This type of temporal evolution of the light emission appears seemingly to be a general behavior of biophotons coming from seeds in the germination phase, for example Gallep and dos Santos [7] describe a very similar emission (see their Figure 1) concerning the germination of wheat seeds.
light in shaping life biophotons in biology and medicine
The transition from regions with crucial events to regions where FBM dominates suggests the influence of quantum coherence [48]. Therefore, we are forced to adopt a physical interpretation of the transport of information that cannot rest only on the role of crucial events. Nevertheless, we think that our paper supports an important contribution to the revolution occurring in biology [56,57,58,59,60]. This is so because, to the best of our knowledge, in the current literature no research work has revealed the existence of crucial events in the germinating process. This paper shows that they exist at least in the first phase of the germination process. Although many authors emphasize the importance of quantum coherence for cognition, including authors believing that biophotons favor cell-to-cell communication, there is no prescription on how to measure and determine the intensity of quantum coherence. We believe that the results of this paper will lead to future research work where the role of quantum coherence can be established with more precision, by evaluating in detail the spectrum P(f) and deepening the quantum coherence properties discussed in Ref. [48].
4 Preface Welcome to the study of the photonics of life. As you venture into this exciting field, you will discover many wonderful things. Photonics is an all-encompassing light-based optical technology that is being hailed as one of the dominant technologies for this new millennium. Photonics utilizes photons instead of electrons to transmit, process, and store information and thus provides a tremendous gain in speed in information technology. Biophotonics is an extension of photonics dealing with the interaction between light and biological matter. In nature, one recognizes beautiful examples of biophotonics at work in basic principles of life such as harnessing photons in photosynthesis and conversion of photons in molecular structures. Conversely, biology is also dealing with the endogenous production of ultra-weak photon emission (also indicated as biophotons) in and from cells, organs and organisms. This light emission is endogenously formed and characteristic for alive organisms. Its sources, interactions with biological matter, and its temporal/spatial emission are increasingly investigated with the use of highly sensitive photomultiplier tubes (PMT) and charge-coupled device (CCD) imaging systems. The connection between endogenous photon emission and free radical reactions has been known by biologists and clinicians for many years. However, such interest has been amplified by recent discoveries of a.) the importance of free radical reactions in normal body chemistry as well as b.) novel developments in whole (human and animal) body photon counting and imaging technology. V Unfortunately, any expanding field attracts the charlatan (i.e., those who make money out of proposing that endogenous photon fields are effectively changed by their therapeutic methods and will make you live forever or, at least, will enhance your health). In evaluating these and other less obviously silly claims, it is useful to understand that the basics of ultra-weak biophoton emission need to be scientifically discussed. Although several books and journals exist that cover selective aspects of biophotonics, there is a void that could provide a space for a unified synthesis of biophoton research. This book provides such an overview which is intended for multi-disciplinary readership that aids research integrating endogenous light and the shaping of biological systems. It focuses on historical biological background of the biophoton (field) concept and its PREFACE
5 recent progress plus potential benefits to medicine. It encompasses the fundamentals of light, photonics, biophotons, and biology. In short, you ll begin a journey of discovery about how ultra-weak light makes life possible. This book is aimed to lead the reader as painlessly as possible into an understanding of what biophotons are, how they are generated, and how they are involved in life. Having established this basis, the role of biophotons in health and disease is critically evaluated in the hope that their importance will become more widely utilized. I have tried to maintain a relaxed and conversational prose in the book without being excessively colloquial. This style makes it easier to convey to the reader my own excitement and enthusiasm for the beauty, intellectual challenge, and fundamental unity of biophotons within biophotonics. I hope that I have succeeded. VI Before beginning, I would like to offer a few words of advice: Be prepared to learn a multi-disciplinary vocabulary. An understanding of biophoton facts requires that you learn a little biological, biochemical, physics, photonics and biomedical vocabulary. As with any newly studied discipline, the more familiar you are with the vocabulary, the more easily you can learn and appreciate the discipline s potential. To help the student from getting lost in what may seem like a blizzard of detail, I have introduced Boxed Essays to aid in the understanding of particular important, intriguing, or basic aspects of biology and physics. Each chapter begins with an introduction describing what a reader will discover. Each chapter ends with a take home message. The book emphasizes referencing. Specific referencing is more difficult than it seems because many of the statements made are distilled from several published papers and interpreted through the scientific experiences (or prejudices) of the author. Each major statement in the text is now provided with some references placed at the end of each chapter under the corresponding header. We hope that experts will forgive us if they find their pet paper not cited. Please tell me what you think! I welcome communications from anyone, especially concerning errors or deficiencies. I have spent much time and effort writing the book. In turn, you can help me by letting me know (by or regular mail) what still needs to be improved! Your comments will be greatly appreciated. In order to author a book such as this covering a very broad range of topics, I received help from a large number of professors, associated professors and senior scientists, cooperating scientifically vis-à-vis the International Institute for Biophysics (and Biophotons). Such assistance consisted of gathering technical content and illustrations kindly shared at the Summer schools ( ) of the Institute. I owe a special debt of gratitude to: Rajendra P. Bajpai (North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, PREFACE
Dr. Dan Stickler: Welcome to the Collective Insights Podcast. I'm Dr. Dan Stickler, I'm the medical director here at the Neurohacker Collective, and I've got a really exciting show for you guys today. I get to interview Matt Maruca. Most of you guys know Matt, that are listening in, I'm sure, but this is going to be a really fun interview. He's a researcher, entrepreneur, and educator in the fields of photobiology, mitochondria, and optimal human health, and the founder of Ra Optics. This is a company known for producing the world's finest blue light blocking glasses, and we're going to get into what makes those really the go-to for blue light blocking.
I went basically carnivore seven years ago before it was cool, GAPS diet, the whole thing, and no matter how strict I was, I found myself really struggling with these diets, and I wasn't really noticing myself feeling any better like I had with the original shift to a paleo diet from a really refined food-based diet. And ultimately, I came across this whole body of research of circadian rhythms, mitochondria, photobiology, light, how it influences our body, and ultimately came to understand that mitochondria are one of the primary mediators of epigenetics in our body because they're the direct link between our environment, energy production, and then mitochondria regulate genetic expression because the energy required to express the genes is generated by the mitochondria.
You might even be friends with Dr. Andrew Huberman from Stanford, he's been talking a lot lately about circadian rhythms and the effects of light. So, ultimately, even though the literature isn't as strong as I'd like it to be, one day, I'd like to maybe create a foundation through Ra Optics and really dive into the research on light. There's a lot of pieces that can be tied together to understand that light so profoundly impacts so many aspects of the biology of biochemistry, that ultimately affect things like the mitochondria, affect things like sleep, which have been shown to have effects on our genetic expression and so on, and so the repair and so on. So, yeah.
Matt Maruca: Yeah, absolutely. Well, just to be clear as well, I'm not a PhD, or when researcher is in my bio, it's more like a citizen scientist sort of researcher who looks up and sees what's happening. Like you've said, you do your reading hours a day on PubMed and things like that. That's something that I'm constantly digging into the different research on light and so on. But basically, photobiology is the study of how light affects biology. Photo is a Greek word meaning light, same route as photography, and biology is obviously life. So, photobiology is just simply the study of how light affects life.
And there are many, many facets to it. Some people are studying red and infrared light, some people are studying ultraviolet light, some people are studying blue light, some people are studying the whole spectrum of light. So, there's lots of different facets of it, and lots of different researchers active today, as well as over the last 100 years, but that's just basically what photobiology is. 2ff7e9595c
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