Welcome to a 3 part series about the effects of light on the body.
Part 1:
“We are going through cognitive de-evolution…parents have to stop letting their kids use technology as a digital babysitter…it’s absolute child abuse.” –Dr. Jack Kruse. Tetragrammaton Podcast with Rick Rubin, “Dr. Jack Kruse and Andrew Huberman, Ph.D (Part 1)” *see note
If you’re in any health circles online, you’ll likely know at least a bit about light’s impact on health per figures like Andrew Huberman; that going outside in the morning can help set your circadian rhythm or that blue light can keep you up at night. Even if not, you’ll at least know that you produce vitamin D from sunlight and that winters can be a bit depressing.
You’ll also likely be aware that our nation—and really most of the world—is facing a chronic disease epidemic, especially now that a mainstream politician, RFK Jr., ran on defeating it.
Are these two, light and chronic disease, related? I say yes…intimately. In fact, I believe the way we (ab)use light, straying from our natural evolutionary relationship to it, largely explains the chronic disease epidemic as well as the rising rates of novel chronic diseases among our children and the youth in general.
Below, and in the following pieces in this series, we will get into the basics of light as the basis of health and why it may even trump the traditional pillars of diet, exercise, and sleep in terms of importance. We will explore the ways we use light biologically as well as how it can harm us—put simply natural light=good, artificial light=bad (including non-native EMF)—with a focus on its outsized effects on children who are especially vulnerable due to their developing biology.
To get a better idea of what we mean when we say tech affects us and our kids, we’ll begin examining the ‘iPad kid’ phenomena.
iPad Kids: A Real Problem
Would it surprise you to learn that Steve Jobs didn’t let his kids use iPads because they were too addicting? A sage move considering that over a decade after its release, we use the term "iPad kid" to label poorly behaved children who are glued to their screens and throw tantrums when bereft of them.
We’ve all seen these hostage situations play out in public: ”Mom, dad would you rather I start scream-crying at the top of my lungs or just let me watch brainrot TikToks on this plane?” For some this seems innocuous, normal, or even a public good, but when you understand this phenomena through a biological lens, you realize it’s much more sinister.
iPad Kids are a serious problem—maybe even the most pressing we face considering the long term consequences of tech use on the developing brain and body. On another level we must take this seriously because one day Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and the (unfortunately named) incoming Gen Beta are going to be running the world.
The older generation’s criticism of the younger and worry that Rome will burn when they assume power is timeless, but it’s my gut feeling that the degree to which this belief is held today, even among the younger generation themselves, and the severity of it is unprecedented.
We should always refrain from blackpilling, but we have to acknowledge there’s something seriously wrong with some of our kids. You might be thinking “this is just more alarmism…people have had TVs since the 50s and things are fine,” to which I would respond:
Are things fine?
The conditions responsible for iPad kids are totally different beasts from the tech environment of past generations. Boomers had Sunday morning cartoons, Gen X and Millennials had early consoles, TV, and the internet, even Gen Z—who are essentially iPad kids too—had youtube and social media.
Today, the average teen spends over 7 hours on screens and the content they’re consuming is almost all short-form brainrot by design—TikTok, IG reels, Youtube shorts…you all know what I’m talking about. Additionally, virtually all education is conducted indoors via screens through laptops and smartboards. It’s not just the medium or the content, it’s that it deprives us of our natural environment, the outdoors.
The verdict? Tech use and quality of behavior are inversely proportional.
These are just the subjective effects that we can all see, but what do the stats on diagnosable disease have to say?
Rising Youth Chronic Illness
*These stats consider a wide age range from toddlers to young adults. Meta-analyses were used when available. This is representative, but not an exhaustive list.
Mental Illness and Developmental Disorders
~20% of youth during the pandemic, worldwide
In the US, anxiety in ages 3-17 rose 27% from 2016-2019
11.4% of US children in 2022
Rates of stimulant based medications rising
20% of US adolescents had at least 1 major depressive episode in 2021
Increased 24% from 2016-2019
3 in 4 kids with depression also had anxiety
1 in 2 kids with depression had behavioral issues
1 in 36 (2.8%) in 2023 in the US vs 1 in 150 (.07%) in 2007
1 in 22 (4.5%) in California in 2023
Rose sharply during the pandemic in various countries
Non-Communicable Diseases
Myopia (nearsightedness)
~60% of ages 17-19 in CA in 2023
84-97% of young adults myopic in Korea, Taiwan, China!
~20% in 2020 in ages 2-19
500% increase in ages 10-14 from 1999-2020
Are these stats not shocking? Although not a complete picture of all ailments; it is clear that something is truly wrong.
An Increasingly Faustian Bargain
We’re now entering an age of decentralized technology with tools like consumer AI that will benefit those who grow up tech-savvy: the digital natives. But this requires more tech use, and therefore more biological dysfunction and disease (see below). It really is a Faustian bargain, trading health for wealth.
Once you’re aware of the dangers of tech use and indoor life, how will you allow your kids to live? I’m not naive, nor a Luddite, but I strongly advise considering Steve Jobs' example. And what about for yourself?
Moreover, once you fully come to terms with how humans are designed to live (outside) for optimal health, you will begin to see just how much sand we’ve built our castles upon. Again, no blackpills. You have the power to change, but these biological mechanisms are hard truths that we can’t try to override by taking a cornucopia of supplements or drugs to make up for mismatched behavior. We must, to some degree, return to nature while retaining the benefits tech brings.
While I believe poor light environment and tech use are main drivers of these diseases and largely explain their dramatic rise since becoming ubiquitous in society, especially during the pandemic as we were forced even more inside than we already were, it is likely that these trends and many of the modern health issues we deal with are also caused or contributed to by the slew of other environmental toxins that pervade our food, water, air, homes, and many other consumer products.
This is the whole purpose of The Solarium. To make you aware of the problems and centralize the solutions for you so you can minimize damage and maximize your health and life.
Before we talk about why children are more susceptible to this damage and offer these points of practical advice, you should be familiar with how light influences our biology both positively and negatively to get the full story. This stuff can be a bit complex, but stay with me.
The goal here is that we walk away understanding the bigger evolutionary picture with the ability to pinpoint where we are making missteps. There is great beauty in our relationship to light.
Light is a Nutrient
Light should be right up there with diet, exercise, and sleep as pillars of health, even held highest among them because of how it underpins them through its effect on the circadian rhythm, cellular health and energy production, and more.
As light is the most constant, cyclical, and timeless environmental input, also serving as the energy base for our ecosystems, it makes sense that we evolved to use it for good from the beginning. As mentioned earlier, light should be thought of as underpinning the other pillars of health. This is because it controls our circadian rhythm, cellular health and energy production, and much more which allow us to sleep well, exercise and perform with vigor, and utilize the energy and nutrients from our food properly.
Let’s dig in.
Cellular Health and Energy Production
Infrared (IR) light makes up around 50% of sunlight, penetrating deep into our bodies with its longer wavelengths where it reaches most of our cells (60-100% depending on your physical size). Among other functions, this IR light stimulates the production of melatonin within the mitochondria—the fundamental energy production units of the cell—which is key for their upkeep and health.
Exacerbated by being blasted with toxins from our environment, when mitochondria get too stressed from a lack of light their energy production slows down, leaving our cells and the systems they compose unable to perform their specialized jobs.
This is called mitochondrial dysfunction, and because it affects the most basic level of energy production, it can be a root cause of any number of diseases. This is not fringe stuff, it’s recognized by the medical establishment as a main cause of aging and age-related diseases.
The theory is that speeding up mitochondrial function, or being born with poor mitochondrial function to begin with (one reason kids now are more susceptible to tech damage), sets the stage for early disease. What’s harder to identify is why this affects certain parts of the body more versus others to result in diseases unique to the individual.
Different parts of the light spectrum also influence certain enzymes of the Electron Transport Chain (ETC), the actual energy creation process within the mitochondria. Sun exposure, or as mimicked with red light therapy, facilitates electron transfer along the ETC to create usable cell energy in the form of ATP, making your mitochondria, and therefore your cells, and therefore you healthier.
This is a vast understatement and simplification of how light impacts cells and mitochondria and there are surely more ways it occurs, as well as many more functions of mitochondria beyond energy production. In other words, it’s complicated, but its effects are as basic to biology as can be.
When you understand this, the paradigm that the sun is bad and must be avoided becomes asinine.
A Note on Sun Protection
Problems arise, however, when you have pale skin, lacking melanin (a tan/dark skin) and live at lower latitudes with more intense sun than what your ancestral pigmentation is adapted to.
Among other crucial functions, melanin acts as your built-in sunscreen. Ironically, melanin production is only stimulated (through the POMC system) by the stress caused by more energetic UV-A rays we’re told to cover up from.
This is a hormetic process where the dose makes the poison and is why gradual exposure, focusing on sunrise and sunset with their heavy red and infrared presence which prepares and heals the skin from UV damage by boosting the production of collagen and other protective compounds, is key to avoiding sunburn…and for promoting overall disease prevention.
(Also, sunscreen is cancer but that's for a future post)
Circadian Rhythm
Among other factors like temperature, meal timing, and physical activity, light is the chief environmental input that influences the circadian rhythm. This rhythm controls or significantly influences everything from sleep-wake cycles, cellular repair, sexual function, immune function, digestion, glucose response, and energy levels.
Essentially, almost everything going on inside of us either responds to direct external stimuli or operates on a light-based timer. You can think of this rhythm as your body’s automation process to maintain homeostasis for your best chance of survival.
Here’s the mechanism: light hits specialized cells in the back of the eye called intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) which contain melanopsin, a photopigment that is most sensitive to (~480 nm) blue light found in daylight…and now in our artificial lights and screens. See the problem with artificial light at night?
Light information is relayed from these cells to the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), the body’s master clock which works directly with the pituitary and other parts of the hypothalamus to regulate appropriate hormone release depending on the time of the day it thinks it is from the light cues, also setting the time for our various organ clocks and the clock genes in our DNA.
The unnatural overabundance of blue light at inappropriate times of the day is at the heart of circadian misalignment. Taking in confusing light signals disrupts the body’s clocks and sets us up for disordered and diseased lives.
Light interacts with our biology at the deepest levels and the importance of mastering your light environment goes well beyond sleep and wake cycles, other circadian-timed processes, and their downstream effects. Other essential benefits to getting natural light that we won’t dive into, but I encourage you to explore for starters are vitamin D and nitric oxide synthesis as well as the POMC system which affects detoxification, appetite, and mood…it literally creates an opioid called beta endorphin in response to the sun.
Recap
With all that said, let’s go over what we’ve covered:
We have a chronic disease epidemic and we’re seeing novel disease in our youth that seems to scale with tech use
Light effects our health in fundamental ways
Light controls cellular health and energy production and the circadian rhythm among many other things
Safe sun exposure is nuanced, but absolutely necessary to live a healthy life.
Light is an essential nutrient but it can also be a potent antinutrient. Now that you’re familiar with some of the main reasons we need light, we’ll address how it can harm us.
Part 2 will release soon, Stay Tuned.
Let's make The Solarium the parallel ecosystem we can trust.
Elite Health is Clean Living,
-Jessica
*Note: Dr. Jack Kruse, a neurosurgeon and the forerunner in piecing together and propagating the ways in which light impacts health, has worked with both the Kennedy Team and the Bukele Administration of El Salvador in writing medical freedom legislation. While Kruse’s impact and story are still being realized and written, the story of Nayib Bukele’s presidential re-election is history. Watch how it went down in my new short film Forging a Country.
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