The Honest Dose, Issue 1: Sleep, Caffeine and the Clock Change

Welcome to the first issue of The Honest Dose by Vita Bloom Labs.

A note from Dr. Daniel Afar

I'm Dr. Daniel Afar, and together with Dr. Ariel Moradzadeh and Dr. Nathan Moradzadeh, I started this newsletter because most supplement content is written to sell, not to inform. Once a month, the three of us will share the health news worth your attention, the supplement trends worth your money (and the ones that are not), and straight answers to the questions you actually ask us. When the evidence is thin, we will say so. Every claim below links to its source, so you can check our work.

This month's theme is timing: the clocks went back on Sunday, November 1, and that is a good moment to look at when you sleep, eat and take caffeine.

This Month in Health

1. Doctors make the case for keeping standard time

If North America stops changing its clocks, which time should we keep? A new analysis in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, by Lam, Mistlberger, Baylis and Choi, argues for permanent standard time (CMAJ, October 5, 2026; free full text).

The reasoning is about light. The body's master clock runs slightly long, about 24.2 hours, and morning light nudges it earlier each day so it stays in step. Permanent daylight saving time would keep winter mornings dark for an extra hour. In Vancouver, for example, the latest winter sunrise would move from 8:08 am to 9:08 am. The authors note that major sleep and chronobiology societies, including the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, support permanent standard time.

This is a policy analysis built on existing research, not a new trial. In the U.S., the House passed a permanent daylight saving time bill in July 2026. The Associated Press reported on October 29 that the Senate is unlikely to act on it before the end of the year, with several senators citing dark winter mornings (AP via PBS NewsHour).

2. Late-night eating and the liver

Researchers at Oregon Health and Science University and Massachusetts General Hospital looked at long-running data from the Nurses' Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. The paper's title sums up the finding: late-night eating is associated with MASLD (fatty liver disease) and cirrhosis (Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, October 9, 2026).

According to coverage of the study, it included nearly 200,000 people, and researchers reported a 20 to 30% higher risk of liver disease among people who ate after dinner or close to bedtime (News-Medical). Two limits matter. The study is observational and relied on self-reported eating habits, so it cannot show that late eating causes liver disease. And the participants were mostly older health professionals. The team is now running a clinical trial to test whether shifting meal times makes a difference.

3. Caffeine and the developing brain

A King's College London team analyzed data from 9,632 U.S. children aged 9 to 11 (Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, October 15, 2026). Higher caffeine intake, driven mostly by soft drinks, was linked to slightly lower cortical surface area in the brain, with links seen at intakes as low as one cup a week. Shorter sleep and these brain differences together statistically explained part of the link between caffeine and more mental health problems 6 to 18 months later.

The effects were small, the intake was self-reported, and soft drinks bring sugar and other ingredients along with caffeine. This study is about children, not adults. Still, it is a good reason to look at what kids drink after school.

Supplement Watch

Melatonin-free sleep stacks. Verdict: early.

Sleep products built on magnesium, L-theanine, ashwagandha and newer ingredients are launching fast. One trade roundup counted 17 recent sleep launches, many labeled melatonin-free, with almost no study data cited (NutraIngredients, October 21, 2026). The most popular ingredient, magnesium, does not have strong support yet: a 2026 systematic review of 12 randomized trials found inconsistent results and rated the certainty of evidence low to very low (Lopresti and colleagues, Journal of Dietary Supplements). The trend is real. The evidence is not there yet.

Creatine for midlife adults, now in everything. Verdict: real for the powder with training; hype for many new formats.

Creatine is moving beyond the gym crowd, and the SupplySide Global trade show preview lists creatine gummies, gels and even snack concepts (NutraIngredients, October 14, 2026). The evidence behind the trend is for plain creatine monohydrate. In one 2026 trial, adults aged 45 to 65 took 10 g a day for 12 weeks, and the creatine groups gained more lean mass and strength than placebo (Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition). It was a small study of healthy volunteers. New formats like gummies are where dose and stability problems tend to show up, and the trade coverage cites stability claims, not human data.

Ask the Doctors

"I tried Enfinity and felt nothing. Why?"

Fair question, and the most common one we get. Here is our honest answer.

What paraxanthine is. Paraxanthine is the main compound your body makes from caffeine. In a classic study, about 80% of the caffeine people took was converted into paraxanthine (Lelo and colleagues, 1986). It also clears a little faster than caffeine: in a companion study, the half-life was about 3.1 hours for paraxanthine and 4.1 hours for caffeine (Lelo and colleagues, 1986). So it is not a new stimulant. It is part of the caffeine you already know, without the rest.

Why it can feel subtler than coffee. Many of us judge a stimulant by the jolt: a racing heart, a buzz, sometimes jitters. Paraxanthine tends to feel quieter, so when the jolt does not come, it is easy to conclude that nothing happened. The published Enfinity studies measured things like reaction time, short-term memory and sustained attention, not how "buzzed" people felt. Those studies were small (12 and 13 people) and were co-authored by the ingredient's maker (Yoo and colleagues, 2021; Xing and colleagues, 2021).

Why daily coffee can blunt it. Your body adapts to caffeine. A review of controlled studies concluded that in daily caffeine users, much of the morning "lift" is really relief from overnight withdrawal, and that tolerance develops with regular use (James and Rogers, 2005). Because paraxanthine comes from caffeine, a body used to a lot of coffee may notice it less. (That last step is our reasoning, not something a study has measured directly.)

Dose and timing. One 200 mg capsule in the morning, or about 30 minutes before demanding work. Do not take it within 6 hours of bed. If you are sensitive or sleep lightly, give it more room before bed.

People respond differently. Caffeine research shows large person-to-person differences in how fast it is processed, driven by genes, hormones, smoking, diet and some medications (Nehlig, 2018). It is reasonable to expect variation with paraxanthine too.

What to try. Take it on a few workdays, at the same time each morning. Judge it by your focus and steadiness late in the morning, not by a buzz in the first hour.

When to stop. If you have given it a fair two-week try and still notice no difference, it is reasonable to stop. No supplement works for everyone, and we would rather tell you that than sell you a second bottle.

From The Honest Dose

• Paraxanthine Half-Life and Sleep: What to Know About Timing: what a shorter half-life means for your sleep, and what it does not.
• Caffeine Half-Life Explained, and How d9-Caffeine Changes It: why caffeine lingers longer in some people than in others.
• When to Take Your Supplements: A Timing Guide: morning or evening, with food or without, and why consistency matters more than the hour.

Your November Health Move

The clocks went back one hour on Sunday, November 1. You gained an hour, but your light and evenings shifted. If your sleep still feels off, three simple moves:

1. Set a caffeine cutoff about 8 hours before bed. A 2023 systematic review of 24 studies found that caffeine cut total sleep by about 45 minutes on average, and estimated that a regular coffee should be finished at least 8.8 hours before bedtime to protect total sleep (Gardiner and colleagues, Sleep Medicine Reviews). An earlier study found that a large dose taken even 6 hours before bed still disrupted sleep (Drake and colleagues, 2013). If you go to bed at 10 pm, that means your last coffee around 2 pm.
2. Get outside in the morning. Morning light helps keep your body clock on schedule (CMAJ analysis). Since November 1, that light arrives an hour earlier on the clock, so a short walk or coffee outside before 9 am is a good habit to start this week.
3. Get up at the same time every day, weekends included. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine's first tip for healthy sleep is a consistent schedule: the same wake time every day, even on weekends or vacations (AASM Sleep Education).

Bonus, if you like a fourth: with darker evenings, finishing dinner a few hours before bed is an easy habit to try, given this month's late-night eating research.

Product Spotlight: Caffeine 2.0

Caffeine 2.0 is caffeine with nine hydrogen atoms swapped for deuterium, a stable, naturally occurring form of hydrogen. The stronger bonds slow the enzyme that breaks caffeine down, so your liver clears it more slowly, and it is made to last 3x longer than ordinary caffeine.* Each capsule has 22.5 mg of d9-caffeine. Start with one, never take more than four in a day, and take your last capsule at least 8 hours before bed. It is still caffeine, so count it toward your daily total. Shop Caffeine 2.0, or Caffeine 2.0 + L-Theanine.

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*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.