blue light associated with prostate and breast cancer

There’s ample reason to mock the idea — it’s scary.

https://www.nature.com/articles/6601626

Cancer is very serious.

I just don't think blue light causes cancer.

IIRC whether Melatonin supplements actually get anything past the blood-brain barrier is undecided. They are potentially helpful. My anecdote is that they do seem to help me get to sleep but I feel very groggy the next morning even if I take them fairly early the night/evening before. Could be placebo or just coincidence though.

Every link in the causal chain is well tested and documented: blue light exposure reduces melatonin, reduced melatonin increases risks of certain types of cancer. The only question is whether this extends to something as widespread as working nights, if your sleep pattern is reversed from most, does it only matter if you are exposed to lots of blue light during your “relative night” or during actual nighttime as well?

The whole point is that it’s exposure to blue light during the night that is the major cause for these issues. No flashlight or screen comes close to matching the blue light production of the sun during the day. The only exception to that is if you’re on the night shift and have blue light exposure during the day, which to you is night.

very cool

do you think blue light could be keeping your melatonin suppressed?

Im interested in trying Red Trits

Most of the OTC melatonin pills are massive overdoses, far more than the body produces naturally during a dark night.
The pills dose you with 15 to 30 milligrams or more; one milligram is one thousand micrograms.

The body’d natural production is measured in _micro_grams.

The risk that this poses for you to develop cancer has to be so small as to be almost infinitesimal. You are far more likely to develop a form of cancer from chemical exposure or other environmental/epigenetic factors. This thread needs to die.

Do you understand the concept of bioavailability? Or first pass metabolism?

take some warm trits and call me in the morning
.

After some more reading it seems Melatonin taken orally absolutely does pass the blood-brain barrier. Don’t know what the bioavailability is though, or how much is broken down in the gut before absorption.

Risk factors compound with one another though, and eliminating or reducing this one should be fairly easy for many people. Even if cancer risk isn’t the primary concern blue light exposure is clearly having numerous negative health affects for many people. Lack of sleep/lower sleep quality is linked with many other health conditions and overall reduced quality of life, productivity at work, etc.

Not the gut, it undergoes hydroxylation in the liver. Just because you take a 15mg dose of a medication does not mean that it is the effective concentration that your body receives.

I am not arguing that there is no health risks from exposure to blue light wavelengths. Just that there is very flawed thinking by people with no formal training.

Risk factors do not always compound and I am not sure how you came to that conclusion, it would depend on numerous factors.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/27/health/artificial-blue-light-prostate-breast-cancer-study/index.html

You can look this stuff up.

I agree with the spirit of what you’re saying here but reduction in effective dose can start by a substance being broken down by chemicals/temps independent of the body actively processing it. IDK if melatonin specifically is broken down by stomach acid though and if not, I see exactly what you meant.

Could you elaborate on this? Were the researchers in this study not properly trained/educated?

Of course they don’t in every situation, but take for example being both a cigarette smoker and heavy drinker. Obviously one doesn’t cancel the other out and in most scenarios that would be the case too. Unless there are direct opposing effects/results they will.

Nevermind, it looks like the actual definition of “compounding risk factors” are those that are multiplicative with each other. I guess “additive” would be a better term?

Edit: It’s “accruing”. TIL

What he said . . .

Since I haven’t read through the whole study itself, is that isolating this particular risk factor? News articles on medical studies have a LONG history of misinterpreting correlation as causation and ignoring any of the other research that shows they can’t study just one variable’s effects.

15% of 2 mg would be 0.3mg or 300 micrograms, you used the phrase “massive overdoses” which implied that there are significant side effects from taking such a dose. That is absolutely incorrect. I would also say correlation is not causation and the only people drawing incorrect conclusions are those in this thread.

If you want a deep dive into weighing the risk factors, this paper and those it cites will be a good start; click through for the cited sources.

I think studies of the effect of blue (or other) light sources on melatonin production and the relation of melatonin levels vs risk for these types of cancers is needed to see the whole picture.

That study simply shows a correlation between “ALAN” and cancer rates vs the whole causal chain.

Any study that primarily relies on self reporting is inherently flawed and if you don’t get that then there is no hope in me continuing to argue here.

Yep. Put those questions into Google Scholar and you’ll find much of the work you wish for has been done and published.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=melatonin+level+cancer+correlation&btnG=

I’m not going to try to summarize the field here, though. I’m just a casual reader like yourself, albeit with a bent toward looking things up in Google Scholar.

:+1:

Expose it to mass quantities of ‘Blue Light’… that will kill it post haste. . :wink:

Exactly…… :+1: . For any that do not understand, "you can look this stuff up". Google be ur’ friend…. :wink:

My wife is a clean freak and as a result the light lives ‘in’ the draw instead of on top now.

If you’re asking if I felt affected by the blue light and my sleep then no, there are many other factors that have a far greater impact on my sleep pattern. Besides I honestly think the low output of trits and glow have much less impact than other sources of light in everyday life e.g. room lighting, phones, pc’s…. etc…