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“You’re glowing” is a well-known complimentary phrase meant to convey a perceived level of health, happiness, or other biological condition—pregnancies often inspire the platitude, for example. But in reality, humans (along with all other living things) truly do emit a glow largely caused by an organism’s metabolic and cellular processes.
This glow, in scientific parlance, is created by what are known as biophotons (or ultraweak photons). Scientists have studied them for decades, probing their changes due to age, gender, health, and many other factors. Now, scientists from the University of Calgary have analyzed the emissions of these photons in mice before and after death, showing how they quickly dim as a result of an organism’s passing. The results of the study were published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.
“The fact that ultraweak photon emission is a real thing is undeniable at this point,” University of Calgary’s Dan Oblak, the senior author of the study, told New Scientist. “This really shows that this is not just an imperfection or caused by other biological processes. It’s really something that comes from all living things.”
To capture this process in real time, Oblak and his team captured two one-hour exposures using advanced digital cameras capable of capturing individual photons emitted from four mice. Before both sessions of observation, the live and dead mice were given a 30-minute dark acclimation period before imaging. The results show a clear distinction between ultraweak photon emissions (UPEs) between the live and dead mice, with lingering emissions corresponding to areas of high metabolic activity in the mouse before death.
“While the live mice emit robust UPE, likely indicative of ongoing biological processes and cellular activity, the dead mice’s UPE emission is nearly extinguished, with only a few remaining ‘bright spots’, which correspond to ‘brighter spots’ in living mice, reflecting the cessation of metabolic and energy variation,” the authors wrote.
Of course, these photon emissions are not exclusive to the animal kingdom, so Oblak and his team used a similar process to analyze UPEs in a plant—specifically, an umbrella tree (Heptapleurum arboricola). They tested the emission of biophotons due to plant injury, as well as the application of certain chemicals like alcohol (isopropanol), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), and benzocaine. In both instances, the plant appeared to increase its biophoton emission, which could have a particularly profound application for observing the health of the world’s forests.
“The intensity of UPE from plants is influenced by temperature, where higher temperature causes higher UPE […]. Moreover, UPE may be used as an indicator of injury effects in plants, where the injured parts emit more photons,” the authors wrote. “The investigation of UPE from plants may be used as a simple method for non-invasive monitoring of health abnormality and plant growth under different environmental conditions for plant biology and agricultural practices.”
As New Scientist notes, previous studies have similarly captured the disparate “glowing” effect in living cells (and even individual body parts), but never an entire animal organism as examined in this study. Further refinement of these analytical tools could help scientists use biophotons as a non-invasive means of monitoring human health and determining if your “glow” is really as healthy as it looks.
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