Three stories about LIGHT
One
Carbon monoxide (CO): one of the nasty things in car emissions & cigarette smoke. Also, a byproduct of the ever-important heme. Heme, as you may recall, activates Rev-erb:
“Food for thought: an endogenous ligand of Rev-erb is heme (the iron-binding element in red blood cells). Heme is degraded into bilirubin. Elevated levels of bilirubin cause jaundice. A treatment of neonatal jaundice is exposure to blue light. Blue light is a major regulator of circadian rhythms and Rev-erb is an executive-level player in this game. The primary mechanisms of blue light appear unrelated in these two models (melanopsin activation vs. bilirubin photoisomerization), but seem intertwined, because heme activates Rev-erb. Cool.”
News: Disruption of the body’s internal clock causes disruption of metabolic processes
Science: Reciprocal regulation of carbon monoxide and the circadian clock (Klemz et al., 2016)
Tl;dr: heme degradation occurs on a circadian cycle and produces CO. CO prevents Clock/Bmal1 from binding to DNA. Inhibiting this process throws off numerous other circadian rhythms in the liver.
SUNLIGHT and food in the morning, and let endogenously produced CO rhythmically tune the clock in the evening.
Two
News: Flashing LIGHT therapy for Alzheimer’s
Toward treating Alzheimer’s disease with brain waves
Science: Gamma frequency entrainment attenuates amyloid load and modifies microglia (Iaccarino et al., 2016)
Tl;dr: mice exposed to LED light flickering 40x per second for one hour showed reduced amyloid in their brain over the next 12 hours.
LIGHT IS A FUCKING DRUG
Interestingly, 40x worked, but not constant light, nor 20 or 80. The frequency of brain gamma waves (25-80 Hz) may have something to do with it. The researchers theorized that disrupted gamma waves contribute to amyloid build-up, and flickering light within this frequency restores them. This re-invigorates microglia to gobble up amyloid plaques. Cool.
My only advice: if you’re gonna do it, do it in the morning with breakfast.
@CaloriesProper @foundmyfitness It would be profound if we could link modern diseases with electronic screen refresh rates…..
— Joshua Matettore (@joshfattore) December 14, 2016
Interesting point, Joshua. Various brain waves seem to be in the range of screen refresh rates… I don’t know, but I’m keeping my eye on this.
Three
News: Light therapy might boost testosterone and sexual satisfaction in men
“The scientists discovered that the men who received active light treatment saw their testosterone levels increase and their sexual satisfaction improve.”
Study shows lack of interest in sex successfully treated by exposure to bright light.
Science: Light therapy as a treatment for sexual dysfunction; focus on testosterone levels (Koukouna et al., 2016)
Tl;dr: morning sex with the lights on (there’s your fasted exercise LOL). Then breakfast.
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