151: Mike Feldstein, Founder & CEO of Jaspr: My Favorite Air Purifier - Sleep Doesn’t Like Poor Air Quality!

Welcome to the sleep as a skill podcast. My name is Mollie Eastman. I am the founder of sleep as a skill, a company that optimizes sleep through technology, accountability, and behavioral change. As an ex sleep sufferer turned sleep course creator, I am on a mission to transform the way the world thinks about.

sleep. Each week, I'll be interviewing world class experts ranging from researchers, doctors, innovators, and thought leaders to give actionable tips and strategies that you can implement to become a more skillful sleeper. Ultimately, I believe that living a circadian aligned lifestyle is going to be one of the biggest trends in wellness, and I'm committed to keep Keeping you up to date on all the things that you can do today to transform your circadian health and by extension, allowing you to sleep and live better than ever before.

Welcome to the sleep is a skill podcast, your air quality and your sleep, particularly in your bedroom area. Have you thought about it? What have you done about it? Do you have an air purifier in there? What's going on with the one that you do have if you have one or do you not even have one? And we're just hanging out in some funky air quite potentially.

If you are tuning into this podcast, you are likely looking to optimize your sleep results. And we would be remiss if we don't look at the very thing that we're breathing in. every second to second while we're both awake and importantly on this conversation and most importantly in this conversation while we're asleep.

So air quality is huge. What is going on in the space that you're in while you're sleeping? Is there mold present? Is there formaldehyde? Is there VOCs?  The list is long.  So  thankfully we have our guest, Mike Feldstein.  On today to help us understand what we need to pay attention to as it relates to air purifiers and air quality and a lot of cool and practical tips and tricks, including things that he himself does when he finds himself in a hotel or an Airbnb or what have you that just clearly has poor quality air.

What do you do? Well, he's going to give us some of those answers. But first, a little bit about him. Mike spent years in the wildfire and flood restoration sector witnessing firsthand how much polluted air can damage people's well being. Throughout his experiences, he discovered that none of the conventional air purifiers on the market could make a meaningful dent in air quality.

The only thing that worked was industrial air scrubbers, but no one wanted to keep a loud, ugly machine running in their home. So he decided to make something that would solve this problem. It had to have all the power and effectiveness of an air scrubber, but it also had to be quiet and beautiful. And that's why he started Jasper.

Now, just as a quick aside, Mike has become a good friend. I so admire the person that he is, the business he's created and his sense of entrepreneurial flair, if you will. I think you'll quickly get a sense of his personality in this conversation. And I'm very grateful for the fact that for our community, for people that are looking to improve their sleep, he has given us a really generous discount.

So you're definitely going to want to take advantage of that. Now do note, Chasper is spelled J A S. PR and the code that he's given us is sleep is a skill. We'll also include all this in the show notes as well as the link to click through and take advantage of that discount. Again, the code is sleep is a skill, all one word.

Now let's get into the podcast, but first a few words from our sponsors.  Here at the Sleep is a Skill podcast, we're all about enhancing your sleep. And a cornerstone of that journey often revolves around stabilizing your blood sugar levels. That's precisely where Good Idea steps in. Good Idea is an innovative drink crafted by scientists in Sweden that actively assists in balancing your blood sugar.

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Just a quick interesting fact about sleep to mention, drinking more than two servings of alcohol per day for men and more than one serving per day for women Can decrease sleep quality by 39. 2%. A sleep foundation survey reports, not even mentioning all the indulgent food and late night effects that often come along with it.

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And welcome to the sleep is a skill podcast. I am so honored and thankful to be joined by not only the CEO of Jasper, but also a great friend here in Austin. He is amazing. Mike, thank you so much for taking the time to be here. Of course.  Now, of course, Mike and I had actually recorded an in person podcast a while ago, a pretty lengthy one.

And then we had some technical difficulties on my end. So we're doing a double take, but this is actually great because we have some new exciting updates to share. And part of the commitment for me is, and I'd said this to you last time we recorded and I'm going to say it again, is that I want to make sure we provide some more content for people around this really important topic of Air quality and how it relates to your sleep because we just have not done enough on this topic.

So Mike Yeah, so share with us as far as how did you find yourself in this arena of being the clean air guy? Who's actually pioneering and bringing such uh kind of innovative tech to this topic? All right. So, um, I had a short stint in digital marketing in my early 20s, which quickly, but randomly just, I realized working for clients was not the life for me.

I was sick of making other people money. And I found myself. I heard about the mold rush and that mold was gold and has a young broke 20 year old does you do you follow the money. Uh, so this did not start with passion at all. This started from a place of opportunity. Um, so I got into marketing mold services, which led me to get into starting a mold removal company mold removal and mold cleanup companies.

Restoration also get into floods and fires. So I had a several year career in mold remediation, flood restoration, fire, uh, cleaning homes that were damaged in smoke, rebuilding contaminated homes, asbestos, mold, bacteria, flood, fire, lead. All that toxic cleanup stuff. Um, and then the big moment happened in 2016.

It was the biggest wildfire in Canadian history in Fort McMurray, and I got to see how much air quality specifically at the time from smoke was impacting people's lives. Um,  and In that, I got to see how people living on the West Coast, they deal with smoke all the time, and they show how bad the air quality is outside when it's smoky, but I got the insight that the indoor air wasn't much better than the outdoor air, and that most, like, when we were doing restoration, the air purifiers we were using are actually called air scrubbers, and they look like subwoofers or photocopiers.

They don't look like these residential air purifiers, so, like, it's almost like we were driving pickup trucks, and then I realized that There was pickup trucks and golf carts and there was no like SUV category in the air purifier space. Sure. So when I got to see, um, when I was comparing the really effective machines that we were using and to the smaller residential stuff, because we had a lot of customers out West.

Who had a few Dyson's and molecules, which was just coming out at the time and Honeywell's, you know, the best by Walmart sub 500 air purifiers. And we were measuring the air and we were pretty surprised to find out that it wasn't doing anything for people. The analogy that I like to use, it was like trying to heat a bathtub with a kettle.

Kettles are awesome for heating water for tea.  But if you try to heat your bathtub with a kettle, the water is going to be cooling faster than you can heat it. You know, like you couldn't heat a swimming pool with a water heater. You need different size, like if you think about it, a pool heater for your pool, a water heater for your shower, bath, whatever, and a kettle, they're all the same thing.

They all heat water.  But different sized tools for different applications, and I got to see the the void in the in the market, and I got to see how people were trusting these little machines. But when we actually tested the air, they were not moving the needle. They could move the needle in like a closet.

Or like a, a little teeny tiny eight by eight room, but they weren't really designed to clean up smoke or pollen help with your dust a little bit. Sure. But we were dealing with people in the West Coast to their whole home was getting infiltrated with smoke. And when it comes to smoke. What you see is just the tip of the iceberg.

It's all the stuff you can't see and you can't smell that's harmful. Like, if you pick up a glass of water and it's clear, that doesn't mean it's clean. So I just, through being in the air quality testing and the restoration, I got deep insights into what was in the air, the mold spores, the pollen, the fire, the smoke, the, all the other chemicals that arise from fires.

Cause, It's not just the, um, tree smoke when homes burn and cars burn, it's all the chemicals and the paints and the, the everything. So I got an insight that I wasn't expecting to get of what is in our air. And then I also got to see how effective my big machines we were using for construction, restoration were,  uh, comparatively to these little residential ones.

I'm like, why isn't there a machine that's like big? And quiet and pretty. So I just saw a huge void because when we would leave our big air cleaning machines there, even though people had the most toxic air, they would turn it off. They would put it away because it was loud because it was ugly and the efficiency of any purifier goes to zero when you unplug it.

So  I realized I'm like. In order for the problem to actually be solved, it needs to be effective, it needs to be smart, and it must be pretty, so it's not like another thing to manage. So that kind of started my few year journey to create the best air purifier I could that would be designed to tackle larger, more toxic issues.

So the journey kind of went like restoration, air quality testing,  saw that  The solutions on the market sucked. And then I also, the last big moment was when we would finish cleaning a house after like mold removal or something like that, we would test the air and what the insurance companies would consider clean,  wasn't clean at all.

It's kind of like when you get like a blood test from a doctor, and they're like, we'll only call you if it's urgent. Like,  They're not striving for optimal, they're just striving for you're not dying right now, and the error metrics for buildings and for homes is the same. So if you're not going to die tonight.

Meh, who cares? I'm like, that's not okay. I want to breathe the best air, drink the cleanest water, sleep in the best bed. Like when it comes to these essential things, I, I, I don't want to just have adequate. I want to have optimal. So it seemed to me like, Hmm, this is, this is a fun new challenge. And here we are.

Absolutely. And what got shook out out of all of that is now  Attractive, dynamic, meaning that, you know, so I've gotten the opportunity to have a Jasper in my own home for quite some time now, and it's been a forever source of entertainment seeing if I bring in certain things into the environment, you know, I spray certain things or candles going or whatever is happening, how it will dynamically know and sense and then a real time go to work on shifting and making a difference with the environment.

But not just like on a surface, you know, small level, but now like as your website points to design for wildfires trusted by thousands of doctors, commercial grade air cleaning. So in your process, now you've gotten to this product that my understanding is you're continuing to iterate on and from that place.

can be really impactful for people's sleep. Now for many people that are tuning in here, they're looking for things that might move the needle in their sleep results, but I don't know that people are always going to air quality right off the bat. They might think of mattresses, the, you know, the lighting and all these things, but air quality, despite the fact that we're constantly breathing.

We don't always think about it. So why is it important to learn this to invest in something like Jasper or something larger beyond just the thing that you can get on Amazon for 300 bucks for your sleep before that? The question is like, why are we not even aware of air? Why are we not aware? Yes, please.

Exactly. I think that what air is to people water is to fish.  So the fish can be in really contaminated, toxic parts of the ocean, but they don't necessarily swim away to the clean parts because I think the same way we lack vision and perspective, you know, we can't see the forest with the tree right in front of us because the fish is in the water.

It's very difficult to see the water. And because we're in the air, we don't see the air. The first thing we do when we're born,  first breath. The last thing when we do when we die. We take our last breath. It's and when we're when our body's really good. If we're hungry, we go eat. If we're thirsty, we go drink.

With air, we just, because we're doing it 24 hours a day, like those are the three things that really keep us alive, food, water, and air. And air is the only one that our body does automatically, even when we sleep.  So it's like, I think my suspicion here is we, we take air for granted because it's so automatic that our body does it for us.

You know, you can go three weeks without food, three days without water and three minutes without air. So I think it's because it's so omnipresent.  We just got.  blinded to it because it's right here. And I'm bringing that back to sleep. The only thing that we do at night, the only thing keeping us alive for those eight hours or more when we're in that bed is air, nothing else.

We have no other intake. So when you look at the average bed, average bedroom, I'll try to give easy numbers, but typically you have about 800. If we do like a particle test, there's typically going to be about 800, 000 particles between. 0. 3 microns and 10 microns. So that's everything from smoke, dust mites, pollen, mold, construction material, dead skin cells, hair, believe it or not, insect parts, lots of insect parts.

Really? There's so many insects that we can't see, same thing. And they just kind of get obliterated and are always floating through the air. So when you like take a sample of air and you put it under a microscope, you'll always see crazy stuff. It's just so small that it's kind of just blowing around. Um, it's like, so there's so many particles in our, in our air.

And if you think about it, like, especially people with CPAP machines that literally I was just going to say that. Yeah. That it's the forcing this air down their throat, literally. And if we're not mindful of what type, what's in that air, that's could be problematic. CPAP machine filters are this big.

They're literally only designed so some big chunk doesn't get in the motor, the same way furnace filters are designed to protect the furnace, the CPAP machine's filter is designed to protect the CPAP. So like, imagine that someone needs a machine to literally allow them to breathe at night, but little do they know they're breathing 800, 000 parts per million of all kinds of stuff.

And  for, you know, you put a decent air purifier in that bedroom within an hour, you have 95 percent cleaner air. So your lungs just get to rest and recover. And I've got to see a lot of people with  severe allergies. And conventional wisdom would tell you what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but there are exceptions to that rule.

You know, a boxer or a UFC fighter, once you get knocked out once, you're much more susceptible to be knocked out again. When people have a large mold exposure or a pollen exposure, their sensitivity goes Way through the roof, your body's like, dude, stop putting me in this environment. And people who struggle with seasonal allergies, if they can dial in the air quality in their bedroom now at night, while your memories are consolidating and your body's repairing, you can actually go into that rest, that rest recovery state.

But if you're breathing in all these harmful particulates,  All your defense mechanisms are running over time, even at night to try to keep all of these pollutants, these toxins, these particles that you're breathing. So for me, you know, most people when they think about sleep tools, you might think about the bed, the sheets, the blankets, the pillows, we certainly think about temperature.

Many people don't like to sleep too hot or too cold. If it's too loud, if there's a nightclub or a subway and there's vibrations, these things are going to annoy you. But yeah, To not consider what you're breathing all night long and all that people need to do like, you know, growing up, there wasn't really much awareness around filtered water.

You would just drink tap water and then. Once you start drinking filtered water, you like go to the restaurant, you order some tap water, you're like, this tastes like chlorine, and then you're like, this tastes funky, can I get some bottled water, please? And you're willing to pay like, people don't realize how many thousands of dollars they might pay a year in filtered water.

Because it's just this, they don't realize you pay thousands a year. Whether it's from, not just from the city, but whether it's your Brita's, or your Berkey's, or your Kengan's, or your whole home stuff, or bottled water out and about, like, people invest thousands in water, in clean water or organic food, but people have no air budget.

And I don't think that's with intention. So, once you start sleeping and living in a clean air environment. All of a sudden you can't go back. You will just notice that your air is heavy to breathe. It's dusty. Like people start to have kind of panic attacks when they go into that dirty air environment because they're like, I feel the dust.

Now it smells. I didn't. If you go to someone's house and like, it smells like a wet dog and within an hour, you don't smell anything. Our body's doing that with all the pollutants in our life. So wow.  For people that then say, well, I mean, isn't this like an extra item? I know my parents or grandparents never needed this.

Why do we need this? There's, I know you work with a lot of building biologists and you're knowledgeable in that space yourself. So in recent years, even our building structures have changed in such a way that kind of, enforces this problem. Is that correct? Where it's kind of this is the thing. This is the real problem.

Yeah. Yeah. We didn't used to need these because they are used to be fine and the best air purifier in the world is nature. But we left that outside and we moved inside. We moved indoors. We created these little bubbles. So all the bad stuff still comes in. And we have all the bad stuff from indoors, from our, our toxic pans to our off gassing and our furniture and our paints and our chemicals and our shower stuff and our cleaning products.

So we have all the bad stuff that comes in that can't go out. We have all the bad stuff inside that can't get out. And then most people in the West, the way our home, they were built by developers who are building subdivisions and the way a developer these homes. Are built on spreadsheets where they say 2000 acres.

How many homes can we fit? What is our cost to flatten the land scrape? They don't want variants. So they cut every single tree down on the entire property. They scrape the land and then they're looking at square footage dollar per square footage and how cheaply and how quickly can we build these homes and the HVAC, the mechanical, the lighting, all the environmental factors are the last thing that's considered.

They're not even considered. So it's. Sys systemically. HVAC guys, mechanical are taught about heating and cooling. Architects are taught about, you know, design. They're even taught about like flow and energy efficiency and, um, but build, and builders and developers are taught to build homes on spreadsheets to turn a profit.

And I love profit, but I, I think there needs to be a really big awakening of air awareness and US consumers need to not tolerate. Buying these toxic little boxes with no trees and no shade, if people stop buying these subdivision homes, they would stop building them and I would rather have a home that's 20 percent smaller with a better layout.

And like, how crazy is this? We cut down the forest and then we call dead trees wood. We give it a cute little nickname and then we use the wood to create pergolas decks and for shade. And there was, there was already trees there. We cut away the trees, send them to China, process them, bring them back, and we build shade.

What? Why don't we just do better land planning in the first place? I don't know. It's like this, this really sad, horrible, systemic thing, it's the way we build our communities, it's the way we build our homes, and it's the way everybody is taught. So, imagine, and it's, it's, it's getting there, and that's, that's why I'm doing this, like, nothing is more exciting to me than helping the HVAC contractor.

Let's say, They're running their for profit business. They go to your home, you know, your air conditioner craps out on a hot, sunny Texas day.  HVAC guy comes to your house, looks at your air conditioner and goes, I can fix that for a thousand bucks or it's going to be 7, 000 and we'll get you a new air conditioner.

Why doesn't he also check the air quality in your bedroom?  Imagine it goes, Hey, you know, your heating and cooling seems to be fine, but your air is really toxic in here. Did you know for 3, 000, we can upgrade your whole home with an air filtration system will extend the life of your furnace and you can just show them all they want to do is sell stuff the business does in your home.

So it's like it's not even a good business practice. To be completely blinded to this stuff. So yeah, it's literally on all levels. It's, it's the HVAC, the architect, the builder, the developer, but the ultimate change is going to be by the consumer not being willing to buy, buy these thousand row cookie cutter homes.

Cause then the developers are going to have to start building homes that are better for people, better lighting, mold resistant materials. High quality air fresh air intakes like your car has a little button to recirculate the air when you're breathing through a smelly area. It's so silly that your home when there's a high pollen day or a high smoke day that your home doesn't go into a recirculatory mode to increase filtration when it's a bad air quality and when it's a really good air quality day, let's turn off the filters and let's bring that fresh air in.

So there's like. All the technology exists. All the industries exist. Like people just have to care a little bit. But if people don't care, then no one's going to factor it into their business decisions. Um, so yeah, like to me, the top of the pyramid here, you know, first it's  emergency bandage solutions.

Let's put air purifiers in our house quickly. Um, because that's going to at least let us Breathe okay right now while we figure out bigger problems here. Um, forget where you started, but that's that's to me that like the just we need the education. It needs to be bottom down and top up. The people need to demand better homes and the builders and the developers and the contractors need to be made aware that good healthy buildings is good.

Healthy business. And in the meantime, you know, while we need the systemic change for the people that are in their homes or in their apartments to take this step to invest in a quality air purifier can make I think one of the things that can be important is to know just how much of a difference can be made.

I know you spoke to even its impact for things like molds, which so many people can get overwhelmed by. and concerned that it's just hopeless or, you know, not know what steps to take. I'm wondering if you can just share some of the things that then something like a high quality air purifier, like a Jasper or beyond can really help mitigate.

Mold and pollen are like two really easy things to point the finger at because everybody knows that seasonal allergies, I'm generalizing, but pollen and cedar and stuff is like.  The main seasonal allergy. So many, look how big the allergy market is. Like so many people are struggling with allergies and mold like pollen is an allergen.

So you can have a family of five, one or two of them are fine. One or two of them are okay. And one of them is chronically ill. So typically people don't realize this, but like Mold is everywhere. Mold, when you do mold testing, we test outside, we test inside, because it's not whether or not you have mold.

Mold's not black and white. Mold's like air. It's how much mold, what species of mold. Um, so it's not about whether you have it or not. It's what kind, how much, and what are you going to do about it? When we test homes indoor, there's typically more pollen inside than outside. Because the pollen, that's why you have seasonal allergies inside too, it's not just an outside thing because you have no filtration in your home.

So the pollen gets inside in your carpets, in your furniture, in your bedding, in your pillow, in your sheets, and it can't get back out, it's trapped in there, it doesn't go anywhere. So if you're not cleaning it from the air, it settles on all of the surfaces. So pollen and mold I think are really good ones.

We all have seasonal, a lot of us have seasonal allergies and um, a good air filter is really good at removing 95 to 99 percent of pollen and mold. So all of a sudden just having a place where you can retreat from outside and come in, in your home and breathe.  like more pure air. So I'm curious with some of your, um, how much is the sleep community, your community, the education, the literature, how much is there in there about, um, diet, water, food?

Like how much does that come into, um, alcohol? Like how much of that fits into the, the, the sleep? Stuff in your world, huge, huge, huge, and that's one of the things, one of the reasons why we so we love embracing technology from a wearable perspective, because we can see with granularity when we make some of these behavioral changes.

for both, you know, the nutrition, alcohol, drugs, etc. But then certainly even some of these environmental changes, so we'll see things show up when people do shift. Even one, the buildings that they're in, we can tell if people are trending in a particular direction and then they leave their home, they go on vacation or what have you, and then they have markedly different stats that can be a clue for us that something's going on in the environment.

Uh, there's many variables, but that can be something, a red flag that we might want to investigate what's happening in your environment that you're scoring in this particular way, and then it improves when you change that environment. So there's so much that goes into that, so multifaceted, but certainly I think this air quality piece is such a missing component.

So I think what might be interesting is, so we always ask every person that comes on these four questions, and I'd be very curious to hear. more updates since we last spoke around how you're managing these things and how we might see air quality and management of that come into play. So our first question that we ask everyone is, what is your nightly sleep routine looking like right now?

And if you're ever traveling, like any call out there. So I had, I do, when I do travel, um, I do like to if if it's a driving trip, I definitely bring a Jasper with me if I'm flying somewhere, hopefully often. It's just been working out lately where someone I know in that city has asked me about one. So I sent it that I use it in my hotel room or my Airbnb  and then I sell it to them for cheap.

Um, sometimes if I need to, I'll go to Walmart and I'll buy one. Uh, because like so many times I go into an Airbnb and like, I, I'm very attuned to it. Like most they're musty, they're moldy. And I'm like, I literally can't be in that space. Um,  so routine wise, um,  I. Um, I actually, I don't know if I told, I think I definitely told you I have no cell phone again.

Yes. I love that. That's such a novel piece of your, the story of you that whole  stretch, right? With no cell phone for a long time. And I'm back. I'm back. Yep. I'm back. So that to me is like easily the biggest thing for me from a sleep,  the temperature.  I actually like a hard surface so I like if there's a bad bed, I'll sleep on the floor like I'm good on the floor,  so I don't need like a super plushy comfy bed.

I'm pretty comfortable sleeping cold so you know I like to have my temperature dialed in.  I approach sleep from my background air first.  Don't eat before bed. That, that one's a killer. Uh, but the, the no phone to me has actually been like the biggest thing because if I'm not bringing those air pods into my, my, my just not having the phone beside me, the anxiety of it, the reachability, the first, I know the first thing like for me, the best part of a good sleep is how I wake up and starting my day on the right note.

So when I wake up before I allow myself to sit up, I asked myself what would make today great. Okay. And I, I do a play. I'm not looking at my calendar. I just, I know what it is from the day before and I go through a play by play and I just confirm like what would make today awesome. And then when I, before I go to bed, I'm like, was today awesome?

And if it's, if it's no, it's like, why not? And let's stew on that for a little bit. And if it's yes, then it's like, awesome. Today was awesome. Let's go to bed and we'll do it all again tomorrow. Um, Yeah. You know, but I wake up and I, and I hit the cold plunge and, um,  one coffee, usually I ask for 50 percent caffeine.

Sometimes I actually have a coffee shop near me. I can say any percentage of caffeine. So if I'm like, give me a 2080, then they'll give me a 20 percent caffeine. Uh,  so yeah, I, that, that, that for me, less caffeine. Make sure I have an idea of what a successful day feels like that way, because what was keeping me up the most is feeling like I wasn't enough today.

I didn't get enough things done. I didn't accomplish it yet. Another day wasted. But if I already defined in the morning, what a great day was, and I can check that box.  And we're good. It's time to sleep, guys. Love that. Oh my goodness. And for context, you went how long without your phone? Three years. Three years.

2017 to 2020. That's wild. Daughter was born, Aria. Yeah. Got the phone back. I'm like, what if I need to call 911? Well, it's been three years. I haven't needed to yet. My truck has OnStar with that little red SOS button if I really need it. Um. Brilliant. But the, the, the unreachability, which is a little annoying, uh, it wasn't really, but now my wife's like.

Honestly, like the small price of your somewhat unreachability is well worth it for your 100 percent presence all the time. She's like a small price to pay. That's amazing. I'm back. I'm back. I lost my phone. I don't know where it is. And honestly, it's like dying. It's, it's at home loss. It's under a cushion or somewhere.

I'm just not looking for it and neither is Rachel. So it will find me if it's meant to be. Until then, no phone. Fantastic. I think all of us could use a little digital detox like that. And then the third question, because you already touched on the morning. So the third question would be what might we see visually on your nightstand or even if you're traveling kind of in your environment?

I don't have a nightstand.  Okay. All right. I don't even, I don't even have a bed. I have a mattress on the floor. Look at you. So, uh, so it's that, um, kind of ancestral kind of connection. It's not a, it's not that at all. Rachel, my wife would really like to get a bed and nightstands, but it's actually from a motivation standpoint.

I feel like, um, you know, it's very like. I go into the room and it feels very incomplete and, um, I've had periods of success in my life where I get very lazy, very complacent, like, why am I even doing this anymore? Like, my basic needs are met. What are we doing here? So, the, um, not super, like, our bed's amazing.

There's a very plush carpet that it sits on, um, but I'm like, yo, I only want to sleep here. The same for,  uh, and I like the, the motivation of one of having things in my home. Like we don't, we used to have beautiful, like we don't have much art. We have an awesome house. There's a great cold plunge and saunas and air purifiers, but we haven't done all that extra decorating stuff because it's just a constant reminder that like, we, I have some goals that, that it's like, I need to get a certain goal.

Then we get the dining table. Next goal. I like to gamify my life in silly little ways.  To keep myself motivated. So the nightstand is nothing. It was, it was for a while. My phone, man, I had my phone right beside the bed and I would go to bed every night with one air pod in and listening to a podcast.  And then I would wake up and I would instantly pick up the phone and my kids would come in to give me a hug and I would hide the phone under the pillow, uh, to be like, I'm being present.

And then like, I'm like, okay, like go back to your mom so I can keep checking this thing. So the only thing on my nightstand was a phone on my floor stand, I should say. Uh, but now it's, it's nothing. That's great. The minimalism piece. Oh, quick question. So if you are ever in an Airbnb  and the air quality stinks and you kind of just are getting a band aid, you know, cheap air purifier from Walmart, is there a kind of brand that you like to go to or any guidelines for something like that?

Like a quick fix? Yeah, so often the problem with a hotel room is dryness more than air quality and often, um,  too humid can create mold. Too dry is a breeding ground for, uh, uh, bacteria and viruses. So often it's too dry because their HVAC is running. So if you can get bottled or distilled water, even better.

Whatever  get a towel, put it wet and especially if it has like a fan or a radiator. If you put the towel on the radiator, it acts as a natural humidifier. Um, if you don't have that, you could fill the bathtub with hot water and just leave it not as effective with the air blowing through it. It's way more effective.

Um, so that's like a, a, a cheat code to making a humidifier in any situation. Um, but like, yeah, even if you wet a few towels, if there was no fan, like they dry a bit by the morning, if they dried, where do you think the water went? It goes into your hair. Interesting. Love that. If it's kind of smelly or stale or stinky, whether it's, if it's an Airbnb or a place with a kitchen, you can actually leave the range hood on fan speed one.

Often the first fan speed on a range is pretty quiet. Um, and that's, that's ventilating the air outside. It's similar to cracking a window. Um, but if some, if you don't have a bathroom fan or a bathroom fan, a range hood or a cracked window, they actually all get you to the same place. So if it's like a loud environment, you might not want to crack the window.

Um, if you have a convenient window, yeah, crack it. But like maybe there's no screen there and you don't want bugs to fly in. So the rule is one CFM of air out equals one CFM of air in.  By exhausting air out, the new air will come in your homes through the people don't realize that your home is still a bit leaky.

Where do you think the air comes from the windows, the doors, the cracks, the attic that there's often, you know, the drier event. It's all the leaky parts of the home that allow the air to get in first place. So just venting out that stale air that stuffy air, um, Is the best way to just ensure that you have fresh air, but yeah, open window, rain shade, bathroom fan, towel for humidity, um, for the air purifier, honestly, like  depends, but  I'm not, I mean, it's not the most ethical thing that I do, but I typically will go and I'll buy the most expensive, like if I have time and it's like Walmart, if I have time to return it, I will buy the most expensive one.

And then I'll return it on the last day. I've given those guys enough money. I feel ya. If it's a great product, I'll recommend it to people in the future as a great discount model. Um, but yeah, I've done that a bunch of times. If it's super cheap, I'll leave it there. Or I'll ship it Jasper and then I'll I'll, I'll try to sell it to the Airbnb host or the, um, the, the hotel or the spa or whatever.

That's great. Oh, what a good tip. Okay. And then the last question would be so far today, humidifiers are a big deal. Yeah. Big deal. Grabbing one of those, yeah. So if you Google humidifiers, harmful or helpful, most people don't realize that they buy a Jasper. It goes red. They're like, what the heck? Is the Jasper broken?

It's not broken. It's the fact that if you're using a humidifier without distilled water, it puts so much pollutants in your air. So all the stuff that's, all the chlorine and the different minerals and particles that are in your water, you put them in a humidifier, it aerosolizes it. So if someone has an air quality sensor or a Jasper, it will immediately.

skyrocket. Um, so in that case, you either need distilled water or you need a humidifier and a purifier working in tandem because all the same reasons you wouldn't want to drink tap water. You don't want to aerosolize them and breathe them. And our bodies are better. We have better filters for those minerals.

Like In our gut, I guess, than in our, in our lungs. So, um,  if you are using the humidifier, just, if you Google humidifier harmful or helpful, there's really good, a couple of good blogs about this topic that show you the air quality with the humidifier running. Um, so often a lot of people get the humidifier to add humidity because it's too dry to sleep.

Um, but that can come with a lot of cons if you're not, uh, conscious of this. I love that. No, that's such a good point. And I like how you touched on too dry being problematic as well. Cause I've spoken to different clients that have literally moved to desert like environments because they were trying to get their thinking, their logic was the air is going to be so much better.

They deal with allergies and, you know, mold concerns and all these things thinking then the desert would be the safe haven. But as desert is some of the worst place you can go for air. So first of all, if you look at a relative humidity health chart, Google that. You'll see lots. Like I said, too dry bacteria and viruses become a problem.

That's why in the winter in like the northeast, everybody gets sick in the winter because it's so dry. You know, you get dry skin, your, your throat dries out, you're like, you don't have enough moisture inside to deal with stuff. Um, in the desert though, remember all of that sand used to be underwater, so there's super heavy levels of mold.

So when they get dust storms in Hiboubs, some of the worst toxic mold exposures that we see are in Arizona. I remember you saying that from our last conversation. And when you get your blood test, your mycotoxin test, and then you test the dust in your home, almost every single time, the same mold in the dust is in you.

Um, so yeah, Arizona. It's just a different, different problem, but  all that used to be underwater. So there's mold and all kinds of stuff that's in that sand. So interesting. Okay. Wow. All right. So then our last question would be, so far today, what would you say has made the biggest change to your personal sleep game or said another way, biggest aha moment in managing your own sleep to date?

Definitely the Trifecta. Uh, I love my weighted blanket. Yes. I use it sometimes. I forget the name of the brand. It starts with a B, but it's like a weave. So it's not super hot. The bear one. So yeah, something like that.  I got that one. So the weave and the breathability is super nice. Um, so I, sleeping on the floor with a, with a breathable weighted blanket is awesome.

Um, so good. So I like that. I really like having the temperature dialed in. So like 68 Fahrenheit kind of thing. 69 a little bit cooler. Um Either no pillow or a very thin pillow like I don't like having my neck all jacked up. Um,  the no phone is huge. And then the don't eat before bed. And then the air purifier is huge for me.

Um, once you sleep with clean air, there's no going back.  I need a better rhyme for that.

Yeah, they'll know. I don't know, she'll know. It'll know.  The air one is huge though.  The five indicators of air quality are temperature, relative humidity, PM 2. 5, BOCs, and CO2. So temperature is the first one that we notice the easiest. The second one we noticed easiest is humidity. The third one is CO2, the fourth is particulate, and the fifth one is gas.

Temperature is just the one that our body is conditioned to feel the most. I think the reason why is because if we stay in an environment that's too hot or too cold, we'll die quickly. Um, CO2 is a little more subtle, but like, you know, if it's too hot, we need shade. We need water. If it's too cold, we need blankets and we need fire.

So I think ancestrally that was like of the order of magnitude, like it's our most calibrated sensor, but I can do VOCs are trickier, but CO2 mold, like, um, humidity, temperature. Because I am experienced with these things, I can almost to it within a small margin, tell you what the air quality levels are across the board.

Um, most people are really good at temperature, but like if you go into a rainforest, it feels wet. If you go into a desert, it feels dry, like, you know, they teach us the five senses growing up, but no one tells you that you have a relative humidity sensor on board. You know, if you go inside and with a bunch of people and it's stuffy and you go outside.

Ah, fresh air. That's because your body's detecting the difference in CO2. Nobody told you that you have a CO2 sensor on board. You know, our nose is so awesome. Like if there was a piece of like garbage in the corner and I closed your eyes and tied your hands behind the back, you could find the garbage.

You know, if you think about like, Oh, a shark can smell blood two miles away. It's like, You can actually smell garbage really far away too, through the air currents, it's just like water currents, but like, I feel like we just forgot, it's almost like superpowers, and our bodies have all these cool sensors, you just have to tap into those sensors, and then you're able to see the world through the lens of air.

And once you do that, you can't unsee it and you start making better decisions like mold. I can smell it from a mile away now because I tested it enough times and been in it like I can walk into buildings all the time. Know if it's musty. Know if it's moldy. Know if CO2 is high or low or great. I'll walk into people's house like great job.

Like you're CO2 super low. Your ventilation is awesome. I'm like,  that is such a great compliment. Yeah, it's a great compliment. So yeah, for my sleep, it was just understanding, you know, I, I need, I don't want it to be loud. So I want my noise dialed in, I want my light dialed in, I want my comfort dialed in, and I want the five air factors dialed in.

So good. Okay. So one, I'm clear as always that whenever I speak with you, I know we've only just scratched the surface on all of your knowledge in many areas, but certainly in this conversation. So for people listening, how can they follow along with some of the things that you're bringing to market with some of the changes with Jasper, some of the exciting new things that are coming, how can they follow, where should they go?

Yeah, I have a pretty bad answer for this because like I'm not super internet y and super promotional, I'm working on a podcast now, but  I'm kind of more offline, like, I'll try to keep my knowledge growing faster than, um, so it will always be the scratching of the surface because I'm going to keep going deeper and deeper, faster than, hopefully faster than you can scratch at it.

Yes.  So I'm getting better at it, but we've firmly decided that  we want to educate through partners. So instead of me sitting on my bias soapbox and talking about air, I'm talking to other health and wellness people and supporting content creators and sleep experts and food experts and water experts and healthy home experts and, and builders and biologists and HVAC people.

So hopefully if I'm doing my, my job, right, I'll be able to create like, this is like the groundswell is here. Um, you know, like. A little bit on Instagram, but even all the content we share, it's just stuff that our customers are sharing. Um,  honestly, I think people should just,  if like, if you have no air purifier in your life, you should get a good one and don't get one that doesn't have a return policy.

Uh, ideally a hundred percent that also covers shipping back and forth. Cause a lot of companies, they say they have a return policy, but then it's like, Shipping and handling is hundreds of dollars to take it back. You're like, that's not a return policy. That's, that's like half my money back. That sucks.

So I built Jasper to be the company that I wanted to be a customer of. So with us, we have a 60 day return policy. If someone's, we call it the life changing guarantee. So if it's not completely changing someone's quality of sleep in their bedroom, in their air. Then like, we'll just give them a prepaid shipping label.

We pay, it costs us like a hundred bucks. We take it back and go invest your money in something else. But it's like, you know, is it expensive? Not if it makes you sleep better. Like it's a fraction of the price of an expensive mattress,  how much, how much is your energy level worth tomorrow? So I used to really like not promote the product, but I'm like, I am because it's awesome.

So like, that's why I made the policy. That's what we made the lifetime warranty. Like, that's why we're lowering prices dramatically. Like if someone's not living with clean air and they're not, if someone's already feeling 10 out of 10 energetic sleep and everything, then like, don't do anything and don't listen to me ever again, but if you think improve, then like, I would say, why not try anything that has a really strong guarantee.

And, and like just the way I did it with Walmart,  people should do that with us. Go ahead. Buy it and try it. And if it's not life changing, we'll give you all your money back. Um, so I like to put our, put our money where our mouth is. Uh, but yeah, hopefully the website, podcasts, all that good stuff at Jasper co Jasper.

co. Uh, Now, you know, so great. And certainly I can attest and, you know, be putting this in the intro more in depth of some of the things that I've seen using the Jasper for myself, because I've tested a bunch of different air purifiers. You've been over to our place. You've seen some of the other air purifiers we've had and over the years tested different ones.

And by far and away, the Jasper has made such a huge difference. And to the point that, so there's been a lot of variables for me with lots of travel and lots of things, but Since I, in alignment with getting the JASPER, I've had certain changes on things like my heart rate, my HRV, improving, and so I'm quite confident that, you know, while I bring a ton of new variables, I'm the worst person to test these things.

I have new supplements and new this and new that. Yeah, you're testing too much. Testing too much, but I will say it's made, uh, there's a clear line of demarcation where there's been certain measurable changes on my health, and when you change your health, that changes your sleep. So it's really Changes your sleep, it changes your life.

Changes your life, exactly. So somebody, uh, I know in Toronto went from a 61 average aura score to a 91, because There was ambient mold in the condo building that they were living in. Most people have mold and pollen. So they went from, you know, not a great sense of smell, not super aware. So it's not like.

The air purifier was this magic wand, but what it did do is it made it so they weren't breathing a lot of mold that night. So, they were sleeping like 10 hours a night. Long sleeps, but no restfulness in their sleeps. And then they were able to go from like 10 hours to 8 hours and moved up to like a 91. I don't exactly know that metric, but 61 to 91 sounds like a big jump.

That's a big jump. That's a huge jump. And I want to put in too, because you know, we're both friends connected with Test My Home and they had come in and did a whole test and thankfully, knock on wood, to date, no mold, no VOCs. I do deal with EMFs, which I'm dealing with, but so a number of things where there was not as much of a concern.

And yet, when I still added a JASPER on top of that, still a measurable difference from a really, you know, I wasn't dealing with some of those egregious things and it improved. So just from, you know, me being in the place, Blake being in the place and things were bringing in all that sort of stuff. So even if someone's listening like, well, I don't have mold, so I don't need something like that, or I don't have allergies.

So no matter the spectrum that you might, if you're really, of course, dealing with egregious issues with your air quality, we want to get that addressed no matter what. But then even from an optimization perspective, you know, you don't even think that you're dealing with much, no matter what you're doing in this enclosed space for hours and hours throughout the course of your day.

And of course, just while you're sleeping, laying there, off guessing in your own particular way, this can be so, so important. So no matter where you're at, it can make a difference. Amazing. Uh, well, Mike, thank you so much for taking the time to be here. I so appreciate you. Anytime, any place. Yes, absolutely.

Keep sharing with us all the exciting things that are coming with Jasper and I really appreciate you taking the time.  You've been listening to the Sleep is a Skill podcast, the top podcast for people who want to take their sleep skills to the next level. Every Monday I send out the Sleep Obsessions newsletter which aims to be one of the most obsessive newsletters on the planet.

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