Welcome to The Rise – your weekly dose of circadian sunshine, decentralised health wisdom, and actionable tips to help you live healthier, stronger, and more empowered.

This week: how LED lighting is quietly stealing 25% of your visual performance (and the one-hour fix), why night owls face 79% higher heart disease risk, and the beautiful secret about grandparenting that adds five years to your life.

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Much love and sunshine, ☀️
Sandy xx

P.S. If 2026 is the year you stop outsourcing your wellbeing and start leading it — the ​Unstoppables membership is open​. Think practical, science-backed protocols, grounded in biology and nature, without the noise or overwhelm. Your decentralised health coach, in your pocket.

Issue #105 • 1 February, 2026

🌅 Rise Report

Your Office Lights Are Literally Dimming Your Vision (But There’s a Simple Fix)

Researchers at University College London just published a ground-breaking study in Nature examining how LED lighting affects human vision—and the results should make you rethink your workspace and home.

Scientists tested workers in a windowless building lit exclusively by LEDs. After establishing baseline colour vision measurements, they introduced incandescent desk lamps into the workspace for two weeks. The lamps weren’t used as task lighting—they simply sat around the room as part of the environment.

Source: Nature Study Figure 3: The work environment in Here East in which the LED lighting was supplemented with incandescent units.

The results? Visual performance improved by 25% across both protan (red) and tritan (blue) colour ranges. And unlike previous studies using narrow 670nm red light where improvements lasted about five days, these improvements persisted for six weeks after the incandescent lamps were removed.

Even more remarkable: subsequent testing revealed vision improvements occurring within just one hour of introducing the incandescent lighting.

Here’s what’s happening: LEDs produce light from 350-650nm, completely missing the infrared spectrum (700-1500nm+) found in sunlight and incandescent bulbs. This infrared light is critical for mitochondrial function. Without it, your cellular powerhouses can’t perform optimally, affecting not just vision but metabolism, blood sugar regulation, and overall health.

The study concluded that LED lighting “undermines human visual performance” and may represent a significant public health issue, particularly in offices, schools, hospitals and care homes.

The takeaway? Adding simple incandescent lighting to LED environments provides the infrared wavelengths your mitochondria need to function properly.

Late Bedtimes Are Linked to Higher Heart Disease Risk

Newsflash! A massive study tracking over 300,000 adults for 14 years just dropped and confirmed what I, and other circadian researchers have been saying: staying up late is quietly wrecking your heart.

Evening people showed a 79% higher prevalence of poor cardiovascular health and faced 16% higher risk of heart attack or stroke compared to those without strong late night timing preferences. Women were particularly affected.

It also found that night owls commonly exhibited other specific negative lifestyle behaviours like insufficient sleep and poor diet quality, and these habits also drove the elevated heart disease risk.

Meanwhile, morning people showed 5% lower prevalence of poor cardiovascular health, likely because their natural rhythms align with daylight and make healthy habits easier.

Many people identify as being “night owls” and sure there may be some truth to this with some finding it harder to sleep earlier at night. But this isn’t about your genes dooming you. It’s about circadian misalignment making it harder to maintain healthy routines, which then snowballs into poor lifestyle choices.

The decentralised wisdom? Your grandparent’s wise words of “early to bed and early to rise” are definitely not old, daggy or boring. Our grandparents were probably way more aligned with our biological rhythms and living in harmony with the nature, the days and seasons.

Grandparenting Protects Your Brain AND Adds Years to Your Life

Here’s a beautiful truth backed by two decades of research: those precious moments with your grandchildren aren’t just building memories—they’re literally protecting your mind and extending your life.

A 2026 study published in Psychology and Aging tracked grandparents (with an average age of 67) over six years, and discovered something heart-warming: those who cared for grandchildren scored higher on memory and verbal fluency tests compared to those who didn’t—even after adjusting for age, health, and other factors. And grandmothers who provided care showed less cognitive decline over the study period. The study found, what mattered wasn’t how much care they provided—it was simply being involved in any caregiving activities, from cooking, helping with homework or playing games together.

But the benefits go even deeper. A landmark Berlin Aging Study followed adults for nearly 20 years and discovered grandparents who occasionally helped with childcare had a 37% lower mortality risk—living an average of five years longer than non-caregiving grandparents. Half of the helpers were still alive 10 years later, whilst half of non-helpers died within just five years.

The mechanism? Researchers believe caregiving activates a neural and hormonal system that reduces stress, provides purpose, and keeps both body and mind engaged.

Here’s the beautiful caveat: these benefits come from voluntary, occasional caregiving—not full-time custodial care, which can actually increase stress and health problems. It’s about joyful connections between generations, not expectations and burden.

The decentralised wisdom? Whilst I’m a few years off being a grandma myself and who knows what the future will hold, I do hope I get the chance to be one day. Time with grandchildren goes beyond just being good for their development or Nanna’s and Pop’s health – it’s one of nature’s most essential human connections.

Every game of hide-and-seek, every bedtime story, every afternoon at the park is a connection of generations. A continuation of an ancestral story that started thousands of years ago. And whilst creating happy memories is a beautiful thing, the exchange that flows both ways should never be underestimated: grandchildren thrive with their grandparents’ wisdom, and grandparents thrive with their grandkid’s wonder.

❤️ What’s Hot: 

🔢 Number Crunch

20,000 — The number of neurons in your suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), your body’s master clock. This structure—the size of a poppy seed—receives light signals from your eyes and orchestrates your entire circadian system, controlling everything from body temperature and metabolism to hormone release and hunger.

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.” – JRR Tolkien, from “The Fellowship of the Ring

The information in this newsletter is for educational purposes only and not intended as medical advice. Always consult with a healthcare professional for personal health decisions. This post may contain affiliate links, and I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase, at no extra cost to you.