207: Arjen de Jong, PhD: Founder & CEO, AirTulip: The Untold Connection Between Air Quality & Sleep—From Allergies to Snoring

 Welcome to the Sleep As a Skill podcast. My name is Mollie Eastman. I am the founder of Sleep as A Skill, a company that optimizes sleep through technology, accountability, and behavioral change. As an ex sleep sufferer turned sleep course creator, I am on a mission to transform the way the world. Thinks about sleep.

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Each week I'll be interviewing world-class experts, ranging from researchers, doctors, innovators, and thought leaders to give actionable tips and strategies that you can implement to become a more skillful sleeper. Ultimately, I believe that living a circadian aligned lifestyle is going to be one of the biggest trends in wellness.

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And I'm committed to keeping you up to date on all the things that you can do today to transform your circadian health and by extension, allowing you to sleep and live better than ever before.

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Welcome to the Sleep as AKI podcast. What if the air you're breathing at night is actually sabotaging your sleep? Today's guest, Dr. Ion De Young, is a PhD aerospace engineer whose resume includes nasa, Ferrari, Nikon, and he is here to unpack how the quality of the air around your bed might just be one of the most overlooked factors in your sleep quality.

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After years of working in clean room environments and. Studying airflow at the highest levels of engineering. He turned his attention to the bedroom and created air tulip. A beautifully designed headboard that quietly creates a clean air bubble right where you sleep. In this conversation, we dig into the science behind air quality and how it impacts things like snoring, allergies, asthma, and even slow wave sleep.

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We also get real about the limitations of traditional air purifiers and how most of us are. Still breathing in a cocktail of dust, pollen, and pollutants, even with a filter running. This one is a mix of engineering brilliance, personal passion, and practical tools for improving your rest. So let's get into the podcast.

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And also a quick note, they did hook us up with a promo code. So in the event that you wanna test this out yourself, it is. Sleep is a skill, all one word. We will leave that information in the show notes as well. So let's jump into the podcast. But first a few words from our sponsors and do know that our sponsors keep this podcast going and we only align with the best companies that we truly believe in their products.

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Blockout, your not just investing in a blackout shade, you're investing in your health, wellbeing, and quality of life. So again, go to you Blockout. Spelled the letter U blockout and use code sleep as a skill for a discount. If you're listening to this podcast, you're likely looking to improve your sleep, and one of the first questions people ask me about sleep is what supplement they can take.

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Pleasantly surprised by the results. And welcome to the Sleep is a Skill podcast you are in for a treat. This is a very unique topic that we're going to get into, and we're very honored to have our guest here today. He's in demand. He just got back from Shark Tank and beyond an innovator. So thank you so much for taking the time to be here.

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Thank you. Thanks, Molly. Uh, super exciting. To be here. Uh, super cool to see what you're doing and, uh, help around sleep and, you know, improving people's lives in that way. So, uh, excited to be here. Yeah.

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Yes, absolutely. Okay, so on this topic of sleep, I know you are quite the innovator in this arena, so share with us how in the world you came to be such a pioneer and inventor in this area, and what you have invented and why.

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Sounds good. Good. So what we've done. We created a head port for a bed that creates a controlled zone where there's absolutely no particles, no pollution, nothing, just pure clean air. So as opposed to air purifiers, they always state the filter is so clean, but the room is not, it's uncontrolled. Yes, there's dust everywhere.

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So what we've done, we've used aerospace engineering to create a local bubble, and it comes out of the headquarters itself, and it's about, well, yay size where you sleep. So the whole night you'd be. Better than in Switzerland, even if you're in the middle of deli, for example. So you completely cut out any air pollution, pollen, asthma triggers, allergy triggers and better get a better rest and get a better sleep.

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Um, historically I have a PhD in aerospace engineering and acoustics, so I know how flow works. And we worked a lot with visualization. I've worked for it. Automotive companies such as Ferrari and Porsche on how the cars flow is, uh, semiconductor, uh, nasa, all the like. And so I got a lot of knowledge of how we can control this flow.

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Also, we had a family business that made industrial clean rooms. So these are rooms where, for example, aircraft maintenance parts get, uh, you know, refurbished and that has to be in a controlled environment. Think of it like a operating room in a hospital. So in a pandemic. I was like, we could, we should make clean rooms in every room, like every restaurant, every hotel where you go, then we don't have to wear the mask.

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We can actually be social again, because you can actually cut the mixture. Yeah. And so that's what we did. We started working with 'em. We get a lot of traction with dentists on whole places, and dentists already have a lot of particulates for the open mouth and all the things they do. They understood it and post covid we're like, okay, where can we help people?

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How can we have as long as an exposure where people get, you know, recovery And it was like actually where you get recovery for eight hours a third of your life, you're not moving as much. You're between left side and the right side of your pillow. So perfect. If we can control that zone, not the whole room,

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then

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we have something special.

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So yeah, that's how it came to be.

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That is so wild. Okay. Was this also a personal problem for you or like were, did you deal with any of those particular problems or concerns the allergies beyond? I.

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Yeah, I, as a kid, I was like allergic to just about anything. We lived near a forest and I was allergic to tree bark and pollen and grass.

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Wow. Cats and dogs and birds. And we had, of course we had like chickens and peacocks. We had a dog. So all great. So I was constantly sniffing. The other thing I had was I. When I was three years old, I had a, a, a, uh, in a very strong bacterial infection, and they rushed me to the hospital and they jammed the tube through my nose, so they broke the septum.

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So the whole septum was completely deviated. So I always was not able to breathe on one side. It was all messed up. Um, what. I did is like after first operation, it didn't work. The second operation, I actually used my own flow modeling on my own CT scan to see where they had to cut and it worked at the doctors and now it's Rader again, so it's awesome.

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Oh my

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gosh.

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Gosh. Yeah. Yeah. So I was like, no, no. Can I have a look at the scan? They wanted to make it all symmetrical and get a bone in there, an excess thing. I was like, no, no, no, no. Hold on, hold on. Can we just control the flow? And he's like, do what? Yes. Okay, let's do this. Oh my gosh. Ever since I'm very sensitive to it as well.

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And so when I sleep in my bed versus when I'm traveling and I don't have an air tulip, yeah. It's like my whole nasal pathways are more open. The whole thing is like completely like, you know, as if, you know, when you have that kind of mucus and groggy feeling or like Yeah. Some boogers and stuff.

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Yes.

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Now that feeling you don't have, because the whole nasal pathways is just, you know, wider.

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So, sure. I, and the side effect is that, and my wife, uh, doesn't like it when we're traveling because I snore. But I don't snort when I'm in the air tulip. So, um, we're not, we're looking at that later down the road. But what it typically does is, like, it prevents all these triggers in your pathway. So big particles that get in your nasal cavity, the smaller particles that get down in your lungs.

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And for me, yeah, it cuts out allergies and that cuts out the, you know, basically the closure of the nose area for me.

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Oh my goodness. And so you found it to reduce snoring between you and your wife? You've been able to notice that?

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Yeah. Yeah. 'cause my wife is the one noticing when I'm snoring. Of course. So, yes.

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So, and, and this is of course a anecdotal, but, you know, I'm, I'm one to see down the, the down the road what we can do. But what I noticed as well, we have like, uh, uh, a whole bunch of headquarters in the field. We ran a Kickstarter, we developed the product out, and we're really having an on, you know, an ongoing shop.

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Uh, a lot of people, I. That have asthma or severe allergies, they notice it almost immediately. But on the other side of the spectrum, we also working with professional athletes so they can, you know, track their metrics and see what it improves. So I wanna work on building that out further to get to more people and really just work on metrics, like yeah, if you have an ordering or a garment or sleep score, whatever.

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Yeah.

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You know? Tell me and you know, notice it because that's what we are like looking into and that's what we're collaborating with. And down the line, I want to get this, uh, more validated, really, like with clinical data. Mm-hmm. Uh, we have independent tests on this clean zone. So we have an independent lab that convert that.

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We get that clean zone.

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Yes.

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Uh, and there's research out there what air pollution does to your sleep. We wanna ramp that up and get to the level where we really can substantiate that. But for now, um, a lot of people with asthma allergies, they less medicine use, less attacks, like better peak flow, all that stuff.

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And in general, just better rest and recovery. Um, personal, uh, my PhD's in air acoustics and I'm very sensitive to salt. Mm-hmm. Um. So that was the other thing was like if you do so much airflow, because the whole headboard is like basically doing airflow but over very slow kind of dis speed.

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Yes.

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But that's a lot more than a Dyson air purifier.

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But if you put a big fan in it, like these large ones with like metal blades and stuff, it will allowed us, you know, loud. Um, so we started trying to see, can I find the, can I sign the cloud? Can I find a cloud blade? And in the end what we did is I used jet engine software. To design my own blades and my own airfoil.

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We have IP on that, and that is why it is so quiet. So I just completely nerd it out on the whole thing, like, you know, it needs to be quiet. So. You know, let me just find somebody. Oh wait, that's me. Let's do the acoustics. So, yeah. Oh wait, that's me.

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Oh, very sick. That's so great. Okay. And so people can expect that not only will they get this bubble effect, they'll also have, it'll be nice and quiet 'cause and for some people they like kind of that white noise.

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Is there any bit of white noise or what can they think that they'll have if they were to order that?

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Yeah, so what happens is sound works. On the logarithmic scale, what does that mean? It's like, uh, um, for earthquakes, if you have an earthquake of six on the Richter scale, and then five four V two, that's not, like six to five is only a little bit be, uh, better or worse, it's a factor of 10.

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If the mosquito lands on a table that is minus 12 on a Richter kill, if the Death Star a Star Wars, they, you blow up a planet that's maybe 16 or 15 on a Richter kill. So a skill can cover a large range of very small forces and very large forces acoustic the same. The decibel skill is, you know, 26 decibel, 50 decibel.

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Normally when you talk, it's 50 60 when it's like, you know, quiet Street is maybe in the forties, but as you get down it becomes very hard to get very quiet because even the little movements, that's what 30 is and that's what 20 is. We're 26 decibel. That means that if everything is very quiet, you could hear a low hum.

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We made sure there's no annoying tones in it with some of our ip, but you have to also, it has to be really quiet. To the level that we found it actually hard to measure this and typically need acoustic rooms because, you know, you need to have the background to be quieter than your product, and that's typically almost not the case.

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Right? So, yeah, there's a small hum. We also have a, a whisper setting we call it, where we, we slow down the, the clean zone. So we are slightly less effective in the length of that clean zone, but it's a trade off for people that are really, really sensitive.

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Do you recommend that people keep this on all day too, so that it's also filtering the air during the daytime before they even get into bed?

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Or is it just a nighttime thing?

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First of all, we have a day mode, which is just boosting the fan to more than it's designed to. For this, for the whisper, but to the level that it can do because we oversize these fan and then we spool 'em down. So that's how you get quiet. You make this jet engine design fan.

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Then you get it slower so that you get the sound and the efficiency. We also have the day mode where it spills up and you have it louder, still much quieter than an air purifier, but then it cleans the whole room the whole day. Um, personally, I leave it on night mode. I don't think about it. I leave it on day and night and it cleans the bedroom.

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And it, we have like an open down stairwell. We live in a carriage house, and so there's a narrow stairwell. You can measure with the particle content that it also improves, uh, the air in the, the kitchen area. So, yeah.

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Wow. And you've done research too, on comparing the effectiveness of this as it's compared to other air purifiers?

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Right. I. And what did we find there? So

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yeah, we've done field studies ourselves and there's also literature out there. So what, what happens in air purification is that everybody always talks about how they filter and what they filter and stuff, but you can filter 99.9999999%. If you're just filtering a little puff of air, you're not making a change in the rule.

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So one of the key metrics of an air purifier is not the efficiency of the filter, but it's also like how much air they filter through. And a lot of times there's very fancy filters to do something, but a lot of times, for example, a HEPA would already capture a lot of molds, bacteria, and viruses, and trap it in the filter so it doesn't get through.

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And then, you know, after X time they would be deactivated. So there's a lot of. Uh, knowledge in the field, but it's really hard to explain. Okay. Now, effectively, what does that do to the room? Now what you do is you get, you can do lab studies, but you can also get these kind of scientific instruments. This is a particle counter, ah, it breathes in here and it can measure, there's a laser in there, how much dust is in the room, how many particles in the room, so.

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What we've done also for reference testing, we got a whole bunch of air purifiers, put 'em in a room and measure it for like an hour, two hours, three hours. Uh, there's independent tests on that too. So what happens in a room, there's airflow that moves all around us. For example, our head is hotter than the air around it.

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So we're actually like a candle. The air around us is moving up, and that mixes again. So if you would actually see my, my head now on the thermal camera, and you would visualize the air, you could see this wiggle and that. Moves around.

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Oh, weird. Okay. Yeah. Dang.

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So now carpets, dogs, cats, you moving your skin.

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Yeah. It emits dust and air. Purify eats dust away. So think of it as a bucket where there's water and wine, and so you're turning wine into water, but you'll never have no wine or other way around, depending on how people like this. Yeah. Um, so you never get pure. So you always have a mixture. Uh, typically you would say if you leave an RRP fire that's ized for the room on for about an hour, you would reduce about 50% of the particles.

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After two hours, it gets maybe to 70%, depending on, you know, the HVAC system and if there's carpets and stuff and it kind of tapers off. So you still have the triggers, you just have less of it. It's still good. I would recommend anybody to get an air purifier in every room and, and really help eat it out.

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What it doesn't do is if the air purify says it's 99.97 or whatever percent, that doesn't mean your room or your air is that. That means that inside the thing, that's what the filter does. Oh, and so here's the difference. We don't mix with the environment when we come outta the filter, that's the trick.

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We stay stable, we stay unmixed. Think of it as like a flow of syrup that doesn't wanna mix with the rest of the air till it's past you. Hmm. Um. That's called lanar flow, which is flow without turbulent eddies. Now turbulent eddies are, if you look at the weather patterns and you see like on the large planet scale, you see these circles, right?

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Yes. And they break up and there's little circles and stuff that's turbulence. And what turbulence is really good at is mixing. So you get like this whirl, if you have something bad here, it just carried by the and with the other world. And so it spreads out very quickly.

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Yeah.

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What we do is you get rid of those worlds.

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This big pressure settling chamber and through the entire fabric you get like a very slow, like from the side it will be about this speed. So you don't feel a draft slow, but it's equal. It's not a jet. It's like over a whole area. You just push the air away where you are.

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Oh, wow.

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And so locally. You're completely isolated from whatever is happening in the room.

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Wow. So interesting. And your knowledge is so like deep on these different topics. That's wild. Okay. So one, if people are listening and they like step one, don't even have an air purifier, particularly in their bedroom, like, no matter what, you need to get this. But as you're pointing out, we're also seeing the limitations of this.

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Standard air purifier in our bedrooms and that this could be this solution. Is there a reason for the name Air Tulip? Does that have to do with some of this managing the air?

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There's a history to it, and of all people, I had a French guy that wasn't advisor to me. He's like, Arian like, you're coming from Holland.

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We should make it air tulip. But there was a thing, what triggered him? Back when we had the dentistry offices, we actually had an air cleaner that was like a big pillar. It's like a pillar and it had a bulb on it. What? Like this? So it looked like an enormous eight foot tulip. And so he, the fan was in the bottom and the fan was in the top.

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The filter was in the bottom. That's why we had that, to create this downflow. Wow. Um, so it looked like this enormous. Huge oversized tulip and I was like carrying it around on a cart with like, uh, some of my workers and engineers. Yeah. All the way through the West Village. Like, okay, let's put it in this restaurant, in that coffee shop, ma on and everything.

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Of course, yes. So yeah, this is how we started. And so it was like air tulip.

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That is so cool. I love that. Okay. Amazing. I didn't know if that had to do with it, like the, the way it was curved or something. Something with the air. Okay, got it.

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Your original product? Yes. Original. Okay.

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Many iterations have gone down the line.

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Got it. Oh yeah. So could this also have applications too, for any ERs dealing with things like sleep apnea, like CPAP machines, you know, just like whatever error is. Pumping in the environment right into their face could just be yet another possible application, I'm assuming.

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Yeah. So for me, what I wanna explore is like what it does to people and who benefits the most.

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Okay. Uh, and what we've noticed from the people, the pool of people that gave feedback, and I can't yet substantiated like I will. Still your sleep apnea or will do snoring. Sure. You have to explore this yourself. I can't, I can't make that claim yet.

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Totally. Yeah. But what

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I can say is that we got people back where mild sleep apnea, uh, some people had it and there was, you know, sometimes sporadic use of the machine.

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I have no sleep apnea, so I don't know how you use that machine. Yes. But I got some of that feedback that this actually helped. Great. That said. Um, if anybody has sleep apnea wants to try this, let's try this and see what it does. Because for me it's always about measuring. Does that help you? Yes. Does it do anything?

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Um, so that's the biggest thing. So for me, the most obvious ones are where there's really a clear, you know, connection with triggers, asthmatic reactions, pollen allergy, stuff like that. The fact that we create a local zone where you don't have that, of course, helps and that can be substantiated. Now down the line.

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That, you know, relaxing of all the, the pathways and that help as well with snoring, mild apnea in there? Um, I think so, and I think there's indicators for that that we have to explore further. And I, I wanna get a scientific team around me as we scale a production further to really deepen that out to help more people.

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Uh, 'cause I think we have something that across the board will help everybody. It's like, I see this radiation. If you get one x-ray, uh, a day, it doesn't matter. But if you have. Every year for 10 years, you have one x-ray a day after a time you have an effect on your health. Yeah. Now, air pollution for people that are healthy is also like that.

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You're continuously breathing in triggers and, and, and things, and it, you know, of course interrupts your sleep. People that will be allergic to that like asthma allergies would reduce it immediately. People that are relatively UNT triggered by it still breathe that. Taking, then smoke, you know? Sure.

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Rubber particles from the tires from the highway. The New York subway is horrible, by the way. Oh. When you measure it like this is like, oh, when you measure the highest counter? Yes. Oh, really? It like, alarm, alarm, alarm. Get out of here. I was like, oh, oh, oh my

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God. That's what I find. That's one of the rules of thumb with EMFs too.

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It's like, ugh, half the time you don't wanna know. It's just like, yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It's like

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the silence. But that's the thing. It's one of those silent things Yeah. That you think you're okay until there's a dosage effect.

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Yeah.

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Um, so yeah, uh, that's what we're working on. And of course. Certain term.

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Um, and if you go really to extreme athletes like the sports professional athletes there, of course you can notice the recovery because that's always what they do. They really monitor, track their food intake, their, you know, the CI rhythm, you know, for athletes, for example, travel around the world, the Formula One people there, there's a lot of stuff there around sleep and what you need to do with it.

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Oh, absolutely. And real quick on that topic of EMFs, my understanding too is that, um, I know you had different people that had tested the EMF level and has appeared to be like nothing really coming up. And I think if I read it correctly, something about being shielded and grounded. So I'm wondering if you can share any, for any of our like biohacker esque people.

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Yeah. Cool. No, that sounds good. So we have like, uh. Our whole motor and our whole electronics system that controls the motor is enclo in the metal casing. And that casing is grounded. Yeah. So the motor lifts down in the belly of the unit and so we make sure that that all the way grounds towards the motor.

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And we also were testing motors that had low e MF and the style of motors that we had. So the motor is a smart motor, but it doesn't have any external wifi or Bluetooth control, but it's on by design. We didn't want to have any different radiations and stuff.

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Yes.

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Uh, and then. Yeah. What was was nice was, was one of the, uh, the YouTubers that we sent the board to, he actually had an EMF meter and started like testing it and like, yeah, okay, here is, this is well f and nothing, nothing, nothing around the bed.

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So I'm really glad to you see that in the field. And I like, uh, you know, uh, uh, what is this called? I'd love people to measure more. Measure, measure, measure. I, I would like that.

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Great. Well that's fantastic. I think that will be a sigh of relief for a lot of people. That's amazing. And then how about we have different people that are dealing with things like mold.

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Is mold something that this could combat or help support, or what do we think there?

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Yeah, so going back again to what this thing does. Yeah. So what we have, we have like a. A section of filters. Right. Okay. So what we do, we have a pre, we have a grid first for like dog hair and stuff. We have a pre-filter catches large particles.

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So at a certain point, mold sport are a certain size. Then we go past a H 14 HEPA filter, which is an industrial grade. So normally an air purifier has an H 13 HEPA filter, which is 99.97%, or nine nine 7%. We have 10 times that filter capacity. Oh wow. So what the age 14 filter does is that it traps. Even the smaller particles.

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And so you trap mold spores you, you trap that and then it doesn't get passed to through the next layer. So after that we have an active carbon filter for gases and odors, and then we actually have the headboard itself. The fabric is also helping. No. So yes, we trap that too. So yeah, it doesn't reach you.

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If you've tuned into the show or followed any of our content here at Sleep as a Skill, you may have heard that everyone that we work with wears the Ora Ring, and as a result, we have amassed a very large database of Ora Ring users and get to see what really moves a needle for people when it comes to their sleep measurably.

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Now, because we have so much data around sleep optimization, many ask. What they can do to improve their sleep quality. And for years, my answer has been that one of the few things I've seen makes such an overnight difference is the use of a quality cooling mattress topper, not just any ordinary topper that claims to be cooling with like gels or what have you, but an actual cooling topper that uses water and can be dynamically adjusted to suit your unique needs and preferences.

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So with eight sleep you can enjoy advanced. Sleep tracking, allowing you to monitor key metrics like heart rate, heart rate variability, and sleep stages all integrated seamlessly into the app. It also has a dual zone temperature control, which means that you and your partner can each set your own ideal sleep temperature.

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Plus the gentle rise wake up technology uses temperature and vibration to wake you up gently and naturally avoiding the jarring sound of an alarm. But it doesn't stop there. There's more, more, more so. The system even includes a smart alarm feature that wakes you up during your lightest. Sleep phase. I know a lot of people have asked me about this, and this is included in here within a customizable time window, ensuring you wake up feeling refreshed and ready to start your day.

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And for those of you who struggle with snoring eight, sleep has an anti snore feature that adjusts your sleep environment in real time to help reduce snoring and improve overall sleep quality. So this is truly a game changer for anyone serious about optimizing their sleep. So if you're ready to take your sleep to the next level.

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Head on over to eight. Sleep and use the code. Sleep is a skill, all one word at checkout for a discount. I'm so glad you mentioned too the pet hair because we do have a lot of people that their pets sleep in the bed with them. I mean, given that you're testing all these things, I'm curious if you have any kind of awareness or data on the perils of potentially sleeping with your pets and then how that could be rectified potentially with the air tulip.

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So it's very personal to me. I grew up with dogs. I was like in the middle of Holland in, in a very. Course like regions. I just told them we always had like German Shepherds and like you running around. Oh, shepherd was awesome. Shepherd. Yeah. Yeah. And so, and you always cuddle them and stuff, but they of course they shed and they shed and they shed and you, and also even smaller things.

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So what I noticed, like we had an initial tester that had the first product and years for many years. And yet like this beautiful dog looks like a Samoan mixed with something like big fluffy dog. Yeah. So what happens is. Not much fluff on the bed and you know, triggers for him while he's sleeping. But also it's like a vacuum cleaner.

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There's two intakes on the side and we have like a grit that you can take off magnetically. So you get like, think about, you know, lint in the dryer. You can see this kind of like half your dog that can get, you know, every week he's just changing the over. It's like, okay, this is not in the room anymore.

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This is just, you know, take him. Oh. What I did see is like, and it's actually, he's now my, uh, my, he's helping me as head of marketing, um, man here in New York. And, uh, he has success, had a successful marketing agency, sold it off. His wife had, uh, has asthma. And when I met him, uh, through a, a, um, mutual, uh, you know, connection, an investor of mine, she had used her emergency inhaler.

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For every night, for, you know, a week or two weeks on end. And I said, okay, let's, you know. I was like, all right, where you live? Place the bar. I come there and they have four kids and nice apartment and stuff like that, but also a big dog. Yes. And that's the thing as well, like yes, you can have like your allergy and asthma, but you don't wanna get rid of your dog.

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Right. I think. Come on. No, exactly. So the dog stays. Um, so what it does is that she was immediately helped, didn't have to use your machine anywhere anymore. Um, she can open the windows, but yeah, the same thing. Dog was just sleeping on, uh, on the bed or near the bed. And she's fine because the dog, you know, as long, unless the dog is on your head between the headboard and the head, it doesn't reach you.

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So, yeah. Right. So,

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okay. Yeah. Very cool. Well, I feel like that has a lot of great practical application, covered a lot of those bases of things that come up often in the bedroom area. Are we forgetting anything that it can be beneficial for? Did we cover a lot of those areas?

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Yeah, I think so. There's one side note that I also find interesting, and it's more for educational people.

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Yeah, sure. Please. I mentioned already because we're hot blooded, we're not reptiles, we are warm. So when you sleep on the bed, your head normally creates a thermal plume take, creates an updraft like a balloon. Yes. The problem with that is if you sleep here, like you got your nose and your mouth is here and you create that plume up, you're drawing in air from everywhere from around your pillow and they're drawing in exactly around your nose and your mouth.

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So what that does, if you have dust, dust mites, things from the pillow, you know, stuff, you know, shedding from the dog, everything is in the air, gets pulled along your nasal area. Now what we do, 'cause we have this cross flow, it's actually cutting that thermal plume. It's long, stronger than the thermal plume.

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So what it does is, instead of you having a flow that does this, it washes it away. So we measured also with, you know, linen and stuff that the amount of particles that reach our mouth, not only from the air, but also from the linen or from me move it was gone. And that's all about understanding the flow.

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So I think. Not many people know that we're basically almost like walking candles the whole time. But yeah, there you go. I did not. You're walking candle. I love

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that. And also, I talk about this a lot too, with things like cooling mattress, toppers chili, or eight sleep or what have you, where people will say things like, oh, come on, do we really need all these added.

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Gadgets and gizmos to sleep like just for all these millions of years we've slept without these things. But I'm wondering, one of the things I say for the cooling mattress toppers is I make the argument that it's actually closer to mimicking how we likely would've slept in nature for millions of years outside on the ground.

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That would've been the coolest place in the environment, and I'm wondering if yours would kind of have similar ethos in that. In the past, sleeping outdoors, we would just have endless ability to circulate the air. Right? Presumably. Yep. Whereas you're

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in a breeze, you're in a draft. Yep. Right? And

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now we're in this unnatural situation that we put ourselves in, in these little shoe boxes, and because of that unnatural situation, we need a modern solution.

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Is that. Accurate, you think?

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Yeah, I think, uh, we in line with something like how give back, back to the natural thing what it is. I, I know in Scandinavia, I have a six month old now, and in Scandinavia let let the baby sleep in the carrot outside of the restaurants and stuff because there, there's nice fresh air and there's like people called on the faith, they're all tucked in.

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Yeah.

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So there's something to say about that. I think also on the thermal side. A lot of the mattresses out there. Memory foam, for example, is very insulating, so you're sleeping in hot, this thing that's very insulating. So you, you pull up your heat doesn't go anywhere and as you sleep, you wanna go down to different temperature regimes.

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So you're cold at night when you start your big blankets and stuff, and then yeah. You want to get colder. Yes. Um, on my side with the product, what we noticed for people that are sweaty, that sleep with Sweatiness Yes. Is that it, it, because it pushes away. The moisture, you get less sweaty and, and a cooler pillow.

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If you don't sweat and you're always cold, you don't. So think of it as sweat. When sweat evaporates, it creates a, if you would be able to see it again, like air, you'd have high moisture, air fooling around you. So the more moisture is around you, the less the threat can get rid of it. It's like a traffic jam, right?

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So if you have a breeze, that moisture that was just evaporated, cleans out, and the next. Droplets can evaporate. So if you're really cocooned in, you're just, that's why you start pulling your own sweat. Yeah. So we had like people that say like, okay, the pillow is nice and cool, uh, I sweat less. And I would say like, yeah, test that.

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Um, I do like what they're doing with all the, the tech in the mattresses and see what to do with natural bio cycles. Um, I think it's good to stay also in connection with how we as humans operate. We're not robots, so. Right. You don't have to over. You know, put yourself in this, I don't know, medical intrusive thing.

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Yeah. So that's why we try to also put it into a, a nice looking headboard that needs to be okay in the bedroom because you wanna have that environment. Um, but I see it as a great add-on and I love the, the sleep tech space. Uh, and you know, my corner is creating that air environment. Yeah. And the others have corners of thermal control.

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And that said, we're very curious if people wanna get it back. During the Kickstarter, we tested. Different zones, heating and cooling. So that one side sleeps that sleeps hotter, can be a different temperature than the other side. Oh, like your car. But because we don't mix, it's exactly a different temperature.

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So it will be like, left side is 75, 75, 75 and then 69. 69, 69. So if we did that, hey, um, we don't currently have that, but if people are like, oh, we really need to get that back, just reach out to me, ping me, because that will help us understand where we need to go with the product development. Like do we need to focus on this?

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My gosh. Yeah.

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Wow. Well, I feel like definitely, I'm certainly biased, but from the difference I see temperature make for people with their sleep, both subjectively and objectively. So with a rings whoop bands, apple Garin beyond the temperature piece is so, so huge. But also the air quality piece is so huge too.

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So yeah, those two could go together. Like right now, a potential competitor on the market would be like bed jet, who has that kind of fan situation, but just for plain fan. But then if you could add not only the fan piece with the temperature actually like impacting the temperature, not just like moving around there, but then also the air purification.

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Then there's just be so many things and it's, I feel like. It feels like it would be a better angle at it too. 'cause the bed jet is sort of weird where it's on the edge, like the base of your bed.

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Yep.

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And then it kind of makes like this mushroom sort of effect of your underneath your blankets and you kind of feel like odd with it, whereas it seems like yours would be a better situated.

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Yeah. I, I like what people do with airflow. I think, uh, the corner for the bed jet and there's a Dutch company, very expensive fresh bed, that the corner is more there to do thermal control with the flow and to wick it away. Yes. Uh, for me, really where I come from was what can we do with the air quality?

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You actually breathe and if you control that, you can then also control temperature in the air. Sure. And moisture and maybe down the, down the road, different gases. Uh, you know, that's, that's the search we have. Um. Like what they do. I think Ette was ette also in Shark Tank many years ago. I'm not sure about that, but, um, it's interesting to see all the different companies that, that play in the sphere.

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Yes.

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And you know, it, it's, for me, it's about, okay, let's create this local environment that works for you, which is like, it can be the heat, the mattress, the mood in the room, the quality of the air, the sound. There's different aspects that trigger you or not trigger you. Yeah. And, and one of them I'm focusing on is the, is the silent one of air quality.

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People. Absolutely. Yeah. You don't know. Because the thing is you never are in a clean room. Like I'm in a clean room often. 'cause I semiconductor, we had to dress up, you know, be in a clean room.

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Yeah.

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Um, you look like this little mushroom thing. It was really annoying, but you're not breathing dirty air the whole time.

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So yes, you notice an effect. But in real life, even, you know, mark, you, you do measure here. Even if you're on an airplane cabin, the air is still turbulent and moving because of all the interactions.

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Yeah.

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And so it's a lot, it's a lot cleaning. But it's not zero.

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Interesting. So maybe it's five

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times as clean as, you know, being outside.

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And that's, again, 10 times as clean as being in the highway. And that's, again, 20 times as clean as being in the subway. You know, there's, there's ratios

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so cool. It's just never zero. Right. Totally. And as we're talking, it seems like it would make sense that especially people in urban environments in some of these places with air pollution might be in dire need of these things.

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And then not to mention though, that doesn't mean that doesn't take away from these rural environments where just in your direct space, you might be dealing with poor air quality too. So it's just different, different situations from the sounds of it.

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Yeah. One thing to say about that as well is that what people don't realize is that indoor air typically is about five times dirtier than outdoor air.

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Yes.

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Um, your house is not a cocoon or somatically sealed. Outdoor air pollution comes in, but also indoor air sources you do cooking, your carpet has dust, pets around you. Yeah. Uh, other things are happening that fill the air. And so typically there's been studies that that's, you know, a factor of. About five.

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Um, what you can do about it, if you know, what are the common triggers of that, you can work with that. For example, if you have hyper pollen carpet, you know, do more vacuum cleaning with a hyper filter in there was your, did you ever wash your curtains? Yeah. You know, look at that, you know, groom your pet, figure out what you wanna do with, uh, cooking.

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Make sure you have your fume hood. There's a couple of things you can do. Um, and yeah, we made a little air quality report, but also a section on what it does to indoor. Mm-hmm. The other side of it is, of course, you can open your window to air, but look at the outside air quality index. You can find that online if there's a day of bad air.

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Anticipate with when you're opening your window so you can actually control what's happening, uh, in the room. And, uh, yeah. And then there's the typical triggers of us. I had a friend who was, you know, in, in LA near the fires. I sent him a headboard to help, but I also sent him a particle content and he was like, oh God, it's awesome.

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I could see that. But he's like, Ian, Ian. Um, I'm having these weird spikes all of a sudden. Indoor, like a couple days later. I was like, yes, uh, okay, j I'll call him. Yeah. And yesterday, but. Have you just been smoking an hour ago? He's like, oh yeah, he was the emitter. Because even if you smoke and you wait a long time,

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yeah,

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you are actually emitting the particles of what you're breathing.

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So he was breathing on the device and he was the source of the particles in his family. Oh, wow. Stop a semiconductor. If you, if you smoke a cigarette, you can't be in the, in the, in the clean room for at least two to four hours because you are the, you are the source. You're the problem. At that point, you're the problem.

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Wow. They'll keep emitting from you.

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Geez. Yeah. So interesting. Okay, so I'm excited, given that you clearly thought very deeply about these topics of proper air purification and how it can affect your sleep. Very excited to ask you our four questions we ask everyone around how you're managing your own sleep.

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So our first question is, what does your nightly sleep routine look like right now?

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Yeah, so what I noticed is that. For me, it takes a long time to wind down. So, uh, the biggest thing is I need to stop doing work and, you know, really get into,

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yeah.

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Personally, I do a little caving, like watching some YouTube films and movies, but what I notice I'm sleep worse if I just take that to the bedroom.

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Mm-hmm. So I stay in the living room and make sure that. You know, I, I, I steer clear of that, right? And the other thing is like, but it doesn't work for me, is like, be all on, on, on work this thing and stuff like that. You know, I'm, I'm CEO of a company. There's all kinds of things coming in. So your mind is still going?

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Yes. And then I can be in bed and I'm just sw me. I'm like, no, no, no. But I did, I forget about the, no, no. So I'm trying to do a buffer of. Even man cave time in that sense. Like just on my own, that's what I do. Yes.

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Yeah.

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But then also not take that to the bedroom.

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Yes. So smart. I feel like that's such an underrated aspect of things.

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And we work with so many entrepreneurs, or we have a niche with high stakes poker players, so I. Entrepreneurs and poker players actually are oddly similar and that kind of tendency to kind of keep mulling over these things before bed and not having proper kind of runway to downregulate can really be impactful.

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So I love that. Okay, so you're really mindful of that. And then anything we missed in your nightly routine, or does that speak to it?

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No, it's part of the winding down is nice to get home and start cooking something simple like that. You know, in New York you can also eat out and stuff like that. Yeah. But it already impacts how you get into the evening section of it because you're like working with family and you're doing something and it's, you know, it, it sounds stupid, but it's that the low key, like.

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That's actually nice. So yes. Yeah, that's another part of it.

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I like that. Okay. Beautiful. And then the second question is, what would you say we could see with your morning sleep routine with the idea that how you start your day can impact your sleep?

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I had a friend who was always a snoozer. It was like, keep hitting snooze and snooze and snooze and snoo 12 times.

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Uh, I try not to do that. You sleep badly, of course. Hard to get out of bed.

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Yes.

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But I think the, the nice thing is right now with a little one, uh. My wife's getting to the kid. We have like a little, Hey, how you doing? Um, that's another thing for the morning routine. Uh, the kid is now six months old and we were initially having a sidecar bed.

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So what is on your nightstand? My nights night is a sidecar bed for baby trip. Oh, nice. Yes, yes. But, uh, we noticed that at certain point he wasn't sleeping well. If he was in a different room, but mommy was always nearby and could come, he started doing much better and sleeping now every kid their own. But it was interesting to actually try that and then we're like, oh wait, he was less triggered by it.

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So our morning routine, we go to little babies, super happy, like, Hey, did you sleep this and that? And then I uh, I go make coffee. But I have a little Italian stovetop. I used to live in Italy. You have this kind of mocha machine, it's like this size. Oh yes. You twist this off and you do the thing. You grind the thing.

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Yeah.

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So my routine is this again, this simple act of doing something, you know, with your hands, labor. It's not just okay, machine coffee, it's like Right. Get the grounds and the coffee and I like that. Put the thing and la la la.

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Yeah.

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Stuffed upon, we have some oat milk.

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Yeah.

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Start brothing it like that gets me into, it's a.

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Repetitive routine that is both something to kinda start moving you out of the whole slumber side. Yeah. It's not yet the stress of work and decision making, it's just do a little, you know, little you routine, a little us routine, you know, and that helps. So, yeah. I love

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that. That's beautiful. Okay. And then I think you maybe mentioned what we might see on your nightstand from the sounds of it, uh, that's kind of covered.

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Yeah. So, uh, first of all, we, uh. A very small carriage house. And so initially, because the headboard has a shelf, like a bamboo covered shelf above you, so a lot of the stuff, instead of a nightstand, I have my books and my stuff there. Oh, out of sight. Just behind the headboard. So the headboard is like, for the size is this, and then there's a shelf, it's about seven inches and then the whole width.

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Yes.

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So I actually, you know, charge my phone on the side there, put in a night mode, have a couple of books there. So it's actually not a nightstand there because we are, you know, have the stair right there. Right on the other side. I made a, a baby grip and instead of, you know, finding the right one initially we were like, how is outgrowing it?

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I just started using the honeycomb. We have like fiberglass and honeycomb materials are very stiff and we cover it with stuff. I made a baby curve out of that, like in a whole nice sidecar thing. So he is flushed with the, with the rest of the bed, but still has a little bump. And so that felt really good to kind of like, you know, do your.

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Make your own furniture thing, which I guess technically I do as a company, but you know what I mean?

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Yes, absolutely. Love that. Okay. And then what would you say to date has made the biggest change to your sleep? Or said another way? Biggest aha moment in managing your sleep.

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So one thing that I noticed is working with your different stimulants and what you do in life.

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So, uh, I like coffee. I love coffee.

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Yeah. But I have

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a hard cutoff. Like it's, you know, 3:00 PM is my hard cutoff. Sure. No matter what. Normal coffee and also to try to balance that. Uh, and I think on the other side, it's nice to socially have a drink, but alcohol does impact your sleep a lot. So just be mindful of that.

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I would say like how much, you know, you get in of different things that disturb your pneumo cycle. Yeah. Are you too hyped up on coffee?

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Yes.

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Are you too triggered and start getting sweaty and high pounds from even a single beer?

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Yeah.

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Um, just be mindful of that, I think would really help. So for me, the coffee was, for example, the first one, limited amount of coffee.

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And what I do in between, because I like coffee, I've decaf coffee in the middle. So, yeah.

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Oh, that's great. So you still get the ritual and routine without the hitch? Yes. That, yeah. Yeah. Very nice. And that's still, you still make that with the same like with your hands and the whole thing?

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The first one is normal and then I do a couple of simple decaf.

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I'm here at the lab, I just use an espresso pulse because I don't have the stovetop, but it's when I'm at home working easy. I just always do. Decaf and stuff again, it's better coffee anyway, so yeah.

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Oh, that's amazing. Okay. And so for people listening that are saying, wow, okay, I didn't even know this was an option.

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And maybe they're even starting with like no air purification in their space and now want to get the most effective and or they've got an air purification in their space, but maybe they're saying, oh geez, I guess this is not sufficient, and I'm looking to really. Uplevel my sleep. There's partners snoring, we've got pets in the bed, or just all kinds of things that could be maybe without just a total blind spot that could be impacting our health and wellbeing and how we're feeling the next day.

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What would be the best way for them to check out your company, product, research, et cetera?

‍

Great. Yeah. So our website is air tulip.co na.com.co. Okay. And from there you can, you know, get on the website. Uh, you can also subscribe to our newsletter, but there's also, uh, if you'd like and have more questions, we're very personal.

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You can book a 15 minute consultation. I talk more with, and my co-founder as well, talks more with you about it. Um, so, and then there is support at Tulip Co. You can always email us and, uh, we'll get back to you. But the website is Tulip Co. Uh, I would say go there. Have a look at what there is and do interact with us if there's any questions doesn't fit my bed, like how are you, how big is it?

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And stuff like that. We gladly an answer that and we've been through many different people in many different bed frames, so yeah. Uh, I'm sure we can help.

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Oh my gosh. Well that is very generous. So for the listener, definitely take advantage of that. That does not happen every day with every company. So that's like amazing customer service.

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And then I think we alluded to the fact that you're on Shark Tank. Is that episode out or coming out, or where are we at there?

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It aired last Friday. It aired last Friday, April 11th. Okay. It aired last Friday. So it was like we had a watch party here at New Lab in the Navy Yard and a bunch of people, it was super cool to see the cup my first time and I was like, oh my God, how is it going?

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So some people have watched it, some people haven't. I would say watch it again. Currently I think you can get it on Hulu. Uh, and in about a week from now, I think it will be open on a, B, C for anybody without a subscription. So now you can either go to a, b, C with a TV login or on Hulu. And then in a week, um, maybe by this Friday, I think they'll open it up and you can see the whole episode in full, uh, without any login.

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Oh, so exciting and I love this for the clear passion that's obviously there and solving a real problem. So really excited, really grateful for you to take the time to share about this. Thank you. And for anyone listening, definitely check them out. And they're also in all the socials and all the things, so we'll make sure all of those links are in the show notes.

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But thank you again for taking the time and for innovating in this much needed space of sleep.

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Thanks. Happy to help. Love to help a lot of people, and it's just been great that I can use this. What I have, the skill yes to the betterment of people. So yeah. I love that.

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Thank you. Thank you. You've been listening to The Sleep Is a Skill podcast, the top podcast for people who wanna take their sleep skills to the next level.

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Every Monday, I send out the Sleep Obsessions newsletter, which aims to be one of the most obsessive newsletters on the planet. Fun Facts. I've never missed a Monday for over five years and counting. And it contains everything that you need to know in the fascinating world of sleep. Head on over to Sleep as a skill.com/newsletter to sign up.

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