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Sleep Biohacks

Let's talk about forcefully bio attacks the first one is light I hinted at this earlier if you are unable to get sunlight exposure in the morning, they make what are called blue light boxes. I've got a lot of these hacks listed over at ben greenfield fitness dot com slash creative live but blue light boxes or something that you would, for example, place on the table next to you as you eat breakfast or at your office desk in the morning. Kind of between that six and eight a m time range when you need that court assault surge and you need a little bit of help and jump starting the circadian rhythm, and they simply meant blue light. Now your computer certainly does admit some amounts of blue light when you're staring at a computer screen, but this is a lot greater. This is more like a sunshiny type of blue light that's one method that you can use. They also make sunrise alarm clocks. This could be a good solution for people who really decide they really, really do want to use something li...

ke a blackout curtain at night to keep the room really, really dark, but it kind of come comes out to be a catch twenty two. If natural light isn't somehow waking up in the morning, you can use something like a blackout curtain in your bedroom and then use one of these sunrise alarm clocks and what the sunrise alarm clock does is instead of producing sounds to wake you up, it produces light to wake you up. I'll talk when we talk about napping about why using a sound based alarm clock might actually be a bad idea versus actually just using the natural photo receptors on your eyes to wake you up. But a sunrise alarm clock is another really cool bio hack that you can use especially if you're trying to keep your room is dark as possible now, like jess and I, we we don't really have blackout curtains I sleep at night with a with a sleep mask wrapped around my face it looks like this it's freaking huge oh my wax sound walking your plugs aaron there to there you go but this is a sleep mask that I use this one's made by my sleep number and it kind of covers your ears and it covers your face. But what I find is that even in the morning when the sun comes up, a little bit of light comes in and it's enough to kind of get me sense an alert the other thing and this is where research is kind of kind of kind of sparse but it's interesting and that some of your cells that are not even in your eyes have some light sensing photo receptive properties to them and so I suspect that another reason that I still kind of wake up in the morning pretty well and I don't use an alarm clock is because there are other areas of my skin that air still sensing some of that light that comes in through our relatively light bedroom so on day of course the sun like I already mentioned is kind of like the best thing to expose yourself to if you're able to expose yourself to sun darkness especially at night of course as you've just learned based off of what you know about the circadian rhythm is something that's really important to naturally be exposed to for at least a few hours before that natural melatonin surge your goal should basically be whatever time zone whatever area of the world that you live in when it becomes dark when the sun goes down that's when you should start going out of your way to make sure that modern living and technology is not replacing sunlight so black out curtains if you live in an area that tends to have a lot of street lights or if you live in an area where you tend to get a lot of light from like skyscrapers or hotels or apartment rooms nearby blackout curtains can work really well blue light blocking glasses I showed these when I was talking yesterday about some of my son my bio hacks and these glasses not only have a color on them helps a visual perception, but I've also added an amber blue light blocking layer to the lens and you can get blue like blocking glasses like I mentioned yesterday from places like low blue lights dot com or gun our glasses block about seventy to eighty percent of the blue light waves spectrum so this is another thing that you can use like after the sun sets in whatever area the world that you live in and again, you know you wouldn't necessarily want use them before the sun sets, but they work really well in the evening sleep mask like I already demonstrated works really well there's a free app at flux it might be flux dot com or get flux dot com looks f dot luck so I did it completely wrong because I did flu dot x so f dot lux is where you can download on app that will sense what area what times on the arian and naturally reduce all of the blue light waves spectrum from your computer screen based off of where you're at and that's really nice you'll notice that you'll be working all of a sudden your computer's going turn kind of orangish red because it's lost that spectrum of blue light and that can really help out as well I wish they made something like that for iphone or ipad but I'm not aware of anything like that at this point be really careful with kendall you so I think I mentioned we're talking about learning or at some point the past couple days I read a lot like I'm usually reading about three to four books at a time usually I'm reading magazines or physical books in the bedroom kindle is usually like for toilet time or airplane time or something like that. S o I'm careful with using ipads kindles the reader stuff like that ipad insomnia is a proven phenomenon in that they've done studies where they've shown that ipads oh, really do shut down a significant amount of your melatonin production at night when you use them after sunset and even just brief bursts of exposure to computer screens like hopping out of bed at eleven p m to check your email real quick or look up something on facebook can significantly shut down that melatonin production so it's pretty significant peter they also make screen protectors for the kindle and ipad iphone, which will block light what they dio use some of those screen protectors I have yet to find one that doesn't make the screen kind of annoyingly hard to read during the day um so that's that's the only issue I have with screen protectors do you know the big one that that really well I just think I got mine from blue lights dot com but I'd crank um the brightness up during the day yeah, and then that night I kind of lowered down a little bit I think that's the web site that I got my screen protector from that I used on my iphone for a while and I just at the hardest time just like seeing e mails and stuff it seemed like during the day, so I got rid of it, but you know, I'm sure they will eventually make some kind of an app that will just naturally dim light like that for the phone. Another hack hack number three would be sounds by neural beats air one example of a sound technique that you can use to enhance your ability to get into your proper brainwave production and deep sleep face the way that by normal beats work as I can take something like headphones that allow me to pump sound into my ears at night while I'm sleeping and when I want to take a nap without actually having im aside sleeper so the buds from earphones tender kind of annoying me if I'm sleeping on my sides these funds were made for running they're called run phones but they also they make some called sleep phones and they're really the same thing rebranded but um it's a headphone in here and I can still sleep and it's nice and soft and you can use phone aps that are called by general beat devices or you can download by an aural beats from the internet. And what by general beats do, for example, is let's say you want to get into an alfa brainwave frequency. What that would be like a frequency of around ten, hurts so it would pump like four hundred and ninety hurts into one ear and five hundred hertz into the other ear with, like music. And that would be the frequency, the music in the sounds and that would result in a ten hertz frequency unexamined of the bio neural beats up would be like this is ap pz eyes easy. There are some free downloadable soundtracks made by the institute of neuro acoustics. I believe that's nor acoustics dot org's, but the creator of those cds is named dr jeffrey thompson. He's got some really good stuff. I have, ah, bracelet that I wear around my wrists at all times. And I'll talk about this a little bit during our brain segment, probably, but this bracelet, which is at superhuman encoder dot com, comes with three downloadable tracks, one for for for for performance, one for relax, a shin and then one with by naral beats for sleep so that's another thing that you can use when it comes to sound and yes, question about sounds, do you have to use headphones? Yeah for buying oral beats unless you have a speaker on either side of of your bed stand kind and you have it set up like that yeah, the sound has to be pumped in tow either ear kind of the same time so it's really tough to achieve with like say ah you know like an eye home iphone sound player or bows or something off in the corner of the room it really has to be on either side of your head preferably close to your head okay? Because yeah, I have are like your ear phones don't stay in my ears yeah and I don't like the way they feel and had bins like against my ears hurt my ears so those those run phones would be a solution for something like that and the cool thing is if you combine the run phones with a big head wrap around sleep mass like this, the sleep masks helps to kind of push the headphones against your head and this is what I'll do in like an airplane like aware this I'll put the run phones on a punt the bio neural beats and I'm just out like a light on an airplane when I do that it also works really well for napping white noise devices last night at our hotel there was a party some gals fiftieth birthday party three floors up and they're making a lot of noise and I had my iphone app out called the white noise iphone app. I put my iphone in airplane mode so it's not getting a lot of those signals and emitting a lot of those electromagnetic frequencies, but that white noise app, even though it's, not by an oral beats per se, it helps to cover up a lot of that ambient noise, ways that you can get if you live in a loud area there's lots of dogs barking and ambulances and sirens. And, for example, I use at home because I will wake up like clockwork out about four a m because there's a train goes by our house at four a, m and it's like a mile away, but every time that train goes by, if I don't have my white noise app on, I can hear a little horn blaring on the train, and I hear the little rumble of the train and she's like, boom a wake up. But if I have that white noise app on, I put it in rain mode. It just kind of covers up that sound, so those also work, and then if you want to get really fancy, they actually make what are called cranial electro stimulation devices and these air combinations of electro stim by an aural beats sound and light all at once on your head. And this is something that you would use prior to bed, tow, actually lower yourself into sleep. There's a company called I believe it's f o c dot us that makes one there's another one called the david delight, or the david delight pro made by a company called mind alive. I've got a link to a few of these over at ben greenfield, fitness dot com slash creative live, because I'm personally concerned a little bit about how much electricity I kind of put around my head and the lack of long term studies that I've seen on some of these cs devices. I'm personal, careful, and I don't I don't use those, but some people swear by him in terms of the way that you can use sound to help you sleep and then one other hack that I'll get into before we take a quick break for questions and then start talking about supplements for sleep is grounding or earth thing on din the last session, that was something that ari brought up, says a stress control method that actually helped him. He'll crones and inflammation in his digestive tract is the use of a grounding matt or an earth thing, matt, which actually amplifies what's, called the shuman frequency, which is the natural frequency seven point eight three hurts that the ground emits. Now this is a natural healing frequency you'll feel a lot better if you for example walk barefoot around on the ground it helps your body to release aa lot of its negative ions and helps you to get more in touch with these natural frequencies that the earth is emitting and a grounding on earth thing matt is one way that you can achieve that same effect while you're asleep I mentioned in the first day how professional cycling teams in the tour de france have been using grounding or earth thing mats for a very long time help them recover between stages I'm cautious recommending them to my clients in the united states because they are grounded to the actual earth the way that you plug them into the wall a now in your house and because about seventy percent of the power in the u s travels back to the substation through the ground you expose your body to a lot of those power surges if you use a grounding that or unearthing that in the u s that's why I'm a bigger fan of using something like the earth colts which is a device that I that I showed earlier that again amplifies that seven point eight three hertz frequency but is grounded into the outlet in your house in a different way and these two magnets simply go underneath your bed usually comes with one magnet I used a headphone splitter toe actually hack the device and make it twice a strong but this would be another form of grounding or er thing they also make a really cool device called a bio matt and I've got that one over a ben greenfield fitness dot com slash creative live as well but the bio matt works really really well it's very expensive but it doesn't plug into the wall at all it's just naturally releasing these magnetic frequencies so it would be the most natural grounding or earth thing solution but it's also the most expensive there north of a thousand dollars for like the entry level version of course being in touch with the ground we'll talk about that a little bit when we talk about jet leg but simply going barefoot on the ground is a very, very good way to ground yourself for earth yourself or just going outside and lying in the backyard for about you know excuse me ten, fifteen minutes that's a great way to ground or the earth and then finally bracelets you know I mentioned like this this bracelet that I wear on my wrist this emits a frequency very, very similar to that that earth thing frequency that shuman frequency of seven point eight three hurts and all it is is a it's a crystal in here that vibrates at that frequency it's been exposed to sound frequencies it's what's called a pho electric crystal so it will store a sound frequency and then vibrated that same frequency and the frequencies that it's been bombarded with, or that seven point eight, three hertz frequency, so in natural medicine, a lot of times they'll use what are called tor moline crystals to mitigate the effects of electromagnetic field exposure. People hang these around their next. This is something similar except it's a little bit more applicable to athletes, because the disc or the crystal is actually embedded in the bracelet, so I can wear this during sports without, like, having to swim and having a necklace at me in the face and that type of thing. So those are some of the ways that we can use the concept of grounding and er thing and low frequency magnetic waves to actually help the body to sleep better, or to get into his circadian rhythm a little bit better. So those air for my bio hacks and we'll get into supplements here in a second, but before we do let's, take some questions, jessa, is there an ideal amount of time to grant be grounded? I'm not trying to be grounded if you can. If you can stay grounded the whole time that you're sleeping that's ideal because it lulls you into your deep sleep phases like that earth polls, I can plug that in, and I technically don't even need an alarm clock. If I say one a nap for an hour, I can plug it in, turn it on for an hour, and when it turns off, I automatically wake up because it brings you from that data brainwave state get down into a delta brainwave state and kind of naturally brings you back out based off of the patterns of the frequencies that emits. So as far as an ideal amount of time, be grounded or earth, I don't know of any studies that look into, like a number of hours or number of minutes, and then is there like a certain body part that can that is they give your hands or your feet or something? I suspect that it's probably the feet, because for so many thousands of years, humans have just kind of walked around in the planet earth, but, you know, probably any area of your body that's in contact with the ground would be beneficial. You know, I showed these sandals earlier how these have carbon plugs in them that allow me to be shod to do something like walk around a city that I've arrived in after traveling and still be grounded, or earth as I'm walking around these allow you to release a lot of those negative ions and stay grounded. And, you know, it's a big difference when you were a sandal like this that has the carbon plugs versus like a regular sandal after you've been traveling, this is certainly one of the jet lag techniques that will use how about a question from the internet? Yeah, bionic a it was asking what you feel in your body when you eliminate those electron magnetic waves, so basically she's she was saying that you mentioned several times that you cut these waves out when she's wondering what she should be looking for in her body to know if there's a problem like if she's getting too many of those waves brain fog, especially in the afternoon or headaches. What feels like kind of like a high pitched sound and kind of like the back of your head that just slightly annoys you but that you can get through throughout the day. I'm getting really tired, especially when you start work on your computer almost automatically feeling some kind of a switch go off in your brain that where you almost feel like some of your creativity diminishes difficulty sleeping can also be one of the things, but I noted like I work around computers so much with my job is being like a writer, you know, blogger spending a lot of time on the internet doing social media stuff like that I noticed right away when I wifi router right instantly it's almost like my brain just gets a little bit more clear, so it's usually kind of feel in your head, so we've had a discussion in the chat room regarding kindles, ipads and all of the blue light discussion we were just talking about. I just wanted to be clear on a few things we were talking about in the chat room, the kindle and the kindle that uses that the paperwhite technology and doesn't have a back light. Does that still give off the same sort of things that we're talking about with the eye? That's that's a much, much better solution can get way less blue life from something like that. You're still getting some blue light, but it would probably be just fine to something like the kindle paper, along with blue light blocking glasses like the gun ours or that pair that I showed was made by a company called erlin and required a custom fitting for the for those special lenses. But combining something like that with the blue light blocking glass would would be kind of like a way that you could have your cake and eat it, too.