Meredith Oke: Andy and Katie Mandt, welcome to the QVC podcast.

Katie Mant: Hey, how are you doing?

Andy Mant: Hey, Meredith, thanks for having us.

Meredith Oke: My pleasure, Andy.

We had a great chat last time and I'm super excited to do it again with Katie in the house.

Katie Mant: Yay.

Meredith Oke: As the two of you founded this company together.

And Katie, I was actually just listening to you on a podcast talking about how you both, the two of you started this sort of like out of your bedroom while you were both working other jobs and you ordered these glasses and you were like, oh my gosh, this is so important.

People really need these.

And it just kind of took off.

Katie Mant: That is so true.

Meredith Oke: Tell me a bit about, like, that's such a fun journey.

Katie Mant: Yeah.

Do you know what?

It's actually quite funny as well.

It was leading up to our wedding, which is going on about eight years ago now.

Like any bride and groom, you're trying to get into the best physique for those photos.

So we were like exercising more, dieting just to sort of get the best physiques.

And it was Andy that decided to look into sleep and how that impacts what you eat and your energy levels and how well that you work out at the gym.

And he went down this rabbit warren reading all the different scientific studies out there to understand how do you improve sleep.

And then through that, learned that artificial blue light after dark can really impact your body's natural ability to produce melatonin.

So Andy started off by ordering a pair of blue light blocking glasses off a well known platform.

They arrived and oh my gosh, I wish we took photos that I could share it with the community.

Now they were full on safety goggles and he'd wear them in the evening watching Cavity.

I thought he was mad.

Honestly, I was like, I have a pair like that.

Meredith Oke: They're like the big square plastic orange.

Katie Mant: Yeah, it's like orange.

Like literally something out of laboratory.

So he started wearing these off work and I was like, you are a freak.

What are you doing?

But his sleep did start to improve a little bit.

So I was like, okay, there is something here.

But the, the signs know that Andy has kept delving deeper and deeper to understand, well, why are they working and why are they not profoundly impacting his sleep?

They're only having a slight impact on it.

Learned that there's very specific wavelengths that need to be blocked.

Not just generic blue light, a very specific wavelength of blue and some green light, and then struggles to find any glasses that actually did block that.

So long story short, we were like, there's an opportunity here.

To design something that's actually stylish that people would want to wear because there's no way I'd go out to a restaurant wearing the glasses that he was wearing, that correct lens that block the right round frequencies to optimize sleep.

And so the journey sort of evolved from there quite quickly, to be honest with you.

Once we found out how to develop the, the lens and what needed to be done, the rest was quite smooth sailing, wasn't it really?

Reaching out to influencers and people that we were networked with to begin with to give them a pair to see if they could have, have a go and report back.

And they all reported back how great they were and how much better than the original pair that they had.

And so we just launched the brand and, and ran with it.

A little bit blind I guess in the beginning.

Just thought, let's just do it and see.

We still had jobs at the time, so it was a side hustle.

So there was no sort of commitment or impact on us.

It was just a side like passion project that quickly grew that allowed us to then leave our day jobs and run it full time and over the years now have grown it.

We've got a team of about 35 staff now.

So it's been an evil.

Meredith Oke: That's crazy.

Yeah, I think too, I think it's good.

I always say if I knew now what I knew at the beginning of any given project, I'm like, I would never have done it.

We have to be a little, a little blind to what we're getting ourselves into.

Katie Mant: Just go with it, go with your gut.

Meredith Oke: You just gotta go for it.

Katie Mant: Yeah, absolutely.

Meredith Oke: So Andy, if you could just, you know, I know, I know everyone listening, I know, you know, but I don't think we can, I really don't think that we can hear it too many times, please.

And you're so good at explaining it, Andy.

So please tell us why.

Why do we need to block blue light at night?

Andy Mant: I know, yeah, it's, it's that double edged sword, blue light.

It's such a fantastic thing when used correctly and such a bad thing when used incorrectly.

So I always like to go back to how we were ancestrally.

Okay, so hundreds of thousands of years ago we evolved as you know, through our life cycle to human beings that we are now.

But one thing that evolved all those hundreds of thousands of years ago was something called a body clock, a circadian rhythm.

And it's a little tiny clock system that's in the middle of our brain.

And what it does Is it uses light to tell your body, your internal mechanisms, what time of the day it is.

And why that's so important is it allows for certain hormones, hormones and neurotransmitters to either be released or suppressed.

So as we lived ancestrally, we live mainly outside, right?

So we would get up in the morning hundreds of thousands of years ago with the rising sun.

And what that would do is that would tell our body clock, our circadian rhythm, that it was daytime.

And it knew this because the blue light would stimulate dopamine, serotonin and cortisol, which are all really important for us to be active during the day.

We needed to be active during the day because we needed to go out to hunt, to gather, and to do what, what we used to do back in those days.

Now, as we were outside all day, the sunlight actually changes in its spectrum gently throughout the day and into the, into the evening.

And all those little subtle changes in light was telling our circadian rhythm what time of day it was.

And to dial things down, dial hormones up, and just keep us really in hormonal bliss.

And then as the sun set in the evenings, that would then signal to our clock system that, okay, blue lights going now, so the evening must be coming.

We need to lower cortisol and we need to increase the hormone melatonin, which is our sleep hormone.

And then we put the campfire on.

You know, we'd probably sit around there talking or eating those types of things.

And that would be in the presence of orange and red light, which has been shown in studies to help increase melatonin production, which is great.

Then we would go to sleep and we wake up the next morning and that cycle would continue until we died of old age or eaten by a saber toothed tiger, whatever it might have been.

But what we've done now is as we've evolved light, like, you know, when you go into like say the 1700s and the 1800s, we still would have had that kind of rhythm and that kind of natural light cues.

We didn't really have artificial light in those eras.

We would have had, you know, moved around the house with a lantern that was like a candle.

We'd have had candlelight, firelight, things like that still exist.

But it wasn't until recently that the, the governments and the companies, they, they invented something called LED lights.

And what they did with these lights is they stripped out all the red light, most of the orange light, and they left in the blue light and some of the green light.

And these were put into our house lights at the time.

And what this did was every, every time the sun would set and we'd go in and we'd watch telly, which is where LEDs are, or we turn on our house lights or, or in the last 20 years, scroll for our smartphone that still sends light signals to our ancient circadian rhythm, our ancient body clock.

So this body clock can't distinguish between artificial and natural light.

So what it's doing is these little artificial suns that are all scattered around our house or our workplace after sunset is still telling our body clock that it's evening time, that it's sorry, that it's daytime, and to keep cortisol level high and to not have high levels of melatonin, the sleep hormone.

So our bodies are now believing that we're in perpetual daylight, there is no darkness anymore because the light signals aren't stopping after sunset, which they used to do.

So we have to think ancestrally and go back to how our ancestors used to live to be able to mimic what they saw, which is darkness after sunset.

So we do that by wearing the glasses you're wearing now, by changing some of the lighting in our house, by powering down electronic devices one to two hours before bed so our circadian rhythms can actually understand what time of day it is and to produce the correct hormones to allow us to sleep better.

Meredith Oke: Right.

It makes so much sense when you say it and yet we don't think about it.

I mean, the three of us do and people listening do, but up and you know, up until we stumbled on this information, it just doesn't see, it just doesn't occur to people.

And when, you know, I think anyone who's interested in their health, they understand, like, okay, if I eat like ultra processed high sugar foods, that's going to be really difficult for my body because that's not food found in nature.

I should eat real food.

Everyone's like, oh yeah, totally, that makes sense.

But we don't take that next step and then apply it to all of the other things that our body is communicating with.

Andy Mant: Yeah, it's so true.

It's that whole thing of what you don't know, you don't know.

And there's probably tons of other things that as humans we don't know are impacting us from a, you know, a really negative standpoint.

I mean, it's only until recently that we weren't even thinking about EMF radiation, you know, like 5G Wi Fi, 4G cellular towers.

And it's, that's really allowing people to start wake up.

Waking up now to, well, blue light is actually on the EMF spectrum, EMF radiation, like what I've just discussed there is on that spectrum.

And it's all impacting and interacting with our cells in a way that the human body has never had before.

Like, we've evolved for millions of years and the systems that have evolved within us biologically have been around for that length of time as well.

They haven't just suddenly evolved in the last 30 years, they've been around for millions of years in us.

And now we're almost creating an environment where they've evolved that isn't conducive to how they would function optimally.

You know, it's like, you know, it's like building a car to ride on tarmac roads and then taking it down a mountain.

It's just not going to work.

The environment is very different.

But what we're doing in this day and age is we're bringing out these technologies on this electromagnetic spectrum that human bodies just aren't used to receiving.

And we're almost like this experiment now of like, well, let's see what happens in the next 30 years like we did with smoking.

Let's see what happens in the next 30 years like we did with refined seed oils and low fat diets.

And it's only because, like LED artificial lighting and the advent of smartphones and backlit LED devices in the last 20 years that right now we're starting to see the detrimental effects not just on us as adults, but on our children as well.

Meredith Oke: Yes.

And they're getting their screens younger and younger and they're holding them closer and closer to their faces.

I mean, I remember as a child, it's like you were like, you got to be six feet away from the tv.

We're all like, why?

No one had an answer.

They're like, that's just the rule.

Katie Mant: Yeah, I remember that.

Meredith Oke: Yeah.

Andy Mant: Or you go blind, I think it was.

Or get square eyes.

Meredith Oke: Square eyes.

Maybe that's.

That was an Australian thing.

That's great.

That's funny because.

Yeah, now they, you know, like the.

Yeah, they're so, Their little faces are so close up to them.

Something that I love that you guys did is that you built, you know, and this was also out of necessity, I guess, but you really built the company on top of education and on top of teaching people about this.

So I think it's really interesting because you've had such amazing growth.

You know, even just to stay focused on the blue blocking glasses which I'm wearing, you know, and it's like people were ready for it, but at the same time, like I'm still outside of this circle.

The only person I know who wears these, like when I go out in my normal life like and have meetings with, you know, I was on a committee at my children's school and we did zoom meetings at night through the winter and I rock up in these or go to.

And they were like, what is that?

What do you.

Why?

So I'm just curious like how you see that education trajectory playing out in the, in the public sphere as it's coming out of like the little biohacking corner that it's been in.

It's growing, but there's still so much more room to go.

Katie Mant: Yeah, there is absolutely.

There's not enough people talking about artificial blue light and its impact on sleep.

And I think there's a long way still to go on that.

You're right.

It's how we started the company.

Because when we did come out with the blue light blocking glasses that we designed and launched, we, we had a massive education piece to let people know that first of all, blue light blocking glasses exist.

They're a thing.

We had to let them know that artificial blue light is bad after dark and it is impacting your sleep.

And then thirdly, had to educate them on the actual wavelengths that they needed to block.

So it wasn't just a case of they could buy any blue light blocking glasses.

They needed specific tints, specific lenses that would block it.

So that was kind of how our journey began.

Anyway, it was always education first because it was such a young industry.

And I even think it is now, years on, more people are understanding how it impacts sleep.

But there is also that reluctance for people to let go of technology.

So they don't want to sometimes believe that it's impacting them.

I do find that a little bit because it's how we connect with everybody now, right?

The world is so digitalized, they don't want to give up their smartphones, their laptops, their tv.

And there is still an element of ignorance to the fact that it is impacting their well being and their sleep.

Then you have the others that are ready to listen and ready to understand and adopt principles like circadian friendly lighting and artificial or blue light blocking glasses to block artificial light after dark.

And then the others I think is going to need more education and more and more touch points.

It's the classic principle, isn't it, with marketing that they say you need at least 12 different touch points before someone can understand something and absorb it.

So there is still the journey to be had.

And also we're battling against big tech brands.

They don't want people to sleep.

You know, there's that famous quote that supposedly, I don't know if it's true or not, that came out from Netflix, where their mission was to stop people going to sleep.

And that's why it's got that binge culture where they want you to stay up and keep, basically keep absorbing.

Because the longer you're awake and the more that you're on technology, the more you're able to be marketed to and absorbed enough for you to absorb more information from whatever message is being pushed on whatever platform.

So there is a bigger piece at play here, really?

From, from my standpoint.

Andy Mant: Yeah, I think, I think on top of that as well, it was Netflix that said that sleep's their biggest competitor.

Meredith Oke: Oh, my God, Netflix.

Andy Mant: I know.

So that's not great from that standpoint.

But, you know, the thing is, to be able to reach people, there's got to be a level of them wanting to help themselves.

Right.

It's like fitness.

It's like healthy diets.

These people aren't going to be told by you, me, Katie and anyone else that they need to wear blue light blocking glasses after sunset or they're going to have, you know, metabolic issues when they're older.

Because one, they look at it and go, well, I feel like I'm sleeping.

Okay.

Two, you know, why would I want to wear those silly glasses and not watch all the colors on my favorite TV shows?

And they'd look at it and go, well, this is just nonsense.

The mainstream aren't talking about it, so it's woo.

But those are the things that sort of come up with the masses.

And you've got to, you've got to want to change.

And we've learned over the years that, you know, we can educate and we can put information out there that explains the science, the evidence behind how these devices will help you from a longevity and wellbeing standpoint.

But if you're not ready to listen to that, then, you know, you're really knocking your head against the brick wall, as they, as they would say.

I think one of the pivotal moments of education moving forward is probably aligning the brand with trustworthy sources that are, I guess, in the mainstream culture at the moment.

So, like celebrities, for instance, trying to get them on board and talking about these issues because a lot of people that perhaps aren't ready to be helped will look up to what these idols are saying and be able to at least start the conversation.

Like the big one is.

There's a big guy in the uk, Simon Cowell.

People in the US know him, but he does all the, like, oh yeah.

Meredith Oke: He, he judges all the talent shows.

Andy Mant: Yeah, the talent show, like American Idol, that type of thing.

But in the uk and he's now started to wear red lens, blue light blocking glasses on the shows because the lights are giving him migraine headaches and disrupting his sleep.

But when he wore them, there was no publicity.

He came out to do that because he had any kind of involvement in the company, but because he was wearing them, the press, the media started picking up articles on it.

Well, why is he wearing these glasses?

And it starts the conversation.

And I think those are important moments moving forward.

If we want to allow everyone to understand what the, I guess, biological impact is on artificial light, on our health and well being, these people at the top need to start the conversations and then have brands around them and educational hubs around them that then continue that conversation, allow it to make sense to people.

Meredith Oke: Yeah, that really makes sense.

And I think that's true.

I've been thinking a lot about how to what are the ingredients that we need to shift a paradigm?

Because I think right now people are like, oh, all right, maybe I'll blue light, whatever.

And they see it as a health tip, cold plunging or something.

And it's, it's really to me much so much more fundamental than that.

It's like if you get into why light matters so much and what, how our bodies really work it, it's a completely different way of looking at human health.

And then once you look at human health differently, you look at the whole universe differently.

So my like, big passion project is like, okay, so what are the elements required to make it a paradigm shift and not just a tactic?

And I think the science obviously is an important piece.

Like you need the scientific research, even though this is ancient, as you were saying, just how our bodies have worked since the dawn of time.

But what I think is missing is the storytelling.

I was listening to that podcast, the Telepathy Tapes.

I don't know if that got popular in Australia, but it was.

It's about how the many non verbal autistic children communicate with each other telepathically.

And where am I going with this?

Where I'm going with this is that there was a scientist who'd been studying that for years and years and nobody would really pay much attention to her.

And this podcast, this documentary producer came along and Turned her, turned her work into a podcast and turned it into a story.

And it one week on the podcast charts at Beat Joe Rogan, like it was downloaded like a bajillion times.

And I was like, oh, we need the science needs storytellers.

And I think like Andy and Katie, I think that's what you are.

And then as you were saying, like the more, the more and the more famous ones we can get, great.

But it's that it's telling the story in a way because then people can absorb it into their lives.

Whereas just throwing studies at them doesn't land the same way.

Andy Mant: Yeah, 100% right.

You got to be able to talk about, you need to be able to, you know, from our point of view, understand the studies, read them and then translate them into actionable sort of items that people can then incorporate into their day to day life.

Rather than sort of saying, you know, this study showed that, you know, the statistical significance in this, that and the other was whatever, like no one cares.

Like, let's be honest, it's, it's more, it's more like saying, you know, there's a specific banding of light, it's found in your laptops and your house phones.

It's going to disrupt your sleep.

You've got two options.

Go and live in the middle of the field and throw away your devices or wear red lens blue light blocking glasses two to three hours before bed before you start using them.

And I think it's sort of, when you were talking there, another thing that sort of came to mind is a lot of the audience that are into this type of thing, whether it be blue light blocking glasses, whether it be red light therapy, whether it be cold plungers, whatever the holistic protocol may be is they're already sick, right?

They've been sick, they've had health issues themselves and they know what it feels like to number one, be failed by the institution, big pharma, whatever it may be.

But they also understand what it feels, feels like to not be healthy.

And they, they use those two things in combination, those two failures to then look at alternatives within, you know, holistic medicine, well being, maybe ancestral practices to really, really get their health back on track as almost a last resort.

Sometimes they've tried everything else, everything else has failed.

And then when they start doing these basic easy to incorporate holistic measures like grounding outside, barefoot, watching the sun rise, wearing blue light blockers before bed, maybe having a cold plunge if they've got arthritis, things like that, maybe they're doing red light Therapy, really easy protocols.

They soon realize that being healthy isn't very complicated at all.

And it's actually quite easy to do if you're prepared to change your life very dramatically from what you've been told and how to be told to live your life.

And living your life closer to as close as you can to nature and as close as you can to how we lived ancestrally has profound effects on one's well being and getting healthy and, or, you know, even maintaining health.

But the big thing for, for us is we want to be able to reach people before they get sick.

You know, it's great to help people recover and great to help people live, you know, a more fulfilling, healthy life by these, you know, ancient protocols.

But how do we reach the people that are healthy already or the ones that are starting to go down the slippery slope of you're not going to be well in 10 to 20 years time because you're eating refined seed oils, you're not exercising, you're not lifting weights, you're eating a very refined processed diet, you're not blocking blue light after dark, you're not outside enough.

How do you then tell those people that, well, in 20 you might feel great now, but in 10 to 15, 20 years you're going to feel like the other people that are with us now that are healing from, you know, lifelong issues caused by, you know, eating badly or not managing that blue light.

I guess what I'm saying is here that the people that are well now, it's like eating a, eating McDonald's every day when you're 16 until you're 20, you're not going to notice really much difference at all.

You'll be all right.

You'll probably be a bit overweight, but maybe you exercise a bit as well.

But if you continue to eat like that for 20 years, you're going to have major metabolic syndrome and major metabolic issues.

And the same is true with light.

You know, people go, well, I'm falling asleep.

Fine.

Okay, great.

Well, how's the quality of this sleep?

Are you tracking it on a whoop or an aura or another tracking device?

No.

How do you know if your REM and deep sleep are good?

Because it doesn't matter if you're sleeping well, falling asleep fast, if you're not getting the restorative deep and REM sleep that your body needs to recover and clear out the dead and dying damaged cells over time, that's going to have a compounding impact on your health and well being.

Meredith Oke: Yeah, it's so true.

And and it's like I.

So often I hear people and they're like, oh, okay, all right, I'm gonna get healthy.

And they're like, I'll just.

And they're like, and they're.

I.

And what they think that means, it never includes light and it often includes taking supplements and eating vegan.

Katie Mant: Okay, we see that too much.

I know, I think that's, that's the default setting for getting healthy, isn't it?

Or they go the other route and they take on too much.

They try to take on all these different practices, do an ice bath every morning, go for, you know, 20 kilometer runs.

And they take on so much that they actually can't do it day to day.

It becomes, it becomes too much, it's not sustainable.

And then they give up and they go, nah, being well, it's too hard or looking after my well being, it takes too much out of my time.

I'm not feeling that I am unwell right now, so I'll just carry on as I am.

And that's the message that we're trying to put out there as well.

It's not complicated.

It's just a few, few simple tweaks, A lot of them free as well.

You don't have to invest in these big expensive products.

Some of them are just getting out into the sun in the morning or changing a bulb, switching one bulb out and putting it circadian friendly bulb in the lamp that you're sitting in the evening.

They're simple things, but they really do change their well being.

Meredith Oke: Yes.

And I love, I try to hammer that message all the time.

Like it doesn't have to be complicated.

And small little things, especially when it comes to light, make a huge difference.

Like just throwing on those glasses, going outside in the morning.

Like, yeah, it doesn't need to be a major life overhaul.

It makes such a difference.

And I have, you know, over the, over the years, like I have yet to meet anybody who, who started wearing blue blockers and didn't notice a difference.

Like I have friends who are like, who, you know, they're like, they're like, oh right, I guess, like should, I really should get them.

I'm like, yeah, you really should.

And then they like the next day they're like, oh my God, I slept so much better like that night.

Andy Mant: That's the thing.

It's crazy.

And it's like, it's like this, like this whole biohacking, this whole sort of quantum science when people want to try and holistically get healthy.

Right.

It's Very much a spectrum.

You could be at the beginning of it, you could be at the end of it and be the ultra biohacker like Brian Johnson, Dave Asprey, people like that.

But it's fine for an individual to be anywhere along there on their journey.

And the big thing is where I would start off is I would look at it from a point of view of what would I like to improve in my life?

And that's what we did.

That's how we founded the company.

We looked at our sleep and said, how do we improve this?

And what can I do that isn't conventional to improve my sleep?

Okay, so maybe someone says, my sleep's not great.

Okay, well, wear blue light blocking glasses two to three hours before bed and watch the sun rise and your sleep will improve.

Someone could say, I've had arthritis for years.

What could I do that isn't conventional?

To help?

Maybe I'm going to have an ice bath once a day.

I'm going to get in there and have an ice bath and feel amazing.

Maybe I'm going to try red light therapy to help with, with it.

Maybe someone suffers from migraine headaches, so they change the flickering LED light bulbs in some of their house lights and wear light sensitivity glasses when they're working on a computer.

You know, it's kind of looking at your, looking at your current life and going, am I optimal?

And the answer is always going to be no.

Right?

No one's going to get to that 100%.

It's just impossible in the world we live in.

But where would you put yourself out of 10?

You know, how do you feel in the mornings?

How do you feel during the day?

Are, are you

crashing at 3:00pm?

You know, are you struggling to get to sleep?

Little things like that.

Pick one that's a nuance in your life and go, how can I holistically do something to make myself feel better?

And just try it, because you're not going to lose either way.

It's not as though you're taking a medication, a pill that may have some profound and unwanted side effects.

You're only going to try these things and go, oh, you know what, that worked for me.

Or you know what?

Cold plungers aren't for me.

I, I literally, my body cannot get into an ice bath or something like that.

So maybe I'll look at red light therapy instead for my joints.

So it's kind of looking at it like that.

And I think a lot of people like what Katie was alluding to in alternative health Biohacking well, being quantum science, I think they bite off more than they can chew too quickly.

They go full.

I don't do anything to full Dave Asprey in like a day.

And it's just because you've got to have 150 supplements and you know, 400 hours of red light therapy a day, which just isn't practical.

But there's so many cool things people can do just to like make those little incremental 1% improvements and it will compound over time.

It's like investing money.

Right.

If you do 1% more every week, you know, in, in two years you're going to be up at the Dave Aspirate sort of level.

Or you may go in two years.

You know what?

I'm fine at 20% because I feel great.

And that's all the time in my life that allows for it.

Because, you know, rather than biohacking 24 hours a day and sleeping, I wouldn't mind playing with the kids or the grandkids or you know, going out for a dinner with friends and stuff like that, which is all fine to do.

Have that odd glass of wine if that's what some something you want to do.

Life is still there to be lived and biohacking just needs to be incorporated into it to just optimize that time you've got on this planet.

So we're aging well.

We're not, you know, adding 10 years of, you know, I'm going to be sat in a nursing home for an extra 10 years.

Brilliant.

That was kind of not worth the extra 10 years I did biohacking.

You're not, you're going to be living the way we're living now, into old age and living well and being mobile.

And that's what biohacking does for you.

Meredith Oke: Yes.

And it's, it's, yeah, it's, I think that term reverse aging has come up right where it's like the, the chronology rolls on.

You know, we're not going to not get older.

But yeah, our bodies don't have to decay in the, in the way that we thought they did and we don't have to be these crazy biohackers in order to support the process.

There's so many things to do and it's, I've been seeing lately, you know, I think, I mean, I think everyone should do whatever they want.

I don't care.

But, but these gurus who do all the things right, they, people get turned off and they're like, I'm not doing that, like all this health stuff is nuts.

And I saw, I saw a post recently from a young woman, I think she works like in Silicon Valley or something.

And she was like, all right, listen, I talked to one of those health people and I guess they're not all crazy because I've been like turning off my TV and going for more walks.

And I don't know, she had a few things that she did which are all really good.

Basically she's like, and you know what?

I actually feel a lot better.

She was sort of like begrudgingly acknowledging that the health freaks maybe have a point on something.

But that's what I loved is that you don't, you know, you don't have to be crazy.

My friend Kelly Ritter did a post recently.

She called it like barefoot and bougie.

And she was like, you don't have to be like an outdoorsman or like an outdoorsy person, like living off the land to benefit from, from this.

Like, just take your shoes off sometimes and still like have whatever kind of life you want.

Andy Mant: Yeah, that's super important, you know, and that's, that makes it relatable, makes it easier for people to comprehend that, you know, you don't have to be a mad scientist and you know, obsessive to be able to get healthy.

And you know, that's, that's super important.

And you know, I think another topic that's, that's well worth sort of covering as well is a little bit about red light therapy as well.

We're starting to see, you know, light can be used for so many different things.

Like, like blue lights, great to keep you alert.

Blocking it helps you sleep.

Green light shown in studies to help with migraines and the symptoms of migraines it seems, which is, which is fascinating.

But red light has been been shown and the most studied frequency of light to have a profound effect on all sorts of different situations like you know, from skin appearance to joint and muscle pain to weight loss to sort of skin conditions like eczema, psoriasis, sleep.

You know, it's, it's, it's absolutely fascinating.

And one of our top selling products in, in red light therapy and our most top selling product is our red light face mask.

So interesting, like it's utilizing visible red light at 630 nanometers, the most studied for reducing the signs of aging and near infrared light as well.

And that's been incredible for tens of thousands of people in terms of how they look physically.

Yes, that might not be a health benefit, but it's a mental health benefit on aging.

You Know, the face sure is.

You know what I mean?

Meredith Oke: Yeah.

Andy Mant: Katie's a great.

She uses the red light face mask like three to four times a week.

So maybe you could talk to the effects that you've seen.

Meredith Oke: Yeah, and I wanted to bring that up because we actually haven't really covered.

I'm always wanting people to sleep better and feel better.

And I was like, you know, we actually haven't talked about how all this makes you look better.

And I'm not gonna pretend that doesn't matter to all of us.

So.

Yeah, Katie, tell us, you know, tell us how like, like red light can make my.

Make me look younger.

Katie Mant: Yeah.

Really, there's no shame in saying how we look matters to us.

It does.

Like Andy said, it's your mental well being.

You know, when you wake up in the morning and you look in the mirror, do you see the person that you feel?

And if you don't, there's a disconnect.

And that does play a role on a lot of people's well being.

And it's been something I've had to challenge as I left late 30s and moved into 40 the other month.

It's a big transition and you feel a lot younger inside than how you look.

But equally don't want to go down the route of doing other procedures that maybe aren't very holistic or, you know, I want to sort of stay with within modalities that are going to be okay for my well being long term as well.

And red light therapy has been fantastic for that because like Andy said, there's two frequencies, the near infrared and the red.

The red light, that's the color that you see, that has all of your surface level concerns.

So any fine lines, wrinkles, sort of any imperfections, any discoloration, your skin tone and texture, it's great for that overall surface level appearance.

But what near infrared does, and this is the big one, that really helps with the anti aging properties.

Near infrared goes right through to your muscles and through down to your joints.

And it is so, so good at relaxing the muscles.

So if you think about relax a muscle, what that does to the skin, it then relaxes the skin, which then smooths it out, which is then reducing the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles further.

So just by relaxing the muscle itself, it can have an effect visually on the surface level appearance of your skin.

Because there's other procedures out there that are all tailored around relaxing muscles.

We know what those are, those injectables.

It's the principle of just stopping the muscle getting so tight.

Because when it gets tight it's pulling on the skin and creating those creases.

But you can do that holistically with red light therapy, just relaxing it and doing things like gua sha, you know, just to sort of keep that muscle relaxed and then your skin will follow suit, it won't be so crinkled up which will then reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.

Again, it's a very simple principle, but I think a lot of people don't realize that near infrared does that and then have to in their eyes resort to some maybe injectables and things that possibly aren't suitable long term for the, for their well being.

So Nia and Fred is a great alternative for that.

Meredith Oke: Yes.

And it's really like what we were saying earlier.

I've been thinking about this lately, like the difference between reverse aging and anti aging.

Right.

And where you do when you do chemicals or you inject things or you do surgeries and it's like you're fighting your body and it's going to wear off and it's really expensive and then you got to go into it again and whereas when we utilize light therapy, phototherapy, when we harmonize our body and like everything you just said, relaxing the muscles naturally were the benefits are compounding over time.

Like our bodies are getting healthier and better and we look better but underneath like we're not, we're not adding chemicals and trying to change ourselves.

Katie Mant: Exactly that.

And it's exactly that not changing yourself.

You're not wanting to look like a different person.

If you go and have certain procedures done, you might look like a different person.

It doesn't even look like you when you were younger.

It is a completely different whereas.

What?

Meredith Oke: It's weird.

Katie Mant: Yeah, right, it is.

And a lot of us just want to look fresh and like we've slept and you know that the effects of time haven't taken its toll on our appearance and we just want to look in the mirror and see reflected back at us who we feel inside.

So.

And it's actually quite confronting.

I've heard some, you know, quite sort of challenging stories from, from people that have gone under procedures and then it's actually had a worse effect on their well being because yes, they might look younger but they no longer identify with a person that's looking back because it's completely changed the structure and it doesn't look like them anymore.

So yes, they might have reduced fine lines and wrinkles and you know, might look a bit younger.

It's not how they looked when they were younger.

And therefore it's still that disconnect.

And it's always that disconnect.

It doesn't feel authentic.

And then when you don't feel authentic, you don't feel true to yourself.

And that just impacts so many different areas of your life.

And there is so much you can do holistically now for not just your well being but, but beauty as well.

You know, just, just skincare products themselves, just checking the ingredients in them.

You know, some of those aren't great for, for the body, you know, toxins that are in them and the overload that's going on on the skin.

But you know, I question sometimes whether some products actually contribute to aging.

Meredith Oke: I don't know.

Katie Mant: That's not something I've had proven.

But it's things that play in the back of your mind.

You know, it's a bit like the medical industry.

You know, they, they want you to keep taking medication.

You know, it'll have a little bit of an impact to make you feel better, but you need to keep taking it in order for it to, to have long term effects.

Meredith Oke: And yeah, they want us medicated in front of Netflix.

Katie Mant: Yeah.

Lathering on skincare products that we think are making us look younger, but actually it's aging us.

Meredith Oke: Yeah.

And then going to get Botox because we're all, we look wrecked.

Katie Mant: Yeah, absolutely.

There is a better way.

Yeah, there is, there is.

And there's freeways just, you know, getting out into the morning sun, morning sunrise and sunset.

That's the best time to be out.

You know, even if you're not going to go and do red light therapy with the panels, at least get the beneficial frequencies in the sun naturally outside of the peak UV periods for your skin.

That's great as well.

The morning morning sun and evening sun.

Meredith Oke: Yeah.

There's so much we can do.

And I liked what you said too, you know, about the authenticity piece.

Because what I have found is, you know, taking this route that we're talking about where we learn to understand how our bodies really work and to support that.

It makes you feel happier, it makes you feel more powerful.

It makes you feel like, oh, you know what, I belong on this planet.

I'm not just like spinning out through some weird like pre, pre made synthetic reality that I'm just gonna hobble through until I get sick and die.

Like it, I think it, you know, I, there's a spiritual element to stepping outside, you know, and as you were saying, like wanting to understand sunlight and darkness cycles and Support our lives, lives that way and wean off technology, especially at night.

It's like there are not a lot of forces that are supportive of that.

They're working against us.

And so but when we connect with it, it's like, oh, this is what it's supposed to feel like to be alive.

Katie Mant: It's very true.

It's very true.

And there's nothing wrong with the modern world.

There isn't, you know, blessed to be in a time where, you know, technology and advancements in anything in the world are happening at such a rapid rate and we're to see that, you know, that's great.

We shouldn't take away from that.

It's just not letting it overrun us.

Remembering where we have come from and the short time that we have been as humans on the planet and making sure we blend the both and use the little hacks that are available to us to live in the modern world while still kind of remembering where we've come from and who we are at the core.

And I think there's, there's the opportunity to have both.

There really is, you know, otherwise we'd be advocating not having smartphones, not having TVs, not having laptops and disconnecting from everything.

We don't advocate that.

They're fantastic.

We're able to have this conversation now for the very reason this technology here.

We're just advocates for the glasses that you're wearing to protect you whilst you're on the call to us.

So there isn't, it doesn't need to be a fee mongering thing where it's like forget everything in the modern world.

It's just using it with intent, not being consumed by it.

You know, picking the moments in your day where you are on social media and maybe disconnecting the rest of the time and then just making sure you're looking after your well being whilst you're in the modern, the modern world.

And it really is as simple as that from my, from my standpoint anyway.

Meredith Oke: Yeah, no, I completely agree.

I like the modern world.

Yeah, I like living on the grid.

I have no plans to leave.

Okay.

So I mentioned earlier at my, at my family dinner tonight, I told my children, I'm like, oh, I'm interviewing the founders of Boncharge tonight.

So they all, we have lots of on charge stuff in our house.

So they were all, they all knew what that, knew what that was.

So I made them all come up with a question for you.

So while we're on the red light, I'll start with My older daughter, who she just finished her first year at university and at Christmas I let her bring the Bon Charge sauna blanket back to school with her.

And her friends were like, what is that?

It's weird.

And then they all wanted to borrow it.

But she said she, she started going to the gym a lot more than she used to and she would come back all shaky and she would, especially on, on leg days.

This is, yeah, this is what she was saying at dinner.

But then she would put the sauna blanket around and she said it, she would feel so much better.

Better.

So she wanted to know why.

Andy Mant: Yeah, absolutely.

No, it's a great question.

And it comes all comes down to recovery and how light can be used to penetrate deep within to the muscles.

So when she's been in the gym, you know, she's a female, she's going to be working her lower body constantly.

Like that's just how females do it.

Like guys work up the work on the chest, the girls work on the legs and the glutes.

So she's had a hard day in the gym and she's had a good session.

She's going to have all that energy sapped out of the muscle.

You know, they're going to be.

She would have pushed them to the point of, you know, failure so she can grow those muscles which leaves them feeling wobbly and jelly like after, after an intense session.

So the way infrared sauna works is different from red light therapy.

So it's not near infrared and it's not red light, it's far infrared light.

So it's used for heating purposes.

Now when you go into a normal sauna, like a cold sauna, it heats the air around you, so it just sort of heats the outer part of the body.

Whereas what the far infrared light does, it penetrates deep into the muscles and starts to heat within the muscles.

It starts to raise the temperature internally.

And what studies have shown is that when we apply heat, not cold, after we work out, that enables the muscles to start relaxing, more energy to be produced in the muscular system.

And when there's more energy produced in that system, we start to recover faster.

And as a result, those shakes will stop a lot quicker because we're warming those muscles, providing more energy for them to heal quickly.

And she'll come out of that sauna blanket and just, yeah, feel like she can walk again normally, which is something that wouldn't have happened that quickly without utilizing far infrared light for that sort of internal heating process of the muscle.

Meredith Oke: Cool.

Thank you.

Okay.

There's that's the clip for Millie.

All right.

So then my younger, my youngest, her question was, how do you get the orange glasses?

Orange?

Katie Mant: Oh, it's quite a process, actually.

Actually takes about a few hours per lens.

It's basically just keep it brief.

It's a constant dying.

So it goes in and out of a.

Of a bath, I guess you could call it, of dye, and it sits within there for, say, 30 minutes.

You pull it out, rinse it, and it just keeps getting repeated until it gets to the potency that that's needed.

But ultimately, it is a sort of a dye that takes place in a little bath.

It's quite a cute process.

Andy Mant: But you don't just have one bath for one pair.

Our lab has, like, multiple baths with multiple glass lenses in there.

Meredith Oke: So the lenses go in the back bath?

Andy Mant: Yes.

Yeah, they go in the tint bath and then they.

They cook in there for probably about two to three hours.

Then they come out and then they go into a spectrometer.

So the spectrometer tests the frequencies of light that pass through the lenses and the ones that don't.

So if we pull it out and we aim for 100% light blocking from 400 to 550 nanometers, which is the.

The melatonin disruption zone, according to the science.

And if it's at 98% or 99%, goes back in the bath for a few extra minutes to cook a bit more, then it goes back and it's tested.

But 99% of the time, we know the exact time that each lens needs to be within the tint bath to achieve the 100% blocking between those frequencies.

So, yeah, they have a lovely warm bath in a lovely solution, and then they come out looking like yours.

Meredith Oke: That's so funny.

That's a good question, Twyla.

I didn't actually know that.

So it's like the clear glass absorbs the color and then depending on how long you leave it in, all the way up to 100%.

Andy Mant: Yes.

And if you leave it in for like an hour, it would look like paler orange all the way up.

If you left it in for, like 10 hours, it would be bright red and you wouldn't see anything red.

But you have to time it just right.

It takes a lot of experimentation, but we managed to have the recipe.

Now that works really well.

And the tin is developed in partnership with our lab partner as well.

So it's proprietary to our glasses, which is really good.

Meredith Oke: That is so cool.

Okay, that was a good one.

I didn't know That I love thinking of all the little lenses in there.

Katie Mant: I like it.

Meredith Oke: Yeah.

Well, you know, I should get a little bit.

Get the 11 year old to do the podcast questions going forward.

So my son, he succeed.

He, he didn't have a question, but he wanted to say thank you for using.

I don't even know what, remember what they're called.

But the thing that plugs in, he's like, that's the.

He liked it was the kind that you can use and that it plugs into anything.

You know what I'm talking about?

Like where you go to charge it.

What's the little piece that sticks in called?

Katie Mant: Oh, for.

On the phones, like the.

Is that what you.

Yeah.

Meredith Oke: Or on the, on the night lights.

We have all the little clip on night lights.

Katie Mant: Oh, yes.

Yes.

Meredith Oke: That you would plug in to charge them.

Yes, that you can see how technical I am.

Right?

The thing that plugs in to charge it.

Katie Mant: Okay.

Meredith Oke: He was happy because he could use any plug and it charges.

Andy Mant: Yeah.

Meredith Oke: That was his feedback.

That's all I got.

Katie Mant: Nice.

I'm glad.

Yeah.

Again, look at him spotting all these little things.

Meredith Oke: I said, are you sure you don't want me to double check that I'm not overreacting, making you wear orange glasses and make your turn your screen red all the time?

He's like, no, I believe you.

I actually noticed a difference, Mom.

Like, okay.

And then Twyla also wanted to know where you got the name Bon Charge.

Katie Mant: Oh, do you know what?

That took what, a year to 18 months?

That was a mission.

That was an absolute mission.

Because we wanted a name that reflected the products that we currently had, but also the vision of where we're going as well.

So it all comes down basically.

Bon Charge means good energy.

So we're principled around the fact that we harness the good energies of nature and then try and block the bad energies of the modern day world.

So it was all about good energy.

But it was just a lot of brainstorming, a lot of troubleshooting to find a name that, that worked.

So.

Yeah, nothing glamorous really.

It was just me and Andy bouncing names around until we found one that worked.

So I wish there was a more polished story.

Meredith Oke: No, that's a great, I mean, good energy.

That's, that's a good.

And it is, it's a cute little like, it's a good name.

It's a good.

Katie Mant: I'm glad you like it.

Meredith Oke: You did a good job.

Yeah, it lands.

And it's funny because whenever I work with, you know, people who, you know, like my podcast producer or technical people who don't really know anything about the content of what I do.

They're just there to help me.

A few.

A few months in of listening to all of my.

The interviews that I do and pros, you know, editing all my stuff, they're like, okay, send me a link for the blue for those glasses.

So I remember I said, my podcast producer, she.

She wrote me back.

She's like, they're not cute.

And I was like, okay, try.

Try this one.

And I sent her Bon Charge.

She was the ones she was finding.

She's like, I understand why to wear them, but they're not.

They don't have.

Katie Mant: They're not cute.

Meredith Oke: And I'm like, oh, Bon Charges are cute.

So I don't know if that was you, Katie, or what, but this woman had like a trend level that she was not willing to go below even to save herself from the blue light.

Katie Mant: I'm here for that as well.

Meredith Oke: So that was.

She was happy.

Andy Mant: If it was up to me, they'd all be looking like lab safety goggles.

Thanks for them looking cute.

Meredith Oke: Yeah, I thought maybe I was like, oh, Andy's.

Yeah, Andy did this with his wife.

Maybe that's why his are so cute.

So, yeah, I just wanted to wrap up.

So I alluded to this earlier, but I really do think that entrepreneurs play such an important role in the progress of society because what you identified in order to start this company was a problem, and now you built a product to help to solve that problem.

In order to sell the product, you need to educate the public on that problem.

And so we all work together.

And I just want to say that because I coach a lot of people who.

In the health and wellness space, and they just want to help people and they don't want to charge any money and they don't want to start.

They're like, oh, the business stuff, oh, I don't know.

But I think it really matters.

And I think it's a really important, crucial piece of creating a healthy culture to have companies that are rooted in good stuff.

And so I just wanted to say that because I know it's hard.

Katie Mant: You believe in and you're passionate about it, and for those people that.

Meredith Oke: Oh, thanks, Andy.

Well, I.

I really do love partnering with you guys.

And you run a really tight ship.

You know, your company is really well run, your marketing is good, all your stuff is good, and I think that matters.

And you're modeling how to do that in a way that has integrity and that is overall, you know, contributing to our culture and to our society.

And so good job.

Yeah.

It was a pleasure to have you both back on and, you know, to everyone listening, if you want to dig in more.

Andy.

I made Andy go really deep on his how to build a successful business in our first interview.

So circle back and listen to that one.

But thank you both, such a pleasure.