BYRON HINTERLAND RETREAT - Circadian Living by Regenerative Health Retreats

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, thomas Seeger, I'm extremely happy to have you
back on the Regenerative HealthPodcast and, for those who
haven't heard our first episode,which was a deep dive into all
things cold and cold exposureand the health benefits of cold
exposure, please check that outfirst.
But, thomas, thanks for comingon.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
It's my pleasure, it's nice to see you again.
It's my pleasure.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
It's nice to see you again.
So it's probably been a yearsince we last talked and I'd
like to get some updates fromyou on, I guess, the
practicalities of cold exposureand the data, the anecdotes,
maybe the unofficial case seriesof people and experiences of
using cold, maybe through yourMorosco baths or other forms.

(00:45):
So, yeah, what can you updateus with?

Speaker 2 (00:47):
There are two things that are going on, and one is
pretty rock solid.
That's testosterone, and I'velearned a few things.
We've gotten a lot more casestudies published, some new
articles, and I'm going tocompile these in what I'm
calling a mini book.
It will be called UncommonTestosterone.
It will be on Audible.
This one will be on Kindleinstead of the I mean the big

(01:07):
book, the Uncommon Cold.
This is only available atMorosco.
This is the you know, 500scientific citations bigger than
my dissertation.
I've gone a little past thatwhen it comes to testosterone,
and so I'm going to go to abigger market with that.
Then the other one is biophotons, and it's something I've been
wanting to talk with you about,because this is a more

(01:29):
speculative area about therelationship between vitamin D,
autoimmune disorders and thecold.
Now I see you've got your redlight going on and almost
everybody knows what that is.
So I thought you know it'salmost Christmas.
Maybe I should have my greenlight.
We should talk about that.
So I guess this is the thirdthing and we can just do a

(01:51):
podcast in our Christmas colorsand talk about the different
wavelengths of light.
But the thing I just put thispost out after talking with
Alexis Cowan and it got mythoughts going on biophotons,
vitamin D and autoimmune.
This is more hypothetical,speculative, and I think running
it past you would be a goodidea.
I don't know if the audience isreally going to be interested

(02:13):
in speculation, because theinternet loves people who are so
certain and convinced thatthey're right in their opinions.
But if there are any sort ofcitizen scientists out there who
want to hear about thehypotheses and the social
creativity and the people whoare sharing ideas even though
they're not afraid, I guess, tobe wrong or corrected, then

(02:35):
we'll do some of that on thispodcast.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
Excellent.
Yeah, those sound like threevery apt topics and very
interesting topics to talk about.
So I mean, let's, let's startwith testosterone and I'll
pretty briefly summarize them.
What it seems like you haveexperienced, and others have
experienced, is that sequentialcold exposure, followed by
exercise, resistance, training,and seems to have amazing

(03:01):
effects on boosting endogenousproduction of testosterone in
both men and women, and so muchso that urologists have accused
you and others of being juiced,so to speak, or taking exogenous
hormones.
So, yeah, talk a little bitabout this and what you're

(03:22):
noticing and what specificprotocol that people have to
follow if they want to get thesebenefits.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Last time we talked I summarized my story.
I had this prostate-specificantigen scare.
Here I am a sedentary collegeprofessor.
This was when I was in my early50s and my PSA came out over
seven.
I didn't want to do the biopsy,I didn't want to do a
prostatectomy, so I did ketosisand ice baths and I did it every

(03:47):
day.
I'm here in Phoenix, arizona,and so I had to have my Morosco
to be able to do it every day.
I was scared out of my mind,but it worked.
My PSA came down below two andat the same time I was getting
my testosterone checked becausethat's the male health panel
standard lab test here and mytestosterone was at around 750

(04:10):
when my PSA was elevated.
By the time my PSA came down,my testosterone had jumped to
1180.
And it was because I was doingthe ice baths every day, not for
working out, not for exerciserecovery, but just to work on
that inflammation in my prostate.
And then I would come out andI'd be cold.
So I'd have to do my steel maceor I'd have to do jumping jacks

(04:32):
or push-ups or pull-ups andthen I would walk into campus.
Turns out it doesn't take a lotof exercise, it's just enough
exercise to restore thecirculation to the limbs.
The original 1991 Sakamotostudy did cold stimulation and
then 20 minutes on an exercisebike and they noticed an
increase in testosterone and anincrease in luteinizing hormone

(04:55):
in their young male subjects.
So you don't have to lift heavyto get the testosterone boost.
So we talked about that.
I wrote this article.
It was great that nobody readuntil Joe Rogan read it and he
read it out to David Goggins.
He's like you know there's thisguy and he didn't name me or
anything, but he showed theInstagram post about the article

(05:16):
and he quoted it to Goggins.
And people found me.
You know they were searchingand they're like I think, I
think this is the guy, this mustbe the post, the picture looks
right.
And they started messaging meand they said I want to try this
, I've got low T or I've got midT and I want to get up to high.
All of these messages coming in.
People are like, look, I added250 points, I added 400 points.

(05:37):
They were great sort ofanecdotal examples of people
getting similar results to me.
So I interviewed four men indepth, got their before and
their after labs and some ofthese guys were down in the
their doctors put them onhormone replacement therapy or
testosterone replacement therapyand that got them up into the

(05:59):
when they started doing icebaths and then exercise.
When they started doing icebaths and then exercise 1,300,
1,500, like super normal, and Iasked them aren't you going to?
You know you can go off the HRTnow and they said no.
No, I mean I probably could,but I felt so crappy when I was
down low.
I don't ever want to go back tothat time in my life.

(06:27):
Well, not everybody told exactlythat story.
There was a firefighter whom Imet in Central Valley,
california.
He works in Visalia or Tulareeither one.
He injured a testicle on thejob.
So we did this really in-depthinterview.
The injured testicle resultedin low testosterone, which you
could probably imagine.
His physicians put him on HRT,got his T levels up, but he

(06:49):
didn't like it.
Part of him sort of his not hisethical sense, but his values
where he wanted to be naturaland part of him felt like he was
experiencing negative sideeffects, especially in his
personality.
It was coming at a difficulttime in his life.
He was separating from his wifeand he thought maybe the
testosterone was messing up hisrelationship.
Well, he quit the HRT, gotdivorced, read the Sakamoto

(07:13):
study, started doing ice bathsand then exercise.
He got himself up into the 800s.
He's got one testicleRemarkable story.
But there were these two otherguys who wrote in to me and I
interviewed them and they saidI'm not getting any boost at all
.
And it bothered me a little bitbecause I love you know a
hundred percent success.
You can draw a straight linethrough all the dots and make a

(07:35):
conclusion.
And when I ran it past AJK I'mlike well, what do you think is
going on?
She said are they on any othermeds?
I don't know why I didn't thinkto ask this.
So I wrote to him and I saidyou know, are you taking
anything else?
Sure enough, they were bothtaking medications that
interfere with testosteroneproduction, and so the ice bath
and then exercise is not acure-all if you're doing other

(07:59):
things that might interfere orsuppress your testosterone.
But it's worked really well forthese three men in particular
in-depth case studies.
And then Max, the women startedto write.
Pamela Butler, I can say hername, I've written about her,
I've interviewed her.
She said you know, I saw yourarticle and I thought, huh,

(08:20):
could this work for me?
She is 60 years old, whichwould be be postmenopausal, you
know, because of her age.
But she's also had ahysterectomy and she's had her
ovaries removed.
Well, you think that theovaries might be the source of
testosterone in a woman's body.
It makes sense.
It's the analogy to the gonadsin a man right, and it's true.

(08:42):
The ovaries are responsible formaybe 25% of a woman's
production.
The rest comes from skin, fatand adrenal glands.
So Pamela was on hormonereplacement therapy.
In the United States there areno FDA approved protocols for
treating women for low T, so anyclinician who wants to

(09:04):
prescribe has to adapt a maleprotocol and figure it out.
She got her total T up to maybe16 nanograms per deciliter, if
I'm remembering this right.
I'm probably not getting thenumber right, but for a woman
they're like okay, you're doingfine.
She started doing the ice baths, she did some exercise, but it
turns out women don't have to.
She got well up over 100.

(09:25):
It was almost a 10x increase inher testosterone.
Her clinician was shocked, saidwe must discontinue the TRT
immediately.
You're doing great.
I don't know what you're doing.
I'm not sure I even want toknow what you're doing, but I am
going to deprescribe you forTRT.
Well, at a level that is around150, 160 in a woman.

(09:47):
A lot of women getself-conscious.
I asked Pamela, do you have anyregrets?
No, I said.
But Pamela, aren't you growinga beard?
And she laughs and she's likeno.
Posterone is the dominant sexhormone in women and a lot of
women aren't told this.
We worry about their femalehormones estrogen or

(10:08):
progesterone, whatever you wantto call it.
They don't think that they needtestosterone.
And yet a healthy woman willhave three to four times more
testosterone coursing throughher bloodstream than she will
estrogen.
Pamela got up to 160, butthat's nowhere near male levels
of healthy testosterone.
So there are thesemisconceptions that if a woman

(10:30):
were to elevate her testosteroneto levels that are heavy or
healthy, she might somehow bemasculinized.
But we are not talking the EastGerman swim team from the 90s
or something.
We're talking about what yourbody can make for itself,
getting the mitochondria in yourbody to make its own
testosterone.
Well, a young woman in theUnited Kingdom, 32 years old,

(10:53):
healthy, biohacker,extraordinaire.
She saw the Pamela Butlerarticle and she said I want to
do this, I want to test this,I'm going to see what happens.
She did this for three monthsand she kept track of her blood
serum testosterone levels withfastidious precision.
Three days after her cycle,same time every year, she sent
me her labs and she said,professor Zeger, I didn't really

(11:15):
see a big boost, only a 0.5increase.
Now that's disturbing.
I'm like 0.5, I guess maybeit's in the right direction, but
that's not a lot.
Max, in the United Kingdom theymeasure testosterone in molar
units and not in nanograms.
So the 0.5 was reallydisappointing.
Until I said send me the labs.

(11:36):
And when I did the unitconversion she went from 0.6 in
molar units to 1.1.
She almost doubled hertestosterone over the winter,
when usually testosterone levelsare seasonal, especially in men
, and over the winter theytypically go down.
They're associated with vitaminD, but she sort of fought that
seasonality by bringing in thecold and almost doubled her T.

(12:00):
Well, this collection now ofcase studies four men, two women
, two negative case studies,which I think is due to the
interfering medication thiscreates a more robust data set,
especially because it'swell-documented, both
quantitatively with the labreports and qualitatively in the
interviews.

(12:20):
We now have to look for amechanism because a sort of
black box association isinsufficient.
We have to understand howtestosterone, not just where,
but how it is synthesized in thebody.
So let me explain.
It's the mitochondria Max.
They take cholesterol and thenthey synthesize a steroid which

(12:41):
is a precursor to all the othersex hormones.
And so if your mitochondria aredamaged and there's lots of
different ways in Westerndeveloped society that they can
be damaged they're unable to dothe job of synthesizing
sufficient testosterone.
Your body might be having ahard enough time keeping up with

(13:02):
sort of normal cell turnover orwound repair or powering the
immune system or even poweringthe brain, which is the most
demanding metabolic organ in thebody.
Damaged mitochondria will leadto low testosterone in men and
in women, because it is themitochondria that synthesize
these steroidal precursors.

(13:23):
Now we understand the mechanism.
Now we understand why cold,which is one of the most
wonderful things you can do torejuvenate your mitochondria,
would lead to improved metabolichealth, improved mitochondrial
quality and higher testosteronelevels in those people who are,
I'm going to say, suppressed,because the idea that 600

(13:47):
nanograms per deciliter in a manis normal is ridiculous.
I don't want to be normal.
Normal for a man in you knowsort of Western society right
now is sick.
There's no reason that yourtestosterone levels should
decline at my age of 58.
The only reason they decline isbecause you're accumulating
mitochondrial damage.
We call it aging.

(14:07):
We don't have to agemetabolically in this way.
So we should be up at healthylevels 800, 900, over a thousand
.
And I suspect that if we leaveWestern society we will find
those kinds of testosteronelevels in people that don't have
heated leather seats in theirSUVs, you know, that don't have

(14:28):
all the comforts and the seedoils and the dysfunctional light
environment that is keeping ussick.
So that's been a lot ofprogress on the testosterone
research and that's why I've gotto assemble it in a book.
You know, for people who don'twant to buy the whole thing,
they can just zero in on thetestosterone, male or female,

(14:49):
come to understand it better andthen they can manage their own
testosterone levels withoutnecessarily getting a
prescription for it.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
Well, there is so much there and that's such
exciting news.
I want to make a couple ofpoints, starting from some
accounts that I've had as wellfrom my members who have been
using cold.
One lady, similarly to thewomen that you've discussed, she
had ovaries removed and she wasliving in the UK and what she

(15:25):
noticed subjectively was thather self-confidence, which took
this massive hit afterpotentially losing these ovarian
hormones, was remediated orrecovered after getting regular
cold exposure.
I didn't see any lab results,but this was a profound
subjective response.
And she also mentioned she hadthe warmest winter that she'd

(15:49):
ever had, despite the fact she'dbeen exposed to the most amount
of cold.
And really that speaks to thehuman body's ability to
upregulate its thyroid hormones,its brown and beige fat, in
response to a cold exposure.
And if we're living in asimulated semi-tropical

(16:10):
temperate region all year round,then you're not giving the body
at 22 degrees indoorenvironment, you're not giving
the body reason to generate anyhormetic response to therefore
develop a cold resistance.
And a couple of points about theera of potentially using cold
as a treatment in something likeprostate cancer.
I see patients and the patientsare coming in and some of them

(16:33):
are on androgen deprivationtherapy, and what that is for
the listeners is it's a methodof treating adjunctive method of
treating prostate cancer thatinvolves essentially turning off
the male hormonal axis in aneffort to prevent growth of
testosterone-sensitive prostate,potentially prostate malignant
cells.
The issue here is that thisessentially induces

(16:56):
menopause-like symptoms in men,with the hot flushes and all
this kind of thing.
That's instructive for a numberof reasons.
One, it's potentiallysuggesting that menopause in
women is a testosteronedeficient deficiency process and
two, it it suggests that well,I think it's like bludgeoning it
with a with a hammer, and if wecould have a way, more careful

(17:17):
and physiological process thatcould potentially reduce the psa
, reduce the proliferation ofmalignant cells and keep the
testosterone high, then thatwould be amazing there are two
responses.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
The first one is prostate cancer is a disease of
men and because I'm such aconspiracy theorist, I think
that there's this idea that ifwe somehow feminize the men,
that will help treat the maledisease.
Now, that's not a medicalopinion, that's a cultural
critique.
Part of low testosterone is theculture of toxic masculinity

(17:51):
and these ideas thatcharacteristically male traits,
those traits of what we call itaggression or assertiveness or
whatever, are somehow toxic andundesirable and they should be
suppressed.
And I think some of thatthinking might be leaking into
treatment of prostate cancer,this misandric kind of attitude.
And I'm going to set that asideentirely because now we're

(18:13):
going to talk about the data andthe science.
The hypothesis is that becausetestosterone is anabolic, that
it might promote the growth ofthese malignant cancer cells,
because it promotes growthgenerally.
And so some physician has it inhis head that we need to
suppress testosterone and thatwill somehow slow down the

(18:33):
growth of prostate cancer tumor.
And this is dead wrong.
It's Abraham Morgenthaler whois a physician and researcher in
the United States and heexamined the data.
So these are largeepidemiological and clinical
studies and he says hightestosterone is not associated

(18:54):
with increased risk of prostate.
High testosterone protectsagainst prostate cancer.
It is exactly the opposite.
One of the friends that I talkedto when I had my high PSA
because I called a bunch of guysand I said it wasn't easy.
I'm like you know, I just gotthese labs back.
Have you ever had your PSAchecked?
Everybody had their PSA checkedand everybody told me a

(19:16):
different story.
One of them was he had aprostatectomy.
He will suffer erectiledysfunction the rest of his life
.
He's resigned to this and hehad a super sensitive scan that
showed cells that might be maybecancerous, that maybe didn't
get removed and as aprecautionary measure, his
high-tech physician put him ontestosterone blockers and he

(19:40):
felt terrible.
He gained weight.
Of course his metabolism waswrecked, his muscle tone was
wrecked, but in his mind, justlike I was when I got my
elevated PSA, he felt terrible.
He gained weight.
Of course his metabolism waswrecked, his muscle tone was
wrecked, but in his mind, justlike I was when I got my
elevated PSA, he was scared andhe said I got to do this for my
family.
I got to do everything I can doto try and stay alive.
But his physician was harminghim because the guy didn't know.
The physician hasn't read theresearch.

(20:01):
He's doing whatever they taughthim in medical school without
updating that based upon thereal data.
And you can download AbrahamMorgenthaler's papers on this.
I've cited them, I put it up onour website.
I cite them in my book.
You can listen to BrighamBueller on this.
He was really good atexplaining the research, and
Morgenthaler himself, I think,is on Instagram and trying to

(20:24):
get the word out thattestosterone suppression is
hurting men's prostate healthrather than helping it.
What you just did was make thisreally clever inference about
women, especially those womenwho seem to exhibit what I would
call early menopause.
Like it seems, menopause iscoming sooner than it should in

(20:48):
a lot of women's lives, andyou're speculating that might be
because their testosteronelevels are already too low, and
so some of the symptoms ofperimenopause or menopause are
showing up in women who are intheir late thirties who, I think
, if they were metabolicallyhealthy, should still be fertile
.
That's an incredible hypothesis, max, and I'm wondering how

(21:10):
would you put that to the test?

Speaker 1 (21:12):
Yeah, I'm not exactly sure, but just to continue to
harp on that point and this tiesinto the mitochondria and is
the site of hormone synthesis isthat people like Sarah Kleiner
and Kerry Bennett have seenmassive improvements in
fertility in premenopausal womenstruggling to conceive when
introducing cold exposure, andthat's obviously strategic.

(21:35):
It's not necessarily used inevery part of the menstrual
cycle, but what it speaks to meis that there is a tuning that's
occurring when the body isexposed to cold and that has an
amazing benefit for hormonalhealth, and using it, no matter
what the menopausal status ofthe woman is, could potentially

(21:57):
make sure that the body issynthesizing the exact
appropriate amount of hormonesat the right time of the cycle
to make the menstruation and theovulatory cycle as smooth as
possible and then smooth thattransition into menopause which
is essentially to use the wordovarian failure, but it's

(22:18):
physiological ovarian failureinto menopause.
So it seems to me that medicineneeds to start understanding or
implementing this technique forwomen and men in various stages
of medical care.
I talked about the sun andsunlight being the best tool of
primary and secondary preventionof cardiovascular disease, and
that's a topic for a completeanother time that I've talked

(22:40):
about at length, but it soundsto me that urologists and the
field of urology needs to startimplementing cold as its
firstline treatment for theprevention of prostate cancer
and high PSA, because at themoment it's really fraught, and
especially asymptomatic testingof PSA screening of PSA for

(23:04):
prostate cancer in asymptomaticmen is an absolute minefield and
that's something that you it'sirresponsible, yeah, that you've
come across, and what it soundslike and you previewed it at
the beginning is that we've gotthis situation where everyone is
so many people aremetabolically unhealthy, they
are hormonally disrupted throughtheir artificial light at night

(23:25):
, through their sedentaryactivity, sedentary behavior and
their processed foods, and thatis essentially playing havoc or
failing to give the body thissufficient stimulus to make
appropriate levels oftestosterone.
That totally makes sense to methat a healthy testosterone
level would be inverselyassociated with prostate cancer

(23:46):
and not the other way around.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
It makes sense to me too.
How could it be otherwise?
There is a group of researchers, I think in the Netherlands
they coined this phraseintermittent living.
All of your listeners, theyunderstand intermittent fasting.
Right, but you can broaden thisto other topics.
So this intermittent livingsays you need exercise and you

(24:09):
need rest, you need feast andyou need fasting.
You need light, you need dark,you need feast and you need
fasting.
You need light, you need dark,you need heat, you need cold.
And they took it another stepfurther.
They said you need briefperiods of dehydration.
They were saying it'severything in your life.
The human body is designed forvariability.

(24:31):
It responds to those hormeticstressors and as long as it
doesn't kill you, like Nietzschesaid, and it comes back in this
adaptive way.
When the human body experiencesconstancy, it will change, but
those changes are maladaptive.
So by the time a woman gets tobe I'm going to choose an

(24:52):
arbitrary age 35.
I don't really know what it isin Australia, united States, but
some cut off Her OBGYN will saythat's a geriatric pregnancy.
What the heck kind of a term isthat?
Max, you know she's a35-year-old young woman and
they're using geriatric as anadjective because typically

(25:14):
she's already so metabolicallydysregulated that she is
vulnerable to disorders duringthe pregnancy.
That could be preeclampsia orit could be gestational diabetes
, because pregnancy is acondition of physiological
insulin resistance.
There's so much growth hormonecoursing through the pregnant
woman's body that it interfereswith the action of insulin.

(25:36):
If you are somewhat lacking inyour insulin sensitivity going
into a pregnancy by the time youhit the beginning of that third
trimester, you are at seriousrisk for metabolic dysfunction.
So, not physiological insulinresistance, but going over the
top to either gestationaldiabetes or preeclampsia.
Cold is one of the bestmetabolic therapies that a woman

(26:00):
or a man can engage in.
Not only will it reduce theinflammation, you get some good
vasoconstriction, you get somegood circulatory benefits.
But what you mentioned aboutrecruiting new brown fat,
beiging the white fat,rejuvenating the mitochondria,
is how you improve your insulinsensitivity and you can
interrupt the progression of theinsulin resistance that happens

(26:22):
during pregnancy, before itwinds, before it manifests as
preeclampsia or something elsethat would cause a premature
birth or a medical interventionlike a C-section because the
woman is metabolically no longerable to support the fetus.
I wish we could get this messageout there that life is the flow
of energy.

(26:42):
There is no such thing, youknow, thermodynamically called
life, if it is not resistingthis sort of inexorable increase
in entropy.
I know Jack Cruz talks aboutthis a little bit, but I did my
engineering doctoraldissertation on entropy and
thermodynamic measures of theenvironment.
I had to do a really deep divebecause entropy is one of these

(27:05):
confusing sort of voodoo typeterms that even the engineers
struggle to understand.
The point is that we are theflow of energy through our
corpus.
The only difference between aliving creature and a dead
creature at the moment of deathis the failure of that energy
flow.
It is mitochondria thatregulate that energy.

(27:27):
When we care for ourmitochondria, we are caring for
our lives.
So we have to go back now for asecond to the intermittent
living.
Everything that we're talkingabout is a mitochondrial booster
, and it's not light alone.
It's light and then dark.
It's not exercise alone, it'sexercise and then rest.
It's not fasting alone, it'sfasting, and it's this toggling

(27:50):
back and forth, the variabilitythat we're built for, is what
keeps our mitochondria healthyand our bodies alive.

Speaker 1 (27:57):
That is extremely well said and it reminds me of
my recent episode with ProfessorJeffrey Guy who, through the
Guy Foundation, wrote a spacehealth report and they analyzed
the health effects of space andif anyone's interested, go back
and check out my episode on that, the health effects of space,
and if anyone's interested goback and check out my episode on
that.
The long story short is thatspace is providing an unending,

(28:18):
non-intermittent source ofmitochondrial stress in the form
of completely disrupted lightcycles, complete absence of
near-infrared light and loss ofmagnetic fields and loss of
gravity and obviously exposureto electromagnetic radiation and
other kind of particles emittedfrom the sun.
So the point here and theconclusion of the study is that

(28:41):
humans are not going to be ableto thrive in space because it is
so removed from ourevolutionary niche.
But the biggest takeaway for mewas to concrete in this idea of
hormetic stress andintermittent living, as you so
eloquently put it, and thatspeaks to the need of the
temporality of these exposures.

(29:01):
We need temporary, but then weneed that period of recovery,
and whether it's three minutesof cold exposure followed by the
rest of the day at ambient airtemperature, whether it's a
minute of hard sprintingfollowed by ambulant walking for
the rest of the day, and all ofthese are temporary and the
benefit is in the recovery andthe benefit happens when we

(29:23):
sleep.
So I think and that's obviouslymediated through the
mitochondria.
So if people can yeah, I mean,take away one big point from
this conversation already, it'slike start living intermittently
, Start giving your mitochondriaintermittent stresses and then
giving them the high qualitysleep to recover.
Can you quickly speak to thesafety profile of cold exposure

(29:45):
in pregnancy before we move on?

Speaker 2 (29:48):
There is a woman who's a Wim Hof certified
instructor in Germany.
I think she was probably thefirst woman to become Wim Hof
certified and at the time shedidn't have any children.
But she watched her sisterconceive and her sister
continued to do cold plungethroughout her pregnancy.
Now this woman, josephineWorsak she's on Instagram.
She's got a PhD in microbiology.

(30:10):
She has a scientific mind.
She's got a PhD in microbiology.
She has a scientific mind andwhen she and her husband were
ready to start a family shediscontinued her cold exposure.
Very briefly, she said coldwill activate the immune system.
And in her mind she said afertilized egg must implant in
the lining of the womb and theimmune system, if it's

(30:30):
overactive, can interfere withthat implantation.
Especially for her firsttrimester she discontinued her
cold.
She also discontinued her WimHof breathing.
She said look, don't do that ifyou're trying to conceive or if
you're pregnant.
And she said don't do Sona.
Pregnancy is a contraindicationfor Sona.
I'm not sure if I can put itmore clearly.
Just don't heat yourself up,because the epidemiological

(30:52):
outcomes are poor if you'regetting too hot when you're
pregnant.
And then she worked cold plungeback in and she was doing
straight up ice bath.
She's got some good pictures onInstagram of her in the tub,
outdoors in the snow with theice in it and her belly.
Of course she's in her becauseshe sort of brought it back for
the second half of her pregnancy.
Course she's in her because shesort of brought it back for the

(31:14):
second half of her pregnancy.
I think that her informedexperience and the way she has
interpreted that experience withher scientific mind is a
wonderful example to follow.
She continued to do cold plungewhile she was breastfeeding.
A lot of women will say butwon't it interfere with my milk
production?
And josephine says that's notwhat happened to me.
As a matter of fact, I have acollection.
This is three or four womenwho've done the same thing and

(31:35):
they say nope, I've never had aproblem with milk production
either.
However, after birth you canreintroduce Sona.
The Sona will not interferewith milk production.
So if you think that that sortof helps your milk come in, then
go ahead and bring the heatback.
So I think her informedexperience is instructive and
I've been in touch with twoother women in particular who

(31:58):
I've watched very closely doingtheir cold plunge just a few
minutes, very cold, but maybethree minutes.
Both of them got the approvalof their physicians ahead of
time and they got thereassurance from their OBGYN.
My goodness, the baby isinsulated with multiple layers
of protection.
You are not going to, you know,freeze your baby.

(32:20):
You're not even going to affectthe core temperature, right?
But you can't blame these womenfor being cautious, for asking
the question, and theirphysician said yeah, you can go
all the way in, you can go up toyour neck, it's just not going
to be a problem.
And what we do is the sameprotocol that I do Very cold,
maybe one or two degrees C, fourdegrees C is fine, and stay in

(32:40):
there for two to four minutes.
If you are just starting out, ifyou're naive to cold exposure
and a pregnant woman islistening to this and she's like
well, I'm in the middle of mysecond trimester, I'm in the
middle of my second trimester, Iguess maybe I should try this
you don't have to go down to twoor four degrees C, you can
start at any temperature thatyou feel the gas reflex.
So if you draw a bath I knowit's summertime down under, you

(33:01):
know, but here it's winter Ifyou happen to draw a bath and
maybe the temperature of thewater is 15 degrees C, but you
step in and you feel that gasreflex.
It's cold enough.
Stay in long enough until youfeel a little bit of urge to
shiver, and that is yourindication that you've activated
your body's genic response.
Your thermoregulatory responseto the cold is now active.

(33:25):
Your body will adapt to thatstimulation.
You're doing great.
Do this for 10 to 14 days in arow and you will have repeated
the experimental procedure thathas been demonstrated to improve
insulin sensitivity in humanbeings Recruit brown fat.
It might be less.
Nobody really knows what theminimum effective dose is in

(33:46):
pregnant women, but we do knowthat in type 2 diabetic
middle-aged to elderly Germans,10 days of cold exposure
consecutively improved theirinsulin sensitivity, in some
cases by 80%.
We're not talking about alittle.
It is a dramatic improvement.
I'm not the kind of guy who'sever going to publish a book

(34:09):
called Protocols Other people dothat but I'm more like what
matters is what works for you.
There is no single besttemperature.
There's no single best time orsingle best procedure that works
for everybody.
It's kind of like weighttraining the amount of weight
that you should use and theamount of weight that I should

(34:29):
use.
They're going to be differentbecause we're different people
with different bodies and we'retrained to different extents.
Cold is the same way.
So this rule of thumb is moreimportant to me Go cold enough
to gasp, long enough to shiver.
When you're just starting out,after you've done a couple of
weeks and you know you'verecruited brown fat and you're
strengthening that smooth muscletissue that is responsible for

(34:50):
vasoconstriction and yourthermoregulatory defenses are
improved, you probably don'teven have to shiver.
I only shiver when I'm reallyanxious about something.
I don't shiver for thermogenicreasons.
I shiver for reasons,psychological reasons of you
know, anxiety and stress andthings like that, and the
shivering can be really helpfulin that case.
But when you become experiencedthree, four minutes, you don't

(35:14):
even have to do it every day.
I do it every day because Ikind of need it for my own
mental health.
I need that win, but a coupleor three times a week.
Susanna Soberg is probablyright.
We don't know the minimumeffective dose, but her
measurements show that anaverage of 11 minutes a week of
acute, brief cold exposure, nomatter how you split it up, is
pretty effective for maintainingmetabolic health.

Speaker 1 (35:37):
Yeah, very interesting.
And I want to make a commentabout pregnancy quickly, which
is let's reason this from firstprinciples If we've noted that
cold exposure improves thehormonal profile of men and
women, if we've noted that coldexposure can smooth, say,
postmenopausal symptoms and helpimprove women to actually

(35:59):
conceive, then it doesn'tactually rationally make sense
that something that would help awoman conceive through hormonal
optimization would suddenly beharmful when pregnancy happens.
That just doesn't make sense atall to me.
I agree so in terms of and thenwe think from an evolutionary

(36:21):
point of view and the migrationof humans into the northern
latitudes was such an importantshaping factor on our
evolutionary biology that wemade these key mitochondrial
mutations to inducethermogenesis through things
like the uncoupling proteins andthese essential leaky
mitochondrial membranes thathelped us generate heat.
I think that if and this ismost people in Australia from a

(36:44):
Northern European ancestry isthat cold would have, of course,
was part of their history,because reproduction happened
above the 50th latitude, thosewomen would have been cold, they
would have fallen pregnant cold, they would have carried their
baby cold.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
When we think about this what else do you have to do
when there's 23 hours ofdarkness?
You cuddle up with your lovedone and it's nine months later,
right, and nine months later,right.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
And then we're thinking about today's day and
age and the kind ofexperimentation that is, and I'm
going to be pretty you're goingto confer.
What I'm saying is that allthings have been advised for
women during the third trimesterof pregnancy, particularly in
the last four years, and to saythat that's okay, but

(37:34):
potentially having someenvironmental temperature
exposure in cold is notappropriate.
I think we need to really thinkcritically about that.
The point about heat is welltaken, however, and we do know
that there's an association withneural tube defects that is
potentially something thatshould be avoided during the
first trimester.
That makes sense to me.
But yeah, cold seemsinteresting and potentially

(37:55):
appropriate for metabolic healthreasons, but perhaps other
reasons too.
I wanted to ask you about thisevolutionary, what your thoughts
are on the evolutionary role ofthe sequence of exercise
followed by cold and the factthat if we do our exercise first
in men, we're not seeing thesebenefits.
I was talking to a friend aboutit and it's something like if

(38:18):
you fall into a cold river andthen you wrestle a grizzly bear,
you get a big squirt oftestosterone.
But if you fight the grizzlybear and then you fall into the
river.
Your body's like sorry mate,game over.
What's your thought on this?

Speaker 2 (38:31):
I don't have an explanation for it and it's not
exhibited in women.
That is, women will get animmediate testosterone boost, at
least according to the onesaliva study that has measured
this from cold stimulation.
And it doesn't even have to bewhole body, you just do the cold
presser test, so you take thenon-dominant hand and you put it
in a bowl of ice water and thewomen get an immediate

(38:52):
testosterone boost and it'sprobably coming from the adrenal
glands.
But men, the opposite canhappen.
And I've kind of dreamed onthis, because sometimes I give
my brain problems to think aboutbefore I go to bed.
That's a grad school thing,probably nobody else does that,
but I was struggling at thattime when I figured that out,

(39:12):
and then in the morning I wakeup with an answer.
The testes are supposed to becooler than the rest of the body
.
This is why they exist outsidethe body.
But that doesn't mean they'resupposed to be frozen.
Max, you know, it may be thatyou need the exercise, that the
man needs the exercise, not alot of exercise, but some
exercise to stimulate thatluteinizing hormone production,

(39:36):
to stimulate that testosteroneproduction, for purely like
thermochemical reasons.
I'm not a biochemist or anorganic chemist.
I'm a physical chemist becausemy chemistry is the environment
and particularly water chemistry, and you have a much better
understanding of what's going oninside the body Because I'm an

(39:56):
engineer.
I build the machines thatcreate the environment for the
body and I think you give us acouple of years of conversations
like this and working togetherand we're going to make a lot of
progress on why is the order soimportant for men?
But right now I don't have agood reason.
I just have a lot of data thatsays it makes a big difference.

(40:17):
Everybody online who hasn'talready heard of Craig Heller's
studies on heat extractionduring exercise at Stanford,
where he gets this hugeperformance boost, a peak muscle
power output goes up, endurancegoes up.
Anybody who's read theliterature on pre-cooling those
people.
They're up to speed and theyunderstand that mitochondria

(40:41):
shut down when they get too hotand this is to protect them from
the damage of reactive oxygenspecies.
Fatigue happens in your body toprevent mitochondrial damage.
This is a wonderful sort ofself-defense and everyone except
David Goggins this is awonderful self-protective
mechanism.
It's much easier to sustainphysical exercise in the cold

(41:06):
weather than it is in the hotweather because you don't have
to worry about the heat buildupso much.
But everybody online who hasn'tread that, who hasn't come up
to speed and says cold plungeice bath doesn't do you any good
.
You know it doesn't helprecovery, they're right.
But they're talking about doingit right after your run or
doing it right after yourweightlifting session.

(41:28):
When you pre-cool, not only doyou get better performance
during exercise, but you getbetter recovery after the
exercise.
There are so many things justlike the idea that testosterone
could somehow cause prostatecancer was wrong.
There are so many things thatwe think are right that turn out
to be wrong, and one of them isthat you should use ice baths

(41:51):
to soak your knees or your elbowor whatever when you're done
with your game.
No, use the ice bath beforeyour game.
The people who reallyunderstand this are the Canadian
hockey players.
You know, when I talk to proathletes and I talk to the
football players in the NFLMitch Wisnowski, he's in
Australia Now.
He's punting for the 49ers.
The football players have neverheard of pre-cooling until we

(42:14):
talked about it.
But the hockey guys are alllike oh yeah, I love being cold
because they're in a wintersport.
They've experienced this and ifthey're doing roller hockey
during the summer.
Very different experience forthem than ice hockey when
they're out in the cold.

Speaker 1 (42:32):
It's been my personal observation, again anecdotally,
that girls and women seem moreaverse to getting cold than men.
There's a local bathhouse thatI go to, near me and there's a
cold pool.
It's not even that cold, maybeit's around eight degrees.
It's, maybe it's not even thatcold, maybe it's around eight

(42:55):
degrees.
And the men will be sitting inthere, you know, with a pretty
serene, calm look on their faceand you know the girls will will
dip a toe and just walk theother way or get in and they'll
be in for 20 seconds and thenabout okay, I'm, I'm done, what?
What's your comment on this?
And maybe it's in my, in mythought it's.
Sometimes it feeds into thisidea that maybe it's a
misconception that womenshouldn't get cold or women

(43:16):
can't benefit from cold, andwhat are your thoughts?

Speaker 2 (43:19):
That is a misconception.
You're really setting me up foraccusations of sexism here, max
, and I'm going to do it anyway.
Stacey Sims she's an Americanwho studied, I think, in New
Zealand, but maybe it wasAustralia.
She went on the Huberman Labpodcast and Stacey Sims is
famous for training female ultraathletes.
You know you want to do atriple triathlon or whatever

(43:41):
they're called.
I don't know, it's not my field.
Stacey Sims is the right personto talk to for women because
she's out on that extremeperformance edge.
She correctly pointed out thatwomen are more sensitive to cold
than men are.
She also, at least in some ofher writing, points out that

(44:01):
women respond to cold trainingfaster than men, and so because
we know women are more sensitivethan men, we might jump to some
conclusion that, oh, there'ssome genetic underlying, you
know, sex-associatedpredisposition.
But when we see them respond totraining faster than men, that
contradicts the idea that thereare really these strong genetic

(44:23):
differences and it suggests thatmaybe men are just getting more
cold.
In general, women are lesstolerant of the cold because
they don't routinely get as muchcold exposure, whether that is
having an outdoor job.
There are fewer women fishermen.
There are fewer women garbagecollectors.
There are fewer womenlumberjacks.
Men work outdoors more, ormaybe it's because, I don't know

(44:45):
, men are going outside onThanksgiving and playing touch
football in the backyard, orwhatever it is we do in the
United States.
It may be an artifact ofbehaviors that are associated
with these typical gender roles,and I'm saying that because the
women will respond to coldtraining or to cold exposure
with faster adaptations than themen will.

(45:06):
So the idea that women andgirls shouldn't get cold is a
misconception, and I want todraw, maybe, on your personal
experience.
I don't know if you have adaughter, but I have two sons
and a daughter.
When they're young, whenthey're prepubescent especially,
but really they could beteenagers and they're running
around.
My kids want to go in the ocean.

(45:27):
They don't care if it's May andthe ocean is freezing.
They want to play on the beach.
They want to go out in thewinter and they want to make
snowballs and snow forts andstuff.
I never saw my daughter come inand say I can't keep up with my
brothers because it's too cold.
There are no differences atthat age, and so this is why I
think some of this stuff istrained later, when your date is

(45:52):
in dress and heels, you knowyou're not going to take her on
a long walk after dinner orsomething.
But men don't think twice aboutyou know, let's head outside.
Compared to women, and it'spossible, by the time they get
into their mid or late knees,that these sort of different
levels of exposure have createdpopulation level or statistical

(46:13):
differences that don't reallyapply to individuals.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
And any comments on perhaps starting cold exposure
for women in the follicularversus the luteal phase of the
menstrual cycle, of the ovariancycle.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
I wish I could say it was my area of expertise.
I have no personal experience,you know.
However, when a woman istracking her cycle and she
thinks, yeah, I'm ovulating, ifshe want to take a break in that
moment.
Take a break.
If what Josephine Warsack saidabout when you're conceiving and
you want that egg to implant inthe womb, maybe that's not the

(46:48):
time to really stir up yourimmune system.
That intuition makes greatsense to me, and if a woman has
the same intuition that she saysyou know, I'm trying to
conceive, I want to take thesethree or four days off, I
applaud her.
Your brown fat is not going todisappear in three or four days.
Your insulin sensitivity is notgoing to decay in the three or

(47:08):
four days that your brain andyour body is focused on
conception.
So take that time off.
There's another 24 days in yourcycle that you can get cold.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
Yeah, and really what I say to my members is be
cognizant and mindful of howmany hormetic stresses that
you're trying to derive benefitfrom in your lifestyle at that
moment hormetic stresses thatyou're trying to derive benefit
from in your lifestyle at thatmoment.
And if you're stacking coldexposure onto some, you know a
more extreme time-restrictedfeeding window, and you're
stressed and you've gotemotional stress and you've got

(47:43):
work stress, it's just let'spare it back so you are really
going to need your sleep.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
Yeah, so really encouraging people to be mindful
of what else is going on intheir life and maybe keep it to
one thing at a time if they'retrying to get a hormetic benefit
Because, as we have talkedabout earlier, hormesis has that
benefit if you don't overdo it,which Nassim Taleb called
anti-fragile and I really,really recommend Nassim Taleb's

(48:10):
work because essentially it is aU-shaped curve.
There's a sweet spot ofhormesis, but if you push it too
far, Typically upside down Unot enough.

Speaker 2 (48:19):
I mean, if health were on the Y-axis, poor health
would be associated with two lowdoses, optimum dose and then
overdose.
So this is the way I learned itin toxicology.
And Taleb takes it a little bitfurther than hormesis.
I wrote about this in one of myarticles in the book and it's
probably not a distinction thatreally needs to get made.
But it's not just abouttolerance for toxins as an

(48:41):
adaptive response, sort of astress-inoculating response.
It is about health.
And that's where Taleb isreally good.
He talks about the Mediterraneandiet, nina Teicholz she wrote
Big Fat Surprise and I might bemispronouncing her last name.
She just finished her PhD andshe talks about the history of
the Mediterranean diet and shesays it is bullshit.
That's not a direct quote, youknow that's I'm paraphrasing.

(49:04):
The Mediterranean diet was amade-up marketing scheme.
But Taleb points out thataround the Mediterranean are
conservative or maybe the rightword is orthodox religions and
if you look at their calendarthere's like 181 days out of the
year where they're fasting fromsomething.
The benefit of theMediterranean diet is not so

(49:24):
much in what you eat, like fishand olive oil, it's that you
don't eat, it's that you skipeating, or at least you skip
meat on Fridays, or whatever itis.
You introduce the variabilitybased upon the religious
calendar, it's not based uponthe geography of the
Mediterranean, and this, Ithought, was Taleb's genius

(49:45):
example to represent howanti-fragile the human body
really is.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
Yeah, and that's multidimensional thinking, and
so many people, and even who aresupposed to be intelligent, are
lacking the ability to think inmultidimensions and they think
that it's the content of thediet.
But what Taleb pointed out wasit wasn't necessarily the
content.
Maybe that was playing a role,but it was the fact that there
were so many fasting days in theOrthodoxodox christian calendar

(50:13):
that was having these.
I love that you know that thatthat was something that stuck
for you, because that definitelystuck for me when I reread,
when I read and reread his work.
So, yeah, that's amazing.
Let's quickly talk about a bitabout what's going on in these
mitochondrion, and you mentionedbiophoton release.
This is some cutting edge stuffand this is also why I think

(50:36):
that the question about healthoptimization transcends so far
past just diet is because itappears that the mitochondria
are specifically releasing lightand they're using that
different light releasewavelengths to help the cell
communicate and potentiallyreproduce.
So, yeah, tell us about yourthoughts currently.

Speaker 2 (50:56):
I want to put it a little more strongly it not just
appears, it happens.
Appears kind of says well,we're maybe not social.
No, mitochondria producebiophotons and those biophotons
are mechanism of communicating.
People don't realize that themitochondria, these organelles
inside your cells, they operateway differently than the DNA in

(51:17):
the nucleus does.
Mitochondria will bind together, they will cooperate, they will
separate, they reproduce,separate of the cell.
That is, mitochondria have kindof their own life cycle and
their own DNA, as if they wereseparate organisms living inside
us.
So this part is remarkable.
They must have mechanisms ofsignaling one another and they

(51:40):
produce bio photons.
That are one of thosemechanisms.
That's not really what got meinterested.
I haven't finished all thebooks that Jack Cruz says I'm
supposed to read on Twitter, youknow.
So I'm going to get a F on myhomework from Jack on this, and
part of the reason I haven'tfinished all those books is
because I couldn't get an ideaout of my head.
My son is type 1 diabetic.

(52:02):
He was diagnosed when he wassix years old and as a dad I
felt so ashamed.
I didn't know what to do.
I didn't know why he was sick.
I thought he had the flu.
I was giving him orange juicebecause you know that's the way
I was raised.
What a terrible thing to give achild that isn't making insulin
anymore.
So I was making it worse forhim.

(52:22):
After he was diagnosed and hewas released from the pediatric
ICU and we come home and I'vegot the vials of insulin and
I've got the blood glucose meterand I've got the insulin
needles and and I've got theinsulin needles and I've got to
figure all this stuff out aboutmetabolism.
I thought, thank goodness I'man engineer, I have a problem to
work on.
And it was shortly thereafterthat the results of a

(52:42):
longitudinal Finnish study werereleased and it said the rates
of juvenile diabetes so this istype 1 diabetes go way up when
the mother is not taking vitaminD supplements In Finland these
are all Finnish populations inlate into pregnancy or while
she's breastfeeding and theinfant is vitamin D insufficient

(53:05):
or deficient.
And this opened up like awindow of realization, because
we don't necessarily know whatcauses this autoimmune disorder
called type 1 diabetes.
But now we know what sort ofmoves the risk needle on it and
it is a deficiency of vitamin D.
There is a relationship betweenvitamin D and the development of

(53:27):
the immune system because anewborn baby doesn't have an
immune system.
It takes time for that to comeonline.
The newborn baby is relyingupon the antibodies in the
mother's milk for its immunesystem.
Great.
Then COVID happened, Max, andyour country locked down, my
country locked down and it wasall bullshit.
And by this time I'd alreadybeen through 20 years of sorting

(53:48):
out the lies from the AmericanDiabetic Association and sorting
out the misconceptions that theendocrinologists harbor, and so
I was already kind of skeptical.
I knew about vitamin D in theimmune system.
I started looking this up andI'm like.
It looks like COVID isassociated with metabolic
dysfunction.
It looks like a weak immunesystem is associated with a
vitamin D deficiency, and I wascanceled.

(54:08):
I lost a lot of faculty friends, journalists came after me,
other people were calling upArizona State and trying to get
me fired for spreading heresyabout critique of the lockdowns,
and it stuck.
The association between vitaminD and the development of the
immune system is not exclusiveto type 1 diabetes.

(54:31):
It also shows up in multiplesclerosis.
It also shows up in rheumatoidarthritis.
It also shows up in Parkinson's.
It also shows up infibromyalgia.
It shows up in Hashimoto's andother thyroid disorders Every
single autoimmune disorder thatI've looked at has its origins
in vitamin D irregularitiesearly in life.

(54:51):
There's a lot of clinical trialsand epidemiological studies
will say, oh no.
I looked at all theseParkinson's patients, you know,
shortly after their onset wedrew blood.
They don't have a vitamin Ddeficiency, but that's not when
their immune system developed.
You have to go, like the Finnsdid, all the way back to the
earliest years or months ofchildhood when the immune system

(55:12):
is developing and it willdevelop along this aberrant
pathway if you don't have enoughvitamin D.
All this stuff we know.
I'm not even speculating yet.
But, max, how the hell do theInuit live in Greenland?
How the hell do you have peopleliving in the Arctic Circle

(55:33):
where there's no sunshine,there's no vitamin D?
That was really bothering me.
Mitochondria in the cold makebiophotons.
Some of those biophotons are inthe wavelength range that UV
about 309, a little bit more 312nanometers that, when it

(55:54):
strikes the right cholesterol acatalyze might not be the right
word will stimulate synthesis ofvitamin D.
So this is the speculative part.
So biophoton strikes thecholesterol, creates the
pre-vitamin D that is laterconverted into vitamin D, and it

(56:15):
all happens inside the cellwhere the light is made where
the cholesterol is present andit doesn't require any enzymatic
sort of modulation.
This is just a physicalreaction the light and the
cholesterol.
Will that vitamin D that iscreated inside the cell ever
show up on a blood serum?

(56:35):
Vitamin D, you know, 25-o-h-d orwhatever the heck it is test
and I'm speculating.
No, the cold can compensate fora blood serum vitamin D
insufficiency and you might behealthy, that is, without any of
the symptoms of low vitamin D,because your cells have the
vitamin D insufficiency.
And you might be healthy, thatis, without any of the symptoms
of low vitamin D, because yourcells have the vitamin D they

(56:56):
need, even if your blood serumis low because that vitamin D
was synthesized inside the cell.
That's a hypothesis that I'mnot sure I know how to test yet,
but I don't know.
Maybe my friend JadaBhattacharya will be, you know,
director of the NIH in theUnited States and I'll submit a
proposal and they won't shoot itdown right away because it's

(57:18):
not about, I don't know.
I'm going to keep thinking thisthrough and one of the ways I
do that is to ask you, max,what's your reaction to this
idea that cold can stimulatevitamin D synthesis inside the
cell that never shows up in theblood.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
Yeah, very, very interesting question.
I'll take a step back and havea thought that Professor Bob
Flosbury gave to me, who's anastrophysicist and astronomer,
and he suggested that there wasreason to believe that UVB light
was actually able to scatterand therefore be available above
the sun angle which woulddirectly be exposed, possibly

(57:57):
into the winter.
So he was of the opinion thatpeople might be able to generate
cutaneous vitamin D if they hadno clothes on out on the ice in
the northern latitudes.
That's an interesting question,but we'll remain to see where
that goes.
To answer your questionspecifically, I think a little
bit about vitamin D physiology.

(58:17):
As you mentioned, the process ofvitamin D formation is this
photoreaction, which essentiallychanges the conformation of 7D
hydrocholesterol intopre-vitamin D, and then the
thermal effect of the body at 37degrees isomerizes that into
vitamin D and then obviously,the conformational change of the

(58:40):
cholesterol ejects it from thecell membrane and then it
transforms and then it mostlygets bound to a vitamin D
binding protein and thenessentially transported around
the body.
The other interesting point tonote and a smaller proportion is
attached to the lipoproteinfraction, which is LDL and HDL.

(59:00):
So people that aresupplementing seem to have most
of that supplemental vitamin Dgoing into the LDL fraction
rather than in a vitamin Dbinding protein, which is less
specific.
The other interesting pointthat needs to be said is that
there's an enzymatictransformation of vitamin D
occurring both first in theliver and then in the kidneys,

(59:20):
to activate it from vitamin D to25-hydroxyvitamin D, then to
1-25-1-25-dihydroxyvitamin D.
This is also occurring locally,and it occurs locally in the
skin, where the enzymes arepresent to transform the vitamin
D into active form, and thatseems to play a role in
preventing skin cancer,preventing the proliferation of

(59:44):
malignant skin cells andmelanocytes in response to UV
exposure.
But how that's relevant to whatyou're proposing and I really
like it is that we could beproducing really local vitamin D
that could therefore beconverted to its active form at
the site internally.
And, yes, I 100% agree that itwould not show up as a

(01:00:06):
circulating 25-hydroxy bloodtest because it's potentially
tuned amount that's only beingsynthesized to meet the needs,
just like it appears thatmelatonin is being secreted and
synthesized on-site in themitochondria in response to
near-infrared light.
The other point that I think isinteresting is that the

(01:00:26):
darkness that occurs at highlatitude, living in winter,
means that there'd be much moremelatonin produced and it
appears as if there's analogoussignaling pathways with the
melatonin receptor and melatoninsignaling that potentially
could be overtaking some of thefunctions that would occur with

(01:00:47):
vitamin D signaling.
So yeah, those are my points,but I really liked the idea.
I think that definitely hassome legs.

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
Well, I wrote an article and I put it on Twitter
to see what people would think,and I think it was mostly people
like you that were reading it,because there was a lot of
excitement about the idea andsome of the usual criticism that
, oh, this is only a hypothesis.
Some of the usual criticismthat, oh, this is only a
hypothesis, only Only ahypothesis Like let's get more

(01:01:19):
hypotheses.
We should be putting thehypotheses out there instead of
diminishing them because theyare hypothetical.
We should be thinking aboutways to falsify them, to
disprove them.
Hypotheses are the funnest,most creative part of science
and that's why we share them arethe funnest, most creative part
of science and that's why weshare them.

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
The other point I'll quickly make and I agree with
you completely is that thepeople living at high latitudes
had an abundant source ofpreformed vitamin D in the form
of fatty fish and marine foodsand potentially animal fat.
So they were potentiallygetting vitamin D needs met
orally and they potentially hadalso had stores accumulated from
the summer.
And this is the idea if you'vegot a fair Fitzpatrick 1 or 2

(01:01:58):
skin type and you're fullyexposed during summer and the UV
index is only climbing to say,a 6 in Sweden at maximum, but
potentially you're storing awaythat vitamin D in the adipose,
in the fat tissue, and thenthat's potentially released
throughout the winter.
But I think your idea really,really has legs Because if we go
back to this biophoton idea, itseems like the and I want to

(01:02:23):
make a quick distinction betweenbiophoton release and
bioluminescence so biophotonrelease is actually photons of
light being emitted from thecell endogenous or the
mitochondrion endogenously, andthat seems to be as a result of
biochemical reactions.
So this paper there's a paper byRhys Moult and Alistair Nunn is

(01:02:45):
one of the co-authors.
These are researchers throughthe Guy Foundation and it's
called Ultra Weak PhotonEmission a brief review.
But what they say is that itoccurs during essential
metabolic reactions wheremolecules are moving from higher
to lower energy states,releasing photons and
electronically excited products.
Such pathways include themitochondrial respiratory chain,

(01:03:06):
lipid peroxidation, peroxisomeand catecholamine biochemistry.
Again, what gets upregulated incold is catecholamine
biochemistry and mitochondrialrespiratory the chain.
So it sounds like these photonsbetween 200 and 800 nanometers
are being emitted and obviouslypotentially cold is stimulating

(01:03:27):
that process, andbioluminescence seems to be the
release of light that waspreviously absorbed.
That's the distinction betweenbioluminescence and biophoton
release.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
This is great.
Now I've got some more homework.

Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
I really respect the fact that you're delving into
these topics, thomas, and askingthese questions and posing
these scientific hypotheses,because it's so common and I
think in clinical medicine,especially when clinicians have
their paycheck replacing kneesor putting stents in hearts,
there's zero financial incentiveto intellectually speculate at

(01:04:04):
all.
So I really respect the factthat you're asking these
questions and yeah, it's.

Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
Is that an opportunity then?
Can we come back to green light, because nowhere near enough
people are talking about thisthing.
Yeah, please give us anoverview.
I started looking at papers onlight.
I'm getting curious vitamin D,light, environment, that kind of
thing and I think probablyGoogle figured it out that this

(01:04:31):
guy is curious about this orsomething.
In any case, a paper showed upthat I didn't ask for, but
Google, scholar alert orsomething sent it to me and it
was on green light and headaches.
Maybe they were listening to myphone, because this has
happened to me before.
I'm having a conversation withthe AJK and we say something.
She says it in Spanish and Istart getting cat food

(01:04:52):
commercials in Spanish languagebecause Google listens to my
phone and I haven't shut thatthing off.
So maybe it was because I'mtalking about migraine headaches
.
She suffers from them.
This paper shows up Green lightrelieves the pain of migraines.
There was a study at HarvardUniversity in these active
migraineurs and it was onphotosensitivity.
They wanted at HarvardUniversity in these active
migraineurs and it was onphotosensitivity.

(01:05:12):
They wanted to understand whythe people with migraine
headaches are so sensitive tolight and they tested all the
individual wavelengths in thevisible spectrum.
Every single one of them madethe pain worse and they thought
probably some.
You know wavelengths are worsethan others, except green, which
cut the pain, which is aself-reported subjective score.

(01:05:33):
But these migraineurs are sortof subjecting themselves in the
interest of science, to thesepainful wavelengths.
Green came on.
They said wait a second, thatfeels good.
University of Arizona did afollow-up study using like
practically green Christmaslights.
You know, they just boughtthese lights online.
They were LEDs.
They measured the wavelengthsand they said here's what we
want you to do to the humansubjects Lock yourself in a dark

(01:05:55):
closet, plug in your Christmaslights and just sit there for an
hour and then keep a headachediary.
Tell us how it goes.
They got a significantreduction I'm talking like 60%
to 80% in the frequency andseverity of migraine headaches.
They published like threepapers on this.
So this paper comes into me andI call up a buddy who's in the
red light business and I say canyou make me a green light?

(01:06:17):
You know just the same thing asyour little red light, but I
want green LEDs in there.
He goes I think I could.
Yeah, you know, we'll see whatprototype comes in.
And he calls me up.
He says, tom, this is garbage,it's way too bright.
And you can see me up.
He says, tom, this is garbage,it's way too bright, and you can
see.
You know, when I turn this on,you're like nobody would want to
stare at this thing.
It's probably going to give youa headache.
He says I don't know what we'regoing to do.

(01:06:39):
Those guys, you know, make myred lights.
They're all about the power.
And I asked him to tone it down.
I said it's okay, me and AJwill be right out there.
I got to see this for myselfand I agreed with him.
I'm like this is crap.
But AJ says let me see thatthing.
She takes it out of my hand andshe puts it right up against
her face with her eyes closed.

(01:07:00):
Max, all the laboratory studieshad been, with the eyes open,
asking the subjects to allow thegreen light to come in through
their eyes and strike theirretina.
But this one's so bright and AJ, you know, when she has a
migraine she doesn't want toopen her eyes anyway.
So she closes her eyes, puts itright up here and she goes.
This feels really good.

(01:07:23):
This has taken my headache froma six down to about a two.
I ordered a hundred of themright away.
I'm like let's get these intothe hands of other people.
And since then I've collecteddozens of testimonies.
These are sort of like productreviews.
80% of them sound like thisthis is amazing.
I can't believe it.
I've been searching for thisfor my whole life.

(01:07:44):
It's a miracle.
I don't need my headache painmeds anymore, and that's not an
exaggeration.
This is coming from achiropractor in Utah is using it
with his patients and thesepeople are desperate for relief.
Whether it is a post-concussionheadache or a stress headache
or a sinus headache or amigraine headache, they are

(01:08:04):
getting relief.
But 20% of the reports soundlike this At a certain time in
my cycle I get a headache.
It's a migraine.
It just won't quit.
Green light cannot touch a highestrogen headache and I didn't
know this until people told methat the other one is.
There's a type of migrainecalled vestibular and I haven't
had a lot of success withvestibular migraines.

(01:08:25):
All the other headaches, thegreen light is taking the pain
away.
It won't necessarily take awaythe visual aura or the loss of
proprioception or some othersymptoms that migraineurs often
have, but the pain goes away andthat's why it feels like a
miracle.
So I put that up.
You know, I read a couplearticles and people.
Everybody wants to know whatare the mechanisms?

(01:08:46):
I have no idea.
Rami Bernstein at Harvard hasno idea.
The scientists at University ofArizona have no idea.
Rami Bernstein at Harvard hasno idea.
The scientists at theUniversity of Arizona have no
idea.
All I have is sort of thisevolutionary hypothesis, because
if you go around the worldmeasuring the dominant
wavelengths of light in theshady forests, it doesn't matter
what forest you could be in,the Dominican Republic or

(01:09:08):
Vermont or China.
It's dominated by twowavelengths green, which should
be no surprise to anybody, andnear infrared.
These are the two things thathappen in the forest.
Well, where would our ancientancestors go when they're
anxious?
We know that one of the deepest, most visceral fears that comes

(01:09:33):
out in people's nightmares isfalling, and I've always thought
that was because we were up inthe trees.
I've always thought that theworst thing that can happen to
us, from this sort of brainstempoint of view, is falling out of
the tree while we're asleep.
When we're anxious, we gostraight into the forest.
And this is just a story.
This isn't even a scientifichypothesis.
There is something about greenand those forest wavelengths of

(01:09:57):
light that reduce pain, reducestress, reduce anxiety.
I don't even get headaches, butthe days are short right now.
So I get up in the morning, Iuse my green lantern, I turn it
on right next to you know, I'mgoing to use my computer in dark
mode and I'm waking up and it'sokay to have a little blue
light, it's okay to have alittle green, but I'm getting
the green into my eyes because Idon't know, otherwise I might

(01:10:19):
be a bundle full of stress.
What are your thoughts?

Speaker 1 (01:10:22):
Well, yeah, this is incredibly interesting and you
mentioned that near infrared andgreen are the predominant
wavelengths in a forest and thatis because of the physiology of
the leaves, which is thephotosynthesizing leaf uses red
and blue, visible mostly and itreflects massive amounts of
green.
That's why the leaf appearsgreen and it reflects a massive

(01:10:44):
amount of near infrared.
So that makes sense to me.
I'm fascinated and intriguedabout the possibility of light
as a drug replacement therapy.
I mean fascinated and intriguedabout the possibility of light
as a drug replacement therapy.
I mean, I think that is thepromise of photobiology and this
idea of light as medicine, thatall the way from UV up to past
near infrared.
So to hear that you'vediscovered and have now

(01:11:06):
implemented a product based onthat discovery is amazing to me.
So well done.
What exact wavelengths is thisdevice emitting?

Speaker 2 (01:11:17):
This is a little bit random.
At Harvard they used 320nanometers and then they
couldn't get that exactwavelength at U of A.
I think they were a littleshorter.

Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
Did you say 520 or 320?

Speaker 2 (01:11:28):
No, no, no 320.

Speaker 1 (01:11:30):
320 is in the UVA range.

Speaker 2 (01:11:34):
You are correct.
I'm sorry, it must be 520.
I'm pulling it up right now.
What I put into my light is 530and 545.
And you are correct, theHarvard study was in the 500s,
like 520.
And then the University ofArizona was close, but it wasn't
the exact same.
When I looked at thespectrophotometer data from the

(01:11:59):
forests I noticed that the peakis higher than that.
It's not a 520 where they firstdiscovered the result, but they
never tested 550.
They never tested 540.
So I put two into this devicethe 530 and the 545.
So far people have not reporteda distinction.
They haven't said I want fourdifferent wavelengths and I want
them on sliders and I put theminto ski goggles so that the

(01:12:37):
patient could experiment withfour different wavelengths at
these changing intensities.
We had to work out the flickerso that we were pretty careful
on that.
We didn't want to create aproblem when we're trying to
solve one, and so the lessexpensive model, which is
imported from China, is just twowavelengths, four intensities
in those, and we seem to begetting good results.

(01:12:59):
But the research tool are thesegoggles that would allow people
to fool around with the slidersand see if there's an optimum
wavelength.
It might not be the 545 to 550that dominates the shady forest,
it might be a little lower thanthat for reasons that I don't
really understand.

(01:13:19):
But the one time that I testedthe red light and infrared on
the back of a subject's head andthe green in the front, I got a
really good sort of subjectiveresponse from the subject and
then I said now let's do it inthe ice bath, you know, because
I'm going to add some stress andthis guy was it was his second

(01:13:40):
ice bath ever so pretty naive tocold.
He got in there and I set up myred on the back of his head and
he held the green on the front.
Six minutes go by no shiveringthe front.
Six minutes go by no shivering,no urge to shiver Like.
What he reported was that theusual experience in the ice bath
was different for him becausethe panic didn't set in.

(01:14:01):
The usual shivering, whichwould seem like it's very
healthy, right Coldthermogenesis didn't feel the
urge.
Now it's activated by thenervous system.
It's possible that this combowas doing something to him that
kept him relaxed in a way thathe wouldn't otherwise have been.
And now I want to write up anexperimental protocol and see if
other people report similarthings.

Speaker 1 (01:14:22):
Yeah, the idea of combining a device of green and
near infrared to me soundsfascinating and potentially a
possible option.
The other thing that springs tomind is these transcranial
photobiomodulation devices, andthey're mostly in the red and
the infrared and they've beenusing for anything everything
from autism to traumatic braininjury to Alzheimer's and

(01:14:44):
Parkinson's disease.
Really it's Professor MikeHamblin is the kind of lead
researcher in this point of view, so I imagine if you made a
device that was a transcranialhelmet or a cap, potentially
what that would look like.
But I guess that thewavelengths are shorter, so the
green light is shorterwavelength, so it probably
wouldn't penetrate anywhere nearas deeply.

(01:15:05):
You are correct.

Speaker 2 (01:15:06):
Just like the short wavelengths of UV are so easily
attenuated, whereas the longwavelengths will penetrate
deeper into the body.
Green is between the blue andthe red and it will penetrate
more than blue, more than uv,but less than red.
So it might not be able toreach the brain when you're

(01:15:27):
going through the hair and theskull, but that optic nerve is a
shortcut straight into themiddle of the brain and it's not
like the light is travelingalong the nerve.
There is something happening inthe back of the eye that is
sending signals to the brainthat subtract out the pain.
I don't know if it'smitochondrial related and I've

(01:15:49):
always kind of doubted it.
I do know that the retina ispacked with mitochondria.
Conversion of visible lightinto the signals you know, the
sort of psychologicalinterpretation of that light
must be an incredibly energyintensive process, because
otherwise the retina cellswouldn't have so many
mitochondria in them.

Speaker 1 (01:16:10):
Many mitochondria in them.
Yeah, exactly, and that's GlennJeffrey's work at UCL in London
and he's shown howmitochondrially packed the
retina is and how beneficial 660nanometers in the deep red can
have for mitochondrial health.
There's devices that arespecifically using that.
So I'm so glad to talk to you,thomas, and to hear how you're

(01:16:31):
innovating and doing thiscitizen science research, but
from such a way in that you'reactually executing solutions and
not just sitting in an academicchair kind of postulating and
conjecturing but not doinganything about it.
So I really respect that.
I mean, imagine this inemergency departments People
come into the ED and they havesuch severe migraine headache

(01:16:52):
and they end up getting allkinds of IV medications and
otherwise to kind of attenuatethe migraine symptoms.
If we had a couple of thesedevices in the emergency, you
could give them to a patient atthe same time as maybe some
other drug treatments.
You could probably dischargethem so much quicker so they
don't take up a bed in the shortstay unit for the next 12 hours

(01:17:15):
and hopefully prevent them fromeven coming in if they had one
of their own.
So I'm just so optimistic aboutthe role of expansion of panels
, of light panels in variouswavelengths, for so many
different treatment options toreally replace drug therapies.
I think this is the promise oflightest medicine.
So thank you, thank you for yourwork in this field.

(01:17:38):
It's my pleasure.
This has been great, cool.
Well, we should definitely doanother episode sooner than a
year to go over the green lightstuff again in depth.
Yeah, maybe you can share evenmore results and stories, and I
really hope that this is an areaof research that gets funded

(01:17:59):
under a decentralized health andmedicine science push, because
this is the type of researchthat I think can change people's
lives and does not involveexpensive drug patents and
trials.
It could be very cheaply toresearch this.

Speaker 2 (01:18:16):
In the United States, the NIH so this is the National
Institute of Health is the mostimportant funding agency for
medical research and it's highlycompetitive and it's
institutional and it'sbureaucratic.
However, there is anotherprogram called ARPA-H.
So the ARPA programs in the USare the Advanced Research

(01:18:37):
Projects, defense, something orother this is the Defense
Department research.
Darpa was essential in theformation of the internet, as an
example, and the ARPA programstypically have room for more,
higher risk, potentiallyentrepreneurial, innovative,
transformative things.
Arpa-h has a program with anopen solicitation that allows

(01:18:58):
people with these sort of crazyhealth ideas to ask for funding
to investigate them, to see howcrazy they really are, and maybe
that's the pipeline for me asan academic now, and maybe
that's the pipeline for me as anacademic.

Speaker 1 (01:19:12):
Now, yeah, yeah, amazing.
And I know for a fact thatProfessor Mike Hamblin's
transcranial photobiomodulationresearch was funded by the
Department of Defense becausethey were interested in helping
basically war fighters who'dcome back from the war theater
Afghanistan with traumatic braininjury.
So absolutely that could be agood avenue, amazing.

(01:19:35):
So where can people find youonline and please tell us how
they can connect and learn morefrom you.

Speaker 2 (01:19:41):
You can read just about everything that I've
written on cold plunge therapyand its science on
morozcoforgecom O-R-O-Z-K-Oforgecom Click on the science
tab and it's written in a blogformat and, because that doesn't
work for some people, you canbuy the book.
You can only get it atmorozcoforgecom.
I'll ship it to Australia.

(01:20:02):
It's not cheap but it'savailable.
If you're the kind of personwho likes sticky notes and you
wanna write in the margins thatkind of thing, you can find me
on Instagram.
I'm SeegerTP.
I'm not very popular but I'mthere.
And if you want to read aboutall the stuff that gets me in
trouble with my dean, then go toTwitter and you can find me as

(01:20:23):
SeegerTP there.
I'm going to be, I don't know,called into the provost office
for half the stuff I tweet.
It feels like because I got abig mouth on Twitter.

Speaker 1 (01:20:33):
Yeah, I think science and society advances when
people speak their truth andeven if that's inconvenient to
the status quo.
So let it be.
Keep it up.
So absolute pleasure speaking,thomas, and yeah, we'll be in
touch.
I'm looking forward to it,thank you.

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BYRON HINTERLAND RETREAT - Circadian Living by Regenerative Health Retreats

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