81. Sunlight as Medicine with ICU Physician Roger Seheult, MD

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So today I have the absolute pleasure of speaking

(00:02):
with Dr Roger Schwelt Now.
He is a practicing sleepphysician, general medicine
physician, intensive carephysician and respiratory
physician.
He is the founder of theYouTube channel, medcram, which
has got over 1.5 millionsubscribers, and his flagship
video, called Light as uh calledlight as medicine, has over

(00:26):
four million views.
So dr swelt is a true clinician, scientist, educator and and I
think he is probably the leading, one of the leading people.
Uh translating what I believeis a a massive body of basic
science research proving aboutthe benefits of sunlight for
health, but that yet doesn'tseem to have permeated through

(00:50):
to the public and to clinicalpractice.
So, roger, thank you so muchfor joining me.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Well, thank you so much, Dr Gulhane.
Should I call you Max?
Yeah, please.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Please, okay, and I was watching your videos about a
decade ago when I was studyingfor my medical exam, so I've got
a lot of gratitude for the workyou do and your role in this.
There's actually five broadcategories I want to talk about
and feel free to start whereveryou want to, but those are

(01:21):
circadian rhythms they are nearinfrared light and the
mitochondrial melatonin and thework of Scott Zimmerman, russell
Ryder and Bob Fosbury.
There's the epidemiologicaldata about sunlight and
all-cause mortality and perhapsvitamin D deficiency.
There's the metabolic healthstory and the exciting data
we're getting out of labs likeGlenn Jeffrey with regard to the

(01:45):
effect of light on metabolichealth, circadian meal timing
and, finally, there's theclinical applications, and
you're pioneering or I would sayre-pioneering the use of
heliotherapy for your patients.
So those are the five broadtopics that I'd like to talk
about, but please start whereveryou'd like to.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
No, let's jump in.
Those are really apropos topics.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Cool Circadian rhythms.
This is so broad, but explainto us how you think about
circadian rhythms in general.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, the way I like to start out about talking about
it is in terms of what we ashuman beings do during the day
and what we do during the night,and the package deal that it is
, and that's important tounderstand.
The best way I have ofexplaining it is talking about a
friend that I had back in highschool.
He used to work at Disneyland,which, as you know, is close to

(02:42):
where I am.
I'm in Southern California andhe would work at Disneyland, but
he would work at Disneylandwhich, as you know, is close to
where I am.
I'm in Southern California.
He would work at Disneyland,but he would work at night.
This is a park that never reallyclosed.
It closes to guests at around12, maybe one in the morning,
depending on the time of year.
Then the real work beginsbecause, he would tell me, he
was in charge of cleaning andsweeping.
But there was people he saw allaround.

(03:04):
The engineers were coming inand fixing the rides, shutting
down the rides, the people werecoming in, taking out the cash
out of the cash registers,restocking the gift shops,
planting new plants, weeding.
All of this stuff was happeningat night and none of this stuff
, if you know anything aboutWalt Disney and how he wanted to
make sure that the facade ofDisneyland, walt Disney World,

(03:29):
was kept so well that heactually, even in Walt Disney
World, he had a wholesubterranean floor where
characters could go and walk outof the park so that no one
could see them in their costumecostume.
So the point is is that therewere very specific things that
happened at night to make surethat the park was ready to open

(03:49):
up the next morning, ready forbusiness, as if it was brand new
.
And that's kind of what we areas human beings.
When we wake up in the morning,we're ready to take on a new
day.
That's sort of the new start ofthe day.
We're well more complicatedthan Disneyland is, and if you
start to look down and see whatthe human body is doing and how
it's timed, there is a certaintime of the day where we are

(04:12):
being prepared for the next day.
That's at night.
So there is breaking down,there is repairing, there is
fixing, there's getting readyfor the next day.
All of that is happening duringthe nighttime, and then there's
the daytime that next day.
All of that is happening duringthe nighttime and then there's
the daytime.
That's when you do all thestuff that we do as human beings
.
That's when we eat, that's whenwe exercise, that's when we do.

(04:32):
We're very active at that time.
And that's the time of day thatDisneyland does its things.
It's got the rides, it's gotthe characters, it's got all
that sort of stuff.
So the problem comes in is thatall of those things are tied in
the circadian rhythm.
So the circadian rhythm, whichis the master clock in the
suprachiasmatic nucleus in thebrain.
This is literally regulatingall of the smaller clocks in the

(04:57):
whole body.
You could think of this as likethe conductor of an orchestra
and you've got the violins,you've got the rest of the
strings, you've got the flutes,the woodwinds, the brass, the
timpani, the rest of thepercussion.
All of these things areprocesses that have to be
governed, otherwise the musicthat you're going to make is
going to be dissonant and out ofsync.

(05:19):
And so when you start to lookand see what are the major
movers of circadian rhythm, it'sfood, okay, it's light.
These are what we callzeitgebers, or things that
intervene into thesuprachiasmatic nucleus and
therefore the entire circadianrhythm.
And you start to get problemswhen you confuse that circadian

(05:40):
rhythm by entering in zeitgebersinto parts of that circadian
rhythm where they're notsupposed to be in the natural
setting.
So if you want to sort of goback a thousand, two thousand,
ten thousand, however time youwant to go back in time,
generally speaking human beingswould eat when the sun was up.
That's when they were able toprepare the food, that's when

(06:03):
they were able to get the foodand that's when light was up.
So it turns out that the thingsthat are associated with the
daytime business of things isfood, eating and light, and so
that is a very strong zeitgeberto tell the body that we should
be doing the things that areassociated with the day.
And the lack of those thingsthe lack of light, the lack of
eating is associated with all ofthe breakdown.

(06:25):
So just to break this down nowlet's get more detail is in
terms of circadian rhythm andfasting and light.
Certainly, it goes almostwithout saying that light is
going to tell your circadianrhythm that it's day and the
lack of light is going to tellyou that it's at night.
And if you flip those around,if you are not exposed to a lot
of light during the day, that'sconfusing.

(06:46):
And if you are exposing yourlight to your eyes to light at
night.
That's going to be confusing tothe hard wiring of our
circadian rhythm.
Furthermore, we know that thingsare better dealt with at night,
when we're supposed to bebreaking things down, if we
don't have food or carbohydratesin our stomach, and that is

(07:08):
because the products of fatbreakdown, specifically
beta-oxidation, going to ketonebodies.
This is something that happensduring starvation, and
starvation sounds like a reallybad term here, but we're
basically saying lack ofcarbohydrates, when you don't
have carbohydrates becauseyou're not eating.
That's when your body, afterabout four or five hours after
your last carbohydrate load it,goes into beta-oxidation of fat,

(07:31):
and one of the key products ofthat process is our ketone
bodies.
Ketone bodies in and ofthemselves are very powerful
stimulators of the breaking downand repair system, such that if
you're eating when you shouldnot be eating, late at night,

(07:52):
you're not going to allow thesystem to do what it needs to do
.
So what does that all mean?
In that analogy of Disneyland?
It would mean that the gardeneris coming in to weed the garden
in front of it's a Small Worldwhile the guests are lighting up
, or the people are in line toride Space Mountain when the
engineers are shutting down theride, you're going to start to

(08:13):
see that the application ofDisneyland is now.
You're now swimming upstream,you're trying to do the same
processes, but it's not flowingand becomes a mess.
If you've ever seen the Arc deTriomphe in France and you see
that massive roundabout whereall these cars are coming in,
that's what your body looks likewhen you're out of sync, as

(08:35):
opposed to a very welldemarcated road where you have
traffic lights and things aremoving very efficiently.
So circadian rhythm is sopowerful, I would say, when
things are happening during theday.
It's so powerful that there's awhole branch of medicine
pharmacology which is now goingback and looking at all of the
studies that they've ever doneand realizing that not only the

(08:59):
efficacy but the side effects ofthe medications that they
tested on people could bedifferent depending on the time
of day that that medication wasactually given.
And it may actually be thatmedicines may have a higher
efficacy if given at a certaintime of day, depending on their
circadian rhythm, versus anothertime of day.
So it cannot be understated howimportant circadian rhythms are

(09:24):
.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
It cannot be understated how important
circadian rhythms are.
Yeah, that whole field ofchronobiology and
chronopharmacology isfascinating, and one that I'm
looking to see is going to beexpanded.
I really like the analogy ofDisneyland.
I also use an analogy of a yinand yang, with clock timing on
it, and that to imply that thereis a necessary dualistic need

(09:47):
for bright daytime light duringthe day, and an absence of light
other than moonlight, I wouldassume during the night.
The problem, therefore I amframing this in today's world is
really we're getting a wholelot less daylight than we should
be and we're getting a wholelot more light at night than we

(10:10):
should be.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
Yes, those demarcations that were very
specific and very well lined upare becoming very blurred now.
You're absolutely correct.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
Talk about the sensation or the perception of
light in the circadian system,because this was an area of
science and research that isrelatively new, with regard to
even the anatomy of the eye and,I guess, the visual vision
forming versus light detectingfunctions.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah, so we are all familiar with the rods and the
cones that give us thedifference between dark and
light and color.
But there are also somethingcalled intrinsically
photosensitive retinal ganglioncells, and these are ganglion
cells that are concentrated inthe lower portion of the retina
and because of that position, bythe way, they're more sensitive
to light in the upper visualfields, which is interesting

(11:04):
because that's where theheavenly bodies of light are.
Generally speaking, these areexquisitely sensitive to light
in the evening time, but notvery sensitive to light in the
morning time.
And that is a predicament forus because, remember now, this
is hardwired.
Now think about your circadianrhythm.
You're a conductor, you're onstage, you're conducting this

(11:26):
orchestra and you have noexternal cues other than these
zeitgebers that I'm talkingabout.
So when someone is eating, orlet's talk about the most
powerful one, which is light.
So if the suprachiasmaticnucleus believes that it is
night and night is coming on,it's going to be signaling the

(11:46):
pineal gland to start secretingmelatonin.
However, if it gets a burst oflight, of light sensation, from
the intrinsically photosensitiveretinal ganglion cells in the
eye, it's going to say wow,there's light coming in.
This means that I have been tooearly in my cueing the pineal

(12:09):
gland to make melatonin, I mustbe too early in the program.
So what I must do is I mustshut down the melatonin
completely, and any amount oflight will do that.
That's number one.
And, by the way, I don't wantto understate that by just
moving on, because when you losemelatonin from the pineal gland

(12:30):
, you're losing the secretion ofprobably one of the most
powerful antioxidants known toman.
It's even more powerful thanglutathione.
People talk about glutathione.
Glutathione I mean melatoninactually upregulates glutathione
, so it's not only a powerfulantioxidant in and of itself, it
also regulates so many otherantioxidant systems.
So it's really powerful.

(12:50):
That gets shut down with lightat night.
That's the first problem.
The second problem is that itdoesn't want to be doing things
in the wrong sense.
It wants to be adjusting sothat it is correct.
So it's kind of like fool meonce.
It wants to be adjusting sothat it is correct.
So it's kind of like fool meonce.
You know, shame on you, fool metwice, shame on me.
So it says to itself okay, Ithought that this was nighttime,

(13:11):
but apparently I'm wrongbecause I'm getting light in
from the retina.
Therefore I must be too early.
I'm going to shift my timing sothat now tomorrow I'm not going
to be coming on at this time,I'm going to be coming on a
little bit later.
So that now tomorrow I'm notgoing to be coming on at this
time, I'm going to be coming ona little bit later.
And you can imagine, chronicstimulation of that retina over
a long period of time is justgoing to continuously make that

(13:32):
circadian rhythm come on laterand later and later.
So that's the major problem withhaving light when you should
not be having light.
Let's go the other way.
If you're not getting lightwhen you should be getting
having light, let's go the otherway If you're not getting light
when you should be gettinglight in the morning time.
Unfortunately, at that periodof time the intrinsically

(13:53):
photosensitive retinal ganglioncells are not as sensitive as
they were in the evening, whereliterally just one photon of
light can trigger that type of ashutdown.
No, in fact it needs a lot morelight.
In fact you need to actually gooutside to really get the amount
of light and just sort of let'sback up here and talk about
something called lux.
Lux is a measurement of theamplitude of the light that

(14:16):
you're getting In a regular roomin your house it's probably
about 50 to 60 lux.
You go outside it could beabout 20,000, 30,000 lux.
On a bright, full, sunny day,100,000 lux.
So you can see the differencebetween the amount of light that
you get inside your home, evenwith windows, versus going
outside into the bright, sunnylight of that day, and that's

(14:40):
the type of light that we'retalking about.
That you really need to have tosend that signal to the
suprachiasmatic nucleus and sayyes, it is the morning time, you
are getting your dose of lightand we're going to anchor your
circadian rhythm to start rightnow so that in your concert the
first, second and thirdmovements of the symphony that

(15:02):
you're going to play for thatday come on at exactly the right
time.
That's the big thing in termsof the timing.
And, by the way, if you aresomebody who has become a late
owl because you've repeatedlystimulated your intrinsically
photosensitive retinal ganglioncells to light at night, one of
the ways of getting that back,of advancing your circadian

(15:23):
rhythm so now it's coming onearlier in the night, one of the
ways of getting that back, ofadvancing your circadian rhythm
so now it's coming on earlier inthe night, is to do exactly
what we said expose your eyes tobright light in the morning
time.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah, the way I think about the exposure of
artificial light at night isreally, people are robbing
themselves of melatonin, as youtalk about.
And when you understand theprofound role of melatonin as
essentially the guardian of themitochondrial genome and you
understand that chronic disease,cancer, neurodegenerative
disease, type 2 diabetes, allthese conditions are essentially

(15:55):
an outcome of chronicmitochondrial dysfunction and I
would say I know it has a lackof adequate mitochondrial DNA
repair, which is also known asmitochondrial heteroplasmy, then
you can see how artificiallight at night leads to cancer
and the data on breast cancerincidents, prostate cancer,

(16:17):
these hormone sensitive cancers,and artificial light at night
is unequivocal.
And it's interesting though andwe're going to talk about this
later in the interview is thatpeople can also deprive
themselves of melatonin duringthe day.
That is because a certainwavelength of natural sunlight
generates melatonin in themitochondria Before we get to

(16:38):
that.
I really want to emphasize thisidea of timing.
I've thought about and talkedto a couple of people about the
importance of why these rhythmsevolved, and it seems like it
was not only allowed us to timeeach of our body processes at
the appropriate time, but alsoanticipate changes in the

(16:58):
environment and as the daylength and the season is
constantly changing throughoutthe year.
We're going to constantly needa different.
We need to update that throughthese environmental sensing
mechanisms and questionspecifically about how we're
sensing this light.
And we talked about theintrinsically photosensitive
ganglion cells and they containthis really unique protein

(17:23):
called melanopsin.
Do you want to explain a littlebit about melanopsin, how you
think about it and what it'sdoing?

Speaker 2 (17:31):
It's basically like a neurotransmitter, from what I
understand.
It's interesting to me that,first of all, that these
intrinsically photosensitiveretinal ganglion cells are in
the lower portion of the eye.
We kind of mentioned that alittle bit in terms of the fact
that they're going to be moresensitive to light, that is, in
the upper visual fields.
They're also most sensitive toblue light.

(17:53):
I don't know if that's whatyou're getting at in terms of
that.
Blue light is going to be theone that sets it off probably
the most sensitively.
But in practical terms, fromwhat I've seen, there's a lot of
things that have come out thathave looked at blue light versus
red light, and I would have tosay that if you block all of the

(18:14):
blue light and still have thatlight hitting your retina,
that's still not as good ashaving no light.
I think that's the key that wefound.
They did a study where theylooked at changing the hue of
digital screens and they noticedthat really there wasn't that
much of a difference as opposedto a study that they did where
they took people reading atnight a liquid crystal display

(18:38):
like a Kindle book we call it, Iguess versus a soft light on a
regular book that you might havebook we call it, I guess versus
a soft light on a regular bookthat you might have, and there
was a world of difference, notonly in terms of the amount of
light that was coming into theeye, but also the delay in the
ability to fall asleep, because,again, of that melatonin
shutdown.
But, yeah, melanopsin issensitive specifically to the

(19:01):
blue light.
I don't know how clinicallyrelevant that is, though,
because our attempts to modulatethat really haven't panned out.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yeah, I was going to ask you because in the clinical
data there is evidence thatmelanopsin, this blue light
detecting non-visualphotoreceptor, which has this
absorption peak at around 480nanometers in the blue, which
incidentally matches what we seenaturally outdoors in the sky
we're expressing this melanopsinreceptor in our skin.

(19:32):
We're also expressing it indeeper brain regions.
So it really is pointing to meto this idea that the body is
trying to collect as much lightinformation from its environment
as possible to entrain thecircadian clocks not only in the
eye and the brain and theretina, but all throughout the

(19:52):
body.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah, that's something that I haven't thought
about, so I appreciate that.
It's almost as if we are seeingthat the body can do a lot more
than we thought.
I mean classically, probably 50to 100 years ago, we thought
that the only way that the bodycould sense light was through
the eyes, and we're nowdiscovering that that's maybe
not the case.

Speaker 1 (20:14):
Yeah, it's very fascinating Then when we also
throw in the mix that we havethese other non-visual
photoreceptors, like Neuropsin,which is detecting in the UVA
range in our retina and in thetestes.
This is like again not beingreally translated into human
studies yet, but it really againpoints to this idea of humans

(20:35):
as really these light beingsthat are so sensitive to
environmental light cues andtherefore disruptions or
perturbations in this light.
So let's talk about theartificial light problem,
because you mentioned lux, andlux is, as you talked about, a
measure of brightness.
But the problem with artificiallight is not only it's lower

(20:55):
lux compared to the sun, butit's also a profoundly different
spectrum compared to the sunand it's also got flicker.
So this is nothing like thelight that we evolved under.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
No, it's a cheap imitation actually and when you
start to look at it you knowsuperficially to the human eye
and to the human brain.
At first glance it may besimilar, in that it's light.
But you've just very adequatelysummarized the differences and
maybe if we dig down.
I'm not too familiar with theconsequences of flicker.

(21:28):
I don't think anybody reallyknows the true nature of how
damaging that could be.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
It's mostly my bad, yeah, I mean the ability to
concentrate.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
You know who knows where that train ends.
But I think we are starting toget a fairly good understanding
about the fact that, well, ledlights the ones that at least
are commercially available forus to put into our homes are
completely devoid of lightbeyond 760 or the near-infrared
spectrum, and it's not byaccident.
I mean it's done that on purpose.

(21:59):
It's mentioned that this energygoing into that area, those
wavelengths, would be wasted,and the very reason why we have
LED lights or we're asked to putthose in I don't know how it is
in Australia, but in the UnitedStates it's basically becoming
mandatory and you can't findincandescent bulbs it's because
of energy reduction.

(22:20):
And, of course, for someone whodoesn't understand that and I
can say that 10, 15 years ago,when I first moved into my home
and I wanted to make my homemore efficient, yeah, it was
worth spending the extra fewdollars to get the LED versions
and I noticed a significantimprovement in my electric bill,

(22:41):
but certainly the lack ofinfrared light was nowhere near
close to being on my mind atthat point.
We're now starting tounderstand that that has
ramifications, that thatinvisible light that we can't
see with the naked eye, or atleast perceive, may have a whole
host of other health benefits.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
Yeah, and I really want you to expand on this point
, because I see natural solarradiation as necessary in all
its different forms, and todistill and remove 90% of the
solar spectrum, which isessentially what LED and compact
fluorescent bulbs are, and thenstick people in a room

(23:17):
underneath that light all day,for, you know, six, eight hours
to 12 hours, seems to be arecipe for disaster.

Speaker 2 (23:28):
Well, see, and that's the thing, what we've done in
science, if you want to look atit philosophically is we've
become reductionist.
So we've looked at things innature that are packaged
together.
The nature of science is, ifsomething is good, if a product
that has 10 ingredients in it wefind to be very good for
somebody, then what we're goingto do is we're going to try to

(23:48):
figure out which one of thoseingredients is doing the
goodness, if you will, of thatperson, completely ignoring the
possibility that maybe it's notany one of those substances, but
maybe one of those substancesin conjunction with something
else that it's packaged with,and maybe it's packaged in this
way, in a way that interfaceswith us in a specific way.

(24:09):
So, to give you the examples ofwhere we've completely missed
the boat on that and it's notcontroversial whatsoever but we
noticed many years ago that lungcancer patients did better if
they were eating diets that wererich in vitamin A and vitamin E
, and so the scientists thoughtwell, maybe there's something
about these antioxidants that'shelping these patients with lung
cancer.

(24:29):
So they extracted the vitamin E, vitamin A, they concentrated
it and they fed it to lungcancer patients.
Well, what do you know?
Those lung cancer.
Patients that had high levelsof vitamin E and A
supplementations given to themdid much worse than those that
didn't get it.
So obviously there's somethingthat we have to realize that
when we take it out of itsenvironment it may act

(24:52):
completely differently than whatwe think is going on.
And so you have to realize thatsunlight is more than 50% by
photons for red light.
So to say that the purpose ofthe sun, that the sun is wasting
over 50% I won't say 50% ofthat energy, because those
photons do have a lower energythan the visible in the

(25:14):
ultraviolet.
So it's not by energy but byphotons that are coming from the
sun.
The majority of those photonsare in the infrared spectrum.
There's a lot about 38% of thephotons are in the visible
spectrum.
And then what's ever about?
38% of the photons are in thevisible spectrum.
And then what's ever left over?
You've got that in theultraviolet A, ultraviolet B and
then of course ultraviolet C,which hardly ever makes it into
the atmosphere.
It's a very specific package andit's packaged very specifically

(25:37):
in that way.
One has to wonder why thatmight be the case.
But what we've done is we'vesaid, okay, we're going to take
that light.
We're going to reduce thatlight and we're going to only
limit it to the 38% that we'regetting and, as you said you
said it beautifully, you knowput you in a room for six to
eight hours a day and thenassume that there's going to be
no health benefits.
It reminds me of what ourdefense secretary many years ago

(26:01):
, donald Rumsfeld, said.
He says you know, you've gotthe things that you know, that
you know the things that youknow that you don't know.
But let's not forget, there'sthe things that you don't know,
that you don't know.
And clearly, I think when LEDbulbs were being developed and
this was going to be a great wayto save on energy, I think that
was the focus that everyone hadwas saving energy.

(26:21):
There was concern about, youknow, about global warming, the
environment, these sorts ofthings, and the detriment to
human health and infrared.
I don't know if I can blamethem too much, because a lot of
the science has come aboutrecently, but yes, there is this
idea, this philosophicalunderstanding that, hey, we're
giving this light without thebalance of this light.
What's going to happen in thattype of a situation?

(26:43):
I don't think anyone's reallythought about that, and so there
was ignorance at that time, butI'll have to tell you, max, the
excuse for ignorance is gettingsmaller and smaller, because I
think the data is coming out andit's showing very clearly and
we'll talk about this as we goon that infrared light is very
beneficial.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
Yeah, undoubtedly, and you said it really well.
The photon count when we'restanding on Earth is majority is
in that non-visible, nearinfrared, which is beyond red
visible, and even if, by actualenergy, most of the light we're
getting is in the visible, andthere's, I mean, a very, very

(27:24):
kind of minor aside.
We didn't talk about the bluelight hazard, which is another
consequence or detrimentaleffect of artificial blue light,
mostly, I believe, at 420rather than 480 nanometers.
But the reason why and bluelight is obviously causing
issues like oxidative stress inthe retina, the reason why that
isn't a problem in naturalsunlight, is precisely because

(27:47):
that blue is balanced by red andinfrared light.
But the point I think that Ireally want to emphasize is that
life and its evolution over 3.4billion years would have made
use of every single last pieceof energy in the environment and
adapted over an iterativeperiod through natural selection

(28:09):
to make use of absolutelyeverything that is available.
So to presume that nature isn'tusing, as you say, 50% of the
solar spectrum is a ridiculousproposition.
And with work of Dr Bob Fosbury, Professor Bob Fosbury and
Scott Zimmerman, of Dr BobFosbury, professor Bob Fosbury
and Scott Zimmerman, we're kindof finding out how much the
human body and plants animals,fungi are actually using that

(28:30):
type of near-infrared light.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
Yeah, I mean, regardless of what anyone's
philosophies are on origins, itdoesn't make any sense either
way, whether by evolution or bycreation.
Let's take the creationiststandpoint.
Why would God create a sun thatwastes 50% of its energy and
not have it utilized by thehuman beings and the creatures
that it created?

(28:53):
And then you can look at it theother way.
In terms of evolution, I mean,this is a tremendous amount of
energy that's coming at thatpoint and why not make use of it
?
I believe the allure of energyefficiency gave us the blinders
to not have to consider thatpossibility, because it's a lot
of energy that it takes to getthat infrared going.

(29:16):
I mean, for people tounderstand and to put this into
terms of reality, when you gooutside into the sun and you
close your eyes and you've gotmaybe one or two layers that
you're wearing of clothes onyour body, you can still feel
the sun.
That's infrared light.
That is the effect of infraredlight penetrating through your

(29:37):
clothes, penetrating through thetop surface of your skin,
exciting the heat receptors, andit doesn't stop there.
It may be stopping therelinearly, but then it starts to
scatter in all directions and itcan even penetrate even deeper.
And that's where I think somepeople get confused about some
of the studies about how deepcan infrared light penetrate.
Yes, there's a linear limit toits penetration, but then after

(29:59):
that it just scatters until itgets absorbed by a weak absorber
, as Scott Zimmerman likes toopine.
But there's actual good data onthat and this is a real key
thing here is if you can'tunderstand that, you'll
understand this, and I like touse this analogy because it's
all happened to all of us.
Right, we pull up to a stoplightand there's somebody next to us
playing that really loud music.

(30:20):
What do we hear next to us?
We hear the low frequency.
We hear the boom, boom, thesteering wheel shaking.
Why?
It's because low frequencyenergy is predominantly the type
of energy that's penetratingthrough that person's car, then
your car, and is actuallyresonating with the steering
wheel and shaking the steeringwheel.
An electrical storm way off inthe distance.

(30:42):
The first sounds that you hearof an electrical storm is that
low, booming frequency soundthat you hear, not the high
pitch ones.
When you hear the high pitchones, you know it's very close.
And again, the reason is thatlow frequency energy penetrates
solid objects very easily.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
Yeah, that's a great analogy for people to understand
.
A point about the fixation onenergy efficiency and the
lighting industry has a metricand it's called lumens per watt.
And when they are mandating alighting standard for energy
saving, they're that they haveto produce a bulb that turns all
near-infrared deficient lightand therefore put it in our

(31:47):
schools, put it in ourpreschools, put it in our
nursing homes, put it in ourintensive care and emergency
departments and therefore createprofoundly unhealthy work and
living spaces.
But to really go deep again onthe near-infrared light point,
it seems like clinicians, ourunderstanding or our teaching

(32:08):
about light seems to bepredominantly around the health
effects or harms of UV light.
We don't get taught in any way,shape or form the biological
effects of visible andnear-infrared.
A lot of clinicians think thatinfrared can only penetrate half
a centimeter into the body but,as you just mentioned, the work

(32:29):
of Scott Zimmerman, who'sactually an optics engineer and
has modeled the optics of lightpenetration, showed that these
near-infrared photons areessentially ping-ponging around
like a pinball machine in thebody and therefore penetrating
deeper up to 10 centimeters, Ibelieve.
Yes.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah, and not just through skin but also through
bone, and this is somethingthat's really hard for people to
understand.
But you and I, max, we knowthat when we went through
medical school, one of thethings that we did was to
transilluminate the sinuses andby shining a light on the
outward surface of the skin andwe could see in a dark room, the
maxilla or the hard palateilluminating, and that's because

(33:11):
the light was able to passthrough that.
So that's visible light.
Imagine if we used infraredlight how much more that would
be the case.
So you mentioned LED lights,and certainly there are issues
there in that industry.
But another industry is thewindow industry.
I don't know how it is inAustralia, but I can tell you in
California that the latest,greatest thing that's going to

(33:33):
save so much energy it's notactually that new is something
called low-E glass which blockson purpose infrared light from
getting inside because you don'twant to overuse your air
conditioner.
You can tell if you've got lowE glass pretty easily when the
sun is coming through.
If you can feel that warmth ofthat sun coming through that
glass, it's probably not low Eglass because it's allowing that

(33:56):
infrared ray to come through.
But if you're not feeling, ifyou're just getting light
without any warmth feeling, thenit's very likely that what
you're dealing with there is lowe-glass.
And yet it's another reasonthat if you really want to get
the benefits of this type ofbalanced light, you've got to go
outside.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
Yeah, and to be clear for anyone who's interested,
the only transparent surfacethat I'm aware of that actually
permits full spectrum sunlight,including UV light, is quartz,
and in one podcast Dr Jack Cruztalked about fitting NICU
neonatal intensive care cribswith quartz covers so that they
could get full-spectrum sunlightin.

(34:34):
But that's an interesting aside.
Let's talk about thephysiological role of
neonphrolight and what is itactually doing, and I want to
reference a paper that I've seenyou talk about a lot.
It's called Melatonin and theOptics of the Human Body by
Scott Zimmerman and RussellRyder.
I've described this as aninstant, a classic album that

(34:56):
gets discovered 20 years later.
It isn't appreciated when itwas first released, but this is
such an important finding, sotell me what that paper meant
for you.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
It was groundbreaking .
I mean I could use all the punsthat I like to use.
It was eye-opening.
It shed light on the topic.
There's so many puns that Icould use, they're all true.
I just remember, max, I was atthis point in my traveling here
in my mind of COVID and all thethings that were going on and
vitamin D and whether vitamin Dwas working or not, and was

(35:31):
there more to the sun than justvitamin D?
These were little intrusivethoughts that were coming into
my mind.
And then, I don't even know how, but I came across this paper
by Scott Zimmerman and RussellRyder and it literally changed
how I saw not only light but thehuman body and its interaction
with light.
There were so many points inthat paper that just you know.

(35:53):
First of all, the understandingof the mitochondria.
The second was the fact that itcould penetrate deeply.
This opened up so many doorsfor potential therapeutics.
This opened up so many doorsfor potential therapeutics.
The idea that it couldpenetrate through bone, the
ideas of the highly reflectivenature of green plants.

(36:14):
When I started hearing thesethings, all of these dots
started to become connected allquickly.
We have long-time data thatshows that natural light in
schools improve learning.
We have long times of data thattalked about the people that
live in green spaces have lessdiabetes, less stress, they have
lower diastolic blood pressure,they have lower urinary

(36:36):
cortisol levels.
We've had reams of data thatshows that chronic diseases like
heart disease, diabetes,obesity, dementia these are all
related to mitochondrialdysfunction and long COVID and
all of these things.
And all of a sudden I went towork and I said you know what?
We need to create a video?
And I called Kyle, who's mypartner at MedCraft.

(36:57):
I said we need to do a video onthis.
This is the most incrediblething.
So it took us about a month toreally put it together and it
was probably a little tooambitious because we looked at
the circadian rhythm and then,after circadian rhythm, we
talked about what we're talkingabout right now with infrared
light, and I wish maybe we wouldhave dedicated and in future

(37:18):
videos we did dedicate it tojust that aspect of it.
But I tell you I was so giddythe night before we released
that video because it's like Icannot wait to hear what people
have to think about this and itwas well documented and it just
really changed my mind.
It opened my mind, it made mesee the possibilities about why

(37:39):
all these things were happening.
And then, of course, naturallyI just followed into
photobiomodulation, sort oflooking at these things
understanding.
Naturally I just followed intophotobiomodulation, sort of
looking at these thingsunderstanding well, why is this
happening?
And it was fascinating.
It was just amazing andexplained a lot, explained a lot
.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
Yeah, it's a totemic paper, and the kind of key
findings that I really havetalked about is this discovery
that we're actually synthesizingmelatonin, this antioxidant.
So it's not just a sign or asignal for sleep as it is having
an endocrine or systemic effect, but it's actually having a
local antioxidant effect, whichProfessor Fosbury has talked
about as almost like the coolant.

(38:22):
It's like the engine coolantthat's being made on site in the
mitochondria to mop up reactiveoxygen species that are
generated as a result of normalcellular respiration, and that
is in itself incredible, and Ithink that explains what you
talked about in terms of thosebroader, perhaps epidemiological
or clinical data showing thebenefit of the outdoors.

(38:44):
But then the optics aspect ofit was groundbreaking to me,
because what Scott showed wasthat the amniotic fluid and the
cerebrospinal fluid both hadtransmissive properties for
near-infrared photons.
What that essentially meant isthat the human body was

(39:04):
concentrating near-infraredlight and bathing the fetus in a
pregnant woman with theseantioxidant-delivering
near-infrared photons.
I mean this is incredible stuff.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
Yeah, it gives you new meaning to the term.
A bun in the oven.
It's literally being warmed,and it also is another reason
why you know women who arepregnant and want to do the best
for their babies is to getoutside.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
And to get even more of that sunlight.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
Yeah, and when Robert Fosbury did his spectrographic
examinations on mushrooms, itturned out that they were
concentrating the near-infraredphotons in their reproductive or
in nuts, I believe.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
It seemed like it was conserved in that other
organisms were trying toconcentrate near-infrared light
into their reproductive, youknow, into their products, so
that they could perhaps optimizethat process.
Yeah, and of course we all knowthat we all get our
mitochondria from our mothersfor the most part, and that's
going to be in the ovary, sorry,in the eggs which are in the
ovary.
Those seem to be pretty deepinside the body, but, as we saw
with Scott's and Russell's paper, eight centimeters may be the

(40:26):
depth that you need.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
Talk about the mitochondrial electron transport
chain now, because thisbranches into the
photobiomodulation research,because what is actually
happening with regard to theinteraction between different
light wavelengths and thiscritical process in biology?

Speaker 2 (40:46):
Yeah.
So for those that don't knowabout what happens in the
mitochondria, it's like anengine.
It's the engine of your cell.
It produces ATP, which, if youcan imagine an engine in your
car is like an engine that'sproducing locomotion.
It causes your car to go, butin the process of doing that it
makes heat, and that heat has tobe dealt with, otherwise it can
make the engine veryinefficient and eventually make

(41:08):
it shut down.
So the heat of the mitochondriais oxidative stress.
So that is something thatoccurs in the process of what it
does, just like an engine does.
And so you've got to understandthat, as the electron transport
chain is occurring, is doingwhat it needs to do during the
mitochondrial process.
Essentially, what it's doing isit's basically handing off

(41:32):
electrons, which are highlynegative reduced electrons, I
should say to more and moreoxidized, until finally you have
these extremely oxidizedelectrons and you've got to give
it to something that's moreoxidized than it is, and the
only thing more oxidized than itis is oxygen itself, which is
the reason why we need tobreathe oxygen, because it needs
to accept those final electronsat the end of that electron

(41:55):
transport chain.
So the process is this it needsto transfer four electrons to
the oxygen molecule.
If it does that, it's great,there's no problem.
But if it's inefficient in anyway, if it's damaged in any way,
it may do three electrons, inwhich case it makes a hydroxy
radical.
If it does two electrons, itcreates a hydrogen peroxide

(42:18):
molecule.
If it just does one electron,then it's giving you a
superoxide.
Now there are species ofenzymes that are there to take
care of this, like superoxidedismutase, catalase, the
glutathione peroxidase system.
But nevertheless, if you createthese hydroxy radicals,

(42:40):
hydroperoxide, these are soreactive that they only have to
float a few I don't knowangstroms, a few molecule
lengths, and it will damage thevery machinery that is trying to
do the electron transport.
It's the same thing with theengine that the pistons are

(43:00):
moving up and down and unlessthere's oil in that engine and
the oil is lubricatingeffectively, the heat is going
to cause those pistons toenlarge and of course the
cylinder to enlarge and it'sgoing to get tighter and tighter
until finally it seizes andyou're actually damaging the
very thing that it should be.
And the more it gets damaged,the more heat it's going to make

(43:21):
and the faster it's going toget damaged.
It's exactly the same thingwith oxidative stress.
The more oxidative stress thatyou have, the more damage occurs
.
The more damage occurs, theless efficiently it's going to
transpose those electrons towater, to oxygen to make water,
and the more damage you're goingto get.
So it's a vicious cycle.
The best thing to do is to makesure that your mitochondria are

(43:41):
well taken care of, thatthere's an abundance of
antioxidants all around, so thatit can suck up those hydroxy
radicals and the hydrogenperoxide and the superoxides
faster than they can actuallycause damage, and so for that
you need an extremely powerfulantioxidant, melatonin, that is
able to upregulate around it.

(44:02):
So that's really what we'reseeing.
What we're also seeing is thatwe are seeing that diseases such
as diabetes, heart disease,obesity, dementia, cancer,
inflammation, long COVID theseare all diseases which have
their root in mitochondrialdysfunction, and the reason why

(44:23):
I got involved with this, max,from the very beginning was my
treatment of COVID patients.
I'm a pulmonary and criticalcare specialist, so I was front
and center in dealing with thosetype of patients, and so
there's, you know, we can talkabout COVID.
But the two big questions thatI had that brought me to the
table to look at this paper.

(44:43):
The first question was why arewe seeing?
The people that are mostsusceptible to COVID-19 are the
ones that are getting sick anddying the people with diabetes,
the people with heart disease,the people with obesity, the
people with dementia, these verypeople that have mitochondrial
dysfunction are the very peoplethat are most susceptible to

(45:07):
dying if they get SARS-CoV-2.
I thought that was interesting,so that led me down this path
of oxidative stress.
As it turns out, the SARS-CoV-2virus binds the ACE2 receptor,
and the ACE2 receptor, as itturns out, is not actually a
receptor, it is a receptor forthe virus, but that's not why
it's there.
The reason why it's there is toactually modulate, to help

(45:29):
modulate and also be a coolingsystem itself for the engine to
modulate and get rid ofoxidative stress.
As it turns out, it takesangiotensin 2 and converts it
into angiotensin 1,7.
Angiotensin 1,7 is actually anantioxidant.
That's good.
Angiotensin 2 is actually apro-oxidant.
Ace2 is actually a goodmolecule, it's a good enzyme,

(45:54):
but it gets decimated.
With SARS-CoV-2 virus.
What happens?
The cell becomes even moreoxidative stress.
If you have these, if you canimagine these diabetics, these
obese people who are runningaround with engines that are
running hot, why?
Because they've got damagedengines already.
And now what's happening isthey get infected with the virus

(46:16):
and so, instead of just havinghot engines, they're now having
to go up this hill calledCOVID-19.
And these engines are going toburn out at the top of that hill
, whereas people who have betterrunning engines don't have
chronic diseases.
Their engines are running morecoolly.
Yes, they're going to run alittle bit hotter, but because
they're running so well to beginwith, they're not going to poop

(46:36):
out, they're not going to seizeup on that hill called COVID-19
.
So that was the first questionthat I had that led me to this
understanding.
The second question that I hadthat led me to this
understanding.
This is why I started thinkingabout light is.
It's unequivocal, it is noteven controversial.
We have ample evidence thatshows that people who came in

(46:58):
with COVID-19 and had goodvitamin D levels did well,
significantly better than thosethat came in with low vitamin D
levels.
Now, the first thing that theywould tell you in that kind of a
study, max, you and I both knowwhen we went to medical school.
What'd they say?
Association does notnecessarily mean causation,

(47:18):
right, but hey, what else do wehave, right?
So what did we start giving ourpatients with COVID-19?
.
We started giving them vitaminD, and boy, the difference
between those that had goodvitamin D levels and bad vitamin
D levels was so much that Ithink we were preparing
ourselves for a greatrenaissance of vitamin D.

(47:39):
That people would, if we justgave them vitamin D early enough
and in just the right amount ofdoses, that we could save the
world with vitamin D.
The fact of the matter is thatthe results were mixed.
There were some studies thatseemed to indicate that it might
be helpful, especially if yougave the active form, especially
if you gave it early andespecially if you gave it high
enough doses.

(47:59):
Then there were studies likeShade et cetera, where they gave
high doses but not the activeform, and it really didn't make
much of a difference at all.
So the results were all overthe map.
Look, I don't want to disparagepeople who supplement with
vitamin D.
I supplement with vitamin D.
I think it is beneficial.
It just wasn't as beneficial aswe thought it would be.
So then I began to think it'spossible that vitamin d is a

(48:25):
marker for something else that'sdoing the heavy lifting, and I
think that sort of gets us intothe whole idea of is there
something about sunlight otherthan vitamin d.
That's benefiting, and we justsort of alluded to it, because
greater than 50 of the photonscoming from the sun is in the
infrared spectrum, which hasabsolutely nothing to do with

(48:47):
vitamin D.

Speaker 1 (48:49):
Yeah, amazing, and that is such an important point
that I'm going to reallyunderline.
And the vitamin D serum, 25hydroxy vitamin D is a biomarker
of how much sunlight thatperson has had, how much
sunlight you've got, or how muchfull spectrum sunlight that you
have.
And Professor Richard Weller,who is the dermatologist looking

(49:11):
at the systemic effects ofsunlight on health, he's come to
the same conclusion.
And predominantly becausethere's such a big disconnect
between the interventional dataof supplementing purified
vitamin D versus theobservational data of these
amazingly improved healthoutcomes of those people that
have a higher storage form ofvitamin D.

(49:32):
And look, coming back to thereductionist point that you made
earlier in our discussion, isto think that we can distill the
incredible benefits offull-spectrum sunlight into a
little pill.
I mean you and I know that itwould never that's.
You know it's a completelyhubristic thought, but I'm
really excited to talk to thisexact point.

(49:52):
Just before we go into that, Ijust want to make a point about
the effect of red light, and redlight is also being absorbed by
cyttochrome C oxidase, thefourth complex, and helping that
process of oxidation, and it'salso helping the….

Speaker 2 (50:10):
Yeah, you asked….

Speaker 1 (50:11):
Yeah, go on.
No, no, go ahead.
Atpa, such that you don't needto in full spectrum sunlight.
You don't need electron inputsfrom food for the electron
transport chain to work ifyou're receiving these light
inputs.

Speaker 2 (50:30):
Yeah.
So your original question waswhat's going on, and that is, I
think, even Glenn Jeffrey, whodid the landmark studies in 2021
and then just published thisyear, in 2024, on red light in
the retina and red light on theback, to show mitochondrial
improvement respectively.
I think he would even say thatwe really don't know exactly

(50:53):
what's going on.
There's been a couple oftheories.
Obviously, cytochrome C let'sjust look at the name of the
enzyme cytochrome chrome,meaning color.
Obviously this is able toabsorb specific wavelengths of
light.
Do we know exactly how it'sworking?
I don't know.
There's some papers that wouldseem to say that this is how it
does work.

(51:13):
Some papers would say maybe not.
There's some papers that saythat the infrared light and I
know this from chemistry, justbeing a chemistry major is that
if you look at an infraredspectroscopy and you look and
see where the O and the H bondsare, it's right there in the
infrared spectrum that you cansee that there is wobble and

(51:34):
where there is potentialabsorption.
You can see this if you comparethe solar radiation from the
sun to what actually getsthrough the atmosphere.
If there's water in theatmosphere, there's going to be
a sharp absorption there ataround 940.
We'll get back to 940 later andwhy that's important, but it's
possible at least they believeit's possible that that type of

(51:55):
light is structuring the waterin a way that allows the as you
alluded to the kinetics of thatFTAPase to rotate more
efficiently and less viscousfluid, which is the thing
responsible for the reason whyit's actually able to ramp up.
It might be worth noting justthis one little thing that
there's a theory of aging thatas you get older, your

(52:20):
mitochondria make 70% less ATP.
Up to this point you might havebeen wondering, or your
audience might have beenwondering well, why is it so
important to increase ATP output?
And that's because when you'rea baby, when you're two or three
, up to 10 years of age, yourmitochondria are working just
fine, they're working very well.
But as we get older, a lot ofthe chronic illnesses, a lot of

(52:42):
the chronic diseases that we see, are a result of significant
battery reduction in ourmitochondria.
So anything that we can do tobiohack and get that ATP
production back up, it's verylikely that we're going to see a
reduction in aging.
We may even see a reversal inaging in terms of our ability
and all of those things that arerelated to mitochondrial

(53:04):
dysfunction.

Speaker 1 (53:05):
Yeah, amazing.
And two quick points.
Professor Michael Hamblin, whois the world leader on the
photobiomodulation research, haspublished data suggesting the
absorption characteristics ofthat cytochrome C and related to
, I believe, the copper centersis one of the mechanisms.
And he's also talked aboutinterfacial water, so the fact

(53:28):
that, as you alluded to, thewater is actually acting as a
chromophore itself to absorbthat light and essentially
structuring it, that's a veryinteresting detour.
The second point I want toquickly make is that Dr Doug
Wallace, who was at theChildren's Hospital of
Philadelphia and theworld-leading researcher on
mitochondria, who essentiallyworked out that the maternal

(53:50):
inheritance of mitochondrial DNAallowed us to map that whole
migration process, he has talkedabout this idea of heteroplasmy
, which is the rate ofmitochondrial DNA mutations
which accumulate a decade ondecade and decade, and the
degree of mitochondrialheteroplasmy that one
accumulates in an organ-specificmanner dictates what flavor of

(54:14):
those diseases that youmentioned earlier that you get.
And obviously there's geneticpredispositions.
If you have family histories,maybe it's more likely to
manifest chronic kidney diseaseversus type 2 diabetes.
But that is a key point thatyou have just spoken to.
In terms of the waterproduction.
Water is that other exhaustfume, I guess, out of
mitochondrial respiration.

(54:35):
It's obviously getting rid ofcarbon dioxide, but it's also
producing water.
So as mitochondrial efficiencyreduces, water production in
mitochondria decrease and thentotal body water content
decreases.
So, as you rightly said, Roger,that the key goal here is to
optimize mitochondrial functioninto aging, meaning that we need

(54:55):
to preserve our health as muchas possible, and plugging into
natural solar radiation seems tobe.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
And plugging into natural solar radiation seems to
be one of the most importantthings.
Yeah, so let's just catalogreal quickly some of the major
headpoints here of Glenn Jeffreyand his lab at University
College London.
The one that's most notable isthe most recent one, where he
took healthy volunteers.
One where he took healthyvolunteers, he gave them a

(55:26):
75-gram load of glucose and hebasically lit their backs with
red light, not infrared light,but red light, as you alluded to
.
I think it was 670, if I'm notmistaken, yeah, 670.
Yeah, and so he showed very,very elegantly that the
mitochondrial efficiencyimproved so dramatically that
there was actually a reductionin the peaking of that glucose I
think by about 27% at peak, andthey were able to show that

(55:48):
this in fact wasn't you know, itwasn't like a sleight of hand
here there was actualimprovement in mitochondrial
function because they were ableto detect an increase in carbon
dioxide in the breath of thesepeople.
That got that.
The other point that it's reallyinteresting to mention, too, is
the idea that what he did threeyears earlier, where he took
people who were older, who hadan inability to distinguish

(56:13):
between colors because of theirretina and because of photo
aging, of aging because of theireyes.
One point to understand is thatthe retina is actually the part
of the body that has the highestconcentration of mitochondria,
and all it took was threeminutes of red light into the
retina and these people wereable to see better in terms of

(56:33):
differentiating color, which isvery energy dependent in terms
of mitochondria, for five days.
So something is going on wherethere is just enough that is
needed to create a change thatlasts for about five days.
I think that's very encouraging, especially when we hear and we
talk about people that areliving in environments and

(56:55):
climates where the sun doesn'tcome out every single day, where
you might not be able to getthe sun every single day, and
it's encouraging to know thatit's not like one of these
things where the longer youspend in the sun, the better the
effects are.
There seems to be a switch atsome point and that effect lasts
for a number of days.
I think that's reallyinteresting.

Speaker 1 (57:16):
Yeah, it's incredibly valuable and the work of I mean
, that paper that Glenn Jeffreydid is, I think, groundbreaking
as well in terms of thisimplication, which is, if red
light is able to lower bloodglucose and basically rev up
mitochondrial metabolism, ifyou're in a room, an office,

(57:50):
windowless room or low-e glassroom with LED downlights, with
no red and no infrared, thenyour mitochondrial efficiency is
going to go down and the nextstep is obviously diabetes and
prediabetes and insulinresistance because of that lack
of external energy.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
Yeah, of external energy, yeah, yeah.
So for me, I didn't approachthis in terms of longevity.
I didn't approach it in termsof the physiology I'm not a
biologist.
I simply approached this out ofthe necessity for, like, what
am I doing for my patients?
Like, why is vitamin D notworking?
What am I missing here?
What does the sun get orprovide?

(58:22):
And there was a lot of studiesthat came out that were very
tantalizing and built one uponthe other.
The first study for me thatshowed that the sun is more than
just vitamin D was the studythat looked at the surges of
COVID-19 in Europe in 2020.
And as the sun started to godown in Europe in the autumn of

(58:43):
2020, below the equator, intothe Southern Hemisphere, down
where you guys are, the firstcountries that got their surge
was Finland, and then from thereit went a little bit more south
to Germany.
Finally, the last out of allthe countries in Europe to have
their surge was Greece, thecountry that is most Southern.
And they looked at thecorrelation.
It had nothing to do withtemperature, it had nothing to

(59:04):
do with humidity.
They plotted those out.
Those R-squareds were flat, butthe R-squared for the latitude
was clearly correlative.
Another study that was done outof the University of Edinburgh
was they looked at mortality andlight in the United States in
areas where they could not getenough vitamin D.
So they looked at the northernportions of the United States

(59:27):
where there was no way enoughultraviolet B was coming through
to make any sort of vitamin D.
They still noticed in thoseareas that the more light that
there was, the lower theCOVID-19 mortality.
They repeated those studies inEngland, found exactly the same
results.
Repeated again in Italy, foundexactly the same results.

(59:49):
So it's incredible that thatwas the case and actually I
worked with a geographist fromMexico, margaret Skutch, and she
and I looked at all of thecountries of the entire world
and we correlated that in thosecountries that had greater than
50% overweight rates in theirpopulation that there was a

(01:00:12):
statistical significantcorrelation between mortality of
COVID-19 and latitude.
But you know what?
It's not just COVID-19.
So if, for instance, in theUnited States, if you were to go
and look at the last four orfive years and look at
specifically every day of theyear, you will see that whether

(01:00:34):
it's pneumonia, influenza, heartdisease, kidney disease,
infections in general, all sortsof diseases, they all peak at
the same time, roughly about aweek or two after the shortest
day of the year, and they allhit their nadir about one to two
weeks after the longest day ofthe year.

(01:00:55):
There was a study that Harvarddid this is the Harvard Kennedy
School and they looked atinfluenza, they looked at solar
radiation data and they lookedat influenza rates from the CDC
and they were able to sayconclusively, and I quote, that
sunlight strongly protectedagainst getting influenza.

(01:01:25):
We as a country, we as a society, as an industrialized world,
are moving towards being indoors, energy efficiency and
basically doing everything thatwe possibly can to devoid
ourselves of infrared light.
It reminds me and somebody Ithink mentioned this, I don't
know if it was you, maybe youdid it or somebody else, I think
it was maybe Bob Fosbury.
He said that this is the newscurvy.
We're putting people on shipswithout limes, lemons or vitamin

(01:01:47):
C and they're all coming downwith scurvy, and scurvy is now
the new norm, and what we'refinding is you add a couple of
lemons back into the situationand you get these miraculous
recoveries.
It's not the fact that theselemons are causing miraculous
recoveries.
It's the fact that we're nowsupplementing a deficiency that
we've caused over the last fiveor six decades.

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
Yeah, amazing data, and it's just.
These are all windows into thesame room of the essential role
of sunlight in health.
That's how I think about it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
I saw during COVID.
I mean, I was on COVID wardsduring certain periods and I saw
the patients who weredeteriorating were the ones with
the visceral fat.
They were the ones that hadpre-existing type 2 diabetes.
They're the ones that had thissmoldering metabolic
inflammation, smolderingmitochondrial dysfunction and,
as you alluded to earlier, whenthe virus kind of came and it

(01:02:44):
provided that extra stressor upand above what they're already
dealing with, you know, thewheels fell off the bus and they
collapsed.
So it's interesting.
Sorry, go on.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
I was going to say for us, the very first people
that came into our hospitals,the very first people that came
in were nursing home patients,and unfortunately we know that
these nursing home patients aredealt with, they're taken care
of very well inside.
They hardly ever get outside,and so they may be getting
supplemental vitamin D, butagain we saw that that wasn't
enough.
They need to get outside.

(01:03:15):
I actually saw a few storiesthat people had sent me when I
started talking about light,where they understood the
benefits of sunlight.
They seem to have known thisand they were regularly getting
their nursing home patientsoutside into the sun when the
pandemic hit, and I think theywere proud to say that maybe

(01:03:35):
only one or two of them actuallycame down with COVID and none
of them had to go to thehospital.

Speaker 1 (01:03:41):
Yeah, I think it goes even beyond that and I think it
actually accounts for thehealth disparities in ethnic
groups, both in your country andmy country and I spoke to Dr
Alexis Cowan about this andthere's a good reason to believe
that the worst health outcomesof African-Americans and the
greater prevalence of obesityand diabetes is the fact that

(01:04:03):
epidermal melanin is essentiallypreventing the use, the
utilization of theomega-ultraviolet light that
they're getting when they do gooutside.
I think that's the same thingthat's happening here in
Australia, without IndigenousAustralians who have such
profoundly worse health outcomesthan Australians of European
descent.

(01:04:23):
Yes, there are other socialissues going on, but with such
deep amount of pigmentationFitzpatrick five or some of them
even six their needs are sohigh and they're not being met
if they're indoors all day,which we know from studies is on
the order of 90% plus for theaverage person.

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
Yeah, I mean the Aborigines, the native
Australians, if I could say itthat way.
Their skin has adapted to beingoutside and as they've become
modernized and they've comeinside, these are exactly the
same types of issues that wehave when we have, for instance,
Africans moving to the Nordiccountries and not getting enough
sunlight.
In that sense, they're at riskfor vitamin D deficiency.

(01:05:04):
Certainly, but vitamin D isjust one variable in that
equation, right?
That's just the UVB that we'retalking about.
How do you measure the lack ofNIR?
Those usually go together.
If you're not getting enoughvitamin D, you're probably not
getting enough NIR as well.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
That's a great question.
Maybe a melatonin breakdownproduct urinary we could perhaps
measure.
It was said that the Somalians,when they moved to Toronto and
Detroit, there was no word forautism.
They had no word for it intheir native culture.
And then, after migrating tothese northern regions which, as
you mentioned earlier, roger,have a seasonal absence of a

(01:05:45):
build of ultraviolet B light.
Therefore, no one, how nakedthey're standing, is able to
generate any vitamin D becausethere's just no UVB light at all
when they moved there, thesekids started getting autistic.
Unfortunately, and again fromDoug Wallace's work, this is a
mitochondrial issue.
It's a neurodevelopmentaldisease, but it's reflecting

(01:06:06):
mitochondrial dysfunction in thebrain and likely.
I mean, from what I've read Idon't know if you've read into
this, roger it's likely aneuronal migration problem
related to near-infrareddeficiency, sunlight deficiency
and excess blue light.

Speaker 2 (01:06:20):
Well, I can tell you that I grew up in Toronto until
I was about the age of nine andI remember distinctly in
elementary school havingfundraisers so that we could
raise funds to do research onmultiple sclerosis, a disease
that I rarely heard about againwhen I moved to California.
We know now that multiplesclerosis is definitely latitude
and geographic in nature andit's not surprising.

(01:06:42):
That has to do with latitudeand it's interesting that it's
at these high latitudes that wereally see the stark issues
related to sunlight exposure.
Probably not unknown to you isthe Sweden study, the famous
Sweden study, where you have30,000 Swedish women followed
for 20 years, divided into threegroups those women that avidly

(01:07:06):
followed the sun avidly gotoutside.
Those that got moderate sunexposure.
Those that avoided the sun.
And in a stepwise fashion yousee a reduction in mortality in
those that avidly went after thesun, not only in terms of
cardiovascular mortality wentafter the sun, not only in terms
of cardiovascular mortality,but also in cancer mortality and
non-cardiovascular mortality,and the amplitude is significant

(01:07:28):
.
In fact, the authors in thatstudy said that women who
actively avoided the light,sunlight and did not smoke had
the same mortality as those thatavidly went after the sun and
did smoke.
So that's the type of I find it.
You know, as a pulmonologist, Ifind it mildly humorous that at
least here in the United States, people that wanted to smoke,

(01:07:49):
we sent them outside.
Little did we realize that wewere actually doing them a favor
by getting them outside.
Who knows, maybe we need to getoutside the ones that are not
smoking, and maybe that wouldeven improve our outcomes even
more.
I would say that recently, justin the last month, there was a
paper that was published from UKBiobank data.
10 times the amount, not just30,000, but 300,000, not just

(01:08:14):
women, but men and women foundalmost exactly the same results.
Those that were in solariums,those that went out into the
light, had a reduction inall-cause mortality.

Speaker 1 (01:08:26):
Those two papers have been the subject of my podcast
and discussion for the past yearand they show profound findings
, as you mentioned, which islower all-cause mortality in
those who self-reported more sunexposure and in the UK Biobank
study those who lived at a lowerlatitude.

(01:08:48):
So they actually ascertained intwo separate ways.
The profound, I guess, findingis that in that Sweden study, as
you mentioned, is that if youavoid the sun, that is
equivalent in magnitude of arisk of death as smoking.
I mean you think about apatient coming into the
emergency department with chestpain and we asked them about
their risk factors Are you asmoker?
I mean this data suggests weshould ask them do you avoid the
sun?
Do you?

(01:09:08):
Do you slip slop slap?
You know, in Australia therewas a there's been a program
called slip slop slap aboutputting hats, sunscreens and
sunglasses on.
I mean, imagine if I asked thepatient you know, do you
diligently wear SPF 50 sunscreen, wear a long-sleeve shirt and
hat whenever you go outside?
A lot of my patients say yes.
The Sweden study showed thatthat's a risk factor for

(01:09:30):
all-cause death, cardiovasculardisease and cerebrovascular
disease.

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
It's incredible.
They're probably waiting foryou to smile when they say, yes,
I do that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:39):
Yeah, the question that I want you to wonder if you
have any input in is those areboth Northern European
populations.
The Sweden study was in aFitzpatrick native Swedish women
.
There was little immigration atthe time that study was done,
though the UV index in Swedenpeaks around six because it's so

(01:09:59):
North.
It's my personal opinion thatthose UK Biobank and Swedish
studies are applicable tolow-weight latitude countries,
but what would you say tosomeone that says, okay, that
was Northern European, but it'snot necessarily applicable
everywhere else?

Speaker 2 (01:10:15):
Okay, I would direct them to data that might be
interpretable.
Have you heard about what theydid in Louisville with the 8,000
trees?
Okay, so we talked about at thebeginning that not only does
infrared light have the propertyof penetrating deeply into the
skin, but that green plants,trees, are highly reflective of

(01:10:38):
infrared light.
And we have data that showsthat people who live in green
spaces have the same benefits aspeople who get lots of sunlight
.
And we already know, of course,that this is reflective of
infrared light.
So we think it wouldn't be aleap of logic to say that maybe
this is what's going on.
But we know that people thatlive in green spaces have a
reduction in diabetes, areduction in all-cause mortality
, a reduction in cardiovascularmortality, and it's around the

(01:11:01):
same amount 10%, 20%.
So those same people that say,yeah, that's in Nordic countries
, those same people would say,well, look, people who live in
green spaces have bettersocioeconomic status, they have
more money, they have betterhealthcare, they probably
exercise more.
It has nothing to do withinfrared light.

(01:11:22):
It has to do with all of thoseother comorbidities, or actually
, in this case, confounders.
Well, there's a beautiful studythat basically put that all to
rest, because, in a four squaremile area in Southern Louisville
, louisville, kentucky.
Okay so this is not Nordicright, this is fairly low.
They planted 8,000 plus maturetrees.

(01:11:45):
So these are trees, alreadywith their leaves on.
They're big.
They just planted these treesinto this area.
The people living in that areadid not change.
They did not tell them to go onan exercise program, they just
planted trees.
That's all they did.
They measured the highlysensitive CRP, which is a
surrogate marker forcardiovascular disease, and they

(01:12:05):
found that there was a 13% dropjust by planting the trees.
That's the only difference thathappened.
That may not sound like a lot13% reduction but that's about
what happens when somebody takesup regular exercise from being
sedentary.
So that's actually a fairlylarge reduction in inflammation

(01:12:27):
that we're seeing.
That's related to all of thesechronic diseases that we're
seeing and that's happening at afairly low latitude.
Okay, so what possibly could itbe that these trees were doing?
The trees did not get people outdoing exercise.
Okay, the trees did not getpeople out.
You know, talking to each otherand community, I mean, all of

(01:12:49):
these things are possible, butthe most likely thing that the
trees did, the lowest commondenominator that the trees would
do, is simply, without doinganything, increase the amount of
infrared light dramatically.
I think Scott Zimmerman hasshown that very well in his 2019
paper that shows the amount ofinfrared light that comes to the
human being when you planttrees in their vicinity.

(01:13:12):
It's the reason why, if you goout into the garden, the coolest
place in the garden on a hotsummer day is under a tree.
Why is that?
It's because those leaves arereflecting out all of that
infrared energy and if you'reoutside and you're surrounded by
these trees, this light iscoming to you.
You're getting bombarded, andif we can actually make

(01:13:32):
physiological changes in apopulation in Kentucky by
increasing infrared light, thatshould tell you that these
people are not getting enoughinfrared light to begin with.

Speaker 1 (01:13:45):
Yeah, that's a very fascinating finding and
inference.
The other point I'll quickly goback to those two all-cause
mortality studies because theywere cohort studies and they
basically used these measures ofself-reported UV and
sun-seeking behavior and theyshowed that the cohort that had

(01:14:09):
the more sun exposure in theSwedish study had more skin
cancer but they had lower skincancer mortality and that was
replicated in the Biobank study,meaning that yes, we might
diagnose more BCCs, moresquamous cell carcinomas and
even perhaps more melanomas, butyour likelihood of surviving
that melanoma was, I believe,eightfold greater in the women

(01:14:32):
who had that most activesun-seeking exposure behavior
compared to the ones thatavoided the sun.

Speaker 2 (01:14:38):
So yeah, and I've seen some studies, max, where
the things that have increasedthe risk of death from melanoma
would be things that you wouldassume, like the thickness of
the melanoma, the fact that itmay be axial or on the head and
neck these are all things thatwould increase mortality,
whereas things that woulddecrease mortality were things

(01:14:59):
that would be that go againstwhat we're told Like, for
instance, solar elastosis,basically skin damage from the
sun.
That's a factor that actuallyreduces the mortality from
melanoma.
People who go out into the sunand who are exposed to the sun
more were actually risk factors,beneficial factors, I should

(01:15:20):
say, that reduce melanomamortality.
Fascinating.

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
That's a great one.
I'm really glad you took thatoff the tip of my tongue.
The other one I was about tosay is that they cultured
malignant melanocytes in thecell culture and then they added
in 125-dihydroxyvitamin D,which is the active form of
vitamin D.
What happened?
The malignant melanocytesstopped dividing.
So the more vitamin D you have,which you generate from UV

(01:15:48):
light, that study suggested thatwas protective of the
development or the growth ofmalignant melanoma.
We also know that Breslauthickness is deeper is worse in
people who are vitamin Ddeficient.
There's another study inmetastatic melanoma for patients
receiving these checkpointinhibitors that the outcome, the

(01:16:10):
death, is greatly increased thelower the serum vitamin D is.
And there's also an Italianstudy.
Sorry, I'll let you speak justto quickly get this one in.
There's also an Italian studysorry, I'll let you speak, just
to quickly get this one in.
There's an Italian study whichshowed the outcome of those
diagnosed with melanoma and itwas improved if they took a

(01:16:31):
Mediterranean holiday or anoverseas holiday versus those
that didn't.
I'm not sure exactly how theyascertained that, but these all
go to show that maybe once apatient gets diagnosed with
melanoma, we should actually beadvising them low-level sun
exposure, including a bit of UVB, to help build up that vitamin
D level if we want a betteroutcome.

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):
Yeah, and let's just face it, let's take a step back
here.
The amount of evidence now hasreached a critical mass that the
dermatological world has totake notice.
They have to raise theireyebrows and they got to see.
And you reference Dr Weller.
I'm sure you're aware that herecently published an article in

(01:17:09):
the Journal of InvestigativeDermatology, a major
dermatological journal, and thetitle of his paper was Sunlight
Time for a Rethink.
And I actually just pulled upthe article while you were
talking because it made me thinkabout it.
He says basically here thatthere have been.
He says here the Australianpanel, endorsed by the Cancer

(01:17:30):
Council of Australia andAustralasian College of
Dermatologists, have both justproduced position statements
recognizing that sunlight hasbeneficial effects that should
be considered in formulatingpolicy on sunlight exposure and
highlighting the necessity ofcarrying out further research
into these beneficial effects.
We should take note.

(01:17:52):
So I think we've reached acritical mass and I think people
are starting to wake up and seeit.

Speaker 1 (01:17:59):
Yeah, and to maybe one more facet into this
all-cause mortality picture isthe vitamin D observational
literature, and I guess we'veexplained pretty in depth that
the vitamin D serum level isjust a reflection of how much
sunlight and near-infrared light, uv light that someone's
getting.
But we've known and there'smirror analysis since 2014, that

(01:18:20):
all-cause mortality is linearlyrelated to vitamin D status and
with vitamin D deficiency beinga risk factor for all-cause
death and a range of otheroutcomes.
So to me that is a reallyelegant reflection of what
Weller found in the UK Biobankanalysis, what Peli Lindquist
found in his Melanoma inSouthern Sweden cohort, because

(01:18:42):
it's a different way of lookingat the same thing, which is that
the more time outside, the moresunlight you get, the longer
you live.

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):
Yeah, yeah.
So you know where are we goingwith all of this, you know,
should we be informing themanufacturers of LEDs?
Should we be informing thearchitects, the people that
build hospitals, the doctorsthat take care of patients in
the hospitals?
I just saw an article wherethey were talking about what

(01:19:10):
they did in 1918.
The outdoor air camps hadsignificantly improved mortality
over the ones.
Even the ones that were inhospitals with the windows open
did not do as well as those thatwere fully outside in full
sunlight.
And they said I rememberreading one of the
contemporaries they said look,it's clear to me.

(01:19:30):
All you have to do is try itand you will see.
It's very obvious that patientsget better when they're outside
.
So here's this dichotomy.
We've been talking about twothings.
We've been talking about howsunlight is a major elixir, if
you will, for prevention, but asit turns out, it's actually a
major way of treating theconsequences of lack of sunlight

(01:19:55):
, if you get to that point.
Influenza, covid-19.
And so I had the opportunity toactually treat a patient that
came in with COVID-19 that wasnear intubation, and we were
able to turn him around very,very quickly with infrared light
.
The reason why I was excitedenough to try.
It was because of thisBrazilian study that I'm sure

(01:20:17):
you're aware of, where they gaveagain 940 nanometer light
wavelength, which is exactly atthat frequency where water likes
to absorb.
I wonder whether or not thatinformed their decision to do
940 nanometers.
But they only did it for 15minutes a day and they did it
once a day for seven days andthose patients could take deeper

(01:20:41):
breaths for longer, have betteroxygen saturations, their
immune systems improve fasterand they were discharged from
the hospital four days fasterthan their counterparts.
And this was a randomized,placebo-controlled trial.
So none of this associationcausation.
This was an intervention trialthat had inclusion criteria,

(01:21:03):
that was randomized,placebo-controlled, and they
were able to find highlystatistical, significant numbers
with just 30 patients.
That's pretty impressive.
Obviously, we need more studiesto really nail that down and
figure out what we're doingthere, but that was enough for
me, knowing what the riskfactors.
What's the risk of puttingsomebody in the sun for 15
minutes?
Not a lot and potentialbenefits, potential upsides.

(01:21:27):
So yeah, I had this gentlemanthat came in.
He was on steroids already, hewas getting conventional therapy
and look, I'm not one of thesepeople that'll say just use
sunlight and don't do anythingelse.

Speaker 1 (01:21:39):
Do both.
Sorry, roger, just to make thepoint, that's prednisolone, not
anabolic steroids.

Speaker 2 (01:21:46):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:21:47):
Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (01:21:48):
Yeah, so not anabolic steroids.
This is prednisolone.
This is steroids that we giveto reduce inflammation.
So he was getting all theconventional therapy.
That's the cornerstone ofinpatient COVID-19 therapy is
Decadron dexamethasone, sixmilligrams daily.
He was up to 35 liters 100%oxygen.
We went into his room.
It was dark.

(01:22:09):
I mean, as soon as I walked in.
With all of this knowledge thatyou and I have now, can you
imagine walking to this room andseeing a dark room with the
windows closed, his daughternext to him with a mask on, he
with a mask on?
Well, I don't know if he had amask on, but he had oxygen on 35
liters 100% FiO2.
And I knew immediately that theonly hope that this guy had was

(01:22:30):
to get him outside into thesunlight.
So we talked to our respiratorytherapist and she was able to
get two oxygen tanks together todo like a high flow nasal
cannula and also like anon-rebreather.
On top of that.
We got him outside into thesunlight and we did it for 15
minutes a day.
The next day he went from 35liters 100% FiO2 to 15 liters

(01:22:53):
oxymizer.
The next day, after that, 10liters oxymizer down to six
liters nasal cannula, fourliters and then finally, five
days later, he was off.
This was the fastest I've everseen anybody go from almost
needing intubation to notneeding any oxygen at all, and
it's really a testament to howfast this works, and I can

(01:23:14):
understand very clearly now howsomebody in a study could really
get out of the hospital fourdays faster.
It's fascinating to me, Ibelieve, that this works in not
just COVID-19.
It probably works in just aboutany infectious disease,
especially given the fact thatour immune system, our
rebuilding system, our lungseverything is based on and built

(01:23:36):
on the need for ATP.
If we're able to give ATP athigher rates and more efficient
mitochondrial engines, I thinkit's very likely, given
everything that we know, thatsunlight for patients in the
hospital could be verybeneficial.

Speaker 1 (01:23:51):
Incredible.
Was that study?
You referenced the Brazilianstudy.
Were they using the jackets?

Speaker 2 (01:23:58):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:24:00):
So they delivered the near-infrared light via a
jacket and elegantly and I thinkthis really speaks to the
quality of the study and therandomization intervention was
that you can very easily placebocontrol this, because you can't
see 940.
No one can see 940 light, soyou simply just turn off the

(01:24:20):
control group's jackets and turnon the intervention group's
jackets to deliver theintervention.

Speaker 2 (01:24:25):
Yeah, it's essentially one of those bulbs
at the end of your remotecontrol.
Yeah, that's basically.
It's actually very similar.
In fact, that may be where theygot it from in bulk.
They actually made their ownjackets.

Speaker 1 (01:24:39):
Wow.
So that was the basic scienceor the clinical foundation for
you to have the confidence totake your patient outside and
deliver his heliotherapy, and Ithink that's a very, very
remarkable.
But I'm not unexpected at allfinding that he improved so
dramatically.
Did he have his skin exposed?
Was he having some UVB on theskin?

Speaker 2 (01:25:02):
Yeah, so actually I will send you the picture that I
took of him and the picture forthose who are listening and can
see it now.
You'll see that I didn't take afull-on picture.
I took it from his back becauseI didn't want to give his
identity, although he did giveme permission to talk about it
and to take the picture.
But basically he was sitting ina wheelchair with a gown on and

(01:25:25):
his head is bald, but he'sbasically getting sunlight
exposure on his head, but weknow that that infrared light is
penetrating deeply in throughthe hospital gown and going into
his body.

Speaker 1 (01:25:34):
Yeah, the other point I really want to drive home is
that this isn't a new practiceand open-air.
I guess clinics were usedduring the Spanish flu in the
20s and even prior to thatheliotherapy was used both in
Switzerland in the high Alps andin the USA for the treatment of
tuberculosis.

Speaker 2 (01:25:54):
Yes, so interesting that you mentioned that, because
I was looking into that and thehistory of that and it first
started out in Europe and it wasthese kind of these hippies at
the high altitude.
They were very free thinkers.
I say that because they werethe doctor that was in charge of
these people at these highaltitudes in the sanitariums,
had these people running aroundnaked outside, basically because

(01:26:15):
they really thought that thatwas really beneficial for
ultraviolet.
One of the guys from the UnitedStates who went over there to
really study what they weredoing, because they were getting
very good cure rates at thosealtitudes.
And for those of you who don'tknow, tuberculosis loves oxygen
and at those altitudes you don'thave a lot of oxygen.
It's one of the reasons why,basically, tuberculosis likes to
reactivate in the upper lobesof your lungs, because that's

(01:26:37):
where oxygen content is thehighest.
At these high altitudes oxygenis very low.
They're getting lots ofultraviolet radiation because
the atmosphere is very thin atthat altitude and the
ultraviolet comes in at higherconcentrations.
But there's also infrared lightas well, let's not forget.
So one of the guys that wasinterested in this was a guy by
the name of John Harvey Kelloggwho was the medical director of,

(01:27:00):
at that time, the world'slargest hospital.
It was in Battle Creek, michigan, known as the Battle Creek
Sanitarium.
What he tried to do was toemulate what they were doing
there in Switzerland and high upin the Alps, to a place that
was not very high altitude, youweren't getting a lot of
ultraviolet light and there wasplenty of oxygen, unfortunately.

(01:27:21):
So he had to make do with whathe was doing.
He emphasized sunlight, heemphasized oxygen sorry, fresh
air.
He also emphasized light in thesense that he would make these
light boxes.
And what's really interestingabout that it was that he made
these light boxes but he refusedto patent them because he
really wanted the world to catchon and to build these things

(01:27:43):
for themselves so that theycould also do the light boxes.
And what happened is that someEuropeans ironically came over
and saw what John Harvey Kelloggwas doing and they adapted
those and went over and builttheir own light boxes back in
Europe.
So it's kind of like thiscross-pollination between Europe
and the United States that cameup with this idea of light and

(01:28:04):
heliotherapy.

Speaker 1 (01:28:06):
It's such an interesting field and I've done
some research myself, and it wasAuguste Rollier who really
pioneered this in Switzerlandand he made some really
interesting observations and Ireally encourage people to read
some of his early papers.
But he treated over I believe,cured over 1,300 patients of
extra pulmonary tuberculosis andhe made the note that

(01:28:27):
essentially health was afunction of pigment.
So the more pigmented thepatient was, the more robust
they were, the quicker theyhealed, the more effective and
prolonged the healing was fromtuberculosis.
So I mean, we've been talking alot about infrared light, but
it's my personal opinion thatthe UV is just as important and

(01:28:49):
the fact is testament by thefact that it comes from the sun
in this package of UV, visibleand infrared.
Are you familiar with pro-opioidmelanocortin and that system at
all?
No, so if you're interested ingoing down that rabbit hole,
yeah.
So I mean, dr Jack Cruz, theneurosurgeon and theoretical

(01:29:12):
quantum biologist, is really theperson who's pioneering this
from a theoretical point of view.
But essentially, the process ofmelanin formation in response
to ultraviolet light is acleavage of alpha MSH from this
pro-hormone polypeptide, pomc,and it's a really universal

(01:29:33):
peptide.
We haven't talked aboutmetabolism.
I don't know how much time youhave, but alpha MSH in the
hypothalamus has an appetitesuppressing effect.
So I think that putting peopleindoors and depriving them of UV
light is driving the obesityepidemic.
In addition to infrared and reddeficiency that we talked about

(01:29:54):
, it's driving hypophagia.
Because full spectrum sunlightis such a profound appetite
suppressant.
I think because there's so muchenergy abundance that the body
evolved an endocrine feedbackmechanism to give us a satiety
signal when we're in fullspectrum sunlight.

Speaker 2 (01:30:13):
Yeah, no, I understand.
I didn't understand what youwere saying at the beginning,
but yes, I am familiar with thatpathway.
What was new to me was theunderstanding of obesity and its
relation to MSH.
So that is interesting.
Yeah, yeah, no, I think themore we learn, the more we
realize that what we're learningis we're just relearning stuff

(01:30:35):
that we've forgotten.

Speaker 1 (01:30:37):
Yeah, so maybe to tie a bow on this conversation.
It's been amazingly such agreat interview.
I've really enjoyed speakingwith you, roger, and maybe can
you give us some suggestions orthoughts of how we can help not
only people but our medicalcolleagues to understand or
really start thinking aboutlight as medicine, light and

(01:30:59):
health, and the importance ofnatural sunlight and the harm of
artificial light.

Speaker 2 (01:31:08):
I think it has to be with data.
That's the only thing that'sgoing to work.
If we hit them over the headwith saying that we're doing it
wrong, you've been doing itwrong, and blame and things of
that nature, I don't think it's,they're just barriers are going
to come up.
I think what we need to do iseducate, and that's probably the
primary, the first thing to do.
The second thing that we shoulddo is we should recommend it as

(01:31:30):
many times as possible and then, when patients get better, we
need to demonstrate it.
You know, if you look at the1800s, we did not have all of
the scientific accoutrementsthat we have today.
We don't have the blood tests,we don't have to be able to do
gene monitoring and DNA and allthis sort of stuff.

(01:31:51):
Yet people like, for instance,florence Nightingale she was a
nurse at the bedside of herpatients.
She was actually ironicallyknown as the lady with the lamp,
and you know what she says sheactually saw the benefits of
some of these interventions andif there's one thing that you
can criticize, you can criticizethem for not having the
scientific accoutrements, butthe one thing that you cannot

(01:32:12):
criticize them is their keenability to observe.
You know in terms of heartsounds.
People back in the ages withthe stethoscope could tell you
so much more about the heartthan we can today with the same
instrument.
It's because they were so wellequipped to be able to look at
the body and make observations.
This is what FlorenceNightingale said back in the

(01:32:32):
1850s so well over 100 years ago.
She says of all the remedies Ihave used or seen in use, I can
find but one thing that I cancall remedial for the whole
disease, and that is a profusesupply of fresh air, second only
to fresh air.
However, I should be inclinedto rank light in importance for

(01:32:52):
the sick.
Direct sunlight, not onlydaylight, is necessary for a
speedy recovery.
I think if she was able to seea dramatic difference with just
putting people out into the sun.
I think what we can do is twothings.
Number one, we can educate ourcolleagues on the science that
is now coming through, because,thank goodness, we actually have

(01:33:15):
the science which isdemonstrating it.
And number two, we can show howfast our patients start to get
better.
I found this true in the casethat I mentioned to you After I
got that patient outside and hedramatically improved in front
of the staff.
It was a witness to all of thestaff that this is something
that's actually a reasonableidea.

(01:33:36):
So the next time you go and saylet's get this patient outside,
there's less resistance becausethey've seen that it works.
So I think, gentle,hand-holding education and
realize that the people that weare trying to convince that
didn't believe us, that don'tbelieve us, are in the same
situation that we were in nottoo long ago, when we didn't

(01:33:58):
understand that this is what wasgoing on.

Speaker 1 (01:34:03):
Yeah, that's a very noble and, I think, kind way of
pushing the message forward andI agree, and I agree
wholeheartedly.
The only, I guess, other thingthat I would think about or
suggest is that the way medicineis practiced in today's day and
age is so pharmaceuticalfocused, and I believe it's that

(01:34:27):
way because of economicincentive.
And circling all the way backto the beginning of the
interview, when we talked aboutreductionism and drug companies
purify compounds, that's howthey make their money, whether
it's you name it.
They'll purify it to then's howthey make their money.
Um, uh, whether it's you know,you name it.
They'll purify it to thenpatent and monetize it, and the
cynic in me is is suspicious orskeptical that certain

(01:34:50):
guidelines will change in thetime scale that we, that our
patients, need to to preventtheir diabetes.
I mean, I speak to my patientsabout lifestyle and some of them
said you know, I needed this,this information, 20 years ago
and and it's a pretty bitterpill for some people to swallow,
and so I'm just, yeah, I reallyadmire you, roger, for your

(01:35:13):
dedication to educating patients, and not necessarily, you know,
doing everything within thehospital structure, but also
trying to do your part to helppeople with their understanding
out of the hospital and in sucha general way.
So, yeah, thank you a lot.
Thanks for what you do.
I really-.

Speaker 2 (01:35:33):
Max, you've been front and center in all of this
I've had unfortunately, myabilities have been spread out
very thin I've got clinicalduties, I've got all of these
things, and so I haveconcentrated a lot of my time on
light.
But there's other things thatI'm also interested in as well,
as you probably know, not theleast of which is like the
ability to induce a fever andthe benefits of interferon and

(01:35:55):
things, and I believe thesethings are actually probably
connected at some point too.

Speaker 1 (01:36:00):
Amazing Cool.
Is there any final thoughts atall?

Speaker 2 (01:36:11):
that you want to share, or handoffs or messages
that you want to impart.
I think we can look at this ina number of different ways.
People who are watching thisnow they can sit from their
armchair and say you guys, gofor it.
That's great, and then they gooff and do it.
But I think we have a realopportunity here, a real
opportunity to make change, andwe're doing our part and we'll

(01:36:31):
continue to do our part.
But the people that arelistening to this also have a
role to play as well.
And what's that role?
That role is to adopt some ofthe recommendations.
So why don't we just, like wecan, talk about some
recommendations and then, ifthey adopt these recommendations
, write back in on social mediayou know you on X and on YouTube

(01:36:52):
and put their comments abouthow their lives have changed by
adopting these things.
That's very powerful.
You know, it's one thing towatch a video that says one
thing.
It's another thing from anunsolicited comment from
somebody who's made a change intheir life and they've posted it
there saying you know what?
These guys are telling thetruth, and this is really
beneficial.
I think we already have acouple of things going in favor

(01:37:14):
of us, max, and that is that,obviously, us telling people to
go out into the sun.
There's no perversereimbursement there, right,
we're not getting paid by BigSun, but we believe in this
because we think it's going tomake people healthy, and that's
really why we got into this gamein the first place, right?

Speaker 1 (01:37:28):
Exactly, exactly, so maybe list off your top tips or
really actionable advice forpeople and patients advice for
people and patients.

Speaker 2 (01:37:43):
So because of Glenn Jeffrey's research that shows
that just shining about threeminutes of light made a
difference for five days, giventhe fact that we have that where
15 minutes a day for seven dayshas such a tremendous
improvement, given the fact thatthere's a biphasic response
where initially there's abenefit and then after a while
that benefit kind of wears offand it's not there anymore, I'm
not recommending that people golive their whole lives out into

(01:38:04):
the sun.
What I think would have themost impact would is that if
everybody intentionally decidedthat they were going to get just
30 minutes more 20 to 30minutes more of sunlight every
single day, and I think if wehad to decide what time of day
that would be based on ourdiscussion with circadian rhythm
, I think the best time of daywould be in the morning time.

(01:38:26):
But to go outside number one,fresh air.
Number two you're getting thatsunlight, you're setting in
motion all the things that youneed for the rest of the day.
I think that very small.
Ask and see how that affectspeople's chronic disease,
people's diabetes, their bloodsugar.
Today we have glucose monitors.

(01:38:48):
I would love for somebody whohas been monitoring their blood
sugar to all of a sudden,without changing their diet,
without changing their routine,now just going outside in the
morning and having breakfastoutside, or going outside after
they have breakfast and justwrite back and say, hey, what
effect is this having on yourmetabolic health?
There's a lot of wearabletechnology now that people are

(01:39:10):
wearing Now wouldn't it beamazing, instead of having to
ask people what their behavioris in terms of sunlight, that if
there was a monitor on there orsomething like that, that we
can monitor how much infraredlight was coming in and then we
could correlate that withmetabolic health?
I think that would go a longway in sort of answering some of
these questions that we have interms of infrared light.
So what's the ask?

(01:39:31):
The ask is to get outsideintentionally for an extra 20 to
30 minutes every single day, aswe're moving now into
wintertime in the NorthernHemisphere and into summertime
in the Southern Hemisphere.
It's going to be easy for thosepeople down under.
It's going to be a little bitmore challenging for us here in
the Northern Hemisphere, forthose of you who are going to

(01:39:51):
work before the sun comes up.
You're not going to get a lotof infrared light from a light
box, but it's going to bebeneficial in terms of other
things, in terms of depressionand in terms of seasonal
affective disorder.
But I would say, do your best.
You can get a lot of infraredlight from a fireplace.
That's generally going to be atnighttime and not in the
morning, but if you're in thewintertime and you're in the

(01:40:13):
northern hemisphere, if you'rein the wintertime and you're in
the southern hemisphere, whenthe sun is not getting up for a
long period of time southernhemisphere, when the sun is not
getting up for a long period oftime, when it does go outside to
meet it, get out there.
Try to actually use that as adate or an appointment with the
sun, because I believe that just20 minutes a day, 30 minutes a
day, is going to make a bigdifference in your metabolic

(01:40:35):
health.

Speaker 1 (01:40:35):
Yeah, amazing and maybe some bonus points.
If you can actually watch thesunrise and actually get a
little bit of the sun on theskin, I think you'll get bonus
points for that.
So thank you so much, roger.
Really enjoyed speaking withyou and, yeah, maybe we can do
another one in the future, butreally really appreciate all
your work and your efforts.
So thanks a lot.

(01:41:01):
Okay, what did you think of thatepisode?
I thoroughly enjoyed speakingwith Dr Roger Swelt.
He is someone who is soimpressive and in his knowledge,
in his generosity is hiswillingness to teach and educate
and he's just an all-round very, very nice guy.
So I think that, particularlyhaving conversations with Dr
Shwelt and others inconventional practicing, in

(01:41:24):
conventional and clinicalmedicine who, like him, are
working in intensive care units,working with patients on
internal medical wards, this isa really key point, I think, in
bringing the acceptability oflight as medicine into
mainstream, into centralizedmedicine, and really

(01:41:46):
rediscovering what we've knownhistorically in the history of
medicine for a very, very longtime, and I'm specifically
referring to the history ofheliotherapy.
There were aspects of this storythat we didn't cover and those
who have listened to my previousepisodes and series might have

(01:42:09):
thought there were topics thatwe didn't cover, specifically
with regard to quantum biologyand perhaps the role of light
being emitted from themitochondria and being emitted
from the cell, that is an areathat both of us are exploring
still and I think will be thetopic of future conversations.

(01:42:32):
Having these types ofconversations that could
potentially move the needle andespecially delivering it in a
way that's hopefully palatableand understandable for not only
people but also doctors, who canpotentially have a lot of sway

(01:42:54):
over the outcome and the healthof patients by advising
circadian lifestyle and sunlightas medicine.
So thank you for listening andlook forward to future episodes
with Dr Shwell.

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