Regenerative Health with Max Gulhane, MD
I speak with world leaders on circadian & quantum biology, metabolic medicine & regenerative farming in search of the most effective ways of optimising health and reversing chronic disease.
Regenerative Health with Max Gulhane, MD
99. How Natural Light Improves Eye Health, Blood Sugar and Lowers All Cause Mortality | Jonathan Jarecki
We discuss three pivotal studies showing how natural light wavelengths positively influence health from all-cause mortality to visual perfomance to blood glucose control in Type II diabetics.
Jonathan Jarecki is a biomedical science sophomore with an interest in light and health, and host of Whole Health Podcast.
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TIMESTAMPS
2:41 Why UV Exposure Might Extend Life
7:28 Building The Sunbeam Score
15:11 Confounders, Vitamin D, And Validity
18:16 Mortality Findings And Dose Response
22:11 Melanoma, Incidence, And Trade-Offs
32:20 How Many Deaths Does Sunlight Prevent?
41:05 Policy, Vitamin D Pills, And Mechanisms
45:59 LEDs Versus Incandescent: The Vision Study
54:10 Infrared, Mitochondria, And Eye Function
1:05:40 Reimagining Indoor Light For Health
1:07:25 Daylight And Glucose Control In Diabetes
1:17:05 Circadian Gene Effects And Brightness
1:23:05 What Better Studies Should Test Next
Resources & Links:
Richard Weller et al: Risk–benefit balance of habitual ultraviolet exposure for cardiovascular, cancer, and skin cancer mortality: UK Biobank cohort study
- https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.08.26343592v1
Glen Jeffrey et al: LED lighting (350-650nm) undermines human visual performance unless supplemented by wider spectra (400-1500nm+) like daylight
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-35389-6
Natural daylight during office hours improves glucose control and whole-body substrate metabolism
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41418772/
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Welcome. I'm speaking with Jonathan Girecki. Jonathan is a biomedical science student from the United States, North Carolina. And I was attracted to Jonathan and his work because he's been educating a lot on social media about light and the exciting new research that's coming out that is demonstrating the importance of different light wavelengths on health. So Jonathan, thanks for joining me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, thank you, Max. I'm excited to talk about these brand new papers that came out this year, and it will be a fun conversation.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so so there seems to be an influx of really good quality research from some big names in the field lately. And I guess the goal of the conversation today is to give the listener an overview of some of this literature so you guys can understand uh better what what is the basis, I guess, scientific basis for a lot of the recommendations to essentially get outside and get get more natural sunlight. So we've got uh four papers that that you and I, john, Jonathan, discussed, is wanting to just talk about. Maybe who knows how many will get through, but let's let's start with this preprint. And I'm I'm gonna read the title out and then I'm I'm gonna let you give us an overview of it. The title is Risk Benefit Balance of Habitual Ultraviolet Exposure for Cardiovascular Cancer and Skin Cancer Mortality, UK Biobank Cohort Study. And the corresponding author, the who's basically doing most of the, I guess you could say the principal investigator, is Richard B. Weller. And listeners to this podcast will know Richard, who is a professor of dermatology and also a dermatologist in Edinburgh, UK. And he has been an author of previous seminal works in the field, including the one, a UK Biobank study, showing that people with greater UV exposure had greater lifespan. And he's also been instrumental in demonstrating the role of ultraviolet light, particularly ultra-RA, in vasodilating the blood vessels, relaxing blood vessels, um, with respect to the skin's nitric oxide stores. So, Jonathan, maybe you kick us off with your analysis or take on this paper.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so uh so great introduction, Max. Uh so first, you know, if we're like literally just looking at this title, what what are we looking at, right? Risk-benefit balance. So, what these researchers were primarily focusing on was what is the risk-benefit ratio of sun exposure? So many people have heard that, especially from the uh dermatology field, that sun exposure is this bad ball of light up in the sky that is gonna do harm to your skin and to your body primarily through uh primarily through uh skin uh uh skin cancer. And so we we understand, you know, there's this there's this connotation of the sun that causes skin cancer and that uh risk association with sun exposure. However, there are clear benefits to the sun. Everyone has heard of vitamin D. We get vitamin D from the sun, uh, and there are definitely some uh some aspects that are beneficial to from that vitamin D perspective. You hinted at the nitric oxide from UV uh UVA uh that Richard Weller has done great research on. Uh and so we see there's also these benefits, right? There's also POM C that we can look at and all these uh other benefits that sunlight brings. Richard Weller's last uh UK biobank study looked at uh these looked at these participants and uh and showed that you have a longer lifespan the more sun you get. So the high sun exposure group had a reduced mortality rate. And so clearly there is some sort of benefit that is occurring from uh from natural daylight, from sunlight. And so uh yeah, so looking at the study, right, uh UK Biobank. So UK Biobank, for those who are not familiar, right, it's this large cohort of individuals. Uh, I think there was something like 500,000 individuals that uh went in to um went in to get a lot of different uh tests, right? So they had blood tests drawn, they uh had questionnaires. From what I understand, it was like a three-hour process. Uh so they would went go in to the clinic or whatever, uh, get blood drawn, ask a bunch of questions. So there's a lot of extensive uh information about these individuals. So really, really, uh, really great source of knowledge that we have and a lot of data that we have here. And so what these researchers were looking at, right, they they looked at the participants where they had um UV and sun exposure uh data from, right? So there was around like 400, just over 400,000 uh participants that they that they they had uh questionnaires, right? So how asking them questions about how much sun they were getting. They also had vitamin D status from these participants. And what was really, really fascinating is that again, the UK Biobank, they drew the blood and they also stored the blood because they knew that years later, because this was done a while ago, right? Years later, we would have the technology that could um allow us to take that blood and do other things with it that we didn't have back next, right? And now we have a lot of really interesting technology that we'll discuss um when we talk about in this paper. Um yeah, so you know, quick overview of this. So one of the main things in this paper is what the researchers call the sun beam score. So essentially it is uh sort of how they categorize these individuals in terms of how much sun they were getting. So a quick, you know, let's quickly break down what that looked like. Uh so to understand how much sun these participants were getting, they were asked uh four different questions. And then from those four questions, the researchers assigned uh a map a specific number, so either zero or one point, basically, uh, for uh these questions, and then they would be put into the group. So running running down these questions, because I think it's important to understand this first to get a sense of how these researchers conducted this. So one of the questions was time spent outdoors. So you would get a one if you spent more than four hours outdoors per day, and you would get a zero if you spent less than four hours a day. Uh residential UV. So from satellite, uh, from satellite uh data, they were able to see how much UV a specific area uh in the UK, a specific area got uh during, you know, during the year, throughout the year. And they so I think they they compared this with uh the average annual value of um a specific city in in the U UK. I'm I'm blanking on the specific one, but uh basically if Nottingham, yeah. Um so if you got more sun exposure, if you had more UV, um residential UV than Nottingham, then you would get a one. If you had less, you get a zero. Then they went to solarium or sun uh sunlamp use. So if they used a solarium at least one time a year, they would get a one. If they used it, if they never used it throughout the year, they would get a zero. And then um the last one is uh sun protection. So I I looked into this into the supplemental materials because um I think this is important. So the question that was actually asked here was when you are outdoors, how often do you use sun slash UV protection? Right? So they asked these people when they go outside, do they use sun protection? And really here, what uh, and there's there's a lot of evidence to back this claim up, is that this uh this question here is a proxy for how much sun someone is getting, right? So uh if they if they use sun protection, sometimes or usually that would get a one. So meaning that these people are uh deliberately going outdoors, right? That is what we're getting from this question here. Uh and then if they never use sun protection or they never went outdoors, they would get a zero. So now with these ones and zeros, right, they uh added those numbers up and then they put them into uh three different categories. So low UV, medium UV, and then high UV. Low UV would be anywhere from zero to one, medium UV would be uh a two, and then high UV would be a three to four. And so um I kind of just I wrote down here in my notes sort of uh what a like participant example would be, just so people can uh better understand this, right? So let's say we have a participant who spends five hours a day outdoors, um, their you know residual, their residential UV exposure is greater than that of Nottingham's, and they let's say they never use a sunbed all year, and let's say they uh don't use sun protection, then that they would fall into the medium category, getting a score of two there, right? And then you know we can we can obviously see how that how that works there. So we have these three different categories of how much sun exposure someone's getting. And then we can now use those categories to to see you know health outcomes.
SPEAKER_01:So um I I just want to make a comment about the sunbeam score, and I and thanks for breaking down that well. In the the seminal paper or the precursor paper to this was Pelilinquist's Melanova and Southern Sweden cohort study. And that was the first paper demonstrating counterintuitively to the investigators that the women that had more sun-seeking behavior actually lived longer. And those who avoided the sun, they that would seem to be a risk factor for for all cause death. I think what the Weller and his colleagues have done in this paper is improve upon the classification or asset um determination of exposure by the sunbeam score. Because in in Pelilinquist's paper, they simply just ask questionnaires. And there's value in that, but there's potential room for more room for confounding than with this sunbeam score. So I think we've got a more way more objective way and rigorous way of establishing someone's UV exposure and sun-seeking habits that's less confounded. And yes, it's is a these are binary kind of outcomes, but it it provides a I think a pretty good uh approximation and proxy to determine someone's ultraviolet exposure, which we're then they are then going to try and look at association with disease outcome and mortality and heart disease.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly. And you know, I'm I'm actually I'm in a biostats course right now, um, and we're talking about uh categorical variables, which this is a categorical variable. So they're putting these people into a category, right? And now obviously, no uh no observational study is absolutely perfect, right? It would be best if we had no categories, but you know, we have to do that in order to in order to gather this data and actually put it into something that we can understand and and take something from it, right? And I think what's what's also interesting, at least, you know, this is what I thought about when I was reading this, is that these binary values, right? So one or zero, one or zero, um, and these categorical values, you know, to me, it seems like it would at least um one benefit from it uh would be that it limits recall bias, right? So I mean, you know, do you it do you get outside four hours a day or do you not get outside four hours a day? Like that I feel like that's a that's a very easy question to answer. So like if we're just thinking about this like logically from our perspective, if we if like you and I were um answering these questions, these are questions that um I think would you know would limit recall bias. So we would we would actually answer these questions correctly in terms of how uh consistent, you know, or like how accurate are we answering these questions. Um so I think that's one benefit that we see, that we see here. Um but but again, and yeah, I also I also want to point out that uh these researchers also uh they they validated these groups with vitamin D levels. So um so the the low UV had they they looked at the group that had that were categorized in the low UV, they had the lowest amount of vitamin D. The medium UV had the middle amount of vitamin D, and the high UV had the most amount of vitamin D. Uh, I believe, I mean, they they definitely they definitely say this in the paper itself, but in the supplemental, they have a whole um a whole table putting this putting this out there. All the p-values there are very statistically significant. So I was looking at um the UV or the sun and UV protection, right? So they validated this also with vitamin D levels. Everything here was validated with vitamin D levels. Uh, and when we looked at the one, so the person who sometimes slash usually got uh usually used sun protection, their vitamin D levels were around 50. And then the zero who would never who would not use vitamin D, who would not use sun protection and would not go outside were around 45. P value there, 0.0001. So again, these are validated with vitamin D levels, which greater um sort of you know validates this categorical, these categorical categorical variables.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, that is it gives us it gives it gives us confidence that the sunbeam categorization is actually correlating to a hard biomarker. And obviously, vitamin D, the sunshine hormone, the more sun you get, the more UV you get, the higher your vitamin D. So it it's again a really confident way to to for us to know that this categorization is actually checking out. And again, this is superior to simply the the questionnaire that that the that the previous miscohort researchers use.
SPEAKER_00:Yep, exactly. Um and then let's also you know quickly touch on the confounders. So, Max, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that in the Southern Sweden cohort study that they did not confound, they did not um adjust for uh exercise. Um uh, I believe. And so here they did, right? So if we're looking at the confounders here, uh all the main models were adjusted for, I'll just read these off age, sex, body mass uh index, BMI, um, talent and deprivation index, highest educational attainment, smoking status, alcohol consumption, physical activity, and sleep quality. So every everything that we're gonna be talking about here, they adjusted for these confounders, uh, which is obviously very important when we're when we're looking at epidemiological uh studies here. So uh let's definitely note that as well. Uh and then you know, let's, you know, we'll talk about you know what they what they found here and their their results.
SPEAKER_01:So um one one final moment one final point to make. Um I think this is important. This is obviously uh in the UK buy bank, and notably the participants in this study were ethnically Caucasian. So that that that's another way to mint to increase the robustness of the results is that everyone's going to be having a Fitzpatrick skin type of one or two. So the the results aren't being confounded by having people of different different ethnic origin who might, again, uh interfere with the conclusions that we can draw. So it also affects what we call um, I guess, external validity or the degree to which the results are applicable to other pop populations. And maybe we're going to circle back to that concept because I think it's a key open question, especially with respect to Australia, about to what to what degree can we um assume or that the the findings in this cohort and that ultraviolet conditions of of of Northern uh Atlantic Island is relevant to an extremely sunny island down here in Australia. But but please go on with the with what they found.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So um so when we're looking at the results here, right, uh there's two main so in figure two, right, there's two two main things that we're looking at. We're looking at mortality, uh, and then incidence. So mortality from a disease and then incidence of having that disease. Uh so when we when we're looking at the first one, right, mortality, um, they're forest plots. So uh, you know, for someone who is unfamiliar, maybe a little difficult to interpret this, but we can uh dive, we can, you know, extrapolate and uh give the audience what we're what we're looking at here. So for uh for all cause mortality, right? So what they what what we see here on the graph is they're comparing the high sun exposure group versus the low sun exposure group, and then the medium sun exposure group versus the low sun exposure group. And we see for all cause mortality that the high sun exposure group compared to the low sun exposure group had a 16% reduction in all cause mortality. A hazard ratio there is uh 0.84. So 16% reduction in all-cause mortality. And then the medium versus the compared to the low uh sun exposure group had an 11% reduction in all cause mortality. So something really key here is that there is a dose-dependent curve here. So the medium versus the low has 11%, the high versus the low has a 16%. So we are in we are increasing that reduction in mortality. So you have an increased, reduced reduction in that mortality uh as you increase your sun exposure there. Um we can, you know, let's look at cardiovascular disease. We see almost the exact same thing. In fact, the reductions are even higher, right? So medium versus low is an 18% reduction in cardiovascular mortality, high versus low is a 23% reduction in cardiovascular mortality. Again, dose dependent. When we're looking at these epidemiological studies, we want to see dose dependence because obviously we cannot uh conclude causation from this, but we can look at things that would uh point us to a causal link. So um one of those things is seeing dose dependence. So dose-dependent curve, right? When we're looking when we're understanding a dose-dependent curve, as we increase the dose of something, right, we are increasing that outcome. So as we increase the dose of sun, as we increase sun exposure, we are having a much better um mortality rate. Our mortality is decreasing more and more. So that's something to consider there. Um we look at cancers, right? All cancers, same exact thing. Dose-dependent curve, high uh a medium versus low is at an 8% reduction, high versus low is at an 11% reduction, again, increasing that reduction as we increase sun exposure. Um and then again, also uh non uh non-skin cancer cancers, same exact thing, reductions, actually the exact same reductions as cancer in general. Um and then you know, we could look at melanoma here. So what's interesting here is that uh in and Max, I would love to hear your thoughts on this as well. So when we're looking at medium to versus low, we have a 22% increase risk of um melanoma. However, I will say that it was not physically significant because it is on it is uh goes to the hazard ratio um right on the line on one. Um but what is interesting is that that uh mortality increase is reduced when we go to the high versus low sun exposure um group. So as they increase the sun exposure, their mortality, although you know, still um increased, is reduced compared to the median versus low. So I would love to hear, Max, what what your what your thoughts are on that one.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. The to and maybe just to add a quick point about how they determined these associations, is they they essentially collected the data, as you mentioned, Jonathan, between the years of 2000 uh 2007 and 2010. But what they did is they they looked at the National Health Service NHS mortality records and all these cancer association uh records up to 2025. So essentially they were linking what the the the initial uh characteristics with the outcome data that as determined by those uh accessing those databases. So that's what and and they they therefore were able to generate these hazard ratios based on looking at the number of cases of death. So there were there are 45,257 deaths um in terms of follow-up, and then what they simply did is asked what was the essentially in those who got the highest and the lowest sun exposure, you know, what what was the the likelihood here or the hazard ratio of death, and and that is what that's how we're getting these numbers. And um as you mentioned, what what when we make associational claims and we use the things like hazard ratio, we have we have a essentially a 95% confidence interval. And ignore this if you're not interested in the statistics, but we have to with the the the smaller that range, the more confident we are that the true value lies in that in that range. And um, that is the case with these findings, is that um, as you said, 0.84 was the hazard ratio of those who had the highest sun exposure for all causal mortality, and and that that confidence interval is well was between 0.82 and 0.87. So we are confident that's a Statistically significant finding. And with respect to melanoma, and essentially it becomes more difficult to be confident of a significant change if the numbers of cases is small. So the number of melanoma cases diagnosed was only 440 out of 400,000 people. It's a very, very small number.
SPEAKER_00:And let's also keep in mind that these people are, sorry to interrupt, but let's keep in mind that these people are below the age of 75, right? And so that could be attributing why we're seeing low cases of these skin cancers.
SPEAKER_01:Sure, sure. But I guess what what the point is is that we're unlike the all-cause and cardiovascular mortality and cancer mortality, we're much less certain of the true effect here because of the small numbers and the wider confidence intervals. But um yes, you'll you're correct in this it says that those with the the highest sun exposures seem to be protected against melanoma mortality versus those that potentially had intermediate sun exposure and and and little UV exposure. And and you know, this this conversation could go a lot, you know, it could be an in episode in and of itself, but the the rest of the epidemiology seems to suggest that chronic consistent UV exposure is protective against melanoma. And we look at data like vitamin D associations with melanoma incidence, melanoma death, um, melanoma prognosis in sorry, prognosis in metastatic melanoma, and having a higher vitamin D is protective of all of those. So potentially what we're seeing in this study is another reflection of that effect, which is uh you're actually better off to be getting daily UV exposure to protect yourself from melanoma because you're building vitamin D, you're building those protective secosteroids, which we know have an anti-proliferative effect on cells, not only in the skin layer, on keratinocytes, um, and potentially melanocytes, but also on uh intestinal epithelial cells, which which cause bowel cancer if they go wrong. So I I I think what I take away from this figure 2A is a incredibly just more robust backup and evidence that in a northern European cohort who have a lot less UV light than here in Australia, but um have very strict sun exposure guidelines, that you are without a doubt better off to be in a higher UV exposure for your for to prevent all cause death, to prevent death from cardiovascular disease um compared to not getting enough sun. And we're gonna continue talking about this because actually the the authors did a really great analysis to give us insight into the magnitude of that trade-off.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, exactly. Um and then yeah, no, that's that's great, Max. And I I agree with you there on the melanoma thing. And you know, when we look at the other skin cancers, like you said, there's only 60 cases there. So we are not very confident in the in the data there. But I mean, I think what is interesting is that the hazard ratio for the medium to low is on the right side of um one, and then from high to low is on the left side of one. So you are seeing a reduction in skin cancer. You know, obviously, again, we're not confident with that because of how low amount of cases we have, and um, you know, it's from 0.3 to 0.08.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, and you know, and and look, the reality here is that no very, very few people are dying from non-melanoma skin cancer. Um yes, exactly. So squamous cell and basal cell carcinoma, they can be nasty, absolutely. Um in Australia, they can especially can be quite nasty. But um people more likely, especially in uh in older age, they die of these can they die with these cancers, not of these cancers. So the fact that there were so few deaths, only 60 out of that massive cohort attributable to um non non-melanoma skin cancer makes it very difficult to interpret. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, no, that's great. So yeah, so that's mortality, right? Um, we can look at incidents quickly here, because I, you know, I definitely don't want to get I would I want to get to the risk-benefit ratio that's let's talk about it very briefly and then we'll move on to the next one. Yeah, just yeah, very briefly here, you know, we're seeing very similar results with in with uh incidents of these of these diseases in terms of cardiovascular disease, um, cancer, you know, a little less so, but we are seeing that dose curve going more towards when you get more sun exposure, you are reducing um the risk of cancer ever so slightly. Again, um, you know, take these ones with the with a little bit of grain of salt just because you know it does, it isn't fully over on the right side of that that that line right there. Um but uh with uh cancers excluding skin cancer, so really, you know, the like you said, the cancers that we probably want to be focusing on a little bit more than just than skin cancer. Obviously, melanoma can be deadly, but um in terms of the other, you know, creatinocyte cancers and all that, um, these cancers, we're seeing that reduction again uh with here. But now what is interesting is when we look at the other skin cancers, incidence of other skin cancers does increase as you increase sun exposure. And I think that is something very important to keep in mind when we're looking at the next um next point here with the risk-benefit ratio. Um, and let's hop into that if you're if you're good with that.
SPEAKER_01:A couple points in to be to clarify for the listener. In incidence refers to new cases. So prevalence is talking about how much disease there is in a population, and incidence is is how many cases in every new year we're we're potentially developing. So the the trial again showed that there seems to be, although the results are trending non-significantly, to reduce incidence of cardiovascular disease, implying that not only are you going to die less of cardiovascular disease, but there potentially also is a protective effect of in terms of developing heart disease if you got more UV light. The the the other I I guess key point to take out of this is that the fact is that melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers, the new incidence of those was higher if you got more sunlight. And uh, I think this is again more proof that uh yes, UV light absolutely lies on the causal pathway of skin cancer development. Are there other factors at play? Absolutely. But in at a population level, those who got more UV light got more skin cancer. The question here, and I think it again this comes back to the crux of the whole discussion, is what is that trade-off? And is that trade-off worth it? That we're potentially exchanging more years of life on planet Earth, less cardiovascular death, less cancer death, um, and potentially less diagnoses of those diseases, but we're trading that for more skin cancer. And that that that I again I think I want the listeners to take away is the key question that we're asking and trying to answer here, because everything in medicine is a risk and a benefit trade-off. Medic take when you take a medication, it's a risk and benefit trade-off. When you go to a doctor, you're you're paying them for their opinion to balance the risk and benefits of different treatments and of doing something and do and not doing something. And when I talked to Professor Weller on the podcast a couple years ago, he made that point really clearly is that this is supposed as job doctors, this is our job to tell you about what you should, what we what your options are with respect to the risk-verse benefit. And you can we can I think and I think doctors need to start considering ultraviolet exposure as a it's a it's like a it's a drug dosing. It's almost like a drug. You need to think that this is something that has risks and benefits that is variable depending on your individual circumstances. But what this study is is alluding to is that uh the risk-based benefit for more UV exposure for a northern European cohort in England absolutely is in favor of getting more sun to sun exposure.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So exactly. Explain the next section for us if you can.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so figure three, I think, is you know, probably it's the main, it's the main uh figure here that we that we wanna that we want to focus on. Um we can look at 3A, but that's just fractions and percentages. But what's really important is uh figure three B, right? So looking at the amount of excess or and or fewer deaths under two different scenarios. So the first scenario is let's say they took all the participants, so the 400,000 participants that were in the study, and they took them and put them and placed them in the low UV category, right? So when we place everyone, so we're taking those high UV and those middle UV individuals and placing them all in the low UV category, we're now seeing the either how many excess deaths we're gonna get or how many fewer deaths are we gonna save, how many lives are we gonna save. So what we're seeing here is that when we place everyone in the low UV category, right, we have in terms of all cause mortality, we have almost 3,000 deaths, just under 3,000 excess deaths that we would have. So we would have 3,000 more deaths if everyone got less sun exposure, right? So all cause all deaths is 3,000 less. Sorry, 3,000 more. Um looking at cardiovascular, around 700 excess deaths is cancer, just under a thousand excess deaths. Uh cancer excluding skin cancer is again just under a thousand excess deaths. And now um now we're seeing that we are gonna have around 39 fewer deaths. So we are going to save 39 more lives uh from melanoma, right? So people get less sun exposure, we're gonna have 39 less deaths, and then we're gonna have one less death from all other skin cancers, excluding melanoma. So that is the scenario if we were to uh put everyone in the low UV uh category here.
SPEAKER_01:If we look at hypothetically speaking, that would be if we locked people up, set the cops after them if they were in the sun, go back inside, you know, whack them on the head, uh, ban allaria solariums in in the UK, and somehow forced everyone to live in Nottingham or north in a northern latitude. So this is this is a hypothetical, this is a counterf these are counterfactuals to model the effects that we're seeing in this in this study. So what about if we put everyone in the high UV category?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So if we put everyone in the high UV category, right? So we're taking those low UV and those middle UV and we're putting them, placing them in the high UV category. So everyone's now getting more sunlight exposure, more UV exposure, what we're gonna see is 4,700 fewer deaths from any cause, just under a thousand fewer deaths from cardiovascular disease, around 1,500 fewer deaths from cancer, and around 1,500 fewer deaths from cancer, excluding skin cancers. Now, we are going to have some excess deaths, which parallel to uh uh the low UV, right? So we're gonna have uh 23 more deaths from melanoma. Yep, there it is, and we're gonna have 12 more deaths from other skin cancers, excluding melanoma. So if we were to put these high, uh if we were to put everyone into the high UV category, so everyone's getting more sunlight exposure, so everyone's being, let's say we force everyone to go outdoors, right? We force everyone to use a solarium throughout the year, we we force everyone to live in uh uh southern parts, right, to get have more UV exposure, we are going to have fewer deaths. We are going to essentially save lives. That is what that is what this figure is showing here, right? And so if you then if you also, if you do the cat, if the the calculation here, right? So if if we had um uh so if we lower sunlight exposure uh enough to prevent one skin cancer death, then it would cause around 75 excess deaths from all causes. So that is if we're taking that 39 plus the one in the uh the 39 melanoma uh fewer deaths and the one uh uh non-melanoma death, we're adding those together, dividing it by um all those uh uh uh uh excess death, or yeah, excess deaths. We're gonna see if we save one life from cancer, we are going to cause 75 deaths from any other cause. So we see that risk-benefit ratio there again, right? And clearly from this, and yeah, clearly from this, we are seeing that the if the more sun we are getting, there is a higher benefit than there is the risk, right? We talked about that risk of potential skin cancers, but there's also that benefit of reduction in all these other mortalities. And we see that there is a better, you have a better, um, you have a better benefit than you do risk. So it's really, yeah. Go for that.
SPEAKER_01:It's a essentially what we're we're saying is this is a favorable trade deal. Yes. Yes. And and again, using these counterfactual hypothetical situations, the we're buying we're buying more probably 1700 less deaths in this high or high UV environment for a cost of some m melanoma mortality. So we're gonna get slightly more people dying of of malignant melanoma, um, but we're saving potentially more than you know 1700 people from death by any cause.
SPEAKER_00:So these are and go on. Yeah, and I was just gonna say, um, I mean you're yeah, you're totally right there. And um what the the other thing I do want to point out, right, like you said, these are scenarios. Um, and they are, of course, you know, they're based off if the um if all the mortality stuff that we talked about previously, if all of that is a causal link, right? So they're based off if um if the if the UV is causing these deaths we're seeing here, right? That is what these scenarios are based off of, right? There's obviously always confounders that we cannot, we can't account for every single confounding variable here. Um, but like I mentioned earlier, they did account for um a lot of of variables. Uh so that was good to see. Um, but you know, these these scenarios are based off if um all of those deaths are caused by the lack or the increase in UV. So so that is you know something to think about. But nonetheless, nonetheless, we are still seeing that like these are these are big numbers, like very big numbers. And it's you know, it's something that we need to seriously talk about from a public health standpoint. And, you know, Richard Weller's doing a great job with this. Um, but you know, we need dermatologists to hear this, I think. And you know, we do, you know, it's it's you know, it's crazy that uh, you know, dermatology is from my perspective, is they are focusing so uh so narrow, narrow view on just skin cancer, right? How do we prevent skin cancer? How do we prevent prevent prevent skin cancer? And you know, their conclusion there is get away from the sun. Well, there's so much other stuff that we need to focus on, cardiovascular death, um, cancer death, cancers that aren't skin cancer death, right? There's other deaths that we should be focusing on, cardiovascular cancer, some of the most prevalent um diseases that that can that uh persist in our in our times right now. And these are the things that we need to be focusing on. And if we're seeing a reduction in those mortalities from increasing sun exposure, right, then clearly, and this is the data that we have needed this whole time, and now we have it. So clearly we are having a better benefit from going out in the sun than we would to protect from the sun and maybe, you know, in preventing a couple of skin cancers. So that's something, you know, we need to like people need to focus on in, you know, dermatologists. If there's a dermatologist listening to this, I beg them to just, you know, at least just read the paper, have go in it with the open mind, hear what the data says, and that's that's the most important thing that they can do.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and and look, I want to I actually want to read out parts of this paper when they when they kind of made some points about this. And they say by prioritizing cutaneous risk and treating vitamin D as the main, if not sole, justification for intentional sun exposure, current guidance adopts a narrow view of sunlight that sits uneasily among alongside emerging evidence for broader cardiometabolic and immunological effects of radio of UV radiation. Again, this is a a way of us describ of describing the fact that where the the field is the dermatology field and by extension the the primary care guidelines are so focused on preventing skin cancer that they're not seeing the elephant standing behind, which is heart disease and bowel cancer and all these other internal cancers that are actually the real what causes or culprits, um more significant culprits for all cause mortality. So um the other key point that they made here is that epidemiological and clinical discourse has often treated vitamin D as the main mediator of any health effects of sunlight, reinforcing the notion that oral supplementation can substitute for cutaneous UV exposure. And it's it's almost so frustrating. I feel like banging my head against the wall when I read these papers and they fail to demonstrate a health benefit when they uh in they prescribe people or they um use oral vitamin D supplementation and say, oh, there's no effect here. So let's one not supplement vitamin D, and two, let's never check a serum vitamin D. And this is wrong on so many levels. One, the the biggest issue is that vitamin oral purified, taking oral purified vitamin D, cholacal sulfurol, is in no way equivalent to obtaining cutaneously derived vitamin D. And also if you're missing the people, people are missing out on the rest of the full spectrum exposure. So, um, and again, what I've talked about and Weller and others have talked about is how profound that that is for cardiovascular health and and cancer prevention.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. Yeah, I mean you're spot on.
SPEAKER_01:The finally, the other thing that um maybe we'll just conclude this paper analysis with, which uh, you know, we they did some proteomic analysis. Uh, I've they they showed some interesting things in immunological, uh immunoregulatory um manipulation. I mean, that's another whole podcast episode, so maybe we won't discuss about that. But let me just summarize this paper with with the conclusion, concluding statement. And they said, overall, these findings challenge the simplistic view that sunlight is primarily a skin carcinogen whose benefits can be replaced by vitamin D tablets and instead support a more balanced perspective in which UV exposure contributes meaningfully and not fully substitutable to the prevention of cardiovascular disease and other major cancers. Future mechanistic and interventional studies are needed. Okay. The the last point I'll make about this, and again, this is relevant to Australia, is can we see the same effect sizes for pale-skinned people living in a high UV index environment? And the crux of this, this is important because here in Australia, the melanoma institute are literally attempting to eradicate melanoma by essentially removing everyone's UV exposure above an index of three. And uh what we essentially need is the same analysis replicated in an Australian cohort, because I personally suspect that um we're gonna see a lot more melanoma, but I I think the risk-verse benefit is definitely still gonna overwhelmingly weigh towards more versus less exposure. Um again, and that this can inform new public health guidelines. We don't need to get Fitzpatrick ones roasted in a UV index of 14, or that's how high it was the other day where I am. Um, but we just need some some more, I think, balanced sunlight and UV exposure. Um guidelines that that actually recognize this effect on all-cause mortality.
SPEAKER_00:Should we that's great?
SPEAKER_01:And go on.
SPEAKER_00:Oh no, I was just gonna say, um, you know, it it it would be super important, you know, and we we do, like you said, we need these studies to be replicated closer to the equator at areas closer to the equator to see, you know, how how that stacks up there. Um, but you know, I agree with you, Max, that we would probably see very similar results uh if if those studies were done.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, let's let's uh go on to another paper that is essentially on the opposite end of the electromagnetic spectrum. We're talking a lot about ultraviolet and in it in its form in sunlight. But tell us about this paper by Glenn Jeffrey with respect to visual health and and
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So I'll just say, first off, this is like I was so excited when this paper came out. I was following the preprint for a while. Um and when it came out, I was I was super stoked because it's such an important paper, and it uh is why I carry around this light bulb pretty much everywhere I go. If you can ask all my friends, they think I'm super weird, but it's always stays in my backpack and I plug it in uh wherever I go. So, you know, reading the title of this paper, um, LED lighting undermines human visual performance unless supplemented by wider spectra like daylight. So this is a paper uh by Glenn Jeffrey and Edward Barrett, and they they conducted it's a it's um they conducted a very interesting intervention. Basically, they went to this uh this building uh at University College London uh out in the UK, and they uh they had they they went to these people who were basically in a building that one had glass that reflected all the infrared. And you can see this from photos, infrared photography in the paper itself. They they show uh figures of this. Um so they have glass, the glass that reflects infrared. Uh, and then also the actual spaces, the buildings that these individuals were working in, uh, their normal uh you know nine to five job, uh the spaces they were working in, there was no windows. And it was only the only light source that they were getting was LED lighting. So light that is coming from a light emitting diode that is bright white, right? So um I've gotten a lot of questions, you know, recently where people are seeing this paper and they're like, oh my gosh, LEDs are terrible. Should I not be using my you know, LED red light panel? And you know, that's another conversation for another time, um, which is very nuanced. But no, LED is just simply a light emitting diode. It can emit light in any spectrum. If you had an LED that emitted infrared light, that could be very beneficial, right? So, but these LEDs that they were using here uh were just standard office white light LEDs. Yeah, and here Max is um has up the um the pictures of this. That is the picture of for the people who are uh watching this video, that's the the photo of the actual building that these individuals were working at. And uh there were there were 22 participants and they they uh had one group of participants, so 11 of 11 participants they had uh for the experimental group, and then the other 11 were a control group where there was no intervention put in place. And they tested these uh participants' color contrast. So color contrast is basically an indicator of visual uh function, and you know, how the test sort of goes is basically how how well are you um able to differentiate uh between two different colors, essentially, you know. Um and they tested their color contrast, right? And you know, I'll I'll first go to you know what they did. So they put a 60 watt incandescent light bulb on the desks of these individuals. So uh there's an image of that. And this image is actually very um good, I think, for people to see. And there's four images really in this. So figure uh six here um shows uh four different images, A, B, C, and D. If we're looking at uh uh image A, that is just a standard photograph of the building with the in with the uh incandescent lamps. There's two light bulbs on the desk there, uh just using a normal camera. Uh the second photo is that same uh photo with a normal uh sorry, with an infrared camera, but the light bulbs are turned off. So the incandescent light bulbs are turned off. C is the uh the same photo with those light bulbs turned on with a normal camera, and then D is really important here. So D is a photograph photo of the light bulbs turned on, so the incandescent light bulbs are turned on, and they're using an infrared uh camera. So this this camera is able to visualize and see infrared light. So the human eye, for those who who don't know, right, the human eye cannot see infrared light. We only see in the visual spectrum. The electromagnetic spectrum that comes from the the sun uh has UV, which is invisible, which we talked about in the last paper, the visible light, so basically the light that comes that you see in a rainbow, and then the infrared light, which is beyond red, infrared, and again the human eye can't see, but we can see it when we use special uh photography images, which you can see in this one. So you see that infrared light coming off of those light bulbs there. And so they placed these light bulbs on the desks of these participants, but they didn't mandate that the participants like stayed at the desk for a certain period of time. They just let the participants do their normal work. All they did was put these light bulbs on the desk. That's it. Now, one important note here is that these participants basically uh, you know, they were they were in this building for the majority of their day. Uh, they rarely went on breaks. If they did, it would be it was the in the paper they mentioned it's like a 15-minute break uh for lunch. They would leave the building. So um there's that. Uh and you know, the participants didn't control, or sorry, the researchers didn't control for other light outside of that work period. But what they did, uh what they did um get is that they figured out the amount of light that was present during this these times of the year. So it was, I believe it was October, November, uh, and possibly into December. I know they cut it off right before Christmas there. Um, but it was in this time of year where basically when they woke up and they went to drive to work, they were experiencing very little light, uh, if at all, just because of sunrise and sunset. And then when they left work, it was it was pretty much dark when they left as well. So they weren't getting uh very much uh natural sunlight during the week. Now, on the weekends, you know, they may have been doing other things, but what's important is that they were in these LED-lit environments for the majority of their day. Now, when we look at these results, right? So what they did was they put those uh light bulbs on on the desk for two weeks, uh, and then they they tested their color contrast. So they tested their color contrast uh at baseline, so see their baseline color contrast um threshold, right? Their pro tan and tritan. Uh so basically blue, green, uh, and and then they looked at um they looked at their color contrast at two weeks, then they took the light bulbs off, the incandescent light bulbs, they took them away, they let they the people went back to work, they tested their color contrast at four weeks, and then at six weeks. And what we see here is a very drastic uh improvement in both pro tan and tritan thresholds. And so that's an improvement in their color contrast, an improvement in visual uh function here, and this improvement lasts. So at two weeks we have a 28% uh improvement there. At four weeks, a 24%, at six weeks, a 26. Those improvements last, and that's in that's in the protein. If we look at the tritan, we see very similar improvement as well. Now, what's important here is that these improvements are lasting, and you know, we it would be it would have been awesome if the researchers could have continued on and seen, hey, is this gonna is this effect lasting at eight weeks? Is it lasting at 10 weeks? But what we do see here is it lasts up to at least six weeks. And so uh, you know, we can compare that to the control. The control, there was absolutely zero uh improvement, there was no um difference between uh these groups, and again, this control, they're not getting the light bulb, so we wouldn't expect an improvement, uh, we wouldn't expect any change really, because you know, we would expect that their days are as normal. And so we see no uh no improvement there, but we do see that improvement in the experimental group. Now, why is this improvement happening? Infrared light is able to one, it's able to penetrate through the entire body, right? Uh, but it's also um it also gets absorbed. So it's a weak, it gets absorbed by these weak absorbers, it gets absorbed by cytochrome C oxidase and also nanowater. So at least this is what we understand now. I would not be surprised if there's something else going on here in terms of what is absorbing infrared light, but from our current understanding, it infrared light gets absorbed by cytochrome C oxidase. Cytochrome C oxidase is a uh protein on the electron transport chain in the mitochondria. So the mitochondria are these, you've heard them as the uh powerhouses of the cell, but really they're these energy transformers, right? So they transform energy from the food that you eat, they transform that energy into the energy of the uh the energy currency of the cell, which is what is considered ATP, adenosine triphosphate, which is uh, you know, very, very, very essential for our body. It is, if we didn't have it, we would all be dead. And so infrared light gets absorbed by these chromophores and basically uh you know speeds up and creates a more efficient mitochondria for that mitochondria to transform energy. So electrons get funneled through the electron transport chain, trained faster and more efficiently. Now, we've many people probably heard that mitochondrial function uh is, you know, and mitochondria are the the uh you know foundations and pillars to our health at the root of many diseases or mitochondrial dysfunction. And so we want to keep those mitochondria healthy. And one way we do that is through the light that our mitochondria are being surrounded by. And so these longer wavelengths of light that are coming from these uh in from incandescents, right? But also it's abundant in the sun. 50% of the sunlight spectrum is infrared light. Uh, it's abundant in fire light, the light, the primordial light that we uh evolved around, right? It was the first artificial light, um, so artificial, but you know, at least it has more um biological uh um, you know, it it's we are more biologically adapted to it than the light that we currently are under, which is LED inflorescent light bulbs. And these LED inflorescent light bulbs, they emit light predominantly on the short, uh, shorter side of the spectrum. So short wavelength blue light. And these blue lights basically do the opposite to the mitochondria, right? So they are uh they're absorbed by porphyrins, which are these rings um in the in mitochondrial proteins, uh, and basically they create reactive oxygen species. Reactive oxygen species, uh, they they do function as cellular communicators, but if we are have are basically out of balance in our and how much reactive oxygen species that we have in our mitochondria, that is when uh we have these deleterious effects that occur. So when we think about light, right, we have the short wavelength blue, long wavelength red, and infrared. Our mitochondria like long wavelength red and infrared. They don't really like the blue, short wavelength light, and and there are systemic effects here, right? So our eyes have tons of mitochondria. Our retina are very mitochondrial dense. They're one of the most mitochondrial dense tissues in the human body. And so, you know, we can practically think about this. If our mitochondria are not functioning properly in our retina, well, then our retina is not gonna be able to function properly because it demands all of that energy that is being transformed by the mitochondria and that uh in the form of ATP. So it demands all that ATP. And so if that ATP isn't coming out efficiently and fast enough, well, then we're not gonna have um our retina aren't gonna be functioning properly and how we want it. And so now that we see in this study is that there's improvements in the ability for our retina and our eyes to uh uh differentiate different colors, right? So there's an improvement in that visual function there. Uh and so, you know, really, really interesting stuff. I also want to point out here, um, again, both the pro tan and the tritan show improvements. Glenn Jeffrey has showed that when we isolate the spectrum of light to just 670 nanometers, so 670 nanometers falls right into the red light spectrum. When we isolate that wavelength of light, shine it in people's eyes uh for, I don't know, it was either like three or 15 minutes uh in the morning, uh, we see improvements, but primarily just in the proton thresholds. So not in tritan. And, you know, not as much in tritan. But here, when we elongate that spectrum, when we get more of that spectrum here, so we're we also, you know, the 670 nanometers is included in from this incandescent light bulb. But the incandescent light bulb, if we look at a spectrum of an incandescent light bulb, it is abundant in red and abundant in infrared, which is, again, lacking in LED inflorescent lighting. Now, when we expand that spectrum, we clearly see here that there are greater improvements, both in improvements in proton, but also like greater improvements in proton than we would see from 670 nanometers. But we also see improvements in those tritan. And yes, here Max is showing a the figure of what these different light sources, the spectrum of these different light sources. So we see a huge spike in the blue light uh from a LED. And these are these are uh uh spectral um comparisons from the light that they actually used in the study. So that LED light is the light that these people were under, and that incandescent is the supplemental uh light that was added. And you can see that incandescent has tons of that infrared that's spanning well beyond 1500 nanometers, right? So near infrared, you can see there is, you know, goes to around, you know, like 750 to, you know, let's say like 900, and then tons of that mid-infrared as well, and there's definitely probably some far infrared in there as well. And so we see this drastic difference between these light sources. Now, when we look at this, when we think about this from an evolutionary standpoint, the sun is abundant in red and infrared, so more closely to the incandescent, where this short wavelength blue spike, this narrow band spike that we see in these, in uh that figure there and in uh LED lights, we wouldn't, we were never evolved to to have that light in front of us. We it's a very brand new light source, um, and and our body doesn't really know what to do with it. And we see these deleterious effects that occur. So that's the paper there. I don't know if we want to dive into any other aspects of this, but amazing, amazing study. And the practical takeaway here that I want people to to see is that clearly, you know, these people were still working under LED lighting. So, you know, unfortunately, met most people are not gonna be able to completely get rid of LED and fluorescent lighting in their environment. But what you can do, and you can you can uh take the your the accountability onto yourself, you can just purchase an incandescent light bulb that can be very cheap, uh, and just place it by your desk, by your work desk. It's what I do every single day. I have an incandescent light bulb to add back in those uh those in uh infrared light wavelengths. And you know, I think about this as from those photos that you saw in the paper here. If you were to take a photo of a standard work desk, you know, with an incandescent with an infrared camera, you wouldn't see anything. So I think to myself, I want to be able to see something. If, let's say my eyes could only sense infrared, I want to see around me. And the way you do that is by adding that incandescent light bulb or by opening a window. Opening a window could be a great, um, could be a great solution there as well. So many practical takeaways that we can take from this. Um, but the main thing is that our body needs these longer wavelengths of light, and they are being deprived from our current indoor artificially artificially lit work environment.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, fantastic summary, Jonathan. I think you really uh conveyed the essence of this paper. I'll I'll add a couple perspectives, and and you you really said it well when you said that our bodies aren't used to this new light, this LED lighting. And I guess I would add a further colour to that uh metaphorically by saying it it's actually deficient lighting. And the f the reason why it's deficient is because due to government regulations to do with climate change and energy saving policies, the reduction in demanded power consumption by lighting has forced engineers to put all of the energy of this light globe into the visual spectrum. Where where by ignoring the fact that there's a biological role of all of this non-visible light that the sunlight gives us that the sun gives us that uh we are using not for reasons other than visual uh discrimination or or visual photoreception. So there's been a grave error made by governments, and the engineers have simply built a product in the the LED bulb in the cool cool LED. They've built a product to serve a government imperative, which is for this women's per watt uh designation, extremely arbitrary, to try and save power. But what the key point here is that by putting LED lighting in all of our indoor environments, we are sacrificing our mitochondrial health. We are sacrificing our mitochondrial health in our eye, in our brain, in our heart, throughout our body, on the altar of green energy and you know clim climate change, like essentially, and that's to put it bluntly. And if you look at these spectrographs and you look at the spectral irradiance of an incandescent bulb, most of the inf of the photons are in are not even visible. They're most of them are longer wavelengths. And the reason why uh short the the the cool white LED is so good at illumination is because it has these huge peaks in at 555 nanometers, which is the peak of human visual uh perception, and and it's got this huge blue peak, but again, it's it's it's distilled light, it's refined, it's it's near infrared deficient, it's causing starvation, it's causing energy starvation. And I think that is what these these neuroinfrared photographs demonstrate is that if you go into a building and you use an an infrared camera, you are in a dead zone of of light of neuroinfrared light. These are it's it's almost it's completely deprived of any of this light that your mitochondrial colonies are using to do its job properly. So the the I think this is actually going to be the most powerful way of conveying this concept, Jonathan, is that we need more people to do near-infrared photography in indoor work environments to show people that they're essentially in a in a dead zone. And if people can realize that that's a bad thing when you compare that image to outside under a tree, which is brilliantly illuminated with with essentially white in these neuroinfrared photographs, because it demonstrates how enriched the outdoor natural environment is in in NIR, which the body is is absolutely using. So like I like I said, I just really want to hammer the point home, is that what the environment that most people are existing in most of the time is profoundly alien and destructive to your mitochondrial health. And if we are to reverse the massive amount of mitochondrial diseases, and look, I say it this way is that it's mitochondrial dysfunction, but it's really mitochondrial maladaption. Your mitochondria are doing the best they can in the situation that you're putting them in. So the fact that you're losing retinal uh photovisual uh discriminatory ability under LED is probably the photoreceptors saying we don't have adequate energy to do our job. So we're gonna pull back and conserve, probably to uh prevent them from dying. Um, you know, there these are these are trade-offs that the the retinal cells are probably making here. And I also think that it's an insight into the long-term pathology. If you're getting reduced visual acuity over six weeks, you know or you're getting that, sorry, the inverse. If you're getting such improvements in visual acuity when you're adding back in natural wavelengths, then what is what is going to be happening to that that eye health and that retinal health over decades and you know, macular degeneration and then everything else because the the eye is a is an extension of the brain and a portal into the rest of the organism's health. So absolutely I echo your calls to for people to get an incandescent bulb. That's exactly what I do in my clinic room. The first thing I do is I open the window as as far as it can, and I have my I take my incandescent globe, put it next to me, and plug it in. And that that is a really simple, cheap, and easy way to add infrared long wavelength light back into our environment and start to mitigate some of these, I think, insidious but ultimately catastrophic health consequences of of living in in red and near-infrared starvation from a light in a light environment point of view.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and Max, maybe um, you know, if if you can, we can add some links to just incandescent light bulbs that you and I like so people can people can go and use that link and try to find you know an incandescent light bulb because I get a lot of questions like I can't get them, I can't purchase them. At least, you know, it definitely does differ where you are in the world. I don't know, but at least, you know, I'm in Florida, I can buy mine on Amazon. Um, I know there's other websites you can buy them on. Uh, so maybe we can share some links with people so they have access to these.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. In Australia, you have to use eBay, essentially. That that's that's where I get mine from. Um can use eBay. Cool. Well I think uh we we're coming up on an hour now. Maybe we'll quickly let's quickly discuss one more paper because we've talked about UV and all cause mortality and cancer mortality. We've talked about neo infrared and red light and visual health and those implications. But maybe we can briefly talk about metabolism because as I'm alluded to we we've known the literature is abundant in its examples of cardiometabolic diabetic complication from circadian rhythm disruption uh which implies an insufficient amount of daytime sunlight and too much light at night. So get walk us through this this next paper if you can.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah so another amazing paper published this month in Cell Metabolism very prestigious journal uh titled Natural Daylight during office hours improves glucose control and whole body substrate metabolism so I first want to yeah there we go and so um so you know we talked like you said we talked about uh specific wavelengths of light this paper is more so looking at from a circadian perspective so I know a lot of your uh listeners know this but just to quickly cover it our body has a circadian clock a master timekeeper in our brain in the supercosmatic nucleus um and this clock basically tells our body what time of day it is and tells our body uh basically what to do, right? It controls hormones and controls all these different processes. It also controls metabolism. And so what these researchers did uh is they they took participants I believe around 13 participants and they had um they put them in two different uh uh work environments and so um it was the same participants and in the image in in the paper we can see the work environment that they were actually in right so there was one environment which was the natural light so light that is coming through these windows so they had massive the big uh full full windows right in front of them and to the side of them uh that allowed in the natural shifting uh daylight throughout the day and then the other environment were uh an artificial artificial artificial artificially lit environment with a in in uh infrared or sorry with a LED not infrared with an LED bulb uh which equivalent uh which was equivalent to you know around 300 lux which is um typical to from like you know a normal work uh work environment so very low low lux there but um that is you know what most people are working around and you can see those ex exact examples that what the study is actually looking at and so they looked at uh uh a few different things right they looked at um uh glucose um control right so how well uh the body was able to um control glucose right and so we see that the part when the participants when they were working under the what they call in this paper natural daylight I don't love that term natural daylight because you know it's not full spectrum daylight that we're talking about here we're just talking about daylight through a window so and and when we when we uh look at that right the wavelengths of light are um are different from when if you were to test the wavelengths of light right outside that window because the window is blocking specific wavelengths of light and so what we see here uh is we see that there's um there's an increase in normal glucose range so max if you go to if you go down just a little bit I believe it's B probably um let's see yep uh but uh go down one more maybe time in normal range so yeah percent time in in normal glucose range so there was a um so these when the participants were under the natural daylight so working in front of a window their time in normal glucose range so basically the range of where glucose is what we where we kind of want it to be uh especially for these type 2 diabetics so sorry I forgot to I forgot to mention here these are type two diabetics so all these participants were type two diabetics um and so they were they they had more time in normal glucose range simply by working in front of this window now um I also want to point out one of the controls or you know the biggest control that they that they did here were so these participants were were uh in here for about like four and a half days so they're in the same environment four and a half days if they had to leave the room so they were in the same room if they had to leave the room uh let's say at night to use a rep use the restroom there was no restroom uh in in this spot they actually uh put on tinted uh orange tinted blue light blocking glasses to uh not allow those short wavelengths of light into the eye at night so they had a lot of great controls here the participants were eating the exact same meals so their meals were the same their physical activity was the same uh and their light exposure outside of the room was pretty much controlled and was pretty much the same and so those you know those are the big big three that we want to focus here when we're looking at glucose control uh and and so if we we controlled those factors we controlled physical activity and food and now the only thing that's changing here is the light that these people are under they're in normal glucose range for longer and they have a lower 24 hour glucose variability. So their variability their glucose fluctuations were lowered when they were under natural daylight through the window. They also looked at uh really quickly here they also looked at um basically you know different circadian uh genes in their muscle cells and there was clearly a link a circadian link here so it was that their circadian rhythms were more in sync and the reason they were more in sync from the natural daylight through the window was because they were getting that dynamic of sunlight from the window. So under the artificially lit environment they only saw those two LED lights the entire day when you're under the natural light through the window you're getting these fluctuations in light. So you're getting and when we look at this like no so sunrise it's very orange um orange light coming from the sun and then it goes more blue more blue more blue until peak during the day and then back dimmer back to that orange at sunset. So you have this dynamic lighting throughout the day and that dynamic lighting is what's is our is the primary thing that sets our circadian rhythm. And so we see these really you know great improvements uh simply by sitting in front of window. So another practical takeaway that we can take from this is you know just try to find a window that is that is better than being completely isolated in a just naturally in in just an artificially lit LED inflorescent uh building. Now the researchers don't point this out in this paper um but I think it is important nonetheless uh Max if you want to quickly bring up um that uh figure one here they actually they should they show the spectrum of light that both of these participants uh both the groups were getting here uh so when we look at the natural daylight right we clearly see more now this only goes up to 780 nanometers keep in mind what they tested uh so uh figure one c uh we clearly see that there's more red uh there's more red light that these participants are getting whereas so blue blue here in this figure is absolutely pretty much nothing the more yellow is more of that light spectrum and so in the artificially lit office light at 640 there was pretty much nothing beyond 640 what they were getting right um but clearly you can see a huge difference there with the naturally uh lit through the window light so they were getting more red light now what's interesting that I um think of about here is that uh you know Glenn Jeffrey did a study where he shined red light on the backs of healthy participants so not type two diabetics but on the backs of healthy participants and he was able to reduce their glucose levels area under the curve for glucose was reduced and peak glucose levels were also reduced. And so these participants were getting a little bit more red light even though that is reduced from the window they were getting more red light than the when than when they were under the artificial uh LEDs so that's another point to think about right so the actual spectrum of light that they were getting was also different. So clearly no doubt about it there was a circadian effect but there may also be that mitochondrial uh effect with the with the longer wavelength of light here um you know not discussed in the paper not something that was tested specifically but uh we can uh you know it could have possibly been an effect here so uh interesting really interesting study here and again in type two diabetics so you know one of the things that I believe Glenn Jeffrey has looked at uh that that specific protocol about shining the red light on the backs of I think he has done type two but type two diabetics and he has seen similar results so you know clearly there is there is there's that there and again if we think about this evolutionarily we would have been outside so we would have been getting both the stimulus we wouldn't get we would have been getting the circadian stimulus and we would have been getting the wavelength stimulus to our mitochondria. So we would have been combining both of those so you know I you know my takeaway from this of this paper is yes great if you can sit by a window but imagine if they put these participants outdoors how much better these effects were going to be because we did you know uh when we looked at those results there the uh the actual you know glucose fluctuations didn't change uh significantly um but again you know that area uh the the time spent in normal glucose range did change so that is a benefit there uh but so you know you will we would have no doubt about it seen uh more and you know probably better results there I will just point out one thing quickly is that uh I did reach out to the corresponding author of this paper. He has been in touch with Glenn Jeffrey. Um so some exciting stuff potentially coming uh collaborating between that those two so that could be really interesting to see where that research leads.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah great summary Jonathan and a couple points here to hammer home the point about the importance of circating rhythm the light that you're being shown that you show your eyes that through the circating mechanism is literally affecting gene transcription. I think that's a really key point it's uh this is this is hammering home how important the light environment and the content of blue the the how much the blue I guess you could say the blue red balance that you're that you're being exposed to is because it's it's fundamentally affecting how your body is expressing its genes. And I recently talked to Sean Sean Cain professor of circadian biology and he described how when we're lacking full spectrum daylight in the 1000 lux or you know 50, 100,000 lux brightness intensity with the balanced spectrum that the body is expecting then you get appropriate depth of or circadian amplitude or essentially transcription and translation of these circadian proteins and genes which are then able to affect the downstream metabolic organs in the adipose tissue, in the pancreas in the liver in the skeletal muscle so that you can maintain good metabolic health. So this is not optional. I don't think this is optional if we're going to try and maintain good metabolic health we need to be outside and we need to be getting really high quality consistent uh not only full spectrum sunlight but brightness as well and and that is that gets to the heart of my criticism of this paper which I think um they they they really needed a third group they needed a group who had a workstation outside and we would compare the the outcomes as they've measured but for those who were literally not getting filtered light through through an artificial window. I just think they didn't go far enough and that's why they the primary outcomes weren't weren't significant. Yeah they they showed some improvements in time and range but I I really think we need to go further and we need that that would help uh back in back up the idea that you know people need outdoor light they need opening windows this is not optional again you to put someone inside a building without artificial light is um Andrew from Gambered who previous podcast guest he called he called fluorescent light a crime against humanity I I honestly think it's it's uh it's infringement on a human right to be in a a room with it with with no natural daylight. But I agree the the key point is that we we really needed to go further and I think another essence of the the sunlight and mental health health story is also going to relate to ultraviolet. So maybe another group who actually were getting direct irradiance of their skin and and I predict that they would have even lower um blood glucose uh levels and and even better time and range.
SPEAKER_00:So it's a step in the right direction but I'm I'm optimistic or hopeful that we're gonna get more of these uh studies done and and look what what about a study that used an incandescent globe next to them like there would there'd be so many different ways to orient this this research to I think get one better quality or better outcomes and two more practical uh outcomes for reimagining the indoor workspace for most of the the planet who are in these inhumane uh light deficient environments yeah no exactly you know the it it is it is you know I'm hopeful uh because you know this paper actually was the uh cover of the um cell metabolism uh uh issue of that month I guess you know January month and so that's really cool you know it's cool that there's eyes on this um it's cool that you know people are you know thinking about this stuff and that's what we need we need more people to to see this and to understand it and the more researchers that we can get to uh ask questions about this and to start hypothesizing and to start actually conducting studies on this you know that's how we're gonna how that's how we're gonna change our um public health you know um uh initiatives and and that's that's the way to do it you know because you know unfortunately you know you and I both know like you know many of the solutions here but you know the only way we're gonna be able to get that is more research and you know that's what's happening here. So it's really awesome to see you know we didn't cover another paper but you know four really awesome papers about light and health in the first month of this year. So I'm I'm hopeful I'm expectant of what's to come and yeah it's gonna it's gonna be it's gonna be good. So I'm I'm excited for for all the the future research that that is ahead.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah amazing and and maybe to recap quickly I think what we've discussed throughout these these papers is that they're each part of the natural solar spectrum ultraviolet light visible light but that's balanced and not isolated in blue wavelengths and in near infrared holistically and in synergistically contribute to to optimal health and we've looked at various outcomes we've looked at epid correlative observational epidemiology and and UV exposure we've looked at uh presence and absence of of near infrared in an office setting in an in an interventional uh control trial and now we've looked at um circadian function and and metabolism and in each situation when we're getting closer to natural sun exposure and our natural environment which was full spectrum sunlight it's almost it's when you think about the sun exposure guidelines in today's day and age it sounds almost absurd to say that we had full spectrum exposure from dawn till dusk in our ancestral environment that's literally what that uncontacted tribe in in the Peruvian Amazon they demonstrated like there was no sunscreen there was nothing like that and there's no artificial light and those people were thriving so um at least from a metabolic health point of view not not to say about um you know traumatic injury or or or or tribal warfare but the the point I guess I'm trying to make is that the closer we get to a natural light environment the healthier people are yeah exactly that's that's exactly it that's exactly it and you know and I think the one quick thing I think um that it's important for more people to start talking about this because even in the health and wellness space at least you know in the in the United States from the perspective that I have it is not talked about.
SPEAKER_00:You know it's food and exercise that are the top two things and if you get those things right you're going to be healthy. Now those are important for sure but there is another factor at play here there's many factors at play but there's another huge and key factor at play here and that's the light that we are surrounded by and so you know when we when we see these uh you know the the cell metabol the cell metabolism study that we looked at today and we look at Glenn Jeffrey's studies with red light it doesn't matter the food you're eating right obviously food has an effect but it doesn't mat but in these studies it didn't matter the food they're eating there is an effect that happens with the light that people are surrounded by whether it be for the better or for the worse getting that longer wavelength light or getting that full spectrum and or getting that short wavelength light. So there is um you know there's this this topic um is is very critical for human health and I think you know we've harped upon that enough um but it's yeah it's very very important.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely you you you can't outrun or you can't out-eat a a junk light diet I think that's the that might be the key takeaway uh so Jonathan where can we where can listeners find out more about you and and follow your work and your educational material?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah so I mainly post um on Instagram it's just my first and last name Jonathan Jurecki uh I you know I post about all these papers that we talked about today and many more um I also am starting to get more frequently um engaged on X. So you can find me there again Jonathan Jurecki first and last name and then um my YouTube and my podcast my podcast is Whole Health and then my YouTube I'm putting out more long format videos because again like you guys have seen here uh science is very nuanced and the studies are very nuanced and we can dive we could have done one of these studies in this whole podcast you know so um it's very nuanced so there I have more long format videos that I will be posting as well. Um and that YouTube there is the whole health podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Amazing well those will be in the show notes. So Jonathan thanks for your time and um I think people really gonna enjoy this this analysis.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, Max. Yeah thank you for having me on and thank you for everything you're doing.
