Dr Dr Leland Stillman MD on How Light & Seasonality Shapes Gut Health

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Hey, guys. Criben governor from the Gut Health Gurus podcast. I've got a background in food science and also a registered nutritionist here in Australia. And today I have a fascinating guest. His name is Leland Stillman. I hope I haven't butchered the name totally. But he's a medical doctor from the States and he's got a fascinating message. I've been following him on social media, on YouTube and Facebook and all those outlets for a while, and his message is very compelling. He seems to be one of these guys that are kind of into the Jack Cruise version of the world and the way science works and whatnot. But look, I'm really fascinated to have a discussion with Leland about light and the microbiome as a continuation of the episode that we had with Dr. Jack Cruz. Do head back to the previous episode if you want to get the hard science and lighten the microbiome. But fascinating to have Leland on the podcast today. Leland, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

My absolute pleasure. And, Leland, what I like to do at the start of every podcast is to get it straight from the horse's mouth, to get the essence of who you are, what you're about, where you come from, what's your super. Your Superman origin story. And yeah, let's go from there. Who is Leland Stillman?

So I was. I'm 31. I was born in New York City, and I grew up in a very, you know, I grew up on the Upper east side leading what was probably a pretty unusual childhood. It was very urban, right? And then moved around the country, lived sort of more a typical suburban life. But I ended up having all the same, you know, the illnesses that for a lot of young people today are sort of the, I hate to call them harbingers of doom, but they're signs that something is wrong in the environment. And these were ear infections. I was sick all the time. You know, my Mother said that I, you know, I cried a lot as a little, as an infant and a baby. And, you know, I grew up and I was never really that healthy. And I ended up becoming fascinated by the fact that I was not as strong as fast as the other kids. And I ended up, my mother ended up taking us to a lot of different alternative practitioners. I mean, we saw a real smorgasbord. And I ended up gravitating towards a mentor who was a naturopath. And he told me that I should go to medical school. And I, you know, I had some problems with the paradigm that I knew I was going to be taught because it's, obviously it can lead you to do some things that I still to this day don't, don't think are particularly. They're not ideal. Right. It's not addressing the root of the problem. And so I finished medical school, I did my training in internal medicine at Maine Medical center. And since then I have been basically, I basically dove right into the world of alternative medicine. And it's been a very interesting journey. And basically what happened over that, I guess, I don't know, 15 year journey since I started getting into health and wellness, because I started reading very early. Like 15 or 16 is when I remember starting to pick up books and not just sort of, you know, casual reading, like actual Textbooks by professors, PhDs, doctors and stuff like that. You know, I fell into the stuff that everybody, I think, finds right off the bat. You know, food, diet, exercise, all this, all this stuff. And at that time, that was really, I feel like all that was out there and you had to really kind of dig to find alternative perspectives. Of course, it was before we had the Internet, so it was just sort of who you heard of by word of mouth or books you found, whatever. And so then in high school, I got much, much healthier. And then college, I basically just didn't, I didn't indulge in all the sins that my friends did, which is basically how you come out of college looking better than everybody else and performing better than everybody else. And then I went to medical school, but in there I started to get problems like medical issues that I couldn't explain and that didn't respond to. Diet, exercise, supplements, vitamins, whatever. And I was so puzzled by this. And I went out of my residency program and I got a job at a, at a wellness clinic in Florida. And we were doing all this really cool biochemistry and we saw a lot of very sick people and we did a lot of good. We helped a Lot of people. But there were some people who I identified who I couldn't figure out why they wouldn't get better. And the way I explain it basically to people is that if the human body is like a car, there are some certain basic requirements, right? Your brake pads need to have some padding on them, your tires need to have some tread, your gasoline tank needs to be full, your engine tank or your oil tank needs to be full. And so a lot of the nutritional biochemistry and the conventional approach to medicine is basically fill up all the fluids and make sure there's tread on the wheels and all this other stuff, make sure everything's balanced. But what's interesting is that after that point the analogy in my mind begins to break down because we're so much more complicated than cars. And what I saw in these young people who were not getting better or who kind of hit a wall with their success with diet is that they were all young, very tech addicted people who lived in indoor, what I now call blue lit microwave life. And I was fascinated to see some people come into that clinic who, and to this day, I mean, I keep accumulating these stories and my experience and my social interactions continue to confirm what I found then, which was basically that older people who grew up in a non technologically sophisticated, in relative terms world were able to basically do with the nutrients and the hormones that you gave them when you replaced them what they needed to do and they would get radically better. But sometimes it didn't matter what young people who were living the blue lit microwave life did, they would just keep getting sicker. And to this day I keep in touch with, I ended up, people ended up reaching out to me after I left that clinic who, because I dove into the work of Jack Cruz, who basically what he was saying was it really doesn't matter what you're putting in the tank if the pieces don't fit together and you don't have harmony. And Jack likes to say that because he likes, I mean if you've ever met Jack, he's just like a verbal pugilist. He just loves basically controversy. He loves to kick up, you know, dust, he loves to just, he just thrives on it. It's entertaining. Sometimes I fear it may be counterproductive, but we love Jack for who he is. And so anyway, I dove into this paradigm and it required a whole other level of information. And if people want to know kind of the, how big this iceberg of reading was, they can go to my website, Polar Bear Fitness, and about three quarters of the way down the page, there's a big photo of all these books and papers and blog posts. And that was what I ended up reading in preparation for making what is now my online course, Polar Bear Fitness, which I launched last week. And basically one of the most enduring things that Jack told me as he said, live like a polar bear. And I thought that that was the strangest thing that anyone had ever told me and diet and lifestyle. Right? I mean, it's a bizarre thing to say. But I went out and I read about polar bear physiology and how it changes across the seasons. And I was dumbfounded to learn that polar bears gain hundreds of pounds of weight and develop insulin resistance, which is basically, you know, diabetes or pre diabetes. And then they hibernate through the Arctic winter. And this is true of all bears in high latitudes. And then they hibernate and they reverse diabetes and they lose hundreds of pounds of weight in the winter. And when you look at bear physiology, you know, they're one of our closest cousins on the Earth. There's only three basically groups of animals that are omnivorous, omnivorous mammals. And they are pigs, bears, and humans. And so there's a lot that we have. I shouldn't say humans, pigs, bears, and, and monkeys or hominids or primates, whatever. There's a lot of similarity in our biology. And what's interesting about comparing humans to bears is that bears or many bears live solely at high latitudes and polar bears live at the highest latitude, the furthest away from the equator. And so they're a really amazing example of how life with our basic metabolic machinery, can thrive in an extreme environment. Because you have to understand that it's, you know, I mean, Alaska and the Arctic is basically as temperate as the rest of the northern hemisphere, or I guess much of the northern hemisphere during the summer. But then it's, it's, it's like places like, well, the rest of the world doesn't get anywhere near as cold, even during their darkest winter. And basically what I, what I found was, as I was reading about polar bears and reading about quantum, what I like to call quantum biology was basically that you have to take a ground up, holistic view of health. I tell people now that life pays attention to the smallest scales of energy and matter. That means photons, electrons, protons. And if you don't have this integrated approach to the environment where you're looking at everything. And I remember hearing a story from a friend of mine who told me a story about a guy named Anthony Beck who said that he Once helped someone get rid of some symptom because he realized that the fan oscillating in their office was like interacting with them badly and they just needed to turn it off. I mean, that kind of level of detail, that's the kind of story that gets me out of bed. Because really, that kind of detective work is what I thrive on. And what I find, I find fun. And, you know, like I said, you hear stories like that and when you're, I think, a layperson, especially when I was early in my training, you know, you want to dismiss all this stuff and just say, you know, I'm just not going to worry about this. I'm not going to worry about that. It's too inconvenient. But my mission with Polar Bear Fitness is to explain to people how the smallest scales of energy and matter shape life and then how you can integrate and still live a modern life, while also getting in touch with your wild side so that you can stay healthy.

Sure, that's a fantastic introduction to who Leland Stillman is. I've just got a burning desire to ask this question, but how did you first meet Jack? Firstly, how did you come across his work? And secondly, what was it like meeting the great man in person?

That's a great question. So I was working at this wellness center. And the amazing thing about wellness centers is that they. There's a basic trajectory that the average person who's educated and who has some kind of funding to help them go to alternative doctors, you know, doctors outside of their insurance, and then, you know, doctors outside of, particularly like Medicare and Medicaid. The basic trajectory is they. They sort of fail the traditional therapy, which, to be fair, for diseases like for many of our modern diseases, from autoimmune, allergic, whatever, is often pretty dismal. There's not a lot that they offer you. They just, you show up and they say, here, take this pill for the rest of your life. And then you show up in follow up and you say, hey, this is not working for me. I really need a different medication or I need a more control or, you know, I'm worried about side effects or whatever. And they say, well, this is a treatment, we're sorry, this is what your insurance covers. You know, that's it. Basically at that point, people begin to branch out and they go to different people. They start to go to chiropractors or maybe more alternatively minded doctors, or they go to acupuncturists. So they basically branch out into the alternative medical world. Now they get some degree of help or not no help or whatever. And their disease process is marching along kind of with whatever tempo that it has. And then if they continue to get sick and worse, which generally is what happens when they don't reverse the environmental cause of the disease or the other possibilities, that they get control on some regimen of drugs and supplements and whatever. But then eventually they either hit the wall or they get much worse and they start to exhaust the number of people in the alternative and conventional medical world in their town and they begin to have this like, very long medical resume. And even many of them, I mean, I can't tell you how many people I've seen in the alternative world who've been seen at like, Mayo, who've been seen at, you know, really top shelf institutions. And so I know, you know, what the conventional diagnoses are. And I always kind of read through the chart and I think, yep, didn't hear, seen this. And then they end up starting to go to people who are, who are more. They basically. They basically start going to people who are in more. I don't know how to say it, like almost underground medical groups, groups that are really off of the radar. There's not a lot of them around who really want to think outside the box, who really want to try new things, have innovative therapies. These are the kind of folks you meet at anti aging and regenerative medicine conferences. And so I was working at this wellness center and at the very top, like tip top of this sort of echelon of people are the folks who end up having patients flush to see them. And if you talk to these doctors, they do tend to track like, you know, one person I met this fall had attracted a patient from Jakarta, Indonesia, and another doctor was seeing somebody in Morocco. And I've already had people contact me from pretty much all the way around the world. And, and I'm really just starting out. And anyway, what happens is they, these patients begin to become sort of experts in their own right. And they have these like very complex networks of people who all have the same problem. And they all talk about their experiences and what this becomes, this amazing network of people who kind of know all the names in the wellness industry and who do all the research to find all the experts. And what I realized was actually talking to these patients, they could teach me more than I could get out of any textbook because they were like living, walking, I don't want to say like encyclopedias because it's the wrong word, but I mean, they knew they lived this and they had all these people they could talk to. And so I talked to all these patients. I mean, I would just talk to them because their stories were incredible. I mean, I've met people who've given themselves fecal transplants, like, at home. I've met people who've flown around the world and done fecal. Actually done professionally done fecal transplants. I've met people who've gone to Germany for therapeutic hyperthermia. There's not that many people in the US who are offering, like, destination wellness services whose names I wouldn't know. And I kind of know. Sometimes I even know, like, a little bit what's going on behind the scenes, those clinics. Anyway, what I found was that, well, one of these. One of these folks who was really struggling told me about Jack Cruise's work. And to be clear, a lot of people who contact me now in this sort of category of people, I don't take them as patients either because I'm not licensed where they are, or because in some cases, I've just said to them, look, I'm just starting out in this. You've seen everybody. You've been everywhere. You've been around the world for incredible medical treatments. Like, I'm not going to pretend to be the guy who's going to, like, reinvent the wheel for you, you know. So, anyway, he told me that he thought this guy had the sort of missing pieces to a. What I consider to be sort of like the functional medicine puzzle. And what I would call it is basically the. I call it. Sometimes I call it the redneck paradox, and sometimes I call it the yoga girl paradox. But you'll meet these people who are incredibly beautiful, incredibly successful, intelligent. They're doing everything right. It's like they wake up and it's yoga, and then they go eat breakfast. It's like freshly pressed juice. And then they, you know, do more yoga. And then they fast all day, and then they eat, like, you know, just amazingly healthy food. And. But then you sometimes meet them, you know, in person. They open up to you and they say, oh, I'm struggling with depression or I'm struggling with this, or I've got Crohn's disease, or I've got really bad psoriasis. And it's only under control because I'm on this really strong drug. And what you find is that there's oftentimes. You know, Jack said it quite well once to me. He said people have a very nice facade. And it's true. Anyway, one of these folks turned me on to Jack's work. And I just dove in and it was. And what I was saying with the yoga girl paradox and the redneck paradox is that, you know, you find all these very successful, healthy looking people and what's ironic about it is some of them will go down or have less endurance, less what we call physiologic preserve and be less healthy than people who have no idea what good health is. Who, whose idea of like, you know, perfect Sunday consists of going out into the woods and you know, shooting deer and then you know, like running down to the local convenience store and crushing a Slurpee with a chili cheese dog. And I always kind of in the back of my head when I saw people living that way, I always thought like, how can they do that? I mean, if I ate that way every day, I would, I would not be able to function. I wouldn't be able to get out of bed. I'd want to just fast for like a day and a half to just get that stuff out of my system. And so anyway, Jack kind of basically put it together. And then I looked back in the literature and I found all of these papers talking about how the sun reduces all cause mortality, it treats diseases. And I shouldn't say treats because I'm afraid of the powers that be. But there are many studies documenting that the, that sunlight and light in particular can have powerful effects on metabolism, diseases like type 2 diabetes, obesity. And you know, this all agreed with what I had seen as a clinician. And then also I did a fair amount of reading in my medical school days on the microbiome because it was just coming out then. And that's why I sent you that paper that I would love to talk about tonight on how the, the bear microbiome varies seasonally. And so anyway, that's how I found Jack's work and that's how he got me on two polar bears.

Cool. And what was it like meeting him in person? What was the interaction like?

Not a whole lot to say. I mean it was. He's a really fun guy. He probably is sometimes more fun than he should be. I hope he listens to this. He's not. He's a. Neurosurgeons are very interesting people because it takes a very unusual personality to go to medical school which is already like super high powered, intimidating, difficult. I mean, dealing with like critically ill dying people is not for like, like the faint of heart. And it takes a really special person to say, you know, I want to deal with the sickest people, I want to do surgeries. Where, if I cough or sneeze or, you know, if I, you know, like get an itch on the back of my neck, you know, and I, and I, and I just move just a little bit, I will paralyze this person or God, you know, you know, or I will, you know, know, destroy their consciousness. You know, it takes a really special kind of person to be willing to do that kind of work at all. There's such. And I never have boring conversations with neurosurgeons. They're always like, interesting in some way if, if all it is is for like how, how strange their personal interactions are. Jack's not, not. Jack's very. I find Jack to be very approachable, but he's so intense, you know, and he really wants people to, to get it and to get it fast. He doesn't want you to, to settle and he doesn't want you to, to. To want it simplified. You know, I was reading, I heard this recently, somebody said people buy emotionally and then they justify logically. And I think that Jack, you know, like, things like that make Jack's blood boiling because Jack wants people to realize just what's at stake. And I think when people are critical of Jack and his personal handling of things, which I can understand, I mean he, he has sometimes the, the personal manner of like a battle axe is that they don't understand like what he has to deal with. And I, you know, as a general internist, I'm dealing with sick and dying people too. So I often see the same thing, but I don't see it with the same kind of gravity, photographic, personal, up close, visceral experience that Jack does. People have to understand that like he's the guy who gets to come into the room and tell you after you've just diagnosed some brain cancer whether or not your loved one is ever going to talk or walk or be themselves again. And so when he gets really serious with people about eliminating technology from their lives and focusing on what really matters to them and making hard choices, that's where that's coming from. And I totally get that. And that totally comes across when you're talking to him in person because he's, and I can't obviously say that I agree with everything he's ever said to any. Everybody, right? But I mean, he's, he's pushing people to really get serious about what matters to them. And it's funny because I was reading today the work of Henry David Thoreau, and he said some really powerful things about people and what they are, basically how to basically think about health and wellness. And he said that the price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. And what people don't get is that technology entails some kind of risk and you really need to take the time to actually understand what it is because it gives you unprecedented convenience for that convenience can come at a cost that you really don't realize you're not actually willing to pay. So yeah, that in a nutshell was basically the experience of meeting Jack.

Wow, thank you for sharing that. It's an amazing insight coming from someone with a medical background as well, to put things in context of what Jack has to deal with. So really appreciate that, really appreciate you for sharing that. And one thing I find, one thing I find really interesting about technology, coming back to your point on these people who are sick and they're trying to find avenues to deal with their illnesses, so they get to a point where they're joining communities online or through Facebook. But isn't it interesting that technology has facilitated that, you know, through Facebook or initially would have started through some form of blogs where people join and share information. But technology has also facilitated people increasing communities, also sharing knowledge, increasing the knowledge on certain fields, these online tribes forming, whether it was Paleo or whether it's a mitochondriac or Black swan mitochondriac. And there's all these little. The other one is the root cause protocol. So there's all these little communities forming, but that's due to technology. But I agree with you, it comes with a price as well, a double edged. And it's having the understanding of what technology can do from a beneficial point of view, but also understanding the negative impacts of technology and then making informed decisions base on that and also having cognition that it's going to come with a price as well.

Exactly. And so what's funny about this, right, is that the, the person who turned me on to Jack Cruz's work for starters was one of the most blue lit, microwaved people I have ever met. And, and you know, I, by contrast, I still use and rely on a lot of technology. I spent way more of my day to day on my computer than I want to admit. But I remember just how much technology this person used and I was impressed by it. And as I got deeper and deeper into Jack's work, it really explained that paradox to me. And what I realized was I would never have found Jack if it hadn't been for technology. And the way I look at technology now is actually very, it makes me think about the immune system. Because, you know, humanity is sort of like a. In some respects a. Well, I guess actually to bring this back to the gut, many people are now saying that we are a supra organism, which means that we are an organism system consisting of many different organisms. Because we know that when you raise mice without any kind of germs, they're weaker, they're. They're more likely to get certain diseases. Basically the warp and woof of what we are is just as much the microbes that we're carrying around, which can also include parasites, which is why many people actually go out, and I shouldn't say many. Some people have gone to the third world to purposely infect themselves with parasites in order to get rid of autoimmune and particularly GI issues.

Yeah.

The way I look at it now is like the. Just as we are a superorganism, each one of us, the human race, has this sort of superorganism like quality. You know, we're all parts of different tribes or communities or whatever. And, you know, within ecosystems, you see this as well. And what's interesting to me about it is that we now have an unprecedented ability to exchange information in terms of speed and volume. Problem is editing it down. Mm. But. But I ultimately think that technology is gonna be our saving grace because it allows for the most compelling message to get out. And that's what's so interesting about watching sort of the social media wars go on, you know, no matter what. Like no matter what horse you have in any race on. On the Internet. Right. Like we see, we're seeing, you know, algorithms from Google changing who rises to the top of the search engine. But what's making about it is that it's got this organic sort of way of going to the people whose message is most compelling. And I believe that really people are going to gravitate towards the right message. They're going to get the message and they're going to ultimately figure out a way to use technology in a way that really fundamentally builds health and ameliorates suffering and avoids disease and suffering. And one of the ways in which I think this is going to happen is basically that a lot of power brokers are being disintermediated now and people are getting advice from just anyone who's got a bright idea. And the beauty is you can iterate it over six weeks. You can say, I'm going to try Jax Cruz prescriptions. And I shouldn't say prescriptions, because it's not. Not treating people over the Internet, but I mean, his ideas, you know, I'm going to try them for six weeks, right? And you know, I was blown away by the results that I was getting within days, weeks, months of doing what he was telling me to do. And I've been blown away by results that, like my mother, my mother had really severe back pain and it's now been basically banished by ice baths. And I'll never forget her telling me, I'll never forget her telling me that it was resolved. And I teach this now at Polar Bear Fitness. And I'll never forget when she, when she told me that she didn't want to try ice bathing. You know, my mother's 76. She can barely carry the, probably the 10 pound bags of ice up the stairs. Her idea of a weight is like a five pound barbecue. And she's like, now she's like, Lillian, I'm just so, so addicted to my ice baths. And I just, I love getting sunlight. I'm sleeping so well and I feel so much better. And I think this is, is great. People are able to find this information. And ultimately, when you look at the immune system within the human organism, it's all about information. And I didn't get that for a long time until I got into this sort of quantum biology stuff. But it's really about what is the information? What is, what information does the immune system have and how is it primed? And if you look at equations like E equals MC squared, right? Well, if energy is matter and matter is energy and they're interchangeable, then really it's very hard and in fact academic to try and disentangle, you know, what a calorie is or what a carbohydrate is. These are pieces of information that your body uses in order to try and make decisions. And so disease of any organ system in my head now is a problem of information transfer and a problem of signaling from the environment. And so people are interestingly creating this kind of, you know, sort of social immune system where they're taking in all this new information to change their behavior, to change their choices, to try and get, you know, balance in the information that they're getting so their immune system can actually work, you know, as, of course, most of the people probably listening to. In my mind anyway, listening to gut health podcasts are probably looking for that. They're looking for the next breakthrough that will help them get that balance back to their system.

Absolutely. And just a side note, an interesting point. I'm 100% with you. It's almost, we've Created almost like a hive mind where people can share information. And I'm the same. I tried Jack's protocols. That worked incredibly well for me. Then I started telling my mom about it. She's been suffering with a very sore knee. A meniscus problem in the knee bought her a red light machine. She started shining red light on that every night. I would never have thought this possible, but we went to a health spa and normally you do sauna and then you do the ice bath. My mom actually did quite a few plunges and she's 60, pretty close to 70. 60, actually, yeah, 60. She's younger, sorry, 63. So yeah. So that's really interesting. With your mom and my mom, you never would have thought them to try these things. But the end of that story was that she got incredible benefits and that knee is almost now pain free, which she struggled with that for years. So that's a huge, huge result. She goes out in the morning, she gets sunlight in her eyes. She's really bought into the idea because you can feel it. You feel the benefits you feel, you know, you try, you feel it, it works for you and you stick to it. It's simple. And it all comes from that mind, that hive mind.

Yeah, exactly. And ultimately what I think is going to happen is that there's going to become enough, you know, should we say enough of a consciousness about what's good for our biology. Because ultimately what people are doing is they're fooling themselves into thinking that the things that they think make them happy make them happy. And when you look at how human neurochemistry really works, you're wired to find fulfillment in actual in person relationships. You can't get the same kind of emotional response through a screen that you can in person. The benefit of the screen is that it allows you to connect with people who are on the same wavelength as you, like, you know, continents away. Which is great, especially if you're in kind of like a small crew who are saying like, hey, really need to think more deeply about how we're using technology. Because I'm going to quote Thoreau again. He said men have become the tools of their tools. And that's exactly what the social media giants have done with the way that they've gamified their technology. They've created a system where you're, you're the rat hitting the coke, the bar and to get the cocaine. It's very pernicious. Now again, we can use this for, in a very positive way. But what people are going to eventually realize Is that they need, while it's fun to have this amazing little machine that can be a portal to the entire world, I mean, you can see, hear, experience the world beyond your zip code. I mean, at the snap of a finger or snap of fingers. And that's amazing. No one wants to give up on that. Right. But how you do it in a way that really is rewarding, fulfilling, and doesn't undermine our fundamental biology is the key. And I think what people are going to find is that they really like living in a deeply. A deeply connected local community where they can. They can walk, they can, like, move through and navigate their terrain, they can exercise, you know, on their way to or from work. They know the people in their community. They know who farms their food. They know who raises the animals that they eat. You know, they know the person who mows their lawn and who's teaching their kids at school and all this other stuff. I mean, this is how people are really wired to work. And we've created this massively, like, decentralized society where you can order everything on Amazon, you can talk to your parents across the country on Skype or Facebook Live or, I don't know, whatever. You can interact with all of your subcontractors through the Internet and, like, upwork and, you know, remote hiring sites, and you can work all day alone and never actually have contact with another human being. Right? Yeah, but this is basically a massive experiment in what happens to human biology when you radically disconnect it from nature. Because we know that even little things like shaking someone's hands or patting someone on the back can have an effect that's biological. And so, you know, I'm talking a lot about probably things that people think make them feel differently, but this is actually where it gets into the neuro chemistry of all this. And remembering the fact that your immune system is fundamentally run by neurotransmitters and hormones, and those neurotransmitters and hormones are shaped by light. They're shaped by your circadian environment. Like, for example, I remember reading these great papers that came out of Korea where they looked at melatonin in nursing or breastfeeding mothers, and they had some women watch, like, a really boring video before. Before breastfeeding. They had someone watch a funny video before breastfeeding. And it turns out that if you watch something funny before you breastfeed your breast milk, melatonin levels are higher.

Wow.

Yeah. So I tell people life pays attention to the small scales of energy and matter. So you really want to dial in this like lifestyle where little things like that, like you get like, maybe my wife shouldn't be watching horror movies every night before she goes to bed. Maybe this is like not good for her HPA axis and you know, our nursing children or whatever. Yeah, it's little things like that. But you know, people like me are gonna, are gonna take all this information, we're gonna distill it down and we're gonna give it to people in just a simple like here's the take home and here's how to integrate this into your modern life and we'll, we'll, we'll figure it out and people will, will find solutions.

That's such an interesting point because even when we do our stool testing and we, we give people recommendations on how to improve the microbiome, one of the most important things is actually management of stress. Human connection, all these things really matter when it comes to the microbiome. Even simple things as hugging, touching, that all impacts oxytocin release, making eye contact with people, all these things that are fundamentally human have a huge impact on the composition of the gut microbiome. So I know the topic of today was going to be the gut microbiome, so let's delve into it. You sent me this amazing paper with the polar bears. So how about you firstly distill your interest in the microbiome and then tie it to this beautiful anecdote of a polar bear study in the polar bear story and polar bear fitness which you've created.

Absolutely. So, you know, let's start with what the microbiome is. I think of the microbiome as really being, it's a colony of bacteria in our body that we can control. You know, when things are awry with your gut microbiome, your gut can just evacuate it. Right? I mean everyone's experienced that. And the amazing thing about it is it can reconstitute itself, right. And we can shape it with what we put into it. But what's really important to understand is that it is performing a function. And so your body is closely regulating it. Your body is very involved in, and I think of it as like the immune system is right there at the gut border. And I think of the immune system as being like the gardener of the microbiome. Now what is the immune system trying to do? It's trying to create a tool that the body can use in order to live well. And ultimately the immune system is being in turn shaped by environmental factors. And what I explained to everyone about the basics of biology is that Life is supposed to have skin in the game. It's supposed to be exposed to the natural stress of its external environment, and it's optimized for that stress. So we think of stress as being bad, right? But the reality is that stress is actually what life orients itself around without, say, gravity. Your bones fall apart. We know this from astronauts. Without the stress of, you know, sunlight on your skin, your circadian system doesn't entrain. And so there's this natural cycle in all functions in nature that you have to understand before you can really try and sort of intervene in a meaningful way. So one thing we know about the microbiome and really about metabolism, right, is that you need to get fat when resources are abundant. If you know that periods of scarcity are coming now at the equator, the photoperiod, or the amount of daylight is relatively constant all year round. It's. It's a pretty boring seasonal life. The equator, it's really hot all the time. Some seasons it's hotter than others, but basically it's just dry and rainy season and it's really hot all the time. There's lots of UV light and you don't have these periods of a seasonal abundance versus scarcity. The Arctic is the most extreme example in the opposite respect. And what's interesting about Earth's history is that, you know, mammals have had to survive ice ages. Well, how do you survive an ice age if you can't put on a lot of fat? The mammals who survive these ice ages best have an enormous amount of fat. So polar bears that basically experience an ice age every winter, they put on hundreds of pounds every summer, and they lose those hundreds of pounds every winter. And they need to get obese in the summer or they will starve to death in the winter, they will freeze, they'll freeze, starve, what's the difference? So people need to understand that in mammals, this ability to gain weight and develop diabetes is actually a seasonal adaptation that allows us to thrive even in the coldest environments on Earth. Where this goes awry is when you take your skin out of the game and all of a sudden you're living in this artificially lit, artificially heated environment with tons of food that doesn't grow there because it's a complete mismatch in what, in what you would naturally be exposed to. Right? That's why when you go back and you look at things like the Greenland paradox, you see that the people in Greenland had virtually no heart disease, in fact, no documented heart disease before the discoveries, before they were Studied by Western scientists and physicians, and now they've adopted Western life ways. And everyone says, well, it's probably because they're eating junk food. Well, yeah, but what about light? I mean, light does ultimately change these. These. These systems. Now, how does this work in the polar bear.

Sorry, come back to Greenland. So why did. So what happened in terms of the Greenland people and their light?

Pretty much all indigenous groups in North America, they have adopted Western technology and western life ways slowly over time.

Yes.

And with the same catastrophic health consequences as the rest of us have experienced. Right. It's been, in some respects, amplified because people like you and I have education and we have a lot of resources that allow us to basically figure out how technology is going to potentially undermine our biology. Whereas a lot of indigenous peoples have suffered a lot of political persecution and are basically starting from a. From a place of, unfortunately, outright government oppression. Which is one reason why I'm so skeptical of any kind of government intervention into. Into trying to get people to be healthy because they. It's like. It's like your friend who's tone deaf, who always tries to chime in and try and make everything better in the song, in the chorus, it's like, dude, just stay over there in the corner. Leave us alone. We'll sort all this out. So anyway, they adopted western lifeways, but the problem is you can't disentangle these effects. Right. So it's not like they adopted eating grains and sugars and whatever, you know, and then, you know, they. They waited 40 years to adopt artificial light. They adopt all this stuff at the same time.

Gotcha. Yep.

So what happens to polar bears over the Arctic summer? Well, it's the definition of the Arctic Circle, is the latitude above which the sun is visible for 24 hours on June 21, which happens to be my birthday. Nice. Yeah, I know, it's very. So. So the Arctic Circle, that's where. That's the highest latitude. And what's interesting about the light environment, that latitude. Right. Is that you're constantly under sunlight. And so what is melatonin? Melatonin is the hormone of sleep, regeneration, rejuvenation. Without melatonin, you fall apart. This is why shift workers who are constantly exposed to light at night have a higher incidence of practically every single disease you could possibly want to avoid. So what happens to the polar bears over the course of the summer is they basically fall apart. That's the process of obesity and diabetes. Interestingly, things like their testosterone and their estradiol, you know, their hormones of fertility, also drop this is also part of the plan, because if the polar bears don't mate in the spring and early summer, when they're healthiest, then the timing of the, of the delivery of the babies is off. And polar bears have to be very careful about timing of delivery of their cubs because if they deliver them too late, the babies don't have enough time to fatten up and then survive the next winter. And if they deliver them too early, it might be too cold and the cubs might struggle to, A, find food, and B, stay warm in the Arctic. Right. So the polar bears are able to do this without going extinct by keeping their skin in the game because they're optimized to that. And the signals they get from their light environment basically tell their bodies what to do. So what happens when you put human beings under, you know, 16 hours of very, very bright light for long periods of time? Well, their, their neurohormonal axes get confused. We know that many diseases today that people struggle with, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, whatever. We finally determine chronic Lyme disease to be all of these diseases, not to mention, you know, autoimmune diseases, allergies, these diseases are all linked to problems with timing and our circadian rhythms. And so, you know, is this sort of a chicken or the egg thing, though? Right? Because sometimes people will have symptoms at night that disrupt their sleep, or they, they will have issues during the day that end up altering their circadian rhythms. To me, it ends up becoming academic. The bottom line is when you live under natural light, your seasons are balanced, you have enough melatonin running around to continue running those sort of cellular cleanup protocols and keeping your cells on track. And that's what the Arctic winter really does for polar bears. That's why I say to people that really what we're living with with are the idols of an endless summer. And what you have to understand is that all of these effects cascade down through the hormones and neurotransmitters, and that changes what the immune system does. So I have this idea that really the immune system is meant to upregulate and downregulate different functions in different seasons in order to adjust to the environment. A great example of this would be the arm of the immune system that's responsible for allergies turns out to also be enrolled, be involved in the generation of brown fat, which is what produces heat in the winter. Who would have thought that the immune system would do that? Well, it turns out that it does. And so immunity and metabolism in the polar bear are really One in the same. And the idea of disentangling them is kind of absurd because if you think about it, the availability of carbohydrates, or I shouldn't say carbohydrates, the availability of food and the type of pathogens that you are going to encounter, viruses, bacteria, parasites, are going to vary based on the light environment that you're in. Right. So we have different illnesses that we expect in winter from the ones we expect in summer. Right. And so where this all comes together with the microbiome is this. Your neuroendocrine axis which is driven by light is ultimately, ultimately going to have a profound impact on your, on your gut microbiome. And we see this in fact in the study that I showed you that we'll post when we post this, this video. This was not actually done in polar bears. Believe it or not, polar bears are wicked hard to study because they live on the sea ice. And wouldn't you know it, it's just really hard to get people out there to collect polar bear poop in the, the winter on the sea ice. So they did this study in free ranging brown bears and they, they looked at the microbiome in their feces in the winter, the hibernation period and then in the active period and they found that there were significant differences in the microbiome. Now I was not surprised to read this because I'd read years before these crazy studies they did in mice where they would take a mice mouse that was dying of like quashure core, which is protein calorie malnutrition, basically a mouse that's starving to death. They would take that microbiome and they would put it in a mouse that wasn't starving and they would induce starvation in that mouse. Wow. Whoa. Yeah. So it's almost like, you know, you change this, you give, you give a mouse that's got a good battery and it's got over here the juice from the bad battery over here and all of a sudden this mouse has got a bad battery. It's pretty wild stuff. Yeah. Now we already knew that this was, we knew this clinically. I mean this happens in humans. And the reason we know that is that occasionally we have to give humans fecal transplants because their microbiome gets totally messed up. The typical causes from C. Difficile colitis.

Yeah.

And there have been very interesting reports that you know one and we try and get it from like, believe it or not, it's hard to get someone to give you their stool because it's not a very fun collection process. And so typically it's a family member who lives closely with the individual who test negative for a whole range of pathogens, who you end up doing this fecal transplant with. And what I, what you, what we heard early on in the days of fecal transplant is that the patients who would get these transplants if the relative they got the transplant from was fat or diabetic, they would get fat and diabetic. Really glad you fixed my, you know, C. Difficile colitis. But it would have been really great if you could have done it without making me, you know, struggle with my weight. So you got to understand this whole gut brain connection thing. I mean like the levels of cross of feedback and interrelatedness of this, the system is just amazing. And I was reading through a lot of quotes today and I have to bring this one up. This one's from John Muir. He said, when one tugs at a single thing in nature, you find it attached to the rest of the world. And that is so true. Absolutely. And so basically, you know, I wasn't surprised to find this, to see this finding in brown bears. And what people need to understand is that they're focused on what they're putting into their body with regards to what effect it has on their microbiome. They're focused on microbiome diversity, they're focused on different species, blah, blah, blah. All of this, I'm sure, will lead to wonderful therapeutics which may one day be as simple as you have X or Y disease. And we know that X or Y like type of microbiome causes a remission of this disease when we transplant it. So we're gonna have a bunch of donors who we pay to regularly donate their stool and we will cure all these diseases. Right. Be great, wouldn't it? Yeah. That's the kind of stuff that we could do with this that unfortunately is not being done because there's not really any money in actually fixing these problems. But, you know, people need to like get loud and clamor for it because it's, I mean, like that study could be done tomorrow, you know, and there's plenty of doctors out there who would be happy to do it. But the reality is that the pace of like, research has basically been hijacked by industry and, you know, academia has become hijacked by people who don't have a lot of imagination and who want to just make it really hard to do research. And so, you know, that's a whole other story. But that's the kind of exciting therapeutics we can get to with the microbiome biome and what people need to understand about it is right now you can change your light environment and have a radical effect on your microbiome, just as bears demonstrate every single year.

Yeah, that's fascinating. So people listening to this, they're 100% sold on the story of light shaping the microbiome. Now what are some strategies, actionable strategies that, that people can use light management to actually influence the microbiome in a positive way.

Right. So the number one thing that I stress with people now is actually a simple fact that the sun reduces all cause mortality. That means that sunlight is good for you. Now people have been indoctrinated to thinking the sun is bad for them. Now there's like a caveat here, right, because it is possible to die of skin cancer. Yeah, absolutely. And particularly in Australia, you know, people have a very pale skin complexion. They're really built to thrive in. I shouldn't say thrive, but they're built that, that skin complexion, a pale skin skin tone is built for a high latitude where you don't get a lot of sunlight and you got to get the most out of it. In a way that's, that's sort of works to your advantage. In Australia because of the modern life, you just like can't get outside that much. And so if you're getting four or five hours of really intense sunlight, as an Australian, you know, for all I know you're getting like the equivalent of eight hours if you were still back in Ireland or Scotland or whatever. So the sun reduces all cause mortality. In the United States. The statistics are basically as follows. 10,000 people every year die of skin cancer. 2.8 million people die. That's point, that's a little bit more than 0.03% of all deaths. Now the other big killers are like heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, respiratory infections, chronic respiratory illnesses, unintentional falls and suicide. And also kidney diseases and autoimmune diseases. Every single one of those diseases starting at the top the most, most deaths is heart disease. Second most is cancer. Pretty much everyone you talk to today knows someone with cancer, knows someone with heart disease or, or know someone who's died from one of those diseases. Right. All of these diseases are linked to sunlight deficiency. The sun reduces the incidence and severity of all of these diseases. It's shown over and over and over again in the literature. So I joke with people that I intend to look like a brown paper bag when I did when I die, because I'd rather be an ugly corpse than an early one, you know?

Yeah.

And it's really that simple. Now, the caveat to that is that the literature is also very clear that you don't want to get burned because the more burned you get, the more likely you are to develop that cancer. And burning, to my mind, is like a sign that your. Your skin's not ready to handle that level of, of sun. If you think about it, our ancestors probably never had to deal with sunburn because you couldn't get out of the sun. Right. Or at least why would you want to? It's like our main stress in northern Europe was. Was dying of cold. Well, one of the main stresses. So the sun reduces all cause mortality. And it can. I haven't yet confirmed this in my own clinical practice, but I would love to. I mean, but I mean, the bears have proven it for me. Right. They've proven that the amount of sun in your environment can alter your microbiome. And Jack anecdotally has mentioned that he's seen radical results on people's stool microbiome testing when they've brought the sun back into their life. I'd love if. I'd love it if you would share more information on that. But there's not, probably not too much to tell other than that it improves things. Right?

Yeah.

Next thing would be, you know, the balance to the sun is darkness and sleep. But what people have to understand is that not all sleep is created equal. So my sleep was always good, and then it declined. When I was in my training and I was doing a lot of night shift, I was working a lot of evenings. I was. I was just under a ton of stress. It was just. It was a nightmare. And I was just getting older. Like it was just taking a toll on me. Right. And I finally fixed my sleep thanks to Raw Optics blue blockers, which I'm wearing right now, and software like Iris, which blocks blue light on your computer screen. And I'm using these low blue light bulbs. But what people need to understand is that light really shapes the quality of your sleep. And so if you're not editing out blue and green light, that shut down your melatonin production. After dark and before dawn, you're chronically suppressing your melatonin, which is the. I mean, the lower your melatonin, and in study after study, the higher your risk of every disease you want to avoid. So, so I did. I. That's one other thing I mentioned to people because. And I, again, I haven't seen these results directly. And part of this is because I'm not that enthusiastic about testing the microbiome because I've looked at all the different functional tests that I have, and it's not that they can't be helpful in certain specific clinical contexts. But here's the reality. You got to ask a hard question every time you order a lab, which is, how is this going to change what I do? I can't imagine something on a microbiome test telling me this patient needs to avoid the sun and this patient needs to get less melatonin. In our world, it's really, people are not getting enough sunlight. They're getting too much fake light. And then they're getting not very good sleep quality because their melatonin levels are chronically suppressed. And when they don't get good sleep quality, their organ systems fall apart. And a big piece of gut health is in training the gut to have the same circadian rhythm as the brain and melatonin from the brain, because basically what melatonin does when it's released in the pineal gland is it runs around the body like basically the biological janitor. Now, the janitor can only work when the classroom in the school or the office is empty, right? If the janitor shows up and everyone is like still there working, there's papers everywhere, he's like, I don't want to mess with all this stuff. You guys are in the middle of something. I don't want to throw something out. That's important, right? So if melatonin shows up to the gut and the gut is busy digesting something, right? Then the melatonin does not get to do its work. And we see over and over again, I think this is why we see a link between autoimmune disease and the, the gut and artificial light.

I will side note a couple of things there. Firstly, on your point on having the food flooding around in the system, that's why I highly recommend people explore a time restricted eating protocol where you're starting to have your dinner quite early in the day and allowing sufficient time for digestion to take place. And when it's time for sleep, you've had this long period of fasting and then fasting through that sleeping process as well. So that's point one. So in terms of the microbiome and what we do know in terms of the link between sleep and gut microbiota composition, we do see an increase in a keystone species called Akkermansia and some other ones that are associated with better gut barrier function, mucin function, Better cognitive abilities, which are all linked to better sleep as well. And so what, what gut microbiome testing can do. So it's very limiting in terms of light management, but it can tell you, like me, it's quite sophisticated. Now with metagenomic sequencing, we can get a very high definition picture of the gut. We can also tell you at a species level of the different bugs that are in there. But we can also see gut metabolites, things like short chain fatty acids or tryptophan, very key molecules that are key to a healthy individual. So from that point of view, I think it's still very useful, especially with the rapid advancements and the lower costs that are now available to consumers.

That's excellent. It's something that I haven't been up on recently because there's been so much, basically, at least for me, going on with light and how to, how to really, how to really optimize my patients, help patients with light and cold. I knew all that was coming, you know, when I was looking into this literature a long time ago and I was looking into it when there was like basically no direct to consumer or no, no real consumer testing. It was like it was back in 20, 2013, 2012, and they were just playing around with, you know, shotgun sequencing, like the whole microbiome. And it was really cool stuff back then. But again, what's, what's interesting is I'd love to hear your thoughts on sort of what supplements you see people using to radically reshape their, their microbiome.

Yeah, absolutely. From that point of view, once you, you've got a picture of what's going on in the gut and the species that are present, then you can use very precision targeted prebiotics. So not to say that you're going to supplement, but a lot of these prebiotic compounds are found in whole foods. Perfect example would be like a raw cacao, which has got all these polyphenols that can feed Akkermansia, or you've got things like blueberries, again, polyphenol rich. Yum. You've got Acacia fiber or fos, which is another very targeted prebiotic that's found in beans and legumes and things like that. So we can then give people very actionable dietary advice to target increasing certain species of bacteria, but then also reducing species that are associated with inflammation. Things like Bilofala or De sulfavibrio or protobacteria generally, which are high in lipopolysaccharides, which can cause inflammation. If you have a Leaky gut. So this is where the science is at the moment, and it's rapidly advancing.

Excellent. Yeah.

So one key point as well that's missing, I think, in dietary advice substantially throughout the world is the. And Jack talks about this so brilliantly, the impact of the light energy that's stored in the food. So because of the advent of importing food from across the world, these days, you go to a supermarket shelf and most products are imported from somewhere. Even fresh fruits and vegetables might be coming from Peru or from Mexico, because now seasonality is pretty much a mute point because you can import and you can use various methods of preservation, ethylene oxide or modified atmosphere, to make fruits look fresh. So they look fresh, but they're coming from halfway across the world and they could be a year old by the time you eat it. But that light energy is still stored in the food product, which could potentially be confusing the body, because you mentioned brilliantly earlier, it's. It's information, isn't it?

Yeah. And, you know, one of the things that really just blew my mind when Jack pointed it out was simply the fact that pretty much every biochemical reaction in nature has some component. I mean, they're all. I guess what I'll say is all these reactions that we talk about in metabolism, they all have light as a component, because what happens when an electron falls from one level to another, it emits a photon? What happens when your mitochondria uncouple and use an uncoupling protein to move a proton or photo, sorry, proton, it emits infrared light. And so we've all been focused on this biochemistry story because it's what we were able to. I mean, if you think about it, the. The work that guys like Pasteur did way back in the day and Joseph Lister, what they were able to figure out was just incredible. Just using microscopes, right? But then getting all the way down to the level of photons, protons, electrons, has taken so much work and been really an amazing challenge for biology because studying that in wet, you know, wet, moody living systems, I mean, how do you do that? Right? And so something that people to understand and think about is, wait a minute. If you're digesting food in your gut, and if all these biochemical reactions involve some. Some emission of light, then a component of what we're eating is not just the raw. I moved this chemical bond over here, transformed it in this chemical energy, energy over there with this amount of ATP or whatever. But how much light was actually emitted by the microbiome into the body. And that's why I use the analogy earlier of a battery, because it seems like the microbiome is having this really profound effect on, on cell metabolism and physiology that is just, I mean, astounding. I think if you told people that stool transplants could take somebody from being into fat before they had done it, let alone in mice, from, you know, normal healthy weight to starvation despite adequate calories, they would have been, they would have said that was, that was total nonsense. Total, total insanity.

Totally.

We've. And yet we've done it. Right. And so, so it's, it's very exciting to think about in terms of therapeutics. And it, it's another thing where, or I think that people modifying their light environment and using light therapeutically, like, I wonder what we'll be able to do with photobiomodulation and red light therapy for GI illnesses. I haven't seen anyone studying that, but it's a very exciting opportunity.

Absolutely. And the other thing I should point out as well, there's even studies suggesting you can take fecal matter from a depressed person and put it into someone that's not depressed and elicit depression. So there's also this mental health impact as well.

Right.

So the gut microbiome is fascinating because it's this huge metabolic organ essentially of trillions of microbes. And I think where the science is headed, if you look at just the general population, they're just getting their head around the microbiome. But I think where the science is really headed in the future, which will be shed a lot more light, is the advancement of knowledge in the quantum biology space, because there's this whole big gaping lack of information and understanding when it comes to the quantum realm. And I think the microbiome is a huge part of that story. And I think that'll only unfold as more research is done. I don't know how long it's going to take, but it'll be fascinating to see what comes out of it.

Yeah, well, I think definitely keep your eye out for it because I think that it's going to come because these kinds of studies are really easy to do in reality. Like, just give me 10 people who've got the same diagnosis of some kind of GI nature, Crohn's ulcerative colitis, and have them use red light therapy and get as much sun as possible and just see what happens.

Yeah, absolutely. And one of Jack's recommendations is, is get some sun in your gut in the morning. And that's what I try and do every Morning as well.

Yeah, right. The other piece of that is that, you know, as on the information side of things is that the food that we're eating, you know, these very old traditions like traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine from India, they had these sort of what people I think have dismissed as hokey and superstitious claims like, oh, the food that you're eating in this season is. Or whatever is the, is the remedy for the energy that you are exposed to in that season. And I think that they're right. You know, I mean, the more we learn about this, the seasonality of your diet matters. And for example, you know, you can. Food is an incredibly powerful cue. And one thing that I've found in the literature is that if you, if you only make food available to bears at night, they'll complete completely flip their circadian rhythm. So not only are you disrupting your gut microbiome by making food available to yourself at night. And so I like to joke with people, you know, your refrigerator, like, can make you fat. Just the light can make you fat. When you're flip, when you're making food available at night, you're actually altering your whole body circadian rhythm. And I really, the more I learned, the more I subscribe to this idea that you're supposed to eat food from your zip code in its proper season. And I think, as I said before, people are getting confused about what really makes them happy. And as somebody who's gone to pretty significant lengths in order to eat a local seasonal diet for a long time, I can tell you food makes me happy. Number one, getting it, knowing the people I get it from is actually there's some of the most meaningful friendships, relationships I've ever had and, and cooking it with people that, you know, matters. And then on top of that, people are just going to realize that this is what creates communities they want to live in. And I think that's very positive because it's. I think a lot of people sort of go, go all doom and gloom and they say, oh, we're all going to end up eating like Soylent Green and beyond meat burgers and we're all going to like, have to drive Priuses because of climate change. And I say, you know, we'll probably create communities where like, I don't have to own a car. Like, my car is. I actually, I had a little rear end. I rear ended somebody the other week. I just got the bill for it. And it really put things in perspective, was like, you know, I would be happy just riding A bike to my place of work, riding my bike to the store, and then riding my bike home. But I have to have this car because I got to get all these other places, you know, I hear. Yeah.

Have you ever watched that movie Cloud Atlas?

Yeah, I have.

That's brilliant. I mean, if humanity, I don't want to spoil it for people, but if humanity goes pear shape, maybe at the end of it, we just go back to almost a primitive tribal type of lifestyle.

Well, Einstein said, I do not know what weapons World War 3 will be fought with, but I know that World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.

He had a lot of insight, didn't he?

He was a smart guy. But what I find interesting about Einstein and those early pioneers of quantum physics is that they actually wrote this long letter to FDR saying, you really don't understand the hell that can be unleashed by nuclear weapons. And what they didn't realize was that and at the time, their technology was so, so primitive. I mean, it's funny to think about quantum physics as being primitive, but it was, it was primitive. They didn't realize what a threat. Microwave and radio wave radiation opposed to the globe because. And you know, there's a lot of reports on it impacting wildlife. I'm very concerned about the effects it's having on, say, you know, monarch butterfly populations that have taken a dive unexpectedly. And I don't like to go in for, for, for environmental alarmism because I've found over the past, and I care deeply about the environment. You know, I always have. I majored in environmental health. But I've found that sometimes people are actually turning the environment into a cash cow to make a lot of money off donations. But the simple reality is that there's a lot of literature out there indicating that microwave and radio wave radiation can have a significantly negative impact, not just on our biology, but on biology around us. And to take that back to the visible light spectrum, right, Blue light in the environment has major effects on wildlife and insect populations. And so one of the sort of silver linings about how bad technology can be for humans is, is that it gives us a much better reason than we've ever had to limit the technology we use for the safety of our ecosystems as well. So I do think we're going to live a very integrated life with our ecosystems in the future because we're going to realize that's what makes us happy as well as healthy.

Yeah, absolutely. Case in point, if you knock out the bees and you're knocking out a huge chunk of our food as well.

So.

Very, very.

Yeah. Although again, like, that's something that I don't know what to think. Think about because I hear about people having a lot of colony collapse disorder, but then I also hear about, like, the honey yield going up in certain places. And I just think, who am I supposed to believe anymore? It's like, which of this news is fake? And I just.

My understanding is that bees play a very important part of the crops.

Oh, they're critical. They're critical, but I don't know who to trust. Like, somebody over here is telling me that they're all about to die. And somebody else over here is like, yeah, but we're having higher honey yields. And I'm like, well, if there's more honey, then how can there be fewer bees? But I don't want to discount the. I mean, in the end, I actually think a lot of this, people, like, get really upset with one another about it. They want to fight about it. I think that the fighting is being instigated by people who are making a lot of money off of the fighting. And I think that when you look at it, we all agree we want to live in a nice, happy, healthy environment. And generally speaking, when people are degrading the environment, they're. They're doing so because some authority has set up a very bad power structure where they make money or really often have no choice at all in how they're making their money. Like, case in point, would be something that has a very significant effect on our gut health, which is the American agricultural system. The only reason that we're currently engaged in the big agribusiness model of agriculture is that the government props it up. The government props it up because it has control. And these corporations see that they can buy the government. Now, if the government had no control over agriculture, people were just free, you know, and they weren't getting subsidies and they didn't have all these regulations, or at least if regulations were done on a local scale where they could be controlled by very small groups of people in their local communities, then you would see, you know, you wouldn't be seeing mega corporations like Monsanto that treat people like, like, I shouldn't say Monsanto. I should probably just say like big agribusiness. But you would, you would see. Maybe you can edit that out later, but you would, you would see people. You would see people farming and living the way that they want to. And people today are now paying top dollar for farm fresh, you know, ethically and sustainably raised food, which is just proof that this economic model works. It's just that, like I said, the government and corporations are colluding to make it economically untenable.

I'm with you. There's a lot of financial implications and tariffs and all sorts of trade wars going on between countries when it comes to agricultural produce. It is a very ugly little place. Part of the food system for sure. I think we've got plenty of material to talk, do another round to it at some point. But I'm very conscious of your time and I want to let you get back to your sleep, which I imagine it's quite late down your neck of the woods.

It's not too late. I got another couple hours to be up. I've got to get packed for a trip. I'm going up to the Pacific Northwest for a conference on integrative cancer therapies.

Wonderful. And so if people have listened to this podcast, they're fascinated by the information that you're sharing. They want to connect with you, they want to check out your program that you have. So how do people find you and tell us a bit about your program that you're launching?

Right. So my personal website is still in md.com people should sign up for the newsletter because it's awesome. And my course is at Polar Bear Fitness. And Polar Bear Fitness is basically where I am offering courses now where I sort of boil down all the most important things. And you know what I've realized is that generally speaking I have, I can offer the average person like hours worth of just information that they can then sort of pick and choose what they need, what fits their context. Right. It's not practicing medicine via online course. It's just, hey, this is like I like the other, the other day I recorded some, some videos on like adrenal stress testing and how you do it, how you interpret it, who needs it, who doesn't need it, what to do with basic, what I do with basic results with patients. And so that's where I'm offering these courses. I think they're a really great value. Polar Bear Fitness is my, should we say, foundational. In my first course it's available for 50% off usual list prices of hundred bucks. Now it's available for 50. It's almost two hours worth of video. It's a 30 page PDF. And then I've committed to answering all the questions that I get in the comments for the first 30 days. So we'll see how much I get to sleep this night. This. But you know, like just to give you an example, I actually added 25 minutes worth of a video yesterday because somebody asked a bunch of really great questions that I really realized I wanted to actually include in the course so people can find that course there and they can find me on social media ilmanmd and pretty much the point of my social media channels is to educate people on how light shapes life and how we can basic little, little changes we can all make to to our lives and our environments to live happier and healthier and more ethically.

Great. I highly encourage people to check out Leland's work because it's just mind boggling and it's great to get simple, actionable advice out of very complex scientific material. So Leland, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. What an absolute pleasure to chat with you.

Yeah, likewise. Thanks for having me.

Awesome man. Take care, brother.

You too. Bye.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Gut Health guest podcast with Dr. Leland Stillman, MD. Wasn't that such an insightful episode? If you'd like to check out the show notes, they were available at www.podcast.nourishmeorganics.com and if you enjoyed this podcast, please share with your friends and family members so we can get this amazing and important health information out to you. Communities Guys, we have a vibrant social media community on YouTube, on Facebook, on Instagram, uthealthgurus. And if you want to check out the Red Light Therapy device by Nourish Me Organics, do head to www.nourishmeorganics.com and use the code Polar Bear for 10% off.