Re-thinking the structure of our workday to support cellular health

I used to work with a gentleman who, on sunny days, would walk into my office and look out my window into the horizon and say, “we should be out climbing mountains today.”

I would always respond with, “you are absolutely right – we should be.”

On the inside, I was saying to myself, “but the only mountains I will be climbing today are the mountains of emails and paperwork I need to get through.”

Sigh.

It is just the reality of the modern day workplace.

That simple comment, however, as superficial as it seems, actually gets to the heart of something very profound that we all dismiss (or suppress) on a daily basis, and that is, the deep connection we all have to nature, and just how amazing it feels to be outside.

In the world of work (when you work in an office at least), nature can become a meaningless backdrop and something you only see through a window, or just something you pass through to get from your home to your car, and to the door of the office...and for weekends and vacations.

Ornamental at best, it is as functionally useless as a picture on a wall.

When nature becomes demoted like this, we may or may not get out in the sun during a day, we may or may not feel rain on our noses, and we may or may not actually feel outdoor temperature during a day – all of these things can become immaterial (or optional) when you are just focused upon your work and what you need to get done.

Once those weekends and vacations do arrive, however, and we can jump into nature, we can’t deny how rejuvenating a walk or basking in the sun and sand (in the summer or in Mexico) feels. To feel rejuvenated and re-energized is why we seek it out, isn’t it?

As you know, I am on a health discovery journey. You are part of my journey, so what I discover, you get a chance to discover, too.

Are you ready to discover something new? (Probably not, because you know this already).

Today I am opening up the discussion on the impact that nature has on our health, particularly our cellular health, and invite consideration on how we can bring it into our daily work lives.

It represents a territory that many of us simply do not consider in the picture of our health – both as a contributing reason for poor health, or a way to help improve it.

Let me tell you that nature is not a meaningless backdrop.

From an evolutionary perspective, it is the very foundation upon which our entire physiology has been built. Millions of years of evolution of mankind interacting with the elements of our nature environment has shaped our basic functions. To return to these very elements, offers us a way to return to health.

Removing the blocking factors that modern life present (let’s just tackle the modern workplace for now) becomes a powerful way for us to make this return.

It’s not going to be easy and we’ll need to do some serious re-thinking about the current structure of our day and work life –both the time we spend working and the environment in which we perform our work.

The work itself is up to you! That’s your magic.

All I wish to open up are ways to create a more healthful structure for you to perform your magic and uphold your health at the same time.

This all said, I am by no means an expert on cellular health, nor nature.

I see myself serving as a bridge between the wisdom that the world of cellular health has to share with us about the benefits of nature on our health and the world of work to empower you to start bringing the sun and earth into your workday.

There’s a lot to cover, so let’s jump in!

Cellular Health – what do we need to know?

When you think about cellular health, or just cells in general, chances are you are having flashbacks to Grade 11 Biology when you were learning about the structure of a cell, and memorizing all the weird words that made up its terminology – cell membranes, mitochondria, cellular respiration, ATP, and all that.

Part of the difficulty with the topic, you might agree, was the fact that it was largely unrelatable - and quite literally, another language.

The only aspect that might have been relatable was the purpose of cellular respiration - how our cells made energy from breaking down the food we ate into protons and electrons, which would feed into the electron transport chain, and our mitochondria was the powerhouse at the hub of that energy production.

That was something we all could relate to, so let’s build upon that.

While the world of cellular health is immensely complex, some of the key aspects I wanted to share with you can be boiled down to this:

• Our mitochondria are responsible for pivotal areas of our health– from our energy production, (functioning like a battery), to metabolism and hormone production, cell to cell communication, growth, gene expression, longevity, sensing safety within our internal and external environments, and adaptation
• The health of our mitochondria is largely influenced by our environment- this includes everything within our environment from the light, air, the presence of toxins in all forms, and even psychological safety (1)

If you find this intriguing, the name Dr. Doug Wallace, PhD., Director of the Center for Mitochondrial and Epigenomic Medicine at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, is one you’ll want to keep on your radar. (2)

His work supports the case that 95-99% of the common diseases we see today (like heart disease, cancer Alzheimer’s, and diabetes), are rooted in mitochondrial dysfunction. (3)

Dr. Wallace advocates strongly for sunlight exposure as a means to support mitochondrial health, noting that even the food we eat, is really just trapped sunlight (remember the process of photosynthesis we all memorized in Biology class, too? It’s just a plant’s way of seizing sunlight).

It all seems very odd for of us to consider (myself included).

I had previously always believed that health was found in a great diet, finding the right supplements, exercise, and sleep – all mostly tangible things we can control.

When I learned that according to the world of cellular health, that diet is third at best on this list, with the photons, electrons, and protons we receive from the sun and earth and absorb through our skin and eyes being far more influential in our health, my world was shaken (in a good way).

In other words, understanding that food is not the only source of energy that fuels energy production on a cellular level, helped me realize the huge potential that I could be offering my health – and something I had been neglecting so terribly for so long during my office life.

Nature – it really isn’t optional

Pushing nature into the backdrop of your day really cannot come without consequences, when you stop to consider how interlaced it is into our biology and what a foundational purpose it has served in human history for this reason.

Let’s not forget that small detail of it being the center of our solar system and the focal point of many ancient cultures, religions, calendars, seasons, agricultural planting and harvests, and all life on earth – yes, just that small detail.

(And, to think, in our work life, it can become just an item on your to do list! “Get outside today” – check, got it).

While “nature” is quite a generalized term, for today, I will merely chip off only a small part of it, and we’ll consider how sunlight and the earth figure into the picture of our health:

Sunlight– every single cell and process in our body relies on circadian light cues. Our bodies are actually designed to run on a 24-hour clock, and intended to do specific things, at specific times.

Light is actually what regulates/synchronizes our body clocks, which orchestrates our entire physiology, from our hormone production and secretion, to our metabolism and energy production, regulation of our nervous system, heart rate, and blood pressure, our digestion (even our microbiome), down to our cellular functions, most notably our mitochondria.

When we are deprived of natural sunlight throughout our day (that means beginning in the morning, throughout our day, and as the sun sets), our body is without its signaling cues and becomes biologically lost essentially - like an orchestra without a conductor (or a Grade 5 band).

Earth– we don’t generally think about our physical connection to the earth (like being barefoot outside, being in water, or lying down outdoors) as being health promoting, but the earth’s electromagnetic field is in fact a rich source of free electrons that both fuel our energy production and have also been shown to regulate our nervous system, immune function, and even keep inflammation in check, due to supporting mitochondrial function. (4)

We are most certainly just skimming the surface here, but I will be expanding upon these pieces in the lifestyle tips that I share in the weeks to come, so stay tuned for those!

Re-Thinking our Workdays and Workplaces

So now what?

How do we take this understanding and just get outside more in our day, or in our workday?

We joke that we are all chained to our work, but in so many ways, it’s true. And, there’s no lack of evidence to prove it.

How do you break away from your desk, your meetings, your presentations, or deadlines, etc. and get outside?

I don’t have all the answers, but I do have some ideas, and some hope.

You’ll be happy to know, it can and is being done, both on an individual level and by organizations.

Globally, more focus is being placed upon employee well-being, and nature is slowly being recognized and supported for its positive contributions to health and well-being.

Here are some hopeful references I stumbled across:

Is your team getting enough nature?

How to harness the power of nature to transform your work culture

As you’ll see, organizations who are part of the momentum encourage:

• Outdoor meetings
• Walking meetings
• Morning and afternoon walk breaks
• Lunch time walks
• Bike to work initiatives

This is all music to my ears, and can be to yours as well. These are all terrific ways to get out there!

Here are a few other primers for you to formulate your own thinking:

Reflect:

• Have you ever had a health challenge that you just couldn’t budge, despite your best efforts using diet and/or exercise?
• How do you feel when you don’t get outside in a day and are stuck indoors and on a screen for more than 4 hours at a time?

Observe:

• How many hours do you spend indoors in a day?
• What type of lighting is in your indoor environment?
• How much (minutes or hours) sunlight exposure do you receive in a day?
• What time of day do you receive direct sunlight?
• How long (minutes or hours) do you sit in a day?
• How long (minutes or hours) are you on a screen in a day?
• Do you walk barefoot outdoors?

Consider:

• It is estimated that we spend 90% of our lives indoors, under artificial light, in artificial heating/air conditioning, separated from the sun and earth, two sources that provide our physiology with energy, signaling, and a means to synchronize and regulate itself. (7)

It hasn’t always been this way – when we look back in history and consider how work alone has evolved, we were outdoors far more than we were indoors and our work was more physical than it was mental. This 3 minute video The Historical Evolution of Work does a terrific job of summarizing the where we’ve been over the last 3,000 years. (8)

• The invention of the light bulb in 1879 completely changed the way we worked and lived, dividing us from using natural forms of light that governed our lives, and subjected us to a new form of artificial light energy that we had never been exposed to before in our evolution. With our eyes being a rich location of mitochondria, they are highly sensitive to artificial light (particularly blue light) – this exposure negatively impacts our circadian rhythms and body clocks, disrupts the production of our hormones that regulate our metabolism, sleep and wakefulness, and has led to impaired sleep patterns on a global scale (which I wrote about in my post on Sleep Leadership – it is time), and perpetuates poor health and disease. (9)
• Here is another little 3 minute video on How Electric Light Changed the Night reminds us of how closely tied our biology is to natural light and how much it has changed. (10)
• The powerful influence that nature has on our thinking capacity and creativity is nothing new – great thinkers in history such as Charles Darwin, Beethoven and Henry David Thoreau were all famously known for their long walks in nature to cultivate deep thinking. So while it is nothing new, it does serve as a reminder for us and a testament to it not being a waste of time! (11)

Final Thoughts

As I say, I realize I am only just skimming the surface on a very vast topic, but I hope it serves as a starting point for us to understand how crucial our environment is in shaping our health, down to a cellular level.

The next time you experience a sunny day and feel like saying, “I should be out climbing mountains,” that is the pull of millions of years of hard-wiring and your body’s innate wisdom reminding you of your original source of nourishment.

But, as I say, you already know this because you can feel it.

The key is to stop ignoring the pull and compartmentalizing nature for weekends and vacations and find a way to bring it into your daily life...and structure of your workday and inspire change in your workplaces, every chance you get, no matter how small.

We just weren’t meant to spend 90% of our time indoors and still thrive.

Let’s figure out a way to re-shape world of our work!

"The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration" - Claude Monet

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Acknowledgements, References, and Further Reading:

I wish to acknowledge and thank BodyBio for shifting my perspective of health to one that embraces cellular health and their ongoing efforts in bringing this message to the world. And, to Cellular Health Expert, Justine Stenger, for teaching me the role that mitochondria play in our health. Without her mentorship, I never would have understood this principle so clearly. Thank you, Justine!

1. Casanova A, Wevers A, Navarro-Ledesma S, Pruimboom L. Mitochondria: It is all about energy. Front Physiol. 2023 Apr 25;14:1114231. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2023.1114231. PMID: 37179826; PMCID: PMC10167337. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10167337/
2. Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (2025). Douglas C. Wallace, Ph.D., https://www.chop.edu/doctors/wallace-douglas-c
3. Wallace DC. A mitochondrial bioenergetic etiology of disease. J Clin Invest. 2013 Apr;123(4):1405-12. doi: 10.1172/JCI61398. Epub 2013 Apr 1. PMID: 23543062; PMCID: PMC3614529. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3614529/
4. LeGates TA, Fernandez DC, Hattar S. Light as a central modulator of circadian rhythms, sleep and affect. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2014 Jul;15(7):443-54. doi: 10.1038/nrn3743. Epub 2014 Jun 11. PMID: 24917305; PMCID: PMC4254760. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4254760/
5. Oschman JL, Chevalier G, Brown R. The effects of grounding (earthing) on inflammation, the immune response, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. J Inflamm Res. 2015 Mar 24;8:83-96. doi: 10.2147/JIR.S69656. PMID: 25848315; PMCID: PMC4378297. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4378297/
6. Globacare (2022). Is your team getting enough time in nature. Retrieved from: htttps://www.globacare.co.uk/guides/is-your-team-getting-enough-time-in-nature
7. Liebenguth, K. (Jan. 7, 2025). How to harness the power of nature to transform your work culture. Retrieved from: https://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/content/comment/how-to-harness-the-power-of-nature-to-transform-your-work-culture
8. Roberts, T. (Dec. 2016). We spend 90% of our time indoors. Says who? Retrieved from: https://www.buildinggreen.com/blog/we-spend-90-our-time-indoors-says-who
9. MITx Videos. Historical Evolution of Work. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjFE2OxIg6I
10. Springer, S. (Nov 11, 2026). How Thomas Edison’s Light Bulb Changed the Way You Sleep. Retrieved from: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-thomas-edisons-light-bulb-changed-the-way-you_b_582632e9e4b0852d9ec21605
11. KQED Deep Look (Season 1 Episode 7). How Electric Light Changed the Night. Retrieved from: https://www.kqed.org/science/26331/how-electric-light-changed-the-night