(slow dramatic music)
- Mike, what are you doing up, man?
Mike, you all right?
Mike, you cool, buddy?
Mike, is everything okay?
What's the matter, Mike?
Mike, you have a bad dream?
- Blue light.
(air whooshes)
(dramatic music)
Blue light.
- That felt good. (air whooshes)
- First things first. What's blue light?
Well, I have here on my whiteboard,
demonstrated the different colors and the wavelengths
attributed to each one of them.
Now, the longer the wavelength,
the less health effects you're actually gonna see
on your eye.
So red, green, above 550,
you're not gonna see as many health effects.
Violet light, may have heard of a UV light.
That's when it starts getting dangerous,
and blue light is right on that same hinge.
But I also, wanna show you how the human eye works,
so you can understand how you even see
these different colors.
Right here, you have the human eye.
(audience clapping)
The drawing is not bad.
There's the optic nerve, cornea, pupil, lens, retina.
Right here, when the light comes in,
it goes through the eye, goes right here to the retina
and then hits.
I'm gonna zoom in, BAM, zoom in mode!
These photo receptors, these photo receptors
are what allow you to see color.
And there's four types of these photo receptors.
Three of them being cones. One of them being rods.
The cones are red, green, and blue,
and they allow you to see color in the daytime.
Rods allow you to see at night without any color.
The way that I actually memorize this in med school is,
C for cones, C for color, rods for dark.
D-R, what am I? A doctor.
You're a quick learner. I love it.
Let's give a huge thank you
to our recurring sponsor, movement.
(air whooshing)
Let's talk blue light and your health.
The most evidence we have in the way that blue light affects
your health is through our biological clock.
Also known as our circadian rhythm.
Blue light actually suppresses melatonin.
That's a hormone that's released in our brains
to make us sleepy, to help us fall asleep at night,
and stay asleep during the night.
Now, if you're exposing yourself
to a lot of blue light at night,
immediately before going to sleep,
that can make you less sleepy.
As you can imagine, that's problematic.
All different types of light can actually
suppress your melatonin hormone.
That's why in all my sleep videos,
I recommend keeping it as dim as possible before bedtime.
But that being said, Harvard actually studied it
and compared blue light to green light,
and they found blue light suppressed melatonin
almost twice as much as green light,
and shifted your circadian rhythm twice as much
as compared to green light.
Three hours to one and a half hours.
Now, that's not all bad news.
When you wake up in the morning.
The first thing I tell you guys is to open up your shades.
The reason is, the sunshine that has a lot of blue light
in it, will actually suppress that melatonin hormone,
making you less sleepy, more alert
and resetting your circadian rhythm,
so you can fall asleep easier for the following night.
This actually brings up an interesting dilemma
because as we're moving to become more energy efficient,
we're using more LED lamps, more fluorescent lights,
as opposed to the traditional incandescent light bulbs.
And while that's great for the environment,
that may come at a personal health cost.
So how do we balance this moving forward?
I think in the future, we're gonna have
lamps that release blue light,
but perhaps the coverings of the lamps
can actually filter some of that blue light out.
Unless we have a major innovation in the next five to 10
years, which can also be a possibility.
(air whooshing)
Let's talk about a couple of health conditions for your eyes
where blue light is not necessarily the culprit.
Starting off with eyestrain.
Digital eye strain, also known as computer vision syndrome.
This happens when we're staring at a computer,
TV, cell phone screen.
When you do that for a long period of time,
people tend to develop this eye strain, this eye fatigue.
The real reason this occurs, is from that intense focus
that happens, leading to muscle fatigue around your eye.
And also because when you're that focused,
you're not blinking as much, and not blinking as much
leads to more dryness, which leads to irritation,
burning, stinging.
And guess what?
I have a few tips for you on how to battle that eyestrain.
One, you want to be at least two feet away
from your computer screen.
Two, if you're gonna be staring at a computer screen
for a really long period of time,
think about using eye lubricating drops.
And three, this one is my all time favorite,
20/20/20 rule.
Every 20 minutes, you wanat to stare at a point
that's 20 feet away for at least 20 seconds.
This wall out your eyes to relax, the muscles to recover,
and for your focus to regain.
This is the most important step in preventing
or treating digital eye strain.
(air whooshing)
Macular Degeneration.
This is the center portion of your retina.
And if you lose your macula, if you have degeneration,
you actually lose the central part of your vision.
There's been some evidence linking UV and blue light
exposure to the acceleration
of age related macular degeneration.
But here's what we actually found.
It takes an enormous amount of blue light to actually
do damage to this part of your retina.
So if you stare at the sun where there's
a tremendous amount of blue light,
absolutely you can cause yourself some damage.
But when we look at research and we see the amounts that
you're getting from your screens,
it's a lot less and probably not enough to the degree
to cause significant damage.
In fact, when you compare blue light exposure
from electronics to aging, smoking, being overweight,
cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure,
the electronics are just a minimal risk and not something
you should spend a lot of time thinking or worrying about.
(air whooshing)
So how do we protect ourselves from blue light affecting
our ability to fall asleep and altering
our biological clocks?
My recommendations actually fall in line
with Harvard Public School of Health.
First, get rid of the screens at least two hours before
bedtime, maybe even three hours if you can.
Two, use dim lights before bedtime, ideally red dim lights.
Red lights are less likely to shift your circadian rhythm
and affect your sleep.
Three, consider blue light blocking glasses
if you have late shifts or have work to do at night.
Researchers from the University of Toronto
actually studied this exact concept.
They broke up individuals into two groups.
The first, who were exposed to bright light while wearing
blue light blocking glasses.
The second group, who were exposed to dim light
without any glasses.
And they found their melatonin levels were exactly the same,
further strengthening the concept that blue light actually
suppresses your melatonin secretion.
These MVMT everscroll glasses I'm wearing right now
are actually filtering out blue light.
And I wear them when I answer your YouTube comments
or watch videos late at night on the computer.
I'm a big fan of all the different styles that MVMT has
of these everscroll glasses.
This one is called the Ingram Crystal style.
I like it 'cause it's different
than my traditional glasses that I usually wear.
If you wanna get a pair for yourself,
you're one of those night owls, or someone that likes
to spend time late at night on their computer,
there's a link down below to mvmtwatches.com, click it.
You're gonna get 15% off of your purchase.
(air whooshing)
If you wanna know the truth about acne and chocolate,
click here, or if you wanna know the truth
about swallowing your gum, click here.
Was grandma right?
Which one are you clicking on?
As always, stay happy and healthy.
(upbeat music)