17 Dec 2025 · 5 min
Sea turtles in Cancun are drawn to artificial lights instead of the ocean, disrupting their navigation. Brian Johnson draws a parallel to how blue light from phones and screens disrupts human sleep by suppressing melatonin. He recommends a digital sunset, turning off devices at night, to restore better sleep.
You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another micro class. This one's on sea turtles and your sleep. It's inspired by don't just Sit There by Katie Bowman. Sea turtles and sleep. What do they have to do with one another? Well, imagine you are a little baby turtle. That's a baby turtle, of course. And this is the ocean and you were just born, right? Now you, back in the day would do something called sea finding, right? Where you would use the moonlight to guide you to the sea. You'd find the sea via natural moonlight. Now, what's interesting is Katie Bowman studied sea turtles in Cancun and, and in Cancun they installed all these huge hotels right on the beach that had huge bright lights at night. So these little sea turtles would be born and their evolutionary instinct was to follow the moon's light in order to find the sea. Right? Well, these hotels are now there with all this artificial light and these poor little sea turtles can't figure out which way to go. They often struggle on the beach and die. Or they wind up in one of these hotel pools and die. They can no longer see. Find. The moral of the story is all animals are affected negatively by artificial night light. We've got to remember that the light bulb was invented in the 1800s. It's been used heavily for less than 100 years. That is literally the blink of an eye in our evolutionary history, right? Boom. Oops. We've now got light, right? That can keep us up at night and it totally throws us off our circadian rhythms. As we talked about in optimal sleep 101, there are no more important biological rhythms that we want to attune to than our circadian rhythms. And almost all of us violate this to a really a horrific extent. So if you are having trouble sleeping and your melatonin is getting disrupted by all the blue light from your little gadgets, from your iPhone to your pad to the huge computer or tv, turn them off at night if you're committed to feeling great the next morning. Remember your sea turtles. An optimal sleep 101 and come close to having a digital sunset are your equivalent. As I shared in the PMTV episode, I recently got a note from a member who took the class optimal Living Sleep 101. And she had been getting up a couple times every night for a long time and she was a little bit hesitant to turn off all this electronic stuff, but she did so, and she slept through the night for the first time in forever. Shawn Stevenson says this is the number one way to immediately boost your sleep. Simply turn off all this blue light emitting stuff, align more closely with circadian rhythms and and like the sea turtles without all this light, let your natural rhythms guide you to optimization in pursuit of actualization. There you go, sea turtles and sleep. What little thing can you do tonight to dial it in a little bit more Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that micro class. If so, I think you'll enjoy everything else we offer at BrianJohnson me two basic things one our free newsletter. It's called the Optimizer. Over 50,000 people start their day with it and they tell us it's pretty awesome and 2 our optimal living Membership program. This is where I put all my best stuff. 10 bucks a month for a ton of wisdom. Two primary things in there philosopher's notes plus optimal living 101 classes. When you sign up, you'll get instant access to 250 philosopher's notes, which are basically six page PDFs and 20 minute MP3s where I capture my favorite big ideas from great books. The PNTV episodes are kind of a mini version of all that goodness. You'll also get instant access to all my Optimal Living classes. This is where I take all the ideas we cover in the Philosopher's Notes and boil it down to the most practical stuff you can apply today. Classes include Confidence 101, Getting Stuff Done 101, Relationships 101, Habits 101, etc. You'll also get access to what we call micro classes that I think you'll love. We aim to astonish and we're blessed to have thousands of members telling us we're helping them change their lives and that this is the best 10 bucks they invest in themselves every month. Go to BrianJohnson ME membership to learn more. Thanks for your support and have an awesome day.
