How much sunlight should we get each day in the shorter days of winter and in the fall? And when should this be done? In the Jeffrey study, it was clear that there was circadian regulation. As you mentioned, getting that sunlight, excuse me, getting that red light, infrared light into one's eyes early in the day was important.

If I'm living a standard life of work and job and people are managing kids and all sorts of things, sometimes it's hard to get into the sunlight because you're just following a schedule. How much time each day do you recommend, independent of anything related to getting sunlight in one's eyes for circadian rhythm setting?

So how much time, what time of day, and what frequency across the week? Excellent question, and you've hit on exactly the issue. Based on Glenn Jeffrey's studies, based on another study that was actually done in Brazil, it was actually an interventional study in COVID that showed that just 15 minutes a day for seven days was enough to actually get people with COVID out of the hospital faster.

This was a randomized placebo-controlled, double-blinded, amazing study, 940 nanometers. So when I talked to Glenn Jeffrey about this, he says he sees it in humans, he sees it in bees, he sees it in insects, it's all the same. The mitochondria behave exactly the same. When you say 940 nanometers, you're talking about long wavelength, like coming from an artificial source?

Correct. Okay. Yeah, that was 940, and it was actually very low. It was about 2.9 milliwatts per square centimeter. So lower energy. Most people are not going to own a far-red or an infrared light. So I just want to emphasize again for people, you can get that wavelength and all the other relevant wavelengths from the sun.

Exactly. That's your red light therapy, folks. Exactly, and this is what I'm trying to say. It's like, this is not like some powerful laser that they were using. This is 2.9 milliwatts. I mean, sunlight, all sunlight is about 100 milliwatts per centimeter squared. By time it reaches- Through the atmosphere.

Through the atmosphere. Yeah, so 130 when it hits the atmosphere. By the time it hits you, it's about 100. If you're looking at just infrared light, we're talking about 20 milliwatts per square centimeter. And so this was 2.9 at a very specific wavelength. So something that's completely doable, okay?

And so what they did, it was 15 minutes a day for seven days. And what Glenn Jeffrey was telling me is that Roger, he says, "Roger, it doesn't matter if it's in insects, "if it's in bees, if it's in humans." Once you hit a certain point, 15, 20 minutes, diminishing marginal utility.

The improvement after that point is so minimal that you only need about 15 to 20 minutes. That's why he was able to do his experiment in the eye for three minutes was all that was necessary. So is this 15 minutes outside in the first three hours of your conventional day, as I call it?

'Cause people will say, "Well, the sun comes up later this hour." Conventional day, meaning after the sun has crossed the horizon, he has risen. I don't think it matters. I don't really think it matters. I think what would matter is if there's a lot of ultraviolet light, which would be when the sun is high.

And for people who are skin sensitive, that could be an issue. But if you're covering up, it doesn't matter. And here's the issue. The issue is that when you need it the most in the wintertime is when it's the hardest to get. So you really have to make a concerted effort.

And for a lot of people, and this is what happens probably right after November and probably going through to mid-January is this is what happens. People get up in the morning, they go to their car, they get into their car, they drive to work, the sun's not up yet.

They get to their work, the sun comes up, but they're inside. Then what happens is they get done with work. The sun is already down. They come home from work. And so there literally is weeks on end that occur where they're not even getting 15 minutes of sunlight. And I think this is the reason why we have the influenza surge at this time.

If you look to see, the EPA did a study and they looked at Americans. 93% of our time is spent inside. 86% inside a building, 6% to 7% inside of a vehicle. - And this is a relatively new thing. I mean, certainly when I was growing up, if I came home and had a snack after school, I was getting kicked out of the house to go outside.

It was routine for parents to tell kids they had to go outside. And I think there's also, it's also the case, as you mentioned, that we're working later or at least on devices later into the evening, which means there's more exposure to short wavelength light from devices and artificial sources.

- Absolutely, absolutely. So my recommendation, which is what the original question was, is take your lunch break outside. It's something as simple as getting outside, even if it's at lunchtime. Yes, the ultraviolet is probably the highest at that point. But if that's the only time that you're gonna get sunlight, take it.

Now for some, you know, we can say this, I can say this, I live in Southern California. I'm blessed by 300 and some odd days of sunlight every year. What do you do when you're in Boston? What do you do if you're in New York? What do you do if you're in England and Sweden and these places where there isn't a lot of light?

Well, there's a study that was done looking at infrared lamps, right? So you've gotta be careful there because if the infrared lamps are too high in amplitude, this result from infrared light in the body is something known as a biphasic response. And that's really important to understand. Don't come into this if you're gonna get a red light therapy and think that more is better because more may not be better.

You actually could do detriment if you have the red light at too high of a level. So I would match it to what we're getting from the sun. As you said, the sunlight is your best infrared or red lamp. So there was a study that was done looking at well-being and they did a red light lamp, infrared light.

So it was coupled with 850, I think was the nanometer. So that is definitely in the infrared spectrum. - Yeah, you can't see that. - You cannot see it. And they had it set up at a desk that some guy was sitting in front of for four hours a day for eight weeks.

And they did the study and they did it in the summertime and they did it in the wintertime. And this is really telling. There was no effect on the subject when they looked at those that had it in the summertime. I would say probably because they were getting plenty of infrared light elsewhere.

They only showed a statistically significant effect in the wintertime. And so if you look at influenza, I would even go beyond that. Look at a chart of the United States throughout the entire year and look at all of the natural causes of death, not just influenza and pneumonia. Look at cardiac disease.

Look at kidney disease, Alzheimer's disease. All of those deaths go up all at the same time and they all go up about one to three weeks after the shortest day of the year. And they all come down and they all are at the nadir about one to three weeks after the longest day of the year.

When you see that and you just start to just digest what you're seeing there, and then you start to understand that infrared light from the sun, which we have filtered out with LEDs and all this, we can get to that, all of that's gone, that we're spending 93% of our time indoors.

Put that all together and the fact that infrared light helps the mitochondria and the fact that the mitochondria is at the sort of the core of all of these chronic diseases that we're battling. It really wakes you up and you start to realize that maybe the lowest hanging fruit that we can do right now today for literally no money is simply to just work on getting more sun exposure in the wintertime.

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