DTNS Weekend - The Science Behind the App That Beats Jet Lag

[music] Welcome to the Daily Tech News Show weekend edition. Gratefully provided to you and thanks for your support of this show. We go into topics a little indepth and I just got back from a lot of travel across a lot of time zones. Uh, and I am not jet-lagged even though I'm just more than 24 hours after having traveled to Japan from Japal back from Japan. And it's thanks uh in large part to Dr. Nikki uh and her recommendation of the Timeshifter app. Uh so I thought why don't we sit down with Dr. Nikki and talk about this app uh and and figure out why it might work. Is it just my imagination? Did I hypnotize myself into not having jet lag? Is there science behind it? >> I just talked you through it. Really? >> Where did you hear about this? Because you recommended it to me and then I mentioned it to Eileen and she's like, "Oh, I have a friend uh who lives in Canada and she has to travel to China because she has family there all the time." Uh and she swears by it. She's like, "I never get jet lag because I use time shifter." >> Yeah. So back in 2023, I had a conference in Australia and it was my first trip to Australia and I needed to like the day after I got there speak at the conference. So I was like I need to optimize as much as possible so I don't get jet lag. And I looked up like all the sometimes I you know for a researcher sometimes I research a little too much but I did a deep dive. I think it was probably on Reddit or something but it was like yeah wear the compression socks do the mask blah blah blah and a lot of people recommended this app over and over. So, I was like, it can't hurt, you know, it's just an app. And uh you can get the first free the first few uses for free, which is how you get me is to make me not pay for the app. [laughter] I'm so cheap. >> Well, yeah. And it worked super well. And so, I've just recommended to everyone after that. >> You get one trip, round trip for free, then you have to pay for it >> per email. >> And so, Well, yeah, exactly. Uh, as long as they don't know it's new, you can get a second one for free. Um, and I saw that and I was like, you know what? I'm not going to use it for Europe. I'll just I'll just look at what they say to do and kind of follow it. And I did that and maybe it helped a little, but I was pretty I was still I still had jet lag. >> I went to Japan, which is much farther much much bigger time zone shift. And I was like, "All right, I'm going to burn my free one on this email address. I'm going to try it out. I'm going to see how it works." Uh, and I did. And I wasn't able to follow it 100%. >> But there's so much you can do. >> Mostly worked. >> Like it's also relatively easy to follow. It's not making you do back flips or anything. >> Yeah. And in fact, I have some tips on which parts to pay the most attention to. >> Uh based on my own experience. Uh but let's actually do our due diligence here. you looked into this app to find out like is just is this just one of those things where because the app is telling you to do certain things you you you know convince yourself you don't have jet lag or is there actual is there actually something behind it? What did you find out? >> Yeah. And and another reason why I kind of stuck with this is I travel to Europe a lot to visit my family and the the sanity that you gain by not having a week of jet lag is so it's such a big difference that it's like important. But yeah, so I I looked into this and like is it an AI? Is it whatever? So, first I kind of did some digging. The founder is Dr. Steven Lachley and I looked at his Google Scholar page and he is a very active researcher in sleep science and has done a lot of work. Um, a lot of this app focuses on light uh and circadium rhythm and he has a lot of like foundational work in that field. So this is not just like a guy who started a startup like he's >> he didn't just call himself doctor. He's literally >> a huge deal [laughter] >> one of the foremost research scientists in the field. It sounds like >> he's a huge it seems like he's a huge deal. You know I I can't speak to his character. I just looked at his page but um and he initially developed this to assist astronauts on their flight to the ISS and help them synchronize with the crew's sleep schedule abroad. And >> now I will say that's a nice gimmick. Like makes it nice to sell an app, but it looks like they're also still using this for NASA missions. So >> I I I feel like that's a pretty good confidence. You know, >> that's an even more complicated system to deal with because you're not just going to a new time zone. You're >> doss. You don't have a time zone anymore. You're just making up a time zone when you're >> outside of Earth. I mean, that's way more complicated than Japan. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um, but basically the main component of this app is just how much timed light exposure do you need to shift your circadian clock. So planning when you're going to see light, like literally with your eyeballs, whether that's the sun or artificial light, uh, specifically blue light or or if you've ever done light therapy, just like really bright light into your face or avoid light. So either be in the dark or like Tom on DTNS, wear two pairs of sunglasses or use red light in a dark room. And also it can give you suggestions of when to add in caffeine to help you out or melatonin to slow you down. So this is it. Another thing about this app, it's so simple. It's >> you just one interface. I love that about an app. It's it's beautiful also and extremely simple. >> There's basically three things to keep track of. Caffeine, which by the way, if you can tell it like I don't use caffeine and it'll be like okay great, then we won't give you the caffeine advice. um caffeine, sleep, and light exposure. And the melatonin comes in as part of this the sleep category. >> Yeah. And you mentioned like when your flight takes off and you give it like the flight information and then how it'll calculate all that for you and when you need to do each step. Basically, >> the the one criticism I will have of it is it doesn't yet do a good job taking into account reality. Like you know when it it like knows when your flight is and it's like great start sleeping the minute you get on the flight. I'm like, "That's not going to happen. No one's going to go to sleep." Like, maybe a few people can can get away with that. I have actually known a few people who've been able to get away with that, but most people won't. Or like, >> you got the mindset, >> you know, stay in the dark for the this hour this morning. I'm like, "No, I have to like walk my dog, right?" Yeah. Or you're driving to the airport. So, um they they are very forgiving in the instructions of saying like if you can't do exactly this, do as much as you can. >> Drive with your eyes closed. [laughter] >> Yeah. Cuz the more Yeah. I don't think they say that. But the, you know, if you're driving with sunglasses on, you're still safely driving, but you're at least limiting your exposure. So, they're you know, they understand that you won't be able to do as much, but the more you do, the better it gets. And it really does uh hinge on the light exposure. I can almost feel it when I'm going through it. Like, yeah, this is helping. Like stepping out into the sunlight really is helping. Why >> is light so important for the circadian rhythm, which is what we're trying to change? Because your circadian rhythm tells your body like, "Oh, it's morning. Oh, it's night." And you're trying to change that. Why does light change that? >> So, this is also once again biology 101. So, I we teach this in the neuroscience class. So, I am well verssed in. Yay. I get to do my my job on DTNS. So, okay, our eyeballs are light sensors for our brain. Um, in the retina, we have certain cells that can detect light uh at a very specific wavelength, which is 480 nanometers on the light spectrum. Tom, what color is 480 nanometers if you had to take a guess? >> Blue. >> Yeah, it's blue. That's the whole blue light phone thing comes from. >> I didn't know, but I guessed if blue is the one we have to try to like avoid when we're in the dark, then that must be the blue one. Okay. educated guess. >> So these cells can detect basically blue wavelength and these are the cells responsible uh for telling you whether it's day or night and then they send this information to a central area of the brain and this area will regulate time throughout the rest of the body. So in blind people this doesn't work and they have difficulties with circadian rhythm. >> Yeah, that makes sense because they're not getting that signal. >> There you go. So this uh small area that regulates your whole body is in the hypothalamus. That's important because the hypothalamus is kind of the regulator for a lot of things in the body and it's called the super kaismatic nucleus but CN for short. It's a cool name. It always makes me think of like Superman. >> Yeah, [laughter] I am super kaismatic. >> But it just means above the the crossing of Yeah. Um but all of our cells also on top of this receive signals from certain genes that we're going to call clock genes. They have other names but that's fine. And these all know that there is an internal clock a length of our internal clock that is somewhere between 23 and 25 hours. So without seeing light like if you're blind you will have a circadian rhythm but it actually will delay itself over time and um they've done tests with this where they just put people in a cave for like a year and then they they think that there's been less days at labs than there have and they're basically think daytime is night time. They have this cycle that continues 23 25 hours, but it's not at the right daytime. And that's how the eyes help coordinate that. >> I was reading on the time shifter site itself that the difference can account for people being morning people or night people because it's when your when your circadian rhythm resets, you know, affects whether you naturally like to get up or naturally like to stay up. >> Which one are you, by the way? I grew up being a night person, but somehow shifted to morning person. So I I I've been a morning person since for the past 20 years now. >> Yeah. I've always been morning. I mean, you know, less when you're a teenager, but nowadays 6 a.m. is the, you know, plus I'm a bird watcher, so I got to be >> Oh, yeah. You got to get up early then [laughter] >> with the worms and all that. Okay. But anyway, so we've got our rhythm and the the SCN is going to take this information from your eyes and from these genes and se send the signal all throughout the rest of your body. And this is why it's important it's in the hypothalamus because that is where all of your hormones get dumped into the bloodstream and then tell everything else. And I mean literally almost every organ uses a circadian rhythm. So this includes things like core body temperature, right? This gets lower when you're asleep. Hunger, that's why you're hungry when you wake up. um alertness, being able to be awake in the morning or being sleepy and all kinds of other functions. Even your heart has its own circadian rhythm. >> And so without this kind of synchronization, all of your body functions might stay on this 24-hour cycle but be a little bit out of sync. And basically that's jet lag. >> So >> yeah, >> basically your internal circadian rhythm doesn't match the external light cycle and then all your organs get a bit confused and sleepy. >> Yeah. Yeah. And that causes that makes a lot of sense especially because if you're let's say you're a person with a 23-hour cycle the SCN the super kayazmatic nucleus nucleus is occasionally going like we need to reset your we need to move your minute hand a little you're you're a little off >> it's the leap year of the brain >> and then your heart and your lungs and your all the rest of you is looking at all of that and and saying oh it's time to time to relax time to go to sleep time to lower the body temperature time to raise the the body temperature. Um, we talked about the fact that caffeine is part of what time shifter uh tells you to do or not to do. In fact, I was surprised that it actually tells you like, no, keep taking caffeine. Not in great amounts, [laughter] but you know, for the for maybe six or seven hours, you need to regularly be getting a little bit of caffeine. Um, I imagine somebody's like, "Yeah, why not just do that? Why not wait? You get up in the morning when you're at the new time zone and you just chug some coffee. Yeah, >> why not do that? >> So, biologically, coffee can keep you awake. And as you've drank coffee, you kind of know the feeling like you're awake, but you're not quite all the way there. And that's because it's not as helpful as light for regulating and shifting your circadian rhythm. It'll wake you up or it'll keep you from feeling sleepy, but it can't help really shift that. >> The SCN isn't paying attention to your caffeine is basically, >> no, not as much. And that's because caffeine works in a bit of a different way. Um, it acts as a blocker. So you have a certain receptor in your brain cell synapses where you once your cells get tired they release a chemical called adenazine and this builds up to a certain amount and when it's at a certain amount your body's like oh I'm sleepy basically >> okay >> caffeine blocks the cells from receiving that chemical. So it still builds up it just doesn't go into the receptor because the caffeine's there instead. So it just like closes the door on a denazine. It's like you're not here [laughter] and and just like it's still accumulating but it's like not there. Right. >> Is that why you have a coffee crash? Cuz you have so much adenosine but >> so the coffee eventually wears off and the adenosine then connects to all the receptor and it's like bam go [laughter] to bed. >> Y >> [snorts] >> um and so this works for a while and like you said after a while it crashes and that's because caffeine has a half-life. It's a molecule that degrades eventually. So, the quote from the Time Shifter website is if you have 100 milligrams of caffeine at 10:00 a.m., that's like two cups of coffee, you still maybe have 50 milligrams in your system at 3 p.m., 25 ms at 8:00 p.m., and maybe 12 at 10 p.m., which is enough to disrupt your sleep that night. >> So, you can use it if you're trying to stay up later or so on. Um, but, you know, eventually it does go away. So, that's kind of the biology of coffee. >> And I think I I I said this on a live stream earlier this week. Uh even if you're like the kind of person who's like, "No, I can drink caffe coffee and go right to sleep, the quality of your sleep won't be the same, even if you can sleep, right?" >> Yeah. And it depends on the person because people with, for example, dopamine disorder actually aren't affected by this, but we don't know why. Like people with ADHD, caffeine actually does make them sleepy, but it's but we don't know why. [laughter] >> But we can't get into that right now. >> Yeah. But it's it's it's also unexpected behavior. So it's it's I I guess what I'm trying to say is like sure maybe you drink coffee and can go right to sleep and maybe you can do that on time shifter and it's fine. You can try it and see >> but it's probably going to affect you in some way. So what this is saying is like if you really want to be sure that it's not affecting you >> take it at this time. Don't take it at this time. >> Time shifter is just trying to optimize everything you can do to help yourself >> and it's not even doing anything. It's just saying like here's what I recommend like do this it might help and here just lining what do you call that expression like aligning all the stars. [laughter] >> Yeah the stars are in alignment that kind of thing. Yeah. >> The the other thing that I have used to help with jet lag and it really has helped me u because my doctor recommended it was melatonin and my doctor said uh take it in the evening you know when you're about to go to sleep for the first 3 days after you're in the new time zone. Um, and it won't cure your jet lag, but it will help you reset your body's expectation because your body generates melatonin. Like, how does that track with what they're saying, what the science says here? >> So, similarly to caffeine, it's not as helpful as light, but melatonin is a hormone, so it can act on the scen. >> And basically, your body would normally when you're getting sleepy dump out a bunch of melatonin into your bloodstream, and then it basically lets your brain know to start going to sleep. If you take it a bit earlier than you usually would, >> it's you're just faking that response basically. >> And the same if you take it a bit later, like your body already put some out and now you're adding a bit more to make you sleepy later. So, you're supplementing your body's own production and helping to recalibrate this clock, which is which is helpful. I will make a note that long-term melatonin use has not been studied. So, just be careful with that. >> Yeah, [snorts] that that's a good point. Um I my doctor never said keep taking it. Uh if if we were talking about like I'm having trouble sleeping, she recommended something else. >> She didn't she didn't say take melatonin for that. She was like melatonin's good for 3 days on a trip. We don't know uh you know what's after that. But but for a small amount of use, she felt it was safe. >> Uh and I didn't realize that actually the SCN sees that as a signal of like oh melatonin's in the system. So yeah. >> Okay. So you have this app that was developed by somebody who has studied and even helped shape uh the science around this and is saying uh uh here's here's when you should get light, here's when you should avoid light, here's when the light should be bright, here's when you can have caffeine and probably should have caffeine. Here's when you need to stop melatonin right before you go to bed so that it mimics the natural body release that you would have if you were normally sleepy. Mhm. >> I know all of that and I'm still surprised how well this worked. Why does this work so well? >> I think the reason it works so well is because it's based on really wellstudied patterns. We know a lot about sleep and we've been studying sleep for decades and we know how the circadian rhythm works really really well. Uh I mean we've known this since like before maybe the 20s and so just like taking all that making it into a formula that again is generic for the general population. there's only so much you can do and also making it so simple for you to follow. Like I get yes, you can follow every instruction, but it just sends you a little alert that's like, hey, put some sunglasses on. And it it also relieves this kind of um mental burden also like I don't have to think about this. This is going to help me, you know, with my jet leg. And so it takes that hard science and makes it really digestible and really easy to follow and basically eases you into that shift. Um also, I don't know if you mentioned this, it makes you start a few days before your flight. Yes. >> Um, and it'll you'll go to bed an hour earlier, 2 days before, and then two hours earlier. And that's also that kind of gradual shift is really helpful for your brain. Um, it's your brain's way better at gradual shifts than very quick shifts which give you jet lag. >> Yeah. I I think uh I focused the most on the light because I I I I could I read that that was the most important and I could feel that it was the most important. Um, but I did try to shift the the awake times. In fact, the day of my departure, my departure was like at 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon on the way back from Japan. It told me to get up at 4:00 a.m. And I was like, I don't know, buddy. Like, like, is this for real? For real? It's like, get up at 4:00 a.m. and see bright light. And I'm like, how am I going to do that? How am I going to get first of all, do I want to get up at 4:00 a.m.? Like, and then I looked at it. And I'm like, well, it's having me sleep twice >> because I'm flying, you know, for 12 hours. So, uh, I'm getting up at 4:00 a.m., then I'm sleeping on the plane and then I'm sleeping that night. So, I'm like, "All right, it this might help me sleep on the plane." Seeing the bright light at 4:00 a.m. when the sun wasn't up, uh, and also when you have a wife that isn't doing this and doesn't want to be woken up, uh, that was tricky. I ended up going into the bathroom, closing the door, and it had a really bright overhead light. >> Yeah. >> So, I did that until the sun came up. Then, I went like a crazy person and hid behind the blackout curtains on the other side of the window so that I was getting the full sunlight on me, but it wasn't going into the rest of the room. >> Uh, and I felt silly. I felt ridiculous especially when I'm sitting in the bathroom just you know like I'm not sitting on the toilet but but still I pulled a chair in there. I'm like I'm hiding in the bathroom. I'm hiding behind the curtains. >> I I came back at 11:00 a.m. yesterday and right now I don't feel like I have jet lag at all. >> And it's such a good feeling. Yeah. >> It's such a good feeling. >> I I have like given my life over to the app. Like even sometimes if I'm doing like a 2 three hour shift if I'm just doing it US time zones I'll do it because I get so affected by bad sleep and it's usually for work and I need to get up in the morning and like give a talk or something >> and I'll be like yeah I'll I'll go to bed you know 2 hours early the night before and and it it really helped has helped me and I know we're doing so much free advertisement for this app but yeah we're not paid it makes sense like it's very simple and logical and yeah we could do it on paper on our own but like the app just tells you what to do and it's also free so like Yeah, you you could probably get some kind of large language model to simulate something like this and it probably would come close. >> Use a lot more electricity though. >> Done. Well, there's that too, right? Um, this is done by the science. Uh, and it makes it easy. I think that that makes it worth paying for is like I'm going to tell you when I'm leaving, when I normally sleep, whether I drink coffee or not, whether I'm cool taking melatonin or not, and then you're going to make a graph >> and it's just going to tell you like during these times do this. During these times, don't do this. There are times when it doesn't matter what you do, you know, and you can you're free to do whatever you want. Uh, and it will also give you close-ups on that. So like when you you can look at the whole day or even the whole trip or you can go zoom in on like what's happening right now. But yeah, the notifications are the best. It's like in 15 minutes stop drink stop taking caffeine >> which is a big reminder for me cuz I will not necessarily drink coffee in the afternoon but I might have chocolate or something like that. >> Oh good point. Yeah. I also saw and I don't know I haven't tried this but I saw that they have a patent while I was going through the the publications for they have a patent to make the notification show up on your smartwatch. I don't know if it's in place yet. >> Um, but uh you get that little notification like on the watch face. >> Yeah. No, I got a I got a uh a watch notification on Apple Watch. But isn't that just the I don't know if that's the patent. >> I think you might be able to install like the app into your watch somehow. Well, I don't know if I'm like blowing their cover, but it's a it's [laughter] a public patent. I don't know. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> It's a patent for the watch face specifically. So, I don't know. >> I see. It's probably for the display. Yeah. Cuz a patent a patent wouldn't be necessary to just push notifications. That's a function of of the operating system. But I love snooping on people's >> patents. Yeah. Yeah. In the way it displays them. They might have a patent on the way you can display the graph uh on your smartwatch. >> I think it was something like that. I'm going to Europe in a month and I will 100% be using this and not have to think about anything. And I worry I'm going to a marriage a wedding right after and I won't hopefully won't be jetlined. >> Yeah. Uh the the other thing to note is like when you're doing the bright light, as I mentioned earlier, it didn't have to be the sun. It just has to be bright light. Sun's better, >> but any bright light helps. >> It's that blue wavelength really. >> And when you're trying to be in the dark, like this morning. So this morning on my recovery day, cuz it's a few days before, a few days after, uh, it said, "Don't look at the light from 6:00 a.m. Get up. Get up at 6:00 a.m., but don't look at the light. Then at 7:00 a.m. you need bright light." [laughter] >> And I'm like, "Okay, at this point, I trust this thing. It sounds crazy." >> Whatever you say. So, at 6:00 a.m., from 6:00 to 6:30, I was just in the bed in the dark, uh, you know, doing okay, uh, listening to an audio book. Then at 6:30, I had to take the dog out cuz the dog isn't using time shifter. Uh, and so I'm like outside with my sunglasses on and like trying to be in the bushes where it's dark and like it helps. It still helps even if you can't be 100% dark, making the effort to like just just wear some wraparound sunglasses. I think >> when you think about it biologically, you're just reducing that stimulus input into those receptors in your eyes. So, and it's telling you, >> yeah, this is weaker light, so it must not be the middle of the day. And and I think I mentioned this earlier, but during the during the middle of the day, I started to feel a little like, yeah, I'm a little tired. I just walked outside into the bright sunlight, and it kind of revived me. It like star directly at the sun. >> Stare directly at the sun. You're right. Good point. And this is funny cuz it'll it'll encourage you to like look at the bright blue light from your phone, which we usually don't hear >> dur when you need the light. Yeah. You want to look at that light and that's another way in the evening >> to get the bright light if you don't if you don't have the sun out. >> Yeah. >> Um Yeah. Yeah. It's uh also you have to remember like if you have glasses that filter out uh blue light normally to help you, you need to take those off >> when you're when you need the bright light because this isn't about your skin. This is about your eyes getting the light as as Dr. Nikki explained to us. Yeah. >> Five stars from both of us. Five. >> I think so too. >> The fact that I'm not sitting here going like Nikki, I don't know my own name. I just got back from that long flight. Like that should be testament uh enough. Uh again, the app, if you haven't heard us say it a million times, is called Time Shifter. Uh it's available in the App Store. You can go check it out uh and see what you think of it. Uh before we get out of here though, uh if you haven't listened to Dr. Nikki's latest new podcast with Wente Dao, you need to do it now. >> Yeah, we may not cure your jet leg, but we'll do something for your brain. Whether you love it or you hate it, we have a new show coming out or it's out now. Uh it's by women in STEM. It's for everyone. We talk about stuff that we love about science and technology and stuff that's silly and girly and fun. And so just go have a listen. It's technical tea. It's uh find us on technical tea.show. We're going to do a show a month. We'll take listener feedback. We're really excited. You could tell in the >> No, it's the these two have been so excited in planning this and trying to make sure it works well and just having fun talking about the topics and you're both super smart in technology and science uh which comes through as well. So, uh people definitely need to check it out. It's called >> And I don't know if you noticed. >> T >> technical T. And Tom's our executive barista. >> This is what we've named you. [laughter] >> I didn't know that either. >> Yeah, we were like, what is Tom? And we just came up with a name. So, that's a little spoiler for you guys. >> Anytime you need coffee, I am I [laughter] am there. >> Or tea. >> Yeah. Oh, I guess it would be tea. Duh. Yeah. Tea barista. That makes sense. >> Yeah. I I am the uh the barista that brews your tea. Anytime you want, let me know. >> Well, thank you uh Dr. Nikki, as always, very much for the recommendation of Timeshifter, uh, and for helping us understand this as well. Appreciate it. Uh, thank you everybody for supporting the show at patreon.com/dtns. We'll be back with regular news episodes on Monday. Until then, have a great weekend. Talk to you soon. [music] The DTNS family of podcasts [music] helping each other understand. >> Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this broker. [laughter]