Light, Sleep, And Metabolism: The Secret Recipe For Weight Loss

Introduction and Speaker Background 0:00

Welcome back to the reversing Hashimoto's and Thyroid Disease Summit. With me today is my dear friend and colleague, Danny Hamilton. And I'm going to tell you about her first. And then we're going to deep dive into all things circadian rhythm light, how it relates to those thyroid symptoms. So Daniel Hamilton is a functional nutritional therapy practitioner and a renowned blood sugar expert. She specializes in using a personalized circadian and quantum approach to optimizing metabolic health. Her journey into this specialized field was fueled by her personal battle.

Like many of us with PCOS, hypoglycemia, acne, weight loss resistance which many of us can resonate with, which she successfully reverse. After learning that blood sugar issues and metabolic issues were at the root. So her mission is really to help the world get back to nature, to heal their blood sugar, uplevel their energy, and feel great. Danny, thank you so much for jumping on today. I can't wait to have your wisdom on this summit. Thanks for having me, Amy. I am honored to be here as one of your, interviewees, and I'm really excited to dive into this topic that I love so much.

Okay, so we were talking before, you know, weight gain, weight loss, resistance and fatigue are the big symptoms of Hashimoto's and hypothyroidism. I hear it all the time with my patients. So one of the keys, in addition to optimizing the thyroid, which we've talked about on the summit, one of the keys in our lifestyle factors is our circadian rhythm and our sleep and our light exposure. And that's where I want you to go today, really tying that into the weight and the weight loss resistance and the energy because, you know, like I say all the time, we can give you a fire and medication.

We can optimize your thyroid, we can give you a boatload of supplements too. But if your sleep is messed up, if your internal body clock is messed up, if you're not exposing your eyes, your body, your thyroid to specific forms of light that you're going to talk about, then it really doesn't matter how much thyroid med we throw at you, it's not going to work. You're not going to lose the way. You're not going to feel better. You're not going to regain energy. So I'm going to let you take it from there.

Just start in on the importance of all of those things and our bodies and our thyroid and our weight and our energy.

Circadian Rhythm and Body Clock Basics 2:34

All right. Remind me how much time we have. About 25 minutes. All right, let's do this. So one of the most important things that I learned recently is that one of the most stressful things our body could experience is not knowing what time it is. And I was like, that doesn't sound that stressful, but think about it. Have you ever been taking a nap? And you wake up and you're like, whoa, where am I? Like, what happened? Like for a second you don't know what time it is. You don't know where you are.

It's kind of panicky in that moment. You know, you just immediately try to orient yourself. You try to figure it out. And so why do we try so quickly to know what time it is to know where we are to orient ourselves? Because if I didn't know what time it was, I wouldn't be on this interview right now. I maybe would I be like, oh, should I be decorating for Christmas? Is it should I just be brushing my teeth? Should I go to the doctor right now? Like we don't know. We don't know what to do if we don't know what time it is.

And so our body has hundreds and thousands. Every cell has hundreds and thousands of tasks to perform at every second of the day. And it needs to organize those in some way. And our body is actually as humans, we're actually way better at doing certain tasks at certain times of the day versus night. And so we've sort of evolved this way. And so it's important that we sort of stick with doing the things we're best at at the time. We're best at them. So right now it's about three in the afternoon.

If you woke me up at 3 a.m., even if you gave me boatloads of coffee, would I be as sharp and as on and as articulate and as good at explaining things as I would be at three in the morning? No, I just wouldn't be. So there's certain things were better at digesting food, metabolizing food, hunting for food, problem solving during the daytime. And we're way better at doing things like detoxifying and repairing and healing in the evening. And so the circadian rhythm, yes, everyone thinks about it as like, okay, this body clock and like it's important for sleep.

Like I didn't really know much about it. But this concept of that, we want our human bodies to be linked to the schedule that the sun is on outside of our window. We can't be sync to our own timeline because of our work or whatever it is, because when we stray from that things, tasks don't get done because it's like, okay, I'm waiting for the signal. And it's like, okay, I never got the signal. So I guess I'm not going to do that task today, so I won't repair this cell or I won't release this hormone.

So then other things happen where it's like, okay, time to go to bed. Let's start to make the melatonin. Oh, she's going out to dinner. And so it's like, okay, turn the kitchen back on. Like we need to start making cortisol. Holy crap. Like all of a sudden it's we're we're supposed to be winding down and and getting ready to heal and repair and sleep and restore. And then we're asking our body to do things that it wasn't meant to do. And that's going to delay all those things, and then it's going to shift our whole schedule.

So then we wake up late and then the whole day is just off. And we don't realize there's no, like, overt symptoms of circadian dysfunction. It's just that stuff starts to break down. Your liver is not as good at being a liver, because maybe the times that you're awake and asleep are off for what the liver has to do. Our gut doesn't get repaired if we don't have all that melatonin release. And that's involved with our circadian rhythm. So it's really important that our body knows what time it is, and it gets the primary signal of what time it is from light.

So we develop these receptors in our eyes and on our skin to actually blue light. We hear a lot about blue light nowadays in a bad fashion. But blue light is so important because it tells our body what time it is. So there's only naturally in our environment blue light. During the daytime, it starts to come into our environment as soon as the sun rises, and then it gradually increases and with it goes our cortisol. And then the sun starts to come down in the sky, as with our cortisol comes down as well.

And then once the sun goes below the horizon, no more blue light in our environment naturally. And that's when melatonin will start to rise. So and melatonin we all know of as being this hormone that helps us sleep. But it is also involved in nearly every single repair process that the body does. So if you want to heal your gut, heal your cells, detoxify. Heal a brain cell that may be damaged like autophagy might Haffajee we need to have this nice release of melatonin. And so what starts to happen is that in our modern environment

Nighttime Light, Sleep, and Melatonin 7:27

now, we have blue light at all times of the day and night, because we made it artificially. And so our screens are very rich in blue light. Our light bulbs now are mostly LEDs. They used to be incandescent. Not that much blue light in there. Now they're almost all LEDs. Same with the headlights and the street lights loaded with blue light. Our phones, which we're addicted to and attached to every five seconds in front of our face, right at night in bed loaded with blue light. So what we're telling our body is let's do daytime things.

It increases cortisol, blue light increases blood sugar. Blue light increases insulin at times when you don't want these hormones to be increasing. And so that in and of itself can just drive thyroid and metabolic dysfunction. Just that alone. So I like to talk about I'll sprinkle in some strategies throughout. But as soon as the sun goes down, what is the only light that humans, early humans our ancestors, would have had access to? Besides, like the moon. What would light fire? Write fire? Exactly.

So we would have had fire light. So the light from fire is this bright orange light primarily. And so we want to try to mimic that with our light bulb. So getting some orange light bulbs that's a really great place to start. They have like orange LED bulbs or incandescent bulbs. And then and candles are great, but of course, please unscented beeswax because we don't want endocrine disruptors. Also. So that's really important. Or a fire if you have a working fireplace, could be great at certain times of the year, and then even a Himalayan salt lamp could be a really great place to start.

And then my favorite are my orange lens blue blocking glasses. I usually have some around, but I don't today. But the orange lenses are really powerful. We want to put these on as soon as the sun goes down to block out all that blue light. Then towards the end of the night, when the fire would have burnt down, we would be left with these dim, dimly lit red glowing embers. So that's when we want to think about, okay, like an hour or so before bed, we're going to turn off the orange lights. We're going to turn on the red light. And even if you just have the orange to start, that's okay.

But then we want to think about really dark red lights. If you have red blue blocking glasses, you can use those as well. But that's also where I put my phone screen red. So one, 23I click the side and you can set this up in settings to turn your phone screen red. Amy, you mentioned that sometimes you have a bad habit of working too late as many entrepreneurs do. There's software you can get. I pay $1.99 a month, no affiliation. But this thing called Iris. And so right now, my my computer screen, you guys can't see it, but it's very, very amber.

So I can change this throughout the day or night. So at least I'm not getting all that blue light in my eyes that's going to cause me to stay up late. That's going to make me wake up less energized, less refreshed because I didn't get the proper hormones going off at the right time. I didn't get that strong melatonin, deep reparative sleep. If I have cortisol going way too late in the night, or if I'm scrolling on my phone getting all that dopamine, getting worked up about politics and who God knows what on the internet.

That's also creating brain chemicals that are going to prevent this melatonin release. So we'll start with our nighttime, and this will help us fall asleep earlier. And then that way we can wake up earlier. And that starts to incorporate the importance of morning sunlight. The sun in the morning is one of the most powerful things that you could do is get out and see that sun with naked eyes and get your skin in that light. Because this light is so powerful for helping to heal our bodies. First off, it sets the circadian clock.

So as soon as the sun crosses the horizon, we get that blue and we get a gentle rise of blue. As the sun starts going up, we don't get like a phone screen in our face. So the light flicking on so again, we want to be mindful not to artificially start our circadian rhythm too early before the sun goes up. So same recommendations I made for after the sun sets. If you wake up before the sun rises, which right now it's October in the US and the sun is rising later and later. And so I'm waking up and it's not even light out yet.

So I do the same nighttime stuff. I put my orange glasses on and I just have red lights on in my house, so I don't have the the blue telling my body it's time to start the day in like a really big way, giving us this giant cortisol burst, right? So we wait to see sunrise, we get outside, put our feet on the ground, and that is so healing because there's so much infrared light in the sun's light. So a lot of you have infrared light panels or you've been hearing about them. And this light is so incredible for our mitochondria.

And that's really what is at the root of our metabolic health is how well our mitochondria are functioning. And this infrared light is so helpful for our mitochondria in the world of blood sugar regulation. It helps our mitochondria use our blood sugar more efficiently. So it actually lowers our blood sugar level. So I work with a lot of people who experienced the dawn phenomenon, where their blood sugar is spiking high in the morning. That's often I find, because they're turning on lights and not getting outside.

So they're getting an extra burst of cortisol from the blue light

Morning Sunlight, Grounding, and Energy 13:12

without the infrared light to tell their mitochondria to pull in that glucose and use it. So when we go outside, we're getting a little bit of blue and a lot of infrared, and we get the benefit of grounding. So one of the cool things about grounding, sort of circling back to the the piece about energy, right. So when your thyroid is low, there's like we we struggle with energy. When I have blood sugar people, they're like no energy. And we I learned something recently that just blew my mind. So when we eat food it breaks down into carbs, fats, proteins, micronutrients, minerals.

But it breaks down further actually into electrons. So if we remember back to like eighth grade biology, electrons go down the electron transport chain and then they create ATP, which we know of as energy. They also create cellular water, which is very hydrating water that's essential for all our of our cells. And that water, when it's made by our mitochondria, actually polarizes. So it turns into a positive and negative, which is turns into basically like a battery. And so that is giving us that potential energy so energizing us.

And then ATP, we know that as being the energy currency of our body. So that's one of the ways that food gives us energy is through because it breaks down into electrons. Well, we can get electrons in other places that actually don't even come with calories. And one of those ways is by touching the earth, grounding earthing. So the second, any part of your skin so your hands, your nose, your feet touch anything that is rooted into the earth, living or a natural surface. So I'll give you a couple of examples a leaf from a tree, a stem of a plant that's in the ground, a blade of grass stepping on the grass, dirt, sand, brick, stone, even cement.

All of those surfaces, when we make contact with that and natural bodies of water and things like that, we instantly soak in electrons because electrons, they're the reason why they're all over the Earth's surface. This is crazy, is because of lightning strikes. So lightning strikes charge the surface of the Earth and it has a strong negative charge. Electrons have a negative charge. So it's those electrons. And the second you touch them, electrons start flowing into you because they flow from high concentration to low concentration.

So you are basically like, you know, when you plug in a phone to charge it the exact same thing. So think about as soon as I touch the leaf of a plant that's rooted in the ground, I'm instantly getting charged. So I want you to visualize yourself like a like an iPhone getting that charge. And so you get instantaneous benefits from grounding. But the longer you ground, the more benefits you get. Very anti-inflammatory, helps with blood flow and is very energizing to us, but not in a way where it's like, oh, that felt like a, you know, I just had an espresso.

It's not like that, but it's this clarity and alertness, because you're giving your body fuel to make energy and the sunlight also can help us make electrons. It gives us these free electrons as well as movement. So we as humans should get about a third of our energy from food. Not all of it, but the rest of it should come from sunlight and grounding and movement. So thinking about even just moving like this, like moving your hands like that's creating electricity in your body, it's creating through piezoelectricity.

So we can get so much energy from non food sources, and we can max out on those to make us feel more alert to turn our brains on. So thinking about maxing out on these free sources of energy be really, really powerful. So I'll pause there, allow you to ask some questions. Now this is awesome. Amazing. And yeah, you know, you have taught me this already. So I can say experientially, I have been doing this. I've been putting on my blue light blocking orange lens glasses in the morning because you're right, it is getting dark.

It's getting lighter later. So I'm not gonna wake up at seven 730. I need to get up and get moving. So I did what I do, I walk out, I let my dog out. So I walk outside with him, stand on the grass and on the concrete. So I've been doing all of that for sure. And it's not that hard. So that's the one thing I want to tell people is everything the Danny's saying, I was like, oh my God, I need to change my entire routine. No, it really is not that hard to implement. And you just do little pieces at a time and implement that into your lifestyle and you go, okay, well, just tonight I'm just going to wear the blue light blocking glasses at night before bed.

You know one thing. Check. Okay, that wasn't that hard. Now the next morning, figure out how you can do some grounding as soon as you wake up. Or at least within a couple hours. I get it. If you're an apartment building, you can't get down stairs, whatever, but it's really not that hard. Now, you had mentioned to me before that bringing in the sunlight, the UV a is actually good for our thyroid. Can you expand on that? Yeah, absolutely. One quick thing before I talk about UVA, because you just reminded me I have a really cool client story about the blue blocking glasses.

I learned this, yesterday because she just signed up for my program. So this woman had insomnia since 2013. Really, really bad. And she saw my posts. She got the orange blue blockers, and within a couple days she was sleeping through the night. And then she realized that in 2013, what happened? She changed all her light bulbs in her house. I, I'm like, oh my gosh, how powerful. And I'm so happy that she figured it out. But I can't imagine how many more people are living like that. And just the importance of supporting deep sleep.

We don't that's that's when we heal. Like, if you don't sleep, good luck having anything go well in your health. You're not going to lose weight. You're going to feel like garbage. I mean, nothing, you're going to. Be more insulin resistant the next day. You're going to be craving for me caffeine and sugar all day, and then you're going to be mad at yourself because you didn't make good choices. And then those choices lead to having poor sleep, like it's just such a vicious cycle. So that's why I say start with just a pair of orange blue blockers, because this is something we can control.

So, Yeah. So helpful. Okay, so after sunrise in the morning, there's another period of time in the day called where UVA light is predominant. And this, there's a new app by my friend Sara Kleiner called my circadian app. And it has like a whole dashboard of where you can see the sun rising when UVA window is. And if there's vitamin D in your environment, all sorts of things. So definitely love that app. Huge fan. And so you can figure out when UVA is by looking at an app. And this period of time has such incredible benefits for our body.

So it does a couple of amazing things. This light, when it hits our eyes and our skin, helps to, number one, convert amino acids into T3 and T4 thyroid hormones. Wow. Amazing. So this is some time in like the mid to late morning. So think maybe around right now UVA is starting at like 830 here in Austin, Texas. But sometimes it starts later like 9:00. But think about it. Is that like mid morning time. So if you can get out at all during this time highly recommend it. So that's just one thing it does.

UVA, UVB, and Thyroid Support 21:08

It also helps to make endorphins. So you feel good. It also helps to convert amino acids to dopamine, which is why people get very addicted to the sun. And it also has been shown to actually help with addictive personalities because we're getting addicted to something that is so healthy for us. I think that we were actually designed to be addicted to the sun because it has obviously so many life giving important benefits for us. It also helps to convert amino acids into serotonin so we feel happy.

It also converts, these amino acids into the norepinephrine, which helps us feel motivated. So we feel happy and motivated and like we want to take on our day and we have the energy from the thyroid. So if you think about it, what I find so interesting, Amy, when do you have your clients first take their thyroid medication? It's usually in the morning. Right? And when do my clients have to take their anti-anxiety or mood medications in the morning. And the reason I think is because it's like, if we can get enough of this light and we can get it consistently, we can signal to our body to do all these things on its own.

And maybe what we're missing all along is just the signal that go ahead. Because if a plane is about about to land at an airport and they're like, okay, traffic control, we're here, we're ready to land. And they hear nothing from traffic control. They don't get the okay, are they going to land that plane? They are not going to land the plane. They're just going to circle the airport and wait. Right. So same thing. We could have all the precursors to thyroid hormones, but if we don't get the signal that, hey, this is the time, guess what time of day.

Let's release those thyroid hormones. You may not get that release. Okay. And it also does other amazing things. This light, one of the things it does is it starts to produce, melanin, which is what pigments our skin and melanin acts like a natural sunscreen. It also does amazing things. They make batteries out of melanin, so it actually gives you a lot of energy. So coming back to that energy concept, it can split the water molecule. It can put it back together. It creates molecular hydrogen which is a really powerful antioxidant because it's the smallest elements in the universe.

And so it can go anywhere. So that's really powerful. And melanin also helps protect our skin from the sun. So when we go to get UVB, which is the next time of day, and this type of light is only available, think summer months, tropics. That's when you'll get UVB. And that light is the only light that can help you produce vitamin D, which is essential for optimal metabolic function and our immune system and basically everything. And but it doesn't just produce vitamin D, it produces tons of metabolites and not just the one vitamin D that we're testing.

So when I say people have vitamin D deficiencies, it's not that they're deficient in this one nutrient, I believe, is that they're deficient in sunlight. And I don't think we're testing it well enough. And so I don't and I don't believe that, like one little nutrient in a bottle replaces sunlight. Like, think about all the things that just in this couple of minutes that I've told you that sunlight does, we're not getting all that when we just take vitamin D and we think we're okay. I'm not going to say I don't have enough information to fully say I don't think anyone should be taking vitamin D, but I also think that I encourage you to, kind of think about it and see if it feels like the right option for you.

There's a guy, Jim, I think his name is Jim Stevenson. I think he's a vitamin D researcher. I'm going to get him on my podcast to talk about this topic in more depth, but he's seen a lot of people overdose on vitamin D supplements and, vitamin D taking it can lower your magnesium if you're not taking enough. So just be mindful. And then if you are a person with lighter skin and you are living in an area that doesn't get vitamin D over the winter, would what is it actually appropriate for us to be supplementing with something that we wouldn't have even been getting really, in that time?

This is all. I'm not saying anything definitive, but I'm just saying for us to start thinking about, I think that we need a big change in the vitamin D conversation is all. And I again, don't know enough. But what I do know is that what I encourage people to do when they can is develop what's called a solar callus, or kind of like a base tan, and that is getting the suns like harvesting the sun's energy, putting it into the melanin in your skin. And that it should hold you over the whole winter.

And it's really, really powerful and healing. And the sun in, I believe UVB light creates this molecule called palm C, and, UVB light helps to. And with the palm C, all the, the alpha msh and beta msh that's helping you to burn fat. And same thing with, a lot of the different metabolites of vitamin D, they help with appetite regulation. They help with burning fat. So getting a tan actually can make you lose weight. Which make you look skinnier, can actually make you lose weight. It's like both. Yeah.

Right. So, really, really powerful stuff. And of course we want to avoid burning and we want to be sure that we're, we're slowly developing this tan. You can absolutely feel free to cover your face. But also think about if you're concerned about the skin aspect that the sun during the time of around sunrise and around sunset is like a giant red light therapy panel. And what do red light therapy panels do? They help to heal skin damage and repair collagen and reverse signs of aging. So it's almost as if the sun has this whole built in anti-aging filter with it.

It's giving you all these things. So what I see is that people who are avoiding the sun, they don't do as well. Then then, people who who go into the sun. And so people who are avoiding it because they're afraid of wrinkles, it's like, well, get a hat and get out there, you know, that's that's my opinion. Oh my gosh, this is amazing information. And it's it's new information. This this is info that really you have taught me in the last year or so. And I've been trying to get out to my audience as well.

So I really strongly believe that this is vital to everyone. Everyone watching this summit, everyone out there. Because again, going back to how we piece it all together in the beginning, weight loss, weight loss, resistance, definite tie in. We see insulin resistance, blood sugar dysregulation all the time with Hashimoto's. Not sleeping is going to make you more insulin resistant. It's going to make you gain weight. It doesn't matter how much thyroid stuff you do. Protocols, medication, supplements.

If your circadian rhythm is off and you are not sleeping properly and you're not caring for yourself in these simple ways that Danny gave us today, then nothing's really going to work at the end of the day. So this is really kind of the cornerstone of the summit because if you're not doing this, then all of the other stuff that you learn on the summit probably not going to work so well. So, Danny, I know that there's so much more information

Meal Timing, Fasting, and Closing Advice 28:48

that you can give through your podcast. I share one more thing. Yeah, we have time for one more thing. Do it. Okay. I just wanted to share that the second way that that our body tells time, the second most powerful way is meal timing. And this is something that I just see so many people in my in my world and in my audience that it's kind of like we all got information in 2018 that was actually designed for men, and so many women are suffering because they are still following this advice, and they're following it so diligently.

And I see it causing problems. And that is skipping breakfast. And if you're like Danny, are you telling me, like I have high blood sugar in the morning, how can I possibly eat breakfast? It's like, baby girl, you have high blood sugar because you're not eating breakfast. Because what has gone from an acute stressor? Because I guarantee you, you saw results at the beginning when you skipped breakfast and maybe did two meals a day. You probably saw results. But what happen now? Chances are you're not seeing results anymore.

If you're still doing this and you have probably plateaued and gotten worse. So usually there's weight gain, there's high blood sugar and high cortisol, all with this issue. And that is because we went from having something be an acute stressor, like a little bit of exercise that's helping us adapt and get stronger. But instead we never stopped exercising. We never stopped the stress like so. Now that acute stressor has gone to a chronic stressor, and that means we're getting a rise of cortisol every morning, a big rise of cortisol.

And then because we're not eating and maybe drinking coffee, we get more stress hormones and more cortisol to carry us through. And what is that cortisol doing besides just regulating the heck out of our our hormones? Besides telling our body that we're in a stress state and that's not promoting healing, it's also keeping our blood sugar really high. It's keeping us from accessing stored body fat. To use this energy, we have to think, especially if you are a female, you want to think about nourishing your body, and I recommend eating within an hour of sunrise, especially outside.

That's when we have our best blood sugar responses to our meals. All that red light when you eat in that red light from the sun in the morning infrared, you get a really good blood sugar response to your meal. I can eat carbs all morning and I my blood sugar is flatlined. It's like a magic trick. And then the worst time of the day to eat is late at night. And so I see people pushing their eating window from like 1 to 9 or 1 to 8, and that then they're like, oh my gosh, but I'm still hungry. And then they end up snacking and then they double down on the fasting.

I recommend to slowly start shifting your eating window earlier and earlier. You don't have to do this by tomorrow, but if you want to still fast, you can still fast, but do it in the evening instead. And if you have a lot of thyroid issues and you've been fasting straight for like two years, please consider eating a third meal. This is one of the things I coached one of my clients on yesterday. This whole conversation, because people are just, like, I'm like, did the fasting work? At first she's like, yes. I'm like, is it working now?

She's like, no. I'm like, okay, so we're going to stop doing it and we have to change, right? So give your body signals that food is abundant. Give yourself the nourishment that will help take down some of those stress hormones, and then you run on nutrients instead of cortisol all day. And we didn't even talk about leptin. So that'll have to be next year. Oh yeah. Yeah. Well they can again tell them how they can find you because they can dive into all of your information in your podcast and learn about that.

Yeah. Thank you. Amy. So my podcast is called Light Up Your Metabolism. So I hope everyone appreciates now the the play on words. I have an Instagram account with lots and lots of helpful content. It's my handle is Danielle Hamilton health and if you're interested in the light stuff, I have a new course coming out that's almost done that I'm so excited about. And it's called It Starts With Light, and it's really about how to make all these, like how to make this the foundation of your routine, how to do it slowly.

It's like, oh my God, what light bulb do I get? Like what? What blue blockers are good and what time does this. You know the UVA happened by me like it. It's it can be overwhelming I understand that. So I make it really, really simple. It's like a made to be a four week program, but you could extend it longer. There's like actionable tips where it's like the first week we're just doing these two simple things so it baby steps you through it all. And I answer tons of questions that end up coming up.

Like, what about grounding when it's snowy? And what do I do in the winter when there's not a lot of light? Like, I answer all those questions inside that program. So, yeah, I'll I'll give you the waitlists for that. Amazing. Well, probably by the time the summer comes out that will be up and running so people will be able to find you, go directly to your site. Yeah. Sign up for that course because that's going to be amazing. Amazing. Thanks, Amy, for having me. Danny, thank you so much for coming on.

I greatly appreciate it.