HoldsUp

Michael Grandner

Michael Grandner is a researcher in behavioral sleep medicine and sleep health. His published research investigates the relationships between sleep, circadian rhythms, cardiovascular health, and cognitive decline. Additionally, his work explores the social determinants of sleep disparities, insomnia chronicity, and interventions to improve sleep apnea treatment adherence.

107 claims checked on air: 9 context 2 contradicted 5 overstated 78 supported 13 unverified

What they said on air - citing their own research

3 citing their own research

2:13:28supportedlowtheir own paperWhy You Can’t Sleep (and How to Fix It) | Dr. Michael Grand

Suicide rates between 2:00 AM and 5:00 AM spike to four times higher than expected by chance.

"all kinds of bad things like suicide spikes in that time four times greater than you would expect by chance than any other time of day." (said at 2:13:28)

The speaker's claim that suicide risk spikes during the middle of the night (between approximately 2:00 AM and 5:00 AM) to roughly four to five times higher than expected based on the proportion of the population awake is supported by epidemiologic research. Analysis of the National Violent Death Reporting System adjusted for population wakefulness (from the American Time Use Survey) demonstrates that after accounting for the number of people awake, suicide risk peaks in the early morning hours, showing an approximately 5-fold increase at 3:00 AM (adjusted IRR 5.20, 95% CI 4.74–5.70). Because this is based on observational and population-level ecological time-use data, the GRADE certainty is low.

2:42:12supportedhightheir own paperWhy You Can’t Sleep (and How to Fix It) | Dr. Michael Grand

Wrist-based actigraphy to estimate sleep versus wake states has been utilized in research since the 1970s.

"People need to know that using wrist-based movement to estimate whether someone was asleep or awake across a night has been around since the 1970s." (said at 2:42:12)

The claim is accurate. Movement-based actigraphy to distinguish sleep from wake states was developed and validated in sleep research during the 1970s. Seminal validation studies published in the late 1970s demonstrated high correlations between wrist-worn piezoelectric transducers and gold-standard polysomnography (EEG/EOG/EMG) for estimating total sleep time and wakefulness during the sleep period.

5:07:50overstatedlowtheir own paperWhy You Can’t Sleep (and How to Fix It) | Dr. Michael Grand

A comprehensive literature review led by Teresa Arora found that improving sleep consistently leads to improvements in physical and emotional resilience across studies.

"A colleague of mine, Teresa Arora, she led this project that I also helped on. We looked at... We basically scoured the entire medical literature on resilience and sleep... And basically what we found was across the board, people... If you can sleep better, your resilience will improve." (said at 5:07:50)

A 2022 systematic review and meta-analysis led by Teresa Arora (PMID 35462348) examined the relationship between sleep duration/quality and resilience across 68 studies in non-clinical populations. The meta-analysis identified a weak positive correlation between sleep duration and resilience (r = 0.11) and a modest correlation with sleep quality (r = 0.27; attenuated to r = 0.18 in prospective studies), alongside evidence of significant publication bias. The authors noted that the literature is predominantly observational and cross-sectional, concluding that additional prospective and interventional research is needed to verify whether improving sleep directly improves resilience.

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