The Best Light Wavelengths for Health | E051
Is our lighting in our homes changing our biology?
Should you care?
In this week’s episode, we are talking specifically about blue light wavelength exposure in the evenings can be making changes in your biology. This light has an effect on your hormones, your fascia, neurotransmitters and your nervous system and usually not in a good way if the exposure is after the sun goes down. So what can you do? Well this week we talk about how you can reduce blue light from your mobile screens, block it with blue & green light blocking glasses and use lightbulbs specifically made without those kinds of wavelengths for night time.
Let’s shine a light on it shall we?
And if you are wanting more episodes of the Wildly Optimized Wellness Podcast, we now have new ways to access the premium podcast that has more episodes, deeper & behind the scenes conversations at the Wellness Curiosity Collective. https://torearodriguez.com/wcc
In This Episode
00:00 The Best Light Wavelengths for Health
03:48 The role of light in the body
05:28 What to do when the sun goes down
09:44 Blue light blocking glasses
11:54 Red lights for the home
15:27 Changing the color of your phone screen
17:55 Blue light after 11pm linked to depression
21:22 Controlling screen time easily
25:22 Quantum biology and light cues
28:44 Show us your 4 eyes!
Resources Mentioned
Want even more circadian rhythm goodness? Catch up on Season 1, Episode 3: Circadian Rhythm & Health https://www.torearodriguez.com/wowpodcast/s1e3 or Season 2, Episode 7: Full Spectrum Light https://www.torearodriguez.com/wowpodcast/s2e7
Midwest Redlight Therapy https://midwestredlighttherapy.com/
BonCharge https://boncharge.com
Connect with Toréa
Website: https://www.torearodriguez.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/torearodriguez/
Connect with Evie
Website: https://holisticallyrestored.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/holisticallyrestored/
Join the Optimized Wellness Community: https://torea.co/Premium
Submit a Question for the Show: https://www.torearodriguez.com/podcast-question
Transcript
Toréa Rodriguez 0:08
Welcome to the Wildly Optimized Wellness podcast. I am your host, Toréa Rodriguez. And I’m joined by the lovely co host, Evie Takacs. Both of us are Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioners and we love working with women from all over the world, through our virtual programs, helping women not only feel better, but actually achieve that vibrant, no holds barred version of themselves, they’ve been missing for a long time, and how we actually get there. Well, that is what this show is all about. Now, please keep in mind that this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. And if you like what you hear today, we would love for you to hit that follow button, leave a review in Apple podcast, share with your friends, and keep coming back for more. Let’s start today’s adventure shall we?
Toréa Rodriguez 1:08
Okay, so welcome back to the podcast, we are going to have a little shop talk at the end I around blue light blocking glasses and the use of red light therapies in your home at night and we're going to do this all while I have accidentally left my blue light blocking glasses in another state. So but we are going to talk about it. So Evie, let's give a little bit of a refresher light as a circadian rhythm cue. Why is this so important for people? Why do we need to pay attention to this?
Evie Takacs 1:47
Yeah, so for people who are watching, I do have my nighttime Amber tinted blue light blocking glasses here. So we'll be talking about those. But light in general is very important. That was one of the first things I started to pay attention to when I went this more holistic route, functional medicine, things like that. Because it was highlighted to me as being such a big influence on your circadian rhythm, which is your body's sleep wake cycle. Circadian rhythm is influenced heavily by light exposure and your food intake, you know, and the timing of those. So I really became fascinated with how the time that I am exposed to natural light outside and the times that I'm eating influences how well I sleep, and how well I feel when I'm awake. And so I really was fascinated by that and have really taken to that and still do things to protect my circadian rhythm and support that and also, that's a big thing that you and I talked about with clients. So really, when we wake up in the morning, we should be having a response that our body is getting up and ready to face the day we should have energy on the rise. Our cortisol is known as a stress hormone that should also be on the rise as well. And then slowly throughout the rest of the day cortisol decreases, because our, you know, a weight or alertness should start to decrease as the sun goes down. And so cortisol is also going to go down. And at that point, what should be rising is melatonin as cortisol and melatonin work inverse of each other. And so when you are supporting your circadian rhythm, what you're doing is you're supporting that rhythm of cortisol rising in the morning, slowly going down throughout the rest of the day, melatonin being low in the morning, rising in the evening. So it's this nice dance between the two of them that we really highlight a lot with clients. So these are the main takeaways. And there's things that we can do to support circadian rhythm rhythm. And there are things to do to hinder circadian rhythm. So what we want to talk about is blue light and how that plays a role in circadian rhythm.
Toréa Rodriguez 3:43
Yeah, yeah, really well put. And thank you so much for giving kind of that background because if you haven't caught some of the other episodes that we've done about full spectrum light and circadian rhythm before we're gonna get into light specifically on this episode, and you had mentioned meal timing, as well as another way to manage their kidney and rhythm and all of these triggers for circadian rhythms. There's a fun term for them. It's called a Zeitgebers. ZEITGEBERR Zeitgeber. I like that word. It's just fun to for me to say but all of these different interactions that we have, so social interactions and our meal timing and the way that we move and exercise and our light exposure are these Zeitgebers and those are the triggers for the circadian rhythm. And it goes beyond just cortisol and melatonin. It's like all lots of different biochemical pathways in the body have these circadian rhythms. So weight resistance, leptin resistance, for example. So resistance for weight loss that can also be triggered by some of the light stuff. And so while we've talked before about getting the right quality of light, and when we haven't really talked about it
Toréa Rodriguez 5:00
What happens when we get the wrong kind of quality and when so that's what we're going to talk about today. So we're avoiding, we're really sorry, let me step back a little bit, we're using the Sun as the cue as to when to do these things. So if you pay attention to when the sun is up or below your horizon, this is when we would want to do these things. So what we're going to talk about next is, what do we do after the sun goes down. And most of us turn the lights on, right? We just turn the lights on whatever lights are, there are the lights that were turning on. And with a lot of the modern advancements and lighting technologies, and we want to conserve on energy usage, we're using LED lights, which are pretty shitty light for a biological being to be in. So what kinds of things are you doing? Like, let's talk about the glasses. But we can talk about some other elements too, that we both use to help protect ourselves from this light that's coming out of these light bulbs that isn't the healthiest kind of light?
Evie Takacs 6:08
Yeah, well, before I go into that, I want to share that it's important that we understand blue light does have a purpose, blue light is blue light naturally comes from the sun. So blue light is highest, around solar noon. So you know, afternoon, we've got a lot of that blue light coming through. That's when the sun is giving that off. So it's more natural to see it, it's okay for getting that exposure. However, the way I describe it as when, you know, if we think back to like, you know, our ancestors and like hundreds of years ago, before electricity, right, let's think back to that even when the sun went down, the day was essentially over you were lighting your house and with FIREPLACES with candles, so you weren't cranking out work, you weren't staying up stimulated by the TV. So that's what I tried to think about is how do I go back to the simplest form of living. And when the sun goes down, my blue light exposure should also be down as well. So that's my general rule of thought and kind of queue of when the sun goes down. What other blue lights should I decrease as well. So that means overhead lights are going to be turned off because overhead lights, those are going to be very similar to Sun, the Sun is above us, we're having that exposure hitting down on us. So turning on lamps that are more like, you know, level two, you turning on, you know, softer lights, maybe having a light on in another room, those are all things that you can do as well. So when the sun goes down for me, I will turn on I'm sorry, I will turn off overhead lights, I will also keep Lights Down Low. If I have ones that kind of be controlled. I also put on the blue light blocking glasses. And for those who are watching, you'll notice that these are amber tinted. So for those who are listening, you can't see that but they're not typical glasses, right? A lot of people have blue light blocking glasses that look like faces. Yeah, so turns
Toréa Rodriguez 8:01
Them on. And they're slightly a blue light blocking, but they're only about 15% is really how much they block out. So they have a little bit of a yellow tint to them. But I do that specifically to block the blue light off of the screens that I look at all day long for work. And so I'm using that, but this is not what we're talking about. For nighttime, we're talking about the amber kind that you have.
Evie Takacs 8:25
Yeah, and the amber ones are best for nighttime because they block out blue and green spectrum of light. So you just get a little bit more protection of the amount of light that your retina is exposed to. And again, we want that to be lessened at night, the amount of light we're exposed to. Because we want cortisol to be down we want melatonin to be high. And those are going to be very difficult for those things to happen when we're getting all the stimulation from light. So the blue light blocking glasses come on when the sun goes down. I also again, will light some candles, I have some red light bulbs. So this is not to be confused with red light therapy bulbs. Right? These bulbs are actually just red light, they just you know emit red, and they just make the room glow red. So I have those in the house as well particularly in my bedroom right now. Because I want the lights to be low and also a reason that it's red is because red also mimics fire. So again, we were lighting our houses with fire and we had fireplaces and candles. So this mimics the exact same thing at sunrise and sundown so it makes the body think oh okay, the sun has gone down the lights are low, we don't have high spectrum of light. So that's why I've been using those to also help me in the evening time.
Toréa Rodriguez 9:41 Yeah. And you know, it's interesting because the you don't have to do the red lights. I know a lot of people get a little bit like weirded out. Well, what are the neighbors gonna think? Yes, they see a red glow out of my curtains, you know, and that kind of thing. And I mean we can use the there's is a himalayan salt lamps, those are really nice, those give off a nice warm glow, we can try to mimic Edison light bulbs as much as possible because if we look at the color temperature of that light that comes out of the Edison light bulb, especially something with a lower wattage, like a 45, water 35 watt bulb, those temperatures are going to be much, much lower. And the brighter blue lights are going to need more intense like 3000 Kelvin instead of like 1500 ish. And I'm just guessing it numbers right now, because it's been a while since I've looked at led temperatures. But if you can find light bulbs that fluctuate in terms of temperature, that's also really nice. So if you've got a dimmer control, and it actually changes to a warmer temperature, when you've got the lower electricity output set on that light, that's awesome. But if we are just taking a very bright LED light and turning it down on a dimmer, we're still getting that blue light exposure, just maybe not as intense. So as much as I love the energy savings piece of it for the planet, you kind of have to be a little bit more careful and selective with the types of bulbs that you're buying to put into your lamps and that kind of thing. But you've got the red light bulbs, I've used those, those are in our bed, side lamps at our house. And so when we've got bedside lamps on and we're reading in bed or whatever, we're using the same kind of lights. I also have a portable light that I like to bring with me. So this guy right here, it's clips on. So this this is from the company used to be called blue, it's blue blocks now No, it used to be blue blocks. Now it's called Bond charge. Sorry, I don't remember when when they change their name, but it's got a little clip. So it clips onto any kind of surface. But this is kind of cool, because it's a bendy read light. And I can turn it on a couple different intensities, but it is red light only. And so I really like this, because I can travel with it. And then it doesn't matter if I'm in a hotel or staying with a friend who doesn't pay attention to red light bulbs at night. I've got this to be able to read by. So I think that's great. I've
Evie Takacs 12:14
Never seen that before. I think that's cute.
Toréa Rodriguez 12:16
Yeah, I'm gonna bring it with me when I come see you in a few weeks. Yeah, yes. Yeah. Super cool. So, um, so yeah, it's important about our lights, and it's important to really pay attention to it. I think the challenge in our homes and and spaces where we live is that during the day in order to actually see to prep foods, so we're not chopping our finger off, we actually need that bright light. So it really is more of this discernment of if I don't need that bright stuff for detail kind of work? Can we shut that down? In some way? Can we use red? Can we turn them off and light candles? For example? What about devices can we talk about device use because this is probably the hardest thing for people to change if they're trying to do a lifestyle change. I know when I started learning about all of this light and circadian rhythm stuff, the recommendation was just don't use your screen devices after eight o'clock. And that's really difficult to do. So aside from wearing blue light blocking glasses, are there some other things that you're aware of?
Evie Takacs 13:26
Yeah, you can actually go into your phone, most people have iPhones, I can't speak to other phones, but I'm assuming this is the same thing. And you can actually change the color of your screen. So you can make it you know, less bright, obviously, you can do that. But you can also put a red hue to your light as well. I couldn't be able to tell you like right off the top of my head as to how to do that. But I do know that in the settings you can do that. And I think you have that don't you tray or you've been I do
Toréa Rodriguez 13:52
That. So this is my normal phone, right? And I've set it so that if I do a triple click on a side button, see if I can do it here. Backwards. There we go. Red, wow turns the whole thing red. You know, so it's, it's better. It's still not great to be on the screens that late but I'm not getting any blue wavelength or green wavelength out of this. And so we will find the YouTube that taught me how to do this and put it into the show notes so that you can do it for your smartphone too. It is a nice trick to be able to do that if you happen to get texted by a family member or need to check an email or plop in one last minute to do before you're going to bed. You have the ability to still use the device but not impact your blue light and your your retinas so much with the blue light.
Evie Takacs 14:48
Yeah, cuz it's it's unrealistic to say oh, you're never going to use your like your phone again in the evening. It's like, Of course I am like I'm sorry, but that's just absolutely live right. You know, there's days where that's going to happen. So yeah, working The round that I think can be really beneficial. And I actually set mine up to do that when the sun goes down, and it knows when the sun goes down based on the weather app in my phone. So I get to remember, yeah, so after a certain point, like now, it's like a little after eight o'clock here in the Midwest, my phone will start to change colors, and the screen looks a lot less bright. So that's how I set mine up. And again, I could not tell you right off the top of my head, how I did that. Somewhere in the settings and screen brightness and things like that, and display. But you know what you're talking about? Yes, you sync it to your weather app, it'll then see, okay, the sun went down, we're going to turn the phone brightness down. And it does have a red hue to it.
Toréa Rodriguez 15:45
There is a computer app called F.LUX flux that you can do on your computer for the same kind of thing. And I know that at least Apple did this, and I'm not sure about Google phones or anything like that. But I'm pretty certain they've got the same kind of features. And so you can set that up. It still isn't when it's at its full dimness, it's still giving off some blue and green wavelengths, at least the people who have tested it have shown them that it's, it's still doing it. But it's better than nothing, right? Because it's not just our suppressing, suppressing suppression. It's not just the suppression of melatonin that we're worried about with the blue light, there are other effects that it can have on the brain. So I was just telling Evie right before we started recording the podcast today that I had just seen on Huberman labs, Instagram account a conversation where they now know if we get blue light stimulus between the hours of 11pm and 4am, that will trigger a depressed kind of disappointed state of being. So we get into the state of depression. So if we're on our screens, late into the night, and now I'm thinking teenagers, right, because that's exactly what I would do if I were a teenager in this modern life, is stay up all night, playing games, or talking to my friends or whatever, that that can induce a depressed state of being in our neural chemistry. And so you can imagine how it cycles in then because we also know that if we get on our phones, first thing in the morning, start looking at social media, we start getting those dopamine hits to counteract that depression. So now we're on our phones, 24/7, because we're depressing ourselves and getting ourselves that dopamine hit and back and forth, and back and forth, back and forth. So this is why it's so hard to put these damn things down.
Evie Takacs 17:49
I know, agree. I mean, I'm like, Why? Why am I looking at this? There's nothing on here that I need to be looking at. But again, it's that same thing. So then I'm like, okay, like I was even outside earlier, it was, you know, one of the first nice sunny days we're having here and fairly warm. And I'm outside and I'm on my phone, like, why am I doing this, I'm sitting outside, my feet are in the grass, I'm grounding. I'm earthing. I'm doing all the things we talked about. And yet, I'm counteracting that, because I have this stupid thing in my hand, right now, that's given me more EMFs that I'm trying to get rid of by grounding. You know, it just doesn't make sense. So, you know, it's like this, this is this is ass backwards here. And so. And I, I was like, it's, the sun is. So the sun is nice, the sky is nice, like, why am I doing this. So it is addictive. But again, so one thing that I was able to do for myself, and that, you know, I still weave in and out, because I fall out of this habit is when I wake up, I don't look at my phone, typically until I'm outside first, like, All right, look at the time, or just check to make sure there's nothing that like needs to be known right away as I wake up. But I typically don't get I don't get on social media until I'm done with my morning routine, which involves me getting natural light. Because again, we talked about how important that is for supporting your circadian rhythm. So that's something that you know, maybe it's like a take home message or take home challenge for you is, you know, let's see if I can get some circadian rhythm support and and that might just start with you not looking at your phone in the morning. Maybe you don't go outside right away. But maybe it's just not getting pulled into your screen first thing in the morning and seeing how you feel.
Toréa Rodriguez 19:21
Yeah, that's that's a wonderful tip. And I definitely have had periods of time where I struggle with that. And I use the I started to use parental controls back when that's all we had. But now they're screentime controls. So I use screen time controls to try and lock myself out and discourage myself from doing that kind of thing because it does become this very subconscious habit. If we are always going towards the news app, or we're always going towards a social media app to get information or find out what's going on with our friends and it becomes very compulsive, it's like a behavior that is Like I didn't, I went to my phone to do a specific thing like look at an appointment or something like that. And then here I am on Instagram for 15 minutes. And I don't even know why or how. And yeah, I'm even noticing it with me recently. And so I've decided, well, the Instagram app now is not on the main page, it has to go like very deep, a couple more pages. And I have to put more controls on it, because I need to break that habit and break that compulsive behavior from happening and put a pattern interrupt in there so that I can stop doing it. Because I will look at it after sunset, and my screen won't be red. And now that I've left my glasses, it's even more imperative that I get really, really disciplined with my devices and the screen time post sunset. So it's really, really huge. Yeah, definitely. Let's talk a little bit about leptin resistance, because I think a lot of people may understand the cortisol melatonin cycle of it as well. I think we don't talk enough about leptin resistance in the sense of circadian rhythm and how much of a big deal the light cues are for leptin resistance. I've had several clients come to me recently who are frustrated with weight loss, and they're not able to shed weight, even though they're doing all the right things. And then we start to investigate that their light hygiene, if you will, is not quite up to par, they're not going outside to get that full spectrum light. They're on their screens at night after the sun goes down. So this is an important piece of it. It's not just about the cortisol in the melatonin.
Evie Takacs 21:50
Yeah, well, one thing that when we were talking about our continuous glucose monitors, and he tried those out, and we were talking about, you know, how we are less insulin sensitive in grabbing when the sun goes down. And so it makes me think about that, like, you know, there's research done, I'm pretty sure it was Dr. Rhonda Patrick, who came out and said it because it was like this big Instagram video where she's like, if you're going to eat chocolate, eat chocolate, but do it during the day, you know, type of thing where it's like, we're going to be able to process that better during the day when the sun is out. And again, it plays into circadian rhythm. It really plays into the time that the sun is out, we are much more primed to digest food to have more energy to function, like all the things and we know this I mean, yes, some people are claimed to be a night owl, I do my best stuff at night, maybe. But you know, I would challenge that after you know, a few months of trying to get your circadian rhythm back into play, I would be curious what you'd feel like. But that to me, I always think about that when you talk about leptin and talk about like foods and like weight loss resistance is, well, what types of carbohydrates? Or what types of foods are you having in the evening, and I wonder if you switch those two, before the sun goes down, if that would make a difference for you at all. I mean, that can get very nuanced for some people, like if someone's like brand new, and to try and do this, like do not even go down that road. But just understand like there is a role in the sun and how our metabolism is working. And when it is working the most efficiently.
Toréa Rodriguez 23:21
Yeah, and keep in mind that the Leptin hormone, that's our satiety hormone. So if we have resistance there with the receptors for leptin, and we have an imbalance in leptin, there isn't going to be anything that we can eat to actually help us feel full. And that can be a problem, because now we're not paying attention to our own body's signals and cues. We don't have that awareness, so to speak. And so if we understand that if we are eating our meals before sundown if we are reducing our blue light before sundown, and that that can help us get in touch with those natural hunger cues. You can bet that that along with balancing blood sugar is going to prevent some of this like I don't eat anything during the day and then the minute the sun goes down, I'm in the refrigerator eating every single thing possible because I cannot get myself full and feel satisfied. And that's definitely what can happen with leptin issues. So yeah, and it's all circadian rhythm based. It's really fascinating. There's, I don't know if you've seen this trend on while a lot of the holistic health world is on social media. So I'm not sure if you've seen this trend, but there are a lot of people starting to talk about quantum biology and parts of quantum biology include really paying attention to these light cues. This is what they're talking about. Because these light cues not only are seeing and perceiving the light in our cones and rods Words and other receptors cells in our skin. But it's the transfer of the photons. And so that's part of this whole quantum biology movement. So me and I have been talking about this for years before it was this quantum biology thing. So it's just getting a new name. And you're gonna start seeing more and more of it, because I think people are starting to recognize, the more we are divorced from our natural rhythms and routines with nature, the sicker we become. And so the healthier we can be is really about bringing those things back together. Absolutely. So anything else on blue light blocking glasses, and it's totally okay to wear? Red blue light blocking glasses over your normal glasses, right?
Evie Takacs 25:48
Oh, yeah, that's what I was sure. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Totally contacts out. But the glasses on and Nope, I got to put the blue light glasses on. So yeah, absolutely. I think you know, again, start with maybe not looking at your phone at night or putting, you know, getting that screen filter, not looking at your phone first thing in the morning, really paying attention to Okay, the sun went down. So maybe the party shouldn't keep going, maybe I should turn off all the lights are maybe I shouldn't dim the lights or get a lamp on or put my glasses on. So we are going to link some blue light blocking glasses in the shownotes. So feel free to check those out. See what you like. There's great companies out there providing these and, again, just starting with one and seeing how you do is totally fine. And I'd be curious to hear I think we will be curious to hear how you feel. If you notice a difference in your sleep and your energy when you wake up. You know, what changes do you notice after a few weeks of wearing these glasses in the evening?
Toréa Rodriguez 26:43
Yeah, please, please don't hesitate to give us a shout out send a DM tag us in comments. We would love to hear how it's working for you or how it's not working for you. And yeah, it's this kind of stuff, though, that we know. The reason why we're talking about it is because it can have a massive impact. And my clients who have started using the blue light blocking glasses noticed a shift in their sleep. Probably within two or three days. It really is a very quick thing. So it doesn't take a long time to get that kind of effect. So we really do want to hear about it. Okay, everybody, we'll see you on the next episode.
Toréa Rodriguez 27:25
Hey, thanks for joining us for this episode of the Wildly Optimized Wellness podcast. If you’re ready to dig deeper into your health, stop playing the Whack-a-Symptom game, start testing to get better guidance, you can find more about Toréa at torearodriguez.com and you can find Evie at holisticallyrestored.com. Want a peek into what it’s like to work with us? Come join us at our Optimized Wellness Community. You can find the invitation link in the show notes below. And if you have a question for the show, you can submit your question under the podcast section of torearodriguez.com. Finally, if you found something helpful in this episode, don’t forget to leave a review, hit that follow button or share it with a friend. They’re gonna love that you thought of them. Until next time, see you outside!
