The Human Upgrade Podcast
with Dave Asprey

Mattress Smarts 101 for High-Performance Sleep – Jack Dell’Accio – #875

Dave Asprey:

Today is an episode of the show that is long overdue. We're doing it live at the Biohacking Conference, so we're in a room together like normal human beings who are safe. And the reason that this is overdue, is you may have already taken my sleep challenge, where thousands of people have learned all of the things that I do to get more sleep and less time. You may even have read the Better Baby Book, my first book that came out in 2011, 10 years ago, back when the show was starting. And I talked about how important your mattress was for having a healthy baby, because of the toxins in the mattress. And for the past 10 years, I have looked at different mattresses and it's always been a combination of what makes you sleep the best and what does the least amount of bad stuff for you, and what does the most good stuff for you.

And the problem with mattresses has been in toxins and with other abilities that you can do. And I'm interested in cooling and heating and all sorts of things you can do, but I'm also interested in not cooking myself and endocrine disrupting chemicals. So, I have an expert for you on the show today who knows about how to make mattresses. If you're a longtime listener, I like natural latex mattresses, but you also know there's a lot of variability and problems there. So, I found that he comes from a family of latex manufacturing for, I don't know how many generations, we're going to find that out. Actually, Jack, how many generations?

Jack Dell'Accio:

I guess I'd be the second.

Dave:

Second generation.

Jack:

For 16 years.

Dave:

Okay, 16 years plus your parents have been doing this. So, there's a thing or two about what really happens with a redesign of mattresses from the ground up, so we're going to go into, here's exactly what matters in a mattress for you. And maybe you'll want one of Jack's. In fact, it's Jack Dell'Accio is his full name. He's the CEO and founder of Essentia Mattresses. Maybe, you'll end up wanting an Essentia mattress, but the important thing is he's going to teach you what is in foam, what is in a mattress, what matters with the mattress, and he's going to tell you about lab studies of how important this stuff is. Things like going as esoteric as blocking electromagnetic frequencies, and things like medical conditions you would never think we're tied to this.

So, this is a Mattress 101 episode for you. Jack, welcome.

Jack:

Thank you very much. I'm very excited to be here.

Dave:

When I say you come from a latex family that could sound kind of weird. What is a latex family?

Jack:

Yeah, whenever the latex comes up in so many different meetings, it can easily get sidetracked, but specifically latex foam family, I guess. My dad was in the latex foam business, so he was supplying pretty much most of the major brands in North America with latex foam.

Dave:

So, for all the mattresses and couches and all that kind of stuff?

Jack:

Right. But you don't, back then you didn't find much latex in couches.

Dave:

Of course.

Jack:

And latex was underused and the way manufacturers would use it, they'd buy layers of it and they would incorporate it into their mattresses.

Dave:

And latex comes from trees, instead of from petroleum.

Jack:

Well, there's two types. There's natural organic latex, which basically is tapped from a tree, so from a Hevea brasiliensis tree and which was a native tree in Brazil, but today is grown in different rainforest climates, so that you can get in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India.

Dave:

Or you call it rubber plantation, right?

Jack:

Rubber plantations, exactly. And basically, there's also the petroleum-based version, which is a synthetic rubber.

Dave:

So, it's chemically the same molecule, but with a bunch of impurities from the petroleum?

Jack:

Exactly, exactly. And over the years, Europe became the specialist in blending these two, so they have, what they would call blended latex, natural, partially synthetic. The key to that is because synthetic products are much more stable, easier to predict. When you're working with organic components, density can change from one tree to the other. Viscosity can change and that's all part of the process of getting something done right.

Dave:

And your family was always doing natural latex or you guys were the petroleum latex and natural latex?

Jack:

It was the European latex.

Dave:

It was blended?

Jack:

It was blended. Back at that time, that was the blended model. And the only time I really started to get interested in this, because I wasn't in that industry at all as a young adult, but when people were becoming ill in the family, not related to work and just learning the sleep environment, the home environment, detoxing, I didn't understand it. It's like, "Why isn't latex everywhere?" Already thinking that the blended latex was healthier than the regular polyurethane.

Dave:

It probably is healthier, but it has some of the negatives.

Jack: Yeah.

Dave:

It's like 50%...

Jack: Exactly.

Dave:

... doesn't have bad stuff and 50% has bad stuff. You got less bad, okay, but then-

Jack:

Less bad, but you haven't fully committed to the good. That's the whole thing.

Dave:

I'm with you.

Jack:

And that was my curiosity is why does a regular foam exist? Why isn't only latex? And only then that I really understand, "Well, okay, blended is kind of good, but you're only going halfway. You need to really fully commit. And my original commitment was just eliminating toxins and the air quality. But over the years, working with so many people who were ill, really, there's two people that know their bodies or can sense their bodies - the severely sick ill people and their affiliates.

Dave:

I used to be one of those.

Jack:

And the opposite, the extremely fit.

Dave:

Yeah, the pro athletes or people-

Jack:

Pro athletes, exactly.

Dave:

Biohackers, right?

Jack:

Yeah. So that's, that's kind of my education came from these two groups of people.

Dave:

It's really funny, but so did mine, like the anti-aging, too. As people age, they start being, "All right, I feel it. This morning, I woke up my joints hurt." So, I first learned from anti-aging people, then it was the Special Forces and pro athletes and all that sort of things. And then the chronic illness and chronic fatigue syndrome and multiple chemical sensitivity, the mold, toxins, Lyme disease, the stuff that I used to have. So, I have the unique power to feel from both sides, that having gone from low performance to high performance, but all the learnings similar group to you.

And this kicked off because a family member had cancer and you're saying, "All right. How do I make them feel better? And what are the contributing factors? And okay, let's lower the toxic burden."

Jack:

Yep. Yeah. And you'll notice a lot with people undergoing cancer, they become hypersensitive to chemicals. Whether it comes out in rashes or respiratory issues, the body is overreacting to that environment. And it was simply, instead of saying, "Okay, let's just go to an organic bed," that seemed like the solution. But then you have allergens, micro dust, things that are in a typical organic bed that are also not good and you wouldn't know this unless you're dealing with the ill or the super athlete, that the ordinary person doesn't. If your body is not overreacting to something, people are as if it's nonexistent.

Dave:

It's kind of funny where you're walking along and so, it punches you and you're like, "It didn't knock me over. And so, I'm still watching. It's all good." [crosstalk 00:10:01] punching every five minutes, it's not good, but you only really feel it or notice it if you stumble. And this is a really important thing. So, if you're looking for performance enhancement, if you're taking the punches, as I was saying, but I'm performing well enough, well, if you didn't take the punches, how do you perform? You don't know because you've never done it without taking the punch.

Jack:

Correct.

Dave:

And that was a big learning for me. And as an example, years ago, when I was first learning, actually, before I first figured out my problem was mold or at least a major part of the problem was mold that helped me be obese without immunity and all this stuff, I just mentioned. I moved out of a place that I now recognize had Stachybotrys in it, black slimy mold on the backside of the bedroom wall. After we moved out, we noticed the water heater for the neighbor was leaking after we actually sold the place. And I said, "Oh, that's gross." But I didn't know there was anything even such thing as toxic mold in buildings because this was early 20s.

And the person who lived with me at that time, her health had been wrecked by this. My health had been wrecked by this and we didn't know why these cognitive things, tired, weight gain, dark circles, new weird allergies, anaphylactic responses to stuff you smell like chemical sensitivity, all this crap. So, moved into a new house. Well, a remodeled house with water damage underneath it, got a win and we bought a new mattress topper. So, this was over late '90s. I don't think it was natural latex, because I didn't know any better at that time. And it was about three, four inches thick, and it smelled like a chemical factory, so we had it air out.

We put it on the bed, go to sleep, wake up the next morning and I had to take her to the hospital because she couldn't really stand up. There was something really bad going on in her back and just horrible pain that was triggering panic attack. Panic attacks didn't come from toxins, but one of her rib heads had dislocated that night, literally pulled out, which causes immense pain and muscle tension around it. So, they said, "Let's get you a muscle relaxant." And then it relaxed and she went to a chiropractor put the rib bed back in. And it was much better. But I was having the same thing happen.

And I've noticed since then, if I get a high toxin load, literally, one of my rib heads will pop out and it's toxin-related. It's not, "I need to go to the chiropractor." I do to help get it back in, but it was because of my exposure to whatever chemical soup of exhaust and pesticides and overcooked foods or whatever. But there's a burden where you get enough of it. And if every night for, well, in my case only six and a half hours, but whatever however many hours you sleep, every night you got eight hours of ingesting toxins to your skin and your lungs from your mattress. It seems like a stupid thing to do.

Jack:

It is. And that's kind of what we try to analyze is that chronic exposure to stuff, because there's that. When we talked about it, people are not noticing it, even if you're getting a punch in the face, they're noticing the punch in the face, but they're overcoming and dealing with it. The problem here is people don't even, they're not even seeing the punch in the face, that chronic exposure. They don't know anything's going on, but reality is your body is reacting to it. Your body is actively fighting it while you sleep rather than fully focused on just cell recovery. It's focused on fighting the outside toxins to be introduced.

Dave:

I like to look at that as like a scale, the old fashioned scale of justice, the one that doesn't exist in the US anymore. That was a partisan comment to be really clear here, in case you even thought it was. Happy you thought it was the one versus the other. It was a broken system comment. But what we're dealing with here is we're dealing with how much energy goes into recovery and how much energy goes into something else. It can be detoxing of new toxins that were coming in. It can be a stress response, allergens, chemical response, or thinking of my mother-in-law.

It's so like how much weight is on each side of the scale. And if you can tip it towards, "I'm recovering," so there's less weight on the side of additional stresses while trying to recover, there's another name for that - parasympathetic activation or rest and relax versus half and half, right?

Jack:

That's kind of been, when you talk about that, that scale, I believe that that's been what we've been trying to overcome over the years is not having the compromise. That's how the laws work. The laws work is, "Okay, this is we've decided that this chronic exposure is acceptable because you're not just falling over and dying. So, this amount of toxin is good and we can't narrow it down to this being a health problem for you." So, that's where laws come in. They have to play the scale. Where I kind of look at this when I'm looking at the super performer or the ill, those compromises are not acceptable anymore. Right? So, we have to be-

Dave:

Are you saying that government standards intentionally introduce things that are less than optimal because they were cheaper?

Jack:

It's for the economy, right? That's what it is, right?

Dave:

Of course, they do.

Jack:

Of course, they do.

Dave:

This is the one that won't kill most people.

Jack: Exactly.

Dave:

And like, that's the bar. And like, "I think I can do better. And I think I have a fundamental human right to choose to do better." If you're listening and you work for the government, don't mess with that right, so.

Jack:

I mean, we're talking about products. I mean, in foods, obviously, they allow ingredients, they allow additives, chemicals, just for efficiency in business, right?

Dave:

Oh, sure. You can have these food colorings that absolutely provably tweak, especially on kids brains and it's okay to put it in many kids' products. And like, I don't actually know why, because most countries won't allow it, but in the US they do. And you have things like mold toxins in food where there

are no limits on coffee in the US, but there are in most of the world. Those are just little examples. And if you look at what someone like Vani Hari, Food Babe, has been talking about it for years. Let's compare, insert name of any product, from a multinational company and look at that in the US, and it has a whole bunch of weird chemicals and then you look at it somewhere else, where they're not allowing it, there's a lot less chemicals.

So, why are they there? Well, because they're allowed for economic reasons, not for human performance or health reasons. And it's your job to say, "All right, in the mattress world, how do we not do that?"

Jack: Exactly.

Dave:

And I look at that mattress thing like I look at lights, like I look at Electrosmog. How do you make it, so that it's way better than normal or average? So, you're making an abnormal mattress because you don't want the normal mattress.

Jack:

Exactly. And the complication comes when if you're just looking at one element that you want to eliminate, that's not so difficult. If I just want to eliminate toxins, okay, great. Work with a certified organic Hevea milk tree sap rubber and that's it, we've accomplished that. But that's just one element.

Dave:

I'm not so sure you've accomplished that. I want you to tell me I'm wrong, because you're a latex guy and I don't know what kind of underwear you're wearing. Okay, but yeah, I mean, you're an expert, but just because it's organic, I mean, Sarin nerve gas is an organic substance from Jack beans and I've smelled organic mattress, and there is a solvent in there. It might be a natural organic solvent, but I think it's a VOC because it smells like it and it measures on my meter. What's going on with a natural mattress that smells like a chemical factory?

What's going on with a natural mattress that smells like a chemical factory?

Jack: Well-

Dave:

Yours don't do that, by the way, just to be clear.

Jack:

Yes, so I mean, it has its own smell, so the rubber has a smell, so an organic rubber does have a smell. And depending on the plantations, it could be much more pungent and sometimes it's a lot softer.

Dave:

So, it's like quality issue?

Jack:

So, it's a quality issue and it's a processing issue as well. So, those are, but ultimately, what's coming off of that organic material is not nearly, it's not damaging as a toxin would be. It's not really, it's not sparking your central nervous system to defend itself from it, so I think that's one of the key differences is a natural product is not really interfering with your body's activity. It's pulling up your defenses.

Dave:

Unless you have a latex allergy.

Jack:

No, then again, it's still, I mean...

Dave:

Talking about latex because, yeah.

Jack:

... in our case, latex allergies, the allergies are to the proteins.

Dave:

How interesting.

Jack:

So, what's really important is that in the processing that the proteins are eliminated.

Dave:

So, there's no proof. So, people with latex allergies can sleep on an Essentia mattress?

Jack:

On an Essentia matters, yes, because we in our processing, we make sure that the proteins are away.

Dave:

And it's different than a natural latex memory foam where they wouldn't do it because the proteins are so present.

Jack:

Well, again, a natural latex memory foam is only exists at Essentia, so a regular latex, in many cases, it should be it depending on how it's processed. So, most of them are processed on-site. So, most brands are buying their latex foam close to those producers and they're coming in and they, again, they may have the protein still active in there. We know because we manage it, we control it, we pour it, so we know that there are proteins are out. And in fact, we had to get this tested when we were working with big institutions where latex is just not allowed. So, we in fact had Dr. Hamilton from Johns Hopkins do a whole analysis on our product, just to reassure everyone that there were no proteins active for allergens.

Dave:

So then, you can look at this like a gluten-free thing where if it's maybe manufactured and cross- contaminated sort of a thing and some of the products that I used to make when I was at Bulletproof, I knew that they probably didn't have gluten in them, right? Because they're made across the factory, but the fact there's gluten inside the factory, so to me, that was a little bit ridiculous, but you have to put the labeling on there. But what you're saying is, food, there are a bunch of standards and in mattresses, the standards are not like that at all, so you're just saying if we control-

Jack:

There are no standards.

Dave:

If we control everything, instead of just buying a bunch of whatever we could find and selling it quickly. So, it's just it's one of those things, where do you want every step of purity. Just like I'm doing with the new coffee stuff that I'm creating, like I have a history of doing. It's about the small things that add up, which is why like, "Okay, you're going to teach me this, you're going to teach our listeners about this," and that's one thing we ought to know. You can get latex proteins in a mattress or not, depending on the quality of the manufacturing process, which you've got.

Jack: Correct.

Dave:

Okay, that makes a ton of sense. Now, before we get into performance enhancement from a mattress, where we're going to go, there's other thing that's been a real pet peeve of mine for a long time. And it was in my first book, but I knew about it since five years before that. The State of California, probably sometime in the '80s, said, "We are very concerned about children's smoking in bed, so the mattresses could catch on fire without the children getting out of the bed. Therefore, we are going to mandate even in children's mattresses and adult mattresses, six pounds on average of flame-retardant, endocrine- disrupting chemicals for your own safety."

And because California has so many people, people who manufacture mattresses for California said, "Well, we'll just use the standard for every mattress in the country instead of having a special California edition." And this led to, I don't know, how many hundreds of thousands of cases of cancer, other endocrine disruption, children's behavioral problems, and it was actually probably meant to be good. It was definitely an evil act, and it was funded by chemical companies who make flame retardants. They put lots of money into lobbying to force the mattress companies to do this.

You might not know that, but if you don't buy a bed that has chemical-free flame retardants or just no flame retardants, because frankly, who cares at this point, since we don't smoke in bed anymore, then you're getting these automatically. And when I was deciding whether I wanted to have Jack on the show, I'm like, "All right, tell me your flame retardant story." So, Jack, how do you do this?

Jack:

Well, flame retardant, that was a big deal for us because that's, again, we've gone there. We've done everything to eliminate toxins and now-

Dave:

It flies in the face of what you believe in.

Jack:

Exactly. And so, we were even questioning, "Maybe we're not selling in the US anymore."

Dave:

Yeah. Good for you. That's integrity.

Jack:

Because of obviously, our products are made in Canada, we don't have any of these flame-retardant laws. But, and the flame retardants today are way much more of an issue for me than they were even five years ago, because now they're getting into their face-changing chemicals and to stabilize those additional chemicals. But what we basically did, initially, we were basically encouraging our customers to get doctor's notes, so that we can sell them the mattress without any flame retardants, because we were not making any flame retardants.

Dave:

So, this is an example of the chemical companies using the regulatory powers of the government to create a monopoly.

Jack: Sure.

Dave:

Okay, that kind of shit pisses me off. Sorry, can't help it.

Jack:

And I was seeing that the US producers of organic mattresses of how are they getting around it, they were getting around, but not in a very straightforward way. They were getting the organic wool and then they were doing separate treatments to that wool, because wool on its own is not a fire barrier. So, they would kind of-

Dave:

That shit catch on fire a lot.

Jack:

Yes, so that was not an option for us. And wool then other nesting grouts, so we didn't want to get into allergens. We don't want to just be shifting over. Then we did find a Kevlar knit, so we basically put this Kevlar knit and we sent it into the labs, and we went made sure that we had zero off gassing that was tracked.

Dave:

Kevlar is chemically inert and that stuff does not off gas that I'm aware of.

Jack:

No, exactly. So, basically, we've opted to basically put a Kevlar jacket on all of our beds. It had the right flexibility, we're able to get all the benefits of the surface of the bed without any of Kevlar on it.

Dave:

Hey, is this is actually a bulletproof mattress?

Jack:

There you go. That's a good one.

Dave:

I can't believe I didn't think of that until now. So, you're saying, "All right, we'll..." and this actually makes me happy at a soul level. You're saying, "All right, we'll follow your stupid rules, but we'll do it our way?"

Jack:

Sure, exactly.

Dave:

And so, you did what they said, but not what they wanted. You didn't buy the chemicals, you bought Kevlar, which is more expensive, as said, but you created a superior bed with that, so all right. And guys, I'm going to talk about what I have slept on for a while and then I'm going to compare it here. And then we're going to go to our performance enhancement, like what mattresses can do for sleep and recovery.

I've had a variety of mattresses and because I am a biohacker and because I used to have a lot of musculoskeletal pain, like more than most people will ever understand, partly from lectins and oxalates, and mold toxins and chronic fatigue and all that. It used to feel like I had a candle burning between my shoulder blades all the time. I mean, I would just get used to it. But it was 7 or 8 out of 10 pain ranges all the times. It's like just grit your teeth and just got through the day, really draining. I don't know if I even talked about that that much, but it was not a good thing and it was toxin-related.

And then I said, "All right, maybe I need a really soft mattress." And I would spend money on mattresses and that mattress topper I talked about that made things worse. And eventually, I settled on sleeping on a very, very hard like neoprene from a wetsuit. There's an even harder version of that, that barely moves when you push on it and I sleep on like a 1-inch thing of that, essentially on the floor. It's on a platform that's tilted, because I like to raise the height of my bed. So it's like a caveman would sleep really, right?

Now, I'm built a certain way. I like to think kind of like an athlete. The New York Times said I'm almost muscular, so they're calling me that, but I'm a big guy, right? And I don't know, but that's worked for me, but since then I've tried a variety of mattresses that I really like, right? And I like it, but then I'm like, okay, I've tested this for a month or two and it feels good. But then I kind of migrated back to sleeping on essentially the floor. I have a very tolerant wife, guys.

So what I'm doing now is I'm testing out the very firmest of the Essentia. And so far, if I'm really liking what I see and I'll report back to you guys. It's going to take 60 or 90 days to really know for sure. But part of my issue with this is that closed cell neoprene is not off gassing after I've had it for this amount of time, like there's no smell at all. So, for me to be able to find a Kevlar coated, actually properly made bed, it really matters because I have played around with some various allegedly good

latex beds. Never had the kind of results I wanted mostly because when they ship them, they're compressing them the same way you do when you vacuum seal it, so it's easy to ship, which is cool, but then they're not very dense, right?

And like that's great if you're a vegan guy who has 140 pounds and low testosterone and no bone density, but I'm like 230 if I do a few pull ups, and my bone density is very high and you put me on a bed like that, it's like wearing vegan pants. It's like I didn't want leggings, I wanted pants, right? So, with a hard thing here like the hard firm, I guess, mattress company shouldn't say hard, that's bad marketing. But with a firm mattress, that's the kind of thing that your, what you said, 25% of NHL sleeps on your mattresses?

Jack:

Yeah, a little over 25% of them are out there.

Dave:

Okay. Are they all on the firm one or they're like the soft, squishy types?

Jack:

It all depends on their posture. We really-

Dave:

Okay, tell me about this.

Jack:

Yes, so ultimately, your posture really dictates what you need. The key is to eliminate and get it straight.

Dave:

Your posture and not the size of your ass, to be really clear.

Jack:

Completely posture and not the size of your ass or your gut.

Dave:

I've been trying to put junk in my trunk, actually.

Jack:

And basically because you want to eliminate that negative space. The negative space is what we need for support. On your posture, see, you're thinking it's because you're built strong, you're built dense, but also with your posture, you need a flatter surface. So, basically when we're developing our mattresses, simply said soft, medium, firm, but really our density is always high. In fact, our softest mattress has higher density than our firmest mattress because-

Dave:

How interesting.

Jack:

And what I'm doing is I'm just changing the elasticity.

Dave:

So, it's not the amount of air, it's how stretchy the fibers are.

Jack: Exactly.

Dave:

And that's different. All the other mattresses are going to just add more air, right?

Jack:

Exactly. That the method of conventional foam or conventional mattresses by adding air and you look at the fibers. If they want a soft mattress, they'll have a looser feel fiber, but those are not durable because air eventually gets compressed out and so, overused, right? So, those products if you're not feeling the pain, six months, you're feeling them two or three years later because-

Dave:

So, they don't last. Okay.

Jack:

They don't last. So for me, durability is how long does it perform for you? Not, because people change it many years after that they don't perform. So, on a posture, you're a pro athlete, you're saying it does change. It doesn't necessarily need to be firm unless your posture dictates it's firm. Simply said, the flatter your lower back, the less elasticity you need. The more curved, your lower back, the higher elasticity you need.

Dave:

And the higher elasticity is tied to?

Jack:

Well, that's where you'll sink in and eliminate that negative space.

Dave:

So, you're going to have a soft, a higher elasticity mattress if you're or more elastic mattress, if you have a really heavy curve in your lower back.

Jack: Correct.

Dave:

if you have a flatter low back, then you want a firm mattress.

Jack:

Exactly. A firm mattress, less in our product, there will be less elasticity, but you're still benefiting from the pressure redistribution, which is important...

Dave: Interesting.

Jack:

... because what you're getting is a flatter back is really driving your midbody into these mattresses that are too soft for you. And so, that's what's really happening, you're not properly aligned, because of and more so, because if you're dense bone structure, more muscle, all these things, kind of if you're on the wrong surface, enhance the problem.

Dave:

Okay, that that makes so much sense and I'm eager to try this. And the implication here is that what your mother ate before and during pregnancy when she was carrying you, in some way determines how firm of a mattress you should get.

Jack: Yep.

Dave:

Because higher grain consumption, lower nutrient consumption actually is documented. This is Weston A. Price research in the Better Baby book, actually, can determine how flat your spine is. So, you get a flatter spine with less of a curve for mom's diet, so thanks, mom for the firm mattress.

Jack:

You know how I consult with pro athletes? I don't even have to see them. We have a discussion over the phone and we talk about personality.

Dave: No way.

Jack:

And that personality is linked to your posture, so.

Dave:

So, you can say by personality, what your mattress firm is.

Jack:

Yes, exactly.

Dave:

Okay, you got to tell me about this. This is awesome.

Jack:

So, it was interesting because I was working with the medical team of the Montreal Canadiens back in the day, a few years back, and we were outfitting their whole team with Essentia mattresses. It was a decision by management. And as I'm working with their trainers and then working with their medical team, one of them was really, he helped players with injury, correct their postures, and he was identifying their postures through their personality questions.

Dave: Wow.

Jack:

And over 1 million case studies and it was right on every single time. And so, what we did during that offseason, I hired, I on boarded them at Essentia. I said, "Guys, we need to learn this. We need to be able to, I can't fly around to everyone to meet all these players and fit them for a mattress, so if this technology, if this concept idea works that would be fantastic." And in fact right now, now we have an automate here at the conference. We're offering free evaluations for everyone where people answer...

Dave: Cool.

Jack:

... 25 questions and we know they're muscular strengths, muscular weaknesses.

Dave:

Is that on the website, too like on the Essentia website?

Jack:

It's just getting on the Essentia website.

Dave:

Okay. I just, I didn't see it when I was-

Jack: No.

Dave:

Because that I did a lot of research to make sure that I wanted to have you on, that you weren't going to try and sell me a mattress.

Jack:

No, we were doing this only for pro athletes. That was, we used it-

Dave:

Okay, only for pros.

Jack:

It was only for pros. When we were coming to the conference, our team says, "Well, let's just digitize the whole thing." So, for this conference, we're making it available to everybody and following the conference, it's a part of our website after that.

Dave:

That's actually really cool and you have some kind of validation clinically or this is just observational or?

Jack:

Well, basically, it was the thesis and all of the case studies by Dr. [inaudible 00:33:55] from the Montreal Canadiens.

Dave:

Okay, so it's-

Jack: It's yes.

Dave:

It's Dr. [inaudible 00:33:58] work.

Jack: Exactly.

Dave:

All right, that's pretty cool. So, tell me the top five personality traits of someone who sleeps on a soft mattress. Okay, they like kale.

Jack: Extrovert.

Dave:

They're an extrovert, okay.

Jack:

Yeah, yeah, so they're definitely an extrovert. Gets onto the softer mattress. Jeez, I'd have to go back. I don't even know everything I'm at because-

Dave:

Because it's a survey with lots of little things, right?

Jack:

Yeah, it was like I said, it was Dr. [inaudible 00:34:23] study. All we've done is, what we've done is based on his results.

Dave:

Okay, got it.

Jack:

We made the mattresses that matched the result. The formulations that matched it. And we're basically making, I guess, it's 264 different latex formulations for every player to be able to adapt to it. Then we've had such a great story from one of the players that used to play in Colorado. We were making these pro athletes model where each side was matched to their posture and personality. So, the players on one side, his spouse is on the other, right? And when he got on it, the surface, it's one mattress. You can't feel the difference that there's two mattresses on the inside going on. So, he got on the mattress and a lot of these players, they immediately recover from certain ailments when they get on our mattress and-

Dave:

Immediately, like in a week of sleeping on it or? Okay.

Jack:

Sometimes in days, yeah.

Dave: Very good.

Jack:

And so, on my next visit to Colorado, I'd go and see him and "Matt, how's it going?" And he goes, "Jack, you know what? I really was questioning your process. I didn't, it just sounded weird personality, myself, my wife and the mattress has felt the same, and but I was feeling good. I was feeling great. My neck pain was gone. And we just for kicks, we swapped sides. And after a couple of days, it was not the same. I was getting a neck pain." And he goes, but I go, "Imagine that, Matt and you're still on an Essentia side, you still had a great mattress that you're on, but it wasn't tuned for your posture as your side was." And so, that was his own little realization how that made a difference.

Dave:

I did, so I have a California King at home and I did have one set of mattresses we were playing around with it. And guys, it's kind of weird to play around with testing mattresses. Look, I'm a biohacker and I've spent way more money than one has any business doing, just trying to tweak things because I'm curious at this point, because I curate stuff. So, we had like a firm mattress on my side and like a softer medium on my wife's side, which is several mattresses.

The problem is then there's certain activities that you do in the middle of the mattress, usually, and it's like off. One side is not as supportive as the other then that wasn't very positive. So, you're saying even if one person has an extrovert, one's an introvert, whatever they have different, like radically different densities, it still feels pretty much like one mattress, because it's very subtle changes at that?

Jack:

Yes. And what we do is we have that top layer where, because everything is molded in our product, so this is our Pro Core Model, which was designed for pro athletes and that top layer, that first top inch were identical all the way across the board and then the formula was changing beyond that. So because ultimately, that first half inch to 1 inch is ultimately just the blood circulation numbing, making sure that you have that kind of flow.

Dave:

Okay. That makes sense, so because of the top layers there you're not feeling that mismatch.

Jack:

And then don't forget, we're a very dense product. So, you're not going to have the air fluff on one side.

Dave:

Because you're not adding the fluff?

Jack: Yeah.

Dave:

That was the problem was there's a lot of air on one side.

Jack:

Yeah, so you're looking at a super fluff cloud compared to a firm mattress. That's not the Essentia way.

Dave:

And there's a reason that high-heeled shoes leave marks on wood floors. It's a pounds per square inch thing. So, if I put my elbow and my knee on a mattress and you got 230 pounds on these little surfaces, that's a lot more than if you weigh 100 pounds, like it just is. So, the PSI thing matters, but since it isn't an air-filled thing, we're not dealing with that. All right, this is making a lot more sense.

You actually did a study about recovering from sports concussions using the Essentia mattress. And okay, that's interesting because if people's brains are working better because of a certain mattress when they're in the process of recovery, what did you find in the study and what's going on with that?

Speaker 4:

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.

Dave:

Okay, that's interesting, because if people's brains are working better because of a certain mattress, when they're in the process of recovery, what did you find in the study and what's going on with that, because it's kind of a big deal.

Jack

So, we've done a lot of tests with pro athletes. They've been really great with us just because they're on board with tracking and tracking their sleep, tracking their activities. And we've worked with, basically, we were working with NFL teams, and we are actually working with some of the medical specialists of the NBA and really understanding players and sleep. What we really realize is that by eliminating these stimulants, and stimulants, I include the toxins. I include heat as a stimulant. EMFs are stimulants. Pain is an obvious stimulant. If we eliminate all of these and what we've just been able to see is that within a short amount of time, you say you only sleep six hours, like-

Dave:

Six and a half hours, yep.

Jack:

The key is that they're good hours that we're keeping you in REM deep sleep cycle.

Dave:

Two hours of deep, hour and a half of REM, on the average, six and a half hours. I'm okay with that.

Jack:

Yeah. So, what we had realized in our testing is that everything is recovering faster, cells are recovering faster, and that was the case with concussions as well. But it also affected stress levels and happiness levels. I mean what we were just seeing with players is that they were way more focused when they're sleeping well and our method is just eliminating stimulants and ultimately, just comparing how they sleep on our stimulant-free mattresses compared to how they're sleeping on a conventional one. And you know what's most popular for athletes you, that's the other thing is that, they're buying, most athletes are buying the complete opposite of what we're selling. They're all into memory foams, high toxins, high heat, or chemically-induced coolness through phase. I mean, so because they're not digging deep, they're not trying to understand what they need for sleep.

Dave:

There are still a surprising number of pro athletes who are eating hotdogs.

Jack:

Not as much though, not as much.

Dave:

Not as much, but it's shifted. But you see like the Tom Brady's, the Nick Foles in football, and it's like the brand brothers, their careers are lasting longer, but they don't do toxins, right? And they don't all eat exactly the same things and all that, but generally speaking, they're eliminating as many toxins as they can. They're recovering better, and they're conscious of all this stuff. So, I think it's interesting that by eliminating stimulants during sleep, you're getting these results. And what did you find for concussions? Like an improvement in speed of healing time or what was the outcome in the study?

Jack:

The outcome was basically what we were seeing early on, and we were not able to actually do a full formal testing with the teams as we wanted to.

Dave:

To impose, yeah.

Jack:

Just because of NFLPA also had certain regulations about tracking players beyond a certain amount of time, so what we were able to do to learn from the doctor that was handling is basically, the less stress, the less anxiety, these are the players who were able to get that rest that he needed and help recover faster,

Dave:

It goes back to that scales of justice model where like, "Oh, look, you have an extra stressor, which is recovering from a brain injury, maybe you shouldn't pour a bunch of other crap on there." It was okay, it makes good sense to me. And you mentioned a list that was really important. One of them was EMF, and you have a very unique way of blocking EMFs on a mattress.

Jack:

So, EMFs, we approach it very differently. Whereas a lot of known technologies for avoiding EMFs has been grounding pads or the idea of channeling the energy somewhere else away from the body. We needed something a little different in what we try to approach everything is an evidence-based approach trying to see how the body's reaction-

Dave:

Looking at outcomes in the body. Okay.

Jack:

Exactly, rather than just analyzing the EMF, we're literally looking at the outcomes in the body. So, we were working with a Dr. Valer in Switzerland and basically, he opened up our eyes to looking at blood cell activity.

Dave:

Is it like live blood cell analysis?

Jack: Exactly.

Dave:

Dark field microscopy?

Jack: Exactly.

Dave:

We just talked about then one of the other episodes here. Yeah, with Lila at Quantum Tech. We actually had pictures of dark field microscopy. So, this to remind listeners is when you have little stacked up red blood cells and when things are working better, they unstack themselves, so you get better oxygenation.

Jack: Correct.

Dave:

And maybe some other stuff, but is that what you were?

Jack:

This is exactly it. This is exactly it.

Dave:

Okay. All right.

Jack:

So, we went through the analysis of this blood work with people using our products, and we came up with a different mineral content version of our mattress, so our EMF barrier version, the whole mattress all the way through, has a whole new mineral formula in it. So, basically, what we've seen and it's during phone calls and we actually have this. I believe we have it on our website, where you actually see the blood cell analysis with our barrier, without the barrier. So, all we know is that with our barrier formula, the cells no longer are stacked together, so it's completely clear, even better than not even having any of the EMFs around interest.

Dave: Interesting.

Jack:

So, the blood is just harmoniously flowing. The cells are flowing unobstructed. And our interpretation of that is that if the cells are kind of stacked together, your oxygen flow is not going to be as good.

Dave:

Well, it's in technology that's been around forever. The first time, I did it, God, I don't remember what year it was, but it was called Country Sun in South Palo Alto. This weird health food store like the OG kind probably that was founded right around the same time that Whole Foods was founded, sometime in the '80s. And they would have someone come in twice a week and do dark field microscopy. The first time I got my little picture of my red blood cell in there, they looked at it like you're going to die because I had at the time, extremely high viscosity in my blood.

Jack: Really?

Dave:

Yeah, to the point that another physician who diagnosed it at a lab just said high risk of stroke and heart attack, and I wasn't even 30. So it was, it's something I've become aware of. And so, it's funny, dark field, which the western medicine people have tried to discredit, although it's got 35 years or something of good data behind it. That was the first one to tell me that and then I spent $500 at a lab to tell me the same thing that I learned from a $40 dark field at that, so. But it's a cool tech.

And what you guys are doing with the Essentia mattress, which I've never heard of, is instead of saying, "I'm going to have a sheet of mineralized fabric," which is the typical way of doing it. What you're doing is you're saying, "What if we distributed a matrix of minerals throughout all the foam," right?

Jack: Yeah.

Dave:

So now, it's a much thicker thing. And instead of saying, "All right, we're going to hold an EMF," so there's no EMFs. We're going to look at when a person sleeps on this, they're getting this result.

Jack:

Exactly, yeah.

Dave:

Now, I kind of like that, but have you actually put an EMF meter there and seeing if the EMFs changed?

Jack:

No, we really only focused on blood cells. We never looked at-

Dave:

You AB tested it, and you said...

Jack: Exactly, yes.

Dave:

..."This mattress doesn't have minerals and the blood sticky this mattress has minerals."

Jack:

Yeah. We've done it with different age groups, different genders, and we really, we were satisfied with the data. I only dive into something if I see that, "Okay, it's making a difference." And that's what's important to me is products that are making a difference and not obstruct something else that we're trying to do. So, by putting another layer on top, I'm not, my elasticity is not adapting to your body as easily or my heat, your body heat is not flowing through as I want it to be. So, that's where by putting the mineral content throughout the whole block, I'm achieving one. We are actually seeing that we actually are protecting the whole room. We actually-

Dave:

Wow.

Jack:

You don't even need to be sleeping on it, because there's so much of it, right?

Dave: Wow.

Jack:

So, those were the important indicators that we were on the right track and it was worth putting in.

Dave:

Blood viscosity is so interesting. Gerald Pollack came on the show a while back, and he's a professor at University of Washington, who identified exclusions on water, which is how inside cells, the body drink water and it turns the water using 1200 nanometer light, in other words body heat, turns it in the presence of a lipid membrane, cell wall, turns the water into biologically usable water called the easy water. And I funded research at his lab where he's like, "Oh, that's weird, but MCT and grass-fed butterfat create really huge amounts of exclusions on water. But the reason I'm bringing all this stuff up is that in large part controls blood viscosity. Because if you have the right kind of water in your blood, it works and around cell membranes, and that allows them to go through microcapillaries.

Now, that is a quantum biology effect. It is not a normal biochemical effect, which is why everyone got mad at him. And he's like, "Guys, look at my microscope slides, do you see the fuzzy border? That's exclusion zone. Can you explain it via any other mechanism?" No, you can't, right? So there's this weird kind of sticky state of water that or actually, less sticky state that is achievable. And things outside the body, I believe can affect that. And it sounds like what you've done is in an attempt to have a thicker EMF blocking field, you actually said, "All right, well, now we've got something that is changing it's probably quantum but anyway, it's changing the dynamics of something in the body that's measurable and visible.

Jack:

Exactly. Yeah.

Dave:

Okay. That's pretty neat.

Jack:

Yeah. And that's kind of important to us is that we're able to measure it and we're able to qualify and quantify it and then it was just a part of it. And that's what our basically, our high performers want. That's what our athletes want. And because, Jack, whatever, my players whenever they say, "Whenever there's something new, Jack, just let me know. I want to make sure I have the greatest that you have to offer." because they've just seen in all the elements that we've we focus on. It is not just to do something different, it's to do something well.

Dave:

Okay. I think you're just a big mattress nerd at this point. I mean, look at this. It's disgusting, Jack. The level of mattress nerdiness that you have.

Jack: Well-

Dave:

It's actually really cool. I love it when you're friends with an expert, who just is like, "I knew everything about this like that's what I do." And you're kind of that way.

Jack:

It's taken me through some pretty cool places. And everyone shrugs and looks at me in the oddest way when they see me in these environments that I never thought. First of all, I didn't think I'd be in a mattress world, right? That's not, that was not what I grew up thinking I'd want to be. But I can recall, this one player and I'm a big hockey fan, so to me, those stories stick with me, but the very first player that we introduced this to, and actually at the conference here, I invited a speaker who was the guy who introduced hockey players to Essentia.

Dave: Cool.

Jack:

And he's just so knowledgeable, strength and conditioning coach, sports science director for the Pittsburgh Penguins. And this guy was researching everything to try to help his star player with recovery. So, when we first offered the mattress to him, and I was such a fan, and differently, our players actually buy our beds, we don't comp them. But that player, I said, "He can have one," because you know and he actually said, "No." He was afraid that this strange, dense room rubber feeling was so different than what he experienced traveling on the road, that he didn't want to try it out. But anyhow, years later, hundreds of players are sleeping on it except him. He gets another concussion.

Dave: Oh, no.

Jack:

And this time around, he says, calls me up and says, "Jack, I want to give it a try." And he gets it and I don't hear from him. A month that goes in, I call, no answer. Typical. I call his agent. He goes, he hasn't mentioned anything, so I figured he chucked it away because he was so such a creature of habit.

Dave:

And plus, with a concussion, you do all sorts of weird stuff.

Jack:

Yeah. And anyhow, I get a call one evening. They're in the Stanley Cup Finals.

Dave:

Wow.

Jack:

And I get a call from his agent and he says, "Are you available tomorrow night? If you can make it, we'd like to have you in Pittsburgh." So, I find the way, I get to Pittsburgh, and here I am in the owner's box with the owner of the Penguins, agent, family, and basically, they told me that if we win tonight, you're coming to the house to celebrate.

Dave: Wow.

Jack:

And one guy saying, "I appreciate what you've done for the team." Then you have like guys there that are sponsors like Gatorade and all kinds of sporting equipment. And they're like, "What do you do?" Mattresses or latex mattresses. And they're like shrugging.

Dave:

I'm a latex guy.

Jack:

Yeah, so like, and they're like, "What are you doing here?" But meanwhile and I go down and see the players after the game and mostly these guys I spoke to by phone or in some way, and they are all so appreciative of what I'd done for them. And it was kind of cool, because I never really thought I was doing that much. I was just being my nerdy self, focused on latex, but he really appreciated the product so much so that I got invited to the owner's box, which is kind of cool.

Dave:

That says more than an endorsement is what I was going to say, where it made a difference and they said, "All right, do this." It's the things that you wouldn't expect that matter that make a difference. So, like the foam or that the mineral distribution through the foam, I mean, it could be replicating the effects of sleeping on the earth or something like that. There could be some other thing going on, but we don't have to necessarily know why, but when you get such dramatic results, people can tell. So, we know that there's something EMF-related that's helping with circulation. You talk about cerebral hyperthermia?

Jack: Yeah.

Dave:

Tell me about that.

Jack:

So, that's interesting because everyone knows that, it's commonly known that sleeping cool is good for you, good for sleep, right? We had realized in looking at the data and tracking that if you're constantly in an active state of cooling down through what we analyzed as an eight-hour period, so rather than going

to bed feeling cold, that's not as important as the act of your body constantly cooling down. And to the point where your central nervous system is constantly slowing down, all your activities, internally are slowing down and that keeps you in your REM cycles longer, keeps you in deep sleep cycle. And so, we've noticed that if you're just cooling yourself down, that's short lived.

So often, people act on their, what they can kind of relate to consciously, so they'll go to bed cold and they'll feel great because they fall asleep really quick. However, internally, how is that clock working? And we've realized that if it's gradual and constant, you're staying in those deep sleep cycles longer rather than when the temperature goes up, the body starts are prepared to get into its awakened stage.

Dave:

You know I get it. I can see, historically, if you were a mitochondria floating in the ocean and at sunset, the water is relatively warm, and it cools with some equation, and it's probably not quite linear, but mostly linear over the course of the night, right? And then it starts to come back up at sunrise, so making the body cold all at once, might not work. And some of the chilling systems that I'm fan of, frankly, are programmable to have it change over the course of the night. But your thing that says, "Okay, as long as the body can dump heat when it wants to, it's going to follow a natural circadian rhythm." But if you're sleeping on a normal like a sticky latex mattress that doesn't have the cooling aspects.

Jack:

JackSo, they're you talking about those chilling products. And I do like the ones that are on top, the blanket version.

Dave:

Yeah, the blanket version is cool.

Jack:

The blanket version because one, you're allowing that cooling to happen, you can program it, but then you're allowing on the surface that your heat to escape.

Dave: Smart.

Jack:

You're allowing that to happen. You're not causing any perspiration through having any of the products that just basically trap you in that, into this kind of heat phase.

Dave: Interesting.

Jack:

So, that's the whole process of allowing your body heat to escape the body.

Dave:

Okay. I have a question that I hadn't really thought to ask you about it, but you guys have been named like five times in a row Consumer Reports top choice for a mattress. And I know Consumer Reports. I run a large company and I haven't found their stuff to be very transparent. They kind of pretend like it is, but I always like there's some weird politics and stuff behind it and all of that. And essentially, it isn't one of the largest mattress companies either for the E-commerce...

Jack:

[crosstalk 00:57:05].

Dave:

... airbag ones, the ones that are most the air or the giant historical ones. How did you pull that off? Because that is hard.

Jack:

[crosstalk 00:57:13].

Dave:

As a CEO, I want to know, how did you get Consumer Reports to even pay attention to a smaller like super premium?

Jack:

We were really surprised to be honest when it happened. And it's funny you say that because our opinion internally, because obviously we're biased and completely proud of what we've accomplished. We feel that the fact that there's a number two so close to us is because they're big companies, because there's no reason for the number two to be even so close to us.

Dave:

Don't you have like a $10 or $100 million research budget?

Jack: Yeah.

Dave:

You ought to be able to come pretty close, but you care about stuff they don't care about.

Jack:

Yeah. So, it is really interesting, just because what they test, this was, it was fully independent. We have no control and the fact that it kept showing up year after year, we were grateful and happy. But we had zero control over it. They actually bought our product without us knowing, tested it without us knowing, and published their findings without, yeah.

Dave:

And so, this was totally blind. It's completely. Wow.

Jack:

Yeah, this was completely blind.

Dave:

So, a reviewer there, listened to some of what you said. It must have changed some of their variables what mattered in the mattress, because the stuff you care about, "Oh, there's actually no VOCs. There's actually no latex."

Jack:

No, that's what one of things that you kind of jump on. VOCs and any of these stimulants have nothing to do with their evaluation process. And that's where...

Dave: Wow.

Jack:

... we were talking with our guys that I worked with a company Delos and they're fantastic when they worked with me.

Dave:

It set environmental standards.

Jack:

Yeah, so we've worked with them and they've put our mattresses in any Wellness Center and they actually told me. They goes, "Jack, if Consumer Reports would actually test the stuff that really matters in your product, there would be no number two." Because if the number two next to us actually is full of VOCs. So, we would be so far detached if they looked at stimulants, VOCs, so many, so many elements. But we're still, I mean, we're so grateful that we're on that list, like I said, we're probably-

Dave:

It's a big win for a small company.

Jack:

We were the only small company on that list.

Dave:

Yeah, it's a huge win. I remember in my career once I wanted to go in the Magic Quadrant, which is a Gartner thing in the tech world. It's a huge thing and I managed to get us on, it was $10 million company up against $100 million dollar companies. But it was like a battle and I mean, it was terrible. And I was imagining you went through something like that. But no, you're like, "They called us and said we won." Okay.

Jack:

No, they published it. And we learned about it from the publishing.

Dave:

Oh, my goodness. Okay, that's about as clean as it gets. And it's one of the things. You go up on the shelf at the store and say you want to buy whatever food product is there. And you go, "These look like their equivalents. This one is $6 less than this one. All right, let's turn that one over." And you look at the labels, and you go they're mostly equivalent, right? But the $6 or less one, they did something. And like, "Oh, they didn't tell you what they did to their cashew butter or they cut a corner," right? They always had to. And what you're saying is, "Here's our standards. They're not related to mattress industry standards."

Jack: Correct.

Dave:

But you still won.

Jack:

We still won.

Dave:

Okay, that's cool.

Jack:

It's an interesting thing, when you look at so many consumer products and you look at in nutrition and food, you walk into a grocery store, there's probably like six companies that make every different product in there. Similar in our space, there's not that many, there's many mattress brands, but they're all buying the components from the same people. They're buying the foam from a handful of foamers. They're buying the fabrics from a handful of fabric guys. They're buying, so really, you're down to like really five people supplying all these different mattress brands. We're the only ones, who really, we make it all ourselves. So, we have our own formula, so we're not on that, on that main track that you'd see in the grocery store or in a mattress store. So, that's what keeps us a little, that's how we're able to really make something different based on our values.

Dave:

Okay. I respect that. It's that same just doing stuff that people don't think matters, except it does. And I kind of did that with coffee, right?

Jack: Yeah.

Dave:

But people get mad at you in the mattress industry? Like, "You're not allowed to say that? How dare you say VOCs and talk about this stuff," or you didn't get a lot of pushback?

Jack:

Initially, because I never thought I'd sell it directly to a consumer. I developed this product. That was just like latex, like I said I was a latex geek, but not marketing geek or anything like that. So, when I was initially proposing people to buy it, everybody wanted it. But they didn't want the story that came with it. So, I had one guy, big promises, saying, "I can do this, but you can't talk about adhesives. You can't talk about VOCs, you can't talk about." So, you don't want me to talk about it? And he goes, "Well." What else am I going to talk about? That's what I make. He goes, "Just depending on your brand." I go, "I don't have a brand. Nobody knows me."

Dave: That man.

Jack:

So, I went, I opened up, we launched our website. And we said, you know what? Because the first people who really adopted Essentia were the ill and they didn't care about marketing. They just wanted to feel better.

Dave:

Yeah. And they all talk to each other, they know what works.

Jack:

And then from there. So, our journey started with people who had health struggles, then it went to people who were overcoming their health struggles, Then it went to preventative people, then it went to lifestyle. Then we got to performance. I was in business seven, eight years before we really thrived in the performance world. Whereas before, we were mostly almost like a healthcare world. So, that was kind of cool. And an interesting transition, an interesting journey as a company, but throughout all it's all about helping people sleep. That was our main.

I was telling someone just the other day, I don't remember if a year economically was a good year or a bad year financially. But I do remember, I remember that guy and I remember who I helped here. I remember the feedback of the guy who can't cycle anymore and now is cycling again. So, those were great stories, way more than we had budget.

Dave:

Yeah, it matters a lot when you hear that. And the idea that you wouldn't kind of sign up for a gag order around "You can't talk about this, you can't talk about that, if we buy it." I have probably lost tens of millions of dollars over my just absolute "I will not sign any gag orders." And people would offer me whatever, and like, "No. I will speak the truth, as I see it and I'm not going to sign papers that say I don't."

Jack:

I think Essentia would be a bigger brand if I would. I wouldn't be running the company. This goes against what I would want to do, so I'd have to hand the keys over to someone else.

Dave:

And then they would probably try to drive it into the ground and ruin your standards.

Jack:

Yeah, they would have.

Dave:

I've never seen anything like that with the thing that I do.

Jack:

Well, if you're not going to, because then at that point you have to then pull out. All those expensive things that we're putting in, it would have to come out. This is whether you like it or not, a gallon of essential oil is 100 times more expensive than a gallon of oil. So, once you start to substitute those things out and go back to what makes it efficient and low cost, then you take out all the value of the product.

Dave:

And I'm going to paraphrase Ben Franklin here and he said, "The sweetness of low price," jeez, "It is never..." something like, "It's never better than the bitterness of low quality?" Right? And is never better and he was more eloquent than that. But basically, it feels good like "Oh, look I got a mattress for $49.95," right? But then you'll hate it later and I've learned that it's the truth. Good stuff costs more. That said, not everyone has isn't enough money to go out and buy, the same mattress that pro athletes use and all that stuff and that's something else that you've done and it's one that I've vetted. And my deal with listeners is, "Look, I'm going to talk about mechanisms."

And you guys learned a lot about VOCs. You learned about cooling and EMFs, and some other aspects of sleep, even the concussion recovery. But I'd like to talk about, what can you do that's lower cost or free, and the mechanisms are free and lower costs? And then there's, what are the crazy billionaires doing? What's all the stuff in between? And instead of saying, "We have kind of one mattress in four sizes." And there's a famous mattress company, that'll send you an airfield one, right? That does that kind of thing. But you actually do like four levels here. Walk me through what those are.

Jack:

Well, I've always been striving to make the lowest price product-

Dave:

Yeah, because you want people to use because it's gets better, right?

Jack:

Yeah, that's been the R&D challenge for us. How do we make this? And you know what? And it's everything's perception, like our pro athletes think that we're a steal, because we're charging half the price of what they're being marketed.

Dave: Wow.

Jack:

On our top end mattress, right? Because people see they're athletes, they got big salaries, so they get inflated prices. So, but that still is not the norm for the ordinary Joe is not spending $10,000 to $12,000 on a mattress, right?

Dave:

That's the very highest performance, like-

Jack:

Correct, that's it.

Dave:

The what do you call it the Rolls Royce mattress level kind of thing.

Jack:

Exactly, that's customized to their posture, and all that. And so, what we've every... so, it's we've gone the opposite approach. Our first mattress that I developed in '05 was our performance category, which is the level below what-

Dave:

So, your second best, basically.

Jack:

Exactly. And then as we improve it and we had our whole body recovery, which is our top quality right now, which basically drops the body temperature. Readapts to any movement faster, so we have our whole body, which is the off-the-rack version of what our pro athletes do or pro athletes would use.

Dave:

Because you're like custom pro core crazy level-

Jack: Custom.

Dave: Than next-

Jack:

Whole body recovery, which is the same technology, but standardized soft and firm.

Dave:

Based on that, okay. Based on that survey. As you know, fill out a survey and they're going to tell you, which is the setting?

Jack: Correct.

Dave:

Versus like 264 custom. Okay, so that's for most people who are going to buy if they're not worried about the budget.

Jack: Exactly.

Dave:

Okay. Then what's below that?

Jack:

Below that is our performance, which our first iteration, which was the body temperature drop is about 4 degrees, instead of the 7.5 degrees, and it doesn't readapt this quickly, but still has so many-

Dave:

Zero VOCs. It's super clean. Okay.

Jack:

Zero VOCs, super clean. All of our, see, there's a certain minimum standard the world is going to go by is that it won't have this, none of our mattresses have the VOCs stimulants. None of them have to have the heat stimulant, none of them have to have the allergen stimulants. And so below that, what we would call our lifestyle, the lifestyle has all of the above. But again, won't have the drop in temperature. Won't have as much of the posture support that you get out of it. So, we have and we have a fourth category, which is our entry level. But I really call our entry level a transitional tool for someone who is not so committed to sleep. Because it's I get called every level how seriously do you take your sleep and how much has it become a priority in your investment?

Our entry level is a hybrid which it has the coils which I've never been a proponent of coils in a mattress. But we like it or not most of the population sleeps on coils, so we put our Essentia technology at the surface and we have the coils and I kind of see that as a crossover. You're not willing to commit to a wellness in bed, you know you need better sleep, you know you need better environment, so this is your transitional tool.

Dave:

And at least it has no VOCs.

Jack:

Yes, and it's low in price.

Dave:

It's got all the natural stuff. Okay.

Jack:

Okay. It's just over a $1,000, so it's a very inexpensive, very affordable mattress, but-

Dave:

All right. That's just harder to ship though with coils isn't it? It's that big old boxes.

Jack:

Well, we can still compress it. We can still probably, yeah.

Dave:

You can still, okay, so you can still get up the stairs. All right.

Jack:

Well, mind you, our equipment to roll pack is not what you normally buy those, we had to reinforce this equipment [crosstalk 01:09:29].

Dave:

Okay, got it, because of the springs.

Jack:

Not only for the springs, for our heavy mattresses.

Dave:

Yeah, because it's not all air. All right.

Jack: Exactly.

Dave:

And that means shipping costs a little bit more. Do you guys pay for shipping or most of the time?

Jack:

We do, yeah, yes.

Dave:

So, that doesn't matter for customers. All right, so that starts with 1000 bucks?

Jack: Yep.

Dave:

And now, those have the Kevlar flame retardant on them as well?

Jack:

Everything has Kevlar

Dave:

Okay, there you go. So, you got a flame retardant-

Jack:

Yeah. We refuse to put any of the, yeah.

Dave:

I didn't look at the price on the some of the other stuff. But that is the best price I've ever seen for a no- flame retardant natural latex. It doesn't, okay, it has coils in the middle, fine. But that's the natural latex on top.

Jack: Yeah.

Dave:

Wow. Okay, so that that is within reach for anyone who's going to buy a mattress?

Jack: Exactly.

Dave:

And it goes up from there.

Jack:

And we stand behind that. It won't have any of the bad stuff in it. That's our commitment.

Dave:

Yeah.No adhesives. Weird stuff.

Jack: Yeah.

Dave:

Okay. Well, I respect that greatly because it bothers me sometimes. I wanted it like this is a $20,000 piece of clinical equipment, right? And I'm going to talk about the mechanisms, so you can go to a clinician and get a treatment with something or whatever. Go to an upgrade labs and use whatever. This is different though because it is accessible for everyone. And if you're going to spend 1000 bucks on VOCs, endocrine disruption, flame retardants or spend the same money and get something that is clean, that's actually really hard to achieve. So, kudos on that one. I didn't realize that the entry level was dialed in, so and it gets a bit better guys.

Dave:

Prioritize what you can do, and what you can do with the money and the time and the energy that you have that's going to make the biggest difference in your life. The reason I care about sleep is that sleep has the highest ROI of just about anything you do. So, you should do something about your sleep, but you may want to spend 10 bucks on aluminum foil to black out windows first if that's where you are and that's okay. Right? So, make sure that you get that and when it's time for a mattress, you know what to look for on a good mattress. See you, guys soon.

Dave:

You’re listening to The Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.