Well with Arielle Lorre - 47: ANDY MANT - How Light Affects Our Hormones, Weight, Mood & Wellbeing

Episode Date: March 11, 2020

In this episode Arielle talks to Andy Mant, light expert and founder/CEO of BLUblox, about how light affects our lives and wellbeing. From hormones to weight, sleep and stress, depression and anxiety — light has the power to drastically alter our biology and the processes that manage how we feel. Andy is incredibly knowledgeable on this subject and has tons of tips that we can implement to decrease the consequences of the technology that we are so reliant on.  Please rate, review and subscribe if you loved this episode! ❤️   15% OFF YOUR ORDER OF BLUBLOX: USE CODE BLONDEFILES at WWW.BLUBLOX.COM   For more education about light: www.blublox.com  www.instagram.com/BLUbloxofficial    For more about Arielle: www.theblondefiles.com  www.instagram.com/ariellelorre  www.instagram.com/theblondefiledpodcast See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I'm Ariel Laurie and this is the Blonde Files podcast where I talk to experts, influencers, and inspirational people in the world of wellness and beyond. Whether it's mental health, spirituality, nutrition, gut health, hormones, exercise, meditation, entrepreneurship, beauty hacks, and procedures, I cover it here with real conversations and even realer guests. I know you're as curious as I am, so I'm asking the questions for you. and you get to listen in. Welcome to the show, everyone. I hope you're all having a good week.

I'm going to tell you about my week. So you may have seen on Instagram that I've been feeling not so hot lately. And I'm doing a bunch of testing, like the Dutch test that Dr. Maritza Snyder talked about in that episode. And I'm doing menstrual mapping and I'm doing a SIBO test. but I did also go to my OBGYN. She found something on my uterus, which is in line with the symptoms that I've been having. Sorry if that's TMI. I feel like we're all friends here. So while I wait to get more imaging and get a biopsy done, I'm also like just evaluating my life situation and seeing where things might be going awry. So normally I'm like very go with the flow. I'm not rigid. Like I eat whatever I feel like. I know some people, think it's restrictive because I don't eat gluten or dairy, but in L.A., that's like nothing. So I eat whatever I want. I work out if I feel like it.

And lately, I haven't been feeling like it because I haven't been feeling good. I know, very, very hashtag inspo, hashtag fitness blogger of me. Anyway, I just don't pay too much attention to like the minutia of quote unquote wellness because I feel like it can get really obsessive. but here I am feeling like absolute garbage and something is definitely off. So why do I say this? I know for a fact that after being on my phone or my computer for even small amounts of time like legit hijacks my nervous system.

I can go from calm and alert and pure and rested and just feeling like good and normal. to like fully brain fried. My muscles get tensed and like clenchy. I'm agitated just in a matter of like not very long. Like it can happen in 10 minutes. And it's not even that what I'm doing is like particularly stressful sometimes. Sometimes it's just like responding to emails and texts and you know that boring stuff that we do on our phone which seems to happen like constantly now. I mean we're just always doing something. People always want something. That's another. tangent that I won't go on. But so the tech just really gets to me like I'm very sensitive.

So this conversation that I had with our guest, Andy Mant, who is a light expert, came at the perfect time. Like I've already implemented some of the things he talks about in the episode because we recorded this, I guess, a little over a week ago. And I already feel a little bit better. like obviously my symptoms from my medical issues, whatever is going on, haven't gone away, but like energy-wise, I feel better. I feel more clear. And it just makes a huge difference in my day. So about Andy, he is the founder and CEO of Blue Blocks, a company specializing in evidence-based,

advanced light filtering eyewear. Andy started Blue Blocks after becoming dissatisfied with the quality and standards of blue light blocking glasses available, and so he set about to design lenses that match the evidence in the academic literature. Andy was born in the UK and moved to Australia in 2011. Not long after, he found himself gaining a lot of weight, struggling with chronic fatigue, and constantly lacking energy. Hello. Traditional dietary approaches only worked to a certain degree, and after stumbling across light and its relation to the body, Andy forged a passion and niche in how light can impact the human biological system. Today, Andy is a leading figure in how light can affect our health and well-being. Through Blue Blocks, he and his team have developed

scientifically backed advanced light filtering eyewear. That is not being mass produced from a factory in China, but rather their bespoke lenses are manufactured and fitted in Australia, ensuring that each pair is infused with love, care, and quality. So I want to point out, education is Andy's number one objective. And this episode is all about light and how it affects our weight, hormones, energy, and all of that. He made it very clear that this is not a pitch for his product. And he only talked about his glasses towards the end because I asked him about it, which was very kind of him because he totally could have pitched me. And I definitely went out and bought them after this episode anyway. But he was kind enough to give all of the listeners a

discount code on the glasses. So you can get 15% off your order with the code blonde files at BlueBlocks, B-L-U-B-L-O-X.com. And yeah, so gracious of him and you're going to want to check them out. I, like I said, went immediately after I recorded and I bought a couple pairs of glasses. They're very, very cool looking. They're not like what you see on like Amazon. So I will put a link to the website and the code in show notes so that you guys can access that easily. And if you like this episode or any episode of the podcast, I appreciate your DMs, you guys. I really do. I always love connecting with you so you can still DM me. We can chat. But if you want to support me, if you want to support the show, please leave a review. Subscribe. Leave a review and subscribe. It's the only

way to take an action that directly helps the show. That's it for me. I hope you enjoy this episode. It is so fascinating, so jam-packed with information and things that you can do in your own life to make you feel better. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on, Ariel. It's an absolute honor to be on your show. You got a love technology. You are across the world. Are you in Perth? I am, yeah. So Perth is actually the most isolated city in the world. So yeah, so it's quicker for us to get to Indonesia and Singapore and Malaysia than it is to get to Sydney from Perth. And Sydney's in our own country. So, yeah, we're pretty isolated down here, which is good.

You know, it's nice to be away from it all. But, yeah, we don't get much come here. It's a bit of a country town. Have you lived there your whole life? No, I haven't actually. I grew up in England. And I actually grew up in a very rural place in England as well. So I grew up in Dorset, which is South Coast.

it's known for not having any fast roads, so it doesn't have any freeways. It literally just has like country lanes and, you know, sort of maybe two lanes of traffic in some occasions, but never any big roads. No cities. And I moved over here to Australia about 10 years ago. So it was about 2011, so probably nine years ago. And we, it was myself and my girlfriend at the time, and who is now my wife, and we moved over because we were just done with how gloomely.

the UK was, you know, it was just doing the same thing every day. The sun shone maybe three days a year and everyone flocked to the beach during those days and we just came to Australia really in search for a better life. So that's what led us to Perth. In a previous life, when I moved over, I was in recruitment for mining and oil and gas. So we found people jobs and it just so happened that when I looked to move to Australia, they had a big shortage of people who could recruit and fine people for the mines and oil and gas. And I had that experience. So got offered a job and did that for a few years and then decided it wasn't my calling

and that health, wellness and ultimately light was my calling. So that's probably a very short sort of high-level version on how I'm in Australia today, really. I'm so curious how you kind of came into light and how that became your field of interest. Can you tell me kind of about like your origin story and how you segueed from what you were doing before into this? Yeah, absolutely. I guess it's like with any story, there was a moment in my life when I needed to change the way I was thinking and how I was doing things. And that moment was probably about seven years ago. And I was living quite a, I mean, going back a little bit more, as a kid, I played a lot of soccer, cricket, you know, the very British sports.

And I was very good at those sports. And I got a really bad injury playing soccer when I was sort of in my early 20s. And because of that, I couldn't really play at the level I was playing at again. And I was really sort of miserable. and I just ended up party and drinking, you know, doing all the things that I probably shouldn't do for my health in my 20s. And in my sort of late, probably 27 years old, 28 years old, so about seven years ago, I just got, I piled on so much weight. I was getting sick all the time. In my 20s, I had things like kidney stones, my appendix out, migraines all the time.

And I was just like, wow, like something's not right here. And it led me into like thinking critically about health and doing my own research because I tried to do things that like the government and all the nutritional body said to do, you know, eat less, move more and all that jazz. And it didn't really work for me. I was just miserable, depressed and overweight. So I decided to just research myself, jumped on PubMed. I have a degree. So I kind of know how to do the like research side of things and sort of take to, you know, take a part, I guess, studies and, and love. learn. And I found a specific diet in there that really worked well for me and it led me to lose a lot of weight and I learned how to train properly and I put on a lot of muscle and I got generally well again, which was really good. But one thing off the back of it that didn't improve were my migraines and also my sleep. Ever since I was about sort of 14 actually, which is I guess a time when men, Now, I guess I'm women as well.

Maybe it's a little bit earlier. Go through a lot of hormonal changes. And I noticed around about that age, my sleep was just shot to pieces. Like I couldn't sleep through the night. I'd get up in the night. I'd wake up feeling, you know, not the greatest. But when you're sort of in your teenagers and 20s, you kind of just brush it under the carpet because, you know,

you don't think it's an issue. You probably just think, wow, I'm, you know, out drinking all this time and living a rubbishy lifestyle. It's probably just tired because of that. I've got my 30s to recover. But, you know, it just got worse and worse. and even when I cleaned up my diet, my sleep didn't improve at all. So again, it led me back to, I guess, the literature and looking into how sleep works

and how quantum biology works, I guess, in a way as well, where, you know, we look at things at a very, very micro level within the body and see how some things can, I guess, affect our hormones and affect our sleep. And that led me to looking into light and how that impact. it's something called a circadian rhythm, which is like little clock system in our body that tells the time and tells us when to release hormones. And light when we expose ourselves at it at the wrong time of day or we don't get darkness at the right time of day can disrupt that clock. And it can sort of run not on the correct time and hormones can be secreted at the wrong times of day. And it can mess up your sleep and a lot of other things as well, which we can come on to.

And, you know, I wanted to know how to manage lights. I was like, well, you know, you meant to block certain frequencies of light after dark to sleep better. And I discovered this thing called blue light blocking glasses, bought a cheap pair off Amazon, pop them on. They did okay. They sort of improved my sleep a little bit. But being the geek I am, I jumped more into the literature and found that there was a specific banding of light that you needed to block. we tested in my friends working in an optics lab so we tested a lot of these popular blue light glasses none of them blocked what they should be blocking to help with your hormones and circadian rhythm

so we basically created our own brand and you know evidence-based blue light glasses but you know my interest then that was kind of a side thing and my interest then led me to research it a lot more become a leader in in I guess light and how it impacts hormones and yeah managed to be lucky enough to be on about 70 podcasts in the last year, which is, you know, a good sort of one and a half a week educating people on light and health and doing a few speaking events and sort of videos ourselves as well. So I guess that's really why I'm into light. And this is why I'm, I guess I'm here now talking to you all about, you know, how light can impact hormones, health and sleep. It's so interesting. I feel like in the year that I've been doing this podcast, like,

I kind of synchronistically have guests on where the topic that we're talking about is super relevant to something that I'm going on at that moment. So it's so funny. I feel like I can't even call this work because I'm just so lucky to be able to have these conversations and learn from my guests. And we were kind of talking offline before about how I'm going through some issues right now. I definitely have some hormonal stuff going on, maybe some gut stuff. But as I was preparing for this conversation and kind of reading about light and circadian rhythm and all of that, I was like kind of struck. I mean, I have noticed and we'll get into this, but I've really noticed lately how being on my phone, even for a few minutes or being in front of my computer, it's not so much the content. It's the light that it's emitting and it totally hijacks my nervous system.

to the point where, I mean, I can just feel completely fried after like an hour of doing any kind of work because admittedly, I don't use blue light blockers. Now I'm paranoid and I'm going out and buying all of your glasses and I'm downloading the flux and this and that. But I mean, I guess I just kind of never realize you hear about this stuff and you see that, you know, kind of trendy glasses and all those kind of things that are going. around, but you really, you have to dig a little deeper to find out what, what it's really doing. And so I'm really looking forward to diving into it with you. And I guess I want to rewind and start with the circadian rhythm. You kind of touched on that. And I'm just curious if you can break it down, kind of in layman's terms for everybody. I mean, for millions of years, right, humans, we were experiencing our days and our nights one way. And then all of a sudden, technology came along.

And we're not just talking phones and stuff, right? We mean like any kind of electronic light and completely disrupted it. So can you talk about that a little bit? Absolutely. Yeah. I think it's really important and a really good question to start with, I think. Because it's good to understand what a circadian rhythm is because it's a bit of a mouthful. and what we would typically refer to it as in layman terms is a body clock.

So in our brain we have a system of genes, okay, and they're called clock genes. And these genes basically tell the rest of our body what time of day it is and what time of day it is to secrete specific hormones. And that's called a circadian rhythm. okay now a circadian rhythm has to get its messages from the outside world so this clock system yes it's internal within the body but it gets its messages from external stimuli and those stimuli are things like temperature food exercise and light and about 90% of the messages come from light okay so what happens is that the the biological clock and the circadian rhythm within our body is started ticking in the mornings by light.

So our ancestors would have got up with the sunrise. The light would have passed through their eyes. They wouldn't have had sunglasses on. And the composition of sunlight at that time of the day would have sent the exact message that the body needed to start secreting specific hormones and neurotransmitters. Now, at that time of the day, it's serotonin in the gut, which is needed for healthy gut

and to produce melatonin, which is sleep hormone later on in the day. dopamine, which is the reward system that, wow, you've got up, this is really good, we feel amazing. And also something called cortisol, which is fantastic in the morning because it's almost like turning the key in the ignition of our bodies. It sort of gets us going and starts us moving and makes us feel alert. Now, from an ancestral standpoint, we would have been outside a lot. There wouldn't have been any artificial light sources. Now, sunlight changes in its frequency of different colors of light throughout the day. So think of a rainbow. That's all the colors in the sun, all very even. Throughout the day, they sort of move up and down a little bit. And as the light then passes through

the eyes, touches the skin, it sends more messages to the body clock that, you know, maybe we need to start lowering cortisol at this time of the day. Maybe we need to start increasing estrogen or testosterone, if you're men or female. Maybe, you know, insulin. insulin for digestion needs to come to the forefront. And it's light that actually sends those messages throughout different points of the day to the circadian rhythm, to the body clock. And then what happens is that it's not just light that sends messages to the body clock, it's darkness as well.

So what would have happened ancestrally is the sun would have set, which would have sent a message to the body clock in our ancestors that, okay, night time's approaching. We need to lower cortisol, which is that sort of stress hormone, but we also need to start secreting something called melatonin, which is a hormone that helps us sleep. Now, it's interesting because melatonin can only be produced when there's no blue, and most of the green light is completely gone. And it's interesting because our ancestors probably would have had a campfire, which is all red light, orange light and yellow light, which doesn't actually impact your melatonin.

So the message that the brain would have got, the body clock would have got at that time of the day would have been, wow, it's night time, let's produce more melatonin, let's feel sleepy, and let's get some good restorative deep and REM sleep so we can recover. So what we've done today is that, well actually, let me go back about 100 years.

We invented lighting, and that lighting was incandescent light bulbs, okay? We didn't have any smartphones, computers, things like that. So we didn't have a huge amount of artificial light. And the artificial light that we did have was actually very similar to sunlight. It was very balanced in all the colors, didn't really impact sleep too much. Now, in the sort of late 80s, early 90s, it was decided that incandescent lights were using too much energy. And they invented something called LED lights. Okay.

Now, these were like these energy saving light bulbs. they wouldn't use as much electricity. But when they redesigned them, they made them brighter. So they took out all the other colours and really only put in blue light, green light and a little bit of yellow light. So what we did was from the sort of late 80s, early 90s, we created all these little mini artificial suns, put them in our house. Then we switched on our house lights, which were really high in that blue light after sunset. And that then sent messages to our brain that, okay, it's daytime. still, I can still keep my stress hormones high.

I don't need to release as much sleep hormone. So people struggled to get to sleep. Their hormones became disrupted because their clock system became disrupted. And we created this environment devoid of darkness where our body couldn't go into this sleep and repair and recover mode because of all the, you know, the strong LED lights. And then just to make things worse, we had a technological revolution sort of mid-90s to the early 2000s when LEDs started to pop up in computers, in smartphones, in TVs, in your fridge lights, in the car headlights, in appliances like your dishwasher or your oven had LEDs on,

your burglar alarm, you know, security systems, street lamps, literally everything you can think of that has an LED in it is giving out this blue light. So we just created this environment where we're bombarded by, you know, blue light, which is found in LEDs in high quix. quantities throughout our day and throughout our night. So our circadian rhythms over the last 10 to 20 years have just become completely out of whack. Everyone's experiencing, you know, a hormonal problem in their lives at the moment, whether it be disrupted sleep, whether it, whether it be fatigue, whether it be circadian mismatched diseases such as anxiety, stress and depression. And it's happened because we're no longer outside getting the correct messages to give our body clocks,

a chance to tick correctly, we're now living our underneath LED lights and using LED backlit digital devices, which have a very similar message that solar noon sun gives our circadian clock. So we're constantly living at midday, both in the day and in the evenings. And that's just wreaking havoc on our hormones. And, you know, it does that by completely messing up this thing called a body clock. And, you know, people need to take it, you know, much more seriously, they need to get outside a lot more. They need to block the blue and green light using blue blockers after sunset. And then, you know, these things will reverse very quickly and people will start getting better. Okay. So can we break down the different kinds of light, both the good

and the bad? Absolutely. So no light is specifically bad. Okay. So we need to understand that. So I think that what a lot of other people, and specifically companies that are trying to ride the trend of blue light glasses that know nothing about the science, demonise blue light, okay? Blue light shouldn't be demonized, okay? It has a purpose in our life, the same as every other spectrum color of light. It has a purpose. And that purpose is during the day is to increase serotonin in the gut, increase cortisol to make us feel alert and awake during the day, and to increase dopamine, which,

causes us to feel alert and awake. But on the flip side, blue light, both in nature, so in the sun and artificially, it's high energy. So it causes damage to the cells in our skin and our eyes. So if you're exposed to a lot of blue light, for instance, whether it be from artificial or the sun, it's going to cause damage to the cells in your skin and your eyes. Okay, so that can be personified by maybe accelerated aging. And in the eyes, it will be things like digital eye strain. So you might be working on a computer all day and your eyes would be watery, dry, or you know, you get a bit of a tension headache. And that's blue light causing damage. Now, not to like scare people, but there is an antidote to this. And the sun has a frequency of light in it the same as blue.

So it's the same intensity as blue. And it's red light. Now red light is a. restorative frequency of light. And what it does is it repairs any of the damage that blue light has caused to your skin or your eyes during the day. And it's present in the sun. You know, nature always has an antidote to any of the double-edged swords that it has. So blue light is good for you during the day hormonally, but it's bad for your cells. However, sunlight has given red light to us, which restores and repairs. And people might have seen things like, you know, like red light like therapy devices that people use to help increase collagen in their skin, help repair muscles. And that kind of works. It's kind of like an artificial way of doing what the sun does, which is

repairing any of that damage. Now, the issue we find ourselves in today, and as I mentioned earlier, you've got all these LED light sources now, like your phone and your laptop and your office lighting. And this only gives out blue light. So yes, we get all the benefits of the blue by working under blue light, which is the dopamine, serotonin and the cortisol during the day. But what we're not getting is any of the red light. Okay, so we're going to get the symptoms of digital eye strain, aging to the skin. But because we haven't got any red light present in our artificial light environments, we're not getting any of the repair. So over time, you're going to see accelerated aging. You're going to see things like cortisol levels continually spiking high. You're going to see

things like stress, anxiety and that increase because we haven't got any of that balanced spectrum. But also in LEDs, the amount of blue light given out is a lot higher than what you find in the sun. So we're almost like ODing on blue light. So this is why you mentioned earlier at the beginning, like the F-lux system, which, you know, is a little free bit of software that you can put on your laptop and it reduces blue light down. And that's fantastic for during the day because that reduces the amount of blue light that's going into your eyes and into your skin, which is going to cause less cell damage and keep you healthier for longer. But what, you know, flux doesn't do is it doesn't block the light that's coming from overhead in your office. So that's where you need blue light filtering glasses.

And, you know, I always say that light hygiene doesn't start at just wearing a pair of blue light blocking glasses in the evening and blue light filtering computer glasses during the day. it starts with a lot of other hacks as well, which is like getting outside in the morning and the afternoon and the evening. And it shouldn't be an issue for anyone because take your lunch break outside. In the morning, get up a little bit earlier and watch the sunrise. If you go to work in the dark, which might be the case for some people at the moment in the northern hemisphere because of the winter, you know, go to work, but then go outside when the sun starts to rise just for a couple of minutes to get the correct messages to your brain and get some of that restorative red light. So, you know, there's a lot more things you can do as aside to wearing blue light glasses.

Another one I always say is salt lamps, incredible. Give out red, pink, orange lights, restorative frequencies of light. Get one, plug it in, put it next to your laptop or your computer or your TV. And you're going to balance a lot of the damaging blue light out during the day. So, you know, we shouldn't demonise blue light, but as it is in LED light sources, it's definitely not a good thing in isolation. but the good news is there's a jolly good lot of hacks that we can do in order to, you know, mitigate that damage.

So it's not a case of like, oh, we're all screwed. There's loads of really interesting and imaginative ways. You can actually balance light and, you know, regain a healthy circadian rhythm and healthy ailments. Yeah, I want to talk about those hacks, but let's demonize it a little bit more. Yep, sure. Like what, can we break down what specific hormones these lights can affect and how that might be presenting in somebody's life? Absolutely.

And again, not to scaremonger, but every hormone is affected by light and your circadian rhythm. So let me delve into a couple of the popular ones. The first one is cortisol. So as I mentioned earlier, cortisol should be high during the day and it should be low during the night and cortisol increases of course by blue light. So you can see now that if you go home and it's dark and you switch on your house lights or switch on the TV and scroll through your phone, you're going to be keeping cortisol levels high constantly, which is going to cause you to feel chronically stressed over time, maybe even anxious or depressed, and it's going to impact your

sleep. So you need to be blocking the blue light after dark. You could go as extreme as me and take out all your light bulbs and put red light bulbs in, but it depends on, I guess, your situation and whether you want people looking in thinking, is this a brothel or not? So just bear that in mind. I heard you say that in an interview, and I was very impressed with your commitment. You said that you only work outside. Is that, did I hear that correctly? Okay. That's correct. Yeah. And I'm sat here. I'm indoors at the moment. I'm talking to you, but I have a big window that's fully open. so I've got sunlight beaming through. So it's interesting, and I don't want to get too sidetrack,

but light passing through a window is filtered light, which is sending the wrong messages to your brain. So you've got to have that window open, and it doesn't really help too much. So, yeah, so, yes, I have a lot of red lights in my house. But, you know, you can wear blue light blocking glasses, and it will give you, you know, sort of 90% of where you need to be. another one that's really affected is melatonin as we've mentioned i don't need to go into too much detail on that

that's a sleep hormone and you need to create something called serotonin during the day which is present which is produced in the gut by sunlight when that's produced in the gut it mixes with something called triptophan later on in the day which is another hormone um which is found in um in sort of dietary means so like, you know, if you're veggie, you know, your spinach is and your broccoli if you're meat into them white meat like turkey and chicken, they mix together in the absence of blue and green light after dark to make melatonin, which helps you sleep. Some other sort of interesting ones, just from a female standpoint, is prolactin and estrogen. They have their own clock systems. Okay, so to get a little bit deeper, you have a master clock system.

which is what I described earlier, your circadian clock. But every cell in your body has a tiny little clock of its own that's synced to that master clock. And, you know, in women, in your sort of ovaries, placenta, those types of areas, they all have their own clock systems as well. And they all produce melatonin. There's other clock systems within the body that help produce prolactin, which obviously is utilised for people that are looking, I think, for.

for to conceive, get pregnant, and then it's used later to produce breast milk. But it runs on its own cycle. And if that cycle is disrupted, then prolactin might not secrete correctly and also estrogen. And what that can lead to is something called polycystic ovary syndrome, which is fairly a fairly nasty thing in women. And, you know, it all comes down to the amount of disruption at specific sites within the female reproductive system which come down to disruptive clock systems within those localities. Another big one as well is insulin. Okay, so insulin is secreted by the pancreas and it's used for digesting carbohydrates and it's used for allowing regulation of our blood sugar levels.

So if your insulin levels become out of whack, you get something called diabetes or even insulin resistance. Now, there was an interesting study that came out several years ago that showed that blue light can actually raise your insulin levels and blood sugar levels independent of what food you're eating. So you could, you know, maybe have diabetes or, you know, from bad diet and things. And, you know, you clean up your diet. Maybe you eat a low carb diet. But if you're exposing yourself to too much blue light, that's still going to keep your insulin levels high and you might not be able to to get better. And this is one of the one of the podcasts I went on recently was a like a dieting,

like a ketogenic dieting podcast. And we were talking about how to overcome weight loss stalls and how light might actually be one of the issues because if light's keeping insulin levels, like blue light in isolation is keeping insulin levels high all the time, that puts our body into a state of fat storage. So you might be eating very low calorie diet. But if your light environment isn't right, you might not be able to live. lose that weight because every calorie you're eating is going to be stored as fat because of your insulin clock is completely out of whack.

Testosterone. Your cortisol is like through the roof, right? Yes, exactly that. Yeah, that's exactly what we dived into. And we spoke about cortisol being chronically high. And, you know, as I mentioned earlier, you know, some clock systems don't specifically, or they do run on light, but they're also influenced by other things. and the liver and pancreas clock are influenced by food and meal timing.

And when you look at the literature out there, we should be eating the majority of our calories in the morning and we should stop eating, stop eating before sunset if we want to create that optimal hormonal environment in our bodies, which was really interesting. And, you know, there were other studies that pointed to the skeletal muscle clocks within our bodies are governed, if you want to do cardio, the best time to do that is in the mornings from a circadian clock standpoint. But if you want to add muscle and train, you know, to build muscle and, you know, tone up, the best time to do that is between 12 and 4 o'clock during the day because that's when the specific hormones and neurotransmitters are optimising the body to

build muscle. So it's really interesting. It comes down to literally every hormone in the body and there's a specific time you should be doing things. But what you've got to remember is, we're now living with disrupted circadian clocks. I guarantee a lot of people that are listening to this now have got disrupted circadian rhythms. So all the things I'm saying are probably going to go out of whack because their clock system isn't in tune. So the first thing they need to do is re-regulate that circadian rhythm. And that's watching the sun rise, watching the sunset, being outside at least once during the middle of the day and blocking blue light after dark and filtering it during the day. And then, you know, you'll notice a change within

a couple of weeks of doing that about how good you feel. You'll be full of energy. You know, if you've got stress and anxiety, that will start to reduce. If you get migraines, they'll start to disappear. You know, I've been on a lot of reproductive health and fertility podcast recently as well, where we've talked about protocols for increasing likelihood of conception and things like that. And it's really interesting that men who go to bed later than midnight have a 50% chance, less chance of conceding with their partner than someone that goes to bed before midnight every night. So things like that. So, you know, I'm talking maybe from a female perspective quite a lot.

But, you know, men are the same. You know, it takes two to tango and testosterone levels, antisperm antibodies, and, you know, the amount of sperm count and the amount of, good quality sperm actually decreases if, you know, your partner sleeps in too long, goes to bed too late and has a mismatched circadian rhythm. So it's, you know, all this stuff is out there in the scientific literature. It's just nobody's picked it up and been like, oh my goodness, there's so many patterns here and we need to actually start explaining this to people because they might be having an amazing diet, exercising all day, doing the mindfulness stuff,

but maybe having problem with anxiety or sleep or conceiving. And what they haven't considered is, well, maybe it's my light hygiene that isn't right. Yeah, that is so fascinating. And I'm sure it's something that so many people still overlook, myself included, like I alluded to earlier. So you gave some really helpful tips on how to kind of start aligning yourself with your natural circadian rhythm. So getting up with sunrise, seeing the sunset. not eating late, getting blue light, blocking glasses, filtering during the day. I'm curious. So you did say that if you do that for a few weeks, you can bounce back pretty quickly. But what are some things that we can

do like daily to counteract the effects that we might be having from this blue light exposure? Yeah, absolutely. I think I'll start with some of the free ones because I think they're always a good starting point. Now, as I alluded to earlier, you want to be outside as much as possible. And I'm not saying going outside, you know, slathering yourself with sun cream and wearing your sunglasses, okay? But I'm equally not saying go out and burn. So what you need to do is you need to allow your skin and your eyes to be out in that sunlight. Okay. Now, the safest time to do that is within the first two hours of sunrise because UV light isn't present. Okay. Now, we need UV light. It's a whole probably different conversation we could have because it helps

create vitamin D, which is really an essential vitamin in our bodies. But too much UV can cause skin damage, which with a mismatch circadian rhythm can cause things like melanoma as well. So you've got to be very careful. So I always say get outside within that first two hours of the morning. number one you're going to get your body clock entrained it's going to send the correct message to your brain and i'm not saying you know what what you can't do is roll over out of bed switch on your house light or look at your phone first thing in the morning as well put all that away the first light your eyes needs to see is that sun in the morning if it doesn't your body clock is going to be out of whack because it's going to think it's solar noon if you roll over and look at your phone or you know switch on your

house light. So you need to be outside. That first light needs to be sunlight. You know, that give you all the correct hormones, get the skating clock system working correctly and just make you feel great. You know, really, you know, we were talking a little bit earlier, Ariel, about why we are so productive in the mornings. It's because we've got that big jump start of cortisol that really gets us in the mood to do, to do work and be productive. So that's definitely essential. If you work in an office, which a lot of of us do and you know there's artificial light sources there like your laptop then or your monitor get flux on there because that will reduce down the blue light and if you don't if maybe you're

in a bit of a stuffy company where they don't let you download software onto your computer that's fine if you go to your desktop and display settings you can actually um select like night shift mode on a lot of monitors now. So a bit like what's on your smartphone. And that reduces a lot of the blue light down and it's not an external app. So you can do that as well. Whatever you do, don't dim your monitor because that's worse for your eyesight because it increases something called flicker and flicker damages the nervous system. And it's found in all pretty much all LED light. So we can talk about that later, but it's a very, very bad thing, Flickr. I guess it's probably not free, but a lot of people have them.

Like I said earlier, the salt lamps. Get them on your desk. So you've got some different colors of light coming at you. That will help balance the blue. Sit near a window if you can. As I mentioned earlier, light coming through the window is filtered, but it's better than sitting under pure artificial light.

So try and sit near a window if you can. Open that window if you can as well. If you can't, then it's not the end of the world. Lunch should always be taken outside the office. not just from a solar perspective of getting more of the correct sunlight, but getting outside the office because offices are discussed in places that recycle air conditioning and they're full of dust. So you want to be outside anyway from a health perspective wherever you can.

And it might be a little bit different in LA because I think a few people that I've spoken to say you've got some pollution issues over there. But I guess use common sense. If it's really bad day and smoggy, then maybe don't. but it's probably going to be better than sitting inside. And then if you can do it, watch the sunset. It's such a calming time of the day as well. The red lights that come after the sunset really help us relax and get ready for sleep.

But I understand that that's probably going to be difficult for some people in the winter time because the sun will probably set during work time. You might be in a city and not be able to see the light properly. So it's not the be all and end all. And then in terms of some of the hacks that you can do that actually costs a bit of money is blue light glasses. So during the day, you need to make sure that you're filtering blue light. You know, you just got to make sure that when you buy blue light glasses, you're not focusing on violet light. It's not really present in LEDs.

A lot of the computer glasses, which are the clear ones that are being sold at the moment and the cheap ones, don't actually focus on any of the blue light. it's just violet light, which is doing absolutely nothing for us. So just be careful when you choose your glasses. You know, you reach out to the company and ask some questions. How much blue light do you filter? Do you filter violet light, you know, and make some informed decisions? Just got to remember that not all blue light glasses are created equal.

And then, you know, if you've got real... One should go by yours. You can... 100%. Yeah. You can self-promote here. Yeah, I always feel bad doing it because I don't want to come on thinking I'm saying to promote my glasses because I just to promote my glasses because I just

want to empower people, you know. But yes, blue blocks is definitely what you want to buy. So we've also got another lens during the day as well called Summer Glow, which we created because it didn't exist on the market. It's this bright yellow lens. Some people get a bit funny wearing this in an office. And I completely understand that I probably feel a bit nervous wearing it in an office environment. But if you have a sensitivity to light during the day, so you've got anxiety, depression, migraines, honestly, these are the best thing ever, because we reduced blue light a little bit more than the clear ones. But we've also infused it with colour therapy.

We started to look at how colour can impact mood. And we found that the specific tones of yellow we used actually uplift mood. So in the northern hemisphere, specifically in Britain, we get something called seasonal affective disorder. And I don't know if you get it in the US. But what it is is it's lack of sunshine, too much artificial light. It makes us feel miserable. Whereas these glasses that are yellow actually. counteract that because it actually uplips the mood using color therapy as well as blue light

blocking so it's a bit of a double whammy yeah that was going to be my next question because there are definitely areas here in the u.s like maybe pacific northwest area Oregon Seattle for sure it's gray and there's no sunshine for six months out of the year or it's rainy and so i was going to ask you if you can't get that direct sunlight in the morning and and throughout the day what the alternative is. Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of people ask us this question. And it's actually quite a simple answer.

I think a lot of people always look for the most complicated sort of answers to things. But sunlight, it doesn't matter if it's cloudy or raining. You're still going to get the benefits of sunlight at those specific times of the day because the sunlight will penetrate through the clouds and you'll still get it. You just won't be able to physically see the sunbees. You know, it's, we're very blessed in Australia that for 300 days of the year, we don't get one single cloud. It's just, you know, we can see the sun. We know when we can go out. So don't stress too much about that, I think.

It's more a case of being outside and you'll get the correct messages. I think the only issue you're going to have in sort of the deep winter in some of these places is that outside they're going to put street lamps on and an artificial light, which can really disrupt your clock system. And northern Europe is a really big issue as well. And again, it might be the case in some of these remote regions, maybe like Alaska, where, you know, in winter months, you can actually only get four or five hours worth of sunlight. And then it's darkness. And people are like, well, am I meant to sleep for 20 hours?

And the answer is no, it's not at all. And what you've got to remember is it all traces back to trying to mimic how our ancestors evolved. And, you know, we're realist. We don't want to tell people, throw your phone in the bin. switch off the telly and, you know, live in darkness, it's not going to happen. And I wouldn't personally do it either. But you need to think, like, in the region you're in, how would the ancestors have lived? And in some of these, like northern regions, like Alaska and Norway, Sweden, Iceland, is that they wouldn't have slept for 20 hours. They would have slept for longer

in the winter months because sleep is seasonal. Okay, you should sleep longer in winter. You should sleep less in the summer. That's just how the circadian rhythm works. But what would have happened is they would have still been light present in ancestral times during the winter months and it would have been a campfire so it would have been the red light sources but what we've done now is we've created this environment of blue light sources which goes completely against that and completely wreaks havoc on our hormones so you know if you're home um you know uh in the winter say it's a weekend because it's probably easier to to say and you know it's getting dark by four o'clock in the in the evening, you probably want to install some red light bulbs in some of the lamps in your

house and have those on. Or you might want to put on your blue blockers at that point in time as well. And what you'll find is during those months, you'll probably get sleepy around 7, 8 o'clock at night. That's very normal because the sleep is seasonal. But in the summer, you will wear your blue, you'll put your blue light blocking glasses or maybe at 9 o'clock at night and not get to sleep until like, say, 11 o'clock at night. So people just need to think a little bit more critically about things and also know that, you know, light is different throughout different times of the year. And this is very normal. So a lot of people come to us saying like, right, I want to have eight hours sleep every day of my life this year. And it's like you're thinking about it wrong because you might only get six hours

sleep during the summer, but that will be really deep restorative sleep. And you might need 10 hours sleep during the winter because that's how the circadian rhythm works and it all intertwines and matches with the spin and rotation of the earth and how it moves and it's present in every animal. So people have just got to accept that seasonality is a thing and it's not going to damage our health but we just need to take different precautions at different times of the year and one of the biggest hacks to do is that you know in the winter a lot of people get up while it's still dark because they have to travel to work before or just after the sun, sun rises. So we just say things like, well, again, mimic what the ancestors would have had.

They would have had red light in the morning from the campfire when they got up during those times to go out to hunt or gather or do whatever they did. So either pop your blue light blocking glasses on in the morning before the sun rises or just have some red light bulbs in the house. And it's quite a simple fix. and, you know, people just need to not get to sort of caught up in the weeds, I think, with it and just kind of think very simply, like, how would our ancient ancestors would have done this? And then think of a hack that they can do themselves or reach out to us. We're happy to help with other hacks that can happen that, you know, can manage that light environment properly. I'm curious if you have any thoughts about where you think we are going to be, I mean, with the pace that technology is advancing, and like you said, we're kind of getting bombarded with this light all day, every day from every which direction. And it's been, I mean, we've only had electricity for what, like a 150 years-ish compared to however, like, however, like.

long, you know, we've been on this earth. So this is happening so fast. Where do you see, where do you see us in 50 years, 100 years? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a really good question. It's actually one I ask on my show as well, which is really, really interesting. So I've had a lot of time to prep for this. It's going to go, you know, one way. And that is that circadian lighting will come to fruition in our lives. I don't know when that will be. It might be 10 years. It might be 100 years.

Because what will happen is the population will get sicker and sicker and sicker until it places an incredible amount of burden on national and private healthcare systems and something will need to be done. And the evidence and research is out there that shows how light is triggering and causing this. but it will take people, I guess, like myself, and there's other people out there that talking about this now and making people aware of the dangers of light, if not managed correctly, for big change to happen. And, you know, we're trying to take that first step because companies like us don't exist where we're trying to educate. And then just so happens that

we sell product, but we try to educate first. And, you know, we want to become that first circadian management company where, you know, we've got light bulbs in production at the moment that are red and also ones during the day that give out a yellow light that don't have as much blue light in them. So sort of, you know, helping our rhythm. So we want to create, I guess, a revolution of circadian lighting and sort of light management techniques. And I think that humans, if they, you know, if they want to stop getting as sick as they are now, they need to look at every single pillar of health. And, you know, nutrition is obviously one of them exercise, mindfulness, EMF and sort of electromf. And sort of electrompt.

magnetic frequencies, but also light is in there as well. And I think that, you know, the way that things are going and how sick everyone is getting from conditions that didn't exist 100 years ago or didn't exist in very high frequencies 100 years ago, like diabetes, obesity, anxiety, depression, insomnia can all be reversed very quickly. But as it cripples health organizations, both private and nationalised, circadian lighting will have to come in. And the thing is, Ariel, it's such an easy fix. Yes, there'll be, you know, a bit of time for change. But, you know, why does blue light have to be present in laptops?

Why can't we make full spectrum LED lights? And, you know, why can't we have, you know, these? And you see it a lot at the moment with some light bulbs that run on Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. And, you know, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi is a big no-no for me because it reeks have. with our nervous system and clock system. But I guess the concept of the lighting where you can get light bulbs now that change colour throughout the day. So you could have maybe a yellow light during the day and then maybe you could turn it

to red or orange after dark. So, you know, there's real, you know, there's hacks already that exist. It's just, I guess, getting the big players that make the big amounts of light bulbs and laptops and LED lights to actually be instructed by governments to say, well, you've got to, here's the science, you've got to make circadian lighting. All street lamps should be red, for instance. You know, why their white light, which gives out a lot of blue, is beyond me. But then you've also got to think about things about safety, you know, like driving at night.

Like you couldn't have red lights as your headlights because of safety issues. You could have more deaths on the road. So, you know, there's a lot to think about. But a revolution will come with circadian lighting. And it's ironic because the world. worst lighting in the world is in hospitals. It's the brightest, most bluest light. And, you know, we've got, you know, a lot of sick people in there that can't get well because the light. And also you've got incredible people like nurses and doctors that have to work night shifts under this,

you know, putrid light that's just wreaking havoc with them. So, yeah, I think it's... A lot of stressed out, a lot of sick patients and a lot of stressed out healthcare professionals. I know. It's so bad. It's, it's really, really not good. And it upsets me. And, you know, my dad was a fireman for many years. And well, actually, for all of his career, he still is now. But, you know, nurses, firemen, police, you know, they're all doing a service to us. And yet they're sacrificing their own health. And I guess doctors and nurses are at top of that pile for me because they're trying to cure sick people whilst making themselves sicker. And it's just so, yeah, so devastating. And, you know, when you look at, just to deviate slightly, when you look at night shift workers, they have,

I think it's something like a 30 to 70% increase in all cause mortality rates than someone that works during the day because their circadian system is completely messed up. And when I was on the fertility podcasts, they did a study on nurses that work night shift and every single one of them had irregular and longer menstrual cycles than those that didn't work night shift. So, you know it's just so bad yet they do such a beautiful job for for humankind that you know we need circadian lighting in hospitals at least you know or wearing you know blue blockers or the yellow glasses whilst working those shifts that try and help themselves and yeah it's just so sad that you know we just we just need more people talking about it more people educating and then people

can empower themselves then to take that leap into you know adding another pillar to their health journey aside from fitness and health and I'm sorry fitness and nutrition start adding light in that. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're doing an incredible job of getting the word out there and I do, I mean, I hope that like you're saying, we can start to look at health and wellness more holistically. I think we are, you know, in terms of not just looking at nutrition and exercise and but we are, we're getting sicker. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's unfortunately a sad truth of, you know, the world we live in. But, you know, the good thing is, there's a lot of things we can do now to really, you know, sort ourselves out from a light perspective, as we discussed. And, you know, I encourage people to come to our website, even if it's just to read the blogs I write. I write for a few magazines as well that are mainly sort of in the print side of things and mainly in that sort of bodybuilding and sort of training space. but a lot of the blogs I put on the website are very simple,

and they also have a lot of advice in there and what you can do. A good one to read is my top 10 lighthacks. It's a really good, simple one to read. I think it's good then if people want to dive a little bit deeper, they can start reading a little bit more on this rather than having to dive into really complex studies and try and interpret it. It's a real pain.

And I write things in very, very basic terms. people can properly understand and, you know, that will then empower people to fix their light environment. And I'll tell you one thing, Ariel, that the amount of podcasts I've been on where we've had people, you know, we've had thousands of people now that messaged us personally and said, I heard you on this podcast. I did the sunrise. I did some of the hacks you did. I bought your glasses. And I'm so glad I did. I didn't think that was in light was an issue. But I did it. And oh my goodness. literally is. There's nothing better, right? Oh, it's just amazing. That's going to be me. I'm buying

whatever you're selling, by the way. So when we are finished with this, I'm going to buy the glasses. When you get light bulbs, I'm doing that. I'm going to do everything. I'm going to implement and everything that we've been talking about today. Love it. Love it. And you know what? When you get the glasses, you'll also be supporting our charity, which I think is worth mentioning. It's always been a dear part of mine and Katie's you know, heart to help those that can't help themselves. By educating on these shows, we're helping, you know, giving the education to people that can afford to help themselves. They can invest in blue light glasses. They can go and do some of these hacks and they can improve their health. But what we wanted to do was we partnered with a not-for-profit called Restoring

Vision, actually based out of California. I think maybe San Francisco and one of their top guys lives actually, I think he actually might live in Malibu as well. which is interesting, so I think that's where you're based. But what they do is, what we do is for every pair of blue blocking glasses we sell, we donate the monetary equivalent for a pair of reading glasses to restoring vision. And what they then do is they collect that money once a quarter from us and other sort of sources, and they buy these reading glasses,

and then they give them to people in the developing world that need them just to be able to work and provide an income for their families or for, you know, kids that have got eye problems that need it to be able to read books and go to school and become educated. So if people want to help themselves by purchasing a pair of our glasses, they'll also be helping, you know, at least one person in the developing world that needs eyewear to be able to, you know, just function on a day to day basis. So, you know, that's really a good thing as well. And, you know, we'd love for people to help support our mission in that as well. Absolutely. That's incredible. So how can everybody find you? How can they support you?

how can they purchase glasses, all of that? Absolutely, yeah, really good one. And, you know, the best place to come is blueblocks.com. So that's b-l-u-b-l-o-x.com. You can run a Google search on it as well if that's too much of a mouthful to remember. For your listeners, I've done up a code just to help them. And it's a thank you for having me on called Blonde Files. And that will get people 15% off.

They can use it as many times as they want. I think that's a good way to get started. But also our social media is really a good place as well because we don't just post pictures of pretty people in glasses. We provide education, which differentiates us from a lot of those brands out there. And find us on Instagram, so just at Blue Blocks Official. If people want to follow me, I don't blame them if they don't. But I am Andy Mant is my Instagram,

and have a little look on there. It's a little bit of an education about light, but also about sort of business, entrepreneurship and working basically with my wife. I like to put a lot of couples things on there. But also Facebook, we're on there as well. And we also have a really cool group on Facebook called Light and Health. It has about 6,000 members. And all we post in there is studies and blogs and people post questions, all about how to manage light and You know, we just stay at the forefront of all the, of all the latest studies in there. So that's probably the best places to find us. Amazing.

Well, this was fascinating. I would love to have you back on after I implement all of this stuff. Amazing. It's a good honor. Check in down the road. And thank you so much. Thank you for the code and everything for the listeners. And it's just incredible what you're doing.

So thank you so much for coming on. Amazing. Thank you so much. And thank you for those that stay to the end, to listening to me ramble on about light, thank you. I'm sure they did. It's so fascinating.