29. Your Birth Year, Latitude, and Bedtime? Weird Cancer Risks No One Talks About.

In this episode, we uncover the strange fact that 11-year solar cycles shape your health, including your risk of cancer and autoimmune diseases. 

I'll admit this sounds like astrology. Or science fiction. 

It isn't.

Statistics show that the number of sunspots during the year you were born  shortens your lifespan, on average, by more than a decade. 

And sunlight affects us in other strange ways. You may also be surprised to learn that living on the far western side of your time zone, or simply eating supper 8 PM compared to 6 PM, is associated with an increased risk of cancer.

This episode also covers

• why your cancer risk rises as you live farther from the equator (it's not all vitamin D)
• how changing your bedtime each night--by less than an hour!--quietly raises your risk of early death
• why your hospital room window determines how fast you heal

You’ll hear surprising data, real patient stories, and practical takeaways you can implement tonight. 

Want even more? Find out how muscle size correlates with brain size. (Yep.)

And if you want your exercise to actually build muscle, Dr. Gordon tells you the best time of day to get moving.

Dawn Lemanne, MD
Oregon Integrative Oncology
Leave no stone unturned.

Deborah Gordon, MD
Northwest Wellness and Memory Center
Building Healthy Brains

Chapters

• 3:26 Sunspots, solar cycles, and human lifespan
• 18:02 latitude increases cancer risk, too… especially breast cancer and colorectal cancer. The cancers we see here in the United States are rare in people living at the equator.
• 21:48 Story of the young man with a fatal fungal infection whose condition mysteriously improved after being wheeled into the sunshine
• 41:22 The later your supper, the higher your risk of getting cancer. And if you have cancer, the higher your risk of dying of cancer.
• 42:29 Cancer risk is higher in the western part of any time zone, compared to the easternmost part
• 47:01 why resistance exercise in the late afternoon may be the key to overcoming anabolic resistance
• 47:01 Muscle mass increases brain size and mass
• 47:23 What's the best time of day to exercise to build muscle

Transcript

[00:00:02.799] - Dr. Lemanne

What caught my interest is that there's an increased risk of dying of cancer decades later for those born during a solar maximum. You have found your way to the Le Man Gorden podcast where Docs Talk Shop. Happy eavesdropping.

[00:00:27.679] - Dr. Lemanne

I'm Dr. Dawn Lemanne. I treat cancer patients.

[00:00:31.019] - Dr. Gordon

I'm Dr. Deborah Gordon. I work with aging patients.

[00:00:34.819] - Dr. Lemanne

We've been in practice a long time.

[00:00:36.499] - Dr. Gordon

A very long time.

[00:00:38.799] - Dr. Lemanne

We learn so much talking to each other.

[00:00:40.889] - Dr. Gordon

We do. What if we let people listen in? In today's episode, Dr. Lemanne and I explore how natural cycles affect your health and even your survival.

[00:00:57.979] - Dr. Gordon

Something that surprised me, why the year you were born, that is where in the 11-year sunspot cycle you came to Earth can steal up to 17 years of your life. It sounds like astrology.

[00:01:11.619] - Dr. Gordon

It isn't.

[00:01:13.019] - Dr. Gordon

Okay, but what about the things you can actually do something about?

[00:01:17.559] - Dr. Gordon

What if eating dinner at 8: 00 PM instead of, say, 6: 00, measurably raised your chance of dying from cancer? What if shifting your bedtime by just one hour made you 22% more likely to die of anything. Here's another one I talk about, patients whose beds face a window get discharged from the hospital sooner.

[00:01:45.259] - Dr. Gordon

And whether you get out of the hospital at all may depend on, here it is again, the sun.

[00:01:51.479] - Dr. Gordon

You'll hear me tell the story of a young man with a deadly fungal infection whose dying wish was to be wheeled outside of his hospital, out of his hospital room, out of the hospital itself, into the sunshine, and then something happened, something his doctors couldn't explain. Have I mentioned geography, specifically your latitude, and how breast and colon cancers are rare at the equator but rise steeply as you move north. And this is not just about vitamin D. There's more, and there's so much more weirdness in this episode. We explore why the most dangerous meal you can eat may be that midnight snack, why muscle mass protects your brain, and how simply living on the western edge of your time zone might harm your health.

[00:02:46.059] - Dr. Gordon

Let's go.

[00:02:51.059] - Dr. Lemanne

So good morning, Deborah.

[00:02:52.259] - Dr. Gordon

Good morning, Dawn.

[00:02:54.159] - Dr. Lemanne

I'm here in the studio with you, and I actually am looking at my iPhone, and yes, I am checking my email. I I'm not being rude. What I'm doing is looking at the email that I sent to you last night. That's right. And I asked you a riddle.

[00:03:13.279] - Dr. Gordon

You did. Luckily, I fell asleep anyway, but I was throwing that around my brain as soon as I started reading it. And it's a good riddle.

[00:03:26.699] - Dr. Lemanne

Yeah. I think I got it wrong, though. I screw up jokes. I get a punchline wrong. I think I even got the first I have this line wrong here. I said, here's the riddle I sent for our audience. Here's what I sent to Dr. Gordon last night. What perfectly natural phenomenon shortens lifespan by eight years? And it's actually Not eight years. We'll get into that. I'll get to the punchline. Okay, it's sunspots.

[00:03:58.559] - Dr. Gordon

I had all sorts of ideas, but that was definitely not on my radar, so to speak.

[00:04:05.489] - Dr. Lemanne

Yeah, sunspots. So solar activity. Solar activity rises and falls every 11 years. There's an 11-year cycle. There's 11 years from the highs and 11 years between the lows. And the highs involved. What this is about is solar flares, sunspots. If you're nerdy about these things, solar storms, coronal mass ejections.

[00:04:33.739] - Dr. Gordon

These are coronal mass ejections. You don't mean masses of people because we're talking about the sun. What's ejected?

[00:04:42.279] - Dr. Lemanne

What’s ejected? Charged particles, ions, and the accompanying magnetic field. Wherever you have a charge, an electrical charge, you have automatically, a magnetic field. Electromagnetism. And magnetic fields interact with other electromagnetic systems. Like the earth, which is a large magnet with two poles, north and south. Or electronics, like computers, and especially systems with long wires, like undersea cables. And humans and other animals have a protein, cryptochrome, which helps us track day and night. CMEs alter cryptochrome, changing our brain chemistry and nervous system, and we see mental health issues and cardiac rhythm problems spike for a day or two after a big CME hits earth.

Sometimes we get these news alerts like, you might see the aurora in your Oregon location tonight, or something like that. And they cause GPS glitches because of satellite transmission degradation from these coronal mass ejections. So basically, it's a big electromagnetic pulse that affects the Earth's atmosphere, and it affects the people on Earth. So it It happens. There are like 10 of these a day. The sun ejects these, but they go in all different directions. So not all of them face Earth and actually hit the Earth, but most of them fly off into space. But every few days, one hits the Earth.

[00:05:49.619] - Dr. Gordon

So I want to go there, but first I have a really mundane question, stimulated by question, by what you said. So they say to me, Oh, you can see the aurora in Oregon. So I think of the aurora as when you have an eclipse that you see the Sun's... What do you mean I get to see an aurora in Oregon?

[00:06:12.279] - Dr. Lemanne

The aurora borealis. So the northern lights. Sorry. Yeah, the corona. You're thinking of the corona when this moon blocks out the sun and you see the edge of the sun and you can see the ragged edges of the sun as blocked because everything's blocked by the moon. So no, not talking about eclipses. We're talking the aurora borealis, the northern lights. And of course, we have them in the south, too. Yeah.

[00:06:38.439] - Dr. Gordon

And it seems to me they are coming down into the continental United States more than they used to.

[00:06:45.669] - Dr. Lemanne

That's because we are at a solar maximum right now. How exciting. Yes, through 2025. So 2024, 2025 is a solar maximum. And what I wanted to talk about today is that these actually affect your lifespan a lot. So if you're born during a solar maximum, your lifespan, according to some records kept in Norway for about 200 years in the the 1800s to the 1800s, people born during a solar maximum live five years less than those born during a solar minimum. So So that's really quite interesting. So that's the average entire lifespan. But if you're born during a solar maximum, this reduces your probability of surviving to adulthood. And it just goes on and on. It's amazing. The fertility is lower during women born during maxima.

[00:07:55.559] - Dr. Gordon

And even though their fertility is an issue that comes up decades later. Exactly. Before we go on, may I ask you a quick favor?

[00:08:06.419] - Dr. Gordon

Hit the subscribe button. You're hitting that subscribe button really, really matters. You're making sure cutting edge ideas that matter to you move to the center of medical discourse, where they belong. Thank you.

[00:08:22.439] - Dr. Lemanne

So the period in which you're born, based on the solar situation, affects how long you're likely to live and what caught my interest is that there's an increased risk of dying of cancer. Later, decades later, for those born during a solar maximum.

[00:08:44.659] - Dr. Gordon

So now you do have to... How on Earth, through the Northern lights affect my human physiology in any way except delighting my eyes?

[00:08:57.549] - Dr. Lemanne

So, yeah, I mean, that's the question. And it's not the Northern light. So the Northern lights is manifestation of how these solar ejecta, the particles coming off the sun, affect and interact with the human magnetosphere and atmosphere, and that creates the Northern lights. But they also interact with our bodies.

[00:09:16.849] - Dr. Gordon

Whether we see the northern lights or not.

[00:09:18.419] - Dr. Lemanne

The northern lights have nothing to do with it. That's not an interaction. But what's coming from the sun causes the northern lights, and also what's coming from the sun also interacts with our bodies. And when we're pregnant or just born, that's where we're getting these effects from. So what happens during this period of a solar maximum is that there's increased UV activity and higher UV exposure as well as geometric activity. And we think that one or both of those contributes to folate level decreases in pregnant women. So women who are pregnant during a solar maximum likely need more folate than they would were it a solar minimum while they're pregnant. That's just a hypothesis, though. We don't know. One of the things that really struck me is that those were data from Norway, and that was from 1676 to 1878 or something like that. But in Japan, a study was recently done. It started in 1950 and it ended in 2024. It was done at the University of Tokyo. In Norway, they found about a five-year difference in lifespan. In Japan, they found a 15-year difference.

[00:10:56.739] - Dr. Gordon

So I was going to ask, I was going to imagine it was better because I imagine the more northern part. But of course, the latitude doesn't really matter since it's going over a full year because different latitudes are closer to the sun at different times of the year. But if you're going a whole circle around the sun, everybody gets their exposure. Why on Earth? But Japan is in the middle. Why is it so much higher in Japan?

[00:11:23.399] - Dr. Lemanne

Yeah. So it's 15 years for males and 17 years, shorter lifespan for females born during a solar maximum.

[00:11:34.799] - Dr. Gordon

Are there some hypotheses about why is it so high?

[00:11:38.639] - Dr. Lemanne

Again, we don't know, but some of the things that get batted around or some variation in the environmental resilience For instance, the Japanese studies were done in the 1900s and the 1950 to 2024. So we had cars and more pollution and those kinds of things. So maybe that has something to do with it compared to really rural, pre-industrial Norway.

[00:12:04.239] - Dr. Gordon

It's amazing that they were doing studies like that in Norway at a time when I barely think people could read and write.

[00:12:10.249] - Dr. Lemanne

They weren't doing studies. These were just church records. So when somebody was born, somebody at the local church would write down, Olaf was born on January first, 1676, etc. And then Olaf died 50 years later, and they wrote it down. So they have birth and death records and also some other vital statistics, like weddings and things like that.

[00:12:34.879] - Dr. Gordon

A number of children thinking about fertility. Yeah. Okay. All right. So Japan- And the data were later looked at, through the lens of how long were these people living and how did that match up with various natural cycles?

[00:12:49.659] - Dr. Lemanne

And that was the solar cycle was the one that really matched up pretty strongly.

[00:12:54.459] - Dr. Gordon

How did they even think to look at that?

[00:12:56.659] - Dr. Lemanne

Well, somebody in 1850, I can't remember his name, but somebody in about 1843, something like that, figured out that the sunspot amount numbers increased every 11 years, pretty much on the nose. So that was when people started looking at those kinds of things. And then there are larger sunspots up cycles, too, that I don't know enough to get into. But I think they're 80 years and 400 years or something like that, where there are more chaotic sunspot activities, which actually are associated with greater incidences of mental health breakdowns during those periods. So specific illnesses are associated with specific actions of the sun.

[00:13:42.979] - Dr. Gordon

Oh, okay. I wasn't born during that era, but I'm living during an era of sunspots. I might be more prone to psychological illness?

[00:13:57.519] - Dr. Lemanne

Exactly. Wow. Exactly, yes. So there's more psychiatric illness. It's definitely chemical, brain activity, degradation during periods of chaotic solar activity.

[00:14:12.379] - Dr. Gordon

Interesting. I mean, and of course, you just mentioned folate, really, briefly thinking about pregnant women, but folate is very important for mental function, emotional and cognitive, both aspects. And one of of my pet peeves is really that when we learn that as a society, we began adding folic acid, the cheapest, funkiest form of vitamin B9 to everything. If you have genetics that say you need the other B9 that you're only getting in trace amounts from your food, the junk folic acid, oh, she had lots of folic acid. She ate boxed breakfast cereal fortified every day. Junk folic acid, it's probably blocking the better folic acid from getting into your body. So having a folic acid supplementation, even if you thought, okay, this is the problem, we'll just give everybody folic acid. It doesn't work for everything, for everybody.

[00:15:25.739] - Dr. Lemanne

I'm so glad you brought that up. So what studies show is that UV radiation, UVA and UVB, the main UVs that we are exposed to from sun and that are higher at higher levels when the sun spot and solar flair and activity is highest, this breaks down circulating folates, and specifically 5-methal tetrahydropholate in the skin and the bloodstream. And exactly what you're talking about, it's essential during pregnancy for neural tube development and it also helps with epigenetic programming, the metal groups attach and detach from DNA to turn genes on and off.

[00:16:08.839] - Dr. Gordon

So I am actually listening to a podcast about sunlight. I didn't know we were going to talk about solar storms today. I'm listening to a podcast talking about the health benefits of sunlight and how UVA and UVB and just being out in the sun is so good for our immune systems. But is it the amount of it or the intensity?

[00:16:31.289] - Dr. Lemanne

The intensity, Is it too much at the wrong time, like in utero or during your first few months of life, could leave a lasting metabolic scar. But you know what? There's something else that... Just to muddy... Let's muddy this picture. It's even more.

[00:16:49.019] - Dr. Gordon

It's pretty unclear picture as it is.

[00:16:51.609] - Dr. Lemanne

The people that are born in the years of Solar maxima tend to have lower rates of autoimmune conditions like multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis.

[00:17:04.089] - Dr. Gordon

They have less of that.

[00:17:05.589] - Dr. Lemanne

Less of it. Less of it. That, I think, is probably due to vitamin D. Because vitamin D You need lots of vitamin D and you make it in the presence of sunlight. Sunlight on your skin, especially UVB, helps turn the cholesterol pathway and turn it into a nice vitamin D making machine. And so that's- And you do know, you've seen the maps of the United States where the rate of autoimmune disease, specifically multiple sclerosis, gradually increases as you head farther north in the world in general.

[00:17:48.119] - Dr. Gordon

But they've done the studies in the United States. You're at greater risk for these diseases if you live in Maine than if you live in Virginia.

[00:17:57.299] - Dr. Lemanne

Yes.

[00:17:58.599] - Dr. Gordon

And that's attributed to vitamin D and the sun.

[00:18:02.799] - Dr. Lemanne

I have a different take on why that might be, but I think vitamin D definitely plays a role. Okay. But the increase in latitude increases cancer risk, too. What? Not just... Yeah. So especially breast cancer, colorectal cancer. The cancers we see Here in the United States, they're rare in people living at the equator. And I think it's due to vitamin D. I also think it's due to something I think it's due to seasons. And what it has to do with seasons is... Do you see where I'm going with this?

[00:18:38.769] - Dr. Gordon

Well, I have an idea, but I want to chase you on your journey here. So where are you going with that?

[00:18:45.619] - Dr. Lemanne

Yeah, it's our disruption did sleep because of light or day length changes and night length changes with the turning of the seasons. We like the turning of the seasons, most of us, but it's actually very, very hard on us because we We primates mostly evolved, we think, near the equator, maybe not. I don't think that's settled yet. But the higher the latitude, the more pronounced are the seasons and the more pronounced the variation in the day and night lengths throughout the year. And what that means is the midnight sun. It's not benign. And I mean that in the oncologic sense.

[00:19:28.059] - Dr. Gordon

Interesting. And so do Do vitamin D levels on a population basis correlate with cancer risk? I tell people individually, have a good level of vitamin D, and the older you get, you can't make it very well from the sun and stuff like that. But on a population level, does that hold up?

[00:19:53.699] - Dr. Lemanne

I'd have to see where things are turning up now. People have been looking at that very, very hard for 20 years. And one of the things that's really hard to What we parse is vitamin D may just be a stand-in for sun exposure. And if you have high vitamin D levels because of sun exposure, you may be a lot healthier or may be or depending on what year you were born and how old you are. You might be a lot... You might have a different health status than someone who gets their vitamin D from a pill.

[00:20:28.439] - Dr. Gordon

Absolutely. Absolutely. So there is a current influencer in the social media medical world, and he's speaking as a guest on another person's podcast, and maybe I will be bold and reach out to him. I've interacted with him on Twitter. He's a professor at Loma Linda University, and he is a big... If you are put into a hospital and you take a dozen people put into a hospital in two bedrooms, the peoples whose beds are next to the big window are discharged sooner. And that's not even outside. In the old days in tuberculosis sanitarians, they made a big point of getting people outside. And he tells a heroic story of a young man, multiple insults to his physical health, who's given two days to live. And they say, Okay, young man, what do you want to do your last two days? He said, Wheel this giant contraption that I'm attached to outside. And they wheeled him outside. And after six days, they realized hadn't died yet. And they need to investigate the terrible fungal condition that was threatening his life. And it was markedly better, as was his white blood count and everything. So sunlight. And they were maintaining a good vitamin D level on him.

[00:21:48.639] - Dr. Gordon

But there were components to being in the real sun that gave this man a second lease on life.

[00:21:56.779] - Dr. Lemanne

Well, that's a fantastic story. And it makes me think of a couple of things. So there have been studies, and I know you're aware of these, that just show that being next to a window that looks out on greenery results in a faster discharge than having a hospital room with a window that looks out on another wall. Okay, so you're getting light and everything like that. But the greenery is important.

[00:22:18.539] - Dr. Gordon

I didn't know that adds another component.

[00:22:21.059] - Dr. Lemanne

And also UVB, which is the part that makes vitamin D, does not go through glass. So sitting in front of glass will not improve someone's vitamin D level. But in the old days, in the 1800s, people knew that tuberculosis patients needed to be put in the sun. And we know that vitamin D made from sun exposure is associated with an improvement in the compartment of the immune system, what's called cellular immunity, that fights fungal infections and tuberculous infections. So tuberculosis and other tuberculous infections from other tuberculosis-type organisms really are affected positively. The patient is affected positively by sun exposure. We've known that for 200 years.

[00:23:15.839] - Dr. Gordon

I wonder about this. I think of my focus in my practice are ostensibly cognitive medicine, but really, I'm interested in a lot of aspects for older people. And one of the things I notice, oh, I can be out in the sun and I don't burn anymore. Yeah, well, you don't tan anymore either. And I think if I'm not tanning and not burning, I bet my receptors that make vitamin D are also insufficiently responsive to the sun.

[00:23:45.659] - Dr. Lemanne

But again, it may not be just vitamin D that you're getting from the sun. There may be something that we can't measure yet because we don't know about it and haven't been able to look for it, that the sunlight imbues. And I think that if I had to bet, I'd bet a little bit, not a lot, that if that is the case. And I think that'll be something that will work out. But yes, people need to be outdoors. If the weather's nice. You need to be outdoors when the sun is shining. Very important.

[00:24:18.699] - Dr. Gordon

One of the things that this person, his name looks like Sue Holt, but it's Schult or something like that. And I will correct all those things and get a proper reference for him for the notes. But he's pointed out some fascinating properties of this being out in the sun that are very poorly understood. For instance, you can be fully clothed, and there's some of the benefits of the sun that work just as well as if you take your clothes off. And take a full body exposure to the sun. So it can penetrate clothing. It can penetrate the human body, some of the functions of sunlight. Now, we're totally... I am walking on unsteady ground because I didn't read the data that he was sighting, but I was struck by the observation itself that, oh, I don't have to strip down and get on the private deck in the back of my house to take a sun bath. I can just be in the sun doing whatever, and I'll get some benefit from it.

[00:25:16.779] - Dr. Lemanne

Well, that's really interesting. A lot of what the sun produces, we can't see with our eyes. So we assume that what's blocked to vision, for instance, by a shadow or something like that, is all there is to it. But if you're in an airplane during a a really severe sun, solar storm or something like that, the airplane will divert from the Arctic areas where the effect is usually largest. The effect is largest up there. That's why we see the auroras up there and those kinds of things. But it's not the aurora, again, it's the sun itself. The airlines will divert flights, and they do this several times a year during an intense solar flare or storm to protect the passengers, but not so much the passengers, but the flight crew who are exposed to a lot of solar radiation due to their continuous daily flight patterns. So yes, these are real things. They certainly go through the body of the airplane into the crew and anybody else Who's in there? When you fly over the Arctic, you're getting, just on a normal day, I believe, not even on a solar max day, you're getting the equivalent of maybe a chest X-ray in radiation exposure.

[00:26:32.799] - Dr. Lemanne

Sure. So, yeah, that's another topic. Small amounts of radiation exposure actually may, and some people be salutatory. It may cause a hormetic response that then hardens the organism against further radiation exposure. So it may be just like going for a jog. The next time you have to walk up a hill or something, you're better at it because you've stressed yourself. So radiation exposure at low levels is something that's very, very interesting. And I think nobody has great answers about that yet. And it's a very rich field. It's not all bad.

[00:27:10.939] - Dr. Gordon

It is not all bad, which is true about everything. But these solar storms have me. These solar intensities that a lot of people aren't even aware of that can have such prolonged effects that somebody could be born at the time of a solar storm and evidently have something compromised so that 60 years later, they die before their kids they went to school with who were a few years earlier, they die with all the kids who died in their class.

[00:27:44.179] - Dr. Lemanne

I think a lot of it is vitamin D. But you know what? We're talking about the latitude of disease. And I don't think that's all vitamin D. I think it is sleep disruption. I think people at higher latitudes, and both Northern and Southern high latitudes, close to the poles, have sleep disruption throughout the year. And if you think about it, at the equator, there's only one season. There's just one season. And by mission that the day and night lengths are stable all year, approximately 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness. And there, what's interesting is people go to bed at about 8: 30, a couple of hours after darkness, sun sets at 6: 00 and rises at 6: 00, and they get up at 5: 30, year round. So that's nine hours in bed, if you add that up, and it's very stable. And what are we finding out Now, as more and more people are using wearable trackers, we're finding out that sleep time consistency is more important for health, including especially cancer risk and cancer survival, than is the length of time you spend in bed and even the length of time you spend asleep.

[00:29:11.259] - Dr. Lemanne

Now, the length of time you spend asleep is really important, but that's not as important as the parts of sleep that you enter each night.

[00:29:20.279] - Dr. Gordon

And I think so my number one rule to people, because looking at brain health, I very much care about the length, quality, components, and consistency of sleep. And people say, Okay, well, am I sleep-summes? What do I do? And the number one recommendation is you get up at the same time absolutely every day. Okay, you can vary it by 30 minutes, but You get up at the same time every day. And that's what's interesting is these people getting up a little bit before dawn year round would be following that rule, which sets the stage for having all good sleep components.

[00:30:05.179] - Dr. Lemanne

So, yeah. And the reason that they can get up before dawn year round is because their dawn never changes. Yeah. And here we're at what? 42? Latitude 42, I think. Is that right? I have to look it up. But There's a huge swing. Huge swing. Huge swings. And I found them... That's one of my difficulties is I have a hard time going to bed at the same time every night. And I have to really work at it. I have to say, lights out. I do like to get up at 5: 30. I naturally like to get up then. But I have to tell myself at 8: 30, lights out, and I often fail at that. But 30 minutes is You can measure the increase in cancer starting at 30 minutes of changes from day to day in your bedtime.

[00:30:56.819] - Dr. Gordon

So if you are cognizant of this as you are, and adhering to this as you are and probably-Trying to adhere to this. It's tough. Yeah, I bet it is. But I assume you use supports. I definitely sleeping in the summer more than the winter or during a full moon time in the winter, I wear an eye mask to bed every night. So all night, my eyes think it's dark, no matter what time I go to bed and what time I get up. I do try to get up at the same time every day. But do you have blackout curtains or do you wear- I have tight curtains that keep the light out.

[00:31:40.639] - Dr. Lemanne

I wear, I've always worn my entire adult life, I wear a watch cap that I pull down over my eyes. That's how I sleep. And I also use silicone ear plugs, and I keep the room cool and dark and quiet and all of that. But I do sometimes look at my phone in in the last half hour. Yeah, before I go to sleep. Oh my goodness. I'll check that last email. And yeah, I've had a rough time with that. I need to be more mindful. I'm pretty good with saying no to social invitations that would interrupt my schedule, basically because I will go to something that's super important. But general things that could be done some other time, will not go if it's going to interfere with my 8: 30.

[00:32:35.239] - Dr. Gordon

8: 30 is very early, but so is 5: 30.

[00:32:39.619] - Dr. Lemanne

I need nine hours in bed to get my eight and a half hours of good sleep. And I've always been like that. That's just me, and I know that. And I can read it I use Whoop, and I can read it on my Whoop.

[00:32:51.079] - Dr. Gordon

I've heard that Whoop... Are you the one who told me that the accuracy of sleep tracking aura has always been the best wearable? But I think you told me Whoop is better now.

[00:33:01.499] - Dr. Lemanne

Well, they're all improving by leaps and bounds, they are so much better than they were even just two, three years ago. And they are surpassing in-hospital sleep lab tests, possibly because who wants to go to a hospital and sleep in a hospital sleep lab? That's probably not conducive to really great sleep. It's probably better to sleep in your own bed. But yes, they're really excellent. And in cancer, we see such disorganized sleep, and you can't tell if your sleep is disorganized or if you're missing certain phases of sleep.

[00:33:38.659] - Dr. Gordon

Oh, no, you can't tell.

[00:33:39.949] - Dr. Lemanne

I will tell you that I have most patients, the average patient will come in and say, Oh, no, no, Dr. Lamont, I don't need to measure my sleep. I sleep just perfectly well, and I have to talk them into it. He'll humor me, take this band home and let's just look at it. And over and over again, we will see huge huge deficiencies, really near death type deficiencies in these patients, even though they're in bed and they feel like they're asleep for eight hours a night, they're missing huge chunks of slow wave sleep or rem sleep or typically both. You want to get 90 minutes of each of those each night, minimum. And I would say most of my patients, when we actually track, they're getting something like 13 minutes, 15 minutes, just horrible numbers. And once we know, then we can fix it. It's like, okay, we're going to try melatonin. We're going to have you skip that little sip of wine at night. We're going to get you out in the morning light, and maybe we're going to try some ashwagandha, whatever it is, or a cold plunge, anything. But we can then see what works for them.

[00:34:53.119] - Dr. Gordon

Do you check people's oxygenation?

[00:34:56.519] - Dr. Lemanne

The Wup does, actually. And a lot of these trackers now check oxygen saturation. They're not great, but they're helpful. And if you see a huge dip, that's very, very telling and important. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:35:13.239] - Dr. Gordon

There is a new device that I'm going to look up, and I'll put a note here that is a really good oxygenation tracker similar to the kind that you would get. Because pretty much everybody for vaguely competent patients does sleep studies at home. The local respiratory treatment company has insurance-covered sleep apnea tests that you do at home that are just a little bracelet and finger that does oxygenation and heart rate so that you can see, Oh, my goodness, your oxygenation went down and then your heart rate went up, and then your oxygenation went back up and to parallel those together. But I think I'm going to start because we loan most of our patients. We do loan out an aura ring. But I think getting oxygenation is really important because sleep apnea can hide as much as insufficient deep sleep.

[00:36:16.899] - Dr. Lemanne

Well, now, does aura Is there something currently, the latest models, doesn't that actually check oxygen saturation?

[00:36:22.609] - Dr. Gordon

It does oxygen saturation, but not at all in the same detail that you get when you're using this device that a patient just told me about, and I'm going to include in these notes, but something you know. That sounds great. Yeah, you can do your EKG. You see all these advertisements on television for this device called CARDIA, where you can put your fingers on it and gives you a really good EKG. I had a patient recently who saw a cardiologist, and the cardiologist recommended she get a CARDIA so that she can look at her own.

[00:36:52.979] - Dr. Lemanne

Well, my Whoop does that. It will take my EKG on demand now. Wow. Yeah.

[00:36:58.579] - Dr. Gordon

Just from one site. It's just on your wrist.

[00:37:02.299] - Dr. Lemanne

Yeah, Yeah, just one lead. But still for a rhythm, it's good.

[00:37:06.599] - Dr. Gordon

Yes. And I think everybody's getting a little more amenable and used to the idea that you don't have to come to my hospital to get this tested if there are really legitimate ways to do it at home. So we want stages of sleep or it attracts restfulness. So sometimes I think I've had a good night's sleep or I've had enough of those stages, but I've not been restful. I've been awake too many times during the night.

[00:37:34.999] - Dr. Lemanne

Well, yeah. So I think that sounds like a great idea. I think maybe what I'll do, what do you think of this? If I get a patient who has a really horrible score on their sleep tracker, I would then move on to check their oxygenation and see how we're doing.

[00:37:49.559] - Dr. Gordon

So if they're local, the company is Lynn Care, covered by insurance, and you just roll out sleep apnea. And they track it for a couple of nights. And they'll even mention, no, their oxygen was great, but their heart rate was really weird. You should get any Yeah. Get a heart rate monitor.

[00:38:06.659] - Dr. Lemanne

Yeah. So yeah, and it really... The sleep is probably the main thing. Nobody's ever asked me this, but if somebody asked me, how can I make sure that I get answer, which would nobody ever ask that horrible question. I don't know. Maybe we want to bleep that out of this conversation. But seriously, what my answer would be is to think you're sleeping well and not look at it, and you're actually sleeping pretty poorly.

[00:38:39.899] - Dr. Gordon

Have you heard the trick that this longevity, a billionaire, billionaire, I think, Brian Johnson is spending ootles of money to try and really reverse his aging, not just prevent death, but reverse his aging. You know about Brian Johnson?

[00:38:56.979] - Dr. Lemanne

Yes, I've heard of him. Yes.

[00:38:58.109] - Dr. Gordon

So his secret hack to having the best sleep of his life. Have you heard it?

[00:39:05.919] - Dr. Lemanne

I think it's having dinner at 11: 30 AM. Yes.

[00:39:09.069] - Dr. Gordon

He stops eating by noon.

[00:39:12.999] - Dr. Lemanne

Yeah. And there are studies that show that this is One of the best hacks to improve your sleep. And I was looking into, when do we start eating huge big suppers? And that was the biggest meal of the day. And it was started in the industrial revolution. So in In more peasant times, when people worked on subsistence farms, the biggest meal of the day was noon. And in the morning, you didn't have time for a lot of breakfast because you had to go do all your farm chores. But once the milk was milked and the crops picked, the person who was doing the cooking, usually the wives, could get together and cook all morning. And by early afternoon, the people who were working in the fields would come in and have their big meal. And that was the main I mean, you might have a snack in the morning and a snack at night. But lunch or midday was the big meal. And then when we suddenly worked in factories, 8, 12, 16 hours a day, you ate when you got home.

[00:40:18.119] - Dr. Gordon

Right. You had a little snack at your station or something like that. A coffee break.

[00:40:22.149] - Dr. Lemanne

Well, that's another thing. A coffee break was invented in Denver, I think between World War I and World War II. We'll talk about that some other time.

[00:40:31.219] - Dr. Gordon

To facilitate industrial output. We've learned recently in recent years the importance of not eating for three or four hours before bed, because if calories are still going into your brain, your brain won't do its normal house cleaning the glymphatic system in the first few hours of sleep. And so that's my leverage and argument I use with people who are cognitive patients. But it's true. I never thought if it's going to interrupt your sleep, if it's going to interrupt your sleep, for a cognitive patient or not, it's evidently not very good for your cancer risk.

[00:41:07.079] - Dr. Lemanne

Well, absolutely. So the later your dinner, the higher your risk of cancer and the higher your risk if you have cancer, of dying of cancer.

[00:41:16.519] - Dr. Gordon

So I think that sentence really deserves repeating?

[00:41:22.479] - Dr. Lemanne

The later your supper, the higher your risk of getting cancer. And if you have cancer, the higher your risk of dying of cancer. And that's because It eating late interferes with sleep, which is your number one protection against cancer. And I'll say that again. Sleep is your number one protection against cancer.

[00:41:44.139] - Dr. Gordon

Well, wait a minute. I thought it was my vitamin D or my physical exercise.

[00:41:47.799] - Dr. Lemanne

I think sleep trumps them all.

[00:41:49.659] - Dr. Gordon

Wow. Sleep is your number one protection against cancer. Good sleep. Good sleep. Good, consistent sleep. Yeah.

[00:41:57.479] - Dr. Lemanne

Wow. And there's a change in a one An hour variability in bedtime increases all cause mortality risk by 22 %. All cause mortality, a one hour variability, meaning you go to bed at 9: 00 PM one night and 8: 00 PM the next night.

[00:42:16.699] - Dr. Gordon

Oh, my goodness. Okay.

[00:42:18.939] - Dr. Lemanne

And in fact, you want to hear something really weird?

[00:42:23.719] - Dr. Gordon

That is all really weird. I am reeling inside my head. But yeah, I'll take one more thing.

[00:42:29.389] - Dr. Lemanne

Okay. Time zones. So there's 24 time zones on Earth, right? Okay, because there's 24 hours in the day and the Earth's divided up into each time zone gets 1 hour. If you live on the western edge of a particular time zone, your risk of cancer, death, is higher than if you live in the Eastern edge of that time zone. And that's because the difference in the light exposure at the same time. And it really makes me cringe when I think about how we play with that so, so casually, like daylight savings time.

[00:43:11.899] - Dr. Gordon

Oh, I hate daylight savings time.

[00:43:14.209] - Dr. Lemanne

That's a terrible health hazard that needs to go away.

[00:43:17.379] - Dr. Gordon

I mean, the rate of death in the few weeks following the adjustment forward or back is devastating. I mean, heart attacks. People die. Yeah, people die.

[00:43:28.719] - Dr. Lemanne

Because of daylight savings time changes, and it's just an hour.

[00:43:33.819] - Dr. Gordon

So just to be very selfish here, are we at the... We must be near the Western edge of our time zone.

[00:43:41.519] - Dr. Lemanne

You know, I haven't looked. Where does the mountain time zone start?

[00:43:45.339] - Dr. Gordon

Yeah, I think it starts like a state and a half to our east. So that makes me think that we're near the western edge of it, but we're going to look when we go home. But EGADs.

[00:43:58.039] - Dr. Lemanne

So what do you tell your patients about circadian rhythm and their overall health and longevity and brain health, cognitive health.

[00:44:09.439] - Dr. Gordon

I do have the same number one goal that you do, that they have in as far as the use of the MedBed in terms of sleep habits, that they have good sleep and that it be really consistent. And I do think some variations of cognitive behavioral therapy and gentle supplementation can really do that for people. And If you look at the literature, people who keep what I think of as farmer's hours, we go to bed, you're better than I, you go to bed at 8: 30. Well, am I impressed? My hours are more like 9: 30 or 10: 00 to 6: 00. I don't need quite as much sleep as you do, but I like seven and a half or sometimes, rarely eight hours. I tell them that keeping those hours and doing it with the sun is very good protection for their immune systems in general, but I didn't think of it so far as cancer. I was just thinking of vitamin D and not getting sick or something, and for their brain health, really for their brain health. I've learned one thing recently about something to do with bone health. But I will say that two of the smartest people I know do not keep farmer's hours.

[00:45:31.879] - Dr. Gordon

They work till 4: 00 in the morning and they sleep till noon. And so it is important to remember that maybe there are outliers, but if you don't know that you're a brilliant night owl, odds are that you are much better keeping farmer's hours, going to bed in the dark at least three hours after you have finished your last calories of the day. There's a suggestion that a lot of doctors give, Oh, you wake up a little bit in the In the middle of the night, just have a protein and carb snack right before you go to bed.

[00:46:08.239] - Dr. Lemanne

Do you know that if you eat something between 1: 00 and 2: 00 AM in the morning, your risk of cancer goes way up. You don't want to do that. Do not eat in the middle of the night. Do not wake up and go have a snack if cancer is one of your concerns.

[00:46:23.049] - Dr. Gordon

So I haven't actually seen the data, but I would say based on what I know about brain cleaning systems, that if you eat in the hour before you go to bed, I bet your risk of dementia goes way And you know what people need to do. So in general, I recommend people don't snack. But I say, oh, Dawn, it's three o'clock in the afternoon and you want a snack, have your snack. But tomorrow, eat a lot bigger lunch. So that you break your snacking tendency. Each individual snack isn't bad, but a tendency to, oh, eat six little meals a day is a crazy idea.

[00:46:59.739] - Dr. Lemanne

Oh, well, that's a whole other podcast.

[00:47:01.969] - Dr. Gordon

That's a whole other podcast. But what I've recently learned about circadian rhythm. So here's another interesting observation of the importance, the central importance of muscle mass. That working on your muscle mass, greater muscle mass correlates with greater brain volume and greater longevity. There are a lot of correlation type observations, and there are some intervention type trials to that effect. But it is really good to have good muscles. And to do that, you need to eat enough protein. And we've talked about creatine, and creatine is a continually evolving subject. I have something to add to what we learned from Andy Baxter when he was on last time. Still a work progress about whether or not you can have caffeine and creatine near each other. But you need to build more... You need to do resistance exercise. One of the observations about building greater muscle mass is that as we age, all these little things fall apart a little bit as you age. You eat the same diet, but your blood sugar goes up and you get a little fatter. Even though you're doing, you swear the same thing you were doing and eating 10 years ago.

[00:48:30.239] - Dr. Gordon

And you also don't have the same muscle mess that you did 10 years ago. And that's all metabolic resistance of aging and anabolic resistance of aging. You can eat the same amount of protein, do the same amount of weight lifting as you did 10 years ago, and that's all metabolic resistance of aging and anabolic resistance of aging. You can eat the same amount of protein, do the same amount of weight lifting as you did 10 years ago, and it won't work as you get older. Okay, long introduction to what I've learned recently, which is at my age, I want to do some weight lifting and resistance exercise to build up my muscles. There is a time of day that's best for me to do that. Did you know that?

[00:49:04.699] - Dr. Lemanne

I think so.

[00:49:06.699] - Dr. Gordon

What would you say would be the best time to overcome anabolic resistance?

[00:49:10.349] - Dr. Lemanne

I believe it's late afternoon.

[00:49:12.539] - Dr. Gordon

You are right. Late afternoon or evening. I've always felt guilty for going out to my weight room at 4: 00 in the afternoon. I think, Oh, this is crazy. Why didn't I do it in the morning when it was fresher? But later afternoon and even evening, which I would say, don't do that. It'll mess with your sleep because it raises your body temperature too much. But yeah, late afternoon is a better time to overcome the anabolic resistance.

[00:49:37.859] - Dr. Lemanne

So the hormone levels are in the right place for building muscle at that time.

[00:49:44.359] - Dr. Gordon

For building muscle at that age. And a little bit of it is that we have greater insulin resistance as the day goes on. So our insulin levels, our sugar levels and insulin levels can creep up a little bit. And you need...

[00:49:58.219] - Dr. Lemanne

Oh, and that's what you want with exercise.

[00:50:00.219] - Dr. Gordon

Yes. So I have learned from Stacey Sims. Now, if she were available, I'd love to have her on the podcast. Do you know her work? I don't. So she is, I believe, from South Africa or Australia, something like that, this freckled, very youthful-looking physiologist for aging women. And she wrote a book called The Next Level, which is helping women enter into, perhaps for the first time, the concept of resistance training and muscle building, things like that. And she says, maybe different for men, but for postmenopausal or perimenopausal women, you need to eat not just protein and creatine, but you need to have carbs, perhaps before and definitely after your exercise, if you want that exercise to have done its good work in your body. And that's because it's going to elicit an insulin response. And insulin is a muscle-growing hormone.

[00:51:01.119] - Dr. Lemanne

Okay. Wow. That's That's fascinating. Yeah. So there's all these rhythms.

[00:51:07.379] - Dr. Gordon

All these rhythms.

[00:51:08.969] - Dr. Lemanne

We got rhythm, huh?

[00:51:10.469] - Dr. Gordon

We got rhythm. And it's enough to just master dealing with our own sleep-wake cycles. But now I want to look into solar storms?

[00:51:21.339] - Dr. Lemanne

Well, there's nothing you can do about that. But one of the things that I'm curious about and I've been thinking about is, is it better to time my sleep-wake cycles with sunrise and sunset here at this northern-ish latitude, or is it better to keep it the same year in, year out and assume a sleep-wake cycle that would be more fitting Were I to be in a place where the sun rose at 6: 00 and set at 6: 00 every single day? I'm going to think about that. Right now, I've been keeping it with the ladder. And I get up in the morning, if If the sun isn't up yet, then I will sit in front of my light box. And if it's a different season and I can go outdoors and get some daylight at the time that I wake up, then I'll do that. But it definitely changes throughout the year.

[00:52:19.819] - Dr. Gordon

You know, that interesting is because I haven't been rowing as much recently, but those years where I was rowing very intensively, I was out in the sun all the time. I was outside when the sun came up. We'd start with headlamps, but be out there for that morning sun, which is so helpful. So I do a fair amount of genetic testing of my patients and hypothesizing principles that might enhance their better health. And one of the genes, pairs that I look at, are the melatonin receptor genes. And I call them the Italy genes, or I could call them the farmer genes, because if If you have variants in one or the other melatonin receptor, you should really keep farmers' hours. And if you don't, with one of the genes, you're more likely to get dementia. If you don't get a sleep-wake cycle that is in harmony with the outside world so that you make some endogenous melatonin, if you disrespect that, you're more likely to get dementia. And the other melatonin gene has to do with metabolic health. You're more likely to get diabetes. And I think of if you have no variants in those genes, your melatonin receptors are happy, no matter whether you're going to bed and getting up in the light or the dark.

[00:53:49.579] - Dr. Gordon

And you can eat dinner at 11: 00. So that's why I call them your Italy Hours and be okay with it. But if you have two receptors in those, two variants in the melatonin receptor genes, you'd be better. So I I wonder if that could be taken into account to perhaps answer your question for yourself and inspire an experiment.

[00:54:11.299] - Dr. Lemanne

Well, I have ancestry pretty equally between sub-Saharan Africa, Equatorial regions, and Norway.

[00:54:17.479] - Dr. Gordon

So I think Italy might be just the place. Right. Or you might really be a mixture of the whole ball of wax. You pick up the of the whole ball of wax and bypass the limitations.

[00:54:37.899] - Dr. Lemanne

Oh, that'd be nice.

[00:54:38.709] - Dr. Gordon

Wouldn't that be good? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:54:40.419] - Dr. Lemanne

Like either the midnight sun or 12 on, 12 off. Either way, it's going to work.

[00:54:44.779] - Dr. Gordon

Maybe either way, it's going to work. Right. Yeah.

[00:54:49.219] - Dr. Lemanne

Well, as always, just a fascinating talk with you.

[00:54:54.259] - Dr. Gordon

Yeah, I think I learned a lot.

[00:54:56.539] - Dr. Lemanne

I've got to go work on my 8: 30 PM.

[00:55:00.439] - Dr. Gordon

So lights out. Lights out. I admire that. Yes. Great talking to you.

[00:55:09.259] - Dr. Lemanne

Always fun.

[00:55:10.619] - Dr. Gordon

Always fun. Thanks for the suggestion. This is a great topic. All right. See you next time. See you next time. Bye-bye.

[00:55:16.319] - Dr. Lemanne

If you haven't already Katie, please take a moment to subscribe. Your simple click is not abstract. It's not anonymous. To us, it's very, very real. It helps us reach more patients and physicians to challenge the old ways of thinking about health and to keep these evidence-based conversations going. Hitting that subscribe button actually makes a huge, huge difference. And thank you.

[00:55:46.119] - Dr. Gordon

You have been listening to the Le Monde Gordon podcast, where Docs Talk Shop.

[00:55:52.079] - Dr. Lemanne

For podcast transcripts, episode notes and links, and more, please visit the podcast website at docstalkshop.

[00:56:01.119] - Dr. Gordon

Com.

[00:56:01.609] - Dr. Lemanne

Happy eavesdropping.

[00:56:11.399] - Dr. Lemanne

Everything presented in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice. No doctor-patient relationship is established or implied. If you have a health or a medical concern, see a qualified professional promptly.

[00:56:28.299] - Dr. Gordon

We make no warranty as to the accuracy, adequency, validity, reliability, or completeness of the information presented in this podcast or found on the podcast website.

[00:56:40.139] - Dr. Lemanne

We accept no liability for loss or damage of any kind, resulting from your use of the podcast or the information presented therein. Your use of any information presented in this podcast is at your own risk.

[00:56:54.859] - Dr. Gordon

Again, if you have any medical concerns, see your own provider or another qualified health professional promptly.

[00:57:01.719] - Dr. Lemanne

You must not take any action based on information in this podcast without first consulting your own qualified medical professional.

[00:57:10.379] - Dr. Lemanne

Everything on this podcast, including music, dialog, and ideas, is copyrighted by Docs Talk Shop.

[00:57:19.139] - Dr. Gordon

Docs Talk Shop is recorded at Freeman Sound Studio in Ashland, Oregon.