263. Why Light Is the Most Overlooked Nutrient for Your Health — Preventing Seasonal Effective Disorder, Circadian Healing & Conscious Tech Use with Dr. Alexis Cowan

So if you look at the modern indoor environment, there is zero near infrared light present. And that is because standard window glass blocks virtually 100% of near and infrared light. LED and fluorescent bulbs have no near and infrared light. Near and infrared light is considered thermal, so like heat producing. And so it's considered a waste product when it needs to be considered an essential nutrient for human health and honestly life in general. And when you think about it that way, it's very clear that we need to add it back in, whether that's through opening up windows or getting incandescent bulbs or spending your time outside, way more working outside, making a nice little space for yourself so that you can, you know, productively work in your backyard or on your patio or something like this. That's what I did. And I usually recommend people like instead of spending money on dubious supplements, spend your money building a nice, a nice little outdoor oasis for yourself that it's going to make it functional and aesthetic so that you enjoy spending time out there and that you can maximize that time. In today's busy world, how can we find the inspiration, knowledge and energy to live a healthy and empowered life? If we balance and harmonize our mind, exercise our body, live according to the laws of nature and connect to spirit, can we find a way to heal, become our authentic self and live our purpose with love? I am your hostess, Amy Fauner and welcome back to Awakening AfroDidi. All right, friends. We're back. Welcome back to Awakening AfroDidi podcast with Amy Fauner. This show is about helping you to be healthy and fit in mind, body and spirit as well as harmonize your masculine and feminine energy tap into your intuition, your true source of power and awaken your authentic self. My friends, you've heard me say many times that light and air and water and food are all so important natural medicines that our bodies, our minds, our spirits require every day because it is actually information and instructions for ourselves, our organs, our organ systems, our body to operate properly. That's right. Light is a nutrient and water is a nutrient and it has to be structured properly for your body to be able to use it the way it needs for you to feel and function correctly. Light is the same way. That's why I'm super thrilled that Dr. Alexis Cowan is on the show today. Wow. Dr. Alexis Cowan has taken the world by storm. She is a protege of the one and only pioneer Dr. Jack Cruz, which I'm sure you've heard of because, uh, wow, he has really changed the game when it comes to understanding light biology and quantum physics. Dr. Cowan is a PhD from Princeton University who defected from academia to help build out the corpus of nature. Nature oriented, decentralized science and living. She is an expert and absolutely brilliant, which you will hear in the field of light biology as well as mitochondria and she's pretty hip to the inner workings of the current spiritual war. She is a freedom warrior. She's a sister in kind of mine and I absolutely have the most props and respect to her. We talk about quantum biology and the fundamentals of light and we get into, of course, the sun and skin cancer because there's so much misconceptions around that. And we also talk about nature's sunscreen, what it is, how to get safe sun exposure, dietary factors that are directly correlated with getting skin cancer and sunburns. We talk about seasonal effective disorder and what we can do naturally to help combat it. And where you live on the globe, your latitude and how that affects your mood and your skin and your sleep and your circadian rhythms. And we have to talk about mitochondria. You know the powerhouse of the cell that you learned in biology 101 and sixth grade. Well, it's so much more than just that. And if you have any kind of energy problem, you've got a mitochondria problem and you're going to want to listen to that. And of course, we get into wrinkles and beauty and skin care because we can't talk about safe sun exposure without that. And we talk about light and serotonin, melatonin, sleep, mood, rhythms, hormones, the natural skin clock. And of course, we have to get in cloud seating and chemtrails and what's going on with them spraying stuff on us from the skies without our consent or our knowledge and how that's unfortunately affecting all of life on the planet. But the good news is we're getting the word out about this going on and we're making in roads to make sure it stops. Wow, you're going to love this show. And I'm going to point you to some other episodes if you're interested in this kind of thing because I talk about light and sun and skin and health and beauty a lot on my show. You're going to love episode 162, the missing ingredient for your healthy lifestyle with a red light therapy and detoxification with the founder of sauna space, which is my red light therapy devices. Then that's with Brian Richards. So you can find that on my website by the way with a discount coupon code at aimifornier.com. And that episode is 162 to learn all about that. Also episode 117, do sunscreens cause skin cancer? With Dr. Elizabeth Plurred, we talk about that and put to bed a lot of misconceptions about the sun and skin cancer and sunblock that you should not be using. And the two episodes with Charles Mayfield from scat from Farrell skin care. His first episode we talk about poofas and sunscreen. And you've got to listen to that episode with Charles and we'll put that in the show notes. I don't have the number on me. And of course episode 255 with Matt Landman. Do you know who he is? Well, he is the producer of the documentary Franken Skies. And that is all about the science, the documentation, the proof that we are being sprayed on. Some of those plane trails that you see in the sky, you know, those white lines that are coming out of planes. Those are aluminum, barium, strontium, heavy metals, graphene oxide, and some are even testing that there's getting vaccines and that stuff that's sprayed on us. Without us knowing about it nor our consent, you have to listen to that episode 255. And we have to be part of the solution friends. That's why I bring this show to you for free because I'm trying to do my part to educate, to get the word out because I believe we can create a beautiful world that we love that respects all of life and nature and helps protect the innocent. I mean, it's one thing if you raise your hand and say, yes, I want to be in. Great. I'm all for freedom of choice. But if you're not choosing something and it's affecting you, I feel you should know about it. So you can make it in form choice. I hope you agree. But anyway, that's what keeps me going. And if you want to support me in doing that, thank you, first of all. All you have to do is leave a review on Apple iTunes. It only takes minutes. Share the show, tag me in social media @fitamieTV. And you can visit my website, eStore, it has all my favorite products. Again, my red light therapy, what I use. These are all the things I do to stay healthy and fit in my third, fourth, fifth decade of life and to keep going because I'm only getting better as I get older. I don't know about you, but I'm not going down without a fight. And I'll also mention one thing you've got to check out is masterpiece. Okay. This is my number one detox supplement. Absolutely got to have it. It removes graphene oxide. It removes heavy metals. It removes the aluminum, the barium, all the stuff that I've been talking about. They're spraying on us. And guess what? It couldn't be easier. All you do is put a few drops of this under your tongue, preferably on an empty stomach. I do it morning and night. And I also put it in my dog's water bowl. And you know, you can really give this to kids. You can give this to anybody. And it works. All the science, all their testing is on their website. And you can find masterpiece on my website with a coupon code and enjoy. So they did it for you detox and let's be part of the solution to gather friends. All right. Let's now join Dr. Alexis Cowan. Enjoy. And welcome back to Awakening Aphrodite podcast with Amy Foyn, your doctor, Alexis Cowan. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I've loved the time that we've spent connecting, leading up until this point over the past couple months. And I'm really excited to share with you today. I think we'll have a great chat. Well, I get to tell you just I am so thrilled to share you with my audience because I've been telling my people forever that light is a nutrient. And you know, you're ahead of the curve as, you know, people in your like Dr. Jack Cruz, who I know we're going to talk about a lot. You know, people are interested that follow the show about being healthy and fit. They get the holistic thing, Alexis, but you know, the diet, the exercise, they're starting to understand sleep and water and the importance of emotional health and being in a good environment and a good relationship. So they're getting all that. But for a lot of people, light and even sound therapy and other types are a little bit out there and very new. So what I would love for you to do because I know you're just literally a genius, like crazy smart. I would love for you to just, well, First of all, we're going to share a little bit of your background. But what I really would love to show to focus on is just give us a real basic for the person who has no really idea like why light is actually a nutrient and how it's just as important as food and sleep and exercise. Okay. All right. So before we get into that, just go ahead and give us the brief synapses of what brought you into being a light biologist. Yeah, I mean, it's been a very winding road. So I did my PhD at Princeton and one of the top metabolism research labs in the world. And at the time, I wasn't light-pilled, so to speak. I was very much focused on metabolic health through the lens of primarily the microbiome at the time. I thought that that was like the thing that I needed to focus on that was the most important. And I should probably preface that by saying that I had a lot of illnesses as a child starting at like two years old. I had a traumatic dental procedure and then chronic recurring strep throat, Lyme's disease three times childhood obesity, which continued spiraling up through my junior year of high school. My max weight was somewhere around 260-ish pounds. And then I decided I wanted to lose weight. I had been dealing with a lot of skin issues, respiratory stuff, like dysmenorrhea, just not acne, so many different things. And so I joined the gym and I went every day for a year and started like counting calories. I was eating primarily processed foods at the time, I would say. They're very easy to count calories. So it's like a lot of people go that trajectory because you don't necessarily have to weigh and measure things as much. And I lost 100 pounds over the course of about a year. But that kind of, although it was the beginning of my health journey, let's say it really opened the door to new issues, so to speak. So I then had to deal with an eating disorder and irritable bowel syndrome that happened after the weight loss. And there's actually quite a bit of science showing now that like after extreme weight loss, the gut issues are very, very common. The gut can become hyper permeable. So anyway, that was kind of my invitation to go even deeper because at that time, I was really at the super like a more superficial layer, I would say like a diet and exercise. I kind of understood that. But I didn't necessarily understand diet quality and the food quality that I was eating. And so that's kind of the initial path that I took to understanding, you know, how I could actually restore a healthy relationship with food, let's say, because when I was eating a lot of processed foods, I think it's very easy to get disordered in your eating in that way because, I mean, first of all, that food is not actually nourishing. You had a very deep level. And so there is some part of me that was like, you know, I don't want to be consuming this. And you know, would would have this unhealthy relationship with it. So when I started integrating more food quality perspectives into my life, I realized that I didn't feel like I needed to release this food for my body that I actually wanted to keep it inside. And then I felt this like just very good feeling around what I was eating, like just from focusing on getting local meats and organic produce and all these types of things. So that's where I was kind of cruising for quite a few years through undergrad into my Ph.D. program. And it wasn't until I graduated from Princeton in 2021, December, and started my business, which was like a consulting business and teaching coursework through the business as well, which is the same business I'm currently running. It just evolved quite a bit. That I initially was very focused on microbiome protocols, like I mentioned. But then I ultimately fell down the quantum and light biology rabbit hole upon finding Dr. Jack Cruz's work in April of 2023. So just over two years ago now, and when I first heard him describing the importance of nature and sunlight and grounding and darkness at night and bright full spectrum light during the day and everything was just kind of like resonating with me. And even when he was going into like the deeper science, like I could really start to connect the dots because I already had the framework built out from my, you know, 10 years in academia so it was very plug and play for me to understand actually what he was talking about with regards to how mitochondrial work and their importance and why the inputs in our environment are actually shaping either mitochondrial health and disease. And essentially the foundational aspects of the chronic disease burden we're facing are rooted in this mitochondrial dysfunction that is largely due to our light environments. And so ever since then, I've been down this light and quantum biology rabbit hole and I have just connected with so many incredible people, including yourself and Paul and I've just been expanding the community and getting the word out more so as well. And I'm also looking forward to starting a light lab that will be decentralized. So be fully privately funded and and that was another thing that I'm very interested in. After seeing, you know, the inner workings of academia for a decade, seeing so many of the shortcomings that are really revolving around the funding issue and how you can really only get certain types of projects funded by the grants from the three-letter agencies. And it's very limiting with regards to actually doing good quality science that is rooted in curiosity and an understanding and appreciation for nature's decentralized wisdom. And so my goal over the next couple of years is to build out this lab so that I can start to ask these questions that have been neglected by centralized science for decades now and hopefully to restore some integrity to the science that's, you know, the published scientific record and help people just feel better and feel more validated and and simplify approaches to health because I think a lot of people believe that you need to have to spend a lot of money on supplements and other things in order to be healthy. But really the foundational aspects of health are ultimately free or very low cost. And once you dial those pieces in, everything else can start to come more easily, including making money and like building wealth in your life and good relationships and, you know, your food and how you're able to assimilate those nutrients and so many other aspects which we'll get into. But that's kind of my winding journey to where I am today. I love it. So what would be some of the questions ignored that you just referenced? Yeah. So I mean, both ignored and also kind of perverted. So there is this paradigm or a perspective within centralized science that sunlight is toxic essentially. And they may not say that necessarily outright, but there's this idea that you need to protect yourself from the sun at all times and that it is dangerous and that it will give you cancer. And you know, despite that narrative being present, there's also a ton of literature to the contrary. It's just not highlighted. So a lot of people like to focus on the risks of sun exposure while ignoring the multitude of benefits. And if we're thinking about any sort of intervention in life, whether it's medical or lifestyle, there's always going to be a risk benefit analysis. It has to do with dosing. It has to do with timing context. There's nuance to this conversation. But when it comes to sunlight, you know, there often will, there'll be practitioners, scientists, medical doctors, citing that sunlight can cause skin cancers in particular, which there is way more nuance of that conversation we can circle back to. But what they're not focusing on is the multitude of benefits that sun exposure provides, which includes protection against colon prostate breast cancer, blood cancers, diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, neurodegeneration in general, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, all cause mortality as well. So like if we're talking about a risk benefit for being in the sun, it's very clear if we actually look at both sides of the equation that there is a huge protective benefit to your health by optimizing and having regular sun exposure practices compared to not. And if we just briefly talk about like the skin cancer issue, it's actually quite an interesting topic because if you look at the data in the dermatology literature, you can see that all skin cancer types, basal cell, squamous cell carcinomas and melanomas are all associated with low vitamin D status. And of course, vitamin D is what is made in our skin in response to UVB light exposure, which is perhaps the most demonized of the wavelengths within the solar spectrum. But we need that UVB light in order to make vitamin D. And a lot of people will think, oh, I can just take a vitamin D supplement. But if we actually look at the data on vitamin D supplementation trials, like the vital study that came out a couple of years ago, it showed pretty strikingly, it was a huge population that they were studying. And they showed that vitamin D supplementation did not protect against cancer outcomes and overall improvements in health in the way that you would expect, given that the correlations with vitamin D status and all different health outcomes, including cancer and diabetes, are very striking. So low vitamin D status is highly associated with these diseases. But supplementing doesn't actually give you protection that you would expect. And that's because correlation is not causation. And when we think about vitamin D, we really need to be thinking about it as a biomarker of your time spent outdoors in natural light and not just something that you can supplement with a pill to optimize, so to speak. And so I think we can explore the other benefits of UVB light and also the other parts of the light spectrum that come along for the ride. But suffice to say for now that between the vitamin D correlation with different skin cancer types, as well as the literature that shows that chronic regular sun exposure, meaning that you're getting daily sun exposure, you're not just sitting in an office for three to 60 days a year and maybe going on vacation for a week and blasting yourself for a few days, especially if you have light skin and just frying yourself to a crisp, that's what we would call intermittent sun exposure. So intermittent sun exposure is associated with melanoma in certain cases. But we're talking about regular daily sun exposure habits, like you are chronically exposing yourself over time. That is actually associated with protection against all skin cancer types, including melanoma. And so that's why I'm just very passionate about providing some nuance in this conversation, I think oftentimes the baby gets or not with the bathwater, and we speak in generalizations that aren't necessarily relevant and can become a half-truth, like Jack Cruz likes to say. So when it comes to sun exposure, there's also of course context for somebody's ethnicity, right? So like, it's gotten to the point now where there's literally a brand of sunscreen on the market called Black Girl Sunscreen. And when I saw this, I'm like, my head is exploding because there's nothing that, you know, somebody with dark skin needs less than sunscreen. Like, your skin is begging for full spectrum sunlight. People, the darker your skin is, the more intense sunlight your skin and body are expecting to receive. And that's because the skin is full of melanin. So in the same way that somebody with lighter skin can get a tan and cultivate their own melanin and develop what is what Jack Cruz calls the solar callus, which is basically gradually exposing yourself over time and building out that based tan, that melanin is what absorbs sunlight, like crazy and light in general. Fun fact, actually, melanin also absorbs radio frequencies, like 5G, Wi-Fi, et cetera. So that is a built-in protection against non-native VMFs. Melanin can also absorb gamma radiation. So from like nuclear fallout. So there's actually mushrooms that were discovered in Chernobyl that leverage the radiation in the environment to make free energy. VM melanin. So melanin is just very, very interesting. It's also a potent heavy metal detoxer. It can kill eight heavy metals out of the bloodstream. So many, you know, amazing things that melanin offers. Yet the mainstream paradigm will say there's no such thing as a healthy tan, which is just like mind blowing, considering the corpus of literature on melanin and melanin. And it's many benefits and functions within the body. But despite that, so if we're looking at like building out the solar callus, like people with lighter skin need to spend more time, especially out at sunrise, priming the skin with red and infrared light, which helps to make more melanin midday and on subsequent days. So and then gradually titrating up that midday sun so that you're not frying yourself, but you're able to actually appropriately assimilate that photonic energy of sunlight. If you're getting burned, it's, you know, not only assigning, you might be getting too much at one time, but it's also assigned to look deeper at your lifestyle in general. And we can talk about that because a lot of people think, oh, I just burned because I'm pale. But that's not necessarily a case. There are many activities that you may be unconsciously or consciously engaging in that are increasing your risk of burning versus people who have more melanin their skin naturally. They will naturally be able to tolerate more sun at a given time. And what I always tell people is, you know, regardless of your skin tone, if you feel like you're getting overheated or you're going to be burning, if you do have lighter skin, that you want to be titrating in nature sunscreen, which is also known as shade. Shade is something that all animals leverage. If you watch animals in the wild or even your pets, they will alternate between going in the sun and then going in the shade. And that is their natural built-in mechanisms for making sure they're getting the right amount of light for them at a given time. So that's what I usually recommend to people. Perhaps we can talk a little bit about the risk factors for sun burning, like the lifestyle factors and dietary factors that can contribute to that. Because I think it's something that a lot of people are really having issues with unknowingly, because people just don't think about what they might be engaging in that could increase that risk. Why don't we go there? I just had, do you know of pharaoh skin care and Charles Mayfield? Yeah. OK. He's a wonderful colleague of mine, met him years ago. And he just came back on the show a second appearance. I don't know if it's going to air by the time you're a show airs, because we're trying to get yours on during the summer season. But we talked about-- because we talked about the sun and how the animal fats are protective as opposed to the poofas, which help produce skin cancer and liver spots and freckles and all the rest. So we're going to put that in the show and know, so we're for everybody that episode with Charles so they can find out more. But why don't you talk to us about dietary factors that increase your risk for sun cancer? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So that's totally the case. When we think about dietary factors that can influence your burn risk, we can definitely talk about this omega 3 to omega 6 ratio and the amount of processed foods one is consuming. So most people are highly deficient in omega 3s, in particular omega 3 EPA and DHA, which are found only in the right forms and animal-based sources of omega. So that would include shellfish, fatty fish, caviar, is my personal favorite as it contains the phospholipid form of omega 3s that are much more bioavailable, especially to the brain and the eyes. The eyes, the retina is actually 65% by weight DHA. And the brain is about 35% by weight DHA. So this is a very, very important molecule. There's also a researcher called Dr. Michael Crawford, who does incredible work on DHA. And he has characterized it as actually working in a quantum biological mechanism to convert photonic energy, so light energy into electrical impulses that allow you to render reality moment to moment. So the reason that we can have this experience in this conversation right now is because the DHA in our eyes and our brain are actually allowing the light in our environment to be converted into electrical impulses that allow us to see each other and to see the world. But DHA, you can only really find it in this very bioavailable form in these animal sources. So people who are vegan or vegetarian that aren't eating any seafood are going to have real issues getting enough of this. And some people will take like algal oils, for example, but algal oils-- this is a little bit technical-- but they contain a triglyceride form of omega 3s as do most of the seafood except the caviar as a phospholipid form. But the triglycerides have a glycerol backbone, which is basically three carbons. And then there's three positions upon which a fatty acid can be bound, the first position SN1, SN2, SN3. So it turns out that the SN1 and 3 positions on the triglyceride are not very well assimilated by the body. So if you have EPA and DHA are in the 1 and 3 position, it's not as easily broken down in the gut and then assimilated into the body versus the SN2 position is the most bioavailable position. So it turns out that algal oils are highly concentrated in SN1 and 3 EPA and DHA, and that the triglycerides from animal-based sources are actually in that SN2 position that we need. So I'm not saying algal oils won't give you any benefit, but it is a significantly less benefit compared to the animal-based sources. So anyway, omega 3s are really important from an anti-inflammatory standpoint. When we think about sunburn, that is an inflammatory issue, which is exacerbated if your skin barrier is already inflamed. So if you have a poor omega-3 status, or you have gut inflammation, lung inflammation, there's a gut-skin lung axis that exists. All the barriers are communicating with each other. And so if there's inflammation in one, there is typically inflammation in all three of those parts of the body. And so if somebody has gastric issues, they're going to be more likely to burn potentially. This is also has to do with food timing as well. So I'll just mention briefly that there's research to suggest that eating late at night will increase your risk of burning the next day, because when you eat late at night, it disrupts the circadian clocks within the gut and telling the gut that it's basically daytime when it's nighttime, which then confuses the skin clocks to thinking it's a different time of day. And so there is definitely a huge aspect to the circadian timing mechanism, which is the 24 hour cycles of the body, which by the way, the primary zeitgabre or timegiver of the circadian clock is the light in your environment or the absence of darkness and light. And that master clock that controls all the other clocks in the bright lives in the brain in the hypothalamus, it's called the SCN or the superchiasmatic nucleus. So the light coming into your eye, back your eyes directly connected to this SCN in the brain. And so if your brain is seeing light from the environment in particular blue light, which midday suns about 25% blue light, about 50% red and infrared light and less than 10% UV light. So that blue light peak is associated with maximum simulation to that master clock saying, it's the middle of a day. We need to engage in upregulating metabolism and digestion and moving and cognition. All these things are associated with daytime. The absence of blue light at night is the signal that tells the body, okay, it's time for rest, recovery, regeneration, cellular turnover, autophagy, and these types of actions. So if we're getting a lot of artificial light at night and we're not getting enough full spectrum light during the day, that means these circadian clocks in the master clock in the brain, but then by default, also all of the peripheral clocks throughout the body are going to be dysregulated or decoupled, which is going to create a lot of havoc, basically across all the tissues of the body, but when it comes to sunburn, it's gonna increase your risk of burning. In addition to that, artificial light exposure from LEDs, fluorescent bulbs, which are both highly enriched in blue light and completely devoid of red and infrared light, we'll get into why that's important in a little bit. As well as all of our device screens are all enriched in blue and absent in red, that blue light and isolation actually directly impairs might a conjural function on your surfaces. So your eyes, proximal brain regions, and your skin. So if you're exposed to a lot of these, you know, forms of light, this isolated blue light essentially, that is going to harm your mitochondria on your skin, which is going to prevent your skin from properly making melanin in response to sunlight, which is what gives you that tan again. In addition, non-native MS, 5G, Wi-Fi, et cetera, also impair mitochondrial function throughout the body, including on the surfaces. So that is another impetus that can increase your risk of burning. To go back to the dietary factors, 'cause I know I went on a little winding road away from the end. there. So the omega-3s being low is a risk factor, but also the omega-6s being high. So the ancestral ratio of omega-6s to threes was about two to one to four to one, and the modern ratio is something like 20 to one sixes to three. So that's until people what they are. Yes. So the primary sources of omega-6s in the diet and the modern diet are going to be your highly hyper palatable process foods, your industrially produced seed oils, canola corn, safflower, sunflower, oil. Yep. These would all be salad dressing sauces, like, you know, marinades. Yep. And even the olive oils that people buy most olive oils, if you go to the, yep, they're cut with canola oil or other oils. So you have to make sure you're getting, you know, good quality oils. I like to cook with tallow personally or ghee and butter, or hyphenol, like, good quality olive oil as well. Even avocado oil, most avocado oils on the market are coming to the consumers' rancid. They're literally made from, like, rancid avocados. One brand chosen foods apparently is made not with rancid avocados, so that is one that's been tested by, like, some consumer advocates within the space. But, yeah, by and large, most avocado oils are also not great. But these omega-6s is in addition to being kind of antagonistic to omega-3s, and by that I mean, if you look at the pathways by which omega-3s and 6s are processed within the body, they use the same enzymatic machinery. And when you're eating omega-3s, let's say from, I don't know, flax or walnuts, which is the alpha and linoleic acid form, ALA form. It's not, it's final form. It has to be converted by multiple steps into EPA and DHA in order to be beneficial. But the machinery that elongates that ALA and DPA and DHA is shared by the omega-6 elongation machinery. And so if you're eating a lot of omega-6s and you're not getting any EPA or DHA and through the diet and you're relying on ALA from plant sources, it's going to be, that conversion is going to be impaired because the high omega-6s in the diet are going to out-compete those enzymes for elongation. So that's an issue in it of itself, as well as the products of omega-6, the omega-6 elongation pathway is also inherently inflammatory. There's a molecule called a racodonic acid that is a product of this omega-6 elongation that can be pro-inflammatory within the body. That's not to say it's always bad. It is important to have inflammation sometimes, but what we don't want is chronic low-grade inflammation. That's associated with mitochondrial dysfunction and chronic disease states. So having two little omega-3s and two many omega-6s are problematic in this way. In addition, the dietary fats that we eat are actually directly influencing the fatty acid composition of your skin because skin is a very high turnover organ. It's like every eight days or something like this. So the fats that you're eating are directly being put into new skin cell membranes. And if you're eating a lot of these poofas, which can also be readily oxidized. So polyunsaturated fats have multiple double bonds in them. And every time you see a double bond in a fat, it's a point of, let's say, vulnerability where that fat can be more easily oxidized at that double bond point. And so the polyunsaturated fats have multiple points of potential oxidation. And an oxidized poofa is very kind of radical in its environment. It can wreak havoc and create free radical species and create inflammation in that way as well. So you don't want these fats to be incorporated in your cell membranes because then you're going to have these weak fluid, flabby cell membranes versus the tight and high integrity cell membranes. You can get if you're eating more animal-based fats like the saturated fats because the saturated fats, they have notable bonds. They stack really nicely on top of each other to create high integrity membranes versus the polyunsaturated fats. If you look at a structure of them, they have all these bends in the structure because of those double bonds that prevent them from sitting on each other nicely. So yeah, when it comes to omega-6 fats, there's multiple ways by which it can exacerbate sunburn and worsen the quality of the skin in general. So those would be kind of some of the main things when it comes to building the solar calisthen we want to look out for. We want to optimize the omega-3 omega-6 ratio. We want to avoid blue light especially at night and incorporate full spectrum lights into the house during the day, which would be incandescent bulbs. We want to minimize or non-ADVMF exposure as much as possible. What that means is not spending a lot of time in the same room as a Wi-Fi router or using ethernet cables whenever possible instead of Wi-Fi. I'm not carrying your cell phone on your person, not using your laptop on your lap, turning off your Wi-Fi at night so you create a sleep sanctuary that's low EMF. So at least a quarter of your day is being spent or a third of your day. I guess is being spent in a very low EMF environment. If you can get that sleep environment right, get it nice and dark, cool, and EMF free. And if you want to stack grounding on top of that, getting like a grounding mattress oper or something like this is also a really good move to really optimize that sleeping environment so that you're setting yourself up on the right foot for the next day and on subsequent days. Let me see if there's anything else that I missed. Oh, the food timing as well would be the other factor that we want to think about when we're trying to minimize burn risk and optimize our skin's response to sun exposure. So again, not eating late at night trying to cut off eating by at least four hours before bedtime and ideally before the sun goes down. So those would be some of the main factors that one should consider when they're trying to build their solar calis and optimize their life to improve their ability to harness the light energy of the sun. So there's so many things to underscore about what you just said. I really hope everybody plays that back, but just to kind of bring it down to the ground. So not only can what you eat affect your risk for sunburn and skin cancer, but also your exposure to blue light, your screen, your phone, and all that stuff, which is a partial spectrum and the timing of that exposure and the timing of that food. So not only it in general, but when you expose yourself to it can affect your risk of sunburn and skin cancer. I mean, these are just incredible things that like Dr. Cowan said at the beginning of the show that this is free, right? This is just a lifestyle habit modification that doesn't cost any money, but just an awareness and adjustment that we're not being told, but this is powerful stuff. Very important. Yeah, and I guess one other thing I'll mention there since we alluded to the importance of timing in general, as I mentioned, dark darkness at night is really important from a circadian health perspective, but maybe just to kind of zoom in on that a little bit more. In order to release melatonin from the pineal gland, you need dark darkness at night. If you are exposed to any blue light in your environment, it directly suppresses melatonin release from the pineal gland. And the melatonin that's released from that pineal gland is what goes into the circulation. It's what also makes you feel sleep pressure. So starting to feel sleepy allows you to fall asleep, stay asleep, and get good quality sleep. That circulating melatonin also influences the clocks throughout the other tissues of the body. So it helps to synchronize that master clock and the brain clocks with the rest of the body so that everybody's on the same page. What a lot of people don't also know though is that melatonin is made within every mitochondria, within every cell of the body in addition, but that's a different depot of melatonin, let's say. So the melatonin in the brain, that pineal gland is made in the absence of blue light in dark darkness. But the melatonin that's made within the mitochondria throughout the body is made in response to near infrared light, which is abundantly present within sunlight. So near infrared or NIR light, people might be familiar with it because most red light panels, for example, will have a near infrared mode. But near infrared is at the kind of the shorter wavelength end of the spectrum close to the red light part of the spectrum, but it's not technically visible to the eye. It's outside the visible range. People might remember Roy G. Biv from elementary school. That's the visible light, but there's a whole world of light outside. We only see a very, very small fraction of the total light present within the universe. But the near infrared light is special because it's actually able to penetrate very deeply into the body. It has the most penetrance of every wavelength that we've identified. And so what that means is it's able to get into the deepest mitochondria within you and directly stimulate them. And so when the near infrared light interacts with mitochondria, it increases mitochondrial energy, metabolic water, and light production. So a lot of people don't realize that our mitochondria make a ton of light in both the infrared and UV photon ranges. So that's why it's also kind of crazy to think that UV light is so demonized within the centralized paradigm when our bodies are literally making a ton of UV bio photons. And this goes all the way back to 1920s, somebody called Alexander Gerwitch did these onion root experiments where he showed that UV light released from slice of onion root was able to trigger mitosis in another onion root that was put adjacent. So he basically cut an onion in half, put a piece of glass in between them, nothing happened. But when he put a piece of quartz glass, which allows UV light to pass through, suddenly they started sprouting. And so he was the first to identify that living systems seem to release UV light. And so in that case, that mitogenetic radiation is thought to come from actually the DNA and the nucleus. But the mitochondria also make a ton of. of UV photons as a byproduct of what's called the electron transport chain, which is the primary mechanism by which the mitochondria can make energy in the form of ATP. So anything that supports the flow of electrons through this electron transport chain is also going to increase light production in the form of infrared and also UV light. The part of the water story here, because I know that your audience may be also interested in water, but the mitochondria also make a very special type of water called deuterium depleted metabolic water. And if people are really into the wellness or a holistic health space, they may be familiar with deuterium depleted water that you can buy, but a lot of people don't realize that the water that you might accondrium make, there you go, light water. That's right. So that mimics the water that might accondrium make. And that water is very special and has very different biophysics compared to bulk water, which is what you would typically drink if you're just drinking like normal drinking water. Bulk water has about 130 to 150 parts per million of deuterium, and the deuterium depleted water made in the mitochondria is virtually zero parts per million and the light water is like between 5 and 10 parts per million depending on which one you get. And that deuterium depleted water is essential for mitochondrial function because, so for those who don't know, deuterium is a heavy form of hydrogen, just as a very brief little lesson on how the mitochondria make energy, essentially a battery is created. So negative charge electrons are separated from positive charge protons. And that happens, there are basically these complexes within the electron transport chain that pump protons in the mitochondria from the inner matrix into the intermembrane space. So the protons get pumped into this intermembrane space. The electrons flow through the complex, the protein complexes. And then there's something at the end called ATP synthase. And this is literally a rotor, a nano rotor that spins. And as it spins, it makes ATP from ADP. But the thing that makes it spin is these protons coming back through this pore that is in the middle of ATP synthase. And as the protons come back into the matrix, it's powering this rotor to spin. But only proteam, light hydrogen can fit through that pore. Deuterium is double the size of regular hydrogen. And so it can't fit well through there. So essentially what happens is if deuterium gets in that compartment, it gulps up the engine and prevents the energy, water, and bio photons from being made effectively. And so if we look at the literature on deuterium depletion, it makes a ton of sense that we're seeing really incredible outcomes for cancer patients, as well as type 2 diabetics, leveraging deuterium depleted water. And then those protocols, they're doing 12 week protocols, drinking around 105 parts per million deuterium depleted water. It's actually pretty interesting. There's a sweet spot for the benefits of drinking deuterium depleted water. And that sweet spot seems to be between 105 and 120. So drinking less deuterium in the water than that. So like drinking 5 parts per million straight is actually not beneficial. It actually has diminishing returns. So interestingly enough, light water doesn't tell you that. Yeah. That's what this is five parts per million. Exactly. So what you want to do to save money but also maximize the benefit is to do a one to four dilution with the five parts per million. So what that would be is like three liters of regular water and then one liter of the five parts per million that will give you roughly 105 parts per million. And that helps make it more economical that way. Exactly. Exactly. That is the sweet spot. That's where they're seeing the best outcomes for patients. And that's really working by improving mitochondrial function. Wow. So it's kind of a feed forward mechanism too, right? Because if you start gunking up the mitochondrial engines with deuterium, that causes energy production to go down, light production to go down, water production to go down, which then gets more mitochondrial dysfunction. So using the deuterium depleted water protocols can help to start push that wheel in the other direction and start to create a feed forward loop in a positive way. But I think there's also likely going to be benefits in like athletic performance and many other disease states as well for deuterium depletion. But everybody can go outside in sunlight and make their own deuterium depleted water in their mitochondria. That's like the biggest takeaway here. In contrast though, if you look at the modern indoor environment, there is zero near infrared light present. And that is because standard window glass blocks virtually 100% of near infrared light. LED infrared bulbs have no near infrared light. Near infrared light is considered thermal so like heat producing. And when you think about it that way, it's very clear that we need to add it back in whether that's through opening up windows or getting incandescent bulbs or spending your time outside, way more working outside, making a nice little space for yourself so that you can you know, productively work in your backyard or on your patio or something like this. That's what I did. And I usually recommend people like instead of spending money on dubious supplements, spend your money building a nice nice little outdoor oasis for yourself that it's going to make it functional and aesthetic so that you enjoy spending time out there and that you can maximize that time. But let's let's talk about though how it's important in doing that outside, not to wear sunglasses and expose your skin as much as possible because what we're talking about how different frequencies of light at different times of the day are like instructions to your cells which control all your body systems and your sleep cycle, your weight, your appetite, everything. But what's very important is and I know there's an association between wearing sunglasses and risk of sunburn because of the connection with your eyes telling your skin that their sun isn't the frequency it is so it doesn't protect it with them whatever you're an explain it better than I am. But please talk about the importance of when you are out in this out in the light because you're trying to expose yourself. You see people with sunglasses and they're you know they got clothes on it's like well you could take off those sunglasses like I even worn sunglasses in probably three years. So tell us about that. Yeah so important so I definitely want to get into the specific benefits of different wavelengths of light in particular UVB and UVA so we'll get into that but suffice to say for now that when it comes to near and Fred light even if you go outside and you're sitting in the shade with clothes on you're still getting the benefits of near and Fred light because it can actually penetrate through clothing. And so that's you know being outside with clothes on even if you're wearing sunglasses is better than being inside. If we want to optimize this process and be our best selves and have our best health it's really important to get natural light into the eyes so I alluded earlier to the fact that it's important to get bright full spectrum light energized during the day. The reason that's the case is because of bright full spectrum light and if we're talking just relatively speaking about brightness on a bright sunny day it's it can be up to 200,000 lux which is just a unit of brightness. Compare that to most indoor environments we're looking at a maximum of around a thousand lux typically. So that's a hundredfold difference in brightness that brightness is critical for stimulating the production of serotonin in the brain. So that makes you feel good and makes you feel connected and kind of upbeat and content but in addition to that that serotonin gets converted into melatonin at night and that's what helps you go to sleep so if you don't get enough bright full spectrum light during the day you're also going to struggle with sleep at night. It's not enough to just get darkness at night you also need the bright light during the day they're both equally important and that's what makes nature a decentralized system as well there's not one controller there's two it's darkness and light so both are equally important in their own ways and you need both of them and so that bright full spectrum light is being impaired if you're wearing sunglasses on your eyes it's reducing the total brightness of the light that you're your eyes and your brain are detecting from the environment and so we want to you know kind of adjust ourselves I know a lot of people wear sunglasses they say they have like sensitive eyes or whatever yes yeah I can tell you you know firsthand I have many friends and family that have light eyes who had sensitivity to light and over time as they've just stopped wearing sunglasses and adjusting like it's completely fine now it's like kind of like in the same way that if you go to the gym and you're lifting weights like it may feel difficult at first but over time it starts to feel easy it's your body needs time to adapt and adjust to the change but it can do that it's quite flexible and adaptable so you just have to start kind of titrating in you know sessions of bright light and of course doesn't mean you have to go stare at some light there's only specific times of day that you should be sun gazing if you want to do that that would be a very low horizon sunlight so like at you know dawn and dusk basically right as the sun is on the horizon but midday sun you can just you know just be outside getting that ambia light into your eyes is plenty enough you're still getting a ton of photons in and that ambia brightness is going to be important for all those neurochemical benefits when it comes to the benefits of specific wavelengths of light this kind of ties into the UV light story as well because sunglasses are touted as being UV blocking and most people are wearing prescription glasses and contacts that are also UV blocking and so for the first time in our species history over the past let's say 50 to 100 years there's no UV light coming into the eye and so people might say you know you know why is it matter what's what's the difference so there are specific outcomes or outputs that happen when you're allowing UV light to come into the eye so UVB light stimulates the production of something called probeomalana cordon or palm c within the hypothalamus of the brain So, POMC is this complex per hormone that's cleaved into 10 different hormonal products, two of which are beta-endorphine and alpha-MSH. So, alpha-MSH or alpha-millanocytes stimulating hormone, as the name implies, is responsible for helping to stimulate melanocytes to produce new melanin. And when we're talking about, you know, tanning versus getting burned, that's a melanin story, right? So, if we're only exposing our skin to UV light and not our eyes, we're only getting half of the hormonal response that allows the melanocytes to say, hey, we need to make melanin, there's UV light in the environment. So, we're supposed to get the coordinated exposure of our eyes and our skin to full spectrum sunlight containing UV light at the same time in order to maximize that response. So, that's, you know, one part of the story, but in addition, alpha-MSH also does a lot of other really cool things. So, one of the other behaviors or outputs that it creates is it directly suppresses appetite and increases energy expenditure at the level of the hypothalamus in the brain. And so, when we're talking about weight loss, healthy body composition, fat loss, etc, this is really a story about the brain, because the brain controls how many calories you're burning at rest, and the brain controls your appetite and how much you feel the desire to eat. And if we look at the indoor environment, that's completely devoid of UV light, both UV and near infrared, we're losing that stimulus from the environment to help our bodies and our brains regulate energy expenditure and appetite. And it just makes perfect sense that then, you know, you're going to be more likely to binge eat junk food and less likely to reach for healthier options. But this also ties in with the beta endorphin, other cleavage peptide beta endorphin, because endorphins are natural opioids made within the body. And if you think about it, if you go out in sunlight, it's basically like your body becomes a drug factor and it makes all these different molecules that make us feel really good from opioids to endocannabinoids, which are natural cannabinoids made within the body, to serotonin. All of these things are happening at the same time to give us this really just enhanced well-being. But this endorphin also has other important roles, so it increases dopamine within the brain, which gives us feelings of satiation and contentment. It will decrease our propensity to have compulsive behaviors or addictive behaviors. So if we're looking at things or behaviors that are happening compulsively, we're really thinking about this dopamine rollercoaster. So if people aren't getting enough UV light from their environment, they're going to be more likely to reach for the drugs, the alcohol, the pornography, the junk food, etc. The cell phone, the social media, because you're constantly in this state of lack, you always feel like you need something to get that hit versus if you're in a natural light environment and you're outside and you're getting the fresh air and you're maybe grounding at the same time and you're getting all the UV and infrared light on you at the same time and the brightness, you're feeling pretty content. You don't necessarily feel like you need something outside of yourself to make yourself whole. And this kind of ties in with the more, let's say, spiritual warfare part of this story because if you look at the specific demonization of UV light, I mean, the way I say UV light is what it's what allows you to have the sense of autonomy and sovereignty because you don't feel like you need anything outside of yourself. You can, you know, you can want something and you can get something, but it doesn't mean that you needed in order to survive or have the sense of reliance on other people or structures, let's say. So I think this endorphin part of the story is really, really important when we're thinking about shaping the society of the future that we really want to see because as long as people are enslaved to their technology and to their vices, they're never going to be awake enough to be able to see the truth of what's happening. And so that's why I always have people just start by getting outside more and just enhancing this baseline of getting grounding, getting your bare feet on the earth as much as you can, getting full spectrum light into your eyes and onto your skin as much skin as possible, ideally. And getting out of sunrise, midday and sunset and then blocking blood at night and you can do nothing else. And that first week or two weeks, like dramatic shifts will start happening. I mean, most people feel differences within a day of just engaging in these practices. And it just starts to make you feel a little more in touch with what actually matters, a little more in touch with your intuitive knowing and like your conscience, let's say. And also a little stronger in your boundaries and your ability to understand your own needs and wants better and not feel so tied or like chained to things that are really put into our lives to keep us kind of dumb down and distracted from what's going on. And so the UV light part of the story is very important from that aspect and it kind of ties, you know, everything together from the obesity crisis and the chronic disease epidemic in general to like the cognitive issues that we're having and like and the tribalism as well too, because I think when you're constantly in indoor, blue lit environments, what that's doing is it's slightly stimulating your sympathetic nervous system at all times, which puts you into this state of low grade flight or flight, which means that you're going to be a little more on edge. You're going to be a little more defensive. You're not going to be able to see somebody else's perspective as well. Because when you're in a survival state, you can only really see what's in front of you and it like being in a sympathetic state literally shuts off your peripheral vision, but it also figuratively shuts off your ability to see the big picture. And so if we're constantly on these blue lit screens under the blue light and never getting that balancing force of near and front and UV, we're not going to be able to see necessarily things clearly and we're going to be more likely to be contentious with other people and not be able to find common ground. And so I feel like this light story is just fundamental to everything that we're dealing with societally and that's also why I'm so passionate about it. All right. So I recently had Matt Landman on the show. Did you see the documentary "Frank and Skies"? No, but I've heard about it. Okay. So he came on the show. We've already I'll put that in the show notes. You need to share with us then your thoughts on geoengineering and blocking the sun and cloud seeding. And let me tell you something. Nothing gets me more. I have to use every spiritual practice known to my history of life to not absolutely lose my you know what when I see them spraying above. And you know, because this is not informed consent, we can choose to step outside. We can choose to wear sunglasses or not. We can choose to eat seed oils or you know animal fats. We can choose to exercise. We can choose when we go to bed. But we're not choosing to have this stuff sprayed on us. Aluminum, barium, toxic metals, forever chemicals on our our vegetables, our our our animals, our soil, us. And this is insane. Like this is happening and people aren't even aware of it. So they're blocking the sun and what you've just told us in the last hour is the importance of the sun in regulating all biological life to run properly. So what are your thoughts on this geoengineering behind the scenes that they're doing? Yeah, I mean, it's one of the things that really, you know, frankly, pisses me off the most as well. As we don't have direct control over it. And I mean, honestly, if Bobby does nothing else as HHS secretary, if he does something about that, like I will be thrilled because like you said, you have autonomy over our choices in these other departments, but this one, it's like, you know, if you live somewhere where they're doing this, which is basically everywhere in the US, you're at the mercy of that. And so, you know, I would still say, if they're spraying, it's still likely going to be better to be outside versus inside. I mean, from an air quality perspective, even indoor air quality is much less, even if there's toxic stuff being sprayed outside, it's still, you know, bad inside, relatively speaking. So, you know, I wouldn't say avoid going outside just because they're spraying. You're still going to get, you know, some benefits, but it's of course going to be attenuated relative to what's possible. You know, of course, because of the heavy metals, but also because of the alteration of the solar spectrum that can happen as the lights being filtered through these nanoparticles. And I get a lot of, like, I wouldn't say a lot of pushback, but there's definitely people online, let's say, that are willfully ignorant around this issue. And I actually made a post about geoengineering that compiled a bunch of sources going back to the 1940s of the geoengineering programs that have been going on. And so, I like to tell people, even if we think that these are just quote unquote, con trails, but even if that were the case, they're still creating clouds that are filtering sunlight and reducing solar yield on the planet. And if you look at the cognitive dissonance between like the same individuals that are willfully ignorant around spraying and/or perpetrating the spraying, and the people who are also supporting like green energy and solar panels and this type of, it's like, how does it actually go? Yeah, and electric cars, like we're clearly getting played if the same folks who, you know, want to block the sun out like, Bill Gates, and also are saying, we need to go solar, we need to go green. It's like this one one does not equal to in this case. And so, you know, something awful is going on there. And I think it's only a matter of time before like, I think a lot of people woke up from COVID to be honest, but we still need to keep, you know, the ball rolling and get more people on board because, you know, that's the kind of the beauty of the information age is that it's really hard to hide things anymore versus in the past, you know, all of the news media and outlets were all being filtered through whatever mechanisms, you know, state wanted them to. But now it's like news happens at the speed of light basically on the internet. And so obviously there are some issues that can come into play with deep fakes and like you can't necessarily verify everything that you're seeing. So that creates a level of complexity. But also you're getting access to so much information. It's unprecedented obviously in the course of our history and our brains haven't necessarily evolved at all to be able to deal with all of this information and exposure. But the bright side anyways that you can find community of like-minded people that you can rally together that you can build awareness on issues that have been happening in the shadows for many, many years. And so I'm hopeful that this geoengineering issue will be one of those things that action is taken on. And I know a few states have been putting up legislature around this issue. Though from what I hear, the bands need to happen at the federal level in order to be relevant because a lot of the planes spraying are federal. So they can fly anywhere and they can do what they're going to do. If you ban at the state level, the planes within the state can, they can't technically spray. But anybody else coming through that's more at a federal regulated a federal level would not that would not apply to them. So we need a ban at that federal level in order for our country to be protected. And I'm kind of hopeful that there have been some talks at least. I know Bobby went on, I don't remember what, top some talk show and he was talking about the spraying and how this is a major crime against humanity and these types of things and that it was being perpetrated by DARPA. I think he said on TV, which is interesting. But yeah, so I think it's a big issue that we need to address. And it can't be allowed to continue and to intensify. I mean, if you look at Bill Gates' initiatives and the other solar geoengineering initiatives that are out there that are saying that we need to block the sun in order to address global warming. It's just, it's absolutely criminal and downright evil if you actually-- And they're doing it. And they're doing it. Like, who were you to make the decision for all life on earth? I mean, like, you were exactly, this is not like no one got a vote on this. Like, the bees are not voting on this. Like, we're not, like, there's a handful, if you want to call them humans, we're not sure that's up for debate if they're all fully human. But these handfuls, small people are controlling what's happening with the global life system. I mean, hello. And which wereses that people are even aware of it. So what we can do is spread the word, look up, use your critical thinking skills, look into it on your own. And don't believe what people say, look into what they're actually doing, and put two and two together, and make sure you're getting your information from independent sources. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're-- I think the news, the mainstream media, so to speak, is basically on its deathbed at this point. Most people are getting their news from-- We can broadcast another, you know, online sources, which I mean, for better or worse in some cases. But there are a lot of good sources online that if you vet them, like, that are on top of things. I like to follow Disclosed TV. On Telegram, they're a good source for like, very like news that's like what's called breaking news. And it's pretty, I would say, they're on the independent side of things. Like, they're pretty like, let's say, Libertarian in their perspective, I would say. But yeah, I think I am a bit hopeful that we'll be able to do something on that part, but we kind of all need to be, you know, standing up for ourselves. And actually, with regards to standing up for ourselves as well, the other thing that I focus a lot on is kids and public schools, because these are just other crimes that are being perpetrated against our most innocent of our population. And if you think about posts-- since post-COVID, now all classrooms have Wi-Fi, and the kids are on Chromebooks all day long and other tablets. And so before COVID, at least, you know, they were working more on paper and like, you know, more analog type stuff. And then ever since, you know, that shift that happened with doing remote school and then back into school, everything is on screens now. And then the Wi-Fi plus the screens were literally harming these developing brains beyond measure. And I mean, there were even studies done back in 2015. There were a few that were published by a group that was in the Middle East, I believe in Saudi Arabia. And they looked at kids in a school that was about 200 meters away from a cell tower compared to kids in a school that was nowhere near a cell tower. And the kids that were in the school near the cell tower had significantly higher levels of fasting glucose, hemoglobin A1C, and higher rates of type 2 diabetes diagnoses simply by their proximity to this tower, which is known to increase blood sugar and change glucose metabolism and create mitochondrial dysfunction. So it's kind of like a trifecta for, well, basically all chronic disease states, but when it comes to glucose metabolism, it's just something easy that we can measure and see like, oh, you know, something isn't right here. And if we look at, you know, over time, chronic exposure to non-native, non-native UMFs, we're looking at like, increased risk of multiple cancer types and brain development issues and things like this. So I'm particularly concerned about these school environments because kids don't have fully mildinated brains until late 20s, actually. So between 28 and 39 years old is peak malination, malination rather of the brain. Malin is the protective fatty coating on the central nervous system. And without that, you are more susceptible to non-native UMFs, including artificial blue light, relative to people who have more of that protection as adults. And so we're putting these kids in basically microwaves all day long. And meanwhile, of course, they're also getting less outdoor time than high security maximum security prisoners. And so we need to do something about that. I'm giving a talk in New Hampshire in about a month to all of the principals and superintendents of the state to help them build, will help build awareness on the importance of the light environment for the kids. And then also the action items of what they can do to just start. Yeah, so I'm really really hopeful about that. I'm planning to record it and I'll probably put it on my podcast as well because I have a lot of soul reaching out being like, you know, I want to know this for my school and my classroom. Yes. I can do. And so, you know, hopefully that can make a bit of a denim also working on a book, which will hopefully come out sometime in the next year. I'm still working on the proposal. That makes two of us. Yeah, exactly. So I'm really just trying to like kind of educate the bare bones of like what you need to do at a very basic level to just improve your environment. But like I said, I think for the kids, which they're completely at the mercy of whoever is making the decisions, we need to do better by them because we're creating a generation of kids that, you know, their life expectancy is at this rate is going to be much lower than we could, you know, we've ever found them already. Our life expectancy is decreasing within cities for the first time in modern history. And not to mention their quality of life. Exactly. So health span is being decimated. Like we already have kids with chronic diseases in elementary school, like type 2 diabetes. It's it's crazy. Like this should not be the case. And the fact that like, I feel like there's people in positions of power that are so gaslighty and they're saying like, oh, you know, basically trying to normalize this, including autism and all these types of things. Like we're just trying to like say that it's somehow, you know, it's just, we're diagnosing it more that it's not increasing prevalence. And this is like, we have the tools to diagnose it whereas we didn't have them before. That's what I'm exactly. And it's like, no, that's not actually what's happening here at all. We're creating environments that are poisoning us. I know Catherine Austin Fitz, she likes to call it the great poisoning. And I'm like, that's exactly what's happening. And we need to address it because like Jack and Catherine both talk about we're basically going through the six extinction event right now. But we're just in the thick of it. So we can't see that it's happening yet. But we need to change trajectories before, you know, we create an entire generation that's sterile and unable to reproduce. And you know, eyes early, it's like, this is the path that we're on. And something has to change. So well said. Okay. So a couple more questions before we let you go that I really need your expertise in. So let's talk about how latitude affects, you know, the body. Okay. So someone living in the Northeast, I don't know what that latitude is. I know you know, but let's say New England or New Jersey or that area. And I love how nature once again has designed the perfect system that from what I understand, you know, the warm light, the strength of the sunlight when the summer where the sun is stronger and different wavelengths, you know, that's what's running all the body systems. But then in the winter when the sun is lower and you're in a northern latitude, you're supposed to have cold exposure because that's what's primarily running the mitochondria properly. So the body and its wisdom is created a perfect thing that if you are going to be cold in the winter with not that strong light, you're not one of those lucky people that get to be a snowbird and go to Florida or whatever. What do you do? Why is the cold important to help keep that balance throughout the year? So explain to us that dynamic and some strategies to deal with it optimally. Yeah. So if we think about the equator, we're thinking about about 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of darkness each day and they get intense some year round essentially. I mean, there can be a rainy season versus a drier season, but the UV intensity is consistent from the sunlight because the angle isn't changing. You compare that to somewhere like here in New Jersey. I'm around the 40th north latitude. So that means that of course we have seasons. There is a period of about six weeks where we lose UV light entirely in the winter. Obviously we're approaching the summer solstice now, so that will be when you be light is at its peak. So we're already reaching up to around UV 11 already over the past like week. So it'll probably peak somewhere around UV 12 and that UV index is basically just telling you how much UV light is present there in the sunlight. In Fred light, so I mentioned earlier about 50% of sunlight is red and infrared. That's consistent, no matter what time of year it is. So if the sun is up, you're getting an abundance of near infrared, red and infrared light. And so that's because those are longer wavelengths of light that are not obstructed by the atmosphere versus UV light is shorter wavelength. And so it's much more easily scattered by or sat atmosphere. And so in the winter time, we have a very low solar angle. And you'll notice like if you live somewhere where you have observed the sun, you can see it's at a different point in the sky like in the winter. It's not above head anymore. It's over near the horizon more. So in that angle, changes the amount of UV light that can get through. And so if you're in the winter, let's say around around 40 North Latitude, we're missing a good chunk of UV light and we're also having shorter days. So our UV and infrared yield is lower because just the day is shorter as well. And of course, nature doesn't make mistakes. And so if we again go back to when I was talking about the mitochondria earlier that are making UV and infrared light, we can compensate for the lack of UV and infrared light from the environment by getting cold because cold is a major stimulus for mitochondrial metabolism. So when you get cold, it makes the mitochondria work better and work faster. And so when you get cold, you are allowing your body to make its own UV and infrared light that can compensate for the lack coming from the outside. That's just amazing. Like yes, you're you going to repeat that when you get cold, your mitochondria makes light inside your cells. That's right. Yes. So you basically have a little suns inside of you that are able to activate in the absence of sufficient life from the outside in. Of course, you can also do cold plunging in the summertime as well, which is actually a highly recommended, especially if people have weight loss goals because cold plunging in high UV light is like basically the sweet spot for fat loss because now you're getting that activation of palm sea from your endogenous UV light as well as from the outside in through your skin and your eyes. So it's like a really potent combination for helping to stimulate your basal metabolic rate, suppress appetite and overall support metabolism as well as leptin sensitivity and insulin sensitivity. So it's a great strategy. But yes, so in the winter time, the mechanism built in is you get cold to compensate for the lack of light. And in the summertime, you get warm, but it's actually interesting too because this is also a story about deuterium. So if we look at latitude, deuterium is lowest at the poles. So if we look at the just the base water that's present in drinking water, let's say tap water in Sweden, we're looking at around 130 parts per million deuterium versus at the equator. We're looking at about 155 parts per million deuterium. So what nature is telling us is that if there is low UV light in the environment and low solar yield, that we need to have lower deuterium in the water in order to support mitochondrial function and also support photosynthesis because it turns out chloroplasts, the things that make plants green, they're very similar to mitochondria and that they don't like deuterium at all. And there's actually been studies showing that if you water plants are deuterium-deplicated water, they grow more and they bear more fruits. Wow. Yes. So they're, you know, we're basically glorified house plants. We need the same things. We need the light, we need the water, we need the connection to the earth. We just have the ability to move around our environments and use our frontal lobes to subvert what nature intended for us, but like we still basically need the same things. So anyway, the reason I bring that up is because in the summertime when you sweat, sweating is a major mechanism of deuterium depletion because our blood is the most concentrated store of deuterium in the body. It actually plays an important role in the bloodstream. Red blood cells don't have mitochondria and so the blood is a place where the body can keep deuterium safely. And so when you sweat, of course, blood volume, the moisture from the blood is able to be pulled out to help, you know, wick heat away from the body, via sweat, but that's sweat because it's coming from fluid from the blood is concentrated in deuterium. So if we're thinking about let's say seasonal eating, in the summertime, we have access to way more plant foods, fruits and vegetables and starches and these types of things, which happen to be enriched in deuterium. So roots and fruits and grains are all enriched in deuterium. Foods that are deuterium depleted are fats and proteins from animal sources in particular. The green parts of plants are also low in deuterium, as I mentioned, the chloroplast don't like deuterium. So it makes sense that when we're in an environment that's more enriched in plant foods that our body has its mechanism via the UV light and also via sweating to manage the deuterium within the system so that it's not harmful. Versus in the winter time, if we're eating a lot of starches, roots, roots, grains, these types of things, we're getting a lot of deuterium into the body, but we don't really have a good way of getting rid of it unless we're like doing sauna and like geothermal pool, this type of thing. But that's why also just in general, subscribe to seasonal eating, not only is it good for the environment, supporting like your local economy, local farmers and all of this, but it's also really important from a mitochondrial perspective because it couples the deuterium in your food to your environment to your mitochondria. And so eating a low deuterium in diet in the winter time, which would be more carnivore, keto-ish type situation, not only helps to lower the deuterium load and helps your mitochondria work better in low light conditions, but it also helps to activate the brown fat within your body, which is responsible for making body heat. So when you get cold, brown fat is what turns on and makes a ton of heat to help maintain your body temperature, but brown fat also soaks up a bunch of glucose and fat from the bloodstream and helps to maintain metabolic health. Brown fat also plays an important role in this so-called brown fat thyroid axis whereby the thyroid can release T4, which is inactive thyroid hormone, and the brown fat can take up T4 and spit out T3, which is active thyroid hormone. And so many people with hypothyroidism will avoid the cold because they naturally have lower metabolic rates, so they think they need to just bundle up and their doctors will tell them that they should just go bundle up. Meanwhile- >> And I've less cold tolerance. They're cold all the time. >> Exactly. You think the crazy thing is that by bundling up, you're making the problem worse because you're further depleting brown fat. And there's actually some research to suggest that only about 10% of adults are walking around with any detectable brown fat because everybody is sitting at 68 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit year-round. Nobody's exposed to temperature extremes. But the cool thing about brown fat is it's quite plastic. What I mean by that is you can grow it back, you can make new brown fat in the form of beige fat, which is the process by which your white subcutaneous fat can turn into brown fat. It's called beige because it's not technically in the same, it's kind of like brown fat-esque. It's not exactly the same lineage like cellular speaking. But you can have the ability to build back what you lost, so to speak. And so gradually titrating in cold exposure, I don't recommend going zero to 100 cold. It's going to be too brutal. But starting with face dunking, then maybe using some ice packs on your core, and then maybe starting with plunging at like 70, 75 degrees and gradually working your way down to around 55 degrees is optimal. This is what Jack recommends. That's what I do. But 55 is a nice sweet spot because it feels cold for like two minutes and then it just feels kind of like you kind of like a swimming pool when you were a kid and just went swimming and it feels cold at first, but you get used to it. Getting used to it means your brown fat's turning on. That's what that is. And the nice thing about 55 degrees is that you can stay in for longer period of time without like risking any damage. So a lot of people do like ice plunges and things like this. I don't personally do that and I don't recommend it for women. It can be too much of a stressor on our hormonal systems. But 55 degrees is a nice spot you can do. Well, start with just a couple minutes, but I in the summertime, especially I'm doing between 25 and 45 minutes at 55 degrees at least twice a week. And when you're cold for that longer period of time, it has different benefits than the shorter cold exposure sessions. So when you go in for a short period of time, it simulates brown fat. It boosts dopamine and orphan effort in the brain to get you feeling focused and like, you know, kind of just sharp cognitively speaking. It boosts metabolism. But what the longer sessions do is it allows your core temperature to drop. Because when you're in for a short period of time, all the blood is pushed into your core as a vasoconstriction, it pushes all that blood internally. And so the core temperature actually stays the same or increases from a short cold plunge compared to a 25 to 45 minute session. You start to lower your core temperature. And what that does actually is improve the biophysics of the body. So we didn't talk about Robert O'Becker, who's the author of the body electric. But one of his major mentors and something that he studied in the lab was the the body is full of semiconductors. And he was inspired by Nobel Prize winner Albert St. George, who won the Nobel Prize in 1939. And at Becker's graduation from medical school, St. George gave a talk and he said that it's it's curious. But it seems like all of the genes in the body encode proteins with electronic structure. And essentially, what he was getting at was that the body is full of semiconductors, like the same kind of semiconductors that go into the phones and the computers and things like that. But, you know, slightly different in that they're within a moist system in like a way watery bot biological system, but that these semiconductors work, you know, similarly, to allow electrons to move. You can think about it as electricity to move under certain conditions. If you look at like the way that semiconductors are studied in industry, they are often studied at very low temperatures because they work better at colder temperatures. So the same applies here. When you're able to lower your core temperature in a longer cold plunging session, you're allowing all of the semiconductors in the body to work better, which means that photons and electrons are able to move throughout the fascia superhighway of the system more readily. And a lot of people, you know, will think about fascia from like an adhesion standpoint or whatever, but the way I conceptualize fascia is it is made of semiconductors. So collagen is a p-type semiconductor. If we think about bone is made of collagen and appetite, so appetite is an n-type semiconductor. And becker found that if you look at bone and actually what it is, it's a light emitting diode and LED, just like our light bulbs, that emits red, brown light. The thing is, you can't see the light when you cut somebody open and look at their bone because the light is retained within the system, it's not lost. And so the body is electric as the name of his book implies. And actually I have a book club called The Incubator and we just finished reading the body electric and we're about to start cross currents, which is Becker's second book. And it's, you know, it's diving into all of the different aspects of the body that he studied when he was, you know, he had his lab in the 50s and 60s to understand the electronic nature of biological systems. And it's very, it's very much a paradigm shift of like in a way of looking at the body that is completely different from the standard reductionist mechanistic model. That also when you look at it through this lens, you can see why our light environments and grounding are so important and the water in our bodies are so important because it's directly working at the biophysical level to shape how our bodies able to express itself and how it's able to run its metabolism and hormonal systems and everything else. Like it's really down to the physics layer. And when you understand that and that's what Jack Cruz's like major contributions have been in this layer of understanding the biophysics of the human body and leveraging that to create health. So it's something that I just think is amazingly low hanging fruit, and which is also why I'm excited to start the lab and probe even deeper. And we are excited for you to do that too. Okay. So what about for the people who don't have cold plunges? So to, to our question, can cold shower rinse, cold showers do any kind of good or any kind of not that it's a full substitute of a plunge? Which is again, for the normal person where they're just like, wow, Darren headlights with all this information. But in the winter or in the summer, how about a cold shower? And for the winter, when you're saying the cold is what the body is supposed to be exposed to to help keep that mitochondria going with lack of sun, how much cold are you talking like we got to kind of stay cold all the time and leave the house at like, you know, 50 degrees, or is it intermittent cold? Like how much cold exposure really is required for optimal functioning in the winter? Yeah, I would say with regards to like cold showers, there is a benefit from like a focus and neurology perspective and a brown fat perspective. Though I will say if anybody has only done a cold shower and never plunge and they hated the cold shower, I will say the cold showers are much more low than the plunging, the plunging like you can get because you're submerged and you're able to really maximally simulate that brown fat. It feels very easy after the first minute or two cold showers just suck. Like they're just awful. So like if you want to do them, do them, you're still going to get a benefit. But if you can, if you have a bathtub, for example, and you can fill that up instead, I would do that. It will just feel easier and you're getting more of a benefit and you can probably stay in for a bit longer as well. I know they also sell like chillers online that are like a couple hundred bucks that you can use to like fill your tub up and then if you need to lower the temperature more, you could do that. But for my experience, tap water in the northeast and the winter is around 55 degrees. So it's actually pretty fine as is. With regards to how much you need to get cold, I would say even just, you know, any amount is better than nothing at all. So if you're going to go for like a cold air, it's less efficient at lowering your core temperature. So I would say like a 45 to 60 minute walk in like shorts and maybe like a t-shirt or something, like a brisk walk depending on how cold it is out, right? Like, I'm sure there's some people in Canada where it's like negative whatever. So like, yeah, I would come on last winter. Okay, I'm just kind of perpetually cold until May. All right. So like, but and I'm outside a lot with my animals and the plus I know how important light is. But I got to tell you the truth. I mean, confession, I've got the winter coat from LL being the whole thing. I'm still cold. All right. So I'm kind of just cold out of time. So is that kind of like, I keep telling myself like, this is actually a good thing because I'm not going to come in the house and crank the heat. First of all, it's way too expensive. But also, I know that you're supposed to be cold in the winter. So just, you know, give me liberty to say I'm kind of chronically cold until May. Is that doing any good or is that just not really what we're talking about? So I would say it kind of depends. My perspective on like, people who are cold all the time, typically at least for myself, because I also tend to run on like the damp stagnation side of things with regards like a, I made a perspective and cold in the winter in New England. Like, I'm not cold if I go to Florida. Like in a, I'm not cold three seasons of the year, just to clarify. It's just, you know, January, February, I just, I'm a beach girl. I don't like cold weather. Yeah. So I would say leveraging sauna is good. I mean, if you look at the Scandinavia, cultures, they kind of hacked this as well by doing, well, they will alternate doing like ice plunges with sauna or geothermal pools, because they found out that sauna and geothermal pools, that's another source of infrared light you can get from your environment that can support your body in the absence of sunlight when it's dark all the time. So that was, it's definitely something you can leverage and maybe pulsing it with cold exposure of some sort, whether you're going for like a jog outside and maybe like a light sweater and shorts or something like this and then going in the sauna and, you know, maybe doing something like that to make it and then finishing with the cold shower, right? I mean, the sauna then to the cold, right? Or is the shower not make a difference at that point? Yeah. So, yeah, people can do contrast therapy. I just would always recommend doing cold last because you want to have your body warm itself back up. We actually have some data, Tom Seeger, who's the creator of Moralsco forage, has some data that he's put together showing that if you, if men and women do cold plunging, it can increase testosterone dramatically for women after the plunge, but for men, they need to exercise after the cold plunge to get the testosterone boost. And it's like a doubling of testosterone. So it's quite significant. But they need to move their bodies afterwards to get their metabolism to naturally heat them back up. Women do. Yeah, men do. Women we can do nothing or we can exercise like it's fine either way. But that's why I usually say for people in general, like if you feel like you're running cold, just do some like jumping jacks until you're warm. Like typically if you're sluggish and cold, it's because your metabolism is just kind of not functioning where it needs to be. And so for myself, like if I ever feel that way, I just, kind of engage in some movement to warm myself back up naturally. And that's because that's really what your body is wanting. It's wanting some stimulus to help it do its thing. Also leveraging like circulatory stimulants like ginger, turmeric, prickly ash, they're all really good ways to also help get warmth and heat throughout the body. Red pepper flake from like an herbalism perspective. I leverage all of those regularly to also help give me a little bit of an edge and just to sunlight in addition to cold exposure, these types of things. Well, I will say that part of the issue is a circulatory problem because I have renaults. I mean since I was born, it's a major issue with renault. So the circulation. And then of course, as I get older, like, yeah, the winners are harder for me because literally my hands, it's just, it's not good. I mean, they're just completely and I have to be outside. So, um, you know, the cold, I know people who swears that they who have sworn that they have cured renault from doing cold therapy. And I'm like, all right, I'm trying, but I really am almost afraid of them and have nerve damage if I force. So do you have any thoughts on that? I do. Yeah. So I would stack circulatory stimulants like ginger in particular is very good for this. Like maybe juice your own ginger. You also get like ginger extract powder. There's lots of different ways you can get it in ginger tea. You can make fresh ginger tea. Doing that, like, I would do it all day. Like I do it all day every day, basically, actually during luteal phase because it basically prevents any PMS and any cramps during menstruation. Like it's magical ginger. Yep, ginger. Yep. So ginger, I would stack that with. So one other thing I didn't mention about UV light. So the UVA component we didn't talk about, but I just want to mention briefly that UVA light is a major simulator of nitric oxide production. Nitric oxide is required for vasodilation, which allows blood to flow where it needs to go throughout the body. It delivers nutrients and oxygen to tissues, removes waste from tissues, hypertension. If we're talking about high blood pressure or hypertension in general or blood flow issues, we're really thinking about a UVA light deficiency at some level and titrating in more UVA light, especially. So the one thing I want to highlight here is because the nitric oxide is made in the skin and diffuses into the bloodstream, the more skin you have exposed, the more nitric oxide you'll make. So we want to expose as much skin as possible, maybe get some like tantrous swimwear so you can expose literally like all of your skin will get some of that light. Stacking that with ginger and then stacking that maybe with some like light exercise before doing the cold, I would say that would probably be like a trifecta that would help support your your circulation when it's challenged with the cold exposure. Brilliant and you know just side note, do you know of any other ways to naturally increase our nitric oxide because I keep hearing about that and I know that's involved in the neurotransmitters in the mood hormones. Nitric oxide is like magic. It makes you use your mojo you know. Nitric oxide is hugely important. I think the UVA-like component is the one that's really overlooked. Like people have no idea. I didn't know that. Right and so that's also why like I know a lot of like gym bros, they'll be like taking nitric oxide boosters, arginine and things like this or beetroot juice and things like this, but they don't realize that doing their weight lifting outside will give them the best pump ever because you're not only getting the UVA light for nitric oxide, you're also getting the infrared light that's directly supporting mitochondria. You're getting the UVB light that improves endorphins and metabolism so that you're kind of stacking all these things together at once, especially for also barefooting grounding at the same time. Like I do all my lifting basically outside or in my garage. Me too. Yeah and it makes a huge huge difference. Huge. But with regards to nitric oxide boosters, the other thing that's really important for nitric oxide is nasal breathing. So when you breathe through your nose, there's a little cilia in your nose that basically gets stimulated when you breathe in and that stimulates nitric oxide release via the breath. If you breathe through your mouth, that doesn't happen at all. So nasal breathing, mouth taping at night, if somebody suspects they might be mouth breathing or snoring in their sleep, trying some like light mouth tape could be a good thing as not only for cardiovascular perspective, but also for glucose metabolism perspective and a dental health perspective too. Like if you wake up and you have a super dry mouth, that is a breeding ground for cavity causing bacteria and acidification of the mouth and demeneralization. So I personally take my mouth every night and I have been doing that for years and I made a huge difference in combination with optimizing my light and my sleeping environment for like I haven't had cavities in ever. Like it's been like four years. So when you say huge difference, it's mainly in your teeth health. So both my dental health, I used to have cavities every check up and now I haven't had a cavity in like four years. But also in my alertness and awakeness when I wake up in the morning. So I used to feel super groggy and like slow in the morning. And now when I wake up, it's like I'm fresh. Like I feel ready to go. And what's the connection with the mouth taping? Yeah. So when you breathe in and out through your mouth, it changes the ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide in the blood stream in a way that activates the sympathetic nervous system. So if your mouth breathing during sleep or during the day, it means that you're stressing your system out essentially. You're not able to get parasympathetic. You're impairing your recovery, you're impairing your nervous system flexibility. And so that is why like if you're mouth breathing at all when you're sleeping, you're basically your recovery is getting shot. And that's also associated with elevated blood glucose levels, elevated insulin levels, basically impairments and glucose metabolism. Amazing. All right. This is obviously keep you here forever. So let's let's wrap this up. I do want to hear any final thoughts that you have. Of course, that you know, make you feel complete. But I'd love for you to share with us your personal mitigation strategies living in the northeast because obviously you're a doctor, you're spending a you've a tremendous online community. I know you're inside a lot because of your work. So what are some of your personal northeast mitigation strategies, both in the summer and the winter where it's more challenging for us? Yeah. So I work outside from usually late February or early March all the way through October. So I have like a just like an outdoor patio that I have set up for myself with we're actually running some ethernet cables so that I can just directly plug in outside versus needing to use the Wi-Fi because sometimes the service will be a little shoddy. So I have that. I have like an umbrella set up because oftentimes if I'm working on my computer, I need to be able to see the screen and also don't want the computer to overheat. So working in the computer in the shade, usually all oriented so that I'm sitting in the sun, but the computer's in the shade so I can still get the benefits of direct sunlight. Because I also have a mix. So like I have a bit more melanin in my skin and I kind of need the light as much as I can get. And so I'm in this time of year, I'm if it's sunny out, I'm in the sun basically all day long. I don't even need to use the shade versus somebody who has lighter skin. You know, we'll need to pull shade for sure and and there's no problem with that. Actually, I forgot to mention earlier that if you're sitting in the shade around green plants, green plants reflect a ton of near and Fred light. And so simply being outside in the shade, you're still getting a ton of that near and Fred light even if you're not in the direct sun. So don't let being in the shade think that you're not getting benefits of being out there. You still are. I'm also always basically always barefoot outside. I'm also grounding right now. So I have a grounding mat that the wire runs out my window and plugs into the backyard. So yep, grounding while I'm working outside either my foot on the concrete patio. Very nice or on the grass. Yes, otherwise right now I'm also using so chroma is a company that makes sky portals. So I have two sky portals on right now. It's raining outside today. So I've been inside today, but usually I'm going to be out. But the sky portals have adjustable brightness and adjustable redness and they go up to 10, around 10,000 lux. So it's a great way to get bright full spectrum light during the day if you're going to be inside. And you can adjust the hue and like the the redness of the light throughout the day. So that if it's later you can use it on like a red or amber mode to help reduce the total brightness and start preparing your body for sleep. I'd also recommend incandescent bulbs. So I like the company health lighting.com. I get all my incandescence from there. We actually have these UVA reptile bulbs from them. I believe they're 100 watt bulbs. I have them in all the light fixtures that we use during the day so that we're not only getting plenty of infrared light, but we're also getting some more UVA as well. And they're really nice and bright as well. So those are my favorite. They also make a like their their Chromalux bulbs are like their standard incandescent bulbs at different wattages. So just so people understand the wattages, the higher the wattage, the higher the brightness. So for day time use we actually want really bright light indoors. So the only thing you need to consider though is your light fixture will only tolerate up to a certain wattage. So just make sure that you get bulbs either get new light fixtures that can tolerate up to let's say 150 watts or get bulbs that will accommodate your current light fixtures. And they have many different like options there. So I like those. They also sell red incandescent bulbs for nighttime use. We use them throughout the house as well. If you come to my house at nighttime, our porch lights and all of our indoor lights are these red light bulbs. And so yes, that's what we do at night. And then with regards to the sleeping environment, we actually sleep. We have a bedroom in the basement. And so it's very dark, very still and quiet and cool. And it's like I highly recommend if somebody has like a nice finished basement. The case. Yes, it literally feels like a cave. It's wonderful. And we have a grounding mattress topper that is so ours is we we tested our outlet and it's grounded. So usually I would tell people just try to run it out of window, but because we're in a basement, I just went ahead and tested our outlets to make sure that we're actually grounding. And so the outlet was fine. And so we have that mattress topper plugged in to an outlet near the bed. And we have the mattress topper covered with an organic cotton sheet. So the only consideration is if you're using a mattress topper that's supposed to be grounding, you need to use an organic natural fiber sheet to cover it. Or you can sleep directly on it. But any synthetic fiber will block the grounding force. So you just want to make sure that you're you know able to and I recommend testing it. You can use a voltmeter to make sure that you're actually grounded when you're on it as same with all your other grounding products as well. And so when we're sleeping, Wi-Fi off grounding, quiet, dark, dark, dark, there's actually research to show that even very low levels of light in the sleeping environment increase, glute fasting glucose, fasting insulin and decrease glucose tolerance the next day, like throughout the day. So even if you're you know sleeping with the TV on or you have night lights or anything like this, like you need to get rid of all that. We've even put like electric tape over any indicator lights on like switches. Yeah, exactly. Just making it as pitch black as possible is going to be extremely supportive from a metabolic health standpoint, ascetic and standpoint. So I'd say those are probably most of the big things. I mean, other than my like routine going out first thing in the morning, getting that natural light on my eyes and on my skin. And I'm usually out in the morning for well, honestly, I'm usually out all day starting in the morning, but try to get out for sunrise. It's a very special time of day. It has a specific ratio of red and blue light that helps your circadian clock to basically reset and determine the time of day. And that red and blue light is also important as as Dr. Cruz likes to talk about for making sure that all the hem proteins in the body, which are in the of course hemoglobin, but also in all the electron transport chain proteins to repair themselves so that your mitochondria are starting off on the right foot each day. And so trying to get out for that sunrise and staying out into UVA rise, which happens between 30 minutes and 90 minutes after sunrise depends on the latitude and time of year. You can get the mice circadian app that will tell you what time Sunrise is and UVA rise, UVB rise, UVA rise as the name implies is when UVA light starts to come into the spectrum, it's not present at sunrise. UVA rise when UVA comes into the spectrum, it's not only beneficial for nitric oxide, but it also simulates this light receptor called neuropsin, which is present all over the skin and eyes. It's also actually in the testes as well, and there's a link to reproductive function and testosterone production there, actually. If anybody, if any men out there have seen the trend of like sunning your balls, there's actually science to back that up. And honestly, for both sexes, it's extremely beneficial from a mitochondrial standpoint in the sex organs and-- - For your breast. -. and absolutely, yeah. So all women should be wearing tan through tops or just like going topless. If you have the ability to do that, I highly recommend it. Yeah, so those would be, I think, most of the big things. And then, oh, I guess the one other thing would be starting at sunset. We turn over lights to red. All of my device screens are gonna be amber or red. And if I'm going anywhere that's gonna have bright, like artificial light, I'm gonna pop on a pair of blue blockers. If it's the evening time, they're gonna be the dark orange, 100% blue blockers. And if I need to go to a grocery store during the day, I pop on a pair of 60% yellow blue blockers to just help attenuate some of that. And I think those are most of like the little habits that I have that help me to maintain my health and energy and focus and vigor. I also do a lot of lifting, like I mentioned in my garage in my yard, so that's usually some time in the afternoon. But yeah, I think that's just about it. - Incredible, just incredible. I mean, I'm just gonna listen to this many times and I'm sure everybody else is too. I'm so grateful for you and your work and your brilliance and your ability to articulate and summarize and remember all these details, it's just extremely impressive. I mean, truly, you are a good testament to your, your method actually working and it's very inspiring for the rest of us humans. (laughing) - Thank you. I'm pretty much mere mortals. - I mean, honestly, when I'm podcasting or just talking in general, I don't feel like I'm remembering anything, it almost feels like channeling, not gonna lie. - Well, you are. There's no question. It's just like pouring out of you. I mean, it's just, I love listening to. I just think I learn something new every time. Again, I'm just so grateful you made the time and you're very busy schedule because I'm right with you. We need people need to know about this and I mentioned the beginning of the show. I mean, okay, I'm supposed to eat, well, so still work out and so so go to sleep, but they really need to know about this part of the health equation too, 'cause it's just not talked about. And once again, pretty much everything that we've been told is literally back-ass backwards, like avoid the sun and all that, it's like it's literally the opposite of what you should be doing. Of course, wisely, like you said, I mean, you wanna build up your tolerance and all that stuff, so incredible. And I will remind everybody, like I said in the intro, I have a lot of resources to help you with blue blockers and near and for red light and some, and the earthing products if you're stuck inside. 'Cause these are the things like, you know, Dr. Cowan and I do. This is what we do as health professionals. We're in modern life too. So we're walking between the two worlds. So how do you mitigate it while staying connected to the real world? These are the tools that we use. So those will be in the show notes. And of course, on my website store, aimifwarnier.com. All right, so any final thoughts and then definitely tell people, I wanna hear about your club and of course your new book coming out. So, but final thoughts first. - Yeah, I mean, I guess final thoughts on this kind of alludes to what you were just saying that everything we've been told is basically either a lie or like a perversion of the truth. And that's why I'm also very interested in like the policy and like politics side of things. And so I'm actually launching a course tomorrow about the history of corruption and science and medicine that is gonna be like an interesting course for me to teach because usually I'm teaching about the science, right? But like I really have been exploring the history of how we got to where we are. And I think it's extremely important because if we don't understand our history, we're gonna be doomed to repeated. We're not gonna be addressing the root issues that are actually driving the corruption and the lies and all of these things. So I think it's really important to dive into that and not remain blind to it because I think it's very easy to just kind of go along with the status quo and believe what you're told. But something that I've noticed quite a bit is ever since improving my light environment and like getting in alignment with nature cycles that I just am much more highly scrutinizing what I'm told so like I'm not just going to believe anything. I'm gonna kind of observe it for myself and come to my own conclusions. And I urge everybody to do that. But I think we need to kind of go through the walk through our timeline to understand who were the players involved in creating these messages that have ultimately killed and harmed so many people. The fact that messages like the Sun is toxic can be perpetrated for 70 years since basically since the 50s I think is when it really started at the expense of our lives and our health to basically fuel the pharma industrial military complex. It's just, it's a big story that needs to be highlighted. So I just urge everybody to stay curious in general, but in particular on these issues where, you know, a lot of these players are still very much active and we actually need to shed light on that in order for things. - We mentioned a few today. - Exactly, yeah. So we need to be prudent on understanding and spreading the word on these issues. So on that note, yeah, that course is gonna launch tomorrow. I think we're gonna start teaching it probably mid June. - Congratulations. - Thank you. Yeah, I'm excited. I have taught a lot of science since my business but it's gonna be really fun to do this project. But yeah, I have my book club. We're gonna start cross currents this week on Friday but everything is recorded. So anybody who joins whenever they're gonna be able to access the discussion calls. We're gonna be reading cross currents over three different calls. The body electric was over like five calls I believe. We also do watch parties. So I'll watch podcasts together and I'll like narrate along the way and give my like two cents and that's been really fun. But yeah, everything is recorded so people can access the recordings if they can't make the lives. We also have a very thriving telegram community of like-minded folks. - Oh, I gotta join that. I'm money or telegram. - What is your telegram? - So it's part of the book club. It's like it's a private room. I'll give you access obviously but when anybody joins the program, they get the link to join the telegram. - I should be in your book club too. - I think you would love it absolutely. And that's only 15 bucks a month. That's like just basically I would do it for free. It's just like I wanna have some filtration mechanism on like who's willing to join and like put a little bit of investment in at least. - Yes. - Yes. And then other than that, I have an e-book that is outlines all the basics around quantum and light biology, what you need to know, practices, products, all of this type of thing. It's about 100 pages and anybody can read it. I literally have had middle schoolers do book reports on it. So it's actually really nice that even 13 year olds can digest and assimilate the information in that. So that's kind of what I wrote it for like anybody, the like the lay person with no background to take it and learn from the like the very foundations up through like the practices of why we wanna build a relationship with nature and the sun and what you can do about that. I have a couple courses. So there's a scientific literacy course called the scientific literacy intensive that teaches you how to read scientific papers and understand the scientific method and scrutinize data and claims and things like this. I have another program called boot camp reboot that is very extensive on like the science and practice behind all of everything in quantum biology and mitochondrial medicine essentially. We also had a three hour lesson on healing post COVID and jab in that as well. So that was really good. That's all pre-recorded now. The live version ended. But yeah, people can take it as like a self-guided same with the scientific literacy program. And I think that's mostly it. I'm mostly active on Instagram, a little bit on X. I'm at Dr. Alexis Jasmine, J.A.C.M.Y.N. on both of those. And I also have a podcast called Undoctrinate Yourself that's on Spotify and YouTube. - So good. - Yes. And it's gonna be on like all platforms by some time. - Oh, yeah, 'cause it's only a Spotify. So what are you doing? You're crushing over like what's that all about? - So I have a friend that's helping me just port everything over to at least Apple podcasts. And I think it's on a couple of other platforms right now as well. But I also am up on YouTube though. We have to censor the podcast before YouTube because they're kind of spicy and YouTube is tyrannical. So but anyways. - Simply yeah. - Yeah, they're virtually every episode is up on YouTube except for maybe like one. And Spotify gets all the uncensored episodes. And then there's also I have a Patreon for Undoctrinate Yourself that gets all the episodes. Usually like a day or two before Spotify. And they're also uncensored of course. So people can join that for five bucks a month if they want to get like first access to them. - Good Lord, do you sleep girl? Whoa, wow, wow. I mean like I need to take a nap just listening to the list. (laughing) That's amazing. I love it. - So inspiring. And what a gift to humanity you are. I mean go, you go girl. - Thank you. - 99%. And I have to tell you something. really fun. One of my chickens names Jasmine. -Oh! -Didn't you just say that's your middle name? -Yeah it is! -So cute! -You're gonna have to come meet Jasmine. -I would love to meet her. -Hey Jasmine, I got to. She's very pretty. -Wow. -Very pretty. She's in Americana, which is also the nickname is the Easter Egg or those are the ones that produce the blue and green eggs. -So cute! -She's very beautiful. She's got really light eyes and she got gray, gray feathers with dark gray. -Oh, it's gorgeous. -She's gorgeous. -Oh, well does she? -She's. What are we in now? What are we in now? Maybe a year? -Oh! -I don't even know how long chickens live. -Well, just like people depends on the environment. I get to tell you that's a whole another discussion. Animals and kids are our greatest teachers. This is what I always say. And I've learned so much from my animals. I mean, it's the good and the bad. I mean, two of them died. That was kind of rough. I mean, you just learned so much about life and the life cycle. And I mean, one of my chickens ate a mouse the other day. I mean, people don't know that chickens are carnivores or at least herbivores or omnivores. Excuse me. They're not vegetarian. I mean, my chicken was eating a mouse. -Well, that's why I always laugh at the eggs of the store. They say vegetarian feds if it's a good thing. Like, no, I want my chicken eating bugs and these eggs. -Exactly. Those eggs are bad for you. -Yeah. -Is there going to be malnourse? -Yeah, but my chickens have been some of my greatest teachers. And, you know, I'll tell you, too, there's a real thing called chicken therapy. Did you know that? -No. -It's a real thing, Alexis, because, and I get it. Like, I can't even tell you when I take like breaks and I go out and visit my chickens on my sun breaks. And they're little noises. And I'm starting, they're like dogs or any other animals. You know, like they have different sounds. They communicate very clearly. It's just a different language, but you get to know their language. And I got to tell you some of the noises they make. Just they literally worm my heart. I swear they lower my blood pressure. They make me breathe. Chicken therapy is a real thing. You know how there's equine therapy for autistic kids? People bring kids to chicken like farms and stuff. And when my friends with their kids come over with their chickens, I'm telling you, it's incredible. Like animals in nature are truly the source of all healing. It's incredible. -That's definitely how I feel. I've always been an animal person. I grew up writing horses for 10 years. And I had a bunch of different animals. I have a cat now. Actually, we just she brought a baby bunny that was literally like five days old, unfortunately. She didn't kill it, but I was first thing him back to health and like he was so healthy and like he seemed like he was doing well, but I guess he ended up getting stasis. This was like just over the weekend. And he ended up dying. And I was so upset because like he was so lively and I literally just had him in my shirt for like six hours that day. -That's the worst. He was so cuddly. I was like, oh, I gotta tell you, I have a most infestation and everyone's telling me I need to get a cat. And it's been on my heart for a couple of years to get a cat. I think it's something spiritual because you know the cats you're totally dialed in on a different level. And you know, the Egyptians knew. And so it's been in the back of my mind about getting a cat, but I can't be responsible for another living creature right now. But I might have to get a cat one day because they're really unique, aren't they? Different than dogs. -Oh my gosh. I grew up only having dogs and I never thought I was like a cat person. -Right. -How to have now is just like she is like such a spiritual teacher for me. She's like like we like instantly had a soul connection. And so like I just love her to death. But yeah so much there's so much instinctual behavior that you can learn from cats. They're also quite independent. So like I don't like you won't you won't need to add too much to your schedule to take care. We're actually she you know may end up freeing up some of your time if the mice are actually a big issue for you. -Exactly. Yeah. And as long as she gets I have four dogs on it, it's like a thing. But I think I might go forward with it and just tell me real quick did she find you like as everyone tells me when they get cats the cats choose the person. -So my neighbor had a girlfriend that moved in and was her cat that was outside and she literally just ran in our house one day. And then we like basically fell in love because I was spending all day outside which is when I first found Jack's work and we just like were bonding all day long. And then eventually there was a whole drama thing. But like I ended up being able to buy the cat from the neighbor and now she's just ours. But -There you know she found you. -And yet another I hear this all the time. So I'm kind of thinking okay well if one walks in my door. Of course that's very kind of highly unlikely but you never know. So you know what I'm open to it that's for sure. I just want I don't want to be like a foster failure because like my biggest fear would be I take in a cat doesn't work with my dogs or I mean whatever. I don't know. I just would never because I really bond with my animals like you. I wanted to be a vet when I was a kid. Me too. -Animal really? -Yeah. Wow amazing. We have a lot in common. Well amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Everybody the all these contact information sources that Dr. Conwan gave are in the show notes. And once you just go ahead and give us your website again real quick for everyone on the audio. -Yeah sure. So they can find me at Dr. Alexis Jasmine J.A.Z. M.Y.N on Instagram and X and my website is AlexisJasmine.com. -And definitely check out her Instagram everybody. It's very educational. I don't know how you put the time into that but it's phenomenal. Really really great. You're what a service to humanity. All right everybody you know what to do. This show was fabulous. I know you got benefit from it. Please rate the show. Share it with someone. Let's get the word out about natural healthy ways to be healthy and fit and happy and take care of the planet and each other. And definitely please consider supporting Dr. Conwan's work. It's so so important. All right my friend. Well we will see you next time and everybody thanks for tuning into Awakening Aphrodite. -Would you like to support my mission to help empower people all over the world to be all of who they truly are? If so please subscribe to the show. Leave a review on iTunes and share it with a friend. And if you're looking to take immediate action to align your energy and optimize your health visit amyfornier.com. Thanks for listening to Awakening Aphrodite. Let's awaken her together in you. I'm your hostess Amy Fornier and I already can't wait to be with you again and for you to hear what I have planned for the next show. -Thanks for listening to Awakening Aphrodite with Amy Fornier. To learn more about Amy check out her website amyfornier.com. That's AMYFORNOR.com. You can also check out Amy's live and on-demand virtual fitness and yoga classes and sign up for her newsletter to receive a free mini ebook of three of her top tips for making holistic health a lifestyle. Again, that's amyfornier.com and get your ebook sent to your email immediately. Connect with Amy on the daily on Instagram @fitamitv. FIT AMY TV. And watch many of the podcast episodes and subtopic clips on her YouTube channel which is also Fit Amy TV. Enjoy and we'll see you next time on Awakening Aphrodite. 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