Good Life Project - Blue Light Zen | Tsh and The Simple Show

Episode Date: November 16, 2017

In today's GLP Update, we're talking about a cool new bit of science about how blue light can help when you're stressed out, and we've got a fun second segment where we jam with fellow podcaster, Tsh Oxenreider of The Simple Show.Good Life Science: Ever wonder if the color of light might have an effect on you, your mood and your brain? You've may have heard the recent research about blue light and how it can disrupt melatonin and mess with your sleep. But, it turns out, new research shows that blue light may have a very particular beneficial effect, especially when you're stressed out. It can drop you into the Zen zone up to three-times faster than white light. That's what we're diving into in today's Good Life Science Update. And, as always, for those want to go to the source, here's a link to the full study.Good Life Podcast Friends: Instead of our usual Good Life Riff, we've got a special jam today with our friend and fellow podcaster, Tsh Oxenreider of The Simple Show. We're actually sharing our favorite recent episodes of each other's shows and why we found them so compelling. You'll definitely want to check out episode 100 of The Simple Show if you've been thinking at all about where you want to live. Oh, and you can find a bunch more recommendations for great podcasts from both of us at Wondery.com/thanksgiving.+--------------------------+Our Podcast Partners: ZipRecruiter: Post jobs for FREE, go to ZipRecruiter.com/good.ShipStation: Manage and ship your orders. FREE for 30 days, plus a bonus. Visit ShipStation.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in GOODLIFE. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So we're going to mix things up a little bit on this week's Good Life Project update with a bit of a different segment. We're actually starting out this week with our Good Life Science segment, and we got kind of a really fascinating new study on how color, the color of light and stress and stress reduction actually play together and kind of surprising. We're going to explore that in just a moment. And we've got a bit of a fun second segment today instead of our standard riff. We're kind of playing with different things and ideas here. So I hooked up with a friend of mine who also has her own podcast. And we thought it'd be fun to share our favorite episodes of each other's podcasts, and maybe a little bit more and talk about why they were so

interesting and so cool. So we will be diving into a conversation with my friend Tish Ochsenreiter of The Simple Show podcast, and we'll be talking about some fun stuff. So, as always, can't wait to dive in with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. I knew you were going to be fun. Tell me how to fly this thing. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary.

Hey guys, so I'm kind of mixing things up and we're going to dive right into today's Good Life Science update. If you are new to the show, our Thursday episodes, we like to mix things up a little bit instead of our standard conversation format, long form with a guest. We play with a couple of different segments very often, a good life science update. I am a complete science geek, not trained in any way, shape or form, just love to research and dive into leading research that in some way touches on how we live our lives and our ability to live better lives. This week, we have got a kind of a fascinating new study that is from researchers out of the University of Grenada. It's published in Plus One Journal. And it is all about how we can come down, how we relax after stress, and how light can actually affect that. So there's been a whole bunch of research that's done on different light, different colors of light and how that affects us.

And one of the things that you may have heard over the last few years is there's a certain frequency in the light spectrum that is blue light. And it's kind of been maligned actually over the last five years or so. And the reason is this, that as we spend more and more time on screens, in front of screens, it turns out that a solid chunk of the light that comes from screens actually falls within the blue light spectrum. Now, you kind of figure, okay, so that's just part of all the different lights that come at us. Why does it really matter? And what concerns people about that is that different frequencies of light trigger different physiological and psychological responses in our body. And there is research that shows that the blue light frequencies, when we interact with them for a little bit of time,

that they actually react with our body bit of time, that they actually react with our body's sleep systems, that they actually react with melatonin, and they can potentially stop the cascade of chemistry in our body that allows us to fall asleep. And that exposure to blue light, especially in the evening, especially right before you go to bed, can actually make it really difficult to fall asleep. And it can be sort of excitatory. It can actually make you more alert when you most want to fall asleep. And it's kind of interesting because there has been a lot of conversation about what

can you do to take blue light out of the experience of whatever you're doing, the screens that you're looking at, when you're trying to kind of come down and relax and get ready to go to bed. I have actually on my computer an app that strips a lot of the blue light from my screen when the sun goes down. So for the evenings in or for the times in the evening, I actually have an app that sort of slowly extracts a lot of the blue light from the screen and which makes my screen look kind of orangey and then my eyes sort of quickly adjust and forget about it. But the idea is that if I choose to be on a screen in the evening, that by doing that, it will mess with my ability to fall asleep less. And whether that's true or not, I'm not sure. And in fact, when you look at a lot of mobile devices now, they'll have an evening mode, which kind of makes the screen a bit rosier.

And part of what it does is it pulls these blue light spectrums out of it so that you're not agitated and you're more relaxed and your sort of melatonin chemistry that allows you to start to drop into a sleep mode can happen more effectively, which flies in the face of this new research. Well, it doesn't really fly in the face of it, but kind of some different research that comes out. So researchers in this particular study, they were wondering how blue light actually affects you after you're really stressed out. And the particular question that they were wondering was, will the color of light that you're sort of immersing yourself in affect your ability to

recover from stress? Will it affect how much you can recover and how quickly you can come back into a more relaxed state? So what researchers did, it's a pretty small study group. So this is an early stage study. We definitely would want to look for replication down the road. But they took 12 people, split them into different groups. And they put them through a six-minute protocol designed to create stress, psychological, emotional stress in these study participants' lives. And in fact, they also hooked them up to EEGs and ECGs, things that measure their heart rate and their heart rate patterns and their brainwaves. So they could actually not just ask these people, hey,

are you feeling kind of stressed? But they could actually see physiologically that these people were in fact very stressed both in the way that their heart rate was responding and the way that their brain waves were responding then they did this for about six minutes because they wanted to jack them up a little bit into that stress state and then they did one of two things they put them into a room that was just sort of like a little padded timeout room on a beanbag cushion, really comfortable. And they either filled the room, they washed the room with a blue light spectrum. So you're kind of like chilling in this little padded room filled with blue light, or they filled the room with white light. And the question was, would this make a difference in how people were able to move from being pretty stressed out to coming back down and being more relaxed?

And you would imagine if you had sort of looked at some of the research earlier around how blue light stops you from kind of settling in and relaxing and falling asleep in the evenings, that it might have a more agitating effect and keep you stressed. What the research found was exactly the opposite. They actually showed that if you go from being stressed out and you kind of just wash yourself in blue light, that the blue light actually allowed people to go from stressed to relaxed way faster than the people who were in white light or what most of us normally experience, which is kind of interesting. They showed that the heart rate changed to a much more relaxed state and there was actually a shift in the brain wave states that in fact people in the blue light were able to come into a much more relaxed state almost three times faster than the

people in the white light. So it's kind of interesting. And you sometimes ask, well, how do you square this with the research that shows that blue light actually stops you from falling asleep and has a bit of an excitatory effect? And the sort of early guesses on that are that what you need to go from being stressed out to being relaxed is different than the sort of the brain processes and the chemical processes that happen in your brain that take you from going to falling asleep. And that in fact, blue light may indeed help you go from stressed to chill, but then that same blue light may stop you from going from chilled to sleep. And in fact, you may need to then withdraw the blue light from the spectrum once you're sort of more relaxed and then allow the body's sort of melatonin system and sleep systems

to kick in and not trigger those systems to sort of shut down when you want to go from chilled to actually falling asleep. Early stage research, really curious to see various aspects of this replicated, but it is kind of interesting because if you think about this also, what do so many of us do now when we're stressed out, when we have a stressful conversation, when we're stressed at work, when we're under a lot of pressure, when we're on deadline, when we have social anxiety that's causing us stress? What do a lot of us do? The first thing that we do is we flip open a screen and we scan.

We're scanning for social media. We're scanning for email, scanning, like, any number of different places. Wouldn't it be kind of fascinating if part of what was going on there was that we were actually opening devices that shot sort of an increased dose of blue light into our systems. And that part of the thing that allowed us to have a sense of comfort or feel a little bit, you know, have the edge taken off may not be just the sort of the oxytocin or the feel good chemicals that are a hit from social interaction or checking, but maybe it's just somehow slightly accelerated or enhanced by a shot of blue light too. Am I saying you should run to your devices every time you're stressed out? No, probably not the best coping mechanism. But it is another sort of alternative explanation for why some of us actually may feel

a little bit differently or a little bit more chill when we resort to our devices. I still think there are a lot better ways to come down. But it also is an interesting thing if you're thinking about, you know, how do I actually come down from a place like maybe there's a place for a little bit of blue light therapy when you're going through stressful modes, stressful times in your life.

So that's what I'm thinking about. As always for fellow geeks, we like to include a direct link to the full study report, the details of the research protocol, and the sort of detailed granular statistical breakdowns of what was done and what happened and what the results show us. And you can find that in the show notes if you want to actually check out the whole thing. Really excited because shortly we're going to roll into our conversation with Kish and talk about our shared favorite episodes. I'm going to share my favorite episode of her podcast,

The Simple Show, which is kind of cool. Sneak preview. It has to do with a decision that I happen to think many of us make by default and not intentionally. And she's going to dive into her thoughts on one of our recent shows. It's a great show, by the way, so you guys should definitely check out The Simple Show. Excited to dive into that with you. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman.

I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot.

Flight Risk. Hey there, it's Jonathan Fields from Good Life Project and I'm with... Flight Risk. that you love that I might like. So we kind of figured with Thanksgiving coming up and with so many people looking for great new shows to listen to, why don't we introduce the Good Life Project audience to The Simple Show and The Simple Show audience to Good Life Project. And we figured what better way to do that than us sharing a favorite episode from each other's podcast. So Tish, you want to maybe kick us off? Yeah, sounds good. You did an episode

October 12th of 2017. So not that long ago from Thanksgiving called To Read Emotion, Don't Look, Listen. And I really love these shorter episodes you do where you were talking about kind of what's on your mind, really, right? Along with a little science segment. And this one really spoke to me because you in it, you talk about the importance of having visceral experiences using our hands like tactile experiences. And man, if that is not a topic that is hot on my mind right now, I don't know what it is. And that's why I loved it so much. You talk about how you and your daughter had this experience doing letterpress and what it led you to think about. And for me personally, that's exactly what we're talking about around here. We're working on a fixer upper our home that we live in. And so it's just on our

minds. It's one of my favorite things actually to do as someone who works on a screen from a screen to actually do things with my hands, paint walls, repair fences, dig in the dirt, it is actually become such a treat. And my husband actually, he used to work for me. And we decided a few years ago that he wants to go back into woodworking for this very reason, because he just missed the reality, you know, of living in the 3D world. And this episode of yours really zeroes in on why that's so important. And then you get into the science a little bit about the emotion that we can hear best through audio more than visual cues. And I've also been experiencing that I'm actually taking a class on becoming a better podcaster through good interviewing with

Alex Bloomberg. And he talks exactly about this, why podcasting has been such a meaningful experience for him, but also for listeners. And that's because we, we feel vulnerable and intimate, and we can hear each other's deepest meanings through our voices, especially when we take away the visual cues. So I loved how you dug into that and the science behind it. Yeah, no, I'm so glad that resonated. It's funny, because it's been on my mind a lot also. And I have, I don't know about you, but I've actually been having a ton of conversations with people. I think we've gone so digital in the last handful of years that people are just yearning to get more tactile and more physical. That other research that I also shared in that episode on audio, just sort of being,

you know, it kind of like bypasses all the filters and stuff like that and goes straight into your brain. It's super powerful. It was fun creating that. So I want to share what one of my recent favorite episodes is with you. And it's kind of fun actually, because it's a pretty, it's a recent episode for you. In fact, a pretty, it's a recent episode for you. In fact, it was a bit of a celebration episode for you, which is kind of funny because I think on your podcast, it's labeled episode number 100. Love where you live. But we also know that because you've kind of like changed identities over time, I think

you're probably closer to like legitimately, I don't know what, two, 300 episodes. But you know what I loved about this? So the title of that episode is Love Where You Live. And what really connected me with this episode was a couple of things. One, the Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS are later required.

Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. I love how you actually brought in all of your other sort of guest hosts and your co-hosts and had made really substantial decisions to change where they live. And not just short term, but many of them moved entirely across the country. And it also, it wasn't, we're not talking about people who are in their early 20s, where it's actually kind of easy to pick up and wander around or be location independent.

You were having these amazing conversations with people who have roots, people who have families, people who really want a sense of home and community. And I found it really interesting to hear the different reasons that people hit a point in their lives where they're like, you know what? Where I live physically actually matters. It changes how I feel. It changes who I am. It changes my quality of life in a meaningful way

because I've been having really similar conversations with my wife also. Our daughter is sort of like heading into the tail end of high school right now. And we both grew up just outside of New York City. And we've been in New York City for the better part of 30 years now. And we're also both kind of coming to the conclusion that we're not necessarily on a path to stay here.

And that the city, while it's super, it's amazing high energy and amazing opportunity, we're both wired in a way where I think we want something a little more spacious and with a different pace of life right now. So we're like in the process of experimenting and looking at all these different places. So it was so great to be able to hear all these different perspectives on why people change locations. And there was one line also, and it was one of the, I can't remember who it was, but one of the people, they moved away from their hometown. And then a little bit later in life, they made a decision to move back. And it was really interesting to hear because I think a lot of people are, they're scared of that because they're like, oh, well, it's almost like I'm going backwards. And it was a really powerful

reframe to say, no, actually, they moved back for very intentional, deliberate, well thought out reasons. And even though they were going back to the town that they came from, they were going back a different person in a different way. And the experience was really different. And I just found the whole conversation so helpful in the conversation that I'm having right now about where sort of like the next place we might land might be. I'm curious, like how, how that episode landed with you too. You know, I'm, it's, it's on my mind so much because we've only been living where we live now for a few years, having come back from traveling all over the world as a family and also living 2,000 miles away and 6,000 miles away, having lived overseas for a while, that I really had to reassure myself with this quote from Terry Pratchett, which I think I mentioned in that episode, that says, going back is not the same as never leaving. And that quote just kept ringing in my head as we were having these conversations that we move and live and dwell in particular locations for a reason.

And it's okay to maybe live in a place that you never thought you would live in or never thought you would return to. And honestly, the older I get, the more I'm actually a big believer in the dots on the map actually mattering. I used to think, you know, home is wherever, you know, the people I love are. And I know some people actually adhere to that. But I actually believe that location does matter. And like you said, it reframes how we think about who we are and what we do and what we're about. So I think it really matters. And I'm glad that episode resonated with you as a big favorite of mine as well. Yeah, I just found it so helpful.

Good. Well, I'm glad. That's why we do what we do, right? Well, this has been awesome. I love an excuse always to chat with you, Jonathan. And we also love sharing our favorite episodes with everyone and to spread the love of podcasts overall. Remember, you can subscribe to The Simple Show and Good Life Project on Apple Podcasts or on your favorite listening app. And you can also check out our special Thanksgiving binge recommendations at Wondery.com slash Thanksgiving. And for those of you who are trying to convince podcast newbies to take the plunge, you'll also find a handy video on how to listen to a podcast for all those family members who are first time podcast listeners at

Wondery.com slash thanksgiving. Hey, thanks so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we've included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode and then share the Good Life Project love with friends because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time.

The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X.

Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk.