From The Mitochondriac Manifesto.
Artificial blue light is ruining our circadian rhythms (daily cycles of sleep and repair) chronically more than any toxin known to man. That’s because natural blue light is supposed to control the body’s daily-nightly stress levels and mitochondrial fitness. But artificial blue light doesn’t have the red and purple light present in real sunlight to counteract the potentially harmful effects of blue.
Natural blue light exposure, in isolation, is bad enough for you. But man-made blue light is profoundly more damaging to our biology because: (1) computer screens and modern light bulbs radiate blue light that’s three or four times the color intensity; (2) we get it way too often; (3) we’re exposed to it far too long; (4) we get it at the wrong times of the day; and (5) it’s usually present alone, without its natural counter-balancing frequency of red.
To give you some perspective, not too long ago, all we had was the incandescent light bulb. They make light that’s kind of like the sun’s. It contains almost the full spectrum of colors, including some IR, with a tad more blue than real sunlight. But unfortunately for our health, the industry moved away from incandescent light bulbs, to fluorescents, and now LEDs.
They sold us on their energy efficiency, while ignoring the health decay. You see, to be energy-efficient, LEDs don’t waste energy making light you don’t see, and wouldn’t think to miss. So modern LEDs produce light that’s almost entirely blue, and not much else.
Let’s take a moment to define blue light. When mitochondriacs talk about artificial blue light, most of the time we mean white-looking light with a very high color temperature (>4500°Kelvin) so it appears bluish, instead of having a yellowish hue like traditional incandescent light (<3000°K).
To explain how the idea of color temperature came about, the nomenclature is modeled after the color at which tungsten glows when heated to the corresponding temperature. The lower the temperature that tungsten is, the more yellow/orange/red it appears, while the hotter the temperature, the more bluish-white it appears. Color temperature is very important because our circadian system is controlled by these frequencies of light hitting our photoreceptors.
Another reason we call artificial light blue is because it fundamentally begins that way. There is no such thing as an inherently white LED. LEDs can only produce one color, whereas real white is a mixture of colors. So most of our tech devices create “white” light by coating blue LEDs with yellow phosphors to make them glow white in color.
Unfortunately, blue light from our gadgetry is many times more intense than the blue that’s mixed in with natural sunlight. It’s 6500° Kelvin or more in LEDs vs. 1800°K in early-morning sun. Artificial blue light is also used everywhere, in pretty much every light-emitting device made – from smartphone screens and LED lights, to street lamps and modern TVs.
But to compound the catastrophe, we’re psycho-socially addicted to blue light because it has a stimulating effect on our hormones and nervous systems, and because of the digital content that’s delivered with it. That means the typical millennial/Gen Z’er looks at their cell phone more than 150 times a day, which does a marvelous job of depleting social media addicts of dopamine, cortisol, and sex hormones through constant activation of their adrenal, pituitary, and psychological reward systems.
That’s the single biggest reason why children and young adults today have adrenal dysfunction, brain and behavior problems like attention deficit disorder, metabolic dysfunction like diabetes and obesity, and fertility problems… as well as being addicted to social media, chemicals, and insert your favorite addiction here.
Blue light basically tells our internal pharmacy to release chemicals so we can concentrate and deal with daily stresses. Unfortunately, we’re doing this all day and night, non-stop, so our pharmacy runs out of chemicals to give us to meet normal daily demands. To show you that Industry knows this, my computer warns: “Screens emit blue light, which can keep you up at night. Night Light displays warmer colors to help you sleep.”
Most people never notice how much that blue light is stressing their system and inhibiting sleep because they’re running on emergency reserves every day. But if you ever try falling asleep well before your body is exhausted, you’d be surprised how jacked up the blue is making you feel.
You wouldn’t believe how toxic blue light is to our biology
- Increases heteroplasmy rate. Blue light expands the respiratory proteins in mitochondria, thereby lowering mitochondrial efficiency.
- Dehydrates you. Sluggish mitochondria make less water. That results in less e-zone to store energy, slower detoxification, and impediments to dozens of bodily functions due to protein malformation.
- Activates the stress response. Blue light in the eye stimulates the adrenal system into releasing cortisol and dopamine to prepare us for daily activities. The stress response also raises blood-sugar level, and dampens digestion and metabolism. In doing so, blue light chronically stresses the body and mind, upsets our hormonal systems (especially the adrenals), and contributes to type 2 diabetes.
- Wrecks DHA function in your eye and brain. Weak mitochondria (from heteroplasmy) make a smaller magnetic field. That reduces DHA delivery because magnetism moves DHA around in blood and offloads it into cells.
- Gives you brain fog and dumbs you down by “over-spending” your dopamine When your dopamine level drops, you can’t concentrate as well, you don’t make mental connections as well (creativity), you lose motivation, you lose empathy, and you lose patience. You become a slave to stimulation in your environment. In a word, that’s ADD.
- Disturbs melatonin and sleep. Blue light interferes with sleep cycles by damaging melatonin via melanopsin-vitamin A degradation.
- Impairs thyroid Blue light penetrates the skin 3–6 cm. So, when you spend many hours a day with your throat area exposed to intense blue light – as gamers and social media addicts do – that blue light can wreck mitochondria function in your thyroid, trigger inflammation, and give you hypothyroidism… or even Hashimoto’s, in severe cases.
- Upsets testosterone production and ovulatory cycles. This causes hormone imbalances, sexual dysfunction, and sometimes infertility.
- Increases reactive oxygen Stretched-out mitochondria make more free radicals, which perpetuates inflammation and causes biologic aging.
- Exaggerates metabolic problems. Blue light raises glucose levels, suppresses insulin, and contributes to type 2 diabetes.
- Promotes vitamin A deficiency and obesity. Blue light breaks the bond between melanopsin and vitamin A (retinol), turning retinol into a toxic version of itself: retinal. Especially significant to those with weight problems, vitamin A deficiency is linked to obesity. That’s a little-known circumstance by which blue light contributes to obesity.
Blue light stretches out your mitochondria (heteroplasmy)
The most harmful thing that artificial blue light does to your long-term health is it stretches out the respiratory proteins in your mitochondria. Recall that respiratory proteins are the building blocks of mitochondria’s five cytochromes that form key workstations along the electron transport chain. Together, the ETC: (1) makes ATP, (2) creates a magnetic field around organs that moves paramagnetic materials, and (3) builds redox potential to power cells, heal, and extinguish inflammation.
So in the same way that increased distance makes it harder for static electricity to jump from finger to doorknob, swelling of the respiratory proteins makes it harder for electrons to jump from one spot to the next along the ETC. That lowers ATP. Cells then don’t work as well. DC electricity that powers healing drops, as does the magnetic field that moves blood, oxygen, DHA, and hormones around the body.
A less-efficient electron transport chain, combined with reduced oxygen delivery, then creates more free radicals. All of that describes how blue light directly depresses mitochondrial function.
Blue light causes near-sightedness (myopia)
In the 1950s, 18% of the population in South Korea were near-sighted. Now about 96% need corrective lenses. Throughout the rest of Asia, myopia has doubled or tripled. Here at home (US), I’m disturbed to see very young children, even toddlers, wearing glasses with a remarkably strong prescription, because when I was growing up, most kids didn’t start needing glasses until they were in their teens – myself included.
So what causes myopia? Of course, there is a genetic component to near-sightedness. But the overlooked factor underpinning the vast majority of cases is artificial light and nnEMFs. Poor eyesight would not be nearly as common or acute without the presence of blue light from smartphones, computers, TVs, fluorescent lights and LED lights.
To understand how myopia happens in a person, look at a rainbow of colors coming out of a prism. You’ll notice that blue light bends more than most colors. Now, by nature, our eyes are built to focus using full-spectrum light. However, artificial light contains mostly blue. So under natural light, the lenses of our eyes put their point of focus more forward, toward the center of the eyeball, which means a rounder eyeball and better vision.
On the other hand, under fake blue light, our eyes get used to forcing their point of focus further back to compensate for the fact that blue light bends more than other colors in white light. The longer this goes on – blue, instead of full-spectrum – the more pressure there is on the eyeball to elongate and stay that way. That’s how we get myopia (short-sightedness) – at least until you shift your “light style” toward natural light, and away from the blue, which is what I’ve done.
Since I began learning from Dr. Jack how light works, I’ve made a concerted effort to open my sunroof while driving, wear glasses instead of contacts when I go for a bike ride, open windows, and get sun in my eyes. And the results are striking: My eyesight improved so much over a few months that I suddenly needed a new prescription.
I can see further than I ever could with my old prescription. And I can see better without glasses – especially after getting real sunlight the day before, and avoiding artificial light at night. But I can’t see things close up through my glasses anymore; my prescription is too strong. So now my vision is caught in a tug-of-war. It gets better when I get UV exposure, and it gets worse with glasses and artificial light.
But the hard lesson some people learn from myopia is this: Having bad eyesight is much more than buying glasses or contacts and you’re good to go. Myopia is actually an early-warning sign of mitochondrial distress and diseases of low-energy supply. It’s a “canary in a coal mine” predicting the occurrence of other diseases, as this chapter should make abundantly clear.
How blue light creates insulin resistance
Of great concern to millions of diabetics, the blue light and vitamin A-toxicity story is a major factor in the development of insulin resistance – not just carbs overloading the system with glucose (although that isn’t helping).
Instead, the bigger bottleneck is happening downstream. Blue light creates insulin resistance because it breaks your mitochondrial engines by stretching out the cytochrome proteins. Mitochondria then can’t metabolize glucose as efficiently as they should be able to because retinal damages the respiratory proteins.
So insulin injections force more glucose into cells faster. But that only improves throughput marginally because the bottleneck is glucose metabolism at the cell and mitochondria level, not so much getting glucose into cells. Hence, those with type 2 diabetes tend to get worse over time the longer they take insulin… unless they fix their mitochondrial dysfunction first.
Here again, mainstream medicine is once again extremely concerned with pacifying symptoms without actually fixing a damn thing. However, I do believe this is a rare case of legitimate ignorance because they don’t know biophysics like a mitochondriac.
Jack Kruse tells Aaron Alexander how blue light and nnEMFs are used to dumb people down, get them addicted, and harvest their money
From Aaron Alexander’s “Align” podcast, episode 144, “Dr. Jack Kruse: Longevity Secrets, Cell Phone Effects, Obesity Paradox”.
AA: “Looking at the world from a dystopian perspective… it’s almost like a mental illness towards staring into things that end up zapping you of energy. Or eating sugary things that zap you of energy… It’s like being in an abusive relationship.”
JK: “If you could see my face, I’ve got the biggest shit grin smile on it. You’re using this as a metaphor. It’s not a metaphor. It’s actually really what it [technology] does. That’s what nnEMF does. It lowers your dopamine and melatonin to make you addicted. Guess what, Google owns the patents on this. Facebook has patents on this. This is how Alexa works.
What you don’t realize, when your dopamine level drops, you effectively are becoming less able to [make mental connections] in your environment, and you become more controllable. The more you use technology, the more you’re going to fall in line with everybody else. And that’s exactly what they want you to do, because that’s how they harvest money.
A lot of people think I’m a giant asshole for pointing these things out. I’m not doing this to be an asshole. It’s because people are asleep. They do not see this going on. They don’t even realize these patents exist. The guy that originally warned [us] about all this was [Robert O.] Becker.
Not even Becker probably could fathom just how bad this is. The Navy in ’73 asked him to review some papers that were never published about pilots [to study the safety of nnEMFs for a prospective radar installation]. You know what all the biochemical changes were? They had cognitive problems, they had symptoms of leaky gut, they also gained weight, and they looked like they were developing metabolic syndrome. This was in ’73, before anybody even knew about this stuff. This was from pilots that sat in cockpits of planes.
Becker pointed out [to the Navy about the antenna they were studying] this had effects between 1–10 Hz. He goes, ‘When you guys realize this antenna is over 60 Hz, that’s exactly where the power grid oscillates to. So not only is the antenna a problem, but the entire electric power grid is a problem.’
You [Aaron] are worried about the MacBook and the [iPhone]. These work on frequencies that would blow your mind. When you understand Becker’s original work… then you begin to understand that this is not a metaphor. This is by design [the way technology devices dumb you down and get you addicted].”
AA: “So you think there’s actually like a physiological dependency here?”
JK: “Dude, I don’t think… It’s published. There’s so much data on this, it’s not even arguable anymore. Anyone that poses that question to me announces themselves to the world that they are fundamentally clueless about what’s in the literature. The guys at Facebook, the guys at Google, the guys at LinkedIn … There is not a social media empire that doesn’t know about this [phenomenon]. There is not a cell phone company that doesn’t know this. That’s the reason why every screen is blue lit.
How easy would it be Aaron to turn the screen to red? …Just make sure it’s blue lit [screens] and you thin the retina, affect their growth and metabolism pathways, lower their dopamine and melatonin, and make them more controllable, so that you can give ‘em suggestions, so that they follow along, and you can harvest all the money out of their wallet.
This is not hyperbole. This is not Jack Kruse’s opinion. I could give you tons of patents that are tied to this.”
Dr. Kruse goes on to say the #1 biggest risk to mankind today is a 1996 FCC ruling that sells large portions of the electromagnetic spectrum – particularly in the microwave range – to the telecom companies to do with as they please. He says (and I agree) it’s akin to letting the Big Pharma companies put any experimental drug they want in our water supply without testing it, and without telling us!
Blue light in a nutshell
As of 2020–2021, artificial blue light (absent UV and IR) is the most destructive toxin to modern man because it interferes with photoreceptor function, hormones, mitochondrial efficiency, and energy collection. It ruins circadian programming that controls sleep, stress level/alertness, metabolism, and renewal. Blue light is sneaky-disruptive, more than you’d ever guess. Yet modern medicine can’t see the connection because it’s totally focused on biochemical imbalances and resulting symptoms, not the true source of what’s upsetting our biology.
To put it simply, when all you have is a hammer (pharmaceuticals and surgery), everything starts to look like a nail. And nail us in the body, mind, and pocketbook they will, with all their off-target solutions. So that’s where we’re at with healthcare and intentional wellness today. However, blue light is soon to be dethroned as the most harmful toxin of them all as 5G ramps up in cities around the world.