Your Body Already Knows How to Heal… You’ve Just Forgotten How

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

Our bodies worked in sync with what nature is doing. And so our blueprint of our biology is set up in that context. That shifted us away from realizing how connected we are to nature. Blueprint, this sort of idea is that our cells, genetics, all these are in the context of the greater picture, which is what nature is doing all the time is life and living and health. And how do we stimulate or go back to tapping into that blueprint? It actually, when we have dis-ease or when we're sick, it's you know, not always, but sometimes a sign that we're living farther away from that blueprint of what our body needs to maintain health.

Welcome to the TBD Fit podcast on Dr. Talks. I'm your host, Daniel Keeley, and I will be guiding you through this wellness journey in terms of optimizing health and longevity, where we unpack the science, the do's, the don'ts, and everything in between. Come join us. Look forward to seeing you inside. Today we have an incredible guest, Dr. Michael Bahut. We just had probably a 30-minute conversation prior to this call on all things wellness and retreat and just feeling better in the right environment.

So Dr. Bahut is a board-certified osteopathic family physician and integrative functional medicine doctor providing telemedicine and osteopathic care across the U.S. through his holistic family healthcare practice. He's also the author of Everyday Medicine Ancient Secrets to Awaken Your Innate Healing Abilities. A very interesting read which we're going to dive into. It's going to be the main focus of our conversation today where he provides practical guidance and blends ancient wisdom with modern science into simple daily practices for restoring energy and whole body health.

He currently resides with his family in beautiful Costa Rica, which we were speaking about early offline, which I hope to come visit him very soon. Dr. Wu, welcome to the show. All right, Dr. Dan, thank you for having me, man. I really appreciate the work you do and the opportunity to speak about some of these health practices and ideas of how to maintain our health and wellness. Yes, the modern world where I always suggest is in congruent with our evolutionary biology. But not about that yet. Or maybe it is.

Let's dive in with you. What is your backstory? I love opening up with guests to depict How they got into what they're doing now. What was the catalyst? Yeah. Well, there's quite a number of things, but for myself, when, you know, I actually have an undergraduate degree in environmental science. So I worked in environmental conservation, coral reef conservation. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Fiji islands for two years and a couple of months. And what I saw there was that how much are. people are connected to the environment and how much our health is affecting us.

If we treat the environment poorly, if we pollute or put chemicals out in the air, how many people got sick? And so then I started to rethink my attention should be on people. I love working on people, working with people. And so I moved from Fiji after there, I went to LA and I got into doing yoga and shiatsu. I got trained as a shiatsu practitioner. I studied Ayurveda and Chinese medicine, all these different alternative practices. And I actually met my wife who's from Italy. I know we spoke about that there at a yoga training.

And I learned from her and from this experience, she had an autoimmune disease. She was really struggling back in Italy. And so what I managed to learn from her experience is that changing her environment, changing simple practices in her health really shifted and her autoimmune disease went away. And so then it's got me thinking like, wow, how powerful are these things that maybe people forgot about or that are less emphasized? And I was working with a chiropractor at the time and he said, have you heard about osteopathic medicine?

And I said, no, what is that? And so he introduced me to a really amazing osteopath and other doctors that were medical doctors and I got opened up to this path about osteopathic medicine and how I can also have the tools and the credentials and the ability to work with people's health, doing some alternative things. open enough that people kind of see you as a resource. And so that inspired me on this journey. So I kind of came from this field, actually I was outside of medicine and even going to school for over 10 years before I went back to school and to medical school.

And so I was learning all these different alternative, interesting health ideas and then went to medicine, then did family medicine as a specialty out in LA and go through all the you know, training and certifications and then realizing that I need to bring these two worlds together. And so it was mostly just this sort of eye opening experiences of just living out in nature, being with people in Fiji and then seeing the transformation that my wife went through in her own country. That's so crazy given what we've been discussing offline because the number one place in the world that I always wanted to visit, Fiji.

Oh yeah. There you go. So we have these connections and this is an amazing, you know, amazing world that we live in that we're attracting each other to learn from each other

Original Biological Blueprint of Health 5:31

and our experiences like really are kind of To me, where we learn and grow is from life and the journey of life. And this is pointing also in our health journey because for me, when the times that I felt sick or wasn't feeling good, I knew I probably wasn't on the right path or I was forcing something that maybe didn't need to be forced and that's kind of hits on like a topic that I really find is important to for people's health is to understand that we have like how important is to have a purpose a connection and sort of a structure set up that what we do feels inspiring to us because then our biology and our bodies respond to that that emotion, that connection in our sort of consciousness that we're enjoying something that were, maybe it's a struggle, like going through medical school was a struggle for me.

It was not easy, but I knew that I had a sense that I really wanted to do it and learn something. And that was able to provide me this sort of force to get through and do what I'm doing today. So it's so amazing just to see those connections and synchronicities. Two principles I want to underscore there. Cause the first thing, the openness to receive. Right? Where our attention goes, our energy flows, but what kind of energy are we emitting and what kind of energy are we attracting? And it's so interesting when you said that, because when you're open to receive, the body provides everything, the world provides everything for you and the body will respond in kind.

And so that synergy, when you said that is just remarkable. If I'm not mistaken in Fiji, I think unique to any other nation, it has three national languages. Yes. Yeah, Fiji has English because it was colonized up by the British. Then the British brought in a bunch of Indians from India because they were using them as indentured servants, let's say, and they were growing all the farms, the sugar cane, the products that were being shipped back to Europe, and then the native Fijians. So the native Fijians came up with a contract with basically the colonists at that time, British, that they wouldn't be forced to work for them or do anything differently and they could live on their land.

So we have Fijian native language and all the tribes, they have their sub dialects, Indian and English. And it was such an amazing, interesting mix of culture there that it's I don't know where else in the world you see something like that, but I'm sure the second principle I wanted to underscore was purpose, which you just referenced. And that's a question we asked within our intake. And, uh, second to Fiji, I've always wanted to visit Japan. I have immense reverence for that culture and they identify with the word as, as if you guy or the reason for existence, the reason why you wake up every morning.

And when we ask our patients or anyone in general, most of us are like, Living lost souls we don't have a purpose or we don't identify with. Why kind of what we do or what drives us again the reason why we wake up every morning to get out of bed and so it's interesting that that you share that because. in terms of connection, right? Connection can really drive purpose in many respects. And we're, unfortunately, in our more kind of globally connected society, we're less connected in many realms. But it's, I can appreciate how you have now blended both Eastern and Western medicine to really accelerate healing.

I want to highlight the term when you said alternative because to me it's a doing a disservice I think to what we do. What we practice is restorative medicine. We're allowing the body to heal as whether intelligent design or however kind of we were put together but our innate wisdom to help heal and so I appreciate the wisdom that you provided in your book and I want to definitely get into that here but what you've done to blend both practices I think is the epitome of what modern medicine should look like and so I don't want to remind you when you use the word alternative I hear all the time because especially in the US and if you're in Costa Rica, maybe it's similar.

But when you practice alternative or holistic medicine, you're kind of like, well, you're, I don't want to say quack, but sometimes, okay, show me the proof. What about, you know, taking pill or everything? We're talking offline about that. And when you said to force something, I think that's what we're trying to do by shoving more prescriptions, right? So it's changing the environment so that now it's conducive to healing or energy is medicine, frequency is medicine, right? And allowing the environment to dictate a shift in physiology.

And so let's start perhaps with your book. You introduced the term original biological blueprint of health. Can you define that? Well, it's similar to what you're saying right there. It's just our kind of remembering what our biology is meant to be stimulated by. And so if you can imagine ourselves without technology, going back even like a couple hundred years, that our bodies worked in sync with what nature is doing. our blueprint to of our biology is set up in that context because if we think about technology just went exponential in the last you know 50 to 100 years but I would say for sure in the last 50 years and that shifted us away from realizing how connected we are to nature and our Blueprint, this sort of idea is that our cells, genetics, all these are in the context of the greater picture, which is what nature is doing all the time is life and living and health.

And how do we stimulate or go back to tapping into that blueprint? It actually, when we have dis-ease or when we're sick, it's You know, not always, but sometimes a sign that we're living farther away from that blueprint or what our body needs to maintain health. And the idea is for me to look at these concepts of how is our body designed in the sort of environmental natural world of things. And start to fuel it back to that, which is, you know, like I state in my book, I have these five zones of health, which are very simplistic, but the idea is that, you know, these are critical categories we can intervene on or remember or bring back to our bodies to turn on the information in our biology that, oh, I can heal or I know how to heal.

I just needed to give them these resources. And let me give you an example like really big one is light how we relate to light is a big signal of information to our body of how you know how safe we are what environment we're in and what we should be doing because in every moment our body is doing something different it's. either healing or understanding. We have the circadian rhythm, which we talked about before, but the circadian rhythm is tapped into the rhythm of the planet, the rise of the sun, the setting of the sun, even to seasonality of when we're in winter and we're in summer.

And we need different things during those different times. And why our body knows that is because of the lights that hits our eyes and our skin. And so a way that we can tap into this sort of original biological blueprint that's as I say but there's a ton of words for this just turning on our innate healing abilities is have a better relationship to light, sunlight and artificial light and realizing what kind of shifts us out of health or out of balance and what shifts us more into health and balance and That kind of coincides with this remembering or tapping back into these principles from breathing to hearing nature sounds, water flowing, to taking walks in nature, to being able to have human to human connections and even connections with animals in nature.

Those are all part of our biology that gives us signals that or that we're in the healing mode and that's what we call a parasympathetic or the rest and digest and heal mode. And the more we're able to tap into that in our nervous system, the more our body is resilient and can heal. I love that you started with light because that's where I wanted to go first. In your book, you elegantly indicate here that whole body exposure to UV light reduces elevated blood pressure by as much as 40 points, lowering blood sugar levels in people with diabetes, decreasing inflammation or inflammatory cholesterol, increasing white blood cells, particularly lymphocytes.

All that playing obviously a huge role in immune regulation. And when I look at aging or now this whole pursuit of anti-aging, which I'm directly opposed to, that's always contextual, but it's immune system dysregulation, which obviously heightens the inflammatory burden, which is the root of all chronic disease. And something as free as light and so ubiquitous that you should know is we need to avoid it. Light is damaging. People are in allergies, quote unquote, to light. And I find that it is inconsistent with our biology.

We need like to survive just like any plants do, right? Just eat all mammals, all animals, everything in this. And so if you've lurched light, the component here is that you're toxic. It's amping on the toxicity inside of you. Your oxidative burn is extremely high and you're not able to buffer against that. So in terms of light, you discuss here, which was interesting, green versus red, I believe, and looking at Yeah, there's different types of frequencies of light that stimulate us from different processes.

You can imagine this by, if we go out for a walk in the forest and you're in a lot of trees, the reflected light that we see is going to be more green light and that light actually is stimulating our bodies to have a remembering of certain frequencies or energy or information. It's all the same of what our bodies should be doing. So we do see you can simply even just put up a picture of a nature scene in your house and look at it and your blood pressure is going to go down. And we do see the nervous system shift.

We do see immune cells shift. And that is because we're tapping into even this sort of deeper programming of our instinctual knowing that nature is good for us. It's not a big aha thing. However, we need, okay, science, I need to see all these articles showing how much points of blood pressure I can drop or my immune system or even blood sugar changes and all that is a reflection that we're doing something good. And getting outside in nature, so we have the green light or green that we see from nature and also red light.

Red is huge. I know this biohacking world, there's red light therapies, all certain things which definitely work and are helpful. However, a free source of that is sunlight or sitting around a fire, you know, those are things that are available all the time. And why our biology responds to that is because That's what we had available and that's what we're around all the time and our body learns from that.

Light, Sunlight, and Circadian Health 16:48

So getting into red light and infrared light as a way that stimulate our body's healing capacity. We have seen so many studies now on mitochondrial functioning, improving stem cell amplification, our white blood cells or immune cells become more informed and are less likely to trigger that inflammatory response but they become let's say more specific in their response because we still need inflammation that helps us but we don't need this wildly out of control crazy inflammation and that's where when these things run out of balance that's when we start to see chronic disease and damage and we need to focus on repair.

So light is huge and people may think of it as like kind of silly or because we just don't notice it or feel like if I take, you know, if I drink a cup of coffee, you know, I'm going to feel all the jitters, but in this way, that's why people go on vacation and they go to the beach and they get the sunlight and they say, wow, I need to go on a holiday and feel good. What do you do? You go and you get sunlight. I mean, of course you go and you think you associate, oh, the ocean's really nice, which has its own, you know, capability of healing.

but that's what people used to do in the old days when they were sick. They go sit outside or they go to a solarium or a sanatorium they were called and Italy was very famous for this too that they're like sun worshipers in this way almost similar to like the Mayans and the Aztecs that you are sick go get more sunlight. Oh because you basically you've been inside too much you have this cold or it's raining or something you don't feel good okay where it's sunny go there and dry and this is Part of when our body remembers and gets that information, it starts doing the right stuff.

So our environment is huge and light is a big part of that. How we can train and push our body into the healing response. Yeah, how it impacts the quality of our mitochondria, which is the root of all kinds of metabolic disease here. So green versus red, chlorophyll versus hemoglobin. Right. Yeah, there's a really cool connection there. And I have a picture in the book about those two differences and it's really at the center is the difference between iron and magnesium. And that's very, very important, but it's also showing how much connected we are to the planet world or the planet let's just say that we are doing things a little differently but we still need the same things.

The sunlight is a big source of energy for us and people used to think oh well we don't get energy from sunlight and that's been totally debunked. We can get out in the sun and your body requires less glucose, less intake of nutrition, the more sunlight you get because our mitochondria work better and they're more efficient. And so we can pass electrons very easily through photons into our mitochondria. And like you mentioned before, I think it's very wise to say that it's not the sunlight causing damage to our skin.

It's all the inflammatory components in our lifestyle. A big part of that are seed oils and artificial, let's say, ingredients in our diet and chemicals in our water and food supply that react to create inflammation. And when sunlight interacts in that sort of pathway, It can create more inflammation. So it's not to say sunlight is damaging. It's damaging in the context of if we're in a toxic state versus a healthy state. And even still, I still tell people it's way better to get out in the sun than it is to worry about, oh, do I have inflammation?

Is my skin going to get damaged? And there's a smart way to do it. 15, 20 minutes in the early morning, late afternoon, not in the midday sun until your body builds up more of the melanin in the skin, the tan. And that's actually very protective. It's very protective for our nervous system. That's why, you know, when we get tan, our body is able to use it as more of a solar panel. And we use that energy more from sunlight, the more tan our skin is. So it's very important as a protective. You're absolutely right that's been debugging.

People don't realize just how integral light is to our existence. And when I ask patients all the time, you know, where is the most dense source of magnesium, where does magnesium come from? Most people aren't aware that it's from chlorophyll, from plants, the green. I haven't seen one individual in the last decade who's not magnesium deficient. Our nutrition, unfortunately, is also crippling our health outcomes, but to continue on this light bandwagon, obviously light increases blood oxygen, and for me, oxygen is the absence of disease.

And so we definitely need to get more out in the sun and it's interesting as you alluded to many of the benefits that are derived and how we have We have weaned away from free sources of healing, right? It would just be your book with Kourar ability to heal and God forbid we use the term cure here, evolution of medicine. We can heal and we can use free sources of nature. You mentioned infrared. Now, are you suggesting artificial sources like these modern additions of red light beds or red light exposure, or how do you think in terms of that?

Yeah. I mean, infrared light is basically heat, right? So when we look at the spectrum of what light, that type of light, I mean, light is energy. So when we say light, we usually focus on what we can see with our eyes. And we have a spectrum of light that we can see is different than other animals and insects. And that's an energy spectrum. And when you go just below the red light spectrum, what we can see is the infrared. That's what's called just below red. And that's a sense of heat that we feel.

And so heat has been used for applications for healing in many, many ways from you know, putting hot stones on your body to just sitting in a sauna. And now we have this sort of modern technology where we can replicate that through infrared light or red and infrared saunas. Some people do okay with that, but not everybody. So how you can test that is just to sense, you know, start slowly and move into 15, 20 minutes. Getting around infrared light now you can buy those light boxes and infrared the light and infrared lights We don't have access to easy way of doing that.

I think using technology is a great step However, like the old way we used to do is get into a sweat lodge get into a Swedish sauna sit around a fire and And that actually those, the light and the infrared light that comes off of that stimulates our body circulation, it stimulates the mitochondrial functioning and repair mechanisms. So when we're around warmth and heat for, you know, a certain type of, you know, point of time, maybe it's 20, 30 minutes, that starts generating repair mechanisms. And there's a lot of science around that, a lot of athletes, and now we can kind of amp that up with technology so I don't mind I think that if people are looking for ways to heal then those technologies are helpful but let's just say there's old and easy ways of going about doing it just from sitting around a fire making a campfire even in the winter it's snowing like I've done these sort of sweat lodges with Native Americans and they're just building a fire, putting a bunch of stones on it and sitting around it.

Then they can move stones into like this tent or teepee and you sit around and the stones are glowing red hot. And there's something that happens in our body that says, ah, yeah, this feels good. And in that way, we know that we're on the right track. Um, but everybody's a little different how they respond. And then of course, you know, when we get around heat and we're sweating, we're releasing toxins. So we have to be aware of our toxic burden and what we're capable of as far as their detox pathways being open and available.

And so it ties into these practices that we can do and we have access to, to utilize in a, you know, specific and health, you know, intentional way that we can move our buy to a better state and. Some people I know that can hit an infrared sauna for five minutes and that's it. They're maxed out. So everyone has a different place where they're at. But using them, definitely we know our body responds to that type of energy. It's interesting because you referenced Italy earlier and I remember growing up, my father, anytime we were sick, he would say, go take a walk by the beach.

What? And the reason behind her stand now is because the high iodide content in the sea and yes, iodine very supportive protective of thyroid, but it is tremendously antimicrobial. And so there's so much innate wisdom in just exposing yourself to the sun, to grounding or earthing, getting in the sea or in the ocean. When you mentioned photons and electrons, obviously looking at the electron transport chain and mitochondria energy, et cetera. The more electrons we lose due to free radical damage, the more inflamed we are, the more toxic, the less our ability to heal.

Excess protons is the root of inflammation. How do you quickly change that is go ground yourself and how to supercharge that? Go into the sea or the ocean, right? Get your, get your feet on sand. It's interesting because you mentioned that sand, that was something novel. Sand reflects light 17% or you, the, the ultraviolet rays from the sun. Yeah, significantly more. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. That's why I think what you're right on with what you were saying that there's such healing benefits from going to the ocean and I think most people sense that or feel that and there was this ancient, you know, not ancient, but cultural idea of like get out and walk by the beach and iodine, the negative ions, the grounding, the reflection of the UV light, you know, water in itself, movement in the salt.

So there's like a lot there that, you know, isn't, uh like mind-blowing but when we put our body in that context and let's say whether it's recovering from an illness or we have some chronic condition that if we're able to put our body into that state more often then we're tipping the scales in the direction of our health of course there might be other things you need to be doing but in that way when our body's in that environment it's way easier to heal. And we have to realize that I think it's in contrast to most people living this modern lifestyle are not grounding every day.

They live in this hermetically sealed box. There's not fresh air flowing. We don't get good oxygen. We have artificial lights. We have off gassing of products in our home. And so all these things are like when we take ourselves out of that context and put it into the beach and ocean context, our bodies like Thank you. You finally realized you get us out of this thing. And it doesn't mean we can't live that way. We just have to be really aware that if we set it up properly, we can live a healthy lifestyle.

And that's really important. There are invisible forces at work in this container of our environment that could be working against us. No matter how much you're working on your gut health or eating an amazing diet or taking supplements, if we're still not able to feel really good then let's start to look at these bigger macro concepts on and that's kind of what's laid out in the book from the light those principles of how our mitochondrial function actually work best in these type of environments and then we can start to work with those things with that inflammation and I know I don't know how you feel about um blue light but this is a huge another sort of avenue of health that we are starting to realize is very, very important because of our, you know, I guess we're inundated by technology, our screens, you know, television, and everyone has a device now they're looking at all the time.

So that's for me, this two, like you brought up the light category, the main ones that I think I love people to learn about is sunlight, how important it is, the positive benefits of heat, infrared light and healing and the dangers of blue light because I think those if you can get those concepts then we're going to be in a way better health state and those are things you can do and work with and it's not like inaccessible at all. What's your thoughts about blue light? That's exactly what was on my mind when I was going to ask you the same question.

Thoughts are simple that the science is unequivocal. Blue light can damage retinal cells. We never evolved with this artificial light. It has become to our detriment. When the electric bulb was invented, you know, so that we can, um, Stay more productive into the deep hours of night. It comes at a consequence of our health and we've seen that over time. It's interesting because when you, um, you speak about this in your book, the importance of darkness, I thought that is so elegant because we're designed to live in conjunction with the cycle of the sun and the moon.

And so I always tell my patients. Nothing good happens after sunset. Now for adults, you know, we like to. But blue light suppresses melatonin. We see that. Health outcomes only deteriorate. And so the goal, I don't even think you can source incandescent light bulbs here in the US anymore. I think they've been banned to some degree. Well, they were banned and then I think they've been unbanned. So, but still the, I guess the industry moved to, you know, more LEDs and fluorescent lights, which is like, I know it sounds, it might sound crazy to some people, probably people who are watching this podcast, they're not, they're already hit to a lot of these things that whatever is generally recommended, try to do the opposite.

But in this way, like the light, even though we're saving energy, from having an LED or a fluorescent light bulb, it's actually way more damaging for our health. So going back to incandescent is great. That's what I have here in the house in Costa Rica. And I even put in the red light bulbs. I put in ways that don't mess up my circadian biology. So there's a number of things. One is when you have an incandescent light bulb, like you mentioned, sure, if it's on in the late hours of night, it is producing brighter light than our eyes used to.

So it's messing up our circadian rhythm and our melatonin. It's way better choice than others and you can dim them. What's coming off of the incandescent light bulb is also heat. So we're getting infrared light from that, which is better than the high spectrum blue lights that come out of the LED lights. And those for sure, there's two things wrong with the LED lights is that they have a flicker response.

Blue Light, Darkness, and Seasonal Living 31:28

And the flicker is like a sub perceptual flicker, but our brain picks up the flicker and it can influence our state of brain waves to be more in the fight or flight response. So there's a flicker response that we have to be aware of. And the amount of blue light is not conducive to health because blue light is kind of rare in nature. That's how our body responded to have these kind of receptors to blue light because it stimulates dopamine. and it is very activating, it suppresses melatonin. So when we're around it all the time, our body gets way out of balance, doesn't know when it should be secreting hormones, doesn't know when is day and when is night.

So these are Besides the hormone picture is actually a dopamine picture. And that is known through the people who develop apps and technology that we can get and grab your attention more through the bright lights, the flashing colors and the high blue light frequencies. And actually what happens, part of our frontal lobe brain shuts down to where we don't process things as well. We're just in this sort of. You know, imagine eating a big Thanksgiving dinner and you're in this coma state. You're like, ah, that feels so good.

I just ate a lot of fruit. That's the huge dopamine serotonin response. That's what blue light's doing to us all the time. And then we get burnt out and then we feel like, When we turn it off, we feel uneasy. It's kind of like a withdrawal. So this is really, really important for us to have intelligent ways to work with our technology. And the simple things that I do is just put on the blue light blocking glasses. I put filters on my screens. I change my light bulbs. It's not like I'm living in a cave.

We don't need to do that, although some people might want to. But we can interface with technology in a better way. It just starts from being aware of the dangers that are out there and it does negatively influence our health in so many ways. Yeah, here I point to both greater nightlight exposure associated with increased risk of major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, PTSD, psychosis, bipolar disorder, self-harm. So my philosophy is very simple. We are no longer living congruent with our biology.

And so I actually preferred to be in a cave at night and the reason being is that I'm looking to, to sync my circadian rhythmicity. And as such, if I, I don't want to undermine people that are looking at this interface with technology in a healthy level. And sometimes, you know, we do have to stay up for whatever reasons, but in looking in terms of our evolution of biology, that never really kind of happened. Yeah, we had fire, you know, or eventually candle. The goal is not to push back against evolution, but to maybe re-sync.

When you said the blue light exposure and the dopamine serotonin, it is a cognitive hijack and we see that with kids. It's immensely exacerbated. It's almost like you're scrolling and then you need to scroll more. And it's not you craving it all of a sudden. It's like the phone is calling you, feed me more, feed me more. And it's becoming this addictive kind of society where we're instantly locked in. And what everyone is trying to do now is disconnect. Right. We're look, we're the retreats that we spoke about, um, prior to the call, we're all looking to kind of unplug and disconnect.

Cause we realize that we are set up in this kind of toxic environment that was designed very, very intentionally to our detriment. Or I don't believe necessarily that things are designed with malice necessarily, but sometimes we don't realize the unintended consequences. And instead of adopting darkness as this is beneficial. We're like, no, I need to turn on the lights. I need to do more work. I need to scroll. I need to stay up later to get things done. But again, it's only to our detriment, unfortunately.

And so my philosophy is identical in many respects as yours. It just, to me, when you said the importance of darkness, we don't think of it, right? We're always pushing back on darkness, right? How much longer can I stay up to be more efficient? Well, actually, not really. Production performance has an upper limit and a threshold, right? So I appreciate you kind of very, very elegantly tying those knots. What's interesting further still is, are we opting Any decision I make, I ask myself a question like, is this in conjunction with our evolutionary biology?

And often enough, the answer is no. As you said, we're going from one box in our car to another box to our office, to another box back to our homes. Our windows are shut. The air is not as tight as now the WGTMO study. The air is indoor air is somewhere between two and a half to five times more toxic than outdoor air. We're not open windows. It's in our breath, asthma, allergies continuously on the rise. Our kids were still. And then obviously we're just bombarded with light. Right. And then the sedentary, which we'll get into a moment, but interesting in your book, the further away you go from the equator, the further that we see this kind of seasonal effect disorder.

My question is while we are extremely resilient, right? We've been able to evolve and adapt. Has that been necessarily again, optimal, right? If you look at Nordic countries or when you're kind of in coal and we were speaking offline about that in terms of nutrition, philosophy is very simple. Eat the seasons. avocados don't grow all year round here. But now because we can get them from Mexico, they certainly do. But what's interesting is we ban DDT here, but we export it to Mexico and then they spray it and now we're getting hit back.

So toxicity is full circle. Yeah, they figure that out. They figure out how to get around that. So you're living by the equator. Is that kind of how we were designed, even though we've been able to adapt? Well, I think that humans are very, they're designed to adapt. However, if someone is in a health situation and they want to have less dressers on their body, then to live close to the equator is a little more. uh easier and easier means that our body doesn't need to do so many things to stay in balance because there's less variance and seasonality and times a year with um the light changes so when you're around the equator your body becomes more in sync with this rhythm and it's not you know when we have like daylight savings time or when you shift it during the seasons people struggle they really are like oh great now I have to do this and have to wake up at a different time and that's because our body you know what we're doing it wants to keep doing and that's like the laws of inertia but if you're doing something that's healthy and working then your body wants to keep doing that.

So it becomes harder when we go to these higher latitudes where the seasonality is much more drastic. But what we've learned as a people over time is that we had a way of eating and living that was in sync with that, that still helped our biology and still was supportive of health. We just moved away from those practices. Well, Nordic countries are one to look at because what they do is go into hot springs and then they go into sauna. And also there is this concept or the study on water, the type of water they're getting is quite different than in other places of the world.

I don't know if you've heard of deuterium depleted water before or deuterium related water. so in that way in the higher latitudes is actually in the mineral springs and in the water they're drinking has more deuterium depleted water which has the type of it's it's really biologically you know important to recognize that water is oxygen and hydrogens and there's also these floating around different hydrogen ions that are can affect us the more or less that they are and whether it supports and fuels our mitochondrial functioning.

And as we keep going back to what we're learning is from a really deep biological perspective, it's how we stay healthy is really keyed into our mitochondrial health. And so the more things we do that support mitochondria, which is electrons flowing through and giving our body energy, then the more supportive our overall health is. And so at the higher latitudes, the way to work with that is saunas, hot springs, and water and even cold plunges is another one that go from ice water to warm to hot and cold.

And that supercharges our mitochondria because it starts to pump and move electrons in a different way. So we can definitely adapt. It's not a problem. But what you don't want to do is sit in a box with artificial light all day and then see the sun going down and keep going all through the night and then you're not shutting the light down or vice versa. In the summer, there's a lot of light in those higher latitudes and people then are doing too many things. They're staying out too long. They're not sleeping right.

You need to get blackout curtains or go into your cave and shut the door and know like, all right, here's my hibernation time. I need to sleep at least a certain amount of hours in darkness and as much complete darkness as you can because our body will get into a deeper sleep and restorative sleep that way for sure. So that's my sense and my belief in what we've seen cultures around the world thrive. And another key thing is our nutrition at those higher latitudes should change. We need to eat more fat and protein during the winter.

And we're gonna live off of fat like in Alaska, the Eskimos just eating pure whale blubber and seal meat. And even like in the Nordic countries, they ferment fish like in the ground and they eat that during the winter. Like we're just eating the wrong things at the wrong time of year and it pushes our body to be in the wrong metabolism. So that's why it doesn't feel good. Uh, and a lot of times people just like send me back, you know, we were talking this before, go to Florida or go put me on a vacation to the Bahamas or somewhere just when it's in the middle of the winter, because we want to, that's the way we were living from the summer.

And then we didn't change. And even though the light changed and the season changed, we just want to keep going like it's summer. And that's not. biologically, I was having this exact conversation yesterday, the body upright salivary amylase in terms of fall harvest, right? When we, we have this innate design that we have now lost. And we are no longer eating the seasons and we're now even longer eating fat, which is produced specific times of year, whether it's coconut or olive oil and fermented foods that you nail that, which we usually can.

And we say for the winter time when nutrition, there's nothing to hunt or food or obviously produce is less prevalent. We are no longer living in conduit again with our evolutionary biology. So there's this kind of mismatch, right? So bodies is constant guessing game. So it completely resonates. Unfortunately, we're it's interesting because when I go to to visit my family in Italy, I'll go into Sicily and I walk with my cousin and he's pointing out all the herbs and he's like, this is for a rash.

This is for a burn. This is for infection. This is for a mosquito. It's like, how do you know all this? And he looks at me, he's like, how do you not know all this? Nature is medicine, but we don't understand that anymore. And the same principle is when I'm going to the markets in Italy, we're just buying local. My uncle is like, no, don't grab those peaches. It's actually not season yet. Those are imported from Africa. The tomatoes aren't ready yet, so don't buy that. We'll buy that in two weeks when those will be ripe.

So they know intuitively when things are harvested so that you're optimizing for nutrient content. We're eating like dead food that's on the back of a truck. Hopefully that's not sprayed with too much organic pesticides that's allotted here in the US. And so we're only getting more sick. So a hundred percent. I want to just for water for a second. Further still, it's funny that you mentioned deuterium depleted water. So for people to understand, this is water with, it's a heavier isotope of hydrogen.

We're adding in hydrogen like this hydrogenated water all these kind of I use an echo go It's a tremendous selective antioxidant tremendous benefits when you're when you're adding that I was sourcing a change in fleeted water ten years ago before this was kind of understood He was from Romania, paying $40 per gallon. Clearly, that's not sustainable. So I stopped, I was like, but the problem here is what's the alternative? So in the US, we have to have an RO distilled dead water. We're drinking dead water.

When I go to Europe, it's water from the tap that is very mineral rich. There is a beautiful taste profile, but it's also structure. The dead water that just sits there, it's not running over stone and collecting minerals. So with like Gerald's Pollock research and the fourth phase of water and the importance of restructuring water and how water can be chaos versus how we can absorb intracellular. When we drink this dead water, we're actually not hydrating unless you restructure, remineralize it.

So all our patients, we suggest a pinch of salt in the water. Or if you like, sometimes I'll leave it outside under the sun and I'll put in some rocks like Shingit or some to remineralize, but people don't realize is that. Patients come all the time like, oh man, I'm drinking a gallon a day. But I look at their cellular hydration and it's 50%. Whereas, I mean, it should be somewhere close to two thirds, which is the natural composition of our, our water. So it's not necessarily people just don't understand.

I think is like, oh, you know, it's not for lack of effort. Sometimes it's just the misinformation that we don't understand. As you said before, we're trying to force things. Like, oh, I need to drink more water. Well, what's the quality of the water that you're drinking first off? Oh, well, I need to eat, you know, this, this, this. Well, is it actually in season and in synchronicity with our biology? Likely, right? Right. Yeah, this is definitely important. And to me, there's like these stages of awakening and our health that we start to realize we're feeling better.

And I know I can feel better. So what are the points that I'm missing?

Water, Minerals, and Structured Hydration 45:40

And I can see, you know, what makes like a really good practitioner is where we're at is to be able to see where the person is able to make that next step. And so if someone's not drinking any water, then okay, Get yourself like water, just stop drinking coffee all day and like, just go to get some water, like good water, try not to get it from plastic bottles, try to have some filter. Okay. Then you're making steps and you're like, yeah, I'm drinking water, but I still don't feel great. Okay. So here's the next level of like, where's your water coming from?

How do we remineralize it? And then the concept of structured water is, is really like the pure water of how our body biologically can utilize actual H2O. And that's from the. water being structured in a certain way that our body loves it and wants to absorb it. And so the Gerald Pollock's work and there's many others that focus on the quality, the energy or the structure of the water is what fuels our mitochondria, fuels nutrition delivery. And as you mentioned, there's studies about actually if you take your water in a glass and you put it onto a, basically you're putting it out in the sun, then you're able to energize that water and what they study like from a pure physics and science standpoint, it's not like, oh, I'm just getting lovely sun energy.

It's putting photons in the water and adding a layer of electron transport to the water that they can actually witness and observe under under the microscope so this is really like kind of sounds all crazy it's like well well that's what hippies and all these people used to do and put it under the moon or put it under the sun and we know water is influenced that way and and you can have i mean we can go down a huge rabbit hole with water and there's more and more people that are really interested in utilizing water for our health.

And like you said, it's really important to know where your water is coming from and what's in the water. And if we can go back to like the old ways, especially in Europe, they have like sacred water sources. They know like from this spring, you know, like this person got healed or go to this spring water if you're feeling tired and need more energy. And the water coming out of the earth with the stones and minerals and it being structured has a quality that's very, very healing. So on a very simple level, if we just even decide, I don't want to invest in anything, then investing and understanding how water affects your body is going to be a huge change for a lot of people.

I went to one of those places, as you said before, a sanatorium, but where they have these healing water places. and Montecatini. We have them in the United States. If you go back and look, and I'm really interested in history. I lived in Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania for a while. There are these retreats that our forefathers, or let's say Thomas Jefferson and George Washington would go to just for the water. There's a place called Jefferson Hot Springs in West Virginia. and along the corridor where there's hot springs where you can bathe in and then get mineral water that they were tapped in when they weren't feeling good or they know they needed to heal or at least get into a better state of mind they would go to these places and our Native Americans know these places and they were animals go to these places so we know that there's something to it and it does turn on that sort of original biology and our innate healing mechanism so I would say just people to try that because I love you know, when I first got into this, I would just be experimenting and saying, how do I feel when I do this?

How do I get access to it? So let's try drinking different water from around the world and see how you feel with it. And just, yeah, some things cost money, but also traveling and getting that experience of what our ancestors did and just exploring different places from a health standpoint, how you feel is really a feeling to experience that. I think the openness to receive, to listen to our intuitive nature, Right? When you go to the grocery store, instead of having a list, maybe seeing, okay, you know, this is what is attracting to like, whether it's a specific produce, a vegetable or a fruit or meat, fish, it's whatever the case, right?

Instead of identifying with societal norms, I got to eat at nine and then at 12 and then at five, because those are my lunch hours and dinner hours. The body wasn't designed. Yes, we do enjoy regularity. I think the body responds well to that. And so when you said, Living closer to the equator, there's less variance and so the body can harmonize. But in terms of just like, we're just eating because that's the time of the day that we said we got to eat rather than, am I even hungry? Listening to your internal tooth, do I feel inflamed?

Do I need to take a nap? Do I need to rest more instead? And in our modern era, it just, we're running on empty. And what do we do? We press even further. Well, how will you caffeinate? Or we need to take some sort of stimulant, or we need to then take some sort of anxiety med or depressive med because we aren't sleeping properly. We haven't had the light exposure to synchronize our circadian rhythm that we go to bed on time. And so the melatonin. can kind of kick in when cortisol decrees into the evening.

So it's interesting that we've hit on some topics that I didn't plan to discuss. I wanted to highlight some other things in your book with the small amount of time we do have left here. Movement and sound. Perhaps we'll start with sound because I think that is something. so powerful when we when I go into some of these like sound retreats it is remarkable how well you can feel and how you can shift your physiological state that especially in conjunction with with breath work and we I was speaking about this on a podcast the other day and We breathe about 10,000 liters of oxygen per day.

That equates to about 30 pounds of oxygen. That's more than you can eat in a week. People don't realize the impact of healthy breathing, what it can do to move length, to help with multiplication, to respire some of the fat and toxicity that's accumulated. But in terms of, well, maybe if you want to open up that rabbit hole with breath or movement, sound, anything that kind of jumps out first. Yeah. I mean, so these are, like I mentioned, that these are practices and ways you can use what we already have available to shift into a healing state.

And this can be synergistic with other things you're doing. So if we're looking to tap into our biology, how our health really is meant to live from, then using these things as a source of healing is super important. Like you mentioned, the breath. I love to be able to just encourage people to stop, take a deep breath. See how you feel. Also, pay attention to where you're breathing during the day. Do we breathe through the nose or breathe through the mouth? Start to shift your intention with your breath.

It starts shifting not only oxygen because oxygen is a big part of why we breathe, but it is so deeply connected to our nervous system. this sort of fight or flight response that so many of us are in day to day. So if we want to shift that or if we know we're doing something that's stressful, then what do we do? Stop, take a deep breath, close your eyes, just feel it in your body that your nervous system changes and hormones change and our body ability to use the oxygen improves by so much. So there's so many breathing techniques out there.

There's different types of breath work, which I go over in my book, from ways that you can really support your nervous system, dopamine response, serotonin, better for mental health, all the way to just helping and supporting your mitochondria. So that's a key area. It's free. You just got to learn how to do it and do it in a safe and trusted way. So tapping into that, there's the sound and frequency, which is another really important one. And many people just like, whatever, I'll just listen to a song because I feel good.

You know, I'm in a bad mood. I want to lift my mood. So on one level music can do that and our brains are kind of tapped into the ability to use sound and music to change the frequency of our own brain waves to even the sound baths and an idea that the vibration itself coming from certain sounds or music or singing bowls or crystal bowls or even bird song and nature sounds like running water they turn on our nervous system to be in the healing mode and then a lot of things happen. Plus deeper down is vibration and frequency that comes off of that is information our body is receiving and that can change cellular response pathways, inflammation response pathways.

There's a new type of medicine you know, that's been going, I guess, getting more popular, it's called frequency, specific microcurrents. And this is another way that we're using frequency. Even though we can't hear it, there are sounds that turn on certain mechanisms or turn off mechanisms in our body. And this is old information we know is out there. People would go to, you know, churches and you hear this. I mentioned the Gregorian chants in one way because If you're in a church, the churches are designed to amplify sound in a healing way, even though we might not realize that.

Like go to a really, really old church in Europe somewhere and just look at this amazing structure. It's designed to put us into a healing state, which when we're in that state, we have a deeper connection to either our spiritual selves or a higher level of consciousness. And that's a place where we get information and we heal from. So sound is another super important one. There's many ways of working with sound from binaural beats to just listening to music. And they've done studies on dementia.

Breath, Sound, Movement, and Retreats 55:28

And if people listen to music from when they were younger, they actually have a better memory of the present. So this is tying into just some of the principles in free medicine that we have around us. Holden Clark was one who popularized frequency medicine and how organs operate at a frequency, but so too deep pathogens. And you can tap into frequency to electrocute if you will pathogens using frequency medicines. There's so much innate wisdom that we've lost because modern society says we need to take a pill for every ill.

So who's really running the show, right? Just, I always suggest just ask questions and the person who asked the better questions finds better answers. Right. We don't have to force things as you, uh, so elegantly into early on. I think we're trying to force too much all at once as well, even in, in terms of healing too, when patients are sick is obviously one get better faster and we can do that when you shift your environment. Right? What is the context of your environment? Are you, are you grounding earth and that's free?

Are you getting adequate sun? That's free. Are you listening to healing vibrations and sounds? That's free. Like have a healthy community. It's interesting because I didn't make really that connection on spot with church. There's always music, right? With sing and dance. And so any sort of dogma there, like it's very euphoric in a context, very healing. It's beautiful how you connect those dots. And then in terms of movement, I find movement is medicine. The body was designed to move. It's interesting when they examined the life of indigenous tribes, such as the Pahotsan, Tanzania, and they're more sedentary than we are.

But the biggest difference was it's these micro movements, right? So even though they're seated most of the day, they're crawling, they're crouching, they're huddling over, they're foraging. they have these little bouts of micro movements versus us. We're just sat and period in under the artificial light in our box without healthy air drinking from a plastic bottle and we wonder why disease is on the right and we're in a flexion point where our kids are gonna outlive us. Hopefully, maybe not. I don't know.

Needless to say, it's a problem and what I really appreciate when you highlight it very, very beautifully in your book is just Ancient wisdom, going back to our roots, nature heals. My philosophy is if nature made it, it's okay. If man made it, stay away. And there's a caveat to that, right? Like technology has evolved, our hygiene practice has evolved, which helped us to live longer lives. I don't know that it's healthier always, right? We can see disease on the rise. Right. We see these ADD, ADHD, neurodivergence, all these things, cancer, heart attack, all these things that really didn't exist, you know, a hundred, 150 years ago were, were null and void, but now all of a sudden quite a prevalence.

Are we testing more? Yes, certainly. But I mean, before smoking lung cancer didn't even exist. It was an anomaly. So the gene somatic theory of cancer no longer is true. It's a metabolic issue. Are genes being able to keep up with our modern environment? That's the next. Right. Yeah, exactly. I mean, this is just, it keeps harping on this concept that it shouldn't be that difficult to be healthy because we just moved away from our original design in our biology. And this is kind of like why I say in my book is ancient secrets to awaken our innate healing capability or ability.

It's because We have it already there and we kind of forgot about it. Maybe cultures and other places still have this and we're remembering right now, we're reconnecting with this information. And I want to remind people that it's not that hard. We just got to start to live it and feel it in our body. And it does require effort and it requires us to be open to new possibilities and being able to make changes that may seem uncomfortable or difficult or you might seem like a weirdo. If you're, you know, around in your house, you're taking all the light bulbs out and making changes, it's okay.

When you start to feel better, you will shine that out to your neighbors and to your community. they're gonna ask you what are you doing differently like how did you know why are you smiling so much and this is just because you're tapping into your original biology and like I said I feel it for myself is that it keeps getting better and better the more we're on this search and on this journey and health and That's what it's important for my message and for me to have patients that I work with, that it's not just like you say, take a pill for every ill or every problem we have, that we're educating and we're getting people to experience health as we're designed to experience it.

And that's very, very important. And we're lost that in our modern medicine. I'm trying to help like you to bring that back to everybody, into our everyday medicine. That is the foundation of everyday medicine, right? I think it's just... The premise is living with intent and being intentional with your decision and through that you'll find purpose. A patient really quickly came yesterday and he was asking how can I make healthier choices for nutrition? But he's like, I'm a foodie and I love to eat super sick, super toxic.

How can I help me eat better? And I, my goal is to just provide education and guide the patient. Okay. It's, it's, we are not what we eat. We are what we digest, absorb, assimilate, and then eliminate. Like there's more to the puzzle. We're more gut bacteria than we are human. So goal is how I frame it is, is this food going to heal you or your hurt you? There's nothing in between to me. So is your decision healing you or is hurting you? And be intentional. No one's perfect. Pursue progress. My goal is 1% better every single day.

Over time, that compounds. It's like James Clear, Atomic Abyss. Little wins, make it very achievable, digestible, and that compounds. And that's the way, for me, is just reframe someone's paradigm to be intentional with their choices. And I love what you're putting together. I want to bring that to light very quickly here as we approach on time. you put together a retreat where people can reconnect, where you're connecting the dots with movement and sound and breath, and just back in tune with nature, right?

Correct, yeah. I have a retreat planned for next year, 2026 in May, and this is really about living and experiencing these principles in a healthy environment here in Costa Rica, near the ocean where nature is very vibrant and healing. When we get together as a community, as a group of people that with this intention that we want to experience our true health and our biology, then our body's going to remember that more when we, let's say, go back home and keep these practices in mind. At least we have this somatic feeling of how much these things have helped us that we can tap into as a resource.

My goal is a one week retreat where we practice these things, we talk about why these principles are healthy and you get to experience some of the things that we talk about in my book from light, from movement, sound, breath and community and purpose in a way that our bodies are designed to live and heal. And during that week, it's just about testing and experimenting with ourselves and our freedom to do whatever you want and join in or not joining on things and That's my intention is to get people to experience it instead of talking about it so much, feel it in your body, and then you decide what works for you.

You guys heard it here first. Like Luke, this has been a genuine pleasure. You are a wealth of ancient wisdom that is just overlooked in this day and age, unfortunately. I appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you so much, Dr. Daniel. I really love talking with you and your outlook and perspective on health. I think we have a lot in common and I hope to keep in connection and collaborate with you in the future. I totally will be knocking in your door very soon in Costa Rica. Come and visit Costa Rica. Everyone is welcome.

And I'm here. If anyone has questions, they can reach out to me. Also on my website, it's everyday-medicine.com. And I love just being able to connect to really good people and help answer questions. So I was going to ask, what can people follow you? Is the website the best to get in touch? Website is good. I also have an Instagram and social media. It's Dr. Michael Blaha. Uh, anywhere you can find that stuff. And my website is good. I try to get information and connect people that way. Um, and yeah, they can reach out.

Perhaps you and I will be running retreats together in the near future. So we, we, uh, share the same philosophy. I appreciate that. I appreciate your time today. Uh, last question I end every episode with, if you could have one superpower, what would it be? Oh, that's a good one. I think my superpower would be to have the, this is something I always wanted as a kid is to just fly or go anywhere instantly that I think of. Because personally, I love traveling. I love exploring the world and I have all these ideas like I want to know what it's like here.

I want to know what it's like there. So Michael, besides just like, you know, the obvious like healing touch, everybody can be healed. I don't think that's as powerful as the experience for me to just go somewhere instantaneously by thought. Uh, and that's just because of my own curiosity. I like, I want to know things. I want to learn things. I want to experience. My answer was identical. You were like, you were like a brother from another mother. I got you. Yeah. I appreciate it. Yeah. And that's why we're here.

We're connecting and we're making, you know, good, uh, vibes for everyone out there to just connect to this ancient and also new wisdom of our own healing potential. And that's our message. It sounds like we're. This has been absolutely awesome. I appreciate it. I encourage everyone listening to read the book, follow you, and perhaps we'll see you guys soon on a retreat. Thank you. That's right. Thank you so much. Be well. Thank you for tuning in to the TBD Fit podcast on Dr. Talks, where we unpack all things health and longevity.

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