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# #074 - Deep Sleep, Blue Light, and TikTok Regret: A Cardio Talk on Recovery That Actually Works
- URL: https://adamringler.com/podcast/074/
- Published: 2025-07-04T12:24:43.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-20T00:47:42.000Z
- Description: We're talking science-backed disruptions to circadian rhythms, CNS fatigue, and why your phone might be robbing you of the restorative sleep your body needs to train hard and bounce back.
- Author: Adam Ringler
- Tags: Decoding Excellence, #podcast, Recovery

**In this *Cardio Talks* episode of The Decoding Excellence Show, I’m breaking down one of the most overlooked threats to athlete recovery: late-night screen time and blue light exposure.**

Whether you're a performance coach, sport scientist, or former athlete trying to stay sharp,this conversation cuts into the heart of why your **HRV, deep sleep, and overall recovery metrics** might be lagging.

We're talking science-backed disruptions to circadian rhythms, CNS fatigue, and why your phone might be robbing you of the restorative sleep your body needs to train hard and bounce back.

If you're a coach, practitioner, or just someone who’s chasing improvement, these walks are for you. Think of it like grabbing a coffee with a colleague, except I’m breathing heavier and carrying weight on my back.

### **I Discuss:**

- How blue light delays melatonin and pushes deep sleep into shallower phases
- The real reason HRV stays depressed after nights with poor sleep hygiene
- What *does* and doesn’t work,f.lux, Night Shift mode, and screen filters
- My personal stack: **Roka x Huberman Wind Down Glasses**, Portal (Magnesium Glycinate, L-Theanine, Glycine, Apigenin), and red light environments
- Why a "power-down routine" can be the difference between winning and flatlining in comp season
- What WHOOP & Oura data really say about sleep disruption

---

This isn’t a fluffy lifestyle chat. It’s a tactical, field-tested conversation based on what I see working with elite athletes at Colorado and remote pros who need every recovery edge they can get.

If your **deep sleep scores are low**, or you’re feeling like your readiness just isn’t rebounding after tough training days,this episode might be your blueprint for fixing it.

---

Whether you’re on your own walk, stuck in traffic, or setting up the gym,this is your behind-the-scenes peek into how I think, plan, and process high performance.

Thanks again for listening to the Decoding Excellence Show! I appreciate all the support growing this Sport Science, Strength & Conditioning, and High-Performance Coaching resource. If you have taken anything away from the show, please login to iTunes and navigate to [⁠⁠⁠**Decoding Excellence**⁠⁠⁠](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/decoding-excellence/id1205636566?mt=2&ref=adamringler.com) page and leave us a **FIVE STAR** ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review.

---

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---

## Key Takeaways

- Blue light delays melatonin and pushes deep sleep into shallower phases, which is why late-night screen time shows up as depressed HRV and poor recovery scores the next morning.
- Not all screen mitigations are equal: the episode evaluates what works and what does not among f.lux, Night Shift mode, and screen filters.
- His personal recovery stack includes Roka x Huberman Wind Down glasses, a Portal supplement blend (magnesium glycinate, L-theanine, glycine, apigenin), and red light environments.
- A real power-down routine can be the difference between winning and flatlining during comp season, and WHOOP and Oura data back up what the sleep science already says.

## Listen and Subscribe

Find this episode of the Decoding Excellence Show on [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decoding-excellence/id1205636566?ref=adamringler.com) and [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/093GVrPwd9l832q3EWhVKc?ref=adamringler.com), or use the player above.

---

## Go Further in This Episode

Enjoyed this conversation? Here is how to get more from it:

- **Read the transcript below** to revisit key ideas at your own pace.
- **Share this episode** with a coach or colleague who would benefit.
- **Subscribe to the Decoding Excellence Show** on [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decoding-excellence/id1205636566?ref=adamringler.com), [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/093GVrPwd9l832q3EWhVKc?ref=adamringler.com), or your favorite app.
- **Join the newsletter** at [adamringler.com/newsletter](https://adamringler.com/newsletter/) for weekly insights on human performance.

---

## Episode Transcript

*This transcript was automatically generated. While we strive for accuracy, some words or phrases may be misheard.*

\[00:00:00\] Sport Science, Strength and Conditioning, High Performance Coaching, welcome to the Decoding Excellence Show. Hey everybody, this is Adam Ringland and welcome back to the Decoding Excellence Show. As always, I'm your host and on today's show we're going to be discussing a little bit of the video YouTube that I recorded maybe about a week ago regarding deep sleep, some supplementation that can help with that, also a wind down routine and physical devices that you can actually use

\[00:00:51\] Things like blue light blocking glasses to actually enhance your deep sleep while avoiding sort of the negative effects of blue light and late time screen uses. So let's get into the show. I thank you for being here. I think you're going to take a lot away from this. Hey everybody, welcome to the Decoding Excellence Show. As always, this is my new segment. This is our cardio talk segment. This is where when I'm walking and I'm just with myself, I'm doing some zone two work. I am essentially having these conversations out loud with my microphone,

\[00:01:27\] Essentially my air pods here and sharing more a raw and unfiltered approach to the Decoding Excellence podcast. So there may be barking dogs. There may be cars driving by. There might be birds chirping in the background. That's because I'm in nature. I'm doing some zone two. I'm working on building that aerobic fitness and trying to improve my body composition and metabolism. So nonetheless, while I have this dead time, otherwise, rather than consuming content, I figured, hey, why not utilize this time to actually create some content and share some ideas in which

\[00:02:05\] I'm thinking about. So one of the things I wanted to talk about in today is talking about how blue light in screen time actually tanks most of your conventional recovery metrics, coming from your Apple Watch, your Aura ring, maybe your Rook device, any other sort of wearable device that you might be utilizing. I wanted to talk not only about blue light in screen time and how that actually tanks it, but what can we actually do to affect deep sleep and improve our HRV? And I wanted to talk about some conventional usage of physical items like blue light black and glasses and sleep masks

\[00:02:45\] And some software interventions like flux and sort of night shift, but I get into all of this on the YouTube video series I recorded recently, and that is located at my YouTube channel, Adam Ringler, but I just wanted to break a few things now like those huge room in roca shades that you might be seeing on social media, that night shift mode, what that actually does, how that actually affects some of the blue light, and even maybe a supplement stack that has been sort of circulating through the biohacking community, if you will, that takes advantage of several key ingredients and

\[00:03:25\] Supplements, all combined to really create a very potent sleep staff. So first part of this is maybe diving into white light messes you up. So we all know that light governs sort of that circadian rhythm and that melatonin isn't just sort of like your sleep time hormone, it's actually an internal dimmer switch when melatonin is turned up, it affects the body when melatonin drops or decreases, that also affects the body. Now I told you the cars in the background, I'm out here walking, get my fitness in blue light, especially that 460 to 480 nanometer wavelengths, that delays that

\[00:04:08\] Melatonin release, it just ends up keeping the brain alert and awake. So while it's not just about sleep timing, while that brain is awake, it's actually about sleep depth as well, how deep you sleep. We all know this, like latency of sleep and how long you sleep and duration of sleep, but if we're never actually achieving RAM or deep sleep, then the sleep that we actually get maybe isn't as meaningful as it could be. Now in addition to that, we need to talk about what that sleep depth actually impacts. So whether that's the onset of deep sleep, whether that's overall HRV, whether that's

\[00:04:54\] Our parasympathetic recovery, especially for athletes or people with professionals that are undergo high CNS load, whether that's work stressors, life stressors or athletic stressors. I also think that we have to fundamentally understand that this disproportionately affects athletes just because of the high CNS demand, that physical activity and sleep sport actually poses on them. So athletes may be more susceptible to lapses or interference in their deep sleep, which then again negatively affects their recovery throughout this entire process. So I just think it's a kin to driving your car or

\[00:05:39\] Revving your engine in the driveway all day long, and then actually shining sort of high beams in the cabin when you're trying to rest, right? Like you're driving the engine, you're pushing it really hard. And then when you're like, man, I'm just, I'm going to go to bed here. You get that bright light shining right into your eyes. You're never going to get that rest, you're never going to get that deep sleep. So the next question that comes to my mind is what the heck do we actually do about these things, right? And that's where we have to investigate what the patterns habits of what

\[00:06:15\] Actually real life real world athletes do in the evenings. And that's when if you're around 18 to 22 year olds, like, you know, the vision one high competitive athletics, you recognize that they're scrolling TikTok, they're maybe watching Netflix with their hotel made or their roommate, they're checking social media at 1157 PM, they're texting buddies, all of these things. So the problem isn't just light. It is that engagement. It is that dopamine hit you get from checking the notification, right? Every single time you do that, you alert the brain, there's a spike in

\[00:06:57\] Cortisol, and we are suppressing melatonin at that moment. And then obviously the ramifications of that is that sleep latency increases, but probably worse that deep sleep just gets pushed back. It gets further pushed into the evening. And ergo, you get less deep sleep as athletes just don't have to run away for the time to achieve it. So we often think that athletes kind of they're tired, but wired, they're wired away. They can't really get the deep meaningful rest that they should get. However, they still wake up tired tired in the wired. And that's something I see in both my

\[00:07:34\] Nine-year-old and my 12-year-old in the summertime when they're both glued to their devices and attend those switches. And then obviously they wake up and they wonder why training feels like sludge the next day and why the feet feels like cricks hand. Well, it may be the sleep, but as it's a sleep, what affects the sleep, it's the devices and the decrease in that deep sleep. So again, what can we do about it? It's the reality we live in. We're not putting the genie back in the bottle here, right? This is the new world of what we have to operate within. So I'm still a big fan

\[00:08:15\] Of the Rokka and Hooperman wind downshades. I wear them despite ridicule for my athletic trainer, buddy, that I travel with. But why I say I like these is there's a couple of things that actually make them different. Number one, the real lens filtration, right? So it's not just the yellow gaming glasses that you see elsewhere. They actually have lenses that filter out the both the blue and green light, green wave lights. So I throw them on, they're a little orange-hued, red-hued if you will. And so now it's a softer cue in my entire visual sort of window, if you will. I'm filtering out

\[00:08:56\] Blue and green in addition to that. I put them on and I swear hand on a Bible 20, 30 minutes later, I'm feeling tired. Just feeling tired. My eyes feel more relaxed. I wear contacts all throughout the day. But again, I recommend starting to wear them 90 minutes before bed. For me, my hard rule is if it's after 7 pm, I'm throwing them on. That allows me 7 to 8, 8 to 9\. I'm trying to wind down, getting bed around 9.30\. So I get them about 2 and a half hours on. Now, in addition to that, you could throw on or activate nice switch mode on your iOS device. You could also utilize things

\[00:09:38\] Like flux, which is more of an Android-based app, I believe. I used to have it on my PC when I didn't have a Mac. And so those are built-in options, right? They don't traditionally or technically eliminate off the light, but it does help reduce the intensity and the hue of the blue light. And, you know, coming off of your screens. Now, they are useful if athletes are still on their phones, right? That's better than nothing. However, the big thing that we need to be looking at is how do we get athletes off their phone, right? And that is, we have to schedule it. We have to make it

\[00:10:13\] Automatic, right? It shouldn't be willpower-based. It should actually be real-world habits that they develop where they get off their phones and they relax and they take a moment what we call like a physical wind down. And there's steps that we can actually utilize to do that. So, like I said, I'm a big fan of trying to get athletes to actually unwind, get off their devices and shift from a digital world to an analog port. So this might be something as simple as instead of scheduling late-night film sessions. Perhaps you're doing paper reviews, right? You're

\[00:10:50\] Going through scout, you're looking at, you know, printed paper regarding the opposition and their tendencies and what we're going to do. So, instead of bombarding athletes with blue lights later in the evenings, you're giving them something that they can tactically hold in their hands, read from, and again, this is another strategy to actually help with their sleep recovery rather than, again, bombarding them with the light that's going to negatively impact their sleep. Another thing that can be done is actually trying to promote an

\[00:11:28\] Environment where there is redshift or warm lights. So this is something like salt lamps, red light bulbs and bedroom, red lamps, things like that. So, dim warm tone lighting helps cue that melatonin release. So in my own personal home, we end up taking all of our harsh lights in the evenings and I turn all of them off. I throw a fireplace on, so I have sort of like that fire lighting, if you will, sort of the red and the orange shoes from that soft light. And I try to just have a very dim dark cave in my home environment. And this is all done intentionally,

\[00:12:09\] Deliberately to actually positively affect that deep sleep. So dim warm tone lighting actually can help that melatonin release. So that's just any of that overhead lighting in my personal home. Definitely dimmable lamps, red lights, things like that can certainly help. And then this goes without saying, but you know, no screen options. That is just simply the best way of trying to get deep sleep. So instead of scrolling on TikTok, maybe read a book. You know, instead of watching late night Netflix, you know, meditate, journal, stretch, do things in those aspects

\[00:12:46\] To get out of your digital device and get into your body, your mind, and your spirit. So just again, just like you power down a device when you're on an airplane, you shift it into the airplane mode. We need to start shifting our devices into bedtime mode as well. So give your CNS maybe permission to switch gears from that sort of fight flight freeze sympathetic nervous state into more of a parasympathetic nervous state where you can rest and digest and actually achieve deep sleep. Now in the beginning of this, I talked about some supplementation options that can

\[00:13:22\] Actually affect your deep sleep, your RAM, and your ability to actually fall asleep faster and achieve greater durations of sleep. Now there is a sort of commercial product out there. This is portal. It's been again, well, advertised in the biohacking community. However, if you're like me, I'm not going to sign up for a monthly subscription to a supplement company. That seems wildly crazy. But I'm just going to go and source the ingredients independently. So let's talk about what those main ingredients are that comprise what portal sleep supplement is.

\[00:14:00\] So there's obviously magnesium, uh, glycine in it. And that's sort of, again, helps down to regulate that sympathetic tone in our body. There's glycine in it. So you end up getting to this sort of mild drop in core temperature. Again, we should be trying to have the coldest, but not lone, chilling cold environment. So I always talk about trying to make your bedroom like a bears cave. It should be dark and it should be cool. So no ambient lighting at very chill cold helps us shift into that more deep sleep state. So that listening actually helps promote a mild drop in your

\[00:14:38\] Core body temperature helps go out that nervous system down as well. You have altheonine, which is it's again, it has some affinity to smooth out sort of brainwamed activity. You end up feeling a little bit less jittered, a little bit more relaxed, more flow. And then there's the apogenin, which is more like a sedative support. Don't think of it as like an ambient or anything like that because it's certainly not, but sort of works synergistically with that magnesium. So one to two hours before bed, you shouldn't chase any of those supplements with TikTok or

\[00:15:11\] Anything else. So while you're taking them, start to shift into your down, wind down routine, whether that's blue, like black and glasses, screen shift modes, getting off line, getting into your body, light stretching, things like that. And when you do so, you'll see that when you stack all these habits and behaviors are top of each other, your HRV should continue to rise. Your deep sleep should continue to freeze, and your time to sleep should improve as well. And that is what a lot of the data actually

\[00:15:45\] Shows. You can see shorter deep sleep windows when you're not following these instructions. And when you do have sort of digital, interdigital devices, impeding your sleep. So again, when you're staring at your phone at 12, 30 in the morning, you'll probably end up seeing these things happen. So shorter deep sleep windows, you see more sleep disturbances. HRVs will stay depressed longer into the day. Your training will probably suffer just simply because it won't be as recovered from the next morning. Going into it, your CNS readiness, emotional regulation, decision-making,

\[00:16:26\] All of those things probably subtly worse. And the crazy thing is that this is just sort of a silent load killer. You end up not really feeling like the way that you should be feeling when you're going into the next morning. We see it time and time again from athletes that don't ever achieve that sleep or have sort of those behavioral issues where they're losing using their devices later in the night. So just to kind of wrap all of this up as I'm winding down my zone two here, it's not about just sleep quantity. Let's make that distinction.

\[00:17:09\] It's not only about sleep quantity. You can get seven hours to sleep or eight hours to sleep. I could get eight hours to sleep. It's about the quality of that seven hours or eight hours. If I have more deep sleep in my eight hours than you, I'm going to most likely have a better HRB response. I'll have more meaningful recovery simply because the quality of my sleep is greater and more efficacious use of that time. So you also don't need to become a full-blown monk with no digital devices. We just need to use them a little bit more strategically,

\[00:17:47\] A little bit more intelligently than maybe what we're doing right now. So it's not a free for all, but we actually have to set some guardrails and some limits around using the devices that we have. So what I would recommend, try the full stack for seven nights. So whether a DIY stack of those supplements or portal, looking at some blue-like locking glasses, trying to reduce the exposure to screen time, post-9 p.m. And then actually look at what your biometric data reveals. And most likely you'll reveal a greater level of sleep than what you've done for this next

\[00:18:32\] Before. Sorry, this is a breezy door right here. Okay, that's weird. Nonetheless, I know this isn't the best topic to talk about, right? Nobody wants to be like, oh wow, sleep is so revolutionizing to these athletes experience. I get that. It's not some new technology, it's not some new thankful piece of equipment that's going to revolutionize sports science and sports performance. However, it is an absolute game changer. When you have athletes that can actually optimize their sleep, optimize their recovery, optimize their performance. So you have to try,

\[00:19:17\] See if it works for you. As always, if this episode hits with you or you take anything away from it, I would love to hear from you. I would love for you to share it with the colleague, a friend, a coach, an athlete, or send it to anyone that you know who might be glued to TikTok post-midnight, right? Because we all could benefit from improved sleep, whether you're an athlete or whether you're just a normal person living life. So, share with somebody that you think has a digital dependency and improve your sleep. And until next time, I'll see you guys on this podcast. Appreciate

\[00:19:54\] Y'all. Hey, everybody, that's going to be it for this podcast. As always, if you missed any of the episodes here in the Decoding Excellence Show, you can go and explore the bat catalog. I host all of our episodes, not only on every sort of podcast hosting site, whether it's Spotify or whether it's a YouTube or anywhere else, but you can go to my website. It is AdamRingler.com forward slash podcasts. From there, you can listen to all of the interviews, whether it's other sport professionals, whether it's the monologues, whether it's the basketball discussions, or the sport science

\[00:20:38\] Intact. Go to the website, check it out, listen to the podcast. I'm telling you, you will take something away from the bat catalog of the Decoding Excellence Show. Now, one of the ways that you can support this show. Now, there's two. Really, you could go to AdamRingler.com forward slash newsletter. You can sign up for my newsletter. And in this, you're going to get access to everything, the cool things that I discover from a monthly basis, new books I'm reading, things I'm discovering, articles that I've found related to sport science that's really cool

\[00:21:16\] And coaching. So pop in your email there. And that is just an easy way of supporting the show. And you'll get free behind the scenes access to all the cool things I'm discovering. If you took anything away from this episode, I would encourage you. No, I would beg you to share it with any of your friends, your coworkers, your family members, share it with somebody that could get a little bit of value from hearing what we discuss today. And as always, I appreciate you, I thank you. Until next time, stay strong, stay healthy, keep pushing on.