The ULTIMATE Hack For Blocking Blue Light

Red light therapy has taken the health and wellness industry by storm and we're realizing more and more. There's so many incredible benefits of red light therapy that go beyond just surface level. So how did you guys get started? And I love that you guys are married and in business together, we're going to dive into that as well. Yeah, absolutely. So we started eight years ago. So it's still quite in its infancy that the journey today, it was both Andy and I getting ready for our wedding. We were on the health kick like every bride and groom is you want to look your best on your wedding day. So we were looking at the best diets, the best exercises, but they only took us so far. And then we needed to delve deeper to understand how could we optimize our sleep because sleep governs a lot in your life is how you show up every day. It takes how you eat the next day, the motivation you have to work out. And through that, we learned the impact of artificial blue light on our sleep. So that's where our journey began, understanding the impact blue light has on sleep and how that then governs our overall well being. So long story short, Andy hopped online to see if he could find some blue light blocking glasses. He went through so many different pairs to try and find the pair that would optimize the sleep. But none really delivered exactly against the signs that we were reading. They were offering a little bit of improvement, weren't they? But nothing substantial. So we decided to invent our own pair of blue light blocking glasses that matched what the literature was saying needed to be blocked to optimize sleep. Said this as an influences. They loved it told us you have to start a company. And so we did. And then the journey began from from that moment on. And for anybody listening that doesn't know what blue light is, can you guys sum up for them kind of what is blue light and how does it affect your health and why it's why it's negative? Yeah, I think it's a double edged sword, you know, like a lot of people think that the blue light is always negative and it isn't. It's always got to have context when you look at things regarding health and well being. So blue light great during the day the skies blue when the sun's out and that's what causes us to feel awake and alert. It increases cortisol, dopamine, serotonin, all fantastic hormones and neurotransmitters to keep us active during the day. The issue with blue light comes after dark because we have something called a circadian rhythm that we all evolved with over millions of years. Every human has one. And it's a little clock system in the center of your brain. And what that does is it takes light cues through the eyes and through the skin and it tells your body what time of the day it is and what hormones to release or suppress what neurotransmitters to release or suppress. But what happens is ancestrally we wouldn't have seen any of the blue light after dark. We would have seen campfires, the sun would have set. So we would have seen the red lights which helps produce melatonin which is our sleep hormone. But what we've done in the modern world we bought sunlight in artificial form into our homes. It's in our mobiles, it's in our TVs, it's in our overhead lights, it's in our fridge and it's even on our appliances, those little LEDs that blink on your dishwasher or your microwave. And they're all sending the message to our body clock telling us that it's always daytime. So our sleep suffering, our REM and deep sleep are dropping, our insulin sensitivity starts to decline, our blood glucose level starts increasing because our body's natural rhythms are out of sync with nature because we're continually under blue light. Now our body clock and our brain can't distinguish the difference between natural and artificial light. So it just becomes this ongoing problem that we're just in this perceived perpetual daytime all the time. And for anybody listening if they're like how do I know I'm suffering from negative side effects of blue light, what could some of those signs and symptoms be? Yeah I think that's a great question. What typically happens is when your body clocks out of sync your cortisol cycle reverses. So cortisol should be highest in the morning leading up to midday and then it should slowly start to dip. And the way you'll know if you've got a good cortisol system is you'll wake up, you'll bounce out of bed, you'll feel like you're full of energy and then come the evening once the sunset maybe two or three hours afterwards you'll start to feel really tired and want to go to sleep and then you'll wake up refreshed the next morning and so on. If your cortisol levels are reversed which is the sign of blue light circadian disruption is you'll start to struggle to wake up in the morning, you won't be able to bound out of bed, you'll maybe slump about three, four p.m. in the afternoon, you'll feel really tired. Then when you get home and the sun sets and you're watching your favorite shows on tv or you're reading or your house lights are on you'll start to feel really energized and you won't be able to get to sleep. So those are typically the most common and early telltale signs that your circadian rhythm is disrupted but it can get more complex than that. It's a bit like bad diet, you know, you'll start to notice a few, if you eat a bad diet you'll start to notice a few telltale signs early but it's the long term that you'll start to see some of the worsening of the symptoms. So for instance if you continually have exposure to artificial blue light and disrupt your sleep you may have problem with weight gain because your insulin sensitivities decline and you become more insulin resistant because blood glucose levels start to increase. You may also have chronic stress or things like anxiety and depression start to develop with a lot of blue light exposure over time because your cortisol systems are continually jacked up high with the stress hormone. So there's lots of little telltale signs which progressively get worse over time. What we always say to people is one of those things right like going back to dieting so a lot of people can relate to diet. When you're eating a not so healthy diet in the short term you actually think you're fine. Oh okay I've got energy, I'm okay, my sleep's fine, whatever. But it's when you start then eating healthy you start to look back and go wow that wasn't feeling good what I was doing and now this is optimal. And the same's true with blue light exposure. Once you start blocking blue light after dark, once you start getting out and watching the sunrise watch how your sleep scores start to improve on your sleep tracker and how you feel generally and then you'll realize what you're living now wasn't optimal and there's so much more potential to your health. To your health yeah exactly. And then what are some of the signs symptoms that are different to men versus women? Like what do women experience? I know it has a lot to do with hormone disruption, that's a really big topic right now. So Katie like when it comes to the women listening to this to this podcast episode what are some of the things that blue light can can do to their bodies? Absolutely well I guess I'm getting a large portion of your your audience are probably going through similar things to you and I in terms of reaching that stage where it's possibly perimenopause, maybe going into menopause for some people and that's when sleep really gets impacted and that's when our cortisol patterns shift significantly. So a lot of women will generally experience that peak adrenaline rush, peak cortisol rush at sort of 3 a.m. and it's again misaligned circadian rhythms that are compounding that. It's something I've experienced myself, it's always at 3 a.m peak where your body is just fired up ready to jump out of bed which shows misalignment with your hormones but also the circadian rhythm is impacted as well. So doubling down on anything you can do to optimize your sleep for women is going to have a huge impact on your hormones not just at menopause stage or perimenopause stage but throughout your life as well because it does govern so much of your sleep patterns which ultimately then governs other elements of your well-being as well. Besides like getting blue light blockers what are three things that people listening can do to lower their blue light exposure? There's some simple free hacks you can do so the first thing that we live by the very first thing we do in the morning is get outside and take in natural light. I think everybody's conditions to wake up grab their mobile phones see what messages they've got what emails they've got scroll on social media you just need to get outside first of all and that's not only limiting the blue light exposure first thing in the morning but it is conditioning your body to align with nature and that's free you literally get out of bed and go outside it's something we live by so so simple. And you know what's interesting about that is when you watch the sunrise in the morning that triggers a response for the body to release something called serotonin. We all know that as like the happy hormone right but what happens with serotonin is in the gut it mixes with something called tryptophan in the absence of blue light after sunset to create melatonin so if you miss the sunrise in the morning you will have less serotonin to utilize to make melatonin later on in the evening which will then significantly impact your sleep. The other thing as well about watching the sunrise is that that triggers the release of the correct hormones at that time of the day to keep you endocrinologically speaking healthy. If you roll over and look at your look at your phone first thing in the morning the spectrum of light in your phone is almost identical to the visible spectrum of sunlight at solar noon so around about midday so your body then gets the wrong hormonal messages to not regulate your hormones properly because it needs that natural rising sun in the morning to set you up for the rest of the day. Yeah and I guess some other things they could do two other tips they can do if you are indoors during the day which a lot of us are unfortunately our jobs and careers confine us to indoor spaces use occasion-friendly lighting that is low in blue light but also address the flicker element as well because that is difficult for the brain to process it causes digital eye strain and fatigue too and then come evening get out as much as you can we all know not to use digital devices or electronic devices before bed but also wearing blue light blocking glasses is the ultimate hack because it allows you to continue using the digital devices in the evening as well without disrupting your body clock but ultimately get outside as much as you can morning breaks during the day nothing beats nature we always say nature has it all. People aren't talking about this enough but I truly want to optimize your health we need to be paying attention to EMFs we are constantly plugged in surrounded by wireless signals radiation frequencies that our bodies have never ever been able to handle at this level research has shown that EMFs can disrupt sleep impact cellular function and contribute to long-term health issues yet we're rarely talking about this or how to protect ourselves from this this is why I was so excited when I first discovered Leela Quantum Tech I met them two years ago at a biohacking conference in Austin and was absolutely blown away by the founder Philip Maughan hearing him on stage and learning about quantum energy technology completely shifted my perspective I knew I had to try it for myself and now two years later I'm so excited to have them partner with me on my podcast one of my absolute favorite products they heal 360 capsule which I wear on my quantum necklace every day this isn't just any pendant it's scientifically designed and quantumly charged to support your body's natural ability to heal energize and protect itself from harmful influences people using it have reported more energy mental clarity better stress resilience and relaxation deeper sleep and faster recovery and that is also the feedback I got from our supper club when I gifted it to all our guests Leela Quantum Tech is leading the way in quantum frequency healing with products designed to neutralize emfs enhance cellular function and help your body operate at its best I personally felt the difference since wearing heal 360 capsule and I think you'll love it too check it out at leelaq.com and use code biohacket for a discount that is l e e l a q dot com and use code biohacket happy healing and you guys have now moved to Australia right you guys are kind of being your base there now to expand the business do you guys did you struggle with the jet lag adjusting to a completely different time zone and you know with with your circadian rhythm and stuff how did you reset it it's a great question we rarely suffer from jet lag but long periods there's always that little bit of one or two days when we travel so far because Australia's like nine ten hours different in the it's like the other side of it's different planet I swear but yeah there's lots of things you can you can do right so you can start to phase shift and there's apps that allow you to do this but what we do is if they say like an an eight hour time difference to where you're going you start to push out your bedtime or bring your bedtime forward in relation to the time zone you're traveling to so when you start to travel you're not getting hit by this massive eight hour time difference that will really mess up that circadian rhythm if you can get it an eight hour one down to five or six hours taken off and you've only got a couple of hours to adjust to you can adjust a lot faster the other thing that that you want to do is you want to when you land try and land in in the evening time in your destination so you can go straight to bed and get the sleep and wake up and watch the sunrise the next morning to help get that circadian alignment in in process there's also a lot of other things that you can do as well i'm related to light that can help with overcoming of jet lag quicker things like grounding to get those shoes and socks off get to a park get on grass as soon as you've landed even if that doesn't help so much for people with jet lag it can help with inflammation because we're flying in this metal tube full of e mf radiation artificial light and that's going to cause a lot of mitochondrial inflammation we also use things like molecular hydrogen which is growing a little tablets and put those into your into your water we try to fast on the plane and eat one meal at the same time as our destination because interestingly studies in chronobiology have shown that meal timing also governs how our body clock interprets the time in the outside world as well so those are just some of the things we do mephaline blues also great to preserve mitochondrial function during the travel and all those things can really help with jet lag and a lot of people also swear by melatonin supplementation which you can do as well in some countries you need it prescribed others you can just buy it over the counter but taking that in line with the time zone you're heading on to can help in the short term not a huge fan of it because i like to try and do things naturally but sometimes if people are really struggling to to sleep and get over jet lag that can help us as well and one other thing that can help is hydro quarter zone so i hadn't heard about that one yeah so it's a cream that you again you would be prescribed this cream or you can buy some of it the low dose over the counter and what that does is you rub it on your skin it's typically been used to treat things like eczema and stuff like that over it but if you rub it on your skin your skin absorbs it and it actually increases cortisol levels so if you use it in the mornings of your destination country that will increase cortisol like you've been watching The Rising Sun which then helps to speed and fast track the circadian rhythm thinking and knowing what the time is in the destination's time zone wow that's such a good little trick i had no idea about that one i learned something new today there you go well i want to also get into red light therapy so the world is on fire with red light therapy see devices coming out your surfed ads online so can we tell the audience what is red light therapy and where is the science today with red light therapy yeah i guess before we delve into that it's key to understand the different elements of red light therapy you know this is something we come across daily with the audience everyone's just looping in all different products all different modalities under the brana of red light therapy and there are very different wavelengths and they all do very different things so the starting point is to understand those three wavelengths and what they do before we delve deeper into it so within red light therapy you've got near infrared you've got far infrared and then you've got red light and they all do very different things so near infrared is most commonly the one that you would see in the panels that we have so they're the ones that penetrate through to the muscles and the joints far infrared is what you've seen a sauna so it doesn't have a color much like near infrared doesn't have a color but it's used in the sauna for heating properties so that warms you or the air around you to allow your muscles to relax for you to sweat and all the associated benefits that come with that and then the color red that you see is the one that targets the skin the challenge we have is a lot of people think that red light therapy is just the color red and that that color red does all of those other elements that we've just discussed which isn't the case the the visible color red does the skins that's the one that targets fine lines wrinkles imperfections tone texture anything like that far infrared is is the sauna experience and near infrared is the one that's penetrating through to muscles and joints so if if anything from this conversation today for your audience is to understand those three modalities and and what they do because it's crucial to pick the right one as someone who's testing and i was retesting for what works for my gut immune system and hormonal health i definitely do not mess around with any probiotics that die before they even reach my gut so this little guy just thrive is completely different it is clinically proven to arrive 100 alive survives antibiotics and even helps to heal leaky gut in just 30 days it beats helps with nutrition absorption and turns your gut into an antioxidant factory and it's the only probiotic i trust and recommend to my bio hack it community check it out at just thrive health dot com and use code bio hack it for a discount and enjoy and then when it comes to for example like i have a red light panel in my house right this is like a really popular product people want it which one of the wavelengths are you getting in that and is it has it changed over time like well people started with when the product was actually first introduced to the market versus what it is today yeah i guess in the panels they're typically combined with reds and nearing fred lights but the ones that penetrate through the muscles and do the skin at the same time it depends whether you're looking at the wellness or beauty industry the beauty industry tend to focus more on purely the red lights wavelengths to target the skin wellness combined both to do skin and and recovery but i guess we always try to conclude both to give people the opportunity to have something that's versatile but also there's benefits in the beauty industry of using near and fred because it does get through to the muscles and if you're relaxing the muscles you know what that does to your skin it removes smooths out the skin so it produces the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles there's benefits to the near and fred in the beauty industry as well and what about on a cellular level why is this so good for ourselves and firing up our mitochondrial health and replenishing us from the inside out yeah all comes down to energy optimization um there's no there's no real basic way to understand it so i apologize in advance i'm going to have done this down as much as possible because it's it's so complex it took me ages to to learn this many years ago when we were developing these products but it all comes down to ATP production efficiency so ATP is a denigin adenosine triphosphate and that's the energy it's what helps us run metabolically so move speak digest everything like that and it's produced in our mitochondria and it's produced for a process called electron chain transport there's four phases okay and at the fourth phase that's the one that really interests us in mitochondrial function and how red light therapy works when we're inflamed so by that i mean maybe we've had a big workout maybe we're aging um and we're starting to see wrinkles and fine lines maybe maybe we're sick maybe we've got um you know joint muscle issues that's all inflammation in the body now what happens is when we're inflamed nitric oxide is increased in that energy production system and that's bad because that takes away oxygen which is vital to react with something called cytochrome c-oxidase to produce the energy so the inflammation is taken away the oxygen which is making our energy production system really inefficient so we feel sluggish it takes a long time to recover we age faster um all of those types of thing now what red light specifically it's between 630 and 660 nanometers and near-infrared light specifically between 800 and 880 nanometers found in red light face masks red light panels those types of things if it's at a high enough irradiance so the power density of the deliverance of that light it penetrates into the mitochondria and it frees up oxygen by reacting with nitric oxide to improve energy efficiency at cellular level so for instance if you have this red light shined on your face what happens in terms of reducing fine lines wrinkles um smoothing out the skin is that it activates energy production more efficiently in something called fibroblasts now fibroblasts when they start to profilate start to then form collagen and the more collagen you have the more smoothier your face the fine lines and wrinkles go and you you have that anti-aging style um yeah factor happening um when you shine it on the red light say on on your knee and you have really sore joints what happens is the energy efficiency starts to increase in something called osteoblasts and when osteoblasts starts to produce more energy you can start reducing pain temporarily in that region or you can actually start to mend any damage that's been caused there this has all been backed up in peer reviewed studies red light therapy is the most studied frequencies of light there's over 4 000 peer reviewed studies and over 450 double blind placebo studies showing the efficacy of this for a for a long time and then did you guys alter as the studies and research has been coming out when it comes to bond charge and in your company were you you know tweaking your products um along the way to land on where you are today we actually didn't need to and the reason we didn't need to is it's what we do with every product every product launch takes us at least 18 months to bring to market and the reason it takes that long is because we go through various prototypes we make sure they're fully backed by the peer reviewed studies um we have two individuals um phd's within our organization that work with us full time that come from this kind of background to vet our claims against the studies however having said that if anything was to change um in the literature we would always we would always change to that so if it came out saying our 850 nanometers is fantastic joint pain however new studies are showing that 860 is better we would go back to the drawing board and look at that but we've actually been quite fortunate one one product we have changed three times is our holster electromagnetic field therapy so our pence mats and when we launched the studies all backed claims of having bandings of um pence to deliver to certain areas of the body but then the study started to come out to say actually individual one step hertz oscillations up to 30 hertz is actually more beneficial so we changed to a 2.0 0 2.0 model based on that so yeah we're always evolving with the science but more often than not we get it right first time because the the studies that go into it um highly researched and if anybody's listening they're like what is your pimp mat what is pimp energy can we talk about that for a second because people will ask that question or be wondering that it's super popular isn't it it really is it's probably one of our most intriguing products that our customers get drawn to you because it's one of those things that you can't see you can't feel it you can't get and therefore you know people find it hard to understand what it is but in a nutshell it looks like a yoga mat or we have different sizes to accommodate um what people are looking for but ultimately it takes the beneficial frequencies in nature and pulses that through the mat into you because your body will always try to conserve energy and to do that it'll mirror the environment that you're in I guess think of it if you've walked into a very hectic supermarket or a shopping mall there's so much energy around there you get pent up yourself that's because your body's trying to mirror the energy in the room so what the pimp mat does is you dial into a certain frequency lie on it sit on it stand on it and your body will then try to mirror the frequency that's coming from the mat because that's the environment and you can choose between different frequencies such as one to optimize sleep one to optimize creativity for grounding for focus for meditation depending what it is you want to dial into but in a nutshell it's it's pulsing a beneficial frequency into your body to get your body to mimic that state and fall into that pattern naturally yeah there's a couple of different applications to pimp there's wellness and medical um from a wellness perspective it's about tapping into natural frequencies as Katie mentioned so for instance you can start to turn the pimp mat mat on and lay on it maybe 10 20 minutes before you want to go to bed and you can start to pulse delta waves um theta waves into the body and what happens um when you start to map the brain of people using pimp for things like binaural beats is that the brain starts to mimic those frequencies which then gets you into a state of relaxation quicker there's also a really cool um cool studies out there that look at something called the shuman resonance which is the natural um sort of elf radiation that the earth gives off so very low frequency extremely low frequency um electromagnetic field radiation um that helps to reduce inflammation it helps to um cause I guess the brain to become more creative um once what like people always say like when you're out in nature that's where creativity happens right but it's it's actually mainly down to this shuman resonance which is that eight hertz that's spinning and you can actually have that pulsed through a pimp mat and it directly into the body now I know what you're going to say is you're going to say well that's similar to a grounding mat but where the grounding mats differ is that a grounding mat is permanently grounded and it's not pulsing grounding into you you're actually connecting yourself to a grid to be able to do it and what happens when you work when you sit on a grounding mat is yes you get all the benefits that you would from a pimp mat in terms of being connected to the shuman resonance but what you do is on a grounding mat is you act as an antenna for any kind of ambient radiation that's in your vicinity so if you're sat on a grounding mat in an apartment or your house all the wi-fi 4g cellular network energy is going to pass through you and then ground through um that device whereas a pimp mat doesn't do that because it's pulsing oscillating those currents through you so you don't become an antenna if you're spending hundreds on skincare by ignoring one of the most powerful anti-aging tools out there you are missing out my biohackers I'm talking about red light therapy and bond charges red light face mask it has completely changed the game for me red light therapy isn't just another hype it penetrates deep into the skin boosting collagen reducing inflammation and easing signs of aging and the best part it's cordless it's lightweight and totally painless so I can wear it while I'm getting worked on watching tv or even making a quick smoothie for myself or taking my dogs for a walk I've tried a lot of skincare treatments and let's be honest some of them are messy others are time consuming or just plain uncomfortable but this mask makes it so easy just 10 minutes a day and I've noticed my skin is brighter clearer and even more even toned no downtime no hassle and because bond charge products are hsi fsa eligible you can use your health saving funds to invest in your skin trust me you need this in your skincare routine ASAP right now my listeners get 15 off when you order from bond charge dot com just use my exclusive code biohack it at checkout that's bondcharge dot com plus you'll get free shipping and a 12 month warranty again that's biohack it go grab yours now your skin will thank you later and then how often should somebody be using a pence mat like how often should you be doing it both for for wellness or for healing what what is the protocol yeah for wellness it really depends on what your goals are so a lot of people will use them daily but for different things so some people use it to improve their sleep maybe that's an issue they've got some people will have it on their chair because it folds and sits on your chair at work and then they set it to the shuman resonance or alpha waves to help increase creativity and productivity you can use them for maybe 10 15 minutes some people even sleep on these these things because they want delta waves or grounding all right so it really depends on the individual but i would say to bit like red light therapy three to five times a week from a general wellness perspective 10 to 20 minutes is you're going to see a profound change from a medical standpoint and our mats are designed for wellness but from a medical standpoint what's really interesting about pence and the preliminary studies that are coming out in the peer reviewed literature is that they've looked at fractures bone fractures using pence and when a bone fractures there's a disconnection of the electromagnetic field energy and electrical currents between those two two breaks so one bit of only one bit of bone there and it can't talk to each other and over time it will fuse together and then it will start to communicate again what they found with pence that varying frequencies is when they start to pulse that into a fractured bone it creates that electricity that field that post-electromagnetic field between the two broken bones and it actually speeds up the fusing of that bone because it already thinks that it's connected so it's it's unbelievable what i can do what it can do from a medical perspective yeah it's it's going to be such a groundbreaking technology when when people start waking up to it in the medical community now i want to talk a little bit about you guys are obviously married you started the brand together your life partners i see you traveling around the world together how do you guys manage it you guys get on each other's nerves ever and you're just like i can't stand this other person like it's a lot to deal with we're building a company we're traveling we're always together how do you differentiate your roles yeah i guess we're quite fortunate in that we are the complete opposites in terms of our skill sets okay i think first and foremost that's probably the saving grace in it all because i think exactly what you just said there would be arguments and friction and confrontation all the time if you were trying to do the same things within the business but naturally we have very different skill sets so andi's very much data sales science statistics to that side of the business i'm more creative so i'm more branding pr product development side of things so by default and i'm really bad at maths and he's really good at data so amazing we're complete opposites in that respect um so i guess it's just putting practices into your day because when you are running a business and your husband and wife and you're both you know the the giant cvo ceo type positions life and business are one it's completely blended absolutely all the time you know you're going home you're talking about work you're waking up you're talking about work i mean that's you eat sleep breathe that basically you know that exactly and we do and you have to check in with yourself because it does blend we find that we're having very hard conversations over dinner and that's meant to be a nourishing you know meditative time or we're going on a walk and we're just debriefing about work so you just have to set boundaries you know you do that this is our talk time this is our switch off from work time as much as possible there's always slip ups there always is when you're running a business particularly when it's global you know you're on different time zones constantly trying to connect but we stick in our lanes set time aside for just husband and wife no business and we kind of stop each other if we do stop bringing business into too much of our social life why did you guys decide to move to australia and how long are you guys going to be based there oh you know at the moment we're traveling so much it doesn't even feel like we are based there we're spending more time overseas but we've been there 14 years we moved there it was actually my decision we were in recruitment at the time that was our day job back in the UK and I just got sick of the weather sick of the weather sick of a job that was sales cold calling every day and wanted a new life for us we don't speak any other languages so australia was the easiest one for us the US would have been first but it's a lot more difficult for us to get there so we just up to went to australia and I kind of haven't looked back it's a great way of life you know the wellness is in abundance there but we're fortunate that we get to see so much of the world that it doesn't always feel like it is our home sometimes how does red light therapy benefit both your like your individual relationships with yourself plus you as a couple it's our connection time so sunday is our wellness day where we really focus on wellness it's blended into our day-to-day life anyway but we try to always on sunday step away from the business step away from life and have an hour in our sort of wellness room at home or if we're traveling use a hotel spa or something I use it for different reasons to andi I lean into red light therapy a lot more for its anti-aging benefits you know I've just turned 40 the appearance is changing everything's going south the fine lines are in for such a moment so I use it a lot more on the beauty side whereas I know andi uses it a lot more post-gym for recovery but we try to bring it together and have the time joint really to do our practices as one as if we don't spend enough time with each other yeah exactly if you had to name each one of you your top two products from your from bond chart from your own line that you've created which ones would they be so andi what would your top two products be cool blue light blocking glasses definitely the the hero product that started the brand but it's a non-negotiable for me and the reason it's a non-negotiable is once you wear them after just one night you simply won't go back you'll take your glasses off to look at the tv in the evening and it will be like some of the shining lasers into your eyes it's such an impact okay such an impact and your sleep will just be so much better as as well and the other one for me is the sauna dome so that's one of our newest products and that's there it's basically a dome light thing it fuck it concertina's up so it's easy to store in an apartment things like that but you slide into it and it's on top of a pence mat so you can have the pence foslating the red light therapy is all inside the dome once you're laying on it and you get red light therapy built into that as well so i like that because it means i can get my red light therapy my pence and my faring for red light in one everything in one so i i i absolutely love that yeah and kitty what about you my favorite is probably the red light face mask i literally use that and just because i can travel with it you know you want to be able to keep up with your skincare routine even when you're traveling and because i'm traveling so much i like that i can take it away and i don't need to go to a salon so i use that a lot and the pence mats my favorite honestly when i meditate on that the visions i see i can go so deep into a meditative state on the on the pence mats that those two are probably my favorite i mean i wear blue like broken glasses every single night and circadian friendly lighting is is often overlooked it's such a simple thing to switch a bulb and put a better sort of human centric aligned bulb into your lights but if i had to pick two probably the face mask and the pence mat if you know me you know i avoid seadowels like the plague they're everywhere even in snacks labeled as clean organic or healthy but the truth is they wreak havoc on your metabolism your hormones and make you super inflamed that's why i'm obsessed with prima one of the few products i completely trust prima was created to push back against processed artificial foods and bring us back to real nutritional ancestral ingredients that actually nourish your body it's packed with 100 grass fed beef tallow grass fed collagen and grass fed whey protein delivering bioavailable nutrients for muscle recovery joint health and overall vitality without any of the junk no to seed oils no refined sugars no artificial additives and the best part is one of the few products that is certified seed oil safe i always keep prima stocked in my bag it's my go-to post workout between meetings or anytime i need an easy high quality protein boost getting in at least one gram of protein per pound of body weight can be really tough but it's essential for building and maintaining muscle as you age or going through a fertility journey in your 40s and 30s like i am and the flavor is delicious cacao mocha and salted caramel you really can't go wrong my favorite flavor is a salted caramel plus the prima bars are sweetened with organic raw honey and only contain organic whole food ingredients so you're fueling your body with real clean nutrition because you're part of the biohacket community you get 20% off just use code iman20 at eatprima.com ditch the seed oiled fuel your body right you will feel the difference i promise when it comes to like changing out the light bulbs and stuff because you guys are on the go you're traveling so much you're all over the world how do you guys kind of do that on your on your travels like you might be staying at a hotel you might be going out for dinner you you know just it is what it is at that point right so how do you incorporate in these little like changes that you might be able to do easily when you're in your own home when you're on the go yeah absolutely we should have recorded this podcast in our hotel room we should have i could show you around we travel with our bulbs we actually travel with our bulbs no way okay because it ultimately impacts your sleep you know and we spend a lot of time and winding in the evening or getting ready early in the morning before sunrise sometimes when we're traveling so we travel with our bulbs unscrew the bulbs as soon as we get into the hotel room put our circadian friendly lighting in there we travel with our sort of motion sensor night lights for the bathroom because they're void of blue light so if we do get up in the night and go into the bathroom it activates with blue free light it's a red light they're so small and compact as well and also we travel with black electrical tape now this is going to sound really weird but we do it anyway and i swear the housekeepers that come and look at our room wonder what we're doing but we go around the room and literally take up any source of lights because you turn all the lights off you close your blackout blinds in a hotel room and there's a clock or there's a yeah there's a tv yeah yes there's always something so black electrical tape we cover them all the aircon panels and then just make the environment completely blackout so we we take sleep that seriously that we even travel like that as well and what about if your room places like the uk in summer it's fine but in the winter it has no sunlight in the morning how do you guys manage that exactly and that's where red light therapy comes in this is a great substitute for that so we always travel with or Katie with her beauty products like the face mask the one the neck and chest i bring my mini red light therapy device sort of about that big and i'll just have that in the in the evenings the big thing with sleep is it seasonal as well so we need to move away from in dieting we need to move away from 2000 calories for women and two and a half thousand for men if we know in the i guess the circadian world we need to move away from eight hours of sleep because it's very different in the winter the body's programmed to go into recovery mode hence why there's not as much blue light present so in the absence of blue light we recover so we're gonna do more but it becomes more difficult because we're culturally not aligned to our ancestral clock system in so much that we've got to get up and go to work and we've got things to do in the house so the winter becomes very difficult for people so that's where circadian friendly lighting comes in play so when the sun has has set you can have the red lights within the house which will then help you wind down easier and it might be that eight p.m or nine p.m is your bedtime in the winter but maybe 11 or 12 p.m in the summer because you need less sleep in the summer active season for humans so you might get by on on six hours sleep but then maybe 10 hours sleep is is required in the winter so we just got to look at the seasonality of sleep is there any population in the world that should not be doing red light therapy or is there any research to suggest certain people should not be you know doing it or you know toying around with it yeah not not that we've not that we've seen there's obviously you know studies that come out all the time that that sort of show different things with red light therapy i think it's it's one of those things that's that if you're very sensitive photosensitive you may have an issue and this is why do we always say that when you start red light therapy always do a skin sensitivity test first so if you've got say a red light face mask shine it on your forearm for a couple of minutes and then wait for half an hour and just see how you react to it but you know i would say it's it's a very very small part of the population that would be very sensitive to it but generally the studies that are coming out are showing that this non-invasive wellness practice in in terms of red light therapy has no side effects there really isn't anything that's going to be detrimental to people using it i think in terms of how long you use it they're starting starting to show some literature that you can overdo it so you don't want to be doing an hour or two every single day you probably want to stick to that three to five times a week for for 20 minutes so that's that's a new emerging area of science that has started to come out in the last few months that you probably can overdo red light therapy so you want to be be careful and follow the instructions for use every time you do a session and what can happen if you if you overdo it like what are some of the side effects or health problems that people can develop yeah you can actually start to get more and more sensitive to the light so if you're using it but this when i'm talking about this i'm not saying like every day for 20 minutes i'm saying if if someone's saying it two to three hours every single day and also you know it's it's like any frequency of light it's that sort of misalignment to nature and that's a cadian misalignment by doing you know it's like saying blue lights incredible because it keeps you alert and awake but if you're sat in front of a computer screen or day you know you'll you'll start to get tired because you're overdoing blue lights because you're overdoing the the hormone production on the endocrine system so all about when it comes to light it's all about sinking ourselves to the rising and setting of the sun and the seasonality of that rising and setting sun so if you're doing something in your wellness routine that doesn't align with that chances are it's not going to be optimal for you and overdoing a lot of red light therapy or a lot of blue light or spending a lot of time under artificial light is not going to be optimal for the individual yeah so we kind of got us just take a look at i guess how how sunlight moves and and kind of mirror that as best we can while still living in the the modern world that we live in no one wants to go and live in the middle of a cave and live like our ancestors yeah and is red light therapy safe for for babies and pregnant women is there any research to suggest otherwise so was it recommended that they check with their doctors because everyone's so different every pregnancy is different every child is different it's an area that it would be a miss of us to comment on and i think it would be foolish of us to say not knowing their individual cases so yeah i think it's best that they would would seek their own medical advice on that really no studies are suggesting it would be detrimental but everybody's situation is different so they should always speak to their medical practitioner that's looking after the pregnancy just just to check if if it's advised or not and for both of you because obviously built this brand together as a global wellness couple what is what is the biggest challenge that you have experienced and what is your proudest moment that you guys have had oh gosh there's been a few challenges over the years always are you know when you're running a business as daily challenges um i guess i mean it's just grown so quickly the challenge for me personally and andi and i might have separate challenges but for me i had the vision of what the company could be and what the brand could be and it has exceeded that vision quicker than i thought so trying to keep up with that when it was only the two of us has been a challenge obviously we've hired over the years and recruited but i think we left it too long to hire and expand our team you always have that sort of protection mentality that it's your vision it's your baby only you know how to do it and you try to run with that as long as you can and i think that's been the challenge for us is that we didn't hire quick enough and then when you do hire you've got the challenge of letting go a little bit and and trusting other people to deliver on the vision that you have and in terms of what we're proud of i mean again every day i'm so proud of what the team achieved and what we achieved but highlights personally and he has also won the same accolades is winning 40 under 40 i mean that was a huge personally yeah i really enjoy that and i'm being recognized in in forks a few times was was blessing it's something that when you are looking to be an entrepreneur and start a business you look up to those publications and then when you start a business and get featured in the knowledge yeah you're like wow that's us we made it yeah exactly that but you might have some different ones yeah i guess in in terms of challenges that the name bon charge was was the challenge because we used to be blue blocks so that's how we started and we rebranded in 2022 because we blue blocks described our glasses they block blue light and then we moved into all these different products utilizing the electromagnetic spectrum of lights and an emfs to be able to enhance our health and well-being when we were choosing a name we had our shortlist and then being a global company being global so quickly you've got to look at the trademarks and use in every single jurisdiction and it was like oh this that's the name oh no can't do that can't do it in germany or that's the name yes brilliant do it everywhere after us have got that name in in the wellness so that was very difficult but luckily bon charge was was such a cool name to use bon good charge energy and all our products give people good energy we use good energy in our products to be able to you know make people live well for longer which which is something that i'm ultimately proud of as well off the back of that that situation but i guess i guess in terms of other things that i'm really proud of is i guess the way the way our products have been researched and all the effort we put into creating the best in class wellness how it's been received by you know the the thought leaders within the industry like we're very close with you know very very influential people like mark hyman dot um steepart alert to people like that that you know when they try our products almost inevitably they come back and say oh my goodness we tried so many red devices we've tried so many pen formats this is doing what it says um and that's a proud moment because we're not pulling something off ali barba and putting our logo in selling it we are developing these products and they're very different to what's on the market and you you said at the beginning of of this podcast that you're targeted constantly with red light therapy devices constantly yeah yeah popping up every single day and they're companies that are riding a trend and i think the ones that are going to be differentiated in the market and the ones that are going to grow like the bond charges and there's other brands out there that are doing similar the ones that are getting their products vetted by these people like the hymens like partners of the world and and the ones that are then going you know what i want to partner with these guys because what they're doing is backed by science here is the literature here is the materials data sheet this is what we're using and this is how we're doing it um because there's so much distrust in the wellness world that trust is just so paramount so that's my proudest moment that we want to continue to be that that trusted brand and trusted leader across every vertical of red light therapy pence sauna whatever it may be so people don't have to find out who's the best sauna blanket company who's the best red light therapy the vice company source yeah trusted source you can get all the quality in every single big tech product um wellness product with with bond charge and when it comes to you guys looking into the future what do you predict will be the next two years of tech or technology that's going to come on the market that people should should know about or be looking into i think there's definitely more to come in red light therapy i think there's it's as you've said it seems to be blowing up everywhere it has been around for so many years it's it actually started in the equestrian industry it was used for forces to recover and it was used with astronauts i think the beauty industry ran with it earlier on and that gained popularity because anything in the beauty industry tends to blow up but before that it was in wellness but i still think there's a lot more to come in that particularly more personalized wearable such style products i think are going to come through still within that red light therapy um again with pence i think there is more to come in that space probably shaped differently to how it looks now because there is some emerging i think that's going to be a bit behind red light therapy but i think there's still some noise happening around that and more understanding needed within the community for them to understand what it does and it's and its benefits really anything else that you think we're innovating products at the moment we obviously can't say what they are but one of them is is an invention involving red light therapy that's not been done before um another one is is another concept that's going to come out again involving red light therapy and sonic vibrations that um is very much at its infancy but not many no known brands are doing it as a couple that have tried to do what we're trying to do and and that's this product's going to be released in the next couple of months we're just okay the mass production of our first batch so wow what two or three incredible products coming out that the market wouldn't have seen before um some that are on the market at the moment that um we've refined and improved that that will be coming out in the next sort of three to six months but i think the way the wellness industry is going is it's moving it's moving away and that this is where we see it happening in the next two or three years it's going to move away from this sort of elite optimization sort of environment where everyone's looking to be you know that's in it at the moment in that biohacking space very much like how can i be a hundred percent optimal to more aspirational more like how do i age well how do i improve things at the speed and level that i want to do things it will become more personalized rather than this sort of one size fits all approach of let's all do red light therapy three times a week for 20 minutes it will become more of a protocol based on one's individuality and i think what Katie was saying there and alluding to the wearables market will progress and then products to enhance individuals based on what feedback and personal biomarkers are fed back using or as woops whatever it may be can then be incorporated using products that involve red light therapy post electromagnetic field um you know blue light all those types of things to be able to optimize an individual at the rate they want to be optimized because not everyone wants to be an elite athlete not everyone wants to be an elite athlete absolutely yeah do you guys see yourself partnering with some of these like wearables like whether it's aura whoop to be like hey if you use these products and you do these protocols how it can be actually tracked and measured individually to see improvements or do you guys think you would do something like that down the line yeah we would love to we were in close contact with uh wuban and aura we've we've got good friends that work there and a lot of our community are constantly tagging both of us to show that their scores have increased off the results of our products so we we see the data come through regularly on a daily basis really but a more formal collaboration who knows watch the space maybe yeah because that would just be such a cool way to be like when you do these protocols and you use our products and you're doing your pimp or you're doing your red light what are the actual trackable differences on your biology and how is that being incorporated in because we we we love to see not just beyond what we feel we'd love to be able to track and have that information backwards right so it might be a really cool partnership to explore yeah absolutely would I agree like let's keep our fingers crossed hey yeah is there anything you want to leave our audience with in terms of you know we've gone over like circadian rhythm what to do some great tips for blue light blocking is there anything else both of you individually want to tell our audience when it comes to optimizing their health I guess one thing I'd like to touch upon because it's something that I struggle with it's just the overwhelm of information that's out there in the wellness and beauty industry it's it's so saturated it really is and sometimes it can be too daunting to actually make any decisions and and adopt any practices because you don't know which one to pick and I would say don't don't overwhelm yourself don't feel like you need to do it all in fact to optimize your wellness sometimes doing less is it is more you know you need to do in the ice bath the saunas the red light therapy that all the different modalities 10 000 steps a day pilates yoga hits it becomes too much undieted you've got to live your life you've got to be happy and ultimately your mental well-being is equally as important as your physical well-being and if it's too much for you it's overwhelming it's not sustainable right so I would always say just pick the things that actually feel good for you you know what what you feel like I actually want to do that in my day and just start with those because it is so overwhelming and get off social media don't try and follow every single different type of yeah which is too much just dial into what do I need right now is it sleep or is it my appearance or is it my weight or is it my mood pick one and just focus on that for now and then build out from there and don't get overwhelmed with it I think the US is extremely dogmatic so I was in Europe this summer for around almost about eight weeks all in and I think the Europeans have a really good balance of living their life enjoying themselves eating drinking and just being themselves and really creating joy through community and presence and connection versus I think in the US everything is so dogmatic what is on this degree it's what is going on here I can't do this I can't do that and that alone in that process you're removing joy from your life you're causing yourself stress you're you're freaking yourself out and that's unregulating your nervous system so I think there has to be a fine line in balance and I think there's a lot to take from other parts of the world whereas in America we're constantly bombarded because we're one of the highest consumer cultures in the world we're constantly bombarded with you should buy this you should do this you should do this hack you should be doing and it just gets really you get overstimulated by it you do you do but like you guys want to be the best you know I admire them you want to be the top you want to be the best and you guys are driven to do that and you're prepared to do everything to do that which is admirable but equally you look at places like the blue zones where they are a lot more balanced in their work ethic their community their family time they even do have some wine or have some pasta or carbs depending on regions but they they have joy and I think that's what is that with the wellness hacks the beauty hacks the biohacking in general we don't take away that joy because it's the joy of doing it that's going to be the key to longevity rather than the practices we're actually doing full stop thank you Andy and Katie I love speaking to you I mean I've been such a fan of your brand for like about three years now and then I bought the products and started using them so it's always wonderful to be able to sit down with founders and hear their stories and talk about the products they're innovating from the inside out not just from social media but really their why behind it it really helps people connect to the brand and I think you guys are doing an incredible job and not only turning our great products but doing the research and really trying to give people what they need so thank you for that thank you and thank you too you know in a world where we're relying on getting the right message across platforms like yourself and people like yourself are fundamental to providing the community with accurate information and a source that they can turn to as well so thank you thank you guys thank you for coming on to biohacket and we're going to share our codes everyone can actually go purchase some bond chart products after the show as well thank you so much thank you thank you for tuning into biohacket if you've enjoyed today's episode please don't forget to subscribe rate and leave a short review it really helps us reach more listeners just like you follow us on instagram at biohack dash it for exclusive content and the latest updates remember your health is in your hand and curiosity heals