Bee Nadia was a biohacker. In short, that is someone who tries everything to be as healthy as possible not to die for the time being. The theme of the broadcast: ‘I do everything I can to stay young’. He did that by putting a device on his head, with headphones and some kind of mining lamp on it, aimed at his face. When he turns it on – with his phone – there will be sound in his ears and light in his eyes. He calls it stroboscopic. Together with the sounds it has a kind of psychedelic effect. A immersive it seems to be called experience. I had to look up the word, but it means ‘to immerse’. Immerse yourself in a bath of light and sound. When he turns it off after a while, his mind is calmer, his focus is sharper, and his “neuroplasticity” is stretched. He bases himself on the latest scientific insights, and has dozens of devices at home that should keep him up to date for eternity.
The documentary By the time (HUMAN) by Nelleke Koop is itself an immersive experience. The image shifts from dark to light, slows down and speeds up, blurs and shifts. The sound sharp and shrill, a monotonous female voice repeats the words ‘on-off’ and ‘light-dark’, almost irritating. All those sensory effects are meant to mimic what four chronically poor sleepers experience. With 17-year-old Muied you initially think that his sleeping problem is due to age, or to laziness. He usually doesn’t fall asleep before five in the morning, and as soon as he hears the first subway and birds, he knows that if he does fall asleep now, he won’t hear his hundred alarm clocks and miss the first hour of school . And the second and third too.
Dating is a disaster for Leon, everyone goes to sleep earlier than him
Nienke (22) follows a dance course and also lies awake for three or four hours before she falls asleep. During the day she is so tired that she sometimes just disappears – 20 seconds, sometimes half an hour – it is like hallucinating. Anyone with a wakeful baby at home can imagine something about that. For Leon in his twenties, all jobs start too early, with his day-and-night rhythm he can really only work in the hospitality industry or ICT. Dating is a disaster because everyone goes to sleep earlier than him. That makes him lonely and unhappy. Maurice (51)’s sleep is also broken, although it seems to be due to his irregular work in different time zones.
Biological clock
The big reset looks slightly different with each of these four. The biological clock of 17-year-old Muied can go two ways: with or against time. Or always a little later, or always a little earlier to bed. He starts by going to bed at 05:00 and getting up at 13:00, and then shifts his sleeping and waking times further and further over the course of ten days, until he is once again in step with the rhythm of his environment. On day six of his new sleep regimen, Leon gets up at 7:00 PM, hits the gym at 2:15 AM, eats a hot meal at 7:00 AM, and goes back to bed around lunchtime. Stunned when he finally manages to get up at 08:00 – so many people are awake then. Nienke sets the alarm clock at 8 p.m., takes melatonin and puts on sunglasses at 8:30 p.m. so that she falls asleep at 11 p.m.
These four people have been examined and treated, how and where is not explained. I had to rely on the uniform of the sleep researcher who put electrodes on Maurice’s head and the credits of the documentary to see it happening at the Hague Medical Center. The insomniacs are all given a lamp with a light intensity of 10,000 lux to take home, which they have to look at for a while after getting up. Through the eyes, the light reaches the brain where the optic nerves cross each other. It has something of a biohack, although it probably won’t be life-extending. Lifesaving yes. For Nienke it brought light into the darkness. To live, she says, you must sleep.