How Blue Light Impacts Your Sleep, Health, and Mood, With Dr. Martin Moore-Ede

Jeremy Grater (00:00.014)
People who are exposed to more light at night have 30 % more depression, anxiety, symptoms and so forth than people who are living with relatively less light at night. That is Dr. Martin Moore Eade, an international expert on the health impacts of light. For over 40 years, he's studied how artificial light affects our circadian rhythms, sleep, hormones and disease susceptibility. He's sounding the alarm about the hidden harms of modern lighting.

and explaining why what you may be doing now to reduce the impacts isn't working. By the end of today's episode, you'll understand exactly why lighting choices matter so much for mental and physical health and how small tweaks to your environment can reduce risks for major diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. So if you want to master healthy lighting for better sleep, balanced hormones, improved mood, and reduced pain, stick around. But first, this is the fit mask for together.

We learn to develop habits that help us live beyond our mental health struggles to create happier, healthier lives. He's Zach. He lives in the future with his anxiety. He's Jeremy, and he lives in the past with his depression. And we get together once a week in the present to share the obstacles we face and how we overcome them.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Fit Mess. Zach is off today, but we still have a great show for you. And listen, Zach and I, we both love the basics when it comes to self care. We try to eat well. We try to move our bodies every day. We have some mindfulness built into our daily practice, meditation, just taking time to pay attention to what's happening right now in front of us. And of course, getting good sleep.

But occasionally something a little less common sparks our curiosity like our topic for you today. We're talking about how the light in your home and in your office might be one of the biggest barriers to better sleep, improving your mood and your overall health. And since we're not experts on this topic, we invited one to join us. His name is Dr. Martin Moore -Ede. He's also known as the light doctor. He is a leading world expert on circadian clocks and light and how they impact our health.

Jeremy Grater (02:01.742)
I had the chance to talk to him the other day and I started by asking him about all of these lights that are shining in my face right now while we're recording this episode. Ironically, I'm sitting in front of two LED screens that are blasting light at me. I've got an LED light behind my camera blasting me. Most of the light bulbs in my house are LEDs. What is that doing to me? During the day, you want to see as much blue light as you can. And that's the key signal for your circadian rhythm, circadian clock, your sleep, and so forth.

But during the evening hours after sunset, blue is highly disruptive to our health, to our bodies, to our circadian clocks, to our immune systems. And that's when you should be concerned about the lights you're using because you need to get rid of the blue. I mean, in the old days, we had wood fires and candles, virtually no blue in them, less than 1 % blue content. But these days, these LEDs are 15%, 20 % blue.

sometimes more. And that's what's causing a lot of the problems. And so what are some of those problems? What is it actually doing to us that's harmful? What it's doing is that it's associated with increased risk of breast cancer and prostate cancer. There's hormone sensitive cancers. It can double the rate of obesity, diabetes, of high blood pressure, hypertension, heart disease. It can do damage to our immune systems.

reduce our resistance to COVID and other viruses. It really is a very disruptive effect because the body's normal repair processes which go on at night and which suppress cancer cells and so forth are disrupted when they see blue light because this blue light coming through the eyes is detected by special receptors in the eyes that are basically telling the body whether it's day or night. Now it's

Inapparent to us, we can't see it. We're just only really conscious of the visual thing about light. In other words, we use our eyes to see and see the images of the world around us. But in reality, just as important, if not more important, is the health -giving aspects in the light spectrum. And that's really critical. And that's a light spectrum we even can't see. Normally we look at sunlight or electric light or any other light as being...

Jeremy Grater (04:23.51)
whiteish, yellowish type of color. In reality, it's made of a full spectrum of everything from violet, blue, green, yellows, orange, reds, all blended together to look white. But those individual colors, each of those individual color wavelengths, have very, very different effects on the human body. So, for example, violet light, or light down about 4, 05, and so forth on the spectrum is...

kills viruses and bacteria. Light around 460 has removes jaundice, prevents jaundice in newborn babies. Light around 480, that's a sky blue color, is light that synchronizes our circadian clocks and our sleep and wake patterns. Green light is wavelengths that are actually reducing pain. They can relieve migraines and so forth.

up in the reds part of the spectrum. We have hair growth and cell repair, all sorts of things occurring with those spectrums. So when you walk outside in sunlight, you don't realize you get the full benefit of an entire spectrum that is good for your health. And one of the takeaway lessons is get out every day, especially in the mornings, because it makes a huge difference to your health and the length in your life.

It's a moment of standing with saying correctly it's more than just what we're seeing we actually absorb this light the effects of these lights just through exposure to them is that correct. That's right through our eyes and those lights are mostly effects are through our eyes but they are effects that we're not aware of their automatic effects of light and it's related to the colors of the spectrum individually having their effects.

We don't think that when we make an electric light or people give us an electric light bulb, they're only doing it for vision purposes. They're trying to do it as cheaply as possible. They're trying to do it as energy efficient as possible. In other words, the fewer watts of energy or electricity consumed per lumen, which is a measure of light, is how they judge it. And we've gone the efficiency route and ended up with light that really isn't suited for human use. A lot of that light, I think,

Jeremy Grater (06:46.382)
Speaking for myself, speaking for a lot of people I know who are badly addicted to their phones, are scrolling at night in bed, thinking that's going to help them sleep. How damaging is that to sit there staring at that smartphone screen? Yeah, that's part of the whole thing. Of course, the smartphone screen is relatively close to your eyes. You may sit 20 inches or more away from a computer screen, but iPhone screen, you're probably much closer than that when you're using it.

iPad, all those sort of things, that is producing light in your eyes. It's also, you know, light from all sources. Now the other side of the equation is that indoors we have so much less light than is outdoors. So during the daytime we get between a hundred and a thousand times more light by going outdoors than we do indoors. Now our eyes adapt to it so we

don't really notice it quite so much once a rise adapted, how much brighter it is, but it's hugely greater, and especially the health effects, it really, really matters. So just give you a couple of examples. Hospitals built for psychiatric hospitals with one set of windows on one side of the corridor facing east and south, on the other side of the corridor, the windows face north and west.

So the ones on the east and south are getting all the morning sun, which is not coming in on the windows in the north and west. The psychiatric patients being admitted by the same doctors, treated with the same medicines, the same conditions, leave hospital half the time when they're exposed to morning sunlight. Just one small example. People who are outdoors a lot, the big study, about 29 ,000 Swedish women.

Studied over a period of time those that spent the most time outdoors Had a increased lifespan the effect was as large as smoking or not smoking in other words staying indoors was the same risk factor as Smoking cigarettes compared to a non -smoker. That's incredible Yeah, so I mean there's a huge industry for you know the phone addict who doesn't want to put their phone down at night and they've sell glasses that you can wear to

Jeremy Grater (09:07.662)
lock the blue light. How effective are those? Is that a reasonable solution? Well, in some ways it is, but most of those blue blocking glasses have useless. In other words, they're actually blocking the wrong blue. Wood is made of all different colors. In other words, if you think about it, there's a violet type blues and then indigos and so forth. You go into the royal type deep blues, sky blues, aquas. Each of those have different effects. Most of the blue blocking glasses, or many of them,

are blocking the light that is down in the violet blue area or in the royal blue area. They're not blocking light which is in the sky blue area which is the key signal that our eyes need to see. Now one way of telling the difference is how nice does the lens look? In other words, if it's just got a little blue reflection off it and it's a pretty clear lens, it is totally useless, right? It looks attractive, but it's totally useless.

The ones that are much more yellow, orangey, are more likely to be effective in taking out the blue that we need to get rid of. But get rid of it, don't wear those glasses during the day. It makes no sense. You need to see blue during the day time. It's in the evening hours. But yes, it is a treatment, and in fact, it can restore our melatonin levels to normal just by wearing the right blue blocking type of glasses. Interesting. Is there a certain brand you recommend or anything that would be?

Smart. I one of the ones where, you I've worked on is one called Blue Safe 24. That is one where they've done proper balancing. Cause what you want to do is have as an attractive visual perception and color perception as you can while being effective. And that's one that's I think struck a pretty good balance. So that's one example. It's available on the web. You mentioned geography earlier. You're in Boston. I'm in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia and it's just possible tangent here, but.

just talking about sunlight and daylight saving time in the ongoing fight of whether or not to keep it, abolish it, pick one side or the other. How much does that mess with us to have to change the clock by an hour every year? Does that affect our exposure to the light in a way that's harmful? It messes with us a lot. I mean, you can see the direct effects of the road traffic in the spring when we shift the clock so we're getting up earlier.

Jeremy Grater (11:31.022)
and getting an extra hour of morning light, traffic accidents go up, heart disease, a number of heart attacks, coronary artery, myocardial infections go up, those sort of things. But that's a transient effect that's once a year, right? The bigger effects of time zones are the problem of this arbitrary lines we draw north -south across the country, which divide time zones.

And what we end up doing is because time zones are quite wide, it means that there is at least an hour, often up to sometimes more than an hour's difference between when the sun arrives in the morning on the east side of that time zone versus the west side. If you look at people who are now on the time zone, just the other side of that line, they're just to the west of the line.

They now are their social clocks and their work schedules and their time when school starts is all shifted by now. The health effects are enormous. So if you just compare people in the counties immediately contiguous, immediately next to that time zone, there's people on the west side of that time zone are far healthier, far fewer cancers, fewer other things than people on the east side of the same time.

And those are people in the same rural areas, the same, you know, the same environments. And you can find it up and down across the world, up and down these time zone changes. Huge differences in health between being on one side and the other. In other words, the people who are on the far west of the time zone are being forced to be getting up way earlier than their biological clock, once they actually get up. But they're, you know, they're forced to live on Boston time when you live in Detroit.

Right, right. Oh, that's yeah, that's that's that's a that's a long term effect and it's a pretty dramatic one. So yes, I think, you know, now the answer to that is quite frankly, you know, time zones were a thing of the past and the railroads and everything else in the past. In reality, everyone should be living on their natural sun cycle. Right. And we can all, you know, our computers can deal with that reality. And you just book.

Jeremy Grater (13:57.646)
according to where somebody is on their longitude, what longitude they're on, and left to longitude and you book their timing. But in the school time, it should be associated with what the natural world is doing. But that's just one part of it that we've really not taken the notice of. And it shows how big the effects are. Yeah, for sure. So.

We talk a lot about mental health here. So tell me about the mental health impacts that this has by living in this sort of artificial light so late in the day. Yes, absolutely. The effect, I mean, big studies now are coming in, 80 ,000 plus people in them, looking at people and how much light they get during the day, and then how much light they get during the night. And people who are exposed to more light at night,

are, you know, have 30 % more depression, anxiety, PST, syndromes and so forth than people who are, you know, living with relatively less light at night. So there's a big effect there and some big studies so we can really see differences. And similarly in the other flip side, the people who have more light exposure, more daylight exposure during the daytime.

you know, have 30 % less of the anxiety, depression, and so forth. So both go hand in hand. You know, in the old days, before electric light, everybody was exposed to much more daylight, because most people spent much more time outside or next to windows, you know, where the sun came in. They weren't living in office cubicles far away from the light. And they were also sleeping in the dark at night, because there was nothing to...

you know, no lights to switch on. You know, when we look at, an amazing number of people sleep with the lights on at night. Largely because of anxiety or those sort of issues, particularly in the elderly, over 50 % of elderly are doing it, but those that are doing it have double the rate of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. So it's a huge impact and such a simple thing to fix, right? In other words, you know.

Jeremy Grater (16:19.47)
Blue light, the blue part of the spectrum at night is a pollutant, you know, environmental pollutant. But compared to, you know, those PFAS and other sort of, uh, forever chemicals, terribly hard to get rid of, hazardous waste clean up, it's simple, yeah. Just change the light bulb. So that was going to be my next question. You mentioned changing light bulbs. We talked about getting outside more in the day, wearing the right blue blockers. What are some other easy solutions that people can do to mitigate the effects of this?

Well, the easiest solutions are number one is getting out during the daytime and every day, making a point of it and get out for an hour or more if you can and get exposed, particularly in the morning hours. That's a huge health benefit there. Also associated with getting out and exercise, jog, run, walk, whatever. Take the dog, whatever you're doing. That's huge. Avoiding the blue light at night. And that's now achievable with what are so -called zero blue light bulbs.

And they, you know, some of them are yellowish in color, some are actually quite pleasant in color, it depends on how they're structured, but all of them are less than 2 % blue content, and that's the key to look for. And those light bulbs are now available, and they're now coming out a little bit later this year, so they'll automatically, you get the same light bulb that automatically changes between bright blue during the day, obviously, you don't see them as blue, the blue content is high during the day.

And then the blue content is very low at night. So it goes from max blue to zero blue automatically and does it by latitude and longitude and seasons of the year and so forth. So let me ask you this. I imagine the listener in the audience hearing this and thinking, it's a light bulb. What's the big deal? I sleep fine. I'm doing well. So what convinces you? Clearly this has been a field of study for you for a long time. Tell me a little bit about how you got into this and why you're convinced that this is as big a problem as it is.

Well, first of all, it's a huge scientific basis and the science is all in agreement now. Over 10 ,000 scientific papers since 2008 on this topic. So, and so there's a lot of science. Secondly, you don't know what's going on inside your body. All right? In other words, until somebody finds that cancer, you know, something's been growing in your body for quite a while. You don't know whether you've got high blood pressure unless someone measures your blood pressure. You don't know whether you're diabetic unless someone actually measures it.

Jeremy Grater (18:44.366)
Most things in the body, you may feel a little tired or run down or whatever else, but most people just do not know. And so that's the thing. You don't think just because you're feeling generally okay and you're getting by that you're not necessarily breeding something that could harm you and shorten your life or whatever. Now that's a little downer of a sound, but in reality, you're going to do things sometimes like that. Why I know it is because as I say, we've done a of studies with people.

We've taken groups of perfectly healthy people, putting them in a room with different type of lights. If we put them in a room overnight with standard LED off -the -shelf lighting, their glucose metabolism goes awry. Their glucose goes up. Their insulin resistance goes up. You can mix them on pre -diabetic in just one night by exposure to a regular LED light bulb. If you use a zero blue, when the blue has been taken out,

and we were able to identify exactly what blue that was. Once we take that out, all those symptoms go away. So we can very indirectly measure this inside of the experiments. The challenge is the scientists know all about it, their neighbors, the regular people on the street doesn't. And this is why I've written my book, The Light Doctor, to really educate the general public about this issue because it's a very real one and it's one we need to take aware of.

The problem is as big as an asbestos liability problem. I think it's going to be, unless it's addressed, you know, asbestos is a very useful substance for doing insulation, you know, and people just using it with abandon until they realize later it's causing all these extra cancers. And of course, that's led to a multi -billion dollar lawsuits and product liability and everything else. I think the lighting industry is going to have to wake up and make a big switch over to healthy lighting as opposed to light.

who's just some brightness cheeky uh... you mentioned but when asked about that in a minute but i was actually a newsletter yesterday about uh... sort of changes you expect to see this year with regard to all this can tell me a little bit more about that yes what we're seeing this year is a whole number of other products coming out uh... that are going to help solve this problem you know uh... lighting for offices for example uh... or hospitals or other environments and lighting that automatically adjusts between

Jeremy Grater (21:11.918)
Max Blue and Zero Blue. We're going to see light bulbs at the home that are sophisticated and that are going to change. And a number of vendors, a number of companies are coming out with different solutions. You need to be a little careful what you're looking for because people can claim they've got circadian lighting. But the real key is to look for lights that are less than 2 % blue content. That means that all the light that comes out, only less than 2 % of it is in the blue spectrum range, in the sky blue range of light.

So those are all coming out and I think we're seeing a lot of interest now, a of companies and hospitals, all sorts of places now looking at this seriously. But people are going to need to ask for it because unless the demand is there, it's hard to sustain the supply of it, get the companies to build the lights. But this is a year where I think the technology is in a mass production of lights that really work.

is is really going to fall you mentioned that looking for the you know less than two percent uh... blue light on the on the packaging is there any sort of requirement that demands that they be honest about that or that they print that at all how would you even know to look for that well the answer is that's very easily testable uh... using a you know handheld device the size of a iphone you can just pointed at the device and instantly know so you can call people out pretty quickly uh... so you can quickly assess the light because you can measure

how much energy all those colors of the spectrum have in total, and then how much of it is in this critical range of which is between 440 and 495 blue. That can be done, you can calculate that on an Excel spreadsheet. The manufacturers should always provide the spectrum of any light they produce, which is how much power in every one of the wavelengths. And with that, you can easily check. So hard to, you know, I think...

People will be cautious about saying they had less than 2 % blue. You have to watch the fine print, what they refer to as blue, but basically, I think that's pretty safe. But when they just say these are circadian lights, be a little cautious. Because you can vary the blue just by changing the color of the light. You can vary the blue by a bit, but not nearly enough to be effective.

Jeremy Grater (23:37.358)
all right tell us more about the book how we can find it and then we're going to find a new ticket okay the book the light doctor uh... is a book over the general public is to explain the list of the terms of making it really attention understandable uh... how the scourge of the media how all the resulted in creating lights and effective and where to find them and how do you actually get persuade people to put them in the places where you're like you and your loved one one spent time whether it's a nursing home or a

school or workplace. The book is on Substack right now, which is an online site, so it's easily accessible. That's Substack you can search for. You can go to my website, thelightdoctor .com for easy access. And the book will be coming out in print later this year. All right. Our thanks to Dr. Martin Morr -Ede. Again, The Light Doctor.

You can find links to him and his work in the show notes for this episode at thefitmess .com. And I gotta say, I've heard a lot of talk about blue light and about how lighting can impact our health and our mood and all of these things, but I had no idea how serious this problem really was. And so I'm really grateful to Dr. Martin Mori for spending some time with us, sharing that information. And I hope you found this conversation helpful as well. If you did and you know somebody else who may benefit from hearing it, please share this episode with them by hitting that share button today. You are the key to helping us accomplish our goal of helping as many people as possible.

So again, hit that share button and come back to see us again next week at thefitmess .com. Thanks for listening. We know this podcast is amazing and it doesn't seem to lack anything, but we need a legal disclaimer. Prior to implementing anything discussed in this podcast, it is your responsibility to conduct your own research and consult your physician. You should assume that Jeremy and Zach don't know what they're talking about.

and they're not liable for any physical or emotional issues that occur directly or indirectly from listening to this podcast.