The Insomnia Epidemic: Dr. Michael Haga on Light, Mitochondria, and Sleep

March 3, 2025 – Discover how the lights in your home could be silently shaping your health in this eye-opening interview with Dr. Mike Haga on Jim Puplava’s Lifetime Planning health segment. From the surprising benefits of red light on metabolism and mitochondria to the hidden dangers of blue light disrupting sleep, Dr. Haga unpacks cutting-edge science that challenges modern lighting trends—like the phasing out of incandescent bulbs. Could LED overload be fueling insomnia and metabolic woes? Tune in for practical tips, like red light therapy and blue-blocking glasses, and hear why this health revolution is just beginning!

Please note, any information presented in this interview is not intended as medical advice and should not be considered a substitute for the guidance provided by a licensed healthcare professional.

Links and resources discussed in today's show:

Transcript

Jim Puplava:
Well, we all know about the importance of diet and exercise to remain and stay healthy. But what about the lights in our home and how that could affect our health? And that's going to be our discussion today. Joining me on the program is Dr. Mike Haga from Hoag Hospital. Mike, you began to study the lights that we have in our house. I think most people, like in my home, I have LED lights, but there used to be a type of light, incandescent light. California no longer allows you to have those. But let's talk about how the light in our homes affects our health. And an example I can think of, Mike, is 100 years ago, not too many people even had insomnia. Now there are millions of Americans that suffer from insomnia. So let's begin with that.

Dr. Michael Haga:
All right, well, thank you for having me, Jim. And I do want to remind people that this podcast represents my opinions. They don't necessarily represent the opinions of my employer, who I'm very happy with. And I want to encourage your listeners to do their own due diligence. And of course, whenever doctors talk on the Internet, they say, please consult with your own healthcare provider. So worth saying that as well. I've been listening to your podcast for, I'll bet you, 20 years, so I can't believe I'm on your show today. So thank you so much for this honor. The light topic is really fascinating. Ever since COVID, I've been going through a little bit of an awakening on medical items. And one of the things I stumbled upon was metabolic health and kind of root cause medicine. And the light topic came up after I went through a vegan phase and then kind of an intermittent fasting phase and just really paying attention to metabolic health and what that means. The main drivers of our metabolism are our mitochondria, and they are one of my favorite things I've ever studied. We have millions and trillions of mitochondria in our bodies, and they're responsible for burning glucose and turning it into carbon dioxide and water. And so what some researchers have been discovering is the effect of light on mitochondria. One of the items that they have studied is red light. And, Jim, you and I have talked about red light a lot. You've had some photobiomodulation experts on your program. And I really got excited about red light when I learned about it and red light's effect on mitochondria. One of the researchers in this space, for any listeners that would want to do some further listening or learning, his name is Glenn Jeffery. He's a PhD, a professor of neuroscience out of the University College of London. And he's done some amazing experiments where he will take rats, mice, or bees, or humans, and he'll expose two groups to a sugar challenge. One group will get a bunch of sugar, and then he'll test the glucose in the blood or serum of a beast. And the group without red light will get about a 20% increase in the blood glucose level as compared to the group who got red light. So if you get red light before a sugar challenge, your blood sugar will go up 20% less. Conversely, Dr. Jeffery has done really good studies on blue light exposure. And if you're exposed to blue light—we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute—if you're exposed to blue light, he can measure instantly with something we call a capnometer, something that measures your CO2 output. Earlier I mentioned that mitochondria, when they're breathing correctly or respirating correctly, they put out CO2 and water. And we can measure in real time your CO2 output. And if we expose a human to blue light, that CO2 will drop by about 30%. So what that means is that slows down your metabolism by 30%. And of course, we know when our metabolism is running too slow, that's often a way to build up weight and blood sugar and all kinds of stuff. And of course, that's ongoing but very demonstrable and repeatable research by Dr. Jeffery. Now, to get to our indoor lighting environment, Jim, in 2007, under the Obama administration, they passed a law that was going to start to phase out incandescent light bulbs. As you know, there's a big push in the world for green energy and reducing carbon footprints and fighting global warming. So one of the ways they wanted to do this was through our light bulbs. They took a look at incandescent light bulbs, which Thomas Edison invented in 1879. And of course, incandescent light bulbs—we all remember changing those—and those bulbs get hot, so that gives off thermal energy. And the fascinating thing about an incandescent light bulb is it only gives out about 12% of visible light. 88% of an incandescent bulb's output is invisible. So in other words, on the red and infrared spectrum. So since 2007 on, there has been a great push to make it harder to buy incandescent light bulbs.

Jim Puplava:
Why has there been a push? And why, like in our own state of California, are you not allowed to have incandescent light when it’s actually better for you?

Dr. Michael Haga:
Well, the individuals, lawmakers, and whatnot responsible for this kind of a bureaucratic change, they think that if the light is emitting thermal energy, that that’s a waste. All they are focused on is visible light. And that’s in a spectrum of 400 to 700 nanometers, and all they care about is visible light. They thought that the thermal energy was a waste of energy and probably contributing to global warming was their thought process—I’m not sure. But it was during the Biden administration that they further solidified that rule, really phasing out incandescent light, period. I think they’re asking now for 125 lumens per watt. And not even a chandelier bulb, which is a low voltage, maybe 25- to 40-watt incandescent bulb, can put out that kind of light. So if nothing changes drastically, it will become impossible to grab those incandescent light bulbs. And they did put out red and infrared light, which is very regenerative for your mitochondria and for human and biological health. If you go to Home Depot and try to find an incandescent light bulb in California, or even in other states, I’ve looked, and you’ll find a few incandescent bulbs on the very bottom shelf. And you’ll find very few choices in that range. But you know, Jim, you and I are kind of intrigued by the photobiomodulation field right now. And if you have a very well-lit home with incandescent bulbs, you’re getting about as much red and infrared light from your light bulbs in your home as compared to a photobiomodulation device.

Jim Puplava:
What about counteracting that, Mike, with, let’s say, a red light panel? Like, I do red light panels. I have a red light helmet that I use every day. What about that?

Dr. Michael Haga:
I think that those are really fascinating. And as I have gone deeper into the topic, I’m starting to see we respond very well to the red light and infrared light devices. I mean, it’s demonstrable for hair growth, it’s demonstrable for wound healing, definitely demonstrable for increasing the metabolism—your mitochondria, the health of your mitochondria. But an interesting fact that’s come up in my ongoing studies—and they will remain ongoing—is modern humans spend about 93% of our day either in an office or a home or in a car with our windows up, so we don’t get the sunlight that we used to get. And of course, if you step out into the sunlight, you’re getting every color spectrum of the rainbow, plus you’re seeing all the invisible light. We can’t see all the red and infrared. You know, Jim, in the last hundred years, when it got dark at night, of course we’d have candles and firelight. And I think we had a much better circadian rhythm. I have an absolute epidemic in my patients of insomnia. I prescribe medications for insomnia all the time. And I think one thing that’s really interesting—let’s talk about that blue light and its effect on our sleep and its effect on our circadian rhythm. If you could just imagine a picture of a spectrometer and you’d see, you know, the ROYGBIV from school that talks about the color of the rainbow, but also we have to expand that out to ultraviolet. And then if we go to the longer end of the spectrum, then we get the red and infrared. So sunlight gives you a full-spectrum light. The LED bulbs that have been invented and the fluorescent bulbs and the compact fluorescent bulbs, they have a very different spectrum of light and wavelengths of energy they give off. And they are predominantly blue. And our eyes are tuned to detect blue light. And that blue light, for—I’ll just keep it in the terms of human beings for now—that blue light signals to our brain: it is time to wake up. It’s time to get going. It releases cortisol, you know, it releases the signal for us to get going. There’s a wonderful Maryland PhD researcher from Harvard. His name is Dr. Martin Moore-Ede. And he and his team found the master clock in the human brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. And for further research, I would recommend to your listeners that they consider getting his book called The Light Doctor. In it, he kind of tells the story of discovering the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the master switch, and kind of describes a little bit better on how that blue light activates us. Jim, he’s gone into business for himself, and he works with all these Fortune 500 companies. So I’m making a case that we are blue light toxic. In other words, we have too much blue light in our lives. Blue light by itself isn’t what is toxic, because of course, if I go step outside, there’s blue light in the sunlight, but it’s balanced with red and infrared light. So it’s the balancing of light that’s going to be regenerative and then also protective against the blue light. Let’s talk a little bit about blue light at night, because that’s the trick, and that’s where the damage comes in. And I think that’s why I have to write so many prescriptions for medicines for insomnia. I talked a little bit ago about 100 years ago, what our light was like at night. We are now with that brighter and brighter LED, visible-only spectrum light. Our homes, our indoor environments are now 100 times less light during the daytime compared to sunlight. And we have a thousand times more brightness at night than we do at the brightest moonlight. And so our circadian rhythms are being tricked by the blue light, Jim. And so Dr. Martin Moore-Ede, his company worked with all the big Fortune 500 companies for groups that have to do shift work, have to do night work. We’re talking about FedEx and UPS and oil rigs and refineries where people have to work around the clock and they can’t have a nice night’s sleep like they ought to. So he’s developed a circadian lighting system. So basically, at a certain time of night, the lights in the ceiling lose all their blue light, and they only put out—well, they eliminate the blue light, but they still have lots of light to work and stay up all night. And the benefits in the people doing that shift work have been profound with better sleep, less blood pressure, weight loss, less blood sugar. So I think the focus for listeners should be on: how can I reduce that blue light at night? Could I get some better sleep at night if I reduce, you know, my overhead LED lights that we all now have in our homes?

Jim Puplava:
What about, let’s say, if you have ceiling lights, floodlights, or things like that, but you have lamps on a stand or something that you use to read? Could you shut the other lights off and, let’s say, get a hold of some incandescent lights and put them in your lamps?

Dr. Michael Haga:
I’m going to tell you that’s what I’ve done. And as in my own home and as I’ve listened to these researchers, it’s really interesting. Let’s—I’ll mention Glenn Jeffery. He lives in the United Kingdom, and they’re very strict with their light and energy rules over there. And so for his family members, basically for gifts, he will track down an incandescent bulb and just have them put it on their desk because having that incandescent bulb on, even at a low intensity, is putting out regenerative light for you as you maybe sit by your computer desk or something. I will say an easy way to get an incandescent bulb, even in California, and very legal: you simply go to a pet store and you buy a reptile bulb because people that keep reptiles need heat for that little cold-blooded animal. And it absolutely is part of that animal’s health. A reptile bulb is interesting—you can maybe put that by your desk. But I think one thing I would want to focus on for folks is to say: let’s have our days be bright and our nights be dark. And that’s very good for your mitochondria’s circadian rhythm. So at my house, I’ve gone a little crazy. My kids are kind of getting used to me. Maybe an hour after sunset, we really dim the lights around the place, and it’s just nice. It kind of sets the tone; it gets your body ready to sleep. And me personally—I mean, Jim, I’ve been through all the insomnia medications myself, and I’m going to say currently, for the last six weeks or so, I’m not taking anything—not melatonin—and my sleep has been pretty good by trying to adhere to having a bright day and a dim, dark night.

Jim Puplava:
Mike, what about if you’re trying to regulate your circadian rhythm—about spending 20 minutes a day outside in the sun? Because as you mentioned, we spend over 90% of our time inside a home, inside an office, or inside a car with the windows up. So what about, you know, maybe exposing yourself to 15 to 20 minutes of sunlight?

Dr. Michael Haga:
I think it’s a great question, Jim. As I sit here talking to you today, I’m actually on the back of my house with the sun coming up this morning. I have kind of established a habit of getting outside each morning early and doing my best to see the sun come up. It is incredible. I listened to a podcast a while back, and they talked about how you can download an app on your phone that measures light. And I downloaded an app on my phone; it’s called Light Meter. And I challenge your listeners to download that app and to check the strength of light in your home. You can even hold it, you know, up to a light bulb. Basically, when I turn all the lights on in the kitchen, even LED, the brightest light I’m going to get is maybe 2,300 photons or whatever this thing is measuring. If I step outside and the sun is out and I point my phone towards the sun on a bright day at the beach, your value will go up to a hundred thousand. And so, of course, your eyes were created or developed to respond to that light and use it. And so I think that question is a good one. And I do think for anyone that wants to look further into the concept of sensible sun exposure—no one’s advocating getting sunburns and stuff like that—but there is a wonderful MD, PhD doctor named Dr. Michael Holick, H-O-L-I-C-K. He’s out of Boston University Medical Center, and he’s an endocrinologist and a researcher, and he actually discovered with his research team the active form of vitamin D in our bloodstream. And, you know, I think everyone who’s kind of paying attention to health keeps hearing: vitamin D, vitamin D is important. Of course, we know it’s important for bones and preventing rickets, but I’ve been recommending pretty high-dose vitamin D to my patients and handing it out to my kids for a long time. And of course, we make vitamin D in the sun. So, you know, having some sensible sun exposure to me cannot be all bad. Dr. Holick also has made a wonderful app for your phone called D Minder. And it’s a fascinating app where anywhere in the world it will tell you what the UV index is. You program some information in that app for your skin type, your skin tone, and it’ll kind of tell you how much sun you should get that’s safe. So that’s one more tool in the belt your listeners could use, Jim, if they want to get a little bit of real, unfiltered sun, but do it in a responsible manner.

Jim Puplava:
Mike, what about red light? So let’s say that, you know, you work in an office eight, nine hours a day, you go home, and you spend the rest of the evening inside your house. You’re not outside. What are the benefits of, let’s say, using red light therapy? 10, 12 minutes, sometimes twice a day.

Dr. Michael Haga:
I’m still a big fan of that. Especially in the winter, if I don’t have any access to a little bit of sun in the morning or I don’t have time—I’ve got to get to work—then, yes, I will do a red light panel. The benefits are big. The benefits I’m going to refer back to Dr. Glenn Jeffery. His research on preventing macular degeneration using red light is phenomenal. And I just saw one of my patients sent me an article this week about the FDA approving some version of photobiomodulation just for that. I mentioned mitochondria earlier. And the greatest concentration of mitochondria in the human body is in the back of the eye because our rods and our cones—it just takes an incredible amount of energy to translate these photons into our vision. And so a little bit of red light on the back of the eye is just important for that eye health. And they need red light. Mitochondria need red light, and they benefit from it. And when we have to go to work and send our kids to school in these completely red-light-deficient environments all day, it’s not good for their eyes. It’s not good for your eyes. So I do recommend either that early morning sun—early morning sun is nothing but red light and infrared light. So if you close your eyes and look at the sun, you’re feeding those mitochondria in the back of your eyes.

Jim Puplava:
For most of us, let’s say that it’s not possible to, let’s say, replace the floodlights or the big ceiling lights in your house with incandescent lights. A couple of things we can do: we can go outside, as you mentioned—early morning light, maybe late afternoon. We could get red light panels, so we’re getting that effect daily. And Mike, what about—they have glasses, the blue light glasses that you can get, and even with a prescription, if you have it, that you could wear at night if you have that bright light. Let’s talk about that and the benefit.

Dr. Michael Haga:
Yeah, thank you so much for bringing that up. So one fascinating thing is we talk about the LED lights being blue light predominant, but our telephones are all blue light screens. Our modern TVs are LED—all blue light. So no matter where you turn, from your computer to your television to your phone and to the LED or fluorescent bulbs, you’re just getting blasted with isolated blue light. Remember, it’s the balance that matters—the balance of red and blue. So here’s a couple of practical things. I’ve been experimenting with the blue-blocking glasses. I have been starting to put those on, too, where they block most of the blue and much of the green, which is going to be, of course, telling my suprachiasmatic nucleus—I’m sorry for that big word—the master clock, to wake up. So I bought those for my kids. My wife doesn’t like wearing them, but if we watch a TV show at night, I’m always after them to go get their blue glasses on. I’ll give an example of my son before I got the blue-blocking glasses. He was just complaining to me, “Dad, it takes me, like, forever to fall asleep. It takes me, like, an hour to fall asleep.” And I was scratching my head; I couldn’t figure it out. And I went through a phase of giving everybody melatonin, and sometimes we’d try Benadryl, which I do not recommend, please. And we went through a phase of trying these natural sleep medications—apigenin and L-theanine—and I got sick of handing out these pills. I didn’t want to be a pill guy. And so I did buy these blue-blocking glasses, and they’ve been really fascinating. Judah’s time to fall asleep has gone down to 10 or 15 minutes. He falls asleep hard and fast now, and my sleep has really been revolutionized. I didn’t sleep good last night—I was a little nervous about this podcast—but the night before, I literally slept eight hours, and that hasn’t happened to me in a long time. So the blue-blocking glasses—I’m happy to give out a couple of websites. I don’t have any affiliation with any of these people or these items, so—

Jim Puplava:
Yeah, could you do that, please?

Dr. Michael Haga:
Yeah, I’d be happy to. There’s a couple that I think keep coming back as quality. One of them is called Lucia Eyes—L-U-C-I-A-Eyes.com—and I’m sure Chris can put these in the show notes. And another group I’ve purchased from myself is called BlockBlueLight.com—BlockBlueLight.com—and the listener will find a lot of interesting things on the Block Blue Light. They sell different light bulbs. I’ve purchased a few of their light bulbs that have no blue in them and have different dimming features throughout the day.

Jim Puplava:
Hey, Mike, will they ship those to California? Because, like, if you try to go on Amazon and live in California and try to buy incandescent lights, they’ll tell you they can’t do it.

Dr. Michael Haga:
Correct. Now, these are not incandescent lights. These are lights manufactured with all the knowledge that we’ve been talking about here that remove the blue light. Now, I’ll mention one more light bulb that’s interesting. There is an optical engineer by the name of Scott Zimmerman, and he came up with a really cool bulb. It’s basically LED, but what he did is he put a tiny tungsten filament in his bulb so that that LED bulb will give you the LED energy for footprint, but it will also pump out a lot of red and infrared light for you. And that is called NairaLighting.com—N as in Nancy-I-R-A-Lighting.com—and his name is Scott Zimmerman. So anybody could find that quickly. And I do use his light bulb at my computer desk. So that means I’ve always got a little bit of red light and infrared light balancing that computer screen.

Jim Puplava:
You know, it’s absolutely—I find it fascinating over the last 10 years—all the knowledge that’s starting to come out. We’re finding, for example, that cancer is more a metabolic disease than it is something that you inherit or you get bad genes. We’re finding out the importance of red light on mitochondria, the importance of oxygen, and, as you just mentioned, now we’re finding out the importance of various light waves in terms of our overall health. A lot of this stuff is coming out. But Mike, when does this stuff go mainstream? Because the stuff that you and I are talking about—if you were to go to a regular doctor and mention this—I know I mentioned to my regular doctor about red light, and they were surprised. They weren’t aware of it.

Dr. Michael Haga:
Yeah, I know. I’m in a little bit of—I’m a concierge house call physician here in Orange County, and I have the blessing of driving around town and visiting patients. And over time, I’ve learned to use my time wisely. And there’s times when I have 20, 30 minutes in between a patient, and I’ve simply used that time to do what I call Medical School 2.0, Jim. And I’ve just decided to pick a topic and learn about it and hear different voices and opposing voices. And I think it’s really hard, I think, for doctors who are in an office—in a blue light office—they have time to get up and cram through their patients or run through the hospital, gobble down lunch, and finish the afternoon in a similar fashion. It’s very hard, I think, to do extra learning if you don’t have a little time in the day, because then if you have a family, you have to go home and take care of kids and get them to their soccer game or baseball game and their play. I think it’s very hard to do outside-of-the-box thinking for many physicians. And it’s just—it’s difficult. I don’t know when it goes mainstream. I’m hopeful with RFK Jr. I do tend to agree with a lot of his health positions, and I’m most excited about if he’s able to get rid of the conflict of interest in the agencies.

Jim Puplava:
Well, it’s absolutely amazing because there is starting to be some breakthroughs. You have Dr. Attia talking about his book on longevity. He’s got a podcast. Dr. Huberman has got a podcast. So these doctors are gaining influence in terms of social media. Their audience keeps growing. So at least the word is getting out. And it may not sound so strange to some people because more and more of this is becoming public.

Dr. Michael Haga:
I agree. There’s another physician out of Loma Linda, California. He’s a practicing ICU pulmonary doctor. His name is Dr. Roger Seheult, and he was recently on Andrew Huberman. I mean, Huberman has 5 million subscribers. I think that there’s a health revolution going on, and I think that physicians need to try to keep up with what their patients are learning. You know, we don’t want to fall for anything. We want to pursue truth. And you know, science is not incorruptible. You know, science is going to often give you the result that the person funding the science is going to desire. So our evidence-based medicine that we really hang on to, I think it has a lot of improving to do, and I think that’s one of the big things I’m hopeful to get from RFK is gold-standard science, as he’s mentioned, and what that would mean for us.

Jim Puplava:
Well, here’s hoping that this will eventually happen. Well, listen, Mike, I want to thank you for joining us on the program once again. We keep finding out more things—whether it’s the food we eat, whether it’s light, red light, oxygen, you know, things like ivermectin, fenbendazole, and things like that. More of this is starting to come out thanks to people like yourself, Huberman, and Attia with their podcasts. As you mentioned, they have 5 million followers. So the word is starting to get out. Well, listen, my friend, you have yourself a great day and thanks for sharing that information with our audience.

Dr. Michael Haga:
Have a great day, Jim. My pleasure.

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