What if your body actually runs on light?
The human body is essentially the most sophisticated circadian
and electromagnetic system out there.
Most people think of sunlight as something to fear at worst, and
a good source of vitamin D at best.
They've been led to believe that the sun is inherently dangerous.
There's nothing more powerful than sunrise.
You're basically getting pure red and infrared light therapy
at sunrise. In today's episode,
heliotherapist and circadian biology educator Zaydahaj
explores how light acts as medicine program everything from
hormones and metabolism to skin repair, aging, sleep, and
disease risk. You can change your reaction to
a certain food by simply changing the light environment.
We unpack why natural sunlight is actually essential for
healthy skin, how artificial blue light disrupts circadian
signaling and accelerate skin stress.
If we look back to our evolutionary history, we
basically only had firelight, moonlight, sources of light that
benefited our species. And why you can eat clean,
supplement and work out, yet still struggle if your light
environment is misaligned. Let's dig in.
Sunlight has come up a lot on this podcast, but I think we've
only really scratched the surface on the importance of
living in tune with the sun and what that means for our biology
and especially for skin health, which you know so much about.
So really looking forward to chatting with you today.
Well. Thank you.
It's an honor to be here. And we're going to get into all
sorts of circadian goodness, so. Sunlight is one of the most
misunderstood and unfairly demonized things in modern
society. What do most people get wrong
when it comes to the sun? Well, I think first and
foremost, most people have this fear based narrative around what
they think with the sun. I think that they've been led to
believe that the sun is inherently dangerous through UV
light more specifically, whereas my philosophy basically flips
that upside down. I believe that sunlight is
inherently beneficial and regenerative.
And if we view it through the circadian lens, then we have a
more comprehensive understanding of what it actually does to the
human body. And there's a lot that goes into
it. Obviously we can talk about
Thyman dimers and skin cancer risk and all that, but there's a
lot more to the story that people have not been educated on
because they've not learned about circadian biology and its
mechanisms. Can you give us just a broad
picture of what how we were meant to live in connection to
the Sun and why that matters for us?
Well, if we look at our species, we have to consider that we're
circadian species. So every aspect of the body is
built around circadian mechanisms.
For example, you have options that sense specific wavelengths
of light. Those are also known as non
visual photoreceptors. You have mitochondria which are
under circadian control. I also believe they're light
sensing organelles, but if we look back to our evolutionary
history, we lived under a light and dark cycle that was
appropriate for our species. Meaning we had bright days under
full spectrum sunlight, we used shade, we were in caves and we
we explored our environment for survival and and thriving.
But then also when we get to the night time, there's no
artificial light. So we basically only had
firelight, moonlight and more circadian appropriate LOLUX
sources of light that benefited our species.
And so if you look at the body entirely, I think that, you
know, you can get into DNA repair cycles and all this other
stuff, but it's oriented around that evolutionary history.
Otherwise it would not exist as an adaptation today.
Yeah. And we're pretty much living in
a very stark contrast to how we did traditionally.
If you think about all of the artificial light that we're
exposed to and how we have removed ourselves from natural
sunlight in a lot of ways. Is it possible for someone to be
living a healthy lifestyle in every other way, eating well,
working out, but still tired, wired and inflamed if they
aren't managing their light intake appropriately?
I think so because you have to look at the circadian realm
through, you know, its fundamentals.
So if you're, if you have a nutritious diet, you're eating
more Paleo or Primal, let's say you're exercising, you're
supplementing and doing all the right things, quote UN quote.
We have to consider that if you're under artificial light at
night, you're not taking advantage of something like
endogenous melatonin production, which is anti cancer,
anti-inflammatory and antioxidant.
And so that's one example of how I think you can be leaving
benefits on the table by not implementing a lot of the
circadian stuff. And that's because the blue
light is blocking us from producing melatonin.
Through indirect pathways. So we have a non visual
photoreceptor called melanopsin, which is a blue light sensor.
It's specifically oriented around sensing blue light in the
environment and then using that for circadian signaling.
And if you look through the body, I mean it's found in the
brain, the fat, subcutaneous fat, the heart's muscles, I mean
it's found almost everywhere in the body.
So the body is oriented around blue light during the day for
circadian signaling. But if you implement any blue at
night, especially isolated blue, then melanopsin takes up that
signal and it basically thinks that it's daytime.
So when people say that you're basically tricking the body
through that method, it makes sense through that perspective.
Yeah, what else is artificial blue light doing to us?
So there are a number of things. I think if you look through the
research, we can find that blue light in isolation reduces
mitochondrial efficiency. I I firmly believe that it
actually destroys mitochondria because mitochondria are light
sensing organelles that are designed to pick up on full
spectrum sunlight. It's not just designed to pick
up on blue or green or UV, but you know, it's taking the the
full breadth of the spectrum into account.
There is the problem of circadian disruption.
Again, mitochondria are under circadian control, which means
that if you disrupt them through that method, artificial light at
night, other things, then mitochondria are not going to
work as well as they should. You have other issues like
feroptosis, which is interesting.
That's an iron dependent form of cell death, which works against
us and causes oxidative damage. I'm I'm sure you've heard of
apoptosis, which is, you know, basically the the cellular
cellular senescence, like a cell basically tells itself to commit
suicide, so to speak, for our own benefit so that it doesn't
become a cancerous cell. But feroptosis is on the other
end of that spectrum where it is damaging to us and blue light in
isolation has actually been caused to, to create that.
Outside of that, I mean, you know, the literature with
dermatology and and all these other realms does show that
isolated blue light causes hyperpigmentation of the skin,
can cause melasma, hypo pigmentation, vitiligo.
And that's not just at night. That's anytime.
That's anytime again because you're circadian biology is
about timing so and light is the most powerful site you ever or
external circadian cue. So if you abuse that through
modern living, then you start to create 2nd and 3rd order
consequences in the body, especially the skin.
Yeah. And I think avoiding blue light
is a great first step for people.
I mean, there's so much more to this that we'll get into.
But when I first started learning about this, it was
like, OK, all the focus was on blue light and especially
avoiding blue light at night. And so I started wearing blue
light blocking glasses. And I encourage everyone to do
this, you know, And obviously, like, you can look at the light
bulbs in your home as well and that kind of stuff.
But the glasses are just such an easy thing that for some reason
a lot of people are like reluctant to do.
Do you wear do you wear the red lens glasses at night?
So I don't do red because I think they're blue blocking on
steroids. I think if somebody is sick and
they're dealing with some sort of pathology, I would usually
suggest red just to make sure we really have it dialed in.
I I use the dark orange because I can actually see at night and
that's an important thing if I'm driving or or doing something
else. But yeah, so you.
Can drag with the dark orange. It depends on the person.
Some people get really tired. I don't want, you know, somebody
to crash and die because. Yeah, sometimes you need to stay
awake. Exactly.
So I think it's, but it's. Hard to like like I've tried to
wear my red ones driving and I realized very quickly that it
wasn't a good idea. I mean, you can't even tell like
the color of the traffic signal that's everything just looks
red. That's.
Obviously a huge problem, but I do think that it is a
fundamental piece of creating circadian alignment in a modern
world where artificial light is almost everywhere.
Yeah. So dark orange lenses are
usually the standard I recommend for people in that eyewear.
Where? Do you get them from?
I like Midwest red light therapy small small business.
Is there a difference between, I mean there's a big spectrum of
cost when when looking at light blocking glasses and some of
them are like hundreds of dollars and then you can get
them on Amazon for like $15.00. So does is there like a quality
difference there or not really? As long as you have dark orange
or red, they're working because you can just take an RGB red,
green, blue color spectrum and you can actually see whether the
lens blocks blue and green, which are shorter wavelengths.
But the clear ones that say they're blue light blocking not.
Effective bunk didn't work. What light bulbs do you use in
your home? Incandescence I think are the
Creme de la Creme really because of their full spectrum, because
of the fact that through thermal inertia, how they make heat, the
flicker is almost non existent, doesn't have an impact on
biology, especially compared to LE DS which are terrible with
flicker. And again, you're getting
infrared indoors, which in this day and age you're not getting
in most light sources. OK.
So you're fine with the do you and but you still wear glasses
at night when you have the incandescents on?
Now here's a little hack. So normal incandescents do still
emit shorter wavelengths like blue and green, which can
disrupt melatonin. So there's some melatonin
disruption at play with normal ones.
If you go for red incandescence, they're only longer wavelengths.
So there's a lot less disruption with melatonin.
So if you if you don't like the normal incandescence, you can go
to the red ones. But either way, I mean there
there's a hierarchy to melatonin suppression.
What about tech? Is all tech equal or are like
phones and laptops worse than TV screens at night?
I'd probably put them on all the same playing field again, if
you're, if you're exposed to isolated blue at night, you're
not making that melatonin from the pineal gland, you're causing
circadian disruption, which is very problematic for you know,
every circadian clock in your body.
So I'd say I'd probably, honestly I'd probably say the
phone is worse just because of something called the inverse
square law, which dictates that wherever the source of either
native or non-native EMF, the farther you get away from it,
the less of an effect the frequency has.
This is why grounding is so powerful, because you're you're
in direct contact with the earth, but if you can manage to
just put like even 5 or 10 feet of distance between you and the
phone, that's a big thing because the the drop off is
exponential essentially. Interesting.
Yeah, you are a heliotherapist, which at one point was much more
common. In what ways did our ancestors
use light as medicine, and how did heliotherapy begin?
What's the history of it? So I think there's one part of
this where there's the ancestral perspective.
We just naturally got full spectrum sunlight by the mere
nature of being in our environment and trying to
survive. If if we go to more of the early
1900s, then you find more of the classic heliotherapy where you
have people like Niels Reiberg Finsen, who won a Nobel Prize on
photobiology. You know, he, he put red light
against smallpox. He studied UV on lupus vulgaris,
which is tuberculosis of the skin.
And then shortly after that, you have somebody like Augusta
Rollier, who was the first heliotherapist, and he's
actually somebody who, you know, put thousands of patients at
high altitude, a lot, a lot more UV into UV light.
And he saw some dramatic transformations from, you know,
tuberculosis to all sorts of respiratory illnesses.
Is this these, like, pictures I've seen of these hospitals in
like, I don't know, the Swiss Alps, it looks like, And there's
these sundecks where the hospital patients are actually
sunbathing is like a part of their protocol.
Yeah. It's it's the fundamental part
of it. Does that still exist?
I don't know, I don't think so, but it's something that needs to
exist. Yeah.
I mean, how much healthier would people be if we still had these
sundecks at hospitals where people could get actual sunlight
and not just be under artificial blue light?
People who are trying to heal and regenerate, like, just being
blasted with blue light all day every day.
Yeah. I mean, look, we can we can get
into like more of the conspiratorial, conspiratorial
aspect of things. But I do think that it is a lost
form of therapy. I think it's arguably the most
powerful form of therapy for somebody who's sick or somebody
who just wants to optimize health.
Because if you look at through the case studies of a
Gusterolier and his patients, you're talking about 6 year olds
who are literally on the verge of death with lupus vulgaris.
And you know, three to four months later, they're rocking a
mean tan and they're actually fully healed.
So, you know, what kind of threat does that pose to
mainstream or centralized medicine?
I'll leave that up to the audience because I think it's
it's a big one, obviously. I do too.
What are some symptoms that can occur as a result of circadian
dysfunction? I mean, honestly, you can
blindfold yourself and pick anyone you know, Insulin
resistance, brain fog, thyroid issues.
I mean, T3 and T4 have an intricate relationship with
circadian biology, UV light, something that's very important
for that. I've also heard like red light
on the thyroid can be helpful. Have you found that or I've?
Seen studies on that, that I think are are very powerful
ultimately, like you have mitochondria, you know, in your
thyroid. So it makes sense that if you
improve the mitochondria within a given area, you're going to
improve systemic function or at least local function in that
given body part. Yeah.
I remember you said like blue light weakens the mitoch, like
isolated blue light can weaken the mitochondria, and on the
flip side red light can actually boost mitochondrial health.
Yeah, I think mainly through cytochrome C oxidase, which is
the 4th complex of the five complexes within the electron
transport chain. So for people who don't really
understand what that means, each mitochondria has five complexes
within the inner mitochondrial membrane.
And it basically describes how protons move, how electrons move
throughout the system to then create ATP, which is the the
main form of energy that we use for being alive.
What do people stand to gain by getting right with the sun?
Getting in tune with the sun? What's the upside?
The upside is I think chronic disease prevention first and
foremost, number 2 is just maintaining optimal health.
Everyone wants to live a long life that's healthy.
You want to get into old age, you know, being able to squat
and do all these things as human, human beings are designed
to, to do. I think there's also a
philosophical perspective on this because, you know,
disconnected from source, being taught that the sun is dangerous
inherently. I don't think that's a healthy
message for people. And I think that it it's
fundamentally anti human. So for me it's it's a lot larger
as well with this work when we're talking about the
philosophical perspective. And so this also gives people
hope. Like if you're in a state of
chronic disease, you're dealing with insulin resistance or you
know, type 2 diabetes. You know, I can tell you that
red light on the back for 15 minutes at like 636 thirty five
nanometers lowers postprandial or post meal blood glucose by up
to 25. I think 25 to 35%.
No way. It's a crazy effect.
Now imagine if you were to stack that on every single day of your
life after a meal, right? You wouldn't have insulin
resistance. And what would be more
beneficial doing that you said red light on, on the where
exactly? It the study showed like a
flashlight size red light on the back, OK.
And they found that impact just from the flashlight size on the
back. And what would the impact be of
just being outside? It would probably be a
thousandfold, yeah, Because you're getting it all over the
body that, you know, those longer wavelengths like red and
infrared get into the tissues. They scatter in the tissues,
which means they get even deeper into the body.
Have. There been studies on that like
measuring blood sugar like with same meal but one under blue
light and one outdoors. There may have been, but I just
can't think of them right now. I do know that for sure that red
light study on on blood sugar regulation was a very powerful
effect. So we can't ignore that.
And I do believe that if somebody's eating under isolated
blue, that actually does dysregulate glucose homeostasis
along with insulin as well. So just imagine eating processed
stuff under processed light, the effect is going to be magnified.
Yeah. Double whammy junk food and junk
light that's. Not a good combo.
I want to do a deep dive on the benefits of sunlight at
different times of the day because there's sunlight, but
there's so many intricacies of sunlight and different
wavelengths that happen at different times.
So let's start with sunrise. What is going on at sunrise?
What types of rays are present? What benefits do they give us?
So sunrise is that's like the first domino that we push in
order to create circadian alignment with the spectrum.
You'll mostly find red and infrared longer wavelengths.
You do still find some UV and a little bit of the rest of the
spectrum, but it's not as pronounced because of the area
where the sun is in relation to how the light enters the
atmosphere. So because of something called
Rayleigh scattering, you get a lot more disbursement or negate
or a negation, if that's even a word, of the shorter wavelengths
like blue and green and all that.
But you allow more of the longer wavelengths to come through the
atmosphere, which means that you're basically getting pure
red and infrared light therapy at sunrise.
There's nothing more powerful than Sunrise so.
Is that better than using a red light device 100?
Percent better. Wow.
You can make the argument that for therapeutic use on a given
body part, photobiomodulation is probably better because of the
fact that you're just way closer to that body part.
But from a systemic perspective and a circadian one, it's
nothing compares like with AM Sunrise.
We're talking about priming the skin for upcoming UV through red
and infrared. You know these longer
wavelengths have an SPF effect. SPF of 15 on the skin.
Wait. What do you mean by that?
Basically, like, you know how we talk about SPF being quote UN
quote protective for the skin. Those longer wavelengths, when
you put them, when you are exposed to them via sunrise,
they create an inherent SPF factor.
How long does that last? In my opinion, I think it lasts
for the entire day. I can point to studies that show
that there's a synergistic effect between, you know, red,
infrared and UV. That's a different topic we can
get into later, but would. You have to go outside wearing
like a swimsuit in order to get those benefits.
Like if you're wearing, I don't know, full clothing and you go
outside in the morning and you get sunlight just on your face,
it's probably not going to provide that SPF 15 effect on
your, the skin on your body. Or does it?
I would, I would urge people to get more skin exposed.
More skin in the game is better, but the longer wavelengths, the
longer wavelengths, especially infrared, like near infrared can
actually penetrate clothing and they can penetrate multiple
layers of clothing too. So you can just be outside and
still get somewhat of that effect.
But I think for sunbathing specifically tolerating UV and
building your capacity, that's something where you need skin in
the game for sure. Yeah.
I know I'm I'm doing that like it's, it's a habit now where I I
go outside right away in the morning, but in the winter it's
like chilly. So I'm, I'm only like I'm fully
clothed. So I'm only getting it in my
eyes on my face, but which is fine by the.
Way, yeah, you can be layered up during winter.
I think the most important thing is that you get outside OK,
because you're still getting a an incredible amount of full
spectrum sunlight. The other day we were we had a
flight and I like didn't get my morning sunlight, but we were
flying out of Kauai. So like the airport is some of
the airports outdoors. So as we were checking in, I
like got a little bit of sunlight that was like poking
through and I'm just like basking in the sunlight like all
the time closing my eyes and pointing my face towards the
sun. My kids are like, mom, what are
you doing? That's embarrassing.
I'm like, I'm charging my battery right now.
Like I have to do this in order to get on this five hour flight.
Like that's going to drain my battery.
Like that's how I see it now. It's literally like I feel
charged from being in the sun and grounding and I can feel the
energy like draining when I'm indoors especially under blue
light. Now here's what's What's
interesting is that people would likely say that's a bit, but the
battery analogy is actually pretty accurate when you study
things like biological semiconduction,
piezoelectricity, flexoelectricity, that the human
body is essentially the most sophisticated circadian and
electromagnetic system out there.
Right, we're electric beings. And it works at the quantum
level at its most fundamental layer too.
So that's just another layer of complexity added on to it, which
is why people refer to like quantum biology or stuff like
that. But we have to appreciate the
miracle that we are. Yeah.
OK. So morning sun very important
for priming of the skin to get into midday sun later.
It's also super important for sleep, I would guess, right,
like getting that sun in your eyes first thing.
It stimulates the body to and stimulates all the the hormones
that we need to be awake and alert throughout the day so that
by the time it's night time, we are ready to go to sleep.
Anything else with morning sunlight that you would add
that's? A great point.
So the morning sunrise is basically the first part of the
the melatonin cycle. So every time you watch sunrise,
you regenerate the melatonin cycle, which means that when
you're out there during sunrise on the back end with sleep, you
fall asleep faster, you have deeper sleep, better sleep
architecture, all that good stuff it.
Works, it really works. People that have trouble
sleeping, I just like, I really want to encourage them to look
into this and start implementing some of this stuff.
It may sound like too simple or I don't know, just for whatever
reason, people are reluctant to think that this is important,
but it matters so much and it's hard to not fall asleep once
you're circadian rhythm. It's right.
It's like when it's time to sleep, you're sleepy and you
can't stay awake. That's the whole point of it,
right? That's how it should be.
Really quick before we dive in, we love getting your feedback.
So please take a second to leave a comment and tell us that your
favorite topics that we covered or guests that you want to see
on the show in the future. Also, by reviewing, liking and
subscribing, you'll never miss a single episode and we get to
keep providing you with this ad free podcast.
OK, without further ado, let's get back into it.
What about midday sun? What are the I feel like a lot
of people are taught to avoid midday sun.
That's a common narrative that I hear that you want to avoid the
sun during peak hours, but there's actually some benefits
of getting sun in the middle of the day as well as some cautions
I would say, right? So, so real quick before we get
into midday, let me also just one point on the morning sun
that's really powerful for people that most don't know
about. Your body contains aromatic
amino acids, OK? Those aromatic amino acids are
made of something called benzene rings structurally, which are
designed to absorb UV light. And so if you also get out for
UVA Rise. What does that mean?
What specifically UVA rice, that typically happens about an hour
after sunrise, but that's when UVA starts to come into the
atmosphere. And so, you know, mainstream
dermatology and medicine will demonize UVA and UVB.
But if you look at this from a a foundational perspective, those
benzene rings absorb UV to then undergo A transformation state
within each of those aromatic amino acids.
So there are three main ones that I'm talking about.
You have phenylalanine, you have tryptophan, and you have
histidine. I've heard of tryptophan.
Exactly. So when when UV light is
absorbed into phenylalanine, it turns into tyrosine, which then
becomes the precursor for T3T4, your thyroid hormones.
So it's very important for UVA rise.
If you have any thyroid, thyroid dysfunction, you need to be
outside during that time. And you said that's like an hour
after the initial season it. It depends on where you are, but
almost always an hour after sunrise.
And you can use like the the My Circadian app for free to
actually track the times. And then that also becomes a
precursor to dopa, dopamine, melanin, neuradrenaline,
adrenaline. So if we go down the list, you
have tryptophan, which gets turned into it, absorbs UV
light, gets turned into serotonin, which gets turned
into melatonin. OK.
And then histidine gets turned into like histidine.
Serotonin always a precursor for melatonin.
It's the, it's the end stage. So no, sorry, tryptophan,
serotonin, melatonin. So it's, it's that middle ground
that then gets turned into melatonin.
But I, I think what I'm trying to say for people is that UVA
rise is fundamental to your most important neurotransmitters and
hormones. You cannot ignore that.
This is first principles, circadian biology.
And I I think the demonization of UVA and UVB has been just an
utter disaster for public health.
Wow, OK. And I can feel the difference.
I think. I think I can feel what you're
talking about when you say that like when the UVA hits, like all
of a sudden it's like, oh, this is more, this is more powerful.
It's a. Hormonal activation, yeah.
And do you need that on your like on your whole body or does
that get taken in through the eye mostly?
How does that work? Eyes are always going to be most
important, OK? I'm not telling people to look
directly at the sun. Sun gazing is a different
subject, isn't? That's not good, right?
Or is it? It can be good if you do it
properly. Really, you have to build up to
it in the same way that to build a tan through midday exposure
done progressively. But we're just talking about
peripheral exposure, like when we're out here in the light's
bouncing everywhere in the environment, so you're naturally
getting UV and all this other stuff.
But yeah. But going outside, like, OK, so
when I'm assuming this is when the UVA hits because I'll go
outside right away and it it's nice, it feels good, but then it
gets stronger and that's when I will do what I was describing
earlier. Like I'll find some point during
that time to got a little visitor.
I'll find some point to close my eyes and just face the sun and
stand there. And that's when I feel like, OK,
my battery's charging. Like is that a good way to do
it? A. 100% and any way you can do
that it works because. Even the eyes closed I get like
that's fine. Even eyes closed.
Because you're charging your mitochondria, you're allowing
your mitochondria to be more efficient, produce more ATP,
more energy for you via the system, and you're you're
creating all these second and 3rd order benefits that just
can't be ignored. OK, I'm going to play this for
my kids who are making fun of me doing that in the airport and
tell them, see, this is all the important things that are
happening when I charge my batteries.
As long as you do it with unfiltered full spectrum
sunlight. Don't do it through gloss right.
Completely different game. Yes, OK.
What happens when we filter it through glass?
So modern life is basically epitomized by low emission glass
for, you know, energy efficiency purposes.
We want to make sure that we don't spend too much money on AC
and whatnot, but that glass is quite literally designed to like
alter the spectrum. So you get a dramatic reduction
in red and infrared, which are kind of like the balancing
forces in full spectrum sunlight.
And you have this phenomenon where you're basically isolating
UVA and blue light together and you're blocking most, almost all
of the UVB Depends on whether you're in a modern car, older
car, side window windshield, But you're you're creating the
environment for accelerated skin aging.
Yeah. That's what I was just thinking
and. You're increasing the risk of
skin cancer dramatically. Modern dermatology also knows
about this low emission glass because they have literature and
they also recommend that you avoid sunlight through glass so
they have a bit of it correct. They should be talking about
that more and not just avoiding the sun altogether.
Yeah. And, and you have that case
study that I've often referenced in my content, which is the
truck driver case study. I was just going to ask you
about that. Drove a truck for 28 years most
of his life and you can distinctly see half of his face.
That face the the altered spectrum through the window is,
you know, experiencing accelerated skin aging.
Collagen and Elastin have gone out the window completely gone
relative to his other side of the face, which is not getting
that direct. And people always blame the sun,
but they're missing the point that the sun is being filtered
through the glass. And so he's getting an
unbalanced light spectrum, I think you said of mostly blue
light. And UVA is what's making it,
making it through the glass. And so that's just blasting him
for decades and decades, accelerating his aging.
So the problem is not inherently with UV and blue light.
This is the key distinction. The problem is with the
disconnection of light wavelengths or.
Other, yeah. OK, exactly.
Because there's always a synergistic relationship between
the shorter wavelengths and the longer ones.
The Journal of Investigative Dermatology in 1998 has a study
on this. They showed that if you expose
specific cells to isolated UV, they end up becoming damaged.
But if you add near infrared, you precondition them with near
infrared and do that over multiple sessions.
The cytotoxic effects or cell toxic effects are removed
completely, which means that infrared is always balanced with
blue, UV is always balanced with red.
There's a synergistic relationship to them and the
whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
So the the first mistake people make is that they look at blue
in isolation or UV in isolation, especially with modern medicine,
and they extrapolate that and apply that to spectrum sunlight.
It's a completely different game.
Wow. OK.
So if if you're ever in a situation where it's not
possible to get morning sunlight for whatever reason, if you do
red light therapy in the morning, does that does that
have some positive effects in terms of prepping your skin for
the midday sun and reducing some of the potential negative
impacts that I don't that you could have if you didn't get any
morning sunlight or any any type of light in the morning?
It's not a perfect solution, but I think it's a pretty good
solution compared to doing nothing.
And in most, in most people's cases, I mean, they just, they
completely ignore the morning time and they just go into high
UV index conditions and then sunbathe.
And that's where you see the burns.
That's where you see manifestations of circadian
disruption in the skin. So it's not the sun that's
inherently causing things like melasma or hyperpigmentation,
it's the fact that you're circadian disrupted.
And considering that the skin is a circadian organ from the
epidermis to the hypodermis, that's a big problem because
you're you're you're manipulating function of things
like melanocytes and carotenocytes and all this other
stuff. OK, let's talk about midday sun.
What's happening with the rays in the middle of the day?
So that's when you have, let's say at noon, you have UVA and
UVB, the most demonized light wavelength ranges.
Both have a long list of health benefits.
It's actually astonishing. UVA stimulates nitric oxide in
the skin, which is a vasodilator, opens up the micro
and macrovasculature to then a lot more blood flow into the
system. So that's the one of the most
powerful things you can do for cardiovascular health and just
prevention of chronic disease and.
That's UVA. That's.
UVA, Both UVA and UVB activate the Ponce system, the pro opio
melanocortin system, which is found in the skin, found in the
brain mainly, but that is responsible for creating your
most powerful peptide hormones Beta endorphin cart.
These are opioid peptides that reduce pain, have analgesic
effects. The MSH family, melanocyte
stimulating hormone family you have alpha, beta gamma
melanocyte stimulating hormone. Those are anti-inflammatory.
You know what's also interesting?
Their appetite suppressants. So when you get into the GLP
conversation, I think that's that's a little interesting
segue. They also have a long list of of
health benefits that I can't remember, but that's.
Fascinating. I've never heard any of that.
I've only heard that UVA is responsible for vitamin D, but
you're talking about all these like peptides.
Do we make these peptides any other way or is it just from UVB
rays that we're able to create them in our systems so.
Just just a little adjustment there.
UVB is the only light waving range responsible for vitamin D.
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Did I say UVAUVAI? Think you said UVA but but
totally fine. UV in general activates the POM
C system so there's no differentiation that the body
has. But when it comes to the
different effects like UVB for vitamin D3, that's where you
have more of a targeted approach where you want to be out during
UVB if you need to make vitamin D.
Which we all do, right? Of course you you can't be out
at UVA or Sunrise and make vitamin D.
That's a completely different ball game.
Yeah, and UVB is also the ray that gives us a tan, right?
It's interesting because UVA kind of, I think UVA kind of
bronzes or or creates the color around the tan and then UVB like
solidifies the tan. I'm not sure how it's
differentiated. I haven't looked into it
recently, but both are responsible for tanning in
different ways. OK, OK.
So just to recap, UVA and UVB midday, the UVB is responsible
for vitamin D synthesis within the skin and then both UVA and
UVB together create or enable us to create all of these peptides
that are anti-inflammatory appetite suppressing.
UVA is responsible for nitric oxide production and without in
the absence of midday sun, we're not able to do any of that.
Is that true? They're they're uniquely
distinct to UV light, which is why I think it's kind of absurd
to demonize them right from the mainstream dermatology
perspective. Yeah, I was just thinking that's
a lot of benefits that people are missing out on.
Oh. I've I've got plenty of
contradictions according to the mainstream evidence.
Like you have evidence showing that UVA and UVB are great for
skin health. Like UV combined with blue light
in modern dermatology literature has been shown to actually
destroy the the bacteria responsible for acne.
I've heard that about blue light, but it has to be mixed
with. UV Well, the the research shows
that UVA with blue destroys the bacteria responsible for acne
and improves skin outcomes. Which is interesting because
modern dermatology says that the worst thing for my skin and my
skin health is UVA and UVB, right?
So that's one contradiction in the long list of contradictions
that we have to try to square away.
Right, yeah, so they're saying, they're saying like in
isolation, do this and it'll be good for your acne, but still.
But actually don't go out in the sun.
Yeah, and it's even more ridiculous because if you go to
to dermatology clinics, they will have devices with isolated
red, isolated infrared, isolated UVAUVB, blue light.
Yet on the other hand, they're going to demonize the full
spectrum that's made perfectly by God for a human species
that's circadian in nature. So again, that's another
contradiction. They also, you know, they,
they've also been shown to heal vitiligo with narrowband UVB.
And vitiligo, OK, that's like the white pigmentation, the
really light pigmentation that people can get on their skin.
Yeah, I think, I think it's just fundamentally a dysfunction of
melanocytes. So melanocytes create melanin.
And so if you have some sort of circadian disruption in the skin
and you impact melanocytes, which are under circadian
control, meaning they're meant to do certain things during the
day, certain things during the night, you can get some sort of
effect like vitiligo or melasma, hypo, hyperpigmentation.
So it just depends on the person themselves.
That is, that is wild, all of this.
I mean, like, and as you're talking about, I'm like, yeah,
I'd, I've experienced that. Like I, I feel like I am less
hungry when I'm outdoors versus when I'm indoors under
artificial light. And there's people who've taken
that to an extreme right and say like they they're like, what do
they call themselves? There's a term.
Or something. There's something else where
rich, maybe you can look that up.
People who like they get their food from oh.
Breathetarians. Maybe.
Breathetarians, yeah. It's something funny, but I
mean, obviously we also need food, but I think it's a, a good
thing to keep in mind if you, if you're someone who struggles
with like, you know, having a, a raging appetite, maybe you're
just not getting enough sun. Yeah, and I'm not, I'm not going
to demonize things like GLP one or GLP 2 or GLP three, you know,
medications. I think they have their place.
But we need to understand that there are fundamentals to this
game. And so there's a lot that people
can do that they have not been taught because all they're
they're, you know, shown is avoid sun where SPF, which by
the way, SPF is very interesting because.
I want to talk about SPF. SPF, even the lowest level SPF
15 blocks at least 90% of UVB. Again UVB is the only light
wavelength range responsible for vitamin D production.
So how are we going to produce an anti cancer,
anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, vitamin D hormone in the body if
we're using SPF religiously? That's SPF 15.
SPF 50 is like 9899% blockage of UVB.
And most sunscreens, chemical sunscreens.
They're really good at blocking UVB, but not necessarily
blocking. Good at blocking UVA and so I
want to talk to you about sunscreen We may have a little
bit of different opinions on sunscreen.
You know, we, we offer a sunscreen, it's a zinc oxide
based sunscreen. So it provides more of that
physical barrier. And how I see how I see it is I
am not someone who uses it religiously.
You know, it's one of our most popular products.
I think it, it has a place and I, I use it sometimes on myself
and my kids, but I'm not covering myself in SPF every
time I'm outside. Like far from it.
When we were just in Kauai, I think I used it twice out of the
whole, the, the 10 days we were there.
And it was for the purpose of convenience when I used it.
So like, if I'm out on the beach for a long time and I sense that
this is going to be like, too, I'm going to burn from being
outside this much, I'll apply a little bit to like, maybe my
shoulders, my chest, just the areas that I know that I'm
personally susceptible to sunburn.
And I don't put it on my. Well, yeah, I don't really put
it on my face because I'm usually wearing a hat.
And I'll put it on my children when I know they're kind of at
their threshold just so that we can continue to enjoy our day at
the beach. And I like zinc oxide because it
offers, like, that physical barrier.
So I almost see it as covering up like protective clothing in a
less effective way. Like obviously exactly like it
it sits on, it acts as an actual like physical blocking blocker
to the skin versus chemical sunscreens that absorb the rays
and undergo a chemical reaction in the skin, which has all these
carcinogenic byproducts. So I think sunscreen can be a
tool to use when needed, but I don't think that people should
rely on it and obsessively wear it either.
I, I think your take is more common sense.
I, I think number one, I'm always an advocate of physical
sunscreens when you haven't had had enough sun.
So, you know, clothing shade, that's by far the most effective
thing. I think it's not a problem to
use zinc oxide if it's infrequent and you understand
you, you have the circadian foundation at play.
So the big, the big, you know, area I.
Want to? I want to hear your take.
I take a very unconventional approach, but it's all based on
1st principle, circadian biology.
So again, I mentioned the morning time.
Well before we even get into that, I view sunbathing as a
training session. So you know, during a training
session, we use a principle known as progressive overload.
You don't immediately go into the gym as a novice and squat
215, whether it's back or front squat, because you're going to
hurt yourself. Progressive overload dictates
that you #1 warm up for the session.
That's what the AM sunrise serves as.
You're warming the skin up and preparing all the circadian
clocks in the skin to, you know, be prepared for UV to expect
upcoming UV. The midday UVUVA and UVB
exposure are the training session where you have to be
very, you know, intentional about it.
You have to be diligent. You just can't be dumb about it
because you're going to burn otherwise.
And then you do that consistently over time to then
build up your melanin, build up your capacity and ability to, to
spend more time in the sun. And then the night time is the
recovery phase. You don't build muscle in the
gym. You build muscle when you're
asleep, when growth hormone is activated and you're, you're
repairing. And so that, that midday portion
is like the stimulus for me to produce melanin and make D3 and,
and do all these good, great things.
But how many people know that? They don't know about the
morning. They don't know how to approach
them a day. They don't use progressive
overload. They don't know about night time
darkness. And like, you know, bright days
and dark nights, your skin doesn't repair itself, repair
itself comprehensively, unless you have dark nights,
Melanocytes, carotenocytes, you know, every layer of the skin is
designed to actually heal itself and regenerate.
DNA repair is supposed to happen fundamentally at night time.
But, you know, in a modern life where we're basically bombarded
with artificial light, you're not getting that repair.
And that's the problem that I fundamentally think about,
because people are just not educated on this.
So with sunscreen, what? Where do you what's your biggest
issue with people who aren't doing these things to prep their
skin in the morning? They're not getting the morning
sunlight and then they go out midday and slather sunscreen on
and think they're good to go. But what's the issue there?
There are a few problems that I have with sunscreen whether it's
conventional, you know chemical based or mineral based.
Number one, I think that we are creating some sort of alteration
to the spectrum in the same way that we are low emission glass.
So if you look at what you know these these ingredients are
designed to do, they're designed to block UVA and UVB, but then
there's an alteration to the full spectrum that happens as a
result of that, which is why I'm personally not an advocate of
blocking UVA and UVB unless through physical means.
So that's one thing most sunscreens don't touch blue
light, which is a short, high energy wavelength that
penetrates the skin. What impact does that have?
We don't have any research to show for it so.
Does zinc oxide block blue light?
I don't think zinc oxide is designed to block blue, only UV
and UVB from what I've seen. And so that's something to
consider, which is why I recommend infrequent use because
if you do the right circadian stuff and you have the right
principles in place, you build more melanin, which is a photo
protective, you know, strategy. You melanin, which is
responsible for the blacks and Browns in nature, blocks 99.9%
of UV, pheo melanin and lighter skin people around 20 to 40%,
which is why they need to be more intentional about this.
But you can avoid burns, you can get more time in the sun with
UV, You can have better outcomes across the board.
And I'm not speaking as someone who's, you know, thinking about
this more theoretically. I'm practically A clinician
without any of the titles to my name because I work with people
one to one as well. I've gotten redheads to the
point where they don't burn at all and they can spend more time
under UV. No way.
Redheads, the most susceptible skin type to burning.
How do we burn that? We just religiously focus on
that AM priming, you know, at least 20 to 3040 minutes.
We microdose midday UV and then you build up progressively
progressive overload at its finest.
And then during night time you make it really dark.
You have LOLUX incandescents, you have fire light, you have no
artificial blue light, which would then disrupt the skin and
disrupt that DNA repair process. So all of this just points to
hormesis. Are you familiar with hormesis?
Same thing with sauna, same thing with exercise, same thing
with cruciferous vegetable intake.
But The thing is, I don't see mainstream dermatologists or
mainstream authorities putting billboards up about how
dangerous, you know, broccoli is or how dangerous squats are or
sauna use. So it's it's just ridiculous
from my perspective. I love that analogy of seeing
the midday sun as like the training session and the morning
sun as the warm up and then night time as the recovery.
What What about sunset? What type of rays are present at
sunset and is it important to be outside during that time?
I strongly recommend it just because I think most people are
gravitated towards it like they gravitate towards the sunset.
You know, it's funny, we demonize the sun all the time,
but when it comes to sunrise or or sunset, everyone's flocking
to observe full spectrum light at its finest.
So the spectrum is kind of similar to sunrise to be honest.
Almost identical. You have mostly red and infrared
orange yellow. But again, the sunset is
different from a circadian timing perspective because the
body is is basically receiving that that spectrum and preparing
for endogenous melatonin production from the pineal
gland. So it's almost like a signal to
start and prepare for for nighttime darkness, whereas
morning sunrise is a is a signal to prepare for the daytime.
I've noticed too that if I do, if I wake up in the middle of
the night, which doesn't happen as much anymore, but used to
happen, sometimes I'd wake up, couldn't go back to sleep.
And I found that if I used a red light device, I would fall back
asleep. But I think I've also, I've
heard you or someone say that red light can inhibit melatonin.
Is that a thing? Or maybe it was.
Yeah, I thought I heard that from somewhere.
And then I was like, huh, That doesn't match up with my
experience of I feel like it puts me to sleep.
On one hand, I think the lux levels, lux is just a reference
to light intensity. Melatonin suppression is
fundamentally about light intensity along with spectrum of
light. So the spectrum of light is not
a problem from a photobiomodulation perspective
at night, but it's a light intensity that I think could
potentially disrupt melatonin. It may be more sensitive
individuals, but either way I think you know if it's working
for you, just keep doing it as long as you're not shining any
artificial blue light at yourself.
No, definitely not. Outside of prepping your skin
with morning sunlight, what else can we do to prevent sunburns?
Again, progressive overload applied to like you need to
really understand how much UVA and UVB you can handle.
Yeah, the, the thing that people ask me all the time is like, OK,
what should I do in the event that I'm about to burn?
The point is to prevent yourself from being in the situation
where you're close to burning. That's the entire point of why
we use physical protection, whether it's clothing shade.
The way I approach summertime, for example, is I sunbathe in
very high UV index environments with the circadian line
framework, but I seek shade and I seek sun.
I go back and forth. Now, some people don't have the
ability to spend as much time outside as me, say lighter skin
people, but I do think that they can actually build up to that
point. So, you know, seeking sun and
seeking shade is a fundamental that every animal on the planet
that's diurnal does. So we just have to really
connect with our intuition on that end and then implement a
lot of the other circadian lining principles.
What's your take on sunglasses? Are sunglasses making people
more susceptible to sunburns? Yes.
It's not conspiracy theory. It's not woo.
When you wear sunglasses, you're blocking peripheral UV light
from entering into the eyes, which then gets to various areas
in the brain like the hypothalamus, pituitary, and
funny enough, the pumsy system. You're preventing UV light from
hitting the Ponzi system, which then produces alpha MSH and beta
and gamma MSH, which produce melanin, which is
photoprotective. So you're preventing your body
from making melanin by wearing sunglasses, which is it's.
Harder to get tan with sunglasses then.
Theoretically maybe, but I don't know.
I haven't seen if if people can tan with sunglasses on, but I do
know that it increases risk of of burns for sure.
And the thing about this is that the the skin, eyes and brain are
one unit they they're referred to as neuro ectoderm, which
means that when you're an embryo in your mother's womb, all three
of those things are made of the same tissue fundamentally.
So there's a bi bi directional relationship between all three
of those elements in the body. The.
Skin, brain and eyes. And so whatever you do to impact
light getting into the eyes will have an impact on the brain and
the skin. Whatever you do to impact light
on the skin will have an impact on the brain and the eyes, so
there's a bi directional relationship there.
How does diet influence our susceptibility to sunburn?
I think it's common sense. I think you don't want to be a
consuming inflammatory fats because they're going to create
chronic inflammation in your system.
If you are chronically inflamed, then you're likely to, you know,
more likely to burn from something as powerful as UVA and
UVB. Yeah, but I don't think you have
to be religious about avoiding seed oils per SE.
I think if you're 80 to 90% of the way there, then you're
totally fine because I've worked with people who, you know, have
that 10 to 20% in there, but they don't burn because again,
there are things more fundamental to this work, which
is why I place light above nutrition from a hierarchy
perspective. At the end of the day, where
does your food come from? Photosynthetic reaction,
photosynthesis. So I, I think light and in the
circadian stuff is fundamental because it's a foundation upon
which the body works. Every organs, cell tissue in the
body is controlled by circadian mechanism.
So. Yeah, I know.
I I'm, I'm starting to feel that way more and more the more that
I try to align myself with the sun.
I'm like, this is big. Like people are missing this.
They understand that food matters.
They understand that exercise matters.
They don't understand how much the sun matters.
And. They don't understand that the
sun and the light and dark cycle control exercise and food.
OK, tell me more. You know, you can change your
you can change your reaction to a certain food through blood
sugar and insulin by simply changing the light environment.
Again, red light can lower postprandial blood glucose.
If I put you under isolated blue light at night, you're going to
get a dramatically increased rise in blood sugar and then
insulin as a result. Insulin, for example, is not
supposed to be active at night. You're not supposed to be eating
at night. And that's a very controversial
take, but. Well it can suppress melatonin,
right? Exactly.
That's why I've noticed when I fast for an entire day I fall
asleep. So easily and I sleep so well
and I don't need as much sleep. I feel just as rested on 6 hours
of sleep than I would on 8 hours of sleep when I fasted.
And is that just because my melatonin levels are off the
charts because my insulin is lower?
I'd say so. I think that's a big part of it,
reduction in inflammation and whatnot.
But also like exercise is controlled by circadian
mechanisms. All of your muscles, all of your
tendons, ligaments, they all have circadian clocks.
So like, which one? Which one gets placed higher in
the hierarchy? Is it the exercise for its own
sake? Or do we look deeper into how
circadian mechanisms control the function of your ligaments,
tendons, bones, all that stuff? Wow.
OK, what do you think about polypodium?
Have you heard of that? Never heard of that.
OK, so it's a supplement and I interviewed a dermatologist who
has a product that has this as the main ingredient, but it's a
it's from a Fern or a plant in the Amazon rainforest.
And tribes would take this before like a long voyage
because it would prevent them from burning.
It would make their skin more resilient to the sun.
I've been taking it. I feel like it makes a
difference too. It's natural.
Yeah. Throw it in there.
What? No.
Can't hurt as. Long as it prevents you from
burning, I think it's a good idea.
How? OK, you've said that you can
get, you've worked with redheads that are able to withstand
midday sun and not burn. Like how long can they go out
for before they would burn? Look, there's always going to be
a limit, Yeah. Because because lighter skin is
fundamentally evolved for higher latitude, less UV light, it's
actually designed to absorb more UV light more efficiently.
That's the interesting thing about lighter skin.
So you have to kind of, you have to play around with it and be,
you know, more intentional, but. So lighter skin people with
lighter skin can get the same benefits with less sunlight.
Would that be fair? Yes.
So especially on a vitamin D, you know, perspective you
melanin is interesting in darker skin people, you know people who
have the caramel tan or African Americans because it is a very
effective photoprotective agent. Melanin is the most incredible
ubiquitous natural biological polymer in existence.
It blocks 99.9% of UV light and dissipates it as heat which is
why darker skinned people need to spend more time in UVB to
make more vitamin D3. And, and I mean, we can get into
melanin if you want I. Do want to?
That's you need to understand that there's always a limit to
to this. Like you don't want to exercise
for six hours on end because that's going to lead to, to more
damaging outcomes. You don't want to sleep for too
long because that also leads to damaging outcomes.
So there's always a balance here.
Yeah, let's talk about melanin a little bit, because I've always
thought of melanin as just an inconsequential, I don't even
know what what would what is it? What would you call it?
A protein, a substance, A biological polymer.
OK. Yeah, I've always thought of it
as just something that determines either how light or
how dark you are. The amount of melanin determines
your skin color. I had no idea until recently
that there are actually so many benefits to building up melanin
in the skin. Can you talk about some of
those? So #1 Photoprotective, the most
powerful photoprotective polymer in existence #2 it's
anti-inflammatory. This is all stuff in the
literature. So if the dermatologists want
to, you know, have a little fit and come at me.
I mean, this is stuff that we can find in the scientific
literature. It's anti venom in some cases.
What? Yep, it's how.
Is the anti venom? I don't know how it specifically
works, I haven't looked into it, but I do know for a fact it is
anti venom. Like venom has less of an effect
on you if your skin is more melanated.
That's, that's the theoretical conclusion.
I would say here's a guess. Melanin would probably be able
to sequester venom and, and hold onto it and bind to it because
melanin has an interesting ability to actually bind to
heavy metals as well. It is a heavy metal sink.
This can either work for you or against you if you're exposed to
a lot of heavy metals. So it is, it is a, a fundamental
detox strategy. Getting tan will reduce the
amount of negative load that things like cadmium or mercury
or aluminum would have on your system because it holds on to it
and excretes it in a, in a more in a, in a slower pace.
So maybe, maybe that's some effect when it comes to the anti
venom aspect. That's wild.
I hadn't heard that until a few days ago listening to you.
And then I guess I just had on also said that Candy Frazier was
talking about it. I'm like, I just learned about
this. Why aren't more people talking
about this, this, That's, that's amazing because.
It goes against the narrative, that's why.
And you know, other benefits, anti-inflammatory, antiviral,
antimicrobial, anti venom, heavy metal detox.
What what what else is there? There's a whole bunch of
benefits to melanin as a polymer and it goes to this point like,
you know, melanin is not a sign of skin or DNA damage.
It's a very reductive and dead philosophy in my mind because it
doesn't take into account circadian biology, doesn't take
into account the holistic, you know, perspective on the, the
human body as a system at large. And it ignores the fact that OK,
UVA and UVB do create mutations, thyme and dimers.
But on the back end it also, you know, circadian alignment also
employs things like nucleotide excision repair.
It's a DNA repair process. It's a hormetic process that's
designed to occur. And also things like vitamin D3
also designed to, you know, improve NER and all these other
DNA repair processes. So.
So it's safe to say that having a tan is a sign of health.
Of course, but again, I think there's also context to it in
the sense that you don't want to tan via tanning booth or tanning
bed because that's a different outcome that I do think
increases risk of of skin cancers for other reasons.
Not by the mere nature of the fact that you have more melanin,
but by the fact that you are, you know, blasting yourself with
isolated UV without any of the balance spectrum.
You're creating circadian disruption.
DNA repair doesn't work as it should.
All this other stuff, yeah. We've all heard statistics like
if you had more than 10 sunburns as a child, you will be 4000
times more likely to get skin cancer as a result.
Is there any truth to that? And how bad are sunburns,
really? I think the greatest way to lie
to the public is through the statistics that, for example,
that you just mentioned, that's an observational, it's it's
purely an observational stat. Even as a kid, I remember my mom
saying that to me because I think those types of stats were
floating around a lot in the 90s.
And I just remember thinking, how do they know that?
Like, is that, is that real? Like even as a child that that
just like, didn't sit right with me well.
Wouldn't we all be dead? Exactly.
Like it just doesn't make sense from a hormatic and evolutionary
and circadian perspective. So again, that's an
observational end point. Like they're, they're concluding
that and they're, they're making it seem as more of a truth than
it actually is. It's a fear tactic.
Some people, they just don't
know about it. Some people I think are more
nefarious. But again, we have to consider
that mainstream medicine and dermatology's philosophy is
largely built on associational findings, observational studies,
flawed studies like using isolated UV on a nocturnal
animal such as a rat, which is not designed to get UV during
the day. Isolated UV is not the same
thing as UV balance within the full spectrum.
And again, like a nocturnal animal, like a mouse or a rat
has different skin function or repair cycles, meaning it's
completely inverted, right? Which is just like, why are you
using that to extrapolate onto human beings, which are
circadian? Yeah, you.
Can't use a nocturnal animal to draw conclusions about humans
too. They often use hairless albino
mice to conclude these things and then, you know, make these
large statements. That's bizarre.
What do we know about albino creatures is that they're most
susceptible to burning, especially under Iceland UV.
So what do people actually need to be cautious about when it
comes to interacting with the sun wisely and just having a
healthy respect for the sun and the damage that it can
potentially 'cause? I, I think we have to
fundamentally they have to view solar exposure in sunbathing
from a more high level viewpoint.
So you have to consider the morning sunbathing because if
you don't prime your skin and create that circadian alignment,
then you leave more potential for burns and negative outcomes.
The the one thing we have to understand about circadian
clocks is that they quite literally determine function,
repair and regeneration of every cell, skin and and organ in your
body in a time dependent manner. So that is such an important
thing because it tells us that we have to do everything
sequentially. You have to watch the sunrise,
you have to watch UVA rise, even if just for 2025 minutes.
And then you have to micro dose and understand your current
context with skin type and whatnot and slowly and
progressively build up from there so that you don't burn in
the same way that you know you don't, you don't squat £250 off
of your back straight out the gate.
You start with maybe 50, you start with then go to 60 and 65
and then you know the nighttime darkness as well.
But I, I want people to understand that SPF is not a get
out of jail free card as well. There are other things I'm a big
fan of informed consent, which means that I'm going to try to
give you as much valuable information so that you can make
an informed decision. That's what doctors have, you
know, That's, that's what the entire profession is built off
of. The Hippocratic Oath first, do
no harm. But I, I think a lot of a lot of
people are not getting that from their medical professionals.
Yeah. And sunscreen is technically a
drug product. The FDA labels it as a drug.
And so I think we need to like, think about that a little bit.
And it shouldn't be it shouldn't be our only line of defense.
There's way more to the equation.
What about sun on the face? OK, so I'm, you know, I'm pretty
in line with everything that you're saying, like an
alternative view on interacting with the sun.
I still feel like I need to protect my face.
I'm really diligent about doing that by just almost always just
wearing a hat. That's kind of what I do if I'm
out exposed to like. Midday harsh rays of sun.
What are your thoughts on that? Do you feel like sun aging in
the face is something that is overblown?
Do you feel like it's a real thing?
And people do need to be mindful of that if they from an aging
standpoint, not necessarily a health standpoint, because where
I'm coming from it as I don't want accelerated aging in the
skin on my face. And I also get lots of exposure
on my body. So I'm like, you know, the
surface area wise, I'm like synthesizing more vitamin D and
all the other things like happening on the surface area of
my whole body. And so if I protect my face, I
feel like I'm not losing out on those benefits.
But what's your take on that? Yeah.
No problem. I think that if you if you want
to do that, just just understand that it's not inherently the sun
that's causing any aging. I mean, look at a certain point
life causes aging. So of course sun has some degree
of acceleration when it comes to, you know, you have telomere
length and all this other stuff that naturally occurs as a
result of, of being alive. But the, the whole photo aging
narrative is kind of like the skin cancer narrative where
you're just using a lot of flawed assumptions and that ends
up creating an epistemology or knowledge base that is also
inherently flawed. And that on the back end when
you start to recommend things based off of that philosophy, it
creates iotrogenic heart. And I think the the modern
public needs to understand what iotrogenesis is, and that's harm
that is caused by the recommendation or intervention
of a medical professional in 20. 16.
In 2016, it was the third leading cause of death and
Harvard ran that study and they found that it was basically the
third leading cause of death behind like cancer and and heart
disease. What?
Was happening in 2016. I don't know specifically, it's
probably higher now, to be honest, after the whole pandemic
situation. But we need to understand that
medical professionals are not God.
And their medical curriculum is guided by a, a philosophy that
is reductive in nature. That stems from something called
the the Flexner Report in the 1910 and that was inherently
biased by individuals like JD Rockefeller, who had a a very
clear interest in creating petroleum based drugs.
So, you know, people want to get into the conspiratorial aspect
of things. That's probably the biggest
confirmed conspiracy out there, and there's no debate on that.
And I think that that's why medical curriculums don't have
circadian mechanisms at the heart of their education.
Yeah. Well, we talked about this a
little bit before we started recording and I feel like it
just makes sense that Big Pharma would want us to be disconnected
from the Sun because of all of the benefits that the Sun
provides us. Because we will be more weak, we
will be more dependent on other pharmaceuticals and the people
at the top, they are not looking out for our well-being.
Like I, I think that people need to understand that I'm not
saying the whole medical system is bad and every doctor is bad
by any means, but the people that created that system, they
are more interested in making money than in us being healthy.
And I think if we can like look at all of this from that lens
and from the lens of, you know, nature knows best, God knows
best. We can't outsmart the the
world's that we live in and we need to learn how to work with
it and not against it. Exactly.
I think it's just profit motive. We have to understand that if if
companies are incentivized to do a specific thing, they're going
to do it for their own interest. So, you know, there's, there's
nuance of the whole pharmaceutical discussion, but I
think that if we could get people into more of the
heliotherapy mindset and we can understand that circadian
alignment is the foundation of this work.
I, I can only think about the crazy amount of outcomes that
can happen. I mean, just imagine how much
money this would save hospitals. How much money would you save on
the back end of, you know, discharging someone 2345 days
earlier? It's a lot of money to be, to be
saved. And so I think a lot more
doctors will start to be hip to this and then hopefully
hospitals and the larger entities would would start to
pick up on it. Bring back the Sundex.
Exactly. You know, there are doctors like
Rodger, say Hold who have been doing great work on this.
He started studying like near infrared and its impact on
mitochondria during the pandemic.
And Dr. Abboud Bakti, who's who's a good friend of mine, you
know, starting to pick up. How is this information
received? You know, you say a lot of what
we talked about online on your social media, like how do people
react to it? How does the dermatology field
react to the information that you put out there?
What's the response? From the public who's more
interested in health, especially regenerative health.
I mean, they're, they're all for it.
They think honestly, people just brave about it from what I've
seen. But once you start to get into,
you know, the, the mainstream landscape, I think that you
either have somebody who opens their eyes and, and starts to
open their ears and listen a little bit more to learn, or you
just have people who completely shut you out because they're,
they've just swallowed the narrative hook, line and sinker.
And so the, the thing I think that's important to understand
about paradigms, which is basically a web of beliefs, is
that people will die to defend the paradigm.
And then there's a classic quote that says that every, I think
every scientific advancement occurs one funeral, funeral at a
time. And that's because people hold
on to their beliefs, especially people in the scientific
community, so much so that they actually have to end up dying
for the belief to, like, start going away.
And it's not to say we wish death upon people, of course,
but it's just a natural consequence of changing
philosophies. Yeah.
I think I heard you talking about on another podcast, the
the person who was like the first person to say, hey, maybe
we should start washing our hands as doctors from when we're
like dealing with a, a super sick patient to then like going
to deliver a baby, like maybe it's a good idea to wash our
hands. And people thought that this
individual was absolutely insane.
And it wasn't until he or she, I don't know who it was, passed
away that later this became common knowledge.
That's it's, it's the timeless case in history that always
happens. And I think that from my
perspective, my work, like I am a heretic right now, especially
against mainstream dermatology and I think the larger medical
community, but I love it because I like to have a chip on my
shoulder. And I think that number one, I'm
not theorizing this based off of no evidence.
Circadian biology is like the strongest evidence available to
human beings, so. Why is it so important to have
adequate levels of vitamin D? It is.
I mean it's an incredible hormone.
You have the fact that it's anti cancer.
I think that's one of the most important ones by far.
When you have adequate levels of vitamin D, you actually activate
processes like autophagy and apoptosis.
Autophagy being like the the cellular recycling process in
your body where you take a dead organelles and you transfer them
into new parts of cells and stuff and then.
Vitamin D activates that, yes. Apoptosis is also activated by
vitamin D. Apoptosis being programmed, cell
death or senescence so. If you have enough vitamin D on
a consistent basis, those processes are just going to be
happening all the time. Yes, and what's also interesting
is that all anti cancer defense systems in your body are under
circadian control. That's something the
dermatologist don't want to talk about.
That's another reason where I feel like the system knows this.
Like on some level someone knows this and they don't want us to
get it because they want us to buy their drugs.
Could be, could very well be a. Lot of money to be made in
people with vitamin D deficiency.
Yeah, and you know, vitamin D has a long list of benefits,
anti-inflammatory as well antiviral.
But I think the most important thing people need to understand
is that there's not one form of vitamin D.
You have over 20 plus metabolites of vitamin D that go
through different half lives are stored differently.
And what's interesting is that you always hear that vitamin D
is a fat soluble hormone right within those 20 plus
metabolites. They're also water soluble
versions. What?
So when doctors or pediatricians say that you can't get vitamin D
into your infant through breastfeeding, if you sunbathe,
you're getting it into the into your infant through those
different metabolites. If the mom sunbathes or if OK or
if. Baby sunbathes.
I'm a big advocate of sunbathing baby.
I mean, I've, I've made a lot of content on that really.
Yes. How do you do that in an
appropriate way for a baby? Same concept as adults, but a
lot more intentional, more so a focus on AM priming.
You're not going to burn in the morning.
There's no appreciable amount of UV and then literal micro doses
of UVA and UVB initially because they have more sensitive skin
and then very strict on the night time darkness.
And then you do that progressively.
And I will say my son, blue eyed blonde, dirty blonde hair, light
skin has never burned in his life.
And he he can withstand higher UV index conditions.
Wow. And I've seen other parents do
the same thing once they implement this.
So wow, it's another. Layer that's going to blow a lot
of people's minds and. By the way, in the early 1900s,
you also had government recommendations in the 1931 from
the US Department of Labor's Child's Bureau on how to
actually properly sunbathe your child.
No way. We don't find that anymore these
days. We've gone backwards, I'm
convinced. Is it possible to make vitamin D
via cold exposure? So so this gets into an
interesting concept that not many people know about, but
vitamin D is a cyclical process. I, you know, I am all for
vitamin D being higher, you know, above 60 milligrams per
per deciliter or whatever it is year round.
If you want, if you can get it, you know, you're at the equator,
but don't feel ashamed if it goes down low during the winter
time. But here's the thing, my
perspective on vitamin D acquisition is that you build up
a lot, you store it in the body fat during the, during the
summertime and during spring. And then keep in mind you're
storing all these different metabolites, you use that
heading into the winter time and that's where I think you take
advantage of things like cold exposure, which is able to
create biophotons. Otherwise light from made from
within in the UVB range, which is hypothesized to interact with
sulfated cholesterol, which is then either hypothesized to be
able to make vitamin D or just maintain baseline levels.
So biophoton production, that's not pseudoscience.
It's something that's been tracked since the, you know,
early 1930s forties. You make light from within
that's, you know, in the infrared UV range and, and other
different spectrums. So that's just as a general
result of systemic function in cellular processes.
Is vitamin D supplementation actually doing anything for
people? In most cases I'd say no.
I think you can make the case that if someone's extremely
deficient you can start them off on a few thousand I us and then
get them into sunbathing. But I'd say in most scenarios
it's probably useless because of the fact that you're not
considering the metabolites, you're not considering UVB
exposure, and you're just not taking into account in the
circadian stuff. OK, when it comes to meals and
food timing, why does food timing matter?
If someone's eating healthy, does it matter when they're
eating their meals? How would you recommend that
people eat in alignment with the sun?
Yeah, circadian meal timing is a big thing for me.
So I'm exclusively a fan of eating during the day and not
eating at night. And that's very controversial
because a lot of people like to eat food at night.
But if we look at the body as a circadian system, food is a
zeitgever. So it's an external circadian
cue, like light, like temperature, like all these
other things. And I can make the argument that
you can turn yourself into a type 2 diabetic simply by eating
late night meals, even if it's high quality food.
Like we need to understand that meal timing is under circadian
control, which means that insulin, blood glucose,
homeostasis, pancreatic function all under circadian control.
So for example, when it's night time, nightfall occurs, you have
to start producing melatonin and melatonin binds to pancreatic
beta cells. There's M, there's Mt one, and
there's Mt 2. There's two different types.
Mt 1 is more responsible for shutting down insulin
production. Mt 2 is more so responsible for
creating that circadian alignment within tissues.
And so if you have insulin coming into the picture, you're
not allowing that to happen, which means that you're eating
when your body is not primed to produce insulin.
That's a big problem because that leads to insulin
resistance. And, you know, there's plenty of
research on this showing that people have worse outcomes if
they eat at night. People have better outcomes if
they eat if they eat earlier in the day.
I just think it's one of those things that people are leaving
on the table for sure. How should people think about
light exposure when traveling across time zones?
Same concepts apply. So you know you're going to
create circadian disruption through travel.
You need to be very diligent about watching sunrise when you
land in your area, either the day of or the next morning.
You need to ground because grounding also has a circadian
lining benefit. And then you need to make sure
you're strict on the night time darkness, you're using infrared
rich light sources indoors, all the same stuff that you know,
we've been talking about. Is jet lag mostly a sleep
problem or is it an A light problem?
Both. It's a circadian disruption
problem, and so circadian disruption lends itself to sleep
outcomes and also to light. What's your take on daylight
savings time? Terrible.
I think it's, it's creating chronic circadian disruption in
people, which is why you you see these trends or associations
between moving the clock forward or backward.
I forgot what specifically it is.
And then, you know, people having more heart attacks in
the, in the season following or, or something of that nature.
So I didn't. Know that.
Yeah, I don't, I don't know the exact correlation, but it it is
a real thing. And I do think that ultimately I
think we need to align ourselves with the light and dark cycle.
That means during summer you have longer light cycles.
During winter you have longer dark cycles.
But all I see is people loving the summer and complaining about
the winter. It's again, we're cyclical,
seasonal creatures. We have to like, work with
nature as opposed to trying to, you know, brute force our way
around it. I was determined to reject
daylight savings this year. I'm like, I'm not going to get
on this, this, this new time. It's fake.
It's not real. I'm just kind of like, if it's
11:00 at night, like quote 11:00, I'm going to, I'm going
to pretend that it's actually what what is the actual time?
I'm getting mixed up now in daylight savings time.
If it's eleven, it's really, it's really midnight, right?
I think so. Yeah, yeah.
So it's like, yeah, it totally throws us off.
So I was determined to just reject it and stay on the actual
time. And I made it like a couple of
weeks and then I think I started forgetting about it and I was
like on daylight savings time. Yeah, it's.
But it's brutal. It's.
Tragic because I think we're trying to just, we're trying to
create a convenient system, but it just ends up biting us, you
know, on the back end of things. Just doesn't work and it creates
terrible outcomes. Yeah.
All right, I want to close this out with some rapid fire sure.
Thoughts on perennial sunbathing?
Interesting trend. Not necessary.
If you sunbathe on with most of your body exposed, your
perennium is going to get the benefits of that.
What about topless sunbathing for women to reduce breast
cancer risk? Huge.
I mean the the one of the greatest things a woman can do
to reduce breast cancer risk, because not only are you
creating vitamin D systemically and getting all these other
benefits like infrared, we didn't even go through the
different spectrums of light that the sun offers at ground
level, but you're also creating a powerful effect locally.
So the mitochondria in the breasts are working as they
should. The opsins non visual
photoreceptors there are working as they should.
The melon in there is working as it should.
And so if you start to, you know, if you cover yourself up
most of the time, as most women do, then I think you create the
conditions for some sort of local manifestation.
Interesting, have you seen any studies comparing countries that
regularly do topless sunbathing versus like America and there is
there a difference in breast cancer rates?
Not specifically, but the general comparison I think is
there. You you'll find that latitude is
a very strong predictor of, of chronic disease.
So you have a lot less, you know, rare degenerative
diseases. Yeah, diseases closer to the
equator. But as you move higher in
latitude, you find more type 2 diabetes, you find more heart
disease, cancer, all that stuff. Yeah, makes sense.
Is indoor blue light aging our skin more rapidly than the sun?
Yes, because it's creating circadian disruption in the skin
barrier. It's destroying the mitochondria
in the skin barrier, destroying the opsins in the skin barrier
along with the melanin. And so you are, you're creating
the conditions to accelerate aging because you're destroying
all the cells associated with the skin fibroblasts, collagen,
elastin, melanocytes, carotenocytes.
Again, there are three main layers to the skin barrier.
You have the epidermis, the dermis, and the hypodermis.
All of those can contain, you know, some form of opsin or
mitochondria. And again, if you destroy the
mitochondria within a given body part, you're going to destroy
that body part. I didn't ask you about this
earlier, but are you a fan of the yellow lens glasses for
looking at a computer screen during the day?
I think they're a good option if somebody wants to do it, but I
personally don't do it. I have AF dot LUX on my
computers OK, which is a free software that basically reduces
the blue. Yeah, I've seen that.
What's the worst light habit that you see everybody doing?
Phone at night in bed. Definitely the worst in this day
and age. Driving a car at night is
terrible because the headlights, I mean, they're just awful when
it comes to ocular health. And yeah, just sun avoidance.
Avoiding the sun is on par with, you know, using your phone right
up to your face at night. What's one thing that anyone who
cares about their long term skin health should stop doing
tomorrow? Cares about their long term long
term skin health. Stop getting sun through low
emission glass onto your skin. Eat eat nutrient dense food.
Eat more DHA and EPA from, you know, whole, whole seafood
sources. Stay away from most of the
makeup, conventional makeup and you know all that, all the
moisturizers and stuff, stuff that's right up your alley.
Make sure to catch sunrise because that's the ultimate red
and infrared therapy. Again, photobiomodulation is
unparalleled when it comes to skin health.
And also fun fact, red and infrared have been shown to
increase collagen, elastin, hyaluronic acid in the skin.
Nice. So.
Great advice. What does your ideal day of
light exposure actually look like?
Probably. I mean, today, honestly, in the
morning, I spent about an hour, hour and a half watching
sunrise, getting my steps in, listening to some soccer news
because I'm a big soccer guy. And, you know, a little bit of
midday sunbathing. Although the UV index is low,
it's like out of 3 here in Southern California.
So I'm not too focused on sunbathing from that
perspective. But I work a lot outside under
shade because I'm getting infrared and all these other
wavelengths as well. And then nighttime darkness.
Strict dark mode. At night all the tech is on red
mode. You can either do it through
something called 1 taps app.com or you can do it manually and
then candles lolux incandescents early to bed before 10:00 PM.
Great, love it Zaid, thank you for being here.
This was so good. I knew this was going to be
good. I appreciate your time.
Where can people find you and learn more about circadian
biology? At Zaid K Dahaj, so ZAIDKDAHAJ
on all platforms, mainly Instagram X.
We also have the 2:00 AM podcast, which is a more
eclectic conversate conversation platform.
And then the sub stack is more long form when it comes to all
this stuff we've been talking about so.
Circadian classroom on sub stock.
OK, amazing. Thank you so much.
Thank you.