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UnDisciplined: The Integrated Physiologist And The Socio-Techno Endocrinologist

University of Utah Health
University of Utah reserach analyzes the ways people with diabetes hack devices for better health outcomes.

This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about life hacks, including some that work — like do-it-yourself glucose balancing devices used by increasing numbers of individuals with diabetes — and some that don't, like the common practice of using weekends for recovery sleep. 

Christopher Depner is an associate professor of integartive physiology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His latest study, published in Current Biology, found that the increased disease risks faced by people who get insufficient sleep aren't reduced when those same people try to make up for it by sleeping longer on the weekends 

Michelle Litchman is a nurse pratcitioner at the University of Utah whose research focuses on the intersection of diabetes, disease managements and technology. Her recent study in the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology analyzed social media posts to better understand the health outcomes of people with diabetes who use open-source technology to provide for their needs. 

Matthew LaPlante has reported on ritual infanticide in Northern Africa, insurgent warfare in the Middle East, the legacy of genocide in Southeast Asia, and gang violence in Central America. But a few years back, something donned on him: Maybe the news doesn't have to be brutally depressing all the time. Today, he balances his continuing work on more heartbreaking subjects by writing books about the intersection of science, human health and society, including the New York Times best-selling Lifespan with geneticist David Sinclair and the Nautilus Award-winning Longevity Plan with cardiologist John Day. His first solo book, Superlative, looks at what scientists are learning by studying organisms that have evolved in record-setting ways, and his is currently at work on another book about embracing the inevitability of human-caused climate change with an optimistic outlook on the future.