Light's Impact on Fertility: Unveiling the Maybe Connection Between Nighttime Illumination and Global Societal Changes

Wenqing Fang; Chaopu Yang; Taiyang Chen; Youming Zhang; Shanxiao Huang; Kaiqi Fang; Tuanqing Fang; Bo Yang; Xudong WangT; Chaoliao

arXiv · 2404.03306

Light's Impact on Fertility: Unveiling the Maybe Connection Between Nighttime Illumination and Global Societal Changes

Wenqing Fang·Chaopu Yang·Taiyang Chen·Youming Zhang·Shanxiao Huang·Kaiqi Fang·Tuanqing Fang·Bo Yang·Xudong WangT·Chaoliao

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Abstract

Chinese people are talking about a national birth rate of 6.4 per 1,000 people in 2023, the lowest in the world. Whether this is related to the wrong use of various artificial night light rays passing through our eyes is worth reflection. Non-visual effects of light are the effects of the blue component of light, which effectively inhibits the melatonin secretion in the pineal gland. As melatonin acts through high-affinity receptors located centrally and in all organs, blue light affects, in principle, the hormone secretion throughout the body, including the secretion of sex hormones and cortisol. These effects have been widely used in animal reproduction. Given that the night light environment has significantly changed over the past century, an effect of light on fertility and behavior could be detected in multiple cases. We showed that the ovulation phase of hens could be shifted by the light as low as 0.2 Lx, which corresponds to the illumination intensity at full moon,and the effect of 0.2 Lx on ovulation is normally far greater than all other factors combined. Two rounds of experiments and many other facts listed support that human intrinsic fertility may have not declined significantly, and food, chemical pollution and policy making are all not the main factors affecting fertility. The longer lighting time at night has brought modern humans into a radically different endocrine state compared with that of humans who lived 100 years ago, which has a huge impact on human reproduction, values and even the progress of civilization. With the development of the digital era, our eyes will be exposed to even longer light time at night. How to restore human beings to a normal hormonal state by combating the misuse of light may be the urgent issue. The light of the digital world (met averse, AI, and so on)may be should not continue to flood.

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Wenqing Fang, Chaopu Yang, Taiyang Chen, Youming Zhang, Shanxiao Huang, Kaiqi Fang, Tuanqing Fang, Bo Yang, Xudong WangT, Chaoliao. 2024-04-04. Light's Impact on Fertility: Unveiling the Maybe Connection Between Nighttime Illumination and Global Societal Changes. https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.03306

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