Dr. Casey Means

And it sounds so simple, but one of the most astonishing stats I literally found in researching this entire book was that the average American is spending 93.7% of their time indoors.

93.7%.

That's in a car or in a building.

so we are locked in these cages staring at fear-inducing media and our mitochondria are like what like what i i don't know where to channel my energy it's just it's short-circuiting i think so many things happen when we go outside as you know i mean even what the vision system is doing to our anxiety levels

We are getting sunlight, which, of course, for complex reasons, is very helpful for our metabolic health separately, entrains our chronobiology, and light from the sun is an incredible regulator of our mitochondrial function.

But it also, it's our best teacher.

You know, when we're out in nature and we really look at how beautiful the world is and the cycles of nature, we see the cycles of, you know, the seasons, and we see the awe of the sun and the trees and just all this alchemy that's happening outside of us.

We see, you know, spring to summer to fall to winter.

We see the tides moving in and out.

Everything's in phases.

And I think...

When we reflect and meditate on all the cycles and the polarities in nature, night and day, cold and hot, new moon, quarter moon, full moon, all these things,

It's actually, it entrenches on a subconscious and conscious level that there is a fundamental harmony and pattern to the world we're living in that is bigger than us and that is fundamentally good and beautiful.

And when we are locked inside of the four walls of our house, I think we get very scared.

We get very controllable.

And the system wants it that way because when we are scared and when we are existentially afraid, we will literally do anything.

We will buy anything, do anything, watch anything that will in some way ameliorate that pain that we're feeling.

And

We will take any pill, we'll get any surgery, anything that makes us feel like we're controlling this seemingly out of control situation.

And that's what drives us into all the dopamine loops, you know, the social media, the processed food, the porn, the gambling, the alcohol, all of it.