The Effect of Light
and Color on Human Physiology, Duro-Test Vita-Lite Full Spectrum Lighting
Simulates Natural Light!
Raum & Zeit,
"The Effect of Light and Color on Human Physiology," Prof. Dr. hc Orm
Bergold M.D. It is becoming increasingly apparent that humans are as intimately
dependent upon light as plants are.
Phototherapy and
photodynamic therapy have found more recent application in cancer treatment by a
process which primes cancer cells with photoactive chemicals such
hematoporphyrine and then exposes them to light.
The Effect of Light
and Color on Human Physiology
Most information has to do with light. No one doubts that light-based
transmission of information is infinitely faster and more efficient than the
oxidation-reduction metabolic transmission system which medical science insists
is the only one humans have. Therefore, plants are light-based systems and
humans metabolic redox systems. But it is an estrogenically false assumption
that humans derive nothing from exposure to light other than scorched buns. Oh
sure, doctors say, the sun and all that diurnal stuff may have some vague but
not particularly important relationship with human kind, but basically such
drivel can be ignored.
However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that humans are as intimately
dependent upon light as plants are. Plants are loaded with pigmented light
sensitive photoreceptor molecules, generically called phytochromes of which
chlorophyll is an example. Humans, by way of extension and analogy, can be
described as tissue sandwiches liberally slathered with plant derived pigmented
photoreceptor molecules, generically referred to as cryptochromes in that, while
the exact molecule has not yet been discovered, it is known to be a flavin of
some variety.
Role of Pineal Gland
The modern medical pineal gland paradigm now places it as the regulatory gland
which regulates all other regulatory glands. Functionally, the pineal is
described as a neuroendocrine transducer which translates retinally received
light wave generated, neuronal impulses into hormonal regulatory messages.
Melatonin, an indoleamin hormone related to the plant growth hormone, ausin, is
the chief pineal messenger. Melatonin shows definite circadian and circumannual
patterns related to light intensity, frequency and photo period. Pineal levels
are higher during night and winter than during day and summer, for example, the
light precipitated cascade of hormonal events affects the behavior, growth and
physiological status of all plants, animals, and humans. It is an absolute
certainty that the character of light emitted by the sun eight minutes ago is
already beginning to express itself in our physiology. This process occurs
independent of one's conscious perception. The process occurs irrespective of
rationalizations to the contrary or some belief that our behavior or
physiological status has nothing whatever to do with light.
Light and Colors
It is just where the medical paradigm light-human interactions ends, that things
start to get interesting. For instance, the human photoreceptor flavin molecules
are not limited conveniently to the retina but rather are ubiquitous, being
found in virtually every tissue. What are they doing there if, indeed, the whole
light-human story is limited to the retinal-pineal axis? What extraocular light
transduced products are formed? What function do these products have?
Flavins are not the only photoactive molecules: carotenes, melanin, and heme
molecules such as hemoglobin and bilirubin are photoactive in addition to a
great variety of metaloencymes. The fact that the difference between chlorophyll
and hemoglobin is essentially that, in the case of hemoglobin, magnesium has
been replaced by iron in the molecular hum begins to take on unsuspected
significance.
One who has done research long ago in plants was the world's first biophysicist,
J. C. Bose, an Indian physicist, who in the early years of this century was
working with ingenious weights, pulleys and strings he produced thoroughly
modern graphics "etched" on carbon sooted glass by a chicken feather
moving as the plants moved. He eventually was the first demonstrating that
"soul-less" plants responded to all sorts of stimuli exactly as
animals did, that they had electrical properties and showed memory for events.
"The barriers which have seemed to separate kindred phenomena will be found
to have vanished, the plants and animals appearing as a multiform unity in a
single ocean of being." (Jagadis Chunder Bose, 1926) - and men , since we
now know that we possess several DNA segments which are possessed by all living
things.
Given the abundance of similarities in plant and animal photobiochemistry, it is
difficult to understand why phototherapy applications have been so limited or
why they have taken so long to appear on the medical horizon. Dermatologists
routinely use ultraviolet light as adjunctive therapy in the treatment of some
acne, psoriasis or other refractive skin conditions. "Blue light" is a
therapy in the 430nm to 450nm light spectra range. Phototherapy and photodynamic
therapy have found more recent application in cancer treatment by a process
which primes cancer cells with photoactive chemicals such hematoporphyrine and
then exposes them to light. The "blue light" phenomenon which probably
plays a role in the applications mentioned, deserves serious research attention.
Its significance lies in the fact that blue light range, 400nm to 500nm,
corresponds to the absorption and action spectra of many extremely vital
biomolecules. The spectra for these biomolecules are as distinctive and
characteristic as are the spectra for the elements of which they are composed
such as carbon hydrogen and nitrogen. Of special interest in this range is the
photoreactivation phenomena. Essentially, photoreactivation is a fundamental DNA
repair process common to all phylla, from the lowest to the highest life forms.
It is a special case in which, after DNA has sustained pyrimidine dimer damage
due to ultra violet light exposure, subsequent exposure to blue light not only
results in repair of the DNA dimer damage but also, as if by magic, causes other
seemingly unrelated cellular repair to take place. Curiously, although this
rather dramatic healing mechanism is well recognized and has looked at
academically, little serious work has been done with regard to evaluating the
immense clinical significance of such a fundamental healing process.
Raum & Zeit, "The Effect of Light and Color on Human Physiology,"
Prof. Dr. hc Orm Bergold M.D.
