Psychospiritual Night Blindness

TL:DR - Our indoor lifestyles have not just flattened our circadian rhythms, but also our minds and spirits. Circadian biology is much deeper than metabolic health and fit bodies.

Do you ever find yourself in a daze and just "zombie'ing" your way through your day?

I see evidence of this more and more often on the roads. Drivers who are clearly not paying attention or completely unaware of other drivers around them. Drivers going far below the speed limit and impeding traffic. Sometimes making dangerous lane changes and turns without a care of who is heading towards them or in their way.

There are also more pedestrians who have their noise cancelling headphones on and walking through crosswalks without any urgency as if they are invincible to the impact of a 5000 pound SUV.

I also see this in public places like coffee shops and grocery stores. There are people who look like they cannot function without caffeine in their veins or are just shuffling around without a clear aim or direction and not noticing they are impeding others' movement.

I go to the gym and see a lot more people with phones in hand and AirPods even watching a TikTok while supposedly working out.

It just seems like there are more of us who are just drifting through our days and lives.

And there may very well be good reasons for this.

This can happen if you have a newborn that doesn't sleep or you stayed up way too late working or just staring at your phone late at night.

But it also happens in people who have a chronic illness and struggle with insomnia.

I am not immune to this by any means.

If anything, this is something I don’t like seeing in myself and I have just been noticing how I don’t like myself when I'm sleep deprived, constantly checking my phone, or consuming some form of media indoors for hours on end.

If we are mindlessly drifting through our days like non-playable characters (NPCs) in a video game, how can we expect to heal let alone reach some form of self-actualization?

I want to focus here on one big reason and likely the one problem you may notice but may not have been able to really put your finger on.

Circadian Disruption

One of the most studied examples of circadian disruption is Daylight Savings Time which is coming up on March 8, 2026.

This one hour shift forward of our clocks aka "spring forward" has been shown to cost lives and human productivity:

• Fatal traffic accidents increase by 6% the following week

• Workplace injuries spike 5.7% with 68% increase in lost workdays

• Heart attacks rise 24% shortly after clocks shift forward

While there's still a lot of controversy about the origins of DST, there is now a movement to abolish DST in the EU and the US to create a standard time that aligns with the true start of day and night based on the sun, solar time. I am all for it.

That one hour time shift creates jet lag without you ever having to travel anywhere and results in more people wandering around in a zombie-like state.

The thing is, our screens and artificial lights do the exact same thing to us if we are not aware of it.

If You Live A Modern Life, You Probably Have Some Degree Of Circadian Misalignment

There are probably fewer people who are true night owls than people who are being exposed to artificial light at night that keeps them up past normal human bedtimes.

There are reasons why there are rules to prevent exhaustion from sleep deprivation in regulated professions like airline pilots and traffic controllers, truck drivers, railroad operators, and nuclear power plant operators.

Any errors from sleep deprivation will cost lives and huge collateral damage.

In our daily lives, it is important to start recognizing where we are putting ourselves in harms way or at the very least not performing at our peak potential.

Since my teens watching hours of TV, playing video games, and getting my own computer in my bedroom, I've been fighting the habit of sleeping late. I would stay up late, go to class, and often fall asleep. It was a badge of honor to see how late I could stay out with friends.

I also used to think staying up late to study or work was "productive."

During medical school one night as I was cramming for a test, I realized that my brain was not able to focus, and staying up past 10pm was just pointless if I could not retain any of the information. My life would be much easier if I got a good night’s sleep and just woke up earlier.

I can attribute this habit of staying up late and being sleep deprived with bad things happening to me throughout my life:

• Missing two opening work shifts in college because I slept in after pulling all-nighters to finish assignments for my Federal Taxation class. Didn't get fired, but I should have!

• Merging lanes into a police cruiser on my commute home one winter evening because I was tired and not fully paying attention.

• Almost missing a first year anatomy final exam in med school because I overslept from chronic sleep deprivation

• Developed a reputation for being late because I couldn't get my ass out of bed

• Hours of unproductive work time and frustration because my brain would not function

• More clumsiness that led to stupid decisions and accidents

My attempts to be more hard working or productive ended up doing the exact opposite for me.

Some of these things we call "accidents" or "dumb mistakes," but there's evidence circadian misalignment is on the rise and causing more health issues than just "silly" accidents.

Deeper Effects of Circadian Disruption On Mental and Spiritual Health

Why are there so many people feeling a void and emptiness when we supposedly have better technology and more stuff than we can consume?

A friend introduced me to a book in medical school that completely changed my perspective on sleep and circadian alignment--Healing Night by Rubin Naiman.

It opened my eyes to the idea that sleep was much deeper than just a biologically necessary mechanism for repairing our brain and physical body.

The night is also an opportunity for us to dream and repair our consciousness and spirit.

Naiman says that our modern, indoor lives where we go from our homes to our cars to our fluorescent lit offices and back to our artificially lit homes has flattened the contrast between day and night.

It is frightening to talk to people and get a feeling that the lights are on but nobody is home. It is frightening when anxiety and depression gets in the way of someone taking agency over their health and lives and becoming dependent on others and substances to get through the day.

There is plenty of evidence linking circadian misalignment to metabolic disease, but what is more troubling for me to see a deterioration of mental and cognitive function--ADHD, autism spectrum disorders, anxiety, depression, mania, and obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

As I wrote about previously, all of these disorders are linked to the health of our mitochondria, which are the control centers for metabolism, hormones, and neurotransmitters.

All of these processes then appear to us as changes in our thoughts and emotions.

Diseases of the mind are the deepest levels of human pathology. You are not you without your mind.

Creating Space To Reconnect With Day And Night

Over the last few years, I started noticing that I was often staying up late following news and commentary about the social and political chaos all over social media and felt like I needed to create windows of time where I could experience quiet and hear my own thoughts.

I decided to start going to Church again to find more peace. It was at least one hour in the week where there was no noise from the news or media. Something occurred to me one day at Church on a somewhat rare sunny day here in the overcast Pacific Northwest with the light flooding in from the windows around me.

Light from the sun is the source of life on Earth. What if light is God or at the very least one manifestation of God?

Whether you believe in God or not, it is silly to not see that we would not be alive without the photons of light being delivered to us from the sun. Humans were birthed in the womb of the circadian cycles of day and night.

Disconnecting from circadian biology is disconnecting us from the sun and therefore God, Nature, and ourselves.

The Simple Experiment That Made Me Question Modern Medicine and Most Health Advice

When we look at our lives today, we've created lifestyles where we prioritized comfort and shelter from these natural cycles and attempted to mimic the sun with artificial light and technology without understanding the damage it does to us physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Our lifestyles have created an indoor generation that is sicker than any previous generation.

Even though this was an ad, it encapsulates what many of our lives have become:

Over the last year, I've been diligently experimenting with this idea that healthy circadian biology is one of the best forms of medicine because I was learning that Vitamin D supplementation is inferior to Vitamin D produced by the sun.

Vitamin D supplementation is one of the sacred cows in naturopathic and functional medicine. To question it is like questioning whether cats are adorable.

So I started putting it to the test because to "know" something and not do it is as good as not knowing it at all.

The reality is, I knew that I would not be moving somewhere like sunny El Salvador any time soon, so I had to make due with what I have and control what I can control. I may not be able to avoid using a computer or being indoors for work, but I could do one thing.

Spend more time outside in contact with the sun and the earth. 

My goal was to have eyes and skin contact with natural light exposing myself to the full spectrum of the day from the orange red of sunrise and sunset to bright white and UV-B rich midday sun.

Again, we’ve been encouraged to slather on sunscreen and wear UV blocking clothes at all times for fear of skin cancer. But again, why would we completely ignore the fact that the active form of Vitamin D cannot be made WITHOUT UV-B light?

This also has the other benefits of fresher air (often healthier than indoor air), movement, and grounding.

My personal experience is that I have needed a lot fewer supplements that I normally felt like I needed to function well--glutathione for detoxification, digestive enzymes, liver support, and Vitamin D supplements. And the range of foods that I can eat without feeling absolutely gross has also broadened, including high quality dairy.

My sleep has been deeper and my energy more consistent. My digestion works smoothly and unobtrusively. My endurance and stamina during tough workouts and while playing tennis has been more consistent. My resting heart rate is lower.

Most importantly, I feel more like my mind and body are working more harmoniously together.

And many of those bone-head mistakes are much less frequent in my life likely because my attention and mental lucidity are that much better.

There are a lot of clinical and scientific explanations I've begun to write about in previous newsletters, but I can say that my experience speaks for itself. The science behind it is icing on the cake and just reinforces they how and why behind the simple act of going outside and getting more light.

If you only remember one thing, please remember this.

Brighter days. Darker nights.

Get outside as close to sunrise as possible and as frequently as possible during the day. Minimize screen time and artificial lights in the evening.

We need contrast in our light environment supplied by the circadian cycles of night and day in order to feel good and be more lucid and aware.

I've been repeating this to clients and my family a lot recently because it is truly that impactful not just for physical health, but for our humanity in a tech world that wants to digitize everything including human consciousness.

So I created a simple 30-Day Circadian Reset protocol to guide you through a simple challenge to experience it for yourself.

Click here to get the free guide (no opt-in necessary for now).

P.S. Do you feel like you are frequently in a daze or your mind just isn’t working the way it used to?

Schedule a consult here https://l.bttr.to/uYxzi or reach out via email.