Red Light Therapy, Biohacking, and the Science of Longevity

Introduction to Biohacking 0:00

Hey guys, welcome again to Sibling RX. We are on, what episode are we on? I don't know. Anyways. I'm Dr. Yaz. I am Dr Roddy. She made me wear this. Well, today we're going to be talking about, if you guys are watching, you can see Dr Raddy's got my mask on, my red light mask, and then we've got redlight in the room. And we are talking all things biohacking. So let's just jump into it. What is bio hacking? So biohacking is obviously a big topic and it's what people try to do, whether it is things that they do in their regular life, you know, and we'll get into examples, but things they can do to kind of slow down the aging and degenerative process that our bodies normally go through.

Just trying to optimize their health. optimize your health, see what you can do to kind of prolong your, your house span and, and live the second half of your life in a healthy way. Because there's a lot more things that we know today that didn't know even 10 years ago, 20 years, 50 years. So, some things cost money and some don't cost. But I think it's and I hope you got this mask for free because And by the way, if there's smoke coming off this, just let me know, I'll take it off. I'm going to have a 430 bird on my face.

Yeah. This is great. It's good. So yeah, biohacking. People have heard the terminology. There's some confusion by what's bio hacking, what not, but I think everybody at a certain age can implement some level of things or habits into their normal life to extend their health span. Yeah, I mean, there's famous biohackers out there like Dave Asprey and Ben Greenfield and other people that take it to the extreme. They say they want to live to, oh, our light just turned off, but it was not a timer. So they wanna live 120, which I don't know if anyone would really want live that long.

But yeah, just optimizing your overall health span because what we do in our 30s, 40s and 50s actually dictates the rest of our life. So Alzheimer's didn't start at 70, it actually starts at 30 and 40. You know, diabetes didn's start it 50, 60. It started at 20, 30. that there's things

Free Biohacks: Sunlight, Sleep, Cold Exposure, Grounding, Fasting, and Breathwork 2:23

that you can do in the first half of your life that really helps optimize. And like you said, free stuff, three ways. There's, you know, more, ways that are a little bit more expensive. You can. Do very inexpensive methods to very extremely expensive methods. So I think there are. A lot of things. That people can in a preventative way, because like your example of diabetes starting to kind of form in somebody's Unfortunately, the 20s or 30s, they may not even know. The sugar levels are normal. Everything's normal, but yet there's something kind of brewing.

So if you can implement some of these things that have been proven, and some are FDA approved and somewhere not, just like nutraceuticals. They're not necessarily approved by the FDA, You know, people use them and they do well with it. But I think that if you can start to implement the things that you feel comfortable with that fit in your time and budget, why wouldn't you do it if it's there and it is easy to do? So let's talk about some of the free things people don't have to pay for to for biohacking.

I know we've talked about morning sunlight when it comes to sleep. So, let us share a little bit about the first a few minutes of the morning when you get up and getting that first ray of sunshine into your eyes. And why is that considered biohacking? Right? Well, when. You get that. First ray. Of sunlight into. Your eyes, like the first 15 minutes. Well. It's on a timer. Yeah. She said it on a setting that's never been set before. So, uh, what were we saying? Like morning sunlight? Why is that considered like a form of bio?

What does that do to us? I mean, you know, it's a very easy way to set your circadian rhythm. If you have a hard time sleeping, the number one thing, first thing you should do is get sunlight directly in your eyes for 15 minutes. for the first 15 minutes you get up. Ideally, 30 minutes of sunlight is good. But it doesn't mean you have to stare into the sun. It just means you need to look outside where it's bright. And just that helps reset the melatonin in your system. it helps you reset your body's natural circadian rhythm.

Which in return, in the evening, that evening you'll sleep better. Right. Which is sleep is a natural way, a normal way to biohack and optimize your health because it's your recharge time. Right, right. So when you reset your system, your circadian rhythm with the sunlight, ultimately Ideally, in the evening, once the sun goes down, the lights in your house should also dim down. In the afternoon. Yeah, as the Sun is setting, your lights should set too. Actually, there's many companies out there that do the red light therapies and all that stuff.

One is the one you're wearing. Um, but there's another company that has bulbs you can put into your house that are like you put it into the recess cans and the different, um, light sources in your housing and that helps. Um. You can set it on a timer where it automatically kind of goes down with the sun. And so as the Sun sets, your houses setting as well and kind it's like a turndown service for your, for you home. uh, you know, avoiding the, the blue light, two hours before bed as well. So screens and monitor, which is probably the most challenging.

That is the hardest, but you can wear, um, blue-light glasses. I mean, these are not blue, light. But, I'm right. Does this also have a blue like component to it? No, it's a reverse of that. Yes. It's just red light for four days. What you're wearing right now is for college and production. We're going to get to that, right? Oh, well, yeah. I mean, we still got some free things I want to talk to people about. Sure. What about cold exposure? Like this morning, I was like, it's cold enough and we've had some rain here.

And, and so I love the cold plunge, like after the gym. So I loved like this one, when I got in the pool and I said, Oh it actually feels good. It's like it. Perfect. Then, uh, Itz, love that, that cold, exposure first thing in morning after. The gym for me is what I like to do that. Um, really just kind of. But you know, you're not supposed to. Do cold Plunge after you lift weights. I didn't lift weights today. Okay. So yeah, I should only do it. Yeah. And it was great. You just felt, especially when I just needed to cool off, you know, and cause I'll sweat for three hours after, a workout, even after a shower.

But it's always nice when cold plunge after like a, 45, 60 minute just cardio session, it feels the best, but that's an easy way. Or you don't have to have a $10,000 cold Plunge. If you live in a state or somewhere where you have pulled, this is a great time to, And some people don't have a pool. You can do a cold shower. Yeah. So like two minutes cold, shower, um, you know, towards the end is a really easy way to do it as well. Um, one thing that a lot of people are getting into is grounding grounding is see your mask just turned off.

Am I going to look different? You, are going look so different. Oh man. Yeah, yeah. Um, so grounding, you can do a free way of grounding. You can't do it. Paid way off grounding but a Freeway of Grounding is just going outside barefoot and touching the dirt or grass. Another freeway is your dogs. Your dogs actually ground you. So when they come in, they sniff you or they tell you pet them. They kiss your face or whatever. They actually, the electrons, they carry them from the outside inside and it naturally grounds you.

Did you know there's a trail up in Flagstaff? It's at Barefoot trail. It said it's Bareford trail you go and I think you pay a couple of bucks and you literally walk a Trail barefoot. The whole premise is that they talk about the grounding, being one with the earth and all that stuff. They take, I think camps there with kids and adults that are kind of suffering from like anxiety and some of those other issues and stuff so it's funny. Um, back to the cold plunge. So massive dopamine surge. Obviously it great for inflammation.

If you're suffering. From knee issues or anything that is just degenerative, cold immersion is really, really good for, uh, for some. And if you have we'll get into that, but if you have the ability of having an actual cold plunge. Or a facility that has it. Yeah. If you go to a gym that it has, that's awesome. Okay. So what else? Fasting is considered biohacking. Intermittent fasting is consider bio hacking. However, so intermittent fasting, there's a lot of um, gray area with that right now with the hormonal shift with menopause.

Should women that are going through men, men and men to pause fast. Some say it's okay. Others say, no, you need to have something. I personally like to something before I exercise. Um, So I don't usually go more than 12 hours of fasting. Yeah, that's good. 12 to 14 hours just to kind of shorten your eating window and helping to reset your hormones and reset you body metabolism is another way. Another way is, and we talked about this before when we talk about protein, is getting protein in as the first meal of the day, like a good amount of protein on the morning.

And that is a really good way to set your tone, set you appetite for the and all that stuff. So what else? Um, so another free way is breath work, right? Like breathing, um, really helping to initiate that parasympathetic nervous system, which is the rest and digest and you know, the calming part of your nervous. We talked about vagus nerve, uh, in a previous episode. Um. But just getting that calmness, working on breathing is a really easy way to help biohack your stress levels. So those are all just really good, really free.

I'm sure there's a lot more. Yeah. But let's talk about the fun stuff, right? Like the mask you had on. The mask here. Red light. What do you use this for? So I use that three times a week before I go to bed. Sometimes I put it on when I do chores around the house because it's wireless. And what it does is it helps increase collagen. for wrinkles, it helps decrease the skin pigmentation. And it just helps with overall elasticity in your skin as you age, because when you lose your estrogen, all that goes away.

A lot of the hyperpigmentation that happens in our skin is because the hormone changes. Then I have this guy, which we had it on earlier. But it's a red light panel that I use and I put at my gym in the house. So when I work out, I have this on and it helps your joints. It helps you skin, but it also helps increase mitochondrial production.

Red Light Therapy, Saunas, and Inflammation 11:29

Energy. And you know, they're not very, very expensive, but you. And then there's saunas like that. Obviously there is infrared sauna, which can cost a little bit more, that's obviously wonderful to put yourself into decrease inflammation and obviously the mitochondrial benefits and things like. So you can really be very simple or you could really go super high end and have an entire room dedicated to biohacking. Oh yeah. Yeah. Um, and I even have a sauna blanket, something that I slip in and it heats up and you lay in it for 20 minutes and like you just sweat it out.

Yeah. So, and there's so many different brands and, you know, of all of this stuff, but red light in clinics to red, light some, some clinics have redlight panels like this while people are getting IV therapy. I know I wish I really would like to add that to our clinics. Um, and then there's also red light, um, panels that you can wrap around joints for, yeah. Cause there are different frequencies of the red lights that help the inflammation of joint as well. And if you target it and hone in on that.

on that joint, it really helps with the inflammation. I think a lot of the key benefit to all the things that we're talking about is ways to decrease inflammation, which is a root cause of all disease that were either fighting or trying to prevent. like this infrared therapy, it penetrates two to three inches. That's a lot. It's really goes deep to detoxify and get heavy metals out of your system. You just sweat all that crap out your systems that is causing disarray. And you may say, well, I'm really cautious about the things I eat.

But it's inevitable that you're going to have some influx of toxins. Well, yeah. I mean, in our modern world. If you walk out, there's toxins all around. You can't avoid it. So you've got to do whatever you can to help balance things out and detox your system. It's like I take a carbon binder every day just to make sure that on an internal level, my system is detoxing from that. from the toxins. But speaking of inflammation, and since it is the root cause of many chronic diseases, let's talk about continuous glucose monitors.

So that's another type of biohacking device that you can either get from your insurance company or you you know, online now they have ones you can pay cash for. It's like a membership. You can get one online. it's a, membership you pay. So I'm very expensive. Some of them I've seen like $10, $20 a month, but it helps track that. And it not just for people that are diabetic. People that want to manage just everything because you think, well, I don't need to do that I exercise every day, certain exercises may not be the best for certain people.

And this really monitors how often you exercise, how intense you exercised. Uh, and, um, it's great. I've never done that. Have you done it before? No, I really want to do it. Yeah. Chris has done. It for like 60 days and kind of see the difference. Cause I can knock on when I'm not diabetic, but again, like to know what my glucose is like throughout the day. You know, the stress can also impact your glucose levels and whatnot. So, No. So again, for people that don't know what it is, it's just a little device that kind of gets implanted in the back of your arm.

It doesn't cause pain. I think a lot of people have seen diabetics have it. That's how they can check their levels. Same thing. And it usually syncs up with your phone and then you can kind track where things are at. If you're not diabetic and it isn't prescribed by a doctor because of diabetes, It's good to subscribe to one of those programs that can help you coach what goals you're trying to achieve and what you are trying do. There's one brand that has a really good support system on the back end.

I think it's called Levels. It's the new Surgeon General's company. So it gives you a membership, but the membership gives macros tracking, nutritional support, all kinds of stuff. That's really cool. We can put that in our notes. People will link to that so people can go find that. Any of the things we talk about, well, device-wise, we can in the notes so people can go and find that. And of course, there's a really common aura ring. Now they sell it at Costco. Mine's right here. Yeah, I know. You put it on your middle finger.

That's really rude. Just today. The aura is great because I love it. My husband hates it, he thinks he gets a report card every morning. I think it's great.I like to track my sleep and my activity, my steps. So I loved it even more than that, Yeah. Heart rate, all that stuff. So HRV is heart rate variability. And so that just is the value of like how well you react and respond to stress. Yeah, so you want to have your HR V ideally above 60. The younger you are, the higher your H R V is naturally, but Um, you know,

Tracking Health with CGMs, Oura Ring, and Wearables 16:48

yo you can see the trends, it'll give you like a report, a quarterly report or monthly report. What was your sleep score last night? I don't have my phone with me. Probably in the nineties. It's always in. The ninetys. Mine was 81, which is pretty good for me that's um, seventies. But I bet your wives, your wife sleep scores really. Let's just talk to one wife at a time. This is a family show. Yeah. No, your wife's sleep score is probably really bad because you snore. Hers is negative 71. You snores so much.

I've never heard myself snort before, so that's my claim. Yeah. Well, I have to tell you guys about the time we went camping at Yosemite when he was little. We're not doing that today. Everyone thought it was a bear, but it's just Roddy snoring. It was messed up. Anyways, yeah, or a ring is great. And I actually, that's, it's when I get up in the morning, I'm anxious. That's the first thing I do is I go look to check. Yeah. Does it give you anxiety? You'd fall asleep. I just sleep longer because I need to be over 81, you know, but you're like anything else.

If you don't track it, you do in life. If there's not a method and you can't get neurotic about it, that's, not the point, but just having an idea of where you're at and what you need to do. And it'll alert you to go to bed too. It'll say, Hey, time to unwind and time. To get ready to kind of go bed. Cause you only slept seven hours a night before, you know, start to unwind and dim the lights and get. Ready for bed and it's a great tool. Not very expensive. There is a subscription involved in it, but it's like $5 a month.

It is so worth it. Yeah. And it looks, I like the way it Looks. I want to try the whoop band, But I don't think I'm going to like wearing a band around my wrist. But those people love those. People that work out, that lift heavy and don t want To wear a ring. They like to wear the the Whoop bands. One thing that I recently got a couple of months ago that i really enjoy is my Apollo wearable. and it's a parasympathetic, um, stimulator. So you put it around your ankle or your wrist and you sleep with it on.

It just, it vibrates at a tone that puts you in a relaxing state. Yeah, that's really cool. Um, so it just helps improve your parasympathy. Nervous system to relax. Mmm. If you had unlimited resources when it comes to biohacking, what is the one thing if you could, the thing you would get, to put in your home if you had unlimited resources? I would build in a sauna. Yeah. A hot sauna. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I have a steam sauna, but I should have, like hindsight, should've put in an infrared. And now those are, they're not cheap, But they are not like outrageous.

You can put them everywhere and you can plug them in a regular wall. It's true. and I thought about that. Oh, well I could put one in the backyard. But I don't know if I want to put it in backyard, you know. Like I would rather maybe You know, try to figure out a way I can kind of, you know configure it into my bathroom. Yeah, that would be mine too. An infrared sauna would. Great to have that. I love the cold plunge, but I mean several months out of the year you can use the pool if you have a pool.

But those two would, if I had the room and I have the resources or whatever to reconfigure, those are the things that I think would One of the other things we talked about several episodes ago was just hydration, like making sure that you're hydrated early in the morning when you first get up, having a glass of water or an electrolyte or something to kind of set the tone for the day. It'll help with your energy, your brain function, you know, um, premature cravings that might have throughout the and obviously just your hydrate and you feel better.

Such an easy way to just maintain wellness throughout your day, yeah. Um, Well, let's talk about hydration. I know last time we were going to talk different types of water. But I went to this functional medicine conference, as you know, in Orlando in October. And they were selling these hydrogen machines for oxygenated hydrogen. to help increase your, everything has to do with either inflammation or mitochondrial production, right?

Hydration and Hydrogen Water 21:08

So that hydrogen, they had hydrogen machines that you could inhale the oxygen that was hydrogenated, which increases your mitochondria production by eight over 800%. Or you could take the probe from the machine and put it in your glass of water and hydrogenate your water, and drink that. So hydrogen water is great. You can buy hydrogen now. There's many different ways to get increased um, mitochondrial production, all forms of biohacking in some regards. So yeah, we'll put some of the things we talked about in the link and, um make sure that you like and subscribe and share this information.

If there's any questions you have, please let us know. We'll answer those as they come through. And, uh, until next time, does your skin feel better? I feel amazing. You look like you had a facelift. It's not like Botox amazing, but I feel like I'm just smiling the whole time. You looked surprised. Yeah, like this, yeah. But yeah, that was fun. All right, thanks guys. Thanks for listening. Don't forget, again, Like us, Subscribe. Rate us. Review us whatever. Just all the things. The information provided in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice.

Closing Remarks and Disclaimer 22:28

While we may be licensed healthcare professionals, this content should not be used to diagnose or treat any medical condition or to replace the advice of your personal healthcare provider. Always consult your doctor or a qualified health professional with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Listening to this podcast does not create a doctor-patient relationship. Reliance on any information provided is solely at your own risk.