The vitamin world is giving the wrong
advice. For instance, if you do not know
what you're doing with them, they're
just as dangerous as any drug you could
put in your mouth. The next thing is
supplementing with vitamin D is not the
same as being outdoors [music]
because we absorb it through our skin.
But what we've been told is don't ever
let the sun touch your skin. And another
example is when we're deficient in this
vitamin, our brain actually forgets how
to sleep. And I know that because I'm a
neurologist and I wanted to tell the
world about what my patients and I had
and discovered together about making
sleep better. And billions around the
world have a sleep problem, but no one's
treating it. And the usual sleep
treatment is behavioral like blackout
curtains, go to bed at the same time.
But that is not something that's helped
the people who wind up with me. They've
tried all that already. And I've taken
care of 28-year-olds who just had a
stroke.
>> 28, sorry,
>> 28-year-olds. We associate stroke with
being old and having diabetes and
hypertension and heart disease. No. So
then I did a whole bunch of sleep
studies because we found some exciting
things [music] by accident that turn out
to have to do with vitamin deficiencies
and deficiencies that have developed
from being indoors too much. [music] And
we're starting to feel the effects of
that like obesity. But there there are
no obese squirrels in my backyard. The
only obese animals are cats and dogs
[music] that we keep inside. And then we
found out most of the sleep disorders
are really linked to the gut the
microbiome and we could go into that but
one of the interesting thing I learned
was vitamin D is a hormone. There was a
mistake made in calling it a vitamin.
>> Well, I'm very curious to learn about
all of this and also you've come up with
this protocol called the right sleep
protocol. Can you walk me through it?
>> Absolutely. Here's the first part of it.
So,
>> this is super interesting to me. My team
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Let's get on with the show.
Dr. Nasha Gmanac for the people that
have just clicked on this conversation
because they like the title, they're
interested in the subject matter, what
are what are they going to get from
sitting with us and listening to us? How
is their life going to improve?
>> A completely unique and new way to look
at why they are not sleeping well or why
they have medical problems. I hope they
will come away with the impression that
I want to find out if my brain chemistry
is normal or not normal for sleep.
>> And you were a clinical assistant at
professor of neurology at Stanford
University Hospital and also you did a
neurology residency at Harvard Medical
School.
>> Yes. I grew up in California. I became a
biochemist and then I wound up being
interested in medicine because
biochemistry is being applied to humans
in medicine. So I became a physician and
then I went into neurology and I'm a
neurologist and then by accident
somebody insisted that they wanted a
sleep study and this was in 2004 now.
>> So you became you were a neurologist,
you became a doctor and then you fell in
love with sleep.
>> Yes.
>> How many patients have you worked with
on the subject matter of sleep? What's
the wide range of symptoms that they
were experiencing and problems that they
had just to get a sort of context on the
variety and broadness of your
experience?
>> Probably 200. Since leaving neurology
practice, I started a online business
where I became a sleep coach. I'm
estimating that I have affected another
5 to 6,000 people. And that's because I
have a a workbook that we're going to
talk about. I have set out a series of
steps that you should do and that those
steps are based on brain chemistry
>> not on you do it wrong which is what is
all over the internet. You are just
doing it wrong. The usual sleep
treatment is behavioral
>> blackout curtains,
white noise, go to bed at the same time,
recognize your bedroom as a quiet place
for sleep, etc.
That is not something that's helped the
people who wind up with me. They've
tried all that. They've tried
everything. So what are the range of
symptoms?
The first experience was with women who
had headache. One of my patients said,
"These drugs you're giving me haven't
worked. I want a sleep study." She had
sleep apnnea. She was young and thin.
She did not look like a fat older male
with a fat tongue, which is what we were
being sold at that time. The people with
sleep apnnea have a fat tongue. It gets
in the air a airway and they need to
wear one of these things over their face
at night that blows air up their nose.
She put on the CPAP device. She came
back two months later. Her headaches
were gone. She'd had a daily headache
for like five years.
>> So it worked.
>> Yes. And I was like, well, no, there's
no way because headaches are really a
brain stem function problem. I have this
whole construct in my mind and it's a
biochemical problem. So, I think maybe
it's allowing her to stay in deep sleep
longer
and she's making the chemicals that I'm
focusing on that allow her head pain
switch to go into the off position,
which is where it's supposed to be. It's
supposed to be off until somebody hits
you in the head and then it turns on.
Hers is just turning on spontaneously
all the time. So then I did a whole
bunch of sleep studies in young healthy
females who had daily headache. They
would frequently say something like, "I
wake up at 3:00 a.m. and I can't go back
to sleep. I wake up at 3:00 a.m. and my
sleep is lighter after that. I wake up
at 3:00 a.m. with a headache." And then
I have, let's say, as an example, a
little Mexican lady who comes in from
northern Mexico. She's now living in
Texas with her kids. She had never had
headaches until she moved up and she's
living with one of her grown kids and
she's coming to see me for headaches. We
happen to have a a beach house in Mexico
for a period of about 14 years. So I
would go down there and I would think,
what's going to happen to these people
that have sleep apnnea who don't have
any electricity and they're living in
palapas that are made of sticks with a
thatch roof. They're still doing the
same thing that they were doing 2,000
4,000 years ago. And you can't tell if
the little vetsitos, the little old
people are 60 years old or 80. They
might be 90. They're not fat. They're
not tired. They're great grandfathers. I
begin to realize this is about living
outside. Humans were meant to live
outdoors like every other animal. We
have decided that we are special, but
we're not special. We're our
biochemistry is like every other animal.
Okay. So, these two these inputs are
coming all at the same time. And I'm
puzzling over these sleep studies. That
first gal had sleep apnnea, but most of
the women that I sent for those studies,
they did not have sleep apnnea or come
back on the front page would say no
significant apnea. There was a
significant score. How many times do you
stop breathing during the night? And
then the next part is what do they have
that's wrong with them? That came about
a year and a half later when the
pulmonologist says, "I don't know if
you've noticed this, but your population
has a really unusual finding. Most of
them have delayed rapid eye movement
sleep, no rapid eye movement sleep, or
they have rapid eye movement sleep
apnea, meaning they only stop breathing
in rapid eye movement sleep.
>> What's rapid eye movement sleep?
>> So, this is called a hypnogog.
And on this bottom axis is time.
On this axis is a representation of what
phase of sleep you are in. And it turns
out that when we enter sleep, we go
through what we call two lighter stages
of sleep. The first phase that we enter
is here it's wake.
Couple of times this person woke may not
even be aware that they woke up went
back to sleep. But we enter sleep in
light sleep one and light sleep two.
These are called that because when the
sleep experts started studying this in
1970, that's relatively recently. You
could easily awaken someone out of these
phases. Okay? And it has a certain
brainwave pattern generates. And then
they go into a phase that's called deep
sleep or slowwave sleep. Everyone who
has a sleep tracker device which is very
common these days is now becoming
familiar with I have this much deep
sleep. I have this much rapid eye
movement sleep. Deep sleep is really in
the sleep industry called slowwave sleep
because the brain waves are these slow
big pattern.
We always go through a couple of light
sleep phases and then we go into rapid
eye movement sleep and then we go
through light sleep phases and then we
go to deep sleep. Now the pivotal
question that I asked the pulmonologist
why would my patient have stop breathing
that's what apnea means. Why would they
stop breathing only in REM sleep? I
thought this was an anatomic problem.
And he said, 'Well, we get the most
paralyzed of all in REM sleep.' And I
went, paralyzed?
Holy crap.
Do you mean I'm I'm paralyzed while I'm
in bed? What if I stop breathing? What
if my brain doesn't ever not like
unparalyze me? That's terrifying.
And it turns out every animal, including
fruit flies who we're doing sleep
studies on, get paralyzed in sleep. We
get the most paralyzed in rapid eye
movement sleep. When this part
needs to get repaired,
it gets paralyzed, too. That means you
have to have an anatomy that stays where
the tube that you're trying to breathe
through stays open
while you are unconscious
and trying to repair everything in this
area. And I want to pull out the brain
to let you know where this is happening
and why it's so important. This part
that's white is called the brain stem.
This part is actually fully in control
when you are asleep. There's a little
switch up here that goes boop. Stephen,
you're not conscious anymore. The brain
is still extremely active. In fact, the
waveforms that they record from up here
look the same in rapid eye movement
sleep as they do in wake, suggesting
that all sorts of things are happening.
Like you wake up abruptly because some a
noise happens and you're in the middle
of a dream. You're traveling. You're
flying. You've you've got huge colors
going on. Your brain is extremely active
during this time, but you're not aware
of it. And this part right here, it is
running your heart rate, your blood
pressure. It is paralyzed you. This is
where the autonomic nervous system comes
in. The sympathetic nervous system and
the parasympathetic nervous system are
centered right here. They are meant to
be the automatic driver of all the
processes that you use during the day
and they run sleep.
This process
that we're talking about here is fully
run by the brain stem.
>> So the sort of sleepwake cycles.
>> Exactly. The sympathetic is called fight
flight. The other one the
parasympathetic is called rest and
digest.
It also is experienced as a state of
calm. Okay. It is also what happens when
we have an orgasm. There are things that
are happening in the brain stem that
feed back to why do they fall asleep?
Why do the guys fall asleep on top of
her? Probably because it actually might
increase the likelihood of
fertilization. Maybe it has a survival
risk.
These are all unconscious things that we
don't we aren't trained to connect
together. But once you get into the
parasympathetic nervous system, it turns
out that the parasympathetic and the
sympathetic are also very involved in
what's happening here. And the basic
idea is the first half of the night, and
you'll see that we've also broken it
into 1 2 3 4 5 cycles usually of about
an hour and a half. The first half of
the night till about 3:00 a.m. is mostly
run by the sympathetic side,
>> which is the fight orflight side.
>> Yes. So when you're well balanced and
you have a completely normally operating
brain stem, you will have a couple of
branches of REM sleep. But my patients
did not have any REM sleep at all in the
first half of the night. And in fact,
they might have been lucky to little
have a little half an hour here between
4:30 and 5, if at all.
The second half of the night from 3:00
am to 7 am is run by the parasympathetic
side. That means if you look at it in a
certain way, you could say, well, wait,
maybe they've lost the parasympathetic
driver for the second half of their
night. Seeing all these sleep studies
that did not have this phase of sleep,
they're actually one6 of the amount of
RAM sleep they should have. And as I go
back through all the sleep studies, I
realize, well, wait, don't we kind of do
mood in REM sleep?
>> What do you mean, do we do mood?
>> When trying to link the comments that my
patients have made and the drugs that I
give them, I realize I've been giving
out anti-depressants to this group of
young, healthy women with headaches
because they frequently say, "I'm in a
terrible mood."
So, they can't remember. Isn't there a
body of literature about memory being
made permanent during REAM? Yes, memory
is linked and mood is linked. If I'm
allowed to go back to sleep, if I have
the proper brain chemistry to allow me
to fall back into REM sleep, I will wake
in a better mood. Those are the sorts of
things that the patients will tell you
if you ask about it and if they're able
to fall back to sleep.
because my group did not have sleep
apnnea and could not wear CPAP masks.
What's wrong with them? Why aren't they
in this phase of sleep? This is a
neurology problem. This is not a
pulmonologist. This is not about
breathing. This is about this brain stem
and what is the chemistry of this? So
then I go to the anatomy and then I find
out what are the cells in this brain
stem area that make us paralyzed. Just
to make sure I'm with you, you're you're
asking that question because you figured
out that the women who are struggling
with sleep and getting headaches have
less of this REM sleep which is
associated with being paralyzed. So the
question you've then asked is what are
the chemicals that help us become
paralyzed?
>> Yes. Okay. What [clears throat] are
cells that take us into these what what
is the chemistry of that? Since I am so
focused on biochemistry, there's
actually a deficiency in a
neurotransmitter that our moving doors
means that we've lost a neurotransmitter
that we must have to be normal humans.
And the reason why they don't know it is
because there are no drugs that
duplicate acetylcholine. There are no
drugs. But ultimately what we found out
together was that vitamin D makes the
enzyme or the protein that makes a
certain reaction happen that makes
acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is the
neurotransmitter the chemical that the
autonomic parasympathetic side uses. We
hear all the time about epinephrine and
norepinephrine or adrenaline and
noradrenaline. That's what happens when
somebody rear ends you. Your blood
pressure goes up, your heart rate goes
up. That's all dominant here. If you're
wearing a sleep tracker, you'll you'll
see that there's a measure of what's
called heart rate variability that goes
up as the parasympathetic becomes
dominant
>> as the the rest and digest.
>> Exactly. So all of the messages that we
have to increase the heart rate or
decrease the heart rate or to have a
bowel movement or be constipated or to
digest our food, those are all
eventually run by a chemical and our
body and our brain use these chemicals
to send messages. This is actually a
chemical deficiency state that happens
when you move indoors.
Sunscreen, computers, and air
conditioning all started in the 1980s.
And the reason why it's not as evident
to you as it is to me is that I was
alive before the 1980s. There were two
kids in my class of 300 that were
overweight.
They didn't go on diets. They didn't
have any trouble sleeping. They weren't
on anti-depressants. The things that
weren't common when I was a teenager
that are common now are striking for
those of us who are this age because we
know it wasn't like that. What we've
been told is it's toxins in the food.
It's that we aren't doing it right. I
don't think those are things when you
say I'm not doing it right, then you
should be able to tell me how to do it
right. And that's what a lot of these
podcasts are about. How do I change what
I do so I can feel rested and be at the
peak performance of my life? That
interests a lot of people.
I would claim that there's a deficiency
state in the background that you can
actually fix and you can fix it, but
it's through vitamins. And the our ideas
about vitamins are wrong. Completely
wrong. We've been taught that vitamins
are not important or vitamins are very
important, but they're easy to use.
They'll never hurt us. Uh you just take
a certain like who's your
recommendation? What's the vitamin D
recommendation dose that this guy's
given out? We've been told things that
are actually not true. And medicine
hasn't taken responsibility for the fact
that this is the the core of
biochemistry.
It was done by physicians. These
original research articles in the 40s
and 50s that the word vitamin was used
was done by medical experts.
It's unfortunately been given to the
government to give recommendations. It
should never be in the hands of the
government. The government doesn't know
anything about our biochemistry.
So the supplement industry at the moment
is a mess. And I say that only because I
have seen dramatic things happen to my
patients that
are not what I expected. And vitamins
are a form of biohacking. They're just
as dangerous as any drug you could put
in your mouth. If you do not know what
you're doing with them, bad things will
happen to you. And unfortunately,
frequently those bad things are the same
thing you had before you took the
vitamin. Therefore, you should pay
attention to what you're feeling. So,
the pathway that I've built that's on my
website now has a a second half that's a
journal. You have to keep notes of
what's happening to you.
>> How many people
are experiencing sleep problems in your
point of view?
>> Billions. It's around the world. There
are sleep study centers in every country
that has electricity. in Germany, in
Japan, in Brazil, and they're all
publishing how abnormal the studies are.
This is not what it looks like.
They rarely
send out an article saying that we have
less RAM because they don't have an
answer for why. I just happen to be the
only one currently on the internet
that has a different way of looking at
it. Well, I'm very curious to learn
about all of this. I've never heard
someone say to me before that vitamins
are linked to sleep issues.
>> Absolutely.
>> Um, it's typically, you know, put on the
sleep mask and close the blinds and make
sure it's cold in the room. So, this is
incredibly interesting to me.
>> Let me add one more thing so I don't
forget. You and Matt Walker talked about
chronotypes. Yeah,
>> there are many dogmatic statements that
are being made about genetics and sleep
that are not necessarily wrong, but
they're also not necessarily right. And
I had the same training that you that
you get from Matt Walker. He's doing
animal training. We say dogmatic things
based on certain studies that we do. And
then my patients
don't behave that way. my patients turn
out to, you know, this person has been
working to take this to an extreme. So
the chronotype story is you're either an
early bird or a night owl and you had
shared that you're a night owl and that
your girlfriend is an early bird. Okay?
And what is being taught is that that is
your genetic makeup.
Although there are genetic mutations
that lead to certain timing of sleep, it
turns out everybody I was doing this
vitamin stuff w with would revert back
to fall asleep at 10 and wake up at
6:00. Even the people who were working
nights their whole life. This woman that
I'm seeing who is on disability now
because she got a terrible disease
that I believe is because she worked
nights when she is at home on disability
for several years. that I'm still caring
for her for that disease.
She's still sleeping during the day.
Well, why would she sleep during the
day? And now I have a whole run of
patients who say, "I guess it's because
I always work nights." It turns out that
humans really can't work nights if they
have normal brain chemistry. Why?
Because we're day hunters. We are
supposed to be asleep in the night. And
that is our biochemistry. There are lots
of animals that are designed to be awake
at night. Owls. That's why they use that
as a symbol.
And if you do the right thing with their
chemistry, and if you insist that they
spend more time outside,
then they actually revert to falling
asleep at 10 p.m. and waking up at 6:00
a.m. It's very difficult to operate,
unless you're international like you
are, to be falling asleep. There are
people who fall asleep at 4:00 a.m. and
wake up at noon. That is a very
difficult problem to operate within the
normal population because the rest of
the world doesn't operate that way. And
when you think about it a little bit, we
actually have certain standards on when
we start work and when we end work. And
that's the same all over the globe. So
there were things that happened to me
that surprised me and they became
consistent. Okay? And those are some of
the things that we're going to talk
about. And that's what made me think,
you know, this is around the world and
it happened at a specific time. There
are many diseases that started to be
reported in the middle 80s. You guys
aren't aware of it because you think
it's normal now, but ADD, ADHD,
depression, things that are affecting ch
childhood development, which we could
discuss at a different time, fatty
liver,
certain things like oh increase in
diabetes, the things that were diseases
that had been described, they're all
some of them are old diseases that have
increased in incidence, but some of them
for the first time, fatty liver was
first described non-alcoholic fatty
liver first described in the 80s ADHD is
similar. So during the time that I don't
know why we have this epidemic I'm still
thinking toxins because that's what
we've been told pesticides glyphosate
and then
we get into the area of vitamin D and
how did I find out about vitamin D? Why
was I sort of forced against my will to
step into the vitamin D politics, which
is a horrible morass?
>> There should be a button just down below
here. And if it says subscribed, you're
already subscribed. If it says
subscriber, that means you're not yet.
And if you're not subscribed, please
could you do us a favor and hit that
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know. And according to the algorithm,
you're someone that watches our show,
but you haven't yet hit that button.
Thank you so much. So explain to me your
your assertion is that vitamin D is
fundamentally linked to a lot of the
sleep disorders and deficiencies that we
see. How how can you prove that to me?
>> I think I would prefer to give you these
two examples.
>> Okay.
>> Because the people who are listening,
these are at the two extremes, but it'll
cover a lot of the people that are
listening.
>> Okay?
>> The first is let let's call her Meline.
>> Maline.
>> She's 32 years old. She's a redhead.
That turns out to be important. She's
100 pounds overweight. She just had her
first pregnancy three years ago. And she
had been told that because she had
endometriosis and polycystic ovarian
syndrome, that she would never get
pregnant. But she got pregnant. She's
very happy about that. She had uh
gestational diabetes, which means she
had diabetes during the time that she
was pregnant with her son. And now she
is pretty much a wreck. She has daily
headache, which is why she's seeing me.
She's on about nine drugs. She has
several kinds of pain. She has a
terrible pain down the front of her leg
that she's been told is endometriosis,
growing on one of her nerves. She has
terrible burning in her feet. She has
terrible reflux. She poops once a week.
She feels like she has to get up and go
to the bathroom several times a night.
She thinks that's why her sleep is so
interrupted. So, I'm treating her for
her daily headaches and her pain. And
then I start to think about sleep. And
because we've been trained that fat
people are fat because they're fat
slobs, because they eat wrong, because
they don't exercise, it's their own
fault.
I don't even think about the fact that
many of these things might have a common
source and that she's been tortured by
this her whole life. So I send her for a
sleep study. She gets on CPAP. Over the
time she's on CPAP, she gets a little
bit better. Her sleep is better. She
feels better. And then I stumble into
vitamin D. Okay. Now, we're going to set
that as an example of the most horrible
set of things you could have perhaps.
And another example, and we're going to
watch what happens to these two women
over time. The second one we'll call
Natalie. And Natalie is tall,
statuesque, she's a triathlete.
She is also seeing me for daily
headache. She grew up in a family that
is of Italian origin. She is dark tan.
She swims. She's athletic. She's outside
all the time in the summer. Five years
ago, she had her first child. Her
daughter, she did well. No problems with
her sleep. Two years ago, she has her
son. And since her son was born, she has
not been able to go back to sleep. Even
when her son goes back to sleep, she
can't. She feels tired. She has
postpartum depression. She had
gestational diabetes. Like she's doing
everything perfectly. She knows
everything there is to know. She's done
paleo and keto. She is very well
informed by the things that doctors tell
her to do. And now her sleep is also
abnormal. And she had a few headaches in
high school, but now she has daily
headache, too. So there's a fiveyear
span here where I'm doing CPAP masks and
sleeping pills. And those are some of
the stories.
And it's not just limited to women, but
I especially want to point out that
women are more effective because they
have the babies. So, the next thing that
happens is 5 years into it, I've got
this beautiful 18-year-old who's about
to go to college. She comes to see me
for daily headache. She has a sleep
study
that shows none of these phases of deep
sleep.
>> So, she's having no deep sleep.
>> No deep sleep. And every 15 minutes or
so, my interpretation is her brain is
trying to get into these one of these
deep sleep phases and she wakes up to
light sleep again. So every time the
brain tries to do this, it breaks to
white sleep, light sleep, light sleep,
light sleep. She thinks that she's
asleep the whole night.
This shows that she's asleep the whole
night. But her sleep study over my five
years of experience is horrifying
because it's not just, oh, she's missing
a little rim. She has no deep sleep at
all. This is a brain stem
disorder of chemistry that's going to
mean she might meet me 10 years from now
with a stroke. I've taken care of 28-y
olds who just had a stroke.
>> 28, sorry,
>> 28-y olds. We associate stroke with
being old and having diabetes and
hypertension and heart disease. That
means I'm looking at this and for the
very first time I have actually started
to see the diseases that my neurology
patients come in with and their
relationship to sleep. By the end of the
five years I'm doing sleep studies on
anybody who will let me. So I'm doing
little kids, I'm doing moms, I'm doing
dads, I'm doing every single neurologic
illness that comes in. They're all
abnormal. All of them. This implies that
the reason why you get a disease is
because your sleep is not restorative.
That implies that I should think about
the body as golly, I know people who
live to be 75 years old and don't have a
doctor. They were my grandparents and
then they started to get medical
problems about age 75 and then they died
at 85.
Why aren't we looking at it that way?
Why aren't we saying, "Oh, this means
your repair system that's designed to
completely repair everything in your
body every night." And you talked with
um Tara
Swat about lymphatic drainage. These
things that happen while we're sleeping.
It is what makes us last.
Like we're not made of teflon. We're
made of these biologic materials and
they repair themselves every night.
That's a miracle.
>> If you view it through that lens,
then you start to question why is
medicine doing what it is. I'm trained
to ask questions for the thing the
person walks in for. Let's say burning
in the feet.
>> Okay?
>> And I'm trained to make a little list of
the diseases that have resulted in that
and then give a drug for it. And if we
don't find a drug that reverses it,
which we haven't for burning, but I'm
going to tell you why, then we give a
drug that numbs the pain a little bit.
>> We just kind of plastering it over
cracks.
>> We're putting band-aids on these things
instead of saying, "Well, what do you
think led to this?" And this
glimpmphatic drainage point I think is a
really important one because what when I
understood this glimpmphatic drainage
idea it had a profound impact on my
relationship with sleep. I would argue
more so than anything else. There's
actually a colleague of mine who's
currently sat out there right and I have
an emoji that I sent to her. She's
called Georgia Gibson. I have an she she
likes to work very hard and I sent her
this particular emoji of this this I
can't even remember. She told me what
the cartoon was, but it's these little
fish that come out and clean the big
whale.
>> Yes.
>> What's What's that called?
>> I don't remember, but I know what you're
talking about.
>> Okay, I'll put it on the screen. It's
from like a movie. So, everyone in the
comments is probably going to know what
I'm talking about. But I sent her this
emoji just to remind her that she needs
to sleep cuz she needs to wash her
brain. That's what I say. I say to her,
"You need to wash your brain," which
means go to bed. When you go to sleep at
night, these cleaners, you want, you
know, again, I'm I'm animating this in a
way that's not scientifically accurate,
but these cleaners come out and clean up
your brain and they wash it all and they
clean it and they scrub it and they make
it all back to normal again. So, if
you're not sleeping, then you're going
to get some kind of buildup of crap and
that can lead to disease or, you know,
other worse things down the line.
>> Yes, that's a perfect description of it
actually. And that's about the level of
what we know. So, the 18-year-old with
no deep sleep, she comes back and say,
"Hey, this drug you gave me for my
headaches made my headaches better, but
I'm so tired." And I'm looking at her
sleep study going, "Holy crap, no wonder
she's tired." Okay, this is really,
really bad. And this is invisible.
Absolutely invisible to the rest of the
physicians cuz she looks perfect. So, I
do a B12 level and a thyroid test
because I have no idea what to do. And
the B12 is profoundly low. low enough
that it shows up as abnormal and a
little red. Okay. Now, the the weird
part about this is I've never done a B12
level in a headache patient since I've
been doing headaches as a part of
neurology, which is a large part of
neurology. I then start to give B12
recommendations and I do B12 blood tests
on all the patients who I have in my
little stable of I've done these sleep
studies in them. They still are not
sleeping well unless the sleeping pill
works. So, for about a month, I'm doing
B12 tests and then one of my patients
says to me, "My doctor said my vitamin D
was low." She gave me vitamin D and my
wrist pain went away. And I had no clue
and I thought, you know, I'm just doing
blood tests anyway, which I never did in
my headache patients. I'm just going to
throw that in. I was completely naive.
And because I was naive, I was not
afraid to do this. But I did vitamin D
levels and B12 levels in a group of
about 500 patients between September and
December of 2009.
And I gave you the background because I
had all these thoughts buzzing around in
my head. What are we looking for? We're
looking for something that it controls
the brain stem. Now, they're going from
August or September to December. That's
in the fall. So, if you're going to make
D in the summer, which is when we're
supposed to make it because we're out in
the sun, that's all I knew about D is
you make it from the sun. It's about
bones.
They were all low. All of them are low.
Two of these guys that are on CPAP come
back. They both have headaches. They
both say the same thing to me in the
same week. You know, I've been wearing
the CPAP mask for a whole year. My
headaches hadn't gone away. But that
little note you sent me last time I was
in here when you did my vitamin D level
and you told me to get vitamin D. I took
that for about a month. My sleep got
better and my headaches went away. Now I
happen to know that all the D's were
low. But D's about bone. Why would it
have anything to do with sleep? So I go
to the PubMed. That's my resource now. I
hang out with PubMed all the time,
>> which is
>> that's where you register all your
articles that we publish. 2009. I put in
two search terms, vitamin D and sleep,
and there are no hits.
And then I put in vitamin D in the brain
and I wind up going to articles by a guy
named Walter Stumpf Stu MF who's been
writing about vitamin D for 30 years who
has actually published that there are
vitamin D receptors in this little
stripe along the back of the brain stem
that paralyzes us. Like he knows the
name of this nucleus. He has shown
articles where the vitamin D receptors
are in this nucleus that paralyzes us
and in the nuclei that are the clock
nuclei that determine what time it is,
what time we go to sleep, when we make
these transitions. The brain always
knows exactly what time it is. Those
areas have vitamin D receptors.
That means vitamin D is doing something.
That means I'm very interested in
thinking if this vitamin D
is low, like if they say 30 to 100 is
normal, and my patients with sleep
disorders and neurologic problems have
vitamin D levels in the low30s and
below, is there a vitamin D level, not a
dose, but a brain or a blood level that
I can measure that might make them sleep
better? That would be phenomenal. Should
we go down this vitamin D road? I know
nothing about it. I start sending people
for vitamin D levels and giving them
vitamin D and I start reading.
Walter Stump has already put together a
beautiful belief system around vitamin D
is the hibernation hormone. It allows
animals to adapt their body to tolerate
winter when there's no food. It tells
their body to do things like the thyroid
hormone lowers the metabolic rate of all
the cells in the body. The weird part is
this is written about beautifully by
Walter Stump. And because he has a whole
belief system that tells what you should
expect, he's also published many
articles. The first articles in 1982
about brain stem. He publishes articles
about postpartum depression, about
infertility, about obesity. He's telling
us what epidemics are going to happen,
but it's before it happens because the
sunscreen's coming out in 85
and the middle of the air conditioning
computer. And when I'm talking about
this during CO, it becomes much more
exaggerated. Okay, CO has brought us all
indoors and we're starting to feel the
effects of that even more exaggerated.
So, Walter has this idea set. I call him
up. Luckily, he's retired and he takes
my phone call and I say, "Hey, you don't
know me, but I'm this clinician in Texas
and I have this clinical observation
that I've done all these sleep studies
on people. Their brain
that should be sending them through
these particular steps is not. You have
shown that there are vitamin D receptors
all over the nuclei that should be
running this.
Has anybody written about sleep and
vitamin D?" And he says, "No, but it
makes perfect sense. It's the
hibernation hormone. What else would you
do? You sleep longer.
And it turns out that when our D goes
very low, our brain actually forgets how
to sleep. That's the easiest way to
describe it. That gal that I showed you,
she had not only vitamin D deficiency as
the primary deficiency and with
secondary deficiency we're going to talk
about, but there your brain just becomes
completely scattered and it's what it's
supposed to do because the the D is
doing a specific thing. It took me a
while to figure out. There are articles
that actually took Walter's articles and
said, "Hey, there are these D
receptors." What hormones do that's
unique is the hormone goes inside the
nucleus
of the cell and the nucleus has the DNA
and it binds to the DNA and it has a
special vitamin D receptor. That's what
Walter was measuring. When it hits that
receptor, there's a specific protein
that that DNA expresses. That means that
little piece of DNA comes out. It makes
this protein. The protein that it makes
is an enzyme that makes acetylcholine.
So that means I can trace through the
scientific literature all the way from
the receptor to the articles that use
that that showed that it was an an
enzyme called choline acetal
transferase. Now the next part is really
important because what I want out of
this is that Meline and Natalie both get
better. Okay, this this biochemistry is
my thrill. But what the listener wants
is how do I get better? Now, since I
started this and the first time I
started giving vitamin D was in 2010,
this is now
16 years later.
Is vitamin D any better understood or
given out? No. The science is
phenomenal. The recommendations for the
doctors
don't go there. The endocrine society
are supposed to be the experts in
hormones. D is a hormone.
>> I think that's an important point which
is a lot of people think of vitamin D as
some kind of well we think of it as a
vitamin but you're telling me it's it's
a hormone.
>> It's the most bizarre thing I've ever
run into in medicine. It's really
bizarre.
>> Which which path?
>> There was a mistake.
There was a mistake made in calling it a
vitamin. It is made on our skin.
Now, it turns out animals frequently
lick their fur,
and they get their vitamin D that's made
in their fur from licking their fur.
Some of it's absorbed, but the thing
that's unique about us and pigs,
domesticated pigs, is we're bald.
That means most of the time we're making
it on our skin. It's never supposed to
be from the food. It was not ever about
the food for us.
We don't lick our skin.
Therefore, we absorb it through our skin
and we can actually have salmon. The
salmon has vitamin D in it. That's the
salmon's vitamin D. It's not our vitamin
D. It's like saying you eat salmon, you
get salmon estrogen. That should be
enough estrogen for you to have a normal
period. That's crazy. If your ovaries
are not making enough estrogen, you
won't have a normal period. Okay? They
called it a vitamin. And in the n early
80s medicine decided vitamins were for
lesser humans. Therefore D got pushed
into that pile and it got given over the
counter. Now, the fascinating part about
that is it turns out to be a good thing
that it's over the counter because the
lay public once they hear that their
whole health is actually tied to this
and that they've been doing what their
doctor recommended, which is to use
sunscreen and stay out of the sun. And
the original recommendation, cuz I was
there in the early 80s, was don't
sunburn.
Every sunburn that's a bad sunburn that
you peel from will age your skin even if
you're 10.
>> Which is is that true or not?
>> That's true.
>> It's true. Yeah,
>> that piece is true. Now, the weird thing
is that has been morphed over the last
40 years into don't ever let the sun
touch your skin. People are smart. If
you tell them that they can use
sunscreen wisely and it blocks the
ability to make vitamin D and it has
turned into the combination of sunscreen
plus being inside much more than we ever
were before. When you had air
conditioning, people slept out on the
roof in Saudi Arabia. That means you
spend much more time outdoors. And it
also turns out there's a particular move
in health and wellness which is about
the many forms of wavelengths of energy
that we absorb that are given to us by
the sun that are not UVB. UVB is the
wavelength that makes D. There are your
podcast about infrared. Very very
important. That means there are many
wavelengths of energy and the more time
we spend outdoors, the more our body
actually uses those wavelengths in our
biology because medicine is so
conservative and so slow to change. They
basically poo poo any new ideas. So
hyperbaric oxygen laughed at uh infrared
laughed at made made fun of and
therefore you could actually have your
license taken away since co
since doctors are now doing things
across video. I am safer in my little
place making my comments making my
statements. They're madeup stories.
>> What is a madeup story? My telling you
my belief system
is a madeup story. This is really an
important idea. I thought that
everything written in a book is true. As
soon as the publications come out, soon
as I can go to PubMed,
I thought those things written down were
true
absolutes. And then you stay in medicine
for 30 years and you realize the things
that you were taught are not truth
anymore. Well,
that means they made up those stories.
They do a scientific experiment. You and
I are looking at the data, but there's
always a conclusory.
My conclusions from this data are those
are always made up stories. And in fact,
they're always humans making up stories.
You and I are not listening to stories
that ants make up or that cats make up.
We're very human centric.
We're studying things that are stories
that humans make up.
>> And we're arriving at a conclusion based
on some factors that we can see which is
you know often causation or correlation
sorry and not necessarily causation.
>> Correlation very important. We all have
a belief system. You and I are building
a belief system here. I told you that
Walter Stump had a belief system. The
reason why I'm using those terms is
I was really pissed off at the
pulmonologist when I realized
that woman with the sleep apnea, she
wasn't a fat middle-aged male with a fat
tongue. How dare they? Here are these
women. They have headaches. They're
suffering. How dare they make up this
story? And then I began to realize
they made up those stories. That was
their best guess.
>> That is every single person who sits on
this side of the table. It's their best
guest.
All of us are or you wouldn't have us on
here. Very enthusiastic about our
guests. But it's very important to
realize that every belief system means
you see the world through that. But it
always has blinders.
>> There are things that you won't be able
to see because of it as well.
Then you must move into a point of view
which is I need to stay flexible. What
if new information comes? Yeah.
>> Okay. So
>> the debelief system at the moment is
that it's a vitamin
>> and there's a huge political fight
within the medical literature. It's very
weird.
>> The debelief system. What do you mean?
Medicine has decided that the only way
you can get any important information is
to have a control group, a study group.
The study group gets X, a drug, in this
case, vitamin D. And you compare the
outcome of both groups.
>> And what does the other group get? A
placebo. Basically, they think it's a
drug, but there's nothing in it.
>> Yeah. And then you compare the outcome.
The problem is in no biologic pathway is
there only one variable. There's never
one variable.
And that means when you give one a
hormone,
you also need to know that hormones are
always in done by blood levels and that
the normal state for the human body in
every biologic
animal including plants is that hormones
stay in a tight little narrow band. Too
much and too little are both not good.
always goes towards the middle. In the
lei experience, this is why we do blood
levels of testosterone. If we give you
testosterone supplement, if we give you
estrogen in thyroid, even lay people
know my aunt would get crazy when her
thyroid was off and it could be too high
or too low. D is exactly the same. Yet,
they do these studies based on a fixed
dose. So it doesn't matter what the
level is,
what time of the year, how much sun
they're getting, they're all getting
4,000 IUs.
>> So they could be having too much or too
little.
>> No blood levels are taken.
>> So you're saying that it should be
personalized the amount of vitamin D.
>> Absolutely. Any hormone that you take,
if you compare, that's why the endocrine
society is so important. They know in
2004 when they gave the final
recommendation for the doctors and
practice, they know that the studies
that have been done so far are rarely
done in the way a hormone should be
studied. And they say that in their
report. They spent a whole year looking
at this chemical, all the research
that's done. And they say, you know, we
don't really have any good studies. We
don't have any clinical studies like
mine for instance where we're relating
the dose that we give the person to the
blood level that's achieved. Therefore,
you would think they would say we need
more studies. No, here's what they said.
Therefore, you should not do vitamin D
levels and you should not give
recommendations about vitamin D, taking
it or not taking it. you should just
avoid the whole conversation because
what's going to happen when you do a
vitamin D level is you're going to call
me up and you're going to say what dose
should I give the D level is this and we
don't know so they've said don't be
curious don't do it that's insane now
that means the lay public is coming to
me and other people on the internet and
they're coming to podcasts like this to
learn about it and there are a lot of
conflicting
attitudes foods. I may be one of the
biggest recorder in my brain, which is
not in a data dump that I can put into
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I'm very curious about Meline and
Natalie still.
>> Great.
>> What happened to Meline and Natalie?
>> Okay. For two years, I'm talking to
Walter on the phone and I start giving
vitamin D to my my patients and I
learned that every single person needs a
unique amount. Very scary. That means
everybody else is saying, "Oh, take
5,000, take 10,000, take 20,000. I take
a h 100,000 once a month. Okay? And I
find out also that if you get past about
a level of 60, that's when they come
back and say, you know what, my sleep is
better. Now, importantly, I still was
operating under the false belief that
there's only one variable. Okay? I came
up in medicine using drugs. That means
you match the drug to the complaint. Oh,
that one didn't work. And then we do
this one, and then we do this one. Okay?
I'm ashamed that I looked at it that
way, but that was my training. So, I
thought vitamin D was going to fix
everything. Within the next 6 months, my
patients start to come back and say
horrible things like my joints ache all
over and my doctor's about to send me to
the rheatologist who does autoimmune
diseases,
>> like arthritis.
>> Exactly. Then the next person comes in
and says, "I've got this terrible
burning in my hands and feet." And
another woman comes in the same month
with burning in her hands and feet. Two
women, same month. They have nothing in
common except they both have headaches
and they've been doing vitamin D with me
for two years. And they say, they want
to know, is this related to that vitamin
D that I've been taking with you? And
now I'm very freaked out because I'm
afraid that what I've been doing even
though their sleep is better and we're
all happy about that headaches were
better now they're a little worse again
is I've put them in a situation where
they are now using more of whatever
these building blocks are and I've I've
actually forced them into another
deficiency state. I'm making them make
more repairs and now they're deficient
in something else and I don't know what.
Now, a patient walks in with a book.
This is why I'm telling you that my
patients are the ones that taught me all
this stuff. And I'm telling you these
embarrassing stories because they come
in and they say, "Did you do this to
me?"
That's very uncomfortable. And I don't
know, but I feel a commitment that I
better find out. And a woman walks in
with a book that's called the pain-free
promise of pantaththenic acid. God
forbid it's another vitamin. So I happen
to have developed over the same time
period this weird buttock pain. I can't
sit down to talk to my patients at the
end of the day because my butt hurts. So
I feel like I have the same thing. So I
read this book. It says pantaththenic
acid is a chemical that makes this thing
called co-enzyme A. Co-enzyme A is
responsible for making cortisol.
And I think I don't think that's causing
this burning, but this is something I
need to know about. And cortisol is big
in sleep. We talk about cortisol all the
time, the timing of it, and it's huge in
inflammation. I go to the vitamin store,
I find panthenic acid. The book says 400
milligrams is the right dose. So, I pick
up the 400 milligrams and I go to the B
complex. I find something called B 100,
which means there's each one has got 100
milligrams or 100 micrograms. I go home
with these two things. I start taking
them
and I give recommendations to the anyone
who comes in in that one week where I
have a sleep study, they have a new
complaint, I give a recommendation of
B100 and B5. What the book did was it
sent me to the references. The articles
that she references are from the 1950s
in this creepy lab next to the Iowa
State prison where they're doing these
creepy experiments on prisoners before
it becomes illegal. They published this
article saying if you block panaththenic
acid for two weeks, you see four things.
They can't sleep.
They have belly complaints, bloating,
and all sorts of things. They have a
funny puppet like gate and they have
burning in their hands and feet and I
go, "This is wonderful." So that was one
of the motivations. So the cortisol link
to pain and the burning in the hands and
feet. Now I've got it in my head that
I've made them use more of the B
vitamins.
>> So let's just pause that. So you're
saying that by asking your patients to
take more vitamin D, you're saying that
the body has also started to use more B
vitamins, which means that by taking
more vitamin D, they're now deficient in
B vitamins.
>> Yes.
>> And so when you use vitamin D, you also
use more B vitamins.
>> There's another point that I'm about to
make, but you summarize it perfectly. M.
>> So [clears throat] the next question
would be, okay, I'm taking 400
milligrams cuz that's what it says in
the book and that's the only dose that
was on the shelf in the vitamin store.
>> I get to the end of the week and I
realize I have restless legs and my
restless legs has been much worse this
week. This is probably too big a dose
and I stop the 400 milligrams and
everything goes away. My butt pain goes
away like in a day.
>> 400 milligrams of
>> B5.
So panaththenic acid is called B5. All
the patients who come back say
were you trying to kill me? This 400
milligrams here I got so agitated
I stopped it after two days. I felt like
I was crawling out of my skin and I
couldn't sleep at all. If you block B5
you get insomnia. That means it has
power in sleep. D has power in sleep.
But it turns out if it has power in
sleep, your body has a very specific
amount that it wants. If you give it too
much, it's not happy. If you give it too
little, it's not happy. And it turns out
that instead of giving you one thing
when it's low and another thing when
it's high, which is what I would have
anticipated, it goes back to the same
thing. When it's not happy, it just
stops sleeping. Now, a couple of them
come back and say, you know, I stopped
the 400 milligrams because I was so
agitated, couldn't sleep at all, but I
stayed on B100. I feel great. My sleep
is perfect. My pain is gone. And I said,
that's what happened to me. It's just
like too weird. This chemical is doing
something and it's acting. What I would
say to my patients is be very careful
with this because I don't really know
what dose you'll need.
If it's too much, it'll act like
caffeine. It'll keep you up at night.
Okay.
Then the next thing that happens is a
gal comes in and says, "You know, you
gave me that B 100
and I I achd all over. I would get up in
the morning and I go
and she said, you know, I broke it in
half and I'm taking that and I feel
great." What you'll see here is B50,
which is 50 milligrams of each, but all
eight B's has 50 milligs of of B5 in it.
It turns out if you've been taking D for
two years, you've actually worked your
way into a place where your body has
been using more bees and you are now
very profoundly deficient. But she did
not take two years. She was a new
patient to me. She had not been on D for
that period of time. The reason why this
discussion is important is there are
millions of people who started taking D
and CO who by the fourth year after
taking it started to have burning in
their hands and feet. They're not even
taking it anymore. They took it from
2020 to 2023. Their levels got into the
60s. Their doctor said, "Hey, 60 is
enough. Stop taking the vitamin D." But
they still show up with the B vitamin
diagnosis. And they go to their doctor
and they say, "Oh, well, you've
developed lupus. Oh, or you have this.
Oh, or you have that." These are all
diseases that have been described
already, but they haven't been described
as B vitamin deficiency states, which is
bizarre, but that's the historical
point. All of the literature says B5
deficiency doesn't exist because it's in
every food. Now, I'm reading that
literature and it says thamine, which is
B1, has a poop bacteria source and a
food source.
B2 poop bacteria and a food source. All
of them come from the poop.
>> What do you mean come from the poop?
These eight chemicals called B, all of
them are made by bacteria
and we absorb them. Everybody knows that
we have the wrong microbiome. And we've
all been told that it's toxins.
Antibiotics are the major thing that are
blamed. But we now have a huge body of
literature about the microbiome being
abnormal.
>> The gut microbiome.
>> Yes. The other weird part about it is
there are these guys in Oklahoma, GI
surgeons, who are giving poop
transplants.
>> Give me context on what that is.
>> They take poop from one person and they
push it up the other person's butt. Like
we've spent a hundred years saying stay
away from the poop. It's bad for you.
Don't go from the poop to your mouth.
Okay? We've made this idea that the
bacteria,
we're fighting against them. They're
trying to take us over and they're bad
and we're fighting against them. But as
people are dying of things like
claustrdium difficil, which ciff is the
way it's shortened, they're dying of
cadiff infection and they're doing poop
transplants and they live. It turns out
that the 8 B vitamins were first
described as bacterial growth factors.
They are chemicals that one bacteria is
able to make and it pushes it out of its
cell into the environment. And this one
next to it, that's a different one goes
>> [gasps]
>> Goodie, give me that. And those guys
live together as a group, a commensal,
meaning each one of them derive benefit
from having the other one there. So
there are four big groups of bacteria
that is the normal human microbiome.
Well, why are there four? Why is it
always this four? And how come we only
know
about 2% of them? for saying all these
things that the microbiome is wrong.
Turns out we only know 2%
of 200 bacteria that are normal
occupants from the mouth, from the lips
all the way to the anus. We only know
2%.
But we have the genetic footprint of
every single one. We are able to take
them out of the poop or out of the small
intestine or out of the mouth and we can
say these are the genetics and we've
named all of them. So we know there are
200. Okay.
>> And the article that they write is, you
know, it looks to us like the reason why
this forsome of groups hang out together
is because they all at least need one B
vitamin and they produce at least one.
So they all have a relationship to the B
vitamins. And we should start thinking
about the microbiome as the production
system that supplies the B vitamins to
the body. I didn't find that article
until after. But here I am back again
with one big question. These two women
with the burning in their hands and
feet, why did they get B vitamin
deficient? If the bees come from the
food, they've had the same diet all
along. And I I haven't controlled their
diet. I haven't made them change their
diet. Why did all of these people come
back with these complaints?
The one thing we know is many of them
have IBS symptoms, which are a signal
that the bacteria isn't right. IBS.
What's that?
>> Irritable bowel syndrome.
>> Yeah.
>> Diarrhea, constipation, bloating. My
belly isn't right.
>> Yeah.
>> Because I had assumed that D was going
to fix everything.
>> Vitamin D.
>> Mhm.
>> The [clears throat] vitamin D was going
to fix their belly and it didn't. There
were several things that did not get
better. One, their IBS didn't get
better. Two, they didn't lose weight.
That was really weird because they were
out exercising more. They were out
exercising in the middle of the day, but
they didn't lose weight. That means
there's still something wrong in the
background where they didn't lose
weight. So, I'm stuck with, okay, why
didn't the D fix the B thing? Oh. Oh,
these were all described as bacterial
growth factors. I have assumed that
vitamin D was a bacterial growth factor
because Walter W talked about the GI
tract having all sorts of receptors for
vitamin D. And so I assumed that the
bacteria that lived inside us needed
vitamin D to be normal. And therefore I
assumed that IBS showed up in the 1980s
[clears throat]
because we went into D deficiency and
that D deficiency caused this IBS. There
were no articles about that in humans
until 2020 when COVID came and they
actually started to realize that the
people who were D deficient died in
COVID and they started to actually look
at oh is the microbiome playing a role
in our immune system? Yes. If I give
vitamin D, will the bacterial makeup of
my stool change in a positive way?
>> Exactly. Does the poop bacteria makeup
change in a positive way? We know we've
seen people who don't have inflammatory
disorders and they have these this
bacterial makeup. Will giving vitamin D
change the population? And yes, that's
the answer. Now I realized now I'm
giving two bacterial growth factors D
and now I'm giving B 100 and I'm giving
a large dose of all eight B's. Remember
that give all eight. Mhm.
>> That means by accident I have actually
given eight bacterial growth factors
that are necessary for bringing the poop
bacteria back to the normal human makeup
that it's supposed to be that it has
always come to be spontaneously.
That's a really important point. All the
other animals in the world, they're not
obese. There are no obese squirrels in
my backyard. The only obese animals are
are cats and dogs that we keep inside.
So to summarize for me, what is the link
between vitamin D and the B vitamins?
>> It turns out that all the bees come from
the microbiome.
>> Yes. Okay, I understood that.
>> In order to have the correct microbiome,
we are actually commensal organisms with
our microbiome. That means we have to
provide D. They in turn provide us with
bees.
>> Okay. So isn't that a good thing that
you gave them D then because then their
body makes B.
>> Yes. But it didn't make be on its own.
Otherwise, those side effects like my
butt pain wouldn't have been there.
Okay. So, let's bring that let's bring
that into focus. The D by itself did not
correct the microbiome.
>> Yeah.
>> So, when I took 5,000 of D between 2020
and 2023,
and I took it for three years because my
doctor told me it was okay. But in 2025,
I started to have rheumatoid arthritis
symptoms. The D did not correct my
microbiome. It actually made me
deficient. I'm going to give you the
drug for rheumatoid arthritis. I'm not
going to picture it as, oh, you need
B50.
>> So, you gave B50, but then didn't they
have another problem?
>> Most of the time, what happens after the
B50 is everything comes back to normal.
The GI tract corrects. You have to take
it only for 3 months. I was taking it
for four and a half months and I started
to wake up and feel old.
>> Yeah.
>> And everything I just parenthetically
told you about the the GI tract was
percolating around in my brain. And what
I had told my patients was, you know, I
think we've stumbled on the growth
factor that the right microbiome needs.
And I think the reason you became B
vitamin deficient was because it was the
wrong microbiome. But when we give them
what they need, they're going to grow
back.
>> Okay. Fine. They're going to grow back
and they're going to do their job.
>> Okay, so
>> they're going to produce B50. They're
going to make that.
>> Let me summarize that. So, by giving
them B50 for a short period of time,
[snorts] you're kind of jumpstarting the
gut microbiome and then you don't want
to keep giving it to them or else
they're going to become like dependent
or not do their job properly. So, you
want to give it to them for 3 months.
Let them jump start and then they'll do
their job and then you leave them alone.
>> Yes. And I want to add one more thing.
The way you think about it is probiotics
are bacteria.
You dump the bacteria down and you
swallow it. It goes into your small
intestine. But if it does not have the
growth factors that it needs, which
every bacteria has its little set of
growth helpers, it needs to be able to
absorb from the actual juice that's down
there. If it doesn't have that, it can't
reproduce.
Every bacteria that's sitting in my
small intestine right now
12 hours from now is going to be in a
different place.
>> A [clears throat] day from now I'm going
to poop it out. Who's up here now? The
great great granddaughters of the
bacteria that are sitting there while
you're I are talking. They reproduce
rapidly. You have to picture them like a
river. Like we're sitting in, we're
looking at the river and the water looks
like this and 10 minutes later the water
looks the same but that's not the same
water that we were looking at 10 minutes
ago. That water is downstream. [snorts]
That means the level of reproduction
that they are expected to do requires
constant production of these growth
factors. Now it turns out that you don't
have to think about that. All you have
to do is have the normal bacteria that
was generated spontaneously when you
were born because mom was giving you D
in her breast milk and it also had eight
B's. Those eight B's came from her
normal microbiome in the breast milk.
That means you had everything you needed
and then you were out in the sun. You
were born in June or July in the summer
and then you got D on your skin and that
process has replicated for 300,000 years
for 250 million years. The dinosaurs had
a microbiome in their intestines. This
is so old it's unimaginable.
>> So what is the conclusion here then?
Because I do want to bring this back to
uh Natalie and Meline.
>> Okay.
>> I still haven't figured out what what
you what you told them to do. Stephen,
you are so smart and it's so such a
pleasure to talk to you. These are
difficult points. Meline is struggling
with all these things. She's slowly
getting better. Then we do the D. She's
slowly getting better. Then we do the B
100. And then
it's freaking awesome. She starts to
lose the pain that she had down her leg.
The burning in her hands and feet goes
away. Her sleep gets much better. Now
she's into year three and four
of what becomes the right sleep program
and she's still on 30,000 IUs of D a
day. That's an immense dose. Most people
are taking 5 to 10. She's been taking
30,000 a day for four years.
Her D level has stayed the same. It's in
the 60s. She's doing a great job of
keeping everything the same.
That really means that her body is using
30,000 IUs of vitamin D a day for four
years. That's a very important concept
because it means she is using so much
more than anybody else is using in my
practice. Most people are on 10,000.
But she's making these amazing repairs.
Her depression is gone. She's stopped
three medicines that we've been using
for pain control. She now gets up in the
morning and she feels energetic. She's
starting a program that the Texas state
has for going back to work. I mean, I
was like, "This girl's never going back.
She wants to go back to work. She is a
totally different person." Now,
importantly, she is not 100 pounds
thinner. She's still 100 pounds
overweight. And that is one of the
things that happened in most of my
patients and clients. The body will not
lose that weight until it's really made
every repair it thinks is necessary. And
then it decides that it's not going to
need this fat anymore.
>> So with her, did you take her off the B
vitamins?
>> The routine is that one, they have to do
D and this this will become the right
sleep program.
>> But they have to do D because they're
not getting sunlight.
>> Correct.
>> We none of us really get enough
sunlight.
>> Correct. So and we can talk about
supplement versus sun, but the D is
pivotal to the entire program and it has
to continue. And if you have a sleep
problem or medical problems, you will do
better if you get your D above 60 and
keep it around there.
>> That is not the same as saying what is
the ideal D level for a human who wants
to overachieve. It is not the same.
>> Okay,
>> so she's on D. She stays on D the rest
of her life as long as she needs it. And
she's always checking her D levels. Then
she goes on B 100. she happened to be
one of the ones that was on D by itself
for 2 years. If you have been on D for
two or three or 5 years in the past and
have developed B vitamin deficiency
states, then you will have to go back on
D with the B50 and you will do that for
3 months and then you will stop and
you'll go down to a much lower dose
that's a multivitamin. One of the things
in the background that we haven't talked
about yet is there are actually hundreds
of things that the bacteria are doing
for us that are just starting to be
reported. But they have been pivotal all
along in all the minerals, all the
minerals that show up in a multivitamin.
All the magnesium, calcium, selenium,
manganese, all these things that
nobody's really interested in and they
all are in list on their multi
multivitamin.
All through the same time frame, people
are developing iron deficiency and iron
overload. And it turns out that the
bacteria have been a pivotal part in our
intestine, speaking to our body about
whether or not our iron level is low or
high in the liver or in the blood system
in our bone marrow or in our brain. And
if you do not have a specific bacteria
called Lactobacillus rutery, you will be
missing a brand new metabolite or
chemical that was named after that
bacteria just in the last three years
that's called rutery. That is one of the
chemical messengers that our body uses.
So that means many of the deficiency
states that the naturopaths and the
functional medicine people are studying
are all linked to the fact that this
bacterial tube has been doing all these
things for us all along. And when you
lost them, each individual person has
its own set of specific deficiency
states that must be addressed for their
sleep to get better.
>> This is something that I've made for
you. I realized that the direio audience
are strivvers. Whether it's in business
or health, we all have big goals that we
want to accomplish. And one of the
things I've learned is that when you aim
at the big big big goal, it can feel
incredibly psychologically uncomfortable
because it's kind of like being stood at
the foot of Mount Everest and looking
upwards. The way to accomplish your
goals is by breaking them down into tiny
small steps. And we call this in our
team the 1%. And actually this
philosophy is highly responsible for
much of our success here. So what we've
done so that you at home can accomplish
any big goal that you have is we've made
these 1% diaries and we released these
last year and they all sold out. So I
asked my team over and over again to
bring the diaries back but also to
introduce some new colors and to make
some minor tweaks to the diary. So now
we have a better range for you. So, if
you have a big goal in mind and you need
a framework and a process and some
motivation, then I highly recommend you
get one of these diaries before they all
sell out once again. And you can get
yours at the diary.com.
And if you want the link, the link is in
the description below. I want to go back
to Madeline. So, my question was because
the research that I'm reading says that
vitamin D does not cause trigger or
create a B vitamin deficiency.
>> No, it's not in the literature except my
article. Taking vitamin D supplements
will not drain your your body's B
vitamins.
>> Let me read my my title. Vitamin D
deficiency changes the intestinal
microbiome, reducing B vitamin
production in the gut. The resulting
lack of pandaththenic acid adversely
affects the immune system, producing a
pro-inflammatory state associated with
atheroscerosis and autoimmunity. This is
a brand new discovery made by someone
who's not a scientist, who's not working
in the primary lab, who is a clinician.
And the impact of this is only as strong
as I can get this the ideas out there
and talk about what happened to my
patients. Now,
>> is it is it plausible that there's a
sort of a intermediary link
um between the two? I'm reading some
things here that say people are very
frequently both low in vitamin D and
vitamin B12 at the same time. And this
is because they share the same root
cause like a poor gut absorption, aging,
or a restrictive diet, not because one
vitamin is destroying the other.
>> That's what we've been told.
We've also been told that old people
don't need as much sleep and that old
people get a bad gut as they get old. It
is my belief now that it is there is an
absolute link between the production of
D and I don't have the articles for this
even though this is dogma at the moment
that our production of vitamin D goes
down as we get older. So, if you look
back to that person who was 75, who
didn't get sick until they were 75,
[snorts]
their skin production, even though
they're still out there with their truck
farm and still raising their own food,
their skin production rate of vitamin D
goes down. And this is probably true for
every animal. And then as their D goes
low, they lose their microbiome. And
then they die of one of the multiple
diseases that are linked to this
multiple deficiency state. It's a
different lens to look through that says
there is actually a system that allowed
us to live without medical problems that
weren't either related to epidemics of
childhood illness or starving to death.
And as long as we had good diets, you
can actually look at 1945 to about 1985
and say, what was the ideal for the
humans that lived rurally in the United
States? Did they live to be 75 years
old? and then get diseases. So it's my
claim that those people didn't go to the
doctor because there weren't any around
them and then things started to happen
to them that instead of looking at it
through the lens of this disease means
this drug that instead we say we should
pre-preventing this by paying attention
to what vitamin D does in the body and
what the bees do in the body and
ultimately
that is linked to most of our diseases.
is okay. So I'll read the conclusion of
your study here which was published in
2016. I hypothesize and it's important
to say [clears throat] this is a
hypothesis that the parallel epidemics
of abnormal sleep and abnormal
intestinal microbiome are linked to one
another through vitamin D deficiency.
Proper supplementation doses of vitamin
D plus all eight B vitamins appears to
return the intestinal microbiome to
normal in 3 months. Reinstating the
normal microbiome not only treats IBS
symptoms, it returns the supply of
vitamin
B's to their natural daily doses. The B
vitamins are neither good for us nor
unnecessary. They are good for the
person who needs them and only until the
normal source picks up again. Both sleep
disruption and pain can be caused by
large doses of B vitamins once the
intestinal microbiome has returned to
normal. The B vitamins are very
biologically intertwined both in their
intestinal production and cellulose
cellular use. This suggests that B
vitamins, aside from B12, were not meant
to be used individually and returning to
restorative sleep with normal supply of
the building blocks of cellular repair
has the potential to repair the
pro-inflammatory state seen in
association with a chloris
>> atheroscerosis
>> as well as the hyperadrogenic
state of associated with hypertension,
heart disease and stroke. It appears
that given the proper essential elements
for normal sleep, the body is designed
to repair every physical injury that
occurs during normal daily use and may
even retain a memory of long deferred
repairs. So essentially, you're saying
that um if you can return the body's
vitamin D and and B levels to normal,
then the body will kick back up and
start producing
the um everything it needs. Yes,
>> I guess the scientific consensus at the
moment is saying that there's not a link
between vitamin D and a vitamin B well
it's saying that vitamin D does not
cause a a vitamin B deficiency.
>> Correct.
>> And you disagree with that?
>> Absolutely.
>> And now could it be the case that
there's some intermediary like i.e. if I
take if I take lots of vitamin D, it
disrupts my magnesium production and the
magnesium production is having an impact
on vitamin B. And could it be the case
that it's something else?
>> Yes, of course.
>> Okay.
>> And in fact, it's way more complicated
than you and I have talked about. And
where you finally arrive is actually at
co-enzyme A deficiency.
And that is a very important chemical.
It runs our mitochondrial health and our
ability to make energy. And it's linked
to all the degenerative diseases etc.
So, it's not that
I don't understand the idea that once
you're a hammer, everything's a nail
because that's what I was told by all of
my colleagues that you're trying to
explain everything. It's that I saw
Meline go back to work and we haven't
even talked about what happened to
Natalie.
>> What happened to Natalie? Natalie got
better and actually how
>> she first with the D like most of the
patients she started to sleep better but
at the end of two years she stopped
sleeping better. She actually lost
weight which was the case with several
of the women that were postpartum who
had complained about that. So in some my
interpretation was in someone who is
less affected than Meline was the DB50
combination especially in the setting of
being after the pregnancy is really all
somebody who was relatively normal at
the start of their life needs
and then she got better. Her
anti-depressant went away. Her
postpartum depression cleared her high
heart rate. So the other thing that we
didn't mention is many of these women
who are very interested in exercise and
doing exercise had high heart rates of
110 or above sitting quietly and had not
been like that before. Their high heart
rates come down. So she came back to
being her normal self again
>> and did she have to come off the vitamin
B?
>> She only took it for 3 months.
>> Okay. And
>> and then she did a multivitamin and then
eventually almost everybody needs to be
off the multivitamin completely. It is
my belief that if all of this happens
spontaneously in every other animal on
the planet,
then we shouldn't have to take
supplements either. The squirrels are
not going to GNC to buy supplements.
That means if there's a mistake made
like we move indoors and we give back
what is needed to get the normal
microbiome,
then you should assume that your body
will go back to supporting itself. And
Natalie's she's good again.
>> Natalie's back to being a triathlete and
doing great.
>> If we zoom out for a second, what is the
advice you'll give to all of my
listeners now? There might be millions
of them all over the world. Some of
which are struggling with sleep. Some of
them just want to, you know, optimize
their sleep a little bit. What is the
the over overarching advice, the thing
that all of them could could do to make
sure they sleep better in your view?
>> One, do the behavioral cognitive stuff
first. Make the bike out curtains. Do
the whole thing. If you haven't done
that with the eye cover, then go ahead
and do that. And if that's all you need,
do not mess around with supplements.
Two, if you've already done the
behavioral changes,
then go to my website, read about the
ideas, or listen to this podcast, and
see whether or not the ideas there feel
like they apply to you.
>> You've come up with this protocol called
the right sleep protocol. What is that?
And can you walk me through it?
>> Sure. So, the right sleep program is a
process of taking your D to a certain
level,
supplementing B12 if your B12 is at a
certain level below a certain level,
taking B50 for 3 months, and then taking
a multivitamin.
And that is until your body says, gee, I
might need more bees.
This is a diagram. And you have a
beautiful step-wise
visual assist here. The first 3 months,
if your B12 is low, you will take B12 as
a separate supplement. And keep in mind,
there's a lot to be learned about
multivitamins. For instance, many
multivitamins say multivitamin on the
front, but they actually have the
equivalent of B50 in them. They have 50
milligrams of all these B vitamins. In
fact, if you go to an expensive vitamin
store, they put up the doses of bees.
The doses of these vitamins are
extremely important for the way you feel
every day. If you get it right, you feel
energetic, perky, and wonderful all day.
If you get it wrong, you feel awful in
the same way you did before. You have to
look at the back. You have to learn some
of the name of these vitamins. Most
people are not that interested in that.
If you want to get better, that's what
you have to do. So, the first step is
you're taking all four of these. Then
in the second step for a period of
usually 3 to 4 months, you're still
taking B12 if you were B12 deficient.
You're still taking vitamin D and you're
adjusting your vitamin D dosing based on
recommendations based on your D levels
that you're doing every month. And I
show you how to get them done properly
because the vitamin D levels that your
doctor is doing are not accurate,
unfortunately. nor do they know that or
care and you're still taking a
multivitamin. Then after [clears throat]
the three months that are depicted here,
it turns out if your sleep is much
better,
you will actually get to a place where
your body will stop sleeping well again.
And it turns out that your brain is
asking for more additional bees. The
basic bottom line is the sleep is a
thing that once you learn how to use it
and once you learn the concept that if
in the third or fourth month of this
program, my sleep gets much better and
then in the sixth month it gets worse
again, what you should take from that is
my brain really knows how to do this. It
was able to get me to sleep from 10 to 6
with one brief wake up. Went back to
sleep. didn't get up to pee and I have
no pain when I wake up and I feel
energetic all day long. It knows how to
do that. When it doesn't do it again two
months later, the message is not, "Oh
man, I knew it wouldn't work cuz
everything else I've tried didn't work."
Instead, it means what my brain is
asking for is something else. Then you
address that.
On my website, I also have multiple
videos of Q&As's addressing questions
like, I'm in the fifth month and this
happened to me, etc. So, what I would
give as advice is one, supplementation
is only good for you if there's
something wrong with you that you're
trying to correct.
Two, keep a log of what happens to that
thing because we tend to forget. All my
headache patients forget that they had
headaches when they go away. That's
challenging to a clinician because they
come back and they say, "Yeah, I still
have headaches." And then their husband
says, "Wait, we were in Vegas two weeks
ago and you said we didn't you didn't
have any headaches at all." And she
says, "Oh, I know, but they're back
now." We view it as it should have fixed
me and now it hasn't. This is a
different belief system where the answer
is your brain is asking you for
something. interpreting [clears throat]
what it's asking for is difficult but
possible.
>> So number one was
>> if you do not have something wrong with
you, do not mess with supplements,
especially D.
>> Number two is keep a log.
>> Read more. Think about it. Think about
it a little bit. Think about whether or
not there are things that are bothering
you.
>> Okay. Number three. Number three is if
there's something bothering you, then
decide you're actually going to take
some time and you're going to learn
about a system which allows you to give
supplements that lets your body be fully
replete, which means fills up all the
deficiencies. And that's your final
outcome will be great sleep, great
repair, and you will be doing things
that will allow your body to prevent
>> degenerative illness. Why don't you
just, you know, why don't I just instead
of taking supplements or be this, be
that, be the other, D, whatever, why
don't I just go outside in the sun and
have a better diet?
>> I think that's a a great question. And
here's the problem.
>> So, I've got, you know, I've got all
these things, these wonderful things
here. I've got I've got some kimchi,
which is good for the gut microbiome.
I've heard I've got kombucha. I've got
uh some yogurt thing here. I've got I
can't even pronounce that. Sauerkraut.
>> Sauerkraut. And I've got some caffier.
Why don't I just have all this stuff,
which is great for my gut microbiome,
and then go outside and spend spend the
morning in the sunshine getting up
improving my vitamin D levels.
Presumably, this is going to help my gut
and the sunshine is going to help my
vitamin D. Voila.
>> I think you could actually do that. If
there's not much wrong with you, I think
that's the better path. Frankly,
supplementing with vitamin D is not the
same as being outdoors.
>> Okay, explain. not the same.
>> What do you mean it's not the same? How
is it different?
>> Cuz my doctor did a blood test recently
and uh I did two blood tests. One at
Nikico Health # #investor. Um, Nico
Health. And the Nico Health test that I
did said I was vitamin D deficient,
which doesn't surprise me cuz I live in
this dark bunker. I I never leave the
driver studio. People just walk in and I
live in here and I eat in here and I But
I am vitamin D deficient, it said. So I
went to the store and I just started
taking vitamin D. I assume that's fixed
it.
Why is vitamin D supplementation
different from being out in the sun?
>> There is a lot of literature about by a
gal named Stephanie Senf who says that
the vitamin D that we make on our sk
skin is sulfated which is different than
the vitamin D we're taking a
supplemented and it has a different
behavior in the body. Number two, it
turns out there's a lot of literature
that shows that vitamin D is not the
only thing made by UVB hitting your your
skin. And what it's hitting is
cholesterol. And that cholesterol has
changed in this chemical called D3.
But there are probably 15 20 other
chemicals that are being made at the
same time.
>> Okay,
>> they are not being taken with that pill
of vitamin D3. That is a separate
literature that's just gotten really
some attention in the last 10 years.
There are all these other things that
prevent inflammation that do things to
your skin that were actually being made
by the sunlight that you're being
exposed to that protects you from the
damaging effects.
>> So why can't someone who is really
struggling with their sleep, why can't
the prescription just be improve your
diet?
>> Have you tried that with patients? Oh,
you said you No,
>> one of the reasons why these are
effective
>> the the the
>> the fermented foods. Okay, fermented
food means you're eating rotting food.
That's not the way we call it because it
sounds disgusting. Okay, but bacteria
are growing in here. Yeah.
>> And they're secretreting things like B
vitamins and rutery. They're making a
yeast bacterial mixture. So there's
fungus growing in there. There are
viruses in there. There are many
microbiomes.
>> Microbes.
>> Microbes. Thank you.
>> Look at me. [snorts]
Look at me.
>> Awesome.
>> That means you're eating bacteria.
You're basically eating a food that has
to be 50 in it,
>> which is great.
>> Yeah. So,
>> so why don't you give
>> because I have no idea what the time
frame will be for this having that
success for you. This is the easy way.
This is the fast way. This is the way I
can tell you that I've had more
experience with my clients over time.
And if you want to fix something that's
really badly off, by the time you get a
sleep disorder,
>> for those that can't see because they're
just listening on audio, you're pointing
at the vitamins.
>> I'm pointing at the vitamins and the
step-wise approach, which is the fast
and easy approach.
>> Exactly. And if you don't want to use
supplements, I would support you all the
way
>> in doing what?
>> In going outside, just what you've
described. I think the healthier
approach to all of our diseases is to be
outside much more and to include these
fermented foods.
>> Now, on this point of being outside much
more, some people live in cloudy places.
You know, I spent a lot of my life
living in places like London in the UK.
Exactly.
>> And there's not much sunlight,
>> right?
>> So, what do I do about that?
>> Remember how I said that Meline was a
redhead?
>> Yeah.
>> That turns out to be important. So,
melanin is the pigment that humans have
in their skin. M
>> you have more than I do. I put more
melanin as I stay out in the sun more
and I tan. [clears throat]
>> That melanin is absorbing energy. It's
there to protect you from overexposure
to sunlight and damaging effects on the
DNA of your skin. The red head gene
usually comes with freckles which means
that there is only little tiny parts of
the skin that have melanin.
And the redhead gene came about in the
far north Viking Scotland.
And those places don't get much
sunlight. That means it cleared out the
blocker of the thing that collected that
energy and allowed people who lived in
very overcast environments to make D
because the melanin didn't block the
conversion to vitamin D and all these
other things that it does. So redheads
actually have a bit of a superpower when
it comes to their relationship with the
sunshine, they can make significantly
more.
>> That depends. Now, if you pick up all
the Scotsmen and you put them in Texas
and Oklahoma, which is where I live, and
many of the people there have red hair
and they came from Scotsman, the problem
is they're now in an environment with
very high sun levels. It's very hot in
the summer and they cannot tolerate the
level of sun. That means if you get to a
point on the world where you pick up big
populations and you move them into
another weather type, they have not had
enough time to adapt. There are things
about melanin amounts
and our survival that make a difference.
So I still recommend that supplementing
with D is not the whole answer.
Supplementation in and of itself is not
what we want. What we want is our kids
to be outside much more. There are now
new learning environments for kids where
they're out in the forest, where they're
not enclosed in school rooms. There's
some interesting stats I found which
says that 90% of Americans spend close
to 22 hours inside every day. That was
from USA Today. And roughly 20% of
Americans never go outside regularly
spending 24 hours indoors.
And downstream from vitamin D, there's
not just sleep disruption. There's lots
of problems, isn't there? Yes,
>> I can start listing them and they're all
related in the background to what we've
talked about. But diabetes, even though
you've had lots of really interesting
shows about that, diabetes is happening
in parallel with the sleep disorder.
It's not caused by the sleep disorder.
It has similar chemical in the
background. There are many types, but
diabetes just means there's a mismatch
between the amount of insulin from the
amount of sugar.
Let me say that I'm not trying to say
that America doesn't eat badly. America
eats badly. I was just in Europe and
that eating patterns in the US are
terrible. But there are other things
that are playing a role and diabetes
shows up. Remember how Meline had
gestational diabetes
and so did this wonderful Natalie who
did everything we told her to. Why would
Natalie show up with gestational
diabetes when she's not fat? Her
supply of this thing called co-enzyme A
is not enough to keep up with supplying
the child and herself. So for a while
she really has a deficiency state and
you start to see it. We've learn to
measure the sugar and the measuring the
sugar is one of the signs of a
deficiency state that's in the
background that actually affects a
hundred things in the body. It makes
acetylcholine which allows our whole
autonomic nervous system to sleep nor to
react normally. So it affects all of
those things that we do is when we're
training and it also affects cortisol
levels. You must have co-enzyme A to
make cortisol. You must have co-enzyme A
to make melatonin.
>> So the things linked to vitamin D are
everything from bone disorders,
autoimmune diseases, mental health,
brain disorders, cardiovascular,
metabolic issues, immune infections, and
then certain cancers. I I I imagine at
this stage in the conversation the
audience are very much looking for like
actionable advice. So we've talked about
the the right sleep protocol which is
this sort of vitamin approach and then
the other approach is to get outside in
the sunshine more
>> and you don't have to be in direct
sunlight.
>> You have to be in direct sunlight to
make vitamin D on your skin.
>> Okay?
>> But you should limit the amount that you
do so you do not burn your skin. that
it's [clears throat] important that UVA,
if you're going to use a um go to a
tanning salon, if they're using UVA, you
are not making vitamin D from that. So,
there are different kinds of beds. UVA
will still tan you, but it will not make
D.
>> So, you don't have to be in direct
sunlight. So, if I'm at a window and I
can't see the sun and it's overcast, am
I still making vitamin D?
>> No, you can't make anything through the
window.
>> Okay. So, what I go outside, I can't see
the sun cuz there's clouds. I'm still
making vitamin D.
>> Maybe it can be that you will actually
still get a burn. Okay, that is from UVA
and UVB penetrating that cloud.
>> Okay,
>> so that does mean that you can make some
vitamin D on a day that it's cloudy.
And the only way to know how much
vitamin D you are actually making is to
do your vitamin D levels over time.
Looking at some data here, it says that
um you can make a little bit of vitamin
D during overcast times. Um up to 80% of
UV radiation still penetrates light
cloud cover. So, you can absolutely
still make vitamin D, though it might
take a few minutes longer than it would
on a completely clear day. When it's
thick, dark, and overcast, or dense
storms or clouds, that can block up to
70 to 90% of UVB rays. On these days,
it's incredibly difficult for your skin
to produce any meaningful amount of
vitamin D. You know these like lamps
that they put on desks and stuff? Can
you get vitamin D from that?
>> No. But make let me make you a point
here that's not in my field but in the
infrared field.
There are so many other wavelengths of
energy that you receive when you're
outside. So you can be sitting on a
porch where you're not in direct
sunlight and you are still receiving
infrared. And infrared is one of the
most important
uh wavelengths that we know about that
penetrates the body several centimeters
and actually gives energy to the
mitochondria. Our bodies are like little
batteries that we receive energy from
sunlight and we can do that sitting on
the porch without being in direct
sunlight. and fire. Also, the reason why
it looks red is because it has infrared
and incandescent bulbs, which we've now
stopped using.
>> So, what's the advice here?
>> Some people believe that you should use
incandescent bulbs on a lamp that's on
your desk. The problem is
>> incandescent bulb,
>> it gives you rays of light. like LED is
an electron
um producing light source which the
government has suggested that is better
than incandescent lights. It's very
difficult to buy incandescent bulbs like
the bulbs that we used to use. Now
you'll get H hallogen or LEDs and they
do not give off infrared light uh
energy. So, an incandescent bulb is the
old school glass light bulbs. Um, the
kind Thomas Edison used to use. It
creates light by running an electrical
current through a metal filament until
it gets so hot that it glows. Because it
relies on raw heat, an incandescent bulb
bulb behaves exactly like a miniature
fire or a tiny piece of the sun. H. So,
yeah, those incandescent bulbs are hard
harder to come by these days, but yeah,
my fiance, she's a big fan of them.
>> Yeah.
>> And she's trying to fill our house with
them.
>> Yeah, she's right.
>> So, is there anything else? You know,
also I've got these prebiotics here.
Prebiotics. Probiotics. A lot of people
say that you should take prebiotics.
Probiotics. Have you tried giving them
to your patients?
>> I was on probiotics and so are my
patients when we started and it had not
corrected the microbiome. It was just a
try. We're going to dump the bacteria
down there and maybe they'll get back to
normal. Okay. That is what a probiotic
is considered. They have the actual
bacteria freeze-dried and you eat the
bacteria. kind of gross when you think
about it as being poop bacteria, but
that's what it is. Okay. Now, what
prebiotic has that's different is that
you feed the bacteria and they feed you.
That's really what happens. What I love
about this is there are different things
that they're feeding the bacteria. We're
kind of interested in what they think.
How do we know what they think? Well,
what if I change to carnivore
and all of a sudden my belly gas goes
away?
>> The carnivore diet where you just eat
meat
>> carniv mostly meat. Let's say 90% meat
and most of my belly complaints go away
and I poop regularly. Then you've just
been very successful at making your
bacteria very happy.
What if the next client who I have is a
mostly plant-based?
Then I have to change the way I think
and the way I help them and encourage
them to recognize that when we're
feeding mostly plant-based, we have a
different set of bacteria. Now, let me
propose something to you. Humans cover
the globe like cockroaches.
We are very successful and we have a
hugely varied diet. I would claim that
that means you should eat the diet that
works for you.
The place where you see something that
is really important for the US is the
original articles about vitamin
deficiency states were in two groups
that ate a pure carbohydrate diet. So
the claim right now for most the people
that are interested in healthy diets is
if you eat a fully carbohydrate diet,
you're set up for failure in a million
different ways. And then they talk about
the diet you should eat. There are two
incidences from the 1940s
where the first vitamin deficiency
states were described and both of them
turn out to be purely carbohydrate
diets. One of them was in the Japanese
prisoner of war camps and the batan
[clears throat] death march in World War
II where they had rice, rice, rice.
That's it. And they're outside all the
time. They're not vitamin D deficient.
They're discovered to have berry berry.
And berry berry is an old disease
described in Japan when you take off the
rice casing. So ultimately they gave
back meat and vegetables and berry berry
is described as heart failure,
non-healing ulcers of the legs, bright
shiny red skin and burning in the feet
that we see in the elderly in the US all
the time in the hospital
that is now ignored. But you can
actually get to a state where you're
feeding only carbohydrates. But now the
lens you're looking through is I was
feeding my bacteria a purely
carbohydrate diet. I therefore selected
for bacterial populations that were not
producing the B vitamins that I needed.
It's seeing it through a slightly
different lens. The same thing about
pelagra which is actually a niacin
deficiency in adults and children that
were institutionalized in the south of
the United States in the 30s and 40s and
fed corn grl as their only food. So
there's still a piece of information
there that is your diet absolutely
affects who lives inside you. And once
you have a purely carbohydrate diet for
many years and you're D deficient, it is
very likely you're going to have to do
something more aggressive,
either change your diet and do fermented
foods and change to a meat and plant
diet and you're going to have to watch
what your body does. And if you're not
able and in and my claim would still be
the sleep that you have should still be
your best measure of whether you've
succeeded in what you'd like to do.
>> And again, to track your sleep, there's
lots of different ways to do that.
Obviously, none of them are perfect. Um,
but you can buy sleep trackers and those
kinds of things and see how you're
doing.
>> Yes. And I would also say use your sleep
tracker. I don't use mine regularly
because I get obsessed by it. I I start
to think, "Oh, I only had an hour and a
half of RAM. I'm dying." And I just get
spiral downward. Okay. So, what your
body is saying to you is still very
important. I didn't have sleep trackers
when I was seeing all these things that
were happening to Meline and and
Natalie. I would listen to what they
said about their sleep.
>> I imagine a lot of people clicked on
this conversation because they are
struggling with sleep or they have a
partner or friend or maybe just because
they want to optimize their sleep a
little bit. And what I've really taken
away is that um a lot of sleep related
issues start in the gut microbiome. Yes.
So we want to try and fix the gut
microbiome. And how we fix the gut
microbiome is can be dietary. It can be
through supplementation.
>> But we want to try and do it through
diet first and fermented foods.
>> Um and then the other thing is sunlight
plays a big role. You're smoking again.
>> You're doing a fabulous job.
>> Oh, you're so sweet. Um the other the
other thing is sunlight plays a big role
because it produces vitamin D and
amongst other things which also can
improve that balance and help us sleep
better.
>> Yes.
>> And we also want to try the stuff that
everybody talks about Matthew Walker
talks about temperature and
>> yes
>> eye masks and all that kind of stuff. I
guess the big insight here is that
vitamins play a really important role in
sleep.
>> Yes.
>> As you've seen through the thousands of
patients that you've spent time with and
helped to uh restore to a healthy sleep
state.
>> Yes. That's a beautiful summary.
>> What is the most important thing we
haven't talked about that we should have
talked about? Is there anything at all?
>> We have skipped the people who have been
told they have
a disease narcolepsy
or sleep apnoa
um where they're told there's a specific
this is a genetic thing and you have to
do these specific things. For instance,
for narcolepsy,
this is an attack of sleep that takes
you out and you become I'm sitting here
talking to you and I fall asleep.
That turns out to be
treatable in the same way.
>> You're saying a lot of it can be about
vitamins.
>> Yes, you can sleep deprive anyone to the
point of falling asleep when I talk to
you. All you have to do is, you know,
two or three nights that you miss and
you can still become taken down by an
attack of sleep. That really is what
narcolepsy means. That means medicine in
its attempt to classify things have said
this is a disease and the idea that they
are all about our body falling out of
its normal state.
What's different about people who have
that a a specific diagnosis like sleep
apnnea and narcopsy is they are unlikely
to be able to cure that with going
outside and kimchi. They are at an end
stage. Your body was really set up to be
able to deal with different diets,
getting up in the middle of the night,
take care of your baby, traveling long
periods of time, all these stressors
that we've had for the last 300,000
years. It was set up to do that and to
get back to sleeping again.
And people lived for long periods of
time. That wasn't the average, but there
were people that lived to be 75 years
old 20,000 years ago. That means that's
the best we can do. If you have a
disease of your sleep switches, you are
really severely affected. And my
experience would say that that person is
not going to be able to approach it by
just going outside and doing kimchi.
That person is going to need some extra
help and they're going to need sometimes
professional help with someone who's
seeing it through this lens
because they go through changes. They
for instance when when you get them a
little bit better
so that they're sleeping at night, they
actually start to have nightmares.
What that means in a setting like that
is they've actually gotten into REM
sleep, but they haven't gotten perfect
chemistry so that they sleep through the
REM
phase, finish up, go into light sleep,
and then go to the next. They've
awakened, so they can't keep themselves
in REM. There are transition states
where they actually feel like they're
getting worse. So, there are all sorts
of things that I've been able to see
that are not talked about at the sleep
meetings that are totally fascinating
that are halfway better and that people
can cure their narcopsy. I have one gal
right now who just called me to become a
client. She has narcopsy and she has
completely cured herself by using
nicotine patches around the clock.
Why? because there is only one drug that
duplicates acetylcholine completely and
it's nicotine.
So she stopped smoking and she uses
nicotine patches. Nicotine is the
duplicate of acetylcholine.
Acetylcholine allows us to focus, pay
attention, be distracted, and come right
back during the day. It is in control of
our ability to concentrate. At night, it
allows us to get into REM sleep. That
one chemical does wake and sleep,
doesn't it, in different parts of the
brain.
That means she is using something that
has been terribly vilified. Tobacco is
considered to be the cause of all evil.
It turns out, oddly enough, the guys
with Parkinson's disease who smoked
throughout the last 30 years have been
shown to do better because Parkinson's
disease is an acetylcholine deficiency
state. First
>> to give a bit of background on I guess
the the problem we've really talked
about. Um I have this little paragraph
here which I thought summarizes the
nature of the problem and the sleep
epidemic. It says while while
industrialization first disrupted our
natural rhythms by moving society
indoors, the true explosion of sleep
disorders occurred in two modern phases.
A medical boom in the 1980s and a
digital epidemic in the 2000s. In the
1980s, the formal recognition of sleep
medicine and the intervention of the
CPAP machine diagnosed millions with
obstructive sleep apnea, sparking a
surge in clinical treatments. The
medicalization transformed into into a
cultural crisis by the 2000s as
sedentary indoor lifestyles starved us
of natural daytime sunlight. Sunlight
exposure is vital because its
high-intensity brightness resets the
brain's master internal clock and
suppresses daytime melatonin, which
establishes a definitive biological
countdown for deep sleep at night.
Deprived of this anchoring cue and
bombarded by a 24/7 hustle culture and
smartphones pumping blue light into our
bedrooms, society succumbed to a
devastating double-edged sword. too
little sun by day to synchronize the
brain and too much artificial light by
night to allow it to rest. The modern
circadian mismatch culminated in an
acute spike during the 2020 pandemic
lockdowns, solidifying an era where our
indoor environments are fundamentally at
war with our evolutionary sleep biology.
>> I love that. Who wrote that? Is that AI?
>> It was AI that wrote that.
>> Yeah. Now, that's the fascinating part
of this. AI doesn't care whether or not
my colleagues think I'm crazy. AI is not
affected by what the endocrine society
says about D. AI is just giving us the
raw data. Okay. Then if you put in there
something like what does Dr. Gmanac
think about whether or not um sun
exposure is the whole story for sleep?
you'll start to see my stuff leaking
through there saying, "Yes, it's true
that the pineal gland makes melatonin
and that that's part of how we get to
the 1000 p.m. to 6:00 a.m., but it's
also true that vitamin D has receptors
in the brain stem. That means that we
are at the edge of about
a big change where some of these ideas
that we talked about today that are very
deep and very wide are going to be there
available in a beautifully written way
by AI. And I think in this particular
case we've
jumped around medicine and its craziness
and its conservative feeling.
It's been taken over by an
an electronic thing that's not affected
by our cultural ideals of who's smart
and who's not.
>> What is the central idea that you
believe that most of the mainstream
industry don't believe? I will I will do
as you say and I will ask the AI. Most
of the sleep disorders including sleep
apnea, narcolepsy, all the ones that the
neurologists have described are really
related at basis by D and multiple
things that are made by the microbiome
that the microbiome and the D deficiency
are very much linked and that there are
hundreds of things that are playing a
role in our sleep switches that are
supplied by the microbiome.
So, I'll I'll summarize that as are many
of the sleep disorders
caused by the microbiome.
I'm using Gemini Pro, which is the most
advanced model. I always use it for
factecking and stuff. So, it says you
are completely wrong. I'm joking. Didn't
say that.
[laughter]
It says yes, the connection is massive.
While we can't say the microbiome is the
sole cause of every sleep disorder,
scientists now know that a damaged gut
is a major hidden driver of poor sleep
because both the melatonin pipeline
starts in the gut. Manufacturing the
calm down chemical is in the gut and the
cortisol alarm system is linked to the
gut. The trickiest part of the
microbiome sleep connection is that it
is a birectional loop. A bad microbiome
causes poor sleep. Poor sleep alters the
microbiome. So, while anatomical issues
like a narrow airway causes sleep
apnnea, or light mismatch, like the lack
of near infrared light, play huge roles,
fixing chronic insomnia often requires
healing the gut just as much as fixing
your bedtime routine.
>> The lack of near infrared light, that's
amazing. Medicine will [clears throat]
not be talking about that anytime soon.
It's too wacky.
It's too woo woo. And yet that means
those ideas are available to us.
>> We have a closing tradition on this
podcast where the last guest leaves a
question for the next guest not knowing
who they're leaving it for. And the
question left for you is more Yeah, I
guess it is a question. It says,
"Describe the best day of your life."
I I'm gonna have to stick with what pops
into my mind first, which is relatively
recently.
Uh we were in
Sevilla, I think, and it was very hot
and my husband and I have been traveling
for three or four weeks together, which
is the longest time we've spent together
in a long time. And we were sitting
playing canasta
outside underneath an umbrella that had
little misters. And we were just sitting
there playing canasta together. And it's
not about it was not about
accomplishment. It was about having this
marvelous circumstance where we're just
hanging out together and having a very
pleasant time together. That was my my
best day recent memory.
[snorts]
>> Dr. Stasha, where should people go to
learn more from you?
>> Dr. Gmanac, no period after DR.com
and I have a YouTube channel where I
have lots of I have a whole series of 50
things called sleep chats where I talk
about if I have carpal tunnel syndrome,
will right sleep program help me? I have
this well right and why
>> I'll link all of that for you below so
everybody can go to those resources.
They'll be in linked in the description
below of this episode.
>> Thank you so much.
>> Thank you.
>> Wonderful to talk about
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