James ↗

Your watch records your health all day, then tells you almost nothing about it. I'm building Upzen Charts to fix that. Also track what your watch can't see, like supplements, symptoms, even your poo. 💩 👀 Choose what matters, know when it changes. 👇 upzen.co/charts

5 bits of my health setup, all hacked together from stuff that was never meant for it: - Sauna: a 1.2m hydroponics grow tent with chicken lamps in it (my girlfriend calls it the bogan sauna). Dripping with sweat in 5-10 min - Bedroom air: 6 PC fans in the window pulling fresh air in all night - Potassium: cream of tartar from the baking aisle, ½ tsp in my 1.5 L work day bottle - Phone: X only opens when I tap an NFC sticker on my keys - Light: a 275W halogen over my desk, and every light in the house fades to red at sunset

Turn your lights red at sunset. In my experience it’s a seriously underrated move for sleep and circadian rhythm. Then put blue light blocking glasses on at 8 pm. You’ll be yawning within 20 to 30 minutes. I guarantee it.

RF → sleep experiment update A somewhat unexpected result! After approx 24 days of my phone coin flip randomly turning on my radios or keeping them off during sleep, it appears to have increased the number of awakenings I’ve had in the night. My REM sleep % has increased too (this is super interesting to me, any ideas why?) Sleep stage count increases too. This is a measure of how “choppy” or fragmented my sleep is, but more is not automatically worse - to a point - for example if I only had 3 sleep stages for the whole night then my sleep would probably be pretty incomplete, BUT 39.5 stages sounds like quite a lot. I am not a sleep expert tho. Remember that this is not a perfect experiment as I am in a city so cannot isolate RF completely. However, the fact that I’m reading a signal in the noise is still significant in my opinion. I will continue to share the results as they come in! @helios_brah

This is how we roll

Here’s something interesting that shows the importance of considering the context behind some data. On the face of it, this reading could indicate that melatonin is bad for my sleep. But digging deeper, I know that typically I’ve taken melatonin when I’m laying in bed already struggling to sleep. Sublingual melatonin acts fast, which prevents me from having a bad sleep and ruining the next day. The message here is that if I want to sleep longer or improve my sleep quality, it might be a better choice to take melatonin earlier in the evening rather than after 9:30pm.

Remember, according to the “professionals”, the big ball of fire that is responsible for all life on earth is very bad for us and we should avoid it at all costs Make it make sense

Update on the RF → Sleep Quality experiment: After 17 nights, there is now “no clear link” between RF exposure and awake time (at least when on the same day) At some point soon I will repeat the experiment in a cleaner environment: camping out in the bush where there is NO phone signal and no sign of any electronics anywhere Right now being in a city I think there is just too much RF noise and other EMFs that it’s not a clean experiment. I just bought a 2014 Land Cruiser, which I am going to convert into a mini campervan. This should make camping trips much easier to do on the regular, which is exciting in itself. Regardless, for science, I will continue to run this study at home. Given enough days of data, the variables could average out. There is, of course, also the possibility that I detect no relationship between RF and my sleep quality, although I find that hard to believe! The other option I’m considering is going the nuclear option and having a wifi router underneath the bed and toggling the radios on/off randomly from night to night with a script (I could do this fairly easily) cc @helios_brah

My glasses prescription has gone DOWN by 0.5 in each eye since 2021. What changed in that time: - working outside in daylight as much as I can (even in the shade) - bright halogen and incandescent light indoors, red after sunset - an infrared sauna - homemade beef liver capsules (about 10-25g fresh liver equivalent a day) I put it down to the combination. If your eyes get worse every year, the light you live under is worth a look

My bedroom window fans run 24/7. My basement vents only run when the air outside is drier than inside. The bedroom is about getting stale air and CO2 out. The basement is about damp, and blowing humid air into a damp room makes it worse. So if you're airing out a damp room, check the dew point first. Lower outside than inside, open up. Higher, keep it shut

If coffee after lunch wrecks your sleep, it might be your genes. Some people clear caffeine much slower than others (the CYP1A2 gene). I'm one of them. Anything after midday and I'm lying in bed wired. Even a 6pm green tea does it. So keep coffee before midday, and count tea, chocolate and pre-workout too

Every night at midnight my iPhone flips a coin. 50% chance aeroplane mode goes off (radios on all night), 50% chance it stays on. It logs the result to a file, and I match it to my watch's sleep data. I don't choose, so I can't fool myself. It’s a blind study. I only find out the next morning. 8 nights in, there's a pattern. The nights with the phone radios on line up with a higher awake %. My app rates it "strongly together", and it's clearest on the same night, not the night after. 8 nights is nowhere near enough to call it, so no verdict yet. My bedroom is already low RF (the router's wifi switches off overnight on a timer), but I live in a city, so it will never be perfectly clean. The way around that is more nights. The coin keeps flipping and I'll post the numbers as they come in.

My sauna is a hydroponics grow tent with chicken lamps in it. And it’s damn good. My girlfriend calls it the bogan sauna. Dripping with sweat in 5-10 min every time. I sit in it for 20-40. Here’s the shopping list for the cheapest and most unconventional sauna in the world: 1.2m x 1.2m x 2m Grow Tent $140 Lamp holders/sockets $122 Chicken lamps $60 (including a spare) Frame for mounting: leftover plywood. Free. Seat: an esky. Free. About AUD $320 all up (~USD $223) It’s hard to measure the temp, because infrared lamps heat you, not the air. But the puddles of sweat on the floor are the only proof I need.

6 PC fans in my bedroom window quietly pulling fresh outside air in all night 👇 I nerded out on this one. A big upgrade for a little price: - Improved sleep - less risk of mould - lower CO2 levels - better temperature control without aircon Also: 3 air purifiers running 24/7, humidity monitors around the house, and a dehumidifier on 24/7 in the bathroom. One measurement for air quality is “PM2.5”. In my observations, the biggest PM2.5 spike comes from one thing: Cooking. It spikes it massively. Particularly when cooking on high heat for a long time. Smoke from the oil in the pan etc. So the range hood ALWAYS goes on, and I turn the purifier up as soon as I start. You must start paying more attention to the quality of the air you breathe. You’re in it for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It matters more than you think.

If I had to keep one supplement it'd be benfotiamine (a fat-soluble form of B1). 300mg a day. It's the one I felt the most. I got curious after seeing a few people say high-dose B1 helps with sluggish metabolism. I always take it with a full set of B vitamins, active forms that take methylation into account. What I noticed: a steady, natural energy. It’s just easier to keep moving without needing breaks. It's biggest on heavy days in the garden, or anything that needs long focus. This benefit hasn't reduced over time, unlike many other supplements. Might try a higher dose soon and see what happens.

A new experiment I’m running. Will share the results in 60-90 days. Notifications on if you’re curious.

cream of tartar from the baking aisle = cheap potassium. so my work day bottle is ½ tsp each of salt, cream of tartar and magnesium malate in about 1.5 L of water. I get through 2 of those then fruit for extra water and energy, rice at lunch

We are truly living in the future. The continuous data this could provide would allow anyone to dial in so many aspects of their metabolic health. I have experimented with continuous glucose monitors - even though I am not diabetic - and probably will again. But a ring is so much less invasive. The future is nuts.