Latest / The Reverse Aging Club with Meredith Oke / 114: Dr. Damien Downing - Daylight Robbery: Lessons From Three Decades As A Circadian Practitioner

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114: Dr. Damien Downing - Daylight Robbery: Lessons From Three Decades As A Circadian Practitioner · The Reverse Aging Club with Meredith Oke

0:31
Meredith Oke: Biology Collective podcast where we break down
0:34
the practical applications of this emerging
0:37
science, starting with healthy life habits and
0:39
going wherever the quantum superhighway takes us.
0:43
This is your host, executive and life coach
0:45
Meredith Oak, with a quick reminder that podcasts
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are conversations, not consultations. But if
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you're looking for one of those, do check out our
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free practitioner
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directory@quantumbiologycollective.org My guest
1:00
today wrote a book on the importance of sunlight
1:04
to health called daylight robbery in 1988. Dr.
1:10
Downing has been practicing ecological medicine
1:13
ever since then, which is a systems approach to
1:17
health that considers interactions between
1:19
individuals and the environment and their health
1:22
consequences. So ecological medicine is a term
1:26
that is widely used in the United Kingdom, not so
1:29
much in North America and other parts of the
1:31
world. But I think it's a beautiful way to to
1:34
explain natural health and a nice alternative to
1:37
functional medicine, which has sort of become
1:40
synonymous with just supplements. Dr. Downing is
1:47
president of the British Society for Ecological
1:50
Medicine and was for 20 years editor of the
1:53
Journal of Nutritional and Environmental
1:55
Medicine. He serves on the editorial board of the
1:59
Ortho molecular news service. Dr. Downing and I
2:04
had a lovely conversation where I was able to
2:06
learn from his decades of wisdom working in
2:09
alternative health and in natural health and as
2:12
somebody who understood deeply and early the
2:16
implications of our changing light environment
2:18
and our changing EMF environment. So I hope you
2:22
enjoy my chat with Dr. Downing. I certainly did.
2:25
He is a fountain of knowledge that goes back many
2:28
years and he is working on a new book and
2:31
continues to be an active practitioner in London.
2:35
So if you live in that area, do look him up. He's
2:40
sees patience and continues to practice his
2:42
wisdom to this very day. Enjoy. And before we get
2:47
into it, please do consider your infrared light
2:52
exposure this winter and really anytime in the
2:56
summer months and in warm places, it's obviously
2:58
easier to get it full body infrared light
3:01
exposure when you're outside in the sunshine.
3:04
However, if you're not able to be outside in the
3:06
sunshine and also to help with detox, an infrared
3:09
sauna is really my top recommendation for feeling
3:15
good in the winter. It's something that I added
3:18
to my routine a couple of years ago when I moved
3:21
back to a cold place after living in places that
3:24
weren't so cold. And I really, really noticed a
3:28
huge difference in how I felt getting through the
3:31
winter months, I should say, I'm sorry, enjoying
3:34
and thriving through the winter months. I
3:36
appreciate winter so much more now that I know
3:39
how to properly take care of myself when it's
3:42
cold and when we're in that time of year. And one
3:45
of those things is making sure we get lots of
3:47
infrared light, which you can get from light
3:49
panels. And infrared saunas are especially good
3:51
because you have the heat as well, which is a
3:54
helpful detox. So I recommend if you need any of
3:58
those things to visit boncharge.com bcharge.com
4:04
they have a very nice little infrared sauna
4:07
blanket that you can just cozy up under while you
4:10
are, you know, watching a movie with your blue
4:12
blockers on. Of course. All right, enjoy my
4:15
conversation with Dr. Downing. He is a delightful
4:18
British gentleman. Have fun. Bye. Dr. Damian
4:23
Downing, welcome to the QVC podcast. Such a
4:26
pleasure to have you.
4:27
Dr. Damien Downing: Thank you. It's great to be here.
4:30
Meredith Oke: So you work in what is called ecological
4:34
medicine. Could you tell us a little bit about
4:37
your long career in that field and how you define
4:41
it? Because it's not a word that's used as
4:43
commonly in North America.
4:46
Dr. Damien Downing: No. Right. Well, it all started in, really in
4:49
about 1979. That's before I came into the field.
4:56
One of the founders was Professor Ronnie Finn,
5:00
who was the guy that did the definitive paper in
5:04
the Lancet Journal showing that food allergy was
5:10
a real thing and that you could cut it out and so
5:15
forth. And he and a few others, including Alan
5:19
Grant, who did the paper that clearly showed that
5:24
migraine could be caused by food intolerances.
5:28
They set up a society. I've got the notes from
5:31
the. The agenda from the. The original meeting
5:35
there. And there's a meeting to consider setting
5:39
up a society for clinical ecology is what they
5:44
called it back then. And it's an 11 o'clock
5:49
Sherry. It starts, and then at 12 o'clock they
5:54
start talking, something like that. So those days
5:57
are gone, including pretty much everybody who's
6:01
there is now gone. But then in about 1983, we set
6:06
up what was then called the British Society for
6:10
Nutritional Medicine. And then it kind of added
6:13
bits in and allergy came in and all sorts of
6:16
other stuff came in. And eventually all those
6:19
societies end up merging. And we called it
6:22
ecological medicine, echoing what was said way
6:25
back then. It. So ecological medicine is kind of
6:30
a systems approach, is looking at the
6:32
interactions between you and the environment. And
6:37
obviously the, the whole sunlight factor, or you
6:43
know, what John Ott called mal illumination is,
6:47
is a key part of that. And my God, we didn't
6:49
realize back then, didn't realize nearly as much
6:54
as we do now because of all the evidence coming
6:58
from photobiomodulation and so on and so forth,
7:01
and our understanding of mitochondria it's mind
7:07
blowing. It's really got so exciting these days.
7:12
Meredith Oke: It really has. And it's interesting because, you
7:17
know, along with the food, our light environment
7:19
has got, you know, our, our food sources and food
7:24
production have gone off the rails. And at the
7:27
same time the light that we're surrounded by in
7:29
our environment has become worse and worse. While
7:33
in parallel, the research showing how important
7:36
real food and natural light are is also mounting
7:38
weight. Yeah, we seem to be in a state of
7:42
complete imbalance there. What are your, what are
7:46
your thoughts on how, how that happened? Because
7:50
you wrote a book on the importance of sunlight to
7:53
Health in 1988.
7:56
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah.
7:56
Meredith Oke: And so to, you know, as you, as you were saying
8:00
about the foundation of the ecological field of
8:02
medicine, this was, scientists and doctors were
8:06
aware of the importance of our environment and
8:08
yet somehow the innovation of the technology and
8:14
the processing of our food just went on
8:18
completely unchecked. Could you sort of speak to
8:20
that a little bit?
8:22
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah, it's always been, in all of this field,
8:26
it's always been more of a patient driven
8:29
progress than driven by doctors or even
8:32
scientists know, and that the British Society of
8:39
Dermatologists reviewed it and said it's a load
8:42
of rubbish, basically. And the British Naturist
8:46
Society, you know, people who like to be naked in
8:48
the fresh air, they reviewed and said, oh, it was
8:51
the most important medical book of the decade.
8:56
Meredith Oke: So the dermatologist said your sunlight book was
8:58
rubbish and the, the naturalists said it was
9:01
brilliant. Yeah. Okay, that tracks right.
9:03
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah. And in America, of course, I mean, I was,
9:08
I'm not the expert on all this, but I understand
9:12
the, the dermatologists launched a two million
9:16
dollar campaign in about 1982, whatever, to,
9:23
well, to demonize sunlight and get everybody, you
9:27
know, looking themselves for, for cancers. And
9:32
that kind of made dermatology quite lucrative,
9:35
which it wasn't before. So there are inevitably
9:41
vested interests in this sort of thing, aren't
9:44
they? You know, you're not going to get away from
9:46
that. But it's interesting writing now because
9:50
I'm writing. Well, I don't know if it's a sequel
9:53
or whatever, but a successor to the Daylight
9:56
Robbery. It's interesting to look at how it, you
10:05
know, I completely lost my train of thought
10:06
there. Maybe you can cut this bit out and I.
10:11
Sure, yeah, go back and think. So.
10:20
Meredith Oke: We were talking, yeah, we were talking about the,
10:25
the progress of the research on light and food
10:29
compared to the, you know, what's happening in
10:32
society and technology.
10:34
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah, well, so it's interesting to look at what
10:41
happens with these trends, because in writing the
10:47
sequel to Daylight Robbery is. I've been struck
10:52
by how long it takes for these things to actually
10:56
be adopted. Somebody does the original science,
10:58
you know, I mean, Albert Einstein did the AMC
11:04
squared in 1920. Something got the Nobel Prize
11:07
and so forth, but it was decades before it was
11:10
really applied. Shent Giorgi. I don't know how to
11:14
pronounce it. I'm not sure anybody does, but, you
11:17
know, the guy. I mean, yeah, guy isolated vitamin
11:20
C and so forth and also wrote a lovely little
11:24
book called bioenergetics in 1957. And he said,
11:31
he talked about this queer substance, water. And
11:35
he said that not just water, but almost any
11:38
liquid where it's in contact with a solid surface
11:42
tends to structure from the. The surface
11:46
outwards. So that was what, more than 60 years
11:50
ago this was known about. And it's only just now
11:55
with Gerald Pollock's work and so forth. They
11:57
were saying, oh, my God, structured water. And it
12:01
is, it's. I mean, it's. It's crucial. It's
12:03
brilliant. But I'm not surprised at how long
12:07
these things take. And I don't think it's just,
12:11
you know, people making a profit out of it not
12:16
being recognized. And so I think it's just, well,
12:21
doctors tend to think that what, you know, they
12:26
learned in medical school is it and so forth, and
12:30
if they didn't learn about it, then it can't be
12:32
real. And of course, they didn't learn about
12:34
nutrition in medical school, and they certainly
12:37
didn't learn about sunlight and its benefits.
12:41
Meredith Oke: Yeah, absolutely. So true. I just saw a post
12:45
yesterday from a woman who was diagnosed with
12:50
ulcerative colitis by her md this was in the
12:53
United States. And she said to him, okay, how
12:58
should I change my diet now that I have this
13:01
diagnosis? And he said to her, it doesn't matter
13:05
what you eat. This was like a year ago. So she
13:10
left and got a new doctor. But it just was a
13:14
reminder to me that physicians are still saying
13:17
that about food, never mind getting to the light
13:20
piece of it.
13:21
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah, yeah, we used to call it. When we started
13:24
up the journal in 1990, we used to call them
13:28
nutritional flat earthers who still believe the
13:32
earth is flat. Nutrition isn't important. How can
13:34
it not be important?
13:38
Meredith Oke: So you've had a major focus on gut health and
13:43
food allergies. Could you explain to us a little
13:46
bit, sort of, after all of your. Your decades
13:50
working with patients and doing research and
13:53
giving presentations and running the ecological
13:57
Journal. Where, where are you at with explaining
14:02
how food and light and digestion all and. Or
14:06
health and health overall? I would say all work
14:08
together.
14:09
Dr. Damien Downing: Oh wow. You want a short answer to that one?
14:14
Meredith Oke: I've got an hour, so just talk as long as you
14:18
want.
14:21
Dr. Damien Downing: So it's interesting, when I came into this game
14:26
back in 1980, 1881, there were people saying
14:35
that, you know, food allergy had kind of just
14:38
been invented. Invented by. There was a guy
14:41
called Richard Mc who wrote a book called not all
14:45
in the Mind. I don't know if it made it big in
14:48
America. I don't know, it certainly did over
14:51
here. He basically showed not only from
14:57
practical, practicing doctors viewpoint, he
15:01
showed the food allergies were real, chemical
15:04
sensitivities were real. He remember he described
15:07
some lady who used to use a lot of hairspray and
15:11
it gave her terrible neurological symptoms and
15:14
fixed it just by cutting it out. The interesting
15:18
thing is that he wrote that In, I think 66, 10
15:23
years earlier, he wrote a book called Eat Fat and
15:28
Grow Slim saying that, you know, you needed a low
15:34
carbohydrate, high fat diet. And now that's
15:38
become an essential part of what we. And you
15:40
know, anybody, well, anybody in integrated
15:42
medicine does that took a few decades as well.
15:50
But back then people used to say, oh, I wonder if
15:54
it's the food upset me. And then all of a sudden
15:56
there were people saying, oh, I've got total
16:00
allergy syndrome. And we did an awful lot of
16:04
desensitizing back then. And then people started
16:10
getting multiple chemical sensitivity, you know,
16:15
started figuring. And this is all, well,
16:18
practically all people figuring it out for
16:21
themselves. You know, there's not going to their
16:23
doctor who's saying, oh, you've got multiple
16:25
chemicals and chemical sensitivity. Usually the
16:28
doctor's saying, oh, there's no such thing and
16:31
diet doesn't matter. And then of course, more
16:36
recently electrosensitivity has come into the
16:40
picture. You know, it's true that the, what they
16:47
call it, the gateway drug to all this is just
16:52
basic allergies, I inhaled allergies, hay fever
16:55
and so forth, or food intolerances. And you carry
17:00
that being severe for long enough, you then move
17:04
on to the next level and get multiple chemical
17:08
sensitivity. And after a few years you move on to
17:11
the next level. But it's also, you know, you have
17:17
to be integrated out now because it always has
17:20
been true that toxicity is part of the problem.
17:27
And it was John Ott that described that in the
17:30
light context. You know, his mal illumination was
17:33
a combination of not enough sunlight and too much
17:38
of this thing. I was thinking about how I could
17:44
do a zoom without a screen, but since you need
17:49
the video, I. I guess I'll have to stay here for
17:53
this.
17:53
Meredith Oke: Sorry. We'll keep it. We'll keep it brief and
17:58
then go for walks outside after.
18:00
Dr. Damien Downing: All right. Yeah. So then now, of course,
18:06
everybody's saying, oh, I think I've got MCAs.
18:09
Mast cell activation syndrome. I'm not even sure
18:13
that that's a real disease. I think it's just a
18:17
different way of looking at. Which opens a lot of
18:20
possibilities. There's a list of drugs and of
18:25
other treatments that may make a difference to
18:28
histamine release or whatever it is that's
18:31
driving your. Your MCAs. But, I mean, it's
18:37
always. It is all. It's all part of the same
18:39
thing. And with the toxicity, again, we should
18:47
have realized a long. Well, we. To some extent,
18:50
we did realize long time ago. When I started in
18:53
this, it was. There had been one or two papers.
18:56
It was kind of regarded as a given that aluminum
19:01
probably had something to do with Alzheimer's.
19:06
But that was 40 years ago, and we're still
19:09
arguing about it now. And, you know, papers
19:12
coming out saying, no, no, it doesn't work. Yes,
19:14
it does. You know.
19:20
Meredith Oke: Yeah, it's. It's interesting. I mean, what I'm
19:23
really hearing, speaking with you is how, you
19:28
know, what you were just saying earlier, like,
19:30
how long it takes for these new ideas to get
19:35
traction. And it doesn't seem to be related to
19:40
how true they are. There seems to be other
19:44
factors at play. So we had, you know, John Ott,
19:48
decades ago, talking about doing all the light
19:51
research, and Georgia, you mentioned, and so many
19:55
other researchers. I know. And anyway, it's just
20:06
interesting to me, right, because we all. We're
20:07
all like, oh, this is this. All this new stuff.
20:10
And it's like. It's not new. It's just kind of
20:13
hiding or being ignored or being pushed to the
20:16
periphery, and it's taking all of us. You know,
20:20
we have to go looking for it. But it. The. The
20:23
research is there and the evidence is there, and
20:25
it's been there for a long time, and you've
20:29
created it. You know, you and your colleagues
20:31
have created a entire field around it.
20:34
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah. Yeah.
20:35
Meredith Oke: So walk me through that. Oh, read. I'm sorry,
20:39
what do you read me?
20:40
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah, yeah. First sentence of Daylight Robbery,
20:43
1988, goes. The plot of many a thriller has
20:46
hinged on the fact that the best place to hide
20:49
something is where it is obvious. I think that
20:54
applies. Oh, absolutely, in space, to the
20:57
sunlight thing. You know, you say, how, how would
21:02
we m. How did we miss it? Because it was always
21:05
there. We never thought, we never realized that
21:10
we were systematically depriving ourselves of it.
21:14
Even though, I mean, what's, what's the real
21:18
punishment in a, in a prison or a dungeon? Let's
21:22
be true. It's depriving you of sunlight. That's
21:24
why they talk about a prison term, you know,
21:28
sheet white people. You know, you see somebody
21:30
like that, I think they've probably been inside.
21:37
Yeah, yeah, sorry, go on.
21:40
Meredith Oke: No, it's just, it's so true. And, you know, I
21:44
think back to the years of my life where I was
21:46
completely bought into the idea that, that the
21:49
sun was bad for me. And I was, I was a good girl
21:52
and I was going to follow the rules and I put on
21:54
my SPF 9000 every time I went out in the sun.
21:59
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah, I know.
22:02
Meredith Oke: And I feel, I feel a little betrayed, I have to
22:05
say.
22:07
Dr. Damien Downing: What, what turned it for you?
22:10
Meredith Oke: The first moment was actually from a woman who
22:15
did cosmetic. Like she, she was doing stuff for
22:20
my skin. I was in my 20s and she had been trained
22:25
in Hungary. She was probably in her 60s, so 60
22:29
something Hungarian woman. And she was looking at
22:31
my skin and she said, you don't go out in the sun
22:36
enough. And I was like, what? And she said, the
22:39
sun is life. And she said it with such force and
22:44
such conviction that it actually broke through my
22:49
false paradigm and stayed with me. And I didn't.
22:52
It was a long time before I understood it the way
22:55
I do now. But it was enough that I stopped being
22:59
so crazy about, about putting on SPF and started
23:02
to think like, oh, that actually makes sense. The
23:08
sun is life. Like, you know, you can tell
23:10
something is true by how it feels when it, you
23:14
know, how it feels in your body. And I was like,
23:16
God, how are you? Do you find that when you have
23:22
been working with people or when people come to
23:24
you and you broach the subject, are they open to
23:30
it? The idea of sunlight, I mean, you.
23:33
Dr. Damien Downing: Know, way back, nobody really thought about it,
23:37
you know, but sometimes you get dramatic changes
23:42
in people. But then you think, we didn't, we
23:47
didn't have nearly as many screens back then. You
23:51
know, you were pretty advanced if you had a
23:52
computer.
23:54
Meredith Oke: Yeah.
23:55
Dr. Damien Downing: And smartphones hadn't been invented, you know,
23:58
so the, the situation was not as bad really. It's
24:02
got a lot worse over the decades. Firstly,
24:07
because we're even more out of natural light. And
24:13
in toxic light, if you like, we're mal
24:15
illuminated more and more. Secondly, because
24:18
other forms of toxicity are just getting worse
24:20
and worse all the time. You know, there's a, a
24:27
principle that I keep thinking about. I'm not
24:33
sure to how, to what extent it works. The
24:35
principle is that natural light, good light, will
24:40
protect you from the effects of bad light. Now,
24:43
there are a few instances where it clearly is
24:46
true, but the good light, you have to have the
24:50
good light exposure first, and that may be near
24:53
infrared or whatever, but the extent to which you
24:59
can then fix the damage of bad light and so forth
25:03
by good light, I'm not sure. Yeah, well, we're
25:09
not sure, but I mean, it is obviously it's the
25:15
fabric of the universe that we're dealing with
25:17
here. This whole. Especially once you bring
25:20
structured water in. You know, there's the
25:22
smallest things, electrons, photons, protons and
25:28
so forth, you know, and it's. Suddenly you start
25:31
to realize, my God, it's on our side. He always
25:35
was on our side. You know, there's a paper I've
25:40
just been looking at that somebody linked me to
25:47
by some Korean guys about magnetic sense, you
25:50
know, that birds navigate by magnetic sense and
25:54
so forth. And some of it happens in the eyes and
25:57
other bits of it happen with magnetic granules or
26:02
whatever, somewhere in the brain. And it turns
26:07
out that humans can do this to a certain extent,
26:12
but it's only men, really. And it's own by this
26:21
method anyway. And it's only slightly over 50% of
26:30
them. But that could be just because all the
26:35
rubbish EMFs that we're exposed to. So it's only
26:39
men, it's only when they're hungry, and it's only
26:45
when they're exposed to blue light. So if you're
26:49
a hunter gatherer and you wake up hungry, well,
26:51
obviously this is a real advantage, isn't it?
26:54
Meredith Oke: You know, and this is the, the ability to
26:57
navigate by magic, by the.
26:59
Dr. Damien Downing: Magnetic field, to know where true north is or,
27:02
you know, which is a, a reasonable, fascinating
27:06
pie Mason, isn't it?
27:09
Meredith Oke: It really is.
27:11
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah. But so it's the, the principle. This is the
27:16
environment we're involved in, where there is
27:17
blue light in the mornings and there is a
27:19
magnetic field that we can navigate by.
27:25
Meredith Oke: When you talk about the fabric of the universe,
27:28
how do you, how do you think about that and where
27:32
we fit into it and where our mitochondria and our
27:37
cells and our bodies fit.
27:39
Dr. Damien Downing: Into it, Mitochondria, wherever they came from,
27:45
you know, that melatonin is Basically as old as
27:48
mitochondria.
27:51
Meredith Oke: We did not.
27:53
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah. And it's the. Probably the best antioxidant
27:59
going. I'm not sure that, you know, it makes much
28:02
sense to have a league table of antioxidants, but
28:05
it's a powerful antioxidant and it's probably,
28:10
they say, about five times as potent and
28:14
antioxidant as vitamin C. Really? Yeah. I don't
28:19
know how they figured that out. What is said. And
28:27
you know that it's produced in the night in order
28:33
to help you sleep. No, that's wrong. Is that it
28:40
is produced in the night by the pineal gland and
28:47
the pine. We used to think it going around the
28:49
bloodstream. You know, you could measure the PI,
28:51
the melatonin there. And it was on its way to the
28:55
brain. No, the pineal pumps it into the
28:57
ventricles of the brain, which circulate it
29:01
through the. You know about the glymphatic system.
29:04
Meredith Oke: Tell us.
29:05
Dr. Damien Downing: Okay. The brain doesn't have an ordinary
29:11
lymphatic drainage like the rest of the body. The
29:14
rest of the body has lymphatic ducts that run
29:20
away from the tissues and take the things to the
29:26
regional lymph glands, you know, the ones in your
29:29
neck here, the ones in your armpit and so forth.
29:32
And what they're taking there is firstly, waste
29:35
and secondly, inflammation. And that's the same
29:37
stuff, you know, because the immune system needs
29:41
to know what it's going to have to handle. And
29:44
that's how it gets that information. And that's
29:46
how it activates the lymphocytes and so forth to
29:49
do it. But we always thought that there wasn't a
29:56
system like that in the brain, although it was
29:58
just a tiny bit of it and so forth. Turns out the
30:01
brain has a better system. It's got what you
30:05
would call a paravascular system. So that there
30:12
are spaces around the vessels that are to some
30:17
extent driven by the pulsing in the vessels. And
30:22
they carry a load of other stuff that isn't in
30:25
the blood, for instance, in the brain. The other
30:29
thing about the brain is that that's got an
30:35
inward and an outward direction of travel for
30:41
this glymphatic or paravascular system. Right.
30:45
The inward takes the stuff from the ventricle
30:50
into the tissue of the brain, and the outer one
30:55
takes it from the tissue of the brain and the
30:58
interstitium, if you like, of the brain out and
31:02
connects to the lymphatics around the back here,
31:06
and more particularly through the nose and the
31:11
structures around Here. And so another
31:14
interesting fact about that is that when you suck
31:19
and chew and, you know, adjust the pressure in
31:22
your mouth, there's a certain amount of pumping
31:25
action going on on this stuff coming from brain.
31:30
Why do comforters work on children? Probably for
31:33
that reason. It calms the brain physically and
31:36
literally.
31:38
Meredith Oke: Like a soother. You mean like a pacifier when the
31:40
baby.
31:41
Dr. Damien Downing: Exactly.
31:41
Meredith Oke: That sucking motion. Oh, okay. Makes sense.
31:45
Dr. Damien Downing: And the melatonins produced by the pineal goes
31:50
straight into the ventricles, and from that it
31:53
goes by the paravascular route into the brain,
31:58
timed to happen when the glymphatic system is
32:03
activated, which is when you are asleep and
32:07
particularly in deep sleep. So it goes in there
32:12
and all the. Helps to mop up all the antioxidant,
32:17
all the oxidative stress and toxins, and also it
32:23
activates some of the other molecules like
32:26
superoxide dismutase and so on. And then all the
32:31
gump is taken out and delivered to, actually to
32:35
the. The lymph nodes around here in due course,
32:40
including the ones in here, the tonsils. So all
32:46
this stuff is. Is so in the brain. But that's one
32:49
half of the story, because. And again, it's. It
32:53
happened a long time ago. 1972, there was a paper
33:00
where they took the pineal gland out of little
33:05
furry animals, rats or whatever, and measured
33:10
their circulating melatonin, and it obviously
33:13
went down, but only by about 80%. So there must
33:19
have been melatonin coming from elsewhere. And
33:23
where it's coming from is every cell in the body
33:27
and particularly the mitochondria of every cell,
33:31
because that's where it's needed. Because when
33:34
you produce energy, the electron. I think, not
33:39
quite sure who said it, but I will find out
33:41
eventually. The electron transport chain, you
33:45
know, the cytochromes in the mitochondrial wall,
33:50
is less than perfect. So every, you know, few
33:54
thousand times, whatever, it drops a free radical
33:57
there instead of using it constructively. And so
34:01
you. When you exercise, when you produce ATP,
34:06
you. You build up oxidative stress, and you also
34:13
produce the melatonin to. To deal with it, and
34:18
you produce it locally and not much of it gets
34:21
out. So it's hard to know quite what circulating
34:25
levels of melatonin need mean. Sorry, it's hard
34:30
to know what they mean because it's the overflow.
34:34
It's not like it's being delivered somewhere.
34:37
It's the stuff that spilled over from the
34:38
mitochondria and, you know, during the night from
34:42
the brain.
34:46
Meredith Oke: So the melatonin has spilled over from where it's
34:51
produced and then is used by the rest of the body
34:53
for all kinds of important things, presumably.
34:57
Dr. Damien Downing: Yes, but I mean, if you get a paper, there is a
35:02
paper, for instance, that says you can get a
35:07
boost to your circulating melatonin level from
35:11
eating two bananas. Well, I'm sure it's true, but
35:17
what does it mean in real life? Because if it's
35:22
there circulating, it's not necessarily getting
35:27
into the mitochondria, which is where it's really
35:29
needed.
35:32
Meredith Oke: So what is the best way to ensure sufficient
35:37
melatonin production?
35:40
Dr. Damien Downing: Good circadian rhythm with, you know, decent
35:46
sleep at night for a reasonable period. And
35:51
probably I. Well, either use, you know, Andrew
35:55
Huberman's thing about getting outside in the
35:59
first hour of waking, get outside for five
36:01
minutes and look up at the blue sky and so forth.
36:04
Well, I tell you, it doesn't work here, but it is
36:08
miserable and cold out there and it's dark. But,
36:13
yeah, that's a good principle. And better still,
36:15
do some exercise, because exercise causes you a
36:21
high spike in circulating melatonin, so it must
36:27
be causing even bigger a spike in the melatonin
36:31
where it's needed in the mitochondria, presumably
36:34
in your muscles. So I think those are really kind
36:37
of the two elements of the circadian rhythm that
36:41
you first need most important.
36:44
Meredith Oke: Morning sunlight and morning movement.
36:47
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah.
36:48
Meredith Oke: And night sleep and sleeping well at night.
36:51
Right. With ideally not a lot of artificial light
36:56
exposure before bed.
36:57
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah.
36:58
Meredith Oke: Or while you're sleeping.
36:59
Dr. Damien Downing: Well, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, yes. I
37:03
mean, it's. How much is enough to disrupt. Not
37:08
much, really. There's. There is a study,
37:11
actually, if you gave me a couple minutes, I
37:13
could probably find. But we talked about it back
37:16
then, A daylight robbery showed that using a. A
37:22
single blue light bulb, which is not very bright
37:26
at all, an incandescent bulb by the bed, and
37:32
having it on and off in a cycle would. It would
37:36
entrain women's menstrual cycles. So that's an
37:43
effect coming from really not much extra light of
37:50
that color.
37:51
Meredith Oke: Coming in, but it's still enough to completely
37:54
change our hormone cycle. Yeah, yeah. So we
37:59
really need to be mindful of this because most
38:02
people. I mean, where I live, most people have,
38:06
you know, gets dark outside, they flip on the
38:08
overhead LEDs, the widest, brightest light. They
38:13
probably have that light bulb next to their bed
38:15
to read before they go to sleep. If they're not
38:17
reading on their phone or their iPad and it's
38:20
just considered normal. Nobody even thinks about
38:22
it.
38:23
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah, no, no, that's right, it's, it's, you know,
38:30
well, it's in plain sight, so we're missing it.
38:33
Meredith Oke: Right. So what prompted you to write Daylight
38:38
Robbery? What was going on that led you to write
38:42
an entire book on the health benefits of
38:45
sunlight? What were you seeing? What was
38:47
happening in the world? How did, how did that
38:49
happen?
38:50
Dr. Damien Downing: Well, really it was meeting John Ott. I mean,
38:54
obviously I was already doing nutrition and
38:59
things like that. I came into this stuff really
39:01
originally by training in acupuncture. But then
39:07
when I started up practicing it, set up a clinic,
39:12
a couple of people came to me and said, oh, I
39:15
think I might have a food allergy if you read
39:17
this book by Richard McAnus. And so I started
39:22
doing, you know, more and more of that. And then
39:26
I read something about John Art and I got
39:31
interested now as an extension of the whole
39:34
nutrition thing and went over to see John Ott. He
39:41
was a lovely guy living in Florida and he showed
39:44
me his special glass in his windows and the, the
39:48
way he'd adapted his TV so it lay on the floor in
39:53
a, in a box pointing upwards. Then he had a, an a
39:58
mirror at this angle above it so that it came out
40:03
there. But hopefully harmful rays were going
40:07
straight up the ceiling.
40:09
Meredith Oke: Oh my goodness. I've never heard that. Yeah, so
40:12
he, he invented his own defense kind of
40:17
mitigation technology.
40:19
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah.
40:19
Meredith Oke: So these things are possible. We don't have to
40:21
be. I mean if he could just do that in his living
40:24
room, I'm sure all these brilliant engineers
40:26
could figure this out if they wanted to.
40:28
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah, yeah, that's right. And I've got a
40:34
colleague who's quite influential in the whole
40:38
electro, well not just electro sensitivity, but
40:42
harm from electromagnetic fields and so forth.
40:46
And you know, I mean, you understand that we
40:49
have, we now have billion in certain frequencies.
40:53
There are a billion times as much electromagnetic
40:58
fields waves about now as they were 50 years ago.
41:05
And of course it's harmful. One of the people
41:09
who's quite influential in that has the problem
41:14
herself and has been shown in a double blinded,
41:18
blinded experiment to react to mobile phone
41:24
things and so forth. But she manages to use a
41:26
computer and so forth, just has them solid wired
41:30
and necessary insulate stuff, you know, and you
41:33
can get a bit of tin foil and put it around the,
41:39
the connectors or whatever. It's better than
41:41
putting it around your food.
41:43
Meredith Oke: Yes, that's true. So we can, we buy the tin foil
41:50
but we use it to wrap our, our wires, not our
41:52
food. Okay. This is, yeah, we're, we're
41:56
definitely not, not looking like the basic
42:00
normies out there anymore. Okay, so you were
42:02
talking about meeting John Ott.
42:06
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah.
42:06
Meredith Oke: And then that led to writing Daylight Robbery.
42:09
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah, well, I led to doing a, a bit more research
42:12
and so forth. And I mean, it wasn't just going on
42:15
the Internet those days. I don't know if, you
42:17
know, you had to, had to write off to the British
42:21
Library, fill these little forms in for the
42:24
paper, and a couple of weeks later they sent it
42:27
to you. I've still got a few of those hanging
42:30
around. But, you know, things emerged like the,
42:35
the cancer connection with lack of sunlight. The
42:40
basic principle is that. Well, not the principle,
42:44
the rule of thumb, if you like, is that the
42:48
further north or south from the equator you go,
42:53
the more cancer there is, the greater your
42:56
chances of developing cancer. And the figure kind
43:01
of comes out with is two and a half times, if you
43:05
live in, I don't know, Oslo or somewhere way up
43:09
north or possibly Edmonton even, you've got
43:16
around two and a half times the probability of
43:18
developing cancer as you have in the, in let's
43:23
say in Florida. And that, that paper goes back to
43:30
like the 20s, you know, so some of this is a
43:33
hundred years old now. And of course that's got
43:41
worse because of a whole bunch of things like the
43:47
actual ionizing radiation. What we haven't really
43:53
appreciated is that firstly, an event like
44:00
Chernobyl or Fukushima, which is still going on.
44:05
All right, firstly, they're not the, you know,
44:10
the hundred ones in 100 years events. The
44:14
Chernobyl was a succession of the, the light
44:18
latest in the succession of events and there have
44:20
been several since nuclear. If you've got all
44:23
this nuclear stuff, you know it's going to go
44:26
wrong sometimes inevitably, and it does. The
44:28
second principle is that that radiation doesn't
44:35
just stay there where it is, it goes all around
44:39
the world. So we're all exposed to a greater
44:42
background level of radiation than we were. And
44:49
with Chernobyl, there's the amazing story of the,
44:55
the Pripyat marshes, which are all around the
44:59
exclusion zone in, around the reactor in
45:06
Chernobyl. And every couple of times a year,
45:11
different berries, the locals go into the marshes
45:15
and they into the woods there and gather up
45:18
berries to different times at berries at
45:22
different times a year. And then they bring them
45:25
out to the roads and there are merchants there
45:30
with stores on the roads and they weigh the, the
45:36
berries and so forth and they run a Geiger
45:40
counter over them. If the Geiger counter sounds
45:46
off high, they still buy the stuff, they just pay
45:51
the guys less. And then it goes into the, into
45:58
the international system. Could be in your jam at
46:01
breakfast right now. Really.
46:05
Meredith Oke: The radiated berries.
46:07
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah.
46:10
Meredith Oke: Oh, all right, so we have the background of the
46:17
really bad ionizing radiation and then we also
46:20
have the non ionizing radiation that we surround
46:23
ourselves by with our mobile phones, our wi fi,
46:28
cell towers, 5G. All of these things.
46:32
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah, all of this that just keeps getting worse
46:34
all the time.
46:37
Meredith Oke: Have you noticed, I mean, you talked about the
46:40
electromagnetic, the electrosensitivity. Have you
46:43
noticed in your patients symptoms becoming more
46:48
complex and symptoms arising in, in younger
46:53
people? I know here in the United States there's
46:56
an epidemic of combination of autoimmune and mood
47:01
disorders and all kinds of things happening in,
47:04
in very young people, you know, adolescents,
47:08
teenagers, and often even children. Young
47:12
children.
47:12
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah, that. I mean, that has been going on for a
47:15
long time. Still is going on. And you know, it's
47:19
not as well. There are. Okay, there's one
47:22
interesting surprise that we just noticed, but
47:26
generally, you know, we. It's been kind of
47:29
predicted for a long time the things are going to
47:31
go on getting worse like that. And my colleague
47:35
of mine, Stephen Davis, described what he called
47:40
the nutrient toxin interface. Quite simply, the
47:44
more toxins you're exposed to and you know, let's
47:47
include toxic stress in this and AMS and
47:51
everything else. The more toxins you're exposed
47:53
to, the more nutrients you need to deal with
47:55
them. Simple as that. So why would we not take
47:59
supplements these days? The one interesting one
48:04
that I just realized I'd experience is I was
48:11
talking about kids with this strep reaction
48:14
called pandas, which is an autoimmune disease
48:19
triggered by strep infection. And I realized that
48:28
both of them had had shingles in childhood. So
48:35
shingles is a reaction to the. Well, it's a
48:38
reactivation of the chickenpox virus. Right, but
48:43
that's only supposed to happen decades later.
48:48
Meredith Oke: Yeah, I always thought shingles, you got
48:50
chickenpox, I mean, this was back before they
48:53
vaccinated the crap out of everyone. But you got
48:56
chickenpox as a child and shingles as an adult.
48:59
If you were unlucky enough not to have the
49:01
chickenpox as a child or if it came back and the
49:05
shingles were way worse.
49:07
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
49:09
Meredith Oke: So you're saying there now children were having
49:12
shingles.
49:13
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah, that's right.
49:14
Meredith Oke: Okay, so that's a new development, new.
49:17
Dr. Damien Downing: To everybody, I think.
49:18
Meredith Oke: Yeah, yeah. And so what's. This is just another
49:23
symptom of, well, immune systems Being destroyed.
49:28
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah, I guess so. By all sorts of factors
49:31
together, including the mal illumination and the.
49:35
The crap in the food and so forth. It isn't just
49:40
to do with, you know, the COVID vaccine or
49:44
anything like that. It. Because it. These two
49:46
predated both that.
49:51
Meredith Oke: Yeah. Well, it's interesting where you're saying,
49:52
you know, we need to have a nutrient load. You
49:55
know, the nutrient load needs to be greater than
49:57
the toxic load or the. The restorative inputs
50:00
need to be greater than the assault inputs. And
50:04
decade by decade, we've been adding assault over
50:08
assault over assault.
50:12
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah.
50:13
Meredith Oke: And with the light piece, I think not even
50:15
understanding. I think the food piece, we kind of
50:18
knew. We just didn't do anything about it. But
50:21
with the light piece, it's like, what do you.
50:24
People are sort of still surprised? What are you
50:26
talking about? What do you mean?
50:27
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah, yeah.
50:28
Meredith Oke: And I'm curious. You mentioned earlier when you
50:30
were talking about the. The glymphatic system in
50:33
the brain, you mentioned the tonsils. And I want
50:35
to ask you something. I have met two children, I
50:41
live in the northeast of the United States, and I
50:43
have. I have met two children in the last year
50:46
whose pediatricians recommended they have their
50:49
tonsils removed, and they did. And I'm just
50:55
wondering what your thoughts are on that. It was
50:57
my understanding that that's not necessarily
51:01
something that is recommended these days. But I
51:04
was surprised. I mean, to know personally know
51:07
two people.
51:10
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah, yeah.
51:11
Meredith Oke: Should we as parents be cautious about that
51:13
procedure?
51:14
Dr. Damien Downing: I think you should, yes. I mean, it is true that
51:20
you do get kids who have recurrent tonsillitis,
51:24
and so they're sick, they're off school, they're,
51:27
you know, their learning suffers and that kind of
51:31
thing. They're unwell a lot of the time. But I
51:35
mean, what's our response to that? We give them
51:37
loads of antibiotics, which trashes the
51:40
microbiome for pretty much the rest of their
51:43
life, and then we vaccinate them. And there's
51:49
good evidence that having things like measles
51:54
infection, I mean, gives you some defense against
51:58
allergies and that kind of thing. So that's part
52:02
of the story of the explosion of the. The
52:06
epidemic of allergies, whatever that we're
52:08
seeing. And I mean, allergies, autoimmunity is
52:14
just like the armed wing of allergy, really. And
52:22
in fact, now that we understand more about
52:27
autoimmunity, we realize that these just mistakes
52:33
in a language that our immune system is speaking
52:37
all the time. 70% of the immune system is
52:44
involved in not reacting to things, only 30% is
52:48
involved in reacting. And so you need a balance
52:54
of all of these things. You need the activators
52:58
and the regulators. And it's the same for
53:04
allergies, autoimmunity and for cancer. You know,
53:08
they're all to do with imbalance, disruption of
53:14
the immune system. And having a good circadian
53:19
rhythm is obviously a key factor in all of that.
53:22
So, I mean, these days, you ask me what's the
53:26
first thing I should do about all that. Get a
53:29
good circadian rhythm.
53:33
Meredith Oke: Yeah, it's comforting to hear you say that
53:38
because I think the bad news is so many people
53:42
have terrible light inputs and don't think about
53:44
it. But the good news is it's not that
53:47
complicated to fix.
53:49
Dr. Damien Downing: No, no.
53:51
Meredith Oke: It's just changing a few light bulbs, you know,
53:55
putting some filters on your screen, you know
53:56
that there are ways to going outside. It's not
54:00
hard stuff.
54:02
Dr. Damien Downing: No, and I don't really. It's another. This is
54:05
things like the, you know, cutting, doing,
54:09
auditing your environment for electromagnetic
54:12
fields and so forth. There isn't an absolute
54:15
threshold that you've got to get over for this to
54:20
do you any good. I mean, every move in the right
54:23
direction is going to be beneficial to you.
54:27
Meredith Oke: Right.
54:28
Dr. Damien Downing: You know. Yeah, I had. When I started thinking
54:32
about the, the screen stuff, I started getting
54:41
floaters in the eye. And I went to the big eye
54:46
hospital here in Moorfield and they say, yeah,
54:50
well, it's floaters. They might go away, might
54:53
not, may come back again. So I said, what can I
54:56
do about it? Nothing really. They've got no
55:01
treatments for it. But I fixed it, I fixed it. I
55:05
recommend two things. One is hydration and
55:11
particularly, you know, zeta based hydration.
55:15
Meredith Oke: What do you mean by that?
55:16
Dr. Damien Downing: Oh, okay. The zeta potential is the charge on
55:26
cells and other surfaces. So, you know, opposite
55:29
poles attract, positive and negative attract to
55:33
each other, like poles repel. So the zeta
55:36
potential is the negative potential on the
55:40
surface of red blood cells. And most obviously
55:44
that keeps them apart, keeps them separated. And
55:52
if you do dark field microscopy on somebody else,
55:57
I don't. You know, the first thing they always
55:59
say is, oh, look, your red cells are clumping.
56:01
That's why they're clumping is because they
56:03
haven't got enough negative charge to keep them
56:05
apart. And so because they're actually larger
56:13
than some of the capillaries, they have to go
56:16
down, they have to be a part. If they're clumped,
56:19
it's deadly. You're not going to get nearly
56:22
enough blood Oxygen, all the other nutrients to
56:29
your tissues. So zeta potential is one of. Now, I
56:33
think one of the most fundamental things you can
56:36
do. And of course, it's coming from the
56:38
structured water.
56:44
Meredith Oke: The zeta potential is coming from the structured
56:46
water. So when you say hydrating yourself, zeta
56:51
hydration, is that a particular type of water or.
56:55
Dr. Damien Downing: Well, it's pure water, really. I mean, I
56:58
certainly wouldn't use London tap water. I don't
57:01
know about where you are.
57:02
Meredith Oke: No. There's fluoride, right.
57:05
Dr. Damien Downing: Oh, God, no. That's awful. That's really bad.
57:09
I've got a great big filter under my sink,
57:13
kitchen sink, and it's got a vortexer, a swirler.
57:21
So that's. So then you just need to add pure
57:24
vortex water. Yeah.
57:27
Meredith Oke: And then you add. Do you add minerals? Do you
57:29
add. What do you do to it?
57:31
Dr. Damien Downing: You add electrolytes. I mean, to be honest, they
57:35
all work, I reckon, really. There probably are
57:37
some that are distinctly better than others, but
57:42
all the. The stuff, the, you know, potassium and
57:46
magnesium and so forth, that they would. They
57:50
would probably give you if you had diarrhea, but
57:52
without the crap.
57:54
Meredith Oke: Right.
57:55
Dr. Damien Downing: Well, yeah, in the. I think they all work, you
58:02
know.
58:03
Meredith Oke: Yeah. The elect electrolyte combinations. So v.
58:07
So pure water, vortex electrolytes. Okay. So we
58:10
were talking about you, how you cured your
58:13
floaters. Okay. So that was the first piece. Well
58:16
hydrated with water that can keep our zeta
58:21
potential in a good place.
58:23
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah.
58:24
Meredith Oke: All right.
58:24
Dr. Damien Downing: And the other input that I did was the infrared.
58:30
But actually, these days I think it's clear that
58:34
you could. You need the UV as well as the
58:38
infrared. The effect of these wavelengths on the
58:44
structured water is infrared, particularly 8, 10
58:48
nanometers is the best penetrating one. Builds up
58:52
the layers, more and more layers of the
58:56
structured water. And the impact of the UV is to
59:03
build up the depth of the negative charge in
59:06
there. So, you know, both together is a perfect
59:12
combination.
59:14
Meredith Oke: Can you explain that a little more? I haven't
59:17
heard it put quite like that. It's interesting.
59:20
Dr. Damien Downing: Oh, okay. We assume the, you know, people
59:25
listening to this will know about structured
59:27
water.
59:28
Meredith Oke: Yeah, more or less. Yes.
59:30
Dr. Damien Downing: Right. Okay.
59:31
Meredith Oke: But, I mean, but if you have. If you have a quick
59:33
overview of that, please give it. I always like
59:35
to have ever. You know, I learned something new
59:39
from the way people explain things just in their
59:41
own special way. Yeah.
59:44
Dr. Damien Downing: Structured water. Well, shank. Your. The
59:47
unpronounceable one said that this happens, you
59:52
know, 60 years ago, that lots of liquids, not
59:56
just water, in contact with the surface, they
59:59
form a sort of A structure. And he said water has
1:00:03
two melting points. One, when solid ice melts
1:00:08
into water, and the second, which is in the 30s
1:00:14
centigrade, somewhere quite near our body
1:00:18
temperature, where the liquid ice, which is the
1:00:23
structured water, melts. And he speculated that
1:00:30
this gives our bodies the ability to destroy and
1:00:37
reform structured water kind of at our will. That
1:00:43
was, presumably, is something to do with what
1:00:47
running a temperature does. You know, whether
1:00:50
it's making the environment less friendly to
1:00:55
infect the Asians or they're not quite sure yet,
1:00:58
but that certainly happens. So structured water
1:01:02
forms when it's in touch with a surface that has
1:01:08
a bit of charge on it, and it doesn't take much,
1:01:14
so it tends to have a kind of a hexagonal form.
1:01:19
It's a layer. First it's a monolayer, then it's
1:01:22
multiple layers. And it's been calculated that
1:01:29
inside us, because there's no empty space inside
1:01:32
us, it's all stuff, you know, it's all molecules.
1:01:36
And a lot of the molecules that are at the
1:01:38
interstitium, like the glycosaminide, glycans and
1:01:42
so forth, they really like water. And so the
1:01:46
water on top of those will be structured water,
1:01:52
which. And also on collagen, which is like a.
1:01:56
It's like rope. It's. There's, you know, long
1:01:58
strings, the small filaments and so forth. So
1:02:02
electricity travels better through structured
1:02:07
water because it doesn't have to try going
1:02:09
everywhere. It's got a kind of Australia. It's
1:02:12
like providing it with a wire, but slightly flat
1:02:15
wire. And so this is kind of key to a lot of
1:02:22
life. This is the bit where the universe is on
1:02:27
our side, you know. So I think, honestly, without
1:02:31
this sort of stuff, life probably would never
1:02:34
have happened, but it did. And presumably these
1:02:39
rules must be the same everywhere in the
1:02:41
universe. So, you know, maybe the SETI search for
1:02:46
extraterrestrial intelligence will finally find
1:02:49
something. We shall see. But the structured water
1:02:56
happens naturally just because it's in contact
1:02:59
with the surface. And then kind of all light, to
1:03:05
a greater or lesser extent, encourages it to. To
1:03:10
build up more and more layers of structured
1:03:13
water. But the best at doing it is the infrared.
1:03:20
And in fact, it's in sort of middle infrared,
1:03:22
where you're talking thousands of nanometers. But
1:03:28
the problem with that is that not much reaches
1:03:31
the surface of the Earth because it's absorbed by
1:03:34
the water in the atmosphere. So the most useful
1:03:40
one is the near infrared, when there's a lot more
1:03:44
reaches us. And also it seems to be the
1:03:47
wavelength with the best penetration. So it goes,
1:03:52
you know, way deep into us. And things like the
1:03:58
cerebral spinal fluid are pretty good conductors
1:04:03
of that sort of electricity. You know, when you
1:04:07
do ultrasound examination, fluids, watery fluids,
1:04:12
look black. There's no reflection from in there.
1:04:17
The stuff goes straight through easily. And I
1:04:19
think if you were to do it with light, it would
1:04:23
be the same. Certainly with the infrared light,
1:04:25
it's carried well through cerebral spirit and of
1:04:29
course, through the amniotic fluid. So the baby's
1:04:34
getting a nice dose. Especially if you take your
1:04:38
bump out into the sun, Baby gets a really good
1:04:43
dose. And so the infrared does that, and the
1:04:50
ultraviolet, which we need for a variety of
1:04:54
reasons. This is one of the reasons why it's
1:04:57
beneficial to us because it helps to build up the
1:05:02
depth of the charge right next to the. The cell
1:05:07
or the molecule or whatever, which keeps
1:05:10
everything moving and. And flowing. So whether
1:05:13
that is why UVA and blue light, high energy,
1:05:20
visible, if you, like, make the magnetic sense,
1:05:23
were. Don't know yet. You know, there's a lot to
1:05:27
be figured out about that.
1:05:31
Meredith Oke: Wow. So it really. I mean, we really are getting
1:05:35
charged up.
1:05:37
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah.
1:05:38
Meredith Oke: We're like the. Where these little sort of liquid
1:05:41
crystal matrices getting charged up by the. The
1:05:45
light that we surround ourselves by. Or depleted,
1:05:50
as the case may be.
1:05:51
Dr. Damien Downing: Well, yes. Quiet. Yeah.
1:05:53
Meredith Oke: Wow. So I. I just love hearing about this. It
1:05:58
really. I mean, there's almost. Almost a
1:06:02
spiritual aspect to it when you think of how
1:06:04
exquisite it all is.
1:06:05
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah, I agree. Yeah. We're in touch with the
1:06:11
fundamentals of the universe. Yeah.
1:06:14
Meredith Oke: Just by existing.
1:06:16
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah. Yeah. Is what I kind of say is it's in the
1:06:22
nature of things. All of this stuff is in the
1:06:25
nature of things. In the nature of the universe
1:06:29
is how the universe works. If we let it, we seem
1:06:36
to do our worst best to prevent it.
1:06:39
Meredith Oke: Oh, there's the key. There's the key, Dr.
1:06:41
Downing. If we let it. And that's a great. That's
1:06:45
a beautiful way to put it, because that is all.
1:06:47
We only have to. We just need to allow it. We
1:06:49
don't actually have to do anything except get the
1:06:53
stuff out of the way. That's. That's disallowing
1:06:55
it.
1:06:56
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah, absolutely.
1:06:58
Meredith Oke: Beautiful. So tell us before we wrap, tell us
1:07:03
about your next book. Is it. Is it building on
1:07:07
daylight robbery and the benefits of sunlight?
1:07:11
What can we expect?
1:07:13
Dr. Damien Downing: It is, but I mean, it's had to be completely
1:07:15
rewritten. I couldn't just do an update. Back in
1:07:19
the 80s, we figured the bit about cancer, we
1:07:25
Figured that it was that light was good for the
1:07:30
heart. We didn't really understand why, but I, I
1:07:35
mean, that's much better these days. We
1:07:37
understand a lot more about lipids and about
1:07:39
mitochondria. And there were observations that
1:07:50
athletes could improve their performance by
1:07:55
exposing to sunlight and so forth. Very clear
1:07:58
evidence back then, but we didn't really
1:08:01
understand how that was happening. We're only
1:08:03
speculating. Obviously knew about vitamin D and,
1:08:06
you know, cancer and rickets and so on and so
1:08:10
forth. But now that we understand about
1:08:14
mitochondria, we understand that there's a
1:08:20
wavelength, the 8, 10 nanometers, the penetrates
1:08:25
that goes straight into the mitochondria. And
1:08:30
there was a big argument, I guess it still goes
1:08:33
on saying is what's happening there? That it's
1:08:37
cytochrome C oxidase, one of the elements, the,
1:08:40
the mitochondrial electron transport chain,
1:08:43
because that resonates the right frequency. And
1:08:45
then there's a bunch of people saying, no, that's
1:08:47
silly. It's really structured water. And now we
1:08:51
have. You know, it certainly would work by
1:08:54
structured water. I. It may be the structure of
1:08:57
water is not the only thing, but it's definitely
1:08:59
got to be part of it, you know, so all kind of
1:09:04
all of a sudden, except, you know, there seems to
1:09:06
be this latency period, about 50 years for all of
1:09:10
it. We've got. Oh, God, it all fits together. So
1:09:17
that's why the. The magnetic center spear is
1:09:21
downs, really. So I call this another way it all
1:09:23
fits together that.
1:09:25
Meredith Oke: Right. All the pieces of the puzzle are.
1:09:29
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah.
1:09:30
Meredith Oke: Are falling into place. So it started out with
1:09:33
observing the effect. Like we can clearly see
1:09:37
sunlight helps with this. And now we've gotten to
1:09:41
the explanation of the causative mechanisms of
1:09:45
how.
1:09:46
Dr. Damien Downing: Yeah, yeah. Mind you, I'd be very careful about
1:09:50
saying, oh, we've got all the answers now.
1:09:52
Meredith Oke: Oh, absolutely. Yes. That is so true. We are at
1:09:58
the beginning of the beginning of the beginning,
1:10:01
most likely in. Of a new paradigm of
1:10:04
understanding. And, you know, it's thanks to
1:10:07
people like you for, for working in this field
1:10:10
and researching it and bringing it to your
1:10:13
patients. So thank you.
1:10:16
Dr. Damien Downing: Okay. It's my pleasure. My delight.
1:10:21
Meredith Oke: Well, I appreciate you sharing and yeah, I would
1:10:25
love to do this again. I think there's lots more
1:10:27
that we could talk about. And thank you and thank
1:10:30
you for your. To the world.
1:10:33
Dr. Damien Downing: Right. Okay. Thank you very much.
1:10:36
Meredith Oke: This has been the Quantum Biology Collective
1:10:39
podcast. To find a practitioner who practices
1:10:43
from this point of view, visit our
1:10:45
directory@quantum quantumbiologycollective.org if
1:10:49
you are a practitioner, definitely take a look at
1:10:53
the Applied Quantum Biology certification, a six
1:10:56
week study of the science of the new human health
1:10:59
paradigm and its practical application with your
1:11:02
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1:11:09
Until next time, the QVC.