Full Transcript: Hormesis Is Capacity, Not Chaos

This transcript is provided for reference and study. Timestamps link directly to the source video.

0:00

we get some sort of stressor, some sort of stimuli, [music] and then your body is going to start responding kind of unbeknownst to you. The more times you do this, hopefully forever, you will reap a cumulative effect. It doesn't have to be a substance. So, we're going to talk about different types of hormetic stressors like being cold, being hot, being in the sun, being hungry. These are hormetic stressors. So, it kind of makes evolutionary sense that our body developed a way to utilize that those signals like, "Oh, I'm too cold. What does that mean I have to do to give it messages that it needed to upgrade something?" Welcome to the Medical Disruptor, a place where well-versed humans can ask the hard questions and get evidence-based answers you won't find anywhere else. Our community is always informed, empowered, and sciencebacked. Every guest on the show must be clinically trained MD, NP, PA, and researchers who want more and expand beyond their conventional education to find deeper answers for complex health challenges. I'm Dr. E, the NP with a PhD, and I help smart, well-versed humans go from medically gaslit to medically empowered. Today's conversation is with Dr. Eleanor Stein, and she is one of my favorites. This is her second episode with me, and there will be a third one coming up soon. And if you've heard our last episode, you already know she doesn't bring opinions. She brings data and lived experience. Dr. Stein is one of the leading physician researchers in neuroplasticity and complex chronic illness. And today she's back to explain the concept of hormesis. It's how precise stressors like heat, cold, fasting, movement, and light can literally rewire our biology for healing and longevity. This isn't trend-based wellness. This is physiology. and what you're about to hear may completely reframe how you think about resilience and aging. Dr. Eleanor Stein, I'm so excited to have you back. It's a pleasure to be back. Thank you. It's always great when I have to do homework before my my guest comes on. So, I had to do some homework [laughter] for [clears throat] I love that there is so much to talk

2:00

I love that there is so much to talk about. Um, last time my mind was blown and I think we even have one more after this because you are just a a wealth of information. I'm so happy to have you. Um, but before we get to today's topic, which is hormesis. And if you don't know what that is, don't worry. I didn't know either. So, look it up while we're talking. Yeah. Um, let's do like a quick circle back for last time we talked about neuroplasticity. Right. And just tell us again what neuroplasticity is. Sure. So, neuroplasticity is the brain's capacity to change as a result of lived experience. That experience could be things I'm doing, things I'm thinking, things I'm feeling, even yeah, thinking, I guess, planning. So, every basically everything that's going a um on in my brain at any given time, what fires together wires together. So, whatever I do repetitively, I have the same thoughts, I practice guitar, um I have the same, say, traumatic response to certain things in my life. those things are going to hardwire and become my new defaults or maybe a a simpler term is just habits, right? We form habits of thinking, feeling, and acting in our brain. And then sometimes those habits serve us and sometimes they don't. If they don't, for example, if they're reinforcing trauma, if they're related to chronic pain, sensitivity symptoms, etc. That's where neuroplasticity based practice comes in as a tool to help us unlearn that habit and get back to a healthier way of being. Amazing. And I know we're only doing a quick recap for those of you. That's it. Because we have other things to talk about today, but it's really cool. So, it's just like you learn how to play tennis and you keep doing tennis over and over again, you get really good at it. You can get really good at anxiety, you can get really good at depression, you can get really good at pain. Um and then I your website for anyone who's dealing with those things

4:00

anyone who's dealing with those things really teaches the practice the learning the non-pane pathway or the non-depression pathway. So um anyone out there consider that and then we have to talk a little bit about your medical gasing experience. We'll get to but let's get to hormesis. Okay. What should we do first? Should we figure out your what happened to your foot or should we go to it's a cautionary tale. I'm happy [clears throat] to share it. It can be pretty pretty short story. Tell us your medical guideline story. So, one of the things that happens um that's affiliated with complex chronic disease meaning myalgia, sephilomiolitis, longcoid, fibromyalgia is uh the connective tissue in our body sometimes just isn't strong enough to hold everything in place. So, people who have that problem tend to have a lot of injuries and we'll just say gimpiness in my case. Is that like the ellers danlos syndrome or Yeah, exactly. So, er's danlos would be one example of connective tissue disorder. Most people in the community don't have formal um like they don't have the genetic markers to prove that they have a danlo. They have what's called the hyper I think it's called the hyper mobile type. Yeah. So, that's really a clinical diagnosis. Anyway, I've had, you know, muscular scaladal issues my whole life that resulted in a knee surgery. And then when you get one thing changed, guess what? All the bones are connected to the other bones. Yeah. And so I ended up with a foot problem. I went to probably including my physios, podiatrist, orthopedic surgeon, probably four or five people and they all missed the diagnosis. uh which was something not that serious and curable, a Morton's nuroma, and then instead they diagnosed me with a bunion and severe arthritis in my toe that needed surgery. Whoa. And all you had was a Morton

6:00

Whoa. And all you had was a Morton nuroma. How was that missed? Yes, indeed. I mean, I did have a bunion and I did have arthritis, but looking back, they were treating the X-ray, not the person. My X-ray looked bad. The amount of pain I had in the in that part of my foot was not like was not limiting. It was the nuroma that was the really severe pain and nobody caught it. So guess what? I ended up having bunion surgery. Oh god, that is so intense. Bunion. I had a special kind. So just it was uh much less intense. I came down to the states actually for the surgery. But nevertheless, it fuses your toe joint. Yes. And it shifts your gate. Yeah. And none of the doctors that I consulted four, fully four surgeons I consulted told me this would happen. And because I'm hyper mobile, it has more impact. Everything has more impact than in say a normal connective tissue person. So now I've got some pretty severe multiple severe pain problems in my foot that have brought me back home. Some of you who have followed me know that I've been traveling for the past year, but I'm back home right now to see if I can get some help with it. You know, that's so interesting. You surface so many things there. Um, treating the X-ray, treating the image is is a problem. Um, it's one of the reasons I really don't like to image if I can help it. Like if somebody comes in and there is no clinical reason, like I'm not worried that there's let's just say back pain and I'm not worried about cancer. I'm not worried about a tumor. They don't have any of those signs. I often say to my patients, I really recommend for you not to image because I could already tell clinically that you probably have a herniation because once we image, we're going to find a lot of things cuz after we've been on the planet for a while, we tend not to have normal images anymore. But then two things happen. One, your specialist is going to treat that image.

8:00

going to treat that image. And two, your brain is going to consistently think that that's the issue once you see that image. like I do not want to MRI my pain areas. I am clinically aware that I don't think there's anything dangerous going on, but it really messes with your head, right? I've really been, you know, I was thinking, oh, today we're talking about hormesis, but really mindset is on my mind. Um because different I've just been thinking over the last few days different messages people gave me. So I got an MRI. Um so after I started getting more and more severe pain, I got an MRI. I'll I'll just, you know, leave it very general. So, one of my uh primary care team said, "You need to stay off your foot." So, I was on crutches for two months. Wow. And it didn't really like it helped a little bit, but as soon as I started walking and doing stuff again, you know, I was kind of back to square one. So, then I went So, that of course that message made me think, oh, this is very serious. Sure. like I have to be on crutches to prevent it from really getting bad. Then my physio just rolled her eyes cuz of course physios are all about maintaining weightbearing activity, of course. And then I got an ultrasound or I can't remember. I got another test recently and it said mild arthritis. I'm like, "Oh, mild arthritis. I've got that all over my body. That's not a big problem." And it just like my mind was just um flipping from connotation to connotation like oh this is really serious I have to stay off my foot to oh this is mild arthritis that's like not even a big deal and it just made me really focus in on like as a health care provider in the past how important are the messages that I'm giving people and I I can't remember if I said this when we talked before but in the past before I got better and before

10:00

the past before I got better and before I learned about neuroplasticity and some of the healing [snorts] tools I told people it's called so back in the day when we called it chronic fatigue syndrome we call it chronic fatigue syndrome because it's chronic right you got to learn to live with it now hopefully I was better than the average clinician because I actually gave them tools to do that I didn't just say like go have a good life and I worked with them as long as they needed to you try to optimize everything we possibly could. But looking back, that was not a good message to give people. And yeah, and my whole website now is about hope, right? Yes. I've totally flipped my messaging because a I know there is hope and b even if the hope is tiny, it acts on the brain. No. In such a way that helps us actually heal. It increases the chances of healing. You know, you are so spot on. And again, I know we promised stop at hormesis. We'll get there. We have to go where the universe wants us to go. Yeah. So, at this point in my career, I'm not talking about my primary care practice. In the holistic world, I don't take on patients, but I have started doing consults again where I could just give people a path because there seems to be such a demand. Yeah. And at the end of my consultation, my goal since I'm not taking them on as clients, I asked them, do you have hope now? Because if that is we're already halfway there. If before the session you were like, I I'm never going to get out of this. I don't know how to get out of this. And now after the session, you're like, I think there's a way out. Yeah. It might take you another year or two or more. But being able to see that hope, that light and the tunnel is part of the healing. It's the biggest part of the healing. Yeah. Um that is I'm actually really glad you brought that up because that that I consider a success. If someone says no, I still feel hopeless and I didn't do a good job consulting. Um that's that's really litmus test,

12:00

Um that's that's really litmus test, right? Because I'm no longer in charge of their care after that. That hope is so undervalued. Giving people hope when they walk out of the room. And then also your experience is very much speaks to if you're going to go to a surgeon, they're going to recommend surgery and you have to remember learned. Yeah. Right. And I tell people that all the time like that doesn't mean you you necessarily need it. Again, broken bones, cancer, we're not talking about those things. But when we're talking about pain, if you're going to go to a surgeon, if you would have went to your physio, they might have said, "Let's work on it this I'm not saying that that's necessarily right, but always take the advice and recognize that the person who's given to you only has one tool toolbox. If you're going to come to me, I'm going to talk to you about nutrition and exercise and sleep. I'm not going to perform surgery on you. [clears throat] So, so I'm so glad you service this because it's really you ha the person you're talking to only has their limited set of tools also. Yeah. Wow. That is really that is a lot the imaging and and when I think about it I'm a physician and I'm I consider myself pretty well informed and this happened to me and I'm really struggling like you know this has been seven months since I went for a walk. No. And you're such an outdoor person. Yeah. This is a big deal for you. This is a massive deal. And so it's just, you know, like I said to you before we turned on record, this is really a cautionary tale. I think in our community, in my community, people are so desperate and this was my case because the pain was so severe. I was willing to take the advice, I guess, without due diligence, you know, or or maybe I was impatient cuz I wanted to get back to all my activities. How did ultimately was it diagnosed and what was done for it? Okay, quick break. If this episode is hitting home, just ask yourself this. Are you gaslighting yourself without

14:00

Are you gaslighting yourself without even realizing it? I made a free guide called self gaslighting habits to watch for. So, if you're constantly second-guessing yourself in the exam room, this is your starting point. Check out the link in the description. Now, let's get back to it. Well, it was diagnosed as a bunion and I had surgery for a bunion. No, I mean at the end when we got to the fact there was a neuroma. How did you Oh, I'm still waiting for that treatment. Oh, okay. So, but how who this is all in retrospect. I'm like, "Oh, this pain I have right now that has now now been [clears throat] diagnosed as being due to a nuroma, that's the exact same pain I had 5 years ago be before all of this. So, I now have additional problems plus the original problem, which I'm hoping to get a call for tomorrow to start some treatment for that." But yeah, and s I mean, surgery is a big deal. I had surgery on my toe also. It's a big deal. It's not not reversible. Um it wasn't my great toe which is great toe is much more critical but it's still I had to work a lot on balance and it's one spin toe and you have to work a lot on balance everything is connected we forget that we tend to be all of us out there whoever's listening there is very rarely the one solution right I'm not talking about you have to have a tumor removed obviously that's the solution yeah but when we're talking about this chronic long-term issues it's don't get out of the mindset is of if I just do this one thing, it will all align. Everything is connected. Um, that's such a good point. And in our community, like in we'll just say in conventional medicine, you use treatment A, you know, to solve problem B, and that causes problems C, D, and E. And now you've got to bring in all these other treatments for the so-called side effects. Yeah. And it can just balloon into, you know, what we refer to as polyfarm pharmacy. Sure. in that respect as well. But also even if you're doing things, you know, not pharmaceutically like I I work with people as you do with various integrated

16:00

people as you do with various integrated methods and idea of like if I just take this supplement that will be fine. It's not we have to there's going to be many layers so many things are connected but we're very um like a to be b we're really have been taught to be a if I do this thing everything will align and it's rarely the case. Um, so thank you for sharing that. Oh, you're welcome. It's a good lesson to see how it happens to clinicians. I mean, my entire history is my entire evolution is because of what happened to my wife and we're both clinicians, right? And so, how much harder is it to your point for a lay person to be able to to manage all this? It's so much. And now we're moving on to hormesis, which is what we're planning. I had to just touch base. So, fancy word. Tell us what it means. Yes. Okay. You know, it's so funny. I went to conferences for years and I would hear people talk about hormesis and they would kind of describe it as a dose response curve. So, you give a certain dose of something and it works and you give another dose of the same thing and it doesn't work. Kind of like that. And I was like, what? H doesn't help me. So, here's here's my new and improved definition. It's basically something. It's a stressor. It doesn't have to be a substance. So, we're going to talk about different types of hormetic stressors like being cold, being hot, being in the sun, being hungry. These are hormetic stressors. So these are natural things that our species of humans encountered on almost a daily basis before we had universal access to food and central heating. Right? Like every person out there in the stone age was sometimes too hot, sometimes too cold, sometimes too full, sometimes too hungry, sometimes too sunny, sometimes too cloudy, etc. those. So it kind of makes

18:00

those. So it kind of makes evolutionary sense that our body developed a way to utilize that those signals like, oh, I'm too cold. What does that mean I have to do? That must mean I need to ramp up my metabolism so I can make more heat. So, our body actually depended on these naturally occurring signals in our environment to give it messages that it needed to upgrade something. So say I'm too hungry, I need to upgrade all the chemistry that allows me to burn fat and go into ketosis so that I don't die. So hormesis is the stressor or the response to that stress. It's the response. Okay. So there's a stress. The stressor acts on us and our body's natural built-in response is to get better at something, to upregulate something to deal with that stress that it just um experienced. Interesting. So, it's always to get better or to get to baseline. Yeah, it goes beyond baseline. So, one of the experts in the field, I don't have his name on the tip of my tongue, but his def like his fancy def, you know, scientific definition is that we don't just come back to baseline, but we go beyond it. And the really cool part, it's kind of like I call it neuroplasticity for the body because we can go beyond it by like 30 to 50%. Wow. So, just think of something like energy. Like we all care about energy and a lot of people listening to this may be low in energy. That's why they're listening to a health podcast, right? Sure. Um so we can when we sense that we don't have enough energy and we've got this whole complicated system. It's called the EMPK sensing system. It measures how much ATP or cellular energy we have. If it's too low, it upregulates or turns on all the machinery we need to make more

20:00

all the machinery we need to make more ATP. And if there's not enough of the parts, it makes those parts, right? So, if there's not enough machinery, like it might just be the machinery is there, but it's just kind of resting, so it turns it on. But if say we're aging and we've actually lost some of the machinery and we don't have enough mitochondria to make enough energy, it will produce more mitochondria. Amazing. So hormesis is our builtin feature. It comes standard with all in our equipment. Yeah. Basically how we survive. Yeah. It's our operating system. Operating we get some sort of stressor, some sort of stimuli from the outside world and then our body responds to improve our current state. Okay. So, we have this definition. So, now what the beauty is um like neuroplasticity we all have it as you just you know eloquently said and that means we can think okay how could I so our body actually depends upon it. So, one idea about our current modern health or poor health epidemic is that it's because we're not stressing our bodies ever, right? We always have enough food. We eat every 10 minutes, don't get enough sleep. We are never too cold or too hot because we have central heating and air conditioning and we barely go outside. We never get enough exercise cuz we take transport everywhere. we always have enough oxygen because we never you know push ourselves underwater. Yeah. Underwater or going to altitude. Um so so part you know one way of looking which I kind of ascribe to of why we're in such poor health is because we're not utilizing our natural hormetic capacity. So things just get out of I

22:00

capacity. So things just get out of I don't know. Uh it's like if you have a car and you never service it, it's going to get kind of rusty and clunky and out of alignment. It's just not going to work. Ideally, hormesis is like taking our car for its annual checkup, but ideally a almost a daily checkup. It goes back to, you know, if you don't use it, you lose it, right? Totally. That's exactly hormesis. If you don't use it, you lose it. That's amazing. And I love that you called it the neuroplasticity of the body. Like I don't like it is hitting me because I read I did the homework prior to coming in, but it didn't hit me the way [clears throat] right now. This idea that we have these built-in features. We haven't even discussed how to like play with them and how to We'll get there. Yeah. But now you're you're talking about the fact like that just using it, right? So if we start I'm glad we started this podcast on neuroplasticity like yes I could teach myself to learn tennis and I could do that but did you know prior to our first episode that you could also teach yourself not to be anxious or not to be in chronic pain. Wow. But now this idea of health that we have this built-in feature that could actually consistently not bring us to baseline but consistently go beyond baseline and we never use it, hardly ever use it. Right? This is insane. This is bananas. So, okay, I'm already seeing some of the applications, but um get us there. Oh my god, this is great. Okay. So, um probably before I go into some of the specifics, there's three really important keys cuz not everything is hormetic. Like not every stress is good. Sure. Okay. Said that right. Like some are just bad. So the first time a baseball bat is not a good Yeah. That's not good. Or you know being abused or neglected as a child that's

24:00

abused or neglected as a child that's that's just never good. Sure. Or for weeks at a time, right? Like that's sorry or starving for weeks after right or being so cold that you die of sure what is it hypothermia never good right sure so the first thing is um the the number one that I give as an example is air pollution so air pollution is not hormetic you don't want to train yourself to breathe in you know everinccreasing amounts of car exhaust thinking that it's going to upregulate your detox pathways and make you healthier. And I just say that it sounds kind of almost obvious, but um people So, believe it or not, there's research showing that tiny tiny exposures to um radiation like uh in cells, not in humans, um makes the cells ability to um uh like heal the DNA. So when you're exposed to radiation, it causes DNA damage. And if you're exposed to it, very tiny amounts, you can actually improve the cell's ability to to um fix or repair that DNA damage. I'm not recommending that. So people look at that on our day-to - day that yeah, people look at that research and say, "Oh, I can overcome toxic exposures." So, I do not believe that to be the case. And I'm absolutely not recommending that people go out there and purposely expose themselves to known toxins. We've got enough, trust me, in our our natural living. So, one is the types of things that could be potentially beneficial are things that our ancient ancestor stove uh stone age ancestors were exposed to. Those are the things that our bodies evolved

26:00

things that our bodies evolved mechanisms of dealing with. So heat, cold, hunger, you know, extreme exercise, altitude, things like that. Those are the things that our body is really good at utilizing for our health. Second thing is, oh, sorry, go ahead. I love that. What about this? First of all, it's a great delineator, right? Because we don't want somebody to go outside. I just don't want anyone to listen to this and go the wrong direction. Go extreme like she said it's hormesis and their teeth areing and yes so [clears throat] that's so it shouldn't be extreme and it should be of the things that are naturally occurring. What about emotions like naturally like I'm coming I'm thinking of like a yearning or or desire like those are natural also. Does that have the same hormetic effect where there's like a driver as opposed to just stress like stressful? Does you know that's a whole other talk, right? That stress is in the perception of the person experiencing the stress. Um maybe that's more of a philosophical conversation. I was just wondering. Yeah, I'm not sure. Okay, fair. Because hormetic research is mostly measuring things like you put the cell in and it's this cold and you measure oh look at the metabolism increases. You know this is like pretty hardcore measurable science. Fair. Okay, putting my woo woo stuff in the closet for now. And well maybe you know I am a psychiatrist so I'll maybe just make one comment that as I'm sure you know one of the main strategies for anxiety of various kinds is to gradually face it right kind of systematic desensitization. So you build a hierarchy of things that you're scared of or reluctant to encounter and then you slowly build up and that's kind

28:00

then you slowly build up and that's kind of more neuroplasticity I would say because you're teaching your brain that these things are actually safe. That's fair. We're going to put that in the neuroplasticity section. Fair. Sorry. Okay. So that was number one. That was number one is naturally occurring stressors are things that potentially could be beneficial. The second is the dose. So, like we were kind of saying, if you go out in the freezing cold and you're not Wimhof and you haven't spent the last 50 years, you know, training your body, you're just going to freeze. So, don't do that. Um, go into a little bit of cold. So, for example, just recently I was at a mountain lake. It was bracing and after I think I stayed in for about 20 minutes and then I was shivering. Wow. So you listen to your body and and I was later I asked a guy he go he was like whoa you've been in there for a while. I said yeah what do you think the temperature is? And he said I think it's about 10 degrees. So centigrade. I'm I'm Canadian right? Yeah. So that's like about 50 or something like that. 40 high 40s. So it was really cold. It felt outstanding, but I wasn't going to die unless I stayed in there for hours. Sure. Um, so the dose is really, really important. And usually you want a tiny dose, just enough for your body to notice. So with heat and cold, it's really easy to tell. You want to stay in the cold just until you start shivering. Guess what? Your body's telling you it got the message. Now you can get out. Fascinating. With heat, you want to stay in until you start sweating, right? It's our body has these ways of communicating to us that are really obvious if we don't think we're smarter and override them. So, are you saying that up until the point of shivering, your hormesis was

30:00

point of shivering, your hormesis was kicking in and keeping you warm enough? No. That is such a good question because it brings up a really important point. The hormesis hasn't quite kicked in yet. Shivering shivering is the signal that the body is now like, okay, we're seriously cold now. It's time to get out. But this is the the third key is you have to do these um hormetic exposures intermittently because the hormesis doesn't occur in the moment. When you're in the cold, nothing is happening. You're just getting cold. Okay, you're just triggering the message to the body that a few more mitochondria would be useful because guess what? We we're having this cold issue and mitochondria produce heat. It's after you get out over the next 24 to 48 hours that the hormetic benefits occur and they slowly build up. So it has to be intermittent. So, you can't just go in the cold once every three months. Nothing will happen. You'll go in, you'll have this little tiny blip of benefit and then it'll go away because you haven't followed it up. So, it's like you want the benefit just as it's wearing off. You want to do it again and again. So, you want to do things like every second to third day. Okay. So the stressor dose the dosed natural stressor let's put that the qualifiers in um need to happen for x amount of time until you're let's just say for simplicity uncomfortable the sugar the sweat yeah uncomfortably hungry uncomfortably tired uncomfortably hot cold yeah and then go back to your modern life get yourself you know fed and warmed whatever get yourself out of the stressor

32:00

yourself out of the stressor and Then your body is going to start responding kind of unbeknownst to you. Exactly. And the more times you do this, hopefully forever. Yeah. You will have you will reap a cumulative effect. A little blip, and before you know it, a year down the line, we've have all this more mitochondria than we would have had without it. Or more ketosis than we would have had Yeah. without this, depending on what the stressor is. Is that the answer? That's exactly right. That's how I understand it. That's amazing. And also what I I like and we haven't even gone to application yet, but I really like about it is that it forces what's the word I'm looking for? Nothing extreme, right? And extreme is problematic. Extreme is counterproductive when it comes to hormesis. Right? So if you decide I'm going to take up running, you don't go register for the marathon next month. Correct? Right. you're just going to injure yourself and you're going to end up in well I won't say bed but you're going to end up very sedentary for a while until you heal from your injury. So that that wasn't hermetic. That was stupid [laughter] at the risk of being blunt. I was hoping you would say that. Okay. [laughter] I was like should I say this on I did say absolutely. Okay. So you want to gradually work up, right? You want to walk around the block and then two blocks and then 1k 2 K and then you want to do that little intermittent thing where you run for a minute and walk for a minute and you want to slowly build up because the cells don't have it's just like neuroplasticity. The cells don't have infinite capacity like just because you demand of them something extreme they can't respond to that. They can just go incrementally. You can't make double your mitochondria in one minute. You know, you you slowly increase them only when the cells get the consistent message that they're

34:00

the consistent message that they're needed because the body hates wasting energy. So, it's not going to start upregulating and turning on things that aren't needed. And if you just do it once every two months, it's going to totally ignore you, right? It needs to know like this is a new environment. We we are in a cold environment. we need to change it or that's amazing. Okay, so this is fascinating. So, okay, say more. Well, what I love about it and why I'm, you know, all jazzed up about it is because it's all free. You love that. There's no supplements. There's no drugs. You can buy fancy equipment. You know, you can buy the cold plunge pool and the fancy sauna. You can, but you don't have to. Yeah. Just go outside when it's cold. Yeah. or go outside when it's hot or exercise. I don't know, turn put a heater on in a room, do your workout, sweat. Like, it's very inexpensive to do hormetic stressors. And again, going back, if we look at the big picture of public health, it's probably the single most helpful thing we could do as a society is to be less comfortable. I love that. And I Well, yeah, in so many ways. But I also love the fact that it's intermittent. Not only does it mean you don't have to be extreme, but it also means that in between you get to not do this. You know, like like with ketosis, and I'm sure we'll get that like it's hard to be in ketosis all the time, but it based on what you're saying, you don't need to be in ketosis all the time, right? Ketosis every third day or Right. And so like in between that, you're not like it's hard to sustain that. And now I'm understanding also, you know, I'm sure you know like some of the Alzheimer's work that's out there. It's really about being in ketosis as often as possible, but like hard to live that way all the time. But knowing that you can get this cumulative benefit by doing it intermittently. Again, not three months intermittent, but every second or third day also loosens up a

36:00

second or third day also loosens up a little bit of, you know, the stress around getting it all the time every day correctly. Am I getting that right? Yeah. Uh, and I don't want to, you know, I'm not an um an expert on how much ketosis is needed for Alzheimer's. That's kind of maybe a special case. Fair. And, you know, people optimization. Yeah. Um, but what I would say is there's like a sciency term called um intermittent metabolic switching. Yes. What that means is you our metabolism so how we create energy we burn food with oxygen we make energy in the form of ATP uh there's a lot of debate out there you know should you be keto like what's the best fuel and my read of the research is the best is to change it up so sometimes you want to be fasting because that turns on what's called these nutrient sensors. So we have these, you know, this is part of hormmesis. We have these sensors in our cells and as soon as the energy gets a bit too low or the protein, the leucine gets a bit low or the sugar gets a bit low, it turns on all these beneficial mechanisms. But you can't have that all you can't be fasting all the time, right? because you'll die. And Whoops. Yeah. And it's because you also need to eat to build new molecules. So intermittent switching means when we're eating, we're turning on all the building programs, build DNA, build RNA, build neurotransmitters, build new cells, build new mitochondria. But all of those parts get damaged and we need to recycle and take out the garbage and we can only do that when we're fasting.

38:00

we're fasting. Yeah. So it's like a switch. You can't be a little bit fasting and a little bit eating. You can't be a little bit building and a little bit breaking down at the same time. It just that's not how the body works. So it's like a literally like a old-fashioned light switch. Maybe now everybody uses a remote control. um you're either building or breaking down and health requires both. So it's not that one is good and like people if um with mTor and rapamy they get really into we need to be fasting all the time. Fasting is good. It activates hormesis. It turns on all the cellular repairs. But then once you've repaired everything, you need new molecules to rebuild. You know, I'm really glad you're saying this because I think we hear one thing uh again back to this binary world. Yeah. And we're think, oh, I have to do this thing all the time and it has to be perfect and daily and regimented. And that's not how the body is designed. I mean, our entire system is like fight or flight, rest and digest. Like you have this, you have to be able to go in and out of metabolic flexibility. Sometimes I have food, sometimes I don't have food, right? and and this concept of hormesis. We have this and when we lack it, we're going to create it. But like this idea of fluidity and flexibility is really important as part of the healing because if we're going to get regimented around it and try to do this on the daily, we're not going to reap that benefits. Understand? And again, I I just keep going back to our ancestral history. So, back in the day, let's say 10, 000 years ago when all we had was a little bit of fire, and we didn't have any other, you know, dishwasher, central heating, anything like that. Sometimes it was hot, sometimes it was cold, it was unpredictable. Sometimes it was windy. Uh, sometimes there was food, sometimes there wasn't, and it was unpredictable.

40:00

there wasn't, and it was unpredictable. So, that that word flexibility that you used, I think, is really central. It's really central it metaphorically and technically being flexible is really just important in life. Um and and I really love that because I to your point I think someone could take some of this advice and uh destroy it. Yeah. Like build this very Yes. Like morning till night. I'm going to do my cold sauna uh cold plunge. It has to be exactly seven minutes at this temperature every single day. But that's not the real world. The real world is it's summer, it's winter, it's fall, you know. Yeah. We're going to wake up every day and I'm going to do this and this. That's not how that we've kind of missed the point again if we do that. Yeah. I It's just like even with exercise. You shouldn't do the same exercise. Sometimes you lift, sometimes you swim, sometimes you walk, sometimes like And the idea is that you should be able to do all of it at all times at any time I should say. Okay. So are we, you know, so we definitely know nutritional a lot. I think a lot of people know about intermittent fasting. Just the fact that it's intermittent is already kind of in line what we're talking about. How else can we manipulate this hormmesis in our favor? Well, through diet, there's another really important strategy which is our phytonutrients. So phyto kind of means plant, I think, in some ancient language. Um, so phytonutrients are all of the chemicals and there's over a thousand known phytonutrients and they're found in colorful fruits and vegetables, so plant-based sources because of the word phyto. And I always thought and I was taught that phyto um plants are healthy because they contain antioxidants. So this is a really important hormetic message that's very surprising. They do contain antioxidants, but they also

42:00

contain antioxidants, but they also contain these phytonutrients which are a little bit toxic. M so if you put yourself in the mind of a plant it's saying I have seeds and nuts and leaves and roots and I actually don't want some animal to munch them down because then I'm not going to survive and propagate. So I'm going to put some slightly toxic chemicals in my being to discourage uh hungry mammals let's say. So, it turns out these phytonutrients are a slight stressor on the body. And I don't know if this is true. I've heard, you know, things that are bitter, that's kind of a sign that it's really high in phytonutrients. So, people that take bitters, um, bitter herbs and things. I think that, you know, there may be the science behind it may be that the phytonutrients are horic. So we take we'll say the bitter herbs or the multicolored [clears throat] fruits and vegetables. It's a little bit hard on our body and it triggers hormesis meaning the body activates processes that we need to overcome that and make us stronger and more resilient for the next time. That's a mind-blowing way of seeing phytonutrients. It's not I never phytonutrients as my understanding of it is that we need these phytonutrients. Um and we do. So both are true at the same time. Yeah. And to think of them as [clears throat] stressors that will create some sort of cascade response is is mind-blowing. And the research has been done on the Mediterranean diet. So you say, okay, what kind of diet should I follow? more or less the medit you know everyone argues over the details but something around Mediterranean is usually beneficial and they've done and it's one

44:00

beneficial and they've done and it's one of the most researched diets and that's what they found that the Mediterranean diet the phytonutrients are horically stressful and they change our epigenetics. So, one of the benefits of eating fruits and vegetables is that it turns on this whole cascade of genes we need to repair our body. Like, it's all about repair, right? Yeah. From the moment we're conceived, it's I hate to be a little bit pessimistic, but it's a little bit downhill. Sure. We're we're on our way to death at all times. Yeah. Right. But but what we do on a day-to - day basis has a significant impact. And this is uh you've heard people talk about biological age and chronological and chron yeah and chronological and that's where hormesis comes in. So if we're uncomfortable enough we're activating hormesis. Our uh biological age could be younger than our chron chronological age. and some of the influencers online, you know, they're getting tested all the time and they're 65 and they're testing out as 38. So, I just want to say the tests, you know, there's a lot of debate over their accuracy. But in general, the concept seems to be true and hormesis is a big part of basically how we stay young. You know, my wife wears a garment and we were just hanging out and then she goes, "Oh, I just went it brought her down by a year as we were talking." I was like, "Wow, that's amazing. That's great. [laughter] That's so funny. Um, but this is [clears throat] this is actually as usual when I talk to you, my mind is blown. And another reason to eat phytonutrients like another like we we know it's healthy for us for so many reasons, but now to know that it's triggering our response that is bringing us above baseline. Yes. Is that also the reason why eating too much of it sometimes makes us gives us reactions? Like some people it's belly, some people is that part of it because

46:00

some people is that part of it because it's just too much of it. Yeah. Like one, you know, one article I read said mix it up like don't eat a bushel of bananas, right? Too much of the same thing and that little bit of toxin, you know, it's going to build up. Fascinating. What other application should we know? The most research most powerful is exercise. So when we exercise, we actually damage our muscles a little bit. That's the hormetic bit, right? They're moving. The meioytes are moving back and forth and there's friction and pressure and all of that. And that causes damage. The cells notice the damage and then they turn on all the repair mechanisms to make the muscles stronger and healthier and more resilient for future. So we call that training. Yeah. Right. So just for anyone who's like, "Okay, this is still sounding a bit hard to understand." Just think exercise. The more you exercise, the stronger your muscles get. You're sore the next day, but then you're building muscles. Right. So that's an important thing. And if you exercise 5 hours every day, you lose some of that training effect. Don't some of like the therapeutic treatments, I'm thinking orthopedic injections, kind of work on the idea of like creating agitation? Yes. So that repair will come in. Yes. So things like prolotherapy. Yes. Um are annoying dextrose. Is that what they're doing? Are they harnessing hormesis there? I don't think they're harnessing hormesis. I think it's more just generating inflammation and just I was just thinking inflammatory response and then coming to repair. But no, it's it's different. You know, they're probably related. Yeah. But mostly if you inject something like dextrose say in a ligament insertion it's just causing the body to see that and go ah I don't like this all the white cells and cytoines and

48:00

the white cells and cytoines and everything rush in and then it gives the opportunity to remodel and repair. Interesting. Amazing. Okay. So you're about to tell us about something we didn't think of. the thought of exercise but you're about to talk. So I'm going to talk about red and infrared light. So that's Yeah. Well, yes, please. I do this every morning. Tell us. So red and infrared light. So this is between a wavelength of we're going to say 600 to 630 nanmters, which is cherry red. And as the wavelength gets longer over about 700, you can't see it anymore. It's now in the infrared. So, it's still there, which makes it tricky. If you buy a device and you don't see anything, you're like, is it actually working? Yeah. Um, and up to really about a thousand nanometers is the the near and then the far infrared. When I first learned this, which is 10 years ago, my mind was so blown and I it took me quite a while to believe it was even true. I had gone through medical school and never learned this. I read Dr. Norman Deuts's um book, The Brain's Way of Healing. It came out. So, it's all about neuroplasticity. But one of the strategies he talks about in the book to enhance neuroplasticity is using red and infrared light. I'm like, that makes no sense. I know plants utilize light to grow all of their carbon structure, right? To get big and grow. Humans, we don't like light does nothing for us. That's what I thought to be true. Sure. Could not be more wrong. So, it turns out there's I'm learning more every day, but the basic is red and infrared light penetrates the cell. It goes into the mitochondria. In the mitochondria, we have these five components, four to five, depending how you count, oxidative

50:00

five, depending how you count, oxidative phosphorilation, the the machinery that makes ATP. And the one called cytochrome C oxidase, it's the fourth one in the line. The infrared and red light acts directly on that complex and makes it make more energy. So, we're basically getting free energy. Amazing. We're like plants. We're getting free energy from the sun. I mean, I've been learning the past from from some of my guests. Importance [clears throat] of light and the sun, which is really important because we have been as a society away from the sun, going away from and sunscreen and sunglasses. And um and the idea that red light is helping us produce mitochondria has been something that I've accepted into my life a while ago. But yeah, the concept that it's secondary to hormesis is fascinating. Well, there's two. It's just like the phytochemicals where there's the direct effect like they are antioxidants and they are helpful in the moment and then there's this indirect coming the next day hormmesis where it um upregulates all of the repair mechanisms. So with light the direct effect is it acts on the mitochondria and we produce more energy. But what happens when we produce more energy is we also produce free radicals. It's part of the chemical equation. You can't have one without the other. Good point. That's the hormetic because now you've got a stress. You've got these additional free radicals. The free radical sensing mechanisms in the cell go uhoh. We've got a problem. We've got to figure out a way to deal with these free radicals if we want to keep producing more energy, which we like because it helps us heal and calm inflammation and all these things. And so it upregulates um our natural antioxidant response

52:00

um our natural antioxidant response pathway. Amazing. To help us be more resilient when we experience oxidative stress in the future. So it's really really important. That's fascinating. Is there you may not know this in your research you see how close do you need to be to this light oh I don't think it matters so um a photon which is the unit of light right any light red blue green they all have photons that's what actually and I'm making it kind of mechanistic like this like it's traveling towards us in the air but probably it's more quantum and fuzzy and hard for my little brain to understand, but basically light reaches us through photons. It's little packets of light. It's not It looks to us like it's just spread all over, but it's actually these little quanta or packets of light reaching us from the source, say the sun or the light bulb or the red light panel. Sure. And it's those little tiny photons that actually have the effect in our mitochondria. Mitochondria are quantum objects. So it's they're just it's energy to energy. It's energy to energy because they're quantum and this is energy. So doesn't it you don't have to see it. It's happening regardless. It's energy. The mitochondria are seeing it in the sense. Yeah. So that photon is giving its energy to the cytochrome C oxidase which is then producing. So it's I don't know what the word would be like the light energy is getting converted to chemical energy in the form of ATP. It's it's crazy because [laughter] it's crazy. This is like a whole other episode, but it's crazy because years ago before I went down this crazy pathway, if you talk to me about energies, I would say you're insane. Right. Woo woo. Right.

54:00

Right. But here I am years later, deeper in science than I've ever been in my life. And I'm back to [laughter] energy and we are energy and we have to be around energy. Yeah. And it's all energy. It's crazy. I'll just even Oh, so you asked uh I got off track. Um you asked how uh close the light has to be. So it matters and it doesn't. the photon like if you think the sun we're is it 93 million miles or something from the sun. Sure. I'm gonna go. It's really big. We're really far from the sun. No problem. Those photons are hitting our bodies constantly, right? So distance isn't an issue. But what is an issue is say you have a little red light panel much smaller than the sun. The closer it is to you, the better because um the int uh like the intensity is the square of the distance. So say it's one foot away, I'm going to get a certain dose and if I move it two feet away, I'm going to get only a quarter of the dose. Yeah, makes sense. So the the really tricky part because there's so like literally hundreds if not thousands of devices out there and they're all different and they're all they have different intensities of photons coming at you. And so I recommend um using the cheapest device of all which is the sun. And even on cloudy days, you're getting a huge amount more than we need of red and infrared light and providing um energy to our mitochondria. The red and infrared does another really interesting thing which I've learned about more recently. It actually causes the skin cells to produce melatonin. And we think of melatonin as being in our brain and helping us sleep, which is true, but it turns out that the skin

56:00

true, but it turns out that the skin produces more melatonin than the brain. And in the skin, the melatonin is a powerful antioxidant. So that when we're out in the sun, because everyone's going to be like they're going to be listening to this and possibly just dismiss everything I'm saying because they're like, "Don't you know the sun is dangerous?" But it's not dangerous because we produce melanin which is our natural tan, right? Which protects our DNA from the ultraviolet light. And we produce melatonin which helps repair the DNA that could be damaged by the ultraviolet light. And anyone who's listening to this, let's go back to point number one, which is don't go out having not been in the sun for six years and then decide to stay outside for eight hours and get a sunburn. Right? This is also a buildup. Absolutely. You might go out like I have people in my community who are sensitive and we're saying, "You know what? Go out at 8 in the morning for 5 minutes." Yes. When the sun's barely barely above the horizon, the rays are the weakest. There's the more more red and infrared and le uh no ultraviolet yet, right? Ultraviolet is more in the middle of the day. And slowly build what we call a solar callus. slowly build the tolerance and the tan really really gradually so that when summer like right now we're kind of midsummer hopefully you've got that resiliency that it's not going to be damaging. I love that so much. We the pendulum has definitely swung uh against the sun and we are now to your point where you started earlier. We have removed ourselves so much from the elements that we don't even know what we're missing and then we're just taking supplemental vitamin D thinking that's all we're missing from the sum but that's that's not even close to and I just want to say something else about energies related unrelated but I just it just came to me so I just go with it. I was just talking to someone

58:00

with it. I was just talking to someone here in LA, the neuroplasticity person I'm working with, and we were talking about like smoothies and she said, "If you're going to have the plant that you're going to make with the phytonutrients, it is so much better to take the actual plants than let's just say the green powders that are available. I don't want to say their names because of the energy that is in the plant that you are now drinking not just the finance but the energy of the living thing as opposed to the powder from a factory or whatever dehydrated. So like you might be getting some of the things in the powder but you are no way are getting the energy that is coming from the plant which is a fascinating concept and just to even build so you know this is like at the far edge of my knowledge right and my it's getting woowoo but just to add to it and take it a step further there's a lot of people who say that's why we should eat local and seasonal because the plants contain information in that energy. The energy isn't just random calorie energy, but it's actually light information. So, the plants store the information from the light that they've been exposed to throughout their life, and they're transmitting that to us. So, if I, who lives in Canada, eats a pineapple, again, I I don't have evidence to support this, but it kind of makes intuitive sense. My body doesn't know what's going on. My body, my Canadian body has never seen a pineapple growing. Yeah. And and the communication, the energy and communication that's stored in that pineapple might not be the best fit for my body. That is fascinating. Eating local, eating seasonal, which is hard to do because everything's available every time.

1: 00

time. Um, but yeah, the fascinating and I love that you said, I know we're so off topic, we think of energy and food as calories only, but there is so much more of energy and information than just the calories that we have taken away from food. Um, so as always, Dr. Elnorstein, thank you for being here with us. And I think you wanted me to mention a link. Yeah. So um I run a I have a membership and my membership we meet every other week. You get you know I give a little talk I mean something similar to what you just heard for example on all all the topics um that people with complex chronic diseases could benefit basically what do we what could we do to help us live healthier and longer and it's called Live with Dr. Stein and we'll put the link in the show notes. Yes, absolutely. I love that. How many people are in your come to your um right now? I've got about um 80. What? Yeah, that's a lot of people. It's a nice nice group size. That's amazing. And we have a community. So, you know, there's conversation in between live sessions and they get the recordings and the handouts. So, it's um quite a robust platform and way to learn. Love that. Okay, you heard it. We're going to put it in our show notes. Make sure you join the membership. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. Well, that's another episode of the medical disruptor. This is what medical disruption looks like. Not blaming, but exposing the limits of the training and pushing the conversation forward. You're part of a community that doesn't exist anywhere else. A safe space for people who want real scientific information, but also want to ask questions without being made to feel crazy. Our community is informed, empowered, and science back. Ready to go deeper? Dr. fratamandre. com has my book, PDFs, newsletter, and a link for consults. Until then, keep asking questions, keep asking for more, and keep disrupting.