Sunlight, Health & Rethinking Modern Medicine

In this thought-provoking episode, we sit down with Jonathan Jarecki, a 20-year-old pre-med student exploring the frontier of light biology, mitochondrial function, and the hidden impact of our modern indoor lifestyle.

What begins as a conversation about holistic health quickly evolves into a powerful exploration of how sunlight exposure, artificial lighting, and our disconnection from nature may be influencing everything from energy levels and brain function to chronic disease and mental health.

Jonathan shares his personal journey, from being raised in a household focused on lifestyle-based healing to diving into the scientific literature to understand why these approaches work. Along the way, he uncovers a missing piece in modern health conversations:

👉 Light is not just important—it may be foundational.

🌞 Sunlight vs Modern Living

We live in a world where:

•  Most of our time is spent indoors 
•  Artificial LED lighting dominates our environment 
•  Morning sunlight exposure is rare 
•  Screen time is constant 

Yet human biology evolved under full-spectrum natural sunlight.

This episode explores how that mismatch may be contributing to:

•  Rising chronic disease 
•  Hormonal disruption 
•  Poor sleep and circadian misalignment 

⚡ The Mitochondria Connection: Are We Light-Powered?

One of the most fascinating parts of the conversation dives into the science of mitochondria—the energy engines of our cells.

Jonathan breaks down complex biology into simple ideas, explaining how:

•  Mitochondria convert food into usable energy (ATP) 
•  Light—especially red and infrared wavelengths—interacts directly with these systems 

This raises a profound idea:

👉 Humans may not just run on food—we may also be deeply influenced by light as an energy source.

🧠 Light, Brain Function & Attention

The conversation also explores how light shapes:

•  Brain chemistry 
•  Cognitive performance 
•  Mood and perception 

From morning sunlight exposure to outdoor environments, we discuss how something as simple as getting outside early in the day can:

•  Improve focus and clarity 
•  Regulate dopamine 
•  Reduce dependence on screens 
•  Support long-term mental health 

In contrast, modern habits, like waking up and immediately scrolling, may be working against our biology.

🔬 Questioning Modern Science & Medicine

This episode doesn’t just explore light—it challenges how we think about health itself.

Jonathan highlights:

•  The limitations of reductionist science
•  The ongoing replication crisis in research
•  The need for open-minded, systems-based thinking

Rather than viewing the body as separate parts (brain, gut, heart), we explore a more integrated model:

👉 The body as an interconnected energy system, influenced by light, environment, and lifestyle.

Sunlight Matters is a podcast exploring the role of the Sun in human health, architecture, cities, and everyday life.

Through conversations with scientists, architects, and technologists, the series examines how natural light shapes our bodies, our buildings, and the way we live indoors.

Hosted by Dave Wallace, Sunlight Matters asks a simple but overlooked question: what happens when we disconnect from the Sun?

Because sunlight isn’t optional. It matters.

Please do not forget to Like and Subscribe. 

Transcript

Jonathan Jarecki (00:00)
We evolved around nature and under full-spectrum natural daylight, sunlight.

We didn't evolve with this artificial light that we are now exposed to.

Jonathan Jarecki (00:12)
We're meant to be here with, to be around community, to enjoy the creation of this world. It's absolutely beautiful, right? And we are being stripped away from that.

Dave (00:15)
you

Jonathan Jarecki (00:22)
I go into everything that I learn about with a complete open mind and with the idea that what I'm learning or what I already believe could be completely wrong,

And I think that is a mindset that is missing in, I would say society as a whole, but definitely within medicine,

We're trying to find the truth, and if we don't question stuff, and if we think we know the truth, well then that's gonna be a barrier for us actually finding the truth

Jonathan Jarecki (00:50)
if I could just do that and like plant some of these seeds and have people's minds maybe a little bit more opened, I think I've succeeded.

Dave (01:18)
welcome, Jonathan, to the podcast. I'm really delighted to have you. You ⁓ popped up on my Twitter feed a couple of times, and I then started having a look at the incredible content that you're producing. So I was like, I've got to have you on the podcast. So.

Jonathan Jarecki (01:22)
Yeah.

Dave (01:37)
Do you wanna just sort of start by introducing yourself, ⁓ telling people where you are, what you're doing, and then we can kind of get into it.

Jonathan Jarecki (01:45)
Awesome. Yeah, well, thank you, Dave, for having me. I'm excited ⁓ to have this conversation. And thank you for the podcast that you have here and the platform that you guys share, because it's awesome. We need more people talking about light, and you guys are doing it. So I appreciate you ⁓ and this podcast. great. But yeah, so my name is Jonathan Gerecky. I am a 20-year-old sophomore in college at Davidson College in North Carolina studying biology with a minor in neuroscience on the pre-med track. And sort of how I've

I can share my background here. I was raised in a very ⁓ holistic household. There was a huge focus on diet, exercise, other lifestyle factors that have a huge impact on your health. And I was raised with this mindset that if you intervene in your lifestyle, ⁓ it has effects on your long-term health. And so I credit it all to my mom.

⁓ And she, you know, she's the one why she's the reason I have this huge passion. She raised I have three older siblings. She raised all of us ⁓ on this on this track when she ⁓ she met this she met this guy named John Gallimaga who's been in the health and wellness space now for over 40 years and John I did a podcast with him. He's absolutely incredible. He ⁓ you know intervened both in my grandma's life and my dad's life with my grandma. The doctors gave her

nine months to live. She had congenital heart failure. ⁓ and John ⁓ had her go on this whole program of a bunch of different lifestyle interventions and gave her nine more years to live. Yeah. So it was absolutely incredible. So my mom saw that. ⁓ And then with my dad, my dad, when my mom met my dad, he was on really high levels of Dilantin, which is a epilepsy medication, super high levels ⁓ and also overweight.

Dave (03:25)
Wow.

Okay.

Jonathan Jarecki (03:41)
My John had him go on this ⁓ complete 180 lifestyle shift and got him completely off of Dilantin, no seizures, no epilepsy episodes, and lost 60 pounds in a very short period of time. So my mom witnessed both of these incredible transformations through what John had to provide in his interventions that he suggested.

And so she was like, well, there's no brainer. I'm just gonna listen to whatever John tells me to do and I'm gonna raise my children that way. And so she did, right? So she raised all four of us this way. ⁓ the past now three years is when I really started getting into the science, started loving learning about the science. And I think it stemmed partly from ⁓ a few reasons. Partly one, because I was listening to whatever my mom said and just taking that for like fact and.

Dave (04:12)
you

Jonathan Jarecki (04:35)
going with it. And it worked, obviously. But if I had these beliefs, I wanted to actually know why I had these beliefs. And I wanted to actually have a foundation of the beliefs that I had, not just, because my mom told me so. Even though, I don't know, she was right in many cases once I started reading the science. And it was incredible. I started listening to podcasts, started reading books, and then I started actually getting into the literature. And I fell in love with

learning about the things that I have adopted my whole life, right? So ⁓ I fell in love with that process of really learning about it on a biological level. And so once I started getting into that, I found the light story and the impacts of light on our health. Many of people who have come into this space probably have heard of Jack Kruse.

I listened to a podcast with Jack Kruse and Andrew Huberman for seven hours and after I listened to that, I was completely blown away. The light story was not something ⁓ I was totally keen in understanding growing up. My mom definitely had us go outside and all of this, but it was more so like diet and exercise and like other things, but diet and exercise are the big things. And I think ⁓ that's a lot of people's experience when they come into the health and wellness world.

and a lot of people in the health and wellness world are, you know, understand it from the point of get your diet and get your exercise and once you have those two things in check, you're good. And after listening to the podcast, I was like, hmm, you know, there may be some other aspects to this. And the light story was one of those huge pillars of health that I've come to realize that is so important that many people aren't talking about. And so I think that...

The aspect of how people just weren't talking about it is really what got me going and be like, all right, I want to start talking about this. And I also started implementing these things in my life. I started getting more sunlight. And one of the big eye-opening things for me was in high school, when I was getting into all this, I started realizing, which I never realized before, I'm sitting in this classroom completely full of LED and fluorescent white bright lights.

barely any windows and I was just thinking to myself like, like this has to impact our health some way, right? Like there's no way that this is doing nothing. And so, you know, if we think about this evolutionary, I mean, you've had great people on the podcast talk about this, but like, if we're thinking about this from an evolutionary standpoint, we evolved around nature and under full spectrum natural daylight, sunlight.

We didn't evolve with this artificial light that we are now exposed to. And so just from that perspective alone, right, should get you thinking like, hmm, there's probably some ⁓ like negative biological things that may occur from these, from this indoor lifestyle that we are living right now. And so, you know, I started getting into all this, started reading the literature and it was, it was truly fascinating how much of an impact light had, right? And

you know, more and more research is coming out and it's super exciting. We're just understanding, you know, the implications of our indoor lifestyle, how that has, the implications of that on our health. We're just now understanding, we're just getting to this understanding. And there's a lot more to learn, but I think the research that we do have points to a huge eye-opening idea. ⁓

And that is that our indoor lifestyle is damaging our health. is, I would argue, causing, at the very least, having a, being at least one player into all these chronic diseases that we're having, right? Chronic disease is huge in our society, both in the UK, where you are in the US, it's absolutely, it's crazy how many people live with a chronic disease. ⁓ Cancer, diabetes.

cardiovascular disease, all these major killers really, and there are easy interventions where we can literally prevent these things. We have preventable measures that we can prevent these, right? And now there's so many other factors, right? Light is not the only thing, but it's a huge one. And so that's sort of how I've got here, yeah.

Dave (09:21)
I mean, it's incredible. I love the story. I mean, your mum sounds amazing. ⁓ I think the fact that she kind of listened and, know, didn't I just apply it to, you know, her husband and ⁓ was it her mother, ⁓ but her children as well. I mean, I think that's brilliant. Because, you know, everything you're kind of describing is

Jonathan Jarecki (09:29)
Cheers.

Yep.

Dave (09:48)
it's sort of counter societal in many ways. So society is driving us all indoors ⁓ and the kind of the march of ultra processed food has sort of taken over many lives. And as you say, it seems to be wreaking havoc on our...

sort of how we all are health and how we all feel. So, you know, I think that's amazing. I'm really fascinated though, because you're doing pre-med, so you're sort of going through like, you know, that sort of centralized learning at the moment of medicine. And then you've got...

essentially light which is kind of coming in as something which is, I mean it's crazy isn't it? It's new. This is new. This is sort of pioneer frontier kind of research and science. And as you say it's crazy because we evolved under light. I mean the first life forms had to deal with light as one of the things that they you know so this is sort of something which is so intrinsic to life.

and yet it's pioneering. And I just wondered, like, how do you kind of wrap your head around the sort of traditional medicine and then this new what's coming in from, I guess, left field?

Jonathan Jarecki (11:20)
Yeah, it's a great question. You know, I go into everything that I learn about with a complete open mind and with the idea that what I'm learning or what I already believe could be completely wrong, right?

Like, if you just, like at night, right, you look up at the stars, we are this little tiny planet in this huge solar system, in this huge universe, and there's so much more to learn. We know so little, so little, right? I mean, ⁓ you know, I've heard some top, ⁓ like, neuroscientists talk about how, even in what's in the medical textbooks, like,

the majority of it is probably wrong, and we don't know which side is right, which side's wrong. And so there's so much more to learn. So I go into everything, even in the classroom, with a complete open mind, and with the possibility of what I'm learning here could be completely wrong, right? And I think that is a mindset that is missing in, I would say society as a whole, but definitely within medicine, right? We think, you know, scientists really do...

It seems like a lot of them, I don't want to speak for all of them, it seems like a lot of them think that they know things for certain. And their brand new finding has to be true. there's a huge replication crisis within science right now. It is hard to even replicate a study. And this has been documented time and time again. Nature came out with this article a few.

Nature is one of the top prestigious scientific journals that came out with this article talking all about the replication crisis that we have, that other researchers aren't able to replicate the findings of another researcher. And so that alone should get us questioning. When you're reading a study, ⁓ and this goes for everything, right? Even the stuff that I believe, like this light stuff, even that stuff, it goes for absolutely everything. Just because you're reading it in a scientific paper doesn't mean it's necessarily true. And so that's sort of my mindset around these things.

And ⁓ I think it's cool that being within this ⁓ path that I'm on and being pre-med and being in these science classes and stuff, I get to have some influence on my peers and stuff. I get them thinking and stuff like that. So it's fun to see that evolution of their thought process going when I start questioning some of the stuff that ⁓ they're sharing.

So I don't know if you're familiar with Dr. Gerald Pollack. had, yes. Yeah, so for those who don't know, he's a professor at the University of Washington. And he studies water. And his lab's found this fourth phase of water. He started his career in muscle contraction and figuring out all that and how that works and stuff.

Dave (14:05)
Yes, totally.

Jonathan Jarecki (14:24)
And what's really interesting is how I actually found out about him is his different idea about how muscles contract. And such a simple thing that you learn in any intro bio course, I learned it my freshman year in my first bio class I had here at Davidson, you learn how a muscle contracts. Very sound mechanism, we think we have it all sorted out. And not to say we don't have it all sorted out, maybe we do, right? But there are other theories out there, right? So the theory that you learn in any

any biology classroom, it's called the sliding filament theory. You have these ⁓ protein complexes that through a bunch of different mechanisms, they contract basically. And the sliding filament theory is what you learn. And there are other theories out there. And so when I learned about this from Gerald Pollack and his other theory, not to say his theory is correct, I don't know. ⁓ But just the fact that there is another theory and there may be a possibility that what we think

we know the mechanism for how a muscle contracts may not be the actual mechanism. Just that questioning, I think, is super important, especially as a scientist, right? That's what science is about. We're trying to find the truth, and if we don't question stuff, and if we think we know the truth, well then that's gonna be a barrier for us actually finding the truth if what we think we know is actually false, right? So this idea of questioning, I think, is what keeps me... ⁓

going with this and like, you know, just the idea of we don't know, you know, we really don't know. We know we can take our best guesses, but at the end of the day, we don't know.

Dave (16:04)
I mean, I love it. It's like life is a voyage of discoveries basically. you know, I was really fortunate. I mean, as you're talking, it's made me realize how fortunate I was because I did a degree in psychology and the last course I did was the philosophy of psychology. And it basically was like, there is no philosophy of psychology. And, you know, you've got entire strands of psychology built on experiments, which it turned out, turns out that people were kind of making up.

Jonathan Jarecki (16:08)
For sure. Exactly.

Dave (16:33)
So, you know, it's kind of fascinating, fascinating what sort of happened in psychology and I guess what you are sort of starting to experience in traditional medical science.

David James Vaughan Wallace (16:54)


Dave (17:16)
I was just talking about the fact that psychology ⁓ lacked a kind of paradigm. ⁓ And, you know, it's interesting that we're at a point where ⁓ actually medical science is probably having to kind of rethink a lot of these things as well. And I think it's really like, I really like what you're talking about in terms of going in with an open mind. I guess, you know, one of the things that I picked up from

like the way you present information and you know the depth of information that you kind of go into in terms of the podcast that you do and some of the videos that you do is almost that sense of wonder and I sort of I think like the more I've got into the light

topic the more my sense of wonder has just gone wow like there is so many wow things and you know it's almost like it doesn't matter if it's right or wrong and but it's the sort of like putting all the bits of the puzzle together so I was keen to get your perspective on that but then you know just to talk about some of the things which you know have completely blown you away

Jonathan Jarecki (18:34)
Yeah, I think that's so great because, know, and we talked about this slightly a little bit before when we first connected, ⁓ but a lot of people in the light space have this very big open-minded perspective on life. And I think ⁓ my hypothesis is, perhaps it goes both ways, but I think it's getting the sunlight and being more out in nature is actually, and we

We know this, it changes brain chemistry. ⁓ And it's changing people's brain chemistries to be more perceptive, to be more aware, to be more tuned in to life in general, and to be more open-minded, I think. And so it's sort of like this, you know, it's this positive feedback loop where you get more sunlight, you're more open-minded, you're more open-minded, you learn more about sunlight, you get more sunlight, you're more open-minded, right? So it's this continuous positive feedback loop. ⁓ Yeah.

Dave (19:30)
I'm sorry, I just interrupt you. mean,

Jack Kruse has been in the sun longer than any of us and he's further ahead. mean, some of the things I've been reading him talk about. mean, there's not any lifetime where I'll ever understand it.

Jonathan Jarecki (19:35)
Yeah.

It's.

No,

me neither, me neither. We're on the same page here. ⁓ But yeah, so it's like, so I think this is a really big thing, right? And.

Dave (19:49)
Yeah.

Jonathan Jarecki (19:58)
We are, especially my generation, right? We're hooked to the phone, we're scrolling, our dopamine is completely out of whack, we're high stress, high cortisol, our hormones are out of balance because our attention is going to the light box that is in front of us that craves our attention, that pays money for our attention, that wants our attention because if it can have our attention, they make more money, right? And that's the name of the game here.

And so this continuous ⁓ attention sort of draining system that we have by our side 24/7 is in and of itself having detrimental impacts on society and my generation, especially. And so I think the light story is a way, it's one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about it is because it's a way to change

⁓ you know, to change people's minds and to change people's, where they put their attention, right? And so it's like even the simple act of telling people to go outside in the morning, within the first hour of waking, right? That in and of itself is putting people away from being, from waking up, staying in their bed and scrolling on their phone. I see it all the time. Like this is what my generation does, right? They wake up late, they wake up at,

I don't know, 10, 11, 12 PM and they get on their phone and they stay in bed and they scroll on their phone and it is sad, right?

They're dopamine again, like I said, is completely out of whack ⁓ and they have this continual addiction to their phone and what they're consuming on their phone. And we're all guilty of it, right? It's like our brain is wired to get these ⁓ good feeling things that we get when we scroll, right?

We're all guilty of it. I'm guilty of it as well. But it's how can we do better and how can we get away from it as much as possible? And the light story is there. And we know that light, infrared light, can penetrate completely through our body, can penetrate the skull. Our brain is literally designed, the crevices of our brain are literally designed to funnel in that infrared light. Scott Zimmerman and Russell Ryder did a great paper on this, Melatonin in the Optics of the Human Body.

infrared light penetrates through the brain, gets funneled into the deep crevices of the brain, interacts with pretty much every single one of our brain cells, and is having molecular effects, produces subcellular melatonin, which is the strongest antioxidant. It ⁓ speeds up metabolism. It supercharges your mitochondria. Your mitochondria, these little batteries, it creates this concentration gradient in the mitochondria. It is powering the mitochondria. Mitochondria are the foundation of health, foundational pillar of

of memory without mitochondria, our neurons don't function, right? If you have impaired mitochondria, your neurons function at an impaired ⁓ level. And so we know we have plenty of evidence to show that this infrared light is having positive effects on brain chemistry and on cognition. There's a study looking at the effects of working out outside versus working out.

in an indoor environment. had these basketball players, the basketball players played basketball in an indoor environment and then they had another group where the basketball players played basketball outside and we see improved cognition. It's incredible, right? Simply just from going outside. And there's probably a lot of factors at play. It's probably infrared light, also probably the visible, probably UV, the full spectrum of sunlight. And then there's also, you have greenery and you have all these other things and there's a...

calming nature of being outside versus being indoors. And so there's a lot of factors there. But what I'm trying to get at here is that

We have this consciousness that is focused on and locked in to a meaningless device and a world that is unlike what we are meant to be here for. We're meant to be here with, to be around community, to enjoy the creation of this world. It's absolutely beautiful, right? And we are being stripped away from that.

Dave (24:28)
you

Jonathan Jarecki (24:35)
⁓ and unknowingly, right? don't even, many people don't even know how great nature is, right? Because they're not being exposed to it. So that is, you know, that's another reason I'm so passionate about this. I'm so driven about this.

Dave (24:50)
And it is amazing, like the more, you know, I had a chat with Scott the other day and he was there, they've got some research which they're going to publish soon, again shows how finely tuned we are to light and infrared light. They're starting to understand a bit more about kind of the broad spectrum impact, but it's, you know, like you're describing, if the crevices in our brains are designed to...

for light and I mean, you may know more about this than me, but I think I heard that when a woman's pregnant, as the skin stretches, one of the things is you get different wavelengths of light coming into the fetus and it's sort of that connection. And even like, I talked to an expert on glass who was saying that UV light is used to basically set up your eyes at.

you know, when you're sort of one, two years old, it's, it's, and you know, you just end up going, God, this relationship between us and light. And, you know, I love what you're saying though, because light is part of this sort of natural world, isn't it? And, you know, for me, light is about reconnecting with nature. I think it embodies

Jonathan Jarecki (25:48)
Mm-hmm.

Dave (26:10)
the appreciation of it because it's all, you you begin to understand that everything's so interconnected. ⁓

Jonathan Jarecki (26:16)
Yeah, exactly. I

want to point one more thing out. So my whole premise is like, mean, everything is energy, right? And this isn't some spiritual woo woo idea. If we just think about atoms, right? What is an atom? Protons, neutrons, and electrons, right? It's simply just energy. And light is another form of energy, right? The electromagnetic spectrum, right? Like everything.

Dave (26:27)
No, no, no.

Jonathan Jarecki (26:45)
I know it sounds woo woo, it sounds like crazy, but everything is simply energy, right? And light, the sun, is the most powerful form of energy. is what energizes life on Earth. If we don't have the sun, we don't have any life. And for many, many, many, many years, thousands and hundreds of thousands of years, like civilizations, many civilizations have worshiped the sun, right? Now, I don't think we should be worshiping the sun, but they have this awe for the sun.

Dave (26:54)
Ahem.

Jonathan Jarecki (27:16)
And and you know now our society we actually have a fear of the Sun, right? We think it's gonna cause cancer and all these things and it's like these huge drastic things and look at where we look at where we've ended up, right? Of course, we have we've had huge advances technology technological advances and huge advances like I'm I think that's amazing, right? But in terms of chronic disease in terms of mental health disorders in terms of all these these things like look at where we went where we've ended up it's not very great and You know, that's not to say

It's like, again, it's not only the sun, but it's a huge, huge impact on all this. ⁓

Dave (27:48)
I completely

agree. think that, you know, again, the more I get into it, the more you realise that light is probably the foundation of health. Life, well, we know it's the foundation of life. So, you know, I think that's, it's not hyperbole to kind of say that, you know. So I think that's really amazing. I mean, just, I want to talk about mitochondria briefly because...

I mean, again, the more I look at things like mitochondria, well, not things, the more I look at the mitochondria, the more my mind gets blown by what a mitochondria is doing. And the thought that they're tuned to light is again, mind blowing. I listened to, think it was Martin Picard did a whole podcast on mitochondria and energy flow, you know, and he was talking about like the difference between being alive or dead is

just the energy flow basically. But I mean I find mitochondria so incredible like and the little engines which are kind of creating ATP. I just wondered if you've kind of got any thoughts on that as well.

Jonathan Jarecki (28:47)
Yep, exactly.

Yeah,

⁓ they're so cool. My favorite thing to talk about. for the listeners who maybe are unfamiliar, Mitochondria are these little organelles. So inside of every single one of our cells, we have a bunch of different organelles, right? We have the endoplasmic reticulum. We have ribosomes. We all these things. We also have mitochondria. Now, within one mitochondria, there can be hundreds of thousands, sorry, within one cell, there can be hundreds of thousands of mitochondria. So it's not just one little mitochondria. know, if you look up like,

eukaryotic cell images on Google, you'll see like one or two mitochondria. Doesn't look like that. There can be hundreds of thousands of mitochondria in a single cell. Now these mitochondria are also networks, right? So they're not just solo and just by themselves. They are communicating with each other, right? And they actually align with each other. And we think that there may be communication. we pretty much know that there are communications there and all that. But within the mitochondria,

right, is what we call the electron transport chain. So the electron transport chain is this chain of protein complexes within the membrane of the mitochondria. So there's a phospholipid membrane and then a protein embedded in the phospholipid membrane. And there's a bunch of these chains all throughout the membrane of the mitochondria. And so these proteins, what they do is they take electrons from glucose and other things, but

Primarily, you just, you know, to simplify it, we have glucose, we consume glucose in the form of food, right? So you have food taken in glucose. That glucose, basically, we strip, our body strips the electrons from the glucose. We have electron carriers that bring those electrons to the mitochondria, to the first protein complex. So it gets to the first protein complex, and then gets, these electrons get funneled through to, within, like, one by one to the next protein complex, to the next protein complex.

And through that funneling of electrons, it allows our mitochondria to push protons, to push this charge, this positive charge, ⁓ through and across the membrane. So now we have this charge gradient, right? Nick Lane has an amazing book. He has multiple amazing books, but Nick Lane is a researcher ⁓ in the UK. He's done amazing research on this. ⁓ Our mitochondria, the charge difference in our mitochondria is

relatively to how small they are, is at the same magnitude as a lightning bolt. So a lightning bolt of electricity, that is how much charge we have in each of our mitochondria. We have tens of thousands of mitochondria in a single cell, and then we have billions and billions of cells in our body. It's absolutely incredible. So we have this energy flow that is constantly going through our body, right? And so again, we'll get back to this electron transport chain. These electrons are funneling through.

At the very end, these electrons need to get picked up. So I think about it as, and I get taught about this in the bio class as the analogy that most teachers will use, let's say you have a flight of stairs. You have someone at the top of the stairs and someone at the bottom of the stairs. The person at the top of the stairs has a ball, let's say like a bouncy ball. They bounce it at the, they throw it down the stairs. This ball is bouncing one stair, another stair, another stair, going down energy levels, right? And now this ball, we can think of it as like the electron, as the electron funnels through the electron transport chain to one protein complex to the other.

it is getting lower energy state. And then at the end of this staircase, it needs to be picked up by something. So you have someone there to pick up that electron, to pick up that bouncy ball, right? And that electron acceptor, that terminal electron acceptor in our cells is oxygen. So every time we breathe, we breathe in oxygen, that oxygen gets to our mitochondria, that oxygen takes those electrons and then creates water. So our mitochondria actually produce water. Now,

We have this charge gradient across the membrane of the mitochondria. And with that charge, we have this little motor, this very, very small nanomotor. It's amazing. It almost works at 100 % efficiency. No motor that a human has ever done. It's a motor. Yes. It looks like a motor. And it has this rotor that spins. And it funnels the protons through to then produce ATP.

Dave (33:07)
But it is a motor. I mean, it is a literal, looks like a motor.

Jonathan Jarecki (33:21)
This rotor that spins, right, the faster we can spin this rotor, the more ATP we can produce, the faster we can produce ATP. And ATP, adenosine triphosphate, is the energy currency of the cell. So looking at this big picture, right, we eat an apple, right? What our body's doing is it's transforming the energy of the apple. Again, the apple is energy. If we think about it as energy, it's transforming the energy of the apple into the energy.

of life that our body can use, which is ATP. And so we have this energy transformation that our mitochondria are doing constantly to do anything in the cell. We think of muscle contraction as one of the big things, and moving is one of the big things, but it's required for every process in the cell. We need ATP. And so this whole process is happening all the time. And what's fascinating is that our mitochondria in these protein complexes

utilize light. So they absorb light. So they're what's called chromophores. Chromophores are these proteins that can absorb light. We have many different types of chromophores in the body. In the electron transport chain, cytochrome C oxidase is the fourth protein complex. It is a chromophore that absorbs red and infrared light. Now, what's really interesting, there's two main things that happens here, is when it absorbs red and infrared light, it releases nitric oxide.

which then has another whole cascade which then produces subcellular melatonin, again, strongest antioxidant, fights reactive oxygen species, free radicals. It releases that nitric oxide. That releasing of the nitric oxide actually allows oxygen to come in, take those electrons, produce water. Now that then allows more protons to get pushed through, which then allows the ATP to be produced.

I know it can get really complex, but basically if we think about this simply as a battery, right, we're creating this charge gradient. That charge gradient is allowing energy transformation to occur, producing more ATP, more energy for the cell. The cell can now do what it needs to do. It needs that energy to do it. And so.

red light and infrared light, you may be asking, how is this light actually getting to our mitochondria, right? We can maybe understand, like, okay, if we shine the red and near infrared light on our skin, well, yeah, the skin cells may be getting affected. But we now have peer-reviewed published literature that this red and infrared light can penetrate completely through the human body. And when we actually measure this on the other side, so if we shine light on our chest, we can measure it on our back, right?

If we actually measure this light, it's very, very little, right? So this light is also being absorbed by the body. Not only is it penetrating through, but it's being absorbed. And why that matters, it's like the question is like, all right, where is this light being absorbed? Well, I just told you, right? The light is being absorbed by the mitochondria itself. So it's being absorbed by the mitochondria, which allows this mitochondria to produce more ATP. And so this light absorption is really, really important because this red and near-infrared light

is abundant in sunlight. So if we look at the sunlight spectrum, the sunlight spectrum consists around 50 % of near, of infrared light. So that includes near infrared, which is really the main thing we're talking about here when we're talking about red and near infrared light. Near infrared light, so, but infrared light from the sun counts as about 50 % of the solar spectrum. And for people to better understand this, right, infrared light is invisible to the human eye, so we can't see it. Some species actually can see it.

Now if we went outside and if we were able to see infrared light, we would barely see anything because it would be everywhere and like we wouldn't, would not be able to see stuff, right? Our vision would be all just near infrared light everywhere. ⁓ But this near infrared light is invisible to the human eye. ⁓ But ⁓ we can think about this like, so our body actually feels in far, mid to in far infrared as heat. So if you go out into a park on a bright sunny day, if you feel a black bench,

versus the grass, right? What is hotter? The bench is hotter. The reason for that is because the bench is absorbing the infrared light, and you can feel that as heat, right? And when you go out in the sun, you can feel the sun is hot. Well, that's because of the infrared light. Another aspect here is the green, right? The green feels cool. The reason for that is because it reflects the infrared light. And that will be important. We can discuss all the amazing reasons to be out in a forest canopy and trees and all that.

⁓ But we have these aspects of infrared light, right? Abundant in sunlight can penetrate through the human body, interacts with the mitochondria, and has systemic effects on our health because, again, mitochondria health are the foundation and key pillar to overall health. So hopefully that sort of sums up the mitochondria.

Dave (38:21)
I mean, look, it's

brilliant. By the way, I tried reading Nick Lane's book and I think you do have to be a proper scientist to kind of understand it. So I think your explanation is brilliant, to be honest with you. I mean, you know, because it sort of really helped me because I then think about like the sun is creating energy, that energy is kind of arriving on earth.

Jonathan Jarecki (38:34)
Thank you, yeah.

Dave (38:47)
It's been used to grow trees. It's been used to produce that apple. So you've got photosynthesis, which is kind of happening sort of through UV light, the scattering of red light, which as you say, that's why when you sit under a tree in summer, you're actually getting a lot of infrared light. But that apple is...

has the energy of the sun contained within it and then you're eating it. So you're turning the energy of the sun into energy for the body and that energy has been dissipated. when, you know, the process of you sort of ingesting it, breaking it down and turning it into ATP. So this is when, you know, people like Bob Fosbury, they talk about our connection with the sun is...

Jonathan Jarecki (39:11)
Exactly.

Dave (39:38)
And the energy of the sun is a real, real connection basically. And you know, so, so I think it's a brilliant, brilliant explanation. And I think, I mean, the thing about mitochondria, I mean, you know, I, I'm trying to get my head around this as well, but in order for you and me to be talking like this, there's a bunch of stuff that our mitochondria has been doing, like they've prepared us, you know,

for the conversation, like they've been working to prepare us, they've prepared us to kind of turn this, you know, so somewhere along the line there's...

collaboration happening between mitochondria and different bits of the body, guess. You I don't know, you know. I mean, we can't sort of, I guess, give them sentience, to be honest with you. But it's just like incredible, though, when you think about what's going on in order for us, you and me, to have a conversation.

Jonathan Jarecki (40:22)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean,

it's interesting you say they can be like their own little things. Well, Nick Lane talks about this. And this is established in scientific theory and evolutionary theory. This is what most scientists believe is what's called the endosymbiotic theory. ⁓ And the endosymbiotic theory basically just states that at one point before there were all these cells and eukaryotic cells and all that, there were just bacteria. And one bacteria.

engulfed another bacteria. And the reason, there's multiple reasons why we think this, but mitochondria have two membranes. So there's an outer membrane and an inner mitochondrial membrane. And what mitochondria are from this evidence that we have is basically just little bacteria. So we have these little bacteria that are in us now. And they've evolved since then. that's essentially their ancestry, are these little bacteria. And what's really interesting is that

these bacteria, before they became mitochondria, were actually ⁓ photosynthesizing bacteria. So they actually used sunlight to literally produce ATP. Yes. Yeah. So it's like the ancestry of our mitochondria used sunlight to produce ATP. ⁓ So clearly, there's origins that stem back there as well.

Dave (41:46)
Wow, I didn't know that. That's amazing.

I mean, I think this

is the thing which is so kind of interesting to me. what you describe is like when I was at school, you learn about photosynthesis, light and plants, and you don't learn about lights and humans grow it, you know, that relationship. But it sounds very photosynthetic in terms of what you're describing.

Jonathan Jarecki (42:23)
Yeah, mean,

there's two interesting things to this point. I think a ton more research needs to be done here. But there's a researcher, Arturo Herrera, I don't know if you've heard of him, out of Mexico. And he has a theory that ⁓ melanin absorbs sunlight and then has, and melanin in our body is ⁓ hydrated. So there's always water around melanin. And so he has this theory where

Dave (42:36)
Yeah, I have. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jonathan Jarecki (42:51)
the melanin absorbs the sunlight, and then that's able to split water molecules. And then through the splitting of water molecules, basically the same thing as photosynthesis, right? You're getting these electrons, and then those electrons are going to be able to be used to ⁓ produce ATP. so there isn't very hard evidence. We need a ton more evidence. I wish there was a researcher that would take on a study like this to see if his hypothesis is true, because I think that's important.

But then you have the work of Gerald Pollack as well, where infrared light is also building what he calls exclusion zone water. Exclusion zone water is basically a battery. I mean, in his lab, they've created a battery just from water, a water battery. And the way you do it is the water splits charge. So you have a positive and you have a negative. And that battery then can do work, our mitochondria batteries. And so if you think of that, the infrared light is building this exclusion zone. It's building this battery.

Dave (43:36)
Yeah.

Jonathan Jarecki (43:51)
We may be solar powered. I think it's a very cool idea. I think more research needs to be done on both of those topics. But it's very interesting.

Dave (44:03)
I love it. then, because you sort of think about then as like ⁓ as an organism, our relationship to sun. So, you know, was listening to Alistair Nunn, some of the things that he's been talking about. And I know that the Guy Foundation have done a lot of thinking about ⁓ space and people going into space. And, you know, the fact that it's not just light, it's also magnetism.

you know, gravity as well, but actually us going into space, you know, may just be a non-starter because of our relationship, this close relationship with light and magnetism and all the other bits and pieces that are so kind of set up on planet Earth. And again, it just sort of made me think like, gosh.

We're just part of this system, aren't we? are, you know, like ATP's got this, we're just the same as Mitacart, we're just little engines on part of this huge, huge organising thing, aren't we?

Jonathan Jarecki (45:10)
Yeah, it's an interesting perspective, We are this super small little planet and then within our planet, us humans are even smaller. And so it's like, I don't know. I don't ⁓ know if I have a good answer, but it's like, keep questioning, right? That's my best answer.

Dave (45:28)
I think what

has really got me thinking is about system thinking. You talk about phones and I think it's really interesting because I'm addicted to this. I'm trying to block at the moment to brick, which kind of helps turn off my social media and that seems to work quite well. ⁓

Jonathan Jarecki (45:33)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Dave (45:54)
But it's interesting because it's sort of, I think we've kind of gone away from thinking big, you know, and system thinking. And now we sort of like very narrow in terms of our perspectives.

Jonathan Jarecki (46:10)
Yeah, yeah, we're very reductionistic, right? And that's how a lot of science works. For good reasons at points, To understand mechanisms we need to be reductionistic. You it's hard. You're not going able to figure out mechanisms if you can't have a reductionistic mindset and actually do randomized placebo-controlled trials, do mechanistic studies. ⁓ But you're totally right, right?

it's this reductionistic mindset of like, and you know, this is perfect. This is a perfect example is UV, right? We have seen like, if you shine isolated UV light on cell culture and cells, they become cancerous and the cancers grow. And so we've though, we've taken that mechanism and said, okay, since that is true, then if you go out in the sun, which has UV light, you're gonna get cancer.

And clearly it's way more nuanced than that, but that is how our reductionistic mindset has made people believe. So, ⁓ yeah, and I think it's not just for the UV, it's for everything, right? I think, like you said, the system's thinking, even with our body, right? In medicine is really, medicine, I applaud medicine for catching up to this, but for a long time we've just thought, okay, the heart is the heart, and the liver is the liver, and the gut is the gut, and the brain is the brain, and they work by themselves.

independently, but that's not the case, right? They're all connected. We very established the gut-brain access. Just think about that, right? Everything is intertwined. And I think the reason for that is, again, we're this energy system that is just a flow of energy that continues to flow throughout our body via the mitochondria. I love Chinese medicine and just seeing acupuncture, Western medicine and even probably still a lot of Western medicine.

practitioners will say acupuncture is woo woo and not real, like there is act like we have plenty of Western like science research now that like pretty much confirms like the meridians right there are literal there are there are Meridians the Chinese knew this thousands of years ago. Like how did they know that?

It beats me, but they did somehow, right? And so I think that the whole systems thinking is, if we can get back to systems thinking, think that's huge. And you mentioned Martin Picard. He talks about this a lot as well, systems thinking. So it's great, yeah.

Dave (48:41)
No, it's really interesting. Really, really interesting. You've got a brilliant, brilliant way of explaining things in a very simple way. So, you know, keep going with that. I guess I'm interested in you, though, as you kind of look forward to, you know, potentially becoming a doctor at some point and.

Jonathan Jarecki (48:48)
Thank you. Appreciate that.

Dave (49:01)
You know, I guess you've got people like Roger Seheult who, you know, amazing person doing amazing things. He's able to kind of...

think about light as part of his day-to-day work. I I guess the question is, is you're sort of going through the education process, is how do you kind of keep all of this going? How, you know, because it can be quite difficult when you're sort of sat in a lecture hall surrounded by people who have no idea really about what this is all about. And, you know, they're part of the system. And I'm not railing against the system because the system's important, you know.

But it's sort of like, how do you kind of keep honest, but also, yeah, just succeed in that world, if you see what mean.

Jonathan Jarecki (49:50)
Yeah, no, it's a great question. What I have come to realize is that even with my very, some may say controversial, I would just say different mindset on things, even with that, tend to be, people are receptive. I think with social media,

Because social media is another whole world of itself, right? We think, ⁓ people are mean and all this. it's like, even within social media, I can get a comment. Someone can comment on my video, something mean or whatever. And then I DM them very nicely. And then they're like, sorry, sorry, sorry. And then they become nice, right? it's like, but it's true. But I see the same thing in real person when you can talk to people one on one about these issues and talk to them slowly through it.

Dave (50:38)
You

Yes.

Jonathan Jarecki (50:50)
that they can hear your perspective, you can hear their perspective. I see people are more open-minded than I think we think people are. ⁓ And that ⁓ has allowed me to share my perspective with people. And I've seen firsthand a lot of people's perspectives on things have actually changed just from me telling them my beliefs. I've had conversations with professors about some of Glenn Jeffries' studies ⁓

And now, is that, are they gonna change your entire life around because of it? Maybe, most likely, probably not, but at least it's like a seed that's planted, right? And so I think I want to, and I think, I mean, Roger has talked about this, where he's teaching other doctors as well, and they're listening to him. Because he is one of them, he's a doctor as well. So it's like, now it's like,

Dave (51:45)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jonathan Jarecki (51:46)
Like, you know, if he was telling these doctors as just a random person, they probably would not be receptive to it. But since he's also in the system with them, they're gonna be more perceptive to his concepts and his ideas. And so, ⁓ I love that, that I can have an influence one-on-one with my peers, with the people that I'm surrounded with. And I think through that, we can change the system, we can change how people think.

⁓ regarding medicine and ⁓ regarding health and all of that. So that is honestly like what keeps me going a lot of the times is like, you know, I love learning all of it just to educate myself, but I also love learning all of it to educate other people. That's why I have social media. That's why I'm sharing what I'm sharing on social media. But it's also I'm seeing it firsthand. I get to share this stuff with the people that are also in the system with me and on the same path as me. So it's like, you know, I started a ⁓

I started a club here at Davidson called the Vital Choice Project. It's a brand new organization, national organization. I started a chapter on my campus. Basically, the goal of it is to teach pre-med students, so students in college that are on the pre-med track, how to have a healthy handshake between allopathic medicine, Western medicine, and naturopathic medicine. how do we, because I don't think naturopathic medicine may not have all the answers, and allopathic.

medicine definitely doesn't have all the answers, right? How do we combine both of these to have a healthy handshake between them? And that's one of goals for this club. But it's cool because we're getting to have these students ⁓ hear these other perspectives. One of our things we do is we're trying to bring speakers onto campus to have talks and all this. ⁓ It's like I brought Gerald Pollack to my campus last semester, a part of a different organization with the Free Speech Alliance. But I brought

Gerald Pollack over, had 80 students come attend. We also had faculty come listen to his ideas. And it's like, if I could just do that and like plant some of these seeds and have people's minds maybe a little bit more opened, I think I've succeeded. And that's the goal with all this because there may be a huge ripple effect, right? I can share one little thing and that person might go down the same rabbit hole that I've already gone down and then they're gonna share with other people as well.

That's what keeps me going. I think, what, that's where my focus is at. And yeah, it's just like, I just want, I want people to be healthy and, you know, I'm biased. I think what I know and my beliefs are the way to get people healthier. That's a bias of mine. I think that's what it is. So that's what I want to share.

Dave (54:32)
I mean, I think you're doing it with incredible positivity and, you know, I mean, I feel like I don't know you at all, but I think I feel you're going to be doing with empathy and kindness as well, which I think is super helpful.

Jonathan Jarecki (54:47)
Yeah, I

try. think that's super important as well. It's like, especially on social media, people who are listening, be kinder on social media. Social media can be such a just dark place at times. And it's like, we gotta be nicer, guys. Come on.

Dave (55:01)
You want it?

I think

your mitochondria want you just to be a nicer person basically.

Jonathan Jarecki (55:07)
Exactly, and I think if you are a nicer person, your mitochondria are gonna be

much more happier. So there we go.

Dave (55:12)
Get out in the sun, be nicer. No, listen, I think it's really, really brilliant. I'm so super impressed to talk to you. It's so wonderful to have someone so young as you who's so passionate about this. Because my belief is this is going to change.

everything basically, you know, we are at the start of something which is vitally, vitally important. And, you know, we need people like you to kind of grow with the subject and push research and the boundaries of research. Because I think this is really about how we kind of reconnect with nature, ourselves, the...

the sun, know, all of this stuff, which is sort of critically important to the future. So I will go to bed tonight relieved that there's young people like you who are going to be doing this. you know.

Jonathan Jarecki (56:10)
Yeah, there's,

and I wanna tell you, Dave, there's also more, right? It's not just me. I I'm also seeing it on social, like I just had, I think his name was Seth. I mean, he just reached out to me ⁓ today. He's a 19-year-old ⁓ in college, gonna be, or planning to do MD, PhD route, and he's in tune with all this as well. So it's like, on social media, I've been seeing a lot of younger people come to me, and I love that so much. It gets me so excited. ⁓ But.

Dave (56:37)
Right.

Jonathan Jarecki (56:39)
There's also a lot of people behind the scenes, not publicly on social media. I have a ton of friends who, know, I mean, not a ton, I don't want to say a ton, but like, I also have friends who are understanding this and who believe in this stuff and also want to become doctors. And so that's super encouraging as well. And I think our generation, my generation is waking up to a lot of these things. ⁓ And so like you said, I think both in terms of the science, we're on,

where breakthroughs are gonna be happening in terms of health and the more the research comes out and the more advocacy there is for this stuff and for light and sunlight and fixing our indoor environments. And I think the same thing in my generation's ⁓ doctors, like future doctors, think there's a waking up there as well, right? They're seeing all these chronic diseases, they're seeing things aren't working and they want change. And I think that's...

super important. So if there's any young kids listening to this who want to maybe become a doctor or are passionate about health and all this, first off, I would love for them to reach out to me, but also I just want to encourage them to continue to work hard and continue to ⁓ just go on your path and work hard while doing it and keep that passion.

and just don't get discouraged. That's the biggest thing I want younger generations to hear.

Dave (58:12)
Amazing. Let's finish there on that high note. So thank you so much.

Jonathan Jarecki (58:17)
Yeah, thank you, Dave.

David James Vaughan Wallace (58:19)
Thanks for listening to Sunlight Matters, brought to you by Shadowmap where we explore how sunlight influences the way we build, design and live each day. If you like what you heard today, be sure to subscribe, follow and leave a review on your preferred streaming platform. You can also search Sunlight Matters on Google to find all our episodes, guest information and resources about sunlight analysis, solar exposure and the best home orientation for natural light.

You can also head over to shadowmap.org where you can download our iOS app for free today to visualize how sun is currently impacting your life. We appreciate you being part of the conversation and we'll see you next time where you can keep exploring the world through the lens of life.