💬 What do you mean when you say quantum?
The evolution of language and making space for the emerging quantum biology paradigm
A quantum refers to the smallest unit of something, as in an electron is the smallest measurable unit of electricity. Other well-known quanta include protons, neutrons, and photons.
Colloquially, quantum also refers to something large or significant, as in a quantum improvement.
Thus, most often, when you hear of someone describing quantum health, they are usually describing a small thing that has a big impact on health.
“Big doors swing on little hinges” is a common metaphor used to describe the goal of quantum health.
Last year, when explaining quantum health, I used this colloquial definition quite a bit.
At that time, I was especially interested in understanding redox, which can be thought of as the balance of:
oxidative vs antioxidant forces
positive vs negative charges
protons vs electrons
acid vs alkaline
(yes, these are all different ways of exploring very similar concepts)
For my interest in optimizing the birthing year, redox is super important as we find oxidative stress to be a major underlying factor—not well-managed by mainstream protocols—in pretty much every major problem that can come up.
You can read my line of thinking in this post from 2023:
From circadian to quantum
As you progress with getting more “circadian” in your lifestyle, you may plateau. Yes, things are better, but X, Y, or Z still bothers you. It could be weight you can’t lose, inflammation, rashes, fertility challenges… or even a mental health or cancer diagnosis. At this point, if you live in a good light environment, the next area of health to address is your natural antioxidant activity.
The leap from circadian to quantum is not just being made by me.
A really fascinating academic paper was published by Frontiers in Physiology in 2022 sharing a more scientific take on what I was stumbling into last year.
While I was observing that correcting circadian rhythms with sunlight and darkness was having outsized effects—much more than could be expected or predicted based on stabilizing circadian health alone—the paper, Chronobiology Meets Quantum Biology: A New Paradigm on the Horizon? was being published.
This review paper was very compelling at the time, giving me hope I was on the right track with this line of thinking.
One of the biggest challenges for me is working with families who have genetic illnesses.
For example, two cases that came up last year along those lines were a woman with the worse form of the MTHFR gene mutation struggling with infertility and a family with a boy suffering from Fragile X Syndrome.
We have so far to go in genetics, and I find a lot of the current genetic strategies in research pretty horrifying and crude—not to mention being huge animal welfare issues.
It’s not enough to just wait for the current research system to catch up, and especially not with the growing evidence that genetic problems may be driven by the double whammy of disrupted methylation due to circadian disruption and genetic and embryonic mutations from the new, long wavelength frequencies being propagated across the planet1.
But I do see the pushback from people who say no, that’s just too small to matter. And that happens not only in everyday life, but also in academic circles. For example, Materese, et al wrote in 2023:
Quantum biology challenges long-held beliefs that limit quantum effects to microscopic scales within the warm and wet conditions of life and pushes the boundaries of our understanding of biology by examining how quantum effects, once thought to be relevant only at the microscopic scale, can play a role in complex, macroscopic biological systems. Traditionally, physicists assumed that high temperatures, a low vacuum, or strong interactions in living cells limited the existence of quantum effects. A paradigm shift suggests that quantum effects can indeed operate within the complex fabric of biological systems. However, a fundamental question persists—to what extent do these quantum effects stretch in time and space within the intricate tapestry of biology?
And Seibert, et al, the same year, shared:
For decades, it has been postulated that time scales for decoherence are too short for quantum mechanics to apply to macromolecules under ambient conditions, like DNA. Nevertheless, as outlined above, current models taking into account physiological temperatures and charge decoherence by the environment as well as experimental findings at corresponding conditions and using DNA in solution (and even embedded in histones), suggest quantum effects to be active in DNA in living cells… In summary, we think there is sufficient evidence for postulating a quantum physics layer of epigenetics, which we propose to name “Quantum Epigenetics". Our hypothesis on this layer’s existence, along with some features, is built on theoretical and experimental data from many groups. Remarkably, whereas physics principles in DNA have been extensively explored until the early years of this millennium, research on quantum effects in cellular DNA seems thereafter to have mainly focused on mutational mechanisms. It seems intuitive to us that the more volatile epigenetic landscape is much more susceptible to the transient and partly stochastic quantum effects.
Indivisible units are at present understood as electrons and photons (though, in certain theoretical and mathematical models, they are beginning to be understood as having different layers of energy which are speculated in time to be discovered to have the possibility of acting independently—we just don’t have very good ways to measure this at present).
Summary of my current thoughts on the word “quantum”
Quantum, as per Merriam-Webster, can refer as an adjective to something large or significant (ie, a quantum improvement).
So, quantum: the littlest hinges that can swing the biggest doors.
I think that’s the simplest summary I can think of.
And honestly, I find this alone seems to be a big mental leap for a lot of people who don’t want to dive into the nitty-gritties of any kind of science—they just want to know what to do RE: light, electromagnetism, lifestyle.
But in my grander aspirations for improving maternal-fetal outcomes (for example, investigating the onset and reversal of genetic disease2), the actual quantum mechanics of sunlight and chronobiology offer an intriguing avenue.
Don’t like my definition of quantum?
It seems there is a growing thread of annoyance at the use quantum’s everyday definitions.
To these people, quantum means the mechanics of quantum physics, and that’s it.
Any other use of the word is invalid at best—and downright deceptive at worst.
These people want to know: are there actually any quantum mechanics in play in quantum health?
And I think they are rightfully miffed at people making up their own definitions, as I also get bummed out when people have latched on to Einstein’s branding of everything quantum as “spooky action at a distance.”
Whether you think the idea of spooky action at a distance is a good or a bad thing, focusing exclusively on the most woo concepts related to the word quantum—or, as I have also seen, inventing one’s own definition of quantum—can obscure the actual results being sought by modern quantum research.
At the same time, the way language works is that everyday use of words drive collective understanding.
Definitions evolve over time.
If everyone decides quantum means important, as well as small, as well as relates to quantum physics, and in the future… who knows what else may be attached to this word… well, no one of us can stop that linguistic development as language is ultimately no more and no less than a tool of humans.
Humans, collectively, not as individuals, decide what words mean.
I think even the word “light” faces some of this, as light is a very real thing, but also is used by “light workers” and other people to mean different woo concepts.
In my field for example, pretty much everyone talking about light and babies is offering miscarriage support, not talking about how babies perceive light or what kind of light is healthy for babies to get or anything really to do with physical light at all.
So, at least within my community of applied quantum biology nerds, I think there’s a growing understanding we are looking for answers that include the science of quantum, but that we are also willing to look beyond what we know with 100% certainty toward an element of mysticism is appropriate.
What would Planck say about quantum biology?
I think Planck, the founder of quantum physics, would challenge many of these new ideas coming out of the interdisciplinary inquiries of quantum mechanics and biology—at least initially—because that’s what he did in life when people built upon his concepts.
But, ultimately, I think he would be glad to find his work being applied to concrete problems and mysteries in that field.
I also don’t think he would outright curse the more “woo” directions the word quantum is simultaneously going.
In his own words:
"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent spirit [orig. geist]. This spirit is the matrix of all matter."
~Max Planck
What do you think?
Kashani, Z. A., Pakzad, R., Fakari, F. R., Haghparast, M. S., Abdi, F., Kiani, Z., Talebi, A., & Haghgoo, S. M. (2023). Electromagnetic fields exposure on fetal and childhood abnormalities: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Open medicine (Warsaw, Poland), 18(1), 20230697. https://doi.org/10.1515/med-2023-0697
Mazzoccoli G. (2022). Chronobiology Meets Quantum Biology: A New Paradigm Overlooking the Horizon?. Frontiers in physiology, 13, 892582. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2022.892582
Really interesting article, for all areas of wholistic health. Very much appreciated and I would love to paid subscribe but for now, can't. You are doing great work.
What are SR's in the diagram??