In Week 2 we followed electrons from macronutrients through the Krebs cycle into the ETC and treated ATP as the main output. Here we add the photonic layer. Every step that handles high‑energy electrons or generates ROS can create electronically excited intermediates; when these intermediates relax, they release photons. Under physiological conditions, that emission is low‑intensity and state‑dependent. When redox pathways are dysregulated, emission intensity rises and its structure degrades. That shift from ordered to disordered light is what we will refer to as “light leakage”.

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This week we are going to explore the quantum effects of the mitochondria and follow a single electron from food into the mitochondrial electron transport chain, then out into light, heat and information. We will connect that journey to mitochondrial DNA haplotypes, latitude and light environment, and also take a more critical look at photobiomodulation and singular light therapies in the context of John Ott’s work on artificial lighting.

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At this stage of learning it is important to not take everything you read as gospel but come into your learning journey with an open mind. For instance I am not 100% convinced that Mitochondria DNA is only inherited from a Mother, even though science is telling me so, therefore I keep an open mind on this and many other things…

My posts have been written with the assumption that you know some biochemistry and “science speak”, if you don’t then the toolkits I have provided you with below use some of the more basic language and concepts. I ask that you remain curious, question everything, I am not your guru, nor do I know everything there is to know, I am simply sharing what I do know and what works for me…So without further delay lets get to lesson 1.

CIRCADIAN RETRAINING

Circadian biology is the science of how your body keeps time across a 24‑hour day–night cycle, it orchestrates everything from mitochondrial energy production to immune surveillance, hormone pulsing, digestion, mood and cognition. When we live out of sync with these rhythms through artificial light, indoor living, erratic sleep and irregular meal timing, our internal clocks drift away from nature’s cycles and health inevitably pays the price.

In the last decade, researchers have also begun to ask whether some of this timing is supported by quantum‑level effects, i.e. subtle behaviours of electrons, electromagnetism and photons that may help explain just how sensitive our clocks are to light, redox and environmental cues. You do not need to be a physicist to work with this; it simply means that timing is written into us at every level, from genes and membranes all the way down to electrons.

Your body’s internal clock network

Deep in the brain sits the hypothalamus, and within this is a tiny structure called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), often referred to as your master clock. The SCN receives light signals from the eyes and synchronises almost every organ system to the external light–dark cycle. Each tissue, including liver, gut, heart, immune cells, adipose tissue and even skin, has its own local “peripheral” clocks, built from molecular feedback loops of clock genes such as CLOCK, BMAL1, PER and CRY, which oscillate over roughly 24 hours and time local functions like detoxification, insulin sensitivity, DNA repair and inflammatory tone.

At the same time, the molecular platforms that host these clocks, which include membranes, mitochondrial respiratory chains, chromatin and photoreceptors, are also places where quantum‑level phenomena like electron tunnelling, coherence and light‑driven charge separation have been proposed to play a role. In other words, your clocks are embedded in a web of electrical, redox and photonic processes that are exquisitely sensitive to the environment.

As daylight appears each morning, light stimulates intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) to transmit signals to the master body clock in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) via the retinohypothalamic tract (RHT). which effectively tells the body “It is morning / daylight,” coordinating cortisol release, a rise in body temperature, increased alertness, and downstream timing cues to peripheral clocks. At night, darkness and dim, warm light allow the pineal gland to release melatonin. Melatonin then feeds back to the SCN and peripheral clocks, reinforcing night‑time programmes of antioxidant defence, mitochondrial repair, immune recalibration and autophagy.

Figure 1 | The Suprachiasmatic Nucleus – image from https://www.non-24pro.com/physiology_of_non_24

The 24‑hour rhythm map

Rather than thinking of circadian biology as only “sleep and wake cycles,” it helps to picture a 24‑hour choreography where different systems step in and out of the foreground across the day and night. Between about 21:00 and midnight, melatonin begins to rise, core body temperature falls, and the nervous system shifts towards parasympathetic dominance, preparing you for sleep onset, memory consolidation and glymphatic brain clearance. If you expose yourself to bright, especially blue‑rich artificial light during this window, melatonin is delayed, the circadian phase is pushed later, and sleep architecture becomes more fragmented.

From around midnight to 04:00, deep slow‑wave sleep dominates the first half of the night, with major pulses of growth hormone, coordinated tissue repair, immune surveillance and synaptic down‑scaling. Body temperature and blood pressure reach their lowest point roughly between 03:00 and 04:30, while melatonin peaks around 02:00–04:00 in healthy sleepers. Between about 04:00 and 08:00, the cortisol awakening response builds and peaks around 06:00–08:00, mobilising glucose, raising blood pressure and preparing the cardiovascular and musculoskeletal systems for daytime activity. In this window, clock‑controlled genes and mitochondrial DNA in metabolic tissues switch on programmes that prime digestion, insulin sensitivity and locomotor performance for the active phase.

From 08:00 to midday, alertness, reaction time and executive function typically run higher, and gastrointestinal motility and pancreatic insulin responses are optimised for food intake, making this an ideal window for your largest energy‑providing meal, more complex cognitive work and, where appropriate, targeted movement or rehabilitation. Between roughly midday and 18:00, coordination, muscle strength and cardiovascular performance often peak in the mid‑afternoon, while inflammatory tone and oxidative metabolism remain adapted to daylight activity. Late‑afternoon bright light exposure and movement further anchor the SCN and peripheral clocks, supporting more stable mood and metabolic flexibility.

As the day moves into the 18:00–21:00 window, natural light shifts towards longer‑wavelength reds and oranges, melatonin synthesis gears up, leptin signalling communicates energy sufficiency, and insulin sensitivity declines, meaning the system is no longer well suited to large, dense evening meals. This twilight period is the time to reduce stimulation, dim lights and transition into pre‑sleep rituals that signal safety and predictability to the nervous system.

Figure 2 | Examples of circadian timing https://www.news-medical.net/health/Circadian-Rhythm.aspx

When we repeatedly push against this natural timing through irregular sleep schedules, late‑night light exposure, back‑loaded nutrition and chronic stress, the amplitude and coordination of these rhythms flatten. Over time, blunted rhythms are linked with increased cardiometabolic risk, mood instability, higher cancer risk and impaired immune function. On top of these mechanisms, head injuries and trauma can amplify this flattening by further disrupting the normal oscillation of key clock genes and disturb basic circadian outputs.

TBI, Trauma, Psychiatric Disorders and Broken Timing Signals

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) and severe or repeated psychological trauma can interfere with this clock network at multiple points. TBI does not have to be a dramatic blow to the head, any event that rapidly accelerates or decelerates the brain inside the skull, such as falls, whiplash, collisions, blast exposure, sports injuries, can cause micro‑injury to structures like the hypothalamus, SCN and the pathways that connect the eyes to the brain and the brain to the pineal gland. This can blunt or shift clock gene activity and melatonin rhythms, contributing to sleep–wake disruption, fatigue, mood changes and autonomic instability long after the original event.

Many people won’t have had a classic “head injury,” but their brains may still be carrying injury‑type changes that matter for circadian health. Long COVID and other post‑viral syndromes are now linked with blood–brain barrier disruption, tiny vessel damage, ongoing neuroinflammation and subtle white‑matter changes which present as a kind of diffuse, microvascular brain injury that routine scans can easily miss. These changes can produce exactly the symptoms you might associate with concussion or mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) such as cognitive slowing, memory problems, headaches, light and sound sensitivity, dysautonomia and profound sleep–wake disruption.

Psychological conditions, trauma / traumatic events also reshape circadian timing. Post‑traumatic chronodisruption, which refers to circadian dysregulation after trauma, is now recognised as a core feature of trauma‑related disorders like PTSD. In the months and years after trauma, people often experience a mix of insomnia, nightmares, early morning awakening or an inverted sleep–wake pattern, alongside changes in cortisol, melatonin, autonomic tone, immune signalling and metabolic control.

The stress and circadian systems are tightly intertwined. When circadian signals are chaotic, the brain and body lose some of their ability to distinguish “safe” from “unsafe” contexts over a 24‑hour day. This can increase baseline stress sensitivity, make people more reactive to minor triggers and reduce the capacity to recover, which in turn feeds back into further rhythm disruption, a vicious circle that many people with PTSD instinctively recognise. For those living with both TBI, psychiatric disorders and trauma, the picture can be particularly complex: structural and microstructural injury to clock circuits, chronic neuroinflammation, hormonal shifts and ongoing hyperarousal all converge on the same circadian machinery. Understanding that these symptoms may reflect an injured timing system, rather than “weakness” or “lack of discipline,” and this can be an important reframing.

Figure 3 | An intricate relationship between circadian rhythm dysfunction and psychiatric diseases https://www.explorationpub.com/Journals/en/Article/100653

At a deeper level, these factors may also disturb the redox and bioelectric environments in which more subtle quantum‑level processes occur, for example, light‑sensitive cryptochromes and melatonin signalling in clock circuits, or biophoton emission patterns that seem to show circadian rhythms of their own. This area is still very much emerging, but it supports what many people feel, that trauma effects not just thoughts, emotions, nervous system tone, but also the timing and coherence of the whole system.

Light, electrons and environmental time‑givers

Light is your dominant zeitgeber (time‑giver), but it is only one of several environmental signals that talk to your clock system. Morning sunlight entering the eyes and hitting the skin triggers the SCN to initiate a cascade of metabolic switches. Different parts of the light spectrum during different times of the day carry different biological instructions. I will talk more about the light cues in greater depth in later sessions, but you can review figure 4 for some initial information.

Figure 4 | Light spectrums throughout the day, adapted by R. Jessey.

Inside cells, your clocks are sitting on top of constant electron traffic. Every time mitochondria move electrons down the electron transport chain, or enzymes pass electrons to and from molecules like NAD⁺/NADH, they are setting the redox “tone” of the cell i.e. how reduced or oxidised it is. That redox tone doesn’t stay flat over 24 hours, levels of NAD⁺, NADH and related antioxidant systems oscillate in daily rhythms, and those electron rhythms feed back into the core clock machinery, changing how clock genes are expressed and how robustly the cellular clock ticks.

Light and environment plug directly into this electron story. When light hits retinal pigments or skin chromophores it kicks electrons into higher energy states; when you eat, move, or ground, you are constantly shifting where electrons are, how easily they can tunnel through mitochondrial complexes, and how much “electron pressure” sits on antioxidant and repair systems. Quantum‑biology work suggests that some of this electron flow uses genuinely quantum processes (like tunnelling and coherence), and that the molecular platforms which host those quantum effects are themselves under circadian control – meaning your body doesn’t just keep time with genes and hormones, it also keeps time with electrons and redox.

From a deeper perspective, the photoreceptors that detect light, such as melanopsin, cryptochromes and opsins, undergo quantum‑level changes when they absorb photons. There are theoretical models suggesting that quantum coherence in these proteins may help explain the extraordinary sensitivity and precision of circadian light detection, meaning your clock can respond to very small changes in light intensity and spectrum. The body is adapted to, and evolved with true light of day and true darkness at night.

In contrast, LED and screen‑based lighting deliver biologically intense blue light at precisely the wrong times, when melanopsin pathways and clock genes are expecting darkness, which suppresses melatonin, elevates evening cortisol and effectively creates a “perpetual daylight” signal.

For many people, who are already chronically ill, this mismatch between indoor, screen‑based light and the natural light–dark cycle can be especially destabilising, as their already vulnerable clock system is less able to buffer inconsistent cues.

The deeper layers of light and timing

Melanopsin and the other light sensors that are found in your eyes all rely on a special form of vitamin A to detect light. When light hits these pigments, the vitamin‑A molecule inside them flips shape and starts an electrical signal. In natural daylight, this signal moves through circuits that include dopamine‑releasing cells in the retina, so bright outdoor light in the morning and daytime raises retinal dopamine, switches your visual system into “day mode” and tells brain clocks, mood centres and motivation circuits that it is time to be awake and active.

If light is very bright, unbalanced with other natural light spectrums or goes on for too long, especially from blue‑heavy artificial sources, the eye is forced to recycle vitamin A, again and again. Normally that recycling is tightly controlled, but when it is pushed hard, some vitamin‑A by‑products build up at the back of the eye as waste pigments (lipofuscin) that can generate oxidative stress and, over years, contribute to wear‑and‑tear of light‑sensitive cells.

During the latter part of the day and at night time, blue‑rich light exposure at keeps melanopsin and the retinal dopamine circuit firing when they should be winding down. This flattens the normal “high‑dopamine day, low‑dopamine night” pattern, delays melatonin and leaves the brain in a wired, light‑adapted state in the evening, a state that tends to drive more stimulation‑seeking (scrolling, snacking, binge watching Netflix series) while gradually eroding the deeper, morning‑anchored dopamine tone that supports stable mood and motivation.

Natural outdoor light also brings in some ultraviolet (UV), and infrared light (IR) which in physiological doses appears to support healthy retinal dopamine rhythms and eye growth, helping the system distinguish day from night when exposure happens at the right time of day. The eye and brain also carry their own opioid system. POMC‑derived peptides like β‑endorphin are made in subsets of retinal cells and in skin and brain, and UV/visible light activates this POMC pathway. In the retina, β‑endorphin can act on mu‑opioid receptors to fine‑tune how strongly melanopsin cells respond to light and how they drive sleep–wake timing, while in the wider body UVB on skin and eyes can raise β‑endorphin and related peptides, contributing to the calm, “feel‑good” sensation after time in the sun. Taken together, sensible morning and daytime sunlight, with its mix of blue, IR and UV, helps set a robust daily rhythm in vitamin‑A photochemistry, dopamine and endorphins, while protecting the night from artificial blue‑heavy light allows those same systems to drop into low‑light, low‑dopamine, high‑melatonin “repair mode.”

Logical thinking💡: Unfortunately most IR and UV studies have been conducted in laboratory settings (potentially not controlled for artificial LED lighting and use animals who are nocturnal by nature). The purpose of theses studies is to measure and infer the effect of single light spectrums on human health. Therefore if you irradiate something with just UV light for long enough then of course you are going to see negative consequences. However natural light spectrums’s from sunlight are not interpreted by our bodies in isolation nor do they reach our eyes or body in isolation. Light studies are flawed and need to be interpreted with caution.

How our light and tech environment has changed

For most of human history, light exposure was simple, bright, full‑spectrum sunlight by day, and darkness a night that was only illuminated with moonlight, starlight and firelight, with seasonal variations in length of day and light intensity. Our nervous systems and circadian machinery evolved in that context, with sunrise and sunset as non‑negotiable daily signals. In less than two centuries, and especially in the past few decades, we have radically altered that environment. Fire and candlelight gave way to gas lamps, then incandescent bulbs, which were were replaced by fluorescent lighting and, more recently, by high‑intensity, blue‑heavy LED lighting in homes, workplaces, gyms, hospitals and public spaces. On top of that, smartphones, tablets, laptops and televisions now emit bright light late into the evening, often at arm’s length from our eyes. Many people spend most of the day indoors, under static artificial light, then bathe their retinas in blue light at night while getting almost no true morning, daytime or sunsetting sunlight.

Figure 5 | Evolution of light over time – Dr Alexander Wunsch.

At the same time, our relationship with temperature, movement and social rhythms has shifted. Central heating and air conditioning flatten natural temperature cycles, while cars and desk‑based work reduce the movement cues that used to punctuate the day. Social rhythms, once anchored to daylight and seasonal work, now revolve around 24‑hour access to entertainment, food delivery and online interaction. We have, in effect, engineered an environment where our biology is constantly being told that it is daytime, even when the sun has set, and where the cues that would once have grounded us in local ecology are muted or absent. It is no surprise that our clocks struggle to stay in tune.

Many of us are unable to avoid these situations; however, there are several things we can do to help mitigate the negative effects.

Meal timing, metabolism and chrononutrition

Just as light sets the phase of your master clock, feeding rhythms strongly entrain peripheral clocks in metabolic organs such as the liver, pancreas, gut and adipose tissue. Chrononutrition asks how when you eat interacts with what you eat to shape blood sugar control, lipid profiles, body composition, appetite regulation and even responses to medication. Insulin sensitivity and digestive capacity are naturally higher earlier in the day, and the same meal can produce very different glycaemic and lipaemic responses depending purely on timing. Regular late‑night eating is associated with higher levels of adiposity, poorer sleep quality, impaired glucose tolerance and greater inflammatory markers, even when total calories are matched.

Shifting a greater proportion of total energy, protein and fat intake into breakfast and lunch, with a lighter, earlier evening meal, respects circadian variations in insulin sensitivity, digestive hormones and mitochondrial substrate handling. Clinically, this “front‑loading” of nutrition often improves energy stability, reduces nocturnal reflux and supports easier sleep onset, particularly for people with chronic health conditions. Compressing food intake into a 10–12‑hour daytime window, for example, eating between 08:00 and 18:00 without aggressive caloric restriction, can improve clock gene expression, cardiometabolic markers and sleep quality, especially when the eating window is anchored earlier rather than drifting into the late evening.

For chronically ill, underweight or highly sensitive individuals, this needs careful personalisation and work with an experienced health professional to avoid under‑fuelling, but the core idea remains that consistent, daylight‑aligned eating rhythms are a powerful, gentle way to signal time to the body. Done well, chrononutrition becomes a potent tool to help entrain circadian rhythms, complementing light, movement and other environmental cues.

Circadian rhythms and your gut microbiome

Not only do your cells keep to circadian timing, but your microbes also keep time. Across a 24‑hour cycle, different groups of bacteria rise and fall in number and activity, shifting what they are doing for you at different times of day and night. Those host rhythms create a changing 24‑hour landscape in the gut, making note of when food arrives, how fast it moves, how much mucus and IgA are present, when antimicrobial peptides and digestive secretions pulse. The microbiome also rides that wave, with many taxa and functions rising by day and falling at night. During the active, daylight phase, many microbes focus on helping you digest and metabolise incoming food, producing signalling molecules that communicate to your immune system, cardiovascular system, gut lining and brain. At night, when you are ideally fasting and sleeping, microbial activity leans more towards repair, detoxification, maintaining the gut barrier and producing compounds that help regulate inflammation and circadian biology.

These microbial rhythms are closely tied to your own patterns of light exposure, sleep and eating. When you eat at roughly the same times each day, mostly in daylight hours, and protect your sleep at night, your microbiome develops its own strong day–night rhythm that supports blood sugar balance, appetite regulation, immune resilience and mood. Disrupted circadian cues, trauma and chronic stress can all disturb these microbial oscillations, which in turn feed back into brain function and behaviour and often why we see a combination or gut and brain related pathologies in circadian disruption.

One of the biggest problems I see in the current quantum biology space is the idea that food is somehow secondary or even irrelevant. I could not disagree more. Food is profoundly important to human physiology, and later on in this course I’ll be going much deeper into why, but for now here are some of the basic concepts.

Natural foods carry far more information than simply calories and macros. They encode information about the environment, season and light from where they were grown and under what light and environmental conditions. That “barcode” is read not only by your own cells but also by your microbiome, helping your body couple to the environment it is living in and responding to.

I’m also not an advocate of blanket dietary prescriptions. It is not healthy or appropriate for everyone to remain in a long‑term ketogenic state, despite its popularity among quantum‑biology influencers on Instagram. Food choices need to be directly coupled to environment, availability, season and timing, not to rigid nutrition dogma or one‑size‑fits‑all protocols. In practice, that means context‑specific, patient‑specific and season‑specific eating patterns, rather than assuming that one “quantum” diet can suit every body, in every climate, all year round.

Practical ways to retrain your circadian rhythms

When I support people with circadian retraining, it starts with gradually restoring a predictable pattern of light, dark, activity and nourishment that your biology understands. The aim is to meet a person where they are at give the body a few reliable “time stamps” it can start trusting again which is especially important for people living with chronic illness.

A helpful starting place is to give the body a reliable “bookend” in the morning. Follow my mantra of “daylight before screen light.” Aim to wake at roughly the same time each day, preferably as the sun is rising; open the curtains and window and take in that natural light. Where possible, step outside to get 5–15 minutes of natural light, even on cloudy days. If getting outside is not possible, sitting by an open window and facing the sky is still useful. Pair this with some gentle movement or grounding so activate “wake‑up” signals. If you are recovering from TBI or are highly light‑sensitive, you need to start with very short exposures, often only seconds or at the edge of your tolerance and build slowly, ideally with support from your medical team. During the day, and especially if you work on screens and under artificial lighting, schedule hourly daylight breaks, where you get up to go outside or to an open window to expose your eyes to natural light.

In the evening, focus on nurturing darkness. When you can, catch every sunset because this sends a circadian signal that gets the body preparing for sleep. Choose a consistent wind‑down time, ideally starting at least two hours before you plan to sleep. Dim overhead lights, or used red /amber lamps with warmer bulbs, where you can, switch to audio, reading or conversation instead of visually stimulating content.

If you are unable to avoid devices and lighting, you can consider blue‑light‑reducing settings, overlays or glasses, however these are just sticky plasters for a mis-matched timing cue, the aim is still aim to reduce total exposure. Become strict around your use of devices before bed and set a timer for when you come off all devices. Please note this cannot apply to those who are using devices to manage health conditions such as insulin or medication pumps. Despite this, creating a simple, repeatable pre‑sleep routine helps the nervous system anticipate sleep which is important for your internal time keeping.

Aligning meals with daylight is another accessible lever. Experiment with having breakfast within 30–60 minutes of waking (preferably outdoors while naturally grounded), make breakfast and lunch your most substantial meals and keep your evening meal lighter and finished at least two to three hours before bed. Try to avoid grazing late into the evening, particularly on highly processed, sugary or high‑fat foods that demand more from digestion at a time when your system wants to be shifting into repair mode. For those with limited capacity, even shifting the last meal 30–60 minutes earlier can be a meaningful step.

Where possible, weave in small, regular doses of outdoor time and connection with natural surfaces. A few minutes standing with bare feet on grass, soil or sand, sitting with your back against a tree, smelling flowers, listening to birds, tending to a plant pot or simply opening a window to feel the air and notice the sky all provide gentle anchoring signals. If you spend a lot of time indoors, consider whether you can rearrange your environment so that you sit closer to natural light during the day and have easy ways to reduce light intensity in the evening.

Seasonal cycles, local food and circadian health

In spring and summer, longer days and increasing light have traditionally been matched with lighter, fresher foods such as tender greens, leafy vegetables, young vegetables and herbs, new potatoes, fresh eggs, fish from coastal waters and animals grazing on rapidly growing pasture. As the season moves into high summer, berries and other sun‑ripened fruits appear, naturally providing structured water, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, polyphenols and fibre. These foods, combined with longer daylight and more movement, tend to support detoxification pathways, insulin sensitivity and a more active metabolism, in step with a time of year when our bodies were designed to be outdoors and more physically engaged with the landscape.

As autumn and winter arrive and daylight shortens, traditional diets shift towards heartier, richer foods and include roots, brassicas, nuts and seeds, fattier cuts of meat, bone broths and slow‑cooked dishes that make use of the whole animal. These foods are more energy‑dense and warming, and can support a slower, more restorative seasonal rhythm with longer nights and more indoor time. It is no accidents that autumn also offers a flush of immune‑supportive foods, deep‑coloured berries, mushrooms and strong aromatic herbs as the body prepares for colder months and a higher burden of winter infections.

Only a few generations ago, autumn was a time for pickling, preserving, fermenting and curing, stretching the abundance of the growing season into the winter months. Families used the whole of an animal rather than the handful of popular cuts we see today, went fishing in particular seasons, gathered shellfish at low tides and collected wild plants, herbs and fungi from hedgerows, woodland and shorelines.

Many of these skills have faded in a remarkably short time. Modern food systems largely ignore seasonal and local cycles; we can buy the same strawberries, tomatoes and salad leaves in December as in June, often grown far away, heavily sprayed, picked unripe and transported long distances. Ultra‑processed foods, available 24/7, add another layer of “timelessness” to eating, with products engineered to taste the same all year round, irrespective of season or place.

This constant, season-less abundance flattens yet another layer of timing cues to the body. When we re‑introduce seasonal, locally appropriate eating, even in small steps, we give our circadian and metabolic systems a clearer message about where we are in the year and what our bodies might reasonably need. At the same time, it gently brings our attention back to local ecosystems and farming practices, reconnecting our plates to the land, waters and communities that sustain us.

Reconnecting with nature’s rhythms

At its core, circadian retraining is about repairing a broken relationship between daylight and darkness, with the land, with food, with community and with the inbuilt intelligence of our own cells. Re‑aligning with the 24‑hour rhythms invites us to live as part of an ecosystem again, rather than as insulated observers under permanent artificial light, ultra‑processed food and constant digital stimulation.

It is important that we reconnect with the living world that has shaped our biology for millennia, starting with the places and seasons you inhabit. Learning about the seasonal plants and medicines that grow in our hedgerows and woodlands, and in our local climate, helps re‑root us in place. Re‑acquiring traditional skills like foraging, wildcrafting, hunting, fishing, preserving and simple gardening turns food back into a story of season, soil and sunlight, rather than something created in a lab that comes in a packet.

As humans, we have evolved under the reliable signals of natural daytime and night‑time; our modern, artificial world has slowly created a huge disconnect and, alongside it, an epidemic of chronic illness and dysregulated rhythms. Each time we step outside at sunrise, share a seasonal meal, watch a sunset, plant a seed, change out lighting environment, or turn down a screen in favour of a conversation, we take a step back towards alignment. In doing so, we are not only supporting our circadian biology but also tending to the deeper coherence of our bodies.

Next please click below to link to my toolkit that you can use as a guide for yourself or your clients. If anything is unclear or you have any questions please use the comment section of this post and I will reply.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to seeing you here again next week.

Disclaimer

This information is for general education only and is not a substitute or replacement for any previously sought personalised medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is especially important that people living with chronic illness, complex medical conditions, eating disorders, malnutrition, significant weight loss or those taking prescription medication do not make major changes to diet, lifestyle, sleep, supplements or medications based solely on this material. Any changes should be discussed with and monitored by a suitably qualified healthcare professional who understands your medical history and current treatment plan.

• The Core idea: To demystify quantum biology (beyond influencer lore) and position it as “sub‑cellular physics that complements biochemistry,” with clear definitions that apply to superposition, tunnelling, coherence, entanglement.

• Angle: Why every clinician working with complex clients should care about electrons, charge, water, and magnetic fields.

• Take away: Every reader should be able to understand the science and the reasoning behind why the most simple of interventions can be the most effective in the long term.

That we will cover

1. Week 1 - Circadian retraining

2. Week 2 – Quantum Mitochondria and Electron Tunnelling

3. Week 3 – Biophotons as Cellular Information Carriers

4. Week 4 – Water, Fields and the Cellular Matrix

5. Week 5 – Quantum Chronobiology, Chrononutrition and the Body Clock

6. Week 6 – Light Spectrums and Connection To Natural Light

7. Week 7 – Quantum Biology of the Gut–Brain Axis

8. Week 8 – Microtubules, Information Processing and Controversies

9. Week 9 – Towards Quantum‑Informed Clinical Assessment

10. Week 10 – Future of Quantum Medicine and Research Gaps

Introduction: From pathways to particles

Most of us were trained to see the body through pathways and protocols, metabolic syndrome here, gut health there, inflammation everywhere, and mitochondria over in the “energy” corner. Behind all of that familiar biochemistry sits a deeper layer of sub atomic rules that govern how electrons and protons. Those rules are the domain of quantum physics.

When I first discovered Quantum biology I asked a simple question, do those rules matter for the way living systems actually function, adapt and break down especially in complex, chronic illness? I have come to the conclusion that the answer is YES!

A clear, grounded definition

One concise way researchers now describe the field is this:

• Quantum biology is the study of quantum‑related physics in living systems and how specifically quantum phenomena (like superposition, tunnelling, coherence and entanglement) show up inside real cells and tissues.

This is different from the more trivial statement that influencers in the quantum biology space use such as labelling “everything is quantum.”

Quantum biology focuses on cases where non‑classical behaviour seems to give biology an advantage in speed, sensitivity or efficiency.

The core quantum ideas

You do not need a physics degree to get the gist here. Four ideas are enough to orient you:

• Superposition:

  • A particle can occupy more than one possible state at once (for example, multiple paths or energy levels), only “choosing” when it interacts with its environment.

• Tunnelling:

  • Tiny particles can pass through energy barriers they should not cross classically, effectively taking a shortcut that speeds up key reactions.

• Coherence:

  • a group of particles behaves in a coordinated, wave‑like way, maintaining a shared phase that allows extremely efficient energy or information transfer.

• Entanglement:

  • Two or more particles become linked so that a change in one correlates with a change in the other, even when separated – a phenomenon being seriously explored in some biological models.

In quantum biology, the question is can any of these fragile behaviours survive in the “warm, wet and noisy” environment of living cells long enough to actually change outcomes?

Where quantum effects already look relevant

The field of Quantum Biology is still young, but several areas have accumulated enough evidence to be taken seriously by mainstream physicists and biophysicists:

• Enzyme catalysis: isotope‑sensitive experiments suggest that proton tunnelling can dramatically accelerate some enzymatic reactions, beyond what classical transition‑state theory predicts.

• Photosynthesis: in certain light‑harvesting complexes, energy seems to move via quantum coherence, exploring multiple paths in parallel and reaching reaction centres with near‑perfect efficiency.

• Spin‑dependent reactions and magnetoreception: models of how some birds sense the Earth’s magnetic field rely on spin‑sensitive chemical reactions that may use quantum coherence and entanglement.

• DNA and ion channels: there are growing theoretical and experimental hints that tunnelling and coherence might influence DNA stability, mutation processes and ion channel behaviour, though this area is still highly debated.

These examples are important because they demonstrate that life can, in principle, harness quantum rules in messy, biological conditions, not just in physics labs.

What this means for medicine

For clinicians working with chronic, multi‑system conditions, quantum biology offers a way to think about the body that goes beyond “more or less of molecule X.”

It invites questions like:

• How might mitochondrial electron tunnelling and coherence shape fatigue, energy variability and PEM, rather than just “ATP up, ATP down”?

• Could biophoton emission and spin‑dependent signalling contribute to how tissues coordinate inflammatory responses, tissue repair or circadian timing?

• How do light environment, EMFs, temperature, redox status and water structure affect the quantum landscape in which biochemistry is happening, not just the concentrations of substrates?

At this stage, quantum biology is not about offering plug‑and‑play protocols, it is a framework that encourages you to see patients as light‑and EMF-sensitive systems, not just collections of pathways and lab markers.

Avoiding the hype: what quantum biology is not

Because the word “quantum” sells books, it is worth drawing some hard lines:

• It is not a licence to attach “quantum” to every supplement, gadget or practice. Claims must be anchored in specific, testable mechanisms (for example, proton tunnelling in enzyme X, or spin‑dependent reaction Y), or they remain marketing.

• It does not replace classical physiology or biochemistry. Every credible review emphasises that quantum biology adds a layer beneath, rather than throwing away what we already know.

• It is not yet a finished clinical discipline. Leading researchers stress that the field is in its infancy, with real promise but also major unknowns and plenty of over‑interpretation in the popular space.

A good rule of thumb to follow is this - if a “quantum” claim does not name a specific effect and a plausible biological structure, treat it with caution.

How to read quantum biology papers without getting lost

When you come across research in this field please follow my simple three‑step filter:

1. Level of evidence: Is this a theoretical model, an in‑vitro experiment, an in‑vivo study, or a human outcome trial? Many quantum biology papers are still at the theory or biophysics‑experiment stage.

2. Specific quantum phenomenon: Does the paper clearly state which quantum effect is involved and how it was measured or inferred (for example, coherence times, tunnelling probabilities, spin‑correlated radical pairs)?

3. Clinical plausibility: Can you map the proposed mechanism to anything you see in real patients – such as altered fatigue thresholds, circadian disruption, autonomic instability or sensitivity to light?

4. Common sense: Is what you are reading making sense? Is it dangerous and would an intervention cause harm? For instance the use of blue light screen protectors on phones is unlikely to have a randomised controlled trail for efficacy, but this intervention is unlikely to cause harm.

This keeps quantum biology anchored to your daily reality, rather than floating off into pure speculation.

A simple metaphor you can reuse

Classical biology is like reading the musical score of a symphony, the notes, bars and instruments. Quantum biology is how the orchestra actually plays in the concert hall with tuning, acoustics, harmonics, and how sound waves interact in real time. Both views describe the same piece of music, but they answer different questions.

For people working in clinical practice, the invitation is not to abandon learned pathways, but to add this deeper layer as a way of understanding why some interventions work, why some patients are so exquisitely sensitive, and why environment (light, fields, timing) matters more than we were taught.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll unpack how these ideas show up in mitochondria, biophotons, circadian timing and the gut–brain axis, with clinical tools you can actually use.

Within just the first WEEK your clients may start to see benefits in their health without you having to rely on complicated protocols, prescribing long term restrictive diets and stacks of supplements that don’t work.

If you are becoming discouraged by getting mediocre results for your clients in clinical practice then I am here to provide you with the very blueprint that I use to support my clients with chronic illness

How it works:

When you join my SubStack as a paid subscriber you will gain access to all of my previously uploaded content, plus I release 1 new module every week.

THE QUANTUM BIOLOGY BLUEPRINT LAUNCHES IN APRIL 2026!

With nearly 16 years of experience as a nutrition and lifestyle practitioner, I know how confusing and overwhelming holistic health can feel for both practitioners and the people experiencing these issues. That’s why I created this masterclass: to give you practical, reliable guidance to help you move beyond the limits of chronic illness.

In this series, we’ll explore Histamine Intolerance (HIT) and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS), breaking down what’s really going on in the body and sharing simple, safe tools you can start using right away. The lessons are designed in short, manageable sections to avoid overwhelm, so you can learn in the way that works best for you.

Whether you’re brand new to this or have been researching for years, you’ll find clear, evidence-based information to help cut through the confusion and misinformation. You’re free to move at your own pace, skip what you already know, and use the i…

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