Seeing the sunrise tells mitochondria in adrenal glands to make pregnenolone. Having breakfast really close to sunrise signals that food is plentiful. Most importantly, seeing the UVA rise in the morning optimizes other pathways in the brain Carrie Bennett: "There's some key signaling that happens in that hypothalamus involving what I call like this sequential layering on of the light in the morning that optimizes not just leptin signaling in the brain, but also a lot of other pathways controlled by the hypothalamus that do support fertility and just overall health. "So first and foremost, I don't think people realize this, but when we stare at an artificial screen, that amount of blue light is pretty shocking to the brain. It sends a confusing circadian signal, unlike if we were just living outside, right? At sunrise […] when the sun reaches the horizon you see a balanced amount of red and infrared light and blue. And it's like this balanced amount of red and infrared and blue, it actually kicks off signaling in the hypothalamus to communicate to the mitochondria in the adrenal glands to make pregnenolone, which can then be converted into cortisol. So that's a key signal, right, because pregnenolone is the start of a steroid hormone pathway which involves all the sex hormones. "So step number one is we have to signal to the mitochondria that the day has started, and so then that pregnenolone production gets optimized. And when pregnenolone gets optimized, another thing happens. The mitochondria have to kind of take a snapshot based on if leptin was able to communicate in the brain last night, what at the night before when we slept. The mitochondria have to say, 'OK, how much of this pregnenolone do we need to divert to cortisol, which we want us at a circadian appropriate surge in the morning, but we don't want it to be too high, we don't want it to be too low. And then the rest of the pregnenolone can get ferried off into the other rest of the steroid pathway to balance things like the estrogen, progesterone, DHEA, testosterone.' So step number one is we got to really consistently kick that pathway off, and when we don't have the right circadian timing going on with that, that could be very chaotic to mitochondrial function in general, but especially hormone balance. "And then I always say that in order for the mitochondria to feel safe for them to say, 'OK yes, we are capable of conceiving and growing a baby,' would be they need to know the time of day, so we went outside and we just did that, right? We got them the circadian signal. "They also have to know that the food is plentiful. So they did that with leptin signaling the night before, and then they'll do that if we also have breakfast really close to sunrise, because that breakfast then will also signal, 'OK, food is available in Carrie's environment.' So we know the time of day, we can divvy up the steroid hormones appropriately, and yes, Carrie has enough food in her environment, she's not going through a period of food scarcity. And if we do those two things pretty consistently the body starts to get in this rhythm that all is copacetic. "And then you add on what I call UVA rise, which clinically, Max, I have found to be one of the most important times of the day in general to optimize light outside, because as soon as UV light appears in one's environment, it optimizes other pathways in the brain. […] "If we can optimize some light exposure outside in the morning it can do wonders for so many things including hormone balance and fertility." Carrie Bennett with @ 12:43–16:00 & 17:10–17:19 (posted 2023-05-28) https://youtu.be/-0vzTEVvglY&t=763

Weight struggles, irregular periods. Leptin signals how much energetic reserve you have. Snacking all day will hamper leptin signaling. Craving carbs every two to three hours. Cortisol elevation due to screens & artificial light at night disrupts circadian signaling of leptin Dr. Max Gulhane: "I see a lot of patients who are having weight struggles, that their weight isn't moving. They're perhaps having some irregular periods, and they're doing a lot right in terms of diet. So can you talk to us about this hormone leptin and how does that relate to hard to shift weight, and how does that relate to the light environment?" Carrie Bennett: "Sure, absolutely. I'll talk about leptin first. Leptin is a hormone that gets released from our fat cells and docks to a key part in our brain called our hypothalamus. I want people to think of the hypothalamus as like a major control hub. It's where you also have our suprachiasmatic nucleus which is our circadian clock in our brain, the main clock in our bodies that's telling time. The hypothalamus has connections to things like the thyroid, the gonads, the ovaries, to the adrenal glands. So signals that go into the hypothalamus are very, very key. "One of the things that leptin does when it signals into the hypothalamus is what's called energy homeostasis. Basically, it downloads, 'OK, Carrie has this much body fat on her body, and this much stored energy and reserve.' And from that snapshot in my brain, my brain gets to decide, 'Does Carrie have enough body fat to be fertile and sustain a pregnancy? […] Let's regulate Carrie's appetite based on that.' What oftentimes happen is we don't get some key, that leptin doesn't get the opportunity to dock in the hypothalamus appropriately, for two reasons that I see in clinical practice. "Number one, insulin competes for leptin for the same receptor site in the brain. So if insulin is elevated, which we see happening with people who kind of snack all day long even if it's clean snacking, if they're snacking all day long there's usually some competitive inhibition happening in the brain for leptin to dock. "And then the other time that leptin really docks and does a download is at night when we're sleeping. That can get disrupted by things like cortisol elevation at night due to us seeing screens and artificial light at night. That can get disrupted because we're not going to bed in time to get a really good circadian signaling of leptin happening. "And so if leptin can't do its job and download and say, 'This is how much energetic reserve Carrie has,' the main thing that's going to happen is it's just going to make the assumption that, 'Carrie is starving.' And so what is it going to do? It's going to basically prevent body fat from easily being metabolized, and it's going to signal that I'm hungry, and it's going to signal that I'm hungry for carbohydrates because that's a very easy fuel source for the body to break down and derive energy from. "So that's a typical client profile I see, someone who is weight loss resistant, has weight to lose, and also has these cravings for carbohydrates every two to three hours. And it just creates this effect of the body doesn't know how much energetic reserve it has to be able to liberate the weight and to say, 'Oh yeah, Carrie does have enough weight either to have a baby or actually to lose some of that body fat, because it's not beneficial for her to be carrying that much adipose tissue on her frame.'" Carrie Bennett with @ 08:19–11:41 (posted 2023-05-28) https://youtu.be/-0vzTEVvglY&t=499

Long-term plantar fasciitis inflammation issues may be due to circadian disruptions impacting the collagen synthesis to create a different type of collagen that's thicker but not as stretchy Peter Cowan: "Yeah, I do think it's really important to emphasize the circadian stuff because this is something that is completely mainstream now. If you go to PubMed and you look up circadian disruption, basically any issue, you're going to find dozens of papers. Specifically for this collagen synthesis one, though, there's some really good literature on it, and I dug through it. It's not actually that hard to understand. You don't have to know the quantum mechanics or the biophysics even. There's an enzyme called lysyl oxidase that's on a circadian timing mechanism, and then I mentioned MPP earlier […]" Dr. Max Gulhane: "Is that matrix metalloproteinase?" Peter Cowan: "Yeah, exactly. […] The fibroblasts are also on a circadian mechanism so you're getting the effects of basically downgrading of the mitochondrial function in those fibroblasts are very mitochondria dense. But then on the other side you're disrupting the timing, so it's kind of like a double whammy. Then you got the lysyl oxidase factor which is critical in giving that kind of cross-linking that is required for the collagen to become just like the sturdy, stretchy, rope-like, cable-like material. When it's not cross-linked, and the fibroblasts are producing incorrectly, you get a different type of collagen that's thicker but not as stretchy, so it's more prone to breaking when under high loads." Dr. Max Gulhane: "Yeah. So it's compromised. The body is making a tradeoff in the production of these factors to do the best under adverse conditions. And yeah, that sounds plausible to me." Peter Cowan: "I there was an ex-49ers who tweeted. He's like, just for what it's worth I never had plantar fasciitis in my life except for when I was in the 49ers. And plantar fasciitis, you probably can explain, there's like an acute one and a long-term one, there probably is a different technical term, but basically long-term plantar inflammation issues is characterized by a switch I think from collagen type three to type one, or whichever direction. And it's documented in the literature; it's not controversial at all." Peter Cowan with @ 52:50–55:29 (posted 2026-01-27) https://youtu.be/bqkn38pBwsU&t=3170

In plantar fasciitis the arch of the foot is usually very tender to palpation and seems quite clearly to be a manifestation of Tension Myositis Syndrome "The pain in _plantar fasciitis_ is located on the bottom of the foot along the length of the arch. Although they are often vague about cause, doctors may ascribe this pain to inflammation. The area is usually very tender to palpation and seems quite clearly to be a manifestation of TMS [Tension Myositis Syndrome]." John E. Sarno, M.D. (1991). _Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection_, Hachette Book Group, New York, NY, p.117

Dr. Jack Kruse: "I would also ban sunscreen and sunglasses the first day I came in because this is one of the biggest problems. People don't understand. When they hear this, they go, 'But Jack, you're decentralized. You said everything should be available.' Like, I'm okay with it being available; I just don't want you to buy it. Like, I want girls to put the sunglasses on the top of their head or in between their boobs. It looks great there in the pictures. Just don't put it on your eye. You know, if you want sunglasses, sell the [blue-blocking] glasses that you have on your face. That I'm OK with." Max DeMarco: "Yeah. How bad are sunglasses? How much do they disrupt your circadian rhythm and like this clock in the eye?" Dr. Jack Kruse: "I'll make it very simple. Sunglasses are an oncologist's best friend. It's a growth machine for oncology practice. How's that?" Max DeMarco: "So sunglasses slowly kill you?" Dr. Jack Kruse: "Well, sometimes not slowly at all. Sometimes pretty quick, especially if you took the jab." Dr. Jack Kruse with Max DeMarco @ 50:09–51:00 (posted 2025-05-07) https://youtu.be/pKEOaE3VTJA&t=3009

Circadian disruptions are likely to be the biggest contributor overall to the injuries seen across professional football Dr. Max Gulhane: "But if we take a step back and think a bit more about the environment that the players are in. Sure, we're implying or suggesting that being in this [49ers] facility and being exposed to this magnetic field is not ideal, but like what else is happening in the modern athletes' environment that could potentially be impacting healing?" Peter Cowan: "Yeah, I'm glad you asked that because I actually think that circadian disruption is a bigger factor overall. I think that the EMF from the substation is likely kind of like the straw that broke the camel's back for the 49ers, because you're seeing these soft tissue injuries across the league, across all professional sports. […] "But I would just encourage anyone to look at the third article of my series. It's non-controversial circadian mechanisms showing exactly how collagen synthesis and repair is based on timing mechanisms, based on our light exposure. And these football players, when they're not playing games, they're working out indoors under artificial light, and they're staying up watching film reels, analyzing plays when it's dark out. And then they're traveling across multiple time zones every week, practically every week. Then they're playing these games outside with this massive bright lights on them. So that's the circadian stuff. "You can actually see that a lot of players are now starting to use blue blockers, and I've heard that some teams even have like a wind down twilight protocol. I haven't seen actual documented evidence of it but I wouldn't be surprised. This stuff is not really that cutting edge anymore. It's becoming very mainstream. So I think that alone is enough to be causing these issues." Peter Cowan with @ 45:01–47:10 (posted 2026-01-27) https://youtu.be/bqkn38pBwsU&t=2701

I don't enjoy cold exposure. Why is that? People with more uncoupled haplotypes tend to benefit more from cold exposure & are more likely to enjoy it. People with more tightly-coupled haplotypes tend to benefit less from cold exposure & are less likely to enjoy it Archie: "I've been resistant to consistent full body sort of cold exposure. I haven't taken to the trend. […] I might sort of finish off lower half of the body with a cold shower occasionally. It does feel refreshing but […] I do my best to avoid that. […] What is the benefit of doing the equivalent of a cold plunge or finishing off with a proper cold shower?" Dr. Jack Kruse: "[…] It's a default reset. […] There's something in physics called the Curie point. It has to do with magnets. OK? When you drop temperature down magnets become more efficient. What else becomes more efficient in terms of electricity? Semiconductors work better in cold. So, if we took your phone and we put it on the hood of the Mercedes-Benz out in the front that's black, you get a temperature warning. We come in here and put it inside the freezer, it will work right away. "Well, I told you that we use semiconductive current in us. So, the benefit of you going in cold water, even if it's a short period of time or a longer period of time, you become more thermally efficient. In other words, you set your electronic state for the proteins in you and the water that surrounds them, because the water that surrounds you is also a semiconductor. In other words, you become much more likely to conduct a semiconductive current which means that you do better. So that's the main reason that you want to do it. "Now I will tell you in different people the effect is different. I'm going to tell you all mammals it's beneficial, but humans are a special case, and I'll explain to you how we found this out. If you have an uncoupled mitochondrial haplotype, which you're kind of close because you're originally from Turkey, Middle East. So, you're probably not as uncoupled as I am. My people are from the 59th latitude. So, I'm very uncoupled. So, when I go in cold water, I get a huge benefit. My mitochondria not only make more water, they release more red light, but they also make a ton of water. That light actually allows me to tan the insides of my body. So, I'm turning on the system that controls melanin inside of me. That's another benefit. "Now, people who are from equatorial Africa who have L0, 1, 2, and 3, these are predominantly people have dark skin. In country you're living in now, those are the bush people. OK? But in Africa, like Nairobi, one degree north, 8,000 ft up, these are the guys that beat everybody in the world in endurance sports. Why? Because they are extremely thermally efficient. But the interesting thing is they don't get the huge benefit out of the cold. How did we find that out? In the Korean War in the United States, when they put people up on the peninsula, you know that North Korea is pretty high latitude. It gets pretty cold. The US military found that black soldiers got frostbite faster than white soldiers, and they couldn't figure out the reason why. It's because they're not thermally able to handle because the amount of melanin that they have on their exteriors. […] "Now, what's the beautiful part of this? People that tend to be heavily melanated tend to be always either at altitude, where there's EMF, or where it's warm. Very rarely are they heavily melanated. There's exceptions; those exceptions are like the original Eskimo." Dr. Jack Kruse with Archie @ 42:08–45:29 & 46:36–46:55 (posted 2026-02-03) https://youtu.be/MIWmqyacaOo&t=2518

All vaccines are useless as they're based on faulty science. Kids have food allergies & peanut allergies now because we've been vaccinating like crazy this whole time. Anytime we inject a young child with anything, they become hypersensitive to that issue Max DeMarco: "Regarding vaccines in general, […] can you say all vaccines are bad, per se, or is there. . ." Dr. Jack Kruse: "I can, but nobody else wants to hear it. But I think they're all useless. I think they're based on faulty science, and that's the reason they have no controls. It's all by design. And I think centralized doctors, the biggest lie is not statins, it's not cholesterol, it's actually vaccines. I personally think they're all useless. And I didn't have that belief my whole life. I used to believe in the camp that vaccines were wonder drug like penicillin was from Alexander Fleming. But then over my career, I started to notice some very interesting things, and then I went back and looked at the papers. "Like for example, when Andy Wakefield got canceled by the British centralized doctors, I thought it was interesting what he was saying that the MMR vaccine had a lot of problems. So I decided to look into the MMR vaccine. […] The first thing I did is I went back and looked at the tables of when the MMR vaccine, and what the incidence of measles was, and when vaccination came in. The vaccination program came in after measles was already rare. So why the hell did we make a vaccine for a disease that wasn't a problem? "Same thing was true in polio. And the polio idea is what really opened my mind to this because I learned about that when I was a young resident. […] When I realized that there was a big farce behind polio, that not only was some of the people who we were taught in our history books had polio, I'll give you an example. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR, many people sold the idea that he had polio. I'm not convinced that he had polio anymore. I think he may have an autoimmune condition called Guillain-Barré syndrome, for a variety of different reasons. And do I think polio as it was sold through the March of Dimes, FDR, and the industrial military complex through Salk, did we really need a polio vaccine? No. I think the government needed this program, and big pharma needed the program. […] "And then if they look at some of the Nobel prizes that were given for the early vaccination idea, this was done by a French physician where we got the word anaphylaxis. What did actually he show? Anytime we inject a young child with anything, they become hypersensitive to this issue. That's actually where most of the side effects for vaccines come from. Why? because you're fine-tuning the immune system to react against this. "So when pediatricians ask me, 'Why do all these kids have food allergies and peanut allergies now?' It's because we've been vaccinating like crazy this whole time. It goes back to that original Nobel Prize that nobody wants to talk about. Why? Because how you get taught this in medical school is actually built on a curriculum that big pharma pays for and gives to the medical school for free. Where did that idea come from? Rockefeller and the Flexner report." Dr. Jack Kruse with Max DeMarco @ 51:01–53:13 & 54:13–55:04 (posted 2025-05-07) https://youtu.be/pKEOaE3VTJA&t=3061

Dr. Niels Ryberg Finsen won the Nobel Prize in 1901 for the use of UV light in treating tuberculosis pemphigus vulgaris. To this very day, when you have drug-resistant TB, the single best thing that still works is sunlight with UV light Dr. Jack Kruse: "People forget this. Finsen won the Nobel Prize in 1901 for the use of UV light in treating tuberculosis pemphigus vulgaris. This is a bad infectious disease. Do you know to this very day that when you have drug-resistant TB, the single best thing that still works is sunlight with UV light? Even today. But people when I talk to doctors, they don't even know that UV light was given a Nobel Prize before any drug was. It's shocking, you know, when I say this stuff to people because like a young man like you have grown up in a world where, 'Oh no, no, no, penicillin, this and that, these are the greatest things ever.' "And then I casually point out to people, well, everybody seems to know about this polio thing, but they don't know why Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin didn't get a Nobel Prize for that. Why? Because it harmed a lot of people because it was tainted with SV40. OK? And that's the interesting thing. "Everybody knows about Alexander Fleming and penicillin, but penicillin hardly works for anything at all. Why? Because we overuse it and abuse it because we don't understand the decentralized nature of man, and that is the key. And this is the reason why we have so many different things wrong because once the paradigm was stolen from us to centralize medications and centralize our ideas all the things that are found in nature were lost." Dr. Jack Kruse with Max DeMarco @ 58:58–01:00:23 (posted 2025-05-07) https://youtu.be/pKEOaE3VTJA&t=3538

Optimizing the three master hormones (leptin, cortisol & melatonin) affects downstream hormones like estrogen, progesterone & testosterone. Leptin resistance & insulin resistance. Leptin resistance & PCOS. Leptin resistance & infertility. Leptin resistance & hot flashes Sarah Kleiner: "Leptin resistance is a precursor to insulin resistance. It happens first, and that's where a lot of people come to me they're like, 'I've gone through the testing, I'm not insulin resistant, my blood glucose is not diabetic or even pre-diabetic yet, but I'm having all these symptoms.' And the literature is quite extensive around leptin at this point because like I said, it's been discovered in 1994, but there is a tie with leptin resistance and PCOS, leptin resistance and unexplained infertility, leptin resistance and hot flashes. A host of hormone imbalances, which people are usually having these hormone imbalances first, and everyone's like, 'Oh, it's estrogen. Oh, it's progesterone. Oh, it's testosterone.' I'm like, 'Yes, but you don't understand those are downstream hormones.' Right? "We've got leptin, cortisol, melatonin. These are up at the top, and then everything else is underneath, and thyroid as well. If we can optimize leptin, cortisol, melatonin, these three master hormones first, a lot of times these issues with these hormone imbalances, regardless of what it is, they work out. And I think that can be hard for people because they're in this mindset of, 'I have to do this extensive testing. I have to spend all this money to find out if this hormone is low and this hormone is high, or this hormone is you know,' and they get all tied up in these numbers. "When I like to just, it's a lot more simple, and it's a lot cheaper of a route to take to address things in this kind of top-down manner, because again like you said, leptin resistance is a precursor to insulin resistance. There's a ton of literature around insulin resistance as well, especially in regards to hormone imbalances. If these things are not optimized then supplementing exogenous hormones, trying to do specific strategies to raise specific hormones and lower other hormones, it's just kind of like you're chasing your tail, and it could be a big waste of time. "And I know that because that's what I was doing kind of on my fertility journey. It was like, 'Oh, your your DHEA is low, your testosterone is low, this is low, estrogen is a little bit high.' So it's like, 'Let's take this supplement to bring this up, and push this one down,' and like I said, I only would get so far. It would help a little bit, but then I still wasn't getting pregnant, and the weight wasn't coming off. It was just like this big cycle of spending money, and yeah, it was a big waste. Very frustrating." Sarah Kleiner with @ 20:08–22:58 (posted 2023-10-15) https://youtu.be/nQA2sAGABNE&t=1210