What Was Silently Draining Him for Years: Roudy Nassif, VivaRays

Welcome to Integrative Medicine with Dr. Leland Stillman, the podcast where we explore the best of East and West, old and new, conventional and unconventional, in search of answers to medicine's toughest cases and most difficult problems. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Diagnostics and therapeutics discussed on this podcast may or may not be right for you, so talk to a qualified practitioner before taking action based on what you learn here. If you'd like to become a patient at my practice, go to stillmanmd.com to schedule a complimentary discovery call. Thank you for listening and welcome to today's episode. Hello again, everyone, and welcome. Dr. Stillman here. I'm joined today by my friend Rudy Nassif, founder of Viva Rays. Rudy, great to see you again.

Great to see you, Leland.

So today we're gonna hear Rudy's story of hope, story of healing. I like to ask, or I like to start everyone, Rudy, by asking, about who they are and where they're from.

Yeah, so I was born in Lebanon and I had a pretty rough childhood as a kid.

I'm curious, was that around the time when war broke out in Lebanon?

When what?

War broke out in Lebanon. I don't remember your age, but I know that on and off there's been a lot of, and right now there's a lot of military action in Lebanon.

Well, frankly, like that could play a role, although like as a kid, I really hated to be in the classroom. I felt like the classroom is a prison cell to me and I, I did everything in my power to be kicked out of the class.

What was the classroom like? What was it? What was prison like about the class?

Well, it felt like for many years I've been asked to sit still, memorize, and repeat useless information under fluorescent lighting that was frying my brain.

So let's paint the picture here. It's indoor fluorescent lighting. Were there windows?

Very few windows.

Why would you have very few windows in a beautiful Mediterranean country with with a dry climate?

Because I, I literally changed 7 different schools because I was kicked out from 7th. And when I say there's no window, it's likely to succeed. I'm not even talking about one school, I'm talking about like 7 schools who had very few windows. And it's an interesting question, like why? Although light is one of the most powerful nutrients, and as kids we crave it. And I knew it being in the classroom, all I wanted is to be outside, and none of those classrooms had windows. I think schools in general, they're They're designed to program kids in a way that they grow up and they're most likely become very obedient and they're most likely to become sick, frankly, because you're spending 9 hours under artificial lighting that is frying your brain from the inside out. You're not getting any sunlight. You are being asked to let go of your ability to think and create and imagine. And you are being asked to memorize useless information about history. And the kids who can repeat this information and who can tell you when the Waterloo War happened would be, would be looked at as a, as a genius kid. So this is essentially the way to stultify the genius within every kid, which every kid is born with that genius.

Absolutely. I agree. So fast forward, when did you first start to have problems with your health?

So being in this classroom, it was a big struggle for me and all I wanted is to be outside. So at some point I was diagnosed with ADHD and I'd strategically do like Crazy thing, like I'd leave a bottle of ink on the edge of the teacher's desk, so waiting in anticipation when he's gonna get angry and like slam the desk and kick me out of the classroom. And by the time I was 17, I was asked to leave 7 different schools.

How did your parents respond to this?

My parents, they were in a very rough place because On one point, they could sense that there's something about what I'm saying made sense. And on the other side, they really wanted me to succeed and to— they wanted me to go to university and have a job. And that was the conventional way of like how parents see their kids succeeding. It was a very rough place for them and they struggled a lot, I guess.

You were a challenge.

Yup. Yeah. So yeah.

When did you start to have problems with your health?

So as I, as I grew older, like around 17, I became really exhausted from fighting and resisting. I did the most heartbreaking thing imaginable. I gave up on myself and, um, I completely disconnected from my inner light and I turned into a creature of the night, into a night owl, staying up very late, doing drugs, scrolling on social media. Is this still a lot better? That was still in Lebanon. Yep. And then waking up the second day, feeling low on energy and unmotivated and dragging myself through the day as though I'm wearing a backpack full of rocks. That's a great description. And yeah, somehow I managed to make it to engineering school because I was really good. And that's, that's a good question. I literally had zero desire to do anything at that point. And I was having a conversation with my mathematics teacher who knew I was really good in physics and mathematics.

And from the school that didn't kick you out finally, or what?

Yeah, the last school. Actually, even the last school, they did kick me out.

But you had a relationship with a teacher, which means you must have— they obviously saw something in you, right?

Yeah, like, frankly, like, some of the teachers, particularly few of them, like, this teacher was really special. He taught us mathematics and he really enjoyed my ability to think outside of the box and he was probably one of the few ones who enjoyed that. And he said to me that—

I'm telling you to think outside of the box. And think of ways to get kicked out of school.

Yep. And like, one of the reasons also a lot of the teachers really hated my presence in the classroom is because I, I would ask a lot of questions and it would make them feel uncomfortable.

You mean reveal their lack of understanding of the actual material?

Yes, absolutely. Like, frankly, they had memorized this textbook that was 30 years old and had not questioned anything in it for many, many years. So when a kid come and start questioning things that they could not answer, it would make them uncomfortable. And, uh, This teacher particularly was really cool and he said, you know, you should go and do engineering. And during that time, if you look at me from the outside, I look like a young, successful, muscular engineer, but on the inside I was completely drowning.

You worked out, exercised?

I did a lot of martial arts actually.

Oh really? What kind?

I did boxing, Thai boxing, kung fu, and I competed in MMA at some point. And I guess like One of the reasons why I started doing martial arts is because as a kid, I was around a lot of violence. And being in Lebanon, it's absolutely tough. Like, as a kid, you'll get hit like nothing. And I've always like fantasized and dreamed of the day where I could like stand up and protect myself. And that led me to start martial arts. And at the beginning, it was— I started from the wrong place because I was like really fired up about fighting. And it wasn't until years and years later that I actually learned the true spirit of martial arts and that, like, a true martial artist is the one who would not really need to get into a fight. But yeah, I was doing a lot of martial arts. I was really on the outside. You look at me and you think, wow, he's pretty fit. But on the inside, I was really struggling. And I went into a deep rabbit hole after getting kicked out of my job. And I was feeling extremely depressed and suicidal depressive. And during that time, I even went and participated with Wim Hof climbing freezing mountains. -20 degrees, and I felt good momentarily, but nothing really lasted. And I was trying all the different diets imaginable. Like I cut down on sugar. I wasn't eating any processed food. I did veganism and then ketosis and then carnivore diet and then ancestral diet. And I was taking all the best adaptogens and supplements, but still I felt the same.

Did you, was this, was the only symptom you had this depression?

Frankly, it was depression, chronic fatigue, and completely low on energy.

How about brain fog?

Oh, big time.

Okay. Anxiety?

Less so, but brain fog, big time. And I remember this event very, very well. It was like 1 AM, March 2017. I was literally laying down in bed next to my former partner in our dark basement in Canada. And that was literally after the breakthrough moment where I was really low. I decided to leave my career as an engineer and travel to figure out a way so I could feel better and could find myself. And, um, 3 months later, I was in this dark basement and it was 1 AM and the blue light is literally like, I'm like scrolling on my phone and the blue light is like shining on my face. My eyes are literally burning and I'm feeling low mentally and physically, but I'm wired and I can't stop scrolling.

Wired but tired. Yeah.

Now suddenly a video popped up on my feed. I almost skipped it, but then something made me click it.

Yes. Fate.

And it says artificial light is killing us. And literally like I was listening to Dr. Jack Kruse talking on this episode and my brain was so foggy that Everything he said literally flew over my head. But then I wake up the second day and there was this sentence that kept echoing in my mind: you can't get healthy in the same light environment that made you sick. And that was the first time ever I hear this. I was like, wow, could this be the reason for everything I've been going through? Like the lack of energy, the constant fatigue, the depression. And this question led me to a 7-year odyssey so far where I've been studying the light problem extensively.

Can I unpack some of your experience from my perspective.

Absolutely.

So interesting that you said you were feeling very depressed because I think depression— depression is something that I'm totally fascinated by. This Monday we're going to be interviewing somebody whose primary symptom after COVID vaccine was severe depression. He went from, I'm a happy guy, I enjoy my life, and this guy, he had it made. I mean, he had it made. And he went from that to this incredibly deep, dark depression. And when I think about depression, mental illness, and brain fog, and also fatigue, I actually think about them as energy generation problems in the brain. And I think about them that way because what you'll find if you really dig deep into the root causes of all these illnesses is they all come back to deficits in energy production as like the root causes. And when I'm talking about root cause analysis, I'm saying, what are the environmental habits or environmental factors, daily habits, lifestyle choices, occupational exposures, artificial light at night, heavy metals, pesticides, sound noise pollution, um, and then psychosocial factors that drive these feelings, right? Now what I think is so interesting and challenging about depression is that there's so many stories around why it appears and occurs. And so almost everyone I've ever talked to who has this story, there's— and maybe it's more of a question or attention, like, well, maybe I'm depressed because I don't like my job. Well, why don't you like your job? Well, could it be because it's in an artificially lit, microwaved environment where you're punching out, in your case, maybe blueprints for something that has no intrinsic value or meaning to you, right? And so they're like, well, I'm depressed because I need a new job, so I'm going to go travel. And then they travel and they're like, I love traveling. Well, maybe you love traveling because you're in natural light, in beautiful nature, and you're not in some artificially lit microwave. And if you can't see Rudy because you're listening to the podcast, like, Rudy has the most beautiful backdrop. He's living in, I think, rural Mexico, is fair to say. It's like a postcard behind the guy. So he's clearly figured out where it's at. And my point with this is I almost always find some element of depression or anxiety, and also insomnia and brain fog. And that's why I knew to ask in people who come in with any one of those symptoms. Like, find me somebody who's super tired, and if they're not a little bit depressed just about how tired they are— yep, they're almost like not even aware of themselves enough to go to the doctor. And the same thing with anxiety. They're anxious. I don't know if I'm gonna get better. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I don't know how to do this. I'm afraid my marriage is going to fall apart, or I'm afraid that my job is going to fire me, or whatever. And so there's just all this symptom overlap And to really, in my view, help these people, the key is let's cut through all the noise to what can we fix right now about your diet, your lifestyle, your environment, and some of how you're potentially— you're relating to yourself and others to remove all these things that are creating this failure of energy production. And, you know, that's another thing that's really interesting to me is that— and I do get into— with patients, it's like if they've had a lot of abuse, which may not— may or may not be physical or other varieties, it can just be a pure emotional abuse— a lot of them will have such a negative pattern in their brain that even if they're in a healthy environment, they actually still have these symptoms of depression. That's when we have to like really figure out— well, and I call it, we, we play the game, where's the narcissist or the psychopath? Because it's usually some kind of like very toxic person in their life who's making them sick. Those cases can be really tough. And I say that because I don't want to discount the fact, having just said, you know, EMF and light and heavy metals and all that stuff, I don't want to discount the fact that there are people who will physically make you ill. And you have to figure out who they are and minimize how much contact you have with them. So I hope that's helpful to people.

Yeah, that's a great point. And I could resonate a lot because when I decided to leave my job and start traveling, there was a moment during my travel where I had forgotten about my depression. And then—

Imagine that. Yes.

And then I got back to reality of figuring out what I want to do in life.

Do you mean Canada?

Yes. And I was on a tourist visa. It was very tough because I couldn't work. At the time, I did not speak English. So there was also the cultural shock and not being able to integrate with people properly because I can't speak their language. Being on, coming back to this dark basement and starting to think about what I want to do in my life. And of course, being under artificial light all day, thinking to myself, oh, I'm stuck. I'm not able to work. Everybody else is working. I'm not able to do anything. Everybody else had figured it out. I did not. Now, a few weeks after that night of me watching that video, my partner was really desperate because I was getting suicidal, depressive. So she comes to me with an unexpected surprise. She says, uh, Rudy, pack your stuff. We're going to volunteer on an organic farm in rural Quebec with the indigenous people. And I'm like, I was like full of doubt thinking like going on a farm, how the heck this going to help me? But then to your point, here we are, we're driving for 7 hours. From Ontario to Quebec and the car is bouncing on this dirt road. And when we arrive at night, there is no electricity, no artificial light, and something I haven't witnessed in so many years, like literally a canopy of twinkling stars, so brilliant, so alive. It felt like, whoa, like the universe is talking to me for the first time ever. Like I felt I am somebody in this moment. And, um, The most fascinating thing is like on day 1, was May 2017, I woke up feeling exhausted. Like my body is heavy. I don't want to be outside. I don't want to be talking to farmers asking me what do I do in life. Like that's the last thing a depressed person wants to do. But then on day 3, something absolutely magical happens. I wake up with no alarm clock. And for the first time in my entire adult life, I feel like energy literally surging through my veins like electricity. My body feels alive, completely rested, overflowing with joy. And I'm like, wow, I can't help but smile. Like, it's like I'm not even trying.

Yeah.

And I look at my former partner and I literally see her through fresh new eyes. I open the door of the tent, I step outside, and I'm looking around and like, wow, like the magical light of the dawn. And I feel like this instant connection to everything around me. And the most fascinating part, Leland Stillman Stillman, is that the night owl in me, who used to stay up until 3, 4 AM every single night, is now sleeping shortly after the sunset naturally, no effort. And here's the part that, like, it still brings me goosebumps. This one morning, I'm like in the field, hunched over, weeding the crops, and the farmer walks over to me. He places his hand on my shoulder. He looks me in the eyes and he says, Rudy, what a powerful focus you have. I've never seen anything like it. And Leland Stillman, like in this moment, I literally like, like disappeared into nothingness and got back. And I was like, like my whole paradigm as a kid was the ADHD kid who can't focus. And in this moment, it's like hit me so deep because I realized, whoa, everything that is wrong that I thought is wrong with me, like my ADHD, my depression, my chronic fatigue, it wasn't about me. It was my light environment. Being in this truth, it completely transformed me. It was a powerful epiphany. And although I came back to the city and within a matter of a few weeks, it all came back crashing back at me, like the brain fog, the night owl tendencies. But in this moment, I knew I had a choice. And I realized I'm not going back. And I turned into a mad scientist with the farm becoming my laboratory. And, and for over 4 years, I kept traveling between the farms and the city, living with indigenous people in a way that is in complete alignment with nature's light and dark cycles. And I start documenting every shift in my sleep and my energy and my moods and devouring every book, every study I could find on the science of light.

Wow. Amazing. Where are you now?

I mean, once you know and you experience the power of nature, you'll understand, at least for me, what I truly understood is as a human, from the very first moment I left my mother's womb, I had all the power and all the health inherent in me. So I asked myself the question, what have I done to move away from that which is already in me? And what I had realized is that as humans, we are, we are born to feel with to feel great. And nature is at the foundation of this greatness. And one thing that I have done is that I moved away from my connection to nature. And, and that is a very interesting topic because when we speak about nature, oftentimes we imagine something that is outside of us. My realization was nature was me. It's my nature. And when I disconnected myself from that light and dark cycles, I was literally disconnecting from that balanced rhythmic interchange that is within every part of nature and in every aspect of our life. When we lose that balance, whether it's in relationship between man and woman, or whether it's in the way we show up in our work, or the way we show up for our health, we become sick. And this sickness manifests in so many different ways. That could be an autoimmune disease, that could be brain fog, that could be depression, that could be different things.

So I'm curious, you obviously then began to investigate, well, what's making people sick in their modern environments? And if you had to give like a 10-minute overview What would it be and what for each thing, what, what was your like moment when you were like, this is a real thing, this is a real problem that people need to be aware of?

Yeah. I mean, you beautifully highlighted depression as an energy problem within the organ of the brain. And we have all these different organs that are powered by the mitochondria, which is that tiny little engine within every cell that is helping us to produce ATP, the energy currency.

And water. And don't forget the water, Rudy. Yes.

Yes. And the water. Different organs and the ones with highly metabolic functions are highly, highly packed with mitochondria, like the heart or the brain or the eyes. And we know, Leland Stillman, that like, I think in 2017, Dr. Wallace, he won an award for a groundbreaking discovery. He said that 90% of modern chronic diseases do not originate from the nucleus genome. It turns out that they originate from the mitochondrial genome.

And the famous experiment with that that I share with people that is so compelling— Thomas Seyfried, PhD, often cites this in his papers and studies and talks— is if you take, if you take a cancerous— the nucleus where the genome is— out of a cancerous cell and you transplant it into a healthy cell, the cancerous genome will reset and become a healthy nucleus. And if you take a healthy nucleus out of a healthy cell into and transplant it into a cancerous cell, the nucleus will become a cancer cell. And so we got this whole like chicken or the egg thing, like cart before horse problem, right? It's like ambulances do not cause car wrecks, fire trucks don't cause fires. The nucleus is actually responding to the environment of the cell. And I always— this comes up a lot for me actually, because what I don't think people get, because they'll often get caught up in their genetics, and I say, yes, I know your genetics are important, but look at your genes, your genome, like it's a bunch of blueprints to make tools. Because ultimately, if you look at all the machinery that the cell makes out of the nucleus, It's a tool. It does something. It transmits a signal. It modifies a substrate like a carbohydrate or protein or fat or whatever. It does something, right? So these blueprints are your genes, but how they're expressed is the whole thing. So you might have this giant library of blueprints to make, you know, reciprocating saws and car engines and blah, blah, blah. I mean, these are just analogies, right? But you might have all these plans, but it doesn't mean that you can't make the things you need to make to thrive in the environment that you're in. And so almost never is a genetic problem truly the truly the main issue, it'll modify our approach and maybe be a very important significant factor for patients, but it's, it's never the, almost never that I can think of anyway, the determining factor.

Yeah. That's, uh, that's definitely a beautiful way to think about it and it makes it very clear. Like when you understand that when you take a nucleus that is healthy and you put it in an environment that is unhealthy.

Yeah.

It becomes unhealthy and it's then, yes.

And then when you, when you step back and talk about it like trees, and I do talk about it this way because the teaching tool I share with patients to think about their healing and their health is— I call it the Tree of Life, which has a lot of symbolism. But a tree has to have roots, and a tree has to have branches and leaves, and a tree has to have trunk and, and bark, and sap has to flow. And if any of these things don't work or in some way impaired, the tree will die. If you take the tree and you put it in a closet, it will die. If you take the tree and you mess with the soil, you add poison, whatever you introduce pests and you don't nourish the tree so it can fight them off, it'll die. And people are like, you know, they're like, well, I'm not a tree. I'm like, yeah, I know, but like, no human being in the history of the world has ever lived in the environment we live in and been healthy. Isn't that a big clue? Isn't this maybe kind of obvious? And then I love that you, you brought this back to agriculture because the really interesting thing when you look at actual the way that they study things in agriculture with animals is they'll ask these very basic questions. What happens when we feed chickens arsenic? Well, it turns out they get fat and they make more muscle mass And the reason for this is because arsenic actually induces diabetes and obesity. So guess what happens to people when you feed them arsenic? They turn into fat diabetics. And guess what the chicken industry did for years? They fed chickens arsenic because it made chicken more profitable. Because you're literally taking a waste— dangerous waste product of industrial manufacturing, you're feeding it to an animal that people are going to eat, and you're going to get more meat. And people buy this based on weight, not based on quality. And they actually did away with this practice, I hope because it was bad for people. I don't know if there was another reason. I wouldn't put it past them. But all these questions, when you actually look into the agricultural literature, really, really obvious. Don't be exposed to poison. You need a nutrient-dense diet. And when you do that, animals and plants flourish. I love Joel Salatin's work on this, which his book, The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs, is on my shelf right now. You'll— you'd love that book if you haven't read it. Anyway, back to you.

And one, one thing to highlight here with the arsenic and the mindset that would lead somebody to feed chicken arsenic so that they can take more. Yeah. Is a cancerous question that all of humanity carries within their hearts. And I think this question is, how can I take more?

Mm.

Instead of how can I give more? Because when, when you're leading with a question, how can I take more? Then you'd feed chickens things that will make them more fat. Yeah. So that you could sell more. And take more. You'd start designing artificial lights that are energy efficient, that cost less and make people sick. So it's essentially in every transaction when we are leading from the question, how can I take more? We break the equilibrium of balance within ourselves and in a relation to our environment or in relation to other humans. And we break, we end up breaking ourselves because this universe is a mirror. It will give back to you that which you give into it. Back to the mitochondria becoming inefficient. One of big reason they become inefficient, it's not what most people think it is. It's not only diet and exercise. It turns out has a lot to do with light and darkness. And how does this work? Albert Einstein photoelectric effect show us that light excite electrons and generate electricity. This is literally how plants photosynthesize and how solar panel works. But the fascinating part is it happens inside of us within our cells. Nobel Prize winner, I think his name is Albert Szent-Györgyi. He, he spoke about how sunlight excites electron and electron transport chain of the mitochondria.

And I think we have to add here that people need to realize this is about frequency and not intensity. And so that photoelectric effect you're mentioning, that induction of flow is not dependent upon how bright or how intense the frequency is. It's dependent upon the frequency. And that's such, such an interesting analogy I'll give to people. And to really make this really clear, it's what I'm saying is your energy generation in your cells is not about the intensity of any of these things. It's about the frequency. By extension, what I mean by that is the illness you're dealing with. Is about frequency. And Tesla famously said, if you want to understand the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration. And that is so important and so gravid with meaning because people, until they understand— and the other Einstein, you know, discovery that I love to quote is that E equals mc squared, right? All matter, all energy in the universe— our health comes down to, are we managing these inputs and influences on our body well, or are we And whenever I find that someone's sick and they're still sick despite all the things, I always look, what did we miss? What did we miss? What's the exposure? What's the problem? One of the things I love telling patients to do is to tell them to go on a camping trip, which is exactly what you did. Because what happens is what you experienced. They go to a primitive tent camping site, and I'm very specific. I'm like, don't take your RV. Don't go to a hookup with electricity and all this stuff. I want you to take a tent. I want you to go into the woods. I want you to be off-grid. I know it's gonna be uncomfortable. And I'll never forget, I had a woman say like, well, I just can't do that because I don't want to be uncomfortable. I'm like, your life sounds like a disaster. You sound miserable. You barely can function. What do you mean you don't want to be uncomfortable in nature? What if it's the solution to your discomfort? And I'll tell patients, go on a camping trip because you might not know what in your environment is making you sick based on the camping trip, but you can figure out that something is. And I'll, I'll ask this question, like, when was the last time you took a cross-country road trip, went on vacation, left the house for more than 48 hours. People come back, be like, you know what, I did take a cross-country camping trip one time and it was the best I've ever felt. I'm like, well, I think that's a, that's a clue.

Yep.

Right. And so it's one of my favorite things that you, you inadvertently did and demonstrated the power of it to you.

Yep, absolutely. Because it's a return back to our roots.

It's a return back to that oneness, our state of nature, which we're adapted to, right? Not this EMF artificially lit that artificially packaged, processed, flavored modernity.

Yes. Yes. And, and talking about the frequencies, that's a very interesting point because it turns out, for instance, that every enzyme in our body that essentially speed up digestion, energy production, and cellular repair, it has a wavelength absorption characteristic.

Yes.

Now what does this mean in plain words? It has a match. Every enzyme has a color and a frequency emission that matches with the color and frequency emission of sunlight. And that match causes the enzyme to activate. There were some research back from 1979 from Martinek and Berezin showed that those enzymes become 500% more effective when they absorb shorter frequencies of light. And different enzymes need different frequencies. And therefore there's no such a thing like, oh, this is the best frequency. Let me stand in front of this panel for that many. No, like you need every freaking frequency because every frequency is designed to activate different things.

And you need them at different times and different intensities and for different durations. And so people are like, I think people at the people, if you don't feel a little bit overwhelmed by this complexity, I don't think you understand it. At the same time, it's like, this is really simple. We should just copy nature. And yeah, you can innovate. Sure. Go crazy with new frequency devices and light therapy and whatever. But like, listen, when we're trying to keep it simple for patients, we're like, take 3 10-minute walks. We can't, we can't lose. We can't lose.

Just to highlight also, when we speak about innovation, What are we innovating and what are we pulling from? Like, idea is eternal and all ideas live in nature and we attempt to pull from those ideas and to manifest them into form. But oftentimes in our attempt of innovating and pulling from idea, we lose so much essence from the idea and we end up manifesting something that is a fraction of the power that the idea carries.

Yeah.

Keep in mind with any product that we're using, Although there are so many wonderful products, they are an attempt to copy nature. And the greater innovation— innovator is the one who could truly copy nature in a way that is balanced and rhythmic and symmetrical. Now, another aspect is we're speaking a lot about light and the frequencies of light. The equal and opposite force is darkness. And as much as we need light, we need darkness, and we can absorb light as much as we are soaking the darkness. Like those who are often photosensitive are the ones who are bombarded by artificial light at night, and they're not giving themselves that darkness that their cells need to essentially clean, clean off inflammation. We, we spoke about light. The other aspect is darkness. So the absence of blue and green light is what triggers melatonin. And most people think of melatonin as the sleep hormone, but it's also one of the highest antioxidants in nature. And it essentially sends a signal that activates the body's cellular cleaning crew, autophagy, apoptosis, and mitophagy. And mitophagy, speaking about mitochondria, is the mitochondria's ability to get rid of old broken mitochondria and replace them with brand new ones. And I don't know if that's totally true or not, but I, I did hear that in highly metabolic organs like the brain, the eye, and the gut, the body could replace 5 to 20% of its old mitochondria through mitophagy every single night. Now, if that is true, in some of those metabolic organs, you could, you could completely renew your mitochondrial chain in a week of actually properly being in the proper environment. And that is the power of camping, I guess. And that is the power of my farming experience.

But let's, let's drill down on that. That process is better when you're younger. And here's what I find fascinating. So if you think about mitochondria as these tiny little units of energy generation and production, then you got to realize that if you're gonna repopulate an organ with mitochondria, let's say you're starting with one— this cell, this organ system is just on its last mitochondria. You got to double it, right? Well, you double it, you get one mitochondria, you get two, and then you get four, and then you get eight, and then you get 16, and then you get 32, and then you get 64 over the same time period, right? And the reason I explain this is that one of the things you'll observe in clinical practice is that the results are not linear and they're not symmetric. What do I mean by that? Because it's really important. You'll get— I always— we have a question on our progress report in the practice that's, how compliant have you been with our recommendations? The people who get the best results are at an 8, 9, or a 10, without a doubt. And the reason for this is very simple. It has to do with the power of consistency. So if you double a penny every day for 30 days, you wind up with an excess of, I think it's $5 million at the end of 30 days. If you double it every other day for 30 days, only 15 doublings, you have $163. Stop and let that sink in. In. Let's say that instead of doubling the mitochondria every period of time, say it's a day, you go from 2— you don't double it every period, you double it every other period. Why? Because you're still in this much artificial light or that much EMF, or you haven't totally fixed your diet, right? You don't actually end up with— if you're 50% compliant, like if I see 50% compliance, I think, all right, we got a problem here. Maybe they'll get better. And I'm amazed, you know, some people will do like 20% of what we recommend and they'll get amazing results. Other people will do 100% and they won't get any results. It's very frustrating. But at the same time, like, the people in that sort of middle band, they do not get 50% of the results. They get like 25% as a rule. And this is that power of consistency. I just got off the call with a patient who just mitigated his house to EMF, and I told him, I said, look, I'm so glad you did that because it's like compound interest on something like an asset in the bank. You don't think about it, you don't do it every day, it's just been done, and your environment is just better and healthier and more wholesome. And it builds. So like in 5, 6 months, I expect to check back in with him. There's some other things that we get— we got to work on, and I expect his life to be very different. And I know that because it's these little things every day that you do, particularly that you can just build in your environment. Like Rudy's environment, like he doesn't have to think about, oh, how am I gonna get natural light today? If you can't see him, he's in this beautiful, totally sunny office. He's got the ocean in front of him and the mountains behind And the more you can do that, the easier this gets. And all the great results in the practice, like the really, really, really great results and case studies, they all dialed that in. Not 100%, but enough to really move the needle.

Yeah, it's, it's quite puzzling that in 2026, in order to achieve something like this, it has to be very complicated. That, like, for most people, it feels like they need to deconstruct every aspect of their social life and pull themselves out of in a harsh way in order to achieve something that is common sense. In fact, when I was on the farm, every farmer that I met, they had a quality of light in their eyes that I have never seen in the community of folks who, who were obsessed about all these different dogmatic diets and countless supplements and countless biohacking. And I sat down and I asked myself a very interesting question. I said, what makes those farmers different? And throughout my observation, I saw that these farmers wake up naturally when the sun is up. They spend most of their days outside in contact with the earth, touching the plants, watering, weeding. So they are grounded to the earth. They eat at a similar time every day. They fast when the sun is down and they're never exposed to any artificial lights after the sunset. Their only source of light after the sun is fire and candlelight. Yep.

It's amazing. All right, let's land the plane, Rudy. What if you had to sum it up for people listening, are the biggest lessons that you learned in your, your story of hope, story of healing?

Yeah, that's a great question. The first thing that is very clear to me is that health is not as complicated as we make it to seem. And as I had mentioned in the beginning, one of my biggest realization is it's something that I was born with. So if I ever struggling with my health, the first question is, what have I done to move away from What are some of my actions and some of my practices that are completely off the universal balance that are leading me to a place of sickness, away from that natural wellness that has always been in me? The second very important thing is all of nature is composed of opposing forces that must interchange and balance. So we look at the day and the night, they're equal and opposite. We look at the seasons, we have a summer, we have a winter that balance it out. And when you watch what nature does between one season and another, you realize that every season is purposeful and it provides the equal and the opposite of the upcoming season. For instance, during the winter, all of nature goes inward. The trees, they shed their leaves. Animals go into their caves. They hibernate. They soak that darkness so that they can spring back in the spring season and then gradually start budding and flowering and soaking that sunlight in a sequential way. So one of my greatest lessons is like, always look to my, to my environment, always look to nature as my ultimate teacher. And before I introduce any practice into my life, I always ask like, does this happen in nature and how does it happen in nature? And that becomes my compass. Things become a lot more easy.

Einstein said, look deep into nature and you will understand everything better. And I absolutely think that should be a bedrock philosophical tenet of medicine because it's really what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to look deep into human nature and understand, well, how can we help people without creating, you know, problems down the line, which is what often ends up happening with medicine. I'm curious, I didn't ask you this earlier. I'm curious what your attitude and outlook was while you were going through this. Did you think you would ever solve this problem when you were at your worst?

Frankly, when I was at my worst, I felt deeply stuck. I constantly thought that nobody could understand me because I had seen different practitioners. I've read different psychology books. I've done acupuncture. I've, I've done speaking therapy. And the one thing that always stuck with me is every person that I had spoken to during that time, they had an idea of what could be happening inside of me and an idea about the solution for it. But it always boiled down for me to like that feeling of like, I am alone. Nobody understands and nobody could help me. And it was, it was very dark to be in this place because the more you try, the more it become evident that nobody understand. And the more I feel hopeless that I will never leave that hole. And of course this, this is combined with like being in a state of like low dopamine. Being exposed to artificial light every night, I was destroying my dopamine, which is this powerful molecule that allow you to like like zoom out and see the bigger picture in life and be creative. Yes.

What do you think if I'd stopped you on the street during that period of time and said, hey, I know you're going through something, do you think you're ever going to figure it out? What do you think you would have said?

Deep, deep, deep down in the deepest part of my roots, I knew that there's gonna be light at the end of this journey. Although from moment to moment, like, to be very frank, like, I would lose that hope and I would feel like this is absolutely hopeless, this is so painful, nobody understands. It's, it's a, it's a road that is blocked. But I think what kept me going is like this deep, deep, deep down, there was a place of light inside of me that have always known that this light within is what is guiding me and that all that seeming darkness will instantly fade away as I allow more of that light to shine through.

Is there anything else that kept you going? Anything motivating, inspiring, people you really hung onto or leaned on?

I think one of the big reasons that I kept going is ever since I was a kid, I was in touch with God. I was in touch with the illuminating light inside of me. And that is always what had led me to like leave the classroom and be outside. Once I was outside, I could hear the music of the spheres with inner ear. I could, I could, I could see colors. I could visualize and imagine the patterns of nature. And it always felt like nature was speaking to me and I was speaking to nature in poems and music and beauty. So that memory of that connection to self and to God and to nature was still with me, although it was buried with years and years of pain and struggling. It was still there and I could somehow touch it and it could keep me going. Also, of course, my love, my love for my parents and my mother and my father, like that, that, that has always kept me from the idea of like suiciding because it was, it was very loud in my head at times. There were moments where I was about to like act on the idea of suiciding. And I guess like the two things that kept me from not doing this was my love for my family and their love for me and my connection to God that I had lost, but that I could still have a glimpse of ever since I was a kid.

Beautiful. Tell people what you do and what you make and how they can follow, get in touch with you and benefit from your products.

Yeah. So I'm the founder of Vivarays. We are on a mission to help millions of people to return back to living in rhythm with nature's light and dark cycles so that we can return back into that place of good sleep, great moods, great energy. And currently we do this by offering Circadian Glasses. Those are, uh, essentially a set of 3-in-1 that is designed to filter the right amount of light at the different times of the day. The daytime lenses, they don't block blue light, they harmonize it and make it more balanced and proportionate with other frequencies that we're supposed to get when blue light is present, like green, yellow, orange, and red light. And those are designed to be worn in environments when you are exposed to a lot of artificial light during the day, like in your office or in the airport or in a mall. You can notice I'm not wearing this right now because the dominant light that is entering my eyes is natural sunlight. Also, this comes with two different clips that seamlessly clip onto the base frame. The evening lens, which mimic firelight, eliminate blue and the high frequency green and help the body to wind down and to prepare for a restful night's sleep. And the nighttime lens, which is designed to be worn about an hour before bedtime. It's like the end of the bonfire when the wood turns into amber coin. It blocks all of the—

love it—

all of the green and it optimizes melatonin, growth hormone, and helps people living in the city exposed to a lot of artificial light to maintain that circadian rhythm. And waking up feeling rested and energized.

And where can people find these products?

www.vivarays.com, V-I-V-A-R-A-Y-S.com. That's where you can find the product. We also share a lot of educational blogs on light and health on our blog post on the website and a one-time per week newsletter dedicated to answering questions about how light impact every aspect of our biology that we share on Thursday, which you're welcome to sign up for. And some of the exciting things that we're working on, we're seeing a lot of companies getting excited about healthy LEDs that do not disrupt circadian rhythm. Frankly, I'm very opposed to the idea of LEDs because it's not how nature makes light. Nature does not produce light by exciting semiconductors. No matter how much we try to market the idea of healthy LEDs, LEDs are digital lights and they will, they will stay digital lights no matter how how many thousands of dollars we, we, we pay on marketing.

Would it be, would it be fair to say that healthy LEDs would be like healthy cigarettes?

Yes. You like that? Healthy tobacco. You'll see, you'll see, you'll see this a lot in the spiritual circles of people who, oh no, I don't smoke. This is like healthy tobacco from this shaman. I'm like, yeah, but it's still—

to be fair, you know, tobacco you can administer through different routes.

Yes, indeed. But when you smoke it, you're still dealing with a consequence, unavoidable toxic Toxic effect of your lungs being hit. Um, so yeah, really excited because there's not that I could— there's not much that I could share about this idea, but what I could say is that we went down the route of exploring healthy LEDs. And you're probably aware because I had spoken to you about this, and we did actually produce arguably a technology that is better than most of the ones that are on the market right now. And I deliberately chose not to launch it because I had fully realized in my conversation with myself and with God that LEDs cannot possibly be healthy. And in my meditation, I realized, although I could launch this and make a lot of money, this is not why I'm here. And even if it's going to take me a little bit more time, I should maintain my focus on launching a technology that copies nature the way nature does it. And this is essentially what we're working on. It's very confidential and I cannot share a lot of details, But we promise that within a year or year and a half from now, that there's a technology that is going to be launched that is going to make all LEDs go obsolete.

That's very exciting. And I think you've been working on this now for as long as I've known you, and I love your dedication to quality. That means a lot. We need quality stuff. And if you want to pick up Viva Rays, in the podcast description, there should be a link where you get a discount, and we appreciate your purchases. Those are affiliate links, so we do make a commission, and we need those to be able to make fun and exciting and engaging educational content like this. Any closing thoughts, Rudy?

First of all, I want to say like, I really feel grateful for you. It's like, I'm almost like tearing up because I don't know how many doctors in the world I know that are doing the work you are doing. And I think in 2026, we have an epidemic of sick people and there is no moment in time better than now to have doctors like you who are operating from a place of service to the world, who are giving all of themselves. Truly and genuinely and authentically to bring people back to that state of health and wellness that we are all born with. So I just wanna say like a deep and frank thank you. And I, I totally wish and pray and imagine that more young doctors who are on their way to graduate and, and, and serve humanity to be inspired by your brilliance and to shape their life in such a way that they could become of true service. Because we really need that.

Thank you, it means a lot. And, you know, I always think about the way I'm doing what I'm doing. I'm just doing it the way that I think it needs to be done to help the most people. And, you know, sometimes I, I sort of marvel at how my colleagues and other, you know, physicians or influencers who are in a position to help people— I sort of, I wonder if they, how they conceptualize the, the magnitude of the project that we have to right the ship that is the world's I also don't know if everyone really understands the stakes. I mean, the stakes we're playing for right now on a global scale in health are— we're playing for extremely high stakes. The future could be so dystopian, it could be so ugly and sad. And I look at pictures from the third world where you've got horrible pollution and terrible infrastructure, and you've got kind of the worst of all possible worlds. You have terrible poverty, malnutrition, disease, parasites, bacteria, fungi just running through the population who's terribly malnourished and inundated with fake light. I mean, it's just like, you know, the old world hundreds of years ago, very sort of dark in the sense that, you know, there were a lot of real threats, dangers, you know, like mortality was high from natural causes, right? Our modern world, it's like, think, just stop and think for a moment. You were an engineer living in a first-world country with every possible comfort, able to do almost whatever you wanted, practically speaking. You know, I don't think people realize, like like the King of England, the most powerful man in England 1,000 years ago, couldn't have picked up a phone and called somebody on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. He couldn't have done that. We, we can do that, and we're like, oh yeah, I did that with my phone that I got for free from the government or whatever. Anyway, we— it's like you had all that power, all that potential, all that, all that, that stuff, and you were totally miserable. And I just think to myself, like, we have to end these epidemics of chronic disease. And that's why the book is The End of Autoimmunity, because it's totally possible. You know, and whether the manifestation is depression or anxiety or poor sleep or lupus or, you know, myasthenia gravis or lichen sclerosis or chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia, we cannot have a population that's as sick. It's totally unsustainable and it's totally optional. We're literally choosing this as a global populace, so we should just stop choosing it. And that's why I'm doing what I'm doing. And it's a, you know, it's like, I think this is just very pragmatic. Do I want my child to grow up in a world where I'm worried about basic things like, will he be able to find a nice a young woman to get married to who's going to be healthy and have— be able to have children? Is he going to grow up in a society where he's going to die at 50 from a heart attack, or he's going to die at, God forbid, like a young age from something like suicide? You know, I mean, these are things that I just— I just like— I don't want to live in the world that's being sort of prepared for me, that the world— like, people of the world are being sort of herded into by, you know, what I call Big Pharma, Big Tech, and Big Ag. And I almost wonder, like, do the people who run these companies understand how dark the future they're creating But anyway, that's enough for today.

And that's a wonderful question to end with because I think we just can't fathom and realize how connected we are and can't fathom the idea that the pain of one man is the pain of every man.

And I love that you clearly have this moment in your life where the power of nature, you know, you didn't like read a philosopher or open some book or watch some reel and get reconnected to nature. You went and you immersed yourself in it, and your body received all the bioenergetic inputs that you're wired— it's set up to receive. And I really do think about things like this, you know. We don't really know what the body does with the energies that come into it. We know that they're absorbed. You know, you can't just like put a person in a lab and be like, well, we're gonna change this and that, the other thing, then we're gonna see what happens. It's like they're just like It's really hard to measure these things, but we know that they have this effect. And so you can have these really incredible transformations in people when you fix that energetic environment, which is why I wanted you to come talk, because it's so important people hear what's possible. Because a lot of the time you tell them till you're blue in the mouth and they don't— it doesn't like land the same way. Thanks again for joining me.