#169 Optimizing Mitochondrial Health and Sunlight Exposure with Matt Maruca

Matt Maruca (0:00)

We are able to be significantly more functional than most people think. There's this modern concept that you're born with your genes, and you're just stuck being like that. But of course, you can change that through diet, through exercise. But again, I believe that our light exposure, exposure to sun, is one of the absolute number, top three, top five factors. I think it's number one that can allow us to basically function as a significantly higher being.

In other words, turning on parts of our brain that in some way that are dormant, just by being exposed to the light.

Siim Land (0:40)

Body, Mind and Powerment.

SPEAKER_3 (0:42)

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Siim Land (0:48)

Everything the body needs.

SPEAKER_3 (0:50)

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Siim Land (0:54)

Welcome to the Body, Mind and Powerment Podcast. I'm your host Siim Land and our guest today is Matt Maruca.

Matt is the CEO and founder of Ra Optics, which is a company that educates people about the effects of light on health. Before I begin the show, I want to let you know that you can also get a 10% discount on Ra Optics glasses if you head over to the show notes and you use the code SiimLand at raoptics.com. I'm going to leave the link in the show notes. But other than that, let's begin with the show. Matt, welcome to the show.

Matt Maruca (1:26)

Thank you, Siim. How's it going?

Siim Land (1:27)

It's going really good, unfortunately, like we discussed before.

But it isn't that cold as it is usually in here in Estonia during the winter. But otherwise, I'm doing marvelous, how about you?

Matt Maruca (1:42)

Doing great. Yeah, I just honestly I'm very fortunate. I'm in Mexico right now and I just was in the, it's like the calmest ocean day that I've had.

So the water was perfect and I was just in the sun just getting cooked. So I have to say I'm very fortunate today.

Siim Land (1:58)

Well, yeah, like we usually don't really get any sunlight for weeks upon end here at this time of the year. So it's like pretty much gray and this, you know, smoke and cloudy and you know, not a lot of sunlight at all. So I have to be I'm kind of jealous of you at the moment.

Matt Maruca (2:16)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, it's an interesting, of course, I figure we'll go somewhere in that direction with our discussion of how like, so many cultures have lived in places without, you know, much sunlight for very long periods of the year. And they do quite all right, at least they have until maybe recently.

So yeah, yeah, definitely stuff you can do.

Siim Land (2:37)

Yeah, we can definitely talk a lot about it. But basically, like you and I, we have like quite a lot of mutual biohacking friends. And we actually we've met a few times over the last year, several times at these different conferences. And the last time we met was in the Health Optimization Summit in London.

So you know, you also gave a speech at there. So what was your speech about? And what did it cover?

Matt Maruca (3:04)

Yeah, so I was talking about the how I believe that the biggest driving factor behind this chronic disease epidemic we're facing today is the transition to an indoor lifestyle, an indoor sun deficient technology based lifestyle. And I sort of came to believe that through my own experiences and attempting to improve my health with diet and getting some significant improvement, but sort of hitting a wall in some sense and eventually learning about mitochondria, which of course you're talking about a lot now and autophagy, the importance of sleep, the importance of healthy circadian rhythms, and sort of seeing that there's this whole additional level, if we can say that, to health that just isn't commonly acknowledged or known about in the mitochondrial function, circadian rhythms and sleep and how if these are destroyed, it can be very challenging for someone to achieve optimal health even if they're on the healthiest ketogenic or carnivore diet, for example.

Siim Land (4:12)

Yeah, it's so kind of underrated in a sense that a lot of people don't pay much attention to the sleep.

And one of the most important regulators of a sleep is light and the circadian rhythms. So it's kind of, most people don't really pay attention to it. And they aren't even aware how big of an impact it actually can have in people's health.

Matt Maruca (4:34)

Yeah, absolutely, like right on the spot there, because again, for someone who's healthy, who lives in a good environment, who's physically active and, you know, lives in nature, grew up in a healthy place, they can, for example, get on a really healthy diet and probably have a very significant benefit in their health as can anyone. But for example, if you take someone who is a kid, a teenager, kind of like I was, who, for example, plays video games a lot, like I did, or spends a ton of time on the TV, or doesn't go outside much, doesn't have healthy exercise, they can get a good benefit from being on a diet that doesn't have processed food. But the systems that these diets typically rely on are the innate capacity of the body to heal itself.