Energy Therapy For The Heart: Earthing And Red Light

Dr. Drew Sinatra

That’s great to be here Joel. Thanks for having me.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Yeah you really have a lot of knowledge but just for the people I work very closely with naturopathic doctor through my practice. Great respect. Great interchange and referral of patients but some people might not know. I mean why do you have an N. D. After your name? After you finished high school? What do you have to do to finally get out and get a license from States that you’re practicing?

Dr. Drew Sinatra

Yeah, no good question. So I went to Franklin Marshall college which was a liberal arts school. It’s actually the college my dad attended and that was a four year college. And then after that I attended five years of graduate school at last year university in Seattle. And that’s where we learned all of the basic science stuff that every doctor takes the immunology. You know histology, all that stuff, physiology. And then we entered into clinic into our third year and that’s when we started seeing patients and you know integrating more of the natural therapies into the practice. And of course we’re taught how to prescribe drugs and medications when necessary but we really focus on you know treating the underlying cause or causes for someone. So that’s really our main focus in natural medicine as natural paths is to really like identify the causes and go after them using primarily natural medicine.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Fantastic. We even have I think actually three natural paths that are right around me in suburban Detroit that are board certified in naturopathic oncology. They’ve got even on and you know and they work closely with the oncologist, radiation therapists. It’s quite remarkable. I think the patients like them more than any of the other dogs because they usually the healing helpful part of the team.

Dr. Drew Sinatra

Those dogs are very well trained because they are specific in cancer. And whenever I have a cancer patient, I just refer out to those folks.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Yeah, really special people. Well, you’re certainly very special too. And you have developed quite an ability to both explain and introduce the audience. We want to heal our hearts naturally. We want to try and limit medication. Maybe slowly work with healthcare people to get off medication, maybe be healthier whole life. Never need medication, avoid heart disease. And you’re gonna tell us that the energy field and the earth itself might be part of that healing process, something that we call grounding and er thing. So tell us how you got interested in that.

Dr. Drew Sinatra

Yeah, so my father we mentioned previously, Steven T. Sinatra, he was a cardiologist. He passed away this summer. He got very involved in grounding and er thing. So whenever I say grounding think er thing as well, those are really the two same concepts. And he wrote a book, I believe it was in 2009 on Earth Thing. And as a cardiologist, he knew that people are electrical beings, right? We, you know, we’re electrical beings with our brains and our hearts and everything. And so he met a man named Clint Ober. I won’t go into the whole story, but essentially Clint Ober worked for the cable industry and he found that when patients or patients clients were grounded in a way. So there was like a copper wire that connected, you know, their bed frame all the way to the earth. He found that they were experiencing less inflammation, less pain. They were sleeping better. Their mood was improved. There was always different improvements in their health. So that sparked the idea of this whole concept of grounding. And I think my dad really took this to the next level and tried to he had some studies done. 

So he looked at the zeta potential of red blood cells which is when you know, if you ground someone there, zeta potential, the red blood cell can increase, which increases essentially the distance between red blood cells instead of it being like a, you know, stack of poker chips which like a rouleau formation. The red blood cells are spread out further because you’ve increased the zeta potential with grounding. So that was kind of a major discovery that he found with it and he knew that that would benefit cardiovascular health. And of course grounding can really influence all sorts of other aspects of our health. It can help normalize circadian rhythm. So, people are having issues with sleep, it can really help, you know, improve their sleep quality. It can help with pain and inflammation. Like I mentioned, you know, for me, I wear an or ring right. And so I’ve been tracking my sleep for a long time and I actually brought grounding back in. I have a grounding sheet in my room, I brought it back in and my scores improved significantly from grounding. So that’s not a placebo right there, that’s like actual, you know, objective evidence.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

So all the bad sleepers portion sleepers be sure you stay tuned here because we just learned to tip about how to improve your sleep without another pill or another therapy that your doctor may give you called grounding and er thing. But let me give you an example right now, I’m talking to you. I’m standing I do a lot of standing and I have a rubber soul marrow clogs on. So the earth may be very electric in its origin. Am I at all connected to the earth at this moment?

Dr. Drew Sinatra

No, you’re insulated right now. So this whole movement we’ve had with rubber soled shoes since really the 19 fifties 19 sixties that’s insulated us from contact with the earth. And so this whole movement of grounding and er thing, it’s trying to bring us back into contact with the earth. So the simplest way to do it is to walk outside, put your feet in the grass and stand there for a while. You know, unfortunately it’s cold in some areas. So you can’t do that for a long period of time. That’s why they’ve developed these grounding sheets or grounding shoes or grounding sandals or grounding mats, patches, you name it. There’s all sorts of things where you can sort of mimic being out with your feet on the grass or on the beach or anywhere outside for that matter. And so like you said, there’s this electrical potential of the earth and essentially, You know, NASA has even said this, that there’s over, I believe 100 lightning strikes per second and there’s somewhere around like 8.6 million lightning strikes per year. And that’s creating this electrical charge on the earth. And so when you’re in contact with the earth, you’re picking up on some of that electric charge via electrons. And the theory is that those electrons are helping quell or reduce free radical stress in the body, which as we know, is sort of one of the theories out there for aging and other forms of inflammation.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Alright, so if you’re in a climate right now, or if you’re gonna travel to a climate where it’s warm, you can take your socks off, you can take your flip flop, rubber soled shoes off and put your feet on the grass or put your feet maybe a little better on a beach by a body of water that also has an electric field. So you have to be in contact with the earth. Let’s talk about why before we talk about how, what are some potential health benefits of this contact with the earth’s electric field?

Dr. Drew Sinatra

Yeah, the way you look at this is that there was a great book written in 2006 or seven about nature deficiency disorder. Do you recall that book, Joel?

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

I that was the first one for me. I love the concept.

Dr. Drew Sinatra

It was I think it was called The Last Child in the Woods. And so it was all about how we’re not being exposed to nature as much as we should be. And this book is all about A. D. H. D. And how Children with A. D. H. D. The rates of it were increasing and this author proposed that it was due to just not being exposed to nature as much as we should be. So the way I look at grounding and er thing is that we’re so disconnected, right? We’re just we’re so disconnected. We’re on our phones all the time. We’re on our computers all the time. We spend most of our time indoors, we’re wearing rubber soled shoes were never really in contact with the earth unless we’re doing gardening or maybe we’re playing with our kids outside and you know, walking like a bear or whatever it is. So I think that grounding is a way to come back to nature. It’s a way to get out into nature and if you do that, take your shoes off for a short period of time, connect with the earth because yes, there’s this flow of electrons into the body, there’s this connection with the Earth with the Earth itself. And I think that is really fundamentally why we need to do it more. It’s because we’re so disconnected from the Earth.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

And I think I heard you use the word a couple of minutes ago that one measurable improvement in health that one can garner from this practice of grounding. Your thing is to lower inflammation, which we have lab tests to measure. And other people just know the feeling of being inflamed and the feeling of lessening inflammation. You mentioned, it might support healthier, better sleep, which you can track with a variety of devices. Anything you would add further down the list, any role in autoimmune illness, any role in specific cardiovascular illness, like perhaps high blood pressure.

Dr. Drew Sinatra

You know, we know that it improves heart rate variability. So, in any sort of cardiovascular condition, whether it’s hypertension or maybe there’s heart failure where we need to improve, you know, just the dynamics of the heart itself. If we improve heart rate variability, we might be able to improve some of those conditions. But there’s never been any research per se on blood pressure on heart failure or any sort of car myopathy, any other cardiovascular condition for that matter. So, we don’t have the research there. We don’t have the research on autoimmune either. But the way I look at it is, yes. If it’s helping reduce inflammation, it could likely be helping many sorts of health conditions.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

And, you know, you again hit another hot button besides telling people they might improve their sleep if they track it or maybe just their own sense of better sleep. A lot of people are so frustrated that they have a device that measures their heart rate variability. A rate watch. I know the new Apple watch doesn’t and it challenges them to get that number higher as a parameter of better autonomic nervous system health and cardiovascular health. So there’s a tip, everybody grounding and er thing. And we’re going to find out more in a minute about how you actually do the process in the practice of er thing. I I do want to contribute though, that this isn’t entirely, you know, a concept and something that you might call in the Wu or New Age. I know I’ve read, for example, a randomized study of some athletes put on a exercise bike and an athlete then attached to an exercise bike that was grounded by wiring, as you said to the earth itself. And there was better performance, measurably better athletic performance, probably from lower inflammation. When the athletes were exercising on a grounded bike. Just done as an experiment not to suggest you need to take your bike right now and run a wire through the wall to the outside. You don’t need to do that on your fitness equipment, but it is a proven concept you’d agree with that Drew

Dr. Drew Sinatra

Yeah. There was also a study on improvement and delayed muscle soreness. So athletes say they said the next day or the following day. I’m not sure the exact details there, but they said their delayed onset muscle soreness was less when grounding. So there is some research to support that. And then the Tour de France athletes, some of those cyclists, this was in the book, the er thing book from 2009. They used grounding sheets back then during the Tour de France. And you know what they used was essentially something like a grounding recovery sheet. This is kind of, this is old school Joel. This is probably around 10 years old, but I’ve kept it the whole time and it’s actually a grounding sheet that you put your body into and you cover yourself with like a sleeping bag. And that’s the Tour de France cyclist did. There was,

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

There is, I just want people to see there’s a cable, just the sheet, there’s a cable. The cable is gonna plug into a grounded outlet. So that grounded outlet actually goes outside the house to the ground. So that’s the magic there. It’s a sheet that has very fine wire in it. You wouldn’t feel it, but it allows an electrical current to go through the material if you’re plugged into a triple outlet that has a properly functioning grounding function. And there’s a little $5 device, I think I have one lying around actually implying it’s really a grounded outlet or not. So it’s always nice to have a free health hack. So we can take our shoes and our socks off. I know you actually can buy grounding flip flops, grounding shoes that void and I think leather is conductive material, so leather shoes, leather soled shoes don’t insulate you like rubber does. So there are some ways that do not necessarily have to be barefoot and garner some of the potential ground everything, but you’ve talked about some, you know, hacks for the house hacks for the office. So I’m at a computer, I could have a pad I stand on or even a pad. My computer done.

Dr. Drew Sinatra

Yeah, I mean, I haven’t used these in a long time, but you can just buy a pad that you can stand on. You can put a, there’s a mouse pad that you have your hand on while it’s touching the computer. You can have sheets like we talked about, there’s even grounding patches where you connect a little, like, like an EKG patch to a certain painful area, whether it’s your back, your elbow on your knee and you can plug that in and then also to, with all of these things, you can plug it into the ground outside, You don’t necessarily have to use the cord to plug it into a wall. You can actually take the cord outside your window and plug it into the ground itself. And so there’s, there’s multiple ways to kind of, like, you know, get the same benefit. But I always tell people this Joel, you know, there’s a reason why we go on vacation to Hawaii or California or wherever it is, where there’s a beach and you’re walking along the beach barefoot, people feel great, right? It’s probably multifactorial. They’re getting sunlight, the air is fresh, you know, they’re enjoying themselves there, but they’re also grounding, they’re also walking barefoot and you’re getting that greater conductivity, you know, on the sand when especially like walking right along the shore there where the water is hitting the sand. I mean you’re gonna have much greater conductivity there. So I tell people it is an example. Just think back to all those times you went on vacation and walked barefoot on the sand at the beach. Most people feel great. So bring it back to those days.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

So I’m just surfing while I’m listening to you and the website that I bought my er thing sheets and er thing pad on, and I have no financial connection, but I’d encourage people to take a look and I think it’s the one your father used to refer to, but er thing dot com and I’m noticing there’s a new er thing, yoga mat, but you do have to plug it into a outlet to get the grounding effect. There’s er thing flip flops, I predicted that right? Lots of sheets for every size of bed grounding socks, grounding mats in your car and you plug all kinds of things that er thing dot com and they’re not really very expensive. Some of the technology, in fact the next one we’re going to talk about can get a little price here and we had a chance to talk to Dr. William Pawluk about post PMF pads. Some of them are thousands of dollars. None of these things I just mentioned are thousands of dollars. So you can break into a reasonable er thing, grounding setup for your home in your office at a pretty convenient price and check the science out. Well, if you don’t mind, let’s shift over I think I see, you know, to your side, what I recognize is a red light panel.

Dr. Drew Sinatra

I didn’t even I didn’t even mean that I have that in the photo here, the video, but I do use this on a daily basis so we’ll get to that. Yeah

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

I tell people, I mean, what is red light therapy and the scientific name some people use for it. Just go off on that a little bit.

Dr. Drew Sinatra

Yeah, so, you know, we were talking about grounding before, which is all about connecting to the earth, getting the Earth’s electrons into your body. I think of red light therapy as being another one of these modalities or practices where we’re trying to get closer to nature because red light and near infrared light which is what this panel emits that comes from the sun that comes from a fire and so you know we’re supposed to be outside a lot. We just aren’t anymore. And like I mentioned before 93% of our time is spent indoors and 6% of that time is spent in a vehicle. So we just don’t have the exposure to the outdoors, the sunlight as we usually have as our ancestors did. And so the way I look at red light therapy is it’s a hack. It’s a way to kind of connect yourself to the sun’s energy because essentially the wavelengths that are coming from this panel are going to be 6 60 which is in the red light range. And then there’s one around 8 50 which is in the near infrared light range and you’ll feel a gentle warmth when you’re around those frequencies. Now I should say though that there’s no UV light coming from this device and that’s what we don’t want because UV light obviously and short burst is in a way good because we’re getting the vitamin D synthesis from our our skin and our tissues but we don’t want to have long term UV B exposure because that’s when we’re gonna develop skin cancer and you know, free radical stress and all that. So these panels don’t have anything to do with ultraviolet light, they’re just dealing with red and near infrared light.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

I think a lot of people have said they’re not tanning panels, they’re not necessarily blue light depression panels and they’re also not saunas. There may be a component of near infrared energy in a sauna. But these are red light panels sometimes called PBM photo bio modulation. And again big science. In fact way bigger science unearthing and grounding when you look at six hours and thousands of scientific publications. So why do you have one? What do you hope to achieve in your own personal health And maybe we’ll wrap it back to a little bit on cardiovascular health. But what do you hope for?

Dr. Drew Sinatra

Yeah. So I’ll tell you a quick story and the reason why I got involved in this. I had a patient with E. D. S. Er Los Danlos syndrome treated that before but very difficult connective tissue disorder to treat. And this gentleman we tried every therapy you can imagine under the sun, you name a therapy. We tried it on him and really he came back to me so ecstatic and so happy about this red light therapy he’d heard about. And he handed me a book and I was super skeptical and I read the book. I was already convinced after reading the book that there’s a lot of science behind this. This is real. And he commented that when he had the red light therapy via the nova thor which I’ll talk about in a moment that’s a red light therapy bed. When he had a session with red light therapy, his tissue was so much softer, his muscles were able to move a lot more easily. And he kind of you know, he likened it to having beef jerky before as muscles and now they’re just tender and soft. He was able to move them easily without pain. After hearing that story, I became very intrigued and then I went down the whole rabbit hole with red light and I’m happy I did because for me I use these panels to support inflammation in the body. There’s a lot of inflammatory conditions in my family. My mom has rheumatoid arthritis. So you know, I need to be careful, I need to be as clean as I can with my diet, my lifestyle, everything. So I’m always trying to figure out ways how do I reduce inflammation. 

I feel like red light therapy is a fantastic way to reduce inflammation. I think of it also for supporting energy production in the body. So as a way I look at grounding as a way that recharge the body to help build up your vitality. And I also think of red light therapy as a way to revitalize your vitality and improve energy production in the body because essentially what red lights are doing is they’re supporting a T. P synthesis in the mitochondria and there’s a whole mechanism behind it with the cytochrome c oxidase enzyme. And you know, nitric oxide getting kicked off from the red light and then more oxygen binding, leading to more a tv production. That’s kind of the mechanism how it works. But that’s really essentially what is happening. There’s a greater production of a teepee which then leads to greater energy production. And I think as human beings we need to become vital again like everyone’s lost their vitality, they’re they’re tired, they’re cranky, they’re not sleeping well. And so we need as many therapies as we can to help charge up our batteries again.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

All right. And you know, you really unpacked a lot there and I just want to go back to a couple of concepts. So for those that say I want in I want to be as excited about red light therapy, photo bio modulation as Dr. Sinatra’s patient or doctor Sinatra and I have a panel at home. I use almost every day. My wife too. So you can say as excited as Dr. Khan is about this, this requires purchasing a device or going to a wellness center. You can’t just walk barefoot in the grass and you’re gonna buy a panel that might cost from $200 to several 1000 depending on the size and how many panels and you’re going to spend 10, 15, maybe 20 minutes every day if you have the time I use it as a stacked exercise. I do squats. I do you know, barbells. I move around while I’m in front of a red light panel. A lot of people meditate. 

Some of my friends do Wim Hoff breathing in front of the red light panel. I mean they use the time to absorb it. The red light doesn’t penetrate very deep and it’s good for the skin and cosmetic. But the near infrared can penetrate a number of millimeters into the skin. And you said it knocks off a nitric oxide trapped in your mitochondria. So you get one more nitric oxide to help your arteries and you actually produce a teepee more efficiently. Incredible. You think you’re, I don’t know if your father was excited about red light therapy but can you imagine if you did the awesome foursome and exposed tissues to red light therapy? I’ve always thought about that.

Dr. Drew Sinatra

Oh I know and I wish he was able to come out to the set and check out what we have there. Which is the nova thor this is sort of world class red light therapy bed. Very pricey people do not need to obviously purchase one of these because they’re way too expensive anyway. But I wish you had the opportunity to try this red light therapy bed because Joel. The fact of the matter is these panels are great. But if you’ve got access to one of those nova thor’s or any other like the Mitel, red is another one and there’s another one too Sarah light. I believe those are all just great red light therapy beds where you get the full exposure. Because the only issue with these is that you’re you’re you’re getting only the certain body part or area that you’re exposing yourself to for that 10 to 15 to 20 minute period. But at least with the full body red light therapy beds you get that full body exposure and I can tell you I just love the north or I mean it is an absolute amazing device and every time I get it I sleep better that night and I just feel like my mood is balanced and I feel more energetic and people may be able to access that full red light bed at a wellness center in their City.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Even if it’s way beyond their price range for home. Some of these smaller handheld ones work out perfectly for home handheld or wall mounted. You know what? There isn’t yet. I know there is FDA approved use of red light for things like weight loss, cellulite wound sling. I mean these are big indications. Yeah, I’m not aware yet of a study that demonstrates that we know conclusively it improves cardiac contract ill. Itty function strength lowers blood pressure. But I will suggest anybody get yourself a red light panel spend time in front of it meditate in front of it, breathe in front of it squat in front of it. The odds are you are doing something directly beneficial. Although at this point we just await a scientific study to prove it.

Dr. Drew Sinatra

Yeah. Well there’s like you said, there’s been over what 3000 studies? Photo bio modulation also known as low level, low level laser therapy back in the day. And they kind of changed that term to photo bio modulation around 2,016 because it encompassed more of what was actually happening then. And then we call it red light therapy as well. But you know, you’ll see these, you’ll see if you go to a conference Joel. You know, people listening, they might see these ball caps that have red lights in them and those can be helpful for people that are trying to regrow follicles on their on their scalp so it can help with hair growth. A lot of people use it for more anti aging purposes in terms of supporting collagen and elastin production. You know, I mentioned the anti inflammatory component that I like using it for and really like charging up the batteries delayed onset muscle soreness. There’s been some studies on that thyroid function. There’s been a lot of studies on hypo thyroid and and red light actually improving thyroid function. So I thought that was pretty neat And yeah, even arthritis or some studies on it as well. So it’s all encompassing and I wish we had more studies on the cardiovascular system like you said because I feel like well it’s probably not penetrating obviously as deep as the heart but at least we know it has a systemic effect in supporting mitochondrial and 80p production.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

This stuff is just fascinating. I mean, thank you for sharing. So many people are going to benefit if I can pick your brain just the last couple of minutes. You are certified and trained all over the place and Lyme disease, I’m switching gears on you a little but the variety of chronic infections that you talk about on your website you know, lime has a definite and defined potential to involve the heart. Lime card itis just your experience. I mean share a little is that very rare? How do you strive to evaluate it and how does it present Lyme disease of the heart?

Dr. Drew Sinatra

I will say that it is rare because I personally I’ve never seen a case of Lyme Lyme card itis. I think I’ve always sort of consulted with lee Cowden when there ever was a really complicated cardiovascular case. He’s sort of an expert in line in the heart. But no Lyme disease is a real condition. I think if you learn more about it and go down that rabbit hole, there’s it kind of just blows up because you’re not just dealing with this bacteria known as borrelia burgdorferi but you’re also dealing with co-infections as well. And then that leads into you know Epstein Barr virus and you know all these different infections mycoplasma etcetera. It just keeps kind of expanding, expanding. And then you know you need to bring in mold of course too because whenever you’re dealing with someone with lime you always want to rule out mold exposure because mold can really just cause such dysfunction within the nervous system and the immune system and it can sort of mimic economic line. 

So it’s always important to make sure that you ask questions around you know water damage water intrusion into the home mold exposure because all these things are kind of interrelated right all the infections the line the E. B. V. The mold it’s sort of you really need to figure out which one needs to be treated first and if there’s multiple ones at once you got to go after them. But you know it’s a line is a very complicated condition. I refer out for the I. V. Antibiotics on more of like an herbal type guy when it comes to Lyme treatment you know supporting detox pathways in the immune system treating all these different co infections and such using herbs. And if antibiotics are needed I’ll typically refer out for you know ivy reception for example especially if there’s a neurological case of Lyme.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Excellent I appreciate you sharing that because it is such a challenging illness for the people that are suffering from Lyme and

Dr. Drew Sinatra

It is,

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

I work with a good team here in the Detroit area that just feel for people going through such a complex treatment program, long term treatment program to

Dr. Drew Sinatra

Yes, exactly.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Let me ask you, is your red light panel plugged in?

Dr. Drew Sinatra

Yeah. You want me to put it on

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

For a minute, just as a show and tell, turn it on and let people see the matrix. There we go.

Dr. Drew Sinatra

There it is. You know, you never want to look directly into the light. Of course.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

All right.

Dr. Drew Sinatra

And you mentioned people doing Wim Hoff meditating in the morning doing it. That’s kind of how I do it. I also just, I’ll take my shirt off and do emails in the morning like this. So I kind of put my back to it around 6 12 inches apart and then I’ll just do emails for a solid 20 minutes.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Excellent, What a wonderful thing. Keep your skin, keep your energy high, appreciate the show and tell you it’s been a total delight to introduce Dr. Drew Sinatra, tell people where they can find you, you’re a busy active practitioner, you stimulated by what you do.

Dr. Drew Sinatra

Sure, yeah, I work at the clear center of health down in No Valley and I also work for healthy directions which is a direct to consumer health and wellness company. So I helped you know develop supplements there and I create a lot of content around health and wellness. So I feel blessed that I have sort of you know, both businesses going in terms of like the clinic piece of seeing patients but also the education piece where you can reach more people and not just do one on one care but really expand what we know to and share all this knowledge with lots of other people.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Excellent, excellent, healthy directions is an amazing company. Obviously your father’s line that carries his name is an amazing line. It’s helped so many people so thank you very much. Thank you for taking time from your Children and a lot of people got great information tonight.

Dr. Drew Sinatra

Thanks Joel, appreciate it.