Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival [Paperback]

T. S. Wiley (Author), Bent Formby (Contributor)

Book Description

Release date: March 1, 2001

When it comes to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and depression, everything you believe is a lie.

Lights Out

With research gleaned from the National Institutes of Health, T.S. Wiley and Bent Formby deliver staggering findings: Americans really are sick from being tired. Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and depression are rising in our population. We're literally dying for a good night's sleep.

Our lifestyle wasn't always this way. It began with the invention of the lightbulb.

When we don't get enough sleep in sync with seasonal light exposure, we fundamentally alter a balance of nature that has been programmed into our physiology since Day One. This delicate biological rhythm rules the hormones and neurotransmitters that determine appetite, fertility, and mental and physical health. When we rely on artificial light to extend our day until 11 PM, midnight, and beyond, we fool our bodies into living in a perpetual state of summer. Anticipating the scarce food supply and forced inactivity of winter, our bodies begin storing fat and slowing metabolism to sustain us through the months of hibernation and hunger that never arrive.

Our own survival instinct, honed over millennia, is now killing us.

Wiley and Formby also reveal:

• That studies from our own government research prove the role of sleeplessness in diabetes, heart disease, cancer, infertility, mental illness, and premature aging;
• Why the carbohydrate-rich diets recommended by many health professionals are not only ridiculously ineffective but deadly;
• Why the lifesaving information that can turn things around is one of the best-kept secrets of our day.

Lights Out is one wake-up call none of us can afford to miss.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This fascinating, thought-provoking study discusses the central role of sleep in our lives. After probing the scientific literature, Wiley and Formby, researchers at the Sansum Medical Research Institute, conclude that "the disastrous slide in the health of the American people corresponds to the increase in light-generating night activities and the carbohydrate consumption that follows." Our internal clocks are governed by seasonal variations in light and dark; extending daylight artificially leads to a craving for sugar, especially concentrated, refined carbohydrates that, in turn, cause obesity. More seriously, lack of sleep inhibits the production of prolactin and melatonin--deranging our immune systems and causing depression, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. The authors prescribe sleeping at least nine and a half hours in total darkness in the fall and winter and switching to a diet low in carbohydrates and high in protein, vegetables, and healthy fats. They support their arguments with 100 pages of notes and by tracing the progression of disease from hunter-gatherers to our high-tech society. Despite its somewhat strident, all-knowing tone, this illuminating work is highly recommended for academic and public libraries.
---Ilse Heidmann, San Marcos, TX
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

The lightbulb put us out of sync with nature. Way back when, people spent the summer sleeping less and eating heavily in preparation for winter because light triggers the hunger for carbohydrates. Now, with light available 24 hours a day, we gulp down food all year long. So, Wiley and Formby assert, it is light, not what we eat or whether we exercise, that causes obesity--and diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Indeed, eating bacon, ham, butter, and eggs for breakfast doesn't impair health, and exercise can make you fat. If we considered our waking periods as equivalent to the long days of summer and the short ones of winter, we would avoid those health problems. Wiley and Formby offer three steps for improvement, but they aren't optimistic, because the light-driven speed and intensity of contemporary life may be too much to overcome. Still, try, first, plugging the leaks in your psyche; then, because you will have lost weight, resisting carbohydrates; and, finally, swallowing a few pills and helpful foods. William Beatty --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Atria Books (March 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671038680
• ISBN-13: 978-0671038687
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 1 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (121 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #42,142 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #40 in Books > Medical Books > Basic Sciences > Biochemistry
  • #58 in Books > Medical Books > Research
  • #61 in Books > Professional & Technical > Engineering > Bioengineering

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

166 of 172 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Important Information, yet terribly written July 7, 2002

By Kenneth Stuart VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have to agree exactly with Leslie of Texas' review below.

The basic information and premise of the book - that staying up late decreases production of melatonin in our bodies, and messes up our hormone system's balance in other ways as well - is potentially crucial to our health. That is why I give this book 4 stars, despite the terrible writing.

The author has a writing style that I believe comes from not really understanding much of what she is writing - I was particularly struck by the sentence in the Acknowledgements thanking her daughter for spending "countless hours explaining physics, chemistry and math to her old mom". This was a surprising admission, considering that a good portion of the book attempts to lecture the reader about a variety of unrelated topics that are not really understood by the author (or any other pop science writers) - including chaos theory and many other recent areas of scientific thought, taken wildly out of context.

The important information to get out of the book, is that 10 years of research at the National Institute of Health have confirmed that modern man's tendency to go to sleep much later than sunset disrupts the body's natural cycles, and this causes a variety of health problems due to the effects on the critical hormone system of the human body. Levels of melatonin, prolaction, leptin, cortisol, insulin, dopamine and serotonin are all affected.

The essential recommendation of the book is - during fall and winter - to try and get at least 9.5 hours of sleep by going to sleep as soon as possible after sunset (ie by 9 or 10 pm), and the rest of the year to also try and get to sleep as soon as possible after sunset.

The other recommendations are the same as can be found in the books by Drs. Eades, ie follow a low-carbohydrate diet and do weight lifting exercise instead of aerobics.

I agree that it is unfortunate that this important research is presented in such a poorly written fashion, and mixed up with so much extraneous opinion.

126 of 130 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Tortuous reading! September 24, 2008

By horse chestnut

Format:Paperback

Lights Out had the potential to be a great book.

I agree with the main point of the book that it's healthier NOT to stay up late with artificial lights, TV, and the internet. I also agree that the healthiest diet is a diet low in carbohydrates (and especially low in sugar) with generous quantities of animal proteins and fats. I like the advice to go to sleep after the sun sets and to seal all light out of the bedroom. It's great that someone is exploring the topic of humans sleeping out of synch with the natural night.

BUT I have to say that T.S. Wiley is one of the worst writers I've ever read, not to mention that she's a total crackpot nut case. The writing is completely disorganized, contradictory, and sensationalist with lots of black and white thinking and lots of false information.

Why couldn't she have just stuck to the very important information about sleep, light, and carbohydrates and skipped all of her nutty, self-indulgent, provincial biases?

Her tone is often unnecessarily offensive: "Think of fat as a condom for your carbs," (page 173).

She contradicts herself constantly and gives completely false information: "The Aztecs had corn oil as a fat source, the Greeks had olives, and the Chinese had the soybean," (page 178), and then: "Think about the world we're really from. There were no machines, and therefore there was no corn oil," (page 180).

Just so no one is left confused by Wiley's misinformation, the Aztecs, who existed no later than the 16th century, did NOT eat corn oil, which was invented around the turn of the 20th century. Similarly, soybeans were NOT the source of fat for the Chinese. Soybean oil, which like corn oil is a solvent-extracted oil (thereby necessitating the invention of solvents in order to be eaten), was not produced until the 20th century.

Wiley goes off topic A LOT. At one point in chapter 9 (by the way, the subject matter is so randomly elaborated on that the chapter breaks are practically meaningless), she is in the middle of psuedo-poetic meditation on the "whirling Dervishes" of the spinning planets when she suddenly degenerates into a rant on cigars: "It's no accident that cigars have become chic again" (page 198). And this is strange because back on page 188 she lists vitamins and supplements she recommends including: "And, finally, have a drink or a cigar once in a while; and remember, unless it makes you jumpy, coffee's good for you." Why? She doesn't say, of course.

Wiley fails to sufficiently explain a lot of her advice: "Don't drink milk. You're an adult," (page 173). That's not really enough of an explanation for me. I'm still going to drink my milk.

She also fails to footnote any of her controversial statements. Says who that each human only gets one billion heartbeats, and then we die?

It would be hard to keep track of how many times Wiley tells the readers that they're about to drop dead; that the human race is about to go extinct; that once humans are past reproductive age, nature wants us dead; and that she thinks we should live no older than age 40.

And she repeats her death mantra in a moralizing tone like we deserve to die: "Harnessing the primal energy of lightening gave us the keys to the kingdom. Now we're going to pay," (page 27). "When you're not a player, nature takes you out," (page 88). "You're probably going to die . . . soon," (page 125). "Now we live too long and eat too much," (page 157).

I have three pieces of advice for Wiley for her second edition:

1) HIRE AN EDITOR!!!! (And Editor, please remove from the book all passages which are merely Wiley's opinion and Wiley's polemical, half-baked ideas.)

2) Learn how to use citations and footnotes.

3) Have real scientists who specialize in molecular biology, nutrition, and sleep research proofread your manuscript to take out all of your errors.

90 of 92 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars "Lights out" presents many interesting ideas, but.... September 28, 2000

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

As many other readers have reported, the editing in this book is just simply awful. There's the mention of an appendix that doesn't exist, the lack of footnotes, mispellings...and then there's that little side trip into paranoia and conspiracy theory in the very last chapter that had me wondering just what kind of kooks these people were! As far as the editorial errors go, well, I'll just assume that was the publisher's fault, but the rest?

But the truth is, I do believe they're onto something. I've successfully incorporated many of their suggestions into my own lifestyle after long years of low-fat, high carb eating. And although I do try, at this point in my life its VERY difficult for me to get nine hours of uninterrupted pitch-dark sleep from September to April.

I bought and read this book shortly after it came out earlier this year. I've tried a number of times to find out anything else about these authors, but have come up with almost nothing. While a fair number of people are reading the book, it appears to have gotten almost no attention past initial reviews shortly after it was published. This is frustrating since I would like nothing better than to see their ideas verified--or at least challenged. ...