Welcome to the VP Lab Podcast, the show

where we bring you actionable health

advice from leading minds.

I'm your host, Rob, and

our guest today is Dr.

Damian Downing.

Arguably one of the pioneers of

functional and

integrated medicine in the UK, Dr.

Downing joins me for a conversation today

about all things light.

Expect to learn what the role of light

really is in the human body, why morning

sunlight is needed to help us get quality

sleep, and what mal-illumination is and

how we can avoid it.

Now, on to the conversation with Dr.

Damian Downing.

Good morning, Dr.

Downing.

It's great to finally

have you on the podcast.

I think this one's been almost a year in

the making, so I'm pretty chucked that

we're able to finally make it happen.

I know today's conversation is going to

be enlightening, and yes,

that was a terrible pun.

I'm sorry, I just had

to get it out of the way.

Anyway, before we dive in, would you mind

just giving us an intro, who you are, how

you got in the world as ecological and

functional medicine?

So obviously, I'm a doctor.

Way back in the early 80s, I discovered

about nutrition, basically,

and then about food allergy.

And I set up a laboratory doing food

allergy testing, the

first one in Britain.

And then a few of us got together and

founded a society which is now the

British Society for Ecological Medicine,

which I'm currently the president.

We describe ecological medicine as being

a systems approach to health, looking at

the interactions between the individual

and the environment.

So inputs from the environment are things

like nutrition, obviously, toxins,

increasingly environmental pollution, of

course, and also general lifestyles,

stresses, and so on.

OK,

then in the middle of the 80s, I

discovered the work of John Ott,

who's the guy who discovered, described

the problem of malillumination.

That's a fascinating sort of story, Dr.

Darning, and I'd definitely like to chat

to you a bit more about the food allergy

testing a little later on, maybe.

OK, so we've obviously

worked together in the past.

Well, I mean, you've kindly listened and

I've talked about the

chemistry that nobody cares about.

However, I think maybe what drew me to

you as a practitioner was your MO, your

your modus operandi.

You have a very systems-based approach to

medicine, which

you've already alluded to,

even within the sort of the functional

and integrated space.

And by that, I mean, again, as you've

alluded to, you really do start with the

basics, focusing on nutrition,

mitochondria, lifestyle and, well,

today's conversation, which

is which is really about life.

Now, of course, we're here to discuss

what these photons of energy are and why

we need them in their natural state, of

course, to be healthy.

However, I'd like to quickly rabbit-holt

that's OK and discuss your your

forthcoming book, which

which I think which you very kindly sent

me the some notes on in

preparation for this podcast.

Again, maybe it's just the

the want to be author in me.

And it's but it's also

a question I asked Dr.

Jenny Goodman earlier on the year.

But what drove you to write it?

And why in particular did you choose to

focus on light as a topic?

OK, so way back in the 80s, I wrote a

book called Daylight Robbery, The

Importance of Sunlight to Health.

And that was really based

on the work of John Ott,

who's the guy who made time lapse films

of plants flowering and that kind of

thing for Walt Disney.

And you can still see some of

his work on the Disney Channel.

And the story goes that this

back in the late 50s, really,

he was getting a bit, you

know, rickety and arthritic.

And so he used an old bicycle to go down

the bottom of the garden

and that kind of thing.

And then one day he broke his glasses and

didn't have a spare pair.

So it was without for a few days.

After a few days, he suddenly noticed

that his arthritis had gone.

And so he's so excited, he rushed

upstairs, we hadn't been able to do for

several years and told his wife.

And from then on, he went on to look at

the effects of light in all

sorts of things on people,

on diseases and people, on animals,

described a lot of things with animals.

I think the most remarkable one was that

some animals who normally in captivity,

they could be very aggressive, like male

rabbits, for instance, and also minks,

minks were undertaken notoriously nasty.

But he put them in the right light, which

then they come from a, you know, a cold

northern place, is quite a blue light,

and they become friendly little animals

and won't savage your fingers at all.

So it's clear that there was an influence

there of light, a very big one.

And what he figured out is firstly that

we're all deprived of

light because we moved indoors.

And obviously, light is the

environment we evolved in.

But we deprived ourselves of it.

And secondly, he figured out that we're

getting bad light, bad

vibes from our devices.

This is before we even

invented the smartphone.

But he got clearly thinking he saw

problems coming from lighting

installations in the ceiling, from

cordless phones and from TVs.

Fair enough.

And obviously, that's what they

introduced to write the book.

Yeah, I do like the sort of

the thoughts about rabbits.

I grew up with rabbits

as sort of family pets.

And yeah, and I, yeah, I often think, to

quote BX-Trix Potter, that Mr.

McGregor had a ride.

They're probably best found in pies.

They are vicious, nasty creatures, at

least from my experience of them.

And I'm surprised I

haven't ended up with tularemia.

I'll tell my mother that she's got to

sort of stick her rabbits into his

sunlight when she brings them in at all

something to that extent.

Yeah,

anyway,

yeah, no, it's definitely something I'm

looking forward to reading

and for the book, of course.

And yeah, I think maybe we could jump

into light specifically now.

Now, the way I understand it, half the

sun's energy is non visible.

And then sort of infrared light makes up

sort of the other 10% ish.

Well, excuse me, infrared light is, I

think I've got this

right, just half the light.

Infrared, you know, rough figures, 50%.

And then depends on your climate.

Yeah.

And then 10% is coming from ultraviolet.

I think that's correct.

Yeah.

And the rest visible, which is just 40%.

Yeah.

Can you explain how these frequencies

interact with our bodies at a cellular

level, and why they're important in the

context of this conversation?

Yeah.

Okay.

So in terms of, okay, that's what hits

the earth from the sun.

The next thing you need to know is that

green stuff, green spaces, plants,

leaves, that kind of thing reflects the

near infrared in quite a big way.

To the extent that if you're in a park or

a forest or whatever, and it's probably

why forest bathing is good for you.

The light coming into your eyes, there'll

be five times as much infrared,

near infrared, in

particular, as there is visible.

But obviously, you don't see it and you

don't really feel it.

So presumably, that is why, you know,

green stuff is good for us,

and we like it, and so forth.

And then the infrared also

has some special properties.

The first is that it

penetrates very well into our bodies.

And we can,

things like the cerebrospinal fluid in

our brain, and the amniotic fluid in a

pregnant uterus, they

transmit that infrared very well.

And lots of other things transmitted

around so that we got our

numbers wrong on infrared.

And in fact, it seems that about 70% of

your cells, if you're an adult, will be

receiving some of that near infrared.

And if you're a child, and therefore

smaller and so forth,

it's 100% of your cells.

Okay.

And then when it gets there, the next

thing is that infrared has some

particular properties,

has a particular resonance.

The one that everybody knows about, which

is thought to be, well, thought by some

people, to be the way that infrared light

works, is that it interacts with complex

four of the electron

transport chain in the mitochondria.

So it's a key part of energy production

in every cell in the body.

And that does seem to be

true that that happens.

But there is also an interaction or

several interactions

with water in the body.

And since 99.9% of the molecules in your

body are by number are water molecules,

there's a lot of scope for that kind of

interaction could go on everywhere.

Would that ends with where light works at

complex four, would that be working on

cytochrome C oxidase?

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

Okay.

And that's the enzyme that then helps to

produce energy in the form of oxidative

phosphorylation or ATP.

Is that correct?

Yes, it is.

Okay.

I think, Dr.

Darning, I'd love to also dig into a bit

about how light specifically helps to

regulate our circadian rhythms, because I

do feel that's often

overlooked by a lot of people.

It's taken for granted that we need

sunlight, but how and why is light

important for regulating our circadian

rhythms, especially in the morning?

And then how does that then play a role

in the way our bodies operate?

Right, okay.

I have to go back a bit.

And we have to talk about melatonin.

Ah, yes.

Okay, can we do it that way?

Okay, perfect.

Yes, definitely.

Got a few questions there.

Okay,

so we thought that when I wrote Denite

Robbery, we thought that melatonin was

stuff that was produced

by the pineal at night.

And some of it got into the brain and

helped you to sleep.

And maybe it was also an antioxidant.

Now we've had to completely reframe that

because melatonin is as old as oxygen.

This is old as

mitochondria, in fact, really.

And it's been, as they say, it's been

evolutionarily conserved,

you know, we obviously need it.

Clearly, its main purpose

is to, is as an antioxidant.

And particularly in the mitochondria,

because what are the costs of the,

like, mitochondria, use oxygen and

produce ATP, is that there's a bit of a

percent, it's not perfect.

So there's a bit of

percentage fallout from it.

So we always produce some oxidative

radical oxidizing radicals

by that process.

Those being reactive

oxygen species, is that correct?

Yeah, correct.

Yeah. And so the amazing thing is that

melatonin is produced when it's needed,

where it's needed, which is predominantly

in the mitochondria.

And just the fact of producing the ATP

will trigger the production of melatonin.

It's a kind of an

automatic process there.

Right.

So

when we need that most for the whole

body, we need it when we're active.

And so the way it's supposed to work, in

the morning, bright light, particularly

blue light, or high energy visible, as we

call it, blue and green, hitting the

eyes, sends a signal to the brain.

This is the suprachiasmatic nucleus we

don't need to get

into the technicalities.

Sends a signal to the brain, it's wake up

time, time to do some activity.

And so that switches off the brain cycle

of melatonin, which we'll come to in a

moment, and switches on

the whole body activity.

And you can make that work even better by

some reasonably vigorous exercise for

something like 20 minutes in the morning,

because that will activate your whole

body production of melatonin.

And we can record that from

the blood level of melatonin.

But the stuff in the

blood is the spillover.

It's the stuff that's left over.

I mean, it may be a good idea that it

goes around everywhere in the body.

It's the stuff that hasn't been used in

the cells, and particularly in the

mitochondria, to mop up free radicals.

Now, the brain is different.

Because the brain is about 2% of body

weight, but it uses about

20% of the energy molecules,

it is so intensive that it has to have a

special system for this.

And basically, that

happens when you sleep.

So what happens when you sleep is that

your body is effectively paralyzed,

except for all the bits

like breathing, of course.

And that prevents you,

you know, burning up,

doing adrenaline driven stuff.

And in the brain, the pineal switches on,

and it pumps melatonin right into the

third ventricle in the

middle of the brain there.

And from there, it diffuses all around in

the cerebrospinal fluid, and

then into the brain tissue.

And at that point, it also it connects

with what we call the glymphatic system,

right, which is the kind of the lymphatic

system of the brain.

And what happens with that is that, at

this point, synchronized

with the melatonin delivery,

you start pumping fluid and toxins and so

forth, waste products, out of the cells

into the extracellular fluid there, and

particularly into these glymphatics,

which are paravascular.

So every vein, every artery in the brain

there has an outer tube around it.

And there's a flow

through that of the water.

And also there's an in, but it is around

the arteries as well.

And so the flow there is pumped by the

contraction of, by the pressure wave

going through the artery, or when it also

pumps the stuff outside there.

And that, of course, is the problem with,

you know, if your blood pressure goes up,

so is all the time your blood pressure is

high, there's less room

for pressure variation.

So the pumping action is impaired.

But so the are the para arterial vessels

pump cerebrospinal fluid, rich in

melatonin at that point into the brain

and melatonin acts as does, or

does ever, as an antioxidant.

And then the output circle is that the

the paravascular, paravenus

glymphatic system pumps a load of fluid

with no toxins and so

forth out of the brain.

And then it connects with the main

lymphatic system of the

body, but only when it comes out.

A lot of that goes through the nose here

and connects with the tonsils, which are

reasonably described as the the toilet of

the brain, or the drain

of the brain, if you like.

And so that's sending the because one of

the points of the lymphatic system is not

only does a there's a route for bad stuff

to go out, but it delivers that bad

stuff, the cells and the molecules to the

lymphatic system to lymph nodes here and

everywhere in the body.

That's where the immune system gets this

information about what

it's got to deal with

and can get activated

appropriately as necessary.

So all that stuff comes out.

So it's a beautifully coordinated system.

And it happens naturally when you sleep

and particularly deep sleep, level four.

So that is why you can't detox your brain

and think or do stuff at the same time.

Yeah, that's fascinating.

And it sort of it does just show the

importance of getting that of why it's

important to get that natural light first

in the morning to sort of well to start

that system going, I suppose.

I mean, what's your saying?

A good night's sleep

starts the morning before.

Dr.

Darling, yeah, what are your thoughts on

supplemental melatonin?

I mean, everyone and their uncle has an

opinion of this, obviously.

I fall into the camp where I don't

necessarily think it's a bad thing.

And I definitely utilized it and found

that there's really no

detriment, at least for me.

I don't notice that there's any sort of

negative feedback loop that seems to sort

of exist, again, subjectively.

And I do find, yeah, that it definitely

helps recovery in terms of aches and

pains and far more so than playing around

with things like lapisarcoma glutathione,

which I think most people associate with

being the body's master antioxidant.

Obviously, there's definitely, as I

mentioned, there's some controversy

around it, especially in the UK, where

it's not available over the counter.

And, but yeah, do you think that

supplemental melatonin is something that

should be looked at more

freely or is it an issue?

Well, it's a slightly

complicated question.

Firstly,

you can boost your own melatonin

production with red near infrared light.

And that clearly is

the that clearly works.

Now, it's been shown to work.

We don't have enough studies yet to say

how good how much so

forth you need to do.

But I mean, you could just, well,

actually, let's start from your point

there that first thing you

need is a good night's sleep.

Second thing you need or that can help is

sunlight and or red light to boost your

own production of melatonin.

And the paper that showed this was a

study on young athletes,

and they gave them a red light, one of

those whole body red light maps,

and take half an hour of

that late in the evening.

And then after a couple of weeks, they

measured their

melatonin levels in the morning.

So we don't know exactly what was

happening in that one.

But we can see that there was an effect

that melatonin came up, their sleep

improved, and their athletic performance

improved, compared to controls.

So it obviously works.

We just don't know all

the parameters properly yet.

But I as to taking the supplements of

melatonin, well, it's clear that small

doses like, you know, three, four

milligrams, that kind of thing can have a

definite effect taken last thing at night

and help with sleep and so forth.

But it's also interesting that people

with cancers seem to tolerate a huge

amount more of melatonin without

completely zonking out.

And presumably that is because there's a

lot of justification for melatonin.

There's a lot of stuff there that

melatonin can help to mop up.

So people have given people with cancer

10s, 40, 50 milligrams several times a

day and got benefits with it.

But what they don't do is don't give it

at night, because then it's going to, if

you, you know, dim

your attention to body,

you want it all to be directed there.

So I don't think that, you know, I

haven't yet seen, I

suppose, I haven't yet seen

a real bad effect from taking

supplemental melatonin.

But in a way, it's not fixing the the

real problem, is it?

No, of course.

Yeah.

It's, again, just

another patch to sort of, well,

I do find, yeah, again, anecdotally,

that's quite effective.

What about as we get older?

I know this starts to sound a bit woo and

a bit out there, but it definitely does

seem to be something, at least from my

view of the literature, that as we age,

there's some

calcification of that pineal gland.

Do you think there's a case to be made

that as we get older, and our 50s, 60s,

70s, 80s, etc., that maybe a low dose of

melatonin, even if it's just a dose that

is equivalent to what's produced in the

body, so sort of 0.3 to 0.5 milligrams,

is that maybe an effective strategy that

people should maybe think about,

especially from a

controlling oxidative stress?

Well, if it's brain you're after, you

know, brain where the problem is, then,

yes, and I mean, if you're thinking about

pineal, but remember, the pineal doesn't

really have much to do with whole body

melatonin, so if it's non-brain, then I

don't see the point.

I've often given it, when I've

put it on a longish term basis, I've

always told people to leave it off for a

couple of days, and like, for instance,

take it Monday to Friday, leave it off at

weekends, and that seems to allow the

dial to reset, so you don't become

tolerant of it, you know,

you don't get used to it.

Yeah, that makes sense, and I suppose it

almost sort of starts to talk to a bigger

question about sort of calcification of

the pineal gland, and why we exclude,

well, not maybe historically, but I think

there's been an interest in recent years

about sort of getting rid of all phytic

acid in the diet, and to the point where

we are, yeah, I mean, ask any carnivore

going, and they'll sit there and sort of

preach the values of never ingesting any

form of phytic acid, but I do find it

interesting that, yeah, that by getting

rid of these, I suppose what we would

call these natural additions to our

appetite, that we actually may be doing

some level of damage to cells, to organs,

and our bodies like the pineal gland,

where maybe it's becoming, they're

becoming calcified, because we're not

getting enough phytic acid in our diets.

No, you have a point there.

I mean, I have to say, I still got to say

that, you know, we wouldn't start, for

many things, with phytic acid, you have

to start with sugar.

Sugar?

Like, sugar is the thing that is most bad

for you, most destructive of immune

systems and health in general.

Oh, okay, from that perspective, yeah,

no, there's an interesting, I don't know

how much of the online dietary

space you follow, but there's

slowly a shift happening to following a

very high sugar, a very low fat diets, I

think one of them is

called the snake diet.

And the idea is that by increasing, not

just carbohydrates, but sugar intake, in

its entirety, you can lose a lot of

weight purely because you are able to get

the, you're able to bypass a lot of the

dysfunction that we see in, in

mitochondria today, where there's this

sort of elevated CER response in the sort

of an inability to burn fat.

And a lot of people are now utilizing

very high sugar intakes to just improve

energy intake and to improve weight loss

because you aren't being met by this sort

of inability to burn fatty acids.

Mechanistically, it does make sense.

But then, as you pointed out,

you're going to end up with a lot of

inflammatory signaling further down,

increased levels of AGEs, increased

levels of oxidative stress.

And so, yeah, not to mention the issues

that would arise with gut issues.

Quite.

So, yeah.

You've made my case for me.

Yeah, no.

The whole diet thing I

do go forth and back on.

Where do you, a bit of a tangent maybe,

but where do you currently stand on

ketogenic diets and their

efficacy with long term use?

Well, I would say with the large majority

of people, it is beneficial to move

somewhat in the ketogenic direction.

But I mean, the thing that people have

said about diets for ages is that you

shouldn't, it shouldn't be a diet that

you go on until you've lost

the weight or lost it, whatever,

and then you abandon.

It should be a lifestyle change.

And you see, that's the thing you have to

bear in mind that our

lives have changed so much.

There used to be that we

had basic healthy food,

some meat, a lot of veg and hardly any

grains and so forth.

Now we've got huge amounts of ultra

processed food and so on and so forth.

You need to readjust that balance.

And I think it's the same with sunlight.

We become so deprived of natural sunlight

and so exposed to unnatural light and

electromagnetic fields, wavelength,

particularly, you know, all

these devices around us here,

and so forth.

You've got to, you know, you've got to

reset that first before

you can get anywhere else.

How was that for a segue?

That's perfect.

And it brings us straight back on track.

Thank you.

I was I was just

about to get there myself.

So yeah, no, I couldn't

really put it any better myself.

I think, just to close that point up,

it's interesting when you follow people

in the online space that most of them

start with an extreme view, whether

eating just vegetables or just meat.

Then at the end of the day, they always

slowly start to come back to center and

then sort of follow fairly well

structured omnivorous diet.

We'll have to have the carbohydrate

discussion another day.

Yeah, I think, yeah, let's get back to

light and this

concept of mal-illumination.

To start off with, and I know we touched

on where it was first coined and where

John Ott came into the picture.

With this artificial light side of

things, do you think it's the excess blue

light that's creating the issue?

Or is it the absence of natural light

that's maybe the primary driver there?

Yeah, no, you're right.

I mean, it is logical that blue light,

particularly at night and so forth, where

it's designed to be a wake up trigger in

the morning, if you're getting it at

night, there's a pretty good chance that

it will disturb your sleep.

But it isn't really, it certainly isn't

that blue light is

essentially harmful for us.

It is that blue light is meant to be

balanced with that much

larger amount of the infrared.

And it just isn't.

People like Russell Wright, who's big in

the melatonin field, makes the point that

as we moved indoors and come to depend on

electric light, we've deprived ourselves

of visible light a lot, but much more

we've deprived ourselves of the infrared.

And for a start, you remember the old

light balm, so we can't use it.

In-condescence, yeah.

Yeah,

the reason why you can now get a three

watt or whatever bulb that does the work,

that used to need a 60 watt one, is that

all that extra energy was

going to heat to infrared.

And so we were getting from the lights

and so forth, we were getting infrared.

And probably also he's right, in a way we

were kind of designed

to sit around a campfire.

In the main thing, you know, you are all

facing a campfire, around a circle,

around the campfire, you're all facing

the fire, you're all got your chest and

your heart and so on, particularly it's

open to the campfire.

There's a nice bit of vagal

stimulus from the infrared there.

And then if you start doing a bit of

communal singing or

whatever, it gets even better.

You know, it's perfect,

vagal work, shall we say.

And we've lost that as well.

Yeah, that's an interesting point.

And I'll quickly before I

forget, there is some data from

Yugi Nakashima.

He's an engineer and I think he's worked,

obviously out of Japan with a name like

that, but he's worked at Caltech.

And he's done some initial

experimentation looking in, well, he's

done a few studies actually, and we can

link them in the show notes in the

podcast showing that high levels of blue

light does seem to have a negative effect

on the skin and that it can increase,

well, oxidative stress in the dermis and

drive up ROS and that there's obviously,

from that point onwards, a negative

association between, well, obviously that

blue light and then various skin

conditions, excuse me,

and obviously people with psoriasis,

eczema, according to his research anyway,

may benefit from just

less blue light exposure.

Yeah, but they also benefit as, you know,

every cosmetic doc you come across has a

room full of different red, infrared

masks and things like that

for the face because they work.

Yeah, so again, you can fix that not by

depriving yourself of blue light so much

as by giving yourself decent infrared.

Get it from the sun, get it from a green

space, possibly just as good.

Yeah, no, it just proves the fact that I

think ultimately we just need

to get out into the sunlight.

You raised an interesting point, which

is, I suppose, the topic of this whole

conversation, get out into the sunlight.

You raised an interesting point earlier

about the vagus nerve and light and I

know you work a lot with light in your

practice, having visited you myself and I

know that you, excuse me, I know that you

also talk a lot about calming the nervous

system down and we've discussed things

like stellate ganglion blocks in the past

and looking at ways to regulate the

nervous system in that respect.

Now, would you be open to elaborating on

how light can help to get you into more,

get this right, parasympathetic state?

I think it's got to do with the stellate

ganglion, but I'm maybe incorrect.

That's a bit of a one-off, the stellate,

but it's an interesting story.

The stellate ganglion is really just a

collection of bundles and nerves in the

sympathetic immune system, the

sympathetic nervous system that basically

runs all runs down here.

And so it's a fusion of the sympathetic

nerves coming out of the

fifth and sixth cervical.

And

20% of people don't even have one.

But you're telling me that.

There's a technique that they've used for

years, that amesotis use and so forth.

If you pump local anaesthetic into the

sympathetic nervous system via the

stellate ganglion, you can treat things

like excessive sweating and also

tachyaglutamism, you know, heart running

too fast and bad rhythm.

Which is kind of quite surprising in

itself, but it does work.

But it has also been shown now that you

can do the same thing with red light.

So all you need to do is put it there,

put the red light there,

and you get the same effect.

Presumably because you're dealing there

with kind of unhealthy

cells of the nervous system

in general.

And what we do know that rare infrared

does, it just makes

everything work that bit better.

Probably biocidochromacy oxidase and also

the virus effects on water and a whole

bunch of other stuff too.

What also strikes me about that is if you

put a mark there, yeah you can get the

stellate ganglion, which is around here,

but the vagus nerve is

going down there as well.

So you can probably get that.

And if you irradiate both the vagus and

the sympathetic, then presumably they'll

both work better and you'll be in a

better kind of harmony.

At the same time, what

else is here is the thyroid.

I was about to say exactly that, yeah.

And there's several studies showing that

with not very much irradiation with near

infrared and red of the thyroid, you can

improve the production of thyroid hormone

and you can actually treat Hashimoto's

thyroiditis, which is the commonest

autoimmune disease there is, and which is

the cause of 95% of

underactive thyroid production.

You can improve that.

You can even damp down the antibody

levels and the benefit lasts for months.

So take that on.

I mean how much else could you treat with

autoimmune diseases and so forth?

But stick a light on there.

I mean fantastic effects.

Yeah, no, it's definitely a modality that

more people need to be aware of.

And like you said, you don't

need fancy bits of equipment.

A simple basic red

light panel will suffice.

Have you looked into

these red light IVs at all?

They're definitely popping up and...

IVs?

Yes, have you come across them at all?

Yeah, I do use IV

lasers of all colors, really.

Okay, intervene directly.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, that's interesting.

Is that light actually, I mean obviously

that there are photons of light, but is

that sort of moving through circulation

beyond just the point to which it's being

introduced to the body?

Oh yes, yeah.

I mean, just do it straight and it

certainly is picked up by the molecules

in the blood and transported all around.

You can even do that with...

Oh, I've got one on here, this thing.

And what we used to call the laser watch,

which just shines

light into the veins here.

And that carries it all around the body.

And that certainly

has a beneficial effect.

If you want to get more power,

more impact, you can use

photoactivator molecules.

The most popularly safest ones are

riboflavin, vinvinibitu and curcumin.

And you can probably have...

We talked now about this as antimicrobial

photodynamic therapy.

And you can get

results on all sorts of it.

The guys, they published some papers

showing that this can work really well on

infections like COVID.

There's slightly different techniques

with COVID, but I think really most

infections can respond to this and

they can't become resistant.

This is a problem.

So, I mean, what I'm

looking at now, this is,

not stuff for people to

do themselves, obviously.

I'm looking at things like Lyme disease,

Borrelia and the other bugs there, which

people end up on antibiotics for weeks,

which is not a great thing.

And so you can combine the antibiotic

therapy with the photodynamic therapy.

I think you can achieve

the same result much better.

Well, there's evidence that you can.

Yeah, I think there's

antibiotic therapies.

Obviously, they have their place.

But when people start to run them for

months, if not years on end, you're

ultimately going to end up with, God

knows how many other issues, all sorts of

bad fungal infections

developing, et cetera.

Obviously, we can't have a conversation

about photodynamic substances and

photoelectric substances without touching

on methylene blue, which is definitely in

vogue at the moment.

Now, I think that it is an

incredibly useful compound.

I think that there is something to be

said about it causing disruptions in

people with already healthy functioning

electron transport chains.

And that has probably been used a bit too

willy-nilly to be blunt about it.

However, as a tool, I think it's

incredibly effective.

I do, again, especially at the doses that

some people are starting to take it out,

worry that you start to inhibit certain

enzymes like MAO, which can maybe create

issues with histamine and

other similar reactions.

What do you think about methylene blue at

the moment, just broadly speaking?

It took me a while to be persuaded of the

merits of methylene blue,

but I did come around to it.

And I pretty much agree with all you say.

I mean, it's the first

ever synthetic drug, really.

And it's not a naturally

occurring thing in the body.

So it's not, it's not also

molecular in the strict term.

But nonetheless, it does have some

remarkable properties.

And of course,

red light and lasers would activate

methylene blue as well, vice versa.

And there are a lot of circumstances in

which it may be beneficial to shift more

electrons around the body.

But actually, it's a case of, as the

Irish say, if I was going there, I

wouldn't start from here.

What you should be starting with is the

sunlight, having its interaction with

structured water and enabling the general

flow of electrons around the body and the

zeta potential, the negative charge that

keeps our blood cells apart.

That's a perfect answer.

And again, you're setting

up my segues for me today.

The next thing I want

to talk about is water.

Now, I know there's this synergy between

light and water,

specifically structured water.

And I think most people would likely

agree with this, at least from an

intuitive standpoint.

Before we sort of dig into this a bit

more, though, would you mind helping me

and the audience to understand what

exactly structured or easy waters it's

sometimes also called actually is?

And then why specifically that's so

critical to our health?

Right.

Okay, so I have the struggle now, because

the guy who isolated vitamin C, Albert

Schenk-Yorgy, I have no idea how to

pronounce it, I still don't know.

Anyway, 60 years ago, he got very

interested in water.

And he remarked that

there are a number of

references stating that all sorts of

liquids, not just water,

can become more structured

when they're in contact

with a suitable surface.

But let's take the water

because it's more clear there.

Water is all to do

with charge and things.

If it was something to be water soluble,

it needs a bit of charge.

They're either positive or negative.

And what we now understand is that if you

put water in contact with a surface that

has a little bit of

charge there, doesn't it?

It could be negative or positive, quite

honestly, it will take on a shape.

And it will become what various people

have called liquid ice

and that kind of thing.

And Schenk-Yorgy remarked that there are

two melting points for water.

One is

zero degrees centigrade

where solid ice becomes liquid.

And the other is somewhere between 30 and

40 degrees, so somewhere around our body

temperature, where this liquid ice will

melt and become water.

But you don't go

outside these parameters.

Water in contact with a surface will form

just a monolayer, just one layer of

molecules of water

taking on a hexagonal shape.

Ordinary solid ice has a hexagonal shape,

but it has it in three dimensions.

Liquid ice has a hexagonal shape, but

only in two dimensions, right?

So the successive

layers don't bind together.

And what happens when you do that is that

the ratio of hydrogen into oxygen becomes

different because of the hexagonal shape.

So it chucks protons out.

So that's the first reason why it's

called EZ, exclusion zone water.

And so the surface on the surface there,

it has a negative charge and the bulk

water, as they call it

outside that, has a positive charge.

Now, what can then happen is that

infrared light in particular

will cause more layers of

structured water to build up.

And you can even get from that, you can

get a flow of the

protons and so forth outside.

You get flow in the bulk water,

spontaneously get flow.

But you'll also in the hexagonal water,

you'll get a flow of both

electrons and protons along it.

It's a very good conducting system.

And it seems that if you like, I call it

an electron superhighway.

And that enables communication everywhere

throughout the body.

And when you think about it,

because there's so much surface inside

the body, we're kind

of all surface, really.

And so all these surfaces, the cells and

the molecules, you know, big proteins and

so forth have a lot, can accommodate a

lot of structured water around them.

And the whole interstitium, the bit

outside the actual cells, is full of

molecules that will do that.

And some of them, of course, are

collagen, the thing, the

stuff that holds us together.

And without collagen,

we become a blob really.

And so this is a super conducting system.

And this actually makes a lot of things

work better, including the mitochondria

and their energy production.

Yeah, no, I can imagine if you've got

electrons that are flowing more easily

through a medium, you're going to have

improved cellular communication, you're

going to have improved

mitochondrial function.

And as I recently spoke to, as you know,

Jillian Kralth, and she was talking

specifically about the other roles that

mitochondria play beyond just energy

production in the body in

the spruce production of ATP.

So no, it makes complete total sense.

And thank you for bringing up that point

about superconductors.

I know that's something that Jack Cruz,

bless him, goes on about a lot when I

actually understand a

word of what man's saying.

That was great.

Thank you very much, Dr.

Darling.

I'll admit I may have to re-listen to

some of that, but I got the gist.

So thank you.

I'd like to move on to this concept of

zeta potential, which I know sort of

underlies a lot of what you've just said.

Now, again, I'm to quote A.A.

Milne, a bearer of very little brain.

So I don't understand the

concept, it's an instant parity.

But what I do understand is that it's

essentially a negative charge that keeps

cells separate and flowing.

Maybe beyond this point, though, I sort

of fall into the I'm

a bit dense category.

So I don't understand it entirely.

But could you help us to understand what

zeta potential is, and how this

combination of light and water then I

suppose makes life possible?

Yeah, if you've come

across live blood microscopy,

dark field microscopy.

So to one or the first, if you're sick

and you go and somebody takes a sample of

blood and looks at a microscope that way,

one of the first things they're likely to

say is, oh, look, all your red blood

cells are clumping together.

Now,

you've got positive

charges, negative charges.

Like charges repel each

other, opposite charges attract.

Right.

So the zeta potential is the negative

charge on the surface of the red blood

cells that keeps them apart, stops them

clumping, and therefore

makes them flow much better.

I mean, there's a load more to that, but

that's basically it.

And where it comes from is the

the structured water on the surface,

which is is negatively charged and the

positive charge goes away from that.

And that is obviously helped by infrared

light, building up the

layers of the structured water.

But it's also helped by ultraviolet,

which increases the

negative charge in those layers.

And of course, there's Stephanie Seneff,

this is at MIT, isn't she?

She's a brilliant writer and thinker

about these sorts of things.

She reckons that one of the main purposes

of cholesterol is to provide the sulfate.

Because cholesterol is a

lipid, it's oil soluble,

typically it's in the

membrane of the cells.

And typically the thing

is called lipid rafts.

On there, it doesn't

wander off in through the water.

Right.

Well, if it's there on the surface of the

cell, the membrane of a cell, then the

sulfate charge it brings with it will

provide a negative charge to the to the

cell as well will boost

negative charge if you like.

So that makes everything flow better and

improve the oxygenation and everything.

Right.

And so, I mean, that's all about

providing electrons.

And you see the ultraviolet has a role

there as well as the infrared.

And, you know, the biochemists say that

we need they say that we pH.

So we urinate out hydrogen ions, protons,

positive charges.

And also they make the point that

we need all of these things.

We produce water by

mitochondrial activity.

And that water is guys pure water and

it's some what we could

call deuterium depleted water.

So it doesn't have the deuterium the

message that messes

up with the whole ATP.

Deuterium, which is a

double hydrogen molecule,

it makes the structured water layer

there, particularly around the

mitochondria more viscous.

So it slows down the energy production.

I think Stephanie was at

Senate that you mentioned.

I think she's done a lot of

works directly into this idea of

deuterium depletion as well.

And I know we're getting off

on a bit of a tangent there.

But yeah, how if you were just to

elaborate on what you were just saying,

why is a deuterium such an issue when it

starts when it comes down to the sort of

flow of electrons and mitochondrial

function in general?

What mitochondria do is using this

electro, the complex is the big molecules

of the electron transport chain.

They build up protons, positive charges

in the inter-membrane space.

They have a double

layer thing on top of them.

And inside there, they build up protons.

So it's exactly like a battery.

I mean, it is a battery.

Right.

And then those protons go back into the

inside of the mitochondria through this

molecule called ATP synthase, which has a

three-way symmetry if you like.

It rotates.

Every time a proton is pushed through

that, it rotates the head of

the molecule by 120 degrees.

And that

upgrades one molecule of ADP,

adenodiphosphate to ATP, triphosphate.

That's our main energy currency.

So this is a very small thing.

I've still got a video that somebody in

Japan actually managed to put a

fluorescent marker on it and film it

going around by 120 degrees at time.

It was a wonderful thing.

But this is very, very small.

It's the opposite of stuff

that's visible from space.

It's barely visible at all.

And it is therefore easily clogged up by

stuff getting in there, like deuterium,

which is just a molecule that's just that

bit too big for the whole process.

So it slows down the rotary action.

Yeah, I think there's a case to be made

again about why reducing carbohydrate

consumption can be an effective tool to

help reduce deuterium as well.

As I understand it, following a lower

carbohydrate actually diet actually helps

to reduce the

deuterium levels in the body.

Dr.

Darling, I know we've only really

scratched the surface today, but I also

know that you probably have patients in a

life beyond just keeping me and the

audience entertained.

So I'd like to pivot to maybe talking

about what we can do to optimize our

lighting environments and

subsequently our health.

Now, I know there are a

lot of parallels here.

And of course, we've got to touch on the

piece about EMS because they obviously

are going to play a

large role in it as well.

But if you would be open to providing a

framework that the audience could maybe

use to optimize the environments in which

they live, they operate, I think that

would be very helpful.

Obviously light being the focus.

And again, I know there are many moving

pieces, but when working with patients,

how do you counsel them in this regard

and tell them to see

the width of the trees?

Okay.

So the first thing you need to understand

is that it's not an absolute, it's not a

binary, a black and white thing that you

have to get all the devices, RID or

whatever, and be totally free of EMFs.

You can't really do that

in the real world anyway.

And actually, you don't need to because

it turns out every bit helps.

One of the most interesting studies in

this regard was one that Trevor Marshall

did about 10 years ago, where he gave

people a hood that screams out

electromagnetic fields, or at least some

of them, it partially screams in her.

And he asked them to wear this for four

hours sleeping and four

hours waking in the 24.

So that's one third of the

time they were using this thing.

These were people with active, they were

on treatment for autoimmune diseases,

cold assortment of them.

Right. And so they did this for three weeks.

And 90% of them experienced an effect.

Now that

is really surprising to me that, I mean,

the best that can have done

is to reduce their EMF exposure by 25%.

And yet it has an effect.

And it is not surprising to me that it

wasn't always a good effect, because

we've learned this about electro

sensitive people, certainly, that you

have to be very careful

about switching it off.

You know, every body's

just got adapted to it.

Maybe it's like food allergy is the, you

know, the other side of

food allergy is an addiction.

Quickly on that one, do you think that's

having a sort of an immuno that's

obviously driving an

immunological response then?

Would that be correct?

There's people who are electro

magnetically sensitive?

Well,

certainly an inflammatory response.

Yeah, that was it.

Sorry, I was just trying to maybe

understand and paint a picture for the

audience as to what happens when people

are electro magnetically sensitive, that

that's sort of upregulating many of the

immunological processes

that then drive inflammation.

Okay, perfect.

Yeah, sorry to interrupt you.

No, no, no, it's okay.

So I think that what you need to do, that

we should all do, is at least try and

limit EMF exposure, get less bad vibes.

And, you know, the way to start that

obviously would be your sleeping area,

you know, no phones, no anything there

that's emitting whatever, Wi-Fi, if you

have to have it far, far away.

And so forth.

So there you're getting, you should be

getting, you know, maybe eight hours

of relatively free things.

And the other thing you should be doing

is getting more sunlight.

And ideally, first thing in the morning,

when you activate the adrenal, the

adrenaline driven sympathetic system, and

with some exercise, you can bring your

melatonin level up nicely.

Yeah, back to the melatonin piece again.

That's very sort of sound advice.

And I think there's definitely some tips

and tricks there with

regards to EMF exposure too.

And I think maybe utilizing things like

magnesium supplementation in the evening

to sort of help offset that, that those

calcium, those calcium voltage channels

are, are good ideas.

And yeah,

we don't have time to go into that.

There are a long list of things here that

things that can help in this regard.

And he has absolutely right magnesium and

vitamin D, of course, still important.

Just because we have discovered this

other stuff about light doesn't mean that

vitamin D went away.

So this is one of the hood type things that you can put on.

I'm not going to put it on because it

completely mess up the earphones and the

glasses and so forth.

But it covers the whole, you can get

beanie hats that do the same thing, but I

don't see the sense of that.

We don't want to just scream the top

third of your brain, do you?

And also, a good point,

you know, let's get the, while we're

getting good light to the stelaganglin

and the vagus nerve and so forth in the

neck, let's also screen

some EMF's away from the neck.

That makes sense.

That's what's good.

Take the thyroid as well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The other thing I

wanted to show you is this,

which is a space blanket.

Which is a space blanket, you know, sort

of thing they give you

at the end of a marathon.

Okay.

And there's a guy online called Peter

Vito who figured this out.

He published a thing saying,

maybe this is the second best light

therapy device there is.

The first one being the sun, obviously.

So what he worked out is this thing will

reflect EMF's, photons,

whatever, back into you.

And we're all producing biophotons, as

they call it, all the time on UWEs,

ultra-weak photon emissions,

they also call it.

And they range from ultraviolet to

infrared, with something

of a peak in the yellow.

But normally you can't see them because

it's much more light around.

But you can reflect them back in.

So use this and just wrap it around

yourself outside like clothing.

You don't want to put it next to the skin

or the metal will just conduct the heat

away from your body.

But you put it outside, I think, or just

under or above the top sheet or under the

bottom sheet or something like that.

It will work fine that way.

I mean, he says if you do it under the

under sheet, then get some earplugs as

well, because it keeps doing

sort of sound.

But he got some benefit from it.

He said that, you know,

it's a strange effect.

It's not like just being warm.

There is a definite effect there.

I now started using it with patients.

I got one guy who was not only

electro-sensitive, but actually

photo-sensitive, light-sensitive.

And so he hadn't been out for months

because he seemed to react to the light.

He started using this for seconds.

He began with, I think, 20 seconds a day,

built up gradually day by day until he

was doing it for 75

minutes several times a day.

At which point he said, you're going to

have to move on from here, otherwise

you're not going to

have time to have a life.

And so he started going outdoors as well.

And lo and behold, he tolerated just for

a few seconds to begin with, but

gradually more and more and more.

And so last thing I heard from him, this

is a year after starting this project

with the space blanket, is that the

sunlight is having, sunlight is starting

to have a profound

effect on my energy levels.

And I think this is going

to be a real breakthrough.

That's incredible.

I was just doing a quick Google while you

were talking and looking into sort of how

space blankets were made, because

embarrassingly I didn't know.

And I wonder if there wouldn't be all

some sort of Faraday effect with, by

using them to potentially, if you're sort

of sleeping at night.

And if you're sort of trying to offset

that EMF exposure in the evening, maybe

it would be a useful

tool in that regard too.

I was looking at some day to the other

day on Faraday cages and they were

started to talk about why they may be

detrimental from the point of view of you

actually offsetting all electromagnetic

frequencies, including the Schumann

residence, which as you know, all too

well is rather

beneficial when it comes to life.

So there may be some issues there, but I

mean, that is a

discussion for another day.

The whole discussion around

electromagnetic sensitivities beyond just

WiFi and all these electric magnetic

fields, excuse me, that are just so

profoundly affect our health, both

positively and negatively.

Excuse me.

That's a very good thing

with that, the Faraday issue.

I hadn't thought about that.

It's a very good idea.

Well, I'm glad I was able

to be of some value today.

Little brain still working.

Little brain still working.

Dr.

Darling, I'd love to end off with just

asking a few rapid fire

questions, if that's okay.

Okay, so your thoughts on structured

walkthrough devices, are they a bit

gimmicky or they have potential?

I have yet to be convinced that the

devices will work, but I have to say that

I no longer regard it

as absolutely impossible

that they work.

So I honestly don't know,

ask me in a year or something.

Yeah.

Perfect.

From a clinical standpoint, what's the

one light based therapy or tool that you

use that you feel moves the needle the

most for most people?

Well, for me, it would be the endo light,

the laser watch thing.

But if you look around, the most widely

used one, and presumably it hasn't be

because it works, is the

cosmetic infrared masks.

Yeah, that's a good point.

If you'd asked me that question, I would

have just said bog

standard red light panels.

But yeah, I suppose the

masks also are a good option.

Yeah.

But either of those are a better entry

level thing than doing one of these.

So if you're not spend too much, you can

get the small infrared light mats for, I

don't know, 60 quid these days.

Yeah, no, they definitely have come down

in price and they're not nearly as

expensive as they previously were.

Okay, two more.

What do you think about blue blocking

glasses and their use in the evenings?

Well, it's all right.

But you could also use

infrared light to balance it out.

Yeah.

This is true.

Yeah.

Replace all your bulb

with incandescent options.

And I use one like the full spectrum

light I've got up here,

so I can't really show you.

Just don't tell a green piece.

Right.

Yeah, I'm afraid so.

Okay.

And the final one, maybe this is a

complete dual topic and

just something of an opinion.

What do you think about all this

engineering that's

currently going through the news?

Glad you asked.

I've done a submission for the ultimate

news service on this and with colleagues

I have and also for BSCM.

The best measure is this.

Firstly,

it's not doing the work that we

absolutely have to do in reducing climate

change and so forth,

even turning it back.

Even if it works on climate change, it's

just a fix and who knows how long it

will, you know, would be of any benefit

to in terms of global warming.

Secondly, of course, there's the law of

unintended consequences.

You know, stuff will happen

that we never thought about home.

So who do you think of that?

Like, I mean, the obvious example of that

is microplastics going on.

But most importantly, there's good

evidence that sunlight

is essential to health.

That I mean, we've known for 100 years,

at least, that the nearer the equator you

are, the less your

chance of getting cancer.

And we know that ultraviolet light

exposure is basically good for you.

They say that depriving yourself, living

up in northern places like this,

depriving yourself of

sunlight is as bad as smoking

for your health and your life expectancy.

And so you can fix that.

So it's a very bad idea.

Yeah,

no, I'm glad you, that's your view.

I definitely share

your views there as well.

Dr.

Downing, if people would like to work

with you, or if you view your books,

where's the best place they can find you?

Oh, well, the,

I'm on land, it's drdaneandowning.com.

But the book will be out later this year,

and I think it's going to

be called Coherent Health,

The Power of Light and Water.

Just look for Coherent Health.

A bit later on, you'll get that.

Now, the book is about stuff that you can

do for yourself and

should do for yourself.

I'm not trying to sell my services.

Okay, that's perfect.

Well, we'll be sure to link to all of

that in the show notes.

And thank you so much for your time.

It's been a pleasure to pick your brain

and to learn a little

more about light and water.

Yeah, great.

Thank you very much.

I've enjoyed it.