Dr. Jack Kruse: "I want you to think about cave people. When Neanderthals started to live in caves, […] they began to live inside and they put animal skins on them. What was the effect of that on them? It blocked sunlight from melanin, and yet they had 125 grams more [points at brain].
"What is one of the things that we started to see in human history 65,000 years ago? They started to make cave paintings on the wall. You know where you get cave paintings from? Dopamine. Because guess what? When you block UV light your cells become hypoxic. You break down melanin to dopa and dopa to dopamine. So guess where creativity comes from. It's a cognitive devolution. How do you like that?"
Mike Vera: "That's mind-blowing because I actually wanted to ask you, I noticed I am most creative at like two in the morning when I know I'm kind of disrupting my circadian. . ."
Dr. Jack Kruse: "Now you know why. Because you're creating hypoxia. But you know what you're doing? You're destroying melanin in the process to create dopa to create dopamine. Dopamine is what does that. […]
"But you don't realize that Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, all the things that humans did in the Renaissance, is a function of actually destroying their melanin. You know what the difference was? Remember what I said to Rick and Huberman at the the foot of Michelangelo statue. Michelangelo's statue is naked and the sunlight hit it. And I said what's the difference between perfection and my fat ass?
"I realized it was the light. I realized when you're in the light, how do you charge the battery? The way you charge the battery is with melanin. That means the way melanin is degraded is a big part of the story. What's the name of the pathway that Rockefeller University found and tried to bury from us? The leptin-melanocortin pathway. […]
"When I stood and looked at Michelangelo's David, I realized there had to be a mechanism in us. Not only do we use light, but how we capture it. Then once we capture it, how it's used further. It turns out the melanopsin system, which is what you asked me about, is one of the ways in which we use light. And that system is codified in that one gene called POMC, proopiomelanocortin.
"You begin to realize that that gene is the target of the leptin receptor in the hypothalamus, which is part of the diencephalon. […] They're all connected in the same part of the mammalian brain, and that's been true for 300 million years. There's proof that this pathway is in us. The mammalian dive reflex is one of them. Every mammal on the planet has it. The reason it has it is tied to this pathway.
"When you begin to understand what this pathway is physically doing with light, water, and magnetism, I promise you, […] you will become the wisest mammal you ever could imagine. And you will begin to see a story unfold for you that is the greatest story on the planet: how we really work. And I promise you it will transfix you, just like it's transfixed me. Because this story is unbelievable. The collateral effects, the implications, the twists and turns. […]
"Creativity is not a positive event from evolution; it actually is a negative event."
Dr. Jack Kruse with Mike Vera @ 01:30:32–01:34:58 & 01:38:58–01:39:06 https://youtu.be/CVHZshSyiXo&t=5432