1.Roadman today I'm gonna talk about a topic that not a lot of people…

Roadman today I'm gonna talk about a topic that not a lot of people ever talk about it's blue light and the damage that it's doing to us. Let's cue the intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our longevity? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Hello, Lord Man. I want to have a conversation about a topic that nobody's talking about. And I don't know why nobody is talking about it. It's blue light and how damaging it is to our health and, you know, our gig is performance, health, happiness, longevity. And it's one of the big things that's undermining all of those goals or stated goals on this podcast. So I thought it would be remiss of me not to talk about blue light, the dangers of blue light exposure. When I say blue light, just to be clear, I'm talking about artificial lights from in the house inside lamp that you have on to the TV screen, to your phone, to stuck on the computer, all blue artificial light. It's a harmful wavelength of light to us. I'm going to tell you why. And I'm also going to give you a little hack to get around that and reduce the damage. I dive into the podcast just a quick reminder of the week to jump on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch guys I can't emphasize enough that this is the life blood it's the engine that feeds this podcast it's what keeps it going week after week we're building a bit of momentum there about it encourage you if you're on the fence to jump on over to patreon and please make a small contribution by a barrier by a coffee and that's what keeps the podcast going. Okay, so I suppose the best place to start explaining why Blue Light is a problem is we have something called mitochondria and don't tune out when you say the word mitochondria that's what I do. I always speak about how we never understand something after a complex word if somebody uses techno bubble we generally just tune out after that but But mitochondria, it's a word to just describe the power of ourselves. They're the engines that power ourselves. And I love the endurance training that we do and a lot of reasons for the sessions that I give clients, it's to improve whether they melt the mitochondria we have or the mitochondrial density. But we have a hormone that's absolutely essential to mitochondria and health and that is melatonin because melatonin, what it does is it repairs the mitochondria and it helps keeps us energized helps keep us healthy and helps keep us young. The creation of Melatonin that's stimulated by exposure to morning sunlight and it's secreted to heal ourselves only in darkness after the sun's set. So that means our lifestyle at the moment of largely indoors and our absolute reliance on artificial light on artificial light, it's disturbing our bodies natural circadian rhythm and it's preventing that natural creation and secretion of melatonin. Now that's an absolute disaster for us as athletes because we work so hard on mitochondria, you know, mitochondrial density, mitochondrial amount of them and that's true endurance sessions, that's through interspers and intensity into those endurance sessions. So then step away from the boy can after doing all that hard work and to neglect melatonin, which is so essential for repairing those mitochondria, is just a disaster.

2.If there's simple strategies that I could employ in my everyday life…

So if there's simple strategies that I could employ in my everyday life that are going to help me to generate more melatonin, which is going to heal my mitochondria, which is going to mean I have more bang for the book for my training sessions, it's an absolutely no-brainer. The big problem we have is, and I speak about this all the time, we need to get back live in ancestrally and it's unlikely to happen anytime soon because COVID and the impact to COVID has meant a lot of us are spending more time on screens than ever before, where indoors more than ever before. We're just not genetically designed to be indoors, we're outdoor creatures, we're hunters, we're gatherers, not stationary, in the chair looking at artificial light and our bodies haven't adapted to this. So there's a harmful wavelength of light and that's the blue light that we're talking about and it really disturbs sleep and melatonin is your natural sleep hormone. So the melatonin that heals your mitochondria, it's also our natural sleep hormone, it's what makes us tired in the evenings and it's what makes us gently drift off to sleep. So what I do is I wear a pair of blue light, black and glasses. Now I will, now I've no affiliation with the company, the ones I use are RA Optics. I'm going to pop them into the Realman resources. I just use them because I've done a bunch of research on a bunch of blue light blocking glasses and these came out top of the pick. They also don't look too bad either because I wear them quite a lot when I'm indoors. So you don't want to look like a complete dune if you have, especially if you have company over or something. So what the glasses do is they contain a pigment that absorbs the wavelengths emitted by screens, light and it's that wavelength that damages our hormones, damages our circadian rhythm and for us as athletes it damages our performance but for us as humans it damages our health. So what I think the research is brilliant on blue light blocking glasses it's almost unequivocal and I believe like much in the world and there's not commercial interests, drive and stuff, the marketing campaigns, the general public awareness, it's just not there and blue light blocking glasses, there's something that's super cheap. Or I think or I optics around the pricier side of blue light block and once what you're still talking about like a hundred quid for something that makes a markedly huge difference in your health. It's for not. And when you contrast this to, you know, supplement regimes, gym memberships. It's an insane level of health improvement for a very trivial amount of money. And that's why it's not widespread in my opinion, in my tin foil, half wearing conspiracy opinion. But when I started wearing them, I definitely noticed sleep was way, way better. I was naturally getting tired. Like, you know, I previously be up at like 2am still watching TV. Sleep was just, I was naturally starting to go like 9 o'clock starting to get the ah. And during the day much more sustained energy levels now I will say I went hardcore on the blue light blocking glasses when I'm at home. Basically I'm wearing my orae optics and that like day or night when I come in I'm putting them on. If I'm on artificial light which I typically am when I'm at home you know I try to keep the lights off in the in the apartment, come in the evening time, try like candles a bit more and use sort of more ancestral lighting around the place.

3.Still like, I can't get away from using phones

But you still like, I can't get away from using phones. I'm on the computer right now recording this podcast. I can't really get away from it. But if you're to dive into the research on this, like it's everything from what I experienced like better energy levels, better sleep and to reduce risk of chronic diseases. So it's win, win, win all around on the blue light blocking glasses. So to summarize this, it's mitochondria that are the powerhouses that are of endurance. We absolutely depend on mitochondria, the amount of mitochondria and the quality of the mitochondria as endurance athletes. And it's a real limiter on performance. If someone says what separates, you know, a bad rider from a good rider from a great rider, mitochondria is one quick word to do that. So melatonin is essential for repairing your mitochondria and the way to enhance melatonin production is to block out these harmful wavelengths through a message from screens, from phones, from TVs and we do that through blue light blocking glasses. That was such a succinct 30 second explanation of what was going on. I could have just said that at the very start and said just trust me, you don't need to know, there's no more to it. I have a 30 seconds to sync explanation. Just listen to that and go about your day. But instead I drag this out for eight minutes. But I know you guys love listening to me. Well, man, thank you very much for this science class. It was a heavy one to finish the week, wasn't it? Apologies for all the science words. One of the things I really want to do with this podcast and just conversations in general, I hate that the stuffy white coat academics have some sort of exclusivity on our health and they use these crazy words like mitochondria and melatonin. And for average people who are busy, a lot of us just tune out when we hear that stuff. And for that reason, we end up leaving a lot of health gains on the table. So a goal that I have is I want to bridge that gap between their crazy, overly an unnecessarily complex scientific words and you guys and your understanding of you know how we can optimize our health so hopefully today that bridge that gap and now you know what mitochondria is you know what melatonin is and you know the importance of staying away from screens. Roadman enjoy your weekend I'm gonna put a link to these blue light blocking glasses I'm using in roadman resources.com I'll put the link in the description, go and check those out for yourself and I definitely would encourage everyone to pick up a pair. I picked up a bunch of them and gave them out to family and stuff because I just think it's so important and everyone isn't as aware and growth mindset as we are listening to this podcast. So they're a good present to give out the paper. Roadmen enjoy your weekend, be safe on the roads, spread the good word and good love about the romance podcast and you know what I'm a chatty all again on Monday.