APPENDIX

Light and the human eye

Let’s zoom in on what is really going on when someone ‘sees’. If you could watch things in slow motion, and on a nanoscale (a smaller than microscopic scale), you would see beams of light from the morning sun entering the person’s eyes. If you then pause the beams and take a closer look as they enter his or her eyes and hit the retinas, you’d see that the human eye contains 127 photoreceptors called rods and 7 million called cones. These tiny structures convert the light into electrical impulses, which are sent to the person’s brain at a speed of over 300 kilometres per hour.

These electrical signals travel along the optic nerve and through the brain – through the pituitary gland, hypothalamus and pineal gland to the visual cortex at the back of the brain, producing vision. The person can then see, say, the ocean or trees or whatever they’re looking at.

But it doesn’t stop at vision, as you can see from Figure A-1 below. From the brain, the electrical signals travel down along the spinal cord, reaching all organs, glands and systems, muscles and bones –communicating with and impacting on all parts of the body and promoting normal, healthy bodily function. They also affect the person’s body clock – and when the body clock is in sync with the natural day/night cycle, their body will sing with vitality.

In this way, light entering through a person’s eyes regulates or deregulates the majority of their life processes.

Figure A-1 Light passing through the eyes