Is Kin Insurance good? What's the general consensus on this sub about them? Is anyone familiar with them?
I'm located in Florida, just shopping for a new carrier. Not sure what I should go with yet but this is on my list. What do you guys think about them? Any advice or opinions would be greatly appreciated.
If someone is doing neurofeedback or qEEG-guided work, would a brain PBM device be useful as a complementary tool, or is it better to keep those things separate?
The two seem complementary rather than redundant, PBM warms the brain up before a neurofeedback session, giving it more energy to work with so the training sticks better. Some practitioners are even using the qEEG data to guide both at the same time, targeting the same areas instead of doing them blind.
I understood that irradiance matters more than total power because it tells you what's being delivered, while total power can look bigger just from stacking more LEDs. I guess that logic hold for transcranial use? And is programmability worth prioritizing or is that more of a clinical thing?
Human milk oligosaccharides, or HMOs, are one of those supplement categories where the name makes people immediately check out. I had the same reaction at first. "Human milk"? Sounds like breast milk, but that is not really what most HMO supplements are. A lot of the commercial HMOs now are bioidentical versions made through fermentation or other manufacturing methods, meant to replicate specific oligosaccharides naturally found in human milk, not be breast milk itself.
HMOs are complex sugars often described as the third most abundant solid component of breast milk after lactose and lipids. Babies do not really digest them directly. Instead they act as a very targeted prebiotic signal, selectively feeding beneficial gut bacteria, especially Bifidobacterium species. Unlike typical prebiotics like inulin or FOS, which feed a broad range of gut bacteria and can cause gas and bloating, HMOs are remarkably specific. The goal is not to feed everything equally but to encourage the microbes that are actually adapted to use these structures.
Bifidobacterium longum is one of the more important of those species, but bifidobacteria levels tend to be much higher in infancy and often lower in adulthood. Age, antibiotics, low-fiber diets, ultra-processed foods, C-section birth, and general modern lifestyle factors can all influence how much Bifidobacterium someone has.
One paper I found especially interesting looked at HMOs in an adult gut model and found that 2'FL and LNnT increased bifidobacteria, increased short-chain fatty acids, and showed effects related to gut barrier function and immune signaling. Another adult trial showed that both were well tolerated and shifted the adult microbiome toward more Bifidobacterium.
A few years ago Holigos had an HMO-based formula that combined 2'FL with Bacillus coagulans Unique IS-2 and a lot of gut-health people talked about it, but it was discontinued. Now HMOs are mostly sold either individually, like 2'FL products such as PureHMO, or in broader formulas like kēpos, which combines HMOs with human milk lactoferrin, a different compound but also naturally found in breast milk.
A 2025 Stanford RCT found that six weeks of 2'FL supplementation in older adults led to improved HDL cholesterol, lower insulin levels, and increased FGF21, a hormone that regulates metabolism, energy expenditure, and insulin sensitivity. Participants also performed better on visual memory tests, which aligns with earlier research showing 2'FL levels in breast milk correlate with cognitive development in infant.
What do you think? I'll leave the sources below if you want to dig in more.
Before buying my first decive I'm comparing red light therapy devices and I keep seeing brands throw around total power, LED count, irradiance, wavelength... chatgpt helped me make some sense of it but I'll ask the experts here. What does actually matters and how do you tell when a spec is just there to sound impressive?
I understood that total power can look huge if a device just has a ton of LEDs, but irradiance (mW/cm2) feels more useful because it's telling you how much light is actually hitting the area, not just how much the device is producing in theory. Is that the right way to think about it?