Why the Body Stores Fat When Coherence Fails
Dr Sara Pugh
Dec 21, 2025
When people talk about “energy” in the body, they usually mean calories, ATP or just how energetic they feel.
But it isn’t about that and it starts at a deeper level… this is what the post is about.
Remember to comment if you have a question on this post. I have gone deeper than usual, so commenting or DMing to get clarity on something specific in the post will help you get an answer. Or save your question for the monthly zoom Q&A.
I intended to write a Substack on a totally different topic which was going to about how I have almost had my YouTube channel and IG accounts taken down over the past 7 yrs and what I did. Then tell you about other people who have had their channels taken or warned.
Dr Catherine Clinton had a suspension for talking about structured water!
Then an incident happened and the only person I could think of to tell about my 2nd encounter with lets call it an ‘intergalactic visitor’ was Dan Winter. So we had a chat on WhatsApp which lead into other science chats. Then afterwards we thought, ‘Oh we should have recorded our chat’
I will be helping Dan as an educator in his ‘Cosmic School’ which is about looking at everything through a fractal and charge collapse lens.
I did a talk at Dan’s conference where I looked at all my quantum biology and biochemistry knowledge and then applied a phase conjugation – implosion lens to quantum health. Dan likes chloroplasts much more than mitochondria, so I could mull over how mitochondria work after studying Dan’s work to think about what they really are and do.
What Will I Learn (Or Be More Confused By) Today
You’ll learn why mitochondria are not power plants, but regulators of timing and coherence; how charge, gradients, and reversibility determine whether energy can be used or wasted; why ATP is a readout rather than the source of vitality; and how cold, light, and membrane physics quietly shape metabolism, aging, and recovery.
This isn’t about adding more fuel.
We Are Alive Because Of Gradients Or Potential Differences
At the most basic level, your cells stay healthy by maintaining electrical and chemical gradients — tiny differences in charge and chemistry across membranes.
Those differences create direction. They tell electrons and protons where to go, when to move, and when to stop.
These gradients are something you should be familiar with:
membrane voltage
proton gradients for example in the image above
redox (electron) balance
They allow your cells to:
move electrons in a controlled way
use reactive oxygen species (ROS) as timing signals, not create damage
regulate calcium and other ions precisely
This only works when those gradients stay coherent — meaning they remain properly aligned in time and space.
When that system (you) is functioning properly, energy flows in an organised manner rather than leaking randomly. This is health!
Daily Life Example
Problems with leptin signalling are a prime example of when you are leaking energy or charge not completing the energy cycle. Your metabolism switches to ‘storage’ of fat and desires food electrons to make up the deficit, which can lead to overeating.
How Coherence Links To Leptin & Health
Some people do follow quantum principles and still struggle with low energy or weight, as they have not considered coherence or negentropy as I had unexpected weight loss when I began looking into ‘how can he be more coherent,’ as I was looking into flow states and bliss states.
I also had far more cold exposure than usual and later in the post I will go into what I found cold was doing to my biology and as you know cold influences insulin and leptin.
This organisation of energy flow is what scientists mean by coherence. It describes how well electrical and chemical gradients stay aligned across time and space.
When coherence is high, reactive oxygen species (free radicals) appear briefly, do their signalling job, and then disappear. Calcium remains tightly regulated. Proteins fold and refold properly. Tissues stay hydrated, elastic, and resilient.
When coherence starts to slip, energy no longer cycles cleanly. Charge disperses or leaks instead of returning. Reactive oxygen species or radicals linger instead of pulsing, and then become harmful. Calcium signaling becomes noisy.
Over time, tissues stiffen, lose flexibility, or begin to calcify. These changes don’t happen because the body suddenly “fails,” but because its ability to keep energy moving in a controlled loop is compromised.
This is where entropy matters. In physics, entropy isn’t just disorder. It’s the point at which a process can’t be reversed.
Energy moves outward, but it can’t come back to where it started.
How Does This Tie In With Dan Winter’s and Bob Greenyer’s Language?
As there are many ways to explain this idea and it took me time to think about it and tie it in with other people’s work.
Dan Winter calls this capacity recursive self-reentry or turning inside out.
This means:
charge separates
does work
re-enters its source in phase
without radiating away as heat
If that return fails, entropy increases and structure collapses.
Recursive Self-Reentry = Biological Reversibility
Bob Greenyer describes entropy being loss of reversibility, Dan Winter describes as loss of recursive return.
They are describing the same failure from different angles.
Bob Greenyer: energy can’t return → entropy rises
Dan Winter: charge can’t re-enter → implosion fails
Different vocabulary. Same physics.
Earlier, I mentioned charge coherence as gradients staying phase-aligned across time and space.
Dan Winter would say:
Coherence exists when charge motion is self-similar across scales and can fold back into itself.
How Does A Healthy System Work?
Healthy biology is built on reversibility. Energy is used, then returned. Repair happens, then the system resets.
Problems arise when that return path weakens. Energy keeps flowing outward, repair can’t fully finish, and small bits of unresolved damage begin to accumulate.
This is why damage alone doesn’t cause disease.
What matters is whether the body can resolve it and this also helps explain ‘hormesis’. As using light therapy creates radicals, HBOT and cold are initial stressors, but done properly your body can still recover and come back stronger.
Mitochondria sit right at the centre of this process. They’re often described as power plants, but that description misses their most important role. Mitochondria hlep regulate timing.
They hold and release charge in a controlled way so energy doesn’t dissipate or leak too early.
Their folded internal structure slows charge just enough for it to be used efficiently and then returned safely.
Mitochondria are recursive charge regulators and this is also very much in line with Dan Winter’s ideas.
Their structure:
curved membranes
fractal cristae
proton delays
phase alignment
…exists to do one thing:
Allow charge to exit, do work, and re-enter the system safely.
Why ATP Is Not What You Think It Is
I mulled over this one and KingMito made a superb post on ATP so look at his work for more detailed description in line with his own way of explaining.
ATP is produced after this regulation happens. It’s not the driver of health; it’s the readout. When upstream coherence is strong, ATP production looks clean and efficient. When coherence breaks down, simply trying to “boost energy” misses the real issue.
ATP is generated after that return is successful.
That’s why:
ATP is not the driver of health
ATP reflects whether recursion worked upstream
This is loss of recursive self-reentry at the cellular level.
Cancer, in Dan Winter’s language, is charge that can no longer implode, so be more negentropic or ‘ordered’ with less chaos.
This is why so many modern health problems aren’t caused by a lack of fuel.
They’re caused by interrupted cycles. The body starts work it can’t finish.
Real Life Interrupted Cycle Example
If you have been following quantum health then you will understand about interrupted light cycles and interrupted clocks
Morning natural blue light = daytime. Safe. Burn fuel
Night bright artificial blue = danger. Save and store everything.
Morning sunlight tells your body: it’s safe to be active
Evening darkness tells your body: it’s safe to repair
Artificial light confuses this signal. Your body stays in “day mode” at night, and repair gets postponed.
As It Is Winter Lets Talk About Cold Helping Coherence
Cold is often framed as a stressor, something the body must “tolerate” or “push through.” That framing misses what cold actually does at the molecular level.
Cold does not primarily add stress.
It reduces noise.
In biological systems, coherence improves when excess motion, heat, and random molecular activity are quietened down. Cold does exactly that. It tightens gradients, slows unnecessary reactions, and sharpens the distinction between signal and background.
In other words, cold improves reversibility.
In my previous Substack post I discussed cold plunges, but this next section goes into cold air and exactly how cold is anti-ageing.
Cold Air Changes the Physics of Oxygen
Cold air is denser than warm air and carries slightly more oxygen per breath. More importantly, it is cleaner: lower amounts of particles, less humidity, and reduced microbial count. As I do like the cold winter air here at the moment.
From a physiological perspective, cold air:
increases oxygen delivery efficiency
reduces airway inflammation
improves alveolar gas exchange
lowers the energetic cost of breathing
This isn’t about “deep breathing techniques.”
It’s about voltage or amount of charge per breath.
Cold air increases the redox quality of respiration. Oxygen is delivered with less thermal noise, allowing mitochondria to extract electrons more cleanly at Complex IV. This supports membrane potential rather than trying to flatten it or collapse it.
Cold Tightens Charge Gradients
At the cellular level, temperature directly affects charge behavior.
As temperature drops:
molecular motion/vibration slows
proton leakage across membranes decreases
water becomes more structured
dielectric properties improve
This strengthens electrochemical gradients rather than flattening them.
A warmer system leaks charge more easily.
A colder system holds charge longer.
This is one reason chronic inflammation and degeneration are associated with excessive heat, constant stimulation, and metabolic overflow.
Cold restores containment, so less ‘leaking.
Mitochondria Respond to Cold by Improving Efficiency
Cold exposure shifts mitochondrial behaviour away from excess throughput and toward precision. Or towards becoming more implosive or negentropic
In cold conditions:
electron transport becomes tighter
ROS production becomes more controlled
uncoupling is regulated rather than chaotic
proton gradients are defended more aggressively
Brown adipose tissue is often highlighted here, but the more important point is global: cold favors signal fidelity (precision) over raw output (just power).
Mitochondria do not “burn more” in cold to waste energy as heat. They recalibrate to protect timing and structure and this is how from a timing and physics perspective, cold is anti-ageing, anti-inflammatory and beneficial for health.
Take Home Message
Health is not about making more energy, but wasting less.
The goal is coherent containment, not stimulation.
Follow my work to learn more about this and most importantly, how to put all of this into practice.
Remember monthly free Zoom Q&A for paid subscribers
Some places left on my Heart Breath Coherence workshop on Dec 22nd. A way you can do practically to put the theory of this post into practice
Source: https://drsarapugh.substack.com/p/why-calories-are-not-energy-and-mitochondria
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