Morning exposure to deep red light improves declining eyesight
nature.com
nature.com
I healed my eczema with red light (infrared heater) It turn out that infrared is needed by all our cells to get rid of inflammation. We are in an epidemic of autoimmune diseases partially caused by the lack of infrared.
The spectrum of halogen lights is continuous and closer to what we would get outside. Tungsten bulbs are also continuous but more tilted toward infrared. I think we will have unintended consequence of everyone switching to led lights: the "wasted" infrared are actually useful for our body.
It is wise to assume that almost everything from the natural environment is connected to our biology. As we move further away from it we stack up the health problems self inflicted: crooked teeth, wisdom teeth, miopia, acnee, vid-d deficiency, autoimmune diseases, depression, anxiety, etc.
Search "Medcram infrared" it’s a doctor that explain the science behind it.
The rest of these seem intuitively correct but could you expand on the dental problems?
Smaller jaw also mean smaller airways in the sinus and throat making snoring and sleep apnea more common with huge repercussions.
Weston Price attributed it to nutritional deficit in our diets and suggested things like eating more organ meats, eat how traditional people did.
Then there’s sugar and fizzy drinks, sticky sweets, refined flour, cultivars of fruits chosen for sweetness, all very good for bacteria growing on the teeth causing tooth decay, and not so prevalent in the past with food being less sugary.
More recently John Mew has put forth the idea that chewing thoroughly involves pushing up with the tongue which is a strong muscle and it pushed out on the jaws from inside; over a childhood of chewing that causes the jaws to widen and teeth to have room. These days with processed convenience foods you can swallow in a couple of bites, children aren’t chewing as tough food for as long, and he suggests that’s a contributor to why modern people have teeth crowding and narrow jaw problems.
you'd think bubblegum would have helped with this. I don't think I've ever seen a kid turn down a gumball
From an economist's perspective, the return on hunting is something like 50x the return on gathering because of the huge number of calories one can acquire by killing a large fatty animal. I.e., six hours of hunting will yield you 50x the calories you could acquire from six hours of gathering. Competing with monkeys and parrots for fruit doesn't make sense when you could kill an antelope instead. (See the work of Miki Ben-Dor for more on this).
And it turns out that if you only eat meat, you develop a stronger, wider, and more attractive jaw, your wisdom teeth come in properly, you never develop cavities, and you have good gum health.
I avoided all plant-based calories in 2021, and when I went to the dentist for a cleaning, she specifically commented on my unusually good oral hygiene and gum health. Plants really aren't good for our bodies, including our gums and teeth.
Today we think of grains, fruits, and vegetables as being less expensive than fresh meat, but that is an artifact of technology and industrial farming -- it does not reflect the natural state of man.
Hunters and Gatherers. Likely gathered a whole hell of a lot of not meat as well.
My point is that when viewed through the lens of economics, meat was a vastly less expensive way for ancient human beings to obtain calories than plants were.
The situation for ancient human beings would be equivalent to a situation today (for modern human beings) in which 3000 calories of fruits and vegetables would cost $500, whereas 3000 calories of steak would cost $10.
The hunting myth is in vogue, but one can make equally handwaved arguments for gathering as the obvious choice.
Plants never move, they have regular seasons, they never fight back, our gut bacteria are symbiotic with digesting plant matter, and it's way easier to chase away competition herbivores than actively hunting them. Since our roots are primates, hunting likely evolved from killing competing herbivores and eating them out of desperation during poor crop years.
Hunting is a risky exercise with variable returns by season. It requires far more knowledge and skill to succeed at.
1. 99% of all plants on Earth are toxic to human beings -- this is in comparison to 99% of all animals on Earth being safe for human beings to eat (including venomous snakes).
2. The fact that plants cannot move means that they fight off predators with toxins and chemicals. They contain natural pesticides, for instance. The only part of the plant that it wants to have eaten is the fruit. The seeds, on the other hand, are particularly well-defended. Plants contain lectins, oxalates, tannins, glucosinolates, and the list goes on and on. Animals don't fight back once they are dead, but plants do. (This is why 99% of plants are toxic to humans).
3. Plants have regular seasons, as you mentioned -- which is why plants are not available to be eaten through the winter in many parts of the world. Somehow our ancestors not only survived winters but also ice ages. Animals, on the other hand, exist year-round.
4. Hunting is not necessarily a risky exercise -- the largest animals, which provide the most calories, do not tend to run. Animals like Elephants, Rhinos, Hippos, etc., will turn and face a predator. They also have predictable paths to watering holes and can easily be captured by digging a hole in the ground and covering it with leaves.
You've made a good attempt at coming up with arguments, but I'm afraid the weight of the evidence argues in favor of our ancestors consuming mostly animals. In fact, the acidity of our stomachs is extremely high, in line with vultures, and is what we would expect to find in "hyper carnivores". You can read more about these findings here: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israeli-study-h...
> Here are some things to consider about plants in light of your arguments:
That was a critique, not an argument. I was trying to show handwaving without reputable citations is not an argument at all. It's just a narrative based on assumptions, unverified trust. You cite Times Of Israel, I could point to vegan/omnivore articles in HuffPo or Buzzfeed. Neither would have substance. Here is an example of an argument: https://biology.stackexchange.com/a/55977
(For the record I am back to omnivore).
(which most people will find unbelievable, not me though. Read meat has been my main food for a decade)
He summarises the research by Weston Price nicely.
I guess I should slow down now I'm 50
To fuck around and find out is not modern, it’s the human condition.
English language stackexchange offered up "paraphrasing" and "snowclone", which I've never heard of.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/292853/what-is-i...
Historically, that hasn't been an option.
"A relatively short life full of painful loss and physical suffering, living in a rat's cage" would be a better description of the median serf.
What about hunter gatherers? Even in the history of our more recent western ancestors, people have always made radical decisions to live lives outside of the mainstream. Religious fanatics and martyrs come to mind.
> "A relatively short life full of painful loss and physical suffering, living in a rat's cage" would be a better description of the median serf.
You are leaving out the part I said about profound meaning. Mental suffering matters as much as physical suffering and a lack of meaning is a sure cause of mental suffering and is experienced by many if not most modern information workers to varying degrees.
Really whatever your definition of profound meaning is it is available to you now if you choose to see it. If you are waiting for your context to provide it for you, good luck.
Now you’re just cherry-picking: going by raw years alone, we have been hunter-gatherers for far longer than the the thousands of years that have passed since the Agricultural Revolution started ('median serf').
“Oh”, someone says: “But more and more people have been born since the time we were hunter-gatherers”. Which is also true. But then surely you would pick “historically” to still be sometime after the Industrial Revolution, since we have doubled the population many times over since then. Hence, talking about serfs if that is some kind of middle-point “historically” is just cherry-picking.
We have created the most abondance, comfort and security ever.
Now we have second order problems: too much abondance, confort, security.
But I think it’s possible it’s going to get worse because of LED, but I don’t know if the amount of power make a difference.
Would be simple to test with a bunch of mice: do AB tests, measure inflammations markers.
Here is the medcram video you mentioned about 940nm light and COVID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdiUnmpOgqE
So much is made of observational studies for other remedies, and this is a prospective randomized study. If this turns out to be an effective treatment, isn't it terrible to not be telling COVID patients to go out and get some sun (which many sick people don't do)? As the doctor mentions, the sun is free, and would likely provide a similar benefit (if not greater).
Sadly, I think that doctor are mostly trained by pharma, and if there is no money for them then it won’t happen or won’t happen fast.
If you look at death per week in northern climate it closely follow the sun exposure.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2020017...
1: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/23/politics/fact-check-coronavir...
I make sense. Infrared to reduce inflammation seems to be know from scientifics for a while, was know from holistic practitioners for much longer.
Consider that they put people in the sunlight in the pandemic of 1918.
Since COVID began, there have been thousands of papers, studies, and small-scale trials that supposedly showed something positive, but the results can't be replicated in other studies or disappear when the sample size is scaled up.
In this case, the first study linked in that YouTube video description (I don't have time to watch it, sorry) is a report from n=30 patients in a Brazilian hospital in a somewhat obscure journal.
Given n=30 patients, I would have expected the data to be available or at least to see a graph of the 30 dots so we could visualize the difference. Instead, there's a note at the bottom that says they'll provide the data on request. I don't put much faith into obscure papers that won't even show their small datasets.
Maybe there's something here, maybe not, but if there was something this significant you can bet that medical device companies would be all over it. The medical industry doesn't like to leave golden opportunities on the table.
>but if there was something this significant you can bet that medical device companies would be all over it. The medical industry doesn't like to leave golden opportunities on the table.
Totally agree, except that mere sunlight could be a decent substitute for whatever they would develop and sell. Surely some people would pay top-dollar for the FDA-approved medical devices, but if sunlight provides similar benefits, lots of people (younger, poorer) would probably just stick with that.
Noting that data is available upon request isn't exactly strange
But with an n=30 study, I'd expect a simple chart with the 15 control and 15 active participants on a plot.
This would make it easy to see if one group had, for example, 1-2 outliers that skewed the average. In small scale studies like this, you could have something like 1 patient who stayed in the hospital for 60 days in one group while everyone else has a more typical ~9 day stay. That outlier would skew the results to an extreme.
That's just one example. The real question is why they didn't include the simple chart, which would have allowed for us to see at a glance whether or not they had outliers.
Search "medcram infrared"
I am becoming more and more disillusioned of the medical system (I have seen a bit of how it work from the inside)
Pharma make all the repeatable money
They buy their way into anything: research, institutions, government, media, doctor formation.
The best possible business for them is multiple chronical disease that need daily medication and unsurprisingly, it’s exactly what is happening to more and more people each year.
You’re mixing up red and infrared for the sake saying that LED bulbs are the Satan. This can still be corrected by adding red and infrared emitters to LED bulbs.
My holy grail is a powerful LED light source where you can adjust the spectrumin very granular detail, including at the extremes.
You usually don’t need to look at the light source as it penetrate the skin, clothes, skull, etc.
The "therapy" bulbs with the red or infrared (or both) LEDs are expensive (if they're intense enough to have a therapeutic effect on large areas of skin) and if he happens to have a heater that glows orange or any high-intensity incandescent bulb (either the ones with the red coating sold as heat lamps or the ordinary ones used for lighting) he can use that instead.
Alternatively, he can go out in the sun, which is an intense source of red and infrared photons (of almost all wavelengths -- and tending to come at you in many directions because they reflect off of greenery, dirt and clouds) and if he doesn't want at the same time to be exposed to UV light he can cover up with high-UPF clothing and hat, and the infrared photons will go right through the clothing and hat.
I live in Canada, my eczema was always in the winter and didn’t manifest when I go traveling south. I tried many things, but the medication is cortisone (can really help if you have a bad flare up) but thing spring back with a vengeance. You are playing the junky with your immune system, what I feel we do with most medication.
For long time I thought it was UV, vit-D, humidity, but I stumble upon this thing about infrared while watching Medcram to learn about Covid (awesome channel by a doctor)
Anyway, the heat dish was a cheap test, locally available.
I figured the spectrum will be continuous in opposition to specialized led, closer to what come from the sun anyway. To my surprise it worked.
Maybe the specialized lights are better/stronger/faster.
My highest confidence is in the sun.
I would prefer a continuous light source, or something that is closer to the sun where I spend most of the day (office) otherwise I don’t think it matter much.
In the winter, most electronics in the house are 100% efficient, because they heat the house. The only things better are heat pumps and insulation.
One of the advantages of LEDs is not needing to swap them out so often, so while I could swap bulbs in the winter, I really won’t, and neither will most of us.
I use the heat dish as a quick test that was locally available and to my surprise it worked!
But you are right, the sun is the best original source.
What type of infrared heater did you use?
Also used hydrating cream to prevent dryness with the heat.
For those not familiar with what is being discussed here, it's a coiled wire, same principle of operation as a hair dryer or toaster. Electrical current makes the wire heat up. It's wrapped around a cone-shaped central piece, and behind it is a parabolic dish like satellite tv dishes to direct the heat in a beam. It's a fanless space heater.
It’s also make me relaxed/tired after a while, maybe from the heat or infrared?
I would definitely go out in the sun instead, but this help in the darkest part of winter.
I hope it help you.
Not a chance - the amount of infrared and near infrared emitted from older style bulbs is a drop in the bucket compared to spending 1 minute outside (we’re talking 1000x more exposure outside).
The infrared deeply penetrate the tissues, so it shouldn’t matter much.
Trust how you feel too.
It is best to do both, and your sides too.
The infrared does not go all the way through your trunk or legs or head.
Nothing nicer than an indoor fireplace when it’s cold outside. The fact that it might help with degrading eyesight is a win.
And I ask about the chimney because fireplaces have been shown to impact neighbor health as well so it’s not just about getting it outside and it’s all good.
https://www.epa.gov/burnwise/choosing-right-wood-burning-sto...
Heat without infrared doesn’t feel the same at all.
Here (Canada) people have spent the winter close to a fireplace for 100’s of years. Warm room without infrared source is recent.
Understanding I may not be on the fat part of bell curve when it comes to outdoor activities, but I've literally never experienced that feeling. Working with my top off means I'll spend the evening peeling blisters off my skin. Doesn't make my feeling or your feeling valid or invalid; but there's at best a tenuous line between how good something feels and how good it holistically is :-/
Check a yearly UV index for your area. There are times of day that are completely safe for your skin type; but typically those times are quite early / late, like before 8am and after 4pm. UV tends to rise quite sharply in the morning, so while it might be a 2 or 3 at 8am it could be 5 or 6 at 9am (enough to burn your skin type).
I suspect there are many other benefits to sunlight other than vitamin D, and that the modern advice to avoid the sun and supplement D instead has been a huge mistake.
In addition to what you mentioned about "mitochondria need infrared," I've also seen at least three additional mechanisms: (1) We need bright sunlight for proper circadian rhythm, e.g. people in darkness experience disregulated sleep and ~26 hour waking periods. (2) Sunlight lowers blood pressure by producing nitric oxide. (3) Sunlight is necessary to regulate the dimensional growth of the eye, to prevent nearsightedness.
I suspect there are many more than this also.
I doubt that regular incandescent lamps have enough infrared to compete with natural sunlight or satisfy our biological need for infrared. People that do 'red light therapy' often use high wattage heat lamps close to the body without clothing or other barriers.
The mitochondria make atp from glucose+oxygen but also cause free radicals (think bad combustion) those float around and destroy what they touch.
To remove those the mitochondria also make melatonin(powerful antioxidant) that scoop up the free radicals so they can be eliminated but to make melatonin they need infrared radiation, I guess they evolved that way, infrared was available all day when activity was highest.
Now our brain make melatonin in the night, this would be the back up plan so that we don’t have to much inflammation at night when our activity level is reduced.
If you have an infection your system is working overtime to fight the virus, causing more free radicals/inflammation. It seem a big part of blood clothing in covid is an inflammation overload. Compounding that overweight people are naturally more prone to inflammation.
overweight + inside + infection + spike protein = clotting of blood.
About clotting, do you 'now good books about it ? I'm having troubles with what may be microclotting (stress, grief maybe other factors) and I naturally want to know more.
I heard that fasting might be able to clean similar things, maybe?
> and had normal colour vision (cone function). This was assessed using a 'Chroma Test': identifying coloured letters that had very low contrast and appeared increasingly blurred, a process called colour contrast.
Using a provided LED device all 20 participants (13 female and 7 male) were exposed to three minutes of 670nm deep red light in the morning between 8am and 9am. Their colour vision was then tested again three hours post exposure and 10 of the participants were also tested one week post exposure.
On average there was a 'significant' 17% improvement in colour vision, which lasted a week in tested participants; in some older participants there was a 20% improvement, also lasting a week.
> However, an additional control was undertaken where colour contrast thresholds were measured in the morning and then re-measured 3 h later without exposure to 670 nm. This comprised of ten subjects (six Females and four males). To determine if there were significant shifts in colour contrast sensitivities across the day that were independent of 670 nm and might undermine outcome measures for their exposure, six subjects were repeatedly tested at 0, + 3, + 6 and + 9 h (four Females and two Males).
Figure 2 shows the (lack of) effect in the no-light control group at T0 and T+3hrs. Interestingly, they don't compare to baseline like in figure 1 with the AM light group. However, Figure 4 does show a lack of training effect when repeating the same test 4 times throughout the day within the same subject.
(Also, interesting that your first response to a paper in Nature is that they don't have a control group...)
Edit: And presumably they took the design of their study into account when calculating their statistics (https://www.stat.cmu.edu/~hseltman/309/Book/chapter14.pdf). Their methods seem to imply that, but I'm not familiar with it so I'll pray the reviewers checked for that lol.
- June 2020 (270 points, 112 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23685915
- August 2020 (211 points, 84 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24080553
> A single 3 min 670 nm morning exposure to the eye at energy levels approximately a log unit greater than found in environmental light
2 questions here:
- "exposure to the eye" - do I need to directly stare at it? or is ambient light enough?
- "a log unit greater than found in environmental light" - how much brighter is "a log unit greater", how can I measure, or know, that I'm reaching this goal
> ...significantly improved subject colour contrast thresholds for both tritan and protan axes when tested 3 h later.
Can someone explain to me what this means? Will I actually notice a difference? or is this something that will just slow down the aging process but not reverse it?
finally, found this interesting from the scienedaily article @mhb posted in this thread https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211124154118.h...
> Home-based affordable eye therapies
> With a paucity of affordable deep red-light eye-therapies available, Professor Jeffery has been working for no commercial gain with Planet Lighting UK, a small company in Wales and others, with the aim of producing 670nm infra-red eye ware at an affordable cost, in contrast to some other LED devices designed to improve vision available in the US for over $20,000."
They've already released a product! https://www.eye-power.co.uk/ It's US$72, GB£45.00
I've placed my order (can't hurt right?). Total with shipping to the US for me came out to $89
I guess all of my questions are irrelevant now that I've ordered this device
Sounds like it. Assuming red light doesn't do the trick, I'll mention that I found progressive bifocals extremely unpleasant at first, but only at first. Stick with it a couple days, like I very nearly didn't, and they're fine - much more comfortable to use than I ever found the old discrete type.
I want to try this, but that's not a lot of safety info to go on...
>>They've already released a product! https://www.eye-power.co.uk/ It's US$72, GB£45.00
Surely even those prices are way over the top?...
-----
>LIGHT SOURCE Premium grade 670nm Deep Red LED cluster
>TIMER 3 minute session timer with automatic switch off
>BATTERY Rechargeable battery with 2 weeks between charges
-----
EDIT:
A quick search finds 670nm LEDs available for £2,29 each [obviously cheaper in bulk] [0] and Amazon selling a 670nm LED torch for £5,61 [1]. I don't know enough about any of this stuff to know if all 670nm LEDs are created equal and if the ones which perform eye magic are "special" in some way. But it still seems like, if not out and out quackery, then there's definitely some cashing in going on here.
[0] https://www.mouser.co.uk/ProductDetail/Lumileds/L1SP-DRD0002...
[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/670nM-Flashlight-Against-Deteriorat...
When I switched to digital cameras and was no longer in the darkroom then my deterioration was back on track.
I've alway wondered if the darkroom was a positive thing for my eyesight...
The reason your eye sight is consistent is because your eyes are the longest they will ever be. As we age, our lenses harden, we lose the ability to focus, and sometimes our eyes shrink. In myopic people, these process will result in an "improvement" in their eye sight, while people with good eyesight will develop hyperopia when these processes happen.
I believe the latest research points to lack of outdoor activities as the source of myopia in children. UV light appears to play a part in regulating the growth of our eyes, preventing them from growing too long.
From that article:
> Home-based affordable eye therapies
> With a paucity of affordable deep red-light eye-therapies available, Professor Jeffery has been working for no commercial gain with Planet Lighting UK, a small company in Wales and others, with the aim of producing 670nm infra-red eye ware at an affordable cost, in contrast to some other LED devices designed to improve vision available in the US for over $20,000."
That company has already released a product: https://www.eye-power.co.uk/
US$72 GB£45.00
Enough red light seems to get in your eyes with this mask, but it isn’t as directed as other products.
After you do a 10 minute session for example and look at a monitor, you see significant contrasts for awhile until your eyes re-adjust. I like to think that it is doing something and is why I keep doing it outside the mood/skin/etc benefits.
An example of the level of rigor you can find in their blog:
"Several studies and guidelines have stated that a NIR exposure intensity to the eye of up to 10mW/cm^2 has no risk of cataract formation especially for long-term chronic (daily) exposure over 1000 seconds (16.67 min). [3][4][6] The ICNIRP notes that higher intensities than 10mW/cm^2 are safe for shorter time periods or in cold environments.
They specifically note the guidelines are set to avoid cataractogenesis (formation of cataracts):
"To avoid thermal injury of the cornea and possible delayed effects on the lens of the eye (cataractogenesis), infrared radiation (770 nm - 3 m) should be limited to 100 W/m^2 (10 mW/cm^2) for lengthy exposures ( >1,000 s), and to 1.8 t^3/4 W/cm^2 for shorter exposure durations" [4]
To be clear these guidelines are intended to include incoherent (non-laser) exposures to near-infrared light including incandescent bulbs, infrared heaters, industrial furnaces, and LEDs. And this calculation is for Cornea and Lens safety only and they have other calculations for different wavelength ranges and different parts of the eye.
For shorter exposure times less than 1000 seconds, they give us this formula such that higher intensities can be tolerated according to the guideline.
E < 1.8 (t) ^-3/4 (W/m^2)
From this calculation we can find that 100mW/cm^2 can be tolerated for up to 47 seconds before potential damage could occur according to the ICNIRP.
Other researchers have noted that 100mW/cm^2 of NIR would not cause significant temperature increase in the eyes to cause damage, but the ICNIRP comments that such a high intensity from an incoherent source is impractical because it would felt as “painfully warm” on the face. [3] [5]
Good thing nobody makes “painfully warm” intensity panels that emit >100mW/cm^2 at 6 inches away. However, feeling too much heat on the face is a good warning to move further away, and we are reassured by this data that we don’t immediately get damage from such a high exposure."
That's just regular visible red light up 700 isn't it though? You'd see it in its entirety.
Just meet the sunrise and it will be at least twice healthier.
So if you need to be exposed to just red light it won't work well, but if the red light works regardless of the presence of other colors then the sun seems like it would be a fine source.
> Most of the solar radiation that reaches Earth is made up of visible and infrared light.
https://www.fondriest.com/environmental-measurements/paramet...
https://www.edmundoptics.com/contentassets/639fec6d719643a8a...
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/74638/transmitta...
Of course I wonder if the fact that I can perceive changes to me energy levels is a sign that I’m getting old now.
That greatly helps me get to sleep by 11p, too, but IIUC has nothing to do with this submission: we know why exposure to the light of the sun when the sun is very low in the sky affects the circadian rhythm (namely, via its effect on intrinsically-photosensitive retinal ganglion cells) and it has nothing to do with the red and infrared photons we are talking about here. (It has rather to do with a particular ratio of yellow photons to blue photons according to Andrew Huberman. Also, I suspect that there aren't sufficient fluxes of red and infrared photons outdoors before sunrise.)
The point is that you need to go outside again later in the day -- or get your infrared or red photons some other way -- to "nourish" your mitochondria in the way we are talking about here. They're separate health effects of light (or EM radiation to be precise) just like the production of vitamin D is again a separate health effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsically_photosensitive_r...
Note: Melanopsin is the name of the ipRGC's photopigments.
---
I've seems studies showing that genetically modified blind mices with ipRGC had circadian cycle. And that just a few photons of blue light is capable of suppress melatonin production in humans.
But I haven't seem anything about supression of melatonin being regulated by the ratio of yellow light and blue light. Could you provide a source?
Huberman never specifies how low in the sky the sun needs to be for the sunlight (and my guess it is specifically the indirect fraction of the sunlight) to have a strong effect on the timing of the circadian clock.
"Indirect": scattered by the atmosphere.
I tried to corroborate with other sources, but gave up after about 60 min in a search engine. I have corroborated by my own experience though (I aim to go outside about 10 minutes before sunrise, but sometime I am delayed by up to 30 min) and the experience of a friend. Also of course the grandparent of your comment is corroboration of one half of the hypothesis (the other half being the assertion that when the sun is high in the sky, it has neglible effect on the timing of the biological clock).
He says that on a cloudless day, you only need 5 minutes of exposure provided your eyes have a clear view of the sky (i.e., no brim of a hat obscuring half of the sky). On a very overcast day, 20 min might be required.
My question was about the "ratio of yellow photons to blue photons".
Fun fact: Blue light can stimulates melanogenesis in dark-skinned individual (type III and above) [1], no UV required. This process is mediated by an Opsin, like our vision.
This is a somewhat recent discovery (~2010) and the physiological effects are still largely unknown. Most studies on the subject are concerned about hyperpigmentation and oxidative stress.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022202X1...
But Huberman was quite clear that the spectrum of light when the sun is low in the sky is different somehow from the spectrum when it is high, and the eye has some way to detect this difference.
The important fact is that when the sun is high in the sky, the light has very little effect on the timing of a person's circadian rhythm, and Huberman was quite clear on that too.
Most people do not seem to know that yet!
So.. based on commercially available LED technology.
Like so: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Measured-spectral-output...
or so: https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-vyhij/images/stencil/1024x10...
The first step would be to use red color (let's say, RGB=0xff0000). Is there anything to do to lower the frequency? Would reducing the brightness help?
Or is it just simply: set it to full-red, full-brightness?
Edited to add: This graphic [1] illustrates the spectrum produced by common light sources. Old LCD panels used fluorescent backlights like the bottom example. More recent LCD panels often use an array of LED backlights. The bottom line is that, if you're trying to maximize red light exposure, you're much better off with: sunlight >> incandescent bulb light > a very "warm" LED light.
[1] https://www.waveformlighting.com/img/full-spectrum-graphic.p...
Usually red emission is wanted close to red cone sensitivity peak (actually a bit redder than that, as green cones are quite close). So about 600 to 650 nm.
I guess, this is one of the health benefits of getting exposed to early morning sun.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZKl5Me4XwPj4YgJCBes3...
xgamma -rgamma 1.0 -ggamma 0.1 -bgamma 0.1
I already had a 250w raw heat lamp bulb sitting around and a base for a high watt bulb.
I put the contraption on one of those remote control outlet switches and placed it at 10 o-clock from the head of the bed.
I turn it on in the mornings if I wanna surf in bed.
I don't have bad eyesight or night vision but so can't tell if it's an improvement.
I can tell you it is very comfortable on my eyes and the heat is nice in the winter.
Is it in common light bulbs?
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=670nm+flashlight
[2] https://www.zebralight.com/H502pr-Photo-Red-AA-Flood-Headlam... (technically a headlamp, but also a 90° flashlight)
[3] https://www.amazon.com/LUMINTOP-Flashlight-Pocket-sized-Wate...
[4] https://www.amazon.com/Copper-Flashlight-LUMINTOP-Function-W...
[5] https://skylumen.com/pages/modding-services
[6] https://www.mouser.com/new/cree/cree-xlampXPG3-photo-red-led...
[7] https://www.mouser.com/c/optoelectronics/led-lighting/led-em...
Edit: Ah they do (but with $50 delivery outside the US lmao): https://rapidled.com/products/cree-xp-g3-photo-red-660nm-led
It probably comes on a pad. Just to show you, made this just for you.[1] Cree XP-E Red (this one is 630nm). Last two images show 0.06Lm, but on turbo it is very bright, 160Lm. Modder linked in my last post did the swap for me in a ThruNite TiS, but it was the generation after this[2], 0.06 Lm, 12 Lm, 160Lm. The middle mode, 12Lm, is about the equivalent brightness of 3Lm of neutral white, meaning even though 12Lm of red is much brighter than 3Lm white, can see about the same with 3Lm of neutral white due to its much superior color rendition.
[1] https://imgur.io/a/f9JC1Ya
[2] https://www.amazon.com/ThruNite-Tis-CW-Portable-Flashlight/d...
> this one is 630nm
Are you sure, that really ought to be more around 650 nm. I was checking the datasheet [1] for the W2812 just to see how far they go (since I have hundreds around the apartment and can set them to full red) and even something as cheap as those can apparently go to 620-630 nm according to the spec.
The optimal wavelength listed in various articles seems to be more like 670 nm. I wonder if one could just do a longer exposure with a less accurate diode and get the same results though.
> probably comes on a pad
Comes on a reel apparently. Do they think they're selling to people with industrial PCB robots? haha
[1] https://www.ledsupply.com/leds/xp-e-emitters bottom of first table.
EDIT:
Not sure what people object to? What do they think is the R in RGB?