Mooresville tech company ChiliSleep recently inked a partnership with Major League Baseball's Cincinnati Reds and Seattle Mariners to provide the teams with its temperature-regulated sleep technology.
Kryo Inc., ChiliSleep's parent company, was co-founded in 2007 by Tara and Todd Youngblood as Chili Technology and rebranded in 2016. Last week, the company announced the MLB partnership, which gives players access to its OOLER sleep system — a system that decreases body temperature to trigger deep sleep.
"For baseball teams that are traveling, jet lag is something where your clock is set one way, and that clock being offset throws off your body," Tara Youngblood said. "They’re not getting great sleep on the road, and this is one way to sort of hack that."
Youngblood said through the partnership, athletes for each team will use ChiliSleep's cooling mattress pad system, which is a double-sided pad with tubing in between. The pad is operated by a portable control unit as well as a mobile app.
"Think about your body being a car engine. You put off heat at night as part of a metabolic dump, but your circadian rhythm wants your body temperature to drop two degrees," she said. "Our mattresses in our homes are all kind of against us — We have one constant temperature with no change, but the change in temperature is what triggers our 'sleep switch.'”
Additionally, Youngblood said the partnership gives the Reds and Mariners players access to sleep coaching to help enhance their experience even further while they're on the road.
"When they fly, they get this sort of recipe of when they should sleep or nap and when they shouldn't, as well as things you should and shouldn't do and when, to facilitate sleep in the best way," she said. Teams are ready to acknowledge the role of sleep in performance. Lack of sleep in professional athletes increases the risk of injury very significantly."
This isn't the first time professional athletes have turned to ChiliSleep. Youngblood said about half of the National Basketball Association and National Hockey League teams used the system in their respective playoff bubbles. High-profile politicians and celebrities have used the sleep system, too, she said.
The company's work with the Reds and Mariners, however, is its first public partnership.
"Up until now, there hasn’t been the level of partnership that’s allowed us to socially share, and it’s finally like a coming out party," she said, "We’re finally able to talk about how we’ve been influencing all these lives."
Kryo raised a $37 million funding round in December, which Youngblood said is being used to continue building out and bettering its technology. She said the startup has expanded the app development team, tasked with increasing customer connectivity to give the company better insight on how users are sleeping.
"Closing that feedback loop is going to be really valuable in being able to make sure sleep is successful most of the time, no matter where they are," she said.
