Lesson Info
15. Sleep Biohacks
Lessons
Class Introduction
00:57 2Seven Big Issues in Training
11:58 3The Right Way vs. The Wrong Way to Train
11:15 4Mobility
10:27 5Balance
06:30 6Fueling for Performance
06:47 7Fermented Foods & Sweeteners
07:13 8Ultimate Human Performance Juice & Smoothie
03:23Lesson Info
Sleep Biohacks
Let's talk about four sleep bio hacks. 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, placed 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 cortisol surge and you need a little bit of help jump starting the circadian rhythm and they simply emit blue light. Now your computer certainly does emit 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. So that's one method that you can use. They also make sunrise alarm clocks. Um, this can be a good solution for people who really decide. They really, really do want to use something like...
a blackout curtain at night to keep the room really, really dark, but it kind of comes out to be a catch 22 if natural light isn't somehow waking up in the morning. So you can use something like a blackout curtains 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 sleep at night with a, with a sleep mask wrapped around my face it looks like this, it's friggin huge. Um, oh my blacks sound blocking earplugs are in there too. There you go. Um but this is the sleep mask that I use. This one is 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 the sense and alert. The other thing. And this is where research is kind of kind of kind of sparse, but it's interesting in 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 are still sensing some of that light that comes in through our relatively light bedroom. So, um, and then 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 the sun. Um, 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, blue light blocking glasses. I showed these when I was talking yesterday about some of my, some of my bio hacks and these glasses not only have a colour on them that helps with visual perception, but I've also added an amber blue light blocking layer to the lens and you can get blue light blocking glasses. Like I mentioned yesterday from places like low blue lights dot com or gun. Our glasses block about 70 to 80% of the blue light wave spectrum. So this is another thing that you can use, like after the sun sets in whatever area of the world that you live in and again you want, you wouldn't necessarily want to use them before the sun sets, but they work really well in the evening. Uh sleep mask, like I already demonstrated works really well. There is a free app at flux, it might be flux dot com or get flux dot com dot looks f dot lux. So I did it completely wrong because I did flu dot X. So f dot lux is where you can download an app that will sense what area, what times on the air in and naturally reduce all of the blue light wave 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 gonna turn kind of orange ish red because it's lost that spectrum of blue light and that can really help out as well. Another hack, hack number three would be sounds. Binaural beats are one example of a sound technique that you can use to enhance your ability to get into your proper brainwave production and deep sleep phase, the way that binaural beats work, because I can take something like headphones that allow me to pump sound into my ears at night while I'm sleeping or when I want to take a nap without actually having, I'm a side sleeper. So the buds from earphones tend to kind of annoy me if I'm sleeping on my sides. These phones 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 just 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 apps that are called Binaural Beat devices where you can download binaural beats from the internet. And what binaural beats do, for example, is let's say you want to get into an alpha brainwave frequency, what that would be like a frequency of around 10 hertz. So it would pump like 490 hertz into one ear and hertz into the other ear with like music. And that would be the frequency of the music and the sounds. And that would result in a 10 hertz frequency example of a binaural beats app would be like the zap Pease's um there are some free downloadable soundtracks made by the Institute of neuro Acoustics. I believe that's your acoustics dot org. But the creator of those Cds is named dr Geoffrey Thompson. He's got some really good stuff. White noise devices. Last night at our hotel there was a party, some gals 50th birthday party three floors up and they were 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 binaural beats per se. It helps to cover up a lot of that ambient noise 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 it at home because I will wake up like clockwork at about four a.m. Because there's a train that goes by our house at four am 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 just like boom, I 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 one other hack is grounding or er thing and in the last session, that was something that ari brought up as a stress control method that actually helped him. He'll Crohn's and inflammation in his digestive tract is the use of a grounding mat or an er thing matt which actually amplifies what's called the human frequency which is the natural frequency of 7.83 hertz 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 a 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 or er 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 er thing mats for a very long time to 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 and the outlet in your house. And because about 70% of the power in the US travels back to the substation through the ground. You expose your body to a lot of those power surges. If you use a grounding mat or unearthing matt in the U. S. That's why I'm a bigger fan of using something like the earth pulse which is a device that I that I showed earlier that again amplifies that 7.83 hertz frequency but is grounded into the outlet in your house in a different way. And these two magnets simply go underneath your bed. Um usually comes with one magnet. I used a headphone splitter to actually hack the device and make it twice as strong. But this would be another form of grounding or er thing. They also make a really cool device called a bio mat. And I've got that one over at Ben Greenfield fitness dot com slash Creative Live as well. But the bio mat 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 er thing solution but it's also the most expensive there north of $1000 for like the entry level version. And then finally um 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 er thing frequency. That human frequency of 7.83 hertz. 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. P. Aizu electric crystal. So it will store a sound frequency and then vibrate at that same frequency and the frequencies that it's been bombarded with or that 7.83 hertz frequency. So in natural medicine a lot of times they'll use what are called tourmaline 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 disk 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 hit me in the face. And that type of thing.
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