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
92. Sun Exposure: Rethinking Dermatology's Core Principles | Zaid K. Dahhaj
Dr Max Gulhane and Zaid Dahhaj explore the intricate relationship between circadian biology, sun exposure, and skin health. They discuss the contradictions in current sun exposure recommendations, the role of melanin as a protective factor, and the importance of aligning circadian rhythms for optimal skin function.
The conversation also delves into the impact of diet on photosensitivity and the potential links between lifestyle choices and skin cancer. Overall, the discussion emphasizes a holistic approach to health that incorporates understanding the body's natural rhythms and the benefits of sunlight.
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TIMESTAMPS
00:02:15 Podcast begins
00:05:04 Contradictions in Sun Exposure Recommendations
00:08:16 The Skin as a Circadian Organ
00:11:04 Circadian Control and Cancer Prevention
00:14:11 The Role of Melanin in Skin Health
00:17:00 Understanding Skin Adaptations to Sunlight
00:21:16 The Importance of Hormesis in Sun Exposure
00:24:06 Nuances of Sun Exposure and Skin Cancer
00:27:17 The Role of Red and Infrared Light
00:30:23 Melanin: Nature's Protective Mechanism
00:33:25 The Complexity of Skin Cancer and Sun Exposure
00:44:59 The Role of Immune Function in Cancer Defense
00:46:13 Understanding Skin Types and UV Exposure
00:49:18 Circadian Alignment and Skin Health
00:52:23 The Eye-Skin Connection and Melanin Production
00:55:12 The Importance of Circadian Timing
01:00:14 Building a Solar Callus Safely
01:04:08 Diet's Impact on Photosensitivity
01:11:13 Melanoma and Immune Dysfunction
01:19:12 Exploring Ferroptosis and Circadian Health
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Okay, welcome back to the Regenerative Health Podcast. Today I'm speaking again with Zaid Dahaj. Now he's a health coach, he is a heliotherapist and circadian health and circadian biology educator. So, Zaid, welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you, max. Always a good time to chop it up with you and discuss these various topics and, yeah, I'm super excited.
Speaker 1:So I've been really impressed by, by Zaid, your recent emails just a whole bunch of really high quality analysis and really picking apart what I think we both agree are some contradictions and holes in the narratives with respect to sun exposure. So let's just run this and give us an overview of what you've been thinking about in terms of some of the most important contradictions between what we're advised to do with respect to sun exposure and health and what maybe is closer to the truth you know over the past year or so, ever since we had our last episode together, is certainly you know more of the foundational knowledge involved with circadian biology, but more so applying that to centralized orthodoxy in regards to what they actually recommend and believe.
Speaker 2:And I think that when you break down their understanding of these subjects it's not.
Speaker 2:I mean it takes about five to 10 minutes to understand that it's completely divorced from circadian biology and just first principles, thinking of how biological systems actually work through a circadian lens.
Speaker 2:For me, exposing those contradictions is very important because it really goes to show that the modern curriculum doesn't involve these foundational circadian subjects. Circadian subjects and even more important to that, I mean I've been exploring things like hyperpigmentation, melasma, these sort of manifestations that are at the edge of people's understandings, especially from a circadian lens. But lo and behold, like if you actually do explore it through that circadian lens, you begin to have a more accurate or directionally accurate understanding of what's going on. It begins to make a lot more sense in my mind compared to centralized recommendations and philosophy and then, outside of that, just learning about how different wavelengths within the solar spectrum interact with each other synergistically. I think that's a big subject that many people don't cover because we're so myopically focused on, like red or infrared light therapy, uv in isolation, blue in isolation but there's a real magic and synergistic effect when we have all these wavelengths together within the full spectrum.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's definitely true. The idea of the skin having a circadian clock is not one that any dermatologist or skin doctor that I've talked to has any inkling or idea about. So speak to that idea and why is it relevant when we're talking about sun exposure?
Speaker 2:Well, it's pretty crazy when you think about it, because, I mean, the role of a dermatologist is to really understand the skin from a first principles perspective and, more so, diagnose certain manifestations that happen with the skin, right, but this is, I think, one of their blind spots because of the fact that they don't have circadian biology within their curriculum. It's just that they don't understand that the skin is a circadian organ. First and foremost. It's light sensing, meaning there are many options within the skin barrier, along with many different aspects of the skin that are under circadian control. And so that's a glaring contradiction in my mind, which leads to, in my opinion, iatrogenic recommendations on the back end, whether it's a sunscreen use, sun avoidance, so forth.
Speaker 2:And I do think this is one of those manifestations that occurs because of history. If you look back to the past, in the 1910 Flexner Report, you know there was a real bias towards allopathic medicine that revolved around big pharma and pharmaceutical drugs, surgery and the more holistic route was ousted to the side, essentially, and demonized. And so for me, I think it's kind of crazy that we have centralized dermatologists but we don't have any decentralized dermatologists. For the most part. There are a few exceptions, a few unicorns out there, but the fact that we completely divorce circadian mechanisms from the skin barrier, knowing it's a circadian organ that deals with time, deals with circadian mechanisms, senses light and uses it in various ways you also have melanin in the discussion as well that's just insanity and to me. I don't think you can come up with an accurate epistemological framework unless you do include the circadian foundation in the skin barrier that.
Speaker 1:But I guess the subject of this discussion is holistic health and the holistic perspective on how we can use the sun to improve our health. And from my point of view and your point of view, I think, because we share the same perspective is that if we are hyper-focused on potential detriments of sun exposure, using a pathological dermatological lens that lacks circadian nuance, then we're going to get a distorted advice and a distorted image of sun exposure and sun use. So let's drill it down for people. Let's really go into the physiology and the circadian biology of what we're talking about. With respect to skin function, why does it matter that your circadian rhythm should be aligned for your skin to function optimally in sunlight exposure?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean, look, if we follow the logical assumption that the skin is a circadian organ that is light sensing inherently and that operates through circadian mechanisms, then we need to understand that the entire light and dark cycle is a part of that equation, and so the skin barrier cannot be reduced to just one part of the day or one part of the night. It needs to encompass the full scope of this work in terms of the overall individual's day. And so for me, if you look at, like every one of the mechanisms involved with how the skin works, there's always this nice push and pull between various processes, and so I do believe that the skin barrier revolves around this concept of hormesis and hormetic stress.
Speaker 2:If you take a look at I mean, you know you've talked about how the thymine dimer subject is kind of myopic in terms of how centralized orthodoxy views it, whereas on the back end of that you have things like vitamin D3, you have nucleotide excision repair, you have the nighttime darkness, which actually repairs the skin barrier comprehensively, and so there's always a push and pull in this biological system that involves the skin, hypodermis, the dermis, hypodermis.
Speaker 2:All these aspects contain some sort of circadian mechanism at its most fundamental layer, and so you look at things like melanopsin, the blue light sensor, encephalopsin, neuropsin, fibroblasts, melanocytes all of these things are under circadian control, and even more than that, I think. They're specifically tuned to circadian timing signals during the daytime and also during the nighttime. And so if we look at modern society and how most people live, it's completely divorced from how we were supposed to live from an evolutionary standpoint. And so you have people who either go out during the midday at the highest intensity UV without the AM sunlight to prime the skin and most certainly without the darkness at night to repair the skin, and so that's a problem for many different angles that can then lead to these sort of weird manifestations like vitiligo or hyperpigmentation. But either way I mean you look through the literature there's a substantial amount of evidence to show that the skin barrier is under circadian control in very intricate ways.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and to put it even, to put it in a different way, we talk about circadian control in very intricate ways. Yeah, and to put it in a different way, we talk about circadian biology and this idea that the eyes and light through the eyes is the key zeitgeber or information giver to help program the body's circadian rhythm. But what Zaid and I are saying is essentially that, in addition to that primary clock in the suprachiasmatic nucleus, we have these clocks in all our other organs and the skin is no exception and that means these functions that we're talking about. So the replication of keratinocytes in their niche and the ascent of those keratinocytes, the production of key growth factors, of activity of melanocytes and fibroblasts. This is all designed to happen at a specific time of day, and the point that I think is relevant here is that if you don't get light in the eye and on the skin at the morning and progressively throughout the day, and then no light at all during the evening, then you're going to disrupt these circadian functions.
Speaker 2:And yeah, you talk about circadian skin clocks. I mean, look, at the end of the day, they really do dictate, arguably, all of the function that's involved with not only the functioning of these various mechanisms within the skin barrier but also the repair cycles. And so if you chronically destroy the circadian skin clocks, then you chronically destroy your skin over a long enough timeframe. And that's not controversial, in the least to say, because, again, if you dig through the literature, all this stuff is well-founded.
Speaker 1:You had a great email that also talks about the circadian control of cancer, oncogenesis and essential cancer prevention, and this is a topic I raised in my recent talk at Regenerate, titled Beyond Skin Deep, and I think we both made the same point in using sources from different review articles but highlighting the same pathway, which is that it turns out that P53, the so-called guardian of the genome, these key oncogene and essential preventers of the cancerous process, require optimal circadian signaling, and the translation for that that I gave was that if you're having a disrupted circadian rhythm, if you have social jet lag, if you have light at night, then you're inherently not going to be able to potentially repair or surveil cancerous cells as optimally.
Speaker 2:It's another wild fact of just circadian biology in general. If you look at all anti-cancer processes this is something I've also latched onto a lot more recently, especially when it comes to battling more of the centralized ideas all anti-cancer processes, whether it's autophagy, apoptosis, tumor suppression, what DNA repair cycles, cell cycle checkpoints, you name it, you go down the entire list they're all under circadian control and it only makes sense when you consider that we are a circadian diurnal species evolved in a specific environment that is directly tied to an environment that creates circadian alignment, right? So for me, that's the one fact that really blew my mind wide open, because it explains a lot of the things that we see in society today, whether it be the chronic or the skyrocketing rates of melanoma, bcc, scc, all forms of skin cancer and cancer in general, right. And I think when you understand the circadian perspective, along with the detriments of circadian disruption on a chronic scale, then a lot of these things begin to make a lot more sense.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and you made a point about checkpoints, and maybe I'll put a placeholder here for future discussion or later in this conversation. But it turns out that the most effective therapy for metastatic melanoma that is being currently used are these checkpoint inhibitor drugs, and they can be incredibly effective. And so that makes us think that if patients with metastatic melanoma are improving when we use an immunotherapy, an immune system manipulation, to essentially assist in the body's immune system function, and that is sufficient to kill metastatic melanoma, then it really speaks to again, from first principles, exactly what you just said, zaid, which is how about we align our circadian rhythm so that we don't need a drug for our immune system to adequately kill these cancerous cells?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had no idea. And that's an incredible fact right there, because again it goes to show that I think nature has a lot of things figured out according to how we evolved as a species. But you know, when you throw in modern society, you throw in the advent of LEDs and all this other stuff, it's going to throw off some very intricate and complex mechanisms within the body. And this is also something I'm beginning to appreciate more, which is the subject of systems thinking Like we can't go into a system and recklessly throw in this reductive input and expect a good outcome all the time. There are always going to be some sort of backfiring mechanism. There are second and third order consequences that are always involved. Sort of backfiring mechanism. There are second and third order consequences that are always involved. And so we need to understand that not only is the solar spectrum a system, it's also a system that interacts with the skin barrier along with the body, which is a system in and of itself as well.
Speaker 1:So there's some very complex dynamics going on here Exactly, and before we maybe I'll say a quick word about bowel cancer. I mean, there's an explosion of what is being called early onset colorectal cancer, eocrc and essentially the incidence is massively rising in people under the age of 50, traditionally under the age of 40, even so much so that they keep reducing the age of bowel cancer screening and they want to keep doing it here. It's age 45 and they want to lower it to 40 eventually. But nowhere in the discussion's aid is melatonin and the circadian control of cancer defense and oncogene prevention prevention of oncogenesis. They keep talking about red meat and, you know, diets lacking fiber, but where is the discussion about the biggest overarching ways that the body deals with cancerous and precancerous cells?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, look, this is why I go back to the 1910 Flexner Report. Like I'm going to say, I don't understand everything about it. I don't understand all the potential effects that it's had't understand all the potential effects that it's had. Maybe it's had positive effects on medicine.
Speaker 2:You know it certainly had some negative ones, but I think one of the negative ones involved with these certain individuals like JD Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie and the I guess the incentives behind that is this reductive, mechanistic and robotic view of the body at large, and I think that's a big problem when you try to think about the system as complex as the human body, because you miss out on so much Like this is why, for example, the dermatologists say that melanin is a sign of either skin or DNA damage, but they don't understand the bigger picture through holism, which shows that it's a hormetic adaptation that then offers so much other benefit on the back end. And so for me, there's this huge problem with this reductive view of biology and the human body, and so we need to bring it back to a more holistic viewpoint, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and dermatology isn't the only specialty guilty of this thinking. It's inherent in Western medicine as it exists at the moment. So let's talk about these specific skin adaptations. What is the skin expecting? We talked about it. It's got this photosensing ability. It's essentially timed to do different functions at different times of the day. So talk about what the different light wavelengths. If we're doing things correctly. What does that look like?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean we start at the morning time where I think that's like the first domino that we push in order to start circadian alignment. Right, you have sunrise, which is anywhere between like zero to 10 degrees. You know, you have mostly a spectrum where red and infrared is, I mean, most abundant. I mean arguably up to like 60 to 80% of the spectrum is red and infrared at that time.
Speaker 2:And so what is the function of red and infrared? Number one it's to precondition cells to, you know, accept or be prepared for UV exposure. Like there's that famous study that I point to, 1998 Journal of Investigative Dermatology, that shows that when you precondition cells with near infrared light, cytotoxicity after about three sessions of that exposure is almost non-existent from UV and isolation. And so there's always this synergistic balance between these different wavelengths within the solar spectrum and then also in accordance to circadian timing. And so when you're out during sunrise you get that, that you get that spectrum peripherally through the eyes and then you get it onto the skin. You're creating circadian alignment within the entire system. And so there are many different points to this discussion. I mean you have retinine for red stimulating collagen, elastin, hyaluronic acid within the skin barrier. You have the production of filigree and uricanic acid, two skin proteins which are highly moisturizing and protective of the skin.
Speaker 2:And then, I think, because you set those circadian skin clocks to such a correct degree in terms of their timing, you're able to gradually, you know, adapt yourself to that eventual midday UV portion. This isn't to say that you have to sunbathe during the midday portion, but it makes you a lot more resilient to that and, more importantly, it opens you up to having more leverage in terms of gaining that hormetic adaptation which I think is the most important thing here. So that's the morning time. There's a lot to go on that end. You know you have the midday, which from my perspective, is something that has to be approached progressively and intentionally, in the same way that you would train right.
Speaker 2:And then, if you look at, like all the anti-cancer processes or all these hormetic processes within the skin barrier, they're most upregulated during midday UV, when you have the highest intensity radiation from the sun, which only makes sense. I mean, this is why there is a longstanding recommendation of having to give people radiological assessments during that midday portion so that their body's most able to deal with that radiation. And then, outside of that, you go to the nighttime and you have just systemic skin barrier regeneration. I mean darkness at night, sleep, that's what actually regenerates the entire skin barrier comprehensively. And so the solar spectrum goes through various light differences, let's say. But if you are in circadian alignment, then you understand that every bit of the day and the night is there for a very precise reason in terms of how your body responds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 1:And maybe to add even more color to that picture and you mentioned a great study there's another study that used isolated red and preconditioned the skin with this red LED and then administered ultraviolet A and B again an artificial source but was able to obtain in these skin type ones up to SPF 15 equivalent.
Speaker 1:So the use of the red light, it turned on these fibroblasts, it helped them upregulate collagenase and these other enzymatic processes and therefore when the UV came, the skin was essentially even more protected. The other thing that again I add even more color to what you've just said is that as we go from the morning, which is, as you said, dominated three to one by non-visible to visible photons, and then really rich in red and infrared, we get UVA before we get UVB. And I think the body has also done something very unique which is essentially developed this immediate pigment darkening process, which seems to relate to oxidation of existing melanin granules, which is again almost a really elegant pre-arrival to the more intense UVB that's more likely to induce erythema and burning. So even within that UV response there's a nuance and a gradient. It's like mother nature has prepared us for every aspect of this solar arc.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, the one thing I found shocking about that 1998 study with near-infrared light removing cytotoxicity from UV is that, you know, when these cells were introduced to near-infrared the protection was almost immediate, and then the protection was cumulative, meaning that it ramped up all the way up to about 24 hours and then, at its highest peak, it maintained that protection for the next three days. So if we extrapolate that and we think about how people in circadian alignment live their lives, I mean you're spending upwards of 30, 40, 50 minutes during sunrise, most of the skin exposed, and then you're gradually and progressively getting that UV. I mean you're in the best position possible in order to gain the most hormetic adaptation right, and then you stack darkness on top of that at night and you have somebody who is in true alignment, who is able to get the most out of how their biology actually works from a circadian lens. So there are many different points to this subject, but I think it's just incredible how intricate and sophisticated the body is in terms of dealing with this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love how you framed it in the notion that it's allowing the body to accept more hormetic stress.
Speaker 1:And that's how I also think about the solar callus, which is, once we've built up a tan, it's really allowing us to soak in more UV light, more ultraviolet energy, without having a deleterious effect. It's as you said. It'll make us like, once you're able to deadlift, you know, 100, 130 kilograms, you can do more reps at that weight and you can get the benefits of axial loading on your skeleton and improving bone mineral density. You can get all these you know neurocognitive benefits of weight lifting because you've gone through the effort of developing that muscle strength to, uh, to be able to lift that much. And the same thing is is going on here, which is, once you've built up that tan, you can suddenly now be in more ultraviolet light and that ultraviolet light, that full spectrum sunlight, is getting to work, potentially doing a whole range of very important things, from suppressing appetite centrally, from building these coherent domains in water, from you name it it's helping producing these melanocortin peptides. So I think that's a really important point that we really should emphasize.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think the great divide between centralized medicine's understanding of sunlight versus decentralized medicine today is this real difference between distress and eustress. And it's always shocking to me how you can have somebody who goes through 20 years of medical education, in terms of whatever specialty they have, and for some reason they have not. I mean, the dermatologists are a perfect example of this. By and large, they have not differentiated between distress and eustress. They, by and large, they have not differentiated between distress and eustress.
Speaker 2:To say that melanin is a sign of skin or DNA damage is to frame it as damage to the organism, aka distress. But if you take the decentralized perspective, that is hormesis. That's a, you know, hormetic adaptation that creates a stronger and healthier organism. So I think we can apply that, I guess, foundational heuristic or knowledge to all these different subjects because, again, the body does have this perfect balance of push and pull. So long as you understand this work and you're in circadian alignment, if you're somebody who lives like the average American or, you know, Australian, then you're obviously going to be in chronic circadian disruption, which then can make things worse to the degree that you think that sunlight is causing a manifestation like hyperpigmentation or something of that nature.
Speaker 1:Let's talk a little bit about.
Speaker 1:Actually, before we move on to this point, I want to make a mention of the near-infrared study and this idea of how prolonged benefit can occur from getting this longer wavelength light.
Speaker 1:It also calls to mind Glenn Jeffries' work with red light and retinal function and his recommendation, based on his research, is that as little as three minutes a week of red light into the eyes can essentially offer or convey this benefit of preventing loss of retinal cells and promoting retinal health. So when we put it that way and we think about how so much of the scientific literature is that demonstrates the harm of ultraviolet light, then I really think that the vast majority of this literature isn't doing a fair test. It's not doing really robust scientific investigation, because rarely in nature and in ancestral past and in evolution were we suddenly getting a high dose of UV and then no red or infrared. It was always, as you said, in the context of a whole morning's worth of massive amount of this light and that would have reduced not only those DNA cyclobutane pyridine dimers, the DNA damage from UVB, but it also would have reduced the oxidative stress which is classically blamed for UVA's damage to DNA strands.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, there's this book called, I think it's, the Structure of Scientific Revolutions by, I believe, thomas Kuhn. It's a book that I recently got into, but he talks about how scientific revolutions come around. And so there's this you know, you have the foundational knowledge within a given area, you have the experts, you have the scientific wizards and top of their class individuals, but then you have the heretic, the individual who comes around and starts to question the foundational knowledge, which I view us as heretics, essentially according to centralized orthodoxy, because we're coming around and saying that, through the circadian lens, things like melanin, things like UV light, all of these things are hormetic in nature and, more importantly, they're supported by various aspects of the literature. And so I think that's a big point to understand, because there's a reason why there's so much pushback on our takes, and I think that's because of that reductive philosophy and the fact that we are basically throwing a you know, a monkey wrench into that whole situation yeah, yeah, the.
Speaker 1:I think the archetype of the sign, the heretic is it. And when it comes to um, science and medicine, was the um, was the researcher in in hungary who essentially developed, was it was a hungry uh who advocated for hand washing prior to cadaverous dissection. If you just delivered a baby or you're about to go and deliver a baby and you know without his, you know insistence and thinking from first principles, you know we wouldn't have or we would have delayed that discovery for a long time. But at the time he was chucked out and I think he died in an insane asylum if I'm not wrong.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and that's what the mob I guess the mob rule or the consensus will do to you. But no, I agree completely. So I want to hear your thoughts and explanations for the audience on why cultivating melanin and what melanin is doing. What are the benefits, mechanistically, that having more melanin in our epidermis can offer us?
Speaker 2:Well, if you look at a visual breakdown of how melanin works, I mean it's pretty incredible because you look at how it moves throughout the skin barrier and it almost creates this umbrella over these key mechanisms and processes within the skin barrier, and so there's certainly a protective effect. I mean, if you want to talk about how melanin is the ultimate sunstream that nature provides, I mean there's a clear argument for that. You have eumelanin, which is in the blacks and browns in nature blocks 99.9% of UV light, while also using the rest of it for systemic function. You know, pheomelanin lighter skin people reds, pinks, yellows, oranges in nature is much less protective, around like 20 to 40%. But I do think that, from an anecdotal perspective, I've seen people who are redheads, who avoid burns completely and manage to get high UV index sun exposure with no problem whatsoever. So there's a lot to explore on that end.
Speaker 2:But I think that the radio protective aspect of it, meaning protective against radiation is something that we can't ignore. That's foundational. And then you go down the list you have you know the fact that it's an energy transducer. You go down the list you have um, you know the fact that it's. It's an energy transducer transducer. It can take electromagnetic energy from the sun and turn it into a usable form of energy for the body. There's all this talk about how we can generate free electrons, photoelectric effect. That stuff I haven't really dived into too deeply on, but um, outside of that, I mean it shows potential for being anti-venom, anti-cancer, antioxidant for sure, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, antiviral. There are even fungus in Chernobyl that are managing to use nuclear radiation to grow through melanin.
Speaker 2:So I mean I think through the literature it's just obvious that there's so much more to melanin. It's certainly not a sign of skin damage or DNA damage. I think that's a very reductive way to view it. I think it's a hormetic adaptation, that is, it's almost like nature's most incredible technology. It's just such an incredible biological polymer and it offers us so much, which means that not only can we get the protective effects so we don't burn all skin types, but it also means we have more leverage to spend more time in the sun, which, as we get older, discussing mitochondrial heteroplasmy, that's an important subject. We need to be out in the sun more as we age, and so there's so much to the melanin discussion, but it's nature's most incredible invention in my opinion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I want to add another function in addition to that long laundry list that you presented, which is this purported benefit of heavy metal shedding and this idea that if melanin and we know that melanin essentially binds c eumelanin pigmentation, particularly in the hair, as a means of excreting, chelating and then excreting heavy metals that were ingested in a littoral lifestyle, in a habitat where we were scavenging at the sea, eating mollusks, eating other forms of seafood, getting massive benefits from all that zinc, selenium, getting massive benefits from all their zinc, selenium and iodine and DHA, but potentially also getting some lead, cadmium, arsenic and mercury.
Speaker 1:And so what they think and I think there's robust science to back this up is that the darkly pigmented hair follicle and the fact that most of the world Asia, latin America, south America, central America do have black hair Australian Aborigines and was a mechanism by which the body could bind and then get rid of these heavy metals and detour through the epidermis, as you talked about in terms of the anatomy of the skin.
Speaker 1:In the epidermis, the keratinocytes are essentially pushing up like an elevating staircase and getting shed off, and that is one of the key defense barriers of the skin and the key UV barriers of the skin, the stratum corneum. So how elegant is that If the body is grabbing that lead, it's grabbing that mercury, it's binding it with melanin and then dumping it off into the ether where it can't do any harm? I think the most solid circumstantial evidence for this benefit is in animal observations, where we know that pigeons do this. Pigeons in heavily polluted areas become darker and they're essentially excreting more pigment. I saw a study that sea snakes in polluted water become more pigmented for the same reason, and I do know of a cell culture experiment showing that on introduction of particulate pollution, the in vitro melanocyte cell culture actually it was ex-plants, it was ex vivo skin became more pigmented. So how's?
Speaker 1:that for for an amazing skin technology.
Speaker 2:You know, I've often wondered if if that does actually have a potential backfiring effect. If somebody is in this state of chronic circadian disruption right, I mean, if it's, if melanin is is taking in these heavy metals and adsorbing them to a certain degree, is there a backfiring effect in terms of being able to, like, hold on to too many of the, or too much load of that heavy metal toxicity because your detox systems aren't working, which also happened to be under circadian control? So that's also something that goes through my head. There's like there's so many different things that you know you can explore on that end, which goes to show how much we don't know relative to, you know, our basic understanding of this work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it gets to the heart of this idea of tanning is skin cells and trauma. I mean, that was an advert on TV that in Australia we essentially grew up with and I really think it's a half-truth. You said the same thing in different words, but it's really a half-truth. That is framing. Any form of tanning is detrimental but, as you've explained, zaid, we're getting all these benefits from cultivating melanin. The body is essentially being able to do all these functions antioxidant functions, antimicrobial functions, energy harvesting functions that it wouldn't do if it didn't have as much melanin. So I think people who naturally see someone and say, oh, you've got a healthy tan or you look really healthy, have you been on holiday I think that's some uneducated or ignorant but in a kind of unindoctrinated way, seeing past this BS, messaging and appreciating that hang on, that is a sign of health. That is someone who is chelating their heavy metals.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know, one of the contradictions that I find in centralized orthodoxy, especially when it comes to dermatology, is this idea that melanin increases your risk of skin cancer by substantial amount over time, but then when you look through the literature, it's anti-tumor. So so how do we square away those two things right and go down the list of what dermatology talks about? I mean, you could talk about how they're saying that a sunburn at five years old increases your risk of skin cancer by like 4,000% over the lifetime, but when you look at how they're actually taking that assumption, the research that they're using, it's just, you know, epidemiological, observational, associational in nature.
Speaker 2:So it's not even a causal link.
Speaker 1:Well, there's some key biases and confounding that potentially are at play here. Someone gets diagnosed with malignant melanoma and they essentially recall and there's recall bias about they're going to say that they were potentially in more sun than they otherwise would have been. So that's particularly with these case control studies. But you get potential exacerbation or confounding that really muddies the waters when it comes to associating sun exposure with melanoma risk. In my talk at Regener at regenerative made the point that here in australia the average age of diagnosis in men I believe, is 68 so age 68.
Speaker 1:So you know, what is probably happening is that pale people fitzpatrick to european explants in australia, an area of really high uv, maybe got burnt badly as a child and spent 40 years in an office as an accountant under artificial lighting, under compact fluorescent lamps, developed vitamin D deficiency because they had an inadequate amount of full spectrum sunlight, probably ate a whole bunch of seed oils and processed carbs, melatonin deficiency on top of that Exactly Light at night, so that the melatonin function, autophagy and opitosis are broken and then get diagnosed in a non-sun exposed area with a superficial or a nodular spreading melanoma or nodular melanoma. And that is not a healthy person and that is not someone who's used the sun in an ancestrally appropriate manner.
Speaker 2:And you know I'm willing to go on the edge of I mean I'm willing to state this. So far, I mean, I don't think that there's ever been a study showing a causal link between sunburn and skin cancers. I've tried to find them. They're all either epidemiological, you know, observational, and so there's a lot of these things where they say it's a bona fide fact, but they use isolated UV on nocturnal animals or skin cell cultures under isolated blue in labs with non-native EMF around, but they say that full spectrum sunlight is the end all cause of that manifestation. And then I think you can apply the same to sunburns. Now, do we want a sunburn? Of course not. I think it's a case of an acute injury of the skin. But I think even the science on that is still very shaky, which we need to go deeper into that as well.
Speaker 1:So I mean I think let's unpack this, because I want to be really clear about my perspective too. I guess we might need to. This is a good opportunity to employ another mental model in terms of cause and this component-cause model. So there's components, causes, there's sufficient and there's necessary causes. So I think sun exposure and UV exposure is a necessary cause of most skin cancer, particularly non-melanoma skin cancer, so the basal and the squamous cell carcinomas, meaning that without any sun exposure, I don't think that cancer would have happened. However, does that mean that it is the only factor at play? Absolutely not, Because I've seen personally. I've been in dermatology and skin cancer clinics and I've seen two patients, or I've seen a patient who has had a certain amount of sun exposure, certain lifestyle habits and, in and out, every six months or sooner, getting precancerous and cancerous lesions excised or cryotherapy off him.
Speaker 1:And yet, speaking to the treating dermatologist's, there's people that have had the exact same exposure and, uh, have had no problems so um, yes, there's genetic factors at play, but uh, you know all, all fact, all genetic or family history being equal, there's still someone that has certain traits that have ensure that they keep getting cancer skin cancers and I think that's when it comes what what we're talking about comes into play. I think that's the person who is under the artificial light, who's eating the hydroterium, seed oils and processed foods, who is doing everything wrong from a skin cancer point of view, but that's specifically with respect to non-melanoma skin cancer.
Speaker 2:So sorry to interrupt, but would it be more accurate or directionally accurate to say that sunburns can kind of be viewed as cholesterol in the context of heart disease? Like it happens to be in the environment, it happens to be involved in the whole scenario, but we can't really say that either cholesterol causes heart disease. I think there are many holes in that understanding. But in the same line we can't also say that sunburns necessarily cause these non-melanoma skin cancers. Am I correct in thinking that?
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, there's another aspect to this. So there are certain tumor mutation signatures that non-melanoma skin cancers have, which correspond to those DNA strand breaks like the TT or whatever they are. So there's certain signatures that would suggest that that is UV, light-derived DNA damage. But the issue here is that, again, you can have two people that had the same exposures, but why is one not developing skin cancer? And I think, the point being that it's a host susceptibility factor, it's the terrain, it's the inadequate or poor immune function and skin cancer surveillance function in that individual that made him develop cancer. So, yes, it's necessary, but it's not sufficient. That's the point I'm making with respect to this causal model.
Speaker 2:It makes sense All of these things, especially cancer I mean, it's one of the most complex disease manifestations ever that we know of. So it only makes sense that all of these things come into play. And yeah, I'm glad you clarified that because I think that's you know, I'm certainly not a believer that sunscreen causes like skin cancers, for example. I think that's where influencers can take the message and just go way too wild with it. I don't think the literature reflects that. But there's a lot more to dive into. There's a lot. Nuance is the key word. Nuance is really the key word into Nuance is the key word.
Speaker 1:It is. Nuance is really the key word. It is Again. In Australia we've got a massive amount of it.
Speaker 1:I'm very careful in delivering a nuanced message. I think epistemologically one of the most useful arguments or ways to view this is patients like transplant recipients, because these are patients who get massive amounts of skin cancer on exposure to UV light and we know how they are essentially hampered is because they're on immunosuppressing medications. They're on these calcium urine inhibitors, they're on these medications that are impairing their T cell function. So that really makes sense when we understand cancer as a problem of inadequate immune surveillance and destruction in many ways. So I think that that's also helpful.
Speaker 1:And then another helpful way is looking at a condition like xeroderma pigmentosum, which is a base excision repair enzyme mutation, and those patients get extreme photosensitivity and they get sunlight earlier in life Golan syndrome. So Golan syndrome, I believe, is a patch repair enzyme mutation. These patients get basal cell carcinomas very, very, very early. So again, just looking at this from different angles, it speaks to how important immune system function is to cancer defense and skin cancer defense. And the irony and here's bringing it back to earlier in the conversation is how do you help augment your immune system function and upregulate those base enzyme repair was through vitamin D in the secosteroid cousins, which you can only get from UVB light.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it. Only it lends credence to the idea that UV is just a hormetic stressor. I mean that I think makes the most sense. Hormetic stressor, I mean that I think makes the most sense. And you know you have to. There are certain scenarios where that doesn't apply to the individual, where you know they can be seriously harmed because of the given circumstances. But I think by and large people need to understand circadian alignment and how that fits into the whole understanding of UV as a eustressor to then make the most of it. You know, from a health perspective.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And I think the other nuance and the key point that I kind of convey is just helping people understand their skin type and their ancestry. Because if we do look at the amount of melanin that is essentially endowed on different people by birth and by genetics, it's something like a 60-fold difference between the type 1s and the type 6s, meaning the North European Europeans, compared to the West Africans or the Sudanese and Australian aboriginals. It's 60 times and that matters, that matters. And I think, zaid, if you do have a really pale person, like a lot of Australians who literally are in UV index of 12 sun all year, their ancestry expected a uv of six for like a week.
Speaker 2:yeah, absolutely so it's a massive mismatch yeah. So so do you think somebody who has a a very you know somebody who's lighter skinned, let's say a redhead do you think that they can thrive with the understanding of the circadian principles in an environment like that, and do you think they can adequately put themselves in a position to where they're thrive with the understanding of the circadian principles in an environment like that, and do you think they can adequately put themselves in a position to where they're most protected from these non-melanoma skin cancers and whatnot?
Speaker 1:I saw a guy that was probably our age in the clinic and he was a type one redhead and he worked up in the Northern Territory, so near Darwin, outdoor worker, really, really heavy UV exposure, very, very tanned. But he started developing solar keratosis. He came to me and he was like dude, what's this? And he had a solar keratosis or an acatemic keratosis on his forearm. And this guy was in his again. He wasn't past the age of 35.
Speaker 1:And you know I spoke to him a bit about him. I talked about his diet and you know he loved hot chips. He loved, you know we call it the. Yeah, the. You know the lunch, this like deep fried lunch, kind of a hot box here, and you know it's common in manual workers or anyone who likes to want a quick lunch. So this guy's obviously having a whole heap of seed oils in his diet. Like anyone, he's probably flicking on his phone late at night, but the point is he was developing this lesion which is a precursor to a squamous cell carcinoma, and and it was very young. So so you know, my personal thought is that no matter how, um, what, however you cut the dice, someone who's a type one has got a smaller buffer for developing a skin cancer than a type six I I don't think anyone can argue with that. But if they do everything right and they, you know, and they they use the shade and they align things from a circadian point of view, I believe they can prevent getting both melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I do agree with that. It only makes sense considering the discussion of haplotypes, ancestry, all that stuff. And I've just been fascinated by the anecdotal stories that I've received from many different people implementing the circadian protocol, because, you know, I have many redheads coming to me who say that they avoid sunburns altogether after having a long history of being, you know, sunburned very easily. I think most people can definitely achieve that, but even then like just positive results across the board to where they can handle a lot more UV. But again, I do have to. This is why I like to explore the nuance and go into different territories so that I can have a more accurate framework to then talk to individuals like that, because it's a very important subject, obviously.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Talk about some of these anecdotes, because we just had our circadian health retreat and someone who attended made the comment that he was a keen fisherman, he loved fishing and that one time that he wore sunglasses on his fishing boat obviously without a shirt on he burnt badly, and prior to that, whenever he hadn't worn sunnies, then he wasn't burning. So I'm sure you've heard that anecdote as well. Can you talk to some of your stories?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, plenty of times. I mean people who are blue-eyed, blonde-haired, light-skinned. They remove the sunglasses, they stop burning. There are also other factors involved with that, but I think some people can certainly just remove the sunglasses from the lifestyle equation and they stop burning altogether. It makes sense, considering the mechanisms we've talked about with MSH and all that stuff Riff on that, because we didn't go in depth in it.
Speaker 1:Talk about this axis.
Speaker 2:Sure. So for me I try to explain this in the most simple manner. I mean you have UV light as a peripheral signal into the eyes. The eyes are a circadian light sensing mechanism, and so you have mitochondria, melanin opsins, in the eye that are designed to sense full spectrum sunlight peripherally, right. And so once you get UV light from a circadian timing perspective into the eyes peripherally, that's where you activate POMC I mean not only in the brain but also in the skin as well and so that's where you start the process of making melanin. So you have adequate and appropriate circadian timing to where you begin the whole adaptation process. So you become protected from a very real perspective. On that, you know, on that angle.
Speaker 2:But if you prevent yourself from getting that UV signal peripherally into the eyes, then you prevent the signal for melanogenesis, and so that's a big problem, because melanin is radio protective. Why would you want to block the very thing that is most effective at blocking radiation from the sun, right? So for me, I think that's a good explanation of it, and also we have to understand this access of how the skin, eyes and brain are just essentially one unit, and so circadian timing has massive effects on how those three things interact with one another. If you, you know, use sunglasses or sunscreen, in my opinion, then you start the process of breaking apart that trio and so you, you almost remove one leg of the stool and then you cease to have a stool altogether. So for me that's a, that's an important one, um, and then all all sorts of things light sensitivity people can progressively get used to full spectrum, high lux, you know.
Speaker 2:Other things like actual healing of hypo and hyperpigmentation. Vitiligo you know, narrow band UVB has been shown to repigment areas of the skin where people have vitiligo very effectively. So I think when you put all this together in this framework of circadian alignment, you can make progress in a lot of things that people just think are due to genetics. And I'm not a medical professional, but I'll say that you can heal things like hypopigmentation or hyperpigmentation very seamlessly, from what I've seen through people who have implemented this protocol.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and let's riff on this axis, this neuroendocrine organ, the eye, a little bit more, because it's so key, because a lot of people look at you in disbelief and baffled when you say to them you can potentially reduce your photosensitivity and sunburn tendency by simply removing your glasses. I really like that. You referred to the fact that the eyes and the skin have this common embryological origin in this neuroectodermal tissue and what I learned really fascinatingly, probably most, from the Slominski paper, how UV Light Touches the Brain and Eyes. And if you read that paper and it's very dense for anyone listening, but I'd encourage you to try and battle your way through it what you learn is that the skin is almost acting like the pituitary gland or like the hypothalamus in its production of all these peptide prohormones and melanocortin peptides. So what nature wants, in my opinion and this is my reading of the situation is that it wants complete congruence of the signal between the eyes and the skin so that it can align production of those melanocortins, of that to have the highest fidelity signal and the most accurate attempt at pigmenting or responding to the ambient amount of UV light.
Speaker 1:Melanogenesis is extremely energy intensive. It involves a massive amount of energy to run those tyrosinase enzymes, using copper, using all these inputs to make melanin. So it's not going to do it unless it absolutely has to. That's why people's tan fades to make melanin. So it's not going to do it unless it absolutely has to. That's why people's tan fades. But what this shows is that when the brain and the eyes have an alignment in their UV exposure, it's providing the most optimal circuit, and I think that's what the body is doing. The UV is hitting the eyes. It's like okay, let's tan, let's prepare our skin, and probably compounds melanocortins that are being produced centrally are then for influencing melanocytes peripherally to improve their tendency to tan. That's my take on it, and I know that you wrote about Fritz Holowicz's work, so maybe you can expand on that as it relates to what we just talked about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I fully agree with what you've said. I mean, the skin barrier is incredible in that sense to how it's connected to the eyes and the brain again one unit like if you don't have all three legs of the stool, you don't have a stool anymore. And so when we understand that the skin is able to produce catecholamines and dopamine, melatonin, all these various neurotransmitters and hormones and whatnot, then it begins to make sense how the entire system is made. And again, it makes sense, considering that circadian biology is all about timing the more well-timed the system according to your lifestyle, the better your health is and the better results you get.
Speaker 2:And so, going into Fritz Holtwich's work in the early 1900s, I think his work was mainly around cataracts, correct. And so he would remove cataracts from, I think, human beings and other species, and he would see that there's this very real endocrine effect on the body after you remove them. And so that also makes sense, considering that cataracts block a substantial amount of the full spectrum, and when you remove them from the equation, you see all these changes in cortisol, testosterone, estradiol, so forth. And I think it's a very powerful use case or showcase of these things, because he not only showed it in other species, but he showed it in human beings. So that's just. It's an incredibly sophisticated system that we need to really take seriously through the circadian lens.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And the way I talk about it is that this is a form of sensing environmental color and allowing the animal to coordinate its skin pigmentation in accordance with its environment. I think that was what he demonstrated in fish and in amphibians and we are obviously an extension of that lineage. Melanopsin, our blue life detector, was literally from the lineage of. You know, it's a frog chromophore. That's what Cruz told Huberman because he was unaware of that lineage. But you know we're coming from amphibians. That's why it's conserved is because we have that ability to sense blue light in the skin and in the eyes. And that was the lineage.
Speaker 1:But I think again, people using these sunglasses for cosmetic, for aesthetic reasons, maybe because Daniel Craig and James Bond wears the suit and wears the sunnies and looks like a pretty cool guy, but uh, really the the point that we're making is that if you allow that light signal to hit your eyes and skin in in an unfiltered way, then there's massive health benefits. Um, yeah, don't, don't do it in the middle of uh, you know, at at 4 000 meters on a glacier? Obviously not. There's always someone who takes it, some binary thinker that takes it to ad absurdum. But that's not what we're saying we're talking about in your general daily life, try as much as possible to implement these things and report back and tell us what you find, because, as you've said, zaid, you've seen people who have massive benefit. So have I.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in the case of sunglasses in particular, there are obviously circumstances that you need to use them, right? I mean, I think if you're in an environment with a lot of glare, it would be wise to use sunglasses occasionally to avoid that glare, because that will be damaging to the eyes. You think about being on the water, being in the desert, being at high altitude, even if you look back to the heliotherapy of the early 1900s, I mean, they used quartz lenses in the form of sunglasses. But we talked about the difference with quartz and how it allows that full spectrum through as opposed to regular sunglasses. But either way, they understood intuitively that you have to adapt according to the circumstance, right? It's not just this black and white across the board for everybody and everything.
Speaker 1:The Inuit had their carved whalebone sunglasses and they were just slits. Those two slits and that's the exact reason. Yeah, that blocked the glare but allowed the full spectrum in and these guys had. They had a very well tanned.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of great history behind this work and I think that people would benefit from just uncovering a lot of that and going deep into it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe we can talk a little bit about what else you recommend to help people get a full spectrum sunlight safely, because I've got a bit of a list that I advise people to safely build your solar callus. Obviously, the first thing is align your circadian rhythm. We've already talked about how important getting as much red and infrared from early morning AM sun on the skin before UV arrives. What are the other things that you would advise people to do? Tick those boxes to put the cards in their favor for long-term skin health and prevention of adverse effects of sun exposure.
Speaker 2:So the way I think about it, I think it's very helpful to frame it in this mental model. This has been very helpful for me. It's something that I've been thinking about a lot in relation to not only hormesis and hormetic adaptation, but also the parallels to other things like exercise. Right, sunbathing and exercise have many different parallels through the hormetic lens. And so for me, the morning time before UV comes out, that's the warmup, that's where you prime the skin for UV coming up. And then, after you do that, you know you spend most of your time outside, or most of your skin exposed, for like 15, 20, 30 minutes. This will differ if you have less experience sunbathing, if you're lighter skinned, you're going to have to spend more time out, just generally. But the midday portion, the time where you do actually sunbathe when UVA and UVB are present, that I view as the training session.
Speaker 2:So that's the exercise period where you actually put yourself under an intentional and targeted amount of stress to be able to go through this hormetic process. And so we have the morning time, the warmup, you have the midday, which is the training session. Lo and behold, the nighttime serves as the recovery period, or in the training perspective, that would be sleep. And so you have that nighttime darkness. You have sleep in order to regenerate the entire skin barrier comprehensively to then take advantage of the hormetic effect. Because if you look at training, you know if you exercise really hard but you're not sleeping a lot and you're not under darkness, you're not actually going to get the hormetic benefit. You actually then turn it into distress, which becomes a more harmful scenario for your health and system over the long term. But the moment you introduce adequate recovery, that's when you get all the benefit.
Speaker 2:And so you always have to couple this exposure to stress with that exposure to recovery, and so for me that's very helpful in terms of modeling it from a mental perspective for people, especially everyday layman people, for people, especially everyday layman people Outside of that, I would say it's largely a game of consistency, not intensity. That's the tagline in my mind that I always think about, especially when talking to beginners in this space, because people inherently just want to go out for three to four hours and try to find some sort of hack to prevent them from burning, when in reality you should not be out there for three to four hours unless you're under very good shade or you're adequately protected with clothing and whatnot, and so, for me, I think people need to have an expectation change in accordance to how they're actually going to sunbathe, and so for me, it's all about the long term, as opposed to just going fully hard in the paint over one to two weeks yeah, great point.
Speaker 1:I personally recommend again, if people have had no exposure to the sun at all and they're really starting this solar callus journey, I really encourage earlier morning and later afternoon UV bathing. So, again, depending on what your environment and I always advise people know your ancestry and know your UV environment, because if you don't know those things you're not going to be able to do this in an educated and safe way. But if you are mismatched to your environment and you have a lot less melanin, you're paler than the indigenous people of your area, then the onus is on you to use the shade enough so that you don't get burnt and perhaps after you've built up some pigmentation, then later you could do shorter sessions at higher UV intensity in the midday. Again, just mindful of your timing and mindful of having done everything that we've discussed in sequence prior to attempting that Again the point is not sunburning, sunburning is not the point.
Speaker 2:The point is not sunburning. It's sunburning in the same way that you don't want to blow a disc out when you're doing back squats, right? So for me, believe it or not, those times of lower UV maybe around like a 5, 6, 7, 8 UV for me personally I love sunbathing in those conditions much rather than a UV index of 12 or 13, because obviously you have a heat component to it. And for me, when it's hotter and it's higher UV index, then I'm naturally more likely to go for seeking shade and then seeking sun and doing that like four to five times, more likely to go for seeking shade and then seeking sun and doing that like four to five times. Whereas if I have a UV index of like five, six, seven, I just spend all day out there. For the most part I can do the same with high UV index, but again, the heat is really what drives me inside to take a break.
Speaker 1:Interesting, and I really think that this is again an ancestral adaption, because the people that could stand in a UV index of 9, 10, 11 all day have massive amounts of eumelanin that is really effectively dissipating heat, whereas you and I have melanin but I'm probably the three, you may be between a three and a four perhaps similarly, and we simply don't have the epidermal melanin to dissipate heat as well. So I think you and I are going to get and people paler than us are going to get that sensation of overwhelm, of heat stress a lot quicker than a darker skinned, say African type person. And it gets to an idea that I've really been thinking about with respect to ancestral appropriate sunbathing, which is, if you think of the Swedes type person. And it gets to an idea that I've really been thinking about with respect to ancestral appropriate sunbathing, which is, if you think of the Swedes.
Speaker 1:The Swedes, as I mentioned earlier, they get a maximum UV index of six and it's about for one week a year, and the rest of there's maybe UV light for another three or four months that year and the rest of that time there's no UV light at all. So they've built up a certain suite of adaptations that are specifically intended for that uv environment. So, um, it makes sense that maybe that person, if they, even if they move to a higher uv index area, might be in the long term best to just sunbathe at most at a six or a seven and not go into the higher realms and use the bookend their day and not use the peak to kind of really respect the ancestral niche of sun exposure. I don't know what you think about that idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I actually fully agree. I think that makes complete sense, and all this discussion here ties into, I think, a big misunderstanding. A lot of the centralized practitioners and the orthodoxy at large believes that we're just saying, yeah, get as much sun as you can at any time, who cares whether it's summer or winter? Yeah, go ahead whatever burn Like. That's not what we recommend. We actually recommend a very sensible and first principle circadian approach to where you can progressively get into this work and stick with it over the long term. Right, and so I think that's one thing that I always have to mention for some reason, because they just think we're being very reckless in terms of our advice. But again, if you look at their philosophy, it only makes sense that they think that of us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think if you extend that idea of seasonality or the day-night cycle to the season, then you have a really interesting idea which is maybe someone who is that pale needs like a couple months, a year of no UV exposure because their adaption to UV light, as well as melanin production, was also some epidermal thickening, as Alexander Wunsch has previously talked about. The thickening and thinning of the epidermis should occur naturally and seasonally as UV light arrives and disappears in their environment. Maybe they need to be making vitamin D through cold exposure which that's another whole topic to talk about through cold exposure which that's another whole topic to talk about in winter, because that is more appropriate for their skin type, whereas, again, the darkly pigmented people whose ancestors evolved in the equator are used to and can deal with heavy UV all year round.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a big seasonal component to it as well.
Speaker 2:I do have some people DMing me and saying that they're worried about wintertime, even though, like they're in a place that's relatively close to the equator, right, but, or maybe even farther away from the equator, let's say you're higher up latitude wise, people are generally worried about wintertime in terms of that vitamin D acquisition, and I always have to tell them that vitamin D is number one, a cyclical process, and so you know, during sunny months you're going to get a lot of it, you're going to absorb a lot of it into your system and store it in the body fat.
Speaker 2:You're going to get different metabolites of vitamin D that you can store for the winter time as well. But you know, when you head into the winter time we also get into the discussion that melatonin can bind to the vitamin D receptor, and so there's this almost like a switch of a program that the body can go through from a seasonal perspective to where you can get the best of both worlds. And either way, if you look at it like you're getting a lot of melatonin during the summertime through subcellular and then through circulatory at night, but then during the winter time you're obviously going to take a hit from the vitamin D3 that you produce from higher UV. But again, you can take advantage of those health benefits through wintertime melatonin and then near infrared light outside during the day as well. And so you know, nature has figured this out Like. The human body is incredibly sophisticated to where you don't have to go through the biohack route. You can just understand how your body works from a seasonal standpoint.
Speaker 1:I do, and I think it hits at the idea of why this idea of circadian rehab is so much easier at the equator, because when the temperature drops, no one's getting out. Very few people are getting out, get full spectrum sunlight, grounding, getting cold, no one's getting dark through that whole wintertime, even though that's what their circadian biology is asking of them. So the idea that relocation to a lower latitude is helpful I really think it is, because if you have stable day-night length and you have stable temperature and consistent ultraviolet light, then you can really plan this process in a much more way. And if you have a broken circadian clock and from decades of blue light, decades of technology abuse in inverted commas, then you might need some more stable circadian conditions to really heal in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, for sure, even if you're somebody who lives at higher latitude, like even taking a couple week break and going to you know a closer equator country is very fruitful. I've seen people have some really great results with that. But obviously that comes with a higher cost, that comes with a little bit more planning. But either way, there's a lot of ways to skin this cat, so to speak.
Speaker 1:I think it's essential if you're mismatched to your environment, as in you have more melanin than the natives. I use the example of Stormzy in the UK.
Speaker 1:If you're Nigerian in Great Britain, then you don't have a choice but to migrate to get some more UV light, because there is not enough UV in the environment year round to satisfy that person's needs. I've said this in other podcasts, but I really think it underlies the health disparity that we see in people of darker pigmented skin in Australia, in the UK, in the US. There's a health disparity and those people suffer disproportionately of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and I really think it's because their light needs aren't being met appropriately. I don't know what you think about that idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I fully agree. I think you can track a lot of points of evidence to that conclusion. Of course there's other things that are involved, but you know, the light portion cannot be ignored, especially considering that the circadian system is the foundation, the root cause of really how our body works. So only makes sense.
Speaker 1:What would you? Let's talk a little bit about the effect of diet on on photosensitivity, because because it's very common again on health, twitter and people who eliminate seed oils and or go fully carnivore, carnivorous diet to notice that their sun photosensitivity decreases. So what's your take on this and what have you noticed in your client encounters?
Speaker 2:It's a good question.
Speaker 2:I think it could happen because you you know you could see that result because you're just experiencing lower chronic inflammation. I wouldn't be surprised to see that outcome because you're just generally healthier if you're eating carnivore and you know you're looking for higher quality cuts of meat and you're generally more health conscious too. You could also just be seeking more of the sun, which could happen to be in the morning time, so you could be priming your skin without even knowing it, just because you're on this kick of wanting to get healthier through carnivore and you discover various things and you just want to spend more time outside. So that could be another explanation. But I do think that there's something real to the idea that if you consume highly oxidized and unstable fats in the form of refined polyunsaturated fatty acids, then your skin is going to be more susceptible to burns, and so you know. If you think about a cell membrane, you know lipid is obviously an important factor to that. I mean, how much of a cell is made up of fat? Like what? 50, 60%, if I'm right.
Speaker 1:Do you know? Yeah, I mean. I mean it's called a phospholipid bilayer, like that. It's a, it's a lipid, that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and so it only makes sense that the quality of the fat you consume dictates the quality of your, your skin barrier. And so, um, I think mitochondrial dysfunction is something that we have to consider, because you know high deuterium content from people who eat seed oils. They also, almost all the time, consume a lot of higher carbohydrate foods, typically refined and processed, and so that's something to consider. But there is a fine line between, you know, getting adequate sun exposure while not burning. In that context, If you are somebody who consumes seed oils because I'm not this person who thinks you have to cut them out entirely I don't think you have to be that strict. I've seen people just minimize them to a certain degree and they're still able to get great results without burns.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's kind of interesting because sunlight, high UV, depletes deuterium, or sunlight in general depletes deuterium, which is a big component to the seed oil discussion. But then, on the other hand, you don't want to take it too far to where you can burn, because that can create just a nastier scenario for your skin barrier. So I think all things in balance here more consumption of saturated monounsaturated fats, and then obviously there's a distinction between refined PUFAs and then I think, whole food nutrient dense within a food complex, polyunsaturated fatty acids such as wild caught seafood, the DHA, the EPA that's all super important stuff to skin integrity and also response to full spectrum cell night exposure. So all of these things come together to, I guess, just have a more common sense approach to it all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's a big part of the discussion. I personally advise people to really avoid refined polyunsaturated oils and eat liberally from the marine food web to load their layers with these omega-3s, the EHA and DPA, epa and DHA. I guess my concern is long-term about things like developing solar keratosis, potentially squamous and basal cell carcinomas, because if we're doing this on a long-term point of view, yes, those cancers aren't responsible for mortality, but they can be very nasty and recurrent head and neck BCCs. They can be extremely, extremely bad.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, my thought is to get that fatty acid ratio as close to as sexually appropriate as possible four to one or kind of better and just because we want to look after that skin as much as possible. We do have good evidence that those fatty acids can help reduce photosensitivity.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, it's an important thing. I mean, the strategy, I think, depends on the timeframe. So if somebody is just trying to, I guess, avoid burns in the short term, they don't have to completely cut them out. But I think minimizing to a certain degree will help right. But over the long term, I certainly think that people should stair-step their way to the point where they have no consumption of refined seed oils, because that inevitably will, in my opinion, destroy mitochondria over time. It will cause these secondary and third-order consequences within the system of the skin barrier, and that can also lead you to being at a higher susceptibility of developing some sort of skin cancer, whether it be melanoma or non-melanoma. So yeah, I fully agree on that end.
Speaker 1:Damn, we've already reached like over an hour and we haven't talked about, we haven't even got into the melanoma debate or the melanoma issue in full, I guess, or the melanoma issue in full, I guess. Maybe I'll share with you a clinical anecdote. I had a farmer who was maybe in his mid-50s and this is an extremely nice gentleman, but not someone whom health was a priority and he had obstructive sleep apnea, had visceral fat, although he worked outside. When he took his shirt off he was pale. He was pale under his shirt and essentially I excised a pigmented lesion on his right arm and the pathology came back and it was a melanoma in situ. And I asked him has that area been sun-exposed? And he's like it's been under my shirt for the past 20 years. So getting to this idea of melanoma and superficial spreading melanoma, particularly in young people, I believe this is a problem of immune dysfunction or immune ineffectiveness and I think that person's immune system has not surveilled and essentially removed those precancerous melanocytes before they could essentially turn into melanoma.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what is that? The chief function of apoptosis, autophagy, all these anti-cancer processes that are under circadian control, right? So just because you're outside within if you're a farmer, you spend a lot of time outside, you get a lot of near infrared that doesn't mean you're automatically protected from these manifestations. I think there's a lot more to the equation, right? And so, for me, I think that the thing that I'm coming to realize is that and this is a working hypothesis, I'm always evolving in my understanding of this work All of these odd manifestations with the skin, for me, can be explained through the circadian lens very adequately.
Speaker 2:So if we're talking about vitiligo, you know melanocyte loss, if we're talking about hyperpigmentation or any of these skin cancers, I think the circadian lens offers such a comprehensive and common sense way to view it that you know it almost makes sense that you would want to have everything dialed in as much as you can, and of course, most people don't, which is why I think all these manifestations are on the rise. But again, even weird things like what do they call them? Cherry angiomas or sunspots, they call them All these different things that can actually be explained pretty well through the circadian lens, and I've done my due diligence on trying to understand all that be explained pretty well through the circadian lens and I've done my due diligence on trying to understand all that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like you say, I think 99.99999% of people aren't respecting their circadian rhythm as ancestrally designated, and that is because we've got electric lighting and we've got devices, and people have careers and jobs that prevent them from spending the morning with their bare feet on the ground, looking to the east. I mean, that's the reality and we're not judging anyone for that. But I think the lack of adherence to those circadian principles, as Zaid has just said, is probably underlying a large degree of why someone might go on to develop pathology or disease in these situations. And I agree, I agree there's always going to be a confluence of causes, component causes and mixed in with obviously a necessary cause, depending on what we're talking about. But absolutely it's so abnormal to have all these circadian signals dialed that it really needs to be a work in progress, I think, for people to work towards if they're going to go out and do something like deliberate sun exposure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, cool. So anything else you want to discuss quickly or finish off with before we wrap this up?
Speaker 2:For me, I mean right now. I just posted a recent article, actually this morning, on ferrooptosis. I think ferrooptosis is a very interesting phenomenon, this iron-dependent form of cell death that has been recently discovered, maybe in like, I mean maybe the past 10 years or so, I'm not sure on the date, but again, blue light toxicity, isolated blue in its ability to create ferrooptosis, which, if you think about this process I mean obviously mitochondria create ROS and RNS to a certain degree, right For cellular signaling, for immune function, for all of these different things, mitochondrial biogenesis. But I think the real key problem is that centralized orthodoxy demonizes ROS and RNS and they don't just because they're implicated in some disease models and whatnot, they're a necessary step in excess to create disease. But again, they don't understand how important these signaling molecules are.
Speaker 2:They're hormetic signaling molecules and, more importantly, I think if they're taken too far through circadian disruption, through whatever modern lifestyle habit, that can lead to some very real consequences over the long term that I think can be better explained through that circadian lens. So there's a lot to explore, there's a lot to learn. I find myself increasingly going out to the edge to try to understand these very weird things that are happening. I like to explain the difference between the truck driver case study exploring that through a circadian lens, all these dermatology picture case studies that they throw out to try to demonize the sun, and all that. There's a lot of circadian explanations to be had there. So either way, it's a fun time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's great that you're doing that, because we need more than just one. Take on this whole story Absolutely. And, yeah, thank you, I appreciate your coming on and sharing these critically important perspectives, because I think we both agree that the sun is there to aid health, but we just have to know how to use it appropriately and safely. So, yeah, I hope the listeners have taken away some useful points because, yeah, you've laid out a whole bunch of great information, so, thank you very much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I appreciate it, max. Hopefully we'll do another one, and there's so much to learn, so who knows what we'll explore?
Speaker 1:Cool. So where can people find you if they want to connect with you or to learn more about your work?
Speaker 2:where we have a lot more fun. We just recently had Mark Bell on. We had one of the top midwives in the nation in the US on. So we're coming out with more episodes more educationally focused, but either way, a lot to learn. A lot of stuff on the Substack too.
Speaker 1:Epic and yeah, highly recommend Zayt's Substack. So all right. Thanks very much, mate, and yeah, talk again soon. Thank you, max, appreciate it.
