アダルト Chapter 11

アダルト See me, tan me, touch me, heal me

The skin is the largest organ of your body. Far from being a simple envelope without which your body would fall apart the skin has many functions, we have come to appreciate over recent years.

Any single-celled organism, such as an amoeba, is surrounded by a cell wall or membrane. This enables it to maintain the difference between the environment inside and that outside itself. It cannot do this simply by excluding the outside world; this would starve the cell to death. The membrane must both identify components of the outside environment, determining for example whether or not they are food, and control the selective admission into the cell of those chemicals that it needs. Clearly this process is crucial to the health and success of any organism, large or small.

アダルト A living frontier

All our needs, apart from that for food, are identified and fulfilled through our skin and our sensory organs. These organs are specialized derivatives of skin. The eyes, the nose, even the brain itself, are derived from primitive dermal tissue. Starting, in the early fetal stages, as simply the outermost layer of the body, dermal tissue develops into a complex set of systems for interacting with the environment.

The skin can perform 4 basic functions - it can sense, defend, express and ingest.

The sense function of the skin is performed by the nerve endings which detect touch, pain and pleasure. They enable us, even without using the special sense organs such as the eyes, to detect whether an environment is friendly or hostile to us. They even enable us, by contact with another person, to detect through their muscle tone, the quality of their touch, and the electrical charge and resistance of their skin, much of the nature of their feelings towards us. It is easy to lie down the telephone, but who can lie in a kiss?

As well as detecting pain and advising withdrawal from the painful stimulus, the skin also has inbuilt defenses against a range of damaging environmental factors. Mechanical and chemical agents are excluded by the resilient, elastic underlying structure of the collagen in the dermis, as well as by the layer of dead cells that makes up the epidermis. This also presents an intact barrier against micro-organisms, as do the oils that are secreted on to the surface of our skin, when they are activated by ultraviolet light.[1] UV itself gets no further than the skin, but only a small proportion of it is reflected; much of it is transmitted into the epidermis and dermis, where it can have very definite effects on the skin, and then on the body in general.[2] The skin protects itself from excessive ultraviolet by producing melanin, which blocks the radiation effectively, but it only produces sufficient melanin to limit UV light, not to exclude it entirely.[3]

We express ourselves through our skin in a variety of ways, The skin is very important to doctors, as it is the easiest and readiest source of information about the body within. Nowadays we have sophisticated methods of 'seeing' the inside of the body, such as the CAT scan, but good medicine has always depended and still does depend on a careful physical examination of the patient, which is in large part an examinination of the patient's skin. Some diseases of the whole body are fairly obvious on the skin, such as anemia, jaundice and extreme exhaustion; others require a specialized eye. In the five-element system of traditional Chinese medicine, for example, important diagnostic clues can be obtained from skilled interpretation of skin colour.

The other important signal that the skin gives is through smell, and this includes chemicals known as pheromones which can transmit sexual and emotional signals without either sender or recipient being consciously aware of them. When we kiss, as well as enjoying the touch sensation, we exchange pheromone signals.

アダルト Skin repair kit

All of these functions depend on a healthy skin, and healthy skin requires to be fed regularly. What it ingests, apart from the nutrients that are transmitted to it in the blood, is sunlight. The skin and eyes are the only organs capable of absorbing sunlight, and they do so voraciously, with effects that involve the whole body. The skin itself requires an adequate intake of sunlight in order to stay healthy. There is a long list of skin diseases which are benefited by sunlight and particularly by ultraviolet light. Possibly the best known of these is psoriasis, which affects about three per cent of the population.

Sufferers develop red scaly plaques of thickened skin, particularly over areas where there is friction, such as elbows and knees, but sometimes over the whole body. The top layer of the skin, the dead cells of the stratum corneum, is much thicker, and flakes off easily because the next layer down is less developed, causing poor attachment of the stratum corneum. As a result of this thickening, the skin is much more reflective to ultraviolet light.[4] In fact, simple exposure of the skin to ultraviolet may benefit the disease, but it is made much more effective if the transmission can be improved by application of an oily lubricant, such as Vaseline, before ultraviolet treatment. This technique has cleared ninety per cent of patients, although it takes a lot of treatments.[5]

A substantial business has built up around the treatment of psoriasis, particularly in Israel, where the shores of the Dead Sea seem to be areas with a particularly beneficial effect. Like Death Valley in California, this is one of the hottest and most barren places on earth, and is also below sea level. The climate in such places appears to produce a self-sustaining hole in the surrounding weather, through which the sun shines intensely hour after hour.

It seems likely that this is why the Dead Sea benefits psoriasis. However, we now know that the effect can be greatly enhanced by giving the patients substances which sensitize them to ultraviolet effects. Essentially these substances are dyes which attach to molecules within the body and enable them to absorb light radiation more effectively, thus increasing the impact of sunlight.[6] Because of their proven effects in psoriasis, the major group is known as psoralens.

Surprisingly, the treatment of acne with sunlight or ultraviolet has been much less studied. There have been no controlled scientific studies to prove that it works. However, anybody who has suffered from acne - and this includes most of us at one time or another in our lives - will have noticed that sunlight does make a difference. There are a number of reasons why this should be so. If acne is caused or made worse by bacteria in the skin, as many scientists believe, then ultraviolet light will help to kill the bacteria. On the other hand, it will also stimulate our immune response to these bacteria, and this would fit with the observed fact that acne often gets slightly worse immediately after sunlight exposure. From being unable to handle the bacteria effectively and remove them from the skin, we suddenly go into the attack and clear them out of the skin by the only route available - through spots.

If a build-up of dead skin cells and cell debris clogs the pores of the sebaccous glands and causes a back pressure and swelling of the gland which then gets infected, ultraviolet light will increase the turnover of cells and help to clear this blockage. Whichever way it works, light therapy is a far more attractive prospect in acne than long-term low-dose antibiotics, which can cause allergies, often interfere with the organisms in the bowel and do not work very well anyway.

Another disease of the skin which improves on sunlight therapy is vitiligo, in which patches of white, depigmented skin appear for no clear reason. It has been suggested that this is associated with vitamin B12 deficiency, but nevertheless treatment with sunlight combined with psoralens has a mildly beneficial effect in at least seventy per cent of cases.[7] Even more effective, according to a recent study, is a combination of the amino-acid phenylalanine with regular sunlight exposures. Improvement is slow, as the pigmentation takes time to develop; but when it does reappear it is long lasting. The same psoralen/UV light treatment benefits an unpleasant malignant disease of the skin called mycosis fungicides, as it also does urticaria, or nettle rash, even if this is triggered by sunlight itself.[9] Nobody knows how the treatment works in this case, but work it does.

アダルト Natural healing

One skin effect that is easy to explain is the benefit to wound and ulcer healing, particularly if these occur in areas of poor circulation. Clearly, sunlight increases the blood flow through the area and therefore the supply of nutrients to the injury

アダルト Sunlight - essential to a balanced diet

• 大人気のアダルトビデオが見れる

  アダルトビデオ作品が、マスターテープを使用した完全オリジナル編集

• 完全無料アダルト動画のサンプル

  アダルト動画が見れるサイトだよ多くの作品が、マスターテープを使用した完全オリジナル編集動画作品を多数配信！

Perhaps more fascinating still are the effects that the skin has on the rest of the body. There are several of these in which sunlight clearly plays a part. The first, and the best known, is the production of vitamin D. This requires sunlight for its manufacture from the precursor of cholesterol. When released through the body and activated, vitamin D improves our efficiency in the metabolism of minerals such as calcium and magnesium, and also of protein. A Russian study found that vitamin D produces a thirty per cent improvement in our conservation of protein.[11]

Interleukin-1 is a newly discovered molecule that is produced by the most superficial cells in the skin, keratinocytes. It stimulates white cells to multiply and is a vital stage in the mobilizing of an immune response to any infection. This may explain the observation that gamma globulins (the proteins in the blood which contain antibodies) are increased for a month after exposure to ultraviolet light. It also makes sense of the observation that polar explorers suffer frequent infections on return to civilization. In fact, the Russians refer to 'light-hunger, a disease for the far North and polar regions,' which involves a general weakening of the body's defenses against infection and chronic illnesses of all sorts.

The skin also comprises an enormous bed of capillary blood vessels, through which the blood circulates, and in which it can be exposed to sunlight. It is the red blood cells in these capillaries that give the pink colour to our skins. When skin goes red from sunburn or after being smacked, for instance, this is caused by these capillaries dilating to allow more blood into them.

The experience of American physicians working with the Knott technique showed that ultraviolet irradiation of the blood had some very powerful effects on the system at large. But the structure of the skin makes it a highly efficient organ for irradiating the blood with sunlight. The cells of the blood which have been gently bathed in ultraviolet light by this method are stimulated to produce their own ultraviolet radiation, and they carry this effect in the circulation to every cell in the body. This provides the light energy necessary to fuel our essential chemical reactions.

Now that the evidence is starting to mount again in favor of ultraviolet light for a variety of health problems, many of us are going to want to take advantage of its effects. It would be nice to imagine that the government will provide a 'photarium' in every small community, but few things on earth can be less likely. We shall all have to make our own arrangements for regular trips to the sun, full-spectrum lighting or some more specific form of light therapy.

Chapter 12

The Solar-Powered Athlete

For forty years we have been missing out on a literally golden opportunity to become healthier. Whether we are rundown office workers or athletes in training, the effects of ultraviolet light on fitness are considerable. One example is the improvement in the power, endurance and recovery time of muscles - and this includes the heart muscle. Fitness training undertaken in sunlight or with exposure to ultraviolet light is far more effective than without it.

When the skin is exposed to sunlight, the blood passing through it receives ultraviolet and other radiation. The effect is a gentler version of that achieved with the Knott technique, in which blood is removed, irradiated with ultraviolet and reinjected. The capacity of the blood to carry oxygen goes up, and this happens within an hour and lasts for several weeks. This means that less work is demanded of the heart. At the same time the amount of oxygen being supplied to the tissues, including the tissue of the heart itself, increases. In some studies the oxygen-carrying capacity went up as much as fifty per cent.' This irradiation of blood cells also stimulates them to produce their own bioradiation. They then pass through the whole of the body, transmitting these impulses to all the other cells.

Protti in Milan, and other researchers throughout Europe, found in the thirties that the radiation detectable from blood increased after food, and decreased with fatigue.[2] After a day's work or several hours physical exertion it was down to almost nothing. in a couple of hours it had returned nearly to normal. Inhaling oxygen had a boosting effect on bioradiation, but only for about one hour. The effect of ultraviolet exposure, on the other hand, lasted for hours or even days.' In other words, when fuelled with ultraviolet light energy, the blood becomes a living battery, supplying energy to the working muscles and nerves.

The muscles underlying an area exposed directly to sunlight also show some local effects. There is an increase in the amount of blood flowing through the muscles, as the blood vessels relax, together with a measurable rise in the temperature of the muscle.[4] At the same time the work capacity and endurance of the muscle goes up. After a single dose of UV, the effect lasts for at least five days. Whereas the increase in oxygen capacity of the blood is a general effect - and treating, say, one arm will affect the whole body - the increase of blood flow through the muscles is a local effect, and only operates in muscles under the area exposed to UV.

アダルト Today's athletes can learn from the past

The Greeks obviously appreciated some of the importance of sunlight; their athletes trained naked out of doors, thus exposing all their muscles to its beneficial effect. I fear that as a fitness aid this would have been less well received at the last Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh than it evidently was in Ancient Greece. But there is no reason why gymnasiums and health clubs should not be equipped with full-spectrum lighting, enabling athletes and customers to train in ultraviolet light. It would not be necessary to train naked, but is seems that one might be well advised to avoid synthetic fabrics where possible. Natural fibers appear to be much better transmitters of ultraviolet light than synthetics, as well as being generally drier and more absorbents The heavier the fabric, and the stronger the dyes in it, the more it filters out UV.

Because of the blood's increased oxygen-carrying capacity, athletes would find that their respiratory rate also decreased, their lungs would not need to work so hard. By the same token, their resting heart rate would go down, and the amount by which their heart rate went up after exercise would be less.

When a group of generally unfit students at the University of Illinois was treated with ultraviolet light as well as physical education classes, their pulse rate after exercise came down by more than ten points on average. The students who did the same exercise but did not receive the UV light only had a three point improvement. The experimental group also found that their recovery time after exercise went down by thirty per cent, and their overall muscular fitness improved by half as much again as did that of the control group.

But the really startling results of this study were in the cardiovascular fitness tests, where the experimental group improved by almost 20 per cent, compared to a minute 1.5 per cent improvement in the control group. Cardiovascular fitness, in this case, referred to a combined measure of a number of different parameters, such as resting pulse, rise of pulse after exertion, blood pressure lying and standing, rise in blood pressure after exertion, and time for pulse rate to return to normal after exertion. The students also reported an increase in their interest and enthusiasm for class work, and those receiving ultraviolet developed only half the number of colds that the control group suffered.[6]

アダルト Fuel reserves

People training in such an environment would also experience an increase in the amount of glycogen in their muscles and in the liver. Carbohydrates in the diet are broken down into molecules of sugar, which either circulate as blood sugar and are therefore readily available but also readily lost, or else they are stored for later use as glycogen. Glycogen molecules consist of thousands of glucose or sugar units joined together in numbers of small clusters. Each cluster contains thirty four molecules of glucose. It represents the main source of energy for normal physical exertion, and is the limiting factor for endurance. When all the available glycogen in muscle is used up, the muscle relies on what energy can be brought to it in the blood. One of the most important effects of physical training is to increase the store of glycogen in the muscle, and this explains why athletes normally do not train for two or three days before a competitive event - it takes this long for the glycogen store in the muscles to be built up again.

When human subjects are exposed to UV, the glycogen level in their tissues dives in the first hour or so, and then the enzymes which manufacture glycogen are stimulated. The level of glycogen stored in the tissues rises steadily for about sixteen hours. Because of this timing, ultraviolet light or sunlight in the one or two days preceding a competition would appear to be ideal. Clearly, also, athletes who train in or come from tropical countries have a bead start on those of us who inhabit these gray islands.[7]

In parallel with the increase in glycogen stores goes a decrease in blood sugar - or, more precisely, a normalization of abnormal blood sugar. Although most cells in the body do not depend on glucose, being able to use their glycogen stores, the one tissue that is most dependent on blood glucose, and which uses up twenty per cent of it, is the brain. As a result, the way we feel depends very much on the circulating level of glucose. When the blood sugar is high, we are likely to feel alert, clear-headed, energetic and generally capable; if it gets too high we may even feel tense, twitchy, anxious and agitated. It is precisely this range of effects that we develop after a cup of strong tea or coffee, and it is largely through raising the blood sugar that these 'social poisons' work.

When the blood sugar goes down we tend to find ourselves running out of energy and becoming drowsy, irritable and emotional. it is then that our inbuilt weaknesses show through, such as migraines, fainting, hallucinations, attacks of crying or tantrums, or simply falling asleep at the job. When the blood sugar is up it is anxiety and anger symptoms that prevail; when it is down we experience the depression and exhaustion. This may explain why so many of us can be hell to live with at times; when our blood sugar is up we pick a fight with somebody, but when it drops we suddenly find ourselves slumping and wondering why everybody hates us. Many women find that the problem of hypoglycemia - low blood sugar - is much worse before their period.[1] [9]. The effect of light on blood sugar is quite remarkable, and depends on the wavelength or colour of light used. The graph shows the blood-sugar level of rabbits during constant exposure to light of different colors. Blue and green lights do not make a great deal of difference, red causes it to go up rapidly and ultraviolet reduces it.

This effect was further confirmed in human studies when it was shown that the blood sugar of diabetics was also lowered by ultraviolet. Diabetics do not produce enough insulin, the molecule that lowers blood sugar by assisting the sugar into cells. Their blood sugar is therefore unstable, and they commonly have to take injections of insulin to help to bring it down. Pincussen showed that by using daily doses of UV light, he could bring the blood sugar of diabetics down very effectively. There was an immediate improvement after the first day of treatment, and over a period of up to a fortnight the blood sugar slowly settled down to normal and stayed there. It showed no signs of decreasing to below the normal level, so there is no reason for us to think that UV has a harmful hypoglycemic effect.[10]

Not all of us need our blood sugar lowering drastically, and it appears that a ratio of ten per cent ultraviolet, ninety per cent visible light produces the best stabilizing effect in normal people, as well as having the best result in raising glycogen stores in liver and muscle. This proportion, you will not be amazed to bear, is close to that found in natural sunlight, and is the balance aimed at by modern full-spectrum light fixtures.

アダルト Sunlight adjusts the gauge

An interesting angle on the connection between light and fitness comes from the finding that the pineal gland, the famous third eye, regulates our whole hormonal balance. It is now clear that the pineal produces melatonin in response to darkness. The effect of this chemical is to make you drowsy and more able to sleep, and also slower at simple tasks. But it appears that the pineal also regulates the output of the pituitary gland. This small gland at the base of the brain produces hormones that control the functioning of all the other endocrine glands, and thereby of every cell in the body.

Pituitary products include a thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), an adrenal-stimulating, or adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH), and several other hormones with effects on the sexual glands in particular. With all of the endocrine functions, it is not a matter of 'if a little is good for you, then a lot will be better'. We need a precise balance of hormones in order to stay well, and an excess can be just as damaging as a deficiency. The thyroid gland, as we shall see later, can be overactive, leading to thyrotoxicosis; or under active, causing myxoedema or hypothyroidism.

Proof of this comes from the work of Hollwich in 1980.[11] He studied the levels of ACTH, the adrenal-stimulating hormone, in the blood under natural and artificial light. After a fortnight in light from 'cool white' fluorescent tubes his subjects' ACTH levels had climbed to abnormally high, stress levels. Two weeks under daylight returned them to normal. But when the lights used were of a full-spectrum type, there was no significant increase in ACTH levels. In both cases, the light intensity was high - high enough, at 3500 lux, to suppress melatonin. So this was not a straightforward pineal effect of the type we can now easily recognize, but another mechanism altogether. As yet, we do not know how it operates, but the implication is that artificial light which is different in spectrum from sunlight puts a stress on the body, even over a period as short as two weeks, which is enough to persuade the pituitary to overproduce hormones.

One of the established methods of testing pituitary function is by the degree of response to insulin. Although insulin is required for keeping blood sugar down, it is normally counter-balanced and held in check by several other hormones within the body, and in particular by ACTH from the pituitary. If pituitary function is low, then the body cannot handle insulin properly and it will send the blood sugar down dramatically. If, on the other band, the pituitary is overactive, there will be a generally high blood sugar. This is known to be a risk factor for hardening of the arteries, heart attacks and strokes. it also makes us more prone to infections. All of these are problems encountered by diabetics, who cannot produce enough insulin for themselves.

Sunlight entering the eyes prevents the pineal from inhibiting the pituitary, and thereby provides a counterbalance to the hypoglycemic effect of sunlight hitting the skin.[12] Vitamin D and calcium also appear to have a stimulating effect on insulin,[13] and they are affected by LTV light as well.

Insulin is also important as the molecule that conducts a wide range of nutrients, not just sugar, across the cell walls and into the cells. Without it there may be problems of cellular nutrition, even though the diet is adequate. But some athletes face the problem of finding time to get enough calories into their stomachs, not to mention all the other essential nutrients. Because they may be expending anything up to three times as much energy as the rest of us, they need to eat proportionately more.

Yet for every ounce they eat, they need also to take in the vitamins and minerals required for processing those calories into energy. To a nutritionally oriented physician, many of the recurrent health problems of athletes these days are strongly suggestive of a borderline nutritional state. In my own practice, I have certainly found that athletes in training may need to eat considerably more vitamins and minerals than the average person, just to prevent a deficiency.

There are several ways that sunlight can help this state of affairs. Firstly, by stimulating all of the hormonal system and metabolism it can increase the efficiency with which we use nutrients. Secondly, by enhancing insulin production it enables us to transport nutrients into our cells more effectively. Thirdly, an increase in vitamin D production will lead to an increase in our body's uptake of calcium, magnesium and protein from the diet. Magnesium deficiency has been found in athletes quite often, and supplementation can lead to an improvement in health generally as well as in sporting performance.[14]

Finally, joint problems and stress fractures are by no means rare in top athletes, and improved calcium and magnesium metabolism, with increased bone density, will unquestionably benefit this. As an example, bone density in Polynesian women has been found to be twenty per cent higher than in European woman of the same age.[15] Polynesians are not noted for their adherence to health foods, and communities have been known to survive for months on fish, coconuts, palm wine and little else - no salads or whole grains at all. But they do live in the sun.

The role of the pineal in fitness now starts to look a little complex. Clearly, sunlight-induced suppression of melatonin will lead to a pituitary stimulus, increasing the output of all the hormonal glands. The next gland we should look at is the thyroid. Thyroid hormones are important in controlling the basal metabolic rate of the whole body - the rate at which cells burn up calories to produce energy and heat. A simple test of thyroid function is the basal temperature. The temperature is taken in the armpit for three minutes minimum, first thing in the morning, before getting out of bed and before any activity at all. The ideal temperature is about 98.0⁰F, one that is below 97.5⁰F raises the possibility of a thyroid problem.

Symptoms of a thyroid deficiency commonly include depression, lack of energy, weight increase, cold sensitivity, excessive sleeping and a generally run-down system.[16] Sunlight, via the pineal-pituitary axis, stimulates the thyroid and benefits such problems. It also increases energy levels in general, together with resistance to disease, and the ability to burn up calories and lose weight. At the same time, the adrenal gland is stimulated in exactly the same fashion, with a consequent increase in the ability to handle stress, including physical stress. Muscular development is enhanced, and we feel better while we become fitter.

It comes as no surprise, though, that we need our beauty sleep. We need a period during the twenty four hours when the pineal is producing melatonin, and our metabolism is more or less shut down for repairs. It is known that adrenal steroid levels vary throughout the twenty four hours, climbing steadily through the day and dropping down at night. This shifts our metabolism from an outward-looking, active phase to a rest and recovery phase. The list of measures which vary throughout the day/night cycle is immense, ranging from rate of cell division to sensitivity to pain.

But this rhythm of sleeping and waking is controlled through the pineal, and needs both the light and the dark for a proper cycle. Nowadays, living indoors, we see very little of the necessary intensity of light. Are we spending less of our time either fully waking or sleeping, and more of it half awake? One of the components of ageing is a disorganization of this cycle, with loss of the rhythmic alternation, leading to disturbed sleep patterns and to loss of the ability of our bodies to repair themselves. Interestingly, administration of pineal extract to rats increased their life-span by up to twenty five per cent.[17]

Even weight control can be assisted by attention to the pineal. The link-up here is through a substance called brown fat. Only discovered a few years ago, this is very different from ordinary fat. It appears to have a much higher turnover of calories and production of energy, and is a major heat source for the body. It also helps in reducing weight by using up calories. Unfortunately for many of us, our amount and activity of brown fat seems to be proportional to the calories we eat. The higher our calorie intake, the more brown fat activity, and so the more calories we burn off. But fasting or dieting gives our bodies the signal that we are in a period of hardship and energy should be conserved. So our brown fat activity decreases.

In several different species of mammals, it has been shown that melatonin given by mouth, or long nights leading to increased production of melatonin, can produce an increase in the amount of brown fat." This melatonin-induced increase in brown fat leads inevitably to rise in the metabolic rate, which is helpful in controlling weight problems. Since diet won't do it, and since there is no wonder drug yet to trigger brown fat activity, the only way seems to be with melatonin. Once again, it appears that we need the down side and the up; we have to maintain a Diet in order to control our own health.

Regular exposure to sunlight, then, or to indoor lighting that includes the full spectrum of visible and ultraviolet light, can help us to get fitter, and to look and feel better. All the crucial biological signals dependent on sunlight hitting the skin are activated and sent to the rest of the body. Fitness in general and cardiovascular fitness in particular improve. We are able to build healthier muscles with greater endurance, to use up more calories more efficiently and to burn off fat deposits. All of these changes enable us to feel and look better. After all, nothing improves the appearance and texture of our skin more than a gentle tan. And nothing enhances our attractiveness so much as glowing healthy skin and a slim figure.

Chapter 13

アダルト The Sun and the Heart

Why is it that shift workers get more than twice as much heart disease as the rest of us?[1] Is it because they smoke more or take less physical exercise outside work, or suffer more stress? Or is it because they are light-deficient? When a group in New Jersey looked at the life expectancy of hamsters with an inherited tendency towards heart attacks, they found that keeping them in constant light made them live twenty five per cent longer.[2] This result was obtained despite the fact that the longer-lived hamsters had had time to develop worse heart disease, according to anatomical measures. If, just supposing, we could carry this effect over to humans, the average life expectancy for men would be approximately ninety, with far more centenarians surviving.

 

Sunlight clears the channels

At the moment this study is a puzzle. We have no clear explanation for it, but there are a number of possibilities. For example, we do know that sunlight lowers cholesterol levels. Exposing human skin to sunlight for a couple of hours lowers the level of cholesterol in the skin by at least a half.[3] The effect is less in Negro skin, suggesting that it is the ultraviolet, which melanin pigmentation filters out, that is causing the effect. It is also known that sunlight lowers the level of cholesterol in the blood stream in humans by 9 or 10 per cent.

We know that the reduction is greater the higher the starting cholesterol level; people with low or normal cholesterol to begin with are much less likely to see a significant drop than those with a raised cholesterol.[4] We also know that ultraviolet irradiation of foods can lower their cholesterol content.[5] In some cases, too, simple sunbathing can bring a raised level of fats (known as triglycerides) down.[6]

The difficult question to answer in all of this is just how important cholesterol is in the development of heart disease. We know that a raised cholesterol is associated with a greater risk of heart disease, but this does not necessarily mean that cholesterol causes heart disease. An increase in the number of tourists is normally associated with summer, but it may not be causing summer. The summer may be causing tourists to breed rapidly, or on the other hand they may all just turn up together in summer by coincidence!

It is true that cholesterol is a fat-soluble substance, and an increase in the fat content of blood is often associated with an increase in cholesterol. Cholesterol also precipitates out of blood on to and into the lining of arteries, and forms the plaque which clogs them up and leads to blockages or thromboses. A rise in the circulating level of calcium in the blood can play a part in this; the bulk of the calcium in our bodies should be in our bones, and we require vitamin D in order to place it there and keep it there.

It was, until recently, thought that once a cholesterol plaque formed in a blood vessel, it was quite immovable. We now know that this is untrue. There is a simple technique called chelation, which is viewed without enthusiasm by the orthodox medical profession, despite a very large number of research papers describing and measuring it.[7] Chelation involves using a chemical called EDTA, which combines very strongly with minerals in the blood and is then excreted along with those minerals. It clears all the toxic and unwanted minerals out of the body, together with the essential ones - but the essential ones can be replaced at the same time so that the patient does not run short of them at all. The method leads in some cases to a dramatic drop in blood cholesterol and a declogging of the arteries with removal or at least diminution of the plaque.[8]

Sunlight can lower cholesterol dramatically and produce the same effect as chelation. It can also protect against the development of coronary artery disease and the other forms of hardening of the arteries in the first place.[9] This might well be why shift workers suffer from more heart disease than the rest of us, and may also explain the observation that heart disease is more common the further we go from the equator. In fact, heart disease and cancer do tend to go together to some extent; areas and groups with a high cancer risk tend to have a high risk of heart disease also. In chapter 6 we saw the effect of latitude on cancer; there is about 2.5 times as much cancer in northern climates as there is near to the equator. This parallels the incidence of heart disease.

The other common misconception about cholesterol is to see it entirely as a baddie. This is desperately wrong. Cholesterol is the precursor of our entire catalogue of steroid hormones. Without cholesterol we would have no hormones and therefore no sex, no ability to respond to stress and no ability to reproduce. Although it has not been shown that sunlight causes cholesterol to be converted into steroid hormones, we do know that cholesterol is lowered and sex hormones are raised by sunlight and ultraviolet light exposure.

 

The mellow mineral

Another factor which plays a major part in heart disease is magnesium. This is one of the most abundant minerals inside our cells, and is important in an enormous range of functions. A deficiency of magnesium can lead to psychiatric symptoms such as anxiety, insomnia, fatigue and irritability, as well as premenstrual syndrome, disorders of calcium metabolism including osteoporosis or thinning of the bones, and also to heart disease.[10]

There are a great number of enzymes which depend on magnesium for their operation, but the single most important one is probably the 'pump' which controls the flow of minerals across the cell wall from the serum and extra cellular fluid, into the cell itself.[11] Cells without enough magnesium around tend to be oversensitive and irritable, firing off at slight provocation, just like a pre-menstrual woman (sexist remark). If nerve cells do this, it may cause a sustained discharge rather than a regular, rhythmic one. This is why the typical symptoms of magnesium deficiency are a tendency to muscle cramps, spasms, sensitivity to noises and other external stimuli, as well as a tendency to irregular heart rhythm, and to spasm of the coronary arteries leading in extreme cases to heart attack. Giving magnesium intravenously after a heart attack saves lives, by preventing the heart from going into arrhythmia.[12]

Magnesium deficiency can also lead to high blood pressure, high cholesterol and fat levels in the blood, and thromboses.[13] So magnesium is essential for health, and particularly for cardiac health. It is also the crucial trace element in the chlorophyll of green plants. Just as iron is necessary to hold the hemoglobin molecule of human blood into shape, so magnesium provides the shaping force for chlorophyll. The best source available for magnesium, therefore, is green leafy plants. It also occurs in reasonable quantities in nuts and in dairy products, but in milk in particular it is heavily outbalanced by calcium.

Calcium and magnesium have related, complementary roles in the cells of our body, rather like the accelerator and the brake on a car. Both are necessary in reasonable degree, and without a proper balance between the two, things can go seriously awry. Unfortunately, it seems that the human body has spent most of its evolutionary time in an environment which is rich in magnesium, but not so rich in calcium. This would be the case if we had evolved eating plants and vegetables, which in prehistoric times were presumably there for the taking, but had not started milking cows or other domestic animals until much later on.

The consequence is that we have a much better developed mechanism for conserving calcium than for conserving magnesium.[14] The effect of vitamin D, for example, on calcium balance is quite clear cut. It influences every mechanism of calcium intake and output to ensure that calcium is conserved, and it can make a difference of 2.5 times in the percentage of calcium that we absorb from our food.[15] With magnesium, on the other hand, the picture is more complex. Vitamin D increases the absorption of magnesium from our diet, and in vitamin D deficiency we need more magnesium; but an excessive intake of vitamin D causes greater loss of magnesium in the urine, and again increases the requirement [16] [17]. We need to get our vitamin D levels just right, in order to make the most of the limited amount of magnesium available to us.

In laboratory studies, the signs of an experimental magnesium deficiency are very similar to those of experimental vitamin D toxicity.[18]

• Hardening of the coronary arteries
• Calcification of the arterial wall
• Necrosis of the heart muscle
• Raised blood-fat levels

Protection against the toxic effects of excessive vitamin D appears to be possible by greatly increasing the magnesium intake; but beneficial as it may be, not many of us would elect to live constantly on large volumes of salad. It makes more sense to avoid a high vitamin D intake rather than to have to treat it.

 

The British complaint

In Britain, food is not supplemented with vitamin D to anywhere near the extent that it is in the USA. As a result, vitamin D deficiency is much more common, especially in winter. This is no more desirable than a vitamin D excess. The only sensible approach is to obtain adequate amounts of sunlight and manufacture our vitamin D as it is meant to be done, through a system that has inbuilt checks and balances; an overdose of vitamin D from sunlight has never been recorded.

Magnesium is also essential for the regulation of blood sugar levels.[19] In this it complements the direct effect of sunlight on blood sugar. As discussed in chapter 12, all frequencies of light have different effects on our blood sugar. Red light causes it to go up most, and blue and ultraviolet light cause it to go down. The best combination of frequencies for regulating blood sugar correctly appears to match the spectrum of sunlight. Since sunlight is the environment in which we evolved, this is hardly surprising.

There is no question that sugar is bad for the heart. As well as suppressing the ability of the body's white cells to fight off infection, sugar contributes to weight problems which put an added burden on the heart muscle. Simply eating refined sugar depletes us of essential minerals and vitamins that are needed for proper heart functioning, such as chromium and vitamin B6. It also appears that sugar itself causes or worsens arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). A high blood sugar level, such as that experienced by diabetics, is a definite risk factor for all the cardiovascular problems such as heart attack and angina.

 

Lighting the interior

Sunlight in general, and ultraviolet light in particular, appears to have powerful beneficial effects on the heart. Ultraviolet irradiation of the blood, whether in a clinical setting such as the Knott technique, or by irradiation as it circulates through the skin by means of sunbathing, can increase the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood dramatically.[20] This means that the same amount of circulating blood can supply more oxygen for the tissues, including the heart muscle itself. Sunlight can also lower the blood-cholesterol level significantly - and by a greater amount the higher it is to start with.

The effect on blood pressure is even more striking. A single dose of sunlight can bring the blood pressure down immediately, and the effect takes two or three days to wear off.[21] Two doses of sunlight on consecutive days can keep the blood pressure down for over a week. The effect is, as with cholesterol, much more marked when the blood pressure is abnormally high to start with. One study found that in people with a normal starting blood pressure, the systolic pressure (the higher of the two numbers of blood pressure) was brought down by 6 mm, but in the hypertensives the average drop was 17 mm of mercury.

At the same time as the blood pressure came down, there was a substantial increase in the output of the heart in the majority of patients. Since the pressure drop was associated with this increase in cardiac efficiency, it must be due at least in part to the known relaxation and widening of the blood vessels - and increase in blood flow through the large muscles of the body - that occur when we are exposed to sunlight.

In Cureton's study, conducted at the University of Illinois in 1945, cardiovascular fitness (based on measures such as the resting pulse rate, increase in pulse after exercise, lying and standing blood pressure, and so on) improved far more in students who received short doses of ultraviolet light before their training sessions. In the experimental group (receiving UV) the improvement was nearly 20 per cent, whereas the control group benefited only 1.5 per cent.[22] This effect was measured after three months, and other studies have shown that an improvement in physical fitness after sunlight lasts for weeks and months, rather than days.

Using sunlight or ultraviolet light to treat blood pressure and heart problems is safer, freer from side effects, more generally beneficial to the whole body and definitely more pleasant than having to take antihypertensive drugs. But in a world which spends 1.2 billion dollars a year on only on the top three blood pressure drugs, surely the use of sunlight is also more moral?

 

UV - the nourishing element

As well as the benefit to the heart itself, the consequences of sunlight therapy include improved perfusion (blood flow) to all the tissues of the body. For decades now, doctors in Russia have been using sunlight and ultraviolet light therapy on patients with arteriosclerosis.[23] They have found that as well as improving heart function, the blood supply to the brain can be improved, even in patients with arteriosclerosis of the brain.

Many victims of angina, hypertension and ischaemic heart disease feel lousy in general. They complain of headaches, dizziness, difficulty in thinking, chronic weakness and fatigue, lack of muscular strength or stamina. Much of this is due to poor blood supply to their tissues, with a consequent build-up of toxic metabolites. These include chemicals, such as lactic acid and ammonia, which are natural products of our metabolism, together with unmetabolised fats and toxic minerals. Methods such as chelation therapy unclog the arteries and help to clear these toxins out of the system. They would not be necessary if we had employed nature's own method of detoxification, which is the application of sunlight.

Once again, it is only the Russians who have fully appreciated this effect of sunlight and put it to use. Their experiments showed that animals exposed to the correct doses of sunlight were capable of clearing a wide range of toxins out of their system considerably quicker than animals reared away from the sun. The toxins that they studied included quartz and coal dusts, toxic minerals such as lead, cadmium and mercury, liver poisons such as carbon tetrachloride, and the neurotoxins which these days are so heavily used worldwide as pesticides. They found that sunlight speeded up the clearance of toxins from the body twice to as much as twenty times.[24] The best effect was obtained when sunlight exposure had started some time before exposure to the toxin.

Nowadays, some Russian miners are required to have a treatment with ultraviolet light every day when they leave the coal-face.[25] If we offered this treatment to our own coal-miners, they might not only suffer fewer ill effects from what is, after all, a very punishing occupation; they might be happier people all round!

As we shall see in the next chapter, sunlight also plays an important part in helping us to handle stress. This is a concept which it is easy to misunderstand. Many people say: 'I operate better under stress; I need a certain amount of it to get me going.' They are in fact talking about stimulation, which we all need regularly in a variety of forms in order to keep us functioning. This is not stress. Stress occurs when the incoming stimulus exceeds our ability to handle it, or we handle it only with damaging consequences to ourselves.

To use a physical example, we all know that exercise is good for us. A run or a workout on a regular basis can make us feel much better. But if we are forced to exercise violently, beyond our capacity, or to exercise when we are already exhausted, then our bodies are likely to suffer. This applies equally to our minds and our nervous system.

Features associated with chronic stress in humans include overweight, smoking and excessive intake of tea, coffee, alcohol, sugar and other generally non-nutritious foods. All of these factors are potentially damaging to the cardiovascular system; they increase the risk of heart and artery diseases. Raised blood pressure, poor peripheral circulation, angina and heart attacks have all been connected to stress. By its impact on the mind, stress can damage the body - and the heart is one of the main targets.

Sunlight has implications for all of these problems. It relaxes the muscles, unclogs the arteries and helps us to cope with life. It soothes the mind and heals the body. It should be an essential part of any stress management programme, or any attempt by individuals or groups to return to health.

Chapter 14

Sex - and Sunlight

Nude sunbathing makes you sexier!

If you turned to this chapter first, I would not want the opening sentence to disappoint you, and in any case it's true. For a number of general reasons, exposure to sunlight is likely to make us feel healthier and improve our sex lives - but there are some very specific reasons also.

The general reasons include a lowering of blood pressure, an improvement in the flow of blood and a rise in the oxygen content of that blood, all of which will stimulate the metabolism within all the tissues of the body.[1] The brain is, without a doubt, the most important sexual organ; without it we would be unable to feel anything physical, emotional or spiritual for anybody else. Anything that improves the blood and oxygen supply to the brain - and sunlight does - can only improve our capacity for loving, both physically and emotionally.

 

Ultraviolet aphrodisiac

The warm, relaxed sense of well-being that we obtain from lying in the sun must be one of the closest things on earth to the warmth and security of snuggling up in our mother's arms. Such a feeling cannot be less than beneficial to a healthy sex life, but it seems to go deeper than this. Sunlight is, we now know, essential to health in a variety of ways. Along with protein, calories, vitamins, minerals and all the others, it is an essential nutrient. Sunbathing gives us something we need, particularly nowadays when most of us spend our whole lives indoors; it recharges our batteries. It replenishes our stores of the principal life force of this planet, and so we have more to give to others. It is not for nothing that a caring person is referred to as warm, and an unfriendly or unloving one as cold.

Several years ago I worked in the Solomon Islands, in the Pacific Ocean, just south of the equator. It was regularly remarked upon there that most European couples arrived certain that they had filled their quota of 2.4 children, and never expected to have any more. But two years later many of them left bemusedly clutching a babe-in-arms. The local people said simply that the child was a 'gift belong Solomon's'. We pale and sickly expatriates were probably no different from the post that, supposedly dead, is stuck into the ground to support a washing line, and sprouts roots and branches. This was another hazard of Solomon life! There is no doubt that the level of fertility is higher in tropical climates for all living things. Humans are not such an exception as they have always liked to think themselves.

Sunlight falling on the skin can raise the level of sex hormones in the blood. This effect has been known for over fifty years, and has been the basis of, for example, measures to improve the laying rate of hens.[2] But the same thing does happen in humans. When researchers gave doses of ultraviolet to subjects in Boston, USA, they found that a course of five doses, of increasing duration, each of them sufficient to produce slight reddening of the skin, could double the male hormone output.[3]

This ties in with the studies which have shown that levels of testosterone, the major male hormone, rise by about twenty per cent through the summer, reaching a peak in September.[4] In females, the effect was somewhat less but still measurable. The part of the body exposed to ultraviolet also made a difference. Some increase could be achieved whichever area of skin received the irradiation, but while exposing the back produced a doubling in hormones, exposing the skin of the genitals could cause the hormone level to triple.

At this dose level they also found that five treatments was the ideal number. The effect ceased increasing with further exposure. After this experiment, the rise in hormone levels took a fortnight or more to return to normal, and the beneficial impact on health, mental well-being and sexuality would of course take longer still to wear off. In other words, a week in the sun can make all the difference.

Naturally, the greater the amount of skin exposed to sunlight or ultraviolet, the larger the effect. Doubling the area of skin exposed will double the amount of UV we can absorb. It is tempting to reflect that the bikini-clad beauty may not be simply attracting male attention by her display of skin - she may also be giving the signal 'my hormones are tanked up and ready for action'!

All this gives us a rather new slant on the phenomenon of the holiday romance. After a week in the sun we feel more relaxed and therefore less inhibited, our sex hormones have been given a boost, and our whole bodies are tuned for reproduction. What's more, the opposite sex instinctively know it.

アダルト Family planning by sunlight

Remarkably, it seems that from birth onwards our sexual development and functioning is subject to regulation by sunlight. In previous chapters we discussed melatonin - the hormone produced by the pineal - which is suppressed by sunlight of sufficient brightness, and which controls the production of hormones by the pituitary gland. One of the substances regulated in this way is LH, luteinising hormone.[5] This is the hormone that causes ovulation and triggers off the second, premenstrual phase of the menstrual cycle. It also appears to influence the development of sexual maturity.

A role for the pineal gland in sexual development was first proposed in 1909 by Otto Marburg.[6] He suggested that the gland produced a chemical that inhibited sexual function, but that with age the production of this chemical would decline as the gland calcified. Since then, melatonin has been shown to suppress sexual function in some laboratory animals. In humans, the LH level is inversely proportional to the level of melatonin. As puberty progresses and body size increases, the level of melatonin decreases to its adult norm, and the level of LH rises.[7] This decline in melatonin cannot be due to calcification of the gland, which normally only happens in middle age or beyond. What does seem to happen is that the pineal produces melatonin at a steady rate over the years of growth, and the increase in body mass causes the melatonin to be progressively diluted and its effect to be reduced.[8]

Nearly all mammals have seasonal variations in their sexual habits, and seasonal cycles of fertility. However, these vary widely from species to species. So do their responses to environmental light and to melatonin. Put as simply as it can be, mammals can be divided four ways. They are either active during the day (diurnal) or during the night (nocturnal). They are also either monoestrous, which means that they come into season only once a year, or polyoestrous, having regular ovulatory cycles throughout the year, as do humans.

アダルト Staying alive

There are obvious survival advantages to timing reproduction carefully. The most important is that if offspring can be born at a time when food is abundant they are more likely to survive - and less likely to threaten the parent animals by restricting their ability to gather food. Viewed in this light, the seasonal variation in mating, and the way this is mediated by changes in day length and therefore in total melatonin production, start to make sense.

Many small animals such as rabbits and hamsters have very short gestation (pregnancy) periods, from two weeks to two months. They mate in the spring and give birth in spring or summer. Reducing the day length, as occurs in autumn, inhibits them from breeding and so prevents them from having babies in winter. On the other hand, sheep and deer have gestation periods of six to eight months, and tend to mate in autumn and give birth in the spring. Therefore a reduction in day length causes them to come into season.[9]

In humans, the peak time for conception is late spring to early summer, leading to birth at the beginning of spring. This is not a very powerful variation, the peak rate of conception being only about ten per cent higher than the annual average.[10] It has also decreased in amplitude throughout this century. But it remains consistent for any given country. In Mediterranean Europe the peak is in April; in France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands it is May or June, and in Scandinavia July.

Both luteinising hormone and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) - the former definitely suppressed by melatonin, and the latter possibly so - show similar patterns of variation, with a spring and autumn peak in temperate climates.[11] LH also peaks at the time of ovulation, and melatonin shows a drop at the same time, which is clearly not due to sunlight levels, however, but probably to suppression of melatonin production by estrogen.

Among most species studied, major disruptions of the day/night cycle can interfere with the menstrual or oestrous cycle. In rats, which are nocturnal, continuous illumination throughout the twenty four hours suppresses the release of LH and thereby ovulation. In humans, who are diurnal, we would expect light deficiency to do the same. There are no scientific studies yet to show that this is so, but I am not the only doctor to have seen female patients in whom light deficiency appears to disrupt and even completely stop the menstrual cycle, and in whom regular sunlight exposure produces an improvement.

Melatonin appears also to be a major factor in seasonal affective disorder, a recently recognized form of depression, which comes on particularly during the winter months. These patients are very different from the large majority of sufferers from depression, and one of the ways in which they are different is that they tend to have a different seasonal pattern of reproduction, with a peak for starting pregnancy in late summer.[12] This is scarcely surprising - presumably that is the only time they feel fit enough to get pregnant!

In winter, as in shift workers, cholesterol levels are higher. Vitamin D levels are lower, and so are steroid hormone levels. In the spring, however, the sun reappears, and we celebrate the fertility rite of Easter, with chickens and bunnies as its primal symbols, distinct from the more recent Christian ones. Everybody feels and looks better, and therefore more attractive, the conception rate hits an all-time high, the buds come out, and nature's great fertility show is on the road again. If we dare to show our faces out of doors we can join in the fun.

アダルト Chapter 15

Sparkling Intellect - Light and the Brain

There are so many reasons why sunlight makes us feel better and improves our mental state that it is hard to list them all. Our brain is the most complex arrangement of cells in our body (or anywhere else on earth), and so there are, by definition, more things that can go wrong in it than in our other organs. It is energy intensive, requiring a steady supply of glucose from the blood to fuel all its operations and interactions. Minor alterations in the supply of oxygen, the flow of blood and the availability of various nutrients can all make a striking difference in brain function, which manifests itself to the sufferer as a change in the way he feels and to the observer as a change in behavior.

Being so sensitive to biochemical changes, the brain is in many cases the best indicator there is of things going wrong. In deficiencies of the B vitamins, for example, it is most often in the brain and the central nervous system that symptoms first show. Complaints such as anxiety, fatigue, irritability, even pins and needles in the hands, are often the first signs of such a deficiency.

Because the light in which we live influences and regulates our biochemistry and our complete functioning in not just one or two, but a whole range of ways, the brain is also particularly sensitive to variations in our light intake - to light deficiency. Take a look at some examples of this.

アダルト Le Tetanie Latent

Hyperventilation is a disorder that is now recognized to be surprisingly common - and by no means only in hysterical and neurotic people. It is made more likely by some physical disorders such as allergies; victims may even wake up with the symptoms, and then have to bring it under control themselves.[1] What happens in hyperventilation is that the body reduces the oxygen supply to the brain. This is an unfortunate reflex, a minor design fault if you will, which we all have to learn how to control or cope with, but some people have much more trouble with it than others.

The supply of blood to the brain, through the carotid arteries, is regulated according to the amount of carbon dioxide in the blood coming away from the brain. The more carbon dioxide the brain produces, the more work the body deduces the brain to be performing, and so the more blood, with its cargo of oxygen, it allows in to fuel it. The carbon dioxide leaves our bodies through the lungs, but if we breathe too rapidly, we can cause an excessive loss of carbon dioxide. This leads to a signal for the body to reduce the blood flow to the brain, and consequent symptoms from lack of oxygen.

This is a simplified version of what happens, but a good working model nevertheless. Many a sufferer has tried in vain to find logical psychological explanations for the symptoms, the strange feelings, the frightening ideas that occur in hyperventilation. There are none; it is a physical phenomenon.

Hyperventilation is made significantly more likely by deficiencies of minerals, especially of magnesium. In fact, some French and other European workers regard the link as being so solid that they treat hyperventilation as a diagnostic sign of magnesium deficiency.[2] As we have seen earlier, magnesium deficiency is a very common deficiency in our society - perhaps the commonest. This is largely due to diet; the best source of magnesium is green vegetables, which some of us never eat from one year's end to the next! But even if we eat the things, we still need to absorb the nutrients in them, and magnesium absorption, like that of calcium, is dependent on vitamin D. We all require sunlight - and vitamin D derived from sunlight - in order to absorb and retain magnesium effectively,[3] and thereby to keep our breathing and our brains running smoothly, our nerves less jagged.

It is easy to assume that calcium is only important for bones and to forget that it is present in every cell in our body, and is a necessary part of each cell's functioning. In nerve cells, calcium has a crucial role in stimulating them to discharge, while magnesium appears to help them recover from firing. A proper balance of the two minerals is necessary for all cell function, but especially for the nervous system. A deficiency of calcium can lead to a variety of mental and neurological disorders, including depression and anxiety, insomnia, general tenseness, jumpiness and twitchiness. The symptoms of magnesium deficiency are very similar, with the addition of learning impairment, general confusion and worsening of epilepsy.[4] Both of these minerals are absorbed and conserved in the body under the regulation of vitamin D. This is best obtained from sunlight.

アダルト A bellyful of sleep

A second example is that of tryptophan metabolism. Tryptophan is the precursor of serotonin (5HT) and melatonin. Not surprisingly it has a sedative effect on humans and other animals. For instance, there is a relatively large amount of tryptophan in red meat. When large predators such as lions kill and eat their prey, they take in a hearty dose of tryptophan. This makes them drowsy and relaxed for hours or even days, during which time they doze on branches waiting to be photographed by tourists. As the tryptophan effect wears off they start to wake up, and eventually hunt for more food.

As well as regulating the sleep/wake cycle, melatonin also influences the release of endorphins in the brain. These are the naturally occurring morphine-like substances which have a controlling influence on our alertness, our appetites, and indeed our goal-oriented behavior in general. Melatonin, derived from tryptophan, triggers the release of the sedative beta-endorphin. So at the same time as the basking lion is sent to sleep, it also loses its appetite. And which of us has not felt sleepy after a large meal?

But tryptophan is much more effective as a sedative in humans if it is given in the evening, near to bedtime. The important difference at this time, the spring in the biological clock, is production of melatonin from tryptophan, in the dark. Yet another example of light and dark interacting with the other nutrients from food to make our bodies function smoothly.

アダルト Sunlight rejuvenation

One disorder that is guaranteed to interfere with the supply of nutrients to the brain is cerebral arteriosclerosis - hardening of the arteries of the brain. In severe cases this may lead to a complete blockage of the blood supply to certain areas, with consequences such as convulsions and strokes, but more often it leads to a slow general deterioration in mental functioning and in behavior. In Russia, the value of sunlight in treating such disorders is appreciated. A study published in 1966 on 150 patients reported that the mental functioning of cerebral arteriosclerosis sufferers was improved greatly by regular sunlight baths.[5]

The long-stay geriatric wards of many of our hospitals are full of tragic cases of people whose brains have deteriorated due to arteriosclerosis, but whose bodies carry on functioning as if all were well. They represent a considerable burden on the taxpayer, but even more they are a constant source of grief and despair to their relatives. How easy it would be to expose them all to full-spectrum light, with the necessary, nutritional, full visible and ultraviolet light components. Installing such lighting would help them all day and every day, for a cost that is quite trivial in terms of the National Health Service budget. Of course, if hospitals reverted to a slightly old-fashioned design, the patients would be able to go outside when it was sunny - but no doubt there are administrative reasons why this would be inconvenient.

アダルト Hip-hop kids

At the other extreme of the age scale, the effect of lighting on hyperactivity was first noted by Dr Ott. This is an increasing problem in schools - and homes - these days, and it has been observed to be worse under artificial lights. Since sunlight has a soothing and relaxing effect on everybody, young or old, it made sense to see whether full-spectrum lights made a difference to hyperactive children. A study was set up by a lighting company in America, and it came up with some startling results.

In a school environment which was almost entirely lit by fluorescent tubes, hyperactivity was a constant and substantial problem. But when the ordinary tubes were replaced with full-spectrum ones, things improved dramatically. These results were recorded by a hidden video camera, and studying the video brings the point home powerfully. Children who before could hardly stay on their seats started to sit down and pay attention. The rate of punishment for misbehavior went down and the work output and learning capacity of the children went up. It was noticeable that the children who were worst to start with improved the most.[6]

As well as hospitals, it seems, we should be installing full-spectrum lights in schools. Because the pupils would feel better and be healthier physically, they would also learn better and get into less trouble.

 

Solar detoxification

Another Russian study looked at the body's ability to withstand poisons and eliminate them from the system. It concluded that "tolerance of the organism to chemical substances depends, to a great extent, on its subjection to ultraviolet radiation; it drops in ultraviolet deficit and increases in exposure to suberythemic doses". In other words, we do not need to get sunburned or even suntanned in order to experience physiological benefits from ultraviolet light.[7]

The Russians, of course, have more opportunity than us to study ultraviolet deficit, or 'light hunger' as they have called it. They also have more reason to find treatments for it, but not that much more reason than us, since the effects of being further north are now easily outstripped by the effect of living indoors. We might as well all be in polar regions, for the amount of sunlight that we get in an ordinary day. If we adjusted our light intake upwards, this study clearly states, we would be more able to withstand the damaging effects of environmental pollution, and the pollution of our food and drink.

It has been shown that an excessive body burden of toxic minerals such as lead or cadmium can lead to high blood pressure, impairment of the functioning of the heart, and to general malaise and ill health. But the most important links by far are with hyperactivity, with behavioral and learning difficulties in children, and even with dyslexia.[8] These are growing problems, one might say. Organic molecules such as pesticides are probably even more of a problem, as it is hard to avoid them if we want to eat at all. Since a lettuce may well have been sprayed fourteen times with a range of chemicals by the time it arrives in our salad bowl, it is safe to say that we all carry a burden of pesticides and other chemicals dissolved in our fatty tissues. These chemicals operate as neurotoxins. They kill pests by poisoning their nervous system and paralyzing them. But if the pest has a nervous system, then it is similar to humans, at least in that respect, and there is no reason why we should be immune to the neurotoxin effects.

Pesticide residues have been incriminated in cases of psychological illness, even more so of chronic fatigue, depression and general malaise, and in extreme cases of triggering allergies. In some way that we do not yet appreciate, they damage the immune system, and can lead to the development of severe and fulminating allergy problems.[9] If our ability to tolerate and resist the damaging effects of these chemicals is proportional to our exposure to ultraviolet light, then we have a major treatment ready and waiting for what is clearly an increasing health problem.

Patients who have been found to have high body burdens of toxic chemicals could benefit from sunlight or full-spectrum light by an increase in their excretion of these toxins. But prevention is always better than cure, and it is more important still to ensure our children get enough sunlight to keep their load of toxins down and prevent such illnesses from developing.

アダルト Strategic secretions

優良アダルトビデオ Exposure to sunlight also stimulates the output of our thyroid glands. Since the thyroid hormones regulate the metabolic rate, this can have a dramatic, although subtle and sometimes easy to miss, effect on the way we feel. Patients with even mild hypothyroidism (low thyroid hormone output) often feel chronically fatigued, rundown, unable to concentrate, generally unwell, and in need of excessive sleep. They also tend to put on weight, which can depress them still further.[10] Sunlight, through the pineal-pituitary axis, can increase the output of the thyroid gland and remedy these problems.

By the same mechanism, it can stimulate the output of the adrenal gland. Adrenal products fall into two categories; the long-acting corticosteroids hormones, which have effects on the whole of our metabolism; and the short-acting chemicals, such as adrenaline, which are released into the bloodstream and have immediate effects on blood pressure, heart rate, general arousal level, and ability to cope with stress and emergencies. Patients with poor adrenal output tend to suffer from a drop in blood pressure on standing up. This is the simplest model imaginable of a failure to adapt to a change in circumstances. When we stand up, the height of the column of blood in which we have to maintain pressure, and circulation, may double or treble. A small release of adrenaline is required in order to adjust the pressure. Sufferers from hypoadrenalism cannot provide this.

They also suffer from chronically low energy levels, susceptibility to infection, poor temperature regulation and chronic backache, and generally feel lousy.[11] In Chapter 12, 1 mentioned the experiments on adrenal steroid output under different lighting conducted by Hollwich. He found that in daylight healthy subjects kept a normal, healthy output of ACTH from the pituitary and cortisol from the adrenal. But under artificial light of the ordinary type, output climbed within two weeks to a stress level.

It is a well understood fact that if the production of an endocrine gland is pushed up to abnormally high levels for any length of time, the gland may become exhausted and depleted of nutrients. A second, exhaustion phase, with lowered output and inability to respond to minor increases in demand, can ensue. Hypoadrenalism is an example of this. Increased exposure to sunlight can help to stabilize the output of the adrenal to normal levels. It should be a component of any treatment programme for adrenal insufficiency, and of everybody's plan for staying healthy.

アダルト A question of wavelengths

優良アダルト動画 Another problem with living indoors is that of visual fatigue. Anybody working indoors, particularly at office work, suffers eye strain at times. One of the reasons for this is that the light reaching the eye is refracted differently according to its wavelength. There is a difference in the refraction between red and violet of about 2 dioptres, which is a reasonably powered pair of spectacles. This means that a correct focus for one colour of light may be several centimeters out for another colour.

As a result our eyes may be constantly trying to adapt and adjust their focus, but never succeed. The more distorted the light source the more serious this problem can be. This was brought out in an American study which looked at the 'spectral effectiveness factor'. This is a more or less incomprehensible mathematical product based on the number of mistakes that are made in visual tasks under that light. They found a difference of just over 22 per cent between a good light and a bad light. The good light, it seems, is always the light with the broadest spectrum, and therefore the nearest replication of natural daylight.[12]

Another study looked at fatigue and visual acuity under two different lights - regular fluorescent and full-spectrum. They found that under ordinary lights people reported feeling fatigued after the set period of four hours, but under FSL they did not. When they measured visual acuity - the sharpness of vision - it actually improved under FSL, but worsened under normal lighting.[13]

The implications of this for anybody who employs personnel to do paperwork or look at computer screens for long periods of time, for example, or for anybody engaged in study, are quite staggering, The implications for all of us who have to live under such lighting are equally disturbing. Very few of us are able to arrange our lives so that we can work under sunlight, so attempts to improve the quality of indoor lighting are clearly called for.

アダルトBlue February

無料アダルト動画ですね In this chapter I have deliberately avoided so far the subject of SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder. In the form that it is now recognized by doctors, this is relatively unusual. It certainly responds to bright light of a composition near to daylight. It certainly also represents an abnormally high requirement for light as a nutrient. But I would not like you to think that there is a tiny number of people with SAD who need large quantities of light to stay cheerful, and the rest of us are doing fine. Far from it.

The fact that individual needs for particular vitamins vary widely from person to person was clearly and conclusively shown some years ago - first by Roger Williams, who is in many ways the founder of nutritional medicine. Because of the immense variety in our genes and therefore our biochemistry, one human may require several times more vitamin B6, for example, than the next in order to stay well. Another may need more vitamin B12, or more zinc, and so on. The same applies to light. For every sufferer from SAD there will be many who experience less clear-cut, but still damaging, mental symptoms in low-light conditions. And there will be others who cannot produce enough vitamin D, and so develop calcium or magnesium deficiencies. Negro and Asian people, for instance, are especially likely to have this problem.

But most importantly, we all live in poor light environments these days, unless we work outside regularly. We could all benefit from more light in our diet. As George Somerville, MD said 50 years ago;

"The beneficial light of the sun, winter and summer, induces an intimate emotional satisfaction - a pleasing expansion of the whole being which creates a healthy outlook on life."

アダルト Chapter 16

アダルト Colour me Healthy

Another book could be written - and several have - on the component colors of daylight and their different effects on us. A considerable science has grown up based on colour psychology and there is no question that some very powerful changes can be wrought in our state of mind, and our state of body, by skilful use of colors.

Until very recently in man's development, the theory states, all our colors were derived from nature. The green of the leaves, the blue of the sky, the colors of flowers and animals, were all that our eyes saw. It was not until the industrial revolution, and the mass production of fabrics, that synthetic dyes became widely available - although a limited amount of dyeing has gone on in some societies for hundreds of years. Because of the expense, the labor involved and the relative rarity of the raw materials for dyes, colored fabrics tended to be the prerogative of the ruling caste. More often than not, interestingly, the only dye available appears to have been purple. This association of purple with royalty has entered our own culture.

Nowadays, colors are widely available to all of us in clothing, paints and wallpapers, packaging and many other aspects of the environment. We tend to choose colors for aesthetic reasons or because they are fashionable, and easily forget that they can have a profound psychological impact. Colour psychologists, however, who work in the advertising industry more than anywhere else, have not forgotten this. They use selection of colour as a way of fine-tuning our response to a variety of products and ideas.

 

A patchwork of light

An interesting sideline on this is provided by the founders of the successful American clothing company Esprit, which recently opened its first stores in Britain. Their high-fashion 'leisurewear' is notable for its use of strong, bright colors. Yet the couple who started Esprit are among the leading collectors of antique American quilts. The walls of their open-plan offices in San Francisco are decorated with these beautiful, subtly patterned quilts, many of them made by the Amish sect, who completely reject the use of synthetic dyes in their fabrics. The dark, muted colors they use have a surprisingly soothing effect. Yet Esprit say that they derive inspiration from them for their ultra-modern designs.

 

The ups and downs

The most basic differentiation of colour derives from the day/night cycle, which controls our pineal melatonin output, and all our other rhythms as well. Put simply, there is a time (daytime) for activity, for expending energy, for the pursuit of food and other interests. There is also a time (night-time) for rest, retreat into our cave or hut, and repair of our bodies and minds.[1] There is a cycle within our metabolism that tunes to this day/night cycle, whereby in the morning our bodies are catabolising, which is to say using up and breaking down the component molecules of our cells to fuel our energy expenditure. At the same time, waste components are filtered out and excreted. In the evening and night, on the other hand, we enter an anabolic phase, during which we repair and build up our cell structures, providing healing and recovery.[2]

The theory of colour psychology states quite simply that we will respond positively to a colour that corresponds with our physical or psychological need. If we are in need of rest, calm, relaxation and healing, we will choose a dark, night time colour. If on the other hand we seek energetic pursuits, ambitious strivings and the satisfaction of our appetites, we will go for a brighter daytime colour.

In the Luscher colour test, for instance, states of mind and emotional conflicts, even physical illnesses, can be detected from the way people respond to colors. A series of colored cards are presented to the person to be tested, who chooses the one most preferred, and then the one most preferred of those remaining, and so on to the last. The sequence of choices provides a surprisingly detailed and logical insight into the person's psychology.[3] In the short version of this test, eight colors are used, so there are 40,320 possible different sequences.

There is a scale of colors from the most outgoing, stimulus-seeking colour, yellow, to the most retiring, calm-seeking, blue. There is even a list of diseases which are commonly associated with notable choice of each colour. The test can therefore be used to identify psychological stresses and problems, and their physical consequences too. As a psychological tool, it has been used in medicine and industry by a number of people with notable success.

 

Seeing red

In recent years researchers, particularly in the social sciences, have turned the problem round and looked at it from the opposite direction. They have reasoned that if colors can be used to detect states of mind, perhaps they can also be used to influence them. A West German study using college students found that the use of yellow, orange or red colors in the classroom produced an increase in IQ and academic achievement, The use of brown or black suppressed these abilities.4

John Ott uncovered an interesting angle on this when he gave a lecture in Florida nearly twenty years ago. Afterwards he was approached by the manager of a local radio station, who told him of their remarkable experience with office lighting. In an attempt to brighten up the office, the regular fluorescent tubes in the studios and control rooms had been replaced with deep pink ones. After a few weeks, everybody there started to show signs of strain. People were more irritable, argued about everything and objected to every management decision even without grounds. The announcers started making mistakes and performing- badly on air.

It wasn't until several more weeks had passed, and two of the staff had resigned for no clear reason, that the penny dropped. When one staff member complained about the pink lights specifically, management immediately had them replaced with white ones. Two weeks later everyone had returned to normal, tempers had settled down, and the resignations had been withdrawn. The announcers were even performing well on air again.[5] Dr Ott immediately saw the connection with another experiment in which he had been involved, at a mink farm in Illinois. Different cages of mink were kept behind different colors of glass or plastic. Those with blue tints to their cages became strikingly docile and friendly - and anyone who has ever handled a mink will attest to how unfriendly they are. But those in the pink-shaded cages became even more aggressive and dangerous. There were effects on reproduction too, with those in the blue area becoming more fertile, and those in pink areas having less litters than normal. The natural deduction from this is that mink respond to blue environments better because they originally come from well up in the north of Canada, where the nights are long and dark, and they hunt by night. Humans, of course, originate from East Africa.

 

Psycho-colour

The use of environmental colour has now been considerably refined, most noticeably by Professor Harry Wohifarth at the University of Edmonton, in Alberta. He has conducted a number of studies in schools and work places.[6] He finds that the colour scheme outlined in theoretical colour psychology - with yellow and red as the most stimulating colors, and blue and black as the most calming - holds fast. He has used blue walls to calm down hyperactive children, to lower blood pressure and reduce stress in general.[7] Yellow, on the other hand, has been found to increase alertness and learning ability. There is in fact a clear-cut scale of effects, from most to least stimulating.

As well as influencing the psychological state, this colour system has been shown to affect blood pressure, pulse and respiration rates. Remarkably, it appears to be just as effective in people who are colour-blind. The same applies to the Luscher colour test. This is taken to be evidence that the mechanism operating here is physiological rather than psychological. On the other hand these colour psychodynamic effects, as they have come to be termed, do require the accurate colour rendering provided by sunlight or full-spectrum lighting for their full impact.

 

Pretty in Pink

One of the most powerful demonstrations of the use of colour was conducted in a US Marine correctional center in Seattle, Washington State. The military police at this camp had a lockup for arrested men while the paperwork for charging them was prepared. They were likely to be in there for something less than an hour. This room had always been the site of frequent disturbances. Men detained in it regularly became abusive and even violent. Many of them, of course, were roaring drunk when put in there.

The colour psychodynamic measure proposed for this room was extremely simple. It was to be painted pink. The colour in question was a precise hue, reputedly the colour which would be perceived by a baby in the womb. After the colour change, disturbances and outbursts in this cell decreased almost to nil. The effect was dramatic and unarguable.[8]

Since then, the use of Baker-Miller pink, as it has come to be known, after two of the major participants in the original study, has become relatively common throughout the USA and Canada as a means of calming aggressive or agitated inmates in institutions and prisons. It is even used by a number of sheriffs' offices in the lock-ups to which Saturday night drunks are committed. Everybody employing the technique reports excellent results.

There is one drawback: an overdose can be dangerous. When men were left in the pink room for about two hours, some of them became very disturbed and made self-destructive attempts. Clearly the sedating effect is capable of building up to the extent of severe depression. If anything, this is further proof of the potency of colour in changing the way that we think and feel.

Colour psychodynamics will grow in importance, and we will all eventually find ourselves exposed sometimes to its colour schemes. You may feel that this is manipulation of your mind, but for myself I would rather work in an office which has been designed and colour-schemed with some of my physiological and psychological needs in mind, than in one that is merely the product of an architect's whim.

The new information on light and colour, on their essentiality, their health benefits, their specific physiological effects, provides us all with an opportunity to rework our environment. Each of us can take this chance or leave it. We can modify our lifestyle, change our indoor lighting and put pressure on our employers to do the same, or we can continue to fungate in the dark. Bearing in mind a magical figure that has recurred several times throughout this text, it is likely that by using sunlight and full-spectrum light together, plus some commonsense adjustments to our lifestyles and sensible nutrition, we can make our lives 2.5 times more livable.