BYRON HINTERLAND RETREAT - Circadian Living by Regenerative Health Retreats

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome back to the Regenerative Health Podcast.
Today I am speaking with BobFosbury.
He is an emeritus astronomer atthe European Southern
Observatory and an honoraryprofessor at University College
London.
So he is also a colleague ofprevious podcast guests, Scott

(00:29):
Zimmerman and recently GlennJeffrey and he is applying his
astrophysics training andbackground to these fundamental
problems of the interactions oflight on biology.
So, Bob, thank you for joiningme today Very pleased to be here

(00:50):
.
So tell us how someone with suchan extensive physics and
astronomy background getsinterested and involved in
solving or attacking some of themost important problems that I
believe are in biology and humanhealth.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
I mean, it's a very good question, of course, and I
think it raises a veryfundamental issue with the way
science operates at the moment.
I mean, okay, I was anastrophysicist.
I started off in the late 1960sat the Royal Greenwich
Observatory in Hurstman's Zoo inSussex and I became the first
research fellow to be sent tothe Anglo-Australian Observatory

(01:35):
in Coonabarabran in Australiain 1975.
And since then I've spent acareer in astrophysics not very
much in a university environmentbut more in an international
environment.
I was employed by the EuropeanSouthern Observatory and the
European Space Agency during mycareer to work on various space

(01:58):
projects, notably the HubbleSpace Telescope and, to some
extent, the James Webb SpaceTelescope.
But I had an active researchcareer.
We had these positions where wecould spend 50% of our time on
research as well as 50% of thetime on running observatories
and so on, and so I becamefamiliar with many techniques in
astrophysics.

(02:18):
And when I retired from theEuropean Space Agency more than
10 years ago now, they kick usout fairly young from the space
agency, so you have to survivein other ways.
I realized I'd had a wonderfulcareer in astrophysics.
I'd used the biggest telescopeson the ground and the biggest
telescopes in space and you knowwe'd worked on many problems in

(02:43):
astrophysics.
You know the galaxies at theedge of the universe, which are
very pertinent to the James Webbtelescope program at the moment
In fact I'm actually activelyworking on that problem as well
as biology.
But when I retired I thought,well, I could carry on doing
this with my colleagues you know, not get paid anything, but

(03:04):
just do it for free and carry on.
Many of my colleagues did that.
But I wanted to look around andlook at other things that
interested me and I'd always hadan interest in the colours of
life, which included biology andgeology and so on.
And I'm an avid spectroscopist.
I'm obviously a professionalspectroscopist with astronomy,

(03:24):
but I also was an amateurspectroscopist.
I'm obviously a professionalspectroscopist with astronomy,
but I also was an amateurspectroscopist.
In fact I have a set ofspectrometers in my study here
with me at the moment which Iuse all the time on this
biological problem.
And it was by accident that Igot involved with Glenn Jeffery
at UCL through the problem ofthe vision of the reindeer,

(03:46):
which was the problem that Ifirst worked on with him.
But when he started telling meabout the work he was doing with
red light and its potentialeffects on mitochondria.
We had an extraordinaryconversation and he said well,
we're using 670 nanometer lightto study the effect on
mitochondria.
And I said, you know, naively,I said, well, why are you using

(04:08):
670 nanometers, why are youusing that wavelength?
And he kind of said well, youknow, it's a available
wavelength and these leds arenot so easy to get at that time
and we're using it seems to work.
And I said do you realize?
That's the wavelength wherechlorophyll does photosynthesis?
And he looked at me and henearly kicked me out of the lab.

(04:29):
He said look, if people here inthe Institute of Ophthalmology
know that I'm working on plants,they'll kick me out and I'll
kick you out.
So this became a bit of a jokebut a sort of verboten topic
that you know we talk aboutphotosynthesis.

(04:53):
Since then we've realizedthere's such a close connection.
This is a very, veryfundamental wavelength in all of
life and I observed this myselfeverywhere.
I call it the 42 of biology.
You know, douglas Adams, life,the Universe and Everything 42.

(05:13):
Many of your audience I'm surewill have heard the number 42.
But anyway, the number inbiology is 670 nanometers.
Okay, and we very recently,just in the last couple of days
we've come across a huge amountof evidence that this is indeed
very, very relevant.
Anyway, that was the way I gotinto the subject and so I did

(05:37):
provide, because Glenn Jeffreyis a visual neuroscientist.
We have Mike Powner, who worksat City University, who is our
biologist.
I mean, he's a very expertbiologist.
But then we started workingwith other people and we were
talking to people inphotodynamic therapy.
We were talking to people insort of raw medical biology, and

(06:03):
we then eventually got intotouch with Scott Zimmerman and
Roger Schrelt, who does hispodcast on medical education in
the US, and so we realized wehad a very multidisciplinary
team together and in factbiology because Mike Pown is so
busy all the time, biology wasour weak point because he had so

(06:26):
little time to spend with us.
So we looked at this problem, Ithink, in a very, very different
way from the medics and thebiologists.
And you know, I realised astime has gone on that the you
know, the kind of science wekind of science I was doing in
astrophysics is very, verypertinent, this subject in

(06:50):
biology, and perhaps we'll gointo that in a little more
detail in a moment, but that wasreally the way I got into the
topic and in retrospect Irealize I've come down a path
which is almost unique.
Which is almost unique I don'tknow anyone else who's doing
quite this interface betweenastrophysics and biology, but it

(07:11):
gives us a very uniqueperspective on what's going on
with the fundamental problem ofthe way light interacts with
biology.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
Yeah, it's a very fascinating field and the
multidisciplinary aspect of whatyou're doing, I think, is some
of the most interesting to me,because there's not a better way
, I don't think, of getting afresh set of eyes, a fresh
perspective and a fresh way oftackling problems and getting
people from different fields toreally look at the same problem.

(07:43):
So maybe you can frame for thelisteners what is the, I guess,
what was normal in terms ofthese light-life interactions
and why and how are things goneso wrong in the 21st century?

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yes, in the 21st century.
Yes, well, it starts with theevolution of life on the planet
Earth.
Now we don't know aboutevolution of life on other
planets yet.
Hopefully we will, at leastrelatively soon.
But on Earth life is basicallydriven by sunlight.

(08:25):
It wasn't necessarily in thevery beginning.
I mean, the current idea isthat life perhaps started off in
these deep ocean vents.
But as soon as life got to thesurface, the existing life
structures realised that theyhad a wonderful source of energy
in the form of sunlight.

(08:45):
So the photosynthetic processevolved very early.
We had the cyanobacteria in theoceans producing oxygen,
gradually filling the oceanswith oxygen as the waste product
they produce fromphotosynthesis, and then the
oxygen started filling theatmosphere and that opened up
the possibility of life movingfrom the oceans to the land.

(09:08):
We're talking about billions ofyears ago now, three and a half
billion years onwards, and bythe time we got to about just
over two billion years ago, theatmosphere was pretty pumped up
with oxygen and life moved out,was able to begin to move out
onto land, and life formed akind of Faustian pact with

(09:31):
oxygen, because most of the lifein the early days found oxygen
to be highly toxic.
They were anoxic forms of life.
If there was too much oxygenaround it killed them.
So the adaptation to livingwith oxygen, which something

(09:51):
happened early in the history ofthe evolution of life and when
complex life started, when wegot the first eukaryotic cell,
the first complex cell which hadingested what became the

(10:12):
mitochondrion and what becamethe chloroplast.
The function of themitochondrion was to basically
to protect the cell from thetoxic properties of oxygen.
So that was the Faustian pactsaying look, we'll use the
oxygen because it's a wonderfulsource of energy for us to burn
our food and make all our energy.
But we've got to be prettycareful with the way we handle

(10:33):
the oxygen inside the body.
We've got to protect the cellsfrom the oxygen.
We've got to package the oxygenup so it can transport into the
mitochondria where it gets usedin respiration.
We can do that without doingtoo much damage to the cells.
And the kind of damage that itdoes is the damage that is done

(10:55):
by reactive oxygen species,which I know you've covered
before on these talks so I don'treally have to describe what
those are.
But if you have too manyreactive oxygens you trigger
cell death and so on.
You have all kinds of problems,a bit like throwing a hand
grenade into a cell.
On the other hand, thesereactive oxygens, I think, are

(11:17):
more critical than we realizedin the process of energy flow
and energy generation in thebody.
In the process of energy flowand energy generation in the
body, they're an essentialelement in the way that we make
ATP, the energy currency of thecell, which I think I don't have
to define.
You've discussed this before.
I don't know.
I've seen triphosphate.

(11:38):
It's the energy that the celluses to do all the things that
cells have to do and drives theway we move and the way we think
and so on.
So this, this way of um usingthe waste product of
photosynthesis, on the one hand,the oxygen and the light coming
from the sun, which isessential for photosynthesis but

(11:59):
also, as I will hopefullydemonstrate, essential for life
on the biosphere as well, is thecoupling that we're dealing
with.
It's the way the mitochondrionuses the oxygen and the products
produced by photosynthesis, thefood that we all eat and also

(12:23):
the plant material that makesall the gas, coal and oil that
we burn and you know, the wholeenergy source.
Basically is the solar photonscoming and first of all hitting
plants, but also hitting animalsas well.
And so this sunlight, thesesolar photons and the

(12:44):
interaction with the biosphereis what life is.
I mean, this is life, it's theprocess, and it's a process
which has a characteristic which, of course, is very unusual,
because life is very unusual andthe process is that it's life
is a system that is way fromthermodynamic equilibrium.
Life is a system that is wayfrom thermodynamic equilibrium.

(13:05):
You know, your body has aconstant temperature, hopefully,
of about 37 degrees centigrade,that's about 310 kelvins on the
absolute scale.
Your body has a temperature of310 kelvins which it maintains,
and if you drift too far fromthat temperature then you're
going to die if you drift toohard.

(13:25):
So this is a kind of state ofequilibrium your body, your
homeostasis, the stable form ofyour body and all of life.
I mean, what I'm saying isapplicable to humans, but it's
applicable in general to thewhole of life on the planet.
This homeostasis is a curiousstate of equilibrium because

(13:47):
it's in what we call kineticequilibrium.
The temperature is maintainedconstant by a whole load of
processes that are going on inyour body, sensing and making
sure that you're kept at aconstant temperature.
But the processes are way outof thermodynamic equilibrium.
They're not, like, you know, acup of coffee in the room

(14:10):
gradually cooling to come intothermal equilibrium with the,
with the room, your body, likewhen, when you're alive, you're
away from thermal, thermodynamicequilibrium.
But you have this thermalequilibrium, this kinetic
equilibrium.
Your molecules are bouncingaround because they have a
temperature of 310 kelvins.
So each of those molecules hasa kinetic energy associated with

(14:32):
it, a three halves KT inphysics terms, associated with
its thermal motion.
Like the molecules in a gas,they all have three halves KT
kinetic energy in them.
Like the molecules in a gas,they all have three halves KT
kinetic energy in them.
So the molecules in your body,at your kinetic equilibrium, the

(14:54):
way they interact with oneanother is determined.
The rate at which they interactwith one another is determined
by the temperature.
So all the biomolecules in yourbody are interacting with one
another.
All these redox reactions thatyou have in respiration,
metabolism, they're all going onat a temperature of 37 degrees

(15:17):
Celsius, and if you wanted themto go faster you could increase
the temperature, but then yourhomeostasis would fall apart.
So there's an issue there.
If you're sitting in the dark ina room, you're sitting in a red
light, so you're not sitting inthe dark.
But if you're sitting in thedark in a room, your homeostasis

(15:40):
will allow you to live, becauseyou can produce energy through
your mitochondria and so on, andyou can you know, you can
digest nutrients and you burnyour food and make atp, all of
those things.
But if you were sitting in adark room for months on end, you

(16:01):
wouldn't be so happy.
You wouldn't be so happybecause life relies on the
sunlight and your body relies onthe sunlight.
If you turn the sunlight off,you don't immediately die or
fall asleep.
You'll continue.
But if you turn the sunlight offfor six months, you're going to

(16:21):
be sick, and if you turnsunlight off for a year, you're
probably going to be dead.
So the point I want to make andthis is probably the most
important point I'm going tomake is that the process of life
, all of life on Earth anyway,the life that's based on
photosynthesis in plants, all ofthat life is dependent on the

(16:44):
flow of sunlight through thebiological systems, whatever
they are.
Now you can say, well, some ofthem live in the dark and so on,
and we can argue that point,and that's a good question to
ask.
But that can be answered.
But we all have access tobiological systems that are

(17:07):
often in sunlight.
I think that's a simple answer.
You know, we eat food that'scome from sunlight and so on, so
we're in contact.
Even when we're in the darkwe're in contact with biological
systems that have their energybecause of sunlight.

(17:28):
So this concept of homeostasis,which biologists and medics are
very familiar with and they'revery familiar with the way it's
maintained in terms ofbiological systems, that's fine.
What happens if you walk outinto sunlight?
Now we've shown and ScottZimmerman has talked about this

(17:52):
on your podcast we've shown thatthe human body, and indeed life
in general, is an incrediblyefficient harvester of light and
for three-dimensional bodies,unlike leaves, tree leaves,
which are two-dimensional.
For three-dimensional bodies,you have to get that light

(18:15):
inside your body and we nowunderstand how that happens.
But the only light that getsdeep into your body is the light
in the near infrared, becausein the visible light we have all
these powerful pigments, thesehighly colored molecules called
porphyrins, like chlorophyll andhemoglobin and so on, which

(18:37):
absorb light very strongly.
But as soon as we move into theinfrared part of the spectrum,
there are very few, if any.
Well, there are no strongpigments in life in the infrared
.
They're all very weak.
Chlorophyll is just transparentin the infrared.
So when we move from thevisible, where all the

(18:58):
photosynthesis happens with thinleaves, they don't need leaves,
don't need the light topenetrate deep into them,
because they have everything onthe surface.
But if you're a human when youmove into the infrared.
The only light that you getdeep into your body is in the

(19:19):
near infrared and that peaks ataround 800 nanometers, and it's
the gap between the strongabsorption of haemoglobin in the
visible spectrum and if youmove further into the infrared
spectrum, beyond about 1200nanometers, you get the water
absorption.
Now we think these, theseabsorptions close to the surface
of the body are probably veryimportant as well for for life.

(19:41):
That's not really what we'regoing to be talking about today,
but I think, in the visible,the interactions of light with
the skin producing vitamin D andso on and probably protecting
us from bacterial infections andso on, and similarly, a lot
further in the infrared, theinteraction of light with water

(20:02):
is probably very important.
There are very complex physicalinteractions of infrared light
with water, which can do allkinds of things.
These are very related problems, but we'll be focusing today on
the near-infrared part, wherethe light gets deep into the
body.
So you have to look.

(20:25):
Not only it's obvious that thetrees are antennas.
You go outside and you look atthe trees.
You see the canopy of the treesin the forest, you see the
grass on the ground, you see allthe plants growing, all of
their structures are an antennasticking up into the sky.
So you know, certainly, inphotosynthesis, life is an

(20:47):
antenna, collecting sunlight,harvesting it and making the
sugars, making carbohydrates,through this process of
photosynthesis, which is verycomplex and quantum, mechanical,
and so on.
Also, your body, when you walkoutside, is an antenna.
It's an antenna that happens towork in the infrared.

(21:09):
So you know, I have a phrasewhich I invented quite recently,
but the more and more I thinkabout it, the more personate I
think it is, and that's thatlife on Earth and Earth I mean
the whole biosphere is anantenna with its receivers tuned

(21:29):
to sunlight.
So life on Earth is an antennawith the receivers tuned to
sunlight, and that's what it is.
That is what life is, and it'sthe tuning to sunlight which is
so critical here.
So let's get OK.
So, having said that I hopethat's clear We'll go back to

(21:53):
the history of the problem.
Well, the history of the problemstretches from about three and
a half billion years ago to 1939, when history was broken, and
1939 was when fluorescent tubeswere introduced as light sources

(22:13):
in factories and, eventually,homes and so on.
Now, fluorescent tubes weredeveloped because they were very
efficient in emitting visiblelight and they didn't waste a
lot of energy producing lightoutside of the visible spectrum.
They did produce a little bitof infrared light, but not very

(22:33):
much, and you know people don'tlike living under fluorescent
lights.
People feel uncomfortable.
There's a long history ofpeople being very uncomfortable
living under fluorescent tubes.
I'm sure that's partly due tothe fact that they flicker, but
basically they're very poor inthe infrared and if you don't
get this infrared light for longperiods of time, you get sick.

(22:54):
Now, most people living underoffice lighting go out in the
evening and they get sunlight.
They wake up in the morning,they get sunlight, so they don't
suffer too much.
But if you're a factory workerand uh, especially if you work
shifts at night, you're alwaysunder fluorescent tubes and you
very rarely see daylight, andthose are the people who tend to

(23:17):
suffer problems medicalproblems, okay, so then that
developed until the beginning ofthe 21st century and in uh, I
think and I think it was 1996where the first commercial white
LED was introduced and sincethen LEDs have become the
dominant source of lighting inthe built environments.

(23:39):
Now, leds benefited enormouslyfrom the invention of the blue
LED.
It got the Nobel Prize forphysics in 2014,.
I think it was because the blueLED was able to produce blue
light itself, but it was able touse its energy to excite
phosphors in the lamp, whichemitted the other colors.

(24:00):
So your white LED has a strongblue driving diode in it and the
other colors come fromphosphors which are chosen to
emit in the visible part of thespectrum.
So the end product is thiswonderful light source which is
very efficient, using electricalenergy to produce just visible

(24:21):
light and because it's soefficient at doing that, it
doesn't produce anything outsidethe visible spectrum.
So it's just visible light andit's great for lighting rooms.
But I now have a quote that Imake from an unknown because I
didn't write his name down atthe time an unknown announcer on

(24:43):
the BBC Today programme, theMorning Today programme, about
this time last year, where itwas a senior medic in the
National Health Service and hewas saying we have this problem
with the you know, the gradualdecay in public health and life
expectancy and we, you know, westrongly suspect that it has a

(25:04):
lot to do with ultra-processedfoods and the lifestyle choices
and so on.
And he said he actually saidthis.
I remember it very clearly andGlenn Jeffrey heard it as well.
Separately.
He was listening to the radioat the same time and it hit him
in exactly the same way.
He said there's a problem.
And of course, both of us saidto ourselves well, we do

(25:32):
understand what this problem is.
Why don't you listen to what wesay?
And this problem is that peopleare living under pure visible
illumination in the builtenvironment, and this is a
complete break with theevolutionary history of life on

(25:52):
the planet.
This is the first time thatlife forms on the planet have
been consistently irradiated byjust visible light, and frankly
it doesn't work.
Life doesn't work like that.
And so the fundamental problemis we've moved from a time when

(26:14):
we were always illuminated bywhat we call, in physics, we
call a thermal light source.
I mean, the sun is close tobeing a blackbody radiator.
It's not exactly, of course,but it's close to being a
blackbody radiator.
So it radiates of a broadspectrum and, of course, the
life that's evolved under thesunlight has evolved to exploit

(26:35):
all the light that reaches thesurface of the planet.
So you know, there are someparts of the spectrum of the sun
that doesn't reach.
You know, the far ultravioletdoesn't reach the surface,
fortunately, because it wouldkill us, and quite a lot of the
infrared radiation doesn'tdirectly reach us.
But the visible region, theextended visible region, from

(26:55):
about 300 nanometers, where thelight is cut off by ozone, and
about two and a half microns ortwo microns where the light is
cut off, largely cut off bywater vapor in the atmosphere
and water absorption in theoceans, by water vapor in the
atmosphere and water absorptionin the oceans.

(27:15):
We have this window of sunlighton the ground which extends
from, say, 300 nanometers towell.
The cutoff in the infrared is agradual cutoff, but let's say
one and a half microns roughly.
I mean there is light beyondthat, but we have this range of
sunlight which life has adaptedto using Now very cleverly we're

(27:36):
very clever humans.
We worked out what was happeningwith visible light.
It was going intophotosynthesis and since
photosynthesis was firstdiscovered, it took about nearly
two and a half centuries tofigure out how photosynthesis
worked.
It's not a simple process, butI don't think anyone's really
thought carefully about whathappens to all the other light

(27:58):
that well, some people havethought about this I'm
exaggerating, but in generalit's not in the public
consciousness.
What's happening to the lightoutside the visible range where
photosynthesis occurs, andthat's the issue we're dealing
with.
Photosynthesis occurs, andthat's the issue we're dealing
with, and we're beginning tounderstand some of the details

(28:19):
about how this works.
And there are two areas thereperhaps we can discuss
separately.
One is the way the light getsdeeply into three-dimensional
life bodies and other systems,and the other is when the light
gets into the body, what does itactually do?
And I think we're we'rebeginning to understand both of
those problems, but we at thecurrent time you can't expect us

(28:44):
to have the complete answerbecause it's going to be very
complicated to figure out allthe interactions of infrared
light with biological systems.
There are probably many, manyof them, hundreds, maybe
thousands of interactions oflight with biological systems.
We're beginning to see thefirst smattering of those, but

(29:05):
it'll take a while, many PhDtheses later, to figure out
what's going on.
But I think the general conceptof withdrawing the full spectrum
of sunlight from oursurroundings in the built

(29:25):
environment fortunately not inthe natural environment, but in
the built environment this isthe problem we're facing and you
know, in my opinion, thegradual decay in public health
that we're seeing now, and it'squite rapid and it's growing in
seriousness.
The fundamental problem behindthis is the fact that we're

(29:49):
starving people of the fullspectrum of sunlight, the full
spectrum of ground-basedsunlight, the light that reaches
the ground, and we have to makepeople aware of the fact that,
while one has to be carefulgoing out and exposing oneself
to too much sunlight, it's veryeasy to expose yourselves to the

(30:13):
beneficial effects of sunlightwithout suffering these dangers.
And we can talk about that.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
Great summary, bob.
I think that this topic oflight and the problem that
you've laid out is just hyperemblematic of a reductionist
mindset and medicine isnotorious for having a
reductionist mindset, butengineering and life in other
facets of society obviously istoo.

(30:46):
And this idea that we couldstrip away more than 50% strip
away more than 50%, probablystrip away 90% of the light diet
, the light nutrients that thissun has provided life for 3.4
billion years, that we couldstrip that away and then expect
there to be the same biologicaloutcome.

(31:08):
I don't even think whoeverinvented fluorescent bulbs and
LED lighting had even thoughtabout this problem.
So it's not in any way amalicious one.
I don't believe.
I think it's driven purely byinterest to improve lumens per
watt, energy efficiency andsimply disregarding or in

(31:30):
ignorance of the fact that morethan 50% of the photons hitting
Earth that we're talking aboutinfrared here are non-visible.
And just because we can't seethem doesn't mean they're not
doing anything.
And I believe that's really thecrux of the issue and how we
can continue to walk so far awayfrom our biological niche is

(31:52):
because this vital whitenutrient is not even obvious to
people, because our ocularsystem, our visual system,
doesn't allow us to really seein the near infrared, which
obviously you can if you usespecial camera technology.
But talk before we, and Ireally want to hear your two

(32:13):
explanations of how light isgetting in and then interacting
with biology, but maybe as anangle or perspective on those
two questions is why do youthink proportionally this light
problem is more significantperhaps than the ultra-processed
food problem?

Speaker 2 (32:40):
And however you want to answer that, go ahead.
I'm not sure I really want toanswer that in a quantitative
sense, because the rise ofultra-processed foods has been
very rapid and I think thenutritionists understand this
problem.
It's the way we digest, it'sthe way the food actually passes

(33:02):
through the digestive tract andso on, and I'm certainly not an
expert in that area, but I'mthinking in terms of the
fundamental nature of theworking of life and the working
of the human digestive system.
Metabolism and so on means thatif you feed the human with the

(33:23):
wrong food, you're going to haveproblems, because it's not
necessarily that you don't haveall the right nutrients.
It's the fact from my, myunderstanding anyway, listening
to what the nutritionists sayit's the fact that the, uh, the,
the nutrients are in, ingestedin a way which the gut is not

(33:44):
able to process properly, ie you, you get raw chemicals coming
into your body rather thanpackaged, complex chemical
bundles that have to go throughyour digestive tract to be
unpicked, piecemeal.
So I think it's a.
That's the way I see the, the,the ultra process food problem.

(34:06):
You know that you, you can, youcan list all in all the
nutrients you have in your food,but if it's not packaged
properly, it doesn't getdigested properly, and so on.
So I don't think I have muchmore to say about that
particular problem and Icertainly don't want to make a
strong statement that the lightis the worst problem and the

(34:29):
ultra-fertilized food is asupplementary problem.
It depends what you do, itdepends you know what you do, it
depends on your lifestyle.
If you're a farmer and you workoutside all the time, you're
going to get plenty of light, soyou're not going to have any
problem with the light problemthat we're dealing with.
But if you're a nurse on nightshift or if you're a doctor in

(34:50):
an intensive care unit, um,you're only given white leds and
you get sick.
And if you look I mean I'm sureit's not come out of the covid
inquiry yet, but I'm sure rogerroger schrell would agree with
with me that you know, if peopleduring the covid pandemic had

(35:13):
had had had more exposure to thesun before they caught COVID or
before they started working inintensive care units, they would
have survived better.
I think there's very strongevidence for that past history
of sunlight which makes you verysubject to infections like

(35:39):
COVID.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
Yes, I didn't mean to ambush you with that one, only
to quickly convey my perspective, which is from and we're going
to get into exactly what ishappening.
But I really think that thelight environment is setting the
stage for the mitochondrialdysfunction which the ultra
processed food is exacerbating.
That is kind of my perspectiveas it stands now.
And the insulin resistance andthese inability to deal with the

(36:08):
food, excess nutrients, excessenergy, deuterium, et cetera is
fundamentally exacerbating thisdysfunction, this mitochondrial
dysfunction that's a product ofthis infrared, deficient, blue,
toxic lighting environment.
So only to really frame that as, yeah, and to emphasize that

(36:31):
these are complementary,co-exacerbating processes, and
that's why I commonly tellpeople that you need to clean up
your light diet and your fooddiet and both are very important
and, depending on theindividual, as you mentioned,
they'll be in differingimportance proportionally.
So talk about these lightinteractions, talk about how the

(36:53):
light is getting into the body.
And again, just a quickreminder for those who listened
to the Scott Zimmerman episodeshis great, groundbreaking paper
essentially analyzed this gyriand the sulci of the brain and
inferred from an optics point ofview that these structures are
optimized to essentiallyconcentrate near infrared
photons, uh, deep, deep withinthose, those, uh, brain

(37:17):
structures.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
So so, so, let's, let's explore this um topic,
about interactions of thesephotons with biology yes, I have
to admit that scott and I talknot every day but almost every
day.
So we've discussed this veryclosely over the last months and
again, I think it's a verybeautiful concept and process

(37:43):
and the physical understandingis, on one hand extremely
complex but on the other hand,quite simple.
And I'll try and give you thesimple view and you know I'm
talking with Scott here, I'm notyou know, we've done this
together.
I've already hinted it to you alittle bit earlier in our talk

(38:05):
today the fact that lightbehaves very differently in the
near infrared from the way itdoes in the visible, and that's
a product of that's physics.
Basically it's that the abilityof photons from sun, the
visible photons of light, canexcite pigments in the visible

(38:28):
spectrum.
And all the paint pigments thatyou use are pigments, because
you can excite electrons in thepigment to an excited level and
the energy that you you use toexcite that molecule or atom or
whatever the pigment is, umtakes light away from the

(38:50):
visible spectrum, so it makesthe visible light coloured.
So the pigments, the domain ofthe pigments, is the visible and
the ultraviolet spectrum as youmove from the visible to the
near-infrared.
The molecules do have low-lyingenergy levels, but they're

(39:13):
generally very weak absorbers atlow levels which can be excited
by near-infrared photons.
But basically you run out ofthe possibility of exciting
atoms and molecules to a higherenergy state using photons.
So basically the simplest wayof putting it is that in the

(39:35):
near-infrared there are nopigments.
There are pigments but they'revery weak and some of these
pigments in the infrared areweaker by factors of thousands
or tens or even hundreds ofthousands.
They're much, much weaker thanthe absorbers in the visible.
So you move into this differentdomain where you don't have any

(39:59):
absorbers around.
You have very few absorbers andthey're very, very weak.
But you still have all thecellular structures and so on
associated with life.
In plants you have the cellularstructures in the leaf, and in
bodies you have the lipidstructures of cell walls and
mitochondrial walls aboutmembranes and so on.
You still have lots ofstructures, but these structures

(40:23):
don't absorb in general.
When they do, but not often,they're're very, very weak.
And so you hear from a visiblespectrum where the light
transport is dominated byabsorption.
You get a photon coming intoyour hand.
It'll penetrate a millimeter,say, in the visible, or even

(40:47):
less in the visible.
The first thing it comes acrosswill probably absorb it.
The first thing it comes acrosswill probably absorb it.
So you only really illuminatethe surface layers with a short
wavelength light.
This is why leaves are thin.
A leaf is generally less than amillimetre thick.
The first thing that a photondoes is to find an absorber,

(41:08):
even in plants.
That's not true.
I think the photons wereprobably scattered several times
before they actually reach achloroplast and get absorbed by
chlorophyll, because the plantsare very efficient at scattering
light.
And then we can talk about thatas a separate topic.
But that's a very importanttopic.
But in the body, the photon ofinfrared light coming into my

(41:30):
hand will actually penetrateseveral millimeters.
In fact we reckon it penetratesat 800 nanometers.
It penetrates about fivemillimeters on average before it
hits something.
But it doesn't hit an absorber.
It's very unlikely to hit anabsorber.
It will hit something thatscatters it, a cell wall or some

(41:51):
structure, refractive index,structure refractive index
difference.
Scott's talked about this.
I'm sure you know.
You.
You have variations inrefractive index between the
lipid and the water and variousstructures within the within the
body that can scatter light.
So what the light does?
It gets five millimeters intothe body, it bounces in some

(42:13):
direction and it will goprobably for another roughly
five, five millimeters before ithits something else and
scatters again.
So your photons basically getfed into the body by the
scattering process.
You're fairly unlikely to bescattered directly out of the

(42:35):
body.
Directly.
The first photon that gets inis rather unlikely to be
scattered out again.
Reflected back, basically, it'smore likely to go into the body
and as you get deeper anddeeper into the body the less
likely you are to lose photonsfrom the surface.
So you do this random walk andit's a kind of random walk.

(42:55):
There are details here in theway that scatters, sometimes in
the atmosphere.
A photon that scatters off amolecule of nitrogen in the air
will really scatter to make theblue sky and that scattering
process is roughly isotropic.
It's not actually isotropic,it's slightly forward dominated

(43:17):
and backward dominated in thedirection of the incoming photon
.
But it's a fairly isotropicprocess.
So you can be scattered more orless in any direction to make
the blue sky.
A photon coming into the bodyis probably more strongly
forward scattered than it is inother directions.
But I mean, I don't know indetail and it's possible to

(43:41):
experiment and work this out andsomebody probably does know,
but I don't know exactly, butit's probably forward scattered,
which means that on average itmoves further into the body.
So what you have is you haveall these photons entering into
the body, bouncing around offthese scattering structures,

(44:05):
cellular structures, and justcarrying out this random walk.
And if we assume it's a randomwalk, then the distance that the
photon travels after, thedistance that the photon travels
after, say, 10 scatterings onaverage, is the square root of
10, which is roughly three timesthe five millimeters which we
call the photon mean free path.

(44:27):
It's the mean distance thephoton travels between
scatterings.
So the simple picture of thescattering is you have photons
getting into the body, they'rebouncing around many times and
after scattering n times they'vereached a distance of roughly,
on average, square root of ntimes.

(44:49):
The photon mean free path intothe body, and so that gives us a
scale length that we can dealwith for modelling light going
into the body.
Now what happens to a photonthat gets deep into the body?
What's its fate?
It can do one of two things.
It can either escape throughthe surface and once it's deep

(45:11):
into the body it's very hard forit to do that.
So the only other fate it hasis to be absorbed by one of
these weak absorbers.
And it gets many chances ofbeing absorbed by one of these
weak absorbers because it'sscattering around many times.
So it's traveling a longdistance inside the body, much
further than just the thicknessof my hand, for instance.

(45:34):
It's traveling, probably, youknow, several times the
thickness of my hand in distancejust by scattering around.
And so what this does, thisprocess does it couples.
It couples these very weakabsorbers deep into your body

(45:55):
with the atmosphere of the sun.
So you're establishing a directconnection between the photons
coming from the sun all the waydown through the atmosphere,
entering your body, bouncingaround many times and eventually
being absorbed by one of thesevery weak absorbers in your

(46:15):
tissue.
And that's establishing theequilibrium with our star that I
mentioned right at thebeginning of this talk today,
talking about the star and theinterstellar nebula.
In exactly the same way thatthe nebula is coming into
radiative equilibrium with thestar.

(46:37):
That's exciting it thebiomolecules in my body, deep in
my body, are coming intoequilibrium with our star, the
sun, with the R star, the sun.

(46:59):
So this is an entirely differentcomponent of the homeostasis we
were talking about thehomeostasis in the dark.
You're maintaining your bodytemperature by burning your food
in your mitochondria, makingATP.
You're using nutrients, you'rebreathing oxygen.
You're doing all the thingsthat establish your homeostasis
in the dark.
When you move into sunlight,you're using nutrients, you're
breathing oxygen.
You're doing all the thingsthat establish your homeostasis
in the dark.
When you move into sunlight,you have an additional component
of homeostasis, which is thesephotons coming into your body

(47:23):
from the sun directly.
And I wish to tell you firstthere are two things I need to
tell you.
The first thing I'll tell youis there's something very
special about these photons.
The energy you have availableto your body in the dark is the

(47:44):
kinetic energy of the moleculesbouncing around at a temperature
of 37 degrees centigrade.
That's the three halves kT thatwe talked about.
The energy of an infraredphoton, I mean, although it's an
infrared photon and you thinkof infrared photons of having
low energy the energy carried byan infrared photon is something
40 times larger than thekinetic energy associated with

(48:08):
the molecular vibrations in yourbody.
Fortunately, these photons arerare and you're not heating up
to the 6000 kelvins of thesurface of the sun, so you're
not in thermodynamic equilibriumwith the sun.
You're in a radiativeequilibrium with the sun, but
the radiative equilibrium isdriven by a much lower density

(48:30):
of photons than you get in theatmosphere of the sun, obviously
because of the large distanceyou have to travel.
So we have a dilute but highenergy radiation field inside
the body.
It's very dilute, but theindividual packets of energy are
quite large.
Now what happens when one ofthese weak absorbers absorbs one

(48:53):
of these photons in theinfrared?
This is critical.
Okay, this is a critical partof this talk.
You excite a molecule to a statewhich is nearly two electron
volts above the ground state.
That's a huge amount of energycompared to the energy that your

(49:15):
normal homeostasis had, thethermal energy that your normal
homeostasis has.
Now, while that molecule isexcited, it's no hotter, but it
contains a lot of energy.
It's not thermal energy itcontains, it's an energy of
excitation of energy.

(49:36):
It's not thermal energy itcontains, it's an energy of
excitation.
It can use that energy to makethat molecule much more reactive
with surrounding molecules,because it's like having it much
hotter than you would survive.
But it enables the chemicalreactions to happen more quickly
.
So you're enabling all of thesechemical reactions that you

(49:57):
have to have to drive yourhomeostasis, all of these redox
reactions, all the reactions inthe electron transport chain of
the mitochondrion have an energysource available to them which
they would never get from thetemperature of your body.
They get from the radiation,and it's a low density radiation

(50:18):
, so it doesn't immediately, youknow, heat everything up and
kill everything.
It can even generate reactiveoxygen species, but it probably
some of those reactive oxygensare generated in places in the
mitochondrial chain of pushingelectrons up a voltage gradient

(50:39):
where they can be verybeneficial.
The fact that the oxygen ismuch more reactive the excited
oxygen is much more reactive canactually have a beneficial
effect.
So I think, as an astrophysicist, what I'm saying to the
biologists is that you have thisincredible source of energy
deep in the body which is veryselective.

(51:00):
It's a very special sort ofenergy.
It's a low entropy sort ofenergy.
It derives from the sunlight.
Sunlight photons coming fromthe sun are very low entropy
sources of energy and you canexcite atoms to relatively

(51:23):
lower-lying levels than all thepigments in the visible.
We tend to call them groundstate configurations in the
energy level diagrams ofmolecules.
They're ground states, you know, just an electron volt or so
above the ground state.
But they have effects and theyhave many effects.
It's not just, we're nottalking about a single mechanism

(51:45):
here.
All of these molecules arecapable of absorbing infrared
photons in some way or another.
They're all being given thishigh quality source of energy
which they can use in variousways.
It opens their possibilities ofthe way they interact with one
another because they have thishigh quality source of energy.

(52:06):
So it's enormous value.
These infrared photons gettingdeep into the body.
They're a sprinkling of veryhigh quality packets of energy
penetrating deep into the bodythat can do all kinds of things,
and we can, you know later onwe can talk about one or two

(52:28):
things that I think these thingsmight do, but the fundamental
physics is that you'reestablishing a new component of
homeostasis.
when you're in sunlight, it'squite different.
You suddenly, the range ofpossibilities that your
metabolic processes haveavailable to them, have suddenly
increased in many, manydifferent ways.

Speaker 1 (52:52):
Well, that is quite a fascinating implication, and I
might just summarise for thelisteners what we've talked
about up till now, just soeveryone is on the same page.
So we have sunlight, andsunlight is being emitted from
our star, the sun.
It's coming in flavours ofvisible and non-visible light.

(53:13):
Ultraviolet and infrared arenon-visible and obviously
visible is visible and infraredis more than 50% of the photons
that is actually hittingterrestrial earth.
And what Bob has explained isthat over the course of the
evolution of life on earth, wehave evolved to make use of that

(53:35):
abundant source of energy.
And, just like plants have madeuse of it to photosynthesize and
produce essentially carbonstructures, we have also made
use of that free energy or ourmitochondria have.
And the process of using thatenergy is the passage of these

(53:56):
near-infrared photons into thebody, where they're not absorbed
cutaneously, they're notabsorbed superficially, but
they're actually bouncing aroundlike pinballs in a pinball
machine for multiple times in arandom fashion until they are
finally absorbed by weakabsorbers in up to 10

(54:17):
centimeters or more in the body.
And those weak absorbers, whatyou're suggesting, are compounds
or components in theirmitochondrial electron transport
chain.
So these photons areessentially a form of exogenous
energy.
They're a way for the body tooperate and to derive energy

(54:39):
without eating food.
It's a light derived energy andthat light is, as you mentioned
, forming this homeostasisbetween the solar, the sun and
life on Earth.
Is that a reasonably accuratesummary?
A good?

Speaker 2 (54:58):
analogy with the effect of these photons on the
electron transport chain is theanalogy with an engine, where
you need to lubricate the engineto get it to work efficiently.
And I think these photons arein effect lubricating the
electron transport chain.
It's making them work moreefficiently.

(55:20):
And just for a moment, we thinkwhat happens if we don't
lubricate the electron transportchain in this way.
It will work, it will digestfood for you in a way, but it
won't do it as efficiently as itcould.
It'll be working more like aTrabant than a Ferrari in

(55:43):
darkness.
And instead of using the energycoming from oxidizing the food,
instead of using that to makeATP the energy currency in your
cell that drives your cellularprocesses, you'll divert that

(56:03):
energy to some way.
You'll store it.
You'll store it as fat, forinstance.
So the energy flow into yourmitochondria cannot all be
processed efficiently into ATP.
It'll get diverted and storedin your body.
The biologists will tell youhow that happens.
I don't know.
So you know.
You can see the connection withwhat you said previously.

(56:24):
If you're not working properly,your body's not working
properly.
You suffer things like type 2,diabetes and obesity and all the
other diseases of aging becauseyou're not using your nutrients
properly to generate thecellular energy.

(56:45):
You're inefficient and you'rediverting the energy somewhere
else.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
Yes, and that is exactly what I was referring to
earlier when we were talkingabout the effect of a processed
food diet and this idea that alight diet or a poor light diet,
an infrared deficient lightdiet, a blue toxic light diet,
is essentially disabling orfundamentally harming the

(57:10):
ability of the mitochondrion tooperate efficiently.
And to use a car analogy ifyou're not servicing the car, if
you're not lubricating orcooling the engine, you can put
98 octane fuel in the tank and,yes, it will continue to work
well for the first maybe year.
But if you continue to notlubricate and do those

(57:33):
fundamental energy enginecaretaking tasks, the engine
will break and then therefore,you can keep putting in 98
octane, but if the pistons areall seized up because of a lack
of lubrication, then it's notgoing to be producing energy
very well.
So I think that really is mypoint about the food

(57:56):
exacerbating fundamentally alight deficiency and a blue
toxic kind of light environment.
On the point of the absorptionof near-infrared light and its
biological effects, thelisteners to this podcast and
from previous episodes will befamiliar with two biological
effects, one that ScottHasimoman has talked about and

(58:18):
one that a water researchercalled Gerald Pollack and Dr
Jack Cruz separately have talkedabout.
So obviously you're familiarwith Scott's work, melatonin and
the optics of the human bodythat it's the infrared light
that is stimulating melatoninproduction at the level of the
mitochondrion.
But the other effect that I'llmention and maybe you have an

(58:39):
input on this or maybe you don'tis that the absorption by water
is changing the biophysicalproperties of that water,
perhaps around the ATPase, butalso in the cell itself, such
that it's adopting an exclusionzone it's adopting, it's making
coherent domains in a way thatis fundamentally altering the

(59:03):
biophysical properties andtherefore the biological
interaction of water in the body.
So do you have any, I guess,thoughts to share about those
two effects of biologicaleffects of infrared light?

Speaker 2 (59:16):
Yeah, I'd like to comment on those.
I mean, I haven't studied theeffects on water myself, but I
know something about what's beendone, I think, coming back to
my previous point, I'm sayingthese photons that get into the
body can perform many, manyfunctions, and I think that's
the point I'm making.

(59:36):
I'm not focusing on any one atthe moment.
I'm not focusing on any one ofthose particular functions.
I think we're looking at themoment at the direct
interactions, the process ofexciting the molecules to
electronic states.

(59:56):
That's what I'm thinking about.
I think it's very possible thatthe direct effect of light on
water is changing itscharacteristics and I've read
about this and I think it's anextremely interesting topic and
it probably has an effect onviscosity and the ability of

(01:00:17):
water to move around.
So I'm certainly not rejectingthat as an idea.
I think this is one of the manyeffects that infrared light is
having going on much longerinfrared wavelengths than we're
talking about at the moment,because the water will absorb at
various depths depending on howabsorbent the water is at any

(01:00:39):
particular wavelength over awhole range of depths and it can
change the properties of thewater.
So that can have many effectsin the body.
Absolutely, I'm not sayingthat's not important at all, it
is important.
It's just I don't have thebandwidth to work on that at the
moment, but I think that's true.
So, yes, there are many kindsof interactions of those photons

(01:01:01):
with the biochemistry, with thebiophysics of the whole life
system, and this is the reason Isaid we're not going to give
you a complete solution at themoment, because these are so
numerous, these possibilities ofinteractions, that it's going

(01:01:22):
to take a long time to teasethem all out and see exactly the
effect of these differentfunctions.

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
The other point I was just going to raise and maybe
this is relevant to themelatonin piece, but it sounds
more relevant to what youmentioned originally, which is
the fact of the interaction oflight with biology and the fact
that photons are interactingwith electrons, and it was the

(01:01:54):
photoelectric effect by AlbertEinstein who initially described
, I believe, that fundamentallaw, and he described it in
terms of metals.
But not only Dr Jack Cruz, butalso Dr Alexander Wunsch has
obviously spent a lot of timedescribing the photoelectric

(01:02:18):
effect as it applies to biology.
So how does that fit in interms of what you're researching
and how you conceptualize this?

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
Well, let's talk about electrons for a moment.
I think this is one thing wehave looked at.
But first of all I'd like tomention discussions over Zoom
I've had with Professor WayneFrash, who's a person who works
in the University of Arizona inthe US on the function of ATPase

(01:02:52):
, the enzyme, the rotatingturbine in the membrane of the
mitochondrion which shepherdsthe protons down from above the
membrane into the mitochondrionand drives the turbine that

(01:03:13):
mints the ATP.
That mints the ATP, and he gavea talk at the Guy Foundation
series in the spring about therotation of the ATPase, where he
showed that it's watermolecules that shepherd the
proton down through the turbineto turn it through particular

(01:03:40):
angles at particular times inthe rotation.
And this is, I think, a veryinteresting example of the way
that the properties of the watermolecule may play a very
important role in the ATPsynthase.
I found that a very excitingidea.
So that's one of the kinds ofinteractions I think.

(01:04:04):
Talking about the electrons, I'dlike to talk a little bit about
the effect of the oxygen as thefinal receiver of the electron
coming up the electron transportchain in the mitochondrion.
Now, as you know, the electronstarts off and goes up through

(01:04:27):
there are four complexes in theelectron transport chain.
Well, I think effectively threein the chain itself, I think
effectively three in the chainitself, and the electron ends up
in cytochrome C in complex four, and it's waiting to be

(01:04:47):
absorbed by the oxygen.
The oxygen is sitting therewaiting to absorb the electron
coming out of the electrontransport chain.
Now you know, oxygen likes tointeract with electrons, it
likes to grab electrons, as weknow.
But the normal state of oxygen,the normal ground state of

(01:05:08):
oxygen, is, unusually inmolecules like this, is a
triplet state in quantummechanics, that is, it has
paired electrons in its outerorbital and so it's in what's
called a triplet state.
Many similar atoms andmolecules have singlet ground

(01:05:31):
states where the electrons arepaired.
So the normal oxygen, althoughit's highly reactive and it can
grab electrons, if you had asinglet oxygen sitting at that
point it wouldn't be much moreelectron hungry and it would

(01:05:56):
grasp the electron being spatout of the electron transport
chain much more avidly.
And I did have a discussionwith Wayne Frasch about this in
his video talk and he was quiteinterested in the possibility
that if you could excite atriplid oxygen to a singlet

(01:06:17):
oxygen while it was in thisposition waiting to grab the
electron, that might have aprofoundly positive effect on
driving the electron transportchain.
So there are cases I thinkwhether this works or not, I
don't know, it's just an idea,but we do know that we can
excite triplid oxygen to singletoxygen with photons in the body

(01:06:40):
.
Now, this was an idea that wasentirely rejected by biologists
because this absorption is soweak that they couldn't imagine
how you would ever have enoughphotons to be able to excite a
triplet oxygen to a singletoxygen to make it into a highly
reactive version of the molecule.

(01:07:02):
But now we know we have thisamplifier in terms of the long
time that the photon spends inthe body bouncing around.
And also something I'vediscussed with Scott is that
there are clearly regularnanostructures associated with
the mitochondria and thesurrounding cellular structures

(01:07:24):
and these nanostructures areextremely efficient light traps.
This is very well known inanimals and plants All the ideas
about structural coloration inanimals and plants.
These are nanostructures whichtrap light so they retain the
light for longer periods of time.

(01:07:44):
They make that light availableto the absorbers for longer
periods of time.
Wonderful examples in plantswhere plants in the forest
understory, where they're verypoor in direct sunlight their
leaves have these beautifulnanostructures which set up
standing waves in the structureand enable the photons to

(01:08:08):
actually perform photosynthesismuch more efficiently in the
forest understory, because theand I think if you start looking
at the structures in animalbodies, you'll find that the
mitochondrial region issurrounded by these
nanostructures which arereasonably regular and are

(01:08:28):
regularly spaced by orders of100 nanometers or so, where you
can set up these photoniccrystals that trap light.
So the possibility of absorbinga photon and exciting an oxygen

(01:08:48):
from its triplet to its singletstate, I think is very real
inside the body and in fact I'vedone experiments shining light
through my hand where I canactually see the absorption of
these photons.
In fact, curiously again,there's an astronomical

(01:09:10):
connection because the way youexcite a singlet oxygen is using
lines in the infrared part ofthe near infrared part of the
spectrum which are visible inthe spectrum of sunlight
reaching the Earth.
The two Fraunhofer lines, thetwo strong Fraunhofer lines in
the near-infrared, the A and theB bands, are the wavelengths
which will excite triplet tosinglet oxygen.

(01:09:31):
This happens in the atmosphereand this can happen in the body
as well, and I say I've actuallyseen them in the spectra that
I've taken here in my study, uhwith the, uh with my
spectrometer well, so so if I'mif I'm getting this correctly,
just correct me if I'm wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
So so, the fraunhofer lines are gaps in terrestrial
light that we don't receivebecause of absorption in the
atmosphere.
So it's sunlight that doesn'tget through because of
absorption by various compoundmolecules and gases in the
atmosphere.
So what you're saying?

Speaker 2 (01:10:05):
is… no, no, no, no, I'm not saying it, sorry to
interrupt, but actually I'm notsaying that at all.
In the sunlight coming throughthe Earth's atmosphere we see
these bands reasonably strongly.
But when you look at thesebands at very high spectral
resolution, they are lots andlots of very narrow absorption
bands.

(01:10:26):
They're rotational structuresin the water molecule, in the
sorry in the oxygen molecule,and they have very, very fine
lines which have huge gaps inthem.
So the lines are very deep andthey absorb very strongly at
fine lines which have huge gapsin them.
So the lines are very deep andthey absorb very strongly at
very particular wavelengthswithin the band.
But there's still plenty ofphotons that get through the
gaps.
So although you see thisabsorption in the atmosphere, it

(01:10:48):
doesn't mean that the light isnot getting through.
A lot of the light is gettingthrough into the body.
I have to be very careful whenI do my experiments that I don't
let any sun, any daylight in atall, because I know there will
be absorption bands there.
So I have to do this atnighttime when I know there are
no absorption bands due tooxygen in the stray light in my

(01:11:11):
study.
But we do see the same bands inthe body and there is a
literature on this.
Now there's quite a small butpowerful literature about the
direct excitation of reactiveoxygens by photons.
All the photodynamic therapistsuse these auxiliary
photosensitizing molecules toabsorb the light and then they

(01:11:35):
transfer that excitation energyto oxygen to make singlet oxygen
.
So they make singlet oxygenindirectly via a
photosensitizing molecule,usually a porphyrin-like
molecule.
But we can in life excite areactive oxygen, a singlet

(01:11:57):
oxygen, with a direct photoncoming from the sun.

Speaker 1 (01:12:01):
Okay, that was going to be my follow-up question,
which was was this photon thatis having this effect on oxygen?
Was that endogenously generated, like perhaps from the
mitochondrion, or was it a solarphoton that was having?

Speaker 2 (01:12:14):
Coming from the sun.
Yeah, I think I say that withgreat certainty.
I mean, I know there's ageneration of bio photons in the
body, but the number of photonscoming in the sun is very, very
large, even though only a smallfraction will get through.
But the availability of thepossibility to excite this

(01:12:36):
particular triplet-singlettransition in oxygen I think
will come from predominantlyfrom sunlight.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
Interesting, very interesting.
So I think we've done, we'vedelved pretty deeply into the
mechanics, the nitty gritty ofwhat's happening.
I really want for this last bitto take it to zoom back out,
keep it really nice and broadand really spell out this
problem for people.
And I'm going to summarizequickly and then, bob, maybe you

(01:13:04):
can offer we can kind of riffon that.
So, essentially, humans havecreated diabetic lighting and
we've done that by stripping out90% of the terrestrial sunlight
from our indoor environments,basically creating hermetically
sealed chambers illuminated byvisible only predominantly blue

(01:13:26):
wavelength light, deficient inultraviolet, deficient in this
more than 50% of sunlightspectrum, which is infrared,
which infrared is providingessentially an exogenous energy
source that's aiding inmitochondrial function,
mitochondrial efficiency and,essentially, mitochondrial
regeneration through things likemelatonin.

(01:13:47):
The consequence is that when welive in these environments for
six months, 12 months, threeyears, then we are chronically
depriving ourselves of acritical light nutrient that is
involved in mitochondrial health.
And mitochondrial healthunderlies chronic disease
because, as Dr Doug Wallace hasinitially said, initially

(01:14:09):
posited and it's been veryframed very elegantly is that
chronic disease is essentiallybioenergetic failure of your
mitochondrial colony and whetheryou develop heart failure or
you develop Alzheimer's diseaseor you develop type 2 diabetes
and in what order, essentiallydepends on your genetic
predisposition.
It depends on your organspecific manifestation of this

(01:14:30):
mitochondrial dysfunction.
So the chronic disease epidemicthat we're experiencing can
really be framed as the fire canbe fanned enormously by this
light deficiency, this infraredlight deficiency, which is
profound and is onlyaccelerating as more and more
indoor environments areessentially kitted out with

(01:14:51):
visible only LEDs, as thermalartificial but thermal lighting
sources like halogen andincandescent get thrown in the
bin in the name of climatechange or energy efficiency,
completely failing to realizethat these are essential light
nutrients.
So that's, I think, where we'reat and that's my perspective as

(01:15:13):
a medical doctor, treatingpeople and striving to prevent
cases of metabolic syndrome andtype 2 diabetes and cancer and
all those neurodegenerationaldiseases.
So we're at this point now andyou've come up with an analogy
and I really like it and Ireally want you to talk about
this analogy to help peopleunderstand the concept of a

(01:15:34):
light-deficient environment thatthey're finding themselves in.
So feel free to add anything tothat summary and talk about
this analogy that you've come upwith.

Speaker 2 (01:15:48):
Yeah, I think it's a very good summary.
First of all, Well done fordoing that.

Speaker 1 (01:15:51):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:15:52):
I think the phrase we're beginning to use about
this is one which I think peoplewill understand, and actually I
think the analogy is quite good.
I call it 21st century scurvy.
Now we know about scurvy, weknow how easy it is to cure now,

(01:16:17):
but for centuries scurvy was ascourge of exploration.
I mean, in the days of sail,you sent off these sailors to
sail around the world in sailingships.
It took them, you know, monthsto reach the Cape Horn and sail
around it, and most of the crewswould or many of the crew, a

(01:16:40):
large fraction of the crew woulddie of scurvy.
And it was realised a long timeago that this was a deficiency
disease.
It was the deficiency ofvitamin C and if you
supplemented vitamin C thescurvy went away.
It was a curable disease,although you may have lost all
your teeth or whatever, but youcould be cured when you had a

(01:17:04):
supply of vitamin C.
So the development of thatdisease was not immediate.
When you set out from the firstport, you wake up the next day.
You didn't suffer from scurvy.
It took months to develop in acrew and we've had these.
We're going through a processat the moment which is very like

(01:17:25):
this.
You know.
We know the astronauts that comeback from the space station
come back in a state ofpre-diabetes and mitochondrial
dysfunction.
They've been locked up in a tincan.
Ironically, if you're in thespace station, I doubt if you
see the sun.
And if you do see the sun, yousee it through so many filters

(01:17:46):
that you won't get any usableinfrared radiation from it.
They live under so-calledcircadian LED lighting, which is
basically infrared darklighting, completely infrared
dark lighting that varies a bitin color temperature throughout
the Seganian cycle, for whatevergood that does, and they come

(01:18:10):
back starved of infrared.
And as soon as they get back onEarth, they seem to recover
very quickly when they get outin sunlight again.
But they have aged more rapidlythan they would have done if
they hadn't been locked up.
And okay, that's an extremeexample of locking up people in
a tin can for six months or so.

(01:18:31):
But there are many examples ofpeople in the built environment.
If you're living in a MiddleEastern country with skyscrapers
I mean, many of the Arab stateshave skyscrapers and they live
in skyscrapers and they walk totheir air conditioned, dark

(01:18:53):
windowed cars, probably out ofsunlight.
Some of those people probablynever go into sunlight at all,
even though they're living in anincredibly sun rich environment
, and those are the people whoare suffering severely from type
two diabetes.
So there's a huge amount ofevidence out there that your

(01:19:14):
mitochondrial health is verystrongly determined by your
light diet, your exposure tosunlight.
Roger Shrout has an examplewhere he took one of his very,
very sick patients out intosunlight onto the balcony and
the person survived almostcertainly because of the

(01:19:35):
exposure to sunlight.
Person survived almostcertainly because of the
exposure to sunlight.
So I think the analogy withscurvy is the 21st century
scurvy.
The analogy with the deficiencyof vitamin C is not an exact
analogy.
Of course the disease developsalong different pathways, but

(01:19:55):
it's not so dissimilar.
I mean, vitamin C has functionas an electron donor in
biochemistry and you know we aretalking about electron
transport and electron donors.
So I think that the disease I'mtalking about in 21st century

(01:20:17):
scurvy is an analogy.
It's a slowly developingdisease and the symptoms are all
the diseases of aging which areassociated with mitochondrial
function.
And I fear that it's reallygoing to get worse.
I mean, it's been going on fora couple of decades now.

(01:20:38):
It's going downhill, our lifeexpectancy is going down and I
think if that person on theradio, on the BBC Today
programme a year ago, had beentold what I've just told you, he
might begin to understandwhat's wrong with the built
environment.
And I have to say that you know, glenn and I nowadays are

(01:21:00):
talking more to architects andlighting designers than we are
to medics and biologists,because the architects are very,
very concerned by this problemand we are making them aware of
what the problem is.
And there's an even worseproblem than just the LED
lighting and there's an evenworse problem than just the LED
lighting.
All of these skyscrapers are nowbeing fitted with glass that

(01:21:23):
only transmits visible light.
So the windows are obscuring.
We know windows for a long timehave obscured the ultraviolet,
the dangerous ultraviolet light,the light that gives you
vitamin D.
But now the best-sellingglasses are blocking all the
infrared, so the transmission ofthe window glass mimics the

(01:21:46):
white LED.
So we're exacerbating thisproblem and, quite frankly, it's
going to be a disaster.

Speaker 1 (01:21:54):
It's going to be a disaster.
Yeah, it is, and the trajectoryis only in the wrong direction.
And that point that you raisedis fascinating because what it
implies with this filtration ofthe natural sun spectrum is that
we can generate blue lighttoxicity and near infrared
deficiency not only by puttingan LED in the room and then

(01:22:19):
emitting that blue light fromthe ceiling, but we can generate
a blue toxic, profoundlyunaccessually appropriate light
environment by plastering thesefiltration, whatever the 3M film
on the windows and therefore,by filtration of the solar and,
dare I say, abomination of thesolar spectrum, that we're also
creating a blue toxic, visibleonly lighting environment inside

(01:22:43):
these office rooms.
So there's multiple facets ofthe problem, but it just seems
that, wherever way we look at it, the myopic attempt at saving
energy and again to use theunder the umbrella term of

(01:23:05):
climate change, it's reallyhaving this unintended
consequence of profoundlyharming human health.
And if the goal is to savehumanity by averting climate
change through climactic and Iknow this is a completely
different topic climactic changein 10, 20, 30, 50 years, to me

(01:23:26):
it's baffling because there's amuch more pressing, much more
proximate threat, which is theactual unintended consequences
of all these bureaucrats who areself-importantly making these
and mandating these profoundchanges to our environment that
are detrimentally affecting notonly human biology but all kinds

(01:23:46):
of other animals and life onthe planet.
The point I'll quickly makeabout your discussions and who
is hearing this message is thatmedical doctors, because we are,
our orthodoxy, our trainingbackground is organ-specific
pathology.
We have missed the conventionaldoctor has missed this reality

(01:24:11):
about bioenergetics andmitochondrial function.
And if they understood thehuman body from a mitochondrial
energy point of view, then itwould be clear, by simple
reverse engineering, by firstprinciples, thinking that what
we need to do is optimizemitochondrial function by any
means possible.
And, as you've described soeloquently, bob, solar photons

(01:24:33):
are a critical input intooptimal mitochondrial function.
So you can just make the simplelogical steps from those first
principles and then you willfind out that if you sit in a
blue lit room with no infrared,then you're going to get sick
and diabetes is going tomanifest.
But unfortunately we don't havethat intellectual framework

(01:24:54):
taught to us in medical schooland we have to learn it
ourselves and talk to peoplelike yourself, like to Scott
Zimmerman, and you know doctorslike Roger Swell, other doctors
and Jack Cruz, other people andAlexander Wansh who are talking
about this, but it's a very,very few number and hopefully
that's going to change.
The other point I'll quicklymake about architects and the

(01:25:15):
built environment.
Is traditional architecturesolved for this problem over
3,000 years?
If you travel to any old city,the outdoor areas have tall
windows, they have casementwindows, they have big balconies
, they have internal courtyards,they have all these functions

(01:25:37):
that allow the penetration offull-spectrum sunlight.
So it's really modernarchitecture that has itself
exploded in the past 50 years.
That is doubly exacerbating theproblems that we've described.

Speaker 2 (01:25:51):
Yeah, your summary is good.
You said it.
I think it's very good.
I'm an optimist here.
I think I see the way thearchitects are reacting when we
talk to them.
I think there are many waysthis can be addressed.
I think the problem of excludinginfrared radiation from the

(01:26:13):
built environment is a thermalbalance problem.
Radiation from the builtenvironment is a thermal balance
problem.
You can't build a skyscraperand make it into a greenhouse
and just it would overheat.
So they face a difficultproblem.
They do face a difficultproblem.
It's not just a matter ofchanging the window glass.
They have to think much morecarefully about this and there

(01:26:33):
are many subtleties here.
I mean they could put glass onthe north face, in the northern
hemisphere, on the north face orthe south face in your
hemisphere.
They could put non-infraredrejecting glass, ie infrared
transmitting glass, on the sidesof the buildings that don't get
direct sunlight.
They can also put around lowbuildings.
Anyway, they can put lots oftrees.

(01:26:55):
Trees are wonderful.
In fact, the best place you cansit for mitochondrial health is
under a tree in the sunlight,because you're protected from
the short wavelengths by thecanopy of the tree and all of
the infrared will be bounceddown to you Almost all of the
infrared will.
Tree leaves are incrediblyefficient infrared scatterers

(01:27:19):
and as you see in infraredphotographs, the tree canopy is
brilliantly white in theinfrared.
So you know, architects can beclever.
They can think about where theyput the different kinds of
glass, they can think about theenvironment of the building and
how many trees you have.
And also there's been a hugeamount of work done on the

(01:27:44):
nanostructures that people arefinding in plants and animals
All the structural coloration,fantastic structures you see in
birds' feathers and butterflywings and snake skins and all
kinds of things.
A lot of that work is beingfunded by engineers now because

(01:28:05):
they're thinking of ways ofcontrolling the radiation
environment of of buildingsusing nanostructures to reflect
light, which is damaging, and totransmit light, which is
beneficial.
I can imagine in the futurehaving windows, skyscrapers with

(01:28:28):
windows that perform manyfunctions, that is, they
generate electricity with solarpanels.
They can be visible,transparent solar panels.
They can be visible,transparent solar panels.
They can let in specific,biologically beneficial
wavelengths.
They can be much more highlytuned to make the building more

(01:28:53):
healthy and a healthierenvironment.
And you know, these structurescan be injected into buildings
at critical places and so on.
The lifestyle merged with theproperty of the building can be
much more beneficial.
So I do feel optimistic aboutthis, but I do feel, like you,

(01:29:13):
that if we follow the path thatwe're following at the moment,
we're losing our healthyenvironment.
We're losing our healthy peoplewho can contribute to solving
the other major problems we have, like you know, the thermal
climate change problems that wehave.
So I remain an optimist.
But I think, coming back to thebeginning of our conversation,

(01:29:38):
the interdisciplinarity I meanI'm unusual, being an
astrophysicist working in thisfield.
Okay, I can see enormousbenefits in having these two
cultures working together.
You know, the conversations Ihave with architects are very
close and gritty.
You know gritty conversationsabout what we can actually do to
make things better and it's notdifficult.

(01:29:59):
And the other thing that Iwould say is we're wasting huge
amounts of energy, illuminatingour planet in totally
unnecessarily ways.
So if you were thinking thatit's going to be expensive to
make these changes to makebetter environments, turn the
lights off, use less energylighting unnecessarily and just

(01:30:25):
think about what we're doing.
The cost of type 2 diabetes inthe National Health Service in
the UK is huge.
When I talk to doctors inhospitals and I say which
disease would it be mostbeneficial for you to get rid of
, they say type 2 diabetes.
I see nurses going around, youknow, spending all their time

(01:30:47):
testing people for diabetes allthe time, rather than you know
doing other things.
So there are huge amounts ofmoney to be saved by increasing
the health of the populationyeah, I mean, I couldn't agree
more.

Speaker 1 (01:31:00):
And yes, it's not only testing.
I mean, when someone hasend-stage type 2 diabetes,
they're they're a customer,they're a client of an, of a
kidney disease, of a kidneyspecialist, because they're on
dialysis, they've um, they'vehad a heart attack, they've had
a stroke, they've got peripheralneuathy, they need to see the
podiatrist, et cetera, and onand on and on.
So, yes, it's a profoundproblem.

(01:31:22):
A couple of quick points andI'll emphasize quickly, because
I'm mindful of your time, bob,and I don't want to use it up.
But the fact that those leavesare reflecting infrared is
fascinating, or reflectinginfrared is fascinating.
And it goes to this idea of thebenefit of just simply being in
nature and having all theseamazingly elegant ways of

(01:31:42):
benefiting from nature.
And it's just simply how wewere designed.
And a lot of people can getthis far into the interview and
think, okay, I'm going to gooutside, but a lot of people
just know that they feel goodwhen they're outside under a
tree.
And the other point is thevalue of the short wavelengths.
Yes, in high doses, especiallyif we're mismatched to our UV

(01:32:04):
environment, they can be inexcess.
But obviously the shorterwavelengths the visible and UV
are essential in their own wayfor optimal health.
So I think that that point isemphasized.
And then, turning off thelights at night that is an easy
thing for people to do.
It's something I teach peoplein my circadian reset course
just simply minimizingartificial light at night, of

(01:32:26):
any color, because essentially,from a circadian point of view,
that's not what your body wantsor needs.
Again, just maybe before we wrapup, um, again, just maybe um
before we, before we wrap up,like talking about
interdisciplinary uh, you're anastrophysicist.
Scott zerman is a junior.
Uh, glenn glenn jeffrey is aneuroscientist.

(01:32:48):
Dr roger schwelt is a intensivecare physician.
Uh, you know, I'm a gpregistrar.
Camera borg is a is anutritionist.
It's a.
It's a somewhat disparate andmaybe motley crew of people who
are talking about this topic,but I think it's benefited from
all these different people'sperspectives and I think it
actually will take even morepeople with even more unique

(01:33:12):
perspectives to really deliverthis incredibly important
message to a wider audience.
Yes, I agree.
Maybe the final thing to saysorry, go on.

Speaker 2 (01:33:29):
I would just say just one thing about the trees, one
thing I didn't mention we don'thave time to mention everything
but one thing I've realized, andI have talked to a friend of
mine who's an ex-sciencedirector of Kew Gardens about
this.
We discovered that mushroomsthat grow in the forest

(01:33:49):
understory are beautifullyadapted to absorb the infrared
light, to produce spores.
To absorb the infrared light toproduce spores.
They grow up in the forestunderstory.
The infrared light is veryefficiently transported by the
mushroom matrix, by the flesh ofthe mushroom, down into the
spore-producing bodies.
And also I observe with myspectrometer that nuts and seeds

(01:34:14):
are also incredibly efficientharvesters of infrared light.
And I think biology needs thisinfrared light to reproduce.
It's a very energy demandingprocess in life to reproduce and
it seems that all the naturalreproductive structures that we

(01:34:35):
see greatly benefit frominfrared light.
There was a paper publishedrecently about the motility of
human sperm being greatlyincreased by infrared light.

Speaker 1 (01:34:47):
Wow.
That immediately made me thinkof Scott's paper where he looked
at the refractive properties ofhuman amniotic fluid and
described the optimalessentially optimal transmission
of infrared photons to bathethe baby in a, in a, basically a
cocoon of infrared light, andthat that means that what you've
just described in the plantkingdom is holding in in humans,

(01:35:10):
in mammals too, and it makescomplete sense to me.
One, one further idea is youknow, dr Jack Cruz has talked
about blue light as being, andthis blue light environment
driving this autism epidemic andbasically a problem of neuronal
migration.
To me, the other facet of that,the corollary or the

(01:35:31):
implication of that, is aneuro-infrared deficiency.
So whether near-infrareddeficiency is greatly
exacerbating the autism epidemicand we know Doug Wallace's work
is, he's replicated autisticbehaviors in mouse models
through mitochondrialdysfunction.
So there's lots of separatemechanistic pathways that could
lead us to the same conclusion.

(01:35:51):
But absolutely fascinating, bob,absolutely fascinating.
I think this is such a deep andamazing rabbit hole and one
that I think needs this is whatneeds the scientific funding,
and instead there's all kinds ofother things being funded and
it's up to citizen scientistsand people such as yourself to
do this very important work.

(01:36:13):
Maybe the final point that Ireally want you to convey to
people is how they can benefitfrom infrared in their
environment and put it back inand say that they need to cook
dinner up till 6pm.
They want to have some infraredand perhaps they can't have
access to halogen orincandescent in the way that
they previously were.

(01:36:33):
I know Scott Zimmerman's Nairabulb company uses a visible LED
with a very small filament bulbrun at low voltage to provide
both a visible and non-visiblecomponent.
Can you explain to me yourworkaround or your solution to
this problem of putting infraredback in to our indoor
environments?

Speaker 2 (01:36:55):
Yes, I think there are two answers to our indoor
environments.
Yes, there are two.
I think there are two answers,and the answers are extremely
cheap or cost-free.
One is get outside.
Be aware that if you get outinto strong sunlight, your
clothes will protect you fromdamaging ultraviolet radiation.
Your clothes will also beeffectively transparent to

(01:37:19):
near-infrared, so you don't haveto strip off to benefit from
near-infrared sunlight.
You just walk out in yourordinary clothes and it gets
perfectly well through yourclothes.
I've demonstrated this picturesin my articles about this,
showing that clothes areperfectly transparent, showing
that clothes are perfectlytransparent, almost perfectly
transparent.
So get outside, sit under atree.

(01:37:45):
I mean, my quote about Newtonhas been used a number of times,
but Newton was sitting under atree, an apple tree, when he
thought of the idea of gravity.
I don't think that was anaccident, although it's probably
anecdotal.
Anyway, it's not an accident.
The best environment formitochondrial health is sitting
outside, drinking a glass ofwhatever under a tree, in

(01:38:06):
sunlight, grounded, absolutelyperfect for mitochondrial health
, and you won't suffer any harmfrom that in terms of sunburn or
whatever, because you'll bewell shaded.
I mean, please get out in thesunlight as well to pick up your
vitamin D.
I noticed that Scandinavians domuch better for vitamin D than

(01:38:29):
Spaniards or Italians and Ithink that's because
Scandinavians spend a lot oftime outdoors, both in the
summer and the winter.
And there's a point I'd makeabout the ultraviolet and the
vitamin D synthesis.
It's always said that when thesun's below whatever the angle

(01:38:55):
is, 45 degrees, you get preciouslittle ultraviolet getting
through.
But the sunlight that'sreaching the atmosphere above
the ozone layer can reallyscatter down onto you from above
through the thinnest thevertical path through the ozone
layer.
So the Scandinavians out on thesea ice skating for five hours
a day, like one of my friendsdoes they get plenty of

(01:39:16):
ultraviolet radiation even withthe sun.
On the sea ice skating for fivehours a day, like one of my
friends does they get plenty ofultraviolet radiation even with
the sun on the horizon becauseof scattering of sunlight down
through the ozone layer.
So there is a path forultraviolet vitamin D generating
ultraviolet down through thesky, even in the winter with a

(01:39:37):
low sun, if you're outside andyou have at least part of your
body uncovered.

Speaker 1 (01:39:42):
Interesting and I'll hammer home the point that has
been made by your countryman,professor Richard Weller, who is
a dermatologist investigatingthe systemic benefit of sunlight
exposure, and he has saidmultiple times that there is
there is no evidence um linking,uh you, greater uv exposure
with greater all-cause death.

(01:40:03):
And, and it just seems, nomatter which study we look at,
the more um sunlight people get,the more uv light people get,
the the greater their longevity,the lower their all-cause
mortality, um in a range ofcardiovascular mortality, cancer
mortality, uh, so, in a rangeof studies, so, and yeah, it's a
well, the point is well taken,I mean, I I think this podcast

(01:40:25):
in many ways has become adifferent, an exposition of
different reasons why we shouldbe outside and not inside.

Speaker 2 (01:40:33):
one more thing I would add.
You're talking about aboutlighting.
I have here a 60-watt tungstenfilament lamp which I bought
from Amazon in plain packaging.
They're getting difficult toget.
I ran this on a cheap dimmer,also from Amazon, and it has a
slightly lower voltage, so thefilament will last forever.

(01:40:55):
These are designed at normalvoltage to last about a year.
That's what the factories do.
They make them to last a year.
Turn the voltage down a coupleof notches and it'll last for
the age of the universe.
It'll last forever.
So this whole setup cost me 10pounds.
I have one of these in my study.

(01:41:15):
I have here plenty of light forworking by.

Speaker 1 (01:41:18):
I run it at a lower voltage, so it doesn't get hot.

Speaker 2 (01:41:21):
I can hold the.
I can hold it.
It's warm but it's not hot.
It's not using very much energy.
It has a color temperature ofabout 2400 kelvins and it's 200
lux on the on on the table,which is adequate for me to work
with.
I have one in my bedroom I usefor reading at night and I have

(01:41:42):
one in my sitting room forreading, and they cost nothing.
Essentially, you don't have tobuy fancy infrared LEDs.
These are as bright as sunlight, at one and a half microns.
They're very, very bright inthe infrared and you don't need
to rely on these for brightlighting.
I also have an LED on the otherside here which gives me white

(01:42:03):
light, which gives me allow meto do fine work and so on.
But using tungsten filaments,I'm afraid.
I mean they're frowned upon byclimate change activists,
they're frowned upon by theDepartment of Energy in the US.
They're frowned upon by theDepartment of Energy in the US.
They're frowned upon by theEuropean Union.
They're frowned upon byeverybody.
But they play a role and Scottwith his NARA bulbs using a low

(01:42:25):
voltage tungsten filament is anextremely effective, efficient,
low energy solution to theproblem.
But we need a thermal lightsource anything that has a
temperature above the out of acandle flame.
A white candle flame will giveyou plenty of near infrared wood
.
Wood burning stoves in intromso in norway.

(01:42:48):
Keep those people alive in inthe winter because they they
have wood burning stoves.
They get plenty of nearinfrared radiation.
There are many ways of gettingthis near infrared radiation
without burning huge amounts ofenergy yes, and that that's.

Speaker 1 (01:43:02):
That's a very good point.
Maybe, bob, you could.
I know it sounds evensimplistic, but to put together
just a really brief pdf ofexactly how you've done that and
because people are, um, atvarious stages of of
understanding and even some likea resource, is really simple as
what exactly you bought and howexactly to put it together, I

(01:43:23):
think could be immensely helpful, especially for a lot of my
YouTube and podcast followingwho simply want the TLDR or the
actionable steps.
So maybe if you could do that,that would be a step in the
right direction.

Speaker 2 (01:43:37):
I've done that with my friends.
I can easily yeah, yeah, yeah,and but I I do.
I I do worry about gettingthese, these bulbs, these
tungsten filaments.
I mean, they're becomingincreasingly difficult to get,
they're becoming illegal in somecountries and, uh, you know,
it's a problem.
We need to, we need to changethe language.
We need to make it possible forus to utilize, uh, thermal

(01:44:02):
light sources in in intelligentways, yeah, where they're
necessary, but we don't use them.

Speaker 1 (01:44:07):
We don't have to use them for for everything, but we
can use them for special,certain healthy health
benefiting circumstances yes,and I know for a for a fact, or
it's been suggested that the ElSalvador administration is
actively looking at restartingor generating incandescent
factory in their country, andthat is amongst a host of other

(01:44:30):
exciting things along withadopting Bitcoin and throwing
gang members in jail that thatcountry is doing.
So really looking forward tohearing more about that.
But if anyone is listening hasgot this far in the interview, I
think a really actionable thingthat can also be done in
addition to getting outside,putting infrared back into your

(01:44:53):
environment through a thermallighting source and maybe
through Bob's guide that he'sgoing to give us.
But it'd also be to just talkto your member, talk to your
member of parliament and saythat hey, there's a problem here
.
Your energy saving rules byyour bureaucratic department are
causing diabetes and they'reworsening diabetic metabolic

(01:45:16):
syndrome.
They're worsening polycysticovary syndrome.
They're worsening diabeticmetabolic syndrome.
They're worsening polycysticovary syndrome.
They're worsening fatty liverdisease.
They're worsening obesity andthis needs to change, and to
change it we need to reversecourse on this non-thermal
lighting and in your recentinterview with Scott Zimmerman
and Cameron, Scott made thepoint that at the moment, the

(01:45:36):
Department of Energy in the USUS is moving to 160, I believe,
lumens per watt minimum in termsof efficiency for their bulbs,
to a lighting source that hassuch energy efficiency, because

(01:45:58):
it will necessarily imply thatit is only visible in these blue
wavelengths and be deficient ininfrared.
Yeah, I agree, Fantastic.
Well, Bob, thank you so muchfor your time.
It was an enlighteningconversation.
I think people really will likethis and really appreciate the
depth and knowledge that you'veconveyed.

(01:46:21):
So, yeah, thanks again and yeah, hopefully we'll be in touch
and maybe we can talk again soon, and I know you're doing very
exciting stuff with the GuyFoundation and other
collaborators, so maybe we cantouch base in the future to hear
what you're up to.
Okay, well, thanks very much,Max.
It was a pleasure tocollaborators, so maybe we can
touch base in the future um, tohear what you're up to, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:46:37):
Well, thanks very much, max.
It was a pleasure to do thisand it was a pleasure to shape
the talk in this way.
That's the first time I'vegiven this talk in this
particular way, which covered, Ithink, the very important
points that are perhaps notcovered elsewhere.
So it's been a pleasure.

Speaker 1 (01:46:50):
Thanks very much indeed, thank you.

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