We Live Indoors
Modern day life has moved indoors and this has a HUGE impact on our health.
Indoor lifestyles revolve around technology.
Electric alarm clocks wake us up in the morning, not the sun.
Electric lighting allows us stay up late into the dark of night to watch TV, play games, read.
When we move indoors and divorce ourselves from the sun and Nature we increase our chances of getting sick.
If we were spending our time outdoors, we would be exposed to Infrared, red, purple, blue and many other colors of visible and non-visible light.
Indoors, we get large spikes of blue light and nearly no infrared, red, and ultraviolet. Much of those are blocked by windows and are not present in artificial lighting.
In nature, the sun balances blue light with many other frequencies and colors. Human biology, like that of all other animals on our planet are tuned to the sun and earth. When we live indoors without thought to these signals we set ourselves up for disease.
LIGHT
Processed indoor LED and CFL does not normally include the infrared and other important spectrums.
A new article in Corporate Wellness Magazine titled “Can Blue Light Making You Sick?” notes that too much blue light could be causing diabetes, obesity, depression, and other modern diseases.
BUT Infrared and near-infrared light can help heal our cells from the blue light damage. Sunlight balances blue and red and includes a host of other benefits including entraining proper circadian rhythm, creating vitamin D and more.
Soooooooo indoor lighting is too high in blue light, and that causes damage to our cells and our eyes without the healing balance of other light spectrums that we'd get from natural sunlight. It also slows down our mitochondria causing us to have less energy.
Now let’s be realistic, we’re still going to look at our phones and TV’s at night. It’s hard not to! Fortunately, all you need to do is block the Blue light emanating from those screens.
- Use these blue light blocking glasses to cut out the blue from any source. This includes your TV, phone, tablet etc.
Just wearing these glasses 1-2 hours before you go to bed gives you the equivalent of 1.5 extra hours of sleep.
This really is the bio-hack of the century for people who have trouble falling asleep, yet don’t want to give up their TV!
Get OUTSIDE!
Get sunlight in your eyes as soon after sunrise as possible. This sets your circadian rhythm for the day and also helps with better sleep that night. Circadian rhythm uses signals from the environment to keep you healthy.
Turn out all your lights after dark.
Stop using devices when it’s dark.
Light with candles.
Go to bed shortly after dark.
We know this isn’t for everyone, but maybe you can do it just one night a week to start out. It’s really quite fun and might just lead you to a whole new level of sleep. Sunlight in the morning helps you sleep better that night. It’s also an important missing nutrient that many of us lack in our diets. We call it Vitamin S.
Because we’re also hackers, we know we can’t living in our naturally inspired cocoons every single night. So we take advantage of blue light blocking glasses on our faces and blue light blocking apps on our devices when needed. There are other ways to protect yourself when bathing in processed light.
Dim
When we’re out and under artificial light at night, we try to keep it as dim as possible. Some people aren’t as affected by bright light at night. My friend always turns up the lights at night to see better and it just makes me cringe. I get stressed. I like to dim the light or turn it out altogether. It makes me feel more relaxed and even gives me a greater sense of silence and connection at night.
Cover
Light signals come from the environment into a receptor in our eyes and change the way our brains function. But these signals can also be produced from light on our skin. Truly, light is a biological signal. If we want to ensure we are getting the “DARK” signal at night, cover up your body.
Our bodies use light as a biological signal. When indoors and exposed to artificial light, cover up. As much of you as possible, including your head, should be covered against the artificial light at night.
Only 2 studies I could find have been published on light at night on the body and not in the eyes. 1 study showed light shined behind the knee caused problems with sleep while the other study showed the opposite.
If you must be under light at night, minimize, cover and dim.
You can look like a cool hacker, even if you don’t even know how to hack a banana off a tree.
EMF
EMF – electromagnetic frequencies surround us indoors.
The wiring in your home gives off electric and magnetic fields that can and do affect your body.
The Wi-Fi router in your home, cellphone in your pocket, and cellphone tower down the road all give off invisible microwave radiation. That’s not to mention all the Bluetooth and the Wi-Fi from the neighbors home invading your space.
All this microwave radiation is hitting our body at a rate 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 times more than ever before in human history.
There have been over 5,500 peer reviewed and published scientific studies showing this microwave radiation can affect human biology.
You can minimize the effect in your home using a few key strategies.
- Turn off your wifi router at night when you go to bed. This Remote makes it easy to turn on and off
- Keep your cellphone in airplane mode while you sleep.
- If you ever put your cellphone in your pocket, turn it onto airplane mode first
- Use this radiation blocking cellphone pouch to protect your self
- Never put your phone to your head, it even tells you not to in the phone settings. Use airtube earbuds instead
- Advanced strategies include using EMF blocking paint or fabric inside the home to block out EMF from even entering. Paint can be found HERE and fabric HERE
Conclusion
Get outside as often as possible.
Our indoor environment is only killing us because we don’t pay attention.
Here is my outdoor work station and my outdoor gym. I try to get out as much as I can to give my body the correct signals that nature intended.
Mitigate the EMF in your home.
Get outside at dawn and dusk as these are the times the sun helps set your body’s circadian rhythm.
Block blue light at night and work on going to bed soon after sunset for optimal recovery and health.