Sunlight: Optimize Health and Immunity (L... - Cure Parkinson's
Sunlight: Optimize Health and Immunity (Light Therapy and Melatonin, circadian rhythm and mitochondria) as per MEDCRAM video Jan. 21, 2022
Great find Marc! It lines up with stuff we have been looking into. I only watched a little of the video so far, but it is obvious I need to raise my game.
Thanks Dave. It is long, but important.
Thanks you Marc, I’ve been pretty sure this is the story with my husband. Light seems to affect him immensely. Sometimes it is counter intuitive. You would think summer would be a good thing but the trees round our house grow thick leaves in summer and block light in the house. So the room he sits in which is bathed in sunlight all morning in winter with the deciduous trees leafless is very dark in summer. And he gets easily over heated so less likely so sit in a sunny room or want to go outside until the cool in the evening. He started feeling slowly worse over summer mood wise and he has been so good all winter and spring.
The other thing I have noticed is in winter when the football season started in the past he would go from being inside 22 hours a day to watching both our boys play then a men’s team so would be out all day in the bright sun and he would become quite sick the next few days. This was back when he was on an SSRI so I wondered if he was getting mild seratonin syndrome?
possibly. but I doubt it. Something else is going on.
Good stuff! Having watched the entire two hours today, January 22, I can say it is well-presented with valuable takeaways.
Part one is about the use of light to anchor and establish a favorable circadian rhythm. It reminds me of Huberman Lab's excellent podcasts on improving sleep, also found on YouTube.
Part two starts at minute 48. It reinforces and details what Art chartist taught us two weeks ago about the value of sunlight to produce melatonin naturally (in the mitochondria) to reap its health benefits without having to take supplements.
healthunlocked.com/cure-par...
Thank you Ms. Mango for the link to Art's post.
Thanks Marc,I have been studying this subject for the past month and I believe it is important. I also think it is more complicated than what is discussed in this video for people with Parkinson's disease.
The Circadian Rhythm (CR) as shown by overnight melatonin expression, and the transcription factors that drive CR weaken with age and weaken much more with PD and this correlates with sleeping disorders.
Melatonin is a strong antioxidant and should deal with overnight oxidative stress in healthy people. Obviously this is a problem with PwP.
But by far, most oxidative stress is generated when we burn glucose with oxygen to make ATP for energy and this is much higher during the active period (daytime). The master regulator of Antioxidant response is the Nrf2 pathway and in healthy people, Nrf2 expression is tightly synchronized to the CR to neutralise oxidative stress and protect mitochondria during the daytime. If the CR is weak, Nrf2 will not be synchronized to neutralise oxidative stress.
We therefore need to boost our CR as the video says, by exposure to strong daylight (at least 1000 lux) or strong blue light, 480nm, in the early morning.
Many people who stay indoors all day are in a constant light intensity of about 50 lux which is not enough to set the main CR clock.
To overcome this, I have made a cheap blue light source which delivers 2000 lx centred on 480 nm using a 30 watt, 5500 K white led light projector and blue filters used for theatre projectors. This is equivalent to about 8000 lux daylight.
Albert,
It's a good video. It increased my confidence in the viability of red light therapy and it's penetration.
Your blue light gadget is a good idea. I'd be curious to see what it looks like.
Fortunately, my dog walking route is in a woods/grass/greenery, the importance of which was new to me.
Marc
Marc,
The NIR radiation from the sun is stronger than many if not most home NIR units and its free! The sun gives an amount that our bodies are well adapted to accept and use properly and it is waiting just outside of our doors to go and get.
Dr. Seheult discussed how the NIR from the sun generates melatonin in the mitochondria and increases pineal melatonin production but he didn't even get to production of melatonin in the gut which is at least 400 times the production of the pineal gland and totally eclipsed by mitochondrial production. Production of these levels of melatonin in multiple areas of the body clearly show the importance of melatonin in maintaining health and this is confirmed by hundreds of studies.
On a somewhat related note, I wrote to Dr, Seheult in early 2020, around May and told him that he should seriously look at melatonin as a treatment for his many Covid-19 patients and I referred him to Dr. Neel's work in his Covid-19 patients using high dose melatonin, which he completely ignored and he replied to me that he believed me, but he said, where are the RCTs to support that use? I thought at that point, he simply was not interested in melatonin for Covid-19 at all, because there were no RCTs at that time to support any of the drugs or supplements he was recommending for his Covid-19 patients. There were zero RCTs for everything he was using to treat his patients at that time including NAC which he was discussing heavily at that time suggesting that based on the science, NAC was likely to be useful as adjunctive treatment for Covid-19, but the truth was that melatonin had significantly more studies to suggest that it would be far superior to NAC as a treatment for Covid-19. I lost respect for Dr. Seheult after that. Now he is bringing up this study by Dr. Reiter from I think 2019, to support his view of NIR, to essentially increase melatonin production in the mitochondria and the pineal gland. He still has no clue about the total value of melatonin in human, animal and plant life health!!!
Art
Hi Chartist. I have it on good authority that Dr. Seheult did not ignore you. Often it is difficult to reply to everyone when you are a full-time physician working at two hospitals and a professor at two medical schools with a family and three kids with literally dozens of people wanting to speak with you and have you speak for them. The fact that he replied to you in 2020 is remarkable. There are randomized controlled trials for NAC as Dr. Seheult has referenced many times: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/923..., in addition you'll be happy to know that Melatonin was added as a dietary supplement at the hospital that Dr. Seheult worked at for patients with COVID-19. You'll notice that the nearly 2 hour presentation could very well have been longer and include all of the favorite things that you would like him to speak about but as it is the video is probably too long to begin with. Remember that just because Dr. Seheult doesn't mention something in one video doesn't mean that he doesn't think it is important. Please be patient - making comprehensive videos on medical topics is not Dr. Seheult's first job - it is saving lives - personally.
MedCram,
I understand what you are saying and I have only an inkling of the time constraints that he is under and I find it is remarkable what he gets accomplished on the daily.
I was surprised that he responded also, but I was disappointed by the fact that he used a lack of RCTs as the reason for not mentioning melatonin back then as melatonin had many RCTs at that time to suggest that it should be very helpful for avoiding a cytokine storm, that it has shown benefit in other viral issues, that it is a potent inhibitor of oxidative stress, is a protector of the endothelium, is a potent inhibitor of NLR3P inflammasome via inhibition of NF-kappa-b and as such greatly reduces the chances of ARDS and ALI, is also a potent inducer of the Nrf2 pathway and has shown the ability to significantly lower multiple inflammatory markers that at that time were known to be over activated in Covid-19 patients. It also increases activation of many of the bodies natural antioxidants at the gene level. Lastly and very importantly, melatonin has a better safety profile than all drugs being used at that time for Covid-19 as the melatonin LD50 should attest to in the following link and yes, even better than NAC.
medscape.com/viewarticle/47...
I am obviously a believer in melatonin as a potent health aid that is naturally occurring in multiple areas of the body with new areas still being discovered. This goes for animals and plant life as well. Melatonin produced in the gut at at least 400 times of that produced in the pineal gland is of major importance and it is my contention that the combination of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) and melatonin feed off of each other in a positive health cycle as opposed to the negative health cycle represented by the combination of oxidative stress and inflammation that promote ill health and disease. The interaction of SCFAs and melatonin in the gut microbiome is very interesting in the promotion of improved gut health and health overall as well as a better balanced gut microbiome and inhibition of gut permeability.
MedCram, thank you for taking the time to reply to my post and for the information that you added to the conversation. I am impressed by Dr. Seheult and his seemingly endless abilities and knowledge, but that particular occasion just left me really disappointed.
I forgot to mention that melatonin now has a couple of RCTs as an adjuvant treatment for Covid-19 and it has shown to decrease the death rate in patients in serious condition even at low dose compared to the higher dosing that Dr. Richard Neel is using in his many Covid-19 patients and seeing extraordinary results.
Art
Thank you for your thorough reply.
Thank you, MedCram for your thorough reply.
Minor point but melatonin from mitochondria is intracellular. Is melatonin from the gut inta OR extracellular like the pill version?
It has to be both I and E, because melatonin is produced in every mitochondria in the body, but in the gut it is also active in gut barrier repair as well as reduction of inflammation and oxidative stress.
Art
In the brain melatonin is produced intracellularly by light stimulation, mainly from near infrared light around 810 nm. How does that happen deep in the gut?
I haven't seen any studies that suggest that gut melatonin is even partially derived from sun derived NIR radiation. NIR can increase mitochondrial melatonin production, but sun derived NIR is only thought to reach a depth of approximately
2 3/4".
Melatonin is produced in the gut through two methods that are known. The first being mitochondrial production and the second being from short chain fatty acids which produce both melatonin and melatonin receptors. If there are other methods of melatonin production in the gut they are not yet known. Other than that, melatonin is obtained in the gut via small amounts in different foods or via supplementation.
Mitochondria can also draw melatonin from outside of the mitochondria into the mitochondria. The gut produces approximately 400 times the melatonin produced in the pineal gland.
Art
Many thanks for this 👍🏾
This means no more 2, 3am watching tv for me
What of those working regular night shift jobs,, does this mean their bodies (mood, cognitive... ) will work less well later in life?
Hmm... counterintuitively but great that totally blind people are less likely to have cancer
More outdoor activities and red-light therapy... NIR exposure
I watched the video--nearly 2 hours long--and need to watch it again. The subtext was NIR. We get NIR from green leaves on the summertime trees. Or a NIR sauna. I have one. It's like a tent and zips up to my neck. I wonder if I use my snorkel and sit lower I can bathe my head in NIR? That's kinda what the Vielight machines do. He said intracellular melatonin in the mitochondria doesn't cause sleepiness the way melatonin pills do. But in the sauna I get really sleepy. Placebo???? Like I said, I need to watch the video again.
So I finished watching the two hour video for the second time.
As relates to PD, one thing I remember reading or being told years ago was that PD affects highly educated people. I remember my doctor from 40 years ago having to quit practice due to PD. Same thing happened to my wife's doctor.
I'm highly educated. I got a BS with double minors (GPA 3.8) and graduated from vet medical school. It took me nine years. If college was difficult, vet med school was infinitely more difficult. So my classmates were often able to have a life outside of school. That is, they could play golf or take short vacations etc. Not me. I had my nose to the grindstone constantly. I survived by studying much of the night. Every night for 9 years.
This relates to PD because how many of these highly educated people were flooding their bodies with melatonin-depleting light needed for studying much of the night. The video says melatonin produced by mitochondria is the major antioxidant of our bodies. True geniouses (genii) didn't need to study all night. The rest of us did. And we paid for it with disease like PD? Not a joke.. PD is a mitochondrial dysfunction syndrome.
Interesting theory. Good point.
Thanks so much for posting this, Marc! It is absolutely fascinating and informative. I now have a better understanding of the role of infrared light in supporting mitochondria function and neuroprotection.
