Day 26   It's the Blue Light Special Day!---Not Kmart Style

Before I get started today I had to share this little tidbit. Larry and I reading through the Bible each year together--- in the morning while we drink our lemon water. The reading plan contains a little Old Testament, a little New Testament, a little Psalms, and a Proverb or two. Today our part of our passage in the Old Testament came from Deuteronomy 34:7. It was a verse about Moses' death. It said he died at 120 years----and his eyes were not weak and his strength was not gone. He's my man!!, my goal setter!!!---the motivation for setting up my website for my blog. http://healthyandhappyto120.blogspot.com. Just on a shorter side note, I have been criticized a bit, suggesting that I was trying to control my destiny that may be already in place by God. Now I believe in an all knowing God, who yes, knows the date of my death. I have even been quoted the Scripture that says it is "appointed man once to die". I agree with that also, but I don't think it is an appointment, just because it says that death is appointed. Doesn't an appointment have to involve two people? So yes, God knows the date, but for it to be a true appointment, wouldn't the second party which is me,  have to know when the appointment is? Does your doctor make an appointment with you and not tell you when it is?  So I have decided to make an appointment with God on my 120th birthday.   Now if God wants to change our appointment that is ok with me. It is a win-win situation. I just want to be around long enough to influence a few people into believing that they do not have to live a sick-filled life that the majority of the world lives, ----and that it is possible to be healthy and happy during your last years,  if you will do it God's way. Ok---off the soapbox.




 Along this journey of sleep, I learned one concept that made me unhappy, uncomfortable or possibly the word was MAD. I found a deterrence to my beloved night time activities that was messing up my circadian rhythm. This is a true journey that I am on--- as we speak--- so with what I am about to share, I do not have a lot of positives evidence as to it's effectiveness. But rather than wait on any positive results, I have decided to share it with you now and we can journey and learn together. Even with the blogs I have shared in the past, they are all open for review and change as time goes on, and there is always room for improvement. When I discover those ways of improving my information,  I will share them with you. I wish I knew the answer to everything and could say I  had discovered the perfect way to handle all my present and future health problems, but I'm smart enough to know that is impossible---unless God were to reveals it to me. And I have that kind of faith, too. So what are my latest findings?




Sunlight is true, pure light, that contains a combination of blue and red light that is balanced and of course very beneficial to the health of our bodies as well as having the ability to produce the perfect circadian rhythm that keeps our sleep at the optimum. Any light lower's melatonin levels, but the real problem comes from times when we are exposed to only blue light or mostly blue light coming into our eyes. This can do harm and damage. Harm by messing up the circadian rhythm, and damage to the DHA, an essential fat in the eye that is responsible for converting sunlight into the DC electrical current that our body needs to operate. So where does this blue light come from? Not from Kmart and the blue light special  that shows up unexpectedly when there is a bargain in the store.  It comes from a lot of sources, and the ones that we readily recognize are computers, phones, LED lighting, TV's, and other electrical devices---and the newer devices have extra blue light. These bedtime screens lower melatonin by 55%.  So I learned that when the sun goes down, I did not need to be working on a computer writing blogs, or on my phone looking at the beautiful pictures of my Grands, and your Grands or even watching TV. How depressing was that?  So hummm, was I  having to make a choice between good health and entertainment that brought great joy?  And really this is no joking matter. Blue lights also causes night time users to get less REM sleep (Day 25), and it takes them hours longer to feel alert the next morning. This has even brought about a new form of therapy called chromotherapeutics  that treat people whose circadian rhythm is off because of exposure to the above mentioned electronics. Serious health issues come when our circadian rhythm is off.( I will cover that later in detail).  As an example, they exposed mice to only blue light for 5 months. At the end of 5 months, the mice had muscle loss, pro-inflammatory gut issues, an obstructed immune system and signs of osteoarthritis. The good news is that when they exposed them back to natural light, their health was restored within two weeks. So we know it is reversible if we do the right thing. So how does blue light effect us?


Our body interprets blue light coming from these devices as sunlight and delays or stops the production of melatonin. We know this melatonin production is triggered by the sun going down. So if we come inside, crank up the TV, turn on our computer and look at facebook on our phone, this is saying to our body--it is not time to get ready to sleep so don't start the melatonin production. So I was up too late, lying in bed and could not go to sleep because there was not enough melatonin to put me to sleep. The first suggestion I read said that to help this problem I should  turn off all electronics at least an hour before I went bed, dim the lights and let my body begin to make melatonin. Then when I got in bed, I would fall asleep. This all sounded great and wonderful, but it did not fit my schedule. Even though we are retired, we do not live the retired life. The chances of us being home at night an hour before bed in time to do all the necessaries before bed just doesn't happen that often. Sometimes we barely make it to bed in time to get the eight hours that we need. So this all seemed almost impossible. We have grandbaby duties several times a week---track, swim, wrestling, basketball, football, almost year round, plus we are members of 2+ small groups at church that meet mostly at night.( And by the way, we wouldn't change this for anything, so I am not complaining about this---and I can assure you it will not end.) I am complaining about the blue light deal that is not a special at all. Thus my mad attitude, because I did not want to give up my blue light time at night. So you can imagine my excitement when I found out there was a solution!!!! Yipeee!!

First of all I learned that there are filters that you can get for your computer and apps that you can get for your phone. LowBlueLights.com, flux and Ocushield.com are some of the common ones.  (I'll let you research that). Then that still leaves LED and other sources of light that I am sure can be controlled by some device and you can also replace the light bulbs in the house. But I understand that some of these adjustments can be quite expensive.  But I found the true "Blue Light Special"---

glasses that block it all and can be purchased on Amazon for less than $10. Many call them reverse sunglasses. You put them on when the sun goes down and take them off when the sun comes up. Actually you would not keep them on twelve hours a day, just when you are exposed to blue light which would generally mean when you came in the house for the night. Blocking the blue light signals your body to start producing melatonin. I have not used these long enough to make a clear assessment as to the quality of my sleep. I do know that my biggest sleep problem right now is getting to sleep. Once I get to sleep, I am doing fine most every night. So I am hoping that this jump start on melatonin by limiting blue light is going to be the answer to my problem. I see good signs, but I don't want to jump to any wild conclusions until it is truly tested by time. In the meantime I want to emphasize a little more the importance of good sleep by sharing with you the tragedies associated with poor sleep.  I hope these future blogs on sleep will encourage you to take charge of your health even if it only means questioning the norm. I found it shocking when I faced my health issues with questions and not pat answers. Some fun times are on the way!!!!