The Healthiest Way To Light Your Home For Optimizing Sleep & Energy (& How To Sleep Better When You TRAVEL!) With Block Blue Light's Daniel Ebbett

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast—

glasses are great, they work. In my view, they're a bit of a Band-Aid solution because why not improve the light at the source? You're putting on these glasses to filter out junk light. Stop emitting junk light in the first place, and then the benefit is—

welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, health, fitness, longevity, and beyond.

Hey. So, in this episode, I interview this ninja on all things circadian lighting. The guy actually designed all the light bulbs that I use in my house, but he knows way more than just light bulbs. His name is Daniel Ebbott from this cool company called Block Blue Light. All the shownotes will be at BenGreenfieldLife.com/BenGreenfieldLife. Blue Light Podcast. I had a blast learning a lot of things I didn't know actually about light. And, he had some tricks up his sleeve that are new to me and that I'm going to implement. So, enjoy this one. There have been 2 videos just in the past few months alone that are kind of like an MTV Cribs-style walkthrough of my so-called biohacked home in Idaho. And, one of the things that feature heavily in both those videos are these special light bulbs, the way that I create a circadian-friendly environment in my home. I get so many questions about how do they even work. I mean, just in case you didn't see the video, you— the ones that are in most cans in the house, you flip the light switch on once, it goes daytime, you flip it on again, it goes early evening twilight, you flip it on again and it just sucks all the blue light out of the bulb and switches to red. So, I've been getting questions about that and other questions from people just in general about how we address circadian lighting in our home, preferably in a way that doesn't just require us to use a bunch of Wi-Fi-enabled light bulbs that increase EMF, et cetera. So, I decided to get an acquaintance of mine, a guy who I know is kind of a visionary leader in the field of blue light on the podcast. His name is Daniel Ebbott. He's actually the founder and the CEO of Block Blue Light, which as the name implies makes a bunch of blue and artificial light-blocking products. And, this is where I actually got my light bulbs from was from Block Blue Light, these full-spectrum bulbs. So, Daniel, welcome to the show.

Daniel: Hey, Ben. I'm excited to be here. Obviously, light has changed my life, so I'm excited to get into the details and share it with the audience.

Yeah. I guess I just want to jump right in, man, because I don't even fully understand it. You can probably describe the installation process and the technology better than I, but how does this actually work? Where you flip the light switch on once and it goes daytime, then again it goes twilight, then again sleep? What's the technology behind that?

Yeah, sure. I mean, I think the best way to probably talk about this is to, to break down what an actual full spectrum bulb is, or what a real full spectrum bulb is versus a standard bulb, right? So I mean, a standard LED bulb starts with a, a pure blue LED chip around like 450 nanometers, and then what they do is they coat it in a real basic yellow phosphor, and it creates white light that we see. And, um, when you measure that within a spectrometer, it's got a very unnatural spike in blue light and very little of the yellow, orange, and red light in it. So, that's why they feel pretty cold, harsh, and fatiguing to be under for long periods. Essentially, what they're doing is they're tricking your eyes into thinking they're seeing daylight, but biologically, your body knows it's not actually the real thing, right?

Trust me, I know because the two areas of my home that I didn't put special lighting in were my garage because I just have the long LED light strips in the garage and then my shop in the basement. And occasionally, I flip those on at night and I'm like, "Wow, wow, wow, wow." It just feels like I'm getting blasted because I'm so used to the twilight or the evening lights. So yeah, you notice it even more, the whole LED thing, if you switch everything out and then you have a couple LEDs left.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Once you kind of go to biologically appropriate lighting and then you get exposed to these unnatural sources, your body can really feel that. And so, and so the real, the real difference between, between what I've described there is a, you know, a basic blue LED with a basic phosphor is to create an actual full spectrum bulb. Um, we use like what's called a multi-phosphor system. So instead of relying on a single layer to filter and create the light we see, we use kind of a multi-advanced phosphor that will essentially convert the diode's output into the wider range of wavelengths. So that gives you coverage across the entire visible spectrum. So it's filling in the greens, the yellows, the oranges, and the reds that are normally missing in conventional lighting that we have in our homes.

Okay, and explain to me how you— um, maybe you were just about to get into that, sorry— how it interacts with the actual light switch.

Yeah, so I mean, that was one thing when we, when we created this full spectrum bulb, right? You don't want the same spectrum throughout the entire day. So okay, we've created an ultimate full spectrum with all the visible color, but we need it— the solar spectrum changes throughout the day, and our body expects it to change as well. So when we created this bulb, we wanted the ability to be able to change the spectrum in the bulb, but we didn't want to introduce things like smart technology like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth throughout the home, because ultimately we're trying to create a healthier lighting environment or a healthier environment in general.

Yeah, and I, I know, by the way, it's not your job as a CEO to throw people under the bus. It's mine as the podcaster. But this would like, like the, the super popular, like, Philips Hue system or something like that, right?

That's it, yeah. And so we wanted a way that we could kind of get the best of both worlds here, and so that's what we did. So, and incorporated in— so once you install the bulbs, um, it works off any light switch, and essentially inside the, inside the brains of the bulb, when the bulb has got power and then it and then you turn the power off and back on within 3 seconds, that instructs the bulb to change to the next spectrum. So, pretty much that allows you to chop and change the modes you want by just using the light switch in your home.

And so, if I were to buy these bulbs, I don't need to call my electrician and get the home rewired. As soon as I screw them into the existing cans in my home, All I have to do is just flip the light switch on and off and they'll automatically switch?

That's it. That's the benefit. You don't have to buy a special switch or a special dimmer or anything to run them. They'll just run off your existing wire.

Okay. Yeah. That's one question I've been getting from a lot of people is, "Do I have to have an electrician come over and change anything else?" But no, you just screw them in. And I mean, I don't know if you have a good response to this question, Daniel. Mine is just fashion, I guess. I'm wearing them right now. I'm wearing daytime anti-glare glasses primarily because I'm staring at a backlit LED screen in front of my camera right now. However, why wouldn't people just for maybe whatever, $100 just outfit the family with a few pairs of blue light-blocking glasses and just use those?

I mean, there's a use case for everything. And so, my view is glasses are great, they work. In my view, they're a bit of a Band-Aid solution because why not improve the light at the source, right? Like, you're putting on these glasses to filter out junk light. Why not stop emitting junk light in the first place? And, and then the benefit is, um, everyone in the home benefits. Like, to get buy-in and those families to go around and make sure all your kids and everyone puts on the glasses.

Yeah, exactly. Like, my kids each have like 3 pair. They just, they just teenage boys and they don't wear them. I'm not going to force them to. And then, if I throw a dinner party, it'd be nice if everybody in the home gets to benefit from circadian-friendly lighting.

Well, I don't know if you have a dinner party, you could hand out glasses on entry.

I don't know for sure. That's true. Yeah, good icebreaker. The other thing is if you just wear blue light-blocking glasses, from what I understand, and correct me if I'm wrong, you still don't eliminate flicker and EMF, right?

Correct. I mean, so because a lot of— there's a bit of a misconception that think people think, okay, blue light blocking glasses, I'm on screens, I need the glasses. Absolutely correct in most circumstances— TV, computers, phones. But our biggest exposure is all the lights in our home, right? Like, you've got the sunset, everyone turns on like a whole host of lights throughout the home. So that's, that's really our biggest exposure to artificial light. Screens are a problem, but so is— more of a problem is our overhead lighting in our home. So that's kind of why I think it's always should be a layered approach where glasses absolutely serve their purpose. If I'm on a screen at night or during the day, um, I should be using them. But how do I improve the entire environment? And also, like, there is some research around looking at The receptors in our skin are also activated under blue light. Melanopsin receptors have been shown to exist in the skin, which sort of say are having an influence on our circadian clock as well. So, it's more of an argument.

Ben: Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. I have an article. I'll put a link to it in the shownotes, which are at bengreenfieldlife.com/blue-light-podcast. But, I have an article detailing what you were just describing, Daniel. It's called "Your Skin Is an Eye." And, it's because of those photoreceptors and it's nowhere near what amount of circadian rhythm disruption like retinally-directed blue light would cause, but there's still an effect there. That's it. Yeah. And then, regarding the EMF piece, I think it's pretty obvious that you were saying something like a Philips Hue or a smart lighting system just based on the fact that Unless I guess you've hardwired it all with ethernet, it is going to kick off EMF just because of the Wi-Fi component. That would, I imagine, be the most EMF. But then, is there a difference if it's not a smart wired home but just the LED bulb versus say this full-spectrum bulb, any difference in the EMF between those two?

Yeah. I mean, this is an area I don't think people even realize that matters, but it's really important. So yeah, you've got smart bulbs, EMF from the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, but in just general lighting has 3 major EMF components you need to worry about. So we've got, um, dirty electricity, which is the big one. So the re— the reason we've got dirty electricity in, um, cheap mass-made light bulbs is they use what's called like a switch mode power supply. So what this does, instead of delivering smooth power at like the 50, 60 Hz, the natural AC cycle of the, um, wiring in your home. They sort of chop it up into very high frequencies, and this creates a lot of sharp voltage spikes back on that ride back on your home's wiring. So that radiates out a field from the bulb, electrical noise, into your environment. Not ideal, right? The next one is electric fields. And so very similar, inside bulbs you've got power supplies, drivers, uh, they're not grounded. So they're not grounded, they emit out— or shielded— they emit out a whole bunch of electric fields into the environment as well. So you could be sitting under, you know, close enough to a bulb and you're getting bathed in a high electric field as well. And the last one we've got is magnetic fields. And for a similar reason, a switch mode power supply is chopping the current on and off like 1,000 times a second. So what you end up doing is pulsing magnetic fields sort of radiate into the wiring again. So, that's kind of like you've got 3 big EMF problems and pretty much 95% of your conventional lighting.

Okay. So, in the 3 problems, we have magnetic fields, electrical fields. What was the other one?

Dirty electricity.

And dirty electricity. Okay, got it. Okay. So, does the full-spectrum bulb not have any of those 3? Or lower amounts of all three of those?

Yeah. So what we did is I talked about a switch mode power supply. This is pretty much like all LEDs use this type of power supply. It's cutting up, it's cutting up the current as it comes in. We don't use them. We use what's called a constant current driver. And so what this does is it essentially smooths out the current. It eliminates the dirty electricity. We, we put a shielding in the housing for the electric fields. And because the current's coming in at a steady direct current, it doesn't have all these magnetic fields that are associated with the, the chopping up of the electrical current. So you kind of— the result is what I call like an electrically clean bulb. It's— you can put it above your head, you're not getting like these massive exposures to all these electrical magnetic and dirty electricity fields coming off the bulb.

Okay, I would imagine people are wondering, does that affect the lifetime of the bulb? Like compared to, I don't know, standard 100 or 150-watt LED, um, what do you sacrifice as far as lifetime of bulb.

The longevity of a bulb is created by using an LED or a light-emitting diode, so you've still got all the longevity benefits. The only reason, the only reason manufacturers use switch mode power supplies is for cost. It's cheap. They're cheap and nasty is what I kind of like to say.

Okay, yeah. How much is, uh, one full spectrum? Well, I don't know, people buy them as a package. You sell them standalone? I don't even know.

We, we do. We said because we sell all sorts of different fittings, obviously can lights, bigger floodlights. Yeah, there's a lot of different.

Okay. But just like a standard, like all the ones, you know, actually they're more of the floodlight version in my office, but most of the house is the bulb. How much is just like a standard bulb?

It's sort of ranging from around $20 to $30 for a bulb.

Okay. Okay. Got it.

Yeah.

Well, I remember Brian Hoyer, our building biologist, when he first came in with the proposal for lighting, I was like, this seems spendy, but I've got I think over 100 cans in the full house and I was doing them all at once. And, I had to kind of step back for a second, remind myself, "Okay, this is an investment in my health and this is how I'm going to light my home for the rest of all time, so I better make the right decision." Speaking of the flicker, total rabbit hole here, you mentioned phones. Obviously, we look at them. Did you know starting with the new iPhone 17, They have a pulse width modulation setting and you can go in and set it so that the phone is now basically flicker-free.

Well, I was not aware of that.

Yeah, they just added it.

Okay. Because I was aware that pretty much iPhones and most LED sources are using pulse width modulation, which is causing, you know, high amounts of flicker rate off the screens.

I'll put a link in the shownotes for those of you who want to look at it for the iPhone 17, but it's just like you go into settings, I think it's Settings, General, Accessories, something around in there under Display. And then, there's a pulse width modulation and you kind of like, I believe you deactivate it or lower it and they warn you this may affect screen performance if you're in a dimly lit situation. My take on it is if you're in a dimly lit situation, you should probably sleeping anyways. So anyways, yeah, I'll find the instructions and put them in the show notes at BenGreenfieldLife.com/BlueLightPodcast. Another question, and hopefully this isn't a curveball for you, Daniel, but I'm seeing this more and more these days. Even Andrew Huberman, I think, has talked about it. He's probably the most popular guy that's talked about it. The idea of having your lights be lower, even below eye level in some cases to reduce something like sympathetic activation based on the actual location of the lighting relative to your eyes. Are you familiar with this idea?

I'm very familiar with it and I think it's actually a really clever strategy because there's actually some pretty solid science behind it. So, our circadian system doesn't just respond to the intensity and spectrum of light,. It also responds to the angle of the incoming light. And how this works is the specialized cells in our eyes called the ipRGCs, which are the main detectors of our circadian light. These cells are the most dense in like the lower half of our retina. So when you've got light coming from above, it's hitting the lower part of your retina, and obviously it's hitting a strong— it's activating more of those cells. To detect sort of daylight signals. But when you've got light coming from below, like a fire or table on a lamp, that's primarily hitting your upper retina. Now there's far fewer of the ipRGCs, so you get a much weaker circadian signal. So the, so the brain is essentially interpreting that it's more capable of being evening or nighttime kind of lighting. And so that's kind of like evolution that has hardwired us this way, right? For millions of years, we've had only source of light is bright overhead was from the sun. And so then always like night lighting was coming from firelight, which from below. So like, I think it's a really solid strategy. And like, in terms of like the, um, the how the eye is created in terms of where the cells are and how it's, and how it's interpreting light, it's, it's completely aligns to angle of light as well.

Yeah, I've been aware of it for about 6 months, the concept. And so, in my office, I have 2 standalone bulbs that I can just— if I'm working my office in the evening, I can put both those on and those are below eye level on the floor or near the floor of the office. I can adjust the angle of those. There's just a standard lamp stand that I have the bulb plugged into. I'll admit I haven't gone through every room of our house and adjusted it so I could just have floor lighting at night. But have you seen people implementing any creative strategies when it comes to considering this concept?

My view is it is relatively simple to implement. So, you know, if you've got your overhead lighting, you have like what you've got where you can change the modes using that in the early evening. You've got a nice warm amber light, have your dinner, relax, hang out with family. Once you're finished, you've cleaned up and you're really wanting to wind down for the evening, turn all your overhead lights off. Just have a couple of lamps on, like a couple of lamps with red bulbs on where you might be just relaxing, reading a book in those like 1 to 2 hours before bed. And you've— it's, it's not that hard to actually just strategically place a couple of lamps in your, in your lounge, living room, or bedroom where you, where you hang out in those last sort of hours of the evening. And you don't need the overhead lights on, like we, we don't need that bright stimulus anymore.

So I don't know if I got these from you, you can tell me if you sell them, I honestly, I don't remember where I got them, but I have these motion-activated red lights and they stick to the wall. They're like these little square things. So, I've got one in the bathroom and three in my pantry. And, the reason I have those is if I get up to pee at night, that just automatically detects my motion and flips on red light. And then, in the pantry, When I get up in the morning, I actually find that I do better as far as daytime energy if I keep myself in kind of sunset mode for about the first half hour or so of the day. So, I put on blue light-blocking glasses when I first get up. I only use the Block Blue Light Full Spectrum in night mode. And then, in the pantry, I don't even turn on any lights, I just open the cupboard, the sensors detect it and I get red light so I can take my morning supplements and stuff. Do you guys have something like that, a block blue light, or did I get these somewhere else?

That sounds like our ones. Yeah. So, we've got the— yeah, essentially will activate by motion, perfect bathrooms in the night, exactly where you're using them, hallways to just find your way back to the bedroom, stuff like that.

Yeah. Yeah. They're the ones you just stick to the wall, right?

That's it.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

All right. Those did come from you. Okay. Good to know. What else do you guys have that's interesting? Besides the full spectrum bulb and motion activated red lights when it comes to kind of outfitting somebody's home or even like portable solutions for a hotel that you think are big wins?

Yeah, I mean, so like our goal is, as we've developed our business over the last 10 years, is to really look at how one uses light in their home, how they interact with light, whether they're traveling in a hotel, whether at home, and trying to create solu— an alternative solution, right? So what that's led to now is I think we've probably got like 40 different types of light fittings. We have sort of, you know, like a portable lamp that you can wrap up and take traveling, the motion lights. We've got book lights where you can sort of clip them onto a book to read. We've got strip lights even, so you can put strip lighting in your kitchen, for example.

I actually use the strip lighting to light my pool house in my old home. I have like this structure of— it's like a big cold plunge next to a hot tub, and that was lined with Red light strips.

Yeah, nice. Yeah, so, so similar idea. We're just trying to look at all the ways people were using lighting and create a more circadian-friendly version of it. So, and that's kind of our goal, was just we could come into one person's home and be able to change out 95% of the lights that they're using today with an alternative, healthier solution.

Okay, so let's say Daniel the light expert is going to travel you're going to go on a trip and let's make this a little bit more complicated, no checked bags, okay? This is carry-on only. You're going to go to a hotel for, I don't know, 6 days or whatever that has crappy lighting. What is going into your bag from kind of your essentials travel kit that's going to allow you to be as circadian-friendly as possible but not have 12 light bulbs in your check baggage.

Well, literally, that's what I used to do, right? It's check like 12 light bulbs in my bags, and it wasn't practical, right? Because it was like you'd end up at a hotel room, you go, I've got the wrong fittings, or, all right, they've got these sealed bulbs. And I was like, this is, this is not practical. But so, I mean, in today's world, I keep it real simple. I, I pack with me, uh, what we call our multi-mode lamp. It has a red, an orange, and an amber mode, uh, portable USB-C charged, so I charge it up, can go into my carry-on bag with me. Um, so that's my bedside lamp. And then I've got exactly what you said, one of those motion-activated, uh, red lights straight into the bathroom. And then I've got a book light with me so I can read. My—

that's my—

and then the last thing I've got is a blackout sleep mask. Oh, sorry, last two things: a blackout sleep mask, because I can't always trust that the hotel curtains are going to be blackout. I need to create an actual blackout environment while I sleep. And then a roll of black electrical tape to tape up all the LEDs that are still blinding in the room at night.

Ben Greenfield: I do the black electrical tape thing, so I'm on board with that. And, that's super simple. Just the first night before you go to bed in your hotel room or Airbnb, flip off all the lights and look for anything that looks like a blinking alien spaceship and try and cover it up if you can. And then, the rest of my kit's a lot more basic than yours. Even though I might have to go spend some money on your website after this to upgrade. I do a cheapo like $20 red light headlamp from Amazon. And, that's pretty much how I navigate around my hotel room at night, how I read at night, et cetera. And then, I grab a few curtains or a few hangers from the closet of the hotel room and use those to make the curtains actual blackout curtains. So, I don't travel with the curtains either. I do travel with the sleep mask and I do travel with the blue light-blocking glasses. So, I'm even more stripped down than you, but I also don't own a lighting company.

Yeah. I mean, you've got a pretty solid strategy there. I think we could just improve it with a couple more advanced portable lights for you, I think.

Okay. We talked briefly about the pulse width modulation on the new iPhone 17. We obviously use screens, TVs, computer monitors. We discussed blue light-blocking glasses as being one of the potential ways to address that. Do you mess around at all with phone settings, software, say Iris or Flux on your laptop or computer monitor, or do anything to the actual hardware component of the screens using software or any other tools?

Yeah. So, I mean, for how I tackle screens, primarily my computer monitors, I use IRIS Tech. I have on there sometimes Flux. Yeah.

For those who didn't catch that, by the way, IRIS, I-R-I-S. I interviewed their lead engineer years and years ago, so I'll link to it in the show notes. But, that's what I use. So, keep going. If you get a chance, explain what you do with IRIS to people, Daniel.

Yeah. So, I mean, I set up IRIS actually. So, during the daytime, I'm setting it up to remove the big blue light 450-nanometer spike that's coming off my screen, bring it down to a more balanced level. So that makes my screen look a bit, you know, orange, like a warmer color. Um, so that's really, really good for the daytime. It's, it's helping, you know, there's a good number of studies looking at the impact of high-energy visible blue light, you know, causing reactive oxygen species in our retinal cells, leading to oxidative stress, you know, potential long-term eye damage. So I'm really wanting to make sure that I'm not getting overexposed at such a short distance to a screen. So, you know, Iris does a really good job at allowing you to manipulate the color temperature but also the brightness. And then it also doesn't— because a lot of the time when you start to manipulate these things, you can increase the flicker. I know Iris has done a really good job at how, how they're actually interacting into the, into the hardware of the screen where it's not increasing the flicker on it. So that's why I really like what they've done versus the alternative saying, which is like Flux or f.lux, which simply is just manipulating the color temperature but not really helping with the flicker when you're starting to change the brightness.

I'm very similar with Iris. I decrease the color temperature, like take some of the blue light out of the screen. I have it set to automatically switch to night mode feature, and that's just based on time. Which really makes the screens red. Those are really the biggies as far as that technology though. That software can go much deeper than that. It'll even adjust the, I think, the font style on the screen for eye-friendliness if you're doing a lot of reading on the screen. I mean, I probably use 25% of the features on Iris.

Yeah. One thing I would say in my research is when I started to look at this around, and this is more around the nighttime use and the use of the software. Um, so a screen has got what's called LED backlight bleed. So even if I'm sitting here trying to eliminate all blue light, which is what I'm trying to do at night, uh, there is— there is still an element of the backlights on these things. It can— even though I've manipulated the color temperature, there's a bit of bleed that comes through. So I, I'm still a strong proponent of— if I'm on a screen at night, I'm not relying on the software, I'm relying on proper, you know, science-backed blue light glasses that are going to block all of the blue and most of the green portion up to 550 nanometers. So I'm not, not having any way my melatonin at all suppressed in the evening. So it's kind of like, it's a really good daytime solution, I think, the software, but I kind of want that assurances that I'm— I've got lenses on my eyes that I know are eliminating all the wavelengths of light that I shouldn't be exposed to.

But not. Yeah. The only technology I know of that eliminates the backlit problem with the screens is Daylight Computers. They have a tablet. I think they plan to expand into other categories, but it's a special technology that harvests light from the environment that you're in to light the screen. And honestly, I use it like a Kindle. It's got anything in the Android App Store you can install on it, but I pretty much have Well, I have YouTube and Kindle on it. So, primarily if I'm traveling, I can read my books on it and I can watch YouTube videos if I'm in bed, for example.

It's a great technology using the ink-style screen. It'd be great to see them evolve that into a more form factor where I can actually use it as a computer and stuff because I've got one as well.

Exactly. I'm like, "Dude, just freaking sell the technology to Apple and let them—" That's it. Yeah, yeah. Because I'm not going to get all new device. Even if they do make a tablet or, I'm sorry, a laptop and a phone, I'm just too knee-deep in Apple to switch, I think, at this point. But, it's a great technology. It's a great idea. So, if anybody from Apple listens to the podcast, contact Daylight Computers and buy their technology or whatever and start using it in some of your devices. Daniel, I'm new to the podcasting game, so I my apologies that I didn't ask this question earlier for you and for our audience. But how did you get into this in the first place? Like, where'd your interest in light come from? Yeah, I mean, this is interesting.

Obviously, I didn't start out as an engineer or a lighting designer. I mean, I came into this from a health angle. So back in like 2015, I was in a pretty bad place. I was dealing with severe insomnia, constant fatigue, severe migraines. I was doing all the things right, optimizing my diet, training, trying supplements, nothing moving the needle. And so, that's when I started to dig deeper. I came across the concept of circadian biology from the wonderful Jack Kruse. Ben Greenfield: No way.

So, identical story. I knew nothing of circadian biology. I didn't learn anything in pre-med and master's studies, anything. And, I was a Jack Kruse cover-to-cover blog reader for a solid 3 years. They're the hardest blog posts ever. It would take an hour to get through one. And, back then, AI summaries didn't exist. But, yeah, continue your story. I just think it's funny we both found this through Jack Kruse. Yeah.

So, exactly what you said, deep diving in these crazy blogs, right? But, what sparked my interest was no one's talking about this, right? And, I'm like, I've done all the things, I've been to all the doctors, they're telling me it's in my head, nothing's wrong, and all that sort of stuff. And so I just got fascinated by Jack's work, right? Understanding how light controls our sleep hormones, you know, our energy, everything. And I was sort of like, whoa, it's, you know, the missing piece isn't food or exercise here, it's like my light environment. It's like the modern way I'm living, I'm working, I'm training is just all in this like artificially lit environment. So I started experimenting. This is in 20— 2015. Uh, Uvex glasses are from Amazon. You know, that was my first, you know, trying the concept of blocking blue light at night. And that was the first thing that actually moved the needle for me. And I was like, well, this is crazy, you know. And within a couple of months of applying these concepts, you know, insomnia gone, migraines gone, back into a full suite of health. And for me, it was like so life-changing I was like, I can't be the only person, right, like going through this. Like, so 2016, I'm like, let's, let's start a company. And we just started selling glasses. I think back then, like, I don't even think the, the name blue light blocking glasses existed back then.

Was Dave Ashby selling them back then? Because I think he called them like junk light glasses. I think he called them when he launched them.

The main ones was me, me selling them in Australia, New Zealand, and a bit into the US. And we had, uh, Swanix Sleep as well. We were like the only guys in the space, so We've been around like veterans for 10 years, started with the glasses for us. But you know, that's when I realized something else, and I was like, I've alluded to before, I was like, glasses are the, you know, only part of the solution here. I was like, yeah, they're powerful, but they're also a Band-Aid. I was like, we're just putting them on to block out all this junk light. So like, how do we actually flip this around and create better light at the source? Because like, you don't just want to manage the symptoms, you want to solve the problem at its root, right? So that's kind of where the business evolved. I began working on lighting. I spent, you know, I came from, you know, creating glasses to let's work out how to create lighting. But that's why I was like, okay, now we need to look at this, we have to go deeper. It's not the spectrum, we've got to look at flicker, we've got to look at EMFs, we've got to look at creating a light that supports human biology rather than fights against it. Yeah, yeah. So from So for me, it was like, like, um, it was a light bulb moment, essentially, you know, no pun intended. But like, the company wasn't created around, you know, a lab or a boardroom. It was, you know, it was born out of necessity, experimentation, and a lived experience, right? And so that's, you know, that's why today I think, um, people resonate with that, where it's like, we're here to create solution, you know, solutions for people and understand the problems that people have in the modern day.

Yeah. Well, you've done a good job so far with a few of the curveballs that I've thrown you, so I'm just going to keep on going because when you're talking about your early involvement with blue light-blocking glasses, James Swanick, who's a friend of mine, I actually recently debated him about alcohol, but before that, he started the Swaneez blue light blockers. Back in the day, we had Gunnar. We got RA now. We got TrueDark. A lot of brands out there, but this documentary just came across my radar. I don't know how long it's been out.

I think I've seen that same one just literally 2 days ago. It's going to be the same one. Okay.

I saw it 5 days ago. The documentary is basically saying that blue light-blocking glasses are a myth. Every study that's demonstrated that they somehow combat melatonin suppression or improve sleep quality is false in poorly controlled environments and that they're a total waste of money and basically the equivalent of snake oil. And again, not to put you on the spot, but I'm curious if you just saw it, do you have any initial thoughts on it or anything? Yep, I do.

So, I mean, so interestingly, I felt like the— first of all, the documentary contradicted itself because it did actually say, yes, there are studies that prove that blue light suppresses melatonin. And then went on to say that, oh yeah, but there's no studies that really show that melatonin is the key driver of sleep. Which I was like, okay, so you're trying to make a— there's a link here. You've made a link to say, yes, we can— there are studies that show melatonin suppression, but we're not— but the link between actually like melatonin and sleep is kind of hazy. And I was sort of like, well, melatonin is much more than a sleep hormone, right? It's a powerful antioxidant in the body, of course. Why would you want to suppress that? Is my kind of my rebuttal to it. Regardless of— let's just take sleep out of the picture here. If I'm really wanting to optimize my hormone levels, of course I want like optimal levels of melatonin. The next thing I looked at in that study, and I thought was quite— of this, this documentary, is they keep referencing like meta-analysis saying essentially that, you know, blue light glasses are junk, they don't work, there's no kind of solid research on. But when you actually dive into each of these studies, which I've done a little bit, and I was, um, you've got to actually— the devil's in the detail, right? Because blue light glasses, you can't just say is that they're all the same. Um, I like using the analogy of a water filter, right? So if I, if I did a study, I bought a cheap $10 water filter and I did some studies and passed water through it, and then, you know, all the contaminants was still in the water, and I made the conclusion that water filters don't work, right? So I can— I look, I did a study, it's double-blind, zero-controlled, and water filters don't work. Well, it's the same with glasses. It's like, what, what were the lenses like? What, what frequencies were they blocking? And then when you actually dive deeper, it's like, ah, they're just using like these cheap clear lens ones.

Yeah, did I buy these next to the gum at the Walmart checkout? That's it, right?

I'm like, well, they're not, they're not aligning to the the academic literature on like what wavelengths you actually need to block and filter to make them work. So yeah, I agree with the study. The glasses, the blue light glasses you used are junk and don't work. And that's the thing, because in today's industry it's like 95% of them are junk, like because they've flooded the industry, right? They're everywhere, like, and there are, you know, there's a handful of good companies around the world, and you've mentioned some just before, that do look at the science and do create the right lenses to block and filter the right frequencies. So, I kind of agree. Yep, your research is correct, but don't put everything, don't put all these different glasses under the umbrella of blue light glasses when they're all so different from each other.

I'll link to the documentary for those of you who have 45 minutes to kill at BenGreenfieldLife.com/BlueLightPodcast. But, another thing I noticed, I don't know if you picked up on this, Daniel, I looked at all the studies cited, they were all, at least all the ones I could find, an analysis of the impact of screens. None of them took into consideration a lot of what we've been talking about, overhead lighting. Yeah. Yeah.

Because I just don't think they're— Again, they've just cherry-picked ones on screens and said, "Well, we're just going to now group that under the umbrella of all blue light sources." make conclusions off that. So, that's why I think, again, it's like the devil's in the detail, right? You can't just generalize things. Ben Greenfield: Yeah, yeah.

Okay, a few subtle nuances here. Timing. I'm still trying to figure this out. You kind of sort of hinted at some of the times to switch, but explain to people almost from a generic— well, I want two standpoints. One, if people have the block blue light bulbs and they decide they're going to get these full-spectrum bulbs in their home, what your recommended times are for when you go daytime and when you go twilight and when you go bedtime. And then, let's say somebody's like, "Screw that. I'm not going to buy a bunch of bulbs. I'm lazy. I don't have a ladder to replace my bulbs." If someone is in that boat, when do you recommend they just switch off all the lighting in their home and switch to a headlamp or some nice red lamps or something like that? Yeah, cool.

I mean, so solar spectrum changes based on the seasons as well, right?

So yeah, no hard set rule. Yeah, well, we'll base it around— if you can, then base it around sunset and sunrise.

Yeah, correct. So I mean, so if you're getting up before sunrise, um, you should, you should be still using the night mode, right? Because we're trying— essentially, the idea with the, the lighting is you should try to mimic the solar spectrum, right? So if you're getting up before sunrise, there's no blue light in the environment, so you shouldn't starting to create blue light in your environment. Once the sun starts to rise, I like to use what's our mixed mode or our low blue mode. And the reason for this is it's, uh, it's a lower blue spectrum, and that's kind of simulating the same natural spectrum of the sun, which has got less blue around sunrise, but it's starting to bring blue into the environment. So that mode is really good for like early morning after the sun has risen. And then late afternoon, when we're getting around sunset, when you're getting more reds into the environment and less blues, then the full spectrum mode should be on for the bulk of the day. Sort of once you get sort of closer to solar noon, so maybe around 11 AM right through to like 3 PM, you can run the full spectrum mode. And then once you come into the nighttime, you're running the night mode. Now you're— now your question around like, okay, no one has the bulbs, they just want the cheap solution. When do I— when should I start turning off all this like stimulating light in my environment? And that's really just around sunset, right? So once the sun is set, you can— you should really have no exposure to any blue light at night. So that's— if I was rocking the headlamp, that's when I'd be turning that on.

Yeah, and, and if you can, by the way, if you don't have fancy light bulbs like we're talking about, when the sun has risen, first of all, have as many curtains open and stuff as you can so you have to use as few lights as possible earlier in the morning. But, when the sun has risen, you could flip on some of the lighting in the home. But, this is what I do if I'm at a hotel or whatever, just as few of the lights as possible.

And, I think there's an interesting part we probably haven't touched on you said open the curtain, is, uh, windows and real full spectrum light and infrared light, right? So infrared light is an interesting part which we haven't touched on, and that is an interesting question we get from people which go, hold on a minute, you're calling these full spectrum, but, and, you know, in the solar spectrum we've got infrared light, so do your bulbs emit infrared light? And the answer is no, they don't. Um, but We do have like what we have like as an ultimate solution to that because, um, first of all, it's like a natural light coming through the windows, great, but it also filters out as most of your infrared spectrum. So if you put a spectrometer next to a window, you'll see that, um, very little infrared. If you then open the window, a lot of infrared coming in.

Yeah, as demonstrated by the way in the YouTube video I do with Brian Hoyer. So if you want to see a building biologist demonstrate what Daniel just described with an actual light meter, the difference between the amount of infrared you get through a window versus when you step outside. I'll put that video in the show notes.

Infrared makes, you know, is making up like about 40% of the natural sunlight spectrum. So it's important. It's important to our biology. You know, it's helping with mitochondria, it's helping with energy production, circulation, cellular repair. So, you know, in the ideal indoor lighting solution, we want to have infrared light presence with the full spectrum. The challenge is it's not that simple. LEDs are semiconductors, they don't like heat. So modern lighting is built on not emitting meaningful amounts of heat. So if you try to put, say, the wavelengths of 800 to 1,000 nanometers into a light bulb, it's going to overheat, it's going to have a long— a really short lifespan, it's going to be very unstable. I have seen some companies trying to do it. They've marketed like, I got a full spectrum bulb and it's got infrared in it, right? And the reality of that is when you actually test it with a spectrometer, the infrared output is so low compared to the visible spectrum output, it's basically negligible. So it's like, yes, there you can say it's there for marketing, but it's not making a biological difference. But it is. But so what I recommend is a bit of a layered approach here. So think about your indoor environment and layers. So you want to start with high-quality full-spectrum lights to cover the visual and circadian needs for, like, for daytime. So these bulbs, you know, like our ones, are very balanced, got lots of blue light in them, and they're doing the circadian stimulus for your circadian rhythm, your hormone regulation, your neurotransmitter regulation. Now you need to complement that with a true source of infrared because that's what's lacking in them. And the simplest and most accessible option to that is an incandescent bulb. Um, they naturally emit a very large amount of infrared, but they're not the ideal solution for daytime by themselves because they're very low in blue and green light. They don't actually create enough circadian stimulus that we need for daytime. So what I like is you, in a room, you'll have primarily, say, our full spectrum bulbs, but then you might have one or two, uh, incandescents in the environment And they're there purely to create the missing infrared spectrum. So ultimately, you're kind of then getting like a really good balanced solar spectrum in your home, and it's kind of like you're getting the best of both worlds rather than relying on a single imperfect source, essentially. Yeah.

And for those of you who just heard that and you're like, yet another type of bulb I need in a different room, if you're lazy like me and you want to half-ass it, Here's what we did. We did the whole house with the full-spectrum bulbs, but then in our great room, the main room of the house where we spend the most time in eating, socializing, family devotions, reading, whatever, we have two chandelier-style fixtures with a whole bunch of incandescents in them. So, we chose one room of the house where we were just gonna make it as full spectrum as possible. And yeah, it's not like— if I want to be a perfect little lighting boy, I would put incandescents in every room. But we kind of chose to do it like in the room where it makes the most sense, where people are kind of hanging out the most. Yeah, cool.

And then like another option is like if your people were light fittings and all that, is you could say in your work environment by your desk, just run a small infrared panel as well to start to bring the infrared spectrums into, into the environment as well.

What do you mean? What do you mean a small infrared panel?

So like a, I mean, red light therapy panel, but just run that, but just turn the infrared spectrum on. So turn the red off because it's way too bright and blinding. But if I'm on my desk in my office here, I've got full spectrum running here, I might just put a small little like a tabletop on my desk, turn all the red, turn all the red frequencies off because they're too bright, and it's just pushing out a good amount of blend of the infrared spectrum into the environment.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. You know what? Brian Hoyer, I think he was thinking ahead of this for me and he gave me a lamp and it's actually a full-spectrum lamp and it puts off a little bit of heat. He gave it to me and sometimes I'll admit I forget to turn it on. So, I technically have that in my office. This is a good reminder for me to use it more because it's easy to forget that, yeah, just like you mentioned, even though you have these bulbs that adjust for circadian rhythmicity, if you want to mimic sunlight as much as possible.

And, that's the thing, another point to stress here is these are great hacks for the indoor lifestyle, but nothing replaces the sun.

Nothing can beat the sun. Even on a cloudy day.

That's it. Exactly. Yeah.

And, of course, another thing to think about as far as breaking the rules of everything that we just talked about, you can use the knowledge that you've learned over the past little bit to adjust your circadian rhythm. And, what I mean by that is if I have been, let's say, time zones behind the Pacific time zone that I'm currently in, and so I arrive home and my preferred wake time is 5:00 a.m. but I'm kind of groggy when I wake up because my body's been trained during travel for the past 7 days or whatever to wake up at 8:00 a.m. Pacific time because I was in a different time zone, what I can do is actually use the brighter overhead lights or blue lights or not wear blue light-blocking glasses earlier in the day to kind of shift that circadian rhythm backwards. And, another thing that I would do in a situation, for example, like that is there are other so-called timekeepers. So, I would shift my mealtime a little bit earlier, I would shift my exercise session a little bit earlier, I would shift my light exposure a little bit earlier. If I had the ability to have one of those sleeping pads that introduce warmth, I would do the warmth a little bit earlier. So basically, what you're doing is taking advantage of all these little timekeepers to shift your circadian biology. And, it's a similar thing at night. If you're having issues and you're not getting sleepy till midnight, you may want to even consider starting to implement some of the light mitigating practices earlier in the evening. So, you're kind of shifting that circadian rhythm backwards in that type of situation. So, it is kind of fun to play with light and it is super effective. Once you understand how to adjust your light, your temperature, your food intake, and your movement like your exercise session timing to adjust your circadian rhythm, it's great for frequent travelers or people who experience jet lag.

Yeah, I mean, I recently traveled, uh, all the way from New Zealand to London for the Health Optimization Summit. Now, that was like 33 hours of travel or something crazy like that. And, um, I, I can't remember the name, but I need to find the app. I had an app that literally told me literally all the things you talked about— when I need to get the light exposure, when I should be having my meals— to— so I could adjust to the time zone I was going into. Whilst I'm traveling.

So, the app does not just do light, it'll do when to exercise, when to move, temperature, everything?

Yeah. It was not temperature, it was exercise and meals and light.

Yeah. And, those are the most powerful.

And, because without that, I was always like you'd always be trying to work, okay, what's the time there? And, it's actually really complicated to try and work it out yourself, but you just want this thing to literally give you alerts like, okay, you need to put your blue light blocking glasses on now. You need to eat now sort of thing. And like, it just makes travel kind of easier.

Okay, so these, these are the things you're doing even before you leave?

That's it, yeah. Before— because like, in a scenario like that, I want to get, get off the plane and hit the ground running in the place I'm at, right? Versus like taking 2 days to recover.

That's where my laziness shines through once again. That's the one thing I don't do. Maybe it's because of how often I travel. I'm rarely saying, "Hey, family, let's go, let's go. We're going to eat at 5:00 p.m. tonight instead of 7:00 because Dad's traveling again and we're going to adjust all the lighting in the home and Dad's working out 2 hours later today. So, boys, adjust your schedule so you can hang with me in the gym." I actually— this is going to sound horrible for a lot of people who think I'm just the perfect little biohacker or whatever, but I ignore all the advice to wait to sleep on the plane. And, as soon as I get on any national flight, my number one objective is avoid much movie consumption at all, skip the meal or have them serve it to me all at once so I get out of the way super quick, pop a sleep supplement. Usually, for me, it's high-dose melatonin combined with a Valium, about 10 mgs of Valium, sleep the entire flight, wake up when I get to where I'm going, and if it's daytime, take 150 milligrams of modafinil. And, I realize that's not the perfect healthiest protocol, but just for the acute bout of traveling, lighting, food, movement, and temperature aside, I sleep like nuts on the plane and then take a cognitive stimulant that I rarely if ever take unless I'm traveling internationally, modafinil. That's the way that I do it. I realize that might not be for everybody, but that's my approach.

I mean, travel is not optimal in itself to start with, right? And I think hacks like that to just increase the amount of sleep is the most important thing regardless of time zones. And that is like if you can sleep on as much as possible on a long-haul travel, like that's the game changer right there.

Yeah. Like if I'm arriving at my final destination at, let's say, like 10 PM and I know I'm going to be going right to bed and it's, let's say, like an 8-hour flight to London, I will still sleep. For the entire flight, get up, take the Uber, the car to the hotel, get ready for bed, and fall asleep again. My theory is just bank as much sleep as possible while you're getting to or returning from a long-haul travel destination. Yeah, we're aligned there. Yeah, yeah. Well, this is pretty fascinating. Obviously, Block Blue Light is kind of like a shopping mall for a lot of this stuff. I don't even have it in front of me, but I know we have discount codes and I'll put those in the shownotes, BenGreenfieldLife.com. /blockblue light. One open loop, Daniel, is if you do recall the name of that app you were using and you email it to me, I'll put that in the show notes for people. And, everything else Daniel and I talk about like the lighting video, other podcasts I've done about this stuff, maybe we'll even link to a few old-school Jack Kruse posts just to give people some good bedtime reading. And, Daniel, I've been wanting to pick your brain on these light bulbs for a while. So, thanks for letting me ask all the stupid questions.

No worries. And, thanks, Ben. Enjoyed the chat.

Yeah. Alright, folks. Well, thanks for listening. Again, show notes are at BenGreenfieldLife.com/BlueLightPodcast. And, until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield with Daniel Ebbott from Block Blue Light signing out.

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