Light Environment

In Nature, you have a true wide spectrum of light constantly fluctuating as the sun rises and falls throughout the day. Inside, you have an isolated spectrum of artificial blue light constantly flickering emitting the same color temperature regardless of time of day.

You must put yourself in a natural light environment and reduce your time in a poor artificial light environment. Easier said than done nowadays, but still what nature's laws demand for optimal health.

Getting no sun is paramount to putting a tarp over a tree and expecting it to grow. Combining that with lots of artificial light in the eye and skin will destroy melatonin, the hormone responsible for sleep, recovery, and regulating the sleep-wake cycle and ultimately create poor health.

Natural light v Artificial light

During the daytime (light hours), you want as much time in the sun as possible with as much skin showing as you can. At night (dark hours), you want the opposite, skin covered and as little light as possible.

Recommendations

Avoid all forms of artificial light into your eyes and skin. This means indoor overhead lights, TVs, computers, cellphones, and any device that has small lights.

Technology blue light screens emit at 5700 K. The sun starts at 1600 K in the morning and ends at 16000 K at sunset. Looking at your phone screen with no protection tells your eye it is noon all the time. Everyone is a nightshift worker now with the way people use their tech.

- Dr. Jack Kruse

Now this doesn't mean you have to entirely stop using all devices. There are multiple tools we can use to make artificial lit devices healthier.

Light Mitigation Tools

Software

IRIS - This is an amazing software to manually reduce blue light and flicker. Available on all platforms but iPhone requires some tech-savviness.

Twilight - Android app I use in conjunction with the IRIS app. Not available on iPhone.

Here are two tutorial videos showing on iPhone how to do basically what Twilight does on Android but just in the settings. Video 1 Video 2

Blue light blocking glasses

Recommended to always wear night lens at night regardless of filters you have on. Any device is going to be backlit so glasses are needed to not let any artificial blue light into the eye.

Sunlight

So yes real natural light will drown out artificial light. This means there isn't much of a problem when using devices outside in the sun where the color temperature is much higher than inside. I'd still recommend keeping IRIS going but can turn up the brightness.

Blocking

The effect of light is non-linear meaning even a super tiny light will still have a negative effect. You can physically block small LED lights, and this will help. See more recommendations in the Sleep Lesson.

Lights at Night

At night, use fire through candle-light, incandescent bulbs, or safer LED red lights as a way to see and be somewhat productive at night.

Coconut wax or beeswax are best materials for candles. I would avoid soy which most candles are made of unfortunately.

Incandescent bulbs have a more natural light spectrum, but can have some flicker and EMF due to being plugged into the AC power grid (your outlet).

The Sleep Lesson will have more links on what options you have.

Football Training or Match at Night?

Unfortunately, most footballers will have to play under artificial light at night due to our modern unnatural world. Here's what I recommend:

• Maximize your light environment during the day like always.
• While playing you can wear sleeves to cover as much skin as possible.
• Right after the match throw the blue light blocking glasses on and clothing to cover most of your skin until you get home to go to bed.

Stuck in School All Day?

Unfortunately, modern schools are not designed for optimal health due to the lack of fresh air, natural light, and general poor sitting posture you're forced into all day. These are a few things you can do but ultimately control what you can control.

• Try to open a window if possible.
• Use blue light blocking day lens if forced to stare at blue light toxic screens. Cover skin.
• Take "bathroom breaks" to get outside in the sun.
• More drastic solutions: switch to online school and lay in the sun while "in class".

Once you get a pair of blue light-blocking glasses, you can use them to notice everything in your environment blocking light under 550-570nm. Move the glasses up and then over your eyes and see what light "dissapears" from behind the lens. Then you can see how there's no change when looking at red light and a small change when looking at fire.

Further Reading

Private Blog Series

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