#83 Effects of Blue Light and Blue Blocking Glasses - Andy Mant

Andy Mant (0:00)

In the morning, you see the sunlight, that clock is entrained, and it starts a cascade of hormone release throughout the day, which keeps you really optimal, keeps you in good shape, keeps you feeling sort of mentally well as well. You're going to sort of start off by feeling maybe a little bit groggy in the mornings, maybe you'll be more of an evening person, you'll start to slump during the day, and just not feel great. And over time, that will lead to, you know, that sort of leptin insulin resistance that we were talking about, sort of around that brain area. And then you're going to develop things like an Alzheimer's, like a dementia. A lot of people think, oh, it's just to manage sleep, but it's actually, it goes a little bit more deeper than that. It goes into metabolism, it goes into insulin resistance, and you know, you've got to think about light as the key sort of master governor of formats as well.

Siim Land (0:47)

Body, mind, empowerment.

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Andy Mant (0:56)

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Siim Land (1:00)

Welcome to the Body Mind Empowerment Podcast. I'm your host Siim Land, and our guest today is Andy Mant from Australia. Andy is an entrepreneur and the founder of BluBlox. BluBlox is a brand of blue blocking glasses that seeks to combat the negative effects of blue light on your health and well-being.

Andy, welcome to the show.

Andy Mant (1:20)

Thanks for having me on, Sin.

Siim Land (1:22)

Yeah, it's nice to see you. And I see that you're wearing, you're not wearing like the specific blue blocking glasses, but I can expect that they are still, they're filtering out some of the blue wavelengths. So what time is it there from Australia at the moment?

Andy Mant (1:38)

Yeah, so we're just after 5 p.m. in the evening. And it's really bright outside, still I'm sat right next to a window, sun's shining in, as you can probably see, the light's great. So I've just got on some BluBlox computer glasses, so there's no artificial light sort of on around me apart from my computer screen.

So all I need is just to filter out a little bit of the nasty blue spike. But I can explain a little bit more later on as well about the different types of glasses. But yeah, these are specifically computer glasses, specifically focus on the light that's coming straight out of this screen at me and filtering it out. So yeah, it's all very positive stuff. And yeah, if I was sat in, for instance, if I was sat in a room where I had LED light shining down on me, it was starting to get a little bit dark outside, or maybe it was a cloudy day, then I would wear a pair of these, which are yellow glasses. They just filter out a lot more of the blue. But they also make things a lot brighter in terms of all the other colors that are coming through. So it actually makes your day a lot brighter.

And then if it was completely dark, so post sunset outside, I would wear blue blocking glasses as opposed to blue filtering glasses, which are these ones here with the red lens, because we don't want any blue or green light after dark. So that's the reason why I've got these on right now.

Siim Land (3:11)

Yeah, yeah, it is indeed like, we would talk about the differences later on, but yeah, first of all, maybe we can start off with like, what are the negative side effects of blue light exposure?

Andy Mant (3:22)

Yeah, absolutely. Well, it really depends on context, Siim. So it really depends on what time of the day you're talking about when it comes to blue light and any kind of color of light, whether it be visible or invisible. So let me talk about the positives of blue light first. So when you wake up in the morning, your first sort of light that you should be seeing is a sunrise. And the reason being is during the sunrise, you get a sort of very well balanced spectrum of colors, but you also get specific frequencies of blue light there as well. And what that does in the morning is it raises your cortisol levels initially, which helps you sort of feel awake and alert. A lot of people put cortisol down to stress, anxiety and depression. I'll talk a little bit more about that later, but in the context of light, it's the first light that you see when it's a sunrise will spike that cortisol and only have positive effects of making you feel alert and awake.