Are Blue-Light Blocking Glasses Making Things Worse? with Roudy Nassif

Transcript

00:00
Light is the most powerful information that is controlling our endocrine system, our nervous system and our circadian system. The quality of our life is entirely dependent on the quality of the spectrum of light that hits our eyes every single day. I'm Veronica Larisova and today I'm joined by Rudina Sie, the founder of Vivar and Circadian light educator. This

00:26
episode explores how natural and artificial light affect our sleep, energy, and recovery, and whether circadian glasses can help protect us from the effects of modern indoor living. You are listening to the Chief Life podcast.

00:47
Rudina Sie, the founder of Vivace, the first circadian glasses. Welcome to the Chief Life podcast. Awesome. Thanks for having me, Veronica. I'm so excited. As you can see, I've been wearing my Vivaries religiously since I got them a few months back. And the reason I invited you today is to chat about the science behind the glasses and light in general. So, I'm really excited.

01:12
I'm so excited. It's so interesting because there's so many blue light blockers, but I've never heard about circadian glasses until I heard about Vivace. But first and foremost, how did you become so obsessed with light that you built an entire company around it? Yeah, that's a wonderful question.

01:32
Obsession came from pain. So, it's one of the stories of going from deep pain to purpose. And um looking back, there was a moment that fundamentally changed everything. It's uh March 2017 and it's 1:00 a.m. and I'm laying down in bed next to my former partner in our dark basement in Canada and I'm scrolling on my phone

01:58
and uh the blue light is literally shining on my face and my eyes are hurting and I'm feeling exhausted but I'm wired and I can't stop scrolling. Suddenly, a video popped up on my feed. Artificial light is killing us.

02:21
And I'm sitting there brain, my brain fog is so thick, like I'm barely understanding a word from what Dr. Jack Cruz is saying. But then I wake up the second day and something really phenomenal happens. Throughout the whole day, there's this one sentence that keeps echoing in my mind.

02:44
You can't get healthy in the same light environment that made you sick. That is true. And I was like, wow. That that was the first time ever I hear something like this. And I asked myself instantly, could this be the reason for everything I've been going through? The lack of energy, the constant fatigue, the depression.

03:09
And uh this question led me to an 8 years odyssey where I've been studying the light problem extensively and got obsessed and I even founded the company to solve it. And when I say when I talk about the light problem, some people think, oh, he's probably going to talk about why the blue light is hurting our eyes.

03:33
Mhm. However, the light problem is a lot more nuanced than simply avoiding screens 1 hour before bedtime. And what I learned, Veronica, and experienced firsthand is that the quality of our life is entirely dependent on the quality of the spectrum

03:56
of light that hits our eyes every single day. Interesting. And um you know I I wish somebody had told me this when I was a kid at school. Uh because back then I really struggled and I was classified and judged as the ADHD kid who can't focus.

04:19
That's from the from the teacher's lens. In my words, I felt like I'm literally being asked to sit in a prison cell under artificial lights that were frying my brain on the inside out. And I could feel it and um it was a really challenging

04:40
journey for me and I became a a uh a rebel. Got kicked out of seven different schools. By the time I was 17, I was completely disconnected from my inner light and my intuition and my inner self. So I became exhausted from fighting and resisting and I gave up on myself and I turned into a night owl,

05:07
staying up very late, scrolling on social media, partying all the time, doing drugs and then waking up the second day by noon, literally feeling exhausted, low on energy and unmotivated all day long. And uh no matter what I tried, I literally like left my career as an

05:30
engineer because I I hit rock bottom and I knew something had to change. And I went on a long journey of like trying every diet possible like veganism, vegetarian, ketosis, carnivore diet, ancestral diet and I was taking all the best adaptogens and supplements for brain health and mitochondrial health. But still I felt the same.

05:55
And uh that's when I realized something radically had to shift. And a few weeks after watching that video by Dr. Jack Roose, my former partner was really desperate. She wanted to help me because I was in a really difficult stage in my life where I was almost suicidal depressive. So she came to me with an unexpected surprise.

06:20
She said, "Pack your stuff. We're going to volunteer on an organic farm in northern Quebec with indigenous people." And I was like, "What?" Like, "How is this going to help me? I had to trust her honestly." And we drove for 7 hours from Ontario to Quebec.

06:44
And when we when we arrived at night, there was no electricity, no artificial lights, only like a canopy of twinkling stars, like so brilliant. And it felt like, wow, like this is a complete new universe over here. I we put up our tent. I went to bed. I wake up on day one. It was May 2017.

07:10
I was completely exhausted. like I didn't want to leave the tent. I don't want to be outside. But then day three, something absolutely unexpected happens. I wake up at dawn, no alarm clock, and for the first time of in my entire adult

07:32
life, I feel like wo, like energy surging through my veins. I feel like absolutely alive. I couldn't help but smile. I look at my former partner and it's as though I'm looking at her for the first time in my entire life, like fresh new eyes. And the world around me was like glowing with colors. It felt like I'm on a psychedelic journey without being on psychedelics.

07:57
And um the most profound thing is that the night owl in me who used to stay up late until 2 3:00 a.m. was now sleeping shortly after the sunset with no effort. effortlessly. And the one thing that really shook me to my core, I was I was in the field

08:21
weing the crops. The farmer comes to me, he places his hand on my shoulder, he looks me in the eyes and he says, "Rudy, I truly admire your focus." And like in this moment, like I completely disappeared into nothingness. I'm like, "What? me focused and I had to like face my old paradigm of being the ADHD kid who can't focus. And I I

08:46
realized in this moment everything I thought to be wrong with me, my ADHD, my depression, my chronic fatigue. It wasn't about me. It was my light environment. Wow, that's a big revelation. And that's when you came up with the idea of the glasses.

09:09
No, absolutely not. Um, back then like I was still like in early stages trying to digest my experience. Like how could I go from desperation to inspiration from inability to focus to radical focus? I'm like still like sitting with the experience and I go back to the city and within a matter of few weeks it all comes crashing back at me. The night

09:36
hour tendency, the fog, the inability to sleep well. So it was in this moment I'm like no no no I'm not coming back. And I turned into a mad scientist with the farm became becoming my laboratory. So for over 5 years, Veronica, I left everything and my life

09:59
was a rhythm between traveling between the city and the farm, living with indigenous people in a way that is in complete alignment with nature's light and dark cycles and documenting every shift in my sleep, in my energy, in my mood, and devouring every book, every every paper research that I could find on the science of light. And what's really interesting about light back then there was nobody talking about light.

10:23
Like you could not find people on podcast saying about the benefits of morning sunlight, the detrimental effect of artificial light. You could find some books way back from the 1960s, 1970s that were completely buried. Like you you don't you don't easily find them on Amazon even. And um that's when like I really started noticing a pattern that every time I could go got back to the city, although

10:51
I was still getting morning sunlight and getting sunsets and exposing myself to sunlight as as often as possible, I wasn't able to maintain that solid effortless rhythm where my body felt that it was working for me instead of me constantly needing to prompt it to do the things. And that's when I realized that my artificial light exposure in the

11:13
city was the big problem because every time I was exposed to this light, I was literally disrupting my circadian rhythm. And that's when I discovered about blue blocking glasses and tried so many different glasses in the market from the clear lenses to the yellow orange and we could talk more about the flaws of each one of them. But it wasn't until I made

11:39
a decision, I met an optical engineer from Florida that agreed to help me figure out a melanin pigmentation die that would do exactly what I needed it to do. And at the time, frankly, like and honestly, I had zero intention to start a business. Like zero. And even when I started Viv, it was my sister Joy

12:02
who had to convince me. And uh finally like 6 years in I'm more convinced than ever before because I could see that everybody around me had a light problem. And I could see it because when I made the first 30 pairs with no intention to start a business, I start going around traveling. I talked to people. my mother

12:27
who had insomnia, my sister who had acne and chronic fatigue, friends who had digestive issues, all of them were able to reverse their issues once they solved the light problem. So that's when I realized, wow, like everybody in the modern world is bombarded by this artificial light problem. And we're being radically impacted by it because what we don't understand is that light impact us on a

12:56
cellular level. And we could talk more about this, but that was the radical moment when I was like, "Oh yeah, I'm committing all of my life to this." Incredible story. And I love how so many businesses come like are born out of necessity of the founder. It's very similar story to Chief. But I have a question. You say blue light isn't the enemy. What do most people get wrong about light?

13:22
That's a that's an excellent question. Most people think that light is something superficial that allow us to see the world around us. You turn on the light, you turn it off, that's it. It ends there. But light is uh a lot more than illumination. Light is in information and the most powerful information that is controlling our endocrine system, our nervous system and our circadian system.

13:52
And just like the information that we allow into our minds by reading books or watching news can either trap us in fear or empower us, light is literally a double-edged sword. It could either elevate us or it could make us sick.

14:12
And that's that's really because light affect us on a on a cellular level, more specifically the mitochondria. And those are the tiny little engines within every cells that are responsible for producing the energy that fuels everything that we do. Thinking, moving, creating, digesting, healing.

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Now, here's what's really interesting. Back in 2017, Dr. Douglas Wallace, he won an award for a groundbreaking discovery. 90% of modern chronic diseases including anxiety, depression, diabetes, loss of productivity

14:57
originate from the mitochondria losing their efficiency. And one big reason the mitochondria lose their efficiency, it's not what most people thought it is. Most people thought it's only about eating the perfect diet and exercising.

15:18
But it turns out that these ancient mitochondria have a very powerful relationship to sunlight and darkness. These are like the main mechanism that speak to our mitochondria, letting them know when to optimize our metabolism and be in an active state, a sympathetic active healthy state and when to be in a parasympathetic act parasympathetic

15:46
rejuvenating and repairing state. And I find it really interesting because when you think about how it works now, you need to start thinking about the physics that is sending the signal to the biology because if you go to any biology school, you don't learn any physics and physicians or people who are in the

16:10
physics don't learn any biology. So they're two completely separate domains. But we're coming to a realization that the physics of nature including light and magnetism are literally the executives that are sending the information and the direction for the executive assistance

16:31
in the body like the hormones, the chemicals, the macros, the micros on what to do. And Albert Einstein's photoelectric effect, it showed us something radically important about our biology. He said that when light shines on matter, it excites electrons and it generates electricity.

16:55
Now, we know this is how plants photosynthesize. Yes. And we know how that this is how solar panel works. But Veronica, here's the most fascinating part. It's how our body works too. Okay. And there's there's a Nobel Prize winner his his name is Albert San Gordi.

17:17
He literally discovered that sunlight excites the electrons in the electron transport chain of the mitochondria and it creates the spin or in other words the electricity that the mitochondria needs in order to be able to break down the food into energy.

17:37
In fact, it's now scientifically known that onethird of the energy that we get comes from food and 2/3 comes from sunlight. That's super interesting. And it also makes sense because people in a sunny states are always healthier and happier than people in a dark, rainy, cold states, right?

18:02
Absolutely. And look at you. you have this wonderful tan and you you have this melanin that you've built. And this is a absolutely superpower because what most people don't realize is melanin is to humans what chlorophyll is to plants. And we know that chlorophyll in plants is what allow that breakdown of the water molecules between hydrogen and

18:28
oxygen. And it creates this charge that the plants use. But here's the most fascinating part. What's one of the most powerful antioxidant in nature? We have melatonin and we have hydrogen. Hydrogen literally is created underneath the skin when when melanin interacts with light. Light interacting with

18:52
melanin splits the water molecules and creates in order of magnitude free hydrogen that is the most powerful antioxidant and a longevity uh atom. Now what's another very powerful antioxidant? Melatonin.

19:13
Okay. And here's the really really powerful thing and exciting thing. There's actually two types of melatonin. The melatonin that most people know is the pino secreted melatonin that is secreted only in darkness when you stop seeing artificial light at night. It turns out there's another type of melatonin. It's circulatory melatonin.

19:36
And the mitochondria actually produce on-site circulatory melatonin in orders of magnitude higher concentration than is made in the pineal gland. And this happens during the day when we are in sunlight. It has nothing to do with sleep. Super interesting.

19:58
And this is let me ask you. So that's melatonin and melanin. What about melanopsin? What is it and why is it one of the most important health concepts people have never heard of? Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. So, our bodies are full of opsins. And what are opsson? Opsons are

20:19
receptors that are designed by nature to capture light information and convert them into signals that our body use every single time throughout the day. Now melanopsin is one of many different options including neuropins and particularly melanopsin is a very

20:40
interesting one because it's an opsson that is sensitive to blue light. So it sits in our retina and it's a blue light detector. As the sun is rising and the blue light is the blue light frequency is slowly increasing. This detector in the eye captures that light information and sends an electric signal to the hypothalamus in the brain telling our central clock that the day is starting.

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And this is one of the most fundamental and important signals we could ever give our bodies because they literally send a signal to the mitochondria and to our adrenal gland to start secretreting cortisol and adrenaline, a healthy pulse that acts as the most effective cup of coffee.

21:28
And if you've ever woken up in the morning feeling groggy, low on energy, that is essentially a light issue. And it translate into two different parts. One, you're not getting that morning sunlight in your eyes and your adrenal are not secretreting the healthy PS of cortisol. The second part, most probably the night before you've been exposed to a lot of artificial light after the sunset. And that is radically tragic.

21:58
Why? Because it shifts your clock forward. And instead of melatonin rising at 8:00 p.m. allowing you to be in bed by 9 9:30, now you have a ton of cortisol in your system and cortisol is antag an antagonist to melatonin. Both cannot coexist. So you start feeling wired at night instead of sleeping and ready for bed and your melatonin cycle

22:23
gets pushed way later by two or three or four hours. Now, what that means is by the time you're about to wake up at 6:00 a.m., your melatonin hasn't really peaked yet because it has been pushed forward. So, for a healthy circadian human being, by 6:00 a.m. before the sun is rising, if their melatonin has peaked

22:46
at the right time because they did not expose themselves to artificial light, they're going to wake up with a healthy pulse of cortisol and much less residual melatonin. However, for a circadian disrupted person who's exposing themsel to a lot of artificial light at night, they're going to be living upside down and they're going to have a lot of cortisol at night, disrupting their ability to repair and rejuvenate. And

23:09
the residual melatonin is going to drag with them until early morning. By the time the alarm rings, the melatonin is starting to kick in. And now they're waking up with a lot of residual melatonin which makes them feel a lot a lot of groggginess and they need to drink coffee. That makes sense. I'm going to send this to all my friend who are trying to convince me they are naturally night owls. And I always tell them if there

23:35
was no artificial light how could you be night owl? There would be darkness. Like what would you do in a dark like you can't do anything. So I don't know if there's got any scientific merit, but I don't believe in natural night owls. But a question for you. How much of modern chronic disease do you believe is linked to light deficiency and light toxicity?

23:57
Yeah, that's that's a great question. So we spoke about Dr. Douglas Wallace saying that 90 or 95% of modern chronic diseases are mitochondria in nature. And we spoke about mitochondria's primarily force that either keep it healthy or let it degenerate is light

24:19
and darkness. Now most people today are skipping altogether not only morning sunlight but being outside in the sun throughout the day. This is absolutely problematic. Now combine this with sitting under LEDs. It becomes a disaster because Dr. Glenn Jeffrey he published re recent research literally he asked himself a very interesting question. What will happen

24:45
if I bring a relatively healthy human being and I put them under LED lights all day long? He ran this experiment and when he looked in the in the microscope to examine what was happening in the mitochondria, their mitochondria literally start clamping together and they stop breathing all together and they were slow slowly going downhill.

25:11
Wow. Yes. Insane. So we know that when if if you go out in the sun at any time during the day, your mitochondria has stopped making an absolutely crazy amount of circulatory melatonin within yourself. Now anytime you are living, you are creating reactive oxygen species.

25:32
Whether you are when you eat a meal, the metabolic the the byproduct of living is inflammation. But inflammation is not always bad. In fact, when you exercise, there's reactive oxygen species that are being created and that trigger the production of antioxidants as well as it it it triggers your immune system to be more active. However, when we are in a chronic state of that, this is when we

25:58
run into issues and the mitochondria, it needs a cooling system to clean off those oxidative stress. So what's the cooling system during the day? It's sunlight. It activates Yes. It up because it it's upregulating the the melatonin which is a very powerful antioxidant and it actually upregulates glutathione system.

26:28
Oh wow. That's interesting. That's what I need. Yes. Now the the the question is you you may ask yourself what is then the cooling system at night when when the sun is not there. And the answer to this is darkness because mitochondria needs darkness in order to regenerate. And what do I mean

26:53
by darkness? The moment the sun sets, this light flows as information into our system telling the body that the day is ending. And this start releasing pino melatonin which completely get destroyed when people instead go and

27:13
start watching a Netflix movie without protecting themselves from artificial light. And melatonin is a very powerful sleep hormone. We all know this. But it's a equally as powerful of an antioxidant and it acts as a signaling molecule that activates the cellular cleaning crew autophagy, epoptosis and mphagy.

27:40
Okay. So these are the cellular mechanisms that allow the body to take old and broken cells and replace them with brand new ones. It's literally our longevity program running every night and it's controlled by light and darkness.

28:00
Now, mphagy, which circling back to your question, what's the percentage of chronic disease that I believe is connected to light the light problem? Dr. Douglas Wallace has proven that 90% or more. And what happens is mphagy is the program that allow the

28:21
mitochondria to replace the broken old mitochondrias with brand new ones. And in highly metabolic organs like the eyes, the brain and the guts, the mitochondria could replace five up to 20% of the old mitochondria with new mitochondria every single night.

28:44
Now this is a crazy number there because if you think about it in some of those metabolic organs the mitochondri could completely renew themselves in a matter of 3 weeks. Imagine this. So you just need to sleep and sleep at night to renew you need to create a healthy light environment where you're getting

29:06
sunlight first thing in the morning where you're taking sun breaks throughout the day and sunset. Yes. And where you are protecting yourself from the inflammatory frequency of LED lights during the day and where you're eliminating all artificial light at night by using either a technology like this that allow you to remove all blue and green light which confuse your brain

29:30
about the time of the day or an end changing the lighting in your in your department. So you have more like Himalayan salt lamps that are down at a floor level powered by incandescent lighting which is the most natural lighting that we have been exposed to throughout our evolution because it has the same frequency as the fire. Um and those are absolutely non-negotiable.

29:53
Yeah. Okay. So let's just recap it. So if we want to have a good mitochondrial health and be healthy, have healthy brain and feel good, we need to get out in the sunset and sunrise without sunglasses. We need to have uh breaks from a LED light and get out throughout the day several times and we to we need to protect our eyes side against the le from the LED lights and screens. So my

30:17
question is how does the indoor LED lightning diff lighting differs from natural sunlight from a biological perspective? But if you can explain it just like very simply like if you're explaining it to a child. Yeah, that's a great question. So when we look at the sun, sunlight has a lot of blue light. However,

30:39
the blue light is always balanced and proportionate with the other frequencies of colors. So you have the full colors that you see in a rainbow, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red light. And all of them come symbiotically together as a balanced package that we have evolved to get throughout all of our evolution.

31:03
Now we had just covered the visible spectrum of sunlight. There's also the invisible spectrum of sunlight which is composed of on one side infrared light which we experience it as heat and on the other side the UV radiation which is the essential radiation that allow us to tan allow us to make vitamin D etc.

31:25
Now this is full spectrum sunlight and as the day starts when you watch the sun you'll see that sunlight is a lot richer in the longer wavelength red and orange as the sun is rising and then slowly the green and the blue light start increasing in proportions

31:49
and this increase in that proportion is what sends our brain the signal that the day is starting. That's why it's absolutely important to be outside during that time. In contrast, when we look at the LED lighting and we measure the frequency that is coming from LED, what we see is most people think LEDs have a lot of blue light. The reality is it's not that true. Blue, the sunlight

32:15
has more blue light than LEDs really. But what LEDs have, they have a narrow spike of blue light. They don't have full spectrum blue light. They have a narrow spike at 455 nanometer that is not balanced and proportionate with the other frequencies that must come symbiotically with blue to balance it out. So what we end up with, we end up with a 455 nanometer frequency that we're overdosing.

32:44
And if you take only the 455 nanometer and look at the quantity that we get from sunlight of that spike, then you realize that we're getting about 20 to 25 times more 455 nanometer from an LED compared to what we get from sunlight. And this is this is why people think that LEDs have a lot of blue

33:08
light. Yes. Yes. And no. It's only though a portion of blue light that we're overdosing. And what we know and what we've seen in the science is that when we are exposed to this 455 nanometer frequency say throughout the day because at night it's a complete different story and the damage be becomes 100 times more but say

33:30
throughout the day you work in an office you're under LEDs all day long. What is the problem with that? The issue is that you're getting a narrow spike of blue that is not balanced with the other frequencies that are regenerative frequencies. Because if you if you compose the spectrum, you look at blue light, if you expose yourself to blue light in isolation, it's a degenerative

33:53
frequency. And it's not bad in nature because it always come with a regenerative frequency. And it creates this balance seesaw between the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic. Okay? So the two continue to play and we have great fun because there's balance in nature. The moment we step inside that seesaw tips

34:15
to one side. We're overexposed to a re degenerative frequency that is blowing our nervous system with sympathetic arousal. And there's lack of exposure to the parasympathetic frequencies that must create this balance. What end up happening? The body starts secretaring a lot of reactive oxygen species.

34:37
The body is not having access to circulating melatonin to clean that uh excess inflammation in the mitochondria. Then the mitochondria start aging and the inflammation start increasing. And we've also seen that under this four 455 nanometer frequency something really weird happens on a mitochondrial level. It's really

35:00
interesting because in a natural human being these mitochondria are supposed to split and fuse together as a rhythm that allow them to regenerate themselves. And what we've seen is bring a human being, put them in an office under LED lighting for seven or eight hours.

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Shortly after that, their mitochondria start going into a complete radically different rhythm. They start splitting and they fail to fuse back together. That's why that literally start destroying the mitochondria and make people age faster for sure. And you can feel it. Like if I

35:41
don't have many days where I'm in the office all day, but when I do that, I really don't feel great. Like it's not a good feeling and I always need to get outside. It makes sense. Is it true that that the wrong light exposure affects our blood sugar regulation and insulin sensitivity as well as our testosterone, estrogen, thyroid function, and other hormones?

36:05
Yeah. I'm I'm glad you're asking this and and before I say um before I jump into this, I just want to salute you for being aware that where you feel good and where you don't feel good. And I'm imagining the reason why you're aware of it is because you had experienced that goodness. And once you experience that goodness, it's hard to completely deleted from our our memory because our

36:30
brains are wired in such a way that we want to feel good. And the mo the biggest tragedy for most humans is that they never experience that goodness. They're in the office all the time. I was about to say some people don't even know what it feels like to feel good. And when you don't know, you don't know. Like if you never tasted a chocolate, you would never crave it cuz you wouldn't know. And that's the same with feeling good. Some people just never feel high in energy and then they

36:55
tell me, "Oh, I always feel crap because I'm in my 40s." And I'm like, "Well, so am I. You don't have to feel terrible." And I know that the LED lights and the screens are a massive contributing factor. So can we talk a little bit about the health issues that are related to the light toxicity and being in, you know, in enclosed fake lighted areas throughout the day.

37:19
Because the problem is, for example, so now I'm going back to Australia in July and the sunset is at 7:30 a.m. and the sun sunrise at 7:30 a.m. and sunset is at 5:00 p.m. So if I was in the office all day, I would leave my house in the dark and I would come back home in the dark. No

37:40
chance to see sunset and sunrise. And that's the one of the main reasons I think that lots of people feel terrible during winter and they get sick as well. So what are the biggest issues with health when we don't expose ourselves to the natural light and when we always sitting in the fake light?

38:00
Yeah, absolutely. So there's indeed countless different processes in the body that are being negatively impacted by this. To break it down, we spoke about how it all starts with a disruption of a fundamental rhythm between cortisol and melatonin. And we spoke about how the body start being flooded by cortisol at the wrong time of the day. Now, why is that an

38:26
issue? One of cortisol's job is to give your muscles sugar so you can run away from the predator. But with all these artificial lights on, according to German scientist Fris, your body is literally in a state where it's constantly running from the predator without even having a predator in the room.

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And the way stumbled upon this is very very interesting. He actually stumbled upon it by accident and he took a group of people with cataracts, meaning no light could reach their eyes into their hypo hypothalamus and he measured their stress hormones. Now

39:12
without light reaching the hypothalamus, their hormones were an absolute mess. But after their cataracts were surgically removed, these patients came and they had complete different energy and they were like wo like and and and this is where uh Hish like asked himself a very interesting question because he saw like what is the relationship

39:36
between removing the cataracts and and people digesting better, feeling more energized, having better moods. So what he realized that finally when sunlight could enter their eyes their hormones came back to neutral they normalized. So he took this a step further and he asked okay what will happen if I bring a group of healthy individuals who eat healthy

40:00
diet and exercise and I put them under fluorescent lighting the same lights that we see in offices and gyms and in classrooms and the results were absolutely shocking. He saw that their bodies were going into a chronic stress mode.

40:21
So cortisol stayed elevated for long periods of time. And this is a lot more damaging than actually being chased by a predator. Why? Because think about it for a moment. For millions of years, when we were chased by a predator, we've experienced this momentarily

40:45
and cortisol would go up and then we'll go back to baseline. Now the light in your living room is triggering the same biological alarming response and is keeping cortisol chronically elevated. Now we know that cortisol job is to drive sugar to the muscles. So that keeps your blood glucose level in a

41:10
chaotic state where blood glucose is increasing without you eating a single bite. Wow. That's insane. Think about all the people with diabetes who are trying to will will use their willpower to control their food intake and they're still struggling. And that's literally because they're getting the wrong light at the wrong time.

41:37
And and you know, Veronica, that when the blood glucose is not stable, it negatively impact everything like our mood, our thinking, our cravings. And then it extends into insulin and it causes insulin to spike because now insulin is trying to lower our blood blood glucose back to normal.

42:00
And not sure how your audience is familiar with the word but I'm just going to break it down in an easy way. Insulin acts as like a key to unlock the door of our cell so we can take in the sugar from the blood and use it for energy or store it for later. Now here's the twist. Artificial light goes into our eyes.

42:22
Cortisol stay elevated and cortisol suppresses the the effect of insulin because it want to direct the glucose to the muscles instead of the cells so we can fight and flight. So what happens over time being chronically in this state it could literally lead to insulin resistance and even type 2 diabetes.

42:44
And u there's a friend his name is Dr. Sashin Patel way back he was one of the first people I talked to him about light and he was blown away by it but he start experimenting he's constantly he had his blood glucose monitor to track his level throughout the day and after he start wearing the vivase he start noticing that his blood glucose was a lot more stable without him changing his diet.

43:12
That's wild. I love that. It's absolutely wild. And it just poses the question of like, whoa, like if light impacts us on every level like this, like what is what is the consequence of living in an environment where nobody is paying attention to the light problem.

43:36
Yeah, that's crazy. Okay, so viva rays are circadian glasses. What are circadian glasses and how they are different from traditional blue light blockers? Yeah, so that's an excellent question. Um, traditional blue light blockers are designed with the premise that blue light is bad and therefore we should eliminate it.

44:00
Circadian glasses take in consideration that light in nature is constantly changing and this light is acting as information that inform our circadian system. It also takes in consideration that in nature there's nothing good or bad. Everything is relative. And the impact of blue light on us will depend one on the time of the day that we're exposed to it. Second on whether

44:27
it's balance and proportionate with other frequencies. So instead of trying to eliminate it like other blue blocking glasses do, we took a holistic approach to to look at the time of the day and to solve the issue from a perspective of let's get the right light at the right time and that's why we have three

44:48
different lenses for three different times of the day which we can. So good. I love this. So explain it to us. So right now I have the yellow one. So what are these ones for? So the ones that you and I are wearing are designed to be worn during the day when we are exposed to artificial lights

45:08
and their sole purpose is to harmonize that inflammatory frequency that we spoke about that spike at 455 nanometer that causes inflammation. And our goal was to harmonize it without blocking it. And the way we were able to achieve this, we we we balanced this

45:28
frequency and we spread it across the spectrum. So when you look at the after, if you're looking at before and after, you're going to see that after you wear the glasses, if you measure with the spectrometer, you're going to see that the 455 nanometer still exists. Blue light still exist, although it's now balanced and proportionate with the growing green, yellow, and orange, which weren't there before.

45:53
And that's why it instantly helps people to overcome their eye strains, their headaches and the agitation that they often experience when they are under these harsh intense artificial lights during the day. So you wear these ones throughout the day and I I have them but I made the mistake of not putting my prescription lens in them because now I can't wear

46:16
them for reading. I actually think I need these yellow ones with my prescription lens because I would love to wear them throughout the day, but instead I wear these ones where which have some kind of blue light blocker and I don't think they're as good, but they have my prescription. So, I need to get these ones with prescription. But then you have the orange ones and I just want to show to everyone how easy it is to clip them on.

46:38
Yeah, it's seamless. And I'm glad you brought up the prescription conversation because it's an excellent conversation. But first my question to you, do you wear your prescription outside? No, I just wear the prescription to work on my laptop and to read and watch things. It's just Now we know that many people who have prescriptions, they may need to wear them outside if they are performing a task where they need to see. And the

47:04
issue is the ones that you just showed me, they have a blue light coding. And this blue light coding is an absolute scam. Why is that? because it's blocking blue purple light up to 420 nanometer. And if you look at the emission of LED lights, they start their emission at 430 nanometer and they peak at 455 and

47:26
there's no blue purple light below 420 nanometer. So, so trying to block blue light wearing clear lenses is like trying to rinse your quinoa with a pasta strainer. The quinoa will pass through the holes because it's it's the wrong filter. All right. So, can I get these ones with prescription? I need them. If I had

47:47
these ones with prescription, I wear them all the time because I actually like the look and I really want to wear them, but it's really hard for me to read with them all day. But anyways, let's go into this one. What are these ones for the orange? Um, yes, I'll go to the orange. To answer your question, you can get them in prescription. And also for any prescription user, if you're somebody

48:10
who need to wear your prescription outside, we have something called the 4 in one. And the base frame comes in prescription and it's the only glasses in the market that allow blue purple light and UV light to pass through when you are outside in the sun. So you're not blocking those those beneficial frequencies. Yeah. Okay. after the sunset.

48:32
Um hopefully you've went out and allowed yourself to receive that light information. And by the way, directly or indirectly, it doesn't matter so much as long as you're out and you're letting that light hit your eye. Um you come back home and most of us are exposed to the second sun, the television, the phone, the LED lights, and the ceiling.

48:55
And you want to eliminate this because it's going to confuse your brain about the time of the day. So this is when the evening lenses are absolutely essential. And when is the right time to put them? Right after the sunset. And never remove them until you go to bed because you want to protect your brain from the wrong light at the wrong time.

49:16
Yeah. So anything I do after sunset, I wear the orange. Yes. anything you're doing after sunset, the orange lenses which are engineered to mimic the exact color temperature of the fire. And the reason why we have evening and night time is because when you are around the fire, you relax, you

49:36
wind down, you breathe out, although you're still like socializing, talking to friends, you're cooking around the fire, so you're not overly sleepy. And this is why we have evening and night time because the night time will make you overly sleepy and our clients refer to them as the sleeping pill. And the reason why Uhhuh. This is this is the one. Yes.

50:02
And and the reason so is because we're trying to mimic the end of the bonfire when the wood turns into amber coil. So we're at th00and Kelvin color temperature. We're eliminating all of the blue, 100% of the green as well. and we're dropping the brightness by 10 times. So finally the brain receives a very strong signal that it's absolutely dark outside. It maximizes melatonin

50:25
production. It resets also we didn't talk so much about leptin and grein the hunger hormone and how it impacts weight but it also ties to light and we can talk about this perhaps if we still have more time or on another conversation. You can just say it very simplified quick form for people to understand because it's a very complicated topic. I think we could do a whole podcast on it but it would be good to touch on it.

50:51
Yes, I'll touch on it quickly. So, uh to simplify it, we have two hormones, grein and leptin. And grein is the hormone that is essentially allow us is responsible for our hunger. When grein is high, we want to eat a lot of food. Whereas leptin is our satiety hormone. It's the it's the hormone that tells our brain that we're feeling full, that we have enough energy, that we don't need to eat. When we are living a circadian

51:16
aligned life, naturally after the sunset, leptin goes up to the hypothalamus because when melatonin increases, leptin travels up. It tells the brain that we have enough energy reserve and we feel great satiety and satisfaction. We don't feel the desire to eat. On the other hand, when that blue light hit our eyes, it suppresses melatonin and leptin never never rise.

51:41
And the opposite of leptin, ghrelin now goes up and now all of a sudden we start having a lot of craving for food and we open the fridge, we stop munching on things, and we we end up feeling bad because if if we're if we're somebody who's like dieting, we're often being asked to use our willpower to control our appetite. But it's not a willpower game. It's a biological game because the

52:07
moment you get that light in your eyes, you're trying to swim against thousands of years of biological evolution. So you're swimming uphill on a on a very strong river that is dragging you towards wanting to eat. Yeah. Interesting. Well, thanks for the explanation. And tell us now, what do we when do we wear these red red ones? I'll put them on one more time. They're very

52:30
red. You cannot see much through them to be honest. So when do I wear these ones? Okay, so it really depends on the environment in which you're in. In in most environments, if you are at your home, you're not facing crazy amount of harsh and bright artificial light. I would wear these 30 minutes to 1 hour before bed. If you if you're somebody who's dealing with insomnia, definitely

52:53
put them 90 minutes before bed. And if you follow the steps that we've shared, like getting morning sunlight, blocking artificial lights, I've seen that every insomniac that we've worked with had overcame their their insomnia in a matter of three or four days, including my mother who went from insomnia to 8 hours of sleep. But something I realized lately, I flew to New York City and New York City is absolutely bright at

53:19
night. And what I personally noticed is it was too bright to the point that I if I'm going in the subway and it's past sunset already, it's extremely bright that I had to wear the the red lenses. And it was it wasn't 1 hour before bed. It was right after the sunset. So you could play with it. If you're in environment in a hotel or in an airport or in a subway, big cities like New York

53:44
City where it's extremely bright, then I would wear the red lenses earlier. If you are in a regular environment, then evening lenses right after the sunset, switching to the nighttime lenses 30 to 60 minutes before bed. That's great. And you can also use them to reduce jet lag and travel fatigue because you regulate your light. Absolutely. Yes.

54:05
Yeah. That's great. That's what I'm going to use because Yeah, it's the the blue light and the artificial light can really mess you up even more when you jetacked. Yeah. And if you want to use them in the proper way, if you're traveling say east, you want to start advanced shifting your clock, what you need to do is 3 days before you go to Europe for instance, you start wearing the evening lenses on day one, 2 hours before the

54:30
sunset because now you want to tell your brain that the sun is setting earlier and you want to start waking up earlier. So you advance shift your clock. So by day three, you you're already wearing the evening lenses about four or 5 hours before the sunset. And then you're probably wearing the nighttime lenses around sunset. And what end up happening is on the day you're traveling to

54:51
Europe, you don't look at the time in your current location. You look time in Europe. So if it's 8:00 a.m. in Europe and it's um say I don't know 12 12 midnight in America, then I would allow as much artificial light in the airport in my eyes as possible. I would not wear the glasses because now I'm I'm telling my brain already that it's daytime in

55:16
Europe and while I'm on the plane I will follow the Europe timing. So I will remove the glasses if it's daytime in Europe. I will put the glasses if it's night time in Europe. Yeah that's great. You know what I use this app called time shifter. Have you heard of it? I have not. Yeah. Okay. So the app is called time shifter and they do exact this whole procedure they just described but you should do collaboration with them and

55:40
incorporate the glasses because that would make the program even better. You go on the app and you just purchase like a program for you upload your flight and they'll give you the whole time shifting light shifting everything like the whole shebang. It would be so good to have the glasses incorporated because they're using caffeine, light modification, blindfolding, and stuff like that. I think it would be a great addition.

56:06
That's amazing. What's the name of the app again? Time shifter. Time shifter. Definitely going to reach out. I'm definitely going to play with it. I always use the app when I'm flying. So, when I go to Australia on the 8th of July, I will I'll try that in a report. I'll talk to you about it separately. Anyway, I think it's really interesting. But the question I have, if you could redesign the average home and office for optimal circadian health, what is the one thing you change?

56:36
One of the biggest issues in homes in America is that they are designed to completely disconnect you from the world outside. So you have these windows that block the sun, you have the regulated temperature inside, and you're you're under LEDs. So, one of the first thing I would start thinking of is how do we create concepts and homes that are more of an open concept that allow you to be

57:00
more in in touch and in rhythm with what is going outside. So, instead of like burying our ourselves inside and regulated temperature under artificial light all the time, now we're using our profoundly powerful and adaptive physiology to sync to the temperature outside as well as the light outside.

57:20
So, would you change the light bulbs? Like, are there any better light bulbs we can use around our house that also allow us to still being able to see and read, but they're not as damaging as LED lights? Yes. So, incandescent light bulbs are the best that you could ever use because they have a very natural spectrum.

57:40
Although, in many states, they are being banned because of the energy efficiency conversation, which makes absolutely no sense. thinking of incandescent as a waste of energy because they emit a lot of infrared. But we know that infrared is what charges the mitochondria. So how could that be a waste of energy? But from that perspective, I would use very bright incandescent during the day and very dim incandescent at night. And one

58:06
of the things that we are working on right now is engineering lighting technology that solve this problem at its core. Because many companies right now are launching the so-called circadian bulbs. They're LED lights and they make them in such a way that they emit less blue at night, but they still have these narrow spikes

58:28
in red. They have a choppy spectrum and ultimately it's a digital light that is being used by exciting electrons using semiconductors. And it's not how nature makes light. Nature uses an incandescent technology to make light and this is how sunlight operates. So our goal is to be able to bridge that gap and recreate

58:52
lighting that is aligned with how nature makes it while also solving the problem of the energy efficiency. Um so we're not running into bans from the government in different states. Amazing. I can't wait for that. But until then if I wear my glasses all the time I don't need to worry about what lights I have at home. Is that correct?

59:13
Yes. And I would say like ideally during the day if you're by your office, I would definitely get a bright incandescent light bulb that is sending right to the office because it's going to really charge you with a lot of red and infrared. Okay. Can you send the link to good ones? Because there's so many out there on the market and it's really hard to decide for someone who doesn't know uh the ins and outs which one is a good one. If you

59:37
could send me links and I include them in the show notes for people to look at it. Absolutely. I'll do that. Amazing. Thank you. Okay. If someone could only spend money on one thing, circadian glasses, blackout curtains, red lights, or a sunrise walk, which one would give them the biggest return on investment?

59:58
I mean, the sunrise walk is free, so they don't need to spend anything. And I wish and I hope that everybody listening to this conversation if they're taking one big key takeaway is to start rethinking about how they can get that morning sunlight. And what we're left with is circadian glasses, blackout curtains, and red light therapy. Red light therapy, I will absolutely blow it out because it's not

01:00:20
as necessary as people think it is. The only reason we see scientific studies pointing to some benefits is because we are absolutely deficient on red light and infrared light. Although when you look at a panel, you're getting a fraction of what you'd get from sunlight. So you could easily replace and save your money and go outside in the sun and you're going to get a lot more than what you'd get from a red light panel. The blackout curtains and

01:00:46
the circadian glasses both are really powerful and important because they're essentially eliminating a signal that you that you can almost not escape and that signal completely disrupt your biology and your circadian rhythm. However, I'd play it bright and I would potentially replace the expensive blackout curtains with a blackout mask

01:01:09
that cost like4 or $50 and then I'd invest in the circadian glasses because essentially they're ultimately controlling the light that is entering your eyes and that light as I started my podcast by saying the quality of our life and wellbeing is entirely dependent on the quality of the spectrum that is entering our eyes. And we really want to make sure that we are maximizing the healthy one during the day. And we are

01:01:34
being super protective of the unhealthy one that enter our eyes. And unfortunately, it's hard to control light because it's a wave. It it could come at you from every direction. Unless you're at home and you're able to completely control your light environment, then I think the glasses are an excellent uh investment. Yeah, great answer. And to sum this all up, what are the three most important things people can do tomorrow to improve their light environment?

01:02:03
Yeah, that's an excellent question. I'd venture to say that the three steps I'm about to talk about are one of the most important three steps that I have done throughout exploring many many many of the things in the health and wellness space. And I'll even venture to say that it's probably one of like the top three most important step.

01:02:30
Step number one, every morning, wake up, do not touch your phone, do not turn artificial lights. Before you do any of that, step outside and get morning sunlight in your eyes for at least 10 to 15 minutes. Now, if 10 to 15 minutes sounds too big in your head, I beg you, start with one. And it's great enough because that one minute is going to

01:02:55
makes you feel good. And what do we know about the science of behavior? We act on the things that one make us feel good and second that are easy to do. When something is hard to do in our head, it requires a lot of willpower and motivation to do it. We end up falling. So start with one minute and build up.

01:03:15
If you're already able to start with 15, that's excellent. Go for it. Yeah. Okay. But what is the solution if I get up too early and it's in the middle of winter and it's dark for the next two hours after I wake up? That's an excellent question. If you wake up too early and you are pretty chill about how you want to start your day, I would start my day in

01:03:38
darkness meditating. And one of the most underrated powerful moments to actually meditate is in darkness when nobody had woken up. Why? Because darkness or meditation to me is about communing with universal intelligence.

01:04:00
And that requires looking inwardly towards your soul versus outwardly through through your senses. And one of the most challenging thing for every human being alive is that we're constantly very confused whether we are body or a soul and we are we are essentially both. But our body has unfolded for millions and millions of millions of years. Whereas I do believe that mind unfoldment started a few

01:04:26
thousand years ago and therefore our senses have always been dominant compared to our uh to our soul or to our inner mind. And by making use of those few hours in the day when it's actually dark outside when there's no noise, you could easily tap inward and use that time for meditation. And then after the meditation, I would exercise still in

01:04:50
darkness or in low lowle light. And that exercising is going to make you sweat. It's going to increase your core body temperature up. It's going to make that cortisol pulse happen. and it's in alignment with your circadian biology. So, by the time the sun is rising, you go outside and you get that sun and it's absolutely delicious. Okay, that's great.

01:05:12
I think I'm doomed. I have a question for you. So, I have to be at work at 6:00 a.m. when I'm in Australia and the sun rises at 7:30 a.m. in winter. What do I do? Okay, here's what you do. So, you wake up and now your focus is not on meditating or going inward. Your focus is on getting as sharp as possible in the best way possible. And the way I would do this is I would use either cold

01:05:37
exposure or exercise. You want to do anything that will increase your core body temperature up and that will create that healthy pulse of cortisol. You could even combine both. I love you for saying this because I do an ice bath every single day. The first like the first thing I get up and I go to the ice bath. That's yeah, that's amazing because the ice bath acts almost like your sunrise in that case because it's raising your core

01:06:01
body temperature up. It's increasing your cortisol. It's cleaning the residual melatonin. So, if I was you, I would do the ice bath. I would I would exercise right after it. And I would do it in lowlevel light while I'm wearing the evening lenses. So I'm still protecting my physiology for the right signaling of which season we are out because that's the red one or the orange one.

01:06:26
The orange one. The orange. So that just to make sure people don't wear the red one. So I get up, go straight into the ice bath in my orange glasses and I exercise in the orange glasses. Yes. And and that's also another like long conversation about infraian rhythm which is seasonal rhythm which is also determined by length of the day and shortening of the day. But this will help you to maintain that infra rhythm without going too deep in it.

01:06:51
And you keep them on until sunrise hits. You're in your job at your office 7:30 and now you take your sunbreak and you take them off. You go outside. You get 10 minutes of sunlight. You feel amazing and wonderful. you come back in and you continue working. Amazing. So, we said three most important things. The the first one before we went on into all the depth of

01:07:15
it, it was expose your eyes to the sunrise for 15 minutes if you can. That's number one. What What are the other two most important things? The second very important thing is stop getting sunbreaks throughout the day. Okay? Like we know like every chain smoker is like obsessed with getting their cigarette break and they would do anything for it. Uh so start thinking of

01:07:41
sunlight as this nourishing power in the sky that is energizing every aspect of you and include regular sun breaks throughout the day. For me personally, what works is if I'm working for a 90 minute to 2 hour session, this is when I hit my peak concentrative power. And after that, in order for me to repeat another

01:08:04
concentrative session, I need to decentrate or expand or do something where I'm not focused on anything. And that is usually for me going outside and walking, uh, running, doing whatever it is, and getting mornings and getting that sunlight on my face. So, step number two is that sunlight break. And step number three, after the sunset, using the best technology you have in

01:08:29
hand to protect your rhythm and tell your brain that the day is ending because you want that signaling first thing in the morning to stay consistent same time. That tells your brain they started and then you want that end of day signaling happening same time. And this is a mistake many people make who buy our glasses. One day they wear it after sunset, another day they wear it

01:08:52
at 7:00 p.m., then on 9:00 p.m. And then they're not getting that consistent signaling that the day is ending. And once you get those two consistent signaling, you have trillions of clocks in your body. All of them are ticking on the same rhythm, predicting the day, even to to the prediction of when you should eat and h and how you could best digest by your body being able to

01:09:16
predict the timing of your your food intake and being able to secrete all the enzymes that it needs to to secrete predictively to the meal. So you're able to absorb more of that food without without sweating. Yeah. So same as with everything else, consistency is the key. Love that. Okay. Is there any science or science study behind the circadian glasses? Have they been tested or is there anything we can read about it?

01:09:45
Yeah, we p I mean there's there's a lot of studies there's some wild data actually from Harvard uh university showing that artificial light at night suppressed melatonin and the question is how much artificial light and the answer is absolutely shocking 15 seconds of artificial light exposure after the sunset and that's because the rods become extremely sensitive when we've

01:10:10
been 12 hours awake and I've seen many research papers showing uh different uh glasses and the impact on melatonin on REM sleep and sleep. Personally we run a clinical study on uh students and uh we used uh the evening lenses uh on the so there was a group of student who wasn't wearing any lenses a group of student

01:10:34
who was wearing the viv lenses and the results were absolutely beautiful because uh these students had higher level of alertness and focus the second day they were able to sleep deeper and better at night and in there there was measurable cognition improvement as well. That's great. Well, thank you so much.

01:10:54
That was so much information. I almost feel like we need to do another podcast. But I have a one last question that I ask every single of my guests. What is your favorite book or a good book that you've read recently? My favorite book. It's not even hard for me to to answer because it's the book

01:11:19
that stands out above every other book that I had read. And it's mostly more so than a book. It's uh it's it's a course and it's called the uh the science of the natural science and um natural natural science and philosophy by by Walter and Leo Russell. They have

01:11:41
written several books which I think it would be useful to mention a book because the course is pretty big and not everybody is going to commit to it. But Walter has written a book called The Secret of Light and Leo has written a book called Love. Both of which are tremendously beautiful and impactful. And Leo's message is

01:12:03
pretty simple. and she she essentially emphasizes that in order for us to experience love, we must learn how to give love first. And Walter actually in his book

01:12:26
the the the secret of light he points so much so about the essence of our inner light and the power of that light that sits still within us. And he's probably one of the first people who spoke about the two different type of lights. light uh capital L letter and and small L and

01:12:51
the small L is the light that we all know it's the light in motion uh that comes from the sun but the capital L letter light is that inner light that sits within each one of us and what Walter refers to as the genius in us and I think there's one quote from it that I love the most and it says that mediocracy is self-inflicted and genius is self-bestowed

01:13:15
I love that that's a such Such a good closing note. Thank you so much for sharing all the information and I can't wait to speak to you again. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the Achieve Life podcast for more conversations on performance, nutrition, and mindset. And we'll see you in the next episode.