BYRON HINTERLAND RETREAT - Circadian Living by Regenerative Health Retreats

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, welcome back to the Regenerative Health Podcast
.
Today I've got Cameron Borgjoining me back here, and
Cameron is a nutritionist, he'sa pulmonary scientist, he's the
host of the Ricky Flo NutritionPodcast and I think he's a
fellow leader in interrogatinglight and the photobiological
effects and what implicationsthis has for health.

(00:21):
So, cameron, thanks for joiningme again.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
No, it's a real honor .
Love talking to you, Max.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
It feels like a pretty opportune time to jump
back on a call because thereseems like the thought of light
and its effect on health ispenetrating more into the
mainstream.
I mean, we had our mutualpodcast guest and friend, Dr
Roger Swelt, on AndrewHuberman's podcast.
It seems like there's more andmore recognition that this is a

(00:52):
critical part of health.
So maybe I could get you tokick off with how you think
about the space now.
What excites you and what areyou thinking about?

Speaker 2 (01:06):
What excites you and what are you thinking about?
I mean, what's really excitingme at the moment is thinking
about how light is giving ourbody energy.
I think that's really a keypoint in this whole field at the
moment.
I know there's a lot of talkabout basically being able to
generate energy directly, thesame way that plants do this

(01:28):
type of photosynthesis.
And I think to most people whohave embraced the sun this
doesn't sound far-fetched at allbecause you do feel like you
get more energy from the sun.
I mean, this is a universalexperience.
When you go outside you alwaysfeel better, you always feel
more energized.
So I guess on the surface itseems like quite a logical thing
to explore.

(01:48):
But I mean, as far as evidenceis concerned, or direct evidence
, you know there's still thisfood first sort of idea coming
forward from the literature thatyou know all energy comes down
to food, forward from theliterature that you know all

(02:09):
energy comes down to food.
But I think the idea that we'rebeing bathed in, you know the
amount of photons that we cannever really quite grasp.
I mean it's in the range ofnumbers that you sort of lose
the ability to understand.
You know, being bathed in thatmuch light with all these
different wavelengths has to becontributing to something,
because these photons areinteracting with all of the

(02:31):
molecules in our body andbasically donating sort of
vibratory energy.
And this is why I reached outto you a few days ago, was?
You know, I had quite a longconversation with Bob Fosbury,
who was talking about this ideathat the primary energy we're

(02:53):
getting from the sun is aroundthis one electron volt, you know
range, and that seems to be theexact energy that the
respiratory proteins in themitochondria sort of require to
help electrons tunnel.
So it's sort of like thisbuilt-in activation energy that
our bodies always evolvedexpecting.

(03:15):
Yeah, why not have a oneelectron volt barrier everywhere
?
Because you know that's a givenand what's happened is we've
basically removed that given andthis makes it very, very
difficult for energy to flow inthe body, and of course, energy
flow is the precise thing thatsets up cycles in the body.

(03:39):
I've been really getting intoMei-Wan Ho's work and it's funny
.
I've been reading her book andI'll read like half the book and
then I just start again because, you know, I feel like there's
so much more to get out of itand you know she quotes Morowitz
, who talks about you know.
He basically came up with thislaw that wherever there is

(03:59):
energy flow, at least one cycleis generated flow, at least one
cycle is generated.
And I think this really comesout of the laws of you know, the
thermodynamics of complexsystems.
She calls it the thermodynamicsof ordered complexity.
She really felt that there was aneed to sort of come up with a
new formulation ofthermodynamics, one that wasn't

(04:23):
come up with looking at steamengines, but one that was come
up with looking at organisms.
And it looks like what ourorganism is doing is making lots
of energy flow but consequentlyalso making lots of cycle and
lots of order and lots ofstructure.
And the energy flow is exactlywhat's sustaining our structure.

(04:43):
And of course, structure andfunction are connected at the
hip.
They're two sides of the samecoin, basically.
So it just makes you think thatsunlight really is the primary
donator of energy.
It's just not the electronsthat we think of and that's all

(05:04):
food is.
We're just trying to getelectrons from food, and
understanding that is really thekey to understanding food is
that it all know.
When you learn about this stuffin school, you're sort of given

(05:27):
this idea that all electrons inthe universe are the same,
they're a defined quantity, butof course that's not true.
They have all of these otherintrinsic properties like spin
and vibratory states and energythat differentiate them and
clearly, ostensibly communicatedifferent things to the body,
them, and clearly, ostensiblycommunicate different things to
the body Particularly.
You know the body's hyper,hyper sensitive to small stimuli

(05:50):
.
It's quite remarkable.
So basically, what Bob ran pastme was this idea of a phonon
bath.
I didn't even know what aphonon was until he told me, but
I probably won probably won'tbe 100 correct on this because
I've only started learning aboutit but when a photon interacts
with a molecule it can basicallyimpart a vibratory energy on it

(06:14):
and this is not lost as thermalenergy straight away.
So you basically the photon youknow interacts with the
molecule and then leaves somesort of energy in a vibratory
state and that's a phonon, thisvibratory energy that's passed
on.
And you think, if you'regetting bathed by all of these

(06:35):
around this one electron voltenergy, your body just gets
blown up like a balloon with allof these one electron volt.
This phonon bath is what he'scalled it, and he said he's run
this idea past quite a fewquantum biologists, which is
great because he has access to alot of them now, because he's

(06:57):
working with the Guy Foundation,so he's been able to run this
idea past people and it seems,it seems to seems to be quite
logical that all of thisactivation energy has been
provided.
And, of course, when we'resitting inside, all of that, you
know, activation energy that is, you know, an evolutionary
given for two billion years hasall of a sudden been switched

(07:21):
off.
The light, the light has been,you know, flicked, and I think
that's a really fascinating wayto think about what's going on
and a different way to thinkabout how light is providing
energy to the body.
And clearly we need electronsto make the energy flow.
That's where food comes in.

(07:42):
But, you know, I think mostpeople who have embraced the sun
realize that they probablydon't need to eat as much when
they're in the sun or they'reliving, you know, just like a
normal, natural human being.
You don't need to eat that muchbecause you're being provided
lots of energy by the sun.
Um, you know what?
What is this?

(08:02):
Something that you've beenthinking about too, max?

Speaker 1 (08:06):
yeah, absolutely.
And the, the default state ofirradiation is what I've been
thinking about as as it relatesto how humans would have walked
the earth and the, the evolution, the product of evolution, of
homo sapiens, homo sapiens goingfrom this primitive all the way

(08:28):
back to the beginning ofunicellular life, then
multicellular life, all the wayup to animalia, amphibians, and
then we became hominids and westood upright.
The given there is fullspectrum sunlight from dawn till
dusk, and that begins withvisible and infrared light at

(08:50):
peaks in the midday, withpenetration of a whole bunch of
short wavelength light in the UVrange depending on your
latitude and season, and thenessentially a reversal of that
process.
And when you tell people thatthe default is to be irradiated
with full-spectrum UV-containinglight, you almost get a funny

(09:14):
look because the statement inand of itself implies or
suggests danger.
It suggests perhaps even cancer, and I think that's been a very
powerful meme that's enteredthe discourse via concerns about
skin malignancy.
But really that's what happenedand that was what our default

(09:36):
state was.
The nuance here is that,depending on where in the world
your ancestors came from, therewas a differential amount of
epidermal melanin that wascultivated in response to the
ambient ultraviolet conditions.
But if you are in Australia,that means that you ended up as
a Fitzpatrick 6, extremely dark,indigenous Australian

(10:01):
Aboriginal with extremely darkskin, because there's high
intensity UV year round.
But if you lived north inScandinavia, then half the year
the UV index is peaking at sixand then the other half of the
year there's absolutely noultraviolet B light at all.
So no matter where you are inthe world or no matter where

(10:25):
your family or ancestors are,from the morning to dusk full
spectrum of radiation was thenorm and, as you alluded to
before, cameron, this issomething that's been taken away
now that we're all livinginside.
I'll just quickly make thepoint for those who aren't

(10:46):
familiar with Professor BobFosbury.
He's an astronomer,astrophysicist, who's since
turned his hand to understandinglight-life interactions, and
he's been a mutual podcast guest, and I think his most famous
quote maybe to date, was thatlife on Earth is an antenna for
solar radiation, and I thinkthat really sums up so far what

(11:07):
we've been talking about.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
It's exactly the quote that needs to be spoken
very loudly now.
And he was telling me that himand Scott it's nice they
communicate at least once a weekand they've been finding all of
these coincidences that relateto how life has evolved with the

(11:31):
energy that's provided by thesun.
And you know he listed off abunch of these coincidences that
all relate around the specificenergy that the sun provides and
how all life has sort ofevolved.
This activation energy of aboutone electron volt, this is one

(11:54):
of them, and then he named a fewmore.
And it just starts to become soobvious that life is just all
specifically tuned to the solarspectrum At its most fundamental
level.
That's exactly what it's tunedto.
And, yeah, it's just sounfortunate that our eyes have

(12:17):
evolved to see only such a smallportion, because we've just
become so myopic about the waythat we perceive these questions
around.
You know being exposed to thesun and even you know you said
before radiation.
You know, unfortunately thatterm resides in a lexicon where,

(12:39):
you know, everyone hears thatand thinks that's bad.
Yet at the same time they havetheir phone in their pocket
without realising that it's thesame thing.
The things coming out of yourphone are photons.
They're just in a differentrange, they're slightly up past
the infrared and it's hard toget this point across in a

(13:00):
lexicon that sort of doesn'tallow us to speak about this in
a way that's understandable, ina way that's not going to get
confused in any other way.
But yeah, I mean, it's alwaysquite frustrating to think, you
know, people are so concernedabout the invisible radiation
from the sun, the UV, whilsthaving their phone in their
pocket.
It's always been, you know,don't people realize that the

(13:24):
same sort of thing is happening?
And why wouldn't you beconcerned about the other side
of the spectrum, which clearlyhas biological effects?
I think everyone would agreethat probably putting their
phone up to their head during acall for a long period of time
is probably not a good thing.
I think most people, even withno scientific background, would
say, yeah, that's probably not agood idea.

(13:45):
But if you push them and saidwhy you start to come up with
answers that clearly theseinvisible wavelengths have
biological effects, it justhappens to be that the ones we
lived under are going to be theones, the ones that we evolved
under, are probably going to bethe ones affording us some, uh,

(14:08):
adaptive benefit and somefitness um benefit as well yeah,
and I think that'll be a topicwe'll get into later in the
discussion.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
But really I think the semantic high ground has
definitely been taken and maybecommandeered by, and perhaps the
dermatology profession morebroadly in their attempts at
primary prevention of skincancers and that's, as I
mentioned, has really shapedpeople's thinking about this

(14:37):
idea of sunlight radiation andperhaps also more around
ionizing radiation and perhapsits connotations and allusions
to nuclear power, nuclearweapons and these kinds of
things.
But we don't get taught aboutthe electromagnetic spectrum at
school and maybe maybe we peopledo at physics.

(14:59):
I I actually didn't takephysics, nor biology,
interestingly, but uh, it seemsto have found me, me neither.
But I think it's incrediblyimportant and as medicine and
health evolves into this newfrontier of what you and I I

(15:21):
guess are part of thisdecentralization that I think,
and quantum biology, learningabout the electromagnetic
spectrum and as it relates tosolar photons and also
endogenously generated photonsand how light is influencing
life, I think it's going tobecome more and more important.
But I wanted to ask you about,now that we're on the topic of

(15:45):
light and it's imbuing ortransferring energy to life, and
we know that that's happeningpredominantly through
mitochondria in a variety ofdifferent mechanisms.
But it's commonly you hear thisstatement that we're only
supposed to get 30% of ourelectrons from food, and it kind

(16:07):
of gets repeated.
I don't want to use the wordparroted, but maybe that's
somehow sometimes what it feelslike.
What's your take on thescientific validity of a
statement like that?
Because on the surface it seemsdifficult to believe,
especially if someone doesn'thave any understanding of

(16:27):
light-life interactions.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
That's a great question.
I think if I had the answer,you and I would probably have a
Nobel.
But yeah, it's a difficultthing to try and unpack because,
first of all, how do you evengo about investigating something
like that thing to try andunpack, because you know, first
of all, how do you even go aboutinvestigating something like
that?
And then you know there's thisidea of earthing providing

(16:53):
electrons, and you know I'veheard some criticism about that
too that I've been exploringthat perhaps the effects of
earthing are not mediated by um,the uptake of free electrons
from the earth, um, which is aninteresting idea.
That that's not.
That's not why, uh, it seems tohave a benefit, um, yeah, I

(17:17):
mean, I really don't know.
I I know, um, that people havelooked at um pectin in the eye
of birds and this is sort ofthis melanin structure that
interacts with light to generateglucose, generate electrons,
basically, and this is probablybehind why migratory birds can
fly for days or weeks withoutstopping and eating, because

(17:40):
they have sunlight, they'reliterally photosynthesizing,
they don't need to stop and eatbecause they're being supplied
electrons from the sun.
And this is, you know, this isin the literature, but no, this
is old, you know I haven't seenany recent work on it and I said
this, I told this to Bobbecause Bob was like you know,

(18:00):
we have to think about thesemigratory birds that you know go
, have to think about thesemigratory birds that go weeks on
end without eating.
And I said, oh, I think peoplehave talked about the pecten in
the eye and he said, oh, thatmakes total sense because
they're being supplied theelectrons.
All they need is electrons.
They don't need food, they justneed electrons.
Of course, after some period oftime you do need food because

(18:23):
you need other things other thanelectrons.
You need minerals and so forthto basically provide the
building blocks for life.
But ostensibly all you need iselectrons to have energy flow.
And where you have energy flow,you will have dynamic
adaptation and you'll be able tomaintain your structure and

(18:44):
you'll be able to maintain yourstructure.
So this idea I'm not sure wherethe idea of 30% comes from food,
but that wouldn't surprise mebecause food is such a small
part of what we do.
It's not like we're eating allday, because if we needed
electrons only from food, we'dbe sitting down doing nothing

(19:05):
but eating all day.
And humans I mean longest waterfast, I think is over a year,
so it's quite clear we're ableto get energy elsewhere.
In what form that takes, Ireally don't know.
There's all these other sort ofinteractions going on, and
there's other particles from thesun that we get, like even

(19:26):
things like neutrinos are comingthrough, um, no one's talking
about those, but we don't knowwhat the biological implications
of those particles interactingwith life are.
So it wouldn't surprise me if,if it's, you know, the amount of
electrons we're getting fromfood is quite low, um, and you
know, perhaps we needed, neededmuch less food when we were

(19:48):
living in an environment thatwas, or when we had a food
environment that was so rich inmicronutrients that you could
eat a smaller portion and getway more nutrition.
Basically, and get yourelectrons elsewhere and get your
electrons elsewhere.
But whatever has happened,we've sort of lost contact with

(20:11):
this source, or sources rather,of electrons that we probably
would have got.
But your guess is as good asmine as to where they're coming
from.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, I think it's going to be useful to break down
maybe the different parts ofthe terrestrial solar spectrum
as it relates to potentiallygiving the body energy.
Maybe we can do that, from UVto visible to infrared.
And the reason why I think it'sworth laying this out, to

(20:39):
always bring this back toclinical and individual
relevance, is that we're framingor understanding chronic
disease in this day and age as amitochondrial problem.
And again, to go back to DougWallace, he's the researcher
who's really done the groundworkto show every form of chronic

(20:59):
disease is simply organ-specificmitochondrial inefficiency I
think that might be a betterword than dysfunction or
maladaption and depending onwhich organ your mitochondrial
inefficiency shows up in whichis influenced by your
environmental choices and yourgenetic predispositions, that

(21:21):
kind of dictates the flavor ofchronic disease that you get.
So maybe let's start with theultraviolet and then go through
to the infrared to explain topeople what are the mechanisms
by which light is actuallyproviding energy to the body.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
Ultraviolet's the best one to start with, because
it's probably one of the mainreasons life was able to begin
in the first place, because it'sable to provide such a large
amount of energy to chemicalstructures.
So uv light can can changechemical structures.
It can make new chemicals byinteracting with them and that's
exactly what we see in thesynthesis of vitamin d, the.

(21:59):
The uvb photon is sufficiently,it has a sufficient amount of
energy to actually change thechemical structure.
And clearly that's reallyreally important in terms of the
beginnings of life in general.
You know, to generate, tosupply the right amount of
energy to make new chemicals andto allow these chemical

(22:24):
structures to make new things.
And anyone who's looked atAndrei Slominski's paper
something along the lines of howUV light touches the brain you
know he puts out very clearly inthat paper why UV and perhaps
probably even it was uvc, evenstronger photons that was a

(22:48):
major, major player in thebeginnings of life, in the
beginnings of chemicalcomplexity at least and you know
we see that everyone's familiarwith vitamin d you need a
really high energy photon toprovide that energy to the
chemicals in the skin.
So uh, it's.
And you know the fact thatGerwitch found in 1923 that this

(23:09):
mitogenic radiation, thesebiophotons, I guess perhaps even
predominate in the ultravioletrange, clearly says that the
ultraviolet is very important,or the energy of those photons
is very important for cellularand subcellular communications.
I think it's fairly wellunderstood now that

(23:31):
mitochondrial communication ishappening, at least in part, in
the UV range.
Nature doesn't do things, youknow, by accident.
You know clearly UV, that rangeis important for some specific
reason and it probably hassomething to do with the fact
that water absorbs quitestrongly in the uv and in the

(23:55):
the infrared.
So we don't really understandthe uv interactions with water.
But you know, if you look at aspectrometer reading of um, the
absorption spectrum of water,there's quite large peaks at
around these, like 280, 270,which is quite strong uh photons
.
So uv is interacting not onlywith chemicals but also with

(24:17):
water, which is what life isbuilt on as well yeah, I'm glad
you brought up um dr slominskiand we can definitely talk about
his, his work.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
He was a well, he is a us uh, they're called
dermatopathologists, uh, overthere, so I guess a
dermatologist that is also uhanatomically uh trained in
anatomic pathology, sodiagnosing and then then
actually looking at skinbiopsies to potentially diagnose
skin malignancies.
But his work and that paper thatyou referenced, it's almost

(24:54):
heresy within centralizeddermatology because it's really
illustrating how importantultraviolet light is in a
physiological way and maybe mybiggest takeaway from that paper
was that the skin is actuallyacting like an accessory
pituitary gland pretty much it'salmost acting like a central

(25:14):
endocrine organ.
In and of itself it's able tosecrete a whole bunch of these
peptide hormones that again,normally the hypothalamus or the
pituitary gland is secreting,but on exposure to ultraviolet
light it can make thesepro-encaphalin compounds,
obviously the melanocortin andPOMC compounds and all these

(25:37):
other products that are neededfor proper endocrine function,
and that is completely evenseparate from the circ circadian
signaling role and it'sobviously separate from the
infrared um light interactionsyeah, the, the skin is a is a
compounding pharmacy and ittakes its orders from the

(25:57):
spectrum that you give it.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
Um, I think that's.
You know.
We have to start thinking of ofthe skin the same way that we
think of the brain.
The skin is just an extensionof the brain and it takes its
orders from what it's exposed toand unfortunately for most
people, what it's exposed to isabsolute garbage.
So it has no idea how tocontinue regulating in a way

(26:23):
that's beneficial for the body.
But yeah, speaking andre wascrazy because I think he
realized quite early that he hadto be careful with the way that
he was talking aboutultraviolet light.
So he sort of created his ownniche you know, this
dermatopathology, um, this aneuro endocrine, uh sort of

(26:44):
connection to make it soundlegitimate.
And he sounded very aware thatthat's what he had to do if he
wanted to pursue effects oflight.
He had to sort of create thisnew role in order to legitimize
what he wanted to investigate.
He sounded very, very aware,which was really interesting to

(27:05):
me.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yeah, it's almost like disclosing or cloaking the
true narrative in a way thatjust makes it palatable to
centralized scientific fundingmodels and I really enjoyed your
episode with him because it wasvery insightful for that reason
and the way he was able to getfunding, I believe through the
NIH specifically, I guess,emphasizing certain aspects of

(27:30):
the research and using certainframings.
But it does make sense.
This role of the skin in thecontext of embryology and the
common neuroectodermal origin ofboth the skin and the brain and
I think that's a point thatJack Cruz will continue to

(27:51):
emphasize until he's pink in theface, which is the light that
you're showing your skin hasdramatic importance for health
through its connection to thebrain and, even more that this
evolutionary idea that the lossof hair enabled, you know,

(28:11):
greater essential harvesting oflight to therefore enable the
growth of our, of our twofrontal lobes, which is
obviously larger than any anyother, any other primate.
And to emphasize the point as itrelates to ultraviolet light
and energy generation, I thinkthe key point here is melanin.

(28:33):
Melanin is probably the key wayhow the human body is deriving
ultraviolet light and thereforeusing it, and maybe in medical
school we get taught thatmelanin absorbs and dissipates
ultraviolet energy as heat, andabsolutely it does.
But I think maybe the nextinteresting thing and the step

(28:55):
that isn't taken or isn'texplained is that what is the
body doing, perhaps on a quantumbiological level, with that
heat energy that's dispersedfrom the absorption of
ultraviolet light in melaninpigments?

Speaker 2 (29:09):
Well, it's really interesting.
You bring up this idea ofdissipation as heat.
One thing Mei-Wan Ho reallypushes home is this idea that
the energy in complex systems iscoherent.
And what she means by that iswhen you think of heat
dissipation, you think of itgoing off equally in all
directions, and she says that'snot coherent, that's incoherent,

(29:33):
that's just sort of equilibriumsort of stuff.
What we think of coherent iswhen we're dissipating energy,
it's all being directed in onespecific way.
So it's not just dissipatingenergy, it's all being directed
in one specific way.
So it's not just dissipatingoutward, you know, it's not just
radiating outward equally inall directions.
It's able to take that energyand dissipate it specifically in

(29:55):
one way.
And I think that's probablywhat's happening when we think
about energy from the sun beingused in some way, is that it's
being captured, and we don'tknow.
Melanin's probably one way.
There's probably a thousandother ways.
Energy is being captured fromthe sun but instead of then just
dissipating randomly, it'sbeing directed in some way.

(30:19):
It's being sort of funneledspecifically throughout the body
in order to do what needs to bedone.
And I think this idea ofcoherence really makes sense of
this idea.
You know this energy capture,storage and then dissipation.
This is all happening in a verycoherent manner and it's

(30:39):
happening in sort of a nestedmanner where you know one cycle
will capture energy and withinthat cycle there's 10 other
cycles and it just keeps passingit through these cycles and you
think when you have a cyclethat keeps repeating, it's a
zero entropy cycle becauseyou're not losing anything,
there's no waste, it's all theenergy stays within this cycle

(31:00):
and the sub-cycles within, and Ithink that's what's happening.
You know we're getting all ofthis energy and the sub-cycles
within, and I think that'swhat's happening.
We're getting all of thisenergy from the sun and it's
being very, very carefully andcoherently captured, stored and
then dissipated in a way that ismost effective for the body.
And there's probably countlessmolecules.
Melanin's probably one of them,and you know Lord knows how

(31:24):
many different types of melaninsthere are.
My melanin's probably differentto yours.
You know melanin evolved many,many different times.
I think at least three to five.
I think is where we're at atthe moment the amount of
different times it evolved,which is why you know African
people's skin is a differentcolor than you know the people

(31:45):
in Southeast Asia.
They have a different type, adifferent mix of different
melanins and you know, I don'teven think we've been going to
scratch the surface onto howthese different melanins are
reacting.
But you know, probably whateveris happening it's all coherent,
it's all being able to be verywell controlled and directed in

(32:07):
the body, whatever that energyis doing.

Speaker 1 (32:11):
That makes sense to me and when you said that it
evoked an image of an internalcombustion engine.
And an internal combustionengine takes the combustion of
oxygen and a hydrocarbon fuel inthe form of diesel or gasoline
and it combusts it and channelsthat energy through pistons into

(32:31):
a prop shaft, propeller shaftthat then turns the wheels of a
car or the wheel of a motorbikeor a chainsaw.
So what you describe seems tome a full stack of an ability to
capture light energy, turn itinto a hydrocarbon fuel, burn it
into an engine and turn apiston and repeat the cycle.

(32:54):
That makes sense.
That makes complete sense to meon a high level.
With respect to the melanin andthe mechanism of how it's
actually potentially one of themechanisms that's working, I
think we're left with a somewhatunsatisfying hypothesis of

(33:15):
Arturo Herrera, the Mexicanresearcher whose a lot of his
work has been around this ideaof human photosynthesis and the
ability of melanin to chargeseparate water, and this seems
to be a legitimate hypothesis.
However, in terms of the amountof evidence that we have to

(33:36):
back that up, right now I wouldsay it's I don't know, maybe
pitiful, is too intense, butit's incredibly small and so it
feels like in this area ofquantum biology.
We're a little bit out on alimb in terms of a small number
of people making pretty largeclaims about how this
interaction between melanin andcharge separation of water is

(33:58):
occurring, but we don't have asmuch to go off.
It makes sense as a mechanism,but I I'd really like to see
more research.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
I I couldn't agree more.
I think we're sort of in inthis, in this space.
We're sort of waiting forsomeone to make, make some
discovery that allows us tosafely say that we're making
energy from something other thanfood.
I think that's sort of what youknow intuitively.

(34:28):
I think we know that, and it'sdefinitely connected to the sun.
How that's happening, we justdon't know at the moment.
But I mean, for me it's sort ofa non-issue, because I just
take for granted that it ishappening.
And you know, we can chargeseparate water.
I think that's primarily whatATP is.

(34:48):
This is what Gilbert Linghypothesized.
Atp wasn't the purveyor of ahigh-energy phosphate, it was
something that was the cardinaladsorbent of water in the cell,
and when it adsorbed water itwas generating these positive
and negative areas.
That was acting like a battery,and this is sort of where

(35:10):
Pollock's work comes in.
I think water's doing a hell ofa lot more than that.
But I'm not sure.
I'm not sure where the melaninstory comes in.
And I think, arturo, thelanguage barrier for him is
actually quite frustrating forus English speakers, because
perhaps he does have themechanistic evidence, but you

(35:32):
know, we just don't have accessto it, or it's in Spanish and we
don't have any idea about it.
It would be interesting forsomeone who speaks Spanish to do
like a proper interview withhim and then tell us all about
it.
It would be interesting forsomeone who speaks Spanish to do
a proper interview with him andthen tell us all about it.
But yeah, I think I asked GeraldPollack about it because I

(35:52):
think he knows Arturo and hesaid, yeah, sometimes people's
ideas get too far ahead of them,and I think that was his way of
nicely saying.
I think he's got hypothesesthat you know are probably too
far out there, given theevidence so far.
But you know, it's good to havepeople like that who are really

(36:16):
putting interesting ideas outthere, because hopefully someone
sees that you know, maybe ayoung PhD and wants to test it.
And then you know, maybe ayoung PhD and wants to test it.
And then you know, even ifthat's not true, at least we're
one step closer to figuring outyou know, the right direction to
be looking in.
It wouldn't surprise me ifmelanin's doing something like
that, though, but you know thequestion arises.

(36:39):
You know, how are differentskin types taking advantage of
this?
Uh, actually, so many questionsarise from that, but yeah, um,
we're all looking for that holygrail of you.
Know what's making energy otherthan food?

Speaker 1 (36:53):
absolutely.
And I want to move on to visiblelight and how that's
potentially interacting withwith, with sunlight, to give us
energy.
But the final point I want tomake about uh, melanin and and
it alludes to the point of therebeing at least five different
types there are some form of Ibelieve they're fungi that were
discovered growing in Chernobylthat are essentially using
melanin to harvest radioactive,really really high energy

(37:21):
photons to power themselves.
And another point of informationis the synthetic use of
melanins in semiconductor andbattery-type and solar-type
applications.
And then when you throw inScott Zimmerman's work
anatomically, his anatomicaloptic analysis, suggesting that

(37:45):
the epidermal-dermal junction,the dimpling of that that is
optically optimized toessentially concentrate light
photons in the same way as asolar panel, then it really
gives more circumstantialevidence to support the role of
melanin as an energy harvestingtool.

(38:06):
But look the question about towhich degree different skin
types and ancestries can harvestlight energy.
It's very, very interestingbecause obviously a Northern
European person seasonally wouldhave an absence of UV light in
their environment and they don'thave the amount of eumelanin
that a Sudanese or an AustralianAboriginal person would have.

(38:28):
So perhaps that is moreevidence to suggest that that
person needs to consume morehigh-energy, animal fat-rich
food during those low-lighttimes to kind of make up,
perhaps, for the light energythat they're unable to harvest.

Speaker 2 (38:45):
It's an interesting thought, and this was something
that Bob also spoke to me about,because he sort of nonchalantly
brought up that UVB wasavailable all year round, no
matter where you are on theglobe.
And I was like, hang on,everyone's told, you know, at
certain times, at certain places, uvb, the sun, the angle of the

(39:08):
sun is too low to allow thepassage of UVB.
And he said well, yeah, that'strue if you're looking at direct
radiance, but the scatter fromthe sky, you're always getting
UVB.
And he was just speaking.
He was speaking about this asif everyone knew.
And I was like, are you serious?
And he said, yeah, even if youget right to the pole, you

(39:30):
actually get more UVB relativeto visible light because of some
sort of scattering phenomenon.
And he sent me all these graphsof his models about ultraviolet
B light.
You know, in the vitamin Dwindow and you know, even at you
know, five degrees above theequator, even at five degrees

(39:53):
elevation sunlight which is likenothing the sun's just come up
You're getting all this UVBcoming not directly from the sun
, but from the scatter down fromthe sky.
He calls it skylight.
You're getting UVB fromskylight.
And he was like oh yeah, youcan definitely make UVB during
the winter, no matter where youare.
He said the reason people don'tis because they're wearing

(40:13):
clothes.
And I thought, well, I meanmore questions came to my mind
than anything else and I'vestill been thinking this through
to my mind than anything elseand I've still been thinking
this through.
But you know, it is aninteresting thought that the UVB
is still there, it's just notcoming directly.
And you know I've been askinghim so many questions about this

(40:37):
because if that is true and itseems his models do, clearly
show that UVB from skylight isthere, even at one degree above,
at one degree elevation, youknow, makes things very
interesting.
With regard, to, you know,thinking about seasonal
differences in vitamin D andwhether the amount that's coming

(40:57):
from the skylight is clinicallyrelevant.
I think that was my biggestquestion.
Yeah, it might be there, butyou know how much is it
sufficient?
And obviously, people living,you know, really far from the
equator, you know, of coursethey're going to be in clothes
all the time, they're not goingto be out sunbathing.
So you know it raises a lot ofquestions, but you know UV is

(41:19):
still acting through the eye, soyou're still getting
high-energy photons into the eyefrom the sky and when you're in
those regions of the worldyou've got snow everywhere,
which is a great reflector.
So I mean, lots of questionscome up about this and the
availability of ultraviolet Blight even during winter, even

(41:40):
very far from the equator.
But to get onto visible light,I think one of the most
interesting things with regardto visible light is that it can
have quite profoundpsychological effects.
And this is the idea ofsyntonics using monochromatic
light to elicit specificphysiological responses.

(42:05):
And I don't know if you've everdone any kinesthesiology with
Jalal, but he did some with meand it's and you know I knew
about all this muscle testingbefore he did it.
So I was like sort of goinginto it, going oh it's not going

(42:26):
to work because I'm so aware ofthe effect already.
But you know he'd ask you toput your arm out and he'd put
pressure on it and then if yousay a lie, you just you know you
lose all tension in your body.
You know the body can't lie,basically, and he'll put like
the red filter or the greenfilter or the blue filter over
your eyes and it completelychanges your muscle tension.

(42:47):
So it's always been fascinatingto me how much monochromatic
light has an impact over thebody, which is why I've been, I
guess, maybe a bit more criticalon blue blockers than most in
the space, because I do thinkthat there are people out there
who are going to have perhapsnegative physiological responses

(43:10):
to monochromatic light comingthrough the eye.
Some will probably have reallybeneficial effects, but I think
it's important to be aware thatvisible light is because it's
the light that we see that weinteract with.
You know consciously that ithas quite strong psychological
effects.
But again, you know even theviolets and the blues, they're

(43:34):
very high energy photons.
They're capable of, you know,we know they're capable of
generating lots of reactiveoxygen species.
They're capable of generatinglots of reactive oxygen species.
We know that isolated cyanlight will absolutely kill
mitochondria if they'reirradiated with that.
There's these great nanolivevideos of mitochondria.
You know a single mitochondrionbeing irradiated with cyan

(43:57):
light and just over the space ofa few minutes it just dies.
So we know that light in thevisible spectrum is very
profound.
We know Glenn Jeffrey and MikePowner's paper from last year.
They used 660 nanometersvisible red light to completely
abate a blood sugar, a glucosespike.

(44:17):
So across the whole spectrum inthe visible range there's
probably so many things going onthat we're not aware of.
I mean, I think Sarah Pughbrought up this idea that no
one's looking at orange light oryellow light, you know.
But obviously all of them aregoing to be having, you know,

(44:39):
substantial effects and weshouldn't favor red or blue or
ultraviolet, they're all goingto be irrelevant.
Anything, anything that'spresent within sunlight, if you
use it in isolation, is going toprobably exert profound effects
because you start using lightlike a drug and that you, I'm
sure you, can use it in apositive way.
But you know there are likelygoing to be some other effects

(45:03):
that we can't predict when we'reusing isolated visible light
yeah, and look I I'm.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
It's an open question .
I'd like to learn more myselfabout how potentially blue,
green, um, you know, yellow,orange light are contributing to
energy derivation.
I know well, I mean, we have anhave an idea about blue
triggering melanopsin.
From a circadian signalingpoint of view, we know that
green light, green wavelengths540, 560 nanometers, has a

(45:33):
potent anti-migraine effect.
And that was work that was done, looking at the different
wavelengths and to the degree towhich they provoked photophobia
in migraine sufferers.
And the researchers weresurprised to note that green
light was actually attenuatingrather than provoking migraine
symptoms.
And then obviously, we know alot about red light through the

(45:58):
photobiomodulation field TinaCarew, mike Hamblin and now
Glenn Jeffrey and there'sobviously absorption by
cytochrome C oxidase in themitochondria, that absorbing red
light.
But there's also a pretty bigabsorption band for hemoglobin

(46:20):
with red light, hemoglobin um inwith with red light, and maybe
that's probably, um you know,another pretty unique way that
that the body is deriving uhenergy from visible light is
perhaps through it, throughthrough the effect on on
hemoglobin and and maybe theanatomical shape of the red
blood cell.
I know, I know dr cruz hascalled blood uh make.

(46:41):
What is it called amagnetohydrodynamic fluid with
an antenna tuned to sunlight.
So it's a variation on what Bobsaid, but to me that makes
sense that perhaps red lightitself is a key aspect of
helping those red blood cellsoffload their oxygen cargo and

(47:01):
delivering that oxygen to themitochondria.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
Yeah, I mean, if you're going to pick a target,
if you're going to evolvesomething that's going to
interact with light, blood's apretty good place to start
because it's close to thesurface, so you have lots of
access.
It's mobile, so you can havethese abscopic effects where
you'll radiate one part of thebody and everything else on the
other side has gets the sameeffect.

(47:27):
Um, and you know, it seems likequite a logical um sort of
place to have, uh, quite strong,uh light light life effects is
is in in the blood.
Um, and you know blood's mostlywater as well, which I think
you know.
From my perspective, waterstill is the primary chromophore

(47:49):
of the body.
It seems, you know, if you lookat the absorption spectrum in
the infrared, water absorbsextremely strongly and water's
surrounding everything.
But yeah, porphyrins arenotoriously good absorbers in

(48:10):
the red and of course that hasto be having some effect.
I'm not sure if anyone's lookedat the hemodynamics of blood.
You know pre and post, you knowexposure to sunlight, but you
know, even without theultraviolet effects of nitric
oxide, I'm sure there would be asort of thinning effect.

(48:33):
And this has been spoken aboutquite a lot by Stephanie Seneff
based on Pollock's work is thatthe infrared light is basically
like a lubricant.
It's allowing the blood to notbe like tomato sauce and rather
be like a very thin fluid that'scapable of flowing very easily.
But yeah, the longerwavelengths, I think, are doing

(48:57):
so so much, particularly whenwater is interacting with the
infrared.
I just wish we knew more aboutwhat's actually happening when
infrared light is irradiatingthe water in the body, because
we know that it's having aprofound effect on the structure
.
And if Pollock is right andthat there is a charge

(49:22):
separation event whenparticularly infrared is
interacting with water, thenthat may very well be a way in
which we generate electrons.
We generate this chargeseparation, and it seems quite
logical to me.
I'm not sure if the specificdetails have been worked out.

(49:45):
I'm sure if you asked Geraldhe'd say they definitely have
not, but it seems like a prettygood place to start thinking
about where energy is comingfrom.
If you do in fact believe thatATP is not the source and I
think it's only a matter of timebefore that, you know, sacred
cow goes down, but you know,then we're left with where is

(50:08):
the energy coming from?

Speaker 1 (50:09):
like we were talking about before, I think infrared
light and water probably is agood candidate to start yeah,
and and that would really againillustrate the the negative
health effects of, of puttingsomeone indoors and and
depriving them of this massivesource of solar energy.
If it does turn out thatinfrared light, water

(50:31):
interactions are playing as biga role in mitochondrial
physiology and energy harvestingas we think To tie a bow on the
thought of blood and lightinteractions, it
circumstantially also makessense that blood and red blood

(50:51):
cells are designed to beirradiated because of
full-spectrum sunlight havingsuch a potent vasodilating
effect.
I mean, why else would the bodyreact with vasodilatation in
response to UVA, uvb and visibleblue light if it didn't want
that sunlight to essentially bebathing and irradiating the

(51:15):
blood volume?
So that again makes so muchsense, makes a lot so much sense
.
And uh, when you tie in the roleof clotting and you know
workhouse triad um in in termsof of uh, that like vascular
pathology and blood clotting,then then that plugs really

(51:35):
elegantly into a, into a quantumand biophysical, quantum
biology and biophysical model ofof ischemic heart disease and
cardiovascular disease, which isnot something that anyone
really in the cardiology worldis talking about.
I think that they're well andtruly stuck in a
lipidology-focused model and Idon't think anyone's making any

(51:56):
progress with respect to trulyreversing the incidence of new
cardiovascular disease.
But we've arrived at infraredlight and this is the one that
you and I, I think, have reallyspent a lot of time exploring.
And you interviewed Bob Osborneand Scott Zimmerman very early

(52:18):
on and I was grateful to getsome introductions from you and
talk to them on my podcast.
But these are two gentlemen whoare doing such pivotal work to
understand this massive part ofhealth that I think I have a
hunch that in the next maybe oneto five years will become a

(52:39):
much more discussed and talkedabout story.

Speaker 2 (52:43):
I hope so, and I don't know if you've spoken to
Scott recently, but he's got hishands on they're basically
continuous glucose monitors butthey measure melatonin and
cortisol in real time so you canjust track them and it's
absolutely fascinating what he'sseeing, because melatonin and
cortisol go up and down likecrazy depending on what you're

(53:05):
doing during the day and ofcourse when you go out in full
spectrum sunlight they go uptogether and you know when you
come out you know they go downtogether and, depending on all
the stresses that you're exposedto, you get wildly different
reactions in these you know,sort of stress chemicals, I
guess you could say, and I thinkjust little things like that

(53:27):
will start to get peopleinterested in the effects of
light and start to thinkactually you know, if melanin
and cortisol are responding thatdrastically just by walking
outside man light must be havingsome pretty strong effects
throughout the body.
You know, what else could we belooking at?
What else does sunlight startto change?
So I think the fact that theydon't have biology backgrounds

(53:50):
has been their biggest help,because they've been able to ask
questions and investigate in away that biologists don't, and I
think that is why they seem tobe pushing this field forward so
much, even though they don'thave a biology background.
I think that's their biggeststrength, to be honest, and the

(54:12):
way they speak about biology.
It's way better than anyeducation that I've had in
biology courses.
They actually understand whatlife is, and Bob was talking to
me about rereading Schrodinger'sbook.
In biology courses they actuallyunderstand what life is.
You know and Bob was talking tome about, you know, re-reading
Schrodinger's book what Is Life?
You know over and over and overagain, because you know he

(54:33):
thinks he got it right.
You know back in what waswritten in the 40s or 30s or
something.
But yeah, I think they'rereally changing, or they are
changing the way that we'retalking about this in a really
really powerful way, andhopefully more people start to
get infatuated with this ideathat just going outside as much

(54:56):
as possible is really the bestthing that you could possibly do
for your health.

Speaker 1 (55:01):
Absolutely.
Have you read Nassim Taleb?
No, I haven't.
He's an interesting author butin one of his books he has a
section on scientificbreakthrough and this idea of
the tenured or kind of theEnglish gentleman who doesn't

(55:22):
have any mundane distractionslike having to earn money or
anything that is demanding onhis time.
So he's basically got anincredibly free, creative and
intellectual mind and hereferences a couple of
interesting people I mean Ithink Newton himself, maybe it

(55:44):
was Francis Bacon and a coupleof other reverends or pastors
who were obviously employed bythe church.
They were essentially able todo all kinds of fascinating
multidisciplinary lateralthinking, unshackled and
tethered by differentconventional or intellectual

(56:05):
orthodoxy, and were able to makeall these incredible
breakthroughs.
And when we're talking aboutScott and Bob, which we do so
fondly, that image is conjuredin my mind.
And really so much ofscientific progress, I think, is
unlearning the incorrectparadigm that perhaps people

(56:31):
were brought up in and that'sperhaps why some of these
engineers and other thinkersoutsiders, intellectual
outsiders are able to make somuch progress is because they
have got less to unlearn Exactly.

Speaker 2 (56:43):
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

Speaker 1 (56:47):
Let's wrap.
I want to get your thoughtsabout sunlight and cancer,
because I think it does tie intothis energy story and, from a
mainstream point of view, we'restill anchored in a genetic
somatic mutation model of cancer.
We've got people like ProfessorThomas Seyfried, who's talking

(57:10):
about cancer as a mitochondrialmetabolic disorder and really
advocating for low-carb,ketogenic type diets, which is
definitely, I think, a massivestep in the right direction type
diets, which is definitely, Ithink, a massive step in the
right direction.
But how do you conceive aboutcancer in the context of
mitochondria and maybe thisconversation that we've been

(57:31):
having?

Speaker 2 (57:34):
Yeah, I think my thoughts on cancer have mostly
been based around Becker's oldwork and probably the work by
Mike Levin that's being done atTufts that cancer is basically a

(57:56):
disease of a loss ofmulticellular cooperation and
communication.
A loss of multicellularcooperation and communication.
And this is basically the ideathat if the communications
whether that's through light,whether that's through fields I
think it's probably both when acell that's one small part of a

(58:22):
massive multicellular organismsuddenly loses communication
with everything around it, itreverts back to this amoeba-like
state, this single-celled state, where it's focused on two
principal things moving aroundand reproducing, just as a
unicellular organism would.
And I think thinking about thatfrom a philosophical point of

(58:47):
view actually gives us more ofan insight into what cancer
really is.
It's not sort of the bodymaking a mistake.
It's a cell doing exactly whatit thinks it should be doing,
given what it's the environmentthat it thinks it's in, given
the environment that it thinksit's in.
And the reason I think this isbecause there has been quite a

(59:11):
bit of work coming out ofLevin's lab that shows that if
you, for instance, give I thinkit's Tadpoles, they use the
oncogenic.
You know the KRAS mutation,which is notorious for being one
of the best mutations to giveto have tumor growth from

(59:35):
dropping the voltage, themillivolt in the cells, from
dropping by adding, you know,specific ion channels, even
though they have the mutation,there's no tumor growth, there's
no malignant growth, and that'ssomething that is well known,
that you know.
In cancer cells the charge onthe membrane drops and I think

(59:59):
this is related to, you know,loss in gap junctions.
That's one thing that oncogenicmutations actually do is they
cause a loss in cell-cellcommunication by basically
breaking down gap junctions.
So the KRAS, like theseoncogenic mutations, might
actually be oncogenic just byvirtue of the fact that they're

(01:00:21):
breaking down communications.
It's not because they'recausing aberrant proteins to be
made or anything like that, it'sjust because they break down
the communications.
Thinking about cancer at themoment, but another one was put
forward to me.
I spoke to Alistair Nunn lastweek and he said to me oh,

(01:00:47):
there's this idea that you know,when you have conglomerates of
single-celled organisms sort ofcooperating, kind of like an ant
colony, you have this sort ofsuperorganism.
This is before multicellularorganisms.
If all the cells sort ofconglomerate together and then
the environment shifts in a waythat's bad for the colony,
everything dies.
But if you have one cell thatgoes, you know I'm going to go

(01:01:10):
my own way, I'm going to get outof here, I'm going to go in my
own niche.
If an environmental shift comesalong and wipes out the colony,
that one that got away mightactually survive.
And he said it might actually bejust an unfortunate coincidence
of evolution that cancer issort of a runaway cell trying to
find a new niche and it mightjust be sort of baked into

(01:01:34):
evolution to a certain degree.
I'm not sure I buy thatwholesale for sure.
But it's an interesting pointto think that multicellular
organisms all derived fromunicellular organisms that were
cooperating and perhaps it is abit of a hangover from

(01:01:55):
unicellular times that it'smaybe not the most advantageous
thing for all the cells to sticktogether all the time.
Maybe it was beneficial in somecircumstances for some cells to
find their own niche and sortof make their own way.
Interesting idea.
I have no idea if there's anyvalidity to that whatsoever but
it's interesting to think about.

(01:02:15):
But at the end of the day Ireally think cancer is a
breakdown in communication and Ithink it can be explained by
aberrant fields and probablyaberrant well, not probably
aberrant metabolism uh,definitely I think the fields
are probably just a result ofmetabolism in general.

(01:02:37):
So when you know when they bothbreak simultaneously you get
sort of growth.
That's not characteristic ofcooperation.

Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
That makes sense to me.
And if we consider that themitochondria is the site of
biophoton release that is,coordinating cell-cell
communication, and then ifmitochondria start failing,
start browning out because ofthe environment that you choose
to put yourself in whetherthat's blue light, toxic,

(01:03:08):
deprived of infrared, rich inall kinds of oxidatively
stressful foods and perhaps lackof hormetic stresses like
exercise and cold, and perhapslack of hormetic stresses like
exercise and cold Then theenergy production of the
mitochondrion drops, thenegative charge of the cell
drops, the inter-cellcommunication becomes, the

(01:03:35):
fidelity of that signal isimpaired and then that makes
complete sense that the cellmight respond with immortality
or uncontrolled cell replication.
There's also a point that I'demphasize that made me think of
when you raised that, which is atalk that one of the Garland

(01:03:56):
brothers made with respect tovitamin D and its effect on
colorectal cancer and on acellular level.
It was noting that vitamin Dwas having some kind of
promotion of adherence or toupregulate gap junctions between
cells.
So when the vitamin D leveldropped, then the ability of

(01:04:17):
that cell to maintain adherenceto its neighbors was impaired
and they were speculating thatwas one potential mechanism to
account for the fact thatvitamin D deficiency and
colorectal cancer seemed to beso strikingly related, and
obviously he wasn't abreast ofthe bifotilin story and what

(01:04:41):
we've just talked about, butit's a, it's an elegant, another
kind of piece of the.
The story that I think is is isis interesting, interesting and
relevant, and, and maybe maybeto tie that into again,
something that Dr Jack Cruz hastalked a lot about, which is how
do you prevent cancer?
Dr Jack Cruz has talked a lotabout, which is how do you

(01:05:03):
prevent cancer?
Perhaps in this brave newoncogenic environment that
involved a widespreadintervention that was taken up
almost ubiquitously, how do youprevent a potential oncogenic
transformation in cells?
Perhaps in a situation, and hisanswer is that you prevent the

(01:05:23):
negative charge of the celldropping by exposing to as much
solar radiation as is practicalto maintain the so-called solar
redox and therefore hopefullyprevent oncogenic transformation
.

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):
I mean, that makes sense and and it probably also
plays into why ketogenic stylediets probably have quite a
large therapeutic value, uh, inin these situations, I think
principally because they'resupplying so many electrons, um,
you know, through through thehigh fat content and you know,

(01:06:00):
when you couple that with theright environmental inputs, it
wouldn't surprise me at all thatthat amount of energy supplied
to the body coherently isprobably going to be one of your
best chances.
I don't know, but probably one.
I'm going to give you a muchbetter chance at reestablishing

(01:06:21):
communications andreestablishing the lost fields
that are generated in thosemalignant growths.
I mean, another thing that'sjust an interesting point that
Pele Lingvist told me was that,you know, I was sort of I wasn't
sure whether to believe himwhen he first told me, but I

(01:06:43):
found the paper and, sure enough, people who use sunscreen in
Sweden have 10 times the risk ofmalignant melanoma compared to
people who don't use sunscreen.
So and you know, he said it likeit was nothing, but of course
no one knows about this here andyou can buy 50 plus sunscreen

(01:07:05):
in every pharmacy here, eventhough you have fewer than 10
days a year with a high UV index.
That's supposed to becoordinating the body.
Even if it seems like arelatively small thing, blocking

(01:07:28):
a small signal can lead tolarge effects.
The unfortunate thing, orperhaps the fortunate thing,
about non-linearity in the bodyis that small signals can have
large effects and vice versa.
So yeah, just an interestingpoint about preventing cancer is
you want to receive the mostunadulterated signal from your

(01:07:52):
environment as you possibly can,because that's ultimately the
one that your body's looking forto coordinate itself in the
best possible way.

Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
Yeah, very interesting.
And look, the skin cancer andsunlight story is maybe a topic
for another podcast and I thinkmaybe I'll quickly share my
perspective and then, cameron,I'll get you to share yours.
Some claims that sunlight isunrelated to or, you know, not

(01:08:23):
lying on the causal pathway ofskin cancers.
I don't think that's helpfuland I think we need more nuance
in the discussion.
I think that this ionizingradiation UVA, uvb is
undoubtedly causingde-inhibitations in
keratinocytes.
I mean, you can read a coupleof papers, you'll find that out.
Uvb via direct photo products,uva via oxidative stress.

(01:08:45):
The nuance is that if someone'sin, if they're matched to their
latitude, their skin type ismatched to the area which they
evolved and their ambient UVconditions, then I believe that
that person has built in the DNArepair mechanisms, the
antioxidant pathways to harnessand repair that UV stress on the

(01:09:11):
keratinocytes, the melanocytes,the other cell types that are
exposed directly to UV radiationdirectly to UV radiation and
providing all the other inputsignals, like the circadian
signals, like the food inputsignals, are not highly

(01:09:32):
processed and not rich in lipidperoxidation products and other
HNE and the rest.
If that all is the case, Ithink that people can safely get
the exact amount of sunlightthat is in their environment,
based on that area they'reinvolved in.
What's gone wrong in today's dayand age is that you've got
Fitzpatrick One people living inAustralia or Southern Africa
who are extremely mismatchedwith regard to their epidermal

(01:09:54):
melanin and their ambientconditions.
But on top of that, they're alsodoing everything wrong from a
circadian perspective.
But on top of that, they're alsodoing everything wrong from a
circadian perspective, they'renot building up any form of
hormetic buffer or protectivefactor.
So these are the nuances thatneed to be made, and if you look

(01:10:17):
at the Melanoma Institute ofAustralia with respect to their
melanoma risk calculator, thekey things that influence risk
of developing melanoma is age,it's the state you live in, and
then it's questions thatascertain your Fitzpatrick skin
type.
If you're red hair and you're aFitzpatrick 1, then you're much
, much, much orders of magnitudemore likely to get a melanoma.

(01:10:37):
And so there's a very smallnumber of people that have to
worry legitimately aboutmelanoma with respect to chronic
sun exposure, and they'repeople that really evolved in
the situation that you describein Cameron, which was a UV index
of six for three days a year,as for everyone else the

(01:11:01):
benefits of full-spectrumsunlight and titrated
appropriately.
For the reasons we've discussedwith respect to mitochondrial
metabolism and cell energyprovision, seem to be
overwhelmingly in favor ofregular daily full-spectrum sun
exposure in a sensible way.

Speaker 2 (01:11:21):
I couldn't have put it better myself and I think
it's really interesting to lookat the people who do even
develop skin cancers, you know,even focusing on malignant
melanoma, the one that's themost dangerous, even the people
who get the malignant melanoma,they actually live longer than

(01:11:41):
those who avoid the sun, forinstance, and there's actually
quite a real survival advantagefor redheads here in Scandinavia
they get more melanoma thanpeople who don't have the
genetics for red hair, but theystill live longer.

(01:12:01):
And I think that's what'sreally interesting is that
avoiding melanoma may actuallyjust put you at a high risk of
heart disease or type 2 diabetes, which we know is the case.
So it's kind of this sort oftrade-off.
But again, we're looking at thegeneral population.

(01:12:23):
We're looking at a populationof people who are eating seed
oils every day, who are, youknow, staying up on their phone
till midnight every day, whoaren't getting enough sleep, who
are doing, are doing thingsthat we would probably never
think of doing, and I think thisis where epidemiology needs to
be.
You know, we need to step backand go.
Okay, we're talking about ageneral population here.

(01:12:45):
What about the person who'sdoing everything right, you know
?
What about the person that has,you know, a kill switch on the
power to the house, so that whenthey go to bed you know they've
got no electricity flowingthrough the house at all.
You know what about the personthat's eating?
You know from their localorganic farmer next door, every
single day, you know.

(01:13:06):
Do these rules apply?
You know, can we apply theepidemiology to them?
And I'm not sure that we can,because what we're talking about
is such enormous differences inenvironmental exposure that
perhaps the epidemiology is nolonger relevant, or at least
it's relevant only peripherally.
So, yeah, it's an interestingthought, but yeah, the skin

(01:13:28):
cancer topic itself is a wholeseries of podcasts,
unfortunately.

Speaker 1 (01:13:33):
That is such a great point, cameron.
And again I'll emphasize ananecdote that I had in sitting
in with a dermatologist at askin cancer clinic in Queensland
, which is one of the worldcapitals of melanoma and there
would be, and from speaking withhim who's seen, thousands upon
thousands of patients withmelanoma, non-melanoma skin

(01:13:55):
cancer.
He said to me you can have twogentlemen who had the same
Fitzzpatrick skin type.
They have the same sun exposurehabits, the hot their whole
life, whether they were workingin the field, working sun
exposed, you know lifeguards etc.
And those two gentlemen thatthere could be one that has
never had a solar keratosis, aprecancerous sct, never had any

(01:14:18):
any form of suspiciouspre-melanoma or melanoma-type
lesion.
And then you can have anotherguy who is coming in every six
weeks getting BCCs cut out, sccscut out, melanomas cut out.
So there's clearly a massivespace for environmental and

(01:14:41):
lifestyle and behavior toinfluence our risk of skin
cancer.
And maybe even in that guy whois the frequent flyer of the
dermatologist, he's stillprobably living longer because
he's avoided the stroke and theheart attack that's killed the
sun avoider.
But all that to say is thatlifestyle is key.
Sun avoider.

(01:15:02):
But um, all that's, all that tosay is that that lifestyle is
key.
And, um, maybe I'll, I'll.
We can finish with with a quotethat you actually said on our
first podcast, which is avoidingthe sun to prevent melanoma is
like taking up smoking toprevent parkinson's disease.
Yeah, so I think, yeah, I, I, Ilove that and I think that's
really apt yeah, yeah, I thinkit's very simple.

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
I'm not sure it's mine, I'm almost certain I stole
it from someone, but yeah, thesentiment rings true,
particularly today.
So the story is turning around,I think.
I think people are starting tounderstand how important
sunlight is and weighing up thecosts and the risks.

Speaker 1 (01:15:43):
Amazing, Well Cameron , any parting thoughts or
handoff you want to give to thelisteners.

Speaker 2 (01:15:50):
You know it's interesting.
I'm sitting here, there's snowoutside, it's freezing and I'm
looking at you going.
I wish I was there right now.
I'm missing Australia so much.
I've seen my family go to thebeach and I'm just like.
It's freezing here and the daysare so slowly getting longer.

(01:16:10):
It's crazy, but I'm hanging inthere.
But, yeah, get out in the sunfor me if you're listening to
this, because, uh, it's going tobe a while before I can great.

Speaker 1 (01:16:23):
Well, uh, yeah, sending you um, send you getting
as much sun, vicariously, Ihope we deliver some to you but,
uh, thanks for coming on.
And, yeah, check out cameron'spodcast ricky for nutrition.
Check out his recent talk atregenerate albury that is now up
on youtube.
That's an absolute powerhouseof a talk and actually covers a

(01:16:43):
lot of the backstory of kind ofwhat we talked about today.
And if you're interested inlearning more about sunlight and
cancer, I'm actually going tobe synthesizing my thoughts and
delivering them in person inRegenerate Melbourne and Sydney
on March 23rd and 22nd 2025, inabout a month.
So, thank you, cameron, forfertilizing the ground in my

(01:17:08):
brain for this topic.
But, yeah, it's always apleasure and enjoy, enjoy Sweden
.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
Thank you so much, man.
I really appreciate you havingme on Talk soon.
Cheers.

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