Sunlight: The Greatest Multivitamin

For decades we’ve been told to put on sunscreen, wear sunglasses, and avoid the mid-day sun. But what if this advice is actually the OPPOSITE of what we should do? Matt Maruca, of Ra Optics, says we need to discard this paradigm and embrace the sun! He explains that sunlight is critical for optimal cellular function. He calls sunlight “the greatest multivitamin ever,” since each wavelength of the sun’s rays benefits the body.

On this podcast, Matt tells his story of how he got into exploring the benefits of the sun in the first place (hint: he suffered from headaches, allergies, gut issues, and more), and he dives into exactly how sunlight helps our bodies work optimally. He also describes his “Light Diet” and offers simple steps we can take to avoid junk light and soak up the sun.

Visit Matt’s website for more on the “Light Diet” and other resources: raoptics.com

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Listen to the podcast here

Sunlight: The Greatest Multivitamin

Episode Transcript

Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda Labrada Gore and the regular text is Matt Maruca.

Put on sunblock. Don’t go outside at midday. Wear your sunglasses. Better to stay out of the sun. What if this common advice has hindered our health? What if we started doing the exact opposite, getting as much sunlight on our bodies as possible? This is episode 332 with Matt Maruca, the Founder and CEO of Ra Optics, a company that makes blue-blocking sleep glasses and screen lenses.

Matt proposes a perspective on sunlight that is quite different from what most of us have heard all of our lives. He suggests that natural light from the sun is necessary for our bodies to function optimally. He calls sunlight the greatest multivitamin ever. He points out how the human body can use every single wavelength of the sun’s rays to improve health. Yes, this includes even the most maligned UV light. He describes what he calls the light diet in this episode and he explains how getting more sunlight nourishes our bodies on profound levels.

Check out TheColdPlunge.com and use the code WISE for $111 off when you make your purchase. Go for it. Take the plunge.

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Welcome to Wise Traditions, Matt.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it, Hilda.

I met you on a beach at Playa Del Carmen at a Dr. Jack Kruse retreat. You were twenty years old and you were the youngest person there.

Probably.

I remember Jack is saying, “This young man is hungry for the truth about quantum healing.” Can you tell us a little bit about your story? What got you interested at such a young age in these matters? The sunshine, for example.

I had tried so many different things in the traditional health and wellness world on my journey. I tried a lot of diets and a lot of supplements. It showed me that we have the power to influence our biology using our environment. It didn’t seem like that was all that there was to the picture. In other words, I knew there was more. Many of the health experts were stopping with functional medicine, food, supplementation and exercise. I thought, “There’s got to be more,” and that’s when I learned about people like Jack Kruse and researchers in Europe talking about light. I dove deep down the rabbit hole and learned that there’s so much more to our body’s function than just the fuel that’s going in. That light and energy have such a critical role.

Did you have any presenting health problems, Matt?

Yeah. When I was younger, I was mostly having headaches daily, chronic gut issues and chronic allergies to pollen and all these sorts of allergies. Low-level chronic issues that thankfully weren’t fatal or anything horrible. It’s enough that I was not happy with how I felt every day. I was tired and I didn’t sleep well. I didn’t even know that that was an issue at the time. It was a bit of a bother for me as a teenager.

What you’re describing doesn’t sound that uncommon to me.

That’s the crazy part about it.

Most teenagers are like, “I need another energy drink. I should have some coffee or I’ll get into exercise.” They’re trying every which way but they’re missing that big yellow orb in the sky.

I was fortunate that I was blessed with curiosity. Once I learned about things like the paleo diet and the concept of epigenetics where we can modify our own gene expression through certain environmental factors, I wasn’t prepared to stop learning until I found something that scratched my itch. It was as if I was born to find something.

The curiosity that you’re describing describes a lot of our readers. I’m excited that they’re reading this blog. Let’s take it from the top. Help us understand how sunlight is a nutrient.

Sunlight is the primary source of energy that powers life on Earth. Life is this beautiful dance of biochemistry, energy and matter in particular and water. The most dominant energy source for life on Earth is the sun. As life evolved out of the depths of the ocean and started coming up to the surface, life began to utilize this big flaming ball in the sky of energy, that free energy that can be used to help catalyze reactions. All of these cool processes were sculpted and driven by light. In other words, it wasn’t that life evolved innately in and of itself. The environment that was present drove certain evolutionary advances to occur.

In other words, having the sun present offered certain wavelengths of energy that could interact in certain ways with different molecules that absorbed those wavelengths of energy and could create life. It’s like a sunlight-driven process, that energy of the sun allowed for certain things to happen. Because there are so many wavelengths in the sun or in the solar spectrum, those different wavelengths can each be used to power different reactions in different processes.

If you look at the human body, you see all these proteins, biomolecules, water and all these things that absorb different wavelengths of sunlight. The more options we had and there’s a lot in the sun that comes to Earth in great amounts, the more complexity we could build. We see that blue light affects and controls our body’s circadian timing, which controls our entire autonomic nervous system, all the vegetative functions, our heartbeat, our breathing and hormone secretions. It’s from blue light wavelengths, a specific range of blue light.

WT 332 | Sunlight Multivitamin — Sunlight Multivitamin: Sunlight is the primary source of energy that powers life on earth. Life evolved out of the depths of the ocean and utilized the power of the sun to help catalyze reactions.

If you look at ultraviolet B, it’s used for vitamin D. If you look at ultraviolet A, that stimulates blood flow and the release of nitric oxide in our blood cells. You can see with red light, it optimizes mitochondrial function. Infrared light causes water to become structured and to hold energy in a special way as per the work of Gerald Pollack in The Fourth Phase of Water. Sunlight is not just a vitamin but it’s the greatest multivitamin ever. If we were deficient in any other vitamins in our diet, if we’re deficient in full-spectrum sunlight, our body can’t work because the reactions can’t be powered the way they need to be.

What you’re saying is amazing because I feel like so many people are like, “I need my vitamin D.” They look at the sun as the conduit for that one thing and they don’t realize that there’s so much more. The thing that I feel like we’re all deficient in is exposure to the sun because we spend most of our time indoors.

There was a cool band of light researchers in the ‘60s and ‘70s and there are still some. They have some predecessors. I’d like to be one of their predecessors because they seem like cool guys, even though I’m not a traditional practicing scientist. I’m more of an interested person and an entrepreneur. Dr. John Ott and his colleagues coined this term called mal-illumination. You can be malnourished but as beings of light, you can also be mal-illuminated, lacking in light. Mal-illumination is the condition you’re referring to that afflicts everyone in the modern world who doesn’t get outside in ample amounts.

You couldn’t have said it better because we’re deficient. We don’t have these wavelengths of light, the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet and the infrared and the ultraviolet, which fill up our stores as a vitamin would. The cool thing about chemistry and biochemistry, people who are familiar with these things can know this because every biomolecule, molecule and atom absorbs certain wavelengths of light.

When the light required by a certain reaction is present and those molecules or atoms can absorb that light, those reactions can proceed more quickly, effectively and efficiently because the products in the reactants have the energy to speed things up. Every single reaction in the entire body effectively can be enhanced by one or another of the wavelengths of light coming from the sun. The great thing to look at is mitochondrial energy reduction.

I can’t help but think of Dr. Price’s book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. He remarked that many indigenous people were unclothed. They would only put on clothes if they were going into town for a meeting or something. In some of the chapters, he talks about that. They were getting the benefits of the sun. What’s funny to me is this conversation might sound crazy to the person who has been told all their life, “Wear sunscreen. Wear sunglasses. Get out of the sun. It causes all kinds of damage.” Why are we getting the opposite message from the powers to be right out about the sun?

There are lots of theories about that. There are conspiracy theories and so on. I like to assume that people don’t have any mal-intent, Hilda. I like to think that maybe it’s ignorance. If we look at the sun, you can see that like anything, if you have too much of it, it can be harmful. Ultraviolet light, for example, is powerful. If you get too much ultraviolet light, you can cause damage to the skin and to the eyes. In the same way, if you don’t get enough, you’re going to have vitamin D deficiency and all sorts of other issues.

We went from living outdoors all the time as humans and not suffering from a lot of these chronic illnesses. We were eating healthy food and we didn’t have as many chemicals. We then went indoors and we change our environment radically. There was a period in the ‘20s when sunbathing became a massive craze. It was after this period in the ‘20s that the scientists started to come in and say, “These people who’ve been getting skin cancer, it’s probably because of sunlight.” We went back indoors and people started avoiding the sun.

In the early 1900s, they were using sunlight in Switzerland in these heliotherapy clinics to cure all sorts of diseases. The 1904 Nobel Prize was awarded for showing that sunlight can be used to cure lupus vulgaris, tuberculosis of the skin. Nonetheless, they did some limited focus studies showing that excess ultraviolet light in huge amounts could cause cancers in different animals. They conclude, “That must apply to humans,” even though it’s an isolated artificial ultraviolet light source in a lab on animals that oftentimes were nocturnal like mice and so on. It’s not conditions that replicate healthy light exposure.

I’m not advocating for anyone who’s gotten cooked themselves and get burnt. It’s about people getting back into nature and getting healthy amounts of exposure. In the news, they’re recalling all these big sunscreens because they’re finding these toxic chemicals in the sunscreen. There have been people in the natural health world talking about this for 30-plus years and all of a sudden, they’re finally catching up. Sunscreen is not a good thing for our bodies. Our body makes sunscreen and it’s called a tan. It’s in melanin and DNA. Our skin cells scatter their DNA upon exposure to ultraviolet light. The top-level cells die, scatter their DNA and it’s a perfect protector against ultraviolet radiation.

That’s a natural system that’s efficient and effective if we dose ourselves properly with sunlight. In those sunscreens, the chemicals are already toxic. They’re absorbing our blood and then they get irradiated by ultraviolet light, which has been shown to make certain non-harmful chemicals carcinogenic once they’re irradiated. They become damaging after being irradiated with strong ultraviolet light. It’s a big mess when we’re talking about sunscreen and sunglasses.

I’ve also understood that when we wear sunglasses, it means that our brain gets a different message than the skin and the brain isn’t getting the message through the eyes to the hormonal glands to protect the skin. The brain, in other words, thinks it’s a different time of day so the skin isn’t getting protected. You’re more likely to get burned when you wear sunglasses than when you don’t.

It’s a good point. I wanted to touch on that as well. I’m glad you brought it up. There’s a great paper that shows that ultraviolet B light passing through the eye is the same range of light that makes vitamin D. When it passes through the eye, it stimulates the production of the alpha-melanocytes stimulating hormone. Alpha-Melanocytes Stimulating Hormone or Alpha MSH for short, is what stimulates melanocytes, the cells in the skin that make melanin, which is the pigment that protects our skin and our eyes from excess light.

In the same way that a chameleon or an animal adjusts its color to the background that it’s on in order to be protected, that stimulus is the light going through their eye. If you put a chameleon or one of these animals on a brown background, you might think they would turn brown. If the space above their eyes is white so they see white then they’ll still stay white even on a brown background. In other words, the signal for the adapt patient, in that case, goes through the eye. It’s the same for us. The stimulus to make the melanocytes is primarily the light coming through the eye.

It’s not necessarily on a moment-to-moment basis, although it is as well, over a period of time, when it’s summertime, the brain gets this constant stimulus of UVB. We make more melanocytes over that time and we’re protected. If we’re wearing sunglasses, we don’t. You’re right. We’re downregulating our body’s natural protective system, which is the most effective and efficient to adjust to the different light levels. We’re slapping on this chemical sunscreen that’s not even fully efficient at protecting our skin and it’s highly toxic on many levels. It is a backward situation and the evidence is there to support this.

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I want to pivot and talk about the light diet. You’ve done a lot of studies, Matt. Talk to us about what you mean by the light diet.

When I learned about all this stuff and I had all these protocols that I was learning from people like Jack Kruse, Dr. Wuntch and Joe Dispenza from a meditation and spirituality perspective, there’s all this great information. I’d have people ask me what do I do and I couldn’t find anywhere to send them to. I put all the things that I learned that in the way I understood them with the research and everything into one place where people could get it. I said, “This is a framework. There’s got to be a name for it.” I decided to call it the light diet because it’s not like a food diet. It’s a diet of our light exposure. It’s the first one that is becoming popular. I decided to go with the light diet.

It was cool that I was able to get the Instagram handle for TheLightDiet. I thought that was funny that that wasn’t used for some reason by anyone else. It was meant to be. The idea is at the core, as energy beings, it’s possible for us to live more on light than on food. Based on my research and what I’ve been learning, the more we can live on light energy, the healthier we can be, the lighter we can be, the happier we can be and even the longer we can live.

This is clear when we look at studies on calorie restriction. Over time, calorie restriction increases lifespan. The thing is calorie restriction could feel like starvation or could be not a pleasurable experience if you’re not also replacing that energy with something. Light is pure free energy from the source. That doesn’t require any of the processes in the body that are responsible for aging. When we process food, we’re taking the light energy out of it but we have to deal with all this matter that encapsulates that light energy.

The process of breaking that matter apart in our cells and in our mitochondria to make energy, that’s what causes aging, oxidation, free radical production and all the things that cause us to age. We repair that every night with melatonin, which is produced with sunlight exposure and then released in the absence of light in the evening. This is why I make blue-light-blocking glasses to protect our brain and eyes from that artificial light, our Sleep Lenses at Ra Optics. We can live on light more and more.

As I learned more about ancient yogis and people in the east who are almost considered supernatural, there are people who have lived purely on light with no food. It’s possible for us all, at least a certain degree in our Western lifestyle, to live more on light, both sunlight and even spiritual light. For example, by meditating more frequently, we can better channel and cultivate our own light, be more efficient in that way and be calmer. We’re leaking less light because when we’re stressed, we’re leaking more light. That way, people need to eat less food, cause less damage to their cells, gain less weight and ultimately be happier and healthier. That’s what the light diet is all about.

It’s resonating with me, no energy pun intended. I’ve experienced some of this energy that I get from the sun that I feel so good. My mitochondria are functioning properly and they’re feeding off that energy. When you’re talking about spirituality, it also makes me think of what Jesus said at one point when his disciples were going to get some food or something, “I have food that they know not of,” or something like that. Maybe it was this thing. Talk to us about how we might get started in moving in this direction of taking more energy directly from the source.

I turned the protocol of the light diet into a simple video course with enough science that anyone can get but more focused on what do you do. That’s on RaOptics.com. I can recommend people go check that out if they want to see the whole thing. The simplest things so that people can apply and get the majority of the results are getting outside and starting to get morning sunlight exposure.

You’re familiar with this, of course, Hilda. Ideally, watching the sunrise as per your sunrise sunset challenge that you’re doing. If people can sun gaze even at sunrise and sunset for about 20 to 30 minutes, I do it every day, depending on which coast I’m on. I’m on the Pacific Coast now so it’s easier for me to get a sunset. That’s when I’ll sun gaze. Sunrise is a little harder but I’ll still go catch the sunrise and get the morning light. It’s just the horizon is not quite as perfect. It’s doing that each day at sunrise, sunset ideally. If someone can’t see both sunrise and sunset because that might be hard for people, get out for 15, 20, 30 minutes in the morning and 15, 20, 30 minutes in the evening. That’s a great start.

What I recommend people do is begin sunbathing as well during the middle of the day, especially in the summertime where there’s the abundant sun for several months in the Northern Hemisphere. If you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s the dead of winter. Sunbathing depends on people’s skin tone and how tan they are. Their skin tone is their ethnicity, background and whether it’s African, equatorial, tropical or temperate like Northern, lighter skin, for example. People need to find the right dose and start with maybe 2 to 3 minutes and add 2 to 3 minutes per day.

If you have dark skin or already tan skin, you can maybe start with 5, 10, 15 minutes on each side of the body and get a session as close to the middle of the day as possible 11:00, 12:00, 1:00 but don’t burn. That’s the key. That’s why I recommend if someone has light, pale skin, start with 1 or 2 minutes on each side of the body and build that up. As you know, the morning and the evening are more red and infrared light, more of those healing wavelengths and also has the change in the blue light to set our circadian rhythm, which is beneficial.

The reason for the middle of the day, in addition to the morning and the evening, the benefit of this is that ultraviolet B is the strongest. The sun is the strongest overall. For people that have the shortest possible amount of time in the sun as a whole, for those concerned about any risks of skin damage or aging, usually, UVA light is attributed for this photoaging if you get too much of it over time. Although, we’re talking if you’re overdosing. If you’re getting reasonable amounts, it’s only going to keep your skin and everything looking nice, tan, healthier, supple and everything.

The reason that midday sun is so great is that you can get the smallest amount of time in the sun and the biggest benefit as far as ultraviolet goes. Whereas at 9:00 AM or 4:00 PM, you might have to spend an hour to get as much vitamin D. You could spend 10 minutes or 15 minutes in the middle of the day or even 5 minutes. I recommend people do it morning, midday and evening. That’s a key part as far as the light goes.

As far as the food goes, this is where it starts getting interesting. We have to be careful about our food consumption because this affects our circadian rhythm and our energy as well. As I’ve studied this more, I’ve been learning about Ayurveda, Eastern-Indian medicine and the way they’ve known to eat to maximize health, lightness and everything.

These are general recommendations. People could consult with an expert physician in Eastern medicine or something if they want to have more tailored recommendations. Generally, the best practice would be to eat a lighter breakfast when the sun is getting stronger, something lighter earlier in the morning and then have the majority of calories in the middle of the day when the sun is the strongest. Between approximately 11:00 and 1:00 or 10:30 and 12:30, in that window, that’s when our body is most primed for digestion.

Maybe there’s a snack but assuming someone has three meals a day, maybe even two then dinner should be a lighter meal because if someone eats a big, heavy dinner, even if you eat it at 4:00, the body’s still going to be metabolizing that big, heavy dinner. It’s better that dinner be a lighter meal in general and then ideally, depending on when the sun goes down, I recommend people shouldn’t eat much food within 3 to 4 hours to bed. If someone is going to bed at 9:00, maybe try to stop eating before 6:00 or 5:00. That’s a generally good rule of thumb because then when we go to sleep, we can be super light and mostly digested and our body can focus on repair rather than digestion.

Tell me if this is true. Someone once told me that melatonin is a hormone that not only oversees our sleep but also digestion. The hormone has to pick which it’s going to do. If you ate late, for example, it’s going to focus on digestion and your sleep won’t be as profound. Is that right?

I’m not familiar with melatonin as ruining digestion. I’d have to look into that a little bit. What it is doing is it’s responsible for cellular repair and scavenging free radicals. We naturally produce free radicals in the process of digestion, aka metabolism. Melatonin is going to have a key role in that process as well. Regardless, there is truth in it because our body does have to pick. Is it going to be focusing on digestion or is it going to be focusing on repairs? Yes, in a sense, there’s truth to that statement.

It’s important because if you eat a big dinner like the Spanish or the Italians do at 9:00 PM or 10:00 PM, you’re not getting any high-quality sleep. One of the things I wondered is, “These whole cultures of Italians and Spanish people, how do they all do this? They seem to be relatively healthy and okay.” If we look at disease data and we look at things like this, these aren’t cultures necessarily that are super healthy. Maybe they were 100 years ago when they were in a more natural environment and everything. Now, most cultures in the world have a lot of health issues. Except those that are super connected to nature and living outdoors in the sun, they typically do well. These are general recommendations but this is how people can get started if they wanted to.

I am thinking about when I was in Spain and Italy. I remember seeing a lot of people smoking and I thought, “How are they staying healthy while they’re smoking?” The other thing I noticed, Matt, is they do have more of a culture of being in the sun. The men look tan and well. They were also eating a lot of real food. It’s interesting. There are so many factors. I’m glad you’re talking to us especially about the sun. I wanted to ask you, have you heard about people who are allergic to the sun, who get rashes and stuff? Do you have any idea what that’s about?

I have. That’s not something I’ve researched a ton into as to why people have these responses but it is a subject of interest and I’m going to look into it a little bit further. There are people whose bodies are sensitive and disrupted. In other words, you can find someone who’s allergic to anything. Not that anyone would necessarily use that as a case to say, “The sun is bad.” Anyone like that, I would naturally recommend that they start simple. They stay out of the sun, of course, if it’s causing a reaction and they start trying to lower down whatever that inflammatory response is in their body.

Anyone in that situation, their body must be in such a high state of inflammation for the sun, which is generally healing and beneficial to be a trigger. Their body is in a rough spot. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone like that, if they got an early morning or late afternoon sun, the response could be significantly less. I can’t say for sure. The midday sun with ultraviolet is intense. Even for someone who’s healthy, it can be a lot. It can be strong and stressful on the body.

We were talking about artificial light. I also read John Ott’s book, Health and Light, which I thought was fantastic. In there, he talks about how as the natural light heals us, the artificial light hurts us. You mentioned your Ra Optics blue-blocking glasses, what are some other things we can do to avoid the damage that comes from light that isn’t natural with all the spectrum and all the goodness that it gives us?

Some of the simplest things are during the day, if we can work outdoors and do more of the things that we do on a daily basis outdoors, that’s a good start. Office buildings would be something I’d recommend avoiding. If you have to be in one, I would wear, for example, a pair of our Screen Lenses for daytime use when you’re exposed to artificial light. You can also do what I have on my computer here, a software that takes out the blue light is Iris.

The reason I don’t wear my Screen Lenses when I’m on most podcasts is that I have the full spectrum of infrared and full spectrum light coming through this open big screen door behind my computer. That’s giving me a big benefit. I wouldn’t want to be blocking that infrared with the Screen Lenses. I would only wear them if I had to be encapsulated in an office or something like that, which thankfully I don’t have to be. I wear my Sleep Lenses every night when the sun goes down because they’re going to protect my circadian rhythm if I’m going out into the wild or the streets. That’s what I use at night.

In the wild, there wouldn’t be the blue light that would interfere with your gland and all that. The only light our ancestors had was the fire.

I’m joking when I say in the wild. I don’t mean the concrete jungle. You’re right, in the wild, we wouldn’t have this stuff and that’s why it’s so relevant. During the day, that’s what people can do. Open the windows and letting the full spectrum because even windows block this full spectrum. Get outside and be outside more, even take sun breaks every hour and get a little quick sunbathe like people take cigarette breaks. Take a sun break.

At night, it’s particularly important. Even during the day, the imbalance spectrum from fluorescent, artificial light sources and LEDs is disruptive to the body. The main issue with it is it’s mal-illuminating. In other words, it’s not so much that the light is bad. The act of being awake for eight hours under fluorescent lighting is a trick to the body. It’s like stealing from Peter to pay Paul as the analogy goes because our body is awake and carrying out all the processes of metabolism. It doesn’t have that full power. All of the vitamins and the wavelengths of the sun to power that wakefulness and that conscious state. There’s a big amount of stress that’s occurring in that system that’s awake and functioning but under artificial light sources.

People need to go out and get even a short dose of sun to fill up their stores. That would be a huge thing that people can do. At night, besides wearing, for example, sleep lenses, like what we make, people can use any firelight or candles at their house or red lights, which is something we’re also developing healthier lighting for people’s homes and stuff. Even candles, fire or cheap red lights on Amazon are better than nothing.

I have to be honest with you, sometimes I wear my blue blockers and I feel like I look weird. Don’t these things make us seem different?

I appreciate you asking. I was concerned about that when I was first wearing them. I was in high school so I’m particularly concerned about people’s opinions about me and so on, at least I was like most high schoolers. Once I embodied all this information and I knew that this is the truth, I thought, “If this is true, I’m going to use these and I’m going to improve my health and then I’m going to have the results. Eventually, maybe from living the truth as best as I can, if it’s true, people will be interested. They’ll want to learn more and they’ll want to know what it’s about.”

Now, I don’t even think about it. I wouldn’t want to go out at night without my Sleep Lenses on because I know it’s going to affect my body’s circadian rhythm to a certain degree, depending on what kind of light I’m exposed to. I get people asking me all the time, “Those glasses are so cool,” because we make cool frames. People are like, “Your glasses are so cool. Those are awesome. Where can I get those? What’s that about?”

People are often more interested in fashion because they don’t know that there’s a health reason but then when they asked, “What’s the deal with that?” I explain and they’re like, “I never would have thought. That’s amazing.” It’s like a performance-enhancing drug that isn’t even a drug. It’s just a pair of lenses that affects the light passing through your eye that affects all your hormones, glands and circadian rhythm. It’s cool.

They become used to it but they have no idea that it may be related to their light hygiene if you will.

I’m with you on that. I’m glad you’re talking about this and it’s awesome that you’re open to this subject. Even in the advanced alternative wellness world, there’s not a lot of people who are saying, “Let’s look beyond food and supplements and see what else is out there.” People get stuck like I was as a young kid, who had all the time in the world to try all the diets and try all the supplements and wasn’t quite clicking. When people realize that there’s more to it, things start to get interesting.

For me, it was cool too as I’ve learned about this and the light diet, as we talk about living more on the light. I’ve become spiritual looking at this because I’ve read all these books that imply that our body is energy. These are Western textbooks on science and research from Russia and Germany over the last 100 years or so that our body is electromagnetic. We’re beings of light. I couldn’t help after reading his books. I was super atheist growing up and all this but I’m thinking, “These things that have been considered crazy, like people being able to heal people with their hands by channeling energy through their hands. People being able to telepathically communicate their thoughts through the field and energy. Maybe it’s not impossible.”

These researchers are saying these things that we thought were possible. There might be a basis for this. We don’t know but it’s not impossible. It opened me up, “These things that have been considered crazy woo-woo by all these Eastern masters for Millennia, maybe there is a basis for this and we should investigate this.” People could benefit from meditation practices and things like this. There are lots of people who practice tai chi, qigong, meditation, acupuncture, Reiki, you name it and they get great benefits.

Western science still says, “That’s woo-woo and that’s unscientific.” In reality, science is the process of questioning established beliefs to try to get at a deeper understanding. It’s ironic because those who claim to be scientific are the ones who are not practicing true, genuine, honest science. They’re completely blinded by the system that requires them to think a certain way to continue to get grant money.

It can be distressing. In the foundation, we often say science is catching up to traditional wisdom. Sooner or later, it comes around and they start realizing, “There’s a reason.” There was the sunlight cure written in the 1800s and whatnot. Florence Nightingale was taking notes about how the patients would turn toward the window even if they were lying on their hurt side. There’s all this documentation from the past if we just open our eyes to it. I’m grateful that we’ve had this conversation. I have two questions to ask you as we start to wrap up. One is, you were talking about all the problems you had as a teenager and your health issues. Where are you now with your health personally? Has the light helped you?

It’s helped a lot. I’ve never felt better and I’ve never been more vibrant. I attribute it mostly to adding on to the light protocols and starting to do more inner light work as I call it. Step eight of the light diet, which are eight steps, is to cultivate our inner light. These are things like meditation. I’ve been following the work of a guy named Dr. Joe Dispenza who you may be familiar with. He’s amazing. He’s an expert on explaining meditation with science and teaching it scientifically with Western research that’s available now about the subject. That’s been awesome to dissolve old belief systems that were keeping me in a state of fight or flight.

I’ve learned that no matter how perfect our outer light environment is, even though it supports physical health if we’re stuck in old patterns, our inner light is incoherent and that causes huge issues. That’s why it’s an essential piece of the light diet, maybe the most important I might argue at some point in the future, that we cultivate our inner light. Things have been good for me. I have scarcely any of the symptoms I had in the past. It’s a progression of seeing how much better can I feel, how much more I can increase my physical abilities and so on.

That’s great to know. Did you shave your head to get more sunlight? Do we have to do the same?

I did. Was my head shaved or was my hair short when we last met?

No, it wasn’t. You did it after I saw you.

Since then, I had shaved my head. It was because I went to Bali, Indonesia and I want a fresh start. I shaved my whole head. I did do it to see what it would feel like to get more sun on my scalp. It was short-lived because as soon as it started growing back, I didn’t want to keep shaving it. I wanted to let it grow. The hair is long. It’s 2.5 years now of growth without cutting it. It’s down past my shoulders now for those who can’t see. It’s interesting, the Egyptians would do the same thing. They were reported to have strong skulls. I don’t think we have to shave our heads but it’s interesting that that is something that was done by an ancient culture for reputed health benefits.

I know this is inspired me to get outside more and I already get outside a lot. When you were talking about overdoing our sunlight exposure and possibly getting burned or hurting ourselves, that reminds me of people who complain to us sometimes about vitamin A toxicity. They’re like, “You guys are pushing too much vitamin A.” It’s hard because we’re so deficient in vitamin A. For me to imagine people getting too much of it, to be honest, is rare when that happens. It’s most likely that people need it desperately and aren’t aware that they do. That’s where we are with the sun. That’s my little side commentary. If the reader could do one thing to improve their health that may be related to our conversation or something else, what would you recommend that they do?

I would recommend more than anything that people cultivate a meditation practice to cultivate their inner light. Of course, that’s closely tied with going outside and standing in the sun for about fifteen minutes early in the morning to let the light hit their eyes and their skin to set their body’s rhythm and feel how those things feel. Do the meditation while you’re standing in the sun letting the light hit your eyes and skin, even better.

Thank you, Matt. This has been a great conversation.

Likewise. Thank you, Hilda.

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Our guest was Matt Maruca of Ra Optics. Visit his website RaOptics.com to check out their glasses and his light diet course. I’m Hilda Labrada Gore. You can find me at HolisticHilda.com.

About Matt Maruca

Matt Maruca is a researcher, educator, and entrepreneur in the field of photobiology: the study of light in health. He is the founder and CEO of Ra Optics, which makes the world’s most advanced Screen and Sleep Glasses for protecting and optimizing our health in the modern world. He loves to travel, to learn, and to live with love. Learn more at RaOptics.com.