This is Part 2 on my non-toxic bedroom environment where I discuss my lighting setup at night. In Part 1, I discussed how your mattress emits toxic fumes while you sleep, and why I only use natural organic non-toxic mattresses and bedding.

How I Switch my Lighting at Night to Mimic Nature:

In nature, it’s dark after sunset. Darkness is a signal to our bodies to start winding down and begin repair processes. Our modern lives with electricity and blue-rich LED bulbs make this impossible. Blue light at night is linked to cancer (especially breast2 and prostate3 cancer), diabetes4 and heart disease.5

Even during the day, LED bulbs keep us in perpetual stress mode. (See below post on how office workers can reduce stress by mitigating isolated blue light from LEDs and screens in a home or non-home office setting.)

Not to mention that LED lighting flickers constantly, giving you eye strain and headaches.

Blue-rich lights that stimulate you and inhibit repair processes by blocking melatonin6 are the exact opposite of what you want at night. Here is how I switch our home, bedroom, and device lighting as evening dawns and sunset begins:

Home Lighting:

• We use red incandescent bulbs at night. They emit zero-blue. I got some from Amazon but sadly they’re going out of stock since the fatal ban on incandescents.

• I recommend circadian lighting from Healthy Home Shop. The same bulbs switch from full-spectrum during the day to zero blue at night. They mimic nature much better than any traditional LED. No WiFi needed to work them. (10% off with link)

• After sunset, I use blue-light blockers from VivaRays, (Code: LIVELONGERWORLD). VivaRays makes 3-in-1 blue light blockers to block different intensities of blue over the course of the day. Isolated blue light (without the infrared) from LEDs and screens during the day raises your cortisol. So, if you’re going to be working indoors in front of screens & LED bulbs, you want to wear their yellow blue-light blockers (stops some blue) during the day. And then you switch to the red ones at night, which block all blue.

• I absolutely hate the bright blue light in all refrigerators. Especially when you’re putting dinner away in the fridge, the last thing you want is being blasted by blue light before bed. There is also research that blue light at night can increase appetite and sugar cravings. So the last thing you want is being bombarded with blue light from the fridge and tempted to pull out that ice-cream! I finally found a way. It’s a neat set it and forget it $5 hack.

  My fridge hack tip is for premium subscribers. Upgrade to get full access.

Bedroom Lighting:

• I keep our bedroom as dark as possible. We can detect even small specks of light, which can disrupt sleep. I use SleepOut Non-toxic curtains for our blackout curtains. Most blackout curtains are made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) or synthetic materials like polyester which release toxic fumes called volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and formaldehyde (a carcinogen!) over the life of the curtain. VOC releases get magnified when sunlight hits the curtains through the window. So, during the day, these VOCs keep infesting your bedroom and it’s what you breathe in while you sleep. Jeez! (Yes, these are the same VOCs we encountered in mattresses).

  • SleepOut uses only non-toxic materials and the best part is that they have a portable curtain too, so you can easily carry it with you when traveling.

• I use an organic cotton or silk sleep eye mask. Even low-level light can disrupt sleep.

Device lighting:

• For reading at night, I use my blue-light free Daylight computer (Code: LIVELONGERWORLD) which I love. It’s gentle on the eyes, has no blue light and is flicker-free.

• When using devices at night, turn them all on zero blue or red light mode. Apple’s Night shift mode is a lie. It does not cut out all blue light. To do so, here are the steps for Iphone, Android, and your computer.

• When working on your devices at night, if you don’t want them on full red mode, or if you’re working under lights that are not zero-blue, use blue-light blockers, like the ones I have from VivaRays. (Code: LIVELONGERWORLD)

We spend many hours of our life sleeping, and it’s also the time when the body is repairing. I sincerely believe that we should create an environment to allow for proper rest and restoration.

In the next post, I’ll cover how I change our house EMF exposure at night.

You can see all the sleep and health products we use at healthstacked.com/aasthajs

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I did it for 10+ years. We assume we’re getting restorative sleep while never creating an environment designed to repair.

Much of sleep advice focuses on dinner timing, dinner composition, and activities to do before bed like a warm shower or cutting out social media. I used to practice some of these for years, with little improvement to my sleep, but nothing significant.

What drastically improved my sleep was making my bedroom environment less toxic, getting more sunlight during the day, and eating dinner by sunset.

Sleep is when our body is repairing and we must give it a proper chance to do so by mitigating the effects of toxins. Our sleep environment should be as pure as possible, and devoid of modern day toxins like blue lights, EMF, polyester bedding, noise, excess CO2, dirty air, and other such toxins.

Below I detail my exact non-toxic bedroom set-up in 3 parts.

Part 1: Mattress, Bedding, Pillow (this post)

Part 2: My Zero-Blue Lighting Set-up at night

Part 3: How I lower EMF in our house and bedroom at night

Part 4: Maintaining good Bedroom Air Quality while you sleep

Mattresses were designed to pass a fire test, not provide restorative sleep

Most mattresses are toxic. I had no idea about this till last year. Nothing in a mattress is chosen for how it interacts with a human body for 7+ hours a night. Every layer is chosen to pass a fire test, survive shipping compressed in a box, and hit a price point.

Mattresses are made of a material called polyurethane foam and adhesives (glue that holds every layer together). These emit Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are the chemical smell from a new mattress and are toxic fumes to inhale. VOCs can take a month or more to dissipate. At high levels they cause headaches, eye and throat irritation, and dizziness, and some of them, like formaldehyde and benzene, are carcinogens. The crazy part is that the VOC emissions test for every mattress is run cold. However, when you sleep on these mattresses, body heat multiplies the toxic effect and increases the emission rate by 2.5x or more!1

Then you have the bigger problem which is chemicals that don’t evaporate away so easily called semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs). In a mattress, these include phthalates, flame retardants, plasticizers and stain repellents. Phthalates are endocrine disruptors, meaning they interfere with hormone signaling, and are linked to reproductive and developmental effects. In some small studies, flame retardants have been associated with lower IQ in children. PFAS are “forever chemicals” that build up in the body and don't break down.

So, unlike VOCs, these SVOCs don't evaporate away. They keep migrating into dust that you breathe and onto your skin for the life of the mattress!

Foam mattresses also use knit polyester (plastic) on their covers. It gets worse where some waterproof mattresses covers and crib mattresses with vinyl have been tested for PFAS and phthalates, which as I said, are known endocrine disruptors.2

Fiberglass (spun glass) in mattresses also contributes to toxins. The fibers irritate skin, eyes and lungs. The bigger issue is when the cover gets unzipped or the fabric wears through, the fibers escape and spread through the whole house. There are households that have had to throw out clothing, furniture and carpet after this happened, and lawsuits to match. So much so that California has banned fiberglass in mattresses starting 2027.

What I Use Now

This is why I only use 100% organic mattress from Naturepedic and Happsy. They don’t use any polyurethane foam, adhesives, flame retardants, and fiberglass mentioned above. They are made with certified organic cotton, wool, and are GOTS-certified. Given my family and I sleep on it everyday for years to come, I don’t want to compromise on our mattress.

Why is a Mattress designed this way?

Before the 1950s and 60s, mattresses used to be made of cotton, wool, horsehair, and kapok. Then began the petroleum era and the rise of cheaper cost goods. Polyurethane foam (emit VOCs) used in mattresses today is a petroleum product, and it won on cost. It's cheap, it's light, you can tune it to any firmness, and it compresses small enough to ship in a box, which is why every bed-in-a-box company sells foam.

But the issue is this foam is also fuel. It’s a petroleum product, after all! So, it created fire risk for mattresses. In 2007, a federal rule started requiring every mattress sold in the U.S. to pass an open flame test. Manufacturers again chose the cheap route. They met the test by adding flame retardant chemicals to the foam. The very flame retardants that seem to lower IQ and were banned by California in 2020.

So what did the industry do after the ban? They moved to another bad solution from a health standpoint - wrapping the foam in a fiberglass barrier instead. California is banning that too, starting 2027. Let it be known that a mattress can pass the same fire test with a barrier that isn’t fiberglass and no added chemicals at all, but they don’t do it for cost reasons.

Even when fiberglass is banned, mattresses still have cheap materials like polyester, plus phthalates, PFAS and other SVOCs, which keep shedding toxins into your home over the life of the mattress.

Your Bedding is shedding plastic that you breathe in

The sheets that are the most cost effective and found in hotels are made of polyester. Polyester is plastic. You end up sleeping on a bed of plastic which sheds microplastics that you ingest through skin contact and breathing.

Polyester also traps heat so you sleep hotter which disrupts quality sleep. Sleeping cooler helps one sleep better. Further, polyester disrupts hormone health and fertility, increases inflammation, and might be contributing to heart disease.

This is why we sleep on 100% organic cotton sheets and pillow covers. Pact is my go-to for sheets.

I’ve written more on the harmful impacts of polyester and safer clothing options here:

Pillows too shed microplastics

Pillows share some of the issues with mattresses. They are filled with polyester and in memory foam pillows, it’s polyurethane foam. This means microplastic shedding and VOC emission. I use the Organic adjustable pillows from Naturepedic. It’s great that you can adjust the filling inside to make it the height you’d like.

Blanket / Comforter:

Similar to bedding, we only use organic natural materials for our comforter. We use a wool one from Coyuchi.

We spend many hours of our life sleeping, and it’s also the time when the body is repairing. I sincerely believe that we should maintain a non-toxic bedroom environment to allow proper rest and restoration.

In the next post, I’ll cover how I change our house and bedroom lighting, and EMF exposure at night.

You can see all the sleep products we use at healthstacked.com/aasthajs3

Follow me on X @aasthajs & Instagram @aasthajs as I parse through the snake-oil in longevity. If my work is useful, become a premium subscriber.

Browse my health stack across 9 categories (sleep, fitness, non-toxic kitchen, skincare, diagnostics, lighting).

For the full collection of 300+ health products curated by me, see Health Stacked.

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Glen Jeffery is a leading mitochondria and light scientist at UCL and he explains that blue light raises cortisol and keeps us stimulated.

“It’s stimulating. It produces a bit more cortisol. You’re a bit more stressed. It’s very clear.”

So, the blue light from computer screens ensures we don’t fall asleep at our desks.

(To watch the full 22 second clip, see X or Insta.)

While this blue from screens may keep us from falling asleep, it comes with significant health costs, not just at night.

The misleading half truth that blue light during the day is good for you

Blue light during the day stimulates you. It keeps you alert, and it spikes your cortisol so you can remain focused. This has led many health influencers to conclude that “At night blue light is bad for you, but blue light during the day is not bad and that you actually need blue light during the day to be alert. Hence the blue in screens and LED lighting during the day is good for you.”

This is a very misleading half-truth.

It is true that you want blue light during the day. But you do not want the blue light that you get from computer screens, LEDs, or indoor lighting in our homes and offices. The blue light that comes from devices and bulbs (both LED lighting) is very different from the blue light you get in nature.

In nature you do not get blue light in isolation. In LED screens, you do. The blue in sunlight is at its peak during the day, but even then it makes up 25% of sunlight. 50% or greater is red and near infrared.

Your biology evolved under blue light from the sun, not from LED lighting. LED lighting is the tobacco of today’s world. We’re going to soon wake up to the health damage being done by them in the name of energy efficiency.

Blue Light from LEDs vs. Sunlight

The image above shows how the light spectrum differs between LED lighting and sunlight.

Some key differences before I discuss the health implications:

1. LED bulbs spike in 450nm blue, a particular blue wavelength. The sun’s spectrum has no spikes. It is smooth and continuous, across the whole range of blue wavelengths. In sunlight, blue is also surrounded by other wavelengths, UV and predominantly red, infrared, and near-infrared.

2. LED bulbs don’t even have the right blue we need to stimulate our circadian clock! They have a gap in 480nm blue which is what is the most potent stimulator of melanopsin, the photopigment in your eyes1 that reads light levels and tells your brain’s master clock what time of day it is. Melanopsin peaks around 480nm, and that signal drives alertness, melatonin timing, and cortisol.

3. LED bulbs are dominant in blue with some green, and yellow wavelengths (400nm to 700nm), all in the visible spectral range. They have little to no red and infrared. Sunlight on the other hand is rich in wavelengths all the way from UV to near infrared. In fact, sunlight’s spectrum is ~50% red and infrared at any point in the day. This difference is not minor, it has significant health consequences.

4. Sunlight’s brightness is 100,000 lux. Contrast this with a typical office lit by LED bulbs which is only 300-500 lux. Even if you stack several bulbs, you cannot replicate the brightness of sunlight. This brightness is key for proper stimulation of circadian rhythm.

Summary: Under LED lighting you only get blue light, particularly in the 450nm range. Under the sun, you get blue light with plenty of infrared and near-infrared. And the blue in the sun does not only spike at one wavelength. It is continuous, providing energy from all wavelengths our body needs.

These differences are not trivial. They have massively different implications for our health and energy.

The blue in LEDs and computer screens keeps you constantly agitated:

During the day, blue light stimulates you to go work. It does raise cortisol. In sunlight, the cortisol spiking effects of blue are counterbalanced by the calming effects of red and infrared2. This way you’re not under perpetual stress mode. You get the alertness and the calmness together in sunlight.

This is in stark contrast to the lighting environment of a typical office worker. We sit under blue-rich LED lights staring at blue computer screens. Our windows block most red, infrared and UV. They predominantly allow blue light to come in. As a result, the office is only surrounded by blue light. There is no infrared. Merely 100-150 years ago when most of us were farmers, we spent almost all our waking hours outdoors. Being in isolated artificial blue lighting is a modern day problem.

What happens when you get blue in isolation? You’re constantly agitated and stimulated. You’re under a constant low-level stress. This is not how it’s meant to be. We’re meant to get the calm effects of red and infrared to balance this cortisol spike.

In a recent study3, office workers were subjected to daylight vs. artificial LED light. They controlled the brightness to be the same. Under daylight, the workers had better cognition and low stress. Under blue-dominant artificial light, they had higher sympathetic arousal (nervous system preparing for action, stress or danger). This implies that it’s not the brightness, but the fact that the red and infrared in sunlight counterbalances the stress. In contrast, under LED lighting and screens, your nervous system is in constant arousal mode, and cognition is worse.

This is one reason why office environments can be so stress inducing. It’s not only your boss ;)

This is why when I work in front of my computer screen indoors, I use my daytime blue-blocker from VivaRays (code LIVELONGERWORLD for 10% off) to partially block some of the blue. I do not want isolated blue light from computer screens stressing me out.

LED lighting flickers and causes eye strain:

The blue light isolation is not the only reason LED lighting is stressful. LED bulbs and computer screens when dimmed also flicker constantly. Screens will fake low brightness by rapidly pulsing on and off 100 to 120 times a second. Even though our naked eye cannot detect it, the flicker makes our pupils constantly dilate and constrict. It can be detected by our brain and visual system leading to eye strain and headaches.

There are easy fixes to remove this flicker from your computer and phone screens. See:

When you get no infrared from the sun, energy production and metabolism falters

The big problem with blue-rich LED lighting is that they strip out all the red and infrared. In sunlight, you ALWAYS have 50-55% infrared at any time of the day. Our mitochondria and metabolism evolved to absorb infrared and near-infrared light4 and use it to produce energy. When we avoid the sun, live under LED lighting and blue screens, we starve the mitochondria of an essential nutrient, resulting in altered energy production which can manifest as disease. Mitochondrial dysfunction is linked to practically every chronic disease. Needless to say, the health of our mitochondria is key.

So what’s the solution to mitigating isolated blue light?

I’ll discuss how to set up your office environment, home environment, and your screens to mitigate this effect. I’ll include tips for people who work in an office where they cannot control their lighting. There are still some easy steps you can take. Many of these include tips for everyone for general circadian health to mitigate the effects of isolated blue light.

Office environment where you can control your lighting:

1. Set up an outside desk if you can: No indoor lighting beats sunlight. You can utilize the shade, you do not have to get fried. You still get plenty more infrared in the shade than you would sitting indoors. I have an outdoor shaded desk setup and spend 6-8 hours in the sun everyday. When it’s too hot, I come inside.

2. Circadian lighting: Circadian lights are closer to full-spectrum including infrared during the day and zero-blue at night. I like the ones from Healthy Home Shop (code LIVELONGERWORLD for 10% off). This way you’re not getting isolated blue light during the day. And the same bulbs turn to zero blue at night.

3. Open your windows and let sunlight come in. Window glasses naturally block UV and infrared, so you’re only getting blue light, which adds to the isolated blue light problem. Even if you’re not sitting directly in front of the window, sunlight photons are streaming in and benefiting you.

4. Add a circadian and red lamp to your desk. Circadian lighting is good for lighting the whole room. However, it’s often not a powerful enough light stimuli to most potently activate your circadian clocks. They lack the brightness you need unless you stack them up. Chroma makes circadian lighting and red light lamps especially for the office worker (code LIVELONGERWORLD for 10% off). You can use both on your desk to get the circadian and infrared boost. If you work indoors, this is one of the best substitutes you have for sunlight.

5. VivaRays Blue light blocking glasses: It’s a myth that you only need blue-blockers at night. If you are working indoors under LED lighting in front of a blue computer screen, you want to block some of this blue to not damage your eyes. I love the 4-in-1 from VivaRays (code LIVELONGERWORLD for 10% off), and use their daytime blue-blockers when working in front of my screen indoors, every day! Their 4-in-1 lets you block out partial blue during the day, and full blue at night. They are also the only ones that make prescription glasses that allow UV to come in. UV to the eyes is key for regulation of dopamine, mood etc. When outside, use their UV glasses (if you have prescription) and when indoors use their blue-blockers.

6. Use a zero-blue tablet for reading and other tasks. I love my Daylight Computer - zero-blue and zero flicker screens! (Use my link for $25 off)

7. Step outside for plenty of sun snacks. You want to get sunlight throughout the day to let your body and circadian clocks know what time of day it is. Merely morning sunlight does not do it. Our clocks don’t just start in the morning and run by themselves, they need light signals throughout the day to maintain proper circadian functioning. Step outside and view the sun (without sunglasses, prescription glasses, or sunscreen) during your bathroom, water, and lunch breaks. Even 1-2 minutes of sun snacks throughout the day helps.

Office environment where you cannot control the main lighting:

Even if you can’t control the main lighting, the last 4 points above can be utilized effectively to mitigate isolated blue light.

1. Add a circadian and red lamp to your desk like the ones from Chroma

2. VivaRays Blue light blocking glasses

3. Zero-blue tablet like Daylight Computer

4. Get plenty of Sun snacks

Strip out blue light from Screens:

I always keep my devices on partial red mode, even during the day. I do not want isolated blue light stressing me out. At night, my devices are on pure red, zero blue light mode. Blue light at night particularly disrupts melatonin and repair processes in the body. Wear blue light blockers if you don’t turn your screens red during the day.

It takes 5 minutes to set your devices to red mode:

And again, this is how you mitigate flicker:

Home environment:

1. Be outside as much as you can: If you spend most of your time home, be outside as much as you can. Again, utilize the shade when you need to.

2. Leave doors and windows open to allow sunlight and fresh air to come in.

3. Replace your lights with circadian lighting: LED bulbs are the tobacco of today’s world. Switching to circadian lighting is one of the easiest, set-it-and-forget-it, and low-cost health interventions you can make. Again, Healthy Home Shop and Chroma are my go-tos.

4. No need to use LED bulbs during the day (and especially not at night), they’re not benefiting you. Let natural light come in or use circadian lighting or incandescent bulbs.

5. Have red lights only after dark: Use zero blue lights after dark. We use red incandescent bulbs only. If you get the circadian lighting from Healthy Home Shop, the same bulb goes from full-spectrum during the day to zero-blue at night, which many people find convenient. Blue at night is particularly harmful. It suppresses melatonin which is not a sleep hormone, but one of the most powerful antioxidants your body has. Suppress melatonin with blue light, and you suppress repair processes while you sleep.

Summary of Products I use to cut out isolated blue light:

• VivaRays 4 in 1 Blue Blockers and UV transmitters: VivaRays makes 3 in 1 blue blockers that you can easily switch from day to evening to night.

  • Use my link https://vivarays.com/livelongerworld or discount code LIVELONGERWORLD for 10% off.

• Healthy Home Shop Circadian Bulbs: The Circadian bulbs have 3 light settings that easily switch spectrum from daylight (full-spectrum) to evening to night (blue-light free). This is exactly what you want for mimicking the sun’s wavelengths indoors. And no WiFi required.

  • Use my link https://thehealthyhome.shop/livelongerworld for 10% off.

• Daylight Computer No-blue screen: I love reading on my Daylight! They have zero blue light and are flicker-free. It’s such a peaceful reading experience, without causing you any eye strain.

  • Use my link https://buy.daylightcomputer.com/livelongerworld for $25 off.

• Chroma Circadian-Aligned Desk Lamp: The Sky portal desk lamp is a great circadian lamp for your workspace. It delivers bright light during the day, and red light as evening sets in.

  • Use my link https://getchroma.co/photonsfromaastha and code LIVELONGERWORLD for 10% off.

• Iris Software: It removes blue light and flicker from computer screens. This is what I use to keep my screens on partial red mode even during the day.

  • Use my link https://iristech.co/?ap_id=livelongerworld for 1 month free.

For all the Lighting & EMF products I use, see my health stack

For the full collection of Lighting & EMF products I’ve curated, see Health Stacked

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The levels that are considered safe differ by benchmark. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC)1 would say even 715mW/m² (the level without the foil) is safe. However, some of the more health precautionary benchmarks like the Building Biology Institute would say its 700x the extreme concern limit! This brings me to the debate on whether WiFi signals and phone radiation have a health impact.

Do WiFi signals and EMF from phones have a health impact?

RFK Jr., the Health and Human Services Secretary of the U.S. has come out and said that cell phone use is connected to cancer and neurological damage in kids. A lot of people will say that this is “batshit crazy.”2

However, it is not as crazy as mainstream would like us to think. There are many studies linking EMFs to cancer, heart disease, neurological disorders etc. For the past 30 years, Dr. Henry Lai has documented studies on the harmful impacts of EMFs like the RF radiation from WiFi and phones, and low frequency radiation we are flooded with in today’s electrical and technological society. In 2018, the US government's own $25 million study3 found evidence that cell phone radiation caused tumors in male rats.

Yet, the mainstream continues to say that the science is settled and EMFs have no impact on health because it does not cause DNA damage. However, biology extends beyond the gene, and there is evidence that EMFs can impact electrical and ion channel signaling, and cause oxidative stress.4

One of the most telling arguments against the mainstream is that the DC court ruled against the FCC in 2021, and found the agency’s decision to keep its 1996 radiation limits “arbitrary and capricious.” The FCC was ordered to explain how its radiation limits protect against long-term exposure. 5 years later, the FCC has not responded.

Practical tips to mitigate EMF exposure from your cell phone

I’m of the camp that these days we are flooded with constant EMF radiation from phones, WiFi, cell phone towers, microwaves etc. Our biology did not evolve with these. They are a foreign toxin, especially the constant doses we are subject to these days.

I also recognize how inconvenient it is to live without these wonderful inventions. So, I take a practical approach and mitigate their impact on my family’s health as much as feasibly possible, without causing inconvenience.

Whether you merely want to take precaution or if you think EMFs are having an impact on your health, here are some practical tips to mitigate EMF exposure from your cell phones. They’re free, low-cost, convenient, and extend beyond just “put your phone on airplane mode at night.”

Learning these tips took me months of research, testing with my EMF meter, and understanding how EMF from devices works. Below are 16 practical tips on how to reduce EMF exposure from your phone when sleeping, walking, driving, and using or not using your phone.

1. Cover your WiFi router in aluminum foil. As I showed above, it makes a huge difference to the EMF emission. And it did not seem to affect my WiFi signal or make it spotty.

2. Do not put your phone in your pocket, especially for men. Multiple meta-analyses point to how it reduces sperm count, changes sperm quality, and dampens male fertility. It’s also associated with higher risk of colon cancer5. You can use a phone pouch on your arm like this one. For women, do not put your phone near your breasts.

   The other 13 practical tips are for premium subscribers. Subscribe & reduce your EMF exposure EMF from your phone. I practice each of these every day & take my limitation of EMF exposure seriously. I think EMF is a big contributor to health decline.

   16. Blue light from phones and flicker is also an EMF. Turn your phone screen red at night like I detail in these posts.

In another post, I will write my practical tips to reduce EMF exposure from computers and electricals around the house.

Fun fact I’ll leave you with: The idea of “tin foil hat” comes from using foil to protect from EMF radiation. Woops, I guess I’m now in the tin foil hat camp!

You can see the EMF shielding products I use on Health Stacked here.

Follow me on X @aasthajs & Instagram @aasthajs as I parse through the snake-oil in longevity. If my work is useful, become a premium subscriber.

Browse my health stack across 12+ categories (sleep, fitness, non-toxic kitchen, clean water, skincare, diagnostics, lighting).

For the full collection of 500+ health products curated by me, see Health Stacked.

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Hi, I’m Aastha and thanks for joining Live Longer World as I parse through the snake-oil in longevity. On my health stack, you can see my exact collection of non-toxic health products I use (12 categories including sleep, fitness, clean water, lighting, air quality, non-toxic kitchen). For the full collection of 500+ health products curated by me, see Health Stacked.

In 2019, I was deficient in Vitamin D. Around the same time, I came across Dr. Rhonda Patrick who built much of her fame touting the benefits of Vit. D supplementation. She pointed to the associations between low vitamin D and cancer, heart disease, and worse COVID outcomes. Her recommendation was to supplement to reach the optimal range. Even today, it’s top of her list of recommended supplements1.

For 6 years, I religiously followed her advice by taking a high dose 5,000IU a day. A year ago, I learned how wrong she is.

Vit. D supplements recommendation is built on correlation, not causation. High Vit. D is linked to good health, and low Vit. D to poor health, so health practioniers jumped to the conclusion that “We should supplement people with Vit D.” Trying to discern between correlation and causation is in direct conflict with the ~$10 trillion global healthcare industry.

This is how Vit. D supplements became a thing: People learned that the sun is good, and sun produces Vit. D, therefore Vit. D pills are good. It’s a classic case of reductionist biology and poor logical leaps.

Recent evidence confirms it was correlation, not causation. A large landmark study showed how Vit. D supplementation had no effects on cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, or death from any cause. This does not mean Vit. D is not important. Natural Vit. D from the sun continues to be critical for good health.

Vit. D from the sun does not equal Vit. D from pills.

In this post, I will discuss:

• The cause-and-effect mistake at the heart of it all. Why we mistook the messenger (vitamin D) for the message (sunlight).

• The landmark trial that quietly broke the vitamin D story. 26,000 people, five years, and almost nothing to show for the pill.

• What sunlight does that no pill can copy. The benefits that have nothing to do with vitamin D.

• How to actually get your vitamin D, the practical, free, evolutionary way.

We have confused Vit. D as the cause when it is a marker

The history of how Vit. D research shows us how we made this mistake of confusing cause with effect. In 1980, 2 brothers Cedric and Frank Garland noted that people living in the south sunnier regions of the U.S. had lower colon cancer mortality. Back then, it was believed that the main benefit of the sun was Vit. D. So the brothers attributed the lower cancer mortality in sunnier regions to Vit. D. They attributed the “sunlight signal” solely to the “Vit. D signal”. This was a big mistake. We now know that the sun has many benefits beyond Vit. D production, and this leap from “sun helps with cancer” to “Vit. D pills help with cancer” was a logical fallacy.

Vit. D was a marker of people getting adequate sun. Not the cause of cancer protection.

This mistake got further perpetuated over the next 2 decades as observational studies linked low Vit D. to higher rates of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, stroke, infection. This was all based on correlation.

In 2007, there was one trial by a researcher named Joan Lappe that initially showed lower all-cancer incidence with calcium and Vit. D supplementation. But when the trial was replicated with cancer as the primary outcome they were testing for, the results failed to hold up2.

The 2019 landmark study that showed Vit D supplements don’t prevent cancer, stroke or cardiovascular disease

The VITAL study3 was the largest trial ever built to test whether vitamin D pills prevent cancer and heart disease. Nearly 26,000 healthy older adults, half of them women, a fifth of them Black, took either 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 a day or a placebo for just over five years.

The results? No reduction in cancer, cardiovascular events or death from any cause.

What if the pill dose was too low?

My first thought on reading the results of the study was that perhaps the Vit D dosage was low. But that doesn’t seem to be the case, because the Vit D. levels of the people who supplemented with it did in fact go up. Blood levels in the supplement group climbed from 30 to 42 ng/mL, squarely in the optimal range. So the supplement did work in moving Vit. D levels up. However, the high Vit. D from the supplements had no effect on prevention of major diseases. In other words, the supplement worked as they say - your Vit D. levels shot up, but with no benefit to health.

What if the pill didn’t work because most people had adequate levels?

Adequate levels of Vit. D are debated. Around 30 ng/mL or above is generally considered sufficient. However, optimal levels are seen to be between 40-60 ng/mL. Under 20 ng/mL is deficient.

50% of the population was in the sufficient bucket. Most people were not in the optimal bucket. So, the pill should have still helped the people in the adequate bucket. Importantly, 13% of the population were in the deficient bucket. And the pill did not help this group either! Even among the Black population, the pill had no effect. This matters because darker skin makes less vitamin D from the same amount of sunlight, so Black participants tend to run lower levels. They were the group most expected to benefit from a pill, yet they didn’t.

VITAL Study was not the only one to show Vit. D didn’t work

Even before VITAL, other studies like the Women’s Health Initiative showed no effect of vitamin D pills. And the same result has since been repeated by several more: the New Zealand ViDA trial, the Finnish FIND trial, and Australia’s D-Health trial.

In each of these, vitamin D had no positive impact on cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, or other chronic disease. FIND is worth singling out, because it used higher doses than VITAL, up to 3,200 IU a day, and still found nothing. So this isn’t a case of the dose being too small.

So why then do healthy people have good Vit. D levels?

Two reasons. First, vitamin D is a proxy for whether you are getting adequate sun. It’s a marker of good health, not the direct cause of it.

Second, the sun has many benefits that extend well beyond vitamin D production.

A big one is the release of nitric oxide when skin is exposed to UV. Nitric oxide relaxes blood vessels and lowers blood pressure, and this has nothing to do with vitamin D. Tellingly, vitamin D supplements have repeatedly failed to lower blood pressure, which is exactly what sent researchers looking for another mechanism in the first place.

We’re only now starting to uncover the many health benefits of the sun. Avoiding the sun is as bad as smoking, and worse than getting skin cancer! In a landmark study of nearly 30,000 Swedish women, the ones who lived the longest were the ones who got the most sun and got non-melanoma skin cancer!

How then did Vit. D pills become a cultural mainstream?

The poor logical leap I described above is a big piece of it. Sun is good, sun makes vitamin D, so vitamin D pills must be good.

But a huge part of it was the media narrative and one central figure: Dr. Michael Holick. He wrote popular books on vitamin D deficiency, and as chair of the 2011 Endocrine Society guidelines, he helped push the threshold for “sufficient” vitamin D up to 30ng/mL, above the 20ng/mL that the other major authority, the Institute of Medicine, considered adequate. Raising the bar like that reclassified a large share of the population as insufficient overnight.

I’m not here to argue whether 20 or 30 is the right number. The point is that he was the central figure in the rise of vitamin D, and a 2018 New York Times investigation4 later reported he had received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the industries that profited from it, including a major lab that sells vitamin D tests and the indoor-tanning industry. To be fair to him, he is also a genuine advocate for getting sun, which is more than most of his critics in dermatology can say.

How to get Vit. D practically and naturally

The best way to get Vit. D is from UV light from the sun. Modern dermatology has demonized UV light entirely and this is a big mistake. All the studies that were done showing how UV light can cause skin cancer were done using UV light in isolation and on mice that were stripped of melanin, the natural ability to tan. Even at peak UV, the sun never has UV light in isolation, and it’s only 2-3% of the sun’s rays in fact. However, this doesn’t mean getting burnt and sitting in peak UV, if you’re not primed for it. Here are 12 practical guidelines for safe sun exposure I follow, including points on sunscreen use, building sun exposure, food guidelines, and more:

1. Make sure to get morning sun as a warm-up. Morning sun and evening sun have almost no UV, and are rich in beneficial infrared. Some new research shows that priming your skin with infrared before UV exposure can protect you from potential UV damage. Just like you wouldn’t do deadlifts before warming up, don’t step out in peak UV if you’re not primed for it.

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“View morning sunlight to set your circadian rhythm” has become common health advice, popularized by influencers like Andrew Huberman and Bryan Johnson. They’re wrong. It misses how our circadian clocks actually work.

Circadian rhythm is not just about viewing morning sunlight. Our body clock doesn’t start in the morning and keep running smoothly on its own. It needs cues and signals throughout the day.

I spend 6 to 8 hours outside every day. Morning sun is 2 hours of that. The rest of the day matters just as much.

Why does circadian rhythm alignment matter?

Circadian rhythm is not just your body’s internal clock to keep time. It’s what powers the timing of your hormones, metabolism, immune system, gut cells, and every cell in your body. If there is disruption to your circadian alignment, the coordination between cells and hormones breaks down. It results in different cells working per their own timing without coordinating with each other. Your body begins to function like a discordant orchestra - cells don’t work in harmony with each other and create a noisy machine. Brain fog, trouble falling asleep, poor digestion could all result from circadian misalignment. It’s not just about giving your body the right signals, it’s about the right signals at the right time.

There’s a reason night shift workers have higher rates of breast cancer, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and metabolic syndrome. It’s because their circadian timings are out of tune with how we evolved.

Circadian rhythm beyond morning sunlight

Viewing morning sunlight is sub-optimal advice on its own. Circadian rhythm alignment is about viewing the sunrise, getting ample afternoon sunlight, not using the wrong artificial lights at night, not eating out of sync with daylight, exposing your skin and eyes to sunlight, hydrating well, having good melatonin production, and going to bed by the right time.

Here is the full protocol I follow, sunrise to sleep. Skipping any of it disrupts your circadian rhythm.

1. Sunlight activates your master clock. We have a master circadian clock in the brain called the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus (SCN). Its activation is the most potent signal that the day has started. And it is activated by light, more specifically by full-spectrum sunlight. If your SCN does not get its sunlight cue, your body doesn’t fully know the day has begun. It will function sluggishly the rest of the day. Missing the morning sun is like driving a car with a broken engine. It’ll chug along but very sub optimally.

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For 4+ years, I tried to shed my stubborn last 10lbs. I tried it all: calorie counting, intermittent fasting, long fasts, keto, gym grinding, you name it. I’d lose 1-2 lbs, then gain them back. This is despite working out every day and eating clean. I thought the problem was that I wasn’t restricting calories enough.

Then I got pregnant. I obviously wasn’t going to try and lose weight during this period. So I decided to let go. I ate whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I would finish tubs of honey ice-cream and packets of honey chocolate on some days. The caveat was that I’ve never enjoyed junk food much, so my diet was still 95% clean. But I had zero self-imposed restrictions. I enjoyed my chocolate and ice-cream guilt-free.

I noticed that my relationship with food started to change. Despite having unrestricted access to sweets in the refrigerator, most days I simply didn’t want it. I started eating naturally based on hunger cues. I wasn’t bound to the clock by crazy fasting schedules.

I had a healthy pregnancy, gained ~27lbs, and delivered a healthy chubby baby. I lost all my pregnancy weight in the first 3 months and miraculously in the next 6 months, I lost those stubborn 10lbs that I’d been trying to lose for 4 years. And I didn’t even try this time.

I re-established my power over food

While sunlight and other factors played a massive role in my weight loss, I realized that a big part of it was changing my relationship with food. Pre-pregnancy, I lived in fear of eating too much. Food had more power over me. This fear caused me to eat artificially: gorge on cheat days, eat less even when I’m truly hungry, eat more when I’m not hungry to follow my diet plan, and eat foods that I didn’t want to. I was living in a scarcity mindset, worried about food.

In pregnancy, I let go of this fear. I had power over food. One thinks that without any willpower or restrictions, you’d eat junk food all the time. Quite the opposite. I started to live in a state of food abundance. Because I knew I had access to food whenever I wanted, I didn’t worry about overeating.

Why calorie counting apps make weight loss harder

Those who struggle with overeating and/or eating junk food have a tenuous relationship with food, that I described above. The irony is that calorie counting and weight loss apps perpetuate this fearful negative relationship with food. By making you log every calorie, they make you live in constant fear of food. The very fear that was stalling me from losing weight. These apps want you to be loyal customers, not ones who fix the problem and leave.

Losing weight is not so simple as “eat less and move more.” It’s not a matter of willpower and counting calories. It’s a psychological game. It’s about you having power over food.

The answer to weight loss lies not in calorie counting but in changing your relationship with food.

How to regain your control over food

If you want to change your dynamic with food, try this experiment for a few days: eat as much as you want, whatever you want. Guilt-free. The first couple of days you might eat more. But then you might begin to notice how your fear over food changes. You begin to control food, food does not control you. You might begin to eat naturally, more intuitively. In this fearless state, controlling your food choices will become easier.

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Weight loss is not about calories

Contrary to popular belief, calories are the least important metric when it comes to food regulation. Your appetite is heavily regulated by protein intake, circadian timing, light exposure, and hormones, not calories.

Below, I share the exact 10 things I changed to help me lose 10lbs without trying. No calorie counting. No willpower needed.

1. Morning protein breakfast: I used to do intermittent fasting and skip breakfast. My first meal of the day was around 11am. This shifted my gut clock to start the day later, which naturally pushed my dinner time later too. We have a master circadian clock in the brain and local clocks at every organ and cell. My master clock would get its cue from morning sunlight upon waking up. But my gut clock was getting its morning cue only much later in the day. This creates a desynchrony in our body clocks, disrupting circadian and hormonal signaling. Losing weight and optimal health requires your body to work in synchrony. Morning breakfast is key for proper circadian alignment. Aim for 30-40g of protein at breakfast. Eggs, meat, or Greek yogurt. This anchors your gut clock to your wake time and keeps you full until lunch without snacking.

2. Eat dinner by sunset: This was one of the biggest levers in me losing weight. I ran a simple experiment for a few days: eating the same dinner but finishing before sunset vs. after. I noticed that whenever I ate post sunset, I felt more bloated and had worse sleep. I also effortlessly started losing some weight after only a few days of eating by sunset. Eating after sundown not only delays the onset of melatonin which helps you wind down, but it also desynchronizes your body clocks which I discussed above. Eating late also tends to make you hungrier the next day and shifts your body toward fat storage. Your metabolism is highest earlier in the day and winds down as the sun sets. Eat with the sun, not against it.

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Dermatologists have spent decades telling us to avoid the sun. Wear sunscreen. Cover up. The fear is skin cancer. But one of the most thorough studies ever conducted on sun exposure and mortality found the opposite. Women who got the most sun lived the longest. Women who avoided the sun died at the same rate as smokers. And the most surprising finding of all? The women who lived the longest in the entire 20-year study1 got skin cancer AND were most sun-exposed.

And it wasn’t just about living longer. The study showed that women who got more sunlight were protected from:

• Cardiovascular disease

• Cancer (including skin cancer!)

• Type 2 diabetes

• Venous blood clots

• Death from all causes

And the more the sun, the better the outcomes. In this post, I break down the study and what it means for how you think about the sun.

Basics of the study:

Researchers recruited 29,518 Swedish women between 25 and 64 years of age starting in 1990. They asked four simple questions about sun exposure:

1. Do you sunbathe during the summer?

2. Do you sunbathe during winter holidays?

3. Do you use tanning beds?

4. Do you go abroad on holiday to swim and sunbathe?

No to everything = low sun exposure. Yes to one or two = moderate. Yes to three or four = high. They also recorded smoking status, exercise habits, BMI, education level, marital status, disposable income, and whether the women were on medication for diabetes, blood clotting, or cardiovascular disease, all of which were used to adjust the results. Then they followed these women for 20 years and tracked what happened.

Results: Risk of disease & death increased by avoiding the sun

• Not getting sun was as dangerous as smoking. Nonsmokers who avoided sun exposure had a life expectancy similar to smokers who got the most sun. Even among smokers, those around age 60 who actively sought the sun lived ~2 years longer than smokers who avoided it.

• Heart disease: The highest sun exposure group had ~60% lower risk of cardiovascular death.

• Cancer: The highest sun exposure group had ~40% lower risk of cancer death, including melanoma. In fact, women with the most sun exposure who developed non-melanoma skin cancer had the lowest mortality of anyone in the entire 20-year study. Lower than cancer-free women. Lower than every other group. More on skin cancer and melanoma findings below.

  • Melanoma: Melanoma incidence was slightly higher in the high sun exposure group (0.81% vs 1.1%), but the increase wasn't statistically significant. And when they did get melanoma, their risk of dying was essentially the same as sun avoiders who never got cancer at all. Meanwhile, sun avoiders who got melanoma had 4x the risk of death. And within the melanoma group specifically, sun avoiders had 8x the death rate of sun-seekers.

• Diabetes: Women who avoided the sun were at nearly 2.5x the risk of type 2 diabetes compared to those with the highest sun exposure. The relationship was dose-dependent: moderate sun exposure carried 47% higher risk, and low sun exposure carried 147% higher risk. The effect was even more dramatic in normal-weight women, where sun avoiders had nearly 4x the diabetes risk.2

• Other non-cancer deaths: The highest sun exposure group had over double (110%) the reduction in non-cancer, non-cardiovascular death (things like diabetes, multiple sclerosis, pulmonary diseases). Combined with the cardiovascular disease reduction, this is where the biggest increase in lifespan came from.

• Dying from anything: Women who avoided the sun had double the risk of death over the next 20 years compared to those with the highest sun exposure. This translated to 0.6 to 2.1 fewer years of life for sun avoiders.

• Blood clots: For every “yes” answer to sun exposure, women were at ~30% lower risk of venous thromboembolism. Blood clot risk was also 50% higher in winter compared to summer.

But is it really the sun? You might wonder: do sun-seekers just live longer because they're wealthier, more active, and healthier to begin with? The researchers tested this. They adjusted for age, smoking, education, marital status, income, pre-existing conditions, BMI and physical exercise. The results held. The survival benefit of sun exposure wasn't explained by lifestyle differences.

This study is not a one-off. A 2024 analysis3 of 376,000 UK Biobank participants found the same pattern: higher UV exposure was associated with lower all-cause, cardiovascular, and cancer mortality. A separate Swedish cohort study4 of women followed for three decades found sunbathing vacations were linked to 30% lower risk of death. The data pointing to sun exposure as protective against the leading causes of death is consistent across multiple large cohorts and countries.

But what about skin cancer risk?

Here's where it gets really counterintuitive. The women who lived the longest in the entire 20-year study weren't the ones who avoided skin cancer. They were the ones who got skin cancer and had the most sun exposure. They outlived everyone, including cancer-free women.

I couldn't believe this when I first saw it. For paid subscribers, I break down exactly what's going on:

• How women with skin cancer outlived every other group in the study, including women who never got cancer.

• The 8x death gap: why getting melanoma while avoiding the sun was the deadliest combination in the study, while getting melanoma with high sun exposure barely affected mortality.

• The vitamin D connection: why the same cancer can kill one woman and barely affect another.

• What no one tells you about the sun vs. skin cancer tradeoff: the risk of dying from skin cancer vs. the risk of dying from avoiding the sun.

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I threw away my polyester clothing. And switched to organic cotton.

Polyester clothing is literally wearable plastic. It’s not just a skin irritant, it might be contributing to the fertility crisis, hormonal imbalance, and reduced energy levels.

Roughly 60% of clothing is made from polyester and other synthetic fibers. Lululemon, Under Armour, Zara, Calvin Klein are all predominantly polyester. Testing on popular sports bras from Nike, Athleta, The North Face, and others found BPA levels up to 40x the safe limit under California law!1 These brands are great for the booty bump and coolness factor. Not so great for your health.

This is what the modern human looks like. We eat plastic, drink plastic, breathe plastic, and now wear plastic too!

What’s the big deal with polyester clothing?

• Poor sperm health: Polyester traps heat. Tighter underwear and more heat are linked to worse sperm markers. In one study2, 14 men who wore a polyester scrotal sling had zero sperm(!) within 5 months. And a 2024 study3 found microplastics in 100% of human semen samples tested. Enough for me to not want my husband to wear plastic down there.

• Disrupted hormone health: Polyester clothing carries phthalates, PFAS (forever chemicals)4, BPA5 and other finishing chemicals. These are endocrine disruptors - they mimic or block estrogen, testosterone, and thyroid hormones.6 A study of children's school uniforms found PFAS in 100% of products tested.7

• Loaded with PFAS and heavy metals: Water-resistant, stain-resistant, wrinkle-free, and performance finishes mean added chemicals like PFAS. Polyester is also commonly made using antimony (heavy metal) as a catalyst, and antimony can migrate from polyester textiles into sweat. Antimony is a possible carcinogen. What’s worse is that the antimony keeps leaching even after repeated washes.8

• Microplastics contribute to heart disease: A 2024 study9 found micro and nanoplastics in the carotid artery plaque of 58% of heart patients. Those with plastics in their plaque had a 4.5x higher risk of heart attack, stroke, or death over the following 3 years.

• Increased inflammation: Synthetic textiles are the dominant source of indoor airborne microplastics. It is estimated that you may shed up to a billion polyester microfibers into the air each year just by moving around. Indoor air contains roughly 6x more microplastic fibers than outdoor air, resulting in oxidative stress and inflammation.10 Investing in an air filter and opening your windows is worthwhile.

• Skin irritation: Polyester traps heat, sweat, and oils against your skin. Textile dyes and finishes, including formaldehyde (a Group 1 carcinogen used for wrinkle-free finishes), add chemical irritation on top of the physical discomfort.11

So what did I do about it?

• For my undergarments, I only do organic cotton.

• For the rest of my clothing, I do organic cotton or cotton 99.9% of the time. Pact is my favorite - they are affordable and fashionable.

  • Cotton is a natural fiber so it doesn’t come with the same plastic problem. The catch with cotton is that it is the world’s dirtiest crop. It is loaded with pesticides and accounts for 16% of the world’s insecticide use. These chemicals get absorbed into the cotton and don’t necessarily get off your clothes by washing them. Organic cotton is worth the extra money if you can get it.

• Our bedding, blanket, pillows, mattress are all organic cotton or organic wool. Never sleep on polyester sheets. Sleep is when your body is repairing itself, and polyester can even hinder the charge of the mitochondria.

I’ve compiled more safe non-toxic clothing brands at healthstacked.com.

The rest of the post is for paid subscribers. I discuss:

• Other materials that are safe (bamboo is not as safe as you think)

• Why to never wear polyester while working out

• More tips I practice to reduce clothing toxicity

• How to mitigate risk from textile dyes and carcinogenic wrinkle-free finishes. It’s not just the materials that matter, dyes too contain chemicals.

• Safe certifications when picking clothes

Read more

Then, I gave birth to an angel in April 2025. Postpartum, I obviously couldn’t grind at the gym and go on a diet. I started living more naturally, more in tune with our environment, and how we evolved.

• I got a lot more sun.

• I learned about the impact of artificial lights on our metabolism and sleep, and switched to red incandescent only at night.

• I threw out all the toxic everyday products from our house. I wanted our house to be as non-toxic as possible for our daughter.

• I reduced our EMF exposure through hacks I’ll discuss later.

• I spent more time in fresh air.

• I started sleeping earlier and waking up with the sunrise.

In short, I fixed my environment to make it more in tune with nature. I noticed how great I felt.

What happened when I stopped grinding and fixed my environment

• I lost the baby weight in 2.5 months and in the next 5 months after that, I lost that stubborn 10lbs that I’d been trying to lose for 4 years!

• My deep sleep doubled to over 2 hours, despite waking up 2+ times a night to nurse my baby.

• I felt higher energy and happier, with few to zero afternoon slumps.

• Snack cravings and food thoughts throughout the day vanished. I didn’t need to use willpower.

I achieved better results in under 1 year than I did with grinding for 5+ years. This is why I keep saying: Environment over effort and Health on Easy Mode. Not because it sounds nice. But because I lived both ways.

What surprised me most

Along the way, a few things genuinely shocked me:

• Avoiding the sun can be as bad as smoking (in terms of all‑cause mortality).

• Artificial light isn’t just about eye strain - it impacts metabolism, stress, and sleep.

• CO₂ buildup indoors impairs decision‑making, learning, and sleep.

• Our clothing and furniture shed microplastics and chemicals onto our skin and air.

• Non‑native EMF exposure is likely more important than mainstream messaging suggests (especially at night and near the head).

I realized: diet, exercise, and sleep matter, but your environment is the substrate all of that rests on.

Why I built Live Longer World

I’m not a “theory only” person.

• I test things on myself first.

• I talk to scientists directly (Live Longer World Podcast).

• I dig through old papers and mechanisms.

• Then I try to turn that into something you can actually use.

This newsletter, Live Longer World, is where I:

• Share the protocols and experiments that actually moved the needle for me.

• Explain the biophysics of health (light, air, toxins, environment) in plain English.

• Help you avoid the years of “hard mode” I put myself through.

And because so many products are toxic:

I built healthstacked.com/aasthajs as my curated collection of low‑toxin, PFAS‑screened, lower‑plastic products I actually use at home (light, air, water, kitchen, diagnostics, etc.). Inclusion is 100% merit‑based. Brands don’t pay to place.

For the full catalog of vetted health products hand-picked be me, see Health Stacked.
This newsletter Live Longer World is where I share the protocols and research.

What paid subscribers get (first time I’m sharing this)

Up to now, all my posts have been 100% free. That’s not changing.

• The philosophy, the big levers, and a lot of tactics will stay free.

• But the deep protocol breakdowns (step‑by‑step, with research) are going to live behind a light paywall for members.

Think of it like this:

• Free: “Fix your evening light if you want better sleep. Here’s why it matters and what to aim for.”

• Paid: “Here’s exactly how I set it up (room by room), more under-the-radar protocols, and deeper research.”

If you become a paid subscriber, here’s what you get:

• Detailed playbooks on:

  • Light & circadian rhythm (day and night).

  • Sleep environment (light, air, bedding, EMF).

  • EMF basics and practical mitigation.

  • Non‑toxic living (materials, kitchen, water, personal care).

• Deep‑dive research behind each tactic.

• Early access to my Health on Easy Mode guides and experiments.

I’m not promising a $2M/year Bryan Johnson protocol. He spends millions and built a full‑time operation around his health.

My goal is the opposite:

Live Longer World through Environment over Effort
No grind. No $2M/year budget.
Simple, low‑cost environment tweaks that stack over time.

~$100 per year gets you the deep playbooks and research that took me years (and a lot of mistakes) to assemble.

Upgrade to Paid

Who this is (and isn’t) for

This is for you if:

• You care about energy and healthspan, but don’t want to live in a lab.

• You’re willing to change your environment, not just add another pill.

• You like understanding the “why,” not just copying checklists.

• You’d rather pay a little to save dozens of hours of your own research.

This is not for you if:

• You want a $2M/year Bryan Johnson protocol.

• You only care about macros and macros alone.

• You’re hoping I’ll sell you a miracle supplement stack.

Thank you + what to do next

The best ways to support my work:

1. Share Live Longer World with someone who cares about health & longevity but doesn’t want to live on hard mode.

2. Become a paid subscriber if you want access to the deeper protocols and research.

This Friday, I’ll publish my first paid breakdown, where:

• The first half (free) covers the philosophy and main levers

• The second half (paid) walks through detailed protocols and supporting research

Upgrade to Paid

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Thank you for following along as I parse through the snake‑oil in longevity and practice Health on Easy Mode.

Environment over effort,
Aastha

Follow me on X @aasthajs & Instagram @aasthajs as I parse through the snake-oil in longevity. If my work is useful, become a paid subscriber.

Browse my health stack across 12+ categories (sleep, fitness, non-toxic kitchen, clean water, skincare, diagnostics, lighting).

Two major contributing factors: protein and sunlight.1

Animals in the wild don’t calorie count. Yet they’re never fat in an unhealthy manner. Humans obsess over calories. We struggle, suffer, use willpower. And still gain weight.

What do wild animals know about eating that we don’t?

May the Protein Be With You

The answer lies in the "Protein Leverage Hypothesis." It was developed by David Raubenheimer and Stephen Simpson, authors of "Eat Like the Animals: What Nature Teaches Us About the Science of Healthy Eating."

Animals, including humans, have evolved separate appetites for protein, carbs, fat, sodium, and calcium. This is the big five that signals a nutritionally balanced diet.

But one nutrient sits above the rest: protein.

Protein is the primary lever for appetite regulation.

Our body prioritizes eating a target amount of protein. It’s our gauge for recognizing whether we’re full or not. Here’s how it works:

• If we under consume our protein target, we don’t feel full. So, our body goes searching for protein in the other nutrients, mainly carbs and fats.

• But carbs and fats are low in protein. So we have to eat a lot of them to make up the difference. That means overshooting on calories.

• For example, if your protein target is 15%, but you only consume 10%, your body will try to find that missing 5% in carbs and fat. Since those are protein-poor, you'll overconsume them trying to close the gap. That's how overeating happens: not from a lack of willpower, but from a protein shortfall.

When protein is high in the diet, the opposite happens. We naturally eat less because our appetite is satisfied sooner.

This applies to herbivores as well. Horses and cows don’t just eat any grass, they seek forage that is protein-rich.

Why eat carbs and fats at all then? Because they are the primary fuels for energy.

Why does our body index on protein?

Because we don’t store it. We can store energy from carbs and fats. But protein? We need to refuel it almost every day. Indexing on protein is our body’s way of making sure we get what we can’t bank.

What is your target protein?

Protein requirements vary by age, gender, muscle, and activity level. But the general pattern:

• Children and adolescents: ~15% protein from daily calories. Essential for growth.

• Young adults: ~18% protein. To support growth and reproduction.

• Pregnant and breastfeeding: ~20% protein. More protein to support the baby.

• Mature adults (30s): ~17% protein.

• Middle age (40-60s): ~15% protein. Protein targets can fall, which may promote healthy aging and potentially slow aging. This is where the association between low protein and longer lifespan fits in.

• Older age (65+): ~20% protein. Protein needs rise again because the body becomes less efficient at retaining it. The drain gets increasingly leaky.

How Small Protein Shortfalls Drive Obesity

Ultra-processed foods are a protein leverage trap. They’re low in protein, high in carbs and fats. So you need to eat a lot of them to hit your protein target, massively overshooting on calories in the process.

Even a 2% protein shortfall can set off a vicious cycle. Your body hunts for that missing protein in carbs and fats. But since those are protein-poor, you eat more of them to compensate. More calories → weight gain → now your larger body needs even more food → and if you’re still eating the same low-protein diet, the cycle repeats.

Practical take-away to lose weight

I’ve tried calorie counting and fad diets and they didn’t work for me. When it comes to food, this is what I did that helped me lose 10lbs:

• Make protein your lever: If you’re craving carbs, eat protein first. When I do this, I notice that I’m fuller and my hunger for sugary carbs goes away. It’s our body telling us to meet our protein target.

• Don't skip carbs and fats entirely: You need them for energy. Just make sure protein comes first.

Do Health on Easy Mode.

May the Protein be with you,

Aastha

Follow me on X @aasthajs & Instagram @aasthajs as I parse through the snake-oil in longevity. If my work is useful, become a paid subscriber.

Browse my health stack across 12+ categories (sleep, fitness, non-toxic kitchen, clean water, skincare, diagnostics, lighting).

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You can’t see flicker with the naked eye, but your brain can detect it.

This is a 10 second video that shows the flicker in your bulb.

Most indoor lights/LEDs rapidly pulse on and off 100 to 120 times a second. This is what causes them to invisibly flicker.1 Your computer and phone screens flicker too.

Even though flicker is invisible, it creates rapid light fluctuations that can stress the brain and visual system. Our eyes have to keep adapting to tiny changes in brightness. This is why low-quality lighting and screens can leave one feeling tired and cause headaches.

How to remove flicker from Computer screens:

Screens flicker when brightness is not at 100%. Instead of actually dimming the light, the screen flashes on and off very quickly to fake a lower brightness. (This technique is called Pulse Width Modulation or PWM).

The lower your brightness, the longer the off gaps are, making the flicker more aggressive and harder on your brain. I used to keep the brightness low to reduce the screen glare, till I learned about flicker.

Here is what I do and it significantly reduced my eye strain:

• Increase the brightness to 100%: This keeps the backlight always on and eliminates the flicker / PWM flashing.

• Use a software dimmer like Iris: Since 100% brightness is harsh on the eyes, you need a way to lower the brightness without the flicker. Iris is the best tool for this.

How to remove flicker from Phone screens:

iPhone:

• iPhone 16 and older: Keep your hardware brightness at 100%. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size. Turn on Reduce White Point and slide it to 80-90% to dim the screen safely.

  • Pro Tip: When in the sun, you will have to toggle off White Point so you can actually see your screen. You can set this to a triple click shortcut in your Accessibility settings.

• iPhone 17: Apple added a native setting to reduce flicker, but there is a catch: it only works if your hardware brightness is below 25%. Above 25%, the screen still flickers. Because of this, I highly recommend keeping your brightness at 100% and using the “Reduce White Point” method from the bullet above.

  • If you still want to use the native setting: Go to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size and toggle on Display Pulse Smoothing. (Note: iOS will not let you use this at the same time as Reduce White Point).

Android:

• Just like the iPhone, keep your hardware brightness slider at 100%. Then, go to Settings > Accessibility > Vision Enhancements (or Display) and turn on Extra Dim. This applies a software shadow, allowing you to dim the screen safely without triggering the hardware strobe.

  • Pro Tip: You can add the “Extra Dim” toggle directly to your Quick Settings pull-down menu so you can easily turn it off when you walk out into the sun.

How to remove flicker from Home lights:

• Use Incandescents: While they aren’t always 100% flicker-free, they drastically reduce it. Because they create light using a physical filament that stays glowing hot even as the AC power cycles, the light output remains smooth instead of harshly flashing. The bulbs I use are flicker-free.

  • Additionally, at night, I only use red incandescent bulbs to protect my melatonin and prepare for sleep.

• Check your LEDs: Most cheap LEDs aggressively flicker 120 times per second. If you use LEDs, specifically look for and buy bulbs labeled “Flicker-Free.”

• Ditch the dimmers: Avoid using wall dimmer switches. Dimmers work by chopping up the electrical current, constantly pulsing the power on and off. This creates a harsh, aggressive flicker, even if you are using good bulbs.

These seemingly innocuous 60 second fixes to your home and display lighting will significantly reduce your eye strain. Do Health on Easy Mode.

See all my lighting and blue-light blocking products on my health stack. Inclusion is 100% merit-based. Brands do not pay to place.

Environment over effort,

Aastha

Follow me on X @aasthajs & Instagram @aasthajs as I parse through the snake-oil in longevity. If my work is useful, become a paid subscriber.

Browse my health stack across 12+ categories (sleep, fitness, non-toxic kitchen, clean water, skincare, diagnostics, lighting).

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My phone is red too.

Blue-rich LEDs in your house are ruining your sleep.

Blue LEDs are not just in your house lighting. They are hiding in all your device screens as well: computers, TVs, and phones.

At night, blue light signals “alertness” to the brain and suppresses melatonin, the hormone that helps you wind down. Blue light can also cause overeating and alter our metabolism. This is why I only use red incandescent bulbs after sunset.

But changing my lights wasn’t enough. If your house is red but your phone and devices are blue, you are still signaling daytime to your brain.

Here is exactly how I stripped blue light from my devices:

1. iPhone: The “Red Light” Trick

Most people use “Night Shift,” but that only warms the screen slightly. To fully protect your melatonin, you want to eliminate blue pixels entirely and turn your screen monochrome / entirely red.

I set my phone so a simple triple-click of the side button switches it to red mode.

Set it up in 60 seconds:

1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size.

2. Tap Color Filters and toggle it ON.

3. Select Color Tint (the last option).

4. Scroll down to the sliders: Slide Intensity and Hue all the way to the right (Max).

5. Go back to the main Accessibility menu.

6. Scroll to the very bottom and tap Accessibility Shortcut.

7. Check Color Filters.

Now, simply triple-click your power button after sunset and your screen will turn pure red.1

2. Android: The Red Mode

If you are on Android, you have two options depending on your model.

Option A: Native Settings (Samsung/Newer Phones)

• Go to Settings > Accessibility > Visibility Enhancements (or “Display”).

• Look for Color Correction or Color Filter.

• Turn it on and select Red or Grayscale with a red tint.

• Like the iPhone, you can often set an “Accessibility Shortcut” to toggle this with a button press.

Option B: The App Solution If your phone doesn’t have a deep red filter built-in, you can try the free app Twilight. It allows you to overlay a red filter on your screen automatically at sunset, far more aggressively than the standard Android “Night Light.”

3. Computer: F.lux

I’ve been using F.lux for over 5 years. It is a free software that syncs with your local sunset time to remove the blue light from your monitor.

While Windows and Mac now have native “Night Light” modes, I find F.lux is much better at getting the screen to a deep, campfire orange/red color rather than just a pale yellow.

4. Blue-Light Free Tablet: Daylight Computer

This tablet has been one of my favorite purchases of the past year.

Unlike an iPad or Kindle, the Daylight Computer is naturally free of blue light and flicker.

I use it primarily for reading. It is a calming experience which makes you realize how aggressive the flicker and glare of traditional screens are.

Use code livelongerworld for $25 off.

5. Blue-light blockers

As evening approaches, I occasionally swap my regular glasses for blue-light blockers. Even though my home is lit by red bulbs, occasional blue light seeps in from the fridge light, the microwave clock, or streetlights outside. These are also very useful when you’re away from home in blue-light rich places or for watching TV at night.

Summary of my stack:

• iPhone: Triple-click for Red Color Filter after sunset.

• Computer: F.lux (all day, but aggressive at night).

• Reading/Browsing: Daylight Tablet.

• Glasses: Blue-light blockers.

See all my lighting and blue-light blocking products on my health stack. Inclusion is 100% merit-based. Brands do not pay to place.

Environment over effort,

Aastha

Follow me on X @aasthajs & Instagram @aasthajs as I parse through the snake-oil in longevity. If my work is useful, become a paid subscriber.

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Bryan Johnson1 uses a sunlight lamp in the mornings to “regulate his circadian rhythm.”

When I first learned about this, I jumped to buy it. I thought I’d use it on cloudy mornings, or while drinking my coffee before heading out for a walk.

Now, this lamp is buried in my attic.

Sunlight lamps are a gimmick and come nowhere close to replicating morning sunlight, even on cloudy days.

I watch the sunrise almost everyday and get over 2 hours of morning sunlight. I’ve lost 9lbs, have higher energy, and an elevated mood. Any amount of sunlight beats a fake sunlamp hands down.

Nothing compares to Sunlight for Circadian Rhythm regulation

Light intensity is an important cue to tell our biological clocks to wake up. Sunlight has 3-5x more light intensity than Bryan Johnson’s sunlamp. Without sunlight’s intensity, your brain’s master clock does not get the same alert cue.

But intensity is just one piece. Health influencers miss the other irreplaceable benefits conferred by morning sunlight. Morning sunlight is irreplaceable in its unique benefits. No sunlamp or LED/artificial light comes close.

Sun vs. Sunlight lamp

Unique benefits of Morning Sunlight

Watching the sunrise and spending time in the morning sun helps with energy production, repair signals, cognitive performance and blood flow. Each wavelength of sunlight is important.2

Morning light is particularly rich in beneficial red & infrared, UVA, and blue light.

Red & infrared: Mitochondrial fuel

• Boosts mitochondria: Recharges your cells’ batteries for higher energy.3

• Balances Blood Sugar: Helps smooth out glucose spikes after meals.

• Lowers inflammation: Soothes musculoskeletal pain and speeds up recovery.

• Blood Circulation: Delivers more oxygen to your body by improving blood flow.

• Repairs Skin: Stimulates collagen to repair damage and reduce wrinkles.

• Sharpens Vision: Revitalizes aging eyes to see clearly for longer.4

UVA: The Morning Repair signal

UVA and UVB have been demonized with little care for nuance and the benefits they confer.5 Morning UVA significantly improves cardiovascular health, among its many benefits.6

• Lowers Blood Pressure: Widens blood vessels to improve flow and heart health.

• Signals Repair: Tells your cells and mitochondria to start fixing damage.

• Boosts Mood: Triggers natural feel-good chemicals for a morning high.

• Fixes Sleep: Sets your internal clock for deeper rest at night.

• Builds Melatonin: Triggers production of melatonin in the morning so it’s ready for release at night. Melatonin is the hormone that lets you sleep better.

Blue light: Cognition boost

Morning sunlight contains blue light balanced with red and infrared. This signals your body to increase cortisol, helping you to wake up and feel alert.

Blue light from the sun also:

• Boosts Serotonin: Triggers your body’s happy hormone to elevate your mood.

• Sharpens Focus: Enhances brain power to keep you alert and dialed in all day.

• Sets Your Clock: Signals daytime to every cell to keep your daily rhythm on track.7

The problem is artificial blue light at night and isolated blue light without the other wavelengths that come from the sun.

If you don’t get morning sunlight, you’re doing health on hard mode. You rely on grinding and 100 pills like Bryan Johnson ;)

Without sunlight you miss out on energy production, deeper sleep, improved blood flow, higher cognition, cellular repair and so much more.

Be smarter. Do Health on Easy Mode.

Don’t be me 3 years ago. Don’t fall for Bryan Johnson’s sunlamp trap.

Go out and get the real deal: sunlight.

Environment over effort,

Aastha

Follow me on X @aasthajs & Instagram @aasthajs as I parse through the snake-oil in longevity. If my work is useful, become a paid subscriber.

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A friend came over for dinner carrying this monitor with him:

“Oh boy, you need to open your windows right now.”

“Why, what happened?” I asked.

He pointed to the carbon dioxide monitor which read 1,032.

“The carbon dioxide buildup in your house is making us dumber.”

Clearly, he isn’t your typical dinner guest. But his advice helped. I bought the same Co2 monitor that night and started opening windows.

Co2 buildup kills work performance and impairs sleep:

• Decision making: Impaired by up to 50% in office workers with high Co2 levels.1

• Sleep quality: High Co2 ruins sleep2 and work performance the following day. Sleeping with no ventilation unwittingly destroys our rest.

• Headaches: High Co2 levels can cause headaches and raise blood pressure.3

• Children’s learning: High Co2 levels impairs their ability to learn4 and makes them sleepy. They are more vulnerable given their high metabolic rate.

What Co2 levels should you aim for?

I aim for Co2 levels below 600ppm5 in the house.

Protocols for managing high Co2 levels:

• Ventilate well: Open doors and windows.

• Monitor Co2 levels indoors: I frequently check my Co2 monitor and if the levels are higher than 600ppm, I open another window or my backyard door.

• Use exhaust fans: Turn on kitchen and bathroom exhausts to pull out indoor air.

• Air filters vs Ventilation: Air filters don’t reduce Co2. Only ventilation works. Worried about outdoor pollution? Use an air filter for that.

See my exact Clean Air setup on my health stack. Inclusion is 100% merit-based. Brands do not pay to place.

99% of human life was spent breathing outside, not in locked boxes.

We evolved breathing fresh outdoor air in constant motion. Now we’re sealed in boxes re-breathing our own Co2. Open your windows and stop making yourself dumber.

This is Health on Easy Mode. No grinding. No pills. Fix your environment.

Environment over effort,

Aastha

Follow me on X @aasthajs & Instagram @aasthajs as I parse through the snake-oil in longevity. If my work is useful, become a paid subscriber.

Browse my health stack across 12+ categories (sleep, fitness, non-toxic kitchen, clean water, skincare, diagnostics, lighting).

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This is what our house looks like after sunset.

And it’s how I increased my deep sleep by ~40% (~2 hrs) for under $20.

It looks ridiculous. But this one change has been the single biggest lever for my sleep.

I fall asleep faster, sleep deeper, and wake up earlier.

The change: after sunset, we only use red incandescent bulbs instead of normal LEDs.

It cost under $20 and has already given me hundreds of hours of better sleep.

You might think: “How can one change have such an impact? This sounds like a gimmick.”

The right change has trickle‑down effects. The red lights help me:

• Eat smaller dinners.

• Be in bed by 9:30pm.

• Fall asleep within ~10 minutes.

• No more 3am wake-ups to pee.

• Wake up at dawn or with sunrise.

Sleep advice typically focuses on routines, alcohol, meal timing, and exercise. Very few people talk about how indoor light quietly sabotages all of those.

For me, better sleep started with changing my night lights.

How Your Indoor Lights Quietly Wreck Your Sleep

Most homes are lit with bright, cool‑white LED bulbs. LED bulbs are:

• Blue‑heavy, red/infrared‑poor: Blue light signals daytime alertness to the brain and suppresses melatonin, the hormone that helps you wind down.1

• Linked to overeating at night: Evening blue‑rich light has been associated with later eating, higher calorie intake, and altered metabolism.23

• Mismatched to nature: As the sun sets, natural light shifts from blue to infrared. Our indoor LEDs at night do the opposite: bright and blue right when your brain expects the opposite.

• Flickery: Many LEDs have invisible flicker that can trigger headaches or strain for people.

Why I Use Red Incandescent Bulbs After Dark Instead of Normal LEDs

• No night alert signal: Red bulbs emit no blue light, so they don’t send the same “be alert” signal at night.

• No night-time cravings: Less blue light = less evening snacking and a stronger melatonin signal.4

• Better glucose regulation: Red/infrared light has beneficial effects on mitochondria and glucose regulation. LED bulbs lack near-infrared light compared to incandescent bulbs. (See my podcast with Glen Jeffery for using red lights to lower glucose).

• No eye strain: Incandescent bulbs emit a smooth, continuous glow similar to firelight. In contrast, LEDs produce a sharp “spike” of light that creates noise to the brain and eye strain.

Practically, this looks like: no LED lighting after sunset → a few red lamps on → phone in red light mode → bedroom as dark as possible.

Fixing night lights was just the start of cleaning up my environment.

My Journey to Health on Easy Mode: Parsing the snake-oil in longevity

My longevity protocol was a second job: supplements, calorie counting, gym grinding, willpower.

So I was shocked when a simple $20 change to my night lights achieved what years of traditional sleep advice couldn’t.

Once I fixed light, it was hard to ignore everything else in my environment: air, water, plastics, EMF.

healthstacked.com/aasthajs is my curated collection of the exact products I use to change my environment so health becomes “automatic.”

• 100+ exact products I use at home (and why).

• 12+ categories (light, water, air, emf, haircare, skincare, diagnostics).

• PFAS‑screened, plastic-free, non-toxic vetted picks.

Inclusion is 100% merit‑based. Brands don’t pay to place.

Health on Easy Mode thrived in my ultimate stress test: Life after my daughter was born.

My rigorous longevity protocol wasn’t an option, so I went all-in on “Easy Mode.” The result? Effortlessly lost the baby weight, better sleep, higher energy than before, and elevated mood.

This journey led me to two big realizations:

1. Controlling your environment makes health the default. No willpower required.

2. You can’t out-supplement a bad environment. Environment over effort.

The goal is simple: Less hype. Less junk. More health.

Copy My Sleep Setup (what I actually use at home)

• My Sleep Setup: The red bulbs, blue-light blockers, mattress, and blackout curtains I use.

• Browse the full catalog: Explore the full Health Stacked collection of 500+ products.

  

Check out my health stack at healthstacked.com/aasthajs

If you start anywhere, start with light. Swap a few bulbs and see what happens to your sleep. Drop a comment if you try it!

I’m Aastha, and thanks for reading Live Longer World. I write about my Health on Easy Mode protocols and interview scientists at the frontiers of longevity. The goal is to parse through the snake-oil in longevity.

With the holiday season upon us, most of us will be indulging in some sweets with our families. Eating desserts as part of the holiday celebration is very different from eating treats mindlessly.

I have a hypothesis that If you generally eat clean, occasional desserts enjoyed with family won't hurt your health - the joy helps blunt the negative effects!

There is no better time than the holiday season to enjoy desserts in merriment. However, I do believe that many desserts can be made significantly healthier (to the point where they could be called “healthy1 snacks”) while still being delicious. I’ve long believed that healthy food should be yum. It’s the best way for people to avoid eating processed food.

I find store-bought desserts too sweet, so I make my own using almond flour and natural sweetness from berries or a tinge of honey. No added raw sugar.

Below are 4 of my favorite recipes. The best part is that they take under 15 minutes of cooking time.

Given how much I love these healthy home-made desserts, I thought I’ll share mine in case others enjoy them too. Feel free to tweak them or use AI to find healthier versions of your own favorite desserts. Hope these serve as some inspiration!

Almond flour Blueberry Muffins

My mother-in-law makes these delicious blueberry muffins with no sugar. I devour many at a time!

Ingredients

• 2 cups almond flour

• 3 eggs

• 3 tablespoons maple syrup (optional if you want more sweetness, we don’t add it)

• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

• pinch of sea salt

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 5 tablespoon melted ghee (can use coconut oil instead)

• 1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. In a bowl, combine almond flour, baking soda and sea salt.

3. In a separate bowl, combine eggs, vanilla and coconut oil.

4. Combine both mixtures together. Once well incorporated, add blueberries and mix.

5. Fill a muffin pan with liners. Fill each liner with batter.

6. Bake in oven for 15–20 minutes.

Almond flour 5 ingredient cookies

These cookies take 5 minutes to make and it’s hard to believe how they taste so indulgent!

Ingredients and Instructions:

• 2 cups Almond flour

• Little bit of honey

• Dark chocolate chips

• 1 tsp Baking powder

• 1/2 tsp Vanilla essence

• Add some cream / butter if too dry

• Mix well, make them into cookie shapes with your hands

• Bake for 11 minutes at 350 degrees F

Olive Oil Nutty Berry Chocolate Cake

Nuts, berries, olive oil and cocoa..hard to go wrong with this one!

Dry Ingredients:

• 1 cup almond flour

• 1/4 cup ground flaxseed

• 1/4 cup ground hemp seeds

• 1/4 cup ground chia seeds

• 1/2 cup chopped nuts (such as walnuts or almonds)

• 1 teaspoon baking powder

• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 1/4 cocoa powder (I forgot to add it in the cake in the picture!)

Wet Ingredients:

• 5 large eggs

• 1/2 cup olive oil

• 1/4 cup unsweetened almond milk or coconut milk

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Berries:

• 1 cup or more mixed berries (such as blueberries, raspberries, or strawberries), fresh or frozen

Instructions:

1. Preheat the Oven: Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

2. Mix Dry Ingredients in a bowl.

3. Prepare Wet Ingredients: In another bowl, whisk together eggs, olive oil, almond milk and vanilla extract.

4. Combine Wet and Dry Ingredients: Gradually add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, mixing until well combined.

5. Fold in Berries: Gently fold in the mixed berries into the batter.

6. Bake: Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan and spread it evenly. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until done.

Notes:

• To give you an idea of proportions, for the big glass tray displayed in the picture above, I made was 4x the proportions in this recipe.

• You can also drizzle some melted dark chocolate on top when eating!

Protein berry ice-cream

Homemade ice-cream sorbet with berries, vanilla protein powder, almond milk, macadamia nuts, and a touch of pomegranate juice! Topped with pecans.

I’m a sucker for ice-cream but the ones in stores are too sweet. So I bought a Ninja Creami ice-cream maker and decided to make my own yum healthy rendition of it.

It’s surprisingly delicious and now I get to relive my childhood days of eating tubs of ice-cream everyday.

Wishing everyone happy holidays! See you in the new year for some more health and happiness.

Aastha

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One of my more popular posts from last year was my 2023 longevity protocol, along with my 80/20 version of Bryan’s Johnson’s Blueprint.

This year, I thought I’ll list out the products I use that help me optimize my health. I’m always on the lookout for trying new health products, so if you’re anything like me, you will hopefully find value in this post.

Also, with Thanksgiving and Christmas around the corner, some of these could make for great gifts.

Note: I don’t have partnerships or affiliation with any of these companies. Some of the links are general affiliate links and if you purchase using the link, I’ll make a small commission. I’m only listing products I personally use.

As always, you can also find me on X @aasthajs. Happy thanksgiving and holidays ahead!

Diagnostic tests:

• Function health - comprehensive blood testing (Use my code to skip the waitlist)

• Prenuvo - whole body scan for cancer screening

• Galleri - liquid biopsy for cancer screening (can purchase through Function health without referral)

• Tiny Health Gut Microbiome test (Use code REF-AASTHA5213 fir $40 off)

• Dexa Body Composition scan - testing for fat, muscle, and bone density composition

• V02 Max test - testing for cardiovascular fitness

Food:

• AWG Bakery (use code livelongerworld for 10% off)

  • organic, gluten, grain-free yummy bread

Sleep:

• Eight Sleep - cooling mattress (Use this code for $500 off the Pod4 Ultra)

• White noise machine

• Cotton Eye mask

• Organic Cotton duvet

• Flat pillow (helps with no shoulder & neck pain)

• Myotape Mouth tape - for nasal breathing

• Kindle - for falling asleep faster

• Theragun - massage gun I use as part of my bedtime routine to help relax my muscles

  • While traveling, I carry the mini one

Oral Health:

• Water PIK

• Electric toothbrush

• Fluoride free toothpaste

• Tongue scraper

Home health:

• Air filter / purifier

• Reverse osmosis Water filter

• Air quality monitor

• Co2 detector

Supplements:

• 100% Grass-fed Whey protein

• Carlson’s Omega-3

• Thorne Vitamin D

• Thorne Zinc

• Thorne Vitamin B-Complex

• Thorne Magnesium Citrate

• SlowMag Magnesium + Calcium

• Thorne iron

• Life Extension Vitamin K2

• Thorne creatine

• Vital proteins Collagen

Bath:

• Giovanni Shampoo

• Giovanni Conditioner

• Jason Body wash Tea Tree

• Shower filterhead

Skincare:

• Cellbone facial cleansing gel

• Cellbone toner

• Cellbone Neutralizer

• CeraVe face cleanser

• CeraVe AM face lotion + sunscreen

• CeraVe Facial Night lotion

Fitness:

• Dry Sauna (Almost Heaven)

• Cold plunge (BoxPlunge)

• Rucking vests

• Rowing machine

• TRX suspension system

• Resistance and booty bands

• Echo bike

• Bowflex Adjustable dumbbells

• Kettlebells

• Leg press

• Multi-function power rack with weight set

Foot strength & Mobility:

• Toe pro

• Foot blackboard

• Walking treadmill

Fitness trackers:

• Fitbit Charge 6

• Stelo Continuous glucose monitor

Clothing:

• Organic cotton clothing from Pact (Use my code for 15% off at checkout)

  • Recently made the switch to organic cotton especially for underwear and many everyday clothes after learning about microplastics, dyes, and toxins in most clothing. Organic cotton is a natural fiber, so has far fewer (hopefully no) toxins.

Kitchen appliances:

• Reverse osmosis Water filter

• Stainless steel pan

• Glass non-toxic Air fryer

• Ninja Ice-cream maker (for homemade healthy ice-cream with no added or artificial sugar)

• Plastic free water bottles from Klass Kanteen

To living longer,

Aastha

P.S. Check out my Live Longer World podcast on YouTube where I speak with scientists researching longevity and the frontiers of biology.

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I’ll also make a first-time plug for my other newsletter Aastha Simes where I write about alternative education, books, human progress, and more, if you’re interested.

Now let’s dive in! - Aastha

Today’s post discusses some important blood biomarkers that are typically not covered by standard insurance, at least in the U.S. I have zero affiliation with any blood test company and this is not a sponsored post. I’m writing this because my friends often ask me which additional biomarkers they should test for, outside of the ones insurance covers. So, I thought others will find it useful too!

Two Critical Ways Insurance blood tests are lacking

A few days ago, my friend called me up and told me her blood work indicates she is pre-diabetic and her LDL levels are very high. I asked her if she got her ApoB tested, a more robust measure of cardiovascular health compared to LDL. She said she didn’t know what that was and had used her annual blood test through insurance to get her bloodwork done.

2019 was the last time I used my insurance to get my bloodwork. Unfortunately, standard American insurance blood tests are not comprehensive in measuring all your biomarkers, and they miss some important ones. You could ask your doctor to add on some of the missing biomarkers, but dealing with the American healthcare system can be a nightmare. Take for example, this poor guy who was charged $1,338 by insurance for asking his doctor to add on an ApoB biomarker which normally would cost under $40.

So, for the last 5 years, I’ve been getting my blood tests done with private companies who are a lot more comprehensive.

There are 2 critical ways in which insurance blood tests are lacking:

1. Important biomarkers are missing from the annual standard blood work covered by insurance

2. Reference ranges for biomarkers are sub-optimal (to be fair, even private companies may not do a good job at this)

In this post, I touch on both these points below, highlighting some of the important biomarkers to get tested for, and how to think about reference ranges.1 Please note I won’t be going into details explaining each biomarker. The purpose is to list out some of the important missing ones and give a brief description so you can start going into further details.2

Important biomarkers that are missing from standard insurance tests

My list of the missing biomarkers is based on 1) Comparing the biomarkers done by my friend’s insurance plan vs. the private companies I use 2) Researching biomarkers considered important by longevity doctor Peter Attia, a few other scientists, and doctors like Thomas Dayspring.

1. ApoB: Latest research points to how ApoB is considered the gold standard in measuring cardiovascular risk. This is not to say that HDL and LDL might not be useful, but that ApoB is the most reliable measure we have so far. If your ApoB is high, but your cholesterol is normal, it is not be a good sign. This is why measuring your ApoB is important. (Learn more in my episode with Dr. Ethan Weiss)

2. ApoE: This is a measure of a genotype that is highly correlated with dementia, Alzheimer's, and cardiovascular risk. For example, people with 2 copies of APOE4 have a 15x higher risk for these diseases, whereas an APOE2 type is protective. Note that this is not a deterministic gene but given how much your specific type could increase risk, it’s better to know in advance since you can start implementing certain lifestyle measures that are protective.

3. Lp(a): This is typically a one-time test and largely determined by genetics. A high Lp(a) increases your risk of heart attacks and stroke by 2-3x. It’s good to get it tested once to see where you stand.

4. hsCRP: This is a measure of the inflammation in your body, and a predictor of heart disease.

5. Homocysteine: An amino acid that is a modifiable independent risk factor for heart disease, stroke and dementia. High levels of homocysteine can in many cases be countered by an intake B vitamins.

6. Omega-3: A measure of the Omega-3 in your body which is a very important micronutrient that protects your brain and heart health.

7. Uric Acid: This is a chemical created when our bodies break down purines. High levels of uric acid can lead to gout, kidney stones and other metabolic disease.

8. Sex Hormones like SHBG, LH, FSH: Hormones that measure testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, help in production of eggs and sperms in the body.

9. Vitamin D: Many standard insurance blood tests won’t cover Vitamin D either! Vitamin D is not just a vitamin but also a hormone responsible for bone health, muscle function, immune health, mood, and more.

Note: Please don’t treat this as a comprehensive list.

Reference ranges – Normal vs. Optimal

Reference ranges can vary slightly depending on the lab because each lab sets its own reference range. They set the references based on studies conducted on healthy people accounting for factors like age, sex etc. And then the reference range is determined by the central 95% of the values, meaning that the lower and upper limits of the range encompass 95% of the results from the healthy population. All of this means that typically the reference ranges are too broad and what might be “normal” might not be “optimal”. For example, most blood tests will indicate that if your ApoB is below 90-100mg/dL, you’re normal. However, according to Peter Attia, below 65 is what is considered optimal. That’s a huge variance! Of course, this is not the case with every biomarker and in some cases the normal and optimal might overlap. But it’s important to keep this in mind so you can do your own research regarding reference ranges, and try to figure out what the optimal might be.

Why measurement and prevention is important

Since getting her bloodwork done, my friend has started taking exercise and clean food more seriously. If she hadn’t gotten her results done, she would have gone about her life as usual until some diabetic symptoms started catching up to her. But now, she can start nipping at the problem much earlier. Blood tests are a great way to proactively measure your health biomarkers instead of waiting for symptoms of poor health to catch on. Humans have a funny way of taking action when they see results on paper. Otherwise, we just about life blind-sided, having no clue of what’s going on inside your body, till one day we might fall very sick and realize our blood results don’t look so great.

Comprehensive blood work is the best way to check many of your health biomarkers. However, you cannot rely solely on insurance to provide you with this critical information.

Insurance does not care about your preventative health

Insurance is notorious for touting marketing claims on how they care so much about your preventative health. Take for instance this marketing message on United Healthcare’s (UHC) website3:

As we all know, their messaging does not align with their actions. Here is what is not covered in preventative health:

Checking for iron and vitamin D levels are not in the realm of prevention according to UHC! They’re only some of the most important biomarkers that influence your energy, mood, and susceptibility to illness.

One of the reasons U.S. insurance doesn’t care about your health is because it’s an employer sponsored model. In a world where people switch jobs frequently, you might switch to a different insurance plan under your new job, so the payor (insurance or your company) doesn’t want to unnecessarily pay for your expenses that will benefit you in the long-term, but not them. And if insurance companies or self-pay employers can stall long enough to not pay for your preventative care, then you will be the government’s problem.

In U.S. healthcare, all parties involved are engaged in lowering costs in the short-term at the expense of your long-term health. It’s on you to take care of your preventative health. And taking stock of your blood biomarkers is a good place to start.

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You might like my post Bryan Johnson’s Blueprint Simplified, if you haven’t read it yet. Also check out my Live Longer World podcast.

Until next time, stay in good health!

Aastha

This post is part of my series Live Longer Weekly, where I curate actionable longevity tips from some of the best longevity experts in the world - Peter Attia, Rhonda Patrick, Andrew Huberman, Bryan Johnson and so on. 

Let's unite in improving our health day by day, week by week.

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#1 Exercise “Snacks” to Enhance Cardiovascular & Muscular Endurance: Andrew Huberman

Exercise snacks help maintain or enhance your cardiovascular and muscular endurance. These are brief 1-3 minute exercises that can be done during the day. This can be as simple as getting up from your desk and doing 50 - 100 jumping jacks or going up and down the stairwell for 1 minute. The purpose of these exercises is to get your heart rate up and they enhance your fitness training. In this clip, Huberman shares more examples and discusses the purpose of these exercise snacks.

LINK (start at 43:29 for ~10 minutes)

#2 Cold plunge before exercise: Joe Rogan and David Goggins

Joe Rogan talks about the benefits of cold plunge before exercise, giving the example of a man in his 50s who dropped his PSA significantly and increased his testosterone using this protocol. Also note that cold plunge post exercise can decrease hypertrophy or muscle gains.

LINK (4:59)

#3 Exercise changes your genes and your kids inherit it: Rhonda Patrick

“Exercise can potentially affect your unborn children’s genes by altering the chemistry of DNA in sperm and egg cells..Looking at genetic changes in sperm, three months of high-intensity aerobic exercise done twice per week was enough to see changes in paternally inherited genes involved in risk of autism, Alzheimer’s disease, obsessive-compulsive disorder, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and atherosclerosis.” - Rhonda Patrick

LINK + LINK

#4 Training differences between men and women: Peter Attia & Holly Baxter

Holly Baxter discusses why women do better with higher-rep ranges and men do better with lower-rep ranges when strength training. Females have a greater percentage of Type 1 muscle twitch fibers which makes them better able to transport nutrients into the tissues and clear different metabolites. This means that women tend to be less fatigable and are better able to utilize fatty acids. She also discusses women’s training around the menstrual cycle.

LINK (6:40)

#5 82 year old deadlifting 210lbs

Inspiring and mind-blowing!

LINK

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To living longer,

Week by week,

Aastha

Previous Live Longer Weekly posts:

#6 Strengthen your lower-back and be pain free

#5 Grip Strength, Creatine, Circadian Rhythm & Neck Posture for Longevity

#4 Oral Health Longevity Practices

All Live Longer Weekly posts