Transcription
Hello everybody. Welcome back to Quantum Conversations. This week we have a little bit of a different episode. We are pulling out some clips for our Health Transformation Summit that's happening on November the 8th, right, Carrie?
Yes. And so we, you know, we had such success the first time around and such so, so many amazing talks. I'm drawing a blank on how many speakers we had, but it was, it was phenomenal, how many speakers we had and the talks that they gave. And so those are still available, but we wanted to add to it; we wanted to enhance it. And so what you're going to be hearing here in the, in the rest of this video is basically clips from these new speakers and some kind of like enticing you about with the information that they provide, because it's phenomenal.
Yeah, absolutely. So we'll have the link to sign up. The summit will be free, of course, if you want to watch the talks live, and then there will also be an upgrade package if you want the recordings. And then we have brand new bundle offerings. So I have a new little mini-course that's only available through the summit called the Leptin 3-Day Kickstart. Carrie, you have a new offer as well that'll go with the bundle.
Yep, it's nervous system regulation through the lens of nature.
Yeah, I can't wait for that one. And then we've got Dr. Conover, who will be in this little clip; she's got a grounding course that's going to be really cool; that's in the bundle. Um, Dany has a course about metabolic hypoglycemia, which is actually really interesting and so fascinating. I was talking to her about that stuff; that is really interesting what she's uncovering there. Yeah, so we'll have the link if you want to get the upgraded bundle, um, and/or register for free. It's going to be a lot of fun, so I hope you enjoy these short little clips and don't forget to sign up for the summit.
I have Daniel White as one of our honored guests. Now, I've known Daniel for, I want to say about two, three years now, and I just have been blown away with the work that he's doing, particularly with our children and teenagers and helping them with circadian disruption. And just to share a little bit of the experience that I've had over the last six or seven years of initially working with families in a, you know, private formal coaching setting, and then to registering a charity and providing education on a mass scale within schools and conducting research and sharing tools as well as learnings, you know, around circadian health, around light exposure, around quantum biology, and, you know, other factors of health and wellbeing as well. One of the things that first inspired me to reconsider the approach that I was taking in my business and in my life was when I worked with a family, and um, I came to sit down at their dinner table one day, and I said to them, you know, "Well, how's the last week been? You know, have you worn your blue light-blocking glasses? You know, have you eaten the foods that you were interested in exploring?" And, you know, there was mumbling around the table: "I was busy, I was stressed," or, and that was coming from the parents, right? And you've got these, these 13- and 14-year-old children, boy and girl. I can remember them clear as day looking at Mom and Dad saying, "Why haven't you been doing it, Mom and Dad? You know, why haven't you been doing that thing that you know makes you feel better?" And that just, it links back to what you were saying about, you know, children experiencing, let's be real, like an epidemic of mental health-related issues. Um, we don't have to name them and tame them; it's a spectrum all the way from, you know, fatigue and exhaustion through to some of the most severe psychiatric illness that we see. But what I see as a commonality amongst every child that I've ever met and spoken to about this stuff is that none of them want to feel bad. And so if you give a child who's in that like halfway point between, you know, the ages of conditioning where they don't quite have that theory of mind and ability to take accountability for themselves, but you catch them before they become an adult in their early to late 20s to 30s when we really start to, you know, dig our roots in—yeah, this is who I am, this is, you know, you can't change me—as so many people like to think of themselves, um, there's this just curious position between age like 10 and and 20 where people are very open. And if you give them a solution that can impact them in positive ways, then they take it. And that's what we've seen time and time again. I mean, in 2023, we went into schools; we provided, with the help of Vivay—I'm sure you and some of—yeah, Rudy is one of our speakers.
Ah, fantastic. I love Rudy.
Um, yeah, we, we provided access to, to blue light-blocking glasses. Excuse me, mine are a little bit dirty; they get a lot of use. And um, we got into over 500 kids, and we provided some sleep education, and we saw phenomenal improvements, you know, compared to control groups who didn't receive the interventions. And you, you might think that that would spark like a revolution within education, right? Within these communities and institutions, you know, "We've got to adopt this," but what I've come to realize is that actually when you try to knock on the door of these places, just like government, right, everybody in there is fighting so many fires that you have no idea are even lit. They may not even be real fires; they might be imaginary fires, like preconditioned or, you know, self-imposed fires. Um, so I went back to these schools where we did this research, and a lot of them said, "Oh yeah, we might be interested in looking at something next year or the year afterwards." But yet I have children and families and parents knocking on my door, quite literally, because I live in a small community, you know, blowing up my inbox on various different platforms saying, "When can we get more of that education? When can we get more of those tools?" Because on a communal and a societal level, people are crying out for alternatives. Yes. And I don't mean alternative like, you know, hocus pocus woo-woo; I mean other options.
Mhm.
You know, in relation to those which are currently given, which are usually psychiatric medications, medications, yeah, or, you know, um, counseling, which all of which have their place, as we know, but they are short-term solutions to long-term problems, and, and that doesn't work. So I think the most exciting thing in relation to the research that we're doing, and, and I like to talk more now about communities, because when I go into a school, you know, a school is, is an entity, right? It's, it's a formal entity, but within that school—because a school isn't a person, right—within that school is a community of people, and it's people who, who want change and embrace change, and it's people who come together and generate accountability and motivation and camaraderie and all of those things that can result in the possibility of a completely alternative future for our entire species on planet Earth. I think people are very open to this information; it's just not readily available, like you said. It's the pushing of the drugs, and, uh, I think people are more willing to talk about food, but that's a hard one for a lot of people to change, you know, to tell—there's a whole lot of lobbying going on around food right now, and people are raising awareness about the food, and I agree, uh, the food that we're giving our families is terrible, and we need to do better. But I find that changing the light is an easy fix a lot of the time. And when we look into the science around circadian biology and see what light actually does to our physiology, I'm a big believer in, uh, "Change your light, and the food will be easier to deal with; you'll have less cravings, you'll have less appetite issues, and then you can change over to healthier foods and be more open to that information." So I don't know how you feel about that, but I, I feel like that's—everyone's talking about the food, but no one's really talking about the light and how that impacts our body's uh proclivity to crave all these specific foods, you know, that the kids are so addicted to.
Yeah, I know. I agree with you wholeheartedly. I mean, all of these issues are complex, right? And they become more complex the further you, you dive into certain communities which are perhaps arranged or not as well resourced. And food is a very complex one, right? Because we eat for reasons of spirituality; we eat for reasons of hedonism; we eat for reasons of nutritional, you know, we eat because of our budget; we eat because of our friend groups; we eat because of our emotions; we eat to celebrate; we eat to, you know, dowse our fears—all of these sorts of issues. And certainly when you make changes to nutrition appropriately, you can feel improvements in your energy and whatnot very quickly. But with light, there is an upfront investment in terms of educating yourself and perhaps, you know, a couple of tools that you need to invest in, but these are things which are low-hanging fruit. I've got Danny back; we're going to talk about metabolic health, and, you know, I think this is an area of underserved people, people that are kind of having this metabolic hypoglycemia, which is essentially like they're needing to eat every two hours; like they're unable to tolerate a lot of sunlight; they're just in a, in a bad uh situation. So we really want to talk to those people today, right, Danny?
Yeah, that's—I see so many people like this, Sarah. So I started out working in like the blood sugar world, and I obviously see a lot of people with high blood sugar, because that's most common. And I do apologize for this sweet distraction over here. Um, it's just so—but I started seeing, you know, a lot of people with high blood sugar, but when I was having my issues with metabolic health, I did not have high blood sugar. I didn't test it a lot back then, but when I went to the doctor, my blood sugar was 60, 63. I was shaky; I was dizzy; my head felt like a balloon; I almost passed out getting fasting blood work. And meanwhile, I had PCOS; I was trying to get to the root of it, and no doctor said boo about my blood sugar, even seeing it that low. And then I started—and I also was a person who was like snacking and grazing every couple of hours. I had this intolerance to being hungry, because hunger for me felt—it felt really bad in my body. And unbeknownst to me, it was because it was kind of this blood sugar crash where my body was, uh, not able to burn the fuel that it had stored on it between meals. And that is like really the key to a healthy metabolism. And so when I started practicing, I would also see people with some of these same symptoms that I had—this sort of hypoglycemic pattern of people—and they—like the approach to helping them, you can't use the tools you do with people who have higher blood sugar, but eventually that is where you want to get to. So it's a little complex. So with my people with hypoglycemia, sometimes we almost have to go backwards before we can go forwards. So, for example, certain things that may help someone who have, who has chronically high blood sugar, high insulin, high leptin would be things like a ketogenic diet, um, circadian-aligned intermittent fasting—not eating between meals, not eating before bed, um, heat and cold exposure, the stress—like these healthy hormetic stressors, exercise, building muscle. But the people that I see, they can't tolerate these things; they can't tolerate heat, so they can't go out and get sunlight; um, they can't—often times they crash if they walk; their blood sugar feels like it's crashing even after a hot bath sometimes or a shower; uh, they can't drive sometimes without feeling like they're going to pass out; they need to eat every couple of hours. And then if you say to them, "Well, don't eat between meals," they're like, "Are you kidding me? Like I would feel so bad." So, "Don't snack before bed." I get that a lot, too. Anytime I talk about how eating before bed is not healthy for your metabolism, I get a slew of people who are like, "If I don't do that, I am—I will be sick; like I have to eat a bedtime snack. And then sometimes I have to wake up in the middle of the night and eat." I'm like, "Whoa."
Yeah, 911.
Yeah, these are the people that, that I see as well. And so a lot of times people will get into a place where they're kind of managing things, so they say like, "Okay, if I eat six or seven times a day, and as long as I have my bedtime snack, and then sometimes if I wake up and I eat between, then I'm sort of keeping things at bay." But what that really is is just managing your blood sugar, but what it's doing at the root is it's actually, as you know, Sarah, worsening the hormones that regulate all of this, because if we're having to eat before bed—we want you to do it if you need to at the moment—but that's not a long-term healing strategy. It's kind of like training wheels, right? So we—if you're eating before bed, just for example, you're probably raising your insulin, raising your leptin, driving leptin and insulin resistance, and not allowing for the proper release of melatonin at night. And that's going to—disregulation is where their blood sugar is actually dropping low to like 50s and 60s; it starts to happen that the crashes or these feelings of dizzy, shaky, hangry, anxious, heart palpitations, um, nausea, headaches, uh, extreme hunger, cravings—those start to happen at higher and higher numbers. So then we see people saying, "My blood sugar feels like it's crashing anytime it goes below 90." That's not normal. But go to the doctor; they're going to test your blood sugar; it's going to be 88, and they're going to be like, "Your blood sugar is fine." So it's obviously not your blood sugar. So this is where—this is why I started calling it metabolic hypoglycemia, because it has to do with the metabolic hormones that are at the root of it that are sort of keeping either your body fat locked up or help making you not see all that stored energy on your body—like the glycogen in your liver that we should be able to just use easily between meals—but leptin resistance, low leptin, it's going to not make your body see those things, so it can't use them.
Yeah, it's this stored energy on the body and the brain are essentially just not having a conversation, and that manifests differently in different people, but for this particular group of people, it's just like the appetite is just—I'm always hungry; I'm having to eat all the time in order to just keep the ship afloat.
Correct.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I see that all the time. And I do see sometimes a different presentation for like high leptin versus low leptin, but sometimes it's, it's not what you would expect.
I'm so excited to have you on the summit, Mike, because you are like not only an expert in red light therapy, but you're an innovator, right? Always thinking about what the body needs for optimum health. And you have the lens that I do, right? Light, water, mitochondria. And so I'm really excited to talk about why—you brought, you know, with your awesome red light therapy, you brought in methylene blue. And so let's, let's dive into that for people so that they can understand what the heck methylene blue is and why would I want to take it, and why would I want to take it with red light therapy?
A lot of great questions, Carrie. So let's get started. Um, so like you, my passion has become mitochondrial health and mitochondrial function—something I didn't have an appreciation for even five or six years ago. I'm a physical therapist by trade; serendipitous events led me to red light therapy; red light therapy led me to learning about the mitochondria, and here we are. I'm very passionate about improving mitochondrial health, and I love your education because it's like, what are the natural ways—going outside, getting sunlight, grounding, um, getting negative ions by the ocean or wherever you can. There's a lot of quote-unquote free ways to do it. And so, uh, for better or worse, a lot of what my tech—technology is, is essentially like a man-made solution for a man-made problem, meaning we're never outside enough; we're inundated by non-native EMFs and blue light indoors, so we're compounding our issues. I know I'm preaching to the choir here. So, for example, like red light therapy, we really wouldn't need it if we were like our—probably even our, our, our parents, let alone our grandparents, who are constantly outdoors, rarely inside, and, and the light was a completely different situation indoors. So this mitochondrial dysfunctional epidemic has happened because of our new modern lifestyles. So red light therapy—one of the easiest or most effective and safest ways to improve mitochondrial function when used appropriately. So that got me digging down these rabbit holes, and like red light therapy—where I had heard about red light therapy for years and years before I ever got into it—same thing with methylene blue. I had heard about methylene blue for years prior to really getting into it last year, but when I heard about it on podcasts, it was prefaced with, "Methylene blue is also an aquarium cleaner; it can also improve your mitochondrial health," but I—all I heard was "mitochondrial cleaner." I turned off—I listened to it, but I was like, "Nope, not putting that in my body." So I don't really know what, uh, necessitated me jumping into it—probably books on Amazon; that's what got me into red light therapy. Um, so I read about it; was impressed with the mechanisms of actions; made sense; there's research behind it; and, of course, its capacity to help the mitochondria and, and equally importantly, just like red light therapy, how safe it is. It's not one of these things where it's like high-risk, moderate to maybe high-reward; it's quite low-risk and quite high-reward, especially if you're dealing with mitochondrial function. And what I also like about it, on top of your point that it's synergistic with red light therapy, is it's not redundant with how it helps with mitochondrial function. So, for example, red light therapy, the mechanism of action theoretically is it, um, um, affects cytochrome c oxidase, which is in the complex four of the mitochondrial electron transport chain; does a lot of good stuff there; and output is improved ATP production and biological water production. Methylene blue seems to have its effects, and it can donate its electrons—I should back up a moment—methylene blue is like one of the best antioxidants out there; it can donate a ton of electrons, and it's a cyclic or regenerative antioxidant, meaning it can donate then accept electrons, then donate electrons, then accept without degrading like other antioxidants like vitamin C and E. When they donate their electrons, they begin degrading slowly but surely, or, or more quickly, especially compared to methylene blue. So it has its capacity to donate again and again and again. So it's a very powerful antioxidant. So back to the electron transport chain, it can donate its electrons to complex one, complexes one, two, and four. So now we have this, uh, potential to improve the mitochondrial function internally from a different vantage point, uh, compared to red light therapy. Similar to red light therapy, when we're talking antioxidants and electron doning—or donating, excuse me—you're going to have a positive effect on mitigating excessive reactive oxygen species, and thus you're going to reduce oxidative stress. When we're donating electrons or, or adding electrons to a situation, that's inherently going to help reduce inflammation. So not only are, are you improving the internal structures or, or functioning of the mitochondria, but you're also improving the environment in which the mitochondria is. And that's another thing—like C60 is a whole other topic—but that's really its, uh, not saving grace, but like that's its, uh, call to fame, so to speak, is its ability to significantly reduce oxidative stress. And that's why I like C60; it's another way to really improve the external environment, because when there's too much—too much excessive—that's kind of redundant—when there's excessive oxidative stress, that leads to mitochondrial dysfunction, which leads to the elongation of the electron transport chain, more leakage of the free radicals, which leads to more oxidative stress, which leads to more mitochondrial dysfunction, so on and so forth. So if we can improve the external environment, that's going to set the stage for, uh, less, less attacking of the, or, or just less degradation or less dysfunction of the mitochondria, which is going to keep that electron transport chain a little more tighter, a lot of things to function more, uh, smoothly. So again, methylene blue seems to help especially internally, donating electrons, but can also help externally with the oxidative stress. But to your point, the dark blue pigment of methylene blue is especially receptive to, um, or most photo-receptive to, uh, like 660—like right in the heart of red light. So if you ingest methylene blue orally—of course, you can do it through IV, which is more instantaneous—but if you do it orally, the research I've seen says the peak plasma rate is about, uh, an hour and a half, meaning that's when it's going to be most, uh, prevalent in your, in your plasma. Thus, if you were to do a red light therapy around that time, the blue pigment in, in your plasma, in your body, is going to, uh, receive more of those red photons than it would otherwise. So methylene blue on its own is an extremely powerful mitochondrial boosting adjuvant; red light therapy on its own is extremely powerful in improving mitochondrial function in a myriad of ways; together, very synergistic. So you can do one or the other, but doing both seems to lead to this very powerful, um, one-two punch.
We want to talk a little bit about why we both use more red light therapy in the winter, really quickly.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, come summer, it is so easy for me to pop outside for five minutes here, 10 minutes there, take the clothes off, or, and, and just soak up, up the natural light, right? And I know, I know you—I know you do the same, and it's beautiful because we're getting all of those, um, red and near-infrared wavelengths from the sun and imparting all those—all those healing benefits from sunlight. But come, you know, November, December in Michigan, there's very little opportunity for me to do that; it's just too cold, you know? And so I'll go outside and get my light signaling through my eyes, but my skin—really, that, that, that infrared and red that I want to absorb through my skin is just lacking. And so that's why I would highly recommend, if you do—if you live in an environment like that, you consider using a red light therapy panel in the winter; it can be the biggest game changer.
Yeah, and we both love the BonCharge Mini. This is super convenient; you can take it with you traveling, um, I—you know, you guys don't know when I'm recording the podcast, half the time I have it on my low back or somewhere in my body to mitigate some of this blue light. And for the months of November and December, you can use the code QuantumPod25—November and December only—to get 25% off the panel or anything on the BonCharge website. Carrie and I are both big fans.
Yeah. And one more thing really quickly with that: it's a great gift, too, right? If you want to start getting people involved in this lifestyle, and say it's a—the most convenient way. If there's a mom that you know who needs to tend to boo-boos and aches and pains from, for kids, or earaches, tummy aches, sore throats, it's a phenomenal gift to give as well, because it really can wipe away pain very fast.
I love it. All right, check it out; link is in the show notes.
I have Justine here, who I consider an expert on mitochondrial health, cell health, and so welcome, Justine. Thanks for being here.
Oh, thank you so much for having me, Sarah. I'm very excited to be here. So my area of expertise is in cell membrane medicine or mitochondrial medicine, and so I'm going to put two items in that category. I would say that phospholipids and essential fatty acids are often really missed in that whole conversation when we think about the important role that they play just in terms of energy production and water production on a mitochondrial level. Oxidative phosphorylation occurs on a phosphatidylethanolamine membrane, so that membrane is rich in that specific phospholipid. And so if we don't have adequate amounts of that phospholipid, which also synthesizes another phospholipid called cardiolipin, and that cardiolipin is really crucial for maintaining the structure of the inner mitochondrial membrane and really the integrity of that membrane, and it also houses complex one, complex three, and complex four. And that phospholipid bilayer is made by the phosphatidylethanolamine membrane, and it is also very rich in essential fatty acids, specifically linoleic acid, which often gets demonized, uh, in this whole world. So I think that focusing on phospholipids and fatty acids, outside of, of course, all the other foundational things that we need to do to support optimizing our cellular health, uh, is really, really key, and it's something that's often missed in the whole conversation.
Yeah, I think it is really missed. And the reason I like you and the things that you teach is that you are—you always have a foundation in light, and you understand how things like light and being grounded and getting cold and using infrared light and can all help to really improve mitochondrial health. But there are a lot of people I know that, that you work with that kind of need a little bit of extra layer of support. And so essentially what you just explained was that if we want optimal mitochondrial functioning, this is another thing that we can do to support the body at that level, correct?
Yeah, absolutely. So when we look there at all the different cells in the body, there's about 37 trillion cells, and we have roughly about 200 different cell types and about 500 trillion mitochondria, and some people even estimate more than that. And the really interesting thing about the human body is that all of these different cells and all these different cell types and all the organelles within the cell have biological membranes, uh, that are really determining—when we look at the cell membrane, the structure and the function of that cell membrane is determining all the nutrients that get into the cell, all the wastes that are exported out of the cell. And what's really interesting, and this has been an area that I've been diving deeper in lately, is that the polar head group on the phosphocholine molecule that is hydrophilic—so water-loving—is actually interacting with that exclusion zone water, and that exclusion zone water is helping to support this optimal electrical charge of the membrane. And so we talk a lot about, especially in the quantum fields, about the importance of the exclusion zone water, and absolutely critically important, right? There's even, uh, someone, a researcher, Alexis Carrel, way back in the 19—early 1900s, that said that the cell is really immortal; it's the water in which the cell floats that degenerates. So we know that the water in the cell is crucial for all of our, uh, biochemical reactions that take place, uh, but specifically when we look at the membrane, the interaction with that exclusion zone water and the membrane is generating this beautiful electrical charge to optimize everything that's happening on the membrane where all of our proteins and our peptides and our receptors and our ion channels are found, uh, and so when we improve the structure and the function of the membrane, we're simultaneously improving all of those things within the body. And I always say that these phospholipids are really providing head-to-toe support, uh, to the body. And so it's not about, you know, only the light piece—yes, light, we are regulated by light; there's no doubt about that; we are a body of water that's regulated by light when you really break it down to the bare bones—and we also have these essential nutrients that are required for optimal structure and function of all of those membranes. And just going back to what I said earlier about the body being all about compartmentalization with these membranes, if you focus directly on a—on the mitochondria and look at it through the mitochondrial lens, our mitochondria have two biological membranes as well: one outer membrane that's rich in phosphocholine and one inner membrane that's rich in phosphatidylethanolamine, and again that is where oxidative phosphorylation is, is occurring. So when we're exposed to, you know, life's downloads—I call them—all the things in this world that are directly damaging our membrane—if you think about the body through the lens of like a bank account, if you were to only take withdrawals out of your bank account and never put deposits in, you'd end up bankrupt, right? And we often don't look at the body through that same lens, but it's the same idea. If we're only taking withdrawals out to repair damage to our membrane that's occurring because of exposures to these toxins, to non-native EMFs, etc., the body is eventually going to run out of the ability to actually go in and repair it; it's going to become biochemically bankrupt. And that's where we can use exogenous phospholipids and make sure that we're focusing on optimizing our essential fatty acids in the body and optimizing the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 to support optimizing the structure and the function of, of our membranes.
I'm so excited to have Dr. Laura Conover here today. I consider her the world's expert on grounding. Uh, we're gonna, we're going to talk about what she thinks is the most important thing for your health, uh, so Dr. Laura, thank you for being here.
Oh, I'm super excited because this is a very often overlooked aspect of health, which I believe for longevity and for the function of your body from head to toe, it's like necessary, just like drinking water, you know, breathing—you have to do the electrical conductive health. So it's, it's a good topic.
I agree. Yeah, I mean, I think so—so many people—Carrie and I talk about it all the time, and that's really what the whole summit is about, is allowing people to understand these really simple things that nature gives us to implement them into their daily lives to have a full picture of health. But we're so disconnected from all this that I think a lot of people think it's too simple to actually be imp—I'm sure you run up against that at all. So, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, maybe we can just start there of like why it's not too good to be true.
Yeah. Well, I 100%—the biggest, like, barrier for people doing it is that it's so simple that people are suspicious. They're like, "Why would I need to be on the earth or touch the Earth?" And it's kind of so obvious—like we weren't separated from the earth except for a couple hundred years ago when we discovered plastic and insulation and, you know, rubber tires—all that stuff—and we didn't pollute the Earth with electrical smog before we invented our own man-made electricity. So it was the most natural thing for—ever—and then in the past 150 years or so, it's become unnatural, and now people are suspicious of it just because of that one little pocket where we've isolated ourselves, and now that's the norm. So it's the weirdest—weirdest thing. But yeah, it's real. Um, there's not just, "Oh, I feel better when I'm outside," so I think maybe I'm talking about double-blinded medical studies showing that there is an instantaneous shift to how your brain functions, an instantaneous shift to how your heart literally beats, in the health of your cardiovascular system, an instant change in the muscle tension throughout your entire musculoskeletal system, and then long-term benefits, too. And again, these are all double-blinded, placebo-based medical studies; it's not just like, "Fill out a form if you, you know, tell me how you feel after you sleep grounded." It's literally, um, measurable, double-blinded studies, like on looking at inflammation markers of the blood, looking at an EEG with your brain hooked up, looking at a, um, EKG, looking at literally the heart rhythm. So it's, uh, it's no longer something that could be considered fringe, I don't think. And really, the, the most surprising thing is that people would be suspicious of it, and even physicians, because all in medical school, all you learn is how every organ system depends on electrical conductivity—every thought, every muscle twitch, every digestive, you know, swallowing, talking, blink, you know, every heartbeat—everything you need to stay alive in your body 100% has to have healthy conductivity, or it doesn't work. So how on Earth someone can make it through medical school and then not use that, and we—you know, to diagnose a heart attack, we'll look at an EKG; to diagnose a stroke, we'll look at an EEG—but how they don't go one step further to say, "Maybe it will boost wellness," like—what? I don't get it.
Yeah, how does that blow their mind? I don't know. I know, I know it—it, it blows my mind completely. And then when you do like an Instagram post about it, I'll throw something in there like, "Things that are ruining your health," and I'll throw in like, "rubber shoes."
Yeah, yeah.
People are like, "What?"
Yeah. My shoes. I'm like, "Yeah, well, it's just a lack of connection with the Earth; like you're missing out on a lot that could be really, really helpful for you," right?
Yeah. And it's not even just like, "Okay, we did a couple studies, and now we think this"—it's like there's continued research; it's been 50 years, five decades at least—now actually longer—the first studies started in the 1970s, and we first started learning about the cardio curve and the, um, Schumann resonance back like 1920s. So I mean, it's—we're talking 100 years now that we've understood that in a medical sense that the body needs it to be healthy; doesn't function well without electrical support; it just doesn't.
Yeah, absolutely. And so that—I mean, a lot of people will—because, like I said, our lives are really, really built up to disconnect us, to discourage us from touching the ground, touching the Earth. Some of the things that I will get, uh, a lot of pushback on is, "Well, I don't want to get—I don't want to touch the earth; I don't want to get bit by bugs or get parasites; um, there's no grass where I live." I get a lot of stuff like that. So how could we talk to some of th—those people that are concerned about those things?
Oh, my gosh, so easy! Because this is something that a lot of people miss because they think it has to be through their feet; it has to be barefoot. And I agree with you—not just that people don't
They can't fathom themselves telling a lie so big. And another, uh, quote to add for additional context, as it relates specifically to false beliefs that are fundamentally a lie or fundamentally unproven or disproven, is that our beliefs control our bodies, our minds, and thus our lives. Human beings have a great capacity for sticking to false beliefs with great passion and tenacity.
Okay, so according to the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), communicable diseases, also known as infectious diseases, are disorders caused by organisms such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, or parasites. These diseases can be spread through respiratory droplets that are produced when an infected person talks, coughs, or sneezes; close contact with an infected person, such as touching or shaking hands; contaminated surfaces or objects that have come into contact with an infected person's bodily fluids. And that last part comes from the CDC. So this is what we are taught to believe, for the overwhelming, the overwhelming majority of the world, from a young age, right? And one could argue that we see quote evidence of this in our daily lives. But I like to start with, uh, a sort of thought experiment on how evidence can be misleading.
What we're also told from a young age is that on December 24th through 25th, a guy in a red suit with a white beard flies across the Earth and delivers presents to all the kids who've behaved well. Now one might say that the countless things in our environment reify or reaffirm that belief that this guy in a red suit, known as Santa Claus, is flying across the sky. And that list of things includes the songs, the decorations, the excitement felt amongst the kids and all the families, the movies, uh, you're following Santa's trajectory across the sky on the Santa Claus sleigh tracking app. Um, one might even say that more direct evidence could be that, uh, that when my parents tell me that I've been a good kid this year, so Santa Claus is going to bring me presents, I have measurable and observable excitement in my body. Versus if I'm being a bad kid and my parents come up to me and say, "Hey, if you don't behave, Santa's not going to bring you gifts," or "Hey, you've not been good this year, so Santa's not bringing you gifts," I experience measurable and observable fear. I have a biological response to the idea of Santa Claus. And then, of course, on Christmas morning, I wake up, I find presents under the tree, I find pieces of beard in the fireplace, I find uh half-eaten cookies and milk, I find a bunch of things that confirm that Santa Claus is the cause for this phenomenon. But the reality is, as many of us know, despite it being the best-fit model when we're kids and despite all of these things in our environment clearly at the time indicating to us the existence of Santa Claus, we come to learn that no, there's actually no evidence for Santa Claus causing this phenomenon, nor that Santa Claus exists. Um, and there are plenty of other plausible explanations for the cause of these various phenomena. So just keep that in mind as we continue on with this presentation.
Okay, so has this idea that healthy people, when exposed to sick people or their bodily fluids, become ill actually been proven? Okay, so we're going to be getting into some uh third, fourth grade, fifth grade level stuff here, uh, meaning that it's stuff that we all should have learned at some point, even if we went to public school, uh, but it's it's a really important refresher because it pertains to being able to prove something in reality or demonstrate that one thing causes another. So natural science is essentially the study of natural phenomena. You're trying to ascertain what causes an observed natural phenomenon, essentially, right? You're trying to figure out what is the cause of that observed natural phenomenon. So in order to figure out what is the cause of an observed natural phenomenon, you use uh empiricism, and in this case, when it comes to making uh claims regarding observations, the thing that is most commonly employed is the scientific method. And that is a systematic process of discovering knowledge about the natural world by making falsifiable predictions, also known or otherwise known as hypothesis testing them and developing theories that match known data from repeatable physical experimentation.
So the steps of the scientific method that we all should have learned are as follows: You observe a natural phenomenon; you formulate a hypothesis; your independent variable is the presumed cause, and the dependent variable is the observed effect, and the control variables are factors that you want to remain constant throughout the experiment so that you're ensuring that it is the independent variable that you're varying and manipulating uh to see if it is actually the cause of the observed phenomenon. And so you formulate alternate, alternative or alternate and null hypotheses. And your alternate hypothesis is that X does cause Y, and your null hypothesis is that X does not cause Y, essentially, or IV causes the DV, or IV does not cause the DV. So anytime I say X, I'm referring to the independent variable; anytime I say Y, I'm referring to the dependent variable. So a natural phenomenon requires that it is not uh manipulated or instigated by the investigator. So the overwhelming majority of quote science these days does not deal with natural science as it was intended; they're dealing with tinkering with chemicals and technology in a lab outside of a natural context, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with actual natural science, trying to figure out the cause of a naturally occurring phenomenon. Um, one sort of example of this is uh cell biology, which I know you all are interested in. I'm not saying that we can't uh take away or glean some some beneficial information from cell biology, but we have to be extremely careful because fundamentally cell biology is taking tissue from a complex physical, chemical, emotional, spiritual, biological being that is existing in its natural context and manipulating that tissue in a laboratory setting and assuming what is being done represents what happens in nature. But um, so an example of observing a natural phenomenon would be that you observe multiple people falling ill in the same space with similar symptoms. So one might develop a hypothesis: I think X causes Y. And in this case, the independent variable, the thing you think is the cause, would be snot, spit, blood—basically fluids from sick people—and you think that that is transmitted to healthy people, causing illness in the healthy people. So essentially you think that fluids from sick people (X) cause sickness in healthy people (Y), right? That would be the hypothesis for this. So alternative or alternate and null hypothesis would be: alternate one would be that it does cause Y, and then the null would be that it does not cause Y, right? And then from there you design and conduct experiments to test your hypothesis. So what experiments have been done? And some of them you can't even constitute as experiments because they're not following the scientific method, they're not controlling. But what experiments and studies have been done to test this hypothesis? So in his recent book, uh, called *Can You Catch a Cold? The Untold History of Human Experiments*, Daniel Royos, who is a naturopath based out of Australia, delves into over 200 contagion studies conducted throughout history, essentially studies that were attempting to demonstrate that X, being fluids from a sick person, or you could say exposure to sick people themselves, causes Y, causes illness in healthy people. So he scoured scientific literature attempting to find evidence for this. And so some highlights from Daniel's book is that he found the overwhelming majority of these studies failed to demonstrate contagion. [Music]