Summary: In this show, Dan speaks with Dr. Jamie Zeitzer who is an Assistant Professor in Psychiatry & Behavioral Science at Stanford and at the VA Aging Clinical Research Center of Stanford University. In his research on light and the timing of biological rhythms, he noticed something curious: A brief flash of light has a greater ability to adjust body clock timing versus continuous light exposure. For instance, sitting in a room with the light on 4a can adjust your internal clock by about 35 minutes. This means that if you usually wake up at 7:30a, tomorrow morning you would naturally wake up at 6:55a (and the timing of all your other body process would shift accordingly, too). On the other hand, if you were to get 2-millisecond flashes of light every 10 seconds at 4a (instead of sitting in a room with the light on), you could advance your internal clock timing by about 120 minutes - over 3x more than simply being in the room with the light on. That would mean that getting these light flashes at 4a would make 5:30a the next morning feel like your typical wake-up time. In this conversation, we also discuss an effort by the company LumosTech to commercialize this light technology and the many benefits that can come from it.
