The Benfits of Sun Light

Mal-illumination is equivalent to malnutrition. Most people are very familiar with the term malnutrition, but have never heard of the term mal-illumination. I want to make the case in this post that this mal-illumination is probably just as important as malnutrition.

“Mankind adapted to the full range of the solar spectrum, and artificial distortions of that spectrum – mal-illumination, a condition analogous to malnutrition — may have biologic effects.”

Light plays a critical role in managing

  • Circadian rhythm
  • Mitochondrial function
  • Immune function
  • Inflammatory signaling
  • Hormonal system
  • Neurotransmitters

 

Most of us live 90+% of the time indoors and we’re not getting nearly as much sun as we have for basically all of human evolution of millions of years. It’s only since the last few decades that we’ve shifted mostly to an indoor light lifestyle.

 The Five Bioactive Types of Light

Blue Light

Blue light, and to some extent green light enters into our eyeballs, feeds back through nerves into the Suprachiasmatic nucleus (the circadian clock in your brain), and then regulates a variety of different neurotransmitters and hormones that control our sleep-wake cycles, energy levels, brain function, and many other aspects of our function.

Different light sources emit different wavelengths of light:

In general, for indoor lighting, especially evening lighting, I favor incandescent lighting because this mimics fire best.

UV Light

UV light is just on the smaller wavelength side of the visible light spectrum.

Vitamin D is synthesized in your skin as a result of exposure to UVB radiation. There’s a whole series of chemical events that happen in your skin as far as how cholesterol gets turned into vitamin D and then the active form of vitamin D and then absorbed into the bloodstream. And why is vitamin D important?

A day in the sun can provide up to about 25,000 IUs (international units) of vitamin D, which increases our blood levels for up to a week before declining. Typical vitamin D supplements on the other hand may provide somewhere like 500 to 5,000 IUs and stay in your system for less than 2 days.

Roughly 1 billion people worldwide are vitamin D deficient or insufficient, including 42% of Americans.

And you would find similar numbers among pretty much all the westernized countries where people are spending most of their days indoors.

How can you get vitamin D?

Most people think that vitamin D supplements are basically sunshine in a bottle. This is absolutely 100% wrong and insanely ignorant because taking a vitamin D supplement is not even close to a sufficient strategy to make up for a sunlight deficiency. So where do we get our vitamin D?

You can get a typical dose of Vitamin D of about 10,000 to 25,000 IU through the sun through a minimal Erythema dose of UV radiation. And what that means is simply staying out in the sun until you turn a little bit pink. Now that time is going to vary tremendously depending on your skin type and your current sun exposure adaptation.

You want your skin turning slightly pink, you don’t want to get sunburned. 

Studies show that it takes about eight hours for the vitamin D that we make in the skin to enter our bloodstream with levels rising until 24 hours after sun exposure and remaining elevated for up to one week. Comparatively, any vitamin D that we eat, including supplements leaves our body in about two days.

As it takes about eight hours for the vitamin D that is made via the skin to enter our bloodstream, there is some indication  that taking a shower after sun exposure and soaping up your skin and scrubbing your skin could potentially wash off some of that vitamin D.

In this study a group of white and black people were exposed to the same amount of UVB radiation in a tanning bed. Whereas the white adults raise their blood levels of vitamin D more than 30-fold, no change was seen in the black adults who were instead required being exposed to five times more UVB radiation to experience a 15-fold increase in vitamin D levels. The point here is that darker skin takes more sunlight and more ultraviolet light exposure in order to synthesize a given amount of vitamin D.

We can break things down in terms of what is called the Fitzpatrick skin type scale:

There are six different kinds of skin types. In general, as you have lighter skin, you will have lower tolerance to sun exposure and lower actual needs for sun exposure in order to synthesize adequate levels of vitamin D. And vice versa. The darker your skin, the more easily you will tan and the more overall ultraviolet light and sun exposure you’ll need to synthesize adequate levels of vitamin D.

The goal here is to protect the skin from damage by building up a lot of Melanin in the skin, and to have hours of sun exposure producing a proper dose of vitamin D.
In regions very far from the equator (like Ireland, Scotland and Scandinavia) the UVB exposure is so minimal that the skin adapted to get a sufficient dose of vitamin D with even very minimal amounts of sun exposure. So be aware!

Should I be concerned about Skin Cancer from UV Exposure?

The research shows that getting sunburns very frequently increases your risk of skin cancer.

Non-burning sun exposure (below the threshold of what causes a sunburn) does not increase your risk of skin cancer.

So, when somebody who spends most of their time indoors, (maybe as an office worker or in a climate that doesn’t get much sun exposure) goes on a vacation and get lots of sun exposure, spending hours a day in the sun and getting burned. Doing that consistently over the years is going to lead to an increase in the risk of melanoma.

So, should you be concerned about skin cancer from sun exposure? Well, just keep in mind that humans evolved under relatively constant sunlight exposure and the body has numerous defenses against such damage, including DNA repair mechanisms, cell cycle and growth inhibitions, reduced proliferation, enhanced sensitivity to apoptosis, and enhancement of cellular differentiation and anti-inflammatory effects, many of which are related to vitamin D produced by exposure to UVB. The body isn’t stupid.

Since about 1975 there has been a massive increase in rates of skin cancer. Now keep in mind that this huge increase in this epidemic of skin cancer corresponds to a 30-fold increase in the use of sunscreen and spending more and more times indoors.

There’s no way to account for this massive upward trend in the incidence of skin cancer by saying, hey, people are just spending way more time outdoors in the sun, because we’ve all shifted from indoor computer jobs to outdoor jobs where we’re working in the sun.

No, in fact, the opposite has happened over the last several decades. More and more people have shifted from outdoor jobs, where they’re getting sun exposure for hours a day, to indoor office work, where they’re being removed from sun exposure. Keep in mind that it is extremely common for indoor office workers who get little to no sun exposure to have melanoma and skin cancer. So, there isn’t this sort of direct correlation between the more sun exposure you get, the more skin cancer you got.

Also keep in mind the bigger picture of the overall pie of the relationship of sun exposure to cancer. Sun exposure dramatically reduces the risk of many, many types of cancer and many other diseases.

This study quantifies exactly how much sun reduces the risk of other diseases by looking at our risk of all-cause mortality:

40,000 women in Sweden were monitored for 15 years looking at their sunbathing vacations and incidents of sunburn.The study found that increased sunburn frequency was associated, believe it or not, with reduced all- cause mortality. Also sunbathing vacations more than once a year reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality.

So, what this is really saying is that people who have more frequent sun exposure reduce their all-cause mortality. But the point is, even when this sometimes resulted in sunburn, there was still a massively reduced risk of dying from any cause.

Further studies blowing into the same horn:

This last study concluded that nonsmokers who avoided sun exposure had a life expectancy similar to smokers in the highest sun exposure group, indicating that avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor for death of a similar magnitude as smoking, essentially saying:

 “If you are avoiding sun, you’re doing something as harmful to your health as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.”

Dos and Don’ts of Sun Exposure

Avoid tanning through a window as it increases your skin cancer risk

Because UVA has a longer wavelength than UVB radiation, it penetrates materials and the earth’s atmosphere further.  Window glass will therefore effectively filter out the majority of UVB radiation, but only minimally remove UVAs. What’s the significance of that, you ask?
It is important to remember that vitamin D3 is formed from exposure to UVB rays, whereas UVA radiation actually destroys vitamin D. This helps keep your body in balance; it’s one of the protective mechanisms your body has to avoid overdosing on vitamin D when you’re outside.

However, when you are exposed to sunlight through windows — in your office, your home or your car — you get UVA, but virtually none of the beneficial UVB. This can lead to significant health problems, because in addition to destroying vitamin D3, UVA’s also increase oxidative stress.

UVA is one of the primary culprits behind skin cancer, and it increases photo-aging of your skin. It is also what causes you to tan. You can get vitamin D without significantly darkening your skin, because the UVB wavelength does not stimulate the Melanin pigment to produce a tan. Normally, of course, when you get tanned from outdoor sun exposure you are getting both UVA and UVB at the same time, so it is not a problem. But when you are indoors and expose yourself to sunlight filtered through window glass, you are increasing your risk of a variety of conditions, primarily skin cancer, because the UVA’s are effectively destroying your vitamin D3 levels while you’re getting none of the benefits from UVB.

This is one of the reasons why many that drive long hours in their cars develop skin cancer on the arm next to the car window.

Midday UV light is critical

Midday sun has the highest proportion of UVB, which is critical for synthesis of vitamin D and Melanin.
Non-burning sun exposure sessions around noon for ~20 minutes (or more if you have more sun tolerance) are ideal.

Sunlight, Hormones and Healing

Full body sun exposure (to ALL parts of your naked body, including your nether regions) is ideal to get hormonal benefits. (Cover moles or see a dermatologist to have any reactive moles removed).

Sex hormones boosted by full body sun exposure have a massive impact on brain function, health, energy levels, and body composition.

Should you wear Sunscreen?

If you work outdoors all day, or if you need to protect sensitive areas of your face (like around your eyes), safe sunscreen is certainly recommended. But if you apply sunscreen every time you are out in the sun, you will block your body’s ability to produce vitamin D and cholesterol sulfate.

Before using sunscreen, I recommend drawing all the registers of textile and behavioral protection.

There is mineral-based sunscreen which only builds up a layer on the skin and then there are chemical sunscreens that are absorbed by the skin, entering the bloodstream, changing the concentration, and acting as endocrine disruptors-you can even detect them in breast milk.

It depends. If you are stranded on a ship with no clothes you should use it to prevent severe sunburn. But as a strategy to avoid solar overdosage, it is not good.

Minimize time in the sun without sunscreen to prevent sunburn—go slowly and progressively to increase your skin’s tolerance (Melanin).

Use textiles (clothes, hats, scarfs, etc.) to cover up any sensitive areas (face). If you must use sunscreen for any reason, use a mineral-based sunscreen, not a chemical one. You can also make your own very simply and cheaply with zinc oxide powder and coconut oil.

What to do if you get sunburned

If you ever develop a sunburn, it is important to realize that aloe vera is one of the best remedies to help repair your skin as it is loaded with powerful glyconutrients that accelerate healing. Ideally, it is best to use the gel from a fresh plant, but there are commercial products available that have active aloe in them.

Ideally, you would never need it, because you are using safe tanning guidelines, but accidents do happen, and it is important to have contingency plans for them.

No, 10 Minutes per Day of Sun UVB is NOT enough

Many people and doctors believe that 10 minutes a day in the sun a few days of the week provides enough vitamin D. They are wrong most of the time.
5-10 minutes is enough only if you are near the equator
and young

and not obese
and have light skin

and it is summer
and it is the middle of the day

and you have lots of skin exposed to the sun and you are lying down

and you are not wearing sunscreen.

Time in the Sun to get 4,000 IU of Vitamin D

Based on your skin color and body composition as well as the time of day and climate you live in, your sun exposure needs in the following changes:
– Obese (2X more minutes)
– Black Skin (5X more minutes)

– Early morning or late afternoon sun (2X more minutes)
-Sun during Spring or Fall ( shoulder season >2X more minutes)
– Urban haze – perhaps 2X or 4x more minutes

How many minutes of Mid-Day Summer Sun?

Effects of Red, Infrared and Far Infrared

These effects will be discussed in another post coming soon 😉

Fasting

An organic plant-based whole-food diet should be the first step to detox your body.

Detox method number two is fasting.
There are different types of fasting.

One is the water fast.

Water fasting is an incredible therapy. Fasting supercharges your immune system.
There’s a fascinating study that came out a couple of years ago (2016) where they found that during a three-day water fast old and damaged immune cells die off, stem cells awaken from their normal dormant state and start regenerating. Then when you start eating again your body ramps up production of new immune cells.

The 2016 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Japan’s Dr. Yoshinori Ohsumi for his discoveries of the underlying mechanisms of a physiological process called autophagy. Autophagy is a natural process by which the body degrades and recycles damaged cells, proteins and toxins. Autophagy comes from two Greek words, auto meaning “self” and phagy meaning “to eat.”

This is the body’s way of cleaning house. It happens during starvation, calorie restriction, and fasting. If the body fails to engage in autophagy, damaged cells and structures can accumulate dangerously. Autophagy is one method that the body uses to naturally neutralize cancer cells and degrade cells infected by harmful bacteria and viruses.

So fasting basically reboots and recharges your immune system. They found that when cancer patients water fasted 24hours before chemotherapy treatment, the treatment worked better, because water fasting weakened the cancer cells.

Reset your immune system by fasting

Water fasting can be very beneficial and I want to encourage you to do it. Most people can handle a three day water fast without any problems.
If you have a serious health condition, you should check with your doctor before attempting a fast.
Your doctor may not know anything about fasting. He may say you can’t do it or you shouldn’t do it. If that’s the case then you fast at your own risk.
For most people fasting is perfectly safe. I’ve done it many times and never had a problem.
Fasting gives your body a break from digestion and when you fast your body switches from normal daily operations to repair and regeneration mode.

Your body is constantly processing the foods that you’re bringing in and using them to create energy and maintain homeostasis to keep you alive. But when you fast you stop the conveyor belt, so food stops coming in. Now you’ve got all these workers that don’t have anything to do, because there’s nothing on the conveyor belt. There’s no food to process, so they’re like: “What do we do now? Well, let’s look around and see what needs repair!”

When you fast, your body switches gears into internal housecleaning mode. You’re giving it a break, which allows it to pay attention to things that have been overlooked. It will break down and recycle the useful parts from old and damaged cells. It will caused new cells to be born, effectively renewing the immune system.

During a fast your body will also break down fat for energy.
Fat is your body’s secondary energy reserve. You have two backup energy reserves. You have glycogen, which is stored in your liver and converted to glucose if you need extra energy. Then when that glucose runs out, your body starts burning fat.

It takes about 24 hours to burn through the glucose that’s stored in your liver. Once you burnt through that, your body will start burning through body fat. If you’re active the first day of your fast, your body will burn through the glucose faster and switch to fat-burning sooner.

Fat is a place that your body stores toxins. So when you start a fast, whether it’s a water fast or juice fast, as your body starts to break down the toxic fat, you’re going to feel bad. You will have detoxification symptoms. They are called ‘Herxheimer Effect’ or the ‘Healing Crisis’. Some people experience this just from converting from the standard Western diet to a raw food diet or a plant-based diet and there’s a few reasons why: food addiction and detoxification.

  • We’re addicted to a diet that’s high in protein, fat, sugar, and salt and when you remove the animal protein and the high levels of sugar, fat, and salt from your diet, you will experience withdrawal symptoms. You will also experience withdrawal from caffeine and other food additives like Aspartame if you’ve been drinking diet sodas or chewing gum all day.

  • The other reason you feel bad when you switch to a hardcore healthy diet is detoxification. So again, when you start burning through body fat, your body starts dumping toxins into your bloodstream and they circulate around and your body has to process them in order to excrete them. During that process you’re going to feel lousy. Some typical reactions are low energy, headaches, nausea, aches and pains. You could get diarrhoea. You might throw up.
    If any of those things happen, it’s because there’s some serious detox going on in your body. Just power through it, again under medical supervision if necessary.
    If you’re taking prescription drugs this could be dangerous, so you need to make sure you’re cautious about your approach.

    You might even run a fever. Your immune system ramps up into high gear when you have a fever. A fever can wipe out a host of viruses, bacteria, and parasites in your body that you didn’t even know you had. And stuff is going to come out in a lot of different ways if you’re toxic, so this could cause, like I said, aches and pains, headaches, nausea, diarrhoea, vomiting, fever, pimples, rashes, any of the above, but hopefully not all of the above. The best case scenario is, you just feel lousy, no energy, maybe a bit of a headache for a few days. The worst case could be pretty rough for a few days, but remember, if and when you start feeling bad, just remind yourself: “This is normal. I will get better.”

    When you get over that detoxification hump, usually after a few days, worst case a week, you will feel amazing.

There might be a point in your fast where you feel so good that you may think to yourself that you never need to eat again, which, of course, is not true. Eventually you will get hungry and that’s a good time to eat.
Your immune system will generate new blood cells as soon as nutrients start flowing back into the body.

Now how long should you fast is something that you should determine. If you want to just get your feet wet, you can do a one day water fast – that’s pretty easy. A three day water fast is the optimal minimal length of time. There are people that have done forty day water fasts. That’s serious. You definitely need professional supervision if you go that long. The longest I’ve personally fasted on water, is five days. I haven’t gone for a longer fast, because I have a high metabolism, I’m really thin and struggle to put on body fat.

 

The next step down from water fasting, is juice cleansing.

Some people will start with the three day water fast and then do a three, five, or a ten day juice cleanse. And then, when they come out of the fast, they’ll transition to raw food or plant-based wholefood diet. Lots of fresh fruit first and incorporate vegetables as well. There’s all kinds of information online about different fasting methods, but I’m all about simplicity. I think the optimal starting point for most people is three days on water, then using juices (mainly vegetable, not fruit juices) to transition to a plant-based diet.

Now the more body fat you have, the longer you can fast.
All body fat is really just stored energy. In case there’s a food shortage, that’s good! But if you have a lot of extra body fat, it’s a burden to your entire body. We know that obesity is the second leading cause of cancer, so you need to get rid of the excess body fat. A nice benefit of fasting is a quick loss of body fat.
If you’re not sure what you’re supposed to weigh, you can do a Google search for a BMI calculator and just type in your height and your weight and it will tell you if you’re underweight, normal, overweight, or obese. That’s the best way to find your ideal weight range.

For the best podcast on fasting, listen to the podcast below with Dr. Sunil Pai and Dr. Michael Klaper.

Dr. KlaperMichael Klaper, M.D. is a graduate of the University of Illinois College of Medicine and received postgraduate training in internal medicine, surgery, anesthesiology, and orthopedics at UBC teaching hospitals in Vancouver and obstetrics at UCSF. He has practiced acute care medicine in Hawaii, Canada, California, Florida and New Zealand.
Dr. Klaper focuses on health-promoting food and lifestyle choices to help people prevent the need for hospitalization and surgery. He has authored numerous articles on plant-based nutrition and has been featured in several films including the award winning “Diet For A New America”, “What the Health”, and “Cowspiracy.”
A long-time radio host and a pilot, Dr. Klaper has served as nutrition advisor to NASA’s programs for space colonists on the Moon and Mars.
Dr. Klaper adopted a plant-based diet in 1981 and has helped thousands of patients with diet and use of fasting. Learn more about his videos and newsletter at DoctorKlaper.com.
 

What are the best wholefood supplements?

There’s a lot of uncharted territory when it comes to supplements and there is some risk involved. Typically not nearly  the risk of pharmaceutical drugs, but you could have a reaction to something you’ve never taken before and if you take too much of anything, it can make you sick.

If you drink six litres of water in one hour, it will kill you.

There are additional risks if you’re taking prescription drugs. Taking certain supplements with pharmaceuticals could cause serious side effects that may even be life threatening. I am not trying to scare you, but you should do further research beyond this blog post to be aware of any potential risks and be cautious.

There are thousands of supplements on the market and it is easy to get overwhelmed. What to take, what brand is best, how much to take…

There s a lot of scientific research on certain compounds proven to have significant health promoting effects.

If you’re on a tight budget and it s a stretch just to afford to eat an organic plant-based diet and juice, that’s ok. Forget supplements, just remember nutrition is the foundation of health and healing. You’ve got to get the diet right.

If you think you re going to take a bunch of supplements and keep eating burgers, pizza and ice-cream washing it down with cans of beer and continue smoking, then you are fooling yourself and you’re wasting your money.

A lot of us have been brainwashed. We’ve been conditioned to put our faith in magic bullets (which are pharmaceutical drugs). And then we bring that same mentality into the natural world and we just want one pill, one natural supplement, one natural cure to fix our problem.

In most cases, one pharmaceutical drug isn’t going to fix your problem and neither will one natural supplement.

In order to find out which supplements to take, you should get the nutrient levels in your blood plasma tested and then supplement what you’re not getting in your diet.
If you don’t have access to blood plasma nutrient analysis or if you just want to get more nutrients into your body with the approach to overdose on nutrition, giving your body more than enough and letting it use what it needs, I recommend taking whole-food supplements.

Wholefood supplements in contrast to nutraceuticals do not just give you one isolated compound in high dosage, but a whole plethora of compounds including phyto-chemicals, micro nutrients, vitamins, amino-acids, minerals, antioxidants, fatty acids etc.

Here are three of my favourites:

Amla/Amalaki/The Indian Gooseberry

Amla is the highest antioxidant food on planet Earth, and it has the second highest concentration of Vitamin C.
It’s very hard to find Amla fresh, almost impossible. It’s bitter and sour and pithy and just awful. Buy organic amalaki powder instead (on Amazon).
It’s super potent, so start with 1/4 teaspoon mixed into water or juice, smoothie or oat meal and get it into your body.
I add it to about 20 ounces of water that I drink first thing in the morning.

Moringa leaf powder

Moringa is one of the most nutrient dense plants on planet Earth. If you compare gram-for-gram, it has: 10x the vitamin A of carrots, 17x the calcium of milk, 15x the potassium of bananas, 25x the iron of spinach, 9x protein of yoghurt. It actually contains all the essential amino acids. It’s an amazing superfood.
You just add 1/2 a teaspoon or a teaspoon to water, juice, smoothie or you can add it to your oat meal in the morning.

Vitamin D3:
Vitamin D3 is the #1 anti-cancer vitamin. I can’t say enough good things about Vitamin D3. More than 3,500 studies have examined this vitamin, and overall they have shown the following:

The lower the levels in the body, the worse and more degenerative any health condition will be. That’s any condition from Alzheimer’s to astma, dermatitis to depression, and colitis and cancer. The higher levels of Vitamin D3, the better you feel and the fewer symptoms you have.
A landmark study came out in 2016 which found that women over 55 with blood concentrations of vitamin D higher than 40 nanogram per millilitre had a 67% lower risk of cancer compared to women with blood levels lower than 20 ng/ml.

The researchers concluded that the optimal levels for cancer prevention are between 40 and 60 nanogram per millilitre. The study also found that most cancers occur in people with vitamin D blood levels between 10 and 40 ng/ml.

A 2005 study in the European Journal of Cancer found that women with blood concentrations higher than 60 ng/ml had an 83% reduction in breast cancer compared with those lower than 20.

Some cancer experts say that 60-80 ng/ml is really the best range for your blood level for Vitamin D3 leading to an 80 percent reduction in diabetes occurrence and 77 percent reduction in all cancers.

Now the best source of vitamin D is sunshine.
If you’re living outside the tropics it might be difficult to get enough sunshine to get your blood levels that high, so that’s why supplementation makes sense. You may have read that you need vitamin K2 to absorb D3, which is why some vitamin D3 supplements also contain K2, but many clinical studies have shown, it’s not necessary and that D3 is easily absorbed in gelcap, liquid drops and oral spray form without K2.

So, check your blood work and depending on where your D3 level is, you may need to take between 5,000 – 10,000 international units per day to get your blood level over 60ng/ml. Make sure you retest in 30-60 days to see where you’re at and adjust your D3 intake accordingly.

Vitamin D3 is a fat-soluble vitamin, meaning it’s better absorbed (up to 60 percent better) when taken with a healthy fat, such as organic ghee, coconut oil, avocados, olive oil, or nut butters.

Prevention is key to lifelong health, and Vitamin D3 helps precisely that. Interestingly enough, one can also use Vitamin D3 for acute health problems. When you are coming down with a cold or flu, bronchitis, sinusitis, or some other minor illness, I recommend that, at the instant you feel  start to feel achy or have a sore throat  or a fever, start taking higher doses of Vitamin D3 for three to five days. For example, take 20,000 to 30,000 international units (IU) daily for three to five days and then return to 5,000 IU or your regular dose once the cold or flu has subsided enough. This increase in Vitamin D3 helps up-regulate the immune system and cause soldier cells to become more active  and help assist the body’s own innate abilities to heal itself.
D3 up-regulates the immune system so effectively that pharmaceutical companies are currently undertaking clinical trials to make Vitamin D3 a prescription drug.

Yes you read that right: in the future, Vitamin D3 may become a prescription drug.

Finally, make sure that whatever Vitamin D3 you take, does not contain fillers or unnecessary incredients. It should contain a vegetarian capsule, Vitamin D3, L-leucine, and silicon dioxide (to stabilize it).
Avoid D3 supplements that have multiple inappropriate ingredients, such as Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS), colours, and other fillers. The same goes for Vitamin D3 in liquid form.

What is the best diet?

There are about 20,000 genes in the human genome. The genes are static and do not change, but they can lead to develop up to  4 million different bodies, because each gene can make over 200 different protein structures depending on its environment. The biggest environmental factor is nutrition. 

The biggest environmental factor on the human body is nutrition. 

So, don’t believe anybody, or any doctor in particular, who tries to tell you that it doesn’t matter what you eat.

This way of thinking is not only absurd, it is completely ignorant, and grossly uninformed.

Science understands that food fuels our body, giving us the ability to function appropriately. If your body were a car, you would be careful to give it the right type of fuel. 

You wouldn’t put kerosene or lighter fluid in your car, nor would you put cheap gas in a Ferrari.

But when it comes to what we eat, we do just that – choose the cheapest fuel possible. It’s easy to understand how kerosene would ruin your car, but when it comes to our bodies, we do not acknowledge the consequences of using the wrong fuel, partly because our bodies are too good. It just takes too long before bad food choices show their consequences.

What diet does fuel our bodies best?

In my eyes the best diet should be able to reverse any disease by tapping into the body’s ability to heal itself. The optimum nutrition should minimise the risk of developing diabetes, cardio vascular disease, cancer or any other disease of the western civilisation.

So, which diet do you think does just that? The standard American diet? Just joking.

Maybe the Mediterranean diet? All the studies on the Mediterranean diet have shown that, compared to the standard American diet, it is

able to reduce heart disease and related conditions by approximately 75%. That’s amazing, but what about the other 25%? Why did those people on the Mediterranean diet still get heart disease even though they were eating this incredibly healthy diet? Wasn’t there a diet that could prevent heart disease for everyone?

Yes, there is!

A plant based diet reduces heart disease and related conditions by 95 percent. It can reduce the risk of heart disease even more by increasing the intake of plant-based proteins, reducing the intake of animal-based proteins (even seafood) and eliminating the heavy use of refined oils.

The most comprehensive report on diet and cancer in history was published in 1997. This first report took over four years to complete, reviewing 4500 studies from thousands of researchers across the globe – a landmark scientific consensus document written by the top cancer researchers in the world. Download the summary of the third update of this report from 2018 here.

After all that work, what was the number one recommendation?

Choose a diet that is predominantly plant based, rich in a variety of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and beans with minimally processed starchy foods.

 

Chris Wark, a cancer survivor himself, promotes a whole-food plant-based diet as the centre piece for the radical lifestyle change necessary to survive a cancer diagnosis.

On his website Chris Beat Cancer you’ll find many testimonials from cancer survivors that used his programme, based on a whole food plant based diet, to recover their health.

There are no cancer survivor stories out there on the internet of people who survived cancer with a ketogenic, paleo or Atkins diet.

With every piece of food you put into your mouth you either promote disease or health.

Most people don’t understand, that what you put at the end of your fork, is more powerful than any drug you find in a pill bottle.

 

How to hydrate yourself in the morning…

The first sensation most of us register when we wake up is thirst. If you’ve managed to sleep well, you’ve just gone seven-plus hours without drinking a drop of water. If you’re in a dry climate, worked out the previous afternoon, or partied hard the night before, you likely hit the pillow at a fluid deficit out of the gate. Depending on the temperature of your room, you may have even accelerated the dehydration process through sweat. In combination, the vapour from respiration and perspiration can often amount to a pound of water lost overnight. As a result, we regularly wake up feeling like we’ve been nursing on a cotton ball.

You would think that the logical response to this condition would be to get up and drink some water, to lubricate all those critical internal components we need to fire correctly for our bodies to be most effective today and for the long haul. Instead, what most of us do is hide under the covers, hitting the snooze button like a snare drum until the last possible moment, at which point we hurry out of bed, strip our clothes off, step into the shower and pour gallons of water over our body, then dump three more quarts through a drip coffee maker. We rarely think to actually drink any of this water before it goes down the drain or through the filter, which is insane; if the physical sensations we experience when we wake up happened to us in the middle of our day, we’d say “Damn, I’m thirsty” and then crush a glass of water. Starting the day, though, it always ends with us holding a cup of coffee.

There are studies on both men and women showing that even mild dehydration resulting from fluid loss equaling roughly 1 percent of your body weight can cause headaches, moodiness, irritability, anxiety, and fatigue.

Decreases in mental performance and short-term memory loss can start at as little as a 2 percent loss in water. You ever find yourself being 1 or 2 percent lighter in the morning than before bed? That is enough.

But it isn’t just the water itself that is the problem. We lose electrolytes and minerals over the course of our sleep as well. Minerals are key to modulating and supporting numerous body processes, from the muscles to the organs and even the brain. Without adequate minerals, many of the body’s normal functions start to diminish. Well, guess what, we are just as bad at replacing our minerals on a regular basis as we are at getting ourselves moving and into the sunlight to start our days.

Hydration

Sixty percent of the average adult human body is made up of water. About the same percentage of Earth’s surface is covered by water. The world is water, we are water, yet here we are, every morning, essentially starving for it. And we wonder why we wake up feeling miserable so often.

A glass of water from the bathroom faucet or tipping your head back in the shower is not going to cut it, however. This isn’t just about curing cottonmouth. Health coach and sleep expert Shawn Stevenson calls that first glass of water in the morning “a cool bath for your organs.” Another way of putting it: it’s priming your internal fluids before hitting the road.

Just swap your first-thing-in-the-morning coffee for some water and minerals, in a drink Aubrey Marcus calls the morning mineral cocktail. You don’t have to eliminate coffee—God forbid, coffee is delicious—just hold off on it until you’ve hydrated properly and can mix it with some fats like butter or coconut oil to slow it down. The components of the morning mineral cocktail are water, sea salt, and a splash of lemon.

Morning Mineral Cocktail

0.4 to 0.7 litres of filtered water

3 grams sea salt (=flat tip of a tea spoon)

1/4 lemon, squeezed

  • The water should be room temperature. When you’re looking to maximize mineral absorption and aid digestion, room temperature is always best for any beverage.
  • Sea salt contains upward of sixty trace minerals above and beyond the sodium, chloride, and iodine in regular table salt, including phosphorus, magnesium, calcium, potassium, bromine, boron, zinc, iron, manganese, and copper.

    Together they are essential for healthy bodily function and contribute meaningfully to optimal performance. Sodium binds to water in the body to maintain the proper level of hydration inside and outside our cells. Along with potassium, it also helps maintain electrical gradients across cell membranes, which are critical for nerve transmission, muscle contraction, and various other functions. Without it, needless to say, we would be toast.


This post is an extract about hydration from the first chapter of Aubrey Marcus‘ book:
Own the Day, Own Your Life

 

Aubrey Marcus is the founder and CEO of Onnit, a lifestyle brand based on a holistic health philosophy he calls Total Human Optimization. Onnit is an Inc. 500 company and an industry leader with products touching millions of lives, including many top professional athletes around the world.

To hear more from Aubrey Marcus, listen in on one of these podcasts:

Keeping healthy blood glucose levels

We should all be concerned about insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome X, and diabetes – different names for a health condition in which your blood glucose is elevated above normal levels.

One must understand that blood glucose is one of the most important things to keep within the normal range, and the most current scientific data indicates that keeping it in the lower part of the normal range is better.

Terms like “insulin resistance” and “metabolic syndrome” have been used to describe what is occurring prior to and up to the development of full-blown diabetes, which is when elevated blood glucose starts a cascade of other health problems. For example, with elevated blood glucose, one can develop high blood pressure, an increase in lipids (cholesterol), an increase in weight, and a host of other problems that are far better avoided.

If someone has elevated blood sugar or diabetes, they are at fourfold increased risk of developing heart disease. Why? Because when blood glucose is elevated, insulin (the well-known hormone secreted from the pancreas that helps bring glucose into the body to be utilised as fuel) resistance develops over time because of the continued consumption of highly refined carbohydrates and processed foods (e.g. white bread, white flour tortillas, doughnuts and pastries), highly sweetened snacks (e.g. candy bars) and sugary drinks (e.g. soft drinks), and other triggers that cause inflammation of the pancreatic cells.

This inflammation in turn causes an imbalance whereby the body cannot absorb glucose into its cells, muscles, and organs, and the glucose instead remains in the blood stream. This excess fuel – or energy – that the body cannot use is then converted to fats (both excess weight and elevated lipids/cholesterol).

Additionally, once blood sugar is elevated, there is an increase in the metabolic pathway to convert more omega-6s, triggering more inflammation – not only systemically but also in the internal lining of the arteries – leading to more cholesterol and plaque formation. This plaque formation is the body’s attempt to calm the inflammation initially, but when there is chronic inflammation, the repair becomes a hindrance. This pathway of inflammation and the complications from it become a vicious cycle.

If you obtain most of your calories from highly processed and refined foods, this creates spikes in your blood-glucose levels, and over time your insulin loses the ability to bring it down.

All food has a glucose number, called its glycemic index (GI), which tells how much your blood glucose will rise once you consume that food. White bread is the standard measurement to which other foods are compared, as it has one of the fastest glycemic indices.

Carbohydrates with a low GI (55 or less) will make your blood glucose rise slowly and fall gently over a longer time. Carbohydrates with a high GI (70 or more) are digested and absorbed quickly causing your blood glucose levels to spike and then crash.

White bread and similar highly refined grain foods have been “pre-digested”: The manufacturing process removes the whole-grain and fiber content in addition to other core nutrients. This makes the processed grain product easier to chew, cut, slice and pull apart, and it also increases the rate of absorption and conversion to glucose. As a result, blood glucose spikes immediately after consuming these refined foods. While that doesn’t sound very appetising, these types of foods are popular, because a glucose spike gives a quick, satisfied feeling of having instant energy. But soon thereafter, energy levels crash, and you feel hungry again. And so you eat again. This rapid cycle is part of what makes these foods so addictive.

Food companies create their foods so precisely, that once the average teenager at school or adult in the workplace eats a snack, his or her physiology is basically on a timed cycle to spike and crash exactly as food companies want it to. Most of these packaged products have been calculated to create that specific rollercoaster of soaring highs followed by a massive crash – timed to happen right before the next class or workplace break.

Avoid this rollercoaster ride by not allowing yourself to get on it to begin with. That is the willpower you need. Try to learn not to put these foods into your grocery cart when you go shopping. Do what you can to replace these quick-fix foods with something that you really like that is genuinely satisfying – generally foods that don’t come in a box.

And when you eat, stick to three meals per day. One of the worst dietary advice in the last years has been to eat whenever you feel hungry. As a result you are having snacks every couple of hours sending your blood glucose levels on rollercoaster rides all day long.

 


This post is a summary of the relevant chapters of Sunil Pai‘s book:
An Inflammation Nation – The Definitive 10-Step Guide to Preventing and Treating All Diseases through Diet, Lifestyle, and Use of Natural Anti-Inflammatories

 

Dr. Sunil Pai, MD is the founder and medical director of Sanjevani Integrative Medicine and Lifestyle Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He was one of the first physicians to become a Fellow of the Program in Integrative Medicine at University of Arizona directed by Dr. Andrew Weil, the “father” of Integrative Medicine and was one of the first Board Certified MD’s in Holistic Integrative Medicine in the United States.

To hear more from Dr. Pai, listen in on one of these podcasts:

Rebounding for Longevity

The best exercise for detoxification is rebounding. That’s jumping up and down on a small one-person trampoline.

Rebounding

Rebounding & Increasing Vitamin D

Your lymphatic system and your blood get rid off the metabolic waste in your body. You have three times more lymphatic fluid than blood, but the lymphatic system doesn’t have a pump like your cardiovascular system.  It only moves when YOU move.

So when you’re sedentary it’s not moving very much, but when you’re walking, when you’re doing physical work, when you’re picking things up, when you’re putting things down, every muscle contraction in your body moves your lymphatic system, even breathing (especially deep Wim Hof breathing).

To stay healthy you need 30 to 60 minutes a day of deliberate, moderate aerobic exercise, like Rebounding.

Rebounding is easy. Anyone can do it and you can do it for a long time without getting tired, because it only requires a gentle bouncing motion where your feet don’t even leave the mat.

But what effect can an easy activity, like half an hour of rebounding, have on your body?

“Not much” is probably what you think, but a well-known 2007 study  found that breast cancer patients who walked 30 minutes a day and ate five or more servings of fruits and vegetables per day, had half the recurrence after 9 years compared to patients who didn’t exercise as much or eat as many fruits and vegetables.

That’s incredible. Anybody can do that!

2014 study of over 4,600 Swedish men with early-stage prostate cancer found that the men who walked or biked every day for 20 minutes or more, had a 30% decreased risk of dying from prostate cancer and a 30% lower risk of dying from any other cause compared to men who were less active.

The bottom line is: If you want to stay healthy, you need to create daily habits that keep you in motion. It doesn’t have to be one long block of exercise. You can break it up any way you want: 10-20 minutes Rebounding in the morning, 10-20 minutes around lunch time and another 10-20 minutes in the evening. Do it while you’re watching TV or rebound outside and fill up on Vitamin D at the same time.

Apart from activating your lymph system, the G-force resistance you experience during Rebounding strengthens your entire musculoskeletal system: your bones, muscles, connective tissue, and even organs.

Just gently bounce on the Rebounder.

Stick to a basic bounce until you get bored and then go all 80s Aerobics or Disco. Anything is allowed!

 

For further information, check out:

  • Introduction video by Chris Wark (from “Chris Beat Cancer“)
  • Al Carter is THE pioneer of rebound exercise. Enjoy his lecture/rebound session here.
    Carter is the founder of ReboundAir and the author of  “The Miracle of Rebound Exercise” (published in 1979!)

The mystical Pineal Gland and its Functions

The Pineal's location within the brain

The Pineal Gland is also called the pineal body, epiphysis or ‘Third Eye‘. It has the size of a grain of rice and the shape of a tiny pine-cone (hence its name).
It is tucked in a small groove between the two hemispheres right in the centre of your brain.
The pineal gland is not covered by the blood brain-barrier so it can secrete its hormones straight into the bloodstream.

Mystery has always surrounded this tiny organ. Modern medicine knows little about the gland’s role, but it has a rich metaphysical history. René Descartes believed the pineal was the “seat of the soul,” the interface where the mind meets the brain.

Pinealocytes

Pinealocytes

Pineal Gland’s Function

The Pineal’s function is not fully understood yet.
Pinealocytes are the main cells contained in the pineal gland. The primary function of the pinealocytes is the secretion of the hormone melatonin, which regulates your circadian rhythm, seasonal rhythm and your sleep/wake cycles.

In a study from May 2013 the researchers Barkera, Borjiginb, Lomnickaa and Strassman confirmed the existence (and, they argue, production) of dimethyltryptamine (DMT) in the pineal glands of rats. Further research has to be done to determine whether endogenous DMT in humans also originates in the pineal gland.

Pineal Gland and Third Eye

Nearly all vertebrate species possess a pineal gland. In some species of amphibians and reptiles the pineal gland is directly linked to a light-sensing organ.

The parietal eye (very small grey oval between the regular eyes) of a young bullfrog

Parietal Eye

Reptiles (mostly lizards, frogs, salamanders and some fish) have a so called parietal eye, also known as a third eye or pineal eye. This eye acts as a calendar: It can see days getting longer and nights getting shorter, and the reverse, and so tells the brain how seasons are changing. It regulates the animal’s circadian rhythm and its body temperature.

The parietal eye uses a different biochemical method of detecting light than rod cells or cone cells in a normal vertebrate eye.

Humans’ Third Eye

The human third eye is a mystical concept of an invisible eye located around the middle of the forehead, slightly above the junction of the eyebrows. This inner eye provides perception beyond ordinary sight and can lead to outer body experiences and lucid dreaming, to name a few.

Scientifically this is not understood yet. So far science has revealed that pinealocytes and photoreceptors of the retina share common components of signal transduction. Whether this supports the pineal gland’s mystical role in human consciousness remains to be seen.

The development of a bony cranium in mammals has obscured light from the brain and the mammalian pineal has lost direct contact with light. Without direct light input, a complicated neural circuitry has developed in which visual information from the photoreceptors of the retina is directed to the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalmus. Within the suprachiasmatic nucleus is an endogenous circadian clock that is reset daily to entrain the clock to the environmental lighting cycle. Output from the suprachiasmatic clock is transmitted to the pineal where during darkness the pinealocytes produce increased levels of melatonin that are released to the circulating blood.

The vastly disparate signaling systems in human photoreceptors and pinealocytes of the pineal gland may actually be variations on a common theme. As the mechanisms of phototransduction in retinal photoreceptor cells has become more clear, it has equally become apparent that pinealocytes have retained a selective group of retinal proteins that are involved in the phototransduction cascade. How the pineaIocytes utilize these proteins and whether the “retinal photoreceptor” proteins participate in signal transduction in the pineal is still unknown.
(https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00966868?LI=true)

Hypnagogia

Hypnagogia is also referred to as ‘hypnagogic hallucinations’ or ‘hypnogogic state of consciousness’.
It is the experience of the transitional state of consciousness when you go from wakefulness to sleep. (The transitional state from sleep to wakefulness is called ‘hypnopompic’.)

In Hypnaogogia you might be seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting things, or experience a feeling of falling or floating. This is similar to when you’re dreaming, except you’re not asleep yet and still able to remember.

Experiencing these hallucinations can be confusing, because it can be hard to distinguish hallucination from reality. They create strong, intricate visual images in the mind that may be distorted in an unrealistic way. As a result, these hallucinations often cause fear. In some cases, they can cause you to suddenly jolt back to reality from the verge of sleep. ‘Hypnic Jerk’ or ‘The Kick’ as they call it in the movie ‘Inception’.)

Visual Hallucinations (Sights)

The beginnings of visual hallucinations occur as phosphenes – seemingly random speckles, lines or geometric patterns that may float around or remain still behind your closed eyelids.

When deeply immersed, you can control these patterns at will. To do this, just focus on changing the direction of the lines. Then mentally demand specific shapes and movements. After that it’s not difficult to have the phosphenes form a familiar face or animal.

Salvador Dali’s ‘The Persistence of Memory’ (1931)

Hypnagogia and Creativity

Artists have been using Hypnagogia as a key to their creativity: Salvador Dali nicknamed it “the slumber with a key,” and used it as creative inspiration for many of his imaginative paintings.

During hypnagogia, the brain is more fluid and open to making connections between seemingly unrelated ideas. This makes it so conducive to creative problem solving.

How to induce Hypnagogia

Thomas Edison and Dali often induced hypnagogia using a similar technique: Both men held something metal in their hands while they fell asleep. As their hand relaxed, the item would clang onto the floor and wake them up.

Scientists have observed the presence of both alpha brainwaves — which are the dominant brainwave mode when we are conscious but relaxed, for instance when daydreaming or meditating — and theta brainwaves, which are associated with restorative sleep, during Hypnagogia.

Therefore I suggest you try binaural beats or if you can, book a session with the Ajna Light, and make use of  brainwave entrainment to achieve more relaxed states of awareness which lead to the hypnagogic magic.

I experience visual and sensory effects every time I am under the Ajna Light and it can lead me into a deep meditation, which is an excellent primer for lucid dreaming (but that’s another post on its own).

Binaural Entrainment with Beats

Binaural Beats

Binaural beats are an auditory biohack designed to facilitate brainwave entrainment.

Just as pulses of neurons firing are measured with frequency, so too is sound.
The human ear can hear sounds with a frequency (pitch) between 30Hz and 18,000Hz.

The Range of Human Hearing

The Range of Human Hearing

 

How Binaural Beats work

In order to induce any brainwaves other than Gamma brainwaves, you need the brain to follow frequencies below 30 Hz. If you want to use sound waves for the entrainment, the problem is that humans can only hear sound waves with a frequency above 30 Hz. That’s why you need to use the phenomenon of Beats as a bio-hack to entrain the brain:

Wearing headphones, you listen to an audio track that pumps one frequency or tone in one ear and a different frequency or tone in the other ear. This means that there is an almost imperceptible difference in sound coming into your left and right ear.

Hence the term bi (meaning two) and aural (of the ear). The difference in the frequency between the left and right ear will be the frequency of the beating and therefore the target frequency for your brainwave entrainment.

If you want to play around with creating some beats, check out this applet.

Often times white noise (rain) is used in conjunction with these tones to help relax the mind and put it in a more malleable state. The result is that you can target a variety of different brainwave states that can yield varied benefits.

While the effect of any form of music on a human individual is highly personal and therefore resistant to generalization, a variety of research shows potential improvements for everything from cognitive performance to enhanced relaxation.
A UK study with control group from 2005 showed significant reduction in anxiety for pre-operative patients listening to binaural beats prior to surgery (source:  http://www.binbeat.com/images/binauralsandanxiety.pdf).

Where to get Binaural Beats

You can find binaural beats tracks for sale online or on YouTube.
Aubrey Marcus, the author of ‘Own the Day, Own your Life’, has produced two albums of binaural beats. Together you can purchase them for US$35 here.

Click here to download ‘Earth Piece’ for free, Aubrey’s favourite 30 minute track for a mid-day power nap.

My favourite Binaural Beats App is Brainwave: 35 Binaural Programs.

You can get it on iTunes. It’s only US$4.99 and has a programme for all sorts of occasions. Check it out. Definitely worth its money.