What Happens When You Shine Light on Your Gut and Brain | Sarah Turner

How much do we know how light affects the brain? I assume if you shine these probably considered life supporting lights and then all the little organelles are going to work.

More effectively, it has huge implications for the brain because we know, you know, for example, hydrated proteins fold differently. You know, this has implications for what's going on in the brain. Also, the functionality of these proteins and things in the body is potentially changed. Also the speed of blood flow, the speed of removal of waste products, all of these things are potentially changed when you shine light onto the body, particularly the brain.

Welcome to the Dr. Joy Kong podcast. This is where I have a chance to share with you some of the latest developments in the space of holistic health, longevity and wellness. I have always honored intellectual curiosity and scientific rigor combined with real world practicality. My goal is that what you learn here will help you live longer and, and live better. Hope you enjoy the journey with me.

Hello. Welcome Back to the Dr. Joy Kahn podcast. You know, this is where I share really exciting new things about health and medical sciences, all to help you live longer and better and just having a more vibrant life. So today I'm really excited to invite Sarah Turner, who is a scientist and entrepreneur and who has developed something that's really interesting that can supercharge your health, such as the brain and the gut connection.

Right.

So we're going to dive deep into this. And Sarah, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you, Joy. Thank you. It's always lovely to see you.

I know, I know we've known each other for, for a while. I think it's been a year and it took this long to finally come together and really chat and, and go deep into what you've developed, which is very exciting. So I to want to introduce Sarah just a little bit. So Sarah Turner is a researcher and practitioner specializing in photobiomodulation and consciousness studies and regenerative health. She has a background in biology and over two decades of experience bridging the cutting edge science and practical application of light therapy for brain, gut and systemic wellness. And she's a CEO of Sarah Thrive, which is a light red light device for gut and brain connection. So thank you so much, Sarah. I've been interested in light for some time. I know light has profound effects in, in our health. I think we're just beginning to understand, you know, we're all energy beings. You know, we're not just a chemical soup. We're very much a physical entity and how we interact with our environment through something that's invisible. It's Actually very powerful. So can I ask you how you became interested in light?

Yes. Yeah, I mean, right. Light is a very interesting topic and it's something that actually I wasn't taught in, in a lot of my science training. And so I came to it quite late, late later than I would expect considering its significance in my life now. So really I was working in pharmaceuticals. I did some nutritional medicine qualifications and to cut a long story short, moved to California to get involved in alternative medicines, mainly looking at things like consciousness interface devices and nutrition and biohacking. You know, biohacking was just starting in California when I moved there. And actually it was through that and meeting people. I actually was fortunate enough to meet people like Professor Jerry Pollock, who was doing stuff about how light interacts with water, Dr. Jack Cruz, who was putting out a lot of information about circadian biology and various other people. I started to get very interested in how light affects the brain, mainly because I do have a clinical neuroscience background. So I started to get interested in that. And because I do have a research background, I was able to get myself on some actual trials where I could see for myself quite how powerful this technology is. So, so probably I've been now full on researching photobiomodulation since 2018 and that's kind of what led me to start the company. Yeah.

Uh huh. And how does light affect the water?

This is a very interesting topic and something that I think is very under researched and undervalued at the moment. But if you shine light onto water, depending on the surface that the water is adjacent to, you can actually change the structure of water. And when you change the structure of water, you change its charge. So this is research coming from, like I say, my main introduction to this was a guy called Professor Jerry Pollock, who wrote a fabulous book called the Fourth Phase of Water. Because we all know that water is a solid, a liquid and a gas, depending on the temperature. But actually water does form another phase, which is a gel like phase when it's in contact with a hydrophilic surface, as you would find in biology, like a cell membrane, for example, a blood vessel, and you shine light onto that water. So Professor Pollock is actually, he's not a biologist, he's a material scientist. So he was using nafion tubing. But it's a good enough analogy to a biological membrane that you can make that transition. If you shine light, particularly near infrared light, onto water, you kind of push out some of the protons, which is the h part of H2O, into the bulk water and Then you have water, which is a different structure. It's a bit like when you age out.

Are you saying you're making hydrogen? Hydrogen?

No, you're not making hydrogen gas. The, the hydrogens get pushed into the bulk water. So all you're doing, you change the structure of the water. So water has different structures depending on what form it's in. When it's ice, for example, it's a lattice structure and those hydrogens bond, those extra hydrogens bond the different layers of, of a lattice structure fairly tightly. But you know yourself, if you stand on ice, you slip because you have these like layers of hexagonal structured water that are held in place by the hydrogen bonding. So it seems very hard, but it's slippy because it's sheets. If you have that in water where it's not frozen, those additional hydrogens are pushed out into the bulk water or the water that's directly adjacent. And the effect is that you have a positively charged section of water and you have this gel phase of water which is negatively charged. So this has huge implications for biology. And like I say, it's something I don't think at the moment is researched enough because anything where you have charge one, it has implications for how you could store energy because it could form like a battery in the body, because you have a potential difference between the positive and negative. But also because it's a geolite phase, it's more slippery, it's more viscous. So all of those little engines in the body like ATPase, potentially could spin better because they are lubricated by this gel phase walls. It's very interesting and like I say.

So I'm standing in the sunlight, I'm getting fully charged and lubricated.

There you go. That's a thought.

Yeah. That's fascinating how all my water's changed by just being in the. In the light.

Yes. Yeah. And it has huge implications for the brain because we know, you know, for example, hydrated proteins fold differently. You know, this has implications for what's going on in the brain. Also the functionality of these like little proteins and things in the body is potentially changed also. How, you know, there's the speed of blood flow, the speed of removal of waste products. All of these things are potentially changed when you shine light onto the body, particularly the brain.

But what kind of light? There's so many different wavelengths and the whole spectrum. Yeah. How do you pick your light?

Brilliant, brilliant question. Yeah. Because you're right, it's all to do with the wavelength which, in regards to light, wavelength Equates to color. So the sun of course, contains all spectrums, all colors of light. But what we're talking about here is generally a longer wavelength. And if you think of like your visible spectrum down in the bluey purple ends, that's short wavellight and then up in the red ends, that's longer wave light, not massive long wave, but longer. So what we're talking about is the red, and slightly above red, which is near infrared. These are the wavelengths of light that we're using in what we call red light therapy. We, we kind of bring in near infrared light under that umbrella. And these are the wavelengths of light that are having that effect on the water, having that charging effect. And if we're talking about the body, it's only really these longer wavelengths that actually penetrate deep into the body. Anything else, anything shorter than red and specifically near infrared won't penetrate very deeply.

Mm, I see. So in the brain, how much do we know how light affects the brain? Like to the details, like how do they. So they change the water, which of course all cells have water. And all the organelles is going to work differently. I assume if you shine these wavelengths, these are probably considered life nourishing lights. Right? Life supporting lights. And then all the little organelles are going to work more effectively.

That's right. And, and it's particularly the organelles in, in the cell that are affected by light also. So the, the, we know quite a bit about how light works. I think probably the water piece that we've started off with is usually something that kind of people leave till the end because it's a little bit fringe still, you know, we still have to, we still have to make that transition from research to actually finding that in biology. But there are some mechanisms that are very well researched. I mean, there are probably like 6,000 peer reviewed published studies on how light interacts with organelles, particularly mitochondria, which are the small organelles that are present in the cell that make energy. So we know that light interacts with those organelles and we know that light mainly interacts with one of the enzymes on the respiratory chain, which is again this production of ATP. So the most common, commonly cited theory on how red light is having such a positive effect is that it's working on the mitochondria and producing more energy. And also the mitochondria are kind of acting as sensors and they signal to the cellular DNA to switch on different healing programs.

Mitochondria actually talks with the DNA?

Yes, the mitochondria. Yeah, it Helps switch on different epigenetic genes because the mitochondria has its own DNA, right. Form of DNA and that can then be set, you know, that's sent to the cellular DNA and it can actually help with gene expression, it can change the gene expression. So that again is very interesting because it just goes to show how we're using different organelles to sense light in our body and then we're using that information to actually change how our body responds and things like switching on healing protocols. Again, very, very interesting and kind of fundamental for an understanding of how important light is for our biology and well being.

That's fascinating. I didn't know that orinals can actually communicate with our DNA or allow them to make changes. Yeah, fascinating. Of course, I mean it's shouldn't be surprising. You know, everything communicate with each other. And of course mitochondria really is a form of bacteria that has been incorporated into our, our, our, you know, eukaryote cells in that, you know, DNA is a living organism in a sense that is communicating with us. So living things communicate with each other and they can send information out.

Yeah, living thing. And, and you're totally right that you know, the current understanding is that the mitochondria were, were once an independent bacteria that were engulfed into a cell in order to help with cell metabolism. But it's also interesting that we are, we do also contain a lot of actual bacterial cells. Is very much on my mind when I'm trying to target the gut is, target the brain is also thinking about the gut because as you say, everything talks to everything and bacteria also sense light and they're also messaging us all the time. And it's quite wild to think actually we're more bacterial. Right.

We just have a, we have a little bit input, but the rest. And they're helping us figure out how to live in this world. How does light affect the bacteria? Because there are supposed to be good bacteria and bad bacteria in our body. Right. Some we really don't want, but some are crucial. So do light affect them differently?

So we know bacteria respond to light and we know bacteria respond in a similar way to the mitochondria, which should make sense as, as you've pointed out, they're very similar in evolutionary ancestry. From animal models we can see a very direct relationship. If you shine light onto an animal, like I'm thinking like a rodent, you have a, you can, you can then assess that animal and see that the bacteria has changed. It's slightly different in humans because we have different layers of tissue covering our bellies. And. And so potentially, I think what could be going on is as you start to heal the gut, you create a more beneficial environment for those good bacteria that you're talking about. And I think probably that's how light therapy is working on the gut rather than directly affecting the bacteria, which we know light can do. But I think potentially in humans, when we're using fairly low level light, what we're doing is we're just making a really good environment in the gut, and then those beneficial bacteria tend to be happier there. We tend to get detrimental bad bacteria when there's something going wrong. You know, when we've got leaky gut or, you know, we're exposed to toxins or pollutants or stress, that's when we tend to get more of these deleterious bacteria. But if we're kind of happy and healthy, then automatically we're a host to the good bacteria that you're talking about.

And what kind of science and research have been showing the effect of light on gut health?

So there's a lot of data. There's a team in Australia that put out a lot of research. And like I say, mainly they use rodent models because it's obviously a lot easier then to assay what's going on. You know, you can do immediate stool samples or whatever you want to. You know, you've got a controlled condition and you can show very, very clearly that if you shine near infrared light onto the abdomen that you get this change in the variety and the species of bacteria back to a. More in an animal model. You know, the studies are usually no much. They're no longer than three months, and usually they're getting data after three weeks.

Okay. So they shine a light every day for a certain amount of hours, and then they collect the sample in three weeks.

Yeah, I don't know the exact. I mean, we'd have to look at the exact protocols, but it definitely. It's just. Yes, it's a periodic exposure to near infrared. It would probably typically be a daily exposure. And then they look to see the gut bacteria. The group in Australia that I think of, it's actually led by Dr. Ann Lieber and her team, Brian Bicknell, and there's another guy, Dr. Johnson, that they've shown this now in humans. So they have kind of retrospectively looked at people with Parkinson's who've had red light and they've done samples before and after and shown that you can move from. Actually, Parkinson's is very interesting because it has a very specific bacterial profile. They have a very specific gut profile, which is more diminished. You know, it's more limited than a healthy profile. Which kind of makes people wonder, you know, is it because they have Parkinson's, they have this bacterial profile, or is it because they have this bacterial profile that it's led to Parkinson's? But either way, what they found is after exposure to photobiomodulation for a, for a period of time that people tend to go back to a more healthy profile. So this is a hot topic in research right now. It's called photobiomics to kind of designate that we're looking about how light affects bacteria. And yet it's a very fertile research ground because obviously we're starting to realize quite how much of bacterial health affects our own well being.

Hmm. Well, in the case of the Parkinson's, do they show what, after they change the microbiome of the patient, that their mental brain issues are improved?

Yes. A change in the microbiome tends to go with an alleviation of the symptoms of Parkinson's. So like I say, it's not clear whether it's, you know, that the bacteria is causing some of the symptoms or whether changing the symptoms and moving to a more healthy stage changes the composition of the bacteria. So I think at the moment that's, it's a hot biomodulation they used for.

These Parkinson's patients was mostly, is it focusing on the gut or were they.

Focusing on the brain in these particular studies? They were focusing on the gut.

I see. Well, that's a pretty. But the light actually travel everywhere, right? So even if you put something on the gut, doesn't the light, the energy and the wave actually travel to the brain?

When you place light onto a certain area, the effect is local. As in the light will only travel in like through the brain, just it will get to a few millimeters to the surface in the gut, maybe 5 centimeters if you're lucky. But the effect is systemic because you're kind of elevating the person's general wellness. Also, we do know that some of these substances are carried in the blood. We know that some mitochondria are free floating. You know, we know that. Now, we didn't know that changes water.

The water can travel anywhere.

It changes the water. It can be carried in the blood. You know, it changes the blood. Also, when you think about how interconnected the body is, I focus on gut brain connection. And one of the facets of that is the vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve is a nerve that's, you know, it's called vagus because it's wandering, it goes all over the body, but it also connects the brain and the gut. When you shine light onto that area, you're also potentially increasing the tone of the vagus nerve there. So again, this is another way that you have this global effect in the body. There is a real systemic effect we've known from contralateral wound studies. You know, if you have a wound, you can have a wound heal on the other side of the body when you're using photobiomodulation, heal quicker. Because there are definitely, you know, these effects of reduced global inflammation, changes in what's going, you know, things in the blood, changes in how nerves react. So there's definitely a systemic effect, but the actual light will only penetrate the local area. Like I say, it doesn't go that deep into the body, but it seems to be enough. We know that now because there is just overwhelming data to show the positive effect of this therapy.

Yeah, and then you developed this very interesting device that actually shines light on your forehead.

Right.

With the goal is to target a brain and then another, like a waistband to, to shine light onto your, into your stomach or into your, your abdomen. So tell me your thought process of bringing these two together. Like it's a, what if somebody just stand outside and, and be naked or you know, just have, you know, light goes everywhere. Like, what. Why are you developing something that's specifically targeting the brain and the gut?

I started initially thinking about the brain because the first study that I got involved with was actually a Parkinson's study. And they were using a big helmet that was using this longer wavelength light. And they did a very short study and they got some very good results. Just over a three month period shining light directly onto the head. But it was a big device.

Okay.

And it was really uncomfortable. And I kind of was there with these little old ladies because I was lucky enough to do the data, like putting these big devices and seeing these little old ladies like sink down in their chairs. And then I thought, okay, we need something that's a little bit simpler than this. And actually you really only need to get to the frontal cortex because a lot of the brain projections are coming there. And also it's a good place to go because you haven't got hair as a barrier or had to kind of change the dose. So that was my original thought. But then as I started to get more into the study of gut brain connection, it's so simple just to have a little panel that goes over the gut and potentially, you know, that's so much more effective to do both together because you can shine light onto the brain where you need it. You can have that global effect on the brain, but you're also treating the gut bacteria and the gut and the integrity of the gut and the vagus nerve at the same time that it to me that the benefits were there. And there is actually a couple of studies that have been published mainly in France, showing an increased and synergistic effect of shining light on the gut and the brain together. And that was something I paid close attention to. That was research done by Dr. Blivey and his team and they published on. They've published several rodent studies on that and they're now looking at human studies. So they also show an increased synergistic effect of shining light on the gut and the brain together. And it's easy to do, you know, shall I show you the device? Maybe that'll make it.

Absolutely. So they've shown that the two together works better than either one alone? Basically, yes.

That was their original finding. I think they published that around about again, 2018. And they did. They showed quite clearly, and this was a model of Alzheimer's that you got this increased synergistic effect. And I think it's probably because, as you've just said, the body is a connected system. The more you treat it as a connected system and kind of do two things at the same time, the more the body can respond. It's very difficult, I think, to kind of get your brain back online when you've got all the issues from leaky gut and all the inflammation that causes. So if you can reduce inflammation in the gut, you can reduce inflammation in the brain, and then you've got a much better chance of having a more efficacious treatment. And like I say, from my point of view, it's so simple. Like, this is the body panel and you can. It's so simple. It's like this is red and near infrared. You can't. The near infrared you can just about see, but actually they're just as bright. It's just our eyes can't pick that up, but actually it's just as bright. So this is red and near infrared. So we're getting the blood and we're getting, like I say, maybe 2 to 5 centimeters into the abdomen with this.

Right? Yeah. Okay.

And. And cozy and simple and easy. You know, it's not. It's not a problem to have it on. And if it's you know, why not if you have them on.

I've done it, you know, definitely. It's. It's very comfortable.

Yeah, it's comfortable. Yeah. A lot of people find it comforting. And then this is the headband, so you can see. This is light clusters. This is slightly longer wave light. Because I'm targeting the water, a lot of people try to avoid the water because it kind of soaks up some of that energy. But as I mentioned to you at the start, I deliberately want to target the water because I think we're going to find soon that structured waters having. Playing a major role. So I have 6, 38, 59, 40 and 1070. That's the nanometers. That's the color of the light, if you like. And then you put it. I'll put it on for you just so I can show you. Because people look at it and they think it's going to go over the eyes, but it doesn't. So it's just going very simply into that frontal cortex. And the interesting thing about light is that you can also modulate light frequency. You can use pulsing frequencies. It's very simply just turning the light off and on to modulate brainwave frequency. So this is a kind of very simple device, but actually fairly high tech because you can use the light, but you can also modulate brainwave frequencies.

So the light does have different frequencies. Does it change? I know it's connected to an app, but. So the app is modulating the frequency of the light.

That's right. So we also know from studies that the brain is using different brainwaves at different times, depending on what you're doing. And to a certain extent, you can entrain that brainwave. You can encourage the brain into different states. So, for example, if 40 Hz frequencies is a brainwave state that probably you and I are in right now, when you're concentrating, where you're attending to something you're in, they call it gamma. It's just the word for 40 times a second. The brain is oscillating at 40 times a second. So we can do that very simply with the light. We can turn the brain off and on at 40 times. We can turn the lights off and on at that frequency and entrain the brain. So in my device, we've got six different programs that you can use with an app, depending on what you're trying to do.

Yeah, I'm trying to pull up the app. You have different. Okay, so I have to connect it first. The different programs are pretty interesting. So there's Energy, balance, performance, performing performance, resilience, meditate and focus. So how do you choose energy? I kind of understand. You can see if you. Yeah, I guess if you're a little tired, you want to have a higher energy, then that one will help you. So when you want to meditate, you meditate. So does that have frequencies enhance the results of or how quickly or deeply you can get into a meditative state?

It does, actually. The meditation 1 is 100 Hz, which is slightly higher than a kind of brainwave frequency that's normally associated with health. And actually it was discovered at Arizona University using sound. They used ultrasound at 100Hz frequency and they found that people who were meditating could get into meditation quicker and for longer. So I spoke to the guys there and asked them to try it with light and they found. Found a similar effect. So pulsing theory is actually quite high. 100 Hz is high, probably high gamma. But pulsing at that frequency has. Has been shown to get people into meditation quicker and longer. So that one I've put into the device, actually, it's interesting the feedback I get, because people do find it helps with meditation, but people also find it helps them to sleep. So I don't know, you know, what that's doing. You know, potentially that's having an interesting effect on the brain where you're kind of able to get into an altered state of consciousness.

Well, sleep, definitely an altered state of consciousness.

Yes. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. So let's just help people can. I don't know if people can see this, but that's a different apps. It's very nice app. So the resilience, is that for stress reduction? Like what is resilience?

Resilience is one where it's full power, so that's kind of giving your brain, you know, the ability to deal with what's going on. And that one is just going into the frontal cortex. We're just focusing on that because I don't. I don't know whether you kind of got it when I held this up, but I do have a little module that goes on the cerebellum. And this one again is for kind of movement. It helps with movement and emotionality. But I'm a little bit constrained by the current medical system where we don't have. We don't have an FDA classification for a brain health application for light. Nobody does at the moment. And so we're not. We can't make any health claims for brain red light. So all of these things I'm talking to you about Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. This is all research. This is not yet in the state where we can actually make that claim. I'm just telling you what we've done in the research.

That research we can talk about what. The light does the same thing with what I do in stem cell therapy. A lot of times actually there's a lot of research showing exact what happens when a person's given stem cells when they have particular conditions. But sometimes we don't, we don't know. If there's no research, then we just have to look at how the disease came about in the first place and how a particular modality actually is able to address that mechanism. So, yeah, let's say for, I just say, you know, stay with Parkinson's, you know, what, what's the disease process?

Right.

A lot of times we, we don't even know. We don't know why, why are people having Parkinson's. So some people say it's dopaminergic, you know, region in the brain that there's, you know, reduction of the dopamine production. But some people also think there's viral origin of this condition, that there's infectious underlying cause and it's an inflammation, is a lot of inflammation going on the body and it's brain inflammation and really what's, what's underlying that. So if light can address, can if, can the light help the body get rid of certain unwelcome virus? Do we have any research on, you know, kind of your body's resilience against infections?

Yeah, I mean that again, it's an interesting question. Certainly we can show that you can reduce the inflammation because I think that's a huge part of what's going on is reducing inflammation and returning the body back to homeostasis. You know, getting the body back into that healthy place where it wants to be, you know, making sure you have blood flow, making sure you're sleeping properly, doing all these things that returns the body to a more healthy optimal state. And I would suggest that when you're in that healthy optimal state, your body is better able to fight any kind of infection. So I think from a secondary point of view, yes, for sure. Actually directly impacting viruses, again, that's is probably unlikely. Red, that red light therapy is going to do that. It's, you know, if you're looking to act some light does have antiviral properties, but it tends to be right down at that blue end where it's quite aggressive. And then you have to have it like on the surface of possible that.

It'S elevating our immune system's ability. Right.

I think that's exactly what happens when you reduce inflammation and when you, when you support oxygenated cells, when you support removal of waste products. The body does its own healing. I think a lot of the time the reason why people get ill from infections and things is because they just don't have enough energy to surmount a proper healing reaction themselves. So these red light therapy devices where you're returning the body to a healthy state, you're really, you're really empowering the body to kind of fight off all of these things for itself, rather than you're directly affecting something because it's not acting like a drug. We're not. It's kind of not in the same mechanism as a pharmaceutical. This is more about healing the body in a kind of cumulative way so the body can then deal with any of these infections. You're reducing inflammation, you're providing more oxygenated blood and removing waste products. With these, with these devices, you're not directly treating something. So there's the difference there. And that's why, you know, it takes a little bit longer because you have to allow the body time to get there. In the end, it's a net beneficial effect. Whereas potentially you could get there a lot quicker with a pharmaceutical. But then you have to pay the price for kind of breaking the body down.

Yeah, I wonder, this is a. Do you consider yourself as being part of regenerative medicine? I know right now people think regenerative medicine, they think about stem cells, exosomes, prp. I mean, it's regenerative. Right. We literally are giving the body's ability to regenerate. And that's the definition for sure.

I definitely think that. And actually, with regards to stem cells, we do know that that near infrared light helps with stem cell proliferation and migration, you know, so to what extent? I think that still needs to be worked out. But all of those things, I think count towards regenerative medicine. You know, helping the body to build up rather than going the other way, where you're kind of doing a quick fix, but you're actually breaking the body down.

Yeah, well, I love the light so much that after we prepare our stem cell product to be ready to put in the IV bag, we put them in this light. Well, you know, specifically acting as an activator for the cells, making them much more vibrant, more more active, healthier and more mobile. And then when the patient is getting the stem cells, we actually shine laser light on the particular Organ. Wherever we think that needs more repair, we give them overall protocol as well. There are different frequencies, like you mentioned, when we were targeting different systems. It's almost like programming a language for the body for different organs, and the different frequencies will speak to the body, will resonate differently. So. So we. We put particular settings and we focus on the organs. We're trying to help. Yeah. So. And you're doing that with the brain and the gut, right? You're giving the frequencies for the brain that you think that would be more helpful for the brain and the gut. I assume the frequency for the gut is different from the brain.

Yes, the gut one. I'm not actually using a pulsed frequency, actually. The gut does have its own frequency, but it's much, much slower. And I kind of have. I have played around with thinking about that, but actually, with the gut, I think it's just about getting the light in there. You know, it's just about having reduced.

How often do we get light shown on our belly?

That's right. We should have it more often, for sure. Yeah.

So there. There's six of these different programs. Is there a frequency people need? Like, is there a time limit, is too long, not beneficial, or you just reach a maximum, you know, kind of a point of no, no further return.

It is what they call a biphasic response, in that theoretically, you know, you can do too little and too much, and there is that kind of sweet spot in. In between. But for these kinds of devices, which are kind of low to mid power, you can do, like 30 minutes a day quite comfortably. A dose is actually just 10 minutes a day on this particular system. Like I say, it actually depends on where you're at physically. The sicker you are, the less light you need.

Oh, really?

Yeah, because your body starts to power up, and, you know, when your mitochondria are very, very slow and sluggish, you know, they start. As they start to power up, you start to produce waste products. And if you're. If. If you're particularly unwell, you don't want to produce a lot of waste products that you've got to deal with because it's counterproductive. So for most people, you know, if you're very fit and healthy, 30, 40 minutes is fine. If you're not, and you're kind of dealing with something, 10 minutes is a good dose. So we tend to stick to 10 minutes. Like, that's what we recommend at CERA, Thrive. Just because that is a. That is one dose of light. And as long as it's done frequently or. And consistently, people see an effect from that. Just ten minutes a day.

Hmm, I see. And what have people reported after they started using this device? It's pretty easy to use, I have to say.

Yeah, it's easy. And I have arranged you a little.

Warmth on your tummy.

And actually, the tummy is where people normally find the greatest response. So people normally start with saying, okay, their gut issues have cleared up. Then I start to get feedback about the brain issues. So we're doing a big study at the moment, a big user study with people who've bought the system, and we're kind of tracking that, and that's also shown in that data that if people have got something like leaky gut going on, they see that heal up first, then they start to notice the more cognitive symptoms. So for a lot of people. A lot of people don't even realize that they've got gut issues. You know, they're so obsessed. You know, if you have somebody who's got something going on with their brain, they don't realize until it's gone that they had gut issues. I think so many people have got gut issues right now. It's almost taken as normal.

Yeah. For example, constipation. And people think it's normal to go to the bathroom like, once every few days. They think that's okay.

Even the other way around, you know, people are sitting on the toilet for like, half the afternoon, and then they say, oh, do you know what? That's gone now. And I just didn't realize how incapacitating it was, you know, that I was having to, like, plan my shopping trips about whether there was going to be a toilet. And you're like, oh, my goodness, you've been living like that. And that isn't what they come with. You know, they're talking, you know, they have memory loss or whatever they're working on. And so I think for a lot of people, that's a bit of a revelation that that's not a norm. And it's not. That's not just aging or stress.

That's.

That's something that you can deal with quite easily using these therapies. So that's what people normally respond. I actually have a small cohort of people with ALS that are starting to get some good results. This is not me prescribing or saying it's for this condition. This is just me giving you the feedback that I'm getting from my research. Yes, it's according to the research. I mean, really, people tend to see, like, A really, like digestive issues, brain fog, stress. Sleep is a big one too. You know, sleep is so important. And again, people don't realize until they start to get good sleep how much better you feel.

Yeah. So even if they do it early in the day that they're noticing later on they're sleeping better.

Yeah, because the brain actually, sleep is a highly energetic process. People just think that you kind of get so tired that you crash out. Well, that's not the case, actually. You need to have energy to sleep. The brain is doing a lot while you sleep. It's flushing your brain, you know, it's processing memories.

I've never heard of people put it that way, that you need energy to sleep.

You need a lot of energy to get good sleep. And so people tend to find no matter how they use these devices, you're giving your brain that additional ATP and then that is reflected in your sleep. Doesn't matter when you're using the device, actually.

Wow. So interesting. And as far as research in what areas, like what, what type of conditions have you guys done research on, besides the ALS you mentioned?

So ALS is the one we have ongoing and we don't have a big research budget. So at the moment we're doing documented case studies with a professor at Durham University. We're doing some other small scale studies. I was recently in Berlin at Charite University, where we're going to start looking at measuring people's QEG before and after, which is how you measure. It's a measurement of brain function, looking at those brain waves we were talking about. But all of the programs that are in my device are based on data that's already published because there is quite a wealth of data that's already published. And as long as the output and the wavelengths are the same or similar, you know, you can make a good assumption that you're going to have the same effect. So I am doing scale studies. Like I say, I've got. I've got some studies going on in England and in Germany and in Australia, and we do our own studies in house. We use, you know, if people have got wearables, we're kind of all walking around it. We're all in the biohacking circle. So people have got whoops and garmins and auras. So we are able to do trend analysis looking at things like heart rate variability or sleep scores. So we do that instantly too.

I think the focus one would be pretty fun to, to look at. Right. You have them do whatever, you know, test that measures focus and then you put that on for 10 minutes and then do another test. That'll be really interesting.

Yeah, see, yeah, there's lots of things you can do. I'm actually playing at the moment with a, with a really cool app that allows you to do reaction times and brain processing. You know, there are lots of things there where you can kind of do more of a citizen science where I'm looking to roll that out to a small group. You know, I, you know, I mean my background is research, so I'm very pro orthodox scientific research. But at the same time, you know, we have to work within our budgets and there's so much stuff out there where you can really get a good like idea of trends and if something's working just using phone apps and wearables now.

Well, let me ask you, what if you live, you know, near the water, by the beach and then you just decide to go there, land under the sun. Is the, the red and infrared light is all included in the sun ray and then is shining on your forehead and your belly. Do you think you're going to get similar benefits?

For sure, for sure. The OG red light therapy device is the sun. You know, we predominantly get the near infrared wavelengths at sunrise and sunset. That's where the angle of the sun like with relation to the planet is where we get the predominant red and near infrared. And actually that the wavelength that does all these fabulous things that sets us circadian biology that turns on like all of these things that the mitochondria are absorbing. So that is the best time to be outside, actually. So if you want to do your own red light therapy, be outside at sunrise naked every morning. Because then I think no, if everybody did that, we wouldn't need these red light therapy devices. I think the issue is, you know, life gets in the way. I mean, it's just difficult to do it or people are resistant to do it, or we live in cities where you can't get outside at those times a day. But I really think that that's, yeah, I'm all for if possible, being outside much more than we're indoors, a lot more than we should be. And we're seeing all this blue light, you know, we're looking at blue lit screens. We're totally changing the way our body is responding to light so that we now need these devices. I mean, our ancestors didn't need these devices. They were doing exactly as you said they were outside. My prescription would be be outside every sunrise, kind of naked in the sunrise, with your feet on the ground and you probably need these devices, but, you know, otherwise we have to supplement. I see it a bit like any kind of. Any kind of deficiency that we have at the moment, we have a deficiency of light, particularly long wave light, sunrise and sunset. So this is a way to put it back.

Yeah, yeah, wonderful. Well, thank you so much for educating everybody on light and on, you know, how we can help our brain and gut and people can purchase the device. Right. Where do they get them?

It's SarahThrive.com C E R A spelled like the brain way. C E R A Like it's not.

Based on your name.

It's just a very, it's just very nice that my brain, my name kind of matches the brain, actually. I used to have a pen name which was Sarah Tonin, but I had to change it because it's yes, Sarah Thrive is yes, C E R a and then thrive.com. and then I think for your audience, we're going to give a discount code which will be Dr. Joy. So if people want to get the device at a discounted price. Yeah, you just put the code, Dr. Joy in at checkout. And then we're happy to give a discount to your audience. But yes, it's very easy. And if people want to get hold of me, it's Sarah S A R A Harathrive.

Wonderful. Thank you so much, Sarah. And yeah, I follow what you're doing. You know, you're, you know, doing really cool things, going to great conferences and spreading the word. Yeah, it's. It's great to know you and really, really happy that you brought this to the world.

Thank you and yeah, such a pleasure. Such a pleasure. Joyce, always nice to talk to you.

Okay, you have a beautiful day.

Thank you. Take care.

Thank you for listening to this episode. Hope you enjoy the content and if so, please rate and follow this podcast. To reach me, you can contact Uplift Longevity center center, that is Uplift with a Y. You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel, Joy Kong MD. See you next time.