Dr Jack Kruse: "I don't really look at evolution as a good or bad process. When I make the comment about a cognitive devolution, Sara, I want to be clear about this. As a brain surgeon, I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. Hopefully I made that point to you when I tried to get you to think about cave paintings and Michelangelo.
"Without us wearing clothes, what's the collateral damage? We don't get Michelangelo's David. We don't get the Sistine Chapel. We don't get, whether you like it or not, Rothko. We don't get some of the modern artists, Kandinsky or things like that. Some people may say, 'Well, I don't like that anyway.' Well, that's OK.
"What I'm basically saying, that's really what Rick Rubin's book is about. It's about the catalog of what's possible in the real estate of the human frontal lobes. Because that's really what separates us from chimps, and melanin is what created that."
Dr Jack Kruse with Dr Sara Pugh on 2023-05-11 @ 01:34:59–01:35:57 https://youtu.be/cy8cByk8H00&t=5699
Dr Jack Kruse: "If you really read my last blog, what did I say creativity was a function of? It's a regressive evolution. I believe that we became more creative just by wearing clothes. Everybody looks at creativity as a positive thing, like Rick does. I don't.
"I think it's actually shows us the devolution between Neanderthals to us. Neanderthals had 125 grams more tissue in their head. We have less. And what happened with Neanderthals when they left the East African Rift? They went to Europe, your latitude. What did they do? They started wearing skins. What's the first time we ever saw human creativity, ever? Cave paintings, when Neanderthals and humans both lived on the planet. That's where artwork came from. It came from a lower dopamine state from our original state.
"If you understand what I just said, are there levels north (or rostral) of human evolution? The answer is yes. I believe since Neanderthals, I believe since last 25,000 years, humans have been devolving. We have changed our frontal lobe's abilities. Most of the thing that you find interesting in the Louvre, in science and in art.
"There's a reason, Sara, they call them the Dark Ages. Remember, you're a UK girl, so you can go tomorrow into the museums. I hope you do this.
"When you go I want you to do it with this eye. Look on the wall about how artists painted with light in 1200s vs how they painted with it all the way up to Monet. You'll notice something startling. You'll also notice and have a new appreciation for Michelangelo and DaVinci's work. they were known as the artists that painted with light. Who was the first guy that innovated light? Rembrandt.
"You're going to start to see this story of that dopamine state. Then you're going to go back and look at those slides that I take from Alexander Wunsch and keep telling people look at the top: tyrosine, phenylalanine, T3, L-DOPA, melanin, dopamine and noradrenaline. What you're going to begin to realize from Noether's theorem, not only does that pathway work left to right, it works right to left.
"Right now you're a modern mammal, who your entire human existence, the entire history of humanity, has been lived when we're going the wrong way. How do you like that?"
Dr Jack Kruse with Dr Sara Pugh @ 01:20:15–01:22:58 https://youtu.be/cy8cByk8H00&t=4815
Dr Sara Pugh: "What's the real cause of bipolar disorder?"
[…]
Dr Jack Kruse: "Maybe I can give it to you like this. I want you to think about all human mental illness as a bowling alley. The two gutters on either side, one is depression, that's the low dopamine state. Schizophrenia is the other gutter, that's the high dopamine state that's released chaotically.
"Bipolar disorder is in the middle but closer to schizophrenia. The reason for that is defects on the retinohypothalamic tract that go to the habenular nucleus, that then get relayed from the hypothalamus and the thalamus into the orbital frontal gyri, to affect the reward tracts. That's actively what happens. The single big effect is that tract is out of whack with the oscillations of the same tract that goes from the RPGs into the suprachiasmatic nucleus.
"To get bipolar disorder you have to have the hard tract (that I just gave you) plus you have to have the circadian mechanism completely broken. What people don't realize that the initial part from the retina into the hypothalamus is actually the same tract. Remember that the retinohypothalamic tract synapses in the SCN and the habenular nucleus. They're both the same; it means the gunshot is the same.
"But to get different diseases, what happens if one tract is out and the other one's not? OK? Or what happens if they're both out? That explains the difference. OK?
"With schizophrenia, it's the third tract, it's all those tracts that go from the thalamus that radiate up into the frontal lobes, they all have to be damaged. What you're basically seeing, I use the analogy in the podcast that it's almost like a train station. Which part of the train station is damaged on the line? You know that a line in the Underground in the UK has 20–30 stations. Well, what I'm saying to you is every mental disorder is damage to a different station along the tract from the eye (or the skin) all the way through.
"I haven't talked about the skin too much, because understanding from the eye is easier. But believe it or not, do I think there is an issue between the eye and the skin when you give it a mismatch, like just by wearing clothes you're much more likely to actually have a mental illness."
Dr Jack Kruse with Dr Sara Pugh @ 01:17:29–01:20:15 https://youtu.be/cy8cByk8H00&t=4649
Dr Jack Kruse: "Most people don't realize why this story of autism is really important for people to understand because there's another physics part. This will probably be something that will tickle you because it brings you back to the magnetic part of the story.
"The human thalamus is where the alpha wave in the EEG comes from. OK? That wave is 7.83 Hz. That mimics the heartbeat of the earth. So via molecular resonance, the heartbeat of the earth that's created from the cathode ray of the sun hitting the anode with the magnetosphere around it (remember that that sun keeps magma flowing in the planet that creates Faraday's idea of a magnetic field), the magnetic field that's how it's informing your brain how things work through this thalamic relay.
"The caudal end of this retinohypothalamic tract, this story, the answers and parts are all there. This is the reason why defective sleep always comes, if you're on the rostral end it comes with alterations in vitamin A, the distal end it comes with problems related to the alpha wave. What sits in the middle of that pathway? I actually told you that in this podcast already: ATP, ADP, AMP to adenosine. Adenosine is the middle part.
"What stimulates adenosine? Red light. Bright huge intense red light stimulates adenosine. And the reason why, if there's any doctors that listen to this, they'll be stunned at this.
"On our crash carts for ATLS and ACLS (I'm talking about physicians), when somebody gets SVT (which is supraventricular tachycardia, that's a bad rhythm from an alien DC electric current in your heart), guess what the drug is you give? Adenosine. That tells the clinician immediately they have a problem with either vitamin A in the brain or they have a problem with the Schumann resonance in the thalamus. But none of them realize that."
Dr Sara Pugh: "Wow."
Dr Jack Kruse: "Exactly! It's kind of cool stuff."
Dr Jack Kruse with Dr Sara Pugh @ 01:15:26–01:17:25 https://youtu.be/cy8cByk8H00&t=4526
Dr Sara Pugh: "[Your blog] says the autism rates are highest in the whole world in California. Yet you'd think it's the most educated, the most healthy and the most wealthy."
Dr Jack Kruse: "Well the reason why it's like that, […] the thesis that I laid out in that podcast, basically that the retinohypothalamic tract is the gun that shoots at melanin targets deep in the brain. I made the comment that anything with the name thalamus in it is a target of the retinohypothalamic tract.
"Well the distal end (in neurosurgery we call things caudal and rostral, rostral being the head, caudal being the tail), the tail end of the retinohypothalamic tract is the human thalamus. What does the human thalamus do? That's where all five senses congregate. They're all there. That's the defect that's in autism.
"What happens in the thalamus in the embryo? The thalamus undergoes what we call neurulation. Neurulation creates the hemispheres above. When you understand autism functionally, it's a defect in POMC biology that eliminates melanin somewhere in that tract so that neurulation is defective. This is the reason why the kids have a huge problem with sensation: being touched, sounds, bright lights, anything like that. […]
"You don't have a sense in your body that doesn't use melanin. When I told people in the blogs in the quantum engineering theory that you have to use light to hear, people couldn't believe it until I showed them a picture of the cochlea and then showed them papers that said I was right.
"Same thing is true with smell. That's why Turing is more right than the guys […] that got the Nobel Prize for the lock and key mechanism for smell. Same thing is true with Pacinian corpuscles and touch. Same thing is true with any sense. Melanin is the key semiconductor for sensation.
"When you understand that autism is a sensory deprivation, or how shall I say, almost a synkinesia or an akinesia of sensory abilities. Most people never take the next step where they go back and say, 'Well neurulation only occurs from the thalamus. So that's the reason why the defects are present between different parts of the hemisphere. That's the reason why there's a spectrum, because wherever the melanin defect is, is where the kid's going to be autistic the most.'"
Dr Jack Kruse with Dr Sara Pugh @ 01:12:18–01:14:16 https://youtu.be/cy8cByk8H00&t=4338
Dr Sara Pugh: "I have a few [supplements] left that I like, like deuterium-depleted water, and I suppose bioidentical hormones like the sex ones or the other few things I think people might need when they're older. But then I just start to see through. And I feel bad for suggesting it to people. That's why the nonsense needs to stop."
Dr. Jack Kruse: "I can't say that I disagree with that. I would tell you I think I said in the Rubin podcast that the only two supplements I can get behind are sunlight and deuterium-depleted water. Why? Because both of them are natural. Mitochondria makes it and the sun is the power source, as Rick likes to call in his book 'The Source,' that controls the whole show inside of ourselves."
Dr Jack Kruse with Dr Sara Pugh @ 01:10:02–01:10:45 https://youtu.be/cy8cByk8H00&t=4202
Dr Sara Pugh: "Also, none of it's on humans anyway. Because all the sirtuin studies are on mice, and mice are nocturnal as well. That's the other thing that really annoys me."
Dr Jack Kruse: "Just think about what we talked about earlier in the podcast. Not only are they nocturnal and they have different retinas, but remember what I said about mTOR.
"mTOR, it works between yeast and primates. Where does it stop? It stops at gorillas. OK? Doesn't mean anything you find in those lower mammals is the same.
"Now I want you to think about the magnitude of the implications I said. In the podcast, did you hear me use the word incalculable? How many mistakes are we making? if what I just said to you is true, you realize that everything in the nutrition literature should be thrown in the garbage, because it's all done on mammals that are not like us. Think about it. Not only are they studied in a blue-lit lab with electromagnetic radiation around them, but they don't have the epigenetic toolbox we have."
Dr Jack Kruse with Dr Sara Pugh @ 01:08:07–01:09:08 https://youtu.be/cy8cByk8H00&t=4087
Dr Sara Pugh: "What you've said has sort of stimulated lots of things in my mind. The first one, just to go back to the massive amount of millivolts that's held in a person. Do you believe in spontaneous human combustion? I know I'm bringing quite a lot of woo in, but then. . ."
Dr Jack Kruse: "No, I don't."
Dr Sara Pugh: "Because, I was just, when you said that I thought, 'I wonder if you know.' I know there was a big craze on it a long time ago and nobody proved it either way. When you said how much charge a human holds, my little brain thought, 'I wonder, you know.' I like dispelling myths. . ."
Dr Jack Kruse: "I will tell you this. Let me give you a spin on this. Maybe you'll like this better. I think that I just cause a spontaneous human combustion in your brain by telling you what I've just told you. Do I think that a thought is an endocrine secretion that is mitigated by VUV IR light, even though we're doing this over a Zoom call on the internet? Do I believe that I am capable of putting something through the melanin in your ears, the melanin in your nose, the melanin in your touch, the melanin in your eye, so that it tickles your orbital frontal gyri, and the melanin sheets in your head to say, 'You know, what he just said, I have a lot more questions?'
"Because guess what, Sara? That's how good science is done. In other words, you don't seek the answers. The answers you get lead you down to deeper rabbit holes. You start going, 'Huh.' So I think the more interesting thing is, is that you can sit across from me, we can have this discussion.
"I guess I'm going to change my answer. There is spontaneous human combustion in ideas, in our imagination, in the way we think about things. Why?
"Because what makes humans so amazing is that they can think about, they can see the world, like I'm looking right now my world, seeing two birds feeding on my feeder, seeing my dog right in front of me, and seeing my nurse sitting over there listening to what's going on.
"But at the same time in my imagination, I can imagine what the world should be that's not present today. I can take myself to a completely different place in the world inside my mind. I can imagine a different spot. I can imagine what the day is like today in the UK. I can imagine what the day is like today in El Salvador. I can imagine what Peter Attia or David Sabatini are going to think about listening to this podcast. I would imagine some of the physicists that you'll show this to, some of them will say this guy is an absolute quack. Or they're going to say this guy is probably one of the most interesting guys I've ever heard talk. Because you know what? I've never thought about science from this facet. And guess what? That's what we're talking about.
"Science is a big diamond. We all come at it from the facets that we're more facile with. What am I trying to say, Sara? Start getting familiar with the facets that you're not familiar with. Because guess what? Ultimately, they're going to lead you to spontaneous human combustion in your mind."
Dr Jack Kruse with Dr Sara Pugh @ 58:13–01:01:25 https://youtu.be/cy8cByk8H00&t=3493
Sara: "I was going to ask whether psychedelics are consciousness enhancers or whether it's just a big red herring?"
Dr. Jack Kruse: "Sara, […] my last blog, […] you saw Alexander Wunsch's slide that's in there about photoadaptation and amino acids? […] Did you see the one path in there? I want you to look at it a little closer. You know what it says there? Tryptamines. […] Guess what? That's where they come from. So it's a melanin story. so even the drug addicts that like this work and think that's where the evolution came from, it's still a melanin story! And they don't know it! […]
"The people that get a benefit from using mind-altering chemicals like DMT, psilocybin, all this stuff for mental disorders, that tells you you have a melanin renovation problem in your head. That's fundamentally what it means.
"I've been around people that have taken those medications and they've not had any of the effects that people who use it. Like when people go on these Ayahuasca trips. Like I've got a member who I'm thinking about right now who's told me, 'I will pay for your trip. I want to have an Ayahuasca trip with you, Jack.' And I told him I said, 'Dude. I don't think it's going to do anything to me.' Because he did it. He happens to be a doctor. I'm like, 'I don't think it's going to affect me because I think my redox in my head's pretty good. My redox in other parts of my body may not be so good, but I don't think it's going to have a huge effect.' I told them in my past when I was a kid, I had the opportunity to do mushrooms with my friends. This was when I was a teenager. Did nothing to me. Absolutely nothing.
"When I saw Alexander's slide and I saw that was there, I was hoping that people would begin to ask me the question you just asked me. Because this is another one of those aromatic amino acids that is being changed by this VUV light into things that allow us to do things we do.
"Do I believe, because you haven't asked this question but I know it's probably circulating your head, do I believe this is why psilocybin, ketamine, LSD, all those drugs can have effects for people that have dopamine problems in the frontal lobes? Absolutely! No question about it. Do I think it's one of the, I don't want to say solution, but I think is it a potential to help their symptoms? No question."
Dr. Jack Kruse with Dr. Sara Pugh @ 01:36:05–01:40:12 https://youtu.be/cy8cByk8H00&t=5825
Dr Zoë Harcombe, PhD: "Three things that I look at if somebody is saying, 'Well, my doctor is telling me to go on statins. I still don't want to go on statins. What ammunition have you got for me?'
"Number one, there's a great website called TheNNT.com and that stands for 'the number needed to treat.' Go on https://thennt.com/ , put in statins. Assuming you haven't had a heart attack, click on the number needed to treat for 'without pre-existing heart disease,' because you haven't had a heart attack, so you're not pre-existing heart disease.
"I happen to look at it this morning. […] The 'number needed to treat' is how many people do you need to have on a statin for five years for one of them to avoid something. So you need 150-odd people on a statin for five years for one to avoid a heart incident. Which could be angina, which kind of feels a little bit like indigestion.
"Then on the same website, they've got the number needed to harm. So how many people do we need to have on statins for five years for one of them to suffer harm? Now we only need 50 for one of them to probably get type 2 diabetes. I think it's only we need about 10 for one of them to suffer muscle damage, which is why people who go on statins talk about muscle pain, they become less active, which has other repercussions on health. So number one, TheNNT.
"Number two is Kristensen paper [ https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2014-007118 ] from I think it's 2015, where they said all of this stuff about, 'Oh, you need to be on statins because they're going to save your life.' Can't save many lives, we're all going to die. So the only question is by how much longer might you live if you're on a statin. So they did the analysis and said if you're on a statin for five years, you might live an extra three or four days. But you've got the side effects for the whole five years.
"Now if the doctor said that to your friend with the cholesterol of eight [mmol/L], 'Look buddy, I might be able to buy you three or four days, but I'm going to give you side effects for five years,' your friend immediately is going to say, 'No thanks, doc. I'll just quack on.'
"The third thing that's really helpful is to look at the patient information leaflet. So another confession: I used to work for a drug company and I was on the management team when I worked for the drug company. If we don't make the information in drugs accurate, by law, we could end up in jail. That's the way it works in the UK, anyway. We didn't want to end up in jail, so we made damn sure the packet information is accurate. If you know there's side effects then you need to put them in the package. […]
"Look at the patient information leaflet for statins. Look at the things that they report as common side effects. Like one in ten people are going to experience these, the chances are. There's some pretty serious stuff in there that you really don't want to get, particularly for that three to four days extra life.
"Those are the three pointers that I give people if you're still under pressure to take a statin, you maybe want a bit of ammunition to talk to your doctor about."
Dr Zoë Harcombe, PhD with Jerm @ 52:42—56:01 https://podbay.fm/p/jerm-warfare-the-battle-of-ideas/e/1739869806?t=3162
Jerm: "But Zoë, we also take in cholesterol, like in eggs."
Dr Zoë Harcombe, PhD: "Yeah. Makes no difference. And we've known that forever. The guy who started looking at this is called Ancel Keys. He did the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, which was published in 1950. Fantastic study. He then was kind of like man of the moment, and he wanted to stay being the man of the moment. He started looking at things like cholesterol, dietary fat, heart disease, particularly in men. He started off with the premise that cholesterol in food raises cholesterol in the blood. He concluded really quickly, and there's quite a famous quote of his, where he says, 'Cholesterol in food makes no difference to cholesterol in the blood, unless you're a rabbit or a chicken.' And we've known that all along.
"They did some animal experiments, and it does make a difference to a rabbit, because a rabbit is a herbivore, and cholesterol is only found in foods of animal origin. To give rabbits cholesterol you've got to feed them animal foods. But the bunny is a herbivore and you're feeding him something he can't digest. No wonder he's going to have some bad outcomes. It's got nothing to do with the cholesterol, and everything to do with the fact that you gave him food that he can't digest. It'd be like giving your cat (or a lion) a plant-based diet. You know, they're carnivores.
"So we've known for ages that cholesterol in food makes no difference to cholesterol in the blood. Don't worry about eggs, don't worry about animal foods, don't worry about full-fat dairy. That's where you find your nutrients. If your doctor is insistent that your cholesterol is too high, you can remind them that the normal distribution is where it is."
Dr Zoë Harcombe, PhD with Jerm @ 51:07—52:42 https://podbay.fm/p/jerm-warfare-the-battle-of-ideas/e/1739869806?t=3067
Dr Zoë Harcombe, PhD: "If you held cholesterol in your hand it would be like a vanilla-colored candle had sort of melted on your hand. It's a sort of creamy-colored waxy substance. That's kind of what it looks like. The chemical formula for cholesterol is C₂₇H₄₆O […]
"First thing people need to know about cholesterol is it is so utterly life vital. I can't even use any words to describe how important it is. It is so life vital that it is not what we call an essential nutrient. You don't have to consume it. It's so important that the body makes it for you. The body is not going to leave it to chance that you're going to get it in food. It's just too important.
"It is the essence of every single cell that we've got in the body. If I were just able to go [snaps fingers], 'Magic, you've got no cholesterol in your body right now,' you would be a puddle on the floor. You would have no structure, no form, no cells, no nothing. That's how important it is.
"It's one of the most important repair tools that we've got in the body. I think if it is anything it might be a marker. I have known people say, 'Oh, my cholesterol is higher than it was at my last test.' And I'll say, 'OK, given that it's a repair tool and the body makes it, the body is making more of it right now because there's something to repair. Tell me what you think there could be to repair. Have you had an injury? Have you been overexercising? Are you particularly stressed at the moment? What's going on in your life?'
"And 19 times out of 20 they'll tell you, 'Oh yeah, I sprained my ankle,' or 'I broke my leg,' or 'I've had this chest infection that I just couldn't shift,' or whatever. They'll tell you something. And I'll say, 'OK, your body is trying to repair itself. That's why your cholesterol has gone higher.'
"I've done a whole blog on just how inaccurate the cholesterol test is. […]
"The normal distribution for cholesterol will go anywhere from 2—3 mmol/L at the low end up to double figures at the higher end. […] Even though the actual norm for cholesterol was probably around 7—8 mmol/L before we started statinating everyone, the medical industry has decreed that we're now going to call five 'high.' Now hang on. Like five is to the left of the average on the normal distribution. You're now telling me that everyone else to the right is not normal, they're high. Even people who are average you're now calling high. Now why would you do that?
"Well probably because statins are just about the most lucrative pharmaceutical until the covid jabs to come onto the market. One statin, Lipitor, made by Pfizer, last time I looked, had $279B for Pfizer. That's one statin, one company. You know, there is a massive industry in lowering cholesterol.
"I don't ever want my cholesterol lowered. I don't want it measured. I don't care what it is. It's going to be what it's going to be, because my body is going to make what it needs to repair me if I need repair.
"I would worry much more about lower cholesterol, personally, than I would about higher cholesterol, because the brain is hosting about 25% of the cholesterol in the body, which is why one of the side effects of statins is cognitive malfunction, basically. You get memory loss, mood impairment, mind disturbances or whatever. A lot of people do on statins because you've got so much cholesterol in the brain and then you go impair the production of that cholesterol. Not completely, because if you did you'd be the puddle on the floor. But statins impair enough to lower cholesterol. Your doctor's then happy, but your body isn't."
Dr Zoë Harcombe, PhD with Jerm @ 46:11—51:02 https://podbay.fm/p/jerm-warfare-the-battle-of-ideas/e/1739869806?t=2771
Jerm: "Zoë, when we talk about losing weight, what are we talking about?"
Zoë Harcombe: "[…] Weight loss is breaking down body fat. […] Body fat is what we call a triglyceride structure. […] Triglyceride is […] a backbone of glycerol with three fats attached to that glycerol. […]
"You've got this whole calorie theory group who say, 'Oh, so long as you eat fewer calories, the body is just going to break down body fat.' And I'm like, 'No, the body can only break down body fat in certain physiological circumstances.'
"We touched on it earlier. Insulin and glucagon are antagonists. If you think of them like alley cats, they're never out in the alley at the same time. If insulin is doing it's thing, glucagon is not there. If glucagon is doing it's thing, insulin is not there. Insulin is the dominant hormone. If insulin is doing it's thing, glucagon can't say, 'Whoa, it's my turn!' […]
"To even be in the state that your body can lost weight, let alone that it will, you have to not have insulin present, you have to not have carbohydrate available. If you've just eaten a croissant, you've got glucose in the bloodstream. As fast as the body is trying to take it out of the bloodstream, because that's toxic. Let's say you eat a croissant and then you want to go for a walk. Your body is trying to use up the croissant for carbohydrate, because the body is lazy, it will use carbohydrate if it's there. […]
"The body, if it doesn't have excess glucose in the bloodstream or if you haven't just eaten carbohydrate, the body will go looking at your stored carbohydrate in the body. We know that as glycogen.
"When insulin is taking glucose out of the bloodstream it's putting it in this storeroom. It's storing it away as glycogen. […]
"Let's go to that 3 o'clock in the morning situation. So body says, 'Blood glucose is dipping a little bit low. Insulin's not around, that's good, we've not just eaten something. Glucagon, wake up, go do your thing!'
"So glucagon will say, 'Right. Is there anything in the storeroom? Because that's the easiest thing for me to use. If there's anything in that carbohydrate storeroom I'm just going to use that.'
"If you're eating the 400 grams of carbohydrate that the government is telling you to eat everyday, I can tell you you've always got something in your storeroom. You can be eating 500 fewer calories than you think you need, but if you're eating them all in the form of carbohydrate, you're not going to run empty on carbohydrate in any 24-hour period. Trust me on that.
"So the body is just going to go to the storeroom, use the carbohydrate, and off it merrily goes. But you have not lost any body weight. There has been no chance of you losing body weight, because you're only going to lose body weight if the body has to use body fat. It's not going to give that up first; it's going to go for the easy route, which is carbohydrate.
"Let's assume you're […] moderate carbohydrate, which Tim Noakes would define as no more than 130 grams of carbohydrate a day. You will use that up in the day period. You get to 3 o'clock in the morning, glucose is going a bit low, body says, 'Glucagon, do your thing!' Glucagon goes to the storeroom. It's empty, because you've used it up. It then has to look for fat.
"Now if you've eaten a lot of dietary fat during the day, you might have dietary fat available. Which is why even if you go low carbohydrate, you can't go nuts on fat if you're trying to lose weight. Don't go and eat butter like some sites tell you to do (joke) 'until the cows come home,' because the body will just use the dietary fat instead of the body fat.
"Let's assume you're sensible, you're not sticking butter on everything, the body then has to go and find some body fat to break down to put some glycerol into the bloodstream. The fats then go into the boodstream and the body can use the fat for fuel and the glycerol will keep the blood glucose level topped up.
"That is the definition of weight loss. The body going to break down that body fat, that is the definition of weight loss. You have to do the things that enable the body to be able to do that. What does that mean?
"Don't eat too much. Don't count calories, whatever you do. But don't go nuts. Don't stick butter on everything.
"Don't go too high on carbohydrate. I mean ideally, don't go over 130 grams a day. You may find if you really want to lose weight, go down to somewhere between 50 or 100, even lower if you really want to speed things up.
"Make the body have to use fat for energy. Don't go too high on dietary fat and then it will have to use body fat.
"Then watch out for things that impair the body being able to do that, which is primarily alcohol.
"Then your final thing will be give the body the reason to need some fuel. I'm not saying go out and run a marathon or anything like that. Use your brain! Read an academic paper. Read a Substack article that really makes you think. The brain is a fantastic user of fuel. Go for a walk. Hunt. Dance with your partner. Play with your child. Do natural activity. You don't have go down the gym, which is a not very healthy thing to do, in my view. But do some natural things that's going to increase the demand for fuel within the body. Don't have that fuel available as carbohydrate and then body has got to go over and look for body fat, which it will happily do."
Zoë Harcombe with Jerm @ 37:12—43:03 https://podbay.fm/p/jerm-warfare-the-battle-of-ideas/e/1739869806?t=2232
Zoë Harcombe: "There's two hormones that are trying to keep our blood glucose even, in an incredibly tight range, like four grams of glucose in your entire bloodstream at any one time. That's one teaspoon of glucose. There's two hormones trying to achieve that, and that's insulin and glucagon.
"If your blood glucose goes high, because you've just had an apple, then insulin is going to be trying to take glucose out of the bloodstream and it will store it as glycogen, stores it as carbohydrate. If you don't use it up it turns to fat, which is why high-carb diets make you fat.
"The other hormone is trying to get your blood glucose level back up into the normal range is the one called glucagon. So at about 3 o'clock in the morning, assuming you have a sort of normal eating pattern and you're not binging on 10,000 fuel units a day, at about 3 o'clock in the morning your blood glucose level will naturally dip. That's when your body calls upon glucagon to say, 'Hey, it's getting a little bit below that four grams. Go and put some glucose back into the bloodstream.'
"Glucagon does that by breaking down triglyceride, which is basically breaking down body fat. So when people say how do you lose weight? It's like you have to create circumstances in which glucagon can do what it's designed to do.
"Weight is nothing about calories. Weight is about getting your body in the physiological states that it needs to and wants to break down body fat.
"Now alcohol inhibits the operation of glucagon, and that's its major impact on weight. You have a couple of glasses of wine in the evening. When you get to about 3 o'clock in the morning and the body is saying, 'Hey, let's get the glucose level back up to normal.' If you still got some alcohol in the body, if the body is still prioritizing the processing of the liver, basically, it's prioritizing the processing of that alcohol, the liver isn't not going to be waking glucagon up to do its thing. It's just like, 'Hey look, I'm sorry glucagon. I'm busy over here dealing with the alcohol.' So you can have your blood glucose go lower.
"So let's say you started drinking quite early in the evening. That's when you're walking back from the bar and you see one of those burger vans or kebab vans. They look like shit in the daylight. But at 11 o'clock at night when you've been drinking for a few hours and your blood glucose is dropping and you've got no way of getting it back again, that actually looks quite attractive, because you're now in a hunger situation.
"So, it can make you crave food, because that's your only alternative way of getting your blood glucose levels back up. So that's one of the problems it's going to cause.
"Of course, the other one is, let's say you carry on drinking into the night. When you would normally be breaking down body fat at 3—4 o'clock in the morning, it can't do it because it's still processing the alcohol that you were consuming late at night, because you were watching a film or something, or at a dinner party.
"So there's a couple of way in which it's sabotages our ability to get glucose levels back to normal. And it'll probably wake you up. If at 4 o'clock in the morning you don't have that ability to get your blood glucose back to normal, you'll probably be woken up, and you'll probably be woken up with the munchies.
"So alcohol and weight is just fascinating. It really is."
Zoë Harcombe with Jerm @ 12:12—15:28 https://podbay.fm/p/jerm-warfare-the-battle-of-ideas/e/1739869806?t=732
"The retina is really interesting, because it's got more mitochondria than any other cell in your body. […] Your retina burns energy at an enormous rate. […]
"When mitochondria really run down, they start to become associated with diseases that we know as diseases of aging, such as Parkinson's disease, macular degeneration. They've all got a relationship with mitochondria, […] the battery, the powerhouse, in the cell.
"If mitochondria are truly batteries, […] can we recharge the battery and avoid diseases of aging? Or if not avoid diseases of aging, can we slow the pace down of aging? […] What is the possibility of recharging?
"Well in the last 30 years we learned something new about mitochondria: they react to light. They are very sensitive to light. Certain ranges of red light, when given on their own, can recharge mitochondria, allowing them to provide more energy. That's great news.
[…]
We did an experiment. The experiment was, what happens if we take someone whose vision is declining, and we give them a burst of red light which recharges the mitochondria in our eye? […]
"This was a really little simple experiment. This is one of the postdocs in our lab, Pardis. The device she's holding up in front of her eye is a red-light torch, a specific wavelength. […] We found that after we did that, we reduced the threshold for color vision by 17% when those colors were bluish, and by 12% when those colors were reddish.
"So we can recharge the battery and we can improve aged vision.
[…]
"The other thing that we can do is we can reduce the rate of cell death in the retina with these red lights. That means reducing the rate of geographic atrophy. […] Here's a nice story. It's a great story.
"There are children born with mitochondrial disease. This is one of them. These children are an active part of our research program. Because their mitochondria don't work they can't control the muscles in their body. Their faces become a little distorted and they can't open their eyes properly. They have ptosis.
"So this little girl, Eva, her parents came to us and asked if they could use red light. This was an entirely a choice for them. […] After the third photograph (photographs taken each week), Eva started to improve. And you can see by the last [sixth] photograph on the right that Eva now can open her eyes, she can walk to school, and she's doing swimming lessons. […]
"But the important point that I would like to get over to you is that we can improve mitochondrial function.
"Of course, the big question for this audience is, can we use red light to improve vision in AMD? Well, we had a clinical trial and we failed. But with everything that doesn't work first time you've got to ask why. Why didn't it work?
"Well, we only had a very very short time period to do the study, about a year. As most of you will know AMD is a long disease. We need to follow you over a long period of time. The second reason why we think it didn't work was because the patient population that we had at Moorfields all had rather well-established disease. We didn't grab the patients when they first had their first symptoms of AMD, and that's where we should have got in.
"But not everything is lost. While we may have failed, others are showing some signs of improvement.
[…]
"This doesn't solve AMD. It might, some of these devices may help slow it. But we have to be very, very cautious, and we have to keep our expectations relatively low."
Glen Jeffery, PhD @ 02:18–04:28, 06:47–08:09, 10:00–12:32, 18:21–18:33 https://youtu.be/R9kF0gIyDp0&t=138
Tristan Scott: "We can't change the blue light in every capacity. Like there's some imbalance happening. So if we can't get rid of the blue light, which you shouldn't be wearing blue light blockers during the day, either. That's what I want to emphasize. We need blue light during the day. That is what's driving wakefulness and cortisol, like helpful cortisol, so you can get stuff done. And dopamine during the day. Like blue light is far more dopaminergic. . .
Paul Saladino MD: Well, it's driving the. . . 'cause you get the cortisol awakening response in the morning. It's driving actually probably the drop of cortisol, isn't it?
Tristan Scott: "Yeah. But it's driving timing. Blue light is the main what's called zeitgeber, or time giver, to our our circadian system."
Paul Saladino MD: "Zeitgeber!"
Tristan Scott: "Yeah, zeitgeber! You can really do yourself a disservice by not getting enough blue light during the day.
"All of these circadian studies, what they show is both the combination of brighter days and darker nights is what's improving all-cause mortality. Now there's a study out there: metabolic health and also sleep quality. So it's the combination of brighter days and darker nights, and brighter days includes blue light.
"If you can't fix the blue light aspect of these LED peaks from the screens and the lighting, well then let's add back in the infrared and balance this out, so you can get the protection from the melatonin production.
"So what I do, and what I told you yesterday, is I bought this 250-watt incandescent bulb chicken lamp, it's straight up a chicken lamp, on Amazon for $10. I just have it on a lamp next to my work setup.
"I typically like to work outside. I want to preface by getting outside, working outside, is the best thing you can do. But most people can't do that. Especially in the winter time, or you work in an office setting, it's challenging.
"This 250-watt incandescent bulb, which has blue light, it has green and yellow, but it has a ton of infrared. I feel great at the end of the day. I don't feel as fatigued from an eyestrain perspective. I don't feel super drained, like you normally do when you're just inside looking at a screen all day.
"I think that's powerful. I think it's really accessible to a lot of people. I love it. I've just changed over: I'm an incandescent maximalist at this point, because I keep going back to just how important infrared light is."
nostr:nprofile1qyx8wumn8ghj7cnjvghxjmcpz4mhxue69uhk2er9dchxummnw3ezumrpdejqqgpr246hcmk9u9mxaw5s8h0974zu43k6ylgdht9ljujcqrl445lqf5u755kj with nostr:nprofile1qyx8wumn8ghj7cnjvghxjmcpz4mhxue69uhk2er9dchxummnw3ezumrpdejqqg90weelkzw4nr4kxfev6lnvr5tpgqcumlqgf3rq7h25n03nthrkxqpllvyn @ 46:33–49:01 https://youtu.be/01op4XmNmxA&t=2793
Paul Saladino MD: "I love what you said earlier, 'An incandescent bulb is basically fire in a bottle, in some ways.' […] But there is glass around the tungsten filament. It's not taking out all of the infrared?"
Tristan Scott: "No. After we talked about this last night, I think that that glass is so thin that it's not having a major impact. […] Whereas in your house, double-paned windows. Now most windows are what's called Low-E, low emissivity, so they're even more 'energy efficient,' which means they're blocking even more infrared. Whereas my house in Wyoming is built in the '60s. I have single-paned glass windows. They're better, they're still not great, but that's something. And then ultraviolet, that's filtering out any of the ultraviolet as well.
"And windshield glass. So driving, if you drive a lot (I drive a lot). . ."
Paul Saladino MD: "You told me. This is a crazy story."
Tristan Scott: "Open the windows as much as you can. That's fantastic. But I did a funny little experiment I told you about. I drove to Canada, 10 hours, the other week. I have 120 volts in my car (it's a 4Runner). I bought these mini incandescents and I just plugged them in and shine them on my face. I will say, I did not feel super fatigued at the end of the drive. I did not feel super drained. I felt good."
nostr:nprofile1qys8wumn8ghj7cnfw33k76twd4shs6tdv9kxjum5wvhx7mnvd9hx2tcpzamhxue69uhky6t5vdhkjmn9wgh8xmmrd9skctcpzamhxue69uhkyet5vyhxummnw3exjmpwvdsk6tcpzamhxue69uhk2cmvd9c8xefwwp6kytmjv4kxz7gpr3mhxue69uhkx6rjd9ehgurfd3kzumn0wd68yvfwvdhk6tcqyq342atudmz7zanwh2grmhjl23w2cmdz05xm4jlewfvqpl6660sy694g5dh with nostr:nprofile1qyg8wumn8ghj7efwdehhxtnvdakz7qghwaehxw309a3kztnjv4kxz7tpvfkx2tn0wfnj7qgswaehxw309asjumn0wvhxcmmv9uq3wamnwvaz7tmpw3kxzuewdehhxarj9ekxzmny9uq36amnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3wvf5hgcm0d9hx2u3wwdhkx6tpdshsqg90weelkzw4nr4kxfev6lnvr5tpgqcumlqgf3rq7h25n03nthrkxqy0v3um @ 45:04–46:31 https://youtu.be/01op4XmNmxA&t=2704
Mike Vera: "If you had a magic wand and you could change things about hospitals today to make them […] fit in your image, […] what would a future hospital look like?"
Dr. Jack Kruse: "It's simple. […] Casement windows, like they have in Germany and Europe, the windows that open up so the nurses can just go like this [makes cranking motion], the windows open up and invite the sun in. That's it!
[Looks to his right] "How much would that cost us, Frida? Frida's in construction. How much? Not much! A lot less than some of the shit that we waste money on. Just so you know, Frida build NFL stadiums, so she knows a little bit about something like this. So casement windows is where I'd start."
Frida [Off camera]: "NanaWall."
Dr. Jack Kruse: "Right. NanaWalls. Those are retractable things that Frida puts into NFL suites for rich people so you can open it up.
"Second or third thing. I would put in systems of water to get rid of deuterium, to lower deuterium. Every hospital would run on deuterium-depleted water.
"Every recovery area for any patient, whether it's the ICU, PACU, ICU like the place where your dad works in the PICU, all of them would have openings to put the kids in nature. All of their incubators your dad works with, I'd have the top layer or the side layers made out of quartz so that when you do put them in there, they can do it. You can still make the plastic openings that the nurses go through made out of plastic so it's cheap. But let's make all incubators out of quartz. That way light comes through that we're bringing in from the casement windows work.
"Why is that important? Because most of those kids that your dad deals with, they're all incubated. People don't realize that UV light, when it's married with IR light, increases venous O2. So guess what? We actually are effectively giving these kids more oxygenation just by changing the external environment that we put it. [...]
"Probably the fourth thing I would do, because I got to make some of the food people happier, I would fire every dietitian in the United States. I would make the dietitian in every hospital look at the latitude and the longitude and go talk to the farmer, find out what grows there, and that's what would be on the menu for the people at that hospital. It would be based on photosynthesis, 100%. In other words, my QA program would […] be photosynthetic. How's that for my top four?"
Dr. Jack Kruse & Frida with Mike Vera @ 01:18:35–01:22:08 https://youtu.be/CVHZshSyiXo&t=4715
Dr. Jack Kruse: "[…] you do have melanopsin in your skin. […] The pathway on your skin is direct. What makes it direct? What's the most common biologic chemical in your body? Water. The melanopsin system works through hydrogen bonding networks everywhere in your body. That's the reason why it's so powerful. […]
"The number one opsin in the human brain and human skin is melanopsin. So you got to ask yourself a question: 'Why is it that nature put a blue light detector everywhere in our body?' Then you got to ask yourself, 'What's the effect of us creating a blue light world?' Then all of a sudden you begin to see where the problem comes.
"The pathway that you need to know comes through the eye, hits something called the RPE in the eye, its the retinal pigment epithelium. That's the first place that melanin is at. Turns out that the melanopsin system is in the inferior nasal part of the retina. Then it projects to the SCN and it goes to a place in the thalamus called the habenular nucleus. That controls mood.
"Those are two places where the light pathways direct in the brain. Both of these are diencephalic derivatives, from the embryo. This tells you these are primitive pathways in all mammals, but they also extend to almost everything that's alive on this planet. It tells you that this is an ancient, ancient system. We're talking 650 million year old system when complex life formed. That's the reason it's important.
"Now where it begins to change is […] the pathway in humans goes the retinal hypothalamic pathway, which is that RPE, to the SCN. The SCN goes to the PVN, which is the paraventricular nucleus, goes then to something called the dorsal longitudinal fasciculus. That's where all the sleep pathways are. Then it radiates out through the whole spinal cord and all the things there.
"If you understand this one pathway of melanopsin, you can pretty much describe every single chronic disease that man is afflicted with.
"Now, do you need to understand how the non-visual photoreceptive system interacts with some of the things that centralized medicine talks about? For example, most people are stunned to find out that the number one non-visual photoreceptor in man is cholesterol. No one gets told that. No one understands truly what the difference between HDL
and LDL cholesterol is. The answer is electrons. Oh, we're back to the guy in Bern photoelectric effect.
1:26:16
"It turns out that the non-visual photoreceptor system varies by the light environment you're in, which is the reason why I told you conditions of existence are far more important than any of the Darwinists really understand. […]
01:26:43
"Once you understand how light controls our biology, and I just gave you a basic framework for the system you ask me, which is melanopsin. The system through the eye is very direct. […] The eye is the on and off switch for the brain. Turns out your skin is also an on and off switch for your brain. Because what is the skin? The skin is the solar panel for the accessory two lobes right here, the frontal lobes.
"[…] our skin is covered with hair but it's hair that allows the sun to go through. Chimps have a lot of hair. The amount of light they're getting through their surface isn't as great as what we get. That's the reason we lost the hair, so that we could give energy to these two extra lobes. […]"
Dr. Jack Kruse with Mike Vera @ 01:23:28–01:27:36 https://youtu.be/CVHZshSyiXo&t=5008
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