Well, yes, that's true.

A lot of times what we say is it's too hot to go outside.

That's what they say in Southern California.

Here I'm sure it's too cold to go outside.

And actually what's very interesting is that when you are exposed to extreme temperatures, your body makes proteins.

called heat shock proteins that actually improves the way that your proteins function.

This is the whole basis behind hydrotherapy and what we used to practice here actually at the Battle Creek Sanitarium over 100 years ago.

What counsel would you give to help us separate what matters from what's really just noise?

All of it says that there's a way that we better connect with God based on how we live our lives.

Yes, thanks again for inviting us to speak here.

When I look back at when God created man, he created man out of the dust of the earth, and he breathed into him the life, the breath.

So we as Adventists have a very unique view of this from our Christian brethren.

They take a very Greek or Plato view where basically the soul is inside of a body and the body is something to be discarded.

So they didn't really place a lot of emphasis.

But what we bring to the table, Seventh-day Adventists, is this understanding that the soul is actually the body and the breath.

Why?

But why do we end up with a COVID uptick in August?

Yeah.

So there are two reasons why that someone might become infected.

And this is the thing that people argue over.

There's germ theory, there's terrain theory.

And the real answer is that it's both correct.

So there are factors that will make a germ more infective and it will be more likely to affect somebody, especially if it is a epidemic or something that is surging that's regardless of season.

Where's my acetaminophen, my Tylenol? Or, oh, I'll take some Advil or some Aleve because that'll lower my temperature and I'll feel so much better, but that may be counterproductive.

You know, I talked about your origin story and there's multiple that are there, but in the particular part of this conversation, and we're talking about light, I'd love for you to give us a little bit of a background about how you had this aha moment around light, specifically around the pandemic and taking care of some of the sickest people who literally were dying or on their deathbed.

People were coming in and there was some research about vitamin D.

And we did see that people that came in with vitamin D, levels that were either normal or elevated, seemed to do on average better than those people that came in with low vitamin D levels.

And that wasn't just at our hospital.

That had been published multiple times by multiple sources.

And so people began to think that this was a vitamin D deficiency that was causing it.

Of course, those types of studies were what we call retrospective studies.

How much of our modern-day obesity crisis, which really probably started, I don't have the exact number, probably like in the late 60s, early 70s, started to uptick and continue to uptick, How much of that is connected to the sun in some capacity?

Yep.

Now, a paper that was just published this year, in fact in May of this year, while we were still, you know, cutting-- getting together and looking at this, fascinating paper, is what they were able to do is they excited-- And this is not a living substance.

This is, this is-- We're now talking about, uh, inanimate objects.

They had a, a, a, a-- They had a surface of gold, and of course, electrons are, are floating around the surface of gold.

They're able to excite the electron, and they tried to direct that electron to another substance.

But there was a activation barrier in between that substance, which they knew.

They built it this way.

And, and it's toxic and poisonous to the mind, so.

But let's really try and unpick what is it about being outside that has all of these different aspects on our health?

Absolutely.

So when we look at the light that's coming from the sun, there's basically three types of light that we wanna talk about.

There is obviously the visible light, which you can see, and there is countless studies and decades of research that shows that visible light itself has a tremendous health benefit on the individual.

Why? Number one, it prevents, uh, depression.

So we know that people who live at high latitudes who are not exposed to enough visible light, especially during the winter months when the days are short, when they're getting up before the sun gets up, and they're getting home after the sun goes down, they are susceptible to seasonal affective disorder.

And a very easy way of overcoming that particular issue is with visible light into the retina that stimulates a portion of the brain that prevents, uh, depression from happening.

So I bet there's been some practical things throughout the conversation, but I wonder if we could just really focus for the next few minutes on what are the things then you recommend people do to try and mitigate this?

For anyone who's clicking onto this now and they haven't really thought of this subject too much in the past, how much agency and autonomy does the individual have over how often they get sick?

Oh, quite a bit.

We...

When you're talking about getting sick, I'm assuming here at first that you're talking about viral infections, but it could be more than that.

It can be getting sick because you're feeling run down.

You're getting sick because you have diabetes.

I mean, all sorts of things.

Is there any way that people who have jobs where they go to sleep when it's light and they wake up when it's dark, that they can not necessarily get the benefits, but almost mitigate some of the risks that come with that lifestyle? Yeah.

Ellen White, what's the deal? But I think this quote that you shared with me from the book Education shows you the relevance of our discussion here today.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, exactly as you said, like, why would we even use this meter stick of science to judge, you know, the messenger of God, right? And certain people in our audience would be thinking that.

Other people would be saying, like, why are we even, why aren't we using science, right? Because aren't we supposed to be using science? So I think to start this off, let's find out where we should be.

And let's find out even how Ellen White saw where she should be.

And here she's talking about the scriptures and science.

Our ministers are to work on the gospel plan of ministering, you are you will never be ministers after the gospel order till you show a decided interest in medical missionary work the gospel of healing and blessing and strengthening yes what's your thoughts on that as a physician

When light meets life what the sun, the cell, and scripture reveal about God How many of you, um, listen to podcasts? Okay.

How many of you are familiar with The Diary of a CEO? Okay.

Well, just yesterday down in the bottom right-hand corner, um, Huberman, Andrew Huberman, who has his own podcast, was on, um, Diary of a CEO, and they got over a million views in just a few hours.

And I would highly recommend that you watch this episode because in it he talks about faith.

Andrew Huberman talked about how he prayed before he went.

He got down on his knees and prayed before he went onto this podcast so that he would be humble, that what was coming through was something that God would wanna have come through as he talked about health.

Right

... to those who are in the body of Christ.

Well, yes, that's true.

A lot of times what we say is it's too hot to go outside.

That's what they say in Southern California.

Here I'm sure it's too cold to go outside.

And actually what's very interesting is that when you are exposed to extreme temperatures, your body makes proteins called heat shock proteins that actually improves the way that your proteins function.

This is the whole basis behind hydrotherapy and what we used to practice here actually at the Battle Creek Sanitarium over 100 years ago.

In fact, this is the emerging evidence, and I'm happy to tell you that there is a hospital in Australia, just outside of Melbourne, $1.5 billion hospital that they've just constructed this year in Footscray that has now built their intensive care unit outside so that they can have fresh air, they can have sunlight, they can have all those things that we've talked about 100 years ago.

What counsel would you give to help us separate what matters from what's really just noise?

I wanna hear more, more of your personal experience with it, um, to start, and then we'll get into some mechanisms and all that.

Yeah.

So basically what really started to wear on me was this, this, th-this paradox where we would see that vitamin D levels were able to predict very well how people would do with COVID, but they weren't able to protect.

So we would give people high doses of vitamin D, and indeed there were several studies out there, a shade study, a number of studies that showed that when they gave vitamin D, there was mixed results.

Some studies didn't show any benefit.

There was one, uh, Spanish study where they used activated, uh, vitamin D that'd already been hydroxylated at the one and twenty-five position calcitri- calc- calcifediol, and that was a, sort of a quasi-randomized study that did s- show some benefit.

The question was is why was, why was it so predictive? I mean, it was very predictive.

Um, I don't know if you, if you wanna touch on that a little bit.

So is that linked to a lack of sleep? If you're not sleeping a- a lot, you're gonna spend more money?

Yeah, so you're driving home from work, and, uh, you have a choice.

Like, l- let's go with, uh, option one.

Option one is you're driving home from work at Standard Time.

It's dark out.

You're less likely to stop in, eat at a restaurant, buy something at a gas station, 'cause it's dark.

You wanna get home.

Okay.

our brain's just as insecure

as us? It's insecure.

Your clock is so insecure.

It's looking for cues.

And the biggest cue, zeitgeber, we call it in the business, is light.

So when it sees light, it thinks that it's daytime.

Okay.

Exactly.

What's happening in this situation? Why hasn't it spread more widely before? And why is there a particular risk now?

You know, there's a lot of things that are different than what we would expect that we've seen with other viruses.

So this is a very deadly virus as well.

Its mortality is anywhere between 25 and 40%.

One of the things that people need to understand about Ebola is that it's not one particular virus in particular that causes Ebola.

There's different types of viruses.

Many may be familiar with the Zaire version of Ebola, where they actually have developed some monoclonal antibodies against it.

And to switch to the Hantavirus situation, Dr. Schwelt, where are we at with that now, would you say? Does this still pose a significant risk? I don't believe

And, and Roger, y-you know, I guess from your perspective, um, i-in medicine, you know, what are some of the implications that would, would, would come out of that lubrication just not being there?

Yeah, it's, it's big.

Uh, it's not like we're talking about, you know, a little biohack here or a biohack there to get a little bit more.

This is, uh, this is major.

So if you look at the Western world's chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, obesity, at the heart of all of these conditions that are, are plaguing our healthcare systems is, is the mitochondria.

So metabolism is central.

It's in all of our cells.

Roger?

Um, speaking of lights, like, how much do those light boxes work for people who are living in an area where they may not get a lot of sunlight? Are these things actually effective?

Yes, they are effective.

Um, the, uh, let's put aside the benefits of infrared light.

That's a whole nother topic, uh, and a, and a good one.

Um, but what we're talking about here is circadian rhythm, and for circadian rhythm, you don't need infrared light to have a- an effect.

These light boxes that you can get online for $25, 10,000 lux, use it for 20 minutes, about 11 to 16 inches from your, from your eyes in the morning are, are exactly the right thing to do if you live in an environment where you get up in the morning and it's, uh, there's no sun.

You get up before the sun, and you're home after the sun goes down.

Could that also be playing a role here?

How does light penetrate through the body, actually get into our cells, and then what does it actually do inside our cells?

There's a great paper that was just published by Glenn Jeffrey and Robert Fosbury out of the University College London.

And what they published in Nature Scientific Reports is an amazing study that really answers the question that you've just asked.

Because what they did was they took subjects outside in the midday sun in London, and they were able to actually demonstrate sunlight coming into our body.

They were able to measure it on one side of the body, and they were actually able, believe it or not, to measure it on the other side of the body, obviously much less.

Wow.

But they were able to actually see the wavelengths that the body was, let's put it this way, had windows to, to allow those wavelengths to go through.

Yeah.

you know, there are a lot of young people who were listening who don't even know who she was because she was sort of the first person to recognize those elements were really important for healing.

Yeah.

So Florence Nightingale known as the modern, um, founder of nursing, basically was a nurse during the Crimean War.

She was named Florence because she was born in Italy, but took care of those patients there in Turkey, where there were so many of them that she noticed that those that were outside were getting better much faster.

And she wrote this down.

This is back in the 1850s.

And so this is how things got cleaned up.

Could you share that story, please?

What's the blueprint for helping people like not get sick during the times when like immunity type things tend to rise?

Yeah, and by sick, I assume you're meaning like get viral infections, colds, flus, things of that nature.

Yeah, so it has to do with immune system.

It has to do with a whole host of things.

And actually, the body is far more integrated than we would give it credit for.

In science, we like to medically reduce things.

Like if you get sick, then it has to be a problem with your immune system.

Let's dive into nutrition because I think this is something, too, that if people are not eating well for a period of time, they can definitely feel like their immune system start to suffer.

You mentioned the connection there to vitamin D. Let's talk about in a practical sense what it looks like getting the UV light in a healthy way.

Yeah.

So you really have to be outside to get that because, um, ultraviolet light, even though it's very high frequency and high energy, it does not penetrate very well through objects, uh, through clothes.

So you have to be somewhat exposed.

And, and because it cannot penetrate very easily, um, the sun has to be pretty high in the sky for you to get enough ultraviolet radiation.

So wintertime is not a good time to get, uh, ultraviolet light.

That's why a lot of people supplement with vitamin D.

Give us the 101, what it is, and why it's important.

Dr. Schwelt, I wonder if you could tell us what is the idea behind New Start?

Yeah, so New START is an acronym that describes basically eight pillars of health.

If I could just sort of back up a little bit.

Yeah.

If you could picture your body, your life as a chain of links, each with their own representation of an organ.

So you've got a heart link, a kidney link, a lung link.

As you go through life in a particular way with a particular lifestyle, that will subject more strain and stress of any one of those particular links.

But on the other hand, is it possible that we're making ourselves more susceptible to infection?

Let's start with a great case.

Yeah, well, thanks so much, Anthony, for inviting me.

Great case.

You know, something that really sort of puts it into perspective.

15-year-old boy.

This, by the way, this is a case that was told to me by his mom.

I actually got the medical records, reviewed it, because when I heard the story, I really needed to actually see it for myself.

But we're going to walk through together with you, Dr. Seheult, the evidence that you've recounted in many other settings so well, And we're going to channel that discussion to how we can understand how this could be done and implemented system-wide here in the United States.

So if we want to parse this S, sunlight, in NEWSTART, how are you thinking about sunlight? Is it sunlight on the skin? Is it also midday light, not just morning sunlight? Is it a certain amount of sunlight? And then maybe we can also talk about some of the underlying mechanisms.

Yeah, exactly.

So when you talk about sunlight, and I'm a, a big believer.

I'm, I'm board certified in sleep medicine, and I, and I, I'm cheering you on when you talk about these things 'cause it's so important that light into the retina does have an effect on the circadian rhythm, suprachiasmatic nucleus.

It does have an effect on mood.

It goes to the perihabenular nucleus in the brain and has an effect there.

Those are well known and very important.

How do you know if you have long COVID?