Join the discussion below
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC, has served thousands of patients as a Nurse Practitioner over the last 22 years. Her work in the health industry marries both traditional and functional medicine. Laura’s wellness programs help her high-performing clients boost energy, renew mental focus, feel great in their bodies, and be productive again.... Read More
August Brice is passionate about providing straight forward solutions to live safer and healthier in this digital world-empowered to enjoy the tech that makes life easy, convenient and connected. She’s founder of Tech Wellness, a digital wellbeing platform based on research backed solutions for living mindfully with technology. She hosts... Read More
- The effect of Screen Time on your mitochondria and brain
- Learn how Digital Blue Light zaps your energy
- Screen Time Tips for healthier and happier mitochondria
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Welcome to the restore, your mitochondria conversation. I’m your host, Laura Frontiero. I’m bringing you experts to help you boost your energy and fix your health so you can build the life you love. Today, my special guest is August Brice. Hi, August, welcome.
August Brice
Hey Laura, thank you so much for having me here.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah, I’m so excited.
August Brice
This seminar is amazing.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah.
August Brice
I mean, oh, the mitochondria, our power house.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
We’re bringing you on today because we wanna talk about how screen time and blue lights are messing with your mitochondria. This is very relevant conversation. It’s happening to adults. It’s happening to children. And this is a big, a big reason why people are feeling low energy, brain fogginess and having all kinds of low mitochondria functioning symptoms. So you’re an expert on providing straightforward solutions to live safer and healthier in this digital world. And you do this so that people can enjoy the tech that makes life easy, convenient and connected. So we’re not saying throw everything out, but we’re sharing how to do this in a smart way that doesn’t hurt your health. And you’re the founder of tech wellness, a digital wellbeing platform. It’s based on research backed solutions for living mindfully, with technology. You host the thriving with technology podcast, featuring experts, exploring technology’s effect on mind, body and spirit. And you’re an expert on the effects and mitigation of electromagnetic fields as the EMF instructor for the Digital Wellness Institute. So welcome. We’re so excited to have you here. Thank you.
August Brice
Thank you, thank you. I hope that that I can give some good information and help people because screens are not going away.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah, they’re not. So let’s talk about that. They aren’t going away. In fact, we’re getting more and more of them. And so what are some of the stats on screen time right now? How much time are we spending on screens?
August Brice
Well, you know what? This was really, this was before the pandemic, Pew Research always runs out and tries to find, as year by year by year, how we’re changing regarding all kinds of things in our culture. And so they asked thousands of adults, how much do you use your phone? And 85% of them said that they go online every single day and three in 10 actually said I’m on my phone constantly. So that’s a really good indication. I think we know, I think we all know that we’re probably using our devices too much, but there was another study where thousands of parents were asked if they thought their teens were on their phones too much. And the teens were asked if their parents were on too much and 72% of parents thought that their teens. And what do you think it was for the parents thinking, the kids thinking their parents were on too much?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Probably higher.
August Brice
No, it was only 51%. Isn’t that interesting? I thought the exact same thing, but of course the pandemic has just exacerbated all of our use and I think we’re all getting used to it now. We’re all becoming so much more apt to look to our screens for everything, for our information, for our friendships, for all the things that we learn to do in the pandemic. And that’s just not going away.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
And it’s not lost on me, the irony of this right now, that we are on a screen teaching.
August Brice
Right.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
And we’re doing a talk about reducing screen time. And so, this is what we’re faced with. The information that we’re sharing right now is critical. And it’s how we get it to you. So screens aren’t going away and it’s completely ironic that we’re doing this right now on a screen.
August Brice
Yeah, and so, and you brought up just safer ways to use the screen. And so here we are. From time to time, you’ll see me put on my blue light blocking glasses, because it’s a safer way to use my screen. So I’ve eliminated some of the blue light about 40%, these clear ones do that. And so that’s one way, another thing that I’ve done is I’ve put flux, which takes the blue light out of the screen with software. So there are things we can do, but still we need to limit our screen time for many different reasons. And it’s so funny Laura, because the American Pediatric Association and the World Health Organization, they’ve set limits, but really just for our kids. So we know that we should not be having our children sit in front of a screen at all. I think before three, it goes between two and three. And I say no more than an hour until they’re six years old. The World Health Organization says four. The American Pediatric Association says five, but I think the more we can wait, the better off our kids will be for developmental reasons, for physical reasons, but there’s really no consistence on how much time adults should be online. But there’s a brand new study out from Arizona state university. And I found this really fascinating, and we can talk about it more in a minute, but that screen time was shown to have cellular effects. It’s the first study of its kind. It’s really interesting.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah, so I’m really curious. I’d love for you to shed some light on how screen time affects your mitochondria. So we’re talking about cellular health, mitochondrial health. So tell us a little bit more about that study and how it is affecting.
August Brice
Now, the study is really interesting because they only had 60 people in the study. However, they had students report whether or not they had more than 75 minutes a day of screen time, which of course is probably average, right? Or 75 minutes or less than 75 minutes. And they found really extraordinary correlations, but I’m gonna go to the study and I wanna read it to you, okay? I wanna read what they said, because it was kind of fascinating that this is a pretty big deal, but yet the steady size was so small. So hold on, let me find it. I put it over here. I should have been a little bit more ready for this, but okay. So here’s what the author says. She says that “Knowing that the microbes respond to our behavior and what we do matters for them as much as what they do, the microbes, matter for us, that we should think, okay, well, if I don’t care about screen time for myself, maybe I could think about what it’s actually doing to all these tiny little partners that share my body space with me, because she said that high screen time was predicted to be significantly associated with type one diabetes, obesity, chronic fatigue syndrome, and various manifestations of inflammatory bowel. That’s saying a lot for one new study. The first of its kind only looking at our cellular health regarding screen time, but still pretty significant, right?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Totally significant. And I’m even surprised that that study has made it through because there’s a lot of reason for tech companies to block information like this coming out, right?
August Brice
That was published in Nature Scientific Journal.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
August Brice
Which you know, that has a lot of credibility, right?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah.
August Brice
Yeah.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Does this say anything about the psychological impacts of screen or screen dependence? Can we talk about that? Because I know that I see it in my own family members, when you try to get, a family member off of their phone or their screen, they sometimes get angry and frustrated and short-tempered and snippy, and it just feels like an addiction, like taking alcohol away from an alcoholic.
August Brice
Yeah, well, there’s tons of research that’s pointing to higher amounts of screen time being associated with mental health problems, namely stress, addictions like you were talking about. It’s interesting because our American Psychological Association has only called gaming addiction an actual diagnosis, meaning you can get help for it. And insurance will pay for that help. However, all of the other addiction, social media addiction, internet addiction, shopping addiction. Those aren’t really categorized as addictions, but we know there’s things like nomophobia, which is fear of being without your phone. And a recent study out of Bahrain, said that there were in this meta-analysis they did, 70% of the population has nomophobia, fear of being without their phone.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Oh my gosh. August, I can tell you. So we were together a month ago and you know, we were at a retreat together and we went to the Olympic Park in Park City. And do you remember, we got on chartered buses.
August Brice
So much fun.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
I left my phone in my hotel room.
August Brice
Oh.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
I actually I thought I had lost it. I thought I had left it like at the place where we were boarding the buses. Turns out it was in my hotel room, but I will tell you that it was very surreal to be disconnected from my phone that whole time. ‘Cause we were there. We took chartered buses. I couldn’t even like call an Uber to take me back to the hotel to go look for my phone. So I just had to be without it, but it felt very disconnected and almost like, oh my gosh, what if I have to connect with my family? We don’t even know our family’s phone numbers anymore. Thank goodness, I know my husband’s because I’ve been with him since, before cell phones were our whole life, but it was really strange. And I wouldn’t say I was nomophobic, but I was definitely feeling off and I had to force myself to shift and say, okay, you’re here to have a good time. Let it go. If the phone is gone, you can just go to the Apple store and buy a new one tomorrow. And it will, all your information will get downloaded on it from the cloud. So don’t worry about it, but it was crazy to be disconnected from it.
August Brice
Well you know, that panic and that stress that you feel, well the process that’s going through your body and university of Cal State Dominguez Hills, I believe it was, did this research where they showed that the more you’re attached to your phone, the worse it is, but your brain triggers your adrenal gland to produce a burst of cortisol that fight or flight hormone, right? And that causes anxiety. And so that anxiety sets in and if it lasts 15 minutes or more, they found that then people started getting depressed. They had all of the sadness, the down of depression after 15 minutes.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Oh my God.
August Brice
Isn’t that something? And then I love this. Go ahead.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
I just wanna share, this happened with my daughter. So when she was, she’s 17 now, but I would say when she was about 15 or so, she dropped her cell phone in a pool and it was like done. It was gone. This wasn’t a waterproof cell phone and the depression that came after that, just in, because it took us, 24 hours to go get another one. It was crazy what I witnessed. It was a complete depression. Just what you’re talking about.
August Brice
Isn’t that interesting? It’s so obvious. And then you know, physically what that stress, what that extra cortisol is going to do to your body. We don’t need it. And so one of the best ways to, because I was going to save this for the end, but one of the best ways to help alleviate the nomophobia and that panic is just to try every day, 15 minutes, maybe without your phone, just to start with. Just a little mini digital detox, because that helps you gain perspective and it helps.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah.
August Brice
It’s like exercise. It helps your mind and body get used to the idea of the phone not being attached to you, not being in sight. And it’s really wonderful because you get in touch with the real world. Things smell different and feel different and conversations are more meaningful, but it just starts with a little bit at a time because most of us feel like your daughter, honestly.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah, it’s it’s nuts.
August Brice
Yes.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Now there’s something happening to our sense of self, our attitudes and our general happiness here too. So tell us about that because it’s definitely being impacted with social media. We know that anxiety and stress and suicide is up in teenagers. So what’s happening there.
August Brice
Well, it’s so crazy because we all remember the White House had that Facebook whistleblower testify because Facebook’s own research found that 32% of teen girls said that when they felt bad about themselves, Instagram made them feel worse and it’s true. There’s so much social comparison and it’s just, it’s a normal thing that we all do online or offline. We compare up or we compare down. And so just being mindful and knowing that the social media is going to make us feel that way, it’s going to make us feel depressed. It’s going to make us feel that we’re less than, I think just knowing that and approaching social media that way. And you know, maybe looking at things differently, maybe just following accounts that make you feel good about yourself, instead of feel worse about yourself. I mean, there are, it’s great to be motivated, but when we self objectify, when there’s so much social comparison that we end up having lower self-esteem and poor mental health and body shame, then we know that we need to step back and take a look and really examine what this device is making us do.
And I love this study. There were a thousand women that were, said take a selfie. And so of the thousand women that took a selfie, some did not have to post it at all. Just take a picture of herself, others posted it. And others had the opportunity to use a lot of filters. So the ones that used a lot of filters felt better about themselves. They had less stress, but guess what? The people who didn’t post at all felt the best about themselves and had even less anxiety. So just knowing that, it makes you approach the whole idea of taking a selfie and posting a selfie a little bit differently. And you talked about your daughter. I think it’s so important that we really arm our children with as much information as possible about how social media and Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat, TikTok, how all of these things are either gonna suck our time or make us feel badly. When we’re aware, we’re so much stronger. It’s just being, go ahead.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah. It’s so crazy because all of this negative feeling that we have, it raises the cortisol levels and it does affect mitochondria. It affects our cellular levels. So it’s all connected. This conversation is so relevant to mitochondrial health, energy production.
August Brice
Yes, right? Because yeah, Martin Picard, he did that big meta-analysis of 23 studies on mitochondria and stress and anxiety. And he found that, yes, just like you’re saying, significant adverse effects of psychological stress on our little powerhouses. So it’s so important. And I always say, our phone was designed to make our lives easier, but when it stops feeling that way, put it down. If you feel any palpitations, any anxiousness, any stress when you’re running toward that phone. And I know when you found your phone, you probably were having this huge sense of relief. But sometimes, sometimes when we wake up and the first thing that we do is turn on our phone, what’s it doing? It’s triggering the stress of the day. It’s triggering notifications of things that we know we’re supposed to do or things that we didn’t even remember that we were supposed to do. It’s hopefully not, but a lot of times we’re triggering the bad news. So I think one also really simple thing to do is just to remove at least one app a day that isn’t bringing you joy.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Oh, that’s a good idea. Get that phone cleaned up.
August Brice
Exactly. It’s so simple, it’s just so simple. But again, it’s just being mindful and knowing that this is a power pack little device, you know?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah. And it’s one thing to be mindful about how we’re using our technology. And most of us find that if we have a second of downtime, we’re immediately reaching for our phones or tablets or our laptops. I know I do, being a. I own a virtual business, so I’m constantly jumping on. And so when is it dependence and when is it addiction and what does that mean for us? ‘Cause sometimes I wonder like, am I addicted to this computer? ‘Cause I can’t seem to get off of it.
August Brice
Well, that’s a really good question. And especially like I said before, since our American Psychological Association, isn’t calling it an addiction, we’re a little bit confused, but our original screen internet addiction expert was the late Dr. Kimberly Young. And she made the still the gold star internet addiction test. And we have a version of it on our site. So you can walk through it and find out if you’re technically addicted and addiction is very serious and addiction really requires all of the help that normal addictions need. So it’s serious. And okay, some of the signs of addiction are, if you’re lying about using your phone, or your any device, if you’re lying about using your device, if you’re lying about how much social media you use, if it’s getting in the way of your day-to-day life or your job or your relationships, that’s a really good sign. And if you step away from the screen and it’s the first thing that you think about when you walk away, that’s also a sign. Now that doesn’t mean you’re addicted. Those are just signs. So make sure that you go online and take that test because it’s super helpful to know really on where you are on the scale. But most people now are calling it maladaptive consumption, which means, taking something that we normally consume just normally and in an everyday fashion. And then all of a sudden using it so much that we start to have negative effects. So that’s really the difference between addiction and just what I call being obsessed.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
So if we find out that we are addicted to it, what do we do?
August Brice
Okay so, Kimberly used to talk about really, really heavy addictions. And there are, centers that you can go to, addiction rehabs. But I think a lot of parents especially are sending their children to camps where they’re just not with their phone for a couple of weeks. And that’s really what we can do for ourselves too. If you really, really think that you’re having addiction, then of course, you’re going to need to need to redirect your brain. That’s absolutely what you’re gonna do. And you’ll probably need some professional help. You’ll need some talk therapy, you might need to get away, but if you just think you’re obsessed and you wanna get ahold of it, the best thing to do is that daily digital detox. And then on top of that do a day a week, because that way you build up your muscles to say that, your mental muscle, to say that, yes I am in control of my screens. They are not in control of me. So those are really the best things you can do. We have little tricks, turn your phone to gray scale. So it’s not as enticing, which means that when you look at your screen, it’s all black and white. That’s helpful. Like I said before, removing an app or taking away the notifications because another really interesting study is this one done by the University of Texas that’s called The Mere Presence Of, and it had 1200 people in the study and they were given a little task to do. And they rated, how much they love their phone or if they can live without it. And they found that the people that love their phone the most had the most difficult time, but what they found was if the phone was off and turned over, but sitting right next to their computer, it was taking up so much cognitive space that they couldn’t perform the task. And it wasn’t until the phone was outside the room, turned off and in a purse or a backpack or a cubby, that they were able to have complete focus. So if we know that we’re so distracted by them, that’s another reason I think, to take a little bit of a break. And one of the ways that a lot of people take a break is to make sure that they don’t charge their phone in their room. Ad soon as they come home, maybe they drop it in a basket and it’s a charging basket and it stays there. And again, they’re exercising that mental muscle of control.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
I know the crazy thing these days is we don’t have house phones anymore. So if somebody needs to call you up and tell you something, it’s your cell phone. So I mean you.
August Brice
Right.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
It’s a Catch 22, right? Stick the phone in the basket and shut it off. And then are you willing to be basically out of pocket for the rest of the day, right? Are you willing to not have people be able to get ahold of you? Some of my most freeing moments are when I get home from doing something and I just don’t ever take my phone outta my bag. And it just stays there for two or three hours. And it’s so wonderful to not be connected to it. But then once I pick it up again, it’s like, all these people are talking to me and sending me like, hello, I’ve been messaging you like this whole instant gratification thing. Like if somebody messages you, they expect you to answer right away. You gotta train people up that you don’t do that, right?
August Brice
Well, I used to have a whole video on setting the do not disturb function. And that’s what I would say, hey, I’m taking some time for myself. I’ll get back to you in 10 hours, 24 hours. But now iPhone has the focus built right in. So you go in and you can turn on focus in your settings. Then anytime you place focus, you can have a personal message that says just that. So they’re making it easier and easier for us to.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
I didn’t even know that’s what the focus thing was on my.
August Brice
That’s what it is. I’ve got a little tutorial on how to do that so.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Oh my gosh, does it shut down? Does it shut down notifications and stuff like that when it’s on?
August Brice
You can have a breakthrough. It can breakthrough if you want it to, for certain people. So you can set that up. But the nice thing is, is that you set focus and it just lets people know your standard message that you know, that you’re busy, that you’re taking time for yourself, that you’re spending time with your family, all those good things. But you were saying something a minute ago, oh, about the addictions and the focus. And I forgot to mention that there are really excellent studies that show that we have, we don’t know if the screens gave it to us because we don’t do a scan and then give someone a scream and see if they have less white or gray matter in their brains.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah.
August Brice
So that would be, that would be right. But we do know that less gray and less white matter correlates higher with higher screen use. So we actually are affecting our brains in the most profound way with our screens. And it’s really profound because, having less gray matter also, relates to depression, Alzheimer’s, alcohol, addictions, all those things. So it’s really important that we say this much of that matter as possible, right?
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah. I think it’s a good thing that I still like to curl up with a real paper book. I do not like to read my book on a device, even a, the devices come a long way and you can read, you can have a device that doesn’t have a back lighting and all that, but I still don’t like it. I like to dog year, I like to underline. I like to go back and flip through and flip forward. And so, yeah, there’s nothing like a real paper book. That would be good therapy for your brain too, just to get a real book.
August Brice
Absolutely is. And you know what? There are studies that show that you have 30% greater retention and understanding when you read the book, the paper book like you’re talking about, versus reading it on screen. And some people think, well it’s because we’re just taught through texting to just, go fast and just try to get the details or that it’s the way our eyes look across the screen, versus the way our eyes look across a book.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Interesting, that’s fascinating. So can you talk a little bit about what screen use is doing with hand eye coordination? You did touch on white and gray matter changes in the brain. So there’s some physical effect when we overdo something and we’re overdoing our screens.
August Brice
Well, you know, I think that a lot of us, a lot of parents, especially, I was this way, maybe you were too that the first time that your child played a game online, or when you watched them maybe a little bit too much playing those games and you thought, well, this is good because at least they’re developing their hand to eye coordination, right? That’s what I thought.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
That’s like the big lie, right?
August Brice
Sort of, sort of. So I was speaking to social media researcher, Dr. Ehryn Torrell and I asked him that question and he said, honestly, we have studies and it shows that you need one and a half hours per week to develop and keep that hand to eye coordination from gaming. So it’s okay, right? It’s not saying it doesn’t work at all, but it’s saying that we’re probably doing it too much thinking that, oh, there might be benefits. And you know, and I did wanna mention that study when we were talking about the amount of time. A study recently came out from, oh my goodness. I can’t remember the name of where I came, but from oh, University of Colorado. And they said that it isn’t so much about the time that children use their devices. It’s more about what they’re doing. Because they found out that kids that had a lot of screen time had better relationships. But you know what? At the end they wrap it up and they say that they found a moderate connection with higher screen use and depression, focus problems and ADHD. So.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah, and I would say connecting on screens is not like connecting face-to-face. I find that today’s teens have a really hard time with face-to- face relationships because they’re so used to doing everything through a text. It really affects your ability to read body cues.
August Brice
Correct.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
And non-verbal language, non-written language. They’re not so good at it.
August Brice
No, and they’re finding that really what’s being affected is our level of compassion. And they did this great study at UCLA where they had all these markers of compassion and then they take people and as adults and kids go out to the desert for five days and they come back and the skills have changed completely because they have been with people and they have been without devices.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Oh yeah, that’s.
August Brice
You’re right.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Amazing, I’ve done those. I’ve done trainings before emotional intelligence workshops and trainings where you’re in the training room for 12 to 14 hours a day without a phone, right? It’s turned off, it’s put away. And you’re just in deep connection with people actually looking in people’s eyes and reading body cues. And you feel so good after that. Like there is no better feeling than human true connection.
August Brice
So true.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Try gazing in somebody’s eyes for, two minutes straight. People can’t do that these days. They find it very uncomfortable.
August Brice
And don’t you just feel all the mitochondria, just like being so healthy. You’re happy.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Just start buzzing, everything’s amazing. So I’d love to, in the last few minutes that we have here in this talk, I’d love to tap into your brain a little bit about EMFs. So you’ve been studying EMFs for more than 20 years. We’re talking about the, we’ve been talking about devices and blue light and all of that and how it’s affecting us at the cellular level, but EMFs are also very much influencing our cellular health and causing mitochondria problems and all kinds of chronic diseases.
August Brice
Totally. Absolutely, Laura, so true. I found out a long time ago that I had electromagnetic hypersensitivity syndrome, which means I can feel the energy. And so a lot of people don’t, but there is actually an invisible energy, that’s powering your wireless devices and it’s called electromagnetic radiation. And we knew 20 years ago that that radiation could actually weaken the blood brain barrier. And that’s so important because, that’s where our brain gets its nutrients and hormones and everything that we need. And then we let toxins into our brain just by virtue of that invisible radiation. So that’s another reason that we should be away from our devices as much as possible, as much as we possibly can and to utilize airplane mode. And to know that every source of radiation is just a little bit more. So your Bluetooth is more, your Wi-Fi is another signal. Your cell phone is another signal. So any of those signals that right now you can turn off on your computer or your phone, is going to be helpful to your brain. Because also there’s a study that shows that radiation actually damages the Myelin sheet, the Mylan sheets of the white matter.
And they found this from five hours a day for 12 weeks. And they also found in the same study that, of course they weren’t using people. They were using rats and they found that their rats displayed hyperactivity. And that’s not the only study showing hyperactivity. I spoke with Kesler Devin and she was a researcher, is a research scientist that found out that just 30 minutes a day affected the melatonin levels of rats and cut it virtually in half. And so melatonin, as probably most of us know by now, is really important for our sleep. It’s a hormone released by our Pineal gland and it just helps us feel sleepy. And if we don’t have it, it makes it so much harder to get to sleep and stay asleep. So we know that it’s that radiation that’s affecting the melatonin in our bodies. And also she saw cell death in the brain and she saw what she said was crazy anxiety in the rats. And what they did was they put a cell phone, a cell phone that was generating real electromagnetic radiation, not pulses, but actual radiation from the phone up against the cage. And she said they would take it away because it was only 30 minutes a day. And every time somebody came to put that phone in, the rats just went nuts.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Mm. And I bet they ran away from it. Like tried to get way.
August Brice
That’s what she said, exactly. She said they all ran to the opposite side of the cage.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah, and you know, we’ve seen there’s studies of electromagnetic radiation, stunting growth of plants, right? That’s the test you can do in your classroom, right? Or we try to.
August Brice
Wi-Fi, right. Grow the sprouts.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Next to the router.
August Brice
Yes, yes.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
And they don’t grow, yeah.
August Brice
They’re very unhappy.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah.
August Brice
Yeah.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
One of the worst things you can do is have that router in a space where you’re constantly at, right? So in your bedroom where you’re sleeping or right next to you in your office where you’re working, you really wanna try to get it away in some kind of nook and cranny of the house where you’re not hanging out all the time. ‘Cause distance is your friend, right? August.
August Brice
A thousand percent. Been saying that for 20 years, Distance is your friend. And when it comes to the Wi-Fi, it’s about 30 feet. When it comes to your phone, it’s about three feet, before you’re really at a “safer distance.” So that’s why I use two wired headsets. So my phone can be three feet away. I have a switch where I turn my Wi-Fi off at night, actually truth be told, I don’t even have a Wi-Fi. I have my entire home hardwired. The thing that we used to do before there was Wi-Fi.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
It’s faster and it’s healthier for you.
August Brice
It’s so great, it’s safer. It’s faster, just like you said. It doesn’t break up or break down. You never have to say, oh, that’s my connection because it isn’t, yeah.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
It’s tricky too, because you know, with Wi-Fi now, people have their home alarm systems are also wireless. And if you shut off the router or you shut off the Wi-Fi at night, your alarm system is now off. So you’d have to hardwire your alarm system as well.
August Brice
Laura, it’s my number one question. You’re absolutely right. I think ring and nest introduce this way of living that without we always had to have a camera. And so now we’re very used to that. We all want a security camera, but I do. I have found one that you can hard wire and very simply hard wire, if you have any Wi-FI access points or plugs in your home, you can wire up your security camera.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
So that’s good to know. Well, tell us where people can get ahold of you. Where can they find your work? Where can they learn more from you? Where can they find that quiz you were talking about?
August Brice
You can find the quiz on techwellness.com and we’ll put a link to that. And then also on Instagram. Every day, I try to do a tech wellness way, which is just one simple thing that you can do to make your technology safer and make your life a little bit healthier, while you use your technology. And then there’s Facebook and LinkedIn, but I really love it if you came to tech wellness and visited our site and saw the information and the solutions we have.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
So wonderful. Thank you so much for contributing to this talk on mitochondria and energy. This has been so valuable today. We appreciate you.
August Brice
Thank you for doing this, Laura.
Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC
Yeah, you take good care now. Bye, August.
August Brice
Bye.
Downloads
Download Transcript
