October 18, 2024

Contents

Daily Updates

October 14, 2024

I originally planned to work for 3 hours, but I ended up taking 5 hours. At the end of this work block, the user can:

  • Add cycles by indicating that cycle's period start and end dates.
    • The cycle's start and end dates are automatically calculated based on the presence of previously-recorded cycles
  • View all of their previous cycles. In future, I want to be able to view sleep and exercise statistics for a particular cycle; this has not been implemented yet.

I also started implementing a datepicker (using react-native-calendars) for the Symptom Tracking page, but it's not functional yet. By the end of the week, I intend to finish the saving of symptoms (i.e. an upsert) and retrieval of all the symptoms for a day.

October 15, 2024

I attended a Shut Up & Write session (same as last week) and continued working on the Methodology section. However, my Overleaf editor got a little wonky and I ended up spending the second half of my writing session (and another 1.5 hours afterward) trying to get LaTeX working with VSCode.

At first, my Table of Contents was not rendering because of a LaTeX syntax error. Once I resolved it, however, I was able to render all parts of my thesis into PDF form. Special thanks to the LaTeX Workshop VSCode extension ❤️

October 17, 2024

I was supposed to code on October 16, but my assignments from other courses caught up to me and I had to tackle those first. Those other assignments overran into October 17 too, so I only managed to do a brief literature review regarding melatonin supplementation and measures of sleep quality for around ~2 hours in the evening.

October 18, 2024

I continued my literature review of sleep quality measures in the morning for ~1.5 hours.

In the upcoming week, I hope to finish sypmtoms upserting within 2 hours and merge kyurikotpq/self-report to main.

I will also work on kyurikotpq/insights: Visualizing my health data (sleep, exercise, and steps) in relation to days of the menstrual cycle. This requires breaking down each day into the relevant phases (menstrual, follicular, ovulatory, luteal) and then attaching the health data to each day. Visualizing the sleep stages will involve a lot of frontend work, but I will try my best!

What worked?

I didn't try anything explicitly different from last week.

What didn't work, and what can I do better?

I genuinely wish there was a way to get rid of my non-Capstone assignments lol. But I guess pursuing a PhD is a similar experience (i.e. being torn in different directions), so I should be glad that I'm having this experience now?

Anyway, I still want to do well for my other courses, so there isn't a way out.

Technical Learnings

Sleep Quality Measures

  • Total Sleep Duration
  • Number of Sleep Cycles
  • Initial Sleep Onset Latency (ISOL)
  • Sleep Fragmentation / Wakefulness
    • Wake After Sleep Onset (WASO)
    • Sleep Fragmentation Indices as well as number of awakenings
    • Sleep Efficiency (SE)
  • REM Sleep Rebound

Melatonin supplementation

This is completely unrelated to my Capstone, but potentially useful for my future PhD studies in menstrual health.

I was particularly stuck during my review of long-term melatonin supplementation. In The Menopause Reset, author Dr. Mindy Pelz discouraged melatonin supplementation as a first resort because of possible dependence:

Once your body knows that there is an exogenous source of a hormone coming into your system, it can stop producing that hormone on its own. Many women experience this with thyroid medication. Once on a synthetic thyroid hormone, you have to stay on it as the natural production of that hormone slows down. This is why I recommend melatonin last.

However:

  • I couldn't find any papers that concluded a drop in endogenous melatonin production due to supplementation.
  • In fact, most studies concluded that there was no effect on endogenous melatonin production in the short term
  • There are also methodological inconsistencies in melatonin studies (different melatonin dosages, etc.)
  • No study has investigated the impacts of long-term (>1 year) melatonin supplementation
  • Anecdotes on Reddit regarding long-term melatonin supplementation (>1 year - 10+ years) did not report any dependence or withdrawal symptoms

In a 2023 article—years after The Menopause Reset was published—Dr. Pelz also recommended melatonin supplementation for menopausal women:

Q: What are some strategies that can help women get a restful night of sleep?

A: Go down to the pharmacy right now and pick up a bottle of 1 mg melatonin pills. Take one each night, an hour before you go to sleep. You’ll support your body’s natural melatonin production and make up for the decline many women experience during menopause.

While you’re there, pick up some magnesium glycinate as well. A ton of research shows that magnesium eases stress and improves sleep quality. I suggest 400 mg of magnesium a night, taken alongside the melatonin.

A quick third tip is to avoid electronics like your phone and computer for at least an hour before bed. Nighttime exposure to blue light (like the kind you get from electronics) stalls your body’s natural melatonin production, which is already lowered during menopause.

Endogenous melatonin production does decrease with age (Karasek, 2004), so supplementation makes sense for menopausal women. After all, poor sleep does decrease one's quality of life, so sleep should be prioritized over possible supplement "dependence".

I'm also cognizant that melatonin supplementation is a huge industry in the US. As a result, there might be very little incentive to challenge the status quo in the scientific world.

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