Regenerative Health with Max Gulhane, MD
I speak with world leaders on circadian & quantum health, metabolic medicine, regenerative farming in search of the most effective ways of optimising health and reversing chronic disease. Contact me regenerativehealth@proton.me
Regenerative Health with Max Gulhane, MD
79. Best Indoor Lighting For Optimal Health & Circadian Rhythms | Andrew LaTour
We discuss how to choose best lighting for health and circadian rhythms including role of flicker, luminosity, colour temperature, spectral emission and EMF on health. We also discuss the engineering challenges of putting near infrared (NIR) light back into indoor environments, in order to more closely emulate our solar light needs.
Andrew LaTour is the owner and chief engineer of GembaRed, manufacturer of high quality red light therapy devices that aim to adhere most faithfully to the biomedical literature of photobiomodulation.
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REFERENCES
White Light Bulb Review Blog: https://gembared.com/blogs/musings/the-best-daytime-white-light-bulbs-for-health-enthusiasts
Red Light Bulb Review Blog: https://gembared.com/blogs/musings/the-best-red-light-bulbs-for-sleep-and-avoiding-blue-light-at-night
RoscoLux #19 Filter: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/43899-REG/Rosco_RS1911_19_Filter_Fire.html
Study on Low-Intensity NIR for Ambient Light and Health Benefits: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9855677/
GembaRed light bulbs and night lights: https://gembared.com/collections/red-lights-for-night-time
GembaRed Learning Center for more Blogs: https://gembared.com/pages/learning-center
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Joined again by Andrew Latour of Gemba Red. He is an engineer and a photobiomodulation expert who's really doing his utmost and what I believe is probably the most out of anyone in the photobiomodulation and red light therapy industry in actually applying the clinical research and translating that into products for people and patients to use. So, andrew, thanks for joining me again. Hey Max, thanks for having me back. Let's launch into ambient lighting. I mean, I've talked at length about artificial blue light and its effect on health and circadian rhythms. I've talked recently with Robert Fosbury, an astrophysicist, who's talked about the importance of near infrared for our health. So give us an overview of how you think about this indoor lighting problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you know, with a lot of the trends of blue blockers and you know, like you said, the anti-blue light kind of movement, especially at night blue blockers, you know, you got your red lights on, you know, in your background, you know switching over to you know, red lights, amber lights and all that stuff at night, and then people are starting to think about, OK, what about my lighting during the day? What about my lighting, you know, am I getting enough sunlight, enough bright light? So you know, we start to think about when we get into red light therapy. We get into, you know, sunlight and, just, you know, getting that daily dose in the mornings. People are starting to appreciate like light has a very strong effect. So we have to control our environments in order to get the best health outcome.
Speaker 2:But you know, there's just like a lot of not not a lot of education on how do you choose a light bulb, how do you shop for a light bulb. Like it seems like very basic but it seems like, you know, a lot of people just have no clue about all the metrics for a light bulb. It's kind of like shopping for a red light therapy device. What's the intensity, wavelengths, you know EMFs, flicker. You know the same things you have to start to think about what does a white light bulb look like? And you know different types of color, temperatures and applications for for how you design things. And you know the architects and house builders are kind of trying to figure this stuff out and they're starting to become more mindful of the human aspects of that. Like, every once in a while you hear like, oh, some new hotel is doing human centric lighting, and you know they're starting to get more and more on board with with this, you know, making your lights good for your human biology, which we assumed was always the case, but it's obviously not. Um, so, yeah, so I moved into a new house a couple years ago and it was just, you know, completely filled with compact fluorescent bulbs as as the lighting, and so I thought this would be a good opportunity to go through.
Speaker 2:I tested, like you know, 20 or some odd light bulbs from a company, lightbulbscom. I try to avoid amazon whenever I can. Um, so I test, you know, got them, you know, and I've got the spectrometer, I've got the flicker meters, I've got the emf meters and dirty like I've got them all. So I was like, well, you know this is totally normal.
Speaker 2:I'm going to not just going to replace some light bulbs, I'm going to test 20 different you know models and brands out and see which ones work best and use that for myself and then share my results with everyone else. So, you know, I think that's a big key of you know biohacking and alternative health, of just you're trying to improve your own condition and you share your results with other people. So that's kind of what I got into with one of my blogs that we'll be referencing and maybe you can link in the show notes of you know, if people want to save some time, I've got my favorites that I ranked and how to use them and you know all the criteria there. So if they want to skim through and find the bulbs that I recommend, it's on that blog.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fantastic. So what are the metrics? What are the metrics by which people should consider when they are purchasing indoor lighting? And you've alluded to some of them, but walk us through all of them, and maybe in reference to the old thermal lighting, which is the incandescent halogen, versus the new LED technology.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think you know. Just to summarize yeah, you want the right amount of brightness. Obviously, you don't want your room too bright and you don't want it too dim. It needs to be functional. Obviously, you don't want your room too bright and you don't want it too dim. It needs to be functional. If you've got a workplace or an office, you probably want more lighting. If it's a living room that you just hang out in the evening, you probably want less brightness.
Speaker 2:So, looking at the brightness metrics, sometimes that's measured in lumens, sometimes that's lux, in terms of the distance, and sometimes they go into like the 40 watt equivalent or 60 watt equivalent. And that's how they helped market the newer generation light bulbs to say, oh, this led is equivalent to the brightness of a 60 watt incandescent bulb. So if you're trying to replace one for one, you you kind of look, you can use that. I think that's not a very good metric because I think LEDs are kind of feel more bright or they kind of feel more intense in some ways. So you might want to step down. So if you had a 60 watt equivalent, a 60 watt incandescent, you go to like a 40 watt LED and that kind of helps manage the brightness. So I think sometimes people start switching over to LEDs and fluorescents and then it's just way too bright. So I think brightness is super important. You know we have this dim on scent melatonin production at night that you know we need to be below a certain amount of lux, usually like at least below, like 100 or 200 lux in the evenings. You know you can even go lower as your eyes kind of acclimate to lower brightnesses. So you know you want to think about having the right amount of brightness, depending on the circumstances. So that should be listed on most bulbs as the lumens, like I think a standard 60 watt is like around 800 lumens. You know a 40 watt equivalent is about 400 lumens. So you kind of want to, you know, think about that as brightness. And again, not a lot of people even think about brightness. They jump into spectrum and blue light and all this other stuff. But you know if you have a big room you need a bigger, you know a higher powered bulb and if you have a small room you can use lower powered bulbs or use multiple bulbs scattered around. So yeah, think about the brightness and you know again, might be a little bit of trial and error or it might be, you know, getting one that's kind of dimmable, that's, that's handy. But yeah, start with thinking about how much brightness you need.
Speaker 2:Then the next thing you want to go into is your color temperature, your spectrum. So with white light bulbs, you know that's a combination of you know the whole spectrum generally of you know red, green, blue Usually those combined we get the optical illusion of white light. Typically, sunlight is kind of a broad spectrum. That's well-defined. Incandescent bulbs are also a very broad spectrum. They have about 99 CRI, which is the color rendering index. So that's how well the spectrum is represented and gives you kind of a natural feel for getting all the colors right.
Speaker 2:And so with LEDs and even fluorescents they tend to have lower CRIs because they're deficient in certain wavelengths. A lot of times it's the red end of the spectrum, so the red colors don't really pop out as vibrantly. So you want to look for higher CRIs. So you know a typical LED nowadays is about 80 CRI, which is pretty good. If you just need some cheap LED bulbs, you can get 80 CRI, which is pretty good. If you just need some cheap uh uh LED bulbs, you can get, get 80 CRI. But all the ones that I uh recommended on my blog were above 90 CRI, um. So again, it gives you a little bit more of that red end of the spectrum and it gives you kind of a more comfortable, you know, natural feeling, so, um.
Speaker 2:And then you want to look at um, the color correction temperature, the CCT, and it's measured in Kelvin. You know, a standard incandescent bulb is usually around 2700 Kelvin and you know that's literally how hot it burns. Because we know from like Planck's laws and how the spectrum works, that the hotter something is, the more visible light it emits, and so sunlight's about 5500 Kelvin works. That the hotter something is, the more visible light it emits, and so sunlight's about 5,500 Kelvin. So that's why we get a lot more blue, we get a lot more brightness from sunlight, but an incandescent bulb burns at 2,700. So if you're trying to shop again for something that's comfortable and that's a good replacement, you'd look for LEDs that are 2,700 Kelvin. So that's usually a good switch. That's pretty safe and I think a lot of people accidentally jumped into leds and fluorescents that were higher kelvin.
Speaker 2:You know those cooler uh color temperatures like I have behind me. I've got, like you know, a couple of 2700s and then I have one that's 4000 and that's got, you know, that brighter kind of white, that more of a bluish hue to it, and then the 2700s are going to have more of that yellowish hue to it. That's a little bit more calmer and natural. But you know, if you jumped right into 4000 kelvin or even higher, you're going to get a lot of that eye strain from the high blue light spike in those 4,000 Kelvin. That didn't even exist with, you know, incandescent and halogen bulbs and so it just felt like a big, you know jump for a lot of people. And that's kind of what you know caused LEDs to get so demonized is, you know, they got into too much brightness, they got too high of a Kelvin temperature and it's super uncomfortable for the eyes in the long term. So that's that's.
Speaker 2:You know, the main kind of components that you can usually find on like a spec sheet when you're shopping for an LED bulb. Then you can go into. You know what we talk about. A lot is flicker, which you know is that modulation of brightness or intensity. So you know we've got the alternating current that comes from our outlets In America it's 60 hertz and you know the rest of the world. It's usually 50 hertz and so it cycles through zero, you know, 50 or 60 times per second. And so with incandescent bulbs that was fine, because it's warming a filament and it kind of warms and cools and warms and cools and it's got some mass to it, so it's kind of buffered, and so incandescent bulbs do flicker.
Speaker 2:And there's two major flicker metrics you know we need to go over. One is the flicker frequency, which is the hertz, which is, you know, hertz means per second. So if we say something's flickering at 120 hertz, which is very standard flicker for the USA, that means it's just flickering, you know, 120 times per second. So you know. So we've got that metric and I think a lot of people only focus on that one metric. But the most important one to me is the flicker percentage, and so that's how high and low your modulation goes. So it's not always a hundred percent. So, like, when an incandescent bulb flickers, it's only flickering at about 10%, it only drops 10% of its brightness. So that's why it's not very harmful. It doesn't really disturb us because it's very, you know, relatively low, only being 10%. So we don't really notice that kind of flicker. So it doesn't really disturb us, it's pretty good.
Speaker 2:But then when they jumped into fluorescents and LEDs, leds respond to that AC, you know, much more rapidly, almost instantaneously. And so that's why the original LEDs that came to market they were turning on and off almost rapidly, almost instantaneously. And so that's why the original LEDs that came to market they were turning on and off almost fully, almost 100%, every cycle. So that's a lot more dramatic. So, even though the frequency was the same, for a lot of these LEDs, the LED, you know, the frequency, the Hertz is the same.
Speaker 2:And I think a lot of people trying to make up stuff like oh, leds are flickering at a higher frequency or this or that and it's you know, generally they don't they. They flicker at a higher percent but not a higher frequency. You know. I think people were making that up. So the percent was a hundred percent and even though it's still mostly invisible, cause it's 120 Hertz, so above about 60 or 70 hertz, we have critical flicker fusion in our eyes. Our eyes and our brain work together to make it seem like a flickering light looks consistent, so it's very insidious. It's hard to tell when you've got flickering lights, except if you're flicker sensitive like me, you can feel right away, you know, kind of that eye strain, kind of a little bit of anxiety, a little bit of disturbance in your brain, especially if you're trying to do tasks or read or, you know, do any kind of mechanical work or something that's really disturbing for your brain and you know it might trigger some seizures, but the seizure range is usually more of a visible range, but it's very disturbing.
Speaker 2:So what they did with modern LEDs and this has been true for at least a couple of years now, especially now there's standards in Europe for being low flicker you can add more circuitry to the LED and kind of buffer out that AC cycle so you can get the flicker very, very low. So all the you know LEDs I recommended are less than 10% flicker, so similar to an incandescent bulb, even better than a standard incandescent bulb. So if you really care about flicker, you can get high quality LEDs that have extremely low flicker. You know all my products are about 1% flicker, which is excellent, you know. And then some of the white light bulbs I recommend are 1%. So again, so it's that modulation is very low.
Speaker 2:So even though technically the frequency is always the same around 120, or it's about 100. In other countries like Europe it's about that magnitude of the frequency. So I think a lot of people kind of haven't gotten that education about flicker percent versus flicker frequency. So it's super important to understand both those metrics. And there's even more advanced metrics too, but generally those are kind of simple to wrap your head around. So, yeah, those are really key for for the flicker. Um hey, do you have anything about flicker or?
Speaker 1:only to say to link in the clinical aspect, which is migraine, uh, migraine and uh and epilepsy being the two major kind of clinical implications of of existing under flicker flicker light, the so-called um, I believe it's the scott scottistrobic effect, and it was an episode, was it an episode of sim the simpsons or uh, that was initially setting off. Uh, people, there was one episode of a popular tv show I referenced um the pokemon.
Speaker 2:There was a pokemon episode in the 90s that um in j, like hundreds of kids, went to the hospital for seizures. There might have been some sort of mass like anxiety, like some people say. It wasn't really real, that was an anxiety thing, but I think a lot of kids did get some sort of neurological problem from that and that's what started a lot of the Flickr research of that. They started putting EEGs on these kids and tried to figure out you know what kind of frequencies that were triggering them, what kind of wavelengths they did find deep red was highly triggering. So if your red light therapy device is flickering, then that's that's kind of the worst wavelength you could flicker. Um. But uh, generally you know the high contrast like if you're watching a cartoon and they're flashing between you know they generally have brighter colors and high contrast colors. If you're flashing between blue and red and things like that, that's the contrast also helps, you know is part of the problem. So, yeah, so it was a Pokemon episode. That was one of the most famous.
Speaker 2:But there are some you know examples that people will send like flashing images to like journalists that they don't like on social media and give them a seizure or whatever. And so we we can weaponize this stuff. Like you know, there's tactical flashlights that flicker at like 11 hertz and you can shine at someone and it disorients them, you know, it messes you up. So we can weaponize Flickr like real easy. So we don't want it in our daily lives if we can avoid it. So yeah, so yeah. Flickr is super important and you know, you still see it in a lot of media that they have a Flickr and seizure warning for certain tv shows and cartoons and video games. You still see that warning a lot. So they know, you know, they know it's a real issue.
Speaker 2:Um, but you know, you know we get a lot of so gone, gone no, yeah, we get a lot of people that say, oh, I'm not affected by flicker, so well, nobody else is, I don't, you know? Like, oh, not, you know, I don't have a peanut allergy, so nobody else has a peanut allergy. Like you know, a lot of people are sensitive to to flicker. When I walk into a grocery store or certain stores, I'm like these lights are flickering Cause I'm feeling disturbed and I'll get out my camera and do the slow motion. I'm like, yep, they're flickering. I'm like a flicker detector. So you know, you can feel it. When you get, you know, more and more used to it and especially if you kind of you know you start to enjoy your life without flicker. Then when you go out to the stores and restaurants and they've got flickering lights, then you start really knowing the difference of how you feel. Like if you're numb to it because you're working in an office that flickers all the time, you might not notice it, you know.
Speaker 1:That's a great point and I share that personal experience of having lived free of flickering artificial light for a long time to then experience it is you have a heightened sense of awareness. The interesting point you made about inattention as a symptom of being under flickering light we have an epidemic of ADHD right now in children in pediatrics, and you wonder, we obviously know that the light that they're probably sitting under in classrooms and kindergartens and preschools is going to be to some degree of this variety, and it's a thought in my mind of how much we're possibly medicating kids for an inappropriate light environment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know some of the old standards I read. They said if a kid has a mood disorder, you know some sort of problem, a mental problem or anxiety or ADHD to move them, seat them closer to the window. Seat them closer to the window. So that way they're not. They're getting the more continuous light from the sunlight and they're not. You know, in the rest of the room that back in that day was probably all fluorescent light bulbs, which you know fluorescent light bulbs.
Speaker 2:I can't really think of any redeeming qualities for I think they were a crime against humanity. I mean, you can use them for like I use them. You know they use fluorescent bulbs for the UVB therapy. So I guess that's one thing, but otherwise using them for general lighting is such a horrible thing and I think a lot of the stigma from fluorescent bulbs carried over into LED bulbs of saying oh, they're high. You know EMFs, which we'll talk about. You know fluorescent bulbs were high, which we'll talk about.
Speaker 2:You know fluorescent bulbs were high flicker and how they resolve the flicker with fluorescence. They did increase the frequency because when you increase the frequency it kind of reduces that perceived flickering. So if you go from 120 hertz to a thousand hertz. You know, then it kind of is a little bit better for your brain. Uh, you know, then it kind of it's a little bit better for your brain, you know, even even though it's not great, at least it's a little bit better, um, for comfort and for for how your brain processes, because you see it more and more continuously. So, um, yeah, so we can talk about emfs if you want to get in there a couple points to before we move on.
Speaker 1:Is uh called compact fluorescent lamps a crime against humanity? I've called artificial lighting inhumane lighting and just recognizing or emphasizing the difference between that light source and the sun, which is this natural solar radiation that our biology has evolved with and, yes, we're going through the nuances of how it's different right now. Can you talk a bit about flicker and natural sunlight and color temperature and natural sunlight? If you observe, using your instruments, natural sunlight, perhaps at different times of the day, what do you notice along some of these metrics?
Speaker 2:Yes, the sunlight, you know it's got that full spectrum, like I said, in the middle of the day it's around 5,500 Kelvin. So it does you get a big proportion of blue light. You know some. You know between 10 to 30% of sunlight is that blue light, so it's pretty significant, but it's balanced with the red and near infrared and the full spectrum. You know, obviously you don't stare at the sunlight for eye health. But generally, you know, maybe you know as as the sun sets, you know, in the early morning or late at night, the sun gets more filtered by the atmosphere, the blue light and the UV light gets scattered and so that's why you get proportionally more, you know, red and near infrared. That's generally helpful for healing and recovery and all those great benefits we associate with red light therapy.
Speaker 2:Sunlight generally is a continuous light source, so there's no pulsing, there's no flicker, naturally, from shimmering light, from waves or from the leaves and the waves. You know the wind kind of blowing the leaves back and forth or if, even if you blink your eyes too fast, you can get some flicker distress, you know. So there are natural ways. So we do have some coping mechanisms for it. You can look at the zebra.
Speaker 2:You know they have the black and white stripes out in the savanna, which doesn't make sense for camouflage because they're not blending in with, you know, the grass. That's kind of brownish and whatever. So it doesn't make sense. But they're using that flicker kind of sensitivity because it disorients the predators, especially when they're in a herd, in this big group. All these striped lines kind of mess you up. So whenever you, sometimes when you see striped lines in nature or, you know, in paintings or something, even that can disorient you with with kind of a similar flicker kind of a problem. But yeah, so generally you know very low kind of flicker exposure in in nature, you know, and, and really in nature, you know, and and really, yeah, that's, that's kind of the best thing. If you can sit near a window or, you know, spend as much time as you can outside, then you know you don't have to worry about all these nuances of light bulbs and electric lighting and you know all this stuff that we're talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I really like to keep that in the front of mind of people. Which is the best option is always going to be natural solar light, light radiation, but what we're talking about now is for the fact that we all have lives where we have to do some form of work that is inside, and therefore how to choose the best option. So let's dive into the next criterion in this evaluation.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that's EMFs, which with incandescent bulbs there's minimal EMF. Again, there's kind of like people lying and saying incandescent bulbs have no flicker and they have no EMFs. I mean, they do have some flicker, they do have an electric field that comes from your outlet. But overall, you know, an incandescent bulb is a very basic, it's just a filament, right, there's no electronics, there's nothing fancy inside, it's just a filament and a glass. You know glass ball and and that's it. So it's very simple in terms of the electronics. So you only get, um, some electric field coming from it. It it doesn't really produce its own. You know kind of EMFs per se.
Speaker 2:You know fluorescent bulbs again, they were super problematic with radio frequencies and you know dirty electricity and all that stuff. You know, with just the way they had, they called them ballasts. You know, with just the way they had they called them, ballasts were kind of these magnetic drivers that kind of ran the bulbs. And then LEDs, again, the early LEDs probably suffered from similar problems of not having any standards for the electronics and not really caring about this kind of stuff. But now they're enforcing a standard from the FCC which governs kind of radio frequencies and all that stuff. Then LEDs. You know, unless it's a smart LED then it gets registered to emit Wi-Fi or receive signals. But a standard LED can possibly emit some radio frequency and some dirty electricity just by the nature it has to use kind of a driver to step down the voltage and to step down the flicker. So some of the early ones did produce some RF and they still have some dirty electricity. But, like I said, if you're buying from a major name brand like Philips, ge, sylvania, you know, fet, they all need to be compliant with these standards, otherwise they'll get big fines from the FCC. So the radio frequency again is barely measurable for a lot of the bulbs I measured in my blog.
Speaker 2:The dirty electricity again is super low. It's caught up in the noise. Like I had to unplug a bunch of my appliances in my house. I had to really turn off everything I could because it's so low. Like you know, there's always going to be some dirty electricity in your house If you have any appliance plugged in a refrigerator, plugged in a router, plugged in. So you're always going to get some of that dirty electricity and if you don't turn those off, it's just noise, you know, I mean it's just caught up in the noise it's very insignificant compared to all your other devices. So you know again, you know might have been a big problem with the early generation LEDs, you know 10 years ago or so, but all the ones I've tested, you know there's barely any problem with that. But again, you know, if you're a super purist and terrified of EMFs, then you would still go with an incandescent bulb and that's fine. Just know a lot of LEDs are super high quality and it's not really a big issue anymore.
Speaker 1:A question to quickly revisit back to Flickr. Have you measured Flickr behind a set of blue light blocking glasses and can you tell us if they mitigate in any way a flicker coming from a really offensive light?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question. I think I haven't recently done it. I might have done it in the past. But basically your blue blocker is going to cut down the blue light you know transmitting through your lens. So if a big portion of your light bulb is blue, then you're cutting out that proportion. So your flicker kind of metrics will be the same.
Speaker 2:It's just that you're kind of cutting out at least part of the spectrum so you're kind of reducing the magnitude of the brightness, that you're kind of cutting out at least part of the spectrum so you're kind of reducing the magnitude of the brightness that you're receiving. So it does help kind of buffer it out. It doesn't really change your flicker, you know it can't change your flicker frequency, it can't really change your flicker percent, but it kind of reduces the total brightness that's receiving into your eye. So I think it's practical to it's practical to wear blue blockers and maybe the blue light component when you flash. That is pretty harsh on the eyes. So it's a good idea to use blue blockers. But I don't think it specifically reduces any kind of practical metrics of flicker.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, but that makes sense. That's an advantageous and probably a common reason why people report that their anxiety not their anxiety, their migraine symptoms improve simply from just wearing the blue blockers. And, having recently spoken to Scott Zimmerman, who was a previous podcast guest, he's talking about the basically required minimums of energy efficiency in a lumens per watt metric, essentially outlawing the inefficient in inverted commas, inefficient incandescent lighting that's emitting in this near-infrared range that you know, lo and behold, has some health benefits, but these standards seem to be incentivizing even more isolated blue visible only lighting. So what's your take on that and can you explain that for the listeners?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, like you said, you need a certain amount of lumens per watt. You know some of the standards were already rolled out in California but now the USA has. You know the whole country has adopted some of these standards and you know I don't know the exact number, but basically they purposely defined it to exclude incandescent bulbs and make it very hard for an incandescent bulb to be approved for general lighting purposes. So that's what the standard's around. You can still find incandescent bulbs for specialty purposes the heat lamps and appliance lamps. So you can kind of get around it sometimes. But generally they purposely made it so you can't get. You know, because an incandescent bulb is you're just heating up a filament and a large part of the spectrum is invisible near infrared, mid infrared, far infrared. So that's why they're inefficient. So a lot of the energy consumed is going into invisible wavelengths and that doesn't help your lumens metric, right, because lumens is just brightness that the eye can perceive. So you know, that's why the incandescent bulbs are kind of excluded from that. You know, I don't think that's that's a good way to go. You know I don't think you should force regulations. I think you know you shouldn't have a nanny state or whatever, tell you what to do.
Speaker 2:If you want to spend more money on an incandescent bulb, then it's your money and you need competition. You can't have the government artificially messing with competition. Like we're talking about here is debating if incandescent bulbs and LEDs can be comfortable or competitive. You need incandescent bulbs on the market to incentivize LEDs to keep getting better. They need to deliver on that higher efficiency, saving you money, lasting longer, having good color quality and flicker metrics, and so all those things need to be there. You need competition to drive improvements and change.
Speaker 2:If you just monopolize the market and you can only buy LEDs now, there's no incentive for manufacturers to improve the quality of their lights. So I don't like that kind of artificial stuff. But again, I am hopeful that LEDs are super high quality nowadays. I've got a good review. I think there's a couple of good reviews online for finding those good white light bulbs for your home and then finding light bulbs for the day and the evening and what you want to consider for that. But yeah, no, I don't like regulations like that. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't help the market.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, we're definitely agreeing on that point. So where are we up to in this evaluation of lighting? So we've ticked off EMF. Is there anything else that you're concerned about when selecting a bulb?
Speaker 2:I think, yeah, I think that covers it. I think, yeah, you mentioned price. I think generally LEDs have always been a little bit more expensive than an incandescent bulb. You can buy them. Usually back in the day you could buy them a buck a piece, a couple bucks a piece, and LEDs would be about 10 bucks a piece. So you know, again there's that cost trade off and then maybe they try to upsell you that you're saving electricity in the long run. So you know it kind of balances out. So again, that's part of the competition, of it and shopping around.
Speaker 2:And you know, I one of the brands I recommended is called waveform lighting, which is super high quality. It's very good. I've got, um, this yellowish one is the 1700 kelvin, um, so it's got a very nice, uh, yellowish kind of amber color to it. Um, so I use a lot of their bulbs because they're kind of photography and filmography grade. So you know they made it low flickers because if you're trying to record a video and you got that flicker it messes it up, you know. And they made a high CRI to make the colors right.
Speaker 2:So but they're pretty expensive, I forget. They're like 20 bucks per bulb or something like that. So there are alternatives, like I think there's the Phillips ultra definition. There's a review on YouTube, so that's not on my list, but if you look up Phillips ultra definition, they've got some really cheap bulbs that are low flicker, high CRI. So you know, that's what I'm all about is finding what's a cheap solution. You can replace all the bulbs in your house with, you know, a full Phillips ultra definition or some all the bulbs in your house with a Philips Ultra definition or some of the bulbs I recommend, and you shouldn't have to spend a ton of money for quality.
Speaker 1:This should be really basic, standard stuff them from quite human, inappropriate, to a situation where they can actually be desirable, because we've reduced flicker, we've controlled and specified the spectrum they're emitting and we can dim potentially dim them to reduce their brightness and lux, and they're also low EMF and now they're cheap because the technology is proliferated. Is that a good summary?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I just, you know, I want people to have all the facts and, you know, be really recent with how the LEDs have developed to be lower flicker, lower EMF. You can choose low blue lights, either like00 kelvin or lower. Um, you know and uh, you know choose, you know learn just how to choose the right brightness. And so once you learn all those things, you can really empower yourself and choose the right thing. And you know, if you still prefer incandescent bulbs, it's fine, uh, but you know we, we need to have more. You know options, you know, for our health.
Speaker 2:I think one of the things we wanted to talk about was the health benefits potentially from the near infrared of the incandescent bulbs. So say, you know, we extracted all these incandescent bulbs over, you know, from our households and offices, incandescent bulbs over, you know from our households and offices, and so now we're kind of relatively less exposed to near infrared and mid infrared that we used to get from incandescent bulbs, right? So what do you think about that? I think you talked to Scott a bit about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that's a great point to bring up, because it's another consideration, which is, yes, these LEDs, technology has improved, but we're still only dealing with visible, only lighting and, as we referenced, the natural solar spectrum, which is over 50% of near infrared non-visible. So to me, I think one of the key problems that we need to remedy is how do we put this non-visible near-infrared back into our indoor environments in a way that is going to work with existing LED technology and is going to not consume so much energy that we fall foul of these what you and I and others will call ridiculous regulations about energy-saving lighting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and you know I think it's pretty tough because if you've got an incandescent bulb, you know your standard 60 watts that we all used to use, but it's up in the ceiling and it's like eight feet away. But it's up in the ceiling and it's like eight feet away and you truly have, like you know, the inverse square law of you know the distance, you get less and less brightness, you get less and less intensity. So I think the actual amount of near infrared and infrared that you got from incandescent bulbs were pretty minuscule, unless you had like a desk clamp that was pretty close to your face. I can't imagine getting like a therapeutic kind of level of near-infrared. And so we're really talking about, you know, subclinical, you know sub-photobiomodulation kind of levels of intensity that we used to get from incandescent bulbs that were in our ceiling. So there was only one study I found that on this topic. It's called the effects of near infrared light on well-being and health in human subjects with mild sleep related complaints, a double blind, randomized, placebo controlled study. So you know, maybe we can share that in the show notes. But they modified an Ikea lamp, you know a white desk lamp with 850 nanometer infrared LEDs the people were exposed to five milliwatts per centimeter squared for about three hours a day and they didn't really they didn't get a lot of significant benefits. They got some overall kind of general wellness benefits. They said the sleep improved, the sleep benefits wasn't super significant. They said the sleep improved, the sleep benefits wasn't super significant.
Speaker 2:So you know, we're really on the early phases of trying to figure out like what's the ambient kind of solution for near infrared. I think you can. You know you can solve this with some of those infrared security camera panels that are super cheap. They're on Amazon you can get an 850 security camera panel and you know, if you want a little bit of ambient near infrared you can put that on on your tabletop or desktop. But again, it's really it's going to be really subtle and really hard to quantify that I think we're going to start to think about this like the exercise epidemic with sedentary kind of office work.
Speaker 2:Then, okay, you know, if you work, you know a sit down job, maybe every hour or so you take a break, you go for a walk, you go, you know you go outside and that's better than nothing. And then maybe you want like a standing desk and you know, maybe you the kind of thing we need to think about with light as well, of like, hey, maybe every hour or two I'm going to turn on a little red light therapy panel, you know, get 10 or 20 minutes of a little bit of therapeutic light, and you know kind of, you know, do that occasionally to help, kind of help me with my eyes and, you know, mood and brain and all this stuff, and get the bright light therapy that you know we need bright lights during the day and that helps us sleep at night, you know. So that's one of the things we're missing too. We're not just missing UV and near infrared, we're missing bright lights in general.
Speaker 2:That most indoor lighting is only up a max of about 500 lux. And we know sunlight you know full direct sunlight is about 10,000 lux. So sunlight you know full direct sunlight is about 10,000 lux. So we really need, like, some high-brightness light therapy as well and not just, you know, near-infrared UV. We need those, but we also need bright lights. So if you can get that artificially with some bright lamps or you know a red light therapy device or a blue light device, I like cyan and green light for bright light therapy device or blue light device, or I like cyan and green light for bright light therapy, but you know. So that's another missing component that I think that you know. Bright light therapy has a lot of studies. It helps with a lot of chronic age-related conditions like Parkinson's. You know you need to improve your sleep quality and you can do that with bright lights in the morning and during the day. That's a profound result. That's why a lot of people that get the early morning sunlight are seeing so much benefits, especially for their sleep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very nuanced and interesting point, and that is that it's not just about the spectrum.
Speaker 1:That's amusing that the brightness is a key aspect of this and especially in the circadian research which is, you know, it's grown massively over the past 10 years, showing that importance of brightness as well. Can you comment? So obviously, what you've alluded to is some of the solutions that we can, I guess, start with to put this near infrared back into the indoor environment. And you raise great points that we're in an embryonic stage of understanding, as you said, exactly you know the dose and distances and all this kind of thing, and it's a fascinating area of, I guess, building biology or optics and interactions with the human body to really get these distances and appropriateness. But one of the solutions is Scott Zimmerman's Naira bulb and that is, it seems to me as a layperson, quite an elegant solution, which is to run an LED for the visible light, for the lux, but then run a filament bulb in the same unit at a low voltage to provide some near infrared. Do you have any thoughts or comments on that approach?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's a good concept. There's still a lot we need to see how it pans out, what the actual spectrum really looks like and you know, I think, how you actually use it.
Speaker 2:Like I said, if you just put it in the ceiling that's eight feet away from you, that near infrared is like so minuscule you might as well just use a standard cheap bulb. So maybe you want you know your incandescent bulbs or your Neera bulb, or even like a near infrared therapy lamp close to you on your desk that you can either leave on if it's super low intensity or turn it on intermittently throughout the day. You know, get you know five or 10 minutes every couple hours. So you know you have to think about how practical. I don't think it'd be practical to outfit your all your ceiling lamps with the nearer bulbs. The same way, an incandescent bulb wouldn't really give you therapeutic near infrared. So it's a good concept, but you know, I think you know there's not like there's not a lot of science to say what's the real quantifiable benefit at this point yeah, and it's, it is so nuanced because the spaces of everyone's indoor environment are different.
Speaker 1:Some people have, you know, two meter high ceilings and others, uh, very the opposite.
Speaker 1:And then, uh to to really understand these differences is is uh, yeah, it's, it's a, it's fraud, and but, as you've mentioned, um, I think there's going to be a bunch of innovative solutions. I mean, I've I've even heard of of some near infrared emitting devices that will just sit on a laptop, like almost like that webcam, like an on webcam kind of thing, and it's emitting in the near infrared so you can't even see it, but it's, it's probably it's providing providing some beneficial photobiomodulation wavelengths, like right in the eyes and the face, which is probably helping mitigate that high-energy visible possible related photoaging eye strain if someone's not wearing blue blockers. So I think I'm really excited for the myriad of solutions to this problem and it sounds like stepping out of the form factor of simple, just a screw bulb is also going to be a major advancement, because if you're no longer limited by that single fitting, then I think we could probably design some pretty cool solutions to this problem then I think we could probably design some pretty cool solutions to this problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, yeah, you can make lights that you plug into your USB port on your computer. Or even some lights can be powered by your phone, you know, from the battery pack on your phone. So yeah, and using, you know, panels which are nice because it's just plug and play. And you know, I can make a panel like low EMF and low flicker and have all the electronics there. So it's kind of a one, you know, fit solution.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I think there's a lot of different solutions. But you know, I would say like intermittently, getting that photobiomodulation treatment is going to be more practical than trying to do super low intensity for a long period of time, because we don't know how to quantify that yet. But you know, if you do photobiomodulation you know adequate intensity and wavelengths. You know at least once a day you know with the low intensity and get that bright light and get that red and near infrared light. You know that's kind of like okay, I work a sedentary job but I work out, you know, 30 minutes each day in the morning. You know there's debate. Does that really offset your eight hours of sitting? But it's still better, obviously, much better than nothing. Um, so you know it's that kind of mentality that's interesting.
Speaker 1:It reminds me, it evokes an image of the kids standing around those early uh Arc UV lamps and they're all sitting around and they're standing around it in their undies and it's almost like all right kids, all right office workers, time to get up. Everyone stand around and get their near-infrared photobiomodulation dose and then go back to hopping on Excel and tapping away at the keyboard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think they'll get there with wellness rooms. I think a lot of modern corporations are trying to be more hip with some of those alternative solutions and things that help you kind of relax and decompress and different offerings, so they try to get creative with that. I think there's a big opportunity for consultants to help them revamp their lighting situation the flicker, the color temperatures and all that. I think some of the corporations I worked for used to do little health seminars and whatnot, so I think that's a big possibility that more of this should be going into the corporations and helping the office workers get better lighting solutions and ideas.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and look, that's who, professor Glenn Jeffrey, who I talked to, who's doing that very interesting work with six, seven nanometer visible red light and its effect on blood glucose levels and mitochondrial function in the retina and the eye. And he made the point that when companies start realizing and people, their workers, show up at the CEO's office with torches and pitchforks because they've become pre-diabetic after a decade under that type of lighting, then there's going to be some movement, so to speak.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, that would be, that'd be good. You know, sometimes to motivate a corporation you got to get some lawsuits, you know, and say, hey, I'm connecting my diabetes to the. You know the lighting and you know the, the type of work. And again they're like you know I've worked for some they're super supportive because they don't want that liability. If I say, hey, I want a standing desk, they'll get me a standing desk. If I want, you know, different, different ergonomic accessories, they'll get me that. So if, if that becomes, you know, the latest kind of trend, you know the companies won't argue with you that much because they want to cover their butts that they provided you with with whatever you need for your office space. So you can just start asking hey, boss, can I expense getting a little red lamp for my you know, a little near infrared lamp for my desk here? You know, I think that would be a real possibility.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I've called it diabetic lighting.
Speaker 1:And if more people say to their boss, hey, like you know, this is a problem, this diabetic lighting that you set me up under, you know, this is a health hazard, this is an occupational health and safety hazard, then there could be some movement and RFK Jr you know this titan in kind of corporate litigation standing up against corporations that are having these negative externalities on society. I mean, he's just started to understand the process, probably a bit longer than just, but in the past year maybe has started addressing the processed food issue and learning more about how damaging that is for health. And amazing if we could get him on board with this issue and say, hey, look, there's this whole light contribution to metabolic syndrome and diabetes that actually goes beyond the seed oils and the carbs and it's clear that they are exacerbating probably what is, in my opinion, fundamentally a light circadian mismatch problem. But maybe, who knows, in the next couple of years, or maybe someone can send him this interview, I think well, yeah, and I think, um, nicole shanahan, she was big into light therapy.
Speaker 2:I think she even mentioned she might be doing some trial for for light therapy for autism because of her child, um, so you know, I think she's got that bug. I think there isn't some conference with nicole and jack cruz going up and that's coming up soon. And then Jack Cruz and RFK they had an interview on the Rick Rubin podcast but they talk more about history and all these conspiracies and stuff. I don't think Jack really pressed the light and health issue. That's kind of the next phase. There's definitely a lot Once people start thinking about their health. That's kind of the next phase. But yeah, there's definitely a lot, you know, once people start thinking about their health.
Speaker 2:That's what I did. You know that's how I got into all this. I started dieting and improving my diet and that wasn't really getting me 100% of the way. I had to start thinking about light. I started using blue blockers, getting sunlight in the morning, and then I went down this rabbit hole of light therapy and then I started this business. But it all started with the diet aspect wasn't really covering me for my goals and energy levels and sleep, and it really turned into the light being my biggest focus.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that's a common story for people. So, yeah, it's great to be able to spread the message I wanted to ask you about. We talked about, you know, these different color temperatures. I've got a red-only visible portable lamp with me at the moment. So, obviously, when we're setting up the house, yes, we can get access to these different LED bulbs, but what do you advise in terms of the types of LED bulbs? Would you favour one that has a modular ability to change its spectrum, the so-called circadian appropriate lighting or would you look to set up your house with lighting of different spectral emission that you would turn on at different times of the circadian day? Also, mindful of the role of light position in the eye that is also going to influence its effect on our circadian rhythm?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I mean, that's all great stuff. You know I'm pretty basic. You know I don't do any kind of fancy, I don't do dimming, I don't do multiple spectrum bulbs, or you know, I just kind of do really basic bulbs. So, yeah, I kind of have like a set of bulbs that I use during the day that are a little bit brighter, maybe 3,000 to 35,000 Kelvin, 35,000 Kelvin, and then for the evening, and you know, the afternoon and night, then I turn off my overhead lights and I've got floor lamps and desk lamps. So that way, you know, like you said, if you've got a light coming from overhead it might trick your brain into thinking it's like sunlight.
Speaker 2:So it's better to have your evening lights, you know, more horizontal, more on the horizon of being on a, you know a desk lamp or you know a floor stand lamp or you know getting that. So I think the angle is important. And then those bulbs are, you know, lower in Kelvin, 2700 or less. Or you can go really hardcore and get, you know, yellows or ambers or reds, but those are on the floor lamps. So I'll turn off my overhead lights, switch to the floor lamps. So you can get more automated with smart bulbs if you're comfortable with that, or all the different dimming bulbs and whatnot. But I try to keep things very basic, no extraneous electronics, and just use a different set of light bulbs depending on the circumstance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's great, and I'll just share my current experience, where I've just moved into a new clinic room and, having turned off the light overhead, I'm just using a yellow bulb, essentially at my desk height, and I've got a window open for some natural sunlight, essentially at my desk height, and I've got a window open for some natural sunlight, and a patient, or many patients today commented how much more relaxing the environment was and it was something that they appreciated. As you know, if they're coming in with, you know, anxiety-related symptoms, and a question that I have is some common lighting options that some people might have. So I don't know if you're familiar with the Himalayan salt lamp at all and have you tested that with your various apparatuses and can you report its suitability?
Speaker 2:I have not specifically tested one. You know I probably have one in my basement collecting dust, but you know they seem nice. I don't know the benefits of the salt lamp.
Speaker 2:Purely from an optical point of view. Yeah, from the optics I mean it looks nice. It's usually got more of a yellow or reddish kind of enclosure on it and one of them I saw had a little incandescent bulb inside. So it depends on what kind of bulb you have inside of it, but the ones I saw back in the day had little incandescent bulbs, so that's very nice. So you've got an incandescent bulb and then it's also kind of being filtered by this rock that kind of diffuses the light.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it diffuses the light and kind of probably blocks a little bit more of the blue light so it appears a little more red or yellow. But then if they insert an LED, kind of okay, what's the quality in the spectrum of the LED? And then it's kind of getting filtered by this crystal which again it seems to help drop some of the blue light, makes it a little bit warmer kind of color temperature. So you know, it seems nice, you know, but the same things, you can try to check it with your phone camera, the slow motion video, check for flicker and things like that. You know, if it feels good, if looks good, for for your eyes and um seems mostly kind of yellow, then then I have no problem with it yeah, that that's uh.
Speaker 1:That's great because it's it's a really a common option because that people have, um, some people have handy, so it's great to be able to uh to recommend that. The other kind of workaround that some people use and this is this is a hack, uh that even a lot of kind of influencers have have also kind of shared videos doing is applying cellophane, like the transparent plastic uh film, essentially over things like a, a light, a fridge light, particularly. That's a. That's a common one. What's your take on essentially just changing the emission via, say, a covering like a transparent film? What does that do to its suitability of the light, based on what we've just been talking about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, when I did a lot, lot of travel, I would carry some black electrical tape and cover up tons of indicator lights and and light bulbs and whatnot. So sometimes if you have an indicator light that you don't need at all, just cover it with black tape, um, you know. So sometimes you can do that, um, but yeah, I mean you can. Basically it's like putting a blue blocker on the light source itself rather than needing to wear it on your face. You can put these, you know red cellophanes, um, there's one called roscoe lux, number 19, so you know you can see it's drastically changed the spectrum that you can see through it. So it's Roscoe Lux, number 19.
Speaker 2:I get it from B&Hphotocom. They sell it because it's made for, you know, photography and so it's really nice. It's like the fire red spectrum. It blocks, you know, the majority of blue and green light and it's got a very nice kind of orangey, kind of red color. So it's definitely viable.
Speaker 2:So I've cut out little bits of it and then taped it on to different, you know, light bulbs or indicator lights. So if I still want the indicator light to be kind of mildly functional, you know, but I don't want to block it all the way. So I'll use that and kind of cover up different lights with that and you can try to use it. Sometimes you can put it over a screen or some companies are selling like a screen, you know, blocker, you know, and tape it onto your screens. Tape it onto your TV, you do get more kind of reflections and glare like. So it's kind of annoying to use it on a TV, but you know it could be a viable option.
Speaker 2:If you have, like a lot of led lamps are like hardwired, it's not like a bulb you can replace, so you could cover it with the cellophane. Or, like a lot of people, they asked me about the um recess lighting and they're making the recess lighting as like a permanent led fixture, which is like nonsense, because what do you do when they burn out? Um, but you know you could try to color, cover that with cellophane. If you don't have the you know electrical tools to to swap it out, um, you know you could color. And then they do sell like yellows and and ambers, and so they have a whole range of different yellow cellophanes and orange ones, so you can really, you know, customize your, your colors if you really need to with the with the rascalux uh line of uh, you know these cellophanes, or whatever that's it.
Speaker 1:That's great. Well, thanks for bringing that up. That's a real practical tip. So we'll include those, those cellophanes, uh, in the show notes. What about uva? And are you aware of any easily purchasable product that can put some UVA light into the ambient environment during the day?
Speaker 2:I have not. That gets kind of risky with those kinds of recommendations. I have one of the Spur-T vitamin D lamps. I think it's a little bit more vitamin D lamps, I think it's a little bit more. The vitamin D version is a little bit more heavy towards the UVB for vitamin D but they do have like a tanning lamp that's a little bit more towards the UVA.
Speaker 2:You know it'd be interesting to see because there are a lot of like violet lights that are right around 400 nanometers, so the old black lights and the old, you know, fluorescent black lights and things like that. So those would be interesting if those could be kind of an ambient light solution. Otherwise you're kind of getting like a reptile bulb. You know there's tons of UV reptile bulbs and you know you could have it. You know a safe distance away so you're not causing any harm. And again, maybe you want a little bit of that UV in your environment. You know, I don't know. That's one of the things. It's not worth the risk until you really measure the intensity, measure the exposure, understand the safety limits of. You know you don't want to haphazardly start putting UVA all around your house unless you really know what you're working with.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But theoretically that'll be the next kind of step of, you know, figuring out the indoor lifestyle yeah, we should definitely um, if you don't mind, sharing the brands of your, your meters, and we'll put that in the show notes too, so people can stop, um, you know, if they're really interested putting together a toolkit to, uh, to test for their environment all these metrics.
Speaker 2:So one of my Flickr meters they stopped manufacturing. It was awesome, it was 120 bucks, it's called Radix Lupin and I tried to be a distributor for it. I was like, don't go out of business, I'll distribute. But they're like, nope, we're done. But yeah, it was amazing.
Speaker 2:So I don't have a good Flickr meter. Maybe I'll shop around for for a different one. You know I have other ones but they're expensive. But yeah, you know, use your phone camera, your slow motion video. You can see, um, you know you can mostly trust your eyes If something looks red.
Speaker 2:I think you had mentioned if something looks red, it. You know it's red. I've had a lot of people try to convince me my color perception is pretty spot on at this point, and so I was saying the booth at the Planet Fitness that I tested. I tested three different locations and they're garbage. They emit a lot of blue, they emit a lot of green, they emit some red and barely any near infrared and it's like 12 milliwatts per centimeter squared. But the intensity is fine, except some of the spectrums, blue and green. So like, what are you doing? And so, because they're combining blue, green and red, it looks very pink and like white, and tons of people tell me that. Tons of people reported that to me and I saw it too. It's hard to see it through a camera and so, but people still comment on that video of like, no, it's totally red, that's what the spec sheet says, that's what the manufacturer advertises, and I was like I don't know, I don't think. So it's mostly white and pink. Uh, you know, but anyway. So, yeah, the color is key.
Speaker 2:But you know, with blue blockers I did find you know, I was testing a lot of blue blockers back in the day If you have a red-blue blocker, sometimes it lets through some blue, like you know, because there's kind of like a gradient of how dark a tint can be. So if you have orange or red or yellow, you're pretty comfortable. It's definitely reducing some blue light. So you know that for sure. And obviously we know the clear blue blockers only can block a minuscule amount of blue light, because that's the nature of how optics work. If you reduce too much blue light it's going to start to appear yellow. So you know they're all limited just by physics of how much blue light they can actually reduce with a clear, you know appearing lens, and a lot of times the best clear lenses have a very subtle yellow hue that you can only see up close.
Speaker 2:But you know. So generally you can trust you know yellow is going to reduce a significant amount of blue. Orange cuts out most of the blue and red cuts out most blue and green. But again, you know, you still want to verify. If you're really hardcore, does it block 100% of blue or 95% of blue or 90% of blue? And you know, again, it's not a terrible thing. Maybe you want a little bit of blue so you can kind of appreciate the full spectrum. But you know, just know, you know, know what you're shopping for. You have to shop from a good brand. I have another blog about some cheap brands that you can get that have really good blue reduction. So so, yeah, so you know you can mostly trust your eyes. You can hold it up to a blue light and see, ok, well, blacks that blue light. You can trust your eyes. Your eyes are pretty sensitive to photons, you know.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, so there's a lot of ways to evaluate it and not need a lot of fancy equipment. Yeah, fantastic, and that's why I appreciate your work, because you're really not advocating or selling anything that's extraneously or you know bells and whistles, it's just pure functionality and cost, which the people really appreciate. I know we've got already an hour in and apologies if I haven't made this clearer to a more lay listener, but the reason why we want to block blue light, especially after dark, is because of its suppressive effect on melatonin, a hormone that will help us induce sleep and keep us asleep and kick off all these cellular repair mechanisms. So, from a circadian point of view, that is why we're so interested in blue-free lighting, particularly after dark, particularly, uh, after dark. So, um, what what more can we say about? Um, uh, indoor lighting? I know you make a gamma red, you make a red led bulb, so, uh, maybe talk a bit about that bulb and what, what problem you were solving when you, when you, designed that?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, I made um. You know there are, you know, a lot of pure red bulbs on the market, so I wanted to make something unique. I do recommend on my blog a TCP brand red party bulb. It's only three watts but it's a low brightness red bulb. I checked it out, it's really great. So and that's only like eight bucks, you know, on lightbulbscom, plus shipping, but so that's a really cheap solution.
Speaker 2:But I wanted something that um was brighter, because a lot of the red bulbs are not very bright um, and a lot of people were complaining that those bulbs were were not bright enough. And then I also wanted to have, like that, 660 nanometer spectrum, so it's all 660 nanometer wavelength, so it's like one of the deepest reds you can really appreciate without getting too dim. So it's like a really nice deep red. It's very bright because it's seven watts. So you know it's a very nice elegant solution and it's in this what's called a corncob type light bulb format, so it just looks like all the LEDs are on the outside and it kind of looks like a corncob. So you know it's a really very neat, unique design and got great brightness, break call, great color. So you know it's a good option for if you need a screw and light bulb to replace. You know some that some of your indoor lighting at night, but yeah, yeah, you know there's, there's good options on the market.
Speaker 1:That sounds really good and I'll have to maybe somehow get a couple to Australia. I'd love to try them out. I'm guessing, I don't know, but is this the fitting standards? Is it like an E27? Screw yeah.
Speaker 2:E27. I don't know if it's right. I don't think we made it officially rated for international use. So if you have a different voltage or frequency I'd have to do like a little voltage test to make sure, because you know it was really specifically designed for the US for 60 hertz, 60 hertz and 120 volts. So that's one of my only only products and some of my plug in nightlights. I do have plug-in nightlights but again, they're specifically designed for the US grid so I don't recommend them for outside use. But, like some of my therapy panels, they have power adapters that work internationally, but these are smaller devices, so we just focused on making it for the US voltages.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, that's good, okay, great. Is there anything else you want to say about indoor lighting or any of these lighting options or any kind of guidance that you give to the listener?
Speaker 2:I think we covered it. I think a little bit more emphasis on bright light therapy we didn't discuss. If you get up in the morning you get your morning sunlight, that counts as bright light therapy. If you can't do that for some reason, and even on a cloudy day, you know you still get high lux from being outside, but to get some bright lights in the mornings or even, you know, during the morning, and that helps anchor your circadian rhythm, so your sleep schedule kind of starts in the morning, getting bright lights in the morning, whether it's sunlight or a bright light tool, again, you can just get a high-quality white light bulb and just kind of use it relatively close to the face.
Speaker 2:So you don't have to buy anything expensive or fancy that's marketed for sad.
Speaker 2:So you don't have to buy anything expensive or fancy that's marketed for sad. But you know that's the key thing is you know the melatonin is a major antioxidant and even if you're using your screens late at night and you're like oh, I use my phone screen late to be a slow degradation and that might be a strong correlation to a lot of the chronic diseases we're seeing is the poor quality sleep, the lack of melatonin production. So even though you think you're sleeping fine, you still haven't produced enough melatonin, naturally. So you know we're trying to combat all these things that lead to big problems down the road and they're proving that if they improve the sleep of Parkinson's patients and different types of chronic diseases, they're improving that whole quality of life. So the sleep and getting your light bulbs right during the day, in the mornings, at night, you know, really think about that whole system that's going to help you, you know, with longevity and quality of life and sleep and focus and energy. So that's the key we were trying to hit home today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very well put. Very well put, andrew. And really, this sleep is so critical to human thriving and optimal health it's almost difficult to overstate it. It's almost difficult to overstate it. And even Brian Johnson, who is spending millions of dollars biohacking his way to his version of immortality, his emphasis on sleep is unparalleled and it's something that he puts so much emphasis on. I think his last protocol was he's down to such a fine art that he's even timed his eating, uh, into a window, to to a really early eating window, and that's that's another way of of preventing desynchronization of of your peripheral gut clocks with, with your, your, your suprachiasmatic gluteus, your central clock.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the other point that I'll make is that this is so out of field for the decentralized medical paradigm that it's. You know you're an engineer, a chemical engineer turned photobiomodulation and lighting expert. You know, and I'm a family medicine, you know, trainee talking about, you know, light and health, and you know, trainee talking about, you know, light and health, and, uh, you know there's not a lot of people talking about this and obviously, glenn jeff, professor glenn jeffrey, and bob fosbury, astrophysicist and neuroscientist, uh, these are all disparate professions, um, and we are trying to, in different ways, talk about a subject that really needs to be the domain of more and more doctors, but it's just this collective misunderstanding or lack of appreciation ignorance is a strong word, but that's probably appropriate of the role of light in health, and so I think we've done a pretty good job. I really appreciate your insights, andrew, into this topic. So let's include all that information, all those, into the show notes so people can go through this, click on them and really set them up, and hopefully a lot of them are US-based, but I'm sure we could try and find some Australian shipping options or equivalents in Australia.
Speaker 1:Yeah Cool, all right, thanks very much in.
Speaker 2:Australia. Yeah, cool, all right, thanks very much. Great, yeah, thank you, thank you.
