Mark Bell's Power Project - The Problem With Modern Light | Jonathan Jarecki

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

Follow: @jonathanjarecki @TheSignalWithJonathanJarecki  Jonathan Jurecki joins Mark Bell’s Power Project to break down how sunlight, red and infrared light, blue light, and our modern indoor environment may influence mitochondrial function, circadian rhythms, melatonin, eye health, vitamin D, and overall health.Jonathan explains why he considers natural sunlight the ultimate form of red light therapy, why some commercial red light devices may be unnecessarily intense, how infrared light interacts with mitochondria, and why simply changing the light environment around you could be an overlooked piece of health and performance.They also discuss sunscreen, sun exposure and skin cancer, incandescent bulbs, LEDs, morning sunlight, vitamin D supplementation, blue-blocking glasses, and practical ways to bring more natural-spectrum light into everyday life.Special perks for our listeners below!🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWER to save 20% off site wide, or code POWERPROJECT to save an additional 5% off your Build a Box Subscription!🩸 Get your BLOODWORK/TRT/PEPTIDES! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com and use code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off Self-Service Labs and Guided Optimization®.🧠 Methylene Blue: Better Focus, Sleep and Mood 🧠 Use Code POWER10 for 10% off!➢https://troscriptions.com?utm_source=affiliate&ut-m_medium=podcast&ut-m_campaign=MarkBel-I_podcastBest 5 Finger Barefoot Shoes! 👟 ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM?si=JZN09-FakTjoJuaW🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎➢https://emr-tek.com/Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!

you know, 93% of an American's day is spent indoors. Sunlight is the best red light therapy device. It's the perfect intensity. It's the perfect wavelengths. My philosophy is nature is the best medicine. It's perfectly designed for us. 95% of the melatonin that your body produces is actually produced during the day and in response to light. I think what we're really seeing with the vitamin D story is,

vitamin D is more so a proxy of how much sun exposure somebody is getting. Every single study looking at sunlight and melanoma mortality shows that as we, increased sun exposure, we actually reduce melanoma mortality. The cheapest, most simplest, I think also the healthiest thing that people can do is simply by a 40 or 60 watt incandescent light bulb, place it on their desk, especially if you're, you know, if you work a nine to five. All right, Jonathan, I'm just going to start out by asking you flat out, do you think a lot of the lights that people have bought and purchased over the last couple of years to bring inside

their home to utilize red light therapy. Do you think some of those efforts may have been worthless? And when we look at a lot of these red light therapy devices, I mean, you know, I've seen ones that are like 850 milwaukee or 702 squared, which is really high intensity. And then when you contrast that with what I would say the best literature shows around sort of, you know, red light therapy and the effects of red and infrared, these longer wavelengths of light on mitochondrial health, you know, a lot of this is coming out of the Glenn Jeffries lab at University of University of. College London, and he has seen that he is basically titrating down and down to lower and lower intensities in his studies and seeing still having the benefit and those beneficial outcomes

while being super low intensity. So he's even seen benefits with one millimeter squared. And when we look at sunlight in general, right, natural sunlight, which is what our body expects to have 24-7, you know, my question is, all right, what is the intensity of that? And when we look at full sunlight spectrum, so spanning from UV all the way into far infrared, which goes past 3,000 nanometers, cumulatively, that is around 100, a little bit over 100 milawatts per centum square. Now, if we were to take a specific wavelength of the sunlight spectrum, so let's say you took like 850 nanometers, which is in the near infrared, which a lot of, you know, red light therapy devices and panels have that specific wavelength in it. If you, if you measured that

wavelength, the intensity of that wavelength coming from the sun, you're at around one milawatt per centimeter square. So super low intensity where these red light therapy panels are at 100 plus millawatts per centimeter square, very high intensity. And I think, you know, I've talked about this like on my page and stuff. And I find, I don't use red light therapy devices, the vast majority of them for this particular reason. I don't, we do not have any literature showing that it is necessarily harmful. However, I think I take a precautionary principle around it. And, you know, sunlight is the best red light therapy device. It's the perfect intensity. It's the perfect wavelengths. It's the full spectrum, right? And that's the best red light therapy device that we,

that we have. I take a precautionary principle around these red light therapy devices. One, they're not regulated, right? We don't have long-term, you know, efficacy studies on them. And they're not, like, they're not natural, right? There still could potentially be benefits because you are getting these long wavelengths of light back into the environment. I recommend people, because it's super high intensity, what I recommend is, like, distance is your best friend. So the further you go away from the device, just how the physics works, the lower the intensity gets as you move away from the device. And even with devices that have near-infrared light,

so the properties of near-infrared light is that it bounces and scatter. So it doesn't absorb with a lot of material. So let's say you turned your red light therapy device around, facing it against a wall. What's going to happen is those longer wavelengths of near-infred light are going to bounce against the wall and come right back at you. So you're going to still get the benefits while not having that super high intensity. So I think, you know, getting to your question here, it's like, I think when we look at sort of, you know, the biohacking culture of today and trying to like biohack everything and finding the device to fix everything, you know, I, my philosophy is nature is the best medicine.

It's perfectly designed for us. It's what we expect 24-7. And any time we go, anytime we find ourselves a little bit away from the natural state, we're all. there is a potential for risk. And so that's sort of my thoughts around these devices. You know, the, again, best red light therapy is the sun. Sunrise is awesome is also very, very great because we're getting that concentrated red and infrared light

in a very concentrated manner without sort of those shorter wavelengths of light. And so I think, you know, and we always see this, right? It always comes back to these fundamental things. And these fundamental things, one, it's free, right? You don't have to go spend $5,000 or whatever it may be on some of these devices. But, you know, it's also perfect for the human body. Now, you know, I think there's a time in place potentially for some red light therapy devices, but really the best source is the sun, and that's my philosophy around it.

Yeah, so I think I definitely see a potential for these red light therapy devices with injury. I think there's some great literature around, you know, recovery time with red light therapy. But again, I would always encourage people to find companies that sell lower intensity red light therapy devices. Because even the literature that we do have around red light and infrared light therapy for recovery from various different injuries, even that literature, a lot of it does use lower intensities of light. And we see the benefits with it. So there's no doubt that you're still going to get the benefits with lower intensities. So there are some companies out there that use lower intensities. Now, outside of sunlight, and I'll just mention this one quick thing because I think this is super important.

My favorite red light therapy, if you want to call a device, is simply a 250 watt red incandescent light bulbs. So these are these huge, huge, you know, incandescent light bulbs that emit a ton, a ton of heat. But what's nice about them is that their broad spectrum, they are lower, much, much lower intensity closer to the sun. And you're also getting a heating component, which in the literature, there is. some evidence that that can sometimes counterbalance some benefits from red light therapy, but from sort of a first principles approach here, I would say whenever we are getting full spectrum sunlight, there's always a heat component because we're always having those longer wavelengths of infrared. So the long wavelength of infrared light is heat. That's how our body senses

it, right? We can't see infrared with a human eye, but we can feel it as heat. And so, you know, I think I always try to, when I think of signals right to the human body light is one of probably the the primary signals that I think about when we think about signals I always think about you know signal coupling so whenever we're in nature we're always getting these signals coupled together so we're getting light we're getting air we're grounded to the earth all these signals are happening at the same time coupled together whereas when we you know when we go in a lab and we study these things they're always isolated right and we're never going to see the full picture the full picture I have no doubt is always going to be greater than

than the sum of its parts, right? The whole is always better than some of its parts. So, yeah, that's my suggestion there, but I will say to your question, yeah, I think injury could be a potential use for these. And then I do think, like having these red light therapy devices on, especially if they're higher intensity, just having them on all day, bounce it against a wall, like, you know, face it against you or just put it far away, but having it on all day when you're indoors, because our indoor environment is lacking these long-a-way things light. we do need to get these longer wailing some light back into the built environment. We can do that various ways.

We can open a window. We can use incandescent light bulbs. Or if you will have red light therapy devices, you can simply just turn that on and keep it on all day. Now, don't stand in front of it all day, but just distance and bounce it against the wall all day. I think there can be tons of benefits with that. Good part. Quick question. Because I think mostly when, at least when a lot of people I know are using red light devices,

you're not generally going to be standing in front of it for like 30 minutes to an hour. It's going to be like a short route 10 to 15 minutes. So what are your thoughts there? Because I think we talked to a lot of people on the show and the goal of red light devices isn't to replace the sun. We know that the sun is the best light source, especially if you can get a good amount of it. But the shorter bouts, what are your thoughts there? And then actually my second question would be if you were to, do you have any theories as to

how it could be risky getting this higher bolus of light from these devices? I know that maybe it hasn't been studied, but maybe since you've been paying attention to a lot of these things, you might have some extrapolations that you might think of. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, two great questions. So I would say, I would say first thing when, well, yeah, I'll get to a potential mechanism at play as why these could potentially be risky. And again, like I said, there's no, there's no concrete evidence about this. But sorry, what was your first, what was the first question? My first question was because you know, you were mentioning that, you know, these are high doses of light we're getting from these devices.

Yes, timing. Yeah. In my mind, it's like, yeah, these are high doses, but at the same time, we're staying in front of it for like 10 minutes, 10, 50 minutes. Sure. Right? Yeah. And we're still getting the sun. And you're still getting the sun.

So my curiosity is like, do you think that this still carries that potential type of risk because you're not going to be standing in front of it for an hour? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. No, that's a great point. And, you know, when you do, you know, when these manufacturers, I mean, they'll, in the companies, they'll say, like, you know, specific amount of time. And usually, like you said, that is a short duration because it's very high intensity. And so, yes, I would say, my big thing is pay attention to what the company says, right? And definitely don't go over what the company says. I think when we do look at this, you know, it is, you know, it is basically photons over time. And that is another consideration. You know, what's what I find so fascinating around the space is that the, the, the, the, the, the, the, science and the research behind all this is sort of at the forefront and it just can it's just really starting starting to like look really strong and we're getting to understand more and more and so that is another thing there is jules per second which is taking into consideration timing

and then there's millawatts per centimeter square which is taking into sort of just looking at intensity but i think it is smart to look at intensity over time so yes i think when using these higher intensity devices the shorter duration is going to limit any potential risks, if that makes sense. Now, I'll get to that second question about what can potentially be happening. So this is not my theory, so this is sort of the theory of these two researchers. One, his name is Bob Fosberry. He's an astrophysicist out of London, as well as Glenn Jeffrey, who's just a normal wet

lab neuroscience researcher, who's sort of one of the top researchers in the area of how light interacts with our mitochondria. And their concern around these high-intensity devices is basically this concept. So when, and we can talk about more about like mitochondrial physiology later, but just to give you a little bit foundation, because this will help with sort of what we think

is potentially occurring here. So in the mitochondria, we have two membranes. The second, the intermiticondrial membrane is where electrons flow. So electrons funnel through this intermitondro membrane from protein complex to protein complex. And when we, we're in the endermicondro membrane, and when we,

we shine longer wavelengths of light on mitochondria or on humans and it gets our mitochondria, when we shine this light, what is happening is basically, there's a few mechanisms at play of why we're seeing benefits from relay therapy devices, and this will be crucial to understand where the risks can come into play. What we're seeing is the energy of, let's say, a near-infrared photon is the perfect amount of energy needed for an electron to get from one protein complex to the next protein complex. It's around 0.75 electron volts. And when electrons are jumping from protein complex

to protein complex, there's an energy barrier to get to that next protein complex, to get through that chain, to flow these electrons further. The near-infraed light is able to basically assist those electrons funneling through the mitochondria. Now, the idea here in the proposed sort of potential risk is that if we are pushing too many near-infrared

photons into the mitochondria. You can think of it essentially as it is clogging up the mitochondria and putting too much energy into it where these electrons aren't able to flow properly. So there's a beautiful paper published in cell by these two researchers, Martin Picard and Norosha Marugan. They're out of Columbia University. Martin Picard, he's a mitochondrial researcher. And they came out with this paper called the Energy Resistance Principle. That's the title of the paper, and that's this foundational principle that they're sort of proposing. And I think it's going to be the forefront of science, health, and medicine in the future. Just once people start understanding that mitochondria, I mean, I think it's getting there,

but mitochondria, you know, the root of health and the foundation of health. And if we have healthy mitochondria, we can live long and healthy lives. But anyways, their energy resistance principle basically proposes that for proper health and for just proper bodily functions and cellular functions, there's this Goldilocks zone of energy resistance. So when electrons are flowing through the mitochondria, there needs to be resistance, a certain amount of resistance to allow that flow to happen. But if there's too little resistance, well, then the energy isn't going to be able to be shuttled down the electron transport chain properly.

If there's too much resistance, these electrons aren't able to flow at all, right? There's going to be sort of that stoppage and that blockage of electron flow. So we want a Goldilocks zone of energy resistance. And now tying that concept into the work of Glenn Jeffrey and his idea of these electrons are going to be clogged up, well, if we're putting too much energy into the system, that could potentially lead to too much energy resistance. Electrons aren't able to flow as easily. And then that's where you can get that sort of clogging up of electrons.

So that's the idea there. Again, we don't have like solid concrete evidence around this. It is, I mean, it is based on some, you know, fundamental, like, just physics principles at play here. But I think, I think it is wise to use lower intensity, again, just from, like, the precautionary principle. That's not to say, again, that's not to say you're going to completely damage. It's, like, harmful to use these higher intensities. I just think you need to be careful. You know, don't use them too long.

And, you know, don't use them also too close. You know, have a little bit of distance from them. Last question on this idea. Yeah, yeah. Do you know, I mean, theoretically, what could happen to one if these areas got clogged? Like, what is, what could happen? Sure, sure. Yeah.

Well, so, you know, foundationally, and again, this sort of gets to the idea that mitochondria, the foundation of health. And so mitochondria need to have proper energy flow within them to work properly. So I think this is a good sort of place to talk a little bit about mitochondria physiology. So, you know, mitochondria produce what's called ATP, a then-sene triphosphate, which is typically thought of as the energy currency of the cell. Without ATP, and we have experiments about this, if we remove ATP from a system, the system doesn't work.

The cell doesn't work. The organism does not work at all. So we need ATP to function properly. And when electrons flow down the electron transfer chain, what happens is protons get pushed to the other side of the membrane. basically making this charge gradient, basically charging your mitochondria like batteries, your mitochondria are literally batteries, where on one end of the, on one side of the membrane is a positive charge, where all the protons are.

On the other side is a very negative charge. So you have this charge gradient, you have this battery that is formed as electrons funneled through the electron transport chain. At the very end is the last protein complex is ATP synthase. It's basically this motor. It's this little, essentially, the smallest motor that we've ever discovered and the most efficient motor, it runs at pretty much 100% efficiency. And it's quite literally a motor.

So at the end of it is this little rotor that spins super fast. And when these protons get funneled through that motor, that's when ATP is produced. Now, this is all to say, and this gets to your question, as when we are, let's say, clogging up this mitochondria electron flow, what's going to happen at the end is we're not going to be able to produce enough ATP. Now, from there, our cells are not going to be able to function properly, and with dysfunctional cells, well, then there's all the upstream consequences that occur from there. And, you know, mitochondria, again, foundation of everything. So when we think about cancer, cancer is a mitochondrial disease, when we think about diabetes, diabetes is most certainly a mitochondrial disease,

functioning right at, especially type 2 diabetes, right at the mitochondria. So really, really every single chronic disease that we see, I mean, even. like cardiovascular disease. Pretty much every single chronic disease we see has a root of either of mitochondria disease. And we see that, right? Pretty much all people with chronic diseases have dysfunctional mitochondria. So that, and again, this gets to that energy resistance principle. We want that Goldilocks energy flow. And really these mitochondria are basically just, you know, little batteries that flow energy. And what's really fascinating with mitochondria is they also communicate with each other. So the mitochondria are working separately. They are, it's a network of

mitochondria in, in our cells. And this network of mitochondria allows more energy flow. Energy flow cannot, if energy flow is restricted, mitochondria aren't as healthy. If mitochondria aren't as healthy, our cells aren't as healthy, our cells aren't healthy, well then we have the downstream consequences. So it's really foundational to pretty much everything. Someone what you're mentioning kind of makes me think about, you know, I was just in New Jersey and we were out on the beach a lot. And, and being exposed to the sun quite a bit. And the sun is weird because the sun's very energizing at times.

But then it's also very tiring at time. So like once you're in the sun and if you have some powerful sun, you all of a sudden start to feel pretty, pretty fatigued. Yeah. Maybe even like hungry. And maybe some of what you're talking about, maybe there, maybe there kind of is like a natural set point of like just saying to yourself in your head like, I should probably go get

some shade. Yeah. It's like some sort of trigger of the sun. Is that, is that like a real thing? Or like, what are your thoughts there? Like, what's happening? Yeah, I mean, you know, when we look at, like, just observe any, any organism, any animal, right? I mean, I look at my dog and, you know, I'll go outside in my backyard sunbathing and he'll come out there with me. He'll literally lay right beside me sunbathing. And then when it's time for him to go in the shade, he gets up and goes right in the shade, right? He has this sort of innate consciousness where he knows, all right, I'm getting, I'm hot, right? I want to, I want to go get some shade. And so I think that's sort of, you know, it is definitely something that we have been designed to, you know, seek shade when it's needed, seek direct sunlight when we want it as well, because we do sort of have this addiction to sunlight, which is very necessary because sunlight is so vital.

So our body does know that we want to go get sunlight when it's time, but also seek shade when it's time as well. So I think, yeah, and I guess when thinking about this from that perspective of energy resistance and energy flow, you know, I think, What's really fascinating around, so when we look at, even when we look at shade, right, especially green shade, green shade reflects, you know, trees in general reflect a ton of infrared light. So if you go underneath green shade with no even direct sunlight on you, you're just under green shade, a tree, or whatever that may be, you're getting tons and tons of near infrared light, which our cells are going to utilize. And I think this interaction between the near-infrared light and electron flow is not necessarily a like a so sort of like biohack. It's sort of just the natural state that our body's supposed to be in. And that continuous sort of environment of tons of near-infrared light around us constantly

is allowing the electrons to flow in this Goldilocks zone of energy resistance. Now, the second we sort of step out of that and when we go indoors is when we're going to have sort of that consequence of, okay, now the body's not getting that signal of the near infrared light. The electrons aren't getting those near infrared light. You're going to have some sort of, you know, change in the electron flow. And I think, you know, maybe thinking about this from what you mentioned about, you know, like getting tired and things like that, there are some interesting effects of red and infrared light on. melatonin. So 95% of the melatonin that your body produces is not produced in the pineal gland at night. It's actually produced during the day and in response to light. So the primary, so the primary, most of your melatonin is actually produced in your mitochondria. So Dr. Russell Ryder,

he is the leading melatonin researcher in the entire world. He's actually one of like the top scientists in the entire world. They rank scientists. You know, you can find this anywhere. and he's I think number like 145 ranked scientists just based off on how many papers he's published and everything. Where are you in the ranking at 21 years old? I'm nowhere near him. Oh, man. It's on that list. Give him a bit better.

But he, him and Scott Zimmerman, who's an optics engineer, came out with a paper called melatonin in the optics in the human body. And they described this so beautifully where when we interact with red and infrared light, these longer wavelengths, they stimulate our mitochondria to actually produce. what's called subcellular melatonin, sub below cellular, below the cell within the mitochondria. So extra pineal outside of the pineal gland within every single mitochondria of your body when you're interacting with infrared light, when you're surrounded by infrared light, you're actually, your body's producing the subcellular melatonin.

Now, we can actually measure this in blood as well as sweat. So there's actually more and more monitors coming out now where they're measuring both cortisol but also melatonin in people's sweat. So you can, I think, you know, there's some devices where you can wear like a little wristband that measures your sweat throughout the day, measures melatonin concentration. And this melatonin that we're being, that we're producing throughout the day is coming from our mitochondria, not from our pineal gland. So, you know, at night, our pineal gland produces melatonin in the absence of light. But this is separate from that. And there are some theories that when we, you know, expose ourselves to a ton of light, a ton of a natural daylight and sunlight, let's say you go to the beach and you get tired.

I think this is a phenomenon that a lot of people sort of experience. You're at the beach for a long periods of time and you get tired. Well, potentially, one reason for this is the melatonin that your body is producing within the mitochondria throughout the day. And you can think about this, you know, and when you're producing this melatonin in the mitochondria, it's getting into your blood, going into your bloodstream, potentially, you know, having that sort of calming and sort of drowsy, like sleepy feeling that you get from nighttime melatonin as well.

So same exact melatonin molecule just produced in a dead. different area, but when you're producing a ton of it, it can leak out of the mitochondria go into the bloodstream and that can have systemic effects. Recently, Joe Rogan has been talking about how he may have cured his macular degeneration. Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, via, you know, standing in front of a red light panel or lying down in front of a red light panel for 30 minutes a day for like three or four days a week. What are some of your thoughts there?

and, you know, have you seen any of this from either people standing in front of red light panels and or even just going out in the sun having improved eyesight? Yeah, so, I mean, we have some beautiful, great literature on red and infrared light for age-related macular degeneration, where, I mean, we're seeing complete reversals of age-related macular generation by shining red. and I believe most the literature is looking at specifically red light. So I don't think a lot of it has gone into the longer wavelengths of infrared, but most of it is looking at red light shining on the eyes and improving vision one, but also macular degeneration.

So there are some clinical trials on this, and what's really fascinating is that we've had some time for these clinical trials to go out. And there's one paper where they actually did a five-year follow-up on these participants who sort of, you know, who had these amazing improvements in their macular degeneration. five-year follow-up, they showed no age-related macular generation from, I don't know the exact protocol what they did in the study, but it was red light for X amount of time every single day just shining on their eyes. So it wasn't just, you know, full-body red light panel, but shining on their eyes. So we have some great, you know, great literature around that.

And then even, you know, I'll talk about some studies I'm more familiar with out of Glenn Jeffries lab, where he has shown that separate from macular generation, just, you know, healthy participants, where he shines for three minutes. He shines 670 nanometer red light. So this is red light, not infred, 670 nanometers onto participants' eyes in the morning for three minutes, and they're able to either, he gives instructions to either close their eyes

or keep them open, they can do whatever feels more comfortable to them. And he actually then tests color contrast. So Glenn Jeffrey's in the field of ophthalmology, so he deals with the eye a ton, and he's also in the Department of Neuroscience. and then he tests their color contrast. So he tested their color contrast before,

and color contrast is basically your ability, the ability for your eye to detect two different colors side by side, essentially. And that's basically what the test is. And this is a marker of visual function. So if we have improved color contrast, that is an indicator that the visual function of the eye has improved. And that is exactly what he's seeing.

So he saw around 15% improvement in color contrast of these participants just by three minutes of red light shine on their eye. Now, he also did another study using a just incandescent light bulb. So no, you know, no LED red light therapy device, just an incandescent light bulb placed it on participants' desks. So it wasn't even sort of a deliberate treatment. It was, you know, ambient exposure to the incandescent light bulb day to day on their work desk from like a nine to five essentially. And he did the exact same thing. He tested color contrast of these participants' eyes. And he saw an even greater improvement. So it was around a, it was around a 28% improvement in both pro tan and tritan

thresholds, just the two different color contrast tests that they do. But so around a 30% improvement in color contrast sensitivity of these participants with incandescent light bulb. So that sort of points to this fact that when we're thinking about, you know, red light therapy, we know for a fact that we're going to always see better improvements when we use a more broader spectrum and when we include even more wavelength of light. We're going to see that improvement with just single or maybe even a couple wavelengths of light, or it's going to be an even greater improvement when we expand that out to longer wavelengths of light. And, you know, this goes to, I think what we're really seeing here, especially, you know, with age-related

back in the generation, but also just, you know, eye health in general, I think what we're really seeing today is probably one of the biggest contributing factors to that is the lack of infrared in these people just day to day and the abundance of short way-length blue light from screens and just LEDs in general. So, you know, people are living in indoor environments where there's one, a ton of blue light, which has consequences that we can talk about. But then there's also a lack of the healing red and infrared. So what you're getting there is then these mitochondria are not going to be functioning properly. And your retina is the organ that has the highest concentration of mitochondria. The reason for that is because the retina just has to work super, super hard. So it needs a ton of energy

on a mitochondria. And when we have, again, when we have, you know, dysfunctions in the mitochondria, especially in the retina, where then we're going to see consequences in eye health. We're going to see macular degeneration, and we're going to see, you know, just dysfunctions in the visual function of people's eyes. So I think it's a huge problem, but it's easy one to fix, which, you know, Joe Rogan says that he got his eyes fixed, and I have no doubt about it. I'm definitely convinced of that from the literature for sure. So I think it's a really fascinating aspect of red light therapy. What are your potential thought thoughts too? Because obviously different skin tones have different responses to the amount of light one can absorb, right? So maybe thinking about that

when it comes to the devices that are being used. Do you think that a black person should think differently from a paler individual for if they have a device, how long they can or should be in front of one of these devices. Yeah, this is an amazing question. So I think the research on this is going to be better in the coming years because researchers are understanding that the people with darker skin and more melanin actually, well, one, we know they need to get more short-wave things like UV light because the UV we know very easily absorbs those, their shorter wavelengths light.

But the same thing with infrared as well. So the properties of infrared, they're still going to be able to penetrate through a ton of melanin. but it's less than someone who doesn't have a ton of melanin, especially you melanin, right, the darker pigments of melanin. And so I think, yes, people with darker skin tones do need to get more sunlight in general. They need to be in more shade than a, to get more infrared light. When we think about devices, yeah, I would probably say it would,

it would be more efficacious for them to also get longer durations of the red and infrared light from devices. as well. Now again, I can't like give a recommendations only because we don't know. But I would say it's definitely a fact just from the optics of how how light interacts with melanin in the skin and how then that affects the absorption rate of it and the penetration depth of it is definitely something to consider. There's a, there's one quick point on this. So there's a, so Glenn Jeffrey has a paper that is not published yet, but he sent me over the manuscript where he, what he does is he has participants who have a, you know, they're working in a typical, you know, work environment, no windows whatsoever. There's a big LED right above them. And he also had, they also

have, you know, an LED light bulb lamp at their desk. And what he did is he had, you know, two groups of control and experimental. In the experimental group, what he did, he took their LED light bulb. He took it apart, placed an 850 nanometer single LED inside the standard LED light bulb. So now we have a typical light bulb spectrum plus 850 nanometer, just a little 850 nanometer spike. You can see the spectrum in their manuscript, and that's exactly what it is. You just see a little small peak in that, the 850. Then he had them do two things. One, a oral glucose tolerance test, so essentially they drink a ton of glucose, and they measure their glucose over time.

But they also had a continuous glucose monitor on these participants for, I believe it was a week time. So continuous glucose monitor monitoring their glucose throughout the day in our own. all that. And incredible, incredible findings. What he found is that the people who had the single 850 nanometer light installed in their standard LED. So the LED still was emitting those shorter wavelengths. Overhead light as well. It was on the whole time as well. So they're still getting exposed to those shorter wailings of blue light. But they just added one single 850 nanometer into the device and they showed amazing improvements in blood glucose regulation. So blood, sugars continuously throughout the day were down significantly. Now this paper

should be coming out hopefully by the end of the year. You know it takes a ton of time for these papers to get published. It's unfortunate but you know that's a scientific process. So but hopefully that will be coming out soon. But but I say this too so I had Glenn Jeffrey on my podcast and he was discussing this this paper and he was telling me that when they were looking through all the data, because when he when he first saw this you know it was his PhD student that was that was doing the study. When he first saw the results, he was like, no, there's got to be something wrong here.

Like, no way this had that big of an effect. So they were looking through all the data. One really interesting thing that they saw is that the people that they had in this experiment that were darker skin, so these black people that also had the near infrared light, they did not have the same effect on their blood sugar. There was an improvement, there was still an improvement, but it was nowhere near the improvement that they saw with the white people, which is really, you know, I think points to this fact that, yeah, darker-skinned people with more melanin definitely need to be exposed to more sunlight in general,

but when we think about, when we're thinking about just the longer wavelengths of red and infrared, they need to be exposed to more red and infrared as well. And this definitely does get to melanin. Now, I think the reason why we're still a little unsure. I mean, we do know that these long-reliquence light don't penetrate as deep with more melanin, but they're still penetrating, so they're still interacting. with mitochondria, but again, to a lesser degree. So I think that's a phenomenal thing that needs to be discussed more and needs to be researched more for sure. So, yeah. Do you know in that paper if eye color was considered at all? I don't know. It potentially was, I don't know. Darker eyes can look at the sun or look at light easier, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I do know

people who have, you know, blue eyes have a greater sensitivity to, especially just bright light in general. But again, this was, this was, so the actual brightness of light didn't change at all, again, because this is 850 nanometers, so they can't actually see this visually. So there's no visual change, this is also really great. So they actually don't even know, like, it's a placebo controlled trial, so they don't even know if they got the 850 or not, which is what's great about this sort of research around infrared, because we can't, you know, people don't know if they're actually getting it or not. But yeah, that's a, it's an interesting concept there. And I think, you know, even with that, like, just a side note on just brightness of light,

you know, if people, could I know a lot of lighter eye individuals will, like, wear a ton of sunglasses and going outside. Well, that's just, you know, putting a band-aid on this problem of light sensitivity. If you, you can easily adapt your eyes to brighter light conditions if you expose your eyes to brighter light condition. Now, if you don't expose them, the eyes are never going to be adapted to such conditions. So I think that's a really important, a nuance point there as well. It seems like things like skin cancer are kind of confusing. When it comes to things like sunscreen, some of that seems kind of confusing. For myself personally, I don't normally use sunscreen, but I will occasionally use sunscreen. Excuse me, if I know I'm going to be outside and

And I know that I'm going to be vulnerable and not able to maybe get to shade appropriately. And the UV is like through the roof. I will try my best to have appropriate clothes, appropriate hat, you know, get like one of the little fishermen caps or something to kind of lock the ears and stuff. But I've had tons of friends and family members who've had cancerous tumors removed, you know, from their ear, from their nose. And myself recently, I went and got a mold. checked out and it was cancerous but it was benign and they removed they removed it and it was you know lucky that it didn't turn into something worse um you know and i i am originally like

kind of fair skin but i'm also italian so there's some uh heritage there to you know get get out in the sun and so forth um but like for yourself you know living there in florida like what are some precautions that you take are you someone that will use sunscreen on a case And I know clothing plays a big role. I know that we can get like a little bit more charge and get a little bit more sun, even if we're wearing like cotton and things of that nature. So how do you get the sun and then also protect yourself from the sun? Yeah.

This is a great question. So I'll, I can talk about my personal experience and then I'd love to get into some of the literature just around, you know, skin cancers and things like that. because I think that literature needs to be talked about more because it's way more nuanced than what dermatologists will tell you. So for me personally, I mean, I have the same, I have a little bottle of sunscreen that I bought like three years ago. It's not even halfway done. So I try to not use sunscreen as much as possible.

Like you said, there's other mitigations to utilize, like shade, clothing, hats, things like that, always going to be better and healthier and safer than sunscreen. Now, if people do utilize sunscreen, and when you do utilize sunscreen, I mean, my recommendation is always to use a mineral-based sunscreen. My sunscreen that I have, like, I can eat. It's basically just like beef tallow, coconut oil, zinc, oxide, and, you know, a couple, like, essential oils.

Coconut oil. I can make you fry even worse. What, oh, the coconut oil? Did you make that one, or is that a brand you bought? It's from a farmer's market by nearby me. Oh. Yes, yeah. But, yeah, but, yeah, so I say if you can, if you can, if you can.

you can eat your sunscreen, it's fine, it's good to put on. But, you know, the chemical-based sunscreens, I would just avoid. Like, we have mineral-based sunscreens that you can utilize, that work just as good. So why risk the potential, you know, risk with these chemicals that we do know absolutely get absorb into the skin. I mean, our skin is very absorbent. Now, when we use zinc oxide, that the zinc molecule is much larger. It cannot absorb into the skin, so it's more of a barrier sunscreen there. So, yeah, so that's my recommendation there. When you do want to use sunscreen, exactly like you said, Mark, like when you know that you are going to be exposed to too much sun to where you have a potential to burn, yeah, put on some sunscreen. Like, I see no problem with that, right?

Now, we do want to, you know, we do want to have smart sun exposure and we can optimize smart sun exposure over, like, wearing sunscreen, that's always better, right? So if you can go into shade when you can, wear clothes, things like that, I think that's always, always better. when we think about skin cancers, I think this is a very important topic. So I'll first say this. So when we take cells in a little petri dish and we shine UV light on these cells in a petri dish, so these cells are not connected to the human body. They also have so many other problems with them in that a lot of these actually don't even have the DNA repair mechanisms into them. So these are these are cells that have DNA repair mechanisms knocked out of them. So one of the big DNA repair mechanisms is P53. A lot of these cells that researchers will test on are P53 knockout cells,

meaning that they change the genome of these cells to not actually not be able to produce P53. So there's a whole ton of problems with cell culture studies. But when we do shine UV light on cells, we do know that DNA is going to break. And there's actually some benefits to that. And we can we can discuss some of those, but there are, you know, we actually have mechanisms in play that utilize that broken DNA to actually have some other, this is why we see increased in testosterone when we go into the sun. This is why we see pro-opio-malino-coran, which is this big pro-hormone, Palm C, which gets produced. All of that is fundamentally because first DNA gets broken when we expose ourselves to UV light. So we do know that DNA gets broken. Now, day to day,

throughout the day, no matter if you're exposed to sun or not, your deal, DNA is breaking on every single second of your life, your cell's DNA is being broken. Now, we have what's called DNA repair mechanisms. So we have these little proteins that basically go around our cells and our body and repair the broken DNA. And this is obviously very important because if those DNA repair mechanisms are not able to repair the DNA, well, then that's when we can, you know, see cancers and things like that. So I say this all because the primary control mechanism for every single DNA repair mechanism that our body has, they're all under circadian control. So our circadian rhythm, which is basically the central timekeeper, which governs practically every single cell and every single organ of our body, which gets entrained by light, so the light-dark cycle of the earth, entrains this circadian rhythm.

and these DNA repair mechanisms have a circadian rhythm themselves, and they're governed by the central circadian timekeeper. So if our circadian rhythms aligned properly, that means our DNA repair mechanisms are going to be expressed at the right times. So the main DNA repair mechanism for specifically UV-induced DNA damage is what's called NER, N-E-R, and N-E-R gets expressed highest in the middle of the day and does not get expressed at night. This is the proper circadian cycle of NERR, this circadian, this DNA repair mechanism.

Now, this makes sense. When we are outdoors, when is our DNA going to be damaged the most? Well, it's going to be when we're exposed to the most UV light, which is in the middle of the day. And that's also when we're supposed to have the highest amount of nerve being produced. Now, if our circadian rhythm is misaligned via, you know, our, we're getting the wrong light signals into our eyes. We're getting tons of artificial light at night. we're not getting bright light throughout the day and in the morning, well then what's going to happen is that nerve, circadian rhythm,

is either going to be shifted, so now we're going to have nerve being produced at night, or it's going to be blunted. We're not going to have enough nerve being produced. So that then is going to have problems with repairing our DNA properly. Now, that I think is when we're going to be seeing a lot of these cancers and things like that. Now, that aside, although I think that's a very, very important note, when we look at the broader epidemiological literature, these large, large observational studies,

we do know that when we look at these participants in these large observational studies, as we increase sun exposure, we do see a link to increase sun exposure to increase risk of squamous cell and basal cell carcinoma. So these are these skin cancers that, you know, they're not necessarily deadly. I mean, people aren't really dying from basal

and squamacell carcinoma, but, you know, I don't want anyone to get skin cancer in general, but they're not, you know, they're not these super deadly skin cancer. You can go to a dermatologist and get it out, and it's not a huge, huge deal. That's not to belittle that. But, you know, they're not, the big problem is melanoma. Melanoma is what is the skin cancer people are dying from, especially if you don't get it checked out.

Now, that's to say, these large obstinational studies that are seeing these increases in basal cell and sullmusole cell carcinoma from more sun exposure, well, that is looking at, I mean, they'll say it's a healthy population. But really, you know, all a healthy population means in today society is they don't have cardiovascular disease yet. they don't have diabetes yet, they don't have cancer yet, right? I mean, that's like the healthy population. So, but that healthy population, well, it's all circadian disrupted. Like every single person I guarantee in that study, or the vast, vast, vast majority, over 90% of these participants have a, have circadian disruption. I mean, you know, these, you know, circadian biologists, a lot of them will say, like,

you know, in today's society, pretty much everyone's a night shift worker. And we know, for a fact, I mean, you know, the national organizations have said that night shift work is a group to a carcinogen, a probable human carcinogen. And that's because, you know, our DNA repair mechanisms are under circadian control. So I say that to say, yes, we do see increased risk of basal cell cell carcinomas. But again, that's in a population that is circadian disrupted. So that's one point there. When we look at melanoma, because I think that's probably the more important one to focus on. When we look at melanoma, you know, I even thing in this, there's another whole of discussion around, you know, melanoma, you know,

with doctors, you know, over-diagnosing melanoma. Because when we look at year-over-year melanoma incidents, there's a, in the past few years, there's been a two-and-a-half percent increase in melanoma incidents year over year, but melanoma mortality has stayed exactly the same, which that is a telltale sign of there is over-diagnosis happening within the dermatology. field around melanoma. They're diagnosing melanoma too much, essentially. Now, that's a contested debate, but there's some great dermatologists that will attest to that without a doubt. But either way, when we look at melanoma and melanoma mortality, there is not a single study, and I urge people to find me a study, because I've been looking for one. There's not a single study out there

showing that as we increase sun exposure, we increase melanoma mortality. There's not a single study that shows that every single study looking at sunlight and melanoma mortality shows that as we increase sun exposure we actually reduce melanoma mortality this is death for melanoma right so there's actually a protective effect from sun exposure on melanoma mortality now there are we can look at melanoma incidents and there are some studies showing that as we increase um son and sorry i should point Now, the sun exposure I'm referencing here is chronic sun exposure, meaning regular sun exposure, meaning you're going outside getting sun exposure every single day. We know for a fact that as we increase what's called intermittent sun exposure, so that means

you're indoors all week and then on Sunday you go to the beach and you fry yourself, as we increase that type of sun exposure, we do increase the risk of melanoma mortality. So that's for sure, right? We don't want to burn, although that's to say, like, for someone who is, you know, who understands circadian biology and who's eating clean diet and who's truly living a healthy, healthy life, I personally don't see a huge concern over sunburning. That's not to say to tell people to get sunburned. I do not think people should get sunburned. When I get sunburned, I am not freaking out over it because I know my body is resilient. I know my body can handle that. I don't

think that's going to have a huge impact on anything long term for me and for somebody who is truly aligned in their health. So that's sort of the, you know, skin cancer, sunlight story there. And even with, okay, even with these increases in basal cell and squamous cell carcinoma, I'll say one more point on this. There is a pre-print out by Richard Weller. So Richard Weller is a dermatologist, who he's joked on some podcast that he has no dermatology friends because he's actually a pro-sun dermatologist. He thinks the son is actually good for us, where most dermatologists will say otherwise. But he has done some beautiful research. And he, him and his team, is the reason why we actually know that when we expose ourselves to UV light, we mobilize

nitric oxide. So we have these nitric oxide stores in our skin. And when we expose ourselves to UV light, nitric oxide gets released into the bloodstream, vasodilates our blood vessels, increasing blood flow, reducing blood pressure. And then we see with the epidemiology, people who get more sun exposure have reductions in cardiovascular death, so cardiovascular mortality. And so him and his team have done some beautiful research on, on some. sunlight, and especially with the UV portion of the spectrum. He is, I asked him to come on my,

my podcast, and he said, reach back out to him in, in a few months because he is publishing some amazing, amazing research currently right now. One of the papers that he's publishing this year, which is in preprint right now, so, you know, preprint, basically these researchers can publish a paper onto this preprint server, and there is, there's, there's, there's, it hasn't been peer reviewed or anything like that, but it just sort of the public can see. There's a preprint paper by Richard Weller that was published this year, looking at the risk benefit ratio of sun exposure. So like I said, there's a potential risk of basal celloscaliscal maceromasal. But we do know from prior literature that people who get more sun exposure have increased lifespan, reduced all-cause

mortality, reduced non-skin cancer cancer mortality, and reduced cardiovascular mortality. So there's clearly a benefit to sun exposure, but there's maybe a couple of risks with these skin cancers as well. So he was looking at what's the risk-benefit ratio? He took around 400,000 participants and surveyed them to gauge their average amount of sun exposure with many different ways to survey them. So it was just questionnaires. It was satellite imagery. It was vitamin D status.

And those were the three main ways. And he took all of those to come up with a proxy for sun exposure. He categorized these participants into three groups, low UV, low sun exposure, medium sun exposure, and high sun exposure. And what he saw the same thing as we see with other literature, as we increase sun exposure, we reduce our risk of all cause mortality, death from any cause, cardiovascular, and non-skin cancer cancers. He did see that when we increased sun exposure, we also increased the risk of basal and squamous cell carcinoma. Now, what he saw, however, was that the risk of those skin cancers did not outweigh the benefit that we got from the sun exposure. Now, he took all these numbers

and he dialed it down into one small little ratio. And what he saw is that if we took, he did what's called a counterfactual analysis. So basically, what if there was a different behavior of these participants? What is the outcome we would have seen? So his what if was, what if we took all the participants in the high sun exposure and the medium sun exposure? And what if we put them in the low sun exposure category? What is the outcome we would have seen? And what he saw is that we would save one life from a skin cancer death because we would be reducing sun exposure, but we would lose 75 lives from other causes like cardiovascular disease and non-skin cancer cancer. So without a doubt, there's a greater benefit to sun exposure than there is a risk.

And this is just going to come out more and more with these papers that are publishing. That again is in the UK, one of the biggest like rebuttals towards that study. And a lot of these, you know, sunlight and mortality studies that are out is that they're very high latitude studies. So UK, there's a study published from Switzerland, looking at women in Switzerland. So it's high latitude, right? So, you know, the dermatologist out there who are anti-sun will say, oh, well, if you do that same study in a lower latitude closer to the equator environment, there's no way you would see that

same result. I'm told by reputable researchers that there is currently a study that is done. It's in the publication process right now. It's not published yet. Looking at the basically the exact same thing in the United States. and they saw the exact same thing. There is a much greater benefit than there is any risk to sun exposure.

And so that's the takeaway, right? As medical doctors, as dermatologists are, it is first, do no harm, right? So you should be advocating for the action and the behavior that is going to have the greatest benefit. And so we shouldn't be advocating for, to avoid the sun as much as possible. We should have sensible safe sun exposure, right?

This isn't to just go fry yourself out all day long, right? I mean, ancient civilizations, they literally, I mean, they literally like murdered people by stripping them naked, putting them on the top of a tower and killing them just by being an intense UV for days and days and days. So that's not what I'm saying, right? It's get sensible, safe sun exposure. And that's just, it really is common sense sun exposure. Like we mentioned, go in the shade when you're ready. Get, get, I think it's safe to say everybody should have some level, and especially very, very pale person. This could be super, this could be five minutes of intense UV.

but every single person should have unprotected sun exposure for a certain amount of time. So that's the sunlight skin cancer story there. What a great way to torture somebody. Yeah, yeah. Just sun exposure. Yeah, that's terrible. Brutal. You know, I do wonder, because common sense sun exposure makes so much sense.

But it seems to me that this is one of those things that if you're not someone who gets consistent sun on a day, basis and you do this intermittent thing. Not only are you putting yourself at more risk, but also potentially my thought, this is not based in any base of research, but I'm curious your thoughts on this. My thought is that like your body's innate understanding of how much sun you should be getting could be a tad off because you're not consistently giving yourself the sensations, the input of that consistent sunlight. What are your thoughts there? Yeah, I think I think that's, I think you're right there. I mean, I would say even, you know, even just the average person in how we just live our modern days, like, I don't think we're in tune with our body enough,

just in general. And yeah, I think someone who isn't getting, you know, regular sun exposure, yeah, 100%. Like, they're going to be at a higher risk of, you know, risks with getting too much sun exposure because, like you said, they're probably not aware of that. So, and I think it is easy to sort of, you know, let's say you go to the beach. I think it's easy to, to not have a sense of where your body is at in terms of how capable it is to getting how much sun exposure it can get. So I think that is something that, you know, you build up as you do get, you know, more regular sun exposure. And as you get more in tuned with, you know, just circadian biology, as you get more in tune with light exposure in general. So, yeah, I think people who aren't sort of like tapped into all of this at first, they do need to be much more, you know, precautious around this stuff.

But that's to say, I think people are just so sunlight deprived in general that I don't want to sort of, you know, I don't want to say that to make them think like, oh, maybe I should be avoiding the sun. Right. So I think there's a, there's definitely a balancing act here. I will never go to a doctor ever again about my general health. All they want to do is put you on pills. Really well said there by Dana White. Couldn't agree with them more. A lot of us are trying to get jacked and take.

A lot of us just want to look good, feel good. And a lot of the symptoms that we might acquire as we get older, some of the things that we might have high cholesterol or these various things, it's amazing to have somebody looking at your blood work as you're going through the process, as you're trying to become a better athlete, somebody that knows what they're doing. They can look at your cholesterol. They can look at the various markers that you have. And they can kind of see where you're at and they can help guide you through that.

And there's a few aspects too where it's like, like, yes, I mean, no, no shade to doctors, but a lot of times they do want to just stick you on medication. A lot of times there is supplementation that can help with this. Merrick Health, these patient care coronators are going to also look at the way you're living your lifestyle because there's a lot of things you might be doing that if you just adjust that, boom,

you could be at the right levels, including working with your testosterone. And there's so many people that I know that are looking for, they're like, hey, should I do that? They're very curious. And they think that testosterone is going to all of a sudden kind of turn them in. into the Hulk, but that's not really what happens.

It can be something that can be really great for your health because you can just basically live your life a little stronger, just like you were maybe in your 20s and 30s. And this is the last thing to keep in mind, guys, when you get your blood work done at a hospital, they're just looking at like these minimum levels. At Merrick Health, they try to bring you up to ideal levels for everything you're working with, whereas if you go into a hospital and you have 300 nanograms per deciliter of test, You're good, bro, even though you're probably feeling like shit. At Merrick Health, they're going to try to figure out what things you can do in terms of your lifestyle.

And if you're a candidate, potentially TRT. So these are things to pay attention to to get you to your best self. And what I love about it is a little bit of the back and forth that you get with the patient care coordinator. They're dissecting your blood work. It's not like you just get this email back and it's just like, hey, try these five things. Somebody's actually on the phone with you going over every step and what you. what you should do. Sometimes it's supplementation, sometimes it's TRT, and sometimes it's simply just some lifestyle habit changes. All right, guys, if you want to get your blood work checked and also

get professional help from people who are going to be able to get you towards your best levels, heads to Merrickhealth.com and use code Power Project for 10% off any panel of your choice. We do definitely need to take into consideration. And I think this sort of just gets to the point that I would want to make. And that is, you know, people just need to, you know, start very gradually and just be cognizant of, yeah, we should not be getting that intermittent sun exposure, start getting regular sun exposure. And I think that will give you that ability to be more in tune with your body, how much your body can handle those more intense, you know, sunny days. So yeah, I think that's an interesting nuance point to make for sure.

Curious about this too. You know, obviously, I'm Nigerian, West African, so I'm in Sacramento. right? For me, when seasons change, I've noticed, you know, for years past, winter would come. I would, it's easier for me to want to eat a little bit more. It's easier for my mood and my, my, I just tend to feel worse, which is one of the reasons why when that time comes and I'm not able to get as much UVB as I would like, I dose it more with my device. And that has been something that I could tell has actually counteracted the, I guess, mood shifts. that I tend to get the end-dringdough seasons. So my curiosity is like, first, maybe with you,

I don't know where, I think you said you live in New Jersey, but like when certain seasonal changes happen with you, do you take any different approaches when it comes to your light input? And do you suggest that people keep things in mind when certain seasons come? And of course, it depends on where you live, because some areas, it's December.

You could still get a decent amount of like UVB, but in other areas, it could be almost non-existent. So what are your thoughts? Yeah. So I think devices can have a great, devices can be a great tool for, you know, especially people who live more, more away from the equator and higher latitudes. You know, I mean, I'm, so I'm born and raised in South Florida. So we have UVB all year round, which I'm very, very grateful for. I am in school in North Carolina. So when I'm up there during the winter, it can, you know, there's definitely days, days on days where, like, we're not getting very much, very much sun. And I haven't used.

yet, but I am this year going to start, when I'm up there this winter, going to start utilizing some UVB light therapy as well. And I think, you know, we need to be cautious with this. So my suggestion is when utilizing UVB light, or just UV light therapy in general, which I think there was a time in place for 100%. Obviously, you know, that's not the same. The sun is the best source of it. But, again, people who live, you know, higher, higher latitudes in areas, I think it's like in Washington state. I mean, I think they don't have UVB for like three months or something like that. So it's like, you know, places like that for sure. Like, you know, I think it's crucial, crucial to get those shorter wavelengths of UV light as well. And if you have to use a device,

I think there can, there can be ways to do that and do that safely. So my suggestion is whenever, whenever utilizing a isolated UV light device, always accompanied with it with red and infrared light. So if you're using a UV light device, also have, you know, a red light device as well. I think that's probably the best, best suggestion there. Because, again, isolated, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, so just curious as to why. It'll cause burning, right?

Sure, yeah, so isolated, yeah, so isolated UV light. I mean, isolated UV light for, I mean, when we look at the literature, excuse me, when we look at the literature around this, isolated UV light is a carcinogen. I mean, we know that for a factor. I mean, we shine isolated UV light on cells and we can, you know, break DNA without the proper sort of counterbalancing effect of the infrared. Now, there's great, there is, there is a paper in 1939, I believe, I've talked about this on, on my Instagram before, where they took cells in a petri dish, they shined UVA light on these cells. They looked at the cell viability.

They saw by shining UV light, cell viability decreased by around like 50%. So these, these cells were dying off by shining isolated. they did UV UVA light on these cells. However, they did another experiment where they had the same petriarchive cells. They shine the same amount, same duration and same intensity of UV light. All they did differently is they also shined infrared light on these cells as well. And when they did one treatment of infrared light, the cell viability only decreased by like 30%. Two treatments, I think it went to like 20% decrease.

So we had an increase in cell survival as we increased the dosage of shining infrared light. When they got up to, I think it was like either three or four treatments of infrared light while still shining the UV light. There was basically as if they weren't even shining the UV light at all. So it looked exactly like the control that didn't get any UV light shine on it. So I think it's that synergy effect that we have when we're looking at UV UV light. We always want to have that with infrared. Now, you know, I mean, the reason why mechanistically, I mean, there's a ton of different reasons. I mean, I would probably say one of the biggest one. So going back to the subcellular melatonin, when we're shining infrared light,

we're producing subcellular melatonin. What that subcellular melatonin is doing in our body, it's acting as an antioxidant. So the strongest antioxidant that our body has is melaton. Melaton is absolutely the strongest antioxidant. It's stronger than glutathione. The reason for this is because most conventional antioxidants, like glutathione, for every one antioxidant, if that's glutathione, if it's vitamin C, whatever may be, it can scavenge up, it can scavenge basically one free radical reactive auction species. However, with melatonin, when it scavenges a free radical, that metabolite, that end product after it scavenges the free radical is itself another antioxidant.

It can go down to scavenge up to 10 reactive auction species. So melatonin is a far stronger antioxidant. It can also upregulate glutathione, which is really interesting. So super strong antioxidant. Now, when we're shining UV light on ourselves, you know, we're going to have all the, all the benefits, the nitric oxide, the vitamin D, the vast array of benefits with the UV light. But we're also producing reactive oxygen species because it is a shorter wavelength of light. And when we're producing that reactive oxygen species in nature, we're producing the ROS, reactive oxygen species, in combination with also an upregulation of melatonin, this antioxidant that can combat those ROS. So I think it's the same.

synergy effect that we want to prioritize. And I would say that's probably one of the mechanism at play, that antioxidant reactive oxygen species sort of model there. Yeah, I have a EMR tech device that like points in one direction and then I have spurty lamps on each side. Like one's more UVA than UVB and the other one's more UVB than UVA. one of them is almost like a vitamin D lamp type thing so I kind of have that all kind of like aimed in a direction that kind of get some of those different lights and then

I have another light that's next of my toilet which that ends up being some decent like intermittent light just to kind of you know figure out how to get work all this stuff in I love it I love it yeah I mean you know we're never going to be able to get sunlight you know the fulls we're never going to be able like mimic sunlight with a device but we can get closer to it. And I think I think the best thing, because I haven't seen a device that that does it perfectly, I think the best thing is utilizing different devices. Like you said, Mark, you know, different light bulbs, different spectrums to sort of try to mimic sunlight as best as we can. Of course, you know, we're never going to get there, but we can we can try to mimic it as much as possible.

You mentioned something that I wanted to kind of highlight is everyone is a night shift worker these days. That's crazy and kind of independent of when they go to sleep. I mean, many of us are guilty of like, you know, not getting to bed on, you know, at particular times that we would like to get to bed.

Sure. But even those of us that are getting to bed at decent hours, people are just spending massive amounts of time inside. And so the encouragement here, if it's hard for you to pick up the nanometers of light and the different things that we've dove into here today, just try to find some encouragement to get your butt

outside the best you can, even if it's 20, 30 minutes. That's 20, 30 minutes that you weren't doing before. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I think like the stat is, you know, 93% of an Americans day is spent indoors, which is, which is crazy. And in that indoor environment, again, you're not exposed to the infrared wavelengths. You're not exposed to just the full spectrum of sunlight. And our body is absolutely deprived of it. I mean, I think, I think one of the reasons we're seeing these rises in these chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, especially, cancer as well, especially when we look at it from a circadian perspective. One of the reasons we see these rises in these diseases is absolutely because of the light environment we're exposed to. I mean,

the light environment, and, you know, I think it's super easy to understand it from a circadian perspective, and the literature is so well established there. But even in a wavelength perspective as well, I mean, I have no doubt about it. And I know even the top researchers in sort of the photobiomodulation space also say this as well, that I think, you know, companies and definitely light, you know, conventional light companies that just produced, you know, standard LED light bulbs, I think they're going to be starting to get sued by individuals. And they're more than likely going to be, you know, the individual is more than likely going to be winning

those lawsuits because it is actually. absolutely causing, in many ways, you know, at least, at the very least, a contributing factor to these chronic diseases. And, you know, someone's going to have to pay the price for it. And I think it's, you know, I mean, obviously the individual is paying the price for it with the diseases. But I think these companies are going to start getting sued, unfortunate. But I think that is when we're going to really start seeing changes in the indoor light environment, especially. So, you know, never wanted to get to that point. But unfortunately, I think it's probably where it's going to have to get to. I know even there was.

There was a lady. I saw a news article a while back who sued this company that produced, or maybe she even sued the city, there was a street light that was shining directly into her bedroom. And she ended up with, I believe it was diabetes or some chronic condition. And she attributed it to the streetlights. I'm sure she got up a bunch of studies, which we absolutely have the literature pointing to that, where we were you know the artificial light at night into her bedroom was was causing this this these problems that she was having in her health and so I think that's going to that's going to start

popping up here and there we're probably going to be hearing about it all the time especially again as more and more research research comes out so yeah I think it's a fun fun topic to discuss for sure I like your message I like I like what you've been sharing and and what kind of caught my attention more recently was the fact that you were saying like you know hey look just get out you know get outside. The red light therapy, it's like, you know, we still have to make sense of it. We still need more research on some of these devices. But like, you know, people tend to want to go to things that are like really convenient. And when it comes to like vitamins and things like that, we know we can get vitamin D from the sun, but there's so many more things going on with

vitamin D. What are people kind of missing in the story of the sun and the relationship to vitamin D3? my understanding is that it's like, well, there's D, 3, 4, and 5. And there's a lot of other things that come with getting sunlight, especially certain times of the day, and then it's sulfating with the cholesterol and so on. So can you kind of run us through some of this? And people tend to, they reference vitamin D, but they continually reference it as if we're talking about the same vitamin D that you get from the sun as we're talking about pill form, which is probably, you know, a seed oil that it's probably

suspended in. I know like when I hear Joe Rogan and some other people talking about vitamin D, vitamin D, vitamin D, it kind of sounds like they're talking about the supplement vitamin D. And I'm always like, I don't think it works that way. Yeah. When you get it from the sun and you do the thing, the hard way that takes longer, it almost always has better outcomes. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I think this is so crucial.

I think, let me first start with some observational studies around this. So we know that when we look at people who have higher vitamin D levels, serum vitamin D levels, they have better health outcomes pretty much across the board. You know, reductions in cardiovascular disease, reductions in cancers and things like this. We know that for a fact. Now, when we take vitamin D pills and supplements into a clinical trial, we do not see that same outcome as we do with these observational studies. And there was a, so there's a great physician.

His name is Dr. Roger Schwalt. I don't know if you guys are familiar with him, but he's a quadrubo board certified physician out of Loma Linda, California. And during COVID, he's in the intensive care unit. So he was seeing a bunch of COVID patients, you know. And during COVID, during that time, you know, there was some great literature around vitamin D in COVID. And seeing that people who had higher vitamin D statuses had better prognosis with COVID,

better outcomes, and we're also, you know, not getting the disease as much. So there was all that literature. And he was looking at this. He tells the story. He was looking at this. And so he was like, hmm, maybe I should start supplementing my patients with vitamin D. And, you know, him and even other doctors were doing this, but they weren't seeing the benefit. So really what I think what we're seeing with vitamin D.

Now, there are benefits of vitamin D, no doubt about it. But I think what we're really seeing with the vitamin D story is vitamin D is more so a proxy of how much sun exposure somebody is getting. So when we look at the vitamin D pill, right, a supplement of vitamin D, what you're receiving there is what's called 25 hydroxy vitamin D3. So it's sort of that last form, that active form of vitamin D. Now, when UVB light, it's only the UVB light spectrum, UVA does not do this, but UVB light, when it hits our skin, yes, it interacts with cholesterol molecules, breaks some bonds,

and then through a whole ton of cascade of chemical reactions that occur, we then eventually get to vitamin D3, 25 hydroxy vitamin D3, that active form. Now, in the process of all that, you also have upwards of 70 other metabolites of vitamin D that your body is producing with this interaction of UV and cholesterol. That you are not receiving in the pill, the pill you're in the supplement. The supplement is only that active form of vitamin D3. there is some, I mean, I would say there's more than some. There's definitely a body of literature looking at some of these other metabolites of vitamin D and seeing that there are actually benefits of

some of these metabolites. There are anti-cancer benefits. There are definitely immune benefits with this, improving immune system function in all this. Now, I think, you know, the problem with us, the medical establishment and science establishment has really focused on the active form of vitamin D. So much, much of the research is really on that. And we don't have research on every single metabolite, but I guarantee you, right, the synergistic effect of all these metabolites being produced in the body, all at once is guaranteed having a greater effect.

Again, the whole is better than some of its parts. So it's definitely having a greater effect than just having that one supplemental vitamin D. And we see this in the clinical trials of vitamin D supplementation, right? We're not, you know, there's obviously some clinical trials showing some benefits with vitamin D, and we know that, that active form of vitamin D. But there are a lot of clinical trials, especially looking at more long, long-term outcomes. We don't see the benefits that we would think we would see from observational studies. So yeah, I think, you know, vitamin D obviously has so many, so many benefits. But the story that sunlight is just vitamin D is definitely a story

that needs to be refocused and rethought for sure. How did you get into all this? I mean, you're 21 years old and you're amazing with this stuff. It's unbelievable. So how did you get all fired up about this? Yeah. So I, you know, I was raised in a very holistic household. You know, we practiced a lot of prevented medicine growing up.

And I tell everybody my, I think this sort of gets a little, gets you to understand, like, how my household was growing up. My infrared sauna is older than me. I think it's like 35 years old that we have. it's still downstairs in our garage, you know, going in it all the time. So, you know, my family, my parents, I'm super blessed to have them, you know, understand this stuff. And, you know, they saw crazy improvements in their life and my mom's grandma and my dad with just complete 180 of their lifestyle showing, you know, my dad was on super high levels

of dilettin, which was an epilepsy medication. You know, he had seizures. He did a 180 of his lifestyle, went completely off of dialin, no seizures whatsoever. my grandma who, you know, my mom's mom, she was, she had congenitive heart failure, super overweight. Again, complete 180 on her lifestyle and she lost a lot of weight. Her, the doctors gave her six months to live. She ended up living nine more years because of the lifestyle intervention that she had. So my mom saw all that, you know, and she decided to raise her children on this,

this idea that, you know, one, the body has the innate capacity to heal, but also that we can, not only can we prevent diseases, but we can also reverse diseases. We can reverse chronic diseases that, you know, sort of the standard medical establishment will even say you can't reverse. So I think, you know, I was raised in that environment. And then about three, four years ago, I started really diving deep into the literature and the science around pretty much all the health practices that we did growing up. Because, you know, before it was sort of just, you know, whatever my mom told me I did, but I wanted to have sort of a backing on why I was doing these things. And so I started diving deep into the literature. And I fell in love with it.

I listen to, which I'm sure you're probably familiar with, there is a podcast with Rick Rubin, Andrew Huberman, and Jack Cruz, seven-hour podcast. Yeah, I listen to that. Mind was completely blown. I, you know, dug deep into the literature on light, fell in love with it. And I think, you know, there's no going back once you understand the importance of light on your health. I think, one, it is such a foundational pillar to health, but also it's a underrated pillar. It's not talked about enough, especially in the health and wellness space. You know, it's like diet, exercise, once you've got those things, those two things locked in, you're good and no need to worry about anything else. But there's so much else to focus on. And I think light is just another one of those pillars

of health that needs to be talked about more. And so I fell in love with it. And yeah, that's sort of how I got into it. You know, now I'm in, I'm in college, undergraduate, going into my junior year, studying biology and neuroscience. So just really love science in general, although I have my big critiques around the scientific method and all that. I do enjoy reading papers and things like that. So that's a little bit about how I got into it. What do you do for exercise? Yeah, great question.

I do a lot of, and I love what you guys do. I do a lot of unconventional stuff. So I've been doing rope flow for like three years now. You know, I do a lot of kettlebells, a lot of sandbags, a lot of clubs, maces, Bulgarian bags, all that fun fun and fun stuff so you're well aware of in seema and stuff he does with stronger human stuff and all that stuff yeah yeah oh yeah for sure no i i absolutely love it and i you know i got into like weck method um a few years few years back um and i don't know if you guys know

andrew torres i think his name is or sorry not Andrew um Edward tourist um yeah yeah yeah so he he sent me a rope flow a few years back uh because he i so if you like scroll all the way down on my Instagram. You'll see I used to just post exercise and workout stuff for me doing, you know, kettlebells and sandbags and all that. And he was seeing, he was seeing my stuff. And he sent me a rope flow. He sent me his course and I started learning it through, through that. And I, I love, I love all the unconventional stuff. I think like going in the gym doing, you know, conventional training is just like boring. And I don't want, like, I don't want to do boring stuff. So, and what's great is you can do all the stuff outside.

What was that? I said, we don't disagree with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And be morning sometimes. Exactly, yeah, exactly. And I think what's great also about, you know, kettlebells and sandbags and all that is you can take it outside and get sunlight as you're as you're working out, which is a great bonus as well. So yeah. So before we finish this, I do want to know. I think everyone knows that we need to get outside.

We need to try to get some sunlight in the morning, afternoon, evening, get as much as you can in a reasonable way. Don't burn if you can. But for those who are, they don't. can't work outside. You know what I mean? They can't get all the sunlight that they feel that they need. You know, earlier we were talking about the infrared wavelength, how that having some type of lamp on a desk made a difference for some of these individuals, right? What would your potential, not even stack, but like what would you suggest some of these people get that could be artificial for their environment to benefit them since they don't have the luxury of just being able to go out

when they want to get the sunlight they need. Yeah. So I think the cheapest, most simplest, I think also the healthiest thing that people can do is simply by a 40 or 60 watt incandescent light bulb, place it on their desk. Especially if you're, you know, if you work a 9 to 5 and you're at your desk all day long, that is the easiest thing to do. And we have literature showing that literally just placing the incandescent light bulb on one's desk. You don't need to stare at it.

You don't need to do anything. Just turn it on and, you know, do it. do the rest of your thing. Even if you're in an LED lit building, you're going to have improvements in mitochondrial function. So I think that's probably the simplest thing that someone can do. Other things, it's like also sit, sit if you can, like sit by a window. You know, window light is not ideal, but it's still much, much better than, you know, standard LEDs in fluorescence. So window, window lighting can be something that people can do. Opening up a window is great as well. But really also, you know, again, you know, prioritizing that.

time outdoors. So everyone has a lunch break, right? On your lunch break, go outside. Like that's, that's probably one of the easiest things that people can do. Even if it's like cold, right, even if, you know, winter and it's cold out, even going outside with tons of layers on. So infrared light can penetrate through clothing and get to your body. So we have peer-reviewed published literature showing that infrared light can penetrate up to six layers of natural fiber clothing. It can also penetrate, you know, polyester and stuff, but not nearly as, as, as great. But so try to, you know, try to utilize the more natural fiber clothing and, and, you know, bundle up, get outside and things like that. But I think that's, that's probably

some really key, easy steps for people to take. Also morning sunlight, right? The first thing you, you do when you get up in the morning, like try to get outside as soon as possible. If you drink morning coffee, drink the morning coffee outside. If you scroll on your phone, scroll on your phone outside, you know. So it's like, you know, habit stack and like whatever you're doing in the morning already, like try to just go and do that outside, getting that morning light into the eyes and really just being conscious about your light exposure. But really, I think the Incadent Lightbul was an underrated thing that people can just simply add back into their environment for sure.

I was doing this for a little while. I was taking my red light and I was bouncing it off the wall while I was watching TV. Yep. Do you think that is a better option than maybe throwing on red light glasses? Like, what are your... Ooh. Okay, are you talking about like nighttime? Oh, no, this is at in the evening.

Oh, in the evening. Yeah. So I, yeah, so in, in the evening during the day, I would say to probably not utilize the amber tinted blue locking glasses, it would definitely, I would think it's, I would say it's probably better to do what you're doing, to shine the red light device, bounce it off the wall. Because what we're really seeing with like these harmful effects of blue light is really basically just like an absence of the longer way things of light. When we're outdoors in the sun, we're getting.

tons of blue light, but it's counterbalance with the longer weightings of light. So I think if you're watching TV like in the middle, middle of the day, I would say, yeah, turn on that red light device, bounce it off a wall, do whatever. That would probably be the ideal scenario for sure. But and then at night, at night though, I'm a big proponent of, you know, red, blue, blocking glasses. Gotcha. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time. They really appreciate where can people find you and where can they learn more about what you got going on. Yeah, no. Thank you guys. this is a really, really fun conversation. So, I mean, people can find me on Instagram

is mainly where I post. Just my first last name, Jonathan Jurecki. Also have a podcast called The Signal, Jonathan Jurecki. People can see X, same thing, Jonathan Jureke, first last name. And yeah, if people want to contact me, DM me on Instagram, I reply to pretty much all my DMs I try.

So people can feel free to contact me on there as well. Strength is never a week. This week, this never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.