We cannot live without sunlight. Plants, animals and all beings need light, and not just any type of light, we need balanced light, the full spectrum found in sunlight. This is one key area that has had the biggest impact on my health in the last decade.
The 2017 Nobel Prize for medicine was awarded for discovering how our circadian rhythms are controlled and this was a key area that was not considered during my original healing protocol. Light remains one of the most powerful influences on our behavior and well-being and studies have found that disrupting the circadian system increases the risk of disease.
A few years after my allopathic treatment, I was still suffering badly from insomnia, low energy and hormone issues. Luckily, I discovered a doctor who helped me review my circadian rhythm and support it with consistent environmental input to improve my sleep. This had a positive cascading effect on my physical and mental health.
Keep reading to learn more - and for details on an upcoming event Emma is facilitating on this topic.
Using Light to Cure Cancer
Scientists have recently discovered how to use light to cure cancer. It turns out that immune cells are also controlled by light, and activation of immune cells by light plays a vital role in destroying cells. Scientists realized that by shining specific frequencies of light on a photoreceptor called channelrhodopsin, they could properly activate T-cells to kill cancer cells. This is a newer field of science called optogenetics, which is the study of the control of neurons and other cells in the body using specific wavelengths of light. This is in the realm of quantum biology. This is all a function of your biological clock or circadian rhythm.
Where do these Frequencies come from? The Sun!
At least they should because that’s how your body is designed by nature. Today, people spend more than 90% of their time indoors, disconnected from nature’s light. Indoor light is not equal to nature’s light.
No matter how busy you are, a little bit of sunshine is well-needed and appreciated by all the cells in your body. This will help you work better and gain more energy throughout the day, as well as sleep better at night, as it elevates serotonin in your brain, the hormone responsible (among many other hormones) for mood, energy, appetite and sleep regulation.
The Electromagnetic Spectrum
Natural light is full of codes and information, and your body is designed to be exposed to the entire solar spectrum, not just a portion of blue light, which is what you get from energy-efficient lighting and screens that have little of the other colors of the visible spectrum and none of the non-visible spectrum.
If you look at the solar spectrum, you'll see a lot more frequencies than just blue, and they all do something different in your body.
Red and infrared frequencies are helpful for regeneration, ATP production, and local melatonin production.
UV-B makes vitamin D.
UV-A makes dopamine, serotonin, and melatonin.
Blue and green, when balanced with the sun, keep you alert and stimulate the production of hormones and neurotransmitters.
All existing forms of light, visible and invisible, make up the electromagnetic spectrum. From the lowest energy to the highest energy: radio waves, microwaves, infrared waves, visible light waves, ultraviolet waves, x-rays, and gamma rays
Visible light forms about 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum, containing all the colors of the rainbow, ranging from violet and blue with the highest energy to orange and red with the lowest energy. Sunlight is composed of about 42-43% visible light, 52-55% infrared, which we perceive as heat, and 3-5% UV light.
Blue light is the higher-energy, shorter wavelength of the visible light spectrum. Blue light is emitted from the sun when it is at its highest in the middle of the day. It is also emitted from devices like smartphones and computers. Blue light is also emitted by all ‘white-coloured" LED lights, smartphones, computers, and almost all electronic devices.
"Love and Light health may be the best solutions to our world’s health crisis..." - Dr Robert Rakowski
Natural daylight is a combination of visible full-spectrum, ultraviolet, and infrared wavelengths. But sadly, we're getting fewer photons of light that the body uses to make energy, vitamin D, neurotransmitters, and hormones.
What Living in Unnatural Light is Doing to Us
In the past 100 years, we’ve moved indoors and spent 90% of our time in buildings or houses, deprived of the full spectrum of light outside. We are constantly in a ‘lit’ world; most people come home to be surrounded by ‘suns’ that are equivalent to the brightness of the midday sun.
If we see blue light after the sun has set, the man-made blue wavelength sends a nervous signal to the hypothalamus in the brain and tricks it into thinking it’s still daytime, which then stimulates ganglion cells in the retina.
People may not be experiencing a dark environment in the way that they need to function optimally. This is unnatural, and it has tremendous short- and long-term negative consequences for your overall well-being, physically, mentally, and spiritually. They’re all interrelated, as nothing functions in isolation in the universe.
Why you need more natural light
If you want more photochemical reactions to make more energy so you can get more done, more hormones so you feel and look great, and more neurotransmitters so you feel good and think well... You need more light, and that light needs to come from the sun and not energy-efficient bulbs. These bulbs create harmful photochemical reactions that increase inflammation, decrease your body’s energy output, and make you age faster.
Bright screens and ceiling lights that we expose ourselves to at night activate melanopsin, reduce melatonin, and disrupt our sleep. Melanopsin is a blue-light-sensing protein that’s present in 5,000 neurons in our eyes. Naturally, the same protein is found in both normal and blind people. These neurons are the hardware for the master clock in our brain.
When we spend most of our day indoors and do not give ourselves enough time to go outside, the next day we wake up to an alarm clock, further confusing our bodies. If this cycle continues, we are more likely to develop depression and anxiety. That’s why ‘light for vision is not the same as light for health’. This is a simple idea that has started an innovation between architects and engineers who are coming up with new security and lighting for buildings in the future. Every smartphone or laptop now comes with an option for night vision.
Upcoming Community Gathering
Join Emma to learn more about how light can have positive (and negative) effects on physiology and health, such as; inflammation, immune responses and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. You will also learn useful ways to harness the power of natural light in your own life.
Date: Thursday, July 20
Time: 9:30-10:30am PT / 11:30-12:30am CT/ 12:30-1:30am ET / 4:30-5:30pm BST (England)/ 5:30-6:30pm CET (Germany)
Cost: Free for Health Navigators Thriver members - just $15 for non-members
For more details and to register click here