Current Studies
Sauna and Lifestyle Every Evening Practices for Sleep
The Studies: The SLEEPS Studies will test a mind and body treatment for insomnia. The SLEEPS Studies treatments are digital cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) and sauna blanket sessions using an infrared sauna blanket. We’ll begin recruiting participants in early 2025.
Hyperthermia as an Alternative Treatment for the Biology and Experience of Depression (HEATBED) Studies
The studies: The HEATBED Studies tested whole-body hyperthermia (WBH), which is whole-body heating using an infrared sauna device. The first HEATBED study tested whether our WBH protocol could reliably raise core body temperature in healthy people. The second and third HEATBED studies tested the feasibility and acceptability of a treatment combining WBH and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) sessions for people with clinical depression. Click here to join the waitlist for the next study.
What we found: You can read the outcomes for the first HEATBED study (healthy people) here, the second HEATBED study (people with depression) here and a case report from the second HEATBED depression study here. We will soon be submitting our results from the third HEATBED study for publication.
Past Studies
The Temperature as a Predictor (TemPredict) Study
The study: The TemPredict Study began as a project focused on detecting COVID-19, but grew into a project that focused on using wearable device data to identify both acute and chronic health conditions, as well as to identify sleep phenotypes and biological signatures of mental health states.
What we found: We have published more than 10 peer-reviewed articles from this dataset, which you can access through our publications page. Some of our favorite papers have focused on detecting COVID-19 and finding a dose-response association between greater body temperatures and greater levels of depressive symptoms.
Diabetes Education to Lower Insulin, Sugars, and Hunger (DELISH) Study
The study: The DELISH Study provided a carbohydrate-restricted diet with or without mindful eating training to people with Type 2 Diabetes who find food cravings hard to resist.
What we found: We have published a protocol paper, as well as data on the cardiovascular outcomes from this study, with more to come.
Biology and Experience of Eating (BEE) Study
The study: The BEE Study explored reward-driven eating among people with overweight or obesity.
What we found: We have published several versions of the Reward-based Eating Drive (RED) scale, in a rapid 5-item version, the original 9-item version, and the expanded 13-item version. The 5- and 13-item versions have the best psychometric properties, and have been translated into several languages; these translations are in preparation.
Cognition and Glucose Study (COGS) Study
The study: The COGS Study explored how drinking a glucose beverage affected cognitive attention and performance across individuals of normal body mass index (BMI) status and those of obese BMI status.
What we found: We found that individuals of obese BMI status (relative to individuals of normal BMI status) showed greater attentional bias to food-related stimuli after consuming the glucose beverage.
Eat Right Now (ERN) Study
The study: The ERN Study tested whether a 28-day, mobile intervention for mindful eating could reduce the experience of food cravings and eating in response to food cravings.
What we found: We found that the ERN program was associated with a 40% reduction in craving-related eating and significant reductions in trait food cravings. We also found that training in mindful eating weakened an association between mood and food craving strength.
Sugar Transitions and Reward (STAR) Study
The study: The STAR Study was a sub-study of a larger trial examining the brain. It tested whether consuming sugary beverages versus aspartame-sweetened beverages for 14 days changed reward-driven and craving-related eating.
What we found: We found that sucrose consumption (but not aspartame consumption) was associated with reductions in stress-induced cortisol after a cognitive task.