Somewhere in a youth-viewing center, there was a teenager who was a headache. Because he was so hostile and aggressive, he had to be placed in an isolation room on a regular basis. Each time he would curse at the walls of the room for hours, even pounding them with his fists, but then the room was painted pink, and when he re-entered in a fit of rage, within six minutes he was sitting quietly on the floor, crying.
It's no coincidence that both of these examples seem to hint at a possibility that has long been overlooked - that the subtle leaping energies of the color and light senses have a profound, wide-ranging effect on our physical and mental health.
Today, many psychiatrists and endocrinologists affirm that the light sense may have a very complex effect on the body, and that it can do more than just enable our eyes to see.
While the process of the effect is still not fully understood, it is generally believed that light enters the eye, travels to the brain, and then stimulates the pineal gland. In and out of the light, the pineal gland suppresses or secretes a hormone called melatonin, which triggers sleep, raises the level of serotonin (a neurotransmitter that transmits messages through the nervous system) and determines changes in the body's hormone production. And, in general: light enhances the protective immune system of a person's body. In short, light seems to have a strong influence on our health and behavior.
There are two researchers whose work gives us further insight into the relationship between light and health. One is Dr. Wurtman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has argued for years that most people don't receive enough of the kind of light that's good for vision health. He says that the artificial lighting we use indoors provides only about one-tenth of the light we get outside in the shade on a sunny day. And, even the best artificial lighting is not as helpful as daylight. Dr. Wootman also noted that light also helps determine the production of eggs in women's ovaries, affects the ability of older people to absorb calcium, and can be used to treat painful jaundice in newborns.
Another researcher is Ott. He discovered the effects of light on plants while doing photography of the passage of time for Waldensian. He was not a scientist, but wrote two influential books on light: "Health and Light" and "Light, Radiation, and You". He argued that most artificial light lacks fundamental wavelengths, just as refined flour lacks certain vitamins and minerals. Without these components of the spectrum, certain cells in the body can't function properly; moreover, much of the light indoors also causes disease, including cancer.
Many other studies have been based on experiments done by Ott and Wootman, and the most remarkable and groundbreaking part of the research is now being treated as medical treatment for depression.
Beating depression opticians now know that certain depressions appear in winter and disappear in spring. When "daylight saving time" ends, a large number of people enter a state of winter panic. As one researcher put it, "Humans will know to hibernate." Dr. Weir of the National Institute of Mental Health says, "Many people say they have a slower pace in the winter, sleep longer, and gain a little weight. There are more people facing difficult problems than we originally thought, people who know something is wrong but don't know exactly what it is." In some cases, minor panic evolved into serious mental illness. Dr. Will says, "We are currently treating people who have severe symptoms, and they are also almost incapacitated as a result; they no longer cook or see friends; they are experiencing so much stress that they are even having thoughts of suicide." Dr. Will and his colleague Rosenzo treated a sixty-three year old bipolar patient. His periods of depression almost always began in midsummer and peaked at the end of each year; when depressed, he would become withdrawn, timid, self-blaming, and anxious, and he complained that he was too tired and dreaded going to work. Unable to do medication due to side effects.
After seeing this, the researchers decided to help the man out of his depression in a very simple way. They created a springtime scenario in which doctors woke him up at 6 a.m. sharp every day for three hours during the first week of December and exposed him to very bright artificial light (about 10 times the amount of light in a room) for three hours; they then exposed him to the same light again at 4 p.m. for three hours. In effect, they were prolonging his daylight hours, and this treatment continued for ten days.
In about the first four days, the man gradually broke free from the shackles of his despondency and depression. He himself said he felt better, and so did the nurses who observed him. After the experiment, the researchers noted that like bears, migratory birds, and many other animals in the animal world, humans have seasonal rhythms. Although the effects only lasted until the fourth day after the treatment, the researchers have concluded that both artificial light and natural daylight have a significant impact on mental health.
Artificial bright light also affects people who are depressed year-round, believes Kripke, M.D., of the University of California, San Diego, who believes that depression can occur when there is a shift in the rhythm of physiological cycles within the body, when the biological clock goes too fast or too slow.
He believes that waking up a sick person early in the morning and exposing him to very bright light at a critical moment may have jolted the biological clock and soothed the frustration.
Morning light In Dr. Kripke's study, twelve frustrated patients agreed to be awakened for an hour in the middle of the night on three consecutive nights. On the first night, researchers woke them up an hour before their usual wake-up time and exposed them to a very bright white fluorescent light; on the second night, the process was the same, but this time the patients were exposed to a faint red light; and on the third night, they were awakened more than two hours after going to sleep, and then exposed to a faint red light. According to subsequent tests, the bright fluorescent light used early in the morning temporarily, but "markedly reduced their depression.
Will these findings be a message that people concerned about their health can use themselves? That remains to be seen. It's really interesting and promising; I'm quite excited about it from a scientific point of view," Dr. Kripke said. However, since it is still in its infancy, we are not yet able to determine what practical utility this has." In the foregoing experiments light was used to awaken and stimulate depressed persons; in other cases certain portions of the spectrum have been used to pacify over-active children. According to Ott, the cool fluorescent colors generally used in elementary school classrooms tend to cause hyperactivity and restlessness in small children. One reason for this may be that the lamps emit X-rays and harmful radio waves, but not the ultraviolet wavelengths found in daylight. (Ott adds, however, that the lamps do not emit the ultraviolet wavelengths found in daylight. (Ott added, however, that devices have been developed to solve this problem.
The issue of increasing one's exposure to ultraviolet light has been hotly debated. According to Dr. Herndon of the National Center for Radiological Health, it is believed that UV light increases calcium absorption in older people and relieves headaches and fatigue.
Encouraged by Ott's findings, Dr. Herndon and a researcher, Sykes, conducted an experiment comparing the activity of rats under normal white-hot light with that of ultraviolet light. They placed the rats in cages fitted with spinning wheels and measured how much they moved under the different lights.
As Ott expected, the rats did the least amount of spinning under ultraviolet light. Their conclusions suggest that adding wavelengths to a particular light source can indeed affect the behavior of rats -- and even humans. However, does this fact that rats are less active under UV light represent a positive shift? On that point, they don't know what the answer chokes on.
Light: a cause of cancerResearchers have also examined the possibility that some component of light affects our ability to mate and reproduce, and raises or lowers our chances of developing cancer. Back in the early 1960s, an experiment by Ott showed that rats living under pink fluorescent light were more likely to get cancer and to have problems reproducing.
A group of researchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in North Carolina decided to test whether Ott's theory could hold up, and as it turns out, the answer was yes.
Dr. Zinal and several colleagues at NIEHS experimented on a group of rats that had been raised to deliberately develop tumors. They divided the rats into three groups and placed them in three different environments, each with a fluorescent light: one pink, another cool, and the third "simulating daylight.
After 573 days of the experiment, the rats living under the simulated daylight appeared to be the most resistant to cancer. The rats living under pink and cool light developed chest tumors after forty-two and forty-seven weeks, respectively; however, the rats under full-spectrum lighting did not develop tumors until the fifty-first week. They found that light stimulates the pituitary gland, and Dr. Zinnell also suspected that prolactin (or lactation-stimulating hormone - a hormone in the anterior pituitary gland that stimulates milk production in mammals) might be involved in the different results in the three groups of rats.
Currently, the scientific community is becoming aware of the effects of light on human health, but not enough research has been devoted to light; no one knows for sure how a particular quantity or quality of light affects the functioning of our bodies (either for the better or for the worse); however, some important facts have been recognized. For example, we now know that the eyes are - as one researcher put it - "not just for looking at." Light travels through the eyes to the brain, where it then stimulates the production or suppression of specific hormones. Daylight appears to be more healthful than artificial light, but the full spectrum of artificial light can also mimic the sun's peculiar power.
"Read This Again: In the Pink" We already know that various different components of light and color can have additional effects. For instance, the particular pink degree mentioned earlier than elicited a strong physiological response in Joss - director of the American Institute for Biosocial Research in Washington. And it also triggered an unusual practical idea.
Joss used a piece of cardboard 24 inches long and 18 inches wide - now known as the "Baker-Miller pink" - to test himself on a piece of pink. pink" - as it is now known - to experiment on himself. After a period of deliberate over-excitement," he recalled, "I found that my blood pressure, pulse, and heart rate dropped rapidly when I came in contact with this hue, and more rapidly than when I saw any other color. ...... If an environmental variable like color can lower my heart rate, blood pressure, and pulse rate, what kind of effect could this phenomenon have on aggression?" When tested in prisons and other behavior modification centers with specially painted pink cells, the results heard are very consistent and can't help but be surprising. Violent and aggressive inmates were quieted within minutes and sent back to general confinement.
Joss said, "We should understand one thing - the effects of the Baker-Miller pink slate are physical, not psychological or cultural." Even people who are color-blind can be affected by this appeasement.