Your Body Hates Bad Lighting: How Light Exposure Wrecks, or Restores, Your Health

Myanmar wasn't supposed to be on our list.

When my wife and I compiled our "better be done without kids" destinations, we focused on the obvious ones. Five weeks in remote Patagonia. Nepal trekking. Four weeks on the Trans-Siberian Railway through Russia. Two weeks in North Korea with government guides watching our every move.

But when Myanmar opened its borders in 2011, we packed our backpacks on short notice and went anyway.

The Golden Rock pilgrimage site sits atop a gravity-defying boulder on Mount Kyaiktiyo. According to Burmese legend, this 25-ton granite boulder remains perched on the cliff edge because a single strand of the Buddha's hair is enshrined inside the tiny stupa crowning the rock. Pilgrims buy packets of 24-karat gold leaf, then press the delicate squares onto the boulder while whispering wishes.

We slept there. Right next to the rock site.

The bells struck at 5 AM. I stumbled from my sleeping bag onto the viewing terrace, wrapped in a fleece jacket that felt absurd given Myanmar's tropical latitude. Mount Kyaiktiyo at dawn is alpine cold, the kind that bites through the fabric and shocks you awake.

What happened next still brings tears to my eyes. And before you judge, there are precisely three officially acceptable reasons for men to cry: major sports events involving your favorite team, the birth of your first child, and nature's beauty in full force.

As the horizon blushed pink, the Golden Rock began to glow. This massive boulder, perched impossibly on a cliff edge, transformed into molten gold against the awakening sky. The coastal plain below released early fog in ghostly ribbons. Monks chanted in the distance. The entire scene felt like nature's own cathedral, designed to humble every human being who witnessed it.

That sunrise taught me something most executives never grasp: perfect timing is everything.

But here's the brutal irony. While I was witnessing nature's clockwork precision in Myanmar, back home in the corporate world, millions of ambitious professionals were waging biological warfare against themselves every single day. They just didn't know it.

Your biology evolved for one rhythm. Your ambition demands another. This internal war is systematically undermining everything you're trying to achieve. Most executives are fighting the wrong battle entirely.

The Biology Behind the Battle

Light is the master controller of human biology. When photons hit specialized cells in your retina, they send signals directly to your brain's master clock, the suprachiasmatic nucleus¹. This tiny cluster of neurons orchestrates every biological process in your body.

Morning light triggers a hormonal cascade. Your cortisol spikes, creating alertness. Your pineal gland stops producing melatonin, the sleep hormone². About 14-16 hours later, your brain starts ramping up melatonin production again, setting your body's internal clock for sleep.

This system evolved to sync perfectly with the sun's cycle. Bright days, dark nights. Modern professional life created the opposite: dim days under artificial lighting and bright nights staring at screens. Your internal clock fights a losing battle against mixed signals every few minutes.

The Modern Trap: How "Dim Days, Bright Nights" Destroy Executive Function

Your ancestors lived by a simple rule: when the sun rose, they woke. When darkness fell, they slept. You live by a different rule: fluorescent-lit boxes during the day and LED-lit screens at night. Dim days, bright nights. The exact opposite of what your biology expects.

Scientists at Brigham and Women's Hospital discovered something that should terrify every high performer: individual sensitivity to evening light varies by more than 50-fold between people³. Some executives can handle bright office lights until midnight and still sleep well. Others have their entire circadian system hijacked by a bedside table lamp.

Most professionals are unsure which category they fall into. They're flying blind through the most fundamental aspect of human performance.

The cognitive tax is brutal and immediate. When your circadian system is disrupted, working memory drops 15%. Decision quality craters. Processing speed crawls⁴. That afternoon brain fog, you blame on lunch? It's actually your morning light deficit catching up with you.

Meanwhile, you're spending thousands on executive coaching, productivity apps, and performance supplements while ignoring the master variable that controls everything else.

Challenge #1: "You're Obsessing Over Blue Light Glasses While Your Morning Routine Sabotages Your Entire Day"

Blue light glasses have become the new productivity totem. Biohackers swear by them. Even prominent science influencers now market them. Looking at you, Huberman. Not this, too.

Here's the truth: 99% of blue light glasses are expensive placebos.

Most blue light glasses filter 10-25 % of blue light. That's like wearing a raincoat with holes in it and wondering why you're still wet. The ones that actually work, the amber-tinted glasses that block 90%+ of blue light, make you look like an idiot wearing safety goggles. Try explaining that look in your next meeting.

But here's what's really perverse about the blue light obsession: you're worrying about evening light while completely ignoring the morning light that actually matters.

Your morning routine is likely sabotaging your entire day, and you may not even realize it.

Most executives wake up, stumble to the coffee machine in their dimly lit kitchen, check emails on their phones, and then drive to work in a dark car to sit in a fluorescent-lit office. By the time they see actual sunlight, it's already noon. They've missed the most critical window for biological activation.

Here's the kicker: your office is a circadian dead zone. Standard office lighting pumps out 300-500 lux. Outdoor light on a cloudy day delivers 10,000 lux. You're spending 8-10 hours per day in a lighting environment that's systematically degrading your biological function⁷.

Research tracking over 400,000 people found that each additional hour spent in outdoor light was associated with better mood, easier sleep onset, and reduced need for antidepressants⁵. The effects were independent of physical activity. It's not about moving your body. It's about feeding your brain the light it craves.

When you skip morning light, you're essentially telling your body it's still nighttime. Your cortisol awakening response stays muted. Your melatonin production stays elevated longer than it should.

Then you wonder why that third espresso isn't working.

Your perfect morning routine, including meditation, journaling, and a protein-rich breakfast, becomes worthless if you're doing it all in the biological dark. You're optimizing around the edges while the foundation crumbles.

Challenge #2: "Your Evening Productivity Sessions Are Systematically Destroying Tomorrow's Cognitive Capacity"

The most dangerous myth in executive performance? That late-night grinding builds careers.

You stay in the bright office until 9 PM, crushing through emails and strategic planning. You come home, flip on the overhead lights, and keep working on your laptop until midnight. You feel productive. Accomplished. Like you're winning.

You're actually sacrificing tomorrow's sharpness for tonight's illusion of progress.

Research from Harvard shows that exposure to just 24 lux of light in the evening, roughly equivalent to a dim table lamp, can suppress melatonin production by 50%⁶. Most office environments pump out 300-500 lux. Your home probably hits 100-200 lux with standard lighting.

You're not working late. You're chemically preventing your brain from entering recovery mode.

The melatonin suppression creates a cascade of dysfunction. Your sleep onset gets delayed. Your sleep architecture gets fragmented. Your growth hormone release gets blunted. Your memory consolidation gets impaired. You wake up cognitively compromised, then compensate with stimulants and willpower.

This compounds over time. Chronic evening light exposure doesn't just make you tired. It makes you stupid.

The executives who truly win understand that protecting tomorrow's cognitive capacity is more valuable than extending tonight's productivity window. They know when to stop. When to dim the lights. When to let biology take over.

Those who don't learn this lesson burn out spectacularly, usually right when their careers should be at their peak.

The Strategic Ceasefire: Why Light Is The Master Switch

This hits the core of the Activate pillar in my Upward ARC framework. Most health optimization focuses on what you do. Sleep protocols. Nutrition plans. Exercise routines. Almost nobody focuses on light as the master variable that makes everything else possible.

Think of light as the operating system for human biology. Without it running correctly, every other application crashes.

Your sleep optimization? Useless if your circadian system is confused about when bedtime should be. Your nutrition protocols? They underperform when your metabolic rhythms are misaligned. Your exercise recovery? It suffers when your growth hormone release is blunted by poor light exposure.

Most executives try to optimize individual tactics while ignoring the foundation that supports them all. It's like trying to run high-performance software on a corrupted operating system.

Light exposure is the foundation that either supports or sabotages every other aspect of the Activate pillar. Get it right, and your sleep quality improves without changing your sleep hygiene. Your energy becomes more consistent without adjusting your diet. Your stress resilience increases without adding meditation apps.

The monks at Myanmar's Golden Rock understand something your LED-lit office has forgotten: there's sacred timing to human biology. You can fight it or align with it. One path leads to sustainable performance. The other leads to biochemical chaos.

This isn't about becoming a monk or living by candlelight. It's about strategic alignment, not biological warfare.

Tactical Protocols: The Executive's Light Arsenal

Skip these protocols, and your entire optimization stack becomes worthless. Get them right, and everything else falls into place.

Protocol 1: The Natural Light Advantage

Natural sunlight remains undefeated. Even on cloudy days, outdoor light delivers 10,000+ lux, roughly 20 times brighter than your office.

Within 60 minutes of waking, ideally spend 20-30 minutes outside. No sunglasses. No windows between you and the sky. Direct retinal exposure to natural light is non-negotiable.

Cloudy doesn't matter. Overcast skies still provide more circadian stimulus than any artificial light source. Take calls while walking outside. Schedule coffee meetings on outdoor patios. The goal is to accumulate natural light exposure throughout your morning hours.

Protocol 2: Artificial Light Strategy

When natural light fails, technology steps in. This is your winter protocol and backup plan for dark mornings.

Medical-grade light therapy devices deliver 10,000 lux at a measured distance. Position the device 16-24 inches from your face, angled slightly downward. You don't stare directly at it, but the light must reach your retinas.

Use your lightbox while drinking coffee, checking emails, or reviewing daily priorities. Same time every day. Same duration. Same intensity. If you're naturally a night owl trying to shift to an earlier schedule, start immediately upon waking.

Protocol 3: Blue Light Blocking Reality Check

The research on blue light-blocking glasses is mixed at best. A recent meta-analysis found no conclusive benefits for general populations⁸.

For the glasses to work effectively, they must be amber or orange-tinted, blocking at least 90% of blue light at wavelengths of 450-500 nanometers. Yellow tints don't cut it. If the lenses don't look obviously orange, they're not blocking enough blue light to matter.

Most people who claim benefits are likely experiencing a placebo effect. However, if you must work under bright lights in the evening, amber-tinted glasses can offer some protection. Wear them for 2-3 hours before your target bedtime. Accept that you'll look ridiculous.

Blue light-blocking glasses are a form of damage control, not optimization. If you need them every night, you're doing something fundamentally wrong with your evening environment.

Protocol 4: The Evening Wind-Down

Create an electronic sundown 2 hours before bed. Harsh overhead lights go off. Screens get turned off or switched to maximum night mode settings. Lighting shifts to dim, warm-toned lamps under 30 lux.

If you absolutely must work late, use task lighting only. A small desk lamp with warm bulbs. No overhead fluorescents. No bright computer monitors without heavy filtering.

The goal isn't perfect darkness. It's relative darkness that allows your pineal gland to begin melatonin production on schedule.

Most executives resist this protocol because they're addicted to the artificial alertness that bright evening light provides. But that alertness is borrowed from tomorrow's cognitive budget. You always pay it back with interest.

The Return to Sacred Timing

That sunrise at Myanmar's Golden Rock revealed something profound about timing and transformation. The monks didn't try to force the sunrise to happen on their schedule. They aligned their schedule with the sunrise.

Your biology operates by the same principle. You can fight it with caffeine, willpower, and artificial light. Alternatively, you can align with it and gain a systematic advantage over everyone who is still waging war against their own circadian system.

The choice isn't between ambition and biology. It's between sustainable excellence and inevitable burnout.

Your ancestors knew something about light that your LED-lit office had forgotten. They understood that perfect timing isn't just beautiful; it's also a gift. It's powerful.

When you align your light exposure with your biological rhythm rather than fighting against it, everything changes. Your energy becomes more consistent. Your focus sharpens. Your recovery accelerates. Your performance becomes sustainable rather than borrowed against future capacity.

The sacred timing that creates lasting transformation has nothing to do with mysticism and everything to do with precision. Get the timing right, and the biology follows.

That's the lesson of the Golden Rock. That's the foundation of sustainable performance. That's why your light exposure might be the most critical variable you're not optimizing.

Stay healthy.

Andre

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References

¹ Zeitzer, J. M. (2018). When is a proxy not a proxy? The foibles of studying non-image-forming light. Journal of Physiology, 596(11), 2029-2030.

² Cajochen, C. (2007). Alerting effects of light. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 11(6), 453-464.

³ Phillips, A. J., Vidafar, P., Burns, A. C., McGlashan, E. M., Anderson, C., Rajaratnam, S. M., Lockley, S. W., & Cain, S. W. (2019). High sensitivity and interindividual variability in the response of the human circadian system to evening light. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(24), 12019-12024.

⁴ Chellappa, S. L., Steiner, R., Blattner, P., Oelhafen, P., Götz, T., & Cajochen, C. (2011). Non-visual effects of light on melatonin, alertness and cognitive performance: Can blue-enriched light keep us alert? PLoS One, 6(1), e16429.

⁵ Burns, A. C., Saxena, R., Vetter, C., Phillips, A. J., Lane, J. M., & Cain, S. W. (2021). Time spent in outdoor light is associated with mood, sleep, and circadian rhythm-related outcomes: A cross-sectional and longitudinal study in over 400,000 UK Biobank participants. Journal of Affective Disorders, 295, 347-352.

⁶ Zeitzer, J. M., Dijk, D. J., Kronauer, R., Brown, E., & Czeisler, C. (2000). sensitivity of the human circadian pacemaker to nocturnal light: Melatonin phase resetting and suppression. Journal of Physiology, 526(3), 695-702.

⁷ Figueiro, M. G., Steverson, B., Heerwagen, J., Kampschroer, K., Hunter, C. M., Gonzales, K., Plitnick, B., & Rea, M. S. (2017). The impact of daytime light exposures on sleep and mood in office workers. Sleep Health, 3(3), 204-215.

⁸ Singh, S., Keller, P. R., Busija, L., McMillan, P., Makrai, E., Lawrenson, J. G., Hull, C. C., & Downie, L. E. (2023). Blue‐light filtering spectacle lenses for visual performance, sleep, and macular health in adults. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 8, CD013244.

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A note for new readers:

I'm a trained reconstructive facial surgeon, medical doctor, and dentist. Before launching this newsletter, I had a varied career: competitive freestyle wrestler, management consultant (McKinsey), entrepreneur (Zocdoc, Thermondo, and docdre ventures), and corporate executive (Sandoz). Today, I'm a Managing Director and Partner at BCG.

Husband of one. Father of three. Split between Berlin's urban pulse and our Baltic Sea retreat. I'd rather be moving than sitting. Not just hobbies. Research. My body is my primary laboratory; I've been conducting experiments for decades.

If this is your first time here, welcome. I'm excited to share what I've learned—and will continue to learn—with you.

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DISCLAIMER:

Let’s get one thing straight: None of this—whether text, graphics, images, or anything else—is medical or health advice. This newsletter is here to inform, educate, and (hopefully) entertain you, not to diagnose or treat you.

Yes, I’m a trained medical doctor and dentist. No, I’m not your doctor. The content here isn’t a replacement for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

If you have questions about your health, talk to your physician or a qualified health professional. Don’t ignore their advice or delay getting care because of something you read in Health, Redefined. Be smart. Do your research. And, as always, take care of yourself.