Field Notes | Mahwish Syed

Observations on beauty, biology, culture, and the built environment.

Every space tells a story. These essays explore what I've learned as an anthropologist, designer, and author studying the relationship between beauty, human experience, and the environments we inhabit. From healthcare and hospitality to homes, workplaces, and everyday rituals, each Field Note is an invitation to see our surroundings differently—and to recognize that the spaces we create quietly shape our lives.

When Our Light Changed, But Our Biology Didn’t

A swagged light fixture in an interior by Mahwish Syed Designs. Photo by Yvonne Albinowski.

From Bling To Biology

Lighting was what I called the “bling” in the room. The chandelier or sconces were the jewelry that added sparkle and panache. Yes, functionality was important, but that usually meant making sure there were locations for the proper amount of downlights in a hallway, enough task lighting in the kitchen to illuminate chopping vegetables, or enough reading lights in a library to feel cozy and erudite. I’d always considered lighting as an artistic sculpture in a space, filling up the vertical volume with personality.

I understood light as mood. I understood it as drama. I understood it as beauty.

I had not yet understood it as information.

It wasn’t until cancer that I began investigating lighting beyond its use as a decorative object and more as a biological input. Why would a diagnosis lead a designer to explore lighting as a relevant player in our health?

Everyone approaches a calamity differently. Some freeze. Some run. Some fight. My approach was research. I wanted to understand the why and how of illness.

As I began researching cancer, I encountered the field of epigenetics—the study of how environmental and behavioral factors can influence the way genes are expressed without changing the underlying DNA sequence. It made me look at my own environment differently.

So I began to investigate the foods I ate, the pots I used, the clothing I wore, the relationships I kept, and the home I lived in. I began to audit every aspect of my environment.

And eventually, I began asking a question I had never thought I’d be asking as a designer: What is the light in this room actually doing to the person experiencing it?

The Last Minute of the Clock

If you compress 300,000 years of our existence on this planet into a 24-hour clock, indoor life occupies roughly the final minute. The past 23+ hours were lived outside, under the sun and the stars, in darkness with the exception of firelight, and in tune with the cycles of the seasons.

Firelight dominated indoor illumination for most of human history until we began harnessing gas and, later, electricity in the late nineteenth century.

In just a few generations, we went from a world in which light was largely dictated by the sun to one in which we can produce daylight at any hour, in nearly any place. Fast forward to today. We’ve made incalculable strides in our ability to control our indoor environments, but one essential part of our biology hasn’t caught up.

Our ancient circadian inheritance is very much at play today as it was for millennia, despite being bathed by modern LED lighting indoors, long after the sun has set.

I am not saying that modern lighting is inherently bad. It’s that we have radically changed the light environment without fundamentally changing the biological systems that evolved within a natural light-dark cycle.

Our technology changed faster than our biology did.

Junk Light and the Undernourished Body

We all know that junk food is bad for us. We extol how empty calories feed but don’t truly nourish our body.

That made me wonder: What does “junk light” look like?

As I started reading the research, I encountered a concerning body of evidence around circadian disruption, night-shift work, light-at-night exposure and cancer.

I want to be careful here. This research does not allow me to say that artificial light causes cancer. It does, however, raise questions about the biological consequences of disrupting our normal light-dark cycle.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified night-shift work as “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A), based on limited evidence in humans, sufficient evidence in experimental animals, and strong mechanistic evidence. The human evidence included breast, prostate, colon and rectal cancers.

Night work involves a constellation of exposures and behaviors, including altered sleep timing and circadian disruption. But the classification made one thing very clear to me: the relationship between light, circadian biology, and cancer was serious enough for me to investigate further.

Then I found research more directly focused on light at night. A 2021 systematic review and meta-analysis found higher breast cancer risk among women with greater light-at-night exposure, including both indoor and outdoor exposure.

A second 2021 dose-response meta-analysis of 17 epidemiological studies found a similar positive association, with somewhat stronger associations among premenopausal women and women with estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer.

A 2023 meta-analysis of 21 case-control and cohort studies, encompassing more than 734,000 participants, found a similar association between light-at-night exposure and breast cancer risk.

A 2011 review in the Journal of Pineal Research examined how the nocturnal melatonin signal interacts with molecular, metabolic, and hormonal pathways involved in breast cancer, including estrogen-receptor signaling, and explores the consequences of disrupting that signal with light at night.

This was the part that stopped me.

What if my own diagnosis was affected by my own light environment? What if the light I used at night contributed to circadian disruption by compromising my normal nighttime biology, including melatonin signaling, and influenced my hormonal or metabolic pathways?

I cannot categorically say that it did. And I would never tell someone that their lighting caused their cancer. But there was enough scientific evidence—and enough unanswered questions—for me to become deeply curious about the differences between contribution and causality.

And the relationship between light and health isn't limited to cancer. Rowan Jacobsen in his book, In Defense of Sunlight, mentioned the resurgence of rickets in children in industrialized countries due to lack of sunlight exposure from modern indoor living. His exploration of what happens when we separate ourselves from natural light reinforced a question I had already begun asking: What happens when the environment our biology evolved for is radically different from the environment we've now created?

Before I even read his book, I’d gotten my certification in Applied Quantum Biology so that I could better understand the relationship between our light environment and our health. There is growing evidence that our light environment matters to our health at every stage of our lives. We may not have all the answers. But I believe we have enough evidence to start asking better questions.

Close up on a sconce in an interior by Mahwish Syed Designs. Photo by Yvonne Albinowski

A Designer Asking Different Questions

My question changed from “Is this light beautiful?” to “What effect is this light having on my biology?”

What wavelengths are present? When is the exposure happening? Where in the room is the light coming from? How long does the exposure last? Is there flickering? What is the relationship between light and dark? How does darkness affect our circadian health and is our environment supporting both?

I began thinking about light not as a single design variable, but as an environmental health experience.

I started applying circadian principles within my design work. And I also realized something very important. When most projects take months and years to complete, what could I share that helps people now?

The title of my book, Purgatory to Paradise, came out of my desire to break out of the waiting room and design a paradise—a healing environment—that is in tune with our ancient biology but something that didn’t require a million-dollar budget and a couple of years.

I began to share my light protocols that anyone, anywhere could use. My workshops at Mount Sinai, the JCC, and other institutions came out of my desire to bring the healing power of design to the participants on both sides of the medical aisle, patients and providers. That was my Claim Your Paradise program, which has now evolved into Design Is Medicine™.

Because while I love designing beautiful spaces, I don't believe beauty should require waiting for the perfect renovation, the perfect budget, or the perfect moment. Sometimes the most effective intervention is a simple change we can make within our space. Cancer taught me to claim my paradise now–to create a healing environment without waiting for tomorrow.

If I could help one person look around and see their light environment differently, then maybe they don’t have to go through the pain and suffering I did.

Nourishing the Body With Light

We have become extraordinarily good at designing our lighting to be efficient and cost-effective. Perhaps the next step is learning how to make it harmonize with our ancient biology. If light is indeed a nutrient, then how can we feed ourselves the right kind of light?

I'm becoming more interested in what kind, how much, and—just as importantly—when to design for the darkness to return. Our Underworld is just as important as our Upperworld.

What if a smart home isn’t about turning your light on with your phone but becoming wiser about designing the lighting to be aligned with your ancient circadian biology?

For architects and designers, that means asking different questions.

Instead of asking: Does this fixture look beautiful?

We can ask: How is this light nourishing our bodies?

Are we prioritizing our lighting design for greater convenience or energy efficiency—or for better health? Can our lighting be both? And what does that look like?

These are the questions I’m continuing to explore through my work in Design Is Medicine™.

Beyond the Bling

I still love the bling.

I still love the chandelier, the glow, the drama, the way beautiful light can transform a room.

Now, I know that the light in a room is doing more than just illuminating it. It may be one of the most consequential environmental inputs we experience every day—and we are only beginning to understand what our bodies do with it.

So when you look at your chandelier tonight, remember: there is more to light than what meets the eye.

About Field Notes

Field Notes is an ongoing series exploring beauty, neuroaesthetics, biology, culture, and the built environment through the lens of Design Is Medicine™.

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Design Is Medicine™

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Healing Environments: Why Design Is Medicine™

What Is a Healing Environment?

What if one of the most powerful influences on your health isn't found in a prescription bottle, but in the room you're sitting in right now? Most people think healing happens in hospitals or through medicine. I believe it also happens through the environments we create. A healing environment is not defined by location; it is defined by its impact. It is a space that supports the body’s ability to regulate stress, restore balance, and maintain well-being over time. This idea sits at the center of my work as a keynote speaker and designer. Design Is Medicine™ is my framework for understanding how our built environments influence health, resilience, and recovery. It draws on research in neuroaesthetics, circadian biology, biophilic design, and environmental psychology while translating those findings into practical strategies for homes, workplaces, and healthcare settings.

How Cancer Changed the Way I See Design

For more than two decades, I designed beautiful environments. It wasn’t until I experienced cancer that I began asking how beauty might influence biology. While I was convalescing, I began to instinctively design ways to experience beauty, especially when I wasn’t feeling so beautiful. I called them my Rituals of Reverence. And instead of tuning out, I began tuning into my environment in a whole new way.

The Science of Healing Environments

Growing research in neuroaesthetics, environmental psychology, and epigenetics suggests that our surroundings can influence: stress regulation, sleep quality and circadian rhythm, immune function, cognitive performance, emotional resilience, and other factors associated with health. In other words, the spaces where we live and work are not passive settings—they are actively interacting with our bodies.

Modern Spaces, Ancient Biology

Many modern spaces are designed primarily for energy efficiency, cost reduction, and visual appeal rather than human biology. As a result, many spaces—both work and home—unintentionally create chronic low-level stress, overstimulation, and poor lighting conditions that are divorced from our circadian rhythm. Over time, our bodies adapt to this imbalance without being consciously aware. But our bodies are aways responding.

Three Principles of Design Is Medicine™

A healing environment is not a design style. It is a set of conditions that supports regulation and restoration. I believe healing environments rest on three interconnected principles:

1. Circadian Alignment — designing with light that supports our biological rhythms.

2. Biophilia — restoring our relationship with nature using natural materials and living systems.

3. Neuroaesthetics — creating sensory experiences that calm the nervous system and support emotional well-being.

Circadian Alignment

My interest in the relationship between light and health led me to earn my certification in Applied Quantum Biology where I examined our space through the lens of our ancient circadian rhythm. I discovered how our modern homes and workspaces often overlook the importance of natural daylight, opting for efficiency over alignment, cost reduction over well-being. I prioritized solutions that didn’t involved a costly renovation as I felt a level of urgency to create actionable shifts for maximum impact. I now apply this lens to the spaces I design and the consulting work I do with organizations.

Biophilia

One of the defining challenges of modern life is our growing separation from the natural world. While chronic disease has many causes, our biology evolved in close relationship with daylight, seasonal rhythms, and natural materials. If you think of our human existence on this planet as a twenty-four hour clock, we only have had electricity for the last 30 seconds. The majority of our time has been spent outside, in connection with nature, and our biology still reflects this indelible link. Modern homes don’t breathe, and incarcerate our biology more than support it. What if the solution is more simple than moving back out under the stars? Biophilia doesn’t just mean bringing plants indoors although I advocate for indoor jungles, any day. It also means designing with natural materials that support our biology. Certain synthetic flooring and furnishings can contribute to indoor air pollution through volatile organic compounds (VOCs) so making material selections is an important consideration. What if we just replaced synthetic materials like polypropylene with natural and sustainable ones like wool? Using natural materials in our spaces is biophilic design. Our environments should support—not ignore—our evolutionary inheritance.

Neuroaesthetics

As I was recovering from my cancer treatment, I began to redesign my home using beauty as my guide. Looking back, I realized I was instinctively applying principles that are now being explored through the emerging field of neuroaesthetics. Through design, I realized that I was shifting from an activated (I.e. sympathetic nervous system) to my parasympathetic state where the healing actually happens. Even when I couldn’t taste anything, I brought out my best dishes, added violas to my sliced banana, used my best cloth napkins, lit candles, and sprinkled rose petals on my table. I was instinctively practicing the science of neuroaesthetics. For more on this, please read my book, PURGATORY TO PARADISE: How Cancer Helped Me Design an Authentic Life. This is now a cornerstone of my design and consulting work.

Designing With Our Biology, Not Against It

Organizations invest heavily in leadership development, wellness initiatives, and performance optimization. Yet one of the most influential factors affecting employee well-being and patient experience often goes unnoticed: the physical environment itself. Healing environments are not simply a design decision—they are a strategic investment in human performance, resilience, and care. Even small spatial changes can influence employee focus, burnout, patient recovery rates, and cognitive fatigue. This is why design is not just an aesthetic decision, it is an organizational health strategy.

Where to Begin

What does a healing environment look like in practice? While it’s not a one-size-fits-all, I recommend starting with a few simple principles. Receiving natural daylight whenever possible, modulating the lighting to align with circadian health, access to nature and implementing natural materials, and designing with all your senses are a great way to start. We are living in an era of increasing burnout and chronic diseases. And in this context, your environment becomes one of the most underused tools for supporting well-being. What if one of the most overlooked ways to support our health begins by improving the spaces we live inside?

Why Healing Environments Matter at Work

As burnout, chronic disease, and mental health challenges like anxiety and depression continue to rise, conversations about health can no longer focus solely on treatment. We must also consider prevention, restoration, and the environments we inhabit every day. Healing environments are not a luxury reserved for high-end homes or hospitals. They are becoming an essential part of how we think about our health.

We Shape the Environments That Shape Us

We cannot always choose our diagnosis. We cannot always control our circumstances. But we can shape the environments that shape us. That is why I believe healing environments belong in the conversation about healthcare, workplaces, leadership, and everyday life.

Because our environments are never neutral.

Design Is Medicine.™

If you're interested in bringing Design Is Medicine™ to your organization, I'd love to continue the conversation.

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