The Shocking Ways That Modern Homes Damage Our Health (And How to Protect Yourself!) - With Michael Feldstein

26:11You know, he's an expert with the Alzheimer's and the dementia. And he was telling me some studies about how an air purifier, nevermind an air scrubber, how it's dramatically improving the or decreasing the likelihood of people having dementia and Alzheimer's. So he was quoting some studies on that and also blood pressure. And I like to think about it the other way, instead of thinking about is cleaner air helping your health, is imagine you pollute your room more. So add more chemicals, add more garbage, add more dirty diaper pails and sleep in that environment and see how you feel. You know, know if you add more whether it's noise pollution light pollution air pollution water pollution when you add more toxins to the system your ability to heal yourself gets really impacted that's why people are like i need to go to the nature i feel so much better there you didn't have to do anything it wasn't that the nature healed you it was that removing yourself from the toxic environment allowed your body to heal itself get that sun drink some good water so yeah to me the bedroom must be the sleep sanctuary and you know people have a million dollar home or we're in los angeles now so let's say a two million dollar home little one and maybe a thousand dollar bed that's off gassing formaldehyde at a great degree with a toxic pillow that's off gassing that was also acting as a sponge pulling in the pollen pulling in the mold pulling in the pollution then you're sleeping on that bed all night long so maybe spend instead of a million dollar home maybe get a 950 and put 50 grand into your bedrooms and turn your bedrooms and your kids bedrooms into sleep sanctuaries how do you make a sleep sanctuary so getting an organic bed there's a bunch of different ways to approach that there's no particular one i recommend but like find a non-toxic bed do your own research make sure you're not using any artificial lights after sunset or before sunrise let the sun do its job and tell you when it's time to have light if you want to use a little red light or a dim warm lamp okay but these big bright fluorescent lights leds and stuff don't do that like in your bathroom get a little tiny red light get the smallest light possible for for nighttime because you know i heard huberman do explain that when you see bright lights at night even for one second that can impact your circadian rhythm for days because if you imagine naturally other than fire there was no light available at night we did not evolve with this.

28:36This is an, the light bulb is a very new thing. So let's make sure we have good minimal lighting in our bedrooms and wherever we're going to be at night and early in the morning. If you're an early riser, let's get clean air in the bedroom. Let's get, make sure it's a quiet, cool environment with a non-toxic bedding situation. And wow, you know, I think I talked about the sleep study last year. I can't remember, but when we gave 150 people Jaspers, I call it a sleep study. It was a community science. No doctors involved. 150 Jaspers to people of all walks of life who were using whoops and aura to track their sleep.

29:11The average person, when they measured a week with no Jasper, two weeks with Jasper, and then one week without, they were sleeping 25 minutes more per night with Jasper on, 18 % deeper sleep, and they were falling asleep five minutes faster. And I actually think white noise, if you live in a city, is almost mandatory because, you know, the jungle is not a quiet place. So you can sleep in quiet, but that's like, that's going real ancestral. Now we're going into the cave. It's not a silent place. And the background noise of your home, your HVAC system turning on and off, the sirens, the road noise, just the life out there that is happening, especially in a city, being able to tone that down with white noise that's mimicking wind or rain.

29:50Jasper actually emits what's called pink noise, even more than white noise, which is actually even more beneficial for sleep. so I just think like reframing what your house is it's a place for you and your family to heal at night have a great breakfast together get cozy get a smaller home you don't need six rooms with chairs everywhere and a home that takes up your whole yard you have a smaller home you have a bigger yard for that 50 grand you could save on a little smaller house get an outdoor kitchen get a screened in porch get great beds and make your home do that what it's supposed to do a place to get calm.

30:24And it's your, instead of the home being the place that makes you sick, make it the place that makes you feel awesome. Oh man.

30:30Shawn Stevenson:I love that. I love that. The thing is, when it comes to our sleep quality and having good air quality in this environment, this is something that we shouldn't have to do. You know, like if we were still living in more natural conditions, but you know, this is an adjustment for us to make and we could do all kinds of things. Just thinking about before I moved to Los Angeles, I lived in Missouri, right outside of St. Louis. We lived in a place called Wildwood. And it was just like super clean. You know, like my sleep was notably better. I didn't have to do a lot. You know, like we didn't even really need curtains, you know, just because there's no street lights out there as well.

31:10Shawn Stevenson:And so, but coming here, I had to really stack conditions and especially lean into the air quality, especially with wildfires and things like that. which you've helped me to reorient the chemical fires, you know? And so this is something where I had an air purifier that was just like running in our living room, you know? And after my conversation with you was like, this needs to be something in our bedroom. And so I got one specifically in my bedroom and in my son's bedroom as well. And so this has been a game changer every day. And I didn't share this with you, but every day he gets up, he turns off the Jasper and he goes to school.

31:45Shawn Stevenson:Right before bed, he turns on his Jasper and make sure that's running at the gym. You gotta give him some feedback. He should not turn it off because a lot of the dust and particulate will accumulate during the day when he's not there. So the energy cost on the Jasper is like pennies to run and it won't really impact filter life because the carbon life is gonna last about six months regardless. So during the day, the pollen and the allergens and the mold don't sleep. So it's still gonna be accumulating on his bed, on his pillow. When I go on, when me and my family travel, I turn my Jaspers on to full speed when we're gone because that way when we're gone, the noise is not an issue.

32:17So it's deeply scrubbing the environment when we're gone. And then when I come back, I turn it to an appropriate level. So, you know, like I sleep with my Jasper on fan speed three. And then when I leave in the morning, I put it on smart mode. So it's just quiet throughout the day, quietly cleaning. Then you increase the speed for bed, but I would not recommend turning it off when he goes to school. The air will be a lot cleaner.

32:37Shawn Stevenson:And the question would be specifically during sleep, like what's going on here. You mentioned the pilot study that you guys did. Yes. But I went and dug this up and I shared this last time that you were here. This was published in the journal Sleep and they took individuals who were experiencing poor sleep quality and they placed them into this eight week study to see if improving their air quality in their bedroom at night could improve their sleep quality. Now, during the first four weeks of the study, scientists tracked their sleep quality without any interventions. Then during the next four weeks, the researchers had participants to utilize air purifiers in their bedrooms and monitored if it made any notable difference on their sleep quality at night.

33:13Shawn Stevenson:At the end of the study, the scientists and participants were shocked at the results. The study found that improving bedroom air quality helped participants to fall asleep faster, which is congruent with you, go through their sleep cycles more efficiently, which is congruent with you, wake up less often at night and spend more actual time asleep when they were in bed, which is again, congruent with what you found as well. And so overall, but what was the result? They were waking up feeling more refreshed and they had more energy throughout the day. this does make a difference because again, this, especially during this time, this is where I love that reframe of sleep to, did you call it healing?

33:54Shawn Stevenson:Healing time. Healing time, healing time. And it truly is. So how can we stack conditions? And you've obviously mentioned Jasper a couple of times and you mentioned it's intelligence, right? There's a smart mode and I see it, you know, if our Jasper's on smart mode and somebody's cooking downstairs, Jasper starts getting a little look concerned starts talking a little bit you know and just like picking this stuff up and cleaning the air and you know the same thing with maybe a door's open and there's what the wildfire even if the doors are closed if the wildfire is going if we'll just say if i have my window if i open my window and then just like within a minute jasper starts getting angry and so let's talk about what makes jasper so special and in particular reframing from we don't just want an air purifier you mentioned air scrubber.

34:43Shawn Stevenson:Yes. So what's the difference? So my background was wildfire restoration, hurricane and flood cleanup and mold remediation. So how do you clean up after a flood or a fire or a mold situation? It's all the same. You got to clean the surfaces and you got to clean the air. It's like, if you got a fish tank, you got to filter the water and scrub the surface. The water cleaning is the main thing that you have to do. So when it comes to cleaning a home, there's some dusting and mopping and vacuuming that people do a lot because it's more visible and people love doing stuff actively it's almost too good to be true you know air quality cleaning your air is the laziest way to be healthy it's so passive and like people are so addicted to suffering and work that they have a hard time even receiving such a passive solution so how do we clean up let's say a big toxic mold event we remove the mold we'd sanitize the surfaces isolate the area and we would scrub the air.

35:35So we'd use these industrial grade air scrubbers. So an air scrubber is basically like what a Honda Civic is compared to like an Escalade or a pickup truck. They're both cars. They got doors. They have wheels. They drive. They got passenger seats. But one is designed for work. One is designed to pull your boat. One is designed to commute around town. So a scrubber is an industrial term. That's what we used in restoration for the mold and the flood and the and when I was comparing and contrasting the scrubbers we were using, so the downside of a scrubber, why doesn't everyone just get a scrubber?

36:10Because they're these hundred pound giant metal boxes that are loud and it would be like having a truck in your living room. It'd be a huge eyesore, a huge noise pollution event. Those are designed for remediation construction. But when you look get an air purifier. A scrubber though, the goal is to get the air like 99 % clean. It's to scrub the air just like a water filter. We wouldn't be okay if the water filter only filtered 10 % of the water or 20 % if it got incrementally buttered. We need to filter out all that bacteria. So an air purifier, the goal of a purifier is incremental. It's trying to purify the air.

36:47It's like a freshener. It's cute. It's trying to get the air 10, 20 % cleaner. That's why you see these little purifiers at the store and they say it covers 1500 square feet because people don't know better if it was a space heater and they told you that little space heater heats the whole room you'd be like no it doesn't it does a closet it does a small bedroom it doesn't do a big area because you could feel the temperature more than people can experience the air difference so the scrubber the mission and the vision for jasper originally was to create the world's first air scrubber that looked beautiful and quiet and it would be something you'd be proud to have in your home like functional art.

37:21That's why it's made from steel. So it's very industrial. That's why it has no apps, no Wi-Fi, no Bluetooth, no EMF. It's meant to be rugged, but it's meant to be good. You know, in the early nineties, late eighties, that was when the SUV came on the market, when they took military grade trucks and said, how do we make these family friendly? There comes the SUV. Now that's over half of all cars sold. So Jasper was originally just supposed to be for wildfire smoke. Then COVID happened. It ended up being for doctors and dentists. And then when mom started buying them for their kids that's what's kind of taken it mainstream and become um you know the same way a dishwasher and a stove and an oven and a microwave have become non like water filtration has become a no-brainer appliance i believe over the next 10 years we're going to look back at this time and think it was crazy that we didn't all used to scrub our air so at the most basic sense it's an industrial grade machine that has the aesthetic and the performance and the quiet that you would want in the modern home.

38:16So the other really big significant thing is when someone's looking at a purifier or a scrubber, they're looking at it from the exterior. They're looking at the shell, but the real magic is the filter. So people think, ah, I got to change my filter twice a year. You're actually buying the filter. Like Jasper's heart, its core is the filter. It's four and a half pounds. Most air purifiers have filters that aren't even half a pound. You open them and they're these flimsy piece of paper. Jasper, the real magic is in the filter. and we a lot of people they look at it and it doesn't look that dirty and they're like wait do i even have to change this thing here's the cool thing when we take it out if we weigh it it's often a pound or two heavier when we look at the air quality coming out even though you can't see it the exterior is just the pre-filter the real filters on the inside where all the microscopic stuff is so small you know mold spores are too small for the human eye to pick up when we send those filters that look clean to the lab they're not very clean so when we often pop in a new one you feel the airflow like double or triple.

39:13You see the air clean, cleaning power go way up. So often people are just assessing it off their eyes. But the real magic is the filter itself. I want to make sure before you wrap, I got to tell you about the school, man, because I planted the seed last time when I was here and that's when it was just in its infancy, but it's really happening. So we're opening a school in Austin in September. It's called Kindling Academy. And the mission is to make it the healthiest school in America. There was a study in Finland a few years back where they put air purifiers in half the classrooms across a few schools, and the air purifiers decreased the absenteeism in the teachers and the students by 30%.

39:49So just filtering the air meant the teachers weren't getting sick, the kids weren't getting sick, which is profoundly impactful. So this was frustrating. We couldn't find a great school. Really, no schools. You know, you're talking about how homes are built poorly. let's focus on the kids first and get these schools healthy because that's where the kids are going all day to learn so and you can make one room good that's going to help 20 kids breathe better and learn better all day so right now schools are not optimizing for human health so we're going to turn this school into basically a showcase and we're going to put two air scrubbers in every class water filtration circadian rhythm lighting natural lights non-toxic products i think we're going to get the absentee rates down 50 to 70 percent we'll work with some doctors and scientists to make it scientifically valid.

40:34And we're also going to donate scrubbers to a lot of other, we already started donating scrubbers to a lot of schools. So they'll be part of the data set to make this like scientifically valid, because if we can make this a no brainer, then all of a sudden the public schools and the private schools will realize this is actually financially beneficial for them. Public schools are funded on attendance. So yeah, I'm really excited. So it's called Kindling Academy. It's only a small school, it's a not for profit, but if anyone is interested, we're going to open source everything we do. We're going to publish everything online.

41:03The mission is not for us to make a lot of schools, but it's for hopefully people to look at what we're doing and take bits and pieces that would be beneficial for their schools. And anyone out there, public schools are impossible to work with, but if you're in a private school in the Austin area or really anywhere in Texas, reach out to us and we'd be happy to donate scrubbers to your class and get your kid's school part of the clean air study for next year. Where can they reach out? jasper.co j-a-s-p-r.co or dms on instagram but if they go to the contact on our website or dms we'll get them into the process and so now what about for our personal use where can we get our hands on a jasper all right so last time i was on the show several hundred people almost a thousand people from your listeners in the community you know raised their hand and accepted our offer and we got a lot of we got a lot of great feedback from that episode and we've got really heartwarming responses about people sleeping better, breathing better, less allergies.

41:58So, you know, we're not really a brand that runs a lot of discounts or promotions. We let the quality and the product speak for itself. The only time we really do make special offers is Black Friday. But I'll tell you, I learned when I look at my own buying behavior and my own psychology, half the things I bought that were expensive was when they were on sale. So I like to incentivize taking action at a time that speaks to you. So, you know, they've just, we've been listened to, thank you for listening for maybe an hour or so. And at the bottom line, if you feel, you know, open your windows, pay attention to the air that you're breathing.

42:30But if you feel called to invest in clean air in your home, normally Jasper is$1 ,199. So it's$1 ,199. But today it's June 8th. So for the next 10 days between June 8th and June 18th, code model, or if you go jasper.co forward slash model, either of those options will work great but if you if you go there the Jasper will be$300 off for the next 10 days and then for perpetuity forever after that it will always be$200 off and something we started doing in the last few months because Jasper works so good we're able to put our money where our mouth is you should know within the first week if Jasper is changing your life or not if Jasper is not changing your life$1 is too much if Jasper is making you sleep 20 30 percent better and helping your family feel better then this is very cheap so you know once you have your Jasper, then you get the filters twice a year.

43:21You have a lifetime warranty, but we put our money where our mouth is. So if in the first 30 days, Jasper is not changing your life, we will buy the Jasper back off you for full price. We will also send you a shipping label because it frustrates me when I want to return something, but then there's the shipping and I got to go to the store. None of that. If Jasper is not changing your life, we'll refund you 100 % of your money and give you a prepaid shipping label. So the costs are on us to take it back. So this way we've de-risked it for you entirely. And I would recommend if you want more than one great but starting with one putting it in your bedroom on fan speed three with dark mode get the undeniable life-changing sleep if you cook a lot one in the living room on smart mode so it's silent but will adapt to your cooking in real time so if you feel called if you trust me if you trust sean um this is a good opportunity for you guys to try jasper and i hope you all learn something today

44:11Shawn Stevenson:man thank you so much it's so generous thank you thank you well i've got i've got an extra question for you that just came up because again, this environment is somewhere that we can again, control and create a healthy micro environment for ourselves and for our families. But when you think about how much time we're spending indoors, as we kick this episode off with like around approximately 90 % for the average American, which could be upwards of 99. But then even for those that are at the 90 % mark, another 6 % statistically is time spent in sealed automobiles. So I want to ask you about this because, and the reason it's coming up is last time you were here, we did recently experienced terrible wildfires here.

44:52Shawn Stevenson:And as you helped to reframe the chemical fires and all the debris and all the building materials that were burned, the Tesla batteries. Yes, sir. And so that got me thinking along those lines. And so what about when we're in our cars, do our cars have air filters? Because we got LA traffic here. Like, what do you do? I know you're, you You know, like you think about this kind of stuff. I do. You know, we've got any advice for us. I was thinking about it this morning in bed before I got up. I was working on designs for a car air purifier this morning. Come on. I swear to God, I'll show you the render in a minute.

45:23Man, you're on that Tony Stark stuff, man. I love it. So I'll tell you, the Teslas, speaking of Teslas, they have incredible air filters. If you look at a Tesla air filter, it's like 20 times the size of a regular car's air filter. It's like what a scrubber is, what a Jasper is to a regular air purifier. The Tesla filters are that good. They are massive. They have HEPA. They have carbon. They are incredibly good filters. So the Tesla does filter the air really well. General cars know they have this teeny little carbon filter that you change every so often that doesn't do very much. You can go on Amazon and you can actually get an upgraded cabin filter that will work a little bit better.

45:58It's leveraging the HVAC in your car. So that incrementally helps. You can buy one with some carbon and it's good. The reason why we haven't created a car filter yet is to me, if it's not beautiful and it's not elegant, then we're not going to do it. you know if you need some giant plug and it sits on your dash or it sits on your car seat we're not going to do it i'm optimistic that battery technology is going to improve a lot over the next couple years and i'm hoping that what we basically want to design is you know where those air fresheners are sitting on the vents if we can leverage some of the airflow coming through the vents and then subsidize it a little bit with just a small fan because we don't want cords and plugs but it will look like a little mini jasper it will have the green yellow red light just like jasper so that'll be taking care of pollution that's why if there's smoke outside it'll go red and kick up so this is probably not something you're going to see from us anytime soon if we can make it and it's we won't make it if it's a gimmick it has to be effective it has to be battle tested so maybe three years or so out but in the meantime changing your cabin filter it's actually i'm the least handy guy of all time but usually it's in your glove box it's pretty easy So if you go on Amazon and you type in like upgraded cabin filter, they're like 11 or 12 bucks.

47:08Do it every two months, every three months. Check it out. They'll usually be really dirty. And then also your air conditioner and your heater in your car. If you're ever like, hey, it's not working that good. It's probably because your cabin filter is saturated with dust and smoke. And in the car, you're also right behind those fumes. So yeah, cars are a problem. But the best option for your car is open the sunroof for the windows. Nature's right there. Yeah, that's great advice.

47:31Shawn Stevenson:And also when you feel that stuffy feeling, right? Whether it's in our homes or also in our cars, it's the CO2 levels, right? So again, cracking the window. Like you just mentioned, open a sunroof. And the same thing for our homes, open a window. Once you feel it, you can't unfeel it. Yeah, that point. The feeling of high CO2. Yeah, my family has definitely turned up their antennas on like feeling stuffy in the house. Like it was actually, it was this week, my son came downstairs and he sat on the couch. and you know within a couple of minutes he went and opened the window up and I'm just like good that's interesting he's never done it before and it's just like he felt like it was stuffy in the room you know he's paying attention now yeah man it's because of this education right and that's one of the great things about Jasper as well is that it also provides you with an education and a resource to tell you what's going on with you really an education company that happened to sell the world's best air scrubber but at our core we're here to teach that's why a school is just a natural progression for us but education and awareness is the main thing.

48:29And then people can go out, use their awareness, invent new products. That's all good. That's why we don't have any competitors, only collaborators. So education is what really matters. Boom, boom.

48:38Shawn Stevenson:So again, jasper.co forward slash model. That's J-A-S-P-R dot C-O forward slash model and or use the code model. Yes, sir. 10 days starting right now as of the release of this episode, June 8th, 2026,$300 off. take advantage i appreciate you so much man thank you so much for having me man yeah it means a lot tony stark man you're the tony stark of air i'll take it let's go let's go the one and only michael feldstein everybody peace man thank you so much for tuning into this episode today i hope that you got a lot of value out of this i love things that can improve my health and my well-being in a passive way things that i could set and forget automate just to make life a little bit better.

49:26Shawn Stevenson:And obviously, again, we might have aspirations. I know that I did for a time of moving to an environment to where, you know, our accessibility to cleaner air, less light pollution, and all of this kind of tech noise that's constantly buzzing in the background was something that I aspired towards. And I spent some time in that, and it does make being healthy easier, but it can also disconnect us in other ways. And so it's us finding what really works for us. And for me being here in this city that I live in today and the closer proximity with people, all the electrical noise and the light pollution outside.

50:07Shawn Stevenson:Yes, I need my blackout curtains. Yes, I need to put some more intention into my air quality. Yes, I need to stack conditions in my day-to-day life to make it a little bit easier for myself to be as healthy as I can possibly be. And I didn't do these things overnight. I added a piece at a time because I also come from conditions to where I felt like I didn't have any control over any of this stuff. And I just started to take steps in the direction of the life that I wanted to live, of the health that I wanted to create for myself and for my family. And so this is about stacking conditions. And if anything, this should encourage us to at least once a day, crack the window.

50:49All right.

50:50Shawn Stevenson:Open up the blinds. Let the sunshine in. Let some fresh air into our homes, at least for a certain amount of time each day. Because again, even in the most polluted cities, the indoor air quality is often five to 10 times worse. and sometimes in some studies, upwards of 100 % worse indoors. And Michael today helped to illuminate some of the reasons why. Again, just keeping in mind, our cooking habits, our running the dishwasher, these frequent habits that we don't really even think about dramatically change the air that we're breathing in our homes, not to mention all the off-gassing materials the home is built with, our furnitures, carpets, and all the things.

51:37Shawn Stevenson:And so this is not to live in fear. This is the stack conditions in our favor. Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to this. So many aspects of our health and our longevity depend on our air quality. So we can improve our sleep. We can improve the energy and cognition that we have each and every day. We can improve our recovery, putting a little bit more intention into this. And again, stacking conditions in our favor. And I'm going to tell you right now for the average home, especially in the context of a city. Any air purifier is better than none. But as Mike mentioned, we can get a 10%, 20 % improvement with the standard run of the mill stuff.

52:17Shawn Stevenson:A true air scrubber is something that he has helped to facilitate and to make accessible for more and more people and businesses, and it's really a game changer. And if you want to take advantage, again, as of the release of this episode,$300 off right now when you go to jasper.co forward slash model. That's J-A-S-P-R dot C-O forward slash M-O-D-E-L. Got about 10 days to take advantage of that. He also added on, even after that time outside of the 300s, he's still gonna keep it to be$200 off if you're listening to this sometime in the future, in the year 2000. Shout out to Conan O 'Brien. All right, I appreciate you so much for tuning into this episode today.

53:04Shawn Stevenson:We've got some incredible masterclasses and world-leading experts coming your way very, very soon. So make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon.