Lighting and the Physiology of the Body

Podcast Transcript

Walt Zerbe 0:01
I am CEDIA. I am CEDIA. I am CEDIA. This is the CEDIA media, CEDIA podcast. Before we begin the podcast, I'd like you to know that this cast was graciously sponsored by meridian, a British audio technology pioneer for more than 40 years. Meridian has pushed boundaries, disrupted norms, and engineered products that have shaped the industry. As a company breaks new ground through research, it continues to challenge convention and enrich people's lives and redefine how customers experience sound meridians. Ambition is to enable people to listen, enjoy and fall in love with their music and movies wherever they are, and its renowned sound philosophy can be applied in all listening environments. Meridians. Award winning product portfolio includes DSP loudspeakers such as the visually stunning DSP nine and DSP 8000 xe, the discrete and powerful in wall, DSP 750 loudspeaker, the versatile 271, digital theater controller and ellipse. Meridians, first all in one streaming speaker. To find out more, visit Meridian audio.com.

Walt Zerbe 1:13
Now let's get on to the podcast.

Walt Zerbe 1:18
Hello. I'm Walt Zerby, Senior Director of Technology and Standards, and your host of the CD podcast. And today we're going to be talking about a subject that I'm really, really interested in, not that I'm not interested in anything else that we talk about, but I've found over the years, I've really gotten into lighting, I've really gotten into wellness. I've gotten into working outside more as I've gotten older. I don't know it just, it just makes me feel better. So so this podcast I'm talking about the physiology of light seemed right up my alley just to dive into. And this happens, like many podcasts happen if you go to a trade show, like to CEDIA Expo, or integrated systems Europe, or any other show, you run into people and you talk and you chat, and you take classes, and you learn stuff, and you figure out things you would have never known. And it's exactly what happened here. I ran into Andy bull, and I ran into, uh, LaDonna Erickson, and they were also teaching this class with Bruce Clark. Uh, about there's been a lot of changes in the Light World, and apparently there's constant change in the Light World as we learn more. And I think it's really interesting as well. We still don't really know how we hear, and hearing like how hearing affects us, and how to really capture it and recreate it. Our hearing is we're still studying how we hear, and so sounds like looks like, we're still really studying how we outline affects us as well. So I'm going to introduce some, some new friends here, and actually not some, some new Bruce is a new friend, but LaDonna and Andy I've known and we've talked to, and we'll probably do some more stuff with. So I'll just start right off with LaDonna Erickson. She's the education concierge of construction Education Consortium. Wow, that's a that's a mouthful. I didn't mess that up. How you doing, LaDonna? Pretty good. And you did well. Thank you. And then we have Andy bull, who's a Director of Design at lighting, audio, video projects. Hi. How are we doing? Very good. Andy, it's good to see both of you again. And then we have a new friend, which is Bruce Clark. He's the founding lighting Sherpa with a collider light, lighting design. Good to be with you all. Thanks. Walt, so what's, what's, what's Sherpa? So the Sherpa people live in the Himalayas, and they're renowned for helping mountaineering expeditions move from base camp up to the summit. So right term has been ubiquitously used across any kind of trekking or hiking where you just need someone to come alongside of you and carry an extra burden that you don't want to or are unable to on your own. Oh, that's super cool. So for you, that's lighting design, yeah, so lighting design, but education, consultation, strategy, empowering. So whatever your lighting burden is, I'm here to help you carry it. That's basically what it is. Wow. I'm going to need to get a lot more clever with my title, I think anyway, feeling a bit inadequate, I know, I know, I'm gonna end the podcast right now. Oh my gosh. All right, so let's who wants to introduce this subject. I mean, you basically LaDonna and and Andy. I spent a couple minutes with you at a at a volunteer appreciation event that that CEDIA held, and you just talked to me for like two minutes, and I was like, mind blown. What is going on? Because I think most people today in lighting think that they've got a good handle on it. They understand it all. All I need is a lot of layers. I need to watch my my color temperatures and circadian rhythm is just changing your lighting color.

Andy Bull 5:00
From, you know, from one thing to another, and it's there's a way more. So who would like to start off our discussion? Well, I'll quickly bring this up to how we got here, perhaps Walt, as you know, we've been talking lighting with CEDIA for maybe four, possibly five years now, and and since that initial conversation and presentation and class we've been talking about, we'll call it human centric lighting. Yeah, the best term, but we'll use that term and and it's been a really popular class every ISC and Expo. And each time you do it, you think, Oh yeah, well, I can just get the old presentation out and do a few changes on the way, and it'll be fine, but every time I had to kind of rewrite it. And this isn't just once, but every single time. And then when it came around to to this, just the expo just gone, and unfortunately, Jonathan, who puts together a lot of the CEDIA education classes, you know, said, Hey Andy, and you know, can you have a talk with LaDonna and Bruce? Because you know that they've got some really great stuff on this as well. So we, we sort of got together and collaborated many months ago, and and I'm glad we did, because there's been so much change and research and information coming into the space and and way deeper than than I'm able to go with with the knowledge of exactly how it works. And fortunately, LaDonna came on the scene

Andy Bull 6:36
in a manner that only LaDonna can you'll find out in a few minutes. Yeah, starts talking, and Bruce's expertise on it as well, and it's been a phenomenal collaboration. And again, just something that came out of working with CEDIA. So that's how we got to it as every time the course changes, this was the biggest fundamental change we've done on the human centric lighting class

Andy Bull 6:58
in its history. And I don't want to waste any more time talking about it, but say everything we knew about lighting, and for me, every six months, I just feel massive imposter syndrome because everything's changed, and I'm trying to keep learning new again. So that's how we got here. And perhaps LaDonna might want to give us a quick summary to tell us that there's a bit more than circadian rhythms going on here. Yeah, that's, that's quite the cycle, audio and video and networking and things don't have a six month major cycle. So that that's really interesting. So LaDonna, let's, let's dive into this. Yeah.

LaDonna Eriksen 7:37
Well, one of the things that I found out was the fact that,

LaDonna Eriksen 7:42
as an educator, for as many years as I've been an educator,

LaDonna Eriksen 7:46
is the fact that you have to adapt and change constantly. And when I usually talk to my physiology students, it I go into these biochemical reactions and everything else, and I had to suddenly change all of that and talk to people who knew absolutely nothing about the physiology of the body. And you know it, it really made a difference in my reactions and and how I went through all of this information because, you know,

LaDonna Eriksen 8:25
humans have been around for well, humanoids have been around for over 20 million years, and we have evolved under the sun. And

LaDonna Eriksen 8:36
suddenly, 150 years ago, we were thrown into artificial light, and now we spend about 90% of our lives that way, and it's starting to really take a toll on our bodies.

Walt Zerbe 8:50
So you think right now it is just just now, because it took, because evolution takes a really long time. Evolution

LaDonna Eriksen 8:56
takes 1000s of years, yeah, and I think we probably saw the changes occurring over 100 years ago, but we really didn't recognize why these things were happening, why we saw All of the escalation of diabetes, of immune deficiency, diseases of cancer and everything else. And we started to see a progression of changes for for humans, basically, and even our animals that we see this, this exponential growth of all of these issues with humans, and we finally started to see, as scientists, that it's light, it's the fact or lack of light that is natural light. I.

Walt Zerbe 10:00
Okay, so like, how we move on the Bruce here in a minute. But how did they what did they finally do that that made them realize this is the problem? They just continued researching and just it just took a while to figure this out, or all of a sudden, an introduction of a new type of light source, accelerated issues like Bruce. Bruce is nod to said a lot too. So Bruce, just chime in if you want. No.

Bruce Clarke 10:30
I mean, yeah. I mean, let's just say to kind of before I share some of my thoughts, when Andy and I and LaDonna had our initial conversations, it became apparent to both of us that we needed to bookend our portions around what LaDonna had. Instead of doing a 123123, simply because, you know, as as LaDonna is talking about, there's, there's some cutting edge ideas that go beyond just simply light and the eyes. When you understand how deeply connected all of our body systems are, right? And one of the first things that we presented in the in the talk was that, you know the research even around knowing that our bodies or our eyes have a special neural net within the back of our eyes, called the intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells that are

Walt Zerbe 11:26
hardwired. That sounds like a good thing for a band, you know,

Bruce Clarke 11:31
so that everybody calls them iprgc. Like the science around that is only about a little over 20 years, or within 20 years of age. So it's, it's like Gen Z research, is what I called it in our talk, you know. And so because of that, a lot of professionals are looking intensively at the eye, at light, at different elements of how our bodies respond to light, you know. And to piggyback off LaDonna, I was a part of a conference couple years ago where someone was talking about circadian disruption. Maybe you've heard of that before, and a lot of downstream effects that even she mentioned, that include obesity and and anxiety and whatnot. So like, understanding, you know, even, like, there was a legal case in Europe, where some shift workers had a legal case that they put against, you know, the hospital for the kind of light that they were exposed to during the period of time when they should have been asleep, and they noticed that a lot of the nurses had a higher incidence of breast cancer. And there was enough evidence to support their claims that they're actually won their suit, and they've made changes in that environment to help them. A lot of the medical industry is intensely focused on light and health within that context, but LaDonna has really brought a whole nother paradigm of exploration around light and health that goes beyond the quote, unquote circadian cycle of light and dark, of wake and sleep. And so I think that's, I think, what Andy's referring to in terms of kind of blowing the doors off this notion of circadian lighting, or human centric lighting, and and still keeping it very much in the context of just changing the chromatic value of white through tunable white technologies and things like that. So this

Walt Zerbe 13:24
is, I think this is really cool. I've always wondered when air, light and and sound was going to be a responsibility of business to make sure that when you're exposed to that environment that you're being employed to be in all day, and how that can I know I've, I've been, I had a real hard time with fluorescent lights right flickering and and that flicker, and my screen flickering and bulbs flickering. I got all kinds of flickers going on and and bad, bad colors. So it definitely so I would, I would, I would not use them, and I'd bring in incandescent lights and put them in my office, because I found I just couldn't it negatively affected me. So Bruce, thanks for setting the stage on that. So LaDonna, let's dive into this some more. Like Bruce just mentioned, different colors of white. I mean, can so here's the big question, can artificial light be healthy in the home

LaDonna Eriksen 14:23
at this point? No, hmm, it's simply not healthy. Perhaps Sandy and Bruce can tell me that it can it. Well, it can be. People can change. The industry has to change. Tell me more. But in inside the home, unless you have a lot of external light, if you have light coming from the sun into your home, then you'll be fine. But without it, you're not going to be if we, if we look at what classically, has. Been the concept of circadian rhythm, and that's the sleep wake cycle, yeah, and the fact that it takes 480 nanometer light, which is the wavelength of light that's necessary to make sure that our sleep wake cycle functions. And you have to have that 480 nanometer light entering the retinal ganglion cell, and then it will travel. It will actually produce in the retinal ganglion cell A G protein called melanopsin, yeah, and that melanopsin will then travel along the little tentacle of the retinal ganglion cell to a location in our brain called the hypothalamus. And interestingly enough, the hypothalamus is actually the master clock of our body, and it is actually within that hypothalamus is where we find the suprachiasmatic nucleus,

Walt Zerbe 16:02
not a good name for a band at the

Bruce Clarke 16:08
end of this talk today,

LaDonna Eriksen 16:12
you know? And unfortunately, we can't stay away from some of these terms. I love them, yeah, because they're they're very important for people to understand real parts of the body, and that's right, they're real parts of the body. And of course, scientists have to come up with big names for things, because that way they can really sound important. But the suprachiasmatic nucleus is the master clock. It is what actually keeps our body going. And that melanopsin that came from the from the iprgc. We won't go through that word again. We'll get to the suprachiasmatic nucleus that melanopsin, and it actually sends an inhibitory signal to another group of cells in the hypothalamus, called the paraventricular nucleus, and that will send out a lot of different neural impulses that go to the pineal gland and stop the release of melatonin. So it's not the fact that we produce the melody that we introduced, the production of melatonin. It's the fact that light stops the production of melatonin. So

Walt Zerbe 17:29
is the 480 is it? Is it really kind of binary? It's either you have 480 nanometers or you don't, and those two that those two things either produce or stop producing?

LaDonna Eriksen 17:40
Well, it's not only the 480 nanometers of light as the wavelength, which is, to an extent difficult to get with artificial lighting you can but most people don't like it, and it also needs to be at 1000 Lux throughout the day. 480 nanometers at 1000 Lux to suppress melatonin throughout the day. So

Walt Zerbe 18:06
LaDonna and Bruce just and well, I don't want to leave you out too. Andy, what do you think the typical Lux in a home is that someone has with artificial lighting, just to give people a reference, because I don't know if everybody knows that

Andy Bull 18:22
we would if for a bright work environment, well, for a desk in an office where you're working, you would possibly 300 looks, maybe 500 looks, if you were working with paper drawings and things like that. But I mean very, very, very rarely as lighting designers, do we ever get above 500 looks? Okay, in a home, you know, you could be 100 100 looks, and considerably less for, you know, in a non task area, that

Walt Zerbe 18:50
put some but put some good context to this for everybody listening. So

Bruce Clarke 18:55
Bruce, and then the comparison is, when you're outside under, uh, normal daylight conditions, what is that like, 100,000 Lux, or something crazy like that, or is it? Yeah, it's 100,000 it's not even, not even close to be compared. So the it's, it's about the the timing of of exposure, the duration of exposure, the intensity of exposure. So, like, if I get, you know, 100,000 Lux of 480, nanometer light at 8pm at night or 9pm at night, that's probably not the best time to get it. It's better to get it early in the morning, right? So you know, some of what people have talked about in the scientific community is, if you're exposed to high blue concentrated light that's bright enough at night time. So talking about tablets and cell phones and and and devices that give light off, or even cheap LEDs that are high on the blue side that can actually be disruptive to that cycle. So there's a lot of talk around that aspect, where we want to warm the light, dim the light, you know, kind of suppress some of that over the night time without comp. Optimizing attentiveness and visual acuity that people may otherwise need in certain spaces. So there's kind of a trade off, that it's not just the nanometers of light, but there is a duration, timing, intensity, even the directionality that it comes into the eye from from above or within or from below, and the distribution of it, if it's like a laser beam of that in my eye, it's going to be really uncomfortable, but a nice, broader kind of surface area where it's diffused, that's going to be more attractive. So there's a lot of variables you have to manage to try and deliver exactly what our bodies need during that period of time.

Walt Zerbe 20:38
So once somebody understands the science behind this, which sounds like it's a deep study. This isn't, this isn't a quick this isn't a quick thing. Ultimately, ultimately, they'll arrive at light harvesting, which I think LaDonna you were talking about, is going to be an important part of lighting design, and which means that's going to have to have to go back to the architects and the designers to say, we need more windows, and then it's also going to go back to an opportunity for shades and shade controls, so that all that stuff needs to work cohesively to try to deliver better light in the home. It's a much larger equation here. Is that

LaDonna Eriksen 21:19
accurate? Well, that's accurate in the fact that, yes, having external light being brought in, that natural daylight being brought into our homes, but we think of the areas of our homes where we can't get daylight, where we can't have that and or in offices. I mean, we spend 90% of our lives under artificial

Walt Zerbe 21:41
light, yeah, my basement, that's me every day,

LaDonna Eriksen 21:45
yeah? And you're like a mole.

Walt Zerbe 21:47
I am. I look like one too. That

Andy Bull 21:51
wasn't very nice, but

LaDonna Eriksen 21:53
I didn't compare him to a mole. He's like a mole, yeah? But it's, it's rather interesting, because people have massive problems with with, well, not only cancer and immune deficiency diseases and diabetes and but you're looking at stroke victims. You're looking at people with high blood pressure. You're looking at all of these different issues that go on that until we can change the lighting itself. That's where we have to work.

Walt Zerbe 22:33
Is this because of the relation of just getting proper sleep? Or is it? Is it way, way deeper? Oh, it's

LaDonna Eriksen 22:40
way deeper than that. Unfortunately, it's

Walt Zerbe 22:42
wild that we're that tuned in and that light is that important to our physiology, well,

LaDonna Eriksen 22:48
but we evolved that way. Remember, we evolved outside like a flower didn't go inside, yeah. And so we're like, we're like, the grass that grew and without light, grass won't grow well, we're kind of the same way we are now, the the grass inside the house that's withering and dying because of all the problems that we're that we have made for ourselves. And if we look at if we look at one other one, if we just change the nanometers of light by 10, if we go to 470 nanometers instead of the 480 we're looking at a light signal that is sent to the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which then is sent to the paraventricular nucleus again, but that paraventricular nucleus, because of that small change in light now, is going to produce a substance called corticotropin releasing hormone. Now, corticotropin releasing hormone is a substance that will travel to the pituitary gland, and the pituitary gland will then, in turn, produce another substance called adrenocorticotropic hormone.

Walt Zerbe 24:14
Oh my gosh, where's the Supercalifragilistic expialidocious? Thank you.

Bruce Clarke 24:18
Mary Poppins, yeah, we should call you Donna. Poppins, yeah,

LaDonna Eriksen 24:20
that's right,

Walt Zerbe 24:21
this is so wild. So, so is that bad? Because we're 10 nanometers off, that'll produce something that harms us? Oh, no, it's not. That's okay.

LaDonna Eriksen 24:30
Oh, that's just fine, because ACTH will make it shorter, yeah. Then travels through your body, through the bloodstream, and it goes to the adrenal glands that sit on top of your kidneys. And because of that ACTH, it causes our kidneys to produce cortisol.

Walt Zerbe 24:51
Oh, wow. Now

LaDonna Eriksen 24:53
you know. And you look at this and you think, Well, wait a minute, you know, this is all because of light, yeah. And yeah, it is all because of light. And cortisol has a lot of different roles in our body. It's not just one, because it helps to regulate metabolism. And people have a concept of the word metabolism, because most of the time they think that metabolism is digestion. For some reason, I've never understood why, yeah, yeah. But anyway, metabolism is not just digestion, because metabolism is the sum of all. How do I say this? It's the sum of all biochemical reactions that occur in our body. Wow. And so that's what cortisol does. It helps to regulate metabolism. It controls blood sugar levels. It raises blood pressure through a lot of different possibilities, including one that's called vasoconstriction. It makes our blood our blood vessels get smaller, and therefore it will increase our blood pressure. It stimulates water retention from the kidneys, which also causes sodium retention, which of course, sodium or salt will increase your blood pressure, and it activates something called the sympathetic nervous system, and that increases our heart rate, which also increases blood pressure. And the other thing that will that it will stimulate is our fight or flight system. And if you've never heard of the fight or flight that's basically the part of our system that will either give us the ability to stand and fight, yep, or to run the opposite direction as fast as you can. Oh, man, that's the flight now. So people think that, you know, it's just sleep, wake No, it's the entire body. Yeah, wow. And cortisol is in a good example of that, I wonder

Walt Zerbe 27:03
if that's the reason why sometimes when I'm sitting at my desk, I feel like I just need to I feel very, I don't know, I get kind of worked up. I don't feel comfortable, I feel annoyed, and just like, nothing happening. It just, it just happens. And I leak. And then I need to go outside, and then I go outside, I feel better. Do you think that's the light? That's That's exactly

LaDonna Eriksen 27:24
right? Wow. It's the light. So we have to, we have to encourage the research and development people to change the light

Walt Zerbe 27:33
so it would sit, wow. I would think that if insurance companies and healthcare industry started diving into it, there would be a heck of a lot of power, power to get the light industry to recognize this and change. So where are we? Because right now, the picture you just painted is we're all in trouble, and our lighting is not going to do a darn thing. It might make your space look nice to you, but it's not really good for you.

LaDonna Eriksen 27:59
Oh, esthetically, you know, as a designer, esthetically, the light is great, yeah. And I've been a designer almost as long as I've been an educator in in physiology, but you know, you have to have that pleasing look that people want. Well, that pleasing look is killing us.

Walt Zerbe 28:22
Andy, LaDonna, you didn't tell me this cast was gonna go like this way. Holy crap. This is just This is so intense. It's really amazing. And

LaDonna Eriksen 28:31
the sad part is, Walt is the fact that the information is out there, but you have to go down a lot of rabbit holes on the internet to find this information. It's not in anatomy physiology books yet, and it's been almost 20 years, none of this is taught in the classroom. I talked to friends of mine who are still teaching anatomy physiology full time, and they said, What are you talking about, I've never heard of this. I've never heard about any of this. I've talked to doctors, I've talked to nurses, all of them have the same reaction. We've never heard about this. So it's not out there yet, and you have to, like I say, do that deep dive to find the information. And that's why it's so important that Andy, Bruce and I were out there and putting out this information, even though we're teaching people some new big words, we need to somehow get this information out there, so people know that we have to make these changes.

Walt Zerbe 29:46
Bruce Andy

Bruce Clarke 29:47
has in our conversations. Andy had even stumbled across some individuals that are starting to take some tentative steps down this path to really help us think about lighting in a different way. A lot of. Terminology, primarily, as you mentioned, Walt and it's, it's ubiquitous across the industry is thinking about luminous intensity. So talk about Lux and lumens, right? Talking about, you know, the directionality of light. Talk about the CCT, you know, in Kelvin. Talk about CRI or TM 30. Those are the parameters by which we understand the ingredients of light in a given space, but when we start to shift it more down the path of a scientific understanding like LaDonna has been talking about, we recognize that really, just like sound has the crests and troughs of low frequency and high frequency sound to give this a combined sound, it's similar where we're focusing now on the spectral intensities. You know, in lighting terminology called the spectral power distribution of a source of light. To understand, okay, in the packet of violet all the way up to the packet of red, and even as LaDonna talked about extending further into the ultraviolet spectrum and extending further into the infrared spectrum. Most light is only concentrated on visual tasks and visual support, right? But as Andy has done some research, he's even found some individuals that are more focused on fine tuning the spectral composition of light, instead of just like, let me just get these LED diodes and just kind of create a certain visual experience. We're really trying to get into the nuance of spectrally tuning that light. That's a newer term, I think, in some circles, that still hasn't fully caught on, because we're just kind of whitewashing the entire thing with circadian lighting, or, you know, human centric lighting, and, and, you know, all of that stuff, or tunable White is what it is. But we're adding that nuance because that that is a compelling idea, but unless we actually know what's happening at the spectral level, we're not really addressing some of the core issues that we're talking about here.

Walt Zerbe 31:59
So that's true. Okay, well, that's

LaDonna Eriksen 32:02
true because most of the lighting that we need as humans is in the UVA and UVB. I just gonna

Walt Zerbe 32:08
ask, was the 480 in the in the UV range, or the ultraviolet? Oh,

LaDonna Eriksen 32:12
no, no. That's That's down into, that's actually into the visual spectrum, but it's at about 7,000k Oh, which most people don't like.

Walt Zerbe 32:23
No, 5000 to me is inside seems like a hospital, like it's antiseptic,

LaDonna Eriksen 32:31
yeah, and then you get we, but we actually need the UVA and UVB even to produce serotonin and Walt. That's one reason why you get that aggressive feeling? Because your serotonin levels, I

Bruce Clarke 32:45
want to fight somebody. And it's not history. How good talkies you had for breakfast?

Walt Zerbe 32:49
I feel like just, I don't know, smashing something right now. Yeah,

LaDonna Eriksen 32:54
it's because the serotonin levels are low. Because it takes UVB of 290, to 320 nanometers that UVB light is what's necessary for serotonin to be produced. And if you don't have serotonin, then you get these feelings of anxiety and aggression and pain and and it actually causes feeding behavior problems, which is why people become obese because you're sitting at your desk and you're eating M M's because, yeah, you're don't have any serotonin.

Walt Zerbe 33:29
Wow, I still have so many questions like, let's, let's say you have a giant window in your house, but you have coatings on the window to prevent UV and things like that. Are we negating the quality of of of light getting into the at the house and to our skin. Yes,

LaDonna Eriksen 33:43
you can't have that, and you can't have you can't go outside with with all kinds of sunscreen on, either, because if you do, if you put sunscreen on, you're blocking all of the UV light that you need. Wow.

Andy Bull 34:01
Andy, so perhaps, if anybody happens to be listening to this in front of a computer or access to the internet, and we're talking about the spectral distribution a bit and and everybody goes, oh yeah, that's just LEDs being unhealthy and, you know, fluorescence. But basically, I'm assuming anyone that's listening to this has got a slight interest in lighting and knows a little bit about the spectral distribution, where we have a graph with wavelength, and say, on the left hand side, you've got the ultraviolet, and then you've got the blues going through the greens, the yellows, the oranges and into the reds. And then on the right hand side, we've got the infrared spectrum. And that's the sort of distribution that we're talking about now, if anybody wants just to type in experimental physics, halogen light spectrum and go for images, then it will bring up a little image, and it's got six different light sources on it led for the. Essence, but what's really interesting, and it's got daylight as well, of course. And a lot of what we're talking about here is not this core, White, Blue peak with LED scenario, too much, but if you compare the daylight to even the incandescent and the halogen lamps that we that we thought were all fine and visually, they give quite a good representation of daylight for color, but you'll see that they have very, very, very low ultraviolet and blue light in them, okay? And if you look at the graphs, you'll see that. So whilst we thought they were quite good and not doing us any harm, they're actually a lot more harmful than we thought. You can just fluorescence, and that just makes your skin crawl. Well, literally. And when you see the graph, send me

Walt Zerbe 35:48
a link to that. Andy, I want to put that in the chat so people can, yeah, yeah.

Andy Bull 35:52
So just Google experimental physics, halogen light spectrum and images, and it will come up. But I'll give you the look for the I can find it. But say, just, just have a look at those and say, and what we're talking about is the is the wavelengths towards the edge of the spectrum that are the ones that are really affecting the physiology.

Walt Zerbe 36:13
Okay, so, where are we, like, other than doomed. I mean, how do

Bruce Clarke 36:23
um session to deliver. Because, you know, at the end of ladonna's talk, my section was called the big sigh.

Walt Zerbe 36:33
Okay, good, tell us about this. Hey, everybody, uh, okay, let's

Bruce Clarke 36:36
just take a deep breath, you know, because at the end of the day, it's like, well, let's not presume to think that we can address all of human beings physiological needs, because artificial lighting is like a Twinkie in the ceiling, like if all that we ever ate was Twinkies. You know, it might taste good for a while, but at the end of the day, we're gonna look a little, you know, peek at and unhealthy, right? More than that. So we need that good whole food. So, you know, go outside, like that kind of that's a that's an undercurrent of this. Like, just understand that what you're getting is adequate to a point, but don't think that it's going to replace the fundamental source that we need, right? So for me, our focus was, let's just shift the conversation around some of the psychological benefits of good lighting, right? And how there is a correlation. And I don't have the science on this, there is a correlation between human physiology and human psychology. A lot of pharmaceutical companies use the placebo as a part of their research to verify if there's significant standard deviations of difference between the control population and the experimental population. And some people are do receive placebos, and because they think that it's making them feel better, they actually exhibit, you know, those qualities physiologically in their bodies, right? So not underestimating the power of the mind in that regard. And so for me, it was like, okay, yes, thank you, LaDonna for, like, just taking your big fat pin and bursting this bubble wide open for the all of us. Now, what do we do? Like, I'm a lighting designer. Now, how do I tell people you know that you can have good outcomes with lighting? And so we shift the conversation to say there are still things we can do from a design perspective that can address some of the psychological needs for good quality lighting. And if we do that process of design with an understanding of some things I alluded to earlier, the dynamic qualities of our sun. So talk about intensity, talk about directionality, duration, yeah, timing, all of the even the chromatic value, if we carefully orchestrate those aspects in design, we create something that I've referred to, and it's still evolving within my own mouth as I talk with clients, a circadian effective environment. So I don't say I'm doing circadian design or circadian lighting, but I'm essentially creating an affective environment that's based upon circadian principles that still produces a good experience for the client, that does yield some benefits, but I never say that this replaces the fundamental source of regulation that your body needs, which is the sun. But we want to address at least a holistic experience that you can have. And so that was, you know, my attempt to sort of put back some of the pieces, yeah, of the facade that that LaDonna had completely decimated

Walt Zerbe 39:50
it, you know, and we'll still continue.

LaDonna Eriksen 39:51
She's a

Bruce Clarke 39:52
record mom, but that's a good thing.

Walt Zerbe 39:54
The larger story to me here is, as we've as we're getting more knowledge. And more equipment to gain more more research and more equipment to gain more answers. We're finding out how sensitive we are to light, water, air, sound, and this just ultimately will speak of nothing but opportunity for our community to be providing better solutions and healthier environments and like a wellness concept, because this is it's not like putting speakers in a ceiling for somebody. This affects every person on the planet. Yeah, so it's a huge opportunity, but it also is telling me that our community is going to need to, is going to need to partner with people like you, because it's not so let's say the 480 nanometer bulb exists. You just don't screw it in the ceiling. Yeah, and turn it on and turn it off whenever you want, right? There's going to need to be a a dosage or something, or a plan that happens with that light. I mean, like, what? Okay, so I'm going to ask that question. We have the balls right now, I can get them at the hardware store. What's what's, can I just use them? Or what's deal? I doubt it

Andy Bull 41:08
right? Yeah, well, you're absolutely right. Is that the integrators in the custom channel are perfectly positioned to help deliver as best we can with the technology, with the lighting technology that exists. So the lighting controls is, is the absolute perfect route for it. Now, I mean, I look back, and maybe eight, nine years ago, we did one of the first sort of circadian lighting systems in a hospital in Manchester. And at the time, I'm guilty, and I'm not sure LaDonna will ever forgive me, but that was a color tunable lighting system. But the purpose was, it wasn't to save lives and things like that. That the purpose was because it was completely encased in lead. It was chemotherapy, and everyone was getting zapped with radiation, and there was no you couldn't have a window because, you know, if you're walking past, you'd get an unhealthy dose of it, but, but nobody would, not even the patients nor the staff knew what time of day it was. So we had a system in there, and we had sky ceilings. In fact, we even had a video windows as well, which were quite cool. And anyway, we picked, you know, a lighting control system that, in fairness, I knew from the custom install channel, and we ran that, and it would automatically adjust, well, not only the videos, but also the color temperature throughout the day. And sort of on an automatic cycle, we had it set up so that if a doctor needed to do an examination or something like that, they could just hit a button and the room would go bright, it would break out of the cycle, and as soon as they finished, there was just the button to go back into the auto mode. And I say now at the time when I was there, I never really realized how busy nurses were. They are absolutely flat out. And it occurred to me that we'd never going to have time to train people on how to use such a system. So we thought long and hard and put a lot of effort into it, and we and we came up with, say, with a system like that. It was basically auto and examination, and that was that. And I said, and when it came for sort of commissioning and everything, and we were said, oh, you know, you show us how to use the lights. And we said, oh, well, you know, good. Just go and have a go. And if you can't use them, yeah, we'll come up tomorrow and we'll, you know, we'll run through it. And we never heard back from them for the rest of the day. And phoned them again that evening. We said, just checking how you got on, did you have a look at it? And they went, Oh, yeah, we can do that. That's fine. And, you know, and in the eight years, you know, I never had a call back to say, how do we do this? Or, you know, you didn't do a manual because it didn't even need a manual for the maintenance department, but not for the for the operation. So, so it's not hard for or say again that the control systems that are better and more advanced now, to be able to set up intensity, and I'm not going to say color temperature, but spectral control, wavelength control, so that exists, the biggest challenge to us at the minute is actually getting the light sources. But I'm confident that it's, it's on the way. You know, it's not going to be here next year, but it is on the way. The lighting design industry are aware of this and and, of course, all the manufacturers want to jump on to what everybody wants, or what gives them, you know, margin, something to market and talk about it's going to be expensive and getting everybody that's why I hate the human centric lighting, because it's been so abused.

Walt Zerbe 44:50
Same with the term AI

Andy Bull 44:54
by people like me putting in color tunable systems and then talking about human centric lighting. But anyway. Yeah. So it's Yeah, so that the the light sources are coming, that they're working on them, that there are some improvements, but, but again, sometimes it's been restricted to the visible light spectrum. When, you know, when the Donna's given us a clip around the ear hole, we now need to make sure that it's also providing that, you know, the non visible wavelengths as well, just just to help, to look after us. So I'm kind of

Walt Zerbe 45:22
thinking, I'm kind of thinking this is going to start first in the commercial side, and it's probably going to start like somewhere in the UK or something, where they're a lot, I believe, a lot more in tune to to people and their and their work environments and their health. And then it's going to trickle down, hopefully into the residential world and integrators will have an opportunity to connect the dots between builders, people building houses, and lighting designers and all that stuff. Is that fair statement? Or do you think I'm wrong on that?

Andy Bull 45:56
I think it, I think it probably will work like that initially, however, the I mean that you've heard LaDonna talking about how healthy, unhealthy the lighting is. I mean, within the lighting design community, it's being likened to the fast food realization of how bad that is for us. And the same as, you know, like we just haven't realized it yet, or the majority of people haven't realized it, but we're now able to prove it and see it. So, so I think, and again, you know, wellness and being healthy is, is, is a lot more prominent these days. You know, sometimes, oh yeah, you get up to our age, and then we start to try and think about how we get life out of it longer. But actually, you know, the younger, younger folk are getting a lot more into it a lot earlier. So So I think that will be driving it. So I think it might come quicker than, you know, previous changes or previous technologies. But yeah, ultimately it will be the commercial world, and maybe some hospitals and stuff like that will drive it. But again, once it starts to come, it'll it will accelerate quickly. I was

Walt Zerbe 47:06
just telling my wife about that. You know, when you're young, you're all healthy, nothing matters, and like 30 to 50, you let everything go, and then 50 and over, you're trying to get healthy again.

Andy Bull 47:16
And I'm not sure quite what you're talking about there, but Madonna can certainly help us with the right wavelengths for light, for libido, isn't it? And everything? Yes, it is. Yes,

LaDonna Eriksen 47:27
yes. Because you people are you have, of course, reduced fertility in women. Of course, that doesn't make any difference after you're 70, so but

Walt Zerbe 47:41
lower, you know what? Though, that's become a big problem. I know of a lot of people that have been having fertility issues that are younger. I wonder if this, if the light, has some barrier and and preservatives in their food and whatever the heck else. Well,

LaDonna Eriksen 47:57
preservatives in our food don't who we can we don't even want to start that's another cast. That's another whole ball game, but the lighting has definitely caused infertility in women. It has caused low sperm count in men. It has caused reduced libido in in both women and men. And so yes, the fact that people are having fertility issues, it has affected them even when they're young. And looking

Bruce Clarke 48:27
at population trends that we have today, like in quote, unquote, first world countries where we have a lot of artificial light, there's actually a decrease in overall like reproduction, but in places that are so called, you know, less developed. They've got no problems with any of that. Wow.

LaDonna Eriksen 48:46
As they go outside. Well,

Bruce Clarke 48:47
yeah, that mean, there's a natural they're naturally connected. So

Walt Zerbe 48:51
the moral to the story for at least people listening to this cast right now, you've, you've got to go outside. You got to tell your customers that go outside. I don't know if you'd explain this to a customer yet, because that's pretty deep. But what's the best time to go outside? And for how long is that kind of an easy answer? Yes, it

LaDonna Eriksen 49:08
is actually from four a or from 10am to 4pm is the best time to go outside, expose your arms and legs to natural sunlight without suntan lotion or anything like that, on for anywhere between five to 30 minutes, two days a week, and you will actually be able to produce enough vitamin D

Walt Zerbe 49:33
for your body. Yeah, because that's a big issue, vitamin D, I do know that, yes,

LaDonna Eriksen 49:37
because you need to have vitamin D, and that takes UVB light, which is from 280 to 315 nanometers in wavelength, wow. And of course, that's what's responsible for a lot of different things for your body, because vitamin D will regulate the calcium. Phosphate levels in your body. And I mean, we can go on and on with that for a long time.

Walt Zerbe 50:06
It sounds like we're going to be learning and talking a lot more about this in another six months, maybe at ISC Andy. I don't know if anybody else is going to that, but you'll have more information to share. But this isn't something we you're obviously letting go, not letting go. I don't want to let it go. I want to keep learning about this.

LaDonna Eriksen 50:24
Yeah, well, and it's not, you know, when we think about, let's talk about Iran for just a minute, the old Islamic traditions of women totally covering their bodies has returned. They have started doing this again because they brought the old tradition back. What they have seen is a spike in immune deficiency disease and multiple sclerosis in these women because of that tradition.

Walt Zerbe 51:01
Wow.

LaDonna Eriksen 51:04
So it's all over the world that this is occurring. And if we go north and south of the equator, we see changes in in diabetes type one, diabetes type two, like you say, we can go on for a long time with this. Yeah, all right,

Walt Zerbe 51:22
so speaking of which, we're just about up with our time on this cast. Is there who would like to Is there anything else anybody wanted to make sure that they got across on this? I'm gonna say initial cast, because this is, this is fascinating, and I think we should be having another chat on this later. But I just

Bruce Clarke 51:39
want to circle back on where we might see this evolve. I definitely agree, the commercial sector, but I would say probably you'll see a lot more research focusing on the most vulnerable in society. So neonatal units, elderly care facilities, places that both have individuals that are very sensitive to environments. In general, you're seeing a lot of systems, both employed and then also, because it's a relatively highly controlled environment, they're able to, you know, cut out all the other factors of like your bag of talkies that you have that might be the reason why you're feeling irritable, as opposed to the lighting. So in elderly care facilities, we've got, you know, where they're seeing demonstrable improvement in areas of memory care and an Alzheimer's and dementia, and then with the neonatal units kind of seeing how they're able to reduce maybe the time that some of the more vulnerable babies are there when they put them under a special kind of lighting configurations those, and I think also probably in shift work. We may see some of that too emerging. So in those sectors, it will probably manifest more before we see it more commercially available within the residential sector. That's my that's my perspective.

LaDonna Eriksen 52:59
You know, even in the 1950s and 60s, they found out that if they had babies who were jaundiced, and they put them under UV light, they would reduce the jaundice in those children. They still do that, and they would no longer be jaundiced. And it was always interesting, because they said, Well, they didn't do that before. And what if a child was jaundiced in the 1800s Well, the children were not jaundiced in the 1800s because they would either put them by the window or they'd have them outside all the time, and the sunlight would take care of the jaundice problem. And so we didn't, you know that, didn't notice. That's

Walt Zerbe 53:38
really interesting. I have recently learned some cultures do put their baby in a carriage outside, like kind of all day. It might have been Switzerland or something, but there, it might be cold or whatever, but they have a lot of outside, outside exposure. Yeah, it's really interesting. Yeah, all right,

Andy Bull 53:56
perhaps one thing just to say, Why? Why this community is in a great position with all of this. Yeah, the name of the person that came up with this one. But if you can be talking to your clients and have a level of knowledge, I mean, Bruce and myself, you know, we're never going to get to the Donners level of knowledge on this topic as well. We're so we're so lucky to have her on and call her up. But if you do, if you are able to get an appreciation of it, then really good quote. I can't remember who to accredited to, but spending on health and wellness is viewed as an investment, not a cost. Oh, yeah. And when you can approach it like that, you know, it's very hard for somebody not, not if they've got the money not to spend it.

Walt Zerbe 54:52
Yeah, are there any resources where somebody could go to learn a bit a little bit more? And maybe, if you guys can't think of them, just send me. Some and I'll put links in. But if somebody wants to do a little reading, do a little bit more dive into this, a little bit more, or is it all at the academic level and really hard to find and or hard to understand?

LaDonna Eriksen 55:12
Well, actually, I'm putting together a training program on this. Oh, currently, and probably will be writing a a short little book on it to help people to understand this. And I think it's in in the benefit of the the lighting community, especially that they understand some of this. And I'm going to try to weed out some of those Supercalifragilistic expellious words

Walt Zerbe 55:43
in there for maybe using the letters as you keep talking about

LaDonna Eriksen 55:48
it. That's right. That's right. ACTH is a lot easier, but it's something that I think is very important, and it's, it's, it's important to humankind altogether, that we get the point across. Not only that, we have to get outside more, but for those people who live 90% of their lives under artificial lighting, we need to make some changes to help those people out. Yeah,

Bruce Clarke 56:22
I've got two resources for your for your listeners. One is by an individual from the UK. Yeah, you're welcome. Andy Dr Shelley James wrote a book called light, your essential Survival Guide. She's She's done a ton of research, and has even been engaged in architectural settings to help them invoke strategies for improving health and sleep. And another individual who is putting information out there is a gentleman by the name of Martin Moore Eid who has a book actually titled The light Doctor using light to boost health, improve sleep and live longer. So Oh, and,

Walt Zerbe 57:04
you know, you know, what else was a big category at the CES show last year was these light things that go on your skin to help fix muscle pain and things like that. It was a, I don't know if that's legit or not, but it was a red, I think a form of a red, yeah, and it was, there's a whole giant area of it, oh, yeah, I think it's being used in physical therapy. Is now as well.

LaDonna Eriksen 57:29
They use infrared all the time. But it's also not something that you can get with general lighting. Yeah, it's beyond that visible spectrum, again, right?

Walt Zerbe 57:40
Okay, any last comments? This has been a really, really informative and has my wheels spinning as I digest all this. It's just fascinating.

Andy Bull 57:52
I just think it could sum it up quite easily. Mind blown. Yeah,

Walt Zerbe 58:00
thanks LaDonna and Bruce for Andy for doing that. But you know, that's I love. I love podcasts like that. I really love to listen to something that just turns out to be super deep and incredibly impactful. So this is, this is that I've never done a cast that was more impactful because I did not know that light was that important to us. And yeah, it sounds like when the sources are out, we'll have a real opportunity our channel to help educate and deploy these as a wellness opportunity everywhere. But I mean, we're we just kicked we disapproved in the R 10 standards group, an assisted living recommended practice that's going to be started in Australia. I could lighting like this is going to be paramount to helping people fight disease, stay healthy and everything as they become more vulnerable, aged or sick, whatever. So I just see this as giant, yeah, and it should be everywhere, so agreed,

Andy Bull 59:04
and it will stop Walt wanting to go and punch somebody.

Walt Zerbe 59:07
Yeah, I'm gonna go outside. Because it is two o'clock, so I'm within the window.

LaDonna Eriksen 59:14
I'm gonna do that. That's right. Serotonin levels up. I

Walt Zerbe 59:18
am I'm gonna do that. So Bruce and Andy and LaDonna. Thank you very much for giving us all this amazing information, for taking the time to to do this cast with me.

Bruce Clarke 59:28
Absolutely. Thank you.

Andy Bull 59:29
You're welcome.

LaDonna Eriksen 59:30
Thank you. And

Walt Zerbe 59:32
I reserve the right to get you guys on another cast, to maybe dive into one of these things or talk about something completely different. But lighting is very interesting to me. I do know it's it's definitely a growing category in our industry that's also it's beneficial, but it's one that also happens to make margin for people, so it's a good extension to their businesses. So we'll think of something else to talk about. So thanks again for doing the cast with me. Thanks everybody for listening. Listening to the cast. Hope you got a lot out of it. Hope your minds are blown. I will have some links down in the text so we can get additional information about this, including that super duper psychological halogen led, or halogen light, that Andy talked about, so you can go research that. So once again, thanks for listening to the cast, and after listening to this, now you will know why I always ask you to please keep an open mind.

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