The Light Doctor: Using Light To Boost Health, Improve Sleep and Live Longer

by Martin Moore-Ede

"This book terrified me, in the best way. Dr. Moore-Ede is doing cutting-edge work to change the way we think about light and how it affects us." - Penguin Life

"I was so impressed with his detailed yet thoroughly comprehensible explanations and expert advice! I’ll definitely be changing some of my lightbulbs ASAP!" – Simon Element

The light we see is as important for our health as the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe. For most of human existence, our ancestors lived with the natural 24-hour light-dark cycle, spending each day in natural daylight and sleeping in the dark at night. But since the widespread introduction of electric light, more than 90% of our time is spent indoors, under unhealthful and human-unfriendly electric light, which disrupts our circadian clocks and greatly increases the risk of cancer, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and hundreds of other diseases.

Today’s LED fixtures, light bulbs, and screens are designed to produce cheap light with little regard for human health. Like DDT and asbestos, they are dangerously flawed technologies. THE LIGHT DOCTOR reveals extensive scientific evidence establishing the risks of blue-rich artificial light at night. Furthermore, it provides the practical information you need to counteract these risks at home, and in workplaces, schools, hospitals, and senior care facilities.

"I had no idea that artificial lights posed so many health risks, beyond the disruption of sleep. And Dr. Moore-Ede is clearly the leading authority on this topic." – Spark

"As someone who sits under fluorescent office lights all week, it made me question my life choices! The author does terrific job." – Tarcher Perigree

Here is how to find and install healthy light bulbs and fixtures for both residential and commercial spaces, how to obtain the lights you need for evening and night use versus daytime, and how to obtain energy-efficient light that is also safe and healthy. You will also learn which outdoor lights to install to avoid harmful effects on wildlife, another inadvertent consequence of the LED revolution.

Genres: Health, Nonfiction, Self Help

282 pages, Paperback

Published June 17, 2024

About the author

For over 40 years, Dr. Martin Moore-Ede has been a leading expert on circadian clocks and their regulation by light. As a professor at Harvard Medical School (1975 – 1998), he led the team that located the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), the biological clock in the human brain that controls the timing of sleep and wake. and showed how circadian clocks are disrupted by light at night. As founder and CEO of the global consulting firm CIRCADIAN® he pioneered technologies to help people safely adapt to working around the clock. His best-selling books “The Clocks that Time Us” and “The Twenty-Four Hour Society” are based on this work.
To address his clients’ growing concerns about the harmful effects of conventional fluorescent and LED lighting, Dr Moore-Ede in 2010 founded the Circadian Light Research Center. His discovery of the precise blue light wavelengths that are needed during the day but are harmful at night enabled the development of the first healthy white circadian lighting that automatically switches between blue-rich light during the day to entrain circadian rhythms, and zero blue light at night. Because of these inventions it is now possible to spectrally engineer light to reduce the risk of numerous diseases caused by circadian disruption, including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. After proving the effectiveness of this healthy lighting, the IP was licensed to major lighting companies and acquired by Korrus to scale up the delivery of healthy lighting to the world.
Dr. Moore-Ede graduated with a First-Class Honors degree in Physiology from the University of London and received his medical degrees from Guy’s Hospital Medical School, and his Ph.D. in Physiology from Harvard University. Dr. Moore-Ede holds multiple patents on assessing and mitigating circadian disruption and fatigue, and on circadian lighting systems.

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informative, helpful a d well researched. Sharing this with as many people as I can. It’s also inspired me to engage with local officials in my town for healthier street lighting.

[Ann Cavlovic · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author has published widely in this field, but he left Harvard medical school decades ago to found his private "research centre" and now sells the lights he says are the best for reducing blue light. So his objectivity is suspect. From delving into the actual research, there is a correlation between blue light at night and inflammation/cancer, but this was only seen in night shift workers and even that is debatable. His chapter on cancer points to uncontacted tribes who are not exposed to blue lights having less breast cancer, but there are of course MANY other factors at play too, such as reduced exposure to industrial pollutants. Classic correlation vs. Causation. His claim that "at least half of the breast cancer cases diagnosed in the world today are linked to the widespread use of electric light" (p20) is a huge overreach. This is effectively a self-published book and I see why. It is medically irresponsible.

[Prashanth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an eye opener on how our current LEDs are not only wreaking havoc to us humans but also to our biodiversity.

It comes with warnings but also suggestion based years of research. Very timely considering LED penetrations increasing in countries like India and automotive industry planning to add several LEDs.

[Ajay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Made me rethink my relationship with lighting. You often hear about the importance of blocking "blue light" at night. But bright blue light is important in the morning.

[PottWab Regional Library]

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