Dr. Justin Marchegiani interviews Daniel Ebbett, founder of BlockBlueLight, on how artificial blue light affects sleep, circadian rhythms, and overall health. Daniel shares his struggle with migraines and insomnia, which conventional medicine couldn’t resolve, leading him to discover the biological impact of light exposure.
They discuss how blue light is beneficial during the day (boosting serotonin and energy) but disruptive at night (suppressing melatonin). Daniel offers practical solutions like blue light blocking glasses, screen filters, natural light exposure, and circadian-friendly lighting.
The conversation also explores the benefits of red and near-infrared light therapy, which can improve mitochondrial function, reduce inflammation, and support hormone balance. Daniel explains how to safely use these therapies and avoid harmful light flicker from standard LEDs.
He also introduces innovative home lighting to support healthy light cycles and shares tips for maintaining light hygiene while traveling. The key takeaway is that managing light exposure—both natural and artificial—is essential for sleep, hormone health, and well-being.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: [00:00:00] Hey guys, it's Dr. Justin Marjani. Welcome to the Beyond Wellness Radio podcast. Feel free and head over to justin health.com. We have all of our podcast transcriptions there, as well as video series on different health topics ranging from thyroid to hormones, ketogenic diets, and gluten. While you're there, you can also schedule a consult with myself, Dr.
J, and or our colleagues and staff to help dive into any pressing health issues you really wanna get to the root cause on. Again, if you enjoy the podcast, feel free and share the information with friends or family and enjoy the show. Hey guys, Dr. Justin Marjana here with Daniel Ebot. Today we're gonna be talking all about blue Light.
Daniel runs and owns the website, block blue light.com. So we'll be diving into his story, some of the science and some recommended changes and things that you can do around your home to improve the negative impacts on blue light. Daniel, welcome to the podcast. How you doing man?
Daniel Ebbett: Hey Justin. Yeah, doing well.
Thanks. Excited to be here and get into all things health and light.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, absolutely. So I, patients reach out all the time that [00:01:00] have, and they have blue light issues, or they have circadian rhythm issues, sleep issues, and we know blue light can be an important. Part of rectifying that. So I'm excited to first, before we get into the science and such, I wanna hear your story.
How did you, 'cause it's unique for someone to say, I'm gonna just create a store and technology for reducing blue light. How did you come across this? Tell me about your story.
Daniel Ebbett: Yeah, sure. For me it really started about 11 years ago, so it's quite been, I've been on quite the journey.
I wasn't always into this sort of space around like circadian biology and how it impacts, health. But for me it started in, in university I. So I'm, I grew up in, in New Zealand. At a small university here in New Zealand, studying like technical IT and business.
Towards the end of my studies I felt like I wanted to start to, to get healthier, right? I was about to enter the workforce, about to start my career and I thought, not that I was unhealthy, but I was 3, 3, 4, 3 years of university and kind of just as a student partying a bit too much, probably not really having the fo that core focus. So in the [00:02:00] last year of my studies, I really got into health, so I was. Taking nutrition really seriously. Got right into exercise and was actually starting to compete in power lifting here in New Zealand and then later in Australia.
So I set myself up when I was leaving university into the workforce, and I was feeling really good in good shape, feeling good with energy. Then I decided to move over to Australia because the career opportunities in New Zealand are limited based on, we're just a tiny population, 5 million people here.
So I decided to jump the ditch over to Australia and start a sort of a graduate position with a large insurance company there. So I was kinda working in the big CBD, up highriser building. Working in it as a grad, as a graduate. And within this, within the space of about, I'd say about two months of being in that position, I started to get quite severe migraine attacks in the office where like I was so sensitive to Lido to go shut myself into meeting rooms.
And then the big thing for me was I was getting insomnia. So I would go to [00:03:00] bed at like about midnight. I'd have to stay up quite late. Due to being the graduate in it, like doing out of hours changes and stuff like that the stuff that no one really wanted to do was lumped with me to do at night.
So I'd go to bed about midnight and then I was, I'd be waking up about 2:00 AM, two to 3:00 AM and then I couldn't sleep. And that, that pattern got worse and it just continue to evolve where. Could barely function during the day, and then I could barely sleep at night. And the pattern just continued.
And so then I had severe, like sleep deprivation, which was causing quite severe hormonal dysregulation. So
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: how did you know to jump on board with the blue light thing versus like diet or supplements or, yeah. And something else. Environmental. How did you know to go there?
Daniel Ebbett: That's the interesting thing.
So initially I did what most people would do. I went to my, just my. Conventional doctor. Yeah. And was help. Like I can't sleep. I can barely function during the day. My mood is up screwed. I'm just, yeah I'm struggling. And that, that led down like a big path of okay, let's try and give you sleeping Dr.
Tablets. [00:04:00] They didn't work. Let's try and give you some anti-psychotic medication, some anti-depressant medication. So I went through a whole cocktail of prescription medication over about the, over about a year of me going back and forward. And it got to the point where my doctor was like and this is, I think them just putting the flag up saying, we don't we can't bandaid this with any prescription medication anymore.
We didn't ever do any root cause analysis, but essentially saying, Hey look, we can't find anything wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you. It's in your head sort of thing. And I was. That doesn't make sense to me. Like I was fine. I was feeling good. I had good energy, and now suddenly I can't sleep and I've got migraines and I'm fairly functioning.
I feel very sick. And so at this point I was like this doesn't work right. Like this. This is not gonna fix me. Where all we're trying to do is continue to throw different drugs at the problem, and then essentially when they don't work, they say there's nothing wrong with you. I took it into my own hands essentially.
And I was like and I just started researching, and this is 10 years ago. So the, the accessibility of knowledge we [00:05:00] have, it wasn't of health Knowledge was, it wasn't like it is today, right? Like podcasts, like this didn't exist. And then, what I, what we did have back then, it was like health forums, right?
So I was just t trawling the internet, just desperate, right? And I stumbled across. A neurosurgeon based in the US called Dr. Jack Cruz. Yes. And he's a little bit more widely known today, but he certainly wasn't very well known 10 years ago. And, but his, what he talks, what he talked about was so different to what conventional.
The com, the mainstream was talking about around health. I was always taught if you eat healthy and you exercise, you'll be healthy and there's no way you could be sick because, or if you are sick, it means you're not doing those things enough. Like you mustn't be exercising enough or you mustn't be eating well enough.
And that was ingrained in me. And then when I just suddenly started listening to this guy and he was like, it's not about what you eat. It's about your environment and it's primarily about your light environment because
Light governs your biology where [00:06:00] human beings have evolved on this planet earth under the sun, which has day and night cycles, and our biology has ultimately evolved over millions of years to honor those cycles.
And that's how we. Release different neurotransmitters and different hormones based on the exposure to different types of light. Exactly. And I thought that, and I thought that was such an interesting concept, and I was like, this guy sound like he sounds crazy. He sounds absolutely nuts and he's very difficult to understand.
But I was like. That and I just deep dived and went down rabbit holes of learning and listening to what he had to say. Reading his blogs and going over to different research, reading different books, and then ultimately going, okay, I think there's something here. How do I, what's the practical takeaways?
I can start to test these things out on an n equals one here, but the research shows this. I'm in, and then I started looking at my own lifestyle was like, whoa. It's so disconnected from [00:07:00] nature now. Like I work indoor all day under fluorescent lighting. I'm on screens all day and then I'm.
Going from that environment to the to a gym under the same fluorescent lighting training under there going home Yep. On screen screens till like midnight doing work and then expecting my body to just suddenly be able to switch off and go to sleep for eight hours. Like it, yeah. I was like, there's something here.
And so the very, I just started with some basic things and the concept of blue light blocking glasses or blue light glasses 10 years ago didn't exist.
But that terminology, people didn't know what that was. And so there were a pair of safety glasses I ordered on Amazon that were designed to.
A block about 99% of blue light. And so I wanted to test the theory where I could use these glasses to manipulate my environment in a way that, wasn't me trying to just go off the grid and live in nature because it's not practical. I needed to earn a living as we will do, but how can I use some tools like.
Glasses to filter the light spectrums coming into my [00:08:00] eyes to then allow my B brain when it's supposed to understand its night, really. And its night. And for the first time in a year, like I started to see positive changes and I was like, whoa, hold on. I'm onto something here. Like these glasses cost me 20 bucks off Amazon.
And they are now making a significant change to my conditions. I'm starting to sleep better, starting to feel better during the day. I was like, this is so bizarre because like I spent, a year going to doctors, with, advanced medical degrees and all these advanced pharmaceutical drugs and like the solution was like, get outside, get good natural light and wear like a $20 pair.
I'm really simplifying it here, but a $20 pair of glasses. And I was like really taken back by and I was like and I thought to myself like, I can't be the only one, I don't live such a. Different lifestyle. Exactly. So many other people. And I thought I feel like a bunch of people would've just accepted, like that's their reality.[00:09:00]
Like when the doctor tells you there's nothing wrong with you, just continue to take their sleeping pills. I felt like so many people must just give up at that point because for me it was. I'm stubborn, right? I just don't, when something, I need to figure something out, I figure something out. And that's kind, what I did in this situation.
But what it did is it ignited a bit of a fire in me. I was like I want to, I need to tell everyone about this. I need to try and like everything I've learned I want people to learn this as well. I don't want people to have to go like, how can I use my year of suffering that affects my health to help other people?
And. So ultimately what I did to start with was like those glasses that had such a profound impact on my life, let's just order 20 of them in, start up a website, start writing blogs and start trying to educate people. And this was 10 years ago in 2015 the block We Light was born.
And I'm gonna be honest, like a lot of people don't even listen to me. Like it was, the world wasn't ready for what I had to say. But in saying that, like it was also because. The world hadn't evolved into to where we are today in [00:10:00] 2015, I think it was like the iPhone two. iPhone three. Not everyone had one of these things in their pockets, correct?
We were. So we have advanced into a digital age. We have got devices. All our lighting in our homes has changed over from incandescent, which is a great heat source, very biologically appropriate lighting to an LED based correct light source. We've got streetlights, car headlights. We're just.
We've got light pollution everywhere in today's world. Whilst I say initially people didn't listen to me some people did. The, I would say like you are really dedicated health biohackers where the people, they were my audience 10 years ago. But as we evolved into this digital. Age that they, the people that are aware of this and wanting to do something about it is starting to expand further and further out to wider circles now.
And so I've just spent the last 10 years trying to service that market, trying to create solutions and products all around. How can we live in the modern [00:11:00] world and how can we make sure this light pollution that we're exposed to doesn't have such detrimental effects on our health? Because the reality, like I said, is we all can't just go live in the bush and and go next to a campfire every night because it's not practical and it's not reality.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. So when you started making these changes you're in an office environment, what was the first change? Was it just getting some blue blocking glasses? Was it changing some of the light bulbs? Did you get a low blue light?
Low flicker screen. Did you do any of the apps to kinda lessen the blue light? What's the kinda like. The minimal investment to get going for you to actually see some results back in the day.
Daniel Ebbett: Yeah. Cool. The top three things I did, first of all, the issue with the office environment is you don't really have control over the light environment in there.
You can't swap out, like we, I worked in a big corporate, so you, the reality was I couldn't say, Hey, I want you to turn off all the lights, or I want you to change them. So you have to work around those things. So the three big things I did were. I installed a piece of software on my screens called, and it's a [00:12:00] free piece of software called flux or f Lux.
Yes. And that can manipulate the levels of blue light that come off the screen to bring them down to more what I'd call more balanced levels. So that helped with the screens, but obviously's still the full environment around us. So the next investment was, like I said I initially started with a very cheap pair of safety glasses that I would.
Use intermittently during the day to just lower the levels. Now what I've learned later is obviously they weren't actually optimal to use during the daytime because they were blocking too much blue light, but too much,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: right? Yeah.
Daniel Ebbett: Yeah. But initially I was still testing the theory with them. So it still showed me that, you want to have some kind of filtration on your eyes in an office environment.
Not probably to the level, around 50% is where you actually want to land. Ah. Because you still need blue light stimulation during the day. It's very important. And actually kids white because you get tired
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: almost, right? If, yeah, if you don't, it's too dark. It's like working in a room that's pitch black, like it can kinda, basically get the parasympathetic and get the melatonin up and it [00:13:00] starts throwing out the circadian rhythm.
Yeah.
Daniel Ebbett: Yeah, exactly. Blue light's very essential for us during the daytime. It's regulating our neurotransmitters. It's regulating our energy through cortisol and adrenaline production to normal beneficial levels and also dopamine and serotonin and regulate it also through blue light exposure.
So if you don't get enough of that, you don't stimulate those pathways enough. You start, you'll feel tired, you will feel unmotivated, and you'll feel like it's nighttime. So you've gotta be very careful that you don't. Go to this pathway too much where it's like, Hey, I'm gonna demonize blue light.
I need to get it outta my life. It's all about context around what time of the day it is. And yes, making sure you don't get unnatural levels where, hey, I'm getting it out of balance where I'm getting too much blue light and not enough of the other spectrums. So that's number three for me is actually what I did is I made sure I got outside a lot.
‘Cause I found when I'd go to work, I would arrive at sort of 8:00 AM and I wouldn't leave the building till 5:00 PM and like I would just have breaks inside and have lunch inside. And I was like. So I [00:14:00] made very conscious efforts to get outside like four times a day, even if it was just like small breaks for 10 minutes.
A lot of my colleagues were going outside for like smoke breaks and I was like I'm going outside for a light break just to get light in my eyes and help my circadian rhythm. Help my Exactly. Yeah. Understand what time of the day it is. I'd eat lunch outside, just, so that's when I got a good hour outside.
So it was really about just trying to as much as possible. As much as practically getting outside, getting natural light exposure to break up my day, allow my circadian rhythm or the clock system that lives in our brain to be able to check in with the sun and understand why, what the actual time of the day is.
Because when you go into an indoor life environment, your. Your brain, actually, this thinks it's continuously, thinks it's solar noon based on the spectrums of light that are coming off. So it doesn't actually get the ability to, to what I'd say shift through the day. So that's very important.
And then the we talked about just. Reducing the light exposure of blue light during the day. But what's really important is in the [00:15:00] evening time, it's completely removing the blue light spectrum from primarily from your eyes. Why this is important is because the sun is the only natural light source.
Blue light. So once the sun sets in nature, there is no such thing as blue light in our environment anymore. Well before electricity caman days where they had fire or color, the fi, the spectrums that come off fire, yellow, orange, and red light, there is no blue or green light. And so our biological systems.
That we've evolved with are blue light actually stimulates a wakefulness system through the brain. Oh, actually through receptors in our eyes called melanopsin receptors. That sends a signal into our brain that then sends signals to secrete wakefulness hormones. So if you have blue light exposure post sunset, that system is doing exactly what it's designed to do is to keep you awake and alert because your brain doesn't actually realize.
That's not the sun because it's just, it's evolved to go blue light [00:16:00] comes from the sun, which means it's daytime. So we've got like all these art, what I call artificial suns in our world today, which is our phones, our lighting, the TV screens, we look at the car headlights, the street lights. It's essentially what I call this artificial stimulation of solar.
Noon is everywhere now, your circadian rhythm is confused. It doesn't understand. It can no longer elegantly tell a 24 hour cycle of day and night anymore based on the light signals that we're getting in the modern world. So that's kinda why it's really important to use things like glasses that block blue light at night.
So your brain actually can actually recognize, hey, yeah, the sun has set. I need to start to like secrete melatonin. I need start to get into a like parasympathetic state so I can go into a rest and digest and sleep for the next day. That makes sense. Eight, eight hours.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Are you able to see my screen here, Daniel?
I can.
Daniel Ebbett: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Alright, cool. So I got Daniel site up, block blue light.com. I wanna talk about some of the glasses, right? You talked about starting with some really dark ones. Were you starting with these kind of amber ones here? And then how [00:17:00] did you evolve using the different glasses? Let's talk about like the darker ones versus the lighter ones and just your experience and what are they doing?
What frequencies are they blocking? How are they different?
Daniel Ebbett: Yeah, that's a great question because in today's world, we're actually flooded with so much different information and choices of blue light blocking glasses. And what's really important when you are, when you're using glasses is to make sure they're actually filtering the correct frequencies of light.
Off our screens that we're looking at right now and the LED lights that are above us, they primarily emit a frequency of blue light that's well lights measured in nanometers. Blue light ranges from 400 to 500 nanometers, but the peak of like disruption of blue light we get is 455 nanometers. A big spike in that frequency.
So what's really important is. During the daytime, you're trying to bring that spike down to more natural levels. So you need a set of glasses that will filter the blue light frequency of 455 nanometers by around 50%. So we've got like a, we've got more, more [00:18:00] clear lens looking glasses. They exist everywhere.
All these clear lens ones, but most of them don't even block or filter 455 nanometers. They have a kind of a real basic, what's called like a UV four 20 coating on them. You can see this nice blue light reflecting off them, oh, I've got blue light glasses. They must be working. The reality of those glasses is they filter blue light up to 420 nanometers.
But your screen's emitting 450 and it's not even really emitting any light at four 20. So what are they actually doing? It's it's not a hell of a lot. So the devil's in the detail when you're actually selecting glasses to really understand the science of the light. The problematic spectrums you're being exposed to during the daytime and making people glasses.
So how are these
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: blue lights different? What's the frequency difference? Is this more at four 50 versus four 20? What's the difference?
Daniel Ebbett: Correct. So our glasses will actually filter 50% of blue light. Up to 455 s right at that spike. It brings it right down. Now, the difference is we don't use, we don't just use, [00:19:00] rely on this technology of a nice reflective blue coating.
You can see on the glasses, we actually embed special pigments in the lens as the light passes through it. We light frequency. So what comes onto the other side of the lens is a reduction in different light frequencies. So we can get quite granular in what frequencies we actually want to filter down with those sort of glasses.
So that's the core difference between what we do is we really look at the science of okay, your screen's emitting these frequencies, how do we reduce 'em down? And then actually creating lens technology that can actually do that. Now, I'm not saying these other ones. They are technically blue light glasses.
They are filtering blue light, but are they filtering the right frequencies of blue light? And that's the problem with them.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That makes sense. Alright, good. And so the evolution here, we started with blue light glasses, and then if we go to these guys, the orange ones, what's happening here? I'm guessing just the higher percent reduction.
Daniel Ebbett: Correct. So these are our nighttime ones where we go into the, like the amber or red glasses. Ah. So now we're got eight. [00:20:00] Yeah. So the big difference with these ones is they're eliminating 100% of blue light. So we've got an amber set, a hundred percent of blue light is reduced. So that's the 400 to 500 nanometers.
The blue light spectrum is eliminated because. Any amount of blue light in the evening is a signal in the brain. When the light enters the eye, if there's any blue light present, even if it's just 5% of blue light, it's an unnatural spectrum. It triggers that pathway of through the melanopsin receptors that are activated through blight.
It send a signal into the brain to start to secret. Cortisol and adrenaline. And based on those hormones secreting the opposing hormone to cortisol is melatonin. So you can't have high cortisol and melatonin at the same time. They oppose each other. They run on the opposite like cycles.
So if you can't have a, if you suppress your melatonin, melatonin is a very important hormone to help you sleep. So then it starts to impact your ability to get good quality sleep. [00:21:00] Whether it's falling asleep or staying asleep. Now, the we, as you can see in the screen, we've actually got two different types of glasses with some that look more like a red lens.
Now, the different, the difference between those two are, there was a piece of research done in 2001 and what this research looked at, it was looked at all frequent things of frequencies of light and how much how much melatonin suppression was occurring in, in, in people. And so what they did is, and they mapped out on a curve of.
All the way, right through all the spectrums. And so what they found in this research was. Cor what I alluded to is yes, blue light significantly suppresses melatonin. So they found the peak melatonin disruption was at 464 nanometers, and that was about 85% of melatonin was suppressed. But what the research also showed is suppression didn't suddenly finish at the end of the blue light spectrum.
So blue light finished at 500 nanometers, but there was still melatonin suppression happening all the way through to 550 nanometers, which is three quarters of the green light [00:22:00] spectrum. If you want to be completely optimal in the evening, you need to actually block most of the green light spectrum as well.
And so that's what we've done with these red lenses. We've actually aligned them to that piece of research to say let's actually completely eliminate the blue light spectrum and let's eliminate the green light spectrum up to 550 nanometers. So any light that's coming into the eyes has no.
Melatonin suppression effects. And so green light is significantly less of a suppressor. Like I said, the peak was right in the middle of the blue light, so I think like in the green light, the melatonin suppression was like 20 to 15%, so significantly low, which is why you can still have significant benefits by just blocking the blue light spectrum.
But hey people, some, a lot of people don't just want to just do something. Halfway. It is if you wanna be completely optimal and really dial your sleep in and get your circadian rhythm the way it should be, it's these are the, these are, the red lens glasses are really the choice to go for,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: so [00:23:00] the green is gonna be a big contributor.
So if you're really having a hard time with sleep, you get the blue, but then you add in this, the little red tinge, red orange tinge, 'cause that gets the green light out so you have more melatonin suppression.
Daniel Ebbett: That's it. Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Cool. Alright, so what's the next thing? So let's, any other sciency things?
So we're talking about the wavelength that four to four 50 ish wavelength is what we wanna be blocking. Then the green goes a little bit above that, right? Maybe into the into the, low five hundreds. What's the next big thing we can work on? Is it changing out some of the lights? Is it just maybe if we have LED putting a dimmer switch in so we can get some of the intensity down, 80, 90%?
What are the next simple things people can do around their home to make them more blue light friendly?
Daniel Ebbett: One, one thing I'll just add on, which I think is very important 'cause everything we've talked about today is you know, removing the blue light in the evening, making sure we're allowing our brains to recognize darkness, not suppressing melatonin.
A very important thing actually starts at sunrise, or when you get up in the morning, is actually. Plays into this. I alluded to earlier, like that blue light, natural blue light's important [00:24:00] for, energy and mood regulation. So one of the, one of the neurotransmitters that is regulated heavily through natural full spectrum light we get exposed to during the day is serotonin.
Serotonin's. Really important. Not only does it regulate our mood and our energy levels, serotonin is a precursor to melatonin. So in order to actually be able to make enough melatonin or secrete enough melatonin at night in the absence of blue light. You need enough of the building blocks to it, which is serotonin, and how do you get high levels of serotonin?
You get a lot of natural exposure to blue light and full spectrum light during the daytime. So the kind of the habit of eliminating at night. And getting enough exposure during the day really really compliment each other and they really need to be taken both together. So that's why I always say like getting outside in the morning, first thing really helps anchor the circadian rhythm and then getting that enough sufficient exposure during the day ensures that you have really good [00:25:00] serotonin levels heading into the evening.
So you can actually. Then convert through the absence of blue light into melatonin and secrete melatonin. So I think that's just a really important point to make. 'cause so many of our people will still be so focused on the evening and what they're doing there and completely ignore, what they're doing while they're awake during the daytime and make actually making sure they're setting themself up for a good night's sleep.
Through what they, through their daytime habits as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, that makes sense. That's great. Alright, so let's just highlight, so what are those next big things that we can do besides the glasses?
Daniel Ebbett: Yeah, the next,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: next, I know you have some lights here. Can we just do dimmer, like what are the next couple of things?
I wanna hit those.
Daniel Ebbett: Yeah. So the next couple of things for me is yeah, looking at the lighting in your homes, because you can, that's the, in our, in the evening, it's the biggest exposure you're getting, right? Everyone, no one lives in the dark. The dark, everyone turns on lights in their evening so they can see and they can do, evening activities because the sun doesn't suddenly set and we all go to bed.
So having more like [00:26:00] biologically appropriate lighting or circadian friendly lighting for the evening. It's a big benefit to not only yourself, but everyone in the home. So glasses, you have to wear them to get the benefits and you have to remember to put them on. But if you've swapped out the lighting in your home to have more circadian friendly lighting where the blue light spectrum's being removed in the evening, everyone in the home benefits and it's a much easier buy-in for the family, to benefit from it.
We, and we have a range of, we over the years we've developed, a range of different fittings from, your cam light bulbs to recessed lights, to small little screw in bulbs. And we've got a range now where you can essentially look at your home and we should hopefully have a solution that you can actually swap out the conventional light source for a more, circadian friendly light source.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That makes sense. Good. And so how do you incorporate now red light? So red light's gonna be in that mid 600 nanometer. So like the blue light's gonna be in that mid to low 400 green hits that low 500. And [00:27:00] then now we hit GR red light. So now we're in that mid 600. There's a lot of good research on red light helping with mitochondria.
Doing a lot of things for regeneration, anti-inflammatory. Just break down, just give it like a one minute overview on the science that, that you're aware of. Red light and how do you incorporate it with the what your recommendations?
Daniel Ebbett: Yeah, so so that we're really now moving into the realms of what we call like red light therapy.
Yeah. So red light therapy isn't just. Just any kind of red light. It's very specific frequencies of red light. So which ones like six 30 pi? Say 50? Yeah. Six 30 nanometers and six 60 are the ones that have been shown in a lot of research. And then the other part of it is also making sure the ar radiance or power density is at a sufficient level that it can actually elicit actually.
The biological change. What you alluded to is they, these frequencies of light are very bioactive in the body that help the mitochondria. So essentially the mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cells. And they they produce a TP, which a TP is the sort of the energy currency [00:28:00] that ourselves use.
And so the, these frequencies of red light help help the mitochondria produce a TP more efficiently. And so that helps with our energy systems. It helps with repair mechanisms. That helps. So like the red light primarily will work on the skin lab. We'll help with things like collagen production. It will help with scar tissue, it will help with those sort of things.
The other. The other frequencies of light are near infra red light and a red light. These are like eight 10 nanometers, eight 30 and eight 50. They're more, they're not visible frequencies, but they can penetrate deeper into the body. And these. So they can help a lot. Again, eliciting the same pathways around mitochondrial stimulation to produce a TP.
This can help with repair mechanisms in the body, so it can help with joint health. It can help with back pain, it can help with anything around repair and recovery. There's a lot of research. I have a
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: red light laser here. This is a class three B. It's one by avant, but it's nice.
It's 1200 millivolt, so it's very powerful. But this is [00:29:00] a red light setting. This one has frequency, so not only the wavelength, which is like the 6 35 plus or minus 10, but it has frequency, which is like the offer on to harmonize with tissue. So it's got an inflammation ligament, and so I can use this here and I can toggle back and forth.
Now it's. Now it's infrared. So you can see infrared penetrates deeper. That's like that mid 800 you were talking about. So this one goes deeper. Joy, inflammation, you can do it over thyroid. Just gotta make sure you're monitoring your thyroid dose tissue, skin stuff. And so you were talking about red and infrared.
Is there anything spec, do you have a favorite? Which one? Which one that you like better, therapeutically and why?
Daniel Ebbett: To be honest, I really like. I like like how we've designed our panels. We actually tried to put like what I call like multi wavelengths. So we don't really, so like most of ours will have five different frequencies in it.
There, there's a lot of research. I really eight, 10, nanometer light, like eight, 10 has a lot of good research around neurological health as well. So the brain conditions around like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, but it's also really. [00:30:00] Also got a lot of benefits. Yeah. In the joint health space inflammation as well.
But in saying that, so do the other frequencies as well. I just, I just see a lot of emerging research on eight 10 nanometers. So all of our devices, I'm, we're starting to favor eight 10 nanometers in there as well. Yeah, I just there's just so much. It's a very evolving space is the photobiomodulation, which is actually the, the scientific term for red light therapy.
There's a lot of research coming out. If on this, there's a database I follow and it's now it's it's just building up, there's about eight, over 8,000 kind of studies on photobiomodulation now. And it seems to be evolving quite rapidly which is really cool to see.
It seems to be like, people starting to see, hey, like this stuff can really help with such a wide range of benefits when it's, 'cause it's actually, ultimately working at the cell layer. To, allow, the mitochondria to produce energy more efficiently to upregulate the body's own ability to, do to upregulate healing essentially.[00:31:00]
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. All right, very good. So we have the infrared, we have the red. Anything else? And so do you have a preference, like I know you have some panels on the website here that we chatted about or we didn't really chat about it, but we have 'em up here. Any feedback on the panels? Do you like sitting in front for 10 minutes a day?
Is that a good dose? Can you look at the red light? I know there's some, like with the lasers, the frequency is much more specific and much more coherent. Yeah. So you gotta be careful that can blind you. Yeah. And impact the retina. But I know with some of the LED, they say you can look indirectly infrared.
Ah. It's dicey. What's your take on that?
Daniel Ebbett: My take on it is. There is research to show the benefits of infrared and red light into the eyes. But I think context needs to be applied where, hey, it's not sitting there staring directly, eye level into the LED. We generally recommend we have a set of eyewear that we actually just reduce the intensity down so it's not eliminating it from the eyes, but it reduces it down by 70%.
So it allows the infrared and the red to still go into the eyes, but, oh, cool. Just not [00:32:00] at the same, like full intensity. These panels are very powerful. They're emitting very bright light. So our recommendation is not to use them without the eyewear. Or if you are to use it without the eyewear not to be staring directly at the panels.
Do you have those glasses on your website? They are not on there, they just are included with each panel. We actually are gonna, yeah they're like a, they're like a green lens essentially. 'cause green is what actually blocks red light, believe it or not, and infrared. Traditionally we used to supply it with those kind of sun.
These guys here? Yeah. Tho those are them. Yep.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. This is a OD three for the red. An OD four plus on the near infrared. So I think the OD two, like two to three does 99%, and then the OD four is like 99.9%. Does that resonate? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It just it's the grade. If you're buying 'em, they're on the side of the glasses.
That those on your face, you can,
Daniel Ebbett: those are one for laser devices, right? Because Yes. Yeah. Like you said, a laser [00:33:00] is a very narrow bandwidth, specific frequency and it's at a very high power,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: which is yeah. So let's hit that. How is a laser like mine different than like an LED panel? So it's more just a coherence and the frequency behind it or, so
Daniel Ebbett: yeah, so an LED will actually, we'll say, Hey, at, we've got six, let's say we've got eight, 10 nanometer LEDs in there.
That's just the peak frequency. So it's actually emitting a range. So it will probably be from about seven 90 through to about eight 30 is probably the bigger the range. So it versus a laser would be exactly eight, 10, and it wouldn't be emitting either side of that. So the difference is the power.
The power curve is a bit more distributed over. It's not nearly, not nearly at the same power or radiance or light intensity just based on the technology you use. So it's a more of a band of. Frequencies that you get from an LLED at a much lower, it's almost like
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: taking a magnifying glass and putting it in the sun.
And when you make the circle big, you don't feel the heat or you a little bit, but then when you make it small, you can burn [00:34:00] stuff. It's like that.
Daniel Ebbett: Yeah. And just to be, and one, one important point to make is the concept of red light therapy or infrared light therapy is, it's a non-thermal based thing.
So the benefits aren't coming from heating the tissue. It's actually all the research shows and it talks about is actually. The light inter it should like it shouldn't be actually heating the tissue or taking it apart above 40 degrees. So it's really about those frequencies of light.
Yeah, so it's very different to like our infrared sauna for example, or something that's actually just he heating the tissue and you're feeling some kind of pain relief or benefits from the tissue being heated or sweating. That's not what this is. And it can just get a little bit, people get a little bit confused 'cause they hear the word infrared light and they think, oh yeah, it's the same as my infrared sauna, which when I turn it on has a red, conveniently, actually has a red light and it makes it all look red.
So that's a, it's quite a. A very different modality that has different different mechanism of action and different benefits.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. And so I've seen studies where, I think it was a monkey [00:35:00] study where they had monkeys with an injury on one side of the body, but the monkey was guarded and so they were forced to red light the other side of the body, and it seemed like the red light was transferred in the blood cells.
It was able to positively impact the other side even though it wasn't hit directly. So you were highlighting that it's okay if you don't hit the area directly. I know if you work on skin you can help with pigmentation and collagen and elastin, from an aesthetic standpoint, but even from a functional standpoint, you can still impact the tissue even though you're not hitting it.
Correct. Can you talk more about that?
Daniel Ebbett: Yeah, there's just research showing this. There are systemic benefits, right? And I, from the, from what I read, yeah, they've certainly shown exactly what you've said, right? Shining over here has had positive impacts or over the entire body.
And obviously 'cause it's irradiating the blood is the blood flow through blood, through, through the entire body that red light is impacting, the point that you were shining it in. Now I would say that if you're wanting to treat a specific problem. Probably you probably [00:36:00] should shine.
It's probably more beneficial to shine it on that area. Like you said, I have
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hashimoto's, so I'm just giving it a little bit of anti-inflammatory reduction here. Again, contraindicated, if anyone's listening, 'cause you have to, it can lower your thyroid medication so you may not need as much, so you may overdose it.
So be mindful at home. If you do have that issue. You gotta be testing yourself, making sure you're on point with it. Yeah, exactly. Cool. Now, how does red light impact hormones? Can we use it to help with hormones if someone's going through menopause or any hormonal stressors? I know there's some data with men, for instance, like red light and on the genital region that can help with testosterone.
Any feedback on how it can impact hormones?
Daniel Ebbett: Yeah, yeah, so that is one yeah, certainly around testosterone and production, there's been a lot of research around males and red light exposure. To testes and improving testosterone? Yeah, in particular, I think if there's a hormonal dysregulation going on, a lot of the time a root cause can be a mi mitochondrial dysfunction, right? So ultimate. So ultimately, if you're able to help the [00:37:00] mitochondria work more efficiently and produce a TP more efficiently it's generally gonna to assist in, in that area, right? That's generally the, what I look at and going, because a lot of the time.
There may not be a, we'll see yeah, someone's got like menopause or we've got a hormonal imbalance. And it's there's not necessarily hey, we can actually see this is direct, like what the actual how it's actually helping in that area. But ultimately, yeah, if I come back to is there mitochondrial dysfunction happening?
Am I using red light therapy and infrared light and it's actually improving my mitochondria? Then it's probably gonna have a positive impact on, the such hormonal imbalance that occurring.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I think if you have hormonal issues you want get that looked at, but as an important adjunct, you want to get the.
The light and the circadian rhythm dialed in. Now I actually found you through some of the can lines. I was doing online searches and I saw that you guys have blue, low blue light can lights, which was interesting 'cause there aren't a lot of people on the market that have this. [00:38:00] So how would someone incorporate this?
Is this something good to just install? Like in replace the can lights in your kitchen? Is it okay because how much blue light is it is removed from it? Will it be too sedating? Talk more about these. Can la 'cause I haven't seen a lot of these align.
Daniel Ebbett: No, that's, that's why we spend a lot of time going what's the most common kind of lights in the household and how can we create, yeah.
Yeah. So those resets can light REITs, those are designed to just go into your ex, pull out your light bulb and these will actually screw in. Now these one ones, one that's gotta
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: dawn the dust, so it'll go more blue light. Less or light, huh?
Daniel Ebbett: Yeah. So we've got three settings on there. So you've got your like what we call like a full spectrum daytime setting from the reasons I talked about, getting that good full spectrum light into the eyes during the daytime, hard to, it's a nice crisp white, but it's very different to your conventional light and that.
It's got blue light, but it's got plenty of red. It's got the full spectrum of light in there. Your traditional lights, conventional lights, strip out all the red light. It's not [00:39:00] efficient. It's not energy efficient. It doesn't, it's all about energy efficiency now. It's like, how can I produce the most amount of light with the least amount of power?
And that's using primarily blue light and not the red light or the longer wavelength frequencies. In our one, we've actually included all them because we're not really. Shooting for the number one energy efficient bulb in the, on the market. We're shooting for the most healthiest, circadian friendly, most, biologically appropriate lighting.
What this does is then you can actually use your light switch to turn it off and on and flick it to the night mode so you can actually strip all the blue light out. So in that, in the evening,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: how do you control it? 'cause normally you have on off. And then if you have a dimmer kind of toggle on the side, how do you incorporate night mode?
Day mode?
Daniel Ebbett: Yeah with the light switch off and on you can't use dimmers with these. So dimmers don't work with it. That's by design. That's by design, to be honest. How do you turn
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: it off though? So if on is light, day mode and office night mode, how do you put it off in general?
Oh,
Daniel Ebbett: no. So no. So if your light's on and you wanna change the mode, you turn it off [00:40:00] and on really quickly. Oh, I see. So boom. Got it. Yep. And then it. And then it. Yep.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's so cool. So off, slow on and then off on fast and then it changes the mode. Very cool. That's it.
Daniel Ebbett: Yeah. That's
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: how I follow you.
So that's cool. I think that's really good to incorporate. What else are people utilizing? 'cause like I just tell people outta the gate, like the easiest thing is just get dimmer switches, right? And then if you are really sensitive, maybe look in your bathroom or look in your kitchen. If you're spending a lot of time at night in there, maybe look at some light changes.
These are cool too because these type of lights are common even in my home right here. These more, these common things that pe you sell here and that people benefit from.
Daniel Ebbett: Yeah, those, these are just really all different form factors of the same light. So that's the BR 30, which are commonly the bulbs that are used in the can.
The can, yes. Yeah. Okay. Yep. Yeah. Yep. So pretty much what we've done is we've just created all the different form factors, use the same technology, same bulbs. So if you come to us and you go, oh, but I've got this different type of light. Fitting, we're hoping we've got a [00:41:00] form factor that will fit your home.
That's what we've been working on over the last, four or five years.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's great. And same thing with that off on fast, we'll change the mode. Yeah, that's it. That's great. Cool. I like, using some of these biohacking products that you know can help improve your physiology.
Any other big things that I wasn't aware of? We talked about some of the glass frequency, the glasses, the green. Yeah, the, the blue, we talked about some of the red light benefits, talked about some of the canned lights. Anything else that's cool that you wanted to highlight?
Daniel Ebbett: The big thing for me, which it's still in the lighting space, which is quite important, is when you're traveling you might fit out your home with all these lights and everything, but then you're on the road or you're in a hotel room and you're, oh, hold on a minute this.
Now my sleep is messed up because I can't, I don't have all those, all those lighting and stuff I put at home. Correct. So what's really important is what we've got is like these battery powered lamps and like portable lamps that you can easily pack with you and travel with them they're real.
I do a lot of traveling for business and. That's the first thing I put in my bag every time is I've got, I've got a motion sensor nightlight that I put in the bathroom at the hotel. And then I have a [00:42:00] couple of lamps that are now my bedside lamps, which are just, just USBC charged and they've got a little integrated battery that I can, i'm not having to suddenly pay the price of not having my, home environment when I'm traveling. So that's just one another thing. And we've got very similar kind of frequencies and the different, similar types of lights, just more on the portable form factor that you can pack with you.
Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. Anything else about the science at all or physiology that you wanted to highlight at all for any of the listeners?
Daniel Ebbett: I think I think we've touched on it, but I just, for me, one of the biggest hacks is it doesn't cost anything. It's just getting outside in the sun, I think is, people Yeah.
Really don't overlook that one. And for me, it's a non-negotiable. Every morning when I get out of bed, I don't look at my phone, I don't look at artificial light sources. I get outside and get that natural light into the eyes, and it's. It's a very important part of getting your, aligning your circadian rhythm and getting your sleep in check.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That makes sense. That's so helpful. Very good. Anything else Daniel, you wanna highlight there with the listeners at all? So your [00:43:00] website is low blue light or block blue light.com. So we have your site here in the description. People can see it and we have notes and stuff below. Anything else?
Daniel Ebbett: I'll just say jump on our site and one of the, we've got a. Like a blog resource. There's probably over a hundred blogs we've written on there now, and they all host of different topics around light and health and different areas. So if someone really wants to learn more and jump in that, that's a good place to start.
We try to, to write them in a way that, the average person can start to understand and we can break down the science in a easy, digestible way. I'd recommend people go there and, start there if they really want to learn more.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's great. Excellent. And then regarding some of the changes you made, you mentioned the migraines and some of the sleep stuff.
How long did you start to notice an improvement in those areas?
Daniel Ebbett: So for me, within a couple weeks I started to notice improvements within the space of about six weeks. I was back to sleeping through the night again. And migraines were gone within about two months sort of thing wow. Yeah. Yeah. So it was about a year of suffering and then [00:44:00] about two months reversal.
That's why I was just so blown away, like how fast and how quick if you implement these changes and. Consistent with them, you can really start to have, quite quick dramatic changes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now I have low blue lights. I got a View Sonic screen. I went and got low blue light kind of lights on the monitor and low flicker and you mentioned like the flex app that you can get, which is helpful. What about the flicker? How much does that have an impact? So if I got like low blue light and low flicker, is that a good type of monitor, criteria that you wanna be purchasing and talk about the flicker a little more?
Yeah,
Daniel Ebbett: We haven't even really touched on flicker and what that is and why we need to be aware of it. So flicker. Flicker is a modern light source problem as well. So Flickr essentially is the light source, the LED light source, turning off and on very quickly. To be exact about 120 times a second.
The reason it does that is because you might've heard of like power being ac, which is alternating current power, so Correct. How they get power from your substation into your home [00:45:00] is through pulsing it down the line so it can move at a further distance and they pulse it at 120 times a second into your home, to all your devices.
They get power that way. Now, LEDs are digital, so they're either on or off. They either have light on when they've got power or they don't and they're off. So that what that causes is flicker. So they're turning off and on essentially strobe lighting so quickly that you are, that you can't actually see it, your eyes, 'cause you're, the frames per second that are coming in your eyes don't see it, but your brain does.
Your brain can sense a rapidly changing light source. Why? That's a problem that causes neurological stress in the brain. It's over. It's making your brain works over time to process an image that shouldn't be flashing. And s droving. So the symptoms of that are eye strain headaches. Migraines essentially, it's very similar symptoms to over exposure to blue light can occur from flicker, so your monitors have flicker.
And that, you'll see things that say 60 hertz and that's the same frequency that the power's coming into your home [00:46:00] at. So you're really wanting to look at for a, what I call like a high flicker rate, something that's like a hundred and twenty two forty because it's, and then it gets to the point where it's almost like a continuous light source and the brain isn't sitting here having to.
To try and. Process a really rapidly flashy image. A really good hack is you can grab your phone and you can turn it onto the slow motion filming and film. Film your light bulbs. That's an interesting one because cheaply, poorly made light bulbs. They don't do anything to try to mitigate the flicker.
And if you play that video back, you'll just say in slow motion, you'll just see the thing going crazy on your screen. And that's normally a sign that you've got pretty poor quality lighting, which is actually very commonly used because, hey, if I'm a manufacturer of lighting and. Like the average person doesn't know what Flicker is and you can't see it.
Why would I spend more money to actually make a higher quality light source without it? Because that's not their primary focus. That's a really easy test someone can do to see if they've got some really bad flickering [00:47:00] lights in their home.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's excellent. That's really good.
Excellent. Again, people can look at getting the flux app. We can look at getting a good low blue light, low flicker monitor. That makes a lot of sense. Do you have any products, are you looking at pro expanding your product line in that area
Daniel Ebbett: and monitors? Probably not. Yeah. In monitors? Yeah. Nah, not at this point.
We're primarily focused really on probably actually creating more just the more generic light sources we're interacting with in our home is probably our core focus also in the infrared and red light therapy is how we can create different form factors and ways people can Yeah.
Can bring that into their lives is probably our big focus this year.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Thanks so much Daniel. I. Block blue light.com, link down below. Take a look at Daniel's information. I appreciate it. I found you from the Can Lights. That's how I was just searching. I'm like, there's not a lot on out there on this.
This is cool. So let me get you on. So appreciate you being part of the show and share all this great information. Thanks a lot.
Daniel Ebbett: Thanks Justin.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Cheers. All right. Take care, Daniel. Bye now.
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