Paige Klingerman

Your body runs on light. Most people spend their days indoors under fluorescent and LED lights, then wonder why they feel sleepy and reach for sugar at 3 pm.

Light is a biological input. It shapes your hormones, your sleep, and your circadian rhythm more than almost anything else you do. Once you understand how it works, the fixes get simple, and most of them cost very little.

What Real Sun Exposure Does for You

When sunlight hits your body, it delivers three things your biology depends on.

Vitamin D From UV

UV triggers vitamin D synthesis in your skin. Vitamin D supports hormones, immunity, bone health, and more.

Mitochondrial Support From Infrared

Infrared light penetrates tissue, stimulates mitochondrial function, and lowers inflammation.

Circadian Timing Through Your Eyes

Morning light enters your eyes and tells your brain what time it is. That single signal sets your cortisol, your energy, and your melatonin timing for the entire day.

Why You May Be Light Deficient

Your day probably starts with your phone six inches from your face. You commute behind glass that filters UV, sit under fluorescent or LED lights for eight hours, and watch a screen until you fall asleep.

Artificial light runs heavy in blue wavelengths, and blue light tells your brain it’s midday whatever the clock says. Run that signal all day and into the night, and your cortisol, melatonin, and sleep rhythm never get the right cues. Your circadian system never fully calibrates, and the effects show up everywhere: poor sleep, low energy, imbalanced hormones, low mood, and blood sugar swings.

You can fix this.

Build Your Light Stack

Four steps set up your daily light for better energy, sleep, and performance.

Get morning sun. Spend 10 to 20 minutes outside within an hour of waking. Skip the sunglasses and contacts, and keep glass out of the way. It costs nothing, and cloudy days still deliver benefits.

Fix your indoor light environment. Standard LEDs run blue-heavy and work against your biology all day. Health Lighting’s Chromalux full spectrum bulbs are a great alternative. In the evening, add dimmer switches and red bulbs to create the warm, low-light conditions that let melatonin rise. Blackout curtains keep your bedroom fully dark, which matters for high-quality sleep.

Block junk light at night. After sunset, blue, green, and violet wavelengths tell your brain it’s still noon. TrueDark glasses filter those wavelengths, which matters most when you work on a computer or phone at night. Use code DAVEASPREY15 for 15% off. To filter light at the source, the Bodyguardz Red Light Converter screen protector turns the blue light from your phone into red light.

Add red light. Sunlight contains red and near-infrared wavelengths that penetrate your skin and reach your mitochondria. That supports ATP production (your body’s energy currency), lower inflammation, faster tissue recovery, and better cellular function. Red light therapy delivers concentrated red and near-infrared wavelengths in a targeted dose, separate from your daily sun. EMR-Tek makes high-quality panels for home use. Use code DAVE.

The Short Version

• Morning light: 10 to 20 minutes outside within an hour of waking, no sunglasses
• Indoor light: Health Lighting Chromalux full spectrum bulbs, dimmers and red bulbs in the evening, blackout curtains in the bedroom
• Night light: TrueDark glasses (code DAVEASPREY15 for 15% off) and Bodyguardz Red Light Converter screen protectors
• Red light: EMR-Tek panels (code DAVE)

Your body uses light as information. Give it the right signals at the right times and a lot of other things start working better on their own.

Stay Upgraded,

Dave

Researchers have found microplastics in human blood, in breast milk, and in testicular tissue. The average person ingests roughly a credit card’s worth of plastic every single week, and it’s just getting worse.  

This is not a fear email. I don’t do fear. This is an email to give you the tools you need. Once you understand a little bit about microplastics, the fixes become pretty clear, and most of them are not that hard. 

What They’re Doing to Your Biology 

Your Hormones 

Most plastics leach chemicals, including phthalates and BPA and its replacements. BPA-free doesn’t always mean safe. These molecules are structurally similar enough to your hormones that your receptors cannot tell the difference. They bind to estrogen receptors, throw off hormonal signaling broadly, and interfere with the balance your body works hard to maintain. In men, they concentrate in testicular tissue and suppress testosterone while disrupting sperm production. In women, the pattern looks like estrogen dominance, disrupted cycles, and thyroid interference.  

Your Mitochondria 

Microplastics interfere with mitochondrial membrane integrity, generate oxidative stress directly inside the cell, and disrupt the electron transport chain, which is the core machinery your cells use to produce ATP (your body’s energy currency). Less efficient mitochondria means less energy, more inflammation, and faster aging. 

Your Gut 

Microplastics accumulate in your gut, alter your microbiome toward more inflammatory bacterial strains, and degrade your intestinal lining. This leads to leaky gut and sets off a system-wide inflammatory cascade that touches immune function, mood, metabolism, and autoimmunity. The gut is where most of your plastic load lands first, and it is also the most addressable place to intervene. 

Where You’re Getting Exposed 

• Tap water is one of the highest-volume sources. Municipal filtration does not remove microplastic particles. 

• Indoor air tends to surprise people. Synthetic carpets, furniture, insulation, and HVAC systems shed plastic particles continuously. When you run a dryer full of synthetic clothing, you are also venting microplastics into your home.  

• Plastic food packaging and plastic water bottles are significant daily exposure points. Heat and time both accelerate how much plastic migrates into food and water. 

• Non-stick cookware is one you have complete control over. As the coating on conventional non-stick pans scratches and degrades, it sheds plastic particles directly into your food while you cook. 

• Plastic cutting boards are doing the same thing. Every time you cut on a plastic board, you are adding particles to your meal.  

• Tea bags are often made with plastic mesh. Steeping them in boiling water releases microplastics directly into your cup, which add up if you drink tea regularly.  

• Synthetic fabrics shed microplastics during wear and during washing. Most people are in synthetic clothing for the majority of the day and sleeping on synthetic bedding at night. 

• Sea salt and seafood are two common sources. Ocean-sourced foods carry a real microplastic load, because our oceans are saturated with them at this point. 

• Personal care products including some cosmetics and body washes still contain synthetic polymers that absorb through your skin. 

What You Can Do About It 

Filter your water first. This is the single most important change you can make. I use AquaTru, a countertop reverse osmosis system that removes microplastics along with a long list of other contaminants that pass right through standard filters. If you do nothing else on this list, do this one. 

Filter your air. Airborne microplastics are a real and underreported exposure pathway. AirDoctor uses an UltraHEPA filter that captures particles down to 0.003 microns, well below the size range of airborne microplastics. 

Change what you cook in. Look for cookware made without PFAS, like what I use from Our Place. They offer a variety of non-toxic pots, pans, and appliances. Stainless steel is also a solid option. 

Replace your plastic cutting boards. This is a high-impact swap that can really reduce your daily exposure. Titanium is the best alternative since there are zero microplastics. And unlike wood, it’s non-porous so there’s no mold risk.  

Use a stainless steel or glass water bottle. If you are still carrying a plastic water bottle, you are drinking a meaningful amount of plastic every day. 

Switch your tea bags. Look for brands that don’t use plastic or just use loose leaf. Pique is the tea brand I use and trust, and their packaging is plastic-free, which is especially important when hot water is involved. 

Repair the gut barrier. You cannot undo what you have already absorbed, but you can support the system that’s managing it. For intestinal lining support, I use BodyBio Butyrate. Butyrate is a natural compound your gut bacteria make (if you’re healthy). It’s the primary energy source for colonocytes (the cells lining your large intestine). Many people don’t make enough on their own and supplementing can make a huge difference. On the microbiome side, Just Thrive Probiotic is one of the few spore-based probiotics that actually survives the journey to your gut intact, where it produces antioxidants directly in the digestive tract and supports microbial diversity in a way most probiotics simply cannot. 

Look at what you are wearing and sleeping on. Synthetic fabrics shed microplastics continuously, and most people are in them all day and all night. Switching to natural fibers like 100% cotton, wool, and linen, particularly for clothing and bedding, removes a source of chronic exposure that compounds over years.  Check out AYA for microplastic free clothing and Essentia for non-toxic sheets and bedding. Use code DAVE at Essentia.com.  

Choose clean seafood. Studies show wild-caught chinook salmon is the best variety for the lowest microplastic exposure. You can also source it from a brand that tests for microplastics. I use a seafood delivery service called Seatopia. Everything is lab-tested to be omega-rich, mercury-safe, and free from detectable microplastics.  

Switch your salt As for salt, I use Oryx Desert Salt, which is harvested from an underground brine aquifer in the Kalahari Desert, completely removed from ocean contamination. They also use glass bottles with ceramic grinder heads, so you are not grinding plastic particles into your food along with the salt. 

The Short Version 

• Water: AquaTru, and carry a stainless steel or glass bottle 

• Air: AirDoctor 

• Kitchen: Our Place cookware, titanium cutting boards, glass storage 

• Tea: Pique or loose leaf 

• Gut support: BodyBio Butyrate and Just Thrive Probiotic 

• Fabrics: Aya for clothes, Essentia for sheets and bedding 

• Seafood: Seatopia  

• Salt: Oryx Desert Salt 

Total elimination isn’t the goal. Meaningful reduction is. And that’s completely within reach. You can substantially reduce your ongoing load and meaningfully support the biological systems that are bearing the weight of it. 

Stay Upgraded, 

Dave