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Katie: Jack, welcome back. I’m so happy to chat with you again. Thanks for being here twice.
Jack: I appreciate being here. Thank you.
Katie: Well, in our last episode, which,
Jack: Not everyone is willing to listen to me. I should say at home people listen to me but not everyone’s willing to listen so this is great.
Katie: Well, I’m very much enjoying it.
Oh, I feel you on that. I have teenage kids who won’t listen to a thing I say. I have to get other people to seed ideas in my own house too. I know how that goes. Um, well, I will link to our first episode in the show notes. If you guys missed it, I highly recommend checking it out because Jack you really debunked some myths when it comes to sleep, gave some really practical metrics to pay attention to and ways to improve our sleep. And in this one, I’m excited to kind of create a dovetail, perfect episode that goes along with that on our sleep environment and really creating a sleep sanctuary.
This is something that is very top of mind for me and that I prioritize both in budget and in time, because I feel like we ideally are spending about a third of our life sleeping. And so anything we can do that improves our sleep environment, especially that doesn’t require effort once we set it up, is really high ROI. Can we get the benefits of compounding and anything that we can do that improves our sleep quality, especially, um, just has, it pays dividends in every area of life.
Um, I know there’s a lot of things to cover in this episode, but maybe start broad with what are some of the common mistakes that we make when we’re setting up our bedrooms for better sleep? Maybe what are some of the big offenders that you see most often?
Jack:I think one of the things I see is people forget the purpose of that room. And so, uh, I think generally speaking that bedroom needs to be built as a sleep sanctuary. What does that mean? Anything that’s not relevant, uh, don’t over clutter, uh, because clutter becomes distractions stimulating the mind. The most common one is obviously a television set.
Most people have a TV set. Most people are watching that blue light uh, streaming through them every night. So the sleep environment starts with, uh, eliminating those distractions, uh, declutter that room. Not having, you know, bold, bright, dark colors, you know, make that room soothing. Um, one of the things when we talk about a sleep environment is your brain kind of gets into the habit of knowing what everything is for. And if you, for example, if you like to, uh, work in bed, well, your brain will identify this as a work zone, not as a sleep zone. So one of the things, um, we’re talking about sleep environment, but also some of the sleep habits is, um, try not to, uh, do any type of work, TV watching. Uh, all those type of activities in bed, uh, I’d even say reading, if you can read on a couch next to the bed rather than the bed, because anything that you’re doing that is, um, not sleep, your brain will, kind of merge that together and not necessarily get to bed for, for sleep purposes, but for either work purposes, play purposes, or, you know, Or in fact, uh, reading and leisure purposes. So the best you can train the brain to know what, what it should do, the better it will be at on onset of sleep and kind of get the wheels slowing down for you to get proper sleep.
Katie: That makes sense. And I know there’s also a lot that goes into like the physical environment as well. I think you’re right. Like setting the tone mentally of your room makes a huge difference. That’s something I used to not get right and that I’ve made an effort on lately. Like I, I don’t even have bright lights in my bedroom.
Um, I have lots of plants cause those make me happy and relaxed, but I have, you know, low lights, Amber bulbs, no bright blue lights. And then I know if I went through this year long journey of as much cozy, comfortable, soft textures, things that just make me like take a deep breath as possible. Um, also like with natural materials as much as possible cause I know that’s a big one that goes into this. Um, and I will say I maybe take it to an extreme and how much effort I’ve gone to in creating a literal sleep sanctuary in my room. Um, but I’d love for you to explain about the materials that are in our environment as well, because it just has like a little springboard into this I’ve kind of been on a research pathway with natural fibers and clothing.
So I’ve been trying to, as much as possible, switch out for natural, organic fibers versus synthetic plastic fibers in what I wear. And what I realized actually, one of the first things I switched was my sleepwear and my sheets, because I realized we’re spending so much time in our beds, hopefully getting good quality sleep that if just making that switch, even if during the day I’m still wearing the plastic leggings that I’m working out in, I’m still getting a third of my exposure down by simply switching out my sleep environment, but it goes so far beyond, of course, just our sleepwear.
So, um, walk us through what happens with kind of what we’re exposed to in the air and in our tactile exposure where our sleep environment.
Jack: So, one of the things I want to kind of, uh, jump back on is because you’re ahead of the game, uh, also because I mean, uh, I believe it’s over 10 years, you’ve been using Essentia if I’m not mistaken. So you, you’ve been ahead of the game on getting an organic mattress, and I’ll just touch on that, uh, and then we’ll get onto everything else in the environment.
But in our, in our evaluations, this is going back 20 years. And as we recheck on this over and over every few years, the most toxic component in everyone’s bedroom is the mattress. It’s the highest concentration of con of toxins in the whole household, actually. And we put that in our bedrooms. So I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to get a certified organic mattress that that’s to address the toxins in the room.
And then there’s so many other things that we do at Essentia, but specifically when it comes to toxins, that is the number one emitter of toxins in the bedroom environment. Then it gets to making sure you’re getting certified organic sheets, um, pillows, pillowcases. Comforters, all those layers are maybe don’t have the, the high exposure that the polyurethane and mattresses do, but they’re still there in the polyesters. Uh, the fact of, of, um, uh, it touches on a few things, touches on toxins, but also touches on, uh, trapping heat and not making it breathable fabric. Your, uh, your sleepwear again, if you’re, if you’re dressed in polyester or if you’re, if you’re, if you’re not in breathable fabrics, you’re preventing the, um, uh, the, the, the natural thermal regulation of the body to take place, to have your body expel its heat and slow down its central nervous system.
So all these are happening with. Your pajamas, your sheets, your pillows, your pillowcases, and your mattress. So those are really the critical points in your room. Now, obviously then we get into other toxins, you know, making the right selections, if you’re using any scented candles. Are they toxins or are they not toxins? Some people put plugins, plugin perfumes. Again, those are released releasing toxins. We need to really be aware of what we’re putting in, it can’t just smell nice. Whatever’s invisible in that room has to be equally healthy for you. And, um, those are probably the major points when it comes to toxins is usually again, really around the sleep and what you have contact with. And, uh, and basically aromatherapy, which needs to be, uh, carefully thought through to make sure you’re, you’re, you’re purchasing and putting in the right materials in the air.
Katie: That’s such a good point. I have a strong feeling that the like artificial fragrances is going to kind of be the next big thing that we get awareness about it and how harmful that can be to the body that like kind of low level chronic exposure that we’re getting through our lungs, through our skin, kind of multiple points of exposure.
But on that note, I didn’t actually know that statistic, that mattresses are often the most, the biggest form of toxin exposure in the entire house. That’s drastic, especially I know, um, there’s also, I mean, the materials themselves. And then there’s concerns with, if you’ve had a mattress for a long time, it can have moisture built up.
There can be mold spores. There can be dust mites, like some dead skin. So much can like store in the mattress itself. Um, I’ve seen like horror stories, videos about that. And when people removed them, but I didn’t realize even just the mattress itself is often the biggest form of exposure in the entire house.
And especially, I mean, we’re putting our babies on mattresses and our kids when they’re young on their own mattresses. So that’s a really big one to think about that I did not know about.
Jack: It’s huge and you touch into something that we’ve spent a lot of time researching last year. Uh, we’ve been doing some work with the military, but specifically on addressing potential mold, uh, build up and, you know, mold is something that is external. So it’s in the environment and it easily attaches on to any products and mattresses and curtains and everything around you.
And that can be extremely dangerous. Um, so in fact, if you’re… one of the things that we also did do a lot of testing on, is that the organic products, uh, are less likely, uh, specifically latex organic products are less likely to, uh, develop mold than the synthetic ones. Go figure, but the synthetic ones are harbor mold and, um, allow mold to grow a lot more rapidly than the organic latex does.
On our end we found ways to actually minimize that and almost create a protection barrier from mold. And the way we do that is the acidity from our essential oils. We’re the only ones who put essential oils as part of our latex formula. We do that as part of the formula, how to make it behave in a certain way, uh, to have it react to your movements in a certain way.
So, so essential oils are not for aromatherapy in Essentia mattresses. They’re part of a critical role in how the foam behaves. However, as of last year, we’ve been able to change the actual essential oils used to make them more effective against mold spores. And in many cases, uh, we saw some regression and a mold that would shrink rather than grow when it was artificially injected in a lab environment. So, again so much goes into a healthy room and in the air and some of those things are organic. Uh, you know, mold is an organic product. You just don’t want it in your environment. So a clean, uh, and that when we talk about mold, we get into, were talking about aromatherapy, but we also have to talk about clean air. You need to make sure that there’s an air exchange is happening in your house in your room to make sure that there’s not this moisture that is developing this moisture that develops and harbors mold. So there’s a healthy bedroom is really important. Every aspect needs to be thoroughly thought through.
And it’s, it’s a game changer, uh, sleeping well. So it’s important that the people put the thought into these little details.
Katie: That’s so cool that you guys have been able to literally incorporate essential oils into the mattress itself and like take that mold into account. I know I live in Florida where it’s a very humid environment naturally. So it’s a consideration I think of often. It’s almost like a, when, not if, of if you’re going to eventually have mold exposure somewhere.
So anything I can do to minimize that risk is huge living in such a humid climate. Um, I feel like another not talked about enough, and I know we touched on it in our first episode, but component of quality sleep is the EMF mitigation aspect. Um, and I know a lot of moms are kind of becoming aware of this and wanting to be conscious of it in their homes.
But can you walk us through kind of some of the key factors to pay attention to when it comes to EMF exposure? I would guess just simply not having our phones right next to our bed is a huge one. But beyond that, what else can we do?
Jack: So this is an interesting one because this is, um, again, I tap into my, uh, my journey with the pro athletes, you know, pro athletes are, and, and, and, and moms and dads of, uh, of, of young athletes will, will relate to this. Some of these guys, they leave them, uh, guys and girls leave their homes at, the age of 15, 16, and they go out to, uh, different prep schools, and they go on to, uh, minor sports and they’re away from home. And their only connection back to their family and friends is constantly through their devices, right? So, uh, every time we would tell athletes, especially the younger ones, is not to keep your phone on next to your bed, not to be browsing before you go to bed. That was a hard, a hard journey and no one wanted to overcome that.
That was their connection with home. So over the years, we really tried to figure out how do we get around EMFs around athletes. And, um, in learning more and more about this, I think it’s about five years ago when we really dove into the research on this, the thing with EMFs, it’s not just your phone, it’s all around us. It’s in the wifi signals and the antennas, the satellites, it’s coming everywhere, it’s coming erratically, and it’s coming through your room. It could be your neighbors, it could be the communities, so just simply not having your phone next to you, while the phone is, you know, the closer proximity, makes an impact, but we are just realizing that it’s everywhere around us. So we really spent time and, and a lot of this research was done in Europe. I was working with, um, doctors out in Switzerland who were really trying to hone in on the effects of EMFs. What we really saw is it really creates an erratic behavior of your blood cells. And for me, it was really important to make an evidence based approach to dealing with EMFs because, um, it was, you know, we deal with institutional clients.
We work with government clients and we work with, uh, professional sports teams who don’t just want me to tell them on a hunch. It’s got to be evidence based. So we were able to showcase blood work, uh, through dark field microscopy and really see how the blood cells behave during active phone calls, during active streaming, and you see that the behavior is not natural.
It changes when you shut off the devices, it would normalize, but not fully normal because it would take about 30 minutes for the cells to calm down and behave normally. And when you turn it up again, you’d see this erratic behavior of your blood cells. So we know we were able to demonstrate that there is an actual physical unnatural behavior that happens through your blood cells with these devices. The result of that? We can’t, we couldn’t put any conclusion. What does that mean?
The hypothesis is we’re just blocking a proper oxygen flow, which means less cellular repair it’s it slows down that repair, which is what we’re looking for from sleep. So, but ultimately, how do we get around this? And, uh, again, without sheltering ourselves from technology, because technology is something we want to embrace. We wouldn’t want it to harm us physically and mentally. Well what were able to come up with is, um, again, through the research is that it’s the dominant signal, the dominant wave that ultimately, um, uh, can, can be the healthiest. We can create a dominant wave, which is organic, the way our bodies were meant to behave while still allowing these signals to come in.
So let me try to regroup myself on my thoughts here, just so it’d make it easy for everyone to understand. Our body works in picture it as regular waves, kind of like water waves. And when we have this organic wave, our blood cells are not behaving erratically. When you introduce cellular signals, Wi Fi signals, satellite signals, they come from every direction, not in a wave pattern. They come in a very erratic behavior, so it’s all crossing in every, from every single direction. And so when that happens, our, our, our blood also, our blood cells also behave erratically. However, By putting in a dominant wave, these signals can still come through because the phone signal does not have to come in erratically. It just has to come in. So what we’ve done at Essentia is create, and in fact, we were talking about essential oils just a moment ago. We’ve also added quartz to our latex.
We’re the only ones to have quartz and it’s, it’s, it’s a powerful informed quartz. What the quartz in our latex does is it becomes the dominant wave in the room. So, which means that the dominant wave is a flowing pattern rather than an erratic pattern. What this does is you’re able to get your cell phone signals, your wifi satellite streaming, every signal comes through, but it’s no longer an erratic signal.
It follows the wave pattern. We’ve been able to identify that during active phone calls on the Essentia quartz bed, your, your, your blood cells do not behave erratically. So that is, again, gives you a little bit of an understanding of what EMFs actually do to your body. Also an understanding on how we’ve actually overcome that.
And, and this was something we launched specifically for athletes. Oh, wow. I said five years ago, man, time’s flying. That was back in 2016. That’s that’s quite a while. That’s a eight, nine years ago. Um, we only introduced it to our, uh, uh, general consumers back in 2019, 2020, that’s probably what I’m thinking five years ago, but we introduced this in our pro core mattress for athletes way before that.
A lot of times our research, uh, when we get into the research, we start with athletes who they are the ones who want to pioneer stuff. Uh, and when we, we get enough of a track record, then we go on and bring it into the main essential line, but it’s, it’s really, uh, um, I think more and more people are understanding that EMFs are, um, uh, are not healthy, uh, and are looking for solutions.
Uh, the easy solution is to shut them off, but it doesn’t take care of the whole problem. Doesn’t take care of the neighborhood. Doesn’t take care of the satellite signals and everything that’s it’s kind of all around us. So finding, uh, um, something that protects you within your, uh, sleep haven specifically, I think is really important and I think we’ve achieved that at Essentia.
Katie: Yeah, I feel like that’s a really unique and amazing and it also really helpful because as you touched on, we’re not going to be able to entirely avoid EMFs. It’s a nice ideal, but in today’s world, it’s just simply not possible. Even I know people who do take down, they have like a kill switch. They take down the wiring in their walls even at night, but that doesn’t do anything about your neighbor’s wifi or the satellites.
So I love that you guys figured out a way to kind of work with what is now the reality of our lives in a way to, sort of support humans as much as possible in the modern life and in modern sleep. Um, a couple other things I want to make sure we get to touch on when it comes to creating a sleep sanctuary and sleep environment, one of them being light.
I talk a lot about light. I think it’s a massive signaling cue for our nervous systems, for our circadian health. Um, and you touched on it with talking about a reason not to have TVs in the bedroom, um, but I know there’s a lot more to this light component than just only avoiding screens at night. So can you walk us through kind of an ideal, if we’re creating a sleep sanctuary, what do we need to just know about light exposure during the day in our bedroom environment and how can we sort of best set ourselves up for sleep success with our light exposure?
Jack: So when it comes to light exposure, I’d say, start thinking about sleep. The moment you wake up. If you can invest a few minutes, 10 minutes of your time out in the sunlight. If you can actually get outdoors and just absorb some of that daylight to start the day, you get your body’s circadian rhythm going. You, you, because it’s not just about your light environment at night, your body’s going through its cycle throughout the day. So if you can get some of that sun exposure early in the morning, get that light going. There are some synthetic methods out there. There are some, um, uh, mirrors right now that you can buy in the, in the bathroom, which gives you a bright light, which kind of sparks it up.
So if you’re, if you’re stuck in a synthetic environment, there are some synthetic hacks to get this going. So you can get the right, the light going and, and spark up your mind with that light. But if you can actually. You know, there’s always nice to have a no cost version to something and a no cost version to it is just to step outdoors, be able to absorb some of that daylight and that sunlight. You get that when you start your day, you get that circadian rhythm clock going and aligned.
That also preps you for what’s going to be at night. Because it’s on an internal clock, right? So when you’re getting into the evening, again, throughout the day, if you’re in very much blue light, very much synthetic environments, you may want to invest into some blue light blockers throughout the day. Um, but not everyone is in those environments. More and more places are getting better lighting, better quality lighting, so that you don’t have this exposure, uh, more window light, less, uh, synthetic light, the better. When you’re getting into the evening is where the, I like to see one, the home environment with dim lights, nothing that is actually stimulating you too much.
And again, there are some blue light blocking glasses that are effective there. When it comes into the last 15 minutes to 30 minutes before bedtime, one of the practices I like is to get the, um, red lens, light blocking glasses. It’s not just blue light. They’re eliminating multiple stimulants. And if someone has trouble with the onset of sleep, this could be a real good sleep hack just because when you remove all of those stimulant lights beyond just the blue for 15 minutes, for me, it just takes 15 minutes. I’ll assume for some people, it may take up to 30 minutes, but just those 15 minutes without all those stimulating lights, and I am so ready to sleep. And, uh, those are one of the simple hacks where you can have it in your, In your lighting in your home, or the hack would be the glasses. Um, your, your brain is just ready. If you’ve done that from when you wake up in the morning to have that exposure to really eliminating those stimulants in the last 15 minutes, I think you’ll see a huge difference in the onset of sleep and sleep quality as well.
Katie: I love that. Yeah, natural light is free and I know red lights are such a big trend, but I like to always point out those same spectrum of red light are available for free at sunrise and sunset, and I think it’s a tremendous advantage. The more we can watch the sunrise and watch the sunset, it’s so good for our circadian rhythm. And lastly, I want to make sure we touch a little bit on wearables and sleep trackers. I know we have the availability to have much more insight into our sleep than we used to through these wearables. And I’m curious your take on them, how they can be best used to our advantage and, or if they have any downsides that you would caution people about.
Jack: So, the downside to wearables are the stress that they may bring with them. So, uh, again, most people are, uh, if you’re, if you’re, so, so what I tell you on wearables, wearables are great. Which is, you know, we, we do a lot of our, uh, assessments, a lot of our lab studies are all based on wearables. And so, so it’s, it’s just amazing. However, You have to know that a wearable information could be off as much as 25 percent and inconsistencies because of our environment, our movements, and so many things around us. As good, as great as they are becoming, they are not perfect. Also, so what I like to tell people is look at the data from 10 days. Don’t look at your data day in and day out. Why? Why do I say that is life happens. So you may not be consistent with everything every single day, whether it be your nutrition, whether it be your lighting, whether you know, whatever, whatever issues you’re dealing with one day compared to another day, the stresses of life. So daily looking at your sleep score can cause you to stress about your sleep instead of just embracing your sleep. Looking at a 10 day trend, are you trending right? Are you overall? That’s you have to look at it at a macro level. Not at a micro level. When it comes to athletes we almost impose this on them.
Say, Hey, guys, do not look at your daily score. Because what athletes will do is they actually doubt their performance that they’re about to get on. You know, we did a lot of hockey players. They’re about to get on the ice and the back of their mind is I didn’t sleep well last night. So again, it’s counterproductive to them playing well. So it’s the same for all of us. If you know you didn’t sleep well, obviously, if you don’t feel well is one thing, but if you feel okay, but all of a sudden your sleep score was poor last night, you may question a lot of your adjustments to the day. So you don’t want to really be over focused on them.
You want to look at it at a macro level. I like to look at them in 10 day slices and make sure that you’re trending right. Um, a hiccup, a spike up or spike or drop down on one specific occasion is okay. It could also be a malfunction of the device and nothing to stress about. But if you see that your trend of REM and sleep is declining, start to question yourself. What am I doing wrong? What can I correct? Is it in my sleep environment? Is it in the products I’m using? Is it my routine? And if it’s, if it’s trending, right, if it’s not just consistent, but going in the right direction, try to figure out what that is. Is it actual sleep environment, products you’ve changed, something you’ve done or just again, a positive change in your life. That’s reenhancing it, but this awareness and this, uh, looking at it through wearables, I think is a great tool, love them, uh, and encourage people to look at it at a macro level.
Katie: I love that. I think that advice applies across so many metrics of physical health of like, if you’re watching your weight, don’t obsess about it daily, especially if you’re a woman that can fluctuate with hormones or just fluid, but look at trends over time. If you are looking at your sleep, another great place to do that.
Even with nutrition, I find matters more our consistency over weeks and months versus our, you know, perfection in any given day. So I love that advice. I think it’s very relevant in lots of areas. Um, and I want to make sure we also touch on Essentia. I’ll link to our first episode. We talked about it a little bit at the end of that episode as well.
I just feel like you guys are doing so many novel things that other companies are not doing, which is why I am so excited about these mattresses and love them. Um, I’ll link to Essentia again, of course, in the show notes, people can find it, but maybe just talk about all the different types of options you guys have available and where people can find them.
Jack: Great. Well, thank you for that. I mean, I, often when I’m invited somewhere, I don’t like to talk about Essentia all that much because I’d like to give as much free advice as possible because I just want everyone to sleep well. When it comes to Essentia, obviously, it’s been my work for the last 25 years. I know we do it right. I know we do it best. We have what nobody else has. We, we tackle EMFs like no one else does. We tackle mold like no one else does. We tackle toxins like no one else does. So, so our products are, um, uh, the best out there for, for sleep. Now, what we have as options are, we don’t have bad products. I don’t believe in making them. I don’t have a product on the market just simply to have a product on the market. Yes, there’s so much more products we can make at a lower price. That would be uh, that that could make good business sense but that’s not Uh, what we’re about an Essentia. We’re here to help people to help people sleep, help people thrive.
So we really have, uh, just two categories of products and it’s really limited to five models. Um, our first, uh, three models are our lifestyle collection, which are the foundation to the company, that everything has to be organic. Everything has, certified organic, I should say. Everything has to be, um, uh, durable ahigh density, everything has to be comfortable. You’re not a mattress if you’re not making it comfortable, consistent, durable comfort. Everything has to be allergy free, which means there’s no proteins from the latex, which means it’s built so that it doesn’t nest any dust mites and bed bugs. And as of last year, everything has to have our mold protection formula which minimizes and really protects against that risk that is external from mold. So that’s our, what we call our light organic lifestyle collection. And that comes down to three models, which is our grateful eight model. Which is a huge model that we’ve, we’ve done, uh, institutionally well.
And with consumers, uh, our tatami classic model, which is our firmest of our lifestyle models and our, uh, Stratami, which has won for eight consecutive years as the top foam mattress, even beating off anything synthetic without considering that we’re certified organic. Our Sratami model has been our top lifestyle model. And then it gets to the next category, which we call performance. Our performance models are really what, uh, um, go above and beyond has been kind of when we patented our core in 2009, where we started working with pro athletes and our performance models go a step further with pressure redistribution, posture support, um, extending REM and deep sleep to the next level. Uh, dropping temperature. Our classic REM5 drops five degrees of surface temperature organically without any chemicals over an eight hour time lapse. And then our Dormeuse REM9 model, which drops nine degrees over, uh, over the same eight hour time lapse. These are never been done. Never. No one else manages to get this type of thermal regulation again, proper thermal regulation.
I’m not cooling down the body with chemicals. I’m not putting any mechanics in there to blow air. This is all just natural thermal regulation allowed, uh, allowed to happen on these products. And we’re really proud of them. It’s a simple lineup of five mattresses. Uh, they’re all guaranteed 20 years.
We stand behind every single one of them. We’re proud of all of them. They all serve a purpose. Uh, and, um, and it’s really the next level of sleep.
Katie: Amazing. Well, I will link to all of them in the show notes for you guys listening on the go, as well as some followup resources to stuff that you’ve mentioned. Like we got so many actionable takeaways for improving sleep quality and creating a sleep sanctuary. And I know I learned a lot in this episode, Jack, I hope we get to do future episodes as well.
But for today, thank you so much for your time. I’ve learned a lot.
Jack: Thank you, Katie. Appreciate you.
Katie: And thank you as always for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the wellness mama podcast.
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