The healing power of full-spectrum light

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, Jan, 2004 by Joseph G. Hattersley

Chlorination and Melanoma

Drinking and swimming in chlorinated water can also cause malignant melanoma. (41-44) Sodium hypochlorite, used in chlorination of water for swimming pools, is mutagenic (45) in the Ames test and other mutagenicity tests. (46), (47) Redheads and blonds are disproportionately melanoma-prone; their skin contains a relative excess of pheomelanins (48) compared to darker people. (49)

Franz H. Rampen and his associates in The Netherlands state that the worldwide pollution of rivers and oceans and the chlorination of swimming pool water have promoted an increase in melanoma. (50-52)

Another major factor in the increase in reported incidence of melanoma has been physicians' continually relaxing their standards for what constitutes melanoma.

Synthetic Hormones and Melanoma

What about oral contraceptives and hormone replacement therapy (HRT)? Melanomas have increased sharply among women in the principal Pill-taking countries of Australia, America and in Europe. In the Walnut Creek (California) study, all the women who developed melanomas under the age of 40 had used the Pill. By 1981, the overall increased melanoma risk for Pill-users was statistically significant at three times. (53) The Pill also promotes development of heart attacks, in part by depleting body stores of vitamin B6. (54)

Further, like breast cancer cells, those tumours have oestrogen receptors. And so women on HRT are more likely to develop melanomas than non-users. A recent study of 52,705 women on HRT found that the risk of breast cancer increases by 2.3% for each of the 11 years the average woman takes HRT. The good news is that the effect diminishes on stopping it and disappears after about five years. The authors comment: "These findings should be considered in the context of the benefits and other risks associated with the use of HRT." (55) Others challenge the assumption that HRT provides benefits. (56-58)

FS Light & Childhood Health

In 1973, radiation-shielded full-spectrum (FS) lights were installed in five classrooms in Sarasota, Florida. And what happened? Several extremely hyperactive, learning-disabled children calmed down completely and learned to read. Absenteeism dropped. The children in four standard-lit rooms continued to misbehave (as tracked by concealed motion-detecting cameras); their learning disabilities and absenteeism were unabated. (59) And after a year, students in the full-spectrum classrooms had one-third less tooth decay than those taught under standard lighting. Laboratory mice, which had been exposed all their waking hours to FS light, had zero tooth decay. (60) Similar findings were reported from California, Washington state and Alberta, Canada. (61) A classroom comparison in Vermont found that full-spectrum lighting strengthened immunity. (62), (63)

Why was there so much less tooth decay after exposure to full-spectrum light, including trace UV? And why did immunity improve under FS lights? According to Dr. Ott: "Every nutritional substance and medicine has a specific wavelength absorption. If those wavelengths are missing in the artificial light source a person is exposed to, then the nutritional or other hoped-for benefits of the substance will not be utilised." (63a) UV functions as a nutrient and as a co-factor (a substance required for a bodily process to occur) in the utilisation of other nutrients.