Mitochondria Tune Up? With Kristina Kristen

June 30, 2026 Adiel Gorel

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Mitochondria Tune Up? With Kristina Kristen

Everyone, it is great to be here with you again. I’m very excited to have Kristina Kristen with us. Kristina, I understand, actually, besides all the stuff that you are going to be talking about, you are teaching in my county, Marin County, right?

Yes.

That is not very far for me. My office is in San Rafael, so not very far. What do you teach?

Teaching Chemistry And Bioenergetics At Dominican University

Amazingly, we have not met because Marin County is actually very small comparatively. I hope we will meet one of these days in person. I teach at the Dominican University of California. It is a small college. It is a gem, and it happens to be ten minutes away from where I live. It is perfect.

It is five minutes away from my office. It is very beautiful. What do you teach?

I should mention I teach chemistry.

Kristina, I saw some of your content on Facebook, and I knew that I wanted to have you on the show. Obviously, you are touching upon so many things that we have covered in the past two years now. Time really flies. A lot of the people that we have had on the show, and I really like not only your messages that you put out, but I like the fact that you created content. I know you have a book, and you also created something called the 10,000 Suns: The 28-Day Mitochondria Reset, which I want to know more about as we talk. Why do we not start with you, Kristina, just giving us a bit of a path that you took to come to this point?

The Organizing Principle Of Energy Flow And Mitochondria

It is a very circuitous path, but also in a way, when I connect the dots backwards, it is rather magical, I think. I developed this huge obsession, almost, I would say, about mitochondria, bioenergetics, and so on at this point. I would say that I have come here, my path has led me here over years and years and years of studying chemistry, biology, metabolism, and chronic illness specifically. What was really just like a paradigm shift for me was when you try to approach all of these various disciplines as though they are separate, what became very obvious to me was that they are all interconnected, and the foundational, I would say, deepest connecting force is energy flow.

Basically, energy flow, meaning the distinction between inanimate systems and animate systems, meaning life and non-life, is energy flow. What is energy flow but mitochondria? For me, this framing completely has overtaken how I view health, disease, life, and all of it. Once you see this framing as the overarching fulcrum, the connecting piece, everything starts to make sense a lot more. Essentially, I have always been hugely interested in health. It is something that I cannot remember when I was not interested in health. In particular, when I really started to go deep and really started to do the research, that’s when I had these a-ha epiphany moments.

What became even more interesting to me and fascinating to me was when you go down the rabbit hole, the energetic rabbit hole, you start to realize how disconnected from this framing, basically, medicine is, or our understanding of health in the mainstream vantage point is. Essentially, I would say medicine treats body parts and systems within the body as separate. It treats all your organ systems separately.

You have diagnostics that are somehow diluted or isolated, and it misses the deep organizing principle behind all of it, which is energy flow. Anyway, all of this to say, I just could not fathom how something that I am truly so understanding on a deeper level comes to this realization, how it is lost. It is not at the forefront for most people in their understanding of their own bodies. It is not discussed when they go to the doctor at all. When was the last time anybody discussed mitochondria with their doctor? Never.

How many people know what it is?

Believe it or not, I go around asking people randomly because it is so fascinating, just for my own sensibilities. You are right. Nine out of ten people have never heard of mitochondria. I find that to be astounding.

You are highlighting something that is becoming even more acute as time goes by. More than 100 years ago, hospitals had large windows, and the patients were near the window. They had balconies where the beds could roll out, and the patients could be in the sunlight. Everybody knew that a hundred years ago, how healing it was. Today in the hospital, because of insurance and risk, you cannot even open the windows at all.

They are shut, and the glass is treated. It blocks a lot of the spectrum. We have gone backwards, not only that, but we specialize. Now you get a PhD of a PhD, that is a PhD that leads to a PhD. At the end of the thing, you are an expert on this tooth. That is your specialty. That is the universe that you live in. We are all a system, just as an aside, not science. I was trained in the teaching of the Feldenkrais method.

It is body work that I do just on friends or my kids, whether you know it or not. What makes me laugh is if somebody came to me and said, “I have pain here, I have pain here,” and I go to their feet, and I move the body through the feet, and they go, “No, not the feet, my pain is here.” Are we not one skeleton? Is it not all connected? That is on the skeleton level. What about the entire body level? The more we specialize, the narrower we get, the more we lose the whole picture. Do you not think?

Flaws Of Medical Specialization And The Need For Holistic Framing

Absolutely. It is not seeing the forest through the trees. It is truly astounding. This is where I, coming back to if you are trying to build a puzzle, if you have a puzzle in front of you, I am just going to make a silly analogy, but hopefully it will make the point. You are looking at the picture usually to decipher where the pieces go. If you do not have that picture, if you have an incorrect picture, it is going to be very difficult to put the pieces together.

In fact, it probably is not. It is definitely not helping whatsoever. You are going to build it without the picture. The framing is so important in terms of coming up with the solutions. If the framing of where we are approaching a problem is completely not correct and also maybe misguided or sometimes even incorrect in these silos of diagnostics that we have in medicine, we are not going to get to the real solutions.

You are going on an ocean without a map or with the wrong map to get from point A to point B. I am making all these analogies because it just makes it easier. It is very basic. It is very profound. Your cells function or do not function as a direct result of whether their energy demands are being met, period. If their energy demands are not being met, if it is your liver or your heart or your brain tissue, your cells are going to eventually disintegrate into symptoms and then disease.

Now I want you to tell me, I know it happened some time ago. It did not happen when you were six years old. What brought you to the whole field of radiation from the sun, the spectrum from the sun, and what it does to our body when it goes in us? When did you start getting into this part of health?

The Importance Of Sunlight And Full Spectrum Light For Cellular Health

Once you start to see the entire life as an energy system, it becomes very clear, very lucid, very quickly that there are signals that we live, as biological beings, there are signals that either promote health or detract from or destroy health. Learning about mitochondria and their ancient lineage of being the endosymbiotic theory, ancient bacteria separate from separate beings and are very connected to light and very light signal beings, essentially organelles, light-sensitive organelles.

It was just one of those things where people are. I made a couple of posts, and it just blew up on the importance of sunlight and how in today’s life, in today’s world, in the Western world, people are made to fear sunlight to the point of complete avoidance of any sun and then slathering on all sorts of chemicals and so on to prevent any sort of harm or damage.

Basically, the idea behind the importance of light essentially connects to mitochondria, and mitochondria connect to energy, and energy connects to well-being in terms of cellular energetics. In answer to your questions, it is so simple. We are light-sensitive beings. The light is full-spectrum light over millions of years. Sunlight is full-spectrum light. People have now been determined through massive studies, predominantly to be living indoors 93% of the time under artificial light, which is not full-spectrum light. We have all this confluence of metabolic illnesses, separation from the right signals. One of those signals is sunlight.

Part of the reason that disease and metabolic issues have been rising is what you just said. It is the sun. What also contributes to and confounds the whole issue is the industrial food production and the bad oils and all of that. It has become less clear to pinpoint one element, which, of course, the sunlight is a major element. There’s a doctor in Australia who has a nice podcast. He has interviewed all the people that I interviewed, and he laments constantly about the state of affairs in Australia, which is apparently much worse than here. I do not know if I recall it exactly, but I think they have a slogan.

It is like slip, slop, slap. It is like slipping on a hat and sunglasses, and then slop all the sun is the enemy, it will kill you. He is the lone voice there, not lone, but he is one of the few people who are advocates for, “We need this light.” It has become a knee-jerk reaction that sunlight is bad for us. I talked to Martin Moore Eid, and he told me about the Swedish women’s study that you talk about, where they studied tens of thousands of women over a couple of decades. There was a direct correlation between exposure to the sun and less exposure. The health benefits were clear.

Scientific Studies On Sun Exposure And Mortality Rates

It is one of the major studies called the MISS study, the Melanoma in Southern Sweden study. It followed 30,000 women over 20 years. Essentially, they sought to determine the relationship between melanoma and sun exposure. What they ended up finding out was so much more profound. What they found was that those who had the lowest amount of sun exposure habits had nearly double the mortality rate compared to those with regular exposure to sunlight who sought it out. We are not talking about fractions.

We are not talking just small amounts. We are talking about nearly double the mortality rate of those who were trying to avoid the sun. That is the Swedish study. There are other studies, other very large-scale studies. Also, the UK Biobank study in 2024, which followed 370,000 people over 13 years, and they also determined that there was a massive correlation between more UV rays, consistent daily UV ray exposure, vitamin D, and mortality rates.

Of course, we’re talking about cardiovascular disease, diabetes, all that we call the lifestyle illnesses that are responsible for the epidemic of lifestyle illnesses that are killing the majority of Western populations. It is not surprising to me at all that these very big, important studies are showing what seems very clear. Sunlight is actually very important and is preventative against disease and mortality. It seems to be a surprise to many people.

It's no surprise that major studies keep reaching the same conclusion: sunlight is essential for health and helps prevent disease and premature death. Share on X

We can run the discussion along the spectrum of light literally. Since you have mentioned UV, and UV is the one that people say, “No, do not get UV near me,” why do we not start there? You have the shortest waves, and UVB hits your skin at a very superficial level. That is what helps us create vitamin D. Once again, we talked about the silos. People are in silos. People say vitamin D is good for you. People know that. Check your vitamin D level. Now people say, “What, you will get it from the sun, but then you’re going to give UV light, so get it from a supplement.”

It turns out there are many differences in how you generate vitamin D, not to mention the POMC, and it breaks down into nine different beneficial things for our health. UVB is actually very good for our health now. Do I say that we should go out in the sun and worship it all day, and be in the sun all day? No, I’m not saying that. Also, there is something in nature that somebody said is not mine.

There is something in nature that is nature’s sunscreen. Nature’s sunscreen has a name. It is called shade. You see a dog going in the sun, enjoying the warmth, but they get too hot. What do they do? Naturally, they go into shade. Nobody says we have to be out there in the sun baking. We can be in the shade. We still get the photons. We still get a lot of the benefits. The hype has made it so, and that’s only UVB that we are talking about so far.

UVB, obviously, we know the correlation between UVB, cholesterol in your skin, and vitamin D production. It is vital, and people have reduced sunlight’s benefits to only vitamin D at this point, which is, in and of itself, absurd. Yes, vitamin D is one of the master hormones. It is incredibly important to note that everything within our body has receptors on almost every cell, etc.

Even UVA, which has also been demonized, is responsible for the nitric oxide release. Basically, the UVB helps in vitamin D production, and UVA actually releases the nitric oxide, which is a vasodilator. It improves circulation, temporarily reduces your blood pressure, and is incredibly important within the mitochondrial electron transport chain at one of the last enzymes, the cytochrome c oxidase, where it actually improves ATP production.

This reductionist idea that just because too much of something could be harmful means a Goldilocks amount of it is not good is truly astounding to me. It is the equivalent of saying if you eat too much food, you will die. Overconsumption of food is not good. Neither is completely not consuming any food. Both are extremes. Neither is synonymous with bringing forth health. You need the right amount of food with the right nutrients to be healthy.

The same goes for almost everything in our lives. There is nothing that is outside of the idea of the Goldilocks paradigm, where we live on a Goldilocks planet. We are at the right distance from the sun, which has created all the life-sustaining systems. Internally, we also have the need to live within the margins, like pH balance, temperature balance, metabolites, and ions. Everything is strictly monitored to be sustained within a certain set of margins where too much is not good and too little is not good. That applies to sunlight.

For most of our audience, one thing that you’re familiar with is this. You just got the result of the blood A test. You get all the values. Guess what? They show you whether they are in the Goldilocks zone, showing if this one is too high or this one is too low. We do live our whole life in a narrow band that you call Goldilocks. That is a good name.

There is also the story that has been studied, which is not just a story, of the astronaut who went into the space station for months. As it happens, he had an identical twin brother on Earth. The differences between their health markers and aging in a few months were remarkable. The astronaut aged enormously relative to his own identical brother. As you say in your book, the title indicates it is not all about genetics.

Back to the framing, genetics is the static blueprint, so to speak. It is the equivalent of the car make and model, but the engine is your mitochondria. That is the bioenergetics part of it. If we only focus on the genetic part of it, the chromosomes that we inherit from both mother and father, we’re missing the life force. The life force is your mitochondria, and those are the engines within the cells.

Those really are responsible for everything that we do, the heartbeat, the breath, just breathing, metabolism, and neurotransmitters. The energy flow that is part and parcel of the transformative power of the mitochondria is what keeps us alive, breathing life into us. This idea that everything is genetic, of course, varies depending on which study looks at it, but somewhere between 5% to 7% of your ultimate longevity curve is genetic. The rest is lifestyle.

It is what you do. It is what you do within your everyday life that accumulates over time. The idea that your heart disease, whether you have cancer or not, is genetically driven, I think, is pretty much outdated by now. There is this inability to let go of this paradigm for some reason, that it’s all genetically driven. Also, unfortunately, there seems to be a lag in modern medicine in coming around to the bio-energetic perspective of this framing, where you really do take control of your life more through your daily interventions, which also have preventative forces.

Once again, it is due to silos and specialization. Jack Cruz, who is an MD, taught himself physics because he said you cannot really only talk about biochemistry and biology. You need to know physics because a lot of these processes, if you know physics, you know what’s going on. Biologists know what they know. Physicists know what they know. Nobody talks to each other. Jack Cruz is actually an example of a guy who tried to be and is very broad about it.

We covered UVA. Many people have high blood pressure. Just spending a little more time in the sunlight, again, the nitric oxide, which is beneficial for many things, but a vasodilator could help. I know it’s temporary, but when people make it a habit, 200 years ago is a great measure for us to use. What was our life like 200 years ago? We got up in the morning.

We spent most of the day outdoors. Most jobs were outdoors. Not to mention, we wore leather shoes, which let the flow of electrons from the ground into our bodies. We spent most of the day outdoors. We got back at night, there was no TV, there was no phone, no Instagram, I’m sorry to say. There was nothing much to do, maybe a little fire, and then you went to bed, and it was dark. That is how we lived.

Benefits Of Infrared Light And Indoor Versus Outdoor Living

Compare that to today, where you go to your office, you’re under LED lights or fluorescent lights all day long. People do not have this concept or idea for the most part to actually venture outdoors for lunchtime because it is healthy for them due to the sun exposure. They may or may not do that at all. Basically, the entire life from morning through evening is indoors under artificial light, which has predominantly blue-spectrum light.

The mitochondria thrive on infrared light, which is the opposite side of the visible light spectrum. We have the 600 to 1000 nanometer range, which activates the mitochondria. It actually promotes ATP production. All sorts of very positive effects are from the infrared and red spectrum, which you do not get when you’re indoors under fluorescent and LED lights. You’re missing the daylight, the full-spectrum daylight.

At night, when we have evolved to have darkness and perhaps candlelight or some incandescent light, people are exposed to the phone and more LED lights that have now infiltrated the homes as well, which are mostly blue spectrum. Is it a wonder that it seems like it is so backwards that we have lost touch with the most important signals? We are disconnected and lost touch with the most important signals that actually are foundational to our energetic system, our mitochondria. We’re doing things that are quite possibly detrimental, especially when it’s compounded over time.

There’s a consistent effect. One day is not going to do anything. It is not going to kill you. When you do this over 10 or 20 years, you better believe there is going to be an accumulative effect of not enough proper light exposure that brings forth heart disease. It can promote it, as it is one variable among many. We have said it, ultra-processed foods, stress, and so on contribute. It certainly is compounded over time. We absolutely need to understand that the sun is not the enemy. As with everything else, we need to have the right relationship with it and to not shun it like it is the enemy.

One day won't make or break your health. But over 10 or 20 years, the cumulative effects of inadequate light exposure can contribute to heart disease. Share on X

The Importance Of Morning Sunlight And Infrared Exposure

You talked about infrared light. One thing that the windows nowadays filter out is infrared light, because that is felt as heat. When you walk outside, you feel the nice heat on your skin. That is infrared light. Nobody wants heat to come into the house because you want to be energy efficient. That is the drive behind eliminating the incandescent lamp, which has a big component of that heat, infrared light, and replacing it with LEDs, which are basically cold.

We think we are being very efficient. There are studies that actually showed that LEDs have not made us more efficient because people just use more of them now, and it is the same. Hopefully, now that we have a certain movement towards replacing it back again, I hope they do. Roger Seheult has done experiments, some of them just ad hoc. He took patients in the hospital where he is and wheeled them out into the yard. He is telling amazing stories. They were discharged four days sooner. They got better much sooner just by wheeling their bed out.

A hundred years ago, there was already a balcony, but now we had to wheel them out on the elevator and take them outside. The results are quite amazing. That is the infrared light. Not to mention, remember how Jack Cruz said, when they asked him, “What’s the one thing you would advise people to do, the most important thing?” He said, “Never miss a sunrise.” What is the sunrise? The sunrise is dominated by red and infrared.

There is blue, but those are the dominant colors. You’re not going to get burned in the sunrise. You’re not going to get UV yet, as it is not there yet. You will get the red and infrared. That is how you start the day. It hits your eyes. It hits your skin. It synchronizes the little clock, the SCN that we have. That was his advice. Never miss a sunrise. It is simple

It’s very profound, very simple. It’s almost like it’s too simple for people. That’s one of the things. Again, there’s the brainwashing, there’s the propaganda. I found it interesting that it becomes part of the identity. It’s been decades since this idea that the sun is bad, sunblock should be used, and it should be avoided at all costs has been reinforced. It reminds me of Copernicus or Galileo, where, throughout history, contemporary thought processes have an identity element behind them. The sun has become part of a political world paradigm identity where it’s perceived to be bad.

Just from my own post, I noticed maybe 40% of the people, when given the data about the benefits of the sun through actual twenty years of cumulative data, do not really want to believe it. There is an intransigence. They do not want to believe it because it has become such a part of their understanding of the world around them. As you said, just seeing the sunrise is such a simple thing.

It gives you all the infrared light. You’re not even being exposed to UVA or UVB, which obviously can burn in excess. I do not think that’s part of the dialogue for most people. They’re not doing that. Some are. A lot of people are actually waking up to the idea of the importance of it. I find that sometimes the lowest hanging fruit that is the best medicine is the most ignored.

It’s much easier psychologically to pay hundreds of dollars for some advice or take a pill than to do the super complicated action of opening your door and stepping into the yard. That’s too simple, as you said. It is easy. As you said before, if you eat too much food, you will die. If you drink too much water, you die, but we know that we need water too. Again, back to Goldilocks. The infrared is plentiful in the sunrise and in the sunset, where there’s no more UV.

If somebody here says, “I’m so scared of UV,” okay, fine. At least go out at sunrise and be out at sunset. In the middle of the day, try to spend time outside in the shade. Just sit under the awning and have your food. The guy from the University College of London, Glen Jeffery, everybody talks about his experiment. He shone a panel of red light, about 670 nanometers, on a group of people’s shoulders. He gave them a glucose tolerance test. The glucose goes up to a peak, and then it goes down. The group that got the placebo had the peak where it was.

The group that got the red light saw it go down by 27%. That’s very meaningful. What’s the takeaway? The real takeaway is to eat your lunch outside. Some eat their lunch in the shade outside under an umbrella awning. Of course, the trees and the greenery reflect the infrared light. They do not like it. They give it back to us. That’s why people like greens and forests and everything. Just eat your lunch outside. You are at work, teaching at Dominican, and lunchtime comes. Go outside, get your lunch. You will get the red light, not from a panel, but from a much better source. Nature.

It’s astounding. Do you not just feel that there are signals that we get that are instinctive? We like to be around trees. We like to be around green. Personally, I find myself drawn to the sun, of course, with measure and with the thought frame around not burning ever. There are signals that are sent that I think our body actually interprets internally that make us automatically attracted to the things that are good for us. It’s not understood that way, somehow, in terms of just the general understanding that we’re given. Trees are beautifully health-promoting because they reflect infrared light.

Even having them indoors sometimes or going outside in the forest, like the forest bathing movement, highlights this. Where does that come from? It comes from the fact that people do this to feel better. They are naturally drawn to that because it actually feels good. We need more of that. We need more of this idea. There are so many natural, very powerful interventions that we can do every single day that can have such an impact in terms of health and longevity. They’re just underutilized and, for the most part, completely ignored in mainstream medicine. I do think that there needs to be this awakening around it because it’s free, it’s available, and either feared or underutilized in many ways.

If you want to extend it to how we live our lives, we eat plants, and those of us who do eat meat and protein are eating animals that eat plants. The plants grow because of the photosynthesis from the rays of the sun. Everything we eat comes from the radiation from the sun. We need it just like the plants do. We do not really have photosynthesis, but as you know from your study of the mitochondria, we do have synthesis. We make energy, water, and light in our cells. For that, we need food. We need maybe the electric charge from the ground if we can walk on the ground. That’s why you also said it feels good. Does it feel good to be barefoot in the sand on the beach? It feels good, does it not?

As long as you’re not burning your foot.

When it comes to light exposure, that’s a secondary issue. I talked to a friend of mine when I got into this a couple of years ago, very strongly. I talked to a female friend, and she responded. Her first sentence was, “I’m a woman, there’s no way I’m going in the sun.” What do you think about that?

It just ties into everything else. When you go to a dermatologist, they have a very reductionist vantage point of cancer, skin, and so on. If you have ever been to one, they will say avoid the sun, put on sunblock, and give you all sorts of other things, like retinol to put on your skin, which makes you even more sun sensitive. It is back to this formalized idea that the sun is going to age you. It’s bad for you. It’ll kill you. It’ll give you melanoma. It’ll give you cancer, so avoid it at all costs, and it’ll make you look old. What woman wants to have that? We discussed before that there are nuggets of truth in that if you do not do it right, if you go and burn all day, or if you have intermittent burning.

Intermittent burning is one of the worst things you can do, which is having unadapted skin to the sun when it is not built up properly over time, and you just go, and you burn once every month. That’s not really terribly healthy. To take that as the end-all be-all to avoid the sun altogether is where it becomes problematic. Women in general want to look young. Men do too. There’s a little bit more of an emphasis on that for women, so they want to avoid the sun in order to look better, healthier, younger, and also to avoid cancer. At what cost? The studies are showing that they’re not getting those benefits, and they might actually be doing themselves more harm by avoiding the sun entirely.

What you talked about is actually a lot of people’s notion of what it is like to be in the sun. They live indoors, working in an office. At night, they’re on their phone in the blue light, white as a sheet, and then comes the time to take a vacation in Hawaii. They come to Hawaii lily white, but they have only one week. You cannot adapt gradually. Five minutes are not enough, and there is no time. They go out and play in the sun and frolic, they come home looking like a lobster, and they get a bad sunburn. That’s a lot of people’s notion of what the sun is.

When you actually go out in the morning, where there’s no UV even, it conditions your skin to handle the UV later. If you do it on a daily basis, you’re never going to get that. We were talking about the sun and how many people ascribe all kinds of dangers and horrors to the sun. That is starting to shift. Even dermatologists and eye doctors are starting to talk about it. Again, it has to do with many factors. We talked about the extreme burning when you go on vacation for a week in Mexico or Hawaii, and you’re totally light-skinned at that point.

That is not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about giving a chance for the sun to give you some of the benefits little by little. Of course, it has to do with skin type. I am like number three on the scale or number two, something like that. Obviously, it depends on who you are. If you are incredibly white like number one and totally blonde, you’re pink because you’re so white, you obviously need much smaller doses. It is the same with food, too. Some people need smaller doses of food than other people based on their skin type.

Of course, if you grew up in Africa and you’re number five on the scale, you can tolerate not only much more, but your melanin will absorb so much of it that you actually need to be in the sun a lot. They talk about health problems showing in people who grew up in Kenya, for example, where they got very high-quality sun, very strong sun, and it’s very high up in the mountains too. One person like this who has built up a lot of melanin is now moving to the US and going to live in Minneapolis, where there’s hardly anything, which could have a detrimental effect.

Understanding Skin Adaptation And Avoiding Excessive Sun Exposure

It’s very much so. It’s all about context, adaptation, and your own genetics. It’s all the above. There’s no one-size-fits-all. You really have to be the master of your own environment when it comes to the sun. What is very beneficial in terms of time and context for one person may be too much or too little for another person. The major issue, as we already said, is this idea of intermittent burning of unadapted skin, which is problematic because you’re burned. We never want to burn the skin.

That is something to be avoided because obviously, that’s something that we can intuitively and non-subjectively understand that it’s not good. It can lead to problems down the line. Barring that, if we understand that we’re looking to have exposure to the sun in a wise and smart way because it is hugely beneficial, we do that gradually. If we’re not already exposed to it on a daily basis, we slowly build up or adapt our skin day by day with higher doses at different times to be able to see what we can and cannot tolerate.

I think of something back to what you also said, which was the morning light and the late afternoon light. These mainly have more of the infrared and the red light, which are very beneficial for the mitochondria. Avoiding the midday sunshine is also a little misleading because we all know the benefits of vitamin D. Vitamin D comes from the UV, as we already discussed, UVB and UVA.

How can we talk about the benefits of the sun and ignore that we need the UVB for vitamin D production and the UVA for nitric oxide production? I do think it’s about time and exposure and the right amount where the switch turns on for your own terrain and your own system. For that to happen, it could be five minutes, it could be 10 minutes, it could be 15 minutes. It’s dependent on everything that we just discussed. What you do want to avoid is burning and having unadapted skin and going madly under the sun for the whole day trying to catch up and get a tan. That’s just not a good idea.

How can we talk about the benefits of sunlight while ignoring that UVB is essential for vitamin D production and UVA for nitric oxide? The key is getting the right amount of sun at the right time for your body's unique needs. Share on X

They call it the solar callus. You’re building up a callus slowly. Once again, I really want to highlight that you can be in the shade and still get the benefits of all the rays of the sun, all the frequencies, including UVB and UVA. You still get it. There is scatter, and the photons are going to hit your skin. UVB and UVA in the middle of the day can reach you in the shade. It’s okay. We talked about that quite a bit, but it really represents only one half of the equation. The second part is actually much harder. Let’s say we listen to this as an audience of the show.

I decided I am going to spend a little more time outdoors and make it happen, just a few minutes here and a few minutes there. I’ll have my lunch under a nice tree. You’re doing well in the daylight. Now comes the second part. Sunset has come and gone. It is now night. That in modern life is much more of a challenge because people do not want to be bored. People want to look at the news, look at their texts, look at all of the goodies that they have on their phones. They want to watch TV. The fundamental light behind those devices is blue light. That is not what we want at night. What do you say to all of that, the second part of the day?

You have to have discipline. You have to understand that it’s okay to be bored if your sole source of entertainment is to be on the phone or something with blue light. If you’re going to do it, it’s important to have some discipline around it. If you want to have it for an hour or two, make sure that before sleep, which is incredibly important for our mitochondria and general health, you do want to really reduce your blue light exposure at least a couple of hours before sleep. We are in this culture right now where people are just on their phones 24/7. It’s always about the cumulative effect of that.

I do not know if we have fully seen the full cumulative effect of that. We will be in 30, 40, 50 years when the generations that have seen nothing else start to become gray. We do not know what’s going to happen with their eyesight and everything else. Knowing what we know and the detrimental effects of blue light at night, which is not organically normal and not what we would normally be exposed to in prior generations, it’s very important to be aware of that and to minimize it to the extent that it’s possible.

Again, we all have emails we need to respond to, we all have work, and we all have certain things we must do that are maybe not optimal in terms of timing. At least by 8:30 or 9:00, I’m going to put my phone away. I’m not going to be looking at blue light. I’m not sure if I’ve really bought into the glasses. I know that there are people who make blue light glasses that take out the blue light. There is light coming from refractory sources and all sorts of light. I do not know if that’s more of a gimmick. I do not think that can really make up for looking at light.

That’s a very good point. It definitely helps a lot, because the glasses block the blue light when you look at them straight on. As we know, our skin is full of light receptors. Let’s say you’re on the beach and it’s so warm. At night, you’re wearing hardly anything, just shorts. That’s all because it’s so nice and warm and you’re watching TV. Your entire body is getting this blue light. You can say, “You can cover up.” The hazmat suit. “I look at my phone.”

Personally, that is the bigger challenge than what to do in the daytime. I’m fortunate to have both a big awning here that I can spend time in the shade, a big yard, and spend time in the sun, walk around, and all of that stuff. I live on a mountain, so I can actually hike from my doorstep. I got that handled. The night is where the onslaught occurs. Again, it comes from the silos that we talked about.

Those LED lights at home came from the silo, which has a very good point in that saving energy is paramount. We do not want infrared because that is heat, and we do not want that. LEDs are used, but from looking at the whole picture, like the puzzle that you put together, that’s unhealthy. Everybody’s in their own silo, and saving energy has become a mantra. Now you’re a good person, you’re very virtuous, and you installed LED lights. You can even brag about it, or at least you can pat yourself on the shoulder for how good you are.

Somehow it’s lost in terms of the energy costs on the other side when you become sick and chronic illnesses have taken over. They’re epidemically high in numbers. With all this saving energy, what is the cost in terms of ultimate health down the line? This is completely off-topic, but this idea of energy conservation and being energy conscious is contrasting with the AI data centers that are mushrooming all over. I do not know if you’re tracking that. What happened to the whole idea of energy consciousness, carbon consumption, water, and all of that, anyway? I digress, but I just think that the health and wellness of the individual is not being considered in a lot of these approaches.

The data centers consume vast amounts of energy, so much so that the government now wants to say that if you put up a data center, you supply all the energy. They do not care what you do. You buy a nuclear plant, you do the work, you get the energy. There is also non-native EMF and the constant hum that comes from these places. Maybe a radius of a mile, a half a mile, or three miles affects neighborhoods, and they bear the consequences of that. You’re right, so much energy is required, yet we need to put an LED light at home.

I want to ask you this. You study, teach, and care about the work of the mitochondria. We’re not going to get into the details of what happens inside the mitochondria, the electron transport chain, in this episode. Maybe we will meet again, and if you want, we can go into everything. 1, 2, 3, 4, exactly what’s going on. Here is something I heard recently, and I really want to see what you think about it. Something is becoming very popular, and that’s the application of peptides. Peptides do all kinds of things.

Some of them specifically bolster the mitochondria, and some of them heal. Many of them are not approved yet, but I start seeing more and more of them. For example, there’s a popular peptide called BPC-157, I’m sure you know. I’m starting to see more and more that all the glowing reviews about the results of BPC-157 come from people 35 and under. That’s not me saying it. Some people are saying it, and I want to know what you think about it.

Why? It’s because when you get to 35 or whatever age you reach, your mitochondria is in poor shape and then it’s not going to work as well. I want to hear from you. Here we are talking about this. I know you have a kid, and I have kids. They’re young, but that is proof that we are not kids because we have kids. What do you think of that? Does the mitochondria function worse as we age, or if we live a certain way, it can function very well?

Mitochondrial Function And The Impact Of Aging And Lifestyle

At the heart of the research behind aging, I think you’re most probably very well aware that the mitochondrial theory of aging posits that energy transformation, the capacity to do it well, diminishes with age. It is a result of many assaults on the mitochondria. Whether it’s food, lack of exercise, a sedentary lifestyle, lack of sunshine, or toxins that we’re surrounded by, all of these contribute. Stress is a huge one, chronic stress. Over time, these assaults that accumulate and can be chronic diminish the capacity of energy transformation by our mitochondria so that they do not do their job efficiently as they once did.

Whether it’s to fuse mitochondria, they fuse, they can separate, which is called fission, biogenesis, and mitophagy, which is essentially autophagy for mitochondria. Mitochondrial self-elimination occurs. With age, depending on lifestyle, how well one has protected their mitochondria seems to be a major determinant of how well they operate for how long. That’s why we call them metabolic illnesses. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes. People keep throwing this word around, metabolism. Slow, fast, dysfunctional metabolism. What is metabolism?

Metabolism cannot be separated from mitochondria because it is the process of transforming the hydrocarbon food that we eat, plus the oxygen, into usable biological energy that basically sustains repair, sustains growth, and sustains all of the biological functions that we have to maintain to be alive. That is mitochondria. Your mitochondria are synonymous with metabolism. When we hear of metabolic illnesses, lifestyle illnesses, or chronic illnesses, every single one of them has a root cause that goes back to whether the energy demands of the cells are being met or not, and whether the mitochondria are healthy or not. This means are they doing their job at the optimal level and rate?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the number of mitochondria in a cell will change based on the energy demands of the cell. For example, please tell me if that is the case, if you go out and exercise, hike up the mountain, maybe run, maybe swim, your body says, “We need more,” and it literally makes more mitochondria. Is that true?

These are the signals that are sent to the mitochondria when we do certain things, such as exercise. Depending on the exercise and the level of exertion, it sends a signal to the mitochondria to say, “We need more energy. We need more of it in order to do X, Y, Z, whether it’s run a mile or 10 or 20 or hike up the hill or whatever.” If it’s done consistently, it’s a signal to the mitochondria to create more of themselves, biogenesis. Essentially, what has been determined is that, for example, in marathoners, they’re able to double the number of their mitochondria within their muscle cells and other cells through repeated exercise and repeated training.

It’s not only replication, but it’s also efficient. It’s also getting rid of any of the debris. Fission and fusion both serve different purposes when they bind and when they separate. These are all the necessary gymnastics, for lack of a better way of putting it, that the mitochondria need to do and have to do in a timely and efficient manner. When we talk about health, the energetic systemic health which is supporting your mitochondria, it comes down to what are the signals we should be aware of that are important in sustaining that mitochondrial health.

Again, that goes back to the pillars that we discussed earlier, coming to those pillars of health through a mitochondrial lens. How does what I’m eating support my mitochondria? This type of exercise, how does it support mitochondria? My sleep patterns, the whole blue light versus non-blue light at night, how does that support my mitochondria? What we call sleep hygiene and stress control matter. Chronic stress is one of the worst things for our mitochondria. We’re not designed to be chased by a tiger all day long, yet the modern lifestyle with chronic stress sometimes keeps it at an all-time high.

Chronic stress is one of the biggest threats to our mitochondria. We weren't designed to be chased by a tiger all day, yet modern life keeps many of us in a constant state of stress. Share on X

Basically, the body cannot distinguish between the stress that would be there if you were being chased by a tiger all day long versus having financial worries or work worries because the system reacts to this chronic stress as though you’re being chased all day long. The cortisol that is basically pumped is produced within the mitochondria and is very necessary for acute situations in order for it to rev up the ATP production.

When you have cortisol pumping, it revs up the capacity of the mitochondria to produce more ATP. That is supposed to be for a short, brief, acute situation. It’s not supposed to be pumping all day. When it does pump all day through chronic stress, that’s a cumulative detrimental stress load on mitochondria that can really be the precursor to many of the metabolic illnesses as well. I lost my direction. What was the question?

You wrapped it up nicely. I want to check with you what you think about some of the hormesis that we can impose on our body, and how that will work with the mitochondria, specifically fasting and cold exposure.

There’s a lot of phenomenal data behind the benefits of fasting, cold exposure, and heat exposure. We’re talking about acute, time-framed cold and heat exposure. The idea behind it is that, like everything else, back to the Goldilocks formula, you do need the proper amount of stress in order for there to be any health benefits. For example, when you fast, what does it do? It does put a certain amount of hormetic stress where the mitochondria are getting reduced caloric intake and nutrient intake. What prompts them to do is to clean up debris and the non-functioning elements that they’re surrounded by.

It is a promotion of the cleanup apparatus when you fast within the mitochondria and the cell to then operate more efficiently. I’m going to use a metaphor. When you’re within a building or a corporate office, the morning consists of the people who come in and work. At night, who has to come in to clean up after the day’s activities? It is really important to have the ability to clean up properly after anything that has created any debris, right? Fasting creates that capacity for mitochondria to basically get rid of any of the junk and debris and to operate more efficiently.

Cold plunge and heat shock, heat plunges, basically, shock the system. The mitochondria again have to adapt to this acute situation. When you are in cold water, what it basically does is it promotes brown fat generation, which is loaded with mitochondria. Basically, you’re promoting biogenesis of mitochondria, and you’re waking them up. It’s like an exercise. It’s a hormetic stress and exercise for mitochondria to become more efficient. The same goes for heat exposure, where they have to work harder to cool down, and they need more energy to be able to do that.

All of these things, it would be silly and idiotic to say do it for hours because then it becomes real stress, and it’s not hormetic stress anymore, becoming actually not healthy at all. All of it has to be within a certain time frame, a certain temperature, and done in a way that makes sense. Fasting, cold exposure, heat exposure, and exercise are forms of stress, and it’s a hormetic stress. Again, you’re exercising your mitochondria to be able to function in a more efficient way.

I find it fascinating that the term brown fat came about because under the microscope it looks brownish, and the reason is so many mitochondria. From my understanding, when we cold plunge, we build brown fat in certain parts of the torso, like around here in the back a little bit. Given that there would be so many more mitochondria here, is it likely to affect our total body energy? It’s not that our legs are going to have more brown fat.

There’s more research that needs to be done on the overall effect and how long it lasts. I’m sure there are positive effects, and I need to see a little bit more full, rich evidence and data as to what exactly is happening, how long it lasts, and how long one has to do it. All the specifics are a little bit too nebulous for me right now. Mechanistically, it makes sense because it’s an adaptive response to something that you do over and over and over again. Where it deposits, and obviously, we do not want this to be really bad, so all of that, I’m not a hundred percent clear on as of now.

I would say it’s a little bit more on the speculative range for me, but it is something that a lot of cultures have done. Northern European cultures do it quite often. I do tend to trust it from just an instinctive place, but also the data seems to corroborate things often, like in the blue zones, what they do and things that have gone on for generations that continue to go on for generations are compelling.

By the way, the blue zones are such a good point because there are so many books and so many lectures. What do they usually look at? They look at what they eat, how they move, and their social function. That represents the three main things that they look at. Nobody ever bothered to say they spend a lot of their time outdoors, and they do not go to Facebook at night. Nobody said one word about that. I bet you that’s easily at least half of why the Blue Zones are the Blue Zones.

I totally agree. Interestingly, you say that. I thought they had said that there were nine variables, as they’re all in different areas like Okinawa, Greece, and Sardinia. They’re all different diets, mainly different diets. They correlated nine things that they all shared. Obviously, whole foods. They all do not eat processed foods, as you just said. I do think walking was one of them, and walking outdoors.

The way they move.

You’re right, maybe they don’t correlate that directly to light, even though the movement was outdoors.

I have yet to see a chapter in one of those books on the Blue Zones that will have some of the stuff we discussed here. I bet you it’s a dominant portion of it. In those books and studies, it’s not just that variable. By the way, it occurred to me also when we talked about how, when you exercise within a certain frame, you create more mitochondria. When you create more mitochondria, you have more energy available to you. You have the energy that yields the desire to do it even more. It’s a virtuous cycle where energy begets energy. You have the vicious cycle, which we see so much. Somebody says, “I’m not going to go hiking. I’m so tired. I’m going to watch the show instead.”

That’s a vicious cycle. Less energy, less movement. It’s true in all of those things. Even when we talk about the cold plunge, you build brown fat. The mitochondria there actually create heat, as you know so much better than me. The more brown fat you have, the colder you can get. You’re more motivated to go. If somebody starts being a virgin, so to speak, and says, “What? You want me to plunge my body in a cold tub? No way, you could pay me a million dollars, I’m not going in,” once somebody has adapted, and they have the brown fat, it is going to be really fun. I’m not saying the three minutes are fun, but the rest of the day is fun.

The more you do it, the more you want to do it. Your body actually adapts to being able to do it in a way that maybe is even more pleasurable than initially. Just like if you go without training and try to run a seven-minute mile, it is not going to be fine.

Even going to the gym, even weightlifting, which many more people do, shows this. People say at the beginning, “I do not like it, I got cramps.” When people are one or two months into the process, they actually like the process of working with weights and feeling stronger. All of these processes feed on each other.

We’re creatures of habit.

Tell us about your publications. You have two publications that I know about. One of them is your book, and one of them is 10,000 Suns. I want to learn more. Let’s start with the 10,000 Suns. Can you tell us about that?

Introduction To The 10,000 Suns 28-Day Mitochondrial Reset

I would love to. The 10,000 Suns is born because I’m a huge fan and a voracious reader of anything that has to do with mitochondria. I came across Nick Lane’s books. I do not know if you’re familiar with him, but he’s an evolutionary biologist, a prolific writer, and he’s brilliant. In one of his books, I think it was Power, Sex and Suicide, but I may be wrong. Anyway, he made a calculation which just struck me. It was just insane for me to hear that, where he said, “Actually, our mitochondria gram per gram are 10,000 times more efficient than the Sun.”

There was something very powerful about that. I just thought, “What a beautiful, what a powerful statement.” I would love to just use that as the central pin around which I want to create my book. 10,000 Suns is the metaphor for our mitochondria. It was an answer to so many people because I had written another book prior to that called Beyond Just Genes – Welcome to the Energetic Revolution!. People would reach out and say, “I love this book, what do I do now? What is the next step? What can I do?” I do consulting, of course.

I did want to create a very user-friendly manifesto blueprint, whatever you want to call it, to reset your mitochondria within a specific timeframe, which is 28 days. I came up with 10,000 Suns, and it is actionable and science-backed. Everything I put in there has a ton of research and data to back it up regarding what you can do on a daily basis for 28 days. Week one, week two, week three, week four. These actions are within what I call the pillars, NESTS. I created this mnemonic, NESTS. Nutrition, Exercise, Sleep, Toxin avoidance, and Stress control.

Those pillars govern what you do every day through a mitochondria-focused lens. You stack the signals that benefit your mitochondria over these 28 days in order to really remove what’s hindering optimal energy transformation, and then feed all the right signals that are stacked together. This multiplies the effects to really get to a beautiful state from the first day that you start. That is 10,000 Suns: The 28-Day Mitochondria Reset.

Where can we get it?

You can get it on my website, KristinaKristenWellness.com. My first and last name. You can download it right away and start right away.

Kristina Kristen are both spelled with a K, just like you hear, just like you think it’s going to be written, KristinaKristenwellness.com. We can get the book there. You said that you work with people and consult with people. How can people reach you for that?

Through the website as well. Everything is on the website. My books, my philosophy. It is a go-to hub. For anyone who’s interested in working directly one-on-one, it’s there. I really love consulting with people, and that’s one of my passions as well.

Tell us about the book that you’ve written previously regarding how it is not just the genes.

My first book, Beyond Just Genes – Welcome to the Energetic Revolution!. That is basically for anyone who, I would say, it’s a perfect combination for somebody who knows a little bit or nothing about mitochondria, does not want to get fully technical, but really wants to have a thorough understanding of what mitochondria are, what they do, and why you should care. How can you take care of them on a deep level? It’s not quite in the way that the manifesto of 10,000 Suns is set out, but it gives you a full understanding from A to Z on mitochondria.

That sounds really useful. Remember, at the very beginning, you told me that you asked people whether they knew what a mitochondrion is, and 9 out of 10 did not. For those people, it sounds like this would be a perfect book.

I want to scream from the rooftops how important it is for us to understand our own bio engines. If you did not know that your car runs with an engine, it would be absurd. The idea that we do not have a better understanding of our own bioengines, our own mitochondria, is truly a shame, and it needs to be rectified. It needed to be rectified yesterday, so that we know when something goes wrong, and how we look under the hood. What’s going on? What are the things that we can do to basically get back to a state of health?

All of these things are empowering to us. If we do not even know that we have mitochondria, we’re not looking in the right places. We’re just going, and maybe symptom managing or even doing things that may be completely detrimental and making our health worse. It is incredibly empowering and incredibly important to identify what drives health, what’s the highest lever, and what’s the most important framing that we can understand, embrace, and then use to drive our own health.

The most empowering thing you can do is identify what truly drives health, embrace the highest-leverage principles, and use them to transform your own well-being. Share on X

Is the book available on Amazon?

On Amazon, exactly.

Very good. Once again, Kristina’s website is KristinaKristenWellness.com. The 10,000 Suns book can be downloaded there. Kristina’s consulting is available there. I want to thank you so much for taking the time. It’s always fun to talk about the most important subjects of life, really. It was really fun.

Thank you so much for having me. Such a great pleasure to be here with you.

Hope to see you again soon here.

Me too.

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About Kristine Kristen

Kristina’s lifelong exploration of health and disease revealed a fascinating and pivotal insight: optimal health and disease hinge on your cellular energy transformers- your mitochondria! Kristina combines her extensive knowledge in health and nutrition with personal experience to uncover pathways to wellness. Educated at Harvard University’s Lifestyle Medicine program, in Health and Nutrition, she’s also an adjunct chemistry professor, who understands the biochemical processes fueling our bodies. Her book, Beyond Just Genes: Welcome to the Energetic Revolution! empowers readers to take full control of their health with practical, actionable, evidence-based, mitochondria-centered lifestyle protocols.