Can Light Affect Your Health?
With light, the body sets its internal clock to a 24-hour cycle regulating an estimated 10 percent of our genes. The workhouse of this system is the light-sensitive hormone melatonin, which is produced by the body every evening and during the night. Melatonin promotes sleep and alerts a variety of biological processes to the approximate hour of the day. Any sort of light can suppress melatonin, but recent experiments have raised novel questions about one type in particular: the blue wavelengths produced by many kinds of energy-efficient light bulbs and electronic gadgets.
The benefits of blue light: better memory and cognitive ability. The downside: delays in sleeping, weight gains and maybe even cancer:
Body clock disruptions “can alter sleep-activity patterns, suppress melatonin production and disregulate genes involved in tumor development,” the WHO concluded.
See article on how light can affect your health.
I guess this means I better stock up on the melatonin supplements.
Interesting.
If all this is true then why are people in the northern climes (where is less sunny) healthier on average than people in the southern climes – at least in the northern hemisphere?
Cancer? Blue light? They’ve been able to experiment with control groups subjected to different kinds of light for the decades needed to see differential cancer rates?
We are just scratching the surface on light. From the ideas in this post, to solar power, to lasers, to Einstein’s theories, there is more than meets the eye when it comes to light.