Ep 37 – Healing ADHD Naturally with Light

From ADHD to Spiritual Light Engineer

We had the honour of interviewing the founder and CEO of Viva Rays, Roudy Nassif.  Roudy was one of my instructors at the Institute of Applied Quantum Biology.  I was so struck by his journey, I used his example as the core of my Blue Light Protocol workshop.  His story of young life with ADHD  is both distressing and hopeful.  It highlights how circadian practices and changing your light environment have the potential to address this mental health “disorder” without medication and its side effects.  He shares about how getting in touch with nature really opened up his eyes to a whole other world and we get really deep in this conversation.  There are so many suffering with ADHD today  and we have to start questioning … are we born broken or is it our environment?

What Do Blue Blocking Glasses Do?

Blue light glasses reflect violet, blue, and often some green light from entering your eyes. These colors contain more energy than yellow, orange, or red.
Blocking some of this light during the day with yellow tinted blue locking glasses can help with eye strain or headaches.  Blocking this light in the evening with orange and red lenses will help you to fall asleep by promoting the release of melatonin and potentially do more for your health as you will read below.

VivaRays

Viva Rays is now officially sponsoring the Quantum Healthy podcast! You can use the discount code QUANTUMHEALTHY for 10% off your purchase. These are by far the best blue blockers on the market in my opinion.  One of their mantras is “Better light. better life”.  They have the world’s first 3-in-1 Circadian Glasses, harmonizing artificial light from day to night to restore your natural rhythm, deep sleep, balanced hormones, and lasting energy.

Should we Wear Blue Blockers?

It depends.  What time of day is it? What lighting environment are you in? Which wavelengths are they blocking?  There have been several studies that have not shown blue blockers to be protective of health risks but these have been done with clear lenses that block wavelengths below the highest energy light – 450nm.  Blue light (when balanced with the full spectrum) plays a role in regulating your body’s circadian rhythm—your natural sleep-wake cycle. However, excessive artificial blue light exposure at the wrong times of day can disrupt this rhythm, leading to poor sleep and a cascade of health issues that can fuel other chronic diseases. 

 How Blue Light Affects Our Sleep

Our sleep-wake cycle is a circadian rhythm, one of the many physical, mental, and behavioral changes that happen in our bodies during a roughly 24-hour cycle. And it’s highly sensitive to the presence and absence of light. When certain cells in our eyes detect darkness, they send a message to the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN, a nuclei located in the hypothalamus of our brain that’s made up of about 20,000 nerve cells. The SCN then tells the pineal gland to produce the hormone melatonin, which makes us sleepy.  In the morning, when our eyes detect light, the SCN tells the pineal gland to slow the production of melatonin, so we can wake up more easily.

Sunlight as a source of full spectrum light that includes blue impacts the sleep-wake cycle which explains why we feel more awake during the day.  The lack of blue light at sunset signals our brain to release melatonin which makes us sleepy. But if we are scrolling on our phones, the blue light from our screens provide a midday signal to the brain, blocking melatonin production. Over time this can become a problem.

“I sleep fine”

Many people think they do not need to wear blue light blocking glasses in the evening  because they sleep well.  I question if they have tracked their sleep quality yet. If you use a sleep tracking device like an Oura ring like I do, you can see this in your data, even with the simple metric of sleep latency. But I will save that conversation for our upcoming podcast interview with sleep expert Mollie Eastman.

What Does the Research say on Artificial Light at Night and Sleep?

Recent studies that covered small sample sizes (20 or fewer people) also suggests a correlation between one to two hours of night time blue light exposure and loss of sleep quality:

• One small study found that compared to reading a print book, using an e-reader one hour before bedtime prolongs the time it takes to fall asleep, cuts the amount of REM sleep, and diminishes alertness the following morning.
• Another study found that two hours of blue light exposure at night shortens sleep time, disturbs sleep, and leads to more grogginess the next day.
• Research has also found that one hour of blue light exposure stimulates the production of cortisol, a stress hormone that increases alertness and shuts off sleep.
Over time a chronic lack of quality sleep could build up to other symptoms like fatigue or stress.

What does the Research say on Blue Light & Breast Cancer?

• Women with hereditary breast cancer predispositions should avoid using their smartphones, tablets, and laptops at night Seyed Ali Reza Mortazavi1, Seyed Mohammad Javad Mortazavi 2  Editorial,  Iran J Basic Med Sci. 2018 Feb;21(2):112-115. doi: 10.22038/IJBMS.2018.27711.6751.
• Reply to ‘Comment on ‘Domestic light at night and breast cancer risk: a prospective analysis of 105 000 UK women in the Generations Study”. Johns LE, Jones ME, Schoemaker MJ, McFadden E, Ashworth A, Swerdlow AJ.Br J Cancer. 2018 May;118(11):1537. doi: 10.1038/s41416-018-0092-z. Epub 2018 May 17.PMID: 29769747 Free PMC article.No abstract available.
• Comment on ‘Domestic light at night and breast cancer risk: a prospective analysis of 105 000 UK women in the Generations Study’. Mortazavi SMJ.Br J Cancer. 2018 May;118(11):1536. doi: 10.1038/s41416-018-0060-7. Epub 2018 May 17.PMID: 29769746 Free PMC article.No abstract available.
• BRCA1and BRCA2Gene Expression: Diurnal Variability and Influence of Shift Work.  Bracci M, Ciarapica V, Zabaleta ME, Tartaglione MF, Pirozzi S, Giuliani L, Piva F, Valentino M, Ledda C, Rapisarda V, Stevens RG, Santarelli L.Cancers (Basel). 2019 Aug 9;11(8):1146. doi: 10.3390/cancers11081146.PMID: 31405066 Free PMC article.
• Circadian clocks and breast cancer Breast Cancer Research volume 18, Article number: 89 (2016).
• Altered Circadian Rhythms and Breast Cancer: From the Human to the Molecular Level.

Do Blue Light Blocking Glasses Improve Sleep?

Clear blue-blocking glasses will absolutely not help improve your sleep. They don’t block enough high-frequency light for that.  Blue light gets a bad reputation for its connection to sleep loss, but researchers aren’t completely sold on blue light blocking glasses as a solution. That’s because there are no large, long-term studies looking at blue-light-blocking glasses, says Dr. Bhavna Sharma, who is an expert in sleep medicine and the Associate Program Director of Pulmonary and Critical Care at Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia. Still, says Dr. Sharma, “Given what we know about blue light, it might be worth a try to see whether or not [wearing blue light blocking glasses] helps.” .  This is what studies have found:

• A study on 20 adults found that wearing blue-blocking glasses three hours before bed significantly improved sleep quality and mood compared to a control group.
• A trial on 14 people with insomnia who wore blue-light-blocking glasses for two hours before bed found that compared to clear placebo lenses, the blue-light-blocking glasses improved sleep time, sleep quality, and soundness of sleep.
• A trial with 20 healthy adults who wore blue-light-blocking-glasses for a week from 6 p.m. until bedtime concluded that these glasses did not improve sleep time or quality after a week of testing
• A 2017 meta-analysis reviewing studies on blue-light-blocking-glasses reported that they could not conclude wearing them improves sleep quality, eye fatigue, or eye health.
• A 2020 systematic review and meta-analysis of studies of blue-light-blocking-glasses concluded that research is mixed, but would most likely to help people with insomnia, bipolar disorder, attention-deficit hyperactive disorder, or a delayed body clock.
• 0172 Blue-Light Blockers and Sleep: A Meta-Analysis of Intervention Studies – “The “blue-blocker” intervention may be particularly useful in individuals with insomnia, delayed sleep phase syndrome, or attention-deficit hyperactive disorder.”
• Blue blocking glasses worn at night in first year higher education students with sleep complaints: a feasibility study – The results of this feasibility trial suggest that BBG have potential as an inexpensive and feasible intervention for reducing sleep and circadian dysregulation in young adult students. A larger trial, following this successfully implemented protocol, is necessary to fully test the efficacy of BBG.
• Blocking nocturnal blue light for insomnia: A randomized controlled trial  “Amber lenses represent a safe, affordable, and easily implemented therapeutic intervention for insomnia symptoms.”
• In “Evening wear of blue-blocking glasses for sleep and mood disorders: a systematic review” published in 2021, researchers looked at a total of 29 studies containing over 450 participants, many of which were randomized control trials, and came to this conclusion:  “Out of the 24 publications focusing on sleep, there was substantial evidence for blue-blocking glasses being a successful intervention for reducing sleep onset latency in patients with sleep disorders, jet lag, or variable shift work schedules. Given the well-established biological mechanism and clinical research showing that blue-blocking glasses are effective for inducing sleep, they are a viable intervention to recommend to patients with insomnia or a delayed sleep phase.”

Research on Eye Health and Blue Light Hazard

• Light-induced retinal damage using different light sources, protocols and rat strains reveals LED phototoxicity – stated “..the emission spectrum of these devices is enriched in blue radiations, known to be potentially dangerous to the retina.”
• Recent studies showed that “light exposure contributes to the onset of early stages of age-related macular degeneration (AMD)…the blue component of the white-LED may cause retinal toxicity.”

Back to our Podcast Guest and why I am so Passionate about Quality Blue Blockers

And why I am over the moon excited to be aligned with Viva Rays, whose founder and company are trying to change this planet’s relationship to light.  Here are some of my favorite Roudy Nassif Quotes:

• “Our relationship to light is so fundamental and obvious, but it’s so simple that we often miss it. We take it for granted.”
• “I’m truly inspired about helping humanity to elevate their light.”
• “It is as destructive to block the right light at the right time of day as it is to not block the wrong light at the wrong time of day”

And check out his answer to our signature questions: “What does Quantum Healthy mean to you?”

The Seven Steps to Harness Light

This is just a teaser.   Roudy initially promised our listeners a handout on the The Seven Steps to Harness Light.  But as we never got to discuss them, we decided Roudy will be back soon on Quantum Healthy to discuss these further.  Looking forward to it already!.

Sources:

• Sleep.com
• Blue Light Diet Blog post
• VivaRays Website

Episode 37 – Roudy Nassif

Roudy Nassif is an engineer, and advocate of circadian health. He is the founder of VivaRays. They specialize in creating circadian light harmonizing glasses that filter harmful artificial light, thus aligning our internal clocks with the natural rhythms of the sun. All their lenses are based on the science of light and all the frames are eco-friendly and biodegradable. Roudy and I have a common diagnosis of ADHD and today we are going to hear his story and how he came to find the quantum biology space.

Timestamps:

00:00 – Intro

01:39 – How Roudy Found Quantum Biology

03:42– Roudy’s ADHD Story

08:44– Life-Changing Experience on Organic Farm

11:58– Discovering the Power of Light

19:13– Roudy’s Life in Canada

22:10– Purpose of Winter

27:26– Spiritual Light Engineer

34:33– Understanding Quantum Health

36:47– What Makes VivaRays Different

41:49– Thank You

44:06– Sponsor Acknowledgment: Viva Rays

44:35– Outro

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Laura’s Offerings:

• Quantum Health Coaching
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• EMF Mitigation Sessions
• Access Consciousness Bars Sessions
• FIR Sauna Sessions 

Music Credit: Devon Kissmann aka Devostuff

This podcast is for educational purposes only.