Dave Asprey (8:05)

You eat clean, you train hard, you sleep well. But if the air you breathe is toxic, none of it matters. You take around 20,000 breaths a day. Each one delivers oxygen or pollution straight into your bloodstream. Most homes carry mold spores, VOCs, wildfire smoke, and microscopic particles small enough to slip past ordinary filters. Once they're in your body, they trigger inflammation, stress your mitochondria, and drain your resources long before you even feel it. That's why I use Air Doctor. Its ultra HEPA filter traps particles down to 0.003 microns. That's a hundred times smaller than what standard HEPA filters catch. Built in sensors track your air quality in real time and adjust automatically when your environment changes. Plus, it's sleek and quiet. Clean air isn't optional if you want to perform at your best when your air is clean, everything works better. It's why I have an Air Doctor in every room in my house and in my office. It's that important. Go to airdrpro.com daveasprey to breathe like it actually matters. Because it does.

VRBO Advertiser (9:12)

VRBO last minute deals make chasing fresh mountain powder incredibly easy. With thousands of homes close to the slopes, you can easily get epic Pow freshies, first tracks and more. No need for months of planning. In fact, you can't even plan. Pow Powder is on its own schedule. Thankfully, somewhere in the world, it's always snowing. All you have to do is use the Last Minute filter on the app to book a last minute deal on a slope side private rental home book.

Dave Asprey (9:40)

Now@Vervo.Com and late night carbs spike blood sugar more which Causes a crash in the middle of the night. And that's why you suddenly wake up at 2 or 3am and you can't get back to sleep. It turns out that when melatonin goes up, your body becomes insulin resistant, which is why carbs at bedtime are so bad for you. Also, a lot of protein too close to bedtime can mess with your sleep quality. Protein takes a long time to digest, and if your body is too busy using energy to digest protein, even moving blood into your stomach and your gut, well, it's not going to go into your brain and your body won't focus on repair and recovery. And yes, alcohol. It tricks you into falling asleep faster, but it absolutely destroys your REM sleep cycles. REM cycles are the dream rich stages of lighter sleep that help your brain reset and store memories. So heavy digestion will raise your core body temperature, which blocks your body's ability to enter deep sleep. Because you're supposed to be colder at night, not warmer because you just ate a steak. People try expensive supplements and some of them really work. But it doesn't quite connect your wake ups to the food chemistry that's happening inside your body. One of my favorite sleep supplements is from qualityolife.com I help to formulate it and use Code Dave too. And you can save some money. And there's one small change in food timing that will also flip a biological switch for your sleep. Eating at the correct time sends that signal to your nervous system. It's safe to rest now and it's time to rest now. So by not overeating and not eating too late, it means your gut won't compete with your brain for those resources. So you're not digesting when you should be repairing. And when you fix that food timing, your digestion magically gets better. Your hormones work better and your body chemistry shifts into nighttime mode. And here's exactly how to do it. Eat your main dinner three hours or longer before bed and keep it balanced. Lots of protein, healthy fat and some clean carbs if you're in a carb eating cycle. In fact, you might find that having some carbs in your evening meal improves your sleep. It does for a lot of people. Avoid alcohol and avoid heavy fats too close to bedtime. That's why you eat three hours before, because those will delay melatonin and strain your digestion. You want to hydrate earlier in the day and taper off liquids at night so you don't have to wake up to pee. You might find that using a little bit of Electrolyte in the water you do drink in the evening also helps it go into your cells instead of your bladder. And most importantly, align that last bite with the setting sun, or at least before full nightfall, and that single adjustment will calm your digestion. It'll shift your circadian window, stabilize your biochemistry, and tells your body that it should actually get real rest. But even if your posture is perfect and you've timed your meal at the right time, there's still one factor that can destroy all of your progress in just a few seconds. And it's something that people overlook the most, even though it's easy. We've trained ourselves to use screens and lamps and overhead lights all the time, and they're just a part of life and we think they're harmless. But that bright glow from your phone, your tv, doesn't take very much. It literally tells your brain that it's still daytime. And artificial light from screens and from LED lights literally shuts down melatonin production almost instantly. Even five seconds of bright light can change your biochemistry. And this is because throughout all of the last 2 billion years of life being on the planet, there has never been bright white and blue light in the middle of the night, ever. And if there was, it came from lightning, which lasted for less than a second. So if you're sitting there in the bathroom, brushing your teeth and wondering why you can't sleep, and you wake up all the time, just look up. That'll tell you why. Overhead LEDs and bright bulbs trick your body into thinking the sun hasn't set, or worse, that it already set and then rose again. And your body has a built in rhythm called the circadian rhythm, and it controls so much of how you age and how you feel. It's like a master clock controls when you feel wide awake, when you naturally get hungry, whether you wake up full of energy, and when you're ready to pass out for the night if you disrupt that rhythm, when with late meals or worse, with bright lights, even for a few seconds at night, your body gets really mixed signals. You feel wired when you should be sleepy and you feel tired when you should feel alert. And everyone's rhythm is broken today because we're exposed to massive amounts of unnatural light long after the sun goes down. And lights today are much brighter than they were 10 years ago or 20 or 30 years ago. So the problem gets worse and we get more and more stressed because our sleep gets worse and worse, because our lights are on all the time. Even the faint glow of a television in the background Confuses your body's Internal clock and TV backlights today are 10 times brighter than they were in 1990, and this is affecting us. And your indoor light in your living room is a hundred times brighter than natural dusk. That's enough to spike your cortisol. Tell your body it's daytime. Suppress melatonin right when your body needs it, which keeps you on high alert when you should be powering down. It's no wonder so many people lie awake at night, even when they feel exhausted. But there's an actual switch inside your brain that controls deep sleep. It's called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or scn. It's a tiny little cluster of neurons behind your eyes, and it acts as a master clock for your whole body. Think of it like a control center that tells all of you, whether it's day mode or night mode. So your eyes are not just for seeing. They feed light signals directly into the scn. And when the right light hits your eyes in the morning, that switch sets a timer for when melatonin is going to rise later at night. So if you flood your eyes with bright light after sunset, you can fuse the switch that's going to delay. Melatonin keeps your nervous system alert, which means even if you do go to sleep, it's not deep, restorative sleep. And once you understand that, the light becomes the main lever for sleep quality. Even more important than food, if you were to dim your environment to candlelight vibes and shift to warm red light at night, your nervous system gets the message that it's safe to sleep. Because unless it's really bright, red light doesn't count as light. Your body just lets it go in, and it doesn't change your timing signals. When you expose yourself to actual morning sunlight as soon as you wake up, you anchor your circadian rhythm for the entire day, which pays off with deeper sleep that night. Think about it like this. You're mimicking nature. Bright sunlight in the morning, say, hey, buddy, wake up. And then in the evening, dim firelight, red light, which is, hey, body, slow down. And when you do this magically, all of your hormones get better and your sleep gets better. When you master light, your body learns to transition automatically. Your cortisol peaks in the morning, which gives you energy. And melatonin rises at night, which gives you rest. The easiest way to have the right color light at night is truedark glasses, which I invented 10 years ago. I don't get jet lag anywhere on the planet. When the sun goes down, I put on our glasses designed for evening time. And it blocks all of the colors of light that tell my brain that it's daytime. That means I can watch Netflix and I don't pay the price when I go to bed. Just go to truedark.com to check these out and use Code Dave too, and you can save some money. It's like noise canceling headphones for your eyes. And we published a study in a medical journal showing that TrueDark glasses shift your brain waves within 15 minutes, which moves you more towards calm and away from stress. These actually work. That's why I made them. When you get your circadian rhythm fully dialed in like this, your sleep becomes way deeper. Your rim cycle's more stable, and if you use a sleep tracker, you see the difference. Your parasympathetic nervous system takes over. Your body starts repairing itself. It cleans your brain out better. It resets your hormones. And here's how to reset your circadian rhythm. And flip on your sleep switch. Wear the TrueDark glasses. They're going to filter blue, green, and violet light in the evenings, which are what talks to your SCN and breaks your circadian rhythm. Ideally, it's 90 minutes before bed. Dim every light in your home as much as you can. It's not normal to have a brightly lit home in the evening, so just dim everything. Switch your bulbs over to amber or ideally red lamps, and avoid these bright overhead fixtures shining down, because your body knows if there's bright light above you, it must be the middle of the day. And if you're going to use screens, which, let's face it, most of us do, wear the TrueDark glasses or use at least the app on your phone. That'll shift to night mode. And yes, we should all go screen free at night, but most of us don't. And if you can watch the actual sunset without sunglasses on, that sends a signal to the SCN that the night cycle is beginning. And make sure your room is completely dark. You need real blackout curtains that completely block light. Cover any LEDs, any little light sources with black electrical tape. It's going to maximize your melatonin production. And it's surprising what a little green LED will do to ruin your quality of sleep. Keep your bedroom cool, because temperature plays a meaningful role in signaling your body that it's nighttime, so you get better sleep. You want to minimize noise and electronic devices and turn off WI fi if it's really close to your bed, at least, because that is shown in studies to disrupt sleep in the morning. Spend five or ten minutes outside in real sunlight. It doesn't take very long. Just take off the sunglasses before you do it. And sadly, if you're behind a window, you don't get the full morning signal. You need to be outdoors, and that single habit locks your circadian rhythm in and it sets your sleep up that night to be much better. Look, for thousands of years, humans didn't need sleep hacks. We just followed nature's rhythm. And you don't need to fix your sleep, you just need to stop breaking your sleep. The switch has always been there, and tonight you can finally flip it on.

Podcast Disclaimer Narrator (19:12)

A human upgrade Formerly, Bulletproof Radio was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider carefully, read all labels, and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media.