89. Progress Note #6 - Do Blue-Light Blocking Glasses Actually Work?

Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Darsha, and I'm Dr. Altamash Raja, and welcome to Medicine Redefined. A podcast where we will explore the often overlooked but necessary components of health, what we consider to be the fundamentals. We will investigate topics and practices that can give you and your patients the best chance to optimize a healthy lifestyle. It's time to move the needle forward and put the health back in health care. All right, in this episode, Altamash and I deep dive into whether blue light blocking glasses are actually effective. Now obviously they've gained a lot of popularity, and myself included, we'll wear one. I use a daytime one, I use an evening one, and then I even have a late night one, and I talk about my experience in this episode. But the data is very interesting, and so without further ado, let's get to it to make sure you're not wasting your money, or hey, maybe it is worth the investment. Let's see. All right, Altamash, what's up, man? We're back here with another progress note. I am doing well. How are you, buddy? Good. Good, hanging in there. I'm excited to talk about this topic that we have coming up right now. Yeah, by the way, you're here. It looks great right now. Thanks, dude. Just got out of the shower. You know, a little messy up in the front, and a little taper on the side for me yesterday, so yeah. Thank you. Yeah, my, you know, my uncle, he's always like, every time you got to get a shower, you got to put some oil in there. You got to put some oil in there. I'm like, dude, it's not. It's some coconut oil. Yeah. That's not why my hair it is, but he's, he swears that that's the reason he's got this beautiful cylinder. Oh. Like I'm like, yeah, okay. 100%. 100%. But any time of product in your hair, it's going to lead to hair loss, you're not putting coconut oil. You're stamping your hair. Yeah. Definitely. Cool. All right, man. Well, let's get into this. Anyways, that's not what we're here to talk about, right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So let's get into it, right? So this progress note is going to be about blue blockers and something that I really wanted to touch on because I've been wearing blue blockers now, probably for the past three years through various companies. But, and, you know, obviously there's been a lot of talk about them. Light has been light and also vision and also screen time and sleep have kind of been combined into this concept where we now talk about blue blockers and what we can do to optimize sleep, optimize our circadian rhythms and help our eyes as well. However, what I've noticed and what a lot of science out there shows too is that, hey, people aren't doing this correctly or, hey, is there actually a benefit to wearing blue blocks? Right. Yeah. I think that that can probably apply to a lot of from things, right? I mean, even some of the best things that we have with respect to exercise or nutrition and water, right? We talked about that. And to be fair, we've given, we've touched on this, right? So really massive. I couldn't, I don't know, way back when in the archives, what we can find in a link in the show notes. Yeah, I think that was a pretty good discussion where we touched on light a lot and maybe we'll recap a little bit of that here just so people understand it. But, you know, I got to say, I think you're probably more passionate about this than I am. I think for me, what we're going to touch on later is, you know, I would probably consider this. It wouldn't be fair to characterize blue, blue blocking glasses and wearable technology. Is that what do you think of it as such? I would, only because it's been brought up in that biohacking space where a lot of the other wearables have come from, I feel. But I wouldn't, I wouldn't put as wearable with like technology and giving you kind of like data and stuff, right? Not yet. It's not yet, yeah, exactly not yet. I think for, for me, again, we're going to talk about more later on, this is something that I experimented with and I think I am, I am interested in, and we can talk about offline how, how my, my do it again and explore down the path, because I'm not sure if I did it the right way. And I'm curious, my screen time has increased, but, you know, before, before I get ahead of myself here, maybe it's worth starting with why just a quick brief overview or recap rather of what blue light is, you know, we could touch on different frequencies. We recently did, actually you did a podcast with West talking about red light and all the potential benefits and really the utility of that. What do we, what's the high level stuff that we kind of need to know that you think that, you know, people haven't understanding of what blue light really is? Sure. So, you know, we all go through elementary school, let me kind of learn the colors of the rainbow, right? Roy G. Biv. And so what we learn is red is one one out of the spectrum and then you have the blues and violets on the other side of the spectrum. And so that blue light is a higher frequency light that really gets emitted through our screens, right? And so when you look at why the sky is blue, when the sun refracts, you know, through all the droplets and everything through the atmosphere, it's given off of that blue spectrum of light. And then when you have the sunset, you start to see more of that red and orange, right? So that's kind of just the primer in terms of it's all wavelength dependent. Whatever wavelength these light photons go through is going to show you a different spectrum or a different color on that spectrum. So blue being, you know, an ultraviolet and those being very high frequency is what's coming out of our computers. And so one of the thought processes that we, as a society because we're increasing our screen time, right? I mean us as doctors, I mean, I was thinking about all the time. I'm always staring at some screen, whether it's my work computer, whether it's my laptop, whether it's my iPhone, maybe the only break I get is when I'm sleeping or when I'm at the gym. And even at the gym, I'm looking at the screen to see the rest timer. So it's hard to catch a break. But essentially the thought is that blue light can cause strain in your eye because whenever blue light, so the way the eyes work in vision is that the light goes through your lens and then it has to kind of come together to a crossing point to form an image, which is typically on the on the right now. And so what happens with blue light is that this image doesn't occur at the focal point. It doesn't occur where you actually want it to to make it easier. So what your eyes have to do is it has to strain. It has to actually change its shape in order to bend that light so that it can focus it better, right? And so now there's this concept, right, which is blue blockers is, wait, so blue light might be damaging for us, one from an eye perspective, but also because blue light gets emitted from our screens and everything, when you think about night time and blue light is known to keep us awake and known to kind of help our circadian rhythm understand that hey, we're now seeing the sun, there's blue light, we're now awake. When you have that at night, it's going to confuse and trick your body. And so the thought process is if you wear blue blockers, you can now increase your melatonin, suppress that blue light, which will help you go to sleep quicker. So it's kind of twofold. One is from the screen prevention or the strain prevention from the screen as well as the sleep and optimizing it. Right. Yeah, I think that those and that we could talk about the perpetrated mechanisms for all those. And I think just to kind of recap a little bit because I think about it a little bit differently. I think you use the word frequency and I think of that as more energy, right? And so a lot of people or some people might have remembered or have looked at wavelengths. So I think that's inverse in terms of frequency or energy. And so blue light will have lower wavelengths. So there'll be shorter wavelengths, but they have tremendously high energy, which is why we can't have higher exposure to that. And that's that's what causes the strength. Whereas red light, most people will feel either a dawn if you're looking at the sun. It's much more comfortable and you can probably look at it and you can look at that gorgeous sunset probably for a lot longer. And so and so that's kind of the idea. And in all these light makes again, electromagnetic particles in these rays, we also describe them depending on how far you go in the spectrum. You also have gamma rays, you have UV rays, all that kind of stuff. So again, there are natural exposures as well, right? The sun also has tremendous amount of natural light. And then the other thing I know that really grinds your gears is, you know, kind of people wearing it kind of in the opportunity times, right? And so you also know that the natural blue light can be beneficial things that we'll talk about some interesting stuff on TVI actually recently published as well. I'll mention that a little bit later, but it's everywhere, right? I mean, so what's happening is that you have these particles that kind of collide with the air molecules in this scatter throughout and that's what essentially what gives the sky. It's blue shade, not because it's reflecting off the ocean, at least I don't think, right? So that's another interesting thing that it's always there. But what's happening in 2023, well, really a decade ago, it's everything, which is why I mentioned that the, you know, maybe five minutes ago is, especially recently in terms of how the podcast is going for us, how things are going on in terms of our work outside of here, everything is behind the screen, everything is behind my iPad, it's between iPad to computer, and you know what's crazy is if I'm getting a break from the computer, like you said, it's going to the phone screen and if it's not, then it's going to be looking at the TV and the gym and that kind of stuff. So it's not, I don't think at the end of the day, just to give people a little sneak peak, we're not going to say that stop looking at that because that's not going to be realistic, but maybe we could talk about some tactics and people can use to kind of decrease exposure, decrease potential pathology that could build up down the road. So with that, I think maybe the next place to kind of go is, when we, what do you think? You think that talking about the timing of the glasses or in terms of the types of glasses and the types of lights to avoid, what do you think is the best place to go next? Yeah, I think talking, you know, if we're going to go through our soap, just talking about the subjective, right? Like kind of our experiences with it and I'll talk a little bit about my journey, right? So I was in the camp when blue blockers first came out, the thought was blue light is dangerous for you, whatever you do, get it, get rid of it, right? So I was wearing orange tinted sunglasses, so for people watching, you know, let me jump in there. Let me jump in there. Yeah. So you said you were kind of hard on one and okay, avoid it at all costs. What, how did you get there? That's what I'm curious about. Misinformation, you know, the biohacking community, when I really started looking into it, Dave Asprey, all these guys, I mean, you could look at some of them too. They'll still wear orange tinted glasses during the day, right? And we have now learned that, hey, you need blue light during the day, like looking at your screen is not dangerous from a circadian rhythm perspective. So you actually want glasses that will take away some of that frequency and wavelength and decrease that amplitude, right, that energy as well, but you still want the blue light because that's what's going to tell your body you're awake. Back then, though, the thought was, hey, you just want to get rid of that blue light where these glasses with a heavy tint. And at that time, you couldn't go to like your Walmart or Vision Center and get prescription glasses with just a slight tint or those little purple kind of, you know, you can see the purple reflection out of it. And I'm curious around what time is this, like is it 20, what are we talking, 18, 19, oh, that's my second year in med school, so 2017. Okay. Interesting, because, you know, I think about, I think the first pilot study that it was somewhat recent, actually, that it was published, I think I might have it here somewhere, that was published. I think it was plus one in 2020, yeah, February 2020, this pilot study, where they looked at the effect of restricting bedtime mobile phone use on sleep or out of the mood. And I think an article was published from this on Harvard Health and maybe then Washington Post took it and took it, might misquite exactly the size there, but I do think that maybe this is the, they were talking about Harvard, essentially what they, they looked at was phone use, close to bed and how that could disrupt sleep quality, right? And so that got a lot of attention and its effects on, on sleep. And so I was probably late to the game when I started learning more and more about this. I mean, I think what we talked about blue light disruption sleep, like, you know, that was kind of talked about a lot, right, but that's the software flux that people have, people have things on their iPhone. I mean, that's been around for a long, long, long time. But I think when I, when I personally started hearing a lot of people get really invested in blue light, blue light, blue light was kind of around that time, but anyways. So that's another here and out there. So with that, I think maybe, sorry, you were going to continue with your experience. Yeah, no. So then, you know, we brought Rudy on, started learning about, you know, so disclaimer, I work with Viva rays in a way, right? So if people want to get blue like glasses, I have a coupon code. So that's the disclaimer behind here, is that I wear Viva rays blue blockers now. But the thing is I have three different ones. So I have one during the day, which are these like yellow tinted blue blockers. And so we'll talk about this next two about the Viva rays experiment and what they've done in terms of showing the differences between commercial blue blockers, their blue blockers, and then these orange or even the red specs, right? And in the red specs, you really just use at night time as to resemble looking at fire or whatever when we're back with hunter-gatherers because that's always always the red light. So you know, I'll talk about this again near the end about the effect that blue blockers have had on me. But at least for now, I think, you know, it's a good starting point to really go into the data now and really talk about what has what have blue blockers shown in these experiments. Yeah, let's do it. Cool. Okay. You know, that was really just talking about blue light and the focal point. So this is a recent thing like you were talking about. There haven't been many experiments on blue blockers. A lot of them have been from like 2016, 2017 onwards now. And there's still not enough good quality data. So that's going to be the main point of everything we're going to talk about here. Just keep in mind listeners that none of this is really high quality research. So 2017, they looked at the effect of blue light blockers on visual performance and sleep wake cycle. So for this, it was all subjective. They asked, you know, they had like five different questions in regards to visual performance. You have headaches, eye strain. You know, could you read more easily after you were off the computer, things like that? And then for sleep wake, they really just looked at sleep latency and sleep onset. And again, a lot of that was subjective. So they're kind of just asking, hey, do you feel like you fell asleep quicker and they'll say, yes, we did. But then you look at the objective data and it's like, there's not really much difference. But this was a meta analysis actually that they've done and we can link all these in the show notes. But what the authors have come up with was that, hey, there's really no effect on wearing blue light blockers. And I should add here, because I was thinking about this when I was reading the papers, was, well, what kind of tint did these glasses have, right? Because if it's a clear tint, we know that's probably not going to work. So most of these studies do actually use a good orange tint on their glasses. So it is a legit quote unquote, blue blocker. But the research has concluded that there wasn't enough high quality research to really make a true decision. But based off what they saw, there was no effect of blue blockers on visual performance or sleep wake. Yeah. I think it's worth probably defining this term digital eye strain because from an article I recently read, I think previously people used to say that the greatest work related injury or pathology or dysfunction, what do we call it, was carpal tunnel syndrome. Although recent evidence suggests that that's really not how carpal tunnel syndrome presents, but that's not what we're talking about today. But essentially, this is a medical issue that's, you know, it's serious, right? You can affect your learning, work productivity, things that you just kind of touched on. And other symptoms are going to be, you have this computer vision syndrome, exactly. You give blurry afterwards for a while. It could be blurry vision, difficulty focusing. You just touched on that these authors are looking at this study. What else? You get, obviously, dryness, irritate eyes, headache, neck pain, back pain, all that kind of stuff. And, you know, and that's, that's aside from the postural related stuff that I think, although they are very hard to disentangle when we're talking about upper extremity injuries and shoulder and tightness and all that kind of stuff. The other thing that becomes very, very challenging to disentangle in these studies, you know, we're talking about quality evidence, right? You highlighted that and I'm glad you did, is because most of the time when people are doing work, right, and especially late in the hours at nighttime before bedtime, they're, if they're doing work, there are, it might, there might be some type of stress associated with it, right? It might be some type of strain associated with not actually a physical strain, but cognitive strain as well. And so if your brain is firing hard and you're in this logical stage and you're going through calculations and whatnot, it's going to be very hard to wind down and then go to sleep. And so that might disrupt sleep quality as well. So controlling for those factors is very, very difficult. In fact, I remember Matthew Walker talking about this in Peter T's episode, you know, how he had maybe changed his stance because what he had believed later on about the light is that maybe it's not necessarily the light that's affecting it, rather the activating work that people are doing, right? So I'd be curious to see, well, the study that I referenced before in 2020, the pilot study, when they looked at, like, I think it was 38 individuals, they saw 30 minutes before bedtime use, you know, disrupt sleep quality. They did mention that if they had compared head to head with a group who had that iPhone filter on, you know, would that have affected something, right? So, and then also what is it that we're doing on the iPhone, right? Are we scrolling through TikToks and watching dance videos and laughing about it? Or are we, you know, looking up something stressful? So I'm, you know, speaking of stressful stuff like last night, I'm in the market for a car. There's a time pressure. I got to do that. So I'm looking for cars and there's a social distress because I really got a car accident and you know, I got to get all that stuff done. There's a much different stress of what's going to happen to my cortisol with everything for the next two to three hours. The early phases of my sleep versus if I was watching a standup comedy for five minutes before on the same iPhone. So people can start to get a sense of why this can be so complex and why it's hard to really tease out what the effect is. But yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. No, I agree. And that, that's kind of what I've read too is that, and this is interesting, right? From an osteopathic standpoint, we've done manipulations, I should say, with tight necks and using the eyes, right? So we know that there's a connection between some of the muscles in the back of the neck and the eyes as well. So when you talk about strain, I think that is something we have to keep in mind. I mean, I remember, so there are some days where I've forgotten my blue blockers and I go to work and I'm forced to use my other prescription glasses. And subjectively, I can tell you, I've definitely felt the eye strain using those computer work, those screens, they're so bright, it's so white. And then when I put my blue blockers on, I can feel it softened. Now, how much of that is just placebo? And I'm just saying that because I'm like, oh, I don't have my blue blockers. But I don't know. I mean, I've had headaches whenever I have not had my blue blockers, there's been times where they come on after an hour or two of doing work. So it is interesting to kind of see that. Yeah. And there was, yeah, that's, all right, for those who might be listening who are not familiar with the brain and the cranial nerves and all that kind of stuff, the occipital centers sit at the posterior part of your cranium, right? And so that's kind of what the connection is between the posterior occipital muscles, paraspinal muscles, and then some of the vision centers. So sorry, go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. So I was just going to go into that, the second article we have here. So they looked at evening blue-like blocking glasses. So participants had to wear this after 6 p.m., and they measured sleep as well. And again, they were asking subjective measures for this, right? So sleep onset and awakening, which is really hard to tell. Like, if you were to ask me, hey, how long were you awake for before you went to sleep? I wake up sometimes, and I think about that. I'm like, I have no idea when I fast out. It could be five minutes, it could be 20, like, I don't know if people are actually good at determining that. I don't know. Are you? So no, I couldn't tell you the exact time, but I'm very blessed in the sense that I'm not the person who stays up 20 minutes, 25 minutes. Like if I go 15 or 20 minutes, that's long for me. And I know it's really hating me right now. And you know, when I, at the times and phases, I should rather say, when I am wearing the order ring, that tracks as well, it'll be fast within 10 minutes, which isn't necessarily a good thing, right? Because if you go to sleep too fast, those are signs of sleep deprivation, right? You shouldn't be collapsing into sleep that fast either. So, but I'm curious though, doesn't your whoop tell you? It does. It does tell me. I'm just thinking like, I don't always look at the latency, but I just wake up sometimes and I'm like, when did I pass out? Was it 15 minutes? Was it five minutes? Like, I mean, I feel like in a data sample, those are pretty two different times. For sure. Yeah. But yeah, so go back to the study. So again, it was all subjective. So when they looked at the objective data, they were looking at the latency, and then they were looking actually the quality of sleep too. So throughout the night, and they found no difference in terms of wearing these blue blockers. And it begs the question, I mean, I never thought there would be a difference. But I primarily wear the blue blockers that help me with onset of sleep, and to get me tired and groggy before bed, but I guess it's a good point in terms of, does it actually help you with the quality and going through the phases, especially if you're maybe not suppressing melatonin, right? If you're getting it early enough. So I don't know. So you brought up the fire red ones. When do you transition? Because currently you're wearing the orange ones. Yeah. So my orange ones are prescription, so that's why I usually wear these a lot of times. I will, these aren't prescription, I should have got them prescription. But I will wear these usually like 30 minutes before going to bed. Usually I try to read or something at night, so I'm always wearing prescription, but if I'm just meditating or I'm just hanging out, then I'll wear these. But these are really pretty difficult to see in. I mean, if people want to take a look there, I mean, it is all just red. It's very hard to watch TV. It looks like it looks like one of those rooms, like the old school polaroids when you had to put the camera up. Yeah. That's how it looks like right now. It's exactly what it is. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of scary. So that's usually when somebody comes and kills you. Exactly. That's why I don't wear them all. Yeah. Okay. So what's your wine down routine? You read before bed. Huh? Sometimes. Sometimes. I'll read before bed. Usually, so it depends. My wine down routine doesn't even make sense. Usually it's blue blockers. I got the blue blockers on around 6 p.m., especially during the winter time, we'll start to wear the 6 or 7. I'll take a magnesium supplement, and I'll use racie, extract to help me lose a dream at night. Those are my three mainstays. The rest is kind of like whatever happens happens. Yeah. But see, what's really interesting about that, that is a bedtime routine, right? So the moment you put the blue blockers on, your brain knows, okay, this guy is saying it's time to shut down, right, like system shutdown initiated, right? Like whatever, however, that system shutdown takes 30 minutes, 45 minutes, whatever. If that's what you've consistently done and you told yourself, it's time to go to bed, I am literally, it's like putting your PJs on. Like that's exactly the same thing, right? Do, there's this person on, on TikTok shoot, her, Erica Colberg, her name is, and now she has a podcast. She's a very interesting podcast. She's a lawyer, and she, she's like, Erica taught me this, Erica taught me that. She listened to her out of the podcast recently, she had this world memory champion. It's so funny how this world memory champion is essentially talking about how the secret to being a world memory champion, it just gave good quality sleep and like eat well and stuff. Very little to do with actually memory exercises and, you know, she had some, some tricks and tools, but really it was like, I got to get good quality sleep and this and that. And she was talking about whatever your sleep routine can be, you literally have to trick your brain. And it's like, if you just go through the same motions after the first time, the second time, third time by like the ninth or 10 time, your brain seemed like, okay, this person does this every single time they're ready to go to sleep. So by every single time you switch those glasses, like that's, that's the record glasses respond. Right. So it could be literally as simple as that. I think when people think wind down routine, I know I'm a little, uh, going off track here, but when people think wind down routine, they think it has to be this 15 minute yoga knee jar or whatever it is that, you know, human sense or, um, or, you know, like a 10-minute stretch and then a cool bath and a boat like, no, that's not what it necessarily has to be. So if you are doing that, then it's like, okay, you know, is it truly the glasses or is it the wind down routine? Right? This is kind of what I was getting at before. Right. But I think, right. Another point that you, sorry, I'm almost on here. I think another point that you made earlier, this whether or not this placebo, there's this misconception that people have is, you know, the placebo is not real. It's actually a very real thing, right? I'm so glad that more people are talking about this. Recently, I heard, um, Lee Norton actually just talked about this and I don't want one or two podcasts where, you know, in some of the studies, when people actually have a placebo, they still have physiological changes throughout their body. So it's actually a very real thing, right? And our perception is a very real thing of what supplement we're taking. We're not taking what we're putting on, what technology we have on, what glasses we have on. So at the end of the day, the question really becomes, you know, does it really matter? And the argument could be, it only matters if the financial harm is really, really high, right? Because that's really when it comes down to it. But I know, you know, I don't want to speak for you here, but I know the way that you look at it is a personal investment, right? I mean, like, you know, clearly, fortunately, we're both privileged enough that you could invest in something like that, but you also cut places, you know, costs or else we're like, this is what's important to you. And even if there is a placebo effect, like that really matters to you. So I think at the end of the day, everybody has to do their own calculation on whether or not matters for them and whether or not they can make that investment. You know, what the mechanisms are, does it work, does it not work? You know, what I'll say, it'll work if you want it to work, right? I don't know if I confuse more people out there or not. Yeah. No, no, it makes sense. If you want it to work, you can make it work, right? And that's what the investments for. And you can train your body and your mind to almost look at this subconsciously, which is kind of what you're talking about in the placebo effect is that subconsciously, you're going to have these physiological effects, but you can use it for benefit, right? placebo doesn't always have to be like, oh, damn, this is placebo. I fooled myself. It's like, no, you're purposely trying to fool yourself. Yeah. So. And the other aspect of it as well, what was the the person who came was on Chris Hutchins podcast, Jordan, somebody, he's a physician who does a lot of slaying, yeah, George Lane, right? He's, I really liked his matrix of, you know, when he's considering these, these technologies, those forefront practices reach these cost probable practices, even though this not really that. But, you know, he wanted to look at efficacy versus safety, right? If the safety is really, really good and the efficacy is good, that's a no brainer, right? If we have good evidence, if the safety is really, really good, right? And the efficacy is not so good, then it's a gamble. It's up to you. Can you, can you afford to lose that money? That's fine. So both of those instances, like when we're talking about blue, black glasses, if you look at it through that lens, yeah, the safety is really, really good, right? I mean, as far as we know, it's not harmful anyway whatsoever. And there's some evidence to support. It's good. That's a pretty good bet to me. Like, you know, I'm going to go with that. And worst case scenario, the efficacy is not good. Well, then it's still like, if it is good, when we find out it is, then you've benefited for 15, 20 years. The opposite side of that coin, though, is, you know, for those who haven't listened to it, is that if the efficacy might be good onto something that we don't have strong evidence, but the safety is poor, now you're risking your health. And that's clearly not the case here. So, you know, to me, something like this, if you are interested in this, if you want to invest your health, this looks like potentially high reward, almost no risk. But that's always a good bet to me when it comes to investing in your own health. Yeah, absolutely no, I totally agree with that. All right, so the last kind of thing in our objective data here was this VivaRays experiment. So again, disclaimer, these are the last I'm wearing. But they have a really cool Instagram post, which I think the listener should really click the link in the show notes to check this out. So the whole concept of VivaRays, why they believe they're superior than the other glasses, they will actually run tests through a, I can't even pronounce it, a spectrum, my aggro, whatever. It basically will shine light through, and you can basically see what wavelengths are coming out of the opposite end. So they will take commercial glasses, and they'll shine a light. And again, the goal here is not to block all blue light. It is to take away some of that frequency and some of that amplitude, so that you're now in a safer environment for that blue light. So that one, it eliminates that strain, and two, you're still getting that blue light to help you stay awake, circadian rhythm. So commercial sunglasses, because they don't have that yellow tint on them, they typically don't really get much of the blue light out at all. They might take a little portion away from the end of the spectrum, but they're not getting, I forget what the nanometers are, it's like 400 and like 50 to 480 is like what you want, and they're not, they're only cutting a little bit into that. And then you take these orange glasses, which a lot of people will say, you know, you need to wear, and that will completely eliminate blue light, right? So now you have even raised with these glasses when they do their test, you'll see that they'll take away some of the energy and the amplitude of these wavelengths. So now you're getting the best of the blue light that you want coming through. So I'll put that link into the show notes that people can check out that experiment that they'll show you. Right on. I love it. All right. So, man, let's bring it home here. I think, you know, I jumped around a little bit, but so, you know, we talked about kind of the data. We talked about the symptomatic ways. We talked about our experience with it coming back to assessment and plan. Essentially, what's what's kind of your final take in terms of assessment, you know, when you look at the entirety as, and I know this just because we talk offline is, even though you're doing this for a long time for the listener, every single time, as we prepare for this, you also reexamine the data. And I'm wondering if you came away preparing for this discussion with something different. Like, did you get stronger in your take here? Are you going to change anything? Maybe that's part of the plan. Yeah. Maybe hold off on that. Yeah. So, okay. So, we'll start with the assessment. So, I wasn't surprised by what I've read because that's what a lot of people have told me, oh, your blue block is just a Pavlovian response, right? Kind of what we talked about. You put it on, it helps you go to sleep, it tricks your brain. And I knew there wasn't good data going in. I just wanted to know exactly why and what they were testing. And it's kind of what we came back to talking about. It's really difficult to test subjective data, or, you know, have these subjective responses in terms of eye strain and posture. And what I'm curious to actually know is how many more kids actually need glasses now? Is it because of an awareness issue that we have now picking up that kids' eyesight, or our kids' eyesight's actually getting worse, and how much of an effect does screens have on that? So, that's something else I got to look offline, which hopefully we can maybe come back to an update the listeners at some point. So, that's what I'd be interested in looking at. Why just kids? I can personally tell you for me going from 2020 vision, and, you know, I went to 0.5, like, in 2020. And now, even with my glasses at nighttime, I have difficulty driving. So... Yeah. Well, I've found that most people will, like, the genetics kick in around, like, 20s to 30s. Or, like, all of a sudden, you need, like, glasses. Yeah. At least, that's what I've just, like, seen from people. Like, I had 2020 vision up until, I mean, I'm, like, pretty close to 2020, but I still have to wear a prescription for reading. But, like, even for my dad, he didn't have to get him until he was, like, 25, and then for me, I didn't have to get him until I was 25. So I wonder, like, if the threshold now for kids getting glasses is different. And that's one of the things I was reading in the papers is that we're seeing more ocular motor disease. We're seeing, like, worse posture. So how are these things affecting eyesight? And, you know, is that something that will make strain worse for the health? Right. So there's some, probably, some, again, this is me kind of theorizing, speculating, I don't know the data behind it. But I would be interested in knowing is, you know, again, people talk about the whole concept of inflammation, right? Again, they mentioned some of this and that podcast that I referenced earlier on in the Chris Sessions, all the hacks, we'll find that link that as well. But, you know, a lot of these pop-up people are talking about how do you have every single organ is aging at a different level. And we actually know that our eyes are aging. And so this might be one of the ways they're accelerating that aging process, right? Talking about microvascular disease, also aging that is I so, you know, poorly controlled glucose and high insulin and that kind of stuff is also going to affect your eyes and your retina and all that kind of stuff. So I wonder if some of that, you know, is it a combination to the genetic piece of it or, you know, maybe there's so, so tightly linked that you can, you cannot uncouple them? I think for me, yeah, it's much of the same. I am going to give it another go just because the whole thing that I mentioned in terms of potential high reward, very low to no risk, yes, slightly more financial investment. But in the grand scheme of things, I think that it would totally be worth it, even if you can get a, you know, a minuscule response positively for sleep quality, for a strain, for headaches, for vision. So I think for me, that's personally worth it. So I think, you know, my plan in terms of moving forward is to give it another go. And I am interested in exploring, I think the first time around just to throw some brands around that you like Viva rays. I had looked at them. I had looked at the science, a couple other brands that had come to mind. I don't know where they are now in comparison, but Gunnar Optics was something that I had looked at. There were some, some good stuff about there. That's the one that I got. I got that one, but it was a very, very mild tint. And the reason for that one is because when I'd be walking around the in-patient rehab unit, I did not want, I did not want to be seeing patients at like 10, 30, 11 o'clock and I would like these dark orange, darker and stuff like that. Oh, dude, I wear these on call all the time. Unless I'm like, wait, are they John Dist? No, yeah, yeah. For me, it was, that was the biggest challenge in residency that, you know, the hospital was so bright now, like, okay, I can't go to sleep and get back up and stuff. So, and honestly, I just can't seem to find them anymore. So I got another pair, another really good brand that I had heard good stuff about and read good stuff about was Felix Gray. Now this was two years ago. I don't know what the quality of their stuff is now. And for me, personally, no affiliation with any of these guys, but anybody else, again, we know you personally use Viva Rays. You like their stuff. You like the science behind the stuff. Any other brands that you think are decent. Boop. Boop has a lot of family come out with blue blockers now. Yeah, they just came out with them as well as a sleep mask and then there's another company that starts with an R that I kind of think of that a lot of the biohackers and stuff use. I'll try to find it and put it in the show notes. It starts with an R. It's like a short name. Okay. I think Tim Fares and this guys might use it. But to kind of end on my plan, right, so talk about whoop. So they have a journal in there, right, and you can talk about what you've done and what time you've done it. And so I've been using that journal every single day every time I use the whoop and I put it in my blue blockers and what time I use it. And surprisingly, the greatest thing, the greatest improvement in my heart rate or recovery, score, heart rate variability has been wearing blue blockers. And so that's how I've been convinced of like, okay, this works. And a great thing about the whoop journal is that they've run regressions. So it's not necessarily like, oh, you're just wearing this and this is why it works, but they'll give you association. So like you typically wear this and drink less alcohol. And because you've worn this on this many times, you know, this is the biggest thing that has been shown your improvement. So that's the cool part about it is that is that the whoop data has showed blue blockers be really helpful for me. I love that. I wish ordered something like that. I think if they did, or if they do, somebody knows they should reach out to us, just I'd be curious. I'll certainly wear it more to collect more data for just kind of science in general. That's the thing. We're going to have to do an episode of Wearables. I actually found someone really good on Twitter who's like, does all the wearables and talks about it, tries it all and goes through everything. So awesome. Awesome. Awesome. A little teaser for the folks to tune in. So I mentioned other things, right? I think obviously abstinence would be the best thing, but let's just be real. That's not going to happen. We're not going to get anything done if we just abstain from screens. That's not going to happen. So other things, you know, aside from glasses, what we could do right, I talked about the software. I flux. I think it is on. Yeah. So for this flux, and I use iris as well, iris is what I used for max, yeah, those are really, really good. I think they're both free, flux is free. Yeah, iris. Yeah, should be free. Everybody. I don't know if droids do, but I certainly have the built in night dimming thing. I imagine droids have that as well. So I think those are some, some low hanging fruit that people can, can look into just a kind of overall decrease that that energy exposure throughout the day. So you potentially have less risk and then, you know, cumulative doses a little bit lower. And with that, I think those are all the thoughts that I have today, Darshan, what you got. That's about it for me too. I mean, other things that I can think of, maybe red light, but again, it's an investment pretty expensive, but putting red light lamps in your house and turning off all the other kind of blue light admitting devices using candles, especially if they're healthy candles. If on, we're good if you're listening, sorry. So you know, using candlelight, but yeah, I think, I think you nailed it all. I mean, in the end, we're just trying to look for improving our sleep mainly. I don't think there's as much of an issue with this circadian rhythm as, as we want to think. Yeah. Because I mean, lights everywhere, honestly. Yeah. How are we going to get rid of it and really optimize? So I think it's more for the sleep standpoint. Yeah, you know, I don't know if we actually touched on explicitly stated about how it actually affects the circadian rhythm, right? So just to kind of recap, maybe this should have been mentioned about 30 minutes ago is right? So these melanopsin are these cells in our, the retinal ganglia that are affected and they are responsible for the circadian clock, essentially, well, you know, affecting male tonin and all that kind of stuff. So when they become hyper responsive, you have aberrencies down that pathway. And so, and so that's the way. And we know the TBS study that I quickly referenced, I'll link it for the people interested, but for you, because, you know, a traumatic brain injury for those who don't know, people learn about concussions, like that's a big thing, but we in the rehab setting see a lot of TBI, but also severe TBI, especially after severe TBI, people have a lot of sleep disturbances. They have mood related issues. So the other thing with these melanopsin cells, they're responsible of blue light is also not only is responsible for kind of modulating melatonin, but also serotonin, right? Serotonin helps with mood. So there was a study, study published, I think in October of last year. I think this was in plus one as well. Yeah. Looking at the blue wavelength light therapy for post TBI behavioral symptoms, and they looked at essentially people's sleep disturbances. So post TBI sleepiness, they looked at, you know, more awakenings throughout the day. They also looked at their mood and depressive symptoms afterwards. And they didn't see much of a, no, they did so see an effect on sleep, although I don't think that it was statistically significant. However, there wasn't effect on post TBI depressive symptoms. Now, this was a very small cohort, and this is one of the first ones that I have seen, but I thought that was very, very interesting. Because for those of my colleagues who take care of these people, they know this is a very challenging population to treat because your brain gets really jacked up after a traumatic brain injury. So anyways, that's an interesting one that probably maybe only the two of us will like. So I'll just send it to you. But yeah, man, with that, I think we should probably close here. So. You know what I just realized, man, is you're wearing a blue shirt, and I'm wearing a red shirt. So I wonder if that, that affects since I'm, I'm looking at a blue. That's great. Is it look blue? Yeah. That's great. I've got my blue glasses, bro. I've got my flex on. That's what I got. Nice. All right. All right, man. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. So yeah. All right. Thank you so much for tuning in. I really hope this episode gave you more insight in terms of how you want to approach your health, your eye health, and your sleep. Hopefully more and more data is coming out on blue blockers so that we can get a better answer in regards to whether it truly does affect these measures. I want to thank our team, Iman Bashiri, Harita Yapuri, and Ethan Zhu for the production of this podcast. If you could all do me one favor is please rate and review this podcast. Every review really helps these episodes get out into the hands of other people so that we can share useful information to the rest of the world. And of course, the disclaimer, everything in this podcast is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute the price of medicine, but we're not providing medical advice. No physician, patient, relationship is formed, and anything discussed in this podcast does not represent the views of our employers. We recommend that you see the guidance for your personal physician regarding any specific health-related issues. We'll see you next week.