What follows is a transcript for the podcast The Science of Light - Matt Maruca - Mitochondrial Health.
Topics within the interview include:
- The effects of light on epigenetic expression
- How light drives mitochondrial functions
- The definition of “junk light” and how it impacts our health
- Full-spectrum light vs. natural light?
- Why circadian rhythms are the foundation of life
- The role of blue light blocking glasses in our vision health
How Chronic Illness Prompted Matt Maruca's Quest to Learn More About Mitochondrial Function
Dr. Dan Stickler: Welcome to the Collective Insights Podcast. I'm Dr. Dan Stickler, I'm the medical director here at the Neurohacker Collective, and I've got a really exciting show for you guys today. I get to interview Matt Maruca. Most of you guys know Matt, that are listening in, I'm sure, but this is going to be a really fun interview. He's a researcher, entrepreneur, and educator in the fields of photobiology, mitochondria, and optimal human health, and the founder of Ra Optics. This is a company known for producing the world's finest blue light blocking glasses, and we're going to get into what makes those really the go-to for blue light blocking.
Matt also created The Light Diet. It's a diet that directly addresses the root of the modern chronic disease epidemic and mitochondrial dysfunction. And so, we're going to talk a little bit about that as well. Matt now spends most of his time traveling the world studying and teaching about the relevance of light in human health cycles with a focus on reversing this situation, as well as integrating science with ancient Eastern wisdom. So, welcome, Matt.
Matt Maruca: Thank you so much for having me.
Dr. Dan Stickler: Yeah, I'm excited to dive into this. This is a topic that I get a lot of questions about in my medical clients. They're always asking me a lot of questions around the timing of using the blue light blocking glasses, which ones are the best? And how much should we use these? And does it matter if we watch TV? And all of that. So, we'll get into all of that, but I wanted to dive in right at the start and really talk about, what's behind you? What's your passion? What prompted you to create Ra Optics?
Matt Maruca: Yeah. Well, thank you for asking, Dr. Daniel. What basically happened in my own life was just a series of challenges that led me to want to dig a little bit deeper. So, I was having gut issues, allergies, headaches, and all sorts of just fairly debilitating chronic issues at a really young age, between third grades, around eight years old and onward, and I came to accept that my genes control my destiny and I couldn't really do anything about this. And I listen to some of your amazing interviews like London Real where you speak about epigenetics, and it resonates with me so much because what I started to learn about was epigenetics when I came across the paleo diet in an sort of an accident way trying to actually clear up some acne that I was having as a adolescent teenager.
And so, I read this word, epigenetics, on Mark Sisson, Mark's Daily Apple, Primal Blueprint Blog, and I just completely had this light bulb go off like, "Oh, my gosh, I can change my genes through my environment." And so, at the time, I thought it was all about food, and I got really deep into all sorts of different food-focused approaches to optimize health, which ultimately gave me a ton of improvement and further convinced me that this was possible, but I hit some basically walls and obstacles along the journey where I felt like I plateaued, I couldn't really advance with just food alone no matter how strict I went.
I went basically carnivore seven years ago before it was cool, GAPS diet, the whole thing, and no matter how strict I was, I found myself really struggling with these diets, and I wasn't really noticing myself feeling any better like I had with the original shift to a paleo diet from a really refined food-based diet. And ultimately, I came across this whole body of research of circadian rhythms, mitochondria, photobiology, light, how it influences our body, and ultimately came to understand that mitochondria are one of the primary mediators of epigenetics in our body because they're the direct link between our environment, energy production, and then mitochondria regulate genetic expression because the energy required to express the genes is generated by the mitochondria.
So, this was fascinating. And when I learned just how important light is for regulating the basic things like our circadian rhythm, which regulates mitochondrial repair via, for example, melatonin production and so on, it just started to click that this is so much deeper than just food and things like this, which are also, again, really important, but that there's this whole other world that's hardly explored to date.
And ultimately, it led me much further towards a path of almost like a spiritual quest, because once I learned that there's so much going on in our body in regards to light and electricity and bioelectromagnetism, that's been researched for decades, it started to open up the path towards a deeper understanding of these ancient Eastern principles of, whether it's yoga, or meditation, or Kundalini, or all these different things that have been spoken about and have been dismissed as woo-woo despite wondrous healings and all sorts of amazing things happening over the last few thousands of years with those practices. So, that's my background, and I want to share this information with the world as much as I can.
The Effects of Light on Epigenetic Expression
Dr. Dan Stickler: I love that, and you're speaking my language with the epigenetics and the Eastern practices. That's something we've been really delving into quite a bit. Now, I am curious because I teach epigenetics and I have not really dug into any studies on the effects of light on epigenetic expression. Have you found any literature on that? Is anybody doing that research right now?
Matt Maruca: To be honest, there's not. It doesn't seem like, again, based on my research, that there is a ton directly showing how light affects genetic expression. There are bits and pieces here and there. There's a really amazing textbook called Light Shaping Life: Biophotons in Biology and Medicine, which is not quite exactly directed towards epigenetics, but it's more generally focused on how light is playing a very fundamental role in things like mitosis and other very fundamental cellular processes which henceforth were not... it wasn't very well understood, the mechanisms of these things. And it turns out that according to the research, which was done pretty thoroughly, that cells always pulse a little bit of extreme low frequency ultraviolet light before they're dividing.
So, ultimately, this is sort of an example of light functioning inside of the body. There's a lot of evidence indicating that light, for example, blue light at night can disrupt melatonin production, and that, of course, there's a good amount of literature on melatonin disruption or things of this nature being harmful to the body because, well, melatonin is scavenging, damaging free radicals, and so, if we don't have as much melatonin, of course, the mitochondria can't function at their highest level. And then, of course, there's the effects of the circadian rhythm on, or I should say sunlight and sunrise and early morning sunlight and afternoon sunlight, which you may be familiar with.
You might even be friends with Dr. Andrew Huberman from Stanford, he's been talking a lot lately about circadian rhythms and the effects of light. So, ultimately, even though the literature isn't as strong as I'd like it to be, one day, I'd like to maybe create a foundation through Ra Optics and really dive into the research on light. There's a lot of pieces that can be tied together to understand that light so profoundly impacts so many aspects of the biology of biochemistry, that ultimately affect things like the mitochondria, affect things like sleep, which have been shown to have effects on our genetic expression and so on, and so the repair and so on. So, yeah.
Dr. Dan Stickler: Yeah. And when you look at it, you can look at the fact that we do know epigenetics disruptions or impacts from circadian disruptions, from sleep disruptions, from even melatonin secretion or non-secretion. And these are all things that we know have an impact on gene expression. So, we've got the indirect effect for sure, but yeah, it'd be great to start seeing some studies that look at the direct effect of such like blue light exposure and UV exposure, and just see what kind of results are actually taking place there.
Matt Maruca: Absolutely.
Dr. Dan Stickler: Because it's, I mean, it's definitely an impact on a system. I see it in the responses from clients that actually go through this. So, can you give us kind of a, let's assume that we have listeners that aren't really familiar with the term photobiology, can you give us a high-level overview of what that means?
What is Photobiology?
Matt Maruca: Yeah, absolutely. Well, just to be clear as well, I'm not a PhD, or when researcher is in my bio, it's more like a citizen scientist sort of researcher who looks up and sees what's happening. Like you've said, you do your reading hours a day on PubMed and things like that. That's something that I'm constantly digging into the different research on light and so on. But basically, photobiology is the study of how light affects biology. Photo is a Greek word meaning light, same route as photography, and biology is obviously life. So, photobiology is just simply the study of how light affects life.
And there are many, many facets to it. Some people are studying red and infrared light, some people are studying ultraviolet light, some people are studying blue light, some people are studying the whole spectrum of light. So, there's lots of different facets of it, and lots of different researchers active today, as well as over the last 100 years, but that's just basically what photobiology is.
Dr. Dan Stickler: Yeah. Something you said right there at the beginning of that was, you're kind of a citizen scientist, and I have a great deal of respect for the self-taught people. One of the advantages of that is that you can look at things from a different perspective than the people who have established personal deep knowledge through education and training that has been delivered to them, not that they've done on their own. And it can sometimes bite you. In fact, we're big fans of being deep generalists, so, maintaining a wide spectrum of knowledge while still having deep knowledge in an area.
And, well, as soon as you become an expert, you basically have limited yourself. It means you're done learning and that you know everything. And that is death to me for the growth of a scientific and questioning mind. So, I have a great deal of respect for people that go through that. I mean, what I do now has very little to do with what I learned in medical school, most of it was self-taught myself.
Matt Maruca: Yeah. Well, thank you. I really appreciate that. And again, I disclaim to people that as not being formally trained in, for example, medicine or things like that. I'm not a medical doctor. But, again, I appreciate you shedding some light on that, because I do think people have often handed away our power to someone with a bunch of letters after their name, who often are very intelligent people, but ultimately, there are many who, just like you said and alluded to, that really just become biased. And I've met many, many PhDs, especially young PhDs who think they know everything just because they graduated college and did their thesis and everything, and they're not very open-minded to things, even like science that's very well established like blue light disrupting circadian rhythms and the benefits of, for example, blue light blocking glasses or things like that.
So, it is cool for people to know, I think that people can go out and research and make their own decisions and understand what's happening.
Dr. Dan Stickler: Yeah. And to me, they actually make better clinicians in a sense because they have not been so entrenched into one area where they're hearing everything from one field. People like you and I are more of complexity thinkers where we can have knowledge in other areas and say, "How does this relate to what's going on in there?" Not, "Okay, this is the narrow focus we have because the human system works in that way with interactions among all different inputs into it." So, kudos to you on that one.
Matt Maruca: Thank you. Yeah.
Defining Junk Light
Dr. Dan Stickler: Tell me a little bit about the term junk light, and how is that an impactful spectrum for us?
Matt Maruca: Yeah, it's super interesting to me. I don't know who came up with the term junk light, but it does a decent job. It's not that old. I mean, someone in the biohacker health communities threw it out and it sort of caught fire. It's not my favorite term, I more just refer to artificial light or basically natural light, which is full-spectrum sunlight versus artificial or man made light or electric lighting which is artificially produced or produced by men. And by its nature at present, most electric lighting is produced with a significantly different spectrum from that of the sun, just because of the challenges of recreating the solar spectrum, as well as the lack of awareness of potential benefits of doing so.
But so, I typically start more with a focus on why sunlight is so essential from my understanding and research for the body, and as well as my own experience. And basically, if we look at human evolution, even though life, based on some really advanced theories that I ascribe to myself, life began at these alkaline hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean. You may have read Dr. Nick Lane's work like, for example, I actually forget the name of... It's called The Vital Question was the book where he goes through these theories, and he's the main guy researching how life began. But anyway, life did begin supposedly at the bottom of the oceans in these vents with lots of infrared light energy, as well as all sorts of chemical reactions going on, but ultimately, life moved towards the surface of the ocean and then onto land, different pieces of life did, and began to utilize sunlight energy as if essentially what we could call free energy source to drive evolution.
So, our life is both catalyzing reactions between, for example, carbon and hydrogen at the early stages, and that's how it's generating energy and it's this sort of self-perpetuating reaction. Ultimately, energy is the currency of life. And so, when we're exposed to this sunlight energy, it makes almost intuitive sense that life would assimilate this light and use it to further its ends, so to speak, and advance, and grow, and develop. We still obviously use energy for everything we do, and that's why we have these mitochondria that produce our energy. So, anyway, sunlight allowed for a very high level of biological evolution. If the sun weren't shining on Earth, first of all, it's debatable whether life would have ever existed, but ultimately, we can look today at living organisms and see that definitively, we utilize so many different wavelengths of light that's contained in the solar spectrum.
So, rather than just looking at the theory of evolution and so on, we can actually see, plants, animals, and so on, we have all of these chromophores in our body that are these basically molecules and pigments and all sorts of things that absorb light. And it seems to be the case that almost every single biomolecule, just like most atoms and pretty much all atoms in nature, absorb and re-emit certain spectra of light. And in the same way, the molecules that are made from those atoms and the biomolecules from those molecules in our bodies absorb and re-emit certain spectra.
So, all that's to say, my sort of understanding and belief at this point based on the research I've done is that every single biomolecule in the body is actually tuned in a sense to a certain wavelength of light coming from the sun, and that our biology has basically figured out how to utilize the tremendous number of different wavelengths of light just in the narrow band of solar light that does reach Earth, but there're still tons of different wavelengths, we figured out how to use this light to carry out and enhance a lot of different processes. For example, ones that are very commonly known and very well-researched today is the interaction of red light with cytochrome c oxidase in our mitochondria.
How Light Drives Mitochondrial Function
Matt Maruca: It's been shown very clearly that red light improves mitochondrial production of energy and ATP, and increases its efficiency, and so on and so forth. So, this is just one example of where light from the sun is being utilized by biological systems, the mitochondria specifically, to really improve energy production. And so, when people say, "Let's do some red light therapy and improve our mitochondrial function," for me, it's given that in nature, we would have this benefit that we've evolved with from the sun constantly optimizing our mitochondrial function. But today, now, we don't really have it because we've all moved to this indoor technology-based lifestyle where we're really deficient in red and near-infrared light. That's just one example.
We can look at, obviously, plants directly photosynthesize and create sugar from sunlight and carbon dioxide and so on. And plants are obviously taking advantage of sunlight. There's other research that's very fascinating that I'm actively diving into more and more, which is this idea that humans actually are able to photosynthesize to a certain extent. Ben Greenfield actually turned me on to this book called Melanin, the Master Molecule, by a guy out of Mexico city, a doctor down there, basically theorizing that utilizing sunlight and melanin, we split water and basically generate a ton of free energy in the form of electrons from the water molecules that are split.
And this is a bit more, I'd say, kind of edgy science out there, but there's a lot of both more forward-thinking science and more established research that just continues to compile showing that, wow, we are really these beings of light. And so, to go to the question of junk light then, as a being that evolved with this full spectrum of light that powers us huge variety of different reactions in our biochemistry, including those as foundational as energy production, when we remove ourselves from that exposure to that light throughout the year, whether it's winter, there's still good sunlight coming through in the winter, even on a cloudy day, there's still a good amount of light, even if it's 30% of what's normal on a bright blue sky day, or in the summer when there is a lot more light, we're getting this benefit throughout the year.
But we've moved totally into an indoor lifestyle, where we're behind walls, windows, and so on, and these basically block, especially windows, I mean, walls block light completely, but windows, even though they let some light in, and we have to use windows because if you put people in a dark room that would be like solitary confinement, people would get tired and fall asleep and not be able to function. So, just that alone shows light's very important. We put these holes in our walls so that we can get light in to stay awake and feel good. And any room that's only artificially lit is typically a very stressful and not happy place to be, it's like a dungeon, like a courtroom, or like a big study hall for students in a university, that it's underground. These are just not fun places to be.
So, we move inside and we basically deprive ourselves of these wavelengths, again, many of which are studied, many of which have yet to be studied, that affect our body in so many different ways, and the body starts to devolve and function at a lower level. And this is where I would tie this to epigenetics because what happens when we are depriving ourselves of the red and near-infrared light that optimizes mitochondrial function and optimizes the structure of the water in our cells, the mitochondria will be, as a result of producing energy less efficiently, there's some evidence to show that mitochondria will be producing more free radicals in this case, or more reactive oxygen species in this type of situation, again, largely due to the lack of red and near-infrared light, and the increase, typically, in blue light exposure in these situations.
There's some published data indicating that blue light exposure increases reactive oxygen species production, specifically, isolated blue light. And so, what this does, and this is getting a bit scientific, but that's causing mutations in mitochondrial DNA, which is the study of Dr. Douglas Wallace, who's huge epigenetics and mitochondrial researcher out of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, basically, this issue that's happening is causing our... it's basically accelerating the process of aging by mutating mitochondrial DNA. And melatonin's supposed to scavenge and solve that problem of us being indoors, but what happens is, we're blocking the natural production of melatonin by exposing ourselves to more blue light, not just during the day, but at night, and then we are not repairing the damage that we've done throughout the day as a result of both normal energy production and hindered energy production when we're indoors.
And so, again, that's a bit scientific and long-winded, but ultimately, it's this, fundamentally, I think, the biggest risk of junk light is that it's tricking us that we can be indoors and not have sunlight and function at anywhere near the level biologically as if we are outdoors in light. So, it's a pseudo-replacement for full-spectrum light, that with using blue light, tricks our brain to just keeps secreting cortisol and keep us awake and alert without having the rest of the spectrum, especially, again, that red and near-infrared, to power the energy production, help support in the energy production processes. So, I look at it, again, like an engine or a fire that's burning with more smoke, and smoke being reactive oxygen species, versus a fire that's burning clean, which I would liken to when we're functioning in full-spectrum sunlight.
So, I hope that makes sense and answers the question. This artificial light can be really problematic for our body.
Can Full-Spectrum Light Replicate Natural Light?
Dr. Dan Stickler: And it brings up a lot of questions from... there's a lot in that statement that I want to jump back to. A lot of people will ask me, specifically, they'll say, what full-spectrum light have I found to be the best? And is there one that can truly replicate the spectrum of natural light?
Matt Maruca: Yeah. That is something that I cannot give a very good answer to at present. I would say that the best source is absolutely, unequivocally, sunlight. There are certain bulbs that I've come across like fluorescent bulbs and so on that were utilized by a guy named John Ott, who wrote an amazing book called Health and Light. He was researching or he was actually doing time-lapse photography for Walt Disney, and was using light to change the movement of flowers, and using moisture contents in the air to cause them to stand up straight, and then basically then wilt, depending on the amount of moisture in the air, and use the light to make the plants turn. And by doing this over a period of days, he could make the plants appear like they were dancing up and down and right and left.
And he also started to notice these effects on the plants, of just being exposed to light at night, it would affect the certain, like the morning glory, for example, wouldn't open up in the morning as it was supposed to with the exposure to light at night. So, he started studying that and all sorts of other things along this line, but he did come across some full-spectrum fluorescent bulbs, which I haven't been able to actually source effectively, but that's stuff we are looking into with Ra Optics is more full-spectrum healthy light sources. What people can do is look at, there's a company called Sperti, S-P-E-R-T-I, that makes both UVA and UVA, UVB lamps for tanning and for vitamin D exposure or production, I should say.|
And so, they have very clear recommendations on dosage and not overdosing, because that's a huge issue with ultraviolet is that, if overdosed, and in certain contexts, for people with different skin tones, it can be very problematic, and this is where people can create issues for themselves with excess exposure. But I would say Sperti is probably the best place for people to start. And when I talk about lighting for people's homes, I usually recommend using just natural daylight during the day, and I recommend, at night, getting some red light bulbs, for example, something you could find on Amazon even, or red light bulbs. And again, that's another product where we're looking at developing, we are developing actively with Ra, is more healthy full spectrum, and not full spectrum, but night spectrum lighting for people.
Dr. Dan Stickler: Yeah, I'm in agreement with you about natural light. I just don't think there is a true replication of full-spectrum sunlight, and I do recommend people get outside, I mean, even in a house with windows, the windows are going to filter some of that spectrum from what's coming out. So, I do try to get them to spend as much time as possible outside. Now, you did mention the infrared lights and the health benefits of those from a mitochondrial standpoint, a common question I get from clients is, we know red light penetrates pretty deeply into the skin, but how deep does it actually go? I mean, where does that benefit seize? How deep down?
Matt Maruca: Yeah. So, with the penetration of light, there's actually an amazing chart that I'd like to pull up and maybe you guys could put it in the show notes, but the penetration of infrared light is something like 30 centimeters into the skin. So, it goes basically through us. It's something that most likely because it's so integral to the function of water in living systems, it's likely for that reason that life didn't develop any mechanisms or systems by which to block the absorption of infrared light. In other words, I imagine you're familiar with Dr. Gerald Pollack, maybe you've even interviewed with him or know him personally, but he studies how water works at a deeper level than has been typically studied, and he wrote this amazing book called The Fourth Phase of Water, as well as a few others like Cells, Gels and the Engines of Life and so on.
And basically, he talks about how, and researches really how water in cells and water in life is distinctly different from water in a glass, and that when water is placed against a hydrophilic, which is like a water-loving surface, it can structure in such a way where it becomes H3O2, where basically, the water becomes a bunch of OH- ions or pieces of water, I'm not sure the correct chemistry term for OH-, but they create a liquid crystalline lattice that builds, and basically, the water becomes very, it becomes a conductor of electricity. They've actually stuck many electrodes into this structured water, into the, what they call exclusion zone, which is the structured water, and then into this, the rest of the water, which they would call the bulk water, and they've been able to basically draw out enough current to light up a mini-light bulb.
So, basically implying that water can function as a battery. And the research is very, very compelling. They've done a lot to try to disprove it as any really talented scientist would, and it seems to just hold up the test. So, my thinking on this, and again, I'd love, like you said in the beginning of the conversation, to have some real, real solid data that links all of this together so it isn't just conjecture about, this makes sense, and that makes sense, and you put these two together and it also makes sense, and even if it does make a lot of sense. So, ultimately, I do believe that because of the way that infrared light is what he found to impact water and create this structured water, where it becomes sort of like a battery, that's infrared light which is doing this.
Ultraviolet also plays a role as well once the water is structured. But so, this infrared light goes very deep and basically through us and is affecting the structure of water in every cell. So, that's one big way that infrared light, for example, like a Clearlight Sauna or a sauna space can have a huge benefit. Obviously, there's the heat there, the heat shock proteins, which when activated have all sorts of other beneficial effects for the body.
Why Circadian Rhythms are the Foundation of Life
Dr. Dan Stickler: Yeah, I've seen a lot of just anecdotal benefits of my clients that have gotten the red light saunas that they start using regularly. They've had a lot of health improvements across the board. But you've mentioned something with the circadian and how important the circadian rhythm is in life. I mean, all of life is really tuned in to circadian rhythms, but we also have the ultradian rhythms that are going on. I mean, we've disrupted most of these because of the artificial light that we have. And how much of an impact do you think our overriding of circadian rhythms has created health problems for us in society?
Matt Maruca: I think it's really, really massive, to be honest. Having come from growing up my whole life and having sleep problems, and I didn't even know I had sleep problems because I had nothing to measure against, I would just lay in bed and have a hard time falling asleep, and looking back, that was a very big symptom of my body having all these other issues that I wasn't even aware of was an issue. But so, circadian rhythms are so fundamental to life. I think of them like a beat in a song, like the tempo that keeps things moving, and if that tempo were off in, for example, an orchestra with, for example, maybe a couple dozen different violinists and musicians of all different types, it would become problematic for everyone playing.
They would all say, "Well, I was trying to keep up with the regular tempo, but then I heard the tempo change, and so, I was trying to do this differently." Ultimately, when it comes to an organism with 100,000 biochemical reactions happening per cell per second, just as an estimate, it could be a lot more profound on our biology in ways that we, again, probably don't even fully understand. But the good thing about circadian rhythm disruption is that there is a lot that has been researched and is understood by, for example, people like Dr. Satchin Panda out of, or I should say, yes, Satchin Panda out of the Salk Institute in San Diego. And he has a couple of really great TED talks, for people who want to look into circadian rhythms more.
Ultimately what they have found in their studies is that when they feed an animal, and in their case, they were feeding nocturnal animals with food sources that were considered suboptimal for those animals, and then food sources that were considered healthier, so to speak, and basically, the animals that were eating this basically more toxic food at the time of day when the animals were more metabolically active, they actually had better health outcomes than those who were consuming healthier foods, what would be considered healthier, cleaner foods, at a time of day when they were less metabolically active.
So, transferring this over to humans basically, their conclusions or thesis were that, if you're a human being and you're drinking a bottle of Coca-Cola at, for example, 12:00 noon, and the body is most metabolically active and the metabolism is able to burn through these things, it could be the case that that would actually be less bad for the body than consuming something that one might consider to be helpful, whether it's a salad or a steak, at 10 o'clock at night when the body is supposed to be getting into sleep and repair mode, which is so foundationally. I heard you speak about, if you were to have clients who, or a group of people who said they don't sleep even more than six hours a night, you might not even get started working with them, because, I mean, that's such a foundational issue.
And so, that's all to say that the basic issue of circadian rhythm disruption is the fact that it's disrupting our sleep, which is the most vital time for us to repair. So, it's pretty simple for, to keep it really simple for someone who doesn't have the deep scientific understanding, it's basically when we get this blue light exposure at night, it's basically sending a signal through this really interesting cell that they found in the retina only in the last couple of decades, called retinal ganglion cells. It's in addition to the rods and the cones which we use for vision. And these retinal ganglion cells have this pigment in them that specifically absorbs blue light wavelengths, and nothing else. And it also doesn't communicate with our visual centers, it communicates with our hypothalamus, which is the master regulator of our body's metabolism.
And so, they basically were able to infer, based on the data, and then looking deeper into all of this, that this cell, the retinal ganglion cells, and the pigment in it, melanopsin, is this master controller of our body's circadian rhythm because it's speaking right with the super charismatic nucleus in the brain, which is the master timekeeper of the body. And basically, we get this blue light in, and in the morning, it's like, I think of it like an on switch, turn a light bulb on, you press the on switch and everything's on. And as long as we keep that blue light stimulus throughout the day, we're going to stay awake. And that's part of why being out in the sun is beneficial, it keeps us awake, alert, it keeps our hormone production and our circadian rhythm in sync.
And then as soon as the sun would go down, and the color temperature of the sun and the sky would change significantly, which is very hard to avoid if you're an animal that lives outdoors, unless you're sequestered in a cave or you're in a place in the Arctic or Antarctic Circle where there's no light for periods of the year, we get this circadian stimulus, and the brain starts to make melatonin a few hours after this period, and then melatonin allows our body to really repair on a huge level. It's a master antioxidant in many ways, an anti-aging, and even anti-cancer molecule, based on some of the data. So, just by having this blue light, which is likened to that, the on switch in my example, after the sun goes down, it's basically throwing off that simple rhythm that's not just controlling sleep, but it's also controlling metabolic activity, it's controlling the secretion of key hormones and neurotransmitters, especially in the morning when we are supposed to be getting the natural light stimulus of the sun.
So, ultimately, it's, I think, hard to really quantify how much a circadian rhythm disruption can affect people, but I think the things people can relate to on an intuitive and immediate basis are, you'll feel you have more trouble falling asleep, people will sleep less well, wake up feeling less rested, and have less energy throughout the day, have more brain fog, less productivity, less energy again, and ultimately, this, I think, consistently over time, is a foundation for development of chronic metabolic diseases, whether it's weight gain, because the cells aren't functioning as optimally and the body feels like it just constantly needs to take in more and more and more sugar and carbohydrates, or for some people, it might manifest as, for example, depression or anxiety because they're living in such a stress state, they're so drained.
So, yeah, to the question, circadian rhythm disruption has a very broad variety of effects, again, many of which have been studied and probably many more of which have yet to be thoroughly clarified from the research.
Dr. Dan Stickler: And to expand on what you're talking about there, one of the things that we teach with our students in teaching them epigenetics, on the sleep section especially, everybody focuses on the suprachiasmatic nucleus, this master clock of the body, and they're so focused on the sleep-wake cycle of that and don't realize typically that we have metabolic clocks in just about every organ system in our body that are tuned to the suprachiasmatic nucleus. There are clocks in our muscles, there are clocks in our heart, there are clocks in the liver, and the lymphatic system, all of these clocks are set to circadian rhythm, and they're set to be active and turned down at different times of the day. And this is one of the things that you're talking about here with the timing of eating.
Now, I will say, you at least said it's less bad with the Cokes, but for me, that kind of an intake of a bionutrient is probably one of the more impactful negative impactors of the body. And there are the needs to focus on the circadian, as well as the ultradian rhythms. The ultradian rhythms are, these are rhythms that occur multiple times, multiple cycles during the 24-hour period, whereas a circadian is a 24-hour period clock. But that master clock is what everybody uses to set their, all these other organ system clocks use to set their timing on the day. And this is why we see such disruptions with people doing night work, people that are playing the video games late at night, and they have just a huge impact on our health.
And that segues nicely into my next question, which is, I was shocked when I was reading the statistics on the amount of screen time that increased in 2020, and not just in the teenagers, but across all age groups, in the under 10-year-olds, in the over 60-year-olds. I mean, the amount of screen time has gone up dramatically. I mean, what do you think is going to be happening with this? I mean, are we going to start to see the impacts in the short term? Or is it going to be more of a long-term impact on health?
Increased Screen Time and our Vision Health
Matt Maruca: Yeah, it's an amazing question. And it can be a little scary almost, or at least make me a little bit concerned about like my generation, because people have been on devices since really, really young ages. And looking at this sort of bigger picture of how, at a simple level, blue light can affect mitochondrial function, increase free radical production, decrease mitochondrial efficiency, and increase, ultimately, the onset potentially of mitochondrial-related metabolic diseases, which, again, Dr. Douglas Wallace, who I mentioned earlier on, has found that basically every single modern chronic metabolic disease or chronic illness is related to mitochondrial dysfunction at some level, whether it's Alzheimer's, diabetes, cancer, depression, dementia, anxiety, and so on.
And so, I think that ultimately with what we're doing with our light environment, disrupting circadian rhythms and a tremendous lack of natural solar exposure and time outside without sunglasses or without tons of sunscreens, chemical sunscreens, and so on, I think we're probably going to see an increase in the incidence of all of these mitochondrial diseases in all of these age groups, including really, really young kids and with mothers utilizing so much screen time, probably, I think we'll see the incidence of this in young newborns as well, sadly.
And again, not to say that light and blue light and lack of sunlight is the only contributing factor to mitochondrial disease, because of course, it's not, there are so many toxins and malnutrition and so many other things that are present in our environment, but light is seeming more and more to be a very dominant factor, especially with its, again, relations to energy production, circadian rhythm function, and so on. So, yeah, it's a little disappointing to say, more than disappointing, but I think as long as we continue this direction, we'll probably see more increases in these issues. And I think I saw on your wall behind you, there was a Buddha, and so, I'm sure you're, I would assume you're interested in things like meditation and these practices of Eastern wisdom.
Dr. Dan Stickler: For sure.
Matt Maruca: Correct me if I'm wrong. I've been also diving really deep into the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza and people like him, Bruce Lipton and so on, and really trying to understand the science that people like him are putting behind, what science is he pulling from to explain this meditation work in a really scientific manner. And it is fascinating to see how much people can overcome the limits of our environment just by having positive beliefs. I mean, whether they eat a poor diet or do other things that are not good like getting artificial light at night, disrupting our biochemistry and circadian biology, people can, I think, overcome a lot of these things with really, really positive mindsets and being full of love in life.
But I do really wonder, and again, there's not much, I would say significant and data that could be really relied upon in the literature on this, but I really do wonder how much, to what point can we use mindset work and meditation and so on to overcome these issues? And where does it end? Where is it just simply, you're eating, whether you're eating a poor diet, you're lacking certain nutrition, or you are chronically being disrupted, the circadian rhythm's chronically being disrupted by artificial light, what is the limit on the mental work? And I would hope it goes really far, but ultimately, I think, as a biological organism that's largely governed by light, I think we have to really address this issue of our relationship with how we understand and our relationship to light and how important it is.
We're all looking at food and supplementation, which are, again, essential, but very few people are looking at light, and yet, ultimately, all of our food breaks down to light energy in a way because light is what's powering the production of that food in the first place. And so, we use this in our lives, but we don't really look at how light at a much higher level could affect our biology. So, again, I hope that we start making improvements in this sense for all of humanity, and especially for kids and younger generations.
Peptides and Mitochondrial Function
Dr. Dan Stickler: Yeah, the mitochondrial health is becoming more front and center in, especially in the aging community, and one of the concerns has always been that, because of the way mitochondria divide and create new monoclonal lines of the least damaged or hopefully the least damaged mitochondria, one of the concerns has always been that we're in a situation where the reversal is not quite that easy. So, people will shift their health and start leading a more health-based lifestyle, and they're dealing with some less than optimal mitochondria. Have you done any work with any of the peptides on mitochondria or rejuvenations?
Matt Maruca: Yeah, I actually have not. That's not something I've looked into much at all, so, I wouldn't be able to speak intelligently on it. But I have seen among just friends and biohackers who experiment with things like this, I've heard of really, really amazing results of people utilizing peptides, so, I do think it's fascinating. My only immediate question, and again, coming from place of not having a thorough knowledge on the subject, would be, knowing, or at least understanding, as I feel I do, that life is governed by an energy field, that our bodies are ultimately governed by a field of energy, which has been studied by people like Robert O. Becker in The body Electric, and other researchers like the textbook I mentioned earlier about light called Light Shaping Life: Biophotons in Biology Medicine, I just wonder, is using things like peptides a really sustainable long-term solution for people?
Or does that have to be coupled with both utilizing that to get people, especially those who are compromised in certain way such that they can't necessarily practice meditation, or they maybe can't even get out into the sun, or they can't maybe do healthy exercise, but if any, is there a line where people have to, on top of peptides, utilize lifestyle and environmental changes to ultimately change the underlying biochemistry and energy that is ultimately failing and resulting in that deficiency or issue in the first place? Again, maybe you can enlighten me there on that one, but-
Dr. Dan Stickler: Well, it's interesting because in the longevity world, I mean, we use quite a bit of mitochondrial peptides. I mean, there's the MOD-SC, there's the human, and one that I really like is SS-31, but it was taken away from the compounding pharmacies because of a patent issue on a company that patented it, and they're going to be selling it for a very high price. But some of the newer research is actually looking at replacing mitochondria in the cells, ways to deliver youthful mitochondria to an aging body, where the mitochondria is pretty cool because you can transplant mitochondria without a problem.
And they're doing that with some of the mitochondrial diseases that mothers carry, and they're replacing the mitochondria in the eggs, essentially replacing the egg and putting the mother's DNA into the egg of a healthy egg with good healthy mitochondria, and completely obliterating the risk of the mitochondrial disease that she would normally pass on. But it's exciting to actually see that, but the thing is, I mean, people, I don't think people should be candidates for that, they have not established that baseline of health, because, yeah, you're getting new mitochondria, but you're just going to accelerate the process of aging them again. So, I think if that option does come up, it should be based on the need and the focus of the person to do it because aging is not a magic pill that's going to do it, you've got to have the full complement of it.
Now, before we get too far into this, I want to talk a little bit about blue light and blue light blocking glasses. So, for the listeners out there, can you explain, because people are now, you hear people talk about it in the biohacker world and they're all about how awful blue light is, but I try to explain to my clients, it's the timing issue, it's not that the blue light is bad for you. So, don't wear your blue light blockers all day long.
Using Blue Light Blocking Glasses to Protect Our Vision Health
Matt Maruca: For people who are sitting, for example, on a screen all day or in an office building, where they're not exposed to natural full-spectrum sunlight, and therefore, they need ultimately some level of protection, because the key thing based on my research is that when they don't have the presence of that near-infrared light, the blue light that is coming off of these light sources becomes fairly problematic for the cells in the eye, and even the body's rhythm is disrupted by a stagnant amount of blue light throughout the day. So, again, basically, simple way to put it is blue, balanced by the sun, with red and near-infrared is much more okay and actually beneficial to the body, but blue light, when highly isolated and in high ratios and concentrations that even greater than what's found in the sun, and this is what happens in an office in LEDs and fluorescent lights, then I believe it's prudent to block the blue.
And what people experience when they wear these glasses, this is the amazing thing is, you just feel a bit more relaxed, just calms things down a little bit. And if you're in a place like a school or an office building with really abrasive fluorescent lighting, it's easier to just be a little bit more chill, because the blue is stimulating that stress response. And of course, a bit is good, so, I always recommend people get outside and get some natural sunlight in the morning if they have to work in an office all day, and even take sun breaks, instead of like people go out and take smoke breaks, better just go out and take a sun break and not smoke a cigarette of course. And so, those are what the day lenses are for, sort of use cases like that.
And then the night lenses ultimately block, not just all the blue, the day lenses are blocking about 95% of the blue light, the night lenses block 100% of the blue light, and then about 80% of green light as well, and this is because there is limited evidence that green light is more impactful on the body's circadian rhythm than, for example, the warmer colors, those of fire, which would be the red, the orange, and the yellow color wavelengths.
And so, we block the blue and the green at night because not only is there some evidence showing that green, again, can affect the circadian system, but ultimately, from having tested these myself, and now with tens of thousands of customers and people who I know very closely who use these, people anecdotally notice that they get more tired and sleep better and more easily when they use these night lenses after the sun goes down, because what it basically is doing is cutting out everything except, again, the reds, oranges, and yellows, the colors of fire, which we would have naturally evolved with at night when we would have fires and stand around the bonfire and so on.
So, those are the two different lenses that we offer. And ultimately, back to the question just about blue light in general and why it's important to block it, I think we've addressed that pretty thoroughly throughout this episode, and so, it's just great that people have this option now to put these glasses on. And the reason I started this company, Ra Optics, is because, when I was wearing these glasses in the beginning, there were no options that basically blocked these correct spectra of light, a meaningful amount of blue light and a meaningful amount of blue and green light, for example, where they also had an attractive high quality frame style.
There were some that had high quality good-looking frames, but they're all doing clear lenses because they're catering to a really mass market and they're not interested in doing the hard work, which is educating people about the importance of a colored lens in order to have meaningful blue light protection to really see results and feel results, as opposed to just a placebo, which also is a result, in a sense, but it's not the real results that we want people to get based on the evidence available. And so, on the other hand, there were glasses that did block the right spectra of light, so, there are these red lenses or orange lenses, but the issue with these is that typically, there were more biohacker companies or even just Amazon safety goggle type things that were really, really low quality lenses and frames especially, that just didn't feel good on the face, and I was in high school at this time, so, I didn't really want to wear this product out to be around friends and girls and in public.
And so, ultimately, it was just inevitable that I had to create something for myself that I wanted to use. And since then, we've just constantly refined and evolved and linked up with some of the best frame and lens manufacturers in the world, and experts on developing lenses and utilizing pigments and lenses to achieve different results for physiology, and in our case, it's, again, the protection from blue light to reduce oxidative stress in the mitochondria, and reduce circadian rhythm disruption, improve natural melatonin production, sleep quality, and ultimately though, just make people feel better. That's really what the core is of this for me, and give people that option to be protected. And so, that's the story of how we got here and why our products, to me, are the best available on the market today.
And one other thing I wanted to share is that when people use these glasses, again, this is anecdotal evidence, so, I'd love to have clinical studies at some point, but people typically say like, "I literally can't imagine my life without these," that's the number one comment, because you look at a TV screen, and you take the glasses off, and you're like, "Whoa, how did I ever look at a TV at night and not have these glasses on?"
Or like you put on the glasses if you're driving, I don't recommend using the night lenses for driving because they block too much light and it wouldn't be safe, but the daytime lenses can be used for driving at night, and they still provide way more blue light protection than if you didn't have them on, just not as much, or they're just not quite as, make you tired, make you fall asleep as the night lenses, but people can drive with these. And if you take them off while you're driving, getting blasted by the new bright white LED headlights, people are like, "Oh, my gosh, I can't even believe I didn't have these before. This is crazy, how abrasive these headlights are on these cars today, the new Audis and stuff." So, I hope that answers the question pretty thoroughly.
Dr. Dan Stickler: Yeah, I mean, that's great and it's perfect timing because my wife just, she got lens replacements this past week, and she has for years required multiple glasses, reading glasses, and then regular distance and mid-length glasses, and she always had to get prescription blue light blockers too, because that's just the way she would do it and it was getting so expensive to buy the different prescription glasses that she could shift off of. And she just got the PanOptix lenses, so, she's thrilled. She can see close up, she can see medium, and she can see far away, so, she doesn't require any visual correction. She's like 20/20 in both eyes now.
Matt Maruca: Wow.
Dr. Dan Stickler: And so, she's going to be finally able to get some Ra Optics to look around.
Matt Maruca: Oh, amazing. Yeah, I'd love to get her hooked up. Absolutely.
Dr. Dan Stickler: All right. Well, this has been hugely informative. I'm sure our listeners have learned some gems to go explore on their own and certainly to pick up some blue light blockers from Ra Optics. But I have to say, I have seen the results of this. We monitor biometrics in all of our clients, they're wearing the Garmin fenix 6s, and so, we're constantly, on a day-to-day basis, we're getting their stress levels, their resting heart rates, their sleep patterns and durations, and we see a big change when they start wearing blue light blockers at night, the stress levels, because night is the recovery period, and if they can start the recovery period as they're preparing for bed, rather than waiting until they'd lay down, close the eyes, there's definitely a much accelerated recovery that they are seeing.
Matt Maruca: Yeah. It's so powerful. My all people I know who wear Oura rings, they have, some, even one of the chief executives at their company and his wife told me that their deep sleep 10Xed when they started wearing blue blocking glasses. So, it's amazing, and it's been amazing speaking. I really appreciate the opportunity. It's so great to speak with someone who has a very scientific mind. It's very stimulating for my brain and I'm very grateful for it because it's a rare opportunity in today's world other than when it's actively sought out and made to happen.
Dr. Dan Stickler: Well, I'd say, any conversation I walk away with with greater knowledge of something is a good conversation. And this certainly was a good conversation.
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