Blue Light Is Wrecking Your Vision! How Screens & Artificial Light Disrupt Your Eyes and Circadian Rhythm | Dr. Valerie Giangrande on Eye Health, Sleep, Quantum Biology, Circadian Health & Eye Strain

0:03 This is the fitness wisdom. Podcast Hello and welcome back to another exciting episode of the Fitness Wisdom podcast. Today we have a very special guest, Doctor Valerie John Grande and she's an optometrist and she views the eye from a quantum biology perspective. So the eye is such an underrated topic, right? Because a lot of people think that when something happens to the eye, it just remains in the eye, but the eye is actually impact so many different systems of the body. And This is why I wanted to get you on today to bring like illumination and light to this area.

0:38 Because many people need to realize that taking care of your eyes is actually taking care of your overall health and well-being. So welcome to the show, Doctor Valerie. It's a pleasure to have you. Thank you so much, Andreas. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Thank you. Awesome. Yeah, I mean, we booked it quite ahead of time. You know, I've been trying to get you to come on the show for quite a while, so I've been very excited and I've been accumulating a lot of questions along, you know, along the way and digging your Instagram page to find some gold to share with the public today.

1:06 And so maybe you can tell us about your story, how you actually go into, you know, the, the road of quantum optometry, because how does that actually differ from traditional or conventional ophthalmology in optometry? Oh, sure. So the, the way I got into it, I've been an optometrist now for almost 25 years at this point. And again, I, I was very conventional the whole time. And then I had started having kids and when my son was about four, he's now 17, when he was about four, he started having some, some neurological, some health issues.

1:39 And of course, you go to the pediatrician, put him on medication. I said, I'm not, you know, I don't want to do any of that. So I went into, kind of delved into functional medicine, which was fantastic. You know, it really helped was a lot of the things we were doing were we're not, right? Toxins, food methylation, all that stuff that we go through with functional medicine. But then I was having some health issues myself, you know, chronic fatigue and, and all these other things. So I went to my own doctor, my functional medicine doctor.

2:03 And the first thing he said to me was, you know, how much sunlight do you get? And I thought it was an interesting question because I never got sunlight maybe when I was a kid, but I hadn't had sunlight in, in decades, right? So it, that opened me up. He, he basically turned me on to, you know, I, I realized who he was following on social media. I started seeing the studies and, and all the information just completely changed everything. So of course, at that moment I started doing all the quantum things with my family, with myself, started seeing these amazing changes.

2:32 So then I started to understand, like in with patients that there's so many links to quantum health and, and most of the things that are happening can all be linked back to, to light because it controls so much of the body. So the regular view of eye care is, is very camera focused. You know, we, we need to have, make sure our light is focusing in the center of the eye. So we have 2020 vision and that's important. Everybody wants to see clearly, but there's such a, it's missing that a lot of people don't, maybe don't focus on is that the eyes control the entire body as far as our health, the light that gets into our eyes is not just for vision.

3:07 There's so many aspects of vision that control the Physiology of our body and, and our world, our modern world has destroyed that. And there's so many issues that happened starting in our eyes that can, you know, go to the whole body just based on, on our modern world and, and what it's done to us so we can get into all. So basically the catalyst for you going down this road and expanding your awareness about what the eyes are doing beyond just receiving the light, you know, just processing the light, but actually going to going in deeper into the body and doing so many different processes, you know, activating certain hormones and all that good stuff was because of your son's health and also because of your own personal health as well.

3:47 And it's always, I always feel like people who get into the circadian and quantum biology space is because of some personal health struggle. And that is because it's like the last thing on the list that we look at, you know, we kind of address all of the things, you know, the nutrition, maybe some environmental factors in the home, like micro plastics or whatever. And then eventually the last thing on the list is the light because we don't think that how can light, you know, possibly influence us?

4:14 Maybe before we dive into all of that, you know, about the interesting things. So give me some interesting facts about the eye that maybe that people don't know about. Yeah, sure. So the eye makes its own hormones. The eye controls neurotransmitters in the body. The eye has probably one of the biggest energy needs in the entire body. So it's got ton of mitochondria. Our muscles never stop moving, you know, micro, we make micro movements over 100,000 micro movements a day where our muscles are constantly these little tiny saccades because if we just stare at one thing, the images would fade.

4:46 So we need these fresh images on our photoreceptors constantly. So there's just so much energy involved in not just vision, but just the entire body. So there's a lot of interesting things about the eye. And again, we have cells in the eye that are not meant for seeing. We have cells that are controlling what every single other cell in her body does. So that that I think is the most fascinating that I, you know, learned. I mean, I, I think that is hopefully common knowledge. I think that is becoming a little bit more common, common knowledge.

5:12 Everyone knows, you know, if you have too much light at night, you can't sleep. But that seems to be the basic that a lot of people have heard, circadian rhythm, things like that. But it goes so much more than that. Yes, wow, that's super fascinating. So let's dive into it then. Like let's dive into all of the functions that the eye does within the human body beyond like eyesight, because I think it's so important to illuminate this fact. So let's begin with I with with light entering the eyes. What's actually going on there?

5:39 Like beyond us, just seeing things. So as far as what we see, we can only see a small portion of this entire spectrum of light that exists. So we just see basically the rainbow, right? We know about Roy GBB, that's what we can perceive as vision, but there's other aspects of the spectrum that are invisible, but we can still detect their eyes detected. And those are the most important parts that actually control a lot of our Physiology. There's also of the blue light aspects. So in our eyes, on our retina, not right in the center where we see the most detail, but kind of in the a little bit lower, we have cells called melanopsin.

6:12 So those are photoreceptors that are blue light receptors and they respond to a certain level of blue light like sky blue. And every time that blue light hits those receptors, it sends a message through our object nerve to a clock in our brain. And that master clock, the SCN super chaosmatic nucleus, once it gets those signals are that's connected to every other parts. It's connected to the pituitary gland and that's going to send messages to different parts of our body. It's connected to our sympathetic system, our nervous system.

6:43 It's connected to basically all of there's the master clock that controls all the cells in our body. So blue light, we need that blue light to be the correct blue light. We need blue light to come from sunlight because there's a certain level of blue light that happens. So when the sun is rising, we have the morning sun. It's a morning signal. It just tells our brain we're so intricately wired for how much blue light there is and what time it is that every time we go outside, our body gets a new time and we get those signals.

7:07 And we also have, you know, red and infrared light that are that we require for our mitochondrial health. So the sun, the sun is a perfect recipe for our eyes. So I'm going to backtrack a bit. So when we're getting exposure in a perfect world, we're getting exposure to sunrise. So then we have the blue light, we have red and infrared light. Now infrared light is a very long wavelength. Very soothing anti-inflammatory wavelength that we physically need. First of all, our entire body needs it, but our eyes in particular need it because the the red and infrared light are what mitochondria response.

7:37 You know, mitochondria are responsible for the energy for basically for keeping us healthy and the eyes have a ton of mitochondria. As I said, they're very energy hungry. So we need that in light to be to come into our eyes to help us make hydration on the cellular level. Our mitochondria helps keep us hydrated gives us energy. So we need those combinations to help, especially early in the morning. It's actually helping us make more melatonin inside our cells to help us with the anti-inflammatory.

8:02 And we also need some ultraviolet light. And this is where I think the biggest hurdle is because we're so conditioned to be so afraid of ultraviolet light, but we actually have all these receptors in our eyes for ultraviolet light for UVA. There is some ultraviolet a light that gets through to our retina. It was not. And when we get those signals that's actually controlling the local circadian rhythm in our eye. It's helping us with dopamine. We need dopamine during the day in our eyes to keep our eyes, so our eyes know what to do so that we see well during the day.

8:31 We, we make our own melatonin at night and, and it's linked to to light. Ultraviolet light is also going to help us link our neurotransmitters. It's going to help optimize serotonin and dopamine pathways that go to the brain and, and the rest of the body. It's going to release nitric oxide. Nitric oxide, when we're exposed to ultraviolet A actually opens up our blood vessels and increases in nutrient flow and oxygen and, and nutrients and it's going to dilate blood vessels and just helps lower blood pressure does all of those things, but it also helps with nutrients in the eyes as well.

9:02 And the other thing it does is it connects to the brain. It connects to something called, you know, palm C, which is something that connects to our metabolism, our ability to make melanin and all these other things. So you can see that ultraviolet light in in these different portions throughout the day are very helpful, especially in the morning. So again, those morning really important for us. And that has nothing to do with vision. You know, it's just it's red light. And and the interesting thing about ultraviolet light, which most people are afraid of, is that it's always balanced by infrared.

9:29 So if you get an oxidizing signal or a strong signal from ultraviolet, it has that balance of infrared in the sunlight. So as long as you know there, I'm not telling anyone to at the sun or to, there's different ways to do it, but we really need as as far as the morning signals, we need to optimize first our circadian rhythm. We need to optimize our neurotransmitters. It helps optimize our sleep patterns when we're getting that UVA and we're, we're optimizing serotonin. Serotonin is what gets turned into melatonin at night.

9:54 So, so we need those recursors to help us sleep. So we need all of these different aspects of light through our eyes to help us maintain proper health. And again, that needs to. Guys, if you haven't already, smash that subscribe button and the like button. Now back to the show. Wow, that was super fascinating. Thank you for that breakdown. So basically you break that you broke down the different wavelengths of light. Well, not not all of them, but you, you talked a lot about about the invisible ones and about the blue light as well, which is critical for the circadian sinking right for our body to know what time of day it is because we have these receptors in the eyes that you mentioned.

10:31 I find this super fascinating actually, that the eye has these specific, specific receptors that is meant to pick up specifically this wavelength of light, which is only present at certain moments of the day. And then after when those moments are gone, that receptor now is constantly like seeking for that light. And if it gets it from anywhere, any source, whether that is natural or artificial, it will, again, you know, influence those clocks. So I can imagine how this can massively influence the circadian rhythm in a negative way as well.

11:03 If we're exposed to the wrong forms of light at the wrong times of the day, for example, in the evening time, that could, you know, you know, throw sink totally off off track. But as well, I think what was really cool what you said there, a lot of the processes that are happening in the body are happening due to the invisible wavelengths of light, you know, which is the UV and the infrared, which is impacting our hormones and all, and our neurotransmitters and all of this in our cellular repair, our melatonin and our mitochondria.

11:31 And I think that's super cool and fascinating for people to understand. Done. Then maybe. Do you think that there is a reason why the human eye cannot see those specific wavelengths? That's a great question. I I just think we're, we're not, we're not meant to use it for vision. We're meant to use it for more important things, non linear effects, you know, effects that we don't need to see. We don't need to roll our bodies, you know, autonomic functions or all the Physiology in our eyes. Like I don't think we need to see it because we we don't like what we see helps control our world and how we navigate and all the things that we do.

12:03 But we don't need to see that or just designed to let the body do what it needs to do as long as we give it the right inputs and and again, that's where the world, you know, fails, fails us with all the lights that we're exposed to and at the wrong time, as you said. So you talked about the sky blue color from coming from the sky, the natural blue light coming from the sun. And so maybe can you tell us a little bit about the differences between the natural blue light and the artificial blue light?

12:30 Like what are the differences and why is 1 harmful and why is 1 beneficial? Right. So those melanopsin cells will respond to basically a range of blue light. So that the peak of light melanopsin response is about 479 nanometers 480. That's considered more of a, a cyan blue or a sky blue. But there is a range where melanopsin responds. So it can respond, you know, from the lower 4 hundredths into, even into the Green Zone. Sunlight has all of that, right? So, and, and in different, different ways, as I said, it gets stronger in the middle of the day and then it gets weaker and all of that.

13:00 And we're exposed indoor light, most LED screens and phones no longer has used to, if we backtrack to say incandescent bulbs, when it incandescent bulbs, the bulbs that used to get hot had more of a full spectrum. They had heat, they had the infrared portion. So it was a little bit more balanced. It was more like sunrise or sunset didn't really do as much damage to us. But those aren't energy efficient anymore. So they took all of that out of out of the bulbs. And now if you look at a spectrum of most LE DS and phones and TV's and all of it, all this indoor light, it's really just a single spectrum of blue light.

13:32 And that blue light is roughly in the 455 nanometer range. It's still within the range that melanopsin will fire. But the problem with this light is that there's no balance. And if you think about blue light, it's actually quite a strong signal. We need a strong signal to set our circadian rhythm and to do the things it needs to do. But it's, it's close to ultraviolet and, and people, you know, know that ultraviolet's a strong light. And if you think about that, it's very oxidizing signal. But in sunlight, it's OK.

13:56 It's balanced. It's balanced by the antioxidant long wavelengths, the infrared and the red. Indoors, it's not you have this unchanging blue that has a strong, powerful wavelength with no balance. So what's happening now? That kind of blue light is considered more of a hazard to our eyes. So when we're staring at screens, we're not designed to stare at that single spectrum of light. That doesn't change. So first, it's the color temperature of the sun at about 12:00 in the afternoon. So just from that standpoint, it just doesn't make sense that we would have this same unchanging signal all day.

14:24 From a circadian rhythm standpoint, it just it doesn't make sense. We need the morning, we need there to be a crescendo, a blue, and then it goes down. So it's messy, but from a retinal standpoint, from an ocular standpoint, those wavelengths of that stronger light actually causes oxidative stress in our eyes. Our macular, our cells are absorbing all the site that we're not designed to absorb. And it actually creates damage. It actually creates A dehydration, it damages our cells. It I can get into the specifics, but it's very damaging and because there's no balance, you know, a lot of people are getting ocular issues from staring at screens all day and then at the end of the day when the sun goes down, melanopsin is not expecting blue light that the brain is supposed to have darkness.

15:03 That's what we're designed for cortisol supposed to go down when there's no more blue Every time we're exposed to that blue light, cortisol gets released because that's what gives us energy. We're supposed to have higher cortisol during the day and it's supposed to go down at night in the darkness and we're supposed to have a few hours of darkness so that that melatonin from the brain gets released and we can start repairing the body. Well, most of us aren't sitting at home in the dark. We're sitting at home.

15:24 We have lights on. Even if even if we're not on the phone, which most people are, even LE DS or TV's, it still has blue light. That's going to now tell the brain it must be 12:00 in the afternoon all over again. So here's cortisol. We're going to start that clock and, and, and our bodies releasing cortisol over again. And that's going to start the whole trigger of other hormones and keep us awake. And it knocks out melatonin. Melatonin from the pineal gland cannot be released if cortisol's high.

15:48 There has to be this, you know, this up and down wave so melatonin can't be released. And melatonin, not only does it help us sleep, which everybody knows, but it repairs our body and it repairs the eyes. It actually helps the, the eyes repair all those photoreceptors. You know, all the light that we're exposed to there exists from the photoreceptors have to keep getting regenerated constantly because there's so much light. Now imagine all that blue light that's damaging. It has to, we need even more repair because we're not designed for this kind of light.

16:16 And without that melatonin to repair it, it's, it's a mess. It really is causing a lot of trouble. And that's just the eyes. You know, there's also the other health aspects of the blue light, which we know, you know, diabetes and blood sugar and the high, high blood pressure, autoimmune, all the other diseases that are linked to circadian rhythm dysfunction. Because if our cells don't know what time it is, they don't know what to do. And it creates a lot of stress. So it's it's a really big. Imagine spiking your blood sugar without eating cake, elevating cortisol, your stress hormone, without being stressed, and suppressing your body's most powerful sleep, antioxidant and regeneration hormone, which is your melatonin.

16:51 This is why I make sure to wear my yellow daytime blue light blocking glasses every time when I spend time indoors, under artificial lights and in front of screens to protect my eyes from oxidative stress and my entire body. And if I'm going to be exposed to artificial blue light, especially after sunset, I'm going to wear my red lens, blue light blocking glasses. To. Support my melatonin production and release. So if you want to protect your energy levels, sleep, and biology from artificial blue light, head over to the description and you will find all of the links with a massive discount on my favorite blue light blocking glasses.

17:22 So basically you just explain there why circadian rhythms are important because like the eyes, you know, govern really our circadian rhythms because the like, the master clock is found, you know, behind the eyes, right in the brain. And so that informs the rest of the body what to do with all of its processes. And when that gets thrown off, as you mentioned by us living our modern lifestyle, then it throws everything off. And then we have these other health issues which can manifest in different ways for different people depending on the individual.

17:54 And so another thing is that what you mentioned, which was important earlier was about the melatonin that we make from the infrared light. And because I just thought about it when you said about how we need the melatonin at night to repair the body and regenerate, right, and to repair the eyes. But nature is so intelligent that it put like, you know, the sort of the fix with the stressor, right? So you have the stressor of the blue and the UV, but then it added the red and the infrared, which then balances the spectrum.

18:22 And then that is able to produce this melatonin in the mitochondria. And then that's able to repair the mitochondria from, you know, that excess energy that they are producing. Because every time when they produce energy, I can imagine that they're also producing reactive oxygen species as well, right? So if they're making more energy, then that means more Ros. And so that's what you were saying that basically if the if we're exposed to the artificial blue light the entire day, that unchanging spectrum which is lacking the red and the infrared because of not being outside and because because of not having full spectrum lighting indoors and nothing will ever beat the sun anyway, then that's going to cause so much oxidative stress without the repair of the melatonin.

19:03 Is that correct? Absolutely. And I thought that was fascinating research from Scott Zimmerman when he, you know, found that near infrared light, just being outside, being exposed to that gets so deep into our body and it helps the mitochondria make it so melatonin. And that's not what gets into our bloodstream. So it's not making us tired, but it's, it's our built in antioxidant system and we're just designed to be outside. We're designed to get those signals. Even the shade, I mean, the, the shade is really powerful as well.

19:28 Like I'm sitting under a tree. It's one of the, it's really powerful because we have so much near infrared light that we're not getting into words at all. And that's one of the biggest problems. Even if we're sitting behind windows, a lot of people say, Oh, my office has windows and I have all this window and natural light coming in, but you're not, you're not really getting full natural light because those windows unfortunately block a lot of the infrared and they're blocking, you know, some of the, it's actually causing an imbalance because it's blocking the, it's letting some UVA through, it's letting mostly blue and it's blocking the infrared.

19:57 So again, we have an imbalance of that blue and even perhaps UVA that's not balanced either, which is a little not great. Everything needs to be balanced for it to work. If you're taking spectrum and and you're isolating it, that's where we have issues. Yes, exactly. So yeah, it's just so important for people to realize that you need to just spend as much time outside as possible, or if you are going to be indoors, to make sure that you open your windows and just to allow the natural light. Because I feel like a lot of people don't realize how light is nonlinear, how it works, the way that photons, they sort of bounce around.

20:31 And even if you the sunlight is not coming directly indoors, the the light intensity so much greater with the windows open #1 and #2 you're getting the spectrum, a balanced spectrum of light into the house. So you're not then even if you are on a screen or something like that and you're sitting by an open window, you can meeting mitigate some of the harmful effects of the blue light. Would you say that that would be beneficial? Absolutely. I think that's fantastic. If you're in an office or you're in a home and working from home, you can sit by an open window.

21:01 I mean, that's fantastic. You're getting the signals that you need. You don't have to, right? You don't have to be outside. You can have an open window. You're still going to get those benefits, absolutely. Awesome. And so let's talk about sunglasses a little bit and let's have a nuanced discussion about this because of course you can see in social media there's a lot of tribalism going on, right where some people say that never wear sunglasses and some people are very pro sunglasses and yeah, so maybe give give us a nuanced perspective to sunglasses.

21:27 When when is it a good time to avoid them? When is it like a good time maybe to consider them and, you know, what are their use cases? Because is really good at making things, creating inventions, right? And we made them for a reason. And it probably benefited us for what we created it for at some moment in time. But then when it becomes like culture and fashion and trend, then it loses its function and now it's just used and abused, right? Yeah. Agreed. So yes, this is definitely a nuanced discussion here.

21:58 Most people who wear a lot of people who wear sunglasses love wearing their sunglasses and never take them off. And I think that's a really big health risk. So obviously if we're wearing sunglasses, just we're not getting the full spectrum of light. We're not even getting even if sunrise doesn't have ultraviolet light. So technically sunglasses are blocking ultraviolet light. So some people say, well, why can't I wear sunglasses at sunrise? There is no UV anyway, but you're still changing this spectrum.

22:23 You're reducing the amount of light that you're getting. You're completely talking the signal of light. We, I think signals of light are crucial, as we said, for the entire body. So we cannot wear sunglasses in the morning. We should not be wearing them first. And, and this very, because depending on where you are in the world, but the first hour of the day, there's no UV that can hurt us. For the most part, UV doesn't really show up or UV that can be even, you know, doesn't really show up until the, until the sun's about at a 10° angle, because that's when the UV is rotor wavelength, it gets blocked, you know, by at sunrise, sunrise, we need those signals on, we need signals that are not blocked.

22:56 We need the blue, the red, the infrared. We need all of that. And then when the sun rises and UVA starts to show up, those lighter levels of UV, Like I said, we have receptors for UVA on our cornea. We have them in our retina for a reason. We're designed to absorb it. We need, especially with that infrared balance to start the day to help our mood, our neurotransmitters, all of those things that I had mentioned. If you're wearing sun, you're not getting those signals and that's really damaging. And again, you don't have to.

23:23 Many people who wear them aren't wearing them because they're light sensitive. But that light sensitivity gets worse. If you've already, if you're indoors all the time getting cooked by that artificial light and then you go outside and and you wear sunglasses, you're not getting any signals. So now it's just getting worse and worse and worse. So for people who are super light, even if you just pull them down for a few minutes, just get used to it. You don't want to go out there if you wear sunglasses all the time.

23:45 You don't want to just go out and take them off and be out in the sun all day. That's not my point. But my point is we do need those natural signals. And then even as the day goes on, we, we know everyone thinks about sunlight as vitamin DI can make my vitamin D in the sun when there's so much more to it than right. That's like just one little aspect of the sun. But when we can vitamin D just as an example, that's when UVB has to be at the the sun has to be at a 30° angle or greater, the UV has to be over.

24:09 You know, 3 or 4 doesn't even happen all year depending on where we are. But when we do have those signals are hitting our skin, yes, we make vitamin D, but we also have a lot of protective mechanisms for absorbing vitamin. The stronger signals of ultraviolet safely and part of those signals up regulated when we when we have the same signal coming through our eyes. So, so we have protective, you know, we have melanin that gets built up, we have urecanic acid that gets built up. We have different signals, nitric, oxygen, all these different things.

24:40 We have again, the body makes the melatonin, you know, in our cells with all these different mechanisms. But if our brain has sunglasses on, the body thinks it's night, like we don't know what time it is, right? So the brain can say, well, is it middle of the day is my skin, my skin's getting 1 signal, my eyes are getting another. And and that's just a mismatch for palm C, which helps up regulate. That's the molecule that's everywhere, but it's in our brain and that helps regulate alpha MSH, which helps regulate melanin.

25:06 And now UVB does not get absorbed into the retina. You know, it's just it actually can hit our cornea. But there's actually a study that came out showing that when UVB hits the cornea, and I think it was done in mice, that they found an increase in alpha MSH in the skin when UVB hits the cornea. And it had nothing to do with the visual input to the optic nerve. It had more to do with this nitric oxide signaling through the a different nerve pathway just from our cornea. So you can see the importance of getting all these signals.

25:33 And again, we want to be careful. We everyone has different levels of melanin. So, so we require different levels of sunlight. Like somebody with very light from the north doesn't need all these hours of sun, but we do need some of those signals. The times when we have obviously for driving, there's a lot of glare, you know, we want to be safe. So driving the windows of the car kind of block the light that we need anyway. So you might as well, you know, be careful if you're driving. So a lot of people need sunglasses to drive, especially if you're driving into the sun.

25:59 A safety is always an issue. The other issue is reflections that there's some some environments where the glare and reflections can actually be damaging because it's changing sunlight. So if we think about snow, the light, you know, it's getting reflected off of snow right into our eyes is, is higher levels of UV because it's reflected so much. So that changes. So if you're, if you're getting an unbalanced amount of sun, that can be damaging if you're on very, you know, white sand, that's reflecting.

26:26 And, and when I say reflections, it's not every reflection. It's not that every reflection is bad for us, but there are some visceral reflections that you can tell him and, and you just know that they're not good for you. You need the blind layer off of, of reflections. People who are say, fishermen are on boats all day long. Yeah, the reflections coming off the water is, is a little unbalanced. So, so you do want to be careful. I'm so those are the situations where too much of an unbalanced signal of light needs to be protected.

26:50 So those are, those are situations. And again, this isn't, there's no real blanket statement for when you should wear them. Like I can't tell everybody don't ever wear them, but we need sunlight in our eyes. It's really important that we get those signals, even if they're intermittent. So a lot of times I'll say, you know, if you're wearing sunglasses and just go outside and you know, throughout the day, just got some breaks pulling down even for a few minutes at a time and don't face the sun, go in the shade.

27:13 Shade is really important when you get those signals in the shade, it's so soothing. I like to wear hats, you know, I, I wear hats all the time in the middle of the day in the summer. I, I just feel so comfortable with the hat just reducing a lot of that glare, but I'm still getting the signals in my eyes. I love hats. I love under an umbrella. If I'm at the beach, I get, I get the sun that I think I need and then I sit under an umbrella and I just it's fantastic. So those are the things I think we need to understand that sunglasses, I don't know where this came from that we have to block every bit of sun.

27:39 It doesn't make any sense at all. And and it's we're designed to handle, you know, these different wavelengths and how important it is. So that's what people need to understand that we don't need them all the time. Yeah, exactly. I think that it's important for people to build that relationship with their environment, right? Because as you mentioned earlier that the UV, for example, is not out at all times of the day and the intensity of the UV light is not the same at all times of the day. It's the same paranoia with people applying sunscreens before the UV has even come out.

28:11 You know, I see people when I go to the beach every morning and to get grounded in the sea, it's like in the early morning time. So there's no UV yet or there's very little UV. You're not going to burn at that time and there's no UV. So like why you're literally blocking that, you know, because there is some infrared blocking sunscreens right now as well, which is insane. So you're literally blocking, you know, the beneficial, you know, wavelengths of light, while you could be getting so many incredible benefits, you know, getting grounded in the sea, plus you're polluting the ocean as well.

28:41 So you're doing a disservice to yourself and to the into the planet. So it's the same thing with sunglasses, except with sunglasses, you're not having the planet at least. And so basically, like you need to just consider like, when are you using the sunglasses? You need to understand, OK, maybe there are some use cases, as Doctor Valerie explained, like certain situations like on water or snow or something like this, or if you're unconditioned. And, and I personally noticed that if I don't wake up with the sunrise or if I by accident miss the sunrise, my eyes are way, way more sensitive for the rest of the day.

29:12 And what I love about the sun is that it's designed with your biology, like your biology has evolved to, to, to grow with the sun. So when you're outside, you notice that how the light intensity is so much less. So the sunrise or Daybreak in the morning before the sun has even risen, you can look at the horizon no problem. Like it's not difficult to keep your eyes full open and as the sun is rising higher and higher and higher, it's not hard for the eyes to remain open because that is such a gradual and slow increase which the eyes are constantly adjusting to the I'm just saying, saying based on my experience, you know what's actually going on.

29:49 And then like towards the middle of the day, because you have been out all of those hours, now your body knows how to respond to the middaylight. And then you know, then you've got the afternoon is like now the reverse. So it's going to be easy for you to keep your eyes open obviously in the afternoon times and then you've got more of the just the red and the infrared remaining because of the UV leaving the environment. So then it's going to be like so much more healing as well for the rest of your body.

30:13 So I just feel like it's so important for people to acknowledge that the UV is not the same like all the entire day. Plus at different times of the year, it's not the same either. So it changes with the seasons. And we just need to build this relationship with being in connection with the sun as much as we can and being outdoors and actually realizing that what do we actually need, you know? And then. Yeah. And then the glasses then become like a tool which we utilize in certain situations and conditions.

30:40 But we shouldn't necessarily just grab them out of habit or just use them because we think that we are sensitive to the light. But we just haven't conditioned ourselves to be able to tolerate that light because we haven't woken out with the sunrise and we haven't done the circadian principles. Exactly. Yeah. Sunrise. Is crucial. None of this works without without getting those warning signals. One thing I did forget to mention about sunglasses. Sunglasses, because there's less light getting into the eyes, the pupils, your pupils are going to dilate a little bit, right?

31:07 They're going to try to let more light in. Our pupils are always telling our brain how much light we need and we're designed and it's again, another protective mechanism. It was too much light. The pupils will close so that we're not getting as much. Sunglasses kind of mess that up a little bit because now there's there's less light, there's less brightness, so the pupils can get a little more dilated. And here's what happens. Well, the other thing I forgot to mention is that a lot of sunglasses will block ultraviolet light, but it's not blocking that high energy blue light.

31:31 And there's a lot of blue light in the sun as well. So now again, we're we're talking about a possible imbalance. So if you're just blocking ultraviolet, but you're still getting the high energy Violet, you're actually getting more of that or the high energy blue because now your pupils are bigger. So you can potentially, depending on the sunglass, some sunglasses will go into the blue range as well. But if you're not blocking that high energy blue and you're just blocking the ultraviolet and your pupils are more dilated now, you're going to get more damage because that blue light penetrates a lot faster and a lot, a lot deeper than ultraviolet.

31:59 Like that's, that's again, that high energy, right? That's why everybody talks about blue light because it does penetrate the retina so much more. So that's the other thing I forgot about that. Like it's just not natural. Yeah, yeah. No, that's such. An important thing that you said there and another thing is that what was really important, what you mentioned was about the brightness that, you know, we talked about how important it is to block the blue light at night time and how important that is for melatonin production and minimizing cortisol elevation.

32:26 But I don't think people actually realize how important brightness actually is during the daytime. And I don't think we can emphasize this enough that you know that you need to be get the the brightness of light as much as you can throughout the day, even if you're not in the sun directly, even if you're in the shade. This is why we say like, keep the windows open because that light intensity, like no light bulb will ever be able to produce, you know, of course, yeah, you can probably get some light bulbs that produce like, really bright indoor environments.

32:54 But it's not going to be the same full spectrum with the same, you know, light intensity, which is giving your body this information. And your body can tell that when it goes towards the evening time and that light intensity starts to decrease, it can tell, oh, light intensity is going down, plus blue light is going down. That perfect combination signals, you know, melatonin, you know, production and release. And so, yeah, so, so important. The Lux is really important. So even though the color temperature of indoor lights tends to be the same color temperature as the sun at you know, the middle of the day, the lux is not as bright like you said.

33:28 I mean outdoor lux even on a cloudy day they can go up to like 100,000 lux or 10, you know, whatever it is compared to indoors. What is a 506 hundred? 1000 lux is such a huge difference for our metabolism. We need that. We need those bright signals, absolutely. And I think at night, I love Sarah Kleiners at my circadian app with her lux meter. You're familiar with that night. We need less than 10 lux. We need darkness. We even, we need such a dim environment at night, not just not just the light itself, but we need that dimness to help as well because if our pupils start to die, start to constrict because of bright light, that sets a signal that it's daytime the same way.

34:02 Yeah, it's important for. People who are aware of this work already who are in the circadian health space or biohackers who are interested in taking care of their light environment, that they even if you use a red light or incandescent at night, that is actually, yes, as you mentioned below, a certain amount of locks because that alone can suppress melatonin, right? Yeah, some red. Light like if I would never recommend, you know, using red light therapy, red light panels at night because it's just the brightness really right.

34:31 You can use Olds, you know, those are are not the luxes and it's bright. But but if you're doing intense, say red light therapy or you even really bright red lights and your pupils are real enough to it's still a brightness signal. So yeah, we do want darkness at night. We've probably heard. About red. Light therapy before and all the incredible benefits that it has to offer. But unfortunately, not all panels on their market are created equally and This is why I only use and trust the ones that have put in the description below.

34:56 They have the highest quality panels on the market from build quality, a aesthetics, and functionality. So if you want a massive 40% discount on my favorite red light therapy panels, head to the description below and make sure to use the code attached to get a massive 40% discount. So. Maybe let's go back to the circadian rhythms a little bit. Like for example, if the eyes are damaged or strained, how will that actually? Because we talked about how the light is so important, you know, for the eyes and how the eyes regulate the circadian rhythm.

35:26 But like, how about the circadian rhythm like influencing the eye health? I guess they have like this bidirectional relationship, right? So if the eyes are not working as they should or, or, you know, if they have to have some issues, how is that going to influence us so? It influences the entire body. And in my opinion, the light solely, the eye itself has its own circadian rhythm. And of course, the eye is controlling the circadian rhythm of the entire body, right? So if you're getting damaged, so you're exposed to all this artificial light, you start damaging the photoreceptor, start to get damaged, including those melanopsin cells.

35:58 Now that now we're not getting the correct light signals that go through the optic nerve to that master clock and the timing is off. So now if the timing is off and that's controlling every, basically every cell in our body, our body doesn't know what to do. And it's, it's creates stress, It's a mismatch in timing. And if our body doesn't know what to do, if our digestive enzymes, if our mood, if our hormones and our organs and, and we're not on the correct time, you can imagine how many things can happen with, with the, with the entire body, the systemic health.

36:27 So eye health has to be really good. You know that that's anything downstream from the eyes. Anything that affects the eyes can affect everything downstream to it I guess is my point. And the itself have their own circadian rhythm. So we need the light we need again. We need retinal dopamine to be bright in the higher in the day, we need retinal melatonin. The retina makes its own melatonin at night to repair its photoreceptors at night. So those signals also have to be correct. So the circadian rhythm of the eye itself and the secreting rhythm of the body have to be correct so that they can work together.

36:56 And anything that goes wrong in the eye can, can really have these horrible downstream effects for the entire body based on, based on what kind of light signals we need light signals to get to the body. So even if we don't have enough DHA, you know, if we're not, if we don't have enough of the nutrients that that are needed so that those light signals can transfer to the brain, that can affect the entire body as well. Let's talk a little bit. About that about the nutrients in the eyes, I rather really interesting post that you wrote about vitamin A and how it can be a double edged sword in the in the wrong type of environment, right.

37:29 How it can be great in the right type of environment, but it can be detrimental in the wrong type of environment. So maybe let's talk about the role of DHA in the eyes and also vitamin A as well. So in order for. Us to see the way photoreceptors work, not just in our eyes and the entire body, but it's vitamin A is connected to, you know, the chromophore that that that accepts light. And when light hits that we call it an obstinate. When light hits it, it's actually vitamin A in this form 11 CIS.

37:57 It's just a form of vitamin A. And when light hits it, it changes its form to an all transform. So it just changes its configuration. And that shift in vitamin A is really what starts all the cascades of vision. It's it's the crucial need for how we see. But once it's switches to the all transform. So every time lights hitting a photoreceptor, it's CIS, all, you know, 11 CIS to all trans over and over and over again. But in order to see again, in order for that photoreceptor to accept light again, now that vitamin A has to recycle back to 11 CIS, back to the same formula, the same shape, so that it can accept light again.

38:31 And that vitamin A cycle takes a while. It's actually it's not immediate and the more of that armful blue light that we have when, when vitamin A is going through its cycle, there's different intermediate forms of vitamin A that keep getting so pathway so keeps changing and changing and changing. And some of those intermediates, vitamin A blue light actually can, can hurt. It can respond to vitamin A. So even we're talking about photoreceptors that aren't even blue light receptors, the vitamin A still responding to blue light in that harmful that that hazard of blue light, that strong signal can actually take those intermediates and damage them.

39:07 It's toxic. They become toxic intermediates. And because that cycle doesn't happen immediately, now you have these toxic intermediates floating around and they're causing damage. They can, they can damage the cell membranes of our photoreceptors. They damage our, they say they damage the RPE. The retinal pigment epithelial layer is perhaps the most important layer of the retina because that's what's regenerating our photoreceptors. That's where our melanin, that's what's keeping our eyes healthy.

39:29 And, and when you have damage from vitamin A can actually become toxic. And blue light really does trigger that. So while we need vitamin A for vitamin, if we don't have enough vitamin A, it's not good because then our photoreceptors can't work. But vitamin A itself, I'm toxic. So taking vitamin A as a supplement, you know, it's not going to answer anything if you still have the wrong light environment. Now you're just creating more. So that's really important. And DHA is, is makes up the cell membranes in our photoreceptors that it makes up so much of our eye health.

39:56 And DHA is a healthy fat found in fish, for example. And because of this, because of its structure, it'll, it, it collects light, it has a lot of electrons and it's just, it's like a, it's like a, a wire. So it's like a. Direct current, it helps us create energy flow. It helps the light get to our brain very quickly. And we need DHA to be, we need fish, we need to eat DHA, we need to make it, we need to have it in our retina so that the light that we're gathering goes right to where it's needed.

40:24 Without DHA, those signals are, are, are not, are not getting there. So it's like a, it's like a copper wire, you know, it's just, it's just wiring HA and we need vitamin A, but we need it in the correct context and does blue light. Damage DHA. Also, if you're exposed to artificial blue light, does it alter its form it it can? Damage DHA and I think if we have a lot of you hear people talk about seed oils, how that becomes oxidized under light. So a lot of that plays a role. Yes, you can get damaged.

40:52 It's just that high energy blue is really damaging in general. So it is important. We do need, we do need a lot of DHA in our diet. Taking it as a supplement, I usually don't like to, I used to recommend it all the time, but I, I hesitate to recommend that at this point because, because getting it in a supplement is very difficult because it gets oxidized so quickly. And the idea of getting a nutrients from our food, you know, it's, it's already in the perfect recipe. It's already, we're able to absorb it so much better if we're taking it isolated and supplement.

41:20 Sometimes that just overrides the system a bit. And I don't think there's a lot of benefit to that Sometimes, Yes, yes. It's like taken out of the matrix. So your body is like not fully understanding maybe sometimes what it's taking in. But also what you said about the oxidation state of it as well. You know, by sitting on the shelf in like warm temperatures where maybe it's not designed to be or different like harsh blue light environments that you can see in the stores. For example, you know, you see all of our food in the grocery stores, right?

41:50 It's all sitting like under this artificial fluorescent blue light. What's that actually doing to the food? Food that we are consuming, especially the fats. I'm not an advocate of seed oils at all, right? I tell people to avoid them at all costs. But, you know, what about all the fruits and the vegetables and the meats? What's actually happening to that as well? Under the blue light? We don't even know. And then we're consuming it. And maybe we're, you know, receiving less biophotons from the food.

42:15 I don't know. Maybe we're just receiving just less nutrients. What's your thoughts? That's a great question. I mean, I would imagine our lighting situation, it effects everything, right. I have to really think about that. That's a great question. I would imagine it has an effect. I just need to think through that a bit. Yeah, I mean it's. Just nice to think about these things, isn't it? It's similar to. If you're getting blood work and then the lab that you're using is under blue light, then that's going to change both of your blood work, right?

42:41 There's just blue light effects, so much of our bodies. How would it affect? I think the most important thing with food is if, if we're getting it from a local, if, if it's food from a different part of the world and it had to travel. I mean, that you're losing energy that way just doesn't make sense. Like if we're eating food that's local and grows seasonally and it didn't have to travel. And when it's not sitting on a truck or sitting in a in a grocery store for, you know, weeks, then we are going to get better signals when it makes more sense for our nature doesn't make sense for us.

43:08 Things that don't really grow near us or or you know, halfway across the the world by the time it gets it just doesn't make doesn't make sense. So yeah, that would that would play a role I guess that discussion. Always, always goes back to the, you know, the light that the food contains, you know, like how much light does the food contain and retain really. And the fact that, you know, when foods are picked too early, for example, you know, when they're not ripe and then they are traveled in gases and they're brought like across the globe.

43:36 You know, you're eating a papaya from Costa Rica went on the other side of the world. Then that's not going to be the most beneficial for you. It's also probably giving your body wrong signals. It's probably going to produce too much Ros as well in your system depending on your lifestyle. So then that's more inflammation and then obviously that's not going to be good for your eye health either. Maybe you can tell me some symptoms associated with poor eye health that you see, you know, with people like for example, if they don't have very good vision or if they've had eye damage or strain from technology usage or whatever, what kind of symptoms are associated with that beyond the eyes, Right, I think.

44:16 So many people these days have dry eyes. I mean, that's probably the most common thing that happens because when we're staring at screens, we're not blinking. First of all, we're we're not meant to stare at it, but we're just getting so dehydrated from these lights. Also, even EMF's being exposed to, to harmful radiation is a dehydrating signal. So I would say dry eyes is probably the first thing that goes wrong. So we have burning, we have fluctuating vision because our tear film actually keeps our eyes smooth and healthy and clear.

44:44 So every time we blink, it's like a windshield. So what happens when that tear film breaks up or it's not formed properly because of all this inflammation that we're exposed to? We're going to get burning. We're cheering, fluctuating vision, redness, just like that's just the simplest thing that people get. That's probably the most common symptom. My eyes are dry, my eyes are dry. My eyes burn, My eyes are cheering. My eyes. Everybody, everybody and most people who have these symptoms are on screens and, and unfortunately that's the world and we have to, we're, we're just, we have jobs, we're on screens during the day and we're not meant to stare.

45:19 Not only the light issue, just we're not meant to keep our eyes focused in one position and not blink, blink. We need to the muscles that we're using the strain. A lot of people will also have blurry vision at the end of the day because they've been staring and their muscles are just trying so hard to focus. By the time they, they look up in the distance. Most people don't look in the distance enough. Every time we look in the and so our muscles relax. If we're staring at something so close muscles get stuck, what happens?

45:44 Vision keeps getting worse. A lot of people who are near sight and need stronger and stronger prescriptions because we're just straining our eyes in this near vision. We need to look in the distance. We need to take breaks, we need to get the right light. You know, that's really important. So symptoms of fluctuating vision, worsening vision. Even floaters, if floaters are really interesting. So many people have floaters. People hate floaters. I think it's a lot to do with dehydration. You know, the floaters, we all have Jelly in the eye full of structured water, hyaluronic acid water, collagen and, and it needs, it needs, we're lacking in Fred light and Fred lights going to help us with our structured water, with our, you know, exclusion zone water.

46:17 All of that blue light dehydrates us. So if you're getting all this dehydration signals, you can get more fluid because that vitreous ball of Jelly is going to just shrink, you know, especially if you're new things like that eye strain, headaches, and then you can get others, you can have systemic effects, you know, just based on what we said, the downstream effects of, of poor eyesight, balance issues, vestibular the, the vision is linked to our posture. It's linked to our vestibular system. And there's so much of our brain is, is devoted to vision because it's like our steering wheel for our posture.

46:48 You know, we need so we Orient our bodies so, so we're a forward head posture all day. Like all of that is is just wreaking havoc and it does stem from from poor molecular health which stems from our environment. So is there? Is there maybe like something that we're missing in terms of what things are actually causing eye damage and strain? Like we talked about the artificial blue light in the tech, for example, people's tech abuse, I guess, using screens for multiple hours a day on end without taking any natural light breaks outside or just being exposed to any kind of like just balanced light spectrum, this completely unnatural isolated blue, but also the fact that people are not blinking as well.

47:28 That's that's another huge issue. And also because it has that dehydrating effect as well as you mentioned. And we also talked about the Emfs a little bit. You know, one thing I noticed from personal experience is even if I wear my red blue light booking glasses and I have to do something in the evening, even though my eyes are protected like from the blue light, I still feel like they get like strained or like they hurt. I just feel like the Emfs are so you know, they're just so harmful. They just the glasses are not protecting you against the EMF's I assume.

48:03 So can you maybe explain a little bit what's going on when our eye is exposed to EMF? Sure, I'm just a little. Backtrack though for the red light because I wear also the orange glasses at night sometimes I put the red ones on. It's really hard. It screens with those red light glasses on and just because the the light is so dim and red light focuses in a different part of our retina. Like if we think about the way blue lights going to bend fastest and red light, like if we look at a prism in a rainbow, because of the way the wavelengths are, blue light focuses faster and red light focuses lower.

48:34 So red light is kind of focusing almost a little bit behind our retina. So in order to see with the red light at night, if our pupils are bigger, we have to focus to see. So I think that this is just my thought, like I, I, I just think that it's causing more strain because now we have to focus even with larger pupils and, and it's hard to see at night, like it's almost better. And it's almost impossible to do that, especially in the world we live in to say, never go on a screen at night, especially in the winter.

49:00 But it is hard. It's a lot of strain. And, and although it's protecting our eyes from the blue light, it's still tough. It's, it's, it's tough on the body. A lot of people when I show them my, my phone screen that it's red, they're like, I can't see through that. I said, I know I can't either. I mean, I guess they don't own, but that's, again, that, that's something you can't really tell everybody that because that's not the world that we live in. So it does make it difficult. But EM house in general, when we're exposed to those signals, it's like being exposed to a microwave in the sense that it's dehydrating ourselves.

49:28 It's actually damaged damaging our MiTo where our calcium channels, it's allowing. There's studies showing that when we're exposed to those EMF or Wi-Fi signals, it's actually going to open up calcium channels into our cell. And what does that do? It's bringing in positive charge and the mitochondria, we need more negative charge in order to work. We need voltage, we need electrons. So the mitochondria is going to work really hard at trying to get that calcium out and it's not going to really work well and doing other things.

49:52 At least that's how I understand it. So damage is our mitochondria, it's dehydrating. If our mitochondria is not working now we're not making a lot of water. We're not making that exclusions on water that the, the energy or the voltage, our redox or the ability to flow charge and to to have that charge is no longer there. So we literally get dehydrated and we a ton of hydration in our eyes. We need, again, we need the exclusion zone water to help those electrons flow. We need it everywhere, but we need a lot of voltage.

50:19 And the other thing that happens that I didn't mention is our lymph, like we, we need, we need movement throughout the day. There's a lot of lymph vessels around the eyes. You know, that could be an issue as well. We need to make sure that we're moving our bodies, our posture has to be good. You know, we want to make sure we're moving our eyes, even moving our eye muscles around can help generate that piezoelectric, you know, the, of the, of the fascial, the fascial system around our eyes. And you know, all of those things basically we need to do, but we need also, we need, we need electrons where most of us are very disconnected from the earth.

50:49 So when we're outside grounding, we're getting those signals, those electrons getting absorbed. So we need that both, you know, all of those things are things that we're lacking when we are sitting on a screen all day. Yes, we'll get into. The solutions very soon, but before we get into that, like how does the how do the eyes affect the nervous system? Because, you know, a lot of people know that taking care of your nervous system is very important because it's better to be in a parasympathetic state the majority of the time, right?

51:14 Because that's where you heal, regenerate and detoxify. And you know, we know that the artificial blue light is, you know, stimulating our fighting flight state, our sympathetic nervous system. So how, how are the eyes actually contributing to our nervous system state not only from the light standpoint, but also from the proprioception standpoint, Right. Yeah. So. Because our eyes are a steering wheel for our whole body. You know, if, if we're constantly getting stress signals to our eyes and that includes even dryness.

51:43 Dryness is a stress signal visually strain is a stress signal. The, the idea that our muscles are getting fatigued, that's a stress signal. Blue light emulates the sympathetic system. It's actually going to keep our can can keep our pupils a little more dilated. All of that is a stress signal and that's going to allow too much light getting into our eyes. And all of that generates the sympathetic system as well. So our nervous system is very highly linked to, to our vision. The other thing that happens is our mood and our is also linked because of the UVA, because of those light signals is actually a direct link to our mood and our neurotransmitters and our dopamine and our serotonin and even our adrenaline in our nervous system.

52:17 If we're getting those signals again at night, now we're stimulating cortisol just through our eyes and what that's also stimulating a stress signal at the wrong time. You know, we need cortisol. We don't need it at night. And that also can contribute to to stress it mess and blue lights going to mess with our through our eyes. It's messing with our dopamine system and, and we're just getting more stress, you know, mood issues, issues, fatigue, all these different things, but it's very, it's very linked.

52:44 If we're wearing glasses that are the wrong prescription for us and restrained, you know, if we're people who are very near sighted who wear those same glasses for reading is automatically stressing the nervous system because we're not design prescription that's meant for distance for reading. Now you're forcing your muscles to focus even harder and, and that's exhausting. And that also just generates stress and it can change our posture. It can it can lead to a lot of other issues with the nervous system.

53:07 So the calming things for the eyes that can help us calm down again would be just to look in the distance, you know, take breaks, take break from your screen, move your eyes around, even blinking. A lot of people do palming that just calms the system and just gives us a little bit of a break. Because that think about all that light that we're absorbing all day, all those, all that information we're taking in is just very stressful. Being in green spaces, you know, all the, all the good things that we we associate with, with less stress has to do with, with how we're getting that information through our eyes.

53:37 That's amazing. And I think it's so important why I ask you this question is because, you know, to bring the awareness really because people need to be aware about all of these different ways that they are stressing their body unknowingly, right? You know, a lot of people associate stress as something that either it's psychological stress or physical stress that they can literally feel or see like in their immediate environment. But sometimes it's not something that you can see or you can or that you're thinking about.

54:02 It's actually literally happening to you and you're doing it to yourself unknowingly and just by taking care of your eye health, for example, you can like massively influence your nervous system state. And that's just it can be such a simple hack. You know, you can be doing all of the things and maybe wondering why are you like on the edge? Why are you not able to relax? You know, and then that could be a huge factor. And maybe the only time when you can relax is when you close your eyes. So that could be something that you can ask yourself like, hmm, maybe it has something to do with my eye health or my eyesight.

54:32 You know why I don't feel so optimized or, or well, or, you know, relaxed when I have my eyes open. The other thing I. Forgot to mention is flicker. Flicker is a huge stress to the nervous system and I didn't even mention that. When we're exposed to artificial signals of light, the lights turn on and off 100 or 120 times a second depending on the frequency of the alternating current that we're we're plugged into. And with that, you can imagine of this mini strobe light constantly turning on and off.

54:59 Our retinal cells see it, we don't really notice it, but our retinal cells see it. Our Mueller cells in the eye that's like, just like a, it helps bring light into the retina and and the retinal system itself is very stressed. It's a nervous system stressed to be exposed to flicker. So we can block light with these glasses, we can use circadian friendly lights, but but we're still getting flicker and that's huge. That's a big problem and and some some of the technology, I think Iris technology. I use Iris tech on my computer.

55:25 It's supposed to reduce Flickr. I I haven't tested it though myself. I think it does, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I I do like. That program, the Flickr, but then you still have overhead lights that are flickering and it's a lot of such a stress. Yeah, I mean in nature. That doesn't really exist, right? Like you don't have something that's like flashing like on and off, like constantly 100 times a second, as you mentioned. I think that's pretty insane for the brain because now your brain is trying to understand that information and it's sort of strange, the brain and the eyes, because they're like, whoa, like what's going on?

55:55 You know? And This is why a lot of people experience, I feel, migraines and headaches when they're under that type of lighting, not necessarily because of the spectrum. Yes, the spectrum can be influencing your nervous system, but it's mainly because of that flickering effect. You can see in these old fluorescent light bulbs, those flicker a little bit more slow. So you can actually see that with your eye that is actually flickering, but with the new leads, you can't really see it. And you know, if you put your phone on slow, slow motion and record, you will be able to actually identify that.

56:27 I think one really cool thing that you said there about the eyes and the dopamine produced in the eye and also in the brain, a lot of people don't actually realize that you need dopamine for movement, right? And your ability to move your body and Parkinson's disease is basically a lack of dopamine, isn't it? So that that that must be important than the fact that we actually need to be getting the right type of light in our eyes, you know, to protect ourselves from these diseases and conditions and that dopamine.

56:56 Is linked to melanin. Melanin is really important for the health of our eyes, health of our brain, for Parkinson's, as well as a lot of melanin there and not getting those right signals to optimize the melanin in our body, keep it stable and hydrated. It starts to breakdown. And that's where we have a lot of these issues. Even in the eyes, a lot of a lot of issues that we see are far because you can see melanin breaking down. You see different changes in pigmentation. And, and when that melanin isn't there, we're losing so much of we're losing energy, we're losing protection, we're losing the ability to see really is and, and everyone has a different level of melanin, but even in people who have low melanin, we still, you need it.

57:32 You need to optimize that. You need to maintain melanin with with those mills definitely which has to do with dope means it's this seesaw. So so basically you're saying that melanin is not a sign of skin damage, it's the most amazing? Amazing pigment, right? I mean that the research of Arturo Solis Herrera is is just fascinating and and amazing. I mean I, I've never had more of I just it's just it's just amazing it can give us energy. I mean it's just so many amazing things for us that people just don't understand.

58:03 So it's kind of a shame that we think of that. Been told that melanin is a form of skin damage. I just that's a whole other story. My gosh. So basically like. When we think about the eye and we look at the eye, where is the melanin found in the eye? Is it found in the center bit like where is it actually found? So melanin is in the iris? Also, the color part of our eye is a layer of melanin depending on its different levels of melanin depending on the color. And then in the back of the eye, we have the retinal pigment epithelial layer.

58:31 So light has to hit like like what kind of goes backwards? It's 10 layers of the retina. So light hits, it goes through the 10 layers, hits the back of the eye and then comes back and goes to the nerve. So that melanin is there to do a ton of things. It's going to help reduce toxins. Iron like it, it, it holds on to heavy metals. It's a UV helps dampen light damage. It helps gives us, give us energy. Now the way that we see, it's interesting is the pathway of life for vision has no blood vessels at all.

59:03 The only way we see is because there are no blood vessels in our cornea. The cornea, you know, that the layers of our eye are, are super clear because we have no blood vessels. So where are we getting that energy from? Like the, the retina itself, the phobia has meant we need to get energy somewhere and, and melanin creates a lot of that energy for us as well. But it really is interesting that we're not getting, we, we can't have blood vessels in those areas. And that's when things go downhill. If we start developing blood vessels in those areas, that's kind of where you know, some of those issues come from.

59:32 But melanin is in like I said that the retinal pigment epidelia, it's in the cilia, it's in the whole uveal tract. It's not just a retinal pigment epidelia. It's in the ciliary body. There's the iris is connected to they call it the uveal tract. It's like A and the choroid, the choroid below the retinal pigment epidelia layer where our blood flow actually that's where we're getting our blood flow to the center of the eye is coming from the choroid that's very highly has a lot of melanin there as well.

59:57 That. Just. That just reminded me because you talked about blood vessels and I and I thought and I thought about diet and about how that can actually influence our eyes because, you know, you you think about in conditions like diabetes, for example, what happens to the eyes. So yeah, because we were going down the list of the things that influenced eyes. So the light, the Emfs, the nutrition. Like, is there anything else that I'm missing? Like lack of sleep I can imagine can be, you know, detrimental.

1:00:24 What else would you add to the list? Hydration we. We need, now when we the water we drink is really important, we need to make sure we're maintaining enough minerals, enough hydration. So we want water that's clean, hydrated, preferably structured water just so we're getting more of those nutrients and those minerals to maintain that charge. And the water we drink isn't necessarily making that exclusion zone water, but we need to be hydrated. That's really important. And I think as far as nutrition, getting the food that's in season that makes most sense for us locally is going to give us the most nutrition.

1:00:56 Grounding talked about sleep stress, you know, mental stress, though even that mindset, it's kind of sounds a little woo, but mindsets really important as well. You know, you have, you can do all these healthy things, your mindset is if you're always stressed or your sympathetic system, aside from all the stuff that I said triggers it. But if you are in a state where you are just in a constant state of stress, it's hard to heal in in that state. So we want to be mindful of our mental state breathing, right, our breathing, our mechanics, our movement, you know, limb support, all of those things are helpful.

1:01:29 Even our microbiome, like there's links to our gut microbiome, there's links to our teeth and there's all these links to the, the gut eye access. Our liver health needs to be healthy. Everything's connected. The eyes are a connection. The eyes are an extension of the brain they have, they're an extension of the body. So it's the only part of the body that we can see blood vessels without cutting. So, you know, everything that's healthy for the body is going to reflect in the eyes that's. That's amazing.

1:01:56 So like you can for example, when you look, take a look at someone's eyes, can you tell that they have issues that other in other areas of the body? Are you able to do that with your work? Yeah, so a lot. Of times that's where people get diagnosed with diabetes and you know, you can start seeing little hemorrhages. There's certain certain types of hemorrhages that happen or certain types of retinal changes that occur with diabetes pretty specifically so you can tell someone has blood. I mean, blood pressure would have to be pretty uncontrolled to see it, but you can see vessel changes even early on.

1:02:28 Sometimes cataracts, there's certain types of cataracts that are linked to sugar like glycation or high, high sugar. Sometimes diabetics will get cataracts a little bit sooner. You can see a lot of different things with vessels. Optic nerve, I mean, it's brain tissue. So if there's something going on, someone, God forbid, has swollen nerves, you know, there's some kind of pressure. What's happening in the brain that there's different things that happen. You know, Miss can show up in the eyes. It's a lot of different conditions that show up just based on what our vascular system looks like, what our nerve tissue looks like.

1:02:59 Even our, you know, dry eyes. All these different things can connect to the body. Dry eyes is a lot of stomach issues that can show up, hormonal issues show up and things like that all play a role. So cataracts for. Example, you know, there is the conventional view that just comes about, you know, that just the natural byproduct of aging. But I guess the in this day and age, I'm sure that you have probably noticed that many people are having cataracts at a way earlier age. Maybe you can enlighten the audience like why this could be and what is the actual cataract?

1:03:34 Why is that actually happening? And it's not maybe something that it's not like we always think that the body is doing something to us, but maybe it's doing something to protect us. Exactly. That's exactly. What it's doing, everything, every symptom, everything that's happening is because the body is trying to protect us. So our lens in the eye has mitochondria, right? On the epithelial surface. It's the only place where mitochondria exist. And the lens itself made-up of crystalline proteins. And these proteins were there since birth, and they just keep growing in a certain pattern.

1:04:02 To make sure that they stay. They have to be clear, right? They're hydrated proteins and they keep growing and growing and growing. So our lens keeps getting thicker and thicker and thicker. So you can imagine that proteins that were there since birth, they can get oxidized pretty easily over time. So that's why cataracts are technically, we think of it as an aging issue because just natural oxidation will happen over time. So the lens starts to become yellow. So that's why young people can absorb more blue light.

1:04:29 Young people can absorb more of that, some of those ultraviolet signals. The lens is designed to absorb basically most of our UVB, so it doesn't make it to the retina. The cornea absorbs that also, and it also absorbs most of the UVA and it doesn't really absorb blue. And so it used to be ultraviolet light is the cause of cataracts. But it turns out a lot of the research is showing that that high energy blue light is a, is a major cause of cataracts. And that's actually going right through. And when the, the, the lens is turning yellow, it's actually blocking some blue light.

1:04:59 It's almost like a, like wearing these glasses. It's, it's a protective mechanism. So when we're exposed to these unbalanced signals of light, we are going to get more oxidative stress. Again, our mitochondria is going to get damage. It's going to dehydrate the eyes. It's going to create more oxidation. We do have some nutrients that the lens uses. Lens uses glutathione, vitamin C. Like there are other things that we need to make sure we have in our diet, that we're optimized. We don't overdo it with antioxidant pills.

1:05:24 You know, that's the other story where everyone's taking all these crazy. Vitamins and you're. Blocking things that we need those signals, which is a different topic, but the lens itself is protecting us and over time it is like I said, it is easy to become oxidized. But if we're getting, especially with the wrong signals of light and, and even reflections, again, when we're, when we're exposed to reflected glare, we're getting more UV than we should really have. So that's an issue most of us are lacking the, the healing wavelengths of those morning signals are again, sunlight.

1:05:52 We need that. So if we're never getting sunrise light, we're not getting those long wavelengths that's helping our mitochondria and helping reduce inflammation. And we're just getting these signals of this unbalanced flu. We're going to get much more oxidation faster. So I'm seeing cataracts and people who never, never get sunlight, always wearing sunglasses and are on their screens all day. That's something that I didn't, it was always like, oh, cataracts happen in the tropics, happen when people are outside all day in strong UV.

1:06:17 I'm not, I'm not seeing that much, you know, I'm seeing it really very highly in people who are not getting those signals. So I think we have to be really mindful of getting the full spectrum safely. There's also the lenses can also absorb heat, so you'll hear people who like are welders, you know, or very high levels of infrared can also create cataracts because again, it's just absorbing heat and oxidation really. Oh wow. Too much heat so I can. Go from. Both both angles from red and blue. I mean, it's too much.

1:06:51 Of any light, you know, this unbalance is not going to be great, but also we're designed to, if our tear film is good enough, it's going to protect the eyes. It's the first level of protection for our eyes. It cools the surface of our eyes. And if our tear film is very dry, the signals getting through our eye are stronger than they need to be, hotter than they need to be. So that that can also create some stress. And all of that goes hand in hand with our environment. I mean, it's so much of it comes back to the lights that we're exposed to.

1:07:16 And that's why I feel like that's the foundation. We can eat healthy. We can do all the things we can. We could do all the healthy things that for our body and sure, we can see some improvements, but we can do all if our light is wrong, it really doesn't matter what we're doing. We have to have the foundation of light first before we layer on or before we see the full benefits of all the other healthy things that we think about. And that's what I try to tell people when they say, what can I take?

1:07:37 What can I do? Like you have to get your light right. Oh, I, I can't, I don't go out. I'm not, I won't wake up for sunrise. I'm, I'm sleeping or I'm already at work. And you know what? And it's a shame, but we have to find a way to get it. We have to find, even if it's for a minute, you know, just be consistent, try to get as much as we can. So those are the things that I think people understand. People don't want to wear these orange glasses at night, and I don't understand why some people do. But when I talk about it, I'm not wearing those like why, why put anywhere?

1:08:02 What's what's it's so it's such an easy fix, right? Such an easy thing to do. And it's it goes a long way to to do those things. I know you wanted to get into, you know what we can do, but just gosh, so yeah. So cataracts can be again from our and modern environment. I do feel like it is triggering us a lot. I mean, that's why it's. Important for us to have these discussions to to bring the awareness to people and to actually explain the mechanism behind how all of this is happening. All of this damage is occurring and strained to our eyes.

1:08:30 It's not just some woo woo information that light is like, you know, not doing anything to our eyes. Like studies are all the time coming out for all of the skeptics out there. You know, you don't need to have a study to believe in this stuff, but you just need to witness the effects, you know, spend enough time on a screen and tell me that your eyes don't hurt or they're not red. You know, doesn't that mean that there is actually something going on there in your eyes? You know, could there be some correlation there?

1:08:56 This is just some things to maybe like think about, you know, and, and exactly I wanted to have you on so you could bring the awareness to the public and the audience about the mechanism of action and how light is influencing so many different aspects of our health. But specifically how our eyes are influencing so many aspects of our health and our overall well-being. Because for all the reasons that you actually mentioned. So we talked a lot about the negative things. And so I now would like to get into some solutions, but again, one last question before we get into that would be like if people have had have encountered eye damage or strain, is this reversible or is it does it depend on the situation I. Think there can be improvements?

1:09:41 And I've seen people improve their eyeglass prescriptions. I've seen people improve, you know, if someone has end stage cataracts, I haven't seen that improve. If someone has really had, you know, scar tissue from macular degeneration, I I haven't seen that improve. I'm not saying it never did. I I just haven't seen it, but I have seen improvements and, you know, absolutely. I think that if we get our light right, the body knows how to heal like we, we the body can, especially when things are at a low level, it's much easier to prevent, of course.

1:10:08 But I do think that there are improvements that can be made, especially to dry eyes and very early cataracts. You know, if you get the, if you're reducing sedation, I think there is a chance that we can, we can help ourselves. Floaters sometimes be improved upon for different things, although that's very frustrating for people and it's, you know, but there's studies on that as well. But there's so many things that we can that the body just knows. Again, when we give our body the right input, I think we have a really good ability to heal you.

1:10:35 Think that the floaters because I feel like I talked to so many people and they talk to me about this floater topic, right? And it I feel like it's increasing more and more with this, with this blue light exposure. Do you think there is not only the fact that it's dehydrating that front layer on the eye, but do you think there is actually damaging some parts of the eye with and then it's not allowing the eye to be able to perceive the light as it should? Yeah, vitreous, the vitreous. Is such an important part of the of the eye.

1:11:03 It actually creates a lot of it's a, it creates a lot of issues the vitreous because it's this ball of Jelly again, it has metabolites in there. Again, it has, it's structured in a way that it's supposed to slow down light just this nice. It's like a, like a, like an airbag. It has structural support. It has a lot of nutrients in there. It has hyaluronic acid and collagen and water and it's meant to slow down light. And there's an interaction where it's actually touching parts. It's, it's pretty well connected.

1:11:29 It's very sticky. So it's touching the Mac in the optic nerve. It's touching parts of the retina and it's just designed to be this nice airbag of support. So when it starts getting dehydrated, it's physically dehydrating that layer, not just the front, like the light itself is just creating dehydration. It's gonna pull away and when it pulls away, it's actually creating. It can create a lot of issues, most retinal holes and tears and even be retinal memories, like different things that happen come from that vitreous pulling away from the eye and it's a really important part.

1:11:59 So there are some studies just interesting. This doesn't necessarily have to do with light, but there are some studies showing that the enzyme from pineapples can help break up excess tissue. So that's kind of an interesting thing and think about the bromelain now that we should be eating pineapple. But if we, you know, maybe this is where a supplement can come in handy for some people. But there are some studies like if we're breaking up with up some of that excess tissue. But I think the hydration piece is huge for the actual vitreous.

1:12:24 And when we start to have dehydration now the lights not getting the light is changing. It's on a quantum scale. So even a tiny can change the way we're getting light into the body, into our eyes. So the vitreous is actually really important. And unfortunately, floaters are really common. I mean, I have floaters myself and, you know, most people, a lot of people do do got that. But again, I spend before I knew about all this, I spent, you know, so much time on screens and I still do. So there's always this trying to fight against our world, trying to do the best we can.

1:12:53 I know it's. Really annoying. I have them as well. And I just noticed that they get more and more every year. And I just noticed that in a period of winter after I've endured a long winter and I've honored my circadian rhythms and I've gotten dark inside the house when it should be dark after sunset. So let's say the sunsets at 5 or 4, I will close all my windows. I will make everything red inside of the house with my red bulbs, and I will make everything dim to honor that melatonin production in the, you know, in the winter time.

1:13:24 And because I do more red light therapy and honor more of the darkness, I notice at the end of the winter time, my vision is actually improved. I feel like I don't have as many floaters and all that stuff. But when the summer comes, by the end of the summer, I have, I feel like I have so much more floaters. And I just feel like it's that because of just the light intensity and the way that maybe the light is striking the eye. But also I live close to the sea and I go to the sea a lot. Maybe the way that the sun is striking the sea, you know, maybe it's something to do with my habits.

1:13:53 I don't know. Of course, I'm using my tech as well because obviously, I mean, I do podcasting, I do social media, so I have to use my tech. I use always my blue light walking glasses when I'm using my tech. So I try to protect myself. I'm outside as much as I can, but I still encounter these issues even though I'm doing all of the things. So I just feel like it's such a difficult topic. But that that thing that you mentioned about the enzymes is super interesting and I'll definitely look into that also if if we're in.

1:14:19 A bright background, we see them a lot more. So you can see floaters and the when the background, when you're outside the background sky, that's when you see them the most. Or if it's a very white wall, you don't see them as much in the dark. So I'm wondering if you're just noticing them a little bit more because you're outside all day and that's when that's when you see them the most that that bright background. It's also hard. So floaters for the most part, that's what I was talking about with the dehydration.

1:14:43 But there are some people who get floaters from toxins. You know, sometimes it's like pour them, it's like toxin. So if there's inflammation, it's interesting. The vitreous is, is such an interesting structure that it's actually used in forensics because there's so many metabolites that they can, I read that, you know, investigators can figure out time of death from the vitreous because the metabolites stay there so much longer than they're not metabolized like the blood. So it you can, you just kind of know there's like toxins that show up there.

1:15:14 There's drugs you can, you can do like drug testing as from a forensic standpoint through the vitreous. So it does hold a lot of of toxins, right? It's it's holding every, all these metabolites. So I feel like that can also contribute to floaters. So a lot of people anecdotally will say my floaters went away when I did this, this and this or even Castor oil and the, you know, improving lymph flow. And I believe I just, I haven't seen much of an improvement in my own floaters. But again, like I said, like I said, it is, it is a very tough thing because it's almost like putting an egg.

1:15:44 Once an egg shell breaks, it's hard to put it back together, right? So if you have collagen separated from the hyaluronic acid and it's in this this bowl of Jelly, it's not going to really put it. It's hard to get together again because it's already separated whole to not increase the amount of dehydration and have it pull even more, I guess. And people who are near have more floaters simply because the eye is stretched out. So that's another piece near sightedness, again linked to the lack of ultraviolet.

1:16:09 The blue light can also make floaters worse. So that's most people. Many people are near sighted. So that's where floaters are also worse in the in that population as well. So you talked. About the lengthening of the eye, and I know that Doctor Jack Cruz talks about that as well as the exposure to the blue light. So why is the eye like getting longer? So dopamine. As you said, how it helps with skeletal muscles will hold on to the skeletal muscles of the eye so that it doesn't keep growing. So when we're near sighted, part of the reason why people are near sighted is because the eye just keeps growing and growing and growing and then lights not making it to the retina.

1:16:42 So we need glasses to to move that light to the retina. Part of that growth stems from a lack of dopamine and there's studies a lot of even in the conventional world, sunlight, full spectrum sunlight is known to slow down myopia, partly because of the ultraviolet light with the dopamine, just circadian rhythm in general. And even Violet light, Violet light, which triggers neuropsin, Violet light and UVA that they're very close to each other. That's those strong signals of light had been shown to down regulate genes from myopia as well.

1:17:08 So we need sunlight to help us. The other thing that triggers myopia is again, all this near strain because those muscles again are just again, contracting so much when we're trying to focus on something close that the brains like, well, let's just become more nearsighted because nearsighted is technically an adaptation so we don't have to focus. People who are nearsighted do any work without their glasses. They could see really well here. So it has to be an adaptation in a way. The brains like, fine, let's just become nearsighted.

1:17:31 I don't have to focus for reading. But then we look up, things are blurry now we need glasses to fix the distance, but then you're going to get that distance prescription, wear it again for reading, and they got to focus all over again. The brains like, forget it, let's just become more nearsighted. Let's get longer or you know, change it. Those are the signals help. I hope that answers your question. I kind of went up on it, that was. That was great, yeah. No, thank you for that. I love it. And so basically you're saying that the just looking at things up close as well for long periods of time causes the same thing as the exposure to the blue light as well, right.

1:18:01 So that's why our. Screens are, are just so tough for us. We're just not designed to look here all day. We're just, we're just not. And I mean, I feel like most people can, can feel that in their body. You know, if you stare at something and then you look up, it just takes a while sometimes for those muscles to relax. And that's the problem. If we take a lot of breaks, if we look at the distance as much as we can, it will help. We are designed to be able to look near and far, near and far. Those muscles are designed to be very agile.

1:18:26 But when we're when we force them to do like a push up or a fist all day long, it's just we're not for that. It's using up too much energy. It's creating it's, it's creating a whole host of problems, headaches, all of that. So it has to do with the light and our lifestyle. So talking about. Solutions. Then you already mentioned quite a few during this podcast episode, which is fantastic. So that would be the waking out with the sunrise and just being outside and blocking the artificial blue light after sunset because that, you know, make sure that our melatonin gets released, helps to repair the eyes.

1:18:58 We don't have that cortisol elevation. We're in a partisan politics state, so we're all good on that, on that spectrum. And you you mentioned about the blue light blocking glasses as a hack to, you know, protect our eyes from the screens or any blue lights in the home or whatever. What other strategies or things you have for people? Sure as far. As these wearing blue light glasses, there's something like this a yellow, like the lighter glasses that you would use for daytime. Yes, you're using them all day long and you still don't get sunlight.

1:19:26 That's still not the right answer because then you're just we need light. We need that sunshine. So it's also important like I've made that mistake. There are times when I'm I, I'm at work and I really can't get outside during the day. Maybe for lunch, I'm out there, but that's it. And I'm wearing these, I'm exhausted because we need blue. You don't want to block, not that this blocks all of it. This doesn't block all of the blue light, but we still need this. So if we can get outside during the day, even for little sun breaks like people used to take smoking breaks, go out and take a sun break.

1:19:54 Pull down your glasses. If you work, pull them down. Don't, don't stare at the sun. Just face the sun. Do the best you can throughout the day. You your energy will be better. Eyes will feel better again, that morning signal. So it's sunrise and UVA rise. Those are really important. UVA rise is probably even more important than than Sunrise is really important, of course, but to get outside for a walk if you can, you know about an hour after sunrise, that goes a really long way for the body grout, getting the electrons hydrating, making sure we're getting enough minerals, making sure we're moving.

1:20:23 As far as circadian friendly lighting, doing all the things, again, there's so many companies that make circadian friendly lighting, even incandescent bulbs. Red light therapy in general can be, you know, added. We have to be really careful with the eyes. You know, I'm not, I'm not going to make any recommendations for specific red light therapy directly for the eyes because that's that's not. Not something I can keep. The eyes closed. Though, right? You can sit like in front of the panel with your eyes closed and still get the benefits because they're red and infrared penetrates deep in the body, right?

1:20:51 If you're using it. Systemically, you are going to get those benefits and your eyes closed. That's fine. But I'm talking about if someone were taking that red light that's meant for the body and using it for their eyes. Don't do that because so the studies on red light therapy are really powerful, but they're really not using, they're using mostly just one wavelength of red. And again, not to say that other wavelengths aren't good, but they mostly studied 670 nanometers, but at a certain, certain level of light.

1:21:14 So some of those panels are really strong. And again, are, are we not? The sun is the perfect recipe. Sunrise if you, you know everyone, red light for the eyes, it's just getting out for sunrise basically, or sunset. Like, that's really the perfect balance and the perfect amount once we start adding, you know, getting a device for red light. There are certain devices that are designed for ocular use, but some of them are too strong, like some of the regular red light devices are not meant for the eyes.

1:21:38 Again, the lens, even though red light's healthy, it's still too much light for us to handle. It overwhelms our system if it's wrong. And there's some controversy about infrared light getting it. You know, as far as a device for the eye, getting infrared directly into the eyes, it's not is it the right amount? You know, like I said, the sun is just no brainer. There's there's no, nothing, nothing that to worry about about with the sun. But if we're using ocular red light therapy, it has to be made for the eyes.

1:22:02 But systemic benefits, you're going to get eye benefits as well. So that, so that's fine. Again, eating healthy, right? You want to eat preferably you want to reduce toxins. You want to do everything that's healthy for the body, It's going to be healthy for the eyes. All the, all the majors, all the main stuff, right? We do want to make sure we are getting of some vitamin C from our diet. We're getting DHA, really healthy fats, preferably not from supplements, but from our diet. Animal sources are much better than plant sources.

1:22:28 I know there's some controversy there, but our body can really when it's in an animal source like fish, it's already in the correct form. It's already in the correct form that we can use utilize for light sleep. When you wake up in the morning, you want to make sure you are putting on your orange glasses before you see the sun. You do not want artificial light to be the 1st signal that your brain sees. It has to be something. So even though before when I first started, I didn't go outside for sunrise, I have AI call it my sun window at faces east and I would just stand by the window and just stand there in the morning instead of getting outside.

1:22:58 Now, you know, obviously for the last few years I'm grounding out there, but I never did that. Like I still had benefits from opening the window every morning. I tell my kids come to the window every morning. Now they're teenagers, they don't listen as it's a little harder to get them to do it, but that's what I did for years. I just would stand by the window and do that little bits of driving. Open the windows when you're driving because you'll get those signals because again, the car windows are going to block the benefits that we need.

1:23:22 If you crack open the window, you'll get the signal because a lot of times people cannot get UVA rides because they're already on their way to work. So open the windows. If you can crack them open, you don't need much. I think that's the main the main things movement. How about eye? Exercises. I love to do eye exercises every day, like, you know, big eye circles like this in kind of Infinity shape, like figure eights. What's your thoughts and eye exercises again? That's really good you. Want to move those muscles?

1:23:48 Piezoelectricity, you're going to increase hydration. Another thing that that's really good for us again, is gazing in the distance and even near far exercises like looking in the distance, looking close looking. We, we want those muscles to have that. Like I said, the ability to, to change focus is really important. Take as many breaks as possible. If you're on a screen, we want to be looking slightly down at an angle at the screen instead of straight ahead or up because we don't want when we're looking up at an angle, our eyes are going to be more open and they're going to dry out a little bit.

1:24:16 So we need them. If they're angle, they're not going to dry out as much. Remember to blink, things like that. I think that's, those are the basics that I got. I was fascinating. What you said there about the screen, like I didn't know that that actually like it's better for your eyes if it's lower down than versus when it's higher up. And is there something to do as well with the fact that like your eye is meant to receive, for example, the blue light from the top, right? Because in nature, blue light always comes from the top, whereas like if you think about in nature, red and infrared light comes on the horizon.

1:24:49 So it's almost like your eye is designed to get the the red and the infrared light straight into the eye, but the blue not so much because it's coming from above you. That's a good point. Our Melanopter. Receptors are designed to be on an angle down below so that it's coming from the sun. So that's why when we are wearing orange glasses at night, if we still have LED's on on the ceiling that, yeah, you see, you have to be careful. So I like to turn off all the overheads and then use lamps, you know, eye level so that we're getting there with amber signals.

1:25:16 So that's yeah. And in nature, if you. Think about it like at sunset. Now the light is on the horizon, it's not above your head. So if you have lights on above your head, even if they're circadian friendly, you can think that that could be a bit of a stressor subconsciously to your nervous system because you've got that light overhead instead of it being just slow down on your desk or your table or something like that. Well, Doctor Valerie, it's been an amazing discussion. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it and I'm sure the audience is absolutely going to devour this episode.

1:25:46 So where can people actually find you, connect with you, work with you? If on Instagram? I'm Quantum Idoc and there's links on there. I have a website, I have new things on the horizon, so you can look at that, some resources and work with clients as well. And I'm on YouTube. I'm Quantum Idoc. That's really where you can find me at this point. That's amazing. Yeah. Keep on sharing your also some content and posts. I absolutely love them. They're really, really great and you deserve to go absolutely viral because your information is really life changing, you know, and so you're definitely going to make it keep on going like this.

1:26:18 And I would love to have you on again in the future when you have pumped out some new interesting facts on your page and and do it again. I really enjoyed this thank. You so much you guys enjoy the. Topics and guests I bring on the show, I would really appreciate it if you left me a five star review on Spotify and also subscribe to fitness wisdom podcast on YouTube as well as this helps to spread the knowledge and wisdom with the world. Until next time, this is the Fitness Wisdom Podcast.