Transcription
Sunlight. This is something that, um, I've really become more and more involved with because of some of the benefits that this can do. A very big misconception that people have is that sunlight equals vitamin D and therefore, if you take a vitamin D supplement, you don't need to go in the sun. This is really something that's now, um, being debunked. Sunlight has far more benefits than just vitamin D. Not saying that vitamin D is, is not something that you want to supplement with. I supplement with vitamin D. I think there's a benefit to supplementing with vitamin D, no question. But sunlight has so many important things. And I, and I really would like to spend the bulk or the lion's share of the time talking about this because this is really important.
>> Um, this is a, this is, this is amazing. Uh, and it really made me think about sunlight. So, this is a story by a lady by the name of Amy Hanmire. Her 15-year-old boy was diagnosed with lymphoblastic leukemia. Went into, uh, the hospital, actually started chemotherapy for it.
>> Which is blood cancer.
>> It's a blood cancer. Yeah. And so, this, the treatment for blood cancer is chemotherapy, which he started. The side effect of chemotherapy is suppressing the immune system. And unfortunately, he didn't realize it, but he developed, uh, he didn't realize it immediately, but he developed a fungus, flesh-eating infection in his lung and went into the hospital in June of 2024. Uh, this was in Minnesota tertiary care hospital, and he got worse and got worse and got worse to the point where the only way that they could control this infection was to actually remove his left lung, which they did. So, this is a 15-year-old boy. He is without his left lung. He only has a right lung, and he starts to decline even after that. They do a CT scan, and it shows that now the infection has moved to his remaining right lung. They have a family conference, and as Amy is telling me this story, I could hear her choking up. She's telling me this on the phone. She's saying that he's 15. He's completely awake. He's completely alert. He knows everything that's going on around him. He's on a ventilator, like a machine that they use for, for sleep apnea. It's like a BiPAP machine that's breathing for him. It's not intubation, but it's on his, on his mouth. And the doctors, you know, have done everything they possibly can, and they say, "Look, he's getting worse. We can't take, obviously, we can't take the right lung out. We can't put him on a heart-lung machine because there's no sort of destination to where he's going." Uh, we recommend not intubating him and making him what they call DNR, do not resuscitate. So they're like, "Wow, they were not expecting this coming." So they have a big conference, somebody, they, they call in help to like, how do you explain to a 15-year-old boy that you're dying and how, how is that going to feel? So they ask the doctors, how, how much time does he have? They say, two days. So, in this, in this situation, they ask this boy, okay, you're going to die. What do you want to do with your life in the, in the next two days? What do you want to do? And surprisingly, he says, "I want to go outside. I just want to go outside." This, this guy grew up probably on a farm or something, and he spent his time outside. So he wants to go outside. So, you know, how, I mean, I don't know if you know this, but like, if you're a nurse or you're a doctor and you've done everything you can, and this, and you're just completely horrified at the fact that this 15-year-old is going to die, and he has one request, you're going to move heaven and earth to fulfill that one request. And that's exactly what they do. They get this boy the hospital bed outside. He's on a BiPAP machine, the respiratory therapists have put together. So this guy is outside, and they're not putting him outside to get better. He's just, this is his dying wish. They also use this thing called a Firefly. It's like a light device that they were using. I'll, I'll be honest, I don't know which did it.
>> The Firefly. What's that?
>> It's a, it's a light device that gives off light at different wavelengths. And they would use that for about three times a day for five minutes. This guy does not die. After the first day, his white count starts to come down. That's like a measure of the infection that's going on in the lung. And, and by the way, they do a CT scan of his lung before this all starts, and they, and it's just, the, the remaining lung on the right is just filled with infection. It's horrible. By the, by the second day, the white count comes down even more. And by the way, they haven't changed any of the other treatment. He's been, by this point, he's been in for six weeks. He has not seen the light of day. And, and he's still getting the powerful antifungal medication, amphotericin B, and posaconazole. All of these things are, are really high-powered drugs that, that just completely fight fungus. But it's not working. He's getting worse. But now he's out for the second day. The white count's coming down, which is good. That's a good sign. His oxygen requirement is coming down. That's a good sign. He's requiring less and less oxygen. By the time he gets to day five, okay, we're already past two days. He's off the BiPAP. He's on regular just nasal cannula oxygen that you see people wearing on their nose. The doctors are scratching their head. They're like, "We, we should get a CT scan to see what's going on." So, so Amy tells me that they, they get a CT scan of this guy, and they're in the room, and some, some even like swear under their breath, like they, they're completely amazed because on the CT scan, obviously the left lung is still gone, but the right lung, the disease is probably 60, 70% gone, and he, he's still alive. He goes home. There's no sign of the disease after, after treatment. And he, he, uh, I, I just, she just, uh, communicated with me to tell me that he just got his Make-A-Wish, uh, thing for his cancer. He's continuing treatment, and to, and she just can't believe that he was literally two days away from dying. They changed nothing. They changed none of his treatments. The only thing that they did was they took him outside, and they, they were using this Firefly before inside, but they were using it more consistently when he got outside.
>> Maybe hospitals should be outside.
>> This is exactly what, okay, so if you wanted to know what my drive was, what it is my purpose that I'm doing right now, I'm working at three different hospitals, and I'm trying to work in each of those three different hospitals to try to get patients outside. The biggest barrier that we have is staff taking those patients outside. That's the thing that's the hardest. But this is what we used to do, Stephen. This is what we used when we built hospitals at the turn of the century. We had hospital rooms where beds could be taken out onto the veranda, and people could get sunlight. I would love to see a time where we could go back to that type of, uh, effect. There's studies that have been done. People in a two-bed room, if you're the bed closer to the window, you get discharged from the hospital faster on average.
>> Really?
>> Yes.
>> I need to swap sides of the bed with my girlfriend. She's on the sunny side.
>> There's, there's so much evidence for this. People who are in hospitals that have bigger windows, they give better surveys. And hospitals, uh, reimbursement is tied to the surveys that they get from patients. So, it's literally a win-win-win if hospitals started to, I believe, get patients outside. And, and they're already doing this there. I don't want to say that this isn't happening. There are hospitals that have programs to get patients outside. Um, I think we just ought to be doing it a lot more.
>> Um, temperance.
>> Temperance. What does that mean?
>> It's an old term, isn't it? It really means moderation. And, and I, I would say in this sense, temperance really means to, uh, avoid toxins in the body. Um, as somebody who is a pulmonologist who is...
>> What's a pulmonologist?
>> A pulmonologist is someone who takes care of the lungs. And so, as a result of that, I see a lot of issues, uh, with lung cancer related to smoking. Um, I see in the intensive care unit people with liver failure as a result of, of alcohol abuse. I also see people, uh, on amphetamines here in Southern California where I, uh, reside and where I work. We, we have quite a bit of that. And, uh, temperance, if, if you want to live a long and wholesome life, there are some toxins that you want to avoid. And, uh, and, and understanding that is really important. So this is something that if you stop some of those things that we're talking about, all of those links are going to be improved.
Air seems kind of obvious. Early on, I used to think that that what this meant was getting pure air with absolutely nothing in it except for just nitrogen and oxygen. That's not true anymore. We now understand that for you to have the best type of air, it actually has to come with some things in it. Just like our, our gut has a microflora that you may have heard about, so too does the air that we breathe also must have that. And, um, the best type of air that you can have is actually outside.
Rest. This is really interesting because we just mentioned that exercise was a pillar, but rest also is. How can rest and exercise at the same time be pillars of health? And it really comes down to knowing when to do what. Sleep, which is also part of rest. So we're not just talking about a daily rest when you go to sleep. And, and as a sleep physician, I can tell you, uh, quite a bit. We have lots of information about how long we should sleep, the quality of sleep, some of the diseases that prevent us from sleeping. Sleep is so important. I can't, I, I couldn't overexpress it enough. Not just a, a daily rest, but, um, I would also say, and venture out, we can talk more about this, a weekly rest.
>> A weekly rest.
>> A weekly rest.
>> What do you mean, a weekend? Like...
>> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. How many times do we, uh, even on the weekend, do we put down our, our phone?
>> Never.
>> Or we stop reading emails and we take the time out to do things that we would never be able to do.
Finally, trust. So, this is something that really just can't be ignored. And, and I'll say this upfront that, um, in the world of research and science, there is a, there is a silo of science and there is a silo of faith. But what's, what we can't ignore is the growing body of evidence from the scientific world that's peeking over and looking at faith, that people who have faith and people who have faith in God, uh, whether that is, uh, their God in, in that particular denomination, are better apt and able to deal with stress and depression and anxiety. So, this is something scientifically that has been shown.
Now, if you, you may have noticed that I, I did these in a particular order. Um, and if you go through them, you've got nutrition, you've got exercise, you've got water, you've got sunlight, you've got temperance, you have air, you have rest, and finally you have trust. You put that together, and it spells out NEW START. So, interestingly, these, these particular topics are not copyrighted, but there is a, um, there is a university in Northern California called Weimar University that is actually put these together in that very pattern and has called it NEW START. They actually have a NEW START program. Um, and so this is something that, uh, that is actually being used, uh, internationally.
So, of these subjects that you just went through there for this NEW START, um, framework, where do you want to start?
>> I think actually sunlight is, is one of those things where I'm excited about all of those, but I think sunlight is, is really where we have it's the, let's put it this way, it's the lowest hanging fruit.
>> Okay. Explain to me why sunlight is the, the place where your focus is at the moment.
It's a long trip that has gotten me to that. Um, and I, and I think part of it has goes through right through COVID.
>> So, as a critical care intensivist, when I heard that there was this virus that was coming, they all told us that it was going to be people with respiratory illnesses, which I was certainly comfortable with, but that's not what it turned out to be. We certainly saw people with respiratory illnesses, but what we saw in the intensive care unit, the people that were dying around me were people with obesity, people with heart disease, people with kidney disease, people with dementia, people with chronic diseases. And it made me think, why was that the case? All of those things have one thing in common, and many other things, too, but specifically, they're rooted in something called mitochondrial dysfunction. So, let me unpack that for you. And, and this has to do with longevity. This has to do with aging. This is a huge topic that is now just emerging, and we're, we're now finding more about this. So, when we were, when I was in high school biology, when I was in college, uh, we all learned about this little organelle in all of our cells except for red blood cells called the mitochondria. And, and I have to say it, what is the mitochondria? It's the powerhouse of the cell, right? So, it's the thing that makes energy. What we didn't know at the time is that as we get older, the output from these batteries in our cells drops by about 70%.
>> Damn.
>> Can you imagine running your house on 70% less energy? Well, how fundamentally that would change, change what happens in your house. Like, you could not run the laundry the same way. You could not run the microwave and the laundry at the same time.
>> And what does that look like in terms of symptoms?
>> Excellent question. Because what it looks like is depending on the cell type that we're talking about, that's going to have the issue. So, if we're talking about the liver, the liver is going to get more fatty. If we're talking about the heart, the heart's going to, is going to become more congested. If we're talking about the brain, it's going to have more dementia.
>> And so, what's, what's happening here is that as we get older, the batteries in our cells are not working the same way as they used to. Metabolism is slowing down. And, and so, these are, hu, these are huge issues. And all of these diseases that I just talked about, all the ones that we saw in COVID, if you look in a lot of these diseases, they are rooted in mitochondrial dysfunction. So the question is, is why is that the case and what can we do about it? So there was a paper that came out in 2019 that fundamentally changed the way I saw this. It was written by, um, Russell Ryder, who is the, uh, executive editor of Melatonin Research. It's a, he's out of University of Texas, and Scott Zimmerman, who's a light engineer, and what they set forth was to show that basically sunlight is made up of so many different types of wavelengths. You've got ultraviolet on one end, which of course makes vitamin D, and it's very beneficial. It, it's the type of light from the, from the sun that is very shortwave, and but cannot penetrate very deeply. Let me, let me back up a little bit and explain. You pull up to a stop sign, and somebody pulls up next to you, and they're playing the latest hip-hop music. How does that sound to you in your car? It's very boom boom, right?
>> Yeah. Muffled.
>> And muffled. And the reason why is because low wave frequency has the ability to travel very far. Go to the Grand Canyon, and there's a thunderstorm at the other end of it. What do you hear? It's like a rumbling. And then as it gets closer, you hear the higher pitch sounds. This is a fundamental physics, uh, principle. And so when the sun is, is shining, there's very short wavelengths, ultraviolet B, involved in vitamin D. But at the other end, there's this infrared light, which we'll talk about, or red light. It's very long wavelength, and it can penetrate very, very deeply. That's very important because what we're talking about is the human body. And if the sun is going to have an effect on the human body, it's got to be more than just the skin. So that's exactly what, what this paper showed is that basically infrared light from the sun is able to penetrate probably up to about 8 centimeters, according to Scott Zimmerman in this article, and it fundamentally interacts with specifically the mitochondria. And what does it do to the mitochondria? So, let's, let's back up and talk about the mitochondria because this is central. The mitochondria to the cell is like the engine in your car. The engine produces locomotion that causes this, the wheels to spin. But in the process of doing it, it causes heat to, uh, surround the engine. And if you don't deal with that heat, it will shut down the engine. It will make it more inefficient and eventually it will shut it down. So what do all internal combustion engines have? They have a cooling system. They have a radiator. They have an oil pan. They have a water pump. And that's exactly what the cell has to have for the mitochondria. It's not heat in the mitochondria. It's called oxidative stress. And it's specifically oxidative stress that causes destruction and, uh, and, um, yeah, destruction of the mitochondria and leads to these types of diseases. So oxidative stress causes the mitochondria not to work well. This leads to diabetes. Oxidative stress makes the mitochondria not work so well. This leads to dementia. So there's, this has already been laid out. This is not that controversial. The controversial part is what do we do about it? So what these guys in this paper showed was that, and, and not just them, but reviewing the literature, is that the mitochondria makes its own cooling system, and that cooling system is melatonin. Now, you might be thinking, wait a minute, melatonin, isn't that the, isn't that the stuff that we take that our brain makes right before we go to sleep? Yeah, that you're, it's absolutely correct, that's what happens. The problem is, is that this is not melatonin that's made in the brain. This is not melatonin that goes through the blood supply and goes, goes through our blood and tells us it's time to go to sleep. This is melatonin that's made in the cell, in the mitochondria, and it's a powerful antioxidant that basically prevents the oxidative stress from occurring. What Scott Zimmerman, Russell Ryder showed in, and proposed in this, was that basically the infrared radiation that's coming in to the body is able to stimulate and upregulate melatonin and a number of other factors that keep the mitochondria cool and can actually improve the energy output of the mitochondria. So, this was actually mind-blowing to me, and I'll tell you why I resonated with this as a critical care physician, because there were two things that bothered me the most. Number one, SARS-CoV-2 virus, when it comes into the body, it interacts with something called the ACE2 receptor. You may have heard about the ACE2 receptor. Okay, this is where the, the virus actually latches on to the cell and gets internalized. So, what is this ACE2 receptor? Is this, was this there for all of humanity just to be a receptor, or does it actually have a role? It turns out it actually has a role, and mind-blowingly, the ACE2 receptor is involved in mitigating oxidative stress. So, in other words, it's another part of the cell's cooling system for the mitochondria. What, what's happening is that the, the virus, when it attaches to the cell, is basically eliminating that action. And so, imagine you have a bunch of people with various different engines running at different temperatures. In other words, you've got some people with chronic disease, and we know their engines are running hot. We have other people who are completely healthy, and they're doing quite well. Their engines are nice and cool. They have no problems at all. Now imagine COVID comes, and SARS-CoV-2 is infecting everybody. What that tendency is to do is because it's knocking out everybody's ACE2 receptor, which has the ability to cool down the engine, if, in other words, it's causing everybody's engine to run hot, right? So, but in somebody, so in other words, picture this way, you're, you're driving along in your car, and your thermometer is there, and all of a sudden, there's this big hill that you have to climb called COVID-19. Who's going to make it over that hill, and who's not going to make it over that hill? The people that make it over the hill are those with great cooling engines, whose temperatures are running great. The ones that don't make it over that hill are the ones that have the thermometer on their engine running hot.
>> Those are the ones that poop out at the top and can't make it. And they're, they're the ones pulled over to the side of the road with the hood up and the steam coming out of the, out of the engine. Do you understand what I'm saying?
>> Of course.
>> So, this makes perfect sense to me why I wasn't seeing what they were predicting, which is these respiratory patients coming into the ICU. Who was I seeing in the ICU? I was seeing people with dementia, as we talked about, diabetes, kidney disease. These are the ones that were, that that were sick. The other thing that, that really hit me and resonated with this was, and this was, this was not even controversial. We knew early on in the pandemic that people who came into the hospital and had higher levels of vitamin D did really well. They didn't die. They, they didn't have the same chances of dying. People who had low vitamin D levels, they had much higher levels, uh, chances of dying. So, we would check these vitamin D levels. And so, think about this. You're, you're there at ground zero, and you're taking care of these patients, and you see this data over and over and over again that vitamin D is very predictive of who's going to die. Obviously, what are you going to do? Even though this is an associative study, that association doesn't mean causation. You're going to be giving people vitamin D and try to get those levels up. The problem is, is that we gave vitamin D, and it really didn't have much of an effect.
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