Regenerative Health with Max Gulhane, MD
I speak with world leaders on circadian & quantum biology, metabolic medicine & regenerative farming in search of the most effective ways of optimising health and reversing chronic disease.
Regenerative Health with Max Gulhane, MD
Circadian Health For Carnivores
The carnivore diet is exploding in popularity. In this episode I discuss why light and circadian biology should be added to our lifestyle routines to ensure optimal mitochondrial health beyond diet-only changes.
This talk was presented to the How To Carnivore private group in November 2024. Join the HTC group here - https://www.howtocarnivore.com/
Skool group - www.skool.com/dr-maxs-circadian-reset-7528/
So my name is Dr Max Gulhane and I am a family medicine doctor trainee and obviously have a deep interest in light, photobiology, circadian biology and quantum biology. So the study of health is one that has been researched for the past you know, more than 100 years but really has been sidelined in many ways since the um, since the pharmaceuticalization, I guess you could say, of medicine and the invention of pharmaceutical drugs. And what I'm trying to do in my work is to encourage or educate about the importance and the role of light in health and how light can act essentially as a medicine and what I believe to be probably the most powerful preventative medicine. And I guess the question that many people have, as they're obviously joining this group from a dietary-centric point of view, is how is this relative relevant to, or how does this relate to, a carnivore type diet? And, as I was briefly mentioning just prior to starting this recording, that I really see them as as very complementary and meaning that what we're doing with a dietary restriction and dietary elimination to a carnivore type diet that is how I see it is. That is how we optimize health or optimize our mitochondrial function from a dietary point of view, but what optimal health is and is really a game of making sure those mitochondria, those energy producing organelles in our cells, are running as smoothly as possible, and we can do that not only through diet, and that is, I guess, the crux of the message is that there's so many other ways to really make sure that your mitochondria are working properly.
Speaker 1:And remember the chronic disease epidemic that we're now talking about in the mainstream with RFK Jr and this Make America Healthy Again movement. This movement is specifically in response to the explosion of chronic disease, and chronic disease is mitochondrial dysfunction appearing in various masks and with various faces. That's how I want you to think about chronic disease, and a lot of people who've arrived at this group have basically developed their own version of chronic disease. Whether that's obesity, type 2 diabetes, parkinson's disease, autoimmune disease, these are all, I guess, windows into the same room of mitochondrial dysfunction. So, like I mentioned, carnivore and eating a higher animal-based diet is an optimal way of optimizing your mitochondria, because it's essentially like burning the cleanest fuel in the engine, but it just so happens that the fuel is not the only thing that dictates the health of the engine, and what I mean by that is we need lubrication, we need coolant, we need maintenance, and all these are happening through light and they're happening through circadian biology. So let's briefly explain this and then I will open up and really take any questions in terms of practicalities of implementing light and health.
Speaker 1:So this image here is a little bit complex, but I'm going to walk you through it. This is what I call the wiring diagram of circadian biology and human circadian biology, and what we have here is the center of this system is the eye, and the eye is actually an extension of the brain. That's how to think about it. And when we think about the eye as an extension of the brain, it becomes really important that we need to what inputs we are showing our eyes and what we are, what we're exposing our eyes to, because what we're exposing our eyes to we're exposing our eyes to, because what we're exposing our eyes to we're exposing our brain to literally directly. So what this shows is that the eye is, is receiving light wavelengths and obviously the eye is what we use to perceive the world the eyes and what we use to form images of what we can see.
Speaker 1:But what this diagram shows and implies is that there's actually a non-image forming function of your eye. What does that mean? That means that your eye is not only acting as a camera, but it's also acting as a detector of different light wavelengths. And specifically, the most important light wavelengths that influence this circadian or clock system is the presence and absence of blue light. And this should make immediate common sense to you, because what color is the sky? It's blue. So the presence and absence of blue light is going to help the body recognize whether it's daytime or nighttime and, specifically, the proportion of blue light with respect to the other wavelengths is also informing us about the specific time of day. So this blue wavelength light triggers these special proteins in the eye, which are called non-visual photoreceptors, and what that means is that specifically, as it says, is that they sense light, but they're not for vision forming, they're for this light detecting.
Speaker 1:And the way this works is fascinating and might be a little bit beyond this group in terms of the science, but really the light changes the way this protein operates and that sends a signal, and that signal gets sent down an information superhighway from the eye to this part of the brain called the hypothalamus, and that's where the master clock, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, runs, and this master clock is how the body operates and coordinates everything inside it with regard to time of day. When your clock is operating like a finely tuned Swiss clock, then you're going to be in a good health because your hormonal system, which is orchestrating all these processes specifically for those who are having metabolic diseases metabolism, immune function, rest and digest, digest, repair, cell repair, cancer prevention so all these functions are, uh, reliant on a smooth clock timing mechanism and, um, if that clock timing mechanism disrupts, then you're going to get disease and we're going to talk about it. What and what this is also showing is that this pathway from the reception of blue light goes to the pineal gland via another pathway. What that does is, when you see blue light, it suppresses the production of a very important hormone called melatonin. Now, you might have taken melatonin over the counter to help you go to sleep, and that is one of the functions of this compound is basically a signal of darkness and a signal to rest and digest and actually initiate sleep. So, as you might imagine, this is a very elegant system where, if you, if the body, is sensing blue light and it's supposed to be daytime, then it's not going to make you feel sleepy and, in fact, it's going to turn off your melatonin level, and so you should be alert, and that's what happens.
Speaker 1:So if you think about um, the normal, the normal, um uh day day schedule, back before we invented artificial light, is that there was no blue light after dark, and that way our bodies were perfectly synchronized and therefore we would fall asleep easily. But thanks to the modern environment, then now we can trick our bodies into thinking it's daytime when it's nowhere near daytime, and that is this idea of artificial light at night, which is also abbreviated to ALAN, the acronym. So keep that in mind, because that is going to be important for optimal circadian health, which is, are we having blue light at the right time, and are we having natural blue light, as nature has intended, or are we having artificial blue light which is refined, a refined form of light? So I want to give you another analogy to help you think about circadian biology, and that is one of an office block, and this office block basically has a very specialized and, I would would say, time-dependent function, meaning that during the daytime, the people in the office are working and they're doing their business, and at the nighttime the office block is being cleaned. So the importance here is that this is happening at the right times. If the cleaners come through at 11 am in the morning, while these guys are trying to offload dodgy stocks to people on phone calls, then they're not going to be able to operate properly and that system is going to become chaotic, and an analogy for chaos in the body system is inflammation.
Speaker 1:So what circadian biology does is actually does a form of cellular timekeeping so that we can coordinate processes that are actually opposing, and things like sleeping and waking obviously are the most foundational or obvious dichotomy of functions that need to happen at different times. You can't recover and repair while you're awake. You need to be sleeping. So that's why the organism, your body, and not only humans, but every organism below us, have also evolved or created to partition those opposing processes, to partition those opposing processes. So here's a really simple diagram for you to think about circadian biology, which is it's a clock, but it's also this yin and yang symbol, meaning that to make sure to have this optimal circadian health, we need bright sunlight during the day, but just as importantly need we need um uh darkness at night, and that is. Those are equal and opposite requirements, so you can disrupt your circadian biology by having inadequate full spectrum natural sunlight during the day, but also by lighting up your night and and having light other than moonlight, essentially in your bedroom or in your work environment.
Speaker 1:So you can see how this clock system will actually change over the seasons, meaning that as the earth spins, the earth rotates around and orbits the sun, then the day lengths are actually changing. So the circadian system and that perception of light through the eye is a form of allowing your body to adjust this clock to the changing day length and make sure that it is always perfectly timed and tuned so that your body's responding to the environment that it's in. And again, the organisms that survive, the animals and bacteria and fungi that survived are ones that can not only respond to what's going on in their environment but also anticipate changes in the environment. And that's why this clock system is so important. And that's what it is it's a cellular timekeeping to synchronize us to the environmental light signals. So for those who are perhaps using carnivore to lose weight or to reverse diabetes, then this is, I think, one of the most important diagrams to understand, which is it turns out that there's not only a clock inside the brain and the hypothalamus that actually regulates our food intake, our energy expenditure and our insulin sensitivity. But there's actually clocks what we call peripheral clocks inside all the metabolic organs.
Speaker 1:And what does this mean? This means that, just like there's a building site that offers a building analogy for our eye clock, well there's an office building analogy for all of these organs that are going to depend on whether you're metabolically healthy or not. So that means that there's going to be a right and a wrong time for your muscles to operate efficiently, to essentially be sensitive to the insulin hormone, um, to operate effectively, there's a there's a right and a wrong time for your liver to make, uh, glucagon and to make glucose. And there's a right and a wrong time for the pancreas to to release insulin and other glucagon hormone. And there's a right and a wrong time for the gut to have food in it and to basically take up glucose from your digestive system and to basically contract or do a poo. That's gut motility. And there's a right and a wrong time for your white adipose tissues, or your fat cells, to essentially break down fats and lipids and to take up glucose and to make these key hormone called leptin, which tells your body how much energy is on board.
Speaker 1:So what this essentially means is that if we're mistiming our food intake, what this essentially means is that if we're mistiming our food intake, then we are disrupting these clocks, we are causing them to run at different times towards the light clock, and the outcome of that is going to be obesity, is going to be metabolic disease, is going to be leptin resistance, insulin resistance, and you're going to get you're going to be basically overweight and uh, metabolically unhealthy. And the key point here is that carnivore diet obviously is, um is going to be the ideal diet for addressing obesity and and metabolic dysfunction. But the point is that if you're eating your steaks at 11 pm or midnight, um, you're really not going to get the maximum health benefits uh compared to if you were doing this in daytime, at a, an appropriate time with regard to uh, with your circadian rhythm. And this is this idea. And there's a whole field called chrononutrition which is emerging, showing that if we time our food intake correctly, then we can have massive benefits for weight loss and for diabetes. So what does the data show?
Speaker 1:And this one is just one of the increasingly massive number of papers being released, so how they describe this, which is again a rewording of what I've just already told you is that the circadian rhythms allow organisms to synchronize their physiology and behavior with cues from the external environment to maximize resources and reduce energy expenditure. Again, these rhythms have evolved to be aligned with a 24-hour solar day. How are we disrupting our solar day? Well, again, it's from lack of sunlight and then too much artificial light at night. This provides a relatively simple but powerful cue that entrains physiology to efficiently use energetic resources when the body is optimized to do so, which is during your active phase, and effectively metabolizes energy stores to maintain stable blood glucose during fasting. So another way of thinking about this is how circadian rhythms evolve is about efficiency. The kanean rhythms evolve is about efficiency and um engine efficiency when it, when it comes to our biological organism, is what allows you to survive. And indeed an inefficient um organism is unadapted to its environment, it's going to die out and therefore not pass its genes on. So this is um at its fundamental level. Um, it's all about energy efficiency.
Speaker 1:So here's another diagram which, sorry, I'm being attacked by multiple hours. This diagram is showing us how, when we're circadianly aligned, when this central eye clock is synced up to these peripheral clocks in our organs, then things are going to work optimally, and what that means is that we've got bright daytime, bright light during the daytime, we're sleeping at night and we're taking our food during the day, whereas if we are having light at night, we're sleeping during the day and that's very common in people with psychiatric disorders, but that's a talk for another time and we're eating at night. Then look how these clocks, these oscillations, they're mistimed and that is when we get sick and that is when the mitochondrial system basically comes off its rails. So another way of of thinking about this is that these are the key, what we call zeitgeibers, and if anyone's studied german or speaks german, then um, then you will know what that means. But essentially these are information givers and zeitgeibers are the inputs into our circadian rhythm, and the most important is light. Um, and obviously the presence of of good, of normal light, and the absence of light, but um, activity and uh, food, timing is are also zeitgeibers and and they are going to also entrain our circadian rhythm. And that's why, in my circadian reset course, I teach people the importance of the morning routine, and what our goal is to do is when we wake up, is to think about all the ways in which we can make sure this alignment between our central clock and our peripheral clocks is as optimal as possible and that includes morning sunlight into the eyes and on the skin and some morning activity and morning breakfast. And that is a key point of difference that you know.
Speaker 1:I see figures like Dr Ken Berry and and I respect his work and he's done enormous work in terms of helping people reverse their metabolic dysfunction. But I fundamentally disagree with their approach of advising fasting until 2 pm and really because that disrespects the chrononutrition and the chronobiology of the role of food to entrain our circadian rhythm and I think it does to some degree send a message of starvation or lack of abundance to the body from a metabolic point of view, whereas earlier food consumption in response to or soon after the the sun, seeing the sunrise, especially a fat, obviously a fat and protein rich breakfast is a, is a form of of environmental abundance and when that body has that environmentally abundant signal then um, it's, then it becomes more inclined to let go of extra weight and that's tied to leptin sensitivity. So here's another review article. It's just showing how circadian disruption is fundamentally linked to metabolic disease and some of you might be aware of the work of Dr Jack Cruz and he talks about the role of blue light as it relates to developing metabolic disease and diabetes. Look, I really do agree with him, but I think it's a multifaceted thing and it's both the presence of blue light but it's also the absence of natural full-spectrum sunlight that is a problem. So here's some interesting associational epidemiology and this is a really common finding, which is that if we have light in our bedroom or we're just exposed to light at night, then we're on the train track to obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure. And these researchers stated that the prevalence of obesity, diabetes and hypertension was significantly higher in older adults with light at night compared to those with no light at night, even for adjusting for a whole range of confounding variables. And look, there's a whole bunch of other papers on the topic and we can look at studies in mice as well, which point to chronic shift work and chronic circadian disruption causing the, the adipose tissue, to become inflamed and fibroic and dysfunctional.
Speaker 1:And again, to touch base with the food-centric paradigm, say, you know doctors paul saldino, tucker, goodrich talking about mitochondrial dysfunction in white fat cells as being the inception point of metabolic dysfunction and really pointing to things like seed oils, which I think are contributing, but note here that what this research is suggesting is that the light in and of itself, with no other factors changed, is sufficient to induce that same dysfunction that puts us on the path to metabolic disease. So hopefully you're kind of appreciating what I'm suggesting, suggesting, which is that if our light environment is poor, if our light environment is ancestrally inappropriate, inconsistent, if we're exposing ourselves to this high fructose corn syrup light which, uh, which is what I call blue light from from leds and energy saving bulbs, then you know this is a diabetogenic stimulus. This is putting you on the pathway to metabolic syndrome and chronic disease. And without addressing this or doing carnivore, without looking at our light environment, our circadian rhythm, it's just making things harder than they need to be. So that's a hard stop in terms of the emphasis or the point.
Speaker 1:So what I wanted, quickly, I'm not going to cover some of this stuff which was a little bit more technical, but what I will highlight is that let's look at the difference between what most of us are living under compared to what ancestrally we would have had. So this is the, the led bulbs that now, um, you know, most of the world is illuminating their, their living space with day and night, and look, look how it has this massive peak in in the blue and it disappears. Yes, it's got green too, but it also disappears beyond. There's no light beyond, really beyond 700 nanometers, and what that means is this is a refined form of natural sunlight. It's not representative of natural sunlight in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 1:So if we think about light and and if you've listened to any of my previous content, then I've spoken at length about natural sunlight and each of its wavelength properties as being in medicine if we think about what this modern led bulb is, it's it's less than 10 of the full full solar spectrum. So we are distilling, refining, turning our healthy, holistic diet of light into a highly refined version of that, and we're using that all day. It's not varying at all, it's just the same, and the properties of this light are highly, highly damaging and, as you can see, it's got a peak right at that melanopsin level which is stimulating our retinal ganglion cells all day, and that's not normal. It's not normal for us to have that type of message. And the other thing that's harmful about artificial lighting is this flicker effect, and the other thing that's harmful about artificial lighting is this flicker effect, also known as the stroboscopic effect, and that is the on and off, the flicking on and off, on and off, on and off of the light that occurs as a result of it being powered by this AC power grid that is essentially oscillating. So natural sunlight does have has zero flicker. It is a constant thermal heat source that does not flicker, and that is a problem if we're under this artificial light.
Speaker 1:And to contrast that, look at natural sunlight. Look what it's got Every time. It's got blue, it's got green, it's got heaps of red, it's got this massive amount of infrared which is not even visible to our, to our eyes, and it's also got uv, which is in itself extremely important for our health and is probably why complex life evolved back in the cambrian explosion, which is um a massive new amount of energy that life could make use of to operate in various ways and forms. And really look at what natural sunlight does throughout the day it changes. It changes in its color, temperature and in its wavelength and intensity and, like I mentioned, it's always paired with the blue light, is always paired with this non-visible infrared, and it's also paired with red. So I hope that makes sense and I'm really really happy to take any specific questions right now.
