What If Health Begins With A Photon

One photon travels nearly 93 million miles and still arrives with a job to do. We dig into sunlight as biology-changing information, starting with Einstein’s photoelectric effect and ending with a practical, unsettling question: what are we giving up when we spend most of life indoors and out of sync with the day?

We walk through the spectrum in plain language and connect it to real physiology. UVB light helps convert cholesterol in the skin into pre-vitamin D, but the deeper story is that vitamin D behaves like a transcription factor with “top secret access” to the nucleus, influencing hundreds of genes. Then we zoom out to what most people miss: blue light around 480 nm sets circadian rhythm through melanopsin receptors in the retina, UVA can mobilise nitric oxide to support blood flow and cardiovascular health, and red to near-infrared wavelengths interact with mitochondria through cytochrome c oxidase, shaping energy production, healing, and resilience.

Along the way we challenge the supplement-only mindset, explain why sunlight is self-regulating in ways pills are not, and explore why people often override what their bodies feel with what they have been told to fear. If you care about circadian health, vitamin D, nitric oxide, photobiomodulation, mitochondrial function, and the future of biophysics in medicine, this is the map we wish more people had.

Subscribe to The Health Edge, share this with a friend who never gets outside, and leave a review so more people can find the science of self-care.

For slides and open source references: www.thehealthedgepodcast.com

Transcript

Sunlight As A Healing Input

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Health Edge, translating the science of self-care. I am Mark Pettis with my friend and colleague, John Bagnulo. John, good morning, my friend.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Good morning, Mark. It's great to see you. And I'm excited to talk about uh talk about sunlight.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Great to see you, John, as always. And uh the health effects of sunlight is one of our favorite topics, as our health-edged listeners know. And uh this time of year, with these beautiful, long uh peak days of sunlight, uh, seems a good time to continue to reflect on the various dimensions of light, light as information, light as a free and readily available healing intervention for just about anything that someone in modern life would confront. And what I love about what we're going to touch on today, John, is the the physics of sunlight, the physics of light and health. Um, we often talk about how the modern medical enterprise is a very much of a materialist reductionist model. There's a lot within that. Um, I'm not discounting that. Um, but uh it was really some of the early advent of quantum mechanics and quantum physics, now over a hundred years ago, that opened an entirely different uh door into a reality that a hundred years later is not really well, or if at all, integrated into this material reductionist model. And uh so much of the quantum realm is outside our senses' ability to fully appreciate. Uh and uh when you don't see what's going on, um, even though you might be feeling what's going on, uh it's it's hard for the medical enterprise to take seriously anything that is sort of non-material. And and so um we're coming up on the 100th anniversary of uh Albert Einstein's photoelectric uh effect papers back in 1926, and he won the Nobel Prize in 1927, so 100 years ago, for the photoelectric effect. And basically today what we're gonna be looking at in 2026 is the photoelectric effect. The fact that every time you go outside, there is this reality interacting with you and interacting in a most profound way that one could easily, day after day, week after week, month after month, over a lifetime have no full appreciation of. And when you look at what's happening at that level, for me, it brings me to my knees, John. Uh it it's so um beautiful, it's so uh simple, it's so intelligent, it's so um uh responsive, and and it it just it reveals the nature of a reality that I think we struggle to fully appreciate today. Uh the information that we're bathed with every day, uh, you know, that sort of what is coming at us, and then there's the information that we are sending out into the world by way of our thoughts, our emotions, our behaviors. Um and it's a feedback loop. There's feed forward, there's feedback, and all of this non-material um uh interaction is affecting the material. And so, yeah, we might notice an inflamed joint or a high blood sugar or a high blood pressure, and and in that material paradigm, we you know, we all know how how that is interpreted and and responded to, and and surely there are some values within that paradigm. But what we're talking about here is something much more profound, and and I hope it won't be too um, I don't know, esoteric or outs, you know, too outside the box for folks.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

Um but some of the things it's fundamental. I think it's very fundamental, Mark. I think it's it speaks to the physiology, the the power of photons, sunlight, and as an essential requirement for life. And that's why I don't think it's esoteric. I think it's one of the most important principles that people understand with respect to health. And it's, you know, I didn't mean to interrupt, but I I think it's really far from esoteric. I think it's it's a core component of health is sunlight. And we have all of this evidence of how sunlight, there's a there's a requirement for sunlight. And and most people have such a limited understanding of that. They think vitamin D, and that's that's really all people think about. And they think the whole thing can be circumnavigated by taking a supplement. And I think what we're going to discuss today shows that no, no, it's just it's so much more powerful, it's so much more influential on our physiology than vitamin D. Yes. So I I think I think it's as far from esoteric as you can get. I would I would say this would be, for me, this would be maybe the single most important component of health is sunlight. And I, you know, I feel feel very strongly about obviously nutrition and and exercise and all those other pathways for information to change our life. But this is like you, you really can't have health without sunlight.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

And we hope we can we can help people appreciate, if they don't already, that um sun all of what we're talking about here can easily be extrapolated to nutritional science, to exercise physiology. Um and this this it really does sort of lift the veil on um, I think a more elegant and precise um view of how we function biologically. Uh, where you know, so biophysics, uh in my view, is the future of medicine. It should be the future of all health sciences. Uh today we continue to struggle a hundred years later to fully integrate some of the these amazing findings. And so uh, yeah, thank you

Why Biophysics Matters In Medicine

SPEAKER_00 6:55

for that, John. Let's um let me uh open up a few slides here. And again, I apologize for those listening, uh not able to see these graphics. We'll we'll do our best to sort of describe these, and I will make sure that all of our slides, of course, will be on our website, the healthedgepodcast.com. Uh the video recording of this, of course, you'll be able to visualize those slides on our Health Edge YouTube channel. And uh let's uh dive into this, right? So the physics of sunlight, we'll we'll reference vitamin D, but I love what you said, John. This is um so much more than about just vitamin D. Uh and circadian rhythms. That we we we talk a lot about that. Um uh and it's one of the many ways that sunlight guides, um uh choreographs, um uh really fully integrates and coordinates our biology. And it's very easy to take that for granted day after day, but it's a it's a beautiful and awe-inspiring um model. Uh, and so we're gonna look at how one photon can unleash the activation of hundreds of genes in our DNA and and all that comes from that downstream. Uh, you know, I started researching some of this stuff sometime back, John. I was um amazed at how little of this I remember learning about, if at all, in uh you know, high school, college. I did the sort of traditional pre-med. You could take quantum physics, but that was sort of the, you know, that that was the course for the real geek and those that

Einstein And The Photon Idea

SPEAKER_00 8:55

were maybe going to become PhD in physics. Uh, there was really no health implication. It wasn't about um sort of, you know, the biologic effects of these remarkable quantum revelations, but it was really Einstein that uh uh suggested that light is really not this sort of continuous stream of what we see as light, but it's uh individual uh packets um of energy. Uh that this remarkable kind of revelation that uh uh light is at the these packets of energy, and each packet is is referred to as a photon. And when a photon, uh uh in some of the original research, but this is true in human biology, and and we're going to be talking about the skin and cell membranes and mitochondrial membranes, when these photons interact with receptors uh in skin and cell membranes and mitochondria in the brain, um, electrons are uh released. This electrical energy uh emerges. Uh and I I think we're we're we're coming to see that this is a fundamental foundation for which much of human biology uh seems to function and rely upon for optimal function, right? This photoelectric effect. Hard to believe it's been a hundred years, John.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Yeah, it's and well, I mean, I think the hardest thing to believe is not only that's been a hundred years, but how little of it has been appreciated or translated as influential on biological systems, whether you know you talked about circadian and training, but like hormone and the end, the whole endocrine, the whole endocrine system is really influenced here by by these photons. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

And uh another great physicist, uh Princeton physicist, Richard Feyneman, he once famously said, and I I love this, John, sunlight is captured in all matter. Uh and I think that might be uh kind of a paraphrase of what Einstein referred to as uh material being frozen light. Yeah. So so what we see as matter uh has at its basis uh light. Uh and that light can also be looked at as vibration. Uh and and we know from this photoelectric effect that light can be looked at as electricity, and where there's electricity, there tends to be magnetism. Uh and so you begin to see how um um a human being, a plant, uh an animal being out in nature is is in perpetual relationship with these interactions, uh, all of which are happening sort of below the surface of awareness. Um and and some of the graphics that I'm going to be sharing here, John, come from a YouTube channel called the Feyneman Way. Uh, I really get into the physics, so there are a couple of channels that I follow. This is one which takes a lot of Feyneman's um lectures. Um he died many years back now, uh, but his brilliant uh lectures um, you know, they they're today I think they reveal more than ever. He he was such a great thinker and a great teacher. And this was back in the days of the blackboard, right, John, where you started on the on the upper left side of the of the blackboard to the left, you work your way down and over, and by the end of the class, you had you know many square feet of blackboard covered in equations and diagrams and arrows, and um uh this this was sort of the methodology that I grew up with uh as a as a student. And and so some of the graphics that we'll be sharing here are you know what the blackboard would have looked like at if you were sitting in Feyneman's um coveted classes and uh and

Feynman, Wheeler, And Frozen Light

SPEAKER_00 13:45

capturing his sort of views on sunlight. And uh Feyneman studied under the great John Archibald Wheeler. Uh John Wheeler, um, also a Princeton uh theoretical physicist, a brilliant fellow. Uh these were very holistic thinkers, even though they were uh immersed in some of the most sophisticated mathematics and abstract sort of scientific principles that existed. Uh these these were very uh I'm struck when I look at the lives of these individuals, Sean, at the humility. Um Wheeler, you know, as many physicists were during his life, were involved in the Manhattan Project, and um they had the most advanced human understanding of nuclear um physics and thermonuclear principles, and never never expecting that that knowledge would be applied toward weaponry. Uh, but you know, when it's all hands-on deck and um and uh in his example, you're confronting the threat of Nazi Germany and Hitler. Uh, you know, you everyone everyone gets on board. And so Wheeler found himself immersed in all of this uh in very conflicted ways. And so this autobiography is um is a really interesting read. Uh and it was Wheeler that talked about this concept of quantum foam, that that this sort of space, the vacuum um that that seems to occupy most of our universe is in fact filled with energy and um uh uh geometric um uh forces uh that that this energy seemed to perpetuate. And um it was really Feynemann who emerged from his his studies with Wheeler, who I think famously said that if you took the energy inside of two coffee cups, it would be enough to evaporate all of the oceans on our planet. Um and then this sort of brings you back to Einstein's E equals M C squared, right? And so that this this this space where it would appear that there's really nothing is in fact where the action is really happening.

Reality As Information And Participation

SPEAKER_00 16:25

And I I love that Wheeler sort of characterized that, and and Wheeler once said, and I'll and I'll read this quote, this famous sort of quote, it from bit. Uh that which we identify as material, the it, ultimately has its origins in information, uh, the bit here being a bit of information. Uh it from bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom an immaterial source and explanation, that all things physical are information theoretic in origin, and that this is a participatory universe. And what he meant by that, I believe, John, was that um um humans are also uh at their core immaterial. And interacting with the material world is more than just, well, there's a book, I'm gonna pick it up and look at it and read it. Uh, what Wheeler was beginning to identify was that humans and the consciousness that humans embody could actually affect the material world, that the non-material affected the material, and as a human, as this material avatar, uh you through your consciousness, this developed mind and all these beautiful gifts could actually alter the material world. And

Observer Effect And Belief Biology

SPEAKER_00 18:06

some of the geeks out there might recall the double slit experience uh experiments that suggested that photons could either act like a particle uh when you shot them through a slit, uh, or they could act like a wave. Uh and the form with which the the photon took was altered by the conscious observer, the observer effect. And um the observer effect, John, may be, in my view, one of the most um humbling and awe-inspiring findings that that we've ever had. It it to me it would suggest that we are capable of altering the realities that we are in at any time and in any place. And um uh that's that's um there's something magical about that, right? This is the Harry Potter world, yeah uh where instead of a wand, uh you're using your consciousness, you're using your thoughts, you're ultimately using your your beliefs. Um and depending on the nature of one's beliefs and thoughts and the emotions and behaviors that they induce, the reality that you impact will either serve you well or maybe be a great source of angst and suffering. And that it's it's a much more sort of interactive model. And that's what I think Wheeler meant about the participatory universe.

Water Structure And Light Energy

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Yeah, and of course, you know, the contemporary, you know, studies that have been done with water structures, and you know, these have been done in Japan, for instance. I forget the name of the researcher that has shown how the conscious state of an individual can affect the structure of water that is in a container right next to them.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

It's a great example, John. And you know, there are um uh Amoto. The Japanese uh um researcher, uh brilliant work that, of course, you know, couldn't easily find its way into sort of mainstream thinking. And a contemporary, uh um Gerard uh Gerald Pollack at the University of Washington and his research on the fourth phase of water showing that light in the infrared frequency, um, this is just another member of the light orchestra, yeah, um, will alter the structure of water just when you thought you knew everything about water, right? But most people who teach chemistry, biology, yeah, physics, you know, they think they think we know everything there is to know about water. What more can you know? Um Pollock and certainly Emoto was suggesting that water, in fact, is intelligent, it can store energy and can actually communicate. Uh, what a what a novel um uh mind-bending sort of concept. And really, this is all photoelectric. This can all be brought back to some of those foundational um uh, you know, we we you know, right in our face in modern medicine is the crebo effect, how the simple belief, strong, committed, unfaltering belief in a particular effect, um, can induce the biology that produces that effect. Uh, in in much the same way that if one's beliefs are that of fear and harm and bad things happening, uh, the reality that ultimately they confront is likely to mirror that. Um uh and so you begin to see how this participatory universe. That Wheeler was talking about is very much, I think, you know, piercing the veil of material science. This is what you start to see on the other side of that veil. And I don't think medicine will ever be able to cure anything until it pierces that veil and begins to look at humans as more than molecules and subatomic particles. It's just not going to get you there. And history would suggest that we're still very much stuck when you look at the epidemiology of chronic complex disease and the cure, the promise of cures that to date continue to fall short of expectations. So yeah, there's there's just so much here. So let's get into just a little bit about um uh the the physics here. And um, you know, we I think understood that the original pursuit of understanding particles like electrons, um, there's a point beyond which the particle no longer exists. And it's not like nothing is there at that point. There, that there that is when you start to see the energy. The photon is not a particle now, it's a wave. Uh and that wave is information. Um, and the and the information varies depending on the frequency of that wave. Uh, and that that was the revelation that I think Wheeler um uh found most profound in his lifetime of work. So

UVB Starts The Vitamin D Cascade

SPEAKER_00 23:45

imagine John um a photon uh leaving the sun um and traveling you know a hundred ninety million miles, this packet of information, and when it gets through the planet's atmosphere, it uh hits our skin, you know, you're out, you're cutting your your lawn, maybe you're out playing baseball, uh, and this uh millions of mile photon traveled interacts with uh a cholesterol molecule in your skin, and it breaks a bond in that molecule specifically in a very specific site, and it begins to convert that cholesterol to vitamin D. Uh so I mean just think about that.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

It's incredible. Or you know, or think about how it has the ability to help attach a sulfate anion to whether it be cholesterol or heparin and all of the other molecules that need to have that SO4, that sulfur and four oxygens attached to it as a sulfate. I mean, it drives those. It it you know, I think it it's amazing how much biology is changed by a by this single photon. It's incredible. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

And and and what we know is that this photon, and in this example, um, this is an ultraviolet B photon. So this is a photon whose energy, packet of energy, uh, and the frequency of that energy is 290 nanometers. Uh and so that unique energetic frequency has very specific effects in undoing a bond, uh a chemical bond. Uh it it the uh that cholesterol uh toward the surface of the skin is then changes its shape. And as you say, John, this unleashes a cascade of biology that uh suddenly you go from cholesterol to a precursor of vitamin D thanks to an ultraviolet photon. Uh you now have pre-vitamin D. And what the body then does, as we've talked about, that vitamin D then goes to the liver and then goes to the kidney where it becomes most fully active. And um as you frequently comment on, you know, vitamin D is you know, we all sort of understand and we're taught that it helps with calcium and bone strength. Uh, but vitamin D is a transcription factor. Vitamin D has above top secret access to every nucleus in every cell, and not all molecules have that top-secret access. Uh and once it once it accesses the nucleus, it turns on all these genes, a couple of hundred uh that are understood to date. So now we've got one photon in that UVB range, uh, which has a small amount of energy, just enough to break a very specific bond in a very specific molecule that leads to the production of vitamin D that now uh is like an agent that that uh is probably sensing the conditions of the environment, since that's where the signal originated, uh, time of day, um uh amount of of sunlight in the environment. Uh and now we have this agent that is profoundly affecting human biology from head to toe. Uh and that if that doesn't bring people to their knees, John, I I don't know what what would. Yeah.

The Built In Vitamin D Ceiling

SPEAKER_01 28:15

Uh yeah, and we know Mark, and we know that you know not every photon results in the generation of vitamin D, right? That there's there's a feedback loop there where vitamin D is kept in a you know, a fairly tight physiological window. We might say 40 to 50, we might say 45 to 55. I mean, again, it's gonna depend on a few factors, but which always begs the question okay, then then what? What do those photons that don't initiate this cascade we're describing, what happens to that energy? Because we have to go back to that basic premise, which all matter absorbs sunlight, right? So all that energy that those photons are carrying have other profound influences on our physiology outside of this vitamin D pathway. And that's where I think things get really fascinating because that's more of the unknown. Like the vitamin D is at least, right, at least at that part of this equation is understood and appreciated by the medical community, right? Everybody understands that sunlight has this positive effect on our physiology in this way. But what if we

Where The Extra Photon Energy Goes

SPEAKER_01 29:35

open up the door to that fourth phase of water? We know that the texture or the consistency, let's call it the viscosity of our cytoplasm is influenced by this energy. And obviously, there's an optimal level of viscosity or thickness of that gel that's going to make the cell much more effective. It's going to make the immune system more, you know, just more robust. So then there's all these other, all these other compartments in our physiology that that energy from those photons is changing. And I think that's where we're on the cusp of something, you know, hopefully, I mean, again, we you and I talk all the time about the, you know, for some reason, the inability of the scientific community, the scientific enterprise, let's say, to accept the role of this energy, right? In changing our health. But it just gives me optimism that there will be a greater, there'll be an evolution, let's say, of the mindset, the collective mindset about the importance of sunlight. But anyways, I, you know, I digress there, but I just think the photon, you know, at some point it stops driving additional vitamin D production because there is an optimal physiological window. And that's again, that's that's a beautiful thing, right? That the body can say, okay, enough of the vitamin D. Now some of this energy is gonna, it's gonna be redirected, right, into other areas of physiology.

SPEAKER_00 31:09

Yeah, that's such a great point, John. Uh, and this is such a vast topic. And vitamin D is sort of one example that I think people can relate to because it's right. They can wrap their heads around it. Yeah, and yet, to your point, John, it's the tip of this really complex uh uh symphony of of uh photon biologic interaction and the exclusion zone water, water as a capacitor, water in human biology would look different than the than the dasani that you're drinking out of a out of a bottle, right? Uh you know, right, right. Um and um it it these properties are made possible only through interaction of these very specific light frequencies. It it's a um from an evolutionary biologic perspective, and I and it and it people may know this, but you know, these um all animals, including invertebrates, have uh photon receptors. That exactly this this pervades every living um uh being um life form on our our planet. These are these are universal uh evolutionary biologic adaptations, and uh which is why absence of sun means absence of all life on our on our planet. Um and and to the point that you're making here, John, um when you get beyond sort of the vitamin D and the ultraviolet B, and I and I think this is where there's a lot of interesting debate, but but even today there's um not great either appreciation for this research or acceptance of the implication of the research. And that

Blue Light Sets Your Circadian Clock

SPEAKER_00 33:05

uh so so take a photon of blue light. Uh this is right, a packet of information. The differences, the the frequency of the of the wavelength of these packets of blue light are 480 nanometers. Uh that's an entirely different piece of information. And so, you know, in in the physical world we call that blue light, uh, specifically sky blue. Uh, this is um there, you know, there are many different sorts of shades of blue. And interestingly, John, this this wavelength is one of the uh only wavelengths of visible light that can penetrate depths of water. Um and uh you find in uh um uh aquatic species and and um even those that live um deep in the depths of of ocean water um will have receptors for blue light. Um this um is a very unique frequency. And what we associate today with blue light is that our retina uh have receptors for this exact frequency of light, much in the same way that the the 10, 11 cholesterol carbon bond as uh it can be disrupted with ultraviolet light. In this example, the retina has receptors, they're not visual receptors, right for this frequency of light, and when they engage uh this frequency of light, the the protein changes its its shape, its configuration, and we know that that changes function. And this receptor, also known as melanopsin, uh, seems to be central in its circadian effects. This this would be the light equivalent of the on-switch of our circadian biology, which for you know well-adapted humans will be in those early morning hours. That's when this switch has evolved to be on. Uh, after sunset, this switch has evolved to be off, completely off. Um, and so we're beginning to see that blue light is an important player in circadian biology. And as we've talked about often, John, if your circadian biology is not well entrained with sunrising, sunsetting, diurnal cycling, environmental cycling, you can anticipate um uh significant challenges to your um health span, your quality of life, your chronic complex disease risk, ultimately your longevity. Um and so getting this wavelength of light uh at the times we were designed to get it, uh and not getting it, uh we've talked about the quality of darkness and all of this information hopefully um is um uh uh synergistic and and incremental and additive as people sort of think about this. This is one of the key mechanisms that uh has not been well understood until very recently. And so ultimately, uh so we have one example of of light in the UVB range interacting with skin. We have another example of light photons of a different frequency in the blue range interacting uh in the retina and the eye, and and and that's sort of what you would expect, right, John? You we uh how many ways can we receive light? Well, we've got our skin, this huge surface area, right? This huge organ. Yeah. Um, and then we have our pupils, which are a portal into the retina. You have direct access to really the brain. Yeah uh and and so these are highly evolved systems. And again, here this is just an example of how uh uh this blue light interacts with these non-visual receptors, these melanopsin receptors, and it's really what begins to introduce um circadian rhythm. And and so um, you know, the the that blue light becomes just a major issue in terms of how synchronized our circadian rhythms are. And then just another example, John, that we we talk about. Um and that's

UVA Releases Nitric Oxide

SPEAKER_00 37:50

UVA, right? This is a photon that um uh has a little bit of a higher frequency than UVB. Uh and um, you know, here you're uh uh looking at the release of nitric oxide uh from the superficial layers of skin and and the dermis and epidermis. Um and we know that uh nitric oxide is one of the key players in allowing capillaries, where most of the blood flow to our end organs is happening. They start in the large vessels. That's where most of our sort of uh interventional cardiac vascular enterprise focuses. It's on opening up the large, the macro vessels in the heart, maybe in the legs. Um, what we're talking about are capillaries. This is really where the largest um volume of blood is ultimately being received at the level of organs and tissue and cells. And so nitric oxide is a just an enormously important regulator of that system.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

And um huge, huge evolutionary role for it. If you think about the need for cooling, for you know, temperature control, the body, you know, UVA is associated with the need to have a greater perfusion of blood flow to the surface, right? To the periphery of the body. And wow, I mean, just such powerful effects if it happens on a daily basis to get those surges in nitric oxide, right? Opening up blood vessels, moving blood around. This is, I mean, again, this is beautiful stuff. And it's also it's fundamentally essential for cardiovascular and circulatory health. So it's just amazing that it isn't appreciated more by that area of medicine.

SPEAKER_00 39:53

But yeah, right. There's there's this uh seemingly uncrossable uh bridge to that revelation, Sean, that we often talk about.

SPEAKER_01 40:05

Uh and we have drugs, right? We have drugs that that elevate nitric oxide levels, whether that be for you know erectile dysfunction or cardiovascular purposes. Nobody, you know, the elephant in the room here is sunlight. If you really want, if you really want to mobilize nitric oxide, and and again, to the credit of certain, you know, there are cardiologists out there that are kind of more pioneers in this, guys like Stephen Sinatra, right? And there's a list, there's a list of of cardiologists that yeah, Krause in that category. Yeah, yeah. And they will say, look, the w whether you want to come whether you want to look at the the role of electrons in promoting better circulation and the zeta potential, or you want to look at the importance of really absorbing this energy, this sunlight, you know, and these photons for greater circulatory effects because of you know nitric oxide release. There are cardiologists out there that really really embrace this and promote it, but wow, by and large, it's it's missed on by by most by most patients who have circulatory issues.

SPEAKER_00 41:17

And it becomes easier to understand why disruptions in circadian rhythm by, for example, spending more than 90% of your total time of life indoors, yeah, uh by uh very little blue light at the time of day you need it most, and too much blue light at the time of day you don't want any. How those conditions, which we know are disrupting all of these pathways, lead to much higher prevalence of cardiovascular disease, of MI, of stroke, of cardiovascular death. And so uh it's you've got the you've got the the mechanisms, you've got the epidemiology, you've got uh clinical studies, and and yet it's still very hard to identify the elephant in the room. To your point, John. Uh and then and then just to sort of extend this, we're giving examples.

Red Light Powers Mitochondria

SPEAKER_00 42:25

Um, and again, we talk a lot about this, but I just to kind of bring it back to this biophysics, um, and we're just sort of going along the light spectrum. Uh, when you get to the red uh and near infrared lights, again, these are photons. Uh they have um uh different frequencies, right? These are these are lower frequencies compared to the ultraviolet range. They penetrate more deeply, uh, as we've talked about through these optical windows uh deeper into our tissues. Uh and we know that this particular wavelength of light has numerous effects, uh, not just on wound healing and um collagen production. Uh but I think what's most exciting and interesting, John, and this this relates to uh um the work on water, uh Gerald Pollack's work and Emoto's work, uh, is the effect of these wavelengths of light on mitochondria. Yeah. And uh, and we you know we could talk all day about mitochondria, um, these uh organelles that seem to be connected to many chronic complex modern diseases, um, uh, and and particularly degenerative neurologic diseases and chronic pain syndrome, some of the most challenging and difficult things. For modern medicine to get their head around, can be traced to alterations in mitochondrial function. And here you've got specific wavelengths of light that stimulate these proteins in the inner mitochondrial membrane, the cytochrome C oxidase, where ATP is produced, where electrons tunnel. Electron tunneling essentially is like it would be the equivalent of Harry Potter and his friends getting on the train to Hogwarts. You walk right through the brick wall at the train station. You don't go around it, you go right through it. That's the most efficient path from A to B. And when these systems are working well, electrons flow freely. They almost defy classical Newtonian physics because at the level of the quantum, you're dealing with a with different laws of nature. Things work differently. So you can begin to see how light can completely charge mitochondrial function, energy production, reaching depths of tissue penetration that are profound. And so three sort of different wavelengths, UVB, UVA, red, infrared, all with very profound effects, and all generated by really the sort of photoelectric effect, these sensitive proteins that have evolved to be in relationship with specific frequencies of light that completely change structure and function in response to that engagement. And they do so in ways that every life form in this planet has evolved to

Sunlight As The Body’s Full Alphabet

SPEAKER_00 46:05

benefit from.

SPEAKER_01 46:07

And sunlight mark is an basically an alphabet made up of photons, right? And every photon has a different level of energy. So in a way, it's a different letter helping communicate with our biology, different words made up of different energy levels, right? Each having a necessity. The body has a necessity for the entire alphabet. If you just get one spectrum of light, you're behind glass all the time, you might get UVA, but you're not going to get the other two. So you're getting some of that, you know, you're getting some of that information, but you need the full spectrum. You need the entire alphabet, and every compartment of the human body needs to have all of those letters of the alphabet assembled in different ways for us to have the downstream effects, right? That the biochemistry flows once these words are assembled from different energy levels and photons. It's just, it's incredible. It's incredible. And I, you know, again, I it's a really complex topic. And I know that for a lot of people, the, you know, when you just say the words quantum physics, right, or you talk about the relationship between energy, a conscious state, photons, and then our biology, I think for, you know, for a lot of people, just not having the exposure to that, which, you know, again, it's it was a long time ago for myself, you know, looking at some of these different concepts. But once you bridge that, once you really bridge the connection between those two worlds of sunlight, energy, photons, and you understand all of the different compartments in the human body that can absorb and utilize that energy, I think you appreciate it on a much deeper level than just, let's say, vitamin D. We use vitamin D, and I it's these slides are phenomenal. We use vitamin D as almost like a surrogate because it's the one area, right, where there is more of this universal acceptance of the need for a molecule that, in ideal terms, which you're going to go into now, in an ideal scenario, is always produced in the body, at least some of it. Right? I mean, obviously, vitamin D is found naturally in certain foods, a very small number, but in an ideal situation, we're making the majority of the vitamin D that circulates in our body. We're making it from these photons reacting with cholesterol, right? So yeah, I'm sorry. I just No, that's that's great, John.

SPEAKER_00 48:39

And and um just mindful of time. We'll we'll just want to go over one, two more slides here. We'll we'll finish on that theme, John, and then we'll come up and pick up on this because I know they're um uh we're a little bit constrained in how much time we can run with this morning. But you know, you brought up earlier, John, how uh nature um uh the systems in nature are um self-regulating. They're intelligent. They get feedback, they adapt to that feedback, then there's an output. Uh that output will produce more feedback, and it's a it's a continuous loop of feed-forward feedback information. That appears to be very much the sort of structure of the of this reality that we're in. And um what intelligent systems do is they maintain balance, and you see that in vitamin D. Uh, when you make it from light exposure, you you can't overdose. There is a there is a ceiling. Um uh you'll make more melanin. That melanin will absorb more of the ultraviolet light that you're exposed to. Less of it goes to vitamin D uh production. And and so, unlike taking a vitamin D supplement, uh, you know, it though um risks from super high vitamin D tend to be infrequent as people are more mindful of dosing and can get their vitamin D levels measured, uh you can get into significant toxicity. Uh, true of any pill that you're taking, uh, these are not smart pills. Uh you take them, they whatever's in there breaks down, gets absorbed, and the body tries to figure out how best

Sunlight Versus Vitamin D Supplements

SPEAKER_00 50:30

to use it. Um, and so um it also makes me think, John, of um, as we've oversimplified the story to vitamin D. And um there are a lot of researchers, um, I mean, Michael Hollock, who we talk about, is an exception, that see very little value in general in vitamin D supplementation. Um, you know, a lot of the clinical research looking at vitamin D supplementation compared to, say, a placebo, haven't shown dramatic clinical outcomes. The outcomes that you hope you might see. Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_01 51:08

Very true.

SPEAKER_00 51:09

Uh and uh and yet we know epidemiologically that people at more southern latitudes, people that historically have more sun exposure, have much lower rates of cardiovascular disease, of cancer, uh, of cognitive decline. Yet the only research using vitamin D as an oral supplement where you do see measurable benefits, are in people who are starting with very low doses, you know, levels less than 10, less than maybe 15. Uh uh so there's some value there, but but it it underscores the difference between a very black and white simplified view of vitamin D, take a pill if it's low, versus uh reconnecting with the original systems whereby vitamin D was produced and understanding that these are two entirely different systems. Both can increase your measured level of vitamin D in the blood, but uh it would be like comparing this beautiful symphonic production with you know someone just learning how to play their keyboard. Um and and so uh people are puzzled, they say, well, vitamin D clinical research doesn't really show a lot of benefit, therefore, vitamin D, yeah, you know, it's not as important as we as everyone out there is saying that it is. Um totally misses the context of the mechanism whereby the vitamin D is being produced. And as you've pointed out uh repeatedly, John, um the the UVB is just one issue. Uh that same light is giving you the blue light, the red light, the the near, mid, and far infrared light, every other frequency in between. Uh and you you cannot compare the biologic output of that system uh compared to the biologic output of having your vitamin D level measured, it's low, you take this supplement and and get on with your life. Uh if you're not uh if if you have a low vitamin D and you don't consider the need to be outdoors more at critical times, you're you're totally missing the point of what's going on. Um, no, I'll leave it at that. And then this just kind of makes the point. This is uh Michael Holleck um uh produced this slide from some of his research. When you look at these indigenous cultures that are outside all the time, you know, their vitamin D's run between 40 and 60. Yeah, they're not 100, 120, what you know. If you're getting all that light, how you know, it again they adapt. Um uh they don't need more vitamin D than that. Those those photons, that energy, that information is going, as you so nicely articulated, John, is going to many, many other uh uh biologic needs. And um uh and and and we might say in those cultures you don't see a lot of chronic complex disease. Um it it again it's um uh the all of the pieces start to connect. Uh and yet it's very hard for the um those looking at the parts of the elephant uh to just see that part and come away with a with a uh an underappreciation of just how profound these interactions are and how important they are now so more than ever.

SPEAKER_01 55:03

Yeah, you know,

Trusting Your Body Over Fear

SPEAKER_01 55:05

Mark, it's it's incredible um how many people can feel the energy from the sun, especially right if if they've had a long window of absence from it. Let's you go somewhere for vacation in the winter if you're from a northern latitude, or even in the summer, you know, you you get outside on a weekend day and you absorb sunlight for an extended period of time, and and you just feel, you know, people feel really chill, they they they can sense like a just a total body relaxation from it, right? It feels so good. And yet, and yet all of that which they feel gets overridden by what they have in their head and everything they've been told, like, you know, gotta stay out of the sun and what it's doing, skin. It's kind of for me, it's like the prime example of how we can feel something, right? And you can have that biological effect, but the brain just gets in the way and prevents people from adopting that on a regular basis. It's it's really fascinating, like in human behavior, how we have we have the inability to kind of follow what our body feels is right by what we've been told to do.

SPEAKER_00 56:26

Yeah, that's that really sums up sort of the the paradox of the of the the world we're in right now. Uh when the evidence parts ways uh with what we're taught, or when our experience parts ways with with what we're taught, uh we I think often fail to see that as an opportunity to say, hmm, what's up with that? I who do I trust, my experience of life or what this person is telling me? Uh and um that that's where true sovereignty, true, you know, we're in this time of the year where we're gonna be celebrating our 250th anniversary as a country. Uh, you know, where is our, you know, what does it mean to have freedom, to have liberty? Uh and and I think of sovereignty, this self-discernment, the ability to experience, to contemplate what that experience is, and then to choose based on what that is teaching you, is um so much more powerful than just downloading all this sort of stuff and trying to make sense of it. And uh there's probably a a balance there, but um, true liberty and true freedom is the ability to see beyond the programming. Uh otherwise you're in a prison cell of which you don't know that you're in. And and that's uh it's hard to escape something when you don't perceive that you're captive. Um, and I think that's sort of uh I'm not pontificating, I'm not judging. I I just think that's part of the challenge of of modern.

SPEAKER_01 58:14

Believe what you feel, brother. Believe what you feel.

SPEAKER_00 58:17

Believe what you feel. That's right. Exactly. Well, this is a good uh I know you've got a commitment, as do I, John.

SPEAKER_01 58:24

Yeah, but we gotta we have to reconvene on this. This is, brother, I love this topic. It's uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:30

We will pick up on this, and again, I want to just give a shout out to the Findem and Way YouTube channel for um all their amazing work, which I appreciate, and these graphics in particular, which I have uh shamelessly borrowed in the spirit of making some of the points graphically that we're talking about. And so uh uh we appreciate people listening to the Health Edge. Check out our website, thehealthedgepodcast.com. Um, John and I have a pathetic social media presence, and uh you know, we don't get any sponsorship by design. We we get approached by folks that would love for us. Uh, you know, we we just try to keep it clean and um have fun with it. So we hope people appreciate the spirit within which we share this stuff and um look forward to picking up on this conversation when we next connect, John. I can't wait, Mark. I love you, bro. Love you too, my friend. Peace. Peace.