Ep 212: How Too Much Artificial Lights & Sunlight Affect Lifelong Health & Mortality with Matt Maruca
The Way Forward with Alec Zeck
Alec Zeck
4.8 • 968 Ratings
🗓️ 9 January 2026
⏱️ 161 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Turn online alignment into an offline community — join us at TheWayFwrd.com to connect with like-minded people near you.
Block harmful blue light during the day and at night, optimize your biology with RA Optics. Their lenses are developed with leading experts, using advanced light-filtering technology, and their handcrafted frames offer both quality and style. Check out raoptics.com/twf10 and get 10% off your order.
We obsess over food and supplements. Meanwhile, the light we live under every day is quietly wrecking our biology.
In this episode, I sit down with Matt Maruca, founder and CEO of Ra Optics, to discuss how artificial light, blue light, and disrupted circadian rhythm quietly impact energy, sleep, and long-term health. Matt shares how a years-long personal health journey led him to study circadian biology and the essential role light plays in human physiology.
We explore why modern indoor environments are so biologically mismatched, how LED lighting and screens affect mitochondrial health, and why sunlight is powerful but not something to mindlessly overdo. Matt also explains how light influences hormones, mental health, and recovery, and why most wellness conversations miss this entirely.
You’ll Learn:
[00:00:00] Introduction
[00:08:02] Matt’s childhood health struggles, and the discovery that changed everything
[00:12:23] Diet alone can't fix your health, so what is at the root of chronic disease?
[00:16:34] The fourth phase of water inside your cells and why 40% of sunlight is designed specifically to structure it
[00:18:33] The devolution of artificial light — from fire-like incandescents to blue-heavy, infrared-stripped “junk light” LEDs
[00:39:16] Blue light, your circadian rhythm and mental illness
[00:45:22] Why "more sun is better" is wrong
[00:57:15] How a chance encounter at an event turned a garage tinting operation into Ra Optics
[01:13:19] Why traditional sunglasses blunt the health benefits of sunlight, and the lens innovation designed to fix that
[01:20:58] What makes Ra Optics different from other blue light blocking glasses on the market
[01:30:02] Why doing all the right things still left Matt miserable, and the event that created a huge shift
[02:09:27] The hidden problems with "circadian bulbs" on the current market
[02:20:12] How to protect your light environment and stay healthy while traveling
Resources Mentioned:
The Way Forward episode on the Hidden Dangers of EMFs, Artificial Light, & Wifi (How To Avoid Them) featuring Tristan Scott | YouTube
The Way Forward episode on Circadian Biology, Leptin, & Light featuring Sarah Kleiner | YouTube
The Life Stylist episode on Extreme Biohacking: Millennial Edition with Matt Maruca | Listen Now
A mitochondrial paradigm of metabolic and degenerative diseases, aging, and cancer: a dawn for evolutionary medicine by Wallace, D | Article
The Fourth Phase of Water by Gerald Pollack | Book or Audiobook
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz | Book or Audiobook
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries | Book or Audiobook
The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss | Book or Audiobook
Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda | Book or Audiobook
South: The ENDURANCE Expedition by Ernest Shackleton | Book or Audiobook
SaunaSpace | Website
Find more from Matt:
The Light Diet Podcast | Spotify or Apple
The Light Diet | Instagram
Ra Optics | Instagram
Find more from Alec:
Alec Zeck | Instagram
Alec Zeck | X
The Way Forward | Instagram
The Way Forward is Sponsored By:
New Biology Clinic: Redefine Health from the Ground Up
Experience tailored terrain-based health services with consults, livestreams, movement classes, and more. Visit www.NewBiologyClinic.com and use code THEWAYFORWARD (case sensitive) for $50 off activation. Members get the $150 fee waived
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The modern example that people are following is they have issues with their health, |
| 0:03.5 | and they immediately think it's about diet and exercise, |
| 0:06.1 | and yet they're unaware of this basic fact that mitochondria are the engines in our cells which process our food. |
| 0:11.5 | There are so many factors that influence mitochondrial health besides diet and exercise. |
| 0:16.1 | And one of the biggest ones is light. |
| 0:17.2 | The least natural light during the day and the most artificial light at night |
| 0:20.6 | had significant increases of every mental illness, anxiety, depression, schizophrenia. That ultimately |
| 0:26.2 | led to the development of this product that I'm wearing right now. Blue light glasses block |
| 0:30.5 | generally less than 5% of the harmful range of blue light. Clear lenses are really ineffective for |
| 0:35.7 | the significant biological effects that I was going for. |
| 0:38.3 | You said that you had originally had this biohacker-esque line of thought with respect to sunlight, |
| 0:44.3 | but now you've taken a different stance. |
| 0:46.3 | I definitely overdid it on my sun exposure over the years. |
| 0:49.3 | We should take advantage of the benefits of sunlight and also be moderate and not overdo it. |
| 0:55.9 | We're literally sitting in an environment |
| 0:57.5 | which is damaging the retina, |
| 0:58.6 | aging our eyes, aging our skin. |
| 1:00.1 | In the artificial modern lights, |
| 1:01.7 | you don't have UV light, |
| 1:02.6 | but you have a lot of high energy visible blue light. |
| 1:05.1 | The good news is we have been developing |
| 1:08.7 | the solution for really a long time. |
... |
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