#2516 - Rowan Jacobsen

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. You up? All right. Very nice to meet you, man. You too. Thanks for having me. Thank you. And thanks for doing this work, because you want to talk about a subject that's confused so many people. Is the sun good for you? Is the sun killing you? Why does it give you vitamin D if it's bad for you? Why do people get skin cancer if it's good for you? Yeah, it's super complicated, and the messaging has not sort of admitted that, and that was, yeah, a big impetus for the book. What was your opinion of sun exposure before you started writing this? So I had inherited the conventional wisdom from the institutions that it was really bad. At the same time, I will admit that my instincts were that maybe it wasn't as bad as they were leading me to believe, because whenever I was in the sun, I felt like I was in the sun. I felt good, and I live in Vermont. By the time winter was reaching like month six, I felt bad, right? Right. So I was like, there's more here than we're being told. Yeah, that was my wife's opinion. She's like, the sun can't be bad. It always feels good when you go out there. I'm like, I don't know. It's a little more complicated than that, but that is the instinct. It feels great when you're in the sun. It's like your body wants it. Your body wants it. I mean, we now know that it literally triggers the release of opiates. It's in the brain, sunlight. So yeah, your body wants it, and your body rewards you when you get it. So what is the issue? Well, let's go back to the beginning. So you had this idea that sun exposure is probably giving people cancer, and sunscreen is good. You need to wear sunscreen, stay out of the sun. So when you started going into the research, what made you shift your opinion? So it really started for me like seven or eight years ago. I was on this science journalism fellowship, so I was just doing research, and some of those studies hit. The one about opiate release in the brain, and other studies showing that when light hits skin, cognition actually improves. Like your metabolism cranks up a little bit when the body feels sunlight coming in. And I thought, that's interesting. That's all good stuff. Then I came across a couple other studies that seemed to indicate that sunlight could lower blood pressure, which was really interesting. So then I still had the sense sunlight. Bad, right? So then I remember just like Googling, like, so how much does sunlight like shorten your lifespan? And like the punchline is, sunlight seems to extend your lifespan. So when I hit that, I was like, why are we not hearing this? So that was the beginning. And so then, so what is the problem? Like, what is the issue with sunlight? Like, when you think about skin cancer, what are the confounding factors that lead to skin cancer? Are we completely aware of that? It's more complicated than we thought. So sunlight does increase your risk of skin cancer. But depending on the type of skin cancer you're talking about, it's not necessarily like a linear relationship. So yes, in general, too much sun increases your risk of skin cancer. But yeah, the question is, what are the confounding factors? How important is skin cancer compared to these other things? If sunlight reduces your risk of other diseases, how does that weigh against the risk of skin cancer? So it's not the type of thing that can, you know, be done in a 30-second PSA. Right. So sun cancer that does cause skin cancer, excuse me, sun exposure that does cause skin cancer, what is causing it? Why is it happening? So ultraviolet light, which is the most energy intense part of the solar spectrum, when those photons of light hit your skin, they go inside, right? We absorb. We absorb all wavelengths of light to a greater or lesser degree. And that super high energy ultraviolet light, if it hits a DNA molecule, it can mess up the DNA molecule. And then that can lead to mutations and skin cancer. Then it can also indirectly cause skin cancer by creating what are called reactive oxygen species, which are free radicals, basically. So it energizes these atoms that start to steal electrons from other atoms. Right. And cause a little chain reaction, which is what a free radical is. So ultraviolet light can increase your free radicals, and it can directly damage DNA. So that's why it can cause skin cancer. So it was basically that learning that one fact back in like the 40s and 50s that made scientists start to say, uh-oh, light skin cancer, maybe we should think about how much sun we're getting. But this wasn't universally accepted, right? Right. There were some people that. There were some people that even back then thought that sun exposure was very healthy for you. Like, when did we figure out that sun causes the body to produce vitamin D? Yeah, that was an important part. And it's a big part of the story, I think, because that was really back in the 20s that we figured that out. And then even a little earlier, we realized that sunlight could prevent rickets. Rickets? Yeah. So rickets is a like soft bone disease. Like if you don't get enough calcium in your bones when you're a kid, when you're a baby, you get soft bones. You get rickets. Really bad disease. And in the Industrial Revolution, kids started getting rickets. Farm kids never got rickets. Then suddenly, kids are working in factories. They're living in cities that are choked with coal smog. They're living in tenement buildings. They're never seeing the sun, and they all start getting rickets. Late 1800s. Is nutrition a factor in that? Vitamin D. It was all vitamin D. At first, they thought maybe it was vitamin A. It turned out that was how vitamin D was discovered, was some doctors figured out that it could solve rickets in kids. And then they figured out that if sun hit skin, that's how we made vitamin D. Then they figured out- How did they figure that out? They tested, they did some tests on dogs. Actually, one of the guys figured it out, he had a hunch that that's what it was. They noticed that kids in the country wouldn't get rickets. And kids in the city did get rickets. So they're like, I wonder if it's sunlight. So then a guy took dogs, and this is, I think, Scotland, stuck them in a- They actually thought it was dietary. He stuck them inside in this little warehouse and fed them oatmeal, which is what everyone in Scotland ate at the time. And the dogs got rickets. And he thought it was the oatmeal. He's like, okay, so something about diet. But then- He got lucky because he had deprived the dogs of sunlight. And that's why they got rickets. So then eventually they realized that light hitting cholesterol molecules in the skin actually converts the molecules to vitamin D. So vitamin D is like downstream of cholesterol, but it takes that same ultraviolet light that can screw up your DNA. It actually breaks a bond in the cholesterol molecule. Which allows it to- It gives it some movement, and it flips around into a new form that's vitamin D. So once they figure that out, then they're like, sun's really good for you. So we had this era in the 20s, 30s, and into the 40s when everyone thought sun would cure everything. And they went after it hard. Really? Yeah. Parents would send their kids up into the Alps in the 20s to institutes for heliotherapy. Kids would ski around in their underwear. Take classes. Take classes in their underwear. There's awesome photos from this era. Like, the instructors are in their underwear in the mountains outside in Switzerland teaching the kids. And everyone looks really healthy, right? So there's kind of like this idea that you couldn't get too much light. So people are literally burning themselves on purpose for health. This episode of the Joe Rogan Experience is presented by CBS Marshalls. Luke Grimes is back as Casey Dutton in Marshalls Season 2 as a part of an elite unit of U.S. Marshalls. Working to bring range justice to Montana, Dutton has to balance family duty and everything they cost to battle the chaos around him. Marshalls returns Sunday, October 4th, kicking off CBS Premier Week and streaming on Paramount+. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. It's normal to want to improve. Maybe you want to be more present with friends. Maybe you want to get better at a skill for work. Or maybe you want to be better at following through on a commitment. Not just with others, but with yourself, too. Your personal goals. You define what better is. It means different things to different people, after all. 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Finally, the freedom to move. across the room or across the world is here snapdragon that's how go to snapdragon.com laptops snapdragon branded products are products of qualcomm technologies and or its subsidiaries is that the issue is burning a giant part of the issue yeah so to give it away now it looks like for melanoma which is the most dangerous type of skin cancer it's associated with burning strongly but not with like gentle moderate everyday sun exposure so um how much of a factor is skin type like people that are pale or have freckles and red hair blonde hair like how much of a factor is that in skin cancer and can they mitigate that by like gentle slow exposure like a little bit here a little bit there and slowly build up yeah huge like skin type is kind of everything people have really dark skin type people have really dark skin type people have really dark skin type people have really dark skin basically don't get sun induced skin cancer almost never um and the uh you know the authorities don't tend to talk about that because they want things to be they want to have like these one size fits all recommendations but those recommendations to basically always avoid the sun are written for the super fair people especially if you have red hair orange freckles then um you actually have a mutation in your melanin gene that makes you super susceptible to skin cancer from sunlight so if you've got if you've got that phenotype lots of moles red hair uh freckles you do have to be really careful and you can't you you can only do so much like you're not going to tan that much anyway your melanin is just different everybody else yeah you're you're much less susceptible and you can tan you know you can make more melanin pretty easily through tanning i wonder what is the difference between tanning and tanning and tanning and tanning and if any effect have you ever heard of that i don't i can't remember the name of the peptide but there's a peptide that people are taking now that causes their body to generate melanin and they get really dark yeah yeah it's really weird yeah and i don't know what's going on there exactly it seems like that peptide is maybe making you there's things called photosensitizers that make your skin super sensitive like like you just absorb solar radiation really well then but not necessarily in a good way and that can make you make tons of melanin to try to compensate so i wonder that peptide might be triggering um like melanin as a compensation mechanism for extra protection from sunlight or maybe it's just making melanin happen like independently of sunlight did you put it into perplexity all right here it is um melo melaton melanotan melanotan melanotan synthetic peptide um analog of the naturally occurring hormone a melan melanocyte stimulating hormone stimulates the body's melanocytes to produce melanin resulting in a dark tan it's largely unreaded unreal excuse me unregulated illegal in many regions for cosmetic purposes and carry significant health risks or what's the risks uh it's not approved by the fda for cosmetic use and unregulated market means purity okay but that's unregulated notable risks include dermatological issues rapid and uneven darkening of existing moles the emergence of new moles and hyperpigmentation concerns that could mask or accelerate the development of melanoma uh what is this potentially damaging erections what why the erections oh that's right this apparently gives people raging erections why prolonged painful and potentially damaging erect damaging imagine you get an erection it goes so hard you red line the penis medical and dermatological organizations strongly advise against the use of melaton melanotan because it's unapproved there are no clinically established safe dosages well weird because that um so alpha msh the thing that it is mimicking is is that's how your body makes melanin that's how your body's supposed to do it you gotta see the before and afters because they're kind of bonkers um i've seen some people get super well the problem is it's instagram you never know what's real that's uh that guy got a little tan let's see if uh there's any okay look how pale that see but that's not how do we know if that's real just like there's like a light on him right and then he's in a fucking dark closet in the last picture before and after photos i've seen is there that one right there the low the no the one yeah that one look at that guy well you know it's a look it's an interesting one he injected himself with unregulated tanning peptide melanotan melanotan two click on that seems like a joke a little no no this guy this is the guy that i saw online this guy's he's the test rabbit this dude went hard did he get a an erection too yeah he died from that i don't know so his before and afters so let's see what is he just okay yeah he just got darker and darker and darker but i wonder if like if i understand that it's unregulated but if it was regulated and this is something they're trying to work with right now with peptides and make them regular see that's the photo's dark though i mean that's like a shitty iphone one camera that's crazy if that's like this is nuts there's something going on there like you know what it looks like it looks like those bodybuilder guys who use that that that ink that dye on their skin to make themselves darker so their muscles pop out more so here's here's better tanning log photos these are better photos that's crazy but i wonder if that offers skin protection it would definitely offer skin i mean if it is if it's if it's melanin um right definitely i mean that guy can can probably be outside all day yeah so that's the question is that available to someone who's pale like and if someone is pale see if you could find an example of someone who's pale who took it because you would think like oh well maybe that maybe just we need to do studies and figure out what the dosage is and figure out how to activate that aspect of it melanin clearly protects you from from skin cancer like if you if you have super dark skin like you know african ancestry you're blocking like your melanin is absorbing like 97 98 percent of the uv rays it's super effective but did you didn't bob marley die from skin cancer he did um that's pretty crazy okay this is one wow it looks like the same person hard to hold up the same mold yeah it looks like the same mold that looks pretty good but i would just also wouldn't if you were trying to sell some of this stuff uh and maybe in nefarious ways this would be an easy one to market tough and you know definitely look this is part of the unregulated market problem is we don't know and also you know you're getting 99 bro science on this stuff you know like what screams bro science screams it from the top of the hills what legitimate scientist is out there injecting himself with melanotan but the other thing is if you do it naturally right if you just get a little sun every day and slowly build up you're not just making melanin you're also increasing your body's damage repair system you have all these like nucleotide excision repair things that fix your dna and fix cells that have gotten screwed up and that will also ramp up every day you and it's not just um not just sunlight like exercise same thing like anything that that like stresses the body a little bit it's like hormesis right so all those things are going to cause your damage repair system to crank up and be ready so you could probably want those to like the melanin and the damage repair to to like go up together right so you would want to if if let's say studies were done let's say we found what the effective and safe dose is and how to administer it you would want to do it along with sun exposure slowly to try to ramp up your body's ability added note on this uh this happened 14 years ago wow which is strange here's some of the side effects he said but he also said he's pretty much impervious to uv at this point increased libido didn't see that one much either he said he didn't get it okay sides are decreased appetite very mild nausea more for some none for me decreased libido increased libido he said it didn't see that one much either some get facial flushing like a niacin dose never got that either and the most strange thing is that it feels really good to stretch like when you first wake up interesting huh um did you do it for the skin coloring yes i did it for skin coloring i'm pretty much impervious to use uv at this point i have faded about 25 since returning from florida january 35th we'll be dosing again probably in march is this guy still alive that's my question 14 years what is that click on that link where his his profile oh let's see if homeboy's alive where this takes us is this reddit uh see a year ago he's commenting i never did it subtle okay so a year ago he's still alive or someone has taken over his account - In theory, could use an old school quartz tanning lamp okay so you could tan with it and he's in a weird reddit there so we gotta stop looking why i don't i mean this is not for the show but he's in a weird oh yeah yeah yeah okay that's why i was afraid to go that way that's a problem well only crazy people are willing to try something like that like do you remember that there was a guy god i think it was on oprah or one of those shows where he was uh taking was it silver yeah colloidal silver that's right colloidal silver and his whole his skin turned blue permanently yeah like a smurf yeah poor guy yeah and he wound up dying yeah what when and how did it kill him i don't know if it killed him but he's i believe he died young that's homeboy not good yeah that's that's just not a good look you would think you'd start turning a little blue and you'd go hey maybe i need to back off this colloidal silver papa smurf dies yeah i mean the fuck dude that guy i mean maybe he could have gotten some melanotan and even that out it's just been a nice chocolate you know like a bluish chocolate i mean he looks delicious i'll say that yeah this is argyria argyria argyria the rare disease that turns people blue caused by a buildup of silver in the body which discolors the skin wow oh 2013. he died from unrelated causes whatever that means i mean anybody's taking that much colloidal silver you're probably making a lot of other mistakes i mean yeah like you're a risky dude so many options this episode is brought to you by ketone iq here's something cool ketone iq is giving five lucky listeners the chance to win custom autographed gloves signed by john bones jones the goat the absolute legend of mma but first you know i've been studying ketones for years the u.s military spent years researching one question what is the best fuel you can give the brain they landed on ketones your brain's natural super fuel the guys at ketone iq helped bring it to market and make it accessible and i'm telling you this stuff is great my brain works on another level when i take it there's never been a better time to try it out yourself and because when you order now through my link you get 30 off and you're automatically entered to win a pair of custom mma gloves signed by ketone iq co-owner john bones jones and gold medal wrestler gable stevenson so go to ketone.com slash rogan today claim 30 off your first order and enter to win some autographed gloves um back to bob marley yes he did die of skin cancer and that confuses a lot of people so he had he had melanoma on his toe um so and that was a kind of uh melanoma that's not caused by the sun and everybody gets it no matter uh you know what race you are everybody gets it at this the same rate which is it's quite uncommon um they know it's not caused by um the sun but it like it complicates things for people because people are like i got melanoma my toe and and they think it's from the sun and they're like how did that happen right uh like what's melanoma doing on there but so it does not all melanomas are are caused by the sun there's um you know most probably are but it gets really weird with melanoma um it's associated with burning with like intermittent sun exposure like you work in an office all year and then you're like oh my god i'm gonna die of melanoma and you go to cancun and get fried that's a pretty good recipe for melanoma um history of sunburns also that will double your risk chronic exposure where you have an outdoor job every day lower than average risk of melanoma so really yeah so it gets weird like landscapers landscapers have outdoor workers have fewer have a lower incidence of melanoma than office workers wow and we don't hear that no no i mean i was i was looking at instagram the other day and some poor guy had this i don't know what happened to his face but he had some sort of skin cancer and they had to take a graft and his it was on his nose so it was like a flap of skin was like almost covering over his eye and you know his message was wear sunscreen yeah what happened to me well so i mean yeah so i don't want to downplay a skin cancer but i don't want to downplay a skin cancer but i don't want to downplay a skin cancer but i don't want to downplay a skin cancer answer because it sucks when you get it if it's you know they have to cut off a hunk of your ear or something that definitely sucks even if it's not life-threatening sucks yeah so but and so yeah like but that's generally from overexposure like burning burning all the experts i've spoken with said don't burn right burning is the one that people always say that it's not just burning it's burning causes damage that starts to appear years later yeah and there's there's dialing in on that more and more it can start like burns during childhood is actually the highest association for melanoma so don't burn when you're a kid so we're all screwed oh that sucks that sucks because i fucking cooked myself as a kid same here i grew up in florida fried you know well when i was a kid in the 70s and 80s you know you wanted to get a tan especially when i lived in boston it was cold as shit in the winter when it got warm you know you're a vermont car yeah you got out there like put baby oil on we fried totally i was just looking at some of those johnson baby oil ads from like the 60s and 70s oh my god yeah yeah it was basically cooking lube who's totally yeah it just helped helped you cook better but you remember you know george hamilton like the actor yeah mr tan he was like yeah he was all about that i just the other day i was like how's he doing 87 and ridiculously healthy right now really yeah he's going strong yeah i met that guy he was he did an episode of news radio once yeah yeah he was tan as fuck yeah that that was his thing that was his thing it became yeah what he was known for and still he's still going that's so he's still tan yeah you should see him he looks great look like pull a photo of george hamilton i mean great for an 87 year old yeah look at him still tan how does he and shiny what a weird thing to be known for he's the guy who gets tan you know what i'm saying i mean try to remember a role that he played that's true i think he was dracula in some bad 1970s like comedy look at that that's a tan right there right so how was he getting it though like i remember when i was a kid in boston a lot of people use tanning beds especially in the winter time and they still do like that those are actually like on the rise and they do they seem to raise your risk of melanoma for sure there you go that's how we did it ah look he's got a reflect a tan thing so he's just out there getting sunlight all the time and he didn't look bad that's you know that that's a that's a weird one right he claims he's never had skin cancer i think well he probably was doing it so often that his body was prepared for it right look at that photo of him with that lady in the corner yeah look at that that's nuts see that's the thing i think um like if you're getting that regular dosage your body is producing all these compounds and you're getting that regular dosage and you're getting that regular dosage and your body is producing all these compounds whose entire job is to make sure your cells don't turn cancerous because you know living things have been working on this for 500 million years like they've been get hammered by the sun every day and they got to deal with it right so it's when uh it seems like when your skin is totally unprepared and you shock it with a like a massive dose that that is not ready for uh then then you're in trouble like that's the kind of thing that triggers trouble was there any pushback on this research like when you when you first started examining this and realizing that sun exposure has a lot of benefits were any dermatologists saying hey this is dangerous information you shouldn't say this hell yeah you know i've been denounced multiple times by the american academy of dermatology like officially they send an official letter when i write an article and they say nobody should be getting any sun exposure that's their opinion no one should be getting any sun exposure regardless of the benefits the vitamin d the no sun exposure without protection from either sunscreen or you know clothing wow and if if that makes you vitamin d deficient take a pill so that's what that's what needs to change because those pills haven't panned out in tests they don't work like natural d does for whatever reason really yeah they don't work at all what do you mean so everyone thought like back in like the 80s uh 90s and then they were like oh my god we're Everyone started noticing, scientists started noticing that people who naturally had lower amounts of vitamin D in their blood had higher rates of all like the classic chronic diseases. So they started thinking, okay, vitamin D, it's like a magic pill almost. It'll cure, it'll reduce everyone's risk of all these diseases if we raise their rates of D. So they started recommending vitamin D pills, which I think are still like the number one supplement in the world. I take it. So then they did all these clinical trials to prove that it would help. Huge, huge clinical trials, tens of thousands of people, follow-ups that went for many years. None of them showed a benefit. No benefit in terms of your immune response? No benefit for any condition. Now, did they take vitamin D along with vitamin K2 and with magnesium? Because that's what's recommended. So I don't, I mean, there were a bunch of different. Apparently vitamin D by itself is not effective. That you need vitamin D with K2 and magnesium. And I think there might be another one. Let's see, put that into perplexity, please. See what it says, like, what are the benefits of vitamin D and what should it be taken with? Because I think magnesium and K2 are the big ones. And that together they have a sort of a synergistic effect. Yeah, that could be. Like, yeah, I'd be curious. Yeah, I think vitamin D by itself, the body has a problem absorbing it. It's like, there's a lot of things like that. Like zinc is like that. You need an ionophore to absorb zinc. So you take it with quercetin. Well, one thing, D, you know, the way it naturally comes into the skin and it comes in with a whole bunch of related compounds. And so, yeah, I do think there's sort of a synergistic effect when it's combined with the right things. But D from the sun has always been known as the best way to get it. Like the best way to get vitamin D, the most effective, the healthiest way is through sun exposure. Yeah, like that's how the design is supposed to work. Perplexity says vitamin D helps your body absorb calcium, build strong bones and teeth, support muscles and nerves, plays a key role in immune function. It's best absorbed when taken with a meal or a snack that contains some fat and often paired with calcium for bone health. So please put in what are the benefits of vitamin D taken? Taken with K2 and magnesium. See if it says that. Because this is what my doctor, who is a vitamin specialist, recommends. Benefits when taken with K2 and magnesium. Okay. Taking vitamin D together with vitamin K2 and magnesium can make each of them work more effectively, especially for bones and heart. As long as the doses are appropriate for you. The trio mainly improves how your body handles calcium. Interesting. D helps you absorb it. Magnesium helps activate D. And K2 helps send calcium into bones instead of arteries. D increases calcium absorption from your gut and supports bone, muscle and immune function. Magnesium required to activate vitamin D. Low magnesium can blunt vitamin D's effect and also directly support bone structure and many enzymes. K2 activates proteins that move calcium into bones and teeth and keep it out of the arteries and soft tissues, helping bone and cardiovascular health. Potential benefits of the combo. Better bone support, heart and artery protection, more efficient vitamin D use. Okay. So the doctor is correct. So maybe that's the problem. So these people were taking it with low magnesium, low calcium. Didn't have K2. Yeah. I'd be curious if there was an effect on disease incidence for that combination. I don't know. Because the D on its own, yeah, it didn't show any effect. But sun exposure. Let's put that in. Does vitamin D taken on its own have any health benefits? Let's see what it says to that. Because I'd never heard that, that D on its own was not effective at all. I just heard that it was minimally effective. That you had to take it with other. It seems like it only helps people who are really deficient. Like if you're super low, like below like 16 nanograms per milliliter, then probably it's a good idea. But like for people who already had like at least 20 nanograms per milliliter, it didn't seem to have any of these benefits that they were seeing in people who naturally had high rates of sun exposure. It says, yes, vitamin D on its own has several well-proven health benefits, especially for bones, muscles, and immunity. Just like a general. That's a good answer. Huh. Bone strength and fracture prevention, muscle function, adequate. I didn't add own, sorry. What's that? I didn't. I missed the word own. Taken on it. On its own. I'll try. The answer was weird. So let's see. Yes. It has clear proven benefits, especially for bones, muscles, and correcting deficiency. Yeah. So that's going to be for people who have super low levels. Mm-hmm. Preventing rickets. There it is. Yeah. So they have. They had thought that it might reduce incidence of all these other diseases based on what they're seeing for people who naturally had high levels through sun exposure, and it didn't. So then. Wait a minute. People who had high levels through sun exposure? Yeah. Yeah. Because your natural level of vitamin D is sort of a direct meter of how much sun exposure Right. But this is natural level. You're not talking about supplementation. Right. Right. Okay. So that was why people who had high levels of D without supplementation have lower rates of all. Like every disease. Every disease you can think of. So the hope was that raising everyone's D to those levels would have the same effect. And it didn't. Like New England Journal of Medicine actually did an editorial in 2022 saying, stop prescribing D. It doesn't work. God, that seems incorrect, though. Because if you're taking it with magnesium and K2, it seems that they do work synergistically, and there seems to be proven health benefits. One of the problems, I think, is like, I think people generally want to avoid recommending supplementation for some reason. Mm-hmm. It's kind of a weird thing. Like, they want to dismiss it. Like, I had a doctor once that told me, don't bother taking vitamins. Just eat a balanced diet. And I was like, look at you. The guy looked like shit. He didn't look as good as you, right? He looked terrible. I was like. Doctors, yeah. I'm amazed how poor. What poor health they generally, like, seem to be displaying. I can't take it. I mean, it's so hard to take seriously a guy with a gut when. Well, it just. He looked terrible. Yeah. And he was telling me that I just need a healthy diet. And I'm like, okay, I do have a healthy diet. But also, I feel different when I take vitamins. And my blood work reflects that. Yeah. I noticed that when I was. I started going to all the conferences of the Sun researchers, and they're all in, like, the basements of hotels. And those guys all. They all are as pasty as it gets. Like, do none of you guys, like, you know, practice what you preach? Really? How strange is it that human beings with all of our knowledge, with, I mean, obviously, there's much more to learn. We're still confused about how we interact with our environment. Yeah, absolutely. A hundred percent. With Sun, which seems to be like, it's there. It's everywhere. It's like you're always in the Sun. In the normal world environment, we're outside of cities. And all that stuff. It seems like we would have an understanding of what happens when you're interacting with Sun. Yeah. And light, period. Like, light of all kinds. Like, it seems like there's this sense in biology that light didn't matter. It's, like, just ephemeral. Which, you know, the quantum physicist 100 years ago understood that light and matter are just, like, two halves of the same coin, right? And that light totally affects the behavior of molecules. We're made of molecules. Light's going to matter. So I actually think. Like, that's where I eventually got to with the book. I was like, we need to think about our light diets and our, like, lightscapes that we're, you know, surrounding ourselves with, like, more seriously than we have. Well, it seems like your work is based entirely on the data. So what did these dermatologists have to say about the data if they're denouncing you and they're saying that, you know, this guy should not be listened to, the things you're saying are dangerous? Like, but you're talking about data, so I don't understand how they can just make those flat statements like that. This episode is brought to you by SimpliSafe. Some security systems aren't that secure. Say, a burglar breaks in, alarms go off, police are called, but they still have time to grab stuff, damage your property, and get away. So, yeah, not very secure. When you're ready for a security system that's serious about protecting you, try SimpliSafe. 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It sounds awesome, paired with a twin-turbo, six-pack gas engine, mind-blowing. I love cars that sound like that. And then I tried launch control. It's fantastic. You feel all 550 horsepower. It then goes from zero to 60 in 3.9 seconds with a top speed of 177 miles an hour. And it's comfortable. It's nice to drive. Another cool thing, you don't have to choose between control and performance. You got all-wheel drive when you want the grip, but you can switch it to rear-wheel mode and just have fun with it. Totally get why people are so excited about this car. I loved it. Check out the new Dodge Charger Scat Pack. Learn more at Dodge.com. Dodge is a registered trademark of FCA. US LLC right and what I think we just need to have a conversation about the data. And, you know, there's no, like, right answer ahead of time. But they don't, like, their job is to prevent skin cancer. So if that's your only job, you're going to tell people stay out of the sunlight. Forever. Forever, right? And no one can call you on that. No one can say, hey, like, I got skin cancer. It's your fault. Right. But doesn't sun exposure improve cardiovascular health and lower blood pressure? And isn't cardiovascular disease a far more dangerous problem than skin cancer in terms of numbers? It's number one. 20 million deaths a year. Cardio. So anything that moves the needle on that is awesome, you know? And it does. And it seems to. Like, all the studies show it does. But they're all observational studies, right? You look at populations, you're like, oh, these people have more sun exposure, lower blood pressure, lower rates of cardiovascular disease. But then, you know, the other side will say. You know, correlation does not prove causation. Like, prove, show us that it's, you know, do your giant clinical study where you stick half the people in the sunlight and they live longer, which is not going to happen. Right. Yeah. But it's like, are they willing to have a conversation with you? They're not. They're not willing to. They don't want to look outside of the sun and skin cancer question. Like, they're not willing to entertain any of the other benefits that are outside of their field. So there's got to be somebody out there who can be the generalist who can, like, think about it holistically. That seems so ignorant. It's the state of science now. Like, the science is, you know, like, a field of micro-specialties. Would you like some coffee? Yeah, I'll take a little. That looks good when you're pouring it. That's a very shiny press you've got there. Oh, yeah. Cheers, sir. Cheers. Is coffee good for you? Awesome. Coffee is shockingly good for me. Talk to me. Let's go. It is fucking crazy how good coffee is for you. I've been, like, startled by the, like, power of the evidence. Yeah. I've read both. I've read It's Bad For You and I dismissed it because I'm biased and I love coffee. And I just, it just tastes too good. It feels too good. I like it. But I've read a lot of benefits about it. I think it's the best possible supplement. Really? You think of it as a supplement? It's the best. And I think it's all due to mitochondrial function. I think it makes your mitochondria just spin, you know? And is it particularly because of caffeine or coffee itself? Is the coffee bean? You know, I mean, caffeine, I think it's caffeine, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's other stuff in coffee that's contributing. Because, you know, like, tea doesn't seem to quite, like, deliver. It doesn't deliver the goods like coffee does. No. But caffeine is actually, the plants are making it to kill bugs. Right. Right? Because it makes the bugs' mitochondria run out of control and they basically, like, blow up. It does that to us, but we have these other, like, governors, like, that come in and slow down that ramp up. So we get the nice ramp up without the explosion. So it's good. So it makes, you know, we produce energy more efficiently. With less wear and tear. That's all I need to hear. I'm in. I just love coffee. I'm not giving it up. But I've heard many people say that. Michael Pollan had a really interesting anecdote. He laid off coffee for, I think, three or four months as an experiment. And then he had a cup of coffee and he said it was like taking a psychedelic. He said, I just felt so amazing. The effect was so profound. He said, I really wanted to do it only that way, where I only take it, you know, very rarely. But then I fell right back into my He went right back. Yeah. Like, I remember that article. It was great. And also, he said none of the, like, the caffeine researchers touched the stuff. I'm like, that's not good. But yeah, he went right back to it. And I think he's a proud coffee drinker. Yeah, he is. He went right back to it. But so have you had any conversations with these dermatologists that are denouncing it? No. No. No. No. Are they denouncing you? No, but I'd like to, actually. I think. Are they willing or have they avoided them? They have so far really avoided. Like, they just say, you know, we're not ready to look at any of that research. God, that's so weird. I think it's going to change. I think, actually, like I said, I think light medicine is actually going to become very important in the next 10, 20 years. And dermatologists are kind of positioned to be, like, the leaders on that stuff. Because, like, skin. Skin is the primary, like, interface with light for our bodies. And, you know, they should be experts on all this. You know, red light therapy is a big thing now. And dermatologists are doing that, even though the evidence isn't great for that. But I think there's probably something there. But they should, basically, I think they need to be thinking more about all these different wavelengths of light as healing modalities and how to, you know, work them into, like, regular, like, programs. I've talked about this before, so I apologize to anybody listening. But I've, essentially, completely stopped my macular degeneration with red light therapy. Wow. Yeah. Not just stopped it, but reversed it. Like, I don't need reading glasses anymore. I've been using a red light bed for about two years now. And from the time I started using it, within about a month, I started seeing benefits. And so Gary Brekho was on the podcast and he explained it to me. And so I went out and bought one of these really expensive, it's like a tanning bed, this thing you lie in. And I do it three times a week for 20 minutes. So all over? Yep. Naked. Just lie down in there. And I keep my eyes open. And they, you know, I went to a tanning bed once, not a tanning bed, a red light bed once at a health clinic. And they were like, "You gotta wear these goggles and make sure you close your eyes before the light goes on." I was like, "Okay." I did all that. And apparently, there's some benefit that even when blindfolded, it increases your vision. Yeah, for sure. It's, again, I think mitochondria are part of that answer. There's a guy at University Glen Jeffery who, this is his whole field, optometry and red light. And he has shown in multiple different animals, including humans, that red light improves mitochondrial function and improves vision. Yeah. I mean, I'm 58. And for me to be 56 and saying, "I'm fucked," I had these fucking things everywhere. I had these reading glasses, I had them all over my house. I got up to 3X. These are the cheap Amazon ones. I had a nice pair, but I keep losing them. So I just went and bought cheap ones. They seem to work. And it was just fine for looking at a computer, you know, reading my emails, reading my phone. And I needed them to read my phone. I don't need them anymore, like at all. I don't use them anymore. My vision's not perfect. It's not as good as it was when I was 20, but it's way better than it was when I was 56. The mitochondria in the eyes have to fire faster than any mitochondria anywhere else in the body. The eyes burn through energy like no other cells, because it's kind of the toughest task. It's like they got to go super fast. So yeah, those mitochondria need to be on top of their game, and it seems like red light benefits that in particular. But it seems so close-minded that these dermatologists aren't willing to say, "Maybe we're looking at just an insufficient amount of data. Maybe we're looking at this wrong. Maybe the whole thing is much more nuanced, and maybe there's benefits if done correctly." I just don't understand why they're not willing. If there's all this data, which clearly you show in your book, that there's a tremendous amount of data, why? You know, like, so there's this like saying attributed to Max Planck, who's this like quantum physicist, "Science advances one funeral at a time." I think we got to let the old guard die off a little bit, but I guarantee there's a young generation coming in who's going to be really interested in light and how they can use it. Oh, certainly. Well, I think there's so many conversations available online now from actual researchers and people that have put in the time and put in the work and explored things from this position that like, "Hey, maybe the old guard are not correct." And the data seems to show that that's true. Yeah. And it's fun. I mean, playing with light, it's super fun. So- So like, this is a way you can like make your world a little bit richer, is starting to think about this stuff. Well, it's also like, don't you want to be informed? And if we do understand that it has an effect on mitochondria, and there is all this evidence that red light seems to have some benefits, like wouldn't. I just don't understand how someone could be an expert in skin and ignore that. Well, I think that. And they won't object to the red. Some of them are using red light therapy because there's no risk of skin cancer from red. It's only the UV and maybe a little bit of the blue that contributes to skin cancer. So it's the UV where they get a little wigged out. Yeah. But even that, it seems like there's. Like in your book, you show there's a tremendous amount of data, there's health benefits to it. So I just don't understand. Yeah. And that data is. It's coming from all different other fields, like immunology, cardiology. So. And like scientists are sort of increasingly like hesitant to trespass. They're other domains, you know? Like they're not gonna walk across campus to the other building anymore. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That needs to change, you know? Yeah, we've had those discussions, too, with scientists that are super frustrated, especially when they try to get interdisciplinary groups together to study one particular thing. And everyone's resisting because they have their own work that they're working on. They don't want to get involved. And it's like, guys, this is what you're here for. There's not a lot of scientists. You got to do your job because, like, you're the only ones that are doing it. Without you guys, we're fucked. And if you're out there relying on old, insufficient data or, you know, you have this very small data set that shows that there's negative outcomes to sunlight, and so you just throw the baby out with the bathwater, like, you're doing the whole field a massive disservice. And the other part of it is that science, it's sort of very self-reinforcing. It's all grant-based, essentially. Like, if you're a scientist, you want to do a study, you have to apply for a grant to get the money to do the study. Right, right. And you have to apply for a grant to get the money to do the study. And there's generally a handful of entities that are, like, handing out the grant money, and it's the old guys waiting to die who are going to approve what they think is the truth. They're going to fund the study that fits with what they already know about the world. So it's this kind of crazy system where the only way you can get money to do a study is if you're already telling them what they know. Right. Right? So it's very difficult to get funded to do something that goes against the grain, increasingly so. And that's a problem. And so much of it is dependent. It's dependent upon the ego of the people that are at the top of the organization. Ego is definitely part of it. It's a giant part of it because if they've based their entire career on telling you one thing that turns out to be incorrect, they're very reluctant to correct themselves. Yeah. There's not just a whole—it's very rare to find the individual who's well-known in the field and is eager to self-correct, you know? So have you had any conversations with any of these dermatologists? No, but I'd love to. Not one? That seems crazy. Have you— Have you reached out to any of them? I have. I've reached out and I get the boilerplate. Like, we don't want anyone in the sun. Take your D pills. It doesn't matter. And the one that really, that I think has got to change is the skin color question. Because fine to, you know, go with the recommendations for avoiding sun for people with fair skin. But for people with dark skin who have almost no risk from sun-induced skin cancer, and can benefit hugely from, like, things that will lower blood pressure and lower cardiovascular disease, like, it seems like you're not being fair to those people. Not only that, it makes you feel better, which is very important just for sanity. I mean, that's—I think that gets underplayed. Like, mood and happiness is kind of the whole deal, right? Yeah. And there's just no question that sun exposure makes you happier. I spent a week with my friend Brian Callen and Steve Rinella. In Alaska, on Prince Edward's Island. And it rains there, like, 350 days a year. And we got rained on for the entire week. And then when I came back to L.A., I was driving around, and the sun was magnificent. It felt so good. I stood outside. I closed my eyes. I, like, stretched my arms wide, like I was just taking it all in. And I called my friend Steve up, and I said, Dude, because we were in the rain for, like, a week, I go, I'm in L.A. right now in the sun, and it feels amazing. I never felt the sun like this before. It's because, like, my body was saying, You didn't get enough of this for a week. Now take it in, and we're going to reward you with all these amazing endorphins and good feelings. Like, if that was a drug, that drug that I took, like, if depressed people could take whatever I felt when I was out in the sun after a week in the rain, they would take it every day. It would change the world. Like, I could feel like this all day. I could feel like this all the time. And it went away. You know, it went away because L.A., it's sunny all day long, every day. Right, right. So eventually I got accustomed to it. But that feeling that I got after the week in the rain and coming back and just be like, Ah, it was incredible. It was like a drug, an amazing drug, a happy drug. Yeah, it's an awesome drug. And I felt it for sure. You know, especially, like, early spring. If I leave Vermont and I, like, have something in L.A., I'm just like, Like, why is everyone not just dancing on the streets? This feels so good, you know? But the problem is Los Angeles, they're so used to it. Yeah. They're so spoiled. Everyone there is so spoiled weather-wise. It's the perfect weather on Earth. It's incredible. Yeah. Especially if you live in, like, Malibu where it barely even gets hot. So you're dealing with that cool ocean breeze and it's sunny every day. You know, like, oh. Yeah. But how about here? Like, do you end up spending a lot of time outside here? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I do. But I'm out. I'm outdoors all the time. I work out outside. I do a lot of farmer's carries outside. I practice archery, so I shoot my bow outside every day. And I love it. I feel better. Even when it's hot out, I don't mind because I'm really kind of accustomed to it because of sauna use. I use a sauna every day. And I'm pretty religious about it. So my body's really acclimated to heat, so it doesn't really bother me that much. I just bring a big jug, a 64-ounce jug of water, with ice and electrolytes, and I just drink that while I'm out there. So I'll shoot my bow for an hour and a half, two hours, and 105 degrees, and I'm fine. I love it. I actually love that, too. Yeah. Like, as a kid in Florida, you know, we'd play basketball after school for hours. Or in summer, it would be 105 degrees, and then you just kind of turn the hose. You stick it out of your mouth for quite a long time, you know? Yeah, I mean, it feels great. It's just you have to make sure you're not dehydrated, and you have to make sure you don't burn. That's kind of all it is. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's all it seems to be. But we do see, like, truckers. Have you ever seen those? You're talking about that famous photo. Yeah. That is a crazy photo. Crazy photo. So what we're referring to is there's a photo of this trucker, and the left side of his face, from the sun coming in from the window, looks like he's 20 years older on his left side than it is on his right side. It's like special effects. Somebody melted the left side of his face. What's that all about? Yeah, there's the guy. There he is. That's literally nuts. Yeah. Like, left side is just sloping off, basically. His left side looks like a 100-year-old man, truck driver face. Years behind the wheel driving a truck. Damage typically limited to the left side of the face. So it's literally called truck driver face. Yeah. Now, so that photo and that study got used to, like, scare the shit out of a lot of people, try to keep them out of the sun. Especially people that are. That are vain and don't want that fucked up wrinkly face. This episode is brought to you by Paleo Valley. You guys know I live a super busy lifestyle, so I need snacks that don't slow me down, and Paleo Valley is the perfect on-the-go snack. That's why I keep a couple beef sticks in my bag. Not just any beef sticks. Paleo Valley 100% grass-fed beef and finish sticks. Because let me tell you, beef sticks are not all equal. Most on the market use preservatives and additives like encapsulated citric acid. And lactic acid to keep them shelf-stable. But not Paleo Valley. They naturally ferment their beef sticks to preserve freshness and flavor without using any chemicals or questionable ingredients. That natural fermentation even supports a healthy gut. No MSG, no gluten, no sugar, no additives, no junk. Just clean, high-quality beef. These are tender and perfectly seasoned. Not dry or tough like most sticks. And they've got five flavors right now. I'm on it. I'm all in for the jalapeno. Go to PaleoValley.com slash Rogan and use the code Rogan. That's PaleoValley.com slash Rogan. Oh, that's crazy. Look at the difference between. Wow. That's literally bananas. So what they're showing back and forth is they're just taking the skin from the left side of the face and switching sides. So you can see how much damage he's received on that side, the driver's side. Yeah. And so there's a couple interesting things there. One, that is shot. But the question to ask is, why doesn't every trucker look like that, right? Like, if that's the problem, why him? Because I've been driving in a car for 45 years, and, you know, my face is. The same on the left as it is on the right. Kind of hanging in there. But the other thing is, window glass, I think, is actually a really interesting problem to talk about. Yeah. Because window glass blocks UVB, but not UVA. And there's two different wavelengths of UV. The UVB is the super high-energy one. UVA is a little bit lower. It's kind of on the way to blue. And they used to think back in the day that UVB was the only one that caused skin cancer. And those old sunscreens that we used in the 70s, 80s only blocked UVB. Window glass blocks UVB, blocks only part of the UVA. So anytime you're driving or you're hanging out in a window in your house, you're getting a bunch of UVA. You're not going to burn, because UVB is the one that causes burning. But you're still going to get a bunch of UVA, which they figured out, like in the 90s, does cause skin cancer. Oh, wow. So sun through the windows is not as good as sun outside. It blocks the UVB, but the UVA comes through, but you'll never have a burn reaction because of it. But you might be getting damaged. Yeah. So, like, in the U.S., People get slightly higher rates of skin cancer on the left side of their body. In the U.K., they get slightly higher rates of skin cancer on the right side. Uh-huh. Because they drive on the opposite side of the road. Yeah. So window glass is— Slightly? Slightly. It's like 52, 48. It's not huge. Okay, but it's statistically significant? Statistically significant, yeah. Huh. So do you think it's this guy's particular genes? There must be something weird about that guy. Right. Well, how many instances of truck driver face do they have? I just Googled the condition, and it's only him coming up in the photos. So this is the thing. There's one lady, but she clearly doesn't seem to have the same issue. There's a lot of truck drivers that have been doing it for 50 years. I don't know. That's not the same thing. Oh, that's not real. Is that real? It's a different thing. She's got something wrong with her jaw. Oh. But it's coming up as the same condition. Unilateral dermatotoxic. Oh, so she had some sort of cancer that made her— It's way into her jaw? But I can't—I would have assumed that more cases would pop up, but it's literally just him. So that's the thing. The real question is, what's up with that dude? Yeah. Interesting. Here's a different truck. That's not the—oh, I don't think that's the same guy. No, it doesn't seem like the same person. It might be. It's hard to say. Could be different lighting. But so the thing is, if—so those sunscreens that were acting kind of like window glass in the 70s and 80s and even into the 90s before we got the broad spectrum, sunscreens, they're blocking the UVB, so you weren't going to ever burn. And that's what SPF actually measures, is how many more times you can be out in the sun without burning. So if you got—but it's based totally on UVB. So if you got SPF 30, in theory, you can spend 30 times as long outside before you start to burn. That's a long time, right? But all that time, UVA is just pouring into you, and they now know that UVA is the one that probably is most likely to cause a burn. Oh, that's crazy. Wow. So sunscreen. Now, I use a natural sunscreen when I use it at all. It's the stuff that's like beef tallow-based and has zinc in it. It's very white and obvious. You know, it's the—the spray stuff goes on clear. You can't even tell you have it on. Yeah. But it's very effective. But I'm always like super hesitant. I'm like, what's in that stuff that we're going to find out 15, 20 years from now? Like, if it can block the sun. So it's a— It's a chemical, and you're spraying this chemical on an organ, which is your skin. Yeah. So your skin's absorbing it. I'm like, what's going on there? And they used to say, oh, no, no, it's not absorbed very much. And then the FDA, CDC did studies a few years ago and discovered that it's absorbed at very large amounts. Yes. It turns up at high doses or higher doses than they would like it to in blood, breast milk, urine, you name it. It shows up. And what specifically? It turns up. And what's dangerous about it? So they're suspected to be hormone disruptors, all those classic chemical filters like oxybenzone. There isn't much proof that they're dangerous in the amounts used, but they definitely are absorbed at much higher rates than we thought. And the FDA has refused to approve them as safe, pending more testing. And nobody's done the testing. Whoa. But they're about to get phased out anyway. Like, just as of a couple months ago, the government changed the rules and is going to let in, for the first time in 30 years, new ingredients, which they've been using in Europe and Asia and Australia for decades. And the sunscreen companies have been asking to use them and haven't been allowed to, but they're finally going to get to use one of the main ones. And what are these ingredients? So it's called, like. Bemotrizinol or something. And there's another one that you see in Europe called, like, Mexeril 400. But they're way better. Like, basically, U.S. sunscreens are a generation behind everyone else because in the U.S., sunscreens are regulated as over-the-counter drugs. Bemotrizinol. Yeah. Bemotrizinol, highly effective broad-spectrum UV-filtered blocks, both UVA and UVB, approved by FDA as an over-the-counter sunscreen ingredient in June of 2026. Oh, wow. So this month. Yeah, it just happened. Celebrated. Celebrated for being highly photo-stable, doesn't break down the sun, transparent on the skin without leaving a white cast, and gentle on sensitive skin. So this is RFK Jr. stuff. Yeah. This one looks really good. So this other stuff that has been in there, why didn't it get examined if Europe and Asia and all these other places were using these different, safer versions? Yeah, they all bailed on it long ago because it was all we had. God damn it. That drives me. That drives me crazy. Yeah. Well, so it's because, so FDA, so in the U.S., sunscreens are regulated as drugs, over-the-counter drugs. So you have to do all this safety testing if you want to get a new ingredient in. Everywhere else, they're just cosmetics, so you can use kind of whatever you want with more minimal safety testing. So the companies wanted to use this stuff in the U.S. forever, but the FDA said, sure, just, you know, do the testing. But they didn't want to do, it was too expensive to do the testing. They would have to test it on animals. They didn't want to. They didn't want to get the blowback on that. There are a bunch of reasons that they weren't willing to do it. Also, I think they're a little scared of what they might find. So anyway, so our sunscreens have not been nearly as good as what's used elsewhere, both in terms of performance and, like, maybe safety suspicions. So that's going to change by the end of this year. It's going to get better. Well, that's good. With the traditional sunscreen ingredients that we used to use, is there any negative health consequences of using them that they've shown? Like, is there any diseases that occur more readily or more frequently? Not that have been proven. There's, like, toxicologists are a little suspicious about some of them. Like, they've definitely been shown to mess up coral, right? Like, people who— Coral reefs, right. Yeah. That's one of the things they found after COVID, right? They used to think— Exactly. They used to think that it was the warming of the environment. This was one of the things that climate change people used to say. The climate change was destroying the coral reefs. And then it turns out, actually— It's all these people that have sunscreen all over their body, and they jump in the ocean, and they're essentially poisoning the reef. Yeah, I mean, it's all of the above, I'm pretty sure. But, yeah, the sunscreen at that kind of concentration, if you've got a bazillion snorkelers in the water, can definitely mess up the coral pretty badly. Yeah, wasn't there some sort of a study that examined what happened to the reef after COVID? There was one particular reef that was in this highly visited area where people would jump in. And they— They showed a massive increase in the reef after COVID. Yeah, like, well, Hawaii banned use of those sunscreen—a bunch of places banned that style of sunscreen. But the— But they don't really check your bags, though. Yeah, yeah, right. When they say banned, like, people are going to take it anyway. But it doesn't look like—I don't think it has much impact on us unless you're using a ton of it. Which, of course, now some people are. So it's not great for you, but it's not the worst. Yeah, there's been a bunch of studies that just looked at, like, lifespan. And sunscreen doesn't seem to have any impact whatsoever, like, positive or negative on lifespan. So it just might have some sort of an impact on hormonal function? Yeah, it could well. Endocrine disruption? There's a guy named Graham Peasley at Notre Dame who found that many, many— many cosmetic products of all kinds are actually contaminated with forever chemicals. And it's—even if they don't have it on the ingredients, like, anything that's, like, water-resistant or super smooth is quite possibly going to have forever chemicals in it. And some of it is actually coming from the plastic containers because those get— they basically get, like, fluorinated with this, like, fluorine. And so they're going to get a lot of gas before they get anything in them, which is supposed to make them, like, a little smoother inside of the containers. But it turns out that actually leaks forever chemicals into the product, whatever's in there. Hmm. Ugh. That's what he found. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, this is a problem with hot coffee when you're drinking it out of a paper cup. Very similar, yeah. Yeah. People don't realize, like, the paper cup is not capable of keeping that liquid. Yeah. It would turn to mush. Yeah. And the reason why it doesn't turn to mush is because there's essentially a constant— a condom, like, around the inside of the coffee cup. And, you know, Paul Saladino broke a coffee cup down to show what it looks like on the inside. And you're like, oh, no, you're pouring hot liquid into plastic, which you're never supposed to do. And it's also, like, most coffee machines. Like, a giant percentage of coffee machines have just plastic everywhere. I got rid of mine. That's why we use French press at the studio. And I use that at home, too. And I have one of those little arrow presses to make an individual cup of coffee. Yeah. It's like the plastic is a real problem, and heating it is terrible. We know that about water bottles. Like, you're never supposed to drink out of a water bottle that you leave in the hot sun in your car. So now picture that bottle of sunscreen that's sitting in your car, right, cooking and leaching into the material. Yuck. Yeah, not good. People don't think of the skin as an organ. And I was explaining to a friend of mine the other day, he was using hand wash, that fucking hand sanitizer. sanitizer stuff, and I'm like, man, think that's good for you i mean i think if you want to wash your hands you should just use soap and water and then i read this article about it like oh yeah that's a toxic chemical like hand sanitizer when you're using it every day you're essentially exposing your skin your organ to this like what what exactly is in hand sanitizer and is it bad for you because i remember this article but i i just like went over the headline and briefly started reading it and then i had to do something and i put a bookmark to it i was going to go back to it later and i never did okay i thought you're gonna say like something happened to the bookmark no no no no i just i never went back to it but i remember during the covid times everybody was just like hand sanitizer everywhere i'm like i just don't think that can be good for you i mean anything that's antibiotic right anything that's killing biological life probably you want to be at least a little bit hesitant with mostly alcohol well even alcohol going through your skin like that uh isopropyl alcohol sometimes used instead of or with ethanol similar levels and then this word benzalkanonium chloride uh in many alcohol-free products all right um but see if you can find articles on the dangers of using hand sanitizer because this is what i had read briefly just say overuse it you're gonna up your skin biome but i don't yeah that's what it's saying overuse i just i just know that i know a guy's got um ocd and uh he's um you know hypochondriac a little bit and he uses hand sanitizer all the time it's kind of crazy and uh a friend of mine without knowing went to look at his house because his house was for sale and he's looking at the house he's like this is a very nice house and he opens up a closet and one of the closets was filled with hand sanitizer and he got so freaked out he didn't want to live in the house anymore he's like i don't want to buy this house like this guy like whatever weird thing he's possessed with that he needs 50 000 fucking bottles of hand sanitizer issues are just classic overuse and then don't not use it on your hands obviously don't breathe it don't drink it right only use it on your hands yeah but jamie's right on the skin uh biome skin biome starting out to be really important like right there's um you know they call it the gut skin act excess where you're skin microbiome and your gut microbiome are like chatting all the time and you the you you can change the composition of your skin microbiome based on all kinds of stuff like products sun exposure you know everything you do probiotics probiotics yeah well in the jujitsu world um in the the early 2000s people started really getting into probiotics they started really getting into yogurt kimchi fermented vegetables and stuff like that just to prevent skin issues interesting because jujitsu because you're you're getting scratched up and you're rolling around and there's a lot of infections and a lot of people get not just infections like staph infection but they also get ringworm and a bunch of stuff like that and so some people started using antibacterial soap and the problem with that is it just nukes all the good flora of your skin yeah so then there's a company called defense soap anti-bacterial soap and they're using anti-bacterial soap and they developed a soap specifically for grapplers and this soap has tea tree oil and eucalyptus and it's very healthy for the skin so it promotes healthy gut flora but it does kill all the cooties it kills all the mat cooties yeah um yeah that's i think that's basically what you want like that microbiome it can take a lot of natural uh you know abuse it's there it you know it naturally lives on skin so it's usually getting like roughed up by the world but yeah chemicals that are too strong can take it out and the gut flora is important as well as like you got to think of the whole thing as one sort of ecosystem yeah your whole body it all works together and if your gut biome is all fucked up and you don't have healthy gut flora it can affect all sorts of different issues and yeah it shows up on the skin for sure that's that's well known this episode is brought to you by uber eats it's football season and uber eats is delivering every game day this week double down on protein packed sandwiches with buy one get one select six inch subs from subway whether you're keeping it low-key for the game or hosting friends uber eats has deals to keep you fed so order a six inch turkey tuna or meatball sub from subway and you'll get one free no matter who scores big tonight you'll score a deal order now for buy one get one select six inch subs from subway only on uber eats subway offer valid through october 4th add eligible menu item to order prior to checkout taxes fees and terms apply product availability varies by region exclusions may apply see app for details this episode is sponsored by better help it's normal to want to improve maybe you want to be more present with friends maybe you want to get better at a skill for work or maybe you'd want to be better at following through on a commitment just with others but with yourself too your personal goals you define what better is it means different things to different people after all for better help it's a better help therapist who understands you it's concentrating on mental health and a person's well-being by providing access to therapists to millions around the world and it's helping you progress towards what's better for you like learning ways to connect with others defining what you want and yes even tackling commitment issues sign up and get 10 off at betterhelp.com that's better h-e-l-p.com so when um you first started getting pushback against this did were you surprised did it upset you like what did it feel like to get attacked by dermatologists I am naturally conflict-averse right so I was kind of do I even want to talk about this but it was such interesting information I thought was important so I wanted to it started um I wrote an article for outside back in like 2018 and I titled it is sunscreen the new margarine right so right there that's pushing buttons yeah I probably you know in retrospect I don't push as many buttons today I just point to the data you just didn't like it didn't like the response well I mean it got a massive it went truly you know viral as they used to say um but it actually detracted um like now I think I think those old sunscreens really were like margarine detrimental like the ones that only blocked UVB um so I think I kind of got it right but also it's like the title detracted from the information in the article in a sense but why because margin sucks Marge sucks those old sunscreens did suck the new sunscreens are they're fine but um so it's a good comparison it turns out to have been yeah like the more we learn about those old sunscreens the more it looks like a sort of like a catastrophic mistake that then got fixed but uh but yeah so that like I so now the book is out suddenly I've got all these like beauty magazines contacting me and um they have this image of me as like you know the Unabomber like hanging out hanging out in my cabin and firing off these missives really yeah from like beauty magazines they were nervous to talk to me because they thought I was going to be you know a kook a kook yeah wow so the first are so those is sunscreen the new margarine so that was the first one and what was the response to that so like what do you remember the first like really negative response and how you felt about it um so yeah so there's an official letter from the the AAD uh like you know we and you know they're very they're very polite um but they're like here we we we think this is misrepresenting you know the the information um and this is and we think this is dangerous if you're telling people that they might benefit from more sunlight that's dangerous so that's probably and then you know when that came in I was like so that needs to change if if we have in our heads that exposure to any Sunshine is dangerous we you know we're not seeing the forest for the trees we've lost the thread on this one uh so then so I did a bunch of other articles I did one an article that focused specifically on the skin color issue um like do people of color do we need to stop telling people of color that they need to protect themselves from the sun um and then I did a couple more recently uh for the Atlantic um just on um like what should recommendations be how do we can we do recommendations that are not one size fits all well skin color in particular is one of the best signs of adaptation to environment I mean that's how human beings were able to get vitamin D from the sun in a place like Scotland when people moved there they got pale as you know 100 completely makes sense yeah and you can track it it's like yeah like the gradations of lightning go with that move northward yeah so you can tell like white skin is like a desperate attempt to get enough light in a in a you know screwy northern environment right but when those people that have ancestors from that screwy northern environment move to California or Arizona or Australia yeah and Australia is real bad right because there's all the people that use hairspray in the 80s they cause a fucking giant hole in the ozone layer over australia well yeah essentially yeah australia when i was there they have these uh signs on buses like these warnings that show skin cancer like these horrible lesions on people's faces and stuff and it's just this warning to wear sunscreen and protect yourself they're right for that like that's the textbook case where you've got a horrible mismatch between the population and the place like super super high levels of sunshine in australia weak ozone like redheads from scotland who like are trying to deal so like their their skin cancer rates are literally like two or three times what they are anywhere else in the world wow now how much of that is because of the skin color of the general australian population other than the indigenous people and how much of it is because the ozone so the ozone is is healing itself slowly we're getting there um so the that's probably less of an issue now it's really it's a really fair skin population in a like super bright intense environment um so they do need to worry about it but the problem is the rest of the world has kind of set its like rules about sun exposure based on australia what's interesting also about australia is like i wonder how long it takes for human adaptation to start to show itself like do you think like in a hundred thousand years from now people that live in australia will be dark well you um david reich had that did that great episode with you right did you have david reich on david reich he's the harvard uh ancient dna guy did we no so he so he just came out with a new study like two months so many people and i can't remember who i had on i can't either um i was like if i didn't hear it here what i hear anyway um i'd be lex it um it just uh that movement started a few thousand years ago suddenly like the the that pale redhead gene came out of nowhere and like skyrocketed so it can change pretty quickly when the environmental factors change really that's that's only a few thousand years old um the the redheaded gene yeah yeah i mean it was kind of like lingering quietly in the background and then like maybe that's why gingers get so much hate because they're just brand new you can't they are they are like the next new thing kind of but yeah four or five thousand years ago it suddenly explodes in popularity but in a very particular place in in northern europe oh and most likely as a result to the environment yeah for a hundred percent wow yeah so i wonder how long it's going to take i'm like i wonder if we could go into the future if the same population lives in australia now well i accept here's the weird thing like so australians versus uk right similar genetics um australia super high rates of skin cancer because of that sunny environment but also way better lifespan than in the uk really so skin cancer is a factor but that sunlight is actually benefiting australians more than it's hurting them compared to the uk i wonder if a lot it's a wonder if that's a healthy user bias as well because one of the things about australia is a lot of outdoor activities a lot of people are doing stuff outside um i wonder if that's a healthy user bias as well because one of the things about australia is a lot of outdoor activities a lot of people are doing stuff outside um i wonder if a lot it's a wonder if that's a healthy user bias as well because one of the things about australia is a lot of outdoor activities a lot of people are doing stuff outside yeah and a lot of activity period and that could be a factor and actually that's one thing i come you know come down to in the book is it's really hard to disentangle all of these factors but what's really obvious is just outside good too much inside bad yeah so whatever like you don't even have to like break it down too much more outside covered up whatever you want is probably going to be good for you one of the things a friend of mine who's a doctor said that he when he was uh working in new york city in the winter time he would find people with undetectable levels of vitamin d yeah and he said it was a particular problem with people with darker skin because if you have darker skin you're going to get less vitamin d from the sun for whatever exposure you do get and then these people are all indoors all the time yeah that's a really bad formula like yeah if you have dark skin you need five to five to ten times as much sunlight to make the same amount of vitamin d oh so you're really bad at vitamin d yeah and i think that's a really good formula because if you really if you have really dark skin you're kind of designed for a very bright you know tropical environment where you're where you're outside all the time outside all the time you can handle 12 hours a day of sunshine and in fact you're going to benefit from it you get moved to a really dark environment that's not going to be good for you so you probably need to compensate in other ways it's going to be very interesting when genetic engineering reaches a level where we can turn those things on and off in people and it's going to be very interesting when we can and how do people react to fair-skinned people all of a sudden getting dark like like yeah you know like well we are one race we are it's we're the human race there's a bunch of different ancestors where people came from different areas where they adapted to different environments but the reality is we're just human beings and we all started in ethiopia and we spread out and that's just what we are we are the result of whatever environment we're in and we're just the environment our ancestors evolved in yeah totally and with with skin tone it's clearly like very very specific reactions to that environment and trying to figure out what's best in each situation but there's so much racial identity that's tired that's tied to these characteristics of your appearance and where your ancestors are from and it's going to be very weird if all of a sudden you could like people get like dark thick curly hair and you could and they're they used to be strangers i wonder how people are going to react to that i mean it's coming right right it's coming all bets are off yeah i just wonder how many people are going to be claiming cultural or racial appropriation with people just deciding to have a healthier skin tone that protects them from the sun more i see where you go yeah oh yeah well yeah um like that guy with the melanotan i wonder i wonder if anybody got mad at him right right like like what are you supposed to look like yeah what are you supposed to look like yeah yeah there was a lady that was on a television show once that was turning herself black it was in the uk and this lady looked she looked like she had other issues she had giant breast implants she looked like a kook a bunch of plastic surgery but she was dark as a date like like that lady that's a white lady so that's what she used to look like and she's getting her boobs bigger and bigger she wants them bigger and so look she keeps getting that's a little too far maybe maybe wow that's her that's her so what did she do via intense use of tanning injections yeah so she's she's the ultimate melanotan hero wow um i mean that got that lady got like cameroon dark like look at that photo again go back to that video like that's crazy that is crazy that's crazy i don't know i don't know maybe you're in australia it works for you uh maybe well it would right it would protect because it is melanin but obviously she's got she's got other things going on like you yeah at some point you might might might have too much mel so here's the funny thing about melanin as well like so it's made by our melanocytes um which are what can become melanoma if they get screwed up and those are in the very bottom of the epidermis the outer layer of the skin um and it's an incredibly good absorber of uv better than anything we've come up with it's almost perfect at it but what you want it when it when your skin gets hit with sunlight that melanin that's just been produced is at the bottom of the epidermis where the melanocytes are so it has to migrate to the surface and then it kind of acts like like like little umbrellas like it'll like cover the nucleus of the cell and protect it so you get these little like umbrellas a line of umbrellas on the very top of your epidermis but it has to migrate up because of sunlight if melanin is lower in your skin then it's going to absorb all that radiation farther down and actually it can cause more free radicals deeper in the skin and what would cause it to be lower so it starts lower right and it only goes up in response to sunlight so if you're never ever in the sun and you suddenly go out and get hit by a bunch of sunlight your melons gonna be down too low and can actually create for you it can exacerbate the problem so this lady might be exacerbating the problem if he's just getting the melanin that way so yeah i don't know because i don't know about this specifically but you probably yeah you don't want to just be like messing around with melanin uh like to the extent that she is oh boy that's interesting because like the melanitan stuff the i've i've heard about it before and i just i never really looked into it but the idea would make sense that if you can make your body produce more melanin that would protect itself but i didn't realize that it has to be melanin from sun exposure you want in the right place yeah could both things work could you do it that way and with sun exposure increase increase both and would it would it give some sort of a benefit to have a higher level of melanin that could eventually get to the surface of the skin does that make any sense you're above my pay grade now like i think you might be above everybody's pay grade i don't i don't know if anyone has looked at that they see it seems like something to look into though If we know that there's a benefit to having melanin. Yeah, I mean, it'd be interesting. But I think this stuff's new enough that there probably hasn't been a ton of research on it. So what does a pale person do? What does the old pasty white do? Yeah. So full pasty white, like really pale? Yeah. I have a friend, my daughter said, he's white. And I said, she was really little. And I go, yeah. She goes, no, no, no. He's white like paper. So if you're white like paper. He's from England. Yeah. Yeah. You do have to be really careful. You're not going to tan that much. You just don't make that much melanin. Can that change over time? Can they like slowly expose themselves to the sunlight like five minutes a day and just ramp it up? It depends on your genetics. If you're like a full on ginger, like true redhead, then you have a type of melanin called pheomelanin, not eumelanin, which is what it is. But everybody else has. And pheomelanin just does not do a good job of absorbing sunlight. Oh, no. So there's no hope for gingers? There's no hope for gingers in terms of sun exposure. Damn. The hope is just, you know, avoid that midday sun that's high in UV. Get the morning and like the sunrise and sunset stuff that doesn't have the UV in it. Okay. So they can benefit from sun exposure, but they can't have like full on outdoor sun exposure. Yeah. They're the ones who need to be really careful. So for those people, sunscreen is recommended. Yeah. Or just cover up even, I think, better, you know? How many other people are working on this stuff? And is everybody sort of in agreement with the data, the people that are examining it? I mean, there's a ton of science coming out, but it's early days for sure. Doesn't it seem crazy that sun and our reaction to sun is unknown? Or at least. Poorly studied? Yeah. Yeah. But yeah. But it's amazing how many things in medicine, you know, you dive into the research and you dig down a little and you realize that we're just kind of guessing still on many levels. Like it's early days for a lot of this stuff. Well, certainly for like stuff that they use for antidepressants. Yeah. But that's. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sun exposure is competitive with antidepressants in terms of lifting depressants. That's a good question. Isn't that nuts? And you know what's way better? Exercise. Yeah. Many times better than any known antidepressants. Regular exercise. I mean, exercise is number one for everything across the board. I talked to Ginger People with Mel with the peptide here. Mm-hmm. I'm seeing a few posts about it changing their hair color. Interesting. And this one says permanently. What? Yeah. Click on that. Well, that makes. Well, this is. Yeah. I guess this just takes it to the Reddit. It's just going to show a YouTube video here, but there's multiple. Change his hair color? Other posts about it. Whoa. And there's a. I was just seeing. What if that would work with people that are old, that have white hair? I want to know what that would do. This one here, like a Melatonin 2 page says how it can affect hair color. Whoa. I read through it real quick. This is not the best website to read about. Isn't it weird that women with red hair are hot and men with red hair are not? It's very weird. Because women with red hair. Men with red hair are considered very attractive. Yeah. This one's. This guy's got a spray tan. Okay. But the people that take it, that one guy, is he like a one of one where it changes his hair color? So that. This. Like I said, so this website. Click on that. Click on the video. Let's watch it for a couple seconds. See what this guy's showing. So this is him before, and this is him now. His eyebrow and his beard color's changed. Also, we clicked on the. This might not even be him. He could be reporting the video. He could be reporting the video about someone else, too. So before I got all gray and my hair started. It looks pretty good. I guess it is. Yeah. animal lying by the side of the road. Gray? I actually used to be ginger. Now, I was bullied a lot as a kid because I was ginger, I was weird, and I was chubby. That's the winning trio for being directions from this going through a lot of changes up here, down there, you know, the stuff that happens during puberty. So I didn't immediately notice that my hair had gotten much darker. It was actually other people asking me what the hell I had done to my hairline, you know? On this picture, it's probably much clearer. That's a picture of me and my brother. We have the same genetics in regards of skin color and the color of our hair. And as you can see, my hair is now completely different from his. We used to have the same skin and the same hair, especially the color. Now, this is only from using one vial of Melanotan II in the span of a year, even more than a year. I was at low dosages, but with our genetics of big, tall, white ginger, Belgian gingers, it completely changed the color of my hair and my skin and the effects were very strong. So the effects are permanent. So he still has dark hair. But what's interesting is that in the beginning he had gray hair. He seems older, obviously, right? Right. But he had gray. He was showing and his hair's not gray anymore, right? I mean, gray. Yeah. Gray and ginger. Gray is a loss of melanin. Like, melanin's what makes your hair dark as well as your skin dark. So he's resupplied his melanin through his hair as well, it seems like. That seems kind of nuts. He said one vial for a year? I don't even know, over a year. Right. So for a year. So his skin has gotten pale again, but his hair is permanently dark. So that's what he used to look like. He had red hair, he had a red beard, and he had gray hair. His hair had gone gray. Yeah. That's the problem with Mark. I gotta know if this guy's full of shit. Yeah. That's, again, it's like there's only one person saying that. Yeah. That's the problem. It's like you don't know what you're looking at. This episode is brought to you by Chime. And I know people don't usually get excited about banking, but Chime is doing something different and it's worth paying attention to. In a recent survey, they ranked the number one choice for new checking accounts in America. That means real people, millions of them, are choosing this over traditional banks. That's because banking at Chime is the best choice. It's a great way to get your money back. And it's a great way to get your money back. I have heard that though, actually Brigham ways to well. The local wellness clinic was telling me about that. That some people have crazy erections because of melanotan. Yeah, like what? How? And then some people don't. Like that one guy that had taken it, he said it didn't affect him that way. But maybe, maybe he's broken. Does it say anything about why melanotan causes boners? Okay. It can increase libido and trigger erections in some men, but it's not approved for, well, I know it's not approved. How does it affect it? Stimulates melanocortin, melanocortin receptors in the brain which are involved in sexual arousal and erection control, not just tanning. Controlled tiles, controlled trot, jeez, I can't talk today. Subcutaneous melanotan too caused erections in most men with erectile dysfunction, often without sexual stimulation. Same studies found increased sexual desire in a majority of doses compared with placebo. Hmm. Interesting. I wonder what the connection is. It's the melanocortin. The MC, what was it, MC4R up there? So, yeah, MC1R is the gene for that determines whether you've got the red hair or not. Look at this. Common side effects were yawning. Nausea, yawning, and stretching. Flushing with decreased appetite. Some participants had severe nausea at higher doses. Yawning and sexual desire is an interesting combination. Yeah, that's weird. Yeah, I'm really horny, but I'm too tired to do anything about it. Hypoactive sexual desire for premenopausal women. Interesting. Interesting. Also shows rectogenic, I like that word, a rectogenic effects in men with ED. Including those who fail PDE5 inhibitors. What is that? What is a PDE5 inhibitor? Interesting. Someone should, someone out there with gray hair should give it a go. Find out. Find out what's up. Doesn't sound like, other than dealing with boners, doesn't seem like there's any real problems. I keep going back to this, you getting attacked thing. And I don't understand how someone could attack you with the data that you're showing. You're not making any dangerous or you know, any claims or any, you're not advising people to do anything that's reckless. Yeah, no, I mean, I purposefully have sort of, well, I really haven't, I basically tell people to figure it out for themselves, right? But, it's only small amounts of sun exposure that seem to be necessary to get most of the benefits. Like, the jump isn't going from zero to some. It's, you don't need a lot. Nobody really needs a lot. Unless you have really dark skin, then you can probably get away with a lot. So, yeah, just a little bit of sun exposure doesn't seem like a crazy recommendation. But, it's just because the messaging has been sort of so extreme and unyielding. Like, they've worked for so hard, to sort of scare people away from any sun exposure, that I think backing that up a little bit is sort of uncomfortable. You know? I understand, but I mean, isn't history filled with new discoveries and changing courses? Yeah, and I think it'll change. But, it's going to be one funeral at a time. It's going to be ugly all the way. When you do this kind of work, like, have you discovered any other things that people thought were unhealthy that turned out to actually probably be good for you, at least if used correctly? Yeah, that's such a good question. So, the one, like, the metaphor that I think we're all familiar with, and that I think maps pretty perfectly here, is diet and fat, right? Like, 20, you know, 25 years ago, Gary Taubes does that article in the New York Times Magazine, what if fat doesn't make you fat? And we were still, still back in that era of, you know, carbs cut all the fat out of your diet, carbs are good for you. Margarine, right? The margarine era. The top experts got it 100% wrong back then. And when they got called on it by, like, you know, Taubes and others, Nina Teicholz, you guys have had Nina on. I've had Taubes on as well. Oh, yeah? Okay. You know, they fought hard, and they were totally wrong. And we now, you know, we flipped, but it took a long time, and, you know, there was a little blood in the water during that process. Oh, yeah. I was in the early days of that, and people were just warning me about my cholesterol. What about your cholesterol? Yeah. What's really interesting is during the heart of that, when I, you know, I eat a lot of meat. My diet's mostly meat. And I went to the doctor and I got all my levels checked, and he said, are you on some anti-cholesterol medication? And I said, no. Why? And he goes, you have very low cholesterol. Interesting. It was weird. And I go, dude, if you saw my diet, my diet's like mostly meat and eggs and bacon. That's like a giant percentage of my diet. I thought that was really interesting. I think, I mean, yeah. I think the evidence is pretty good. Like, for keto, I think it's pretty strong. Saladino, I think, is pretty much spot on on a lot of this stuff. But, so yeah, so that like, the ultimate experts all said that was going to kill you. Right. You know, Atkinson, Kins back in the day, and they were all completely wrong. So, there's a, you know, there's a long track record of the pros being wrong, I think, on a lot of things. But that's a really good example. And people can wrap their heads around that one, because we now, I think a lot of people understand that low-carb really works well for them. I mean, they completely flipped the food pyramid. Right. Which was a beautiful thing to do. And I can't believe it happened so fast. Yeah. Well, also, with very little pushback. It's kind of interesting. Because the evidence had already compounded, to the fact that, listen, for sure, margarine is not a good thing. It's not a good substitute. But also, that all these healthy fats that you're getting from milk, that you're getting from eggs, eggs in particular. We've been told eggs are bad for you, the cholesterol in eggs. Eggs, you could live off just eggs. Yeah, probably the perfect food. Yeah. Like, eggs are fantastic. I always tell my friends that are vegans, I was like, listen, man, just get some chickens, and they're your pets, and they give you free food. It's like, I have 16 chickens, now, and I get eggs every day, and these chickens are pets. Like, I go, hey, ladies! You know, I feed them, I throw the worms down. They're not afraid of me. They listen to me. When I open the door, they come running out, and they wander around the yard. It's like a great relationship. You get free food, you take care of them, you feed them, and they eat all the bugs in your yard, and you get these delicious, healthy eggs from them. With those beautiful orange yolks. Yeah. So if you're worried about, if it's an ethical thing, you don't want animal cruelty, and good for you, that's a wonderful way to live. But you are sacrificing your health by not eating pasture raised eggs. Just get the real ones. Not the bullshit ones, the real ones. Unfortunately, they're tricking people now. Some companies have been exposed for feeding their chickens turmeric. They feed them curcumin and turmeric, and they're making, because it makes their eggs a darker, more attractive yolk. I know, right? It's like, it's so screwy, so bizarrely backwards. It is, but isn't turmeric good for you? And wouldn't turmeric that you're getting from those eggs also be good for you? It's like. Yeah, it can't hurt. Right? It's not like they're getting them food dye. You know what I mean? So it's like, yeah, you're getting these darker eggs because people like that, and the darker eggs come from turmeric, but yeah. Still, you're getting turmeric then, aren't you? Isn't that how it works? I mean, that's fine, but I think the chicken, I think, like, it's the bugs that sometimes help turn them orange. Yeah, we get eggs from our neighbor. Like in Vermont, everybody, there's chickens like running around the road everywhere. And yeah, they're delicious. Yeah, you can tell that they're getting it from the bugs and the greens and. Yeah. And it's super healthy. I mean, but that color of things is also why they dye farm-raised salmon, which is really gross. So salmon are getting that from bugs in particular. Yeah, exactly. Little arthropods. Yeah. Like miniature shrimp, kind of. Yeah, that's why they have that wonderful-looking pink skin. That orange-y pink skin. So in that case, the dye is maybe a little more suspect. Yeah, well, the dye is very suspect because it's like, you know, these farm-raised salmon, they have pale skin because they're eating bullshit. Yeah. Are there any other things that you've stumbled across that turned out to be good for you that people were averse to? I'm still curious about alcohol. You know how everything is flipped on alcohol? Like, first it was like, a drink or two a day is good for you. And then suddenly, they flipped a year or two ago and say, any amount of alcohol is bad for you. I looked into those studies and it seems like the takeaway really should have been, you know, moderate drinking doesn't do much of anything to you. Like maybe it is slightly good for you or slightly bad for you, but for like a drink a day or like one to two a day, didn't seem to have a whole lot of impact on mortality at all. And also probably reduces a little bit of stress, relieves a little bit of social anxiety. And that alone is really beneficial. Like, how do you feel? Like, are you happy or are you stressed out? Sometimes a drink or two, you're like, ah, fuck it. We're fine. Everything's good. Like, that alone has benefits. Like, what it does to your mood, that it's a social lubricant. It'll allow you to like maybe laugh a little bit more, have a little bit more fun. Totally. Which is why I can't give it up. Like, that social environment is a really nice environment to be in. And if, you know, a couple beers helps make that happen, it's a good thing. I gave it up for about eight months. I completely, problem is I own a comedy club and I was there a lot. And so everybody's like, have a drink, have a drink, let's do shots. And then next thing you know. I was in the gym the next day feeling like shit. I got tired of doing that to myself. And so I said, I'm just going to stop drinking. Not because I'm an alcoholic. It wasn't hard to stop. It was super easy. I just stopped. And then I started feeling way better. I was like, God, why was I drinking for so long? It was just so bad. And then out to dinner with my wife, had a margarita, like eight months later. I'm like, let's have a drink. She wasn't drinking either. I'm like, this is nice. I like it. So now I limit myself. I just, I won't have more than like two drinks. Two drinks is a, but two drinks is right. Two drinks is like, we, as long as you don't have to drive, you're not going anywhere. You know, if I go to the club, I'm there for hours. Yeah. Completely sober after it's all over. It's like, I wake up in the morning. I don't feel like shit. It doesn't seem to be affecting my workouts. However, if you wear a whoop or an aura ring or one of those tracking devices, you will notice in your sleep and your recovery, you're not sleeping as well. You don't sleep as well. You don't get the same deep sleep. I can tell. Yeah. Just one glass of wine can fuck you up a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. And that, for me, that hit in middle age, like before that wasn't a problem. But now, yeah, like two drinks, two does seem to be the cutoff where, you know, life functions normally still. But yeah, the sleep's not as restorative somehow. Somehow. But I wonder if it's the timing of when you're drinking. So I wonder if you have like a glass of wine at dinner at like six o'clock, but you don't go to bed till midnight. I wonder then your body is like, oh, I'm going to sleep. I'm going to sleep. I'm going to sleep. I'm going to sleep. I'm going to sleep. I'm going to sleep. I'm going to sleep. I'm going to sleep. I'm going to have a chance to process it and then you're okay. Well, that Italian style, right? Like, I feel like the Mediterranean lifestyle, they got this pretty much nailed down like 2000 years ago. Right. It seems to work pretty well. Which also brings us back to food, right? Because the way they eat is so, it's so interesting how thin they are. And yet they eat mostly carbs. I know. I know. Something's different there. A lot's different. And we know what it is now. We know that there's a lot of additives and preservatives. And it's also like, they don't use glyphosate and they have heirloom wheat. So they have wheat that hasn't been optimized to have a higher yield. So it doesn't have as much complex wheat glutens. And so there's a lot of issues with our food, unfortunately. And if you eat American bread, you know, the bromine, all the different additives, all the shit that we put in our food, that's so disturbing. Whenever I go to Italy, I'm so angry that when I come back home, I can't have food like this. Like you have to seek it out. You have to go to like, certain restaurants that only use like Italian flour. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, you look at those Mediterranean cultures and it just works for them. And yeah, like you say, it's, you can't explain it in terms of like macronutrients or anything like that. Like it's something, there's something like synergistic about that lifestyle. I do actually think light is part of it too. Like they got great light there. Yep. They have great light, especially like Malvi Coast, those people. But the other thing is also, less stress. They're not as career focused. They're more family oriented, very tight knit family groups. They eat dinner together. There's a lot of laughing, a lot of drinking wine. A lot of them smoke cigarettes. You go over there like, cigarettes never went out of style over there. They're all smoking cigarettes. And you're like, how are you guys so fucking healthy? This is weird. Yeah. It'll be interesting on cigarettes if it turns out that in a certain context, they're not that damaging. And then out of that context, they're super damaging. I have heard that with polyphenols. I've heard that, and this is a, I think controversial as well, but it's cigarettes taken along with olive oil. And that a lot of these people have high olive oil rich diets and that cigarettes along with olive oil, that the olive oil tends to balance out whatever damage that the cigarettes are doing. That is super interesting. This episode is brought to you by Visible. As fall hits, we enter another season of change. Time to shift gears, drop the dead weight and upgrade the wardrobe for the drop in temperature. But one thing that doesn't need to change, your phone. 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It's bad in a certain context, and then it seems to have been okay for people in a different context. Yeah, yeah. Are there any other things that you've noticed? Like, I know you've done work on chocolate, right? A lot of work on chocolate. Yeah, like my first sort of big magazine story, outside magazine, sent me to the Amazon on this crazy hunt with this German guy. It was basically Apocalypse Now with chocolate. You know, this German guy was going upriver into the Amazon to try to find this wild cacao, like to work with some of the indigenous groups to harvest wild cacao and make like the world's first wild chocolate. So I went with him. Crazy, crazy trip. But yeah, I sort of fell in love with cacao on that trip. But it was like we landed, we took a small plane and we were going to land on this river and meet a canoe that was going to take us upriver to meet with these indigenous groups. So we found a runway, right? This is in the Bolivian Amazon. I've been in the Amazon all of like four minutes, right? The plane drops us off on this flooded runway where like it was a crazy landing. We hop out of the plane. I'm glad to be alive. And then these four guys with guns come out of this little cabin. And we're like, we're, this is actually a landing strip that our, you know, we're going to take off. And they're like, we're going to take off. And I'm like, what are you two white dudes doing here? So like all the cocaine traffic comes through this part of the Amazon. And we had just done what people actually have been killed for, which is, you know, like if a couple of white guys drop in there, they assume you're like the EA or something. So they are super suspicious. And I didn't, you know, they were speaking Spanish. So I was like catching every fourth word or something. I'm like, this can't be good because of the guns. But anyway, the guy I was with, the German guy, he negotiated with them. And finally they're like, okay, just give us a landing fee. So we're like, sure. But yeah, so that was, but that was the beginning of my chocolate journey. What, so what part of the Amazon were you, where are you? Bolivia, which, you know, Bolivia, you think of like mountains, La Paz, but they have these lowlands, which are like straight up like rain, like tropical rainforest. It's called the Beni. And it's like truly lawless area, like huge swaths of jungle, bunch of cattle ranching as well. All the drug traffic comes through there from the Andes. So. And you went in there as just as a journalist? Yeah. So this guy, this German guy, he'd been living there for 20 years and he was trying to get this cacao. And he's like, yeah, I'm going to go meet with these groups. Do you want to come? And outside had just come to me and they'd liked something else I'd written. And they're like, hey, we're outside magazine. What's the like freakiest thing you, you ever wanted to do? We'll, you know, we'll send you there. And I had like a little kid at the time. So I was like, you know, I'm not going to be going off a $200. foot waterfall and kayak for you guys but then this this like you know heart of dark chocolate uh thing came up and i was like i could do that i could be like the comic guy for them so it was this like ridiculous journey where like everything went wrong um but we did get some really good good chocolate at the end of it so what is the benefit of wild cacao um it tastes really really good like better than the industrial varieties of cacao that most chocolates made with and it's just like kind of a cool story and it can be used to support those indigenous groups so that the forest doesn't get cut down and turned into more like cattle ranch because um cacao grows in the understory of the rainforest so it's kind of a way to monetize the the full rainforest and keep the canopy intact exactly yeah um what is the benefits of cacao like health-wise it's right there with with coffee um you know tons of polyphenols a little bit of caffeine it seems to you know be anti-inflammatory gives you a little boost makes you happy there's some of the same reasons and maybe some different ones as well and when you say it tastes better like in what way like when you try it um a lot more like aromatics and less bitterness like basically what happened with cacao is um when it became a global product the europeans selected varieties that were high yielding same thing that happened with tomatos and everything else they were high yielding but they lost some of like the great uh aromatic qualities that like the old maya cacao had had and that's what gets grown all over the world most cacao comes from africa now and it's it's more bitter less interesting but way cheaper so then there's this movement that started like 10 15 years ago of people trying to go back to latin america to find the like ancient heirloom varieties that had this great flavor and make like better chocolate than had ever been made before sort of the most ancient is the stuff in the amazon which is where cacao originated still growing wild so it's it's you know it's kind of cool if you can go back to the you know primordial days well i mean the example of tomatoes is a perfect example because heirloom tomatoes are sensational they're so delicious so much better they're so much better and then you have one of those mcdonald's tomatoes that looks like a piece of paper yeah cacao that's what it looks like that is yeah so it's these pods and you open up the pod it's kind of like the size of like a little nerf football or something oh wow yeah i had no idea and so chocolate is made from the seeds inside you got to ferment them and then roast them and then you grind them into chocolate where can one get heirloom chocolate made from this ancient cacao so is there a company yeah so the place i send people is uh caputo's which is online site they're like the main importer of specialty chocolate that's there they are um is that the people yeah so they caputo's has most of the like the great wild cacaos available on their website they just it's just like retail caputo's so is it caputo's.com yeah yeah it's from salt lake city yeah they've got a cool shop in salt lake oh interesting preserved bolivian rainforests yeah all right ritual chocolate yeah i've heard of people like ritual cacao ceremonies i'm like what are you doing so that what are you doing that it's it's so um that's a gringo thing uh-huh everyone thinks it goes back to something like like we're referencing some ancient maya ceremony of course it is it's it was a a a white dude in guatemala yeah there you go look at these people right it's kind of like ayahuasca with trading wheels yeah they do cacao yeah but like what what's what's the difference between cacao and cacao like what's the difference between cacao and cacao yeah but like what what's what can come out of a ritual where you take cacao i mean you know same thing that can come out of ritual where you do anything else like you're you're focusing you know it's a mindfulness you get a little you know you get a little boost from the cacao but not much yeah it's it's more about the ritual or why is cacao what is a cacao ceremony why they're suddenly showing up all over l.a uh yeah you can answer that one on your own so i mean jamie if you can call up keith cacao there's this guy named keith i think he died recently he's like the classic gringo guru with a big white beard who would like have people in guatemala and he's just invented this cacao ceremony thing oh white people but he's uh damn it white people and then everyone else sort of took it from him there he is well he looks like the type of guy look at him big old dirty pot of cacao dunking in a costume so he started you know okay poor keith these silly people so um but what there's like antioxidants in it like there's other a ton yeah it's good for you it's totally good for you and um yeah it you know gets your heart beating a little faster there's some happy drugs in there um it's got a tiny bit of cannabinoids in it um but and it tastes great so you know what's not to like anything else any other foods or substances or different things that you found out that were beneficial well how do you feel about oysters i wrote a book about oysters too i eat them all the time are you your friend yeah i like them are they okay i mean they're great uh but there's no but they're great but i think they're i think i think we haven't figured out why you know they're like you know you're eating like a little living being so i think you know there's like some chi factor there where the reason people get so excited and feel so good when they eat oysters it's not because of like the nutrients it's like there's something else that's in there you know well isn't there zinc in oysters there's definitely and they're supposed to have an aphrodisiac effect right yeah so i think that aphrodisiac thing is like it's more about the chi like this living force that you're ingesting than this this sounds like hippie talk it does that is it does sound a little uh you know like she's gonna get um she's gonna get justified scientifically you think yeah um so you think you're getting what's interesting there's another a friend of mine made an argument for vegans to eat um shellfish he said like if you're eating clams and oysters they're so primitive they're more primitive than plants he said there's more evidence that plants are conscious than there is that these shellfish are conscious yeah i mean i think yeah plants are pretty damn smart so yeah weirdly so yeah and mussels and clams and oysters they're not they're they're they're sort of alive but they don't feel pain yeah and they just move and because they move they open and close we've decided that they're animals and with oysters that's literally the only thing they can do yeah like clams at least can you know they get the tongue and yeah oysters they're stuck they they just open and close there's not a whole lot going on there for sure right but healthy for you yeah unless you get a bad batch and then you die they are definitely a source of food poisoning yeah i've heard people dying yeah yeah they they kill a few people every year you know it's interesting my wife got food poisoning from oysters once when we were on vacation we were in hawaii and she ate oysters and somehow or another she got it and i didn't but then my daughter who didn't eat oysters also got the food poisoning because food poisoning apparently can spread through the air interesting and so it's contagious yeah if you're i guess if you're like ralphing hard enough you're you're flowing it through the air i guess but it was really weird and that's how we found out that food food poisoning is contagious and that's one of the reasons why they isolate people when they're on boats when they have food poisoning yeah because those people could actually spread whatever that is through the air fucking weird yeah yeah but that i do i do love oysters but i do get nervous when i eat them because every now and then you hear like houston man dies from food poison cold water cold water is uh it says food poisoning itself is not directly contagious as it refers to an illness caused by eating or drinking contaminated food however the specific viruses or bacteria responsible for the contamination are highly contagious and can easily spread from person to person through poor hygiene or shared surfaces yeah so it's contagious so the viruses that come from food poisoning are contagious it's not like through the air oh surface contact is that what it is oh i see so coughing and stuff injecting yeah and so you may be interesting the airborne confusion the confused few show more um confuse food poisoning with highly contagious stomach bugs like norovirus where the viruses are not airborne they're highly contagious can spread through the air in tiny droplets when someone vomits there it is leading to contaminated surfaces or breathing in aerosolized particles so that's what it is it's the coughs yeah um okay i think we covered it you think yeah i think i think we uh i think you're gonna get a lot of uh interesting responses so guess what i don't read them so good luck to all those haters shouting into the void um i've long suspected that sun exposure is probably good for you and it's really just a matter of like how much mitigating the damage that you could get if you get burnt turns out you're right yeah uh it just doesn't make sense that your body produces vitamin d through it it makes you feel so good and yet somehow another is bad i think it's like many things very nuanced and so i'm really happy that you did so much work on it thank you and love you happy you rode the storm too well the storm's just coming i'm sure especially after this show but uh thank you very much and tell everybody where your book is and how they can get it uh yeah so whatever their favorite online place uh in defense of sunlight amazon anywhere else and did you do an audio version of it yeah i they let me read it yes we'll see if that was good news or not nice i love it when someone reads their own book it's very important i think me too yeah all right well thank you very much this episode is brought to you by uber eats it's football season and uber eats is delivering deals every game day this week double down on protein pack sandwiches with buy one get one select six inch subs from subway whether you're keeping it low-key or you're keeping it low-key you can or hosting friends uber eats has deals to keep you fed so order a six inch turkey tuna or meatball sub from subway and you'll get one free no matter who scores big tonight you'll score a deal order now for buy one get one select six inch subs from subway only on uber eats subway offer valid through october 4th add eligible menu item to order prior to checkout taxes fees and terms apply product availability varies by 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