I’ve gone through writing this post in so many different forms and fashions. I’ve tried explaining the science. I’ve tried breaking down redox, mitochondria, electrons, thermodynamics, light, water, and time. And every time, I end up feeling like I’m losing the entire reason I started writing again in the first place.
My goal with bringing this blog back was never to write a textbook. It was to share my story of finding true health, to share what I’ve learned along the way, and hopefully to challenge the way you think about your own health and the world around you.
I’m not asking you to blindly believe me. In fact, don’t. If something I say makes you curious, go investigate it. Go down the rabbit hole yourself. PLEASE! At the end of this article, I’ll link to some of the people and sources that have been foundational in teaching me to see health, and really, the world, differently.
The truth was never meant to be overly simplified just so that it could be easily accepted by everyone.
So I’m not going to spend this post trying to explain every piece of the science behind redox. I’m going to tell you what I’ve learned, how I’ve applied it to my life, and why it has completely changed the way I think about health. And then it’s up to you to decide what you want to do with it.
We tend to learn about the cell through biology and chemistry: molecules, reactions, enzymes, ATP. But underneath those reactions are physical principles: energy, electrons, electrical potential, charge separation, gradients, light, and time. Redox was what started connecting those pieces for me.
A living cell must maintain differences in energy and charge to keep doing work. If those differences disappear and the system reaches equilibrium, there is no longer potential available to drive that work. Redox potential is part of that energetic picture because it deals directly with electrons and their tendency to move (aka their ability to be used by the body).
But there’s a caveat. The body can, in fact, have a great deal of energy stored but have also lost the ability to receive external signals and/or properly use that stored energy.
What changed everything for me was realizing that my environment has a direct influence on all of this.
Light isn’t only something our bodies respond to biologically. It’s energy. And the changing light of the day also carries information about time.
So the way I’ve come to understand it, there are two pieces I had been completely and unknowingly overlooking: the energy our cells receive and the timing information that tells our body what to do with it.
It has nothing to do with food and exercise. And by nothing, I do not mean that they don’t have their role. Food is another external signal that brings light energy and information into our bodies through the GI tract. This is one reason why eating local, in-season foods is so important. And movement is also important for humans. We were made to move. However, we must proceed with caution if we still think that exercise is necessary to be healthy. Exercise, if not done with intention, can actually deplete our redox potential.
One of the ways people typically push back against what I’m sharing is by saying, “But I’m healthy.” If our bodies are meant to be synced to nature, how can so many people live without those environmental cues and still appear perfectly healthy?
And the truth is, our bodies are highly complex and incredibly capable. Our bodies want health, so when we don’t give them the correct environmental cues, they do the next best thing. They rely on food as a secondary source of cellular energy and pull from whatever redox potential might be stored throughout the body.
But everyone’s context is different. We all have a different maternal lineage. We all live in different environments. We have different exposures, different stressors, and different amounts of redox potential to pull from.
This is why one person may seemingly “get away with” living completely disconnected from nature for years, while another person’s health begins to unravel much sooner.
And when it unravels, this doesn’t automatically mean death. It simply begins to show itself through dysfunction. When things are not organized in time through light, our bodies begin to run in a state of dysfunction. What that looks like will be different for everyone.
And if you are one of the few who can truly look at your health without any blinders and say, without reservation, that you are 100% healthy, then all the more reason to continue building your redox potential.
Syncing with nature is free.
Have you ever thought about how expensive it is to be sick? I know, personally. Which is why I choose to sync my day with the sun.
So what did this actually change for me? Honestly, almost everything.
Once I started seeing health through this lens, I couldn’t unsee how disconnected modern society has become from the very thing that is meant to keep us healthy (did I mention it’s free?).
So I started changing the way I structured my day and, slowly, my family’s as well. And I realize this can look different for everyone and, quite frankly, isn’t always (or maybe ever?) easy. Modern society and modern schedules have undoubtedly made it hard.
But for me personally, it looks like getting outside for sunrise. I stopped treating morning sunlight as another “healthy habit” to check off a list and started seeing it as the signal that begins my day.
I started paying attention to how and when I could get light in my eyes and on my skin throughout the day. This looks like avoiding things that could get between me and the sun: excess clothing, sunscreen, skincare, sunglasses, or even windows. If I’m indoors or driving, you’ll see me opening a window any chance I get.
But I also started realizing that getting sunlight was only half of it. It’s not just about eliminating “bad” blue light. It’s also about embracing the darkness.
If morning light tells my body what time it is, then the light I expose myself to after the sun goes down matters too. So our evenings slowly changed as well. We turn off our lights after sunset, and if we need light, we use dim red light.
Overall, sunrise became the beginning of my day, and darkness became something I stopped trying to eliminate from my night. Eventually, these weren’t things I had to constantly think about. They simply became the rhythm of our home. That’s probably been the biggest practical shift for me: I stopped trying to make my environment conform to my schedule and started letting nature help set the schedule.
It changed the way I think about when I eat, when I move, when I expose myself to light, when I seek darkness, and even how I think about the seasons.
And truly, none of this costs me anything. It’s simply a different way of interacting with the environment that’s already around me. That is what makes this so personal for me. I spent years thinking about health primarily through the lens of what I could put into my body.
Now I think about it much more in terms of what my body is receiving from the environment around it, and when.
Resources
Ephesians 2:10 “or we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do”