Dr. Glen Jeffery

Lux is not very meaningful to this situation because that's adjusted for the human eye.

We want to know what was the energy that the cell experienced.

So people started off at, say, 40 milliwatts per centimeter squared.

And I looked at that and I thought, crikey.

That's bright.

That's bright.

Big after effect.

Yeah, that's going to make someone wince.

It is.

So then we...

got ourselves down to what we do in the lab now generally, which is around eight, which is very comfortable, has the same effect.

But then we had someone in the lab do an experiment and we had the flashlights that had batteries in them, which got a lovely effect, and we found out the batteries had been run down.

She was getting an effect close at one milliwatt per centimeter squared.

That is low.

That's dim red light.

So macular degeneration is when, you could put it crudely, that the center of your retina that you're using for reading degenerates.

And you could say it's part of an aging process.

If I get you all to live to 50, so if I get you all to live to 100 years, probably 20% of you will have macular degeneration.

Remember, the retina is a sports car.

It burns out.