The Importance of Natural Daylight to Health

The Importance of Natural Daylight to Health

"The life of every created being is the more perfect the more it enjoys the influence of light. Let a plant or an animal be deprived of light, notwithstanding every nourishment, care, and cultivation, it will first lose its color, then its strength, and at last utterly decay."
Dr Charles de Lacey Evans

Sunshine, apart from directly influencing body chemistry by direct penetration, is reflected by the atmosphere, and that which enters the eyes stimulates hormone production in the body by its influence on the retinal--hypothalamic--endocrine system of glands. The light affects the glandular system by entering the eyes through the pupil and, by way of the retina, appears to cause a reaction with the pineal gland located behind the eyes. The production of the pineal hormone, melatonin, is thereby influenced which in turn interacts with the other endocrine glands. Specifically, the ultraviolet spectrum of light is beneficial, and deprived of it, the body chemistry is adversely affected. Ordinary artificial light does not contain this spectrum, but certain fluorescent lights do, in fact full-spectrum daylight-simulating lights have been developed. Ordinary glass and spectacles shield out most of the ultraviolet light.

It has been observed in Norway that in the "morketiden" (murky time) from November 25 to January 21 when at the high latitude of the city of Tromso the sun never comes into view, the morale of the people is affected. Tromso psychiatrist, Dr Reppersgaard, said, "The whole city slows down, people's concentration and work capacity reduce, and they are always tired".

"The least desirable elements of human behavior come out," said an Oslo psychologist. Sales of sleeping pills, pep pills and tranquilizers rise sharply, accidents increase.

For many years observations on the health promoting effects of sunshine have emphasized the special qualities of the ultraviolet spectrum, to which is credited stimulation of the ductless glands, improved circulation, enhancement of red cell hemoglobin and general quality of the blood.

Dr Joseph Meites, endocrinologist of Michigan State University, in 1969 stated that light entering the eyes causes nerve impulses that influence the lower brain and pituitary gland that trigger the release of other hormones. Dr Meites further stated, "We have no idea how many diseases are linked with hormone problems, but we do know that several diseases such as diabetes, infertility, cancer and thyroid disorders are involved with hormone imbalance".

That sunlight has a profound effect on human health became startlingly apparent to Dr Ott through a surprise personal experience. He had been suffering badly from arthritis and had been advised that he would need a plastic hip joint before very long. He had heard many stories about arthritis being affected by weather but had not noticed any improvement at all when visiting sunny Florida occasionally from his home at that time in Illinois.

   One day at home he broke his glasses and because his spare ones were uncomfortable, he made do without them while waiting for new ones. Suddenly, after a few days working outdoors, he found he no longer needed his walking stick and that his arthritic elbow felt fine. From there on he went without his glasses most of the time and after a while found that when he wore them they caused him eyestrain. His oculist re-examined his eyes and discovered that they had improved greatly and prescribed new ones because the previous prisms required to correct a muscular weakness were no longer needed.

   Dr Ott decided to have his hip joint x-rayed again and the x-ray showed a distinct improvement. A physical examination revealed the complete disappearance of a 30% restriction to the rotational movement of the hip joint, and of course, the hip joint operation was no longer necessary.

   Many experiments with plants and animals were made, all of which showed that natural unfiltered sunlight is essential for optimal body condition, but that the necessary light spectrum can also be provided by certain fluorescent lights.

   Here is an extract from Dr Ott's book:
 "As I did not want to give the living animals too much ultraviolet light to start with, I was not certain just what intensity would be within a safe limit. While in the process of trying to decide how much ultraviolet to give the animals, my wife and I had dinner one evening in a restaurant known as 'Well of the Sea', in the basement of the Hotel Sherman in Chicago. As soon as we entered the restaurant I noticed there were black light ultraviolet lights placed throughout the ceiling.

   "They had been installed solely for ornamental purposes to cause designs on the waiters' coats, as well as the menus, to fluoresce in the otherwise subdued light. The next morning I went back to the restaurant with a meter to measure the intensity of the ultraviolet at various distances from the ceiling, such as table level and the eye level of the waiters as they walked directly under the various light fixtures. I also wanted to ask the captain of the waiters a number of questions. In view of the general concern, especially at the time, regarding the danger of overexposure to ultraviolet, I wondered how long the lights had been installed and whether he had experienced any unusually high turnover among the personnel working in the restaurant. I asked him if any of the men had complained of any eye problem, skin cancer, or other difficulties such as sterility, which might be attributable to working long periods of time under the black light ultraviolet. The captain told me that he had essentially the same group of men working for him as when they had opened the restaurant 18 years before. He said that the ultraviolet lights had been in use continually during that time, and that the health record of his men had been so consistently excellent that the manager of the hotel had checked into the situation, with medical supervision, to try to determine why this particular group of men was always on the job, even during flu epidemics, when other departments in the hotel would be shorthanded because of employees' illness".

Here is another case quoted from the book:

   "Obrig laboratories, located just north of Sarasota, Florida, is one of the largest manufacturers of contact tenses and has approximately one hundred employees. During the entire flu epidemic (1968-69) not one employee was absent because of any flu-type ailment, according to Philip Salvatore, Chairman of the Board. Obrig Laboratories was the first to design a new building using full spectrum lighting and ultraviolet transmitting plastic window panes throughout the entire office and factory areas. The added ultraviolet seemed to tie in closely with the results noted at the 'Well of the Sea' restaurant in Chicago. Mr Salvatore mentioned that the Obrig employees had not been given any mass inoculation against Hong Kong flu. He also commented that everyone seemed happier and in better spirits under the new lighting, and that work production had increased by at least 25%".

Having delivered a lecture on the subject, Dr Ott was approached by the manager of a radio station, WILZ, of St Petersburg, Florida, Mr Richard Marsh. Mr Marsh told him of the deterioration of morale and efficiency at the station when deep pink fluorescent lights had been installed. The staff had become irritable and difficult to manage, two of them tendering their resignations. When it was realized that the pink lights were irritating everybody, they were replaced and an immediate return to good morale and efficiency occurred. The two resignations were withdrawn.

Dr Ott described many other observations of the effect of poor lighting on humans, including some related to cancer. He relates them as being observations and nothing else, but there can be no doubt that any factor that can affect hormonal balance must influence any disease of metabolism.

One particular case was in 1961 when the Communicable Disease Center of the US Public Health Service in Atlanta reported that a school in Niles, Illinois, had the highest rate of leukemia of any school in the country. In fact, it was five times the national average. Dr Ott visited the school and interviewed the teaching staff, superintendent and maintenance staff. He learned that all of the children who had developed leukemia had been located in two classrooms. Because of glare, the windows of these particular classrooms had been customarily shielded by translucent greenish curtains, light being provided by "warm white" fluorescent lights which are strong in the orange-pink part of the light spectrum. When the lighting was changed, no further problems occurred and the situation has since been normal.

Recent epidemiological and laboratory studies, worldwide, have revealed that radiation such as from microwave communications, power transmission lines, video display terminals, radio frequency welding machines, and so on, is a distinct danger, greatly increasing the risk of miscarriages, birth defects, neurological impairments, circulatory problems, cancer and leukemia in animals and humans. Farm animals kept in the proximity of overhead power transmission lines have been observed to be affected, particularly in respect to aborted pregnancies and birth defects.

Involved in these studies, Professor Ross Adey of Loma Linda, California, says there is evidence that electrical fields from power lines can modify the activity of enzymes and other cellular mechanisms in the body. Dr Robert Becker of New York thinks radiation affects the pineal gland, which in turn influences the pituitary, thyroid and adrenal glands, so affecting hormonal balance and the entire function of the body at cell level. Thus unnatural forms of radiation increased the risk of all kinds of defects, including cancer.

The latest bulletin from John Ott describes his recent observation that long-chain clumping (rouleau) of human red blood cells occurs in five minutes when a blood sample is placed directly in front of a video display terminal. When the sample is removed and directly exposed to low-level ultraviolet light for another five minutes, the cell rouleau breaks up and blood structure returns to normal. This experiment is described in The International Journal for Biosocial Research, July 1985 (Tacoma, Washington).

On the subject of the ultraviolet wavelengths of light, it should be noted that ordinary glass effectively shields ultraviolet. Thus, even in a sunny climate, people who wear glasses or contact lenses will not receive this wavelength in their eyes. Car windshields and ordinary windows have this shielding effect. It is possible to get glasses and contact lenses of special material which does not shield out ultraviolet. I wonder how many hyperactive people wear glasses in addition to eating the wrong things?

This article taken directly from Chapter 18 of  The Health Revolution by  Ross Horne