Light #5: Sunlight and Athletic Performance

Sunlight and Athletic Performance

Light sculpts life. That is the key. It shapes and molds the human organism. It controls, dictates, and facilitates life as we know it. Those that respect Nature's laws (both knowingly and unknowingly) stand to benefit where others will suffer.

If you ask Dr. Jack Kruse, you'll get a whole lot more.

Light is the stimulus in the body for the production of hormones and neurotransmitters.

If sunlight causes cancer then spoons make people fat.

Dr. Leland Stillman

First we have to start with the understanding that sunlight is a whole lot more than just vitamin D. As you'll read below it influences muscle composition and mitochondrial signaling which directly affects athleticism. Light has it's hand in every biological function in the human body.

Starting with the most logical relationship is our circadian rhythm which is like our internal clock.

It guides our body through the different stages of the day and the corresponding changes that need to happen for optimal health and performance.

This is why isolated spectrums of artificial blue light messes up your circadian rhythm. The sun is constantly fluctuating throughout the day (as we've covered in past posts) to signal important processes to end and new ones to begin.

The artificial blue light tells your body it's high noon and puts you into a state of internal chaos as the actual time of day and the artificial blue light collide. As one might imagine, this is quite detrimental for all those other processes we mentioned above and has a negative systemic effect on sleep, dopamine, and ATP production for example.

Next, let's have a look through some Dr. Jack Kruse excerpts:

Muscle fiber type is linked to sun exposure as a kid.

AM sunlight, the transition between UVA and infrared A light, actually makes dopamine. That's one of the things that programs dopamine and dopamine is made from aromatic amino acids. Dopamine goes to fiber-type muscle. AM light is what builds dopamine levels the highest.

Usain Bolt lives on top of a volcano in Jamaica. The higher you go, the more UV you get. Darker your skin, makes your redox higher.

Kenyans come from Nairobi. Nairobi's at one degree north, 8000 feet on a plateau on an old super volcano. They're the blackest people on the planet to protect their skin from the UV light. The UV light index there is 14 or 15. That's why they have the fiber type for endurance racing.

Top 20 NFL rushers all went to school in the Southeast. Muscle fiber type is linked to your physiology and the amount of solar exposure you get as a kid.

Red light is the fastest way to build your solar callus, so that you can assimilate more UV light.

Dr. Jack Kruse

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Infrared-A (IR-A) light builds an Exclusion Zone (EZ) in water, Ultraviolet light (UV) expands the EZ.

The eye slows down sunlight to make things with mass & structure.

Light in the eye must be slowed as it travels peripherally through the body (eye clock must run faster than peripheral clocks).

UV light is important for signaling. Tightly coupled = signaling (run from lions), Loosely coupled = less signaling, more heat (stay warm).

Strong light tunnels electrons across the Electron Transport Chain (ETC), increasing Direct Current (DC) electric current (increased ATP, making more water to bind to proteins & unfold them).

Vitamin D and Cold increases vibrations on cell membranes. Anything that vibrates releases more electrons.

Dr. Jack Kruse

What we can learn here is that one's environment, especially during childhood is going to mold you accordingly. Equatorial sunlight plus higher altitude living is going to mean a lot more UV light. A lot more UV light tells your body that you need to maximize your athletic abilities to match your environment's circumstances. The opposite remains true for higher latitude colder climates where staying warm and surviving off less food is the reality for survival. It creates the circumstances where fast twitch muscle fiber wouldn't be needed as much.

This again shows why a childhood of outdoor free play will always dominate that of an indoor iPad existence being shuttled from school to private trainer.

Vitamin D

Contrary to popular thinking, vitamin D is actually more like a hormone than a vitamin.

Vitamin D is not a vitamin in the usual sense of the word. That is, most natural human diets contain little vitamin D—unless those diets include much wild-caught fatty fish. Furthermore, activated vitamin D is a secosteroid hormone, not a cofactor in an enzymatic reaction or an antioxidant like most other vitamins. Moreover, the vitamin D steroid hormone system traditionally began in the skin, not in the mouth. Cutaneous production from incidental ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation in sunlight—not dietary intake—is the principal source of circulating human vitamin D stores. Source

Vitamin D is critical for several systems of the human body. Vitamin D deficiency is a serious concern and most people hold back their performance by living indoor alien lifestyles. Even all-cause mortality (death) has been linked with vitamin D deficiency.

Vitamin D is essential for normal growth, calcium absorption, and skeletal development. Vitamin D is naturally present in few foods; most comes from the photo-conversion of 7-dehydrocholesterol in skin. Ultraviolet radiation < 310 nm is absorbed by skin pigment, but it also increases skin pigmentation. Source

Stress fractures, chronic musculoskeletal pain, viral respiratory tract infections, and several chronic diseases are associated with vitamin D deficiency. Source

Vitamin D also directly affects protein synthesis.

Administration of vitamin D to deficient rats leads to improved muscle protein anabolism and an increase in muscle mass, weight gain, and a decrease in the rate of myofibrillar protein degradation. Three human muscle biopsy studies confirmed the findings in animals. Biopsies on 12 vitamin D–deficient patients, before and after vitamin D treatment, found atrophy of Type II muscle fibers before treatment and significant improvement after treatment. Source

Vitamin D also influences neuromuscular performance. This means muscle strength, balance, timing, and reaction time. This begins to show how vitamin D on it's own can increase performance.

Studies of muscle biopsies of severely vitamin D–deficient patients, before and after treatment, indicate that vitamin D increases the number and diameter of fast, Type II muscle fibers. Source

Despite the limited evidence available at the time, athletes and trainers in the early 20th century believed that UVB radiation was beneficial to athletic performance. Accumulating evidence supports the existence of a functional role for vitamin D in skeletal muscle with potentially significant impacts on both the performance and injury profiles of young, otherwise healthy athletes. Source

Vitamin D deficiency may cause deficits in strength, and lead to fatty degeneration of type II muscle fibers, which has been found to negatively correlate with physical performance. Source

Our findings suggest that vitamin D levels are associated with the ergometric evaluation of muscle strength, as expressed by SJ and CMJ, sprinting capacity, and VO2max in professional soccer players, irrespective the levels of performance. Furthermore, our data reaffirm the importance of UVB on serum vitamin D levels. Source

Less sunlight equals less fast-twitch muscle fibers...

Type II muscle fiber is also known as fast twitch muscle fiber. Muscle fiber types can be broken down into two main types: slow twitch (Type I) muscle fibers and fast twitch (Type II) muscle fibers. Source

Keep in mind though that our knowledge of fascial fitness takes us beyond the limiting paradigm of merely just thinking in terms of fast twitch vs slow twitch muscle...

Case Study

"Few athletes live and train in a sun-rich environment, thus few have ‘‘natural’’ 25(OH)D levels, with the exception of equatorial athletes, such as the runners of Kenya. Another possible exception was the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, where athletes had to arrive early to acclimatize to the 7400-ft altitude. Because UVB penetration of the atmosphere is higher at high altitudes, because Mexico City is relatively close to the equator, and because of the summer season, ambient UVB irradiation from sunlight would have been intense during the 1968 summer games and should have rapidly increased 25(OH)D levels of any athleteacclimatizing outdoors.

Many new world records were set that summer, and the Americans, perhaps unexpectedly, won more gold and total medals than either the Russians or East Germans. Although most experts attribute the impressive number of world records to decreased ambient air pressure, vitamin D may also have contributed. For example, the Americans dominated in outdoor sports, winning 42 of their 45 gold medals in outdoor sports, whereas the Russians won most their gold medals (18 of 29) in indoor sports. Both the number of new world records, almost entirely in outdoor sports, and the percentage improvement in outdoor world records, for example, Bob Beamon added 21 inches to the long jump are consistent with the theory that vitamin D improves athletic performance."

Overall, we can conclude that maximizing our vitamin D levels should be of paramount importance for any footballer.

This means getting full spectrum throughout the day and on as much of your body as possible. This also means no sunglasses, sunscreens, or excessive clothing that can prevent proper absorption of sunlight.

Melatonin

Melatonin is a hormone secreted by the pineal gland in the brain, which is located just above the “middle brain” and is about the size of a pea.

Melatonin is produced in the morning by AM sunlight and then secreted at night in response to the lack of light (darkness).

Melatonin switches our body into night mode, the repair and digest mode. Mainly produced in the pineal gland as well as the eyes. Blue light at night destroys melatonin and disrupts the repair of rods and cones in our eyes.

Even colors after sunset that our eyes can clearly differentiate is too bright for our body to perform repair and regeneration. Makes too bright for our eyes to regenerate rods and cones.

Melatonin is our main antioxidant and antagonist for cortisol. Good melatonin levels at night support your immune system which are constantly counteracting cancerous developments. It helps lower estrogen levels.

Better melatonin levels allow your mitochondria to save ATP for the following day as body heat lowers for sleep.

Dr. Alexander Wunsch

Melatonin is made in the daylight but operates under the cover at night when magnetic fields are larger than electric fields.

There is another side to the leptin story: Melanopsin is the blue light detector between 435 and 465 nm but had melatonin effects all the way up to 550. This is why blue light blocking glasses must block the right spectrums. Melatonin makes sure your Ferrari engine is performing beautifully. They found out melanopsin is in your skin, your arteries as well as the eye and subcutaneous fat.

Melatonin supplements ruins UV receptors during the day.

Blue light from screens is 5700-6000 Kelvin (solar noon). This destroys melatonin in our skin, gut, retina, etc.

Dr. Jack Kruse

The lack of light at night is also critical to athletic performance as this flows with the duality of Nature. The more complete darkness at night you can get, the better. The complete darkness is when your body allows itself to get into deep recovery mode. Almost think of the bear hibernating in a cave for the winter, and don't forget you do most of your fat burning in your sleep.

Further sourcing for Melatonin: Source 1 Source 2

Dopamine

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter (or chemical messenger) and “feel good hormone” that sends messages between nerve cells in the brain. It binds to receptors in the brain, making them send signals from one cell to another.

This causes cellular changes that can affect your well-being in a number of ways. It plays an important role in many everyday behaviors, including how we move, feel and eat. It helps us regulate movement and supports reward regulations in the brain.

Dopamine is most notably responsible for feelings of pleasure and euphoria. It also plays an important role in locomotion, learning, memory, and other emotions.

Dopamine is essential for being fast

****Dopamine allows you to move your limbs faster and gives you reckless confidence; two elements that make kids fast.

Sprinters in the north are no match for sprinters in the southern states. Why does Florida produce twice as many elite sprinters as Illinois? I think this speed differential has to do with sunshine and dopamine.

Sunshine. Minimum exposure to sunlight should be 30-60 minutes, but the more, the better. Sunlight also increases the skin’s production of vitamin D, boosts testosterone levels, and improves the ability to sleep. We evolved for 35 thousand years living in the natural light. Too many people now spend their lives in artificial light.

Track coach Tony Holler

Any modern screen, it projects images using blue light. Blue light is very stimulatory on the dopaminergic receptors… it produces a huge pleasure sensation, that’s why these iphones are so addictive. When you put a kid in front of a flat-screen TV that emits blue light, it produces a stimulus to the dopaminergic receptors that is excessive.

A kid can permanently damage his dopamine receptors by too much exposure to artificial blue light screens.

Christian Thibaudeau

Sunlight not fake light in a gym builds hormones like cortisol by building dopamine using aromatic amino acids that absorb UV light. It does this to cortisol too. That light is used to power up electrons and this electrons have to get assigned a spin in mitochondria. So light acts as the currency in the compound pharmacy in our pituitary every day to make things we need from light. If you understand factorial math, that means within our octave of the visible spectrum that retinal cells that control bio chemicals can handle 8,683,317,618,811,886,495,518,194,401,280,000,000 different frequencies.

This is a staggering level of power and control. So when you open up any biochemistry book and realize that biochemistry only uses 100,000 substrate in reactions you realize light can control it. When you factor in that the photoelectric effect acts instantaneously, with no time delay, then you begin to see how 100,000 biochemical reactions can occur per second using light frequencies from the visible spectrum easily.

The use of cellphone increases the AMP-k pathway which controls glucose metabolism and opens the blood brain barrier. This how dopamine reward tracts can be stolen by porn, bright screens, etc.

This is why the opioid addiction really took off around 2008. Increasing levels of 3G to 4G and now 5G. Blue lit screens increase your blood glucose levels and kills your dopamine. Literally makes you addicted to technology.

The control of time in the brain is codified in three dimensions. Light, dark, and by electromagnetic cells in our hypothalamus that pay attention to the Schumann resonance of the earth’s magnetic field. When the clock’s measurements are off kilter for any reason, we get resultant low dopamine levels in the brain and an altered hormone panel. Modern life has brought to us, ubiquitous artificial light and constant pulsed EMF’s over the last 100 years.

Going towards your intuition builds up your dopamine.

Dr. Jack Kruse

Modern life contains too many high dopamine activities (high stimulation) like social media, processed food, and porn so that your dopamine reward system doesn't work correctly. Then sex, working out, "real life" (low stimulation) doesn't happen as smoothly.

Balancing dopamine improves sex.

John Gray

Understand here that overstimulating your dopamine receptors with artificial blue light, nnEMF, porn, processed foods, coffee, and other stimulatory agents leave your dopamine receptors unable to stimulated by real things like sunlight, sports, friends, and life in general.

This is akin to when a drug addict needs more and more of the drug to get the same fix over time.

This also goes some ways to explaining why people with speed and explosiveness seem more alive and lively. Their dopamine receptors are working properly and optimally sensitive.

Sunlight and optimal mitochondrial function will have many positive effects on many other, if not all, hormones and neurotransmitters. In an effort to keep this article from turning into an essay we'll keep it here for now.

Red Light

As we've learned before, red light is a specific spectrum of light between approximately 620 nm to 750 nm. The red light wavelengths that have the most scientifically proven benefits are 630 nm and 660 nm. Near-infrared starts at 750 nanometers and extends all the way to 1,200 nm. Near-infrared wavelengths that have been scientifically proven to yield benefits for humans include the 810 nm, 830 nm and 850 nm wavelengths."

Many companies have created LED or incandescent devices that emit these isolated spectrums of light to produce the studied benefits. Essentially what is happening is that the power of the Sun is being studied, segmented, and isolated in order to procure helpful effects. Red light obviously is present in natural sunlight, most notably at sunrise and sunset.

Red light and it's compatriots (Infrared, Near Infrared, and Far Infrared) are what I would consider the more healing portions of sunlight. There are many studies covering the positive benefits with red light exposure:

Infrared light (IR) is free energy for our cells. IR light turns water into structured water in our cells.

Cold exposure unloads IR light stored in fat cells like an Inner Furnace.

Matt Maruca

Do you need to buy a $500 Red light panel?

No. Go outside and maximize your sun exposure. Nothing can replace the sun. When you're a pro you can spend some money and get a nice panel to supplement your lifestyle and Inner Furnace work. Until then use the power of Nature hiding in plain sight.

UV light

As we've covered before, ultraviolet light (UV) is apart of the non-visible electromagnetic spectrum ranging from technically 10-400 nanometers. For our purposes, we really only need to think about UV-A (315-400nm) and UV-B (280-315nm).

As most will be aware of, ultraviolet light has been vilified over the decades as cancer-causing and harmful to human health. I can say confidently that that is entirely overblown and founded upon either purposefully or accidentally misleading studies. I say possibly purposefully because this vilifying of the Sun, specifically UV light, gives way to billion dollar industries like sunscreen and vitamin D supplements and also gave an easy escape goat for cancers caused by other things like artificial blue light and industrialized processed foods.

Much of the research used to found this fear of UV light studied artificial isolated spectrums of UV light inside of laboratories instead of within full-spectrum sunlight. As we all know, Nature works in an entangled manner where things in isolation do not work as designed. In order to get around much of the nonsense in the "scientific" world regarding UV light we have to look further in the past for research.

I'll also mention that there a lot of reports of Soviet sports scientists "doping" their Olympic athletes with supplemental UV light to improve performance.

‘It is a well-known fact that physical performance can be increased through ultra-violet irradiation. In 1927, a heated argument arose after the decision by the German Swimmers’ Association to use the sunlamp, as an artificial aid, as it may constitute an athletic unfairness, doping, so to speak. Source

There is a body of literature dating back over 80 years which suggests improvements in physical performance in individuals exposed to UV radiation. These studies do not directly mention vitamin D but UV-induced alterations in vitamin D levels may have played a role in muscle function. In 1944, a German study of medical students reported 13% improvement in performance on a bicycle ergometer after 6 weeks of UV exposure (Lehmann, 1944). A Russian study in 1938 demonstrated marked improvements in sprint times amongst students exposed to UV radiation (7.4% vs. 1.7% improvement in controls) (Gorkin and Teslenko, 1938). An American study of 11 male students reported a 19% increase in cardiovascular endurance following a course of UV radiation (Allen, 1945). Source

UV-exposure makes athletes faster, quicker and stronger is well documented by Dr. John Cannell, the founder and executive director of the Vitamin D Council in his book. It is not only thanks to vitamin D from exposure to UVB-rays but also thanks to the Nitric Oxide from UVA and probably many other, not yet identified, processes in our bodies.

The report also stresses the well-known historical fact that UV-radiation was widely used in the Soviet Union, not only to increase the performance of athletics but also to keep the general population healthy and in good shape. Source

In the 1930's, exposure to ultraviolet ration was used by some Olympic teams to improve the performance of their athletes. At this time, it was thought that because severe vitamin D deficiency caused hypocalcemia, which increased neuromuscular irritability, it was vitamin D's effect on calcium metabolism that was important for maximizing muscle strength. Source

UV light is responsible for Reactive Oxygen Signaling (ROS) signaling. This is how your body changes. Same thing happens when you workout.

Dr. Jack Kruse

I've only made an introductory section here on Ultraviolet light that will expand in the forthcoming Altitude and Latitude blog!

Testosterone

The study revealed that exposure to UV light triggered huge increases in testosterone levels which did not return to baseline levels for over a week. This increase was dependent on the location of the body and the amount of skin exposed to the UV light. The researchers found that men’s baseline testosterone increased by 120% (more than double!) when the participants’ chest and back were exposed to UV light.

However, the biggest increase in testosterone came when the participants’ testicles were exposed to UV light. The latter resulted in a massive 200% increase (triple) in baseline testosterone levels. This study has enormous implications for guys attempting to optimize testosterone levels and for athletes who want to maximize performance naturally and legally.

It is a wonder why the sporting and fitness industries haven’t gone mainstream with this knowledge. Then again, there is little money to be made by advising people to get more sunlight. Companies would rather sell you expensive supplements. Athletes who have this knowledge may also wish to maintain a competitive advantage over their rivals. Source

It is recommended to get as much full-body sunlight as possible to bring out the most optimal you that is possible. This is largely what I talk about when speaking of the Natural. I'm asked all the time, "how do I get bigger and develop size if I'm not in the gym?" Well you need to think how the naturally big guys in highschool did it? The ones who had decent size before even touching a weight. It is about Nature. It is about optimal hormone levels like testosterone. It is about metamorphosis not simply manufacturing artificial muscle in the gym.

Now, we haven't even gotten into the importance of sunlight for bone health or even Nitric Oxide, but I'd like to wrap up with what I think is a vital connecting-of-the-dots for sunlight, mitochondria, and fascial fitness.

So far, we've understood how natural sunlight improves vitamin D which has downstream effects on muscle strength and mitochondrial function, how sunlight controls our circadian rhythm, the many positive effects of red light and ultraviolet light within natural sunlight, and of course how sunlight improves hormone production both directly and indirectly through the mitochondria and chronobiology.

Now the below study that I found through Chong Xie shows the difference in fascial tension and ankle stiffness based on estrogen levels (the female hormone). You can see how the men have a stiffer Tibialis Anterior, and men have higher levels of testosterone and lower levels of estrogen naturally. This means that higher levels of estrogen will lead to lower fascial fitness and increase injury risk while decreasing performance. I'd say it's pretty damn important!

Further fascia sourcing: Source 1 Source 2

Now we know the human body operates in an entangled manner, meaning testosterone and estrogen have a close relationship in this scenario. What this means to you is that doing everything you can to foster the Inner Furnace (resulting in better mitochondrial function and increasing testosterone naturally) will help lower estrogen levels and improve the performance of your Anterior Tibialis Tendon, a critical component of ankle stiffness. This forms a critical piece of the Performance Matrix and developing the holistic posterior chain fascial connection all elite athletes have.

If human skin is not exposed to solar radiation (direct or scattered) for long periods of time, disturbances will occur in the physiological equilibrium of the human system. The result will be functional disorders of the nervous system, Vitamin-D deficiency, a weakening of the body’s defenses, and an aggravation of chronic diseases.

John Ott - Health & Light pg. 107

Closing Remarks:

There is obviously a lot here to go through but understand that Sunlight and Nature was designed to make you strong both metaphorically and literally. Work with Nature and you'll be rewarded. Work against and you'll be punished regardless of what you believe...