Are LED Lights Destroying Your Health?

29 Comments

1. I only use clear incandescent bulbs in my home. They give off a full spectrum light which is pretty close to the full spectrum light from God’s light (the sun). They do lose some energy in the form of heat from the red light they produce, but in cold weather, I can certainly use that healthy warm red light heat in my house anyhow.

2. I have also been looking into LED lighting lately and we are going back to incandescent bulbs wherever possible now.
   This interview below is what made me really look into them more
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01op4XmNmxA
   If anyone has used lighting products from this company I would love to hear results please
   https://www.blockbluelight.co.nz/products/full-spectrum-downlight

3. Regarding natural light from the sun or a flame, it does not have a ‘wave length’. Unfortunately, all light produced from AC electricity flickers depending on the frequency (hertz), this flicker is very unnatural and some say it causes seizures. In this regard, LED lights are better as they operate on DC (they contain a rectifier to convert AC to DC). An option is to coat the outside of LED lights with a warm colour that provides the preferred homely feel. Most LED lights have the same electrode chemistry but the covers/lenses are what produces the desired colour.

   Also to add that red, green and blue light will not combine to produce white light. (when these 3 colours overlap the intensity washes away the colour only, any 3 colours will do the same thing) Newton’s theory of light belongs in the same basket as germ theory, colour is not a fundamental property of light. You can see Goethe’s explanation of light for more info.

4. Great topic and something that needs to be studied more. I am an electrical engineer and I know that white LED lights can be adjusted for color temperature by reducing or increasing the intensity of the blue wavelengths which are considerably higher in intensity than any other wavelength in the white LED spectrum. This is done by
   1. Using separate warm and cool (more blue) LEDs and control the color temperature by dimming one or the other.
   2. Use multi-chip LEDs to control the intensity of the red, green and blue LEDs individually.
   I recently installed LED track lights in my kitchen. I needed bright lighting over my workspace for my bread making. At first I appreciated the bright and even illumination they provided but I found I cannot tolerate working with them for any length of time outside of a couple minutes. They really bother my eyes and after a while I literally feel dizzy. It almost seems as if they are being pulsed. The development of white LED lighting is a marvel but the health aspects of this light that the human eye has never been exposed to throughout our evolution is warranted.
   Just a note; the photo you have representing Oleg Losev is actually Guglielmo Marconi posing with his invention the wireless telegraph.

5. We use led lamps throughout most of our house but we buy ones with 2700K (the K is color temperature) or lower so that the light is more yellow from them .

6. Thank you for a very information video Dr Sam. I feel that LED lights have an effect on my eyesight. Unfortunately, I purchased an LED lamp for my desktop without really thinking about it. I noticed my eyesight, getting ‘fuzzy’. We had halogen uplighters in our sitting room but again without thinking started changing them for LEDs because they were burning out too quickly. Things got worse again in the living room with my eyesight and severe headaches. They have all been changed back again to halogen and things are easy again.
   In my home office, I still have the LED over the desk but use rarely now, as there are halogens in the ceiling light. With the summer approaching here in the UK I feel a lot more comfortable in my office with natural daylight although it is north-facing and can get a bit dark on cloudy days.
   I find it interesting that using transformers, the life of halogen bulbs can be extended, so I will do some research on that and see if I can purchase these here in the UK, because we still go through the bulbs quite quickly and have to ensure we have a good stock of them.
   Back in the early 90s, I visited a retired GP who was doing (Muscle Testing) Kinesiology. I was then in my 40s and was beginning to feel very exhausted with no answers coming from allopathy at all. Anyway, I got a kinesiology test from him and it was discovered back, that I was EMF sensitive (that was most electrical currents including my wristwatch which I exchanged for a wind-up version). I was a bit sceptical at first back then, but found myself feeling better with his suggestions. I had an old CRT monitor which wasn’t good at all – I think mostly EMFs rather than light though. I exchanged it for one of the very early flat screens, but sat a way back from it and things improved. Then later we had wi-fi when we changed to broadband, and I soon found I had to switch the wi-fi off. A few years later I changed to a smart phone (I never learn!) but that is retired now, along with myself from my work.
   So me and electrics don’t bode too well, but I have rigged up an earthing wired plugged in to the earthing system and I just need to make sure that it is touch my skin, either wrist or ankle. I tried earthing mats, but I found that there was no continuity between the mat and earthing plug on any one that I bought??? So I made my own with copper wire and that does make a difference as there definitely is continuity. I must have had EMF problems for many years even in my youth. I was always getting electric shocks from metal handrails where nobody else did? They could really hurt at times.. I don’t know if that’s got anything to do with my sensitivity…

7. Thanks David for pointing this out! It has just been fixed now.

8. A podcast with Dr Jack Kruse (a neurosurgeon and biophysicist) (@drjackkruse on Instagram) would be awesome!!! You aren’t on the same page when it comes to viruses but you have more in common than not (he is scathing about centralised medicine and the system). He has done years of research on light and the critical role the sun has. Specifically how crucial the POMC gene, melanin and mitochondrial functions are to good health and how our light environment (not enough sun and too much non native emf including blue light) is a key underlying driver of modern chronic disease. Fascinating to read/listen to but deeply disturbing.

9. Re Block Blue Light company… I have one of their bulbs in a ceiling light which has 3 colour temps… the brighter/whiter one is horrible but the yellow one is good and I have that on in the evening (when I need more light than a beeswax candle). It’s just a question of switching the switch off and on to cycle between the 3 colour/temps. I also have one of their red light mini torches for when I need to see the time during the night. That’s great. I also have a mini clip light from them for reading a book which has reduced or no blue light. That’s perfect… clips onto the book.

   I recently bought an LED desk lamp (not BBL) for seeing my keyboard… very bright but adjustable intensity and also a choice of 3 colour temps. So I keep that on the yellower colour. If I face this desk lamp onto my PC touchscreen, everything goes haywire when I switch the lamp off (not on), for about 20mins. Weird. So I have it just on my keyboard. There is apparently an inverse square law with regard to LED’s… keeping a lamp at least 2 feet (60cm) away from your head or body is best. I got rid of a standing reading lamp which used a fluorescent bulb! In the UK it’s very hard to find incandescent bulbs and even then a lamp that will take them and I’m dubious about halogen…can’t remember why! What a minefield… and what a mess.. and as per normal now, how lacking in common sense and also in giving the consumer the choice. I fume at their diktats.

10. Post script Re halogen bulbs… it’s the UV light apparently (there’s always something!!) but maybe they have been ‘doped’ these days?!
    Quote from https://emfacademy.com/light-bulb-emf-radiation-complete-guide/:

    “Halogen bulbs are probably the worst offenders when it comes to emitting UV radiation. In fact, according to a study called “The risk of ultraviolet radiation exposure from indoor lamps in lupus erythematosus” published in 2010, researchers stated that:

    “Halogen lamps emit significant levels of ultraviolet radiation and should be doped or covered with glass prior to use.”

11. Thanks for broaching an important subject. I have been quite concerned about the harm to insects, therefore the ecology, of outdoor lighting. Even indoor lights that insects see through the window. There’s a “lot of it around”. People and governments don’t seem to care except perhaps for the outdoor lights at Key West that turn red during sea turtle season. I switch all lights off except for a remote sensor for the front door. If you have to have outdoor lighting then using warm (less blue) lights is least attractive to insects. They should be low power and well spaced out. I have not delved deeply but having warm spectrum lights inside should help insects keep their distance from your windows. Hungry spiders lurk too.
    Now a bit deeper for gardeners, farmers and orchid growers that are interested in measuring lighting for growing seedlings, crops, plants in grow tents, outside or indoor plants like orchids.
    Here is my hot tip. We used to have to
    1) use a cheap Lux meter and try to convert it to PPFD (lumens x 0.01 = the ppfd measurement, but it’s not exact). Or
    2) buy a very expensive PAR meter for $300. Now there is an app called Photone that you can download to your iPhone for free. This is useful because it measures the light spectrum then converts the information to “useful light for plant photosynthesis” rather than how humans see the light (that’s a PhD thesis which is as much a pyschological phenomenon as it is “physics”). I am not into orchids but you can measure low light in each room and either “tune” the situation by changing the species of orchids (low, medium or high light) or drawing the curtains or trimming the bush outside etc. Happy gardening.

12. First, a good LED bulb will have some red LEDs in them to produce a warm, pleasing light. Secondly, LED-based tubes are replacing a lot of fluorescent tubes (T8), a very blue light.

13. Hi Sam,
    In the U.S. we all pretty much all use LED lighting in our homes. I do agree that this form of lighting is not a good source for reading and the lighting is definitely more harsh and affects seeing negatively. I will be looking into whether low voltage halogens are available here.
    thanks for covering this topic it was very useful for me ,
    Ken

14. Here’s an excellent video on the hidden health dangers of LED lighting.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV4-rltIje4

15. And to add some light to the topic, here is Jerm’s interview with Nisa Khan: https://www.jermwarfare.com/nisa-khan-on-why-led-lighting-is-harmful-to-all-life/

16. I would recommend watching the interview on YT of Alexander Wunsch a photobiologist who states that there will be an epidemic of blindness in the next ten years due to the saturation level of LED lighting in our lives – here it the link; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZInqDKVxb0 – use only incandesecent bulbs as the closest to natural light – I have to hunt for them in England but I will never use leds

17. I strongly suggest you look at the work of the following:
    Jack Kruse M.D
    MAX Gulhane M.D.
    Roger Siehault M.D
    Glenn Jeffrey PhD
    Robert Fosbury PhD
    Scott Zimmerman

    The latter produces a light bulb of full spectrum light, including infrared.

    The work of the above doctors and researchers is very valuable.

18. Measuring lightbulb output with beer in hand (@ 8:26). Lol.

19. I had an infectious eyes Keratite some years ago I had to cure alone because of ophtalmologists denial, it tooks me some years, and my first strong problem on the first days was the blue lights. I could not go on supermarket or sports hall without high level blue light protection glasses and it was difficult to drive my car by night too because of blue lights of the cars, was difficult on the morning too when sunny days.
    Now I’m cured but I still can feel the power those lights have on my eyes and I avoid or limit the time exposure, at home of course I have only older incandescent warm lights.
    Blue light is Energy (the Moon) and with dry syndrome that many people have growing up, it get worse.
    Perfect business for blue light glasses protection and ophtalmologists… another one!

20. We have a new house & fitted bio lights & incandescent lights mainly. However the last few years have been getting occular migraines & occuring more regularly now. Wear Blue blocking glasses now as much as I can & seems to be keeping them away. Mainly due to computer & phone use, but got triggered walking into a airport & hotel last month. Only blurry vision but concerning as one of them this year took me out for a day & 1/2. Dr Kruse talks about them being pretty nefarious but have looked too far into that

21. +1 on Dr jack Kruse. He knows the impact of light on your body better than anyone. The only true light is the sun and mornign sun is always best being high in Red light whch helps the body recover + sleep well at night. We have no wifi either nor bluetooth. Light wise we use Red or Orange LED’s with limited power ie 1w in the bathroon at night. And if we need more light we have sunset dimming ie 1800k or 2400k lights but use infrequently. Switch Lighting based in Nelson make quality LED’s if required. Love the video. A get start into the reasons to minimise artificial light from lights, tv’s and computer screens.

22. I have seen Dr. Jack Kruse listed in the comments by several people, great. Dr. Kruse mentions John Nash Ott as a source of some of his light knowledge. You can sample Ott’s work here . https://archive.org/details/healthlighteffec00ottj
    Other John Nash Ott works are listed here https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ua=%22https://id.oclc.org/worldcat/entity/E39PBJwhB3JK6d8DFYM7bcmDbd%22
    All the best.

23. Two things to consider:

    1) Pretty much all TV / computer / laptop / smartphone screens are LED backlit these days…….. so…. if you are staring into one of these for hours a day, you are still staring at LED light (even if you use incandescent light bulbs in your house)……

    2) ‘Smart’ meters– these make the electrical power ‘dirty’ in your house with distortion, vs. the ‘clean’ sine wave power of the past. (Among many other bad things about ‘smart’ meters). So your electrical wiring in your house is poisoning you more than it used to with EMFs, and also what effect will this ‘dirty’ electricity have on the light your incadenscent bulbs are putting out?

24. A little over a decade ago at the ripe age of 26 I was experiencing drastic vision loss seemingly all of a sudden. Thank god at the time that I was honest enough to see that an obsessive amount of time spent of mobile devices (especially at night in a dark room) was the main causal factor in getting to this point. There was no interest in wearing glasses at such a young age when it had never been a problem up until that point. Thankfully my intuition was right to put down the phone and start focusing on skateboarding (being active) outside in the sun for the months following. While it wasn’t a quick fix by any means, within 3 months of doing so and vigorously avoiding the use of screens I noticed a full crisp recovery in my vision! This was the start of many natural healing experiences to come! And furthered my investigation into other problematic topics such as non-native emf’s years later when a slew of “symptoms” arose. Thank you Sam and Mark! Love you guys! ❤️

25. Thank you Sam for shinning light on this topic.
    Oh shit, I have purchased LED’s due to being unaware of the issue.
    And I tend to pick yellowish color as I don’t like the whitish one, and haven’t had any serious health issue for over a decade though I still prefer using my Himalayan salt table lamp (with regular light bulb) that LED ones are mostly off.

26. Great video and well explained!
    I like using both Incandescent and LED light too.

    This is my experience of eye fatigue with different lights:
    When I was kid, no Fluorescent or LED existed,
    I noticed my eyes would fatigue with incandescent light but not with the natural sunlight.
    I do not understand why, but I suspect either the difference on the light spectrum compared to the sunlight (lot of infrared light) or maybe because the light flickers at 60Hz (or 50Hz, depends on the country).
    This flickering is unnoticeable to the eye, but I have measured it and believe it or not, incandescent lamps do have some (mild) flicker!.
    When I got my first computer, with CRT monitor, only half an hour in front of the screen were enough to cause an uncomfortable feel on my eyes and
    headache, even with the anti radiation filter.
    Then when upgraded to a 85Hz CRT monitor, I could use the computer for 3 or 4 hours without a headache.
    I wonder if I have become desensitized to artificial lighting flicker after many years of using those bright CRT monitors with background applications in blue color.
    With the coming of fluorescent lights the eye fatigue was still noticeable.
    With the LED lighting has been hit and miss, probably depending on the flicker, color temperature and so on.
    Some LED bulbs flicker a lot with 60Hz since a lot of Chinese manufacturers try to save a few pennies by not adding a big enough capacitor at the rectifier to smooth the voltage.
    Some LEDs bulbs flicker at much higher frequencies like 1KHz or more due to their internal circuit
    And some others have properly designed electronics with negligible flicker or they use DC voltage.
    Add that every white LED is different, each part number with different spectrum, color rendering index (CRI), different blue/purple light leakage.
    Another factor is that I get more eye fatigue with high contrasts, I feel more comfortable with indirect diffuse lighting or at least multiple light bulbs across the room rather than a single strong one and matching the computer brightness to the room light.

    Regarding life time of the bulbs:

    Manufacturers overload the LEDs, presumably to make them last less to increase the frequency of sales of LED bulbs. Something like the Phoebus cartel.
    Overloading LEDs causes them to overheat, burn-out and dim, or to crack the gold DIE to lead bonding (the internal terminals of the LED) and flicker at random.
    Often once the LEDs have a fault, the electronic circuit might fail too, flickering on and off the LEDs like a heart beat disco light.

    So what I personally do is to buy good quality LED lights that have a high lumens rate, open the bulb and modify the electronics to dim down to half
    the brightness (usually by changing a shunt resistor inside to a higher value), reseal the bulb and then the LEDs last much longer, so far none of
    my modified bulbs have failed yet.

    As for incandescent ones, I do the same, I lower the brightness of the incandescent lamp and make them last much longer.
    I used a dimmer in the past, but that comes with the downside of high frequency audible noise.
    So instead I connected two light bulbs in series to half their brightness, and that’s worked fine for me for long time, the light is warmer, the
    only downside is having to alter the light bulb socket fixture to have two bulbs instead of one.
    The other solution I came up with for the lifespan is to import 240V light bulbs in to my country which uses 127V.
    In your video I presume that by using a transformer, the voltage of your light bulbs is lower than normal and so the life time of your bulbs have extended. (see the 120 years old bulb at Livermore, is 60W bulb running on 4W)

27. In the US it has gotten difficult to find incandescent bulbs. However, LEDs cannot hold up to oven temperatures, so we purchase oven light bulbs, incandescent, 40 watt, and use them in all of our lights. There are also some spiral filament incandescents you can get if you search for “antique light bulbs” on Amazon.

28. Very topical and informative Dr Sam. Thx tons for your time.
    You referred to convection cooktop. I did hear somewhere that convection cooktops emit way too much radiation than we can handle. Got the skinny on that ?

29. In response to simonde288 tungsten filament incandescent bulbs do not flicker at 50hz. Once the filament is lit it gives off light consistently.
    Fluorescent lights do flicker but I would still prefer then to LEDs which or halogens which are both u pleasant lights. Unfortunately the range of tungsten bulbs has rapidly reduced and even fluuros are now only available in a limited range, ironically the brightest ones. You’d think that if the authorities really brlieved there was some truth in the global warming narrative that they would make the lowest wattage fluoros and incandescents a priority but they have gone.