August 11, 2025 • 65 mins
I spoke with Brett Hanson on why I believe circadian biology is the foundation of optimal health. We cover: how sunlight provides an external energy source for the cell, the role of near-infrared light in health, the Vitamin D system and thoughts on melanoma skin cancer as a problem of immune system failure.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Okay, welcome to the MediSun podcast.
Today I'm joined by Max Gullane.
Super excited to talk to Maxtoday.
He was one of the first peopleI listened to when getting into
the quantum circadian healthspace, so, max, thanks a lot for
coming on.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hey Brett, thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Awesome, I wanted to start and just get your
perspective on from yourbackground starting as a
conventional medical doctor andthen now viewing things a little
differently and kind of get alittle insight into your
awakening into the whole quantumcircadian health aspect of
healing.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah, it's been a journey and the journey started
with a conventional medicaleducation, learning about
disease, pathology and reallyhow to treat that disease and
pathology.
But lacking in that educationwas more background or context
in terms of potentially why thatdisease arose in the first
(01:03):
place or any investigation orinquiry into what could be done
to really prevent the diseasefrom happening.
So that was going on inmainstream medical school and I
had my own health issue,relatively minor on the scale of
chronic disease, but it wasbothersome nonetheless.
(01:26):
I had acne and I exploreddifferent lifestyle modalities,
I guess after finding that thesolution that was given to me by
my GP, by my dermatologist, wasjust unsatisfactory, to say the
least.
It was simply just drugs, drugtherapy, topical therapy and
(01:47):
oral therapy for acne, whenthere wasn't any in-depth
conversation about what'sactually going on.
So I went through self-discoveryI used a low-carb diet that
really helped, progressed to acarnivore-type diet which felt
amazing, and then hit aroadblock, wasn't feeling as
(02:08):
good.
So I kept looking and whenyou're ready, the pathway opens
up in front of you.
I think that's what most peoplefind when they go down any kind
of intellectual journey there'salways going to be someone
ready to serve you up a plate ofinformation and I've found the
(02:30):
work of Dr Jack Cruz and that isthe smorgasbord of information
and I guess he was my entrypoint into this idea of the
effect of light on health andthe quantum biological
influences on health andmitochondria.
(02:50):
And from there it's just been,I guess, an ongoing process for
me of learning so I can betterunderstand how to, I guess,
advise patients, treat andadvise patients to help them
optimize their health, preventdisease and hopefully cure and
prevent disease.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
And I think it must be a difficult position for a
lot of physicians who aren'treally they're not privy to a
lot of this information andthey're trying to fix issues
with their patients but therekind of isn't a means to an end.
It's just this rabbit hole,like you're just cycling through
different medications.
How was like when you startedchanging your perspective?
(03:35):
How are you perceived by otherphysicians and people you worked
with?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Yeah, I think, a good analogy.
I've been, I always think aboutanalogies and I really like the
analogy of a motor mechanic anda car, because you know as much
as uh, what what may maybelayperson can understand is this
, this relationship the mechanichas an obligation to fix a car
and and the person who owns thecar, let's say, say they know
(04:05):
nothing about mechanics.
They don't understand whensomething should be changed,
they don't understand whatquality oil or coolant just got
put in.
They have to trust the mechanicthat what they're being told is
the appropriate maintenanceperiod, that the parts need
replacing at appropriate times.
There's a whole lot of trustthere, this massive knowledge
(04:27):
asymmetry, and I think theposition that modern mainstream
doctors have, mds in this dayand age, is that likewise there
is this asymmetry of knowledge.
But I think in many ways, whenit comes to chronic disease
prevention and treatment, it'salmost like the doctors are
(04:47):
reading from the wrong manual.
It's like you're trying to fixa Land Rover Defender but you've
got a Toyota Corolla manual andthe outcome is that the
recommendations or theadjustments that are kind of
being made, again from apharmaceutically focused,
(05:09):
allopathic, western medicalpoint of view, isn't giving the
best quality advice in myopinion, and it's almost like
you send the car out of thegarage still kind of blowing
smoke and the owner's kind oflooking at being like you know,
is this okay?
Like yeah, no, no worries, comeback to me in in another five
years when the you know exhaustpipe falls off and you know we,
(05:32):
if, if you're looking at this ata more preventative health
point of view, or at least aroot cause, or just someone
who's who wants to, uh, makesure that car's running as
optimally as possibly, it's likeokay, no, we're not going to
tolerate sure that car's runningas optimally as possibly.
It's like okay, no, we're notgoing to tolerate that.
That's not good enough.
I think that's where I'm at atthe moment.
I think a lot of doctors can'trelate because they haven't been
(05:56):
through a personal journey.
You see this in patients, yousee this in other colleagues.
Until they have to experiencedisease or illness and find the
status quo lacking in itsability to help them, they're
going to be I would say,willfully blind, but just
apathetic to these pathways,because they don't need to be.
(06:19):
They don't need to know this ifthey're content in their
intellectual lane.
They don't need to know this ifthey're kind of content in
their intellectual lane and it'svery rare that a doctor does, I
guess, come to this throughtheir own means, as in not
through a personal problem, andthat's usually a mix of really
curiosity and listening topatients, because if they have
(06:44):
patients telling them that theygot better turning off the
lights at night, watching thesunrise, taking their shoes off,
then if you're listening, ifthe doctor's listening, then
they might start inquiring abouthow that was effective, not
dismissing such an anecdote outof hand.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
That's a great analogy and I think I mean a lot
of pushback that I get justtrying to spread this
information is that there's thisblind trust for the medical
establishment in general, andI'm like they haven't really
earned that trust, to me atleast.
Their body of work isn't greatin chronic disease management at
(07:20):
all, and I think you made agood point about fixing your own
issue.
That doctors have to go throughsomething like that to see,
because you must have fixed anissue with through a path that
they no one's ever told you toreally do in a conventional you
know education, and so you.
That just opens your eyes.
(07:40):
So there's so manypossibilities that we're not
even we're not even looking inthe right direction.
Um, so when you're trying tonot only diagnose but uh, fix a
patient that you're working with, what's the?
What's the first?
Is the base redox like?
Is that where you're trying tobuild up from there?
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Yeah, I guess it's going to depend on what the
issue is and how did they getthere, what environmental or
genetic factors predisposed themto get to where they were, what
is their current setup, what istheir lifestyle, what are their
habits.
You know, as comprehensive aspossible but in terms of you
(08:30):
know, once we've identified anissue and we're kind of building
, building up to, to fix thatperson there's not one usually,
there's not one silver bullet.
It's going to be a process ofpiecing together.
It's like a puzzle.
We had a retreat the otherweekend and it's simply
(08:51):
implementing these circadianhealth principles and showing
people how to live this idealcircadian life.
And someone used a really greatanalogy, which is that of a
piece a puzzle.
So everyone has got a differentpuzzle and the pieces for each
person are a different size andshape, meaning that there's
going to be relative differentcontribution to their illness of
(09:14):
certain lifestyle habits.
However, based on the fact thatwe are all homo sapiens and we
all came from the same geneticlineage and we had similar
evolutionary adaptations, we alllived on planet Earth, then I
think that there are some basicsthat apply to everyone and at
(09:35):
the base of this I mean you canconceive it however you like.
At the moment I'm thinking aboutit as a pyramid and at the base
or the foundation of thepyramid is the light and dark
cycle, and that's kind of aheretical comment to a lot of
people.
It's a heretical comment tomainstream medicine, it's a
heretical comment to functionalmedicine doctors who use
(09:57):
supplements all the time.
But I'll explain why I thinkthat.
And at the bottom again, when Italk about what I mean by
(10:30):
light-dark cycle, I think thatthis compound even further back
this hormonal system, the waythat the organism interfaces
with the environment, is goingto dictate how it behaves, not
only on a hormonal andbiochemical level, but also on a
biophysical level.
And my premise or myproposition, which I think is
backed up by good science andpractical application, is that
the light cycles and the lightsignals are critical in
programming the bodily functionsand the functions of the
(10:50):
organism.
So overarching is essentiallyjust like melatonin and cortisol
, which are two extremelyimportant hormones for the
coordination of the body'sfunction.
And essentially, if we roll ourway all the way back, before the
evolution of eukaryoticorganisms, there was melatonin
(11:14):
and before it was acting as asignal of an onset of sleep, it
was acting as an antioxidant.
Obviously it still has thatfunction antioxidant and
obviously it still has thatfunction.
But the, the point being andyou know when, when you're
getting into disagreements or oryou know arguments about the
hierarchy of of, you know,intervention or lifestyle change
(11:36):
, the, you know the, thismelatonin hormone and this
photoreception.
It predated the evolution of agastrointestinal tract.
So before we were even able todigest and assume the cellular
components of other organismsfor energy, the organisms, the
(11:58):
proto-organism, before again,eukaryotes arose, were receiving
light signals and helping themto make sure that they were more
likely to survive, becausethere was this huge difference
in energy availability betweennight and day.
So that's nighttime I meannighttime is a period where this
(12:20):
hormone, melatonin, does getsecreted.
It's now being secretedendogenously by the pineal gland
and it kicks off or it signalsa whole bunch of repair
processes in the body and youchoose the cell type or the
organ type and it's allregenerating.
But in order for it toregenerate it needs darkness at
(12:43):
night.
There was a comment recently, Imean Jack Cruz made a comment
about regeneration of the conephotoreceptors in the eye.
I mean, why would a conditionlike age-related macular
degeneration be rising, amongstother lifestyle changes?
Well, because the cones needdarkness to regenerate and if
(13:04):
everyone's lighting up theirrooms at night, then that
process of regeneration can'toccur.
So this darkness process isfundamental.
This is why we sleep.
It's that fundamental to healthand other people agree with
that.
I mean you can talk to or youget opinions from people like
Brian Johnson or Andrew Huberman.
(13:27):
They will agree that sleep isimportant.
But I don't think thatespecially comes to this
foundation of health withrespect to circadian biology and
light-dark cycles full spectrum, bright, daytime sunlight and
essentially in the form thatyour body would have received.
(14:10):
And we can make nuances andallowances for skin type and
ancestral origin and thelatitude that your ancestors
evolved.
That's also a nuance that needsto be made.
But basically it means from themoment the sun rises until the
moment the sun sets.
Then we were ancestrally andhistorically exposed to sunlight
(14:33):
, and not just the visible andnot the UV.
It was everything.
It was everything from 280nanometers.
It was everything from 280nanometers, which is in the
(15:10):
ultraviolet B, all the greatest,but by um photon count, the the
non-visible, the infrared ishas the highest photon count and
then obviously the uv.
The ultraviolet, which again isnon-visible, is extremely
important even though it makesup less than five percent of of
of solar energy and uvb.
You know five percent of that.
It was indispensable and thereason why complex life was able
to evolve in the first place.
(15:31):
So this whole mix of UV visibleand near-infrared are all
indispensable light nutrientsthat we evolved with that we
need.
Nutrients that we evolved withthat we need.
And yes, we were sitting inshaded trees during peak of
midday or in a forest canopymaking the use of other tools to
(15:54):
mitigate the effects ofultraviolet as ionizing
radiation, but nevertheless weweren't in these chambers,
sealed chambers that werefiltering natural sunlight.
We weren't in these chambers,sealed chambers that were
filtering natural sunlight.
We weren't in areas, dim indoorenvironments.
We had full, bright daylight.
And Michael Moorheed, who's oneof the circadian biologists and
(16:18):
researchers, they put out a uh,stating that modern existence,
like the modern human life todayin society is, is essentially
uh exposed to, because, becausepeople are spending 95 percent
(16:40):
of their time indoors, areexposed to, you know, a thousand
times less intensity of brightlight compared to, and
especially what we would have.
And you know, 100 timesbrighter nighttime than than we
would have and 100 timesbrighter nighttime than we would
have.
So the yin and yang, theduality.
Taoism is like this duality.
It's been disturbed.
And it's been disturbed becauseas humans, we've been able to
(17:03):
invent technology that isessentially lighting up our
nighttime and cocooningourselves during the daytime.
And the reason why the daytimesunlight is so important is
because it I mean there's somany facets to this, but it in
and of itself is an energysource that the body is deriving
(17:25):
and the mitochondria arederiving energy from.
What is happening in themitochondrion is reversal of
what's happening in achloroplast that's
photosynthesizing.
So the addition of solar lightessentially aids in this whole
(17:47):
process of oxidativephosphorylation of mitochondrial
function.
And if you subtract out thatsolar light, then the
mitochondria has a harder timeessentially doing its job.
And the chronic diseaseepidemic, I guess, coming back
to what we started theconversation with, is different
(18:07):
versions of mitochondrialdysfunction, or maladaption, you
can call it, depending on whichorgan it develops in, which is
again a function of differentlifestyle habits and genetic
predisposition.
So this is why and you canmeasure that daytime, you can
actually measure the biochemicalamount of daylight sun.
(18:29):
Someone's got by proxy, whichis the serum vitamin D level.
So if we take a step back andlook at these key hormones that
influence your health as aperson vitamin D, melatonin,
cortisol, or three of them.
They're all intimately tied tolight and they're only just
(18:51):
three examples, because thewhole of the pituitary gland, or
hypothalamus and the pituitarygland, is all responding to
light signals and the rest ofthose pituitary hormones are
also kicking off secretion at acertain amount of time of day.
So, in totality, the way thatthe body is essentially
(19:12):
conducting everything that itneeds to do is fundamentally
reliant on correct timing ofdaytime and nocturnal darkness.
So if we screw that up andscrewing that up is the default
for most people most of the timethen we're going to get sick,
and those sicknesses as I justsaid, metabolic disease, and
(19:39):
metabolic syndrome being perhapsthe most visible or relevant is
all downstream of disturbedmitochondrial function, and that
includes insulin resistance.
So that's, I guess, why I putthe light-dark cycle at the
bottom of the pyramid guess whyI put the light-dark cycle at
the bottom of the pyramid.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
That was a great explanation and I'm glad you
went with the yin-yang direction.
So morning light just to kindof zone in and bounce off the
cortisol.
How do you use morning light tocorrectly build the right
cortisol?
Rise and fall or not fall, butrise and then steady balance
throughout the day to managethat cortisol level?
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Yeah.
So I think whatever in terms ofthe wake up like this, this um,
the, the, the way that the bodyis supposed to wake up again,
um, which is appropriate,appropriate is through solar
blue light and the.
The reason is because thesespecial uh clock, clock recept,
(20:43):
like non-visual photoreceptors,that the clock aspect of your
eye and not the vision formingaspect, I'm talking about the,
these intrinsicallyphotosensitive retinal ganglion
cells.
They're uniquely susceptible ortriggered by blue light.
But the key point is that theblue light that they receive,
and therefore that goes on toessentially trigger that
(21:08):
cortisol response, is present inthe form of natural daylight at
sunrise, which in and of itselfis approximately a three to one
ratio of non-visible to visiblephotons, and it's completely
different to the blue light thatyou're getting from an iPhone
screen or from an iPad screen,which is, you know, a big dirty
(21:33):
spike of, of, of blue, withoutany form of uh, of non-visible
red infrared light, and that's,that's uh.
You know that.
I think that affects the waythat the body interprets that
morning um wake up.
And so I guess the key point isthat whatever mother nature is
(21:54):
giving you in your location, inyour season, at your latitude,
at that time, is going toessentially anchor your
circadian rhythm and optimizethat wake up so that your I mean
your cortisol level will simplyreflect ideally with if there's
nothing else going onphysiologically.
Reflect ideally with if there'snothing else going on
physiologically.
(22:14):
Um, you're an appropriatemorning, uh, environment that's.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
That's great.
Um and uh.
Melatonin specifically.
The first time I ever heardjack cruz say that, uh, morning
sunlight is going to help yousleep better, it was so
counterintuitive to me.
I had no clue, had never heardthat.
So what is that morning lightdoing to our cellular melatonin
and how is it benefiting us whenyou get that darkness later at
(22:40):
night?
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah.
So this is a great opportunityto make the point that there is
in fact these two kind ofrepositories, or the body has
two separate mechanisms by whichit's making melatonin.
And historically, the type ofmelatonin that most are familiar
with and most scientists arefamiliar with is that so-called
(23:03):
circulatory or pineal gland.
Essentially it's a brainstructure and it's a vestige,
it's an ancient remnant of avisual receptive system in
different species and it hasdifferent anatomical position
(23:26):
and it's actually directly lightsensitive.
But in the humans the bluelight signal goes from the
retinal ganglion cells to thehypothalamus and then it goes
down the superior cervicalganglion to the PVN and then it
goes to the pineal gland andthat signal of blue light
essentially turns off melatoninand that's an appropriate
(23:50):
reaction to the reception ofblue light and therefore would
kick off the dark cycle, wouldkick off the sleep cycle.
So that is the main source ofmelatonin that most of us are
aware of and possibly that'skind of mopping up oxidative
stress that's occurred duringthe day.
But it also happens and this isa more recent discovery by
(24:14):
Zimmerman and Russell Ryder,maybe five years ago was that
the mitochondria is actuallyalso making melatonin on site,
essentially right there in themitochondrion, but only on
stimulation of near-infraredlight.
So it seems like your body'smaking on-demand melatonin,
(24:37):
again because it's anantioxidant to essentially cool
down the heat damage.
Think about it that way that'sbeing done by just the engine
idling.
So just think about when you'redriving your car and you're
pushing the accelerator pedal oryou're even leaving it idling,
you're creating these reactiveoxygen species in the
(24:58):
mitochondria.
Adequately balanced with anantioxidant force, they can
cause oxidative damage andtherefore damage to the
mitochondrial DNA and thereforethe cellular energy output will
(25:18):
drop over periods of years.
So the melatonin that's gettingmade on site in the
mitochondrion is almost like acoolant, like an engine coolant
that the body is using then andthere to help mitigate the
oxidative stress of the body.
So there's these two pools,there's these two ways that the
(25:41):
body is making and usingmelatonin and really what we
want to do is maximize bothpools, both pools.
So, specifically to maximizethe daytime on-site melatonin,
you just preferably spend yourtime outdoors and, again, close
to bushes, natural greenery,shrubbery because again, osbury
(26:05):
and Zimmerman's work shows thatgreen plants essentially reflect
these near-infrared photons andtherefore they can be used and
there seems to be some extremelyinteresting anatomical
adaptations that the body's madespecifically with respect to
skin physiology, brain, thesulci and gyri of the brain, as
(26:29):
well as the actual refractiveindex of human amniotic fluid of
the pregnant woman, toconcentrate these near-infrared
photons into these reallyimportant areas of the brain and
body and spinal cord.
So it's absolutely essentialand we can maximize that by
(26:49):
simply just getting outside andbeing near natural greenery, but
then to maximize the pineal orthe circulatory melatonin, then
that is essentially programmedby early morning sun exposure
and even into the UVA rise, the,the early morning time and and
(27:11):
the more uh you know, because ofessentially the photochemistry
of these, these, these chemicals, these um compounds there, the
more ultraviolet light you canget during the day.
Essentially that is setting upthe body to release prime and
then release uh melatonin fromgland, the pineal gland, to
(27:31):
several hours after darkness.
So people might you know, ifyou've gone camping, you've gone
out, we call it the bush here,you guys, I don't know what you
call it over there.
If you go out to the bush andyou spent the whole day outside,
you're hiking, you're climbing,whatever you're doing, and you
know you have a small campfireand you've cooked dinner, you've
(27:53):
eaten before sunset because thesun's gone down and you just
sit down and you get this waveof tiredness, your body's
starting to dump melatonin intothe system and because there's
so little artificial light in atnight, out there when you're
camping, I mean, nowadays peoplebring generators and they turn
(28:16):
on, you know, all kinds of ledcontraptions on their, on their,
uh, you know, camper vans.
But I'm talking about if, maybe, if you've walked in, then you
you'll fall asleep and you'llfall asleep like an absolute log
, because that melatonin hormoneis assisting in the onset of
sleep.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
That's great, and I think a great point that you're
emphasizing here is that beinginside is basically stealing
energy by not getting it fromyour environment, and then when
you're outside, it's just soenergy rich.
Everything is wanting to putenergy into the system to make
you run, run correctly, Um, andI I think it's so prevalent
(29:00):
today.
You just see like you can seethat someone, they look like an
inefficient energy system, likeeverything about them.
Um, even when, when Jack Cruztalks about, uh, how inefficient
energy systems expand, and itjust I think that really
highlights the obesity epidemicthat's worldwide today.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Yeah, great, absolutely great point, and I've
been thinking pretty much thesame thing, which is every and
again, not to sound too extreme,because the process of
implementing a circadianlifestyle can sometimes become a
bit overwhelming if people tryto go from woe to go and they
think it's too hard.
But essentially every momentyou're inside behind a tinted
(29:49):
window or under artificial lightis essentially you're depriving
your mitochondrial colony ofenergetic input they need to
essentially operate efficiently.
And you know we talk aboutthere's a lot of talk about
longevity, longevity, thislongevity that, um brian johnson
, don't die, the the crux, thecrux of not dying, is
(30:13):
essentially the slowest declinepossible of the energetic
capacity of your mitochondrialcolony.
What that essentially means isyou essentially want to slow
down the process ofmitochondrial decay as much as
you can to prevent you fromdying.
And obviously some of the maincauses of death in society are
(30:39):
neurological and cardiologicaland various flavors of
neurodegenerative disease stroke, ischemic heart disease or
heart attack, heart failure,heart disease or heart attack,
heart failure.
And it also happens that theseorgans are up there with the
(30:59):
most mitochondrial dense tissuesin the body.
So if we're trying to preserveor reduce the likelihood of
death by neurodegenerationAlzheimer's, parkinson's or
heart failure or heart attack,then we really want our
mitochondria working asoptimally as possible and it's
like money on the table.
(31:19):
If you're simply being outside,your body doesn't even have to
do anything and it's essentiallyable to use that red light to
spin the ATPase and essentiallysuck glucose out of the
bloodstream and just run moreefficiently and essentially
optimize all functions.
(31:40):
And what I think about and forme is a personal journey and
evolution in my understanding ofthinking about diabetes and
metabolic disease as a problemof excess dietary carbohydrate
and processed food components towhen you're understanding
what's going on with how lightis interacting with the
mitochondria, then you realizethat sure, the food is
(32:04):
absolutely making the problemworse.
I mean people guzzling downultra-processed, sugar-sweetened
beverages and high-fructosebeverages.
Absolutely that's a problem.
But when you learn that the redlight is simply able to reduce
blood glucose levels by 27% inthat Glenn Jeffery trial from
(32:25):
the beginning of last year, thenit's almost like daylight.
Is this constant anti-diabeticstimulus that you can access for
free, that is putting constantdownward pressure on rising
blood glucose levels in responseto food.
So absolutely, people are goingto become necessarily dependent
(32:46):
on a low-carb or carnivore dietif they're never getting
outside because they're notgiving their mitochondria any
leeway to essentially processcarbs, and any moment they shove
carbs into the system becausethey're so sunlight deprived,
they'll get a glucose spike andput down visceral fat and become
, over a period of months,pre-diabetic.
So the root cause wasn't thecarbohydrates per se.
(33:09):
It was the fact that they werenot outside and not eating
latitude, location-specific,seasonally appropriate
carbohydrate.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
I completely agree, and in that study I believe they
shined it right on the shoulderor something right.
It wasn't even full bodyinfrared light.
So it's, I mean, like you said,it's just money on the table.
You can really improve yourhealth just by being outside and
I noticed it a lot.
I was in Northern New Hampshireand um, and it's in the summer.
(33:40):
There's so much greenery therethat it's just like you feel
absolutely amazing If you spendany amount of time outside.
It's just reflecting and it'slike it's forest bathing.
It really is, um.
But to move on with a higherenergy photon, with uv light,
and we'll start with thebenefits of uv light.
(34:01):
What is what is someone missingif they're not getting out and
getting midday sun exposure?
Um, and that's obviously ifthey're, if it's prefaced with
morning sun exposure yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
So a couple of different angles to I guess uh
get appreciate this on.
Maybe like the biophysical,biochemical, starting and
starting starting from the.
Maybe we'll just quickly gotalk about the.
The biophysical benefits is theUV light appears to via its
absorption by melanin.
(34:35):
This pigment, melanin, seems tobe able to essentially liberate
electrons from water using thepower of ultraviolet light.
So again, in terms of what thatmeans for, so again in terms of
what that means for thecellular health and the cell, is
that it's suddenly able toaccess a whole bunch more energy
(34:58):
, perhaps even in a distinct anddifferent way to the
near-infrared mechanism we justmentioned, by just simply being
outside and having ultravioletlight.
So again, the more melanin youhave, the more potentially you
can derive benefit from thisenergy source without getting
(35:19):
sunburned.
From a biochemical level,there's lots of different ways
of, I guess, conceiving aboutthe benefits of ultraviolet
light, but maybe it's first bestto illustrate how important
this process is, because the uhsimply the, the one of the photo
products of uv light is um, an,an endorphin product, so an
(35:44):
endorphin chemical, and that'svia this pro-opioid melanocortin
, um access.
This pathway is that it uvlight?
This pathway is that UV lightwhen it strikes the skin, when
it strikes the eyes, itupregulates or it facilitates
the transcription, translationand cleavage of pro-opioid
(36:07):
melanocortin into all thesemelanocortin peptide hormones
and they are intimately requiredin the skin for the tanning
response.
So the reason why themelanocyte, which is this little
dendritic-like cell that sitsin the basal layer of your skin,
why that's able to make themelanin pigment, is because it
(36:27):
received a message from thisalphaMSH that was made in the
keratinocyte in the skin celland essentially signaled to the
melanocyte to make more pigment.
And that's yes, it's anadaptive response.
Let's not sugarcoat it.
That occurs after there's beenDNA damage to the skin cell, but
what it sets in motion is abeneficial hormetic adaptive
(36:53):
response.
Obviously, if people don'tcontinually stay out there and I
guess this is the crux ofhormesis is that there's this
benefit in intermittent dosing,not in constant dosing.
If you have intermittent dosing, then you allow the organism to
respond favorably.
(37:14):
So amongst these products ofPOMC, as I mentioned, include
alpha-MSH, the endorphins, acth,which is essentially the
precursor to cortisol, and oneof the other pioneers in
photobiology is Dr AlexanderWunsch and he explains about the
(37:37):
function of these skin-derivedcatecholamine hormones and
because, interestingly, not onlyACTH gets produced, but a whole
bunch of other essentially likepituitary, like hormones, get
made by the skin.
But uh, the reason?
One of the reasons is becausethe ultraviolet light and and
(37:59):
short wavelength visible likeblue light is able to vasodilate
the the, the skin and the bloodvessels under the skin, causing
a redistribution of bloodperipherally to the surface.
So that has enormous benefits.
It obviously improves low bloodflow and therefore reduces
blood pressure, improves allthese markers of cardiovascular
(38:24):
health and cardiovascularphysiology.
But the other reason why thisACCH and cortisol release occurs
is to essentially preventexcessive redistribution of the
circulation to the periphery.
So we want a little bit, buttoo much is not good.
But thankfully the body has gotthis extremely elegant system
(38:47):
to deal with that andappropriately manage that.
So what is UV light doing withthis POMC compound and with the
vitamin D system?
Because the vitamin D system isanother kind of critical
insight into the benefits of UVlight and that again was
(39:10):
initially thought to only be astory of bone metabolism and
calcium and phosphate absorptionand that's its kind of base
function, which is, if you avoidbeing frankly deficient, then
you prevent rickets, you preventosteomalacia and long-term you
can help prevent osteoporosis.
But that is only part of thestory.
(39:32):
I mean, if you get someoneabove 30 nanograms per mil or 75
nanomoles per liter serumvitamin D level, then you're
going to safely prevent thosebone complications.
But what happens above thatabove 40 nanograms per mil or
above 100 nanomoles per liter isthat you get all these
(39:56):
non-skeletal benefits of vitaminD.
And we're at the point now thatthe literature around vitamin D
and health has ballooned,meaning that we've investigated
people have investigated theabsolute gamut of health
conditions, from preeclampsia inpregnancy to cardiovascular
(40:17):
disease, to all-cause mortality,to breast cancer, colorectal
cancer, multiple sclerosis, type1 diabetes you name it Any of
these diseases that we've seenmassive rises in the modern
world.
Essentially, you can find anassociation with low vitamin D
and these diseases and reallythe takeaway point, or the key
(40:42):
point here, is that you can justsubstitute sunlight deficiency
in the place of vitamin Ddeficiency, because every time
you see vitamin D insufficiencyor deficiency, the only way, or
the most important way the bodyis making that fat-soluble
hormone because that's what itis, it's actually a hormone is
through UVB exposure and, yes,you can get it from certain
(41:08):
dietary sources, but for mostpeople, most of the time, during
most of human history, the sunwas our greatest source, from
280 nanometers to 320 nanometerlight.
And again, if you see the termvitamin D deficiency, then you
can again substitute it withsunlight deficiency.
And the root cause of thatproblem is not purified
cholecalciferol from thepharmacy.
(41:29):
That's not the disease process.
That's not the problem.
The problem is that that personhas not been in full spectrum
sunlight, because the vitamin Dmarker, the 25-hydroxy vitamin D
assay that you get measuredfrom a venous blood draw, can be
thought of as a proxy or amarker of that person's
ultraviolet, visible andnear-infrared sun exposure.
(41:53):
And the reason why we know thatis because often some of these
intervention trials that haverelied on vitamin D
supplementation haven't beenable to replicate the findings
that we get from these long-termobservational studies.
And there's some other reasonswhy that.
Maybe those studies weren'tdone as fairly as they could
(42:14):
have been.
But I guess the key point isthat these health benefits are
downstream of full spectrumsunlight, which necessarily
includes UV, and we can't thrivewithout UV light.
But we just have to be sensibleand we have to respect our
ancestry and the ultravioletconditions that we're living in
(42:35):
when we get UV light.
And it's not about burning,it's not about toasting
ourselves like some Englishtourist in Byron Bay who hops
off the plane looking like alobster the next day.
That's not the point.
But it's about nuance and it'sabout sensible exposure, yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
And there's so much nuance around it.
I think it's important forpeople to know, too, that if
you're, the more fair skin youare, the easier it is for you to
absorb vitamin D.
And I was just curious inclinical practice, how often do
you see people who are vitamin Ddeficient, and how often is
that also related to them havingsome sort of chronic disease?
(43:18):
Is that also related to themhaving?
Speaker 2 (43:19):
some sort of chronic disease?
Yeah, great question.
So the body will consumevitamin D.
Vitamin D will get essentiallyused up in the process of
dealing with inflammation andresponding to infection.
And the way to think aboutvitamin D is that it's almost
(43:42):
like if you have a high vitaminD level, if you're replete with
vitamin D, then essentiallyturns your whole immune system
from pro-inflammatory toessentially anti-inflammatory.
The way I explain it is it'slike if the body's vitamin D
deficient, its immune system isgoing to have its fists up.
It's going to be ready torespond to essentially benign
(44:05):
environmental allergens, that's,these atopic diseases like
asthma and eczema and allergicrhinitis, and it's also going to
be, at the same time, lesseffective at essentially dealing
with viral and bacterialinfections.
So we know this not onlymechanistically but we know this
(44:27):
epidemiologically, because youcan plot the severity of flu
seasons and seasonal viral andrespiratory infection against
time of year and they coincidewith the nadir of the
population's vitamin D level,which obviously is coinciding
with the nadir in sun exposurehabits and, to some degree,
(44:53):
potentially, vitamin Davailability.
But what you're saying isabsolutely correct, which is if
you look at patients I mean, Ihad a lovely old lady with
temporal arteritis or giant cellarteritis, which is an
autoimmune vasculitis.
And you measured her vitamin Dand it's in her boots, but
(45:15):
severely deficient and it's afactor that was undoubtedly
playing a role in thedevelopment of that disease.
And there's factors thatinfluence our ability to kind of
maintain our vitamin D level,particularly obesity, and the
work of Michael Holick has shownthat if you're obese you need
two to three times the amount ofvitamin D to essentially
(45:37):
maintain the syrup level.
But absolutely if we can avoidthat state of vitamin D
deficiency, then a whole bunchof potentially inflammatory
chronic diseases would notmanifest because of the
beneficial effect of the vitaminD system per se, but also
sunlight and those othermechanisms on the health and
(46:01):
disease prevention.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
It makes perfect sense.
Even autoimmune disease is sorampant, it's like your immune
defense is up Literally it'sgoing to even fight itself.
So what is pharmaceuticalvitamin D lacking Like?
(46:25):
Why do you, aside from all thebenefits of being out in natural
sunlight, but why is thatversion of vitamin D not doing
the same thing as what you getfrom UVB exposure?
Speaker 2 (46:31):
Okay, fantastic question.
So there's a way to think aboutthis.
So if we contrastsunlight-derived vitamin D to a
supplemental vitamin D, so aquick explainer of the
physiology of vitamin D.
(46:53):
So what happens is that vitaminD is a compound that gets made
by the conversion of cholesterolin the skin to vitamin D, to
vitamin D, and that process thenundergoes the.
It basically changes thestructure of a ring structure in
7-D hydrocholesterol and thatprocess it changes that ring
(47:14):
structure and then vitamin D isessentially created, and then it
essentially isomerizes andbinds to a carrier protein.
It's as if you're generating inthe skin.
So UV light hits the skin,turns the cholesterol into a
vitamin D, the vitamin D changesconformation, binds to this
(47:34):
vitamin D binding protein andthen it actually gets
transported by that bindingprotein to the liver where it
gets hydroxylated orenzymatically transformed, and
then again another step happensin the kidney.
So the advantage of this andwe'll start right at the skin
(47:54):
layer is that vitamin D is notthe only compound that actually
gets made.
On exposure to UVB light itturns out, and we originally
thought, that these chemicalcousins were actually benign.
But if you keep exposing thatvitamin D chemical compound to
(48:14):
ultraviolet light, then itactually starts making these
chemical cousins of vitamin D Icall them to ultraviolet light.
Then it actually starts makingthese chemical cousins of
vitamin D I call them or thesesecosteroid compounds which turn
out to have other related buthighly important effects, such
as upregulating DNA repair, sohelping the DNA fix any damage
that was done by the ultravioletlight.
It helps reduce cellproliferation.
(48:38):
So in conditions like cancer orpsoriasis, where there's excess
cell proliferation, theseseclosteroids are helping to
dampen that process down.
So you wouldn't make any ofthese if you're only taking
isolated vitamin D3,cholecalciferol, whereas again,
when you made it from sunlight,you're generating not only
vitamin D but all its relatedcousins.
(49:00):
And uh, compare that to tosupplemental vitamin which is
cholecalciferol d3 by itself.
So that is ingested.
It um majority, majority inmajority gets bound to the ldl
fraction, the lipoproteinfraction, and and it's carried
around that way and it'stherefore bioavailability or its
(49:23):
absorption and its utilizationis less.
Another interesting study thatHolick Michael Holick did was
used to had a couple of groupsand gave one group a minimal
erythema dose of UV light inthese tanning bed and gave
another group um 10 000 units ofof vitamin d orally and then
(49:45):
measured the vitamin d levelsand what he showed is that the
the people who ingested thesupplement had this like big
rise and then fall, and whereasthe people who generated in the
skin essentially had a moreconsistent and prolonged release
of vitamin D into theircirculation.
So, essentially, if you aregetting it from sunlight, you're
(50:07):
making a whole bunch morefactors than just plain old D3,
and you are essentiallyoptimizing it for the body's use
and absorption, which iscritical.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
It's a great explanation and I wanted to just
pivot slightly into, you know,because UV light catches so much
flack for skin damage andpeople are and its association
with skin cancer.
I just wanted your take becauseI know I've listened to you on
previous podcasts and you have agreat explanation of this
(50:44):
process.
So when is UV light damagingand when has it become
concerning, and what are themisconceptions about, UV light
and skin cancer?
Speaker 2 (50:56):
Yeah, great question, because I think that the main
reason that's holding morepeople back from getting
sensible, safe sun exposure thatthey need for their health is a
fear, and the fear of skincancer.
Maybe.
To think about skin cancer, itis cancer just like any other
(51:16):
cancer, and what that means isthere's got to be a lot of
derangements in the body'sphysiology, in the correct
functioning of the body, for amalignancy to form like off the
bat.
There has to be things.
Cancer doesn't form in someonewho is essentially healthy, who
has intact optimal mitochondrialfunction, who is having this
(51:41):
dialed in circadian cycle ofdarkness at night and
appropriate daylight, and whohas intact mitochondrial power
redox, so who's not insulinresistant, who is not vitamin
deficient and the funny thingabout that is that the person
(52:04):
that I've just described is inthe vast minority.
I mean less than 1% of peopleon the earth fit that bill.
But the key point when it comesto skin cancer is that there's
a lot going wrong for skincancer to develop the the
distinction needs to be madebetween the melanoma and
non-melanoma skin cancers, andthe reason is because the
(52:25):
non-melanoma skin cancers, whichare squamous cell and basal
cell carcinoma, they are, theycan be, they can be cosmetically
very troubling, they can be umunsightly and they can be
absolutely a problem metastaticsquamous cell more than basal
cell but these, on the whole,are not a cause of death.
(52:48):
They're not a cause of death inthe way that other cancers are,
so much so that cancerregistries don't even record
SCCs and BCCs.
So from a public health and apopulation health level, we need
to think about what is killingpeople.
Well, it would be the malignantmelanoma, and malignant
(53:09):
melanoma is a problem of thosemelanocytes that make the
melanin pigment essentiallyreplicating and becoming
malignant.
They can metastasize, theymetastasize to the brain and
it's a very sad process.
I think the key to an insightthat people might find
interesting in the context ofwhat we've talked about is the
(53:31):
treatment for metastaticmelanoma at the moment, and that
is immunotherapy.
So the current standard of carewhen it comes to treating
someone with malignant melanomais these checkpoint inhibitor
medications that essentiallyassist in the immune system to
find, detect and kill melanoma.
(53:53):
So that really gives you aninsight into what's actually
going on.
You an insight into what'sactually going on.
It turns out that it's aproblem of insufficient immune
surveillance and destruction ofmalignant cells, and the reason
is because right now, or ineveryone's body, we're
developing malignancies, there'serrors in DNA replication in
(54:14):
cells.
But if your immune system works, your cells will identify,
destroy them before they canform a tumor.
So that problem is obviouslygone awry in patients that
develop malignant melanoma.
But again, the mechanism ofbenefit of these immune
checkpoint inhibitor drugsimplies that that is a patient
(54:35):
who has a defective immuneresponse.
And if you look at thismultiple other ways, you get
insight, which is those with thelowest vitamin D levels have
the most invasive melanomas.
They have the greatest Breslauthickness.
That's also been shown withbasal cell carcinomas they're
(54:55):
more thicker, they're moreaggressive.
So that's an interestingquestion.
That's, I guess, a paradox thata doctor needs to.
Someone can send this to theirdoctor and they can ask them
this question, which is why isthe invasiveness and
aggressiveness of melanoma somuch greater in those patients
who are vitamin D deficient?
And if you tie that into whatwe just talked about the effects
(55:17):
of, say, vitamin D and thepsychosteroids on stopping cell
replication and essentiallychanging the immune response
from pro-inflammatory to lessanti-inflammatory, but I'd say
immune-tolerant, then it startsmaking sense.
(55:37):
Then it starts making sense.
And then you also think aboutthe life cycle of someone who
develops a malignant melanoma.
And typically and obviouslyAustralia and New Zealand.
This is the highest incidenceper capita of melanoma in the
world.
I will tell you, I'll give youan insight into the typical
(55:59):
patient story.
And it's someone who is aFitzpatrick one or two so a pale
.
They have Northern Europeandescent, they live in Queensland
or New South Wales here inAustralia.
They potentially have had someburning sunburn in their youth
and adolescence, maybe earlyadulthood, and then the rest of
their life.
They work inside, they work inan office job, maybe they're an
(56:22):
accountant, they're a lawyer,they're covered up.
Most of their body is coveredup most of the time for two,
three, four decades and then theaverage age of onset of
melanoma here is 68 in men.
So you've got maybe a 40 or50-year lag time in which time
that person has avoided sunlight.
(56:46):
So they're vitamin D deficientor insufficient.
They've eaten all manner ofprocessed food and developed
visceral fat and insulinresistance.
They have not done any of these.
They haven't been outsideconstantly, they haven't got the
benefits of infrared light,then again have had a disrupted
circadian rhythm, which is keyfor the cancer surveillance and
(57:11):
response process, and then theyget diagnosed with a malignant
melanoma in a non-sun exposedarea and I've seen it.
I've diagnosed myself amelanoma in situ on a farmer's
forearm and I asked himpersonally.
I said to him, does that areaget sun exposure?
He said it hasn't been exposedto the sun in 20 years.
(57:34):
So I'm giving hope to give theaudience an insight into the
discrepancies here between thisreally simplistic, reductive sun
equals melanoma narrative,because it's wrong, it's not
correct.
Now are there certain types ofmelanoma that are associated
with total sun exposure?
Yes, that's true.
So lentigo maligna happens onthe face, shoulders in elderly
(57:55):
people, say a farmer again whois from Northern Europe they get
it at age 80, 85, after theirwhole life.
It's an indolent, mostly lesslikely to metastasize type of
melanoma.
So this is just some nuance thatI think we need to carry into
this discussion and the realproblem I think is the
(58:20):
insufficient exposure for mostpeople and that's because the
diseases that could be preventedthrough healthy, safe,
consistent sun exposure ischemicheart disease, reduced or
massively improved cancers,bowel, prostate, breast, any of
(58:40):
the neurodegenerative diseasesthey would be massively improved
.
You have neuromelanin,parkinson's disease, loss of
neuromelanin in the substantianigra.
So if we're looking at this ona balance beam, where we're
mostly concerned about thesediseases that are killing people
, compared to skin cancer.
But in Australia I'm not sureabout the US skin cancer is
(59:01):
responsible for the 13th causeof years of potential life loss
and obviously at the top are theI mean barring suicide and
death by misadventure andtraumatic injury.
It's those conditions that Imentioned previously.
So, again, at a population level, we need to think about this in
a more holistic way.
On an individual level, we needto know what is my family
(59:24):
history?
Do I have a strong familyhistory of melanoma?
Am I a fair-headed redhead?
What else is going on?
Because that will give us morenuance on an individual level.
But on a societal level, weclearly need to move the balance
beam from sun avoidanceextremism a bit more towards
(59:45):
healthy, regular, non-burningsun exposure.
Speaker 1 (59:48):
That's a great explanation and it's just to tie
a bow on it.
It's like you're raising yourchance of all of these other
things just to avoid a very like, like you said, like that, uh,
the patient who had, you know,uh, the farmer with melanoma at
80, you know, um, it's just we.
(01:00:08):
I agree, we have to shift thebeam a little bit just to, even
if meet somewhere in the middle,you know, um, but I don't want
to take too much of your time.
Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
uh, that's all I just want to make them, brian, I'll
just make them mention.
The other key point is is photoaging, in terms of the
resistance to sun exposure, and,and I think the key point here
is that, based on the amount ofmelanin that you have in your
epidermis and your skin willdictate how much exposure is
appropriate.
And people who are who's skinwill dictate how much exposure
(01:00:47):
is appropriate, and people whoseancestors are from West Africa,
who have this Fitzpatrick 6skin type, they're literally
adapted to high UV index thewhole year round in the beating
sun, same with the AustralianAborigines.
But someone whose parents andancestors were from Sweden, the
UV index gets above six forabout a week and then is never
higher than that.
So these are radicallydifferent ultraviolet
(01:01:08):
environments and thereforethere's radically different
tolerances to ultraviolet lightand I think we just need to
respect that when it comes tomaking these choices.
And again, if you're paler andyou're starting from zero, then
really you can start earlier inthe day and you can avoid,
(01:01:29):
obviously avoid peak UV time, soyou don't essentially push off
from hormetic stress intopotential, you know, damage.
But yeah, look, the key pointis that for so long this message
has been demonizing sunexposure, when, for so many
(01:01:51):
people, the beginning of theirhealing journey from chronic
disease would start by takingoff their clothes, literally
taking all their clothes off and, you know, gently, starting
with, with morning sun exposureand essentially cultivating
pigment, developing that, that,that POMC, building it up, and
(01:02:12):
uh, you know that they'll startthriving, the, the.
The path to thriving begins, um, there.
Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
The path to thriving begins there.
That's awesome.
And taking all your clothes off, big fan, I want to.
Maybe next time you come on, wecan break down what that's
doing for the body, and I hateto rush you off, but we're going
to have a classic mid-afternoonthunderstorm here in Florida,
but I really appreciate youcoming on.
You're awesome.
(01:02:40):
You have such a great wealth ofknowledge.
Um, so where can people findyou?
And I'd love for you to talkabout your uh, your health
retreat and what that's allabout as well yeah, so we more
recently we've just I've run acouple of these health retreats.
Speaker 2 (01:02:56):
It it's circadian living, we call it, and the
thrust of it is it's easier toshow someone what to do than to
kind of intellectually for themto study it.
And what that looks like is werun people through an ideal
circadian day we're up atsunrise, we're seeing the sun
come up, we're doing somemovement, sometimes we're
(01:03:17):
getting cold, we're using thosecircadian zyclibes to help
entrain our circadian rhythm,we're eating nutrient-dense
breakfasts and early dinners,not eating late, no eating after
the sun sets, respecting thenatural light cues and really
(01:03:39):
tying that all in with arelaxing weekend meeting a whole
bunch of like-minded people.
And that's something we reallyfound is that people loved
meeting other people who areinto this thing, because it can
be isolating and a little bit, Iguess, alienating if you feel
like you're the only one doingweird in inverted commas, things
like taking your clothes offand sunbathing.
(01:04:00):
But uh, but yeah, you can.
You can hit me up on Instagramon Max Goulhain, MD or X, and my
website is drmaxgoulhaincom.
Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
Awesome, Max.
Thank you so much.
This is awesome.
I really appreciate your time.
Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
Yeah, thanks for having me, brett.
Okay, welcome to the MediSun podcast.
Today I'm joined by Max Gullane.
Super excited to talk to Maxtoday.
He was one of the first peopleI listened to when getting into
the quantum circadian healthspace, so, max, thanks a lot for
coming on.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hey Brett, thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Awesome, I wanted to start and just get your
perspective on from yourbackground starting as a
conventional medical doctor andthen now viewing things a little
differently and kind of get alittle insight into your
awakening into the whole quantumcircadian health aspect of
healing.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah, it's been a journey and the journey started
with a conventional medicaleducation, learning about
disease, pathology and reallyhow to treat that disease and
pathology.
But lacking in that educationwas more background or context
in terms of potentially why thatdisease arose in the first
(01:03):
place or any investigation orinquiry into what could be done
to really prevent the diseasefrom happening.
So that was going on inmainstream medical school and I
had my own health issue,relatively minor on the scale of
chronic disease, but it wasbothersome nonetheless.
(01:26):
I had acne and I exploreddifferent lifestyle modalities,
I guess after finding that thesolution that was given to me by
my GP, by my dermatologist, wasjust unsatisfactory, to say the
least.
It was simply just drugs, drugtherapy, topical therapy and
(01:47):
oral therapy for acne, whenthere wasn't any in-depth
conversation about what'sactually going on.
So I went through self-discoveryI used a low-carb diet that
really helped, progressed to acarnivore-type diet which felt
amazing, and then hit aroadblock, wasn't feeling as
(02:08):
good.
So I kept looking and whenyou're ready, the pathway opens
up in front of you.
I think that's what most peoplefind when they go down any kind
of intellectual journey there'salways going to be someone
ready to serve you up a plate ofinformation and I've found the
(02:30):
work of Dr Jack Cruz and that isthe smorgasbord of information
and I guess he was my entrypoint into this idea of the
effect of light on health andthe quantum biological
influences on health andmitochondria.
(02:50):
And from there it's just been,I guess, an ongoing process for
me of learning so I can betterunderstand how to, I guess,
advise patients, treat andadvise patients to help them
optimize their health, preventdisease and hopefully cure and
prevent disease.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
And I think it must be a difficult position for a
lot of physicians who aren'treally they're not privy to a
lot of this information andthey're trying to fix issues
with their patients but therekind of isn't a means to an end.
It's just this rabbit hole,like you're just cycling through
different medications.
How was like when you startedchanging your perspective?
(03:35):
How are you perceived by otherphysicians and people you worked
with?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Yeah, I think, a good analogy.
I've been, I always think aboutanalogies and I really like the
analogy of a motor mechanic anda car, because you know as much
as uh, what what may maybelayperson can understand is this
, this relationship the mechanichas an obligation to fix a car
and and the person who owns thecar, let's say, say they know
(04:05):
nothing about mechanics.
They don't understand whensomething should be changed,
they don't understand whatquality oil or coolant just got
put in.
They have to trust the mechanicthat what they're being told is
the appropriate maintenanceperiod, that the parts need
replacing at appropriate times.
There's a whole lot of trustthere, this massive knowledge
(04:27):
asymmetry, and I think theposition that modern mainstream
doctors have, mds in this dayand age, is that likewise there
is this asymmetry of knowledge.
But I think in many ways, whenit comes to chronic disease
prevention and treatment, it'salmost like the doctors are
(04:47):
reading from the wrong manual.
It's like you're trying to fixa Land Rover Defender but you've
got a Toyota Corolla manual andthe outcome is that the
recommendations or theadjustments that are kind of
being made, again from apharmaceutically focused,
(05:09):
allopathic, western medicalpoint of view, isn't giving the
best quality advice in myopinion, and it's almost like
you send the car out of thegarage still kind of blowing
smoke and the owner's kind oflooking at being like you know,
is this okay?
Like yeah, no, no worries, comeback to me in in another five
years when the you know exhaustpipe falls off and you know we,
(05:32):
if, if you're looking at this ata more preventative health
point of view, or at least aroot cause, or just someone
who's who wants to, uh, makesure that car's running as
optimally as possibly, it's likeokay, no, we're not going to
tolerate sure that car's runningas optimally as possibly.
It's like okay, no, we're notgoing to tolerate that.
That's not good enough.
I think that's where I'm at atthe moment.
I think a lot of doctors can'trelate because they haven't been
(05:56):
through a personal journey.
You see this in patients, yousee this in other colleagues.
Until they have to experiencedisease or illness and find the
status quo lacking in itsability to help them, they're
going to be I would say,willfully blind, but just
apathetic to these pathways,because they don't need to be.
(06:19):
They don't need to know this ifthey're content in their
intellectual lane.
They don't need to know this ifthey're kind of content in
their intellectual lane and it'svery rare that a doctor does, I
guess, come to this throughtheir own means, as in not
through a personal problem, andthat's usually a mix of really
curiosity and listening topatients, because if they have
(06:44):
patients telling them that theygot better turning off the
lights at night, watching thesunrise, taking their shoes off,
then if you're listening, ifthe doctor's listening, then
they might start inquiring abouthow that was effective, not
dismissing such an anecdote outof hand.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
That's a great analogy and I think I mean a lot
of pushback that I get justtrying to spread this
information is that there's thisblind trust for the medical
establishment in general, andI'm like they haven't really
earned that trust, to me atleast.
Their body of work isn't greatin chronic disease management at
(07:20):
all, and I think you made agood point about fixing your own
issue.
That doctors have to go throughsomething like that to see,
because you must have fixed anissue with through a path that
they no one's ever told you toreally do in a conventional you
know education, and so you.
That just opens your eyes.
(07:40):
So there's so manypossibilities that we're not
even we're not even looking inthe right direction.
Um, so when you're trying tonot only diagnose but uh, fix a
patient that you're working with, what's the?
What's the first?
Is the base redox like?
Is that where you're trying tobuild up from there?
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Yeah, I guess it's going to depend on what the
issue is and how did they getthere, what environmental or
genetic factors predisposed themto get to where they were, what
is their current setup, what istheir lifestyle, what are their
habits.
You know, as comprehensive aspossible but in terms of you
(08:30):
know, once we've identified anissue and we're kind of building
, building up to, to fix thatperson there's not one usually,
there's not one silver bullet.
It's going to be a process ofpiecing together.
It's like a puzzle.
We had a retreat the otherweekend and it's simply
(08:51):
implementing these circadianhealth principles and showing
people how to live this idealcircadian life.
And someone used a really greatanalogy, which is that of a
piece a puzzle.
So everyone has got a differentpuzzle and the pieces for each
person are a different size andshape, meaning that there's
going to be relative differentcontribution to their illness of
(09:14):
certain lifestyle habits.
However, based on the fact thatwe are all homo sapiens and we
all came from the same geneticlineage and we had similar
evolutionary adaptations, we alllived on planet Earth, then I
think that there are some basicsthat apply to everyone and at
(09:35):
the base of this I mean you canconceive it however you like.
At the moment I'm thinking aboutit as a pyramid and at the base
or the foundation of thepyramid is the light and dark
cycle, and that's kind of aheretical comment to a lot of
people.
It's a heretical comment tomainstream medicine, it's a
heretical comment to functionalmedicine doctors who use
(09:57):
supplements all the time.
But I'll explain why I thinkthat.
And at the bottom again, when Italk about what I mean by
(10:30):
light-dark cycle, I think thatthis compound even further back
this hormonal system, the waythat the organism interfaces
with the environment, is goingto dictate how it behaves, not
only on a hormonal andbiochemical level, but also on a
biophysical level.
And my premise or myproposition, which I think is
backed up by good science andpractical application, is that
the light cycles and the lightsignals are critical in
programming the bodily functionsand the functions of the
(10:50):
organism.
So overarching is essentiallyjust like melatonin and cortisol
, which are two extremelyimportant hormones for the
coordination of the body'sfunction.
And essentially, if we roll ourway all the way back, before the
evolution of eukaryoticorganisms, there was melatonin
(11:14):
and before it was acting as asignal of an onset of sleep, it
was acting as an antioxidant.
Obviously it still has thatfunction antioxidant and
obviously it still has thatfunction.
But the, the point being andyou know when, when you're
getting into disagreements or oryou know arguments about the
hierarchy of of, you know,intervention or lifestyle change
(11:36):
, the, you know the, thismelatonin hormone and this
photoreception.
It predated the evolution of agastrointestinal tract.
So before we were even able todigest and assume the cellular
components of other organismsfor energy, the organisms, the
(11:58):
proto-organism, before again,eukaryotes arose, were receiving
light signals and helping themto make sure that they were more
likely to survive, becausethere was this huge difference
in energy availability betweennight and day.
So that's nighttime I meannighttime is a period where this
(12:20):
hormone, melatonin, does getsecreted.
It's now being secretedendogenously by the pineal gland
and it kicks off or it signalsa whole bunch of repair
processes in the body and youchoose the cell type or the
organ type and it's allregenerating.
But in order for it toregenerate it needs darkness at
(12:43):
night.
There was a comment recently, Imean Jack Cruz made a comment
about regeneration of the conephotoreceptors in the eye.
I mean, why would a conditionlike age-related macular
degeneration be rising, amongstother lifestyle changes?
Well, because the cones needdarkness to regenerate and if
(13:04):
everyone's lighting up theirrooms at night, then that
process of regeneration can'toccur.
So this darkness process isfundamental.
This is why we sleep.
It's that fundamental to healthand other people agree with
that.
I mean you can talk to or youget opinions from people like
Brian Johnson or Andrew Huberman.
(13:27):
They will agree that sleep isimportant.
But I don't think thatespecially comes to this
foundation of health withrespect to circadian biology and
light-dark cycles full spectrum, bright, daytime sunlight and
essentially in the form thatyour body would have received.
(14:10):
And we can make nuances andallowances for skin type and
ancestral origin and thelatitude that your ancestors
evolved.
That's also a nuance that needsto be made.
But basically it means from themoment the sun rises until the
moment the sun sets.
Then we were ancestrally andhistorically exposed to sunlight
(14:33):
, and not just the visible andnot the UV.
It was everything.
It was everything from 280nanometers.
It was everything from 280nanometers, which is in the
(15:10):
ultraviolet B, all the greatest,but by um photon count, the the
non-visible, the infrared ishas the highest photon count and
then obviously the uv.
The ultraviolet, which again isnon-visible, is extremely
important even though it makesup less than five percent of of
of solar energy and uvb.
You know five percent of that.
It was indispensable and thereason why complex life was able
to evolve in the first place.
(15:31):
So this whole mix of UV visibleand near-infrared are all
indispensable light nutrientsthat we evolved with that we
need.
Nutrients that we evolved withthat we need.
And yes, we were sitting inshaded trees during peak of
midday or in a forest canopymaking the use of other tools to
(15:54):
mitigate the effects ofultraviolet as ionizing
radiation, but nevertheless weweren't in these chambers,
sealed chambers that werefiltering natural sunlight.
We weren't in these chambers,sealed chambers that were
filtering natural sunlight.
We weren't in areas, dim indoorenvironments.
We had full, bright daylight.
And Michael Moorheed, who's oneof the circadian biologists and
(16:18):
researchers, they put out a uh,stating that modern existence,
like the modern human life todayin society is, is essentially
uh exposed to, because, becausepeople are spending 95 percent
(16:40):
of their time indoors, areexposed to, you know, a thousand
times less intensity of brightlight compared to, and
especially what we would have.
And you know, 100 timesbrighter nighttime than than we
would have and 100 timesbrighter nighttime than we would
have.
So the yin and yang, theduality.
Taoism is like this duality.
It's been disturbed.
And it's been disturbed becauseas humans, we've been able to
(17:03):
invent technology that isessentially lighting up our
nighttime and cocooningourselves during the daytime.
And the reason why the daytimesunlight is so important is
because it I mean there's somany facets to this, but it in
and of itself is an energysource that the body is deriving
(17:25):
and the mitochondria arederiving energy from.
What is happening in themitochondrion is reversal of
what's happening in achloroplast that's
photosynthesizing.
So the addition of solar lightessentially aids in this whole
(17:47):
process of oxidativephosphorylation of mitochondrial
function.
And if you subtract out thatsolar light, then the
mitochondria has a harder timeessentially doing its job.
And the chronic diseaseepidemic, I guess, coming back
to what we started theconversation with, is different
(18:07):
versions of mitochondrialdysfunction, or maladaption, you
can call it, depending on whichorgan it develops in, which is
again a function of differentlifestyle habits and genetic
predisposition.
So this is why and you canmeasure that daytime, you can
actually measure the biochemicalamount of daylight sun.
(18:29):
Someone's got by proxy, whichis the serum vitamin D level.
So if we take a step back andlook at these key hormones that
influence your health as aperson vitamin D, melatonin,
cortisol, or three of them.
They're all intimately tied tolight and they're only just
(18:51):
three examples, because thewhole of the pituitary gland, or
hypothalamus and the pituitarygland, is all responding to
light signals and the rest ofthose pituitary hormones are
also kicking off secretion at acertain amount of time of day.
So, in totality, the way thatthe body is essentially
(19:12):
conducting everything that itneeds to do is fundamentally
reliant on correct timing ofdaytime and nocturnal darkness.
So if we screw that up andscrewing that up is the default
for most people most of the timethen we're going to get sick,
and those sicknesses as I justsaid, metabolic disease, and
(19:39):
metabolic syndrome being perhapsthe most visible or relevant is
all downstream of disturbedmitochondrial function, and that
includes insulin resistance.
So that's, I guess, why I putthe light-dark cycle at the
bottom of the pyramid guess whyI put the light-dark cycle at
the bottom of the pyramid.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
That was a great explanation and I'm glad you
went with the yin-yang direction.
So morning light just to kindof zone in and bounce off the
cortisol.
How do you use morning light tocorrectly build the right
cortisol?
Rise and fall or not fall, butrise and then steady balance
throughout the day to managethat cortisol level?
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Yeah.
So I think whatever in terms ofthe wake up like this, this um,
the, the, the way that the bodyis supposed to wake up again,
um, which is appropriate,appropriate is through solar
blue light and the.
The reason is because thesespecial uh clock, clock recept,
(20:43):
like non-visual photoreceptors,that the clock aspect of your
eye and not the vision formingaspect, I'm talking about the,
these intrinsicallyphotosensitive retinal ganglion
cells.
They're uniquely susceptible ortriggered by blue light.
But the key point is that theblue light that they receive,
and therefore that goes on toessentially trigger that
(21:08):
cortisol response, is present inthe form of natural daylight at
sunrise, which in and of itselfis approximately a three to one
ratio of non-visible to visiblephotons, and it's completely
different to the blue light thatyou're getting from an iPhone
screen or from an iPad screen,which is, you know, a big dirty
(21:33):
spike of, of, of blue, withoutany form of uh, of non-visible
red infrared light, and that's,that's uh.
You know that.
I think that affects the waythat the body interprets that
morning um wake up.
And so I guess the key point isthat whatever mother nature is
(21:54):
giving you in your location, inyour season, at your latitude,
at that time, is going toessentially anchor your
circadian rhythm and optimizethat wake up so that your I mean
your cortisol level will simplyreflect ideally with if there's
nothing else going onphysiologically.
Reflect ideally with if there'snothing else going on
physiologically.
(22:14):
Um, you're an appropriatemorning, uh, environment that's.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
That's great.
Um and uh.
Melatonin specifically.
The first time I ever heardjack cruz say that, uh, morning
sunlight is going to help yousleep better, it was so
counterintuitive to me.
I had no clue, had never heardthat.
So what is that morning lightdoing to our cellular melatonin
and how is it benefiting us whenyou get that darkness later at
(22:40):
night?
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah.
So this is a great opportunityto make the point that there is
in fact these two kind ofrepositories, or the body has
two separate mechanisms by whichit's making melatonin.
And historically, the type ofmelatonin that most are familiar
with and most scientists arefamiliar with is that so-called
(23:03):
circulatory or pineal gland.
Essentially it's a brainstructure and it's a vestige,
it's an ancient remnant of avisual receptive system in
different species and it hasdifferent anatomical position
(23:26):
and it's actually directly lightsensitive.
But in the humans the bluelight signal goes from the
retinal ganglion cells to thehypothalamus and then it goes
down the superior cervicalganglion to the PVN and then it
goes to the pineal gland andthat signal of blue light
essentially turns off melatoninand that's an appropriate
(23:50):
reaction to the reception ofblue light and therefore would
kick off the dark cycle, wouldkick off the sleep cycle.
So that is the main source ofmelatonin that most of us are
aware of and possibly that'skind of mopping up oxidative
stress that's occurred duringthe day.
But it also happens and this isa more recent discovery by
(24:14):
Zimmerman and Russell Ryder,maybe five years ago was that
the mitochondria is actuallyalso making melatonin on site,
essentially right there in themitochondrion, but only on
stimulation of near-infraredlight.
So it seems like your body'smaking on-demand melatonin,
(24:37):
again because it's anantioxidant to essentially cool
down the heat damage.
Think about it that way that'sbeing done by just the engine
idling.
So just think about when you'redriving your car and you're
pushing the accelerator pedal oryou're even leaving it idling,
you're creating these reactiveoxygen species in the
(24:58):
mitochondria.
Adequately balanced with anantioxidant force, they can
cause oxidative damage andtherefore damage to the
mitochondrial DNA and thereforethe cellular energy output will
(25:18):
drop over periods of years.
So the melatonin that's gettingmade on site in the
mitochondrion is almost like acoolant, like an engine coolant
that the body is using then andthere to help mitigate the
oxidative stress of the body.
So there's these two pools,there's these two ways that the
(25:41):
body is making and usingmelatonin and really what we
want to do is maximize bothpools, both pools.
So, specifically to maximizethe daytime on-site melatonin,
you just preferably spend yourtime outdoors and, again, close
to bushes, natural greenery,shrubbery because again, osbury
(26:05):
and Zimmerman's work shows thatgreen plants essentially reflect
these near-infrared photons andtherefore they can be used and
there seems to be some extremelyinteresting anatomical
adaptations that the body's madespecifically with respect to
skin physiology, brain, thesulci and gyri of the brain, as
(26:29):
well as the actual refractiveindex of human amniotic fluid of
the pregnant woman, toconcentrate these near-infrared
photons into these reallyimportant areas of the brain and
body and spinal cord.
So it's absolutely essentialand we can maximize that by
(26:49):
simply just getting outside andbeing near natural greenery, but
then to maximize the pineal orthe circulatory melatonin, then
that is essentially programmedby early morning sun exposure
and even into the UVA rise, the,the early morning time and and
(27:11):
the more uh you know, because ofessentially the photochemistry
of these, these, these chemicals, these um compounds there, the
more ultraviolet light you canget during the day.
Essentially that is setting upthe body to release prime and
then release uh melatonin fromgland, the pineal gland, to
(27:31):
several hours after darkness.
So people might you know, ifyou've gone camping, you've gone
out, we call it the bush here,you guys, I don't know what you
call it over there.
If you go out to the bush andyou spent the whole day outside,
you're hiking, you're climbing,whatever you're doing, and you
know you have a small campfireand you've cooked dinner, you've
(27:53):
eaten before sunset because thesun's gone down and you just
sit down and you get this waveof tiredness, your body's
starting to dump melatonin intothe system and because there's
so little artificial light in atnight, out there when you're
camping, I mean, nowadays peoplebring generators and they turn
(28:16):
on, you know, all kinds of ledcontraptions on their, on their,
uh, you know, camper vans.
But I'm talking about if, maybe, if you've walked in, then you
you'll fall asleep and you'llfall asleep like an absolute log
, because that melatonin hormoneis assisting in the onset of
sleep.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
That's great, and I think a great point that you're
emphasizing here is that beinginside is basically stealing
energy by not getting it fromyour environment, and then when
you're outside, it's just soenergy rich.
Everything is wanting to putenergy into the system to make
you run, run correctly, Um, andI I think it's so prevalent
(29:00):
today.
You just see like you can seethat someone, they look like an
inefficient energy system, likeeverything about them.
Um, even when, when Jack Cruztalks about, uh, how inefficient
energy systems expand, and itjust I think that really
highlights the obesity epidemicthat's worldwide today.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Yeah, great, absolutely great point, and I've
been thinking pretty much thesame thing, which is every and
again, not to sound too extreme,because the process of
implementing a circadianlifestyle can sometimes become a
bit overwhelming if people tryto go from woe to go and they
think it's too hard.
But essentially every momentyou're inside behind a tinted
(29:49):
window or under artificial lightis essentially you're depriving
your mitochondrial colony ofenergetic input they need to
essentially operate efficiently.
And you know we talk aboutthere's a lot of talk about
longevity, longevity, thislongevity that, um brian johnson
, don't die, the the crux, thecrux of not dying, is
(30:13):
essentially the slowest declinepossible of the energetic
capacity of your mitochondrialcolony.
What that essentially means isyou essentially want to slow
down the process ofmitochondrial decay as much as
you can to prevent you fromdying.
And obviously some of the maincauses of death in society are
(30:39):
neurological and cardiologicaland various flavors of
neurodegenerative disease stroke, ischemic heart disease or
heart attack, heart failure,heart disease or heart attack,
heart failure.
And it also happens that theseorgans are up there with the
(30:59):
most mitochondrial dense tissuesin the body.
So if we're trying to preserveor reduce the likelihood of
death by neurodegenerationAlzheimer's, parkinson's or
heart failure or heart attack,then we really want our
mitochondria working asoptimally as possible and it's
like money on the table.
(31:19):
If you're simply being outside,your body doesn't even have to
do anything and it's essentiallyable to use that red light to
spin the ATPase and essentiallysuck glucose out of the
bloodstream and just run moreefficiently and essentially
optimize all functions.
(31:40):
And what I think about and forme is a personal journey and
evolution in my understanding ofthinking about diabetes and
metabolic disease as a problemof excess dietary carbohydrate
and processed food components towhen you're understanding
what's going on with how lightis interacting with the
mitochondria, then you realizethat sure, the food is
(32:04):
absolutely making the problemworse.
I mean people guzzling downultra-processed, sugar-sweetened
beverages and high-fructosebeverages.
Absolutely that's a problem.
But when you learn that the redlight is simply able to reduce
blood glucose levels by 27% inthat Glenn Jeffery trial from
(32:25):
the beginning of last year, thenit's almost like daylight.
Is this constant anti-diabeticstimulus that you can access for
free, that is putting constantdownward pressure on rising
blood glucose levels in responseto food.
So absolutely, people are goingto become necessarily dependent
(32:46):
on a low-carb or carnivore dietif they're never getting
outside because they're notgiving their mitochondria any
leeway to essentially processcarbs, and any moment they shove
carbs into the system becausethey're so sunlight deprived,
they'll get a glucose spike andput down visceral fat and become
, over a period of months,pre-diabetic.
So the root cause wasn't thecarbohydrates per se.
(33:09):
It was the fact that they werenot outside and not eating
latitude, location-specific,seasonally appropriate
carbohydrate.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
I completely agree, and in that study I believe they
shined it right on the shoulderor something right.
It wasn't even full bodyinfrared light.
So it's, I mean, like you said,it's just money on the table.
You can really improve yourhealth just by being outside and
I noticed it a lot.
I was in Northern New Hampshireand um, and it's in the summer.
(33:40):
There's so much greenery therethat it's just like you feel
absolutely amazing If you spendany amount of time outside.
It's just reflecting and it'slike it's forest bathing.
It really is, um.
But to move on with a higherenergy photon, with uv light,
and we'll start with thebenefits of uv light.
(34:01):
What is what is someone missingif they're not getting out and
getting midday sun exposure?
Um, and that's obviously ifthey're, if it's prefaced with
morning sun exposure yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
So a couple of different angles to I guess uh
get appreciate this on.
Maybe like the biophysical,biochemical, starting and
starting starting from the.
Maybe we'll just quickly gotalk about the.
The biophysical benefits is theUV light appears to via its
absorption by melanin.
(34:35):
This pigment, melanin, seems tobe able to essentially liberate
electrons from water using thepower of ultraviolet light.
So again, in terms of what thatmeans for, so again in terms of
what that means for thecellular health and the cell, is
that it's suddenly able toaccess a whole bunch more energy
(34:58):
, perhaps even in a distinct anddifferent way to the
near-infrared mechanism we justmentioned, by just simply being
outside and having ultravioletlight.
So again, the more melanin youhave, the more potentially you
can derive benefit from thisenergy source without getting
(35:19):
sunburned.
From a biochemical level,there's lots of different ways
of, I guess, conceiving aboutthe benefits of ultraviolet
light, but maybe it's first bestto illustrate how important
this process is, because the uhsimply the, the one of the photo
products of uv light is um, an,an endorphin product, so an
(35:44):
endorphin chemical, and that'svia this pro-opioid melanocortin
, um access.
This pathway is that it uvlight?
This pathway is that UV lightwhen it strikes the skin, when
it strikes the eyes, itupregulates or it facilitates
the transcription, translationand cleavage of pro-opioid
(36:07):
melanocortin into all thesemelanocortin peptide hormones
and they are intimately requiredin the skin for the tanning
response.
So the reason why themelanocyte, which is this little
dendritic-like cell that sitsin the basal layer of your skin,
why that's able to make themelanin pigment, is because it
(36:27):
received a message from thisalphaMSH that was made in the
keratinocyte in the skin celland essentially signaled to the
melanocyte to make more pigment.
And that's yes, it's anadaptive response.
Let's not sugarcoat it.
That occurs after there's beenDNA damage to the skin cell, but
what it sets in motion is abeneficial hormetic adaptive
(36:53):
response.
Obviously, if people don'tcontinually stay out there and I
guess this is the crux ofhormesis is that there's this
benefit in intermittent dosing,not in constant dosing.
If you have intermittent dosing, then you allow the organism to
respond favorably.
(37:14):
So amongst these products ofPOMC, as I mentioned, include
alpha-MSH, the endorphins, acth,which is essentially the
precursor to cortisol, and oneof the other pioneers in
photobiology is Dr AlexanderWunsch and he explains about the
(37:37):
function of these skin-derivedcatecholamine hormones and
because, interestingly, not onlyACTH gets produced, but a whole
bunch of other essentially likepituitary, like hormones, get
made by the skin.
But uh, the reason?
One of the reasons is becausethe ultraviolet light and and
(37:59):
short wavelength visible likeblue light is able to vasodilate
the the, the skin and the bloodvessels under the skin, causing
a redistribution of bloodperipherally to the surface.
So that has enormous benefits.
It obviously improves low bloodflow and therefore reduces
blood pressure, improves allthese markers of cardiovascular
(38:24):
health and cardiovascularphysiology.
But the other reason why thisACCH and cortisol release occurs
is to essentially preventexcessive redistribution of the
circulation to the periphery.
So we want a little bit, buttoo much is not good.
But thankfully the body has gotthis extremely elegant system
(38:47):
to deal with that andappropriately manage that.
So what is UV light doing withthis POMC compound and with the
vitamin D system?
Because the vitamin D system isanother kind of critical
insight into the benefits of UVlight and that again was
(39:10):
initially thought to only be astory of bone metabolism and
calcium and phosphate absorptionand that's its kind of base
function, which is, if you avoidbeing frankly deficient, then
you prevent rickets, you preventosteomalacia and long-term you
can help prevent osteoporosis.
But that is only part of thestory.
(39:32):
I mean, if you get someoneabove 30 nanograms per mil or 75
nanomoles per liter serumvitamin D level, then you're
going to safely prevent thosebone complications.
But what happens above thatabove 40 nanograms per mil or
above 100 nanomoles per liter isthat you get all these
(39:56):
non-skeletal benefits of vitaminD.
And we're at the point now thatthe literature around vitamin D
and health has ballooned,meaning that we've investigated
people have investigated theabsolute gamut of health
conditions, from preeclampsia inpregnancy to cardiovascular
(40:17):
disease, to all-cause mortality,to breast cancer, colorectal
cancer, multiple sclerosis, type1 diabetes you name it Any of
these diseases that we've seenmassive rises in the modern
world.
Essentially, you can find anassociation with low vitamin D
and these diseases and reallythe takeaway point, or the key
(40:42):
point here, is that you can justsubstitute sunlight deficiency
in the place of vitamin Ddeficiency, because every time
you see vitamin D insufficiencyor deficiency, the only way, or
the most important way the bodyis making that fat-soluble
hormone because that's what itis, it's actually a hormone is
through UVB exposure and, yes,you can get it from certain
(41:08):
dietary sources, but for mostpeople, most of the time, during
most of human history, the sunwas our greatest source, from
280 nanometers to 320 nanometerlight.
And again, if you see the termvitamin D deficiency, then you
can again substitute it withsunlight deficiency.
And the root cause of thatproblem is not purified
cholecalciferol from thepharmacy.
(41:29):
That's not the disease process.
That's not the problem.
The problem is that that personhas not been in full spectrum
sunlight, because the vitamin Dmarker, the 25-hydroxy vitamin D
assay that you get measuredfrom a venous blood draw, can be
thought of as a proxy or amarker of that person's
ultraviolet, visible andnear-infrared sun exposure.
(41:53):
And the reason why we know thatis because often some of these
intervention trials that haverelied on vitamin D
supplementation haven't beenable to replicate the findings
that we get from these long-termobservational studies.
And there's some other reasonswhy that.
Maybe those studies weren'tdone as fairly as they could
(42:14):
have been.
But I guess the key point isthat these health benefits are
downstream of full spectrumsunlight, which necessarily
includes UV, and we can't thrivewithout UV light.
But we just have to be sensibleand we have to respect our
ancestry and the ultravioletconditions that we're living in
(42:35):
when we get UV light.
And it's not about burning,it's not about toasting
ourselves like some Englishtourist in Byron Bay who hops
off the plane looking like alobster the next day.
That's not the point.
But it's about nuance and it'sabout sensible exposure, yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
And there's so much nuance around it.
I think it's important forpeople to know, too, that if
you're, the more fair skin youare, the easier it is for you to
absorb vitamin D.
And I was just curious inclinical practice, how often do
you see people who are vitamin Ddeficient, and how often is
that also related to them havingsome sort of chronic disease?
(43:18):
Is that also related to themhaving?
Speaker 2 (43:19):
some sort of chronic disease?
Yeah, great question.
So the body will consumevitamin D.
Vitamin D will get essentiallyused up in the process of
dealing with inflammation andresponding to infection.
And the way to think aboutvitamin D is that it's almost
(43:42):
like if you have a high vitaminD level, if you're replete with
vitamin D, then essentiallyturns your whole immune system
from pro-inflammatory toessentially anti-inflammatory.
The way I explain it is it'slike if the body's vitamin D
deficient, its immune system isgoing to have its fists up.
It's going to be ready torespond to essentially benign
(44:05):
environmental allergens, that's,these atopic diseases like
asthma and eczema and allergicrhinitis, and it's also going to
be, at the same time, lesseffective at essentially dealing
with viral and bacterialinfections.
So we know this not onlymechanistically but we know this
(44:27):
epidemiologically, because youcan plot the severity of flu
seasons and seasonal viral andrespiratory infection against
time of year and they coincidewith the nadir of the
population's vitamin D level,which obviously is coinciding
with the nadir in sun exposurehabits and, to some degree,
(44:53):
potentially, vitamin Davailability.
But what you're saying isabsolutely correct, which is if
you look at patients I mean, Ihad a lovely old lady with
temporal arteritis or giant cellarteritis, which is an
autoimmune vasculitis.
And you measured her vitamin Dand it's in her boots, but
(45:15):
severely deficient and it's afactor that was undoubtedly
playing a role in thedevelopment of that disease.
And there's factors thatinfluence our ability to kind of
maintain our vitamin D level,particularly obesity, and the
work of Michael Holick has shownthat if you're obese you need
two to three times the amount ofvitamin D to essentially
(45:37):
maintain the syrup level.
But absolutely if we can avoidthat state of vitamin D
deficiency, then a whole bunchof potentially inflammatory
chronic diseases would notmanifest because of the
beneficial effect of the vitaminD system per se, but also
sunlight and those othermechanisms on the health and
(46:01):
disease prevention.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
It makes perfect sense.
Even autoimmune disease is sorampant, it's like your immune
defense is up Literally it'sgoing to even fight itself.
So what is pharmaceuticalvitamin D lacking Like?
(46:25):
Why do you, aside from all thebenefits of being out in natural
sunlight, but why is thatversion of vitamin D not doing
the same thing as what you getfrom UVB exposure?
Speaker 2 (46:31):
Okay, fantastic question.
So there's a way to think aboutthis.
So if we contrastsunlight-derived vitamin D to a
supplemental vitamin D, so aquick explainer of the
physiology of vitamin D.
(46:53):
So what happens is that vitaminD is a compound that gets made
by the conversion of cholesterolin the skin to vitamin D, to
vitamin D, and that process thenundergoes the.
It basically changes thestructure of a ring structure in
7-D hydrocholesterol and thatprocess it changes that ring
(47:14):
structure and then vitamin D isessentially created, and then it
essentially isomerizes andbinds to a carrier protein.
It's as if you're generating inthe skin.
So UV light hits the skin,turns the cholesterol into a
vitamin D, the vitamin D changesconformation, binds to this
(47:34):
vitamin D binding protein andthen it actually gets
transported by that bindingprotein to the liver where it
gets hydroxylated orenzymatically transformed, and
then again another step happensin the kidney.
So the advantage of this andwe'll start right at the skin
(47:54):
layer is that vitamin D is notthe only compound that actually
gets made.
On exposure to UVB light itturns out, and we originally
thought, that these chemicalcousins were actually benign.
But if you keep exposing thatvitamin D chemical compound to
(48:14):
ultraviolet light, then itactually starts making these
chemical cousins of vitamin D Icall them to ultraviolet light.
Then it actually starts makingthese chemical cousins of
vitamin D I call them or thesesecosteroid compounds which turn
out to have other related buthighly important effects, such
as upregulating DNA repair, sohelping the DNA fix any damage
that was done by the ultravioletlight.
It helps reduce cellproliferation.
(48:38):
So in conditions like cancer orpsoriasis, where there's excess
cell proliferation, theseseclosteroids are helping to
dampen that process down.
So you wouldn't make any ofthese if you're only taking
isolated vitamin D3,cholecalciferol, whereas again,
when you made it from sunlight,you're generating not only
vitamin D but all its relatedcousins.
(49:00):
And uh, compare that to tosupplemental vitamin which is
cholecalciferol d3 by itself.
So that is ingested.
It um majority, majority inmajority gets bound to the ldl
fraction, the lipoproteinfraction, and and it's carried
around that way and it'stherefore bioavailability or its
(49:23):
absorption and its utilizationis less.
Another interesting study thatHolick Michael Holick did was
used to had a couple of groupsand gave one group a minimal
erythema dose of UV light inthese tanning bed and gave
another group um 10 000 units ofof vitamin d orally and then
(49:45):
measured the vitamin d levelsand what he showed is that the
the people who ingested thesupplement had this like big
rise and then fall, and whereasthe people who generated in the
skin essentially had a moreconsistent and prolonged release
of vitamin D into theircirculation.
So, essentially, if you aregetting it from sunlight, you're
(50:07):
making a whole bunch morefactors than just plain old D3,
and you are essentiallyoptimizing it for the body's use
and absorption, which iscritical.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
It's a great explanation and I wanted to just
pivot slightly into, you know,because UV light catches so much
flack for skin damage andpeople are and its association
with skin cancer.
I just wanted your take becauseI know I've listened to you on
previous podcasts and you have agreat explanation of this
(50:44):
process.
So when is UV light damagingand when has it become
concerning, and what are themisconceptions about, UV light
and skin cancer?
Speaker 2 (50:56):
Yeah, great question, because I think that the main
reason that's holding morepeople back from getting
sensible, safe sun exposure thatthey need for their health is a
fear, and the fear of skincancer.
Maybe.
To think about skin cancer, itis cancer just like any other
(51:16):
cancer, and what that means isthere's got to be a lot of
derangements in the body'sphysiology, in the correct
functioning of the body, for amalignancy to form like off the
bat.
There has to be things.
Cancer doesn't form in someonewho is essentially healthy, who
has intact optimal mitochondrialfunction, who is having this
(51:41):
dialed in circadian cycle ofdarkness at night and
appropriate daylight, and whohas intact mitochondrial power
redox, so who's not insulinresistant, who is not vitamin
deficient and the funny thingabout that is that the person
(52:04):
that I've just described is inthe vast minority.
I mean less than 1% of peopleon the earth fit that bill.
But the key point when it comesto skin cancer is that there's
a lot going wrong for skincancer to develop the the
distinction needs to be madebetween the melanoma and
non-melanoma skin cancers, andthe reason is because the
(52:25):
non-melanoma skin cancers, whichare squamous cell and basal
cell carcinoma, they are, theycan be, they can be cosmetically
very troubling, they can be umunsightly and they can be
absolutely a problem metastaticsquamous cell more than basal
cell but these, on the whole,are not a cause of death.
(52:48):
They're not a cause of death inthe way that other cancers are,
so much so that cancerregistries don't even record
SCCs and BCCs.
So from a public health and apopulation health level, we need
to think about what is killingpeople.
Well, it would be the malignantmelanoma, and malignant
(53:09):
melanoma is a problem of thosemelanocytes that make the
melanin pigment essentiallyreplicating and becoming
malignant.
They can metastasize, theymetastasize to the brain and
it's a very sad process.
I think the key to an insightthat people might find
interesting in the context ofwhat we've talked about is the
(53:31):
treatment for metastaticmelanoma at the moment, and that
is immunotherapy.
So the current standard of carewhen it comes to treating
someone with malignant melanomais these checkpoint inhibitor
medications that essentiallyassist in the immune system to
find, detect and kill melanoma.
(53:53):
So that really gives you aninsight into what's actually
going on.
You an insight into what'sactually going on.
It turns out that it's aproblem of insufficient immune
surveillance and destruction ofmalignant cells, and the reason
is because right now, or ineveryone's body, we're
developing malignancies, there'serrors in DNA replication in
(54:14):
cells.
But if your immune system works, your cells will identify,
destroy them before they canform a tumor.
So that problem is obviouslygone awry in patients that
develop malignant melanoma.
But again, the mechanism ofbenefit of these immune
checkpoint inhibitor drugsimplies that that is a patient
(54:35):
who has a defective immuneresponse.
And if you look at thismultiple other ways, you get
insight, which is those with thelowest vitamin D levels have
the most invasive melanomas.
They have the greatest Breslauthickness.
That's also been shown withbasal cell carcinomas they're
(54:55):
more thicker, they're moreaggressive.
So that's an interestingquestion.
That's, I guess, a paradox thata doctor needs to.
Someone can send this to theirdoctor and they can ask them
this question, which is why isthe invasiveness and
aggressiveness of melanoma somuch greater in those patients
who are vitamin D deficient?
And if you tie that into whatwe just talked about the effects
(55:17):
of, say, vitamin D and thepsychosteroids on stopping cell
replication and essentiallychanging the immune response
from pro-inflammatory to lessanti-inflammatory, but I'd say
immune-tolerant, then it startsmaking sense.
(55:37):
Then it starts making sense.
And then you also think aboutthe life cycle of someone who
develops a malignant melanoma.
And typically and obviouslyAustralia and New Zealand.
This is the highest incidenceper capita of melanoma in the
world.
I will tell you, I'll give youan insight into the typical
(55:59):
patient story.
And it's someone who is aFitzpatrick one or two so a pale
.
They have Northern Europeandescent, they live in Queensland
or New South Wales here inAustralia.
They potentially have had someburning sunburn in their youth
and adolescence, maybe earlyadulthood, and then the rest of
their life.
They work inside, they work inan office job, maybe they're an
(56:22):
accountant, they're a lawyer,they're covered up.
Most of their body is coveredup most of the time for two,
three, four decades and then theaverage age of onset of
melanoma here is 68 in men.
So you've got maybe a 40 or50-year lag time in which time
that person has avoided sunlight.
(56:46):
So they're vitamin D deficientor insufficient.
They've eaten all manner ofprocessed food and developed
visceral fat and insulinresistance.
They have not done any of these.
They haven't been outsideconstantly, they haven't got the
benefits of infrared light,then again have had a disrupted
circadian rhythm, which is keyfor the cancer surveillance and
(57:11):
response process, and then theyget diagnosed with a malignant
melanoma in a non-sun exposedarea and I've seen it.
I've diagnosed myself amelanoma in situ on a farmer's
forearm and I asked himpersonally.
I said to him, does that areaget sun exposure?
He said it hasn't been exposedto the sun in 20 years.
(57:34):
So I'm giving hope to give theaudience an insight into the
discrepancies here between thisreally simplistic, reductive sun
equals melanoma narrative,because it's wrong, it's not
correct.
Now are there certain types ofmelanoma that are associated
with total sun exposure?
Yes, that's true.
So lentigo maligna happens onthe face, shoulders in elderly
(57:55):
people, say a farmer again whois from Northern Europe they get
it at age 80, 85, after theirwhole life.
It's an indolent, mostly lesslikely to metastasize type of
melanoma.
So this is just some nuance thatI think we need to carry into
this discussion and the realproblem I think is the
(58:20):
insufficient exposure for mostpeople and that's because the
diseases that could be preventedthrough healthy, safe,
consistent sun exposure ischemicheart disease, reduced or
massively improved cancers,bowel, prostate, breast, any of
(58:40):
the neurodegenerative diseasesthey would be massively improved
.
You have neuromelanin,parkinson's disease, loss of
neuromelanin in the substantianigra.
So if we're looking at this ona balance beam, where we're
mostly concerned about thesediseases that are killing people
, compared to skin cancer.
But in Australia I'm not sureabout the US skin cancer is
(59:01):
responsible for the 13th causeof years of potential life loss
and obviously at the top are theI mean barring suicide and
death by misadventure andtraumatic injury.
It's those conditions that Imentioned previously.
So, again, at a population level, we need to think about this in
a more holistic way.
On an individual level, we needto know what is my family
(59:24):
history?
Do I have a strong familyhistory of melanoma?
Am I a fair-headed redhead?
What else is going on?
Because that will give us morenuance on an individual level.
But on a societal level, weclearly need to move the balance
beam from sun avoidanceextremism a bit more towards
(59:45):
healthy, regular, non-burningsun exposure.
Speaker 1 (59:48):
That's a great explanation and it's just to tie
a bow on it.
It's like you're raising yourchance of all of these other
things just to avoid a very like, like you said, like that, uh,
the patient who had, you know,uh, the farmer with melanoma at
80, you know, um, it's just we.
(01:00:08):
I agree, we have to shift thebeam a little bit just to, even
if meet somewhere in the middle,you know, um, but I don't want
to take too much of your time.
Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
uh, that's all I just want to make them, brian, I'll
just make them mention.
The other key point is is photoaging, in terms of the
resistance to sun exposure, and,and I think the key point here
is that, based on the amount ofmelanin that you have in your
epidermis and your skin willdictate how much exposure is
appropriate.
And people who are who's skinwill dictate how much exposure
(01:00:47):
is appropriate, and people whoseancestors are from West Africa,
who have this Fitzpatrick 6skin type, they're literally
adapted to high UV index thewhole year round in the beating
sun, same with the AustralianAborigines.
But someone whose parents andancestors were from Sweden, the
UV index gets above six forabout a week and then is never
higher than that.
So these are radicallydifferent ultraviolet
(01:01:08):
environments and thereforethere's radically different
tolerances to ultraviolet lightand I think we just need to
respect that when it comes tomaking these choices.
And again, if you're paler andyou're starting from zero, then
really you can start earlier inthe day and you can avoid,
(01:01:29):
obviously avoid peak UV time, soyou don't essentially push off
from hormetic stress intopotential, you know, damage.
But yeah, look, the key pointis that for so long this message
has been demonizing sunexposure, when, for so many
(01:01:51):
people, the beginning of theirhealing journey from chronic
disease would start by takingoff their clothes, literally
taking all their clothes off and, you know, gently, starting
with, with morning sun exposureand essentially cultivating
pigment, developing that, that,that POMC, building it up, and
(01:02:12):
uh, you know that they'll startthriving, the, the.
The path to thriving begins, um, there.
Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
The path to thriving begins there.
That's awesome.
And taking all your clothes off, big fan, I want to.
Maybe next time you come on, wecan break down what that's
doing for the body, and I hateto rush you off, but we're going
to have a classic mid-afternoonthunderstorm here in Florida,
but I really appreciate youcoming on.
You're awesome.
(01:02:40):
You have such a great wealth ofknowledge.
Um, so where can people findyou?
And I'd love for you to talkabout your uh, your health
retreat and what that's allabout as well yeah, so we more
recently we've just I've run acouple of these health retreats.
Speaker 2 (01:02:56):
It it's circadian living, we call it, and the
thrust of it is it's easier toshow someone what to do than to
kind of intellectually for themto study it.
And what that looks like is werun people through an ideal
circadian day we're up atsunrise, we're seeing the sun
come up, we're doing somemovement, sometimes we're
(01:03:17):
getting cold, we're using thosecircadian zyclibes to help
entrain our circadian rhythm,we're eating nutrient-dense
breakfasts and early dinners,not eating late, no eating after
the sun sets, respecting thenatural light cues and really
(01:03:39):
tying that all in with arelaxing weekend meeting a whole
bunch of like-minded people.
And that's something we reallyfound is that people loved
meeting other people who areinto this thing, because it can
be isolating and a little bit, Iguess, alienating if you feel
like you're the only one doingweird in inverted commas, things
like taking your clothes offand sunbathing.
(01:04:00):
But uh, but yeah, you can.
You can hit me up on Instagramon Max Goulhain, MD or X, and my
website is drmaxgoulhaincom.
Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
Awesome, Max.
Thank you so much.
This is awesome.
I really appreciate your time.
Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
Yeah, thanks for having me, brett.
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