Your Hormones Are Broken Because of Your LIGHTS

Women's health can be so confusing, especially as we go through perimenopause, menopause, and beyond. And the internet just gives us such a tremendous amount of information overload. It's so hard to navigate through that sometimes. And definitely the question of, am I doing enough, can come up. And then also sometimes, am I doing too much? My guest today, Sarah Kleiner— I wanted to have her on because we really connected over this conversation of judgment in midlife on doing too much or not enough. How I met Sarah was when I was navigating my own hormone, figuring out the whole situation with HRT. I've been very public that I'm on HRT and like HRT, but I started navigating my own issues with it a while back. And for me personally, it ended up being a detox pathway issue where if you do too much of certain hormones for your body and it's not detoxing properly, it can wreak havoc on your health and create other issues. And as I was sharing my journey on social media, which I share almost my whole life, but I was sharing this on social media, I started getting pushback from what Sarah called The Menopausie, The Menopausie, and I loved that term. That instantly connected me to her because I thought, okay, this girl gets it. Let me see what's going on here. And I've been following her, she's been following me, and we've only been social media friends. I couldn't wait to have her on this podcast to learn more about her and her take. She is a true health detective. So you've heard me throw those words around before, health detective. I think it's important in my life that we be one. She is one of those coaches that really helps midlife women especially get to the root, root, root of what is going on and how to fix it. And it doesn't always have to mean HRT or pharmaceuticals. Sometimes it's truly back to basics. So thanks so much for being here today, Sarah.

Yeah, thank you for having me and that warm welcome. I have enjoyed following you and looking at all the amazing things that you put out there into the world. And just, yeah, when you were going through all of that stuff with the hormone crew, I Definitely felt a connection to you. Like, yes, we need to be shouting this information from the rooftops. And I'm so irritated that there's so much pushback when we question this, you know, narrow-minded view, as I see it, of women's hormones, aging, perimenopause, menopause.

Now, Sarah, I'm partially guilty of some information overload because I have a lot of guests on here, and I am a fan of hormone replacement. I've had a number of guests on talking all different levels of hormone replacement. I've had people really pushing the envelope, people that are more mainstream, people that are against them. But I want to help from your perspective, because I know you have walked through this journey yourself and you coach lots of women. Help us understand, like, what was your journey with hormones? Let's, let's start there. What was your journey with that?

So are you talking about HRT and just in general?

I'm in general, like, I know you, you struggled in fertility for for a while back, and you learned then some things about hormones. And then you've been on the journey through getting older and considering hormone replacement and even trying it.

I just—

I want to get a kind of a bird's-eye perspective of what you've navigated and learned there.

Yeah, well, I was told at 39 that I was definitely in perimenopause, that you're in perimenopause, because my periods had become very irregular. I was getting one every few months and then nothing, and then it would stick around for like 2 weeks. And I'm like, what is going on? Why is this happening? Oh, it's just perimenopause. That's what told at the time. And then of course it's like, take progesterone. My body's always been fine with progesterone. So I know there are women, and we could talk about that later, why progesterone is not going to work very well for them. But for me, it's always been okay. But that didn't really fix what was going on. And at the same time, I got this hankering. I wanted to have another baby. And I have a daughter who's 18. She has nonverbal autism. Injury that she got when she was a baby. And it's been a very tough journey to raise a special needs child, and it's very challenging. But around 2020, we decided, you know what, we really have always wanted another baby. We just need to do it. Just do it. So here I am, like, being told, oh, you're basically in perimenopause, your cycles are irregular. And I wasn't really ready to just accept that and say, well, let me just start messing with hormone therapy and this, that, and the other. I wanted to dig deeper, and I also wanted to improve my fertility. And number one, I was doing a very restrictive diet. I thought that this diet was the be-all end-all. I was doing a carnivore diet because it had helped me with like gut issues, skin issues. A lot of really annoying like lifelong issues I had dealt with were gone because I had been doing carnivore for like 2 years. And so I wasn't open to changing the diet until I couldn't get pregnant, couldn't regulate my cycles, and realized that this ultra restrictive, no carbohydrate, you know, stress-inducing in my physiology diet was not optimal for hormones and fertility. And I see that a lot now. You know, I, I, I can speak to it a lot of women in perimenopause and menopause that are kind of told to go down that restrict rabbit hole and just push harder. Cut out more carbs, fast longer, and that's how you're going to lose the weight. And it backfires massively. So at that point, I had gained, you know, 20 pounds, and I was not even eating sugar. I was pissed. I was like, if you're gonna gain 20 pounds, at least like have like the good food to show for it. Wait, I wanna—

I wanna— I don't wanna— I, I want to keep hearing this, this journey, but I, I want to ask you some questions right there because this is very confusing for people about carnivore. And you said a few key things that I don't I don't know if everyone picked up on, but I'm hearing it should be almost temporary and it's a— it's something that you're doing to, like, an elimination diet to figure things out. And I think that gets skewed, and a lot of people think this should be their long-term lifestyle. Can you go a little bit deeper there on, on some of the things that you said about that?

Yeah, I mean, I really had debilitating IBS, gut issues, skin issues, like PCOS, like painful cycles. And so when I did carnivore, all of that went away like quickly. And so I thought I found the holy grail. I'm just going to keep doing this forever. There are people out there that, you know, it's their whole social media page. It's everything they do. They say they've been doing it for decades and they're healthy and yada yada. So I was like, all right, well, I'm just going to keep doing it. And I kind of like ignored the things that were talking to me, like the weight gain, the 20 pounds of weight gain, because my— the cortisol physiology that comes along with long-term carb elimination, it does impact your cortisol, which can then impact progesterone, testosterone, your sex hormones. And then you're not eating fiber, so you're not detoxing estrogen the way that you should. You're— they're— the carnivores brag about pooping twice a week. I'm like, that's not a flex, you guys.

Like, not a flex.

We want twice a day, okay? Like, we want 2 a day if we can. Especially if you have estrogen dominance issues the way I did. So I kept kind of turning a blind eye to it because all these other things were better. And you said it, it should be temporary while you work on the terrain, while you work on why did I have these gut issues, why did I have these skin issues in the first place? Like, what in my lifestyle, what in my environment was leading to this? And so it requires you, if you're gonna do that sort of a diet to be, like you said, a true health detective and really understand things on a deeper level.

Okay, so you had figured this part out, and then now you're gaining weight with it, and you're going, what, what's going on here? And what had to change for you? And I know this is around the time, I'm assuming, you started understanding more about light and circadian rhythm. And where does that tie in?

Well, so I was able to get pregnant, but then I lost the first one. And then my doctor said, well, it's just your age, you know, that this— you'll— the next one will be fine. It'll be fine. Got pregnant again, lost that one. And it was at that point that I was just absolutely devastated. I had never really understood pregnancy loss before, even though women deal with it every day. It's so hard. And I really had this baby set in my mind and I was like this. I was so devastated. So then we start down the path of IVF because it's like you're over 40 and that's where the doctor says you got to go next. So we had already started that process, and it was at that time when I had already started it that I came across Dr. Jack Kruse. He came on my podcast. I've only talked to the man one time in my whole life. It was that one conversation, and that sparked in me a desire to learn more about the topics he teaches about light, circadian biology, the hormone leptin, and how that really impacts all of the downstream hormones. And so I did. I dug deeper. I went in and got certified with the American Naturopathic Medical Board in Applied Quantum Biology. I did further studies. I, I'm constantly have my nose in books and studies, just learning, learning, learning, right? And started implementing these things. Two rounds of IVF failed, and that is not a fun experience either, and very expensive. By the time that had happened, I was really solid with the circadian piece, with the light piece, and I had changed my diet to be more seasonally appropriate. Because when you look at biology, you understand there's a cyclical nature to everything in the body, and you're not supposed to just eat one diet year-round. That's not going to be hormonally friendly. I mean, you're not supposed to eliminate carbs year-round. So I changed all of those things, and then eventually added in a little bit of cold therapy, you know, some of the other things that go along with this, and ended up getting pregnant January of 2022. And it was a successful, healthy pregnancy. Gave birth at age 43. But that was really the catalyst of me, you know, the conversation, the pregnancy losses, the failed IVF, to understand this information, get— study it, get certified in it, and start implementing it with my clients.

Wow. What— okay, I have so many questions, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna back a little bit, if that's okay. Um, and sure, so let's start with circadian rhythm because I have definitely talked about it before and I think people are different levels of understanding. Help us understand at the roots, uh, what's going on there and where we're going very wrong. Because I think people know what circadian rhythm means, they know the term, but help us understand, like, in your perspective, what you learned from Jack Kruse. Like, what, what do you understand and what do you think women are missing the mark with here?

Every single cell and organ system in your body, doesn't matter which, which one, has a circadian clock in front of it. And so we're meant to oscillate through different functions through the day depending on our light signaling, light environment. The stronger the amplitude of your circadian rhythm, of those light and dark cycles, and that does involve going outside and having darkness at night, wearing your blue blockers, turning down the lights, the stronger that rhythm is, the more in synchrony your hormones have the opportunity to be. There is a ton of research to show that since we brought smartphones into the picture in 2010, we've disrupted women's menstrual cycles. Fascinating research. I just did a post on this on my Instagram recently. But yeah, essentially since we introduced smartphones in 2010, which— what does that do? Artificial light at night. Tells the brain it's still daytime. Let's kick off the sex steroid hormone pathway. Let's put all these things into motion. This is happening at night when we're supposed to be sleeping, repairing, and making melatonin. Has disrupted cycles to the point where women are no longer, a lot of them, synced up with the moon and their menstrual cycles. And so there is a lot of interesting research. I love looking at papers for, for like my part-time hobby, but there's so much research on circadian biology. How taking medications even, really different time of the day. Oh yeah. There's a study that just came out about lung cancer that showed the lung cancer patients that got their chemotherapy before 11 o'clock in the morning had, I believe it was a 43% better outcome to their chemotherapy than the ones that had to get it in the afternoon. Why? Because your mitochondria in the morning are more responsive. So we look at things like red light therapy. We look at things even like vagus nerve stimulation. There's vagus nerve stimulation studies that show if you want to use one of these little vagus nerve stimulators, when the subjects did it in the morning around the sunrise time, when your mitochondria are more responsive, it showed marked improvements in HRV that night. When the subjects did it later in the day before bed, afternoon, no impact on HRV. Same thing, same exact therapy. No, no other variables changed besides the timing.

So, so Sarah, I want you to know, and then I'm going to— I have more questions here, but I saw your— I happen to see your post about red light, and I've been sharing a lot about red light recently, done a few episodes on it. But after seeing your post, I was like, okay, I'm shifting this. So it's my red light in the morning, but now when I go in my sauna at night, I turn the red light part off just because of your post. I was like, I had never thought about it that way. So how, okay. So for somebody that they're hearing this, but they don't, they really haven't changed anything circadian rhythm-wise. They're hearing a few things like I shouldn't have LED lights or blue blockers. They don't really know. Can you tell us like, what was your habits before versus like after you learned this? Help break it down so women know practically, like what, like they want something to compare it to. Like what is, how do you manage light now versus how you did before you knew this?

Before I didn't think about light. I never was outside in the morning. Like, why would I go outside in the morning? I have a special needs child. Like, I don't have time for that. So, and sunglasses on all the time, all the time in the morning when they're— the UV index is 1 or 0 or 2. It's not going to create an issue for your eyes. It's not going to be damaging to your eyes to not wear sunglasses. And you need that hormone signaling in the morning from UVA light when it's nice and gentle.

So, because if you wear sunglasses, you're blocking that, you block the UV light, you block a lot of the blue light.

And so your brain doesn't get the signal that it's daytime. Your skin doesn't get the signal to start prepping for that stronger UV light. When you get that UV light in your eyes in the morning, your skin starts a process as well to prepare for stronger UV light. So it's a whole process that the body goes through when we prime the body with light in the morning. And I never did that. I never— I just was like, why would I go outside?

So when you do that now, how long do you do that for? And how long should you do that for?

Anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour. You know, some mornings, like today was a total bleep show. We had a horrible night of sleep. My son was up coughing. He was in our bed. I was in his bed. I finally gave up and slept in his room. When I get downstairs, both kids are running crazy around the house. I'm like, oh my God. What happened. So I do not have like this perfect easy setup, you know, I've got a wild toddler. But what I do, as soon as I come downstairs, I'm outside. I have a deck, I have a patio, I'm just out there. I'm like, all right, I'm gonna drink my water, go outside, have my minerals, just take the dog out, walk around in the yard. And I just spend as much time as I can out there as possible.

Okay.

Sometimes I bring a kid with me if I'm lucky. Sometimes I'll bring my breakfast out on the patio, eat out there, let my son play with his toys, trucks, whatever, even if it's cold. But anywhere from 5 minutes, sometimes I get an hour. And then I try to do a little walk after I drop my son off at nature school in that UVA light, which is really, really important for neurotransmitters, hormones, and leptin signaling.

So, so if you do that in the morning, how— if somebody has been doing red light instead, for example, is that a— do you think of that as a both and, or is it better than nothing? Or help help us understand that.

So I think red light therapy and doing that in the morning is awesome. The issue with that is there's no blue light in a red light panel. So your brain needs blue light, and it's going to prefer that from the outdoors because it's going to come with a lot of other flavors, I guess you could say, of light along with it, not just the blue. It's going to have red, it's going to have infrared, it's going to have scattered UV. And so all these different photons do different things inside of the brain, on the skin, they increase nitric oxide circulation, which declines in midlife. Right. And so getting out there doing that in the morning is going to be different than just doing a red light therapy session because you're not really spinning all these metabolic clocks. You're not telling your brain it's daytime because in a red light panel, there's no blue light.

Makes sense.

So, well, you could look at your phone in front of it.

I'm just kidding.

That's not going to work. That's a bad idea. That's way too much. Highly don't recommend.

I just— if I didn't say it, someone would be thinking it, so I had to say it.

No, trust me, I get it.

So, okay. And if it's cloudy, does it matter?

No, you actually get more infrared light on those cloudy days, and you get enough lux or brightness. And so we look at light, we look at frequency. Like, you know, you've got the sunrise time that there's no UV light, so it's really nice and gentle with red and infrared. Then we have UV, which has a whole set of benefits for the brain. Nitric oxide, serotonin, dopamine, leptin. Right. So all of those things are super, super, super important. When we look at light, lux is one that's been studied tremendously for mental health, for metabolism. There's actually studies showing that for every hour you delay morning sunlight, that BMI goes up a point.

Wow.

So it's heavily tied with metabolism. So the brightness outside on a cloudy day, the lux, that's why my app, my circadian app, has a lux meter. So you can check your lux. Inside is a max of about 300. For your brain and metabolism to really kick on in the morning, you want to go anywhere from 500 up to like 10,000 in the morning if you can, to really get that signaling turned on.

If you live in a place that doesn't— it's not conducive to being outside, and I know what you're going to say, well, even if it's cold or whatever, but if somebody's Just thinking that, what do you think of those light boxes, like those Lux boxes that people buy? Do you think those are gimmicky? Do they actually work? Do they on some level?

The experience I've had with my community over the last 6 years since I've been really talking about this is, and my own experience I've played with them, is that they can overstimulate people. I had a, a coaching client last week who's in Canada. Okay. It's very cold. And I told her, I'm like, look, Open your door, stick your head out for 30 seconds, come back inside. And then a couple minutes later, do it again, right? We're just gonna— and she's got a little toddler, and so I'm like, this is what we're gonna do right now for you in this time of year. It's gonna get better, it's gonna get warmer, but right now we just want to like signal, signal. And so she's doing that and she's like, oh, I don't know if it's enough. I'm like, it's enough, it's enough, it's fine right now. She bought a light box, she bought a happy light box, and I'm like, that's not really a good one, but okay. She— on our meeting last week, she's like, I had the worst headaches, the worst anxiety in the afternoon. I felt terrible. The only thing I changed was that light box. And I'm like, yeah. So Chroma is a brand that I've played around with. They've sent me a couple of boxes. I think those are a little bit more circadian friendly. They don't flicker and have kind of that nervous system dysregulation that a lot of the other ones do. But I still have people in those cloudy, cold environments to get a natural sunlight signal first.

Okay.

Even if it means like I'm just putting my head out the window, counting to 30, coming back in because it's cumulative. So you do that 4 or 5 times, it's going to add up to like a full session.

So when we hear that doing that helps regulate your cortisol, is that because it's helping kind of turn it on in the morning where that's what you want? Explain that part.

So again, there's this clock in the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, and it's essentially looking for the blue light to turn, turn itself on and to start daytime. Now, it also is looking for these other flavors that I mentioned: frequency, lux or brightness, Kelvin, which is kind of like this intensity. The Kelvin at sunrise and sunset is around 1600. 1500, give or take, depending on where you live. Kelvin on your phone is like 6,000. So that's telling your brain, oh my God, it's like noon already. So if you wake up, look at your phone, your brain's going to be like, it's noon. Oh my God. But also the lux is only like 200. So I'm really confused because I'm supposed to be getting like 10,000 when I'm having this amount of Kelvin. Also, there's no red and infrared. Also, there's no UV. And so you wake up, like, the brain just gets confused. So it's really a signal to kind of spin these metabolic clocks to start the process in the body of all these functions. The best way to do that is going to just get the natural signal outside.

Makes total sense. Okay. I don't want to spend too much time on light, but I have to— I want to wrap up the topic here because I want to ask you about the evening wind-down part of this equation.

Huge.

And what you were doing versus what you do now.

So I was Netflix, phone scrolling, you know, my shows. It's like I have a stressful day, I want to watch my shows, you know.

Don't take our shows from us, Sarah. You got to tell us how to do it with the shows, by the way. Okay, I will.

I will tell you how to do it with shows because I occasionally watch shows also. Not like I used to. I just, my system is like, no, we're going to bed. We need to go to sleep.

Yeah, my system's not there yet. I still like some series, you know, there's a couple.

I understand. I understand. So if you want to watch shows, then you want to make sure the lux is below 10, one. So in the evening, when we look at lux, in the morning we want a lot of lux, right? We want to max it out 10,000 if you can, 100,000, like just get that lux in. Lux throughout the day, equally important, because in my office here, it's probably 100 lux outside right now is probably like 30,000, 40,000. Yeah.

So, and mine's a crazy amount because I got all the big LED lights staring at me right now.

I bet yours is probably anywhere from like 500 to 1,000 if you were to measure it. Probably 500 because that's usually max with the LEDs indoors. And you're getting a big spike of blue with no red and infrared. So that's a whole other— yeah, that's a whole other topic.

But see what I sacrifice for you all to do this podcast. Just so you know.

Yeah, I have, I haven't— I have a nasty one, but I also have an incandescent lamp. Dr. Glenn Jeffrey just did a study that just came out that showed even if you have a bunch of LEDs on, okay, they had a 25% vision improvement just by adding a lamp with an incandescent bulb on the desktop.

Okay, well then hold on, standby, Sarah. Hey Brooks, can you hear me? Brooks, can you bring me one of the air— the Pronounce it again, Sarah.

Incandescent.

Incandescent lights. Can you bring one in here, please? I'm going to plug it in literally right now. I'm interviewing Sarah Brooks. I'm live interviewing her right now on my podcast. Say hi to Sarah.

This is Brooks.

Hi. And she's the light expert here. And she's telling me that when I have all the lux LEDs facing at me, just by having an— I can't pronounce it. Incandescent. Incandescent light here, it'll help counterbalance that. So I need it. I need one of them right here so I can show it on screen too. Will you bring me one? Thank you. We see we nailed it at night, but I didn't know that about daytime. This is good. Okay.

Yeah. Dr. Glenn Jeffrey has done a lot of the research on that, and it's fascinating. He keeps showing more and more benefits of long wavelength light indoors and how that can offset some of the damage.

I had no idea. So I can just sit in here on my desk and it's going to help with that.

It's going to help. It's going to help. Yeah, it's amazing.

Thank you.

Easy hack. All right.

Amazing. I love it. Okay, so at night, you— so tell us what you do different at night to make this all work.

All right. So if I do want to watch a show, which I do every now and then, the My Circadian app, the app that I created, has a lux meter in it. So as I was saying, in the morning you want tons of lux. At night, you want your lux 10 and below the 3 hours leading up to bed because these little cells here at the bottom of your eyes, the RPCGs, They have memory. So you got all the lights on and then you turn them off at 9 o'clock and try to go to bed. Your eyes, it is dependent on your genetics, is dependent from person to person, but it's at least an hour, some people up to 3 hours where their brain is still registering the light that was in the room even though it's off. Oh wow. So your brain is still in cortisol making mode. From having too much lux in your environment. So I always tell people, keep your lux 10 and below the 3 hours leading up to bed. If you want to watch a show, use the My Circadian app, grab a pair of blue blockers that you're going to use to watch the TV. You want to make sure they do block out a good amount of the blue and then put it over your camera lens and put it at eye level and measure the lux from the TV to your eye. Mine is usually like a 6. And I have a pretty big, like, offensive TV. Like, it just is. We do too. It's my husband's.

And I do that too. I didn't know to measure it. I do the same with the blue blockers. Same thing.

So put the blue blockers over the camera lens and then measure lux from eye level. Keep it below 10, right? And you want to do that the 3 hours leading up to bed. Make sure you've got blue blockers on, low lights, red lights, incandescence, that they're not too bright because lux alone, even if it's a red light—

By the way, look at this. We got—

oh, I love that.

It's figured out now. Thank you.

Thank you. Beautiful. Yeah. Now you just keep that on your desk and you'll—

I didn't know this. Okay.

Yeah, it's fascinating stuff. But the evening time, that's where you just want to make sure you keep it low. And just a little hint, I have tried all kinds of blue blocking glasses. Chroma, and I don't have any brand deal or anything with them. They did give me a discount code of Sarah Kay. They've got the Luxe light boxes, but they have a special blue blocker. That allows like a little bit of the purple hues in because those don't disrupt your circadian rhythm like the blue and green. It's such a better TV watching experience because some of these red-blue blockers, you're like, I don't even want to watch this. This is just like, why? I can't see color differentiation. The chroma blue blockers, you can see much better color differentiation because they let a little bit of that violet in. Okay.

I wonder how I use the Viva rays. I wonder how those compare.

Those— I fell down the stairs when I was pregnant wearing the Viva Rays Reds.

Why were they too dark, or what was the— okay, well, I don't know. I haven't had that problem. Mine, I have the ones—

it was like, no more blue blockers in this house. He was so mad.

The cool thing about mine is it has like 3 different lenses, so like, oh yeah, I can pop— I can make them darker. So it's like, there's yellow, there's orange, there's red. So like, unless it's— I only do the red like right the hour right before, right before bed.

Yeah, that's the one I fell down the stairs with. Okay. Trying to be a little too dark for you to do that one. Okay. Yeah. I feel like tell people, I'm like, don't walk around with the red on because it's just not safe.

So the way that I've explained it simply, and Sarah, please correct me if I'm explaining it wrong, but I want to kind of reiterate this. So the way that the reason, the way I explain it is that you want your cortisol and melatonin to work the way they were intended to work. So if you think back years ago, the sun rises, your cortisol comes up and then, or it starts coming up actually around after 3:00 AM, it starts like gradually coming up and then you naturally wake up. And then at night you want your melatonin to start coming back in naturally. So we've kind of thrown this off, not just with lights, but with a lot of supplementation, like, and a lot of stimulants like caffeine or things like that. Or then even you go try to take melatonin supplements, which then can suppress your own natural making of melatonin. So the slight changes I made, and I don't have this as perfected as you, Sarah, but I— the morning light, like you said, I do do red light in the morning. Whenever I have the LEDs on me like this, I will counterbalance. So I didn't know about the light on the table, which I'm doing now, but what I was typically innately doing is when I'm done, I go outside. So right after my podcast, I'm outside, and to me that's sort of counterbalancing.

Yes.

I also don't do things later in the day that involve these bright lights. Like, I typically book myself in the morning, and then at night we don't use any overhead lights, LEDs.

We'll use—

I can't pronounce it—

lights everywhere.

Incandescent lights everywhere, or candles or fire. It's also— it's basically what those are doing are mimicking natural amber. Um, so think firelight, like candles. Yeah. And then we'll wear the blue blockers at night if we're watching TV, things like that. So, and whenever someone says to me, give me the research, there— first of all, there is plenty of research, but let me just tell you, you can be a study of one and you will feel a difference in your body. Like, just knowing— just try it and see how you feel. It's the same thing I'll tell you people with cleaning up nutrition. You just try it and you feel different. You naturally will feel so much better doing that and also just being outside. So whenever I have someone disputing it with me, it's— they can throw out whatever dispute they want, but have they tried it? Because if you go outside, you will literally feel the difference.

Send them to me. I have all the data. I've like, I back up everything I say because I know how people are, because I was skeptical. I was told I would have done anything. I would have done any diet, I would have done any supplement. But I thought like being outside was stupid. I was like, why would I do that? Go outside in the morning? Okay, whatever. Put on the blue blockers at night? Whatever. I thought it was so stupid until I really went into this research. Now I've had the pleasure of speaking with some of the world's leading circadian researchers and light experts, and it is so fascinating. Like, you all, you— it will blow your mind. The research and science that is behind this. And I think it's going to be the next wave of things that people are— yeah, really going to be interested in as more and more comes out. I hope so too, because it's such an easy thing to change, and food can be really hard.

Like, I remember being a kid in the '70s and we had the amber lights on the street.

Like, we—

this— we didn't have all these white LED lights until— this is a newer situation. And I, and I remember when I first met my husband like the houses we were living in, we'd replace all the bulbs with like the bright LEDs. Now like we're going back the other way. It's like, but everything is that now.

Yeah. Oh yeah. And people don't— I had this conversation yesterday, uh, with my sister. I was at my mom's and she had this awful fluorescent light on and it was like the middle of the day. I'm like, can I just turn that off? She's like, oh, it's gonna be so dark in here. I'm like, we've got windows everywhere, we don't need that. And she was like, you're so weird, I just don't understand. And I'm like, if you only knew what I knew about these lights and what they're doing to your mind. Mitochondria, what they're doing to your blood sugar regulation, what they're doing to your insulin, what they're doing to your hormones, what they're doing to your eye health. But I really don't have time to talk about this right now because we got kids running around. So can I just turn off the damn light? Thank you.

Yeah, it's a good point. It's a good point.

Yeah.

And I love that whole, if you really knew, um, you know, I'm going to get into hormones and how this, this ties into hormones in a second here. But I've shared this before that I go to this amazing gym that I work out at in Scottsdale. I absolutely love everything about it except that one thing— the lights. They have all the colored LED lights, and it drives me— I couldn't figure it out at first. I was like, why do I not feel good in here? And it was that Vegas effect. It's all those flickering LED lights. It's not just the white. When you add the colors, like the pink, there's— those are even worse. And it's why some people, when they go to Vegas, feel so bad. It's that light sensitivity. And I, I actually had quit the gym at one point because— and I told them, I'm like, I love your gym, I can't take the lights. And we— they, they're not, they're not replace their lights for me. I'm not expecting them to, but what they did do is they started opening up the window shades. So they used to have it all shaded, so they open them up and it makes such a big difference to counter it with that natural light. So yeah, but if you're somebody wondering why you don't feel well at the office or in certain environments, lights are a ginormous, um, role there. Could be your office environment, the lights there.

Yeah, and there's variability between people, uh, and even between men and women of light sensitivity. I've I talked with Dr. Sean Cain. He is one of the world's leading experts on circadian amplitude, lux, looking at all these different health implications. And he, speaking of Vegas and bright lights, he actually did a study to show that when people are exposed to these blue lights, like they are in Vegas, or when you go to a shopping mall or a store, it's like crazy, crazy blue, no red, no infrared. It actually lowers your give a crap. You become more like the dopamine is spiked up so high that you just don't care necessarily about bad decisions. And people that are gambling are more likely to continue making more risky decisions even if they're losing.

Wow.

So it lowers. And yeah, and so it's interesting. I don't know if all the big box stores know this.

They probably do. It would make sense.

Yeah. So you're going to be more likely to shop more, to gamble more, to eat more. It's really interesting to look at the physiology.

So I want to talk about hormones, and I want to get into kind of your journey, and I'm talking HRT replacement now. And one of the things I say to women all the time— and again, I'm not against HRT at all, I use it, I'm very much for it in so many ways— however, I always say it has to be done on top of all of these basics. So when we think of basics, we already are thinking about hydration and proper nutrition. That can mean different things, different people. Movement. But light falls into that circadian rhythm and light, and it's often very overlooked. And those 4 things have to be done before we even think about tinkering and dabbling with hormones. And I think some women, they jump to the hormones before all those things.

Estrogen dominance can be a light story when you're blasting your body with artificial light at night and it thinks it's still daytime and it's kicking off the sex steroid hormone pathway at night. That in itself and the absence of melatonin can lower your progesterone. That's huge, huge, huge. And if you're already someone who is like me, naturally doesn't detox very well, recipe for disaster, right? So you can create hormone imbalances with your light environment. And again, that's been shown in the research very clearly, but it's not mainstream and there's no pill you can take. For that. It is just like, hey, let's fix this. And so I've had women that they want to do HRT, they can't tolerate it. We fix terrain and they're able to kind of gently dabble it in. Or I've had women that are on HRT, they don't want to be on it for whatever reason. Maybe it doesn't make them feel their best and they're just like, I just don't want to do this. Been able to help them too, with their doctor's help, not just me, fix their light environment, fix a lot of these signals. And a lot of them have come down, come off. So I'm like Switzerland when it comes to HRT. I think every woman needs to understand her terrain and her physiology, cover the basics. And the basics are going to be your light environment, your diet, circadian amplitude, darkness at night, all those other things, and your hydration, minerals. Those have to be as a foundation taken care of. And then potentially knowing your genetic predispositions for detox, I think is equally important. And then making the decision on that.

Sarah, you just said something that just really— I was going to say it was a light bulb moment, but that would be too pun intended there.

But it was—

I just made me think of this. A lot of times women will say, well, how come these other countries or these areas or my grandparents or whoever didn't do HRT? And but what's making sense to me is this increase of fake artificial light. Is also correlating with this uptick of needing hormones.

Yeah, wild. It's so much— people want to do this ancestral thing, and I always tell people, let's look at ancestrally. How can we get back there with our light and dark cycles? How can we get back there with our nutrition? How can we get back there with simple living, stress management, to not have to do a bunch of biohacking and gadgets and things? But we don't live in the same world that our ancestors lived we have all these LEDs indoors, which Dr. Glenn Jeffrey basically said is akin to asbestos. Right? He said that on Huberman's podcast recently. He said that in a conversation I had with him on our podcast. And we're essentially exposed to this asbestos-like thing for our mitochondria, for our cells all day long. Then we do it into the night. We get no infrared in our environment. Right? Which you can You can fix that with a little lamp, right? Adding that to your environment, that can really help a lot.

But I think mine's a little cuter than yours, by the way. I'm about to put it—

I like yours. I want one of those.

If you're watching a video, I'll have to ask Brooks for a link for this one.

I need that one. Yeah, mine's just an Amazon whatever. But we have all of that, plus we have things, you know, I don't know how rabbit hole-y you are, but we're getting sprayed with things, food's different, soil, like everything's different. Than that ancestral thing. And so it makes sense to me why we potentially have to support our bodies more. But like I said, doing these foundational things with light— I've had a lot of women that they're like, am I supposed to have really bad symptoms right now? I've been— they've been with me for years doing this stuff. They're like, I just had my last period a year ago, I'm, I'm feeling okay, is that all right? Do I need to start hormones? I'm like You're, you're feeling good, right? You know, uh, that's a different conversation. So it's, it's really interesting to watch it play out.

So for me, I really do love HRT, for me, and I've been on quite a journey with it where I thought I understood it, I started not feeling amazing, and I had to learn a lot about detox pathways and levels and really understand it myself. And now I've sort of landed at this very, very low level that I do that's enough to get me to not have hot flashes, to actually feel focused and good. But I don't go into this level of these high levels. And that's sort of a trend right now of— and I've had people talking about this too, guests on my show about going and pushing the envelope on these higher levels to sort of mimic the years ago. Can you share your thoughts on that and what you're seeing?

Around that? Yeah, I mean, I've seen a lot of horror stories really just in my community of people. I think they feel almost like a peer pressure to do HRT. I deal with that a lot. It's— I see all the memes going around about like, I never thought I would be pressured into eating protein the way that I was like pressured into like drugs and alcohol as a teen. It's like I'm pressured into protein and perimenopause. And I think HRT can be like that a little bit too, because I think there are benefits. Benefits. And I have had women who it's like life-changing for them, like coming alive, feeling better, relief of pain, energy, sleeping better, right? Me, you can pry my progesterone out of my cold dead hands. I will not be getting rid of that. That's the only HRT I currently do. And I'm like, yeah, I unequivocally notice a difference without my progesterone. Like, I need it and I'm okay with that, but to think that we need the same hormone levels as maybe like somebody in their 20s or 30s. I just don't— I don't know. I question that. I really do question that.

And I think it's very individual. I just think— well, let's talk about— I want to— and I've had experts on about detox pathways, but I'd love to hear from your perspective, like maybe what happened from you, what you— if you could help explain what you've learned about detox pathways.

What sent me down the rabbit hole of understanding detox pathways was that my testosterone was like in the floor. Surprise, surprise, because I have very stressful life as a special needs mom.

Meaning like it was zero, like you didn't have any on your blood work or what? Yeah.

Okay. It was like negligible. They were like, yeah, you have none. My SHBG was in the frickin sky. That wasn't ever—

that's your sex hormone binding globulin. Yes.

Nobody ever said maybe we should look at getting that unbound a little bit. Look at your stress, you know, just like boom, you need testosterone. Okay, okay, I'll try it. Wasn't— was not a good experience for me. Even on a very low topical dose, I immediately started having pain in my teeth. Um, I was getting really ragey. I started having insomnia. I was like, what the hell is going on? Then when I was like, I'm coming off of this, I started getting tinnitus. And it was like so loud I couldn't sleep. Wow. And that was when I met Kash, uh, who I know you've talked to before and, and had on, on here many times.

Yes.

And Kash was like, okay, let me run your genetics, but I can pretty much already tell you exactly what's going on. So I did the whole genetics thing with Kash, did a private with him, and he's like, yeah, um, you know, you have these really crappy detox pathways. Your body sees testosterone this is what's happening in your body. And it was just this— I started having hip pain, back pain, knee pain. I'm like, is this perimenopause? Is this low estrogen? So my body was pushing my estrogen levels into the floor. That's why I started having all these other problems with adding the testosterone that I didn't actually need.

And so, so yours was doing different than mine. Yours was not converting to estrogen.

It was right—

it was low. How does that work?

Lowering my estrogen? I have no freaking idea.

That is just very unique.

Cash could tell you. Yeah, Cash could tell you exactly how this works. And it does happen with people.

Okay.

It's not super common, but it does happen because sometimes that testosterone will aromatize into—

which is what happened to me. That happened to me.

It caused fibroids and potentially cancer pathology, you know, if you're not super careful with it. So that's why with HRT, I'm like, I really think everyone needs to understand their blueprint before going in.

I agree.

To make a wise, informed decision on what my body could potentially do with this. Not that genetics are the be-all end-all, but in midlife, our mitochondria start becoming less efficient. They start breaking down more. And so that's when genetic predispositions do start to kind of rear their head, and you have to pay more attention to them, in my opinion.

This is why when I hear somebody say HRT causes cancer, I think that's an incorrect statement. But I also think it's an incorrect statement to say HRT does not create cancer, right? They're both incorrect because if you have— depending on the environment of your body, your genetics, your DNA, your detox pathways— if it is not detoxing properly, if it's not doing the norm, what we think it should do, you are going to create issues. And it can convert, it can aromatize, and you can create a terrain or an environment that is more likely to gravitate towards cancer. I see. I don't think it's black and white at all, you know.

And I, I had this— have had this conversation with so many of my friends that are my age and even a little bit older that are— we're navigating this time of life because, like I said, progesterone is all I take now. I was able to, thanks to CASH, get my testosterone to be normal again. Yay! Without even adding testosterone.

Uh, did you have to add DHEA, or what did you have to do to make that happen?

Boron.

I take boron as well. I take boron as well, and it helped a bit unbind.

And now, and then I have just been working on stress and my light and my diet. My, you know, things can get crazy, and I'm like, yeah, I don't need to work, I can just skip dinner. And like, I had gotten way too lean, which is a problem I never had in my life, but it was just easy. I'm like, oh, just—

do you cycle your boron?

I don't right now.

So for people, or people are going to probably ask what what, so if you have a high SHBG and if you tend to not have free testosterone— so there's total testosterone and then there's free testosterone. So for like, for me, example, we're all unique, but if I were to put testosterone in me and let's just say bring it up to— I'm just making up a number— let's just say I brought it up to 80 on my blood, my free was still not even showing as 1. It was not converting to free. So that meant the testosterone is bound. So for me, mine was aromatizing into estrogen. Androgen, which was making me appear estrogen dominant, which was creating fibroids, or I was feeling the fibroids and cramping and all of that. With Sarah, hers was not aromatizing, but it was basically— it was doing something else that was making her estrogen drop lower. So by— when you add boron, boron is known to help— maybe I'm saying this incorrect, but my understanding is it helps to lower SHBG a little, and it helps to free up bound hormones. So it frees up bound testosterone. So that's why boron. Now I have read that you— most people are supposed to cycle boron. I don't know if that's accurate or not, but I do cycle it.

Yeah, it's worth— I mean, I try to cycle everything. That's one I haven't played with cycling yet because I'm like, I don't want to mess it up, but maybe I should. I do cycle my folate, methylated B vitamins, you know. I keep an eye on my homocysteine levels. I do not do any supplementation just because it's what's trending online. It's very intentional. And I'm looking at my genetic blueprint, my terrain to make a decision of whether or not this is actually relevant to me. So I'm happy.

So Sarah, are you in menopause or perimenopause?

Perimenopause. My cycle is still like every full moon we are synced up.

So if you hit menopause, if you— if and when you will, you will eventually. But when you hit menopause, which I'm post-menopause, If things were to change for you, if you were to start having hot flashes or whatever, would you be opposed to HRT, or would you revisit it for progesterone— I mean, for estrogen and testosterone?

I'll definitely revisit it, you know. And thanks to Kash, I know what kind of estrogen I should particularly start with and what would be best for my genetics and my detox pathways, making sure I'm pooping a couple times a day, doing my sauna, you know, doing all the things that I keep doing. But I'm definitely open to it because I have seen to be life-changing for women. And I started experiencing what it was like to have low estrogen when my testosterone, you know, when that testosterone did what it did to me. I mean, my back was hurting so bad, my knees were hurting, the tinnitus. I was angry, I had insomnia. I was like, what the hell is this? And I started noticing, I was like, this is what women are talking about when they're in perimenopause and menopause. This is it, you know. Thankfully, I was able to go back in, do some smart supplementation, and now I feel really good. I don't have aches, pains, any of that problem, any of those problems. Feel awesome. But I'm open to like, hey, if this happens again, I can go into it knowing my terrain, knowing my blueprint and what to look out for and do it in a smart way.

I think for women that choose not to do HRT, whether they were told they can't, they don't want to, uh, they believe it's not good for them. First of all, I believe that the mind is very powerful, so if you believe something is not good for you, I don't think you should do it. But what do you want them to know? Because then they have this— they get the fear-mongering, or mongering, or the shame around not doing it. What do you want them to know?

It's wild, especially, you know, I talk about light and circadian rhythms and natural food. I get a lot of people that follow me that are like, HRT is poison, it's the devil, it's this, that. I'm like, I'm like, come back to me when you're in your late 40s, honey, because it's always some like chick in her 20s or early 30s that's like, HRT, I'm like, let's talk in 10 years, save my number. Um, let's see how you feel when you get there. So there's those people that I'm just like, y'all can go somewhere. But my coach, I have a coach that helps me run my groups and she helps me with a lot of my clients. She was put in surgical menopause at 29.

Wow.

She's my age now. She's, she's 46. And she tried to do HRT at that time and it made her horribly, horribly sick. She also had a number of health problems, heart problems, like she dealt with all kinds of crazy stuff. And I think it was because she was put in this surgical menopause. Her body has adapted now at this point at 46, and she's kind of just like, nah, I don't want to do it. So She's found ways of adapting her lifestyle, her diet, so that she feels good. She sleeps better than most teenagers, is lean and healthy. So I'm like, okay, cool. I'm open to that possibility. And the women that come to me that want to just not do it, I sent— I'm like, let's work with Becky, right? But, you know, I, I think that to keep an open mind about it is really important and educate yourself to learn more about— instead of like, it's all bad, it causes cancer, there's that just keep an open mind and learn about it. You know, like you said, it might be very inflammatory for the wrong person when used incorrectly. It also might be life-changing. So I think we have to keep an open mind and just continue to educate ourselves and, and learn about it.

I think that there is an order of priority of things, and I'm curious about— curious your thoughts when we look at all the different things. I know we're talking about hormones right now as far as sex hormones, but we didn't even really touch on gut or cortisol and insulin. So blood sugar, all of those things, thyroid. Do you think there's an order that people should be looking at things in?

I always start with light, always, because one thing, especially if somebody's struggling with appetite regulation, morning sunlight, especially that UVA window, it really gives leptin a very strong signal. And also your brain makes a peptide called alpha MSH in UV light, which is an appetite regulator. So if you're having trouble regulating your food and your appetite, outdoors is the solution. Being inside an incandescent bulb on your desk— again, what happens in blue light? Blood sugar, insulin go up. This has been shown in Dr. Jeffrey's lab that you can have insulin resistance and high blood sugar just from that big bright blue light alone. Red and infrared are the antidote. He's shown red light actually decreases blood sugar spikes, increases insulin sensitivity. And so if you're dealing with insulin resistance, if you're dealing with blood sugar issues, even thyroid issues, you got to start with your light environment. Your thyroid is also a circadian organ. Thyroid— when you take thyroid hormone in the morning, right? Most people are told to take their hormone then. It's a circadian organ. And so if you're not getting darkness at night, you're shining blue light on your thyroid every night, it's, it's going to be that much harder to address that. Gut is also a circadian organ, right? Most people aren't pooping in the morning. Most people start doing my light protocols and right around UVA rise, they have to poop. Why? Because your eyes take those photons of light, they start turning that into serotonin, which is a gut motility stimulant. You make serotonin through morning light as well as dopamine, but that serotonin gets recycled into that night's melatonin. and it's also a gut motility stimulant. So I'm like, have you ever tried for your constipation going outside in the morning? Have you ever tried cutting off your eating window for your leaky gut issues and not eating after sunset? Because at night your pancreas goes to sleep, your stomach acid is lower, your enzymatic function is lower because your gut is a circadian organ. So I've had people fix their gut simply from the lifestyle stuff, not even adding on a ton of extra supplements. Wow. So it's really light is super foundational for everything I teach and for every single client. And like, this is what we're doing first. Then we can add in meal timing, food, specific diet, specific macros, then, you know, hydration. And then maybe look at some supplements to improve stomach acid, to improve digestive function. You know, like there's, there's always an order of operations and light is always going to be at that bottom for me.

Oh, I love this, Sarah. So good. Such good information. Where can people find more? Where do they find your podcast? Where do they find you on social? Tell us all the things.

Yeah, my website is sarahklinerwellness.com, and that'll— you can go to my Instagram, which is @sarahklinerwellness. I write on Substack, Sarah Kleiner. Everything is Sarah Kleiner Wellness, so just type it into YouTube, type it into Apple. I have a podcast. Yeah, and my hub is my website where I have all that stuff posted.

Well, thank you for all you do, and I love what you're educating us about and what you're on to. And I agree that this is a big focus. This is going to be the buzz, just like we went through the mitochondria buzz. Now we're on to the light buzz. So this is perfect time.

Mitochondria are like very heavily influenced by light. I mean, that is— we're talking about— you can't talk about mitochondria if you don't talk about light. Like, you just can't. And that, that research is there.

So Yeah, thank you so much, Sarah, for today.

Thank you. Thank you.