Studies are delving into the health benefits of light, but there are also potential unhealthy elements from lighting and other electrical devices that integrators need to be aware of when they speak with clients.
This knowledge is going to be even more important as the lighting fixture category continues to blossom among custom integrators. The analysis will not only help integrators talk intelligently with their clients about Circadian rhythm lighting, but also about electro-magnetic interference (EMI) from lighting and wireless networks that could have negative health effects.
Maurizio Gaudio, CTO of Colorbeam, and Brian Hoyer, founder of Shielded Healing, are looking to enlighten integrators about the health benefits of light.
“There’s possible connection between light and health. There are studies in relation to cancer, diabetes, insomnia, obesity, mental health, and more that bad lighting can affect you. Colorbeam is not going to make any medical claims that our lights are going to cure them of insomnia, for instance. But there are ongoing studies,” says Gaudio.
He continues, “One thing is for sure from the studies: bad lighting affects our mood. It might be just as simple as feeling awake during the day and being able to sleep a little easier at night. We are going to learn more in the future and for decades to come. The discussion around the effects of lighting are only 20 years old. They only discovered 20 years ago that the ganglia cells — the rods and cones used for vision — are sending blue and cyan signals to the brain to suppress melatonin during the day and release it at night. So it’s fairly recent and it’s going to evolve.”
Hoyer comes from the health and wellness industry as a professional nutritional therapy practitioner working with medical doctors, hospitals and clinics all over the world.
“The way that I approach things in my wellness practice is to go back to think about where humans came from, and what kind of environments we live in. Mr. Caveman would wake up in the morning when the sun is rising when there are certain colors in the atmosphere that are filtered out. That’s why we see orange, red and yellow when the sun’s rising. In the middle of the day, we see a cool blue color with a higher Kelvin rating. Our biology is using these different wavelengths at different times of the day to trigger certain hormone production, whether it’s cortisol or melatonin,” he explains.
“Our biology is using these different wavelengths at different times of the day to trigger certain hormone production, whether it’s cortisol or melatonin.”
Brian Hoyer, Shielded Healing
“There’s all sorts of things that are that are happening that we’re discovering now,” continues Hoyer.
Indeed, besides the potential health benefits of light, one little-known area is the EMI effects from all the electronics in home, from lighting to wireless networks. According to Hoyer, the same electric stimulation used to heal muscles could actually be causing involuntary muscle contractions even while you sleep.
“What we’ve done in the modern world is we’ve surrounded ourselves with Romex wiring emitting these voltages. We can measure anywhere from 5,000 millivolts to 15,000 millivolts (or 15 volts) on your body while you’re sleeping contracting your muscles all night long. That’s something that never happened before we had electricity in our homes.
“So it’s relatively new for the human body to be exposed to these frequencies. We’re finding that when we cut out all of these electric fields — from alternating current magnetic fields to electromagnetic interference running on the electrical lines and from the wireless signals — people are sleeping better. They’ve got more energy, and a lot of the symptoms that they have from various medical conditions mitigate or simply go away.”
Shielded Healing is testing various systems in the home, including lighting from companies like Colorbeam, to measure the output of these electrical impulses. The company’s findings show that Colorbeam lighting’s EMI output is very low. Shielded Healing is working on a possible certification for various smart home technologies that verifies the level of their EMI fields.
Hear the entire conversation by watching or listening to the podcast episode above. Find past episodes of the CE Pro Podcast by subscribing to the CE Pro YouTube channel or our Apple and Spotify podcast feeds.