Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #210: Ditch the Shades & Supplements? Debunking Skin‑Cancer Myths with Dr. Cowan

Transcript

Episode #210: Ditch the Shades & Supplements? Debunking Skin‑Cancer Myths with Dr. Cowan · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Hi, welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Dr.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: Cena McKella, and I'm here with our favorite farmer, Joel Salatin.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: Today we have an amazing show for you.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: One of my most favorite people in the world, Dr.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: Alexis Cowan, is joining us.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: She is a pioneer in integrating quantum light biology, nutrition, and mitochondrial health to improve wellness and increase longevity.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: She earned a PhD in molecular biology at Princeton.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: She did a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania, where she developed a fascination with the intricate interplay of light, nutrition, and metabolism.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: Now she translates quantum biology and circadian science into plain English strategies that help everyday people think clearer, move better, and live longer.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: Whether she's decoding the metabolic mysteries of sunlight as medicine or guiding high performers toward metabolic flexibility, her North Star mission remains steady to empower people with evidence-based tools that they can actually use.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: Dr.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: Cowan serves as chief science officer at Joppa Health, which is a digital platform that offers personalized roadmaps for health optimization.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: She co-created Science Silence, a historical exploration of the actors, bills, and events that corrupted modern medicine and public health.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: She hosts the podcast, Undoctrinate Yourself, which examines your beliefs, biases, and preconceptions and helps you dispose of those that do not serve you.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: Dr.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: Cowan is known for her trademark blend of scholarly rigor and an unwavering belief that better light and better science can brighten every corner of modern life.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the program, Dr.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: Cowan.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: That was a great introduction.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for that.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you are an inspiration.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: There's so much I want to cover.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: Joel, if you don't mind, I'm gonna kick off the first question.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So just go right ahead.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so on our program, Dr.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: Cowan, we've talked a lot about a lot about light.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: We've talked about sunlight and we've talked about the internal light of the radiates from within through through the formation of biophotons.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: My first question for you is in your opinion, is chronic disease a light deficiency.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I think it's an interesting question because we can certainly say that chronic disease is caused by mitochondrial dysfunction over the long term in one or more tissues, depending on which disease state we're talking about.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in the case of cancer, that can be in a very specific tissue.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: In the case of autoimmune disease, that can also be in multiple tissues from the immune cells to tissues that are also being targeted.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's actually a pretty interesting thing to think about with regards to autoimmunity that you could have mitochondrial dysfunction in, let's say, immune cells broadly or maybe in T cells specifically, and that perhaps the tissue that ends up being targeted is actually related to the biophoton signature that's being emitted from that tissue.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: And if it's sufficient in some way or deficient, that that perhaps could draw the immune activity to that region of the body.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's a ton that we still have to learn with regards to how biophotons are actually shaping, you know, health and activities of different cells.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but this also goes back to Robert O'Becker's work and he did a ton of work on not specifically biophotons, but on the um electrical nature of the human body and how we're just composed of basically nothing but semiconductors.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: And he was really motivated by um Albert St.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Georgie, who won the 1939 Nobel Prize for actually vitamin C.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: But St.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Georgie's pet hypothesis was that essentially all of the proteins encoded by the nuclear genome had an electronic structure, meaning they were semiconductive in nature.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then Becker went on to prove that.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: But semiconductors essentially have the ability under certain conditions to move photons and electrons throughout the body in that case.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're beginning to learn about how, you know, the biophotons in different tissues are kind of interacting with other tissues, how it's informing function.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's why I'm also very excited to at one, like at some point along the lines, start my light lab because there's just a lot of open questions as well.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: But with certainty, we can say for sure that mitochondrial decline in one or more tissues is the root cause of chronic disease.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: And as mitochondrial function declines, so does biophoton production, because the mitochondria are a huge producer of biophotons, in particular within the infrared and the UV range.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, the UV biophotons can even reach into the UV C range, which is even stronger than the light that we receive from sunlight.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: And Dr.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: Jack Cruz makes the point that, like, as the scale shrinks, there's something called the inverse square law in physics that relates to electromagnetism that basically tells you that the smaller the scale you're working at, the stronger the dose of the electromagnetism.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we're talking about biophotons being produced at this very, very tiny femto-level scale, the not only the wavelength is stronger in the form of UVC, but also because the distance is shrunk down, those biophotons are so potent at stimulating, you know, reactions in a variety of different parts of the cell and in the broader tissue at large.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's something that we still need to kind of understand more exactly what's going on there.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: But not to continue ranting, but Dr.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Tom Seeger yesterday made a post about a study that was done in Finland, I believe, with MS patients.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: And they showed that simply putting one group of MS patients into cold water immersion for a period of time was able to increase their vitamin D levels independent of their sun exposure habits.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so we have this idea that because you're producing UV light at this mitochondrial level, and actually within the nuclear genome as well, that this UV light could actually convert some vitamin D as well from the 7D hydrocholesterol in the skin.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so, you know, that's just kind of a cool example of how, you know, this light is actually potentially creating an outcome that we can visually see on a set of labs, for example.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, not to go on much more, but just one more thing I want to mention is that nature doesn't really ever make mistakes.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it makes perfect sense that when you're, you know, getting midday sun in the summertime when UV light is at its peak compared to the wintertime when UV light is at its nader, we can see that basically the body can compensate for a lack of UV light in the environment by getting cold.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that cold allows the body to stimulate its own UV light production internally.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so when UV and IR light are deficient in the environment in the wintertime, that coldness and immersing ourselves in that environment of the winter can actually help us to build our own internal suns, so to speak, because we're now bolstering the production of infrared and UV light within our mitochondria.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's this perfect compensation mechanism that exists when we're actually in tune with nature.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: All right, you got that, Joel?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: Like you've been amazing.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: And let me have a follow-up question.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: I'll throw it to you in a second.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, see, I told you we were gonna fight over you.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: This is um, I love this that you have this internal sun that the cold can stimulate the UV light production internally, and that could potentially increase the level of vitamin D, you know, catalyzing that reaction.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: So we see, um, at least in the literature I've read, but you know how that can be flawed.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: We see that in the wintertime people tend to have lower vitamin D levels.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: Is this partly because we're too comfortable?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like we're sitting in our homes in this temperature-controlled environment and we're not letting ourselves become cold enough to develop or to create this um, I'm gonna call it more of a metabolic vitamin D from our own internal sun.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so there's a few things I want to point out here.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: So there's there's a few variables that are gonna that's gonna dictate what your vitamin D level is sitting at as you move into the wintertime and UV light starts waning from the sun.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one of them is vitamin D binding protein.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: So essentially what I'm getting at is vitamin D binding protein will bind up vitamin D and help to maintain it in the bloodstream.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so we could alter vitamin D levels in the blood, the 25 hydroxyvitamin D biomarker, which is what the typical uh blood lab would be for vitamin D, which, by the way, is not something you want to supplement to sufficiency and optimization because that is really serving as a biomarker for your time spent in sunlight and outdoors.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we have, you know, actually, I pulled a paper last week that was pretty interesting showing that the calcium response to vitamin D supplementation is about half that of the response you get from getting that same amount of vitamin D from sunlight.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, again, nature doesn't make mistakes.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: We're meant to yoke our vitamin D production to UV light exposure.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: And when we're receiving that UV light, in particular UV B light, we're not only making vitamin D, we're making a ton of other things as well, which we can talk about in a little bit.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: But to answer your question, I think the increase or decrease in vitamin D can be related to production.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: It can be related to storage as well.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: So there's also research to suggest that skeletal muscle plays an important role in vitamin D binding protein and the maintenance of vitamin D levels throughout the wintertime.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: So if you have healthy skeletal muscle and you know engage in regular resistance training, ideally outside, and we can talk about why that might be beneficial, um, that you're gonna be more able to bolster your vitamin D across the wintertime versus somebody who does not, who has insulin resistance, who's a sedentary, for example.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and obviously the levels that you reach during the summertime are also playing a huge role because that is kind of serving as your reservoir that you're gonna be able to pull from in the wintertime because a lot of that vitamin D can be stored within adipose tissue.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: And naturally, we're supposed to kind of, you know, be getting cold and eating more of a caloric deficit in the wintertime, which is gonna allow us to liberate that adipose tissue and release that vitamin D into the circulation.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the more melanin somebody has in their skin, that's gonna dictate their UV dose requirements as well for vitamin D production and the production of other factors as well.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so people who have black and brown skin who are living at higher latitudes, you know, our skin isn't necessarily yoked to that environment.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: If we're, let's say, somebody from Africa is living in Sweden, for example, that's gonna be an extreme example.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: But the UV availability in the northern European environment is very insufficient for people who have melanated skin.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so they're gonna be highly more likely to have, you know, vitamin D deficiency, not only in the winter, but year-round.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that those are the type types of cases where I'm like, I don't like to leverage biohack, so to speak, but in this case, I do typically recommend something like a Spurdy vitamin D light, which is like a broad spectrum UVB and UVA light panel that can help to augment your UVB light exposure to help offset the environment that you're you've chosen to live in or that you were born in.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because you know, some people won't have control over exactly where they live at any given point in time, even though they can, you know, potentially set a goal to get out of there at some point.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: We have to make it work while we're still there.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: So short answer is there's multiple factors that are playing into your vitamin D levels at any given time of year, but those are some of the major ones.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: Go ahead, Joel, if you want to have a stab at it.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, well, I mean, uh how how much how much sunlight should a person get a day?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what what's a what's a ballpark?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Just walk us through because after I mean, listening to you, my sense is that 90% of Americans don't get the sunlight they should have.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's a fact.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, something that Cena mentioned before that like we're basically sitting indoors in climate-controlled environments all year round.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't really matter what season it is because it's always uh 72 degrees, no IR and no UV light, which by the way is highly aphysiologic.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: We're meant to receive infrared light year-round from the sun.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: The UV component changes, but the infrared component does not.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so the fact that we're missing out on near-infrared light in particular, which is filtered out by glass, which is absent from our energy-efficient LED inflorescent bulbs, from our device screens, um, we're never meant to be without near-infrared light, which directly stimulates mitochondrial function.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a huge issue.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: The UV component can go up and down, but when UV is low, we're meant to get cold.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we're sitting in indoors, no UV, but we're also not getting cold.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it's sending mixed signals to the biology.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: With regards to how much sun people should get daily, um, this is gonna vary based on the season, the latitude somebody lives at, and their ancestry and their skin tone, basically.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: So for summertime in North America, you know, we're getting decent levels of UVB light, even here in, you know, New Jersey.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm at the 40th latitude, but we're still getting up to UV 10 right about now.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: So virtually anybody could um, you know, live in this latitude, especially at this time of year.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: But the darker your skin, the more of that midday sun that you need.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: However, having said that, there's different times of day that provide different light signatures that are gonna allow you to get a variety of benefits depending on what time you're out there.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: So typically what I'd recommend is when people can get out for sunrise, that is ideal because sunrise helps to set the circadian clock.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: There's a very specific ratio of red and blue light at sunrise that helps to repair the heme proteins throughout the body, not only in the bloodstream, but also within the electron transport chain in the mitochondria that's responsible for making not only all of the metabolic energy, but also metabolic water and biophotons within the mitochondrial compartment.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so those heme proteins can be repaired.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so you're basically starting the day off on a good foot when you're getting out for sunrise and ideally staying out into UVA rise or going back out for UVA rise.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: So UVA rise, as the name implies, is when UVA light comes into the spectrum.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: UVA light in particular is also important from a circadian perspective because we have this protein on our skin and eyes and other tissues as well called neuropsin, which is specifically a UVA light detector.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I always laugh and like like to make the point to like dermatologists and ophthalmologists like if UV light is toxic, why do we have this UVA light sensing protein literally coating our entire surfaces?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: Clearly, our biology is looking for this frequency of light.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it turns out UVA light plays important roles in local circadian clock regulation, so at the level of the skin, eyes, testes as well.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a relationship between neuropsin stimulation and testosterone production and fertility in men, um, which is interesting.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: But the important thing here also for UVA is that the effects are local.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: So that means you actually need to have that skin and that tissue exposed in order to get the local stimulation of that tissue.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: So TLDR there is that for people who have seen like the sunning your balls trend, there's actually merit to that with regards to the published science.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so the UVA light uh comes into the spectrum somewhere around an hour after sunrise.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna vary depending on the time of year.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: There's an app you can download called the My Circadian app that was uh developed by Sarah Kleiner, who's another person in this circadian and light space.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that will tell you, you plug in your location and it will tell you what time sunrise is, UVA rise, UVB rise, and then when vitamin D is available, as long as UVB is up, and then it will tell you obviously when the set for each one is and sunset as well.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um and there's also a vitamin D tracker on there.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: So basically you can plug in your skin tone, your Fitzpatrick skin type, which is like one through six, I believe, one being the palest, six being the darkest.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: You plug that in, you plug in how much skin you have exposed, and then it will give you a rough estimate of how much vitamin D you're making per unit time.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so for people who are more numbers-oriented, they can use uh a feature like this to help estimate their vitamin D um production requirements.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: And you ideally are looking for within the range of 60 to 80 nanograms per milliliter in your bloodstream without supplementation, in order to know that you're getting enough midday sun for your particular skin type and your body.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's the best way I know how to kind of estimate how much midday sun somebody needs is based on their vitamin D levels.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: And if they're under 60, they're probably living a much more indoor lifestyle than they should be.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: How much how much skin do you need to expose?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta lie out there naked or do you um uh I mean, I I I go I go out at at daylight at sunrise every day pretty much to do chores.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm blessed to be able to live on the farm and I gotta go outside and you know move the eggmobile and open up the chickens and all that stuff.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but you know, generally I'm not, I mean, it's just in my in the summer, it's just my arms and face.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have uh and in the winter, you know, it's just my face.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: You got a coat on, it's cold, and uh you're trying to get in before everything freezes.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um is there a is there a uh a huge difference in the amount of of um skin exposure?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: Great question.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: So the amount of skin you have exposed, well, let me backtrack.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: The amount of vitamin D you produce is proportional to the amount of skin you have exposed because that 70 hydrocholesterol is embedded within the outer layers of the skin, and so it needs to interact with that UVB light to catalyze its conversion into pre-vitamin D.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: So essentially you can have smaller amounts of skin exposed and stay out for longer periods of time, but it's more efficient to have as little clothes on as possible if you're looking to maximize the, you know, the effects uh in a shorter period of time.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Having said that, you can get things like tan through clothing, which helps to, you know, support this process without actually having to be naked outside, unless you can be, in which case, go for it.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so there's tan-through bathing suits, there's tan-through shorts and shirts.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so that is basically like a fine mesh that doesn't look completely see-through, but it does let more light through than your typical, you know, especially synthetic fabrics.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so using something like that could allow you to get more rays through as well, versus, you know, wearing something that is completely blocking sun from interacting with your covered skin.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, it's mostly an efficiency thing.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and depending on what your levels are, you know, if you're outside all day midday and uh your vitamin D levels are still low, then I would sell you, you know, or like insufficient, I would say, you know, trying to remove some clothing or wear, you know, shirtless or just strip down shorts, maybe like whatever you have available and what's convenient and going with that, or like cordoning off a part of the midday where you're literally just getting intentional sun exposure and not doing anything else.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, then just wearing a bathing suit, which you can get the tan-through suits.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, for somebody who has lower Fitzpatrick levels who have Northern European descent, um, you know, even just 20 minutes of midday sun could be, you know, quite good.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: And depending on how um how much melanin somebody has in their skin, like if they're never going outside and then they're going out for 20 minutes, you could actually burn if you're extremely pale.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: So you'll probably have to build up if you're somebody who has very, very fair skin, um, maybe five minutes at a time, pulse in shade.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, something that Dr.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Jack Cruz talks about is the solar callus.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: So basically you're gradually increasing your dose so that you're not burning and you're tanning instead.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're tanning, that's a sign that you're properly engaging your skin metabolically and that the mitochondria within the skin are working well because the mitochondria and the melanocytes is what's responsible for making the new melanin in response to UVB light.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're somebody who's burning and not tanning, that is a sign either of mitochondrial dysfunction in the skin or it's a sign that you're blocking UVB light exposure into the eyes.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it turns out you get a coordinated hormonal response to UVB light when you have UVB light exposed to the skin and the eyes simultaneously.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a factor, a pro-hormone called pro-opiomelanochortin or POM C that's made in the skin and in the brain via UVB light exposure to the eyes in response to this UVB light.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: And POM C gets cleaved into 10 different hormonal factors, three of which are alpha, beta, and gamma melanocyte stimulating hormone or MSH.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: So as the name implies, these hormones are responsible for uh stimulating the melanocytes to make new melanin.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that melanin is what gives you a tan in response to the sun.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: So essentially what I'm saying is if you're wearing UV blocking contacts or UV blocking glasses or sunglasses while you're outside, you're cutting that hormonal response in half.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now you're only getting that hormonal response in the skin peripherally and not in the brain.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so, I mean, these are some of the like the very low-hanging fruit studies that I want to do in the light lab, like literally just stick people outside in sunglasses versus not and see how quickly they burn versus people who aren't wearing UV blocking lenses on their eyes.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and a lot of people are wearing sunglasses outside.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, when I went to Prague in June for Bitcoin Prague, I saw, you know, probably 95% of people who were in just like the city were wearing sunglasses.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I came back and I was in New York for a bit of time, and then I saw, you know, there people maybe like 60% of people were wearing sunglasses, but like 90% were wearing AirPods.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm like, can we just like get on the same page here where like we just understand that this isn't a fashion statement?
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't just like, you know, I'm up on the the latest tech.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is actually affecting your health in a very real way that people just don't understand yet.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why I'm very passionate about educating on it.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: I get uh yelled at for not wearing sunglasses.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: I've never worn because of all this.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: I I this is what I do.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: I, you know, full sunglasses.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: I get yelled at for that.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, you know, it sounds like you're giving a recipe for skin cancer if you talk to, you know, uh regular people.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: And um that's that's kind of scary.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, a good recipe for skin cancer is uh wearing sunglasses when you go out in midday sun and wearing sunscreen and actually never getting sun unprotected, quote unquote, because now you're Missing actually the UVB stimulus that is going to allow your body to adapt to the UVB light exposure by making melanin.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: If we look at the data around melanoma in particular, which is the most deadly of the skin cancers, we see melanoma rates are at an all-time high while sunglass and sunscreen use is at an all-time high and indoor lifestyles are at an all-time high.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: So that doesn't make sense.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: The second point that doesn't really make sense is that if melanoma is caused by sun exposure, then why are low vitamin D levels associated with melanoma incidence and mortality?
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if UVB light was the cause of melanoma, we should we should expect people who have high vitamin D levels to be getting melanoma.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: So things aren't adding up there.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and if we look at when melanoma rates really started to rise, it was really around the 1950s when the propaganda around sun exposure being bad was also simultaneously being rolled out.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where, you know, sunscreens started to be developed and pushed more so.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think the story around skin cancers is highly complicated relative to what is pushed in the mainstream.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, having said that, if you're going outs outside and frying yourself and getting burned to a crisp every time you go out, number one, that's a sign that you have mitochondrial dysfunction in your skin.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: And number two, that isn't inevitable, right?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have to go outside and burn.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: There are a ton of strategies that we can talk about to avoid burning and to effectively harness the photonic energy of the sun without getting those trade-offs, so to speak.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, I love that.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: So can we so let's kind of take a step back and explain more of an overarching um perception, your perception of how sun is medicine?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: So, like I like to think of the sun as it would be like almost like taking a multivitamin, right?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's got all these different um wavelengths to it.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: And we need all of them, right?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that's why they were designed that way.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like you said, nature makes no mistakes.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: So, can you just quickly break down for us, just to get everybody on the same page, uh the these different wavelengths and maybe like one or two main benefits of each of the wavelengths?
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would love to.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: So if we're talking about sunrise, we're talking about around 80% red and infrared light component, um, and very little blue in UV, relatively speaking, at least compared to midday.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that red and infrared light component is really important for mitochondrial function.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, as I mentioned earlier, near-infrared light is extremely important for mitochondrial function in every tissue of the body.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that is because near-infrared light has the greatest penetrance of any wavelength in the light spectrum that we're exposed to, which means that it can burrow basically all the way into reach the deepest cells of your body and directly stimulate those mitochondria to make more energy, metabolic water, and biophotons.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that near-infrared light component needs to be considered as an essential nutrient in the same way that I believe that UV light also has to be considered an essential nutrient.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's really the infrared and the UV component that is running and powering our metabolism.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they're the two frequencies that have been systematically removed from the indoor environment.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: So take that however you will.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so if we're then look at more midday, we're still talking about sunlight that is over 50% red and infrared light.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so this craze around like red and infrared light therapies, um, panels, things like this, I don't think a lot of people realize that simply going outside, you are getting doused with red and infrared light from the sun.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's why sunlight feels warm.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's infrared light.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Infrared light is heat.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's the same reason that fire feels warm or that incandescent light bulbs feel warm, is that they're releasing a ton of infrared light, um, which isn't superfluous.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: And this whole push towards energy efficiency and lighting and technology and and windows, it's selectively depleting the near-infrared and UV component from our indoor environments, which has a bunch of bioenergetic knock-on effects that we've kind of alluded to, but we can discuss more in detail maybe in a little bit.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: So that midday sun is your you know, red and infrared light therapy, as is your morning sun.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: They're both very, very enriched in red and infrared light.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: But midday sun is also highest in blue and UV.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: So blue light gets a, I guess, kind of a bad rap in certain like circles, let's say, but blue light is extremely important from a circadian perspective.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: However, blue light is always supposed to be received with an abundance of red and infrared light.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's because, you know, if we look at the data around blue light exposure and isolation, it directly impairs mitochondrial function on the surfaces, the skin, eyes, and proximal brain regions.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: So it needs that offsetting mitochondrial supporting effect of the red and infrared light with it, so that you don't get those, you know, those negative consequences to mitochondrial function on our surfaces.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: But blue light is also the signal that our eyes are looking for in order to set the master circadian clock in the brain called the SCN or the superchismatic nucleus.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that is a group of about 10,000 neurons that lives within the hypothalamus and it's directly connected to the back of the eye.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: So the retina is correct collect connected rather to this SCN via the RHT or the retinohypothalamic tract, and it's packed full of something called melanopsin, which is our body's blue light detector, specifically is looking for 480 nanometer blue light, and that is the signal that tells the brain it's daytime, it's time to turn on metabolism, activity, digestion, cognition.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: These are the behaviors or activities within our cells that are happening during the daytime, and that's why blue light is important because blue light is only available in nature when the sun is up.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: Compared to, you know, if we look at kind of the environment that we're exposed to as modern humans now, we're not only exposed to blue light from our device screens or LEDs and fluorescent bulbs throughout the day, but also into the nighttime hours as well.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: And when it starts getting dark out, the first thing people do is throw on their overhead lights.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: They're usually LEDs, blasting themselves with blue light and sending the signal to their bodies that it's actually daytime when it's not.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: And as long as we're exposed to that blue light, we're we're directly suppressing melatonin production in the pineal glands.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: So that's directly impacting your ability to get sleepy, to fall asleep, stay asleep, get good quality sleep.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: Melatonin is also a very powerful antioxidant, and lower levels of circulating melatonin are associated with breast cancer incidence and severity.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, actually, a little brief aside note there.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: If we look at the epidemiologic data around breast cancer, we can see that low UV light exposure and high artificial light exposure at night are two of the top risk factors for breast cancer incidents and mortality from breast cancer as well.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so melatonin's not just a story about um, you know, going to sleep.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually very intricately rooted with mitochondrial function and antioxidant um activities within a variety of tissues of the body.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: So that blue light from our artificial devices at night is directly suppressing that, but it's also preventing our body from getting into that rest, recovery, regenerative state that it's meant to receive in the evening time in response to dark darkness.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: If your body is never experiencing dark darkness, then it's never properly engaging autophagy, um, getting into a good fat burning state, improving cellular turnover, which helps to maintain it tissue integrity, essentially.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: So long as you're exposed to this artificial light at night, your body is not able to effectively engage the pathways that allow, you know, damaged and old cells to be removed.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so over time, that you know pays a huge toll with regards to, you know, the incidence of a variety of chronic diseases, honestly.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: And not to mention the direct effects of blue light on mitochondrial function.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: And as we talked about, that blue light exposure on the mitochondria directly uh impairs mitochondrial metabolism.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: And if we're looking at on the skin, there's also some published research relating to melanoma showing that fluorescent lights are associated with melanoma incidents.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: So, like the more you're basking under fluorescent light bulbs, the higher your risk.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why we see a lot of people who work in like office type environments are at a higher risk of developing melanoma.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: And these are among the indoor workers.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: If we look at outdoor workers, you know, there's no really strong data suggesting that outdoor workers have higher incidence of skin cancer.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually the early data suggested the exact opposite that indoor workers had higher risk.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of the blue light component.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then the UVA light component.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about UVA light with regards to the local circadian regulation and neuropsin.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but UVA light is also the primary stimulator of nitric oxide.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: So nitric oxide is the primary vasodilator within the body, so it allows blood vessels to open up, supports nutrient and oxygen delivery to tissues and waste removal from tissues.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, all the gym bros know about nitric oxide because they like to take a lot of nitric oxide boosters like beetroot juice and um L-arginine and agmatine and things like this.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: But most people don't know that simply going outside when UVA light is available will directly stimulate the production of nitric oxide.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, nitric oxide is made in the skin and then it diffuses into the bloodstream.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the amount that's produced is proportional, again, to the amount of skin you have exposed.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: So the greater the response you're looking for, the more skin you want to have exposed.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: And this is particularly relevant for people with um cardiovascular illness and hypertension, high blood pressure, because nitric oxide deficiency is the primary defect in hypertension.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so simply getting people outside if they have high blood pressure is a huge win.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, my father-in-law is a perfect example of this.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: He has um kind of like beginning stages of kidney disease and high blood pressure, and he was in a hospital with some like hypertensive crisis maybe six months ago.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: And they wanted to keep him for testing for days and days, and the weather was getting really nice out.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was early in the spring, and so UVA light was coming back, UVB light was coming back.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: We're like, check yourself out, go home, go like sit in the lawn chair and just sit outside.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: His blood pressure, they had been dousing him with meds, and it wasn't coming down below like 160 over 105 or something like this.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: He checks himself out, he goes home, he goes and sits in the sun for two hours, his blood pressure is down to normal.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: So that it was just a perfect testament of like there's this huge disconnect between the environments that we go to um help uh, you know, fix and remediate our health and what's actually needed for health.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at the hospital environment, it's literally the antithesis of where you would want to go to support healing.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, non-native EMFs, 24-7, blue light from artificial sources 24-7, sleep disrupted constantly, um, you know, just bad energy in general, like people are sick and dying around you, and there's this depersonalization between the doctors and the patients.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's just this lack of empathy and compassion in a lot of cases.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so if I want, you know, if I were to want to heal myself, if I had a chronic disease, you know, the last place I would want to go is somewhere like that.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: I would want to be somewhere where I can be basically be outside all day barefoot on the grass, grounding and getting plenty of sunlight, eating nutritious, um, you know, seasonally available foods for my environment and getting the natural, fresh air and biodiversity that you're exposed to when you're simply going outside into natural environments.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, those are like the bare basic foundational inputs required to be a healthy human and they're the exact opposite of what we're experiencing as modern humans.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's fascinating you bring that up because there used to be hospitals in like America that had like you can go up to the top and you can sunbathe up there.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, go figure, you know, like they did something right back then.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: That was the status quo, and then the Flexner report happened, and then everything went to hell with regards to sun exposure and propaganda with regards to health.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that was like in, I believe, around 1910 or 1911, the Flexner report came out.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: And for those people, for people who don't know, we're teaching about this in the Science Silence course in a couple lessons.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: But the Flexner Report basically was a report that basically said everything that was a traditional medicine that was practiced for long periods of time in other cultures was nonsense and not evidence-based, and that we needed to go this more scientific medicine route, um, with you know, reductionist evidence being the gold standard.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that is ultimately how we got to where we are today, ever since that report and that initiative was made to kind of poo-poo or you know, just uh sweep under the rug a lot of these ancient healing modalities that had been known for generations in our species.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, doesn't she sound like us?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Cena is an expert on the Flexner report.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell you that.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never heard of it until I met Cena, and now I I can spew that stuff out, paid for by the Rockefellers, and uh it gave it gave us it gave us the AMA, the whole thing was fraudulent, and it shut down all the little all the little independent um teaching hospitals that that developed around somebody's genius success.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Essentially the gurus, the gurus were the foundation of the medical science of the day.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: If somebody was having great success with this, then they started a little, you know, started a little teaching uh hospital over here, and uh because I thought the Flexner report was was out, uh all that got consolidated and and um eliminated, and here we are.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: So so what do you do?
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: What do you do with somebody that's works night shift?
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I used to work night shift.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um actually when I was working night shift in college is when I got IBS, terrible, terrible IBS.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh like literally blood and mucus in my stool every day, like was losing weight rapidly, like couldn't tolerate eating basically anything.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time, obviously, I did not put two and two together that you know that could be contributing.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, night shift work is is is officially like I identified as a carcinogen.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: So we know that night shift workers are at higher risk of getting multiple cancer types, um, becoming obese, developing cardiovascular disease.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's not something that is a long-term viable solution if you're a human being, unless you're willing to trade time for money.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I think there's not actually an effective level of informed consent currently.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like, people don't actually know that what they're signing up for.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, hey, I can make a few extra bucks per hour by taking the night shifts.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like, seems like a great deal.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: But that informed consent of like these are all the trade-offs like that you receive each year that you're on night shift, and this is what you have to look forward to in 10 years, like all these diagnoses, people don't necessarily understand that and they're not informed and educated on that.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think you know, it would be one thing if informed consent was present.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think people have autonomy and ability to choose what they want to do.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: But when you're incentivizing people with money, and like the money is just a whole nother conversation, like just how fiat currency is basically creating uh generations of slaves that will do anything for money.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: And like Dr.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: Cruz talks about, like, you know, we're all basically slaves on the economic plantation today, except now it has nothing to do with the color of our skin.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: We're literally just being essentially farmed for life force.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, the the fact that we now need two, you know, parents within a nuclear family working in order to put food on the table and make ends meet from on a month-to-month basis is just a perfect sign of that.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like that did not used to be the case in the past, and it's been normalized to such a high extent now where like everybody just assumes that, you know, in order to have a family, both parents have to work.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: And the problem with that is when both parents are working, who's raising the kids?
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's the state, it's the schools, and now they're being indoctrinated with whatever information they want to share with them, and the parents are so busy and stressed out that they don't have the bandwidth and the energy to actually, you know, make sure that what their kids is learning are is like actually legitimate and and in their best interest.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so anyway, the money and the medicine can't really be like untwined from each other, they go hand in hand.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think, you know, the more that we can cultivate financial independence and freedom, the more we have a choice and a say in like the direction of our lives and the health.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the pandemic was a perfect example of that.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like how many people rolled up their sleeve because they were afraid to lose their job versus like basically going against their gut instincts and their feelings around taking this experimental injection and kind of going against those, you know, those feelings of uncertainty and unease simply to keep the money flowing in so that they could put food on the table and take care of their families.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think that is such an immoral position to put people in.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: And yet we saw it.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so that intricate link between health and wealth, like you cannot unintertwine them.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think the more that we can support our health, the better we can think, the more money we can make, the better we can see situations to get ourselves out of bad situations and into better ones.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: And also the more money we have, the more freedom we have, and the more money we can invest into our health.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like it's a two-way street there.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, Dr.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_02: Cowan, listening to you, I feel like, you know, on this show, Joel and I uncover a lot of corruption, you know, behind the door deals.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, we try to dispel a lot of myths in both the food and the health space.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: And listening to you, I feel like um, well, kindred spirits, that like you've uncovered this, I mean, in our educating people about what I would call this big lie that we've been told uh about the sun, about like, so for example, that the sunglasses may in fact cause cancer, right?
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_02: Or help fuel it, that sitting inside these houses, you know, temperature controlled with with these UVB lights could cause cancer, right?
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, another one was that when I went to um when I was getting my nutrition degree, we were taught that no foods had vitamin D in them.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_02: You had to actually go out and get them, get vitamin D from the sun.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but you know, slather on that sunscreen is because the the that could cause cancer.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_02: So if you go outside and don't have sunscreen on, you may actually get cancer.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_02: But now we're finding that might be the opposite.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: And now we're finding foods also, some foods do contain vitamin D, like some plants, some herbs, mushrooms, for example.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I feel like this is just another one of those stories that it's almost like you we've been duped, like over again.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_02: And now we're um witnessing the ramifications of us believing in the establishment and what they've pushed onto us.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so I wanted to ask you a couple questions, but I wanted to share um a story that's similar to um your father-in-law.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_02: This was in the news.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_02: This was a 15-year-old boy with leukemia.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you've heard this one before.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_02: It was more recent, that um he was in the chemo for uh, he was doing chemo, he was in the hospital.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: He developed a flesh-eating bacterial infection, and he was he was in the hospital for at least six weeks.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_02: They were pumping him full of medications, they couldn't control it.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_02: They actually had to remove one of his lungs, it spread to the other lung, and um, they told me he had two days left to live.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, oh, I'm gonna start crying.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_02: I can imagine being the mom of that child.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_02: And they asked if he had any last requests, and he said he wanted to go outside, and they wheeled him outside, and literally they put him outside, and he was holding um a firefly light device while he was outside.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, within five days, 60 to 70 percent of the disease in the right lung had disappeared, and they didn't change anything else.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_02: All they did was stick him outside, and he was holding and continued holding this firefly light device, which he was also holding inside.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: They literally just put him outside the next month.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_02: He was so healthy, there's pictures of him jumping off a boat.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's the incredible power of this light that God has given all of us access to, you know, but we're so afraid.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's another thing that our culture is now afraid of, you know.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_02: And Joel and I Joel's heard me say this a lot.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_02: For me, the ultimate root cause of um disease, disease is fear, right?
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so we're just perpetuating um this fear-based state in our culture, and a lot of it's because of what we've been indoctrinated with.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so what you're saying really resonates, it rings true to me on multiple levels.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_02: Now, because we've bought into this, a lot of us are not myself, but I know a lot of um statistics show that people are relying on I'm gonna take vitamin D supplements or um I'm gonna take melatonin supplements because I'm having sleep problems now.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_02: So before I chime in on my thoughts on those, you talked a little bit about the vitamin D supplement issue, but what are your thoughts?
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: If you know, let's say that somebody is having sleep issues, let's say somebody got their test results back and the vitamin D status is low.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_02: Would is is vitamin D supplementation and melatonin supplementation something you would ever recommend?
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like what is what is potentially the pitfall that people are not yet woken up to in terms of relying on the supplemental forms?
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so with regards to vitamin D supplements, I think the only context in which they can be useful is in overt rickets, which is like, you know, probably under 12 nanograms per milliliter or something like this.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: If somebody is extremely deficient and they're at risk of, you know, bone breaks and issues with calcium homeostasis, because that's one of the things the vitamin D does is that it regulates how much calcium is available in the body and prevents it from being lost in the stool in the urine.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so in that case, short term vitamin D supplementation to make somebody sufficient, at least over 20 or 30 nanograms per mil, makes sense.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but outside of that window, there is basically no evidence to suggest that once you're around 20 or 30, that supplementing with vitamin D at Gives you any sort of added benefit whatsoever, despite there being data showing that getting that vitamin D level up to at least over 45 nanograms per mil is what's required to fully shut off parathyroid hormone, which is what kicks on in response to vitamin D insufficiency.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: In addition to that, if we look at the vital study, for example, they it was basically a large-scale long-term study of high-dose vitamin D supplementation.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think they looked at fish oil as well.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they didn't see any protection against, I think their primary endpoints were cardiovascular disease and a couple different types of cancers, and they had a secondary endpoint for type 2 diabetes, and there were virtually no benefits of supplementing vitamin D, despite the fact that we know that vitamin D status is tightly linked with cardiovascular disease, multiple cancer types, autoimmune diseases, um, diabetes, obesity, um, to name a few, cognitive decline and um things like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so we have this data set that shows us that if you have insufficient levels of vitamin D, that you're at a high risk for developing these issues, but that supplementing with vitamin D is not enough to actually protect you.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it's because of this pleotropic effect, this multifactorial effect of being exposed to UVB light.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about the vitamin D production component, but actually a dozen other vitamin D-like molecules are made in the skin in response to UVB light.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just the pre-vitamin D.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we also have that POM C molecule being made in response to UVB light in the skin and in the brain via the eyes.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we talked about the MSH component, so stimulating melanocytes to make new melanin.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: But what I didn't mention is that alpha MSH, one of those three factors that's produced from POM C, uh, is also responsible for reducing appetite and increasing energy expenditure at the level of the hypothalamus.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: So this is like a holy grail with regards to, and and well, with regards to obesity, and is actually the same pathway that Ozempic works on in the brain.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: So Ozempic activates POM C production in the hypothalamus to increase alpha MSH to reduce appetite and increase energy expenditure.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: We have access to the same exact stimulus in the form of UVB light to give us that output without the trade-offs and the knock-on effects of potentially trying to subvert the pathway that's you know supposed to be activated in the form of, you know, these drugs, which are basically, you know, then shutting down digestive capacity, creating issues with like gastroparesis.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's some instances of neuroendocrine tumors of the pancreas as well, um, rebound weight loss.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: So there's lots of issues with trying to take shortcuts in general, and this is no exception.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one of the other factors that's produced from POM C that we didn't talk about is beta endorphin.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: Beta endorphin is an endogenous opioid molecule that, you know, gives us those feel-good feelings, reduces anxiety and depression, but also improves overall dopamine status, critical thinking skills, um, and the ability to just kind of feel content at a baseline.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: I honestly, I kind of have a pet theory around um, and maybe this is a little bit of a tangent, but I have a pet theory around why the most imperialistic nations come from northern Europe.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it relates to the light environment.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think when we're UV deficient for a decent portion of the year and we're constantly in this kind of fear-based state to a certain extent, because obviously winters in northern Europe are very harsh.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: So you come inside even more, you're in indoor environments even more and lacking light even more than you would have otherwise if you were outdoors.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: And now suddenly you're operating from this place of lack consistently, where you constantly feel like you need something outside of yourself in order to make you feel good within yourself.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we're seeing, we kind of see that play out on the global scale.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually was just doing a little bit of research on this a couple of weeks ago because yeah, if you look at the Dutch and the English, um, two of the biggest imperialistic forces throughout the course of, you know, the history of the past, let's say five, six hundred years or so.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they're, you know, two areas that have a really crappy life for a decent portion of the year.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so just simply getting outside in that UVB light is also just making us feel good at a baseline so that we don't feel like we need to be so materialistic in our pursuits.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like we don't constantly need something in order to just feel good about ourselves.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I think there's also like a spiritual war component to this demonization of sun exposure because it's literally disconnecting you from the life force energy on the planet.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like all energy on the planet ultimately comes from the sun.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: If we look at the food we eat, we're either eating something that's photosynthetic or we're eating something that ate something that was photosynthetic.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: All of that energy that's stored within those bonds within the food is ultimately coming from the sun.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so this notion that like we need to block the sun for global warming, for example, is just so evil, frankly, um, that you know it can't be understated.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously, it also is very like there's a lot of cognitive dissonance because the same people who talk about blocking the sun for global warming are the same people who are pushing green energy solutions like solar.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, how are you gonna be told to get solar panels and then the sun is blocked and now you can't get energy from your solar panels?
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's literally a recipe for control um and for, you know, basically centralizing the availability to just about everything.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: And we also see this systematic attack on like small family farms, and I've, you know, I've been seeing it, especially on the West Coast recently, where it's like there is this push to centralize the food supply because when you control the food, you control the population.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, I don't like to think that there's nefarious intent behind some of these things, but at some point you just can't deny like what's going on.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like the only motive that makes sense would be if you want more control and power, then you want to control what controls people.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that is, you know, people are more autonomous and sovereign if they're out in the sun, they can think better and see more clearly.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: So we want to get them out of the sun, and you know, we want them eating this food that also makes them dumbed down and sick, so they're dependent on this, you know, awful medical system and you know, this food that will, if you want to call it food, it's you know, the centralized food supply, which is just allowing you to get by but not to thrive.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just like this all, you know, from all fronts we're being attacked, and that's why it's just really important and why I'm so passionate about the Sun story is that simply just getting outside more is going to allow you to see things more clearly and make better decisions for yourself and your family.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that has, you know, so many knock-on effects with regards to the rest of your vlog of your life.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why I I like to start there.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually don't remember what the initial question was, but I feel like I definitely walked up.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_02: No, I love it.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, oh my gosh, now 20 more questions came up.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_02: I wish I had all day.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, no, the original question was about um supplementation with vitamin E and melatonin.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't get back to melatonin.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: So let me touch on melatonin briefly.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: The thing that people just need to realize with regards to being able to sleep in particular is that it is extremely easy for your body to make its own melatonin.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: You just need to do two things.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, you need to get enough bright, full spectrum light exposure into your eyes during the day.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: So that means, you know, if you're going outside in sunglasses, you're dimming the total luxe or brightness that's coming into your eyes.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: That brightness is actually required to helpfully stimulate uh serotonin production, which not only makes you feel good, but then later at nighttime, once it starts getting dark and blue light goes down, that serotonin gets converted to melatonin.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: So the only two things you need to do in order to raise your own melatonin levels naturally and get good sleep is get enough bright light during the day.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: So take light breaks outside, maybe for even just a couple minutes every couple hours.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: Ideally get that first morning light as well.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: As soon as you get up, try to go outside and get that morning light into your eyes for even just five minutes, but you know, longer if you have a chronic illness that you're trying to deal with.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: Go out, you know, midday for a couple minute breaks every so often.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then as soon as the sun starts going down, you want to block blue light religiously.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_01: So you're gonna use red light bulbs.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you can't do that, you're gonna wear nighttime blue blocking glasses, which have a dark orange or red-tinted lens that will block fully the blue light coming in through the eye.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that blue light coming in through the eye is what directly suppresses melatonin production from serotonin.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: So all we need to do is get enough bright light during the day to stimulate serotonin production and then block blue light at night in order to stimulate its conversion into melatonin.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you will notice within a day of doing this that you will get sleepy earlier and you will want to go to sleep and you will get better quality sleep.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I know this because not only have I worked with, you know, probably at least 500 people over the past couple of years on this issue, but for myself included, when I first fell down this rabbit hole, I was a total night owl.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_01: And within a day of simply just going outside first thing in the morning and spending some time midday blocking blue light at night, I just was naturally sleepy earlier, wanted to go to bed earlier and wanted to wake up earlier.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a natural reaction to getting that light and dark cycle exposure right.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's as simple as it is.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_01: You don't really need to use an exogenous melatonin, you can just have your body make its own through those steps.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_02: Is being a night owl a real thing?
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like, are some people actually night owls, or do you think that's just a myth?
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_02: There's something that's developed because of our modern lifestyle, or what do you think?
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, so I I think that the concept of chronotypes is kind of like fake.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: My perspective on this is that if you don't have light from devices and light bulbs at night, you're just gonna get tired.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it's a physiologic response.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there was some data on like tribal communities, especially within the teen years, like the teens shifted by like an hour or two later, something like this.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't looked that deeply into it, but I would say in general, people are staying up later because they're on screens at night.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's really what it is.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: Or they have, you know, their light bulbs on, but typically people are just sitting on their screens, especially their phones, and it's like right in front of the face, and the light is unfiltered, and even night shift mode is not enough.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's still blasting your eyes with blue light and your face skin as well, which by the way, very pro-aging.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: All this blue light in isolation is very aging to the skin.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so the people who are worried about photo aging from the sun and wrinkles, I like to say, you know, just make the point that okay, if you're not going outside and being in the sun, then you're coming inside and you're basically blasting yourself with blue light from any number of light sources and screens, which is far more aging for the skin and for the eyes and the mitochondria in general than getting full spectrum light exposure from the sun.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously that doesn't mean frying yourself or getting overheated and burning and things like this, but you know, getting the right amount and then going into the shade.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like usually I'll I'd be recording outside, by the way, but it's like 95 degrees, and I was out for like 45 minutes before this and melting, and I was like, I actually want to be able to focus uh for our chat.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: So usually I am recording outside, but I have like a full spectrum light um uh focused on me right now, and I have a grounding mat, so I'm currently grounding as well.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: So for people watching and they're like, you know, hypocritical because she's inside, but like usually I am out, but I do my best to offset indoors.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like I like I said, I bring grounding mats inside.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_01: We have all incandescent lights in the house, um, red light for like red light bulbs for nighttime.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, there's lots of things you can do if you need to use tech at night.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_01: You can put filters on your screens.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you can even go into the advanced settings on your TV and put the TV onto RGB mode.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: So there's usually a red mode for TVs in the advanced settings.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: So we can do that.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: We can at least, if you don't have that, turn the backlight way down.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_01: And if you can't do that, then then you want to pop on your nighttime blue blocking glasses to at least prevent that light from coming into your eyes.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's what I would say on on that front.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of forgot the question again, but hopefully answered it.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, well, I saw just to wrap that one question up, have you seen any um like any science or any evidence that supplementing with melatonin could backfire on somebody?
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like could it possibly lower your your endogenous production of melatonin, for example?
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the worst thing that you could possibly do is take a melatonin supplement and then sit on your your phone or your TV to try to get sleepy.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: The reason being is that melatonin production into the circulation from the pineal gland is supposed to be yoked with dark darkness.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're getting higher levels of melatonin because you took the supplement, which by the way, these supplements are like mega doses.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you were to take a physiologic dose, it would be somewhere around 0.5 milligrams.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: And some people are taking, you know, two, five, 10, 20 milligrams, and it's, you know, insane doses relative to what your body naturally produces, first of all.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_01: But second of all, the melatonin that's in the circulation from the pineal gland sensitizes the photoreceptors within the eye.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that's because when it's dark, you actually want your eyes to be able to see better in the dark, right?
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: You want to be able to detect lower levels of light.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so by taking a melatonin supplement, that's also increasing the sensitivity of these photoreceptors, but you're not simultaneously getting that dark darkness.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_01: It would be one thing if you took a low-dose melatonin supplement and then actually sat in the dark to get sleepy, but most people are scrolling on their phones or watching TV while they're waiting for it to kick in or so.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that is the absolute worst thing you can do for your visual health, for the health of the tracks that connect your retina to your master clock in the brain.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's a lot of circadian implications, vision implications as well.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's some um data to suggest that melatonin supplementation can cause macular degeneration.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm guessing that it's related to this issue of light exposure upon taking it.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think we need way more research in this area as well, by the way.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's also just so easy to allow your body to make its own without any of the trade-offs that are possible that happen with shortcuts, that it's kind of like a no-brainer.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I think part of the sleep issue, in my opinion, is also because a lot of a lot of people are eating late into the night and they're eating inside too, right?
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_02: So um, I think I heard you um say this on a podcast, a different podcast, where you're talking about how if you just go eat your meal outside, right?
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_02: It will like blunch your glucose response.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_02: Is that accurate?
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_01: So Glenn Jeffries, who's a researcher in the light space, last year, the year before, published a paper where he took two groups of people.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_01: The one group was given an oral glucose tolerance test, um, and they basically just looked at their glucose response and insulin response to that test.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the other group had the same thing, except that group also got exposed to 15 minutes of red light exposure before the oral glucose tolerance test.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the group that had the red light exposure before the test had 30 per a 30% reduction in their total glucose response to the oral glucose tolerance test.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was only from 670 nanometer deep red light exposure from like a red light device.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now imagine if we're going outside and we're not only getting, you know, 600 through 670 nanometer red light, we're getting 600, 601, dot dot dot, all the way out to 3,100 nanometer far infrared light.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_01: We're getting the full broad spectrum of red light frequencies, all of which have their own little unique signatures that they leave on the mitochondria and the mitochondria's ability to scrub up excess glucose and fat from the circulation.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: So we're meant, again, to be receiving near-infrared light, especially all day long.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so as long as you're exposed to that, it's going to support mitochondrial metabolism, which then allows you to clear substrates like glucose and fat from the circulation more efficiently and effectively.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, essentially, when we see elevated levels of glucose and triglycerides and things like this, it's a sign of stagnation within the system.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_01: There's poor mitochondrial flux, there's poor nutrient clearance, you're either eating in excess or your mitochondrial engines are failing.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: And typically it's the latter because of the kind of indoor modern milieu that is creating this cis like systemic mitochondrial dysfunction over time.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, simply just taking your meals outside, even if it's in the shade, is far better than eating them inside, especially if carbohydrates are involved.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I love that.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so I'm having a mental image of my takeaways from the these are the things that I need to do to like improve my mitochondrial efficiency and you know, stop aging or decrease, you know, my aging and be basically thriving.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm picturing that whatever time I'm gonna eat, I'm gonna go outside.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_02: So in the morning or at lunch and in the evening, so sunrise, midday, sunset, I'll just go outside, I'll be barefoot, feet on the soil on the grass, I'll be naked, right, with no sunscreen, no nothing on, and I'll eat my meal and I'll say things I'm grateful for, right?
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_02: To put me in a parasympathetic state, right?
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe have my dogs there with me, and I won't take any, I won't take the vitamin D.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna take melatonin, uh, you know, any of those things, and my health's gonna improve.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_02: Is that what you're saying?
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I think that sounds like the dream.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_01: I I would love that for myself.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_01: I have neighbors that are too close, unfortunately.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I'm working on getting some land so hopefully sometime in the next few years.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_01: So that sounds like the ideal scenario.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there was one thing that you commented on that I wanted to mention.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, well, oh, with regards to eating timing.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_01: So ideally, eating your last meal before the sun goes down is prudent, and at least four hours before you plan to go to bed, uh, because we want the body to get into a good fasted fat-burning state overnight.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: And to help facilitate that as well, having low to no carbs in the dinner meal is also a good idea.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's also um supported by the fact that insulin sensitivity is also in alignment with circadian function.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_01: So you're more insulin sensitive in the morning and the afternoon than you are in the evening.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so channeling those carbohydrates, if you're gonna have any, if let's say they're seasonally available, to earlier in the day will also help you to clear them more effectively.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then if you're eating outside, that's gonna further support that cause as well.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but having a lower carb meal at the dinner time that's a little bit smaller is gonna help you get into a good fasted state overnight that helps to activate autophagy, which is like the cellular cleanup crews can come in and take out the garbage basically.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that's further accentuated when you get up for your sunrise time.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: That red and infrared light from the sun also activates autophagy.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so you're really hyper-stimulating it when you're getting into that good fasted state and combining it with the sunrise.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's kind of they're working together very synergistically to help support tissue turnover and high fidelity of like maintenance of the tissue as well.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then having your, you know, your first meal ideally with sometime within an hour of waking up.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then if it's summertime and you're getting a ton of UB UVB light, you can actually skip lunch if you want because that UVB light is gonna naturally suppress your appetite.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_01: And there's actually really interesting research.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned mushrooms as it relates to vitamin D.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_01: There were mushrooms found in Chernobyl in the 1990s that were found to use melanin in order to harness the gamma radiation in the environment to make free energy.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it turns out melanin absorbs all wavelengths of light, and this is the same as the melanin that's in our skin, that's also deep in the parts of our brain, and the part of the brain that's affected in Parkinson's disease, the substantia nigra, it's called that because it's black pigmented, because it's full of melanin, and that melanin declines over time in the case of Parkinson's.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, this is really a UVB light story as well, because if we look at Parkinson's patients, very, very low vitamin D status, typically uh very pale.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we also see that black people do not get Parkinson's disease.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_01: So this is really a disease of melanin, melan issue and a melanation issue.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: So um when it comes to melanin, we have some really interesting research from somebody called Dr.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: Arturo Solas Herrera, who is looking at human photosynthesis, quote unquote.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_01: So he's looking at the possibility that our melanin in our skin can actually harness the energy from the photonic energy from the sun and convert it into free energy by splitting water.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_01: So the mechanism at play in plants that do photosynthesis, the chlorophyll and the um water spitting splitting complex within the chloroplast basically takes sunlight, in particular red and blue light, and allows that to power up this water splitting complex with the help of chlorophyll to split water into free electrons and protons, um, which then can power the production of starch or carbohydrates in plants.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in those mushrooms in Chernobyl, they found that the mushrooms were using melanin as their pigment instead of chlorophyll, and that that melanin was allowing the gamma radiation from the nuclear fallout to be absorbed and still being used to split water to make free energy in the very similar way as plants, except the melanin actually produces even more free energy.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_01: It liberates four free electrons instead of just two in the case of chlorophyll.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the same concept.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're studying it in the context of humans, whereby can we actually use melanin in our skin to harness photonic energy from the sun to make free energy so that we don't actually need to eat food?
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that would actually make sense with regards to the hormonal response to UVB light that I mentioned, whereby the UVB light suppresses appetite and increases energy expenditure.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_01: So why would the body do that if it needed more energy?
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the body's basically trying to tell us we don't necessarily need to eat as much because we're getting energy elsewhere.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that doesn't mean that we, you know, never have to eat because obviously you're not getting UVB light all day long.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_01: And some people have more melanin than others.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_01: But if we look at the like the peak endurance athletes, especially in marathon running, it's no surprise that they mostly come from Nairobi, Kenya, which is not only equatorial, but it's also at a high altitude, meaning their UVB light is off the charts.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_01: As you go up in altitude, UVB light is more available as well.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's why you see their skin is super, super dark because they're actually it's not just a protection mechanism.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like the mainstream will say melanin is there for protection against UV light.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_01: My argument is that melanin is there to harness UV light productively, and it's a completely different paradigm, right?
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like one again is kind of fear based and one is not.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I think it's just a really interesting developing.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: Area of research that I'm also very excited to study in the lab in the future.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_02: Wait, so if I'm understanding this right, and I'm I know we're about out of time, so this will be my last one.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_02: I'll throw it over to Joel.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_02: So this is fascinating because I always thought that that was just so too fear-based to be accurate, you know.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so if I'm understanding you right, so you have um I'm very white.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like like Don, my husband calls me translucent sometimes because white.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_02: So you obviously have darker skin than me.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_02: So does that mean that potentially you would be better at your skin is better at producing the energy than my skin?
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the interesting thing about um, like if we look at skin types, for example, in Fitzpatrick skin types from like palest of pale to darkest of dark, we're basically looking on the palest to pale side, Fitzpatrick one and two, you have more plasticity to adapt to your environment.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_01: So you can survive and do pretty well at very high latitudes.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_01: But if you move to, I don't know, Miami or El Salvador or something and you gradually titrate your son up, you could actually get quite a bit of melanin in your skin.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's not going to be to the point of like, you know, Fitzpatrick five or six, but you could probably get to four.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_01: And Dr.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_01: Jack Cruz, for example, he's pure Irish from both sides of his family.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_01: And he actually is almost just as dark as me, to be honest.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_01: And he's worked on that over time, right?
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not like you're not blasting yourself.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_01: You're titrating that dose up.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you're you're supporting your ability to melanate by blocking blue light at night, by grounding, by getting enough DHA, basically supporting an anti-inflammatory status in the body.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you're avoiding non-native VMFs, which also cause mitochondrial dysfunction in the skin.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_01: So anything you can do to basically support your skin mitochondria and your circadian health is going to help you tan versus burn.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, I would say you have more flexibility with regards to what latitude you could actually do well at versus the the darker your skin is, basically the the more your physiology is primed for a more equatorial environment.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a little more niche.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_01: However, your ability to harness the photonic energy of that environment is far exceeding somebody who is never going to be as dark as that person.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_01: So there are trade-offs to being on both sides.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's benefits to being on both sides.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, I think it's a really interesting kind of story to unpack because if we look at like where basically northern Europeans um kind of came down from Northern Europe and came across North America and most of the US is of Northern European descent.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and y'all can do really well at this latitude because you know it's actually more appropriate for human life than even Northern Europe is, which is a very harsh environment.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but actually the other thing that I think a lot about is uh if you look at like native populations to North America, they're actually they have melanin in their skin, right?
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I think somebody with a skin, Fitzpatrick's skin tone like mine, is actually well equipped as well for North America because it seems to match the indigenous populations to this continent.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um so obviously that means you actually need to go outside and like leverage it.
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_01: You're not just gonna, you know, be able to live indoors and and thrive.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_01: You actually need to get access to that photonic energy in order to harness it.
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_01: But I think uh there's definitely a lot of plasticity to be had within where people can thrive.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's just a matter of actually getting outside and harnessing that environment.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_01: The indoor environment is hostile for everybody.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_00: So so Cena so Cena, uh, I think what we need to do is block this, uh block this podcast from going to Spain because in Spain, even think about eating dinner until like 10 30 or 11 o'clock at night.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_00: Every time I've been in Spain, after I went the first time, I I had a requirement.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you want me to come, I'll come, but we have to be sitting down for the evening meal by 8 p.m.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's a requirement.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been it's and so when I went back, you know, a couple of times, I've been back.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's hilarious how my host or hostess uh they're watching a clock, you know, watching a clock.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, we we we get we get into the you know restaurant at literally we're the only ones there for an hour and a half.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_00: About the time we're done, ready to leave, then that's when people start coming in.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard about that.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard about that in in a lot of Europe, I think.
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_01: But it's actually interesting because perhaps the lack of circadian alignment of eating late could be offset a bit by like the the community and like the communal aspect of eating dinner there.
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Because I feel like in my experience at least, it's like it's a you know, you're you're chatting, it's like a multi-hour long experience.
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a good yeah, it's like a good vibe.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's a big deal.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, mealtime in Spain is a meal time in Spain is like uh is like a Christmas celebration here in the in the US.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean every meal is a two-hour, two and a half hour um repast.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a it's a repast.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um listen, we are we we have really enjoyed uh this has just been a like drinking out of a uh a light fire hose, uh Dr.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_00: We have really enjoyed having you on, and um, but we do have to close.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so we also always ask our our uh base here, our subscribers, a question.
• 1:11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so my question is um how much sunlight do you get on an average day?
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Keep a keep a little record of it.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_00: How much sunlight do you get on an average day?
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll I'll bet you that the average person overestimates their sunlight by probably double or triple.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then if we actually kept a log, if we actually kept a log for a couple of days, we'd find out that we're actually not getting very much sunlight at all.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_00: So uh that's the question of the day.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Cena, any parting thoughts or can we are we ready to close?
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh, I just want to do a whole series with you.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we didn't even get into you know fasting or you know, any of the corruption that you have found out, um, or about open access, you know, science.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_02: So we've got so much more to talk about.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_02: We'd love to have you come back.
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but Dr.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_02: Cowan, so if you can tell people where they can go to find you and any like anything that you want to leave our listeners with, like any closing remarks, like take-home message for them.
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean the biggest take home that I always like to leave with people is just to question everything.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like, don't assume that anything is true just because you're told it by some authority figure.
• 1:12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like, actually look into things.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, just like use your critical thinking skills.
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think with AI up and coming, it's like everybody's outsourcing their thinking to bots, basically.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't use it, you're gonna lose it.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_01: So we need to be very scrupulous around our interfacing with technology and just be very mindful and intentional with it.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_01: But just simply start to question things.
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_01: And when things don't make sense, like probe deeper.
• 1:13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Don't just, you know, go with the flow, don't go with the status quo just because other people think that it makes sense or that it's normalized, or, you know, that they don't have the critical thinking skills to even begin to approach it.
• 1:13:20
  SPEAKER_01: So that would be my main thing in general that will lead you to just having a better life is to simply just ask good questions and get curious.
• 1:13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, with regards to where people can find me, so I'm mostly active on Instagram at dr.
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Alexis Jasmine, J-A-Z-M-Y-N.
• 1:13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I have a quantum health ebook called the Lux Living Health Optimization Handbook that people can learn.
• 1:13:41
  SPEAKER_01: All of the baby basics of quantum circadian light biology, um, water biology, mitochondrial function is all within that ebook.
• 1:13:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's around 100 pages.
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's available in my link in bio on uh Instagram and also on X, same handle on X.
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_01: I also released a new ebook yesterday that's the Mitochondriax Travel Companion.
• 1:14:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that is for basically people who travel, you know, whether it's once a month, once a week, once a year, whenever it is, like how to optimize the travel process to offset the harms to the mitochondria, because especially air travel is very, very harmful and pro-aging and anti-mitochondria.
• 1:14:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so we want to do what we can to offset those effects so that we can be healthier and feel better and avoid getting sick pre and pre pre during and post-travels.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I released that yesterday.
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_01: So that's also available also in my Linkin Bio.
• 1:14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I teach a bunch of courses, a lot of them are self-guided at this point.
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_01: So the currently live one is Science Silence, which is like this history of corruption in science and medicine.
• 1:14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we started back with like reading the foundational documents of the US, and then we're kind of building from there.
• 1:14:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I think right now we're around the Civil War and we're kind of building the story up.
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the last science-y course I taught was Bootcamp Reboot, which goes through all of the basic basics of how having to um integrate quantum circadian light biology into your everyday.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_01: So there was a uh quantum biology crash course, which included mitochondrial function and biology in there and circadian biology.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we did a lesson on leptin and fat loss.
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_01: We did a lesson on um exercise programming and and um basically how to optimize your fitness routine, uh, gut health.
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't talk about that, but there's a direct relationship between the light you're exposed to and your microbiome.
• 1:15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh what else did we talk about there?
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_01: There's like six total lessons.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there were four guest lectures and two QAs.
• 1:15:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's available as like a pre-recorded, self-guided situation.
• 1:15:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then I'm also launching a mentorship program next month that's gonna be starting in mid to late September.
• 1:15:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's something, it's gonna be called something like the Quantum Biology Mentorship, but it's gonna be very, very rigorous in the fact that I noticed that a lot of people, like influencers in this space, they may have good information, but I don't think there's like a solid foundation of understanding the like the basic foundational sciences.
• 1:16:04
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna be going through like intrabiology, we're gonna be going through developmental biology, biochemistry, chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, and I'm gonna be laying out all the foundational sciences.
• 1:16:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then on top of that, we're gonna build the quantum biology, the light biology, the circadian, the mitochondrial function, and all these things.
• 1:16:21
  SPEAKER_01: So that's gonna be like my tour de force program that's gonna start in September and probably go through the beginning of next year, knowing me, I'm just gonna keep going and going until I feel like it's complete.
• 1:16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that will start enrollment next month.
• 1:16:36
  SPEAKER_01: So people can keep an eye on my socials or join my mailing list, which is also in my link in bio if they wanna um stay up to date on that.
• 1:16:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's um that's most of you know what I have to share.
• 1:16:47
  SPEAKER_01: I share a lot of free content as well on my Instagram so people can check out my wall and my stories and my highlight reels to learn more as well.
• 1:16:55
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you are a force.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I love it.
• 1:17:00
  SPEAKER_02: I've enjoyed this so much.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_02: Please come back on the show and you're coming to our our health summit at Polyface next summer.
• 1:17:08
  SPEAKER_02: So we are totally thrilled to host you.
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much, Dr.
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_02: Cowan, for being with us today.
• 1:17:14
  SPEAKER_02: We I'm sure our audience has learned a lot.
• 1:17:16
  SPEAKER_02: I've learned something, I'm inspired.
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna track my sunlight and I'm gonna go do the whole protocol that we talked about morning and and the evening.
• 1:17:25
  SPEAKER_02: So we'll check back with you and tell you how it goes with us.
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 1:17:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, please keep me posted.
• 1:17:30
  SPEAKER_01: I would love to come back on anytime.
• 1:17:31
  SPEAKER_01: Literally, and I'm super stoked for the summit next year.
• 1:17:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's gonna be a blast, and I'm I'm really excited to connect in person.
• 1:17:37
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome, so am I.
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_02: All right, great.
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you all.
• 1:17:40
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, go ahead, Jill.
• 1:17:41
  SPEAKER_02: Did you want to say something?
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, I'm I'm good.
• 1:17:44
  SPEAKER_00: I was uh th thank you.
• 1:17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for me as well.
• 1:17:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we certainly look forward to hosting you here at at uh Polyface, and uh we hope we fill that thing up to give you a great audience.
• 1:17:55
  SPEAKER_00: I can't wait.
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_00: So now yeah, so now uh we thank you all for listening and joining us with another Beyond Labels podcast, and we look forward to visiting with you again next week.