🤓 Smarty Pants
Hormesis: When Stress Becomes Your Superpower
We're all told over and over again how bad stress is for us, leading to all sorts of health problems. But here's a plot twist: stress isn't always bad and in fact, there's a type of stress your body actually needs to thrive. Enter hormesis.
Hormesis is when low doses of stress trigger your body's repair and adaptation systems, making you stronger at the cellular level.
Think cold showers, sauna sessions, challenging exercise, even intermittent fasting. Or let's tone it down a bit. Think brisk walks. Push-ups. Leaving the air-con off so your cells remember what hot feels like.
We've been conditioned to make everything perfectly nice and fine 24/7, but each uncomfortable moment creates temporary stress that forces your cells to level up. Your mitochondria become more efficient. Your immune system sharpens. Your longevity pathways activate.
The secret? Dose matters. Too little stress and nothing changes. Too much and you break down. Just right? You become unstoppable. All covered in my Circadian Vault too! 😉
Ancient wisdom knew this instinctively. Science just gave it a name.
🔥 Deep Dive DL;TL
How Sunlight is Secretly Controlling Your Hunger, Mood, and Sleep
This week's TL;DL comes from Dr. Alexis Cowan, a Princeton-trained PhD who ditched academia after discovering how light, not food, is the master controller of human health. In her mind-blowing conversation on The Health Models Podcast, we get some truth bombs we haven't heard before. Buckle up!
The Brightness Famine We Don't Even Know We Have
Need some motivation to get outside? This may help.
Most people spend their entire lives in 1,000 lux indoors when nature built us for 100,000 lux outside. That's not a typo. We're talking about a tenfold difference in the brightness our biology expects versus what we're actually getting.
Why does this matter? Because your brain needs that brightness to manufacture serotonin, the neurotransmitter that makes you feel connected, motivated, and mentally well. Without adequate brightness, you're essentially starving your neurochemistry. No wonder anxiety and depression are skyrocketing when we're all living in dimly-lit caves we call offices and homes.
The Weight Loss Secret Hiding in Plain Sight
Remember all those headlines about Ozempic and the GLP-1 revolution? Well, UVB light naturally suppresses appetite and raises metabolism through the exact same pathway drug companies tried to copy with GLP-1s.
When UVB hits your skin, it creates a cascade involving something called POMC (proopiomelanocortin), which then produces alpha-MSH. This hormone binds to receptors in your hypothalamus and tells your body "reduce appetite, increase energy expenditure."
Translation? You could literally step outside instead of injecting expensive pharmaceuticals with a long list of side effects. The sun has been offering this for free since the dawn of humanity. We just need to accept this gift.
The Midnight Sabotage
Want to know when caves are good for you? How about night time. Even 10 lux of light at night can wreck your melatonin, your sleep, and your morning blood sugar. To put that in perspective, 10 lux is about the brightness of a single candle at arm's length, a typical nightlight, or the glow from your digital alarm clock. It's dimmer than moonlight streaming through your window. If you can see your hand in front of your face in your bedroom at night, you're likely well above 10 lux.
Researchers found that just one night of sleeping in low-light conditions led to increased insulin resistance, decreased heart rate variability, and elevated fasting glucose the next morning. Imagine what's happening if you're doing this every single night. True darkness means you genuinely can't see anything—and that's exactly what your body is crying out for.
The Missing Nutrient
Near infrared light is the fuel source your mitochondria never get indoors—it's the missing nutrient of modern life. Your LED bulbs, your fluorescent office lights, your laptop screen—none of them contain any infrared. Yet this wavelength directly powers your mitochondria, stimulates the production of that 90% of melatonin made during the day, and literally charges the water inside every cell. And as for glass windows? They filter it out too.
Your Action Plan
Get outside within the first hour of waking for 10-15 minutes (cloudy days count—you're still getting 50,000+ lux). Open your windows whenever possible to let unfiltered light in. If you're working out, do it outside with skin exposed to maximise UVA-stimulated nitric oxide production. And for the love of your mitochondria, create true darkness at night—no nightlights, no TV, proper blackout conditions.
☀️ Sandy's Sunshine
The 8 Pillars of Health (And Why You Should Master Just One at a Time)
It's easy to talk about change and results, like that aging reversal study showing improvements in weeks—but here's what actually stops most people: they don't know where to start. How do I fix my sleep? How do I add exercise when I'm already exhausted? How do I ground, cut my nnEMF, do cold therapy when I hate the cold, or get the benefits of a sauna, without a sauna?
Without a clear plan and tools, they try everything at once, get overwhelmed, and quit.
Here's what I wish someone had told me years ago: health transformation isn't about doing ALL the things, it's about mastering ONE thing at a time.
And that is how I came to create this framework that changed everything for me: The 8 Pillars of Health
S = Sleep & Sunlight
T = Temperature (hot/cold exposure)
R = Relationships (with yourself, others, and something greater)
O = Oxygen & Breathwork
N = Nutrition & Hydration
G = Grounding & Get Moving
Here's how it works: Pick ONE pillar. Spend 2-3 weeks making it automatic. Then add the next. Your body needs time to recalibrate each system—rush it, and nothing sticks.
Start with Sleep & Sunlight (it's the foundation everything else builds on). Once your sleep is solid and you're getting morning light consistently, add Temperature work. Then Nutrition. Each pillar strengthens the next.
The people in that aging reversal study? They didn't transform by doing everything perfectly. They transformed by building one consistent habit at a time until those habits became their new normal. That's the secret. 🌅
P.S. - Ready to stop guessing and start implementing? The complete roadmap is in The Circadian Vault which is ready to be unlocked.
🔢 Number Crunch
500 Billion: The number of new blood cells your bone marrow is able to produce daily.
To realise how incredible this is, if you measured 500 billion in time, 500 billion seconds is 15,854 years and 350 days.
And that's a wrap my friends! I hope you have a beautiful week ahead and if you have any questions, comments or feedback, please hit reply. I read every email.
P.S What did you think of today's newsletter? Let me know below ⬇️⬇️⬇️
