Undoctrinate Yourself - #29 - Scott Zimmerman

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

Scott Zimmerman is an engineer and expert in optics focused on understanding the mechanisms by which light interacts with human biology. He is the founder of NIRA: a lighting company that adds near-infrared light, an essential nutrient for human biology, back into the indoor environment.⁠Purchase NIRA light bulbs: https://niralighting.com/⁠Connect with Scott on LinkedIn⁠: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-zimmerman-29b7b59?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_appFollow Dr. Alexis on instagram ⁠⁠@dralexisjazmyn⁠⁠Follow the podcast on instagram ⁠⁠@undoctrinateyourselfpod⁠

Hello everyone and welcome back to Undoctrinate yourself. Today I have an in-person live interview, which is so exciting. You can also see this bucolic background we have, which is real, which is valid today because a lot of time on Zoom you see those fake backgrounds, but this is 100% natural. I'm sitting down today with Scott Zimmerman, who's an engineer and an expert in optics and basically how light interfaces with things, but we're going to focus on the interactions between light and human body, which I think is really important and something that we're we've talked a lot about in this podcast and maybe other avenues, but I think it's really important

to get the engineering perspective on this, and I think it will help drive our understanding of ways that we can re-engineer environments to be more conducive to health. So, but first of all, welcome, Scott. I'm so glad to have you on. Well, thank you. And I, you know, I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about what we've been doing. We've been working in this area for, It's been going on almost 10 years now. And it's been hard to get people to understand that we've made a big change. And I keep on saying people don't quite see it, but we're actually going through the largest reduction in solar exposure in human history and the largest increase in light at night. And that is, well, where our work has been mainly focused on trying to, A, solve that problem, but B, to understand the real.

are the real processes, biological processes. And I've been lucky. I mean, I've gotten to team up with a number of different really great researchers, Russ Ritter, that we did a paper four years ago on the optics, melatonin and the optics of the body. And then more recently, I've been working with Glenn Jeffrey and Bob Fosberry. Great guys, trying to figure, to understand what's going on with how light is affecting mitochondria. It's kind of like a, I feel like it's almost like everything's starting to coalesce. People are, is the research is starting to get up to the point that we're starting to understand some of the basics of what's going on.

And people are also starting to feel the effect of having, you know, my generation, I played outdoors. I did, you know, I built three houses. And then I came indoors and got stuck under fluorescence for a while, your generation, a little bit more. and now we're essentially some of the, especially my grandchildren, this is the artificial environment is beginning to be what defines them in some ways. And, you know, that's where I guess I'm trying to focus all my efforts is to try and understand that and work with certain people around the world and that have similar viewpoints, I guess. Yeah, I was actually thinking about that on my drive over here about how like the Gen Z generation were the ones like the iPad babies.

essentially. Like, they were raised on tech from day one. And I mean, at least in my generation, the millennials, we, for the first, like, let's say, decade of our lives, we had limited tech. I mean, we had TV still. But I feel like at least I played outside most of the time and it was just much more involved in, like, just nature and not being glued on screens. But starting in middle school, we got a computer and stuff, that was when things started to shift. And also to your point about how our relationship with light is changing so dramatically, especially with the Sun for the first time in the history of our species, it makes me think of how Jack Cruz talks about how we're basically creating our own asteroid. Like if you think back to the KT event with the dinosaurs

and like there was this, you know, all this debris essentially went up into the atmosphere and completely changed the light environment. Well, we're basically doing that, but we're doing it to ourselves kind of unconsciously. So maybe, I mean, maybe a good place to start would be to talk about a little bit of like specific differences between the ancestral light environment or just natural light environments versus indoor light environments? Well, I think the first thing that people need that it's important to understand is that sunlight is not, there's so much work out there where people will run an experiment, use a particular wavelength, a little color of light, and they'll get a result.

But that's not what the body is actually adapted to. The body's adapted to exposure from 250 nanometers all the way out to 10 microns and beyond. And in all those cases, the body is almost dealing with thousands of simultaneous equations. As Bob Leposperi likes to say, you know, when he's doing some of his astrophysics stuff, you know, there are thousands of simultaneous equations that have to be solved together to actually explain what's going on in astrophysics. The same thing's true of the body. You know, yes, I can do an experiment and I can expose the body to a certain kind of wavelength or a certain area of wavelength. and it causes a biomarker to change, glucose level drops or the CO2 levels increase,

like Glenn's shown so well. But the reality is that the body's doing that and doing UV vitamin D and doing all these other stuff, generating hydrogen peroxide, generating Ross, all that stuff is going on. So so much of what we have right now in our research papers are essentially just looking at little snippets. of what's going up and what the body is expecting to see. And I think that's where my background,

I don't like to go too far into the biology because that's not really what I've been teamed up with people that know the biology. What I do is the optics. And what the basic premise is is that when you see the body do certain things optically, it's doing it for a reason. You know, when you start looking at how

the body is localizing certain portions of the solar spectrum in certain tissues by some really amazing optical processes, you know, your eye, how it works. But it's not just that. It's your brain, how certain wavelengths penetrate into through the skull and into the cerebral spinal fluid and go down into the gray matter. And it just happens to the gray matter, right? Where that can work out the best.

And so over and over again, you find all these different. optical mechanisms that we hadn't taken into account in what we're doing. And especially now with the DOE coming in and putting so much of a clamp down on lighting, but people may not know, but the rule change for the DOE is imposing on everybody, essentially makes it impossible to do anything but visible light. And that represents such a small part of the solar spectrum. And in a lot of ways, it's almost, I keep on saying it's time for us to move past circadian. There's more to have lied to what's going on than just circadian. The body is using stuff that has no eye response in the near in the UV out into the near infrared and even out into the shortwave infrared. So first and foremost, I guess the point is, is that when we walk outside, it's like, I keep on saying there's a lot of people that get upset about blue.

And I understand, you know, the blue. But when you look up at the sky like today, it's blue. But it's not just blue. The majority of the radiation coming into your body from reflecting out of the trees, from the sky itself, even the dirt is essentially acting like the sense of some nature sunglasses. It's actually increasing the amount of near-infrared and straightway infrared that we are exposed to while we're being exposed to blue. So that's entirely different than what we get when we're sitting here looking at a laptop or TV. The only thing you're getting is blue. And what we're finding more and more is that the near infrared, the short wave infrared, even into the mid-infrared,

is providing a basis for us being able to look at blue wavelengths safely. Because from a photochemistry standpoint, any of the wavelengths that are shorter than about 400, 180 nanometers are capable of randomly breaking a bond. So the body, what did the body do? The body developed this outer skin that essentially is a sacrificial layer. It sluffs off every 20 days. And that's because it can't, it's stuck with the fact that there's this high energy photons coming in that they're having to deal with.

And then what we're showing is is that the near infrared and the longer wavelengths, are then they penetrate deeper into the body. They kick up the mitochondrial response and provide some kind of protective or reparative type response to the body that allows us to walk out and enjoy a beautiful blue sky. Yeah. And I mean, just for people's edification, if they've listened to the podcast before, they'd probably know this already, but just in case you haven't, midday sun is like over 50% red and infrared light, about 25% blue light, maybe less than 10%

UV light. But the point being that if you're outside during the day, you're always receiving an abundance of red and infrared like this long wavelength light, and that can be dappled in with the shorter wavelengths like the blue and UV. But basically what I think the main point is, that you're always supposed to be bathed in this long wavelength light. And I think that's not a mistake either, because if it was an evolutionary constant, for an ancestral constant, then our biology clearly adapted to be able to thrive in that environment. in particular, and if you're sitting behind glass, so about how much of like the near infrared wavelengths

does glass scatter? Glass is a great transmitter. The problem is that it's not glass that we put up anything. Yeah. What we do is we put a coating on the glass that reflects all the near infrared from coming into the building. Now, like I say, we're sitting out here. If you could see in the near infrared,

all the tree leaves, the ground, everything would appear to be bright white, like it was covered in snow. So what you see is that when we're outdoors optically, you know, the visible, we can see what we do in the visible range. What the reality is is that there's tons of reflected near infrared, which actually shifts the ratio. One of the things I've done a lot of work with is looking at ratios of different portions of sunlight.

And yes, it is true. If you're standing there and you're laying on a beach frying yourself and direct sunlight, it's about equal amounts of near-infrared divisible in optical watts. But the minute you get anything like even dirt or trees around you, it immediately, they have reflectivity growth to 90%. So what ends, it's kind of like we're walking through this little integrating sphere. You know, white walls all around us, but we don't even know it's there. But what it ends up doing is providing, you know, you can get up to 30 megajoules per day off of sunlight

if you're just exposed to it. But what it does is it shifts the entire, by being outdoors under a tree in the shade, it drops the intensity levels, but it also shifts the ratios. So you get a lot more near infrared relative to blues, greens, and UV because of the shading effects of the tree. The plants were here first. They walked in and they said, we're going to survive. We can't run around, but we're going to survive. And what they do is that they grab red and blue, and they use it for generating photosynthesis for keeping themselves alive.

So you think about as we're walking into this environment, this environment is already sitting there saying, hey, there's tons of near infrared. And so what appears to be happening is that our body is optically designed to localize the neuroinfrared in certain critical tissues, be it your retina. And it's surprising. The eye actually is an amazing optic for imaging to see a view. But it's even more amazing when you look into it from a non-imaging aspect. In other words, literally what happens is that most of the photons that hit the retina don't go through the pupil. They actually go through your scolera and through the other, because it's a much larger area collection. And we call it a non-imaging optic dialectically filled.

And what that guarantees is that there's almost a 10 to 1 ratio of near infrared divisible in the eye. Same thing happens in your brain through this cerebral fluid. Similar thing happens in the womb. When a woman is pregnant, the amniotic fluid actually acts like a kind of like a dialectic-filled integrating sphere, guaranteeing that she feel her skin filters out all the shorter wavelengths, and then when as, which, but the near-infrared can actually penetrate to and bounce around uniformly bathing the fetus in near-infrared. And then as the pregnancy progresses, which I think is the coolest thing optically, the woman's

skin starts to stretch. And as it stretches, it increases the wavelengths that are allowed to go to the fetus. It also then helps that fetus. Not only does it tend to suppress certain cytokines that have been linked to autism, but it also defines how the eye develops because the eye is developing in the womb, but it's changing as

now that was the case in old times. Now we don't do the same thing. And not that I would ever say that a woman made a mistake not being out. We're just trying to understand this is what it boils down to. And, you know, my concern is that, you know,

we need that the fetus and the mother both need to be exposed to the entire solar spectrum, not just some little slice of it. And if they are, then it creates imbalances in certain hormones and things of that nature. When I did the paper with Russ on melatonin, that was Russ's thing. I mean, Russ has 40 years discussing melatonin. He's got 100,000 citations. And I walked in, there's the little optical engineer going walking into the guy who knows everything about melatonin. And his comment was, he said, Scott, you got to get this published out there because nobody in the biological world are thinking about the optics.

And that's what I guess at the end of the day, that's what I've been focused on. And the more I dig, the deeper I look at it, we're finding all these periodic structures. And for people who don't know, if you have a refractive index, it's how telecom works, it's how the Internet works, all this. other stuff, you set up these gratings, these period, different indexes, and you can change where light goes. And plants do it to generate chlorophyll, or to do photosynthesis, but in the chloroplast. But worse, what's becoming clear is that there are structures within the body that are doing the same thing. So as we progress, first we start out with just basic geometric optics. Then we talk about wave optics. Now we're talking about podonic band gaps and things of that nature with that

it's just, I think that you're going to see that there's going to be this progression that we understand deeper and deeper what's going on with the optics. You're going to have a new understanding of what the body's really doing. And yeah, so, sorry. No, that's, it's a beautiful explanation. It's making me think of a lot of things. But I mean, one thing that's coming to mind is that from like sunup to sundown, does the total amount of near infrared light, is it consistent or does it change throughout the day? It changes. And like I say, the peak or the minimum ratio is at direct sunlight high noon.

As you go to longer wavelengths, you'll see that are to different parts of the day and night, you'll see a shift to where the near infrared levels come up. So is that a fractional increase or is it a total? Well, like I say, I talk about the ratio of near infrared to visible, are visible to the infrared. And it's one to one at noon. It goes to about three or four to one when you get towards sunset or early morning. Now, again, I feel sorry for blue.

I'm a big feeling sorry for blue right now. But because one of the things is that everybody is trying to blame blue for being the problem. When in reality, it's not blue itself. It's the fact that blue that we see is so much more. It's got the near infrared. It's got the short wave. And, you know, you can say, oh, well, beautiful sunset. Beautiful oranges, beautiful reds.

I have to do is look to the side and you'll see blue sky. You know? So it's, and the body, one, what it was very clear is we need to start thinking about the body in terms of being a solar collector. When we are, we are walking upright, we are blocking the direct light most of the time by our hair or the trees that we're in or whatever. But there is this huge solid angle of acceptance all around us. We are like this kind of little pillar sitting right there, collecting things from all different directions and all different. different wavelengths. And that's where I think this whole argument about penetration, depth, and all that gets off in the weeds. Yes. What really matters is what's the total incidence that you're accepting?

And one of the things that's just so cool is Bob Fosberry's done some pictures where he's shown how you can shine light through six layers of clothing in there red and it lights up fine. You can put your hand down on top of a source and look at it. You see all the way through it the entire thing. And I keep on saying, just go into your your bathroom or whatever, dark room, put your thumb over your cell phone and look at how it lights up. Now, according to all the optical models, that's not allowed. Over and over again, you'll see, oh, the penetration depth is only one millimeter at 850 nanometers. No, that's wrong. And here's a picture of it. You know, if you can't believe a picture, I don't know what you're supposed to do. But it, unfortunately,

has gotten in the way because there's been so much attempts to do treatments and things of that nature versus really just trying to understand the optics. And once you get into something like what happens is that in the body, the absorption coefficients are dropping, but also the scatter coefficients are dropping. And so what you, I keep on saying, it's kind of like, you know, how you get to build a snowboard. And you get kind of thin layer up there and you can see the sun it kind of spreads out all over everything. That's what the body's doing. And doing that because that allows it to distribute, you know, think about it from the

standpoint of what's the goal? There are trillions of mitochondria in your body. And the more you can stimulate them with sunlight, the more effect you're going to have. And so it's like kind of doing everybody still stuck on the 2D argument and during the fact this is a three-dimensional problem. And you've got all these, once I start expanding this out three-dimensional, you know, then you start to see how, you know, huge amounts of mitochondria can be being affected, generating, you know, reactive oxygen species, or, you know, dealing with reactive oxygen,

species and cell. And, you know, there's all this stuff that's going on optically because of the way. And like I say, you look at Bob's picture of the hand and it just, it's just right there. You can't ignore it. And what's really important, I think, is to understand it optically, children are the most effective because they're smaller. So if I have, if I'm getting like distributing in inches into the body, almost 100% of their cells are being affected right at the time when you're dealing with hormone changes and all this other stuff. And that's my biggest concern with what's going on is, is that, you know, the children are going to be affected. and unfortunately, you know, every sees her, you know,

turn a TV on and kids are locked in. Totally. And they're being exposed to visible only, which in by definition, and it's not my work, it's other work by Ray and others, you know, the minute you take a visible source and you start exposing somebody to it,

their cortisol levels start to go. And, you know, how far, depends on how long you do, how bright, TV. And what's happening is what gets me is that, you know, used to be when we were doing, we had a little screen like this or a little, you know, now we got huge in there putting out, tons and tons of light in, you know, in a lot of places, you know, the TV is a bigger light source, especially towards the evening than anything, even in the lighting. And so, so, you know,

that's, that's the gist of what I think what's really important to start working on here. is to understand how the body's using these other wavelengths and trying to use that to essentially make a healthier lifestyle. I'm also thinking about like all of the red light devices on the market now and how you're basically get maybe four wavelengths of light in there. But if you look at the solar spectrum, it's kind of this continuous. So like, let's say you're interested in, I don't know, 670 nanometer red light. But then you're also getting, you know, 671, 672.

You're getting a continuous spectrum. and each wavelength is going to be like providing a considerable dose as well. So it's because I feel like a lot of the red light companies will market it as like, oh, this, you know, the dose of 670 is equal to that you're receiving in the sun. But you're not thinking about all the other wavelengths in between that. So the cumulative dose of like all red and near infred light is completely, you know, much higher in the sun versus any of these devices. Is that correct?

That's correct. And, you know, while they may be able to do a very localized peak intensity level, that's higher than the sun. The reality is, as I said from the very beginning, the sunlight is a continuum. Yes. And it is the body, every time you turn around, you may fix this or you may change this biomarker,

but you may also have degraded this biomarker that you're not looking at, number one. Number two, so much of the red light therapy. And if it works for people, great. I'm not arguing about that. But so much of the red light therapy. therapy doesn't control what happens to their test subject. They do a 20-minute exposure. Did the person then go outside? Did the person then go into a fluorescent live room?

Did the person go take a nap? You know, and, you know, so one of the things that I thought was the coolest thing was when I found the papers by Therran and the work like Al, where they're now, what's happening is, is all these biosensors and ability to do measurements. at higher sampling frequencies. Because bear in mind, most of the circadian work, you know, they do something, and then four hours later or 12 hours later, they'd measure. And that's fine. But when you start looking at and sampling at a high rate,

which is only about four papers in the world that actually do this right now, and we're trying to work with some biosensors to make it so that we can do more. but literally when you start to do an exercise within 10 minutes there's a huge spike in not only cortisol but a huge spike in melatonin and if you believe gowls work where he was measuring sweat characteristics of cortisol what literally happens is is that when you do a stressor be it exercise going outside all this stuff the body response it has to respond but that response it's i keep on saying it's kind of like having a tennis ball in your hand take a picture throw it up catch the tennis ball take another picture you know if you can't sample fast enough you

aren't going to be able to see what's actually going on in real time and these transient events are huge if you believe there in his data he literally put a person on a treadmill or on a stair stepper for four hours and within 10 minutes it had gone up to you know well above what the normal I forget the exact number of what level. The melatonin went up to 200 picograms per millimeter, which is higher than what you'd normally expect in a circadian response. But he did that at 9 o'clock in the morning. And the minute he stopped doing that exercise,

they stopped in an extra. Within a half hour, it was back down to baseline. So there are all these transient effects that in my world, I think of it as being that, depending on what I did during the day, I either have an advantage of cortisol or advantage of melatonum. And I can go and put it. I used to put up hay out in Kansas. And, you know, after spending all day putting out pay, I didn't have a lot of trouble sleeping, you know.

But if you don't get that and you don't get that interplay, because what was really cool was, is what Gao showed was is that as you get up into the exercise within about 10, 20 minutes. of that initial spike up, you start to see it dropping down. And there's some very interesting papers that claim that melatonin has the effect of suppressing A-C-T-H and suppresses cortisol. Right. So you think about cortisol is very important, but you don't want it out of control. So it appears, based on this transient response we're seeing from Theron and from Gow, is that the purpose of melatonin going up,

during the exercise is to actually suppress cortisol and bring it back in and keep you within a range. And that's what I think is so interesting about the whole process of these hormones, is that everything we're doing in our artificial environment now, be the space station, be whatever, is pumping cortisol. It's like we're all becoming cortisol addicts or wiping out our adrenal glands or whatever. And that's my big concern about, you know, optically, you know, from the measurements we've done, or people have done and shown, we've shown, is that it's very important that the entire solar spectrum is involved, number one, number two, that we get, don't get a constant bump up and cortisol.

Because it takes, there is a paper where they have brought in a bunch of cocaine addicts. and the cocaine addicts were given a shot or hit, and they measured all their different hormone levels. And what cortisol took almost three hours to get back down after it got shot up. Wow. And I think that's one of the things that we need to be concerned about it. You know, especially some of these virtual reality things and all that. If you're kind, I mean, what's the point of TV?

TV is to excite you. to get you jumped up. I mean, if you go to a casino, what do they do? They flash lights. They make noises. They keep a lot of alcohol. You know, that's what they're getting a response. But that's one thing to do a response for a little bit.

It's another thing, A and day out exposed. And that's what we've kind of focused in on our light sources is to try and mimic as much as we can the entire spectrum. and there will hopefully give at least a response to all this constant, you know, over-excitation, as I call it, or over-stimulations. Totally, totally. And with regards to the melatonin story, I think it's really interesting. Do you know if that researcher has understood whether the melatonin increase in the circulation is from the pineal gland or it's being released from cells like via like the mitochondrial melatonin pools? Well, if you believe Theran's data, which I do, I mean, what he did is he, He was continually sampling melatonin levels during the exercise.

And again, it's during the stressor that he was doing it. Now, it was 9 o'clock in the morning when he was doing this until 1 o'clock in the afternoon. He went up within 10 minutes and held constant. So now there's a really great interface or quick interface between the muscle cells and plasma, your blood supply. And it appears that when you're under the muscle cells are generating lots of reactive oxygen species, they are also generating a lot of melatonin. And I think it's almost pretty definitive that the pineal gland, well, again, circadian, fine,

I don't disagree with it. It's on a different time scale. But the majority of melatonin appears to be produced in the mitochondria outside of the pineal gland. is what that data says to me. The only other alternative I think is he's getting out of the gut maybe, but that wouldn't make a whole heck a lot of sense if you have localized muscles, you're giving everything. You know, that's the other thing that I come back to

is that if you just look at it from a control standpoint, you know, there are so many things that the body has to respond to locally that can never be done with a systemic response. You know? Yeah, I'm sitting over here, And Gao did a really great thing that showed that. What he did is he took a sweat sensor, cortisol sweat sensor, put it on his left arm, stuck the other one in an ice bath. You like ice bath?

I love him. Stuck it in a life, but in six minutes, it actually translated cortisol level in this arm actually went up. So, you know, there is a local response and a systemic response. By the time I, the body got around to figuring out that I just cut off my arm, you know, know, it might be that something's trying to help me. You've got to be cut over here or whatever. Something is doing something locally. So I think you need to, again, there's got to be a local response and a systemic response.

And the time constants are different for those two things. And the body has to be able to respond quickly enough to actually stop something that's serious. Yeah. I mean, for the listeners, just briefly. So melatonin is this really powerful antioxidant. that's basically present in all, I mean, at this point, we think it's all mitochondria within the body and initially was, you know, back in bacteria and like primordial times. It's this very conserved molecule that's highly efficient at scavenging free radicals

essentially. And it was thought, I think up until recently, that that mitochondrial pool of melatonin was like, you know, a completely separate thing from the pineal melatonin, which is released into the circulation, helps you get sleepy and fall asleep. But it sounds like maybe muscle or other tissues become more permeable and can allow that melatonin out during exercise, for example, or some other stressor? Yeah, I think that what the data seems to indicate is that at some point, the reactive, you know, the body has to overreact to reactive oxygen species, whether it likes it or not. But, you know, as if you're doing intense exercise, you can see in the sweat or in the blood,

either one, that there is a huge boost in melatonin and cortisol together. And I believe very strongly, based on the data I've seen, that what's happening is the melatonin is there not only to deal with all the reactive oxygen species. And melatonin is the best antioxidant. I mean, it's not just melatonin. It's all its metabolites as you go down, have different antioxidant characteristics. So you get like 10 to 1, you know, one. you know, one molecule of melatonin does 10 times that amount.

And so it's a very powerful antioxidant, but it also has all these other things where it can control how much ACTH is being generated, which then controls how much cortisol is being generated. And, you know, whether you call it yin-yang or whether you call it negative feedback loops, bottom line is to control something as complex as the body. There has to be some counter to almost every hormone. protein or whatever. It has to be something that counters it to keep it in balance or we'll just go off through the rails, you know? So, you know, I think it's very clear that the pineal gland truly has a

function. It's trying to, it's almost like a wish list, in my opinion, from the standpoint, it's trying to drive you to take maximum advantage of sleep and being awake. But during the day, especially, you know, when you're doing something, you can get all kinds of transient responses that are bigger than what you get from a circadian is what the data shows. Yeah. I mean, I feel like it's also really interesting that there are these parallel dynamics among cortisol and melatonin in the context of exercise or other stressors and in the context of circadian biology as well because we see like melatonin and cortisol as the circadian

in biosensors as well that respond to light where melatonin in darkness is ramped up. And in response to light in the morning, you're getting that cortisol spike that's naturally happening when you wake up and you get like that first morning light. So I think it's really interesting that they're both, they do seem to kind of regulate each other in some way because if you look at like the nadir and the like the peak in the trough essentially for each, they kind of mirror each other. So I think it's a really interesting observation. But also speaking of biomarkers, hopefully I'm going to.

Can I just put in one grow quick thing? Please. I'm sorry. But one of the things that really struck me the most when I was looking at these ratios. And so what I do is I do near infrared to visible, the near infrared and then I do melatonin to cortisol ratios. But there's this really great paper that was out there where they took people who were suffering from schizophrenia and clinical depression.

And at midnight, they measured their melatonin and cordonid at all levels against the control people that they had there. And it wasn't a large study, but it was significant. They had the p values of 0.001 or something like that. But bottom line is that there was a 5x lower melatonin to cortisol ratio in the people that had schizophrenia and clinical depression than the controls. Wow. And so I think that what people maybe need to think about it, there's always, we'll measure melatonin, we'll measure the cortisol. I think it's the ratio that they really need.

to be measuring. And, you know, if you look at it from that standpoint, you think about, wow, if that's really a true indicator, if we're forcing us to have higher, you know, it's two sides. You know, I can either have less melatonin I'm generating because as we get older, we generate less melatonin. Or I can have more cortisol. As we get older, but cortisol levels go up. So it's the ratio, I think, that is really important. And if it has the effect on the nerve you know our neurological health that I think it does you know it could explain a lot of the stuff that we're fighting now so that's my thing sorry about that no please that's that's very interesting and I think we can learn a lot from ratios in general I don't think it's necessarily

helpful to always look at things in isolation when you look at things relative to other things that are also in flux and movement I think it can be really insightful and actually that reminds me I wanted to ask you does near infrared light stimulate the production of melatonin in my We believe it does that there seems to be the problem is I'm trying to get them to actually make the measurement carefully. It's hard. Yeah. It is because, I mean, if you look at zoo's data, she measured melatonin and cortisol, but she didn't keep track of whether or not they were during the day or at night or what time. But you see all these huge amounts of melatonin being generated.

And women, you know, young men were better at it than older men. And women, older women and young women were about the same as far as the data was showing. But what I'm really hoping to do is get us to the point that we actually measure during solar exposure and exercise, you know, to see whether or not we can see it. Because the bottom line is, it's really hard with melatonum because if it is doing what it's supposed to do, an antioxidant, it's going away. You know? Yep. So versus cortisol, it doesn't degrade. you know, it's not doing anything.

It's doing its whatever thing, but it has only real one function, which is to excite us and get us to these important function. Don't get me wrong. But melatonin is not only generating that function, but are dealing with the cortisol. It's also dealing with all the reactive oxygen species. And so it's being consumed at a rate that makes it hard to actually measure. And so, but the sweat data shows melatonin.

being generated during exercise, outdoors, because there was a couple of bikers. They obviously were out doing something. But if I could just get us to run the experiment in a certain, you know, with the right controls in it with the right methodology, I think then we could answer that question. Would you want like muscle biopsies? No, I mean, I think that I think the first step is just to do a controlled experiment where you do it under illumination, non-illumination, and measure.

are, that's why it's so interesting with the sweat. There's a couple of new companies that are starting to develop cortisol, melatonin sweat monitors. Cool. Yeah, and we're trying to get them to do some work in that area because clearly you can see they, and their advertisement they show during exercise, cortisol goes up. Melatonin is kind of doing something, but we're not real sure. And so that's my own goal would be to figure that out.

Irregardless, I mean, there's melatonin's doing a lot of stuff in the body. And you can't have it jump up to the levels that jumped up during exercise without it coming from the mitochondria in the muscle cells is what I believe. Whether or not the skin cells are doing all that, I don't know, but for sure, but it appears that they are. It's really interesting. I mean, my goal is to start a lab at some point in the next couple of years. So, yeah, I'm definitely thinking.

thinking now, we should probably collaborate at some point. Well, I think, you know, it is so exciting to see all these biosensors that are got sampling frequencies fast enough where we can see the transient effects. Because, you know, it does you know good. I'm not done to say that. It's, there's so much that can go on in the four to eight hours afterwards that have nothing to do with the transient response. Yep.

And, you know, that's what I'm, I really. am quite optimistic that we're going to be able to start nailing down. What is the actual key, you know, responses? Because, I mean, they're huge. They're absolutely huge numbers that, I mean, in some cases, the zoos data, the melatonin and the cortisol levels were higher than the blood plasma levels. Where'd that come from? You know?

So in the sweat, you're saying? In the sweat. Oh, yeah, that, okay. That's interesting. Yeah. And I mean, to do something in a lab with these new biosensors and to do it in controlled manner and understand, you know, during exercise, during the events, we'll be able to start telling people, this is good for you because this and all that. And I think that's what we're really lacking. I agree.

I mean, something that I recommend for clients and for myself is whenever I'm moving, if I can do it outside versus indoors under artificial light, I feel like I feel better. I feel like I feel less sore. I just feel like I have better energy during the workout. So it feels like a no-brainer, but it would be really good to have data also saying, like, this is going to be beneficial for these reasons, it's going to increase, you know, whatever. It's going to improve your sleep quality. It's going to improve your recovery or whatever else, like based on these biomarkers and other things. I think we just need some research to support it.

Yeah. And it needs to be, you know, Roger Seahult's been pushing for, you know, clinical trials with a controlled test. And it just needs to happen because we've got the technology to do it. And, you know, I think it'll be interesting to see because what happened is, is the International Space Station, they actually started looking at the blood characteristics of the astronauts after six months to a year. And what they saw was clear mitochondrial degradation. Now, they happened to have one of the most sophisticated circadian LED lighting systems in the world.

And they were under it 100% for six months to a year. Now, is it the only thing that was going on up there? No, but they're now seeing the submariners are having issues. They're having, when they built all these great stealth boats, they took all the port holes out. Now they're having people go out 60 days and they're not feeling too great when they come back. You have people that are stuck at night shift. You have people that are, you know, they're showing all these linkages to streetlights at night for women's breast cancer. And that's what I think is the whole point of this is to try and understand. And I believe the optics are a great way to do that because once you start understanding the optics,

you see selections that the body has made, choices it's made in this huge simultaneous equation thing. It said, this is good for me, this is bad for me. And I'm going to put more of this over here and more of this over there. And, you know, it's interesting because I'll give you another one just for fun of it because I think it's kind of cool. There was work by Yakimo where he showed that the outer 50 microns of your skin is photochemically bleached. The melanin is. And it's that 50 microns is about how far the 285 nanometer UB penetrating. in. Now, what's the point of UVB? It's toast to oxidize cholesterol. Really hard to oxidize

cholesterol. So you only get about 8% efficiency according to some studies. So what happens? Well, the one thing that can bleach, it's really hard to bleach out the melanin in most people, are just hard to photo bleach it out. But it's real easy to photochemically bleach it. In order to do that, you need hydrogen peroxide. Well, there's all kinds of, there was work done by the Hudson and all that, where she exposed to much of the full spectrum of sun as she could, skin cells. What happened? Hydrogen peroxide levels went up by 6x in exactly the same 50 microns

because it was being done by the short wave, which is absorbed. And so, you know, to me it's just, is a coincidence? I don't think so. I think the body's doing stuff to try and optimize survival. And I don't know if it's true. I'm trying to actually figure it out, but it appears that that outer 50 microns is, if you actually look at,

causing a slight, very similar to the effect of a blue jays wave, where it actually is reflecting some of the blue people, people, some people who have really dark skin have kind of like a blue shirt ever to them. Yeah. Well, what it appears is this outer 50 microns is kind of like a botonic band. It's like a brag mirror in some ways that allows to reflect certain things like a blue jay. A blue jay has essentially melanin and structure to generate, reflect preferentially reflect blue. but you can only see it when it's against a black background.

So when people have very dark skin, have the possibility, you know, let these people appear to mention that, hey, it looks like there's almost a blue tube. It may be optically real. And that would be really cool. Wow. Because what it would say is that, you know,

that outer 50, to optimize itself and get the maximum performance, the body has used not only the UVB, but it's using the longer wavelengths. And we're talking about two to three microns way out there. But it turns out optically that because of the strong absorption of water, if you took a picture of you or me, it doesn't matter who you want to take it. We all have super dark skin in this mid-wave infrared and mid-wage infrared, because water absorbs almost instantly what's going on.

So the highest photon density is not in the UV or the visible. it's actually out here in this little bitty bump that everybody says, well, there's nothing going on there. It turns out that's the highest photo density in that area. And it's all localized in the water that's in that outer part. And, you know, professors there out at Stanford and some others have been showing that it's a whole lot easier than what we thought it was to change water into hydrogen peroxide. And so, you know, if you don't get it, then it still works. tries to do it, but you don't get quite the amount of vitamin D. Now, we have a global lack of vitamin D production. All I'm saying is the body's been doing this, and the places where you don't

have the vitamin D is people who are out in the sun more, you know, and is it integrated or, you know, is it all related? I think it is, or that's what we're trying to think. But again, it's an optical effect, which I think is really cool. It is really cool, and it's reminding me of my last conversation with Jack Cruz. We talked about how water is the primary red light chromophore and infrared light chromophore in the body, and how crucial that is, and that also harkens back to Pollock's work and, like, the charged separation of water to form exclusion zones can be facilitated also. I think the maximum efficiency was at like 3,300 nanometer light was really, really good at facilitating that.

Well, and if you look at the first work I was doing was from one show, and from Zostrom, they did electron spin resonance measurements of skin. And I was just using the data, and they had the data there, and I was plugged it all in, and I was working on it, and I said, hey, I wonder if you flipped it. Well, the minute I flipped it and looked at how many photons it took to actually generate a reactive oxygen species, just as an average, all of a sudden. sudden, every one of the theoretical water overtones showed up in the data. Whoa.

And they're like seven of them. And, you know, I look at Wikipedia and I say, holy cow, dunk, dunk, dunk, they're all there. So it appears that as much as we'd like to think we understand water, you know, at certain absorption algorithms, and there's a lot of them in water, that you get this enhanced generation of Ross. Now that's reactive oxygen species. That's not hydrogen peroxide because you can't measure hydrogen peroxide with electron spin resonance. But you tipple that with Hudson work and all that. You start to see that we're maybe not as quite as smart as we thought we were where they came to water.

And I think Jack is probably right that water is the primary chromophore. But what really matters, in my opinion is, is that optically, you know, different portions of the spectrum are affected in different ways. And even though, like I say, if you have somebody plot out the solar spectrum in Watts for whatever, you'll see this big pike and the visible and you'll see all these water bonds and all this other stuff. And then you'll see this little bunch down here that goes from, you know, 1,000 or from 2,000 out to 4,000. and oh, there's nothing going on it. That's where all the energy, not the energy, but the density of photons is highest in the human body.

And that's why we look black and white hair. You know, you'd look really great if we could take a picture. And why? Yeah, and the same with your shirt. It turned white because there's not water in it like there is in your body. I mean, you have to accept the fact that we're kind of walking around like this bowl of water. Someone's a bigger bowl than others. But, you know, it's essentially, you know, we're carrying around our water supply.

Meat balloon. Yeah. Full of water. Full water. Do you have any thoughts on non-ABMFs and how they're interfacing with their biology? No. It's a can of worms. It is.

It is. We also need better research. We do. Yeah. And it's unfortunate, you know, I, you know, I think that the people need to accept that discovery is messy. And this whole garbage associated with disinformation, anybody who sits there and tells you they understand what's going on biologically in the body is a liar. And the fact that you would take and attack, I use Pollock for example, because I think he was crucified over Easingwater. And terrible choice in names, just saying.

But he's a brilliant man. And he's there now, we're recocusing it into bound water, you know, interfacial forces or whatever you want to call it. But, you know, it was unfortunate because we lose time when we have these stupid conversations where it's more about trying to, I said this on a chalkboard someplace at one point in time. And, you know, now I, you know, you can't prove me wrong. Or my ego gets in the way. And, you know, we're struggling with it from our standpoint. You know, the DOE is sitting there putting in this 120 Lumen-Pelot rule in four years. It essentially negates me being able to provide what I think is a healthy lighting.

I think that they are dead wrong. In fact, I think that when it comes down to it, that green initiative, and I'm not, I'm for green on a lot of levels, but there has to be a responsibility associated with it. And it was irresponsible what the DOE is doing. They're trying to save a little bit of energy, but they're squashing. We are the only GSL lamp manufacturer. That's not saying much, but we are the only U.S. manufacturer of GSLs in the country. What's a GSL?

General service lamp, the little screw in Edison lamps like I was showing you. You know, and why are we doing that? Because that has, in my opinion, would have the maximum impact of getting light to people that need the most. I mean, you and I have the, I'm sitting here in a beautiful surroundings. We're enjoying that. There are people who are in inner cities that can't see a green a tree if they wanted to. And even if they could see it, they wouldn't feel safe to do it, go out and do it. So why would we set them up? And, you know, I ran, you know, we've done, I did a paper with John O'League down at the University of Miami. And John, and Professor

Luis, John Luis has been going into black churches over and over again, trying to explain to them the need for sunlight in the black community. And he told me, he said, Scott, we had to have this conversation. And so we put the paper in, it would, you know, didn't do much. But, but the point is, is that, you know, we have to accept that there's certain things. And that's one thing, the beautiful things about optics. It's just the number, you know. There are three, four times higher, there's three to four times higher level of near infrared exposure needed to match the stimulation of someone who has light skin compared to someone who has dark skin. And so therefore, the lighting should not be the same for those things.

So what we chose is we chose to try and match what we believe is the right lighting level, not only for the black population, but all especially for children. And that's a three to one ratio that simulates being under shade. That's why we do it. And I think that it's time for us to put on our big boy pants and have a conversation about it. Because, you know, it's important. And, you know, the DOE took none of that into account. None of it.

And there were some top people, you know, I went and tried to argue at the first one. And then several other really top, what I consider top notch optical guys, tried to explain it to them again. but they still went ahead with it. And it's unfortunate because it essentially, I understand that they think that they're trying to do something good, but they don't understand the problem, and therefore they're creating a bigger problem,

which is somewhat symptomatic of a lot of the green problems, the green initiatives. They don't think it through very well. Yeah, I feel like it's a lot of like superficial facade type, initiatives that they look good at the face level, but when you actually get down to it, like they could actually be making the problem worse or have a null effect. And I mean, just for an example, I feel like I just heard you talk on Max's podcast about how, okay, you have all these energy efficient light bulbs, but now there's like way more of them. So you're actually or maybe

using the same amount of not more energy because they're just more light at night now in general. Yeah. And, you know, it used to be there was a, what somebody told me what they effect was. But bottom line is if you make something cheaper, you'll just get more of it. I think it's burner effects. I don't know somebody here. But it is true. I mean, we are overlighting so many areas. People don't appreciate the intelligence associated with just turning the switch off. And maybe if you really are having struggling with sleeping and all that kind of thing, maybe you need to sit and read the book. Because in the old days, you ask about the older times versus the newer times. I mean, you think about what happened. We're sitting there with an incandescent light that is

overkill in some ways because it's like 10 to 1 near infrared divisible ratio. But it's sitting there and it's reflecting off of a piece of paper that has high reflectivity in the near infrared and surrogate, bouncing up into your face. And you read that and then you turned it off. And you went to bed in the dark. And I grew up in the Midwest, and, you know, you could see X number of barn lights associate one light associated with each one of the farmers. And, you know, you can see the sky. So it's really, that's why I keep on thinking. It's all kind of interconnected from the standpoint of we're messing around with what we are exposed to and putting our kids at risk in schools because we're lighting in a certain way, blocking all the near up red from.

coming into the buildings by and you know and then you know then you've got this I guess not I lost my thought sorry senior moment I mean yeah it's the schools the prisons like the nursing homes all these institutions and also all the kids in schools today are also on the Chromebooks like they're on laptops all day long too on top of it yeah and you know it started out with the myopia epidemic yeah and, you know, that's still going on and everybody's kind of waving their hands about it. But the reality is is that the solution, trying to take some, puts them out in the afternoon for an hour to get, try and deal with it a little bit. But understanding that is, to me, is really fundamental, you know, to so many problems we seem to be having, you know. It's one thing if you have all myopia.

But now you've got all these other things. mitochondrial disease is here. You got autism. You got all, I'm not saying this is going to fix anything. And I would never, you know, tell anybody that, you know, I'm going to solve your problem. But us understanding, if that's what's really going on, might lead to some solution. You know, I keep on, you know, my granddaughter is fighting neuroblastoma. I believe that if we had the right amount of research and they won't let us do the research, is that you could supplement chemos with light. Absolutely.

And at least run the experiment, you know? You know, to me, that's the most frustrating thing. It's just kind of like we have this really bad habit of everybody jumps on a bandwagon. Well, what they don't notice is all the people they left behind because you're not important at that point. And I feel like I wait, oh, well, we got to let the circadian guys to have their day. Once they get done, then maybe we'll get a chance. And that's why I think this RFK, you know, or processed foods or, you know, there's always something else. And for whatever reason, sunlight is just not on everybody.

I think it's because it's so ubiquitous. People take it for granted. Mm-hmm. You know. But now in our modern lifestyle, we've taken it away. And people don't realize it because they got tricked. And I use that word, honestly, tricked because you. it's easy to fool the eye and generate a spectrum that has just these few wavelengths in it.

And you think it's sunlight and it's not, you know? Again, the blue sky. That blue sky up there, you can lay out here for 100 years and you'll still be seeing a blue sky, you know, in most cases. But you sit there and you put 10 luck supposedly of a little bit of light into your eye. night and everything's all messed up, you know. But I mean, there's a lot of blue at night. There's a lot of violent at night. There's a lot of, you know, it's just where is it? It's not going directly into the eye because you're so busy looking at the sunset. And body's picking it up and doing stuff with it. So anyway. Yeah. I think it's also kind of crazy. And I think I was talking about this

with Martin Moreeat as well when he's on my podcast. That's that there's no, I feel like today we have to basically we get the tech and then we backtrack and we're like, oh, this is bad for us. Instead of doing the research up front to show that it's safe, you have to prove that it's bad. Yeah, but you know, it has been such an amazing, almost humbling journey to go through what I've been going through because nobody looked at the optics of the body. You'd think of all the things, you know, of all the optical, very little data. And what the data was there was all done. They take a laser beam.

They take a piece of pig skin. shine the laser beam on it. And they put a detector over here and they say, there is no light penetrating. Wow. And, you know, I say, okay, do that same setup. Take a clear ice cube. Shine it through.

All the light gets through the detector except for when that fernal losses. Take and replace that light cube with a chunk, same size snowball. Cube of snow. The whole thing lights up. Intensity level of that detector drops to see almost zero. And that's what's going on in the body. The body is a huge. this translucent, especially in the air of red, is this translucent scattering mass with low, very weak absorbers, as Bob Fosbury likes to call it.

And that allows the light to scatter and bounce around and equalize, not equalized totally, but it essentially distributes it out to all the mitochondria, all the cells. And then what it does with that seems to be good, you know, seems to be really good. all the red light therapies are people are getting a result and but the reality is that's going on at all the wavelengths you know from x to y and then you got this skin effect going on at the outer wings where we're making vitamin d and so there's and that's all happening simultaneously it's not happening you know if i can if i'm generating a whole lot more vitamin d because of what I'm doing at these wavelengths, then how does that affect the performance at these other wavelengths?

Because it were one body, you know, talking to each other. All these cells are going thing. So it's the summation of all those things that end up being the, in my opinion, what we can call health, you know. Well, that's also what really grinds my gears about the UV light research where it's like we take UV light in isolation. We show that it has these effects on cells. Meanwhile, like, we'd never encounter UV light in isolation in nature.

It's always a very small amount with an abundance of redden infrared. And there's also research showing that redden infrared light can protect the skin from damage and photo aging, et cetera. So it's like, what are we doing here? This research isn't actually, it's like disingenuous. Yeah, it's really is. And it's, I don't think it's on purpose. It's just all I'd say is is that, you know, most experiments, you run it to a point until you get a result. Mm-hmm.

You know, I got to get a result. Now, I get the result, but did I, you know, there's people that have shown that near infrared can be damaging your skin. Yeah, if you put a blast for a furnace next to you, you can do something. You know, they go to super high levels or something like that. But then conversely, one of my things about the red light therapy is that I'm very concerned that there's what we as Americans, especially, if a little is good, a lot's better. Oh, yeah. And, you know, what people need to realize is, is that, you know, you don't have, when you get a bright light or the sun's up there, we're used to one sun. We can look away from it. If you're in the near infrared, particularly or the red,

people are having panels. They're shining the emitter right into their eyes. And, and their high intensity points, so it's just, they don't have a glance away response. And that to me is really scary. Because, you know, you can do some real damage. There are a lot of old physicists that were looking in ports doing plasma research that lost their eyesight and all that. Or laser, near infrared laser diodes used to have all these lockouts to perfect you of something. Now we're selling, giving the public, all these little things. And you're looking directly at the emitters.

I'm kind of going, you can do some real damage. And then that would be detrimental to everybody because then it's like, this is bad. There was a time where women were stuck sitting in front of a fireplace and cooking. And they would get red rash on the inside of their leg because they were continually exposed to longer wavelengths at a high enough intensity and temperature to literally cook their legs. You know, so the right balance, I mean, body's all about balance. It's not about trying to take this extreme or that extreme. It's trying to keep within a range, an amazing range. I mean, you think about the temperature of the body and how well-crank, okay, all these different, you know,

insulin levels, all these things are being regulated within very close-stranders. Now, of a sudden, you take out the largest energy input to the body, which is the sun, 30 megajoules per day, and you're taking it away, and you're putting in something that is entirely different. that's a problem I think and that's what I my concern is and you know we start out when we try and sell somebody at life well keep on saying we're the

worst marketers they are because I mean we just our first comment is go outside not in not in direct sun just go out in the shade sit there put a hat on do whatever you know do that first and you know if you still one more that's fine let you up all

because it's just a tool it's not solving every world hunger or anything like that. It's a tool and I think it's a good tool but that's what we do. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm thinking like also about like the processed foods and such like you're mentioning Kennedy's speech. And I feel like in a lot of ways that's one of the gateway drugs into light. Like it's a I feel like getting chickens in your backyard. I feel like it's also a gateway truck to this stuff. But like if you push it far enough, you realize just how foreign the indoor modern environment is.

You can't unsee it really once you see it. Yeah, I think that's the hard part. It is a hard part. Once you see that the data and you're looking at it, you're saying, why isn't anybody else care about this? You know? Yeah. And it's hard because people have to understand the scale of money that went into just circadian.

And the scale of money that went into generating LEDs. and LEDs aren't bad. They just need to be coupled with something that is more like what you get in nature. In fact, I would argue that the LEDs, because they are so efficient, and they're not as efficient as an incandescent for the particular area you're at, but a spectrum that you're trying to do. But, you know, LEDs, they're great. I mean, we use LEDs.

We put it a little incandescent bulb with it. Two spectrums match. You end up with visible. and you're at a four and a half to one ratio or three to one ratio. And, you know, it's easy to do. Simple. But unfortunately, you know, companies have put a lot of money into developing these visible only emitters. And how do you overcome that?

Because, you know, it's kind of a hard, hard thing to say, go back to your customer and say, You know that incandescent bulb? Well, we just need a little bit of it. And it's so beautiful from the standpoint of the simplicity of the whole thing because, you know, a little filament, short filament, like you used to have in flashlights, is 100% efficient of generating a little bit of the red and all the way out to, you know, five microns over your own, or at least three or four microns. So it's a great thermal emitter, almost 100% efficient.

Couple that with a little bit of LED. It's a lousy, the incandescent is a lousy blue and green maker. It doesn't do it well. It doesn't do UV. LEDs do. You put the two of them together, you know, literally. And you get a pretty doggone close match to what you get in natural sunlight. And so why wouldn't we?

You know, if there's even a chance that we were right that there is. a problem associated with instead of the thousands of papers on red light therapy which say that there's a effect, then why wouldn't you do it? I mean, and the only reason we're not doing is because somebody at the DOE decided that 120 liens per watt was something that they wanted to force us into and with no science to back it up. I was there. When we got rid of incandescence, there was no research that said, oh, was this a bad idea? There wasn't a zero. And the DOE is wrong.

And they need to, and they need to also do the same thing with windows treatments. They're blocking the part. There are studies after studies that somebody's closer to a window, an open window and hospital gets well better. I remember one of the glass manufacturers I was talking to him about it. And he said, you know, that's why we saw that. What they've been doing is they've been moving the edge, the, the edge of the mirror that they were out to longer and longer wavelengths. And they were seeing improved health in all cases. What happened?

They hit a point where the DOE regulations said you can't move that any further because we have to have solar gain in our buildings. So what do we do? We build all these high scapers, skyscrapers, with this near infrared blocking, we flex it out. And so those people in there might explain some of the CEO's behavior. But other than that, you know, they're just plain dumber is what the bottom one is. Yeah. I mean, it seems like the more we strive for energy efficiency in like tech and home, it's like creating this energy crisis in our biology because we're not realizing that, you know, just because it's efficient for technology doesn't mean that it's, not absolutely starving our bodies of this essential nutrient in the form of near-infred light

and UV light. Yeah, and that's one of the hard things is how do you explain it to people without going overboard, you know, near-infrared starvation, sunlight starvation, you know, processed meats will kill you type, you know, how do you, you know, the data is there. People can make their own judgment. And I believe that the data is enough to, to, I mean, bias thinking lightball, go outside. Going outside is free, you know, but, you know, and that was one of the things with John Lewis. There are areas where the tree levels are so low, and it tends to be in our neighborhoods, tends to be within the black communities and the Hispanic communities, that need more light.

Yep. And we're taking it away from them. And none of that's going into any of this social engineering that we're going through. And I find that really frustrating because I think that there's some real positive aspects. And again, it gets into, you know, we're going through now internal air quality, IAQ. Well, what about the optical part of it, non-existent? All they're trying to do is filter out some particles. Not saying it's bad, but from my standpoint, you know, I would argue that, you know,

you'd be better off getting fresh air returns more because there's things that sunlight is generating in the atmosphere on a circadian basis, you know, that are beneficial to controlling the amount of viruses in the air. I mean, during COVID, I did a lot of work with a gentleman on doing computational fluid dynamics, trying to understand how transfer of disease in short range. So we did a series of models. And what we found was is that when you're outdoors, during the day, around 9 or 10 o'clock, Professor Hebe did some studies. He showed that we get this peak in hydrogen peroxide that peaks up about 1 o'clock,

goes back down. Ozone does the same thing on the Earth's surface. And then at night, microbes in the soil are kicking out nitric oxide. All three of those are at levels that are germicidal levels. Wow. But stay inside. Let's say inside. Let's let's, and so the point being, now you couple that with two facts.

One, the epidemiologists have shown that there was about 90 to 99% of all infections occurred indoors, you know, where you've stripped out this reactive oxygen species effect. And number two is that, and there's my level of my senior moments where I had a thought that I was going to go to. Is it vitamin D status? Well, no. COVID patients were like all depleted basically. Yeah. Yeah, but, but, you know, the point being is that, oh, if you look at the most striking data that I ever saw was the data associated with the black population during COVID.

African Americans died at 40 times the rate of sub-Saharan immigrants who did not have vaccines, did not have all these other benefits that we have. That should be right there, should be a reason to fund research and to understanding how can they be that big a number. And unfortunately, politically, that, you know, we tried to bring it up with the NIAID and Fauci's group and they wouldn't listen to it.

And it's really frustrating because, you know, We're going to have another one of these things one of these days. And they're going to, their only solution is going to be to shove everybody into a building with everybody else. And that's a bad idea. Yeah, it's the exact wrong idea. And I think about this a lot, actually, like the disparities in health outcomes among like black and brown communities in the states and how basically most of the U.S. is a pretty northern latitude. So we have less flight quality that, you know, their skin actually requires more light.

And so I think we often focus on the socioeconomic. aspects of that conversation, but there's this whole other glaring area that needs to be addressed. And I feel like on one hand, I can kind of see why there's resistance maybe to adopting these ideas, because I think they are pretty inconvenient in some ways and disruptive in a lot of ways as well. So I think the pushback is not entirely unexpected, but I do feel like it is building momentum. That's been my experience at least. I haven't gotten much pushback at all, like has it been putting out messages like this online. People seem to be very hungry for the information.

And it seems to be resonating with people as well. Yeah, I mean, in the great scheme of things, the scheme of things, you know, you're talking, we evolved over millions of millions of years in this one environment. And then in a nanosecond, from a history standpoint, whatever you want to call it, evolutionary standpoint, we've done an complete flip-flop. And it is not, it is a totally valid statement to say we've gone through the largest reduction in solar exposure in human history, period. And it is having negative consequences. And, you know, do we understand them all?

No, we don't. But all I can say is, if I look at it optically, the body's doing some amazing stuff trying to take advantage of sunlight. And if we take it away, it doesn't mean you die the next day. It means that you're operating at a lower level. I mean, given all the people, what people do to work on maintaining their health through exercise clubs and all this other stuff, and I'm the last to judge anybody. But the point is, is that, you know, why would you not do something about the lighting? and your exposure to sunlight, you know.

And it's in so many ways, it's just common sense. I mean, agreed. You go out, go for a walk in the park. You know, what's great. Yeah, it looks great. You know, Bob Fosberry, I love his little comment. He said, you know, Isaac Newton didn't discover gravity because an apple fell on the head. He was sitting under a shade tree.

That's what's going on. And it's not that much more complicated than that. Now, are there other things like food and all that? But you just look at from a mega-joule standpoint, an energy standpoint, sunlight blows away all that other stuff. Now, it just does. But for whatever reason, you know, it's not something that we're going to, we think we understand it maybe, I guess.

I don't know. Yeah, it's definitely been written off, I think, as just this background given that's not important for some reason. And I think just since the grid came out in the late 1800s, there's just been an ignorance around the role of light in regulating biology. I don't know why that is. I think, you know, we're definitely in Renaissance. There's some really great papers out there that what happened is it. Because back in as Rogers shows multiple times on his cast, podcast is that, you know, Florence Nightingale was not only a good nurse, she was an amazing statistician.

and she used observational to come up with the idea that, hey, put them out in the sun, hey, get fresh air into them, hey, give them a decent food, and they will be better, you know, outcomes. And, you know, but what happened was, is that once Rockefeller and others got into the pharmaceutical business, they literally put those that that science out of business and that's where I it's almost like what we're trying to do now you know it's all disinformation it's all you know some these are from people who have never had a creative idea in their life I'm sorry I think it's true I mean it's just you know the process of discovery is amazing But, you know, I have 85 issued patents.

I can say this. Most people don't really understand what goes into actually having a truly creative idea. And, you know, that's not to put, they've got other things to do. They've got more important stuff to worry about. Only certain people that get really nerdy like me that don't care about a specific task go after this stuff. But it's really frustrating because they get in the, away. They do. They really do. I mean, and especially, I keep on saying that, that the first, you know, you're ignored, then they try and discredit you. And then it's their idea.

You know, that's just the way it is. But, you know, we're a little company, two people company. We're making light bulbs. And we're making them because what we think is the right answer to do But they're not perfect. Never claim they're. If I have my druthers, we'd all switch over to D.C. and do all this other great stuff to save energy. And lighting would just be a component in that situation. I think the other thing that people need to, that I was surprised about,

is that when you look at nature and other than a tiger's about ready to eat you or rock slides coming down, there's very low frequency modulation. It's a calming environment. You know, leaves wiggle a little bit. And if you look at that from a frequency modulation standpoint, nature tends to do everything 1 hertz or less. Okay, now people who are exposed, certain people are exposed to 15 hertz.

They go into epileptic seizure. Most of your laptops and TVs are doing 60 to 200. 140 hertz modulation. So it's high frequency modulation to your EMF issue. How much of EMF is associated with you're getting exposed to high levels because the two go together. Yeah. You know, you know, we have LEDs that are sitting there stroving. You have fluorescence that are, they had to get up to 10,000 hertz in order to not have an effect 30 in my day.

You know, they did that. They didn't do that because they wanted to. They did that because it was causing negative effects. Right. So you either have to get it way up in frequency to where it's not affecting, or you're being exposed not just to electrical field stimulation, but you're getting exposed to light modulation. Because the body, there was a really great paper of all people,

Professor Light up in Alberta. And he took LEDs. and he took some white fat cells and he started modulating. And he was able to, he was an expert on doing what they call it single cell probe, or single cell, get the exact name of it. But he basically was measuring the cell wall potential on an individual cell. Wow. At the peak of lamp levels.

Wow. What he showed is that he could take that LED and he could start turning it off. on and off. And with a kilohertz response response could literally, it was almost instantaneous. So at the cellular level, ignoring everything else, light, LED light can modulate the cell wall potential clear up into the kilohertz rage. That doesn't occur in nature. There's a flicker in nature, right? There's basically very little, if any, flicker. And even if it's there, it's not there.

Yeah. You know, your TV is sitting there, exposing you to flashing lights so you can't see it. Your lighting is flashing. If you buy a light of Phillips hue, I think they use a thousand hertz resolution, are great to switch between red and green and blues. So all this high frequency, I would argue to answer your old, question about EMF, it could be that it's mainly associated with eye response or with cellular response to flashing that we can't see with our eye.

That makes sense. And is that strobing or flashing like an artifact of the AC power grid? In some ways it is. But, you know, everybody wants to have, you know, when the first LCD displays came out, they were kind of slow and then, you know, you get blur. and effects like that. So what did they do? They got faster and faster efficacy.

Unfortunately, you know, they also got bigger and they got brighter and they got higher contrast. And that's where I think the real, you know, everybody wants to buy the big screen. It's putting out 2,000 nits and it's got a contrast of 10,000 to 1 or whatever. They're trying to basically render what it looks like to just go outside. Right. But that that is a, that is a temporally, I don't know a good word to do. say it's it looks the same it ain't the same and you know so much of you can you can go all the way down to the little wall warts i mean we picked a wall wart that we think has lower modulation but

every converter that goes from ac to dc is doing some kind of modulation you know they're chopping it or doing anything something to do the conversion at an efficient level and so unfortunately because we have this AC grid. The easiest thing to do is just convert, chop it up. So much of the dimming that's out there in lighting is associated with what they call pulse with modulation. And so when you want to have this great scene, romantic, whatever, you're dimming it down, you're actually increasing the amount of pulsing, percentage of pulsing that you're

getting exposed to because it's getting narrower and narrower. And they can't do anything else about that because the way they're doing the control system. And the LED is essentially flashing on and off. You know, like I say, I just think that that's probably 90% of what the EMF issues really are because you can't get around it. Because you look at it from a field strength issue, it's hard to make the argument that a little Walmart down there is causing me, but it's not hard to make the argument that the display that's being run by it is seeing not only that, but also anything that that little ballwart was generating in ripples and things of that nature. Yeah, that does make sense. And it's just, there's like such a toxic

soup that I feel like the best thing to do is just to spend more time outside if it's possible, because then you kind of just dilute all that out. And you also get, you're not only taking away bad stuff. You're also adding in good stuff. And I feel like, With the conversation around sun and the demonization of sun over, let's say, the past century or so, I feel like it's just, whenever anything is demonized as only bad, I feel like that's the hugest red flag. Like, you need to look at that thing because there's always a risk-benefit analysis to any behavior. And if we look at the risk-benefit analysis of sun exposure, we can see that there's these immense benefits that can be had. And there may be some risks, and you want to not fry yourself, like you said earlier, but it doesn't mean no sun, like ever, because it's just going to poison you. Yeah, and they're showing studies where melanoma risk actually goes down for people who are in a regularly in sun versus people who just occasionally go out and get burned.

Exactly. But, you know, so, you know, I think, I think it's a hard, hard nut to crack in some ways because people are, they want comfort. They want to be able to see a great show and they're all associated with it. It's just that I'm just hoping that if we had enough of the near-infrared back into it, that it kind of counterbalances it a little bit. You know, it doesn't guarantee you anything. You know, we do four and a half optical watts of near-infrared out of our bulb, and one-and-a-half optical watts of visible.

You know, put that into a room like big room. You need a lot of them. Put that on your desk lamp next to your computer, shining down, bouncing up into your face. That's a significant amount of near-infrared that you don't have now. Mm-hmm. And it's fairly inexpensive to do. You know, if we ever get big and nub, it'll be really cheap.

But, you know, why wouldn't you? I mean, you know. And then, like I say, with this new retrofit kit that we're doing, where you can, you know, you can pick out any lamp you want and just screw our bulb in and plug it in, It gives you a DC. It gives you two positions where you can have daytime and night. Because honestly, most of us don't have time to sit there and adjust every, you know,

and I find it kind of annoying if they change the lights on me, you know, to be quite honest. Totally. But, you know, to you also to your point, one of the things that when I was doing this, I took some of the original data, the electron spin rate, this data, was actually done by the cosmetic industry. And it was really interesting when you started looking at it because what you find optically is that the electron spin rays in the stage shows that the UV portion of sunlight and the higher energy portion of visible light generate equal amounts of reactive oxygen species in the skin. Okay. So the problem is if you want to totally take care of that, you know, block it, you have to actually put in pigments that will block in the visible, which makes everybody

putting on dark face. Right. Or black face. So, you know, we can't do that. So what did they do? They put in the SPF and basically all makeup now. it blocks the UV, which is the portion of the solar spectrum that actually kicks you up into generating sunburn, erythema, generating sunburn.

So now I can stay out longer in the sun because I'm not going to burn because nothing's telling me it's time to go in, yet I'm exposed to this other portion. Where does that actually get deposited most of it? Right at the epidural layer and the basal cell layers. So you have this regular increase in basal cell carcinoma. And what's even worse is that you take and you say to all the manufacturers that we're going to put this sunscreen in all makeup. If you have dark skin, you have about zero.

chance of getting melanoma, but you have a heck of a problem trying to generate enough vitamin D. Yep. Yep. So what did they do? They essentially made it even worse for the black population because they're now blocking the 285 and the UVA and, you know, other places. And so, you know, you can't get around it.

You know, again, it's kind of like this universal solution is bogus. It is. We are all individuals. We all have different needs. We should be trying to target those needs. And, you know, I'm sorry, but at the end of the day, you run the, just run, look at some of the numbers. It takes like one day a week of sick leave, of sickness to offset the entire energy savings associated with. converting to 120 limits per watch.

You know, it doesn't make any sense. It was poorly thought out. They should have focused, instead on focusing on trying to make everything so much more efficient, they should have focused on trying to get the public to understand how to turn off a light and how to use it the right way. And, you know, that's the part that's really frustrating because the government should never have been involved in this and they should be out of it. And that's why I would love to see JFK get in to go in and do some of this work because I think he's dead on.

He doesn't know. He's kind of starting to understand stuff about life. But I think that we need some kind of a radical change in government involvement in certain things. Yeah. The government definitely doesn't, it's not suited to deal with certain topics. It should be deferring to real experts. It's not like paid, bought and paid for experts that are looking for specific types of outcomes and science are just like motivated to ask certain types of questions, which is a lot of, I mean, it's a whole can of worms, but the whole government funding of science is just it's skewing the type of science that's being done in a major way, which is beyond the scope of this conversation. But equally important.

I mean, that's the other funny thing about the conversation about light is it really brings everything together. Like all of the issues we're facing society. I feel like are tied in. with this store as well from like the, you know, the addictions to tech and drugs and alcohol and other types of addictions to how it relates to the dopamine system and how light ties in with the dopamine system and makes more compulsive behaviors and like, so a lot of people are walking around just like a slave to their compulsions, not realizing that like their environment is shaping that behavior. Yeah. And I, because you can still walk outdoors, people kind of think that they're okay, but they don't do it.

You know, it takes a, A, it takes a location, B, it takes time. And, you know, they talk about 93% of our time is now under artificial lighting. I would argue that it's even more than that if you look at the total energy input. Because most of the time that you have any chance of seeing the lighting is towards the end of the day. Yep. Or, you know, early in the morning in a car that's got a blocking window glass on it. You know, so, you know, they're talking about the visible light. They're not talking about the other part that, in my opinion, is more important and being totally overlooked.

And that goes back to your point about like our eyes can deceive us, too, because we're only focused on what we can see. Yeah. Yeah. And people, you know, that's a, that's, that is a real. And, you know, it's amazing how I have. you're great. But I mean, so many people, if you talk to someone who has no idea what's going on

and you explain just some simple things about, you know, how what sunlight is, this is what we made it, they get it. It's kind of common sense, you know? And it's sad that there's so much in the way of letting us correct the problem and at least educate people as to what they can do.

Yeah. You know, I'm trying to write a paper now. to publish on LinkedIn where I'm trying to go through just some recommendations of what you can do because I think it's a huge burden that we're putting on this generation because they're not getting what they need. They're not going out. And so many parents have called me up, you know, about one or both. And, you know, oh, he seems calmer and all that. I don't care about that. I said, you know, have you gotten outside? Because it kind of changes their awareness. Yeah.

You know, this is important. And, you know, there's all kinds of food and diets all over the world. And I'm not one to judge anybody on eating it. But all I'm saying is that people are surviving and flourishing across a wide range of diets. You know, that is not the most driving, the number one driving force. I'm not saying it's not important. microplastics, pick all the ones you want. This one is important because it's absolutely the body depends on getting the entire,

it assumes on all its processes that is exposed to the entire solar spectrum during the day. It's exposed to minimal amount of light during the night. And even then, you know, there are the, it's not like we go from light to nothing. We're going, you know, 10 to the 22 photons per centimeter squared at daylight, full brightness, 10 to the 17th photons per centimeter squared at dark night or 16, or 16, or whatever. So it's not like we go to zero. And there are things, you know, my wife and I were lucky enough to have twins. And I believe very strongly that moon and all this moonlight and all that had an effect on how,

how things went in that. And it's just, you know, I think for whatever reason, it's just easy to ignore. It is. It is. This has been a great conversation. I want to be mindful of your time.

But I do want to ask you, actually, because we haven't talked about it yet, even in our last chat, how you got interested in light to begin with. I'm curious about that. Well, way back when I was mechanical engineer,

I was working on making avionics. And of all things, that was right at the time that they were starting to develop night vision. Oh. Doggles and displays. And there were electrical engineers. There were mechanical engineers. This was an optical problem. I said, oh, I'll do it.

What's the big deal? And I built my own double-grading monocrometer with liquid nitrogen-cooled detector and all this other stuff. I got really into it. And, you know, the more I got into it, the more. I got to understanding various things that are associated with lighting are for displays, and then move from displays into lighting and all that other stuff. But yeah, it was, it was, I was a real nerd in a lot of ways. I literally would have to go back to the, back into the office because the liquid and nitrogen

was going to run out. And if I didn't, and if I didn't do that, keep that cold right there at night, I had to wait for the power grid to stabilize. He was real nerdy. But it was, I found it fascinating. And my wife was very patient. And let me have my little thing. But now, you know, it all seems to kind of culminate up into something that I think is really important.

And like I say, buy our light bulb. I'm happy to sell you a light bulb. But do this other thing too. Because that's what's, you know, especially with your children. I had one gentleman. His son, five-year-old, he was fighting cancer. And doing good. He's doing good now.

But he said, Scott, you know, I never thought about it. We had him outside a lot. And we used walking around barefoot and all this other stuff. And do you think he could be? I said, couldn't hurt. Couldn't hurt. Yeah. Yeah.

And if I could just get the, some people to get out of the way, I think we could actually show that the body has an amazing ability to heal itself as long as we don't get in the way of it. And I'm not saying don't do chemo, not, I'm not saying anything like that. I'm just saying, you know, bodies optimize to survive. And we should give it its full opportunity to do so. Yeah. I mean, whenever I'm working with clients or myself, most of the time, whenever I've experienced suffering in my life, it was something I was actively doing that I was unconscious about or didn't think anything of it that was harming me. And when I took the thing away, I was like, oh, wow. But I feel like in the case of Sun, even though it's supposed to be our norm, we kind of have to add that back in because it's no longer the norm. So it's like we're kind of taking away the indoor environment and just putting ourselves back into the environment that our bodies are suited for. And a lot can change. I would say when you start doing that, and I feel like relatively quickly too.

I always thought I was like a night owl. My entire like teen years, up through my 20s, through grad school, always felt really burned out like at the end of the day when I was working in the labs and all the fluorescent lights and everything. I didn't put two and two together at that time. But I was like kind of red-pilled on the light story when I went back from my postdoc. And I was, you know, basically working outdoors every day. And then when I went inside under the lights, I would always wear my like blue blocking glasses. And I left the day feeling fresh and chipper and like huge difference. And so that was just like huge for me, like the contrast, between. grad school versus the postdoc and just yeah I don't know you can I automatically found like a difference in my sleep from the moment I started understanding like the more circadian side of the story and just inter interface between light and our biology and I just within a couple days started just naturally waking up early and going to bed earlier I just got tired earlier and so it's something that you can I think everybody can really feel a difference pretty quickly which I think is important too because a lot of times in medicine and science, it's like, you're just supposed to listen to the published data and do what is supposed to be good, but that's like for an average population, right?

It's not necessarily for you, but for the individual, like, try it. And if you feel better, that's a good sign. I find it interestingly. Most of the responses we get are from women in response to their children, number one, just calming, things of that nature. But over and over again, I kept on, men, we're dumber and a brick on the whole thing. You know, it just for whatever reason. But then I got to looking at it, and women have a thinner layer of skin.

They have a different layer of collagen than men do. Men tend to be thicker skin and have higher levels of collagen and fat. And so optically, they're indifferent. Makes sense. You know? And like I say, I mean, you know, I totally agree with you on the blue bockers from the standpoint of if you're in that kind of blue. If you're in this kind of blue, it doesn't make any sense. Absolutely not.

Yeah. You know, and so it's like you say, you know, everybody needs to find their own way and find out what really matters. And we're all different. And but until we understand the bed underlying processes, you know, then we're kind of just. it ends up being kind of like a marketing game more than anything else. Yeah. And I didn't want to do that. And that's why a lot of people would say,

well, why don't you just ship it all over to China and make a bunch of them and all that? And, you know, at some point we'll expand. But I really do believe we need to have a responsibility to figure out what the processes are, you know,

not to be altruistic or whatever. But, you know, I think that, you know, We only get one shot at this. Might as well do it right, you know. And it's also really interesting science. It is.

It's awesome. It's really, you know, you look at it and you, you know, and that's why this latest stuff I've been doing with the periodic structures is just so absolutely fascinating to me optically because I can put light wherever I want. And the idea that the body, you know, how little we understand is amazing, you know, literally trying to model what the body builds every day in every cell is almost impossible to us right yet. And I've been working with this one gentleman at Riddaker, and he's got some pretty good software that's modeling various dielectric layers. And you can get some amazing effects.

you know, all the, most of the bird feathers, some of the flowers and all that are all, they're not absorbing something. They're reflecting something by using nanometer scale type structures. Wow. And when you think about that, you know, and you start looking around, what do you see? You see this periodic structure in the mitochondria that's associated with ATP production. Is Glenn actually absorbing something in to a particular chromophore? Or is he literally just creating an intensity gradient, energy gradient,

that locus enhances some of Gerald Pollack's situation? You know? And we're talking about it takes very little. And you start looking at the diatoms in seawater and things of that nature. and now bacteria will align to certain to light and move in certain directions, you know. And then you look at the mitochondria and you see all these little rod the things that are moving around in real time. If, you know, we are naive as hell.

You know, we don't have a clue. Big time. So I think that that, if I had anything that I wish we could get them to do is to get them to understand that, you know, if you don't really understand something, or at least at a minimum, if we're going to do the green, I'm for green, but there's a certain level of extra proof that we need to change from something that nature does, you know, nature's been doing this for millions of years, the body is optimized for that thing. We can show all these different kind of structures and things that the body is doing to take advantage of sunlight, taking and

eliminating large portions of it and putting people in positions where they can't get sunlight should be the opposite of what we think of is green. You know? Yeah. So because if you get sick, somebody gets sick, you're wasting a whole lot of energy, a whole lot of energy compared to, you know. And, you know, I'd like to see us get to Mars or something like that. Well, if you can't get the astronauts to live longer than the trip, it's not going to happen too well. So if you can convince Elon Musk to come in and fund some research in the area, that would be good.

Honestly, maybe not too far off. We'll see how that goes. But, yeah, I feel like the burden of proof really needs to be on the governing bodies that are making these decisions to, like, say, this is safe. Like we mentioned earlier, like not that what we already had, what nature provided. was somehow suboptimal, even though that's what we came up in. And yeah, I mean, I'm really hopeful, though, for the future. I think things are moving in the right direction and excited to see how things develop over the, especially post-election.

We'll see what happens. I feel hopeful. I do. Yeah. Well, you know, the government has a lot of responsibility. I understand that. But they need to, you can't just go changing our employees. environment, you know, like that and not have a negative effect.

That's the one of truth. Yeah. And so there should be a higher level of scrutiny. And, you know, we're both scientists. We love data. We can get the data. We have all the tools. But it's like they won't get the data as long as they're, you know,

sensitive shutting groups down like us. Mm-hmm. I mean, I can get around their thing probably, but it's kind of dumb that I have to, especially where my main goal is to get these things into places where people need it the most. And the best way to do that is a little Edison bowl, screw it in, do your thing, sit there with your laptop, I don't care, and go outside. Yep. And the moment we come to terms with us also, we can start developing better tech. Like, I don't know if you know about, like, daylight computer.

They're making, I should have brought it with me. I have one at home. It's like a, it looks like a tablet, but they're going to be making phones and other stuff, too, that reflects light. It doesn't emit light. And so it doesn't emit any blue light. It has like an amber backlight if you want to use it at night. It renders beautifully. Like, it's very crisp and I can use it for social media.

I can use it for whatever, emails, whatever else. And it's this great tech that is working with our biology instead of against it. And to your point that you made it just a moment ago, like the sicker and more low agency people are like that's the worst case for energy efficiency because you know people are just going to be more mindless with their use of you know whatever energy keeping lights on all night or just waste being wasteful in general well and in how deep does it go i mean cortisol leads to high levels of cortisol is followed by a lot of dopamine it's a strong agent and associated with addiction you know yep is there a way we can do something that helps that um

So many different issues that society is facing, I believe, have at least a part of that are associated with the lighting and our lack of sunlight. That's it. I totally agree. I'm going to link to everywhere people can find your bulbs online. And you mentioned that you prefer people by the DC bulbs, which are available now and your converters are going to be up on the website soon. Yeah, because, I mean, the AC bulb works. It has, we've got a new design coming out that gets flicker down to about 2%. And it makes it, you know, it'll be good.

The first one we came out with, I had too much flicker as far as I was concerned. But we took it out there to people to start giving us feedback. And that was one of the feedbacks. And so, no, the new AC bulbs work were, if you're plugged into an AC circuit with a regular incandescent, You get 8 to 10% flicker modulation from the 120 hertz. Okay. People live with that for centuries. And I don't know that that's terrible.

I just wanted to make sure that our involved didn't do any more than that. And so we did a little bit less than what I say is 2%. It dims better. It behaves better. So there's nothing wrong with the AC. And in a lot of ways, it's a simple solution because you can just screw it into a regular outlet. If people really care. And I actually have one customer.

She's a very nice lady. She could tell the difference between AC and DC. You know, and I believe her. I really do. So the DC is just that. It's direct current has no modulation other than a little bit coming off the wallward, but very little at all. And the beauty of it is that, you know,

if we could ever get ourselves around to moving away, from 120 AC and just put in 48 bolt DC. We have another product we're working on to make a driver that allows you to dim it all the way from, from, you know, pull on all the way down to about 110,001 to 100,001 dimming range. Wow. One of the things that people don't realize about LEDs is there, the old incandes you could dim them down to where it was just a nice little glow. You can't do that with an LED.

A lot of them that you buy, oh, I'll dim it down. It goes down and typically a lot of times it'll shift to blue, even though some of them are now doing the color change. But what it does is that you as a person would have turned it down further if you could. So their energy savings is kind of a farce. And if you look at what happens when people put it outdoors, those bulbs tend to be a kind of cheaper or whatever. You don't see people dimming them down, you know?

So in a lot of ways, the supposed gain we were getting in lumens per watt is kind of bogus. Because, you know, if you had the dimming range of your old incandescent, you could have dropped it down and you could have been saving more energy than their LED dimmed down to the 10% or whatever. the number they can get to. So unfortunately, there's a lot of devils in the details. And so one of the things about our DC is that we have a work on design to where we can actually make it to where you can dim all the way 100,0001. Because I believe that a lot of the problems associated with artificial lie at night is that they can't dim.

Right. And if they do dim, what do they use? We use PWM, which means that you're getting all this flicking. her there was a story about a lady in the dc that the guy came up somebody like the street light wasn't working right and uh so they came out and she she came out the bar she said you fix that i'm just going to have to shoot it out again and you know so many places people are struggling with the fact that these they talk about i'm going to three thousand four thousand four thousand or And people, you know, as a scientist, you can relate to that when somebody tells you 2,000 degrees Kelvin or 3,000 degrees Kelvin, that's a black body.

It has content all the way out. You know, what the lighting industry did is they truncated those and now they're calling a correlated color temperature of 3,000 Kelvin because they only provide this little bit of the whole thing. Right. And so, you know, there's a lot of games that go on in marketing for lighting. And in a lot of ways, LEDs are not as good as an incandescent if you just looked at these other properties. And if they were being truly honest, it's not really saving as much energy as they propense to say. Mm-hmm. Anyway.

Our senses deceive us. But I think at least you're providing a really great option and, of course, the amazing guidance and insights about why it's important to go outside and doing that when we can. And between the two things, I think you can really make a difference in people's lives. And like I said, I'll link to the products in the show notes so people can find you. But I want to thank you so much for your time. This was really fun. Sorry, it took so. Oh, my God. Don't apologize. I like having long episodes personally. I like to flesh things out. I think it was great. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you. Make mitochondria great again.