Russ: There’s a miracle about to happen this weekend where Sarah Turner and I are going to meet for the first time in person, never met in person. And so that’ll happen this weekend. And then, I’m sure there’ll be a rainbow that will appear over the oceans of the Pacific coast. But that rainbow looks like it ends in Mexico because we have our guests here today who is in Mexico.
Sarah: So yeah, for sure, Roudy. Thank you so much for joining us from Mexico. I mean, it’s certainly fabulous where you are, how are you?
Roudy: I’m wonderful, drinking coconut water, surfing in the ocean, catching sunrises and sunsets.
Sarah: I bet you are. How brilliant!
Russ: What about Mexico? Are you?
Roudy: I’m in Puerto Escondido at the Chittick.
Russ: Are you getting away from the cold weather?
Roudy: Well, I actually love the cold weather, to be honest. And my friends call me crazy, because I’m always swimming in the cold water for 15 minutes every morning at 5 am when it’s still dark. And I think winters’ time is a very magical time to me, I go in, I go inwards. And even physiologically, the body goes into autophagy and cellular repair much more in the winter than in summer. So, I honor all seasons and I love the seasonal change, to be honest.
Russ: Roudy, on the podcast, we talked to all the kind of change makers in science and alternative health, everything around gut health, brain health, longevity. What are some of the areas that you focus on? I know, we’re going to talk a lot about your product. But I’d love to hear about kind of what areas do you really like to specialize in, would helping people and helping yourself?
Roudy:
Well, I like to help people to unveil the true power of light, which I consider is the purest form of energy that fuels our life and a fundamental missing link in our current self-care routine.
Often I see in my experience and the experience of others that help people to lose weight, supercharge their energy and transform their health. And I know that in the holistic field, many people nowadays are practicing more holistic approaches such as mindfulness, exercise, healthy diet, supplements. And I always like to introduce people to maximizing healthy light in their life while eliminating junk light, so that they complete the equation and amplify and strengthen every diet supplement and health protocol that they’re currently practicing.
Sarah: That’s great! What are you basing that on Roudy? What kind of concept, are you basing it on? Because I think you’re right, like is one of the things that people tend to think about last, people start diet and exercise is usually top of the list.
Roudy: Well, that’s a great question. And most people think the light is not that big of a deal. They think of it as something superficial that makes vision possible. However, it’s much more profound, powerful and influential than this. And when I talk about the power of light, I like to refer back to Albert Einstein who taught us through His love relativity E = mc2 that light and matter are exactly the same thing. And that when light slows down, it condenses down and becomes mass or matter. And this means that everything around you at this moment, including you, and the planet was once light, and is profoundly influenced by light.
And I love to contemplate the beauty of this equation every morning, every sunrise, because this equation means that when light is hitting the cornea of the eye, it’s slowing down. And through this slide, we are being recreated and regenerated with new life, our brain tissues, our hearts, our organs are being recreated with new light energy. And this is not philosophy. This is quantum physics, which I think at the moment, we’re in a very interesting phase, where conventional medicine and the old paradigm and looking at the body as molecules, and molecularly is shifting into understanding more the body in terms of electrons and photons.
Sarah: Yeah, for sure. It’s the age of biophysics, we need that piece for our health. And I think probably that’s one of the pieces that got chucked out, when everyone was so excited with the discovery of pharmaceuticals, because they work, but now we need something else. We’ve moved past that. And so I think you’re exactly right. We need to start embracing biophysics. That’s super cool. So how do you explain that to people because that’s quite a difficult concept. You can understand it cerebrally. But then how do you get people to apply it?
Roudy: Well, I mean, it’s a very, it’s a very deep concept. And usually, while explaining to people will really depend on the level of their understanding, and whether I’m talking to someone who is familiar with the quantum biology and quantum physics, or not. But to break it down in simple ways, we now know that mitochondria is the power engine in our bodies that burn the foods that we eat, and produce all of our energy in the form of ATP, or adenosine triphosphate. And we can think of this ATP as a currency. And when it splits open, it creates the dollars or the energy units that our body needs in order to create energy. And in a nutshell, the better our mitochondria are working, the more ATP it produces, and the more energy we have to heal, and carry out optimal daily functions, from thinking to digesting to sleeping and so on. Now, it has recently come to light, the mitochondria are not only an energy producer, but it has a place, a fundamentally essential role in sensing what is going on in the environment and mediating communication between the environment and the cell. And one of the most important pieces of information throughout evolution is light. And this is literally because our mitochondria evolved around the ocean from a single cell organism for the past 1.5 billion years to become this super powerful engine that’s able to produce unlimited amount of energy all day every day. And these mitochondria evolved under full spectrum sunlight, which maximizes its ability to produce energy, and they are also designed to repair themselves at night in complete darkness. Now, here’s the problem. For me personally, I was for so many years, exposing myself to very little sunlight during the day, and I was sabotaging myself with late night screens computer use an artificial light exposure everywhere, in the mall, in the streets. And it turns out that this artificial light at night is destroying our melatonin. Now, why is that important? Because melatonin is the highest antioxidant in nature. And it is used by our mitochondria to repair itself at night. So technically, this explains also why I was still struggling with my health. Even after optimizing my diet, exercise and meditation. I was over exposing myself to artificial light and it was destroying the engine in my body. Now, when I speak about the engine, I like to give this analogy because people could relate to it. We love cars we relate to cars, and just like cars engine require fuel oxygen and a spark to create an internal combustion and burn that food to generate energy. Our mitochondria are very similar, it requires fuel in the form of food, oxygen, and a spark in the form of light to ignite the process of metabolism. So, if the ignition system of the car is not working properly, we cannot expect that the car will be able to run, right. And similarly, if we only focus on vitamin supplements and foods and our light is toxic, we won’t be able to solve the problem that is caused by the appropriate wavelength of light to ignite the process of metabolism in our mitochondria.
Sarah: Okay, so basically, you’ve got two forms of light, then because you said that you want the right form of light to get the mitochondria working efficiently. But then at night, you don’t want that light. So what is the mechanism there? Because I think that’s something that people are not clear on, because I’m here in LA, of course, and everything lights up at night, you know, and even in this hotel room, and you wouldn’t believe how many little lights and things there are here in the hotel room, I actually have tape and I’ve gone round, it took me a while. But I think people even now they think it’s convenient, they think, okay, I need light for my health, I’m getting light. But what about this? What about this toxic light, I think that’s probably one of the things that is a bit of a gap for people.
Roudy: Totally, I mean when I say toxic light, it’s day and night. Because technically, as humans, we want full spectrum bright light, from sunlight, through its visible and invisible frequencies to nourish our body, and we got to start thinking of light as a nutrient.
So many people today know that in order to get the full nutrients their body, they got to eat different types of foods, and every type of food has different nutritional value. Now, similarly, light also has different nutritional value, depending on the frequency that we’re exposing ourselves to it.
And every frequency is extremely important. Okay, so when we are during the day, sitting under artificial light that is very deficient, often very high in the blue, and deficient in all the other frequencies of colors, and invisible frequencies, we are depriving ourselves from this nutrition. Now, the problem is that we come at night. And as humans for 1000s of years, we’ve evolved to get this darkness, which signals to our brain that the day is ending. And as a result, we start winding down and activates so many different physiological processes in our body, like our core temperature drops down, our heartbeat calms down, and our energy start being directed inwardly towards rejuvenation and repair. We start recalibrating our emotions, and constantly dating the memories based on the learning that we’ve done. Now, what do I mean by junk light, junk light is a type of light that you’re exposing yourself to at night, that is confusing your brain and body about the time of the day. So rather than our bodies preparing for sleep and rejuvenation, we get wired than anxious thinking or being confused that still 12 Noon. And therefore it disrupts all of these physiological processes that are designed for healing and rejuvenation.
Sarah: Right. I think that’s I actually like that analogy of junk. Like, I think, people realize, you get up in the middle of the night you eat a bag of chips, you eat a doughnut, you do some that you know that you’re doing something wrong, but I think you know, people don’t realize just looking in the fridge straight away the light is probably one of the main things that you’re doing wrong, even before you’ve eaten anything. It would be cool if there was some kind of label, like you have on junk food. Okay, your phone, if you’re going to do it, it’s like a treat. It’s like something that equivalent to eating a bag of chips.
Russ: Yeah, and the issue is that, we’re on these devices now, especially with the remote work in our phones in our hands everywhere. We are on these devices, eight to 12 hours a day.
Roudy: Well, one of my mentors, Dr. Jack Kruse, which I’ve heard speaking probably seven years ago. And at the time, I was desperately looking for a solution to him my depression and chronic fatigue. And after going to so many different practitioners, holistic doctors and conventional doctors, I was feeling very desperate, and I couldn’t find a solution. And one day, I was listening to Dr. Jack Kruse and he was explaining how artificial light, or actually light affects our mental health and sleep. And he said, the right type of light, at the right time of the day, can create wonders in healing. However, the wrong type of light at the wrong time of the day, is making us ill depressed and sick. And at the time, he was the first guy I ever heard talking about the power of light. I mean, light can affect us in so many different ways. One of which is circadian. And it doesn’t stop there, because there’s much more than circadian biology. But to answer part of your question, I’m gonna talk a little bit about circadian rhythm. Because I personally used to sleep 10 to 12 hours every single night, to then lack the energy motivation and focus the following day. And even though I slept for long hours, I wasn’t getting restful night’s sleep. Now, most people think that if they sleep for eight hours, that’s it, they got it. But that’s not actually true. And you can only understand what it’s like to sleep well, when you start sleeping well. And if you’re not sleeping well, you’re not consciously aware of what it is like to live in rhythm and sleep well. And what I learned is sleeping well and living a rhythm do not happen by chance. It happens by design. And how well we sleep and how rested we feel, when we wake up the second morning, is governed by a universal code, or rhythm. And this code is called the circadian rhythm. Now, circadian comes from the Latin word, ‘circa’ and ‘dia’, which means approximately a day, or 24 hours. And this rhythm literally exists in all animals, humans, and plants. We all experience on an unescapable change in the environment. And this change is governed by the law of rhythm, that the day must become night and an in order for all of us to adapt to this daily change, we have had to develop an internal clock that controls the timing of our daily functions to an optimal time of the day, or the night during the 24-hour cycle. Because we cannot do everything at the same time. We have optimized window to do particular things at particular times of the day. Now, being in sync with the light environment, will enable our internal clock to perfectly time our sleep, activity and nutrition so that they start happening at optimal times within the 24-hour cycle. And this mean that if you eat will digest much better. If you sleep, you will access much better sleep. If you study and learn, you’re much more efficient, and you will get things done in much less time. And this means living in perfect rhythm.
Sarah: So it’s interesting that you came by Dr. Jack Kruse because that was also my introduction to a lot of these concepts, especially quantum biology. I think he really, like you said, he really was there at the start when people were first talking about it. Is that what kind of made you sort of change direction and maybe focus yourself? Because I know obviously now you set up a company around these concepts, but was kind of getting better through utilizing that kind of training your circadian biology. What set you off on a different path, or were you already going down that route?
Roudy: Well, to be honest with you, when I started studying Jack Kruse, Dr. Jacob Liberman, and so many different other doctors, all of these things stayed intellectual concepts to me, right. I understood them at the conscious level. However, I had no practical application whatsoever of these concepts, because my subconscious mind was still programmed to do things in the old way. Even though I consider myself to really understand those concepts, my results, were saying something different.
However, miraculously a specific event, change all of that. I spent several weeks on a farm camping. It was a ruler farm, and I was exposed only to natural light during the day, and candles and fire light during the evening. And within a matter of days, I start winding down in the evening, feeling relaxed, and sleeping shortly after the sunset, to then wake up before the sunrise for the first time in my life, getting refreshed, energized. And I literally went from feeling foggy headed, almost suicidal to feeling alive, motivated, and focused. I didn’t change my diet. I didn’t take supplements, and I didn’t exercise or meditate differently.
And I asked myself every night under the stars literally like how is that magic happening? But unfortunately, when I moved back from the fun to the city, I fell back into my old terrible routine. And within a few days, I got depressed again, I couldn’t believe it.
Russ: There’s something interesting, I just spent the weekend in Seattle, my daughter moved up there for college. And being in clouds and rain is where I spend most of my time anyway. But it really impacted me, I felt a severe change in everything. I found a severe change and just trying to find light. Because the sun goes down earlier there as well. What do you do in an environment? And Sarah and I have talked about this, but because Sarah lives in London, and but what do you do in an environment where you don’t have the natural sunlight, you’re surrounded by clouds, or it’s raining all the time? Or, like you said, you’re going from an environment where you’re free of unnatural light, going back to a place where it’s a city, and you’ve got all these, blares of light coming at you? What can you do to kind of reset it and get yourself into a place where you got some balance and your circadian rhythms working?
Roudy: Consider I’m now back in Canada, and it’s a super gloomy, rainy day, I wake up in the morning, and I still go outside because on the gloomiest day ever, it’s at least 10 times more bright than the brightest light inside. But not only this, the sun is still there, but it’s behind the clouds. And this means that you’re still getting the fullness of the frequencies of light. Now, the only difference is circadian perspective. In order to activate the light sensors in your eyes, that signals to your sensory clock, that’s daytime, you get to spend more time outdoors. Because we have a system in the hypothalamus, that add up photons, and when we wake up first thing in the morning, we need around 100,000 photons or 400,000 Lux plus in order to activate the ancient system in the hypothalamus to signal to our body that it’s daytime so that we can start feeling productive, creative and awake. Now, if the sun is not as bright, the only thing we got to do is spend more time outside so that we can sum up those photons over time.
Sarah: Yeah, for sure. For sure. So basically, what you’re saying is just get outside, get outside and get the light. It’s very simple when you kind of think about it. I think that you can try and intellectually understand it. But really, the message is very simple. Get out and see the natural light.
Roudy: No matter how cloudy it is, no matter how gloomy it is. Now as soon as the sun sets, there’s a decline in the frequencies of blue and green, and of brightness. And the sun doesn’t do this instantly, right?
There’s a sequence, an orderly sequence, a beautiful one, where there’s a transition between from higher color temperatures to lower color temperatures transitioning into the darkness of the night. And in the world of quantum physics, light is information. And all this transition to lower brightness and the decline in blue and green light is signaling to our bodies that the day is ending. And technically, when we want to come back home, we want to avoid stimulating ourselves with a second son from artificial lights.
So, what do we do we there’s no escape from these lights. We gotta face it. We live in a modern world where these artificial lights are everywhere. Personally, I turned my apartment into a cave at night. And I make it so dark. I love it. And I got used to it. And people first freak out when they hear this, but I bet that anyone listening right now if they run an experiment of making a cave with candles at night, only for three days staying patient with this, they will never, they will never get back to turning a lot of artificial lights at night, because the effects are phenomenal. I mean, my imagination gets better, my memory gets better, my meditation gets better, I don’t get hungry. All of these different benefits, they’re phenomenal. But if I’m around friends, and they want to turn on the lights, that’s where I make use of the beautiful vivarays glasses, which I wear them if I’m going to a mall, if I’m going to the airport, if I don’t have full control over my life environment, which means I have friends over, I’m going to visit friends, etc.
Russ: Now, I want to just stop on this one part because we’ve talked to Mollie, who’s the sleep expert, and we’ve had a few other sleep people on and I really, I mean, I like to personalize all this because I tend to be the newbie of the bunch. And all this is new to me. And I did I change my sleep habits and one of the things I really focused on was getting in the dark and really focusing on that, I have found that my, like you said, my dreams, my creativity, my hours of staying asleep and not waking up in the middle of the night to do whatever it is, I moved from a room where we have like a loft upstairs, we have a lot of natural light that comes in, we have windows everywhere, to this room where it is a cave to significantly changed my sleep habits. I’m curious around what you said? You know, in terms of like, what if you have a house where you have a lot of light, cover your eyes, right? What are the things that you can suggest to people where they have a lot of light, or they have a partner who likes to have the lights on at night?
Roudy: Technically, the first thing I do if I’m around people who want that light, is I put my VivaRays, either evening, or nighttime glasses. And that will depend on the time of the day, I mean, the nighttime glasses, I will put them one hour before bed, because they are designed to block all of the blue all of the green and decrease the brightness by 20 times, which is a very special feature that we came up with, based on the latest circadian research. And I’ll talk a little bit more about that. And I also advise people to position the lights lower to the ground and versus overheads, because we didn’t talk yet about melanopsin ganglion cells. But those neurons are light sensors that sits in the retina. And they are sensitive to blue and green light. But not only this, it turns out that they are sensitive to brightness and to the angle of the light through which by which it’s hitting the eyes. And this means ...
Sarah: That’s a great hack Roudy if you’re going to have the light put it low down, that’s like the definition of a hack because at least then you’re not getting the light at that angle. That’s the most destructive.
Roudy: Totally, because melanopsin are most saturated in the lower half of the retina. And because there’s a lens in front of the retina, because of the nature of the lens, there’s an inversion that happens, which means the overhead light is what actually stimulate melanopsin. And it makes sense because sunlight is overhead. So technically, putting the lights lower at the floor is a great technique as well. Now, you also want to decrease the brightness. And if you have no control over this if you have no control over eliminating blue and green lights, definitely these guys are life saviors.
Sarah: You need to describe them a bit Roudy because normally we just put out the audio for this.
Roudy: Yeah, I forgot. Yes, for sure. So technically, we have three different lens technologies for different times of the day. Okay, I’m gonna describe the evening and the nighttime because we’re talking about evening routines. And the evening. I designed to mimic the color temperature of the fire or the twilight 1800 kelvins. Now why so let me ask you, how do you feel usually when you’re around the fire?
Sarah: Right. Yeah, it’s a lovely feeling.
Roudy: And yes, I agree with you. I mean, there’s not many people spending time around the fire nowadays. And I think the fire is one of the fundamental elements that we need and winter coming back to what we talked about at the beginning of the podcast. But these guys are engineered to mimic this same color temperature 1800 kelvins. And it turns out that this color temperature of twilight is wired with our nervous system to signal a parasympathetic state of calmness, and relaxation. And this makes sense, because this is what we evolved to see for 1000s of years. And I love these guys in the evening, because they block all the blue, get the keep enough green so that you can still function and do your evening activities like, driving, socializing, and finishing your evening tasks.
Sarah: Yeah, that’s good. Because I have blue blockers, I have them. But I only wear them if I’m in an airport or somewhere really awful, because otherwise I can’t see what I’m doing.
Roudy: Totally!
Sarah: They’re too dark. And then then what happens is I end up putting them on top of my head. And then what’s the point in that, so I find that a lot of the blue blocking glasses are too dark.
Roudy: I mean, you want to put those dark ones, like these guys, the red tinted glasses for Viva rays, which are designed to block all the blue, all the green and decrease the brightness by 20 times around one hour before bedtime. That’s when you set your mind that you’re actually doing all the things that are relaxing, such as laying on the ground breathing during your meditation, and things from that nature. And these guys will definitely boost your melatonin production and growth hormone, enabling you to sleep much deeper and sleep without waking up and access those stressful sleep states that I personally that weren’t able to access without blocking artificial light at night. And I’d like to add something because there’s a paper that I was reading recently showing how artificial lights arriving at the eyes at night, suppresses our dopamine production The following day, and negatively influence our cognition and memory. And this means that we’re much more likely to wake up feeling much less happy, and much more unsatisfied. And we’re also much more likely to be feeling less productive by our work, because our cognition and memory is being negatively affected by this light. And I found this to be very interesting. When we think about it in conjunction with the knowledge that we now have, that morning, sunlight actually increases our dopamine.
So we have this beautiful equation of protecting our dopamine at night and enhancing our dopamine through healthy light in the morning.
Russ: Yeah, that’s fascinating.
Sarah: Yeah, it’s fascinating. The body is so clever. And we think we’re cleverer by inventing all these lights, but you can’t get around it, you really do need to respect that and try to do what you can to get back to that natural state. But we’re just in a crazy situation now of trying to play catch up with nature. But that is a cool hack. And I love the way that you have the different shades so that you don’t have to go straight into the dark one, you can do it gradually. That’s very cool. I don’t think other ones do it like that. Do they? The other blue blocking glasses?
Roudy: Totally. I think this is a common problem in the blue blocking glasses’ industry, the most of the companies are blocking blue light in the same way all day. And the problem with this is like living under a sun that is not changing its position and colors in the sky. It doesn’t work that way. And the sequence of colors that we need to go through is very important information for our system. And this is what inspired us to create three different technologies for three different times of the day. And I love about this system is that you can seamlessly transition from one lens to another without needing to change the frames, which makes it much more convenient and practical as well.
Sarah: Yes, because what you’ve got there, it’s like how is it sticking on the front?
Roudy: Yeah, it’s like snapping on, there’s like a very slight, minimize magnet like, that you just snap on.
Sarah: Yeah. So you’ve just got one pair of glasses, and then you’ve got the other lenses just go on with a magnet. That’s very clever.
Roudy: Yeah. You could transition from one to the other.
Russ: What would be something that you might ask us to do to sort of a change of pace, something that would get us into better, to capture better circadian rhythms, better light? What are some of those things that, what’s an idea you have for us?
Roudy: Well, as soon as the sunsets you come back home, and you turn your apartment into a cave for seven days, no artificial lights, only candles are allowed. And an hour before you go to bed, you even make it more dark by turning off the candles and putting your nighttime glasses for seven days. And I’d love to hear from you. How you’re gonna feel afterwards?
Sarah: I really want to do this one.
Russ: Me too.
Sarah: But I’m gonna put a but in here for the first time. Well, in the next seven days, I think I’ve got five flights. So this one is trickier for me. Because I but maybe I will park this one. And as soon as I get back to the Netherlands, this will be my challenge. So you’re on your own this time, Russ.
Russ: I got it. I can do it.
Roudy: Well, I’m with you, Russ.
Russ: Let’s do it and Roudy your comment about the farm and being out there I had a similar experience going to New Mexico where we really did sort of just kind of follow the flow of the light it was the middle of winter it was about a year ago we went there we did it for a month and I’ve never felt more relaxed more part of the natural environment that I was in. Because we did that before we follow the natural light, we didn’t have a lot of light in the house. We were living in a geometric dome. So we had great light there was an actual an area in the house where they had all these green plants and a lot of oxygen in the house and we felt very much at peace in the home. So I’m excited to do this. Roudy, please enjoy your time down in Mexico. It looks beautiful. I hear the birds behind you. And we’ll, Sarah and I will gratefully you know go to VivaRays and get some of your glasses. I’m also going to pick up I see some of your eye masks. I have a giant Labrador retriever, who if I leave anything out on the bed, he demolishes it with his mouth. So he’s eaten my last two eye mask, so I’m going to grab this blackout CP mask on there as well. And make sure I get that.
Roudy: Awesome. Beautiful.
Sarah: Yeah, thank you for spending the time Roudy.
Roudy: That’s a pleasure too, to explore the power of light and I want to leave the audience would one sentence, turn off the light outside in order to turn on the lights within.
Sarah: That’s it!
Russ: That’s like biblical, like I was gonna say, I was going to say that, the use of light in the Bible and in it all religious doctrine, the discussion of light because light is so important, especially when those documents were written there was no light in the home and we’re carrying around torches and candles. But light is so important because it’s the thing that created their day. But it’s such a religious thing to and having these two light experts next to me, I feel like, I’m seeing from the same hymn book finally, and I understand that so thank you both for your knowledge. It’s amazing.
🚨7 Day Challenge🚨
Russ: You can’t see me because I’m in the dark. Can you it’s like totally blocked?
Sarah: It’s what you’ve been doing, hiding under the bed for a week with the lights off?
Sarah: Yeah, man. Do you feel better? Are you now readjusted?
Russ: I am readjusted. I will say though. And it goes all the way back to Mollie, my sleep habits have really completely adjusted in the last year; I’ve really made sure to focus on sleep. I did have one night this week where I woke up at two in the morning, he didn’t go back to bed. That was only because he wanted to get through a documentary that was six hours is the only time that I watch it.
Sarah: Good for you. That was good advice from Roudy and super cool. And I loved it. I have to say I’ve done a bit of an inverse seven-day challenge for the Roudy challenge, because I’ve done the exact opposite of what he said, I’ve kind of gone from a very good sleep routine to a very poor one. I have blackout blinds the whole lot. But I had a family drama here this week. And I was called into the hospital a lot. And I have to say, I really noticed a difference. Like from my normal going to bed at nine o’clock turning everything out.
Russ: It’s weird. Isn’t that weird about hospitals that they make hospitals really hard to sleep and rest? Isn’t that where we recover?
Sarah: Yeah, well, this is what I always say, really as much as you can stay out of the hospital. So the last place you want to be if you’re really sick.
Russ: It’s true.
Sarah: No, I shouldn’t say that. And there is a need for hospitals and people are working very hard in hospitals and there’s a place for something acute. But in all seriousness, if you’ve got a long term condition, you do not want to be surrounded by beeping noises, people waking you up street lights, and strange toad in the hole dishes, all the other strange things that they give you in hospital. I actually said to my relative, “Have you eaten today?” And he said, “Well, I had a packet of Bourbon biscuits (which are like these really sugary biscuits).” That’s all he had. So, the upshot of all that is I totally appreciate what Roudy was saying because I did the opposite and I felt bad. He said some things that even I hadn’t considered like the angle of the light in your room. The angle of penetration of light in your eye has a big effect because we’re used to seeing you know, sunlight and moonlight from overhead so the actual receptors in your eye are different at different places in your eye. So to try to keep if you’re going to have lights on keep them low, keep them orange and red. And don’t look at them directly don’t have great big lights coming out of your ceiling, that was very cool.
Russ: Interesting but why? I mean why does that matter the angle?
Sarah: Because the all of the light sources that we’ve known up until 200 years ago when we’ve got light bulbs are coming out the sky. So of course, our whole bodies are geared up for being outside where we receive the light from above the sun and the moon and the stars, all the light comes from above. And then that red light comes from the side because of sunrise and sunset, you have the light at different angles at different times of the day.
Of course, our bodies totally geared up for recognizing not only the wavelength of light, but also the angle of the light.
Russ: Yeah, we’ve talked about light so much. We did spend a lot of our first season talking about your expertise in light, and we’ll have some big announcements coming in season three here with Sarah. We weren’t gonna give away the secret yet.
Sarah: No spoilers yet.
Russ: No spoilers yet, but let’s talk through like, are there? I mean, I know there’s like Sunrise, get out there. Get that sunrise at angled, red light. Are there devices we should be getting quickly. Things that we can do that can kind of give us a quick jolt of light. Whether we should be sick stuff up our nose.
Sarah: Yeah, we should definitely be sticking so I mean, I have an intra nasal that I travel with which does red a near infrared.
Russ: Are they expensive?
Sarah: Dr. Joe Diduro sent it to me, it’s one of his devices. And I think it’s about 150 bucks. I think if you go on his website, he’s actually doing bundles at the moment of the transcranial and intranasal. And what will we could put that in our gift guide. But yes, you can get very small devices. And I also use a product that Light Tree Ventures has sent to me called LumaFlex, which is like a flexible panel that you can use. Very, very easy. Its battery operated.
As Roudy said, the best thing to do is to get out in the sun as much as possible to get outside even if there is no sun, maybe use these red light devices to supplement but not instead of getting outside.
Russ: Yeah, they are supplements for sure.
Sarah: They are supplements. Well, it’s like anything, we’ve food supplements or whatever it is, you have light supplements. It’s the same thing.
Russ: So Roudy’s company is VivaRays, right vivarays.com. He does have some great blue blocking glasses. He has some really fun, stylish glasses.
Sarah: You know what I liked about his glasses because I’ve got blue blockers. And my blue blockers are too dark. So I don’t wear them very much. Because I’m a little bit short sighted anyway. So when I wear the I just end up walking into things and getting frustrated, I’m just they end up on my head. And then I think, well, I’ve spent the whole evening with a pair of glasses on my head that was hopeless. But Roudy’s ones are graded. So you put the glasses on, and then when you want to get it darker, it’s got a magnetic clip where you just clip on. I think you can even do it twice. I think it goes darker and then darker again.
Sarah: I think they’ve even got three lenses. So I’m definitely getting some because then you can have them on the light one and then when you if you weren’t doing go somewhere horrible, like I could have done with them last night when I was at the hospital. You can just clip on the extra dark ones and hey, presto, you’ve blocked all that light out. So yes, excellent. I think they’re going to be great. I’m looking forward to getting mine.
Russ: I really liked the VivaRays eye mask it’s good it’s got it’s actually like kind of fits around the eyes and stays on my head because who knows what I’m doing it night but most nights I wake up and that eye mask is on the floor in the other room. I have no idea what’s going on. But if I ever recorded myself I’m sure, I’m probably driving around and at the bars and who knows what I’m doing at night.
Sarah: Have sweet dreams tonight. I hope you stay put and get a good night’s sleep.
Russ: I will. I’ve got I’ve got my movies I’ve got queued up to watch tonight. I won’t tell you I don’t want to I’m not gonna ... Yeah, I know I don’t want to timestamp our podcast but I’m actually looking forward to watching Spencer which I shouldn’t do it but like I’ve heard she’s done a quite a nice job doing the Princess Diana.
Sarah: Oh my God! I can’t believe you’re going to give up your that your circadian biology and your health to watch Spencer.
Russ: I know, well, if that or re-watching the Beatles documentary which I’ve already watched all six hours amazing documentary we’re not here to give that any more extra press but that was a masterclass as Paul and I talked about today a masterclass creative in actually you know building and being creative.
Sarah: Okay, well these are treats like junk. This is like junk, TV like the junk music, it’s treats for every now and then but on the whole bed at night with your eye mask on.
Russ: That’s what we’ll be at season 15 on this because I don’t follow the rules. Rebel Lab Rat right here. Okay, again, we own that one. All right, Sarah. Thank you.
Sarah: Okay. Thank you, Russ. Take care.
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