Slam-Shifting Circadian Rhythms

By Atom Bergstrom

Atom’s Blog

Re: I abhor 130V light. It always looks brown.

Exactly. That’s the very reason why you want to use 130 volts at night.

Additive brown tones down the blue (400-490 nanometers).

Subtractive brown (dyes, inks, paints) can be made with blue, either red, black, and yellow, or red, yellow, and blue.

But additive brown is made from red and green minus blue light.

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Blue light activates nitric oxide.

Red light inactivates it (a good thing).

According to neuroscientist and blue-light expert George Brainard (interviewed by Scientific American on Sept. 1, 2015) …

“My research into the clinical applications of light got NASA interested in applying these findings to spaceflight scenarios. When an astronaut leaves Earth, his or her body is operating on a 24-hour light/dark cycle, but the space station orbits Earth every 90 minutes, and astronauts see the sun rise and set each time. This shift in the lighting environment, known as slam shifting, can have many health consequences and inspired my work with NASA on creating light-exposure schedules specifically for astronauts.”

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The white-light LED disrupts circadian rhythms, making users more prone to every disease in the book from A to Z.

Gianluca Tosini, Ian Ferguson, & Kazuo Tsubota (“Effects of blue light on the circadian system and eye physiology,” Molecular Vision, Jan. 24, 2016) wrote …

“The white-light LED (i.e., the most common type of LED) is essentially a bichromatic source that couples the emission from a blue LED (peak of emission around 450–470 nm with a full width at half max of 30–40 nm) [4] with a yellow phosphor (peak of emission around 580 nm with a full width at half max of 160 nm) that appears white to the eye when viewed directly. The specific pump wavelength of the phosphor in the range 450–470 nm depends critically on the absorption properties of the phosphor. Although the white-light LED can be considered the SSL analog of the fluorescent source, the power spectrum of the white-light LED is considerably different from traditional, fluorescent, or incandescent white light sources.”

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Red light is healing (presupposing no Moving Cognitive Shock) and can maintain evening alertness without screwing up circadian rhythms.

M.G. Figueiro, A. Bierman, B. Plitnick, & M.S. Rea (“Preliminary evidence that both blue and red light can induce alertness at night,” BMC Neuroscience, Aug. 27, 2009) wrote …

“Exposures to red and to blue light resulted in increased beta and reduced alpha power relative to preceding dark conditions. Exposures to high, but not low, levels of red and of blue light significantly increased heart rate relative to the dark condition. Performance and sleepiness ratings were not strongly affected by the lighting conditions. Only the higher level of blue light resulted in a reduction in melatonin levels relative to the other lighting conditions.”

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Red makes you aggressive. It gives you the “reds,” as we used to say in Texas.

Adano Ley (Swami Nitty-Gritty) said the correct way to pronounce “red” is …

“RrrrrRrrrrRrrrrRrrrrRed!” (like a revving, roaring engine)

Blue gives you the “blues,” and the “sugar blues” is in the turquoise range (50% blue and 50% green Dinshah Ghadiali turquoise, not 70% blue and 30% green conventional turquoise.
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