Join us for this exciting episode of the Health and Wellness Show where we'll discuss the necessity of natural light sources for maintaining health, the importance of adhering to chronobiological and circadian cycles and the toxic effects of artificial light exposure.
Relevant links:
https://vimeo.com/alexanderwunsch
http://www.spektrochrom.de/
http://www.unihedron.com/projects/spectrum/downloads/spectrum_20100428.pdf
Running Time: 02:12:09
Download: MP3
Here's the transcript of the show:
Jonathan: Hello everybody. Welcome to the Health and Wellness Show. My name is Jonathan, your host for today but we have a full crew today. We have Doug, Elliot, Tiffany and Erica. Hey guys.
All: Hellos.
Jonathan: So today is Friday, January 13. We have a full moon on Friday the 13th so it is quite an auspicious day. Today on our show we have a very special guest, Dr. Alexander Wunsch. I wonder Elliot if you could go ahead and introduce Dr. Wunsch and then we will just get right into the topic.
Elliot: Yeah, fabulous. So, Dr. Alexander Wunsch is a world-leading expert in light medicine and photobiology. He conducts research on the cellular effects of light and he also runs a private medical practice in Heidelberg, Germany. He specializes in many different types of therapies and treatments including chroma therapy, vibrational medicine and craniosacral body work. So today we've got a very special guest. Welcome Dr. Alexander Wunsch.
Dr. Wunsch: Hi.
Elliot: Would you be able to tell us what brought you to this field of work?
Dr. Wunsch: Oh, this is a short question with probably a long answer. I was not confident with what I learned at university with regard to medicine. It was kind of different from what I expected when I started to become engaged with this field with human medicine. I was concerned about this focusing on pharmacological products, biochemistry and no one really was interested in biophysical issues besides pure diagnosis.
So this was in a way, the starting point of getting interested in biophysics. It started with developing a unit which was able to bring electromagnetic frequencies into the brain via E-clip electrodes, a battery-driven device which is able to change your mood, to change your neurological functions and so on. So this was my entry into this area of biophysical medicine.
Elliot: Fabulous. So when did you start to learn about the effects of light because in medicine light is something that isn't really focused on much. Typically, when you go to a doctor they don't really tell you anything about light apart from the fact that you should stay outside of sunlight or you should protect yourself against sunlight because it is known to cause cancer apparently. So what sparked your interest in the effect of light on the human body?
Dr. Wunsch: When I developed this brain and cranial electrostimulation unit, the stimulation system/device which works on the basis of frequencies and oscillations, I got into the field of electromagnetic waves and the brainwave frequencies are just a very tiny bit of the whole spectrum. So I was discovering a principle which was brought to me by a Swiss mathematician, Hans Cousto, and he was presenting information on how to use the principle of octaves when you work with electromagnetic fields, electromagnetic vibrations and oscillations. This law of octaves - which refers back to Pythagoras who experimented with string instruments and discovered some laws in the context of music - this law of octaves enabled me to get a better impression of the connecting elements between all these different frequencies and the whole range of frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum because you can, for example, calculate equivalent colours for a certain frequency in the brainwave range or you can calculate an equivalent colour for a musical tone.
This brought me from the lower frequencies of the brainwaves, which are somewhere between 0.5 Hz and 30 or 40 Hz to the musical frequencies and finally to the frequencies in the octaves of visible light. So in the very beginning I was primarily interested in the effects of coloured light because I wanted to create an experiential room where you can have some kind of coherence therapy, which means the vibrations you would get from a sound table and the musical pitch and the colours you see would all have to be coordinated or synchronized in a way, would have to become coherent so that we have the same kind of information from all the different levels of experience.
This was the start and from the exploring of the visible spectrum in terms of single colours, finally I ended up becoming interested in the long wavelength part of the spectrum, interested in the near infrared spectrum because there was a growing field these days of applications which are called photobio-modulation or low level light therapy. The last part of the spectrum I started to explore was the UV part. This brought me to all these researchers who went into the field of heliotherapy about 100 to 150 years ago. This brought me to a kind of time travel into those days where tuberculosis and other darkness-associated diseases were a big problem for western society, for people who were living in cities and had a lack of sunlight.
So there was a kind of sequence from the brainwave to the musical tones to rhythms of oscillations and finally the light spectrum.
Elliot: Wow. So you speak about the diseases of darkness and I know in some of your lectures you've talked about tuberculosis, how different types of lighting could be used to treat these diseases but this was a therapy that's not used anymore or widely acknowledged by the medical community.
Dr. Wunsch: When we look back at the 19th century, in the beginning or middle of the 19th century the problem was that the medical doctors had no idea about the reason for certain problems they would see in their patients, like rickets for example or tuberculosis. But what they understood quite early on was that there was a connection between the lifestyle and the occurrence and incidents of these diseases of darkness. So in the cities they found a lot more patients suffering from rickets and tuberculosis compared to people living in the countryside. In a way, they had a kind of idea that light exposure, exposure to natural sunlight, would play a role but it was quite diffuse for many decades.
At the end of the 19th century, just by empirical means, some of the therapists discovered if they would expose the patient suffering from these diseases in a specific manner to natural sunlight, that they would recover, that sunlight would foster the healing process. It went on with the work of Niels Ryberg Finsen who was a physician in Denmark and he in a way, started a movement in late 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, since he discovered that light plays a significant role in certain very important processes in the organism like inflammation reactions. He found out that light was a potent means to induce inflammation, first in the cases of patients with smallpox. If he protected these patients from sunlight and especially from the blue part of the spectrum in sunlight, they would have significantly less signs of inflammation and a much better chance to survive the disease.
So this brought Finsen to a kind of negative phototherapy which means the exclusion of certain parts of the spectrum would be the effective intervention. Later on, he was thinking about the use, especially, of this part of the spectrum which is able to induce the inflammation in case of smallpox, but now in the case of skin manifestations of tuberculosis, he wanted to induce the inflammatory process in the skin because he was convinced that the inflammation would help the organism to fight the tuberculosis germs from the power within the organism. This led him to this positive phototherapy with concentrated rays of the short wavelength spectrum in sunlight.
In the first years, he was using sunlight itself but in Copenhagen, in Denmark, he realized that there were only 30 days throughout the year where he could perform this effective treatment and this was a drawback for the sun itself. So he made experiments with electrical light sources with high content in the UV part of the spectrum and this finally was the moment when the Finsen method, with the short wavelength rays from artificial light sources was inaugurated or invented in the late 19th century.
Elliot: What kinds of diseases did he use this light to treat?
Dr. Wunsch: Yes, I already mentioned tuberculosis. This was really a threat in those days. We're talking about a time where medicine had no pharmaceutical means to treat infections like tuberculosis and they had no means to treat diseases of vitamin D deficiency like rickets, because they had no idea that vitamin D existed. Tuberculosis was a widespread threat. A great number of the population suffered from tuberculosis in different forms. The skin manifestation or lupus vulgaris, was the disease which had been treated by Finsen. He specialized in the skin manifestation, which was socially devastating because if someone carried the sign of the disease he would lose all his social contacts and so on and so on.
But there were other types of tuberculosis where the joints for example, were affected or the pulmonary system was affected. All these different manifestations responded quite well when they had been treated by light and light was the dernier écrit. It was the latest development. It was very fashionable in a way, if you would want to use this word, in medicine those days, stepping into the 20th century because they didn't have antibiotics. They had no other treatment modality which was comparable with the effect of light therapy.
Finsen treated the skin manifestations and in Switzerland for example, some doctors started to use natural sunlight because it was widely available throughout the whole year in Switzerland, if you compare it, for example, with countries in the Baltic region. And the mountains in Switzerland had another advantage. They provided high amounts of ultraviolet radiation even in wintertime. So there were two parallel developments; on the one hand, the treatment with artificial light sources, with concentrated ultraviolet light from quartz lamps which were filled with mercury so the mercury discharge lamps were very good in producing high amounts of ultraviolet radiation and on the other hand we had sun doctors in Switzerland who were using direct natural sunlight with its broad spectrum and a light that not only contained high amounts of UV, but also contained all the other wavelengths, those we can perceive directly with our eyes, but also the near infrared and a bit of infrared B radiation as well.
Elliot: So, before this discovery was made, is there any evidence to say that historical cultures, going back longer than a few hundred years, had this understanding that sunlight could be used as a type of medicine?
Dr. Wunsch: When you think of the area where humans supposedly stem from, I'm thinking of this film Out of Africa, I think the first steps in human relationship to sunlight was for sure the protection from excessive exposure. In the middle of Africa, it was not an issue that you would suffer from low doses of sunlight and we can tell this by looking at the skin colour of people who live there in these areas. The problem with the lack of sunlight was linked to the migration processes or the migration situation when early humans had to leave Africa or had to accommodate to other climate zones like those we have in the area of Europe or in the Baltic region for example.
Here the problem was that there was not enough sunlight for many months during the year and it was an issue in terms of comfort because in ancient days people would have to, as we have to as well nowadays, cover the body surface with clothes and shield the skin from sunlight even if it's there. In our days, the clothing habits in a way prevent our skin from being in constant contact with our outer lighting condition. These were the situations where it became evident that there is a connection between the right dose of sunlight and health, a properly working organism.
We know that even in ancient times sunlight played a paramount role, for example, in religion, for culture. Sunlight was linked or representing life in general and if the sun was not there, life was in danger. So sun worshiping I think can be found in almost all the cultures we have access to in terms of getting information about the culture, the social life. A prominent example would be ancient Egypt and we have access to pictures, to statues and to a lot of visual information from which we can tell that sunlight definitely played a significant role in the ancient Egyptian society.
Tiffany: Dr. Wunsch, I've read a lot about how sunlight was used to treat wounds, in wartime especially, but this in the 18th and 19th centuries. Can you tell us a little bit about how sunlight does what it does? What makes it so special? How does it act on the body on a cellular level to help us heal?
Dr. Wunsch: Hmm. The first thing is that we have to define, from my understanding, the sequence. First in the very beginning there was light. The first stimulus was sunlight and on the surface of the spinning planet this means that you have a kind of oscillatory effect in terms of thermodynamics, which means you have a rhythmical influence onto the surface of this planet. Every 24 hours the sun is in the same position in the sky and as long as the sun is present we have an intake of 1.3 kilowatts per square metre, which is a lot of energy. And when the sun has set and there is no sun in the sky we have an emission of radiation from the surface of our planet.
This alternating direction of energy flow created a situation where the matter on the surface of our planet earth, had to follow this photonic rhythm which was presented in the coordinated activity between the radiating sun and the spinning planet. Everything which happened since then, including the evolution of life, was exposed to these specific properties of the radiation, was exposed to the timing and was exposed to the spectral distribution, which varies depending on the location on the planet surface as well.
We cannot say that sunlight is beneficial. What we can say is that since sunlight was present from the very beginning, all life forms have to adapt in the best manner they could, to the specific properties of sunlight. So we find in the end, when we look at this from the present, it seems to us that sunlight is beneficial, but going a bit deeper it is the fact that those organisms which are existent today are those who were able to optimally adapt to sunlight. This optimal adaptation, for example means that if you have problematic parts in the sunlight, the optimally adapted organism seeks for a solution to compensate for this negative aspect and develops strategies for example which help the organism to act against the negative aspects. If we look at the question from this perspective, then we can ask ourselves what kind of wounds are we looking at? Are we looking at an inflammation? Are we looking at an infected wound?
If we look at the infected wound, we have to focus on the short wavelength part in the solar spectrum. So, the UV part, the UVB and the UVA will create an environment in the wound which is unfriendly to germs, which will kill bacteria. So the short wavelength part is able to reduce the number of pathogenic material in the wounds. The visible light, or especially the red and the near infrared part will do a completely different job. The red light and the near infrared light will lead to improved circulation, to better blood flow in the wound.
It will help mitochondria to produce more energy so this photobio-modulation part plays another role and if we look at both aspects from both ends of the solar spectrum, in a way it is good to have germ reduction and on the other hand it is beneficial to have an increase of energy production and optimized blood flow and blood circulation.
Jonathan: Dr. Wunsch, I have a question. You had mentioned earlier Pythagoras and seeing the light spectrum in terms of octaves. In that context, do you find any benefits in working with what would be considered harmonies, just like a musical octave can have harmonic notes? Do you use harmonic light frequencies together to achieve different results?
Dr. Wunsch: Yeah, this is what I call coherence therapy where I try to arrange or to choose the wavelengths, the frequencies and the oscillations in a way that they all are aligned in the same family of octaves. What does this mean? First of all, we have a lot of mechanisms or activities in our organism which are based on oscillations. Almost all the neuronal activities are based on oscillation. We find frequencies almost everywhere in the organism. When we look at frequencies of our bowel movements, for example, we'll have a certain frequency. Our breathing will exhibit a certain frequency. And if you look at these frequencies you can see clear connections between all the frequencies in different octaves which occur in our organism and our organism has a tendency, as all matter has a tendency, to arrange itself according to laws of harmony. You find octaves. You find chords. The harmonies you find on the keyboard of a piano, for example, can also be discovered in certain oscillation relations in our organism as well.
Doug: I've read about how in different diseased states, those frequencies might be off for some reason in the body. So does exposing somebody to these oscillations, is it a means of bringing it back into that harmonic resonance?
Dr. Wunsch: Exactly and you're using the principle of resonance. If you have an oscillator with the frequency "X" inside, you can stimulate the oscillations by using an oscillator with the frequency "X" on the outside and the special aspect is that you don't even have to transmit a lot of energy when you are working with these resonance principles. You only need tiny little bits of energy. The main aspect is the information and this information in our example, is the frequency. And if you have exactly the same frequency - let's say 10 Hz outside and 10 Hz inside, then you meet it exactly on the same level. But if you have 20 Hz, which is the octave above the 10 Hz - the octave is a mathematical relation of factor 2, it's precisely defined - and it's the connecting ribbon between the different octaves.
So, when you look at the keyboard of a piano, all the tones which are in an octave relationship, almost sound identical, in an identical way. So even the lowest C and the highest C on a keyboard, played together, will fall into a perfect harmony. All the Cs are connected by the law of octaves on the keyboard and our ears are able to demonstrate this because if you choose a C and a tone which is closely nearby, it will sound awful, but the octave always will sound almost identical. You can just extrapolate this from the keyboard to the lower frequencies and also to the higher frequencies.
There is a very brilliant chart of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum which can be downloaded from the website unihedron.com for free. It comes from physics and not from medicine, but it really demonstrates the law of octaves in a perfect manner because all the frequencies from the electromagnetic radiation spectrum are aligned in octaves. So you can, for example, go into the area where you have the octave of visible radiation and you just go down on the same line and you will end up in the low frequency area of the radiation spectrum. So this is a perfect example of how to visualize the law of octaves if you have this chart in mind.
We are on a radio show so there's no way to make this apparent in a visible manner, but all the frequencies in our body can be aligned or brought into harmony using resonance as a principle of interaction.
Doug: That's fascinating.
Jonathan: It's very interesting. That actually makes me wonder about potential negative side effects. Dr. Wunsch, is there a possibility that if you were treating a certain condition, for example as you had mentioned, a bacterial infection, that you could, without proper knowledge of the frequencies at play, actually land upon a frequency or an oscillation which benefited the bacteria and would cause them to grow and perhaps make the infection worse. Is it possible to come across these types of negative side effects? I guess my point in the question is how careful do you have to be when you're doing this kind of therapy?
Dr. Wunsch: So, if you're doing any kind of therapy, being careful is a good strategy of course. But yes, indeed, if you are working with artificially produced frequencies or pulses or whatever, or radiation, there are radiations which are able to increase a certain reaction and there are radiation types which are able to decrease the reaction. For sunlight, it's in a way, if you go to the pharmacy and tell the pharmacist to put a little bit from every bottle on every shelf into the bottle you want to take home with you, then you have what you get, kind of, from sunlight. When we start to produce the light in an artificial way, it can happen that you will only get the content of one of the bottles in one particular part of the shelves in the pharmacy.
So, the lowest risk in my understanding, as long as we follow certain principle rules or basic rules, if we are using sunlight, the potential risk is very low because we are dealing with an emanation from nature which had been there since the very beginning. So, the probability that we are optimally adapted to this form of energy and/or information, is very high.
Speaking about certain laser frequencies, with the pulse mode of certain frequencies, we cannot rely on the fact that since the very beginning of life this was an influence we were able to adapt to. So there is a difference. It's always true in life that the dose makes the poison. So we can overdose sunlight. We can overdose salt which is inevitable for maintaining life in the right dose. We can even overdose water and we also can overdose oxygen. So the question, what is the right dose, is always a question which has to be raised before you use certain means. But you have to ask and investigate even more intensely when you are working with frequencies which do not occur in nature, for example, or which only occur under certain circumstances, like the frequencies from our cell phones or from the wireless LAN or the frequencies we find in the grid of our electricity supply.
Jonathan: We've talked on this show in the past and have interviewed another guest on this topic of electromagnetic EMF pollution, so to speak, and the idea that the frequencies that are being generated by the grid, by cell phone towers, by wireless internet connections and that kind of thing, the saturation of these frequencies, is having a very negative effect on peoples' health. So it would make sense in line with what you're talking about, that the oscillations of these frequencies would not be - for the lack of a better word - harmonious with the oscillations that we have in our bodies. Is that an accurate interpretation?
Dr. Wunsch: This is at least one aspect. Our body uses and is able to detect very broad bandwidth of different frequencies and what we definitely can say is that the frequencies we are using for communication, for example, are much, much stronger than the same frequencies which occur in nature. We have for example, some windows in our atmosphere which are transparent for a certain range of frequencies and in former times our organism in a way, was able to detect even very weak signals which appear in the atmosphere and which have natural origin.
For example, there is a study which I find is very, very interesting I think, from the 1990s where some Swedish researchers investigated the role of sunlight for the development of melanoma. They were asking themselves, if sunlight really is the main reason for the increasing incidence of melanoma then we normally should see in our epidemiological testing that there was an increase with the jet set era. So when people started to enter an aeroplane and to fly to a distant place where they have much more sun, this normally should show some difference in epidemiological data with regard to sun-induced problems of the skin. But they just didn't find this correlation. But what they found is that in Europe for example, in all those countries which established the ultra shortwave radio transmission systems in the midst of the 1950s, they discovered that in the same year when the radio transmission was established, there was an increase in melanoma mortality.
Doug: Wow.
Dr. Wunsch: And in the following years there was in increase in the melanoma incidences; so even inversion of the natural sequence because normally you would first have a rise in the incidences and then a rise in mortality. In those countries in Europe in which there was a rise in radio transmission system, they found this change three years later with regard to melanoma development. Somehow they hypothesized where this might have come from. In this atmospheric window where the transmission of electromagnetic radiation is very good in the ultra shortwave length part of the spectrum, there is a window in the atmosphere, which means in this frequency range, extraterrestrial electromagnetic radiation is able to come through. We have another window in the part of the visible spectrum.
So if there is an increase of solar radiation in terms of increased UV for example, due to increased activity of the sun, there in parallel is also an increase in extraterrestrial radiation around the one metre wavelength band, which is the ultra shortwave length band. So they hypothesized that our organism is able not only to detect the light and the UV, but also to detect the electromagnetic activity in the one metre band and that there are some links in between that our organisms might have learned. If there is increased activity in the ultra short wavelength band, the probability is pretty high that there is also a high radiation level in the UV part.
So if we are using this ultra short wavelength band for communication purposes, in a way we close this communication channel for our organism because the technically produced radiation is much, much more intense compared to this natural level of radiation. And the reason for using the one metre band is that the atmosphere is transparent in this area. So we need less energy for the same distance in terms of needing less radio stations because the atmosphere is more transparent in this wavelength range. So the technicians found that in their estimation it was great. It saved a lot of energy. "Let's use exactly this part". And they had or have no idea that this might be a natural communication channel between creatures on earth and our sun in the middle of the solar system.
So we have a lot of examples for blocking or deafening or blinding our senses, even senses we are not aware of. Just one or two years ago some scientists discovered a very, very capable sensor for electrical fields in our skin cells. There is an ion channel system which is able to detect the weakest field. So from the molecular side in the meantime, we have the knowledge but on the other hand, for some of us it's a bit too late because they are already stamped as "unnormal" because they think they feel electromagnetic fields which others don't feel.
So in a way we are talking about a very difficult matter and talking about the limits of our understanding of the underlying mechanisms here.
Jonathan: I think the electromagnetic sensitivity that some people have is a very interesting phenomenon and I certainly do not want to discredit it despite the lack of understanding around the topic. There are some people who are so sensitive to these frequencies that they become sick, very ill in the presence of them and some of them have even been forced to move to areas of the world where there are less ambient frequencies just so they can live a normal life.
Dr. Wunsch: Yes and in one or two years we have a scientific basis to understand what's going on in them and the next question is why do others not exhibit the same sensitivity. What is the difference because all of us have the same sensors in our skin and have the same kind of mechanisms in our systems? Some of us suffer a lot and others just don't care. They feel nothing. The interesting question to me is where is the difference or what makes the difference.
When we talk about light, this is a very interesting question, for example, with regards to spectral distribution of artificial light sources or with regard to the flickering of artificial light sources. Some are very sensitive to it and others seem to have mechanisms that are able to filter out these interactions and mechanisms which enable them to ignore the differences.
Elliot: Dr. Wunsch, you spoke earlier about life on earth being optimally adapted to this type of electromagnetic radiation, full spectrum sunlight. So, could you just tell us some of the benefits of being exposed to full spectrum sunlight because it's quite a common thing now in health circles and when you go to the doctor that they tell you to stay out of the sun but some of the work that you have done is very interesting, particularly on the biological effects of sunlight when it penetrates the skin. Could you tell us a little bit about what you've found and about the different types of frequencies contained within the sunlight?
Dr. Wunsch: First of all, we are light creatures and the fact that humans don't have fur but they have hairless skin, demonstrates how important the direct contact between the body surface and the solar radiation in our environment is otherwise we would have protective fur in between. But the problem might be that a few percent of the population, probably will not benefit from exposure to sunlight and there is a very small percentage of the population suffering from specific diseases which make them incompatible with sunlight. There might be another fraction of the population which, because of ancestry, would not benefit from the local sunlight where they actually are living.
But I would guess that 95% of the population not only benefits from sunlight, but really needs sunlight for maintaining optimal health. We of course can talk about the vitamin D issue. In the meantime, it is a topic in the media. We know that vitamin D is important. It is an essential precursor of the steroid hormone which helps our body to adjust certain metabolic performances to the outer environment, to the seasonal conditions for example.
So depending on the season, depending on the skin time, each person needs a certain amount of sunlight on the skin in order to produce sufficient amounts of vitamin D for the organism, for the different cell types which benefit from the optimal level of vitamin D. You can look at almost any part of the spectrum and there will be some substance in our body which is able to absorb this particular wavelength and absorption of a particular wavelength means that there is an energy exchange. There is an exchange of information. Almost any substance in our bloodstream, all the hormones, have specific absorption patterns and are able to take up a particular part of energy in the solar spectrum.
Elliot: And so aside from the vitamin D production, what effects do certain frequencies have on the mitochondria because there's a lot of research that has come out recently that is suggestive that healthy mitochondrial function is the way that people live so long. You have super-centenarians who live into their 100s and they seem to have particular characteristics, which means that they have very healthy mitochondrial function. I wonder if you'd be able to explain the different effects. For instance, infrared light, how does a far infrared sauna or an infrared sauna benefit the mitochondria? Why does it work so well and is it just infrared light that benefits the mitochondria or do other frequencies also have a beneficial effect?
Dr. Wunsch: Yes, as I already said, you can find a specific absorption spectrum for any substance in your bloodstream and the bloodstream is in more or less direct contact with solar radiation once you shine sunlight onto your skin because the capillaries in your skin are just a tenth of a millimetre beyond the surface of your organism. So there is an almost direct contact between the outer radiation and your bloodstream.
For example, when we talk about stress hormones, steroid hormones, they will become degraded by ultraviolet radiation. So, if you are stressed and if you exposed your body to sunlight, you will experience a significant reduction of stress hormones because these stress hormones will be destroyed through the activity of ultraviolet radiation which is contained in the solar spectrum.
But you mentioned the mitochondria. First of all it's not the far infrared, it's the far red and the near infrared part where we have a good body of evidence that there is an effect on mitochondrial processes which has been investigated for decades. It is the cytochrome C oxidase which is an enzyme contained in the membrane structures in mitochondria and this cytochrome C oxidase is the last step before protons in mitochondria drive these little turbines which produces the so-called ATP, which is Adenosine triphosphate, the chemical fuel in biology. So all the processes which are energy hungry in our cells depend on proper concentration of ATP. Our bodies produce the same amount of ATP as we see in terms of mass on the scale when we have a body mass of 80 kg, it has to produce roughly 80 kg of ATP in 24 hours.
The enzyme in the electron transport chain, which is the energy-producing process contained in the mitochondria, the last step of this electron transport chain is represented by this enzyme cytochrome C oxidase which absorbs light in the orange/red, in the deep red and in the near infrared. So, if you look at cells which have reduced mitochondrial activity you can stabilize the mitochondrial activity in terms of increasing the energy production, the ATP production, by shining light in the wavelength range between 600 and 850 nanometres onto these mitochondria. As you already mentioned, several diseases and natural processes like aging depend on mitochondrial function. So, if the mitochondrial function is somehow decreased or hampered then light in the far red and in the near infrared is able to stabilize, to help the mitochondria to perform much, much better. This is one aspect of the red and near infrared radiation.
And there is another aspect which concerns the production of reactive oxygen species, of oxidative processes, of oxidative molecules. You've heard of antioxidants which are necessary to reduce the rusting or destructive processes which are induced by free radicals and these free radicals or reactive oxygen species can also be produced by mitochondria but they can occur anywhere in the cells. If reactive oxygen species occur in the vicinity of a membrane, there is a high probability that this free radical will damage the membrane and thereby damage the cellular function.
When we look at mitochondrial activity, the process is that carbohydrates are oxidized, so we need oxygen and we need carbohydrates or sugar, glucose, and from these two compounds mitochondria produce ATP, carbon dioxide and water. Some fraction of the oxygen which is necessary to produce energy, five to ten percent of the oxygen consumed by mitochondria will definitely end up as reactive oxygen species or free radicals.
So it is a normal process, that these aggressive compounds will be produced during the energy production process. When we stimulate mitochondria with red light and with near infrared light, we find that there are two phases of reaction. In the first phase, due to the energy production increase, there will be a slight increase in free radicals as well and this increase in free radical concentration signals the nucleus of the cell that production of antioxidants is needed. So, in the second phase, there will be an increased availability of antioxidants in the cell we are looking at. So, this is a second mechanism which can be induced by long wavelength radiation in the visible and near infrared part.
Elliot: Okay, so if I understand correctly Alexander, aside from carbohydrate metabolism that produces reactive oxygen species, other kinds of light also initiate the production of reactive oxygen species. I remember you speaking in some of your lectures about how blue light and purple light, short wavelength frequencies, have the ability to produce that reactive oxygen species or these free radicals. Is that correct?
Dr. Wunsch: The only thing which is not correct is purple because purple is not contained in the solar spectrum as an intrinsic wavelength but it is correct that UVB and even more, UVA and violet and indigo and blue light as well, are able to produce significant amounts of reactive oxygen species. But in contrast to the free radicals which are produced by mitochondria, the free radicals which are produced by blue light or short wavelength light can occur anywhere in the cell and they are the bad guys in a way. So the danger in terms of free radicals, comes from short wavelength light, and blue light is a very interesting part because it plays a great role in the modern artificial light sources we are surrounded by. For example LEDs will emit significantly higher amounts of blue light in comparison to an incandescent lamp for example.
So blue light leads to increased concentration of reactive oxygen species and red light can help the cell to fight and to protect itself from excessive reactive oxygen species which are induced by incident blue light.
Elliot: So essentially when your skin is exposed to full spectrum sunlight it contains both the blue and the infrared or the red, so is it that the damage is partially counteracted by the fact that both ends of the frequencies are contained within that light source? Do they cancel each other out?
Dr. Wunsch: Yes, I already mentioned that sunlight contains all the different parts of the spectrum and one part can be stimulating for certain processes and the other part can act as an anti-effect, as an antidote. So the toxins and the cure are both contained in sunlight. For example, near infrared makes more than 40% of the total solar radiation energy and near infrared is always there. Near infrared is there when you are sitting in your cave under the influence of fire. Near infrared is there when you are exposed to incandescent lamps. Near infrared is there during night time outside.
So this is ubiquitous and 43% is present in sunlight. This is the trick that our organisms have learned to deal with the problematic part in the spectrum once they have been overdosed, by using other parts of the spectrum, in our example the red and near infrared part to compensate for the potential damage which could be induced by blue light or indigo or violet light.
Elliot: Earlier you spoke about ATP production and how light helps mitochondria to produce ATP. Most people know ATP as the body's sort of energy currency and this is what determines how much energy we can use and basically live with. But in the past you've spoken about light as an energy source to the body and some of our listeners will probably be familiar with the work of Dr. Gerald Pollock. He talks a lot about light's effects on water. I was just wondering if you could explain to us a little about how light may act as an energy source for the body and maybe how much energy that actually accounts for in the body because it's generally accepted that food is where we get our energy from. So, would you be able to comment on that?
Dr. Wunsch: You were opening two different doors with your question so in a way I don't know which way to go. Shall I start with the exclusion zone, shall I start with the water aspect or shall I start with the energy aspect?
Elliot: If you could start with the water aspect, that would be very helpful.
Dr. Wunsch: Okay. So you take care that we don't forget the other topic, right?
Elliot: Okay, right.
Tiffany: And you stole my question Elliot about food.
Dr. Wunsch: The water molecule is not a singular creature in our organism. Water always arranges in groups of many, many individuals and especially in our cells. Our body in total contains two-thirds of water, probably and all the other chemical compounds are covered by water layers and these water layers are arranged like the atoms in the crystal. So in a way they are assorted and they have a topological relationship to their neighbours. Pollock makes a distinction between so-called bulk water and the water which is close to the biological structures so that it forms this so-called exclusion zone.
The water molecules have the ability to absorb light energy, to absorb photonic energy in certain spectral ranges. For example, when you look at infrared B or far infrared, water absorbs almost all the energy. If you are sitting in a classical sauna, not infrared, then you have a radiation environment in the infrared B and infrared C, or in the mid or far infrared. These heat rays, which can directly be felt as heat on the skin, what would you guess? Is there a high or a low penetration with regard to our body?
Elliot: A high penetration?
Dr. Wunsch: No. Exactly the opposite. The penetration depth for heat, which you can feel, is less than 1 mm because all the radiation will be absorbed by the water molecules and we have water molecules even in our epidermal layers. So the penetration depth is very low. In the opposite, the penetration for near infrared radiation and for red light is significantly higher. So red light, for example, can penetrate more than several centimetres deep into the tissue. I think the third slide on the website, where you have sunlight which meets the hand, you can get an idea from this picture because in my awareness, the hand, the fingers looked a little bit reddish. But you can test it with a flashlight easily or when you put your fingertip in front of the camera of your smartphone and you direct it into the direction of the light source, then you will see a red screen.
So this is the radiation which comes through. Our organism is almost transparent for red and for near infrared up to 1,400 nanometres. This means that when we use this part of the spectrum, not only can we address the outer cell layers of our organism, we also can reach deeper layers, several centimetres deep in our body. And this is what makes the near infrared so interesting because we can reach not only superficial, but deep effects.
Coming back to water, we have a lot of water sheaths or layers around all the biological structures within our cells. We have a lot of water within the extracellular matrix and a crucial aspect for a well-functioning metabolism is good working exchange of substances through the extracellular matrix, which is the coupling medium between the single cell and the adjacent capillary vessel. So metabolism means substances are carried through the bloodstream and they are allowed to leave the circulatory system in their area of capillaries. But then these substances have to pass the extracellular matrix before they reach the cells they have to nourish.
And in the extracellular matrix, the concentration of water is even higher than 60 or 70% and we all know that if we start moving the water molecules - we know this from heating - if you drop a sugar cube into a cup of cold water without stirring it will take quite awhile until the sugar has completely dissolved in this water mass. But if you are performing the same experiment with hot water and with stirring with a spoon, then the sugar will go into solution much, much faster and this is due to the higher degree of molecular movement in the bulk water in your cup.
Coming back to our extracellular matrix and to the spaces in our cells and between cells and capillary vessels, water is able to amplify the locomotion processes of participants of the metabolic process. So if we increase the molecular motion of water molecules then we also increase the metabolic processes. We increase diffusion processes. So this is already on a microscopic level of course, but talking about the exclusion zone, talking about these nano-scale compartments within the cell, we can use these amounts of water even as a kind of pumping system because when water masses, also in the exclusion zone, absorbed light energy, they need more space for their molecular movement. So these layers will increase in thickness after the energy absorption. So if you shine the light on the exclusion zone, it will increase the thickness and if you extinguish the light it will decrease its thickness.
So by using, for example, pulsing light, you can bring additional movement even in these water layers around microscopic structures in living cells with the result that you increase the molecular exchange, that you increase metabolism and thereby you increase detoxification. You increase the performance of the cell.
Elliot: Wow. So essentially light's effect on the water in your body allows the body to do many of the things that it does. That's really quite an amazing thing because I don't think there's enough spotlight I guess - no pun intended - I don't think there's enough emphasis placed on the importance of light for the operation of your physiology essentially.
But back onto the energy topic, how does light act as an energy source for the body? How much energy would you attribute light's effect to?
Dr. Wunsch: We have to step into thermodynamics and physics a bit to answer this question in a sufficient manner. Looking at a black body radiation source, we can assign a certain amount of energy per surface unit which will be emitted by this body. Our body almost behaves like a black body radiator at a temperature of 310.-whatever Kelvin. Are you familiar with black body radiation? Are you familiar with Kelvin?
Tiffany: Not really.
Elliot: No, not particularly.
Dr. Wunsch: So at a temperature of -276 degrees Celsius we have no oscillation, no atomic or molecular oscillation at all and this is the absolute zero. This is zero Kelvin, extremely cold, with no molecular movement. Warmer bodies start moving inside. They exhibit a molecular movement and this movement increases and if we are looking at this idea of a black body, which means this body by itself does not emit radiation, it's absorbing all the radiation due to the fact that it's black. And if we heat up this black body, let's say to a temperature of 2,000 degrees Celsius, it will emit radiation in the visible part of the spectrum and it will glow in an orange/yellowish hue.
So, the hotter a body, the more visible radiation will be emitted by this body. There are some formulas in physics which give you an idea about the amount of energy which is emitted by a black body radiator of a certain temperature. Our human body has a temperature of 37 degrees Celsius and if you add this to the -273 degrees Celsius and we start with zero degrees Kelvin at -273, then we end up at 310 Kelvin for the body temperature of 37 degrees Celsius. Okay?
Elliot: Yeah.
Dr. Wunsch: Up to this? And a black body emits around 545 watts per square metre at a temperature of 310 degrees Kelvin. So, this you have to take as a fact, but you can look it up or you can believe me. So, this is our energy emission if we look at our body as a black body radiator. And if you then double this amount because the human body has a surface of about two square metres and not only one square metre, the 310 Kelvin body with a surface of two square metres emits around one kilowatt or 1,000 watts and in 24 hours this is around 24 kilowatt hours of energy which is emitted physically from our body.
But we are not living in an environment of zero Kelvin but we are living in an environment filled up with other bodies emitting infrared radiation, for example, so our 20 degrees Celsius massively contributes to the energy which we are emitting. So if we would have to produce one kilowatt just by ingestion of calories from nutrition, we would be completely lost. The thermal pool of radiation around us makes its contribution, so in this context we have to accept that a great part of the energy we are constantly emitting comes from the radiation pool which surrounds us.
For example, the near infrared radiation around us is able to penetrate deeply into our body and this will be transformed into longer wavelengths and longer wavelengths and longer wavelengths and it will only be able to leave our organism after a transformation - if we talk about 1,000 nanometres near infrared radiation, the peak of emission of our body is around somewhere between 8,000 and 12,000 nanometres, so around 10 micrometres or 10,000 nanometres, we find the emission peak of our body when we look at it as a black body radiator.
The highest amount of energy we can accept is in the part of the optical tissue window between 600 and 2,000 nanometres or 600 and 1,500 nanometres. Here our body is quite transparent. It could be compared to the window in a greenhouse which is able to let the visible radiation in, but it blocks the infrared B and the infrared C. So in a way the radiation energy which passed through the window is trapped inside the greenhouse and due to this the temperature rises inside. And what happens in our body somehow can compare with this greenhouse mechanism. The short wavelengths are able to pass the skin and penetrate the body and then they are trapped until they are transformed into a very, very long wavelength around 10,000 nanometres because this is the window where the radiation can leave our body again.
Elliot: That was a lot of information Alexander. I think I'll have to go back and listen to that a couple of times to fully understand what you're saying, but it's fascinating nonetheless. Does it essentially come down to the fact that light or electromagnetic radiation is absorbed by the body and contributes to the body's energy requirements?
Dr. Wunsch: Yes.
Elliot: And it doesn't simply come from the food that we eat.
Dr. Wunsch: Yes, exactly.
Tiffany: And to double onto Elliot's comment, there are people who claim to be able to exist solely on light. So if a person is receiving a lot of natural light, a lot of near infrared light from the sun, does that mean that they can consume less food and still maintain a sufficient amount of energy in order to function?
Dr. Wunsch: If we just think about winter time, someone who is not able to cover himself in clothes in isolating layers, has to produce much more thermal energy from metabolic processes so you need less food when you're dressed and you would need more food if you are unable to protect yourself in terms of isolating your body from the low thermal quality in the environment, or the cold in the environment. From a scientific viewpoint, I am not aware of any case of documented energy intake or not intake of someone who lives from light. What I'm missing in all the reports of consuming light instead of food is where is the heliotherapy in this concept? Where is the controlled additional light exposure in this concept? But maybe I just don't know enough about these cases.
Elliot: So, for someone who is suffering from some kind of energy deficiency and they have become very sick or are just generally not feeling very well, is this part of the mechanism behind how going out in the sun when it's summertime, simply sitting out in the sun generally just feels really good for the body? It feels healing in some way. Is this a way by which someone can improve their energy status if they're suffering from some kind of deficit?
Dr. Wunsch: First of all, we would have to investigate deeper into what it means to be "not feeling so well". But in general, I would say disease and the way to disease goes always along with a weakening of rhythmicity, a decrease in the amplitude, for example, of our circadian rhythms. So many of do not have enough natural daylight during the day and they have too much artificial light throughout the 24 hours. This leads to a flattening of the amplitude of life and these amplitudes of being active in a bright environment during daylight and being more or less passive and giving the organism the change to restore and to recover during the dark phase, this is affected in many, many of us and this leads to this flattening of the oscillations of night and day, of active and restorative. Light, as one of the most effective zeitgebers [definition: any external or environmental cue that entrains or synchronizes an organism's biological rhythms to the Earth's 24-hour light/dark cycle and 12-month cycle] has the potential to put some energy into the swing system, so it pushes the oscillation like you would push a pendulum of a clock which doesn't have enough energy anymore to perform its oscillations.
So, it's like giving a kick to the pendulum, giving a kick to the swing. And you can do it by increasing darkness during night time as well as increasing the brightness during daytime. The target or the aim is to restore rhythmicity and the loss of rhythmicity can be equal to disease.
Elliot: Wow! So it comes down to this rhythmicity of the organism. That's absolutely fascinating. You talk about artificial light and many people understand that artificial light after darkness suppresses melatonin production and that can therefore throw off the so-called circadian rhythm. You've also spoken about how blue light can cause reactive oxygen species, so the light that we typically use, these energy-saving light bulbs, they're very different to the incandescent, aren't they in that they only provide certain parts of the spectrum? Would you be able to explain what are the biological effects of living under a typical fluorescent lightbulb?
Dr. Wunsch: I can talk about the fluorescent light bulbs but I think this is a species which is dying out at the moment so I would like to talk about non-thermal light sources.
Elliot: Okay.
Dr. Wunsch: Non-thermal light sources represent the group of fluorescent lamps and the group of LED lamps, all the light sources where the light comes not from heat - here we are back to the black body by the way - but from some other process, like discharge process. Because the fluorescent lamp for example, can be specified with the colour temperature of 6,000 Kelvin which is pretty hot, even hotter than the sun itself, but a fluorescent lamp never has a real temperature of 6,000 Kelvin. But the filament in an incandescent lamp has the temperature of 3,000 Kelvin or 2,700 Kelvin, the true temperature.
The colour temperatures which are specified for LEDs or fluorescent lamps are not true temperatures. They are so-called correlated colour temperatures. They appear to our eye kind of similarly to a true colour temperature of a black body with, for example, 3,000 or 6,000 Kelvin. The incandescent lamp and the candlelight and sunlight represent the thermal light sources which follow a natural law and our eye, for example, was able to adapt to the properties of all these natural light sources. The eye is able to adapt to candlelight and will give you a perfect colour rendering even in candlelight and it will give you a perfect colour rendering in sunlight. Candlelight has 2,000 Kelvin. Sunlight has 6,000 Kelvin or so. And everything which lies in between this range of 1,800 Kelvin and 6,000 Kelvin will give you a perfect colour rendering and will induce reactions in your body which make sense in a biological way, in a physiological way.
So, if we have 1,800 Kelvin or 2,000 Kelvin as we have it in fire for example, then our body learns from the appearance of the light there is no risk of sunburn, that the body can in a way sit back and relax because no dangers are around.
In contrast to the situation when we are exposed to direct sunlight, with 6,000 Kelvin, the difference in visual appearance between the 6,000 Kelvin and the 2,000 Kelvin is what?
Elliot: Sorry?
Doug: 4,000 Kelvin.
Dr. Wunsch: No, in visual appearance. The difference in visual appearance between fire and sunlight is what?
Elliot: Sunlight is brighter. It's more white.
Dr. Wunsch: It's brighter and it's whiter and being whiter and not more yellowish, comes from increased amounts of blue in the spectrum. Fire has only very, very, very low amounts in the short wavelength part and sunlight has significantly higher amounts in the short wavelength part. So just looking at the cold white or neutral white light source signals there is more blue inside and under natural conditions, if you have more blue our body learned during the last millions of years in evolution, that a high content of blue light in nature represents sunlight because this is only the case that we have high amounts of blue light when we are exposed to bright, intense sunlight. The higher the content of blue, the higher the amount of blue, the higher the amount of ultraviolet radiation and the higher the risk to experience a UV overdose. UV is invisible and so our body helped itself to extrapolate from the blue in order to guess the amount of the potentially dangerous ultraviolet.
So, there are entangled reactions which follow blue light exposure and the purpose of this was to support and enable our survival because an overdose of UV can be a deadly situation and our body has to learn about the dignity of the environment or the characteristics of the environment and this is done via an evaluation not only of brightness but also of the concentration of short wavelengths. So, for example, there is an increase of stress hormones which can be measured after exposure to bright bluish sunlight. Under natural conditions this absolutely makes sense and it increases our ability to survive. But if you are sitting in an office exposed to fluorescent lamps with colour temperature correlated to the colour temperature of sunlight, then your system is not able to understand that it has the same appearance of light but in the office, there is no risk for UV hazard, for example and therefore there is no need for producing stress hormones.
Under sunlight it's important to produce stress hormones as an answer to high amounts of potentially present UV radiation. But in the office, it's a problem if your organism produces stress hormones because stress hormones which under sunlight would be decomposed in the bloodstream or would be used up by locomotion, by muscular activity, these stress hormones build up as a response to increased blue light in the spectrum but they will not decrease as they would under the natural outside conditions.
Elliot: Wow!
Dr. Wunsch: So this is one problem that non-thermal light sources signal a condition to our organism which is not there in fact, because they signal there is potential danger to high amounts of ultraviolet radiation.
Jonathan: That's fascinating.
Elliot: So essentially artificial light sources are causing the body to produce loads of stress hormones and the natural signal to degrade those stress hormones is not present. So someone who is trying to live a healthy lifestyle by doing all of the right things, sticking with their diet, doing exercise, etc., etc., but are still living under these artificial lights, are still potentially getting sick from that light exposure. Is that correct?
Dr. Wunsch: Yes.
Elliot: Wow!
Dr. Wunsch: So if you do your workout, you will be able to decrease the concentration of stress hormones a bit, but talking about someone who is exposed to office lighting, he will not be able to work out, he will not be able to move in a sufficient way in order to decrease the stress hormones. For example, another issue is that under the influence of sunlight our body needs to hold back water in order to have enough water in stock for sweating and cooling and so on, which is mediated by the mineral corticoid hormone. So, stress hormones not only mean adrenalin and cortisol, but also mineral corticoids and so on.
So it has widespread effects. The tweaking of our circulatory system and metabolic system is very complex, the sunlight-induced adaptation or tweaking of our autonomous processes inside. And light which appears like sunlight to our eyes but does not provide the same properties, for example in the near infrared and in the UV, will cheat our system and will induce a maladaptation instead of beneficial effects or reactions.
Elliot: And this is one of the main problems, isn't it? Because of how important light is or light stimulus is for coordinating the different rhythms in the body, when you are exposed to this artificial light at night time, you're essentially telling the body that it's daytime.
Dr. Wunsch: Yes.
Elliot: Because that is the only time when your eye would encounter the amount of blue that is in that light source. So when you're just preparing to go to bed, you turn on the light and your body is suddenly sent a signal to say "Hey, it's daytime! Wake up!" Then you're going to go to sleep and you're not going to be able to perform those regenerative processes.
Dr. Wunsch: Yes.
Elliot: So it's so easy to see how over a long period of time, this can spiral into serious disease.
Dr. Wunsch: Yes.
Elliot: We're very mindful of your time Dr. Wunch and we are slightly over our time actually, but would you be able to just give some example of different types of light bulbs that we can use and that don't necessarily have this effect or aren't as isolated in the blue part of the spectrum?
Dr. Wunch: First of all, we should not use the light levels we are using in the meantime when it's evening or night time. So after sunset, we should keep the light level as low as possible and we only should use light for orientation more or less and we should make ourselves clear that every time we see colours after sunset, we take away regeneration time from our body. We take away regeneration time from our retina, from our eye and this is the first problem.
The other thing is, you still can buy incandescent lamps and if you choose halogen incandescent lamps, they have 100% higher energy efficiency compared to the standard incandescent lamps so they are energy-saving incandescent lamps that still provide the natural spectrum. If we do not intend to produce daylight-like conditions after sunset, but use just one or two bulbs instead with a low illumination level, it's even compatible with energy-saving ideas. At the moment, we do not have a real substitute for the incandescent lamp. Talking about or thinking about energy efficiency, a candle is even less-energy efficient than an incandescent lamp but a candle is a very friendly and natural light source which can be used by all of those who do not suffer from asthma or other respiratory problems.
Tiffany: Dr. Wunsch, about the halogen incandescent bulbs, what about the ones with the white coating over them?
Dr. Wunsch: What do you mean with coating?
Tiffany: Some of the bulbs come with a white coating. They're not clear. Is there a difference?
Dr. Wunsch: Ah! You talk about opaque or fully transparent or clear lamp housing.
Tiffany: Right.
Dr. Wunsch: For the eye, it's healthier to have opaque or diffuse light sources so you don't have this punctual intensity. So, if you don't have to look directly into the glowing filament but on a larger diffuse area of light, this for sure is better. But unfortunately, the opaque or matte versions are not available anymore. They're very hard to get. But normally it should not make a difference because you are not using the naked lamp, you operate it normally in a fixture and the fixture should provide that the light will be directed onto the area you need for the visual task but not into the direction of the eye because this is never a good idea, to shine artificial light directly into the eye. We should intend to confront ourselves with the reflected light and we also should look at nature and what nature provides in terms of topology. Significant amounts of light come from above only during the day under natural conditions and the fire and the torches are not above the horizontal level, in nature. So light in the evening and light at night should be in the lower area and not above our heads in order to be consistent with the natural conditions.
Jonathan: Well this is absolutely fascinating and I really enjoy how you're drawing parallels with the natural world because we talk about that in other contexts as well in regulating the cycle of our activities and the cycle of our eating in trying to mimic the natural conditions. What you're saying makes complete intuitive sense and it's fascinating that it's backed up with scientific observation as well. Dr. Wunsch, we are approaching the end of our time. I just want to thank you so much for joining us and for sharing your time with us. We know that it's valuable. I know that our listeners are appreciative too.
I wanted to give you a chance to promote briefly. Before the show we were looking to see if you have any materials and I know that you have various interviews with some other shows, Dr. Mercola namely, and you have some blog posts and things like that. I did find on amazon.co.uk a book in German, Licht Therapie that looks like it was written by you and five other authors. Is that the case? Is that released yet?
Dr. Wunsch: I don't think that is released yet and I don't think that it will be available in English, but I'm also interested in the effects of coloured light and I developed a set of coloured glasses, 12 different hues, according to the SpektroChrome system and in a few weeks there will be a manual available which introduces the reader to the SpektroChrome system and how we can use the colours in a controlled way in order to foster or to stimulate these natural autonomic processes which come into action for example, when we step out and take a walk in the forest or if we are in a sunrise or sunset situation or when you're looking over a field with yellow blossoms. What happens in our body, in our physiology depends very much on the quality also of colours we are surrounded by. This booklet will be available soon and then I have almost 50 presentations available on Vimeo.com/alexanderwunch and there is also a section Alexanderwunsch in English where you can find audio-visual presentations which can be accessed for free where I talk about many of the aspects of today's radio show. This might help understanding if you want to go deeper into the topic.
Jonathan: That's great.
Elliot: Just to add quickly, I can say that I've watched many of Dr. Wunsch's vimeo lectures and they are absolutely jam-packed full of really, really, really fascinating information. I would recommend all listeners to go to his vimeo page because really, this is information that is ahead of its time almost, but really makes intuitive sense and is not widely acknowledged by many people. But it really is important, I believe and go ahead and check out those videos. They are jam-packed. You may need to watch them a couple of times to finally start to understand it, but I just want to say again, thank you Dr. Wunsch. It's really been amazing having you on the show.
Dr. Wunsch: So, thank you for having me here with you on the show. It was great fun.
Jonathan: You're utterly welcome. We are totally excited that you were here and to delve further into the information that you shared. I know for one, I'm going to have to listen to this show again, maybe a few times to fully absorb some of the information that you gave us and so we highly appreciate it. Regarding the booklet and the glasses that you spoke of, where might our listeners look to find those when they become available?
Dr. Wunsch: There is a website http://www.spektrochrom.de/ but maybe I can give you the address or can send the address to Elliot because this website exists in a German and in an English version so interested people can learn about the system already on the website and they can register for a newsletter which might start soon and they will be able to find additional information and also when the book is available, they will find it there.
Jonathan: Awesome! Well thank you again. Not to repeat ourselves too much, but we really, really appreciate your time and we wish you the best in your life and in your studies. Please continue to share this information with people and thank you for all the work that you do.
Dr. Wunsch: Thank you very much Jonathan.
Jonathan: I think that we'll wrap it up for today. We're going to call that today's show. Thanks everybody for listening, for people participating in the chat. We did have a few questions that we weren't able to get to throughout the show but I think that that's okay. A lot of information was answered in a roundabout way and of course as Elliot mentioned, please check out Dr. Wunch's vimeo lectures. I'm sure that much more of that information is covered there. We encourage our listeners as well to check out the other SOTT Radio Show on Sunday at noon eastern time. Go to Radio.SOTT.net and you can see the air time in your local time zone. So, thanks again everybody and we will return next week with a new topic.
All: Good-byes.
about how house plants supply oxygen I discovered that it is the BACTERIA IN THE SOIL THAT SUPPLY THE OXYGEN. So the old sci-fi standby of the plants in the space ship supplying O2 is gone forever and instead ships would have to supply the plants with O2. So the astronauts would have to do without any plants at all which explains the replacement scenario of 'deep cryo sleep.'
Would that mean the agro farms here on Earth would be producers of CO2?