Brain fog. Low energy. Digestive issues. Anxiety. All of the above could simply be symptoms of a lack of natural sunlight. Carrie Bennett of the Quantum Biology Collective today covers the many benefits of sunlight: how it can help heal the gut, sync our circadian rhythm, and set off a cascade of proper hormonal function for improved health and mood.
Carrie gets specific about the hormones that get “turned on” by the sunlight and their effect on the mood and body. She also explains how those who are fair-skinned or sun-shy can approach getting more sunshine, and she even has advice for those whose eyes are sensitive to its light and feel like they need to wear sunglasses all the time.
Visit Carrie’s website: carriebwellness.com
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Episode Transcript
Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda
.The time we spend indoors exposed to artificial light is limiting our ability to regenerate our cells and heal our bodies naturally. This is episode 431 and our guest is Carrie Bennett. Carrie is a Quantum Health Educator and Clinician for Carrie B. Wellness. She is also the lead instructor at the Quantum Biology Collective. In this episode, she talks about everything under the sun or rather about the sun. Carrie covers the many benefits of natural sunlight, how it helps heal our guts, sink our circadian rhythm, set off a cascade of proper hormonal function and much more.
She gets specific about the hormones that get turned on when we are in the sun and she explains their effect on our mood and body. She also goes over how those who are fair-skinned or sun-shy can approach getting more sunshine. She even has advice for those whose eyes are especially sensitive to the sunlight and feel like they need to wear sunglasses all the time.
Before we get into the conversation, I want to invite you to the Wise Traditions Conference in October 2023 in Kansas City, Missouri. The food is always Wise Traditions friendly and delicious. The people are down-to-earth and beautiful. The speakers are out of this world, including Tom Cowan, Alec Zeck, Naomi Wolf and our very own Sally Fallon Morell. This is the conference that nourishes us in every way so join us. Go to Wise Traditions to find out more and register.
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Visit Carrie’s website: CarrieBWellness.Com
Register for our Wise Traditions conference in October 2023
Check out our sponsors: Pluck and Optimal Carnivore
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Welcome to the show, Carrie.
Thanks, Hilda. I’m excited to chat with you.
I am too, not to chat with me but to chat with you because, in this quantum health space, it’s so important for people to understand the most basic things that nurtured our ancestors and us as well and we may be overlooking them. I want to kick things off by asking you about the story of that young man who was in such digestive distress, his parents didn’t know what to do. Talk to us about what happened.
We don’t oftentimes tie light exposure to gut health in any way. When this mom came to me, her son was probably about seven years old at the time. She had tried everything under the sun except the sun itself, about things like, “What elimination diet do I need to do? What are his food sensitivities and food allergies? Let me take him through a 4R gut health protocol.” Basically everything.
This poor kid was still waking up vomiting or vomiting after meals with horrible stomach pain. You could also tell that he was severely malnourished, not because they weren’t feeding him nutrient-dense foods but because he wasn’t able to absorb any of the nutrients. He was a lot more stunted on the growth scale. The mom was desperate.
The way the universe works is amazing because she happened to move in as my neighbor. My kids found out there were other kids in the neighbor’s backyard. They legitimately tore a hole in the fence. Finally, one day it was like, “I guess we’ll meet.” She started sharing the story and hearing how I talk about sunlight and health. She was like, “Do you think this will help my son?” I said, “I do. I’ve seen circadian rhythm and sunlight be so transformative to gut health.”
We started applying some simple strategies around when to go outside at key times to get the natural light signaling to touch the earth with bare skin and also blocking artificial light at night. Within three weeks, this kid transformed. He was keeping all of his food down. He was having normal bowel movements. It took months to reestablish growth but you could see that he was pulling in the nutrients.
The hair was growing. The skin was shining. Physical signs of nutrient deficiencies were going away. It was all in response to circadian health because she had done everything else and she was missing this. It was so beautiful to the extent that she wants to become a practitioner in this to help other people with this life-changing experience that she had.
I want to follow up on the bit where you said that our gut health could be linked to our circadian rhythm or rather that it is. Can you tell us more about that and how the amount of sunlight affects that circadian rhythm and gut health?
There are a lot of different ways it does. First and foremost, I want to establish the fact that every cell in our body has a clock built into it. That clock is designed to say, “Based on the time of day that I’m perceiving, I’m going to be optimized for certain tasks.” The gut is no different. The gut is tied to a circadian rhythm. Its circadian rhythm and its function are tied to the central clock in our brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. That is linked directly to the light entering or not entering our eyes. Light enters my eyes. My brain perceives that as a time of day. It oscillates in certain ways to tell time to every cell in my body and my cells sync up their tasks to that. My gut does the same. It’s syncing up all of its tasks and specifically to gut health.
With my background as a clinical nutritionist, I learned in school that it takes about three weeks for the gut to start healing itself. It turns out that when someone has an intact circadian rhythm, the gut can heal itself every 2 to 5 days. It can turn over, repair and regenerate so much faster. What’s missing these days is the fact that the absence of light is the signal to regenerate. Our exposure to so much artificial light at night then limits our gut’s ability to regenerate itself and heal. When we allow that signaling to happen, the melatonin to elevate and the repair to happen when one sleeps, the body could heal so much more quickly.
Is this why we like to eat popcorn during movies or start munching when we’re watching TV? Is it because we’re getting a light signal that’s informing our body and those little clocks in our cells that it’s a different time of day than what it could be outside?
Yes. With that artificial blue light, we get a surge of cortisol. Cortisol is the hormone that signals, “The day is starting. Go fuel yourself. It’s a new day. It’s time to go find food.” We also see the suppression of melatonin. You’re exactly right. There’s so much that ties to the light and we don’t even realize it.
I’ve even heard you say that human beings are in essence like batteries made from water charged by sunlight. Talk to us about that.
This is my favorite topic of all time. I always like to pay homage to people whom I’ve learned these things from. This ties in with the work of Dr. Gerald Pollack, Dr. Jack Kruse, Dr. Alexander Wunsch and Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, some beautiful minds in the space of biophysics or maybe even applied biophysics. The body is made up of so much water. For a while there, all of my learning from both undergrad and graduate school was like, “The water is there,” but it’s not biologically impactful in any way. You know it’s solvent and inert. It’s there.
Open a textbook. Look at a cell sliced in half. It looks like a little pool of water that the mitochondria and organelles are swimming in. It turns out that the water behaves so much in so many ways. It is what allows us to have the level of function that we have as humans. One of the ways we do that is because the water inside of our bodies, specifically the water that the mitochondria make at step four of the electron transport chain comes into contact with a biological surface, which is also called a hydrophilic or water-loving surface. The water then organizes and rearranges itself into a specific molecular pattern that Dr. Pollack has termed “exclusion zone water.”
What I want the audience to picture is hexagons or HSNOs where the Os are at the vertices of these hexagons and the Hs are in between. It’s a very ordered molecular arrangement. For water to take on that very ordered molecular arrangement, it has to kick out hydrogen. What we see is that then when water takes on this ordered exclusion zone form, it has a negative charge, which is very much unlike water in a glass when the Hs and Os are interacting at random. That’s neutral. As we know, hydrogen would be a positively charged entity that’s almost exactly like a proton.
Dr. Pollack’s research showed you could put a little tiny microneedle or a microelectrode in the exclusion zone that’s negatively charged and a little tiny micro electron in the proton zone that’s positively charged and you can light a light bulb. That is how we know. That was the starting point for understanding that the water in our bodies is a source of potential energy that we can use to do work. It looks like it helps with protein folding and unfolding. It helps with optimizing the shapes of cellular receptors and so many things.
We know too that that exclusion zone, that negatively charged battery, that area of negative charge expands in response to certain frequencies of light, specifically infrared light. The sun at any time contains approximately 50% infrared light so it means we can go out into the sunlight, absorb that infrared, which does penetrate deeply into the body and legitimately charge our exclusions on water batteries to provide extra potential energy with which the body can do work.
Going back to the story of that young man at the top of this episode, is it possible that he simply wasn’t getting enough sunlight to not only inform the clocks in his gut about what time of day it was and what needed to happen there but it wasn’t structuring the water properly in his gut? Is that why he wasn’t absorbing the nutrients and all the things?
That potential energy, we say that the only way that we get energy is from food but that’s about 1/3 of the equation and a very important 1/3 of the equation. What we’re designed to do is extract energy. In my essence, energy is electricity, electrons or electron flow. That’s what happens with exclusions on water and earthing.
It is the same thing that also happens when sunlight strikes the skin. You get what’s called a photoelectric effector, a generation of electrons. It’s what happens with movement electron flow. What a lot of people are lacking is the fact that they’re not maximizing their energy efficiency or other sources of energy. When you have a gut that can’t absorb nutrients in food appropriately, that would also be lacking. They all go hand in hand in a healing journey to support a very energy-rich body.
I’m thinking about how most of us live. We’re in front of computers and then we go home from work and we’re watching TV. We’re getting light but it’s not the full spectrum. It’s not the infrared light that the sunlight has to offer.
That’s exactly right. That’s lacking. The two light frequencies that are the most biologically impactful in a beneficial way are the infrared range and the ultraviolet range. Modern living separates us from all of those because those are being omitted from light bulbs. There’s no more infrared in our light bulbs anymore, there was never any UV, to begin with. Modern window glass blocks it as well. The frequency ranges that we were tuned into using for beneficial purposes are missing in most modern indoor environments. Hence why I feel like so many people are depleted in so many ways.
They’re missing in our modern indoor environments. When we go outside, we’ve been told to cover ourselves up, wear sunglasses, wear sunscreen and avoid the UVA and UVB part of the spectrum. If I’m hearing you correctly, you’re saying that’s just as important as the infrared.
It is. We’ve villainized sunlight for a long time. I dove into that research. Why did we villainize sunlight so badly? Back in the day, in the late 1800s or early 1900s, there were two camps of researchers. There were the researchers who were running these heliotherapy or sunlight therapy clinics who were touting like, “Sunlight exposure heals tuberculosis and infection.” All of these beautiful things that they’re like, “It helps with your bone health.”
You then have this other group of researchers that was using arc lamps and studying light in that way. An arc lamp is like a welders lamp, where you get a very narrow portion yet an intense portion of UV light. They were saying, “When we apply UV light to these cells, it mutates the DNA and causes damage.” They were going back and forth at it and you can guess which group ultimately won in terms of “proving” that UV light causes cancer. They were studying UV light outside of its natural spectrum. That makes all the difference in the world. When we apply sunlight correctly, because we have the balance of the spectrum, we could derive so many health benefits from it.
When we apply sunlight correctly, we can actually derive so many health benefits from it.
As I was preparing to talk to you, I was looking at some of your information and resources out there. I noticed that you said that natural spectrum that you were referring to, the whole shebang that the sun offers us. I don’t even think science can necessarily wrap its head around all of the varieties of light that could be in there. As far as we understand it, that natural spectrum you’ve said helps regulate hormonal function. Can you go into detail about how you think this happens? Which hormones are impacted by the sunlight and what they do for our mood, concentration, inflammation and so forth?
There are a lot of different pathways that this happens but the specific range of light happens with the morning light, the changes and how the sun layers itself on with morning light. This is a very key message for people to understand. Sunlight is never stagnant in the blends of colors it has. You have a certain blend that then you add on more with the UV or you add on brightness or intensity as the sun reaches a high point in the sky and then those frequencies start to go away. The sun is ever-changing and it looks like there are a couple of key transitions.
You hit the nail on the head. There’s no way we’re even coming close to understanding what all the frequencies of light do. We’re at the tip of the iceberg. What I can say clinically is it appears as though sunrise is a key time to get outside, if at all possible. I’ve got this dorky little light meter. My kids like using it too. They’re going around the house with it. It’s this meter that you shine it outside and it tells you the exact blend of the colors that are in your environment.
At sunrise, you start to see that the intensity of blue matches the intensity of red and infrared. That’s a signal to kick off this pathway from the hypothalamus that tells the mitochondria to make pregnenolone. Pregnenolone is this master hormone, the steroid pathway, that can become cortisol. It can become all of our sex hormones, DHEA, estrogen, testosterone and progesterone. It kicks off with that light signaling in the brain, step one.
When you said sunrise, I nodded my head because I’m used to getting out on sunrise but I bet some people are like, “Sunrise, is this lady crazy? I never see the sunrise. I wake up so groggily. I either stayed up too late or my baby was crying in the middle of the night.” It’s like you’re talking from another planet about getting that sunrise sun. Maybe instead of reaching for coffee, if we got outside, we would get the right amount of cortisol or that hormone that can generate that cortisol, which would give us energy for the day.
That’s exactly what it is. I find that that’s one shift that people notice pretty quickly. Their need for caffeine in the morning to feel energized shrinks drastically. That’s exactly because you’re making adequate cortisol levels in response to the fact that the brain says, “The day is starting. Carrie needs a lot of energy. Let’s roll and do this.” That’s something that comes into play.
I’m a mom of three so I have found that even on the nights when my kids are waking up because they’re sick in the middle of the night or there are bad dreams or potty breaks, whatever has to happen. When I go outside first thing in the morning, I still get the energy. It’s better than any cup of coffee I could imagine in terms of how it transforms the energy without the crash that you can get from caffeine.
It’s such an underappreciated source of energy that is sustainable and then also it kicks off and coordinates so many pathways because the light’s a signal. You’re getting such an added benefit. Don’t get me wrong. After I go get my sunrise eyes, I still have a cup of coffee. It’s like my little slice of heaven. I do love the taste and the smell that I get in this beautiful coffee. It’s a little morning ritual for me but I don’t rely on it for energy like I used to because I use light in the way that light was intended to be used.
Sunlight is such an underappreciated source of energy that really is sustainable and then also kicks off and coordinates so many pathways because light is a signal.
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This natural sunlight, especially this early morning spectrum of light, can give us energy and wake us up for the day in ways that are perhaps unexpected to most of us, especially if we’re not sunrise risers. I’ve heard you also say that we can get serotonin from the sunlight. Is this particular to the sunrise sun or sunlight anytime?
It’s not particular to sunrise but another key transition in morning light is the appearance of ultraviolet light. There’s a certain time when there’s no ultraviolet light present. If anyone wants to map it out, it’s from when the sun rises to when the sun reaches something called 10 degrees above the horizon. The sun has to rise high enough in the sky for the ultraviolet wavelengths to penetrate the environment. That transition is what I call brain magic time. It’s a little later in the morning but it’s still morning light. What we know is that there’s this massive pool of what we call aromatic amino acids in the eyes. People were like, “Why do we have aromatic amino acids in the eyes? What’s the point of that?”
I was listening to a talk by Dr. Wunsch and I’ve heard talks from Dr. Kruse. It connected all the dots. These aromatic amino acids are called that because they’ve got this ring-shaped structure. What we know is that these ring shape structures are full of electrons. Electrons interact with photons. They capture photons. What does a photon of light have? It has energy. These aromatic amino acids ultimately capture this more intense UV light because the light wasn’t that intense at this point in the morning. As soon as the presence of ultraviolet A appears, these aromatic amino acids get energized or kickstart these cascades to transform them into something else in the pathway.
Something some people might be very familiar with would be tryptophan. It would be one of these aromatic amino acids. In America, we say, “I’m so tired after Thanksgiving dinner because I ate too much turkey. It has so much tryptophan. It makes me tired.” It’s true. It’s groggy. It’s a calming neurotransmitter. It’s why sometimes we might be a little groggy in the mornings. As soon as we receive those energizing UVA rays, that tryptophan gets energized to become serotonin. We build up this serotonin store in the morning. We know the benefits of serotonin in terms of mood, focus and concentration.
Other aromatic amino acids like tyrosine are the same thing. They capture that UVA light. Tyrosine can improve thyroid hormone function so T3 and T4 signaling or release. It can improve the production of dopamine. It optimizes dopamine in the brain. It optimizes norepinephrine or noradrenaline. All of these brain chemicals that we recognize are meant to make us motivated to start our day, feel focused and energized and boost our mood. We get it from light. There are other pathways too. I could go on and on but it’s amazing.
It is amazing because it’s all there for the taking. Yet, Carrie, it’s like we think we have to pop all these supplements and get on the treadmill or keep working even though we’re feeling fatigued and maybe having poor digestion. We don’t realize that this nutrition for our hormones and our entire body is well within reach by stepping outside that front door.
You’re right. When I first got into learning about this, it seemed too good to be true. It’s like I needed to understand this deep level of science for me to be like, “I’ll go outside in the morning.” After three days, I was like, “There is something to this. This is feeling transformative.” It’s amazing but people want a device or they don’t recognize the importance of light beyond maybe making vitamin D. I’m excited to bring this message deeper and farther.
I’m wondering too if we get accustomed to our state of being. I’m saying that because when you’re like, “I’ll go outside,” you sounded begrudging. We’ve all been in that place but our children too when we’re like, “Go outside,” they’re like, “No, I don’t want to.” What is it that makes us resist taking the wonderful opportunity of getting this recharge from the sun?
There are so many things indoors that have a bit of an addictive quality to them, the blue light from the screens themselves or the need for notification of someone liking a post. There are so many things that keep us inside. Also, I don’t think we never lived. I never grew up in a culture that was like, “Go outside because it’s going to be so beneficial to your health.” It was more like, “Go outside. Go play with your friends. It’s summer.” I’d never tied it to health beyond maybe vitamin D twenty years later. I never ever thought it was something that would be beneficial for my body or health.
It’s easy to be comfortable and stay indoors. I don’t know about where you live but in Michigan, people wait for the perfect time to go outside. In Michigan, it’s such a small window of the year. It’s like, “No, it’s too cold in the winter. The springs are still rainy and damp. We’ll go outside in May.” It’s like, “I feel so much better when I go outside.” There are the deeper connections I didn’t make to realize, “I can get that benefit year-round if I prioritize it.”
Let’s talk practically, Carrie, given our internal resistance and our devices calling our name and looking for those likes. Given all of that, what are some simple things we can do to prioritize getting outside? You’ve said, for example, maybe if we work near a window, opening that window up so we get the full spectrum of sunlight. What else can we do?
That’s a great way to go. Also, even first thing in the morning, if you can crack open a window and look outside, the signaling has to be kickstarted. This is the coolest part about this because light signaling in the body works via a process called non-linear signaling. That’s another concept that’s not familiar to us in this world. We’re very much linear in terms of, “If I need to get stronger today, I’m going to do three pushups. Tomorrow, I’m going to do four pushups. The next day, I’m going to do five pushups.” Eventually, I’m going to reach the amount of pushups where I feel strong but I have to keep adding on more.
That’s not the case with how light operates in the body. Light needs the stimulus and the signal, then these pathways get kickstarted and these cascades happen. That’s why I tell people, “30 seconds of the sunrise into your eyes every single day is better than 30 minutes once a month by far.” You just have to kickstart those pathways consistently. Can I tell you something transformative for me too?
Yes, because that’s what I was going to say. Give us some more. Leave the window open and get outside first thing. What else?
Part of my sunrise practice majority of the year is windows cracked open in the car. Can I schedule a phone call outside in the morning at some point as part of my work? Is there a menial task at work that requires me to get a bunch of stuff off of my list but I don’t have to be at my desk doing it? Schedule those and do them outside, even if it’s just for a little five-minute window sometime during the morning. I found pound for pound. People can take a little break during what I call UVA rise which is when the sun is 10 to 30 degrees above the horizon.
There’s an app. It’s called the Circadian app that programs your location on the planet and tells you exactly when that is. I find going outside and prioritizing something outdoors in that window of time like a walk or a phone call. A little bit of stretching to take a break is been key to helping people see shifts or improvements in their health in a smaller window of time.
I’ve heard that all disease has its root in mitochondrial dysfunction. Our mitochondria count on that energy and information from the sun to function properly. Isn’t that right?
Absolutely. I made the connection between UV light and then thyroid hormone optimization. The thyroid hormone dictates a lot of what mitochondria are and how much energetic output they sense and are able to do. The sunlight will help the mitochondria do something called building their membrane potential, which results in more ATP and water production in the mitochondria, which we then structure into that battery of exclusions on water energy. You’re exactly right. There are so many benefits that we can derive from mitochondrial health and more. It just needs to be done consistently. That’s the key.
What’s coming to mind is something a friend told me that people are like plants with more complicated emotions. We see plants stretching toward the window, or the light, wherever they are. The leaves will even turn. Is it the Fibonacci sequence? These things happen with the plant where it’s trying to maximize its solar panels to receive the spectrum of light. Aren’t we the same way? Can you compare somehow photosynthesis and the plant to how we synthesize the light’s information?
We’re very much like plants. Plants are so smart. We could learn a lot from studying plants because when the light is there, they expend energy to be able to get more of it. When the light’s gone, they fold. They’re like, “No need. It’s time to regenerate. We’re not going to waste energy. There’s no need.” We can learn a lot from plants.
The sunlight strikes the skin. We make exclusions on water but there’s melanin pigmentation in our skin as well. This is a whole unexplored path in terms of what’s happening with our exposure and interaction with light. Melanin absorbs all wavelengths of light. Anytime we go outside, if the sunlight strikes our skin, melanin causes a water molecule to split. That water molecule, when it split, derives molecular oxygen, which is an electron donor and molecular hydrogen, which is an electron donor and also a selective antioxidant.
From sunlight exposure on the skin alone, we can start to extract energy from water, which then we can use throughout our body in the same way that a plant splits water as the first of photosynthesis to ultimately make glucose. We do the same things in our bodies in a slightly more complex way. We’ve got more pathways in which we can utilize light beyond photosynthesis. If we can start to understand our bodies in the same way, we have to be more engaged with our light environment to thrive.
We have to be more engaged with our light environment in order to thrive.
Dr. Price even noted in his book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, that a lot of indigenous people would only get dressed when they went into town. Meaning that they had so much skin in the game as Dr. Jack Kruse likes to say. They had so much skin exposed to the sun. They were getting that benefit. This was not the focus of his book but he noted it in his recording of all the people groups he visited around the world.
Even more so than clothing as well, sunglasses are a big topic. It’s a hot-button point that is separating us because even when we’re outside, we’re potentially still blocking the light signaling. I used to love sunglasses. I used to have such sensitive eyes. I had adrenal fatigue. It was more than about but it made my eyes super sensitive to the light. Anytime I went outside, I felt like I would have to shield them.
By shielding my eyes, I wasn’t getting any of those brain-boosting benefits that I talked about earlier. I didn’t feel any better in the light going outside because I wasn’t tripping or initiating those cascades and pathways to make the serotonin, dopamine, adrenaline, noradrenaline and all those feel-good chemicals, beta-endorphin. There are so many things that we can make from light through the eyes.
Sunglasses are one I encourage people to ask themselves what their relationship with sunglasses is and to see if they can take them off at any time when they feel comfortable. I’ve had clients with sun migraines who physically have to start with 30 seconds at a time. They’ve done it and been able to reestablish it.
Is that what you did too to get over your sensitivity?
I started with early morning light because it’s dimmer and more soothing. It didn’t feel as bright to me at all. There came a point where I would wear a hat to shield the intensity of the sunlight but light travels like a wave. It’ll get around the hat and the light signaling will still go into the eyes the way it needs to. I would wear a hat. In the middle of summer, it’s a rare instance that I need any protection for my eyes in the form of a hat just because I’m so accustomed to the light.
I have had so many people say to me, “I’m fair-skinned. It’s easy for you to say I need to get more sunlight but I’m sensitive to the sun.” What do you say to folks like that?
That used to be me too. I used to burn all the time in response to sunlight. It’s because I wasn’t using sunlight appropriately. The typical way that I was applying sunlight back in the day was I’m going to work all day. I owned a gym so I got up early. At 5:00 AM, artificial lights were on. Here I go. I work all day and then on my drive home after work, I would have my sunglasses on as I was driving.
Here comes the weekend. It’s a gorgeous day outside and I’m going to go to the beach or be outside all day. I would fry myself. It’s because the sun is meant to be layered on our bodies. We build what Dr. Kruse calls a solar callous. Once I recognize that if I can slowly and gradually adapt my skin to the increasing amount of light, both from morning to solar noon but also throughout the seasonal variations that we see as well, I tan so well and so do all my kids. I’ve seen this happen time and time again in so many situations where people used to burn until they allowed their skin to adapt to the light.
Beyond those brain chemicals, if we get the light signaling into the eyes, we make specific sun protection factors in our skin. We make urocanic acid, melanin and histamine. All of those things are both sun protection factors. The histamine creates a little pinking response that says, “You’ve received enough direct sunlight for the day. Go ahead and put your cover-up on or whatever it is and get yourself out of the intense direct sunlight.” When we listen to those signals and cue them sequentially, we tan.
I wanted to ask you a little bit about your story because you’ve alluded to the fact that you were not as attuned to the sun when you owned that gym, even though you were trying to live the healthiest life possible. Tell us a little bit about your understanding in this quantum health space of why the sunlight is important and how you grew in that understanding.
I found sunlight because I had tried everything else. What ultimately happened with me is I always had some little health challenges, joint laxity issues and insomnia bouts from my 20s to the age of 30. When I was 30 or 31, I had my first child. I developed the worst fatigue I could imagine. I poo-pooed it. It’s like, “This is a new mom thing. We all feel like this. I can’t keep my eyes open. No big deal.” It kept on getting worse in spite of all my best efforts, including the fact that I went to get a Master’s degree in clinical nutrition to try to heal myself. I was like, “It must be my gut or my food.” I thought my movement was perfect. I thought I was doing everything perfectly.
I’m certain some of the audience can understand this. The horrible feeling was this idea of I’m exhausted during the day and then as soon as I want my body to go to sleep at night, I feel wired. I have insomnia and I can’t get into the deep sleep. I was like, “Why am I not sleeping?” If my kid wasn’t sleeping at the time, I was like, “What’s going on?”
I’m doing exactly what I probably shouldn’t have been doing but I’m grateful I did it at the time. That’s when I stumbled upon one of Dr. Kruse’s blogs. I understood maybe 5% of what I read at the time because it’s such an intense amount of information in a short amount of time. I was like, “Wait a second. No one ever told me that my light environment made any difference, whatsoever.”
I started to dive deep into biophysics and finally, I was convinced, “Let me start doing this.” I started legitimately opening up a little back patio door and looking outside at sunrise. When I would go to the gym in the mornings before sunrise, I would wear blue blockers. In the morning, I would take what I called my circadian walk and all my other trainers there knew. I did legitimately a loop around the block and then I got back into the light that typically coincided with UVA rise.
Within a matter of three days, I felt a difference. Not only in my energy. It’s like this fog and veil got lifted but also, I finally was able to sleep again. I added in blocking artificial light at night and it was such a profound effect in such a short amount of time. It’s when I knew I had to make it my mission to share this with people because it was so transformative and pretty simple too.
It’s interesting for those who have more of a nutrition focus to suddenly realize, “Our food also takes in light information.” This is something Kruse taught me. Our produce, cattle and chickens hopefully are all out on the pasture and they’re getting the sunlight so they’re light transformers for us. It makes sense that we too are light eaters in a sense.
The light plants capture and store that light, which is why certain plants only grow in certain areas. I’ll never be able to grow a pineapple or banana in Michigan. Nothing like that will ever grow in Michigan where I live, even if I try to tend to it in the best interest of the plant because we don’t have the intensity of sunlight to do that here. You’re exactly right. What we eat releases light and it releases the light signature of where it was growing.
That has an impact because those electrons and what we eat ultimately go to the mitochondria. The mitochondria get the electrons as an input but they also get the light as an input and it dictates to those mitochondria. Some seasonal aspects of where we are dictates something called reactive oxygen species production. All of these things can either help the mitochondria in terms of making them more functional, efficient or dysfunctional.
It’s why people have probably heard Dr. Kruse say, “Eating a banana in Boston in the middle of January is the stupidest thing you could do.” I don’t think it’s the stupidest thing you could do. I do understand what we eat is directly tied to our light environment or that’s how it was. We ate things that we found hunted and gathered in our environment.
All the people Dr. Price found around the world are the healthiest people who were eating the food that was from that light environment. They weren’t eating food that was imported from afar. That’s one reason they were thriving probably. This has been a fascinating conversation, Carrie. I want to pose to you the question I like to pose at the end. If the audience could do one thing to improve their health, maybe a small step in the direction of better light hygiene, what would you recommend that they do?
Try to get outside in the morning or open windows. Change your relationship with morning light. Recognize it as such a healing source and try to engage with it as much as possible. Even little bits matter. Even if you think it’s just 30 seconds and it’s not worth it, that’s false. Go outside or get your eyes to the natural light and it can make all the difference in the world.
Change your relationship with the morning light. Recognize it as a healing source and try to engage with it as much as possible. Even little bits matter.
Thank you so much, Carrie. It has been a pleasure.
Thanks, Hilda.
—
Our guest was Carrie Bennett. You can visit Carrie at Carrie B. Wellness to learn more. You can find me and my resources at Holistic Hilda. For a review from Apple Podcasts. Maykaya gave this review with the title Amazing Truth. “I love this as it is very hard to get access to this information in a culture that purposely hides these things. These truths aren’t just our traditions. They are the way mankind has survived for so long. I want to shout this show to the rooftops and share with everyone because of how much I have learned in just a couple of episodes.”
Maykaya, thank you so much for this review. If you’d like to leave us a review, go to Apple Podcasts and click on ratings and reviews. Leave us as many stars as you like and tell the world why you like the show. Thank you in advance. Thank you too for reading. Stay well. Remember to keep your feet on the ground and your face to the sun.
About Carrie Bennett
As a college athlete, supposedly at the pinnacle of health, Carrie began suffering chronic joint issues and insomnia. After her first child was born, she developed debilitating stomach pain, adrenal fatigue, and brain fog. Armed with a BS in Biology, an MS in Nutrition, and certifications as a personal trainer, massage therapist, and breathing coach, she still couldn’t find the root of her issues. That’s when she found quantum biology. Now, as an online educator, clinician, and faculty member of the Quantum Biology Collective and Kalamazoo College, Carrie’s mission is to teach her clients how to create a healing environment by applying quantum health strategies around light, water, electrons, and mitochondrial support. Given these tools, clients who have spent years trying to improve their health—just as Carrie did—finally experience powerful healing and lasting benefits.
Important Links
- Carrie Bennett
- Quantum Biology Collective
- Pluck
- Optimal Carnivore
- Circadian
- Nutrition And Physical Degeneration
- Apple Podcasts – Wise Traditions
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Nancy says
Hilda
Love your podcasts!
Can you help find content from Jack Kruse? His website seems terrible. I signed up for a monthly amount and got no info except a link that doesn’t work on Apple Podcasts.
Your interview with him on this site is very garbled and hard to listen to.
Thank you for alll you do!
Nancy