DHA IS NOT JUST A FAT PART 5
VISION, POSTURE, COGNITION, AND PERFORMANCE: HOW MEMBRANES GOVERN THE WHOLE ORGANISM Up to this point, we’ve stayed mostly at the cellular and membrane level. Conductors, buffers, mitochondria, failure modes. That work matters, but if it stays abstract it risks feeling disconnected from lived experience. So in this part, we zoom out. Membrane health doesn’t just determine what happens inside cells. It determines how an organism perceives the world, organizes its body, and decides how much stress it can tolerate. This is where DHA stops being a biochemical curiosity and becomes something you can see in posture, feel in cognition, and observe in performance. Let’s start with vision. Vision is often treated as a sensory add-on. Something that delivers information to the brain, where the “real work” happens. That framing is backwards. Vision is a primary regulator of autonomic tone. The retina is not just detecting light. It is converting photons into electron movement. That electron movement sets timing signals that propagate through the nervous system. These signals influence circadian rhythm, arousal state, muscle tone, and spatial orientation. The retina is one of the most DHA-dense tissues in the human body for a reason. Phototransduction is a high-frequency, high-precision process. Light hits photoreceptors, electrons move, ion channels open, and signals propagate in milliseconds. The system must respond quickly and reset just as fast. Any noise or delay degrades perception and increases stress. DHA allows retinal membranes to maintain signal fidelity under constant flux. It improves signal-to-noise and shortens recovery time between inputs. When DHA is insufficient, or when membranes are oxidatively unstable, the retina becomes noisy. The system compensates by increasing sympathetic tone. The body becomes more vigilant, more guarded, less adaptable. This is not psychological. It is electrical. From the retina, this tone propagates. Visual instability increases neck and jaw tone.