> healed my eczema with red light (infrared heater) It turn out that infrared is needed by all our cells to get rid of inflammation.

You’re mixing up red and infrared for the sake saying that LED bulbs are the Satan. This can still be corrected by adding red and infrared emitters to LED bulbs.

Before you go correcting him, consider the possibility that his infrared heater glows orange, and he knows by the theory of blackbody radiation (combined with the lowness of the melting point of all the substances used to make heating elements) that that means it is emitting even more red photons than orange ones.

The "therapy" bulbs with the red or infrared (or both) LEDs are expensive (if they're intense enough to have a therapeutic effect on large areas of skin) and if he happens to have a heater that glows orange or any high-intensity incandescent bulb (either the ones with the red coating sold as heat lamps or the ordinary ones used for lighting) he can use that instead.

Alternatively, he can go out in the sun, which is an intense source of red and infrared photons (of almost all wavelengths -- and tending to come at you in many directions because they reflect off of greenery, dirt and clouds) and if he doesn't want at the same time to be exposed to UV light he can cover up with high-UPF clothing and hat, and the infrared photons will go right through the clothing and hat.

Thanks, exactly my thinking wonderful explanation.

I live in Canada, my eczema was always in the winter and didn’t manifest when I go traveling south. I tried many things, but the medication is cortisone (can really help if you have a bad flare up) but thing spring back with a vengeance. You are playing the junky with your immune system, what I feel we do with most medication.

For long time I thought it was UV, vit-D, humidity, but I stumble upon this thing about infrared while watching Medcram to learn about Covid (awesome channel by a doctor)

Anyway, the heat dish was a cheap test, locally available.

I figured the spectrum will be continuous in opposition to specialized led, closer to what come from the sun anyway. To my surprise it worked.

Maybe the specialized lights are better/stronger/faster.

My highest confidence is in the sun.

Medcram's covid videos are what got me onto this, too.

They’re expensive though. Looked into this a year ago. Have things changed?

My holy grail is a powerful LED light source where you can adjust the spectrumin very granular detail, including at the extremes.

I mean can't one buy those IR emitting LEDs for security cameras or TV remotes for cheap? Seems like they'd get the job done but it's hard to say what intensity is required.

The exact wavelength on the red/IR spectrum matters for how deeply the photons penetrates into cells. IIRC, 600-1100 nm is a sweet spot, so from deep red to IR. But the same wavelengths don't seem to help all cells equally. I think eyesight is improved from 600nm-800nm, but skin and muscle healing with deeper IR wavelengths. Interesting stuff.

Note though that near infrared also carries a risk of cataracts. I think they used to call it ‘glass blower’s eye’ because looking at the furnace was a high dose of near IR. Modern IR heaters use much longer wavengths.

Good point. I'm sure it has a lot to do with dosage and intensity. If near IR stimulates more activity in mitochondria (the purported mechanism here), that indicates there are some proteins or other compounds sensitive to that wavelength. It then stands to reason that large dosages at high intensity over prolonged periods can stimulate so much as to cause dysfunction, aka glass glower's cataracts.

I play around pottery kiln, you have to be careful looking at red hot stuff.

You usually don’t need to look at the light source as it penetrate the skin, clothes, skull, etc.

LED light are very efficient. Huge improvement. It’s what I have all over my house. The world is switching it’s a done deal.

I would prefer a continuous light source, or something that is closer to the sun where I spend most of the day (office) otherwise I don’t think it matter much.

I've actually entered a kind of spooky YouTube tunnel on this! Seems as if there is something to this - my girlfriend has eczema and depression I figure getting something that does this might help. What heater did you use?

Here is the medcram video you mentioned about 940nm light and COVID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdiUnmpOgqE

I don't understand — if this randomized trial shows a benefit, and this video came out over a month ago, why is it not being discussed more, or trumpeted from the rooftops?

So much is made of observational studies for other remedies, and this is a prospective randomized study. If this turns out to be an effective treatment, isn't it terrible to not be telling COVID patients to go out and get some sun (which many sick people don't do)? As the doctor mentions, the sun is free, and would likely provide a similar benefit (if not greater).

I tried to spread the word, but people assume that it’s quackery as it sound new age and is not pushed by doctors.

Sadly, I think that doctor are mostly trained by pharma, and if there is no money for them then it won’t happen or won’t happen fast.

If you look at death per week in northern climate it closely follow the sun exposure.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2020017...

Yeah, I did wonder if it's just lack of a profit motive. I also wondered if scientists would be hesitant to show that "bringing light in through the skin" — which Trump was famously creamed for [1] — might actually work.

1: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/23/politics/fact-check-coronavir...

Damn your right, I forgot about this. I thought he was talking about UV to disinfect lungs...

I make sense. Infrared to reduce inflammation seems to be know from scientifics for a while, was know from holistic practitioners for much longer.

Consider that they put people in the sunlight in the pandemic of 1918.

> I don't understand — if this randomized trial shows a benefit, and this video came out over a month ago, why is it not being discussed more, or trumpeted from the rooftops?

Since COVID began, there have been thousands of papers, studies, and small-scale trials that supposedly showed something positive, but the results can't be replicated in other studies or disappear when the sample size is scaled up.

In this case, the first study linked in that YouTube video description (I don't have time to watch it, sorry) is a report from n=30 patients in a Brazilian hospital in a somewhat obscure journal.

Given n=30 patients, I would have expected the data to be available or at least to see a graph of the 30 dots so we could visualize the difference. Instead, there's a note at the bottom that says they'll provide the data on request. I don't put much faith into obscure papers that won't even show their small datasets.

Maybe there's something here, maybe not, but if there was something this significant you can bet that medical device companies would be all over it. The medical industry doesn't like to leave golden opportunities on the table.

Interesting point about the data only being available on request. That doesn't seem like the authors are super proud of their work. I wonder if they, or others, are doing larger follow-up studies, which could show whether this was a fluke or a glimmer of a real mechanism.

>but if there was something this significant you can bet that medical device companies would be all over it. The medical industry doesn't like to leave golden opportunities on the table.

Totally agree, except that mere sunlight could be a decent substitute for whatever they would develop and sell. Surely some people would pay top-dollar for the FDA-approved medical devices, but if sunlight provides similar benefits, lots of people (younger, poorer) would probably just stick with that.

> Interesting point about the data only being available on request. That doesn't seem like the authors are super proud of their work.

Noting that data is available upon request isn't exactly strange

But with an n=30 study, I'd expect a simple chart with the 15 control and 15 active participants on a plot.

This would make it easy to see if one group had, for example, 1-2 outliers that skewed the average. In small scale studies like this, you could have something like 1 patient who stayed in the hospital for 60 days in one group while everyone else has a more typical ~9 day stay. That outlier would skew the results to an extreme.

That's just one example. The real question is why they didn't include the simple chart, which would have allowed for us to see at a glance whether or not they had outliers.

There is many more studies on infrared. On mices, on humans.

Search "medcram infrared"

I am becoming more and more disillusioned of the medical system (I have seen a bit of how it work from the inside)

Pharma make all the repeatable money

They buy their way into anything: research, institutions, government, media, doctor formation.

The best possible business for them is multiple chronical disease that need daily medication and unsurprisingly, it’s exactly what is happening to more and more people each year.

> As we move further away from it we stack up the health problems self inflicted: crooked teeth, wisdom teeth, miopia, acnee, vid-d deficiency, autoimmune diseases, depression, anxiety, etc

The rest of these seem intuitively correct but could you expand on the dental problems?

Look for images from Weston Price’s book “nutrition and physical degeneration”, he toured the world a hundred years ago taking photos of teeth - it’s surprising that native tribal people all over had wide mouths not crowded teeth, no need for braces, they had white teeth and no need for fillings. Compared to today many in the west have narrow lower jaw, crowded crooked teeth and need many fillings.

Weston Price attributed it to nutritional deficit in our diets and suggested things like eating more organ meats, eat how traditional people did.

Then there’s sugar and fizzy drinks, sticky sweets, refined flour, cultivars of fruits chosen for sweetness, all very good for bacteria growing on the teeth causing tooth decay, and not so prevalent in the past with food being less sugary.

More recently John Mew has put forth the idea that chewing thoroughly involves pushing up with the tongue which is a strong muscle and it pushed out on the jaws from inside; over a childhood of chewing that causes the jaws to widen and teeth to have room. These days with processed convenience foods you can swallow in a couple of bites, children aren’t chewing as tough food for as long, and he suggests that’s a contributor to why modern people have teeth crowding and narrow jaw problems.

> These days with processed convenience foods you can swallow in a couple of bites, children aren’t chewing as tough food for as long

you'd think bubblegum would have helped with this. I don't think I've ever seen a kid turn down a gumball

Others have answered already, but I wanted to mention the book Breath by James Nestor which has a chapter on chewing in particular. I can recommend the whole book if this piques your interest.

We eat softer food, the pressure from chewing is necessary for our jaw to develop properly. Without it our jaw is smaller leaving not enough space for all teeths.

Smaller jaw also mean smaller airways in the sinus and throat making snoring and sleep apnea more common with huge repercussions.

Not the op but I read some article saying that it it is caused by the dietary product from corn fed cow as opposed to the traditional dietary product. Supplements with Vit K2 is an easy fix.

Europe is not corn but mainly wheat based, but it's the same after all.

Homo Sapiens have been on Earth in their current form for 200,000 years, and for 95% of that time (until agriculture emerged 10,000 years ago), they were primarily hunters, meaning they ate meat primarily.

From an economist's perspective, the return on hunting is something like 50x the return on gathering because of the huge number of calories one can acquire by killing a large fatty animal. I.e., six hours of hunting will yield you 50x the calories you could acquire from six hours of gathering. Competing with monkeys and parrots for fruit doesn't make sense when you could kill an antelope instead. (See the work of Miki Ben-Dor for more on this).

And it turns out that if you only eat meat, you develop a stronger, wider, and more attractive jaw, your wisdom teeth come in properly, you never develop cavities, and you have good gum health.

I avoided all plant-based calories in 2021, and when I went to the dentist for a cleaning, she specifically commented on my unusually good oral hygiene and gum health. Plants really aren't good for our bodies, including our gums and teeth.

Today we think of grains, fruits, and vegetables as being less expensive than fresh meat, but that is an artifact of technology and industrial farming -- it does not reflect the natural state of man.

Hunters and gatherers*

The hunting myth is in vogue, but one can make equally handwaved arguments for gathering as the obvious choice.

Plants never move, they have regular seasons, they never fight back, our gut bacteria are symbiotic with digesting plant matter, and it's way easier to chase away competition herbivores than actively hunting them. Since our roots are primates, hunting likely evolved from killing competing herbivores and eating them out of desperation during poor crop years.

Hunting is a risky exercise with variable returns by season. It requires far more knowledge and skill to succeed at.

Here are some things to consider about plants in light of your arguments:

1. 99% of all plants on Earth are toxic to human beings -- this is in comparison to 99% of all animals on Earth being safe for human beings to eat (including venomous snakes).

2. The fact that plants cannot move means that they fight off predators with toxins and chemicals. They contain natural pesticides, for instance. The only part of the plant that it wants to have eaten is the fruit. The seeds, on the other hand, are particularly well-defended. Plants contain lectins, oxalates, tannins, glucosinolates, and the list goes on and on. Animals don't fight back once they are dead, but plants do. (This is why 99% of plants are toxic to humans).

3. Plants have regular seasons, as you mentioned -- which is why plants are not available to be eaten through the winter in many parts of the world. Somehow our ancestors not only survived winters but also ice ages. Animals, on the other hand, exist year-round.

4. Hunting is not necessarily a risky exercise -- the largest animals, which provide the most calories, do not tend to run. Animals like Elephants, Rhinos, Hippos, etc., will turn and face a predator. They also have predictable paths to watering holes and can easily be captured by digging a hole in the ground and covering it with leaves.

You've made a good attempt at coming up with arguments, but I'm afraid the weight of the evidence argues in favor of our ancestors consuming mostly animals. In fact, the acidity of our stomachs is extremely high, in line with vultures, and is what we would expect to find in "hyper carnivores". You can read more about these findings here: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israeli-study-h...

I've gone as deep as two years full carnivore. The literature and pseudoscience is quite familiar.

> Here are some things to consider about plants in light of your arguments:

That was a critique, not an argument. I was trying to show handwaving without reputable citations is not an argument at all. It's just a narrative based on assumptions, unverified trust. You cite Times Of Israel, I could point to vegan/omnivore articles in HuffPo or Buzzfeed. Neither would have substance. Here is an example of an argument: https://biology.stackexchange.com/a/55977

(For the record I am back to omnivore).

Honestly it just sounds like you don’t have any response to my points.

> Homo Sapiens have been on Earth in their current form for 200,000 years, and for 95% of that time (until agriculture emerged 10,000 years ago), they were primarily hunters, meaning they ate meat primarily.

Hunters and Gatherers. Likely gathered a whole hell of a lot of not meat as well.

Would you spend $500 at the grocery store to buy 3000 calories worth of fruits and vegetables if you could instead spend $10 to buy 3000 calories worth of steak? Consider the fact that fruits and vegetables contain fiber, which human beings cannot digest, whereas steak does not.

There are close to 1800 calories in a 5 pound bag of potatoes vs 700 calories in a 10 oz steak. Pretty sure your dollar amounts there are vastly different from what is found at the grocery store.

Ancient human beings didn't have grocery stores, though. We're talking about what ancient human beings would have thought about the price of hunting vs. the price of gathering, not what modern humans find at a grocery store. Killing one wooly mammoth would have generated enough calories to feed an entire tribe for months.

I'm literally responding to your post about grocery prices.

Can you try to explain your point at some greater length, perhaps?

My point is that when viewed through the lens of economics, meat was a vastly less expensive way for ancient human beings to obtain calories than plants were.

The situation for ancient human beings would be equivalent to a situation today (for modern human beings) in which 3000 calories of fruits and vegetables would cost $500, whereas 3000 calories of steak would cost $10.

Sorry, but this is just not true. Meat was only a small part of the eating of our ancestors, as it still is for most tribal people. They hadn't an AK to shot at animals. So they spent more days without meat, depending on their luck at hunting.

Great summary.

(which most people will find unbelievable, not me though. Read meat has been my main food for a decade)

Check out "The Dental Diet" by Steven Lin.

He summarises the research by Weston Price nicely.

I love being part of the modern human experiment where we’re subjected to arbitary change without any prior tests. (I don’t love it that much)

Before that, people were “experimented on” by viruses, bacteria, and parasites. Also indoor smoke, etc. And how do you think folk remedies were tested?

To fuck around and find out is not modern, it’s the human condition.

To fuck around is human, to find out is divine.

Is this a thing? Or did you just spawn a quote for future generations to attribute to anonymous and Mark Twain in the coming centuries?

It's known as the malapropism.

In this case specifically of "to err is human; to forgive is divine," which sounds to me like Johnson but I'm not going to try looking up the attribution because, in this context in particular, the universe's love for irony all but guarantees I'll get it wrong.

...it was Alexander Pope.

Nobody uses those anymore, they're too popular.

English language stackexchange offered up "paraphrasing" and "snowclone", which I've never heard of.

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/292853/what-is-i...

Looks like a neopropism to me

A snowclone? Not sure if it's allowed to be that if there's only one of it though.

I've defs seen the quote used on the part of Twitter that likely has also used Tumblr in the past.

"Move fast and break things."

As a middle-aged man I am fairly sure that I would break if I tried to move fast.

I guess in the old days...people just died younger? (as a result of the risk taking of moving around quickly)

Well, if you got, say, a compound fracture, you were at least losing the limb. And in that process just hope the 'surgeon'/butcher was quick and not too drunk, and that luck was on your side in terms of bacteria.

I did myself some kind of old man injury bodysurfing in Mollymook last week. A quick bust of freestyle swimming to get on the wave busted something in my arm.

I guess I should slow down now I'm 50

I'm 45. I pulled a muscle when I sneezed recently. The end is nigh.

I'm some way past 45 and I hurt my arm cutting bubble wrap early in December. It's only just now back to normal.

Be glad of it. I did something unpleasant to a rotator cuff packing for a move last year and I'm not sure I'll get away without a surgical repair.

"Move fast and break your neck"

Half of all humans who ever lived did not make it past the age of five. We are living in the best time. I will take any of these problems over not knowing where my next meal is coming from, or dying from infection after a paper cut.

That is a reasonable personal position but it's not universal. It implicitly seems to assume that a long life of relative ease and physical health is best no matter how that is achieved. Personally I'd prefer a relatively short life of profound meaning and autonomy (even if it involves painful loss and physical suffering) over living in a rat's cage for 80 years, kept alive by my captors.

> Personally I'd prefer a relatively short life of profound meaning and autonomy (even if it involves painful loss and physical suffering) over living in a rat's cage for 80 years, kept alive by my captors.

Historically, that hasn't been an option.

"A relatively short life full of painful loss and physical suffering, living in a rat's cage" would be a better description of the median serf.

> Historically, that hasn't been an option.

What about hunter gatherers? Even in the history of our more recent western ancestors, people have always made radical decisions to live lives outside of the mainstream. Religious fanatics and martyrs come to mind.

> "A relatively short life full of painful loss and physical suffering, living in a rat's cage" would be a better description of the median serf.

You are leaving out the part I said about profound meaning. Mental suffering matters as much as physical suffering and a lack of meaning is a sure cause of mental suffering and is experienced by many if not most modern information workers to varying degrees.

"Hunter gatherers" "profound meaning" was what exactly? Religion? AKA superstition fueled by ignorance, that's an option available to you now.

Really whatever your definition of profound meaning is it is available to you now if you choose to see it. If you are waiting for your context to provide it for you, good luck.

> Historically, that hasn't been an option.

Now you’re just cherry-picking: going by raw years alone, we have been hunter-gatherers for far longer than the the thousands of years that have passed since the Agricultural Revolution started ('median serf').

“Oh”, someone says: “But more and more people have been born since the time we were hunter-gatherers”. Which is also true. But then surely you would pick “historically” to still be sometime after the Industrial Revolution, since we have doubled the population many times over since then. Hence, talking about serfs if that is some kind of middle-point “historically” is just cherry-picking.

I think both are true.

We have created the most abondance, comfort and security ever.

Now we have second order problems: too much abondance, confort, security.

Compared to what? the good old days when we were worshiping the sun? We've always been like this.

Do you think the tungsten bulbs were tested prior to deployment?

You don’t think that I count anything to do with lightbulbs as being part of the “modern humans” era??

The sun is the tried and true method.

But I think it’s possible it’s going to get worse because of LED, but I don’t know if the amount of power make a difference.

Would be simple to test with a bunch of mice: do AB tests, measure inflammations markers.

What if we had programmable LED bulbs that extended into the infrared, and the amount of infrared was inversely proportional to the weather?

In the winter, most electronics in the house are 100% efficient, because they heat the house. The only things better are heat pumps and insulation.

One of the advantages of LEDs is not needing to swap them out so often, so while I could swap bulbs in the winter, I really won’t, and neither will most of us.

Bright sunlight is 1 kW per square meter. You're going to need a lot of LED light to compare.

Which means the IR light from the old bulbs was pretty much neglectable too.

That is the biggest variable, I don’t know how much power is needed to make a difference. They did experiments with mices but I didn’t do any calculation of the power needed. Best thing to do it to go more outside, but that is not the current trend.

I'm very confident that we'll find the effect works well without standing out in the noonday sun. Moderately confident that we will discover that certain wavelengths are more important than others. If you find the right emitter, you might be looking at 40W on the winter solstice, and less than half that at the equinox.

Make sense. For therapy they often use infrared LED.

I use the heat dish as a quick test that was locally available and to my surprise it worked!

Why wouldn't you just go outside instead of trying to get it from a lightbulb?

Depending on where you are and what/when you work you might not be able to "just go outside" at that specific time.

It is currently 11°F with 14mph wind here

I promise I'm not trying to be that-guy, but cold or not, that sun exposure should still work and cold is good. it's uncomfortable, but it's not inherently 'bad' per se.

Honestly, that sounds like a beautiful winter day. Would be perfect to go skating or cross-country/downhill skiing in. Playing hockey, I doubt I'd even wear a jacket.

That puts the wind chill at -5°F. Won't be getting any rays bundled up for that.

Cold, dark Canada in the winter :(

But you are right, the sun is the best original source.

> I healed my eczema with red light (infrared heater)

What type of infrared heater did you use?

Simple parabolic heat dish from costco. 1-2 hour/day for a week.

Also used hydrating cream to prevent dryness with the heat.

I have this dish. It is a hot dish, what temperature setting did you have the dial at and how far away was it that you didn't burn?

For those not familiar with what is being discussed here, it's a coiled wire, same principle of operation as a hair dryer or toaster. Electrical current makes the wire heat up. It's wrapped around a cone-shaped central piece, and behind it is a parabolic dish like satellite tv dishes to direct the heat in a beam. It's a fanless space heater.

On medium at around 3m distance, if I put it lower it make annoying noises from switching on/off. For me it’s mostly on the legs. At some point I get too hot and I stop.

It’s also make me relaxed/tired after a while, maybe from the heat or infrared?

I would definitely go out in the sun instead, but this help in the darkest part of winter.

I hope it help you.

I think my eyes aged faster when I switched to LED monitor then to LED lights.

> I think we will have unintended consequence of everyone switching to led lights: the "wasted" infrared are actually useful for our body.

Not a chance - the amount of infrared and near infrared emitted from older style bulbs is a drop in the bucket compared to spending 1 minute outside (we’re talking 1000x more exposure outside).

What about a fireplace? How much infrared does a fire in a fireplace produce? And is that a healthy amount? Over the winter, I’ve been sitting in front of the fireplace a lot doing my work. I use about 3-4 logs an hour.

I wondered about this as well. And how do gas fireplaces (with 'logs' that light up red-hot) compare? Does it matter if you're facing it, or facing away?

If you feel radiated heat and see a bit of red infrared on a wide spectrum.

The infrared deeply penetrate the tissues, so it shouldn’t matter much.

Trust how you feel too.

>Does it matter if you're facing it, or facing away?

It is best to do both, and your sides too.

The infrared does not go all the way through your trunk or legs or head.

I would be amazed if any benefit from infrared outdoes the harm of smoke/air pollution.

With today’s fireplaces I think there is very little harm from smoke or pollution. Newer models are down to 1gram / hr of smoke and burning wood is carbon neutral for those that care about that part.

Nothing nicer than an indoor fireplace when it’s cold outside. The fact that it might help with degrading eyesight is a win.

Do you mean that much through the chimney or in the home? And what does that translate to for health outcomes. A gram of particles small enough to enter your bloodstream could actually be a lot for all I know.

And I ask about the chimney because fireplaces have been shown to impact neighbor health as well so it’s not just about getting it outside and it’s all good.

Here’s a link to the epa wood stove data. The 1gr is referring to the exhaust out the pipe.

https://www.epa.gov/burnwise/choosing-right-wood-burning-sto...

I think it’s a big part of why it feel so good in the winter.

Heat without infrared doesn’t feel the same at all.

Here (Canada) people have spent the winter close to a fireplace for 100’s of years. Warm room without infrared source is recent.

There is nothing better that having a nap in font of a window with full sun blazing down on you in the middle of winter.

Cats have known this all along.

It's interesting you say that. There's this feeling when you do some work outside with your top off in the AM, it's like a recharge just standing there for the first moments. I'll still cover up before noon, but those first moments where the suns coming over the treeline and hits your skin, it's magic.

>>There's this feeling when you do some work outside with your top off in the AM, it's like a recharge just standing there for the first moments.

Understanding I may not be on the fat part of bell curve when it comes to outdoor activities, but I've literally never experienced that feeling. Working with my top off means I'll spend the evening peeling blisters off my skin. Doesn't make my feeling or your feeling valid or invalid; but there's at best a tenuous line between how good something feels and how good it holistically is :-/

If you're getting blisters you've overshot the mark. Early morning sun is not going to do this, as it passes through much more atmosphere as it approaches you at an angle. Try covering up earlier, I'm talking about sunrise and the hour after, sunset and the hour before.

When people say "early" they can mean very different things, it's not really useful for gauging your actual risk.

Check a yearly UV index for your area. There are times of day that are completely safe for your skin type; but typically those times are quite early / late, like before 8am and after 4pm. UV tends to rise quite sharply in the morning, so while it might be a 2 or 3 at 8am it could be 5 or 6 at 9am (enough to burn your skin type).

When i was under paxil, i unwillingly skipped a day, not knowing this would trigger pain and brain zaps. I noticed everytime was getting sun to warm my skin, the pain and zaps would withdraw (the other one was chewing any food, i'm now extremely curious of the depth of these senses into our brain)

Paxil like many SSRIs can cause photosensitivity. [1] I suspect you were just noticing changes to photosensitivity associated with skipping a day.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19817765/

Thanks for the link, but it seems photosensitivity is tissue reaction like an allergy right ? In my case it was all neurological pain going away. And also it was also due to the warmth, it was deeper when outside directly hit compared to inside a room.

I notice huge improvements in my well being and energy levels spending time in the sun without much clothing on, even in the winter when there isn't enough UV for Vitamin D production.

I suspect there are many other benefits to sunlight other than vitamin D, and that the modern advice to avoid the sun and supplement D instead has been a huge mistake.

In addition to what you mentioned about "mitochondria need infrared," I've also seen at least three additional mechanisms: (1) We need bright sunlight for proper circadian rhythm, e.g. people in darkness experience disregulated sleep and ~26 hour waking periods. (2) Sunlight lowers blood pressure by producing nitric oxide. (3) Sunlight is necessary to regulate the dimensional growth of the eye, to prevent nearsightedness.

I suspect there are many more than this also.

I doubt that regular incandescent lamps have enough infrared to compete with natural sunlight or satisfy our biological need for infrared. People that do 'red light therapy' often use high wattage heat lamps close to the body without clothing or other barriers.

It's not just vitamin D, it's a long chain of different reactions. I prefer to run topless always if temps are comfortably above +5 Celsius. Unfortunately, Europe is probably the darkest place on earth at least in winter months, but this is the place where especially light skinned people evolved. Sun exposure without sunlight is of course not very efficient, but it's worth to use those rare moments when it shines.

What's the link between IR and mitochondria ? I understand skin tissue (or any exposed tissue) could react to radiations but not cells deeper (unless IR goes through us..).

Infrared or even red light penetrate deeply in our body, 10, 20 cm.

The mitochondria make atp from glucose+oxygen but also cause free radicals (think bad combustion) those float around and destroy what they touch.

To remove those the mitochondria also make melatonin(powerful antioxidant) that scoop up the free radicals so they can be eliminated but to make melatonin they need infrared radiation, I guess they evolved that way, infrared was available all day when activity was highest.

Now our brain make melatonin in the night, this would be the back up plan so that we don’t have to much inflammation at night when our activity level is reduced.

If you have an infection your system is working overtime to fight the virus, causing more free radicals/inflammation. It seem a big part of blood clothing in covid is an inflammation overload. Compounding that overweight people are naturally more prone to inflammation.

overweight + inside + infection + spike protein = clotting of blood.

Thanks a lot. I had no clue IR could penetrate that deep.

About clotting, do you 'now good books about it ? I'm having troubles with what may be microclotting (stress, grief maybe other factors) and I naturally want to know more.

The little I know is from medcram (doctor channel on youtube) Search "medcram blood clots" It’s mostly about covid.

I heard that fasting might be able to clean similar things, maybe?

What kind of infrared heater did you use? Heat bulb, floor heater, other? TIA