What Modern Light Bulbs Are Doing to Us

October 30, 2026

https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/what-modern-light-bulbs-are-doing?

What Modern Light Bulbs Are Doing to Us

Decades of forgotten research show natural light is an essential nutrient, and the bill to bring back incandescent bulbs just cleared its first vote

A Midwestern Doctor

Oct. 29, 2026

Story at a Glance:

•Sunlight is one of the most important things for our health (e.g., avoiding it makes you 60% more likely to die), yet all we ever hear is how important it is to avoid it.

•Energy efficient light bulbs emit a narrow, blue-heavy spectrum that disrupts sleep and metabolism, while lacking the infrared our mitochondria depend upon.

•Decades of forgotten research (now being confirmed by modern studies) show unnatural light is a root cause of many inexplicable physical and behavioral illnesses.

•The eyes and the blood conduct light throughout the body, and when this process is disrupted (e.g., by glasses), significant illnesses can develop.

•In 2022, incandescent bulbs were effectively banned because their infrared was scored as “waste.” The Senate bill to bring them back has now cleared its first committee vote.

The Importance of Sunlight

Prior to dermatology’s war on the sun (which is immensely misguided as dangerous skin cancers are due to a lack of sunlight exposure), the value of sunlight was widely recognized in medicine. For example, in the early 1900s, heliotherapy (sunbathing) was used with great success for treating many otherwise incurable conditions such as the 1918 influenza1 and tuberculosis.1 The existing data in turn shows sunlight provides an immense degree of benefit:

•A large study found high solar UVB exposure halved one’s risk of breast and prostate cancer.1

•A 20-year study of 29,518 women found that avoiding the sun made one 60% more likely to die, with the greatest benefit of regular sun exposure being a reduced risk of dying from heart disease.1 Likewise, in a 2024 analysis of the UK Biobank, both measures of UV exposure that were examined were associated with a lower risk of dying from any cause, from cardiovascular disease and from cancer,1 and when 88,905 participants wore light sensors for a week, those with brighter days and those with darker nights were each less likely to die over the following 8 years.1

•Sunlight is critical for mental health, and many workers suffer immensely without it (e.g., in hospital night shift workers, a lack of sunlight exposure was linked to worse mental health1).

Note: I really got this point once, where after a long period of hospital night shifts under fluorescent lights, I noticed I was becoming clinically depressed (which has never otherwise happened to me). I went home and bathed under a full spectrum bulb, at which point I almost instantly felt better.

Typically, sunlight’s benefits are attributed to vitamin D. However, I have long suspected that many of the benefits of vitamin D are not due to the vitamin itself but rather that its elevation indicates the body is having regular sunlight exposure. For example, when 24 healthy volunteers were exposed to UVA (which does not produce vitamin D) at a dose equivalent to about 30 minutes of summer sun, their arteries dilated and their blood pressure dropped, as nitric oxide stored in the skin was released into the circulation.1 Similarly, a meta-analysis found that spending an hour or more a day in the summer sun was associated with a 16% lower risk of breast cancer, whereas simply living somewhere with more ambient UV was not.1 (See link for article)

_________________

**Comment**

Excellent article that I can not recommend enough.

The importance of light pertains to all, but especially those of us in the Northern Latitude, like Wisconsin.

For more:

Category:

Activism, Psychological Aspects, research, Sleep, Treatment

Comments Off on What Modern Light Bulbs Are Doing to Us