Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival

shijing

The Living Force
I just finished reading this book by T.S. Wiley and Brent Formby, and I thought it was very good. The main premise of the book is that we suffer from light poisoning, due to a combination of artificial light and lack of appreciation of our bodies' seasonal sleep pattern (which is abused in abundance, particularly in the Western world), and that this in turn leads to things from obesity, to cancer, to bipolar disorder. The following are the editorial reviews from Amazon:

This fascinating, thought-provoking study discusses the central role of sleep in our lives. After probing the scientific literature, Wiley and Formby, researchers at the Sansum Medical Research Institute, conclude that "the disastrous slide in the health of the American people corresponds to the increase in light-generating night activities and the carbohydrate consumption that follows." Our internal clocks are governed by seasonal variations in light and dark; extending daylight artificially leads to a craving for sugar, especially concentrated, refined carbohydrates that, in turn, cause obesity. More seriously, lack of sleep inhibits the production of prolactin and melatonin--deranging our immune systems and causing depression, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. The authors prescribe sleeping at least nine and a half hours in total darkness in the fall and winter and switching to a diet low in carbohydrates and high in protein, vegetables, and healthy fats. They support their arguments with 100 pages of notes and by tracing the progression of disease from hunter-gatherers to our high-tech society. Despite its somewhat strident, all-knowing tone, this illuminating work is highly recommended for academic and public libraries.

The lightbulb put us out of sync with nature. Way back when, people spent the summer sleeping less and eating heavily in preparation for winter because light triggers the hunger for carbohydrates. Now, with light available 24 hours a day, we gulp down food all year long. So, Wiley and Formby assert, it is light, not what we eat or whether we exercise, that causes obesity--and diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Indeed, eating bacon, ham, butter, and eggs for breakfast doesn't impair health, and exercise can make you fat. If we considered our waking periods as equivalent to the long days of summer and the short ones of winter, we would avoid those health problems. Wiley and Formby offer three steps for improvement, but they aren't optimistic, because the light-driven speed and intensity of contemporary life may be too much to overcome. Still, try, first, plugging the leaks in your psyche; then, because you will have lost weight, resisting carbohydrates; and, finally, swallowing a few pills and helpful foods.

The writing style is very engaging, and the suggestions offered by the authors are, with few exceptions, quite in line with forum recommendations. It also contextualizes many of the recommendations here into a nice, big picture; I actually learned quite a bit, for example, about what melatonin actually does, how it is produced (or not), and why it is vital to our health. Plus, you get a good feeling about a book when in the final pages it discusses killer asteroids and comets, as well as the JFK conspiracy, as examples of our government's general moral bankruptcy :)
 
Thank you Shijing for the post. Another good book to read in parallel with this is The Circadian Prescription by Sidney M Baker, which relates diet, and supplementation, to ‘life is rhythm’ – ‘being in synchrony with the external clock of the earth’s rotation- the day and night cycle’. And, the recommendation of, ‘protein in the morning and carbohydrates in the evening’: guidelines based on the pioneering circadian rhythm research of Dr Charles Ehret.
 
Shijing said:
I actually learned quite a bit, for example, about what melatonin actually does, how it is produced (or not), and why it is vital to our health.

The effects of artificial light brought out by this book is most intriguing. However, here's another fly in the ointment:

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/131795-Fluoride-Accumulates-in-Pineal-Gland said:
Fluoride Accumulates in Pineal Gland

(excerpt)
When Luke found out that the pineal gland - a little gland in the center of the brain, responsible for a very large range of regulating activities (it produces serotonin and melatonin) - was also a calcifying tissue, like the teeth and the bones, she hypothesized it would concentrate fluoride to very high levels. The gland is not protected by the blood brain barrier and has a very high perfusion rate of blood, second only to the kidney.

Luke had 11 cadavers analyzed in the UK. As she predicted she found astronomically high levels of fluoride in the calcium hydroxy apatite crystals produced by the gland. The average was 9000 ppm and went as high as 21,000 in one case. These levels are at, or higher, than fluoride levels in the bones of people suffering from skeletal fluorosis. It is these findings which have just been published.

It is the ramifications of these findings which have yet to be published. In the second half of her work she treated animals (Mongolian gerbils) with fluoride at a crack pineal gland research unit at the University of Surrey, UK (so there is no question about the quality of this work). She found that melatonin production (as measured by the concentration of a melatonin metabolite in the urine) was lower in the animals treated with high fluoride levels compared with those treated with low levels.

Luke hypothesizes that one of the four enzymes needed to convert the amino acid tryptophan (from the diet) into melatonin is being inhibited by fluoride. It could be one of the two enzymes which convert tryptophan to serotonin or one of the two which convert serotonin to melatonin.

Significance? Huge. Melatonin is reponsible for regulating all kinds of activities and there is a vast amount of work investigating its possible roles in aging, cancer and many other life processes. The one activity that Luke is particularly interested in is the onset of puberty. The highest levels of melatonin ( produced only at night) is generated in young children. It is thought that it is the fall of these melatonin levels which acts like a biological clock and triggers the onset of puberty. In her gerbil study she found that the high fluoride treated animals were reaching puberty earlier than the low fluoride ones.
 
JEEP said:
The effects of artificial light brought out by this book is most intriguing. However, here's another fly in the ointment:

Definitely -- Wiley and Fromby actually discuss the pineal gland in some detail, and between light poisoning and fluoride, it's getting hit with a one-two punch. It's amazing people survive at all under those conditions (the reality being, of course, that they often don't in the long-term).
 
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/131795-Fluoride-Accumulates-in-Pineal-Gland said:
Fluoride Accumulates in Pineal Gland

(excerpt)
When Luke found out that the pineal gland - a little gland in the center of the brain, responsible for a very large range of regulating activities (it produces serotonin and melatonin) - was also a calcifying tissue, like the teeth and the bones, she hypothesized it would concentrate fluoride to very high levels. The gland is not protected by the blood brain barrier and has a very high perfusion rate of blood, second only to the kidney.

I often find it interesting that many of the most prevalent/promoted poisons in the world today aim at some of the most important and sensitive regions in our brains. MSG, for example, is very damaging to the hypothalamus. And here we read that fluoride, which is in tap water everywhere, accumulates in the pineal gland. It is almost like a concerted plan to dumb down the population. Or maybe it is? :scared: :curse:
 
Bobo05 said:
It is almost like a concerted plan to dumb down the population. Or maybe it is?

Absolutely!!!!

From the same article:

The use of fluoride for "health" reasons is one of the great insanities of our times. Could it be just by chance that the Germans and Russians both used fluoride to make prisoners stupid and docile (http://www.newswithviews.com/Devvy/kidd102.htm) or that the US government faced legal action over the toxic effects in the environment of this nuclear waste by-product (http://www.democracynow.org/2004/6/17/the_fluoride_deception_how_a_nuclear)?

and from http://www.sott.net/articles/show/209230-Poisoned-Water:

Yet for some doctors speaking the truth has not come without a price. The best example may be Dr. Phyllis Mullinex, who used to be a leading researcher with the Forsyth Dental Institute. She created an innovative computer pattern recognition software to study the neurotoxicity of chemicals. Then she was asked to study fluoride. At first she balked that it was a waste of time. Like most doctors, she believed that fluoride as safe and harmless because it was in toothpaste and drinking water. Yet the software revealed that fluoride even in small doses causes effects similar to hyperactivity and Attention Deficit Disorder. The results were congruent with numerous studies in China that show that fluoride lowers the IQ of children. When Dr. Mullinex published these surprising results, she was promptly fired from Forsyth and since then has not been able to find a position or receive research grants.

and there's this for good measure:

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/142976-Small-Amounts-Fluoride-Destroy-The-Will-To-Resist said:
The following letter was received by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, Milwaukee Wisconsin, on 2 October 1954, from Mr. Charles Perkins, a chemist:

"I have your letter of September 29 asking for further documentation regarding a statement made in my book, The Truth About Water Fluoridation, to the effect that the idea of water fluoridation was brought to England from Russia by the Russian Communist Kreminoff. "In the 1930's, Hitler and the German Nazi's envisioned a world to be dominated and controlled by a Nazi philosophy of pan-Germanism. The German chemists worked out a very ingenious and far-reaching plan of mass-control which was submitted to and adopted by the German General Staff. This plan was to control the population in any given area through mass medication of drinking water supplies. By this method they could control the population in whole areas, reduce population by water medication that would produce sterility in women, and so on. In this scheme of mass-control, sodium fluoride occupied a prominent place.

"Repeated doses of infinitesimal amounts of fluoride will in time reduce an individual's power to resist domination, by slowly poisoning and narcotizing a certain area of the brain, thus making him submissive to the will of those who wish to govern him. [A convenient light lobotomy]

"The real reason behind water fluoridation is not to benefit children's teeth. If this were the real reason there are many ways in which it could be done that are much easier, cheaper, and far more effective. The real purpose behind water fluoridation is to reduce the resistance of the masses to domination and control and loss of liberty.

That pretty well sums it up.
 
Shijing said:
I just finished reading this book by T.S. Wiley and Brent Formby, and I thought it was very good. The main premise of the book is that we suffer from light poisoning, due to a combination of artificial light and lack of appreciation of our bodies' seasonal sleep pattern (which is abused in abundance, particularly in the Western world), and that this in turn leads to things from obesity, to cancer, to bipolar disorder. The following are the editorial reviews from Amazon:

This fascinating, thought-provoking study discusses the central role of sleep in our lives. After probing the scientific literature, Wiley and Formby, researchers at the Sansum Medical Research Institute, conclude that "the disastrous slide in the health of the American people corresponds to the increase in light-generating night activities and the carbohydrate consumption that follows." Our internal clocks are governed by seasonal variations in light and dark; extending daylight artificially leads to a craving for sugar, especially concentrated, refined carbohydrates that, in turn, cause obesity. More seriously, lack of sleep inhibits the production of prolactin and melatonin--deranging our immune systems and causing depression, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. The authors prescribe sleeping at least nine and a half hours in total darkness in the fall and winter and switching to a diet low in carbohydrates and high in protein, vegetables, and healthy fats. They support their arguments with 100 pages of notes and by tracing the progression of disease from hunter-gatherers to our high-tech society. Despite its somewhat strident, all-knowing tone, this illuminating work is highly recommended for academic and public libraries.

The lightbulb put us out of sync with nature. Way back when, people spent the summer sleeping less and eating heavily in preparation for winter because light triggers the hunger for carbohydrates. Now, with light available 24 hours a day, we gulp down food all year long. So, Wiley and Formby assert, it is light, not what we eat or whether we exercise, that causes obesity--and diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Indeed, eating bacon, ham, butter, and eggs for breakfast doesn't impair health, and exercise can make you fat. If we considered our waking periods as equivalent to the long days of summer and the short ones of winter, we would avoid those health problems. Wiley and Formby offer three steps for improvement, but they aren't optimistic, because the light-driven speed and intensity of contemporary life may be too much to overcome. Still, try, first, plugging the leaks in your psyche; then, because you will have lost weight, resisting carbohydrates; and, finally, swallowing a few pills and helpful foods.

The writing style is very engaging, and the suggestions offered by the authors are, with few exceptions, quite in line with forum recommendations. It also contextualizes many of the recommendations here into a nice, big picture; I actually learned quite a bit, for example, about what melatonin actually does, how it is produced (or not), and why it is vital to our health. Plus, you get a good feeling about a book when in the final pages it discusses killer asteroids and comets, as well as the JFK conspiracy, as examples of our government's general moral bankruptcy

Having just finished reading this book, I concur with Shijing’s comments. The book provides a good description of the ‘food factory’ - or perhaps ‘sleep/sugar factory’ would be better - from a multi-disciplinary approach of molecular medicine, genetics, psychoneuroimmunology, and neuro-endocrinology. The book is easy to read, almost like a conversation with the reader. They authors also look at evolutionary biology and behaviour and behaviour, clinical, anecdotal, or folkloric evidence, cross-cultural practices, and even some statistics in presenting their story. For understanding the nuerological and chemical working of the bodymind it complements Pert’s Molecules of Emotion, in this case taking a more ‘food’ approach coupled with Nature.

To give a flavour of the content:
… We felt a recap was necessary. …

It’s the carbohydrate content of food that drives the chemical reactions that turn the proteins and fats that you eat into steroid (sex) hormones, muscle tissue, cytokines in your immune system, and neurotransmitters in your brain and body. Fats called triglycerides can fuel all of the same chemical reactions that carbohydrates do. Remember that even your heart has a summer and winter metabolism – in the summer your heart uses glucose and in the winter it’s meant to run on free fatty acids. In other words, you are designed to live on both carbohydrates and fats, depending on the landscape and season.

There is no evidence that you were ever meant to live solely on carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are converted and stored to see you through lean times. Protein and fat in the form of other living things would be available wherever you were living, no matter what the season – unlike carbohydrates, which would grow and be available only during the warm-weather growing season. So summer eating – carbohydrate consumption driven by the number of hours of light - is as physical imperative to secure sugar storage for famine, and it’s driven by the timing of the light.

In times of actual famine, not just when your side of the planet went dormant (winter), only those of us with stored carbohydrate got to live. Those of us who didn’t have stores died. Our DNA hates that. So an acute insulin response to eating carbohydrates became genetically entrenched over millennia for survival.

Through the miracle of technology, we have lost the famine period. The famine period emptied the stored sugar in your muscles and liver and, more important, from your accumulation of body fat. The next summer, feasting filled it again. That means that episodic high insulin was our salvation. For four or five months out of twelve, insulin levels were elevated to make use of the feast-before-famine period. Continuously elevated insulin meant only one thing for mammals.

Winter is on the way.

If that day of need never comes, you just keep storing as long as there are hours of light.

Now you are in deep trouble with Mother Nature.

Research and common sense would indicate that being overfed, in the grand scheme of things, is asking for it. In the “food web,” every species must stay in balance or all bets are off.

Since the stakes are so high, the rules are pretty strict.

Light-and-dark cycles control insulin through carbohydrate craving but also, more directly, through your stress mechanisms. Remember, when the lights are on, your cortisol stays up because it’s a blood-sugar mobilizer – and it helps you to be ready instantly to run or fight. Continuously high levels of cortisol – which are mobilizing your blood sugar – means insulin stays up too, to disperse that blood sugar to your muscles. So just watching TV late into the normal sleep period keeps your insulin up longer than nature wants it to be, causing insulin resistance – and you know what that means.

You get fat just by smelling a cookie.

For Paleolithic man, long days meant the end of summer and the approaching end of the food supply. The short sleep cycles of long days translated to an increased need for carbohydrates to store fat and to turn serotonin into melatonin for the part of the year when he would sleep more in order to reduce metabolic functions to save energy when it was scarce; so carbo-craving is a precursor to sleep, and modern man still responds to instinctive behaviors led by hibernation drives.

As a result, we crave carbohydrates only when we’re tired, not when we need food.
A highly recommended read.
 
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