The Old Bulbs Are Back on the Table

Throughout history, humans have lived under two lights. Sun and fire. When the incandescent bulb arrived in the 1800s, the basic effect was heating a conductor until it glows. Essentially, it was fired tamed into glass. That light worked well, brightening the world at night for over a century. Then, about fifteen years ago, we traded that warm light for something our biology had yet to experience: the LED. As is the case with many novelties, no one checked into what it might do to us.

The swap from incandescent to LED bulbs became mandatory, thanks to a 2007 energy bill signed by George W. Bush. With a simple pitch that left little room for argument, the efficiency rules in the bill quietly dimmed the incandescent bulb out of existence, clearing the way to replace it with LED bulbs. The bill noted that LEDs use about 75% less electricity than incandescent, they last for years, and old bulbs waste most of their energy as heat. Without much thought, the switch looked like pure progress to many. Of course, to those of us aware of the damage caused by LEDs—not to mention the sterile, cold light—we’ve been stockpiling incandescent bulbs for decades. That point aside, last month, when the Department of Energy testified to Congress in support of bringing back incandescent bulbs, it caught the attention of those of us against LED. And caused us to ask questions about the motive.

The answer given by the DOE touches on freedom. “Why would we centrally plan which lighting technologies people can use?” asked one DOE official. OK, fair enough. But, there is a deeper answer here that the government is not highlighting, and it has nothing to do with saving money on electric bills, and everything to do with LED light itself, and what it does to the human body, and all life it touches, for that matter.

Unfortunately, the efficiency spreadsheet that ushered in LED bulbs left out what is most important. Light is not just something that we see. Light is biological information, and every cell in our body evolved under the sun and the fire, both of which pour out a full, continuous spectrum that is heavy in warm reds and invisible near-infrared light. The incandescent bulb, for all of its efficiency, is itself a small, tamed fire. They called that waste. But the “wasted” heat that regulators scolded for its infrared radiation is the same frequency that has bathed our bodies for centuries.

LED light is altogether different, making light through a narrow electronic process that spikes strong in the blue part of the light spectrum, and emits almost no infrared at all. Even worse, it flickers rapidly, switching on and off hundreds of times per second. The flicker is too fast to register with our conscious eye, but it is not too fast to wreak havoc on our nervous system.

When the two light sources are held up against a spectrum chart, as demonstrated by Jefferey Jaxen recently, the difference is significant. Sunlight is a smooth, full rainbow, while LED is a blue spike with none of the nourishing frequencies. And even the LED bulbs marked as “warm” light are harmful because they, too, carry that blue spike. It is essential to know how LEDs make light.

🚨 The government pushed incandescent bulbs out. Now the Department of Energy is backing their return.

Why? The science around artificial light, blue-light exposure, and what it may mean for our eyes and health is becoming impossible to ignore.

Four states are already issuing… pic.twitter.com/Eu5JUlzpeT

— The HighWire (@HighWireTalk) September 29, 2026

Indeed, the concern over LED light is mainstream and growing. Dr. Glen Jeffery at UCL’s Institute of Ophthalmology has found that the blue-heavy light from typical LEDs lowers the membrane potential in our mitochondria, thus impacting the electrical charge that lets our mitochondria produce ATP, the energy currency of the cell. Along with that, blue light in the evening suppresses melatonin and disrupts circadian rhythms, which in turn affects sleep, hormone balance, and overnight cellular repair. And studies on animals reveal that blue light causes retinal damage. Eye damage is significant because half of the human brain is wired, either directly or indirectly, to process what it receives through the eyes. Stare too long at a device and, yes, your eyes are wrecked. Think about it. The notion that it was safe to rewire the light—swap out the bulb—in every home, school, office, street, and so on, and see absolutely no biological cost is absurd.

Dr. Jack Kruse and others in the holistic world have been warning us about this for years. Kruse maintains that light, not food, is the master signal for human health. He has stated his concerns plainly around this topic for over a decade. He insists that our mitochondria respond directly to the light that hits our skin and eyes, and that the red and near-infrared wavelengths they need are exactly those emitted by incandescent light. The LED light does not have this. Indeed, long-wavelength red and near-infrared light support cellular energy, recovery, and sleep. And those key elements were both inside the incandescent bulb. But now, our bodies are starved of them all day under blue-heavy light, leading to exhaustion, shallow sleep, and a dry, dead feeling behind the eyes, with no explanation for where it came from.

The sheer absurdity of the incandescent-to-LED fiasco warrants attention. As red-light therapy panels are sold to people, often at a hefty price, to nourish our bodies with the very same wavelengths that incandescent bulbs put out for free, it will be interesting to see if the choice to use incandescent bulbs will once again be an easy option.