Regenerative Health with Max Gulhane, MD
I speak with world leaders on circadian & quantum biology, metabolic medicine & regenerative farming in search of the most effective ways of optimising health and reversing chronic disease.
Regenerative Health with Max Gulhane, MD
Improving our light environment for better health | Guy Foundation Round Table
Repost of Guy Foundation 2025 Autumn Series Roundtable discussion "Improving our light environment for better health" on 3.12.25.
The topic of my talk was "Metabolic consequences of indoor light environment".
Head to Guy Foundation YouTube channel to watch the talks with associated slides. Other speakers Biographies
- Professor Stefan Behling is Head of Studio, member of the Design Board and was responsible for Integrated design and innovative construction at the University of Stuttgart from 1995 to 2010. He is a passionate advocate for sustainable design, renewable energy and solar energy and has written a book called Sol Power: the Evolution of Sustainable Design with Sophia Behling in 1996. Daylight and artificial lighting have been a strong interest since the beginning of his career.
- Scott Zimmerma, optics engineer with more than 35 years of experience in the fields of lighting and displays. His innovations and inventions have been used successfully in a wide range of military and commercial products that include night vision displays, liquid crystal display backlighting designs, and lighting fixtures.
- Ulysse Dormoy is a highly experienced professional in the lighting industry with influence the profound impact of light on human physiology. Ulysse's quest to uncover the deeper implications of light also extends to its integration within our built environments, exploring how architects, lighting designers, and interior designers can leverage light's full potential. His goal is to enhance daily life through strategic lighting solutions that can optimise routines, improve quality of life, and promote overall wellbeing.
- James Sherman studied Architecture and City/Regional Planning at Cornell University and the University of Texas at Austin, where he discovered a passion for environmental design. Since he joined Foster + Partners in 2014, James has been focused on the design and execution of natural and artificial lighting strategies for high-profile projects around the world.
SUPPORT MY WORK
🥩 WOLKI FARM. Highest quality fully grassfed & pastured pork, beef, lamb & eggs raised with holistic principles and shipped around Australia. Code DRMAX for 10% off. https://wolkifarm.com.au/DRMAX
🚨 DAYLIGHT COMPUTER. Blue-light free computer that doesn't wreck your circadian rhythm. Now shipping around the world. Code DRMAX for $25 off. https://buy.daylightcomputer.com/DRMAX
🚨 VIVA RAYS. Premium blue light blocking glasses with the most useful 3 in 1 clip on frame sets. Code DRMAX for 15% off. https://vivarays.com/dr-maxgulhane
🚨 GEMBA RED. Highest quality photobiomodulation / redlight therapy devices, shipping within the USA. Code DRMAX for 10% off. https://gembared.com
🚨 CHROMA. Advanced photobiomodulation devices including D-light (Vitamin D-generating) & Lux vital with OPN3-5 stimulation, cold pillow for the ultimate night's sleep. Use code DRMAX for 11% off. https://getchroma.co/?ref=i6p39fn0
🚨 MIDWEST RED LIGHT THERAPY. Blue blockers, photobiomodulation devices, shipping to USA. Code DRMAX for 10% offhttps://midwestredlighttherapy.com/affiliate/DRMAX
🚨 BON CHARGE. Blue blockers, EMF laptop pads, circadian friendly lighting, and more. Code DRMAX for 15% off. https://boncharge.com/?rfsn=7170569.687e6d
🎤 PRIVATE MEMBERS GROUP on Skool platform - weekly Q&A, my 52-page eBook, PDF resource downloads & more. USD20/month, cancel anytime. https://www.skool.com/dr-maxs-circadian-reset
Follow DR MAX
Website: https://drmaxgulhane.com/
Private Group: https://www.skool.com/dr-maxs-circ
Viva Rays Premium Blue Blocking Glasses. Code DRMAX for 15% off - https://vivarays.com/dr-maxgulhane
Welcome back to the Regenerative Health Podcast. This episode I have the pleasure of reposting a recent recording from the Guy Foundation's Light and Health Roundtable seminar that was recently held with input from a range of experts on how we can how light and light environments are affecting our health and what we can do to re-engineer our indoor environment to minimize the effect uh negative effects on health. So I uh had the uh privilege of of speaking alongside uh Scott Zimmerman, who many of you will know, as well as uh other experts, including architects um in the built environment, who uh have some pretty valuable insight. The Guy Foundation are probably the world's preeminent um philanthropic uh funders of quantum biological research and uh presenting and supporting uh research into uh the inputs into mitochondrial metabolism, mitochondrial function, including light, uh and which was the topic of their autumn series. So I would highly encourage you to go to the Guy Foundation's YouTube page if you're interested in delving into these topics more, and really you're able to hear from the world's leading scientists um about photobiology and how light is is impacting uh health. Um so please enjoy this these following talks. Uh now on to the episode.
SPEAKER_01:It's my very great pleasure to um briefly introduce the roundtable speaker uh speaking today, uh Dr. Max Golhein, physician and health educator from Regenerative Health. And Professor Stefan Berling, um who is uh senior executive partner and head of studio at FASTA Partners, Scott Zimmerman, who is founder and CEO of Silas Inc., Yuliz Dormoy, who's CEO at AGM Lighting, and uh James Sherman, partner and environmental design analyst at FASTA and Partners. With that, I'll hand over to our speaker.
SPEAKER_03:Thank you, everybody, and thank you to the Guy Foundation for the opportunity to present. So I am a general practice registrar here in Byron Bay, New South Wales, Australia, and I'm going to share a couple of perspectives that I have had on this recent uh series, and really from the perspective of chronic disease and particularly metabolic disease uh causation and prevention, ideally. So uh this was beautifully recapped uh just now, but as many of you have presented and and uh are are aware of that this massive part of the solar spectrum is uh in in the non-visible longer wavelengths, is having biologically active ways, which I think we're only re-appreciating or appreciating from a scientific and uh and and metabolic uh perspective. Now, the role of this near for red light and its stimulatory and beneficial effects on mitochondrial metabolism are how I'm thinking at the moment, uh uh having a very um relevant but uh constant effect on preserving metabolic health while a person or while a human is in in the outdoor environment. And this was demonstrated, um, albeit in a in a narrow in uh mech way or mechanism through uh through Dr. Jeffery's randomized trial in in 24 showing that that glucose uh lowering effect. And and really it's I think uh relevant that um not only is is this infrared light um uh presence is is is help is assisting in myotal metabolism, but it's also um the correct circadian timing and the fact that features such as insulin sensitivity, uh lipolysis, glucose metabolism, the the activity of all the metabolic organs of uh and processes in the body running on circadian timing, which which again requires uh the appropriate balanced timing of blue melanopically stimulating light at at the right time contextually with um balanced with uh the near-infrared and red spectrum. So uh and as you can see, and and obviously talked about by by by uh Dr. Fosbury is is this massive uh importance of the natural environment which is reflecting that uh that near-infrared light for human consumption. Now, what uh are we having here in uh in in our modern built environments? And there's a lot to say about why this is human incompatible with optimal human health, but really uh as emphasized, it is deprived of long wavelengths. It therefore is uh a and and call in with a corollary of that it's it's enriched in unchanging blue light. And uh this melanophic stimulation in in the absence of of change and variation through sunrise to sunset is uh is again profoundly unnatural with respect to to the human uh the circadian system, but also um the the eye system. So um that there's m multiple other aspects to why this this system or this in but indoor environment is bad. I I strongly suspect that the the presence of radio frequency radiation, and although controversial in certain uh scientific circles, I believe the the animal data is is quite um compelling. And I I think that's probably uh acting as an effect mortifier or potential uh augmenting the the negative effects, um, the energy depriving and so KD and mitochondrial disrupting effects of of a constant isolated blue light that is uh essentially this this environment, which is uh is is very detrimental to mitochondrial health. So the the the way that I really think about this at the moment is that the modern uh indoor LED-lit environment is is providing this continuous uh, you could say hyperglycemic, hyperinsulemic pressure. And and and what I what I mean by that is I think by depriving the mitochondrion of the longer wavelength flight that is helping mitochondrial metabolism, we're actually lowering the threshold for the development of insulin resistance, for the development of metabolic dysfunction, type 2 diabetes, and and therefore potentially uh making the food, the diet, um, and the micronutrient carbohydrate content of the diet relatively more important than it would have historically been in someone existing out in in full spectrum light. So, and the converse is true, is that when we are in full spectrum light, we are getting this basal glucose lowering mitochondrial lubrication coolant um with respect to the the melatonin and the infrared features. And and this is conducive to metabolic health and and longevity optimization. I wanted to give a really quick, interesting uh, I guess, case study that I that I've come across. And this is these are the two casenta people in Papua New Guinea, and this was an investigation into their metabolic and cardiometabolic health from the 1970s, early 1973. And this this group of of subsistence agricultural uh farmers relies on the sweet potato for uh for basically their entire diet, and they're they're they're 90% carbohydrate uh dietary intake. Uh very little protein, 25 grams perhaps per day. Uh pipe smoking is is very was very common in in this observed cohort of about 800 people over the age of 15, and it's in this uh in this central part of Papua New Guinea. So, what what did the authors note? They noted that the population was lean, physically fit, and in good nutritional state. There was no increase with age in mean blood pressure, serum cholesterol, fasting blood glucose, or adiposity. Glucose tolerance was high. Uh, there was a low prevalence of diagnosable cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, uh, cerebral and peripheral vascular disease, and skin card disease was rare, if not absent. So uh there's m there's been said, especially from you know different dietary uh perspectives, about why this population has so little cardiometabolic disease. And uh those explanations, I think, are really missing the main thrust of the point here. And I believe that this is a population which is outside all the time, have prime circadian signals, have a very enriched in the infrared and uh environment in the jungles of New Guinea, and uh their mitochondria are actually uh uh are operating optimally. And yes, they have dental decay, they have um issues related to potentially that high carbohydrate diet, but they are primarily metabolically healthy and intern-sensitive, which is uh, I think what all of us are entitled to if we live uh outside and in accordance with our uh design specification. So, my my the way that I'm thinking about this is that uh, as many of you have uh discussed as well, is that the modern built environment is really accelerating chronic disease and lowering the threshold for the development of chronic disease. And in the space report, the Guy Foundation space report, this great graph um uh pictorially depicts this idea of what an accelerated aging phenotype is is doing. And and really I think that the the built environment, the the indoor cubicle, the the neo-infrared and red-starved, blue, light enrich, visible-only lighting is uh a version of in an induction of of an accelerated aging phenotype. And uh getting ourselves out of that environment and into back into natural sunlight is the absolute priority. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_05:Thank you very much indeed. Um, so uh I think uh we'll then ask uh Stefan actually, probably not to respond to that, but uh please uh we're very much looking forward to hearing your contributions.
SPEAKER_04:Look, um it's a tough one, um, because particularly after uh Brittany's uh summary, uh I would say I've got nothing to add because the only thing I could have said is what I've learned from uh from Eulis and Glenn and Bob and uh Scott over the last uh few years. But um maybe I can add some some different perspective because I realize you know you're all teachers and I can't teach teachers. But uh I think there's a there's maybe there is a a challenge. It's there's like there's a bridge to uh there's a bridge to be built between the let's call it practitioners, consumers, specifiers like us, and uh and your incredible knowledge. Because as that's I'm not just saying it, I'm always feel extremely privileged um to talk to some of you and and learn. And I'm literally just learn. And uh on the other hand, I obviously um we're we're we're fairly guilty, maybe for context, because bridge building, you probably actually have no idea who we are or what we do. We're we're architects and we do uh relatively big buildings, well-known buildings, we're about 2,500 people in London, very big, prestigious uh projects, Apple's headquarters, Bloomberg's headquarters, airports, I mean, millions of square feet of uh working space, hopefully a little bit better than the offices that you showed. And uh and I I I feel guilty. Um well, maybe I feel guilty. And yet maybe just as a as a tip of an iceberg, I think the architectural uh community doesn't know enough about everything that you guys know. And uh I I personally I I personally have been very interested uh in lighting because I worked in theater and film before I even started in architecture, yeah. As a light, well, I would call myself a light carrying uh mule, you know, schlepping lights uh through different uh film locations. Um but I I do and I did understand light and theater and drama and atmosphere, and then you can create the beautiful setting of a candlelight uh dinner with artificial lighting, uh and a lot more than the actual candle, but you give you get the atmosphere, or you you know, I can create morning uh atmosphere or evening with artificial light. And we've done it, and I've personally done it a lot in projects, but what uh what I hadn't actually understood is, and that came quite late in my career, is the you know, this whole thing of the circadian rhythm. And I possibly learning again from a few of you was on a side uh trip that we uh should make the the light in our buildings follow the the color temperatures of the outside to help people with a circadian rhythm. I've now had a lot of you telling me that's complete nonsense and it doesn't work. But uh, as this is only going to be recorded and on YouTube, I would never admit that I was wrong. Um but I have learned uh a few lessons. But I do think I think what is interesting is if you take the two topics, is it's yes, we spend too much time inside, you know. First answer, get a dog. That could be the solution to the problem. But then if you assume that people not are not all gonna have a dog and they will still spend 80 or 90 percent inside, there is there is a job to be done to give them the best and healthiest environment. And we had the benefit of working or still have with the most incredible clients. So, Steve Jobs, we worked with him for two years. He wanted the best environment for his people. If I would have known way back then what I know now, we would have done it differently. Yeah, we he we at that point people didn't even have uh LED lights, and we were one of the first adopters of LED lighting. And uh it's in the building. But if I know, if I would have known now, what I did know then is it so what is the cocktail of lights that we should put in those uh fittings? James is going to talk about it, and we're trying. I mean, Glenn has come and told us that we got it wrong again, but we we are trying to put a cocktail of different uh LEDs in to get uh the right spectrum of light into uh into spaces. And I think uh number one on the lighting topic, I would love to have uh, or I would encourage all of you, maybe without being selfish, maybe for the whole trade of architecture. We need one needs to get very simple messages out of what are the negative effects of bad lighting and what are the benefits of good lighting without losing extremely long words and uh you know mitochondrial uh aging is is borderline. But uh I think one needs to get things out that you can explain to a client it's worthwhile doing your lighting differently to what you're doing right now. And uh and we we in our team, we got, I said, I want all the research in the world where is there any smoking gun that proves it is bad for you? And the only thing that we with our little uh teams could find out is that there's lots of research, but we couldn't actually find the smoking gun that proves look without. I mean, I don't want to name drop, but I mean these are I know very, very important people. You can just check out our clients, and we always deal with the top of the food chain in the client organizations. So these are people they would buy the best light if they would know what the best light is. So at this moment, there is a very clear problem of I would not know, James possibly knows because we're working together. But what do you buy and what is the argument why you should get this one? And uh that's my first plea, but it's not obviously telling you something you don't know, but you know, I'd be super happy to help. We have we have contacts to everyone in the industry, but I still need an argument. And the next one goes with uh windows and glazing again. Glenn, you started it off. We since then have spoken to different people in the glass industry. Yeah, I I heard you, uh Jeffrey, just in in the the moments of introduction, that one should uh you know have different different glazing. We we as foster and partners have built thousands and tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of square meters of glass in buildings, but it is all being uh let's say driven by energy. Yeah, you try to do the most energy efficient uh glass building, yeah. Apple Park, if you look at renders, it's a hundred percent glass. But if you now look at it, maybe one could have had a different cocktail of coating. But to work specifically on what is the right cocktail of coating that lets the right amount of UV light through and lets the right amount of uh solar uh light uh through, but keeps uh keeps the right balance. I mean, I saw a few of your in your summary, you always talk about the Goldilocks, you know, a little bit, uh but not too much. Uh I think that would be an amazing piece of research, and uh I think one can just do it. Yeah. Well, Stefan basically, my my my thing isn't a lecture, my thing is it's basically an offer with all your brain power. Well, I think a lot of these things in today's world, I feel, is like connect the dots. If one connects the dot, one can actually get things uh moving pretty quickly. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_05:Thank you. Thank you for that, and and uh thank you for the for the offer. I think everybody on this call's ears uh has uh pricked up at that. And perhaps in response to some of your questions, Scott, uh can we ask you to present your thoughts?
SPEAKER_00:Well, thank you, Stefan. You're basically uh I think uh was a great preempt to what I'm trying. To talk about. But what I'd like to say is that we've had a series of things where Bob has dealt with the theoretical and I've dealt with the theoretical side. Len's been doing stuff showing that there's uh experimentation, and Roger's showing practical implication. But one of the things, as the engineer in the crowd, uh, one of the problems is we first have to be able to quantify some of these effects, like you were that and give you the proof that you need to convince your customers. So, you know, what I'd like to talk about is how we can quantify the impact of uh LED lighting and displays and and look at at the glazings and and try and uh essentially uh understand that on a quantitative level. Like I say, I'm the engineer at heart. But the first thing you have to do is look at the I'd like to show the two graphs. The graph on the left is what people think about when they think about sunlight, and it shows this major peak in the visible, and there's not much going on in the infrared. But from a biological standpoint, that's there's not we need to go take a step back and get in everybody in the same unit of measure, which I would argue is the electron volts. Biologists like it, and it's very easy to convert uh the spectrum uh the spectrum on the left into terms of electron volts. And when you do, all of a sudden you see this amazing spike. And it was always funny. You know, I found these the all these people that were doing it in solar simulators and and solar cell work, and they always had this spike at about 0.075. And I was talking to Bob, and Bob said, Well, of course, that's the H-opacity window in the sun. Well, okay, great. Um, you know, uh that's one of the beauties of working with an astrophysicist. But um what you see is that uh once you convert this thing into terms that biologists care about, which is the number of photons per second and what energy level those photons have, you see a massive shift in how you view sunlight. And through Marcus's equations, you can translate that into the basics of metabolic uh processes, which is electron transfer rates uh in our all our different cellular products. And lo and behold, if you look at that, that oval that I show in the top right is where most of the metabolic the energy levels that most of the metabolic processes in the body occur between 1.2 and 0.2 electron volts, or essentially one micron to six micron. So then if you go down and you start thinking about how that impacts um uh what we've done, the green in the graph is uh standard LED, 500 lux, the dashed line being the attempts, the recent attempts to add a little bit of the infrared in. And the red line in the middle is an incandescent bulb at 500 lux. And what you see is this massive amount of photons that are being generated by an incandescent bulb, and then the top one being the sunlight, um uh assuming a black body, the sunlight has a black body. And the black lines are what happens when it gets through and filters through this whole thing as as uh because going through the atmosphere, water vapor and CO2 uh strongly absorb and creates these series of bands. So if you can go to the next slide, Bethany. So if you do that and you look at all this stuff and you put everything in the same terms, all of a sudden you see this amazing coincidence. Not only does H- uh from the sun translate into and align with the H-band, what do we call the H-band, one of the peak areas uh of one of the windows, but you also start to see that the biological processes that are fundamental to metabolism seem to kind of line up inside these bins or these windows. Bear in mind that the in that in these range of wavelengths, we have the highest transmission through the atmosphere. These and what the astronomers did is they have came up with some nomenclature, uh, the history of which is kind of fun to look at. But anyway, it's Ijlm and Q. And what's really cool is that you know it appears that one can make an argument that these biological or these process, these um redox reactions are taking advantage of what uh is transparency windows with high levels of photons, the peak level of photons per second, um, that align. And you could talk about what we call a photon-assisted Marcus equation, where the photons that uh we are in actually enhance the ability, the efficiency, not the changing the actual donor acceptor number, but actually changing the vibrant state, the what they call lambda around it. So, and if you look at the table, you can see that there's it gives you an idea of how wavelength versus electron volt and its associated step kind of all align in a very nice, clean manner. Coincidence, maybe? I don't think so. Bethany, if you can do the next slide. So, you know, when you start looking at this, um you you have water vapor, which is defining all these bins or these bands, uh uh, but then you also have um the uh the bands that are are associated with with sunlight, but then you also have to take into account that the body is liquid water, is essentially liquid water. So in the visible spectrum, it's good transmission. In the in the eye band, which is most photobiomodulation occurs, which is from 750 to 900 um or 700 to 900, we have these translucent nature of the of the skin or the body, as Bob has showed multiple times with some of his pictures. Uh photons penetrate deep and bounce around. But as you get out into beyond one micron, water starts to strongly absorb. And so what we end up with is a system that's kind of much more akin to what happens in the UV, where most of the body uh absorbs strongly and localizes all those photons, creating extremely high photon densities. So, in general, you can basically say, and one of the things I'd like people to uh take away from this whole thing is that you know we what we end up needing to figure out on a quantitative level is to move from two-dimensional type thoughts, where we're talking about irradiance per meter squared, and start thinking about density where we take the penetration characteristics optically, and you find that there is a huge, huge change in the amount of photon density, which then can be, if it is assisting in the actual redox reactions, as we believe based on some of the data, it appears that what you've got is essentially a cladding of solar cell on the outside of our skin that is extracting as much work as it possibly can and distributing it out through the body. So if you look at within each of the bands, you see that the number of photons, uh, there's photons everywhere in each one of these bands, essentially sunlight, incandescent, campfire, even to some extent, uh saunas and things of that nature, can actually fill up all these bands, which uh with a massive amount of photon density. But when you actually go to the next slide, Bethany, look at it from the standpoint of the photon density, meters or millimeters cubic or in to the third power or cubed, um, you get uh a better understanding that you know if I'm using this to enhance the capability of metabolic processes, it's the longer wavelengths that really, and we're if you look at the graph, you'll see that that's a log scale on the left. So it's a huge, massive amount of localization, just like the same thing that happens in the UV. UV, UVB is absorbed within the outer 50 microns. Yeah, water is as low absorption, most of the absorption is in the proteins, lipids, and cholesterol. So you get an enhanced optical effect. Um, the same thing appears to be happening in the longer wavelengths, but it's actually uh lined up with essentially enhancing the efficiency of the redox reactions or the electron transport chain, and maybe even defining why it is what it is. You can go to the next slide, Bethany. So basically, what I'd like to say is that I think what uh Stefan and the other or what uh Roger and others have said all saying is we need to start quantifying some of these effects. We can. Um it's been a limitation of for the industry in that uh we just now are getting spectrometers to make it out to a thousand nanometers. But what we're what this is going on is a thousand to six thousand nanometers. And it kind of gives you a perspective of how little of this the solar spectrum we can even uh measure or on a uh reasonably measure, but how much potential there is for making things better and getting you know a better idea of what being able to answer Stefan's question. Because at the end of the day, customer needs to be showed here's the reason, here's the quantity, here's the effect. But uh to do that, we need to change how we look at sunlight as far as its unit of measure. We need to go in and uh think about how it's not just the uh incident, the photons incident in the body, but actually the density of photons in the body at what particular wavelength or the electric energy level. And you know, I'd like to end with this little thing just to give us a perspective. Um, the comments about circadian. This is a graph that shows for a sweat monitor. Um, what it shows is uh simultaneously measures cortisol and melatonin every three minutes simultaneously. And what it shows is I went to dinner with my wife, and you see the cortisol levels as we started eating. You can see the appetizer, then you can see the main course, and you see the things styking up, cortisol is going up. All of a sudden, now nowhere melatonin spiked and then went back down, and cortisol was brought back into check. On the the other side of the graph, uh, we were watching TV at night uh with the in the dark, and 10 lux was able to generate cortisol spikes, you know, in once you were sampling at a fascinating. So it is a matter of getting the measurement tools that we have, getting everything everything in the same units of measure, and bringing that all together, which I think can then have to answer Stefan's prop questions. So thank you.
SPEAKER_05:Scott, thank you very much indeed. Uh that's fascinating, uh fascinating. Um, if we can move on to Ulysse and then James, to Ulysse, over to you.
SPEAKER_06:Thank you very much. And uh thank you, Jeffrey, Nina, and to the Guy Foundation, for having me as part of the round table today. Uh, very exciting. Um, what I'm going to talk about is so unscientific, it's unbelievable. So, so there's going to be no bamboozling whatsoever. Um, so I'm I'm the CEO of Atram Limited, a specialist lighting distributor, uh, working with architects and designers on projects, um, uh, predominantly in in England. Um, I've been in the industry for about 35 years, and I've watched it evolve from what I'd call an analog industry into a digital one. Um, a little while back, probably uh five, six years ago, I was saying internally within business that I thought that light today was sat somewhere between technology and health and well-being. Um, unfortunately, somebody said prove it. Um, and that led me down a path of curiosity. Um and actually, one of the first pieces of work that I came across was uh Scott's work on um melatonin and the optics of the human body, and that really piqued my interest. And it sort of led me down this path and down this rabbit hole, which is really I'm struggling to get out of um around the interaction between light and life. And through that process, I've been really lucky to spend time with Glenn, Bob, and Scott, who've all really uh contributed to expanding my horizons. Um, and I've also been following uh Roger's work for about the last four years. Um, and it really has been an absolutely mind-blowing, wonderful mind expansion. So, having said all that, I realize that um around you know, facing all uh you know the science people uh in front of me, you know, I'm technically part of the problem, but I also would like to be part of the solution. And that's really driven from the fact that um, you know, it's really difficult to unsee what we've seen and to unlearn what I've, you know, what I've learned. Um, and so really, you know, what I'm gonna talk about is nothing necessarily revolutionary, um, but you know, it probably sort of goes in line with some of the things that that Max has uh has been talking about. But you know, essentially, you know, we all know that uh you know all life has evolved under the full same spectrum. Um modern humans today spend 90% or more of their time indoors. Uh and that means that we're away from natural light. Um the trajectory, in my mind, is one which is going to keep us for more and more indoors. Um, and really is a process that for me in my head started with the first industrial revolution. Um, and if we look at that in relative terms, you know, in terms of how long modern Homo sapiens have been around, um, you know, our modern indoor lifestyle accounts for about probably 0.09% of our time on Earth as say as modern Homo sapiens. We chase convenience. Um Dave Wallace and I talked about this a little while, a little while ago, and I think you know, it it's created a sort of a convenience conundrum. You know, we we we we try and develop safe environments and we and we we sort of uh we hibernate in them um much more than we should do. And that that's created a shift and a disconnect from the natural world um and its benefits. You know, as humans, we classify ourselves as the most intelligent species on the planet. You know, we've understood photosynthesis for so so many years, you know, roughly I think 250 years, but we're only now starting to understand that there are, you know, that light you know affects you know human biology. And I think, yeah, for me it's it's it's a fascinating time to be in, I'm gonna say lighting, but I'm gonna rephrase that and say that you know to be connected with light. Um and it's it is truly fascinating, but I think over time we have reduced our understanding of light. We knew more about it 100 years ago than we do today, and that's a problem. We we keep reducing our understanding. Um and you know, within the natural world, there's there's there's an amazing circularity going on. Um, and so many people don't see it. They don't, you know, we we take things for granted. You know, we we breathe out CO2, plants take in CO2, they they send us back oxygen, we breathe in oxygen. But then beyond that, we're starting to get this understanding that there's another pathway, which is the infrared pathway and how plants reflect infrared beautifully. Um and you know, we take that in, we need it, we we we we use it. Um then we talk about the built environment, you know, and and um Stefan, you know, very kindly brought the subject up with glazing, you know, and so this is not a lighting problem, it's a light problem. You know, and lighting plays a part, but glazing plays a part at the same time. Um and you know, we need to try and think about how you know design can be used in a strategic fashion um to make use of the natural world to allow some of the you know longer wavelengths to come back into the built built environment naturally, and also potentially to you know, we we need to try and find solutions you know, um within the artificial lighting environment. I think Max, was it Max that you mentioned um the term? No, I think it was actually um uh Bethany, you're recounting something that Roger had said about um evolutionary uh mismatch, um, if I remember rightly from your from your opening, you know, the the same evolutionary environmental mismatch, I think, is is is really quite a clear one. Um, you know, techniques technically speaking, our physiology hasn't adapted. Um it hasn't adapted, it hasn't evolved to spend so much time in under artificial light sources. Um and you know, I'd say that you know we're living these ultra-processed lives. Um and you know, we we we contextualize ultra-process with nutrition, but I think it's equally applicable to transport systems and then onto things like artificial light. Yeah, I I I see light as nourishment. Um and uh you know, if I consume fast food as an example, you know, I know I'm going to be hungry about half an hour later. It happens every time. I I I I I love a I love a McDonald's, you know, I'm not gonna deny that, but I'm hungry again. And I think part of that is because I've been fed, but I've not been nourished. And just like fast food, I would say that artificial light today is doing the same for us as humans. We are being fed, but we're not being nourished. Um and then the other crazy thing that comes about is that we've also reduced our metrics of light for humans to a metric related to vision. We talk about Lux and Lumens. When we light plants in indoor environments or even in greenhouses, we give them PPFD, photosynthetic photon flux density, which is an energetic value of light. And we give plants energetic values of light because we want them to be productive, we want them to grow. Don't we want the same thing for humans? But yet we've we've we've we've narrowed it down to just the the visible path of the spectrum, we've narrowed down our understanding of light to just being a visual aid, and that for me is a problem. And it becomes an even bigger problem, and I think it was Stefan who was talking about joining dots together. Global populations are aging. The IMF released a study earlier on this year, uh, their world economic outlook, and it clearly shows that the the world population is aging. If the world population is aging, then theoretically, and this is what goes on in my mind, we're going to be probably working later on in life. If we're going to be working later on in life, then surely. We need to have more youthful productivity levels to be able to keep things going. The UK, as an example, is about to become a superage society either next year or the year after, where is it 20 or 25% of the population is going to be 65 or over. So we have a we have a sort of a responsibility in a certain sense to ensure that people are remaining healthy. And just as Max um showed earlier, you know, Alistair's graph of um of morbidity expansion and morbidity compression, you know, the built environment can play a significant part in that, and light equally plays a massive part. Is it is it a technological challenge? I think to a certain degree, yes, there are some technological challenges, but when it comes to lighting and artificial light, the biggest challenge at the moment is legislative because we're chasing lumens for what all the time. We want energy efficiency, energy efficiency, energy efficiency all the time. We are seeking uh environmental sustainability goals without even thinking about the impact on human sustainability. And I think that's a that's also quite a quite a big problem. As I say, uh it's not a lighting problem, it is a light problem. Um in uh we we use light, we understand its power in therapeutic applications. Shouldn't we also be thinking about it in a preventative sense so that we don't have to use the therapy quite so much later on in life? Um we we we know, we've heard you know especially from from you know uh the team at the Guy Foundation about the challenges that happen on the space stations. My question is how different is a space station to our modern office environments? And I'd say they're probably not that different in reality. Um, so the only difference that we have against uh you know somebody on the on the space station, we have a choice, we can step outside. Um, and uh you know, uh who was it who's talking about getting a dog? Was that Stefan? No. Or is that Max? Anyway, someone was talking about, yeah, I think it was Stefan who's talking about getting a dog. You know, we have a choice that the astronauts don't have, but we can see accelerated mitochondrial aging in the astronauts. Maybe those moments when we step outside make the difference. Um, I don't know if anyone can see, but I've got this little button here. This is my little lease button, which has 11 measurement points, and it goes into the near infrared um zone as well. Um, I I took some measurements. First, first set of data that I've chosen to take from it, you know, a day at the weekend where we did a three to four hour walk outside versus a gloomy indoor day where I didn't leave the office at all. My infrared consumption on the gloomy indoor day was at 0.57% of the day at the weekend. You know, that's that's the differential that we're seeing with the built environment. So when we come back to architecture and design, you know, I think you know there should be a priority to design for positive human outcomes, you know, embracing concepts flight through the biophilic and salutegenic principles, and not necessarily as a luxury but as a necessity. Because, you know, again, you know, uh we need to drive human sustainability in in a in in parallel to the environmental piece. Yeah, and light is not just for vision, it is for our health. So that's that's me.
SPEAKER_05:Yes, thank you very much indeed. Um, and back to the architects again in in terms of uh what are you going to do about that? Uh James.
SPEAKER_02:Thanks a lot, Jeffrey, and thanks to everyone for sharing all of your incredible knowledge. Uh, I suppose I come at this topic from the perspective of a designer. And so for that reason, possibly other designers who are considering integrating near-infrared light into interior spaces, might find what I'm about to say the most interesting, but I hope it'll also be interesting for all the other members of the panel and who are listening to this. I thought I would start with uh a brief description of one of our projects where we've tried to integrate near-infrared light into an interior space because it's been highly instructive for us. Actually, Stefan, who who sat next to me, uh is the one who kind of uh challenged us to think uh outside the box. The project I'm gonna describe to you very briefly because I actually want to focus mostly on the learnings that we had from that project, is in our own office. So we're sat in a meeting room here, and just across the way we're looking at it now, is the main building of our office here in Battersea in London. And we undertook a project a little while back to refurbish the main space that we all sit in every day and that we bring all of our clients to. It really is the kind of centerpiece of fostering partners and the and the FP experience. And it's it's kind of undergoing a large retrofit right now to refresh a lot of the interior finishes and to, you know, kind of uplift the space in a bunch of different ways. But lighting was going to be part of that. And initially, what we had thought was we were just gonna replace these old fluorescent lamps, which we had in our ceiling, uh, two LED lamps, uh, and possibly get a little bit more operation out of them with some different color temperatures and be able to get a little bit more flexibility and in how the office was presented to both ourselves and to our clients, our visitors. Uh, but Stefan was the one who said, well, is that really the best we can do? Is that the best light that we can provide for people working in that space? And that sort of sent us back to the drawing board. And actually, in talking with a lot a number of people in this panel, including Eulis, who was a very valuable partner in this exercise, we conceived of a new a new way to light the office, which incorporated both uh elements of near-infrared spectrum and also uh also blue light. And so what we're doing is we're kind of retrofitting our existing uh uh uh lamps to incorporate four different channels of light. And we've heard, as Stefan mentioned, from some of the amazing researchers who are part of this session, that that might not even be enough. But we thought, okay, we're gonna take that step and use it as a learning opportunity to see what we can learn from this. And so we've incorporated an 850 nanometer uh near-infrared LED source into that. Uh, it's just about to be finished, actually. Probably in the next month or so, we're gonna be able to start taking measurements and start really understanding what it is we're able to provide with that particular solution. But enough of the summary. I think what I really want to focus on is what we learned uh through that process. So the first thing we learned is that um there are plentiful near-infrared LED sources available. And actually, lighting suppliers are quite confident in utilizing those because they use, they they perform in much the same way as visible LED light sources. So uh in all the in all the manufacturers that we spoke with, there really wasn't much trepidation to using LED sources for producing near-infrared light. Now, I know a number of people on this panel uh believe quite strongly that LED sources may not be the best sources for producing near-infrared light, that in fact filament or glowing light sources may actually be preferential. Uh, but one of the things we noticed, and this is perhaps one of the barriers to integrating broad spectrum near infrared light emission in interior spaces, is that modern LED manufacturers just are not very comfortable with integrating filaments into their products. So that could be a potential barrier. Secondly, uh, if you incorporate a bunch of different LED sources into a light fixture, that's not the end of the story. You also need to control those. You need to provide power to all of those. And one of the big barriers that we found so far is that manufacturers of other components that go along with lighting systems, like power supplies or what we call LED drivers, um, are just not ready to provide drivers that drive many different channels of light within a single light fixture. We see early indications that this is probably going to change next year. There are already some really exciting products coming out which might allow this a little bit more easily, but they're not available yet. So currently the solutions are quite inefficient. You end up having three or four power supplies to drive a single light fixture just because you need enough uh channels of different control for those LED sources. And then finally, control systems are the thing that ultimately are installed in the building and that govern how all the lights are functioning at any time. And you may, many of you may be familiar that in Europe uh the predominant control methodology is called the digital addressable lighting interface or DALI, which is predominantly the systems that are used throughout throughout projects in Europe. And that system just doesn't take account of any light which is non-visible. So anytime you add uh non-visible light sources to your mix in a in a light fixture, you have to effectively kind of trick this the control system into controlling those light sources, which it doesn't understand natively, which also involves a certain inefficiency. So you you end up needing more controllers, and that's more cost and more material. Uh so at the moment, there just isn't a lot of support for these kind of light sources in in that way. And then from a designer perspective, you know, designers really love being able to calculate and predict what they're gonna get. But a lot of common tools, software tools that lighting designers use in our industry simply don't make use of near infrared light as part of the calculation that they allow. That doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. In fact, our group has been hunting for quite a while now to try to find softwares which do accomplish this. And there are softwares out there that do. And one of the things that our multidisciplinary team is so good at is also building, you know, kind of customized tools around unique capabilities that we want to achieve. And we've been doing that as well. But a lot of these tools that exist are exist only in research scenarios. So there are tools like Radiance or Spios, which is a tool made by ANSIS, which are used heavily in research and in really targeted design of, say, automotive lighting or other kind of very niche aspects of lighting, but definitely not used and not really understood well in architectural lighting. And then finally, I'll just touch on something that Ulyss mentioned, which is regulation. One of the biggest barriers to incorporating any non-visible light into an interior space is current regulation that has been driven by primarily energy efficiency. As I'm sure you will understand, any light, any energy that you use to produce light which is non-visible is inherently understood these days as energy inefficiency because we're so focused on providing light for people to see for tasks, for navigation, for other things. And any energy spent outside of that is considered to be wasteful. So we absolutely need to reorient uh you know policymakers to understand what Ulyss was mentioning earlier uh about the beneficial impacts of spending energy in this way. And I know there are a number of people on the panel, I see Glenn and Bob and others who are very passionate about this topic. So I'm not not, you know, this is nothing nothing new for me, but I just want to highlight that as a topic potentially for future discussion or for discussion in the next phase. Yeah, I think that's that's it for me.
SPEAKER_05:James, thank you very much indeed. Uh well, what a fascinating uh uh hour and uh 12 minutes we've had.
