Artificial Blue Light is Proliferating Chronic Disease & the Mental Health Crisis

It's time to engineer better solutions and return to nature

Introduction

Blue light from artificial sources is one of the most biologically disruptive toxins that exists in our modern world today. It is pervasive, it is ubiquitous and it is only getting worse with the ever increasing time we spend indoors and in front of screens. The worst part is: it doesnt have to be this way. The EVEN worse part: it is exactly what Big Tech wants.

This newsletter will cover exactly why blue light from screens and our lighting is bad for our health, and what you can do to avoid these biological disruptions.

The TLDR:

• Artificial blue light is not the same as natural blue light

• Artificial blue light disrupts our circadian rhythm (the most important aspect of our biology) and our sleep

• A disrupted circadian rhythm has been linked to nearly all chronic diseases

• Artificial blue light is addictive by design & disrupts our neurotransmitters

Natural Blue Light vs Artificial Blue Light

Blue light, like all visible light, is a sliver of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum. That means that blue light is an EMF, and artificial blue light is a non-native EMF. That is why I often say non-native EMFs are the most pervasive environmental toxin in modern society. The food is an issue, but the light is what is really f*cked. It is far easier to change your food diet than your light/EMF diet.

Blue light is typically defined as 450-490nm wavelength light, although there is some debate on where that starts and ends. That correlates to a frequency of around 600-660THz and ~2.5eV of photon energy. That means a wavelength of blue light is oscillating at 600-660 Trillion times per second. It also means that the photons in blue light have the ability to excite electrons they come to interact with, with around 2.5eV of energy.

Blue light is not some alien part of the electromagnetic spectrum, as say 5G radiofrequencies are, it is actually something we are exposed to every single day in the form of sunlight and have been for the existence of humanity. However, there is a stark difference between the blue light we are exposed to in the form of sunlight and the artifical blue light we are exposed to from our technology screens and lighting:

• Blue light in isolation / missing the rest of the spectrum

• Pulsed LED control

• The wrong context / time of day

• Dull

To understand why blue light from artificial sources is so toxic to our biology, you need to understand first what our biology is programmed to take in as an input signal from full spectrum sunlight. I refer to it as “full spectrum” sunlight here because that is the big takeaway: you are getting exposure to a full spectrum of light. Blue light coming from the sun is NEVER present without longer, lower energy wavelengths such as Red + Near-Infrared (NIR). Sunlight is 49%-55% infrared light. NIR (650nm-1200nm) represents 70% of the total solar spectrum from a photochemistry viewpoint when considering photons/second. Compare that to artificial light, which almost always has little to ZERO red/infrared light due to energy efficiency standards. A spectrum plot below highlights this stark difference between sunlight & artificial lighting. We will discuss more about the biological impacts of this in the next section. It is important to note that a large reason the infrared spectrum is NOT present in light is due to “energy efficiency” and is also incandescents have been made illegal. Of course, policies like this are completely ignorant to the health benefits of the infrared spectrum of light and importance for a more fuller spectrum.

All man made modern light is pulsed, whilst in nature it is continuous. Fluorescents and incandescent bulbs, because they are powered via our 50/60Hz electrical grid have a pulse of 50/60Hz (low frequency). LEDs are controlled by a digital electronics control scheme called Pulsed Width Modulation (PWM). PWM lighting control is typically at 500Hz-50kHz (and could be higher). Engineers say that the human eye can’t see “flicker” above 100Hz, which is true from a visual perspective…but our biology knows. This is a large reason why eye strain, headaches, and other symptoms arise from staring at screens for long periods of time. Sunlight is never pulsed, and is only continuous.

Getting back to the spectrum, the real issue with artificial blue light is the incorrect context. Natural sunlight only provides blue light in a full spectrum setting when (obviously) the sun is up. It has a more rich blue spectrum mid day vs first thing in the morning. It also has even higher energy wavelengths such as violet, UVA, and UVB in mid day (UVB latitude/season dependent). Our artificial blue lights come with zero context. They don’t change based on the sun angle or time of day. They do not go away after sunset. They simply are the same pulsed isolated blue light rich lights, all day long. Nature operates on a clock, and our body needs to be in tune with that clock, else we get biological dysfunction.

Indoor and artificial blue light sources are DULL. Not their personalities, but their brightness. If you are outside mid day you are going to be experience 10,000-100,000 LUX of brightness. That is 30-1000X HIGHER than typicaly indoor lighting. Big range because some indoor lighting areas are very, very dull. So now you have an even more alien form of light. Blue light is the main input signal that tells your body it is daytime, and a big component of that is brightness. Brightness = photon density. If you are inside all day you are getting ~100x LESS photon density. Photons carry energy to excite the electrons in your body. We are starving for photon energy.

Artificial Blue Light Disrupts our Circadian Rhythm

Our circadian rhythm (CR), aka our 24hr biological clock, is in my opinion the most important aspect of our biology. Why? Because nearly everything in our body is goverened by time of day and CR. It encompasses our light diet, our food diet, our sleep, hormones, and so much more. Circadian disruption has been linked with nearly all chronic disease and mental health issues.

So what causes our CR to get out of whack and misalign our biological clocks? The number 1 input signal to our circadian biology is light. The other main input signal is simply our sleep/wake cycle. Food input is secondary and our connection to the earth (grounding/earthign) has also been shown as a circadian input signal.

Our sleep/wake cycle should be tied to light, so those two are quite intertwined. But what about light causes circadian disruption? Here is a short list of the big hitters:

• Artificial Light at Night (ALAN)

• Dull/junk light during the day

• Missing sunrise/UVA rise in the morning

Basically: any light that deviates from the natural solar spectrum in your local environment will disrupt your circadian rhthym. The degree of how alien/different the spectrum is will dictate how severe the circadian disruption is.

Artifical light at night is especially bad because blue light is a signal of daytime and suppresses melatonin production. ANY blue light post sunset will cause a circadian disruption to some degree and the magnitude of exposure will determine just how much. This is why blocking blue light specifically at night time is so important.

“Artificial Light at Night (ALAN) can cause circadian disruption…which can result in a variety of pathological diseases, including premature aging”

Really any light post sunset will disrupt circadian biology but blue light is especially bad because it most severely impacts melatonin production. Brightness is another major factor. Wearing dark red blue light blockers will help, but if you are still in an extremely brightly lit room <1 hour before bed time it won’t be ideal for sleep quality.

Exposure to “blue-appearing light within the short-wavelength portion of the spectrum, between 446 and 477 nm, results in melatonin suppression that is more than 3 times more potent than exposure to long-wavelength light above 530 nm.”

Bright and blue is the recipe for maxx melatonin suppression. Bright and any color light will still have a suppressive effect as well. Want your best night sleep ever? Turn the lights OFF and only uses a very dull red light, candle, etc.

Depression, Blue Light & Dopamine

We have a mental health crisis ongoing in modern society. In the US, over 20% of adults suffer from a mental health disorder/illness and even 1/6 children now do as well. In 2000, the percentage of prevalence of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) aka severe depression was 2%, today it is over 8%…a 4x increase. Suicide rates have also been climbing, especially in teenagers in this “smartphone era”. It seems like a strong possibility that our modern technology is the major driver for this mental health epidemic.

I think anyone can agree that our devices, specifically our phones are highly addictive. We think it is just the social media apps penetrating our psychology and dopamine reward systems, but in reality it’s more than that. The hardware also plays a priming role. I am saying that blue lit screens is making you more vulnerable to fall prey to the predatory marketing tactics of short form content on social media apps. You can simply look at toddlers, who are far MORE vulnerable to effects on their developing brains, to know that it is not just the apps or the games, but also the LIGHT…the blue light specifically.

For children, you can easily google or YouTube a video of a toddler throwing a temper tantrum when you take away their iPad. The games or shows they are watching may indeed be “addicting” but I would argue the bright blue dominant screen is the real reason they are addicted.

Blue light induces a dopamine release in our body in short term exposure. Regardless of the science - we can feel it. Some papers are catching up on this, and some are discussing how the blue light photoreceptor AKA melanopsin is directly intertwined with dopaminergic neurons. The initial paper discusses how experiments were performed in a room “illumninated by a red LED to avoid influencing dopamine synthesis”. This means that not all light is stimulating dopamine secretion, and that blue light is especially stimulating in terms of its effect on our brain.

This is the same reason Las Vegas uses bright lights and flasing symbols at the slots to keep players in their seats. The constant dopamine release is addicting, it is like a drug and they end up spending far more money than they would on a slot machine with dull colors. Our phones and tablets are built the same way - perhaps not as directly intention to addict you - but they do nevertheless through the same neural / optic pathways.

When you get all of these “cheap”, short lived dopamine hits you are going to suffer in the long term. When you don’t have that external stimuli - your baseline will feel much lower and that is why excessive tech use can lead to mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression. This is extremely concerning for our children, who’s mental health is spiraling out of control. Screen time, and blue light, could be a direct cause to this epidemic.

The Solution: Technology that is Designed to Work with Nature

You may read this newsletter and think it is fear mongering, but in truth it is a fair assessment of how man made blue light is affecting our health. Most are not yet on board of the importance of our light environment, so think about this:

You eat 3-4x/day, you drink water maybe 5-10x, you consume light as an input to your biology 24/7/365 (and I am not talking about just visible light). Electromagnetism is fundamentally the most prominent input signal to our biology, and it is the one we have distorted the most with modern technology. Blue light is not bad when it comes from the sun, it is only bad in the wrong context. With the amount of screen time every member of society is racking up each day, to me it is undebatable that artificial blue light + man made EMFs are the two most pervasive environmental toxins and are proliferating the chronic disease epidemic.

Because of this man made electromagnetic radiation, we cannot sleep restoratively, we are anxious + depressed, we are constantly in an inflamed / stressed biological state. The worst part is we are getting more and more addicted to our devices with each passing day.

The solution is simple: fix lighting and spend more time outside. Fix lighting on screens and fix indoor lighting fixtures. Emulate the sun, where you never get blue without the rest of the rainbow, especially red/infrared. We are meant to live in line with nature, and it is only when we deviate that chronic disease becomes prevalent.

This is why I joined the Daylight Computer Company at the beginning of this year. As an EMF/Light educator in regards to health + an Electrical Engineering background - I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard that there was a tech startup trying to become a “healthier Apple” with an innovative reflective screen technology that is blue light free and works with nature instead of against it. This is the sort of innovation we need to end our negative relationship with technology and our disconnection to the real world - the natural world. You can learn more in a recent interview we did with prominent Bitcoiner Marty Bent on TFTC:

Nature is the real world, and nature is the world’s first and most decentralized system. A return to reality is needed, and an understanding that real light is what drives our being is needed to change the direction of our future outcomes as a species.

Stay Sovereign,

Tristan