Sleep education and awareness to prevent sleep deprivation
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1:You're listening to k, Berkeley 90.7 FM. And this is method to the madness coming at you from the Public Affairs Department here at Calex celebrating the innovative spirit of the bay area. I'm your host [inaudible] and today we are lucky to have with us in studio, Karen Schwartzback, founder of pivotal sleep. Hey Karen, how's it going? Hey, great. Thanks for having me. So A, we're going to talk about sleep today. Yes, we are. And it's, it's something that we all do a lot. It is yesterday's gone quite a bit of our, uh, nights sleeping. Yeah. It's [00:00:30] amazing because it's something we all do a lot, but we probably don't give a lot of thought to it. Right, right. So, um, so I'd like to start off by asking you about, you founded a company dedicated to sleep yes. And sleep education and awareness. So I want to get into that and what you guys teach. But first let's talk about the problem statement. I always ask this a founder's. Yeah. Why did you start this organization
Speaker 2:way back when? I was interested in helping new families actually with the sleep that they were not [00:01:00] getting because their young children weren't sleeping. Uh, once children were sleeping, parents were sleeping better. And what I realized were, was that a lot of my clients had jobs that were, um, very vital to the wellbeing of the community, the world at large. I had pilots and doctors and nurses and firefighters who were the parents of these children. And I often wonder to myself with me being in the hands of a sleep deprived [00:01:30] adult, what might that you know, do in terms of compromising my health and wellbeing? And so not only for their own health and the health of their families, but also just in the world. Uh, people walking around, sleep deprived, driving around, sleep-deprived, flying around, sleep deprived. It really became clear to me that this was, um, sort of epidemic. As a matter of fact, the Center for Disease Control, um, says that sleep is considered a national epidemic.
Speaker 1:Okay. So, um, you saw an opportunity [00:02:00] yes. To, um, to address adult sleep issues and make yourself safer, it sounded like. Yes. In part, yeah. Okay. So tell us about your background. Like how did you, uh, you obviously had some, some angle here that made you think of this. How did what, tell us about how you [inaudible]. Great question
Speaker 2:came to. So, um, after the birth of my children, I have twins that are almost 19 now with different sleep worries now than when they were babies. Um, I was, um, contracted as an educator at a, [00:02:30] a bay area hospital to educate new and expectant parents. And as a subset of that, I launched a company to support new parents. And the only thing these new parents wanted to really talk about, no matter what I wanted them to talk about was how do I get two babies to sleep and just the impact of sleep deprivation on their own health and wellbeing. And so I sort of toyed around with the idea of helping people with their sleep and um, a client [00:03:00] approach me and ask if I could help her out. She was my Guinea pig. That was 12 years ago and found that I, from a lot of research and personal experience had dialed in a little bit to some sleep solutions for young children.
Speaker 2:And so I began to work with families in earnest, um, as sort of a byproduct of my workshop and education programs and, um, never looked back. Actually. I realized I had a knack for it. I was able to drill down into what makes people tick [00:03:30] in terms of achieving or not, um, good sleep. And people used to ask me a lot if I would work with adults. And I used to say once they're walking and talking, you know, I don't want them anymore because they, you know, there's a lot of pushback because, um, we want to do what we want to do in our days, in our evenings and sleep sometimes get short shrift when there's so many other things that we want to do further along. Doing more research, reading Harvard School of sleep medicine, [00:04:00] the Centers for Disease Control, um, uh, the national sleep foundation, seeing the epidemic proportion of sleep deprivation amongst Americans, 50 to 70 million Americans suffer from some degree of sleep loss.
Speaker 2:Some it's medical in nature, but I would say probably the majority, it's behavioral. And what I realized was that the behaviors of children aren't that different than the behaviors of adults in terms of structuring sleep in a way to [00:04:30] achieve optimal arrest. Um, and so I started, took the angle of, okay, this is what I do with young children. How different is it for adults and the difference between adults and children's that parents show children or dictate to children what they should do. We as adults or college students or high school students, we have our own minds. And so it's sort of at will to change behaviors to improve sleep health. And so that was really what launched this new entity for me. And the response has been [00:05:00] really remarkable.
Speaker 1:AndW when did so the company called pivotal sleep?
Speaker 2:Yes. As you launch it. So pivotal sleep is about two years old. Okay. And, um, my other entities started in 2003, so I've been in the sleep world for about 12 years. Okay. Now, uh, let's just [inaudible]
Speaker 1:let's try to establish, and we're talking to Karen shores, back of pivotal sleep. She's the founder here on method to the Madison k Alex Berkeley. And let's talk about, I was looking through your website, let's educate a little bit on our listeners. So the, you talk about the three [00:05:30] elements of good sleep. Yeah. Duration, continuity and depth. Can you kind of define for us a little bit about those three? Like what, how do those three things work together to provide good sleep?
Speaker 2:Right. And so when you look at those three elements as important, are the precursors to, um, getting a good depth of sleep for a proper duration and good quality. So duration, how many hours of sleep do we need? People always that question. There are people that say, I'm great on five hours sleep. [00:06:00] There are people that say, I get eight hours and I could use more. So there really isn't a magic number. Um, the national sleep foundation and most entities you speak with will say approximately seven to eight hours of sleep for adults. Teenagers, ironically, can't go to sleep as early as adults or younger children because of the onset of Melatonin, which we can get into or, or not. Um, but in terms of the duration of sleep, there is some degree of variability. Uh, there was a recent, not [00:06:30] maybe not so recent study by the University of California, San Francisco, and they found that there's about 3% of the adult population that can sustain themselves well on six hours or less of sleep.
Speaker 2:But for the 97% of the rest of us, six hours isn't really adequate sleep. So let's say you get seven hours of sleep. What about the quality of your sleep? There are a lot of apps out there. There are fitbit's and misfits and all these different tools that you can use. It can actually measure the kind [00:07:00] of sleep that you're getting. Am I getting deep sleep? Am I getting light sleep for the duration I'm in bed? How many hours am I actually sleeping? There really isn't a magic number in terms of how many hours of rem sleep versus non rem sleep. You get rem sleep and non-rem sleep together. A sleep cycle is about 90 to 120 minutes for adults. And so, um, there's a sleep specialist that calculates about five hours of five cycles of, um, of total sleep [00:07:30] to get restorative sleep, which turns out to be about seven and a half hours of sleep.
Speaker 2:People wake up in the middle of the night and people complain that they can't go back to sleep. So broken sleep isn't as restorative as continuously, but the truth of the matter is a sleep cycle is only 90 to 120 minutes. So we all actually wake up in the course of sleep, but go back to sleep. It's those people that wake up and can't go back to sleep that then have compromised, uh, total restorative rest. So when they wake [00:08:00] up in the morning, they're not ready to get out of bed because they're still tired. Um, but their day begins and they have to get up and, you know, get on with her day.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, um, have you talked about in terms of the three elements, the duration, um, given the fact that everybody's unique and you can't prescribe for everybody, but right. The general guidelines is between seven and eight. Correct. And then, um, the two other factors, continuity. So you're, I think what I heard you say every 90 to 120 minutes, [00:08:30] you're gonna kind of rouse and reposition. Exactly. And then that's the second component and a third is depth. Right? And that's where you could get a fitbit or something like that to measure that. Is that Ram when we hear rem sleep depth,
Speaker 2:right. So, so there are, you know, rem and non rem sleep are both important elements of the sleep cycle. So, um, when you're in rem sleep, your body is oddly in a state of paralysis. So your body doesn't, that's how the fitbit actually measures it. It's measuring movement. [00:09:00] So my body's not moving. I'm in my deeper state of sleep, but wrap, my brain is active, but my body's very still. When I'm in a lighter phase of sleep, my brain is in a lighter phase. But my body is more active. So how many cycles of rem or non rem sleep you might be getting, um, is variable as well. So it's not like I have to get six people ask me, well how can I ensure that I get more cycles of Rem Sleep? Well 90 to 120 minutes is both of your four stages of lighter sleep, [00:09:30] non rem sleep and then one stage of, of rem sleep.
Speaker 2:So it's your non rem cycles cumulatively are longer than your rem cycles. Um, but cumulatively it creates the restorative nature of your total sleep intake. So it's hard to kind of explain what it is I'm trying to say. But not everybody is getting full cycles because they're waking up from precursory reasons, which I'd be happy to go into and explain to you why people are waking up half way [00:10:00] through the night and they don't know if it's a rum or non-rem cycle that they're waking out of. Right. Okay. Why are they waking up? So not dissimilar to young children. What happens during the day is impacting how you're sleeping at night? So things that people don't think about as impacting the depth of their sleep or the quality or duration of their sleep are things that we might do before we go to bed. For example, low blue light exposure, the smart phones, um, I iPads [00:10:30] computers that is emitting a low blue light, which actually suppresses the body's capacity to produce Melatonin and it can actually impact and disrupt our sleep.
Speaker 2:So for those of you out there who are on your computer until you shut it off and turn out the lights, you may fall asleep, but you wake up and you're not sure why you're tired, but the low blue light exposure is actually suppressing the body's ability to produce Melatonin. That's one. Another might be alcohol. A lot of people [00:11:00] have their glass of wine. It sort of sends them off to sleep. But when the body metabolizes wine, it can be dehydrating and there's a sugar content and so it actually can wake people up. So there's things that are happening in the earlier part of our day that's actually impacting why we're waking up in the middle of the night or not being able to fall asleep. And I did a talk over at Lawrence Livermore national labs about a month ago. There are about a hundred people in the room and I asked the question, how many people have a hard time falling asleep?
Speaker 2:And maybe 20% of the audience raised [00:11:30] their hand. And the next question was, how many of you have a, you can fall asleep but wake up. And the vast majority of people raise their hands. So that led me to believe that for many people, it's not the falling asleep part, it's the staying asleep part. I'm awake at three o'clock in the morning and I can't go back to sleep. So what do I do? I look at my clock and now I'm doing math and the light is red and stimulating and suddenly I'm awake. And then I'm thinking, okay, if I can fall back asleep, I've got three more hours until I have to get up and be in class or whatever [00:12:00] it might be. And so we're now disrupting our body's ability to go back to sleep because now we're in an active state of thought
Speaker 1:and stress and stress. It's, it's like a downward cycle of it. Yeah,
Speaker 2:exactly. And a lot of people also think they should stay in bed until they fall back asleep. And most experts will say, if you're laying in bed awake and you can't fall asleep within 15, 20 minutes, you should actually get out of bed and go to a quiet dimly lit place. Not Look at your iPhone or your computer. Don't watch TV. Um, and [00:12:30] um, have a, maybe a light behind your head and read quietly or listen to some relaxing music or play guitar or something that's very relaxing. And when you start to tell drowsy to go back to bed.
Speaker 1:Okay, interesting. Well, we're talking to Karen shores, Bach of founder of pivotal sleep here on methods of the magnets. KLX Berkeley 90.7 FM. And we're talking about sleep. So, um, thank you for going over kind of the basics. I did want to ask them. Alec Melatonin. Yes. I'm not very familiar [00:13:00] with it. Can you just explain to how, what is it, how does it get created and how does it relate to sleep?
Speaker 2:Great question. So, um, I like to call Melatonin the body's natural sleep drug. And so in between our eyebrows, if you will, we have the pineal gland and the pineal gland secretes Melatonin. Melatonin is the sleep hormone that our bodies use. Melatonin onsets around nine o'clock at night and, um, allows us, you know, seven to nine hours of peak melatonin [00:13:30] production. And so without Melatonin, there are some people that take synthetic Melatonin. There's probably some part of the population that doesn't produce adequate Melatonin. But in essence, if we allow ourselves to utilize the Melatonin within our system and not compromise it by the low blue light or other things that we might be doing that as suppressing it, that should be enough to help asleep. For a lot of people they'll use melatonin because they're doing other things that are compromising Melatonin's function. And [00:14:00] so synthetic Melatonin or other sleep aids that they may use is sort of taking the place of what we can actually create [inaudible] nature has created for us.
Speaker 2:Nature has created for us and Melatonin is Melatonin and it's not like it's changed. Circadian Rhythm is 24 hours in a few minutes. And so the body functions before the industrial revolution, before light bulbs, when it got dark, man went to sleep and when the sun came up the man woke up and our bodies are still in that rhythm and Melatonin is actually [00:14:30] stimulated by darkness. And so the low blue that I was talking about earlier is suppressing that about the body's capacity to produce it. But ironically, being out in sunlight, which actually stimulates cortisol, which is sort of the stress or a fight or flight chemical, our bodies produce can actually serve later in the date to expedite Melatonin when we move into darker light or sunset or what have you. So melatonin and cortisol, if I can use a biblical sort of term of David [00:15:00] and Goliath. So I like to think of Melatonin as David, you know, kind of this, you know, groovy, scruffy beard accounting guy and cortisol being Goliath. This big hairy monster, well Melatonin can't bring down cortisol but cortisol can sort of squash Melatonin. And that's how I describe it to folks that I'm working with because it is a very visual that you can see that if I'm doing things that are going to actually compromise the body's ability to suppress Melatonin, Melatonin can't get up and over whatever it is that's [00:15:30] getting in the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's interesting. You know, I have a three year old and uh, putting her to sleep is a tough yeah. And um, we've been trying to find the right time and we were debating this. My wife was debating, well, when there's an optimal time, the Melatonin is being released yet we don't quite know what it is. I mean, we're putting her to bed too late. You think the later you put the child to bed, the more tired there'll be, the more they go to sleep. But there's this window of opportunity. Yeah. Right. So how does that work?
Speaker 2:Totally counterintuitive. And, and [00:16:00] I've worked with over 500 clients privately. Um, and I've seen time and time and time again the resistance of an earlier bedtime. But the truth of the matter is if a child's put down after their Melatonin window has closed, so let's say your daughter is in the bath and she's having a great time and she comes out of the bath, her Melatonin that was peaking because she was in warm water and elevated body temperature crashes when the body temperature drops and cortisols are at takes over. And so she's zipping around and [00:16:30] full of energy and you think, well that's going to tire her out and she's going to go to sleep. But her, you can't like lift the head and spin around and get the Melatonin, you know, come to the top like cream. And so it's ironic that an earlier bedtime is actually more productive and yields an easier put down than a later bedtime, which is sort of counterintuitive to folks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it really is. So I wanted to go down, I wanted to go down that path for a little bit. So, um, kind of best practices. [00:17:00] Yeah. So, uh, I wanted to talk about kind of different types of people's. Let's talk with babies. Okay. That's more you started your extra money. So, um, given we know all babies are different and all people are different, but you've been doing this for awhile now it sounds like, was it 12 years, 12 years? So, uh, what are some of the top tips for a new parent that you can give to help them, you know, deal with this stress of having this little person who wakes up all the time and cry?
Speaker 2:I love that question so [00:17:30] much because some of the things I'm going to tell you are also applicable to adults. And so again, once again, the things that we do before we put the body to bed can impact the body's ability to sleep. So for children, and I can also say most of these things for adults, room environment. So National Sleep Foundation, um, talks about having optimal room environment and most sleep experts will talk about optimizing the room environment. Once again, the body reads, light is awake, [00:18:00] dark is asleep. So for little children and for adults having a room that's dark, cool and quiet, that's really information gathering on the body's part that says, oh, I see it's dark. It's telling my body Melatonin production time and the white noise if you will use it or no noise at all. But having a quiet room environment can also calm the mind.
Speaker 2:If there's a white noise element, it's sort of, um, I call it ps noise. It's sort of in the distance, but it just a very settling and relaxing to the subconscious. [00:18:30] There actually some white noise players that have been, um, designed by, um, scientists or they're using the brainwaves as um, sort of the rhythm of the white noise. Um, the temperature. Cool. I say cool is the rule. A cooler room is much more conducive to sleep than a warm room. 65 to 72 degrees peak, whether they be little children or adults. So a cooler room is more optimal, a dark room, a quiet room. Um, if you have clocks or [00:19:00] stimulating day decor or a video camera that has a light shining in the baby's face, that can be very distracting as either as a stimulating element if it's red or if it's green or blue as a low blue light element that's suppressing Melatonin.
Speaker 2:So having a room environment that's conducive to sleep, having a routine. And this goes for adults too. It may seem strange to have a ritual around sleep. So we're doing these three things, four things before we go to bed, whether it be a little child who's [00:19:30] having a bath, a diaper change into pajamas, a final feeding, a story, a poem, prayer, whatever it might be. Those elements are conditioning at the body receives at the same way in the same order each and every time the body starts to expect it and anticipate it for adults as well. There's a lot of adults, many adults who have ritual around their sleep. So they may turn off their electronics an hour before they go to sleep. They may take a warm bath, they may do deep [00:20:00] breathing, relaxation, yoga, whatever might be relaxing for them. Perhaps they have a, a chair that they go to and they write their worry list.
Speaker 2:So they take out of their mind that things they have to do tomorrow or the worries that they have on their mind so they can sort of cleanse the palate, if you will, to then move into a sleeping phase. So I have a colleague that calls it the sleep room, not the bedroom because parents, people have a tendency to do a lot of things in their bedroom, TV, computers, Bill Paying, [00:20:30] reading, I'm moving it or perceiving it as a place to sleep. It can oftentimes be soothing and relaxing for people because they're not stimulated by all the other things that might go on in a room. So for children to have these routines and, um, environmental, um, triggers, the same applies for adults. The third thing I would say this is really, really important for children and a lot of parents miss this is nutrition. [00:21:00] Um, I call it fueling the car for the body to be able to drive the distance like the car drives with gas net, we need to optimally fuel it.
Speaker 2:So a lot of times a three year old might be very carb-heavy crackers, fruits, vegetables, which can be wholesome. You could grow them in your backyard or get them at whole foods or wherever you might get them. But the carbs are carbs, protein sources are more sustainable and can actually help the body fuel itself for more prolonged, more productive sleep for adult, spicy foods, [00:21:30] alcohol, obviously a lot of liquids, red bowls, um, uh, heavy meats. Um, there are a lot of foods that can actually impact the body's ability either to fall asleep or stay asleep either because of the metabolizing in the system or the spicy foods can be disruptive to the digestive process or what have you. Surfing Kathleen's huge. Um, I had a cup of coffee on my way in here and I'm one of those people that can turn off the lights after coffee later in the evening.
Speaker 2:But for most people having [00:22:00] coffee, um, after three o'clock, so maybe five hours before you go to bed, for most people not having caffeine, whether it be a soda, a Red Bull, uh, coffee and even decaffeinated beverages still have a degree of caffeine in them. Um, so that's another, um, no, no, if it, if it bothers you. And that's what I say to everybody, whether it be an adult or a child. Just to your point, we're all different and caffeine may not bother me, but my computer might and the computer [00:22:30] may not bother you, but caffeine might. And so when I'm working with um, adults, I have them actually keep a baseline sleep diary. So I'm not going to give you any solutions. I just want you to observe yourself, take yourself into the laboratory, track your behaviors. This is what I did today and this is how I slept tonight.
Speaker 2:So in the morning, reflecting back, here's what I did today. And then the morning that I wake up in the middle of the night, did I have a hard time falling asleep in the middle of the night? I'll look at that. I did. What did I do the previous day? That may have been that trigger. [00:23:00] Let's see what happens if I turn off my computer 90 minutes before I go to bed. Let's see what happens if I don't have that glass of wine, whatever it might be, and slowly but surely we can start to pull out the triggers and leaving the things that really aren't disruptive to our sleep. Well,
Speaker 1:we were speaking with Karen Schwartzbach, she's the founder of pivotal sleep and she's given a great tips on how to manage your sleep. But I have a question for you. You were talking about babies and a little bit about adults, but you know this, this show, I've interviewed a lot of people who would have startups in. Then we're also on [00:23:30] the UC Berkeley campus and Vlade students and students and people working in startups. They have weird schedules and it's very difficult to have the routine that you're talking about. So how do you prescribe better sleep habits for people in that situation where they can't always control and they might
Speaker 2:have to stay up until one o'clock in the morning and doing something and yeah, they've on their on deadline and that just happens in their lives. I think one of the greatest challenges I have working in or near the silicon valley is that we're dealing with a lot [00:24:00] of high tech companies and a lot of very busy executives or startup folks or what have you. They're burning the midnight oil and if they understood the longterm impact, because if I'm tired tomorrow morning, I'm going to grab myself a triple Cappuccino and I kind of good to go. I may start to fade around three o'clock, I just grab another one and I continue to go. But if folks understood the longterm impact of sleep deprivation, whether it be heart disease, obesity, depression, [00:24:30] um, eh, the ailments that can be a result of extended and prolonged sleep deprivation is pretty scary.
Speaker 2:But people don't look forward that way there. There are sort of in the moment. So what can I do now to preserve the sleep that I am getting? I had a law firm in New York. Um, the um, wellness director said our attorneys sleep four hours a night and they're not going to get more sleep than that. So please don't come here and tell them to sleep eight hours because that's not gonna, that's not the prescription for them. So what can they do? So it's to make the sleep that they [00:25:00] get count. And I'm not advocating four hours of sleep, so don't miss quote me here. But for students who have finals, for folks that are in startups and maybe are talking to folks in India and they have to be up in the middle of the night for con for conference calls or what have you, there's been some research, there's a doctor in San Diego who actually has done some research around the optimal timing for physical, restorative repair.
Speaker 2:So I'm not talking about the optimal time to sleep. It's the optimal time for your body to get its physical [00:25:30] and psychological cellular repair and those hours between 10 and 2:10 PM and 2:00 AM so I have almost 19 year old twins and um, I've had many conversations with them about should I go to sleep at 11 o'clock and get up at three and study or should I stay up till two and then go to bed? So we sort of have an agreement that rather you go to bed between 10, 10 and 11, and then you get up pre-dawn and do your studying because you're actually going to be more alert and you're gonna retain more information [00:26:00] than if you burned through and then just collapse it three to get up at six and start all over again. So that's just one example. It may not work for everyone, but it's just a suggestion.
Speaker 2:And, um, this doctor in San Diego feels like she's really onto something. I don't have her name to give you. Um, but I've been very curious to see really the longterm impact on the body's, um, ability to say healthy sleeping that way before the industrial revolution. People actually slept in two, four hour blocks, they'd go to bed when the [00:26:30] sun went down, got up to milk, the cows, went back to bed and slept till six or seven o'clock. So it's really the advent of the light bulb that has really changed the way we function in the work world. Yeah. You know,
Speaker 1:it's interesting, there's so many different tactics. Like my, um, you know, when I started to learn a little bit more about sleep and, and I would push myself in sleeping Ivers like five hours a night. But, um, when I started doing is, that'll still happen during the week sometimes. But then I'll, I won't let that happen [00:27:00] more than a couple of days in a row and then I'll try to do that catch up. Right. So it's not, we're not on the long term. Like in a short term, if there's a window I have to do it, I have to do it right. But I'll always try to catch up. Right. And that seems to have made me feel happier and better. And
Speaker 2:so people ask that question a lot. Can I catch up? If I have a sleep debt, can you race the sleep debt in the short term? You can probably reduce it, but if that's your lifestyle year upon year upon year and you're sleeping till noon on Saturday and then you're back on [00:27:30] track, you know, Sunday night at late hours, there may be longterm impact. So if I can share just a small anecdote. Um, um, a friend's wife is an executive at Walmart and she gets about four hours of sleep and she's in her early thirties and has never really valued sleep. She's hard charging, very goal oriented, what have you. She had a doctor's appointment and the doctor said that he saw some precursory heart disease. First question he asked her was how well do you sleep? [00:28:00] And she said not well, and you know, before we start medicating you, I want you to start focusing on your sleep. Which was really a surprise to her because she didn't realize that that could potentially be the antidote for her longterm health.
Speaker 1:Well also, I think at that age we all feel a little bit indestructable sleep. You know you're trying, there's a lot of people you're trying to serve and sleeps and easy one to sacrifice and it's only for you. Yes, that's the way I used to look at it as I've caught a lot of different people, a lot of different masters. I can just cut that out and I can serve all these different masters [00:28:30] but you know we're finding out more and more as a science comes out that that's a bad idea because you won't be around to serve all this.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and I would like to just mention to the Harvard School of sleep medicine talks about the three pillars of health. It's physical activity, nutrition and sleep. So I like to think of it as a tripod. If the one leg on the tripod is missing, that tripod can't stand and so people could just visualize that, yes, I eat well, I get my daily jog but I'm completely sleep deprived. At what point is [00:29:00] that going to catch up with me? I want to give just an a comment to your question about students have to stay up late and folks that are working long hours, just in terms of the low blue light, if being on the computer or our other devices is your device, you can actually download, um, a program that will start changing the backlight of your computer from blue to yellow as the day goes on onto it's set to the clock and um, one's called Pango bright and the other f flux and [00:29:30] I may not be exactly spot on, but if you Google it, you can find, um, a program that you can download that will actually help, um, change the lighting so you can be on the computer longer at night if you, and of course your brain still active, but at least your melatonin production isn't being compromised by that low blue light.
Speaker 2:There's also a company called low blue lights.com, founded by two, um, uh, professors at John Carroll University in Ohio. And, um, they worked for GE light bulbs for 30 years, making the brightest light bulbs they could [00:30:00] until they realized in their older age that that was actually compromising people's, uh, sleep quality. So they founded low blue lights and they're about 80 something years old. And I tease them and say, is their pennants for stealing less people asleep for so long? And so they have a whole line of products that are scientifically designed, low blue light glasses, um, screens that can go over your iPhone, your iPad, your computer, your TV, and it's just a sheet of amber plastic. But it's not [00:30:30] just you go to a tap plastics and get a piece of yellow plastic that's very scientifically designed to help preserve Melatonin production while you're, um, on these devices that otherwise could impact.
Speaker 1:Well, great tips from our guests today. Karen Shores Bach, the founder of pivotal sleep. So thanks for coming into studio design, Karen, and to learn more about her work and how you can get in touch with her. You go to pivotal sleep.com. Is that right? Any, any other way they should get into contact? That's the best way to reach me. Okay, great. And you've been listening to a method [00:31:00] to the madness day on KLX Berkeley. I'm your host. Selling is our, thanks for joining everybody and have a great Friday.
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