New Science - A Tiny Change That Can Improve Your Health

from PhotoperiodEffect.com ( http://photoperiodeffect.com/redlight ) - Jan 10, 2007

Want to change your lifestyle and get the biggest bang for your buck? Then go out spend a few dollars on a good red LED bike light. Nope, it's not for exercise – good as that is. You're going to be getting back to nature in a slightly different way.

That “bike light” is your new nightlight. You aren't going to turn on any room lights anymore when you get up during the night or before sunrise, again. Instead, turn on the nightlight, press twice, and you'll have a pure red light that's more than enough to get you to the washroom and back, find the prescription drugs you forgot to take before turning the lights out, etc. No more reading if you can't sleep – choose radio, recorded lectures, or TV sound through speakers attached to your VCR or R-DVD. No more white light at night of any kind, just red, is best. So better drapes, no blue LEDs or other lights at night, also help. It's best to get rid of all the stray white light you possibly can, but start with the red bike light.

You may want to put a long loop of cord around your nightlight so you aren't tempted to put in down in the dark. Also, designate a single place where you will put your light down – say at the foot of one corner of your bed, or looped over a specific bedpost, and never put your red light down unless you put it there; so you can always find it in the dark (having a backup red nightlight so you can find your regular one isn't a bad idea either.)

Why? What magic can spending less than ten dollars this way do? It can change a great deal. For starters, your whole hormonal system. What we didn't know a generation ago, is that we're built for long periods of real darkness during which our whole hormone system changes and a great deal of healing takes place. Remove that and you're setting up conditions in which your mood, weight, inflammation, infection, autoimmune diseases, and more will be affected. We're built for the dark, not to keep the party going under artificial light until we finally collapse into bed, with too much ambient light still present.

What we also didn't know, even a few years ago, is that red light is an exception. The newly discovered cells (called ipRGCs) in our eyes that tell us it's night or day – and so control very nearly our whole hormone system – don't detect red light. But even a flash of blue, green, or white light can cut short our nightly, healing, hormonal changes.

There is too much research tying light, darkness and sleep to major illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease, etc, to list here. But why not just try this simple change yourself and find out? Don't be surprised if within a few weeks your health is better, you have a lot more energy, and are beginning “to feel like your best self!”

Once you've seen some good results, please spread the word. Email, print out or photocopy this short article, and maybe wrap it around another newly purchased red LED bike light, to give that to someone you care about, for their better health. Science discovered the difference red light can make, but only you can start to put that good knowledge to use.