Out of Sync: How Modern Homes Mess with Your Body Clock | Ep 48

You’re not tired because you’re lazy; you’re tired because your light is lying to you.

In this episode of Health Starts at Home, I’m breaking down what really happens when our homes, lighting, and daily rhythms get out of sync with nature. We’ll talk about daylight savings, circadian rhythm disruption, and why artificial light may be one of the biggest (and most overlooked) reasons people feel exhausted, inflamed, and hormonally off.

I’ll share how our bodies actually run on light — not caffeine, calories, or willpower — and why even “healthy” habits fall flat when your biology isn’t synced with creation’s rhythm. We’ll explore what happens inside the brain when light hits the eyes, how melatonin really works (spoiler: supplements don’t cut it), and how modern home design has made us the most indoor generation in history.

If you’ve been feeling wired and tired, grabbing another cup of coffee, or wondering why you’re doing “all the right things” and still feel off — this episode is going to connect some dots.

By the end, you’ll understand how to re-sync your body and home with natural light cycles, reduce inflammation, support your nervous system, and create an environment that actually restores energy instead of draining it.

Resources Mentioned: 

Circadian Lighting, The Healthy Home Shop - use code HOLLYJEAN to save 10%

Keywords: daylight savings time, circadian rhythm, light exposure, melatonin, healthy homes, building biology, light deficiency, fatigue, inflammation, nervous system, home design, energy, holistic real estate, wellness real estate

Your home should help you heal—not hold you back.
If you’re ready to explore how your environment could be impacting your energy, mood, sleep, and overall wellness, you’re in the right place. The Health Starts at Home Podcast is here to help you rethink health from the inside out—starting with where you live.

Curious about your symptoms or feeling “off” at home?
My free Body Wisdom Journal is still available and now includes prompts to help you track not just food and mood—but also your environment. Because sometimes, it’s not you... it’s your house.
→ Download Your Free Body Wisdom Journal Here

Connect with me on Instagram @hollyjean.healthandhome for real life, red flags, and wellness real estate tips you won’t hear anywhere else.

New episodes drop regularly - subscribe, share, and leave a review if this show speaks to you.

Because health starts at home—and yes, that includes yours.

© 2024 Holly Jean Mullen

Transcript

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Welcome back to The Health Starts At Home Podcast. I'm Holly Jean Mullen, your host, holistic realtor and former functional health practitioner, and the show was created to help you create a life and a home that feel good to live in. It is November already. I can't believe it. And I just wanna start off by saying thank you for. Listening, thank you for being here, and just thank you for the support this past year in launching the show. It has been a little bumpy for me and you guys, if you've been following me on Instagram, you know when I've shared my text struggles, so just thank you for being here and sticking around and dang, November already this year has gone by. Fast and we just had daylight savings this past week. It was time to fall back. And the fallback change to me feels easier, and I think it does to most people, and it probably because we gain that hour of sleep instead of losing it. We're not losing the morning light the way that we do in the spring. And this. Fall back kind of gives our body a more gentle switch. It's not, it doesn't quite jolt us like the spring one, but that said, the fall transition even still can disrupt our light biology and our environment. And that is what I wanna talk about on the show today. The real impact behind daylight savings goes much deeper than simply gaining or losing an hour of sleep. The, the real tea to spill here is that our biology runs on light. It's not caffeine, it's not calories, it's not ketones. I mean, those things do provide some fuel, but light is what really. Powers our bodies. So we're naive to think that messing with our light environment on a global scale, mind you two times a year is not anything more than a tiring inconvenience. Just some fun facts I had to look up because I honestly did not know if here in America, if we were the only ones that did daylight savings. It's like, I don't know, is this like everywhere thing or just us? But it turns out about one third of the world's countries still practice daylight savings, and as of this year, 2025, there are about 70 countries that still switch their clocks. So this really is on a global scale that we are messing with people's. Biology and circadian rhythm because every cell in your body is clocked to the rising and setting of the sun. Your hormones, your neurotransmitters, your metabolism, they are all responding to a rhythm that is written in photons. It can get really nerdy if you wanted to dive into this topic, but I will keep it. Not surface level, but I'm not gonna go into the real deep, nerdy stuff, but morning light tells your body it's time to wake up. It's time to make cortisol, it's time to burn energy. We're gonna be repairing some DNA. And then our evening light is what is whispering to us. Like slow down. We need to release melatonin. It's time to restore, it's time to run our detox processes. But what has happened is we've become indoor people. We've really messed up our light environment, and yes, daylight savings plays a role in that, but I think really the bigger issue is what is going on with how we interact with light on a day in and day out. Basis. We have replaced getting sun exposure with being indoors on screens. We're under LED lights now. We have blue light glare. We live in an artificial daylight from morning till night and. Our mitochondria, if you remember from elementary school biology, mitochondria, the little power plants, the little powerhouses that, um, fuel our cells, they get stuck in this state of confusion when they're not getting the right light input. So with changing our environment and becoming more indoor people, we've gotten all messed up and messed up, meaning this is why we are sick. A lot of people ask, why are we sick? And we can blame a hundred different things, probably more. But it really boils down to our cells and what are the signals our cells are receiving, and that all comes from our light environment. We are backwards. We are awake when we should be resting. We are exhausted when we should be alert. We crave sugar and comfort carbs because our hormones are trying to compensate for lost light. We have a light deficiency disorder. We talk a lot about food quality, water quality, air quality, but. Light is the fourth leg of the table and it's missing. Proper lighting may mean is missing in most of our homes, and we can't hack our way out of this mismatch of our circadian environment. We have to live in a way that sinks back with our natural light environment. So if your home is like mine and like probably everyone else's, your home is filled with bright white LEDs, you have curtains, constant screen light on somewhere, that means your body is never getting a clear signal that it's time to rest. And that those light signals that we are getting is confusing ourselves and it's keeping us in a go mode when we should be having times of wind down mode. So let's go back to the comment I made earlier about our body's not being powered by food or calories. We are not powered by food. We are powered by light food. Is just light in chemical form. Stay with me here. Trapped photons are waiting to be released inside of your mitochondria, and our food has stored light information in it that talks to ourselves. So every morning we should be getting sunlight, and when that sunlight hits. Your eyes. It's not just saying, Hey, it's time to get up for the day. That light is data, it's information and a biological signal that is. Being expressed, it's being written, it's being transferred to us in color and frequency, and when those photons enter through your retina in your eye, they land on a cluster of cells in your brain, and that is. The master clock. That clock sets the rhythm for every organ, every hormone, every gene expression in your body. When the light. Environment is bright and full spectrum. Our brain is receiving a message that says. A command. It's telling our body to make cortisol. It's saying, raise your body temperature, release dopamine. Let's build some energy. Let's get going. This is how our metabolism wakes up and this is how our mood lifts and this is how our. Thyroid knows it's morning. Like have you heard of your thyroid being the thermostat of your body? Um, people who are cold all the time or have low, um, body temperature that's tied back to thyroid. Is your thyroid getting the proper message that, hey, it's time to crank up the heat in here. That's all stems from the light environment. Now, of course, there's more factors that go into it, but, and then here's something else that people don't realize is. The communication between your eyes and your brain. It depends on these specialized, light sensitive cells in your retina. So if you've had procedures like LASIK or other forms of eye surgery, that signal can sometimes become weakened or even distorted, and it. It doesn't mean that you can't reset your circadian rhythm, but it does mean that your light environment matters even more. You need to be more intentional with sunlight exposure, especially in the morning, to reinforce those cues that come in through the eye and signal the brain, because those light signals are what keep your internal clock calibrated. Most of us just don't see the sunrise anymore. That's just a fact. When was the last time you saw the sunrise? Most people roll over, they grab their phone, they're bathing those little retinas in blue, enriched LED lights before we've even gotten out of bed, before feet even hit the floor. Then we walk into our kitchens or sometimes lit up like. Old fashioned hospital wards buzzing under fluorescent lights. If you go to an office, you're sitting under buzzing, fluorescent lights all day, sometimes depending on your office. And then you come home and you wind down at night watching tv, watching Netflix or sitting on your phone and scrolling. And we're still under this same artificial light spectrum. All day. From the moment we wake up and that light exposure that we're getting, it is just constantly screaming at our brain that it's daytime, daytime, daytime, daytime, daytime. So our brain's going, awake, awake, awake, awake. Your biology doesn't know. That you're relaxing watching TV or scrolling. It thinks you are like in a 24 hour target store just all lit up. Research shows that just 10 lucks. Of artificial light at night, which is the equivalent of say, a dim light in the hallway like or a light. If you leave the highway, the if you leave the hallway light on and it's just dim, it's just that little bit of dim light coming through. Just that is enough to suppress melatonin production by half, half, half. That's a lot. Melatonin. Isn't just a sleep aid. I know that's what everyone thinks of when they think of melatonin, but it is your body's nighttime operating system. It is what signals cellular repair, detoxification, immune balancing, autophagy, you know, that cleanup of the cells that needs to happen. It's a cleanup process that keeps us healthy on the cellular level. Melatonin is the signal that triggers that cycle. It is your cellular repair hormone and it's a big deal. It's been pigeonholed into being known as the sleep hormone, but that's like saying Jesus is remembered For that. One time he turned water into wine and forgetting that he also rose the dead, walked on water and. You know, like washed away all our sins. Those, those things. Yeah. He did something amazing and miraculous, but he also did all these other things. That's melatonin. I'm not saying melatonin is Jesus as just a disproportionate analogy. Whatever. I'm recording this at 5:00 AM so just, just go with my brain right now. Oh, and. I have my blue light blockers on. Yes, I'm recording at 5:00 AM It is still dark outside. I have my blue light blockers on because it's not sunrise yet. I'm protecting my eyeballs anyways. Melatonin is the signal for detox. Our immune system, that regulation process that our immune system does and our cellular cleanup system. A lot of people try to shortcut this whole thing with melatonin supplements. Uh, but those do not replicate that natural conversion process that happens when your body responds to darkness. The supplement form might help you feel drowsy. It might help you fall asleep, but it does not trigger the same cascade of hormonal, mitochondrial, and repair signals that come from true circadian alignment. So in other words, like I always say, you can't supplement your way out of this. You can't supplement your way out of a light problem with melatonin. When that natural rhythm gets disrupted, dominoes really start to fall. There is a cascade effect. You can't sleep deeply. You wake up groggy, you crave more sugar because cortisol is spiking at the wrong time. You can have mood dips. Sex, sex hormones, uh, become off. They drift in different directions. So when someone says, my hormones are messed up. It's not your hormones, it's your light environment. Uh, I already mentioned thyroid. Your thyroid can slow down and suddenly you find yourself chasing all these fixes for a problem that started with the wrong wavelengths of light. The wrong light environment is the first domino. That tips us into all these symptoms. And I'm not saying that other things that you're doing might be helping the symptoms that you're feeling like with getting your hormones back on track with getting your thyroid adjusted up to speed a little bit. But those are one factor. The big needle mover here is. Getting in sync with your light environment because here's my hot take. We're not tired because we're doing too much and we're in this hustle culture and we just work too hard and we don't know how to rest. We're tired because we are out of sync with creation. We are out of sync with the very fibers that are knit into our being. Our circadian rhythm is not one of those things. That's just a nice to have. It really truly is our operating system, and until you can fix your relationship with light, until you can step outside in the morning, even if it's inconvenient, if your health matters, you can be inconvenienced a little. Lemme just go on a little rant here. We do so many weird. Things that are far more inconvenient and. Expensive. Like we do weird ass shit for our health, and pardon my French, like I said, I just woke up. But we do weird stuff in the name of health, but if you suggest to someone to wake up early and watch the sunrise somehow, that is the bizarre suggestion. I'm telling you. Just try it. Just try it. Until you can get in sync with that morning light. Every other wellness habit is just running on outdated software. It's going to help, it's going to do something, but you still are lacking that reboot and that update to your system that everything runs on. All right. I'm going to transition a little bit here. When I talk about circadian disruption and energy dysregulation, I talk about this because too many of us are exhausted and lacking energy, and I'm not just talking about being tired. I'm talking about your body's entire system is just off. The biggest complaint I heard. When I was working with clients for health is they didn't have energy. People are tired. We don't have the energy we need to get through the day. People want tips and tricks and hacks for how to have sustainable energy. It's a big problem, and this ties directly into something I've seen over and over again, and not just in my health coaching, but in real estate and in life, is that people want to feel better, but we've been conditioned to think that feeling better comes with. A fix, meaning it's something quick and easy. We want a pill, we want a protocol. We want a practitioner who's gonna give us all the answers or tell us what we need to be doing. And we're conditioned to expect immediate gratification because that's just the world that we live in. Everything's at our fingertips. And so we've become accustomed to just expecting everything to be quick and at our fingertips, but recovering your health. It can take some time, especially when we've been knowingly or unknowingly damaging our health with our lifestyles and getting our health back or getting it back on track. Overcoming chronic symptoms and conditions that can take time here. Here's an example of being able to hold two truths at one time. I fully believe in. Fast healing. Immediate, miraculous, full healing. I've seen it. I believe it. I also believe healing is a process or a journey, even though I hate that expression. It may my journey, it's just a good word for it, but it could also be a marathon and not a sprint, and just stacking little changes over time. The timelines vary, the picture looks different, and healing is never one dimensional. But what I have learned from years of working in health, the challenge of helping people has grown exponentially. Everyone wants to feel better, but many are still looking for someone or something to fix them. The problem with that idea is that it puts all the responsibility on the practitioner and it completely overlooks how systems and our bodies and how healing and the repair mechanisms of our body actually work. It's not just another technique. It's not just another supplement. It's not just another miracle protocol that is going to end. You're suffering. It all happens when we create the right conditions inside and around the body. It's multi-pronged. It starts with two key things, and that's really what I wanna tie in and talk about. The whole purpose of today's episode is the light environment. Inflammation, our nervous system and how they all are such a huge factor in getting well. So let's start with inflammation. I guess I already started with light, but now moving on. We're going on to inflammation now. A little inflammation 1 0 1 for the noobs and a refresher for the others is inflammation is the body's alarm system. It's a signal that something is off balance, and so when inflammation is high, the body goes into protection mode. It's harder to repair tissues. Balance hormones, release tension, and because the organs don't send pain signals the way muscles do, their distress often shows up in places that don't seem connected. For example. The liver doesn't have a direct nerve link to the brain. It shares communication pathways with our muscular skeletal system, though, easy for me to say right now, but when your liver's congested, you might feel it as right shoulder pain or neck tension or even hip pain. Those are referral patterns. And they are not random. They are part of the body's built in communication system.'cause our body's always communicating with us. It has a different language that we need to learn, but it is always in communication with us when I do a functional evaluation. I'm, I'm have my practitioner hat on now. When I do a functional evaluation, I test reflex points, Chapman, reflex points, Ridler points. These are points on the body that are subtle, like neuro lymphatic reflexes that have the ability to reveal how specific organs are functioning, and these points often correspond with areas of tenderness, muscle tightness. Even emotional sensitivity. And what's so fascinating is how these same points line up with acupuncture meridians, especially the liver, gallbladder, stomach channels. Oh my gosh. Sorry, I'm starting to like little geek out in my own head here. This stuff is so cool. This, these points actually are also key placements for the life wave phototherapy patches. So when, when I am using those, I'm used stimulating these points.'cause when you stimulate those areas, whether through gentle pressure, through light being out in the natural sun or you can stimulate with frequency, you are. Supporting that energy flow and communication between organ systems and it's a different way of listening to the body, uh, aiding the body in its processes. It's really cool. Anyways, shoulder, shoulder pain might not mean, oh, I just slept funny. It could be your liver saying, hello, can I have help down here? Yeah, maybe your liver is British. I'm not sure, but maybe your liver needs some help with detoxification or some drainage, and once you can address that underlying congestion, that tension can also resolve on its own. No need to go get endless. Muscle work or massages for that. But let's say you do go and get a massage and it feels better for a few days and then it's back and that's not, oh, the massage didn't help. That's your body communicating with you, potentially asking for some deeper support. Like yeah, it could be maybe you work a, um. Manually Laborous job or you work out a lot and that's what the muscle tension is from. But it also also could be that there's something going on in your organs and their pain is being referred to your muscular skeletal system and. Something deeper needs to be addressed. And that's going on. I'm going to get my brilliant friend and body worker, fellow NTP, Dana Marsh, back on the show. She's been a guest before, but I really wanna talk about this with her because it's big and it's relevant and I think it's an important topic. So anyways, putting a pin in that and moving on, but. The second thing I, or I guess third thing now I wanna talk about is the autonomic nervous system and that part of the body that runs everything automatically. Your breathing, your heartbeat, digestion, your immune response, your ability to relax. These are things we don't have to think about doing. Our body just does it. It's designed to self-regulate until it's interrupted. And what interrupts it? Trauma. Chronic stress. I use those words broadly because trauma isn't the only like big thing that happens. It's also the constant just tension of modern life, high stress, unresolved emotional loads. Those things create the same physiological pattern as trauma. The body stays in this guarded state and the nervous system stays hyper alert. And when you're in that mode. Change doesn't stick. Our body just kind of goes right back into that stuck mode. No matter how good the protocol is, is that you're following, no matter how great the practitioner is that you're working with or how good that massage was, your body just goes right back. So if you've ever felt stuck, I'm sure a lot of you have. Or if you've ever just wondered why your progress feels so slow or it's temporary, your results aren't lasting, it's often because the nervous system isn't ready. The body has to feel a level of safety before it can heal. And this was a huge component for me and my. Meandering journey through health, and I remember having to make the intentional choices and decisions to prioritize my nervous system and seek calm. I've shared about this in earlier episodes. Uh, if you wanna go back, I'll link them in the show notes, but this is why I talk about healing as a multi-pronged approach. I feel like we can't talk about it enough because we need to beat it into our brains. Marketing and advertising bombards us with the messaging that one thing, the one thing that is being sold at that moment is the solution. To the problem that you have and it's the thing that you need, but we need to be constantly reminded that it isn't just one thing. It's never going to be just one thing. Even if one thing makes a big impact and really moves a needle for you. For me, that. Fasting at one point. At another point it was cold plunging. At another point it was light sinking with the sunrise and the sunset as I was talking about earlier. Another point is with diet and exercise at another time. It was a practitioner I was working with, with incredible insight and guidance. But the point is it is always a culmination. The right one thing at the right time, built upon a sequence and collection of other things, not a ah one thing in isolation. Your body, your mind, and your environment all play a role together, which is exactly why this conversation, I'm getting us back on topic now. This conversation about light. Our home design, our living environments, it's come full circle now, bringing it full circle. Because if your physical space is working against your biology, your body can't fully rest, repair, or recover. It becomes a barrier. So let's zoom out a little bit here and talk about how our modern homes, despite all the comfort and efficiency. Have actually drifted so far away from the design that supports our human health. Once upon a time, homes were built to breathe. Windows were big. Ceilings were high. Natural light poured in because that was the only light we had. We're taking it way back. We rose with the sun. We went to bed with the sun. It was. Simple. And when that sun went down, we had candlelight, which worked with our body biology, then came progress. We got insulation and air sealing and HVAC systems and energy codes, and those things are all great in theory, except now our homes are so tight. We've sealed ourselves into little boxes that trap stale air and shut out sunlight. I have been going on home visits with different trades people and inspectors, and it blows my mind how many homes have such high CO2 levels because people. Live in such tight little boxes that do not get any fresh air. And they have like no oxygen in their homes. They are just rebreathing their own breath. Did you make me just breathe my own breath? Did you make me bleed my own blood? You your own breath. Yes. We don't have enough air in our homes'cause they're so tight. We gotta open a window. Our windows got smaller, our blinds got thicker, our curtains became blackout, and suddenly we are spending over 90% of our lives indoors under artificial light, breathing our recycled air and saying, oh, this is what comfort is. No, no. Maybe we feel comfort temperature wise, but our body, our cells are saying, I'm not comfortable. These homes are modern homes. They're designed for efficiency, aesthetics, not biology. That's changing. I'm working to change that. I know a lot of people are working to change that, but we've just, we have these homes that photograph so beautifully, but they don't necessarily feel that great to live in. I have a client right now with a gorgeous, gorgeous new home and. She's miserable in it because it does not get natural light like the way the home is positioned, it's just a dark home and she feels it. It affects her mood. It's affecting how she lives her life. So as. A wellness focused realtor. This is one of the first things I pay attention to when I walk into a house. I'm not just looking at the floor plans and how many bedrooms and the finishes. I mean, they would like those things, but I'm paying attention to how a home feels in your body, and I'm asking those questions. Does the light feel balanced? Do you get morning sun in the kitchen? Can you see the sky from where you work or rest? Because. Light isn't just a design feature, it is a biological need and it's a biological lead need that most people don't think about. And so I hope I have beat that into your head by now. Let's start wrapping this up. I'm gonna give you some takeaways. I covered a lot in this episode, so let me just. Wrap up with some actionable takeaways and let me give you five practical, simple steps for rethinking your body and your home with light, which will then help with balancing. And reducing inflammation in your body and getting your nervous system back on track so that the other things you are doing to heal and feel better are actually working and sticking. So the first thing I'm going to say is to get morning light. Get sunlight in your eyes within 10 minutes of waking up if you can. If you do not have to be a 5:00 AM Warrior. Get up with the sun and I will just say a little note here. Yes, I am up before the sun. I have my protective glasses on. As soon as that sun starts coming up, I will be outside and I will be getting that rising sunlight in my eyeballs. The other thing is lighting layers. You can use different types of bulbs and lights. There are even circadian. Lights and bulbs out there. Now, I will link those in the show notes if you want to start swapping some of your bulbs in your house. And it does not have to be every single one of'em. My strategy is when you wake up in the morning, if and when you're up at night, if there is a certain room that you're in that you need a light on after dark, that is the light I would swap so that you are still getting the light you need in your home while also still supporting your circadian biology. The other thing is getting daylight exposure. Opening your blinds is great and letting natural light come in, but taking just quick little walks outside without your sunglasses on that will do wonders for your health with little light breaks outside. Nighttime protection. It's so important to dim your lights and keep your light environment inside sinking with the way the sun sets and the sun goes down. If it is dark outside at night, your home should not be fully lit up like an airport runway. So start turning off lights, start dimming some lights, and like I said, check out the circadian bulbs that I'll link up. And the last thing is just upgrading those light bulbs. I guess I got ahead of myself. You can use smart lighting if you're budget allows. So that would be. Uh, like a bonus if you can.'cause they are, they are kind of expensive as terms for like a light bulb costs compared to a regular light bulb. They are on the pricier side, and that's why I suggest doing just a couple rooms or a couple key lights that you could use in the morning or a night if you get up early for work and you're in your bathroom getting ready. Swap your bathroom light for one of these circadian bulbs, or if you're up late in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner and the kitchen light can kind of power the living room. If you have an open concept, just one or two lights in the kitchen living room that you can have on at nighttime. Anyways, like I said, I know I covered a lot of ground in this episode. We went over light hormones, home design, inflammation. Nervous system regulation, all of it. But really it all comes down to one thing is that your body and your home, our environments are not separate from our health. The same systems that keep our house comfortable, the air flow, the light, the temperature, are the same rhythms that our bodies need to function and heal. And so when one is off the other feels it. You can't separate health from home. You can't separate biology from building design, and you can't separate your energy from the environment that feeds it. If you're feeling wired, tired, outta sync, don't overcomplicate it. It's very easy to overcomplicate things with health these days'cause everyone's selling something to make you feel better. It does not have to be complicated. If you take anything from this episode. Let it be this. You do not have to fix everything. Just start by being a little more aware, bringing a little more awareness to how you live inside your space, and start with light. Start with how you breathe. Take time to breathe. Outside in fresh light and you're already doing the first step. Now you're starting with awareness this episode right now, and as you move through your day, just carry that with you and let sunlight touch your skin. And it doesn't have to be for long, but notice how your home feels in your. Body and start reframing the way you think about how you live and how you spend your day, how that affects how you might be feeling. Because just remember that you were, we were never meant to live disconnected. So these aren't little things. They're simple things. But they're not little. They are foundational. And when you can sink your body with your living environment and with the way we were created, everything else just starts to fall into place. So that is it for today's episode. I'll wrap it up here. Thank you for joining me on Health Starts At Home Again. I'm Holly Jean Mullen. Holistic realtor here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I am a non-practicing functional health practitioner. It never really leaves me, but I am not seeing clients. I'm always learning, always talking about health. The show is for education and inspiration only. It is not a substitute for, for professional advice. Your body and your home are unique, so always consult your trusted healthcare provider or real estate professional before making any changes. Thanks. See you next time.