By Ryan Gallagher
Blue light is part of the detectable spectrum of light that the human eye can see. It is part of the light spectrum produced by the sun, as well as artificial sources like screens, light bulbs, etc. But what does it mean for us as humans who’ve been plugged into screens and devices now more than ever before?
Bryan Reedy reasons that too much blue light after the sun sets could be inhibiting your sleep–especially for gamers who tend to be more on the nocturnal side of the sleep schedule. In order to learn about blue light and to understand Reedy’s point of view on the subject, we used the Leaguefeed.net podcast as a platform to educate readers about his unique perspective. Listen and watch the podcast video on Youtube, Spotify, or Apple. Or readers can dissect the Q&A interview below!
Leaguefeed Interviews Bryan Reedy
Ryan Gallagher:
My name is Ryan Gallagher, and we’re here on the LeagueFeed.net podcast. Today with us is Bryan Reedy of Gamer Advantage. And, thanks so much for coming Brian. I guess just to start off, tell me a little bit about, you know, your personal and professional background and kind of how you got to where you are today with Gamer Advantage.
Bryan Reedy:
Well, thanks for having me, Ryan, I appreciate it. Wow. There’s so many, so many different ways to talk about it. I mean, it all really starts as being a gamer since I was, like, three years old. You know, I got my first Nintendo when I was three. I’m 37 now. So to put it in perspective, you know, I’ve lived through all the generations or most generations of consoles and the beginning of PC gaming and just forever a gamer. I was diagnosed as a type one diabetic when I was ten. I was in the ICU and they wheeled in, uh, Mario Kart. Like a CRT TV. I think that’s when gaming became kind of special. So I always stayed a little closer to it than like the average person my age, because it was still like it was really getting big when we were in high school and college.
I actually had the opportunity to be a co-host on one of the first ever FM video game radio shows in Detroit. This was like 2007 on CBS. It was pretty cool, but it turned to a sports station and they said video games on a sports station doesn’t make any sense, which is funny because if you fast forward to today, it makes perfect sense. Um, so that was like my career in gaming. I went on to pursue a normal like post-grad, post-college, uh, 9 to 5. I ended up at Fifth Third Bank. I worked as a banker, as a branch manager. I worked with the marketing department.
That was fun. Uh, but I didn’t really enjoy working for the man. I was hitting a ceiling a little bit, so I joined a family-owned optical distribution company, and I was in business development there. And one of the things I kept getting asked just inbound inquiries, was to make blue light glasses for other brands like Instagram, pop up shops and stores on Facebook and such… And I did it a couple times. You know, I’m sourcing these $5, $6 frames, selling them for $10, $11. And then they’re selling them for like $40, $50. And I’m like, man, we’re on the wrong side of this equation as a business. But second of all, I really don’t want my career to be making glasses for somebody like, yeah, this will help you sleep and cure migraines. And what I thought was just really a bunch of BS. Like, I didn’t want to be like a snake oil salesman guy.
So, uh, but at the time, I just had my first child with my wife, and, you know, I wasn’t sleeping very well. And, you know, being type one diabetic, I was finding it harder to take care of myself and with this new family and everything. And, uh, so I decided to give it the respect I felt it deserved and started researching blue light lenses. Like how just the whole conversation of light and sleep. And I was going to all the optical shows, so I was able to talk to a tremendous amount of doctors and talk to a few neurologists and opticians, ophthalmologists, that kind of thing. And after trying hundreds of lenses, there was one lens that I liked that physically felt different. And then I had my wife try it and I had my friends try it. It wasn’t until we were wearing it for like 4 or 5 months. I was like, we gotta do something with this. So I was just like, we should make gaming glasses and the guy who makes the lens says, I don’t know what that means, but I like your energy. I’ve been a gamer my whole life, there’s only one other brand out there and yellow lenses, goggle style, like pick you out, just, you know, it aligns with the pizza eating, Mountain Dew-drinking persona of a gamer, where I was more going for the like, sleek and modern more sophisticated gamer, which is what we are today. I feel like there’s a lot of health in gaming now. Whereas back then, it was like the more ridiculous, the more gamer it was. Um, so it just took a different approach to it and started Gamer Advantage five years ago.
Ryan Gallagher:
Very cool. And now where are you? Where are you based out of?
Bryan Reedy:
I was just outside Detroit, Michigan.
RG:
I kind of sensed a little bit of, uh, an accent there.
BR:
I’ve been told I have a strong Michigan accent. I don’t know what that means, but I think I always wanted to have an accent. Yeah
RG:
I don’t know if I have one either, but like I said, I’m based in New Jersey, and grew up outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. But it’s funny that I recognized it because I recently watched, uh, that movie. Have you ever seen that movie Fargo?
BR:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Great movie, great movie. Well, I bet you I could recognize your accent if we got you into an argument with somebody. Yeah, I would know that you’re from Philly.
RG:
Yeah. Start talking about the Eagles and, uh. Yeah.
BR:
Yeah. They’re not playing so hot.
RG:
Uh uh.
BR:
Yeah, I did it on purpose. Yeah. Go blue though [Michigan had just won the College Football Championship].
RG:
Just had this conversation the other night with, uh, a couple of Giants fans. So it didn’t it didn’t go well. But um, other than that, um, going back to the blue light and that was kind of one of the reasons I thought that this interview would be really cool because, number one, you know, I work remotely for a company that’s in Germany. So I’m on my computer all the time. And then obviously I work on game gaming websites. I’m not like a crazy hardcore gamer. I think my experience is more the reason I’m working on what I do. I come from a journalism background, I also have marketing experience. So, that kind of aligns me for, you know, working in media and, um, the project management role that I hold. But I’ve obviously tried to get more into gaming since working with TreasureHunter and working on, uh, sites like LeagueFeed.net. I am playing Nintendo Switch and I mean, the Fortnite thing, I feel like there has been such a resurgence and that’s on Switch. So I started playing Fortnite a lot. Um, and I still play Gamecube and my favorite game of all time is Mario Super Strikers, the soccer game. Me and my friends love to play that, but, uh, yeah, I always wondered about the blue light thing, because from what you said, I’m like, is it BS? Is it a real thing? Tell me a little bit like your definition of what is blue light and how what that means for someone like ourselves who are gamers and also, you know, connected all the time to a screen, uh, working or whatever it may be.
BR:
So I’m not a doctor, but, um, so everything I say is my opinion for the most part. But I have talked to a lot of doctors and I have read a lot of studies, and I have done a lot of interviews, and this is what I’ve gathered and has been true for me personally, and also have the testimonials of thousands of people that that agree is that, well, first of all, we barely had electricity for like 150 years, let alone have any clue what exposing ourselves to all this artificial light all the time does. Like all we need is the sun. That’s all we need. That’s our body’s programmed for the sun. And so we’re supposed to get sun in the morning. And we’re supposed to get sun at night. And we’re supposed to get these certain spectrums of the sun at certain times of day, and that helps regulate all the chemical production in our body with melatonin and the such. And so what I’ve experienced and what we’ve seen is that after the sun sets, there is a certain wavelength in the blue light spectrum that suppresses melatonin intentionally. The sun intentionally suppresses melatonin. But then when the sun sets, you’re supposed to start producing melatonin, which is part of your circadian rhythm. And if you’re exposing yourself to that same wavelength of light in that same color spectrum, then your body is saying, okay, well, wait a second, is the sun set or is it not set now? Is that going to happen immediately? I guess we don’t really know…
What we do know is that over time, though, it definitely is having a big impact on people’s circadian rhythms. We’re not nocturnal, so this idea that we can be awake during the night and asleep during the day and naturally regulate our body’s hormones and chemicals is not that’s that’s a we’re far off from being that type of species you know. So I think that once the sun sets, the more we’re exposing ourselves to this artificial light, the less melatonin we’re producing and the harder it is to fall asleep. So things like digital eye strain, which is like a marketing term, right? There’s a whole list of things you should be doing to be like a healthy adult, right? Like one of the suggestions is drinking half your body weight in ounces and water every day, but do it before 3:00 pm and make sure you add salt and make I mean like, right. So it’s like there’s 10 million things you should do. Sleep is the one constant that there really isn’t much you need other than what your body is already providing you. And if you’re disrupting that, then you’re going to find yourself looking for other solutions to fix it.
So one of the things that was really against or actually learned to become against that had no opinion of it originally was melatonin. And it’s like melatonin is not regulated by the FDA. It’s looked at as a food product. So what it says on the bottle doesn’t necessarily match what’s inside of it. And they have no clue what it means to overdose melatonin over and over and over again. You feel sick the next day if you take too much melatonin. But what does it mean for your body? Melatonin has only been on the shelves for a short period of time. As far as people taking it as a supplement. So I’ve looked at these glasses as the most natural, organic way to diffuse as much of that light that is disrupting my sleep. And the thought process is, is that if I can minimize the amount of that light and that light spectrum, that’s like the sun for as long as possible until I go to bed, that’ll have an easier time falling asleep now when you’re on your device.
And most people like almost 100% of people I’ve talked to agree with. It is like you’re on your device until the last waking second, and it’s like you’re almost falling asleep looking at it. So then you drop it on your face, or you finally shut it off and set it down, but then you don’t fall asleep right away. It’s weird you were falling asleep while you were looking at it, but then you set it down and now you’re not falling asleep anymore. And then it takes all this time to fall asleep. So let’s say you get up for work at seven in the morning, so you game until 11 p.m., then you’re on your phone while you’re brushing your teeth and doing your business or whatever. Then you’re laying in bed, you’re watching TV. Now it’s like midnight. You’re ready to go to bed now. It’s like 12:30, 12:45. You still haven’t fallen asleep yet. Let’s say you fall asleep around 1:00 in the morning. There’s simply not enough time left in your sleep to get optimal sleep.
So yeah, the more melatonin you can produce, the better chances you have at high deep sleep time duration. You want to spend as much time in REM sleep basically as you possibly can, and where people are spending a lot of their time when they’re sleeping just this much. It’s in that light sleep and they’re not really reaching REM sleep. And then we’re seeing things like anxiety and ADHD and things come into the conversation like, okay, is this person having an actual issue? Or are they just not sleeping? Because sleep has been the number one medicine since the beginning of time, yet we’re like, forget sleep, but oh my God, I’m having all these problems. Type two diabetes, heart disease, overweight, all that. So like, you work out, you look like you’re a guy who exercises, right? Well, if you don’t reach deep sleep and REM sleep, your body doesn’t synthesize protein the same way. So if you work out exercise and take all this protein and sleep like crap, like you’re really not doing the full circle of what your body’s supposed to do for that type of, you know, activity and, and to reap the benefits of that activity.
So I’ve always taken the position that I don’t ever want to give up gaming. I’m 37. I have tons of friends who the second they got married, the second they had kids, the second they got their real job, whatever it was like gaming was the first thing to go because in their mind, it’s like, this thing is bad for me. I’m just not going to do it. Whether you’re like you on your computer all day for work or whether you’re like a professional gamer who’s gaming the whole time, at the end of the day, better sleep is going to mean better performance whether it’s in your job or it’s in the game. And this is the easiest, most cost effective, most affordable way to possibly sleep better versus buying a new mattress or some supplementing melatonin.
RG:
No, I mean everything you just said makes so much sense for sure. I mean, the gamer lifestyle is almost nocturnal. It’s like any gamer that’s going to listen to this is going to be like, oh no, like how could this be true? I think the thing that made me, I guess, interested in this is because, you know, of general health, interest, listening to other podcasts about different ways to keep yourself healthy. I mean, for myself it’s now winter time and I’m still grappling with trying to get enough sunlight, trying to get outside enough because obviously on the East Coast and I’m sure for you too, like, it’s really like a crazy change going from October and then November hits, you know, that the daylight savings time. And it’s a really quick switch. It feels like going from spending hours outside because even after work, you’d have til sometimes 9 p.m. in the summer to go outside and enjoy the sun. And now a lot of times you have that time to get sun during the morning or midday and then, you know, you gotta make up work at some point. So if I go out and, you know, try to get in the sun in the morning, then I find myself working later into the night. So I always personally wondered, what could be a solution? I never really wanted to take melatonin either, because I’m not the type of person that wants to take something just to take something. I want to know that, number one, it works. And number two, I’m not going to have an adverse effect. Whereas if I take melatonin every night, will that, um, stifle me creating it naturally?
BR:
You know, I don’t know. And again, neither of us are doctors or claim to be, uh, for anyone that’s going to watch this interview. But it really is, to me, super interesting to try to understand and see what we can do. Because, like you said, we only are coming into such a problem like this in the last, however, 20 years… People working, you know, or behind the screen for 4 or 5, or 6 plus hours a day. Yeah. It really hasn’t happened before. And, you know, computers started out with green and black screens and yeah, it is very new. I just listened to a podcast the other day with the associate, uh, professor for the Sleep Institute at Stanford, and he said they don’t have the data to say what it’s going to mean, long term to take that much melatonin. Like they just don’t have it yet. Same thing with McDonald’s. Nobody thought eating fast food was going to be bad for you. Like it took people eating fast food for 50 years before they were finally like, uh, you can’t do that. Everything seems to be reactive. Usually we’ll wait for there to be a problem.
You know, sleep it’s kind of like a silent killer. It’s kind of like smoking. It’s really hard to convince somebody to quit smoking. But once they have lung cancer, like, they quit immediately, somehow they have the willpower to do it. Uh, sleep is similar. But if you got really sick and a doctor came to you and said, like, listen, if you don’t start sleeping better, you’re going to die. You would take it more seriously. And people have been told that by their doctor. And it does get that serious in some cases. So I think when you’re talking about going outside and getting sun, you’re already 100 steps ahead of the average person in our community. I think it’s like really some of that basic stuff that you got to do and you have to pay attention to. I was just listening to a sleep psychologist actually talk about how you shouldn’t put so much pressure on yourself where you’re, like, disappointed that you don’t achieve these things specifically with better sleep. Like you’re so, you know, you wake up in the morning and you look at your eye where the van. Okay, similar to the aura ring, right? You wake up and you’re disappointed. You start the day disappointed in yourself that you didn’t get a good enough recovery score. And then you end the day and you’re disappointed in yourself that you didn’t have enough strain or whatever. That’s not really the right way to go about it. I think what’s important is to actually give credit to the things that make a difference. You know? So one thing that’s huge for me, especially being diabetic, but it’s big for my wife too, is not eating three hours before I go to bed. Like that has absolutely changed the way I sleep again, consuming half my body weight in ounces of water and really trying to do it before 3:00. I don’t do that one as much as I like, but it definitely has me drinking five times more. Okay, so I don’t get to 95oz of water in a day, but I get to 70, which is way more water than I was drinking before I tried to do the other thing. So yeah, I’m a huge fan of the book Atomic Habits. It’s obviously super popular. I don’t know if you’ve ever read it. It’s one of the best books ever.
RG:
I haven’t read it.
BR:
No. Okay, so James Clear, it’s called Atomic Habits. And, you know, they just talk about how making a 1% improvement is like, if you make 101% improvements, it can be more powerful than one 100% improvement. But this idea that it’s impossible to just one day wake up and say, I’m going to do all these things to start sleeping better. Like your New Year’s resolution is a good time to talk about it. It’s like, I’m going to start going to the gym every day. I’m going to start eating healthier. And what he’ll say is he’ll say, if you want to start exercising, how about just start by doing ten push ups while you’re brewing your coffee in the morning? Do that for like ten weeks without missing one. Then come talk to me about maybe going to the gym one day a week. Do that for ten weeks, then come to me and talk to me about going to the gym twice a week.
This idea that you’re just going to wake up and start doing all these things to change the way you feel, uh, it just doesn’t work like that. So when it goes back to being like, getting that sunlight and doing those things, really what I’m saying is like, if you’re doing nothing, wear the glasses. If you’re doing nothing, wear the glasses and drink some more water. If you’re doing nothing, wear glasses, drink water and stand up every 20 minutes and walk around for two minutes.
You know, it’s like, yeah, the thing I have struggled to get any doctor or neurologist to agree with me on is that gaming can ever be healthy mentally. It can be helpful for things like dementia and autism and it can be a great learning tool and all of those things. But physically being sedentary has zero benefits. Not one ever, ever, ever. So it’s been really hard to come across with a story that is like, it’s okay to just game all the time. It’s absolutely not healthy. And so how do we fit that? How do we make it so we do everything we can to make it more healthy? Our glasses are one of many, many things you could do. But like you said, when it comes to getting sun, know that some sun is better than no sun. But let’s say you get no sun. Don’t also not drink water that day. Not get up and walk around. Eat like crap. You know, eat right before you go to bed. Watch TV until late–you gotta do more than that.
RG:
Yeah. It’s super easy to be down on yourself. I mean for, for many reasons, but, like, you know, just today here, here in New Jersey, it’s calling for heavy rain all afternoon. The sun was not out at all today. It will not be out at all today. So yeah, it’s easy from that perspective to be like, all right, I’m just gonna do nothing today. I guess it’s a good day to do nothing. But then if it’s winter time and that happens four days in a row or whatever, you know, it’s it really gets to you. So and then again, being on your devices, there’s that whole mental aspect to going on social media, seeing, you know, pictures of some beautiful sunny place and you’re not there. So having something I know, like we’re just talking about glasses here and going back to that. But it is having something that you can at least feel good about. And making a little change is, is definitely, like you said, better than nothing. Uh, It’s effortless.
BR:
Right. And the other thing is, I want to reassure you that the sun is out. Just because you can’t see it. Uh, only so much of the UV rays get filtered. So, like, even when it’s cloudy, even when it’s, like, seems impossible, it’s still good to go outside. Actually, some of the best advice I got when we had our first kid was to take the baby outside, like for five minutes every day, no matter how cold it is. Like, that’s good for them. And we did that a lot with our daughter. And it’s just that she’s so resilient. And that I feel could be part of it. Because just like this idea of being cooped up and being inside, like, you know, they make rain gear, they make winter jackets, they make… Just get out, get out there. Like a little bit, I think it’s just you gotta kick yourself in the butt if you’re not going to do that. Of course you could buy infrared lamps and, you know, uh, sunrise and sunset, you know, mimicking room lighting is helpful. Andrew Huberman talks a lot about that. There was one other thing I was going to suggest that you said. I can’t think of it right now, but when it comes back to me…
RG:
So, I guess going back to that definition of blue light and then how it kind of connects to sunlight… What is the difference between… Because from what I understand, sunlight contains blue light, but blue light isn’t the same as sunlight?
BR:
So I’ll explain it like a layman because I am. I’m going to tell you, out of everything I’ve heard from all the people with PhDs after their name, here’s how I interpret it. Sure, there is a light spectrum, right? And it goes from red to blue. Basically one end’s far red and you got red and blue. Okay. So as you follow that spectrum in the sun, I mean, it’s white to red, I forget. But there’s a light spectrum now I sound, now I really sound dumb. But you’ll get where I’m going with this. There’s a light spectrum. So as your eye perceives the light. Light is light is light. Right.
So whether the light is coming from, uh, LCD screen or the light is coming from the sun, it’s on that spectrum that’s just calculated in nanometers. So they say blue light that comes from the sun, which is part of the sun’s light spectrum. So it is sunlight coming down in a blue spectrum, but it gets filtered by the ozone. And, you know, all the other stuff that happens, that 455th nanometer area is the spectrum that suppresses melatonin.
So the idea is if man is awake when the sun is up asleep and the sun is down and has been for the last 50,000 years or whatever, I’m just talking about modern humans. When the sun rises and your eyes are exposed to it, the blue light suppresses the melatonin so you can wake up. Your body produces all sorts of other fun chemicals and hormones, and you get going for the day. Then when the sun sets and that blue light leaves the eyes (in layman’s terms) now your brain says, okay, it’s time to start going to sleep. And so here’s the sunlight pushing down the melatonin all day because you’re out. Da da da da da. And then now it’s time to start going to sleep. So the sun though this is the part that people have brought up that I spent a lot of time talking to people about. Trying to understand it is that the sun produces like, I don’t know, a million, a billion, a trillion. It doesn’t matter way more blue light than your monitor produces like way more, way more, way more blue light than your monitor produces. Okay. But it’d be like saying, can your body handle like another pint of blood? Like, do you know, I don’t know the answer to that question, but the odds are probably not right. Like your body is capable of containing a predefined amount of chemicals to keep and and and liquids and fluids and things to keep it surviving. You can’t change that balance. You are biologically programmed to function a very specific way that we’ve never been able to figure out how it totally happened. Right? So specific. So look at blue light in the same manner. Is that like we are programmed to the sun, then yes, the sun could produce a billion, trillion, whatever trillion million more times blue light than our monitor. But is the amount from our monitor too much for our body?
And it’s the opinion of a lot of experts that it is that any artificial light… No matter where it comes from, no matter what spectrum it falls on, has no benefit, like there is no benefit to artificial light because we get all the light we need from the sun physically. I’m talking about now, of course there’s like like I said, red light therapy and there’s getting vitamin D from a tanning bed or whatever. But I’m talking about when it comes to like in our eyes, there’s no benefit from this light other than if, let’s say you work midnights and you need to manipulate your environment to wake up at 6:00 in the evening, which is very difficult to do. If you’ve ever worked midnights, it’s very easy to go back to sleeping normally. You can work midnights for 30 years. It takes like a couple of weeks and maybe a week and you’re like, okay, I’m just back to how I was supposed to… You don’t become nocturnal. So you’re working at midnight so you can manipulate your environment to mimic a sunrise in your room. Okay. When you wake up at 6 p.m., that could be really helpful. Then when you come home, let’s say, you know, it’s 6:00 in the morning, the sun is rising, blackout blinds. You mimic a sunset. And those that can manipulate your body into thinking sunrise, sunset. But how you have to look at light is there’s a spectrum that contains all colors in the world that the human can possibly perceive, right? And in that spectrum, in the blue light spectrum, there’s a very specific wavelength of that blue light spectrum that science knows suppresses your melatonin. That’s the sun’s light intending to do that. We’re doing that same thing. Essentially, when we stare at a computer screen after the sun sets.
RG:
Uh, it definitely makes sense. I mean, I know how I feel, personally, and I know that after, you know, being out in the sun for a full day, you know, you feel you feel great. And then if you sit in front of a computer screen all day, you feel like you need to get out.
BR:
Because it’s not nearly enough, right? Yeah. It’s not. Not only is it the screen not enough to mimic the sun to wake you up. The screen is also not a it’s not a replacement for the sun. So this idea of comparing the sun to your computer screen. It’s like you just can’t. It’s so hard to even explain how big of a deal the sun is. As to how we function as human beings.
RG:
So one of the other, other questions I had and I don’t know how this relates. It’s just like, I guess my curiosity… Is wearing sunglasses on a sunny day. I’ve heard both ends of the spectrum on that. Is that beneficial because the sun, it’s just so much you don’t need that much. You’re absorbing it through your body… It’s good for your eyes to take a rest? Or is it like I’ve heard, the other end of the spectrum is wearing sunglasses is not good because it doesn’t let your body recognize that you’re in the sun.
BR:
I heard a couple things. One, being out in the sun, the sun is absorbing through your skin. So you can look up at the sun and close your eyes and get a similar benefit as if you had your eyes open looking through sunglasses. Because even with your eyes closed, when you stare at the sun, you can see this. You know what I mean? So, like, a lot of people say when they go out and get red sun in the morning, there’s this idea like, go out, get 10, 15 minutes of red sun in the morning. A lot of people say, just stand there with your eyes closed and put your arms out. And just let it bask on you.
You can’t stare at the sun. It’s too bright. So when it comes to sunglasses, that’s really what it is you’re wearing them for. Yeah, you’re wearing them because the sun is just simply too bright to function as a human being when it’s right in your face. Are you not getting all of the benefits of the sun through your eyeballs that you could possibly get? Yeah, maybe. But you’re spending so much time outside. The sun is seeping through your skin. This idea that you’re going to trick your brain when you’re outside wearing sunglasses to think that it’s not sunny outside that light is. Unless you had it, like vacuum sealed on your face. That light is coming like light is more penetrating than water, even right? It can through the tiniest, smallest, littlest thing you’ve ever seen, light will find its way through. Um, but the other thing is, too, is people with light colored eyes are much more sensitive to the sun than with dark colored eyes. So if you get somebody with brown eyes not wearing sunglasses, that’s just because they’re perceiving that light differently than somebody with blue. It looks like you might have blue or hazel eyes, I can’t tell.
RG:
Uh, it’s like they’re green. Green or brown. Yeah.
BR:
Green or brown. Okay. Yeah. So you’re probably not super sensitive to the sun. You might fiend yourself not worrying. I do that all the time. I’ll be driving or just simply not wearing sunglasses, you know? Um, plus, you can burn your eyelids. It’s very thin skin. So if you’re out on the beach all day and you get sunburned, wearing sunglasses also prevents you from burning under your eyes or your eyelids. And you know that any area of the skin that is thin is going to burn really easy. Same thing with your nose too, right?
RG:
Yeah.
BR:
So wear sunglasses. I mean, yeah, wear sunglasses for sure, because if not, it’d be really hard to function. But also, the idea of closing your eyes and basking in the sun is totally appropriate. I think that that would be if you were laying in the sun on the beach. I would lay without my sunglasses on, eyes closed before I sit there with my eyes open and my sunglasses on
RG:
Yeah. Makes sense. And then, uh, that was kind of not really off topic, but just something I jotted down. Thought it was interesting. But in general, I was gonna ask who do you have using your product? Is there any gamers of note that have used your product or any doctors that have used your product, anyone that you would want to talk story about?
BR:
So, uh, several I mean, there’s a couple doctors that they couldn’t officially endorse us because they’re members of like the American Academy of Ophthalmology, people like that. But there’s one doctor that’s on YouTube, his name is Doctor Eye Health, and he was actually doing a video about the best blue light glasses. And at the end of one of the videos, he mentions this lens manufacturer that you can only get at an eye doctor’s office, happens to be the lens manufacturer that we know as well. And so we’re like, hey, like that lens you said was amazing… We actually use some similar technology, and let me explain it to you. And he was like, oh my gosh. So he made a video calling Gamer Advantage the best gaming glasses. We use a prescription doctor’s office quality lens he was familiar with.
So yeah, if you look up Doctor Eye Health on YouTube, he’s got a blog, he’s got a channel. He talks about everything. And he’s not saying we’re the only game in town either. He just didn’t know about us until I saw that video. We have 800 people in our partnership program. We’ve had big streamers who we didn’t know were going to wear them–wear them like Myth [Twitch] and Shiv [Twitch] and these guys. And then we’ve had other people where we’ve paid them to wear them, you know, which is my least favorite relationship. Like, you can pay anybody to say anything about your product in this community. And it’s kind of a bummer. Like our we’re really strict on – we need to be able to send them to you. You wear them and they help you. And then because that’s the only way you’re going to be able to, for lack of better terms, sell it to your audience. Like you have to be able to go to your community and be like, remember guys, how was sleeping? Like crap. I’m sleeping so much better now that I’m wearing Gamer Advantage, it’ll sell immediately. But if you’re just like, hey, I partnered with Gamer Advantage, use my code for 10% off blue light glasses… I hate it. So yeah, we’ve had I mean, there’s dozens every tier one org has touched or tried our glasses. There’s just so many expectations because we’re a brand in the space. Everybody wants a big fat check from us, and we’re competing for sponsorships with people like Chipotle and they just have some arbitrary budget through some marketing agency somewhere that’s like… Porsche did a deal with the FaZe clan… So, all I’m trying to do is say, okay, listen for $100 bucks and these glasses literally help me sleep better. I think they’ll help you sleep better, too. And if they don’t, I’ll just give you your money back. Like we just say 45 days, no questions asked. We’ll give you your money back. So we’ve had thousands of content creators wear our product. We still have… When you say big, like we have hundreds of creators that are over 500 viewers on Twitch or whatever, we definitely WillerZ [YouTube] is one of the biggest Tarkov streamers and Genji, okay, one of the most viewed female streamers, um, they both wear our glasses. We’ve had people like a Black Hokage [Twitch]. He was a guy that, like, I didn’t even know was wearing them. He’s just a customer. Like, that was pretty cool. Um, that’s. So that seems to happen all the time. So yeah. Definitely our fair share of people who have worn them and loved them.
RG:
That’s cool.
BR:
Uh, and our return rate is 1.5%. So that’s really the metric that drives us forward pretty strongly. That’s why we say like, all right, how about stop complaining and stop fighting me and stop trying to prove me wrong and prove why I don’t know what I’m talking about and tell me that I don’t know gaming and tell me that I don’t understand the industry.
Like, listen, I’ve been gaming longer than you. I hate saying it, but I’m old enough now to say it like I’ve been gaming for twice as long as you’ve been alive. Like I’ve been playing video games. I’m telling you that these glasses help me sleep better. You don’t have to try them if you don’t want to. But if you’re going to talk smack, how about buy them? And if they don’t work, I’ll give you your money back and I’ll pay for the shipping… Just just please try them. That’s the best. That’s been kind of my mantra since day one, because I don’t know how else to do it. I know just paying and running like BS, corporate Facebook ads and that kind of stuff. We’ve tried it. It just never gets the right message across.
RG:
I mean, that’s for me like investing money in in something – it’s it says a lot because I’m obviously on a budget. And for example, one of the podcasts I listen to on Rogan was that Paul Stamets guy who was like the crazy mushroom farmer. But like, his podcast changed my perspective perception. I was like, hey, I want to try his supplements… You know, lion’s mane supplement or whatever. And, you know, even if it is just in my head, I feel like I enjoy the supplements that he has. But again, that it took me, you know, a three hour podcast and then thinking about it and then be like, all right, I’ll give it a try to, to really like get my, my sale, you know, so I, I have to imagine that for everyone else it’s probably similar…
BR:
Oh yeah. Especially $20 on Amazon. Yeah. That’s what we’re up against. It’s like, why can I do it for $20 on Amazon? I’m like, no, it’s not the same thing. Yeah, we’re doing it. First of all we do prescriptions. So we’re regulated by the FDA. We have to be HIPAA compliant. Those glasses you’re buying on Amazon are imported as novelties. They’re lenses glued in… You get hit in the face with a baseball or something… I have to follow certain safety guidelines because I can put prescriptions in them. You mentioned the melatonin or placebo effect, which is a great Harvard article about that. Where basically, there is nothing wrong with purchasing a product that gives you a placebo effect. Like that’s a good thing. And that they said that in that melatonin podcast I was listening to where they said, if you walk into your doctor and said, hey, I’m taking 30mg of melatonin, which you need like point zero or point two milligrams, I guess, or something, but by the time you take, it takes like so long to get through your body that you don’t really get much of what you’re taking. But let’s say you say I take ten milligrams of melatonin every night, and I’ve been sleeping really well and I feel better and look at my blood sugar has gotten better. A doctor is never going to say it will stop taking that, you know what I mean? So if you buy lion’s mane and it turns you into a healthier person because you feel more empowered and you feel healthier, that’s a real thing. Like the placebo effect can change. Yeah, change you physically. So that’s positive. I think putting on the glasses definitely is a reminder, for me at least, to be a little bit more conscious of some of the decisions I make throughout the day, like when I when I get into my setup and I like put my glasses on, I’m like, all right, if I’m doing this, like I’m making a conscious effort to be a little bit healthier. So then they’re just kind of they’re reminding me, okay, what am I going to eat today? Well, you’re wearing the glasses. Are you really gonna eat like crap too? Sometimes you say yes. You’re like, hey, I worked out today and I haven’t had McDonald’s in a long time. I’m getting McDonald’s. I posted the other day for my mental health today, I put Cool Ranch Doritos on my peanut butter and jelly. And all I was trying to say is just like it every now and then. It’s okay as long as you’re doing some of this other stuff.
RG:
I think that’s why I enjoy, you know, listening to a lot of health discussion, especially long form podcasts and things like that. But yeah, where they lose me is just like the one guy I follow. I had a meniscus injury on my knee and it was the knee over toes guy. And I’m like, oh, he’s a great source of information. But the dude doesn’t eat carbs. He literally is like the guy from Step Brothers. Like, I haven’t had a carb in however many years. And it’s like, yeah, I’m not going to do that. Like, I love pizza. I’m gonna eat pizza and that’s that. I think everyone can as long as you have some, you know, thought to it… You’re in a good space. That’s like the internet effect of people sometimes where they just go, I mean, that dude specifically knees over toes guy’s just an insane, like, healthy dude. And he’s just taking his ideas to the next level. But I feel like also in general, the internet has tried to produce people that are extreme and I feel like people just need to know that you don’t need to be extreme… Do things whether it’s health or whatever it is like if it’s gaming, you know, if you if you love gaming, you don’t need to game for the entire day… If you love it. Sure. And if that’s making you money or whatever do it. But you know, it’s not necessary…
I guess on that same conversation. Do you, do you have a sense of like, would these glasses keep you more focused and alert during a gaming session or during work or anything like that?
BR:
So we even… One of our lenses is named Focus. And to not complicate things, sometimes we just say, hey wear are these glasses? And they can make you a better gamer. And it’s like, wow, that’s a stretch. How is that possible? And it’s like, okay, a couple things. So at the really basic level, when you wear glasses, you blink more often, just uh, it’s just a product of the lens being in front of your eye. Blinking more often keeps your eye more hydrated, your eye hydrated, your eye is less dry eye you’ll get. Plus, a lot of gamers have fans and stuff in their rooms. Yeah, so wearing glasses would also prevent direct contact with the air from fans and air drying it out. Now, I know that even sounds like a stretch, right? But let’s go back to sleep… If you sleep better 100%, there is improvement in some of the most important metrics. And the one I like to focus on is cognition. So reaction time is this how I explain it? Layman’s terms. Reaction time. The thing caffeine might be able to improve speed right is how fast you can turn left or right. Cognition is the quality of the decision. So yeah, you turn left faster. But you were supposed to go right now you’re dead, right? So when we look at quality of sleep, what we find is better quality gameplay, better decision making. Like, yeah, you might be able to sleep like crap, slam a monster be wired out of your mind, and if you’re just button mashing or doing something like playing Grand Theft Auto Roleplay or something, yeah, that could be a lot of fun. But when it comes to some of these competitive gamers, I mean, you can look at it from every angle, but the easiest way is to look at when the Boston Red Sox won the World Series. Go back and listen to some of the interviews with Alex Cora where he’s like, well, we had these sleep coaches here that could literally like, you might say that, okay, let me give you a real quick hypothetical. You’re in game seven of the World Series. It’s the night before you tell everybody, go to bed, get a good night’s rest. You’re two first starting pitchers. One guy stays in his hotel room all night, playing video games. The other guy goes out, has a few beers, and then goes to bed. You’re like, the guy with alcohol shouldn’t be the starting pitcher. It’s got to be the guy who just hung out and played video games all night, right? Like if you drank, like, there’s no way. But this guy stayed up till, like, one in the morning, and this guy got back at, like, ten and drank a bunch of water and, like, went to bed at the right time. And so now you got. So when you do the actual cognition test, you’re like, yeah, he might have drank last night, but because he did all these other things to offset it and still got a good night’s rest, like he’s the better pitcher where you play video games, and that had a detrimental impact on your quality of sleep. And while you might wake up and still feel like the best pitcher on the team, your cognition is actually lower than we’d like to see. And you know, baseball is the best sport for that because it’s like all science now. Yeah, everything is data in baseball. So they’ll put these players through these like brain exercises to figure out, like, are you capable of pitching in the bottom of the ninth, like, are you or do you have the mental capacity? And I think we have to look at it as the same way of gaming. You’re not sleeping well. There’s no way you could ever have, like, the mental capacity to be a great, great gamer.
RG:
Yeah. No. And I mean, it does just overcoming any, any feat, you know having the drive to do that uh, takes, takes, you know, some, some really, improved mental cognition and looking at something and saying I don’t even if it is a game that’s supposed to be fun. I’m sure there are, um, situations that these professional esports players get in and they’re just like I don’t want to do this, but I’m in a tournament or I have to train or whatever. Yeah, I think that’s the most telling area of are you functioning properly? Is your brain functioning properly? If you can overcome a challenge like that when it’s tough or whatever…
BR:
The industry has done a horrible job. They dumped, you know, private equity and venture capitalists, they come in and pump a bunch of money into these orgs, and they just make them into content houses. In the beginning of competitive gaming, nobody gave a flying F about the health and wellness, mentally and physically of these gamers who were kids. And it’s still not that great today. Look at the the average professional esports athlete, you could very easily make millions and millions, if not tens of millions of dollars, retiring at 27. You know, like Tom Brady played, I mean, he played in the NFL for like 30 years. And it’s like if you can play 25 years of professional football and get hit over and over and work out every single day and win seven Super Bowls and do all this crazy stuff, like there’s just no way you shouldn’t be able to do that playing video games. Like, why? How is it possible that gaming is so stressful that you can’t even do it professionally, for more than maybe like five years? And I think it’s because when you don’t sleep well and then you spend your time in an environment that’s so social media driven, mentally it is almost more challenging than it is physically. And you just get yourself in a rut. We see it with xQc, one of the biggest streamers in the world. You can just see it in people’s faces. You’re like, damn, that person is like there’s something missing. They’re not a good spot right now, and a lot of it goes back to no social life, not sleeping well, not eating well. You know, back when Covid did a real number on a lot of people for sure.
RG:
And it is like, you know, it’s a blessing for some, for a lot of people in the gaming realm where you’re like, all right, this person just bought a house with his, you know, he just got sponsored or whatever. He’s on a team. You know, he just bought himself a house and his family a house, and now he’s a professional. Like you can’t deny. That’s awesome. He’s doing what he loves. But then on the other end, we’re still in that kind of, wild West of, like, you don’t really know what the end game is. I mean, no pun intended, but the end end strategy is for these gamers now, because just five, ten years ago, we never thought there would be a professional gamer, that could make money. And now that that’s a thing, it’s like, all right, what is the strategy? Is it going to be like football where you just hope for the best and, you know, like you hope to get a couple good years and hopefully you don’t blow your money or is it going to be a longevity thing? Can it be a longevity thing… It’s definitely super interesting. And just like, you know, vaping versus smoking, you know, we really don’t know what’s going to happen with these professional esports players.
BR:
We don’t know what long term exposure to this light that’s disrupting… It could be like a really sad story 20 years from now that I’m not really interested in being a part of. Here’s a couple things I do know for certain. Number one, nearsightedness in children has risen. Myopia is on the rise, and they’re talking a lot of it having to do with kids being introduced to digital devices when they’re younger, their arms are shorter, they hold devices closer to their face, and so they develop nearsightedness. That’s there’s a lot of articles on that. The second thing I know is that device manufacturers for about the last ten years, have been putting blue light filters and blue light features in their devices. Apple calls it night shift. They might not call it that anymore. Um, blue shield, blue defense, you name it, you buy it, you buy a monitor phone… You can remove the blue light. Now, if blue light wasn’t a thing, why would all these device companies invest so much money into filters and programs that remove blue light from your device? Like, why would they insist to make the screen look crappier? Because it’s good for you. Like they know or must be. I think they know. But I look at it like the McDonald’s hot coffee thing. If every device manufacturer puts on their devices a blue light filter of some type, then when the first mom sues Apple because her kids spent too much time on an iPad and has slept so poorly that he’s now developed some type of debilitating condition, Apple is going to say we’ve had blue light filtering on our devices for 15 years. You elected not to use them. No different than now. McDonald’s coffee cups have to say caution hot like no duh, right? But I just find it so crazy that every. Have you ever seen an Apple commercial highlighting Night Shift? Ever?
RG:
No.
BR:
And I think the reason is because they can’t say it does anything.
RG:
Yeah, that’s a good point.
BR:
They don’t have any data that just shutting the blue light off on your phone…
RG:
But they have an idea.
BR:
But they have an idea. Exactly. They know it’s something, but they’re not… They’re doing the best they can with the information they have to protect themselves.
RG:
And it’s about liability obviously.
BR:
Yeah, that’s I think it is, because why else would you do it? Would you ever turn the blue light filter off on your TV?
RG:
Again, I didn’t even know that was an option.
BR:
Well and why would you though? Why watch TV? They just shut the TV. When you get done with this call… Go play Fortnite, but turn the blue light filter on on your device on your monitor and go watch what it’s like to play… Nobody is shutting the blue light. Stop it… like this is not happening. Crazy people always say to me, well, I can just download f.lux or use Night Shift on my phone. I’m like, okay, we got two devices covered now they look like crap or our glasses don’t change. They don’t change any color. Yeah. What about the… I literally have like four govee lights in here right now. And they’re all set to like a light blue color.
RG:
Yeah.
BR:
Is your car your dashboard or your car? The lights behind your head. It’s like an endless amount.
RG:
Well, um, this was honestly so, so cool. I mean, this is a subject I was really interesting, and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to speak today. And one of the reasons I pursued this interview. I usually like to at least squeeze this in or end the interview on, you know, just purely about gaming in general. But what is, uh, you know, your maybe favorite game of all time? And then what’s something that you’re, like, most stoked to play recently?
BR:
Um, okay, favorite game of all time is I have a few, but I’m going to say Red Dead Redemption 2. It was the closest I’ve ever been to a character. I cried at the end. I listened to the soundtrack in my car for like months afterwards. Like, I just felt like it was so awesome. I found a rejuvenation for Halo recently, so. Okay, Halo Infinite and Guardians, I’ve been like swapping back and forth between the two. Um, I’d say what I’m most stoked for… And it’s stupid because it’s so far away from Grand Theft Auto 6. Like, I just can’t wait.
RG:
Yeah.
BR:
And then they’ve already, like, teased another Red Dead Redemption after Grand Theft Auto six. So I think it’s just crazy that I’m, like, excited for games that might not come out until I’m 40. Yeah, like when games were coming out. They were coming out like next month. Now they’re teasing games and they’re like, I mean Grand Theft Auto six is 2025. And if it’s a holiday of 25, you might as well have just said 26.
RG:
And it probably will be.
BR:
I’m excited for that. But I’ve been playing a lot of Halo. I’m having a ton of fun playing Halo for no reason. A Halo where it all started for me. I mean, yeah, online multiplayer. So it’s so fun that it’s capped. So true to its origin, I love it.
RG:
And are you just playing on Xbox or what is it?
BR:
Yeah, I play on Xbox, I have PC. Um, on PC, I would play like play Grand Theft Auto on PC, play Apex a little bit on PC. All my friends are old. Like I said, you know, being in our late 30s. So all my friends have Xboxes. And I found it’s easier to convince a friend who doesn’t game to buy an Xbox than it is to buy a gaming PC. Yeah, so I do luckily have a pretty sweet setup, and every now and then I stream for the brand and stuff like that. Um, but I find myself mostly playing Xbox with my other late 30s friends. But nightly, daily. And one of the guys in our group just turned 50. Okay. You would if you were on the chat with him. This is one of the guys you’d have no clue that he’s one of the dudes. And we play almost every night. Like after my kids go to bed like my wife, her and I hang out for a minute. She likes to go to bed a little earlier than me, and I get like a solid 90 minutes almost every single night to game.
RG:
So yeah, it’s fun. And I mean that the aspect of chatting with your friends and just like, I don’t know, like every so often you just have like a belly laugh, you know… It’s funny, you know. Again, I’ve been in and out of gaming my whole life. I’m 28, so Game Boy Advance, PS2, Gamecube. Then we got PS3 and now I’m on the Nintendo Switch.
BR:
Oh, I remember I was gonna say to you before… Ring Fit for the Switch. Yeah. If you can’t get outside in the winter, if you can’t get out, it’s like a Pilates ring, basically. But you put your Joy-Con… And it’s really cool. You run and then you, like, use it like a bow and arrow and like, shoot stuff. And it’s an exercise program. Do an hour of ring fit… It’ll kick your ass. But it’s so much fun on the Nintendo Switch. Oh, I brought that up again because that’s what I was thinking of earlier.
RG:
No, I have to check that out. That’s that’s sweet. That’s one thing I haven’t done with my Switch yet is because I knowi t was like Wii Sports was like the biggest thing. Bowling. You know, we would go over to my friend’s house and bowl. But yeah, that’s being in and out of gaming for so long. It’s like, it feels like every time I’m getting over gaming. I guess I come back and I’m like, wait, this is actually so fun.
BR:
Yeah, I know it is. You don’t ever leave it.
RG:
Yeah, but I really appreciate you getting on this call. I won’t take up any more of your time today. Thank you.
BR:
All right. Thank you. Ryan. Appreciate it.
Concluding the LeagueFeed Interview with Bryan Reedy of Gamer Advantage Blue Light Glasses
Bryan Reedy was a hell of a nice guy, who happens to be into health, wellness, fitness–as much as he is into gaming. On top of that, he’s got a company that seems to be doing business in an ethical way that will hopefully help lots of professional and amateur gamers and remote workers to achieve new levels of physical and mental wellness.
Thanks for reading and make sure to keep following along for more interviews like this one, and of course for the normal League of Legends and PC Gaming coverage from Leaguefeed.net!
