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Lights Out | 
 enlarge | Manufacturer: Atria Books
Category: EBooks
List Price: $11.99
Buy New: $9.59
You Save: $2.40 (20%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  77 reviews
Sales Rank: 8119
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Dewey Decimal Number: 613
ASIN: B000FC0R5G
Publication Date: January 7, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
Americans are dying for a good night's sleep. Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and depression are rising in our population. It began with the invention of the lightbulb! We just aren't getting enough sleep in sync with seasonal light exposure. This has fundamentally altered a balance of nature programmed into us. Lights Out is a wake-up call!
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| Customer Reviews: Read 72 more reviews...
 Tortuous reading! September 24, 2008
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.
 Fascinating, non-conformist, full of useful tips, well-researched August 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Explores the links between the invention of electric light, diseases, depression, etc. This book changed the way I live, quite literally. Some people seem afraid of these ideas, but all is explained in the book. Once you think about these things, it all seems quite self-evident. Of all the books I've read over the years, this is one of the most important.
 bad pseudo-science June 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The concept for this book is intriguing. If the hypothesis is correct, it would be a most compelling idea for managing our health and emotions.
But... While the author repeatedly says "studies show," she never puts in the reference for *what* study. You can't search the sources. The apparent attitude is that repeating the same leap-of-faith associations many, many times will result in all of us accepting them to be true. Politicians do this regularly. So do used car salesmen. It's not an appropriate scientific investigation.
I confess that I didn't finish the book. I got fed up with the lack of justification and repeated attempts to link Gaia, quantum physics, and serotonin.
This is *not* the scientific method of developing an hypothesis, formulating a test, and observing the results.
Charlie
Don't Be Offended... May 25, 2008
I gave this book 5 stars because it has really made me think about the way I'm treating my body. You always hear from people that you should get more sleep but I'm willing to bet most people have just a rough understanding of why. A couple reasons why this book might be tough to read:
- The writing style has been commented on by other readers, the author can sometimes be offensive or crude but honestly I think that everyone should be able to look past this. It could have been done a different way but with absolutely no "comments" it would read like a textbook which is no fun..
- You will probably be offended more than once. This book makes some serious recommendations about the way you should sleep and also eat, recommendations that you will probably be mad at because you haven't been doing them your whole life (or possibly any of it!) Just take them with an open mind, there are 100 pages of footnotes at the end of the book to back them up!
Some Good, Lots Bizarre, Some Dangerous April 7, 2008
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
"Lights Out" advocates a high protein diet, and claims the drop in serotonin alleviates depression. They also claim the risk for kidney damage is remote even if you ate absolutely (no) carbohydrates for 7 months or longer. They also claim that a high carb diet causes muscle loss, yet in fact it is a high protein diet that causes muscle loss. They claim that the cause of depression, manic depression, and schizophrenis is simply from being out of light and dark rythm, and in fact that all mental illness stems from sleep dysfunction. They also say that people with low serotonin are happy people, and that it is serotonin in any amount that's a downer. They say that little sleep causes excess serotonin, and that excess serotonin causes depression. They seem to ignore the fact that people who suffer from depression in fact have less depression when they get less sleep and get more light, thus more serotonin, and that antidepressants method of action is by increasing serotonin. But, no, they insist that excess serotonin makes you blue. Why then, do people get more blue in the winter when there is less light, and find themselves eating more carbohydrates to subconsciously increase their serotonin levels and lighten their blue mood?
There is some good information in this book, but it gets so overwhelmed by the bizarre discussions, comments, and side-trails into subject matters that did not even apply to this book. One third of the book is end notes, and I feel another third of the book could also have been eliminated. Even with the one third of the book I feel applied to the subject matter, I feel there was a lot of erroneous information and personal bias that had nothing to do with fact.
There are some things in this book that I think are dangerous. They suggest taking 150 mg of zinc, twice a day, to reset your internal clock. Taking more than 100 mg a day can be dangerous, and can suppress your immune system, cause enemia, or lower your good (HDL) cholesterol. Also, they recommend tyrosine, but do not reveal that it can severely restrict blood vessels. Note that they do object to high levels of serotonin, partly due to the fact that it can restrict blood vessels, but then they recommend a supplement that will do that. Wacko! So much contrary information in this book!
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