Welcome to The Rise – your weekly dose of circadian sunshine, decentralised health wisdom, and actionable tips to help you live healthier, stronger, and more empowered.

This week, we’re getting healthier and stronger by shifting into new seasons and learning:

• Why 6 in 10 women are on track for heart disease by 2050, and the biological root cause medicine keeps skipping over
• Does your body needs more sleep in Autumn? And less in Spring?
• The gut bacteria connected to less allergies
• What Daylight Saving Time is really doing to your health
• And how to ease into Spring and Autumn (depending which hemisphere you’re in)

Have suggestions — or something you’d love to see covered here? Help me better serve this vibrant community of health rebels and send me your feedback here.

Much love and sunshine, ☀️
Sandy xx

P.S. Don’t keep The Rise a secret. If you know someone who needs this issue — pass it on. 🤍

Issue #110 • 8 March, 2026

🌅 Rise Report

The Heart Disease Crisis Coming for Women And What Medicine Is Missing

One in every three women is likely to die from cardiovascular disease. In 20 years, it’s projected to be one if every two. Let that sit for a moment.

A landmark scientific statement just published by the American Heart Association (AHA) projects that by 2050, 6 in 10 women in the US will have some form of cardiovascular disease. And this isn’t just a problem for older women in their 60s and 70s. Nearly 1 in 3 women aged 20–44 will be affected too.

The solution? The advice that’s being dished out is eat well, exercise, don’t smoke, cut the alcohol and manage your weight. All true and all very sensible.

It’s also all very silent on the biology that governs all those risk factors in the first place.

Here’s what the AHA framework fails to mention: your circadian rhythm controls your blood pressure. Your light environment drives your cortisol, your insulin sensitivity, your inflammation. Your mitochondria, the engine in every heart cell, runs on light and dark signals as much as food does. Sleep, weight, metabolism, stress, and hormones? They’re all governed by light too. So why is nobody screening for your light environment or the status of your circadian rhythms?

The decentralised wisdom? Our medical system is very good at treating chronic diseases. In fact, there are pills for all of them. It is not however very good at preventing them. This report isn’t intended as a scare story, it’s a signal that the conventional playbook isn’t working.

The gap between what medicine measures and what actually drives disease is enormous. If you want to address why those risk factors appear in the first place and want to avoid them, start by looking at what’s happening upstream. That’s why I’m here, every single week – and hope you are too!

Do You Need To Sleep More in Autumn?

Ever notice that as the days get shorter, your bed calls a little louder? You’re not being lazy. It’s just biological.

Researchers at Charité Medical University of Berlin analysed the sleep of patients across every month of the year and found something striking: people get 30 more minutes of REM sleep in winter than in summer, even in a light-polluted urban environment. And that’s not all. Real-world data from thousands of Oura Ring users confirms the same pattern: sleep duration climbs, and time in bed increases as we head into the colder, darker months.

The mechanism is elegant. As days shorten, darkness arrives earlier, your brain releases melatonin sooner, and more melatonin means more REM sleep — the phase used to process emotions, consolidate memories, and (as we covered in Issue #99) flush out the toxic proteins linked to Alzheimer’s.

“Seasonality is ubiquitous in every living being on this planet,” study lead Dr. Dieter Kunz

For those of us in Australia heading into Autumn right now, this is your body’s natural invitation to slow down a little. For our Northern Hemisphere friends coming out of winter into spring, it’s time to enjoy that seasonal surge of energy. Either way, both hemispheres are shifting, and your body already knows it.

The takeaway? Give yourself permission to go to bed a little earlier as Autumn deepens. Or make the most of the Spring energy. Our cells and bodies know what time of year it is — so it’s time we made sure our calendars and schedules caught up.

Save the Bifido: The Gut Bacteria That May Prevent Asthma and Allergies

If you’ve been with me for a little bit, you know that I’ve written about my friend bifidobacteria before (Issue #85) — in fact, it’s not the only time with this bifido story being one of my most popular newsletters yet. Sorry…I digress.

An international research team led by Denmark’s Technical University just published a landmark study in Nature Microbiology identifying the specific mechanism behind why some babies develop allergies and asthma — and others don’t. The answer lies in their gut bacteria during the first weeks of life.

The researchers found that bifidobacteria produces a natural compound that acts as a brake on the immune system’s allergy response, reducing the key antibody that drives eczema, hay fever, food allergies and asthma by a whopping 60%. A perfect example of our clever bodies at work, and bacteria doing what bacteria was designed to do.

Unfortunately, it’s not all roses here. Bifidobacteria is having a hard time of late, following in the footsteps of dinosaurs and facing a bifido extinction, fast.

Currently, in many parts of the world, 76% of infants are found to be deficient, with 25% having none at all. C-sections, formula, antibiotics, sterile environments are all quietly dismantling the very bacteria our children’s immune systems depend on. On the flip side, babies born vaginally were 14 times more likely to acquire these protective bacteria from their mothers, with exclusive breastfeeding and contact with other kids helping too.

The takeaway? If you’re pregnant or have young children, or just about to become a grandparent (congratulations, by the way) this one is worth knowing. It’s time to support bifidobacteria through breastfeeding, not scheduling a C-section just because it’s convenient and thinking about ways to look after your own bifido too.

For the rest of us? Bifido is still essential for our immune health, gut health, mental health and more. So, eat your yoghurt, your kefir, your kimchi. And let’s Save the Bifido, one jar of sauerkraut at a time. 🥒

Day Light Savings

This Sunday, most of the US and Canada will “spring forward” one hour with the start of Daylight Savings Time (DST). While, most of us in Australia will “fall back” on the first Sunday of April, and honestly, good riddance. I know there will be some of you that are part of the DST cheer squad, but let’s understand what’s actually going on here, because the science is eye-opening.

DST was first introduced in Australia in 1917, during World War I, to save fuel and reduce the demand for artificial lighting – reasons that don’t really apply today. It was repealed after the war, revived during World War II, then reintroduced permanently across most states from 1971. And to my friends in WA, NT and QLD who don’t have DST – I salute you.

Globally, only around 34% of the world’s countries observe DST, primarily in Europe and North America. China, India, Japan, and most of Africa simply don’t bother. And more than half of the countries that have used it historically have since abolished it. Maybe this tells us something.

Known Adverse Health Effects Associated With Daylight Savings Time

There have been many studies conducted into the health implications of DST. Here’s what they’ve found:

• 24% increase in heart attacks on the Monday following the spring forward
• 8% higher rate of ischaemic stroke in the first two days after DST
• 7% greater heart attack risk in the three days after the spring change
• DST linked to increased road accidents, reduced productivity, disrupted judge sentencing, and sleep disruption lasting weeks
• Long-term DST associated with higher rates of coronary heart disease, diabetes and metabolic syndrome
• 6% increase in fatal traffic accidents in the mornings directly after the spring change
• Rise in workplace injuries and measurable productivity drop in the days following the change
• Increased rates of depression, anxiety and seasonal affective disorder
• Disrupted serotonin production, impaired decision-making and reduced impulse control
• A Stanford 2025 study estimated the current DST system is linked to 2.6 million more people with obesity and 300,000 additional strokes per year compared to permanent standard time
• A phenome-wide study of 150 million US patients and 9 million Swedish patients found additional signals including immune-related conditions and adverse pregnancy outcomes
• Multiple leading sleep and chronobiology bodies including the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the European Biological Rhythms Society and the Sleep Research Society — have all called for permanent standard time

But yet here we still are. Ho hum…

British Columbia Goes Permanent DST

In other big DST news this week: British Columbia just announced that March 8, 2026 will be their last clock change, ever! This State will be adopting permanent DST, making this Sunday’s spring forward their final one.

Stopping the biannual disruption is genuinely good news. But I’ll be honest, permanent daylight saving time isn’t the ideal solution either. Having darker mornings in winter, when you need that morning light signal most, goes against circadian biology principals. The best solution is permanent standard time, keeping our clocks aligned with the sun year-round and letting Mother Nature’s clocks take control

For us Aussies: most states fall back on Sunday, 5 April 2026. We only have a few more weeks of these incredibly dark mornings, and before we welcome the earlier sunsets as the natural seasonal signal they were always meant to be.

🔢 Number Crunch

30 minutes: the extra REM sleep humans get in winter compared to summer. Your body isn’t being lazy when it wants to stay in bed a little longer as the mornings darken – it’s being seasonal and yes, you have the perfect excuse to give your partner now. You’re welcome!

The information in this newsletter is for educational purposes only and not intended as medical advice. Always consult with a healthcare professional for personal health decisions. This post may contain affiliate links, and I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase, at no extra cost to you.