More Than Meets the Eye - 2. Health and Light.
C. Reithmuller Lantern, Chromolithograph. c.1890.
Matthew Maruca June 6, 2024
So, we understand that light doesn’t just allow us to see; by powering the evolution of living organisms, and their various functions, light actually caused the process of vision to exist. . If light is powering our existence, what else might it be doing to us? What follows is a brief and incomplete overview of the last 150 years of studies of light, and the crucial role in our physical and psychological well being it plays.
Light. And Health.
Florence Nightingale, considered the founder of modern nursing, observed in the mid-nineteenth century: “It is the unqualified result of all my experience with the sick, that second only to their need of fresh air is their need of light; that, after a close room, what hurts them most is a dark room, and it is not only light but direct sun-light that they want... People think that the effect is upon the spirits only. This is by no means the case. The sun is not only a painter but a sculptor.” (Notes on Nursing, 1860)
In 1903, the Danish physician Niels Finsen was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for his discovery that ultraviolet light was an effective means to treat lupus vulgaris (tuberculosis of the skin) due to its antibacterial effects.
Florence Nightingale.
In the early years of the 20th century, researchers discovered Vitamin D, and found that it is essential for bone development and a variety of other essential biological functions. In 1935, it was discovered that ultraviolet-B irradiation is responsible for the reaction producing Vitamin D in its active form. This provided an understanding of the mechanism by which UV-light was successfully used to treat rickets in the children of industrial smog-covered cities, several decades prior, during the Industrial Revolution.
In the 1920s, a Russian researcher named Alexander Gurwitsch discovered ultra-weak ultraviolet light emissions from living cells, which he called “mitogenic rays”, since they appeared to be the stimulus for mitosis, the process of natural cell division. A few decades later, Fritz-Albert Popp, a German researcher, discovered a wider spectrum of light emission from cells, and called this light “biophotons”, which he defined as “a photon of non-thermal origin in the visible and ultraviolet spectrum emitted from a biological system.” Thus, it was discovered that living cells actually generate, and even communicate with light.
More recently, in the 90s, scientists discovered that our eyes contain photoreceptor cells that don’t communicate with the image-forming centers of our brain, but rather wire directly to the hypothalamus—the master regulator of the brain—informing the brain about the time of day, controlling the “circadian rhythm”, and thereby stimulating and regulating the production of a wide variety of essential hormones, neurotransmitters, and other biomolecules. Light is the primary factor that controls this crucial biological rhythm.
In 2017, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael W. Young for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm—another Nobel Prize for a landmark discovery involving the crucial role that light plays in our health and biology.
Lately, leading scientists and public health experts have taken a keen interest in light, with the likes of Andrew Huberman, Ph.D., a professor of neuroscience at Stanford University, bringing newfound attention to the importance of light en masse. Huberman has spoken in detail about the crucial role that light plays in our health and well-being, and of the importance of daily exposure to morning sunlight in order to stimulate our circadian clock, regulate our biological rhythms, support our sleep, and experience optimal health and well-being. In Episode #68 of his Huberman Lab Podcast, he said “I can think of no other form of energy—not sound, not chemical energy (so not drugs), not food, not touch—no form of energy that can target the particular locations in our cells, in our organelles, and in our body to the extent that light can. In other words, if you had to imagine a real-world surgical tool by which to modulate our biology, light would be the sharpest and the most precise of those tools."
Light.
“The Human Soul: Its Movements, Its Lights, and the Iconography of the Fluidic Invisible”, Hippolyte Baraduc. 1913.
When I was a kid, I never thought once that light could affect my health; or even that it played any more of a role in my life than simply allowing me to see. When the sun was out, there was light outside, so I could see. When I turned on a light in a dark room, there was light, so I could see. On a dark night, the moon reflected the light of the sun, so I could see, at least a little. The stars emitted beautiful, glowing, dim light from hundreds of millions of miles away, causing the night sky to glimmer with beautiful light. In the magic of Christmas time, we would adorn our tree with beautiful, twinkling lights, and these colored lights would shine all around, causing a special feeling in the air. A warm fire in the winter offered a kind of light that could warm the depths of my soul, and a bonfire with friends offered a kind of light that would burn permanent memories to be cherished for decades to come.
We don’t fully understand it, and we may never. But light, whether we know it or not, is the energy that powers our lives. It is the energy stored in our food, it governs our biological rhythms, it controls our biochemistry, our cells use it to communicate, and so much more. Even the top public scientists and health experts are beginning to emphasize the tremendous importance of a healthy “light diet”: with ample morning sunlight, a sufficient dose of strong daylight for vitamin D production (and much more), and a reduction of sleep-disrupting bright artificial light and screen devices in the evenings. As our collective human knowledge evolves, and our understanding of the world deepens, it may be the case that we return to certain fundamental truths, which have been known for millennia: intuitively, viscerally, if not “scientifically”.
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” Plato
Matt Maruca is an entrepreneur and journalist interested in health, science, and scientific techniques for better living, with a focus on the power of light. He is the Founder & CEO of Ra Optics, a company that makes premium light therapy products to support optimal health in the modern age. In his free time, he enjoys meditation, surfing, reading, and travel.
