Embracing The Rhythm Of Spring

In this episode, Adiel is joined by Carrie Bennett for a practical and enlightening conversation about the power of nature to heal us. We have been taught that in order to be healthy we have to rely on pharmaceuticals, or the system. We have been denied the truth, which is that we have the power to improve our health – to sleep better, to feel better, to improve our metabolic function. At a time when Western world populations are being crushed by debilitating metabolic diseases, increased rates of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, Carrie shares with us the powerful and immediately available lifestyle choices we can choose to make, and the dramatic improvement in health that is possible for us.

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Embracing The Rhythm Of Spring

The Transformational Metabolic Healing Power Of Sunlight, Being Outside, And Reconnecting To Nature With Carrie Bennett

This is going to be an exciting talk. This episode is very nice. We have Carrie Bennett with us, who is also known on the web as @CarrieBWellness. Carrie, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Adiel. I’m excited to chat.

There’s so much to talk about, but let’s just begin with the most common question that you get on every show, but it’s a good one. Can you tell us your path leading you to here?

Carrie’s Journey To Circadian Health & Discovery Of Morning Light Benefits

Sure. The path that I took leading me to this point in time, it was by necessity because of my own health challenges. I have always been in fairly good health. I was a college athlete, but had some insomnia, some issues there. After college and after I studied extensively in molecular biology, I decided to go to massage therapy school. It was a very interesting, Adiel because I was able to see this juxtaposition in how to view the human body in two different ways.

One was through this very mechanistic and interesting lens of molecular biology. The other was through more of an Eastern philosophy and energy flow. Fast forward, I opened up a wellness studio. In that wellness studio, I gave massages, I taught fitness classes. It was just a great place to get together. I have a master’s degree in Clinical Nutrition, so I was really applying all of these strategies that I thought were very complementary to support health.

When my first child was born, my health declined drastically. I was exhausted, as could be expected, being a new mama. I was exhausted but I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t digest a thing. I was in pain, I felt puffy, bloated all the time. I thought, “I’m very equipped.” I feel like I’m very equipped with all these tools in my clinician’s toolbox, let me go at it.

I applied everything that I could, from the perfect diet and various diets. The perfect gut health protocol, really strategic supplementation and various different strategies with that. I changed my movement strategies, my exercise, I worked with the acupressure meridians and things like that. I worked with acupressure and massage, not acupuncture.

I thought to myself, “Why isn’t any of this moving the needle? I still feel like garbage.” My kid at this point in time is now old enough that he’s sleeping better. It’s not because of lack of sleep, it’s just I must be missing something so fundamental about how the human body operates that this is why nothing is making me feel good at this point.

That is when I stumbled upon a blog post that mentioned the words circadian rhythm. I am this very curious human being, but also a skeptic at the same time. I dove into the research and I thought, “What is this thing called circadian rhythm? Is there any information anywhere about how the circadian rhythm could influence my health?” Lo and behold, hundreds upon hundreds of research articles popped up. I started to dive deep into all aspects of circadian rhythm, light, nature, and how to start to apply them for my health.

Basically, as soon as I felt comfortable enough that this was a thing, that this was important, I applied just a couple of key strategies, and I noticed a drastic improvement in my energy and my sleep within days. I thought, “This is really something that I think is so important that very few people know about when it comes to human health.” That’s the road that I’ve been down ever since and what I’m using in clinical practice to support clients.

That is a very inspiring story because one of the incredible things that I’ve noticed since I was introduced to circadian biology, I took a deep dive and I interviewed a lot of the great people in the space, and it seems so simple. People normally talk about stuff, some of it is relatively complicated, and some of it is still you need to exercise so much and strength training so much, and keto, and paleo.

Here what you need to do is just grab the door handle, open the door, and go outside. That’s simple. Yet I’ve been finding, and I’m sure you have too, an unbelievable closed-mindedness to those very simple concepts. I’m very curious. Let’s talk about the basics. We begin when we wake up. Here we are, we’re just up, and the first thing we do is if we can, we go outside. If we can’t go outside, we open up a window. Carrie, can you take it from there?

Morning Light As A Foundational Circadian Practice

Yes, I absolutely can. Let’s create this concept of like what the average modern human does and then what I think I see beneficial in clinical practice, very highly beneficial in clinical practice. What the uninformed modern human does is we wake up and we look at our cell phone right away because that’s typically our alarm clock. We want to check emails or we want to see if there’s any important text messages or notifications or things like that. That’s the first light that is into the eyes of most people these days first thing in the morning.

What I encourage people to do is put that down and make the first light that enters your eyes light that’s coming from nature, unfiltered. Essentially, not behind sunglasses, not behind closed glass, just naked eyes outside. Skygazing, just getting out into that natural light. That’s because that natural light contains certain colors within it that we can pick up. We have sensors for the changing wavelengths of light that happens throughout the day. We can literally tell the time of day as soon as we go outside based on the fact that there’s this much, for example, blue light and it’s increasing. The sun’s at this angle and the brightness is at this brightness and intensity, we can literally pinpoint time of day.

When we pinpoint time of day, we organize the tasks in our body. The body says, “It’s morning, I know I want to do X, Y, and Z.” It’s not just X, Y, and Z, it’s literally thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of processes in the body that are syncing up with that information. When we can get that consistently, that first morning light that we go outside, we help to build in this circadian rhythm or this circadian predictability throughout the day.

When we don’t, we give our body no information about the correct time of day or worse, because a screen tells us it’s the middle of the afternoon based on the brightness, based on the blue light we’ve all heard about the blue light coming from screens, we fast forward through this beautiful morning period of time that we need in order to optimize our body for the day. That’s the first thing to be aware of. Just going outside first thing in the morning, and we’re talking minutes.

I know maybe different clinicians in this space have different recommendations, but having been blessed to work with thousands of people on circadian rhythm, I can tell you that all you consistently need is 3, 5, 10 minutes first thing in the morning when the light’s out in your environment to tell your brain the day has started. Seemingly very simple, not a lot of time, it’s free, but it’s one of the most important things that you can do in order to get your body on track in terms of all of the processes it needs to run that day.

A couple of things to say about that. Number one, to make people feel less anxious about the task, because when you begin a new habit, there are many little barriers that could really come up and you won’t do it. Some people say, “You say I should be there at sunrise. I wake up an hour after sunrise.” Still good.

Just go outside. When I was first implementing this in clinical practice, I was a stickler because I was working mostly with the people in my geographic location, I didn’t know any different, so I thought you have to get outside at sunrise. You have to make sure that you get that signal that the sun has crossed the horizon and the blue light’s increasing in order for your brain to know the time of day.

I started teaching this internationally and I would have people in far Northern latitudes say, “Yeah but it’s the middle of summer and sunrise is at 4:00 AM. You want me to wake up at 4:00 AM?” I’m like, “No. The human body has to be way more adaptive and capable than having to see the sunrise every day.” My recommendation then became once you wake up, whatever time it is, whenever sunrise was, still go outside and make that light the first light that your eyes see. If you can do that consistently, the human body knows exactly again what time of day it is. I hope that removes a barrier to entry. Just go outside with naked eyes. Your brain and your body will know what to do with that information.

Once again, in my experience, and I’m sure in yours as well, once you get what this does and how critical and basic it is at the hierarchy of what’s good for us, really, Jack Kruse would say or Alexis Cowan actually built a pyramid, like the food pyramid, except the bottom, the most important is light. Your light diet. One thing that stuck in my mind from a Jack Kruse podcast was the interviewer was very devoted to this and he said to Jack Kruse, “In the morning, I wake up and as soon as I brush my teeth, I go out.”

Jack Kruse said, “How about you don’t brush your teeth?” Just to illustrate, first thing, you just got up, get that light. One of the barriers that I think I’m encountering in being a missionary for this when I talk to people is it’s so easy and it’s so unnoticeable at first. “Alright, I went out, here’s the sun, very nice, so what now?” It’s not something like you popped a powerful pill and you feel the effect. Maybe because it’s so simple, it’s hard to get through.

That’s why I had to dive into the research. I had to convince myself that this was important. Not that research is the end all be all, by any means, but these days, most people who are questioning this want to know if there is science behind it. Science is the new the new language of convincing. I had to understand the mechanisms in my body and what was my body actually keying in on.

How was this happening and what would the results be if I did this consistently that I could track over time. I think that’s an important thing for people to know, because that way it’s like, yes, it’s simple, seemingly simple, but here’s what’s happening. If you’re ready, we can dive down that pathway, because I think that helps convince people that they want to try to implement this.

This show is meant for people to read and get benefit from, so please.

Okay, so we have sensors in our eyes and on our skin for that wavelength range of light we call blue light. To keep it simple, we’ve all seen light split through a prism and we’ve all seen the color blue as one of those chunks of light. That blue, it’s a chunk of light that’s coming from natural light and it’s not static, it changes throughout the course of a day. Very low at dawn, sunrise, all the way until the sun reaches the high point in the sky at solar noon where there’s the most blue light that we would get for the day, and then it starts to disappear until it goes away at sunset.

It makes sense for the blue light because it changes very predictably all throughout the day. It turns out that we’ve got some key sensors for that blue light in the backs of our eyes that’s connected directly. Literally there’s a direct track that connects those sensors in the eyes to the clock in the brain, our suprachiasmatic nucleus, right, our SCN.

Those sensors, those melanopsin receptors that essentially sense the blue light, they’ll fire as soon as they receive blue light signals. Let’s say early in the morning, they’ll fire just a little because there’s a little bit of blue light, but then they’re going to fire more and fire more. That is a continuous clock reminder about the time of day.

The SCN then literally governs so many parts of my physiology. One of the things that I was really struggling with was hormone dysregulation. I had irregular cycles, I had very low libido. My hormones were flatlined, if you will. My cortisol was completely flatlined. I had tests that proved that literally my body was like, “What hormones?”

After I was able to recognize that this was a thing, I was like, “How will this affect my hormonal axis?” That clock in the brain that literally sits in the hypothalamus is connected to the pituitary gland and then the reproductive axis, the adrenal axis, the thyroid axis. Are these communication pathways that start in the brain and then end in an organ system in the body.

As I was implementing this natural light exposure, I learned that my mitochondria, upon understanding that it’s morning, start to make a sex hormone called pregnenolone. It’s called the master steroid hormone. They take cholesterol, they convert it into pregnenolone, and then that master steroid hormone gets divvied up and can become all the other sex hormones that we know of, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, and cortisol.

Cortisol is a sex hormone. As soon as I started getting this, like I said, it took three days, and then all of a sudden, I could feel my energy start to elevate in the morning as soon as I went outside. After doing this for a couple of months or so, I retested and sure enough, instead of having flatlined cortisol in the morning, my body had that natural healthy surge of cortisol in the morning. I was starting to balance my hormones of fertility to optimize ovulation. Obviously, to be to be fertile again.

This is because of the fact that as soon as I stimulate the brain to know that it’s the start of the day, that hormone cascade starts to sync up with what my body needs. It’s the cortisol for early morning energy and it’s divvied up hormones of fertility based on how my body perceives should I be fertile, am I getting the correct signals, do I have adequate energy and nourishment, do I feel safe? As I was, again, doing this more consistently, my body was getting the signals that I was nourished, safe. It knew what time of day it was, it knew what time of the month it was, and it could start to optimize my hormones because of it. That’s just one thing that kicks off when we get that morning light as the first light in our eyes.

To bypass what I see when I talk to people in general is you were in a certain state based on what you say, and just going outside in the morning and getting the morning sun, getting that blue with the red and infrared baked in because that’s the beauty of being outside. It’s not just blue, it’s blue with everything. You saw results within a few days. However, many people may not be in such a dire state and they may not feel anything at all.

You say, “Okay, alright, I went outside and here’s the sun, very nice. What are you making me do? I’ve been doing it for a week and I feel nothing.” No, it’s okay. Just do it. Nike’s really got it right in this case. Just do it. It’s not hard, it’s easy to do. It doesn’t cost you any money, you don’t need any pills with side effects, just go. If you can’t, if you are in an apartment complex, just open the window and put your head out. Whatever you do is better than nothing. It’s just so simple, it’s almost infuriating that people take so much time to do it.

It is. I feel like what I teach in my community and I’ve got a really brief intro challenge that I do with people, and it’s this idea that just do it. Sometimes the morning light isn’t enough because people do things throughout the day that are dysregulating. I bookend it. I say get that morning light as much as you can, whenever you can. Maybe you get that five minutes but then also you take a coffee break outside or you make a business call outside or you take your lunch outside.

Just get that light. Now that you’re aware that this light is a thing and it’s actually doing stuff for us, go outside more in the next five days. Also, be aware of the fact of how dark or likely not dark your environment is at sunset. When people start to bookend it by recognizing the fact that yes, there’s light during the day, that’s just part of the circadian rhythm. The other part of the circadian rhythm is darkness at night. When people start to pair those two things together, more light during the day, more darkness at night, that actually really amplifies results.

In terms of actually doing it, so we started with the morning, whether it’s sunrise or just when you wake up. Throughout the day, very good practice would be, as you just said, take little breaks if you can outside. If you are in an office, stick your head out the window if that’s all you can do. During the day, try to get as much sunlight. We’ll talk later about so far, we have been covering looking at it and getting the signal into the melanopsin and but no, later we’ll talk about our skin as well. Let’s say it’s easy to do. Especially if the weather is relatively comfortable, you’re in a cold place right now, but still you put on warm stuff, you go outside.

You go outside several times during the daytime, and I interviewed Roger Seheult here and he told me about patients in the hospital that were not doing very well and all he did as a new protocol for them was wheel them out. They were so weak. Wheel them out into the sunlight for fifteen minutes a day and statistically, he saw that they were released four days earlier relative to patients who did not have that sun exposure.

We go outside in the daytime, we maximize our time in the sun, we take little breaks in the sun. When people used to smoke, not that I’m saying that’s a good thing to do, it is absolutely not, but they used to take a cigarette break. Take a sun break, it’s much better. By the way, one other thing, people say, “I don’t want to look into the sun.” You don’t have to look into the sun. Wear a hat, wear a visor. I like it the way Alexis Cowan says it. If you feel like you are too hot in the sun, use nature’s sunscreen, the shade. You can be in the shade. You don’t have to look into the sun.

Those photons are everywhere, they bounce around. That’s why even if I sit here and talk to you, I just open up a window and the photons start bouncing all around the room, including my eyes. The daytime, fairly achievable, easy for most people. Now, you touched upon it, comes the nighttime. In 2026, that is, to me at least, a far greater challenge. We have the Winter Olympics that just ended. You want to see the beautiful jumpers and skaters and everything. The TV pumps out blue light and it’s 10:00 PM and the blue light says to you it’s noon time. What happens to your melatonin that your body’s been accumulating? The nighttime seems so much more challenging.

Nighttime Light Management & Blue Light Blocking

It can be. I think there’s a couple of simple strategies that people can start to implement literally right away. Number one, you’re right we live modern lifestyles. My family, we still watch stuff in the evening, no problem. If you can have a wind down routine that doesn’t always involve TV or screens, that’s ideal. What I try to do as a barrier to entry, I try to integrate this into what people are already doing. Let’s say you want to watch the Olympics or a nighttime sporting event, a movie, right, whatever. Number one, you can actually create a darker dimmer remainder of your house.

I tell clients, “What table lamps do you have? Can you really quickly go get a table lamp or two and just put the table lamps lower? Make the lighting lower because one of the ways that the brain knows it’s the middle of the afternoon is that the light is high in the sky. It’s coming at our melanopsin receptors at a certain angle. If we can simply eliminate overhead light, even without changing light bulbs yet, just go ahead and do that.

Number two, only use the lights that are on tables that you feel absolutely essential for safety purposes. Anything else if you can turn it off, turn it off. Essentially, what we’re doing is we’re starting to really eliminate the amount of artificial light that’s in someone’s environment. If you want to watch TV, okay, but that’s where I say make a one-time investment.

This investment, and I’ve got a guide on my website, this investment can be anywhere from $30 to $300. I’ve tested all these different brands and it’s an orange-toned pair of blue blockers. These are orange. I don’t have I have yellows on because I’m not mitigating my screen right now, but I’ve got so I’ve got orange here. The orange lens essentially takes any blue light in our environment and prevents it from entering those sensors in our eyes. For all intents and purposes, even if I was staring at this computer screen in the evening, I would not be telling my brain that it was still daytime because the blue light wouldn’t be reaching those sensors.

That’s where you start. You can switch light bulbs, you can even go to your bedroom, you can buy blackout curtains you can start to mitigate because we do. Darkness is lacking. Especially in the wintertime when we’re designed to make tons of melatonin in response to more darkness and all of a sudden, because it’s dark at 6:00, we’re flipping on every light in the house, we’re lacking melatonin.

If we lack melatonin, that’s not only affecting our sleep, it’s affecting the repair programs our body runs when we are asleep, which is really truly our main master cellular cleanup antioxidant. It’s not just a sleeping hormone. It’s simple to start. It’s just like be aware how bright is your environment at night and what can you do to make it dimmer and darker? Invest in a pair of glasses and that bookends it.

As you were alluding to, we have two ways of sensing how long our day is. Number one, we can sense it by tracking the changing blue. We know, okay, morning is ended because the sun’s at the high point of the sky and now the day is starting to end. We can definitely track that. Our brain also tracks a chemical and this the build-up of a chemical called adenosine. That adenosine starts low in the morning and it builds up throughout the course of the day. After about 14, 15, 16 hours, our brain is saying, “Yeah, this adenosine, got a lot of it. Likely the day should be ending now,” and it’s trying to sync that chemical information in the brain with the light information in our environment.

If we don’t block that artificial light or minimize it at night, our brain’s like, “Yeah, physically, we should be tired but I still see tons of blue light in my environment, so let’s suppress melatonin. Now is not the time to sleep. Let’s surge cortisol.” as we surge cortisol, we’re also not we’re also surging all of those other steroid hormones. That can lead to people feeling things like estrogen dominance, it’s linked to reproductive system cancers, so breast cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, uterine cancer.

It’s also this feeling that people will tell me is, “I was feeling tired, like I was physically feeling tired but now I’m mentally wired and this is my productivity time.” I’ll get that from a lot of artists or musicians. They’ll say, “I do my best work at night because I get this second wind.” I’m like, “Yes, but is that second wind natural? Is it something that benefits your body over time? Can we somehow work with a true circadian rhythm, a true sleep onset at a circadian-friendly time and still have a productive time during the day?” which often turns them shifts to about mid-morning. We can talk about why if ever we want to.

Just some things to work through. We absolutely need to recognize that there’s darkness in our environment and maybe use some modern ways in order to still live a life not be in a cave, all dark, but live a modern life but still signal that the day is ended so we can get a early sleep onset or adequate sleep onset, make that melatonin, help us to fall asleep and then run all of our repair programs when we are asleep.

I relate to what you’re saying. I’m going to be in Nashville for three days with a band. I already know what the experience is like because I’ve done it. It’s all inside with lights that are absolutely shining from above, really big, and I just know that’s going to happen. I want to make it as practical for people. I use my own blue light blockers. When I meet with friends, I bring them a gift. Mine costs about $35, $40. I want to utilize the time with you well. This is not a product endorsement. Please, give us names, specific companies, brands of blue light blocking glasses that we can buy that you like.

They run the gamut and there’s some that are only domestic to the United States and some that are international. Companies such as Midwest Red Light Therapy or Raw Optics. VivaRays. Bon Charge. The Bon Charge you can get pretty much anywhere in the world as well. Soleil Well. Those are typically the ones that my clients will go to. Certainly, there’s others. I’ve tested many.

The one thing I encourage, and not everyone can test this, there are some brands out there that are claiming they’re clear. They’re claiming that they block blue light. There are some brands out there that are just ugly yellow, like these. These are my ugly yellow and they’re like, “Those are your blue blockers at night.” No. In order for a blue blocker to possibly be effective, it at least has to have an orange lens. The last brand that you can get on Amazon, they do not look attractive but they are highly effective. Spectra 479. They look almost like a welder’s googles.

That’s the one I use, actually. Literally, when I travel and I meet friends, I carry a few of them and give them out as gifts.

They’re good because, number one, like you said, they’re inexpensive, they’re very effective and they hug the face tight, depending on the type that you get. You can get the kind that hug the face tight, meaning the light is not necessarily going to leak in from all around.

Alright, I’m going to take a tiny step. You are wearing yellowish glasses and I know why based on what you said, but I’m going to venture a guess. It’s daytime where you are, I think it’s closer to noon actually. You’re sitting inside and looking at a screen right now. The screen is pumping blue light in isolation. If you went outside, you’d get a ton of blue lights but with the red and infrared and everything. These are blocking a portion of the blue. That’s why they’re not orange, just yellow. Is that right?

That’s exactly correct. I do have a window here but it’s closed. It’s a modern window, it’s closed. There are some issues with modern window glass blocking some light. However, what I have found is I do best when I position my computer next to this window so that the I do get a lot of natural light, but because I get a lot of natural light, I can’t mitigate my screen. I can’t make it orange, really, or else I really can’t do my work effectively on a daily basis.

I’ve tried different strategies, and this is not true of everyone, but for me, wearing yellow lenses when I’m in front of a screen for extended periods of time, my eyes don’t feel any strain, my focus and my concentration is very good, my energy stays consistent. The yellow, like you said, especially these particular yellow from VivaRays, they block an important amount of the most aggressive blue light coming from screens without blocking the beneficial blue that keeps me alert and focused and telling my brain that it’s daytime. That’s what I found to be a compromise in this in this office environment.

Now if I’m not mistaken, VivaRays and some other companies too can get you your prescription if you wear glasses baked in. You can send them your they can do it. I don’t know if these are those.

No, these are not prescription. I don’t have a prescription anymore but VivaRays absolutely can get your prescription put in.

Benefits Of Natural Light And Red/Near-Infrared Light For Humans And Plants

Okay, I’m going to hit you for a second from the side with a question you may have never gotten. We all have plants in our home. The plants go for photosynthesis, a little bit like what we do in a different way with the sunlight, but the plants need the light. Many plants are indoor plants and they never go outside. The plant never open the door, walk outside, do some exercise. They don’t. They are planted and we put them where they get light from the window.

Everybody knows windows in the modern house block out especially the infrared component, especially because that’s heat. Nobody wants to bring heat into the home, even though infrared is greatly beneficial for us in many ways. We may not have time to cover it, but it also blocks a good portion of UVA, UVB.

Why do the plants thrive with light through the window? To my knowledge is because the plants primarily need the red component. The red is not blocked by modern window, it goes through. When I’m sitting here and when you’re sitting there next to our windows, I’m getting a lot of red and some other spectra, of course. Just not the infrared and a lot of the UVA and UVB. Now the plants are getting red and thriving through the closed window. Many people shell out all kinds of money to buy red light panels. I’m getting all kinds of red here, why do I need a panel?

Yes, plants are great. In terms of photosynthesis, which is what plants use to grow and to essentially maintain their health, they could also require the blue. Windows allow all of those to pass through. That’s the different photons they capture for photosynthesis. Why do humans why are humans what because number one we require more red and infrared especially than we’re getting with modern window glass.

That’s not to say we’re not getting a benefit. Even so, interesting about that study being wheeling patients out, right, in terms of getting them into direct sunlight likely Roger was a wanting the Vitamin D aspect and infrared, I know he was really big on those. Interestingly, when you look at some research, simply having hospital patients by a hospital window improves the outcome in terms of how quickly they get released. Even a closed window.

Office workers have better health outcome. Closed windows have been studied. This is also where I want to say yes, we have this idealistic aspect of needing to go outside. It’s always best to go outside, but certainly, we’re getting more wavelengths and changes in those wavelengths from a closed window than if we are in a cubby with no natural light access. Windows do give us some benefits.

Now the human body, because a lot of the near infrared and far infrared, the infrared portion of windows, that is being blocked by modern window glass for energy efficiency. It’s typically the fact that the human body is near infrared starved indoors. Red light therapy panels will contain anywhere from 1 up to maybe 2 or 3 different wavelengths of near infrared light, depending on the company. Really truly, it’s that near infrared light that is of a benefit.

However, red light therapy is a tool. It will never mimic sunlight because you have isolated wavelengths of light. It’s been studied as such to have isolated wavelengths. What’s been studied is a certain time duration, usually under 20 minutes of specific wavelengths of light, 2 to 5, at a certain distance from a body part, and what effects does it have.

It’s a therapeutic tool that we can use especially in people who are not by closed windows or open windows or can go outside as a way to benefit specifically mitochondrial health. In order for mitochondria to operate most efficiently, they require key red and especially near infrared wavelengths of light.

What I’ll do in clinical practice with red light therapy is if someone can’t get outside is I will have them precondition their bodies with a red light therapy panel for 10 or 20 minutes before they go into the office as a means of supporting their blood glucose levels, their mitochondrial function, the fact that they’re going to be exposed to a lot of blue light which can be actually photoaging on the skin more so than the balanced spectrum of sunlight. That’s what I think the red light therapy stands out. It’s especially when people don’t have access to even window like a window for natural light in their office space and instead are going to be under this continuous artificial light all day.

Maybe even in Michigan in the winter when going outside may not be as pleasant for some, so yeah I see that and that makes a lot of sense. By the way, again, all the theory, it’s not a theory, it’s a fact. Plants and trees and leaves fend off the green light and the infrared. They reflect it. They are beneficial to humans, that’s why people love, not even knowing why, being in a green garden, walking in the forest, forest bathing. Yeah, we get a ton of infrared just from those trees.

Absolutely, we do. Another barrier to entry for some people is they have heard that natural light because it contains ultraviolet. It’s inherently damaging or cancer causing. If that’s a barrier to entry for some people, I tell them simply to sit in the shade because you’re going to get the changing light that signals time of day and you’re going to get all of that near infrared reflected back to you that has been actually hypothesized that it can penetrate lightweight clothing even. It’s not like you got to be completely naked. It’s like that that’s a long wavelength that can has a much deeper penetration light. Having a spot that you can sit in the shade on a consistent basis is a very beneficial strategy when it comes to applying light for health.

One of the first things I did a couple of years ago when I started very deep into all of this is I shelled out some money to put an amazingly great retractable awning on my balcony, really big, and with a remote. This is such an important thing because it makes it practical. Sit in the shade, be in the shade but in the shade outside. Not in the shade inside. Of course, we are not going to have time to go into the shorter but what you said, the infrared light is already on the longer wavelength part of the spectrum.

These long waves penetrate through clothing, so they will penetrate. Sometimes they go deep as much as this into the body, which mean if we just turn around, we got infrared throughout our entire body. We won’t have time probably to go into the short wavelengths that don’t penetrate clothing, UVB, UVA and of course, UVB is a catalyst for creating Vitamin D as well. People say, “The UV is so bad,” so there’s so much discussion here, we don’t have the time bandwidth to cover it. Getting some is probably a good idea.

Certainly. Getting some of the short stuff on your skin, absolutely. Each person’s unique. Here’s a couple of things. Let’s do three minutes on the short wavelengths of light, the UV range of light. There are some people that I’ve worked with that have avoided the UV light for so long that as soon as they get even 30 seconds of it on their skin, they develop hives, massive pain, itchiness. Those are physiological reactions because of the lack of UV and they assume sunlight’s bad, sunlight’s out to get me.

In those instances, I tell people small doses earlier in the day or later in the evening when the UV is not as intense. You’ve got to build up. Every person I’ve ever worked with who has had that reaction to it has reached a critical threshold. It’s like they’ll do 30 seconds and then they’ll come back inside and the next day, they’ll do 45 seconds and they’ll come back.

They work really painstakingly for a while, but they reach a critical threshold at say 5, 8, 10 minutes. Once they build up that tolerance, UV light is no longer a threat to their body and their body then basically soaks it in it doesn’t really soak it because it stays at the skin level but uses it accordingly in order to optimize things like Vitamin D, blood pressure, all the things that we could talk about.

The other people are the people that have feared it because they they’ve assumed that it causes cancer. In those instances, same thing. I tell clients start small. Start with the early morning UV light, which comes about an hour or so after sunrise, depending on the time of year. Start with that first little bit. Start with five minutes and see. Your skin gives you clues as to how much UV light you can tolerate.

When I was a sun avoider, my skin gave me clues really fast, not as fast as the 30-second hives, but within about 5 minutes of UV light, my skin started to turn pink. Not a sunburn, it’s just my body saying, “Okay, we haven’t seen this in a while. That’s enough for today, go to the shade.” This is where people have to learn their sun signals based on things like their skin tone and how much UV they’ve gotten in the past. From that information they can start to titrate throughout the course of the week, the like all week long but then early spring to mid-spring to summer to late summer, you can start to build this solar tolerance based on those signals.

Preconditioning The Skin With Red Light For UV Tolerance And Overall Mitochondrial Health

If I’m not mistaken, just being out in the sunrise when there’s no UV yet, no UVA yet and certainly no UVB, but that morning infrared red and blue. The infrared and red condition the skin. Far, we talked about going outside so we can see the light, even in the shade. We have a lot of receptors for light all over our body, all over our skin.

In an ideal world, we go out, I hate to say it, naked in the sun if it’s warm enough and some people who live in El Salvador do that or at least with shorts or a top, whatever it is. We get a lot of sun on our skin, so that’s a good receptor too. Once again, these morning red and infrared condition the skin, so later on when the UV comes, it has a little more resilience.

That’s exactly right. Frankly, that’s what they show have shown with the red light therapy. Red light in particular is especially conditioning for the skin, the collagen, the mitochondria there to be able to withstand. UV light, it’s a strong wavelength of light that we absolutely can tolerate if we build up that tolerance. If you precondition, you essentially allow the mitochondria in your skin. If you get that really red and infrared rich sunrise time before ultraviolet light comes, you precondition your mitochondria so that they’re able to tolerate that UV light to a better extent before they give you the signals of we’ve had we’ve had enough for this session.

I’m jumping back into the nighttime. You gave some very good tips. One of them is to get actual lamps that point down and maybe even the VivaRays guys, who I had on my show as well, says, “No, you put your lights right on the floor.” Let’s say you put them on the table. They point down. Now let’s dive into quickly the actual lights, the light bulbs. What can we do? There are many out there, what do you like?

Lighting Solutions For Indoor Environments

I am a fan of old school Edison-style incandescent bulbs. Really amber-toned bulbs that you think of when you think of an old version of an incandescent bulb. I can still get them where I live. In fact, I’ve got a box of like 40 of them over there. This is the bulb that I’m talking about. It’s just this little incandescent bulb that has the tungsten filaments in it.

That’s a pretty one. I like it.

It’s a pretty one. You can see the amber, the orange, the yellow. It’s a beautiful one because to me, it really does feel warm and soothing. This is called a thermal-based heat source, meaning the light is generated because these tungsten filaments inside heat up and they get glowing. That glowing then, if I were to take what’s called my spectrometer, which is like a little instrument that will tell me the blend of the wavelengths of light coming from this, my spectrometer shows little tiny bit of blue, little bit of green more.

The rainbow starts basically at blue in very little and then grows bigger and bigger until you get to the infrared red and infrared. It’s just glowing with red and infrared light and that mimics campfire. I love a heat-based style of bulb just like this one because it doesn’t contain blue and it has a full spectrum blend of light when it comes to what my body is receiving. It really does mimic campfire.

I’ve even I’ve had clients who, it depends on the living situation, they’ve even gotten the heat-based version of a red bulb, which I have one over here too if you want me to pull that out, but that’s the kind that they would use to keep like their chicken coop warm. Especially in the winter, feels good. That again feels like this really red and infrared rich campfire. Firelight is certainly beneficial as well. Especially when incandescent bulbs were harder to come by, companies started to develop what they call circadian-friendly nighttime bulbs.

Before you go there, I’d like you to give us the name, the brand of the one you showed us.

This is on Amazon and the shop is called Dores Shop. They’ve got multiple different styles. Look for the Edison style one and look for the one that is what’s called 1700 K or 1800 K, meaning it’s going to be it’s going to say things like Edison style, amber, 1700 K or 1800 K, which is, I’m certain, it’s a measurement of color temperature. It’s Kelvin, so it’s really warm. It’s not rich in blue. Basically, that’s what it’s saying. It feels warm. That’s the one that I’ve stocked up on. Anything else with the incandescent bulbs?

No, let’s move now to the other brands and all the new the new technologies that make it work.

Yeah, certainly. This is a company called Healthy Home. They’ve also made what’s called the Edison. Let’s do a bit of a comparison here. The Healthy Home shop has the Edison but they call it the Edison LED. Obviously, this one with the tungsten filaments. This one is an LED-based. It’s going to be hard to see but it’s an LED-based Edison bulb.

What does that mean when it comes to the colors that come from it? It’s still amber. It’s still very warm tone to it, it contains zero blue light. However, when I measure it, what happens is it’s going to contain zero blue then yes, increasing amounts of orange and red, but that’s where it stops. There’s no near infrared, far infrared. It’s not a heat-based light source.

Can it benefit circadian rhythm? It certainly can. I have seen countless clients get an LED bulb like this that has benefits. Now the benefit of this LED bulb is it doesn’t flicker, which we could always talk about, but you want a bulb if a company’s advertising a circadian-friendly bulb, you want it to not have any blue light, you want it to be amber and warm toned and you want it to say flicker free. Those are key when it comes to looking for bulbs.

It’s great. It’s a more modern what people would call energy efficient option because it’s an LED bulb. For me, it’s not as soothing because it doesn’t contain that warmth of a true incandescent bulb. Again, can it support circadian rhythm? It absolutely can. There’s other companies. There’s absolutely other companies that are making good quality bulbs. I just again find the incandescent bulbs to be the best for me. I’ve been in this space for a long time. I remember when the recommendation was you have to have just red leds, literally red bulbs everywhere and that’s the only way after sunset that you can support your circadian rhythm.

I had certainly gone through that. We have red in the house. I started being like, “This is off. It’s throwing me off, like something feels off about this.” I still have a private community but at the time, I had more people in my private community be like, “That red makes me angry. I don’t want those red bulbs. I start to feel really anxious and angry.” Certainly, some people have had that reaction.

A red LED that doesn’t flicker, does it contain any blue? No. Can it protect your circadian rhythm? It absolutely can. It’s not the only solution, and I have found some clients, such as myself, that don’t resonate with it. I prefer something that mimics campfire, which is likely what we would have had in terms of lighting our interior environment historically.

Of course, we can go romantic and have candles, as long as they don’t smell. We can have candles, but one name that comes to mind I know that there are many of those is OIO. What do you think about that one?

I’ve not tested them out yet, so I don’t know. If I’m looking for a candle, I typically look for a beeswax candle, no scent. That’s typically the name of the game. We don’t do a ton of candles because I’ve got 3 cats and 3 kids, and so lots of room for disaster.

I talked to Scott Zimmerman here, and his company also makes a light. Of course, they are all very frustrated by the restrictions on the regular lights that we used to have. He’s trying to bypass it and having an LED that’s compliant, but it still has a filament. Now, the standards have risen so much. Hopefully, that will all change. With the new administration, maybe it’ll change. I do have 1,000 light bulbs in my garage, just in case.

I appreciate Scott. Scott’s doing it, Dan White, there’s a lot of people in this space who are crafting a more balanced LED that does contain a little bit of that tungsten or that thermal aspect or near-infrared. In my opinion, that’s going to be the solution for an office environment. That’s going to be the solution for a basketball or a stadium.

They can’t replace all their bulbs with incandescent. There’s no way that’s going to work. I’m really hopeful that people like Scott are going to be able to continue to develop these bulbs because I really truly think that there is an absolute place for them. While I can still get incandescents, that’s going to be my go-to at the house.

By the way, that’s another point. Even exercising is better done outside or at least with an open window. Many people go to the gym and lift and weights and run and do this and this. Everything is closed, everything is dark, and unbelievably strong lights coming from the ceiling all day long. Ideally, those could be changed. That would be a great thing.

You talk about football, many injuries because it’s such a physical. Come on, you’re tackling someone. In basketball, the injury level is very high. Some people actually say it’s because you play inside under artificial lights and it makes you more prone to injury.

It absolutely does. It does two different things. That artificial blue light inhibits your mitochondria from making water, and our muscles and our connective tissues need hydration to withstand forces. That certainly is an aspect of it. The second thing that we have in a stadium is a lot of wireless radiation, which we’re not going to have time to necessarily talk about, but Wi-Fi everywhere.

Now every stadium wants to have wireless. I’ve measured stadiums that have wireless radiation off the charts when it comes to using my meter. It’s insane. That’s a very dehydrating environment for an athlete to play in and to perform high. They’re traveling, and we know being at altitude dehydrates. Now the air travel also has wireless available. These athletes, it’s a much bigger challenge for them than it ever was when we had mostly incandescent bulbs.

The athletes that we’re working with are finding a big-time benefit from the red light therapy because they know that their working environment is going to be full of just artificial blue all day, all night, and they’re realizing that they’re so starved that they really do need actually a lot more red light therapy than you would generally think would be beneficial for someone. Their bodies just soak it in because of their work environment.

By the way, I just remembered that study at the City College of London when they shone red light on the shoulder of somebody for 10 or 15 minutes, then they had a meal, and the glucose spike was 27% less. That’s a really good indication. If the weather is nice, do what people have been doing for millennia. Have your lunch or your breakfast outside, in the shade. It’s okay. Have it outside.

Absolutely, because what that shows to me is the mitochondria are the ones that use the glucose. You’re making your mitochondria more efficient at using that glucose, so the glucose doesn’t stay as elevated. That’s a lot of Glenn Jeffery, what he’s studying in terms of the effect of that red light and the mitochondrial health.

Sometimes I come across claims that, “We can protect your entire house like a bubble of 80 feet across from emfs. We have this incredible generator of frequency.” Is it all just bunk?

It depends. No, actually there’s some companies that I think are actually doing the research to the standard that I want to see, to the level that I want to see, to show that there is something to some of them. I’ve also studied bio-geometry, this idea that shape and sometimes the material of something can influence the waves.

Bio-geometry was started by Ibrahim Karim. He harmonized, which is a word we’ll hear, which is still woo, depending on how it’s being used. He showed on a city-wide level that he was able to harmonize at the time 3G and show a beneficial impact not just to humans but to the insects and the animals as well, which cannot have a placebo effect. Can we use certain geometries to change the EMF and how it’s influencing the human body? We absolutely can.

Buyer beware, you have to make sure it’s tested. There is a company that is testing what are called the voltage-gated calcium channels and how they’re being affected with wireless radiation before using their product and after using their product. They’re showing a very significant reduction in the voltage-gated calcium channel activity. I’m excited.

It’s like, can we have some kind of a device or something in our homes that, in spite of being around wireless radiation that we cannot control. That’s a big fear-based one for people is, “A cell phone tower went up,” “A smart meter just got attached,” “My neighbor just moved in and has wireless everything that I’m picking up now.” If we can’t control it, I want to be able to offer a support for people in a way that you can say, “Okay, you cannot control everything, but here are some things you can do in order to potentially minimize the effect of this wireless radiation.” this company has certainly dived into it.

Travel And Wireless Radiation Mitigation Strategies

What would be a name of such a product that we can get?

That company is Blue Shield.

That puts another angle of how we look at travel. Some people look at travel as an ideal, “I’m going to retire and then I’m going to travel all the time.” let’s break it down. How do you get to your destination? Usually, you take a flight. The flight, you’ve already mentioned what it does to you. You get to what? A hotel, if you don’t get an Airbnb.

A hotel, you’re on the twelfth floor of a twenty-story building, every room has Wi-Fi, everything. You are bathed in Wi-Fi. The windows don’t even open. People think that traveling is just free in terms of the toll it takes on the body. How often do we hear, “I came back from vacation, now I need a vacation?” Partly, it’s because, yeah, we explore and we walk around much more than we normally do, which is good stuff, but partly it’s all of this.

Certainly, it can be. I travel many times a year for work, and we travel as a family. I take my family with me to my work engagements. I think if you have a mitigation strategy, you can almost have the best of both worlds. For example, I don’t want to limit myself because I’m worried about all the wireless radiation. I want to say, “What can I do to mitigate in this given moment?” certainly, prior to a flight and during a flight, I’ll use portable red light therapy. I’ll be very hydrated. I use a specific mineral blend called Quinton Isotonic when I’m flying. I use molecular hydrogen these are things that people can look up while I’m flying to mitigate the cellular and mitochondrial effects of the emfs.

Same thing when we get to location. We set the circadian rhythm, we go outside a lot, we earth, we ground, we get ourselves into we typically go places where we can get into nature and be outside more, for example, than I can in February in the middle of winter. I would say that yes, those absolutely are things, but there are things we can do to support our body so that we don’t have that same sensation of “I feel just completely depleted or exhausted.”

Over time, that exhaustion is indicative essentially of mitochondrial decline because of the frequency of travel and the wireless radiation exposure. I want people to walk away thinking, “Yes, we know that these things are full of it. They’re full of the wireless radiation but are there some things I can do to support my body because I want to visit the South of France or I want to visit various places.” I think we absolutely can get a little bit of best of both worlds there.

You talked about maybe a portable red light even on the plane with you. You get to your hotel room. Is there any portable you said the geometry that can protect you in your room from all the Wi-Fi and the EMF?

Yes. Theoretically, based on the research from this company, they have a portable one that you can bring with you. It’s not even hard to bring. Their product is about this big. Their most powerful product is about this big. To decide which product you need based on their lineup, you go to antennasearch.com and you put in your address and they will tell you how many essentially cell phone towers and antennas are within a three-mile radius. Based on that number, these are the different tiers that you would want to consider.

The most powerful one’s about this big, I have definitely brought this type. They also have portable ones that are like a credit card. You can bring those on the plane and to a hotel. I will bring a red light therapy torch and a red light therapy pad that can go directly on the body. Those always come with me when I’m traveling.

I also have a portable lamp. I don’t travel with bulbs anymore. It just became too big of a headache for me. Soleil Well has a portable red light therapy lamp. It’s LED, but it’s orange. It does not flicker, it’s portable so you can literally walk with it from room to room. Let’s say one kid has to get up in the middle of night to go to the bathroom and forgets where he is, it’s like I can take the kid to the bathroom, we can use that light as opposed to overhead lights. Yeah, there are options, it’s just having a travel toolbox, if you will, that you go with everywhere you go, knowing that you might use all of it or some of it. You just pack a couple of things that can be really beneficial in those situations.

If we had more time, I would go into the list of products with you, but maybe Chad will connect us. I’ll send you an email, you can send me the names of some of the stuff you use. By the way, a pet peeve. Some hotels are now trying to save on the lighting cost, so when you step into the bathroom at night, all the lights come on like crazy lights. That’s like a pet peeve that I have.

I’ve never encountered that yet, but that would be a huge pet peeve of mine.

Alright, Carrie, I’m very well aware of your time limitation. I know very well we could have talked to you for three hours without even batting an eye. I know you have to prep for your next thing. I want to thank you so much for taking the time, and we will send you an email to get your lists and everything. Now, to benefit from your experience, your knowledge, how can people reach you?

Sure. I have two social media hubs where I just put out free content frequently. That’s Instagram, @carriebwellness, and YouTube as well, Carrie B Wellness. You can go to my website and explore my offerings. I have everything from a $5 five-day intro challenge to a $39 monthly community membership to protocols that are available. Very accessible ways that you can engage with this information and start to apply it on a regular basis. I would say those are the places to check out, CarrieBWellness.com and Carrie B Wellness on Instagram and YouTube.

Carrie, thank you so much, and I would like to have you here again because there’s so much more to talk about. We just skimmed on the surface here.

It was a great skim, though. Lovely chatting with you, this was such a fun interview, so I’d love to come back for more.

Very useful. Thank you so much.

Important Links

• Carrie Bennett
• Carrie Bennett on Instagram
• Lighten Up! (Part 1) With Dr. Roger Seheult
• Why You Need To Check Your Light Diet – Roudy Nassif Explains
• Sun Light: Nature’s Abundant & Free-Flowing Wellness Powerhouse With Scott Zimmerman
• Carrie Bennett on YouTube

About Carrie Bennett

Carrie Bennett is a clinical nutritionist with research-backed expertise in hydration, fasting, anti-inflammatory diets, healthy light exposure, and detoxification. Struggling with chronic joint issues, insomnia, and debilitating stomach pain post childbirth, Carrie found herself in a health rut despite her deep knowledge in biology and nutrition. Subsequent to this, she discovered the game-changing field of quantum biology; reconnecting with the natural world in a powerful way.

Carrie learned that optimal health isn’t only dependent on diet and exercise, but also on living in harmony with nature’s rhythms. Her mission has since been to teach her clients to thrive by utilizing quantum health strategies focused on light, water, electrons, and mitochondrial support. She translates complex quantum mechanisms into actionable strategies, emphasizing the use of light, water, and nature.

A sought-after speaker and online practice consultant, Carrie is also a the lead faculty member and on the Board of Advisors for the Quantum Biology Collective, the world’s premier certification for Applied Quantum Biology in clinical practice.