Hendrick Haueisen | Mitolife Radio Ep #171
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
bed, latex, sleep, slats, mattress, pillow, day, beds, wool, put, bit, frame, sheep wool, material, called, sheep, years, good, people, buy
Matthew Blackburn 00:18
You are listening to Episode 171 of Mito Life Radio. I am your host, Matt Blackburn and today I'm speaking with Hendrik Haueisen of CBH Wood Furniture, also called Swiss Dream Beds, I came across a similar bed with the wooden slat system and the non toxic material, all virgin sheep's wool and Talalay latex, and untreated wood. And I never thought I could afford one, because the price tag was over $10,000. And then I discovered this company through my friend Ben Belty. And I was blown away at how affordable it is, I've bought beds online, with all of the moves that I've done in the last couple of years. And by the time you pay for the frame, the foundation, the mattress, it's well over $2,000, and sometimes over $3,000. And all of the beds that I've ever found, that are really convenient, because if you're moving, you just ship it to your new spot, and just pops up and it's really easy to put together in a few minutes. But it's all made from really toxic material, polyester, synthetic material that off gases, volatile organic compounds. And I think that really matters, if you're creating a gas chamber, in your bedroom, just gassing yourself with these VOCs. I'm really shocked researching the cold pads that people use that run cold water through tubes on the top layer of their beds so they can sleep cooler. It's all made from polyester, I haven't found one that's made from natural material. And so I stopped using technology, I mean for one and fully off grid but I just wanted to experience the temperature regulating effect of natural materials that are in these Swiss Dream Beds. And it's amazing I actually do stay cooler on their bed when I'm actually not sleeping on polyester in between me and the natural material. And this took me at least two years to figure out and realize that I was defeating the purpose of sleeping on untreated virgin sheep wool and natural latex by putting this cooling pad above me. Not saying it's harmful, it's all context but I think we underestimate the harm that could come from sleeping around polyester pads or pillows, or all of the material that people tend to be exposed to with these As Seen On TV products or health products. They're generally not made with quality materials. So Hendrik Haueisen breaks down how this came to be in Germany. And he walks through each layer and each component of these beds and the purpose for each part. And what really blew my mind was the self cleaning ability that this kind of bed has, which is really important when you realized bedbugs and dust mites and all of the critters that can live in a bed, it becomes like a horror movie. So the self cleaning quality of the materials that they use is really powerful and it's a very specific type of sheep's wool, as he explains, so enjoy the show here is Hendrik Haueisen. All right, we're here with Hendrik Haueisen. Welcome to the show.
Hendrik Haueisen 04:25
Hey, man, thanks for having me.
Matthew Blackburn 04:27
Yeah, this is a it's gonna be a fun one. Talking about sleep and how to improve it. I think this area of health is kind of overlooked. I know like the cooling sleep pads have become popular the last few years in the biohacking community. And everyone's looking to you know, mouth tape and nasal dilators and high dose melatonin or all these really advanced sleep tactics, but I think it's easy to overlook just the quality of the actual bed, the frame, the mattress, the whole setup. And what you guys have done over it CBH Wood Furniture with the Swiss Dream Beds, it's just incredible. It totally transformed the way I sleep.
Hendrik Haueisen 05:18
Yeah, we - I mean, I share your, your sentiment on the beds, my wife and I, we're always very hard pressed to stay anywhere else. If we're within driving distance of coming home, we're driving home. It's - it does make a big difference. Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean, if we talk about how we get involved, we originally were from Germany. We emigrated to Canada back in 2007. And by, you know, some people call it the luck of the draw, or by God's grace, there was a guy who knocked on our door, within two months of arriving in Canada, and he, he turned out to be some Swiss millionaire who ran, or who invented a bed some many years ago and had a production facility here in Canada. And he had long been looking for somebody competent to run it. And my dad, he had carpentry experience from Germany, ran his own business there for - 25 years or so. And yeah, and that was kind of what he was looking for. And we moved here, word got around, and he popped up in front of our door one of these days and that's how that all got started.
Matthew Blackburn 06:41
That's incredible. Wow. And what were you guys sleeping on before?
Hendrik Haueisen 06:49
Well, we were sleeping on more or less traditional German setup, which consists roughly of a six inch coil kind of a mattress with a slat system where the slats on the tension. So you pre-tighten those slots, and there's a little moving, like pieces of plastic, you would move them to the outside or to middle depending on how how tense you want those slats to be under you. Yeah, that was that was it and then never again. Since I think 2010 - 2009 or so, we started then sleeping on these beds. Took a couple of years. I mean, we knew the system then for two years and my dad had slept on that earlier because he was - he actually had quite severe back pain from, you know, doing manual labor most of his life. And then I think I got involved, I actually got sleeping on the beds in 2009 or 10 or so.
Matthew Blackburn 07:54
Did you and your wife notice, like immediate benefits from making the switch, like, after the first night on it?
Hendrik Haueisen 08:02
Now for me, it's been so long ago - pretty healthy guy, you know, I started sleeping on this bed when I was 20. Yeah, I was 20 years old, you know, when you're 20 years, sort of invincible, and you can sleep on the floor. So most people may not notice a real difference. But I started to notice a difference when my wife and I we had gotten married and I had slept on her old bed before we had moved everything together for a couple of nights at it, it was pretty bad. You know, it was more or less traditional mattress with some memory foam on top. And I remember actually, the funny thing was, I would go to gym after work, you know, an hour or so. And then, so my usual routine was go to work, go to gym, go home that maybe then a soccer game late at night, depending on the day that I go to bed. And after I slept on her bed, I remember once or twice, I couldn't figure out for the life of me why I was so sore the next day. And then eventually I got to realize, you know what, I recover a lot better on my bed coming from the gym. And so that's what I was told in theory anyways, that you know, the slats keep pushing back on you as you move. And the guy who designed it in his literature, he said it's you can think of it as like a kind of a micro massage, you know, you have these points pushing back on you. And so that was really the only explanation I could think about while I was so sore the next day, as in I was sore from the gym and I was never so from the gym I recovered really well. And so the next day, I'm like there's all these sores in my body and then I figured I was like, "Oh yeah, but sleeping on my bed." For my wife it was, she used to sleep on her stomach all the time. And you know, it took about a month or so after she started sleep - after we got married and she slept on our bed then, that, you know, she started to sleep more on her side more on her back. I do remember telling her a few times, you know, make sure you turn around when you start. So I was helping her a little bit and but but there is a theory that some people sleep on their stomachs because, you know, they're not really comfortable in any other position. And the reason they're not comfortable is because the bed doesn't allow them to get comfortable. And so I did find for, I don't know the percentage because I don't get a good follow up with our customers but there is a certain percentage where people just started turn once they sleep on a bed, that's good for them. And some people you know, they just continue on in their stomach that, there is no one fix all but that seems to happen from time to time I get those comments from time to time.
Matthew Blackburn 10:53
It's really interesting you say that, because I've been a back sleeper my entire life. And recently, I started being able to sleep on my side, which is unique, not all night, but just I kind of switch positions. And it kind of feels better to do that. Just kind of changing it up. But I wonder if that's the quality of the bed, kind of to the point you were just saying.
Hendrik Haueisen 11:18
It's certainly possible. It's always - so we started to look inside of the person. But you know, it's hard to say it's hard to say no, but it's hard to say yes with certainty do right. But, you know, if it allows you to sleep that way - you, it allows you to if it doesn't, well, then it doesn't.
Matthew Blackburn 11:37
Do most beds in developed countries worldwide. Like in Germany, US, Canada, like UK, are they mostly coil style, you know, the coil style mattresses?
Hendrik Haueisen 11:53
Well, the foam is certainly what used to be, mostly coil, the foam is certainly - I don't know if it's predominant now I remember going to various places that sell beds you find predominantly either full memory foam, or a combination of coils and memory foam topper. I did once find a very interesting system that was sort of a foam coils - so they they combined both of them. And but I think most - but it goes back probably to what you see on TV market is most is what you're going to see in the store most and it's probably a kind of a memory foam, or some combination with some chemically derived foam anyways.
Matthew Blackburn 12:43
Yeah, it blows my mind when I go into stores like that, where they have all the beds. And I'm just shocked at the price, especially as we'll talk about later, like the affordability of your beds, versus these other beds. That I mean, I've spent double before I discovered your company on a bed that wasn't as good. And I think that's very common, unfortunately. And I guess we can go into like the the detriment of the memory foam beds and the and the coils. I've had a few EMF experts on the podcast and one of the guys he was talking about how basically the coils will - like it's a really complex process, but the Wi Fi or the surrounding EMFs will hit the coils in the bed and actually create like a secondary frequency. That's, that's different. And so we have no idea what effects that would have on human physiology, but they're probably not good effects, because it's completely unnatural to get kind of radiated from from below all night.
Hendrik Haueisen 13:55
Yeah, yeah, the so the inventor of the bed, his name's Balthasar Huesler, Swiss guy, and he knew back in well, when he invented this bed back in the 70s, he was quite aware that there was something going on with magnetic fields, and especially in beds. And I know there's various research done, I remember reading a study, I think it was from Sweden, one of the Scandinavian countries. And they did make exactly that point that you know, in a sense, the metal captures various frequencies and then amplifies it in the sense it builds a bubble around it. And so you sleep in that and Balthasar was aware of that. Back then actually, before that piece of paper, I think that the paper was some done sometime in the early 90's or at some point. So and I don't - that seems to be sort of the the major reference point for many of the people referring back to and, but he was on the ball a few decades before that, I mean, he's Swiss, you know, when you live in the mountains, and you're much more naturally minded and you, you're much more inclined to question what disturbances in the environment will do to you. I guess. He admitted this, and maybe -- go ahead, sorry.
Matthew Blackburn 15:23
I was just gonna ask, was he into earthing and grounding, because he sounds like he was on it. Like, did he ground his bed or sleep grounded?
Hendrik Haueisen 15:31
Not that I'm aware of. He was more into - so the way this bed came about was, he was in the 70's. So let me just think back, he's now close to 90. So 70's, that's 50 years ago, he was about 40 years old, and was diagnosed with chronic lower back pain. Doctors basically said to him, "Look, we can do anything for you." And so after he went, and after some time figured out, it's probably his bed that cause something to him, because, you know, he didn't have the accident, the fall, whatever, it may be nothing, that was sort of a traumatic event. And so, he had, he has - had quite an extensive background in civil engineering, so static engineering, and also, you know, some of his passions were human anatomy and various other things. And so he, putting those together took him a few years, he came up with a kind of a flexible slat system. And, you know, within a few nights, back pain goes away. Now, obviously, that doesn't work for everybody. But from - from what I know -- So the theory is that, you know, when you have your vertebrates, and you have discs between the vertebrates, and then you can think of them like a sponge. And so you have those vertebrates, as you walk and move around, always pressing on those discs, those sponges in a sense, and then pushing out the fluid between them so that, you know, when you when you wake up in the morning, on average, if you had a good night's sleep, you're probably an inch taller than when you go to bed that just with all the discs been squished out by the end of the day. And so the point of sleep, then one of the major purposes of sleep, is to regenerate the fluid in those discs. And so you need all the pressure of those discs. And, you know, so he's like, "Okay, what kind of a sleeping system allows me to get those discs to relax?" And because the problem is always, you know, we're all a bit heavier in one area or another. So it can - there's a problem your body wants to sink more there and less there and your spine is naturally curved a certain way. And so the question is then okay, how can you best balance this on a bed and so this flexible slot system is what he ended up with and, and really, I met with - so he said, the way he came to this was there was an old story of a businessman who would go to the hotel and he find the mattress way too soft. So he would go to the bathroom door, unhinge it, shove it under the mattress to get some firmness into the mattress. And so that's sort of the thinking it's basically the flexible door under your mattress. That's how that came about and then in the 80's they started - he started selling this and, you know, it's been a, it's been a real hit in Europe and in Asia, Japan, actually, they sell a lot of beds now to Japan, which was sort of unexpected, because most Japanese still like to lay on a futon on the floor, and not on an actual bed frame. But they have made really good inroads there because of the design. The materials and yeah, you know, the simplicity of it.
Matthew Blackburn 19:10
Wow, that's, that's fascinating. Yeah, I've been playing around with like a cervical, stretcher. That pretty much is a pump that you put behind your neck and you pump it up and you strap in your forehead and kind of you know hydrates the discs in your neck. And I never thought about that with sleep - an inch taller when you wake up that's fascinating.
Hendrik Haueisen 19:32
Yeah, if you had a good night's sleep
Matthew Blackburn 19:37
Didn't go out for a night of drinking right -- probably pretty dehydrated. That's interesting. Wow. Yeah, I think the back pain thing is super common and overlooked. I mean, just driving, doing office work, all the sitting that most of us do, like overly sitting right? Like sitting isn't bad. It's just when it's over done. Right, then it can be a problem.
Hendrik Haueisen 20:10
Yeah, I mean, I have the same problem. I still work, although I mean, you're very kind in your Facebook or Instagram posts to say the founder of Swiss Dream Beds, I thought it's more like, I just paid the government to open a company. So I dont think of much myself much of how the other than, you know, the guy who paid this $80 fee to get his name put on the record.
Matthew Blackburn 20:37
I didn't know the story of the Swiss founder that was - that's interesting.
Hendrik Haueisen 20:42
Yeah, I still work like because you're saying the sitting, I still work in engineering, most of my day, and my dad builds most of the beds and then I do most of the talking with people and explain to them how the bed works. And but yeah, of the setting I, I'm with you, it's, it's too much, you know, you can buy a standing desk. And that's, that's really good. But then you also sort of end up standing in an unnatural posture, because you know, you get tired and lazy.
Matthew Blackburn 21:14
Yeah, that's what I was doing a few years ago, like in 2020, I had the little stool, where it's supposedly healthier than a chair, and you kind of just rest your pelvis on this stool. And I did that for the first 50 or so, podcast episodes. And then I just started to feel that my back was being strained. So it's really interesting, like, you can stand too much or sit too much, it's just all about finding that balance, right? That sweet spot of all of them. And a lot of my friends are into squatting. They say that's a really good way to release back tension for free, is just squatting, you know, for 10 minutes a day or something, is a start.
Hendrik Haueisen 21:54
Yeah.
Matthew Blackburn 21:57
Yeah. So let's see, where can we go from here. So, with the, with the slats, it can be an adjustment for some people, like I've found. Like if you have a two slat system with like a full bed or a king bed, if you're sleeping alone, then you can't sleep in the middle of it. Because you're gonna like lose the benefit and potentially not have a good outcome, right? But so you kind of have to choose one or the other side. If you have a bigger bed, so what I did, you helped me set up my outdoor bed on my deck. It's kind of an experiment where it's on springs and grounded to the earth, I have a rod two stories down, pounded in the dirt and then I have like a huge lodestone boulder. It's probably like 30 - 40 pounds that I use as a counterbalance on the other side of the bed, since it's kind of hanging and if it's just me, it'll slant so I put a huge rock or multiple. It's a It's one big experiment because the interesting thing about grounding if you take a voltmeter with magnetites been struck by lightning, so it's a lodestone. It's like an earth magnet, the voltage will actually go up, like substantially and that can be measured. So yeah, it's kind of fun and I remember the first bed I bought from you, I was sleeping on the magnetico sleep pad, which I don't denounce, I just think that it's really strong and should be used with caution, if used for several years, because it can cause a Herxheimer reaction and detox. But you probably thought I was crazy when I first told you about it. I'm sleeping on a 20 Gauss, you know, magnetic field and you're probably thinking that's overkill
Hendrik Haueisen 24:03
I guess that way because we always will have thoughts - so let's try to get out of all the EMFs but yes sure that this magnetic does address that a little bit differently. But this - to go back to this last because you mentioned about the two slat systems so yeah, so for the bigger beds, we can start at the, what was it? Double in Canada, I think it's full size in the US that and the queen and the king we generally provide the bed with two separate slat systems. Meaning that you know, one side is in a certain - in a sense, completely separate from the other so you can think of it as you have two foundations to your bed in the same bed. Yeah, when you sleep in the middle - I mean, I do have some people who like to sleep in the middle, it's not that it's - it doesn't work as well as as designed, it will work it just a lot firmer because you now - because those slats, one slat system sits on two latex support. So there's a beam of latex on the right, the beam on the left and then the slat that spans across that. So all your weight gets, at the end of the day, caught in the latex down there. So the - as the slats will push down into the latex, so when you sleep right in the middle, you are in a sense, having doubled the resistance to your weight. And so it's a bit firmer. I mean, you know, when when I really need a quick back fix, I go lay in the middle of the bed for five minutes, and it feels really good. I just can't do a whole night on it. And then I get a bit too sore, it's too much resistance. But some people who like to sleep really firm, they do like that. But it's not intended to be that way it's just an unintended consequence. And sometimes they have some also some bad unintended consequences with them.
Matthew Blackburn 26:02
That's good to know. I might experiment then this summer. Yeah, it's pretty cool. The first night I slept out there heard a giant moose jump in my lake and was swimming around like midnight. That's a pretty good, good sleeping experience. Interesting. And do any other beds come close to this design? Or is this a completely new, like? New setup, like?
Hendrik Haueisen 26:30
Yeah, so I guess maybe it we'll quickly go back to what I said earlier how this bed came about. So Balthasar Huesler, he then in the 80's, I think it was in 82. Yeah, it was 82, he founded a company called Heusler Nest, Nest being like a bird's nest and just his last name in front of it. It's a German idiom. But so they started selling these beds and when I said, you know, they're being sold into Europe and Asia, lots into Japan, that's true. Huesler Nest, the original company, and we use the in Canada simply produced, or manufactured the lumber for them, and they put that all together in Switzerland and then send it out. Now we can, it's a bit different now, but we can talk about that later on. But more to your questions. So if there's any other beds like that around, you know, that was the first one like that, that came up. And then you know, like, it always is, when something good comes out, you don't have to wait long until some other people see some opportunity because you know, the the market isn't saturated at first at all. And, you know, they tried to do their thing and, you know, maybe tried to do something like it or very similar to it, or maybe just incorporate some elements of the design. So you can see some of them around a, I know there's a couple, I don't know the name anymore, there was a company out Western Canada that just sort of jumped up a few years ago, and there's another company out west in the States. But in terms of our connection, we are connected, very closely connected to the original Swiss company Huesler Nest. Basically, the way that our bed came about was -- we no longer had manufactured wood for the Swiss. And the plan was to make the Canadian operation independent. And also Balthasar thought, you know, after 30 years, was then he's like, let's, let's see if we can redevelop the bed a little bit, let's see if there's any quirks that can be worked out or not. And so, that's how we came up with, with this bed design at the end of the day, and my dad had, but then moved here, and he had a lot of knowledge in different kinds of wood and how they work. And, you know, how they react to moisture and various things that you know, affect the long term -- how long the bed will last and how it may change over time. Because the point was to see if we can, if the bed could be made so that it is in 10 years, roughly the same as it is in year one. And so obviously the latex makes a big difference, but also you know, I mean, you and I know wood is not plastic, you know it changes it swells up and it you know releases moisture and it's so there's some - there's some issues when you go with natural materials that need to be figured out. And so, so yeah, so I guess somebody could go and you can go in on the Huesler Nest website and you'll see our bed is you know, slightly different. There's looks a bit more complex. But from an engineering point of view, it's actually it's pretty much the exact same in terms of how much wood is in the bed, how much latex is in the bed. Because that really determines some of the, some of the things on how the bed works and how it works together the latex and, and the wood. And so, although it looks a little bit different, I think they have two rows of slats much thinner and smaller than ours, we have one row slats bigger and thicker. But when you add up the various dimension, you end up with the exact same amount more or less exact same amount of wood, and the exact same amount of latex just spread out a little bit differently over the design.
Matthew Blackburn 30:33
Interesting. Well, that's a good segue to, to get into the latex. Because that's something I learned about from you guys. The difference - I thought, my original belief was that latex is all synthetic, and, you know, unnatural, but then I learned latex comes from the rubber tree, right? It's the sap. But most companies aren't using that, they're using like some weird material that off gases.
Hendrik Haueisen 31:06
Yeah, yeah, it's similar to, I don't know, if you have maple trees in Idaho, but if you did, there's a sap in there and you can eat it. And so same with latex, it comes - they tap a tree and then it runs out just like maple syrup would come out of a maple tree and they catch it with a bucket and, and send it off to process it. Now we get our latex from a place called Vita Talalay, in the Netherlands. And that was the, that's the same place that Huesler Nest gets their mattresses from as well. And now they - in the last few years now, they used to be 95% pure with their mattresses in terms of the latex content. And they have over the last few years step that up to 97%. And you know, the lot - the 3% is like it's the stuff, you won't find out what's in it just like you won't find out the Coca Cola recipe kind of thing. It's that sort of a company secret. Not that I'm promoting Coca Cola in anyway. But so what they do is they get -- they get that latex from various places around the world, you know, in Pacific Asia and in South America, and they ship it there. Now, the Vita Talalay is is not certified organic, like others have their mattresses organic and, and you can read this up on their FAQ on the site. Basically, they say, you know, with food, it makes sense to have organic food. But for latex, it doesn't really make sense because you just end up with sap, if you have real organic latex, you just have kind of a white milk. And so that is not very useful. So you need something to make this sapped foam into a shape that then can dry. And so that's where the 3% come in. And so instead of the organic, you can still get the organic certification. And, you know, places do that. But they decided not to, they thought is more important to track the sap from the tree to the factory instead of just to test the latex that's in the factory. And so they get this thing called Cradle to Cradle Gold. And then what they do is, because they do have to add that 3% mixture in order to shape it into a mattress; They send all of that then to a place called Eco Institute in Germany, and they test it for harmful substances and their general testing criteria is in infant's health. So you know, as good as you can get anyways. Yeah, and that's, yeah, that's probably most of the latex. There's some good things about latex because I know some of your followers on Facebook would probably ask about it, you know, sleeping heart and all this stuff. So latex - they are the two kinds is the Dunlop and Talalay latex - we use the Talalay latex. The difference is just one step in production more or less. The Talalay latex gets one additional step in where they put it into the latex mixture into a centrifuge, they spin it so that at the end of the day, it has the material has the same consistency all the way through so that it's not more dense in one spot than another, so it's roughly equal throughout, which is why it's (unintellgible) usually more expensive because it takes an extra step to make it. You can, you know, your audience can make up his mind which one is better. But, but that's how it works. And so that because they do some of these extra steps -- you know, it makes it, it increases breathability because it's more consistent with latex itself is open cell whereas, you know, like a memory foam would be a closed cell, it works with heat. And, you know, if you lay in a memory foam you, if it's in the wintertime, it's hard and it takes a little while to sink in - at least, so I'm told, you know, I rely on my customers telling me these things, because I don't sleep on that kind of a bed. But so they tell me, and then in the summer, it molds to your body much easier when it's nice and warm outside. Because, you know, in theory, that's how it should work, it should mould like as you lay into it, the heat sort of breaks down the material around you, and then it moulds to your body. The latex works a bit different because it's open cell, it doesn't do that moulding process to your body. But it's kind of like a you know, like a, like a sponge; It's it's very elastic, you know, if you, if you lay in it, it wants to keep, you know, pushing you out. It doesn't, you know, just -- cuddle around you.
Matthew Blackburn 36:23
I love it. Yeah, I think I've ordered like four beds from you guys in the last several years. And whenever I open up the package, it's like Christmas morning because I, I don't know, it's something about the smell of, of the latex and of the sheep wool topper, it just smells so good. It's probably better than gasoline - I used to like that smell growing up, so that's probably a healthier one to smell. Probably better for my system, but I thought, Hendrik, we should probably just to structure this like start from the bottom of the bed and work up, we kind of skipped the frame and just to keep it keep it organized. Because I could go off in so many different directions with you but the frame like I'll just say caspers, you know, bed I used to buy and it was super expensive, I paid like double what I paid for your beds and the frame that they provide is metal and so you have like another EMF, because metals whether it's in tattoos or jewelry or whatever, any kind of metal in your body you will attract EMFs and it's just wild to think that people are combining like metal frames with the coil mattresses, just metal on metal and they're in an apartment with 20, 30, 40 Wi Fi signals and I think the frame's a big deal so what you guys provide, it's pretty cool, your whole bed has zero metal in it right? And you offer like different styles of wood for the frame?
Hendrik Haueisen 38:07
Yeah, yeah, so the frame is -- there isn't a good term in English, you can think of it as solid engineered wood so it's real wood and why I say - what it's not just solid wood cause solid wood would be a solid piece of wood, just sort of shaped around the outside fit. But that doesn't really work too well especially in North America where we have you know high humidity. So, what we do is we cut the wood down and then we put it back together. So that that takes some of them - because what happens is with a solid piece of wood if you make a bed frame or anything out of just one piece then you know it starts to bend and warp and swell and all these things over time. And so that you know, if you need to stay connected to something you may rip the connection or you know, or the bed may become wonky and it starts to, you know, make some noise because three legs only on the ground and one legs up in the air a little bit. And then so we cut the tree down - well the tree, the tree gets cut down by somebody else. But we buy the raw - the raw wood from the sawmills and then we cut it into pieces and put it back together into a solid engineered frame. That's why I use the word engineer because we did something to it. We use a glue for that and I don't know usually in North America is you know glue is a pretty dirty, you know, lots of chemicals in - our glue is basically a mixture of limestone and water. And so this glue we had it tested also by the Eco - because when we work with Huesler Nest, everything has to be -- when we provided wood for them, everything has to be tested by Eco Institute because this was the standard. So same with the glue. So it's the kind of glue where you can, you know, work with your bare hands. If you get it all over you, well, you just peel it off an hour later. And you know, there isn't any, there aren't any adverse health effects. Now, is there any off gassing coming out? Because, again, that testing criteria is the infant's health. So same goes for the glue. And so we put the frames together, we the issue was that, you know, the latex, as you know, latex, pretty expensive. And then if you go with Talalay latex gets even more expensive. So the question was that my dad was trying to solve was like, okay, we can - we can make a great bed system but how can we come up with a frame that's really inexpensive to add to it. Because, you know, most people will probably buy the whole setup, if we can give it to them for good value. And because also, we can make it natural and you know, people appreciate that. And so we came up with this - it's a very simple frame construction, you know, there's four legs, and they're connected by some braces that run right to left. And so you said, there's no metal in it and the way we solve this is that Balthasar and my dad came up with this fiberglass reinforced plastic connector system. And you know, so you have the frame, you have these connections system with the positive and the negative, so you can put one in the other and click-in kind of like an Ikea setup. So it's very easy, you don't need any tools. And then also, they're quite strong. So one of them can, if I get this number, right, I haven't looked this up in a long, long time, or talked about it, I think each one of these connectors can withstand roughly about 2000 pounds. And there's, so each piece that gets connected with four connectors on each side, so there's plenty of strength to, to, you know, that this will never break. Or if one of them will break, there's three more and at this point in the decade or so that we've used it, we haven't had a single broken one, which is which is great. Because at the end of the day, I am happy if I can send out the bed and I never hear from you again, unless you want to tell me something nice about it. So that I don't want you to come back to me saying, Oh, this is broken, that's broken, because you know, it's no good for you and it's not good for me.
Matthew Blackburn 42:42
Yeah, I think it was only the first bed I put together that was a learning process. And I remember a rubber mallet with like a towel to, you know, in between helped to get it, like pushed down once it was in the groove, just like solidify it. And then also twisting the bed. I was confused at first, I had the bed like the wrong way. So I just had to turn it, you know, from - because I thought the head head to toe was a different direction.
Hendrik Haueisen 43:13
Yeah, I learned from those mistakes and I made a video that I sent along now of how to set up the bed. It's yeah, but yeah, you're right. I mean, even because you said you use the rubber mallet to put it together. And the reason is that, you know, these four connectors, they fit fairly tight, and they they need to be very tight so that you don't have any creaking noise in the bed when you move. And you know, we all move at night. And so it's just about noise elimination. And so they have to be quite tight. And you know, you can - sometimes they click in by hand, sometimes you need a little bit of something to give it a little hit to click in. But yeah, it all goes back to you know, my dad's German and everything is made to German standards. So we can't have this stuff wiggling around too much.
Matthew Blackburn 44:08
I love it. Yeah, I have a frame now that I got from a, like a wood furniture store here in Idaho. That's pretty heavy and huge but it looks cool. And so it's a little bit of an upgrade. And so so the frames built and then just to kind of paint a picture in the listeners minds, so you have the frame, the four kind of walls of it and then the next thing is you you include a wooden dowels, that's what they're called right? And you these little like pieces that you put three, three and three, like vertically along the bed and then you then you put the - was it the wool? I forget what those pieces are called.
Hendrik Haueisen 44:55
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So basically the bed consists of two components more or less, you have the frame and then the mattress system. And the frame is the frame, we've talked about the mattress system, it consists of these latex supports or somebody - some people call them latex beams that, again, the German word does not exist in English, so we'll take whatever you want to call them. But on top of those, they, they have the slats. And then on top of the slats is a four inch latex mattress, and then the wool top on top of that, so that's what we would call the mattress system. And it gets connected to the frame by using like you said, wooden dowels and they simply stick them into the frame, the holes are pre drilled. And, and then yeah, you put the latex coats onto the frame, then you span the slats across those latex supports, you basically just roll them out on on top of it, and then you put the mattress and the wool on top of those latex supports, it's, again, it's the same latex as in the mattress, it's just a very, it's a bit of different firmness because it has to take different - a different load, it's very concentrated, whereas in the mattress, your body obviously spreads out your weight over the - over it's area. But once they get on to the slats, it's all basically on single points, right, and less right and left. And so they just have to be a different from this than the mattress, then we make the slats. Again, they're engineered solid wood. You know, again, it's wood that's cut, and then put together in a certain way and shaped in a certain way. And that the point of them is that they are as flexible as possible. Now, as flexible as possible means there are obviously some constraints there because you don't want them falling off the bed. So they are attached in a few places. We just we use some velcro - we tried, you know, because making velcro, it isn't the cleanest process, they are, you know, quote unquote, cleaner materials around it. But we had to make a compromise here we tried with sort of, we would drill little holes into the slats on every fifth or sixth one and then we would have little strings come out. And you would tie them up and that was fine but it was really hard not to have the strings rip off with time depending on the weight of the person sleeping. And so we ended up going back to the velcro because there was just a compromise that had to be made because the bed, first has to be the number one purpose is to give you good sleep and the number two purpose is to try to find the best materials to to allow that. And so anyways to go back to Velcro and maybe one day a different ideas springs up and we'll change the system again. But, that's where we're at. So those slats are connected to the latex support and we aren't concerned about them breaking. I sometimes have people ask you know what if your kids jump on them, and I'm like, they're not going to break them. I used to play football with my son on the bed and we you know, bounce around and I weigh roughly 180 pounds or so. And you know we we weren't exactly easy on on the bed itself. And so usually to put people's minds to rest, when they ask a showing, I'll just stand on one of the slats. I'll put the mattress or flip the mattress over I stand with all my body weight on a slat and they bounce around a little bit up and down and they say, that things pretty strong. But you know, maybe one day it will break but then they could be easily replaced. That wouldn't be an issue. But so far no replacements and we're not really expecting any unless you put an axe to it really.
Matthew Blackburn 49:06
That's awesome. And so, so we talked about the the latex mattress and then the the sheep wool topper. What's the purpose of that? Is it? Is it if someone sweats just to increase the lifespan of the mattress?
Hendrik Haueisen 49:23
Yeah, actually, maybe, well, we didn't talk about - you sort of touched on one thing for the mattress earlier, but when you opened the box, and you know it has this latex smell in the wool and you smell oh, actually, maybe we should go back to the frame, one more thing. You would also smell the wax that we put on the frame. So you know usually it depends on the company but it's more common that they put a lacquer or some sort of maybe your oil wood, depends on companies do it differently and how they finish their wood. We put wax on it, you can - we get that one from Germany, and it's, it is the same wax that they use on children's wooden toys. So, you know, there wouldn't be - if you have an infant that comes around and starts chewing on the bedframe, there isn't any concern that would be harmful in any way. Because as far as you know, wood finishes, it is the most natural least chemical one that we can find. So, you know, people may smell that, but, you know, this is a it's usually a concern people will ask me, so when I - sometimes, not very often, it depends on how much research people have done. I usually get a good idea on sort of, in the email communications or on phone conversations, and those who have done little research and just found us and want to buy something they sometimes ask, you know, do I have to air out the mattress for you know, two, three weeks, because, you know, it never occurred to me, I never had to do it in my life. But I guess that's what people have do these days. And so I tell them, "Look, I there's no concern, you can sleep on it from the first night on -- the latex smell does fade away a little bit." Because when we have - while we have the mattress here, they all the mattresses are together. So that smell is contained within, within the package that they sit in. And so then within two, three weeks, the latex smell fades away. But even on night one, you can sleep on it. And most people wouldn't even consider latex smell to be very aggressive to begin with. What people are usually concerned about is the chemicals that come along with your latex mattress and they are quite, they can be quite bad, so much that you can sleep on it for a day or a week or, you know, some people up to a month. So yeah, so that's always, for some people, it's a concern. But I, I only had, I remember there was one guy, he was sort of more on the autistic spectrum. And so he was very sensitive to smells. And he was really the only one I can remember who had, who couldn't sleep on the bed from night one on. But but that had more to do with his sensitivity than with anything else.
Matthew Blackburn 52:25
Yeah, that I think they're called volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, that come off these synthetic materials. And it's scary to think about, like most people in the United States, and probably in other countries as well. They get a brand new bed, synthetic. Now, like you were saying the the memory foam or whatever. And they're in this bedroom with the door shut, the window is shut. And they're probably just inhaling way over the safety limit of VOCs for days or weeks after they get this new mattress, because I'm sure a lot of people don't follow the directions. They're like, oh, I need it right now to sleep on tonight. And so they just throw it up in their bedroom, and then just make it a gas chamber in there. And that's, I mean, the studies on VOCs, lung damage, organ damage, liver damage. It's pretty scary.
Hendrik Haueisen 53:21
Yeah. Yeah, it's, you know, it's one of these silent little things, you know, you may get a headache or, you know, some people maybe don't get any symptoms, but It's same with the EMF thing, just because you don't feel it doesn't mean it actually doesn't affect you. It's just, you know, you just don't have the, the sensory apparatus, shall we say? Like, like others do. Yeah, so I take that usually as a benchmark in terms of safety, you know, some people say, Look, you know, you know, when you go to the dentist, and he tells you about X rays, like - does less, whatever you call it, and then in a banana next, you know, so that's your safety standard. That kind of sucks.
Matthew Blackburn 54:08
I think ionizing radiation or something, yeah.
Hendrik Haueisen 54:11
Yeah. So yeah, that's, that's fine. I still don't like what to do. Please give me the rest. The safety standard is I want to wear the vest if I need to get the X rays done.
Matthew Blackburn 54:23
Yeah, we can look at that, like the EPA here in the US. And there's a good website, tapwaterdatabase.org (www.ewg.org/tapwater/). And you can type in where you live, your zip code, and it'll show the levels above like, of your municipal water above the EPA standards. And usually, it's like 50 times more 200 times more 300 times more of trihalomethanes or whatever, in the water. And it gets freaky I mean, they all these things add up. It's a slow it's a slow kill.
Hendrik Haueisen 54:57
Yeah, yeah, it's definitely it's always, you know, it's hard to put your finger on the one of the ones. It's usually a cumulative effect from all things. And so we tried to put, we try to keep those things out of our product as much as possible. I guess you asked about the sheep wool. So there's a couple of things about it. It's not comfortably at the four inch Talalay latex mattress is more or less the comfort layer and your weight gets projected down onto the slats so much that if you're a healthy individual, you and you sleep only on your back, you could sleep on just the slats and you actually probably find it quite comfortable. Because of the way it conforms to your body. Now, if you sleep on your side, it's gets a bit, you know, a bit firm. But on your back, if you lay down on your back, it's quite enjoyable, actually. But you know, we add a four inch latex mattress to it because it's probably nicer to have some cushion there. And it's also much more practical for people that sleep on their side. But so then on top of that sheep wool doesn't add anything for comfort, really, it's purely for hygiene that it's added. Now, the sheep wool, again comes from Switzerland. And as I guess if we categorize sheep wool, it can either come from a dead sheep or from a live sheep. And the reason would be as soon as the sheep is dead, the wool dies with it. And if the sheep's alive, the wool in the sense is still alive, in terms of what it does on the sheep, now and then - so it comes from live sheep, then we can categorize the live sheep into wool that gets cut off and is never touched and wool that's cut off and all sorts of things are done to it like treated for mites and moths and, and various other things. And as soon as you start treating it, the wool dies once again. And if you don't treat it with anything, then the wool continues to stay alive like it did on the sheep. So that when - so this wool in that we get from Switzerland, all they do is they cold wash it, and they pick through to get some of the imperfections out of it. But many of them remain and so if you look at our sheep wool - I had one lady, she called me and said, "I think there's more than my sheep wool top" and I'm like, probably not but send me a picture. And so she sent me a picture and sure enough, it's one of those imperfections, a darker piece of wool or sometimes there's actually like a piece of brush in there or, or a stick or something like that you could find them because these things usually get, you know, bleached out and then all the other things like when you hot wash it and all this stuff sort of disappears. But the problem is, when you do that you kill the wool. Because while it's on the sheep, it's self cleaning. And if you cut it off the sheep and you don't do anything to it, it continues to be self cleaning. So when you sweat at night, it will capture the moisture. And then it breaks down those sweat particles and then as air moves through the sheep wool topper, it cleans it out again, it releases all that dirt back into the atmosphere. And then you - in theory have a clean bed every night. And so sheep wool is set to take on about three times its own weight in water, which is more than you can sweat in one night. And so there isn't, isn't a big concern about stuff going through into the mattress. Now it could happen that you know, with young children that they peed the bed and then that could be a lot. And then sometimes it goes through to the mattress and we can talk about that. But at least for the sheep wool, it also takes that pee it captures it, and then it cleans it out. And then so next day when you know my son was younger, and he would pee the bed, I take off, we take off the sheep wool, we hang it up and about four hours later, you could not tell that somebody peed in this bed. Because it also gets - it's really good as getting rid of smell. We tried it with cigarette smoke, we put the sheep or blanket in a room that was full of cigarette smoke. And you know, reeked really terribly bad and you know, about half a day or so you had no idea that there was - that it stunk like cigarettes. And then it's all because the wool has not been hot washed it hasn't been treated with any chemicals. Like all the chemical treatments what they're - what they want to achieve with it, is what the sheep will naturally is already - like it's naturally mite resistant is naturally moth resistant then it's naturally all these things but so you just wonder why exactly. It needs to be treated with all these things when it's naturally all of these things already.
Matthew Blackburn 59:47
Wow, that was all fascinating. You're making me want to get sheep here because I overbuilt the goat enclosures, so I have three goats right now and so I probably need help shearing them but that's really fascinating about the wool being alive, I want to dive into that more through a book or something.
Hendrik Haueisen 1:00:10
Wool does make for good blankets also, we don't sell any blankets right now. But you know, if you can get your hands on a wool blanket, the nice thing about it also is it's quite breathable. And so, so when you if the traditional blanket, you know, you may have down feathers or something like that, you know, but, you know, if you if you see the duck on the pond, it doesn't sink because the feathers keep all the moisture out. Right, otherwise, the thing would go soaking wet and would start to drown, but it doesn't, it was designed to swim and to not drown. And so the sheep, on the other hand, you know, if the sheep falls into the pond, it will drown. Because it doesn't keep the water out. But it actually soaks it up. So when you - when you have it down and blanket, for example, down and feather blanket, what you do is in a sense, overtop of the you, you create a barrier and the air can't go out through the blanket, but it captured it all in between the blanket in the bed. And so if you have, you know, a traditional bed and you may have some, you know waterproofing topper on top of it, which basically seals the bed under you, then you have a blanket with down feathers, you create in a sense a chamber where you know, all the air stays inside, all the moisture stays inside and it stays on you. Now with the sheep wool below you allows that, you know, your sweat can go down and off your body. So you don't sleep in your sweat with the sweat on your body or right under your back. And then the other thing, if you can get your hands on the sheep wool - sheep wool blanket is that, it also allows the air to go out above you. And so you're much less likely to swell, actually, you're probably not going to sweat, because you have good airflow. I mean, okay, there's always some people, but on average, let's say,
Matthew Blackburn 1:02:09
Wow, that's fascinating. So many questions that came out of that. Let's see - I'll start with this one. Like, are there any bedding materials that putting over like the sheep's wool at the top, like a fitted sheet, that wouldn't be good? Like I'd imagine someone wouldn't buy your bed and then put like a polyester base sheet on top. But was it linen, cotton, you know, natural materials that are breathable -- probably will work with the bed, right? Where like a plastic like polyester, like synthetic bedding would probably not help with what you were just saying with sweat and all that it would kind of block, is that accurate?
Hendrik Haueisen 1:02:56
Yeah, yeah, I recommend to people that you don't put one of these water proofing things over top of the sheep wool, like those mattress protectors, because the sheep wool does already do that job. In terms of bed sheet, because I said, you know, as the air moves through, it releases all that dirt that it captures all these particles. It does that through the bed sheet, you don't have to take off the bed sheet every day. And it's just a matter, if you have a heavy blanket, you should probably leave it uncovered a few times of the week or you just don't - don't do your bed at all, then you're golden if you're one of those kinds of people. But yeah, any fitted sheet really works as long as it's, you know, not engineered to be waterproof in a sense. So as long as it lets air go through it and then does just fine.
Matthew Blackburn 1:03:53
Awesome. Yeah, I was using a - and I've had him on the show that Chilipad several years ago. And then last year, I went fully off grid or am now and I realized that it wasn't practical to have that running all night, even though it doesn't use a ton of power. What I found is that putting those pads - so basically it's like these pads that you put, like I was using over your sheep's wool like you know, right under the fitted sheet, these pads that have water channels, and then it cools the water so in the summer theoretically you can sleep cold and there's a bunch of companies now selling these things but what I found is that, I didn't sleep as well in combination with your bed. I don't know if it would work better on another bed but it was polyester based the pads and so it took me months to figure that out and once I did I took it off the bed and I felt like I slept cooler just with not sleeping on polyester. But it's something that people have to experiment with I think in their climate and find what works
Hendrik Haueisen 1:05:00
Yeah, yeah, I guess these things, I mean they have their place and but I would say it's probably not designed for our bed because, in theory, it takes care of that already. Because the sheep wool is cooling in the summer doesn't want hot on units - gets nice and warm in the winter. The biggest test I had was a couple of women that were in menopause. And it was very important for them that the bed was not running hot. And you know, before then I'd never considered it, I thought it was, you know, I just heard men talk about it. But then, you know, various women came, they're like, look, I'm 50 or so and, you know, I just want to not sleep hot anymore. Like, okay, I think I can help you with that. You can give this a try and yeah, they were all - they've all been very happy. And the reason is, you know, the sheep wool does a good job. But then also the mattress itself, because it's the Talalay latex, the Vida Talalay latex, which is engineered to be more breathable than the average latex, latex itself is already quite breathable. But then the Vida Talalay, they have engineered in such a way that it's allows for even more airflow. And because then under the bed, our bed is designed that it's open under so you can have airflow going all the way through. And so in theory should take care of those concerns. You know, 99 times out of 100, there's always somebody but generally, I don't have any negative feedback on sleeping harder. I don't think I've ever had somebody who, who was concerned who came back and said, "No, it didn't address my problem." But you know, maybe one day there will be somebody.
Matthew Blackburn 1:06:47
And another question that came up for me is putting the different components out in the sun to sterilize it, to like deep clean or super clean it; Because I used to do that with my pillows, I would take off the, you know, the cover of the pillow and then just put the pillow out in full sun, in the summer and turn it you know, to just get the UV light on it. And it probably - maybe it made things worse because the pillow was synthetic, I don't know. But I would imagine that's helpful with your materials like, like I have a deck here like could I put the sheep's wool topper, you know, once a month or something in the summer out to just get a deep clean or is it even necessary and same thing with the mattress?
Hendrik Haueisen 1:07:34
Yeah, for the sofa, the sheep wool, because you can't clean it with anything with any chemicals, any soaps -- No, it always cleans itself but just like the sheep out in the field that does get rained on from time to time and it gets bleached out by the sun. And so it's the same thing with our wool, what we recommend is that once or twice a year, we generally do it at the beginning and the end of the summer, where we take the wool outside, put it on the clothesline and completely drench it in cold water and then we just let it dry in the sun. And if you have a nice hot day, by nightfall you can use the sheep wool again or maybe you have to go one day without but that's really the way to clean it just to give it an overall clean again and the sun also does really good at bleaching out some of the spots because you know -- as the, as you sweat and you know fluids go in there and go back out at least sometimes stain rings and so that stuff gets bleached out for the most part, once you have it out in the sun and then the cotton, so the cotton kind of - I guess we didn't talk about that around the mattress, we have a organic cotton cover you know it's organic, but -- personally, look, the same 10 years ago was not considered organic, and then it's still the same one. But people wanted the habit called organic so the manufacturer said okay, we're going to do the certification. It's still the same old cotton as back then but now it's organic. And so that's around the mattress, just as a protector and you can take that off and it's pre-washed and pre-dried so you can put it in the wash on the dryer or you can just wash it and hang it outside and it simply zips on and off, now there is a zipper on that but so there is technically metal on it, but it's aluminum and aluminum is neutral doesn't carry any EMF so despite there being technically metal on it, but it's called EMF friendly metal -- again, and it goes back to what's practical at the end of the day, it's you know, it's kind of hard to sew the thing back together every time you take it off.
Matthew Blackburn 1:09:52
Is that kind of the same process. Could you - unzip that and in wash it like the sheep wool and put out in the sun? Would there be benefit to that, or?
Hendrik Haueisen 1:10:02
Yeah, just for general cleaning would be just that alone. You can do it. Because with most mattresses, the problem is always, you know, over the years, you don't really know what happens inside your mattress because you know, you sleep you sweat and it takes on all sorts of - it takes on a life of its own sometimes even when houses, things that you probably don't want in your mattress, but so, that the point of it is you can take the whole thing apart. Latex is - it doesn't attract any - so for example, in a big city, people ask about bedbugs and various things like that. And so latex is - what was the name of it, let me just think about it. It's antibacterial and so meaning it doesn't have anything for them to eat in there. So they won't, they may come looking at it and then they say, "Oh, nothing to eat in here, let's go somewhere else." And so the only places they would end up then would be the cotton cover, which you can wash if you do have some sort of bug problem, or the sheep wool and that sheep wool cleans itself out again, so they don't really like sitting in sheep wool because they find they get rejected in there. And so at the end of the day, you could clean the bed, like down to its bare bones, in a sense. Whereas you know, other mattresses, you may not be able to actually clean your mattress, you can just sort of clean around it. But you don't really know what happens inside.
Matthew Blackburn 1:11:38
That's a good point about the bedbugs and the dust mites. I think I saw some really gross, like Discovery Channel or Nova documentary about the microscopic bugs, specifically dust mites that live in mattresses, and the numbers were almost unbelievable. Like, I think it was millions of dust mites and they weighed so many pounds, and increase the weight of the mattress, like weighed the mattress before and after, after sleeping on it for several years. And it's super gross. And these, these critters live on dead skin cells is my understanding. And so when we when we shed -
Hendrik Haueisen 1:12:23
So that's another point - that's another point to the sheep wool. Because yeah, they are technically speaking, Huesler Nest did some research on this and I remember seeing that just a few months ago or so, on the dust mites and how they eat skin. And so technically they are friends because they eat this dead skin that we shed. But the problem is, you know, that's the good thing they do and there's other problems that we get from them, like allergic, you know, like allergies and various things. But so the sheep wool, what happens is it also breaks down these dead, the skin cells that that we shed. And so once again, the mites, the dust mites don't find anything to eat, even though if they were there, they would do us a favor by eating this stuff away. But we don't need them there because the sheep wool takes care of that. So that's another little bonus of the sheep of real sheep wool. And the I guess just for general understanding, basically, if you go to the store, and you can buy a sheep wool sweater or jacket or something like that, and they say you can wash it, you can be sure that the wool is dead. So if you can find one that they are pretty meticulous about and say that you can't wash this, then you know you have a higher certainty that the wool is still self cleaning and which means you don't have to wash them - it does itself.
Matthew Blackburn 1:13:54
That's incredible. Yeah, I'm fascinated. Like there's a huge, untapped market. Because everyone's looking to start their own business, right? And I tried to help like, please come out with this company. And I think this is like four or five years ago, I was looking for nettle clothing. Because I think the Germans use that in World War 2 and it was a German thing. It's like using nettles to make jackets and stuff like that and pants. I don't know if you if your dad ever talked about that. But it that seems like a really beneficial material.
Hendrik Haueisen 1:14:33
Mostly - that we have lots of nettles in Germany it wouldn't be out of the question that we'd make use of them. Yeah, but I don't - I don't know.
Matthew Blackburn 1:14:42
Yeah, it's just It blows my mind now and I go clothes shopping like once a year now, or I just rely on what my parents buy me for Christmas, but I'll look at what they're selling and most clothes now are like a mix of like polyester like 90% from what I've seen. And these are like really expensive brands, like wow, Where's all the wool stuff and all the natural materials?
Hendrik Haueisen 1:15:10
Yeah, it goes back to - I mean, just to bring it back to the beds, but it goes back to, you know it will say a cotton this and then you look at the details and it says but 95% polyester, 5% cotton but again it's cotton, whatever shirt or sweater or something like that. And like with with our beds, I try to - somebody once asked me, "Can you sell it to me?" and I'm like, in the sense like, can you sell me - can you convince me to buy your product? And I'm like, look, I'm not a salesman, I'm just an engineer, I'll tell you how it is. And then please decide yourself if you like it or not. And so on the website, I tried to - so we talked earlier about sort of price and so one of the reasons we can sell it for what we do is, you know, I built this website, myself, and there's - it's gone through various iterations. But I simply thought, like, if I have a good product, which I believe we have, I just need to tell you about it, I don't need to convince you, I just need to tell you all that it has and all that it does and then, you know, you can make up your mind about it. And you may be convinced by the details or not by you know, me saying, you know, we use, you know, 100% whatever this or that. And really it's only 97% latex, and I can tell you it's 97% and, and tell you why it's 97%. And then maybe you agree that 97% is better than 100%.
Matthew Blackburn 1:16:44
It's a good point. I'm curious, what do you and your wife use for bedding like in the summer versus the the winter? Like do you guys use wool in the winter and then switch to a different material when it gets warmer?
Hendrik Haueisen 1:17:02
Yeah, we're in Canada here so it does get a little bit cool. But also in Idaho, it's not that warm either in winter. We use, we use a wool blanket in the winter. And I use a wool blanket all throughout actually. And if it's too hot, I use nothing but -- even in the summer, you know? Because it lets the air go through. It's - I find it quite nice. My wife basically she doubles in the winter and goes single wool in the summer, so.
Matthew Blackburn 1:17:34
Oh, wow. That's interesting that you could sleep with nothing over you I find, I just like the weight. I don't know what it is. It's just a matter of finding something light enough or breathable enough.
Hendrik Haueisen 1:17:48
Oh, that actually reminds me, one of the things because it's because we're talking about this; One of the things that our bed is not good for is - and this never occurred to us because in Germany, we don't sleep that way. We have a - you know, you have your your bed, you have your bed sheet over your bed, and then you have yourself and then a blanket over top. But in North America, it's still somewhat common where people have heavier themselves, then they have a bed sheet and then they have a blanket over top. And they sort of tuck the bedsheet in at the feet. And that's the one thing you can't do with our bed, because you have nothing to tuck it in at the bottom. So I had, I had a few people ask about that. And I had to disappoint them, they said just, you know, I guess become a little bit more European and just buy a blanket and forget about the bed sheet. Because you know, you buy a blanket that has a cover around as you can take that off, you can wash that I guess that's the concern if you want something you can wash.
Matthew Blackburn 1:18:49
Right? Yeah, that makes sense. Let's see, do you want to go into some Q&A questions? Because we have some good ones here?
Hendrik Haueisen 1:18:58
Sure - Yeah, we sort of touched on it twice, on the on the price or why we - I would say, you know, you saw the price when I sent it to you and you had your thoughts about the price. And, you know, some people ask, you know, how can I - how can we sell this for the price that we do? Obviously, it isn't cheap, but you know, I'd say it's affordable. We, you know, roughly speaking, you're looking at a bed, you know, depending on what wood you want for the frame, but let's just say between, like a queen to King bed, maybe it's between what $2500 to $3,000 depending on where you live, and that would include shipping. That's for the whole bed setup with a frame. And just unload the point of why we can maybe sell for that price point and one of them is well, if you haven't listened to Matt Blackburn or hadn't had a friend talk about it you probably need to do a lot of research to find us. Because we don't, I don't really do advertising. First of all, I don't have time, because people are buying them without. And but also, you know, it adds a lot of cost to a product, most of most products are like, they are quite loaded with advertisement cost that you pay, you know, if you see a TV ad, it's, it's going to cost a lot of money to create a TV ad, and that reflects in the products price, at the end of the day. You know, we have really good connections with our Swiss friends from Huesler Nest. So we get the materials for a really good price. If we didn't have them, there's no way we could sell that at the price that we do. You know, other small things I, I tried to like, for example, if you go into the store, and you pick up a product, there is, for example, there is a 3%, roughly 3% of the cost is just for you to use your credit card, you know, so I give you the price, without credit card. And if you really want to use credit card, well, you're gonna have to pay the extra 3% but at least you know, you have the option to go without and you know, small things - always trying to reduce overhead cost, you know, I recently got into accepting cryptocurrencies, because the, you know, we're in Canada, the bank question is, let's just say it's, it's questionable. But, but it's another way for people to say, look, I don't want to pay whatever your bank fees might be to send bank transfer, or I don't want to pay the PayPal fees. But you know, I use Bitcoin, or I use US dollar coins, and I can send them without any transaction fees. So you know, there's always looking for small ways that we can keep the price where it is, and don't have to add more fixed costs on it than we have to do it. Yeah, and those are probably the bigger points, why, why the bed costs what it does. You know, we're a small business, it's basically my dad and I building them, it's mostly him, I just help them out, my wife helps out a bit. And we're here when certain tasks when he needs help, so we don't have to support, you know, a big empire behind it. You know, and then also, we thought that, you know, that people will roughly spend 10 years on a bed. You know, after 10 years, you buy a new one, on average, you know, the manufacturer may say five years, but most people still keep it for 10 years around. And I'm just thinking about like a regular coil mattress they usually have done after five years, but people keep them around for a little bit longer. And so so we said, look, there's, you know, in North America, basically, the US populations what, 350 million people roughly speaking. That means, in the US alone, you have 35 million beds sold every year, if you think that every person buys one every 10 years. And so there's, there's a lot of - so if you say, Look, your bed costs $10,000, maybe, then that means there's only so few people that could potentially afford that. And so we know our production costs for the beds, and we know what we need to make a living. And we say, Look, we can live with this price. And the price that we chose is one way or, you know, if you're a teacher, and your husband or your wife is a mechanic or a plumber, or whatever, you can save, you know, you may have to save for half a year and you can afford it. You don't have to be a lawyer or a doctor or something like that, in order to afford a good night's sleep. That was the thinking and, and hopefully, you know, I am more in terms of business. I think having - if a product is good. If you can sell many items for less cost. It's you know, just as good or better than just selling a few at a lot of cost. So most people would probably appreciate that too. I thought at least when I buy stuff, that's how I think about it.
Matthew Blackburn 1:24:33
I love it. Yeah, it's kind of how I run Mito Life and no advertising and I think your beds are super affordable. I think it's a great price, especially if you go around and shop and look at stores at the mall or your shopping center. The bed stores just ridiculous for what you get. It's all you know, VOCs and synthetics and it's horrible. Kind of a oddball question for you Hendrik, like, what, what if I wanted to plan ahead and just have a mattress in storage, like in my shop or whatever is like a prepping thing like if the world ends, how long would that last hypothetically in the box, would it last longer?
Hendrik Haueisen 1:25:19
Yeah it would. So the latex it - the way it deteriorates like most mattresses will deteriorate predominantly based off the weight that they support, like a coil, you know, takes the weight and then depending on how far along is taking the weight, it may come back to 99% or 90% of its original length. The latex works a little bit different in terms of how it fatigues it does fatigue a little bit over time with in terms of getting a dent in it. It's fairly minimal. So from personal experience, the longest I had this queen bed -- before I got married was, you know, something like seven years and then I gave it to a friend because I told him, "Look, this thing is like brand new, I'm not gonna throw it out." And so I gave it to him. And after about 10 - 11 years, you could see roughly about a half an inch dip in it. But you know, it was nothing that overly affects your sleep, especially after 10 years. But so, most of the deterioration comes from it being exposed to sunlight, the UV does dry up the latex quicker than if it's not exposed to it. So if you keep it in a bag and you keep it in a - in a shed or like in some dark room, then it will last a bit quite a bit longer. The natural life of latex is 13 years. And so at Vita Talalay in the Netherlands, they make a few different kinds of mattresses. And this is the kind where they say we add nothing to make it last longer or anything. And so it's you know, you get a minimum of 13 years out of it, you may get more in Switzerland, because they've said they've sold these since the 80's. It was just a few years ago that their last original customer came and got a new mattress now that was sort of an odd one. That was after almost 40 years that the lady needed it to be replaced. Most people are probably between the 15 and 20 year mark. Butyeah, that's that's how it deteriorates is mostly is sunlight is is the one
Matthew Blackburn 1:27:29
Okay. Interesting, so don't do that sun cleaning with the mattress itself?
Hendrik Haueisen 1:27:34
Well, you can you can put it outside I think for a day or so just to you know, get it sterilized again that's not an issue - it's just when it's prolonged period of times in the sun exposed to it. That's a problem.
Matthew Blackburn 1:27:46
Make sense. Awesome. Have you ever looked in looked into inverted bed therapy -- years ago I got into it, I forget the guy that invented it. But basically you raise the bed four to six inches at the head. And the idea is increases your circulation because you think it would be the opposite you think you would want all the blood to go to your head and have your feet higher. But he was saying the reverse raise the head of your bed and I stopped doing it because I ended up waking up at the - like I slid down my bed in the middle of the night and I would wake up at the bottom and I was kind of disoriented.
Hendrik Haueisen 1:28:30
Yeah, I had a couple of customers bring it up and we did there was a handful I think where we they wanted the legs higher. So you know because we build everything ourselves we can just adjust that if somebody wants to sleep so many inches higher like we would always suggest probably stay with - the six inches is very high on the head because the latex does start to slide down because the way our standard mattress system is designed, it's not enclosed by the frame, now you know somebody wants to we can build an enclosed frame and it would contain it better. But you know custom work is usually it does cost a little bit because it's you know when it's outside of you know production takes a bit, it takes a lot more in labor costs to to build it but so I had a few people asked for it. Personally I'm undecided what to do with it, I can see the benefits from it in terms of the detox. The other - the downside of it, I see is that you know, once you go on a slant your body weight now, like if you - lay down flat and you draw an arrow to where your body weight points, it goes straight down, it's at a 90 degree angle all across your body. Now if you go on an angle, you're no longer pushing down into 90 degree angle. And so it's it's a bit angled now. And so then your discs, I don't know what happens to the pressure on your discs. If they're still able to relax, like they're supposed to. So you have some - you have some compromises there that you may, you may end up, you know, detoxing more but actually sleeping a little bit worse. And then the question is okay, can you detox another way and like sleep good and detox? Is there a way to do both?
Matthew Blackburn 1:30:20
That's a good, that's a good point. What about this one? Should we sleep in complete darkness?
Hendrik Haueisen 1:30:26
Well, as somebody who's living in the country and in the city, darkness is certainly better off, I'll tell you how we set up a bedroom. So we try to, we don't have a TV in the bedroom. We don't, we try not to have cell phones or various things in the bedroom. You know, it's not always perfect. But you know, you try to when we're in the city, we, you know, try to get those windows dark as much as possible. Because, you know, city lights are quite bright in the country it's not it's not a problem, when the middle of nowhere, there is no light. So it's pretty black at night. And so, yeah, I mean, it just goes back to, you know, basic human, shall we say? You know, if we think of back of the caveman, you know, the, the ideal before the light bulb was invented, we would always sleep in darkness. And so it's, it's fairly a fairly new technology, still, I guess, you know, a few 100 years. It wasn't designed that way. But we invented that way doesn't mean it's, it's bad. But now, it's, I always find, you know, if you can, if you can go back to the basics, you're probably better off, although some of these things are always hard to nail down, you know, with real certainty if one's better than the other, but it seems more intuitive to sleep in complete darkness than to sleep in the light, just by experience.
Matthew Blackburn 1:32:04
Yeah, yeah. I've done a lot of experiments with that and I found there's no, no cheat to the timing of going to bed. Like, I find that more important than the amount of hours I get, like, if I go to bed, you know, I think it's 10 to 2 - 10pm to 2am is like the best window to be asleep. And I've tried to break those rules for years off and on, and it's never worked. I always feel worse the next day if I'm awake during that time.
Hendrik Haueisen 1:32:35
Yeah, yeah, certainly consistency is, is the, is the thing. I mean, you know, if you're, if you're a night owls, and okay, maybe it's, you want to sleep 12 to 8 or something like that, but you should try to get, you know, seven, seven hours probably is a good, good amount. We did touch on this at the beginning. We said people, you know, we think about all these things, but we generally don't think about the bed, you know, we think about, you know, melatonin and whatever all these things we can do to prepare us for sleep or to prepare the environment, but we don't think too much about the bed. You know, it is you, on average, you sleep, you know, 1/3 of your life, give or take a little bit. So, number one thing should be, you know, obviously, you want to be in a house and a room, but what you sleep on is very important. And then you can you can play around with some of the other things as well. But the most important sleep, the most important factor of sleep is still what you sleep on. Because sort of cant change this once you're asleep.
Matthew Blackburn 1:33:49
Right. Hendrik, we didn't cover the pillow and this is a good question. Someone said, "What's the ideal pillow for proper sleep posture?" So you guys include a pillow right when people buy the bed?
Hendrik Haueisen 1:34:05
Yeah, we have pillows. Like people have bought them separately but it's always have to look for shipping costs because we're not Amazon we don't get preferred shipping rates. But so when people buy them with the beds, they usually get they get them a bit cheaper. We use a again a Talalay latex pillow. It's basically the same as the mattress system that it's wrapped in cotton, and it's wrapped in sheep wool once again, so it's the same idea. You can clean it all and so it has a hygiene component around it which is pretty important for a pillow because, you know, that's where your face is. For our bed, we find, well - so when you lay down most beds because you sink in quite - a lot compared to our bed anyways, or compared to latex beds, let's say, well, they should say compared to our bed because there's just too many latex beds. So just compared to our beds, so some people think and a lot, so they need to sleep quite high up with the head, on our bed, you sleep much flatter, so you need a much smaller pillow at the end of the day. What's important is when when people ask me, you know, what should I get, I'm like, "Look, I always recommend kind of a foam, if you can get a natural latex, I think that's probably the best." And then, just because - so some people asked sheep wool pillow and this pillow, and I'm like, "Well, if you have loose material in your pillow, that means as you move around at night, you're going to start displacing that material to the outside and you start going lower and lower and lower and lower." And eventually you get to the point where it's unnatural, because you want your spine to be somewhat straight, or like if you're on your side, you know, you wanted to have roughly a straight line from head to pelvis, and if you're on your back, then you want to follow the natural curve. So if your pillow gets smaller over the course of the night, that does seem to at some point, you get to a point where it's no longer that good for you, you miss, like you get past the, the good state, shall we call it. So with our pillow, the way it's solved, again, we we get this from Huesler Nest of through Huesler Nest. And they have - it's been about a year or two years, probably they come come up with this pillow while they had somebody come up - they don't make them themselves. But the company who makes it, came up with this pillow that has two slices in it. So you know, if you're a bit of smaller shoulders, then you can take out a slice of latex and have a lower pillow. If you haven't wide shoulders, then you leave the piece in. And so you can experiment around a little bit. And I always say, you know, if you have a husband, wife, parents partner, whatever, they'll get them to just look at how you lay their sleeping. Does it look natural or does it not? You know, is there a kink in there, then you should probably change it up. If it's you know, if it looks natural, then that's that's a good start. And so it's a good way to prevent a lot of upper back and neck pain. It's mostly related to the pillow although you know, yeah, your bed does have something to say as well. But more often than not neck pain, you should look at your pillow.
Matthew Blackburn 1:37:34
Have you seen the pillows that are higher on one side? than the other? Do you have any thoughts on that?
Hendrik Haueisen 1:37:41
Well, ours technically are, they have the shape with two bumps, one is a bit lower than the other. Which, you know, some person may, depending on you know how their body is structured, they may prefer one way around or another. I, the problem is, so our pillows that they aren't cheap. You know, 200 bucks for pillows, it's a lot of money. Again, it's latex, I'd say, "Look, if you think about our bed and the pillows, you should think of it as an investment." You know, if you get 10 years out of it 200 bucks may not be all that bad. You know, especially with inflation these days, no, in 10 years, that's going to be peanuts. But so I say look, if you think of it as an investment and - if you don't want to buy a pillow from us buy it from somewhere else. But this try to find something that is, you know, that works for your body. It's try to find some foam, some latex foam; Well, ideally something natural that you don't have any off gassing, and then you go from there.
Matthew Blackburn 1:38:56
Have you ever heard of people sleeping without a pillow because we had a few questions to pillow or not to pillow and I experimented with this, several years ago, where I just felt intuitively I'm just gonna get rid of my pillow for a little while and I don't know if it helped. I mean, I was on a subpar mattress at that point. So I don't know. But in terms of your bed, is it would you say it's harmful to not have a pillow with the with the slat design?
Hendrik Haueisen 1:39:25
Well, I would say so if somebody sleeps on their stomach, they should sleep on our bed without a pillow because again, you look at the your the way your spine curves and if you sleep on your stomach, you probably don't want your head you know, way back there. You want it somewhat in line with your body. The the simple answer is that I would give is, look you look at if you'd like to sleep on your side you lay on your side and if you can keep your head straight without needing a pillow, then you don't need a pillow. If you can't keep your head straight without needing a pillow, then you should probably use a pillow. So it depends a little bit on the person, but I think most people should probably sleep -- I have not come across a person who, who thought that our pillow our bed needs no pillow. If they slept on their back on their side, only when they were in the stomach, I would recommend they don't use a pillow. And if they do very, very thin pillow, but back inside is probably better just when you look at the alignment of the spine.
Matthew Blackburn 1:40:40
That's good to know about your your pillow. I never noticed that one side was higher than the other. It must be really slight. Right? Because you can't really see if you're looking down at it.
Hendrik Haueisen 1:40:52
Just a little bit. Yeah.
Matthew Blackburn 1:40:54
That's cool. This is a funny one. Maybe the last, "I change my sheets, like once a month. Is that gross? And if so why."
Hendrik Haueisen 1:41:08
Well, if that means you buy new sheets every month, and I'm like you probably buy more sheets than any of us. You know, I don't know. Like if you're a bachelor, maybe you don't care if you - if you have a wife, she may care. And she made -- it's a - it's, yeah.
Matthew Blackburn 1:41:34
Yeah, probably you have to look at how often you're showering and how often you're sweating - a lot of variables.
Hendrik Haueisen 1:41:42
Yeah, it's probably a good idea to wash it every now and again.
Matthew Blackburn 1:41:48
Oh, we had a few questions we can end on this one. Soft versus hard mattresses. So when you get the latex mattress, I don't think, I don't think you mentioned it. But there's two sides, right? So one softer, and one's harder. So you can flip it depending on? And you guys recommend to start on this soft side, right, I believe?
Hendrik Haueisen 1:42:08
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that the mattresses come in, basically, there's three - when you look at it from the side, there's three layers to it, there'll be, it would be rated as a firm side. The middle part is it's bit firmer than both sides because it takes a bit more weight. And then the other side is a medium firm side, I think in terms of IDL rating, because latex is - you don't get an actual number, you just get a range. I think if I remember correctly, it's roughly a 30 and 32 on one side and the other roughly speaking, but it would be considered medium firm on one side and firm on the other side. But because it's Talalay latex compared to like a Dunlop latex, Talalay is a bit softer to begin with, because of how it's made. coincidentally enough, I remember doing the research and you know, when you look at various chiropractors, they will say you should probably sleep on a medium firm mattress. So it is it is good. For some people take some time get used to it. Because in North America, the average person sleeps very soft, you know, it's all plush bed and pillow top and you know. So for some people, it does take a little bit of time to get used to the bed, but yeah you can flip it one way or another. So for example, if you have a king bed, the king bed would come with two twins, and that would be contained in one king cotton cover and you would have one king sheep wool and one king bed sheet over it. So from the outside, it looks like a king mattress. But when you open it up, you have two twins so you could you know, if one person likes that a bit firmer, you'd flip the one side and you leave the other side on the softer side. But in any case, I mean, the - if you look at the encyclopedias for sleep, you'll find they will suggest it takes you about one to two months to get used to a new bed. We recommend, you know, if you try something different, you get to try it for at least seven nights, otherwise, you're not going to get a good grasp on what's happening. And so also that sort of we have a bit of a return policy. I mean, we're a small business, family owned business so we cant give out you know 100 days, you know return it will kind of thing like Costco or you know, Amazon will if somebody else does it, but you know, we know that almost all people will figure out within one to seven nights on average, how they respond to the bed. For some people takes longer but that's it's quite rare. I find that, you know, of every of every 100 beds we sell, I find there's about five, that may find it a bit too firm. And of those five, two of them will end up returning the bed on average. It worked out to be roughly 2% over the last five years that returned the bed and they just can't get used to it for whatever reason, and, and that's fine. You know, there isn't the one size fits all, really. It seems to be good for a lot of people but you know, we know at some point, there's people that can't, can't get along with it for whatever reason. And so we take it back. And, you know, like, I tried to get them back within the return period of 21 days that we give. You know, I think it happened once where it was a bit later for, because there was some strange circumstances and, and so I figured out the deal with the person that he was happy with and, you know, I paid him what, what we both agreed what the bed was worth. And so we took it back, and we both went away. At the end of the day, he wasn't the overly upset because he didn't lose, you know, whatever, a couple of 1000 bucks. And, you know, I had the bed back and I had somebody here a friend that needed one. I'm like, Look, this one's been barely used. Because at the end of the day, after two weeks, the mattress looks like it's brand new. And after a year, it still looks like it's brand new. And so I yeah, there's always friends that need a new bed, so I give it to them. I just found the beds for the road on your website, I love that page. You guys offer beds even for semi truck drivers. And you say campers - Yeah actually - yeah, we haven't really done any, any advertisement, just like I haven't done any advertisement much at all. But this one, it's we - my dad sort of, oh, we were at a truck show, like transport truck, kind of a show. And you know, like, oh, well, these guys sleep all the time. And they sleep horrible all the time and that's all they complain about is the their sleep because they sleep on these $300 memory foam pads on - generally speaking. And so we thought well, maybe we can come up with a bed that just they can just put into the truck. And then also because truck drivers the stop sometimes - most times they sleep in the truck, but sometimes they will go into like a bed and breakfast or kind of an hotel thing. And if they are that kind, they could just take the mattress out - taking the new hotel because it's the better bed anyways, then in the hotel. And yeah, so we have those. We've got a few of them out there and haven't really had time to concentrate that on that at all. I just put it on the website, say look, here's what we've done. It also shows a little bit what we can do. So I had some people that have campers and they had - our bed at home and it's like, oh, well, we now also want to sleep well when we go camping. And so they - we built them a custom kind for for the camper. So.
Matthew Blackburn 1:48:20
That's cool. So if someone like stays with a lot of hotels, they could just get this, like bring this bag in and just they would put it over the hotel bed. Is that kind of what you're saying?
Hendrik Haueisen 1:48:32
Yeah, I mean, it's not light, it does weigh you know, a good, I don't know 40 pounds probably. And you can roll it up. But yeah, it's - it's a possibility like it fits in the trunk is fine or on the backseat. But you would put it on the floor, you would want a solid surface under it because just like our mattress system sits on these latex supports which ultimately sit on wood so that the base of it must be solid. So it is - I have some people who have done it or I have actually a couple of people who bought the truck bed for their home. I had a lady up in way north and Canada and small houses and everything up there. And so she just puts it under her bed and when she needs an extra bed she pulls it out. And so other people have just they just stored away in the closet. I have a couple of people doing that, when they have - expect somebody over when they need an extra bed and so then they pull it out.
Matthew Blackburn 1:49:37
That's cool. Wow, that's awesome. Well, Henrik, this was a lot of fun. I learned a lot and I'm inspired to put my - my topper and other things out in the sunlight. Here is getting full days of sun in North Idaho. And the whole thing about the sheep just blew my mind. So I'm going to be thinking about that for days. The alive verse dead wool is fascinating and yeah, I appreciate you sharing your passion and wisdom and for providing a really affordable, but powerful product that's it's really well built.
Hendrik Haueisen 1:50:17
You're welcome. Well thanks for having me on. It's been a pleasure I am afraid just like anytime you make a post for us on Facebook or various places I have my inbox explodes and it takes me weeks to catch up. But, you know, there's worse problems to have at the end of the day.
Matthew Blackburn 1:50:40
Absolutely. Well, yeah, thanks Hendrik. This was this was awesome. Stick around as I close out the show.
Hendrik Haueisen 1:50:48
Thank you.
Matthew Blackburn 1:50:49
I love all the detail that goes into their bed. I thought it was really interesting when Hendrik said that you're an inch taller when you wake up if you've had a good night's sleep, and that during the day, we're compressing our discs between the vertebrae of the spine. And when we rehydrate those discs, that makes sense that we actually get taller. I bet magnesium and copper are involved in that process. I know copper has this really deep relationship with the bone. I also really loved the sterilizing with sunlight tip that he gave, once or twice a year, I thought I was cool years ago doing that with my pillows and my pillowcases. But this is really next level, doing that with natural material. I love hosting this podcast for so many reasons. But one of the big ones is, when I can take something away from it to practically apply to improve my life. And until I recorded the show, I was using a really heavily arched pillow that was made of memory foam and polyester. And I actually got rid of that and started sleeping on the pillow that they include with their bed. One because I didn't know that it has an arched side, one side of the pillow is higher than the other. And also just the point of the natural material thinking that you're breathing right next to this thing. And even if you have a natural pillowcase, that polyester underneath still has its properties, and you're sleeping on plastic, essentially. So this is a do your best thing, like water and a lot of other aspects of health, I would say opening your window, keeping your window cracked is the top priority. As far as keeping VOCs down. There's also house plants I've experimented with extensively over the last eight years or so with snake plants and filling the bedroom with plants that actually reduce the level of volatile organic compound gases that you're inhaling. But I think just the simplest free thing to do is just a crack your window if you don't have to worry about noise pollution, which is a big issue with people living in the city. Often I forget, living here in the woods, that you can hear a pin drop 24/7 That's a luxury for a lot of people. And of course, there's white noise machines and you can run your humidifier or essential oil diffuser while your windows cracked to kind of drown out outside noise. It's a do your best and it's an experimenting thing with optimizing your sleep. The average person spends 27 years sleeping if we're assuming an average lifespan. So that's a long time of exposure. And so you want to continuously be thinking about the weakest links that you have in your bedroom and your sleep setup. And just slowly making upgrades and setting a bedtime and sticking to it. You know give yourself a half hour or so of give but have a consistent sleep schedule and be continuously thinking about, "Okay am I mouth breathing intermittently throughout the night?" You might want to look into mouth taping like the SomniFix that I have on my website or nasal dilators. There's so many things that people overlook for their sleep. I like to do them all. I've tried a lot of these in combination, and it's definitely affected my energy, my mood, my creativity. Just the whole next day is so much better. If I get a full night's sleep, especially on a high quality bed like this, I noticed when I visit my family in California when I sleep on their bed for three nights, I definitely start to feel it in my back and my brain, it's really hard to go back to a regular style bed after you've experienced this bed from CBH Wood Furniture. So if you're interested in purchasing a bed from them, you can go to swissdreambeds.com And you can email them or call them and if you mentioned my name, you'll save a little bit on their beds, and I can't recommend them enough. It's completely transformed the way that I sleep. And if you want to support the show, you can go to matt-blackburn.com Really exciting news, Rosita was sold out of their liquid cod liver oil, the raw unprocessed, unfortified cod liver oil, and it just came back in stock. And if you use the discount code Blackburn, I think it's just a one time use, you save on your first order. And this stuff's absolutely changed my life. I was shocked with the effects that I've been getting from this. And the further I delve into retinol thanks to Morley Robbins, and all of the research around retinol and the Weston A. Price Foundation has a lot to do have a great article I enjoy called "Vitamin A-mazing" and vitamin A Retinol is so important for so many things. But if we just had to pick one thing, it's loading copper into the ceruloplasmin protein to express 24+ enzymatic functions for most of which is called ferroxidase, which is critical for iron regulation and iron recycling. And that occurs via two proteins called ATP7A and ATP7B. And it's the 13-cis-Retinoic acid, the hormone that loads six to eight copper atoms depending on who you listen to into that ceruloplasmin protein. And you need that to utilize oxygen and convert that poison that we breathe into two molecules of H2O, water. And that's the process of making energy, ATP, or Mag-ATP, magnesium bound to ATP, which is how our body recognizes it. So these pieces are so important. And the piece that I was missing, for sure, with my health was this nutrient called retinol, it was my missing piece of the puzzle. And just plugging that in, switched on my brain like I could have never imagined. So really powerful stuff and there is a difference between marine source retinol and land source retinol. And I've felt that difference. I don't need to see a study to prove that to me. And my brand is called Mito Life you can find those products at mitolife.co. And if you click shop at the top and then wellness, you'll see all the supplements there. And I have some really exciting ones in the works. I have a freeze dried liver product that has a nice twist to it. And then I'm working on bringing back the oyster supplements. So those are the two main focuses. And I'm also getting some cool ideas for other products to release later this year that I'm really excited about. But most of the products are in stock of Whole Food Vitamin C, Digestive Enzymes, Probiotics, Panacea Shilajit, Mixed Tocopherol, Vitamin E, Vitamin K2 Systemic Enzymes, Magnesium, Lactase Enzyme, a lot of really cool stuff. I want to highlight the Digest-It-All and the probiotic. A lot of people have digestive issues, their gut is tore up, and I think glyphosate gets a lot of the blame. And yes, it's harsh it chelates copper really well but I think there's so many things, mainly iron that are really affecting our intestinal integrity. And so just taking one you don't have to take a handful like I did for years I used to buy 1000 capsules of a cheaper brand and take a handful out of the bag of digestive enzymes, and with my product, Digest-It-All, I just need one. There is multiple different types of proteases, which are protein digesting enzymes. There's multiple different types of amylase enzymes in there, which digest carbohydrates and break them down into glucose, as well as a whole bunch of other enzymes, pectinase, invertase, cellulase, lipase, beta glucanase, and then I put Amla and Rutan in there. So there's actually whole food, vitamin C, that I put in a few of my products, like Dissolve-It-All, which I think has a really powerful synergy having that bioavailable copper, with the systemic enzymes going through your system. But if you're experiencing gas, and bloating frequently, I think it's a really good idea to take one capsule with every meal. That's what I do, just as kind of an anti-aging strategy. And to have the probiotics, at least with breakfast, and with dinner, but you could do three times a day. But if you just did it with breakfast, and dinner - and if you just did it once a day, like all of my supplements, you would still get an effect. But you really have to play with the dosages, I get asked every day, how much could I take if I'm pregnant, if I'm breastfeeding XYZ. And since I'm not a doctor, I can't prescribe, I can't give you dosages that you can take, I can only tell you legally what I do. And generally with any supplement, I always start with what's on the label. And that's always a good idea. It's always smart to start slow, with any new supplement. But I also emphasize to people as with the Rosita cod liver oil, if your body is asking for more, give it more. And so you just have to tap into that and listen to your body. And if it's asking for more vitamin E, for more vitamin K2, for more Shilajit, then take more. And if you have a negative reaction, maybe a Herxheimer effect, a detox symptom effect, then back off. But I think people need to really get back in touch with their body, especially when they're taking supplements, and know when to increase and when to decrease. And a lot of things could be cycled. Like if you just cycled one of my supplements, it would be the probiotic, and it's just an endotoxin cleanse. So one month of taking two capsules a day, you can reduce your endotoxin by 42%. And also systemic inflammation markers and triglycerides. And that's a really low dose. That's not much. And I wonder if you take double that a day, if it happens faster. And remember, these are different from regular probiotics, because when I got into health, when I was going to various sprout stores down in Southern California and trying all sorts of different probiotics, while I was working minimum wage, multiple jobs, and just spending my paychecks on good food and supplements to experiment and improve my health - I thought the more strains, the better. And the higher count per bottle, the better. And if it's refrigerated, that's better. And I found out that was all false and it's really about the spore forming probiotics that actually have natural, antibiotic like effects. So they really help to clean out your intestines. At least that's been my experience. So you can check out the reviews under each product and kind of get an idea of what people have experienced with all my products. But try them out if you haven't, I put a lot of time and energy into researching and experimenting with these things. And it's really exciting to be able to bring it to you guys, and most importantly, educate on why to take them and how to use them as tools in your toolkit. So thank you for listening. There's a new episode released every Friday here on Mito Life Radio and check out the YouTube Academy. That's Mito Life Academy on YouTube. And I have four private videos that I put out for advanced members every month and a live Q&A. And in that I share my latest thoughts, revelations, experiments, new things that I'm trying. And that's a lot of fun for me to just connect with the community in that way and just rap for two to three hours answering questions and chatting with you guys. So that's it, see you guys next Friday. Stay supercharged.