Quantum Biology & Circadian Rhythm: How Light Shapes Your Energy, Sleep & Health

Carrie Bennett [00:00:00]:
How light and your light environment can literally transform your health within days. Things you’ll never heard about light before. That could be the biggest game changer you’ve ever experienced.

Nick Urban [00:00:09]:
You’re listening to High Performance Longevity. The show exploring a better path to optimal health for those daring to live as an Outliyr in a world of averages. I’m your host, Nick Urban, BioHarmony, Performance Coach, and lifelong student of both modern science and ancestral wisdom. Each week we decode the tools, tactics and timeless principles to help you optimize your Mind, Body and PerformanceSpan. Things you won’t find on Google or in your AI tool of choice.

Nick Urban [00:00:46]:
From cutting edge biohacks to grounded lifestyle practices, you’ll walk away with actionable insights to look, feel and perform at your best across all of life’s domains. Carrie, welcome to the podcast.

Carrie Bennett [00:01:00]:
Thanks for having me. Nick, I’m excited to chat with you.

Nick Urban [00:01:03]:
I was looking through your bio, your background, and you have an interesting story. You didn’t approach, I guess, where you currently are. And that is like the quantum health, quantum biology realm from. If there is even a standard place to approach that from. But like most people that they have a health concern and they just try some of the basic things like changing their diet or sleeping better or perhaps like de stressing a lot of basic things like that. What led you down a different realm?

Carrie Bennett [00:01:30]:
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. Yeah. Thankfully, actually there is now starting to become like curriculum, actual curriculum based around quantum biology. I was kind of in the wild wild west when I was starting off with this, but it was because of a health challenge of my own. And I’ve got a unique. I had a unique approach to human health and human physiology based on just my. My past year’s experience. So I love science.

Carrie Bennett [00:01:53]:
I always have loved science and studying science. And that’s why I chose the undergraduate college that I went to. It had a very strong science program and I learned all the X’s and O’s of molecular biology and biochemistry. And it was fun for me because my brain liked to think I was learning the really nitty gritty details about how the human body worked.

Carrie Bennett [00:02:15]:
When I was done with my undergraduate education in biology, I was supposed to go get a PhD or become an MD and something just, you know, said that that wasn’t right. I actually distinctly remember telling my volleyball coach in college at the time that who wants to be under garbage fluorescent light all day? Like, that was a distinct quote. And I knew nothing of really about why it was garbage. It’s just, I Knew just didn’t feel good to be under for long periods of time. And so instead I put myself through massage therapy school, which I had never had massage before. So I don’t know if that was a divine intervention at that moment in time to give me a different perspective on human physiology, but it absolutely did. It allowed me to view human health from more of an energetic perspective and energy flow and energy blockages as potentially impairing health and physiology. So it was with that and as I put myself through massage therapy school, I became a personal trainer, fitness instructor, Pilates, you name it.

Carrie Bennett [00:03:11]:
I taught every fitness class on the planet and I opened a little wellness studio and it was very successful helping people have exercise programs and work on metabolic health. And then about 14 years ago when my first child was born, you know, my health just tanked and it kind of been coming along. I could feel my energy getting lower, I could feel my digestion getting worse. But after he was born, I had this horrible phase of literally chronic fatigue, yet I couldn’t sleep. So insomnia, I couldn’t digest a darn thing. Even healthy foods, like I couldn’t. I would either be doubled over in pain or just like literally bloated, like for the rest of the day, you know, I wasn’t recovering from exercise. I stopped exercising because I couldn’t really give myself that type of output, energetic output.

Carrie Bennett [00:04:01]:
And so I thought, okay, the one thing I have left to learn to help heal me, because I tried all the other tools that are in my toolbox from a more traditional mainstream biology perspective and from a more energetic perspective, I thought it had to be nutrition. And so I put myself through a two year master’s degree in clinical nutrition. And I tried every diet and cleanse and elimination protocol and gut health protocol and energetic supplement, adaptogen regime, medical herbalism, you name it, I tried it and it didn’t move the needle enough for me. And I’m like, this stinks. Like this can’t be as good as it gets. Like people are telling me. And so I was scrolling one night when I wasn’t sleeping, when my kid wasn’t sleeping, and I found a blog post that was describing circadian rhythm and light. And I thought, holy cow, like I’ve never heard of this before in all of the training that I’ve done.

Carrie Bennett [00:04:54]:
And I realized that my circadian rhythm, based on being a mom, based on my occupation of getting to my Wellness Studio at 5 o’clock in the morning, being under artificial light all day, my circadian rhythm didn’t know when daylight was and when darkness was. So no wonder it didn’t know when to make energy versus when to go to sleep and when to repair my gut. And within three days, it moved the needle more than in the three previous years, I had tried to work on other aspects of Health, from the nutrition to the exercise to the energetic perspective.

Nick Urban [00:05:37]:
If you were to sit next to someone on an airplane, they were to ask you, what do you do? What is quantum biology? How would you explain it for them?

Carrie Bennett [00:05:45]:
Oh, that’s a funny question. I was just talking about this with my team, like, you know, my business partners and my team. So, because one of them, she was on an airplane and she, she gave a really good, really good answer to that. And we, I tell people I work in circadian health. And then people typically say, well, what does that mean? And I’ll say something along the lines of how light and your light environment can literally transform your health within days. Things you’ll never heard about light before, that could be the biggest game changer you’ve ever experienced in how your body, you know, organizes itself for health versus disease, how you can improve your sleep. So that’s typically the, the, the spiel that I go into is it starts with the light, the light conversation that people can wrap their brain around, and then that leads to the other parts of quantum biology.

Nick Urban [00:06:28]:
But when you look at artificial light, massive amounts of the rainbow spectrum is missing. So LED light, for example, is missing lots of the red. It’s really dominant in a blue wavelength of light, it’s missing. So it’s missing any infrared, it’s missing ultraviolet. So it’s a very foreign light source. Cause if I were to point it at sunlight, especially in the middle of the afternoon, I would have a complete blend of all the colors of the rainbow, including the ones that we can’t see with our eyes, which are in the infrared spectrum. And modern lighting just cannot mimic that.

Carrie Bennett [00:06:55]:
Right, Right. So that’s like the initial conversation. It’s like not all light is the same. And so what I used to think about light was like you said, can I see my space around me enough to do what I need to do? And then at night, is it dark enough for me to sleep? And it turns out that the artificial light that we’re around these days looks nothing like sunlight. When you analyze it through something called a spectrometer. Which is just a fun little handheld meter, you could point at different light sources, and it breaks out the different colors and their ratios to one another throughout. Basically a rainbow spectrum. Ideally, there’s a rainbow spectrum in there, all the colors.

Carrie Bennett [00:07:30]:
But when you look at artificial light, massive amounts of the rainbow spectrum is missing. So LED light, for example, is missing lots of the red. It’s really dominant. In a blue wavelength of light, it’s missing. So it’s missing any infrared, it’s missing ultraviolet. So it’s a very foreign light source. Cause if I were to point it at sunlight, especially in the middle of the afternoon, I would have a complete blend of all the colors of the rainbow, including the ones that we can’t see with our eyes, which are in the infrared spectrum. And modern lighting just cannot mimic that.

Carrie Bennett [00:08:03]:
And so I had just assumed that lighting was for me to see. But when I started to realize that light was information based on the different colors that were present, and those were literally informing my body about time of day and different tasks to accomplish, that’s when I began to realize how misinformed my body had been for a darn near close to like, at least a decade or more as I was owning a gym and under garbage light at school and those sorts of things.

Nick Urban [00:08:28]:
So people who have now come this far, they might have heard of red light therapy, perhaps infrared or near infrared therapy as well. Sometimes a combination of them. It seems like that’s considered largely to be like the good type of light. And then like, blue is considered the bad. Although, like, naturally, in sunlight and other full spectrum light sources, you’re getting some blue depending on what time of day you’re seeing it.

Carrie Bennett [00:08:58]:
Great question. So the first signal that I think is important to understand is the blue, which is why people, I think, hear a lot about blue blocking and blocking toxic blue light and things like that. But not all blue light is bad. What blue light from the sun does is it changes predictably from sunrise till the sun’s at the high point of the sky, and then decreases until it disappears after sunset. And that changing amount of blue, that was the wavelength that literally our eyes that had little blue light sensors in the back of them are picking up on. And the amount of those blue sensors that are firing the. It gets translated into a certain time of day in my brain, and that there’s a clock in my brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus that communicates with every, literally every single cell in my body to say, okay, thyroid, let’s rev up, it’s the start of the day. Okay, you know, adrenal glands, now is the time to produce cortisol.

Carrie Bennett [00:09:51]:
If we didn’t have an air traffic control tower saying, okay, this plane’s coming in from the east, it’s got to curve around, you know, it’s got to go to this runway, taxi here, and this one’s take off. Like, can you imagine being at an airport with no air traffic control tower? Like, it would be utter devastation. And at the cellular level, that’s what we see happening over time.

Carrie Bennett [00:10:29]:
When the brain doesn’t get the correct time of day signal, because that blue, that changes all day long, whether it’s sunny, cloudy, snowy, foggy, rainy, we’re still getting that changing blue that’s very different than the static blue that you and I are staring at right now. Maybe we have screen mitigation, right? But, but the typical blue coming from LED lights, from bulbs and screens is a sharp spike of blue. And that, that sharp spike of blue that never changes. And the only time throughout the course of a 24 hour clock when blue is dominant above the other colors is in the middle of the afternoon. So we’re telling our brain whether we’re waking up at 5 o’ clock to check our phone. It’s like, is it the start of my day or check my emails in the morning or at night to just scroll a little bit before bedtime? We’re always telling our brain it’s the middle of the afternoon. And you can imagine how disruptive that is to this day. Delicate timing that we have built, built into what’s called our circadian rhythm.

Nick Urban [00:11:28]:
Yeah, that’s a very simple way of explaining it. We’re constantly just sending the message that it’s the middle of the day when it’s either morning or it’s late in the evening. And therefore, how is your body supposed to respond when it always thinks it’s solar noon? Okay, that’s a big one. So Would you say that getting outside in the morning for sunrise, despite rain, despite snow, despite cloud cover is still a good idea?

Carrie Bennett [00:11:49]:
It’s a great idea. It has to be built into the strategy. But like I’ve, I’ve learned as I started to, you know, I started to first do this with myself and then with like my local community here where I live. And as I branched out into more of an, an international, you know, community with, of people, I start. I used to be a stickler. You must get out at sunrise every day of the year because in my latitude, sun getting out at sunrise is really reasonable. The earliest it would be would be 6:00am the latest it would be, would be about 8:15, 8:30. And so reasonable.

Carrie Bennett [00:12:18]:
And then I had people from Iceland or, you know, Scandinavia, like contacting me, saying, well, you know, in the summer sunrise is at like, you know, three o’ clock in the morning. Do you still want me up at sunrise? It’s like, okay, no, let’s reframe this a little bit to give, I think a better perspective on this. Number one, if you wake up before sunrise, you want to block the artificial light with orange tone, blue blockers you don’t want to send. So that’s, that’s like this color, this orange tone, right? These might look orange on me. These are yellow. These are the orange tone ones. The orange ones are the ones that will, if I have to turn on a bulb or look at a screen, they’re the ones that won’t allow blue light into those sensors in the backs of my eyes. So my brain still thinks the day has yet to start.

Carrie Bennett [00:13:02]:
Which is, which is what we want. We don’t want to flip the brain into solar noon right when we wake up. So if you wake up before sunrise, block the artificial light and then as soon as you can, likely at sunrise or within the first hour or so, go outside and get that natural light into your eyes. Three minutes consistently, day in and day out is way more effective than 30 minutes once or twice a week. So it’s this consistent signaling that builds in what we call circadian predictability. And that circadian predictability allows that rhythmic entrainment to occur. The other thing though, too, that I would say is if you wake up, if sun rises at 3 o’ clock in the morning, no, I don’t want you waking up at 3 o’ clock in the morning. I want you sleeping in until your body’s naturally desired wake time or when you have to get up to start your day.

Carrie Bennett [00:13:46]:
And, and since the sun has already risen make natural light the first light that enters your eyes. So perhaps you use an alarm clock that’s not your cell phone. Or if you are using your cell phone, you turn the screen to red in order to prevent that blue from shocking your brain again into the middle of the afternoon. And you go outside and get your three minutes of morning light. So there’s nuance to it. But that morning light is especially powerful in what we would call setting the circadian rhythm, telling the brain the day has started and the blue light is increasing.

Nick Urban [00:14:16]:
Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. So it sounds like the contrast here, the contrast between the amount of light or hopefully lack thereof, that you’re exposed to when you’re sleeping, you want that to be as small as possible and the light you’re getting throughout the day to be as great as possible, especially from natural sources.

Carrie Bennett [00:14:30]:
Yes, exactly, exactly.

Nick Urban [00:14:32]:
Are you concerned at all about the receptors in your skin in different parts of your body that are also sensitive to light? Of course, when you block them with glasses, you’re getting the most important one, so your brain isn’t getting the signal. But then what about other receptors and parts of the body that might respond to light?

Carrie Bennett [00:14:44]:
That’s a great question. You know, theoretically, yes, we absolutely have those same blue light sensors. They’re more diffuse throughout our skin. And clinically speaking. So now that I’ve had the benefit of working with thousands of people all around the world, I can tell you 99% of people, all you need to do is block the light from their eyes. And yes, there’s 1% that are more sensitive to the light on the skin. And so they will, let’s say, if they’re up at night and they want to be on their screen, they would probably benefit from covering up with a blanket or, you know, having like a little hood on while they’re, while they have their blue blockers on as well. But, you know, in terms of the hierarchy, most people just need orange tone blue blockers.

Carrie Bennett [00:15:23]:
Then I would say another small percentage might need red blue blockers after the orange. Those red ones block all blue light from entering the eyes, but also all green light and dim the light that’s entering the eyes. And so that would be another group of people. And then the tiniest, tiniest percentage also need to block their skin.

Nick Urban [00:15:41]:
Okay. And for people who live in areas of the world where there isn’t really like, really bright light or it’s dark or it’s overcast, all that, what’s your rationale of, like, why it’s important to get out first thing in the morning still or first thing after your body wakes you up naturally. Ideally close to sunrise.

Carrie Bennett [00:15:57]:
Yeah, because it’s going to be. Even if you have a very bright bulb on, you think it’s bright in your house, the, the lux, which is a measurement of brightness, is always going to be greater outside, even on the dreariest day. I had someone message, you know, I wrote a post, right? I had someone comment or message me. I forget what it was. They were just like, no, that’s wrong. I go out, it’s so dreary. You know, I’m. Apparently they have a lux meter that you stare at my friend Sarah’s app and they say, no.

Carrie Bennett [00:16:25]:
When I go outside, you know, the dreariest, dreariest of days, it’s only 5 lux. And 5 lux is like really bright moonlight. Okay. So, yeah, so I was like, there’s a disconnect here, I think. So I took the advantage of the dreariest day we’ve had this fall. And I still went outside. And I’m not just talking raining. Sometimes it’s raining with bright clouds.

Carrie Bennett [00:16:43]:
It was like those dark, heavy clouds. And I went outside with my lux meter and it was still 200 lux. So it’s still going to be a bright, a brighter. Now if I were to go out on a sunny sunrise, that’s going to be 2000, 3000 lux and getting bigger. And in the middle of the afternoon, you can get readings of 50,000 lux or more on a bright sunny day. And so that’s how that’s another way we tell time of day is the brightness. So we would even very bright red bulbs. I’m sure you’ve probably seen people who live at like turn make their house all red at night.

Carrie Bennett [00:17:15]:
And those red bulbs don’t contain any blue light, which is true. Right. I clinically have seen people use those red bulbs. It makes them angry because that’s a color resonance. And I’ve seen them and I’ve seen the red bulbs be too bright and it still keeps them awake. So brightness, right? We want it, we do want it to be dim at the start of the day and getting brighter at sunrise. You go outside, two hours later, it’s even brighter middle of the afternoon. So that brightness throughout the day that changes is also another signal of the, of sinking or circadian rhythm.

Carrie Bennett [00:17:44]:
And so I’m going to guarantee you great, gray, cloudy, rainy day indoors is going to be way dimmer than if you’re just to step outside a little bit.

Nick Urban [00:17:53]:
Yeah, that’s a good point about the light intensity also, like the factors. It’s not just the light color wavelengths of the light, but it’s also the intensity, the positioning, where it is in the room, if it’s in the roof or not, and the contrast that you would naturally get. Like the Ayurveda was talking about the contrast between the blue and the fire and like the Agnihotra protocol and everything. And so it’s interesting to see how, like, our modern understanding of lighting is starting to dovetail with what the ancient cultures have said for long periods of time.

Carrie Bennett [00:18:22]:
Yeah, they have. And also some people will say, well, you know, I’ve studied traditional Chinese medicine and they don’t talk about the circadian rhythm on a daily basis. They talk about stuff, seasonal rhythms, which is true. But I think when you look at some of these ancient, ancient practices that are very beneficial and synergistic, I would say with the stuff that we’re teaching and what we’re calling quantum biology, I would say that they didn’t have to teach someone how to set their circadian rhythm because they didn’t have the modern lighting and the modern lifestyle disruptions that are going to harm circadian signaling. So it was just inherent in the teachings. They didn’t have to highlight it in any way.

Nick Urban [00:18:54]:
Yeah. All right. We’ve covered a little bit about the indoor light. I guess you mentioned that you don’t like LEDs, at least the vast majority of them, because of the light color spectrum they’re putting out, and then also because of flicker and other issues that we didn’t really get into. But then there’s other forms of acceptable, more biologically compatible indoor lighting. What do you like there?

Carrie Bennett [00:19:13]:
Yeah, I’m a huge fan, so I typically say whenever possible, natural light, even if it’s still with through a closed window, it is still going to be a changing spectrum for your eyes. So natural light, whenever possible, I would say if you’re indoors. So let’s say I’m by a window right now. If I had to go back where it’s a little bit darker and that would have to be my workstation, I would find bright incandescent bulbs. So Chromalux or something like that. A very bright incandescent bulbs. Incandescent bulbs more so mimic sunlight because they do have all the colors and they don’t flicker. And so it’s a.

Carrie Bennett [00:19:49]:
It’s a healthier light, I think, for the eyes. There are LEDs. Some places still cannot get incandescent bulbs. So if it’s during the daytime you can get LEDs from companies like waveform lighting that give you a more complete LED spectrum and also no flicker. So that’s another option for the daytime nighttime. I’m a huge fan of these Edison style incandescent bulbs. So like the dimmer amber, really warm toned bulbs that do mimic campfire or like sun sunset light if you will. So they really allow that you can still see, but it’s dim if you can’t get those.

Carrie Bennett [00:20:25]:
I’ve got a bunch of incandescent bulbs around the house. I also have some near infrared bulbs and I learned a long time ago that if you’re, you have to be exposed to I guess a lot of blue light having a source of near infrared, even if it’s like a cheap $15, like traditional incandescent near infrared light can help offset the exposure.

Nick Urban [00:20:58]:
I’ve got a bunch of incandescent bulbs around the house. I also have some near infrared bulbs and I learned a long time ago that if you’re, you have to be exposed to I guess a lot of blue light having a source of near infrared, even if it’s like a cheap $15, like traditional incandescent near infrared light can help offset the exposure.

Carrie Bennett [00:21:18]:
Yeah, it absolutely can. You know, you just have to add in what’s missing from the LED bulbs and the red near infrared up to the far infrared can be a very beneficial way to do that.

Nick Urban [00:21:27]:
And are you concerned much about flicker from the light sources? I mean, I guess it’s less of an issue for incandescents, but for LEDs.

Carrie Bennett [00:21:33]:
It can be a Nervous System dysregulator. So that’s coming from LEDs and from fluorescent bulbs. So, so yeah, I would say if I’m, if I’m finding, if I’m with someone who, they’re telling me that they’re anxious all the time, they’re on edge, then their Body is experiencing massive amounts of histamine based symptoms because their Body’s on edge all the time, I would say we really need to address flicker now. There’s, there’s and, and not everyone can do it and not, not everyone can, you know, change the bulbs at work. But so addressing it for them might look like how can you take light breaks outside to send the, you know, more balancing healthy signal to your brain versus can you change, can you change the bulb? So there are Certain instances when flicker. Flicker is never healthy, but some people are definitely more impacted by it than others. And it’s oftentimes that the profile of Nervous System experiences. Nervous System dysregulation on edge, really reactive immune system.

Nick Urban [00:22:26]:
Would you say people who have those types of concerns respond very favorably to light. Like it actually makes a big difference in their quality of life. It could be an issue of like they’re coming to you already. So there’s like a bias that they have tried everything else and think this is the last option for them. But like in general, if someone ran person off the street was to have an issue with anxiety or something, how big of a role would their light environment be there?

Carrie Bennett [00:22:47]:
It’s huge. It’s huge. Twofold their daily lighting, of course. So like let’s say eliminating flicker, but also artificial light at night prior to the onset of things like anxiety and depression, you get mitochondrial dysfunction and circadian rhythm dysfunction. And so if you can restore. Store healthy lighting in someone’s environment, which means the corrected darkness at night, you know, circadian friendly lighting during the day that doesn’t flicker. I mean, I’ve seen complete transformation and resolution in terms of mental health challenges. And it doesn’t take a long period of time.

Carrie Bennett [00:23:22]:
Now there’s nuance, right? Because if someone has been on something like an SSRI for quite some time, I mean there’s. That’s not in. They have to work with their physician to kind of work themselves off of a medication. And so that can in and of itself be a harder process because of that. But the lighting alone can be a game changer. And I find that there’s a very soothing style bulb for people who experience that kind of anxiety or Nervous System dysregulation. And it’s. Have you ever seen like those bulbs, those red incandescent heat bulbs that they’ll put with like chicks and stuff?

Nick Urban [00:23:54]:
Yeah, like can’t really see. But I have one, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Carrie Bennett [00:23:56]:
I’ve got one sitting right over there too. I know it doesn’t make for good coloring. When I’m on the Mind, Body, Peak, Performance Podcast, I have one sitting right by my desk. It is such a soothing. Because it’s. It’s very much is like being around campfires. So it’s a soothing wavelength to add not just one wavelength, but the soothing range of red and infrared to that add back into one’s environment. So sometimes people at work, their.

Carrie Bennett [00:24:16]:
Their office, they have their own office and they’re able to put that into their office environment and it provides just that added benefit and it does mitigate some of the flicker and the blue light as well, so.

Nick Urban [00:24:25]:
Oh, good. So it is an actual. A real strategy.

Carrie Bennett [00:24:27]:
It is a real strategy, yeah.

Nick Urban [00:24:29]:
Sweet. All right, so you’ve now mentioned some of the inside stuff to do then outdoors. You’re gonna hate this. What is the minimum effective dose to like actually like re entrain the circadian rhythm? I think you said three minutes and then also like shut down melatonin production. Is there like a amount like you can’t make say a whole 30 minute hour long morning routine, but like at least get outside for the first X number of minutes list?

Carrie Bennett [00:24:50]:
So mine was horrible and I noticed a difference within three minutes doing that three days straight. And I’m not alone. I’ve literally had people reach out to me around the world saying that that’s. They’ve had that exact same experience. So like I said, this was the wild west when I got into it as a CHEK Practitioner, like from a clinical perspective, it’s starting to help other people with it. So I found that I started telling people 30 minutes and people couldn’t be compliant with it.

Carrie Bennett [00:25:21]:
But three minutes, consistently very beneficial. There’s another time of the day when the sun’s a little higher in the sky that I also played around with clinically. So the sun reached 10 degrees above the horizon and that’s when ultraviolet light appears, this demonized light. Right.

Carrie Bennett [00:25:52]:
And we can talk about why. Yeah, we can go into that if you want to, but. But I found that that’s another key window of time to get clients out. And if they can go 5 to 20 minutes outside during that period of time where that sun reaches 10 degrees above the horizon or greater. And if your listeners are like, well, how the heck do I know that? There’s apps, right, that we. That like my friend Sarah created a, my circadian app where you program in your location and it’ll tell you exactly, exactly when that is. So if you can get outside during that time when UVA light is rising and increasing, it’s another key signal that has been a huge game changer for people as well. So if we’re saying minimum, I’d Say if you can do three minutes at sunrise and hope hopefully build in about 10 minutes.

Carrie Bennett [00:26:37]:
Hit or miss, you know, during UVA rise, great.

Nick Urban [00:26:41]:
How important is it to have like minimal clothing on so you’re exposing the most of your body possible to the light?

Carrie Bennett [00:26:47]:
Not important. These signals are through the eyes. So if you’re looking for things like vitamin D production, if you’re looking for things like let’s say, oh, build creating nitric oxide. Because UV light on the skin, skin can make nitric oxide in the blood and, and lower blood pressure. That’s where you actually need the skin to receive the light or what the re with red light therapy or sunlight on the skin, those red and near infrared wavelengths penetrating into the body and stimulating the mitochondria that you want to have on your skin. But the morning stuff we’re talking about is simply through the eyes.

Nick Urban [00:27:23]:
Well, let’s explore UV now because that is certainly a topic that like if people think that the sun is bad, it’s always because of the uv. It’s never because of the red or infrared light or anything like that. What is the role of those in the body? You already touched on one, that’s nitric oxide.

Carrie Bennett [00:27:39]:
Yeah. So there’s different chunks of UV light. One of them is called UVC. It doesn’t, it doesn’t ever penetrate to, to terrestrial earth. So we do not get that UVC. The other two wavelength ranges of UV are called UVA and UVB. So UVA is the one that I set up pierce first and then as the sun gets higher in the sky, 30 degrees above the horizon. For those taking notes, that is when UVB appears, UVB is that wavelength range that when it strikes your skin it makes dozens of versions of vitamin D.

Carrie Bennett [00:28:11]:
People do not realize vitamin D is not the one that gets tested in the blood. Right. That 25OHD D3, there are literally dozens like dozens and dozens of metabolites and variations that are called sulfated metabolites. So when you make it through the skin, you make a balanced amount of all those metabolites. And when you take it through a pill, it’s nowhere near the same. So I encourage people to learn how to make vitamin D through their skin so that they can get that balance and that balanced production, including the pathway that doesn’t really show promise when you supplement with D3, which is the anti cancer pathway from those metabolites. So that’s number one, that UVB also is strong enough to do something called sulfate hormones, meaning people are always concerned with estrogen dominance. One way that we can clear estrogen is by attaching a sulfate group to it. And that sulfate group makes that estrogen able to freely travel through the blood to be essentially processed through the liver and eliminated.

Carrie Bennett [00:29:09]:
So we can essentially help support hormone balance through UVB exposure on the skin too. The UVA is one where you’re going to see the benefits, like I said, of nitric oxide production, which widens those blood vessels so the blood can flow easier. And that means it’s blood pressure regulating if you have low blood pressure, unless you’ve been diagnosed with dysautonomia or POTS, which are conditions I have seen people heal completely from using sunlight. But it takes. It’s a more. They have a more aggressive reaction to UV light. So it’s a really, really titrating strategy with it. But if you say, well, I kind of tend towards low blood pressure, maybe I shouldn’t go into the sun because it’s going to create nitric oxide.

Carrie Bennett [00:29:50]:
No, it acts adaptogenically. It will not lower your blood pressure if you already tend towards low, but if you are elevated, it will absolutely make more nitric oxide and allow that nitric oxide to improve blood flow. So it’s phenomenal for that. The other thing is it stimulates a pathway. UVA light stimulates a pathway in the brain and the hypothalamus involving a chemical and at the skin level involving a chemical called POMC. POMC is this gigantic peptide, which is a fancy word for like a protein, if you will. And this peptide can get, based on the light it’s receiving, the UV light signals it’s receiving, the body will cut the peptide into chunks. And when it cuts it, the product is called the cleavage product becomes a bioactive substance so that POMC can get cut and it could be analgesic, so it can be pain reducing that POMC can get cut and it can stimulate lipolysis, which is pulling fat and burning it as a fuel source.

Carrie Bennett [00:30:49]:
It can stimulate libido. I mean, like so, I mean, there’s a ton of different ways we can talk about POMC. But needless to say, when we’re missing out on that UVA light exposure, then what we’re missing out on is the body. The body getting a signal and energy from light that it can use to optimize whatever the body needs in that moment, whether it’s reducing pain and inflammation, elevating libido, improving fat metabolism, you name it. And I missed out on it for forever. So I think that was a huge contributor to my symptoms.

Nick Urban [00:31:21]:
How do you go about deciding dosing of UV light and making sure you’re doing it safely? Or are you not concerned that much about the concerns most people have around excess exposure? I guess maybe excess is the key word to UV light.

Carrie Bennett [00:31:38]:
Yeah. Like, I don’t think you should burn. Right? I don’t want you. I don’t want you all of a sudden listening to this, and you’re in a very warm, sunny climate right now, and you’re like, oh, okay, well, let me just lay out for three hours. Because you will burn, and that burning will create more, more inflammation than it would than your body might be able to clean up. Right. It might be harmful to mitochondria. So I think there’s a smart way to do sun exposure.

Carrie Bennett [00:32:01]:
I don’t think we need to fear it, but you need to be aware of your skin’s signals and go slowly at first. So you say, okay, I like this information. Let me go outside and get 10 minutes of UVA light on my skin or 10 minutes of UVB. And if basically, once the sun has reached 30 degrees above the horizon and it stays up there, you’re getting both UVA and uvb. So let’s say you choose to go out during that time, 10 minutes, go inside, observe your skin. People who have more melanated skin tend to be able to absorb a lot more ultraviolet light before it would create what’s called an erythema response, which is a reddening or a pinkening or a true intense warming of the skin, which can indicate that the body has received enough light for that given sun session. So it takes about a month or so of just experimentation to realize, okay, during this, this type of sunlight, with this stronger uv, what, what amount of light can I get on my skin without causing potentially a burn? The other thing to be said about this is you cannot be wearing sunglasses while you’re doing this, because when you’re receiving strong ultraviolet light on the skin, we’re designed to sync the light that is entering our skin with the light that enters the eyes. And our eyes and skin have UV sensors called Neuropsych and these neuropsychin receptors.

Carrie Bennett [00:33:19]:
We want the intensity of the UV to match. So if I’m wearing sunglasses that say, hey, it’s like midnight, and there’s definitely no UV, but my skin is like, Whoa, UV index 7 10. We can’t sync the pathway that builds what we would call solar adaptation to that light. And those solar adaptations can look like, let’s produce a little more melanin let’s make a chemical in the skin called urocainic acid, which can kind of titrate the amount of UV that’s coming in. So we want to be able to sync those up. And that blocking that ultraviolet signal from the eyes can really impair that process.

Nick Urban [00:33:55]:
Then also some housekeeping items around that exposure. I’m guessing not going to want to put on sunscreen or wear contact lenses.

Carrie Bennett [00:34:02]:
Well, I have found contact lenses to be less impactful. I do like when people switch to ones that don’t block any of the UV light. But still some of the UV light does still get through and the brightness gets through as well. Whereas with sunglasses, you’re missing the UV and the brightness. And so ideally, naked eyes, you’re right. But if you do have to wear contacts, know that we’ve worked through that and you might just build up a little bit more slowly. Sunscreen’s an absolute no. And number one, obviously it’s mostly full of toxins.

Carrie Bennett [00:34:34]:
Number two, the more natural ones, like non nano zinc oxide type sunscreen. Yes, it blocks the ultraviolet light, but then it’s going to block all these benefits we’re talking about. It does not block the blue light, however. And if now all of a sudden we’re talking about modifying sunlight to be a really dominant blue light source, again without the balanced portions of the spectrums that we would get from natural light. So we’ve modified sunlight to be less natural and that blue light will penetrate more deeply into the skin. So ultraviolet penetrates the. The skin and then just into the blood vessels of the skin. Blue light goes a little bit deeper into the dermal layers and you can actually start to create what are called a lot of reactive oxygen species in the skin based on that blue light penetration that’s not balanced like it is in sunlight.

Carrie Bennett [00:35:20]:
And in fact, nowadays, when you look at the cancer research, the glaucoma research, the macular degeneration research, they’re all of a sudden like, whoa, I think we missed a wavelength range of light that be. Could. Could be actually one of the reasons why we’re seeing an uptick of cancer and macular degeneration in people who live in indoor office environment or work in indoor office environments in Oregon. Right. Or whatever. Because they’re calling it high energy visible light or heave. And they’re like, oh, by the way, that blue wavelength range of light might be bad too, but we also have to fear ultraviolet light. Right.

Carrie Bennett [00:35:51]:
So now that’s why they’re developing things like sunblock for blue light.

Carrie Bennett [00:35:57]:
You Know what you gonna do. But anyways, if you’re, if you are aware about how to use the sun for all of its healing benefits and to know when to pull yourself into the shade and you can still get light benefits of being outside without being in direct sunlight, that’s the most beneficial thing you could possibly learn.

Nick Urban [00:36:13]:
I saw a headline that has your name in it, and it also had the word humans plus photosynthesis. What’s the breakdown there?

Carrie Bennett [00:36:20]:
Yeah, so we are able to pull in sunlight and actually use, make usable energy from it. And this was never considered. So essentially we are photoelectric photosynthetic in that we can cap. There’s, there’s multiple ways we can make energy from sunlight. We have to come back for a conversation on the water in our bodies, because one of the main things that absorbs light, especially infrared light, is the water in our bodies. And that water can hold, hold the energy from that infrared light as charge as electricity that’s donated, that can be donated to the body for chemical reactions, for all the workings, protein folding and unfolding, things like that. So really amazing. Then secondarily, the melanin that’s on the surface of our skin, it’s surrounded by what’s called structured water.

Carrie Bennett [00:37:09]:
Even though you don’t see that water, you don’t feel it surrounded in the layers under the skin of structured water. And melanin absorbs light. And when it absorbs light, it splits a water molecule too, technically. And what’s the start of photosynthesis? Well, chlorophyll absorbs light and splits a water molecule. And the process of photosynthesis allows plants to make carbohydrates. The process of photosynthesis allows the body to take that split water molecule. And that split water molecule contains what’s called molecular hydrogen. And that will donate energy to the mitochondria.

Carrie Bennett [00:37:38]:
It will act as an antioxidant. There’s a lot of cool things we can do with that hydrogen.

Nick Urban [00:37:42]:
Wow. That’s all just from exposure to sunlight?

Carrie Bennett [00:37:45]:
All from exposure to sunlight.

Nick Urban [00:37:47]:
How much of our total energy can we derive from the sun? I know, I saw the. Arturo Haynes Heinz.

Carrie Bennett [00:37:54]:
Arturo Solis Herrera.

Nick Urban [00:37:55]:
Solis Herrera. Okay. That’s his name. Yeah, yeah. So I saw his work a long time ago, but I don’t remember how much we can actually get from the sun.

Carrie Bennett [00:38:02]:
Well, you know what, I think we have to have the conversation first about ATP not being an energy source. And so I can’t give you an exact answer on that. Again, another conversation for another time. But ATP doesn’t contain high energy phosphate bonds to donate to it. It plays an important role in the Body, but not that role. And so if we think to ourselves of, okay, if the water in my Body and maintaining this battery of water in my Body literally maintains a healthy cellular environment, a charged by like highly vital cellular environment, we can technically obtain all of our energy from things like sunlight and earthing, which is why Breatharians do exist. Like I have met many people who are happy, healthy, literally living on, living on nature and breathing and have been doing it for a decade. Right.

Carrie Bennett [00:38:54]:
So we’re not talking like, oh, someone who said, I’m just, you know, it’s been two weeks, I’m a Breatharian. We’re like, no. So I think that there is the ability to do that. However, I think the average everyday person, I would say that if you think of food maybe making up a third, maybe then sunlight and earthing and gathering what I call free energy, I think that can make up to about 2/3 and meet our 2/3 of our body’s energy requirements. If we’re living in accordance with nature and we’re absorbing that sunlight and we’re earthing regularly and we’re getting infrared energy into our bodies to maintain that, that water battery, I, I think, I think we rely on food for nutrients. I’m not telling anybody, especially if you have a history of disordered eating to stop eating or anything like that. I just think we’ve been sold a big half truth when the only way that we get energy is through food.

Nick Urban [00:39:47]:
Yeah. Cause it seems like, I mean, water isn’t really discussed as much as it should be. Food, I mean, not food. Light is not. Electromagnetism is like not in the common like health toolkit at all.

Carrie Bennett [00:40:00]:
Listen, if we start to tell people that all they need to do is go outside and earth and get sunlight and they’re going to have a huge way to support their, their bodies. And energy doesn’t sell money. Right. Trust me, I’m not a billionaire from telling people this.

Nick Urban [00:40:14]:
Do people ever like start doing these things and then have like the Herxheimer or detox reactions where it’s like, okay, maybe this is actually bad for me. I’m getting like a worse response now. Like my Body’s telling me no, but it’s actually not their Body telling them no, it’s okay. You have a lot of stuff you have to process and as a result it’s going to take some time. It’s not going to be like a snap the fingers and all of a Sudden feel perfect again.

Carrie Bennett [00:40:34]:
Yes. I’ve seen two different reactions like that. One of them is when people hear infrared energy is beneficial. And so then all of a sudden they’ll jump into a sauna when they haven’t in a while, or go into really intense infrared heat in the sun. And that infrared energy, it does it actually. What? It can mobilize toxins quite a bit, which is good. But in a Body that might not be prepared, or in a Body that has a sluggish lymphatic system, which a lot of us do, it can start to feel like a Herxheimer reaction secondarily or I’ll say three things. I’ve also, I’ve talked about pots and dysautonomia that gets an overly aggressive response to lupus.

Carrie Bennett [00:41:10]:
To get. You get an overly aggressive response to ultraviolet light, it just means you have to slowly, slowly, slowly build up. But I’ve had people with all of those conditions who could literally only tolerate 30 seconds of UV light build up to a critical threshold, which can happen anywhere between, you know, 10 continuous minutes, building up to 15, and then they can tolerate it perfectly after that. So, yeah, there’s like, there’s that process that has to occur and there’s people who, they’re in the sun and they’re like, well, Carrie, you’re telling me I’m gonna get all this energy, but I literally wanna take a nap every time after I’ve been in the sun. Well, their Body is finally in a parasympathetic state and has adequate energy to go into a heat healing period during their day, as opposed to kind of being on edge or being in functional freeze type type pattern. So, yeah, I’ve had to help walk people through that as not being a pathological response, but just something we need to lean into and allow the Body to then get the rest of recovery it needs because it’s finally getting the energy and the signals it needs to heal.

Nick Urban [00:42:04]:
I always thought that that response from being in the sun too long was due to, like, a myriad of factors, including like, the production, increased production of beta endorphins and stuff. But, like, when I’m in extra intense sun, like I travel somewhere and then I’m in the sun for a long period of time. I don’t. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve traveled, maybe it’s other things, but I definitely leave, like the beach, for example, after a couple hours feeling drained. And are you saying that it’s indicating that, like, I was in an overly sympathetic state and then I’m like shifting into parasympathetic twofold.

Carrie Bennett [00:42:32]:
Yeah. Probably because airfare in and of itself. Right. Has the ability to keep. Put the body into a sympathetic state. But also. And again, this is another thing that what that sunlight does is the near infrared wavelengths of sunlight support what’s called mitochondrial melatonin production, which typically stays inside of the cell and acts as an antioxidant to clean up damage inside of the cell. But when we get a larger stimulus, or let’s say a larger hormetic, we’re exposing our body to something that’s very hormetic, meaning it pushes our body out of homeostasis.

Carrie Bennett [00:43:03]:
And a perfect example would be, I’m in Michigan. It’s February. I’ve got no UV light, no intense infrared outside. And I go to Florida, right. And then I’m on the beach and I’m getting that intense light that pushes my body, my mitochondria, into making more melatonin. And that melatonin leaks into the bloodstream and can cause the body to feel sleepy. Same thing can happen with exercise. When people push it really hard with exercise, that’s another hormetic stressor that could cause melatonin production that’s supposed to stay inside of the cells, but it can leak into the bloodstream and also cause that fatigue response.

Nick Urban [00:43:33]:
That’s so interesting, because I think some of the newer research suggests that the vast majority of the melatonin is not produced in the pineal gland. And to know that there’s a lot of intracellular melatonin, how much is a meaningful amount going to go into the bloodstream? I know you don’t need that much in the bloodstream. Even when you sleep, there’s not that much melatonin coursing through the bloodstream. So I imagine that you wouldn’t need that much to also make you sleepy.

Carrie Bennett [00:43:56]:
Yeah, I believe it’s something like 0.3 milligrams of pineal. Melatonin production is what can initiate sleep onse. And so it wouldn’t be unheard of that. Because 95% of our melatonin is designed to be made and stay inside of the cells. You can imagine if we push the cells past the capacity where it stays inside of the cells and starts to go into the bloodstream, it would probably be quite easy to detect 0.3 milligrams in the bloodstream.

Nick Urban [00:44:19]:
Yeah, that’s what I figured. Okay. Wow. I haven’t heard that much. No one talked about much yet.

Carrie Bennett [00:44:24]:
Well, you know, I hope it continues to grow. I Love the research. It’s Russell Ryder and Zimmerman, Scott Zimmerman, if people are interested, they’ve, they’ve done a really great research on the combination of light stimulating melatonin production.

Nick Urban [00:44:35]:
And then so we’ve really covered the light facet of your work in a good amount of depth so far. But there’s also still the water, which we barely touched on the electron side of things, and the mitochondrial nature in our limited time left today. What do you think makes the most sense to cover next?

Carrie Bennett [00:44:53]:
Do you know? I would say that let’s dive a little deeper into that water because that’s how, that’s a huge connection between light and our Bodies. And so as I alluded to before, our Body absorbs infrared light and the vast majority of the absorption goes into the water in our Bodies. And for those people you probably have heard, we’re like 60 to 70% water. But by molecular count, like if I were to line up all the water molecules in the Body and then all the bigger molecules, say proteins or other chemicals, I would line up 99 water molecules for every one larger molecule. So by molecular count, we are 99% water. And a lovely researcher, Dr. Pollock, found that that water inside of our Bodies behaves very differently than I was ever led to believe in any of my studies. I thought, okay, 70% water, it’s that liquid water, it’s just there, things can kind of swim through through it or diffuse through it.

Carrie Bennett [00:45:50]:
It might act as a cushioning source, but it obviously does not provide any sort of biological relevance in terms of human physiology. That is, for that could be further from the truth. And my entire clinical hypothesis now is that we need to support that water and the energy stored in that water for human Health and vitality. And I mean, I’ve been doing this now for over a decade and it’s proving to be, I would say, pretty true. So what does this mean? Well, Dr. Pollock found that whenever water, liquid water, such as the liquid water produced in our mitochondria, comes into contact with a biological surface, which is called a water loving surface or a hydrophilic surface, it structures and reorganizes itself, meaning the water molecules bond with each other in a very precise way. And that gives that water unique properties. One of those unique properties is that it’s negatively charged, it’s full of energy or electricity, which water in a glass.

Carrie Bennett [00:46:48]:
I couldn’t just derive electricity from liquid water in the glass. Not only that, is it, is it this, this negatively charged zone that he calls easy water exclusion zone water, but right next to that negatively charged zone is a line of positive charge that just automatically gets organized. And that if you were in a stick, little electrodes or wires in, in each zone and connected to a light bulb, the light bulb would light up. So it is usable energy. And there’s a lot of research now showing that if you drain the body of that electrical charge, that negative charge, which sometimes can be called voltage or membrane potential, when you drain it to a critical threshold, the cell starts to become highly dysfunctional, so it can’t do all of its tasks, and it reaches a critical threshold where the cell starts to divide uncontrollably and cannot stop that growth cycle, which we could call cancer. And so maintaining this charged water battery is essential. And two of the most profound ways to do that are by exposing the body to regular sources of infrared, which always exists in sunlight from sunrise through the day till sunset. And you can find it in things like fire, in sauna, in hot therapeutic baths, or going on a hot spring or even a hot shower.

Carrie Bennett [00:47:59]:
So I have found that getting people to understand how to engage with infrared differently, because it’s not in their bulbs anymore, and a lot of it’s being blocked by their modern window glass, they’re in an infrared deficient environment. So we have to actively seek it out to keep that water battery charged.

Nick Urban [00:48:14]:
Not here, you say is to drink any kind of special water. Is that involved?

Carrie Bennett [00:48:19]:
Well, you gotta stay hydrated, but that’s another misnomer. Just like you know the misnomer about sunlight battery, another misnomer. No more. With foods as your only energy source. The water we drink is important, but it’s not the only way we stay hydrated. Certainly I want to drink good quality water. Like, I don’t want to drink toxins. I want to drink water that has some minerals added to it.

Carrie Bennett [00:48:37]:
But the water that our mitochondria make is, I think the way that we stay hydrated inside of the cell and the way that we stay hydrated in the blood and in the space around the cells is how is from the water that we drink. And yes, we want that all those spaces to be hydrated, but the assumption is, is that I drink water and it automatically gets into my cells and that. And that’s how my cells get hydrated. That is not, in my clinical experience, the case.

Nick Urban [00:49:01]:
I did a dry fast earlier this year. And one of the things I found interesting is that I completely stopped drinking or obviously eating any food, and my Body still continued to produce fluids even days after not having my last sip. And obviously like it’s producing its own water. The water’s coming from somewhere. And part of the therapeutic rationale behind it is like it’s supposed to increase the amount of like easy water or mitochondrial water or biowater or whatever you want to call it, that your Body’s producing like a high proportion of that to other water.

Carrie Bennett [00:49:30]:
100 and that’s why people are. I actually am like a proponent of dry fasting. People like but what you’re all about the water in the body, but I’m about the. That’s a huge way to support the metabolic water that’s being made in the mitochondria. When those mitochondria can take fat as a fuel source, which it would do during a fast or a dry fast. But typically the dry fast is a faster way to make that happen. The dry fast, you’ll take fat from storage, you’ll send it to the mitochondria, it’ll make four times the amount of metabolic water than you would from burning carbohydrates in the mitochondria. So it’s a great way to stay hydrated inside the cells that no one ever considers.

Nick Urban [00:50:05]:
Well Carrie, we have a hard stop now so we will wind this one down. It’s been a pleasure chatting with you. If people want to connect with you to follow your work, to check out your website, where do you want to send them?

Carrie Bennett [00:50:14]:
Yeah, sure. Thanks for chatting with me Nick. We got a lot accomplished so I would say two great places would be Carrie B. Wellness on Instagram. It’s kind of my hub where I teach all this fun stuff in short bite sized nuggets. And then Carrieb. Wellness.com is my website if anyone wants to take. I’ve got classes for someone, people who are looking to support themselves.

Carrie Bennett [00:50:34]:
I’ve got classes for practitioners. I’ve got a private community so that would be another great place to look amazing.

Nick Urban [00:50:39]:
Well, we still have three other topics to cover so hopefully we can do a part two at some point. I would love to host you again and go deep into these topics, but until next time, be an Outliyr. Thanks for tuning in to High Performance Longevity. If you got value today, the best way to support the show is to leave a review or share it with someone who’s ready to upgrade their healthspan. You can find all the episodes, show notes and resources mentioned@Outliyr.com until next time, stay energized, stay BioHarmony and be an Outliyr.