Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello everyone, welcome back to Hashimoto's Nutrition Rx. I'm your host, natalia Sanso, registered dietitian and Hashimoto's warrior, and today's episode is one you're going to want to listen all the way to the end, because if you've ever felt like you're doing everything right eating clean, taking the supplements, following all the protocols but you're still tired, inflamed, foggy or stuck in healing, this episode is going to open a whole new door for you. I'm joined by incredible Kerry Bennett, a quantum biology practitioner and expert in light, mitochondria and natural healing, and today we're talking about many overlooked healing tools for Hashimoto's symptoms. Here's what you will learn how sunlight yep, we're talking about sunlight directly affects your thyroid hormone and energy. What junk light is? I'm excited about this one.

Speaker 1: 1:00

Why your circadian rhythm is such an important part of your healing journey Simple, free things you can do every single day to restore your mitochondria and finally feel better. Keri also will share what an ideal light routine looks like for someone with Hashimoto's, from the moment you wake up to when you go to sleep, and how you can start using light as a powerful tool for healing without needing fancy gadgets or protocols. When you're dealing with fatigue, hormone issues, poor sleep, weight resistance or brain fog, grab your notebook, go for a walk in the sunlight and listen to this episode. So without further ado, keri, welcome.

Speaker 2: 1:47

Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to chat.

Speaker 1: 1:51

I told you, I love bringing new subjects to my community because I think your wealth of knowledge, I love what you do and you're truly making a difference in people's lives without relying on expensive supplements or protocols. So I'm personally excited for this conversation and I hope our listeners will take some notes or watch this live interview on YouTube and Facebook or podcast. Keri, before we get going, for those that don't know you, I want to give you an official introduction, okay, sure, sure so. Carrie Bennett holds a bachelor degree in biology and has master's in nutrition. She has certifications as personal trainer, massage therapist and breathing coach.

Speaker 1: 2:40

All of these degrees and certifications have given Keri a unique multidisciplinary lens on the human body and healing. Through her work as an online educator, clinician and faculty member of the Quantum Biology Collective, she teaches people how to harness the healing power of light, water and nature to optimize cellular energy and mitochondria function. Her mission is simple yet powerful to show others how to create a healing environment by applying quantum health principles, so that those who have spent years chasing answers, just like she once did, can finally experience true, lasting transformation. Keri, like I said, we're excited to have you here and I would love to start with your journey. How did you first get into this world of light, mitochondria and natural healing? What are the moments or experience that really shifted your perspective and led you down this path?

Speaker 2: 3:47

Yeah, I think, a lot of us who find a more alternative approach to health and healing. It was out of necessity Because approximately 13 years ago I had some debilitating symptoms. I was chronically fatigued, so I could take a nap, fall asleep and just be flat on my back any moment of the day, but I had insomnia at the same time, which meant that when I was actually supposed to sleep, I couldn't get deep, restorative sleep, and that was brutal. And then with that came horrible digestive issues, it came with brain fog, it came with joint pain and my body just felt like it was betraying me. And this was after I considered myself well-educated in various aspects of the human body right, the biological aspects of the human body, eastern medicine, view of the human body through massage, clinical nutrition and all of the things that I learned through the lens of nutritional protocols and supplemental protocols.

Speaker 2: 4:44

And I was trying my best to implement what I thought would be the thing that would help me move the needle enough so that I could start feeling better again.

Speaker 2: 4:53

And I spent thousands and thousands of dollars on functional testing and expensive supplements and literally taking dozens of supplements a day, and I thought to myself I don't really know if I'm feeling any better right now Like maybe I am and so I had this nagging feeling that I was missing something so foundational about human health that we just hadn't been taught.

Speaker 2: 5:18

And so I was up one night, and I don't know what caused me to find this, but I found a blog by Dr Jack Cruz talking about light and circadian rhythm. And I am such a curious person, right, and I heard the word circadian rhythm and light and I thought to myself okay, what does this have to do with my health? And I dove into the research. I dove into so many different books. It led me to understanding mitochondria, water and through a different lens. And as soon as I felt like I had grasped it enough to apply a couple of key strategies, simple strategies I felt better in three days, more so than I had in years of trying to sort my health out through the lens of food, exercise and supplements.

Speaker 1: 6:05

Thank you for sharing this story, and I love asking a personal question like this how did you get where you are? Because so many of us who specialize in this functional medicine world have our own. Like a wake up moment For me, it was when I realized that I could no longer rely on conventional nutrition advice to manage my Hashimoto's. It just didn't move the needle for me. So I imagine for you, light was that missing piece. So thank you for sharing that. So let's start with the bigger picture. How does light actually impact our health on a cellular level, and why is it so important, especially for someone with thyroid disorders?

Speaker 2: 6:47

Sure. So from the broad perspective, we have always been around a period of daylight and a period of darkness, and we're not alone. Any creatures who experienced a period of daylight followed by a period of darkness have developed what's called a circadian rhythm, or a timed rhythm upon which they want to do different tasks throughout the course of a day. And I think people understand this best when I talk about it through the lens of a plant, because plants have this beautiful intelligence built into them where their flowers will close at nighttime and their leaves will wilt at night because there's no sunlight available for them to capture. And it takes a lot of energy for a plant to keep its leaves rigid or its buds open and then also moving to chase the sun. That requires a lot of energy. And so the plant says I'm going to conserve a lot of energy at night when the sun's not available, so I'm going to just wilt. When the sun wakes up in the morning, the leaves come back to life, the buds open, and then the plant expends its energy following the sun and capturing sun's energy. That's called a circadian rhythm. That's a really intelligent thing to do, because otherwise that plant would just be wasting a ton of energy, trying to keep its leaves open or its buds open when there was no available energy that it could capture.

Speaker 2: 8:12

We have key tasks that we need to do all day long and all night long, and those tasks are things such as when do we produce hormones? When do certain organ systems need to be more active than others? What about the repair processes in the body? When do those turn on and activate, and what signals are needed for those to turn on and activate, and what signals are needed for those to turn on and activate? All of these things are called circadian rhythm, and in fact, every process in the body runs on a circadian rhythm. There's been a whole talk about genes and gene snips and gene variants. Every gene in our body has to know what time of day it is in order to know when to essentially express itself versus when not to, and it turns out that our ability to sense time of day is essential to coordinating all of the body's tasks, especially the thyroid gland, because the thyroid is really responsible for helping the organ systems to know when more energy is needed.

Speaker 2: 9:02

It's thyroid signaling that really initiates that, but that runs on a cellular circadian clock as well, and so the light.

Speaker 2: 9:11

To understand this circadian rhythm, we need to know that the light entering our eyes and how it changes throughout the day is what keeps time for us, and we can talk a little bit about junk light, I know, in the future, but suffice it to say that we are currently. When we're under artificial light, it is the wrong cue for time of day. Nature really picked this perfect cue for us, which was, if we've all seen sunlight through a rainbow or a prism, you see a portion of it as the blue color, and that blue portion of the light is light that we actually capture into our eyes to tell time of day. The backs of the eyes have these blue light sensors, and those blue light sensors connect to the clock in our brain called our suprachiasmatic nucleus, and that clock in the brain literally oscillates all day long, vibrates all day long to signal correct timing to every cell in my body, and without that adequate signaling, the processes can become chaotic or they can be skipped altogether.

Speaker 2: 10:15

The coolest part about this is that when we're talking about natural light coming from the sun and it doesn't have to be sunny, natalia, because oftentimes I'll have people say but it's cloudy all the time where I live and this happens regardless of whether you can physically see the sun or not.

Speaker 2: 10:30

But when the sun breaks the horizon at sunrise, that blue wavelength of light, that blue range, starts to become more intense and the amount and intensity of that blue light will increase until the sun reaches the high point in the sky and then will decrease until after sunset. There's no blue light left coming from our outside environment Campfire won't contain it either and so it was the perfect changing color from sunlight to be able to capture, to tell the change of time throughout the day, followed by a period of darkness where we could run our sleep programs, and then the day starts again and we just repeat this day in and day out. So the amount of blue light that my eyes are picking up is the signal of what time of day it is, and if it's coming from natural light, I'm within a circadian rhythm, but when it comes from artificial light, that's where things can go awry.

Speaker 1: 11:25

That's why there's a general recommendation to get off your phones as early in the evening as possible, because cell phones radiate that blue light and it constantly stimulates your eye, the cornea right, to produce more awake hormone, to produce more cortisol, and I'm sure we'll touch on cortisol and all that stuff. But so many of my clients are dealing with these deep mitochondrial dysfunctions and they always say they're doing everything right with the diet and supplements but they still feel exhausted. And I always remind them that Hashimoto's is not just a thyroid disease, right, it's a cellular energy problem. It's on a cellular level. If our cells aren't making energy effectively, if we're not getting that blue light signal the wake cycle, the sleep cycle this is going to be a game changer. So I'm glad we're talking about this. So you've said before that the light is more powerful than food or supplement in many cases. I love this statement. That's pretty bold. Can you unpack this for us, especially for those who feel like they've tried everything with little progress?

Speaker 2: 12:40

Absolutely. What I experience in clinical practice and now I've been blessed to work with thousands of people is that our eyes are designed to perceive this increasing amount of blue light as that sun bridges the horizon and gets higher and higher into the sky, and that's the signal of the official start of the day, like my body says, ok, the day is starting. When my brain knows that the day is starting, it produces a very healthy surge of cortisol. That cortisol gets a bad reputation, as I'm sure you realize, because it's not just the stress hormone, it actually is the hormonal signal of the start of the day, and we want that healthy cortisol surge. When I was in the worst of my energy crash, I had flatlined cortisol during the day and elevated cortisol at night the exact opposite of what you want to see.

Speaker 2: 13:27

But I see that in so many instances.

Speaker 2: 13:30

And so in order for my body to produce that cortisol in the first place, it needs to perceive that increasing blue light.

Speaker 2: 13:37

And when it does, that clock in my brain communicates to my adrenal glands and the mitochondria, specifically in my adrenal glands, start to make a hormone called pregnenolone, which is our master sex hormone, and that pregnenolone can literally become progesterone, estrogen, testosterone, dhea.

Speaker 2: 13:56

It really is important for overall hormone balance, but in the morning a big chunk of it is designed to become cortisol, another sex hormone which we don't consider it to be a sex hormone but it is and that healthy cortisol surge will happen.

Speaker 2: 14:09

And then the rest of the pregnenolone gets divvied up into the hormones of fertility, based on things like what time of the month it is in my cycle, signals of nourishment and safety, to say, yes, let's optimize Carrie's hormones of fertility, or let's suppress Carrie's hormones of fertility, or let's suppress Carrie's hormones of fertility. She needs more cortisol instead. And all of this is dependent on that morning increasing blue light from the sun in order for my brain to start to produce that, to activate that pathway in the first place. And so after three days of me activating that pathway, I didn't have my cortisol tested, but I went from like groggy all day to oh my gosh. I think this is what it actually feels like to be awake and alert for the first time in a very long time and, like I said, it was a three day thing where I noticed something massively different and life changing compared to years of diet and supplements and exercise.

Speaker 1: 15:05

So when? When is it the best time to get that blue light, the strongest light? When?

Speaker 2: 15:13

it's not when it's from what? Right, because we can get super strong blue light from a cell phone screen. But let's say this is what I was doing and this I don't recommend. This right, this was not. This is what I was doing when I was feeling my worst.

Speaker 2: 15:26

I was picking up my cell phone first thing in the morning and seeing what time it was and starting to scroll, and that cell phone emits the amount of blue light that comes from the sun in the middle of the afternoon. So all of a sudden I went from a period of supposedly I was sleeping, right On a good day I had a little bit of sleep, and I look at my cell phone and then boom it, my brain, that clock, my brain goes. I thought she was just sleeping, but apparently it's two o'clock in the afternoon, and so it really would not allow me to go through that gradual transition of oh, the light, the blue lights increasing. This is the start of the day, and instead it went into kind of like scramble, chaotic mode, and so that pathway just wasn't getting initiated, and so I would tell people if you're going to look at your cell phone, it actually has to be with orange tone, blue blockers on or a red tone screen to it, because otherwise that how many of us wake up and we just look at that wake up, and that in and of itself starts to create circadian rhythm dysfunction.

Speaker 2: 16:29

And so anytime we go outside, we get beautiful blue light. We get the correct amount of blue light for where we live, based on the time of year. So it might look way more powerful in the summer which it will and weaker in the winter, but it will still be the correct amount because it's changing. You need to spend 20 minutes or more outside. During that chunk of time, you're going to get the increasing blue light and with the increasing light, as the sun gets higher in the sky, you also get more brightness, which is another signal of alertness and that the day has started. And that combination is really transformative for people in order to be able to experience that healthy energy increase that we would get at the start of the day 100% and when I tell my clients when I am guilty of it.

Speaker 1: 17:19

Not every morning I walk outside. It takes me three, four hours before I see the real sunlight because I'm always so busy. But I know when you're feeling your worst. When you go outside, when you take your dog for a 10 minute walk, it changes everything. It makes you feel so well. So there's something behind it. So we need to get in the habit. So thank you for preaching this, thank you for reminding us about that. Now let's talk about this junk light. Can you explain what this is and how artificial light exposure might be silently sabotaging hormone health, thyroid function or even sleep? And I know you already touched on that some.

Speaker 2: 18:28

This is a huge piece because modern bulbs okay, so we're talking about LEDs, which are the type of lighting we get from light bulbs and from screens. They have a very dominant spike of blue. So, as I said before, like the amount of blue coming from this screen tells my brain, it's the middle of the afternoon. Here's what was happening with my insomnia, and I've seen this in countless other people and have we've reversed this with healthy light practices, and it was. I didn't get the correct light signaling in the morning, so obviously I didn't get that healthy cortisol surge and it was flatline all day.

Speaker 2: 19:03

And my body has another way to keep time. There's a chemical that builds up in my brain over the course of the day and it creates what's called a chemical drive to fall asleep. It's called adenosine, and so we're designed to, throughout the day, build up more and more adenosine. So at about the 16 hour mark of essentially being awake 14 to 16 hours we start to feel expressions of being tired, and so my brain was starting to feel. I was starting to feel that fatigue, that tiredness. But as soon as the sun set, I would be on my phone, I'd watch TV, I'd flip on all the lights in my house. And so what was happening then was my brain was saying, yeah, I think that the day should be winding down. But all of a sudden my eyes saw an excessive bright blue light and my brain said, oh, I don't think the day's winding down, that's too much blue light for Carrie to be winding down for sleep. It's still the middle of the afternoon. Surge her cortisol, give her a little bit more energy. She's got to stay awake because it's still the daytime, and so that's why I have that elevated cortisol in the evening, flatline cortisol during the day. When you elevate cortisol at night, cortisol is supposed to be low at night, and when you elevate it, melatonin tanks. So your actual hormone that helps you to fall asleep and run your repair programs when you are asleep gets suppressed.

Speaker 2: 20:25

And so these are my clients, and this was me who would get a second wind, where I was physically exhausted but wired, like my brain was wired and I couldn't turn it off. And it's because my body was like nope, don't go to sleep right now. This is not the time. And unfortunately, as that cortisol surges again, all of the sex hormones surge as well, because in order for that cortisol to be produced, we have to make pregnenolone again, and that pregnenolone, yes, it'll be cortisol, but it will likely also, because of the circadian connections to artificial light at night, it will likely become estrogen. Of the circadian connections to artificial light at night, it will likely become estrogen. And so I had symptoms of estrogen dominance. My cycle was completely off and we now see that there is a ton of research linking artificial light at night exposure and breast cancer, ovarian cancer, uterine cancer, these hormonally driven cancers, because of that excessive surge of sex hormones at night when we're not supposed to be surging those sex hormones. They're supposed to be low.

Speaker 2: 21:25

Now we can tie this in with thyroid, because all thyroid hormones also run on a circadian rhythm. It's interesting when they've tested circadian hormones, or the circadian rhythm of the various thyroid hormones, at first, when they tested them in people, they were like, oh, there's no rhythm to the release of thyroid hormones, but they didn't test them in people who were working on their circadian rhythm. So these are people that they tested with circadian rhythm dysfunction and their TSH or T3, their T4, it was all over the place. When they actually tested a controlled group who had strong circadian practices, when they actually tested a controlled group who had strong circadian practices. They found out, oh, when cortisol is low and melatonin is increasing, we have an increase in certain thyroid hormones right to help to fuel the repair cycles at night, and you name it.

Speaker 2: 22:12

It just it was so interesting that the rhythm was not picked up in people who didn't have intact circadian signaling. But when we do, we start to see the hormone release completely line up and regulate itself. Like I said, specifically TSH and free T3 and T4, which are obviously important things that people get tested all the time and they'll find them out of rhythm and they'll think, okay, what can I do? What adaptogen can I take? Or do I need selenium? Or what supplement can I take? When really it's about, are you getting the correct light signaling during the day and darkness signaling at night?

Speaker 1: 22:45

This one hits home for my community, I think, because I work with women who are always on screens all day long. They struggle with insomnia, poor T3 conversion and melasma. Yes, they have no idea that their light environment is inflaming their nervous system and dysregulating cortisol, which you've talked about already, and it's directly affecting thyroid hormone signaling, because we know from research that TSH has its own circadian rhythm. It's naturally rises with sun. So if your rhythm is off or you're constantly staying up late under the blue light, you're throwing off your hormone pulse and for Hashimoto's clients this shows up as poor sleep, early morning anxiety. So sometimes morning anxiety doesn't come just from coffee.

Speaker 1: 23:39

Some people think that they're sensitive to caffeine, but then if your TSH circadian rhythm is off, you will get this morning anxiety and, like you said, gary, this feeling of being wired but tired. So it all comes back to light and we know that TSH is the highest between 2 and 4 am. So if everything is shifted, then you have a high TSH at 8 am instead of between 2 and 4. And high TSH signals your thyroid gland to make more thyroid hormone. But it's already a little too late. It's already 8 am, 9 am. You're awake but you're dragging and you're drinking coffee and taking adaptogens and matcha and thinking why is nothing working? Why is it such an important part of this conversation? Now, in my community, I talk a lot about gut health, but we rarely talk about the mitochondria. Why are healthy mitochondria so essential, especially when we're dealing with fatigue, weight struggle or brain fog?

Speaker 2: 24:49

Mitochondria. So before in our conversation you so beautifully said that Hashimoto's isn't just a thyroid thing. Right, it's a full body, systemic issue. That, and that's because the body can't make adequate energy for the cells, adequate cellular energy. But what produces that cellular energy are the mitochondria. There's these little organelles, and we've literally I have thousands upon thousands of them in our cells, and more so more of them in the more embolically active tissue, like the brain, for example. And those mitochondria. They're designed to make water and ATP and those two things work together to give our cells all the energy that they need to run all their tasks. So my pancreas would have all the energy it needs to make digestive enzymes and insulin, my stomach lining would make mucus and I could produce stomach acid. You name it right. That is all dependent on cellular energy. Without adequate cellular energy, the cells have to pick and choose, and the cells, therefore the whole organ, has to pick and choose which tasks to run.

Speaker 2: 25:53

So a lot of us are running on a cell phone battery status that's drained to that critical point because our cells aren't making adequate energy. And so when a cell phone drains to a critical point, it's. I want to download that new update. Nope, you can't do it. I want to take, I want to live stream something Nope, you can't do it. I want to take a photo with a flash Nope, you can't do it. You're on like this critical battery saving mode.

Speaker 2: 26:18

And so if we're, if our cells are continuously on kind of like that conservation mode, not only do they struggle to perform just their normal daily tasks, but then if you need the added energy to heal, it requires even more energy. And so that's why people like that I was struggling. It's like I was in a depleted state all the time. My digestion was struggling off horribly, I was in a brain fog state, but I couldn't heal because, number one, I wasn't telling my brain when to sleep and, number two, I wasn't making that adequate energy via my mitochondria and mitochondria are very dependent on my brain's circadian rhythm. So when my brain knows what time of day it is and it's communicating that message to my entire body, my mitochondria are picking up on that message and they're saying oh okay, the morning has started. Let's send more energy, let's activate the pancreas more, so that the pancreas has the energetic capacity to make enzymes for digestion right.

Speaker 2: 27:15

And this also ties into traditional Chinese medicine as well, there's like an organ clock, if you will, and different organs are designed to be more active at different times of the day, and so all of this is dependent on the mitochondria being able to make that energy when the organs need them, and if they can't, you're not going to have adequate cellular vitality. And this is compounded by the fact that we now know that lighting that is dominant in blue, that does not contain red or infrared which is unfortunately the bulbs we have these days they're really dominant in the blue, but they don't contain that color spectrum of red and infrared that will impair mitochondrial energy production. And so we're in these environments these days, we're working, we're living, we're learning in environments that are really harmful to our mitochondria's ability to make energy. For us, my brain doesn't know the time of day, and ultimately it just results really, truly in just total chaos, fatigue and just cellular dysfunction.

Speaker 1: 28:15

I think this is one of the biggest missing pieces of thyroid care, because we're obsessed over the labs right, tsh, free, t3. But we forget that if the mitochondria are not functioning properly, the body cannot even respond to those hormones. I have seen clients with normal thyroid labs but severe fatigue. And once we focus on this mitochondria repair things like morning, sunlight, grounding and blood sugar regulation then their energy starts to shift. Keri, what are some practical, realistic, inexpensive things my listeners can do to improve their mitochondria health?

Speaker 2: 28:58

Sure, strategic light exposures are key, right, the mitochondria are very light driven organelles. They need that light signaling. So, blocking the artificial light before sunrise and after sunset, right, blocking that artificial light and then going outside. Like I said, 20 minutes in the morning, more. If you can do the best, you can periodically check in with 20 minutes in the morning, more. If you can do the best, you can periodically check in with the light throughout the day.

Speaker 2: 29:23

But one of the most underrated things besides the light entering the eyes and communicating time of day to the brain is direct contact light on the thyroid. So I have my clients sun their thyroid gland or sun any organs that feel like they are not functioning well. I see this time and time again with the digestive tract. Where people start they went from. Well, I'm never going to show my abdomen to the sun. I don't want anyone to see my belly too. I'm like, no, just get your belly as tan as you can this summer, just get that light on it and literally digestive symptoms just fall away, because you're giving those organs the light that the mitochondria need to make energy so that they can function their best.

Speaker 2: 30:07

And if people don't have access, let's say you're in a very gray, cloudy location or you experience the seasons of winter, right winter and fall. That's when the only thing that I typically quote unquote supplement people with is a red light therapy device so that they can get those wavelengths of light. It's the red and the infrared light that the mitochondria need to function their best and unfortunately, like I've said before, it's lacking in moderate indoor living Incandescent bulbs. We had it LEDs, we don't, and I've seen a huge shift because of it LEDs.

Speaker 1: 30:39

We don't, and I've seen a huge shift because of it. I always say healing starts what you do before breakfast and as a registered dietitian, I'm always all about nutrition, food as medicine, healing but what you do before sometimes not only maybe most important, but that's what really starts. The clock. Breakfast is not the most important meal of the day. The sunlight is because we need to feed ourselves, we need to feed our mitochondria, our eyes, opening up to the sun to start feeling better so we can feel good throughout the day. So I think it's just like turning on your battery or we always plug our phone in at night. The way we recharge is in the morning, right, it's like that energy shot. Now you already touched on what to do in the morning, what not to do at lunch or in the evening. Walk us through what would be the ideal light routine. Are you following?

Speaker 2: 31:38

Sure. So what I typically do is I will block the artificial light right. Nowadays, when we're recording this, we're at the height of summer, right, I should say we're almost to the summer solstice, right. So to the height of the longer days of the year for where I'm located, and so I typically wake up, and it's usually maybe even 20 minutes after sunrise, give or take, and so I don't have to block any artificial light. But if I do in the middle of winter, I will have my orange tone blue blockers, right. So I'll wear my orange tone blue blockers and then as soon as it's sunrise, around sunrise, I will go outside.

Speaker 2: 32:09

Now, mom of three, right? So I got busy life during the school year. I'm packing lunches, making sure uniforms are clean, everyone's got their after school gear for sports, you name it, and so during that window of time I find that around sunrise I can get outside for about three minutes, but that's all that's needed for my brain to be like the day has started. I'm sensing increasing blue, because the blue is shifting second by second.

Speaker 2: 32:35

I typically start my day off by earthing and grounding my feet when I can, when the weather is good for that, and I always have a practice of starting my day off by earthing and grounding my feet when I can, when the weather is good for that, and I always have a practice of starting my day with gratitude, a little bit of gratitude and prayer.

Speaker 2: 32:46

I feel like that really sets the stage for my nervous system to feel like it's in a very safe place. So I've started the day by telling my brain what time of day it is, I've expressed gratitude, and then I will come inside and have breakfast and what I consider to me to be just a very nourishing breakfast which we can go into if you want, but we don't have to, and so then I'll have my nourishing breakfast, take the kids to school, come home, check a couple of emails, prep a presentation or a lecture or something like that, and then I love to take a walk about an hour to an hour and a half after sunrise, where the sun is brighter higher up in the sky.

Speaker 2: 33:19

In my quantum biology language we call it UVA rise. It's when ultraviolet light first appears and that's when the sun's about 10 degrees above the horizon. So instead of being at the horizon at sunrise, it's crept up higher in the sky, and I will take a 20 to 40 minute walk as many days of the week as I can get that in. And then I come back and I'll have had plenty of hydration and I think hydration and minerals are key with all of this as well. And then that's when I start to I really do the chunk of my work. It's okay. For example, today I'm face-to-face with people from 11 AM until 6 PM, with a couple of tiny little breaks in between. Just before coming to record this, I was outside grounding my feet. It's sitting in a chair. I took this off. I have a tank top underneath. I've got a little shorts on. I was sunning myself to the best of my ability Roll the tank top up, get sunlight on my abdomen, and that was only 10 minutes, but it was insanely rejuvenating. It's brighter out there, it's warm, my brain is now correctly syncing with the time of day. So there's so much benefit from these little light break check-ins and I do try to get full body sunlight exposure for at least 15 minutes or more because I can tolerate I used to not be able to, but I can tolerate much more Again, as many days of the week as I can get, because of the connection between vitamin D and overall health of the body and that and we can't get it from a pill alone Supplementing vitamin D, you supplement one metabolite Through sunlight.

Speaker 2: 34:51

You make dozens of versions of vitamin D. I liken it to when, back in the day, natalia's clients would get their TSH tested and their physician would be like oh, this is what's happening, you're just TSH. Now we know that there's more complete thyroid panels. That can be done to tell a bigger picture. Vitamin D in that one form that gets tested Again, that's an incomplete picture. So I want my clients to be making vitamin D through their skin as much as possible, and you do that typically from the hours of 10 and two more like four o'clock or so in the summer months as well, and so I want to try to build that vitamin D pathway up as well. In the evening I will, like I said, block the artificial light and try to do a wind down routine an hour or so before bedtime that it does not involve screens but maybe like a real book. I love to read real books and, yeah, just rinse and repeat day in and day out.

Speaker 1: 35:42

Thank you for sharing your structure. Even I can learn a lot because I'm always in front of the computer. My whole practice is mostly virtually, even though I have a physical location, office here in Franklin Tennessee. But this is always in front of my face and even though I love my job, I can tell. The longer I spend in front of the screen, the worse I feel, the worse my sleep ends. So I love giving this structure to my clients. It's like giving them a meal plan to follow. Do you have this light routine somewhere on your website, or maybe as a freebie or something.

Speaker 2: 36:22

Sure it is. Yeah, you can go to kerrybwellnesscom slash start and you're going to get my circadian starter kit which takes you through all of the things that I just talked about when to get the correct light, when to block the artificial, various brands of blue blockers that I've vetted to make sure you're really protecting your eyes from that blue light at night. So, yeah, feel free to go snag that, it's a free circadian starter kit.

Speaker 1: 36:43

Love it and I will link that freebie under show notes, either podcasts or YouTube, whatever you guys will be watching later. Now, Keri, I know you mentioned red light therapy. You're a fan of it. What about infrared sauna? Is this good for us?

Speaker 2: 37:01

I absolutely think it's good for us.

Speaker 2: 37:03

This goes into the conversation where before, when you were talking about cellular energy, I alluded to the fact that the water is also part of our cellular energy, and this is a topic maybe for an entirely another podcast chat with you.

Speaker 2: 37:16

But the short answer of this is the water inside of our cells can actually structure itself to give our bodies actual energy to use, but in order to maintain the water in that structure that gives us energy, we need infrared light, and again, it wouldn't have been an issue if we were living outdoors, because sunlight, regardless of whether it's cloudy or not, is at least 50% of it is in that infrared spectrum. Campfire, indoor heating that we would have had back in the day, plenty of infrared, and even incandescent bulbs had tons of infrared, but nowadays we have no infrared coming from our bulbs and modern window glass is blocking a ton of it. That blocks about 40% of it, and so I find that using an infrared sauna to be another way to help to replenish the lack of infrared we have, and it literally helps to contribute to that energy water that we have inside of ourselves.

Speaker 1: 38:13

I myself love infrared sauna. I used to go to one of the local infrared spas and I loved it so much and it is a little time consuming so I decided to invest in. That happened two years ago. I bought my own pod. It's a single person pod where you laying just flat and, honestly, I fall asleep. The light feels so good and with Hashimoto's, most people are always cold. Our extremities are always cold. This is the only time of the day when I get warmed up through and it has the red lights illuminating on your face, or you can turn it to pink light and red light through the spectrum, depending on what you're looking for. What benefit for? Maybe clear skin? But I saw the biggest difference in my health and, honestly, I think the biggest difference was in my skin. My skin cleared up. I don't think we mentioned that, but do you have any insight about what light is good for our skin?

Speaker 2: 39:14

Yeah, these days what you're going to find. When you look up light and skin, you'll usually find these masks that will have some blue light to them, and blue light can actually kill some bacteria. But I don't go through what I call kill protocols with my clients. I want to give my skin, my gut, the places that harbor really important microbiome species. I want to give them the correct light. They need to be the best, most diverse versions of themselves, and when we can diversify our skin microbiome and we can diversify our gut microbiome, pathogenic microorganisms don't have the opportunity to create issues for us anymore, and red and infrared light specifically the stuff from the red light therapy that are in the red light therapy devices will help to diversify the microbiome of our skin, diversify the microbiome of our gut and then have the added benefit, for the skin at least, of stimulating the collagen production as well.

Speaker 2: 40:09

So when you stimulate the collagen, you create a healthier tissue. But the collagen isn't just about wrinkles or anti-wrinkles. Collagen holds water in our tissue as well, and then that just restores the water energy of our skin. Our skin cells can turn over more frequently. There's a whole lot at play when it comes to the interaction between red light therapy and skin health.

Speaker 1: 40:29

When I started using infrared bed, I started drinking more water because I learned that, oh, if you're dehydrated, you can get lightheaded or pass out, and I was always so scared of it. So I started drinking like another half a gallon of water more on the days where I was participating in infrared sauna, and I think that also played a role in my clearing my skin and giving me the glow. So it's never one thing. You can't just not do anything and just, oh, let me do infrared sauna once a day. No, if you don't increase your water intake, if you don't increase your sunlight in the morning, if you don't do any of those things and of course, we didn't even touch on nutrition, but that's another that. Maybe we'll schedule another podcast interview just for that. But it's definitely a comprehensive approach. Now, keri, you have a Heal your Thyroid mini course. Can you tell us what's inside and how can someone with Hashimoto's benefit by following it?

Speaker 2: 41:32

Yeah, sure, so Heal your Thyroid came out. That mini course came out of the necessity I found when I was working with clients who had a clustering of symptoms, usually debilitating fatigue and brain fog, the flatlined cortisol, the insomnia plus. Also, their thyroid markers were coming back abnormal, including their markers for their autoantibodies. And so I thought to myself, okay, I really need to harness this into one succinct it's a two-hour online, basically a webinar that I taught that you could purchase, where I lay out the connection between how essentially your thyroid is responsive to circadian light signaling, what we can do to get that light signaling and basically step-by-step what you can do for that light signaling and so basically step by step, what you can do for that.

Speaker 2: 42:20

I also talk about the connection between a hormone called leptin and thyroid health, which I think is another missing factor that people don't usually talk about.

Speaker 2: 42:28

But leptin signals to my body how much energy I have stored and if my body doesn't get that leptin signal, thyroid numbers will downregulate and I won't have the energy to heal any sort of thyroid damage or tissue damage in general in my body, because my body thinks I'm in a threatened survival state.

Speaker 2: 42:45

So I talk about leptin, and leptin has a circadian rhythm and regulation to it as well. I touch a little bit on minerals, I touch a little bit on the various toxins that we know can absolutely impact the thyroid and really, at the end, what I just give people are a couple of key practices for establishing a strong circadian rhythm, optimizing leptin. I touch on red light therapy, I touch on cold, so really just all the stuff that we talked about and how we can essentially view thyroid support through this, what we call quantum biology lens and optimize ultimately thyroid health. But the coolest thing I'm certain you've seen this, natalia is that we're not just addressing the thyroid right. This is a total body approach. So it's not like I'm targeting your thyroid with just a supplement. We're giving your whole entire body the correct light and dark signaling it needs to optimize its own energy production, but also repair at night as well, when we sleep.

Speaker 1: 43:37

That's why I have everybody from scientists to nurses to doctors to you have every degree in master in nutrition and bachelor in biology, and your personal trainer and massage therapist. I think just bringing all kinds of different people in this is how you find the answers to your questions. I don't think there is ever going to be a one person that will solve your problem. I'm sure I can help every client I'm with, but I find the resources. So somebody who can work full-time with me maybe will purchase your Heal, your Thyroid course, because you're talking about things that I don't specialize in it. I don't want to talk about it. I love to listen to you. I will link that course again in the show notes under podcast or YouTube videos. So hopefully and you know what I love about your course that yes, you have to purchase it because we value your time and your knowledge and everything, but you're not offering expensive protocols or supplements.

Speaker 1: 44:44

What's inside is just structural plan that anyone can follow and it's free to go outside. It's just sometimes it's overwhelming how many things we need to do and we freeze up because we don't know what to do. It's the same with work when we have a million questions from clients, I don't know which one to answer first, and you procrastinate, so we procrastinate with our health, so I think your mini course will be so helpful to so many people, so thank you so much for sharing it. Now, keri, if you want to walk away, but give one piece of advice to someone who's listening, what would that be?

Speaker 2: 45:27

Take a morning walk, and if you could take a morning walk in nature, it's going to be even better.

Speaker 2: 45:33

That's one of the most underrated things. That back when I was in my hardcore exercise, most underrated things that back when I was in my hardcore exercise, personal training, fitness instructor days, I just thought walking was lame. I was like, oh yeah, no one can get a benefit from walking. You got to do this bootcamp class or you got to do this heavyweight training every day of the week except one day of rest. And when I hit my low point and I completely crashed my energy, it was walking outside. And walking outside made all the difference in the world. It really started to restore my circadian rhythm, restore my energy levels, and now I view it as one of the most underrated things that we could do to optimize our health.

Speaker 1: 46:12

I feel the same. Before COVID, I used to work out. I never did Orange Theory, but I was like a hardcore one-hour day running and lifting and doing all kinds of things. I felt fine. But when COVID happened, all the gyms got closed and I was forced to go outside and do this lame walking. Like you said, I thought it was lame, it was a waste. Why would I walk when I can burn 10 times more calories working out? But not being able to go to the gym, it forced me to go outside and walk. I slowly fell in love with walking and now I don't want to go back to the gym. That's all I do. I still lift weights, but I walk.

Speaker 1: 46:56

I put on my favorite podcast, I listen to my own recordings, because we're so into this conversation and sometimes I miss important parts. And I'm still a patient, I still have Hashimoto's, so I want to hear those key pieces of information. So I put on my own podcast and go for a walk. So thank you so much, gary. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. We love your energy. So thank you so much for dedicating this hour to us. I would love to have you for another episode to talk about so many other topics, and nutrition and red light and how maybe we can treat thyroid and all of that. So again, your wealth of knowledge. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 47:40

Oh, thank you so much for having me, Natalia. I just so enjoyed this conversation.

Speaker 1: 47:45

Thank you and until next time. Bye everybody.