Sunlight Matters

The Life-Changing Power of Sunlight: Light as Nutrition, Near-Infrared Science & Human Health

• Dave Wallace • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Dave speaks with Dr. Nicholas Witton, a sleep medicine and light researcher, about the critical role of natural light, especially near-infrared (NIR) light, in human health.

Nicholas explains how we've shifted from living outdoors to spending over 90% of our time indoors under artificial light, particularly LEDs, which emit mainly blue light and lack the full spectrum, including the NIR wavelengths that make up over 50% of solar energy.

They explore how NIR light supports mitochondrial function, ATP production, and glucose regulation, with implications for metabolic health, sleep, mood, and performance. 

The conversation explores how modern lighting may contribute to chronic illness and what small changes—such as morning sun exposure or switching to incandescent bulbs—can make a meaningful difference.

This episode reframes sunlight as essential nutrition, not just illumination. If you're interested in sunlight analysis, real estate sun studies, shadow mapping, or optimizing your home for natural light exposure, this is a must-listen.

SPEAKER_01:

We are an antenna. So all we are is an antenna which is taking in that light that is saying, these are the cues that allow my physiology, allow my body to work in the way that it wants to. The lack of near infrared that we're getting is like a modern day scurvy. Three, 400 years ago, people were reduced on the amount of vitamin C that they were getting. It took a long time for people to understand what the problem was and a long time for people to ascertain that it was vitamin C. see I mean a very long time and we I think we're in the same position so we've seen an effect of the last hundred years through a number of things everything is at hand where it never used to be and therefore leaving the house doesn't have to be an essential part of our day but it's taken a long time to help those processes to build up over time but also have an effect on our physiology

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Sunlight Matters, the podcast that reconnects us with the sun. Join us as we explore the power and influence of our star, the force at the heart of everything. Each episode, we speak with leading experts to uncover the ways sunlight shapes our world.

SPEAKER_02:

So firstly, I guess, well, thank you for coming on. I'm so... I feel like I've had a religious experience, actually. I genuinely think I've had a religious experience and thank you so much for the podcast like I went to Glastonbury on Sunday so I managed to swing a day ticket my favourite bit was the journey down and the journey back because I was sort of devouring the Max Gilhane podcast and I'd listened to Jack Krause's podcasts and I was like, wow, this is really just incredible. So, you know, so thank you. Anyway, we can talk a bit more about that when we kind of get started.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I'm really pleased you liked it because people do follow it and Jack Cruz in a way that is almost devout, really, because it is so... it's so life-changing really some of the ideas and the perceptions and I guess we'll get into talking about that but it was it for me when I when I was researching it as well it really underlined all the research that I've been looking at for a number of years so I'm really pleased you liked it because it's even a lot of stuff to question but he does say that he does say go away and question it don't go away and research yourself but it's um well

SPEAKER_02:

I think I think it's like um To me, it's like climbing a mountain or something where you're given a path or a map for how you might get to the top. And then it's up to you to decide whether you just follow that path or kind of take a slightly different one by going off and exploring. So I guess what is good is it's a sort of good springboard for topics. So I like the fact that you've then got Max Gulhane who's... You know, I mean, obviously, he's very interested in the subject, but he's coming at it from a slightly different angle and, you know, with a bit more questions. So, you know, very, very, very interesting. Anyway, let's start the podcast, shall we? So welcome to Sunlight Matters, Nicholas. Really pleased to have you join us and, you know, very excited about today's conversation. So would you mind just sort of introducing yourself and telling us a a bit about your background?

SPEAKER_01:

Sure, thanks very much for having me. It's really great to be here as well. Anytime we get an opportunity to talk about daylight, light, health and well-being is a great opportunity to kind of pass on the research that we're doing at the moment. My background is typically in sleep medicine, so I researched the effects of light, particularly daylight compared to artificial light, on sleep and circadian rhythms where I was researching at Oxford for six years undertaking a PG dip and an MSc and then I've carried on that work in my professional career working with architects in the sporting field as well with athletes trying to improve their circadian rhythms, their jet lag and their sleep by looking at their environment and also the influences that they have around sleep which can affect their sleep but also affect their daytime performance as well and also office workers to look at their daytime performance as well and from there I moved on from specifically studying sleep looking at sleep as the main factor to performance when it became quite apparent to me that actually Daylight is the foundation to, or light in general, is the foundation to all health and well-being. And looking at sleep is just a pillar of one of those health outcomes. And so that drew me into researching different forms of light, looking at daylight versus artificial light, but also non-visible light. And it became apparent to me that Within the whole solar spectrum, 54% of all daylight is near-infrared, whereas the majority of the research out there is looking at the visible light, so the colours of the rainbow that we can all see. And the near-infrared side is just very under-researched, is under-studied, and therefore there is an opportunity to... gather some information and find out how near infrared light doesn't just affect your sleep, but affects your physiology, your biology, and therefore how that affects our daytime performance from our mood to our exercise routines and our daily performances, interpersonal skills, and then how we can utilize daylight within buildings to try and get as much near infrared as possible to individuals to make sure that people are getting healthy doses

SPEAKER_02:

so i mean i in preparation for the podcast you suggested i listened to a few uh podcasts um there's jack kraus who's done an amazing podcast it's very long and in two parts but it's well worth listening to because it's sort of A really nice introduction to the interplay between our physiology and light itself. And then there's another podcast you pointed me out from Max Gohane, who, again, talks to many experts, including, I think, some of your colleagues from UCL, about the interplay between us and light. And I guess what's sort of fascinating is, like, actually, the conclusion is, is that light is probably the most important thing that we... have as a you know it sort of almost tops nutrition and all these other pieces that you know tend to be the things that we kind of know and understand but but it's very very little is understood about what's actually going on um and you know particularly things like uh red light as you say so you know we actually live in a world where we're sort of more and more starved of red light because we're not going outside enough and you know all the lights that we have are blue lights rather than red lights so you know what are some of the things that you've sort of seen around that topic in terms of what's going on with us

SPEAKER_01:

yeah I think there's a number of really good points there I think the first is that The research has shown us that on multiple occasions, we spend 90% of our time inside. In North America, we would spend 93% of our time inside, whereas 100 years ago, we were spending 90% of our time outside. So our ancestors, for the last 200,000 years, have spent most of their time outside. We're now spending the majority of our time inside and under electric light for the last... just over 100 years. But in the last 15 years, those lights have changed for energy saving, for the invention of the LED in the mid 90s, and then the mass production of LEDs in our homes. We've saved a lot of money on energy. But what typically the standard LEDs have are blue light emitting diodes. So you have blue light coming through the LEDs and they're made white through phosphorus. So the combination of the blue light and the phosphorus then will create that white light that we have, that very bright white light that we have. And so that's a very, very narrow band of light. If you think about the whole of the electromagnetic spectrum of wavelengths that are coming into our bodies from the Earth's atmosphere, from the sun, what we're seeing is now a proximity of a very, very narrow band of light that is now reaching us through LEDs. And so in the last 15, 20 years, We're the first human beings that have been subject to a single band of light in the majority of our light intake compared to all of our ancestors. Now, we don't know the ramifications of that, but what we can correlate and speculate on is the number of diseases which are on the rise over the last 15 to 20 years. People are unsure of the answer from anything from eyesight, myopia, so short-sightedness to increase in cancers and other metabolic diseases as well going through the roof. Now, we don't know for sure whether or not the correlation is, and there's probably a number of co-founding variables, But what we do know is that if you put it next to light, you can see there's a huge increase in the way that physical and mental health disorders have exponentially increased, whereas now we're at a point where we're spending so much time in non-natural light that there seems to be a correlation. Now, one of the things we spoke about when we spoke previously was the fact that Humans are not designed to live under one spectrum. So whichever environment that any living organism finds itself, it will create the right physiology to be adapted to that environment that it's in, whether or not it's underground in caves, whether or not it's a worm that's underground, whether or not it's a nocturnal species like a bat that would use different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum to to find food, find mates, avoid predation. We have been designed in this planet, in this way to be specifically designed to suit the environment that is around us. And therefore light in all its forms from visible to non-visible light is the main cue, is the cue that our body will take to create a number of physiological processes within the body to occur at different times of the day so they don't all occur at the same time. This will allow us to do a number of behaviours such as find food, find a mate, avoid predation, but sleep being the most obvious one that we see on a daily basis, knowing when to stay awake and when to go to sleep is determined by the light cycle. What we are ultimately is what Dr. Bob Fosbury has attenuated to, to say that we are an antenna. So all we are is an antenna, which is taking in that light that is saying, these are the cues that allow my physiology, allow my body to work in the way that it wants to.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, I really like that because I think it kind of immediately creates a picture in your head of us outside receiving light. And then immediately you sort of think about kind of an antennae not receiving that light. So we've gone from living outdoors to living indoors and we're now getting very narrow bands of light. You know, you then have to speculate very carefully. quickly like what on earth is going on with our bodies in terms of you know not not having that light and receiving that light

SPEAKER_01:

yeah So if you take a plant and you take it outside of its natural environment, if you remove it away from the light, if you take a plant from the windowsill and you put it in a very dark room, it will still continue to live. It will still continue to do its rhythmic changes, which some plants do where they open and close or like a sunflower, which would turn and face the sun throughout the day. It will still continue to have those changes. So like us, we will still continue you to live. But what will happen is over time, that plant will be starved of the fundamental nutrients that it needs to live and therefore will die. And you'll see plants, they will change their leaves. They'll change, you know, the flowers will drop off and die and it will start to decay. And what we can relate that to is if we take our physiology and we take us away from our natural environment, which is being outside, sometimes being in shade sometimes being in shelter, but the majority of the time being either under a canopy or outside. As soon as we take that, we then most likely, it's common sense to think that we will have a change in our physiology. And what I believe is that we are beginning to see that now, whether or not it's physical disorders, mental health disorders, but our our biology will change because we need those photons. We need that to change our mitochondria, to change our cells and allow a number of physical processes to occur throughout the day. I

SPEAKER_02:

mean, again, it's so interesting because we understand how plants use sunlight for photosynthesis. I mean, that's like, you know, textbook biology that you would do at GCSE level. I mean, it won't go into the quantum mechanics of it, but it's an understood process. And yet, you know, from what you're saying is we're equally reliant on sunlight for our physiological processes. I think you said that it's a bit like photosynthesis in reverse what is happening. But it feels like that is completely different not understood or it may be understood in scientific circles to the general lay person or the GCSE biology student, it just doesn't feature at all. Why is that, do you think?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, it's a good point. I think inherently as individuals, we know we all like to be outside. We all like to, we feel good if we're being in the sun. When we go in the summer, we go away on holiday for the summer, we come back and we'll feel set outside and, you know, feeling good about myself and, you know, feeling refreshed. Or when you go outside and you have that feeling of being in the sun all day, we all know how nice that is. And we all then look forward to it in And that's just from within. But I think one of the issues is that our bodies are so brilliant at adapting. Our eyes are so brilliant at adapting. So we can go from a room which, say, is something like this, which is probably around 300 to 400 lux away from the window. So we can go from that to being outside. right now on a really hot sunny day it might be a hundred thousand lux so the the the amount of of light that penetrating um through the atmosphere or through or through the the the the atmosphere in the room and hitting our bodies and having an effect is is is a huge discrepancy between it but our eyes adjust immediately so within a second we go from a dark room to a light room it takes a split second where we have our eyes adjust and we go out and so we're not if it was that obvious, if we were really seeing a difference in the atmospheres of being outside to being inside, there is no way that we would then spend our time inside. But because it's so difficult to tell the difference, because our eyes are so brilliant, we're quite happy to stay inside and sit there and work all day. I'd also think that Inherently, people know that being outside, and they always have always known, from Florence Nightingale, who used to wheel her patients outside in the early part of the 20th century, not really understanding why, but seeing that there was a benefit to her patients getting better by wheeling them outside, to people who feel that long winters have an emotional effect, like many people do. And then as soon as you're feeling that, People just want to go outside naturally. But that connection between health and well-being and not just that, but thriving in your environment is not there connected because we are entrained. We're so used to being in inside environments.

SPEAKER_02:

And it's almost, well, the sun has been vilified in many ways. So, you know, when I think about like me, I grew up in the tropics and It's really interesting because I suffer sad very, very badly. Like it's almost painful how badly I suffer it. And listening to those podcasts, I realised that my body was, you know, when I was born, my cells... were used to tropical sunshine and actually they're craving that. So to your point, I have to go on tropical holidays now because it's the only way I can kind of get my head sort of feeling completely straight. I mean, that's my excuse and I'm gonna stick with it. But it's really true to be honest with you. But that whole thing of vilification through sunscreen, we're taught that going out in the sun is a bad thing. And actually, like I was looking, even on the hottest days here, we've got a mini heatwave in the UK. The UV index is never getting above six. And actually, six seems a very kind of moderate number. And, you know, one that we should all be kind of embracing, to be honest with you. So again, through the work I've been doing, I've really prioritised getting outside and I've really prioritised getting up in the morning, getting that sort of early morning sunshine as well. it's made an enormous difference to me. Like, I can really feel it. And, you know, a couple of times I felt a cold coming on and then it's just disappeared. Normally, I'd have sort of ended up with some sort of summer flu. So I can... I don't know. It might be placebo effect, but I genuinely can feel the difference with all of this. And... you know, I think it's interesting when you sort of dive into the science. So thank you, because it's people like you who are going into the science and doing research that we're beginning to sort of notice that actually just going outside might be a cure to many of our ailments in, you know, our modern ailments. So many of these things have only appeared in the last hundred years, you know, like obesity and diabetes. I mean, diabetes is always there, but this sort of epidemic of diabetes. And it could be that actually lack of outside time could be a major, major contributory factor.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. So one of my colleagues describes it as the lack of near infrared that we're getting is like a modern day scurvy. So Three, 400 years ago, people were reduced on the amount of vitamin C that they were getting. It took a long time for people to understand what the problem was and a long time for people to ascertain that it was vitamin C. I mean, a very long time. And we, I think we're in the same position. So we've seen an effect over the last hundred years through a number of things. Our consumerism versus the amount of food that we're eating that's now readily available to the fact that we're now making things as easy as possible for us. And everything is much more, everything is at hand where it never used to be. And therefore leaving the house doesn't have to be an essential part of our day. But it's taken a long time for those processes to build up over time, but also have an effect on our physiology. And I think, you know, the nail in the coffin really is the effects of LEDs. And now we're starting to see the effects of it. And it's taken, as you say, some people going out there and researching and realizing that we can't just live under narrow bandwidth. We can't just live under one way. There must be other reasons. And so the effects of near infrared, when I first started research on sleep, This was not anywhere on my radar whatsoever. However, in the last five, six years, what I've seen is more and more people start to realize that through your circadian rhythm, people have been researching the effects of blue light, but there could be other pathways that are affecting this. And so the effect of mitochondria, which has a distinct relationship with our energy production within our bodies, which are little energy organelles within our bodies, the powerhouses that send that energy up through. And that then will have a huge effect on all of our physiology. And you can see mitochondrial traits in most physical and mental health diseases today. And what is the main part of the spectrum that the mitochondria have the greatest effect from? We're learning it's near infrared. So around 670, it then dearths around, which is red light, and then dearths around 730 and then starts to pick back up again around 800 to 850. And we're seeing that that has a huge effect. There's still a hell of a lot of research to be done on finding exactly what it does, exactly what dosage there would be, and then exactly what... far infrared effects will have on the body. But at the moment, the research that I'm looking at and the research that we're working on is looking at how near infrared affects your ATP production and then how that then would affect a number of processes. What we've seen already is one of my colleagues at UCL, Glenn Jeffrey, has done a fantastic paper that came out a couple of years ago now, which looked at the effects of glucose levels And he was able to shine near infrared on a particular part of the body. And then you could see that glucose levels drop in real time. So you shine the red light, you shine the near infrared light, and you could see the glucose levels drop. Now that has an extraordinary effect on diabetes and glucose levels generally. So there is beginning to be a greater understanding of the effects of near infrared and the effects of having light of full broad width on our body and our physiology. I

SPEAKER_02:

mean, that to me is incredible. So, you know, if we think about like... The visible spectrum, we have a rainbow. The invisible spectrum, there's another rainbow. And these things, like our bodies are tuned to, as you say, like glucose. I mean, it's absolutely fascinating, that whole thing. And, you know, now we live in a world, as you say, where, you know, due to kind of environmental reasons, we could actually be poisoning ourselves physically. Well, we are not. We could. It sounds like we're actually poisoning ourselves with the lights that we have. And it kind of makes me think, like, isn't now the time to sort of go back to government and say, well, actually, you know, this policy is absolutely bonkers based on what we're starting to discover. So, you know, one of the things I sort of read some of the paper that Glenn Jeffries wrote, but one of the things that's really interesting is that you can get... red light from incandescent bulbs, so the old bulbs. Now, I was one of the people who, I laughed like a drain when, you know, they brought LEDs in and there was all these old curmudgeons going, you know, bring back our incandescent bulbs, you know. There was a whole thing in some of the papers around, you know, I think it was sort of like... Just leave them alone. Now I'm like, those people are completely right in what they were saying. And I've been on Amazon sort of looking for incandescent bulbs because I'm like, actually, I want my family to be well.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, what we found with incandescent bulbs is that they have a very broad bandwidth. So a huge range of all different types of wavelengths, which the body would then be used in total. People now were taking them away, obviously, because they're nowhere near as energy efficient. But our grandparents were getting near infrared from their light bulbs every day. We get it from fire. So near infrared comes through fire. If you think of the broad spectrum, the red hue that you get from the fire, that is the light that you're seeing on the red spectrum into the invisible spectrum of near infrared.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, is that one of the reasons we all love real fast?

SPEAKER_01:

Most probably, yeah. We're probably getting nutrients coming in. So what they believe now, well, what we've seen now is that the impact that near infrared has on our energy producing skill means that ultimately humans don't really need food for nutrition. You can get enough energy for light. I've spoken to a number of scientists who are astrophysicists and physicists who show me that the number of photons that are coming in, they will affect your energy production. You hear of people who have starved themselves for a number of and it's believed that they're getting enough nutrients from the sunlight. The more that you're inside, the more that you're going to have to get those nutrients from somewhere else, the more you're going to have to eat more. So there is a correlation between what we're seeing of our generation now to what we were seeing back then. Yes, there's other factors of food more being widely available, the ease in which you can then go and pop to the shops or whatever. But also what we're seeing is that our body's having to gain that nutrition from somewhere because it's not getting it from natural light.

SPEAKER_02:

And I mean, you know, I'm guessing the mitochondria, they will do what they need to do in order to kind of get the energy that they need, as you say. So if we're not getting it from light, we'll get it from food. I mean, I just have to go back to that. Like light as a nutrition, yeah. I mean, it's an extraordinary thought, but I have been reading, I think there was even something in the New Scientist recently about it, which is kind of fascinating, the notion that actually we could survive by not eating, just by being out in the sunshine. I mean, it kind of says it all, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01:

It does. I would fully caveat anything of this in saying nobody should go out there and stop eating, because we have to play to the lowest denominator, I'm sure. But I think we've just got to emphasise that point. But going back to your point about why this hasn't actually been talked about before, it's because this science and this way of thinking is incredibly new. People were very, very focused on light affecting your circadian rhythm and seeing the outcomes. What we're looking now is flipping the science on its head and not looking at what's happening in there for the outcomes. We're looking at what's happening inside and then how that would affect us and any outcomes that are are coming out of that being such as sleep or metabolism or whatever. But this is so new that three years ago, the government produced a white paper, a round table on daylight and near infrared wasn't mentioned. Whereas it's only recently in the last two years is that people are now starting to say, oh, look at this research we're looking at. And these are very, very few people that are doing the research. Glenn Jeffery being one of the pioneers on this, Scott Zimmerman being another one in America, and Bob Fosbury in the UK. And this has led to a number of people, such as myself, who were looking at light in specific areas, now realizing, hold on a sec, this is over 50% of the solar radiation hitting the Earth. There must be an effect on that. So seeing... proof of the biophysiological changes that are happening within our body and then seeing them as outcomes is still at its infancy stage. And therefore we're not able to go out into the public and say, we're seeing a huge effect on near infrared on metabolism. We're seeing a huge effect in infrared on sleep and the outcomes that people can relate to. So that's the next step. The next step is to take the research and make sure it's valid and then get it out into the public and say, listen, we know that if you're going outside, you know, because the near infrared is X amount, we can then show that your sleep improves by X amount. That research isn't there at the

SPEAKER_02:

moment. Fascinating. I mean, it's actually like for me, it's one of the joys of the whole subject. It sort of feels like this is very brand new. And yet it's as old as we are as a species. Like we literally, you know, evolved under the sun and under canopies. And, you know, I go back to your comment about we're like antennae for the sun. And actually, you know, an antennae has to be pointing in the right direction to kind of maximise things. And, you know, I think for most of us, our antennae are completely bent out of shape because of, I mean, it's kind of interesting because I think a lot of people will say, but hang on, you know, we as modern people, we're all living a lot longer than we did before. You know, so if you go back a few generations, your risks of dying, you know, young and, I mean, I'd have been an old person by now, you know, I'd be revered for being a village elder or whatever. So, but it's interesting because... I sort of look at it and go, well, we may be living older, but are we living healthier older? And actually by optimizing things like our sunlight, we could benefit from living in a modern age, but also benefit from living healthier lives as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, you can. From the research that I've looked at, we're not actually living longer lives than our ancestors. What's happening is that the rate of childbirth deaths and child deaths is reduced so dramatically that the average lifespan is actually increasing. So there were definitely people who were living as long lives, but because of the number of people dying as children just reduced that number. So I think that's a really interesting point is that our lifespan changes over time. The amount of light that we require changes over time because the amount of sleep that we change changes over time as well. But I just want to just touch upon what near infrared does and talk very, very kind of openly about how the effects have on the body because Near infrared penetrates through into the skin. So UV light will hit the skin. You can see that in sunburn. You can see that's why people want, you know, you see effects of the skin because the amount of light on the visible spectrum doesn't penetrate too deeply within to the body. It stays a kind of skin surface. The near infrared has been shown to penetrate very, very deeply beyond your fat cells over five centimetres into your body. In fact, one of the experiments that we looked at, you shine near-infrared onto somebody's back, and then we measured the other side of that person's body. And 10% of the near-infrared that was being shone came through that individual. So 90% of those photons were in the body, were being, were scattering around within the body and being kept there. And so there must be having an effect. There must be doing something. And that, that near infrared that's being shown penetrates through, through clothing. So you don't have to have bare skin in the same way the UV is blocked through t-shirts, but near infrared penetrates through the, any clothing up to six layers of clothing we've seen and, and then can, can penetrate into the body and penetrate past and through the body. So that near infrared is, is a hell of a lot of information. There's a lot of sensors that are going into the body to tell the body what's going on and what biological processes it should start producing or it should be adapting to. And you don't get that through electric lighting.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I mean, that's so, so, so interesting. I mean, it just, again, it makes me think about, you know, Just getting outside. And, you know, one of, I guess, the interesting things about infrared is you don't need to be in full sunshine either. You know, even on a cloudy day, you're getting bombarded by photons, aren't you?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, that's correct. And because leaves don't take in near infrared, they don't absorb near infrared, they repel it. The most near infrared that you're going to get is sitting on a sunny day underneath the tree in shaded ways. So you're going to get the maximum amount of near infrared coming from the sky. It's going to be hitting the lights and then shining straight down. So

SPEAKER_02:

that's really interesting. I mean, one of the things about sitting under a tree in... very hot weather and I've been doing it here whilst we've you know the coolest place has been under my apple tree and why is it you know what's going on there why is shade so cool is it just you know I don't

SPEAKER_01:

know I guess you're not getting direct sunlight coming through you're not getting direct near infrared you're getting second hand near infrared that is going to be scattering off which is which is which is a great way to absorb it naturally. There are other ways that you can absorb near infrared. You can be near a fire or, yeah, you could spend, even in the evening, you'll see people who are spending in fire, you get a kind of that feeling of, you know, quite a nice warm glow. We know intrinsically that it feels good, but we haven't known exactly what the effect is and kind of until now.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, no, it's really, really interesting. I mean, I think it's such a, such a important area of research, because I think, you know, this could be, you know, there's a chance now to kind of change the way we do things like, you know, all our glass. So I've got glass behind me, that's designed to cut all the infrared out, because infrared equals heat as well. But is glass being designed in the optimal way? Well,

SPEAKER_01:

that's the challenge, yeah. That is exactly the challenge. How do we not overheat rooms and places but still allow near-infrared? I've seen a piece of research that the near-infrared A, so the shorter band, 40% of all of that near-infrared gets blocked out through double glazing. What we need to find is a solution that allows people to get the benefits of daylight, but also the non-visible spectrums of light, making sure that we can then go outside and receive as much light as possible. People can do this in a number of ways. And particularly in the morning, we've seen having the greatest effect on near infrared on the body. So you can do this by getting up early or getting up whenever you're awake and then having breakfast by a window or go outside and have breakfast. If you're commuting to work, what you can do is stop a bus stop early or a train or a tube stop early and walking the rest, and that should give you enough. We've seen around 15 to 20 minutes should have an effect, a very positive effect on the ATP levels.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, it's incredible, isn't it? You think about the notion of 10,000 steps and being encouraged to do more walking. That was always for fitness purposes, but actually... You know, a lot of that fitness could have just been the fact that you're outside and in sort of getting your steps and, you know, the unintended consequence of that, shall we say.

SPEAKER_01:

Quite, yeah. And I think you've just touched on a very good word there, fitness. And we are all into fitness and being fit. But what is fit? You are being fit to an environment is what it is. It's not physically fit. What is fitness? Fitness is actually... fitting the environment that you're under. So if you're a plant, you are fit because you are getting the right amount of light, you're fit for that place. Whereas if I take my plant and I put it under the stairs, that plant is not a right fit for that. So I think people should really be looking at fitness in a sense not of how thin they are or how muscular they are, but how their bodies are fit to the environment they're in and that they should naturally be in. And you mentioned there that you were born in the tropics, that your body is desiring an environment that is fit for an environment that it is used to being in. And therefore, that is what people should think of as fitness rather than anything else, rather than how far they can run or how many weights they can lift. You know, it's a fitness to your environment. You can make a choice on everything else in your life. You can choose where you work. You can choose the house that you live in. You can choose the location that you live in. You can choose what food you eat and so on and so forth throughout the day. But the one choice that people don't have is the amount of light that they need for their bodies to survive in the environment that they are in. naturally adapted to

SPEAKER_02:

I really like that I mean before the podcast I was just tending to my tomato plants and the thought that you'd grow tomato plants in a cupboard it kind of says it all basically you just know that you won't get any tomatoes in order to get tomatoes you need a sunny spot and you know it completely as you say it's sort of fitness to the environment and I I mean, it's fascinating because I think what you're then doing is sort of like, there's whole industries which have been set up, which, you know, gyms are all inside, but that's almost bonkers when you, you know, based on this, that they would be inside. If, you know, people obviously should go and do whatever they want, but, you know, they should balance that with some outside time as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And from a sleep perspective, we've known for 20 years that, light is the governor of our circadian rhythms. So they will set the number of hormonal changes within the body that enable us to be alert and thrive during the daytime, but also prepare us for sleep and stay asleep during the nighttime. And light is the main cue that the body takes. It will take a number of other cues from your urine production to your metabolism to your exercise levels but without light the body doesn't know how to regulate itself. It doesn't know which hormones to express at which time of day. And therefore, you'll have a disconnect. And you see often there's a circadian desynchronization in nearly every physical mental health disorder as well. And because of hormonal changes, imagine chucking a load of different hormones in a washing machine and expecting it to produce the outside of the behavioral effects that you need It doesn't work. So light doesn't just help us see, but it also enables a whole number of biological functions that occur naturally within our body that help us behave in certain ways. And near infrared is the least researched part. It's the newest research area. But what we're seeing is it's having huge effects on humans. on our mitochondria, on a number of physiological functions within the body. And you cannot get that from having inside daylight.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I think we should leave it there because, you know, if we don't, I think we'll just carry on for the rest of the day. But I mean, I have to say one thing, which is that UCL seem to be really leading the way on a lot of the research around this. It makes me very proud that I'm British to know that, you know, there's some of the brightest brains kind of really thinking about what is going on so you know I wanted to say thank you to you and the rest of the people at UCL because it feels like you're not just doing it in there's a kind of context to the way you're researching things so you're looking at people the physiology our relationship to building so it's really impressive how it's all been pieced together

SPEAKER_01:

well thank you I would say that What is interesting is that there are a number of people who have come together from totally different areas of research and professional experience who have all almost landed on the same conclusion. From an astrophysicist to an ophthalmologist to a lighting designer specialist within buildings or building designers. It's just started to come that it's almost being kind of pushed together. And me from a sleep and circadian background, it all is pushed together into one direction. And people are realizing that the common denominator is the effect of near infrared light on our physiology. And therefore, that research here and there are some fantastic researchers in the US that you've mentioned as well. I would say there's only a handful, but the people are becoming more aware of it. And I believe in 10 years time, this research will be out there in the public domain. What we have to do is find a way to connect the amount of research that we're doing And then how we can then connect that into realistic changes, whether or not we're changing light bulbs, whether or not we're changing building designs, or whether or not we're just increasing the education of individuals out there to understand that without light, there isn't life.

SPEAKER_02:

No, fantastic. And I think just one final thing is if people are worrying about red light, a simple thing that they could do is just go and buy a cheap angle poised lamp. and go to Amazon and order an incandescent bulb to screw in. I mean, as a starting point, it's not a bad one, is it?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, that's what I do. I think the first thing I would say is that people should start having a read about it. These podcasts, what you're doing is fantastic to get out there and understand it. You've gone out there and you've done your own research. You've found out exactly... exactly what is suitable for you in your home and your environment. You're sitting underneath three very nice windows there. And so you're getting the right amount of daylight. And if you're outside all the time, then that's great. So people can find out and fit what they need into their lifestyle to make sure that they fit the environment that they want to be in.

SPEAKER_02:

Fantastic. Well, listen, thank you so much for joining me. I really do appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01:

Great. Thank you, Dave. Cheers.