Before You Focus on What You Eat, Look at Where You Live
I’m sitting in artificial light as I type this because it is now 5:30 a.m. I’ve been writing and researching since 4:30 am. It’s contradictory, but so is health. We talk so much about how to be healthy, what to eat, how to move, and we rarely talk about the influence our environments have on our biology and metabolism.
Sitting in Columbia, Maryland, at this point has brought up a lot of questions for me. Particularly because I didn’t grow up here. I’ve been moving around every 2–3 years, mainly living the longest in different parts of California. When I sit and reflect on what it means to be healthy, I have to consider the environments I’ve been a part of. There are specific experiences, conditions, and communities in which I felt on top of the world and others I tended to feel sicker in. Sick-meaning physically, emotionally, spiritually. I’m referring to stress and quality of life also.
What does it mean to be healthy in 2026? Our experiences shape us, even through our visual and sensory worlds. Our bodies are constantly receiving information from the environments around us, much of which happens without our conscious awareness.
Our taste receptors, for example, can sense food and influence what we crave. That’s part of why marketing works so well for fast food. But what’s interesting is that our relationship with sugar goes beyond what we can taste. In a study published in Nature, researchers worked with mice that had been genetically modified to lack functional sweet-taste receptors. Even though the mice couldn’t properly detect sweetness, they still developed a preference for sugar over artificial sweeteners.
How? Sugar was communicating with the brain through another pathway. Researchers found that when sugar reached the gut, it activated neurons that sent signals to the brain through the gut-brain axis, including the vagus nerve. This signaling helped drive the animals’ preference for sugar, independent of their ability to taste sweetness. Sugar wasn’t simply being experienced as a taste. It was being sensed internally and communicating with the brain through a pathway we don’t consciously experience.
This made me wonder how much more is happening beneath our conscious awareness when it comes to our bodies’ interactions. How much of our biology is responding to information we aren’t consciously receiving?
It seems that these days everyone wants to be their version of healthy. How that is achieved varies from person to person. I’m also noticing there are a lot of people struggling with finding the “right” thing that will get them to where they want to be, to actually help them feel better, even narrowing their attention to it.
But a missing piece that is RARELY discussed is the influence of our environments. Like, really. Sure, people are talking about grounding and connecting to nature. But I don’t think we’ve fully explored how much our surroundings may influence our biology, from our circadian rhythms and metabolic function to our nervous system and cellular processes. Why some people can eat the same diet in a different place and have health issues, while others struggle with more stress. It’s all interconnected.
And there’s another layer to this that I find particularly interesting: the environment we live in today is very different from the one in which human biology evolved. For much of human history, daily life was more closely organized around natural light and darkness, seasonal changes, outdoor conditions, and direct social interaction. That doesn’t mean people were necessarily healthier or that ancestral life was ideal. But the environmental cues our bodies received were different.
Today, we can work through the night, sleep through the morning, eat at midnight, spend most of our time indoors, and expose ourselves to artificial light long after the sun has gone down. Our technology has changed the way we experience our environments, and I wonder whether we’re fully accounting for what that means for human physiology.
I could tell you all the ways I’ve been “sick” in different places. My husband and I had moved every 2–3 years for the past 12 years. Just because we wanted to try new things, but most importantly, we just weren’t satisfied with the careers we were in. But I can tell you with certainty that some places impacted me more than others. It wasn’t drastic, but the way I felt in my body felt very different from how I felt in other places.
Environments can differ from person to person. Jack Kruse draws on research in mitochondrial function, circadian biology, magnetoreception, and quantum biology to explore how Earth’s magnetic field, light, and geography may influence our physiology. He takes these areas of research and connects them through a broader theory about the relationship between our environment, mitochondria, metabolism, and disease risk. Within that framework, he argues that deserts are among the least favorable environments to live in. His work raises important questions about how geography and the physical conditions around us may interact with our biology.
For example, desert environments can bring extreme heat, low humidity, and increased demands on hydration and thermoregulation. These are real physiological considerations. Kruse takes the discussion further, proposing that the relationship between our bodies and the Earth’s electromagnetic environment may also matter. It’s absolutely worthy of exploration.
And it’s not limited to those; it can be ANY environment that brings you out of your body and mind, so that you’re disconnected from your health. Think about it, even the hours exposed to blue light have an impact on our circadian rhythm, and circadian rhythms aren’t just about sleep. They help coordinate biological processes throughout the body, including hormonal signaling, glucose regulation, and metabolic activity. Light is one of the most important environmental cues our bodies use to synchronize these internal rhythms.
Blue light is particularly interesting because specialized cells in the retina respond to light and communicate with the brain’s central circadian clock. The timing, intensity, and duration of light exposure matter. Daylight helps establish healthy daytime signaling, while excessive light exposure at night can interfere with the biological signals that prepare us for sleep and darkness. This is one way our modern lighting environment can influence physiology beyond what we consciously experience.
Whereas this quote on iScience connects the two together:
Electromagnetic forces are other physical forces involved in cell biology. One example is the mitochondrial generation of weak electromagnetic fields (EMFs) as byproducts of their biochemical activity. These fields arise due to the movement of charged particles, particularly protons and electrons, within the mitochondrial electron transport chain and across the inner mitochondrial membrane. Mitochondria generated EMFs could play a role in mitochondrial-to-nuclear signaling or even intercellular communication. Dysfunctional mitochondria may alter their EMF patterns, potentially contributing to mechanisms of disease. On the other hand, pulsed EMFs may have therapeutic applications through improved mitochondrial dynamics.
What I find interesting here is that researchers are exploring how physical forces generated by cellular activity may participate in biological signaling. Mitochondria are responsible for producing much of the ATP our cells use for energy, and their function is influenced by a complex network of biochemical and physiological processes. The possibility that electromagnetic phenomena may also participate in cellular communication is an intriguing area of investigation.
I don’t think this research proves that environmental electromagnetic exposures determine our mitochondrial health. But it does raise questions about the relationship between electromagnetic phenomena and cellular biology that I want to understand better.
Our bodies don’t exist independently of their surroundings. They are constantly responding, adapting, and exchanging information with the world around them.
So let’s meet our environments
First, we need to start taking inventory of where we live. What kind of environment is it? Is it a desert? A city? Rural? You need to get clear on what environmental conditions you’re exposed to every day. What does your relationship with natural light look like? How much time do you honestly spend indoors? What are the climate, air quality, noise levels, and opportunities you have to connect with nature on a daily basis?
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Now, I’m not suggesting you have to physically “move” to improve your metabolism. But if you eliminate everything that may be contributing and nothing is changing, where you live needs to be considered.
As I stated before, extreme environmental conditions such as heat and aridity* can place additional demands on the body, particularly when hydration and thermoregulation are already compromised. But I think the larger question is how multiple environmental exposures may overlap and influence health over time.
Add in exposure to blue light at night, and it’s the perfect storm for health issues, especially if we’re not paying attention. It’s about the timing and cumulative experience of living in an environment that may continually disrupt our biological rhythms.
Remember, when we think about our metabolism, our health — we can consider genetics, our age, what we’re putting into our bodies, absolutely, but I’m arguing that the environmental load must come first because we’ve largely overlooked the conditions in which our bodies are expected to function.
I’ll be writing another piece on how blue light influences metabolic health in another segment, so stay tuned.
If to be human is to experience a constant relationship with our environments, most of us are missing the point completely. Someone may live in sunny California, but it doesn’t mean they’re healthier. We’re inside more than ever; we work out in blue-lit gyms, many of us aren’t sitting with our pain or our feelings in our bodies or paying attention to how our surroundings affect the way we feel. We’ve been taught not to listen to our intuition; that intuition is being dulled by medications and supplementation and marketing and the next “big thing” in wellness.
I do wonder whether we’ve become so focused on finding the next thing to add to our routines that we forget to examine the environment we’re living in. So, maybe if we worked with our environments, they would work with us.
How to Make Your Environment Work With You:
- Where do you live? What’s the most stressful thing about it for you? What do you smell daily? What do you see repeatedly? Consider the air, noise, climate, and landscape around you.
2. How much time are you spending on blue light? Do you work out in a gym with blue light? How much natural daylight are you getting, and how much artificial light are you exposed to at night?
3. How can we cut down on that? Can we get outside more? Is barefoot an option? Can you build more opportunities for natural daylight, outdoor movement, and time in nature into your day?
4. Pay attention to your body’s patterns. How do you feel in different environments? What seems to support you? What seems to leave you feeling depleted? Use these observations as a starting point for curiosity, not as proof of a particular cause.
5. Drink more water, especially in a desert. Pay attention to your individual hydration needs, which can change with temperature, humidity, and activity.
May your environment be with you, and if it’s not, allow for that space for an invitation to find one that is.
Resources & Further Reading
1. Sugar and the gut–brain connection
Tan et al. (2020), The Gut–Brain Axis Mediates Sugar Preference, published in Nature. Read the research here
2.Mochel F, de Oyarzábal Sanz A, Pías Peleteiro, Connections between physics and metabolism in brain functions. iScience, 2026; https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(26)00018-0
3. Physical forces, mitochondria, and cellular metabolism
Mochel et al. (2026), Connections Between Physics and Metabolism in Brain Functions, published in iScience. Read the paper here
4. Artificial light, circadian rhythms, and metabolism
Meléndez-Fernández et al. (2023), Circadian Rhythms Disrupted by Light at Night and Mistimed Food Intake Alter Hormonal Rhythms and Metabolism.Read the research here
5. Artificial light at night and metabolic health
Nieva-Ramírez et al. (2025), Artificial Light at Night, Sleep Disruption, and Liver Health. Read the review here
Jack Kruse — Further Reading
- Tensegrity #5: Your Magnetic Sense — His discussion of magnetism, mitochondria, oxygen, and the body’s proposed magnetic sense.
- Tensegrity #4: Magnetism, Sleep, and Electrons — Explores magnetism, electrons, water, and the Schumann resonance.
- Energy and Epigenetics 4: Light, Water, Magnetism — Connects environmental light, water, oxygen, and Earth’s magnetosphere.
- Tensegrity #9: Electron Spin Meets Mitochondrial Function — His discussion of electron spin, mitochondrial function, and quantum biology.
