You’ve tried everything. The supplements line your kitchen counter like a small pharmacy. You’ve perfected your nutrition, counted every macro, eliminated inflammatory foods. You exercise, meditate, and track your sleep. Yet something still feels off—especially if you’re navigating menopause, where the usual tricks seem to stop working entirely. What if the answer has been staring you in the face all along, literally hiding in plain sight?
Dr. Jack Kruse, a Nashville neurosurgeon who underwent his own dramatic health transformation, offers a paradigm-shifting perspective: “Taking supplemental vitamin D3 is like trying to hire someone else to do your push-ups for you.” His core message is both revolutionary and embarrassingly obvious—we’ve become so disconnected from natural light that we’re trying to supplement our way out of a sunlight deficiency.
The tree that changed everything
Dr. Kruse’s favorite patient explanation cuts through complexity with startling clarity: “Look at that tree outside. If you plant it in great soil and water it but cover it with a tarp, what happens? It dies. Yet we cover ourselves—with clothes, sunscreen, and UV-blocking sunglasses—and wonder why we don’t thrive.” One 60-year-old patient wearing sunglasses indoors for “sensitive eyes” after cataract surgery had suffered worsening back pain for months. When Kruse explained the tree analogy, she removed her glasses, her eyes lit up, and her daughter exclaimed, “Thank you so much, no doctor has ever told me anything like this!”
This simple metaphor reveals what we’ve been missing. While obsessing over what goes into our mouths, we’ve ignored what enters through our eyes and skin. Kruse’s research suggests that 50% of the circuits in our brain are wired to light, not dietary metabolism. We’re essentially trying to run sophisticated biological machinery on the wrong operating system.
Your body as a light refinery
Imagine a barrel of crude oil entering a refinery and emerging as 60 different products—gasoline, plastics, lubricants. Your mitochondria, Kruse explains, do the same thing with light. They take the sun’s full spectrum and “refine” it into the biological processes that keep you alive. When you replace natural sunlight with artificial light, it’s like putting crude oil directly into your car’s gas tank. No amount of premium supplements can compensate for giving your cellular refineries the wrong raw material.
The science becomes personal when you understand that 95% of melatonin is made in your mitochondria, not just in your brain. Every cell in your body is literally solar-powered. Blue light from screens destroys this melatonin production, while morning UV light rebuilds it. Suddenly, that expensive melatonin supplement seems like a Band-Aid on a broken solar panel.
Why menopausal women need more sun, not more supplements
Here’s where Kruse’s work becomes particularly relevant for women navigating hormonal changes. Conventional wisdom tells menopausal women to avoid the sun, load up on calcium supplements, and manage symptoms with hormone replacement. Kruse flips this completely: “Menopausal women need more sunlight, not less sunlight as their physicians often tell them.”
His explanation reads like a hidden superpower finally revealed. When estrogen drops by 90% at menopause, iron is released from storage. UV light magnetizes this iron, creating quantum effects that provide extra energy from sunlight—nature’s way of giving women a second wind. Modern women feel terrible during menopause partly because they’re avoiding the very thing designed to revitalize them. Those hot flashes and energy crashes? Your body might be screaming for morning sunlight, not another supplement.
The hormone cascade that controls everything from sleep to bone density starts with morning light hitting your retina between 6-10 AM. Without this signal, taking progesterone or other hormones is like trying to start a car without turning the ignition. Women who’ve struggled with hormone replacement therapy often find that adding morning sunlight exposure finally makes their treatments effective—or unnecessary.
The sunrise prescription that changes everything
Kruse’s most emphatic recommendation sounds almost too simple to be true: “Watch every sunrise. If you do this every day of your life, you will have the greatest impact on your health.” Not through a window, not with sunglasses, but outside with naked eyes looking slightly off-axis from the sun. Start with 10-20 minutes and build up to 30 or more.
The transformation stories follow a predictable pattern. People who’ve spent fortunes on supplements suddenly realize they’ve been living like that tarp-covered tree. An elderly woman with knee pain so severe she needed replacement surgery started combining cold pool therapy with morning sunlight. After 3-4 months, her orthopedist canceled the surgery—her knees had improved that dramatically.
Discovering the obvious: everyday revelations
The “aha moments” come in waves. That afternoon energy crash you combat with coffee? Your cellular batteries aren’t charging because you missed your morning light exposure. Those supplements that seem to work for everyone else but not you? Your body can’t use them properly without the light signals that tell it how. The stubborn weight gain despite perfect nutrition? You’re forcing your body to extract energy from food because you’re not giving it energy from light.
Consider this: every study showing the dangers of sun exposure was likely conducted on people wearing sunglasses. Kruse explains that “when you put sunglasses on, it decreases melanin production in your skin,” making you more sensitive to burning. We’ve created the very problem we’re trying to solve.
The practical applications feel like remembering something you always knew. Open your windows during the day—light filtered through glass isn’t the same. Use candles or red lights after sunset instead of harsh LEDs. Take work calls outside. Eat lunch in the sun. These aren’t biohacks; they’re returns to normal human behavior.
Food as light information
Perhaps most mind-blowing is Kruse’s teaching that “food is just an electromagnetic barcode of sunlight.” That tropical fruit in your winter smoothie carries light information from its growing location, creating chaos when consumed far from the equator in December. Seasonal, local eating isn’t just trendy—it’s about matching your food’s light signature to your environment’s light availability.
This explains why some people thrive on certain diets while others don’t. It’s not just about macros or calories; it’s about whether your light environment matches your food choices. High-carb summer foods require high-light summer environments. When you eat them in artificial light or winter darkness, you create metabolic confusion.
The missing link in women’s health journeys
For women who’ve tried everything—hormone optimization, thyroid support, adrenal protocols, gut healing—without lasting success, light exposure often proves to be the missing link. The body’s wisdom hasn’t failed; we’ve simply been speaking the wrong language. Instead of asking “What supplement should I take?” the question becomes “How can I optimize my light environment?”
One woman’s PCOS journey exemplifies this shift. After years of failed treatments, she discovered Kruse’s work and began prioritizing light exposure. Her hormones began normalizing not from new supplements but from removing barriers between her body and the sun. She went from medical discharge from the military to actively researching quantum biology, empowered by understanding her body’s true needs.
Practical magic: your light transformation protocol
The beauty of Kruse’s approach lies in its accessibility. Unlike expensive supplements or complicated protocols, optimizing light exposure costs nothing and requires no special equipment—just the willingness to step outside. Start with sunrise. Even if you can only manage 10 minutes before work, those morning photons begin the cascade of cellular repairs your body craves.
Remove the barriers—sunglasses during the day, blue light after sunset. Your transitional discomfort as your eyes adapt is your body remembering how to see. Build your “solar callus” gradually, just as you’d build physical calluses through consistent work. Use blue-blocking glasses after dark, choosing ones that actually block the harmful 400-550nm spectrum, not the useless clear versions.
For menopausal women specifically, combine morning light exposure with protein consumption to optimize the hormone cascade. Let that released iron become your ally, magnetized by UV light to provide the energy that no amount of caffeine can match. Trade hot flash misery for morning light therapy.
Rediscovering what we always knew
Kruse’s genius isn’t in discovering something new—it’s in reminding us of something we’ve forgotten. Every wild animal knows to seek shade when it’s had enough sun. No creature in nature wears sunscreen or takes vitamin D supplements. They live by light cycles we’ve abandoned in favor of artificial substitutes.
The revelation feels like Dorothy discovering she always had the power to go home. That exhaustive supplement regimen? Helpful, perhaps, but secondary to the master controller—light. Those expensive bio-hacks? Pale imitations of what the sun provides free every morning. The complex healing protocols? Often unnecessary when you restore your body’s primary energy source.
For health-conscious women who’ve done everything “right” yet still struggle, Kruse’s message offers both vindication and hope. You haven’t failed; you’ve simply been looking in the wrong place. The answer isn’t in another bottle or protocol—it’s in stepping outside tomorrow morning to greet the sunrise, just as countless generations of women before you have done.
As one patient testimonial captured perfectly: “Thank you doctor, nobody has ever told me that before!” The prescription is free, the pharmacy is outside your door, and the medicine has been waiting 4.5 billion years to heal you. All you have to do is remove the tarp and let the light in.
Learn more about Dr. Jack Kruse’s work:
- Dr. Jack Kruse’s Official Website
- Can You Supplement Sunlight?
- How Women Gain Time at Menopause
- Podcast: Dr. Jack Kruse on Junk Light & Optimizing Sunlight
Still Overwhelmed?
This page is an attempt to help simplify what Dr. Jack Kruse is trying to say. But if this is still over the top and you find the “vitamin” D situation confusing still, join us in “Vitamin” D for Beginners on Facebook
I breakdown some of the complicated info surrounding “vitamin” D supplementation here https://pathwaymap.com/vitamin-d/
