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Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.
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Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com. And this episode goes deep on things like EMF and lighting and how to optimize your home with some easy steps that are not stressful. And I’m here with Ryan Blaser, who is the founder and CEO of a company called Test My Home, which is an environmental company dedicated to improving people’s health and wellbeing. He’s also a functional medicine doctor for your home and he uses his expertise in building biology and healthy home consulting to identify and address things that might be impacting your health within your home. He has an extensive educational background in electrical engineering, environmental toxicity, and electromagnetic radiation, combined with years of experience in industries like mold remediation, construction, even nuclear waste cleanup. And this has given him a deep understanding about the relationship between humans and their environment. And in this episode, we go deep, especially on the EMF and lighting side. And he provides some really simple tips and switches you can make in your home to really improve the EMF and lighting factors within your home. And some of these are ones I do, and I also learned some new ones from him today. So let’s jump in and join Ryan Blaser. Ryan, welcome. Thanks for being here.
Ryan: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Katie: I am really excited for our conversations because we’re going to get to go deep on a couple of topics, actually, that I think are really relevant to the audience, especially to all the parents listening. And first, we’re going to go deep on EMF and lighting in our homes. But before we jump into that, while researching for this episode, I read, and you can confirm if this is true, that you have been in three plane crashes and walked away from them. And I feel like I just have to hear that story.
Ryan: Yeah, so as a pilot, that’s kind of what I do for fun. That’s one of my hobbies. And I’ve done a lot of flying, ultralights, different planes. And yeah, I’ve had a couple incidences with planes. And luckily, I’ve been able to walk away from all three of them. But two of them had an engine out. And one of them just caught a gust of wind when I was coming into the land and crashed and spun around. But luckily, I was able to walk away from all of them.
Katie: Wow. Well, that is quite the story. And I’m glad you’re here because we get to talk about some things, like I said, that I think are really relevant to moms. So in our first episode together, I would love to go deep on the topic of understanding how things like EMFs and lighting, which I feel like is less talked about, can affect our health and then really get to get into the weeds with some solutions and things we can all do in our homes to make them a better environment. Because I believe we create our environment, but our environment also somewhat creates us. So to start off with some background, can you walk us through what are some of the common problems someone might encounter when it comes to EMFs and lighting in their home?
Ryan: Yeah, you know, with EMF, it really has to do with where our world is heading with technology. It seems like everything is becoming wireless. Everything is becoming intelligent, Internet of Things. It’s all connected. And we’re using the technology in new ways that we never thought possible 10, 20 years ago. But because of that, you know, this technology comes at a cost. And the EMF that comes off of it can affect our body, our heart, our brain, our nervous system, it all works on these electrical signals. Our brain tells our muscles to move. Those are all electrical signals. Now, when we overlay these artificial frequencies, which comes from all these fun devices we have, the laptops, the Wi-Fi, the Bluetooth, even the electricity in our home, it interferes with our body, and it becomes an issue. And so it’s really important to really recognize where these energies are coming from and what we can do to help mitigate and reduce these exposures.
Katie: Yeah, that’s a good point because like you said, these things are so ubiquitous in our environment and likely technology is not going anywhere anytime soon. So this is something we have to learn how to live with. And you mentioned wiring in the home. And I would guess this is when people are probably aware of things like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. And we’ll talk about ways to deal with those as well. But I feel like the wiring in the home isn’t one that’s discussed as much. So can you explain, like I think most people assume that’s kind of like in a wire, it’s insulated, it’s in the walls, and it’s not as much to worry about. But can you explain some of the problems you see from just the wiring in the homes?
Ryan: Yeah, the wiring is all throughout the walls. It’s overhead. It’s what connects all the outlets and the switches. And if you could look behind the walls, you’d see just like a skeleton with veins. You’d see all these wiring. Now the wiring, the electric field off of that will pulse out up to six to eight feet. So when we’re in the vicinity of any of this wiring or lamps or anything that’s plugged into the wall, that electric field can radiate out and it can get onto the body and it can affect our body.
Katie: And this is something likely everybody has and is exposed to if they’re living in a home environment. Because even if I know I take my Wi-Fi down at night and I’m conscious of those kinds of things, but I think most people, we don’t turn off the wiring to our entire house at night. So I guess the first question would be, how do we know if there’s levels that are not optimal from our wiring? And then what do we do about it?
Ryan: Yeah, so 150 years ago, we lived in homes, we had candles, we didn’t have electricity, and our bodies evolved a long time without this electrical energy. Now, the last 100 years, everything’s electrified, our buildings, our vehicles. Ninety percent of the time, we’re living inside these environments that are electrified. That gets onto the body. Now, what we can do is go outside. That’s always helpful to get away from as much as possible. But what we do at our house is we turn the circuits off at night when we sleep. So that way, at least one third of our life, we’re getting away from this electrical exposure and giving our bodies a break. So you can simply go out to your circuit panel, find the circuits that power up your bedroom, and turn those circuits off. And try sleeping like this, so I always challenge my clients, do like a digital detox weekend where you turn off all the electronics and almost like you’re camping in your house. Of course, you can leave the fridge on, leave the air conditioning, the heating on, but turn all this other stuff off and see how your body responds. It’s interesting when you actually do that. You’ll start to notice a difference. A lot of people tell me, yeah, when I go out to the park or when I go to the beach or when I go out camping, I feel so much better. I sleep better. But then when I go into my home, I just feel run down. That’s a big sign that you’re being exposed, overexposed to these electronics.
Katie: And I may not remember the statistics of this study perfectly. You might know them better than I would. But I know there was a camping study done a while back that looked at people being in nature and away from artificial light for a period of time and how that drastically changed their circadian rhythm and their hormones and resolved a lot of things. And I think obviously one part of that was the removal of artificial light. But it sounds like not being exposed to other ambient forms of EMFs like from our wiring could also have come into play there.
Ryan: Yeah, correct. And you know, just like ancestrally, we evolved on this planet with the cycle of the sun. And it’s no coincidence that we sleep when the sun is down, and we’re awake when the sun is up. And we get those cues from the lighting from our eyes that tells our body to suppress melatonin during the day when we get that full spectrum lighting coming into our eyes. And then at night, when the sun goes down, ancestrally, we had candles and fire and lanterns. And we had that red and that orange and the amber colored light. That’s what triggered our body to start getting us ready for bed and start producing melatonin.
The problem is now the sun goes down, what do we do? We turn on all these lights, we turn on the TV, we jump in front of our laptop, or even worse, our phone, we lay in bed with our phone for 30 minutes before bed, and we get all this blue light into our eyes. That’s tricking the body. That’s telling the body, hey, it’s actually daylight outside, we’re seeing a lot of bright light, let’s suppress that melatonin. Because of that, people’s sleep cycles get messed up, their circadian rhythm gets thrown off.
Katie: We can chalk that up as even more reasons spending time in nature is so beneficial. I know it’s funny that we keep having studies that need to confirm what we probably have always known as humans is that we’re meant to live, like you said, in harmony with nature and get the exposure to the natural light cycles.
And that’s a perfect transition, I think, into talking about lighting. Because I’ve said enough times that people are probably tired of it, that getting morning sunlight as soon as possible after waking up is one of the best free things we can do for our health. And we all have access to that. Even on a cloudy day, it’s so beneficial. But there’s a lot more that goes into this. Like you said, the artificial light at night, even things like we can get into the color and the spectrum of light at different times of day. Can you kind of give us a primer on light exposure and maybe the negative sources we’re exposed to and or beneficial sources we can seek out?
Ryan: Yeah, so part of my training is in the study of building biology. And one of the main ethos with that is that we want to connect with nature as much as possible and use nature as the golden standard. So if we can mimic what the sun is doing when it comes to lighting, then we’re going to be a lot better off with our body and our circadian rhythm. But one part of the lighting that we don’t think about is the flicker rate. So the sun has a consistent glow. Fire has a consistent glow, sort of candles. But, our new LED lighting, the energy efficient lighting that we have in our homes is not consistent. It’s actually flickering really fast. So it’s on for a little bit of time. It’s off for a little bit of time. And that vibration, that strobing effect really affects the body. In fact, a lot of people can get really sensitive to that. And so the best thing to do is what is the sun doing? If it’s out overhead and it’s bright in the middle of the day, that’s the type of lighting we want. The overhead light, the bright, the full spectrum. If the sun is going down and we’re seeing those red colors and the amber colors like the sunset, that’s when we want to start toning down our lights. And you can switch over to more lamps that have the amber colored lights. And then at night, right before bed, we want to stick to more of the red light and the really low. So the color, the intensity, but also the direction of where the light’s coming from all plays a part in how it affects the body.
Katie: Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I want to unpack a couple of important things. I just, I think you just touched on one is being the flicker rate. I feel like this isn’t as talked about. And for people who are curious, if your lights have flicker, one thing I found was if you put your phone on slow-mo and just record a video of your light and then play it, it will show you if it’s flickering or not. And when I did that, I was shocked that even some of the lighting in my home that was labeled as like natural spectrum still had a lot of flicker. And so I slowly switched out to flicker-free bulbs.
I think also what you said is really important about the angle, because this is not talked about very much either. Like even people who are avoiding bright light at night might still have overhead lighting. And I noticed a difference when in my home, I switched out to like you talked about those full spectrum bulbs in all the ceiling lighting, but then lamps at night that are eye level or below that have those more amber bulbs or even red bulbs, because that mimics, I would guess like we see red light from sunset, from fires, from that kind of thing, but they’re never above us. Whereas bright lights always coming from up high. And so from what I’ve read, there’s actually receptors in our eyes that respond differently to both the intensity and the angle of the light. And so that’s why that’s important. Is that right?
Ryan: Yeah, you’re absolutely correct. Couldn’t have said it better. Yep.
Katie: So then is that like kind of the optimal way to deal with that is to just create that circadian environment with lights that sort of turn on at sunset that are lower intensity, lower level, and lower height.
Ryan: Yeah, if you’re building a home from scratch or doing a full remodel, there’s a really cool system called color beam lighting, which is all low voltage. It’s low EMF. And it tracks what the sun is doing and automatically changes the color and the intensity as you go through the day. It does it for you. Now, at our house, we have the overhead bright lights, the can lights that we use during the day. Once the sun starts to go down, those go off. And now we have lamps that we turn on that are more eye level. And then even as we go towards bedtime, we switch over to even more of the red colored lights. And of course, in the middle of the night, I have motion sensor lights in the bathroom that are just full red. If we need to use the bathroom, those automatically turn on. It won’t mess up the circadian rhythm. So maintaining your house and kind of setting up your home that way and then doing it manually is really the first easy step.
Katie: That makes so much sense. Yeah, I do something very similar. And I know, like you said, it’s ideal to not even look at our screens or have phones on at night. But with teenagers who drive now, I find I sometimes need to be able to just know when they’re getting home at night. So one other thing I’ve done, and I’m hoping this is helpful, is to put that red filter on my phone so that after dark, when the sun goes down, it switches to red. So I still try to avoid my phone, but if I have to look at it to see where kids are, is that a way to at least reduce some of that bright light exposure?
Ryan: Yeah, no, that’s a great tip. And you can do that on your laptop too. So Mac, Apple is really good with that. You just go into display, go into settings, and I believe it’s called night shift. And you can set it so that from sunset to sunrise, it will take out the blue light on the laptop and your phone.
Katie: Got it. That makes sense. And I’ll try to find a link to that tutorial and put it in the show notes as well. Are there any other sources of either EMFs or lighting exposure that are not optimal that we may not even think to address?
Ryan: So I think we touched on lighting pretty good. Jumping back to EMF, that’s really the big one. That’s the one that we really need a lot of work on. And we’re not trying to say we got to live in a cave or go hide in the forest to get away from this stuff, because that’s really not possible. We run businesses. We have a normal life. We have kids. We have cell phones. What do we do about that? That’s really where the trick comes in. And we’re looking for the easy wins. We’re not going to get away from it zero, but we can get significant reduction. And so a big win is at night when we’re sleeping. We don’t need a lot of this technology at night. We don’t need the electricity at night. So that’s a great opportunity to turn all of these devices off, unplug them. You said, you have Wi-Fi that you turn off at night. We turn the circuits off at night because it’s really critical when we’re sleeping, because that’s when we’re healing, when we’re resting, when our body is repairing, but also when we don’t need this technology. So it’s a really easy win. It’s a first step to power these devices down.
But even going a step further is during the daytime. Let’s say we have the PlayStation set up in the front living room and all the gaming stuff set up there. If you only use that a couple hours a week, there’s no reason to have that on and plugged in all the time because now when you’re sitting there in the living room, that stuff is radiating you the whole time. So it’s really easy to plug all of those devices into a power strip. You can even plug it into a remote control for Christmas lights. And just think about the mode is going to be off the majority of the time. That’s default mode. And we’re going to turn these devices on and use them when we need them. So another good example is in the office. Let’s say you have a printer in the corner. That thing is radiating all the time, Wi-Fi, if you only use that once or twice a week, leave it unplugged. So we’re looking for easy wins like that.
Katie: Yeah, that’s such a great tip. And I find you can even do that with a timer now. And just, I have that on the surge protector for my Wi-Fi so I don’t have to remember. I feel like to your point, anytime we can set things up to be automatic, so we don’t have to remember to do them, it makes it much easier to, of course, to stick with it. And so I have digital timers on things like my Wi-Fi router and everything connected to that. And also to a lot of the nighttime lighting, cause you can just set it to a schedule. So it goes on when the sun goes down and it’s kind of set it in, forget it. And the funny part is it took me actually having pet reptiles to learn that because they have very specific lighting and you have to actually be very careful about how much light, what time of day and all that for them to thrive. And I thought, of course, if this matters to animals, it would matter to us as well. And I have all these digital timers set up to keep these reptiles happy. Why am I not doing that for the humans who live here too?
Ryan: Yeah, no, that’s a good point. And that’s, yeah, it’s very important to do. We don’t think about that a lot of times, but taking the time to set up our home in a fashion that’s a lot more healthy so it does it automatically is a lot easier because as humans, we want things easy. We want things convenient. And a lot of times it’s not easy and convenient to go around and switch all these lights and change. There’s so many things in life we have to do. So the more we can automate things, the better off we’re going to be. And that’s where we help a lot of our clients is helping them how to set up these tools and these automations to make it easy for them. Because if it’s not easy for someone, they’re not going to implement it.
Katie: And I love your approach to really just focus on it, especially if you’re just starting off, just focus on the nighttime. Because like you said, that’s a third of our life. We’re not using it anyway. And from what I understand, we’re actually in a more susceptible state when we’re sleeping because the body’s going through so many repair processes and we’re supposed to have that time for sort of deep recovery. And so even if I use this example a lot, even if we don’t feel mentally stressed, our bodies and our nervous system perceive stress in lots of ways. And so if they’re getting these low-level exposures to things all day long. Our nervous system might be perceiving stress and stay in fight or flight, even if we don’t mentally feel like we’re exposed to stress. And so I think the sleep tip is huge because like you said, we’re not even using it while we’re sleeping.
Ryan: Yeah, you know, and I see a future coming down the road where it’s going to be almost impossible to get away from this wireless technology with the way things are going. And, you know, I predict, you know, five, ten years, we might see this really big split where technology is so prevalent, but it’s all wireless. But then we have these people that like we’re not going to do it. We’re fighting against it. And there’s going to be this big rift happening. You kind of see it already with the 5G and everybody’s against it. And yes, this stuff is dangerous, but it’s also very helpful for us. So I think it’s really important to try to bridge that gap and come in the middle. Like, how can we use this technology, but use it responsibly and use it safely?
And anytime we can hardwire a device, it’s going to be a big win. So if you’re using a device like a wireless speaker and it has the capability to plug the headphone jacks into it and you can run it from your phone, take that option. Or if you’re listening to, if you need to listen to headphones, make sure they’re wired and don’t use the wireless ones. You know, I’m on my laptop many hours during the day. Most people are. And so I hardwire my laptop to my router so that I’m not getting that exposure. I can turn my laptop on airplane mode and just use the wired function. So anytime we can get those little wins, it’s going to be huge for us. And so even moving into the future, we really need to be more conscious about this stuff and really get these small wins when we can.
Katie: That makes sense. And bringing up the headphones, I’m like you, I’m wearing wired headphones while we’re recording this, but I see so many kids, especially these days with AirPods in all the time, even coaching track. I see kids running with AirPods in, and it seems like that’s obviously not ideal, but can you kind of rank, like what are, if we’re only going to 80-20 and really focus on the really big exposures and those easy wins like you talk about, where would we start? Like I would guess AirPods might be on that list, but what are the other big ones we can just eliminate right off the bat?
Ryan: They are. You know, I’m saying this, this might be shocking to people, but I would rather see my kids smoking a cigarette than using AirPods because the studies and the science that are coming out, you’re putting these high electronic devices right near the brain. So when they’re in the ear, they’re literally inches from your brain and they’re high power all the time. It’s not just if a phone call comes in, not just if you listen to music, it’s constantly transmitting from one device to the other through your head and then from that device down to your phone. So it’s really, really important to focus on the devices that are near the body. A lot of times my clients call me up and say, hey, I’m really worried about this 5G tower down the road or the cell towers. And yeah, you should be. That’s fine. But then I go into their house and start doing testing and I see the kids with the AirPods and I see the wireless headphones and I see they’re on their laptop and their iPad and their phone. And those devices that are near the body, because it’s all about proximity, how close you are to these devices is going to determine how much exposure you’re getting. So the cell tower, quarter mile away, yeah, it’s exposing you, but not even close to what the cell phone that’s in your hand or the AirPods in your ear.
So think about all the devices that are on your body and start with those first. That’s the first place you want to start and then start working your way out from there and then look around you. What’s in my eight foot bubble around me? Is there any devices, anything plugged in, anything electrified or wireless? And let’s focus on those second and then we can worry about the outside stuff later.
Katie: Got it. So proximity is important. And it seems like there’s even a big reduction, even just a little bit. We can move those things out of our environment. Like you said, even if we have to take phone calls as part of our daily life, for instance, if we’re using wired headphones and our phones a couple feet away, from what I’ve read at least, even just removing it from your direct contact with your body or just a couple feet away sort of drastically, it doesn’t remove, but it drastically reduces the amount of exposure you’re getting. Is that right?
Ryan: Absolutely. Yeah. So for example, if I have my phone and I have it up next to my head, I’m getting in the millions range of EMF exposure per microwatts exposing my body. Just by holding it out here in my hand, a foot or two feet away, that drops down like 90%. And then I move it across the room four or five feet, that reduces it another 90%. So it drops off exponentially as it moves away. So what I do is if I’m in the car, I’m on a phone call, I’ll use my plug-in headphone adapters and I’ll set my phone up on my dash so that the phone is about four or five feet away from me. And then I’m talking through the headphones and I’m keeping that away from the head. Never, ever want to put your head right next to the phone. Always keep that distance if you can.
Katie: Got it. What about, I know this has become more popular lately, what about grounding? Like for one, that could just be as simple as going outside barefoot and directly touching the earth or something like a beach or a body of water. And I know there’s now all kinds of grounding devices as well. What’s your take on all that?
Ryan: Yeah, that’s a really, that’s a good topic. And I actually did a podcast where we got into this a little bit and caused a little bit of controversy. Because what I’ve noticed with my testing is that there’s a lot of people using these grounding mats, but they’re plugging them into the outlet. Now, when I’ve done a lot of my testing on the grounding of the outlets of people’s homes, a lot of times there’s dirty electricity on the circuitry. Because it’s running right next to all of the other wiring. It’s connected in the box, in the power box to the circuitry. And so if there’s any interference on the light in the house, it’s going to show up on that grounding circuit. Bring it back grounding is very very beneficial but I would rather call it earthing because when we call it earthing then our body’s like okay let’s go out and touch earth physically let’s put our feet on the grass, let’s walk on the beach, let’s even you know I just saw a video of this guy YouTube and he was walking down the street in Los Angeles he’s like I’m grounding I’m on the concrete and yeah you’re getting I mean it might be nasty what you’re walking in but at least you’re grounding but there is a lot of really good beneficial therapeutic benefits to grounding yourself to earth but it’s not if now if you’re up on a high rise and the only way to ground is plugging into the outlet you’re going to get some benefits from that but you just got to be cautious and if you have a choice always physically ground to earth outside and not through your outlets because you will get interference.
Katie: Got it. Okay. So from a habit stacking perspective, we could add getting morning sunlight, ideally doing it barefoot, touching the actual ground. And that would be some benefit there. How much, I mean, I know with nature more is better, but is even like 10 minutes a day helpful for that?
Ryan: Yeah, as much as you can, any of this type of health stuff, the more we can. I always like to look at it, the decisions that I make throughout the day is going to either point the needle towards health and longevity, or it’s going to point the needle towards disease and cancer. And so every little decision I make, do I choose to go eat a piece of pizza or do I choose to go eat some chicken breast with some rice and a salad? Every little decision I make is going to move the needle one way or another. So if I want to get up in the morning, go watch the sunrise, drink a nice smoothie, put my feet on the ground, that’s all going to move the needle in the right direction. So any of these decisions we make throughout the day, you got to think of it in that mindset. And when you do start thinking about life and decisions that way, it makes it really easy because it’s all about the little, small decisions. They all add up during the day.
Katie: And you mentioned testing. Can you walk us through EMF testing and how someone might know if they have big issues in their home or what they need to focus on addressing first?
Ryan: Sure. Yeah. I would say anybody that’s serious about EMF is a good idea to buy an EMF meter. The Safe and Sound Pro II is a really good one that people can get for radio frequency. It’s a couple hundred dollars, you can get it on Amazon. And that’s going to tell you the levels that are coming off of all your different devices and the levels in all the areas throughout your house. But if you want to look at more of the magnetic fields and the electric fields, you have the Trifield 2 meter is really good. It’s about 180 bucks on Amazon.
Because I want to point out when people talk about EMF, a lot of times they get it all combined together. EMF is actually three separate things. The E is the electrical field and that comes off the electrical wiring. The M is the magnetic field and that comes off of motors, appliances, high voltage power lines, the power grid. You turn the blender on, it’s going to put a magnetic field. Then the F is the fields, or I like to think of those as the frequency and that’s coming off of anything that’s transmitting data wirelessly over the air. So there’s three different types of EMF. And we measure them with three different meters.
Katie: And, like for clarity, I would love to know, are there instances where these types of fields can also be beneficial? I know not the ones we’re talking about from Wi-Fi and AirPods and such, but I’ve read like certain places on the planet have certain magnetic fields that are actually supposed to be beneficial for the body. Or now there’s devices that seem to support or that claim to support the body by creating positive fields. We talked a lot about the negative ones. Are there positive ones as well?
Ryan: Yeah, so the earth has its own heartbeat, its own resonant frequency. It’s called the Schumann resonant frequency. And it’s about 7.7 hertz. You know, I used to live in Phoenix and we used to go up to Sedona all the time. So it’s kind of like a hotspot for these vortexes and these energies. And so, yeah, there are places where you can stand and these energies are really good for the body. But because that’s how our bodies evolved on this planet is having those natural frequencies. And so those are called natural EMFs and those are good for you.
And a lot of what we’ve been talking about on the show so far is the non-native EMF, the unnatural frequency, the frequency that just came out over the last hundred years that our bodies are not used to. But, yeah, so that’s a really good point. You know, we have the North and the South Pole and that’s a static magnetic field that doesn’t change. So when we’re talking about magnetic fields in the home, it’s an alternating field that’s going positive, negative 60 times a second. And as that magnetic field goes through the body, it can induce little currents in our nervous system. It can also interact with heavy metals and iron in our blood and cause inflammation and oxidative stress. So the natural frequencies of the earth are good. Artificial frequencies that are created by the power grid in our electronics are the ones that we’re concerned about.
Katie: That’s good to know. And so like with things like earthing, we’re getting exposure to the earth’s resonance like you talked about. Or I live in an area where we have beaches, and the beaches are actually made of quartz. And I’ve heard that in our area because of that, it’s a very like sort of like extra earthing area, but that there’s like beneficial frequencies that exist because of that sort of like crystal component of the sand plus the water, which can also carry that. So that’s good to know. It’s like there’s things we can do. We can avoid the bad ones and not all frequencies and magnetism and all that are bad. They’re actually good ones, too, which makes total sense because our bodies are electric.
As we get close to the end of our time, a couple of questions I would love to make sure we touch on. The first being of all of the things that someone can do to address EMFs and the lighting in their home and all the things we’ve talked about, what would you put as a few sort of starting baby steps or key takeaways for people who want to start addressing it but not get too stressed about it?
Ryan: Yeah, for lighting, just try to stay away from the blue light. And if you can, I know that this is hard, but an hour before bed, try to turn down the TV, turn off the laptop, turn off your phone. I know a lot of people like to lay in bed and scroll right before bed. That’s really not a good thing to do. Try to stay away from the electronics before bedtime. And then, of course, always try to mimic what the sun is doing. If the sun is down, let’s keep the lighting levels down. Let’s keep it more in the amber and the red colored lights. So mimic the sun as much as possible and get as much natural sunlight as you can during the day. So if you can do those things with lighting, that’s a huge win.
Now, when it comes to EMF. Just the main thing, if you’re not using a device, unplug it, turn it off, put it on airplane mode. And if you can’t do that, then distance yourself. You know, like, for example, I’m on a podcast talking to you right now. I don’t need my phone. It doesn’t need to be in my pocket. It doesn’t need to be even on. So it’s on airplane mode, stop to the side. When I’m having dinner with my family, it’s on airplane mode. You know, when I’m getting ready for bed, it’s on airplane mode. I turn it on when I need to use it and make a phone call. You know, people that know me, they’re just kind of used to that. But that’s just how it is. We don’t need to have 24-7 contact all the time. And I think getting that mindset that we don’t need these things, it becomes an addiction. And so a lot of it is just how we think about these devices. But the distance is also a big one, too. Keeping these things away from you as much as possible. I think if we can do those things with the lighting and the EMF, those are big wins for people.
Katie: I agree. And to echo what you said, I would, again, highly recommend putting your Wi-Fi on a digital timer. They’re inexpensive on Amazon. And I find even don’t just wait till bedtime to turn it off. I found, especially with teens in the house, if the Wi-Fi goes down much earlier, like six or seven, it leads to typically more family time as well because people aren’t on devices. And then we have a rule that I built a charging drawer in my kitchen. So all devices live in the kitchen and not in our bedrooms. And so that way there’s not the temptation to be on the phone or to be looking at a screen right before bed.
I forget who said it, but someone recommended sort of like a 3-2-1 approach of at minimum stop eating three hours before bed, stop drinking water two hours before bed, and stop that artificial lighting as much as possible at least an hour before bed. Or, you know, bonus points if you stop all of them earlier than that. But I think that’s a great, great starting point. And I also know you have a tremendous amount of resources available on your own website for people in learning how to navigate this. And ways they can improve their homes. Where can people find that and keep learning if they’re interested?
Ryan: Yeah, so @testmyhome for Instagram, we’re always posting a lot of good content, teaching. That’s where we try to reach the most people. We answer questions. Our website, we have a lot of good information at testmyhome.com. And we have some training videos. We have a whole course training series that we’re going to give a code for your listeners to get a really good discount on that. So that kit includes an EMF meter, mold test kit, water test kit, air quality meter. And you get to keep this stuff. And the whole point of this course is to teach people how to take control of their own environment and really get an idea of what is going on in their home. And it comes with a training video and then also some access to me with some Zoom calls to really walk you through exactly what to do. And then we do have our in-person testing that we do with people as well. But really, you know, the podcast, the Instagram, the training course. That’s where people are getting the most value.
Katie: I’ll make sure all of those are linked in the show notes. And for you guys listening, make sure to tune in. We’re going to do another episode that goes deep on some other topics related to how to create an optimal environment in your home. But Ryan, for today, thank you so much. I think this is such an important topic and I really appreciate your perspective on highlighting the things we can focus on coming from a place of empowerment, not fear and the little changes we can make that start to make a big difference. So thank you so much for your time.
Ryan: Yeah, thank you again. Appreciate it.
Katie: And thank you for listening. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.
If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.
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