#84 - Say It Ain't So
I’m here staring at my list of blog topics and thinking of which one to speak about.
Nothing is grabbing me.
“Maybe I should say something about 1 of the 2 studies we managed to get accepted for publication this week?”
Immediately my mind turns to that other study that got rejected this week.
“Crap! I haven’t played my rejection song yet …”
Whenever I get a rejection, I play Weezer’s “Say It Aint So” - I’m reminded I’m not alone. Do you have a rejection song yet?
Say It Ain’t So
As of today, I’ve published 120 scientific studies about sleep (including 11 this year) - with 100+ awesome colleagues.
There’s a lot of good memories associated with those studies.
Like spending a couple of weeks in the Arctic - searching for the Northern Lights by night - and crunching sleep data by day…
Well, actually, there wasn’t much daylight in northern Norway at that time of year (late November) - 1 PM in the afternoon felt like 6 PM (see pic above of me in the office). In fact, the townsfolk of Tromsø weren’t going to see the sun for 2 months. You could get a sense of depression that was hitting some of the townsfolk.
But even though there’s been 120 studies accepted for publication - we have probably got rejected more than 100 times.
In a good year, it can take about 12 months to get a study from ‘the idea’ to being published.
At the other end of the scale - one of my studies took 10 years.
The one that got rejected this week was spawned as an idea in 2015.
Can Exercise Alter the Timing Of Your Body Clock?
The driver of this ‘sleep + exercise’ study is Dr Christin Lang, who came all the way from Switzerland to Australia to test this in our sleep lab.
Christin use to be a gymnast - which is good - because there were a lot of obstacles to leap over:
For some odd reason, Christin and myself had to be interviewed by the medical ethics committee before they would give us approval. It was like one of those weird courtroom scenes (everyone had a microphone in front of them). And we were on trial.
Then she had to convince teenagers to spend a week of their school holidays in our sleep laboratory.
On the way to meeting some teenagers at the sleep lab, she fell off her bike. Her arm was a bit sore, but she ignored it and met the teens anyway. Afterwards, she thought she better go to the hospital. She had broken her arm.
And if you’re going to measure a teenager’s body clock, you have to collect their spit. We had litres of frozen spit in our freezers - but struggled to get the funding to send it off for analysis (and we hoped we didn’t get any blackouts - can you imagine a river of teen saliva flowing through the lab?).
I’ll stop there. You probably don’t wanna know about the encounters with poisonous snakes, or her husband breaking his back …
What’s written down on a scientific paper is only part of it.
The point I am trying to make is - A single research study takes a long. frickin. time.
Dr Christin Lang (far right) with the sleep team after a day at the 2018 European Sleep conference in Basel.
And Then …
I’m often teaching clinical psychology students that if they are putting in more effort than the client, then they need to ‘re-balance’. Like any relationship, both sides need to put in the same effort.
This week, Christin gets this feedback on her ‘sleep + exercise study’ she submitted:
FYI - this was not balanced - having both females and males tested makes the issue of a small sample even worse.
I know Christin well, and she will persist and keep trying to get this important study published.
So - can exercise alone change the body clock?
If you got a ticket to the WINK Conference on July 10th, you don’t have to wait for the study to be published - you can check out the recording of Christin’s conference talk.
If you missed the WINK conference altogether, but wished to checkout a talk or two, then subscribe to our weekly newsletter (if you haven’t already) and next weekend we’ll have a little deal for you.
The Night Is Darkest Just Before The Dawn
Despite one reviewer being a bit ‘meh’ about Christin’s study, the other reviewer provided some great points, and gave us food for thought. And there was this recognition of Christin’s hard work:
Conclusion?
You may be going through a challenging time right now. And it sucks. But us humans are made up of a bunch of strengths - even when things aren’t going well.
This means we can overcome our failures - and that’s actually where success comes from.
For example, one study I tried to publish got rejected a dozen times. Indeed, it’s never been published. But that did not stop me.
So if you look at a Professor of sleep science - or someone else who is posting about their success - know that it takes a lot of failure to become successful.
All you gotta do is learn from every failed attempt.
Success follows failure.
Keep going.
Prof MG
To Our Members
To our WINK Members who missed our Live Q&A discussion of ‘Technology Use & Sleep’, the recording is now available in the Member’s section (scroll down to the Live Q&A section, and click on Past Events).
As the first half of this session was a presentation from me - that was split into 2 parts, (1) how to summarise the latest science on this topic when giving a talk to a company, school or online group, and (2) how to translate these findings to help a client in a 1-on-1 format - I’ve also provided the Powerpoint slides I use - so you can use them too if doing a presentation or working 1-on-1 with a client (click the image in the Past Event section to download the file).
And ….. (drum roll) …. it’s finally arrived. There is now an online forum section (called ‘Community’) in the WINK Members area. This is where you can ask a question about a client you’re working with to the Members. There’s several discussion groups, partitioned into different groups (eg, Babies & Toddlers, School Kids, Teens, Adults).
There’s also a discussion group where you can ask whether you can find a study about sleep. For example, one member asked whether babies secrete melatonin during the day. Another member has asked about evidence for sleep programs for those in the travel industry.
So check out the new additions (login here) and introduce yourself (I already have - so say G’day).
If you’re not a member and you wish to join, click here.