39. Scott Zimmerman: Amazing Effects of Infrared Light on the Human Body

Episode Transcript
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Scott Zimmerman (00:00):
We've eliminated the portions of
sunlight and essentially theamount of sunlight we're getting
during the day and we've movedit into the night and it's
essentially affecting all lifeforms.

Dr Max Gulhane (00:18):
Okay, hello everyone.
Welcome back to theregenerative health podcast.
In this episode, I had theabsolute pleasure of
interviewing Scott Zimmerman.
Now, scott is an opticsengineer and light researcher
who has basically been studyingthe effect of infrared or
non-visible light on the humanbody.
He has made some fascinatingand quite unexpected discoveries

(00:43):
about the way that our bodiesuse this infrared light and how
this affects the creation andthe manufacturing of melatonin,
particularly where exactly thesesources of melatonin are being
made.
What he's discovered I thinkwhat you'll hear in the
interview, is fascinating.

(01:04):
This is sometimes a quite acomplex interview, but it is
incredibly interesting and itgoes very well with my Jack Crew
series.
So for those willing to andinterested in delving very deep
down the rabbit hole, then thisone's for you.
If you're enjoying this podcast, share it with someone who
might find it interesting.

(01:24):
That would very much help.
So, thank you and enjoy.
So let's get started with a bitof background on yourself and
how an engineer comes to beaddressing such fundamental
questions about a light andhuman biology.

Well, my background is I've spent 40
years in optical design fordisplays and lighting.
I have 85 issued patents in thearea, and a few years back I
started looking at lighting andI was trying to develop some.
I got very interested in somework by Dr Hamlin and others on

(02:05):
red light therapy and photobiomodulation and one of the
things I noticed is that a lotof the levels that they were
using and showing biologicaleffects were levels that we used
to get at least in the nearinfrared, as far as milliwatts
per centimeter squared, when wehad a well-lit incandescent room

(02:26):
.
Most people don't know whereabout, but both sunlight and
incandescence have the majorityof the photons that they emit
are in the near infrared, and soI got looking at it and I came
to the conclusion that I startedtrying to model what is all
this stuff doing in the body,because I do quite a bit of

(02:49):
optical modeling and I was luckyI ended up talking to Professor
Ritter down and he's an expertin melatonin and we kind of
started to collaborate and havea series of papers with each
other.
But what I found was is thatpeople think they understand
light from the standpoint of wecan see.

(03:11):
Most of us are lucky enough tosee and that makes us kind of an
expert in light.
But it's only the visible lightand that represents only about
10% of the solar spectrum.
And what you start, looking atthe problem from an optics
standpoint, there's very littledata and very little work that

(03:33):
had been going into how lightactually interacts with the body
.
So, as an optical engineer, Istarted modeling various things
and we started previously tothis.
We didn't understand how lightpropagates in the body and in
particular in the near infrared.
It can go several inches intothe body.
But more importantly, what youstart to see is that the body

(03:56):
has all these different ways,that it goes to great extent,
great lengths to actuallycollect and localize light in
very specific tissues.
People think all red.
Now Well, it turns out that forthe eye, the majority of the
photons that hit the red, thatdon't go through the pupil, they

(04:19):
actually go through your eyelidand through your scolera.
And the humor, the vitroushumor in the eye actually has a
broader transmission window inthe near infrared than it does
in the visible.
And you start asking once youstart doing that, you find that,
oh, okay, so light actuallypropagates through the skull and

(04:40):
goes into the cerebral spinalfluid and is light trapped,
light guided down into thefissures of the brain.
Why, you know?
Is it just happenstance or noreal reason?
And the more you look you seeall these amazing ways in which
the body actually takesadvantage of sunlight.
And Professor Fosbury over inEngland has a series of pictures

(05:07):
that I think I just put up onLinkedIn or some of them, but
where he shows you know how, inthe near infrared, light
propagates deep into the body,localizes in the blood vessels,
and you have to.
Once you start looking at theoptics of the body, you start to
ask yourself why, you know, isit just for no reason?

(05:28):
And that's when I startedworking with Professor Ritter
and then he started showing howyou know he's been for 40 years.
He's been a proponent thatmelatonin is being generated in
mitochondria, and so we have aseries of papers around that and
kind of show that.
If that's true, which itappears to be true based on our

(05:49):
latest work, then you knowsunlight is doing some pretty
amazing things to our hormonelevels as well.
You know, most people canunderstand sleep disruption and
things like that.
But just the process of walkingoutside, optically, the body is
localizing that near infrared inparticular in various places in

(06:10):
the body, so that it's alwaysguaranteed that you're never
exposed to visible light or UVlight without that excess of
near infrared.
And so that's kind of wherewe're at right now.
So, as an optical engineer, Iapproached it that I like to
quantify stuff, and so ouroriginal work started out with

(06:32):
okay, we'll model the opticswhere the photons are going in
the body, and then we combinedelectron spin resonance data to
then convert that into a threedimensional profile of free
radical generation in the body.
And then, if you know somethingabout the free radicals, then
you basically get to the pointof saying, well, what's the

(06:53):
response?
Which is antioxidant.
And so you start to see these,like I say, these amazing
ability of the body to takeadvantage of our surroundings,
and that's kind of where we'reat right now.

And you know, I guess, long way around answering
question, but that's fantastic,scott, and I'm always very,
very interested in talking toengineers who have branched into
biology and into medicine andhealth sciences, because the
rigor that you apply to ourfield as doctors is incredible

(07:34):
and it's a very, very unique andfresh perspective.
We will definitely talk aboutmelatonin maybe later in this
discussion and, yeah, as youmentioned, the fascinating
implications of this compoundand what it's doing in the body
and, look, a lot of my listenerswill know of, melatonin is what
they buy in the chemist afterthey've had a long flight to

(07:58):
reset their jet lag.
But there is so much tomelatonin that I really want to
dig in with you Before we evengo there.
I'd really like to take it backto a very, very basic level and
you know, forgive me for reallysimplifying or getting you to
explain things really simply,because a lot of my audience

(08:19):
this is the first kind ofintroduction, or that we're just
getting started in terms ofunderstanding what light is and
how that is affecting the humanbody.
So you mentioned we'vementioned visible light, we've
mentioned non-visible light andwe've mentioned wavelengths and
we've mentioned photons For thecomplete layperson.
Just describe to us what is aphoton and how does that relate

(08:46):
to the different types of lightthat exist.

Okay, I'm not very good at this but I will try
.
But no, first you have tounderstand that sunlight has a
very broad spectrum.
You know, when we walk outsideit goes everywhere, from UV into
far infrared and that's a verywe call that the spectrum and

(09:16):
kind of like the rainbow thatpeople see.
There are different wavelengths, so you know, if you're dealing
with blue, it's 400 nanometers,if you're dealing with red,
it's 650 nanometers or somethinglike that.
But sunlight runs from 280nanometers at least on the
ground, here in in the NOS,wherever you're at 280

(09:39):
nanometers, out to beyond 3000,4000 nanometers, and but the eye
only sees a very narrow portionof that.
Okay, and so, when you know youexperience being out in the
sunlight or in artificiallighting or whatever, your eye
really is only typically exposedto somewhere between 400

(10:01):
nanometers nanometer being thewavelength of the light and 700
nanometers.
So it represents what we cansee is only about 10% of what
sunlight actually provides to us.
And, that being said, you knowwhen we would.

(10:22):
A photon basically is just apacket of energy, and so at each
wavelength there is anassociated amount of energy in
that photon.
At higher or shorter wavelengths, the energy per photon is much
larger than the energy perphoton in the longer wavelengths

(10:45):
.
Okay, and so you have to start,instead of thinking as light as
something continuous, youactually have to start thinking
at it what they call the quantumstates.
But bottom line is, is that thelittle parcels, they're just a
whole bunch of little parcelsand we're talking about, you
know, a typical walk outsidesituation.

(11:05):
You maybe have 10 to the 20thphotons per second hitting every
square centimeter of your body.
So there's just so many of themthat everybody, it's just it's
you feels like a continuum.
But when you start looking atthat, all the different
wavelengths and energy levels,then you can start counting them

(11:26):
basically and you can assignhey, here's how many photons are
coming here every second, howmany photons are coming there
every second, and it's afunctional wavelength and a
bunch of other stuff.
But you know that's, you know.
I guess I'm trying to say youknow, think about the rainbow,
it has different wavelengthrange, but then magnify that way

(11:47):
out to where you've got like4,000 nanometers of bandwidth or
spectral thing, spectrum todeal with, and so yeah, and
that's all.

That's all natural terrestrial salt
radiation that's coming from thesun.
And in some previous podcastswe've talked about other sources
of radiation, so-callednon-native, and what we mean by
that is that sources ofradiation that don't have an
origin from the sun, that wedidn't evolve next to.
So I guess I just make thatdistinction for the listeners

(12:20):
that what we're talking aboutparticularly at the moment is
the radiation that's coming fromthe sun and we're only seeing a
small, I guess, parcel of thatwindow of that energy that's
hitting the earth.
The next question, which iswhat you alluded to a little bit
at the beginning of theconversation, is that these have

(12:42):
very, very unique and differenteffects on our biology
depending on the wavelength oflight.
So maybe can you give us a bitof an idea, maybe I'll start.
And if we go to the bottom ofthat, the wavelength, the
ultraviolet at its core,ultraviolet C radiation, doesn't

(13:04):
make it through the atmosphere,but ultraviolet B radiation is
how we make vitamin D and itbasically photoisomerizes a D70
hydrocholesterol in our skin tomake vitamin D.
I mean that's one of thebiological effects of that
particular wavelength.
So to talk us through some ofthe other biological effects of

(13:26):
the different wavelengths, andparticularly the ones that
you've been researching.

Well, to stay with UVB for just a sec, there's
this really great paper byYakomov where he actually used
Raman micro-specography toactually determine the outer 50,
what's the composition of theouter 50 microns of the skin?
And you know, as you say, 285is necessary to oxidize

(13:56):
cholesterol which is then usedto make a whole bunch of
different hormones in the body.
The problem is, what I think isoptically amazing is that what
the Yakomov showed was is thatthat outer 50 microns in
everybody everybody, independentof their skin color, is when
we're outside, is actuallyphotooxidized, photochemically

(14:19):
oxidized.
And what he showed was is thatwe've got this ultra-thin layer
and the whole point is is thatit's photo bleaching,
photochemically bleaching thatouter part of the skin, so
there's more efficient atallowing 285 to come into the
bot, into that region, and breakup cholesterol which we need

(14:40):
for vitamin D.
So by eliminating, not havingthe full, then what the data
shows is, or some work shows, isthat that outer or that process
is requires or uses, takesadvantage of hydrogen peroxide
generation, which has been shownto require the UVA visible and

(15:04):
the anirin for red to do thatefficiently.
So when we don't get outside,we're essentially reducing the
efficiency.
You know when you're talkingabout trying to crack
cholesterol, it's only about 8%efficient process in the best of
days.
It's really kind of hard to do.
But the body seems to havedeveloped this outer that nobody

(15:24):
seemed to know anything about,this outer microreactor that is
optimized when we're outside tomore efficiently break down
cholesterol or oxidizedcholesterol.
And so you know what you find is, the more you look every time,
what would happen is I do anoptical model of something and

(15:48):
then I'd start looking at well,wait a minute, what's that doing
?
You know, and the more I look,then you start to look at the
biological responses and you say, oh my gosh, there's actually
something going on and you knowthat's.
You know what's been driving alot of the from an optic
standpoint has been driving alot of the work I've been doing

(16:10):
is to just simply understandwhat the body's already doing.
And the thing that people haveto realize is that in our modern
lifestyle we took away the nearinfrared and the UV from our
indoor environment, and when wedid that, then all of a sudden

(16:30):
the body doesn't have theability to do this.
Photochemical bleaching doesn'thave the ability to localize
near infrared in the retina orstimulate tear production or all
these other things that youknow.
It was the elimination and yougot to put it in perspective
from the standpoint theelimination we've gone through
is the largest reduction insolar exposure in human history

(16:54):
period.
You know, we walk into a room.
The windows are blocking nearinfrared for low E glass,
they're blocking UV.
We sit in front of a displaythat has only visible light
coming out of it.
We have lighting that has onlyvisible light and we spend 93%
of our time in that environmentnot being exposed.

(17:15):
And you know what?
I guess what we've been, I'vebeen kind of focused on trying
to do, is show that there's allthese different things that the
body's doing that nobody knew.
I mean, until we did the model,nobody knew that you could.
You know that the near infraredcomponent would actually
penetrate through the skull, getinto the cerebral spinal fluid

(17:37):
and be light, guided down to thegray matter which just happens
to be on the outer portion ofthe brain.
And now we're starting to showthat.
You know the variety of otherthings that I keep on saying.
You know pregnancy.
You know I had have five kids,but I had a set of twins and it

(17:59):
was just amazing to watch theprogression through the
pregnancy.
And when you look at thatoptically, it's just what
happens, is it's an early partof the pregnancy?
The mother's skin blocks the UVand the visible.
Now understand that UV andvisible the higher the blues and
the greens have enough energyto essentially come in and break

(18:22):
a molecular bond, and so youdon't really have the choice.
The body doesn't know wherethat bond's going to be broken
and forms a free radical.
So you know, the higher, theshorter wavelengths.
The body is very discretionaryon how it lets it come into the
body.
But when you're in the firstpart of a pregnancy, essentially

(18:44):
the blues and the UV are allblocked by the mother's skin,
but the near infrared passesthrough and it turns out that
the amniotic fluid surroundingthe baby has a peak transmission
at 850 nanometers in the nearinfrared and that as the
progression, as the pregnancyprogresses, the mother's skin

(19:04):
gets taught, stretching,stretching, stretching, to the
point that you're allowing moreof the other wavelengths to come
in, and it appears that that'san important part of the baby's
eye development.
You know, you start looking atthe other parts of the body.
I mean, one of the things thatI think is the most amazing is

(19:26):
that you know.
If you look at the phosphory'spictures that he's done at 850
nanometers in the other places,you see how the body essentially
just lights up and the nearinfrared bounces around inside
your hand or whatever, but itlocalizes.

(19:48):
That scattering opticallyallows it to actually get to
make sure that the blood vessels, which are very important in
the near infrared from astandpoint, it actually we've
been shown that it's been shownthat that increases blood flow,
oxygenation, cytochrome C allthese good benefits are

(20:10):
associated and the bodyliterally optically scatters it
such that it gets distributedthroughout all these little
micro vessels and kind of likeyou know, we've got a radiator
system on the outside of usoptically and so there's all
these different mechanisms thatnobody seemed to have ever
looked at and when you look atthem you just kind of like it

(20:33):
all.

Incredible.
It's absolutely incredible,scott, and I like to talk to
patients about this idea ofoptimizing their food, diet and
their life diet and what youdescribed in terms of the change
of people's life environmentover the past 50 to 100 years.
To analogize, it's like if wesuddenly only ate food that was

(20:56):
stripped of what 80% of itsnutrients or, you know,
equivalent.
That is the analogy, for whatpeople are doing when they're
living in an indoor existenceand they're depriving themselves
of natural sunlight exposure isthat, as you say, we've lost
the non-visible light below.
So ultraviolet, which is belowvisible, and we've lost the

(21:18):
non-visible light, you know,above, visible, above red.
So, as we, as you justpreviewed for us, they have.
They have very, very criticaland almost up to now unknown
effects on our biology.
But by becoming indoors and byexposing ourselves just to blue
lit LED downlights and computers, we're essentially stripping
down our light nutrients to afraction of what we evolved.

(21:40):
And what, what, what, what weneed, the.
I really want to want you toexpand upon on what, what you've
just talked about in terms ofhow the body is using the
infrared, and maybe, before wedelve really deep into it, can
you explain to us the differencebetween infrared and and near
infrared.

Well, I mean, unfortunately, before we knew
what was going on biologically,we assigned different names to
parts of the spectrum, and sothe near infrared is typically
the portion that you start at,red, deep red, you know and you
go out to, oh, anywhere from1200 to 2000, depending on who

(22:26):
you're talking to, and then from2000 on out, just what's called
shortwave infrared, and thenthere's far infrared, but
they're really just names thatwere assigned based on not
understanding what was going onin the body.
In the body, by the time you get, there's these what they call
biological windows, where, youknow, starting at around 630

(22:50):
nanometers, which is kind of anorange red, out to about 1200 to
even beyond 2000, is an areawhere the body has a very low
optical absorption and thescatter characteristics, how the
light you know you take a.
That's a good way to thinkabout it, basically, the way the

(23:16):
photons are actually spreadingin the body.
In that region there is a mostof the spread.
Let's put it this way if youhave a white shirt on, okay,
most of the light, because it'snice and white, is being
reflected back, scattered backto you.
It's not being absorbed, it'sjust being scattered back to you

(23:38):
In the body, in the nearinfrared component and even into
this shortwave infraredcomponent, there is an effect of
mostly what they call forwardscatter, which that allows you
optically, the photons toactually spread, but they don't
come back at you, they don'tbounce back as much, and that

(24:00):
particular, the absorption andthe combination of that forward
scatter is what actually allowsthe light to propagate.
And I don't know if you've seensome of the Roger Seaholz videos
on light as medicine.
It's based on some of our work.

Oh, wow, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.
And he shows some really greatphotos where in the old days,
before everything medicine was,in the older days of medicine,
people would take a red light,shine it up here and they'd
actually look and see whether ornot with the sinus was occluded

(24:36):
, going through the bone and allthat.
Anybody who's told ghoststories on Halloween and stuff
stuck a flashlight up in theirmouth or up their nose, those
that the entire thing lights up.
But if you read the literaturebecause they really didn't
bother to model it correctlypeople talk about near infrared

(24:57):
only having a penetration depthof a millimeter or something
like that, and the problem is isthey're not actually looking at
the real, the characteristicsof the body properly and not
taking into account a thingcalled that and do a bunch of
other stuff, but anyway.
But what we're finding now isthat you know we can actually

(25:19):
model that effect and what yousee is is that you have this
propagation of this window ofnear infrared deep into the body
and such that in a child andthis is one of my big focuses is
children is that you know, achild is small.
That means that a penetrationdepth or the amount of how far

(25:45):
the near infrared will go intothe body is much higher.
So the higher number of cellsare affected by children, are
affected in children compared toadults.
There's still a lot in adults,but in children in particular,
right when they're in thisgrowth mode and all this other
stuff.
It used to be that, you knowthe kids would go out and build
a tree for it or whateveroutside you know now everything

(26:09):
is they go into a building withartificial lighting and have
sports or something.
So I think people don't reallyunderstand or realize how much
we have changed.
This whole environment and thenear infrared in particular is
extremely important.
But, as I said before, you knowit's not just.
You know everybody wants tohave a single item.

(26:32):
You know I don't need avocados,I live longer type thing.
But with this type of situationit's all complimentary.
You know you talk about we wantto have a lower diet, you are a
better diet, or we want to, youknow, get take this particular
set of vitamins or whatever.
They're all complimentary fromthe standpoint of they all have

(26:56):
an effect on your, your cell,your how your body functions.
But for whatever reason I guessbecause people can see it,
light is never on the list ofthings that you want to care
about, and that's what I guessI'm trying to get people to
realize.
Yeah, you brought it Go ahead.

So you know, definitely that's.
I think this is the messagethat I'm trying to promulgate as
well, which is that light ishaving an amazing effect on
biology and if it's done wrongie if we have a junk light diet
then we're going to get sick,and if we respect our
evolutionary biology, of ourneeds for an evolutionary

(27:38):
appropriate light environment,then we're going to thrive.
I'll include Roger Settlerholtzvideo in the show notes.
That's an amazing, veryinformative video called light
is medicine.
He's the.
He's the doctor from Medcram,so I'll definitely include that.
It's very, very informative,the.
So so let's expand upon what youwere talking about with the

(27:59):
concentration of near infraredphotons.
So so, if I'm correct in termsof paraphrasing you, Scott,
basically what you're saying isthat the body has evolved a ways
of taking this non-visiblelight, which is above the red
spectrum, and absorbing it intothe body and then transmitting

(28:21):
it from the point that has beenabsorbed throughout the organs.
And you mentioned the brain,which are the sulky, which are
the curves within the brain, andyou mentioned into the cerebral
spinal fluid, which is thefluid that bathes the spinal
cord and is continuous with thefluid that bathes the brain.

(28:42):
Is that correct?

Yeah, Well, I'd be a little bit more specific
from the standpoint.
Most of the what happens is isin the near infrared there is a
low level of absorption and, asFosbury puts it, you know,
essentially it's a lowabsorption matrix with a bunch
of weak absorbers in it.
So imagine you have like a snowdrift and you've got in there a

(29:08):
bunch of little asphaltparticles, you know it.
The light, you know, whenyou're sitting there in your
little eagly the lightpropagates through there quite
well, but the you still havethese absorbers in there, which
are the cells, the mitochondriaand all that.
And so all I'm saying is isthat a higher percentage of in

(29:30):
the near infrared, a higherpercentage of those cells or
those absorbers are beingaffected by, are able to absorb
the near infrared componentsbecause it's not absorbed as
well.
And so you get this, thisamazing effect where you get
this propagation of photons deepinto the body.

(29:55):
And what happens is the body has, over the years, developed some
pretty amazing opticalmechanisms to make sure that it
goes to very specific places inthe body.
Like, I say, the gray matteryou know the fetus, the, you
know the blood vessels, and sojust from an optic standpoint

(30:17):
it's really quite fascinating.
The other thing you have totake into account is that most
of the research that is done andan argument's done to for
sunlight, assume you're indirect sunlight.
The most amazing thing about itis is that if you I don't know
if you've ever seen nearinfrared photography.

No.

Okay.
So what you can do is you canactually get your cell phone
modified or a little cameramodified and the, as I said, the
near infrared is between islarger wavelengths than red, out
to 1200 or 1000 nanometers ormore.
Okay, if you take pictures inthat region, you'll see that

(31:04):
we're actually walking around in, in you're in the forest, all
the trees and leaves arereflecting.
They look like they have snowon them because they have
extremely high reflectivity inthe near infrared.
So what happens is is that whensun comes down and hits your
surroundings and reflects off ofit, in the visible it's

(31:25):
absorbed.
That's what gives us theability to tell that the apple
is red and the orange is orange,and you know, lemons are good
and that snake is a bad idea.
You know that those are thethings that we need to be able
to survive.
But in the near infrared,everything's white.
Actually, everything is, is iswhite from from that's, living,

(31:46):
grass, leaves, you know,reflecting clouds, and so we're
actually walking around in thiskind of like an integrating
sphere, and the fact that wewalk upright optically means
that a very small, what theycall a solid angle, hits your,
hits your body, when the sun'sabove you, but all surrounding

(32:07):
you is reflections from thatsunlight in the near infrared
absorbed, dropped down by 80% ofwhat it is in the to make the
leaves be green and all that,but in the near infrared you're,
we're walking around and thebody is accepting all this from
all different directions, andthat's one of the things that's
just I find most fascinatingabout it are virtually our

(32:31):
upright position of walkingincreases the amount of near
infrared we're exposed to, andyou know that depends on even
dirt has a higher reflectivityin the near infrared than
visible.
And so you know it's.
It's.
It's kind of like did we startwalking upright because we had

(32:52):
other reasons?
Or do we walk upright becauseit gave us more near infrared?
You can always make thatargument, but you know Well, you
know it is.
It is because you know it'ssomething that people don't know
anything about and you knowthey feel it as heat maybe and
if I could take just one quicksecond, I know it's a little bit

(33:13):
off in the woods, but heat.
One of my pet peeves is thateverybody just says infrared, oh
, that's heat.
It is no more heat than visiblelight or UV light.
A lot of UV, a lot of visible,a lot of near infrared.
They're all got the you knowthey're made up of photons and

(33:33):
you know we tend to try and lumpall this near infrared and
shortwave infrared into thisthing of heat.
And it is not heat and the bodywas responding in absorbing and
responding in a way that isvery, you know, very interesting
in a lot of ways to what'sgoing on.

Yes, so I guess the question that I have, then,
is if we have evolved thesebiological characteristics so
you've mentioned, perhaps,upright stance, you've mentioned
an ability to concentrate nearinfrared photons into the
grooves of the brain If we'veevolved amniotic fluid with a

(34:17):
specific would you does itrefractive index to, to
promulgate these near infraredphotons.
The question that I guess I'minterested in is why exactly
that that is the case, and to meit sounds like what.
What is happening is that themost sensitive tissues that
perhaps have the most energyrequirements are being are being

(34:42):
facilitated to absorb this,this type of light.
Obviously the growing fetus,obviously, the grain, grain
matter, which commands an insaneamount of energy consumption.
So so, so what are your ideasabout why these biological
features are as they are?

Well, I mean, there's well like right now.
You know why don't you havehair on your forehead?
You know, if you look at itoptically, that hair while it,
you know the fact that you havethat and what, and allows an

(35:19):
ideal amount or an increasedamount of near infrared to
penetrate and be in your frontalcortex.
That's one thing.
You have eyebrows that are in acertain location.
You have your eyes recessedback in your sockets.
You start to see, from thestandpoint of how the body is
constructed, that that it's it'strying to guarantee that you

(35:41):
get a certain amount of thisnear infrared into various, as
you say, sensitive tissues.
And part of the reason is isthat there's been work by
Kessler and others where theyshow that.
You know, once you get exposedto near infrared, the blood
vessels, actually there's anincrease in oxygenation,

(36:01):
hemoglobin, there is a removal,an increase in blood flow
associated with stimulatingnitric oxide compounds in the
blood vessels.
So one could argue that youknow the body made a choice
seans ago that it's going to usethe near infrared, because it

(36:21):
goes so deeply into the body toessentially stimulate waste
removal, you know, increase theamount of.
You know if you have increasedblood flow, then you can argue
that the that various immunefunctions are enhanced.
You know, like I say, even tothe point of determining how

(36:44):
efficiently we generate vitaminD and all the sex you know the
cholesterol is being cracked upat 285 is being used by the body
to do everything from vitamin Dto sex hormones to, you know,
cortisol, to a number of otherdifferent hormones.
And that's kind of what westarted out.
I started out with mainly doingthe optics and trying to

(37:07):
understand where the photonswere going.
And then, when we added, wewere able then to add the
electron spin data to get freeradicals.
And people have to realize thatfree radicals are not always bad
.
You know, free radicalsactually drive life in a lot of
ways and so, but they have to bekept in check and in balance on

(37:32):
a level that is both globallyor systemically, but also mainly
locally.
You know, and that's what, whenyou start looking at it
optically, you're counting thenumber of photons that are
hitting a cell, you know typething.
And you look at and you go,holy cow, that's generating all
these free radicals in a second.

(37:53):
How in the heck is the cellsurviving?
And you know, quite honestly,some don't from the standpoint
of.
You know, every 20 days ourskin cells shed off as a
sacrificial layer becausethey're taking on all these free
radicals that are beinggenerated in life.
And you know that's, that'skind of.

(38:15):
You start to see that there'skind of a.
The body doesn't get just tooptimize around one item, it has
to optimize multiple things,and trying to survive is getting
the best combination, and youknow I would.
I was listening to theconversation, or a Netflix thing

(38:36):
, on the blue zones and thediscussions about them and I was
just sitting there as I feltlike screaming at the, at the,
at the monitor, I said, okay,you talked about the diet, you
talked about how they got alongtogether, you talked about, you
know, getting exercise, but whatyou didn't talk about is is
they're getting a whole bunch ofnear infrared.

(38:58):
Because if you look at the bluezones, the blue zones are that
we know of right now are between37 degrees north and 10 degrees
north on the, in the, in the,in the, in the latitude, and so
you know, kind of like a bandthrough there.
But I would argue that whatreally happens is that those

(39:23):
people that are living to be ahundred, they may have.
There's a, I'm sure there'sgenetic, I'm sure there's other
things.
It's diet I'm not arguing aboutthat but one of the things
that's universal is they spend alot of time outdoors with light
clothing and people have tounderstand that Fosbury has a
this really great set ofpictures where he takes a

(39:45):
T-shirt, a regular shirt, and apart a cardigan, and he looks at
it.
At 850 nanometers Lighttransfer.
The near infrared translatesright through all that clothing
layers.
Now is it reduced Absolutely?
But you don't have to go, youknow.

(40:06):
That's.
That's why I keep on tellingpeople I always make the caveat
I'm not asking you to go out,buck naked and stand outside in
the sun, in the sun directly.
You really want to be in theshade and you want to use, you
know, clothing, because UVinvisible are blocked very
strongly by by clothing.

(40:28):
Near infrared is not, so you cango out and you can play in the
shade and and have a hat on anddo all this great stuff.
It still is providing you withnear infrared.
The problem is is that we'venow developed an artificial
environment that we spend mostof our time in that has zero.
It's not just a little less,it's zero, and you know the

(40:53):
effect of that, I believe isharmful.
Now that's going to get me introuble, but the bottom line is
is that you know we, we've gotenough data.
I think now to say you reallydo need to get out more.
I don't know about down inAustralia, but for us they did a
study and there are people thatare in nursing homes that get

(41:15):
five minutes of sunlight a month.

You know yeah, and it's not right, it's not
near enough.
And I want to comment on thisidea of the, the necessity for
sunlight, in terms of of ourbiology and very much in our
society.
In Australia, the the sun is isvery much demonized and that's.

(41:41):
There's obviously reasons forthat and we obviously we have
high incidents of melanoma andother kinds of non-melanoma skin
cancers.
But I really think that baby'sbeen thrown out with with the
bathwater and you know to thedegree that you know you can't
go outside without you knowbeing covered completely head to
toe with sun, sun including sunglasses and sunscreens.

(42:04):
There's a, there was a campaignI don't know if it's still
going called slip, slop, slap,the, the, the.
But the point that we've made,you know, in this, this first 40
minutes, is that there is somuch important visible and
non-visible light effects on ourbiology and, as you say, you
can still go outside with aT-shodon and get the benefits of

(42:25):
, of near infrared.
But you know, some would arguethat you're not adequately or
you're not stimulating somethinglike pro-opioamalana cotton and
POMC and you're obviously notgoing to be making as much UV
vitamin D if you've, if you'reblocking UVB and maybe you're
not making as much nitric oxideif you're blocking UVA, I guess

(42:45):
my my answer to that would besimply titrate your exposure
based on your physical or yourbattery skin type.
If you're really pale and you'refrom a Northern latitude, then
you obviously need less directsunlight before you're burning
or before you're in order to getyour needs met, and obviously
those, those with darker skin,have to have more, more sunlight

(43:06):
.
That brings me to the questionthat I was that I really want to
get your opinion on which ismelanin?
And you know I've talked to DrCruz and and he's talked about
melanin and basically as a blackhole pigment and because it's
so dark it will absorb allwavelengths of visible and
non-visible light, and he'spresented a data or information

(43:26):
that we actually use melanincutaneously to charge separate
water to generate free energy inthe form of of electrons.
Do you, do you know anythingabout melanin as it relates to
to near infrared light?

Um, I would, uh .
Well, let me back up just alittle bit, can we?
I will address your thing aboutmelanin, but can I address the
issue of, you know, sunscreens,of course, in particular?

Yeah.

Yeah, because it's pretty much one of the best
examples.
One of the best examples ofwhere the optics really matter.
I did a paper, way back whenthat was blocked from
publication, that basicallyshowed that if you do the
optical model, the free radicalgeneration in the skin is, half

(44:30):
of it is associated with UV, theother half is associated with
visible.
And what people don't realizeis that when you get a sunscreen
because of the bad optics,because the body in order, I

(44:56):
guess I'm trying to say in orderfor the body to prevent some
forms of sin cancer, inparticular basal cell carcinoma,
which has been on the rise forall these years, even though
we've been using sunscreen whathappens is, optically is that
the visible portion and the UVand the blues and violets and

(45:19):
the greens localize in the basalcell region of the skin.
So in order for you to use, forsunscreen to be really
effective, you actually need toabsorb in the blues and the
violets and the greens, whichmeans you have to put on dark
face.
So what's literally going on isthe, while the sunscreen may

(45:43):
help you with melanoma, itactually increases the time that
you spend outside exposed toblue and greens, because when
you put a sunscreen, uv blockingsunscreen on it literally
reduces the sunburn that you'regoing to get there, or FEMA, and
so you'll spend more timeoutdoors thinking you're safe,

(46:05):
when in reality you're actuallyincreasing your exposure to the
blues and the violets, which arethen localizing optically in
the basal layer.
So my problem is is that therewas a company there in Australia
that tried to sell somesunscreens that did try to deal

(46:28):
with the blues and the violets,but we're basically have created
this kind of environment thatgiving false.
Yes, melanoma is terrible.
Don't want to argue with it.
Why don't you just wear a hat?
That's a little bit better wayto do it.
Now, when you go down totalking about cruises stuff,

(46:51):
people tend to think about that.
The melanin is just this dye.
You know, your black, yourwhite or whatever.
Actually, melanin is producedas a little granule and is very
specifically placed in variousparts of the cells around the
nucleus.
Actually, that's really quitefascinating because it because

(47:15):
they can actually put a higherconcentration on the outer
portion of the nucleus.
So it blocks, you know, itblocks it Optically.
It allows the rest of theenergy to propagate deep, deep
in.
So one of the things aboutmelanin is is that it's not
continuous.
People think it is because welook at somebody, we see a dark

(47:39):
skin or a light skin or whatever.
The melanin is actuallydispersed very spatially and
very carefully in the body andthere's been people who have
taken melanin and made solarcells out of them.
You know it's possibleOptically.
It is interesting that forthose who know about the dermis

(48:03):
epidermis barrier, it has a lotof modulation on it there.
It has all these differentripples and that type of stuff.
The melanin is actually put inan optically.
If I were to design a solarcollector, I would put the
little granules in a particularlocation in there that the body
does and it would enhance theeffective ability of the melanin

(48:28):
to absorb and to do whateverit's doing.
Do I know what it's doing?
No, I don't know what it'sdoing.
Optically it is being placedvery ideally for it doing
something like dealing withwater or whatever.

Yeah, well, I mean, it seems to me that it's
not only protecting, as youmentioned, the granules.
So the melanocytes, which arethe specific cells that make
melanin, sit in that layer andthey have projections that I
think they supply about 36keratinocytes for each
melanocyte and they have theselittle granules of melanin that

(49:10):
they basically, I believe, blaboff and then they use that to
protect the keratinocytes.
But what you're mentioning,scott, is that the function of
the melanin is to protect theDNA from ionizing radiation,
from ultraviolet radiation, toreduce the likelihood of double
stranded, dna breaks and thenthe formation of cancer.

(49:33):
But what you're saying is thatit's quite possible that we're
also using melanin to harvestenergy and maybe-.

All I'm saying is that if I were to design an
optical or a solar collector,putting it in, we do this, I
mean, we put these kind offeatures on solar cells to
literally enhance their abilityto be more efficient.
And it just is very curiousthat the body has your outer

(50:05):
skin and then this boundary thatis highly modulated.
I have a picture in one of ourpapers where it shows that a
solar cell with exactly the samemodulation frequencies and all
that and how that enhances theability to absorb the near
infrared in particular.

Yeah, it's fascinating.
And Cruz says that he is verycommonly saying that the skin is
the solar panel for the Ferrariengine in our head.
So that's what and look, it'sseeming like the lines of
evidence are really stacking upin favor of that idea.
And then the next question youhave to ask is why did we evolve

(50:48):
hairlessness and is one of thereasons so that we could get
more of that solar radiationinto our skin and then therefore
harness it for energy purposes?

Yeah, well, the other thing that you have to
realize is that melanin, whileit absorbs strongly in the UV
and the visible, it tapers offquite radically in the near
infrared.
And if you actually wereprobably one of the few people
that have published and measured.
But if you take someone who hasa high level of melanin you

(51:20):
know 30, 40 percent and comparethat to someone who has four or
5 percent, you know red-headed,white skin and you look at what
happens in the near infrared.
There's about a three to six Xdifference in the absorption or
the absorption that's going onin that in depending on skin

(51:45):
type.
But what happens is is you getout past about 1100 nanometers
still within the near infrared.
We all end up looking the same.
We all are dark skin, withwhite hair, and it's because
melanin is dropping out.
Water is coming in as the mainabsorber.

(52:06):
So what ends up happening is,if you were to take a picture of
somebody in this short wave andyou can see it in some of our
papers take a picture in theshort wave, infrared.
You know we have this really,all of us have this really dark
skin, white hair, our clothesare white because it doesn't
have much water in it.
But any material that has wateris strongly absorbed and so it

(52:32):
changes.
Once you start looking at thesedifferent things and realizing
that we all are a littledifferent but we're all a whole
lot of same, you know, then youstart to, I think, understand.
And you know it's difficultbecause sometimes our politics

(52:53):
or whatever get in the way ofactually doing real science.
And that's what is really quitefrustrating.
And that's why I love theoptics, because at the end of
the day, it's a physical effect,you know, it's something you
can show, measure and all that.
And it really does illustratethat we're a lot closer to each
other than what we sometimestend to not pay attention or not

(53:16):
think.
Yeah, definitely.
But it also illustrates, youknow.
It also illustrates ourdifferences from standpoint.
If I go down to IQ or anybodyin Australia, that's white skin
you go out, you can get toastedpretty quickly.
You know someone you know witha darker, a higher melanin level
.
They're fine.
You know they have almost nochance of getting melanoma and

(53:42):
it's all because they're adaptedand they're taking advantage of
the benefits of melanin.
Now I'm concerned is that when Ido the numbers and look at it,
my concern is that for you know,like up in America, where we've
got a large percentage of ourpopulation at higher latitudes,

(54:05):
they're not getting sufficientnear-infrared exposure, which
makes them having, you know,possibly being affected in ways
that we don't really understandyet.
Yeah, and that's what I'd like,that's what I'd like to really
get more emphasis going on.
You know everybody wants tosign it to vitamin D, but it's,

(54:27):
there's all this other stuff andthat's what we came to the
point of talking about hormonesand because the best antioxidant
is melatonin and that's kind ofwhat we're doing now is trying
to put together the differenttypes of hormones and how
they're affected by light.

Amazing.
And look, let's talk aboutmelatonin.
I want to tie a bow on thesunscreen point.
It really what essentiallywe're doing when you're, when
we're applying that sunscreen,is that we're really looking at
a biological system in a very,very reductionist point of view,
and it really reminds me ofblocking HMG CoA reductase with

(55:06):
statin medication, in that we'vegot this incredibly complex
system that is running on somany layers in so many ways that
we haven't even fathomed yet.
And then we're looking at onelever and we're pulling one
lever, hoping for a first ordereffect, whether that's, you know
, we're reducing serumcholesterol or, you know,

(55:29):
completely blocking UVB withsunlight, and the amount of, I
guess, epistemic arrogance orignorant about what the second
and third and fourth ordereffects of messing with these
biological systems is absolutelyenormous.
And you gave the example justbefore of, yeah, you can block
UVB with sunscreen, but you'regetting, you're still getting

(55:51):
the visible blue and violet inthat basal layer which is
responsible for oxidative stressand, as you mentioned, basal
cell deaths or incidents goingup.
So you know, the unintendedconsequences of blocking those,
those UVB or using sunscreens isthat you could paradoxically if
I'm interpreting what you'resaying correctly that you could

(56:12):
therefore increase thelikelihood of getting something
like a basal cell carcinoma, andit's just, it's.
So I guess we I feel like,collectively, we need a bit more
humility before we andreperception of the human body,
because it's not just a machinewith levers that have, you know,
direct mechanistic outcome forone.

(56:34):
You know, you pull it and youget an outcome.
There's all these ripplingeffects because it is a complex
system and really, I think theconclusion for me is that taking
a step back and honoring ourevolutionary biology and having
some humbleness and thinking,well, okay, if this system is
here, it's probably here for areason and rather than start

(56:55):
fiddling it with it by applyingsunscreens you know, look, and
we haven't even talked aboutthings like oxybenzone and
endocrine disrupting compounds.
You know there's a whole hostof reasons other than just
simply the ones that we'vetalked about that can that occur
as unintended consequences ofplaying with this system?
The, the, but this we'vetransitioned really nicely to

(57:17):
what we I want to talk aboutnext, which is oxidative stress
and melatonin and what you, whatyou talked about is that there
is this idea that we've gotoxidative stress and free
radicals happening all aroundthe body and the amount of light
that's hitting these cells andwhat you can observe on a

(57:38):
cellular level is that the cellis generating a massive amount
of oxidative stress just as aroutine part of operation in
terms of living, and the way Ithink about it is like an engine
, it's like making a whole heapof heat.
But what the melatonin systemseems to be and obviously you're
going to expand on this is thatit seems to be like a coolant
system or a very, very, veryadapted ability to deal with

(58:03):
this oxidative stress at a very,very local level.
And it's funny because you knowpeople in the nutrition, diet
space and even popular culture.
You know they think aboutsuperfoods, or I'm going to eat
this.
You know axi-berry, or I'mgoing to eat this, you know a
whole bunch of kale leaves andI'm going to get all these
antioxidants.
And really, when you understandmelatonin, it really makes it

(58:27):
all into a bit of, you know, abit of a laugh compared to what
melatonin is doing, both at asubcellular, local level and,
you know, systemically, in thesystemic circulation.
So, with that as a bit of abackground, why don't you talk
to us a bit about melatonin?

Well, I think, first and foremost, people need
to realize that melatonin hasthis amazing ability to it's an
extremely good antioxidant, andit's not just that it's an
antioxidant.
When it oxidizes, the firsttime, it goes to AFMK, which is
a great antioxidant, and then itgoes down to AMK, which is a

(59:06):
great antioxidant.
So you get this cascading.
And this is one of the thingsthat Russ has been talking about
for years.
Is that melatonin?
Everybody seems to assign it tosleep.
You know, I'm going to make itso you sleep with circadian and
all that.
And not discounting that, allI'm saying is that, and he's
been saying, is that the realpower?

(59:26):
I mean, bear in mind thatmelatonin has been around for a
billion years.
It's been used on single-cell,it exists everywhere, basically,
and it has this not only theability to generate, as an
antioxidant, its metabolites, tobe an antioxidant, it has the
ability to upregulate otherantioxidants and affect.

(59:50):
You know how they're behaving.
Now, what's the latest set ofwork that we've been doing is
for?
So this has been debates beengoing on, you know, and Russ has
shown that.
You know, the mitochondria isgenerating melatonin, as well as
the pineal gland, allmitochondria appear to be
generating it.

(01:00:10):
And so what you end up with isthis kind of great debate going
on and people taking melatoninfor getting better sleep when in
reality, I believe its biggestfunction is to actually maintain
only a stasis for a freeradical generation at the
cellular level and at thesystemic level.

(01:00:32):
Now, you know, one analogy I'dmake, or comparison I'd make, is
that you know you can look atthe body selected melatonin as
the to protect the brain duringtimes of sleep.
You know why did it do that?
Because of its antioxidantcapability.

(01:00:54):
So we now have this pinealgland that's generating, in
times of low cellular activity,large amount of melatonin that
goes directly around the brain.
A little bit of it spills overinto the plasma to where you can
actually measure it at night,and that really forms the basis
of circadian, you know theory.

(01:01:14):
So what we've been focused onis trying to understand we now
we had the ability to say, okay,there's all these free radicals
, something's got to beresponding.
And melatonin you know Russ hasbeen working on this thing,
showing that melatonin isgenerated in every mitochondria

(01:01:35):
and every cell.
And but how do you measure it?
Because we can't measurehormone levels on a cellular
level.
So found this data done byTheron and separately by Zoo,
where they actually startedmeasuring melatonin in sweat and

(01:01:56):
in plasma on a scale,transiently, with enough
accuracy that you could actuallysee what's going on.
And lo and behold, what do youfind?
You find that when we startdoing stuff, melatonin levels
increase on.
You know, doesn't matterwhether it's nine o'clock in the
morning, doesn't matter.

(01:02:17):
And so the latest papers arebasically showing that.
You know, when we do stuff,bear in mind that circadian is
actually, they literally makesure that people we measured by
making sure people are sedentaryin the dark, you know,
basically a bedridden condition.
What are the data we're showingis is that during when we're

(01:02:40):
doing something, doing anythinglike having sex, doing, you know
, exercise, going out andswimming in a cold lake, all
these things cause a transientresponse in melatonin.
That, in my opinion and basedon the data, shows definitively
that Russ was right.
You know, all of our cells aregenerating melatonin.

(01:03:04):
Most of the time it's consumedlocally to deal with energy
production from, you know, fromthe ATP production, because it's
not totally efficient.
But it also provides thisability to have this huge
reservoir that was previouslynot.
You know it's talked about, but, you know, if you go through

(01:03:26):
the numbers, you find thatthere's a lot of mitochondria
and they don't have to generatevery much melatonin in order to
create this huge reservoir ofmelatonin that you don't really
see until you actually look atsome kind of a transient event.
And just to give you some roughnumbers, you know, typically in

(01:03:46):
the plasma you'll get 60picograms per milliliter at
night, or maybe a little higherDuring exercise.
Theron and Zoo and all thosewere able to show that melatonin
levels at nine o'clock in themorning go up to 200 picograms
per milliliter and stay there aslong as you're doing exercise.

(01:04:07):
So people's normal response tomelatonin is is that okay, it
helps me sleep?
Well, we're saying no, it'sdoing a whole lot more, and you
know how are we getting it whenyou're doing this exercise.
That's where the debate is atthis point in time.
You know we're arguing thatit's in the mitochondria and you

(01:04:31):
know.
So you know melatonin, what itdoes and how it operates, is
changing, I guess is what I'dsay.
You know people have assignedit a certain thing and it also
shows, when you start looking atthe transient response, that
while you can take a supplementand I, you know, don't
discourage anybody to takemelatonin it's pretty safe to do

(01:04:54):
, I suppose, but the body hasthis ability to clear it fairly
quickly with the liver, and soyou have to take into account
these changes as a function oftime.
I'm sorry if that's a littlebit confusing, but you know,
that's kind of where we're atright now.

Dr Max Gulhane (01:05:14):
Yeah, no, it's fascinating.
You know I'll make thedistinction for the listener
that what we're talking about isthat there's two separate ways
or two separate, you know, pools, maybe even of melatonin.
And there's the pool ofmelatonin that is made by the
pineal gland and that's made inresponse to the absence of blue

(01:05:39):
light.
So if we do a quick detour intocircadian biology for people
who are listening, when the eye,when the retinal ganglion cells
, sense blue light through themelanopsin receptor at, I
believe, is about 480 nanometers, then that is the peak
absorption for melanopsin.
They get triggered and thenyour brain switches off

(01:06:01):
production of melatonin from thepineal gland.
That is why getting exposed toblue light after sunset is going
to be so harmful to sleepquality in general and your
circadian rhythm is becauseyou're simply switching off your
body's ability to make amelatonin.
But what Scott is saying, andthe work that he and his team
have done, is that the melatoninis being made in every cell, in

(01:06:26):
every mitochondria, locally,not only all the time, but
particularly, I believe, onexposure to near infrared light.
Is that correct?

Scott Zimmerman (01:06:39):
Well, it's not just near infrared, it's
exercise, it's doing things.
You know the body.
I mean, when you start modelinghow many free radicals are
being generated in each cell,you're struck by the fact that
something's got to be responding.
And what we've been able toshow now is that when you start

(01:06:59):
doing exercise, you have a tonof mitochondria in your muscles.
That muscle, those aregenerating, have to generate a
lot of reactive, are freeradicals, and through that, what
the data shows is that if youactually measure melatonin
levels during the exercise event, you will actually see this

(01:07:23):
huge increase in melatonin inthe blood that previously, to my
knowledge, was basically noteven known.
I mean but and it gets back tothis issue that you know how we
measure things and in it has abig effect on our understanding.

(01:07:46):
And it's only with, like I say,very careful high frequency
sampling that you can actuallysee this, because what happens
is the body always tries to goback to homostasis and pulls it
back down.
So what you see during anexercise event, like Theron did
or Zoo did that the melatoninlevels rapidly ramp up to a

(01:08:10):
level plateau, and what he wasdoing was he was actually
measuring melatonin in the bloodduring exercise for a four hour
session on a stator stepperlong exercise, it literally
moved the entire baseline of themelatonin in the blood up and
then immediately, once you quitdoing the exercise, within a

(01:08:32):
less than an hour you were backdown to baseline.
And now the same thing hashappened with Gau's work, where
they're using wireless bio orcortisol sensors.
We're finding that duringexercise, you know, you have
this spike in cortisol.

(01:08:52):
All this is not saying thatcircadian is not right.
It's saying that on top ofcircadian is this other effect
that is being done by the bodyand it's using melatonin, and
it's not just melatonin andcortisol.
Anybody can go and run out anddo something, and you can.

(01:09:15):
Oh, I feel like I got it, justduster on it's.
All these are affecting ourhomerowns on a transient basis,
and that's the part that's kindof been missed in the whole
thing is that, you know, the actof living literally is
generating changes in the body'sbasic chemistry and what we're

(01:09:36):
finding is that that level ofchange is much larger even than
some of the circadian effects.
And why you have to startthinking about, okay, you know,
when do I exercise, when do Ieat, when do I?
You know, because they allaffect your cortisol and hormone
and these hormone levels inreal time and I think that's the

(01:10:01):
part that people have kind ofmissed is that that the body is
doing a whole bunch of stuffthat we haven't included in our,
as you say, our intelligencelevel.

Yeah, and look two points to that.
One, it makes sense to me thatthe mitochondria will be making
melatonin if this is a twobillion year old compound that
is highly evolutionarilyconserved across, you know,
prokaryotes as well as all theway up to, you know, mammals.
If they're generating reactiveoxygen species at a single

(01:10:34):
cellular level, then they neededmelatonin to dampen oxidative
stress in their single cells.
Well, to me, it makes sensethat that effect is, or that
site of production is going tobe conserved, If we know that
mitochondria were once primitivesingle cellular organisms.
That's the theory ofendosymbiosis, that's how we
know that, that we believe thatthat complex life evolved was

(01:10:59):
when we got efficiency gains bybringing energy production
in-house in the form of amitochondria.
So that's intuitive to me,Scott, that that would be the
site of their generation.
And the other point that I wantto make is that if we're
generating all these reactiveoxygen species, as you say, just

(01:11:19):
as a function of living, thento do exercise, to eat all these
things, that might add anadditional oxidative stress.
Well, we should do that duringdaylight hours, we should do
that during under exposure tonear infrared from the sun to
help us produce even moremelatonin to dampen down the
oxidative stress.

(01:11:39):
I mean, that seems intuitive tome.

Yeah, I think it is, and it's just unfortunate
that people can't see what'sgoing on in the near infrared.
I get a little glimpse of itbecause of I'm doing models, but
it's just literally amazing howthe body is doing what it's
doing to protect itself andpeople.

(01:12:06):
I don't think I didn't haveappreciation for how many things
the body is having to deal withat any given one point in time,
and that especially when youstart measuring or calculating
how many pre-radicals aregenerated in a cell and the
distribution of that.
You walk out, you go get asunburn.

(01:12:27):
You can see spatially that thatlittle strap across there is
good, not sunburned, and theother is.
So things are happening bothsystemically but also more at a
local level and they have to beresponding.
Those cells have got to by thetime the signal comes back that

(01:12:49):
hey, I've got too much sun onthis particular area.
Send something to help me.
It's too late.
It had to be.
We have to have both the localand the systemic, but what we've
been measuring all along hasbeen a systemic, long range

(01:13:10):
measurement.
Once we start measuring it on ascale that's more appropriate,
then in a way, during some ofthese events it's not saying
that circadian's wrong.
It's not arguing that at all.
It's saying that there's thisother component that we have
underestimated and I'll go backto the sunburn, just for the

(01:13:34):
standpoint of the.
I got into trouble.
I didn't get in trouble, but Ithought it was really
interesting.
They were talking about tryingto stop sunburn and I said but
you can look at it the other wayand say that sunburn is
actually a warning signal thatyou need to get out of the sun.
Now you've prevented theability for the body to tell you

(01:13:58):
you've been in the sun byblocking the UV portion, but you
allowed it, so people stay outlonger, associated with the
blues and the violets andthinking that they're fine.
So I mean, as you say, there'sall these different things going
on in the body that we're notpaying attention to or we're

(01:14:19):
essentially defeating orpreventing them from doing what
helps us survive and yeah, Imean yeah go ahead.
No, I was just going to say that, you know, I think we're at the
point now that we're startingto show that the our exposure to

(01:14:40):
sunlight it's all kind ofcoming together from the
standpoint exercise, diet,sunlight, all these things are
playing together, the bodieshaving to deal with them
together, or at least it assumesthat's one of the things that
people that I keep on trying tosay is the body's functions that
we've seen assume that we areexposed to sunlight, the entire

(01:15:03):
spectrum of sunlight.
When you all of a sudden narrowit down to just a very short
amount and you spend all of yourtime there, it has a negative
effect on our health, and notsurprisingly, yeah, yeah.

And look, we've obviously gone quite technical
in this discussion, but really,if you boil it down to doing
what your ancestors would havedone prior to the invention of
the electricity grid, prior toorganized civilization, what
would hunter gatherer tribes bedoing?
Will they be grounded outsideall the time, being constantly

(01:15:43):
regulated and exposed tosunlight of all the visible and
non-visible wavelengths of lightthat we've just been talking
about?
And look, they didn't need toknow the specifics of
mitochondrial reactive oxygenspecies generation and how to
dampen that with melatonin.
They just lived their life.
They hunted the bison, theyhunted bison, they made a fire,

(01:16:06):
they sang and they watched thestars and they enjoyed their
lives.
I think what you're doing is soimportant, scott, because
today's society has become socerebral and so science-based
and there's a whole religionwhich is, you know, scientism, I
believe is it's kind of croppedup.

(01:16:28):
People don't worship religiousdeities, they worship science as
an entity.
But essentially, by the workthat you're doing, you're really
helping us to move the needle,the compass point, or our
attention back towards what isessentially deeply ancestral
practices, which is simply gooutside and be outside and do

(01:16:50):
that sensibly.
But before we finish and Ithink maybe this is be a great
segue into the final topic ofdiscussion, which is what is
happening when people arespending 90% of their time
indoors and we've really talkedabout it a little bit already
which is that they're notgetting.
They're getting zeronon-visible light, they're

(01:17:12):
getting zero UV, they're gettingzero infrared or infrared, and
what I likened to that earlierwas like eating a diet that is
deprived of 90% of yournutrients if you're not getting
all this outside time.
So talk to us about what arethe characteristics of the light
that most people are living ontop most of the time.

Well, as I said , when you walk in, you sit down
on the couch and you watch TV.
The TV is getting brighter andlarger and we're spending more
time in front of it.
Our kids are spending more timein front of it.
That contains only visiblelight.
It does not provide any nearinfrared, does not provide any

(01:17:55):
UV.
Same thing is true of thelighting systems.
We've taken and shrunk thespectrum down to just the
visible portion.
That was done based to saveenergy Great idea from that
standpoint, but it ignored,there was zero research into
what the effect of that wasgoing to be and in fact I'd

(01:18:15):
argue there was a lot ofpushback where people before me
were saying, hey, this isdifferent, but they couldn't
quantify it.
To just briefly go back to whatyou were talking about, the
humbling effect, it used to beback in the old days that

(01:18:38):
hospitals and all that weredesigned to actually push people
out into the sunlight and dothat, and that was not based on
them understanding, as you say,melatonin, free radicals.
That was based on simplystatistics, where they observed
Florence Nightingale inparticular.
She was a statistician.

(01:18:59):
She observed that people livedlonger when they did certain
things, and so if you look atthe Ellis Island out hospital.
Out here, all the surgery wasdone under a conservatory window
that they could open up.
The windows were mostly openand they used gradient floor
heating.
They had water bodies around itto keep the humidity.

(01:19:22):
So what we're talking abouthere is actually what it used to
be.
And then all of a sudden, whenwe got antibiotics and that kind
of stuff, we started movingeverybody indoors and sealing
off and actually during thattimeframe the idea of using

(01:19:44):
light as a therapy was quiteprevalent and when the drug
company particularly certainparts of the drug companies
decided that antibiotics werethe wave of the future, they
literally shut down some ofthose practices and made it so
that that was considered.
So now what you're seeing is, Ithink, this re-assurgence of red

(01:20:07):
light therapy, near infraredtherapy, people having this
conversation and us measuring.
Some of the stuff we'remeasuring is really just
symptomatic of people having asolar deficiency and
unfortunately, there's a lot ofparts of the population that you
can say go out in the sun,they're not going to do it.

(01:20:27):
A or B, they can't do it.
And that's where I have mybiggest angst because I think
that, you know, while it's maybenot popular to say, I think we
have created an artificialenvironment that is harmful and

(01:20:48):
unnecessarily so.
It's not hard to actually putback the near infrared.
It's maybe more hard to putback in UV, but you don't need
as much of it on a regular basis.
But it's only when we startlooking at trying to quantify
you know, this is the engineerin me you start quantifying some
of these effects, that youstart seeing the opportunity

(01:21:10):
associated with, you know,putting back some of what we
used to have, or at leastproviding people with a
methodology where they can havethem in them.
Try and encourage more kids togo outside in the afternoon, you
know.
You know I don't want to.
I don't want anybody to go say,oh, you told you had to go out
and stand out there.
You know, in direct sunlight,you know that's not what we're

(01:21:33):
talking about.
The advantage is to be actuallyin nature, in the shade.
You know, because in thatenvironment, you know, when you
start looking at you know wetalked about the different parts
of the wavelengths when youlook at the different portions
when we're outside in directsunlight, the visible portion
and the near infrared portionfrom a watch standpoint are

(01:21:56):
about the same when directsunlight.
The minute I walk into the shade, it goes up to three times the
amount of near infrared tovisible ratio.
The intensity level drops butthe ratio changes.
And that's what we're trying tomake everybody understand is is
that it's the ratio that isimportant, because this protects

(01:22:18):
you from this.
And if you don't get enough ofthis and what we did is we took
it to zero for a lot of peopleand then the body has to find
some other way to deal with thisand that ends up being higher
oxidative stress.
It ends up being, you know,maybe some of the maladies that

(01:22:39):
we see in modern society.
You know and it's not a notsolving everything at once, it's
just a part of what you do youknow you're better off eating a
plant-based diet, you're betteroff doing well.
We don't all do that but thisis one thing that we could fix
or provide a minimum levelwithout you know some big issue.

Yeah, yeah, and I want to make three separate
comments.
When you talked about you knowhow they removed the non-visible
light when they in the lightingindustry without consulting
anyone or without understandingthe long-term effects.
It really reminds me of when,you know, they imposed the

(01:23:21):
cholesterol.
You know they went on theanti-cholesterol crusade.
The 1977 McGovern reportbasically mandated that we
should be replacing dietarysaturated fats with
polyunsaturated fats and reallythis is an uncontrolled,
population-based experiment.

(01:23:41):
There was no kind of lead-intime, there was just okay, we've
got a hypothesis or we've got a, you know, something that we
want to do and we're just goingto do it.
And the same thing sounds likewith the move towards this
visible only light is that therewasn't enough humbleness or

(01:24:04):
humility to think hang on.
Well, what are there going tobe?
The downstream consequences ofcutting out on what?
Something that's been there fora very, very long time?
So I think there were multiplepopulation-level kind of
uncontrolled experiments thatwere running in modern society
that it did, especially in thepast three years, that have, you

(01:24:25):
know, unknown and unknowableunintended consequences, and
we're going to find out.
But I think it's going to bevery, very incompatible with
human health.
I think a lot of people aregoing to continue to get sicker.
The second point I wanted tomake is that what we think is a

(01:24:48):
good idea and this is a kind oflead-on point is that we're
going to save energy by puttingLED downloads in everyone's
houses, and that's going to be agreat thing to do, but again,
it hasn't accounted for the factthat there was value or that we
have needs that are now notbeing met or active harm.
That's being done by exposingeveryone to blue-only light, and

(01:25:12):
when you mentioned earlier thatthe blue and violet gets
concentrated in the basal, inthat layer, does that in my mind
?
I'm thinking about theincidences of skin cancers, and
I believe melanocytes do have anabsorption peak around 480.
Does that imply a mechanism bywhich isolated blue light that

(01:25:36):
everyone is being exposed tocould increase melanoma cancer
rates?

Well, all I would say is they need to run
real studies to do it, but allI'm saying, optically, that is
what is happening is that themajority of the photons that are
going in in the blue and theviolet are localizing in that
basal layer and that, bypreventing the body from telling

(01:26:05):
you it's time to get out of thesun, people could be spending
more time in the park, and thisis well known.
Zostro did this study years agoand it's really what we use for
some of our models, where heshowed and he was working for a
cosmetic company and he showedthat you can take a piece of

(01:26:27):
skin, put it out, expose it tothe UV, expose it to the visible
portion, and those two sampleswill have the same number of
free radicals in them.
So it's not like UV is the badguy doing everything wrong.
We actually need UV, but thevisible is also contributing to

(01:26:49):
the amount of free radicals inthat particular region and I
think that's where the majorityof them are absorbed.

So but how far, how far into the skin does
visible like blue lightpenetrate?
Because, because we did.

Yeah, I mean it's a little bit of a
functional wavelength, but ifyou look at, like Eddie or
anything, you can say that 99%of them fall within a millimeter
into the, into the skin photons, and that's based on the
absorption characteristics ofskin in the visible range.

(01:27:24):
So it just like I say, we did amodel and showed you that there
was a higher concentration inthat basal layer and might be an
issue.
It might be a reason why thatpeople with light skin, men with
light skin color, still aregetting increasing levels of

(01:27:47):
basal cell carcinoma.
Somebody's gonna have to runthe test to actually prove that
and yeah, but great.

Well, all right, well, let's.
Let's wrap this up, and I thinkthat a good way to kind of
finish this conversation isbasically what people can do or
what, how you would like to seesociety change from an optics
and a light point of view tooffset, mitigate, reverse some
of the problems that we've justtalked about, when, in terms of

(01:28:18):
reducing everyone's light dietto 5% of what ancestrally we
would have been getting.
So what can people do and whatcould companies and society do
at large?

Well, I think that, as we've been talking
about with sunscreen, thelighting industry is dealing
with now a whole bunch ofunintended consequences, and
it's not just near infrared.
What happened is we created atechnology where people could

(01:28:53):
generate sufficiently generatesvisible light.
Now, I believe that nobody atthe time that they were doing
that came to the conclusion thatif everybody had the ability to
put more light with out costinga bunch of energy, they were
going to put more lights out.
So what's end up happening isnot only have we eliminated the

(01:29:16):
near infrared from the visibledaytime, we've replaced it with
a whole bunch of light,especially in the blue region at
night, which is leading to theartificial light at night.
I'm a dark sky advocate,basically, and so, but I think
it's really along the same linesas I said with the sunscreen,

(01:29:38):
nobody intended that we would.
You know, yeah, they wanted tosell light bulbs, don't get me
wrong but nobody intended tohave this huge explosion of
light at night.
I've got a neighbor down theway that she has the most, the
brightest blue thing that runsall night.
I go up and say turn thatstupid thing off.

(01:29:58):
But you know, but that's what'shappening is is that light is
where we've eliminated theportions of sunlight and
essentially the amount ofsunlight we're getting during
the day and we've moved it intothe night and it's essentially
affecting all life forms.
I don't know about you downthere, but you know I would

(01:30:19):
always go out with my grandkidsto watch the fireflies.
Fireflies aren't around verymuch anymore around our neck of
the woods Now.
It could be a lot of reasons,but you know, I think that we
need to take a step back, as yousay, be a little bit humble and
understand that what we'redoing has a whole bunch of

(01:30:40):
unintended consequences thatnobody wants the planet to die
from.
You know global warming and allthis other stuff.
We're all trying to do it, butat the same time, you can do it
stupid.
You know, and you know that'swhat's the concerning part is is
that you know, as an engineer,I'm looking at the numbers and

(01:31:00):
I'm saying, wow, we really didchange stuff a lot, and do we
know what it's going to do?
And you know.
That's kind of where I'm comingfrom in the whole thing.

Yeah, I know and definitely and I agree with you
a lot, scott I think that wereally need to walk back some of
these changes that we made froma societal point of view, in
the face of what is so muchmetabolic disease cancer, you
know, behavioral issues and somany of them stem back to

(01:31:36):
disruptions of our light, of ournaturally evolved light
environment, and I just recordeda really great podcast with
Sarah Pugh for those who want todelve a little bit deeper and
Jalal Khan into the exact kindof pathologies and diseases that
are kind of getting that arelinked to perturbations in our
light environment.
But from a whole high level view, I think, reducing the amount

(01:32:00):
of LED blue lit downlights thatare in a house I mean looking in
here in Australia there'smassive tracks of housing
developments that get put up.
You know within three monthsthey're all identical, they're
all cookie cutter.
And you go inside them andtheir harshest, darkest

(01:32:20):
laboratory white light you knowis emitted from all these
downlights in the ceiling andyou know people are turning them
on because they just use theirstock standard the lights that
come with the house and notrealizing what effect that is
having on their biology.
So that might be a good pointto kind of talk about what
you're doing with your companyin terms of trying to balance

(01:32:42):
out the artificial lightspectrum.

Yeah, and you know our company.
We've basically developed alight source that it's not very
complicated.
I believe in keeping it simple.
Where we LEDs are very good atgenerating visible light, they
do that really well with a highefficiency.
They're terrible at generatingnear infrared.

(01:33:06):
The old filament bulbs thateverybody learned to hate is
very is the most efficientmethod of generating near
infrared.
And when I talk about filamentbulb I'm not talking about a
light bulb, I'm talking aboutthe little green and wheat ones
that you used to have in yourflashlight.

(01:33:26):
All that.
Well, it turns out that if youuse the filament bulbs to
generate the near infrared, youdrop the temperature of the
filament and the lifetime of theincandescent goes out beyond
that of an LED.
Now the LEDs.
So what we do is we have alight source it's really quite

(01:33:47):
simple where we have acombination of LEDs to generate
visible and we use the filamentsto generate the air infrared
and we do that in a way thatmimics basically a shade
condition where it's a three toone near infrared to visible as
far as optical watts.
So that's what we generate.

(01:34:08):
You know we make it's just alittle screw in light bulb runs
off of 48 volts or 120 volt AC.
And the cute thing is is thatby doing that, it basically
gives us the ability to makeno-transcript, improve the or

(01:34:31):
make it simpler for the controlsystems associated with lighting
, so we can do a larger dimmingrange, we have a better power
factor and other other things.
But you know, just in general,you know that's what we're been
putting out there and trying tosell in the form of desk lamps
and things like that, because Ibelieve that you know we don't

(01:34:53):
have to relight everything.
But, as you say, this idea thatyou can put these high, bright
blue ones sitting up in a canlight and everybody turns on you
have this harshness that isinappropriate.
You know you need to be able toget to the point that you can

(01:35:16):
have something that has some ofthe near infrared content in it
to put by your workstation or toput with your children.
You know, when they're readinga book, you know it used to be
that we'd sit around and youknow either have a little
campfire going or have, you know, be reading under an
incandescent or candlelight orwhatever in the old days, and

(01:35:38):
there was an advantage to thatit basically set you up for
better sleep.
I would argue that what we doas far as the near infrared is
just as much as important inyour sleep patterns, as you know
people are doing.
Because what's really happening?
The lighting industry has said,okay, we're going to shrink

(01:35:59):
everything down from 400 to 700nanometers and in fact they're
really pushing more like 620.
So we can make everybody thinkthat's white.
But now all of a sudden we'rehaving some problems with people
sleeping.
I don't remember having a lotof troubles sleeping when I was
under incandescent lighting.
I do have problems.

(01:36:20):
People are having a lot ofproblems with this shrunken, you
know thing.
So, and they've got a problembecause if they add in the
violet, add in the reds thatmake up, you know, gets closer
towards what we want theefficiency goes in the toilet.
So you know they're kind ofstuck and you know what our

(01:36:44):
light does is let you have stillmeet the DOE requirements for
energy efficiency, but it givesyou the entire spectrum out to
about 3000 nanometers, simplybecause the little filament
bulbs that we're using are soefficient at generating the near
infrared.

So there's some other electrical advantages.
It sounds great and look at itand it reminds me of, look the.
You know the goal is to, youknow, save energy and to prevent
climate change.
But the two biggest, I guess,centralized top-down movements

(01:37:22):
that are being pushed to achievethat end, from an optical point
of view and from a dietarypoint of view, are massively
harmful to human health.
And that is simply using LEDson the visible only, which is
what we've just spent, you know,an hour and a half talking
about.
And then also, you know, thiswhole idea of a plant-based diet
which is highly deficient inessential nutrients.

(01:37:45):
So it's this perverse, kind ofbizarro world where, in order to
save the world from climatechange, we're all having to sit
under profoundly alien lightsources, eating a profoundly
nutrient deficient, you knowmonocropped plant-based diet.
And that's supposed to be kindof everything that we do to, you

(01:38:08):
know, save the planet fromclimate change, which is
essentially making peopleincredibly unwell because our
fundamental biological needsfrom a dietary and a light point
of view aren't being met.
So I really take my hat off toyou, scott, for doing the work
to develop a product that isgoing to help people kind of, I

(01:38:28):
guess, fill those needs back in,and it sounds like an excellent
tool.
I guess it's all about toolsbecause we can go out into the
wilderness and live like youknow, or the caveman, and have a
perfectly regulated circadianrhythm and, you know, max out
our melatonin synthesis all day,every day.
But you know that's not reallycompatible with modern society.
So I think you know, usingtools like what you're talking,

(01:38:50):
what you're designing andselling, is a great intermediate
way because people could simplyput a light on their desk, as
you mentioned, and get some ofthat near infrared and not have
the as destructive effect ontheir biology the circadian
rhythm but their ability to makemelatonin.

So that's really a strong idea.
Yeah, and I think that there'sa good portion of it is people
need to start getting educatedand aware of what's going on.
You know most people they hadno idea, and you know,
rightfully so.
We all have our lives to live,we have things going on and

(01:39:29):
sometimes the solution is notthe perfect solution.
Sometimes the solution issomething on the in between, and
that's just how what we'retrying to focus on is to say,
okay, you know, start, start aprocess.
Start a process, because it'snot just the lighting, you know,
the architects are.
There was a discussion I had awhile back with one of the glass

(01:39:52):
manufacturers for architecturalglass and he said you know,
scott, every time I wasexplained to the air infrared
and he said you know, that kindof explains it.
We've been doing this experimentwith these hospitals and the
more we extend the reflectedrange or window out into the
near infrared, the better theresults get.
There's studies all over theplace that are simply having

(01:40:15):
being near a window in ahospital is better, for there's
lots of ways we can start doingit, but if nobody knows about it
, nobody does anything, you know, then they're going to always
go for the energy savings and Iwould argue that you know that

(01:40:36):
it only takes probably less thana 1% improvement in
productivity or time in thesickness, the reduction in
sickness, to wipe out any energysavings that they are hoping to
get.
And, quite honestly, we reallyhaven't had that much in energy
savings if you actually takeinto account the increased

(01:40:57):
amount of areas that we'relighting.
We used to not like I grew upin Kansas you could look out
across the area and you couldsee one barn light for every
house.
Now it's like everything is litand you know it's overwhelming.
You know some of themeasurements are showing that.
You know we're increasing thelight at night by you know 10%

(01:41:21):
every decade or something likethat.
And it's really part and parcelof this whole thing that people
aren't aware that there'sanother thing going on that you
ought to take into account.

Yeah, maybe in the future people will view, you
know, using a massive LED lightat night as the equivalent of
having a really inefficientdiesel generator spew out, you
know, smoke into the atmosphere,because that's what it is.
That's an analogy about the youknow, the externalized negative
externality of running thesedevices and this technology is

(01:41:57):
that you're really polluting thecommons by putting your really
blue, you know light on in frontof your neighbor's window and
unless you know they haveblackout blinds and wearing a
sleep mask.
It's very consequential.

The other point I have One quick little thing
is that there's a guy namedBartholomew, a lighting designer
, and his thing is that he'sbeen trying to and I wrote a
paper with him and we publishedit on the effect on the black
community.
And one of his things that hetalks about is that in New York

(01:42:36):
City, where they were having somuch crime, their solution was
to take and put in generatorswith high intensity lights for
the parks and the other areas totry and cut down crime.
And I'm looking at it and heagrees is that?
I mean, in what world do wethink it's a good idea to run a

(01:42:58):
bunch of generators and havelight on all night?
You know, to try and makepeople safer.
You know, and for some reasonwe're in this topsy turvy world
where we come up with these kindof conclusions and don't take
into account the effect it has.
You know, it's not justphysical, it's mental.
You know there are all kinds ofissues that improper lighting

(01:43:23):
is having on our health.

Oh, undoubtedly.
I mean, I see patients in myclinic and you know, the sickest
ones from a mental health andpsychiatric point of view
invariably have an absolutelycompletely deficient light
environment, completely sunlightdeficient.
You know their sero-environmentD is low, which is, would I

(01:43:46):
look, as a proxy of theirsunlight exposure.
Their circadian rhythm iscompletely tanked and inverted.
You know, often they're goingto sleep at, you know, 3, 4 am
because they're on the computerplaying games until the early
hours of the morning.
And it's very consequential and,as you said, scott, people
aren't really aware of it yet.

(01:44:06):
But I mean, that's the purposeof this discussion and other
discussions On the.
And the other point I just wantto make about, also about the
light environment and hospitals,is that crews has made the
point that if we put casementwindows, so open up casement
windows in hospitals, that wouldbe something incredibly simple

(01:44:28):
that would be able to exposepatients to natural spectrum.
That wouldn't be that difficult.
And I've worked in hospitalsfor four years and they're
profoundly, profoundly unhealthyin terms of the light
environment that you're going toget in a hospital.
And the other interesting thingis quarts, which is obviously,

(01:44:51):
which is able to allow all formsof visible light and UV as well
, I believe.
So maybe putting quarts on theneonatal intensive care, the
NICU, little cubicles for theneonates, the premature babies,
to allow a bit of UV in as well,that's a cool idea too.

Well, you know, with my kids, you know they
have a little jaundice you putthem up in the window.
Well, now you can't put theminto the window because it's UV
blocking in there for headblocking.
So you, you know they no longerrecommend to do that and you
know it is.
It is, I believe, the hospital,I would argue, based on the
stuff we're done with cortisol,that hospitals presently are

(01:45:37):
designed to bring their patientin with the worst high, elevated
level of cortisol.
It's always scary to go to thehospital for us non doctors, you
know, but the reality is isthat you walk into a hospital
and, rather than trying toreduce cortisol cortisol, you
know, is a very importanthormone, all that, but it

(01:46:00):
basically suppresses the immunesystem.
You know, when it's at elevatedlevels, that's what it does to
help you fight or flight.
But you know, there, everythingthat we do now in hospitals, I
would argue, is making it morelikely that that patient is an
elevated level of cortisolrather than a lower.

(01:46:21):
You know more melatonin typebase, and you know that's just
two hormones.
There's hundreds of hormonesthat we have no clue.
The only reason I was able todo the data we had is because
we'd spent so much time oncircadian, where we had some
measurements that actually werefast, good enough to use for

(01:46:44):
this set of papers, and sothere's so much to learn.
As you say, we need to be verymuch more humble on what's going
on, and I believe that at somepoint in time, you know why
couldn't you just have a nicelittle atrium area that you
bring people into that hasnatural sunlight coming in and

(01:47:05):
you know kind of set them up to?
You know, good music a little?
You know have a carrot, I don't, you know.
I'm just saying that there's noreason that we can't use the
body's defenses.
There's this one thing I waslooking at the African American
population in Chicago are, ingeneral, had 40 times the death

(01:47:29):
rate of the population insub-Saharan Africa.
Now, sub-saharan Africa didn'thave the vaccines we had, didn't
have all this other stuff youknow, as far as healthcare.
And yet there's this hugedifference and I would argue
that in part it's associatedwith a more exposure to sunlight

(01:47:50):
in those areas, and the blackpopulation has is probably the
leading indicator because of theway light.
Actually, you know, our modelsshow that it takes quite a bit
more exposure for them to getthe same stimulus that we get,
and so I think there's a lot tobe learned, and I'm hoping that

(01:48:14):
people will start digging intoit a little bit deeper on the
research side, because reallyall we're doing is putting back
what nature used to provide.
I'm not trying to, you know,sell everybody.
They have to get more, you know, than what nature provided, and
that's why we design our lightsto do the three to one, and

(01:48:34):
then when you switch it intoanother mode, it's dimmed down
to where it's more like a coalsof an ant from a fire.
Yeah, it is amazing.
That's true.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's the two things of
this discussion is, you know,let's have some collective
scientific and epistemichumility about how we're
conceiving the naturalbiological systems and let's try
and get back to nature, becauseMother Nature did it the best.
We sculpted by light and wesculpted by Mother Nature and
the natural light frequencies.

(01:49:04):
So if we can get outside asmuch as we can and use the sun
as safely and as we've justtalked about, then I think
people are going to be able toprevent disease and definitely
heal, which is not what thecurrent setup is really aligned
to.
So, scott, thank you so muchfor coming onto the podcast.

(01:49:25):
Where can people find out moreabout your work, where can they
follow you online and where canthey buy some of your lights?

You can buy the lights from nirallightingcom or
a small little company.
So we're just trying to startbuilding up inventory to get it.
So please be patient.
Do you ship to Australia?
Yeah, we can ship to Australia.
We'll send you the shippingbill.
But that's but you know, forAustralia and the UK, because

(01:49:59):
we're your voltage differences,we just use, provide you with a
plug-in module, so it's a wallwart type thing and you can.
You got a couple versions youcan do one where we provide you
with a lamp and the other whereyou can modify your existing
lamp to do that, and then youknow if you want to look at any

(01:50:25):
of my work.
Russ was extremely patient, tookan optical engineer and told
him how to actually write amedical paper with all the
references.
So we've done that.
There's three or four of thoseout there that I'd suggest.
You know.
Roger talks about some of thosepapers.
It's really, you know, mainlyassociated with melatonin and

(01:50:47):
the optics of the body, and nowit's also throwing in some of
the.
But most of the work I've doneis I post it on LinkedIn, so if
anybody wants to friend me onLinkedIn, they can go back and
look at the papers.
You know it's a stack aboutthat thick because I'm
long-winded, so you know theymay have to dig through a few of

(01:51:09):
them, but I think that you know, like I say, if they would like
to, and it's interesting towatch because, you know, while I
understand the reasons behindpeer-reviewed papers and we do
that sometimes LinkedIn is amuch more open conversation and
a broader conversation with morediversity, as you say.

(01:51:33):
You know, I really believe thatyou know everybody's got a
place at the table thearchitects, the, you know the
phototherapy people, all thiskind of stuff, because we're
really just trying to create anenvironment where people can
live the optimum life.

That's it and that's my goal to help people
live their optimal, mostthriving life.
And yes, I agree with you,there's quite a lot of drawbacks
or problems with thepeer-reviewed process.
It's obviously it can be great,but it can also prevent and
inhibit the free flow of ideas,especially when financial

(01:52:12):
interests get involved.
But look, scott, thank you somuch.
I will include all those linksto your papers and social media
and online store in the shownotes and so people can engage
and get in touch with you.
So, yeah, thanks again for yourtime and have a great night.

You too Thanks.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}39. Scott Zimmerman: Amazing Effects of Infrared Light on the Human Body

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