163: Harnessing the Power of Light for Better Health with Roudy Nassif

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to today's show. If you're one of the 130 million people that are dealing with Sirs Lyme disease, autoimmune disease, or other conditions that are impacted by mold on a daily basis, and you need to learn how to eliminate that exposure, then you're in the right place. My name is Brian Carr, and you're listening to Mold Finders Radio.

Hey, everybody. What's going on? We got another episode today, so today is pretty cool. This is a person that I met at the Reimagining Health Conference in, I think it was October of last year that is put on by Dr. Stephen Cabral and his community. And we were actually both there and we were seated next to each other, and so we had a whole lot of time to talk. Like, during the, during the downtime, some presentations were happening, and we were sort of talking about other things, and we had some really, really cool conversations. And it was around the idea of circadian rhythm and how light impacts our body in a multitude of ways. And ever since then, I've actually kind of like, deep dove it a little more. I've listened to other people's podcasts. It's also, like, incredibly interesting. And I actually have hard data on my sleep tracking that I use, which is I use a whoop band for sleep tracking, which is basically proven that everything that this person has told me is 100% true, at least for me. So with all of that said, I want to introduce here Rudy, who is the founder of Viva Rays. And Viva Rays is a company that actually provides eyewear that helps to manage your exposure to light at various points of the day to help optimize how your body is responding to that. And with all that said, I want to, to kick it over to Rudy. And Rudy, I, I, I, like an idiot, didn't introduce your last name. So feel free to just kind of talk about yourself and your, and who you are and, and why. And why you're so into what you're into.

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for the introduction, Brian. I'm so grateful for connecting with you during the Reimagine Health Summit.

So the way the, the, the reason I am doing what I'm doing is because of a long story of truly struggling for so many years with my health. It all started when I was a little kid at school. Imagine me as this tiny little kid in the classroom, really struggling with a lot of headaches, agitation, and inability to focus. And my teachers were so quick to label me with adhd, and they forced me back into this educational system with all these artificially lit class classrooms that felt like a prison cell to me. From a very, very young age, I was intuitively not feeling good in the classroom. And all I wanted was to break free and be out on it. So troublemaking became my only escape from that prison. And believe it or not, Brian, I was. I was asked to, to leave seven different schools.

Wow. Wow.

Yes. Now, fast forward few years I went to engineering school. But during that time I became extremely disconnected from myself. I started living like a night owl. Think I played until 2, 3am, super wired. And then waking up the second morning feeling exhausted, completely useless and drained. I felt like I've been chewed up and sped out my life, always tired, never up for much. And I was constantly unmotivated and dragging myself through the day as if I'm wearing a backpack full of rocks. So I was in a very bad state. And I start working as an engineer in Africa. The one thing that kept me going is my excitement of being in a new country and, and exploring. But on the other side, I wasn't feeling good mentally and, and physically. And the lowest point is when I was fired from my job as an engineer. I mean, it was a blessing in disguise, to be honest. Brought up to a lot for me. And I remember waking up the second morning feeling completely paralyzed with sadness and fatigue. And I couldn't bring myself to get up from bed or even find a compelling reason to do so. I was very, very depressed.

Now the same, that same evening I, I found a code when I'm. When I was online looking for some stuff and it was by Albert Einstein. And it's that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

And something about those words literally like struck me like, like a ball of lightning. And I felt like this opening space in myself like an instant knowing that, oh my God, what am I doing with my life? I really need to make a radical change. So I decided to leave my career as an engineer and to travel. And my intention was to start learning from different health experts with the intention of feeling better. And I started this long journey of traveling. And within like few months and I was already feeling extremely overwhelmed because, because you probably can relate. I was exposed to massive amount of information from all these different health gurus. But the problem was that each one of them was telling me to do something different. And I found myself in this scene where I'm being bombarded by different messages about what to eat and what not to eat and eat and take this supplement or that supplement. And it was all too much and very confusing. And with all honesty, I tried every diet that you can think of and I was subscribed to the best supplement companies in the world. But I was so miserable and nothing seemed to help me. So I, I remember thinking to myself, oh my God, why does it need to be extremely complicated? That there must be an easier way. And a few days after, I was completely lost in the vasty of the Internet and I found this video by a neurosurgeon from the US. His name is Dr. Jack Cruz, and the video was titled Artificial Light is Killing Us. And I remember very well it was around 1am in the morning, ironically, I'm blasted by all this artificial light, trying to make sense of what this guy is saying. And at the time my mind was extremely foggy and tired and everything he said literally flew over my head. But the one line that stood out, that I was, you know, flashing into my consciousness the second morning when I woke up is this sentence. He said, you can't get healthy in the same light environment that made you sick. And by light environment, he meant the light that we're exposed to all the time while being indoors from our LED bulbs, screens, phones, et cetera. And I thought to myself, oh my God, how can I escape this light environment? Me? It was an impossibility. And I'm sitting down with a friend, he happened to be a backpacker and he's like, rudy, I have a recommendation for you. I, I think I know a place that you could go to. I'm like, yeah, please tell me. And he recommended this website called Woofing, where you could find all these farmers living in rural areas up north, like indigenous people and so on, practicing biodynamic farming, permaculture, and the ideas that you can apply. You go live there with them, you volunteer on their farm in exchange for accommodation and food. And I was like, wow, like I can do that. And, you know, having tried all these, all these different health hacks and like all the diets and supplement and nothing seemed to work, I, I decided to do it. I mean, I, I didn't have anything to lose. So I left the city and I drove seven hours up north to Quebec in Canada. And I arrived to this idyllic place in the middle of nowhere. Uh, it was the first time ever where I'm like completely off the pop, off of the city and not around so much people and population. And for six weeks I was sleeping in my tent, exposed only to natural sunlight during the day. And Fire and candlelight during the evening. Now, within a matter of three days, I felt a transformation that I hadn't felt in 25 years. And I couldn't comprehend what's happening. I mean, Brian, my intense headaches and eye strain disappeared. And having been told that I'm a night owl, I had this like inner belief that I can't function well during the day. The only time I could function well is at night. This trip completely challenged my, challenged my belief about myself because I start sleeping shortly after the sunset naturally to then wake up at dawn with an alarm clock for the first time in my life feeling fresh, rested, energized and literally exhilarated with a sense of, of joy. And it's, it's hard to fathom because I mean I was so depressed and it's, it's hard to comprehend how something like this could happen in three days. And, and having been told that I'm an ADHD person, I've already had this inner dialogue between myself, you know, saying that I can't focus, I'm adhd. Also, this trip completely reconstructed this belief because I found myself around farmers and they were actually appraising me for the level of focus I was showing in the field. Everything I knew about myself was deconstructed in this trip. And the coolest thing is that, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't engaging in any, you know, crazy expensive supplements or any of these things. It was like a super, super simple lifestyle over there. And even more puzzling is that after my six week trip ended, I came back to the city and, and within a matter of few weeks I fell back into my alterable routine of staying up late at night, scrolling on social media, being blasted by artificial light. And here we go again. My, my intense headaches came back. I, I start waking up feeling depressed, unrested, didn't have the motivation, and my night hour tendencies came back. So, so being, being the graceful that I am, I, I, I.

I, I started noticing that after engaging several times in, in those experiences on the farm and that back to the city, it was such a dualistic contrast and I really wanted to understand what's going on. And that was the beginning of my journey. Delving into the, the realm of light and health. And why, why I, why I decided to, to, to pay attention to light because for different reasons. Well, Jack Cruz was one of the reasons because he opened my eye to the topic. But I also start noticing that every time I'm surrounded by those farmers up north, I would witness a level of radiancy and light in their eyes that I've never seen in the community of folks who were following all these different complicated, dogmatic diets and so on. And I'm like, oh, my God. Like, how could it be? Like, I was so intrigued about understanding where do they get this intense radiant energy from? And I started observing, and what I saw is like, well, all of them, they wake up before the sunrise with no alarm clock. They spend a lot of time outside in natural light. They eat seasonally, so they're eating the food that has grown under the sunlight that they're living in. So technically, there's a match between the food that is hitting their stomach and the light that is entering their eyes. And also, they eat with a. With a. With a. With a solid rhythm at the same time every day. They fast when the sun is down and they're not exposed to any form of artificial light at night. Like, whoa, that's. That's interesting. And I wanted to. To try this to myself.

Yeah, there's a lot that they're doing from other biohacking principles of what you just mentioned that isn't necessarily the light is the trigger of it, but because they're following sort of the clock of the light, for example, not eating after it gets dark, you're inherently doing an intermittent fast, probably like 12 to 13, 14 hours every night when you do that. And so just the benefits that you have to your body just by doing that, like, not eating too close to when you go to sleep, and therefore your body isn't working when it goes to sleep, and it can be in more regeneration mode. And all a sudden, your deep sleep pops up and your REM sleep pops up and your awake events go down and, like, all of this stuff. So it's really interesting, like, you know, this, this. Cause the Paleo is the way that I think it first came out, but it's this whole idea of, like, how did people used to live? And we didn't have all this stuff. And it's really understanding, like. Like, physiologically, like, how are we kind of built originally to function? And then we've had all these changes that have occurred over time that have adapted the way that we function throughout time. And then if you just sort of align back, do, hey, how did they used. How did the cavemen do it? Right? And it's not saying everybody has to eat like a caveman or anything, but, like, there's. There's a reason that fasting is incredibly beneficial for you. For example, like, I went down a really Deep fasting rabbit hole too. On a quick tangent because like a lot of this stuff is so interesting to me. And you go back and you start looking at history and how things worked and you know, hunters and gatherers, they wouldn't, they wouldn't eat for a couple days cuz they had to go kill more food. Right. Like they just had all this food sitting there. Like they go to whole foods and they have everything that they want. Right. And what it did is it actually like primed their body, the healing process of their body to prepare them to go out and hunt again. And what was interesting is after like 48 hours, your body gets a hit of energy that it didn't have before. Because thought process is that energy hits because your body, you need energy to go hunt now. Like you're two days without food and you like naturally get this energy flow that comes to you. It's like, hey, it's go time, let me go find some food for the next couple days. And so it's really interesting. Like I've done that, like I've done the fast and stuff, man. There are definitely times like I should not have like the energy that I have right now. Like I haven't eaten and I feel like really good right now. Right. You hit like this peak where it happens and then you start like connecting the dots of, of evolution and, and sort of like the, the, the biological memory that our bodies have over the course of evolution and like what it's supposed to know and not know and everything. Yes, tapping into that. It gets really interesting and this light piece is such an interesting component of it. Where I will, I'll tell you real quick, I told you beforehand but like just to share. So I have a pair of nighttime blue light blocking glasses. So they're, they're the ones with the really red lenses in them. Right. So they take out those frequencies of light which Rudy. I love to dive into the different frequencies and stuff.

Yep. Like that. Yep. And so we put them on, you know, at nighttime my wife and I both have them and we come into our house and we both have these glasses on our faces and they don't look as good as yours. Yours look good. These were like, these were ones that were designed like three, four years ago when they didn't really look that cool. So you like walk into our house and we're like these two weirdos sitting on the couch with these big red like things on their faces. But the effect that they have on, on our sleep is very noticeable. Both from like a qualitative point of view. Like, I can tell, like, I feel better in the morning, but also because I started wearing a whoop. I can see this stuff. Right? Like whoop. What I love about whoop, side note is you can actually, there's like a journal in there where you can track, like, what you're doing each day. And then over time, it will start attributing the percentage that that activity has as like, an impact on your recovery or, like a negative impact on your recovery. So for the record, drinking alcohol has a negative 18% impact on my recovery. Makes sense. Yeah, makes sense. The number one thing, it actually flips between this and one thing because they're very close. But one of the number one things is those glasses I wear every night. It's a plus 8% increase in my recovery in sleep over the night. As you get past my top two items and you go down to some of the other things, they all sit around like 2%, 3%, maybe 1%. Right. So when you look at, like, connectively, the effect that wearing these glasses, which is strictly. I mean, for us, I usually put them on around 8 o', clock, which I know is, you know, it could be even better if I probably did it earlier, but by putting them on around then, that has like a 200% better impact on my sleep than. Than like infrared sauna or something else. Right. Which these are all things that we hear can be beneficial as well. So it. It's really, really interesting. And it's about, like, priming your body and kind of preparing your internal clock to be able to get into this phase where it's supposed to be regenerative and stuff like that. And I would love to dive into you a little bit, a little bit more about that, kind of, kind of more specifically about, like, what are the. What are the phases of light? What, what are our. What is our body expecting? What is happening when we're getting something we're not supposed to get? What's the benefit of, like, transitioning? Because one thing I learned from you at the. At the summit we were at was it's not just about nighttime. There's kind of like this transition throughout the day, which is really what you have built, you know, with your glasses, which I found that was really interesting. So I would love for you to kind of give like, an overview of, of sort of like what a day looks like through our eyes and what our eyes should actually be seeing and what it means if it does see it, and then what it means when we're sitting inside the office with a light blaring in your face and, like, what the difference is. Can you go into that a little?

Yeah, absolutely. And before I step into this, to add a little bit to the. To the conversation that you brought up about fasting and food, what I like to tell people and remind them that all food and all the food chain starts in photosynthesis. And what this means is that food is actually storing light is back and then slides. So I look at food as an electromagnetic barcode of sunlight, and plants are storing this light. And in return, when we eat those plants, the food gets broken down into electrons and protons that. That our mitochondria decipher. So when we speak about digestion, and it's interesting because when you bring it to the attention of, like, people who are into diet, they're like, whoa. Yeah. But like, we never speak about, you know, proteins, carbs, and so on. At a mitochondrial level, we have the electron transport chain. And there's a reason why it's called electron transport chain because all the food that we're eating is actually broken down into electrons and protons. And that is actually what runs the energy production cycle in the mitochondria. And food is very important. Why is so. Because it's storing this light. And when we eat this food, the. The. The light information that our digestive system receives, it must match the light that is entering our eyes. And what do I mean by this? You. You, You. You brought up the topic of Whole Foods, right? We see people all the time living in Canada. They drive five minutes to Whole Foods, and here you go, you're eating bananas and avocados in the middle of the winter. And this creates a circadian mismatch between the clock and the guts and the brain, because your eyes are being exposed to a light environment that is telling your brain it's wintertime due to the lack of UV light, whereas you're eating all this food that is storing high amounts of UV because they're grown under sunlight in Mexico. And when they're hit the. When they're hitting your digestive system, they're telling the clock in your digestive system that you are in Mexico. And they start creating this mismatch, your brain and the gut. So I wanted to. To. To comment a little bit on this point. And another. Another very important thing about fasting is when. When we eat food, we are meant to eat during the day. And there's a. There's a scientist back in the 1970s, I believe his name is Albert Jorgi. He, he won the Nobel Prize with several discoveries. I, I think he discovered vitamin A. But he also discovered how so many of the enzymes that are related to metabolism and digestion of food get activated by sunlight. So much so that they become 500% more effective. So we are not meant to eat when the sun is down. In order for us to absorb the food that we're eating, we must be actually in sunlight and getting all the light frequencies that activate the enzymes that allow us to absorb that food. Um, so, yeah, I, I just wanted to comment a little bit on this.

That's actually really interesting. So I'm, I'm all into like data and numbers and stuff. So I got the whoop. Like, I, like, I work out, but like, I'm not the person that's in there, like, like checking my strain every day to see if I strained enough on the whoop or whatever. So like, but the, the sleep stuff and the recovery stuff and the ability to see like, what actions I take, the impact they have on you. Like, I think that stuff is really interesting and I almost wonder now after hearing you talk about this is the first time that I've heard that the light triggers essentially an enhanced version of digestion, basically because of what's going on in your body. So I know that there's a tracking mechanism in there that talks about, are you only doing daylight eating? Right. As opposed to something else? Like, I wonder, wonder if I played with that for a few weeks and really made sure that's what was happening, like, what impact that would have. Right? Like, it's always so fun now because you have a way to sort of monitor like how these things are going. I feel like it used to be, you know, it's like we have research that supports stuff like this, but on a personal level, like, yeah, I'm going to eat this particular way for a period of time or whatever it might be. Like, I, a perfect example for me. I recorded a couple episodes on this, but I'm working with, with Dr. Cabral on a podcast series where I'm sort of going through their process, right. And so one of the, one of the stages was that I had to do a seven day. I did a seven day. Their seven day detox protocol they have in place. The first two days were fasting and then the rest of it was a very specific diet. And man, my sleep stuff, by the time I hit day three, shot through the roof. Like, what the hell have I been doing with my life before this? It was unbelievable. My HRV skyrocketed. My resting heart rate just plummeted to the best levels that they've ever been since I've been wearing my whoop. And it all happened in like three days. I was like, what am I doing to my body every day? Like, like that's making it not do this every day. It was really, really, really interesting. And when you see stuff like that, it's very validating to say, hey, this is now an action I want to continue to do because I'm seeing proof and if I didn't have that, sure. Am I feeling better this morning? Yeah, maybe a little bit. It's all, it's all very like qualitative. There's, you know, you're like, I guess I'm feeling better. I don't. But when you can see it like that and you're like, oh, I understand what this stuff means. And there's trends, there's all this stuff. It's like, wow. So there's my five minute whoop ad. I need to try to get them to be a sponsor apparently. Um, but it's just, it's, it's an amazing tool. And so as you talk about these things, it makes me want to play with it and kind of see what's happening.

So yes, try also eating your meal outside. I'd be curious to see what kind of different results you, you'll be getting.

Because you're getting the input from, to the eyes at the same time that you're eating. And so it's even expanding on that action more. That's really, really interesting.

Yes, yes. And, and, and, and back to your question about regeneration and sleep. I think that all the processes related to repair and regeneration are actually related to light exposure via the mechanisms that science call, let's say, autophagy, apoptosis and mitosis. Mitophagy. So mitophagy is the process where like old mitochondria get to recycle themselves and.

Replace the old with new mitochondria. And autophagy is like, you know, cleaning out old and cells that are no longer serve you to replace them with new cells that are vibrant and so on. And those mechanisms are controlled by light and dark cycles and that regularity of exposure to those light and dark cycles. So even sleep, when we speak about sleep, getting a great night's sleep consistently and waking up feeling refreshed and energized is not something that happens by chance. Uh, it, it's, it's, it's, it's, it happens by design and it's controlled by universal Law and the science calls it the circadian rhythm. And, and for those who are not familiar with the term circadian comes from the Latin word circa and dia, which means approximately a day or 24 hours. So it's this 24 hour cycle that we all go through, animals, humans and plants, because we live on Earth and the earth rotates around the sun. So we all experience this honest, capable daily change in our environment where the day becomes night and the night turns into day and in order. And it's funny because we, we don't, we don't think about it so much. I mean, we take those things for granted, but our ancestors had to think about those things because they, it's like this daily cycle determines.

Their behavior, whether they're foraging or whether they're sleeping, and whether they're going to be able, be able to survive or not. And it dictated a lot of their decision making processes. So in order to adapt to this daily change, we've had to develop an internal clock that sits in the brain and the hypothalamus. And this clock determines when we go to sleep, when we wake up. It also controls our energy level, our detoxification system, our bowel movement, our mood, our digestion. And.

To put it simply, it's responsible for timing all these different important functions to an optimal time of the day or the night during a 24 hour cycle. And if we think about it, it's almost like this inherently powerful management software system in our body. Just like we use ClickUp or whatever management software for business in order to allocate different tasks for different times. Because we're not designed to do everything at the same time. There's a time and space for everything. And when we do the right thing at the right time, it creates wonders. But just do the same thing at the wrong time and you'll find yourself swimming upstream. So it's this claw that allow us to be in this effortless flow where we are performing these biological functions and the body is able to perform them optimally using the least amount of energy and the least amount of time. So it's creating this structure and coherent communication between the billions of the cells in our body. And I like to use this analogy because we, we've all listened to a musical symphony, and in a musical symphony, in order for an orchestra with many musicians to produce harmonious music, they, they are guided by a conductor that read the musical note and instruct the musicians on what to do so they, they can all sink in together and produce harmonious music. Now in Our body, the conductor is the master clock in the brain and it's reading the musical notes coming from sunlight. Light as information. And, and, and it's, and this, this, this clock is responsible for telling the musicians, like all of our organs and glands and the million of cells in our body, what to do and when to do what. And it's literally how our body knows when to wake up, when to go to sleep, when to solve big problems and so on. And this orchestrator is relying primarily on two main things to create harmony, health and optimal, optimal communication between ourselves. The first thing is exposure to morning sunlight, especially in the first two hours of the day, because it acts as an anchor that resets this clock and it tells the body every single day, hey, it's 7:00am in the morning, so that the body stop predicting and allocating all these different tasks for the right time. The second very important signal is the darkness that our ancestor used to get after the sunset. Now when we get those two signals consistently with, with unwavering regularity, then we have a solid circadian clock that makes everything easier in our life. No matter what kind of effort we're trying to make in order to make our health more optimal, it's going to be more effortless when our circadian biology is working properly.

So I have a, I have a follow up on this because I'm actually wondering this again. I have this log, my app, and every morning, right, and it says, did you see morning? You know, light upon when you wake up, right, which is very important. I have to wake up. We were talking about, hey, it's ideal, follow the sun. But we all live in, you know, we live in a world where sometimes that doesn't completely align, right. And so I have to wake up very early in the morning at like 5 o' clock in order for things to happen. For me, it's dark. So when we talk about first light exposure when you wake up, it's not possible for me to get that when I wake up.

Yeah.

Is there a alternative way to get the same impact? Is it going out just when the sun does come up, or is it trying to flood my eyes with as much light as I can when I wake up, which would be artificial light at that point?

Yeah, that's a beautiful question. And it all depends on your intention and what you intend to do at 5am in the morning. If you're like me, I do wake up at 4.30am, but between 4.30am and around 5.36am, I'm deliberately not engaging in anything that will awaken my senses. And I like to use this time to meditate and to stay in a state with very little sensory stimulation. And that works very well for me to stay in a dark room in that situation. However, if you wanted to wake up at 5am and you have very important things to do and you need to feel alert, awake and energized, then that's a, that's a different, that's, that's a completely different situation. And in order to achieve the wakefulness you must use one of nature's forces that wakes you up. And in this case you have different tools in your, in your toolkit to play with. You have lights which ideally I don't prefer because you will need to use artificial lighting that could throw off your rhythm because of the color temperature of artificial lights which are regulated at 6,000 kelvins, which is the color temperature of sunlight at 12 noon. And that's one of the reasons why I roll like artificial light first thing in the morning. Now we have a, another very important tool called temperature. Because the way our circadian clock work, when we wake up first thing in the morning and when the light is increasing in the environment, our core body temperature is also increasing. Okay, now what are some of the things that will increase and elevate our core body temperature? Cold shower and exercise. So you have these two powerful tools that you could use even if you're in a dark environment to increase your core body temperature up and to increase wakefulness and alertness without disrupting your circadian rhythm. And another two, another thing I like to do is ideally if I need to use artificial lights, brightness is good because you want this bright light to wake you up. However, I put my evening viva race glasses which make the color temperature look so more like the fire color color temperature at,900 kelvins. And in this way I'm not getting that disrupting signal of 6000 kelvin that is at 12 node and I'm still getting that brightness that is waking my, my body up.

Very interesting. All right, so here's what I do. I wake up at 5 in the morning, cuz I got two little kids that wake up at like 6:30 and then I have no time for myself. But until then ever after that. So I wake up, work out and then I actually hit infrared sauna after that. So those are the two things I do in the morning before I start prepping them for stuff. But I end up using, you know, obviously artificial light in the gym and stuff. Cause I gotta see what's going on.

Using Your glasses as a way to counteract the. The tone and the temperature of that light is incredibly interesting and something I might want to do. I think that sounds pretty cool.

Yeah, absolutely. And the reason why I said the evening glasses and not the nighttime glasses is because the nighttime glasses decrease the brightness by 20 times. They block all blue and green, and if you put them at that time, your body will not wake up. You're gonna feel, like, really terrible because your body is like, it's still dark. Melatonin is still high in your system. You're not getting the healthy spike of cortisol that will wake you up. Whereas if you put the evening lenses, they will regulate the color temperature of the light, but you will still get that brightness. Of course, if you're exercising, you're increasing your core body temperature up, and here you go, you're getting the alertness and energizing signal into your brain, which means.

That I'm sort of sinking myself into a. What would be kind of a more normal circadian rhythm by doing these things even though I'm waking up early.

Absolutely. Absolutely, yes. And that is a. Actually a very powerful strategy for anyone who wants to advance shift their circadian clock. So for anyone who wants to start waking up earlier every day and sleeping earlier, one of the most powerful things you can do is you set yourself up to wake up one hour earlier than what you would usually do. And the moment you wake up, you deliberately increase your core body temperature by either exposing yourself to bright light or deliberately engaging in exercise or a cold shower. And after a three days, this is going to create a new circadian rhythm in your body, so much so that this internal rhythm will act as an alarm clock, and it will start waking you up an hour earlier due to. Due to the increasing core body temperature.

Awesome. All right, we're gonna take a quick break, and we'll be right back. All right, so we're back after a quick break. And what we're gonna get into now, Rudy, is talking about sort of the different kind of phases of light throughout the day and how our body takes that in. And, and really the thing that was really cool about, about your glasses, the Vivaray glasses, is that they, they adjust with the time of the day. So you started talking about, like, use this particular lens in the morning to offset that. Right. So, like, it's actually like a really interesting tool to sort of hack it instead of it just being like one thing that you wear at all times. And so I think understanding, like, what's happening during the day and what we're being exposed to and sort of how that changes. You mentioned noon is 6,000 kelvin, and that's sort of what things are based on. So I know that's sort of the root of stuff. And then there's a scale that sort of goes back and forth on time of day. So I'd love to just kind of dive into that a little bit and understand that a little bit better.

Yeah, absolutely. So if, if, if you think about it, it's pretty simple. The sun naturally changes its position in the sky throughout the day until it descends below the horizon at nighttime. And when our ancestors spend their time outside, their body would be exposed to different color temperatures of light and different amounts of blue light depending on that time of the day, which will regulate their circadian rhythm and will promote either wakefulness or sleepiness. So, for example, the moment the dawn break and the sun start rising at that particular time, the UV and the blue light is because of the nature of those frequencies, they're high frequency, low wavelength light, and they get filtered out by the atmosphere. And what comes through is the longer wavelength light, like orange, red, yellow, those are more dominant during that time. And the sun around that time is around,900 kelvins to 2,200 kelvins, which is similar to the color temperature of a candle or even a bonfire. And that's exactly why our evening lenses are engineered to mimic this exact frequency, because that's the frequency that we would expose ourselves to before the sunrise or after the sunset. It would be Firelight 3D. And as the sun start moving higher in the horizon, you can think of light being added to that full blend of sunlight. And what happened is more of the blue light and green and UV light frequencies start entering the atmosphere in a sequential way. And they keep increasing until the sun hits 12 noon at 6500 Kelvin, when it's at its peak intensity. Now.

The problem is that when we are living indoors, we are not being exposed to this dynamic fluidity of light. We're being exposed to a static light coming from our LED bulb or screen. It's a 6500 Kelvin Day and night. And it's tricking the brain into thinking it's 12 noon at, at, at, at every time of the day. And, and that is bad because light is information. And this information is being processed not only by our circadian clock, but also by our endocrine system, our nervous system. And we don't want to contaminate this profoundly important source of information. So the goal is to keep ourselves insane with the light in nature as much as possible. And even if you were to try to block blue light in the same way all day, it would create a circadian mismatch because yeah, like the idea is we're blocking blue light. But the question is, why is it that you're blocking blue light? Oh, because blue light is bad. Well, is it really true that blue light is bad? Not really. Because in nature there's nothing really good or bad. Everything is relative. And blue light will become bad if you're exposing yourself to it at the wrong time of the day when it's not present in nature. And when does that happen? It happens after the sunset. There's no blue light in nature and that's when blue light becomes bad. But during the day, blue light is extremely important. It actually reset our circadian clock. It stimulates our thyroid hormone and leads to the production of so many different important hormone, like pomsy, for example, propriomelanocortine, which becomes a beta endorphins, a natural painkiller and a feel good hormone. It becomes acth, which is a precursor to cortisol. It becomes Alpha mch, which is what allows you to tan, increases your libido, et cetera. So when we speak about light, it's very nonlinear, right? And blue light during the day becomes bad in one condition when we are exposed to a non balanced source of light. Now what do I mean by this? When we are exposed to sunlight, there's a ton, a lot of blue light. But if you look at the spectral curve of sunlight, you will see that there's a lot of blue. But there's also the blue is proportionate and balanced with the orange, yellow and red. And simply put, every system in nature is composed of.

Is, is composed by polar opposites, right? It's Chinese philosophy describes it as yin and yang. Scientific methodologies describe it as positive and negative church. But if you think about it, every system in nature has those polar opposites that interchange imbalance. And that's why the rhythm in nature is very balanced. And the moment we step in nature, we instantly feel good. And sunlight is similar. We have that light coming from the sun and it's balanced because it is proportionate. And it's proportionate and it's symmetrical between the blues and the reds. We've never evolved to being exposed to blue in isolation. That never happened in sunlight. Now the problem with our artificial lighting is that it has been designed from an energy perspective mindset. We, we've used this narrow spike in blue light, not even the Full spectrum blue light. And we've disregarded all the other frequencies as though those frequencies are not important. We, we, we, we try to outsmart nature, but the, the, the consequences are, we're discovering that they're being tragic because we're messing with light. And light is the source of everything. And what our glasses do, the Vivar is daytime glasses. Unlike other blue light blocking glasses, which are designed to block blue light during the day, our glasses do not block blue light during the day. They are designed to harmonize blue light during the day. So we take this spike that is inflammatory and we make it more balanced and proportionate with the yellow, green and orange. And this is a step towards balance, which often leads to less eye strain, less headaches, less agitation. Now when I used blue light blocking glasses in the past, and I used to suffer from headaches and eye strain, I used those yellow tinted glasses that you often see so many blue light blocking glasses setting. And what I, what I noticed right away is that they solved my problem of eye strain and headaches. But within a matter of few weeks, I start feeling exhausted and I would feel like instant drops of energy levels. And I didn't know why. And it wasn't until later that I connected the dots. Oh my God. Okay, I see these glasses are blocking a hundred percent of the blue at, at, at 455 nanometer. And in the process of doing this, they wipe out a lot of the blue turquoise at 480 nanometer. And while this may seem technical, all you need to know is blue turquoise is the most important wavelength of light. Because we have a protein in the eye called melanopsin that is sensitive to light and it's mostly sensitive to blue turquoise. It takes this frequency and it tells the brain it's daytime. And then your brain speaks to your adrenal gland, to all of your hormones so that you can produce the proper neurotransmitters so you can feel awake, energized, ready for the day. Okay, does that make sense in terms of like the daytime glasses?

It makes a hundred percent sense. It's. I literally can't even tell you that it like. Of course it makes sense. I had those yellow tinted ones too, and I experienced a really similar thing. It definitely helped with the eye strain when I first left. But like right when I was starting we inspect, it meant that I couldn't be in every single house anymore, right. Because I had to sit here and start a business on the back end. So there was a transition where I was like still in houses. But then I was also having to be behind a computer, which I hadn't been behind a computer because I've been in houses for a decade. I haven't had a, like an office job since I was like in my early 20s, right. Like early mid-20s. And so when I first sat down and then that blast of screen light was hitting me, which never occurred to me or never never happened to me, you know, in the previous number of years, because I was driving all around town and going into people's houses and doing all the fun things under their house and this, that or the other. It was a huge hit. I was getting headaches. It was like really bad. And so I did. I looked into getting. And so I actually end up getting like two types of glasses. I got the really red ones for, for late nighttime. Right. That blocks it all out. And then I got those yellow ones, like the ones that you're talking about. And I actually experienced the same thing. The headaches went away, which was good. I was like, okay, this is good. I feel better. Like I don't have a headache. But I wasn't as. I just didn't like, I had to get stuff done and I was feeling tired. Right. And so I didn't know why. I just, I actually like, inherently just sort of stopped wearing them. I didn't even really think about it. I almost feel like our body like has us do things sometimes without telling us because it knows what's going on. And I guess in my mind it was more important to have energy and figure out how to run a business than it was to not have a headache at the time. And so like, I guess my subconscious made the decision for me. But what you're saying makes complete sense. Yeah.

Cool. And also, like, one thing to be aware of is because I see so many people falling into the trap of using clear brulee blocking glasses, which you can often get in Amazon or in your optometrist office. And, and, and those are a waste of money and time because they simply block blue purple light up to 420 nanometer. Whereas if you measure the light that is coming from an LED screen or an LED bulb, it actually starts its emission at 4:30 nanometer. It spikes at 4:55 and goes down. So those clear blue blocking glasses, they're blocking blue light that is not emitted by those harmful sources that we're exposed to. They, they do nothing.

So your glasses have, have. Is it three or four different, like transitions kind of through them? I, for. I forget exactly.

It is, but I Three different, three different transitions. So these are the daytime ones and then the moment, the sunset after the sunset, when we come back home, most of us, we get exposed to the second sun from LED light sources. And this tricks the brain into thinking it's daytime again. It increases cortisol at the wrong time and it just messes up with all of our hormones. So that's, that's a good time to put the evening lenses, the one I just clipped on right now. And those mimic the color temperature of a bonfire. And if you've ever been around a bonfire, the, the instant thing you feel is like you wind down, you feel more calm, more relaxed, yet you still have enough energy to cook, to dance, to socialize with your friends. And that was the intention of the evening lenses because also when I used to live in Canada, the sun in the winter would set around 3pm and I would put the dark nighttime blue blocking glasses and I would feel Super Sleepy by 4 or 4:30. And it was very unpractical. So I, I want to come up with a solution that acts as a transition between the daytime and the nighttime to allow the nervous system to be, you know, regulated without feeling extremely sleepy. So they could still run your evening activities.

Cook, do whatever you need to do during the evening without feeling extremely sleepy, yet you're not feeling also wired. And the last layer is the nighttime one. And this one you put one hour before bed. And this one is pretty intense because it decreases the brightness of light by 20 times. It blocks a hundred percent of the blue and the green. And I like to describe it as that phase in the bonfire when the wood turns into amber coil. By that time you're like super cozy, ready for bed. And this is what these glasses are designed to do. They increase your melatonin fully, your growth hormone production so you could get a restful night's sleep and wake up feeling more energized and rested.

I love that connection you just made because I talked earlier about how I see the improvement of a percentage basis on recovery as like a, a broad scope metric that, you know, that I'm able to measure. But understanding the mechanism that happens, it's increasing melatonin and it's increasing growth hormone. Now you start talking about melatonin is going to help you have a more restful sleep growth hormone, and you tell me, but when you're talking about recovery over the course of the night and your body regenerating and those sorts of things happening, you want to be able to get into that deep sleep state where Growth hormone is really doing what it needs to do. That's where your physical recovery is basically coming from. And then when you're in your REM sleep, that's where your mental recovery and. And that process is happening. So. Yeah, I. You know, I can't even, like, sit down at night now without the. My. My, like, really dark red. I only have the one pair, right? But like, those really dark red, blue light blockers. I can't even, like, sit at night in my house without them on. Like, it feels so weird. I start getting a headache. Like, my body's like, yo, why is this light on? Like, you want to watch tv? Cool. Put this thing on. You want to sit up here with some light? You better put these on. Otherwise, like, I am not ready for this. This. It's really interesting that my body, like, craves that now, and I know that it does, and I can feel when it happens. And both my wife and I are just like, oh, we gotta go grab our glasses. Like, we both feel it at the same time. Um, and for those, you know, obviously a lot of you are listening to this and not watching the video. What's really cool about what Rudy was showing here when he was putting them on is you kind of have, like, a base frame. I'm gonna explain how they work. So you have, like, a base glasses frame, right? So imagine you put a pair of glasses on. I think a lot of us, like, over the years have seen, like, those commercials where it's like, hey, here's your clip on sunglasses or whatever, right? But it was like they would flip up in the air and they were clipped and they were bulky and stuff like that. Well, it's really cool. Is that the way these are set up? And for those on the video, you will have seen it already, obviously, but they're basically a magnet connection that just magnetizes to the front of your frame. So they don't. They're not always there, which means your glasses are not always bulky throughout the course of a day. Day. And then all you do is, like, stick on, like, a magnet connection. And then bam, you have the next layer that you need for the next phase of the day, which is a really awesome, like, design component of it is really, really cool. So I just thought kind of explaining that to people would be helpful.

So we're kind of about out here. I want to ask you one quick question that. That I came up while you were talking earlier, and then we can try to wrap it up. Earlier you were talking about, like, a strategy to adjust your Wake your sleep wake windows by utilizing the different type of like the fire one at a different time in the morning, jet lag. So jet lag, you're changing time zones. When you change time zones, obviously you're when you're exposed to the sun, like where it is at the point of the day is going to be different. And so question one, is that a key component in jet lag, do you think? And question two, is there a way to utilize these, these tools that you have, right, the glasses that you have to sort of offset like what jet lag might actually feel like when you're on a trip?

Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. And when it comes to jet lag, it's literally all about light. Because it's light as you know, signaling to your circadian clock about the time of the day. And what happens is when you move from one time zone to another, your clock is still thinking you're in New York while your body is in China. And it's pretty intense, which most people actually experience without traveling.

And you're such a very fun trips by the way, New York to China. I'm just like from like where I am to I don't know, like four hours. That's fine.

Right on. So, so if you're for example traveling east, what happened then is that you need to advance shift to the clock. So you need to start waking up earlier and sleeping earlier. And so depending on how hours difference there is between the place that you are and the place that you're visiting, you need to create a strategy where you start advanced shifting your clock, you know, one hour every day, so it's not very intense. So let's say there's three hours in the place that you are traveling. What I would recommend is few things. Number one, you want advance by one hour every day. And you could achieve this by starting to block artificial lights one hour earlier. So if the sun is setting at 5, you want to give your brain the impression that the sun is setting at 4. And what you would do is you would put on your viva rays evening glasses at 4 and then you would put on your viva rays nighttime glasses around six. And then you're shift your advanced shifting your, your clock by, by one hour. And, and you want to match this by waking up earlier by one hour every single day. And what you want to do when you wake up is instantly increase your core body temperature up. So how can you do this? You have different methods. One, getting exposures to bright light. If the sun was already there, great if not, then you could use artificial lighting while using the evening glasses. So you're regulating the color temperature. Engaging in intense, intense exercise will increase your cold body temperature up. Taking a cold shower will increase your cold body temperature. So after three days of doing this regularly, by the time you're traveling, your, your, your clock is already set to the, to the new time that you're traveling to. Okay. And what's very important also is to start regulating your earring rhythm. So if you usually have your last bite at 6pm at night, your dinner, then you want to advance shift by one hour because food is another very important signal that resets your circadian clock. And when you are on the plane, you want to mimic the time of the location that you're arriving to. So what that means if you're traveling on the plane, it's day, it's 6am in the morning where you are, but it's nighttime with the location where you're arriving. Then you would want to wear the nighttime glasses on the plane so that the brain is, your brain is syncing with the new location. And if you are on the plane and it's nighttime, but it's daytime in the new location, then you want to try to maximize light entering your eyes. So you're telling your brain it's actually daytime and you're starting to sync with the new location. And the moment you arrive to that new location, you, you want to stay true to that new rhythm and to get that morning sunlight first thing in the morning. And usually if, if you're, if you're doing this sequentially like I described, it becomes a lot easier. And especially when there's like seven or eight hour difference between where you are and the new location where you're traveling, then it becomes really worthwhile, the efforts.

That's awesome. That's really cool. I know jet lag is a thing that everybody gets and if there's a way to hack it out a little bit, like why would we not be doing that? And you have a tool here that allows you to do that pretty easily just by shifting what you have on your eyes, which is really, really awesome. Rudy, this is really cool. I, I've really enjoyed talking with you. You obviously, I, we don't mention this at the top. Rudy also spoke in front of the same room of like 400 plus doctors that I spoke in front of at this summit. And the response should have seen everybody lining up to talk to Rudy after his, after his talk. I know all of you think that everybody's lining up to talk to me. But the reality is everybody was lining up to talk to Rudy and I was just lucky to be standing next to him.

That's how, that's how it went down. But it was really, really cool and so super interesting. I just want to thank you for sharing with me and would love to. You know, obviously. How do people find, find your glasses? How do they find the Viva race?

Yeah, absolutely. So our website is ww.vivarace.com V I V A R A Y S.com and the cool thing on our website is that we have some free tools and a lot of educational blogs that dive deep into topics of light and health, magnetism and health, and light and health, and water and health. And we have two free tools. One is called Light. The key to mastering your sleep and energy is a. Is a short e book list, about 50 to 60 pages that I've written where I condense down a lot of the concepts of quantum biophysics and circadian biology in very easy language that anyone could read and could instantly figure out what they can do today to improve their light environment and to start experiencing better sleep and better energy.

That's super, super awesome.

I'm throwing you on the spot here. Is there a way that people who are listening here can come and do you offer any sort of like, special deal for our listeners or anything like that?

Yeah, absolutely. I would love to talk to my team and we'll create a special discount code for your listeners so that you could access a 10% discount. I'll also make sure to add the links for the free tools so that they could get the E booklet. There's also a very interesting winter series blog that I've written to address specifically how to use light, magnetism and temperature in order to transform your winter from sad and fatigue into joyful and regenerative energy. So I'll, I'll make sure that my team include that link also so that you could access this information.

That's very, very cool. Well, Rudy, thank you so much for, for being here. This is, this is awesome. I've been looking forward to. Forward to this. So this is awesome. It's nice to connect again, buddy.

Yes, absolutely. Thank you for having me. GL.

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