Kind: captions
Language: en
you took calories out of it you took bmi
out of it that
calorie for calorie bmi for bmi there
was less risk for diabetes less risk for
hypertension in the vegan group compared
to the non-vegetarian group
dr roger schwelt welcome to the show
thanks tom it's great to be here i knew
that vitamin d was important and people
ask me if phi supplement and admittedly
i do if i'm not getting direct sunlight
but i've always had a suspicion that
there's more going on than the isolated
vitamin d i was just like ah sunlight
probably hitting your skin is better
than supplementing so i tried not to
supplement
but i didn't have any evidence that
there actually is something going on
until i encountered you
so
what is it going on in sunlight that is
more than vitamin d oh wow there's a lot
going on in sunlight there are two
aspects that light really helps us
there's the light that comes in through
our eyes
and that has a tremendous impact on mood
and on our circadian rhythm and we could
spend a long time talking about that
but there's another aspect of light that
we're just starting to learn about there
was a great research paper that was just
recently published by a couple of
authors uh dr russell reiter who is very
esteemed he's actually the editor of the
journal melatonin
and um a physicist which was very
shocking for me that it is generated in
the skin by sunlight i always thought it
is the go to sleep exactly
and uh and another guy by the name of
scott uh zimmerman and what they are
showing what what they're essentially
saying here is that we know without a
shadow of death we have the data that
shows that melatonin
is number one a a huge antioxidant it's
more powerful than than vitamin e it's
actually is melatonin is it a hormone it
it's in a sense it is because we know
that it's secreted by the pineal gland
and it goes into the circulation at
night and we know that
looking at light
at night can shut that down and that's
not a good thing but melatonin is a very
very powerful antioxidant and it's made
in the mitochondria of our cells at
orders of magnitude higher than what we
would get in in the pineal gland in the
brain
and so
what they're proposing in this based on
the data and the biological
data that they've seen
is that specifically near infrared
radiation so what is near infrared
radiation that sounds scary
it's it's a portion of the of the energy
coming from the sun
which comes through the atmosphere much
better than ultraviolet uh radiation by
the way and it comes through the
atmosphere better comes through the
atmosphere better so
let's back up a little bit
there the sun
is giving off radiation and it and it's
from shortwave all the way to longwave
one aspect of that broad spectrum is a
very narrowed area called visible
spectrum that's where we see red green
you know the colors of the rainbow
to the to one side of red is this whole
infrared spectrum
how do i explain that
if you were to go outside and we're
right here in southern sunny southern
california and just have a shirt on and
you stand with your back to the sun well
let's put it this way if i were to say
close your eyes and i would spin you
around
and then have you stop you would be able
to feel
where the sun is and the reason why
you'll be able to feel that even though
the the shirt is protecting you from the
visible spectrum is that that near
infrared radiation is penetrating
through your shirt into your skin past
your epidermis into your dermis and it's
actually stimulating the heat receptors
in your skin to say this is where it's
coming from it's the same thing that
happens when you stand in front of a
fire
you could be wearing clothes but if you
sit too close to that fire you're going
to feel that heat that's near infrared
radiation coming off the fire coming off
the fire absolutely and that it's that
particular
wavelength of light that these
scientists believe somehow is
stimulating the mitochondria
to
to make
melatonin we know very well that it
makes melatonin so why would that be
important why would you want to have
melatonin being made in the mitochondria
think of the mitochondria as a engine in
a car the type of engine that uses
gasoline not an electrical engine like
you might see an electric car
the thing about an engine in a car is
it's
it's designed to to make locomotion to
spin the tires but a byproduct of that
engine is heat
you know obviously engines are hot and
so what the problem is if you don't take
care of that heat either with the
radiator or with the oil that engine is
going to seize up and it's going to stop
and that's the same situation that we
have in the mitochondria the
mitochondria are the powerhouses of the
cell everyone laughs when i say that
because everyone remembers that from
school but in the process of making atp
which is the energy source of the cell
it makes these things called hydroxy
radicals which are very
dangerous molecules you don't want them
in the mitochondria
they only have to travel a very short
distance before they'll run into
proteins and they will destroy the
proteins so you really don't want these
things hanging around so how do you mop
up these hydroxy radicals this reactive
oxygen species
melatonin melatonin does a great job
glutathione is very powerful people talk
about you know glutathione
supplementation and knack and all of
this stuff
melatonin actually up regulates that
whole system does it just envelop the
reactive species yeah it has we can get
into chemistry but it has uh side groups
and arms on this melatonin molecule that
just mops it up and eliminates it
so
think about melatonin in your
mitochondria like
the the coolant system in your engine if
if your coolant system in your engine is
not working very well
and you start coming up uh the hollywood
hills
what's gonna happen to your car it's
gonna overheat yeah and and that's
exactly what we're seeing not only in
america in terms of disease but we saw a
very good demonstration of that with
covet 19.
um americans
wet people in the west develop countries
they don't get enough sunlight and okay
before we get into covid let's start
breaking this down so the first thing
that freaked me out was that because i
had heard that there were um
that there are cells in the body that
have photoreceptors that you wouldn't
think would have a sensitivity to light
and i was like okay this has got to be
like a vestige of something from when we
were cells just floating i was like okay
there's no way that we're using it now
yeah and then i heard you say that
there's actually parts of the light
spectrum that can penetrate your skull
yes and i was like i'm sorry what yeah
exactly so
uh how
how much of light is penetrating through
things that we're
not thinking about because i think of
sunlight as sort of stopping at a
topical level on my skin but in reality
it can penetrate bone correct things
that are longer wavelength can penetrate
through solid objects much better
give you an example you're pulling up to
the stop light
some teenagers in a car pull up next to
you playing that stuff they call music
okay what do you hear it's boom you
don't hear the high frequency the low
frequency is able to go through their
car into your car shake the steering
wheel it's because it's low frequency
it's the same thing with um if you know
we don't have it a lot down here in
southern california but we have
thunderstorms
when you're very far away from that
lightning the sound that you hear is
thunder what is typically that you're
hearing it's that low rumble because
that low rumble frequency can penetrate
so far
and it's exactly the same thing when we
have low frequency infrared near
infrared light coming from the sun it
has no problem penetrating the
atmosphere has no pen no problem
penetrating the clothes that you're
wearing has no problem penetrating deep
down there's some studies that say you
know maybe a centimeter or two there's
other studies that seem to indicate up
to eight centimeters
that's think about think about if i were
to go eight centimeters deep to your
skin
all over your body
there's a very small fraction of your
body that's still in that shadow
a lot of the cells of your body would be
amenable to exposure that to that type
of radiation
man so this kind of stuff this is why if
i can avoid supplementation i will
there's just so many things that we
don't know yet and we're constantly
getting like these bits of information
and i know that a lot of this stuff has
been known sort of anecdotally for a
long time you've got photos was it
florence nightingale that realized
during world war one that it was like
hey if you put the soldiers wounded
soldiers out in the sunlight they heal
faster yes and so we've had sort of a
an intuition around this stuff but now
as the data comes out and we realize
just how much is going on it's anything
that you can sort of get in its natural
state strikes me as better so if i
followed what you just said yeah all
right you have an engine it's prone to
overheating the sun gets in it triggers
the production of melatonin which goes
in and mops us up and acts as sort of
the cooling system yes ironic given that
it's the sun yeah um but that like is
that what's going on and then i think as
we explain that we can get into
covid and like why it matters so much
that's one of the things that's going on
but you know one of the things that
we've discovered as scientists is that
um
the mind
and the body are a lot more connected
than we thought they were so one of the
other things that light does is when you
are exposed to light
that light that comes into your eyes it
hits the retina and we know the eye goes
back to the back of the brain and that's
where the occipital lobes are and that's
where you can visualize
light and you can see it acutely and
consciously
but
from anatomy we know that there are
neurons that come from the back of your
eye that don't project to the back where
you see vision they go to other places
of the brain other parts of the brain
that are involved with emotion other
parts of the body that are a brain that
are involved with mood
something called the perihybenular
nucleus that's a very technical change
i'm just going to say that yeah but if
you
if you look that up this is what they
believe is is implicated in uh in
seasonal affective disorder
known as sad sad seasonal affective
disorder affects about five to ten
percent of the population people who
live at northern latitudes don't get a
lot of sun especially in the wintertime
and what they notice is that they become
more depressed that depression can have
an effect on health as well and so
getting them enough sunlight getting
them enough light this is light that you
don't necessarily see consciously this
goes to a part of the brain that's
unconscious vision of light and that has
an effect as well on overall health as
well yeah okay so that's very
interesting yeah okay so we've got the
body the mind they're far more connected
light is playing a way deeper role in
all of this
what are some of the elements of that
that we're misunderstanding that we're
just now beginning to grapple with
yeah well number one that vitamin d that
you can't package the sun in a capsule
vitamin d i think it would be a mistake
to say that while i'm taking my vitamin
d supplementation i don't need to go out
into the sun so vitamin d is produced in
the dermis when ultraviolet radiation
from the sun comes in ultraviolet
radiation generally comes in between 10
o'clock in the morning and 2 o'clock in
the afternoon
and
it's at that point because the sun is
directly overhead and ultraviolet has a
really hard time getting through the
atmosphere that it's the sun basically
has to be right overhead right for that
to come through
vitamin d is an immunomodulator i mean
we've done a lot of studies in science
uh in the last 100 years looking at
vitamin d and its impact on bone and
calcium
and we've come up with these levels in
the government to say this is how much
vitamin d you need to have
but what we're now starting to
understand is that vitamin d is far more
important than just bone bone metabolism
it's involved with immunomodular therapy
there was there was just a study that
was published two months ago
that showed that people who
supplements with 2000 international
units of vitamin d daily over a period
of five years
had all of the
autoimmune conditions reduced
psoriasis
inflammatory bowel disease you name it
scleroderma all of those just basically
went down with supplementation
and and so i believe that
when we don't spend enough time outside
in the sun
we're going to get levels of vitamin d
that are going to drop we're not
necessarily going to see rickets because
you don't need you don't need a lot of
vitamin d to prevent rickets but you
might be seeing a more nuanced
presentation of vitamin d deficiency uh
in in those types of of patients
because you need higher levels of
vitamin e to prevent those sorts of
things okay so going back to
light's relationship to illness wound
healing covid
is it all around this idea of the
overheating engine the production of
melatonin or is there is it the
immunomodulation of the vitamin d
unknowns like it's it's both um i think
it's probably all of the above
there was a very interesting study uh
that was published out of the university
of edinburgh and they had the same
question that you had is we see that
vitamin d is attached to we'll bring up
coven 19 in this case as you mentioned
because that's a illness that that's
involved with with stress and oxidative
stress in fact
and what they found was when they looked
at the united states in the wintertime
the sun is pretty low people
south of the southern border of
tennessee can probably still get enough
vitamin d even in the winter time here
in southern california we could probably
get enough vitamin d in the winter time
but if you're far north of that you're
not going to get it what they found was
that when they completely eliminated the
people that could get enough vitamin d
with sunlight in the wintertime and just
like looked at those that could not
there was still a connection
with where they lived in the latitude
and their mortality to covet 19. what i
mean to say is the further north you
lived the higher the mortality was and
the further south you lived the less the
mortality was in a population that
really wasn't getting vitamin d from the
sun at all so what does that tell you
and and they came to the same conclusion
as your mind would is that there's
something else in the sun that's
modulating
this
natural history of covet 19 in these
patients
so
you can make the point and say that
covet 19 out of many things that it does
also has an impact in the redox area
which is oxidative stress
and so in fact if
sunlight
is causing a improvement in your
mitochondria because of the
near-infrared radiation and the
melatonin production it could be
mitigating one aspect of that disease to
copen19 and causing improved outcomes
okay very interesting now when you look
at some of the other confounding
variables so obesity seems to have a
huge implication is there is there
anything tied there in terms of
oxidative stress or
yeah absolutely so people who are more
obese have more inflammation we know
that right from the start now is there a
one-to-one relationship between
oxidative stress and inflammation or are
they different animals um
they
are
they can be different but generally
speaking you will see them correlated
with each other because of the because
of the the diseases that cause them so
we see diabetes associated with obesity
obesity with inflammation diabetes with
oxidative stress so we do see them
correlate it's hard to tease them out
but interesting when we talk about light
obviously the more obese you are the
harder it is for those uh that light to
sort of get deeper in all right let me
see if i can track oxidative stress here
across
many episodes that i've done now where
different people are talking about
different ways that oxidative stress
happens so
uh
your diet obviously can create oxidative
stress by going in and causing by using
oxidative stress by increasing say your
glucose intake your sugar intake which
turned to glucose in the bloodstream uh
that you're creating an in
an elevated level of oxidative stress so
oxidative stress what is happening at uh
at the level of chemistry what's
actually getting kicked off yeah it has
to be that melatonin has to mop up okay
so
now you're getting into biochemistry so
for those of you in the in your audience
that are familiar um when you eat
proteins glucose or fats these all get
broken down into a two carbon molecule
called acetyl coa acid acetyl coa then
goes into the mitochondria it's there in
the mitochondria and it goes through
something called the citric acid cycle
as it goes around and around the citric
acid cycle
things become oxidized and basically the
product of this
are reduced electrons okay so what does
it mean to be oxidized oxidized yes so
something is where uh electrons are
being taken away okay okay so in other
words and that's bad news i think
oxidation is bad no oxidation is just
the way we metabolize okay thank god
you're alive you have oxygen yay yeah
but like rust is oxidation it is so so
let's let's take a bigger picture
energy from the sun hits the plants
and what happens is uh the plants taking
carbon dioxide carbon dioxide has a
carbon and an o2 and what happens we
know the plants give off oxygen and it
keeps on to the carbon so this is why
the plants can grow they're carbon based
but these this is very reduced carbon so
carbon with a bunch of hydrogens around
it we eat the plants very reduced
hydrogens and what happens is we get the
energy from the sun
because the way that we do that is we
take they take those electrons away and
they put oxygen on there that's how
we're oxidizing the carbon and so what
do we breathe off co2 so what gets left
behind are these very reduced
electrons very reduced
hydrogens
and so now imagine uh you know like when
you go out to hoover dam or the you have
these dams and basically it's a flow
that's what happens you have these very
high energy electrons up here
and
what what basically happens is as those
electrons go down the electron transport
chain energy is being taken away which
then creates atp
energy in the form of
energy uh in the form of the the
electrons so the electrons have a
specific energy to them
so the bottom line here is that when you
get to the bottom
there's no more places for these
electrons to go something has to take
these electrons they've been stripped of
all their energy and so the only the
only thing left that will accept these
electrons
is oxygen and that's the reason why we
have to breathe and that's the reason
why we have to get oxygen into our body
because
the moment we can't get oxygen into our
body these electrons have nowhere to go
everything backs up no more energy being
made patient dies
that's the bottom line so you've got
this oxygen molecule these electrons pop
on
the electro the oxygen then turns into
water
that's great four electrons pop onto
oxygen you make water here's the problem
when you eat a lot of carbohydrates and
eat a lot of food this this ramp starts
to move so quickly it's not efficient
it's not being done exactly the way it
happens and these electrons up here jump
down
and pop onto the oxygen molecule and now
instead of oxygen making water
you got oxygen making
superoxide
that's re that's a that's a reactive
oxygen species why is it making
superoxide because too many electrons
are hitting it at once well what happens
is that these electrons are not being uh
managed in the appropriate way with the
enzymes your the amount of substrate is
is now going past what the enzymes can
take and so things are just going
everywhere and it's leaking and so you
might get instead of an oxygen getting
four electrons and making water it might
just get one electron and it makes
superoxide if it gets two it makes
hydrogen peroxide if it gets three it
makes a hydroxy radical and so what
happens is these things are
basically they have one little electron
hanging out or or two or three and these
things are so reactive that they have to
move only a few angstroms one way or
another and they're going to bump into a
protein and damage it
and that's that's why i equate
reactive oxygen species to heat in the
engine because you're using combustion
to move that piston up and down and
you're making locomotion but the
byproduct of that is heat and unless you
take that heat away it's going to seize
the engine up and that's why it's so
important i mean
i can't stress this enough
alzheimer's disease
autism
diabetes a lot of these diseases that we
see in society have been tied to
mitochondrial damage
from reactive oxygen species it's really
important
okay so i'm going to keep going with
this electron transport chain okay for
me when i can picture it and i can
understand it becomes so much easier to
comply
in terms of my lifestyle yeah uh the
part in all of that that i don't
understand is what is it about
carbohydrates that overwhelms the
electron transport chain you know the
now we're getting into some uh
some of the nuances in terms of fats
proteins and carbohydrates carbohydrates
are the the fuel
the predominant fuel of the brain and so
the body must always have carbohydrates
available now of course when you fast
the brain can use ketones it's it's
possible but it would rather use
carbohydrates
the problem with carbohydrates when it's
given too rapidly okay is that you have
to make insulin and insulin has to has
to manage glucose the problem with
glucose is that in general if you have
high levels of glucose in your blood
it's going to cause what we call
glycolation of protein and that's going
to destroy the protein so glucose has to
be pretty well regulated and we know
that just
now we're talking about diabetes and
glucose and things of that nature so uh
insulin has to be increased when high
levels of glucose go up and that insulin
shuttles that glucose into the cells the
glucose then is broken down very quickly
and it's probably out of all of the the
different types of
food products carbohydrates protein
and glucose glucose protein and fats
it's the one that'll get shuttled into
that uh pathway the fastest
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okay so we can just the body
because the body likes to use it or it's
easiest to use
it can that's the one that you can
overwhelm the system with like hey i can
just keep putting this in putting this
and putting this in yeah
which explains why the body has to have
a response to become insulin
resistant so that yo if you just keep
shoving this in we're gonna have all
these
are they all called free radicals we
certainly have all kinds of problematic
things because we're not getting the
four electrons on the oxygen molecule
and so whether it's one two three
it's just it's madness correct chaos is
ensuing correct okay that's interesting
that's the first time i've really
understood i've i've heard sort of other
downstream reasons why we would want to
be insulin resistant for instance in
going into
the winter of course you'd want to
become insulin resistant so you can
start storing fat and keep the fat
locked in so that you can survive the
famine amazing makes sense but in terms
of what's going on that makes the body
go yo pump the brakes that's the first
time i've really understood that okay
so
we've got this ability to
by eating too many carbohydrates even
though the body loves glucose and it's a
really easy to use fuel source
it's a system that can be overwhelmed
and
you're in the middle of overwhelming
that system you are kicking oh my god i
think this is actually clicking in my
brain so
uh you're overwhelming the system with
carbohydrates you are also getting obese
yeah now you have this double whammy
of
you have
overwhelmed your
electron transport chain you're creating
these um reactive species thank you yeah
which are damaging proteins if they come
into contact with it correct and you've
layered on
actual adipose tissue so sunlight now
can't penetrate as deeply as it might
need to that may be one of the reasons
yeah possibly hypothesis hypothesis yeah
around uh and by doing that we're not
able to cr the sun light is not able to
create as much melatonin as would be
needed to mop things up so now you've
overwhelmed the system and broken the
ability to clean up the overwhelm that's
correct and so now you're in a system
where to go back to the car analogy
you're running so hot
that when the covid virus is introduced
and this is where you're going to have
to fill me in yeah then what happened so
i understand that i've overwhelmed the
system with free radicals my electron
transport chain is not doing well the
enzymes are overwhelmed and cannot
connect
the
electrons appropriately to the oxygen so
that we can expel it
um but i don't necessarily understand
why the free radicals
is it just they're breaking too many
things no i'll yeah so i understand what
you're saying so um
you've you have the part that you have
to understand with this is that when you
have
too much oxidative stress in the cell
that damages the cell in a way
that can cause problems down the road
and actually physically damage the cell
so so let's set up let me set up exactly
what you said so the analogy would be is
you're running your car hot but it's
still running you're still able to go
and you're on a level now the covet 19
hill comes
and now you have to start going up the
hill and that's when the the engine
overheats and you shut down and the
engine seizes what is it about covet 19
that's a hill is the question really yep
so um
unfortunately the sars kobe 2 virus
spike protein interacts with something
called the ace2 receptor
now it makes it sound like that the that
on the surface of our cells there's this
receptor called ace2 and it's made to
just
have the spike protein come into it no
it wasn't made for that it has a
completely different purpose and the
ace2 protein the ace2 enzyme is actually
designed to take pro-inflammatory
pro-oxidant molecules and turn them into
antioxidant molecules
and that's something that's that's
really critical to understand there's a
substance called angiotensin ii which is
a pro
oxidant pro
oxidative stress
substance which raises your blood
pressure does all the bad things you
could possibly imagine ace2 takes this
and converts it into angiotensin 17
which has the complete opposite effect
it reduces blood pressure it's a
antioxidant it's amazing i mean you take
something that's bad and you turn into
something good that's like a it's like a
double whammy that's like you know on
the on the basketball floor going down
stealing the ball and then going down
and scoring it down that's like a four
point switch they call right that's
exactly what ace2 does
the problem is is that when the virus
attaches to the h2 receptor
it knocks it out and so what cells have
this ace2 receptor it's the bronchial
epithelial cells it is the vascular
cells the vascular cells uh the what's
called the endothelium it's the coding
of the of the blood vessels and when you
have a infection that's so severe and it
spills over into your blood now the
virus is going throughout your blood and
it's infecting all of these endothelial
cells with all these nice h2 receptors
that are
available to it
what happens then is the the virus
infects the endothelial cell knocks out
the ac2 receptor knocks out the ace2
enzyme pro antioxidants go up
antioxidants go down
you have a massive change in the
oxidative stress in that cell
and now what you have is damage to the
cell now the problem with the
endothelial cell this brings in another
aspect is the endothelial cell the
purpose of the endothelial cell is to
protect
the the the proteins in the blood from
seeing
fibrin
put it this way
if you know when you get cut you form a
clot the reason why you form a clot is
because the contents of your blood are
seeing the tissue in your body and
whenever they see tissue in your body
they're designed to clot
what the endothelial cell surface does
is it protects them so that they never
see the inside of you if you will when
those endothelial cells get damaged they
start to
break down and they start to show
what's underneath them and when the
blood sees that it doesn't like that and
it tries to clot
and uh that's exactly what we're seeing
there's something called von
willebrand's factor we're getting very
technical here but von willebrand's
factor is underneath the endothelium
it's like it's hiding it when that gets
broken down the end the foundations
factor comes out and you get very these
clots and when they do the autopsies in
these covalent 19 patients they have
nine times the amount of clots oh nine
times the amount of clots that we see in
and someone that died of the flu or
somebody that died of uh something else
because we're the covet virus is
breaking down the endothelial exposing
the flesh correct and clock clock clot
exactly and there was a study that was
published that showed
555 that's how i remember it it's such
an easy number to remember
555 percent more von willebrand's factor
in the blood of coven 19 patients that
were severe in the hospital compared to
controls
okay so
that's why it's a hill yes
okay so i've the ace2 receptor
is breaking my antioxidants and anything
that i'm doing that is pro oxidative
stress now boom i'm going to be in real
trouble because i've already as you said
walked right up to the edge of the cliff
correct and now i'm in more danger the
ace the ace ii the ac2 receptor is is a
receptor yes for the for the sars cov2
virus but much more importantly it's an
enzyme that is keeping the oxidative
balance in your cells in optimum control
and when the virus comes and knocks it
out when it binds it denatures the
protein enough so that it can no longer
do its job and so for that cell
that's that's a problem right yeah okay
very very interesting um
i'm very curious so
i understand now how light is playing
its role i understand at least the
hypothesis about why
poor diet and obesity are playing their
role talk to me about sleep
yeah what what are we doing in sleep
that is just from an immune perspective
so critical
so we can tie right back into what we
were just talking about sleep is
when you're you know closing your eyes
and you are in bed at night and it's
dark
that is exactly what is necessary for
your pineal gland in your brain to be
secreting melatonin obviously that's
where all the damage is happening
correct so this is the backup plan and
we actually knew about this for years
but we discovered the backup plan before
we figured out what the real plan is the
real plan is being outside in the sun
cooling down the mitochondria ironically
like you said with sunlight um and
making sure that the melatonin is there
to mop up these oxidative stress uh
products but at night the sun is down so
what are you gonna do then you're not
making
you're not making melatonin from
infrared radiation because it's
nighttime because there is no
photons going into your eyes you close
your eyes
there is nothing that's going to shut
down the melatonin production from the
pineal gland into the blood so this is
part of the
master clock that's telling your body
it's time to go to sleep we're now
bathing you with melatonin the melatonin
gets taken up by the cells and it gets
pumped into the mitochondria to do what
it what it was doing during the day it's
just not being made there on site it's
being made in the pineal gland and it's
going throughout the body so sleep
from just that standpoint is is
extremely important
meaning there's enough pumped into the
cell to be valuable from uh
oxidative stress perspective absolutely
and and we have plenty of studies that
show that people who don't get that
melatonin at night people who are not
sleeping well at night i mean it's a
risk factor for for cancers certainly
for breast cancer uh but a number of
other cancers as well because of
oxidative stress or something else
well uh we believe that that's that is
part of what it's related to we're not
exactly sure exactly the definite
connection but there's a number of
molecules
that have been shown to uh go up and
down with circadian rhythm so so now
we're sort of zooming let's zoom out at
the 30 000 foot level melatonin is just
one aspect of sleep yeah i was going to
say i'm back to because i was about to
say can i supplement my way to success
with melatonin and of course getting it
the
natural way is probably better because
there's probably a lot more going on
than just melatonin absolutely and the
way i like to describe it is i used to
have a friend that used to work at
disneyland but he wasn't there during
the day he was there at night
you may not know this but disneyland is
just as busy at night as it is during
the day
yeah they i mean to have disneyland
ready to open up in the morning
to to do what it needs to do during the
day that the gardeners come in at night
you know changing out things cleaning
things they have like a whole catacombs
system they do they do they do and so to
be able to do that and of course the
human body is far more complicated than
disneyland i mean disneyland is
complicated we're far more complicated
than disneyland so for us to be able to
do
in the day
we have to have processes that are
regulated at night that the
suprachiasmatic nucleus in the brain is
the conductor of the orchestra
it says okay we're going to start now
now if you've got the oboe the violin
and the tuba and they're they're playing
the exactly the right music
but at the wrong time it's going to
sound like a cacophony of nonsense every
all of these things have to be playing
at the same time and the master clock
which is in the suprachiasmatic nucleus
of the brain
is is
telling all of the clocks of the body
there's clocks in the liver clocks in
the heart clocks all of these things
this is the regulation now we're going
to start now
imagine if you were the gardener at
disneyland decided to go in at 10
o'clock in the morning
it wouldn't work people are lining up
for space mountain and you're changing
flowers that's not gonna work right i
mean it'll work you'll live i mean
people make money at disneyland but it's
not optimal and if you want to be
optimal
what we're finding out is that there are
certain times of the day that is optimal
for you to do certain things
and it's optimal for you to sleep
at least for seven hours
and to get that sleep where your
circadian rhythm is telling you it's
time to sleep now your circadian rhythm
may be off and that's a whole nother
discussion we may have to talk about how
we shift that in the right place but if
you're not sleeping at the right time if
you're not eating at the right time
you're not getting the optimal
benefit of your circadian rhythm we have
technology today that allows us to eat
24 hours a day we have technology today
that we can turn night into day if we
want we can work 24 7. there's gamers
that do that right and they go straight
for 48 hours and
they die
um and and so what we're finding out is
that technology even though it allows us
to do certain things it may not be
optimal
okay so
we
we've got the master clock it's
orchestrating all of this stuff
um
what exactly is going on in terms of the
immune system in terms of the
brain like i know the brain shrinks and
it allows the lymphatic system to clear
things out yes um what are some of the
the heavy hitters
so if you were to if i were to say what
are all the systems that are affected by
the circadian rhythm i mean i could list
off 20 things i mean leptin grayling
these are enzymes that are used in
hunger and satiety cortisol melatonin we
just talked about those
glucose
insulin i mean these are major players
these aren't like some small things to
give you an idea they did a study where
they took uh college students and they
said okay let's do an all-nighter
how many times have we done an
all-nighter in college right so uh
just one night and in that one night
they measured 100 different
uh proteins and they saw major drastic
changes in not only the amplitude but
the timing of those things and things
that were involved with
insulin and glucose metabolism but also
things that were seen in terms of
fighting cancers and uh and
immunological and and surveillance so
you can imagine just one night of doing
an all-nighter all of these things can
be affected but the part i still can't
understand is what what is happening at
the cellular level
it's just miscoordination so let's let's
go through this light goes in hits the
intrinsically photosensitive retinal
ganglion cells then has a pathway that
goes back to the suprachiasmatic nucleus
and it's that light that neuron that
actually physically changes we can get
into clock genes and things of that
nature where it takes a certain amount
of time for something to become
methylated and then as a result of that
there's a back feed loop which then
causes the transcription of the gene to
and it takes about 24 hours
actually for this sort of feedback loop
to happen when light comes in it slows
that down the clock slows down and what
happens let's just take a an everyday
example
we're up on our ipad or iphone at night
and the light from the the device is
going into our eye and it's delaying our
circadian rhythm so that instead of dim
light melatonin onset happening at nine
o'clock which is when it should be
happening it's now happening at 11
o'clock
and as a result of that we don't feel
sleepy until 12 o'clock at night when we
should have been feeling sleepy at 10
o'clock at night
and so as a result of that everything
starts to shift it actually does in fact
if i can throw in one thing i've heard
you say so that i can reinforce myself
in the audience can hear it yeah uh
sleep before midnight is more likely to
produce growth hormone growth hormones
and has all kinds of consequences and so
just by disrupting your clock you
disrupt the hormone secretion in that
case yes since hormones are
signaling molecules the body's not
getting the right signal and so we begin
to understand how these things degrade
absolutely so why do bad things happen
is because let's look at the other way
every let's let's take the assumption
that everything is perfectly timed in a
clock to get everything done just like
at disneyland uh there's some guy that's
figuring out that i need the gardener in
here at uh at two in the morning i need
uh you know the cash taken out of the
cash registers at this hour and it's all
planned out by some brain that's figured
this out now all of a sudden if you if
you have these things coming in at
different times
if everything is perfectly designed to
get the exact best outcome then anything
other than that is going to fall off the
mark and so that's maybe what's going on
and just to finish up that thought
is if you are delaying the circadian
rhythm
now when you go to want to go to bed at
10 o'clock at night
you can't because your circadian rhythm
is telling you when you when you when
you feel sleepy and so now you have some
insomnia okay but on the other end of it
you're supposed to be waking up at six
in the morning but because your
circadian rhythm is delayed till 8
o'clock now what happens you're you're
getting up early you're not getting full
sleep and instead of that cortisol spike
in the morning that you need for the day
coming at eight o'clock in the morning
it's now going to be coming at 10
o'clock in the morning and and because
you now eat in the morning always at
seven o'clock or eight o'clock and now
that that timing is off
in the morning we know that insulin is
the most sensitive so in other words the
best time to wear the most sensitive to
insulin correct got it uh and not so
much at night and that we can talk about
so weird we can talk about time
restricted feeding do you know that like
at three o'clock in the afternoon that's
the time of day that you generally
speaking are the most coordinated
in terms of uh really yeah oh yeah
as a pulmonologist i do pulmonary
function tests what's pulmonology
pulmonology is the study of the lungs
yeah got it so i have patients all the
time that come in they've got copd that
means they can't blow air out very well
or they've got restrictive disease they
can't take a deep breath and one of the
ways we have of measuring that is having
them blow into a tube hooked up to a
computer and measuring all these things
well this may be a surprise to you but
i may get slightly different results if
i do that pft in the morning than if i
do that in the afternoon
and that's just because of circadian
rhythm we there is definitely something
that happens on a on a daily basis
that uh our our bodies are a little
different at different times of the day
because it's expecting things at
different times of the day
it's it's really it's so weird yeah and
whether
we are expecting it
or
oh god somebody just said i thought this
was a really interesting way to think of
it that the lungs are not
uh they didn't develop as an expectation
of oxygen they are the expectation of
oxygen like
that and i heard another
sort of similar statement about the way
that we connect with each other that
we have a nature
that requires nurture that they're that
that there is
it's such a an interconnected loop it's
almost impossible to know which came
first so instead of saying which came
first the lung or the oxygen it's like
they exist because of each other
especially if you start thinking of like
the plants as sort of the the world's
lung in the way that it's taking in
carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen
and then
other things begin to develop what we
now know as lungs it's so crazy and i
know that i drag people into the weeds a
lot but i as somebody who did not take
biochem yeah i find it really
interesting to actually begin to
understand this stuff it's it's
fascinating i i i hate to bring this up
but have you ever studied the double
slit experiment yes and i actually
considered bringing this up to you okay
uh
so beyond obsessed with this idea yeah
um
do you want to explain it to people oh
the double slit experiment okay
um it all boils down to whether or not
light is a particle or a wave and they
behave differently
depending on if you have a double slit
because you can imagine if i had an uzi
shooting bullets and there was two slits
you would see on the other side of that
wall
a collection of bullets that were in two
slits
but
light is not just uh photons they're
also waves when you get down to that
small of a particle they behave as waves
and anytime you have waves going through
two slits they will as they go through
they will interact with each other and
when the when the peaks come together
you'll have a higher peak and when uh
the troughs when a peak and a trough
come together they'll counteract each
other out and they'll have nothing and
so what you see on the far wall is
instead of two two banks
of particles you'll see something called
an interference pattern and it's like a
bunch of it looks like a barcode so
so this was the experiment they say okay
is light
a wavelength or is light a particle and
the answer will be let's put up two
slits and see what happens
well um if it's a particle it'll go
through one if it's a wave it'll go
through both correct exactly so that
they've set up the two slits that's what
they're thinking hey it's going to be
one or the other so was so what happened
was is that they saw uh of course they
saw a um uh
interference pattern but then they
decided to say okay
let's do it this way well maybe the
particles are interacting with each
other so let's shoot particles through
one
at a time so when they shot it through
one at a time
they saw an interference pattern it's
like how can that possibly be how can a
particle going through one at a time
interact with itself and then not
interact with itself they say
something's happening here and and here
is the key is they set up a detector at
the slit because they wanted to actually
see
which slit the particle was going
through
well when they did that
it stopped behaving this is the part
that breaks my [ __ ] brain
it's exactly i mean it it started to
it suddenly went through only one
correct if you measure it yes it only
goes through one yes if you don't
measure it it goes through both okay i'm
sorry what yeah and then it gets even
weirder than that because they have
something called uh the erasure uh
experiments these were done about 20
years ago so this experiment that we
were just talking about this was done a
hundred years ago and they figured this
out
about 20 years ago they actually set up
the experiment using some mirrors
so they could split the beam and they
could have what they call entangled
photons which are supposed to act
exactly the same and and i'll tell you
what they found and they found that not
only does the photon know
if you're looking at it
but it also knows if you're about to
look at it oh my god so it starts to
behave the way that it should have
behaved
because you looked at it but it behaves
that way before because what they did
was they split off two entangled photons
and before the photon went through the
slit and was detected
the other one went to another detector
and it and it behaved the correct way
before it was looked at
it's i heard that same thing explained
in a different way so you could and i
think it's the same idea but let's say
that it's a photon that left
a distant star
900 million years ago exactly yeah so
it's it's already coming at you as a
waiver uh particle correct and but
depending on whether you measure it or
not it will be cohesive even though that
meant that that decision had to have
been made 900 million years ago correct
that's so freaky yeah that's yeah so the
question is are we changing so so the
obvious one would be our is the fact
that
a human being with knowledge of the
system
because that's it all boils down to
is somebody observing it with knowledge
of the system
is somebody observing with knowledge of
the system changing the way that light
is uh seeming to be behaved or is the
light changing us
dude it's
beyond freaky and the question and this
really boils down to one of the central
tenets of science which is that by
observing something you can learn about
it nowhere in there did it ever say that
by observing something you change it
yeah but that seems to be triggered the
double slit experiment in your mind uh
the fact that some of the things that we
think we take for granted uh right may
not be exactly law all right i need to
ask you about diet real fast i think you
mentioned earlier
something acid citric acid celtic acid
the stomach acid cycle citric acid yeah
uh
that that has implications in terms of
meat that oh cyalic acid cyalas yes
there we go yeah so um let's put it
you like to get technical probably more
than any other interview that i've ever
said so i'll we'll get technical i'll
we'll do that
there
if on the cell surface of of the cell uh
our proteins and then imagine my because
you're a vegetable forward guy or are
you full vegetarian i'm vegetarian i
didn't used to be um i used to eat meat
because i'm really starting to
experiment with
plants good yeah hardcore and this was
another sort of brick in that wall of
like okay this is really interesting
yeah because so i come at the meat
potentially problematic from the mtor
pathway like you're in growth mode you
don't always want to be in growth mode
maybe when you're young but as you get
older that's also sort of pro tumor
and if there's only so many cycles that
the body can run it's probably better to
not trigger growth mode and stay a
little bit h