👨‍🏫 Guest Masterclass: Harnessing Light for Nervous System Flourishing w/ Matt Maruca

Beautiful. Beautiful. Well, yeah, it's, it's really great to have you here and for everyone listening, if any questions come up along the way and you can either raise your virtual hand or it would probably be best if you put them in the chat and we'll come to your guys questions in the second half of this conversation. So feel free to and share comments, things, things that resonate as well. Ocean will be, will be checking the chat too. But yeah. Matt, I really appreciate you taking the time. I've listened to a bunch of your podcasts with Luke's story, the New Hacky Collective Modern Wisdom and I feel like my impression of you is like this kind of radical citizen scientist and like a translator of what I view as, I think one of the more interesting and underappreciated aspects of nervous system health and specifically mitochondrial health and this emerging field of photobiology, which I never heard about until I listened to your conversations. So thank you for being here and maybe to kick us off, you could share for those who aren't familiar with, with who you are, with your journey, like what, what led to going down this rabbit hole around light and what kind of like brought you to this place.

Johnny, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity and I appreciate your kind words about what you've heard so far. I did not plan to be doing photobiology. I didn't really think much about what I would be doing when I grew up as a kid that I can recall. But here we are. So photobiology, for those who don't know, is just the study of how light affects life. So photo is Greek for light and biology is life. And so yeah, photobiology is the study of how light affects life. I got into this field after having some health challenges as a kid, as a teenager and even younger, just trying a bunch of different stuff, like following the Western medical approach, kind of accepting that things were genetic and that I couldn't really do anything about it, at least I thought. And then trying some other approaches like more naturopath medicine and eventually taking things into my own hands, starting to do my own research when I was like 13, 14 years old, just reading a lot online and learning about a lot of diets and got really deep into the diet world, which I think a lot of people have done. And I think it's a really valuable approach to get into food and nutrition and, and it definitely had a huge benefit. And it opened my mind that there's a whole other way that we can be doing things besides just, you know, the traditional Western approach. However, there was more, and I didn't know that at the time. I became really, really obsessed with the nutrition and all the little nitty gritty details of diet, which many people do. And I think that's fine if that's what someone wants to focus on. But when I started to learn about mitochondria, these cellular engines in our. In our cells that generate energy, and that in order for our body to use all that food we're eating, our mitochondria have to work well and that the mitochondria are controlled by light. All of a sudden, things started to get a bit more complicated. Like, it wasn't just as simple as eat healthy and be healthy. It's like, well, you could eat healthy, but if your mitochondria don't work, then you'll still be sick or have issues. And I thought that was a really interesting concept. And it just showed me, like, oh, wow, there's more. The more you look, the more you find. And so light turned out to be one of the most important factors affecting mitochondrial health, probably arguably the most important factor. So, naturally, it's something I started to study. And mitochondria, like everything in our body, are. They work in rhythms, so they're active more during the day with the sun's presence, and they're less active at night when we're undergoing cellular repair under the influence of melatonin, which is only released when we have sufficient darkness. After the sun goes down, it's released optimally. And when we're exposed to morning light, that sets our body's rhythm. And so it's really important for us to get out and get natural light during the day and then to avoid or block artificial light at night. And that's how I ended up starting a business making blue light protection glasses that are actually stylish and work well. And we can get into all of that. But essentially, that's how I got into this field, because it struck me as something that matters a lot. And it's only, you know, since 2015, 2016, when I first learned about this, and then 2018 when I started my company right after finishing high school. Actually, I've only been. It's only been reaffirmed based on the evolving and emerging science, how important light is. We have people like Andrew Huberman who've come onto the scene in the last year or two who've just exploded because they have a really great way with their content and people resonate with it. And I love that I haven't put as much focus on the personal brand content. I've focused more on building up the business, getting the products out that people need to make a tank. Tangible change in their lives. And I think there's value to both. So I'm looking at doing more of the educational stuff myself. And I've gone a lot of podcasts. That's what I focused on because it's straightforward. But anyway, that's. That's how we got here, essentially. That's how I got here. What we're doing.

Yeah, that's. That's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. And it's. It's such a cool story. I'd love to dig into some of the. More like, like nitty gritty aspects in terms of the science, because I think a lot of people here will be really interested in some of the more nerdy sides of this. Particularly I know that you mentioned that a lot of, like, modern chronic diseases are kind of tied directly to mitochondrial health. And I've also heard you speak to, like, mitochondria are electromagnetic. Like perhaps you kind of speak to that so that people get more of a sense of why they're so important.

Yeah, yeah. Well, there's two questions in there. So one is mitochondria are electromagnetic, and the second is why they're important. So first of all, I'll start with why they're important. They're important because they generate energy. So like, living organisms have to generate energy to survive and. Or to be alive, essentially. It's sort of like you can't separate the act of generating energy from life because it's not like we generate energy to survive. It's like we generate energy, period. And that's what makes us alive. And if we didn't, we just wouldn't be alive. We would just be the dust from the Earth, the dirt of the ground, the water and sea, basically. So to exist, part of our existence is just the flow of energy. Bacterial cells and archaea cells, which are the two types of cells that existed before eukaryotic cells. So more complex cells, at least according to, you know, the. The most conventional and supposedly advanced views of. Of biology and evolution. I'm kind of skeptical of everything at this point, but this is what the standard accepted model is of science and evolution. And so basically the idea is that two types of. Basically these primordial cells that still exist all over the Earth, they're just. They're everywhere. They're on top of. They're on our skin, in our hair and our gut. They're on our Laptops or computers, they're everywhere all the time. We just don't really see them because they're so microscopic. But bacteria live basically everywhere, many, many places at least. And so two bacteria, different types, basically merged and created like a supercell, kind of like specialization. So if you think in a business like where the equivalent of the business, equivalent of the way bacteria were working was like every single, like solo businesses, like solopreneurs. So like every bacteria is basically running its own show, doing all the energy production, all of the building all. They'd be the equivalent of an entrepreneur running their own entire business. The sales and the marketing and the HR and like everything is one individual. That's kind of how it was. And then this, with this merger, it was essentially like one bacteria that was really, let's say, effective with structural and functional type of things, became the host cell, which is responsible so for structure and function, which is in our modern cells, like the place where the cell where DNA is stored, the nucleus and the structural component of cells responsible for production of proteins and all these types of things. And then the other type of cells, like in this sort of delegation strategy, let's say, became the mitochondria. And the mitochondria are really good at producing energy and that's their focus. So kind of like having like a sal. Like just basically all they focus on is just producing energy, basically driving sales. And then the boss can focus on the other stuff. He doesn't have to focus on energy production anymore, he or she, and he can focus on doing the organizational stuff. And then the sales team just goes out and crushes it all the time. So that's kind of the equivalent. And this simple biological merger allowed for massive energy savings because now all these energy producing cells, the mitochondria no longer had to take care of getting their nutrients and doing all these other functions. Like they. So basically their genes were cut by something like 90 plus percent. They only kept those few genes inside us. Our mitochondria in each human cell has their own set of genes that basically carries out how it works, how they work and, but it's, it's a tiny percentage of the genes they used to have. Most of those genes were transferred, transferred to the nucleus. So you have, you have Almost average like 5001000 mitochondria per human cell. So it's quite a lot of mitochondria in a single human cell. So our cells are much bigger, they're 30% mitochondria by volume, which is interesting. So that means we're about 30% mitochondria by volume, which is also really interesting. They're very interesting stuff. So anyway, why is this important for life? Well, there, the reason I'm sharing all this science because you said the audience might like. You guys might like the nerdy stuff, so I hope you do. But basically like, what it means is that our process of generating life, which we used to do as single celled organisms, as bacteria, was transferred to these still bacteria that are now part of our cells. So it's not like mitochondria are something that are separate from us. Like they're a fundamental part of who we are and what we are. And so just to give some other examples. So cyanide. How many people have heard of cyanide? I think it's pretty common concept. So, you know, spies and soldiers would use it in case they ever get captured and they just bite it and they die in pretty instantly. Yeah, we like the nerdy stuff. Somebody said, I love that. So like people will, you know, just. Cyanide kills you. And the way it kills you is it cuts off the flow of, of electrons in the mitochondria. So you cut off energy flow in the mitochondria, you die immediately. So it's like a very, very clear thing people can understand. Like, okay, well, if they don't work, I die, period. So that's one. Well, then what happens? The question would be, then what happens? If you decrease mitochondrial function by like 10%, you're probably not going to die. Maybe you would, but. But you don't actually, based on the research that, that I've come across. But the body just begins to function suboptimally when we decrease that energy production rather than cutting it off completely. So there's a really great researcher named Dr. Douglas Wallace who anyone can go on YouTube and check out his lectures. They're amazing. And he's basically found. So he started studying mitochondrial genetics, so in the 60s, 70s and basically. Yeah, like a long time ago. He's in his 70s now. So he started studying mitochondrial genetics while all of his colleagues and peers were studying nuclear genetics. So I believe it was. I don't want to butcher this, but I believe it was Watson and Crick. I don't know if maybe I'm just taking movie characters, but two guys who discovered DNA, the structure, that's Watson Cricket. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It sounds, I'm almost like this sounds like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds like two guys from like a spy movie. And I'm just totally up. But anyway, so they discovered the structure of DNA. And so everybody was studying DNA, but he was the guy who basically said, well, the mitochondria have their genes. So I'm actually going to, I'm going to go ahead and study this too separately, where everyone else was looking at the genes, like this is going to be the cure for all diseases. We're going to find all the diseases genes. And they've spent like literally billions of dollars between all the scientific grants from all the different governments, especially the usa, like the, you know, United States, NIH, over the last few decades studying nuclear genes. And they basically done this much to cure chronic illnesses, like nothing almost. And from nuclear genetic perspective, but on the other side, the mitochondrial genetic perspective has been really interesting because while they started studying very rare mitochondrial diseases of which they only knew of a few, what they started to realize is that basically every modern chronic illness, so you name it, diabetes, obesity, autoimmune disease, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, all types of neurodegenerative diseases. Again, autoimmune diseases, things that affect the skin, als, Lou Gehrig's disease, Parkinson's disease. So again, developmental diseases, autism, gut diseases, so immune system diseases. Like there's so many different modern illnesses, chronic illnesses that people are familiar with and they're pretty much all, they started finding that they all have some aspect of mitochondrial degeneration in them. So basically like what, it's, it's a super simple paradigm shift. And I, to me, I think it's just, it's really intuitive when people really put their head around it. But like it's basically saying the issues that happen in our, in our biology aren't a result of our genetic information. Like we all have probably pretty great genetic information because we've survived like thousands or hundreds of thousands of years of very hard life. Like anyone who's alive now, like our ancestors survived like extremely difficult times. So like our genetic information is generally very solid, but it's when the system lacks the energy to function properly. That's like, why is everyone so sick? Like, how could we have all survived like literally like hundreds of thousands of years of extremely difficult conditions and then all be like super sick, obese, heart disease, cancer. Like it's not the genes, I would say. So to give a little more context, like the, the best analogy I've come up with so far for this is that our genes are like a grocery store. This is what the science of epigenetics basically says the grocery store. So you could go to a grocery stor, basically pick out anything you want and make a really great meal. So to blame. And if your meal isn't good, it's not the grocery source fault, it's your fault as a chef, like as not being creative enough or like not well. But our genes are like a grocery store. Like there's an unlimited amount of choices of. Not exactly unlimited, but there's quite a lot of choices of what we can express to create health or disease. And so to blame genes for disease is kind of like blaming the grocery store for having a bad dinner. Like, it's not your genes, it's actually us. And I really think it's, it's a worthy analogy because it, it's, it's true. Based on the science of epigenetics. Yeah. So our mitochondria are important because when they work well, we're healthy. When they don't work well, well, the science is pretty clear that we start to develop mitochondrial illnesses, which are just modern chronic illnesses depending on the tissue it leads to, you know, and the, the, the way that the person's particular environment is affecting their system and the particular stressors on their system are some people, certain psychological stress will affect certain parts of the body and so on. Anyway, that's the reason why they're important. Now the second question you had is the electromagnetic bit, but you might want to unpack this first. So.

Yeah, so that was awesome. I love that analogy. And another one that I've heard you use which really resonated was this idea of like an internal orchestra is going on. And this idea that junk light, or at least light, lower quality, shitty artificial lights inhibit the mitochondrial systems. And I know you've also made the analogy of like being like an engine burning like dirty fuel versus clean fuel, which I think is something that would really land with people here. So could you speak to like a little bit of that as well? Because I think it helps make it practical and tangible as well in terms of like how we're living our lives.

Yeah, absolutely. So the analogy of the engine really works when we start talking about specifically light and how light affects the mitochondria and so. Or like why light is something that we would want to look at. But it's a really good analogy because I have to say, because again, it's true. And the, and I'll explain what I mean by this with the car analogy. But basically I think your audience being pretty into nerdy stuff, it sounds like, which is great. So I think you guys probably are familiar with like combustion, the process of combustion. So combustion is like it's basically fire. It's a reaction, a chemical reaction in which water is created from organic material like hydrogen based fuel, which I'll explain in a second. Mixing with air or oxygen from the air and making water and combustion is basically the reverse of photosynthesis. So photosynthesis happens when sunlight comes to the earth. Actually first I realized we just kind of jumped right into this and didn't even fully like connect with, with everybody here. But I just want to say hello first of all. But hey everyone, it's really cool to be here and I'm glad we can all be connecting. So we just went and we went like 0 to 100 really fast. So I'm glad everybody's here. I hope this is valuable. Please don't hesitate to send questions because this isn't just supposed to be a one way, like come and talk and leave. So this is cool. I haven't done like a live Q and A in I think a while. Usually it's a prerecorded podcast. So I love this. Johnny, I'm glad this is a great idea. So first of all, kudos to you for putting together an awesome community. So thank you and thank you everyone, everyone for being here. So about combustion. So it's photosynthesis is when sunlight comes to the earth and sunlight splits water. So hydrogen, you get hydrogen and oxygen split by the light energy from the sun. And then plants conducting photosynthesis breathe in carbon dioxide from the air and they use the carbon and they stick the hydrogens onto a carbon backbone and they make what's called sugar. It's C6H12O6. So carbon 6, hydrogen 12, oxygen 6 is the chemical formula of glucose, which is the basic building block of all plant material. On Earth, everything that's green is based on glucose. And if it's it's tightly wound together, it becomes a type of starch, which can be used as or cellulose, which is also based on glucose, which is what all plant matter is. It's cellulose is tightly wound up Gl just like starch, amylose, and all of these things which we can, some of which we can digest, others which we can't, depending on how tightly wound up they are. But if we can't digest them, our gut bacteria often can. But so that's photosynthesis. So taking water, splitting it and putting the hydrogens on the carbon backbone and then the electrons in the hydro on the hydrogens are excited, so they go up to an excited energy state and that's the Stored sunlight energy that that was absorbed and split the water is stored in these hydrogens electrons. So is with me so far. Please do not hesitate to enter. I'm going to have the chat open and we're going to be looking here actually. So basically that is what happens in photosynthesis. Now in combustion it's the opposite as I was saying. So effectively what happens in combustion is you take this hydrogen, you take something that's a hydrogen. So one of these hydrogen based natural plant matter or you could burn fat too. You could burn like whale blubber or wax for example in a candle. But it's a hydrogen based fuel source and you basically put in a spark of energy. So the way that you can get this reaction of combustion to start running is, is a spark of energy. And what a spark is doing is it's called the energy of activation for the chemical reactions. So if you just have a log, it's not going to just spontaneously combust, generally speaking, depending on the conditions, but generally not. You need an energy of activation. And what that does is it kind of gets you over the hump. So imagine like you were here and there's like a big hill and you wanted to roll down here, but the hill goes up here. You would need like a little bit of a bump to get you over the top of the hill, but then you can roll all the way down. So you know, because like technically we're trying to go is lower than where you are, but if there's more hill in front of you, you have to get over that bit of the hill before you can go all the way down. And that's basically what these chemical reactions are. So there's a huge potential for energy to be released, which the universe likes, but you need to overcome the energy activation. So basically a spark overcomes the energy of activation. So you put a piece of a spark on a newspaper and, and enough sparks, what happens is the spark is energy that causes hydrogens to break off of the carbon backbone. And once one hydrogen breaks off of a carbon backbone, this is why Berg, the very famous one, it went down, it was full of hydrogen gas. And as soon as the hydrogen was exposed to oxygen, the whole thing basically existed. So so basically once those hydrogens break free from that carbon backbone, for example, in the case of newspaper or gasoline would be easier one to break free. All it takes is one spark. Hydrogens break free and then they start reacting with oxygen, then that reaction with oxygen makes water and well the light energy, it's no longer sunlight, but it came from the sun. It's energy that's stored in the excited electrons of the hydrogen. And that's what basically makes that reaction happen. And so the spark causes hydrogens to break free. The hydrogens react with the air, make water, and then that energy that's released is the spark to continue the reaction. That's why once you've activated fire, it will keep spreading. And that's essentially how combustion, the combustion reaction works. Now that's maybe a little bit more detail, but I guess I think it's pretty important for people. Seems like it's, it's, I hope it's useful. Is this useful? Like just to have a context of combustion. It'll make sense when we explain like how our cells work. So when it comes to our body so that this can be applicable, what our mitochondria do is the exact same thing as a fire. So exactly the same. So when you light up a log, you're basically putting in a spark or, you know, a little bit of fire. You're breaking off hydrogens and they're reacting with the oxygen in the air. That's why if you cover a candle, it goes out because there's no air. It just burns through all the oxygen very quickly. So you're causing that hydrogen to react with the oxygen, making water and continuing the reaction from there. And once you've done it, well, the fire will just keep itself burning until you run out of hydrogen fuel. Other sources of hydrogen based fuel. So gasoline, logs, leaves, sticks, newspaper, any kind of paper. It's all plant material. Gasoline of course, but even like wax whale blubber fat, these are now they've been eaten by an animal that, you know, that ate the plant or an animal ate a plant and now it's fat, but it's still a hydrogen based fuel source. So same thing for us when we eat, when we eat a hydrogen based, when we eat food, it's hydrogen based fuel. It's either sugar or a fat carbohydrate or fat. And then we breathe oxygen and then we react the, we strip the hydrogens off of the hydrogen based fuel in the Krebs cycle in the same way that it happens in a fire. And then we expose those hydrogens, we put them into our mitochondria and we basically suck all the energy off those electrons. So rather than all the energy just going out in a fire, we utilize all of that to pump protons across a gradient in our mitochondria and we're basically doing combustion inside of us. That's exactly what we're doing and the end product is water. So our mitochondria make water and release a lot of energy in the process which we use to make ATP. So, so and that's exactly the same thing that happens in a car engine. You put in a controlled, controlled drips of gasoline and you compress, you cause the pistons fire, the spark plugs cause pistons to fire and they basically compress. I believe I don't exactly even know how car engine works but it's basically this. They compress. Somebody could add to this, but they compress the gasoline. There's a explosion causes the pistons to continue to fire and they fire and sink and they basically move the car using the gasoline, the energy in the gasoline and the oxygen from the air and it causes a bunch of mini controlled explosions that, that are the engine running. And so the example. So now that we've got this basis down, a lot of explanation but it's, it's good. I'm. I'm hoping the context.

Yeah, it's fantastic.

Yeah, very useful. So, yeah, so, so, so now that's probably the, the most thorough explanation. So this is being recorded, I think the combustion and how it works in our mitochondria. This is as good as it gets in my opinion. I've never heard it better, so I don't think I've ever said it better. So basically we are very similar to a car so we're doing that same process inside of us. Now the analogy starts here. If the spark plugs in the car engine were worn out, there's a lot of things that can happen when the spark plugs are old and worn out, like misfiring in the engine. You know, cars can be blowing la. The car could be failing to accelerate. There's a lot of coordinating the, the explosions and basically the burning of the gasoline and the running of the engine is no longer, they're no longer working properly. So if your spark plugs are worn out, you would have to go get your spark plugs replaced. But so if somebody didn't, oh that their spark plugs were worn out and one day they were driving and their car was not accelerating properly when they would hit the gas, something just off. So they might say well you know what, it's probably my gasoline being uninformed and they would go to the gas station and they would basically try to fill up with. Instead of, for example, you might say well instead of using regular, I'm going to use premium this time around because maybe it's the fact that I've been Using regular gas and I need to upgrade to premium. Maybe that's the issue I have. And so say you go to premium and you use premium and you say, you know what, I'm going to get some fuel additives to help clean out my engine. I'm going to put in some fuel additives and do this. That would be the equivalent. So the equivalent of this for nutrition would be someone who says, you know what, I have an issue with my health.

I'm going to eat paleo, carnivore, Paleo.

Carnivore, whatever, vegan, whatever somebody thinks is the best diet. And then I'm going to add a bunch of supplements. Those are the fuel additives. So I'm going to help clean out my system. Cellular detox, the whole thing. Detox, the heavy metals. Go do all this stuff and they do it. And then they're driving car again and then all of a sudden they're like, the car's still misfiring, the engine's not working there, won't accelerate. So then they're like, all right, well something's wrong. Like, this is clearly the premium, super premium gas. And the fuel additives, no matter how much I do, it's not working. And they try and try and try and it doesn't work. All right, now I got to go to the mechanic because the mechanic knows. No, must know what's up. The mechanic looks and he's like, man, your spark plugs are worn out. Like, pretty simple, let's just replace them, let's get that fixed. And then you should be good. And then at that point you get really high quality spark plugs going on. And all of a sudden it doesn't necessarily matter whether you're eating regular or premium fuel at that point. It doesn't mean that premium fuel wouldn't be a good idea to help benefit your engine and keep it in better health for the long haul. And the fuel additives might help prevent corrosion or whatever else could go wrong in the engine. It's actually probably a good idea to do that, Especially if you have a premium car like we do, like a super mega premium, met, ultimate, whatever you, whatever you like, probably it's really smart to take good care of that. And our system's way more common for most modern diseases is mitochondrial. So that's why I use that analogy. Because it's the, let's say, take home message is that it's important. It's our light environment. Because the equivalent of the mechanic in this analogy is light. So light is the thing that Helps to tune the way our engines work. The ignition system is another term for the spark plus I was referring to. And light is what essentially controls the ignition system. So when we consume fuel, food, we have to burn through it. And there actually is a requirement for energy to burn through the fuel. And the food doesn't power the burning of the food. It's actually that light energy helps our body to optimally burn through fuel, to break it down, get more energy out. You know, because ultimately when we eat food that the benefit is that we get more energy than we put in to consume it. Otherwise it would be not a net benefit. So, but we still need energy to burn through it. And also we get a bunch of proteins and building blocks that are a lot harder to, you know, assemble from scratch than to take in, you know, in the form of amino acids. And so that's part of why we consume other things. Right? Unless you're like super dialed in and you're a breatharian, which is like the whole next level. So. So it's so important that we look at our light diet, as I call it, when people have health issues, because that's how we can start to reset the function of our mitochondri by resetting our body's natural circadian rhythm. We can use things like red light therapy or sunbathing to enhance the op, the optimal function of our mitochondria, which is what red and near infrared light have been shown to do. They help our mitochondria, our cells, to produce more ATP independent of the food we're eating. What we're doing, just adding red and infrared light improves cellular function. And that's essentially the equivalent of optimizing the function of our ignition system, our spark plugs. There you go. See? So that light is absorbed by what's called cytochrome C oxidase, which is part of that chain where the electrons are carried in our mitochondria. And for whatever reason, something, you know, some. Something to do with evolution and the fact that we evolved in full spectrum natural light, that our cells evolved to take advantage of. The science is clear. Like, when we're in that light, which is our natural state, our cells work better. So it's not even saying that. This is the final point here is that it's not even. I'm not, I'm not even saying that like we could get an additional benefit by adding red and infrared light. It's actually like that's kind of our default state. And we've sort of lowered our default, so to speak. By being in an indoor life. So adding red light therapy is more like bringing us back to a sort of baseline or getting outside more is like getting back to a baseline rather than, you know, some super crazy biohack. It's like, like, let's just get back to where our base is meant to be.

That was fucking awesome. Thank you. That was a very.

Thanks for asking.

Very comprehensive answer to that. And what's coming to mind for me is you mentioned Huberman earlier, and I think he has done an incredible job of like, really hammering home the importance. Like pretty much every episode he's like, get outside. Like, get some equals at low angle sunlight in your eyes in the first kind of two hours after waking up. And what I'm curious about is what would you kind of recommend in terms of. For people who have, you know, they have to look at a screen for a certain number of hours per day, but they do have some time, you know, to get outside. What do you think are the most important kind of spectrum of light? And maybe we can kind of use the. Using the metaphor of the spark requires different spectrums of light in order to kind of function at different times of the day, if I'm getting that right. And so what, like, if someone's listening and they're like, how can I improve the functioning of my internal spark plugs? Like, what are some really basic things that people can start to think about?

Yeah, such a. It's a phenomenal question. Let's get straight to practical applications. So the most important spectrum of light would be the sun spectrum, the solar spectrum. So, you know, rather than try to specific, to isolate, I mean, it is pretty simple. Like, the good thing is that we don't have to be. We don't have to make it complicated at all. The solar spectrum is what we evolved to. And for a variety of reasons, similar to the same reasons that the paleo diet is compelling for a lot of people, because they make the ancestral argument. Well, that's the same argument essentially for sunlight. Like, we evolved in this light for a lot longer than. A lot longer than food was even a biological concept. Like before the concept of consuming or evolving in sun for billions of years. So not talking to the paleo diet or anything, but, you know, it just puts things into perspective that like how foundational light is. And also when you consider it's not even about like, you know, this versus that, but like, when you look. When we look at light, it's all part of like a team effort. I'd like to think when we look at light. All fuel, all fuel sources, all food is, as, you know, explaining about photosynthesis. It's basically stored light energy. So it's basically like crystallized light energy, if you wanted to consider it like that. It's not exactly crystallized, but it's stored light in a, you know, sugar, something like that. A sugar or fat.

So.

Yeah, let's see. So as far as where I'm gonna make my computer not ding, I realize I have the focus, but it's like, when there's exceptions to the focus, somebody can send me a message. It's so annoying. So anyway. Okay, here we go. So no more dings here. So basically, the solar spectrum is the most important spectrum. And I think everyone here gets why, because that's what we evolved in and that's what our cells essentially need. Although there's lots of research on how red and near infrared light has a big benefit to our health and our biology. And there's a big. A ton of research on how blue light sets our circadian rhythm and can also disrupt it. I truly. I truly believe that there is so much else that, you know, isn't studied that I hope we will, you know, fund the research over time as we grow and do more with our business. That's one of, let's say my dreams with business is finding more science. Yeah. And that's something that, like, not. Not for the purposes of just business development, but just purely, like, for the purposes of scientific knowledge development. Kind of like what, you know, Joe Dispenza is doing. He's studying the effects of meditation now because they've grown and done so much. So, like, I'd love to do that as we go down, down the road. But anyway, what I'm. What I'm getting at is that I wouldn't even claim to know all the potential effects of the different wavelengths, even from everything I've studied. And even what. What I haven't studied that has been studied, that still doesn't most likely even cover the gamut of what the sun can be doing for our biology because there's so many different wavelengths and so many different effects on all of our organ systems. So I would say that as far as, like, practical, applicable things people can do right away with this knowledge, I mean, there's some pretty simple basics that I'd love to get into. And then as we get through that, if we have some time left to get into some more of the fun, interesting theoretical stuff would also be great. But as far as practical stuff, Huberman's Pretty much on point, you know, based on what I've studied. And he's the neuro scientist, right? So he's up to date on the papers. There might just be a few modifications or suggestions I can make that he doesn't talk about. Because modern science is limited by the belief that the only way you can truly know something is by measuring it. Which is, I believe, a limitation. In fact, I don't even think you can truly know something by measurement because in order to like, somebody still has to read the measurement and that still involves human perception. And it's like, are, you know, is our perception? All the same, it's, it gets into a lot of metaphysical and other types of questions, but keep staying out of that realm for the moment. You know, what we know from the science is that it's important to get that low angle light, as he calls it, early morning sunlight when it's rising. And we can look directly at it. If it's 15 to 30 minutes within 30 minutes after coming up over the horizon, I wouldn't recommend it any later because people can damage their retina from ultraviolet. Depending on where you are on Earth and the time of year and the altitude and the moisture in the air and all these other factors, the sun gets really strong, ultraviolet comes out and you could damage your retina. So we don't recommend looking directly into the sun except for the first, you know, 15 to 30 minutes maximum. But that is an ancient practice called sun gazing that has been known for a long time to increase the function of the eyes and the brain. And the tone, I mean, I, I, the tone of basically the nervous system, you could say, like helping to set our circadian rhythm. So that's one thing that's really simple. And then doing the same thing in the late afternoon can have a reverse effect as the light goes down. So Generally I recommend 10 minimum to 20 to 30 minutes of morning light exposure and 20 to 30 minutes of afternoon to evening light exposure. Like if somebody spent time with me, I think they'd be surprised. Like how simple it is. Like I'm staying in a hotel because I'm in Barcelona at the moment. I open all the windows when the light comes out in the morning and just let all the light into my room because I like to just work a ton before even leave my room. So like I'll open all the windows and just like let the light in and allow it to set my circadian rhythm and basically wake me up. That's what I do. It's pretty simple. And then I'LL look directly at it for a while. Like when I'm sitting working, I'll just sit. Like, I'm lucky that I have a corner room by chance. So I have like, like insane amounts of light coming in, especially east facing. So I'm like, stoked. Somehow got really lucky in this case. You know, it all works out. And then I sit in my chair and I sit with the light on me and, you know, basically naked. And 10, 20 minutes of that, like, it's more than enough for setting the circadian rhythm at an early hour, like 7, when the light's just peeking up over the buildings in the distance. And. And then even before that, I'm getting the light, like when it's just coming up over the horizon and the clouds are all lit up. And so that's kind of like at the moment what I'm doing. And then I'll make sure I get out in the afternoon and walk around a lot. One thing about Europe is that people walk around a lot, which I love. They're outdoors a lot. You know, it's like more. Many ways conducive in European cities to getting out and getting light. A lot of the time they're on big skyscrapers where you're just always in the. In the. Basically in the shadows, in the darkness. Like it is in center city Philadelphia or New York or somewhere like that. I grew up in the suburbs of Philly, so that's why I share Philly. But anyway, so those are simple things like morning sun, afternoon sun, or evening sun, something like that, Right? Then there's a separate focus, which is sunbathing. It's like actually getting in the sun and like, soaking it up. Based on what I've learned from my more recent dives into ayurvedic science, I've really come to believe that what they knew in ancient India about like, light and health and life is really relevant and really pertinent to us today. And typically the recommendation then from that school of thought is that the sun is really good for us to sunbathe in until it gets to extreme strength. So, like, meaning after, in the summer, like after 10am or an a.m. depending on where you are and before tours, which is the more are the more damaging. Shorter wavelengths that can be more deleterious to our biology if we get too much that come through.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, cool. My connection, it said, was a little unstable for a moment. So anyhow, so what that means is that. And I know this just intuitively from my own personal experience, the sun always Feels the best and the most nourishing in the mid, early to mid morning hours. It's really like warming and feel the healing me. And then mid to late afternoon it's also, it's. It's much gentler, like softer. There's more of the healing red and near infrared and less of the shorter wavelength blue ultraviolet, which can be made with strong ultraviolet. In the middle of the day you can, but I would just make the exposure much shorter if you're sunbathing in the middle of the day. So I would say like, what does short mean? There's so many factors. People are gonna ask, like, well, what's the amount of time this or that? Like I could give some general recommendations. Like if you're sunbathing in the mid morning and late afternoon, like maybe 30 to 60 minutes total in the day would be like a place, a great place to start. But it's so broad and vague because it literally depends on every factor. Like the sun strength alone externally depends on where you are on the earth, obviously, and where you are. Also there's factors that have to do with. I mean, let's try to knock through this just so I can't, I can give people an idea of what to. What to be thinking about. But so basically the factors are where you are on earth and how complicated it could be. I should say the energy of where you are. Like whether you're in a place with volcanoes around that change the magnetic field strength in that area and how the light is affecting you and everything there. There's the elevation of where you are. So are you at sea level or are you high up? The higher up you go, the stronger the light gets. For example, in the immediate environment, are you on sand, water or snow? Or are you in a green forest or are you in a, you know, concrete jungle surrounded by pavement and bricks and concrete and so on? So all these things affect how we absorb the light, what's around us. Green is favorable. If you can be in a forest, this is greater jungle. Natural places or water. Snow is great. Obviously in the winter to get out. Skiing is healthy. There's all these factors. And then of course, the time of year depends changes how high the sun's going to be and then the time of day, of course, because you could be on the equator, but if it's night, the sun is not particularly strong. There's all these factors. So like you have to start to get a sense. Just like when someone starts surfing, they have to learn about how the winds affect the waves and the Swell and the tides and the reef versus a beach break versus a point break. There's all these factors when you start to think about sun. Like, you know, you know that the longer it goes in the day, the stronger the sun's going to be. The earlier in the day, the less strong the sun's going to be. But if it's the middle of the winter, it doesn't matter if the middle of the day, the sun's still not going to be that strong. Whereas if it's the spring or the summer, the sun's going to be stronger and stronger the closer you get to June 21st in the northern hemisphere and to December 21st, more or less in the southern hemisphere, when the sun's the strongest and then it's the Strongest not at 12:00 clock noon, but at solar noon, which you can easily calculate on any weather app or on the app Dminder. Dminder is a good app to tell you a little bit about UV index, but you can also get the UV index from your weather apps as well. So UV index is something for people to look at so you can start to get a sense of like the UV index at different times of the day, at different times of the year. UV index is a good measure of the sun strength. But then the only other thing I'll add for sunbathing is that your internal condition affects the ability to absorb the sun. So for example, like if somebody's just eaten a huge meal, I wouldn't recommend going out and sunbathing because your blood should be in your gut digesting the food, not at the surface of your skin absorbing light. Because when we sunbathe, we're like a tree. All of our blood vessels actually go to the surface and our there's a process called vasodilation that happens because UV light causes nitric oxide to be released and our blood vasodilates and our blood vessels rise to the surface of the skin and the capillaries and everything. And so we start absorbing this light into our blood. And that's one of the ways that we bring the light into the deeper layers of our body, through hemoglobin, which is a light absorbing protein. In addition to carrying oxygen to our mitochondria, it carries light. And so super interesting stuff. But so if you've just seen a big meal, sunbathing isn't the best thing better to do when you're fasting or a couple hours after a meal so you're in a more digested state. Not to say it's bad per se. But it wouldn't be my first choice. I feel way better sunbathing when I'm fasted. That or in a more fasted state. Then if you sunbathe and you fast, like if you do long term fasts and you sunbathe is like divine. It feels so good. I've almost never felt anything so pleasurable ever as sunbathing in a thoroughly fasted state. Highly recommend that. And then other internal states is like don't. I wouldn't recommend people reading books like people do a lot on the beach. If you're trying to get a sunbathing effect, like it's just because you're distracting your mind so you're not taking in the light fully energetically. And I think you could increase your risk of burning as well because you're not as in tune with your, how your body's, what your body's telling you. If you're deep in a book and super submerged, that's great. But if you're sunbathing in the sun strong, you might burn because you're not as in touch with what's happening. So there's a lot of different factors going on that affect sunbathing. But those are like, those are the key recommendations. And the last thing I should throw out is people should block artificial light at night. Like of course I have a company making blue light protection glasses. So of course I have an interest in people knowing about this. But as a matter of fact, that's the best. Blue light at night is the best way to throw off our natural production of melatonin, which is the sleep hormone which repairs our retinas, it repairs our cells. It's considered across the board in natural medicine the most important anti aging, antioxidant, anti cancer molecule that the body has. So melatonin is very critical. And we know from a partnership we did last year with Aura, the maker of the Aura sleep tracking ring. I don't have mine on at the moment, but basically that people who wear raw optics sunset lenses after the sun goes down and measure their sleep with their aura ring have significant increases in their deep sleep scores across the board as well as heart rate variability and other things. So we have this data from customer reviews, customer screenshots. So it's a very powerful, simple tool. It's like, it's like, it's amazing with this thought here, but that you could put on a lens that's been specifically designed with certain pigments to absorb certain wavelengths of light and transmit others in a targeted manner that Just changes the light going through the eye. And it could be like steroids, you know, like a performance enhancing drug just by changing the frequency of light going through the eye. But that's actually how it works, how light affects our, our brain and our hormones and neurotransmitters and everything else.

Yeah.

Awesome. And just on that note, I mean I can speak to. I've got a pair of the, the nighttime glasses here. And particularly during winter, like when it was getting dark at like 4 to 5pm Like I noticed myself like calmer and more relaxed like once I'm wearing them. And it's, it's a very. And I've also found myself become more sens. Artificial light. That's around like I went into like a dentist the other day. And it's, it's visceral how the kind of bright overhead LED lights like really impact and to some degree dysregulate my nervous system and feeling just much more sensitive to the quality of, of light. And something that we talk about in this course is interoception and kind of like building up somatic awareness so we can sense how or maybe exteroceptive factors are influencing our internal state. So before I continue, I just want to check like, do you have a hard stop in a few minutes or.

Good. Actually, I can go. No, I could go a bit longer. Absolutely. Like 50 fast. I have more or less.

Okay, cool. Because I'd love to get some questions from the, from the community as well before we, before we wrap up here.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

So, Brent, are you still. Are you still here? You had a question about the connection between. Yep. Do you want to come to the front?

Yes.

Hey, I think that that last bit about the melatonin production explains eye absorption of blue lights, especially the time of day. So that now that makes sense on the glasses. I still have a question going back.

To.

What we'll call mitochondrial combustion and the difference of absorbing shorter wavelength blue light versus longer wavelength red light. And then also how your body absorbs it. You know, like it's not just through your eyes, of course, that's how we perceive it, but it's I think mostly through the skin. Although I'm not a biologist, a cellular biologist, so I'm not totally sure. So maybe make that link for me of how the shorter wavelength blue light impacts your mitochondrial combustion process differently than a longer wavelength red light and then how it's absorbed through the body.

Yeah, this is, this is an awesome question. Thank you so much, Brent. So I love, I love all these Questions because they actually, sometimes I realize, oh, I don't actually know that enough and I need to go and look more into this. So I'll be super honest if I don't know something fully. But basically, regarding light absorption, so there's actually a really cool chart and I'm going to see if I can find it over the next after I explain this. But basically the different wavelengths of light are absorbed to different depths. So blue light is actually not absorbed very deeply into our skin. Like it's, it's. It's only a few, maybe one or two millimeters. I'd have to look at the exact amount, but it's very little compared to, for example, red and near infrared. Near infrared, the longest, the wavelengths of near infrared that are absorbed the most, I wouldn't be able to tell you the exact wavelength, but it's in the near infrared range and it's absorbed like multiple centimeters into our, into our skin. So this is just a side note. Near infrared light is the least like, it is the most beneficial and the least likely to create issues essentially because of its longer wavelength. But if someone ever has a near infrared burn, this is a reason to be really careful with near infrared devices, especially when you don't feel them heating you, it is the worst type of burn. The reason being that it goes so deep, it wouldn't be just like a superficial burn. You could actually burn yourself like centimeters deep and it can take months to heal. So I haven't heard of this happening, but one of the main scientific expert we work with recently mentioned this to me and it was kind of a warning. So just so you know. So given that blue light doesn't absorb super deep, it is a really good question. It's actually something I'm going to look into, and I'd like to be able to get back to you with a more thorough answer. But the blue light definitely is affecting the superficial layers of our skin and our eye. And that's one of the main issues of blue light. So it's like during the day, blue light causes essentially can cause retinal damage. So excess exposure to blue light, that's one of the things that's been studied pretty well. So that's why we wear the daylight lens. Like a lot of people ask, I'll just try to hit this from a few angles. But people ask, why do you wear yellow lenses during the day? Why would you want to block the blue light if it's only important to block it at night? And the answer that basically has come up just from the research and why we started in the first place is because I intuitively knew that being under fluorescent lights, even during the day is suboptimal. They're not sun, they have huge, these spikes of blue light, but none of the near infrared, the healing component. And there's actually videos. Again, I'll try to find these resources and put them together so that Johnny, you could send this all out in like a follow up.

That's amazing.

There's actually videos of the degradation of, so cells being exposed to just blue light versus cells being exposed to blue light with red or near infrared at the same time. And the, the amount of cell degradation essentially going on and the blue light causes these cells to basically degrade very quickly. But with the near infrared it actually creates, it offsets this effect. So there's something really protective going on. And we could understand that this is from the red, which is supporting the mitochondrial function of these cells. And if we have blue, so imagining this is just happening on the surfaces of our skin and our eyes and face and whatnot that are exposed to this blue light, the blue creates, and this has been studied as well, blue light causes an increase in reactive oxygen species production in our cells. That's been studied very well. And that's like the equivalent, so reactive oxygen species. The best way to think of that is like smoke. So when we have this internal combustion happening, there's essentially smoke that's produced always. It's never really fully clean burning. But the more clean we can burn, the less smoke, the less reactive oxygen species and the less resultant health effects. Because reactive oxygen species are considered something that's pretty much across the board bad. And they're. If you think about like the car, like which part of a car is most likely to be, you know, damaged the fastest? Like it's usually the engine because the engine's just so active. Like, you know, okay, yeah, maybe like the doors are going to wear out eventually and the seats might wear out. But like the engines, the place where you would have an issue because it's the part that has the most moving pieces. And it's the same in our cells. Like the mitochondria are so active in energy production. That's where this reactive oxygen species, these damaging byproducts come from. And so a lot of like health versus disease is just managing how clean we're burning and reducing reactive oxygen species, but not by taking tons of antioxidants. Like another analogy that our, our expert, the expert we work with was sharing with me recently, his name's Dr. Alexander Wunsch. People can, you know, look up some of his YouTube videos and everything. I'll share him as well with you, Johnny, to send out. But anyway, is that for an athlete? It actually could be bad. He was saying to take a lot of antioxidants because you need the stimulus of the reactive oxygen species that's a stressor for the body to repair and produce more muscle and all this. And that could actually impair their growth. Now to the specific question of how is it. So this is how the blue light can affect our mitochondria. But this is still like, pun intended, a superficial answer because I know from the research that the blue light only penetrates a very superficial layer. So what I. What I will look into and get a better answer for you on Brent is how that blue light is having the deeper effects in our. It could be having the deeper effects in our system. Or is it only superficial? Because I'm. I'm actually curious too, like, like, is it being absorbed into the blood and carried there? I don't think so. But I'm gonna put the question out and get more detail on that specifically. But I hope. Does this help a bit?

Yeah, it is. Thank you. And I also appreciate your candor being like, I need to look into that.

Yeah.

And I, I can't imagine someone with a better background. For what it's worth, you're great with analogies. And as you were talking about that, I was like, I should have known the answer to this because it's the same way that cellular service works. Companies need both short wavelength to travel long distances, but it's there, it reflects very easily and they need long wavelengths to like penetrate building surfaces or get underground. And it's. That sounds like the exact same thing with this light in our skin.

Yeah, yeah, it's. And let's see if there's. There might be one more bit to throw in regarding the shorter wavelengths. Like, so this is I think pretty familiar, but just from a basics physics perspective. So this isn't any particularly specialized knowledge. But you know, in physics, like according to the quantum theory of light, so not just the wave theory, but the photon theory, shorter wavelengths and higher frequency just have much more quantum energy per photon. So like it's just light, like the difference between like a gamma ray or an X ray versus like an infrared photon is it just has. There's significantly more energy. It's also electromagnetic waves. It's just that the one is carrying a lot more basically energy and momentum given the way it was produced. And so that's why those wavelengths of light can be more damaging ultimately when, again, not balanced properly in our cells because they're, they're useful for certain processes like vitamin D synthesis. We need ultraviolet B. But again, in excess, it's just the case that those wavelengths are harder to manage essentially biologically, like they're. If you overdo it, it becomes a big issue. Hence, like sunburns and so on. But then the interesting thing, and this is, you know, almost food for another call like this down the road at some point, or even we could bring in our, our expert doctor once and he could share even more detail and absolutely blow your mind. But. And this will have been a good primer for that, to have a foundation. But basically, like, one of the things he touches on a lot is how cool it is that. So the length of the water molecule, like a way. A lot, the way that a lot of this stuff works. It's almost like I'm, I wasn't raised religious, but a lot of this stuff is like, making me want to be spiritual or religious because it's almost like everything somehow works out too perfectly. But so like, the, the, the, the, the wavelengths that affect certain matter is, has to do with the, the, the length of the actual molecule. So like, if you look at the length of a water molecule, the wavelengths that correspond to that length are, you know, because the length of water molecules also, like nanometers, it's tiny. And the wavelengths that correspond to that are the near infrared wavelengths, which is why these are the wavelengths that when studied, affect water. You know, so like red and infrared light are the ones that affect water. Red affects the cytochrome C oxidase. A lot of it has to do simply with the literal length of the molecules and so which light they get caught up in. So one of the main functions of red and infrared light, near infrared in particular, is that it basically causes like, jiggling of our water molecules. And so it's interesting when we, and he. This, Dr. Wunsch mentioned this to me and explained this to me. Like when we are exposed to near infrared light, it's, it's actually like, you might not think you're doing like some kind of exercise exercise, but he calls this stuff like photonic exercises. All of our sunbathing and light practices like our photonic exercises, but this actually, this light causes our water molecules to jiggle and that can actually detox the body. And you don't have to go out and like, jump on a trampoline and get your lymph moving, although that's also great too, and I love to do that. But you can just jiggle the light, the water in your cells with the right wavelengths of light and kick out the bad stuff. And that's part of how near infrared light therapy works so well. And although we're working on some products to take advantage of of this for the future, I do have to shout out a friend of mine's company called SaunaSpace Sauna Space. Besides my own products, which I use every day, these which are like blue light protection products, I think sauna space devices are some of the coolest. They're near infrared light bulbs. They're some of the coolest devices ever. And I do have a code. I think it's like light diet. People could just, I think they give a small discount. But anyway, Sauna Space, really cool products and those give you that near infrared for the cellular detox and stuff. But thank you so much for this Great question, Brent. I'm so glad. Thank you. I appreciate the time.

Yeah, thanks, Bryn. That was awesome. So a few people have kind of direct messaged me some questions as well and I'd love to maybe we can tie this in. But I'd love to leave people with some behavioral kind of low hanging fruit recommendations, like simple protocols that they can do to incorporate some of what we've been talking about today. And one of the questions that came up related to that was if you're living somewhere that's say super cloudy, say it's like Alaska, say you're in winter, what are some ways that you can mitigate the lack of available access to sunlight on a regular basis? And maybe as a way of answering this, you kind of walk us through a day, from morning to middle of the day to afternoon, evening of how can you optimize your light environment to support mitochondrial flourishing?

Yeah, great. Well, the first thing I'm so glad you asked this question is that I used to kind of get into the game of like major problem then solution for podcasts and stuff because like, I think a lot of people thrive on that energy. And I've realized like, I never want someone to get off a call that we've done like feeling less like they're in the right place than as opposed to like feeling more, you know, like in other words, like in a fear, like, oh my gosh, like there's all this stuff now I have to go do all this stuff. Like it's actually like a lot easier than it seems. Like it's so easy. But so that being Said, first of all, regarding the seasons, unless someone is from a place where they evolve with like really dark skin to protect from excess amounts of light, and they're living in like a really dark place with not a lot of light. So that would be a biological incongruency that may be worth looking at. I still believe we can overcome that, but it just takes a little like a bit more effort. But for anyone who has a skin type that has evolved for low light places like northern Europe or Europe in general, or the northern U.S. like, our skin is designed, like, lighter skin is designed to absorb more light when there's less. Darker skin has an amazing advantage of when you're in a place that darker skin and most of humanity evolved and still lives, which is within the tropics, you know, basically Indonesia, India, southern China. Basically, yeah. These kinds of regions. Sub Saharan Africa, Central United or Central America, I should say. This skin protects from basically overheating, heat stroke and severe ultraviolet damage, which, if I were like a hunter in the Central America, Costa Rica, which is a place I like to visit, or Bali, which I, I've. I like to visit as well, I would have a hard time surviving. So there's advantages, right? So anyway, the point is that we don't actually need to be like out sunbathing every day, 365 days a year in order to be getting the benefits of light and sun. We don't need to be super tan all the time. Right? Like, I get tan. I was in Bali. I had a good tan. Someone commented earlier, like, you don't look so tan. It's like, I'm not. I'm not particularly after being tan, but I've been in Europe and it's been just above freezing for the last two weeks. I haven't exactly been sunbathe, like, it was free. I was in Switzerland and Prague and Germany and it was literally like zero degrees Celsius or a little more. So just above freezing. And there was, you know, frost on the ground in Munich anyway, so pretty late in the year, but anyway, so just getting out and getting light, even through the clouds, our cells absorb the light. So I wouldn't want to. I don't want to make this about like, like a specific detailed thing. Like, the message is simple and people will feel it. Like, just get outside, like, at least. So what Dr. Wunsch recommends, based on his lifetime of research in the field, is minimum two hours per day of unfiltered daylight exposure. That doesn't mean two hours of sunbathe. That just means Two hours of the day when you're exposed to unfiltered daylight. Like so I closed the window here and therefore put on my glasses because it was really windy and I had, I was cold, a little cold because I got back from jumping in the Mediterranean Sea. But I now open the window right here and I'm getting natural unfiltered daylight through the window. And I wouldn't even wear my glasses now because the near infrared, which is always present from the light, the only thing that filters it are windows and walls offsets the risk of the blue light like we've been talking about. So anyway, for someone living in a cold, dark place, like still go for a long walk. There's a study in a great book. There's many books. I'll send you a list, Johnny, of book recommendations for people who want just to. Because I think it'll be really cool. But a great book called let's see the Healing Sun I believe. And he cites a study in that book about seasonal affective disorder patients. 30 patients, they all, they started to take like a one hour walk in the winter. So in the season when they're affected by this lack of light and they're depressed and 29 out of the 30 people's seasonal affective disorder virtually went away just from a one hour walk every day. So it's like it. I had a conversation with someone about this the other day. Like it doesn't take as much as we would normally think to get this really strong effect. Like just go outside. It's kind of like the message is funny. But it's cool that we have so much science about now why it's so important to get out. It's not just like parents trying to convince their kids, like you have to go out. It's like it's just important largely because of the light. So I think that's really the takeaway is people in cold dark places get out. What I would walk like I lived in, I was in Norway last winter for Christmas, the 2021, going to 2022 for Christmas and New Year's. Five hours of light barely. It got light at 8, 9. It got dark around 3 or 4. And that was just by choice because I wanted to have like a deep internal reset. It was almost a month that I was there and I loved it. I loved the cold, I loved the short days. I loved the little bit of light that we would get when it came out. And I would just go for a walk like an hour a day. Probably could have done a little Bit more. But it was freezing like tons of snow, 3ft of snow on the ground constantly. So as long as I could get out for at least an hour of a walk per day, it was enough for me. Again, more could probably have been done, but given the shortness of the days and the minimum amount of time to work on my computer while the light is out because I try not to work too late after sunset on my computer, but it was, it was inevitable there. Yeah, that was, that was all I did. And then I would encourage people to take advantage of like saunas because that's something people in these cultures figured out. Like is a really thing to do in those seasons. And that is a ton of a massive infrared boost essentially. So saunas are pretty good too. And then I think that's. And then oh, one other thing we haven't touched on but for everyone in all seasons, but especially in when there's less light is the, the timing of food is so important. From what I learned, this is something that really ayurvedic medicine had emphasized to me that the modern western research like Sachin Panda. Yeah, Sachin Panda, the researcher on circadian rhythms has studied especially the effects of food and time restricted eating and has basically found that if we, how do I say this? So like he. They studied animals and basically found a pretty like shocking but not shocking if you know this information. But they found that the animals that they studied, they studied nocturnal animals. So it was the opposite. But so if they ate when their metabolism was supposed to be inactive and sleeping, if they ate something quote unquote considered healthy for their system when their metabolism was supposed to be off, or they had other animals eating something that was considered unhealthy. But when they're their metabolism and their engines were supposed to be active, the, the animals that ate the quote unquote healthy food at the wrong time had significantly worse metabolic outcomes than the ones who ate the unhealthy food at the right times. So it's a totally different concept when you think about the engines because you think, oh well, 110 times out of 10 if you. Someone might think if that they only knew about the fuel side of the equation that oh, 10 times out of 10 it's better to eat healthy food than unhealthy food food. But if the question is between for me eating something healthy in the middle of the night or eating something unhealthy at 12 noon middle of the day when the metabolism strongest. 10 times out of 10, I'd pick the unhealthy thing in the middle of the day when the sun's out. And the reason is that the metabolism's capable of burning through the fuel when it's on. But if you put something into a, an engine that's off, it's just going to basically clog it up. Like imagine putting syrup in an engine that's not running. That's basically what each middle of the night or eating too late does. So the point of this is it's so important because, like, how could the engine burn through anything if it's supposed to be off? Melatonin literally turns off energy production in our mitochondria so that they can repair. Because how can you repair when the engine's running? Like, you can't go and fix the spark plugs when the spark plugs are sparking. Essentially when the pistons are firing, you can't change the pistons. It wouldn't work. So. So the point is we're supposed to not have increased energy production. But. So that's like eating late is I think, one of the worst things. And I, I tested it last week, by the way, and I felt terrible. Like, it doesn't work.

You can also, you can measure it on. I've, I've like eaten within like two hours before sleeping. Your HIV mind kind of goes down by 20 to 30%, which I guess of recovery.

Yeah, yeah. So basically what I would recommend based on what I've studied in another separate researcher. Well, doctor actually is, who's a friend of mine as well and who I'm learning a lot from. He's one of the top Ayurvedic doctors in the world. But basically the recommendation generally is like, have breakfast between, like depending on when you wake up, which ideally would be early if we're following a healthy circadian rhythm. Like people used to wake up way earlier than we do now, as far as I know from what I've read and studied. But basically between 6 to 8am or 9am, like is a breakfast window from like between 11 and 1 or 10:30 if you're up really early, like 10:30 to 1 is like a lunch window and then a dinner window is like between 4 to 6 and not much later. And like, ideally, if, if, like when I'm in Bali and the sun sets at seven, or Costa Rica, sun goes down really early.

I was asleep by 8 when I live there.

Yeah, exactly. That's best to be done eating by like five so that you know you have minimum three hours to digest between your meal and sleep minimum. But even that's Barely enough, especially if you're eating heavy foods, heavy proteins. So but then in the summer, maybe like in Spain, it doesn't get dark here really till 10. Right now, 9, 30, 10. So, like, maybe you can get away with eating up until seven. But even then, the recommendation is to. If you're gonna have heavy proteins, whether it's steak, whatever, fish, whatever eggs, anything people want to eat that's like protein, heavier protein would be more advisable in the middle of the day. And thinking about the other two meals, it's not quite one meal a day, but people could think about it like that, like where you have your main meal a day at lunch. And this is where the US And a lot of other cultures, we go wrong because we eat, eat way later. Some European cultures do great where they eat more lunch. So anyway, having our other two meals, like lunch and dinner, as more like lighter auxiliary meals. And having our main feed, as Australians call it, which I love having our main feed, like in the middle of the day. And I. I find that to be really, really great. Like, certain foods that, like, would maybe make me feel more sluggish or heavy later in the day at noon just doesn't even affect me. Just as an example, I don't. I'd rather not eat things that are going to make me feel sluggish. But in testing and experimenting kind of works. Like Ben Greenfield, we did a podcast years ago, and it's like the best time of day to eat a cheat meal was like the name he took because it was such a funny question that he really wanted the answer to. So, anyway, I hope that helps.

Yeah, no, that's fantastic. And I think I listened to one of your first episodes with Ben or Luke week, and I made some changes to my life probably like two or three years ago. And I'd say it's been phenomenal, both the impact of wearing these blue blocking glasses when I'm outside of the house after sunset and just how quickly I'm able to downshift and sleep well that evening. And also recently, we've got a puppy and spending, like you were saying, two hours a day kind of outside in the light, I. I feel better in my body as well. And combining that with we have a sauna in the house and I've been experimenting with the. With the UV light as well. I found it helpful, kind of if I wake up before the sun's rising, like doing some stretching, it kind of helps. I feel my. My kind of body come online when I'm in front of it. But yeah, it's, it's been fascinating just to, to feel in myself the, the, the like visceral differences in terms of how I'm using light in different kind of contexts and almost seeing it as like a, a tool that I can use in some ways, like when I want to feel energized or activated or when I, if I, you know, want to go to sleep, then I'll put on the, the blue blocking glasses. And also like replacing all the bulbs in the house has been a big thing. I think you recommended the Edison bulbs off Amazon, which I, I bought a while ago. That's been super helpful. Replacing like the crappy LED ones and just using candles. Like we just have candles everywhere in the house outside of the puppy's reach. But it's, it's, it's really helpful. Anyhow, I'm conscious of time. I want to say just a huge thank you for this. This was, this is phenomenal. Like I felt like it was a, a photo biology kind of masterclass crash course.

Yeah, I think this was awesome. I really, I, I don't know. I think it'd be so valuable and I hope you're able to. It's recorded but I don't know if you'll just as a podcast or something or if you can send us the file and we'll cut stuff and.

Yes, totally. I, I can, I can work that out. Yeah, I'd love to do that as well. And I. There's a ton of other follow up questions, but I think they'll have to be saved for around two at some date.

Let's schedule another one. Whenever you. I'm. I'm happy. Next month, whenever you have some time. I'm. We can do it. So amazing. Thank you so much everyone who's still here. I know a lot of people had to hop, but thank you everyone so much for your time and, and giving me your attention. As Joe Dispenza says it is the best. You know, your attention is your energy and it's the greatest gift you can offer someone. So thank you.

Yeah, we didn't even touch on Joe Dispenza's work either.

That's. Well, that's, that's another thing.

Meditation to dive into. Yeah. So thank you everyone for joining. The recording will be posted in the next 24 hours or so. I will send a summary of links, anything Matt shares with me as well. I'll send that on. And yeah, finally. I'd also really recommend right optics. I'll send a link to that as well.

Thank you so much.

I think they are the best. I mean, I believe they are the best blue blocking glasses in the world. Very high quality. So, yeah. Thanks so much for your time and have a great evening and feel free to unmute and say goodbye and thank. Thank you, Matt. Let's all say, thank you, Matt. Unmute you, Matt. Thank you, Matt.

Thank you so much for your time and your attention. Thank you.

All right, ciao, guys.

Thank you so much for the opportunity. Have a great rest of your night.

Yeah. E.T. matt, take care.

Yeah, Take of the care.