Latest / Sunlight Matters / The Light Prescription: Sunlight, Infrared, Mitochondria, and Your Health with Prof Glen Jeffery

Transcript

The Light Prescription: Sunlight, Infrared, Mitochondria, and Your Health with Prof Glen Jeffery · Sunlight Matters

• 0:00
  Glen Jeffery: Yeah, I think that what we need to do is we need to just walk away from all the cell biology.
• 0:04
  Glen Jeffery: Really what we need to do is look at the big population studies.
• 0:08
  Glen Jeffery: And the big population studies, it is very clear.
• 0:12
  Glen Jeffery: All-cause mortality is higher in those individuals that spend less time in the sunlight than those that spend a lot of time in sunlight.
• 0:21
  Glen Jeffery: We've really got it wrong.
• 0:23
  Glen Jeffery: You know, if you just look at the bigger picture, you need sunlight.
• 0:27
  Glen Jeffery: We've got the science.
• 0:28
  Glen Jeffery: We know that light your LEDs are doing you no favours.
• 0:33
  Glen Jeffery: If we give you some longer wavelength light, we change the LED, giving you that infrared, your grip strength improves.
• 0:41
  Glen Jeffery: So it is truly an issue of public health.
• 0:45
  Glen Jeffery: It's an issue about how we reintroduce bright lighting for public health.
• 0:53
  Tilly Wallace: Welcome to Sunlight Matters, the podcast that reconnects us with the sun.
• 0:57
  Tilly Wallace: Join us as we explore the So thank you so
• 1:11
  Dave Wallace: much.
• 1:11
  Dave Wallace: Really, really, really honoured to have you.
• 1:15
  Dave Wallace: It is a Friday, so I promise to be very gentle with you.
• 1:20
  Dave Wallace: And also, I've just got back from Finland where I did a big swim down a river.
• 1:26
  Dave Wallace: So I know we're here to talk about the sun rather than the rivers.
• 1:30
  Dave Wallace: But, you know, one of the things that I did experience was 22 hours of sunlight, which was quite an amazing experience, actually.
• 1:39
  Dave Wallace: So I came back feeling truly sun-blessed from that.
• 1:44
  Dave Wallace: So if I go off at a tangent, it's because my brain's still in the middle of a river in Finland somewhere.
• 1:51
  Glen Jeffery: That's
• 1:54
  Dave Wallace: fine.
• 1:54
  Dave Wallace: Anyway, well, welcome to the podcast, Professor Glenn Jeffery.
• 1:58
  Dave Wallace: Do you like Professor?
• 2:01
  Dave Wallace: No, no, I can't stand it.
• 2:04
  Dave Wallace: Just call me Glenn, please.
• 2:05
  Dave Wallace: Okay, well, welcome to the podcast.
• 2:09
  Dave Wallace: I'm really, really, truly honoured to have you.
• 2:12
  Dave Wallace: Just for those who may not know who you are and what you do, could you give us a brief introduction?
• 2:19
  Glen Jeffery: Yeah, my name's Glenn Jeffery.
• 2:21
  Glen Jeffery: I'm Professor of Neuroscience at University College London.
• 2:24
  Glen Jeffery: I'm interested...
• 2:28
  Glen Jeffery: The Institute of Ophthalmology, which kind of implies eyes, but I'm really interested in light and what light does to the body and little things that we have in all our cells called mitochondria that regulate our metabolism and regulate loads of other things, regulate the pace of our aging, etc.
• 2:49
  Glen Jeffery: I'm interested in how light interacts with those fundamental processes.
• 2:54
  Glen Jeffery: That's kind of roughly where I am.
• 2:57
  Dave Wallace: I think it's fair to say that you are one of the leading lights, and excuse the pun, in terms of research around sunlight and sunlight's impact on the body.
• 3:08
  Dave Wallace: Can I ask, where did that sort of interest kind of stem from?
• 3:14
  Glen Jeffery: Oh, it's quite kind of, I wouldn't say random, but someone sent me, when you're an academic, very often people send you papers to review.
• 3:26
  Glen Jeffery: Publishers really are quite naughty because they expect you to do it for nothing and they pile them all up.
• 3:32
  Glen Jeffery: And most of the time you say no.
• 3:35
  Glen Jeffery: And then I saw one from a group of people that I vaguely knew and it was on how long wavelength light, deep red light, improved outcomes in brain damaging animals.
• 3:47
  Glen Jeffery: And I just didn't get it.
• 3:50
  Glen Jeffery: But I knew these people and I knew that their science was very solid.
• 3:55
  Glen Jeffery: And I think that, you know, that started the ball rolling.
• 3:58
  Glen Jeffery: What's this interaction between light and the body other than, you know, the eye?
• 4:05
  Glen Jeffery: It didn't have anything to do with the eye.
• 4:06
  Glen Jeffery: So, you know, the body's responding to light, in this case, in response to damage, and the outcome's good.
• 4:13
  Glen Jeffery: So question is, what type of light?
• 4:16
  Glen Jeffery: What's receiving this light?
• 4:19
  Glen Jeffery: What is the mechanism going on?
• 4:21
  Glen Jeffery: And that started the ball rolling.
• 4:23
  Glen Jeffery: And God, you know, probably about 10 to 15 years ago.
• 4:26
  Glen Jeffery: I
• 4:27
  Dave Wallace: mean, even 10 to 15 years ago, that sort of feels like relatively recent.
• 4:33
  Dave Wallace: It's kind of fair to say that a lot of the research around the sort of topic is actually quite new, isn't it?
• 4:42
  Glen Jeffery: It is.
• 4:42
  Glen Jeffery: It's snowballed.
• 4:44
  Glen Jeffery: Certainly, five years ago, I walked into clinical environments or scientific environments and made certain statements, and I wasn't taken very seriously.
• 4:53
  Glen Jeffery: That has completely changed.
• 4:57
  Glen Jeffery: The traction is there.
• 5:00
  Glen Jeffery: We find, let's refer to, say, brain damage.
• 5:06
  Glen Jeffery: I'm talking to...
• 5:08
  Glen Jeffery: critical care consultants in major hospitals about whether they need to think about their lighting.
• 5:16
  Glen Jeffery: The whole thing has changed.
• 5:19
  Glen Jeffery: Sadly, at the same time, there's been a commercial latch on.
• 5:23
  Glen Jeffery: I mean, anyone who goes on the web and puts in red light, you're going to find vast numbers of companies asking for your credit card number, selling you fundamentally quite dodgy devices.
• 5:35
  Glen Jeffery: So as we move forward, we're getting traction, but there's also a lot of drag on this which is coming from commercial entities that are pushing the concept and eroding the traction that we get I mean we're winning there's no question about that but it is annoying
• 5:54
  Dave Wallace: Well, look, I think one of the great things is the universities, people like yourself, there's other people all around the world who are really looking at the subject.
• 6:04
  Dave Wallace: And, I mean, you talk about mitochondrial function and how important that is, and it sort of feels that that's really being elevated as something that is of massive interest.
• 6:16
  Dave Wallace: But, I mean, you've done some recent studies, haven't you, which kind of show just how...
• 6:22
  Dave Wallace: impactful infrared light is so you know i think you did a study on kind of glucose metabolism which was was fascinating and then one more recently um which i wonder if you could kind of talk about as well
• 6:37
  Glen Jeffery: so uh the glucose metabolism as we've moved on in life you know people very often don't grab how scientists tick.
• 6:46
  Glen Jeffery: They don't tick the way people think they tick.
• 6:48
  Glen Jeffery: They tick rather randomly.
• 6:50
  Glen Jeffery: So my first drive in life was to find a mechanism because unless you have a mechanism people don't believe what you're doing so one angle on that was mitochondria to function properly need lots of glucose and they need lots of oxygen so we did standard blood glucose tolerance tests which is what you do sometimes with your GP or when you go to the hospital so we load people up with glucose and then we give them red light the red light stimulates the mitochondria that mitochondria grab the glucose out of your serum and consequently your blood glucose levels go down.
• 7:30
  Glen Jeffery: Likewise, your oxygen consumption goes up because mitochondria need glucose and oxygen.
• 7:37
  Glen Jeffery: All right, that's absolutely fine.
• 7:38
  Glen Jeffery: So the transition has been for us from some animal work that includes flies and bees through to some basic work on human physiology and now we're just delving much deeper into the translational aspect so what can we now say I don't want to do any more I don't want to kind of do anything else on mice I don't want to do anything on cells in dishes it's too far from the real world so the playing field now for me is an area dominated by lighting engineers by architects, etc.
• 8:13
  Glen Jeffery: So two recent studies, one published, one just about to be published, showing firstly that daylight, sunlight, goes through your body.
• 8:22
  Glen Jeffery: Those long, long wavelengths that we can't see, the infrared, we can detect them coming out of the other side of your chest if I just stand you in sunlight.
• 8:32
  Glen Jeffery: And that impacts systemically on the body and can improve your visual function.
• 8:40
  Glen Jeffery: the following day.
• 8:41
  Glen Jeffery: So now we're not talking about lights in laboratories in tightly controlled experiments.
• 8:49
  Glen Jeffery: We're talking about you in sunlight and your vision.
• 8:53
  Glen Jeffery: So the next stage on from that, and I think this is this is what I'm really pleased with, is we move into an environment without windows, a working environment, University College London, mainly occupied by engineers and engineers.
• 9:11
  Glen Jeffery: model makers, people that make architectural models, and they've all got horrible LED lighting.
• 9:16
  Glen Jeffery: Now that lighting really undermines mitochondria.
• 9:21
  Glen Jeffery: They really don't like it.
• 9:23
  Glen Jeffery: And the consequence is there's a slowing of metabolism.
• 9:26
  Glen Jeffery: We moved into that environment and we just took incandescent light bulbs.
• 9:31
  Glen Jeffery: The old light bulbs you used to have, which are now becoming more difficult to find, when you switch them on, they got super hot.
• 9:39
  Glen Jeffery: OK, so we got rid of them because they were super hot.
• 9:43
  Glen Jeffery: And so they were wasting energy, not producing light, but producing heat.
• 9:47
  Glen Jeffery: So we reintroduced those into that environment and we got a fantastic result.
• 9:53
  Glen Jeffery: Absolutely.
• 9:54
  Glen Jeffery: Everyone's vision improved and it improved significantly.
• 9:58
  Glen Jeffery: So the if you think about me as a sort of a scientist stumbling through the world, there I was doing stuff on cells in dishes.
• 10:08
  Glen Jeffery: Then I was doing stuff with flies and bees and mice, all getting the same result.
• 10:13
  Glen Jeffery: Highly conserved mechanism.
• 10:16
  Glen Jeffery: And then moving on to humans, bringing humans into the lab and doing things to them.
• 10:20
  Glen Jeffery: And then finally, I think the latter stage of my career is really a latter stage where I'm saying, look, I'm in public health.
• 10:29
  Glen Jeffery: This is a public health issue.
• 10:31
  Glen Jeffery: We've got the science.
• 10:32
  Glen Jeffery: We know the science is there.
• 10:35
  Glen Jeffery: We know that light in the built environment, your LEDs are doing you no favours.
• 10:41
  Glen Jeffery: Now, I'm doing this.
• 10:43
  Glen Jeffery: I'm not the only one doing this.
• 10:44
  Glen Jeffery: I mean, there's a great lab at Westminster University that are just showing if we give you some longer wavelength light, we change the LED.
• 10:55
  Glen Jeffery: We put something in the LED which is...
• 10:57
  Glen Jeffery: giving you that infrared, your grip strength improves.
• 11:00
  Glen Jeffery: Now that's really important.
• 11:03
  Glen Jeffery: Okay, so it's not just Glenn playing around with vision, right?
• 11:08
  Glen Jeffery: Now we've got people who are saying this general effect on metabolism is actually impacting on your motor skills, your grip strength.
• 11:18
  Glen Jeffery: Really simple to do.
• 11:19
  Glen Jeffery: Great experiment, you know, really well done.
• 11:23
  Glen Jeffery: It is truly an issue of, for me, public health.
• 11:29
  Glen Jeffery: It's an issue about how we reintroduce lighting for public health.
• 11:36
  Glen Jeffery: And particularly, let's pick up the place where we need it most, first of all, which is nursing homes with older people, clinical environments.
• 11:46
  Glen Jeffery: I got an email last Friday from NICE, which runs, you know, they look at sort of introduction of new techniques, new drugs, asking about red light.
• 12:01
  Glen Jeffery: We got traction.
• 12:02
  Glen Jeffery: You know, we got traction.
• 12:04
  Glen Jeffery: I can see the retirement door very comfortably in front of me with that kind of request.
• 12:14
  Dave Wallace: To be honest with you, I can see the retirement door slamming very firmly in your face because it sounds like you've just got started.
• 12:22
  Dave Wallace: Can I just rewind slightly because I sort of feel there was so much in what you said.
• 12:30
  Dave Wallace: And I'm thinking about the context of we're spending more and more time indoors.
• 12:37
  Dave Wallace: I think it's the average person is spending 90% of their lives indoors.
• 12:43
  Dave Wallace: mostly under LED light.
• 12:45
  Dave Wallace: So the fact that light can impact metabolism, I mean, and I presume metabolism is just one of the many functions, you know, as you say, you've then looked at eyes.
• 12:58
  Dave Wallace: That really makes me sort of think that this is potentially a real public health crisis that is, you know, we've got to kind of get to the bottom of.
• 13:11
  Dave Wallace: So many of...
• 13:12
  Dave Wallace: what we i guess we suffer from in terms of modern diseases may actually be to do with light is that is that too overstating things too much
• 13:24
  Glen Jeffery: well i you know i try to understate as much as i possibly can uh particularly to take me away from all the commercial entities but you're right that you know the so much of your life is regulated by mitochondria right you know um Your body temperature is there because mitochondria are burning glucose.
• 13:47
  Glen Jeffery: Mitochondria suffer either primarily or secondarily as a consequence of disease.
• 13:54
  Glen Jeffery: So, okay, some diseases are primarily mitochondrial.
• 13:58
  Glen Jeffery: Parkinson's is a classic.
• 14:00
  Glen Jeffery: We think macular degeneration is also another one.
• 14:04
  Glen Jeffery: But as you age, your mitochondria just start to pack up.
• 14:09
  Glen Jeffery: They produce...
• 14:11
  Glen Jeffery: petrol called ATP.
• 14:14
  Glen Jeffery: Now that ATP can go down by 70% with aging.
• 14:19
  Glen Jeffery: So the whole system is starting to become frail and then it only takes a small knock and the pack of cards goes over.
• 14:27
  Glen Jeffery: If we can bolster the ATP, if we can bolster the mitochondria through the difficult phases of aging, and we have an aging population.
• 14:40
  Glen Jeffery: I don't know if it's true.
• 14:41
  Glen Jeffery: Someone told me, I think they did know what they were talking about, that in Japan now, they're selling more diapers for old age pensioners than they are for babies.
• 14:53
  Glen Jeffery: That could be untrue.
• 14:56
  Glen Jeffery: I don't know, but I like the story.
• 14:57
  Glen Jeffery: The demographics of Western civilization are changing enormously.
• 15:02
  Glen Jeffery: We're ending up with a large number of old people who are unhappy because they can't do things they want to do.
• 15:10
  Glen Jeffery: They are, let's say this in a kind way, a social burden in terms of cost.
• 15:15
  Glen Jeffery: So there's a real imperative, not only from a humanitarian point of view to change this, but from a societal angle as well.
• 15:27
  Glen Jeffery: And it's cheap.
• 15:29
  Glen Jeffery: All we need to do is change the lighting.
• 15:34
  Dave Wallace: Well, I mean, it's extraordinary, isn't it?
• 15:37
  Dave Wallace: Because I guess there's the other thing that is going on at the moment, which is this rush to net zero, which is why LED lights have kind of gone into offices and homes and You know, I'm a firm believer in the law of unforeseen consequences.
• 15:54
  Dave Wallace: Yeah.
• 15:56
  Dave Wallace: You know, for the net zero kind of movement, that seems to have played out very nicely in this, that the sort of social aspects of lighting have kind of been forgotten about.
• 16:07
  Dave Wallace: And, you know, it's really interesting about the incandescent bulbs because it happens that, you know, I've got a couple of lights with incandescent bulbs on in my house and they're the ones I always gravitate towards.
• 16:18
  Dave Wallace: You know, I've got a real fire in my house.
• 16:21
  Dave Wallace: I've always wondered, why do I love my real fire so much?
• 16:25
  Dave Wallace: It's kind of fascinating that, like, within us is this connection.
• 16:32
  Dave Wallace: You know, that connection is kind of being lost.
• 16:36
  Dave Wallace: So I guess one of the questions around lighting is how do you kind of address it?
• 16:42
  Dave Wallace: Because I guess if NICE are coming in, so they are the...
• 16:46
  Dave Wallace: How would you describe them?
• 16:48
  Dave Wallace: Just because there's listeners who are from other countries here.
• 16:52
  Dave Wallace: What's the best way of describing them?
• 16:56
  Glen Jeffery: Agency that regulates the administration of new drugs into the market or new techniques for health care.
• 17:03
  Glen Jeffery: So they say, A, it's too expensive or B, it doesn't work.
• 17:08
  Glen Jeffery: OK, so they're not going to win on the too expensive argument now.
• 17:13
  Glen Jeffery: And I don't think they're going to win on the it doesn't work anymore.
• 17:18
  Dave Wallace: But if they come in and they endorse kind of red light and, you know, one wonders then what happens.
• 17:25
  Dave Wallace: So, you know, policy has to change, I guess, not just in this country, but all around the world in terms of in terms of taking all of these things into account, because.
• 17:36
  Dave Wallace: If you play forward, like we're spending more time indoors, we've got LED lights, you know, there is perhaps an even worse health crisis waiting for us a bit further down the line, isn't
• 17:52
  Glen Jeffery: there?
• 17:52
  Glen Jeffery: Oh, yeah, that is definitely the case.
• 17:56
  Glen Jeffery: But of course, governments don't necessarily engage with this because if it's further down the line, their attitude is, it's not going to be our problem.
• 18:05
  Glen Jeffery: You know, certainly in the case of the British government, I've heard people say, you know, their major concern is the headline tomorrow, not the long view.
• 18:13
  Dave Wallace: Yeah.
• 18:13
  Dave Wallace: So I've seen that for myself on the river stuff.
• 18:19
  Dave Wallace: So, yeah.
• 18:19
  Dave Wallace: Yeah,
• 18:20
  Glen Jeffery: yeah, exactly.
• 18:21
  Glen Jeffery: Exactly.
• 18:22
  Glen Jeffery: Pollution in rivers, etc.
• 18:23
  Glen Jeffery: So it's a time bomb and it's ticking fast.
• 18:27
  Glen Jeffery: And I mean, one point I would make about this, I'll keep hammering it because it's the point that I think sticks to the wall with the people with power.
• 18:35
  Glen Jeffery: It's really cheap.
• 18:37
  Glen Jeffery: So, you know, let me let me let me give you an example.
• 18:41
  Glen Jeffery: One of our graduate students was doing an experiment with different light bulbs and he gave all these people these really horrible LED light bulbs.
• 18:51
  Glen Jeffery: He got, I think we could put five in an office, and we're expecting everyone to have their vision absolutely hammered by this.
• 18:59
  Glen Jeffery: And he mistakenly put one bulb in there that actually had had a long wavelength LED put in it.
• 19:08
  Glen Jeffery: It had infrared.
• 19:10
  Glen Jeffery: We got the data back.
• 19:11
  Glen Jeffery: Everybody improved.
• 19:14
  Glen Jeffery: Of course, we all went spare.
• 19:16
  Glen Jeffery: What's going on?
• 19:17
  Glen Jeffery: And of course, in the end, we just found out that someone had just made a simple mistake.
• 19:22
  Glen Jeffery: But that's telling you something.
• 19:24
  Glen Jeffery: It's telling you you don't need much infrared light to improve the situation.
• 19:30
  Glen Jeffery: That one bulb that was actually adding infrared light to this office environment with maybe seven or eight people sitting in it, had had an effect on everybody.
• 19:42
  Glen Jeffery: Now, long wavelength light, that deep infrared light, bounces all over the place.
• 19:48
  Glen Jeffery: We can't see it, but it's bouncing everywhere.
• 19:51
  Glen Jeffery: And it's got relatively few natural absorbers.
• 19:55
  Glen Jeffery: Okay, so plants just reflect infrared and scatter it absolutely everywhere.
• 20:01
  Glen Jeffery: So a small bulb in an environment can have a big effect.
• 20:07
  Glen Jeffery: And remember, when they all tell you you can't get incandescent bulbs, remember, you can't put an LED in an oven.
• 20:15
  Glen Jeffery: It melts.
• 20:17
  Glen Jeffery: So you've got to have incandescent bulbs somewhere.
• 20:22
  Glen Jeffery: To
• 20:23
  Dave Wallace: be clear, Glenn is not saying stick your head in an oven.
• 20:26
  Dave Wallace: No, I'm not saying
• 20:28
  Glen Jeffery: that.
• 20:28
  Glen Jeffery: I'm not saying that.
• 20:29
  Glen Jeffery: I think I've told everybody that we're all working together, you know, on this kind of area.
• 20:35
  Glen Jeffery: Just keep telling people it's cheap and the consequences for public health, I believe, will be significant.
• 20:46
  Dave Wallace: It's amazing, isn't it?
• 20:48
  Dave Wallace: And I mean, that in itself, I'm like flabbergasted by.
• 20:53
  Dave Wallace: I think Bob Fosbury, who, you know, is one of your collaborators, he talks about human beings or anything alive being like an antenna for the sun, which I absolutely love as a kind of concept.
• 21:08
  Dave Wallace: But it sounds like that antennae is so well tuned to kind of accepting these rays that even small amounts can make a
• 21:17
  Glen Jeffery: massive difference.
• 21:24
  Glen Jeffery: profession are not used to the notion of something being taken away and your health suffering so he came out with the phrase that our current situation is analogous to scurvy
• 21:52
  Dave Wallace: yes
• 21:53
  Glen Jeffery: in scurvy people got sick and died because they didn't have something they didn't have vitamin c and fruit So you take these people, you put them in a strange environment on a boat, and they go out to sea, and they're missing something, and they get a disease.
• 22:11
  Glen Jeffery: We as a population have evolved such that we're going into a strange environment.
• 22:16
  Glen Jeffery: We sit in buildings for vast amounts of time with infrared blocking glass on our windows, and we get sick.
• 22:22
  Glen Jeffery: We get sick in subtle ways, and those are public health issues.
• 22:28
  Glen Jeffery: I wish I remember...
• 22:31
  Glen Jeffery: Who said it?
• 22:33
  Glen Jeffery: But I was listening to Radio 4 at about 8.30 in the morning.
• 22:36
  Glen Jeffery: And of course, you know, you're making coffee, you're doing all these things.
• 22:40
  Glen Jeffery: You've got one ear on the radio just to find out if someone's dropped an atom bomb.
• 22:43
  Glen Jeffery: They were talking to a head of public health.
• 22:47
  Glen Jeffery: It was either in Birmingham, Manchester, somewhere like that.
• 22:50
  Glen Jeffery: And he said, there's something going on in the office environment.
• 22:57
  Glen Jeffery: that's undermining health and I don't know what it is now about a week later we're all sitting around having coffee and someone's do you remember that and we all went oh god wasn't wasn't that but it was too late we'd all forgotten who he was and we couldn't find out but public health person said there's something wrong with the office environment and if that person ever listens to this podcast I want him to ring me you know no well
• 23:24
  Dave Wallace: I we we need to get the message out I mean it I love the analogy with scurvy, but there is a warning, isn't there?
• 23:32
  Dave Wallace: Because scurvy, they kind of knew what was going on, but it took a hundred years, I think, before they really kind of looked to sort of make sure there was vitamin C going on to boats.
• 23:44
  Dave Wallace: And I think it feels like this is a really urgent thing that, you know, we don't get changes in terms of lighting then you know our populations as they get older like you know going into care people are going to get sicker and sicker and the burden on the health service of you know us as a population and that I guess is not just in the UK but all around the world of aging populations is huge you know so actually if there is a cheap way of kind of improving people's outcomes and their you know like a grip strength is amazing because grip strength is a real indicator of of like how healthy somebody is isn't it so yeah improving all of these outcomes just is vital
• 24:30
  Glen Jeffery: Yeah, I think that what we need to do is we need to just walk away from all the cell biology.
• 24:35
  Glen Jeffery: Really what we need to do is look at the big population studies.
• 24:40
  Glen Jeffery: And the big population studies, it is very clear.
• 24:43
  Glen Jeffery: All-cause mortality is higher in those individuals that spend less time in the sunlight than those that spend a lot of time in sunlight.
• 24:54
  Glen Jeffery: All-cause mortality in the Northern Hemisphere peaks just after Christmas.
• 25:01
  Glen Jeffery: All-cause mortality in the Southern Hemisphere peaks after Just at the end of June.
• 25:08
  Glen Jeffery: His article on this was great.
• 25:38
  Glen Jeffery: You know, it had all those little snippets.
• 25:39
  Glen Jeffery: You think, oh yeah, oh yeah.
• 25:41
  Glen Jeffery: So if people that get skin cancer, they've been out in the sun, therefore they should have very high vitamin D levels.
• 25:49
  Glen Jeffery: They've been in the sun.
• 25:51
  Glen Jeffery: Sunlight regulates vitamin D.
• 25:52
  Glen Jeffery: Opposite.
• 25:54
  Glen Jeffery: In actual fact, they've got very low levels of vitamin D.
• 25:57
  Glen Jeffery: So we've got causation and outcomes here the wrong way around.
• 26:01
  Glen Jeffery: And what we need to do is we need to look at big population data to get a handle on it.
• 26:07
  Glen Jeffery: Blood sugar control is much better in people that spend a lot of time in sunlight.
• 26:13
  Glen Jeffery: And the studies that have done that have been across Europe, and they've had tens of thousands of people in them.
• 26:19
  Glen Jeffery: So you can't say this doesn't work because it didn't work in my arm.
• 26:24
  Glen Jeffery: You need to look at big population studies.
• 26:29
  Dave Wallace: Which is why we need academics to be really driving a lot of this forward.
• 26:34
  Dave Wallace: Well,
• 26:34
  Glen Jeffery: some academics you don't want driving anything forward.
• 26:39
  Glen Jeffery: You want to lock them away.
• 26:40
  Glen Jeffery: But you do need a big picture to understand what's going on.
• 26:48
  Glen Jeffery: You know, don't say I did this experiment in a dish with cells and nothing happened.
• 26:54
  Glen Jeffery: You need to look at the human.
• 26:56
  Glen Jeffery: You need to look at big picture.
• 26:57
  Glen Jeffery: And you need to look at the concept of aging.
• 27:00
  Glen Jeffery: Because with us, we're not supposed to live really beyond 35 or 40.
• 27:04
  Glen Jeffery: We're putting all these people, average lifespans, 82, 83.
• 27:07
  Glen Jeffery: We have a vulnerability which is completely novel in terms of our evolution.
• 27:14
  Glen Jeffery: Right?
• 27:15
  Glen Jeffery: Really novel.
• 27:16
  Glen Jeffery: I think an incandescent light bulb out of an oven may represent a form of protection for many.
• 27:26
  Glen Jeffery: I took as many qualifications as I can.
• 27:29
  Dave Wallace: Yeah, well, look, I'm going to go straight on to Amazon after this and buy a few incandescent light bulbs.
• 27:34
  Dave Wallace: Like, you know, and it's a very real thing for me because I think about one of my son's he is the archetypal gamer who went into his room in COVID and never really came out.
• 27:48
  Dave Wallace: And I'm like, you know, look at him and think, gosh, you know, what's going to happen to you?
• 27:55
  Dave Wallace: So like the thought that actually if I could get an incandescent light bulb into his room, it's probably not as optimal as the sun, you know, in terms of kind of his health.
• 28:05
  Dave Wallace: But at least it's something,
• 28:08
  Glen Jeffery: isn't it?
• 28:08
  Glen Jeffery: It is.
• 28:09
  Glen Jeffery: And if it, you know, in the cases where you could say, well, look, you know, maybe it didn't work for my son.
• 28:14
  Glen Jeffery: The point is, if we took a thousand people.
• 28:17
  Glen Jeffery: it would work, right?
• 28:19
  Glen Jeffery: Because there's noise in humans.
• 28:22
  Glen Jeffery: I still occasionally work on things like fruit flies.
• 28:27
  Glen Jeffery: You work on fruit flies because I can get thousands of them in a study.
• 28:31
  Glen Jeffery: And I do things like, how long do they live?
• 28:34
  Glen Jeffery: So fruit flies live longer when there's an incandescent light bulb than rather with an LED.
• 28:40
  Glen Jeffery: You've got to look at large numbers.
• 28:43
  Glen Jeffery: Humans are messy.
• 28:46
  Glen Jeffery: Fruit flies are all exactly the same, pretty much, males and females.
• 28:50
  Glen Jeffery: If you look at, say for instance, you look at my two kids, their lifestyles are radically different.
• 28:59
  Glen Jeffery: I mean, they're both fairly healthy, but radically different.
• 29:02
  Glen Jeffery: So if I did something to them, I'd expect noise in the data.
• 29:07
  Glen Jeffery: Looking at small numbers at individual humans is problematic.
• 29:12
  Glen Jeffery: you need to look at big numbers.
• 29:14
  Glen Jeffery: And I've fallen foul of that as well because sometimes I find it very difficult to get my hands on subjects.
• 29:21
  Glen Jeffery: So I look at big population data and I let that guide me for the sorts of experiments I might do with smaller groups of people.
• 29:31
  Dave Wallace: So, I mean, fascinating, fascinating.
• 29:33
  Dave Wallace: And if you ever need a subject, I'm here.
• 29:35
  Dave Wallace: And I'm sure I can rustle up many more as well.
• 29:38
  Dave Wallace: But, I mean, what are some of the other things that you'd like to have a look at?
• 29:42
  Dave Wallace: I
• 29:45
  Glen Jeffery: think, you know, so we're reaching a point where what we want to do are the key metrics in aging.
• 29:51
  Glen Jeffery: So another really key metric in aging, super simple.
• 29:55
  Glen Jeffery: How long can you stand on one foot with your eyes closed?
• 29:58
  Glen Jeffery: Right.
• 29:59
  Glen Jeffery: So that and that is a motor skill.
• 30:02
  Glen Jeffery: It's a balance skill.
• 30:04
  Glen Jeffery: It's got a lot in it.
• 30:06
  Glen Jeffery: So a lot of stuff packed into that.
• 30:07
  Glen Jeffery: I want to start looking at different metrics.
• 30:11
  Glen Jeffery: Ultimately, I want to know how we can influence the clinical environment.
• 30:19
  Glen Jeffery: We know that people who have beds next to windows in hospitals tend to be discharged earlier than people that are sitting a long way from a window.
• 30:31
  Glen Jeffery: I didn't know that, but the consultants in critical care told me that.
• 30:35
  Glen Jeffery: Oh yeah, we all know that.
• 30:36
  Glen Jeffery: Christ, let's change the windows.
• 30:39
  Glen Jeffery: Where I want to be and what I want to do before I walk through that door, it's all around public health.
• 30:49
  Glen Jeffery: It's public health.
• 30:51
  Glen Jeffery: We've got there to some extent.
• 30:53
  Glen Jeffery: We're talking a lot to architects.
• 30:55
  Glen Jeffery: A lot to architects, a lot to lighting engineers.
• 30:58
  Glen Jeffery: And they're really, they're grabbing hold of it a lot quicker than the medics did.
• 31:03
  Glen Jeffery: They're a lot closer to it.
• 31:05
  Glen Jeffery: But, you know, they've got phrases like well-being, which I love well-being.
• 31:10
  Glen Jeffery: I don't know what it means, but well-being going up is clearly good and well-being going down is bad.
• 31:16
  Glen Jeffery: And they've got the idea of daylight and well-being.
• 31:20
  Glen Jeffery: Fine, I'll back that package firmly.
• 31:24
  Dave Wallace: I mean, the other thing I'm struck by is, you know, when we first chatted, you said the other really easy thing to do is to go and spend 20 or 30 minutes outside.
• 31:35
  Dave Wallace: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 31:37
  Dave Wallace: You know, and like I've been reading some of the, I think it's Roger Swift, I can never say it.
• 31:44
  Dave Wallace: Welts.
• 31:45
  Dave Wallace: Yeah, there we go.
• 31:47
  Dave Wallace: It's a killer.
• 31:48
  Dave Wallace: Dyslexic, right.
• 31:49
  Dave Wallace: But Roger's...
• 31:50
  Dave Wallace: stories around people who are very ill going into sunlight and you know getting dramatically improved um by by just sort of spending time outside and you know i guess that's kind of a good indicator for um you know the rest of us actually if we could just spend a bit more time outside it sounds like we don't need to do a lot based on your incandescent bulb thing
• 32:16
  Glen Jeffery: No, in fact, you know, I'd say to you, if you've got a reasonable lifestyle, don't, under any circumstances, buy any red light device that you see on Amazon.
• 32:27
  Glen Jeffery: Don't go near them, right, unless you have a specific reason to go near them.
• 32:32
  Glen Jeffery: So, you know, you've got a vision problem or something.
• 32:35
  Glen Jeffery: But if you change your view of the world, we can't see infrared.
• 32:41
  Glen Jeffery: But if you take a camera and use infrared, All the plants around you are screaming at you.
• 32:49
  Glen Jeffery: They're reflecting all that infrared light like you've got behind you.
• 32:53
  Glen Jeffery: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 32:54
  Glen Jeffery: Go grab a leaf in strong sunlight and then put your other hand on a brick wall.
• 33:00
  Glen Jeffery: The brick wall is warm.
• 33:02
  Glen Jeffery: The leaf is cold.
• 33:04
  Glen Jeffery: The wall is absorbing infrared.
• 33:07
  Glen Jeffery: The leaf is reflecting infrared.
• 33:10
  Glen Jeffery: Now, when I go with my plants, instruments and I go up to a leaf, the reflection of the infrared light is very close at one moment in time to a therapeutic dose, to something that improves physiological function.
• 33:27
  Glen Jeffery: But of course you go for a walk in the park for half an hour, right?
• 33:30
  Glen Jeffery: So change your lifestyle, go for a walk in the park.
• 33:36
  Glen Jeffery: Bob Fosbury, um, Bob loves Spectra and he loves toys and he likes expensive toys as well.
• 33:44
  Glen Jeffery: So I was with him a couple of weekends ago and he just took His device, his spectrometer, which measures infrared light, and we put it under a fern in his garden, and there was almost no visible light.
• 33:59
  Glen Jeffery: It was very, very dark under the fern.
• 34:01
  Glen Jeffery: But the infrared light, I mean, it wasn't a few times greater.
• 34:06
  Glen Jeffery: It was log units.
• 34:07
  Glen Jeffery: It's times 10, times 100 greater under that plant.
• 34:13
  Glen Jeffery: So there's this world out there of infrared light that we don't see.
• 34:17
  Glen Jeffery: Now, I don't think there's any animal that I'm aware of that really extensively sees infrared light.
• 34:25
  Glen Jeffery: So it's out there.
• 34:27
  Glen Jeffery: It's having a profound effect in physiology.
• 34:30
  Glen Jeffery: Go on the web.
• 34:31
  Glen Jeffery: Type in infrared photograph, okay?
• 34:34
  Glen Jeffery: And do it and look at a tree.
• 34:36
  Glen Jeffery: It looks as if it's been snowing.
• 34:39
  Glen Jeffery: It's amazing.
• 34:40
  Glen Jeffery: It's amazing.
• 34:41
  Glen Jeffery: So don't spend your money.
• 34:43
  Glen Jeffery: Go for a walk in the park.
• 34:46
  Glen Jeffery: You benefit in two ways.
• 34:47
  Glen Jeffery: One is you'll get loads of infrared light.
• 34:49
  Glen Jeffery: And secondly, you'll be doing some exercise, which a mitochondria love anyway.
• 34:54
  Glen Jeffery: I
• 34:55
  Dave Wallace: mean, it's fascinating.
• 34:57
  Dave Wallace: And again, it's like we're talking a no-money solution, aren't we?
• 35:02
  Dave Wallace: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 35:03
  Dave Wallace: I think this is sort of like actually understanding that nature-based things can really be...
• 35:10
  Dave Wallace: the most effective is kind of wonderful to hear.
• 35:14
  Dave Wallace: I read this brilliant article or listened to this brilliant interview by one of the doctors who writes for Private Eye magazine.
• 35:22
  Dave Wallace: And this was a few years ago.
• 35:27
  Dave Wallace: And he said that the public health crisis in the UK would be solved if we all had a dog.
• 35:33
  Dave Wallace: And, you know...
• 35:36
  Dave Wallace: And obviously, you know, dogs aren't suitable for everybody.
• 35:40
  Dave Wallace: But his sentiment was very much about, you know, dogs get you out, don't
• 35:45
  Glen Jeffery: they?
• 35:45
  Glen Jeffery: They do.
• 35:46
  Glen Jeffery: They do.
• 35:46
  Glen Jeffery: So, you know, a double whammy in the sense of going for a walk in the park.
• 35:52
  Glen Jeffery: You're getting exercise, you're mitochondria-like.
• 35:55
  Glen Jeffery: You're being surrounded by infrared light, but you're mitochondria-like.
• 35:59
  Glen Jeffery: Both of them are going to have a really positive effect on your blood sugars.
• 36:02
  Glen Jeffery: What's one of our major crises that we've got in front of us?
• 36:06
  Glen Jeffery: We've got a diabetic crisis in old, well, not just old age.
• 36:10
  Glen Jeffery: We've got a diabetic crisis, but it gets worse as you get older because you've got less control over your insulin levels.
• 36:16
  Glen Jeffery: So, yeah, it's really simple.
• 36:19
  Glen Jeffery: you know, it's really simple.
• 36:21
  Glen Jeffery: It was quite heartwarming.
• 36:23
  Glen Jeffery: You know, I'm a cyclist.
• 36:24
  Glen Jeffery: I've always been a cyclist.
• 36:25
  Glen Jeffery: And after COVID, the gentle kind of expansion of cycling in London has been very noticeable.
• 36:35
  Glen Jeffery: I was cycling down the Holloway Road 10 years ago on my own, you know, breathing in all that crap.
• 36:42
  Glen Jeffery: And it's different now.
• 36:45
  Glen Jeffery: People, you know, cyclists are all piling up and we're breathing less crap because half the buses are now electric so exercise super super super important Yeah, no,
• 36:55
  Dave Wallace: I love you, the gentle expansion of cycling in London.
• 36:59
  Dave Wallace: Having done it, there's nothing gentle about it.
• 37:01
  Dave Wallace: No, no, OK.
• 37:04
  Dave Wallace: The Tour de France every day.
• 37:07
  Dave Wallace: But, no, I think I get your point.
• 37:08
  Dave Wallace: You know, actually, you look at London and, you know, I know there's a lot of anti-Euler stuff, but actually, you know, air is really critically important as well, isn't it?
• 37:19
  Dave Wallace: Yeah,
• 37:21
  Glen Jeffery: I...
• 37:21
  Glen Jeffery: I sold my diesel car and got whatever it was, the 2,000 quid for it, and I felt free as a consequence.
• 37:30
  Glen Jeffery: You know, this is slightly anecdotal, but we were doing some work some way or way, the colleague, and he dropped me off in London before going off home, and he dropped me off on the North Circular.
• 37:46
  Glen Jeffery: As I got off, I ran my hand along a railing, a pedestrian railing, And it was just black.
• 37:53
  Glen Jeffery: And all circular was packed.
• 37:57
  Glen Jeffery: And I thought, oh, my God, this is in my lungs.
• 37:59
  Glen Jeffery: So, yeah, there's a whole load of stuff about public health.
• 38:06
  Glen Jeffery: There's a whole load of stuff that we need to readdress because of an industrialized society.
• 38:13
  Glen Jeffery: Public health is not the same issue as it was in 1850.
• 38:17
  Glen Jeffery: And public health is not the same as it was in 1950.
• 38:21
  Glen Jeffery: we have to change what we're looking at and the questions we're asking.
• 38:27
  Glen Jeffery: But, you know, outcomes don't have to be super complicated.
• 38:31
  Glen Jeffery: No,
• 38:32
  Dave Wallace: I think that is such a wonderful message.
• 38:34
  Dave Wallace: Well, listen, we're sort of out of time.
• 38:37
  Dave Wallace: I mean, I'd love to...
• 38:38
  Dave Wallace: I genuinely love to carry on chatting, but, you know, I think we could perhaps have a follow-up at some point.
• 38:47
  Glen Jeffery: Yeah, absolutely sure.
• 38:48
  Glen Jeffery: But, you know, I'm always here.
• 38:50
  Glen Jeffery: I do my best.
• 38:52
  Glen Jeffery: You know, I've said this on multiple times.
• 38:54
  Glen Jeffery: I answer people's emails.
• 38:56
  Glen Jeffery: It rubs out my social life, but I will answer people's emails, and I'm very
• 39:01
  Dave Wallace: easy
• 39:01
  Glen Jeffery: to find.
• 39:01
  Dave Wallace: I think that's really impressive.
• 39:03
  Dave Wallace: I think you're such a great spokesperson for the movement as well.
• 39:07
  Dave Wallace: And, you know, as I Thank you very much.
• 39:20
  Dave Wallace: I mean, I'm here with the sun beating down on my back because of your research.
• 39:32
  Dave Wallace: I know that I've got photons which are zooming through me, a lot of them stopping on their way through, and my mitochondria are probably thanking me.
• 39:40
  Dave Wallace: I mean, I'd love to...
• 39:42
  Dave Wallace: You could tell me someone who could help explain mitochondrial function really simply as well.
• 39:48
  Dave Wallace: I'd love that.
• 39:48
  Dave Wallace: I bought Nick Lane's book, Transformer, about a year ago, and I started reading it, and I was like, wow.
• 39:55
  Dave Wallace: I need a different brain.
• 39:57
  Dave Wallace: Nick,
• 39:58
  Glen Jeffery: Nick, Nick is a, Nick is a tour de force.
• 40:00
  Glen Jeffery: He's a great, he's a great writer.
• 40:02
  Glen Jeffery: Power, sex and suicide.
• 40:04
  Glen Jeffery: The story of mitochondria is great.
• 40:06
  Glen Jeffery: Some of these books like transformer, even for an academic bit like stirring cement with your eyelashes, but it's great stuff.
• 40:14
  Dave Wallace: I love, well, look, I, you know, I think it's the idea that we have these tiny things in our, each one of ourselves, which, you know, powers us forward, I think it's almost magical, isn't it?
• 40:26
  Dave Wallace: You know, I think it's incredible.
• 40:29
  Dave Wallace: But anyway, thank you so much.
• 40:31
  Dave Wallace: I mean, I think, you know...
• 40:32
  Dave Wallace: One of my thoughts is actually to start building a winter sun toolkit.
• 40:38
  Dave Wallace: So, you know, obviously we've got Shadow Map, which enables people to go and have a look at places in the sun.
• 40:42
  Dave Wallace: But it'd be nice to think that we could kind of layer in some other bits and pieces.
• 40:47
  Dave Wallace: So I might come to you for some advice in terms of lighting and things.
• 40:51
  Dave Wallace: And, yeah, we could actually do a link to Battersea Dogs Home so people could get dogs
• 40:57
  Glen Jeffery: as well.
• 40:58
  Glen Jeffery: Yeah, well, I'm always here, happy to respond.
• 41:00
  Glen Jeffery: And...
• 41:01
  Glen Jeffery: always great to talk thank you so much