Jack Kruse on How Light sculpts Your Microbiome & Implications for Gut Health and Mental Illness

Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Gut Health Gurus podcast. I'm Kriben Govender. I have a background in food science. My colleague next to me is all things psychology, with a background in psychology. Today, I have a very special guest. This man inspires me so much; he’s probably one of the guys that I listen to and follow closely on what he says on a daily basis because there are some bombs being dropped daily through his Facebook, his blog, and his Patreon. I’m very honored to introduce Dr. Jack Cruz. Jeff, welcome to the podcast.

Jack, what I like to do is typically set the scene for my audience, so the question I always ask is, "Who is Dr. Jack Cruz?" To the Cruz day job, he is a neurosurgeon, and his passion is based around studying quantum biology, getting to the foundations of truly how we work. Pretty much everything that you'll hear from me is really not my opinion; it’s based on light, water, and magnetism, and the equations that you've probably learned about—his little boy—that are the laws of nature. Specifically, the three laws of thermodynamics; you may even add in the

fourth law that was added in by another Nobel Prize winner later, and equals mc-squared by Einstein in the photoelectric effect. Therefore, I've taken this path as a neurosurgeon because I believe when people begin to understand how nature really works, they understand that the opinions I have are really based on this. If I'm wrong, I've got good company. I don't really explain where these disease epidemics are coming from—not only in my country but globally. My focus is not on the United States; my focus really is global in terms of where the disease processes are going, because

you'll see in different countries there are different issues that are developing, but they always follow back to defects in light, water, and magnetism. And what I wanted to do is start with what cast is, just to explore the moment. Because from my research on your background, Dr. Cruz, you did struggle with, I guess, being overweight, having some form of weight crisis in your life. Now, what was the moment that you had that kind of Eureka, Einstein moment that—wow, it’s not the diet paradigm that’s really impacting you, but there’s something else? Around 2004 or 2005, I

was giving a talk in Auckland on minimally invasive spine surgery, and I was in front of a bunch of orthopedic surgeons and neurosurgeons. I was presenting a paper about this instrument that I had designed, and I stood up and immediately tore my knee meniscus. I don’t know that they told me that that happened, and one thing led to another. One of the IATA helped to the podium; I just couldn’t believe standing up would cause this problem. But one of the ladies in the audience was the wife of one of the orthopedic surgeons, and she happened

to work for a big biotechnology company that you may have heard of, called Amgen. She said, “Jack, I think I can explain why this happens. Here, I’d like to send you a book and six papers.” Long story short, what she was trying to tell me was that the company she was working for was cooking the books, and I took it a completely different way. I read the book and the papers, and I’m like, “Is she trying to tell me that actually what’s in this book—that’s a fable—is actually really possible?” That is what lit me on

fire. That’s when I started to realize that food was not the dominant issue to my obesity at the time. I was 6 feet 2 inches and 360 pounds. I had never had any knee injuries before, even though I was a football player and baseball player in college. This opened my eyes to a completely different world—one that I was never taught about either in medical school or dental school because I used to be a dentist and an oral surgeon. It kind of blew me away, to be quite frank with you. After 18 months of learning about

this, I started to realize that most of the things I was taught in medical school were half-truths or absolute lies. I started to realize the most dominant thing in nature that we miss, especially in medicine, is actually how dominant light is and how complex light is. You know, people, when we talk about light, we think about the light around us. We don’t realize that what we’ve revolved around for 4.6 billion years is the light of the star in the sky. The problem is 99% of people in the world today no longer live under that light.

It turns out that most chronic disease paradigms almost always involve light at some level. It turned out my obesity, I realized, was tied to the new light at night and a lack of sunlight during the day. And it turned out a lot of non-native EMF, because of my job as a neurosurgeon, was detrimental; most people get hurt after the sun sets, and that’s when I had to stay up late at night operating on them. It turned out for probably almost 20 years of my life, throughout all my training, I had been creating a huge circadian

mismatch in my own life. That’s what drove the process; it was the dominant factor. When I realized that, it was kind of stunning. It was actually more than ironic to me because here I am, you know, the smart neurosurgeon. I should know a lot about the circadian mechanism, and to be quite frank with you, back then I didn’t know shit from shinola, you know—compared to where I am now. The reason it was cool for me is because, you know, there’s nothing like unlearning to relearn, and that was the big issue for me as a physician.

Because, you know, in neurosurgery, I felt like I had dominated in school the whole time I was growing up. To realize in that 18... Months that I really didn't know anything about my own problem made me realize, well, how does the public feel about their own diseases? Hmm. And it gave me a completely new perspective on how to approach this. So I had some really cool doctors that were in my hospital, and some of them read some of my initial work, and they were the impetus for me to put it on the internet and not

put it in a journal because they, like me, realized that the paradigm in power is not really interested in the truth; they're interested in furthering the paradigm's beliefs, so to speak. Mm-hmm. And so I took their advice, and that's how the process began. That was 15 years ago, and here we are now talking to you guys in Australia with me in New Orleans. Absolutely, it's a beautiful thing now. And I think the white issue is, with definitely, you know, like a good style of you. For me, it was pretty much depression and anxiety that started

my journey, and I'm really fascinated because I've been reading a few of your, I guess, your posts online, and you speak, on a few occasions, about, I think even recently, about the mind, you know, depression, anxiety, and its link to light. James, I think you’d be pretty fascinated with that, 100%. So how it really begins—the story begins if you look at this chronic disease epidemic with depression and suicide. Most of you guys know that in the United States right now, we've got a big-time depression, suicide, and opiate problem. What most people don't realize is that

this problem all links back to a chemical that's made in your eye and goes into your brain, and the chemical is called PONC. You can look it up; it’s spelled P-O-N-C. This chemical is made in the brain, and it basically breaks down to six different chemicals. One of the chemicals that's in there is a chemical named beta-endorphin, which you've probably heard of; it works on the mu receptor. The interesting thing is, when you realize that morning sunlight makes this chemical naturally, what does that really functionally mean? It means that nature has addicted us to sunlight.

And the thing is, when you actually have this idea, you begin to realize why all the ancient civilizations worshiped the sun—why the Egyptians had Ra, why the Aztecs had their gods, why the Incas had their gods. It begins to make sense. And then you realize—is this the reason why they built the Sphinx looking to the east with all four extremities to the ground? The answer is yes. See, they didn't know quantum physics, but it turned out they knew that the sun was a powerful stimulus for biology. And it turns out, you know, when you're a

neurosurgeon like me, our bias is to evidence-based medicine that we learned in medical school. And I realized, when I found out about PONC in detail, that our cognitive biases as a human species actually lean towards the sun. There are other chemicals that are made in here, but one of the big ones for depression is actually that we make two really big chemicals in our eyes initially that link to this story. So if you're not getting morning sunlight—and I mean morning sunlight from sunrise to about 10:00 a.m.—you're chronically deficient; you have an alteration in melatonin and

dopamine. And it turns out, depression is very much associated with dopamine. What people don’t understand about dopamine is that it’s created from the aromatic amino acids tyrosine and phenylalanine in humans. And the reason why I use the word aromatic is not to confuse the audience, but so the audience knows that the benzene ring is a photon trap. And it turns out it’s a photon trap for UV light. Because most people who come upon this information always think that melatonin is a nighttime hormone—most people do not realize that the benzene ring has to be programmed by

morning light in order to work. And it turns out it's even more interesting than that because it brings up the gut-brain axis. Why? Because serotonin is also made in the same fashion, as is melatonin, and that’s made from another aromatic amino acid called tryptophan. Tryptophan also makes cytochrome in the mitochondria. So when you begin to see that these aromatic amino acids are photon traps for this morning light, it turns out that melatonin has to first be programmed by morning light, but it doesn’t act in the brain or the gut until light is gone at night

for about four hours. So this is the reason why there's a brain-gut axis. The other big issue that I think people in your field, with the microbiome, need to know is that the largest store of serotonin in the body is in the gut. It turns out that that's the storage house for tryptophan that will eventually become melatonin. Now you know that my tribe is called Black Swan, and mitochondria XY is tied to this story. Well, it turns out Doug Wallace, who’s probably the lead researcher in the world on mitochondrial biology, found out about 25 years

ago that melatonin also controls both autophagy and apoptosis in mitochondria. So, in other words, it controls the stolen prokaryote that we have in our body that delivers energy. When you begin to realize this, you start to see how melatonin, dopamine, serotonin, and cytochrome—which is made out of NAD+ and NADH—all work together in this very unusual quantum dance where the brain and the gut have to work together in order for the physiology of the gut and the brain to allow a human to converse like we're doing right now. In other words, we’re not sick; we don’t

have problems. It turns out that blue light exposure, especially at night—and I have a name for that; I call it ALAN—it stands for artificial light at night. Mm-hmm. ALAN is deadly for both the gut and for the brain, and the reason for that is that blue light in sunlight is contained in the seven colors of the spectrum. The control arm for blue light happens to be red light. The secondary control arm happens to be UVA and UVB light, which is ultraviolet A and B, and those control arms are not present everywhere you are on the

planet. So, it means that this variation that you see in your world in the microbiome is tied to actually how the microbiome can be sculpted. Because one of the things we now know definitively—and we believed in the last five or six years—is that the microbiome is really affected by food, and we're starting to find out that that's not really true. It turns out it's really sculpted by the latitude and the light that you get. The sense on where that light might come from? It comes from your eye, it comes from your skin, it comes from

the gut surface itself, and that's what sculpts the microbiome. That sculpting that goes on in the gut is also sculpted in the brain to marry up with the story about palmitate in the eye, the story about dopamine, the story about, you know, beta-endorphins, and the story about the endocannabinoids that are made from palmitate—also, alpha MSH. It turns out alpha MSH controls your appetite. So here you begin to see the connection between this whole area. When you really understand the eye—especially if you're a gut person—you need to understand how the eye and the gut really link.

It turns out the central retina pathways, when you first get light in there, where do they end? They end in the leptin receptor. Here's the irony: where is leptin in the human body? It turns out it's in subcutaneous fat. So, you start to ask yourself, why in the hell would God, or nature, put the key hormone in our body in our sub-Q fat? And the hypothalamus. And it turns out here's the reason: because light on your skin and your eye is what activates or deactivates the whole process. So, if you do not get that stimulus

properly—like Jack didn't, being a neurosurgeon for 25 years—eventually it could lead to some collateral effects down the road. And it turned out the collateral effect for me was becoming a fat ass. Then, one of the things that I realized was that blue light exposure was the cause of the problem. When I put this story together—you know, back when you guys asked me earlier about the whole Laughton story—I knew back in 2005, 2006, and 2007 that there had to be another chromophore, that means a receptor somewhere in the skin, that was a blue light receptor. To

be honest, back then, I guessed that that receptor would be rhodopsin, and it turned out I was wrong. I figured out I was wrong right around 2014. That's when a paper came out that showed us that melanopsin, which we found in the eye in the late 90s and early 2000s, is also in the blood vessels of humans, specifically the arterioles of the skin. And that's when I started to realize, oh my, this is the other side of the leptin story. Well, you guys know, being microbiome experts, that when we eat, 40 to 60% of our

blood volume goes through the mesenteric plexus of our gut. That means that massive amounts of blood are delivered through those arteries. Those arteries also have melanopsin receptors in them. And here's the crazier part: the microbiome is made out of prokaryotes. You know that all bacteria are prokaryotes. Here's what you may not know: prokaryotes are known to release 5,000 times more light than eukaryotic cells. Now, remember, we're made out of eukaryotic cells. To release a ton more light, it turns out there's a physicist named Frits Pot who discovered about 20 to 25 years ago that every

single cell on the planet—whether it's animal or plant—releases a very interesting frequency of light, and it's called extreme low frequency UV light. To this day, nobody knows what the spectrum of that light is, but we know every single cell that's ever been tested releases this light. So, I started to realize immediately that the microbiome's main function is as a light mediator, and the way I like to think about it is I look at the microbiome as a projector in a movie theater, and the interstitial or the surface of the gut as the screen. It turns

out, but the Black Swan mitochondria is most interested not in the projector or the screen; all the information that's buried in the light is actually what we need to know about how the microbiome has worked. It turns out the light that is emitted from the different species of bacteria is absolutely critical in the quantum biology of the human gut. This is the reason why people in biology and gut health really don't truly understand it. You know better than most that we have found— we think certain floras are simplified when we eat certain diets. One of

my heroes in this, because I've been a salmon swimming upstream in the microbiome world—and you know that because I've been saying that light sculpts the microbiome for a really long time—I didn't have a lot of good data to back me up on this. But Jeff Leach, a microbiome researcher that you know, published in Science magazine last year. He found that when he gave the Hosta, who are equatorial people, basically fed them “shit on a shingle,” gave them antibiotics, American candy bars, Coca-Cola, Fanta—you name it, he gave them anything—when he checked our microbiome, nothing changed. Wow!

And when he published this paper, I had the biggest smile on my face because I knew that was right. And, you know, last year I went to Vermont and Jeff also talked at Vermont, and when he presented this paper from the stage, I told everybody there that this paper was the single most important paper that has come out in microbiome research, in my opinion. Why? Because it definitively showed that when you put people in nature under the power of the Sun, their microbiome doesn't change with diet. And this paradigm that you guys know exists in

your world, you must change. It's not changed yet, but it's coming, and there are so many papers now that are beginning to show that just migration alone changes, you know, the microbiome. Well, why would migration change it? Because the latitude changes; that means diurnal variation of the light changes. What people don't realize is that in the equatorial region, there is no diurnal change in light; it's the same 12 hours a day from sun up to sun down. As we move away from the equator, what happens? The day shortens, you know, and it lengthens in the

summer. But the key is the diurnal variation also changes. This has to be correlated with species changes in the gut, and once you begin to realize that these things are linked, that's how I think we're gonna get people to understand how the gut microbiome really is sculpted, utilizing light, water, and magnetism in ways that would probably blow their minds. And you know, I told you before we came on the podcast today, I released the blog called CPC number 42. Mm-hm. I was supposed to go to Vermont this year to talk about this topic. Mmm-hmm. Instead,

I'm going to Europe to go to Poland and to Germany, so I decided four months early that I would release what I was going to say in Vermont about the counterintuitive connection between the gut and the brain today on Patreon. So, some of the things that I just described to you guys—the little nasty details about actually how light, water, and magnetism do this sculpting—are actually contained in that blog. And when you see this, I think you guys, as microbiome researchers, are gonna look at this and go, "Oh my! You need to do a lot of

work!" And I'll be honest, one of the things I'd like to see change is I'd like to see people who do microbiome research take the microbiome out, put it in a photomultiplier, and then do the spectrum analysis on the light that's emitted. Because guess what? I think you're gonna understand why we have all the species that we do and why they vary. Because they're varying based on the light that's outside. And what most people don't understand is that UV light is toxic to most prokaryotes. It turns out that blue, green, and red light is what

most bacteria really like. And it turns out the bacteria that we stole, called the mitochondria, mm-hmm, 650 million years ago, actually is built to like UV light. That's what makes it different from every other bacteria on the planet—it's the only bacteria that I know of that can tolerate UV light to a great degree. And the reason for that is the cytochrome one, which goes back to the story that we started with, you know, is made out of a fluorophore protein. What does that mean? It's a protein that works at UV light, and most of you

have heard of it. It's called NAD+ or NADH; it's an electron acceptor that passes it to the second cytochrome, which is made out of a flavin by hydrogenase, and that's a blue-light detector. And it turns out that NAD is made out of niacin, which is a vitamin. D3—what does niacin come from? Tryptophan. What did we just say before about tryptophan? It's an aromatic amino acid that absorbs between 200 and 400 nanometer light. So, we now know that niacin in NAD absorbs 340 nanometer light. Why is that important for your work and the microbiome? I own

researchers' work: all carbohydrate electrons enter the mitochondria through cytochrome one. So, highly powered electrons made from the sun via photosynthesis—and remember, through Einstein's equation called the photoelectric effect—photons only interact with electrons that excite them. Well, what cytochrome one is really doing is taking those excited electrons and capturing the light in there as it falls back to the ground state, and that energy is being utilized in the cell. It turns out the signal from the environment is not only coming from the eye; it's coming from the skin. But for you guys, it's also coming from the

gut. Meaning that light show between the projector and the entire site is where the action is. You know, these things need to be yoked together, and when you begin to see the pieces and parts moving together, you begin to realize that what we're really doing in microbiome research right now is we're not even in the first inning. We're in like—there's the first batter's up and the count is three and two. And I know you guys are all seas, but it'd be like the beginning of a cricket game. Yeah, the thing is I want to make

sure that the audience understands that where we are now—I think people really think definitively that we know a lot more than we do. I'm gonna tell you, I believe with the gut and the microbiome, we know very little. Yes, and the reason why I personally believe the microbiome and the gut is the most counterintuitive quantum biologic tissue that's in the human body. And if you've read anything that I've written, that's a mouthful. What I've said about the brain and the eye already, I find the gut extremely interesting because some of the most interesting quantum biologic

processes begin there. And you know, there are many diseases. You know, especially the functional medicine guys, they're always out there telling people about autoimmunity and obesity—everything begins in the gut. Turns out that's not really true; it actually begins on the skin and in the eye, and that's what changes things in the gut. But the gut does sculpt the brain in ways that we're not yet realizing. It uses red blood cells, it uses changes, biophysical changes in the blood in both the portal and the mesenteric systems that affect the hydrogen bonding networks, as CSF actually affects

the blood-brain barrier and the cervical spinal cord barrier. That's why many, many diseases that we now don't have an answer for in medicine—when you see it through this perspective, you begin to realize why some of the problems exist. And it's the reason why people who do have depression do tend to have a... A lot of gut complaints, yeah, why they also have serious issues in their brain with other things. So, my perspective is based on these things that I shared with you here. You know, I know that was a loaded answer to the question, but

hopefully it gives the people an idea of kind of how I tackle this problem because it is, to me, very, very interesting. I'm very interested in how nature thinks and how nature does things. I'm not really interested in man's opinion of what they think is going on exactly. And if that's what I love about you, Jack, is you pull it as it is, and I have a huge amount of respect for someone that puts themselves, you know, in the limelight. Sometimes you can attract some, I guess, some naysayers, but I firmly believe in, you know,

the connection between lights and the microbiome for sure. Let's dig in a little bit deeper into, I guess, some of the metabolites that bacteria produce, like methane. I'll tell you why I think what we should do, because you guys both know that there's a lot of different things that the microbiome produces, but I think what we should talk about tied to methane, yes, is something that is so foundational to understanding how the microbiome really works that you can generalize it, and then you'll understand about beta-hydroxybutyrate, short-chain fatty acids, and things like that, because that's a

whole topic in and of itself. But methane is actually how bacteria handle hydrogen. In other words, it's the hydrogen store. So, what do I want to share with you guys that you may not know? Do you know that the human microbiome is designed to make about one liter of hydrogen a day for us to use? Well, and what does it work with? Well, it works with a lot of different things, but what's the number one thing? That's me! It turns out the amount of hydrogen made is quantized to the light that comes through the skin

and the eye. That's the number one thing. And it turns out that the amount of hydrogen actually links to sulfur-containing bacteria in the gut to make a chemical that I'm sure you guys have heard of called hydrogen sulfide, and that's both H2S. Many people don't realize is that H2S is a gaseous neurotransmitter. What does that mean? It's a gas that's a neurotransmitter, but it has direct effects on the mitochondria. And what are those effects? Those effects are linked to the action of nitric oxide, both in the gut and in the blood. And what does nitric

oxide and H2S functionally do? It inhibits electron chain transport; it slows it down. And it does this because it interacts with cytochrome 4, which is known as cytochrome C oxidase, or CCo for short, in mitochondria. *Cling, cling, cling!* Now, when you slow electron chain transport down, that has dramatic effects on the ATPase, which is cytochrome 5 missile turret. That means the spin rate current closes. So, here's the key: if you don't get any sun, do you know what spins the ATPase by itself with no electrons in it? The light that's behind me right now—red light!

Wow! In the video that you guys are doing, you can see that I'm talking to you inside, in my house. So right now, there’s sun outside here in New Orleans, but why do I have the red light in here? Forty to fifty percent of the glass is blocking the red light from the sun. So, what does Jack do? He adds it there because it turns out the ATPase has red light chromophores all around it that allow it to spin at a hundred percent efficiency rate. See, we have no engines by technology that run at a

quantum yield of a hundred percent, but it turns out the ATPase in humans moves hydrogen at a hundred percent efficient rate. So, when you begin to understand this, H2S made from the gut and nitric oxide made from the gut slow electron chain down—that's exactly what calorie restriction does. The difference is calorie restriction only works when you're in full-spectrum sunlight, and this is the big thing that's missing in that research. And the reason for that is UVA light makes nitric oxide, and I just told you that the microbiome is making the hydrogen with the sulfated bacteria

that's in your gut. These things are all quantized, and they're quantized in ways that most people don't understand. But what is the key factor for the microbiome in making hydrogen? It turns out your microbiome is germane’s critical mission important—so sulfated everything in your body. Well, what was that? What was that? Came ready? Here’s where we get into some really cool science: sulfation is humongously important because it turns out sulfur and phosphorus act as quantum dots in your blood. Now remember I told you before that when the eye gets hit with sunlight, a forty to sixty

percent increase goes through the ophthalmic artery. I told you when you eat, the same thing happens in your gut. It turns out when your skin is hit by sunlight, the exact same thing happens. What happens? The blood vessels are raised to the surface so that they can absorb light. What does hemoglobin absorb? 250 to 600 nanometer light! So red blood cells are ferryboats. Then, to work operationally, they have to be sulfated. What else do you know in your body that has to be sulfated? Most people never talk about cholesterol and vitamin D. You know that

vitamin D is made from cholesterol. There’s only one hydrogen difference and a little bond that’s not there, and 312 nanometer light, which is UVB light, does this. Well, once that is connected, it also has to be sulfated. Guess what sulfates it? Things that are going on in your gut. And the key is if you can't sulfate your cholesterol—and there’s something called cholesterol sulfate—that means you can't sulfate your vitamin D. If you can't sulfate your vitamin D, you know what happens? It doesn't do anything to calcium. Everybody believes that vitamin D is linked to calcium homeostasis

and the gut. It turns out that sulfated vitamin D and unsulfated vitamin D... Have different physiologic benefits, so this is a small way how this works. What else is sulfated? Every bit of your platelets in your blood that's floating in there is sulfated. What else? Your white blood cells. Your white blood cells are able to make sulfate directly from H2S made from your microbiome, with no enzymatic machinery needed, provided you can sulfate the blood from your gut or your skin. The microbiome is the backup system for your skin; when you don't have your skin in

the game, then it turns out your gut absolutely also needs to be in the game, because what people don't realize is that red light is the one part of sunlight that penetrates directly through your skin all the way to every part you got. It penetrates ten to thirty centimeters. So that means that every bit of red light from the sun, which is the dominant frequency in sunlight (for those of you who don't know, in terrestrial sunlight, 42% is infrared A light), is what mitochondria are interested in. Mmm. Every single mitochondrion in your gut is looking

for that. It turns out the microbiome is also interested in that red light. Now, blue light does penetrate us, but it only penetrates about 3 to 6 centimeters, so for the gut, it's usually not that big a deal. But where do we get the blue light information? We tend to get it from our red blood cells through our skin and our eyes. It also happens in the gut, but how does it happen in the gut? Here’s where the counterintuitive story comes. Well, when things get sulfated, there are two big things that go on in your

liver. You've probably heard about methylation and detoxification; those things are heavily dependent on sulfate in your body. For example, the accumulation of metals in your body—many of the functional medicine doctors out there are telling people when you eat things for your gut, like for example, the thing that drives me crazy, they tell people if you eat too much tuna, you’re gonna get mercury, which is total bullshit. But the real problem happens if your microbiome is off and your methionine cycle is off. Your methionine cycle needs sulfation to clear heavy metals. So you know what that

means? You don’t even need to eat a lot of things with methylmercury in them at all, because guess what? If the sulfation process is broken in your microbiome over your life, you will become a net collector and can't get rid of the heavy metals. Guess what else happens? If you're not sulfated, you actually develop the methylation defect. See, the dominant paradigm out there right now from the functional medicine guys is that methylation defects come from what? A problem with your SNPs that you get on a 23andMe test. Turns out it’s not true. And how do

we know that? I’m going to tell you. There’s another B vitamin in the gut that’s really important; it’s called riboflavin. Riboflavin is B2. Guess what? B2 is a cofactor in all these sulfation pathways that we’re talking about. Do you know what kind of chromophore riboflavin is? Remember I gave you a clue before: I said cytochrome and FADH2 is a flavin. All flavins are what? Blue light chromophores. Why? Now I'm going to give you some homology. If you look at a chloroplast, it has four nitrogens around magnesium; if you look at hemoglobin, it has four nitrogens

around iron. The difference between magnesium and iron is the amount of electrons it has on the periodic table. That means it can absorb more light. We’re more complex than plants; therefore, we have 14 more electrons. That’s why we use iron. Mmm-hmm. Riboflavin, when you look at it, also has a photon trap, but it has three benzene rings. But guess what it has that’s very similar to the chloroplast and hemoglobin? It’s got nitrogen in its rings. That’s the reason why it’s a blue light detector. And guess what? The microbiome likes to release lots of blue light.

Yes, what turns on this riboflavin context? To help methylation, detoxification, and also clearance of heavy metals for the methionine cycle. That process—so when that process in the microbiome is broken, this whole thing starts to fall apart. And what is the phenotype of patients or the public that’s going to listen to this podcast? Mmm-hmm. They will start to see people who live in a tech world that have blue light and don’t go in the sun. They’ll begin to start out in depression, they’ll get fatter, they’ll start accumulating metals, they’ll have methylation defects. Does that sound like

some of the dominant diseases that we have out there? Absolutely. It all starts from the surface changes, and that’s why one of the counterintuitive things that you’ve probably heard me say over time is that, with time, I believe it will be proven that what happens in our surfaces—meaning the skin, the eye, the gut—in the law, who’s going to determine the biochemistry that occurs below. And what I’m telling you is the biochemistry that’s going on in the gut is radically different depending on the incident light and EMF, because it has to do with the free radical

signal that’s made. And it turns out that you have to turn on riboflavin, and if riboflavin is not in your diet—why? Because blue light will destroy it. That’s one of the causes of leptin resistance. You know, then it turns out that your microbiome simplifies. That’s how Jack got fat, and I realized that this was a big issue. The problem? I never knew the link to melanopsin until about 2014; that’s when everything fell into place. And then in 2017, probably the key paper came out in December of 2017 that we found melanopsin is now in the

subcutaneous fat and arteries of the skin. And I was like, “Oh my goodness!” So now we know that in the mesenteric plexus of the gut, it’s also in the visceral fat; it’s also in all the arteries of the fat. So now the story is complete. Now we’ve got all the missing pieces. What our job is, hopefully doing podcasts like this—you know people who are into microbiome research and the microbiome itself, they begin to... Realize that this story is not just about species; it's about the light these species release, and it's about the EMF. When I

say EMF, I'm talking about solar versus non-native. Mm-hmm. It simplifies the gut. It turns out that blue light, by itself, without all its other frequencies, is the single biggest thing that simplifies together. And that's when we get the obesity flare that everybody talks about in the literature. They have not figured out yet what really sculpts the microbial makeup of the gut. The person who's given us the biggest clue is Jeff Leach. Mm-hmm. Jack, we're pretty much coming up to time. If you wouldn't mind, could you just explore a little bit further for a couple of

minutes now, just with microbiome in sculpting? That's the kind of train I thought you finished with. What would be your recommendations? It's a difficult question to ask. We're so new in terms of the science. We're at the first inning, really. But what are your recommendations for sculpting a microbiome that's going to be the most beneficial for our health? I'm going to give you something that'll surprise you. I think it's very simple. The first, number one thing I want you to do is create this face every single day for the rest of your life: you need

to face the east as the sun rises, whether it's cloudy or not, and see that sunrise. I want you to see it with your eyes, your skin, and your gut. I'd like your gut exposed. You know, you guys can do that; I can do that. But there's probably somebody listening to this in Edmonton, Canada, right now, going, "Jack, it's minus 25!" Yeah, but guess what? The stimulus doesn't have to be really long when you do it correctly. Here's the greatest thing about Einstein's photoelectric effect: the effect happens instantaneously. So the sicker you are, the longer

you must do it. The more healthy you are, you just have to be chronic in your ability. So I tell people 80% of your ability to get better is to do just that. It's not as hard as we all think. Now, where it gets tougher, if you're not a quantum clinician, you're not in quantification, and you don't have this perspective, I'm going to tell you just because we started talking about some of the reactions between, say, sulfation, hydrogen creation, and riboflavin. The thing I would tell you is you know that my book is called The

EPI Paleo Rx: A Seasonal Diet for Your Latitude and Location. If you add seafood and some organ meats, you have solved your problem, and that's all one needs to do. See, I get very controversial online because I tell people food doesn’t matter; food is like fifth on the list. You know that this creates a huge problem when I talk to people who are food gurus or nutritionists or guys like you who are big into the microbiome. But I look at you guys as a little bit more progressive because I've seen some of the things you've

written on social media, and I think you know that there's another side to this coin that we need to look at. And that's the side of the coin that Jack spends most of his time on because I find it fascinating. We're learning way more about how we really work going forward. So that's my take-home in terms of what someone needs to do: if you eat a seasonal diet for your location on the planet and you see the sun with your services every day, I believe eventually you can fix it. Now, the diseases you have may

take a lot longer than you want to know. Like, if you've got MS, SIBO, IBS, or say in your condition, depression—you need to do more than just that instantaneous time we mentioned before. Those are people I would say need 30, 40, 50 minutes from sunrise. In the beginning, 15 years ago, that's what I did. I spent, sometimes, 3, 4, 5 hours outside before I went to work from the time of the sunrise. I changed everything about my life. These days, I don't have to do that. Now, where I am now, 15 years later, I'm probably

30 to 40 pounds heavier than I was at my thinnest weight. But I would tell both of you, since you're microbiome guys, how often do you think it is someone can go from 360 pounds and maintain a hundred-pound weight loss for greater than 15 years and not do anything? I can tell you the answer from my gastroenterology friends: it never happens unless you have your gut cut during an operation. I'm telling you that it's possible when you really understand light, water, and magnetism. The key problem is, my day job— that you guys asked about earlier—puts

me at risk. Jack, for 15 years, tried to change his day job to get a stability of light in my life. And when Jack can't get a stability in his life, he puts a red light on behind him or he goes out. Like, after I finish with you guys, it's four o'clock in the afternoon here, and Jack will be outside with his shirt off in his Kenickie shorts. Told you that's what we need to consider doing. And I think if we can get people back to nature, eating a natural seasonal diet for food that grows

under the power of photosynthesis in that location, my friends, I think this is the kind of medicine we all can get behind. Just a quick question: that red light behind you, is that an incandescent bulb that's coated with LED light that's got infrared A, infrared B, and infrared Qi, but it also has the flicker effect limited? What's the brand, if you wouldn't mind me asking? Well, the brand is actually through my farm. I have Cruz Longevity Farm. I do not sell the lights until you see me as a patient, and they get taught exactly how

to do it based on their work up at the farm. Me, eventually we do think it'll be available, but the reason— and I'm glad you asked me this— is because I think publicly, 'cause you're the first guys I'm gonna tell this to: I believe the biggest mistake that people make is usually utilizing photobiomodulation or red light from the internet and not having an appropriate quantum context to use it. You need to know how to use it when you're trying to get better. Not everybody who's got SIBO, IBS, or Crohn's disease needs to use red light

all the same way. Everybody's process is different. Why? Because you have to understand how mitochondria and the microbiome are working inside of you to get this effect. And that's the reason why I'm a stickler about these details. I think in four or five years the lights will be available, but you and I— us three just talked about some of the quirkiness about how the gut really works— and I think you guys could probably appreciate that putting any red light on the market is equivalent to putting any drug in a pharmacy or putting any drug for

over-the-counter use. And you know that there are many over-the-counter drugs considered safe, but they still have effects. So my personal belief right now is that on the internet it's the Wild West when it comes to light, and most people don't understand light as well as I do. Therefore, I have felt— this is my own personal opinion— but I'm not comfortable telling anybody really how I want them to use light until I know more about their personal context. I respect that. Sometimes treating Y as a form of medicine is similar to like, you don't know. One

of the world's research experts in red light is a Russian scientist named Tina Carew. We spell her name K-U-R-Y, and you'll find her very interesting. This may be in your show notes; you can link this. But she said, “Is red light therapy drug therapy?” And the answer, when you read the paper, is yes. I want you to think about the power that people don't realize: the chemical bonds between carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen. Do you know where the energy of those bonds comes from? The Sun. That's what we don't realize, and these little quantum effects have

massive implications for the clinical diseases we treat and the phenotypes of our patients. Hopefully, when people listen to this podcast and they go out, maybe they'll understand why Jack is a stickler for details and why I'm diligent in what I do. Because I don't think— on social media, most people really understand how deep I try to go with the science. You do know that it's very difficult to teach people quantum physics in terms of how it links to biology. But I think podcasts like this one provide a decidedly different perspective than you're going to get

from anybody else that you interview. I am on the edge of what's published in the science— I'm not interested in yesterday's science; I'm interested in why we don't really understand the microbiome right now. I'm telling you guys my belief based on the state of my knowledge in 2019, that it ties to light, water, and magnetism. Until we get that right, I think we have a duty to tell everybody that we're trying to educate. This is the state of our knowledge. The Dunning-Kruger effect is massive in microbiome research, and we need to keep going forward, paying

attention to everything that's out there to see how these things affect things. I think if you do that, my opinion is that the gut-brain axis is going to be one of the most exciting places to be in the future of medicine. But I do give people a cautionary detail: I think allopathic gastroenterology, microbiome researchers, and the functional medicine paradigm are woefully inaccurate where they are right now. In some cases— especially in functional medicine— I believe that it's creating more problems than it solves. That will probably warm the cockles of many people who listen to this,

but it's a warning that I'm giving. I hope people begin to understand why I have the belief that I do; it's because of some of the science that I laid out to you guys. The more we talk about this going forward, I think the better we'll be, because I'm sure next year we'll talk about something different, or the year after that, because the data is being published now for us to read, decipher, and figure out how it fits with the things that we already know. I guarantee you there are going to be things that come

out in the next year that we learn about the microbiome that are going to blow our minds in terms of how it sculpts mitochondrial biology, how it changes my MOG, even how fasting affects the light released from the microbiome. Anytime you change the nutrient density to a bacteria, it has massive effects on the light that it releases. The mindset that I like people to really get is this: when it comes to the microbial community, I want you to remember the analogy we used an hour ago— the projector and the screen. The projector is the microbiome,

the screen is the intera site surface. I want you to pay attention to the light there, because all that information is really what we're all interested in. Absolutely, and I'm a firm believer that— following Dr. Cruz— light does have a substantial impact. I hope there are no microbiome researchers out there that really start to take heed. I was actually saying the same thing to a colleague a couple of weeks ago: it would be a really interesting study to see what types of frequencies of light different bacteria species actually produce. So let's hope that someone listens

to this and starts to pursue that. People are multipliers, but here's the interesting thing: just when you examine the bacteria say in a petri dish in... A photomultiplier changes the frequency compared to what it is in the small intestine. Remember, it's a totally different environment, so we need to be aware of that as well. But the one thing I guess I'll end with that you'll be interested in: when I talked to Jeff last year, I gave him the idea. I said, "Jeff, because you're the only microbiome researcher that I know that's studying humans in an

equatorial environment with no diurnal change, how about if you take the host that live in the equatorial zone and bring them to Austin, Texas, where you live?" I said, "I will be willing to bet you that their microbiome becomes more like the fat people in Texas." And he looked at me and said, "That's a great idea." Yes, from what I've heard, that's exactly what he's doing. I'll be very interested to see the outcomes of that study. That's cool. Well, Jack, we're going to wrap now. James, did you have any final thoughts? I was just amazed;

Jack's amazing. And what we typically like to finish with — I think you've covered this — is, if there was one thing that our audience could take away today, what would it be? I think that's very simple: I think they need to read to understand; they need to unlearn to relearn. So one of the books that I would tell everybody they need to get to understand this perspective is called "Light Sculpting Life." It's written by a gentleman named Roland Van Wyck. If you didn't know that every cell in your microbiome releases extreme low frequency UV

light, you must read this book. It takes you back to history, all the way back to the 1800s, showing where we are today and how this really works. When you understand the difference between prokaryotes and eukaryotes, I promise you, you'll have a new perspective on truly what's going on with nature's laws and those prokaryotes in your gut. That will be the first time you understand that taking a certain probiotic may actually be making you worse; it may be the reason you're not getting better. It may be the impetus for you to stop doing something that

you've been told by everybody on the internet or in the medical clinics. Oh no, you should take probiotics; you should do this; you should do that. You may say, "You know, let me take a couple of steps back here and try looking at the Sun every morning with my eyes, my skin, and my gut, and see what happens to your brain and your gut." You might be shocked. And here's the best news, guys: you will both know that what I just told you is free. That doesn't mean you need to buy some crazy probiotic that

has no clinical data, like Restore. We have a doctor here in Virginia that tries to sell this to everybody; it's just pure nonsense. But because he can give you a cogent story and a marketing spiel, people buy it. What is Jack saying? I'm not selling you a damn thing; I'm selling you on one cognitive bias: nature, okay? And when you begin to understand this, you start to go, "Well, you know, I've tried everything else; nothing's worked. How about I try this?" And I think you might be shocked. Jack, thank you so much for taking the

time to come onto the podcast. With the huge event like feta cheese appreciation, you have yourself a great day. I appreciate you guys inviting me. Thank you; my pleasure.