FINDING THE light BALANCE
According to Dr Jacob Liberman, a pioneer in the fields of light, vision and consciousness, lack of sunlight and our use of artificial lighting are contributing to an epidemic of modern health problems. As the most primal energy, which we’ve evolved under for millions of years, light impacts on our physiology and daily life in dramatic ways. Yet its role in our health is less understood and appreciated than exercise.
Tellingly, human eyes — those portals to light, and an outgrowth of the brain — contain about 100 million rod cells and 7 million cone cells (photoreceptors in the retina) to detect particles of light (photons). Testimony to light’s importance for the human body, a rod cell can detect a single photon.
Ninety-eight per cent of light infiltrating the body enters via our eyes, yet most of that isn’t for eyesight, says Liberman. Light sparks, or catalyses, our internal biological processes, including metabolism, hormone production and the synthesis of nutrients such as vitamin D, and therefore calcium regulation. “The body is a living photocell, stimulated and regulated by light entering the eyes,” Liberman says. “Every function of the human body is light dependent.”
Light not only switches on our physiology and tells us when to get up but it boosts our moods and energy. And, as the tool through which we see our universe, light is a teacher that develops consciousness.
An energy pondered by scientists through the ages, light is fundamental to
