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Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.
Hello and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and I am back today with Dr. Courtney Hunt for another conversation about light, mitochondria, DNA, and why sunshine is the only way. Absolutely love the way that she teaches this topic. If you haven’t listened already, our first episode together about ketosis, fasting, and autophagy was also really, really good and has some important context that’s helpful for this conversation as well. But I love that we got to go deep in this podcast about how we evolved under the light of the sun and that we take this code, this energy and information from the sun. And she explains the biology of how light can actually help us reverse age, what types of light we need and how to know how much we need at different times and so much more. And this is something I’ve experienced on my health journey as well. As I worked on some of these factors that she explains at a deep level, I noticed that my skin tone changed, my sun tolerance changed. Even though I’m Irish Scottish, I never get sunburned anymore. And she’s able to explain in this episode some of the reasons why, as well as all of the reasons far beyond simply vitamin D that we need the sun. And Dr. Hunt is an OB-GYN by trade and now studies and is deeply involved with nutritional genetics, quantum biology, and so much more. But I have personally found her programs really, really helpful. And especially, I feel like it connected the dots and put the pieces together on some of the things that really helped with my autoimmune recovery and why they worked. So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I enjoyed recording it. I’ve looked forward to it for a long time, and I’m so excited to share it with you. So let’s join Dr. Courtney Hunt. Dr. Hunt, welcome back.
Courtney: Thank you. It’s nice to be here.
Katie: I will link to our first episode in the show notes because we talked all things ketosis and fasting and autophagy, which I think is important context for this conversation. So if you haven’t listened, go check that conversation out. In this one, I am so excited to go deep on the topic of what you say, light, mitochondria and DNA, because I feel like you are, it’s such an important voice in this topic, especially to a population that has been told for years to avoid the sun, to wear sunscreen all the time. We stay indoors almost all of our time these days. And you explained so well how this is sending all kinds of mixed signals. Our human biology was not designed for the way that we’re interacting with our environment now. I will also put a link in the show notes to your book, which explains a lot of the concepts that we’ll talk about in this conversation as well. But can you start us broad with that phrase that you say so often of light, mitochondria, and DNA being the only way and why that’s the case?
Courtney: We evolved from bacteria and mitochondria on this planet to take code, which is just energy from the sun. Summer and winter. Strong sun, weak sun, lots of UV, not so much UV. And day and night. So it’s a symphony. Like Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do to tell us how to make energy. So light is sunlight. Mitochondria are batteries inside of you. The powerhouse of the cell is what most people have learned, to make ATP energy. To tell our DNA if it’s time to regrow us or put us into a resting state and clean. It’s that simple. And when you provide yourself with that understanding, I’m supposed to obey the laws of the sun. Is it winter? Is it summer? Is it day? Is it night? Your mitochondrial energy production goes up. When you provide yourself with the right food, you’re either eating food or recycling it. Those are your only two choices. You don’t have anything else. So when you provide yourself with the right food based on what’s going on with the sun or supplements if you choose to take supplements, I hesitate to say you can reverse age yourself. But you can reverse age yourself.
And the upsetting thing to me is that the gurus are looking for drugs to reverse age us when it is scientifically coded in each and every one of us. The Yamanaka factors, the stem cell factors are coded in us. NAD is coded in us. Healing our eyes. I had a conversation with someone this morning and he was crying. And I had been begging him, take off your contacts, take off your glasses. Please do what I’m asking you to do in the sunrise. It is red light therapy. He hasn’t been able to see without glasses since childhood, and he had given himself a post at the end of the street to see if he could see it, and this morning he could see it. Since childhood, he’s needed glasses. And this morning, I just happened to reach out in a moment that he could see it.
So the gurus are telling us that they’re, we talked in the last episode about the ICD-10 code. They are going to create an ICD-10 code for aging. That’s what they’re trying to do. To sell us things that are mitochondrial stimulants, so to speak, and that are stem cell stimulants when they are just reverse engineering those things from things that we are programmed to do. And there’s restrictions with a medical license in the United States about how I can present this stuff. I’m not supposed to use the word heal. I’m not supposed to use the word reverse age. But when you listen to what these online gurus are saying, and I’m talking to people at the top of your podcast list. They are saying we are looking for the longevity escape velocity of the human. Now, for those of you who don’t know physics, longevity escape velocity means gravity. Maximum gravity is found in the center of a black hole. Light cannot escape the center of a black hole. Well, it comes out as Hawking radiation, but that’s what they’re looking for. That’s a zygote. If you read my book and you really understand what I’m saying, that’s a zygote.
So these people, mostly men, some women, are not going to stop until they find the maximum longevity escape velocity. They are laying it out there that that’s what they’re looking for. And humanity doesn’t even understand what they’re talking about. What they’re talking about is selling, making drugs or supplements or whatever to reverse age you when that is programmed in you as a child, as an infant, as a fetus, as an embryo, as a zygote. Your maximum light escaping place is when the sperm and egg merge. That’s the light that they’re talking about, whether they know it or not.
Katie: Yeah, you are the only one I’ve ever heard be able to explain this and to connect all those dots. And so if you guys haven’t read Your Spark is Light, I’ll make sure you can link to where to download it on your website. But I feel like this is so important because, like I said, we’ve been told for decades to avoid the sun. The sun is harmful. That kind of really, if anything, it’s good for vitamin D, which we can just supplement. And I think dismantling that narrative is so important because there’s so much more beyond just UV when we’re talking about the sun. And you explain all of that, how it’s interacting. It’s that symphony of light that’s interacting with our DNA. And you walk the walk because I see you every morning in the sunrise, at sunset. I think you say sunrise, sunshine, sunset, repeat. But you briefly mentioned, and I would love for you to elaborate on this, how the sunrise is red light. Many people have paid thousands of dollars for fancy red light panels. And you explain it’s for free for all of us every day when the sun rises. But can you elaborate on that a little bit? Because I don’t know if many people realize those same wavelengths you’re paying thousands of dollars for, they exist in nature every single day.
Courtney: Right. So you can buy a light that’s basically pulsing red light, and those are the less expensive ones. Or you can buy one that is pure red light. Or you can get it from the nuclear fusion in the sky. So when the sun emits light, it is white light from radio waves to cosmic rays. It is a huge range of light. We are specifically attuned to the seven colors of the rainbow because of our mitochondria and the way they evolved on this planet. So our eye and our body, what we use is 0.0035% of all the light of the sun. And we evolved on this planet with an atmosphere to protect us.
And the angle of the sun as it comes through the atmosphere allows longer wavelength light, red light, just like the red light you would buy for red light therapy to come through. And as the sun ascends on the horizon, shorter wavelength means more energy. More energy comes through. When it hits 30 degrees, ionizing radiation or ultraviolet light comes through, A and B. Sometimes a little bit of C. C is very damaging. It stays in a window depending on where you are on the earth, and then that window closes and it’s a decrescendo of light. So what light do you need? Sunrise. Red light comes out to play and stays all day. Red light is the longest wavelength of light. It comes through the atmosphere. Your mitochondria are specifically tuned into red light.
And when you get enough red light, you burn through sugar faster. It’s easier to get into ketosis. As the ultraviolet comes through, the ultraviolet is a symphony. It is music. It is talking to you, telling you make dopamine. Make endorphins. Make enkephalins. Make melanin so you have a sunshade. It’s talking to you. And then the UV stays, and then it’s a decrescendo back down. And so because we don’t know that and we eat so many carbs, carbs are free radicals. Carbs are damaging. Carbs, not that you never need them, but when they’re around all the time, you’re making free radicals. You’re causing damage. So when you understand that crescendo and decrescendo of light and the red light is there all day long, you can go outside and get it for free.
Katie: Yeah. And I think a lot of people avoid the sun out of fear of aging and you posted pictures, you seemingly are reverse aging and you do not avoid the sun.
Courtney: No, I’m out of time. I know my window. I have Dminder in my brain. So Dminder is an app you can use when you’re first learning this, but I don’t even need, I show it to teach it to people, but it’s in my brain. I know how long I can stay out in March. I know how long I can stay out in August. I know how long I can stay out. My face looks so different. Siri doesn’t recognize my old pictures. It shows me as two different people. It doesn’t recognize even from age like 39 to 42. It doesn’t recognize me as the same person. My skin looks different. I’ve had a bone density scan. My bone density is better. My facial structure has changed. I went and had filler when I was younger. I went and had the filler removed. It’s, I just look different.
Katie: Yeah.
Courtney: Not dug out, but dissolved.
Katie: I feel like I’ve had firsthand experience with this that I didn’t understand until I started listening to you, because when I started making these changes, I’m, by ancestry, Irish Scottish. And growing up eating processed food all the time, I burned if I was in the sun for five minutes. And now I live at the beach. I do not burn unless I’m in an inflammatory state. So we can talk a little bit about that perhaps. But I have noticed such drastic changes, even in my skin tone and how I interact with the sun. And I noticed to your point about dopamine, I feel giddy, joyful when I get the right amount of sunlight. And yet we have..
Courtney: And your libido goes up and you want to have intercourse and your dreams are amazing. And guess what happens in your dreams? Your cognition gets better.
Katie: Yeah, and I think I would love for you to explain how you walk people through knowing how much light to get. Because I feel like we’ve heard a lot of experts talk about morning sunlight, and I’m glad that’s getting airtime. I’m glad more people are at least getting morning sunlight. But it’s so much more beyond that. And you explained this well, too. It’s not that we don’t want to sunburn. Sunburn is harmful. We don’t want to damage the skin through sunburn. But we do need these wavelengths of light. So how can we learn, based on our bodies, how much light and when we need to get that light exposure?
Courtney: So the easiest way for a working person is to realize that it’s a crescendo and I do my arm like this. So I tell them, go out at sunrise, stay as long as you can. If all you can do is open the door, that’s fine. But open the door and take your glass. If you want to fix your eyes, and yes, you can fix your eyes. I hate pussyfooting around the fact that I can’t say, yes, you can heal things. But yes, you can help your eyes. Yes. You open the door, you look east, don’t stare at the sun. Now, some of you will hear me say otherwise, but that’s advanced.
You start going for a walk. Start going for a longer walk. If you have kids, go back in and bring your kids out with you. If you can go to the school early and step outside of the school, do that. If you’re already at work, ask your boss, hey, I feel so much better when I get the sunrise in my eyes. I know I’ve been here since five. Can I just open the door? Go back out an hour later. Go back out an hour later. Go back out an hour later. Even one or two minutes. But you have to start with the sunrise. You have to get used to the red light therapy before you can get used to the blue light therapy. Before you can get to the ionizing radiation therapy. You have to start early in the morning, building your time.
And you have to be committed. It’s not something that you can just do one day a week for two minutes. And if it’s the weekend, stay out longer. Take your kids and play outside. Fold your laundry. When I was healing my Hashimoto’s, I literally would study outside, writing my book and fold my laundry and make the kids go outside and swim. Like I spent all day long outside. I bought a Jeep. I have the roof off in Phoenix 24-7. Even if it’s 120 degrees in the summer, I drive around with that roof off of my Jeep. I don’t wear, sometimes you’ll see me wear sunglasses because I like the way they look. But for the most part, I don’t wear sunglasses.
You just gradually increase your exposure in the morning and you make a commitment, even if it means that someone has to call you and tell you to do it, or you have to set a timer on your phone. And then you make a commitment that you’re going to go back out at sunset. And the second that sun sets, you’re not going to have bright lights on in your house. Just turn them off. Use candles. Use salt lamps. Don’t use the overhead lights. All those different things so that you get sunrise, sunshine, sunset. And I got to find a way to get darkness because you have to obey the darkness in there, repeat.
Katie: Yeah, I think we underestimate sometimes the simple things like simply light exposure at the right times and how profoundly that can impact. For me, I noticed hormone changes. My cortisol levels improved. Everything changed when I started lining up my life with the light cycles. And you can’t get that from vitamin D supplement. That’s where I feel like the story falls short.
Courtney: So another thing we talked, if you’re in the group now, we’re talking about adrenal fatigue. And I had to teach all of proopiomelanocortin to explain adrenal fatigue. And then it’s really based on cues from the sun. And when you understand the sun and what the sun is doing with your glucose metabolism through cortisol and ACTH, then you realize adrenal fatigue is a lie. It’s not real. It’s not real.
Your mitochondria are determining if you convert cholesterol to pregnenolone and your pregnenolone is driving cortisol or it’s driving your sex hormone production. That’s the evolution of consciousness. Again, that I said earlier, you’re either having sex and making babies, meaning your testosterone and your hormones are working or you’re stressed. But the instructions from that are coming through your eye and through your skin from the sun. Religions told you it’s from light. Because it is. So again, whether you take the religious aspect of this, God is light. Or you take the scientific aspect, there’s electro, and I’m not saying God is a sun. But electromagnetic radiation in the sky is driving your hormones. Either way, it’s the same thing. It’s just that the religious books call it Jasper and Crimson, the colors because they didn’t, the people of the day didn’t understand waves of light, and only the smartest people were allowed the information of quantum field theory. The women weren’t, children weren’t, and the poor people weren’t. But now if you study, everybody on these things has access to that information. All you have to do is study. All you have to do is study and you can have access to what 700 nanometer wavelength light and why was it called crimson and scarlet? You can have access to that yourself.
Katie: I would love to talk briefly about potential the problem with sunscreen, sunglasses. I feel like a lot of people haven’t yet understood why sunglasses can be problematic. And I’ve talked about this a little bit of that you’re missing light cues that are telling your body to do things like make melanin and process that light. But you recommend not wearing glasses or contacts, especially for morning sunlight and not having sunglasses on. Can you explain why so people can understand?
Courtney: Yeah, but you know where I’m going to want to go with the conversation and I’m trying to hold back. Okay, so we have data in science. If you go to PubMed right now, you can look at red light therapy, morning red light therapy to heal vision. Morning red light therapy with a laser that looks like my Ultima to heal vision. But only in the morning. Why? Because red light comes through in the morning and there’s no ultraviolet that can harm you. Our ultraviolet light can harm you. If you don’t understand what you’re doing, you’ll burn. And yes, you may get skin cancer.
But red light therapy in the morning, when you understand that you should be hunting and pushing yourself to make beta-hydroxybutyrate that lowers inflammation and doing high-intensity integral exercise, which is hunting, chasing a beast to kill it for your family, you release stem cells. And if you’re hunting like I do on my mountain, I’m looking rock to rock to rock to rock to up to down to everywhere. My eyes are exercising. If I wear contacts, it’s like going to the gym with Arnold Schwarzenegger. If I wear glasses, it’s like going to the gym with a bodybuilder behind me. I’m not exercising my eyes. The glasses are supporting my eye muscles. You have muscles. You have muscles around your eyes. You have muscles in your eyes. So if you’re out there trying to hunt, looking far, looking close, and you’ve got glasses or contacts on, you’re not exercising your eyes. You’re taking Arnold to the gym with you, right? So you’re not going to get that benefit. Then if you’re wearing glasses and contacts or even sitting inside of a I keep looking out at the street because I have a tinted window there. You’re not getting the full exposure of light. You’re not getting the cues that are telling you, hey, there’s UV light out. Make endorphins. Make enkephalins. Make pain medicine. You have a pharmacy in your brain. And that light is giving you cues to make those chemicals so that you’re happy. So that you’re calm. When you understand that part of the time needs to be hunting and fasting.
Katie: And you mentioned UV can be harmful, but also we know now that we need all of the symphony of light signaling to our body in the right way for health. So can you give us the distinctions of how to avoid the harmful aspects of UV, but also still make sure we’re getting enough interaction with natural light?
Courtney: Okay, so that is a very complex topic that will be hard to shrink into a few minutes, but, number one, we know that beta-hydroxybutyrate turns off inflammation. So if you get a sunburn, that’s ionizing radiation. It basically means that it’s a laser beam of light that matches the energy of the electrons in things like your DNA and can eject them and break your DNA. And you can get DNA mutations. So ionizing radiation causes DNA damage, yes.
You have mechanisms inside of you to clean up that damage. They’re called a DNA repair response or a DNA damage response. It’s triggered by autophagy and apoptosis, which is ketosis and fasting. So if you get a sunburn, there’s actually a United States government patent to use beta-hydroxybutyrate, what you make when you’re in ketosis, to prevent the effects of ionizing radiation. UVA and UVB light are ionizing radiation. So number one, don’t stay out long enough to get a sunburn. But number two, if you do, you have to understand that if you make beta-hydroxybutyric acid, you are going to improve your response to clean up those DNA breaks. Lessening your chance of melanoma or basal cell cancer or squamous cell cancer. The dermatologists are going to hate me, but that’s how it works.
Now, if you know your skin type, you and I have similar skin tone, you don’t go out in the middle of July and lay out for eight hours drinking a beer and having a burger and fries. Right? You have too much inflammation. You start at sunrise in the morning in the spring. And you start stripping your clothes off in the spring because the ultraviolet index, the strength of the sun, this way it’s out for me. So the sun’s over here in the spring. The UV light isn’t that strong. As summer comes, the sun is more directly overhead. So those wavelengths of light are more powerful. They’re stronger. That’s why your ultraviolet index is higher. Like here in the summer, it can get as high as 12 to 14 in Phoenix.
But I have created melanin in my skin by the middle of July to meet it because I’ve been laying out every single day. And I use the Dminder app to tell me or to teach people, you have to know your skin type. You have to know how much you’re laying out. You have to know what your maximum amount of time is. If you have little ligo, or you’re in a thong bikini, and you’re used to wearing a one piece, you set it to the palest part of your skin. And then when it tells you you’re done, you’re done, because it’s taking into account where you are, the ultraviolet strength, meaning how strong the light is. So you don’t stay out too long and burn.
You have to know all of those factors that I just said to not burn, make yourself bring the melanin up in your skin so that your sunshade comes out. And then you maximize your vitamin D production, and all the other things we talked about today, by going out day after day after day after day.
So here’s the key to that. When you go to the doctor, you get your vitamin D tested, and it’s slow. You have to know what time of year it is. For your doctor to tell you in January that your vitamin D should be high when you are a pale-skinned person living in the UK, that tells me they don’t understand one bit of information about the vitamin D. It should never be high in January or February. You’ve just gone through a winter. So you have to look at your vitamin D, sunshine vitamin D level with respect to what season are you in and how did you get it? Did you take it or did you make it?
Katie: And can you also touch on the mitochondrial aspect of this? Because I know people are taking all these expensive supplements trying to improve their mitochondria and their ATP. And I feel like this is another area that you shine light on, pun intended. Sometimes this can be as simple as get your diet right and go outside. But can you explain the mitochondrial and ATP piece of the light exposure?
Courtney: When we are a zygote, we have 600,000 mitochondria. It’s one of the highest mitochondrially dense cells in the human body to jumpstart 23 strands of DNA. And we grow and grow and grow and grow. And grow and grow. Maximizing energy production. And then at some point in our life, we plateau. And then we start to lose energy. So your mitochondria are taking information from sunlight via the electrons from the food and the signals through your skin and through your eye to make you energy. The two most powerful ways you can make more energy, that energy in doctor speak is called ATP is number one enter ketosis because when you burn fat for fuel, whether it’s butter or your own fat, you make 400% more energy. And number two, you make more mitochondria. You can only make so many mitochondria in your brain. It’s trapped in the skull. You can only make so many mitochondria in your heart. It’s trapped in a chest cavity. But you can make more mitochondria in your muscle.
So there’s two ways to make more mitochondrial ATP, and they’re not supplements. They make more muscle and periodically enter ketosis. 400% more ATP and more mitochondrial density. So the way I teach that in my advanced group is we work on people’s VO2 max. VO2 max is the way athletes check how much mitochondrial density they have. Nobody has to lose mitochondrial density. I don’t care if you’re 80 years old. My parents have put on so much muscle. You don’t have to lose mitochondrial density, but you can’t be all fat and no muscle. And when we sit inside all day, we become all fat and no muscle. You can still, I joke, you can still be a size four or six woman. But if you’re all fat and no muscle, your energy is going like this. And you feel it in your brain. You feel it in your heart. Your immune system goes to crap. You’re sick all the time. You get told that you guys are going to hate me for this, but you get told you have Lyme and mold. And maybe you did get bit by a tick and maybe you did have black mold in your house. But you have to look at mitochondrial function if you want to heal that.
You don’t have to age, but you have to maintain muscle mass. Because that’s where your density of mitochondria can be grown. Then when you expose it to sunlight, you actually increase glucose utilization, increase energy production. You basically can eat the sun. That’s how my son who was six put it to me. Mom, we eat the sun. Yeah. The more time you spend in the sun, the less food you need to eat.
Katie: Yeah, I think that alone is so paradigm shifting. And I love that you also turned that around. There’s this idea that we lose muscle as we age, but really it might be more so that we are aging because we’re losing muscle. And then the light piece. What about people who, for aging reasons, are always wearing sunscreen, always wearing a hat, never getting that light exposure on their face, their eyes, their skin?
Courtney: Your skin is one of your biggest organs of detoxification. When you sweat, you’re pushing heavy metals out of your skin. And when you put lotion on and trap those in your skin, you’re just causing pre-radical damage in your skin. We call it lipofuscin, liver spots. And for the ladies with melasma, we’ve been covering this in the light group. Your melanin becomes a sponge. Your melanin is a sponge that’s supposed to dissipate the light from the sun as heat. And when you shine ionizing radiation on it in the face of oxidative damage, too many carbs, basically, it becomes like a disco ball and it reflects the light back out. It fluoresces. It glows melanin.
And then you put any lotion, sunblock, makeup, anything. And it’s like you’ve got this reverberating light making you more pigmented. And then you’ve got the mask of pregnancy because estrogen makes it come out. Estrogen makes it come out. Unraveling, look, the sunglasses industry and the tanning, the sun tan, the sun blocking, I use the word so little I can’t even think of it sunscreen industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry. And, as I was explaining in the group yesterday sunblock doesn’t know if it’s reflecting light back this way or back this way. It doesn’t have a side. It’s not like my whiteboard eraser. And this side is the shade that’s pushing the photons from the sun away. And this side is saying, oh, but if your melanin is fluorescing and giving off photons, it’s not going to come back at you, it doesn’t know. Both sides are black. And it is a multi-billion dollar industry because we eat too many carbs and we don’t ever fast. It’s no different than any other.
Katie: I love it.
Courtney: There were two Nobel Prizes for vitamin D that should come from the sun. And we took it from the sun and we made supplements out of it. It’s the story of the universe. It’s the story of what we do when we discover things from the universe. Sadly, which is again, why I want people to understand what they’re after when they say we’re looking for the maximum longevity escape velocity, because it belongs to the zygote.
Katie: And now we’re trying to put it in a pill just like vitamin D. I love that it came full circle. I feel like these two conversations go hand in hand so much and that it’s understanding both pieces, the ketosis side, fasting side, and the light side as well is where the magic happens. So I’ll put links to all of that in the show notes. Where would you recommend someone starts for the light side or in general? I think you usually have people start with ketosis and fasting first and then adding the light, but what order would you give people for implementing all of these?
Courtney: I think if you understand everything I just said, and you’re in the Northern Hemisphere and it’s spring, if this is going to air soon, hop in my light group, because I think people need to understand the light part first. It’s the most important piece. I just teach ketosis and fasting as I sequence through the groups because I don’t want anyone to get a sunburn. But if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere and it’s spring for you and you want to start building your tan now hop in the light group, go ahead and start with that because I referenced enough that you should be learning ketosis too. But I think if you jump in anywhere. I cross-referenced it all the time.
Katie: Well, those links are in the show notes. And while I could talk to you all day, I know that you are also a busy doctor and mom. So in the interest of respecting your time, thank you so much for these conversations. It’s been truly a pleasure to get to talk to you. I hope that you guys listening will check out Dr. Hunt’s resources. There are so many of them, and I found them personally helpful. But thank you so much for your time. This has been an absolute joy.
Courtney: Thank you. It was really fun.
Katie: And thank you for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.
If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.
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