105. How to Live a Circadian Lifestyle | Zaid K. Dahhaj

This is a practical conversation on circadian living — how to structure your day around light, darkness, food, movement and sleep in a way that supports your biology. 

We also explore the modern mismatch of indoor LED lighting, artificial light at night, late eating, phone use before bed, blue blockers, beeswax candles, incandescent light, night driving, flicker, skin cancer nuance, sun exposure, DHA, omega-3s and the deeper philosophical implications of living in rhythm with nature. 

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Zaid K. Dahhaj is a men's health coach & co-host of The 2AM Podcast with extensive self education into the underlying drivers of chronic diseases. He has extensive knowledge of circadian biology and his current focus is on simplifying concepts surrounding our light environment and sunlight. 
 
TIMESTAMPS
01:10 Why circadian biology is the missing foundation of health
04:00 What a circadian-aligned lifestyle actually means
07:55 Are you waking up at the wrong time?
10:28 Why sequence matters: sunlight before screens
13:16 Morning light, ADHD symptoms and circadian deprivation
16:17 Stacking zeitgebers: light, food, movement, cold and social cues
18:33 Sunrise exposure: skin, eyes and morning light
24:15 Why the skin is a circadian organ
26:32 UV as hormesis: warm-up, training and recovery
30:25 Australia, skin type and UV nuance
33:46 Sun exposure, skin cancer and lifespan trade-offs
38:31 How to build a tan safely
45:46 DHA, seafood and sunlight tolerance
47:26 Melanoma overdiagnosis and dermatology incentives
55:02 Why darkness is the ignored half of circadian health
58:10 Circadian amplitude: bright days and dark nights
01:02:37 Eating within daylight hours
01:04:33 Blue blockers, brightness and nighttime light mistakes
01:12:58 Incandescent light, flicker and low-tech solutions
01:19:22 The philosophical side of circadian living

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DISCLAIMER: The content in this podcast is purely for informational purposes and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Do not disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast or YouTube channel. Do not make medication changes without first consulting your treating clinician.

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Transcript

Dr Max Gulhane 0:00

Okay, and welcoming back on the Regenerative Health Podcast. Said Dahay. Said, how are you? Great, my friend, how are you? Well, our previous two episodes were quite technical dives into circadian biology and some of the the more nuances of how the circadian system operates. But today I really want to talk to you about why we should live a circadian lifestyle and really give it people an episode about practical practicalities to convince them or show them how, what is possible when it comes to circadian living. And you right now, I don't think anyone is doing a better job at communicating this circadian story to to the masses. So I really congratulate you for that. Let's start out really broadly and basically. And someone who is interested in health, they're doing the diet thing, they're doing exercise, they think they're doing everything right. Talk to us now about what they are missing if they're neglecting to think about their light environment and this circadian story.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

You know, it's a great question. I think that a large part of the problem in mainstream health is really just not going deep enough, I'd say. Like I'm a big fan of using the word dilettante, but I do think that's a bit aggressive and a bit condescending to some degree. But there is a real element of this to where people simply either don't have the time to study this work, they don't have the interest. Um you know, a lot of people just don't have it on their radar ever. They've never even heard of circadian biology. And so for me, I truly believe that the foundation of health starts with circadian first principles. Because if you look at exercise, if you look at nutrition, even supplementation to a very great degree, these are all things that are controlled by circadian mechanisms, you know, where whichever way you look at it. So exercise, for example, even muscles have their own circadian clocks, which dictate function and repair and all this beautiful stuff. And uh that that goes down to blood sugar, metabolic health, you know, your desire to prevent chronic disease or even maximize performance as an athlete. There are a lot of great athletes who are all picking up on the message. So for me, I would just urge people to understand that it truly is the base layer when you study health from a first principle's perspective. And that's not to say that other things don't matter. Other things matter immensely. In fact, they're just as important as the Circadian Foundation. But for me, you always have to start with, you know, first principles. What do we know for sure? What can we focus on that brings us the biggest bang for our buck, so to speak? And to me, it's obviously, you know, focusing on things that that revolve around the circadian kind of subject.

Dr Max Gulhane 2:48

Yeah, and when I am hanging, you know, hang out with people or talking to colleagues or just existing in the world, and I think about my light habits or what I know to be ideal from a circadian biology point of view, and I see what other people are doing. They they perhaps in colleagues in their clinic rooms, they've shut all the doors, they've pulled the the blinds down, so there's no natural light getting through, and there's just LED overhead, uh, you know, cool white LED light from 8 a.m. till 5 p.m. Um essentially just blasting at them. And you go to people's essentially you go out, you go to someone's place after dark, and and again, it's a similar story with artificial light at night. What what what it makes me feel like is that so we're so far from um a collective understanding of what what we should be doing with respect to our light environment. So can can you speak to ideally what people would be doing if they were choosing a light environment that is most uh conducive or aligned to their circadian biology?

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Yeah. And you're pointing to something great here, which is that uh, you know, there there is a real aspect of this to where there's just ignorance at play. And so I actually think that's a great thing because it means that people are new to this work. They can start from a fresh kind of slate and then implement a few principles that will really have the most return. And so a circadian-aligned lifestyle essentially just means following the light and dark cycle according to how our species has always done over the past 300,000, up to, I mean, depending on um anthropologists and how, you know, how long modern human beings have been around, up to maybe two million plus years at the the farthest estimate. Um it's it's basically what we've been doing. We've been watching sunrise, we've been spending a lot of our time outside, even regardless of latitude. I mean, you you find a lot of the same universals across various latitudes, whether you're right at the equator or you're at the, you know, um 45th latitude or something of that nature. So yeah, watch sunrise, you know, get that UVA rise as well, get as much of the skin prepared, make sure to stack these various Zeitgebers or external circadian cues onto one another. So you you combine the daybreak or the sunrise with food, with movement, with cold temperatures, with social interactions, even. And these things work in your favor. And, you know, as you progress throughout the day, I kind of want people to emulate how the solar spectrum moves in the sense that, you know, you in the morning time you have more of a preparatory preparatory phase with a lot of red and infrared preparing the skin, the circadian clots within every organ in the body. And then you gradually head into a more intense territory with UV. You get into UVA rise, UVB rise. And that's where I think people need to have a lot of respect for sunbathing and just circadian keliotherapy in general. Um, and then as you progress towards from the more intense midday period, you crescendo yourself into more of a down period where you have the early evening that gets into late evening, nightfall. And I just think all of this follows a very simple, for lack of a better way to put it, circadian sequence. Like it might seem very complex when you look at this realm from a scientific standpoint, but a lot of it is is really simple, which is great for the everyday person who's just not aware of this at all.

Dr Max Gulhane 6:18

Yeah, I I I think that's a good way to to put it. And we'll maybe we'll start at the morning and then work our way throughout the day and discuss maybe what people are doing and then what what they could be doing or ideally be doing. And it also gets to, I think this conversation can also be anchored in this problem that we're trying to solve, which is most people, it seems, are feeling fatigued. Most people are suffering from some combination or some degree of metabolic dysfunction and metabolic disease. And you know, infertility, subfertility is seems to be at an all-time high. We've got early onset colorectal cancer and governments reducing colorectal cancer screening ages. We've got all these um convergence of factors that is basically telling us that the population isn't healthy. And as you mentioned earlier, like you, you and I think this is the foundation of health. So we we might as well um nail this if we're going to try to prevent all this you know tsunami of of disease. So um let's let's start at this sunrise. And you recently wrote a paper, uh, I guess an article and uh very great carousel called You're Waking Up at the Wrong Time. And I think this is actually aimed at people who are already abreast of this Akkadian story, but um may maybe just elaborate on this point. Uh, you're waking up at the wrong time.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Yeah, so I feel like in in this space especially, it's it's a very um it's very common for people to hear that you should just wake up at sunrise. And and that sounds like a great rule of thumb. In fact, it is a great rule of thumb in my opinion, but I think we can go a little bit deeper in terms of understanding the the sort of sequence, the circadian solar sequence, um, and all of the downstream biological impact on the system at large through waking up at daybreak specifically. So, in that article, my case was based off of the idea that it is more ideal to wake up at daybreak, to get outside immediately upon waking. That means not doing dishes, not making coffee, not cooking, not doing anything, stepping outside immediately to catch that um that daybreak portion because that's technically the start of biological day for the body. And there are many points of evidence that um that lead us in the in that direction, uh, such as the cortisol awakening response, you know, um, in large part responsible for so many things from metabolism to cognitive function to energy levels throughout the day. And a lot of people have a negative association with cortisol, but in this scenario and context, it's absolutely key to systemic function. And so we start our mornings from daybreak, which is typically, I think, about 25 to 30 minutes prior to sunrise. Uh, and that's really the starting point for the day. And so, you know, spending a minimum of, let's say, 15 to 20 minutes outside after that daybreak portion is going to be key because ultimately you're getting um you're you're getting a lot of blue light, which is that melanopic stimulating light. Uh, you're getting a lot of violet as well. You're getting, you're certainly getting red and infrared. Um, and for me, that's all very important considering the the effects that those wavelengths have on the system. But uh yeah, I think the important thing to understand is that the cortisol awakening response happens independent of light exposure. So it actually happens the moment you wake up. And so that's also an important thing to understand from a timing perspective, because if you're somebody who wakes up at sunrise or maybe like 30 minutes after sunrise, that cortisol awakening response is going to be misaligned to a certain degree. And then there could potentially be some downstream effects because of that. But yeah, I make the case that it's better to wake up at sunr uh at daybreak, otherwise known as I believe civil dawn, as opposed to sunrise sunrise. And civil twilight is basically that 25 to 30 minute window between daybreak and sunrise that you want to try to hit as much as possible.

Dr Max Gulhane 10:25

Yeah, and uh what I think uh most people uh are doing, even who haven't gotten this far, are they probably waking up well after sunrise, uh not even at sunrise itself, and then looking straight at phones and you know, checking their news feed or their Instagram uh feed or messages. The the point that's key to this Acadian story that you've elaborated on and and I have as well is that it's the timing and the sequence that matters. And it's it's an absolutely different uh biological effect to walk outside and be outside for 15, 20 minutes before and then look at your your the phone rather than sit in a dark room having that phone screen as your only source of melanopic light, of of first light, um, and then doing this process. It's I I use the analogy, it's it's different if you uh wash your shirt and then you dry your shirt and then you iron it. If it to uh ironing it and then washing it and then drying it. You get it, you actually get a different, uh, completely different response. So yeah, I I I like this case. I like the idea of getting up prior to actual the point which the solar disc crashed the horizon, because anyone who's been in a circadian-aligned state would naturally know or feel that they do wake, you do wake up in this when the in this magic window. Um, and everything seems to elegantly work uh if if if you're aligned in in a circadian sense.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Yeah, and in fact, I think this is also an easy win for most people because I'm not saying that you shouldn't be on your phone in the morning. In fact, I'm saying that you wake up, go outside immediately, and as you mentioned, you know, use the phone outside because that that the blue light from the phone is going to be inconsequential when we're talking about being bathed in that solar spectrum uh during that time. And so that I think is an easy win. But uh even from the biological mechanism standpoint, I mean, those intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, the thing that I wanted to appreciate a lot and mention to people is that they they act sluggishly. So they don't pick up on light in the sense that, you know, you you flash uh some bright light at your eyes and they they immediately pick up on the signal and then go to work. They enjoy this nice crescendo between different wavelengths from or wait or spectrums from the sun. And they're very slow to respond in that sense. And that makes sense when you look at how daybreak occurs, how sunrise occurs, how um sunset occurs, even. It's a very slow, relatively slow process to where you're integrating that solar spectrum at that specific time, and then you're gradually and gently being sent into the different or next phase.

Dr Max Gulhane 13:14

I want to talk about a case quickly, an anecdote. And this is a a patient who I saw not too long ago who's had a diagnosis of ADHD, and her pediatrician had actually timed her stimulant medication, and she had a long-acting stimulant medication for during the day, but she actually took a short-acting Ritalin uh basically while she was still in bed, because uh without that, she essentially had no motivation and was unable to get out of bed and and start her day. And suffice to say, she wasn't a aware of this circadian story by by any means. But uh when you just talked about the the cortisol awakening response and this healthy f rise in in serum cortisol, which is one of these key circadian hormones, uh, we we can we can understand why someone might be in that position because they are so deprived of of healthy and appropriate circadian signals.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Yeah. Yeah. And I I think the cortisol awakening response, you know, during that morning period when it happens, right after you um about when you wake up, I think it rises maybe 50 to 100% over baseline, if I have that correct, which is is pretty cool to understand. But within the context of a circadian disrupted lifestyle, I mean, you're you're arguably, I don't know if you're not getting that cortisol awakening response or that you're blunting it to such a significant degree that it's not having the effects that it needs to provide. But we do need to understand that the way most people are living is not allowing them to have that burst of energy in the morning, have that metabolic priming, have the glucose handling from that that cortisol awakening response specifically.

Dr Max Gulhane 14:58

Yeah, and and what we're doing is we're actually massively shutting off the evening signal. We're we're turning off any residual melatonin production because we're we're exposing the system to to blue light, which is going to turn off the pineal gland's output. So obviously this the conversation and and her situation is relevant to the nighttime. We're gonna get to the nighttime. Because if someone's going to sleep at six hours after their the b onset of biological night, which is sunset, then um you know you're you're not gonna feel uh you know chipper and ready to uh start the day uh at at sunrise by any means. So let's let's continue. So say someone's got out, they've they've been in this amazing kind of pre-uh in this daybreak period, the sun's you know 12, 10 degrees below the angle of the the horizon. They've been out, they're starting to do some movement. Whether I mean it's whether it's as simple as you know cleaning up your yard in in that dawn period. I I sometimes I bounce on my got a little trampoline to uh get the lymph flowing. But I I think the key point is it doesn't have to be anything fancy. You can do push-ups, you can go for a walk. As you said, it's just about stacking these zeitgebers and physical activity is a key one of them.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

Exactly. Because look, the circadian system is all about timing. And so once you understand the the zeitgebers, once you understand that you can either use a zeitgebur correctly or incorrectly based off of circadian timing, that I think changes the game for people because they can figure out how to stack a simple walk or you know, some lymphatic rebounding or even push-ups outside with uh that that morning light, and then maybe even have a little bit of maybe a snack prior to your large breakfast just to send that digestive signal for lack of a better way to put it. And then you can also, you know, towards the end of the day, towards the nighttime, you can understand, okay, I should taper down my food and then stop eating up to maybe around the sunset or nightfall portion. But uh, this gives me a lot of hope because I think people are overwhelmed with a lot of the stuff on social media. Whereas when I look at people who follow the work that we're trying to lay out and they they truly implement it, they stay consistent to it, some incredible results, honestly, across the board, from not burning as a redhead to improving glucose tolerance to you know reducing HBA1C on blood tests. I mean, there's a lot of fantastic stuff that comes out of this, which is very cool to see, and I hope that extends far and wide.

Dr Max Gulhane 17:30

Yeah, I and I'll ex I'll expand on that. I've you know had emails of of people's just aches, aches and pains, niggling symptoms resolve, um, pre-menopausal, perimenopausal uh symptoms smoothed out, um, menstrual symptoms um menstrual cycling uh improving in its regularity. So, so so many of these things are potentially impacted by circadian function, and and and it's not a surprise when you understand how the circadian clocks affect gene transcription and uh on and and hormonal function of the of the pituitary gland. So, you know, people say someone has got to go to work, they've done this early morning um routine, they've got some predorm light, they've seen the sunrise. Uh if say they do have time and they have the or they're it's the weekend, what would you recommend next in terms of this this Hukanian day timing and potentially this shorter wavelength light that's that's appearing?

SPEAKER_00 18:31

Yeah, so I think once somebody has integrated uh daybreak, that's where you obviously get into the territory of around 25 to 30 minutes later. I mean, that's where the sunrise, sunrise starts to happen. And that's where I would want to see um ideally as much skin exposed to that uh sunrise light if you're actually able to get your skin exposed directly to that light. I know with cloudy conditions and in different weather patterns, that can be a limiting factor for some people. I do recommend that people get as much skin exposed either way because cold is also going to be an important part of this circadian process. Um again, cold temperatures act as a external circadian cue as well. And uh outside of that, obviously having the eyes in the game like the skin in the game. So if you do have um contact lenses, if you can find a way to just sit down and not do anything for a period of time, take those out, get that light into the eyes peripherally, that's gonna be great. Uh, and then just put them back in to resume about your go about your day. Prescription glasses, you can just take them off pretty, pretty easily and just, you know, sit in a designated spot and get that light. Um I I I don't know. I mean, obviously the clinical perspective on sun gazing is very interesting, but I it can be controversial, but I do think that it has benefits if done in a progressive manner. But even then, I don't really think that people have to sungaze to get the benefits when it comes to eyesight regeneration in a certain sense. Um but yeah, I mean that that morning period is just about getting as much skin exposed, getting the eyes exposed, uh, maybe throw in some intense exercise if you can tolerate it or if you do well with it intuitively. And then from there you get into UVA rise, which is a separate category on its own. But yeah, it's just um it sounds pr stupidly simple, but it's just spending as much time under that sunrise as possible.

Dr Max Gulhane 20:21

Yeah, absolutely. And maybe I'll chuck in my two cents with respect to the sun gazing. When you know, I've seen these these threads, you know, debunk debunking uh sun gazing on on Twitter by some by an ophthalmologist, and they really use they use a straw man argument and they basically say, you know, you'll get yourself a solar retinopathy by by looking at the sun. But really, what you know, those situations, it's it's people uh watching eclipses without proper eye protection. So they're they're watching midday pig zenith angle sun. Uh, you know, people with intellectual disabilities watching sun, they don't they they're they're they don't have the mental faculty to do this properly. And yeah, absolutely you'll get a you'll get a solar retinopsy. Um so but that's not we're what we're advocating for. And when the sun is the solar disk is protruding at horizon zero, one, two, five degrees, you you get such a gentle spectrum because of the attenuation of all the short wavelengths of UVA, the UV light and and and a lot of blue through the atmosphere, that that is intensely healing for for the eye. I mean, we we had a you know, an optometrist dropped a letter into our um practice the other day about low-level light therapy for dry eye. And you know, you and I both know why the population is suffering from from dry eye. I mean, it's it's it's because everyone's on this partially because no one's getting long wavelength natural light. And of course, if you if you use red and infrared artificially, you're gonna you're gonna partially improve symptoms. But why not go out, get that that sunrise, and you can

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Prevent the problem at its root cause. Exactly. And then we're also not considering that a lot of people just simply don't understand how many benefits are packaged in something like watching daybreak or watching sunrise. I like to say often that nature basically packages the complexity of everything into these simple practices because that, you know, by this is a biological system that evolved with the sun in a very real sense. So for me, the the laundry list of benefits from simply watching sunrise. I mean, if you pri if you get your skin exposed, you're priming your skin for upcoming UVA and UVB, which is the sequence that should follow from an evolutionary and circadian standpoint. You are aligning the circadian skin clocks, which meet, which are quite literally responsible for repair, function, regeneration of the skin barrier itself. You're creating filigrin and uricanic acid within the skin barrier, both skin proteins that are protective and moisturizing, uh hyaluronic acid, elastin, collagen. I've mentioned that before. And then there's also all the other benefits from a metabolic standpoint, from a mental health standpoint, especially as you go into UVA rise. So you're quite literally knocking out a thousand birds with one stone. And when you put it that way, it's very easy for you to go outside and spend five, 10, 15, 20 minutes just literally standing outside and doing whatever you need to do.

Dr Max Gulhane 23:26

Yeah. Yeah, amazing. Let's talk about skin exposure. And, you know, this is a topic which both of us have spoken at length about. And both of us have have courses talking about how to get um appropriate sun exposure. But let's let's distill it as as succinctly as we can for someone who, again, is just hearing this message for the first time. They may have heard uh, I would say, messaging about skin cancer risk. They may have had, you know, people who potentially had skin cancers. How do we explain to them the benefits of sun exposure to ultraviolet light or to full spectrum light that contains ultraviolet that can be done in a sensible and nuanced way?

SPEAKER_00 24:13

That's a big question. How do you explain that to the average person? I would say, number one, it depends on where the person is coming from. Where does their inspiration lie? Like, are they more scientifically minded? Uh, do they firmly believe in evolutionary biology? Do they have a more theological view? You could talk about how light influences, you know, that's found in basically every major world religion. Uh and so that's that can be a little bit tough, but the way I break this down is I like to look at the evolutionary lens. And so, you know, why would the skin barrier evolve uh in opsin or a light sensing protein like neuropsin, which is a UVA light sensor, within the skin barrier, as well as other places in the body, if uh the skin was not designed for that light? I'm a firm believer, and I tell people that the solar spectrum is made perfectly for human beings because human beings are originally supposed to be in circadian alignment. What we find over the past 100, 120 years is completely alien to how our species evolved. Uh and so there's a lot of points of evidence for me on the scientific basis to prove that UV light is inherently beneficial to the skin barrier. There's a lot of nuance when it comes to UV light and skin, but I think a lot of people in the mainstream think that UV light is inherently damaging to the skin barrier. And there's way too many contradictions for me to believe in that. But either way, I do think it's also important to emphasize that the skin barrier, at its most fundamental essence, is a circadian organ. And what we know, what we know about circadian organs is that they quite literally rely on full spectrum sunlight, not only for circadian signaling, but for thousands of downstream uh processes that relate to systemic health. So it depends on what angle somebody, you know, is really focused on. But I I just think that um those things are very important. And also relating it to exercise. You know, we we've talked about this in the last episode, but viewing UV exposure on the skin as a hormetic process is key for me. And so you have the morning priming, which is essentially like the warm-up. You have the um, you know, microdosing UVA and UVB, which basically is progressive overload applied to those shorter, more high energy wavelengths. So that's basically the training session. And then you have the nighttime, which is the recovery phase, which would be the equivalent of sleep in the training context. That's where you actually build muscle, for example. So all of these things I think point in the direction that we can uh we can create a healthy relationship with UV exposure, but it has to be done, I think, in circadian alignment first and foremost.

Dr Max Gulhane 26:48

Yeah, I I love that that framing of those those two key points, which is one, we actually have to, and I I think there's significant evidence for this as well, is that we have to reject the the premise, the framing that ultraviolet light isn't inherently bad and inherently something that needs to be avoided. I think that's a really a good, I guess, semantic framing that we need to reject. And we can talk at length about why that is the case. I would really refer people to our earlier episodes, my episodes with uh Professor Richard Weller, Michael Hollick, Jack Cruz. These all go into the the actual details about why uh ultraviolet light is actually necessary for for health and it relates to vitamin D signaling and it relates to Melana Corton and POMC signaling. Uh, you know, there's there's lots of different pathways here. But suffice to say, we have to actually accept, hang on, this is something that we need. And once we do that, then the next question, as you've raised, is how do we, how can we do it safely? And I completely agree that it needs to be done in the context of a circadian align life. It can't be done separately. We can't think about UV wavelengths without having already thought about the red and the infrared and and the blue that you've you've you've elegantly laid out prior to this. And you know, what I like to add on top of that is we we should be dosing our UV light relative to our skin type, relative to our ancestry, um, and relative to our ambient UV conditions. Because as you you've used an analogy previously, uh one person isn't gonna deadlift the same amount of weight. If you're a 30 kilo um, you know, teenage maybe 45 kilo teenage girl compared to an 85 kilo um, you know, football player, then your amount of weight that you're gonna lift in the gym is radically different. So to even consider that there's a blanket rule about UV avoidance that doesn't take into account skin type, it just literally makes no sense at all.

SPEAKER_00 28:58

Yeah, it's a it's uh it's interesting because you have the UV avoidance recommendation spectrum, for lack of a better way to put it. And on one hand, you have mainstream dermatology who are zealot, you know, very zealot about that's even a word, but very um, very militant about UV exposure in the sense that everyone should avoid UVA and UVB because of photoaging and whatnot. And that just lumps everyone into one category. No thought of of, like you mentioned, skin type, of uh maybe a genetic, uh, genetic situation, epigenetic, the lifestyle component. And then on the other side of the spectrum, you have the people who, you know, they they um they appreciate full spectrum exposure and sunbathing, but they don't really, again, they're kind of dilatiltic in the way that they approach the work. And so they don't go deep enough to understand that these things matter immensely. Otherwise, you can actually hurt yourself with UV. And it's it's not, you know, it's not shocking to say that you can hurt yourself with UV light because it's a short wavelength, uh shorter wavelength range that is very powerful. And just like in the same sense that a barbell is powerful, like you can crush your spine with a barbell when loaded with weight. So we just have to approach this from a common sense perspective, but it doesn't seem like common sense is that common because nobody or very few people dive into the first principles involved. And that's especially the case for uh, in my opinion, mainstream dermatologists.

Dr Max Gulhane 30:23

Yeah, and I think Australia has led the the path in terms of sunlight, um, I guess sounding the alarm or maybe fear-mongering UV light. And look, some of it's appropriate and some of it isn't. I think what we have in Australia is a unique situation where you have people whose light, whose physio skin physiology was adapted to northern European Europe, so 55th northern latitude, UV index probably hits a six at at most for um you know maybe a month or less. And then there's massive parts of the year where there's no UVB at all. And then you transpose those people into uh Queensland to New South Wales, Australia, where the native inhabitants have a Fitzpatrick six skin type, the darkest, most uh most eumelanin in the epidermis. And yeah, if you if you rapid, if you expose those people over a a lifetime and you and they don't live a circadian lifestyle and doing a bunch of other stuff wrong, then yeah, you're you're gonna feel them, they're gonna get forms of skin cancers. But uh the nuance, the nuance here is that if someone's from whose their family's from South India, they also have a type six, type five skin type, then they absolutely actually need the UV light. They they shouldn't be avoiding light in the same way that a red-headed, fair-skinned person should be. And if they do, then that they the the science shows us that they're at high risk of of osteoporosis, of bone complications, of metabolic diseases, and of um of cancers.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

Yeah. Yeah, and I I had somebody recently comment on one of my Instagram uh carousels that there is no biological free lunch, so to speak. And that's true, there is no free lunch, but when we look at biological systems from the evolutionary and circadian standpoint, more specifically human beings which are diurnal in nature, you know, there's a reason why the system is oriented the way it is. There's a reason why nucleotide excision repair exists to combat photoproducts in thymine dimers from UV. There's also a reason why those DNA repair processes are so redundant and almost unbelievably efficient. Like the yes, some of those thymine dimers or photoproducts can turn into mutations, but I do think that people quite literally ignore how spectacular these uh these processes are within the context of circadian alignment. So in the case of, you know, Europeans who are in Australia or or a more equatorial and high UV environment, you're you're talking about them getting that insult from excessive UV, which is a problem because they've not considered progressive overload or any of these other things. Then you have things like broken nucleotide excision repair, which is designed to be the first line of defense against those photoproducts being turned into mutations. Uh, then you have the artificial at night with which destroys endogenous melatonin in the skin and systemically as well. You have the omega-6 seed oil diet, you have the sleep deprivation, the partying, the alcohol, the drugs. It's like obvious why a lot of the population is experiencing skyrocketing rates of disease and especially skin cancer. So the nuance is just lost upon so many people, which is unfortunate.

Dr Max Gulhane 33:44

And and I would add on to that metabolic dysfunction and insules. And I had a a patient recently um who 102 um uh and she was fair-skinned in in Australia, lived her whole life uh on the land on a farmer, and had quite um recurrent skin cancers, uh, SCCs and and BCCs. Um and they they had to be treated, they had to be excised um and and treated. But um those non-melanoma skin cancers weren't the reason why she passed away. Um the point being is that, and this is again what what dermatologist Richard Weller has said himself, is that uh there there's no evidence that that this high UV exposure actually reduces lifespan. And in fact, uh the best data that we have from long-term cohort studies, the Melanome and Southern Sweden cohort and his analysis in in the UK Bibank, is that uh you you you trade off extra um more skin cancer diagnoses, but on a population level, uh the more UV light people get, the the longer they live. And and um, you know, the the the cause of death of this patient was was stroke, which is what was um the most up there with the more common causes of of of death in in the population. Um so the again the point being is that maybe we are trading, and obviously individual variation is is not captured by this comment, but at a population level, we trade off the diagnosis of potential skin cancer in those who have more sun exposure against less of the of the causes that really um take people's lives and uh cause them disability.

SPEAKER_00 35:28

Yeah, absolutely. And that that linguist study in particular, I mean I know the Biobank study was was extremely powerful because I think they had a larger population um uh base there that they had to that they worked with. But, you know, I I saw Brian Johnson, funny enough, um, mention the linguist study, the the Sweden cohort on on women, and he just said that, yeah, but you know, those uh I I think the the assumption that I forgot what assumption he was talking about specifically, but he basically said that it was observational. Um and in the same uh I I think you mentioned in our previous episode the Bradford Hill criteria, and that really stood out to me because uh what that linguist study did show is that there was a dose-dependent relationship between how much sun you get and the lower all-cause mortality goes. So for me, that that's obviously an inference towards call a causality. And uh I just don't think people, I mean, people obviously don't view the evidence comprehensively from that perspective, but you know, there there's just so much to cover on this end. And I'm I mean, as a space, I think it's it's extremely exciting to be in because you get to elucidate all these ideas. And I just want, you know, mainstream dermatology to kind of take us more seriously in that sense because there are some real mechanisms at play. Like we're not pseudoscientists who just like make this stuff up.

Dr Max Gulhane 36:46

Yeah, absolutely. And I think I think there's some intellectually lazy thinking that happens when someone looks at a a cohort study and they they can basically uh just dismiss it as if as if it's only uh an associational relationship and it's unimportant. But as you mentioned, uh if you interpret those findings in the context of the other Bradford Hill criteria, which looks at biological plausibility, it looks at at dose um uh response amongst you know nine other criteria, then you can you can put put together a pretty good case for for causation. But you know, I think Brian p places a lot of emphasis on on, may I say vanity, I think to call a spade a spade. And um maybe the possibility is in some people, depending on their U to feomelanin ratio, that yeah, there might be a trade-off. You may s um slightly be increasing photo photoaging amongst a bunch of other causes. Uh and but that potentially that trade-off is uh for longer lifespan. And and I I I don't think Brian has considered that. I don't think he um has conceptualized that there might be a biological toll for for living on this planet, just like oxidative stress. You you breathe in oxygen, you're gonna generate reactive oxygen species. Um does that mean you should stop drinking uh breathing oxygen, of course not.

SPEAKER_00 38:11

Yeah, it's it's it's all uh I think it's all a uh you know uh give or take. That that's what it is. And at the end of the day, people have to make their own decisions. I, you know, we we both value informed consent, and I think that's what a lot of people are not getting, certainly through the circadian lens. Um so yeah, all this stuff is is super, super important.

Dr Max Gulhane 38:29

So I I like to, in terms of people's like, and we're talking about sun exposure, we're talking about UVA and UVB, we're at the middle of the day here, and we're talking about dosing that in a smart way. How do you like to um advise people when it comes to their tan or tanning and um you know building their exposure to UVB? How do you like to titrate or dose that?

SPEAKER_00 38:54

Yeah, so we obviously um we we maintain the universal principles of daybreak, sunrise, priming in the morning, and then we'll also couch that with the end of the day, which is you know, maintain darkness throughout the night and then early to bed and so forth. But for me, I think it it largely depends on the person, of course, and their skin type, depends on their history. If I have a darker skin person, I know it's gonna be very easy because I can, you know, implement all those universals and I can send them off to relatively more intense UVA and UVB uh for a good amount of time before they would even get close to burns. Now, I do know that there are people who are extremely metabolically compromised who are darker skinned and they they can burn pretty quickly. I think that's that's something I've not necessarily dived into too deeply. I think that's a that's a problematic case, though, because you shouldn't be burning that quickly with that amount of eumelanin, considering its photoproductive effects. With lighter skin people, I think it's actually a lot easier to work with them because um you can because the the effect that morning priming, that sunrise, that all these principles has on their system is magnified compared to somebody who's darker skin in terms of understanding how they respond to sunlight, seeing no burns, um, you know, understanding uh urethema and all that stuff. And so I'll give one case with um an older woman who approached me a few months ago. She had this chronic uh case of actinic keratosis, which basically is dysfunction in the carotnocytes, the the skin cells in the outermost layer of the skin barrier. And my hunch is that once you get into circadian alignment, that sort of manifestation, along with many others, goes away because the carotnocytes are fundamentally circadian controlled. And so once you really dial in the circadian alignment, um, those sort of things kind of fall to the wayside, which is really nice to see. And you know, we got we got our vitamin D up from, I think she was sitting at like an 11 milligrams per deciliter, and then she went up to like, I think it was 35, 36 within the first few weeks of UVB exposure. So that's also the cool thing about lighter skinned people. They're very quick to respond to UVB and also UVA, so they can get their vitamin D3 up pretty quickly. Uh, granted, there are some uh edge cases, but for me, yeah, it's it's just a gentle process in guiding the individual on how to sunbathe to the point where where they don't experience burns, where you know they're able to go to become consistent with the practice, and so that they learn to enjoy the process as well. I think that's a huge component to it because you know, sunbathing is an invigorating practice, and uh if you can get somebody in the door, so to speak, without burning, then you you essentially have them for life. Did this lady's actinic keratosis resolve? So far, she she hasn't told me that she's gotten any new ones. I'll I'll follow back with her because I do uh exchange um texts with her pretty consistently. But um we do know that her vitamin D went up, and you know that that'll certainly have an independent effect. She's very religious about the priming. She does live in a more higher UV uh environment, and uh, and she's also consistent with the darkness. So what I do suspect is that maybe over three, four, five months she'll she'll hopefully stop seeing these things um manifest. Yeah.

Dr Max Gulhane 42:17

I mean, it's it's uh something that I I suspect is really going on when when we're talking about driving uh skin cancer physiology, which is that fair-skinned people have historic high amounts uh intermittently or early in life, and then live a sun-avoidant lifestyle for decades. Their vitamin D drops, their innate immunity, their cancer immunity drops, because although we haven't talked about in this episode, immune function is fundamentally tied to light cycles, not only from a circadian point of view, but also from a vitamin D status and a and a melanocorton point of view. And then they they live in a indoors, they do an office type job, and their vitamin D drops and they accumulate their visceral fat from a standard Western lifestyle, and then the skin cancer pops up. So again, the can we blame the sun or can we blame the context? Can we blame the lifestyle and the uh the essentially the the process that they followed to to uh to to develop that cancer? I mean, I saw two a couple days ago melanoma and Saichu was was diagnosed on a a gentleman who and I asked him, I had a really good question about him, um, and he said, yeah, look, I between the age of of my birth to to 21, I was always in the sun as a fair haired person in Australia. And then from 25 to to 60, um, just got nothing, no sunlight. And you know, I looked at his t his historic vitamin D level two years ago, it was 45 nanomoles per litre. So it's he's deficient. And um this this melanoma pro Poked up in a non-son exposed area. So, I mean, maybe we we're not going to hammer the point because we both of us have talked about this at length. But I think the the key here is that no one is developing malignancy, skin or otherwise, in an ideally healthy uh person. Um, to develop a form of malignancy, you ha there's there's some derangement of physiology. And you and I are both all arguing that that first and foremost, that's going to be derangement in circadian physiology.

SPEAKER_00 44:29

Yeah, and I should think just to drive the point home in a very simple manner, I view the the solar spectrum, most notably UVA and UVB as magnifiers of metabolic health. And so if you have somebody who's preloaded their cell membranes with oxidized omega-6 from cheeseburgers and drive-throughs and all that stuff, like, and they go out into high UV index, you're, you're not, you're most likely not going to have a positive outcome because of the byproducts that that oxidized omega-6 within those cell membranes will have on the system. But if you have somebody who preloads uh DHA in a in a complex food complex such as sardines or mackerel or any sort of seafood, and you do that consistently, lo and behold, DHA has a synergistic effect with UV light to where you can create a class called dicosinoids that are potent anti-inflammatories, uh potent for skin repair and I think um and just a whole host of benefits. I mean, there's plenty of studies to show that dicosinoids, marisins, protectins, resolvins, these are all incredibly powerful byproducts that you produce when UV light interacts with a cell membrane that is healthy and preloaded with a good amount of DHE as it should be.

Dr Max Gulhane 45:43

Yeah, what what a great time to raise that point. I think you and I both united in our um insistence that if people are going to deliberately expose themselves to full spectrum sunlight that contains UV, then you need to be consuming from the marine food web and you need to be consuming these omega-3 fatty acids. And literature is full of uh cases of reducing photosensitivity with uh therapeutic use of isolated, purified um omega-3s, but hey, you can get it in in its natural form from from eating seafoods. So that that is a really key point. And and we're not even touching on all the massive benefits you get on a cardiac function, on blood clotting, on um neuronal function and and mental health that you get from from increasing your your vitamin, sorry, your omega-3 ratios. And again, uh, I don't know you, you know, the Australian standard American diet, but in the standard Australian diet, people have been eating grains from from day one. Day one, after they get weaned, they're on some form of of cereals. I mean, people eat this neutral grain stuff, which is just wheat and sugar, uh, or other some other form of cereal or toast, and it's carbs, carbs, carbs with every meal. Um so like these are structurally fundamental population-based habits that are causing people grief, and yet dermatology is is is blaming um the sun when we're just you know gone through a whole bunch of nuance about what else uh people are doing wrong to contribute to to disease in this context.

SPEAKER_00 47:24

Yeah. Yeah. And there's so much nuance to there, or there's so many different subtopics that we can talk about. I mean, one that I'm starting to learn about that I'm I'm truly beginning to appreciate is this potential issue of melanoma over diagnosis. Uh the New England Journal of Medicine in the States, uh, I think it was in 2020, 2021, pointed to the fact that, you know, this is a very real problem. I mean, I I think it was melanoma diagnosis was rising, um, I think 60%. It rose 60% over the course of the last 40 or 50 years, but then malignant uh but then deaths from melanoma remain completely stable. And I think that does point to a deeper problem where it's it's kind of um in a real sense, the the structure and incentive model of modern dermatology can lead to the overdiagnosis of these certain conditions, uh, even to the point where you know they they have something called stage zero for melanoma, which is like it's just more aggressive. Uh you're taking a more aggressive stance to avoid cancer. So they label something as precancerous. But anyways, that that's still something I'm trying to learn a lot more about and wrap my head around. But um, regardless, I think the epidemiology is even on our side in terms of all the other studies available.

Dr Max Gulhane 48:41

Yeah, that that there was a um a paper written by a Texan dermatologist, um, and they basically did a really elegant analysis on the numbers and showed how, as you, as you mentioned, deaths haven't haven't risen, um, although diagnoses have. And again, I spoke to dermatologist Richard Weller about this, and he essentially said that this is this is not a real um it is an epine ep he these were his words, not mine. Um, and people can listen to my episode with him. He said this is an epid epidemic of overdiagnosis. And this is it's a it's a touchy subject because in Australia, um, you know, malignant melanoma does claim lives and um it it is a source of of of illness. But what what we can see, and especially in the US, is that when the financial incentives are perverse, then you get histological samples that get overcalled. So the dermatologist cuts out something because it could be a melanoma, and then the pathologist reports um they they bias towards calling it um an invasive malignant um uh tissue, and you know, the incentive systems around um new disease codes and the rest kind of perpetuate that system. But look, it it creates a fear loop and people you know avoid the sign even more, and it all becomes you know a self-reinforcing cycle, unfortunately. Um yeah, I mean there there's nuances about um you know histological diagnosis of melanoma. They involve they involve certain immunoschemical staining, like say frame, there's there's certain stains that they use to try and distinguish a dysplastic nevus from a from a malignant melanoma. But um, you know, it's it's it's fraught, and I think the key point is that yes, we're probably dealing on some level with with uh with overdiagnosis. Let's let's talk about the evening phase now, and because we've we've I think we've really covered well the the daytime phase. Um and really from an astronomical point of view, the sunset seems to be a reverse of of daybreak, uh, you know, plus or minus the different atmospheric conditions that can attenuate and scatter uh light differently. But you know, interestingly, it's although it's the reverse of sunrise, it has a radically different biological effect than than the morning um than the rise.

SPEAKER_00 51:13

Yeah, I think I think um a large part of it, and you would you would agree is that a large part of it revolves around, I think, just creating a sort of wind-down effect so that uh the the process of endogenous circulatory melatonin can start with um with darkness. So again, those intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, they're also picking up on that crescendo or kind of gradual transition uh into the the later evening. And so, of course, with sunset, you have a big portion of the reds, the infrared, the yellow, the orange, very similar in the in uh very similar compared to sunrise. Um, but I do think it it does the hold is greater than the sum of its parts in a real sense because the body is picking up on all these subtle cues that the spectrum is shifting and then nighttime is about to approach. Um but yeah, I I think the greatest thing from that end to tell people is that um again, the the same principles apply. You just have to try to catch the sunset whenever you can. If you can get more of your skin exposed, sure. Ground while you do it if you can. But none of it is complex in terms of what you should actually do. I think that you should ultimately watch the sunset. Now, the a little bit of nuance here is I do think that that sunset spectrum extends quite a bit into the evening to where um people might not think. Like people think right after the sun sets below the horizon, like that's it, it's time for darkness. But if you notice the outdoor horizon in the outdoor environment, you still see a lot of violets, blues, greens, whatever colors are that are available in the atmosphere. And that points us to the fact that once it's officially nightfall, that's when I think dark mode should occur. That's where I think the blue blockers come in, the you know, the red screens, the daylight tablet, and all that great stuff. So so that people can prepare for sleep because that's you know restorative and reparative.

Dr Max Gulhane 53:07

I like the point you made about this kind of uh wind-down phase. And I've I've thought about it and I've used the analogy of of landing a plane. If you go from, you know, 30,000 feet to sea level uh immediately, then it's not going to be a fun ride. And you wouldn't, you, you're not, you're probably gonna lie awake in your bed trying to sleep because you haven't uh landed the plane um appropriately. But if you gradually land it and descend over a peer process over a period of of uh hours, respecting the circadian system, then you are going to hit the bed and you're gonna go straight to sleep and you are going to recover really well. And as as uh as you've alluded to and how I like to think about it, is the the sequence matters. Um in in daylight and sunrise, it's darkness followed by gradually increasing light and and sun appearance is the daytime trigger for wakefulness and activity. And then if you've gone from uh bright light down to dimming light, red and green, sunset and twilight, and then nightfall, that is the sign for sleep. It's it's it's not as you said, it's not that complicated. But what you can do if you manage to see that sunrise, sunset, is that you can really essentially turn your body's system off. I mean, we I was somewhere with and basically spent the whole afternoon on a on a veranda and watched the sun just completely set over a you know a period of two hours. And and I I literally got home and was, you know, I felt like I drugged myself. I call it nature's Valium because it is honestly so powerful to reduce, induce um sleep. But unfortunately, one, people aren't watching the sunset, and two, they're using artificial light at night, which is sabotaging the process, which probably a good time to talk about.

SPEAKER_00 54:59

Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely correct in that effect. I mean, even just thinking about it considering all the experiences that I've had watching sunset from you know the beginning to the end, like it it really does make you extremely tired. And and I think that just serves to help um, you know, the system at large just prepare for sleep, of course. But with you know, I I think the nighttime from the circadian perspective is probably the most ignored aspect of this work because people are not thinking about all the processes that are occurring that are circadian and time-dependent that need that full nighttime darkness in order to function properly. Um, in fact, also repair and regenerate properly. So the the point, I think the skin barrier is probably the easiest way to explain this because there's so many different processes like you know, DNA repair enzymes, nucleotide scission repair, basic scission repair, endogenous melatonin that occurs in the skin, that's also very sensitive to this circadian timing in architecture that truly depends on nighttime darkness. Uh because at the end of the day, and we've mentioned this before, the the circadian system needs that sharp distinction in bright days or bright sunlight during the daytime, and then really dark nights with very minimal light, uh, whether you use firelight or Lolux incandescence or, you know, whatever new circadian gadget that only focuses on longer wavelengths of light uh during the nighttime. So the the broader point is that, you know, uh your liver, your brain, your heart, uh, every cell in your body, every circadian clock within each cell, these are all things that need that nighttime darkness. And I think it would be beneficial for people to understand that every aspect of the circadian system is tuned to this distinction between light and dark. You can't have light without the dark, otherwise you create problems with UV exposure, you know, inability to repair remove photo products from UV exposure, the night of. Um if you have dark without light, then I I think you just make the the issues of modern modernity even worse because to a real degree, the habits of modern people, you know, they it places them inside under low luxe environments, and that in a real sense can kind of be like a pseudo-darkness. Um it's it's not dark enough to signal nighttime appropriately, but it's also not, you know, um, it's also not bright enough to give that daytime signal, if that makes sense. I'm kind of jumbled in the in the way that I want to say this, but you have to have the nighttime darkness. And so once nightfall occurs, nightfall is is the timestamp that we want to focus on. That's where things like the blue blockers come in, or um, you know, I have the daylight right here that people can use, you know, no blue light on that bad boy. Um, that's where you you would take overhead lights, even if you have overhead incandescence, try to bring them down and bring them below eye level because of those uh, you know, the melanopsin, intrinsically photosets that have retinal ganglion cells. But the the overall takeaway is just to make it as dark as possible. And that that's that's ultimately going to benefit you over the long run.

Dr Max Gulhane 58:08

Yes. And and the contrast, I think that that could be the key word here is contrast between daytime, full spectrum light, and nocturnal darkness. And if you if you respect that contrast, then you essentially you get this really nice what we call circadian amplitude. And the circadian amplitude is a is a way of basically saying how during you you're robustly making sure that the circadian clock genes get trans translated and tr transcribed and translated during the day, and then they turn off relative to this cycle. And when the circadian amplitude is is deep and working, then everything works well because the circadian clock system is regulating, as you mentioned, metabolism, immunity, stem cells, reproduction, repair, everything. So it's a but it's a game of contrast, it's a game of chasing that that that high and low, um, that that contrast in in in circadian amplitude, and then you're gonna be fully alert during the day and you're gonna be fully tired and and sleepy during the nighttime. So um talking about how people can can mess this up, and and I I really I agree that this is probably the most underappreciated part is that most people don't respect the fact that their body needs darkness. And they they keep the lights on overnight, they they're looking at their phone, and what they're essentially doing is delaying the onset of that nocturnal um circulatory melatonin. And if the, you know, right now where I am, there's dark darkness at 5.30 p.m. Um, if someone goes to sleep at 10.30, they're depriving their body of five hours of biological night. And yeah, I mean, there could be a bit of variation in terms of when when we actually hit melatonin full secretion. But what I personally think is that someone is the degree to which they are robbing themselves of biological night every evening is the degree to which they're shortening their lifespan. Because without melatonin, you you don't get tumor, tumor excision based nuclear nucleotide based repair, all this this process. Um, and you don't get regeneration and you promote metabolic dysfunction and insulin resistance and chronic disease and and poor mitochondrial healing.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:23

Yeah. Especially the mitochondria. I mean, a lot of people say that the mitochondria are at the root of systemic health. And I I do firmly believe that in anything you do to damage mitochondria, most notably artificial light at night, considering that from the evidence I've seen, there's circadian-controlled, light-sensitive and light-using organelles. Um, that's a big one. I think the bet actually the best way to illustrate how important nighttime darkness is in terms of how it's integrated into the system is with food specifically in circadian meal timing. So when nightfall occurs, um, your your pancreas is essentially winding down function. Okay. And so there are melatonin receptors on the pancreatic beta cells. There's MT1 and MT2, two different types of receptors that are responsible for many different things. But at the end of the day, we need to understand that you know, melatonin is supposed to dock onto those receptors, and that is supposed to wind down insulin production to a very, very large degree. This is why in in night shift workers, you see um, you know, drastically uh worse metabolic outcomes or glucose handling, insulin resistance, all that stuff. Um, it's because your body is quite literally not expecting to eat after nightfall. And that's like one of the biggest changes that somebody could make is to just simply fast from around sunset or nightfall all the way into the morning time and then have a big early breakfast. Simply changing the intermittent fasting structure around is is going to have incredible metabolic effects. And there's even been studies on this where, you know, they put like 70 women on a, on a uh, a breakfast intervention that removes the dinner, and they put um another group of women on no breakfast, but a heavy evening dinner. And they find that the the women who avoid uh dinner during the nighttime have drastically improved body composition and uh, you know, less triglyceride load and all this fantastic stuff that I think people would benefit from. So that that's a great example of how the body is tuned to this distinction between light and dark in a very real way that has very huge implications for your quality of life, fundamentally.

Dr Max Gulhane 1:02:35

Yeah. Ver very good. Um and so much so that there's a whole field is called chrononutrition. Um, you know, this is this is not a mystery in to the extent it's it's uh it doesn't exist. It's the literature is all there. I I keep saying this. It's like um the literature's there, it's just some simply not being presented or translated through the mainstream organs and and mouthpieces. But if you go looking or you listen to more decentralized sources of of health information, then you you're gonna get the the information that that actually exists. So yeah, uh absolutely and and restricting eating to daylight hours really easy win. Turning off overhead lights is is a massive win. I I I prefer that to wearing blue light blocking glasses. If if I had a choice of of giving someone a pair of blue blockers and you know using the yellow, using the orange, and then using red and having lights on or simply just turning off the lights, turning off the lights is always going to be preferable because we're not only dealing, as as you know and I'm sure you you discuss with your clients, we're not only dealing with spectrum, we're dealing with light position, which you mentioned, overhead light, ancestral trigger for noon and and um daytime, and uh brightness and intensity. So unfortunately, people are doing a lot wrong when they have their standard daytime, uh standard cool LED down lights in their home is because they're they're actually giving a the the daytime spectrum, they're they're really very bright, above well, well above melanopic um uh thresholds for entering sleep, and they're they're overhead. So, and we have and and probably they're they're flickering at some degree too. So um the simplest hack, I think, could just be the first step, maybe, is to just turn off overhead down lights.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:31

Yeah. You know, I noticed that that even has a huge effect. Um I I would also say like there's the discussion of I I do find it interesting that people wear blue blockers, you know, whether it's dark orange or dark red, in very bright environments. Like I understand it if you're out and and you can't control the light sources, of course, if you're at a theater or something. But if you're in your home, most certainly it's it's working against you if you're creating a bright environment, even if you have you're you're fully clothed, you have your blue blockers on, because your body is still gonna pick up on that cue of luxe and spectrum, like you mentioned, which uh, you know, those are the two most important distinctions when it comes to whether melatonin gets produced from the pineal gland or not.

Dr Max Gulhane 1:05:17

Yeah. So so let and let's just turn them off first. And and then I think kicking in is those alternative options. So we we use a couple of things. We use beeswax candles. Um here's a that's uh here's one I prepared earlier.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:33

I've got a small one here, too.

Dr Max Gulhane 1:05:35

Yeah, yeah. It's not the size that matters. The uh beeswax candles, and then also uh really just I I I like um incandescence. We use just one incandescent in our whole kind of living area after the sunsets to do domestic tasks. Um and then when when we're all we're all done, that goes off and we have some just uh red, essentially some red LED. Light strips that are very low, below eye height. And that seems to work really well for us. I know that you've also got some pretty nifty red incandescence.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:12

Yeah, I've I've red incandescence from Chromalux. There's another company called Strainless Lighting that has red ones. Like strainless lighting bulb, regular bulb is pretty cool. Because you can also dim it. So that's that's been very helpful when it comes to kind of transitioning closer to bedtime. The sconces in the back, as you can see on the wall, like those are very useful for beeswax candles. And then outside of that, I would say I'm pretty like I'm pretty strict when it comes to the nighttime. So I'm like fully clothed up, as much skin covered as possible, the dark orange blue blockers, even in a very dark environment, just because there are so many other light sources you can't really control for. I also do employ like the red, I think the red masking or vinyl tape on like the oven, the microwave, the even the fridge has fully decked out red vinyl tape inside. So there's a lot you can do on that front that's cheap that would get people a lot of like maybe 80 to 90% of the way there. And the key indicator for me as to whether this is working is are you actually getting tired within 15 to 20 minutes of being in that environment? Do your eyes feel heavy in the same way that when you put blue blockers on, your eyes start to feel heavy because your eyes are relaxing, there's no um, there's no interference from artificial light on on the ocular system. Maybe there's some local and systemic melatonin being produced there. So the the subjective aspects of this are very important for people to consider because your body is always telling you something. And when it's placed in the right environment, your body will tell you, like, okay, it's time to go to bed, it's time to have a gentle kind of transition into, you know, deep sleep and then a dream steep dream state with REM sleep and so forth.

Dr Max Gulhane 1:07:54

Yeah, absolutely. And this makes me think about how disconnected I think most people are from their actual felt sense and their lived sense. Because when we propose this to most people, they would say, What? Like surely light doesn't affect me that much. There's a small number of people who are quite intuitive naturally, and you'll talk about this and like, oh yeah, and they've they've kind of arrived at this process very, very um spontaneously or intuitively, way more female than male, um, in my experience. But um, but um what I think is most people are so disconnected that they don't actually they're not physically aware of how this light environment is affecting them. But when you do set this up and you insist and you say, okay, let's turn the lights off, let's get the luxe level low, let's provide a warm, long wavelength spectrum without uh blue, green light, let's put the position of the light below eye level and see what happens. But if you put something there, they will get tired. And I really like that that barometer of how do you subjectively feel, how tired do you subjectively feel? Because if you're doing things right, then you absolutely will start getting heavy eyelids and you'll be wanting to uh go into the bedroom.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:16

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And um, yeah, I I think you can only appreciate that appreciate that experience once you have the relative experience, once you, you know, you you have some nights of being exposed to bright artificial light after nightfall, and then you you want the other aspect of this work. Because now when I go into, let's say, when I go into a friend's house and it might be like 9 or 10 p.m., maybe I just don't care about any of these principles for the most part for that day. Like I am, I'm almost assaulted by how bright these lights are. I mean, the flickering is one component. I don't find myself to be too sensitive to flickering from a subjective experience, but just the the sheer brightness of the TV, the the overhead LEDs is is unbelievable. And I I, you know, you begin to appreciate how people experience sleep deprivation and sleep disturbances and all these other problems because it's it's just such a powerful lever for actually destroying your metabolic health.

Dr Max Gulhane 1:10:13

Absolutely. I mean, flicker is another whole conversation and it's it's a characteristic that's inherent into the power source that's driving the light. Um I had just fascinating clinical cases of a patient with post-concussive syndrome, really bad post-head knock, and exquisitely sensitive to flicker. Uh drive is causing headaches, causing nausea, just inattention. And what I think is happening here is that the brain in a healthy person like you or I, and and anyone, is actually filtering out the the flicker effect when we're under artificial light. But that's that's that's imposing a toll. It's imposing a neuronal and um cognitive toll on the brain. So when you put a kid who's hasn't got a fully developed central nervous system in a flickering light environment like a classroom, um the inattention that they develop as a result isn't isn't a it isn't a bug, it's a feature. It's like it's like they're using up their cognitive power and they're now they can't concentrate. Um but hang on, we've just labeled that half of ADHD, you know, inattentive type, and now they've gotten this dexamphetamine. Um so so I mean that's another whole conversation, but if we can really be intentional about what light we're using, then we can mitigate flicker, we can uh in addition to those other um light characteristics.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:42

Yeah, absolutely. And and also another point, like driving at night with the headlights, these modern headlights are atrocious. And so that's also a difficult proposition for somebody who has to drive at night. I uh believe it or not, like I do actually use the orange blue blockers to drive. I've tried with the red ones. The red ones are almost impossible. I would not recommend it because it is a safety concern. You do have to get a little bit used to the orange uh blue blockers for that purpose, but I find that they they provide a very gentle driving experience, kind of like the old school days where you know you had um you had those orange lights. I forgot what exactly they're called, but until they transitioned to LEDs.

Dr Max Gulhane 1:12:21

But those maybe.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:23

Yeah, yeah, those those headlights are absolutely killer for the for the eyes, especially.

Dr Max Gulhane 1:12:28

You you see photos of like New York in the 1980s, like the Twin Towers, and and uh they just had this really warm glow. And yeah, it's a light at night, it's not ideal, but it it it felt at least a little bit slightly more human than uh what what we're all dealing with right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:44

Yeah. Yeah. It's unfortunate at scale, but you know, hopefully, uh hopefully we can get the message out there to try to employ some program to get these lights changed because it's just it's too much.

Dr Max Gulhane 1:12:55

And I I think the key point why incandescent is preferable is that because you you simply are heating a filament. That's what what's happening. You you heat you you're heating a filament, and that filament is emitting uh light, and it's also emitting uh non-visible light in in the infrared. So if we if you pair uh an incandescent light bulb with a like a DC power supply, um then you potentially got the most perfect uh DC 12 volt battery, then you've got got the least possible flicker um that you that you can get. But you don't need to go that complex. This the humble uh beeswax candle can can get you a lot of the way. So hey, hey, why don't we quickly go through this carousel which you put together on Instagram? It's called the good circadian aligned life. Because I think sometimes uh a carousel tells a million um words. Uh and so why don't you just like yeah, walk us through if you've got it up, um the couple of these photos. I should pull it up real quick here. And and I I really I really like this again because it it this speaks to something. It's not we're not just being pedantic biohackers in in this uh conversation. We're not just kind of being sticklers for health just because we we want to or just because uh you know we're we're we're nerding out on this. I think when you when you stitch this lifestyle together in solar alignment, alignment to the solar day, um there's something magical and maybe even spiritual or or religious about this. Um Cameron good good friend Cameron Borg, who who uh he did a presentation at Regenerate two or three years ago, and he spoke about a a tribe in, I believe they were an African tribe, who literally believed their theological basis of of belief was that God was in the sunrise. It wasn't just representative of God, it was like that is God in the sunrise. So um I really like framing that because when you watch the sunrises and sunsets, you see the beauty of the sunrise sunset. There's not sometimes you just sit there in awe because there is something divine and and religious about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:12

Yeah, so this carousel, I I really love the aesthetic aspect of the circadian life. I I think it's just obviously it's tied to nature, so you're gonna get some magnificent magnificent views. Um, like this first picture here. I know people can't see it, but maybe I can show it on the screen.

Dr Max Gulhane 1:15:27

Yeah, show it on your screen, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:29

The um the foggy sunrises are particularly awesome because it it's like it's almost like every sunrise has a unique fingerprint.

Dr Max Gulhane 1:15:39

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:40

You know, when when that orange and red comes through the cloud cover, it hits the this the you know, the dew of the grass. There's something special to it. And like you said, like you can't help but be philosophically and and kind of theologically tied to it. Um, second picture is is more like you know, just a book by TikNot Han on fear, and that's basically what I would be doing at night instead of watching TV or you know trying to lessen exactly doom scrolling. And so pick up a book under some red incandescence, you can see perfectly. Um some it's it's an incredible experience, to be honest. And then the four the fifth picture, my son Enzo on the beach. So, you know, you can see that pretty clearly, and getting him into the work has been pretty awesome. But yeah, as you move through this slide, like you know, the beeswax candle uh candles on the sconces is pretty cool. Um that rainbow on on slide nine, like that that was the most incredible rainbow I've ever seen. And that that basically was like for me, that was a gift from God to show me that the circadian stuff was, you know, um, you know, the right path. Red incandescence, uh the the picture on slide 11. I have uh sunrise from Kauaii, Hawaii, believe it or not, that was for a wedding, um, oysters, mandatory for DHA, nutrient density, anchovies on the next slide. I think this is a daylight incandescent um from Tristan and Daylight Company, and then obligatory bonfire by the beach. Uh what else do we have here? Yeah, just on the beach too. It's just some awesome stuff.

Dr Max Gulhane 1:17:25

And fire light is obviously emitting a really warm spectrum, and and that's what we're kind of um the characteristic of firelight, candlelight, um, and and and halogen or filament bulbs is that they're emitting a ther it's a thermal light source. And if you want to dive into the technicals or learn more about optics, then listen to some of my episodes with Andrew Latour and Dr. Bunch recently, where we can, you know, we drill into the differences. But essentially, LED lighting has no thermal aspect. It's non-thermal, it's visual only, and that's it's like the stripped down high fructose syrup, corn syrup light. Whereas fire light and thermal light sources emit this really warm color spectrum because they're also uh emitting in in the in the longer wavelengths.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:12

Yeah. Modern lighting is dead. It's it's uh it has no feeling to it. You know, when when people compliment others from a more, I guess, philosophical circadian perspective, like people quite literally compliment you by saying you're you're incandescent. They don't say your LED. And that that's for a very real reason because incandescents are warm and inviting and so forth. So even in our language, there's a lot of the circadian stuff that pops up that most people will just not understand from a um, I guess explicitly. They they more so it it operates at the more subconscious level. Yeah, absolutely. People say she, you know, she's glowing.

Dr Max Gulhane 1:18:51

She's like that, like exactly what what an incandescent or a really warm color temperature lamp does. You're glowing, or you know, that she's got a healthy tan. I mean, it's almost like the collective consciousness hasn't um refuses to accept the the psy-op uh semantic framing of dermatology. It's like people know inherently that that that tan is a sign of health. And again, Milana Corton maxing, like that is that's a healthy thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:19

Yeah, it's a very healthy thing. So uh it I I would urge people to go deeper uh instead of just trying to like, you know, take on the the idea that melanin is a sign of skin or DNA damage, which I personally believe is that that comes from eugenic and scientific racist roots. And a lot of dermatologists don't want to get into that territory, but I I think there's some pretty compelling evidence there. But either way, the the circadian lifestyle is a beautiful lifestyle. It's a it's a magnificent lifestyle that will teach you a lot about life. It'll give you that, you know, it'll it'll give you more of an ability to discern um truth from from falsehood, in my opinion. I think there's there's a philosophical aspect to this work that is only attained through practice. Because obviously, if you're sitting there for sunrises, then you're thinking more about your life, you're thinking about the bigger questions, and that is something that's priceless in my mind. Absolutely.

Dr Max Gulhane 1:20:11

I'd echo that and say if you're making the the effort to get up and watch the dawn and the sunrise, you're making the effort to see the sunset, then you you're you're a high-agency person. You are literally taking control of your life and you're you're you're writing your own script and you can choose to do that and you can ben benefit in the all the ways that we've we've um kind of alluded to. Or I think that the alternative is that people just become uh you know non-playing character in their own game, in their own life, and they they're just uh going programmed by the by the news feeds, by the screens that they're addicted to. Uh they maintain a you know low dopamine state because they've deprived of these circadian and solar signals. And look, I I I know which life I'd I'd prefer. I know which one's more fulfilling. And so the this information is, you know, it's there. And we're I think you and I are doing our best to to uh promulgate and disp disperse it. So yeah, I think it's every individual, it's up to it's up to you now what to do with this information.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:14

Yeah. And ultimately it improves quality of life. I think people are are motivated by wanting to be there longer for their kids, wanting to see their grandkids grow up and and just have the ability to move within space. Like if you're somebody, you know, you you don't want to be in a nursing home and you don't have well, you don't want somebody to have to change your diapers every few hours. Like it's it's not a it's not a fun thing. And this is coming from somebody who, like, I saw my dad in hospice for for a few months. It's a very rough experience, regardless of what disease model you're dealing with. You see it often considering your background and your work. And um, this is a very first principles, and I would say relatively simple way of going about trying to prevent chronic disease that's very effective as well. Absolutely. Uh foundational.

Dr Max Gulhane 1:22:02

So, say, thank you for the conversation. And please hand us off to your work and anything else that you're doing at the moment that people might be interested in.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:13

Yeah, so uh at ZaydK DeHaj, Z-A-I-D-K-D-A-H-H-A-J on all platforms, uh X, Instagram, Substack. The Substack has been really fun lately, just diving deep into various nuanced topics, even, you know, uh even at a deeper level within the a lot of the circadian stuff that you see. And then uh the 8020 course is basically a course where I pour just my heart and soul into it, trying to give people as much information as possible. That kind of blends the scientific, the philosophical, the practical, so that it can kind of cater to anybody, whether it's a beginner in the space, intermediate expert. And um, yeah, in terms of what I'm focused on, I mean really just I guess just trying to elaborate my knowledge depth because there's a lot of stuff I don't know. And if I'm going to contend with specialties like modern dermatology, and if I'm going to act like a bridge in between decentralized medicine and more so mainstream or centralized medicine, I have to know my stuff as much as possible. And I do have to like, I have to interact with people who are in that field. And so hopefully, you know, having discussions in person with dermatologists or any specialty to kind of bring the circadian lens forward is something that I I really have on my mind. So we'll see how that goes. Yeah, amazing. Well, thanks again, and uh yeah, we'll talk soon, I'm sure.

Dr Max Gulhane 1:23:31

Thank you, my friend. Appreciate it.