The Pineal Body
Topic: Light
"Hey Tige," I said to Mr. Tiger, the imposture who resides within, "for the last few days I've been discussing an important subject. Have you been paying attention?

Lying through his teeth Tiger answered, 'Yes indeedy. Every word.'

I didn't bother to contradict the deliberate false impression he was attempting to convey because I wanted to wrap up this unit of posts and I wanted to get to it right away. I went along and said, "Good. Because as we are seeing this master endocrine gland that secretes melatonin and is involved in our biorhythms and just about everything else, effects all hormonal functions in the body."

The sharp-tongued pest shook his head up and down and said, 'it's all so important to me.'

I had to suppress a laugh before going on. At last I said, "The source of the material I will present today has been mostly taken from The Julius Axelrod Papers. I read in the first sentence to Tiger. "In the late 1950s, Axelrod's interest in neurotransmitter hormones led him to study the pineal gland, the tiny gland often called the third eye due to its central placement deep in the middle of the brain."

"From his findings into the metabolism and regulation of neurotransmitters," I said as I jumped to another sentence and read from the site, "Axelrod identified the pineal gland is a kind of relay station for serotonin in transit in the nervous system because," I continued, "the pineal regulates the release and distribution of serotonin in 12-hour cycles. These cycles of serotonin secretion define what scientists call the body's circadian rhythms. These are the natural rhythms that regulate the body's internal mechanisms for rest and sleep, and continue unabated whether or not the body is exposed to morning daylight or plunged into nighttime darkness."

'Excuse me for interrupting,' said Tiger, still kowtowing in order to put me off guard, 'but how does this fit in with all you said Monday?'

"I'll get to that," I answered, "I thought that first, it would be interesting to point out how brain chemistry can be changed because of these discoveries. Neurotransmitter reuptake drugs have changed the face of psychopharmacology. I was quoting the scientist, Julius Axelrod when I said, "new drugs to relieve mental illness - drugs to remove prejudice, to store memory, to suppress memory, to enhance intelligence - psychedelic trips, since we can control them, will be good ones."

'Prozac?'

"Yes, and other antidepressant medications," I agreed through a grim smile. "A Pandora's Box actually - a slippery slope. Once you introduce the poison into the well, how do you ever get it out of the water?"

Tiger began to answer before I shifted gears, 'Well...'

"Never mind Tiger. Let's move on," I said. Before closing out the huge topic about the mysterious role of the pineal, I provided an array of noteworthy links that would begin answer some of questions I brought up Monday.

Researchers Shine a Night Light on a Possible Link to Cancer
By KATHLEEN MCAULIFFE
Published: June 13, 1999

BY keeping night at bay, the electric light fostered today's round-the-clock society. But now scientists are asking whether there might be a dark side to so much brightness.

Experts on the biological effects of light worry that artificial illumination at night may be contributing to a rise in certain cancers, particularly breast cancer.

There is no direct proof of a connection, only circumstantial evidence from rodent and epidemiological studies. And even if a link is firmly established, scientists don't know how exposure to light at night would rank next to better-studied risk factors for breast cancer, like delayed childbearing, late menopause or alcohol consumption.

The Use of Melatonin in Children With Sleep Disturbances
Marcia L. Buck, Pharm.D., FCCP

The administration of exogenous melatonin has been used in a variety of clinical settings, most frequently in the management of sleep disturbances, including insomnia and jet lag.

Although considered a dietary supplement and not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), melatonin was classified as an orphan drug by the FDA in November 1993 for the entrainment of circadian rhythm in blind people.
In children, melatonin has been used for chronic insomnia, as well as in the management of sleep disturbances associated with vision disturbances, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and neurologic injury.[1- 3]

Sunlight emerging as proven treatment for breast cancer, prostate cancer and other cancers
Monday, July 11, 2005 by: Jessica Fraser

In The Breast Cancer Prevention Diet, Dr. Robert Arnot claims that national rates of breast cancer inversely correlate to solar radiation exposure. In other words, breast cancer occurs at a much higher rate in colder, cloudier northern regions than in sunnier southern regions. Johns Hopkins University Medical School conducted a ten-year epidemiological study that showed exposure to full-spectrum light (including the ultraviolet frequencies) is positively related to the prevention of breast, colon and rectal cancers.

Alcoholism, Addictive Drugs and Light
Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 1993 Jul, 54:7, 260-2.
Study done with Ken Blum, PhD.

Dr. Geller then gave injections of pineal melatonin to rats kept on a regular light-dark cycle and not subjected to any anxiety. The injections alone turned these rats into alcoholics. Dr. Geller stated that ¿it is only through such animal studies that one can hope to attain a clearer understanding and perhaps an ultimate treatment or cure, or both, for alcoholism in humans.¿

PMS Linked to Light

A prominent PMS researcher, Barbara Parry, M.D., of the University of California, San Diego, recently established that PMS is related to light and that phototherapy (light therapy) can alleviate PMS symptoms. Dr. Parry identified a woman in southern California who only has PMS during the winter months. Parry used specially designed lights to regulate the woman's serotonin levels during the day and sleep cycles at night. The woman's PMS symptoms were substantially reduced. (Phototherapy is best known for treating SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder.)

EMFs 101

Some scientists say EMF exposure may be a cancer promoter rather than a cancer initiator. Melatonin studies offer an insight into this theory. A hormone produced by the pineal gland, melatonin has been shown to slow the growth of breast cancer cells. Recent lab studies show that 1) EMFs may lower melatonin levels and thus promote cancer indirectly; 2) EMFs may nullify melatonin's cancer-fighting abilities in slowing the growth of cancer cells. So, even sufficient levels of melatonin would be useless if EMFs block its anti-cancer actions. As a potential causal link between EMFs and cancer, melatonin is gaining attention from the scientific community. Melatonin's benefits to human health have been the subject of several books published in the last year.

Also under investigation is electrical hypersensitivity, based on reports of skin disorders and allergic reactions to EMF exposure. Better recognized in Sweden, this condition is manifest by skin rashes and irritation, fatigue, dizziness, nausea and headaches associated with computer use. The Swedish Association for the Electrically and VDT Injured has a web site on electrical hypersensitivity. EMF exposure occupations such as dressmaking were 3 times as likely to develop Alzheimer's disease.

The Body Electric
author B Blake Levitt

Frey's recent comments are in response to thousands of complaints about headaches in cellular phone users that are now surfacing around the world, much to the amazement of mainstream medicine. But anyone who knows anything about this subject is not surprised by these so-called "new" reports. Humans truly are "electrical" beings. The heartbeat is electrical. Brain waves are electrical. Most hormonal and neuronal activity is electrically regulated. Some crucial aspects of cell division itself are too. In humans, the eye was thought to be the only organ that had evolved to perceive a band of the electromagnetic spectrum --that of visible light. But recent research has found that the pineal gland, located deep within the center of the brain, is probably a "magnetic" organ which determines our sense of direction, among other things. One could argue that not much happens in the human anatomy that isn't electromagnetic. So why wouldn't we react negatively to some frequencies, or, then again, positively to some others?

Malillumination
Topic: Light
"Theories may be interesting to think about . . . but this was affecting my own arthritis, a much more personal matter. Maybe I was one of the lucky people who get better for no reason at all, but I felt strongly that there was a reason. I had taken off my glasses and let the full unfiltered natural sunlight into my eyes and had also made a point of being outdoors six hours or more a day whether it was sunny or cloudy. To me the results were convincing enough: that light received through the eyes must stimulate the pituitary or some other gland such as the pineal, about which not much was known." - John Ott

"Hey Tige," I said to Mr. Tiger, my own inner stress, "can you guess what the term malillumination means?"

'Who cares?' burped the pest.

"It's a term coined by John Ott, the pioneer in light therapy," I told him before continuing with a series of entries about light and our brains.

"If the body doesn't get a balanced diet it will suffer from malnutrition as we know. Ott, Jacob Liberman and others, contend that malillumination is an imbalance too - it's a lack of full-spectrum light which results in a host of problems. One being, learning disabilities and another being, hyperactivity."

'Baloney,' uttered Tiger before saying, "gullible followers and nothing more."

I ignored him and inserted, "Ott carried out experiments with children in class rooms with full-spectrum lighting and others in rooms with standard cool-white fluorescent lights. His studies revealed that there is a discernible difference between the two light sources. The florescent lighting produced increased levels of stress producing hormones. Full-spectrum lighting did not."

'Those kids weren't trying hard enough,' contributed Tiger. 'And you?' he added with snarl, 'You're just trying to figure a way to explain your own dyslexia.'

"That could be true Tige," I responded. "But have a look here at a syndrome called Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome. It describes SSS as a visual perceptual problem involving how the nervous system encodes and decodes visual information - likely originating either in the retina of the eye or in visual cortex in the brain. Juxiposed with the work of Ott and Liberman, it just might be a clue."

'SSS and dyslexia? I think you're reaching,' said Tiger.

I kept talking. "Jacob Liberman calls this syndrome visual dyslexia and explains in his book, regarding the possibility that light and color effect the learning of adults and children, "Individuals suffering from this condition respond inappropriately to specific wavelengths of light; they feel overwhelmed in the presence of those wavelengths, almost as if they are allergic to them."

I wasn't surprised when Tiger departed, saying as he left, 'I'm allergic to this conversation.'

Talking to myself I asked what others might be asking as well. "What happens when the body is restricted to a specific light-diet and only a selected portion of the spectrum is allowed to enter the eyes?"

I didn't really know but I suspected that all this is complexly interconnected with not only how the brain works but how light enters and travels through the pathways of our brains, glands and organs.

I read a snippet from page 106 of Jacob Liberman's Light Medicine of the Future to help me decide if these theories had merit.

"For years we have been labeling and re-labeling children who appear to have difficulties we do not understand. We test and tutor them continually, only to find out that they are usually very bright but that for some reason outside of our understanding they do not achieve in the expected manner within the traditional learning environment. Although the labels for these children have changed from dumb, stupid and lazy to dyslexic, minimally brain dysfunctioned, and learning disabled, the labels nonetheless scar them for life..."

Sleep oh Wonderful Sleep
Topic: Light

"Light entering the eyes not only serves vision, but also travels to other important brain regions. It is believed that applying certain frequencies of light by way of the eyes can restore balance within the body's regulatory centers, thereby directly affecting the source of visual dysfunctions. This balance is referred to as syntony." - Syntonics web site


"Hey Tige," I exclaimed excitedly to Mr. Tiger, the pest who sees no further than his own nose, "isn't life something?"

'That's for sure,' he answered right away. Knowing him though, I suspect it was for a completely different reason than the one I was bringing to his attention.

To explain my outburst I started with, "I saw the doctor Wednesday - this time it was my ear, nose and throat man and not Dr. Madden, my neurologist whom I discussed in my accidently deleted blog."

'What'd he say?' asked Mr. Tiger, feigning interest about my latest visit to the ear, nose and throat specialist.

"A lot," I responded, "mainly we discussed, more or less off the doctor patient record, that I might be able to throw my C PAP machine out the window one day down the road."

'I wouldn't do that if I were you,' advised the pest in a trembling voice. 'Sleep apnea is a serious condition. Didn't you say so yourself.'

"It is,' I agreed, "and I am giving the uncomfortable contraption my best effort, but I am beginning to see too, that there is more under the sun that meets the eye - literally."

'I suppose you're going to work the eye into this conversation about your ear, nose and throat?' Tiger surmised as his lifted towards the sky and off to the right in that all too familiar, "you gotta be kidding me" gesture.

Here me out Tige," I said because I knew what I was about to say might be construed as coming from left field. "As my sister Sherry recently said in a email exchange, "Doctors are just guides along the way - detectives for that matter. " I have to agree with her," I added before continuing with a paste from our email family exchanges regarding Wednesday's doctor visit.

"As you know," I went on, "over the summer months my neurologist, acting as a medical detective, sent me for two sleep studies, two MRI's, had my blood work done, prescribed Kolopin, which I didn't take for more than a month. All to determine the cause of my deep fatigue."

'Yeah?' grumbled the bored pest who only wanted to hurry me along.

"Based on those results and all that I've studied about the mysteries of the mind slash body connections, and because they've ruled out anatomical obstructions," I said without taking a breath, "I'm beginning to think that there is something else I need to look at."

'Your eyes?'

"Yes, Tiger, my eyes," I answered saying this as I blew the dust off of Jacob Liberman's book, Light - Medicine of the Future. I said, "After I refresh myself with this book, I will return tomorrow with a fuller explanation."

I ended with a paste of a snippet from a quickly written family email exchange. Mr. Tiger ended with that look again.

email exchange:
Good morning family,
To answer the sleep apnea question that was asked, I'd say, yes, sleep apnea is something that happens when you relax during sleep; physically speaking. The doctor ruled out what would be detectable by probing my throat to see if this or that is too big or in the way.
I was just happy to hear he saw nothing that looked to be suspicious.
Sorry if I said something that sounded like I was saying that the C PAP is not for sleep apnea. It is.

BTW, Sleep ap is not this doctor's area of expertise.
Since he operates on so many with throat problems, he's observed that after surgery, people saying as a side note, "Oh and btw, I'm sleeping so much better too," when in fact, that was not the reason they went to him to begin with. It was moreso to correct snoring.*

After he checked me over, the rest of our conversation was not exactly like doctor/patient. His hypothesis about the light/excitement in the brain is not etched in the journals of medicine. It was an observation of his that we discussed.

"Some people, a small percentage, seem to do better with sleep when they do quiet reading, yoga, meditation or something that quiets them before bed." This is well documented and not a new discovery, but how the computer effects us is. When I mentioned my habit of using the computer before bed time (which I've done for about 10 years now), we talked about the light source and excitement to the brain and it was suggested that that might well be an ingredient to my poor sleep.

He thinks, after my sleep pattern is reset, by cutting out the computer, for instance, I might be able to use the C PAP machine only when I think it is necessary rather than every night. He did say, the computer, for me, might well be a hidden factor of my sleep disturbances. Said another way; it might well be something that this kind of explanation for sleep problems is not even looked at by mainstream doctors. I agree.

I think that I've known this for some time because I've read in the book, "Light - the Future of medicine" by Jacob Liberman; ie, the eye, which takes in light, can do things in the brain that upsets our internal cloak (maybe resulting in sleep apnea) via the gland pineal gland.

No I never asked him about an ear infection. I don't think they cause nerve damage in the way I have it, although life has many surprises. I think it is a hereditary weakness. Too much of this odd "stuff" runs in our family. I really don't know why but I'm thinking it has something to do with light/eye/brain.
I think the dyslexia falls under a similar umbrella.
I think I'm going to read Jacobs book again.
Love, Kathy
*I don't really snore. Oz says I do though make a clicking sound.