Disease, mitochondria, sunlight, complete darkness, melatonin
Max Gulhane, MD: "Disease today is overwhelmingly a result of this mitochondrial inefficiency or lack of mitochondria being healthy. That was the innovation of Dr. Wallace's work, which is only a tiny fraction, probably less than 10% (or even less than 5%) of diseases are related to nuclear genetic problems, meaning that mitochondrial problems, and therefore environmental choices, are the most important thing for whether we get sick or not.
"Another way of thinking about this is what I tell my patients: genetics loads the gun but your environment and your lifestyle pulls the trigger and determines whether or not you're going to get sick. That's empowering because it means that no matter what your family history is, if you make the right choices with respect to the light you see, with respect to the food you eat, with respect to where you live, the water you drink, then you can move the needle. It's not a foregone conclusion that you're going to get diabetes, that you're going to get heart disease.
"So that was the innovation of Dr. Wallace, and that's how I think about disease. Because we need to keep these mitochondria happy. The things that make mitochondria unhappy are related to 'innovations' in technology in our modern environment, whether they are indoor artificial lighting, whether they're non-native electromagnetic fields being emitted by devices of convenience like smartphones or Wi-Fi routers, whether it's food of convenience, which is refined grains that have contaminated with glyphosate residue, or coconuts shipped in from the equator down in Tazzy and Melbourne. All these environmental choices are going to influence whether or not our mitochondria are happy and therefore how sick or not we get.
"The way that sunlight really plugs into this story is that it dictates the circadian rhythm, which is the body's response to the light dark cycle. The light dark cycle is what all life on earth evolved over these billion years. If we respect it then the mitochondrial colony recovers overnight. It recovers overnight because this very important hormone called melatonin gets made in the brain, in the pineal gland. But it only gets made if there's no light in our environment.
"The sunlight also stimulates this melatonin hormone on site in the mitochondria during the day in response to near infrared light, which gets reflected from the greenery around us, because natural sunlight is so rich in near infrared photons.
"So the role of sunlight in optimal health is to provide us with this yin and yang situation that if we respect we get become optimally healthy, and if we disrespect we get sick. Another way to think about the yin and yang is the light and the dark is perfectly balanced, and that reflects the equal importance of both full-spectrum sunlight during the day and complete darkness (or just moonlight) during the night.
"We can mess with our circadian health in a couple of ways. One, if we get inadequate full-spectrum sunlight during the day, and/or if we get too much artificial light at night. You can be in light outside during the day, but if you also have your nighttime lit up with computer monitors and overhead LED lighting then you're not going to make melatonin. You're not going to allow that mitochondria to repair themselves properly.
"Similarly, if you go to sleep on time, you don't have a lot of artificial light but you're indoors all day, you're going to become vitamin D deficient. You're going to become near infrared light deficient. You're not going to make those really important hormones and photo products.
"At a high level that is how I think about sunlight and its effect on disease."
npub19yjldzc98lsesatjncxzgunm8xpdjsr5tva3sjc9ggyqsjh5hedst2unad with Kaitlyn Menere @ 18:02–22:12 (posted 2025-04-25) https://youtu.be/ADPl90a4xTE&t=1082
