[Music] welcome back to another edition of the heart toheart podcast and my guest today is Dr melanin Monroe actually her name is actually Dr Alexis Cowan but so welcome to the show well thank you you're the first person to use my new name publicly so it's it's a pleasure well it was you know it was just an awesome uh nickname you know I think that you deserve to have it because of all the work that you're doing and uh yeah it's a dope name I don't know how you came up with it but super somebody else did I can't take the credit for that somebody slid in my DMs with that one okay got you so uh Dr Monroe tell us about yourself well my name is other than melanin Monroe now but Dr Alexis Cowan I'm Dr Alexis Jasmine on Instagram I did my PhD at Princeton in the Rabinowitz lab which is one of the top metabolism research labs in the world when I was there I was primarily studying um how disparate dietary inputs impact tissue metabolism so specifically we're looking at ketogenic versus high carbohydrate diet and fasting versus feeding and mapping out how organ like and tissue specific metabolism changes in these different contexts um I was also doing some work on like the phico kinetics of endogenous metabolites which was really neat um and then when I graduated in 2021 after that I started my private practice where I basically work with really high performing individuals athletes and other people who really just want to take their health to the next level or also people who are just kind of very disenfranchised with the standard medical approach and are looking for another option and Avenue um and so I worked on that for all of 2022 building out my business and then in 2023 I went back to school kind of for a postto at upen um in the lab of Dr Kristoff Ty which is in a lab that studies how environmental inputs shape health and disease um and then I finished that up earlier this year and now I'm focusing really on just building my brand again and at some point along that timeline I discovered the work of Dr Jack Cruz and fell down the light Rabbit Hole um to be precise that was April of 2023 and so I've I mean it sounds I'm saying it so like candidly and like nonchalantly now but it's been absolutely transformative my life is looks completely different than it did a year and a half ago like personal Transformations the way my business has transformed my interests my the way that I think scientifically um just everything in my life has changed for the better and and so many pieces have been falling into place for me so that's kind of my recent timeline I do have a kind of a backstory too but I don't know if you want me to get into that so yeah I mean I did read read a little bit about your uh about me on your uh bio or on your website and it was quite interesting so yeah maybe you should just give the audience a little bit of a beef background about about that that wouldd be great right sure yeah so um let's say I had a history of like sorted medical Affairs as a child where um I first had like really horrific dental procedure done when I was like 2 years old that kind of very much scarred me for life and then I had these issues with recurring strep throw in first grade I got pulled out of school homeschooled was on antibiotics for months at a time when I went back in third grade I my weight had kind of spiraled out of control I was I weighed about double my classmates and that continued to spiral up through through about junior year of high school where I weighed in somewhere around 270 lbs decided to do something about it I had also been dealing with a lot of skin infections respiratory infections dysmenorrhea just overall not good not feeling good in my body not feeling happy um and so I ended up just joining a gym going every day for two hours I would do an hour of cardio an hour of resistance training very strictly counted calories primarily was eating a processed food diet because it's very easy to count calories and I was also a teenager I didn't know um at the time there was still a lot of fat phobia so I was mostly eating a higher protein higher carb diet and lowfat diet after that year period of time I lost about 100 pounds but also gained an eating disorder and then shortly after thereafter IBS as well so found my way through that process that healing Journey which really kind of so the weight loss was kind of the beginning of my healing Journey but it was still somewhat unconscious and I would say healing the eating disorder in the IBS was a much more conscious process that kind of initiated me into this path of like healing myself and then also helping other people to heal themselves as well um and so that was kind of my like ethos or my um interest going into grad school um was really to understand the body better and understand like for my own benefit but also for the benefit of others and somewhere along the line there I was also very interested in the microbiome because through a microbiome optimization protocol is how I really amiliar a lot of my issues with food sensitivities and allergies and the IBS issues so it was something I was very focused on thinking it was like the major thing that was the most important thing nobody was talking about and then when I came across Jack's work and light and circadian biology then I really realized that okay I was still at like a second order phenomenon like I wasn't at the root foundations of Health that I now firmly believe that like light is the foundation of this pyramid of health and if we don't get this piece right especially because modern humans are so divorced from healthy light exposures that we could have the healthiest diet exercise routine relationships but if this bottom piece is not right everything else is going to be suboptimal as well and we can get into the mechanisms behind why that's the case well first of all uh thank you for sharing that and so you know that's part of the reason too I wanted to talk to you not that I don't want to talk with people who haven't gone through you know their own health issues but when you talk to someone who's you know uh a DHD like you and then plus you have this you know um you know pretty crazy health history altogether um you know I find that those types of people tend to dig in a little bit more you know because they want the knowledge not just for others but for themselves then they want to share that knowledge even more and so you know I really think that's that's incredible um and then the other part of that I was going to say is I agree so you know a lot of people always think you know diet and exercise are the two most important things and then I you know say now probably sleep is the most important thing um and now I understand that you know light is just as important like I don't know where I put it in you know in in terms of those four because those four I think are you know critically important and certainly you know people can say other things like relationships I agree are incredibly important in spirituality maybe if you want to like you know round it up kind of thing but if we can talk about like the like the four of like Diet exercise sleep in light like you're kind of putting that one now at the bottom like do you think that's the most important one is that right that's right and I think hopefully my goal by the end of this episode will have you agreeing with me on this one okay perfect well I mean so just start off and tell us like why do you think that deserves then to be the foundation of Health yes so I mean maybe we can start by unpacking um specific wavelengths of light that play important roles biologically and then how the The evolutionary environment differs from the modern day environment and why that's important so first of all let's just set the stage for modern humans compared to evolutionary The evolutionary landscape we have completely different light environments so up until 1893 there was no power grid there was no electricity in homes so we didn't have incandescent bulbs we didn't have TVs computers any devices the primary sources of light that we had up until that point were the sun first and foremost and then at night time if there were to be light that would be some sort of torch candle fire situation um worth noting and we'll come back to why this is important but Fire Light is primarily infrared and red light some orange a little bit of yellow basically no blue green um or shorter wavelengths of light than that so when we're looking at sunlight that's the spectral composition of light that our bodies Our biology evolved to encounter um and sunlight if we think about midday Sun that contains about depending on the season let's say Summer Sun around this time of year contains less than 10% UV light of that UV light about 90% of that is UVA and about 10% of that is UVB then we also have the entire visible spectrum within that solar light spectrum midday which goes from you know red through blue and violet um and then beyond the red we have our infrared which is split into near infrared and far infrared or you may hear it as like infrared A and B and this is part of the non-visible spectrum as well similar to the UV light both of these fall outside of the visible spectrum so we cannot see them but they play very very important roles in the regulation and function of rology so in nature midday sun over 50% of that is red and infrared light less than 10% UV and I I emphasize that because there's a lot of rhetoric and propaganda around the dangers and harms of UV light and the dangers and harms of sunlight and yet the research conducted on the harms of UV light has been done with UV light in isolation not in the context of the Sun and because midday sun light is less than 10% UV light and vast has a vast abundance of long wavelength red and infrared light the data that we collect from these very isolated aphysiologic settings is not highly relevant to our biology because we have a corpus of literature showing that red and infrared light in the sun balances out the effects of UV light to protect against DNA damage inflammation Etc um and so when we're talking about the importance of different wavelengths of light we really want to focus on um a few different wavelengths as it relates to how our biolog is functioning so the UV light which is the UVA UVB the blue light the red light and the infrared light um and so maybe I'll just start with the red and infrared I think it's something that a lot of people hear about recently because of photobiomodulation um and the use of red light panels things like that it's becoming more popular but a lot of people don't realize that the majority of that red infrared light that you're getting at least in The evolutionary environment was from the Sun and so that's kind of how we evolved to um live within an environment is to get an abundance of red and infrared light which is consistent from the time the sun comes up to the time the sun goes down so we're supposed to be receiving an abundance of red and infrared light throughout the day when the Sun is up to when the Sun goes down we're receiving that and the problem is that in the modern environment just by virtue of being indoors we're going to be deficient in this long wavelength light because glass standard window glass that people have in their homes filters out about 40% of near infrared light which is one of these really important groups of wavelengths that have a very impactful effect on our biology which we'll get into a moment so just if you you know live indoors let's say you have like a beautiful home lots of Windows lots of natural light I don't care how much like how many windows are in your home that is not natural light because not only are you filtering out that near infrared light you're also filtering out almost 100% of UV light as well so just by virtue of being inside you're already actually becoming blue light again we didn't even talk about sitting on screens under artificial lights yet but simply by virtue of being inside you're already removing red removing UV and concentrating blue effectively um and so with regards to the biological effects of long wavelength light that red and infrared light directly stimulates mitochondrial metabolism to help produce ATP cellular energy currency as well as metabolic water at the level of mitochondria so does that actually increase ATP overall increases ATP production okay go ahead yes it does and the really important thing about this is that this long wavelength light actually has the ability to penetrate very deeply into the body so if you're even if you're wearing clothes outside that light especially the near infrared light is actually penetrating into your tissue so it's reaching your liver your intestines your heart it's reaching these organs even your brain to a certain extent um specifically there's a a group of wavelengths around 8 10 nanometers that can penetrate through bone and reach into the skull um so even your brain and and deep parts of your body are being um affected directly by this light exposure and so it plays a really important role note on that um just because I did uh post this recently I think about maybe a month ago I couldn't believe it um and I said in my caption I couldn't believe it there was a study on red light and it compared uh improving cognitive function to various other things like it was like um I forget the other domains that they compared it to but there was you know uh exercise maybe um um some kind of computer stimulation thing that they Ed but there was various other you know things that they used and they compared it to red light and red light had the most impact even more than exercise on brain function which is insane like I thought it was insane I couldn't believe it when I when when I saw I thought that you know exercise was definitely the best thing for our brains but apparently in this you know randomized control trial that uh red light you know improved cognitive function even more so just to mention that yeah that's that's really interesting and I mean if we think about it in the ancestral context when we're receiving that red light from sun we're not only getting the mitochondrial benefits of that red light and energy production and metabolic Water Production cellular hydration we're also getting the benefits of the UVA UVB UVA is a major stimulator of nitric oxide production which is required for vasor dilation for nutrient and oxygen delivery for waste removal interesting yep waste removal from tissues and in my podcast I just released with Dr Jack Cruz episode number 24 on indoctrinate yourself we talk about this and the importance of um understanding that the effects of UVA light on nitric oxide are local aka the more skin you have exposed the better the effect is going to be because you actually need specific parts of your body to be exposed in order to get the benefit and so he brought up the example of like erectile dysfunction in men and a major cause of that being literally just constantly covering your business with clothes so you're never getting that UVA penetration I was just going to mention mention that because I listened to the hubman podcast L that's like 2 years old now like pretty recently and he was talking about you know the different effects that like you know basically people want to mate more want to get more physical want to be more passionate when they have light so there was various different mechanisms he mentioned uh he OB obviously mentions you know the skin as an endocrine organ you know stimulating uh testosterone estrogen um there was something else he mentioned as well but you know for the males out there like UVA if that's going to increase your nitrous oxide you know and for the guys who don't know so nitrous oxide is something that you know vasil dilates or makes your arteries bigger so that's what's obviously going to get more blood flow to the penis and cause an erection um so you know UVA if that does that then obviously that's uh you know something that's you know a beneficial part of the sun yep it does that also like a lot of people chase nitric oxide in the context of Fitness to get a good pump in and that's also related to that so if you can do your workout outside grounded in your yard for example you're not going to only get the benefits of that red and infrared light directly stimulating muscle metabolism and energy production which is great because you're demanding that energy production from that working muscle so it's a synergistic effect with exercise you're also going to get a better pump because of the UVA um there's also direct impact of UVB light so outside of the production of vitamin D which is known to be important in the context of muscle metabolism as well we also get the production of this pro hormone called proopiomelanocortin or Palm C Palm C is cleaved into 10 hormonal products three of which are alpha beta and gamma endorphins and the endorphins are these endogenous opioid molecules that not only have pain relieving effects anxiolytic effects improving mood felt sense of well-being um the alpha endorphin also acts more like an amphetamine so it's more stimulating it helps with Focus cognition whereas the beta and gamma endorphins are more um anxiolytic more relaxing mood boosting um and so together they synergize really nicely to enhance cognition but not only that but also your Baseline dopamine levels and we know dopamine is absolutely you know indispensable for human movement and that's why in Parkinson's disease where you getting a uh aberration in dopamine production and signaling that we are essentially seeing like Tremors emerge because now the movement quality is down so much because that dopamine signaling pathway and the melanin within the substan is being degraded and we're losing our our dopamine quality and and Status so that we're no longer able to perform quality movement so just actually by virtue of doing your workout outside as well well your go your movement quality muscle recruitment Etc is going to be better in in addition to all the other benefits with you know reduced pain threshold you'll probably be able to get some extra reps in as well I would guess I don't think anybody's done these studies at this point but I'm going to be starting my light lab hopefully within the next year and that's a topic that I really want to look into um it's like very low hanging fruit easy to easy to study uh the other thing I want to mention for Palm C though is three of the other cleavage products are alpha beta and gamma msh or melany stimulating hormone so as the name implies the msh is directly stimulate melanocytes to make new melanin and that's what helps you get a tan in response to Sun but outside of that they also play really crucial roles in just fundamental homeostatic mechanisms within the body so specifically in the level of the hypothalamus the alpha msh in particular is really good at suppressing appetite and increasing basil metabolic rate and anybody who's in the fitness or dieting space should really see that as like wow that's like a Holy Grail because when you go on a diet and calorie restrict one of the first things that happens after you know a short period of time is your basil metabolic rate goes down and your appetite goes up so it's the opposite effect so just if you can think about the hormonal Cascades that happen in response to UVB light in particular from the Sun we're going to have these natural mechanisms kick into place that's going to help us maintain or or achieve a healthy body composition through these very Central mechanisms at the level of the hypothalamus in the brain um working on that and so I mean that's very interesting I'm kind of uh wondering though if there's been a peptide like that's been invented for that that would stimulate that well that's what melanotan is basically well melanotan yeah that will give you that's at MS2 I think though is it or I think talking it's still stimulating the same U melan Corton receptors I believe I think it's MC mcr4 I could be wrong on that one but I I believe that it's acting on the same receptor as Alpha msh um but you know that doesn't mean typically if we try to shortcut something that nature does we run into issues and I think that's because when we look at Sun like I've already outlined many different benefits of the different wavelengths so we didn't talk about blue yet we're talking about the benefits of UVB we talked about UVA red infrared we're meant to receive all these wavelengths together in Synergy and when you just try to like short the system by giving one input in the absence of the Entourage effected the others I think think we run into some major issues and create imbalances in the system that are unintended okay and then one thing I just want to uh understand too going back to like the red and the near in sorry the um infrared and near infrared light I think some people would like to know the benefits and like how much time they need to spend in front of one of these panels each day to like get the Desir benefits that they're looking for yeah so I mean first and foremost I would recommend using the sun over a p if you have access to it I mean even if it's a cloudy day you're going to get plenty of red and and Fred light that long wavelength light can penetrate through clouds so you're still going to receive that um and then you're going to receive more benefits because you're getting a spectrum of wavelengths versus very targeted wavelengths from a red light device red light devices still have their place I like them I I have them myself but they're never going to be a replacement for the sun because they're very um like let's say unidimensional in comparison but if you're going to use a panel um or if you're going to use a sun let me just start there I recommend for Midday sun exposure I recommend tracking your vitamin D as like a biomarker of your midday sun exposure to make sure you're getting enough that your body needs because vitamin D is going to naturally take into consideration your skin tone the darker your skin the more sunlight you need the more UV light you need in order to facilitate vitamin D production because melanin absorbs all frequencies of light and what that means is that if you have more melanin that light gets sequestered away and it's now not available to catalyze 70 hydroch cholesterol into prev Vitamin D3 and that whole Cascade um and so I mean it should also be somewhat intuitive that the darker your skin is the more sun you need because if you think about individuals that have darker skin they have ancestors or they directly come from more equatorial regions with high quality Sun year round and by high quality I mean higher UV um there's a lot of light stability around the equator 12 hours of Sun 12 hours of dark comparable UV index throughout the year versus the the higher you go up or the lower you go in Latitude the more variability you get in total suntime and UV index as well um but anyway having said that vitamin D is really clearly emerging as a biomarker of sun exposure and not a marker to be optimized in and of itself and we can see that very clearly because there are very strong associations between vitamin D status and health outcom so we see deficiency in vitamin D is associated with a whole host of autoimmune diseases um diabetes um depression yeah absolutely neurod degeneration all of these things but then the clinical studies that study vitamin D supplementation for these Health outcomes null effect and so what that's telling us is that yes vitamin D is a strong predictor of these issues but it's not the vitamin D that's actually mediating the benefit it's the Entourage of sun exposure the the benefits that you get from the red and infrared light from the UVB light from the Palm Sea Cascade from the UVA light that's giving you the nitric oxide boost in circulation and nutrient delivery oxygen delivery and we're getting all of these benefits at one time from the Sun so the sun is like the ultimate multivitamin and I really do think it's helpful to think about sunlight as an essential nutrient and the specific wavelengths of Light Within the Sun as essential nutrients because when we think about it that way it becomes very clear that the vast majority of modern humans are highly deficient in UVA UVB light red and infrared light and they're highly overdosing on Blue Light which is received in excess from fluorescent lights LED lights and all of our device screens they're very highly enriched in Blue Light devoid in red and infrared light um and that as a result of that you know we talked about earlier just being behind glass is already concentrating blue light then add into all the artificial lights into the mix and you're running into some issues with blue light toxicity and we can talk about why blue light is biologically important and the implications of having blue light at inappropri times of day in the absence of red and infrared light okay so with all that being said what I would like to kind of do is you know set out some kind of um you know not to use huberman's word but like protocol or something that like people can can follow so you know if they are living like I'm in uh Toronto on uh Canada so you know we don't get too much you know um Sun that much you know in the the winter time anyway it's not you know uh that sunny here it's very very cold anyway um so with regards to that like how many minutes should we be getting in the Sun every day so that's why I really recommend tracking your vitamin D status to see how much you need for your location uh because it's going to vary so greatly that's a really good metric to follow I recommend shooting for greater than 60 nigs per milliliter modern medicine or standard approach would say anything above 30 is fine but I think that's highly suboptimal and if we look at um more outdoor living communities this is without supplementation is that correct yes so you want so you're basically saying that you shouldn't supplement you should try to get as much of your vitamin D from the Sun as possible because you're not just going to get the benefits from the vitamin D you're going to get all the other Entourage benefits so to speak I use the word entourage a lot because of cannabis you use cannabis Entourage effect absolutely so you know uh I understand what you're saying there and then but say if you're someone and you do this and you're not getting you know to the appropriate level like do you supplement then no so the only time and place that supplementation makes sense in my mind based on the medical literature is in severe deficiencies such as rickets there is a proven benefit to supplement vitamin D and benefit that individual if they are like let's say below 20 nigs per milliliter or you know even lower than that like that's severe then you're going to have negative impacts on the bone and calcium and phosphate metabolism so vitamin D does play biological roles at the very low end of deficiency you can receive a benefit by supplementing but for optimization you're not only not going to receive the benefits that you would want from optimizing like such as protection against a variety of chronic diseases but you're also going to be masking your true levels which is going to make it hard for you to understand like am I getting enough sun exposure for me uh because if you're supplementing and like augmenting that value artificially there's no way to kind of know where your Baseline set point will be okay and then just to kind of um you know make things simple like I understand now like what you're saying like with light it's like a diet you know you have so many wavelengths there so many lights that you need to absorb there's so much stuff that you need to get away too right so with the sun you're saying that you get UVA UVB uh infrared and near infrared light correct yep that's midday Sun at least that's that's midday sun and then what we want to you know essentially um avoid is a lot of the blue green during the day is that correct so we actually don't want to avoid blue green during the day we certainly want to avoid it after Sundown because ancestrally speaking we're not going to be receiving virtually any light in that spectrum of wavelengths uh at that time of day we really are meant to be in dark darkness at night and the light pollution that we have Society I think is a real problem not only from biological aspect which those problems are huge but I would say also from like a spiritual aspect as well because if you think about it our ancestors had access to a miraculously like vast Cosmos to view every single night in the sky assuming it's not cloudy and we just don't have that as modern humans and I think being able to see the stars and like space in that way is so humbling and just awe inspiring and I think we're missing awe in our society just in general everything is so mechanistic reductionist we think we have everything figured out there's no magic there's no sense of like just like a wow factor in reality we just became so kind of jaded with everything and I think there's so much like if we just you can focus on just one wavelength of light's impact on the body and just be scratching your head for years on trying to understand like wow like biology is so complex and so intricate and so interesting and we're just really kind of missing the trees for the forest actually in modern medicine and science yeah sometimes if you don't take a step back like you you know don't really appreciate the things that are that are happening and you know that kind of awe you know kind of puts you into this place where you know you're seeing something bigger than yourself you know bigger than all your problems bigger than you know anything that you think is going on in your head and you know it just kind of gives you that awe moment and it's uh you know gives it makes you feel feel good inside for for the most part you know um absolutely and so with regards to the UVA like what is that doing specifically for people yeah so uh maybe just to Backdraft backtrack briefly before I get into that I should say that when the Sun rises it's really great if you can to get out at Sunrise because there's a very special type of light available at that time it's essentially completely red and infrared light without much else going on and that red and infrared light can really bathe your system turn on your mitochondria turn on your system can stimulate the pituitary gland to make pregal which is the precursor to all your major sex hormones amazing yes so that's a real big benefit you're going to get around Sunrise if you can take your breakfast outside while you're watching Sunrise even better and there was a study that came out earlier this year showing that specifically 670 nmet light but you know we're going to be talking the context of sunlight which has all of the red and infrared light but the 670 deep uh red light was able to reduce the blood sugar response to an oral glucose tolerance test in this case but we could just say that as a pro for a meal by 30% by simply getting that was 15 minutes of red light before a meal that was like 30 minutes later or something like this so if you can take your meals outside you're going to be reducing your blood sugar responses to those meals um you're going to be M maintaining you know just more steady energy levels less of these like crashes less of these like roller coaster rides of of sugar that people often get on that drives Cravings that creates brain fog and issues like this um but that's just to say that morning light is really special and if you can you know take your meal outside while you're out out there even better and then there's something that happens that's called UVA rise so if you get the Circadian app it will tell you what time sunrise is and then it will tell you what time UVA and UVB Rises and essentially what that means is that's the time that UVA starts coming into the Spectrum and when UVA comes into the solar Spectrum which is typically around within an hour of Sunrise now UVA can ex start exerting some of its biological effects which is not only the nitric oxide story but it also stimulates this receptor on the surface of our skin and our eyes is called neuropsin which is a UVA light detecting Protein that's present on those surfaces and neuropsin is actually really important as well for the Circadian mechanism so it helps to Anchor in circadian rhythms within the tissues that it's interacting with as well as within the brain um so it plays an important role in that aspect as well and then UVB rise will be shortly there thereafter UVB of course is what stimulates vitamin D production and palm C production predominantly um and together that that UVA and UVB fraction inre inrees as we approach solar noon so you're going to get the highest fracture and the highest UVA and UVB um enrichment in sunlight around solar noon and that's the most efficient time to make vitamin D and palm c um and depending on your skin type and where you're located you know if you're more or less prone to burning which is kind of another tangent because there's a lot that we do as modern humans to set ourselves up for burning and I have a pinned post on my Instagram about building a solar callus as Jack calls it which essentially is building up your tolerance to uh receiving more sunlight without burning and instead receiving a tan and maximizing the benefits you'll get from the Sun um and so yeah basically that's just to say that the the biological effects of uvite you're going to harness the the most of them like the most efficiently around solar noon and I want to make sure that I mentioned blue light because blue light is also present in the Sun and blue light is also an essential nutrient for our biology the problem is that we're always meant to receive blue light in the presence of red and infrared light so if you look at sunlight blue light comes very very shortly after Sunrise if not at Sunrise as well it increases in its fraction as the sun comes up the sky and that blue light is uh stimulates or tickles another receptor that's similar to neuropsin but it's called melanopsin instead melanopsins on the skin on the eyes also throughout the brain the vascular system the subcutaneous fat which is really interesting um and melanopsin is the prim receptor that's mediating anchoring of the Circadian rhythm in the brain specifically within the Master Clock of the brain called the supermatic nucleus or the scn so basically what I'm saying is that Master Clock in the brain determines what time of day it is based on the amount of blue light in the environment and so this is extremely important to understand because when you get that piece it becomes really clear why exposing yourself to Blue Light when the sun's not out is a real problem because your body body is thinking it's the middle of the day even if it's 9:00 p.m. and you're sitting on your couch watching a movie getting blasted with blue light you know your body can't differentiate that blue light from what it would encounter outside versus what it's encountering from some novel device that we didn't have until like you know a few decades ago so what do you think then of those uh glasses those head-mounted glasses that have they they just uh shine blue light like do you think that those then are nonsense because you have to have you know the near infrared light and uh red light with it are you talking about blue blocking glasses no so you can get I know what blue blocking glasses are but I'm you actually get like head mounted glasses and then they put out like 500 luck 1,000 luck 1500 luck they're called luminet 2 glasses okay so they put out blue light just directly into your eye right so like from yeah so what I'm saying is like from our conversation today like you're saying that you know if you're taking in Blue Light without red light then that would be a bad thing right that that's problematic because when we overwhelm our system's capacity to interface with blue light those receptors that melanopsin can start to break and what it does is when it breaks down it releases free vitamin A into its local environment which then that free vitamin A can go and break other melanopsin and so it creates this cascad of effect where we are not only like trashing our melanops and receptors which has implications for the Circadian mechanism because it need needs that melanopsin intact in order to relay the information to the brain but we're also going to be decreasing our sensitivity to blue light and so Dr Jack Cruz talks about this quite a bit in his Clinic if he wants to determine if somebody's blue light toxic he'll go and shine a blue pen light into their eye and if their pupil doesn't contract that means essentially that the mechanism by which the eye is supposed to detect blue light and respond to it is broken down because these receptors are essentially missing or dysfunctional so the last thing in the world that I would do is expose my eye directly to just pure blue light I think that's absolutely insane when we think about how the biolog is actually working and the fact that we're supposed to receive the full spectrum of light together okay so there's basically no uh device out there like for Morning Light like besides the Sun like essentially like there's nothing really that people can use like you're not really big into like sad lamps or any kind of thing like that like do you think there's anything that people any kind of light device that people canuse use to be you know to to be beneficial during the daytime morning time well I mean you could use a red infrared light panel in the morning that would be okay I mean that's kind of mimicking what you get from the sun it's a sham of that but it's not you know it's not the worst thing in the world um with regards to brightness of light there are full spectrum lights that you can get for your home which are going to be better than standard LEDs of fluorescent bulbs um those will contain some red and INF Fred light in addition to having the full spectrum including blue um I know chroma makes like the sky portal which is kind of cool you can clamp that onto your desk and uh it's like a bright white full spectrum light and then there's a knob that controls the brightness and a knob that controls the redness and so as the day goes on you can turn up the redness so you're kind of mimicking what would happen outside but again it's a sham if you have the ability like let's say you work from home and you have a yard space like what I've done is I just move my entire office outside so I just work out here all day every day record all my podcasts out here make my content out here I'm grounding as we speak I'm in the shade but I'm still getting lots of benefits of indirect sunlight um like for example near infrared light reflects off of grass so you're receiving that um just by you know if you're in the shade Outdoors there's a lot of benefit to just for your eyes for your biology in general to receiving indirect light just independent of the benefits of direct light as well which is primarily um more so the UVA and UVB story which you kind of need direct on skin exposure from the Sun to receive those benefits because that short wavelength light doesn't penetrate through clothes through umbrellas Etc okay excellent and so in terms of then like the light that people would uh you know want to avoid at night like when do you usually tell people then to you know try to mimic what's going on uh at night time like do you try to say 700 p.m. 8:00 p.m. like one two hours before like and you you know believe in the blue blocking glasses what are your sort of thoughts on you know the other side of the light yeah so um obviously it depends on like the season but I would say starting around an hour before Sunset maybe 30 minutes to an hour before Sunset if you come by my house at that time my entire house is lit red um every room porch lights back porch lights the whole house is red and if we're going to be exposed to any um like High Fidelity screens like that aren't being blocked but we we do filter most of our screens our TV has a setting for RGB so we put it on red at night we're going to watch it my phone I keep an Amber screen on all day uh my computer also I keep an Amber screen on all day and you can use a software like Iris um to natively filter out uh blue light and that will change the fraction of blue light removed depending on the time of day as well which is pretty cool so late at night it's going to be full red but earlier in the day it would be more of an amber color um so those are some options for natively filtering I would recommend if you can change the lights instead of wearing the blue blockers that's going to be the best solution because we do have these photo receptors these light receptors on our skin as well and other parts of our body deeper inside that are reacting with environmental light and so if you're blocking the blue light to your eyes with blue blockers that's still way better than doing nothing at all but the best solution would be to just opt for red lights in your environment if that's possible and on the topic of blue blacking glasses there's a lot of really scammy ones out there and most I would say all of the blue light filters that you would get at like an eye doctor put onto your glasses they barely remove like 5% 10% of blue light it's they're not working you know that if you know the glasses is work are working if they have like a yellow or orange Hue to them that's the only way they're going to truly be filtering out the wavelengths we want to remove um so just one quick question on that with the glasses so a lot of people are filtering out um the blue light and I had a guest on recently uh Dr Chris Aken he's a psychiatrist and he indicated it's got to be at least over 90% % you know the glasses I have are are 99% um I asked him though too about green light because I know that green light is also uh a short wavelength FL in addition to to Blue Light and now there are some glasses there not very many of them but I do have a pair of glasses that blocks out blue light and green light now it's kind of like um like if I'm gonna watch TV I'll just wear the ones that block out the blue light because when I do blue light and green it's just like you can't really even see too too much that well um but how much is Green Light affecting sleep at night because I tried to do a little bit of a research on on pob Med and didn't really find too much so is so do we know much about green light and if that affects sleep at night yeah so I would say there does appear to be some effects of green light it's definitely not as strong as true blue around 480 nanometers that's the maximum absorbance uh frequency of melanopsin for light is 480 so that's like sky blue uh essentially and so there there is like a a spectrum of effects if you go down you know towards green because it's not like melanopsin just absorbs one wavelength of light it's kind of sensing the general light environment and there's going to be you know kind of if you look at like a bell curve the peak absorbance is going to be 480 but then you kind of get these tails that go in both directions um and so if you can block green fine I think most of the nighttime blue blocking glasses do a pretty good job if they're a reputable brand um of blocking the the bulk of the wavelengths that are going to have the most effect um and those lenses should look like a dark orange daytime blue blocking glasses which block maybe about 60% of blue light a more narrow window they uh have like a yellowish lens and so if people just see like the different ones out there they may see a clear colorless lens they may see a yellow they may see an orange the dark orange ones are nighttime the yellow ones are daytime and the clear ones I don't think have any benefit I wouldn't waste my money on them okay and in terms of uh like and how it kind of like you know Dr hubman talks a lot about yes it improves you know your your sleep at night how does it directly improve your mood like is it just because it improves your sleep it improves your mitochondria health and improves your you know testosterone I mean those three things you know right there could be you know a link to directly improving your mood but is there something else where within the biology or something else that you know I haven't mentioned where maybe it does something you know to our neurotransmitters or something somewhere where people are just feeling better like is it doing something else that you know we haven't discussed today to mood that's you know uh making people feel so good when they go out in the sun yeah yeah and and specifically in the context of blue light this is absolutely there's a very strong mechanism in place here and that is relating to the dopamine system so we know that blue light has a very let's say addicting effect and that's why you know if your kids are on screens they're just obsessed with phones tablets computers like enamored with it completely and it's really that blue light hijacking the dopamine system giving them that immediate reward but then it ultimately ends up depleting the system very greatly and kind of burning you out um and so by blocking blue light at night and making sure that we're getting plenty of sunlight during the day that's helping to increase the the production and the levels of these neurotransmitters in our brain including dopamine but also serotonin and cetyl choline and a lot of the important neurotransmitters that we need to just feel really good and function at a high level for blocking that blue light at night now we're also protecting our dopamine levels from being depleted and burned out from like this artificial blue light that we received from our TVs and our our devices and our LED fluorescent bulbs Etc and so that's going to bolster us against being depleted in that way and so we're going to be operating from just a place of more fullness and there's also major implications here as well with regards to addiction and not only you know drugs and alcohol but also um social media and pornography and anything else that people go to for their gambling anything that people look for hits like quick hits of dopamine a lot of that is in my mind Blu light toxicity that's literally just driving you to constantly seek just a quick hit of something because your Baseline levels are so low and the Sun is the antidote to that like we talked about the endorphins earlier you get this boost in endorphin production from the Palm Sea CLE from UV light and now you're just feeling really good and you're feeling like you don't you're not in a state of lack you're not constantly looking for something to fill you up because you're already full it's like that almost sounds like I know that sounds crazy to like but it almost sounds like it would help with addiction because I always seen like addiction as like you know basically someone is is saying like I'm not okay with my physiological State I need to take something to change my physiological State because I'm not okay with how I feel right but if you're feeling better all the time because of all these biological mechanisms by by where by the the sun you know increases our mood then I mean it makes sense that you know people aren't going to be reaching for that substance or reaching for that thing that's you know damaging them so I think that there you know could be some major implications in the future about using um you know the Sun and you know different uh Technologies to be able to potentially treat addiction yeah absolutely the way I think about it is and actually if you look at like uh traditional Chinese medicine and ayurveda they would often look at what substances people gravitate towards as a sign of like what deeper issues are at play and the way that I really see it is that like we're all meant to be addicts but we're meant to be addicted to Nature and the Sun and like the natural stimuli that support our biochemistry and our biology when we're not getting those inputs now we're constantly searching for a way to get that hit so to speak and depending on what deficiencies somebody has also I'm sure there's like genetic components too that can change neurotransmission the level of like neurotransmitter levels or or The receptors that mediate those signals now certain people are going to gravitate more towards like abusing stimulants or depressants or you know whatever their kind of Vice is typically it goes one way or the other um but not realizing that we can actually get those stimuli from nature from being outside and it's in a way that's actually supporting our biology and instead of depleting it yeah so that's actually interesting because exercise uh for example as far as I understand like zone2 cardio like benefits mitochondria right so it seems like all the the things that we and like you know a lot of people like to use mitochondrial optimizers and like all you know I'm guilty on one of them I had you know Dr Casey means on here and we kind of you know shared some of those things but there are a lot of you know natural things that we can do to you know increase our mitochondrial function and again for people people who uh don't know mitochondria really kind of like the powerhouses of our cells you know they generate ATP they give us energy you know that's how we kind of you know have energy to kind of just go out and and live our lives and do things and so you know maintaining the function of the mitochondria in our cells is critical and it seems like you know we can do a lot of this through light and through other you know healthy modalities just through nature yeah I mean mitochondria for mitochondrial Health red and infrared light are essential nutrients full stop like they need red and infrared light to function optimally and in the modern environment we're highly deficient in those mitochondria also make bio photons specifically within the infrared and the UV parts of the light spectrum so if you take a photo multiplier you can actually look at the light being emitted from somebody's body and actually it may be a little counterintuitive but I'll kind of make it make sense in a minute that the more light you emit from your body that's associated with disease States diabetes metabolic dysfunction Etc and the reason for that is that because if you're losing light to your environment that's actually a sign of inefficiencies at the level of your biology because we're meant to retain that light and use it productively to help power our our metabolism essentially and so when we lose that ability we start losing energy to our environments that's basically what obesity is in a nutshell and metabolic diseases in general it's like you're losing energy to your environment your mitochondrial engines are breaking down they're dysfunctional you're no no longer able to process nutrients coming in you're no longer able to um engage in a in metabolism in an effective way and so you're basically just accumulating stuff because you can't do anything with it so how much sun do people have to get per day roughly to be able to get the benefits of the mitochondrial function of optim mitochondrial function I would say around Sunrise it would be ideal to be out for like at least a couple minutes but if you can be out about 20 minutes that would be great you can do the same thing at Sunset if you're able to midday Sun is going to vary depending on how dark somebody's skin is and where they live but um again that's why I would point to like vitamin D as a biomarker but I would say at minimum trying to get 15 20 minutes of midday Sun I personally usually go out for about an hour to an hour and a half um I'm in New Jersey I'm at like the 40th I think north latitude right now we're getting good quality Sun but for a period of time during the year we won't be so I'm basically banking my vitamin D for the the months that we're not going to have it um especially because I naturally have darker skin anyways cuz I'm mixed and so my skin is really meant to be at a lower latitude but here I am up here which actually ends up working out and it's kind of a can of worms but my mitochondria from my mom's side are all from Scandinavia so they actually like to get cold and they can make really heat really well they're what's called like an uncoupled mitochondria which are mitochondria that hail from more Northern regions um so anybody who wants to know something about their mitochondria where they come from you just need to study your mom's side of the family and where they came from that's going to tell you something about what kind of mitochondria you have whether it's coupled or uncoupled the coupled mitochondria are really good at making energy not good at making heat and that's why if you look at you know all of the top marathon runners and uh like a lot of the top athletes in general are usually have very dark skin they're usually black and it's because there's a very high amount of efficiency at the level of their mitochondria to make energy so they're able to just basically transmute that energy into physical activity in a very efficient way compared to the uncoupled mitochondria which aren't as efficient at making energy but they're really good at making heat in response to cold and that's what allows these individuals to survive at higher latitudes where it's cold for a period of time during the year um interestingly though those uncoupled mitochondria can actually be quite plastic in that if you move an individual from let's say Sweden to like uh I don't know Ecuador or something over a period of time if you look at their mitochondria they actually will develop more coupled mitochondria over time it's a an adaptation process that's built in to the uncoupled mitochondria so typically so just to kind of back up for for a sec CU some of this is is new to me so the mitochondria coupled and and uncoupled so do we have like a general percentage like you know would I be 5050 someone else be 75 25 like what like percentage of my mitochondria would be uncoupled versus uh coupled and someone else's so do you know where your mom's family came from uh Britain okay yeah so I mean you certainly have uncoupled mitochondria they if you want to know the specific hype you can if you have like 23 me data there's websites where you can look up your mitochondrial hype you put in your raw data set and it will spit out the exact hype um I think generally people don't NE necessarily need that level of resolution typically what would like but say what would like you saying bolts mitochondria look like compared to a guy in Sweden like what do you have 90% more like you know uh coupled mitochondria would you have like 10% more like like how much like variation are we talking about so all the mitochondria that you have as an individual came from your mom because all of those mitochondria that were in the egg that became you that's what basically they multiplied and they partitioned in different tissues so all of your mitochondria have the same hype the same amount of coupling um and how couped they are is going to depend on where they came from per se but typically if somebody's maternal lineage H has come from somewhere more Northern regions has lighter skin that's a sign that they're going to be uncoupled that they're going to do really well with temperature variation throughout the year um so like getting cold in the winter and getting hot in the summer basically versus the coupled mitochondria really do much better with good quality Sun year round and not as much of the on the temperature variation side because they weren't they didn't evolve to basically deal with those types of conditions if that makes sense yeah and it makes sense too because I remember to through the uh hubman podcast he said that you know if you're more feris skinned you actually get a bigger hormonal response and someone who's um you know darker skinned um when you have and that's with and also too just an important point on that um that's not in your eyes like that's I think a lot of the hormonal response is just on your skin as an endocrine organ is that correct yeah well I mean so there's actually I'm glad you mentioned this because there is an important distinction that needs to be made you need UV light touching your eyes and your skin to get the benefit of UV light and so what that means is if you're getting your midday sunning session and you have contacts in you have your glasses on you have sunglasses on that's going to be a problem because you need the coordinated hormonal response in your brain via the eyes and in your skin to get the benefit of that UV light specifically the UVB light so um that's just to say there are Central hormonal effects via the eyes and also a major peripheral effect via the skin and ideally if we're getting those together we're going to amplify the response by a lot okay and so how do you make sure that people are you know protected from the Sun like what are your kind of um you know protocols or what are what is is your advice on that yeah so it's really technical I just tell people to go into the shade okay go into the shade or if you can't go in the shade put some light clothes on put a hat on you feel like you're getting too much I really there's maybe like 0 1% of the population that needs to use like a mineral sunscreen given their like occupation or Recreation like if they're surfing you know on water there's a lot of glare or or snowboarding there's a lot of glare there can be a place for it but the vast majority of people do not need sunscreen they just need to leverage shade and clothing as needed and first and formost they need to be building up their solar callous so they're actually able to um receive the amount of sun that they need to be optimized a lot of people if they're you know they never go outside um and then they go on vacation and they blast themselves with sun for a couple days after not having been outside at all prior to that yeah you're going to get burned and that's going to be a problem um but if we look at actually the medical literature around sun exposure chronic regular sun exposure is associated with decreased risk of of both incidents and uh death from melanoma even despite you know all the propaganda saying like the Sun causes melanoma if you're regularly exposing yourself to Sun like let's say daily for a period of time your risk of melanoma goes down alongside your risk of breast cancer colon cancer blood cancers prostate cancer cardiovascular disease diabetes neurod degeneration dot dot dot so sun exposure is actually only associated with I would say even you know tenuously with uh basil cell and squamous cell carcinomas which are types of skin cancers that nobody dies from um nobody dies from meanwhile the cancers that you get protected from by getting adequate sun exposure are the the major killers in our society so I always get mind-boggled at the like the programming around the Sun and there's like no risk benefit analysis it's all like we're going to talk about the harms of the sun without addressing the vast Corpus of literature showing the sun is protective against all of the diseases we really care about so it's it's really you know more or less like a an amount issue because obviously if you get too much you know UVB we know that can cause some mutations in in and and cause cancer but if you you know do it in a low dose manner you do it protectively you get your skin callous so to speak um then it seems like you know that would be highly highly beneficial for you so there's a little bit of a balance I think and I think that Society has probably tipped that balance too far into the shade and we need to kind of you know get people to not be afraid of the and not being afraid doesn't mean you know go out and burn it just means you know go out you know like you said get 20 minutes obviously if you can handle it you know get a little bit more um but you know just to kind of use your your own brain and you know and to realize when you're getting too much um you know and it's hard to be your own sort of thermostat on that but I think that's you know essentially one of the the better options out there you know I mean I think that's what we need I think too many people are Outsourcing responsibility for their health to experts and professionals like no we're meant to be our the our own doctors are in our bodies like there's an immense amount of wisdom and a potential for healing that's built into our systems that we're just are completely divorced from because we're constantly looking for guidance from the next expert that's going to tell us what to do so we don't have to think for ourselves essentially and I would actually even question the narrative on UV light and mutations because all of those studies were done with UV light and isolation nobody's done those studies in the context of full spectrum sunlight with an abundance of red and infrared light that protects against that process so I think all of those studies need to be Revisited I want to do that in my lab ultimately yeah actually that's what I was going to ask you about I had written that down earlier but I forgot so you had mentioned that um you know red light is protective with the UV light and you know when the sun is is uh spitting out like yes different wavelengths at different times of the day but you know it's it's putting out UV light and red light so does that mean though that if someone wants to protect themselves from UV light they could then say you know have their day in the Sun but then they could go and get some just uh red light say from a artificial Source would that be protective yeah so the research on this topic has been done with like photobiomodulation red light devices for example before and or after sun exposure um and then you can receive protection against sunburn if you do that actually it's pretty striking research showing that like dose dependent decrease in in sunburn um with increasing red light exposure before UV exposure Nature's way of doing that is basically getting out at sunrise and sunset before like you're basically bookending your midday sun exposure with those two times of day and so if you can do that that's great that's built in doesn't cost any money if you have the devices you can use them and you can also receive benefit from that very very interesting so it kind of does it naturally so you're saying like in the morning like you know you have this red light come out you're not getting the UV race and then later on in the day when the UV rays are you know a little bit higher you get a little bit less red light but as you said you've kind of banked that you know red light ends to to protect you later on in the day which is very very interesting so that's why it's you know wouldn't would not be a good idea for someone who's super fair skin to just go you know straight out in the middle of the day because they don't have you know the benefits of having um that red light on them so very very interesting exactly and and on that pin post on my profile I have there's multiple slides of a bunch of different stuff that people can do to minimize burn risk and maximize your ability to tan and assimilate that sun in a productive way um from a range of things between like minimizing your blue light exposure which actually inhibits mitochondrial function on your skin and eyes which is um important because mitochondria are required to make new melanin in your skin so if you want to get a tan you need those mitochondria to be functioning properly and if you're exposed to a lot of artificial blue light non-av MFS those are all going to impair my condal function on your surfaces and so that's one thing you can leverage to help prevent burning and and improve your ability to assimilate sunlight also the ratios of Omega 6s to Omega-3s in your diet or highly deficient in Omega-3s as a culture um so increasing the amount of DHA you're getting in from animal sources decreasing the amount of like industrial seed oils with like the high Omega sixes um in them is going to also help to reduce inflammatory burden at the level of the skin increase your ability to trans essentially transduce solar or photonic energy into electrical energy and there's actually an amazing paper I believe the researcher's name is um Michael Crawford he wrote a paper on DHA and the quantum biology of DHA and essentially its role in converting photonic energy so light energy into electrical energy that's actually required to allow us to render reality from moment to moment and that's why 60% of the retina is composed of DHA and up to 30% of the brain it's literally because the eyes the brain are involved in creating reality from moment to moment so you can actually see it and that's mediated by DHA that's actually a crazy fact and one interesting thing about that too uh I was talking about I'm probably going to actually say this word wrong even though I I was talking about so xanthan you know that oh anthan yeah so so I saw a study on that recently saying that even just 4 milligrams a day can actually reduce there's a a double blind placeable control trial it's actually four or 5 years old I think now showed that it can reduce some of the harms from from UVB and actually 6 milligrams they like reduce like crow's feet and a bunch of other things but I even said in the caption I said you know I'm not totally convinced that you know if you know a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids or a a diet with a proper you know omega-3 to Omega 6 you know fatty acid ratio you know wouldn't kind of do um the same thing yeah I mean especially if you're eating salmon and shrimp like those have Asis anthon in them anyways so you're going to be getting some in there yeah yeah shrimp I I knew that one I didn't know actually about the uh the salmon um one question I wanted to ask you because I know this is becoming you know insanely popular now so people are putting red light panels inside their uh INF for red sauna and so do you have or maybe there isn't any is there any like research on like combining the two like why would you want to and again I do it so I'm one of them like why would someone want to have an infrared sauna and then also have you know a red light panel and for me I you know I don't have uh a red light panel and I have no association with this company at all uh but I have uh what these bulbs from SAA space and essentially they're putting out you know what the sun is so I get the red light near infrared light um in infrared light um when I'm when I'm in it so it's kind of like double in one so we what are your thoughts on these saas with red lights in them yeah so I mean the way infrared light works Works to heat you up is that it actually vibrates your tissues and it makes the heat in you versus if you look at like traditional saunas typically that's you're heating up the air and that's heating up you and it tends to get much hotter but the infrared saas do a really good job of actually warming you up directly versus warming up the air um and that also is the reason why like I'm outside in the sun right now my leg feels warm because the infrared both near and far infrared light is interacting with my skin and creating heat um and so naturally we're receiving typically red near infrared far infrared together in the context of the Sun so that would be my guess as to why they're including all of these together in let's say the sauna space bulbs or in some of the infrared saunas because there is this synergistic effect on mitochondria um that we would naturally receive anyways so I think that's a good idea um we didn't even talk about water in this podcast and it's a bit of a can of worms but I just want to briefly touch on it because far in red light specifically like uh 3100 nanometer light is really good at creating exclusion Zone water which is this fourth phase of water that was discovered by Dr jel Pollock out at the University of Washington years ago at this point and this fourth phase of water is a gel State and this gel state water is actually what facilitates metabolism so often times we think of ATP as this source of energy but it's like this nebulous idea of free energy that never resonated with me and ever since learning the story about water and easy or exclusion zone or coherent domain water however you want to call it it really everything started clicking for me and essentially the way it's working is that when you have ATP you can take a phosphate group from ATP a Denine triphosphate you can take a phosphate group put it onto an enzyme when you do that the enzyme changes shape now exclusion Zone water can enter into new pockets within that enzyme that it couldn't access before and it's actually the water that's facilitating metabolism not the ATP directly and that we can actually store charge within water so when you look at the structure of fourth phase water it's essentially a battery because it separates positive from negative charge in the same way a battery does our mitochondria do the same thing to make ATP but the water independently of any you know mitochondria or anything else can also structure itself um and when we do have the charge separation it's actually creating potential energy that can be used to power metabolism so both 3100 nanm light and I believe the other one is 385 NM which is part of the UV Spectrum together those are really good at making exclusion Zone water that's really beneficial for supporting metabolism and blood flow maintaining the glycocalix which is the um gel-like lining of the cardiovascular system that protects the endothelium um I don't know if you've had Dr Mike tman on here but he's great uh he talks a lot about this he was on my podcast talking about the glyx and how breakdown of the glyx of the structured water coating on the end iium is actually the thing that precedes cardiovascular disease atherosclerosis and that like the LDL cholester in more or less yes exactly exactly so maintaining the structured water within our body is huge from an anti-aging standpoint from a health optimization standpoint and the best how do we maintain that how do we maintain the uh structured water yeah so it's primarily through sunlight and grounding so midday Sun you're going to get both the far infrared and UV light you need to make that structured water and then through grounding we're getting free electrons from the earth that also helps to maintain the negative charge of our bodies our bodies are supposed to be negatively charged that means the body's healthy as the charge gets more positive that means that we're basically losing potential energy in our system and the system is essentially dying what do think of grounding mats um so grounding mats can be okay if they're plugged into the Earth directly I think there's some risk to plugging into Outlets one there could be dirty electricity from poor wiring to there could be jump conduction like maybe you maybe even test your outlet and the ground is good but then when you turn on your washing machine or your dishwasher suddenly were getting jump conduction that you didn't measure because you didn't know to test it then and now you're standing on your grounding mat and you're actually giving yourself a lot of like positive charge ultimately you're not giving yourself the effect that you wanted just out of ignorance essentially so the best bet is to plug it directly into the ground into the Earth if you can't do that directly what you can do is get some copper wire dig a little hole in the ground put a little water in it bury some of the wire in it run that wire through a window or a door and then you can wrap that around the probe that you would have plugged into the wall and that will allow you a direct line of connection like electrical connection with the Earth versus having to rely on a dubious ground yeah no that's that's that's to we have one actually uh my my fiance we sleep on it every night and so she's sort of you know probably I get the idea or the impression she's probably a little more like you she doesn't want any techn ology like anywhere kind of thing um you know which is great so she was kind of hesitant at first but then you know we plugged it in and we really you know saw like holy like when you get on the mat like you know the grounding you know actually changes on the meter right um and so she thinks it's helped with her ttis uh which is you know incredible and like again like this is just an N of one I'm not saying that you know if you get a grounding mat and you have tonight is just going to fix it but you know it seems to be helping her at least and so you know I uh I do feel that there you know it's something that needs to be researched a lot more because there's definitely something very real there you know it sounds like a little bit like you know um you know hippie kind of thing but the thing is you can actually measure it you know it's it's real science that can be measured like you step on the mat you look at the meter you step off the mat you know the meter changes so you know something's going on there so I do feel that like grounding is you know uh another Avenue of Health that we you know need to explore I don't think it's maybe as you know um as uh probably important is like Diet exercise sleep nutrition but it's definitely I think coming into um you know that kind of fold yeah I mean there's a decent amount of research and I just post I made a post the other day maybe two days ago on a systematic review on grounding and in those studies they basically did thermal imaging to as a marker of inflammation because inflammation generates Heat and within 30 minutes to an hour of grounding they showed very striking decreases in inflammatory status throughout the body but the the pictures I posted were in the face and also in the knees and the legs um and worth noting is that like our ancestors were grounded 24/7 because if there was any Footwear on it was made of some sort of a hide which is still conduct conductive rather so if you have like a leather sold shoe you're still connected with the Earth even if your foot is covered but other than that you know if we're you know Barefoot traveling across the surface of the Earth we're always grounded and grounding has a really important impact on the Zeta potential of red blood cells The Zeta potential describes the charge on the surface of red blood cells uh specifically the negative charge and that allows the red blood cells to slide really easily across one another AKA basically not clot and we see you know we saw huge issues during covid during the pandemic of like blood clotting and I think it was really a testament to people's disconnection with nature specifically because there were also like governmental curfews and stuff like don't leave your house don't go outside and it's literally the worst advice you could give somebody who's trying to not get sick from a Corona virus because we really need sunlight and grounding in order to protect ourselves from the cardiovascular implications of coronavirus infections and also too I actually wouldn't mind you uh speaking on this a little bit I know we're going a little bit over time I won't take up to too more much of your time but um I found it really interesting uh I remember hubman saying that you know when the sunlight was shining on people it would actually stimulate the spleen to produce more I'm not sure if it was like you know natural killer cells or what or whatever it was but it was something that uh that the actual sunlight was doing when it hits your spleen that actually induces an immune response that's very very positive and he also believed that that's part of the reason why uh people get less sick in in the winter like maybe there are you know fewer you know uh infections going around because people aren't as sick but maybe also you know people are Al are just have a better immune system because they're out in the sun a little bit more oh yeah I mean there's a lot of uh factors that come into play like why people would get more sick in the winter versus the summer not only like more time spent Outdoors not in circulated air indoors that's very dry as well so dry dry air outside during the winter too increases the rate at which viral particles can basically travel through the air more humidity and the more warmer months is basically inversely associated with that also more time spent outside again not in circulated air so you're not basically concentrating a lot of junk that's in the air indoors um and in the winter time Pally people typically don't spend a lot of time outside so there might be you know groups of people inside they're all kind of breathing each other's air in it's not necessarily a natural environment there's a lot wrong with indoor environments in not only like the light from the glass but also just the microbial diversity as well that makes them uh uh let's say makes the people more vulnerable that are living within them because if you think about nature the biodiversity that's present in a natural environment is immense and our bodies and our immune systems are meant to be interacting with this biodiversity and it helps to train our immune systems to know what's like good what's bad what needs to be kept in check what needs to be um like supported from a microbiome standpoint for example and if we're in a lot of semi-sterile indoor environments our immune systems aren't being trained effectively and I think this in my mind is directly related to increased allergies food allergies as well as like environmental allergies as well um and autoimmune diseases as well because our immune system is not getting the training data that it needs to actually function optimally um and so I think you know there's just an immense amount of implications to the way that we're living and a lot of the solutions are fre .99 too because if you have any access to outdoor environments that you can just spend more time in you can just eliminate a lot of the exposures that could be harming you um from also like a mold standpoint from environmental like like indoor environmental toxin standpoint from a air quality issue standpoint and then you're also getting the added benefits of being outside which include the grounding and the sunlight and the biodiversity so there's just you know so many advantages to spending more time outside that it's just like almost impossible to comprehend yeah I think uh Michael Easter is a guy who's done a little bit of research on that too I don't know if you know who who he is you know uh name sounds familiar but I don't think I know him very well yeah he he wrote um uh something something conf like getting uncomfortable or something like that he's been on uh or the crisis Comfort maybe that that's what it is Crisis Comfort comfort of Crisis yeah something like that I know what you're talking about yeah um but anyways I know we only have a couple minutes up there's one question uh I I wanted to ask you about green light um so green light I don't know if this is just very very uh preliminary but some people are saying that it has some uh potential to treat migraines and headaches have you looked into this research at all or oh yeah so I'm actually uh acquaintances with Tom Seager who's developing a green light panel for w Tom on my podcast he's awesome love too yeah I love him I love him he's great he's actually hooking me up with a Morosco Forge like right now and I'm so freaking excited I can't wait it's going to be great um but yeah like he's done some really interesting research on the green light panels I think there's a lot of potential there I think it also points to again a deficiency of nature in our lifestyles because you can if you think about it we're outside a lot in green spaces we're receiving a lot of reflected green light from natural environments from trees grasses shrubs whatever lots of green light in addition to the green light of course that we're receiving from the Sun as part of the solar Spectrum um I also think depending on the cause of headaches you know if it's a blood flow issue we get the nitric oxide benefits of being outside I don't know specifically the mechanisms at play with green light panels for instance um I think that's probably still an emerging area but I think a lot of the benefits that we may receive from that people could also get for free by just doing everything that we've talked about out um in this podcast and and yeah I think ultimately my goal is to be able to empower people with like tools strategies and information that they can use to improve their health and their lives and the lives of their love loved ones that doesn't really cost a dime that just requires like some shifts in um just the way that we're doing things and the best part about that is once you start kind of implementing even just small changes in your life to this effect you start feeling better really quickly and it becomes just a a new lifestyle that you just want to keep doing more of that thing and so when I started this I was barely spending time outside I mean I always kind of enjoyed the Sun but never really thought twice about it necessarily and since then like I've literally gone from zero to 100 where I I spend probably eight hours a day outside now because I just do all my work outside I'm just hanging out out here um and it's great and it makes you feel really good and like we alluded to earlier with the endorphins it's improving mood it's improving your Baseline dopamine levels which has implications not only for mood but also for your ability to critically think your ability to not be dogmatic to be more flexible in the way that you're thinking and see more perspectives think more panoramically have a better balance of parasympathetic to sympathetic nervous system state which of course has implications in your relationship quality because now you're not operating with a short fuse you're able to see the other person's perspective better have more empathy compassion you're able to have more fun in life in general um make more friends do you know do things that make you happy because you're not just like sitting in this like nihilistic state of dread that can happen if you're just glued to the let's say the news the mainstream media all day and working your cubicle job 9 to5 and never getting outside never seeing natural light and just being burned out like that's not normal for human bodies to encounter those environments and so the more that we can just titrate nature back into our lives we'll literally see benefits in all areas and as it relates to nutrition too the dopamine story if your dopamine levels are accentuated because you're spending more time outside you're not going to be as inclined to reach for the junk food the you know the treats the cheat meals because you're actually not looking for the hit from your food you're now already getting it naturally through your environment um so that's you know another reason why I think we're thinking about relationships we're thinking about food we're thinking about sleep well circadium biology underpins quality sleep and melatonin release blue light at night directly inhibits melatonin release so if we're having a lot of artificial light at night that's going to directly and immediately impair our Sleep Quality and duration and so again that's why I put light as like this base of the pyramid because food falls on top of it movement quality falls on top of it relationships and and just overall Outlook and feelings of well-being falls on top of that our Sleep Quality falls on top of that so I really see it as like this extremely low hanging fruit that if people can even just start to make small changes in this area that they see massive benefits in almost every other area of Life yeah I completely agree with with everything you said and you know I I do now put you know light certainly you know I'm not saying at the top but definitely near the top I think it's just as important I think they're all they're all they're all the like they're so important like those four you know like your diet you know uh your exercise your sleep your light like they're they're so so important you know so uh but and you've obviously made that very very abundantly uh clear here today so thank you so much for that so um where can people learn more about you you know share your Instagram handle uh your podcast all that kind of stuff yeah so I'm on Instagram at Dr Alexis Jasmine J azm YN my podcast is indoctrinate yourself I've been posting every week for a while now so I'm hoping to keep that regular um I just had Dr Jack Cruz on I have a couple really good podcasts coming out soon um with Dr Martin morid who is a very seminal researcher in the field of blue light that's going to be coming out next week um had some really good guests on prior to that too I post almost every day on Instagram um topics related to light typically but also mitochondrial metabolism and and mitochondrial health and grounding and essentially all the information and science we need in order to make the intellectual shift to prioritizing nature again I think innately people feel really good when they do this type of thing like we don't really need the intellectual understanding but I think it does help to get people to feel motivated to just try it themselves and then you can build the momentum from there um and so yeah that's where people can find me uh the podcast I have some classes and offerings through my business they can find in my link in BIO there and if they have any questions they can just DM me there I'm pretty good about answering well amazing thank you so much again for coming on you know I learned uh so much today you've you know shared so much information that uh you know I'm probably going to have to listen to this podcast myself and go back through it so thanks so much again for coming on and thank you so much again for listening every everybody and as always I'll be back again 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