Red Light Therapy for Fertility | Tracy Donegan, MSc, CLT (Episode 572)

Full Transcript: Episode 572

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

This is the Fertility Friday Podcast, episode number 572. Today we are diving into the question of light — whether or not red light therapy is helpful for fertility. What is the role of light in terms of the menstrual cycle? This is a topic that I’ve covered in the past many times on the podcast, maybe not as recently, but the question of what is the impact of light on the menstrual cycle and on fertility and certainly the role of vitamin D in fertility. And so really excited to jump in today with my guest Tracy Donegan. So before we jump in, I’m going to tell you a little bit about Tracy. Tracy is a midwife, author, and certified light therapist dedicated to advancing reproductive health through photobiomodulation therapy. As the founder of Solasta, hopefully I said that right, in Round Rock, Texas, she provides evidence-based laser and red light treatments to support fertility, optimize mitochondrial health, and enhance overall well-being in women’s health. With a background in midwifery, Tracy integrates scientific research with holistic care, offering innovative approaches to reproductive wellness. So, without further ado, let’s go ahead and jump into today’s episode with Tracy.

And I’m so excited to be here with you today, Tracy. Welcome to the show.

Tracy Donegan:

Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to talk to you and I think I’ve given you a few reasons why.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Well, absolutely. I mean, for the audience who isn’t as familiar with your work, why don’t you share a little bit about what you do in your own words and what has inspired you to focus on this area?

Tracy Donegan:

Yeah. So, I’m a midwife by trade. So, I did my training in Ireland and I had worked as a doula for years. And so, preconception care is part of our work. I was in the birth space for, it’s coming up on 20 years. So, yeah. So, the last couple of years I’ve kind of started to step back from the doula work and the midwifery work and I was working more with women who want to get pregnant. They want to have a baby and I’m more than happy to support them and help them learn all about their amazing body and what it can do and how to tune into it. And your work has of course been incredibly inspirational. I think every midwifery college, never mind every woman should be reading it if they want to get pregnant or if they want to avoid pregnancy. It’s just a fantastic resource on learning about your body and your cycles. And then about two years ago I started seeing all of this red light interest in kind of the wellness space — that you can go and you can get these big panels and it’s going to do all this miraculous stuff for you. And then I think probably every second person I know got one of these face masks for Christmas. And I was seeing lots of interest from women asking about fertility and how can this help my fertility or can it help my fertility. So I kind of went down a rabbit hole about the safety of red light therapy, where it came from, how it can help fertility. But along that path, I also found myself down another rabbit hole of the absolute harm that can be done to us by artificial light, and nobody’s talking about it. You do talk about it in your book, which I am so grateful for because the word is getting out there. But what it’s doing to our health overall — not just women’s health, but we spend about 93% of our lives these days indoors under these terrible lights. And we did not evolve to live in this environment. So we’re starting to see, as we see on the news every second day, huge increase in metabolic conditions, obesity, cancer, you name it, diabetes. We are seeing this like an epidemic of metabolic challenges and it’s also affecting women’s reproductive health and men’s reproductive health as well. So that’s kind of where I jumped into this rabbit hole. And then I realized this is especially with the red light therapy — this is not new. The Egyptians and the Celts and we’ve all praised the sun. We honored the sun. It was just part of life. We evolved to be outdoors and not in this environment. Unfortunately, we’re really starting to pay the price for that.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

So interesting. To take a deep dive into that — from my perspective, as you mentioned, I talk about the link between light and your menstrual cycle, but it’s a bit of a different angle. It’s talking about how when you’re trying to sleep at night, if you’re exposed to light, it disrupts the menstrual cycle because it disrupts the hormone balance. At nighttime, you’re supposed to be making your melatonin, which is supposed to be helping you sleep. And if you’re exposing yourself to light, the research tells us that it raises our cortisol. This is a really interesting conversation because you’re taking it to a whole other level by talking about the impact of artificial light versus natural light in more of a general sense. So yeah, I mean, let’s — now I’m wanting to go down the rabbit hole too. So, I don’t even know where to start but maybe because we kind of were hovering around the red light piece of it, maybe you could share a little bit about that in particular. But I really am also interested in just what you found about the difference between natural light and artificial light.

Tracy Donegan:

Well, I guess first of all, to understand that natural light — the light that we get when we’re outdoors — is what we call full-spectrum light. So we’re getting the UVA, the UVB, we’re getting near-infrared, which we can’t see — that’s invisible — and we’re getting the reds. And if we’re outdoors early in the morning, the sooner we can get sun on our body and in our eyes — because light affects us not just through the optics, through our vision, but our body as well. And one thing that I’ll come back to as well about melatonin — you mention in your book to get all the lights out of the room, turn everything off, make sure there’s — I’m at a point now where I have anything that’s a little green light in the smoke alarm, I’m covering it up now — because our skin has light receptors as well. So it is picking up on what’s happening in the environment.

So let’s start with red light therapy. So like many people when this whole wellness trend started, I thought I would follow some of the more prolific biohackers or hormone hackers — all these folks that are really out there doing the biohacking. They’re using all of these tools to improve their own health and wellness. So I did get caught up in a little bit of the trend and did a little bit of research and bought a red light panel. And then I started to see: oh, well, there’s panels and then there’s 20 different other things. There’s these little torches, there’s pads. So I started to invest in quite a lot of products that the websites were claiming that, oh, NASA used this. Well, if NASA’s using it, well, then it must work and it’s been scientifically validated. And then I had women saying to me, you know, what do you think of the red light stuff? Do you think it’ll help? And as I skimmed the research and skimmed some of the more popular websites on red light therapy, there seemed to be this link between yes, it can help you get pregnant, it can improve your hormones, and all of this. And I started to go down that rabbit hole to see, well, how is it doing this?

So one of the biggest effects of red light therapy — and it’s specific wavelengths, so it’s not just any old red light that’s going to have these benefits — is that it increases ATP in all of our cells. So other than blood, every single cell in our body needs energy. We need energy just to get up in the morning, to wake up and open our eyes. So where are we getting that energy from? That energy is coming from our mitochondria. And it takes everyone back to high school biology: mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cells, and everyone remembers that. But as we get older and as we’re eating not great — I know Lily would agree with me on this, our food is not great, or even if we’re trying to eat organic — we’re staying up too late on our phones. All of this affects how our mitochondria work. So if we look at women’s reproductive cells, the eggs are some of the most highly dense with mitochondria. So they need a lot of energy, which makes sense for reproduction. The body needs a lot of energy. But through age and diet and lifestyle, our mitochondria are just not well.

And I think it’s estimated to be something towards 600,000 mitochondria in female egg cells. So instead of us being exposed to red light outdoors and all of the other benefits of UVA and UVB, which has been demonized really in research over the years, but now we’re seeing really big studies that show daylight is really important, especially early morning daylight — we’re not talking about going out and frying yourself, but sunscreen, we need to re-evaluate. We need to take a long, hard look at sunscreen and the advice that we’ve been given over the years about our exposure to sun. So if our cells aren’t working as well, we’re not ovulating, or the two gazillion things that need to line up for conception are just not happening. Or they’re happening and then we see the embryo didn’t stick. Or we’ve done 10 IVFs and my embryo looked beautiful — these were perfect embryos, but implantation didn’t happen for some reason. So by powering up the ATP in our cells, we are just — all we’re doing is modulating inflammation, we’re getting the body ready for conception the way it should have been if we were living outdoors and not in artificial light all day.

Because we know that artificial light shuts down melatonin. And melatonin is, I think, one of the most important antioxidants in the body. So if nine o’clock rolls around and we’re still watching Netflix and we’re still scrolling on our phone, we have stopped the melatonin production. And at nighttime, the pineal gland is responsible for melatonin production and it helps us kind of get a bit sleepy and go off to sleep and hopefully stay asleep. And what that melatonin does at nighttime, I always like to explain it as: during the daytime we’re really busy, we’re active. Back in the day, we were hunter-gatherers, we had a lot going on, we were outdoors. And when the sun went down, all we had was fire. And fire was also near-infrared. So we had a bit of fire and that was it. And we had no lights. We couldn’t be staying up doom-scrolling on Facebook for hours.

So melatonin is like Disneyland when the park shuts. Disneyland during the daytime has all this activity — we don’t do any much cleanup, whatever. But once the park shuts — think of our body shutting down, the brain quieting — now we have this melatonin that’s supposed to be the cleaners and the people who come in and clean up the park for us. They remove debris. They will fix areas that need fixing. But if we don’t have that melatonin being released, there’s nobody coming in to fix up the park. So we’re at a significant disadvantage.

And we can see in plenty of research these days that especially for women who work shifts — midwives, doctors, anyone who’s working opposite shifts to their normal circadian rhythm — they’re at much higher risk of reproductive health issues, cancer, metabolic health. Again, we can’t just blame diet. We have to start looking at what’s going on. And that melatonin — just if we can support our melatonin and our circadian rhythm, we’re golden. But who is getting up to go outside and get a bit of sunlight? I think at the moment in Texas, sunrise is at 7 a.m. So it does take a significant effort.

So red light was kind of designed to: okay, so nobody’s getting any sun, can we bring that light indoors? But it is a very narrow spectrum of lights that we’re getting. And one of the issues with standing in front of a panel — specifically for someone who is interested in improving their fertility — so much of the light is bounced off the body. And some of the red light itself is only penetrating to barely skin level. So the face masks and everything that’s out at the moment, for general skin and overall wellness, it makes you feel good, it brightens you up in the morning, wakes you up, it’s great. But if somebody is having significant fertility challenges, you want to take that to the next level, and that’s laser photobiomodulation. So we are targeting and getting much deeper into the tissues. We can reach the ovaries, we can reach the uterus, we can work on inflammation modulation, because I’m seeing a lot of women coming into me with PCOS and endometriosis. It has a huge impact on their comfort, first of all — especially with endometriosis, it works as a great analgesic.

And it’s not new. Even though the red panel thing is new, the history of red panels is quite interesting because they come from several factories in China who were originally using these lights as grow lights for cannabis. And then when they saw the opportunity within the wellness space — if we just made these red light products into wellness products, we can sell them for huge profit — that’s exactly what happened. So you just look on Amazon, search for red light, and you’re going to see two million products of varying quality.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

So I have a couple of logistical questions. What is the recommended usage? The situation is that we’re inside all the time. I’m guilty of being inside more than I should as well. It seems like the real problem or the larger problem is that we’re just not getting enough sunlight. You mentioned sunscreen. I know that’s a bit controversial. There is a lot of interesting research around that. Ultimately, there are benefits of our body getting sunshine without being blocked through the sunscreen. So I think the issue would be if you’re really never actually getting sun on your body. And so with the red lights — what are they telling us to do? Are they telling us to expose ourselves to the red light specifically during the daytime? And then when we do this thing that they’re telling us to do, like, what is that supposed to be doing for us?

Tracy Donegan:

So for the red light, we’re generally — if we’re looking at overall wellness — that would generally suggest, okay, if you’re not getting outside, you’re using your red light in the morning. Because sometimes if you’re using it at nighttime, the brightness of the lights is going to wake you up a little bit more and suppress that melatonin. And melatonin is also produced during the daytime from the mitochondria. So it’s not just the pineal gland. We figured this out about two years ago — we realized that the mitochondria is also producing melatonin if the mitochondria is well. So what we’re saying is that getting in front of it — the recommendations are about 20 minutes, a couple of times a week if you’re not getting daylight, or at any point you can get daylight, add to that daylight. It’s not a UV light, so not harmful to the skin. It hasn’t been shown to have any impact on cancers. It’s non-thermal and non-ionizing.

So when the body absorbs — first of all we have to have absorption. So that light, let’s just say it’s 670-nanometer light, and that’s the light that we’ve seen in several research studies. Just being exposed to that wavelength for 15 minutes can significantly reduce blood sugar levels by up to 27%. So it’s significant, and that research has been replicated in healthy humans and people with type 2. So the cells absorb this light and it goes through — back to high school biology — the Krebs cycle. So there’s electrons being passed to and from, it creates more energy in the cells, and then the cells do what they’re supposed to do. So if cells are sick, those cells are supposed to die. They’re supposed to be programmed to die. But that’s not happening if we’re not getting that light.

So that’s the kind of recommendation: about 20 minutes a day, kind of every couple of days. Some people have a little bit of a reaction to it if they start right off with the 20 minutes a day, again because they may not have been exposed to these kinds of wavelengths for years. And then there’s different products. There are ones you can wear that you’ll get a little bit better results kind of on skin and for pain management a little bit. But again, if we’re looking at fertility, we need more than the LEDs that are in these panels or these lights. We need it targeted into the ovaries. And we can only do that with a laser.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Well, so I had a thought as you were talking a little bit about fertility. So when you dive into research about fertility, of course there’s various facets. You can look at egg quality, you can look at menstrual cycle length, you can look at menstrual cycle disruption, you can look at PCOS, you can look at endometriosis, fibroids, reproductive health issues, you can look at sperm quality. And one thing — this thread that you will find if you look at enough research in all those areas — is the link between vitamin D and fertility and various outcomes. And if you look at men with lower sperm parameters, if you look at women with lower ovarian parameters, if you look at women who are most likely to have irregular cycles, even fibroids and endometriosis, one of the common threads is the higher likelihood of low vitamin D.

And the one challenge about research is that research is not big-picture. Research is one thing — look at the result of that one thing. So we’re even isolating vitamin D. We’re not necessarily looking at the benefits of full-spectrum light from the sun on these things. We’re looking at this one nutrient. There is likely a variety of other benefits associated with just being in the sun that we don’t even know about. Right. And so then it’s interesting because we do live in this world where we have these industries that are always looking for ways to make money off of women. Especially, there’s a great opportunity for fertility. Unfortunately, when women are going through fertility challenges, it’s just so devastating, it’s so stressful, that it’s grasping at straws sometimes. Anything that shows a potential for benefit, women are going to jump out and try. And so it’s really important for us to find — well, what’s the real research on this thing? So what are your thoughts on — where’s the middle ground on this fancy new red light technology here?

Tracy Donegan:

Yeah. So I have a real bee in my bonnet about this because having experienced my own fertility challenges and that feeling of grasping at straws — tell me to stand on my head, will it work? I’ll stand on my head for 24 hours. You’re looking for solutions. So what I have found to be quite distasteful about how this trend is now continuing is that there are so many device manufacturers — 99% are getting their products from the same couple of factories in China — and they are linking, because there have been some interesting studies looking at red light. But you can’t compare a red light LED to a laser. It’s not comparable.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

One clarifying question. Tell us about the laser, because it sounds scary. Like when you say laser, I’m thinking of my boys’ video games. So I’m sure that’s not what you mean.

Tracy Donegan:

No. So this is called low-level laser therapy or therapeutic laser. So it’s not an ablative laser. It’s not cutting. It’s used at a power that is kind of low level, but it’s enough to power up the cells. I always think of our cells as having all of these little solar panels. And we’re drowning in this artificial light. So when the body gets it — every single woman that comes through my clinic, their first session, they go home and the next morning all I hear is, “Oh, I slept so well last night. I have never slept that well since we started this journey, especially if they’ve been on it for a while.”

So yeah, what I’m finding is a lot of the websites are talking about LED products or some products that have not been third-party tested or really don’t have good robust evidence behind them. And they’re just sharing all of these fertility studies, which have absolutely nothing to do with LED light. It looks good and it lends credibility to their product. So I have a really hard time with that. And to a point where some of the device manufacturers are now working with reproductive endocrinologists and they have sold them really bad information on how these products work. And it’s only the consumer that will end up suffering.

But it is quite interesting to see the effect — because once we charge up the cells, we’ve seen in research on sperm. Let’s look at sperm motility, overall sperm health. We can increase sperm motility within an hour with exposure to the correct wavelength. So if you’re getting busy tonight, you’re about to ovulate — let’s get these guys swimming. Or if you’re planning for IVF. And we know that parameters around sperm health and quality have considerably dropped. So we know that we can use the light on the testes, not on skin but really for a couple of minutes, and significantly increase that motility. And then using it for longer — because we’re looking at germ cells, which are like 72 days or something — we can get less DNA issues. And I was looking at the piece in your book about the crypts and the cervical mucus and how some of the sperm gets stuck over here. And I was like, this is fascinating. So I went to look at how does red light therapy help with this? And I was like, oh yeah, well, red light therapy will give the sperm more energy so they can swim further, faster. And yeah, for me, the research is there. The Russians have been doing this since the 70s. They use laser acupuncture and other low-level lasers. So these are not James Bond lasers. You might feel a little heat on the skin, but when it’s powered properly, it won’t cause discomfort.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Well, so it sounds like there are these really interesting implications with red light therapy because of the research on how it can support mitochondrial health, which can therefore — and I’m sure other things as well — hormone production, for example. Sperm production is highly correlated with testosterone production. So the more testosterone that men are naturally producing, particularly in the testes, is directly related to their quality and count when it comes to sperm. So I think it’s really interesting. And there’s a part of me that like — the natural hippie part of me is like, okay, so obviously we should be — I feel like an overall lifestyle strategy takeaway from today’s conversation is that we should be more aware of how much time we spend indoors. I mean, for all the listeners who track their cycles, maybe it’s worth adding another line on your cycle tracker of how many minutes or hours a day you’re actually getting outside to see, first of all, how few — myself included — how few it is.

And I live in Canada, so even if I were to go outside right now, it’s the middle of winter. So the chance that I’m going to get some good penetrative sunlight that’s going to go beyond my dark skin even — yes, that’s a whole other conversation. For dark-skinned women, that’s a whole other conversation because there is really interesting research that I shared I think in The Fifth Vital Sign where it’s like if you’re a Black woman you might need to be in the sun for an hour to get the same level of benefit and vitamin D production as Tracy might need, about 20 minutes as a white woman. So there are all these different factors, but I think bottom line, it sounds to me like we should really start being more aware of this. And then it’s not only going for a walk, but it’s like we also have to not be totally covered up. So if it’s actually nice out, if it’s actually summer, if you’re actually on vacation, then you have to think about — okay, can I expose my arms and legs? Can I actually get some sunlight? And is there a time of day where the sun is not going to cause me immediate sunburn so that instead of layering all the sunscreen, I can choose a specific time when I’m going to allow my skin to get that access to the sun, even for 20 minutes, an hour?

But then the other part of me that’s the practical part is saying — well, I live in Canada, and there’s a lot of months out of the year where I can’t go outside in shorts because it’s too cold, and even if I did it wouldn’t really matter because there are times of year where you’re just not getting adequate sun. So there is obviously a place for the light therapy for those types of situations. Because unless you really do live in Texas with Tracy, you probably don’t have access all the time.

Tracy Donegan:

And it’s interesting — there is a free app called D-Minder, and you plug in your address so it knows where you are, and it will tell you what the UV index is, when is a safe time to be out. It’s a great app, and it looks at your Fitzpatrick skin type as well. So the darker your skin, that melanin absorbs the light. So when I’m working with women, I’ll extend the time I’m working with them because I want to make sure I’m getting through the melanin in the skin and reaching the ovaries. But the D-Minder is really helpful because it just gives you guidance and helps you do it safely.

And I don’t know if some of your listeners may have heard of this phenomenon called a solar callus. Years ago, when I lived in Ireland, two weeks of the year everybody went to Spain or Portugal. Everyone wanted to get sunlight, and that was the goal for the year — to be able to afford that vacation. But before we went on vacation, we all went and did tanning beds to build a base. And I just thought that’s what you did. But now there’s this research showing that if you are gently exposed to light — not going out at noon with no sunscreen and baking yourself silly — there’s a way to do it safely. And no sunscreen. Light clothing. Shorts. The more skin you can expose the better. And no sunglasses. And that’s a big one. What are the messages our body is taking in? The eyes — the suprachiasmatic nucleus is going to be triggered and it’s going to have this cascade effect on every single organ system in the body. And morning light — women who are exposed to morning light more often are more likely to have regular ovulation. So if that’s something you’re dealing with, if you can get out and get a bit of sunlight, you’re getting full-spectrum, you’re getting UVA, you’re getting a little bit of UVB, and you’re getting that early morning light.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

I love that. It’s such a great conversation because one of the challenges in the health space is that we’ve been trained by our conventional medical system to always look in supplements for all the answers, all of them. And while I do talk extensively about targeted supplementation, we still have to think about the base. And I think even just this conversation is so helpful in terms of — it’s not just about being outside, because if you’re outside but you’re totally covered up, it’s just not the same. And even if you are a dark-skinned person versus a light-skinned person, five minutes of sun, even if you’re dressed for the sun as a dark-skinned person, it’s just not going to give you that lasting result.

And there’s something I wanted to share because it keeps coming to my mind. I often share an analogy with my clients when it comes to supporting ovulation in a natural way. If you think about any fruit — if you think about an apple tree, when any fruit is bearing on a tree, it doesn’t start ripe. Obviously silly thing to say, but it doesn’t. So if the fruit is green and it needs to turn red or turn yellow or whatever the fruit we’re talking about — what is it that causes this fruit to ripen? My family is from the West Indies, so I’ve had the benefit of traveling to the islands and visiting family and enjoying all the yummy fruits off the trees. And it truly is the sun that ripens these fruit.

And so if you think of ovulation, of follicular development, similarly — because what is a fruit? It bears the seed inside. The seed that would grow the next tree. It’s very similar to the follicle, which is a really good analogy here. So then arguably the sun would play a key role in developing that follicle. And given all of the research that shows this link between optimal fertility and optimal vitamin D status, it’s something to think about. And you know, in the summer months, yay, we can go outside, and maybe that’s something to add to your routine when you’re trying to conceive. It’s just a part of making sure you’re getting adequate sunlight. We don’t need to bake ourselves. We don’t need to be outside for 10 hours a day. But if you’re getting a good amount of sun — and the app is a really great idea to give you some guidelines — that is an actual thing you can do and it may even have greater effects than some of the supplements that you’re taking.

So tell us about some of the practical ways to incorporate the red light piece of it. So someone is wanting to have a backup strategy for those times of year when they are not able to get access to natural light as much. Is it something that you would say, okay, go out and buy yourself a thing from Amazon? Or is it something you’d want to work with somebody to support you with?

Tracy Donegan:

Yeah. So it depends on what’s happening with your health. I think of it like a supplement, really. And what’s interesting in the fertility space — lots of women are taking CoQ10, any of these mitochondrial supports. I’m like, you don’t need them if you’re getting enough light. We don’t need the mitochondrial support supplements because the red light and near-infrared triggers the cells to create that energy.

But I think for overall fertility, overall wellness — especially if you don’t have a diagnosis, if you just ovulate fairly frequently and you have regular cycles — a red light panel is a nice little tune-up. But if you have a diagnosis, or if you’ve been struggling, or you’ve had several treatments or IVF, then I don’t think LEDs are going to help. When we look at one of the first research studies that looked at this, it was Dr. Oshiro in Japan and he stumbled across this effect accidentally. He was treating women with low-level laser for back pain, and some of the women coming to him were over 40 and started coming back to him saying, hey, my period has started again. I was post-menopause. So he came across this literally by accident.

For me, I think if you already have a diagnosis or you’ve been through several rounds of IVF and you’re looking for something in the evidence that will support your body — because even IVF creates so much reactive oxygen species and so much inflammation in the body, because we are overstimulating all of our reproductive systems — for anyone who is about to do IVF, this is not something you’re going to do the night before. This is something like with the follicles, with the fruits growing — we want to get them at an early stage and make sure they are getting the power they need to grow.

And just back to your metaphor about the fruit on the tree — I feel there’s so many women who are in this fertility winter. When you look outside in winter, you see what the trees are doing when they’re not getting sunlight. All the leaves fall off. They go into kind of survival mode. They hibernate because they’re not getting the sun to create the fruit. So if women are not getting that sun, I think I see women the way you do — we’re these beautiful trees that are in this winter. But it’s a self-imposed winter almost, because we just didn’t have the information that our body is just really starving for this light.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

And one question I thought would be a nice way to kind of start wrapping up — you mentioned the sun is full-spectrum light. What is the difference between sitting in your house under whatever light you have versus sunlight? What’s the difference between that and sunlight?

Tracy Donegan:

Well, sunlight is full-spectrum, so it includes all the wavelengths. We have UVA, UVB, and full-spectrum goes from you know 300 nanometers all the way up to like near-infrared — in the sun we’re talking like 3,000 nanometers. When we’re indoors, we’re getting a blend, but it’s just blue. This light above me has no near-infrared, has no red. It is just blue. And part of the reason is that was an energy saving decision. We replaced full-spectrum bulbs with blue LED. You can still buy full-spectrum light bulbs to have in your house. And blue is not all bad — blue is energizing. It’s about the time of day when we’re exposed to blue and how long we’re being exposed to it. So with indoor lighting, it has blue only. It’s not balanced. So we’re just being exposed to this really short wavelength, high-intensity light that’s bad for our eyes, our skin, you name it, for long periods of time. This is just not a good option.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

And you referred to blue light. I know I’ve spoken quite a bit about blue light. It doesn’t mean the light is actually blue like a blue pencil crayon, but it’s obviously referring to the wavelengths. From the little research that I’ve done, because I’m always looking at how it’s affecting ovulation and the menstrual cycle, there is evidence to show that it’s about the time of day. The issue is it’s not to say one light is good or bad, but if it’s 9:00 p.m. and we’re on our phones — and I say we because it’s me too — then if we’re on our phones, that light has been shown — there was a study I cited where exposure to this blue light at nighttime was equivalent in terms of how it would disrupt hormones and potentially sleep to having a cup of coffee at 9:00 p.m. as well.

And of course, the red light — I’m really interested to look at more of the research. I think that there’s probably quite a bit more research that could be done. And I think it’ll be really interesting to follow this trend over the next few years and see the research that’s coming out. But what you said about the blue light — that’s what we’re getting all the time, day and night, versus adding more of the red light to kind of try to mimic the sun’s ability to give us that full-spectrum. And even trying to mimic the fact that if you live somewhere where the sun follows a normal cycle, there’s something important about that natural darkening at nighttime that we’ve essentially eliminated from modern life.

Tracy Donegan:

And one of the things that I found fascinating as a midwife is that we had learned years ago that light can interact with birth hormones. So now we have evidence to show that women being exposed to blue light in early labor changes their contraction patterns. So we walk into the hospital and we’ve got these lights all over the place. We used to talk about the fact that oh sometimes when you go into hospital your labor may slow down, and that’s just due to the stress. I’m like, well, that’s part of the stress, but it’s also these lights. And there’s different lights that do different things — red lights are great, but green at 532 nanometer is really soothing for the nervous system. So having a really nice green light in a birth room could be soothing to the system.

We look at blue light — we put blue light on babies who have jaundice. You know, this is a high-energy frequency. It breaks down bilirubin. So if we — nobody, I think, after listening to this conversation can think light is considered woo anymore. It’s a staple. We’ve got to get that light. Our bodies are just thirsty for it.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Well, man, after this conversation, I’m a little bit sad that I’m not going on a tropical vacation this winter. Because it’s one of those things — we’re talking about it in this context of course, but if you think about it, any just random person who has conversations with their friends who live in a cold place like I do, it’s always — if you’re able to go, wherever it is in the middle of winter, you come back, your skin’s glowing, you typically feel better. Not that you can always put your finger on it. I mean, we know that seasonal depression hits a lot of people, and especially up here in Canada, I know a lot of people even personally who struggle with that.

And you know, I worked with this girl back a long time ago who had this light on her desk and she would bask herself in that light during the day to try to help combat her seasonal affective disorder scenario. And so there it’s really interesting. We know that light has an impact on us. We just — it’s not a thing that we are usually talking about. And of course it’s no surprise that there’s evidence to suggest that it also impacts fertility. And the whole thing is just amazing. Whatever your belief in a higher power or evolution — we evolved to be addicted to sunlight. We really did.

So if you think about it — and this really came home for me this summer — spending more time outdoors in the sun than I normally would and not being hungry, because it affects the leptin pathways in the body. If you think about it, you’ve been at the beach all day, you’ve had a couple snacks, you’re not really starving. It’s supposed to be addictive. We’re supposed to miss being outdoors. And it sends signals to the brain that we have energy in the body. It affects the satiety signals in the brain. So if you’re thinking I want to lose a few pounds, get as much daylight as you can, get it on the body, and you’ll feel better. Your mood is lifted.

And I think there was a brilliant study that came out of Sweden — and it was replicated in the UK — where they compared women in Sweden who would get regular sunlight, who would go to Spain and get some sunlight throughout the year, and women who avoided the sun. And dermatologists have a lot to answer for when it comes to this issue. What they found was all-cause mortality was reduced in the women who were getting sun. And the statement they made at the end was that if you’re not getting regular daylight, it is as bad for you as smoking. And this was replicated. It was a large study.

And I think the Australian dermatologist association have come out recently and said we need to relook at the advice that we’ve been giving people to avoid the sun. That’s not surprising to me because I read a lot of research and I’ve seen the tides turning. I’m old enough to remember women putting on baby oil and going in the sun. How did we go from that to no sun at all? I feel like neither of those solutions is what we should do — not the baby oil, but the advice of no sun at all — common sense would say that neither of those options makes sense.

And the deeper we go into the research, there clearly are benefits. Even as you mentioned, some of your clients who report that they sleep better — we know that getting that morning sun is often one of the first steps towards getting a good night’s sleep and training yourself to feel more sleepy at night. So even just going with the day-to-day rhythms of sunshine in the day when you’re supposed to get it, and then dimming the lights at nighttime in your house. Really being more mindful. Getting lamps with covers. Muting the light at nighttime. We know that has a really positive impact on the cycle. And we know that blacking out your blinds and having pitch-black darkness at nighttime can have a significantly positive impact on the cycle. It can lengthen your luteal phase. So while low progesterone is probably one of the most asked questions of all time in my world, one of the freest and easiest ways to start is to just cut down your light after 6:00 p.m. It doesn’t mean you’re going to live in a hut without electricity, but really think about dimming the lights. And then when it’s bedtime, make your room pitch black. Make that the goal.

Tracy Donegan:

Falling asleep with the TV on is more weight gain.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Yes. Well, I was at a hotel recently for just a couple of nights and even the clock light in the hotel room was irritating me. I turned the clock so the face was on the table so I couldn’t see it and I covered because there are all these lights in the hotel and I’m just like, this is not going to work for me. You don’t have to be crazy about it. Find balance. But what I’m saying though is that all of that — that’s what we know. There’s a lot of evidence even just to show that. And beyond talking about is it going to make me get pregnant faster, one of the things you’ll notice right away when you start doing that is you’ll sleep better. You’ll sleep more soundly, potentially for longer. It might be easier for you to fall asleep because you’ve taken away one of the most common insults that maybe you didn’t realize was playing such a significant role in disrupting sleep.

So I feel like we could have talked all day about this because this is so interesting. So I want to thank you so much for being here. Before we wrap up, let us know if you have any final thoughts for the woman who tuned in to learn more about the red light conversation and everything we’ve been talking about.

Tracy Donegan:

Yeah. So I hope everyone will just take away one piece: sunlight is not the devil. We need to get a little bit. And it doesn’t matter if it’s cloudy because we’re still getting those rays. And we can be outdoors under trees because the leaves reflect near-infrared. So get out, get yourself a dose of nature, and yeah, it is an intentional way to support your health and wellness.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Love it. Love it so much. And Tracy, where can our listeners go to learn more about you? Tell us about your podcast and anything exciting that you have going on at the moment.

Tracy Donegan:

Yeah. So if this has piqued your interest into all things red light, lasers, fertility, and luteal phases, my blog is tracydonegan.blog. Or if you’re interested in laser therapy and you’re in central Texas, it is at solasta.health.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Amazing. Well, we will make sure to link all of those places in the show notes and thank you again for being here. This was a fascinating conversation.

Tracy Donegan:

Thank you, Lisa.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it with a friend. You’ll find the show notes page for today’s episode over at fertilityfriday.com/572. I hope that you enjoyed today’s episode with Tracy. I feel like it was a great reminder of how important it is for us to get outside and get some sunlight and also to optimize our vitamin D levels and our sunlight exposure. And during the daytime, we’re supposed to get sun exposure. There are so many benefits. It can help to set our circadian rhythm. If we get early morning sunlight, it can actually help us to sleep better at night. But then to counter that — when it gets to be nighttime and we’re supposed to be sleeping, it’s supposed to be dark. So we need to ensure that we are optimizing our light exposure throughout the day so we’re not flooding our bodies with all kinds of blue light that can be really disruptive to our hormone balance and prevent us from producing sufficient melatonin in the evenings when that’s what we’re supposed to be doing.

So it’s a good reminder to really optimize that, to take advantage of the natural sunlight when it is available in those warm months, to ensure that we optimize our sleep environment so it is dark to support our hormones. I would throw in also to be optimizing your vitamin D levels because if you are like me and you don’t live in a warm place and we don’t have access to direct sunlight for most of the year, then it is really important to be aware of how important it is to optimize that. And as a reminder, there’s a huge correlation between vitamin D levels, low vitamin D levels, and different fertility challenges — whether it’s lower sperm parameters in men, lower ovarian reserve parameters in women, or even an increased amount of cycle disruptions. Women who have long or irregular cycles are much more likely to be deficient in vitamin D.

So I feel like today’s episode contains a lot of reminders for us to just be aware. And also even if it is summer where you are and you are going outside quite a bit — recognize that if you’re always fully covered, with long sleeves and long pants and the majority of your body is covered, you’re not necessarily getting those benefits. So we have to think about being more strategic with our sun exposure to ensure that we are getting as much natural sunlight as we can without harming our skin. So there’s lots and lots to dig into based on today’s topic. If you found today’s episode interesting and you know someone who could benefit from it, the share link is fertilityfriday.com/572. And with that said, I hope you have a wonderful week, weekend, whenever you’re tuning in to the show. And of course, as always, until next time, be well and happy charting.