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The thesis is actually very simple and as first principled as possible:

1. All life on earth always lived in close proximity to it's environment.

2. As humans separate themselves from their environment, which is very rapidly in the last hundred years, they disrupt their bodies natural processes, their cells loose energy, which results in disease.

3. Therefore, if you want to heal, spend more time in nature.

What's to be proven about that? It can't get any clearer ... Biohacks, and red light therapy specifically, is just trying to replicate nature's environment so that you can keep living separated from nature, yet not suffer as much.

BTW, if you think you can improve your health/vitality long term with chemically based biohacks, you are playing with fire.

Would you please share the "people that understand" biology? I would be super interested to read what they are saying.

Juraj 6mo ago 💬 1

These were talks, I don't think they're published yet.

As for the back to nature and adaptation, this is basically paleo (neolithic being the first change of the environment). Not anything new or innovative, we've been doing it for years.

The problem is that that's not the only thing that Kruse is saying. He has various explanations of how things work and they're quite opposite to what paleo people are doing. Many are protecting against UV light. The forest environment does not have UV, inuits wore clothes to protect, even wooden "glasses".

Another problem is that evolution does have different goals than me. Evolutionary pressure (adaptation) is for you to procreate and raise children to procreate. There's a bit of fitness requirement to be vital grandparent, but then the best for the genes is to die suddenly and stop consuming resources. You can see that in DNA damage, telomere length, lifetime of the heart, etc. Most of modern biohacking is to extent healthspan beyond what we are evolutionarily adapted for. Over 40, things start to break down slowly, you already had children, the genes are spread and good for another procreation and you are supposed to help and then leave.

My goals are very different to what my evolutionary adaptation leads to. Definitely after 50 you can do much better than just wait until you die.

Another problem is that the paleo environment does not exist. Even us writing on Nostr is a very different environment than nature. Even Jack goes to an airplane to give a talk. So back to nature needs to consider what to do in contemporary environments. Another thing is that if we know what the adaptation is, we can introduce it in a different and maybe more intensive way (nir panel for example, cryotherapy, HBOC, ...)

So it's often sloppy thinking, the explanations going beyond the basics don't make sense, even evolutionary sense and pure paleo strategies lead to different outcomes than what people strive for.

What is more sloppy thinking is pretending you are pure first principles and then talk about quantum effects and still pretend you are coming from first principles. No, starting from first principles and then diverting to unproven theories how things work is not axiomatic. And when people ask questions or want proof, starting yelling "centralized medicine" will win him some likes on Twitter, but most people rightfully dismiss him as a bit mad.

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Discussion

matej 6mo ago 💬 3

I think there is a distinction to be made between "paleo" and "mitochondriac". Dr. Kruse is one of the leading thinkers in the latter category and I think calling his arguments "paleo" and then attacking those is unfair. They are not paleo and based on your reply, no offense, but I see that you misunderstand his arguments greatly.

His arguments are focused more on mammalian evolution (rather than human DNA), caused by rapid changes in the environment, not random mutations over long timelines. 65 million years ago, the POMC protein allowed us to survive the KT event. The mammals that were hiding from Dinosaurs underground, were now exposed to the sun (after few years) and that caused a lot of changes in the ways their genes expressed and we, Humans are the result.

The basic thesis: The light environment is the most important. Mammals are able to use light to replicate photosynthesis inside them, thus creating glucose and insulin, thus not needing as much food (check POMC cleavage products). That's what allowed those mammals to survive and thrive in this new predator-free world. We now changed our light environment so dramatically and so quickly, that our biology can't keep up. Blue light raises blood sugar and insulin without any sugar intake. Diabetes is an evolutionary response to the amount of blue light we are receiving. This is why chemistry (food, supplements) is not as important as light, water, magnetism.

RE: UV light in the forest.

I don't know how much evolutionary time we spent in forests vs. savannas but I would bet much, much more in savannas exposed to sun most of the time. The other variable is temperature, see next point.

RE: Inuits

Yes, this is actually part of Kruse's argument. Light and temperature are inversely correlated, the less light you have the more you should expose yourself to cold. I'm pretty sure an African man would be cold in Alaska in the exact same clothes his Inuit friend is wearing. In other words, the Inuit is cold adapted, his mitochondria work differently.

RE: Evolutionary goals arguments

I don't dispute these. But I'm not sure whether they are germane to what we are discussing here.

RE: paleo environment vs. technology

Kruse is not against technology, he is against technology abuse. He is saying, don't abuse technology, and if you use it, make sure you counter the damage by spending time in nature, grounding, exposing yourself to sunlight, drinking clean water, etc. Or, yes I agree, if you want to go further, you can start biohacking with lamps, grounding sheets, etc. However, Sun is TINA!

RE: sloppy thinking

I don't quite get this. I thought physics is first principles and quantum effects are part of physics. We know they work, our computers are based on them.

Overall, I think you have almost an emotional response, maybe you are used to understanding things right away, since you are a very bright person. However, his thesis are stretching the limits of what we are able to understand in more than one area of science. That might be the reason his arguments sound like a word salad to you. I am taking the time and studying for more than 2 years now what he has to say and I find it more and more fascinating.

If you are open minded and humble enough to give it a go, I suggest this podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1dzpuyYNN1yHNgiiGVfFBO?si=d2ad5b605f9e48dd

He builds up the thesis from basics in a non-argumentative way.

Have a great day :-)

Jim Craddock 6mo ago

Hi. You look like someone that might find my book.... interesting.

Juraj 6mo ago 💬 1

I've listened to quite a few podcasts with him already, I might check this one out too.

One thing to point out: " The light environment is the most important" <- this is not first principles. It is an opinion. And it for sure does not hold universally - many people have good light environment, but their diet / microbiome / ... is shit.

It is an opinion that he has probably good theory about, but you can't say these things about complex systems (and we are complex systems) and still pretend you are first-principles based (in complex systems, there's computational irreducibility, so you simply can't say statements like these in any logically defensible way).

I am not saying his arguments are not valid, but he does not understand limits of what can be said. He does not show we don't have adaptations - example: to say that light is most important, because we have developed in a particular way and have biology to work with the light does not mean there are not other mechanisms that we use when required in a different environment. Like we have primary and secondary (and tertiary) metabolic pathways for vitamins - it's simply so important that you can't rely on the environment to be the certain way.

I still believe it is safest to go to paleo environments. But for example forests were common - yes, savannas and open woodlands were more common, but there were significant populations, especially in middle and late paleolithic that were based in forests (especially in Europe and in the rainforests). It's very unlikely we wouldn't have adaptation for that environment. Nature does not make mistakes 😉

It is quite common that a guru comes, says something is more important, people super-optimize one factor, a decade passes and they realize, it was not it. Microbiome, sleep, carnivore/paleo diet, light, "fat is bad", ...

For me, it is more low-level heuristic. He just sounds very angry, always exposing conspiracies, always criticizing others in very unconstructive way, etc. I wouldn't like to be like that, so I need either a different role-model or a messenger. It's not a mindset I want to adapt. So if his first principle theories lead to that, I'd rather look elsewhere, I don't want to be constantly angry about the world. I think chronic stress reduction is more important than light 😉 Much more important. It's also environment based.

stache 6mo ago

👆…fav thread I’ve read in a while🤌🏽

…this is the very definition of a constructive debate…and I feel less retarded for it🫡🫂🌅⭕️