Max, welcome to the show.
Yeah, thanks, Kenford. You're great. Great to be here. Awesome. So
Before we get started, I just want to highlight the intention of today's episode. I've personally been
At work I get called out by my co-workers
Whenever I'm sunbathing in my lunch break, right and then they come up to me and they're gonna be like man
You're gonna get skin cancer if you're out in the sun that long. Do you wear sunscreen?
I told them no and they're like, oh boy
You better watch out and so it's like I under yeah, I understand the concern and the intention
but
there's a lot of misconception around this one idea and I wanted this episode to be that
episode you send to someone and
perhaps change their perspective so
Could you give us an introduction of?
You know your how you got into medicine how you got into this specific niche of medicine and
An aspect I want to ask to you is how was your personal experience, you know?
trip in that belief because I'm sure you were
Surrounded by I don't know if you believed in it initially. I certainly did
But that belief changed right and so how did that occur and take place?
Yeah, sure. Well, I started as I
wanted to do medicine from a I guess in an early age and
I kind of got there a little bit of a roundabout way
I did some basic science research in a bachelor of science degree first and and then I went to medical school and
Did some public health as well in between my my MD training and
The prelude or the background to my formal medical education was that I was dealing with some of my own health issue
Which was a dermatologist. We're going to be talking about dermatology
I had my own dermatological issue, which was acne, which is something that a lot of people maybe your listeners have dealt with and
The approach to acne was that I had to experience was very
medicalized and it wasn't in any way addressing
lifestyle or dietary factors and
essentially, I went through a process of many years of treatment with
various medications and
That essentially culminated in in using quite a heavy medication called iso-tretinoin
Or raw accutane, it goes by a lot of different names in a lot of different countries
Essentially, it's the sledgehammer that we use that the dermatology profession uses to take out someone's acne
And it works quite effectively. It's an extremely potent synthetic vitamin A retinoid
Which means it has various effects that essentially
remove or deal with
Acne and sebum production in the skin to kind of cure the condition. The problem with
Is it is extremely
Teratogenic meaning that it causes birth defects
So any any young women taking iso-tretinoin have to be on birth control if they're sexually active
So it just gives you an idea of the kind of degree of
potentially that we're doing
So you can you should often recognize people who are on this medication whether in high school or university
Because they invariably have very very dry skin and they have very dry lips
They constantly got the chapstick the moisturizer and they're putting stuff on their lips and it's a very very characteristic look
So essentially I stopped using iso-tretinoin after about three months because
It was having some kind of a
Severe mood side effects the the whole process of going through this as a kind of a patient
You know throughout my science and medical career. I was training. I was not being told of
Effective lifestyle things that I could have been doing and I was eating a higher carb diet
I was never overweight and I wasn't eating junk food, but I was eating oats
Which you guys call
Oatmeal in the states. I was eating oats for breakfast. I was eating those cartons of
ready-made
They're called up and go here in Australia
But essentially you drink them before you're about to go on a run or a bike ride
so basically a higher carb diet and
it was sufficient for me to to contribute to this this problem and
The the formal medical training that I was getting was
And what didn't offer any any of these ideas, which is like, okay cut down and process foods
Get some early morning
IR red kind of light on your skin and you probably will go away
But that that wasn't anything that I was told in between my visits to the family doctors to the dermatologists
So I basically
Was just trying to get some
To the dermatologists so I basically went on my own healing journey and part of that was
Understanding the role of diet and we're going low carb initially
Keto ketogenic and then carnivore for for a time period
The and it worked extremely effectively and that was I guess the the journey of me questioning
that the model that I was being
educated in and
Understanding that it clearly didn't have all the answers because what why was I having a problem that I was able to fix that
I hadn't been told about so that that was the prelude or the background to the this kind of mindset and
Throughout this journey
I mean
it's I guess I'm a curious type of person and I'm always asking questions and exploring different ideas and within the sphere of I
Guess metabolic medicine or low carb and carnivore you're always you're gonna have other perspectives and dr
Jack Kruse's perspectives in that kind of sphere. So about a year after doing carnivore I
was
Somehow came across his work again
You don't know the exact point some people know the exact point when they hear when they realize it
but I think I can't remember exactly but and end up going down to that Kruse rabbit hole and
Understanding that there's more to the story than just food
Not to say that it's not extremely effective
Intervention for people on its own, but I guess there's more to the story. So that was the the
The pathway and the entry point for me into understanding
I guess circadian biology a bit more delving into circadian biology and and and more quantum biology
And I'm no expert on or biophysics and that's something I'm actively learning but it's
It's this interesting facet of health that I think goes so well with with dietary treatments
So I graduated medical school. I worked for for about
four years in
Emergency departments and it I guess internal medicine you guys call it and then I've started general practice training
Which is family medicine. I'm here in Australia and
This year being of being a family medicine trainee
I've been able to implement some of the dietary and and light interventions that I've that I've learned and that
Make up this circadian biology
school school of thought and having great success and really finding that people
benefiting a lot from going all the way down to the fundamental fundamentals of health and
Implementing these these really really base layer lifestyle interventions
And and finding that they're they're thriving
So that's essentially where I've come from and at the moment now
I also have a podcast regenerative health podcast, which is about a year just short of a year old and
That is also an opportunity to
talk to interesting people talk to
people who have experience and
At the cutting edge and then using those as like tools to help
people in the consult because you only have limited resources
In the clinic, but you can say hey, listen to this this and this and it's it's really effective
So I guess that is that's my approach and and I guess the goal is always to help
To assist people in the most effective way and hopefully help them
avoid the unnecessary
over medic medication without having also or first being given
Effective lifestyle advice that could have prevented them or help them reverse their diseases
But that be diabetes obesity fatty liver disease that they otherwise might not have under an exclusively conventional medic medical model
So in your practice with your patients, would you say that?
The sun is a main aspect
Of how you would correct their lifestyle you like you incorporate sun exposure
Would that be correct?
Yeah, and I keep it simple because my patients aren't as I guess healthy
Literate or down the rabbit hole is a lot of people
On online on youtube and twitter, so I just basically say we need to look after your food diet and your light diet
And just like you you can't be eating junk food. You can't be eating processed seed oils processed carbs
Refined sugar and expect to be healthy. You can't be
Consuming processed light artificial light led down lights
Phone screens and you can't do that and expect to be healthy
so the the message that I give to my patients is basically that those the twofold and
Certain people will respond better to certain things some for some people simply just going low carb is enough to
Sort out all their problems. I had a patient with parkinson's disease
And the thing that so for your listeners
parkinson's is
Basically the degeneration of a special group of nerves in in your in your brain
Where that produced dopamine and dopamine is involved in the initiation of movement
and he had
His his condition was improved the most the thing that moved the needle the most for him was getting out in that morning sun
And spending as much time grounded in in in the morning sun and he was getting
His his voice was was being
His ability to speak was being lost as a part of the progression of his disease
And when he was out in the sun, his voice was
normal
So it was it's just going to show the power of of
Certain interventions, but I guess that the nuance and the skill
Of what i'm doing is trying to understand where each patient's at and picking
The the intervention I think is going to be most effective for the patient
because you know some people like well, i'm not i'm not going to change my my diet they're too addicted to carbs or sugar, so
You know you they're more likely to
Perhaps see the sunrise and other people would be like, okay doc, you know, I work who?
Shift work fly in fly out in a mine. So I can't do a lot of circadian stuff
But i'll eat mostly mostly meat if you tell me to and those people respond really well to those interventions. So
To answer your question definitely
Sunlight and circadian biology is is at the core of my lifestyle message
I think that's very
Well in our space, that's very normal but
If a normal, you know a person who grew up under the notion of sun causes skin cancer, etc
Here's that that they would probably be very surprised to hear that that is the baseline of your treatment. So
let's
You don't do that in a vacuum, right? You don't just
you actually learn this over a period of time and so I want to
Really unpack this idea because a lot of people
Will try to avoid the sun the sunscreens masks
being inside and
I think
There's this belief that the sun causes skin cancer that it's harmful
It's
It's predicated on a couple of things. So
The first thing i'd say it's let's let's take non-native emf for example
I find that when I before I found out about non-native emf
My belief that it was harmless was predicated on
one
It's not ionize. It's non-ionizing radiation
Ionizing radiation is the bad one. So if it's non-ionizing radiation, then you go to the second part of this
aspect
Non-ionizing radiation is harmless
So it's like a two-fold two steps
and so if I believe those two things I must believe
non-native emf my technology
Isn't harming me right?
and
but I read a couple books that
Completely wipe that notion away
non-ionizing radiation
is
Very harmful due to the biophysical basis of our biology
And so to take it back to sun
the first thing I would say is
This this widespread idea or
It's been found in labs that uv light
causes
I don't know
carcinoma in a skin cell culture and there it's
conflated to
It will cause skin cancer in us
and that's backed up by
our personal experiences of sunburn
and
If we are in the sun for too long, we get this this unpleasant experience
of sunburn from mild to severe
and then thirdly we have all these
These studies showing statistics that show correlations of skin cancer going up
melanoma going up
and then
Fourthly you have the doctors the media
Just hammering this message home like wear your sunscreen your sunglasses
And it all coalesces to this
This very concrete belief
That the sun is harmful toxic, etc
So if we break this belief down into its components that I think that makes like a good
basis of it
and
To reverse this whole process
We first need to understand
how light works as a foundation with biology because we study biology as
a closed system
but
biology works in synchrony with sunlight and so
Max could you firstly to to firstly correct?
This notion of sun being harmful
We need to lay the foundation of
specific specifically red and uv light
their mechanisms how
they drive
our biology and
our beneficial
to it so
There's bioenergetics there's repair
There's all this stuff so you can go ahead and you know communicate that
How you want but let's paint the picture of light being the foundation
Yeah, and it's it's a very broad topic and there's so many aspects to this
But I like to really use an evolutionary lens as a as a starting point
because when people understand the
critical absolutely
Indispensable role of sunlight in the evolution of complex life on earth then the idea
That sunlight is inherently harmful becomes
untenable if you if you truly understand
What is actually going on here and?
We can I mean we can take it all the way back to
the
evolution of of single cellular life
That demonstrates circadian
very adaptations to a circadian
ability to maintain a circadian rhythm and by saying that is because as we found melatonin
the substance melatonin in
primitive bacteria primitive archaea that date back, you know to 2.4 billion years and
The reason why is because they're using it's a marker that they're
Making adaptations to their environment that is fluctuating in its environmental characteristics
between day and night and if you you there's temperature change if there's light change between a day and a night
Then you're going to need to adapt your organism to make sure that you're most fit for that for that environment
So the the fact that melatonin is is expressed and secreted in a circadian way
Dianally in in a way that's conserved from such primitive
bacteria even before we were endosymbiosis mitochondria became
Became endosymbiosis into cells to form
More complex life then to me that is immediately showing that we we rely on on sunlight
So if we if we take take that progression to the next step, so 600 million years ago
We were around we were endosymbiosis which meant one organism ate
I believe it was a form of rubric bacterium some kind of sulfur forming bacteria and they these two cells joined forces and
The rubric bacteria became a mitochondria and they decided to well, they specialized in energy production in the cell
and then you know, you you fast forward another hundred hundred million years and
There was the
Evolution of this gene called pro-opio melanochortin and to keep it really simple for for people
I I think of it as a very long carnival ticket
And it's actually actually a hormone that gets produced in a range of tissues in humans
It gets produced in our brain in our skin in in many cells
And you think of it like a long carnival ticket and if you cut this carnival ticket up into different pieces
Then each different ticket can get you entry into different kind of carnival fare
Depending on what what location you're in means that if in the brain you can the pituitary gland
You're going to cut it up into a different piece and you're going to get something like
ACTH or adrenocortico-tropic hormone or if you you cut it up somewhere else you in the hypothalamus
You might get alpha msh, which is a very common thing
So in the hypothalamus you might get alpha msh, which is has a role in in satiety and
Feeling full and then if you cut it up in a different place in in maybe in the skin
You're going to get something like beta endorphin, which is an opioid like chemical
So 500 million years ago, we evolved this this
Very long poly was a polypeptide hormone and the key point is that that is stimulated by uv light
So you're going to produce this this pro-opium lanocortin hormone in response to uv light
And the reason why this is so important is that it governs so many different aspects of biology
This one polypeptide hormone as I mentioned ACTH is is related to the hypothalamic pituitary
Act adrenal axis so our stress response is is critically linked to this
linked to this whole body energy metabolism or how an organism regulates how much energy is caught on board so
So somewhat of your listeners might know about the leptin molanocortin pathway. So so this is a central
thermostat or regulator of how much energy we're carrying that
Again, that is is going to be influenced by some of these pomacea cleavage products and then
What what I mentioned about beta endorphin is
Is endorphins are your body's way of telling you or rewarding you for doing something that is good for your biology
So if you if you get in the sun and you produce and cleave pomacea into an opioid like chemical
Then you're going to feel great. You're going to literally be addicted to the sun
and
You can see how and jacques makes this point quite quite insistently that you can see how
How something like a opioid epidemic makes more sense if people chronically avoiding
sunlight and therefore deprived of their naturally produced opioids which are cleavage products of of pomacea, so
That's the prelude 500 400 million years ago. These jawless fish evolved this this
polypeptide hormone and then we evolved out through amphibians and then
Became mammals and we've conserved this this ability this
polypeptide hormone because sunlight is so critical to
to our biology
so that kind of brings us up to us as kind of as as mammals and
What what is also relevant is that pomacea is not the only hormone or
Mechanism that we have to respond to UV light and and remember UV light is what is being demonized here
UV is part of natural sunlight is what we're being told to avoid at all costs
So not only do we have this master regulatory hormone that is being modulated by UV light
but we also have what are known as non visual photoreceptors and
Basically what that means is that your eye has visual photoreceptors
So the the reason why I can see you can for now is because my visual photoreceptors are giving me an image
there's
about two percent of the
neurons in your retina
Perceive light that they don't perceive
Shape or vision and that these are called non visual photoreceptors because they're still perceiving light
But they're not telling me that there's you know, a pair of glasses and a microphone and and and and a man sitting opposite me
They're simply perceiving light and the absence or presence of certain wavelengths of light
And this was this was discovered because they realized that people
or certain rats could
Dependent what I'm trying to think of the exact experiment
But essentially you could lose a bunch of your your visual photoreceptors
But these rats would still respond to
light cues
so they would still have an intact circadian rhythm because they were detecting the presence or absence of blue light that helped them and
train their circadian rhythm and
That stopped the practice of in you what was called a new nucleation which was removing the eyes of blind people
I think that was a practice for a while, you know medicines done a bunch of crazy things
You know someone want to look nobel prize for lobotomy
So that gives you an idea about how how the we used to do things
But essentially we stopped doing that because we realized that even if people had lost their
Visual photoreceptors to see and become became blind effectively
There was it was important to leave their eyes in because if those non-visual photoreceptors
Were intact then people would still be able to have a normal entrained circadian rhythm and therefore go to sleep at the right time
And it's obviously critical for health
So the non-visual photoreceptor system
basically takes the presence or absence of certain light wavelengths and then feeds that into the brain into what's known as the
suprachiasmatic nucleus and
through what's known as the retinohypo thalamic tract and to do that is allows it to
Coordinate all the body functions in response to the changing environment, which is the presence and absence of light
Remember solar the sunlight and and solar light is still this this
The main thing that is governing our biology and it's helping us to adapt to to these changing conditions
so think about the way that
that the body is using that is it can see if this blue light if
you're using if certain non-visual photoreceptor called melanopsin detects the presence or absence of blue light and
the the reason why that's relevant is because
Blue light is most present in at noon in the middle of the day
So we need to be doing certain things like hunting like finding food like being active
That that is that way in training our biology is through melanopsin to give us that midday signal
but the and to give you your listeners even further depth of
Analysis on this it is thought that we evolved melanopsin
In a very very ancient way because it was the blue wavelengths of light that were able to penetrate
Down into into the ocean. So again, the oceans would where life evolved
So even these plankton's and these incredibly primitive life forms
We're still having circadian entrainment and they were having entrainment through melanopsin
And which was a blue light detector because the other wavelengths of light on the infrared is getting absorbed very very very high up
By the water but blue was being able to penetrate up to a hundred meters or so
So again, let this we're building a story for your listeners that this is how important sunlight is for our biology
It's it's that that old it's that ancient
So not only do we have blue light detectors in in our eyes, but we also have
a bunch of non-visual photo recept photo receptors that that
Take in ultraviolet light. So nuopsin detects ultraviolet light
So again, this is like a stop point for people who think that UV light
Is inherently harmful and this is the first belief
We're kind of breaking down is that if ultraviolet light from the Sun is inherently harmful
Why do we have pro-opium melanocortin that is so critical?
To running all out our body system. It's like calling Microsoft
Microsoft Windows a virus
I mean how if they're computing people out there, how could the prime operating system be of malware? It doesn't make sense
So we've got pro-opium and then we've got nuopsin. So why would nature have given us a UV light detector?
Specifically if it were if it were inherently harmful again
It doesn't it doesn't make a lot of sense and in essentially these non-visual photo receptors are ways of helping us
Become more adapted and more fit to the changing shoulder conditions because throughout the day
That the sunlight is going to vary in the wavelengths of light that that hit the earth depending on the time of day
So for your listeners the morning on sunrise is going to is a lot of red a little bit of blue
Infrared light which is a non visible form of light that's even far further beyond red
And then then we get ultraviolet a light. So ultraviolet is
Below below 400 200 200 to mid 350
I believe and then we get ultraviolet B. So ultraviolet B is where you start making
Vitamin D and that is the most I guess carcinogenic type of UV light that most people are trying to avoid and then
solar noon is
You've got a peak of blue, but it's always balanced with red
You've got UVB and you've got a bit of bit much less UVA
And then that that process kind of reverses itself from new solar noon to to the end of the day
So what what again we're painting this picture is that
nature doesn't make mistakes nature never makes mistakes and
Humans have evolved just like other organisms to be in
Primely adapted to their environment and you can see how we might evolve these these light and non-visual photoreceptor systems
is because if they're
improving our fitness as mammals and as
Animals to survive in our environment, then they're going to be conserved and they're going to be preserved across
across evolution
so that's essentially a bit of a background about
What what are the the natural mechanisms that we have to?
To defend that or to use sunlight
So we've got pro-op amylochortin. We develop with secreting this key opioid hormone in response to
In response to UV light exposure. So then so I guess going more more mechanistically the question
Bears out is like, okay. Well, what is the
Question bears out is like, okay. Well
Is UV light damaging? Well, the answer is yes
So your ultraviolet light will cause DNA
Strand breaks if you're if you're exposed to it and that's so I guess there there is a hot truth in terms of
The the messages about the damaging effect of ultraviolet light
but the answer to this question is that we've evolved mechanisms to
Adapt defend repair the damage that is done from ultraviolet light
and that is part of the adaptions that human that mammals and humans have made and to
To give you an idea essentially
We developed this hormone or this compound called melanin and again melanin is highly highly highly conserved
across species and anytime you see coloration in nature
Is is nature is using melanin to color to color in these?
These animals, but it's not only got a color
form or function it it acts as
An ability to absorb ultraviolet light and or any form of light
So it's black meaning that it can absorb all of the wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum
But one of its chief roles is absorbing ultraviolet light and then dissipating that energy as heat
And certain fungi have even evolved an ability to absorb all kinds of radiation using
Melanin to then make energy and there is a role in in humans as well and this is
Called human photosynthesis or so-called human photosynthesis, which is the ability of humans to actually take
light and and sunlight and use it to
essentially
Derive energy from from the water molecule
But the the point is that melanin is secreted to protect the dna
and to protect the cell and
melanocytes which are a type of cell that sit inside our skin layer
essentially send out blebs of
Melanin to to protect the the keratinocytes
Which are another type of of cell the interesting thing that people will will know and let's bring it back to pomce is that
Pomce is the signal when pomce is cleaved into alpha msh alpha msh stimulates melanin production in
in
currently
Melanocytes so again, this is tying
Propeller and according back into the story
Was that it's the same compound that is making us addicted to the sun when it gets cleaved in one way is also
Giving us a tool to defend ourselves against ultraviolet ultraviolet light
The and there's a range of other defenses that that have and and that is essentially the the skin cells
have become
When they essentially die and they become a form of protective layer
So as they if you imagine just layers of light
protection of armor the the top layers of skin on your
your epithelium
If actually the cells that have died and their dna
Even in the dead cells actually can absorb ultraviolet light as well, which is a form of natural sunscreen
So we've got we've got all these
adaptations to the
Defending ourselves against the ultraviolet light that would would be present even if it was
ultraviolet light that would would be present in natural sunlight
the other aspect to it again and
This is relevant is that the rays that you get in the morning to the infrared and the red
Are going to pre-condition the skin and prepare your skin for the later
Exposure to ultraviolet so and this is going to be relevant when we talk about how things have gone wrong in the in the modern
world, but most people
Don't get that early morning sun red red and infrared exposure. They simply go right into the midday
You know you think about a tourist that gets off the plane in bondai beach in sydney
Very quickly looks like a prawn a piece of shrimp
Because they haven't used the sun properly. They've got no solar calc and we'll talk about solar callus
But the the point is that think about how?
Ancestrally, we would have used the sun and there's there's a group of primates in
Ethiopia and every single morning they climb to the highest point of the mountain
To watch the sunrise like that is what they do every single morning
And we we would have been the similar ancestral humans would have watched the sunrise. We would have had natural
varying wavelengths of sun from starting with red and
infrared and then going all the way up to UV and then back down and
This is how we would have used the sun and this is how the body is adapted to use the sun
And i'm not sure about you kemford, but i've can i know very very quickly that if i've
When i've exposed myself into morning sunlight
I'm much much much less likely to burn quite quite noticeably and i've been around
Friends and we've had been vastly different in in our propensity burn even though we've got a similar fits patrick skin type
So it's it's something that we learn about you can see for yourself after after a while
so we've
I think i've painted enough of a picture for your for your listeners that
We the sunlight is key to to life and it's about how
We're using it therefore wrongly that I might say that is contributing to to skin cancers and
Basically, there's three different types of skin cancers that we're dealing with here. There's squamous cell carcinoma
There's basal cell carcinoma and there's
Melanoma and melanoma is
Possibly the one that it's the one that we're most worried about and when people come in to get their skins checked
That is the one that that we're most concerned because it has a very very high
Well, it's a propensity to metastasize and it can be quite deadly
basal cell is very very much more slow growing and
And squamous cell carcinoma can be quite metastatic and dangerous
But in terms of hierarchy of things that we're worried about the melanoma is right at right at the top
so the incidence of these skin cancers has been increasing and particularly melanoma and particularly in people that don't appear to be
That's unexposed
So we've we've got this
Situation where melanoma incidence is rising despite advice to you know, slip slop slap, which is
Defend yourself against all aspects of of ultraviolet and and other forms of sunlight
And we're faced with this question then is like, okay. Well, what is actually going on here?
Is the sun causing skin cancers? And again before we go into the details
I really you asked me to paint a broad picture and we'll we'll do that
Is that let's look at some of these long-term epidemiological studies and one of my favorite ones is a swedish study
from I believe it's 2016 or 17 and they looked at
healthy behaviors in women in sweden who
smoked who
whose son bathed intentionally in those who didn't and essentially over a longitudinal period the
women who
actively avoided the sun
their mortality was equivalent
Who actively avoided the sun and didn't smoke was the same as those who?
Smoked but but intentionally exposed themselves to the sun
So that that that was such an elegant way of of indicating the magnitude of effect that we're dealing with here so you can
You can smoke and to some degree is mitigated if you're exposing yourself to the sun
Well, depending on how you want to look at it, but that really flies in the face of the advice that we're talking about to
Avoid at all costs and there's clearly health benefit here
So what why has things gone wrong? Why are people?
Getting damaged or what what how they're using the sun inappropriately
And I think it is possible to use the sun inappropriately if we haven't developed
What's known as a solar callus and the solar callus and for people who don't know you know
You develop calluses on your fingers when you lifted a barbell in the gym for many weeks
and it's a form of a protective mechanism and
The you know, you wouldn't cut your calluses off because if they are providing benefit just like a tan is is actually a an
Adaption a whole to the hormetic stress, which was the sunlight exposure
so a solar callus is a tool of basically
Harnessing that sunlight in a way that is not is minimally harmful. So what what that involves or what that means is that
We have cultivated melanin in us in our skin. We've developed our ability to
expose ourselves to sunlight and ultraviolet light without burning and
the way this works is that we
progressively and expose ourselves to
Ultraviolet sunlight starting first with the sunrise when in the most benign and non
Non damaging wavelengths of sunlight which are red and infrared and if if anyone's in doubt about how beneficial
Those wavelengths are you go go and look at the whole field of photobiomodulation
Biomodulation there's whole companies who've made, you know profits and
And helped people by making panels that isolate red and infrared light and people
People's wounds heal better people recover better from
Sport people use it for hair loss. There's a bunch of benefits
You get from using red and infrared light in a photobiomodulation panel. The point is you can get it for free
From the sun and that window is between sunrise and uva rise depending on where you are in in the world
so the the the key to building your solar calus or using the sun properly is by getting
That early morning sun prior to the ultraviolet light
But again people haven't been using the sun correctly in in our modern age and let's I guess maybe we can talk through some of the
things that they haven't done which means that they've got a atrophic skin and
their skin is not
prepared to
deal with the stress of
Of ultraviolet sun exposure so that if they are exposed it is more likely to be damaging in in the long run
so the basically the
Couple of things that i'll go over kenford and if you want we can go into depth more
But the elephant in the room is the fact that
Most people these days are under artificial blue light all day
And their skin is being exposed to artificial blue light without red or or ultraviolet
So that that is kind of the elephant in in in the room their circadian rhythms are often
Disrupted and they're not making that key melatonin hormone that we need for body repair
Especially over overnight. They're eating a diet in the us uk everywhere. It's rich in
Linoleic acid which is plant derived
It's predominantly a purified plant seed that is rich in the omega-6 fatty acid and lactic acid
Which is essentially disturbed the evolutionary ratio of polyunsaturated fatty acids in our body in our skin
to
One that is very much favored in omega-6 and much less in omega-3
Because people are eating processed foods with rich in seed oils and they're not eating as much
Fish or animal derived sources of omega-3 like dha. So we've got
artificial light exposure. We've got circadian disruption. We've got
Omega 3 to 6 ratio, which is completely out of whack and then we've got the uses of of things like sunscreens
And it's a controversial
point to to say that potentially sunscreens have been
contributing to the development of some skin cancer, but
When we look at how these these molecules and chemicals are working it kind of makes a bit more sense because
Essentially these skin skin sunscreens block
Ultraviolet, but they don't block any of the they don't block visible light
The ones that just kind of rub in and dissolve in your skin. So what they're essentially doing is
And and they're mostly blocked uvb and less uva
So if people are going out in the sun, they turn off their ability their ability to
Know that they've got enough sun, which is sunburn. It's a natural
Like warning mechanism that hang on we've got too much sun for our for our skin type at this point
You should go inside so you're turning off that mechanism when you're using a uvb blocking sunscreen
But the the problem is there is oxidative stress caused by visible light
And I spoke to scott zimmerman who's an optics engineer about this
And you essentially turning off that body's ability to block sunscreens
Essentially turning off that body's ability to know that it's being burnt
But you're not doing anything for the fact that your visible light is also causing damage to to your skin
so the and and there's other aspects to it, there's a possible concentration of of
Metabolites of sunscreen because the uv light is breaking down the sunscreen and to what degree are the metabolites of the sunscreens?
causing oxidative stress in in the skin, so it's it's a it's a profoundly
Unevolutionarily appropriate way to use the sun if you think about what we've talked about for the first
Part of this interview is that to to use an exogenous chemical
that we never used in our evolutionary past that is potentially breaking down into
products that have unclear
Implication for human health and then concentrating
Non-visible like blue wave length violet or whatever else in in that skin layer
without
Without you being in a context that is completely unnatural and unenvolutionary appropriate. So that's my take on sunscreens and
he one key hormone in sunscreens or ingredient was is oxybenzone and I believe the hawaiians in
Your country the hawaiians banned the use of oxybenzone in sunscreens because it was killing their reef
So that's another whole aspect to it is the endocrine endocrine disruption
properties of these sunscreens
so
we've got
sunscreen and then we've got sunglass usage and
again, this is kind of a controversial thing to say but
the the blocking of
your
Of the perception of uv light through the eye
Is potentially impeding your body's ability to deal with the hormetic stress of uv light
by sending an incongruent message between your
ocular
Non-visual photoreceptor system and your cutaneous non-visual photoreceptor system
So if those messages are different because your eyes are not getting any ultraviolet light at all
Because you've got a pair of shades on and but your skin is getting that that signal
That the the potential is there that you're paradoxically more likely or more inclined to to sunburn
Because again, you're messing with your body's
naturally evolved mechanisms of homeostasis
so
That is I guess a prelude and maybe the last point about it is this
If there's a mismatch between someone's skin type and the latitude
Then they're more likely to be using the sun in a harmful way
And like I talked about the tourists getting off the plane from you know, grainy cold england and just baking in the australian sun on bondi beach
They they haven't built up a solar callus. They
Their circadian mechanism is highly disrupted because they have simply flown across latitudes and time zones
So they've got no defenses, I guess to this sun exposure
So to paint this whole whole picture for you or just steal it down for the listener
You can't expect to eat a junk a junk light diet your whole life
and then
Be able to use the sun safely. It's just it's not going to happen. You're going to be
Coming coming into problems. So I think a lot of where the message around skin cancer and sun use has come from
again in in terms of half truths is that
It's the people people's inherent
Lack of adaptation that makes something as life-giving and essential as the sun proxy
Yeah, thank you for painting a very big picture very big comprehensive picture of this whole
topic and that just illustrates that
the sentence
The sun causes skin cancer
By itself is incorrect in the sense that it's super reductionist. There's
There's no nuance. There's no context
If that statement was true, you'd have to say okay the moment uvb hits your skin. It's synthesizing
Cancer cells, which is just not true. Then you say okay dna damage
dna damage, etc, but then you elucidated all that where we have
intrinsic mechanisms
that
Protect us against that and so
I just want to recap
What what he said? So first of all he laid out evolution
Proof of work in evolution. That is something that when I talk to people about this that they usually can't
You know argue with right?
obviously the earth
was made by the sun and
Then it goes to a conversation of okay, you're right
But the dosage is what matters we'll get into that later
but
I never heard of the analogy with microsoft before
It was it was wonderful. I'm gonna i'm gonna steal that from you. Yeah, go for it
Essentially we have all these
Biology is studied in a closed system. But with quantum biology I realized
There's a there's a primordial factor, which is light. So yeah, the circadian mechanism the
The leptin milano cortin pathway pomfci three very key mechanisms that run a cascade of hormones
and
biochemical functions in your body
all
Evolved and developed
with sunlight over
millions of years
over
multiple species and generations of life
That is something one cannot
argue with right and
To top it off you have pomfci. So when we use interventions like sunscreen and sunglasses
Sunburn is our natural, you know way of warning that hey, this is a little much you can go in the shade now
But if you use
A sunscreen you block that mechanism
another mechanism that we use to
protect ourselves from the sun naturally
Is like you said through the ocular
through the ocular perception
Not visual perception, but registration of uv light
Through our eye the more intense the more uv light our eye registers the more pomfci
It makes the more alpha msh is clipped and more melanin is made
and that the more uv light in
That the environment the more melanin is made via pomfci
That's another mechanism that we have evolved
for sun and
Sunglasses just completely block that it if there's increasing uv light
environment
Your your body's not making any pomfci because you're blocking it with that
with that those sunglasses and any glasses because
Ophthalmology has demonized uv light. So every eyeglass manufacturer blocks uv light
You also touched on
Red light how red light helps the bioenergetics
Of the body how there's a whole field
That is completely
Sweeping, you know the literature about how beneficial this
This light is
and
I watched your episode with the god zimmerman. It was
super interesting and
a point I want I want to transition this into is
so
we have lived in blue light and
the more
Significant aspect of this is
There's no uv light. There's no red and infrared light. It's just blue
so
We've lived in this environment
And despite us doing a very good job at avoiding the sun. We do a great job
I don't see many people
You know bathing in the sun
Like like I am right
we
melanoma incidence has increased
and
I find it very interesting that the two
Frequencies of light that make melatonin are uv light
And infrared light so uv light through your eye will change
aromatic amino acids and
Through your the pineal gland that you know amino acid reconversion will make melatonin there
but
As got zimmerman laid out in his and max's podcast with him
Red and infrared light on the skin actually makes melatonin in your mitochondria
I'm bringing i'm highlighting melatonin because
max laid out a very
over a general
story for
Sunlight it's essential to life the baseline of life
and
I want to tie this into the the mechanisms of cancer
because
a big
factor of cancer is a dysregulation of apoptosis and
melatonin
Melatonin is what controls apoptosis
so
We live in an environment that is completely deficient of the two light frequencies
that enable apoptosis through melatonin
so
I find that very
you know when you find out the mechanisms of the body and
Which light frequencies make what?
Then it becomes very
enlightening to see that okay this there's more to this story. So could you touch on this?
melatonin
Point, you know of apoptosis dysregulation and perhaps bring in the fact that
melanoma patients have
a low vitamin d level
and yeah, that's it
Yeah, happy to and that's a great point to raise because
again, we're it's raising cognitive dissonance for those who
For the for those who would insist that it's sunlight that is the main problem here
because what we see is that patients who have
Who develop melanoma almost invariably have a low vitamin d level and a low vitamin d level is associated with
progression to metastatic melanoma in the patients that already have have melanova, so
The reason why this is should be confusing or for anyone who's thinking logically. This is a problem is because
Vitamin d is synthesized in the skin on exposure to ubb radiation
so if ubb is causative of
Melanoma then why do patients with melanoma overwhelmingly have low vitamin d level?
so it's it's again, it's something that doesn't really compute and
Cumulative sun exposure seems to be protective meaning that the people who do have
The people who do have healthy sun exposure throughout their life. It's probably protective for for melanoma
So again, that's that's a point that we really need to to hop on and point out and I I like to point out to my colleagues
Because that's not something that they think that they think about and in australia, you know lots of
melanoma or
Suspicious lesions that could be melanoma get cut out, but I don't really think that most
clinicians that I my colleagues are really thinking about something like sun exposure or or the amount of
vitamin d the patient has had to to talk about melatonin and it's
It's fascinating and I really recommend people listen to the episode with scott zimmerman, but essentially he broke down
the idea that melatonin
Melatonin is produced in two separate pools pools, so to speak. So the the classical
Knowledge of melatonin is that it's this hormone of darkness. It's produced a couple of hours after
Sunset when those melanopsin non-visual photoreceptors stop detecting light the pineal gland
Starts dumping melatonin into the system. It promotes sleepfulness and it allows it promotes
repair and and it has very potent antioxidant activity so that that was a classical I guess circadian biology
understanding of of melatonin
But what scott and his and his partner in research dr. Russell rider have researched for a very long time is that
And have good evidence is that the the mitochondria in every single cell are also producing melatonin
Meaning that you've got this
subcellular melatonin in addition to this circulatory melatonin and what the way that they think about it is that on
exposure to
infrared light and even and UVA as well that the
Mitochondria inside every single cell that is exposed to this light is able to produce
Melatonin and that role of that melatonin is to deliver very very targeted antioxidant capability and
this makes sense because if you think about the electron transport chain and the way that the
Mitochondria produces energy for the cell that that's not going to be a perfect process
They're going to be letting off some free radicals here and there that have the potential for to cause oxidative stress in the cell
So it makes sense that they've evolved an inherent mechanism to dampen down that oxidative stress with melatonin
That's kind of gets made at that site and I really think about it is like an engine cooling system
So imagine if you had an engine that's getting hot
But if you've got a water cooler a radiator or whatever that's that's attached onto that mechanism
Then it's it's going to run without burning out and that's how I think about the melatonin that gets made
Right there at at the cellular level. So so melatonin is is a this unique antioxidant and the reason is because
Its metabolites are themselves antioxidants
so you basically can get a cascade of antioxidant effect based on one molecule and
that's one reason why it's it's so so effective and
The this idea of subcellular mitochondrial melatonin makes a lot of sense when we realize that
going back to the beginning of the interview that we evolved from
primitive bacteria and that primitive bacteria make melatonin so
we can see that they use melatonin for oxidative stress and again to
to regulate their circadian biology and if we in every cell have a vestigial thousands of vestigial bacteria and in a
Neuron or in a kind of myoside
Then we're producing a lot of oxidative stress. It makes sense that if they have a vestigial bacteria that they'll also produce melatonin
so that's that's this fascinating implication and what what
Scrape showed is that
infrared light is
Can penetrate so it's a longer wavelength. It can penetrate into the skin and up to
8 to 10 centimeters through through clothing when we're outside and near infrared is always present throughout the day. It just
changes in in proportion to other
Forms of light visible and non visible but it's always there
So what he found is that even when we're walking outside in in nature the leaves and the trees
Reflect near infrared light to basically bathe our bodies in in this light
And when he ran the numbers because he's an optics engineer. This is some very very unique thinking that you you
maybe you wouldn't get from a clinician or an MD that you would get from an engineer is that
about
16% of the total number of cells in an adult are going to be
Contacted by near infrared light when you're walking outside in the forest or in nature
Meaning that 60% of ourselves are going to be producing melatonin on just simply by walking outside
this changes for
pregnant
feed for fetuses or pregnant baby babies in in the in the womb and for children because of their their surface area and their
size children are going to get a hundred percent of their cells exposed to near infrared light and
What Scott found is that the transmission of amniotic fluid?
essentially
Corresponds to the wavelength of near infrared light meaning the amniotic fluid surrounding baby is
designed by nature to collect near infrared photons and
Essentially bathed the baby in these light photons presumably to help baby make
Melatonin and maybe some other functions that we're not yet aware of
But that that is the degree to which and this is only discovered very recently
This is the degree to which we still yet to fully understand the the complete and essential role of sunlight in
In a health and as you as you mentioned at the beginning of this question is we're not getting any of that light
When we if someone's living a typical indoor existence one because the light is predominantly blue and there's no
Non-visual light and the fact that most people are living that lifestyle every day. So when this comes to
cancer we can think about melatonin is that
This put it into the first two points that I raised which is one people are not getting only getting blue light
So they're not making melatonin in those those skin cells in those
Where they they might be developing malignant cells and two they having disrupted circadian rhythm
So both their subcellular melatonin and their circulatory melatonin is going to be knocked down or not working properly
And when as you mentioned melatonin one of its roles is to regulate apoptosis. So
Malignancy is basically when the cell
becomes immortal and decides to
Fail in its ability to arrest its cell cycling and mitochondrial dysfunction is is key in that because when you break
the mitochondria you
get this regulation or
problems with the expression of genes in in the nucleus, so
That's that's I guess the the high level mechanism of how when you mess with your body's melatonin system
You could get not only skin cancer, but a range of other cancers and when we look at
cancer incidence by latitude and there's a there's extensive literature that shows cancer
Incidents increasing with decreasing vitamin d levels and yet when they supplemented people with vitamin d they haven't been able to
correct or cure though that kind of that difference and what what that I believe that represents is
Vitamin d is a proxy of sunlight exposure because people who are getting sunlight that built the vitamin d
They're probably also getting near infrared because they're outside in various amounts
So it's possibly just a proxy of how much near infrared and melatonin that we made throughout the day and throughout the night that is
Reflecting that lower cancer cancer and heart disease and rates that that we notice with increasing vitamin d levels
Yeah, awesome. I want to touch on briefly that
You know the first point I made is
that you know the first point I made in the in the crux of this belief that
UV light causes radiation and you know skin cell culture. Therefore it's conflated to cancer in the living organism, right?
Jalal posted this on instagram
that
All of those experiments are done with narrowband artificial uv light
therefore at best
it's a red herring because
UV light and full spectrum sunlight are just not
It's not the same, right?
The red light that balances the uv light
Is a critical factor if you want to consider
the mechanisms of uv light and so you're kind of if we the the population conflates the two
artificial uv light in a petri dish
now is
Spoke full spectrum sunlight being harmful on on a body. It's it's very reductionist
There's there's no nuance. There's no context and that's the main point. I want to
like talk about in this
podcast and
Max is here to bring us that nuance that detail that context because
He himself is in the crux of it in australia
They have
They are in dire need of sun
But they avoid it like the plague
so
It's our job to to spread this message one episode or one conversation at a time
Definitely and i'll just make a quick point on that and you're you're 100 correct
it's it's reductionist and it's really taking the
The uv light completely out of context and extrapolating that in a way that just just is not applicable
You know, it reminds me of those
You know the the cardboard cutout ferrari compared to it to the real ferrari
You know the guys just holding the cardboard ferrari you can't you can't look at an isolated ultraviolet band
Without the balance of the other wavelengths and then you look at a cell culture
So there's two problems here one that you're not using representative light wavelengths and two you're not using representative cells because
you you
It's not the context. It's not the natural context of of humans in the natural environment
So it is yeah, there's this problems with the I guess the external validity of that science
Which is the ability to extrapolate that that that signs out. So yeah, it's
That's a great point and it is very it's very important because if we're basing our recommendations
on
that type of data and that kind of literature then
People are not getting the complete story and you know as dr
Jack Kruse likes to say, you know the half truth always leads to full lie and I think that that's that's
Essentially what's what's being what's happening?
right and
the last point I want to touch on real quick is
Epidemiology we've brought out epidemiology a couple times in this podcast and
Invariably, you know a person will cite this study that study that shows
you know
melanoma incidence or skin cancer increases with like sun exposure something like that and
I just want to point out that one those studies are the most susceptible to manipulation
You gotta see who's funding them. You can you can mess with the groups, you know the
The categories of the groups like it's a very manipulable study, right? The structure of it is very
Very susceptible to that. So yeah, the field of epidemiology has its benefits and it has its drawbacks and
I think some of some of the most important
studies that we've we've had have been epidemiological and
I guess to break it down for the the listener we have
We can only derive a causative claim
Yeah, if we have controlled for if we actually have have controlled so so a randomized controlled trial
basically
Splits people into two groups one group gets an intervention one doesn't get the intervention
The other the other variables are controlled for and therefore we can compare only that that single factor and
Confounding which is this idea of another third factor that we haven't measured actually being responsible responsible for the observed outcome
Theoretically a randomized control trial accounts for confounding
So that the idea is that if you do an rct you can get a causative you can get an answer to a
Causative question if you don't control for if you don't do an intervention or trial if you do an observational trial
That is simply looking at
Say groups of people then you you are best at getting an associational you're getting an associational relationship
and the associational relationship
Associational relationship isn't causal because you you haven't controlled for
All the confounders you're not 100 sure that the factor that you're looking at is causally implicated
And you know the most classic way to explain this is that you know, if you you you found a whole bunch of people
You had a group of people or two groups of people one carried
Cigarette lighters and one didn't carry cigarette lighters and then you looked at the incidences of lung cancer
You might erroneously assume that carrying a cigarette lighter causes lung cancer
but of course it doesn't it's because the people who carry cigarette lighters are smokers and
The the causative role is the is actual smoking but in unless
That's the degree to which we can be confused by associate associational evidence
the benefit of of
Epidemiology, especially long term is when we're looking at a really hard endpoint like all-cause mortality
because
It's as concrete an outcome measure as any, you know
Did the person die or did they not die?
And that's what I think most of that the long-term associate epidemiology is really beneficial
some of the most most
unrigorous epidemiology is nutritional epidemiology because they essentially
Typically they give people a food questionnaire to recall about what they ate, you know over
Over a year and then look at outcomes and they're so it's so prone to what's known as recall bias other forms of
Confounding that it's literally not even worth the paper. It's printed on so
The point is that epidemiology can be beneficial, but when it's used to
inform claims
Without without nuance or without delving into into causality or being able to tease out that causality
Then it's it can it can send us on the on the wrong path
and
Yeah nutrition is one aspect but in in this context that we're talking about we can correlate
Skin cancer with sun exposure, but what else were those people doing? So the people that developed melanoma
Yeah, they they might have had a couple of
severe sunburns, but
They what else were they doing? Were they eating a diet that was rich in in cedars?
They were under artificial lights. They none of these they had disrupted circadian rhythms
None of these other factors are being controlled for so yes, we can see an associational increase in in skin cancer, but
Was it the sun per se or was it all these other factors that?
their own atropic skin their lack of a solar calus that essentially
Conspired and in constellation
Lowered the threshold such that they developed a cancer
So yeah, so that's the that's the point I want to emphasize too like
epidemiology is a tool and
we
That tool is misused to
Perpetuate certain notions that the sun causes skin cancer. It's
Done. No debated about it. It's at best it's a tool in the sense that it will point you to trends
and if those trends have
underlying mechanisms
That you can explore
Then that's significant. So
What have we done in this pot? What has max done in this podcast? So he's laid out
epidemiological studies that show
vitamin d levels that have
Low that are low in melanoma patients. He's laid out the 2016
Sweden study, you know
Then we investigate. Okay, could there be a mechanism underneath that?
Obviously, there's no mechanism to lay to carrying a lighter in that in of itself
causing lung cancer, right so
Epidemiology the main thing I want to emphasize is
Correlation is not causation but it demands an investigation and what you investigate is a mechanism
And when you investigate the mechanisms of the body that we've evolved to have
it's the evidence just
overwhelmingly points
to sunlight being beneficial when you use it correctly
sunlight being taken out of context being
demonized for no reason and
There's other factors we could talk about forever max like vitamin d supplementation how that's not equivalent
How you know, there's billion dollar industries that are behind this, you know
Fact that I want to push it
Certain people want to block it block out the sun like all this stuff
but if you
Depending on how conspiratorial or not you want to get you know, you could go on listen
Yeah, I mean, I mean I Jack Kruse he said, you know, if you get in the sun, you don't need Rockefeller's medicine
I mean, I don't know to what degree that's intentional, but I will give you I will give you this example is that
There are medications and this is not led to the skin cancer, but it's related to pomC
There are medications that are designed to target
Proto-opinion monocortin to reduce appetite and I know I know one that is a combination of naltrexone and bupropion
that is
specifically designed to
target pomC
Potentiate the action of of pomC and then naltrexone is to remove
The endorphin the beta endorphin and the endorphin there's a negative feedback loop that might stop the potentiation of
The anorexic or the kind of appetite suppressing effect of pomC in the hypothalamus
So if pharma knows about this effect because they've designed a drug a drug to directly target it
So you can you can try and take this medication to reduce appetite if you're overweight
Or you can stimulate pomC naturally by getting in in UV light
so that's that point is just to emphasize that one pharma knows about the role of pomC in
metabolism and the fact that that that pomC is so central to
energy homeostasis and weight weight gain and so you can you can
Disintermediate or you can take out pharma from the picture by simply getting actually of old sunlight
Centralization and decentralization in the nutshell
Yeah, so
To wrap this episode up. I want to just
Finish off with a couple of quick questions and a last little thing. So max. What time is it over there right now?
So we just we're getting into the sun's coming up. So it's almost about 9 o'clock
It's almost about 9 a.m. Here 9 a.m. Over there
so
You're a full-time doctor
You hold down a podcast
And you go interviews. How much would you
Say that time how much time would you say that takes?
In your week like I bet it's a lot right?
Yeah, it is. It's quite busy. So we you know work like 40 hours a week and then in my clinic and then
Podcasting recording can take five six seven hours a week depending on on what we're doing. So yeah, it's it's busy. That's for sure
So yeah in this context because I've I'm in the game
Pretty new and I'm I have a full-time job myself
It's hard, you know, there's a there's a lot on the side that people
That I wasn't privy to when before I started this
So I wanted to ask you
What what events in your life
What life experiences have shaped you to?
You know what drives you to put this message out to go the extra mile?
What in your past has led you to this point to do more for the better?
Yeah, I think it's a sense of
Frustration or this discontentment with this idea that people aren't getting the information that they need to help themselves
the information that they need to help themselves
and i'm i'm okay if someone decides to
Continue a lifestyle behavior that's made them sick that I respect everyone's autonomy to to do that to make those decisions for themselves
But if someone hasn't been given
information that could potentially reverse their disease prevent them from getting that disease
Please avoid them from needing a medication whether that's for three months or lifelong if someone hasn't got that
information then to me
We as doctors we failed that patient and that's that's just simply not good enough
And then when you add in that aspect that a lot of medications or treatment protocols have
Meaningful side effects that cause people suffering then it's it's just not it's not right in in my book
and I think that those of us who have an understanding or
Of how things might work and in a way and able to explain that in a way that can help people then
Then to me then then I have an obligation to put that information out there
And and again, it's it's not about making anyone do anything. It's simply giving people options and
Often patients that I see that they're not interested in making any lifestyle changes for whatever reason and that's fine
I will help them and we'll prescribe medication because that's that's the choice that they've made but the the crux of
patient care in my mind of ethical patient care, which is
the
the commitment that that I and other doctors made when we got into this profession is that first we should do no harm and
The the least harm intervention is a is a lifestyle intervention
so
To me the the podcasts and the talks and and everything is is my
Doing my part and doing my role in in giving people this information to help help themselves
To uphold the hippocratic oath
Yeah, that's yeah and and and a big part of that and that big big
I mean everyone's had a family member who's been sick and and my health journey is part of that. So
I guess seeing those having those encounters is
Has been the fuel for the fire
Right on. I love it. Yeah, this has been great. We've we've laid out a whole comprehensive story
a lot of side aspects to this to this topic
guys the Sun the Sun like
the medical system and doctors being told to
Tell their patients avoid the Sun in my opinion is a Hippocratic sin when you consider
What max is laid out in this episode all the mechanisms the
The context that's called evolution
all the
you know the ways these studies and
Things can be manipulated to point the other way
to
to form another belief that's contrary to what nature has in store for us
so
It's our job to spread this message
one talk at a time and
If you have any
Final parting words any words you'd like to share for my audience?
That would be good. Yeah
Yeah
So I guess my advice would be is to make the effort to build your solar calis if you're if you're going to
Get deliberate sun exposure and get in the sun like kenford's doing then
The actual onus is on you to use the sun properly and that involves
Regulating your circadian rhythm it involves getting in that sun in in the early morning
So you're getting plenty of red and and and infrared it involves
avoiding
Eating a bunch of refined seed oils rich in omega-6s get those out of your diet eat
Fresh seafood wild-caught seafood eat saturated animal fats so you're reducing your likelihood of of
reducing your likelihood of of of burning
Get out of of artificial light and cover up when you're when you're under artificial lights when I was working in the emergency department
I'd have my
Obviously i've been wearing my scrubs, but i've i've got my cardigan on so my my arms are covered
I have a scrub cap on so my head was covered. I have my uvex blue light blue light booking glasses
So I would that would be my getup when I was working in in in the hospital
so cover yourself from from artificial light and
Do all these things that will build your melanin so you can and then gradually expose yourself. So
and we this is the
Essentially the advice that people need to think about is that the the finer your
your skin is so
the people with very very pale skin because
That is a risk factor for developing melanoma is people with very very pale skin red hair
You need to titrate your uv exposure
based on your
Your Fitzpatrick skin type so the paler you are the less proportional uv
You can afford to get before going inside going in the shade because we talked about
sunscreen and sunglasses aren't aren't useful or
Shouldn't be the go-to but what you need to use is shade you to use
Go inside when you've had enough uv
So it's safe for you to use that red and ir window as much as you can
And then slowly progress into the uva and uvb gradually progressively to build your solar
Solar calus and it might only be five minutes if you're really atrophic and you really you know
Like roll them out of all the rings you might only need
To start at five minutes then 10 minutes and it's just a progressive overload and and the key is consistency
Because again, the sun is a hormetic stressor just like doing chin-up
So you or any other form of exercise you need to be consistent and you need to slowly gradually progressively load load up
And that's that's how you can use the sun sun safely
So my advice would be that it takes effort. It takes intentionality use it safely
But really address those lifestyle factors that we talked about that are likely to be underlying why?
People are developing skin cancers and look if you if you want to learn more we are i'm about to launch a 30 day
A circadian health course that's going to be starting in november, which is got some basic lessons. We're mostly talking about circadian
Regulation, we're not going to be doing as much on the solar calus yet
But that that will come later
But it's going to be a kind of supportive environment to help people walk through the circadian lifestyle changes
And if you want to follow my work, i've got a podcast as you mentioned
Ken food is called the regenerative health podcast on youtube and the spotify spotify apple
Uh podcasts and you can follow me on twitter. Dr. Max doctor. Sorry max gulhain mt
Or instagram doctor underscore max underscore gulhain
And we've got an event
That we're working on at the same time which is called regenerate
And that's my vision of how we're going to move medicine and we'll move health forward
And it's based on circadian and quantum health
animal-based diets and regenerative farming
So we're working on that. We've just got our first five videos up on our youtube page
You can go to regenerate os or I can give you the link can but that might be the easiest
And that's something that we'll be we'll be doing in the future so you can watch some some talks from jelal's got a great talk
About introduction to quantum and circadian biology. So yeah, those are my links. Yeah, and thanks for having me on
It was a pleasure having you on. All right guys
This was this was great. I loved having this talk very much needed conversation to just fully unpack
this whole
Notion of the sun causes skin cancer, right? So
Without further ado, i'll see you guys on the next episode of the lighthouse podcast
Cheers