About different lights in the sunshine

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 Hallo, welcome back to my blog.

I have been trying to understand more about the light from the sun and what the different lights could do to our health. I find this is very interesting field and I am curious about what will become of this new knowledge from scientists and  new studies. The sunshine spectrum is from ultraviolet  to infrared which means from the wavelenghts of about 250 nm to 10⁶ nm. One nanometer is 0.000000001 meter.  The wavelength of the light is important because the longer wavelength the more energy it contains. So the light we can see contains just about 40 percent of the total solar energy. The ultraviolet only seven percent but the infrared light has more than 50 percent of the total sun energy. 

Anyway,  ultraviolet light with short wavelength is important and gives us vitamin D. This explains why it is important to expose one self to the sunlight at the correct time as to the latitude where you are. In Sweden for example it is mostly possible to get the vitamin D from the sun from March until October and one have to "sunbathe" while your shadow is shorter than yourself ( the sun must be pretty high in the sky). The time one have to spend in the sun is short. In about a quarter of an hour you can get your daily need of vitamin D. If you are overveight or older you will have to spend a little more time. It is important that it is a short time because there are many warnings about risks of sunbathing and getting melanoma.

Picture: Four important lights from the sun.

1.The blue light is also very important. It is a part of the visible light. In the morning and during the day it gives us energy and helps us concentrate, react fast and is good for your mood and mental health. Light therapy  with blue and other  lights is used for depression and other sorts of unhealth. At night, however, blue lights can destroy your sleep. In the eye there is a part of the retina situated low in the eye which have special nervcells sensible to blue light. At night this can be a problem because when the blue lights hits this low part of retina, the special nervcells are activated and send signals to the inner part of the brain and further on to the pineal gland and tells it not to produce any metatonin..The melatonin is produced in the pineal gland at night and that melatonin goes into the blood and helps us among other things to sleep. But in the morning when morning light with the blue light hits the eye the gland stops to produce this melatonin.

2.  The NIR ( near infrared) light has a different function on the body but it works with melatonin too. In stead of the melatonin of the pineal gland this   is produced in the power station of our bodycells during daytime. The light which stimulates production is the NIR ligth. This NIR light has long wavelengths and a lot of energy so it can penetrate deep into the skin and the body. In this  way many of the powerstations or mitocondrias are hit by the NIR light. This is important because melatonin has another important function. It takes care of many toxic substances which are produced as side effects of the energy production in the mitocondrias. This is very effective because the melatonin is produced where it is needed during daytime.  This might prevent many diseases and that's why it is so fascinating. As time goes by we will know more.

What I write about so far is very much common knowledge in the way that there are no contraversies concerning the facts. When digging deeper I am sure there will be different opinions among experts and researchers.