Light for Health & Wellbeing
Anna Iversen
Let there be light! At fjor light we are passionate about light and the positive health benefits it brings. It is our mission to spread the word as widely as possible! You are in control of your health and wellbeing and we at fjor light would like to help you optimise it! At fjor light we build bridges with a variety of clinicians, researchers and innovators who all share this objective. For our clients, we combine the most cutting edge science, novel technologies and top of the range services tailoring solutions that work for the individuals we are facing. We understand that people live busy and pressurised lives and our support needs to alleviate these pressures, not add to them.
Anna Iversen explores the paradox of modern life, where despite technological advancements,
The solution is going back to good old-fashioned habits our ancestors used to employ and augmenting them with the science and technology out there. That is how we can live as optimal human beings and bring this message to the rest of the world.
Summary
- Modern sedentary lifestyles, excessive blue light from screens, and environmental stressors negatively impact mitochondrial health and lead to chronic disease. - Light is fundamental to biological well-being, and light therapy offers a way to augment natural habits using modern science and technology. - Biohacking technologies and light therapies must be normalized and brought to a wider audience beyond a closed circle of enthusiasts to improve public health. - Education is essential regarding the benefits of natural sunlight and the importance of creating health-promoting lighting environments in homes and offices. - Community-based projects and crowdfunding can make light therapy more accessible to vulnerable populations, such as those in care homes with neurological conditions.
Article
Light for Health & Wellbeing: Bridging The Gap Between Science And Modern Life
At Biohacker Summit 2018 Stockholm, Anna Iversen Made A Case For Light As Both Ancient Medicine And Modern Necessity
There was something fitting, almost elemental, about the appeal Anna Iversen made at Biohacker Summit 2018 Stockholm. In a world of glowing screens, sleepless routines and chronic overstimulation, her presentation, *Light for Health & Wellbeing*, returned the room to a simpler proposition: that health begins with the forces human beings evolved under, and that light remains among the most powerful of them.
Speaking in Stockholm on 18 May 2018, Iversen argued that modern life had pushed people into conditions their biology was never designed to tolerate. Sedentary habits, artificial blue light, stress, pollution and too little time outdoors, she said, were not merely lifestyle inconveniences. They were assaults on the body’s internal machinery, especially its mitochondria, and they were helping to drive the epidemic of chronic disease.
“Our bodies and specifically our mitochondria are not very happy,” Iversen said. “They don't really like modern life. That's why we are seeing so much chronic disease.”
A Familiar Instinct In An Unnatural Age
Iversen’s argument gained force from its emotional clarity. Light, she suggested, was not difficult to grasp because it already lived in the body as intuition. People might not understand every mechanism of photobiomodulation or circadian biology, but they understood, almost viscerally, that sunlight mattered.
“We all instinctively feel that we should be out there enjoying the sun as much as we possibly can,” she said. “Light therapies resonate with us because we understand that light is fundamental for our health and wellbeing.”
That instinct formed the foundation of her broader message. The answer to modern illness, she suggested, was not nostalgia alone, nor a wholesale rejection of technology. It was a reconciliation: reclaim ancestral habits where possible, then augment them with the best tools contemporary science could offer.
The Best Of Times, The Worst Of Times
One of the most striking themes of Iversen’s talk was the paradox she drew at the heart of contemporary life. This was, she said, an age of extraordinary scientific possibility. Yet it was also one in which the conditions of daily living had become increasingly hostile to human biology.
“We live in the best of times because there is so much interesting science and technology,” she said. “We must embrace these tools because we are not spending enough time in nature and we need more than what nature alone can provide in our modern world.”
That sentence captured the tension running through the presentation. Iversen did not romanticise a return to some impossible pre-industrial purity. People were not going to abandon offices, smartphones or urban life. The real challenge was to recognise the biological cost of those choices and to build systems, environments and routines that softened the damage.
In her account, this was not a niche concern for self-optimisers. It was a public health issue.
Mitochondria, Chronic Disease And The Biological Terrain
Iversen framed chronic illness less as a collection of isolated diseases than as varied expressions of the same deeper imbalance. Different people, she suggested, experienced breakdown in different organs or systems according to their vulnerabilities, but the underlying terrain was often shared: poor light environments, low resilience, stress, inflammation and mitochondrial dysfunction.
That language of terrain was important. It pushed back against a purely pharmaceutical model of care and reopened older questions about the body’s condition before disease took hold. Light therapy, in that context, was not presented as a miracle cure but as one way of improving the environment in which the body functioned.
It was also, she noted, a field long sidelined. As pharmaceuticals rose to dominance, therapies based on light were pushed toward the margins. Yet new science, she argued, was beginning to pull them back into view.
Making The Fringe Feel Normal
If Iversen’s diagnosis of modern life was severe, her practical concern was social rather than technical: how to make these ideas intelligible, acceptable and ordinary.
Biohacking, she implied, too often remained trapped in a closed circle, full of enthusiasts fluent in devices and protocols that looked baffling to everyone else. The challenge was not simply developing effective tools. It was making them culturally legible.
“It shouldn't just be a closed circle of people who are talking about these things,” she said. “Our role is to break those barriers, make these technologies normal, and get people on the street involved so everyone can stay healthy.”
That meant confronting the awkwardness of emerging wellness technology head on. Intranasal light devices, for example, could look absurd to the uninitiated. But Iversen’s point was that ridicule was a poor measure of usefulness. If a therapy worked, improved wellbeing and rested on sound science, then the task was to carry it beyond the conference hall and into everyday life.
Sunlight, Screens And The Politics Of Everyday Exposure
Iversen also called for a more direct rethinking of everyday habits. People, she said, needed more education about natural sunlight and more honesty about the consequences of modern indoor living. Offices, homes and public spaces should be designed with health-promoting lighting in mind, rather than treating illumination as a neutral backdrop.
Her remarks went further still, challenging entrenched assumptions around constant protection from the sun. She argued for a more nuanced relationship with daylight, one less dominated by fear and habitual barriers such as sunglasses and sun cream.
The point was not recklessness. It was reconnection.
To live well in the modern world, Iversen suggested, required understanding both good light and bad light: the restorative role of natural exposure and the physiological strain imposed by long hours in dim interiors lit by artificial screens.
From Boutique Wellness To Shared Care
Perhaps the most ambitious part of Iversen’s presentation lay in her vision for access. The promise of light-based interventions, she argued, would remain limited if it stayed confined to affluent consumers and specialist circles. The real opportunity was to build models that widened distribution and lowered barriers.
“I want to make sure that as many people as possible can benefit from these therapies,” she said. “By creating solutions that make health technology more accessible to a wider audience, we can actually really make a big difference.”
She pointed in particular to neurological conditions and care homes, suggesting that community-based projects could bring light therapies to vulnerable populations who would not otherwise encounter them. Crowdfunding, in her account, was not just a financial mechanism but a social bridge, allowing those with resources and curiosity to help subsidise access for those without either.
It was an unusually democratic note in a space often associated with elite experimentation. In Iversen’s framing, the future of biohacking would be judged not by how futuristic its gadgets appeared, but by whether they could improve life beyond the conference circuit.
A Call To Build Bridges
The deepest force of *Light for Health & Wellbeing* at Biohacker Summit 2018 Stockholm was not that it promised salvation through technology. It was that Anna Iversen asked a harder question: how could a modern society, knowing what it now knew about biology, continue to organise itself in ways that made people sick?
Her answer was both pragmatic and hopeful. Relearn the old habits. Use the new tools. Design healthier environments. Share the knowledge. Widen access.
In an era still searching for ways to reconcile innovation with human limits, Iversen’s case for light felt less like a trend than a reminder. Before medicine became specialised, before wellness became commodified, before the screen became the horizon, there was already an understanding written into the body itself: that life needed light, and perhaps more of it than modernity had allowed.
Part of Biohacker Summit 2018 Stockholm