In this episode of the Quantum Biology Collective Podcast, Meredith sits down with Jai Kapoor and Daniel White, co-founders of InRhythm, whose personal recoveries from serious autoimmune conditions led them to build a company dedicated to transforming how the world thinks about indoor lighting.

Daniel shares how chronic screen exposure in his early teens triggered a decade-long spiral of autoimmune conditions, weight gain, and depression that neither conventional nor functional medicine could resolve — until he discovered circadian biology. Jai describes developing sudden, severe, full-body psoriasis at the peak of a high-flying career in AI and fintech, trying everything from Ayurveda to the autoimmune protocol diet over three years without meaningful improvement — until a chance encounter with Daniel in a London café sent him down the circadian rabbit hole. After travelling to Cancún and implementing circadian protocols, Jai saw approximately 80% of his psoriasis symptoms resolve in six weeks.

The conversation goes deep on why these recoveries happened — exploring how autoimmune dysfunction signals a profound biological imbalance rooted in disconnection from natural light cycles, and why circadian rhythms function as upstream infrastructure for every system in the body rather than just another wellness intervention. Daniel and Jai break down the science of the light spectrum, explaining what infrared light does in the body, why its removal from modern LEDs is one of the most consequential and overlooked problems in public health, and why blue light is only harmful when stripped of its natural context and proportion.

What You’ll Learn

• How chronic artificial light exposure drives autoimmune dysfunction — and why removing the stressor alone isn’t enough to reverse it
• Why circadian rhythms behave like biological infrastructure, not a lifestyle intervention — and what that distinction means for your health stack
• The role of infrared light in healing and why its removal from modern LEDs is one of the most overlooked problems in public health
• Why blue light isn’t inherently harmful — and the “orange juice vs. orange” analogy that explains what actually goes wrong in artificial lighting
• How Jai reversed full-body psoriasis in six weeks using circadian protocols — and the evolutionary reasoning behind why it worked
• Why the future of circadian health looks less like a consumer product and more like water sanitation infrastructure
• What “natural intelligence” means and why designing it back into our environments may matter more than any individual health intervention

Timestamps

• 00:00 — Introduction & blue blocker check-in across time zones
• 02:00 — Daniel’s story: from teenage screen addiction to autoimmune collapse and a decade-long search for answers
• 07:00 — Jai’s story: high-flying AI career, sudden full-body psoriasis, three years of failed interventions
• 13:00 — The café meeting, the circadian rabbit hole, and the decision to stay in Cancún
• 17:00 — Why Jai recovered: autoimmunity, evolution, and what it means to course correct a ship
• 22:00 — Circadian rhythms as infrastructure: why this belongs at the top of the health stack, not the bottom
• 25:00 — Daniel breaks down melatonin suppression, cortisol dysregulation, and the full-system cascade
• 33:00 — The workplace light problem: designing offices with zero thought to biological safety
• 38:00 — The spectrum explained: blue light, infrared, and what got stripped out of modern LEDs
• 44:00 — The orange juice analogy: why proportion and context change everything
• 48:00 — Incandescents, regulation, and why the US is about to make things worse
• 52:00 — Natural intelligence vs. artificial intelligence: designing health back into the environment
• 56:00 — InRhythm: the product, the biological baseline, and the civilizational vision
• 59:00 — Where this is all heading and why the shift is already underway

Key Concepts

Circadian Rhythm — The roughly 24-hour internal biological clock that governs virtually every cyclical process in the body, from hormone release to immune function to cellular repair. Light is its primary synchronizer.

Melanopsin — A photoreceptor in the eye that is specifically sensitive to short-wavelength blue light and serves as the primary signal to the brain that it is daytime. Overactivation at night suppresses melatonin and dysregulates the circadian clock.

Infrared Light — The portion of the light spectrum beyond visible red, comprising approximately 50% of natural sunlight at any time of day. Invisible to the eye but deeply penetrating to tissue, infrared supports mitochondrial function, cellular repair, and immune regulation. It has been largely removed from modern LED lighting.

Salutogenic Lighting — Lighting designed not merely to enable vision or avoid harm, but to actively support human biological flourishing — incorporating spectral balance, dynamic shifting across the day, flicker-free operation, and infrared restoration.

Malillumination — A term used to describe the physiological consequences of chronic exposure to spectrally incomplete artificial light — analogous to malnutrition, but applied to the light environment rather than diet.

Resources & References

• Website: https://www.inrhythm.earth
• Better Sleep Bulb: https://www.inrhythm.earth/bettersleepbulb
• The CRD Challenge — circadian rhythm and light intervention program, now under the QBC umbrella
• WELL Building Standard — well.foundation (current circadian lighting guidance for built environments)
• Dr. Alexander Wunsch — referenced by Daniel for research on spectral distribution and infrared in lighting
• Dr. Glen Jeffery (University College London) — referenced for research on incandescent lighting and physiological outcomes in office environments
• Scientific American — “The Sunshine Cure” — referenced in relation to UV/infrared and autoimmune management
• Nathan Walz — QBC faculty member credited by Daniel as his entry point into circadian biology

If This Episode Resonated

Jai and Daniel are doing something rare — they’re building the infrastructure layer for circadian health at a civilizational scale. But we also need  practitioners and clinicians who can translate these principles into clinical practice. If you work with patients or clients and you’ve been piecing this together from podcasts and research rabbit holes, the IAQB certification program is where that knowledge becomes a framework you can actually apply and teach.