#354 When Diet Isn’t Enough For Inflammation and Blood Sugar with Danielle Hamilton, FTNP

This week on The Less Stressed Life Podcast,  I am joined by Danielle Hamilton. In this episode, we get super nerdy🤓 talking about circadian and quantum biology and how it impacts our metabolic health, inflammation, gut and hormones. Dani breaks down the different kinds of light, how they affect us, and why it is important. On the flip side she tells us why darkness is also important. You are going to LOVE this episode!

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Incandescent vs LED light bulbs
• Why won't my blood sugar lower?
• Why have metabolic diseases gotten worse?
• How blue light affects our health
• Why do we need to know what time it is?
• How does seeing the sunrise/set affect our bodies?
• The importance of cortisol
• Are blue blockers and full spectrum sun lamps actually helpful?
• Why getting out in nature is so important

Dani's favorite things
Join Dani's Circadian Circle Community
Dani's Blood Sugar Mastery Waitlist

ABOUT GUEST:
Danielle "Dani" Hamilton is a Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner and a renowned blood sugar expert specializing in hypoglycemia, and reactive hypoglycemia. Her journey into this specialized field was fueled by her personal battle with PCOS, which she successfully reversed after learning that blood sugar issues and insulin resistance were at the root.
Dani uses a nuanced, holistic approach including circadian and quantum biology principles to optimize blood sugar and metabolism. She is the host of the top 50 Nutrition Podcast, Unlock the Sugar Shackles. She is also the creator of the transformative "Blood Sugar Mastery Program."

WHERE TO FIND:
Website: https://www.daniellehamiltonhealth.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/daniellehamiltonhealth

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: https://www.christabiegler.com/links

NUTRITION PHILOSOPHY:

• Over restriction is dead; if your practitioner is recommending this, they are stuck in 2010 and not evolving
• Whole food is soul food and fed is best
• Sustainable, synergistic nutrition is in (the opposite of whack-a-mole supplementation & supplement graveyards)
• You don’t have to figure it out alone
• Do your best and leave the rest

EPISODE SPONSOR:
A special thanks to Jigsaw Health for sponsoring this episode. Get a discount on any of their products. Use the code lessstressed10

Transcript

[00:00:00] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: in order to know what we're doing with lights and blue blockers and full spectrum sunlamps, If we can try to mimic nature as close as possible, it gives us the answers.

[00:00:12] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: It's the guidebook. Nature is the guidebook. 

[00:00:14] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm your host, Christa Biegler, and I'm going to guess we have at least one thing in common that we're both in pursuit of a less stressed life. On this show, I'll be interviewing experts and sharing clinical pearls from my years of practice to support high performing health savvy women in pursuit of abundance and a less stressed life.

[00:00:44] Christa Biegler, RD: One of my beliefs is that we always have options for getting the results we want. So let's see what's out there together.

[00:01:01] Christa Biegler, RD: All right, today on The Less Stressed Life, I have Dani Hamilton, who's a functional nutrition therapy practitioner and a renowned blood sugar expert specializing in hypoglycemia and reactive hypoglycemia. Her journey into this specialized field was fueled by her personal battle with PCOS, which she successfully reversed after learning that blood sugar issues and insulin resistance were at the root.

[00:01:22] Christa Biegler, RD: After overcoming PCOS, hypoglycemia, cystic acne, PMS, and weight loss resistance, she realized the power of staple blood sugar and its vital role in overall health, which drives her mission to empower others to recognize and remedy their blood sugar issues, even when the early signs are often dismissed or misdiagnosed.

[00:01:39] Christa Biegler, RD: She uses a nuanced holistic approach, including circadian And quantum biology principles to optimize blood sugar and metabolism. She's the host of a top 50 nutrition podcast, unlock the sugar shackles and also creator of the transformative blood sugar mastery program. Welcome Danielle. 

[00:01:55] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Thank you for having me excited to be here 

[00:01:58] Christa Biegler, RD: a while back.

[00:01:59] Christa Biegler, RD: I was on Danny's podcast. And I was just waiting for the right topic to come along that I wanted to interview her on. And she has recently been in a hell of a deep dive around circadian biology. And honestly, that first made its appearance here very early in COVID. Actually, there were some great, someone reminded me of these episodes recently in Instagram Messenger they shared.

[00:02:22] Christa Biegler, RD: A particular couple of episodes with a wonderful colleague of mine Jenna Griffith, and we did some COVID conversation was very progressive at the time, very early on. And we also did a lot of circadian rhythm stuff. And that was some of the foundational early stuff that showed up on the podcast.

[00:02:37] Christa Biegler, RD: That said, I have now considered it almost common knowledge and it's not. And you are bringing some cool things to the table. And the reason I asked her to come on and talk about this today is because her excitement for it is infectious right now. So I am so glad. I'd love to know how you got, I know you share about your story in your bio.

[00:02:56] Christa Biegler, RD: We could certainly talk about those pieces. Tell me why, when, how you ended up in this whole realm of circadian biology. 

[00:03:07] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Yeah, so this is a newer story that I haven't told much so maybe it'll be a little rustier but the idea is that it slowly came on because I saw a lot of people who I follow who I respect and they started talking about these concepts and they just Didn't feel that important to me.

[00:03:28] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: They didn't feel oh, wow that's so interesting. That's so cool. It was like quantum biology. Okay. I don't know what the word quantum means What is circadian really mean? What is easy water like these concepts that were frankly over my head and it's Okay, this person's gotten really into grounding.

[00:03:45] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: It's yeah, I know i've seen the documentary Earthing and whatever it just didn't have that like It didn't hit me until I just started consuming enough of it and seeing enough of it that I was able to make sense of it because I'm not a scientist. I am not a quantum physicist. So these concepts are confusing.

[00:04:04] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And so until I was really able to grasp it and break it down to this level that I was able to really understand, it then just totally Blew my mind and it was like there's a huge missing piece that I see in my practice It's like we I have I work with people with blood sugar stuff and you know I see people working really hard and they're eating really well and they're their blood sugar graph is stable and they're you know They're managing their stress and the nervous system and all that they're doing like all the things yet Their blood sugar is high in the morning Like, why?

[00:04:42] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Like, why can't we get this down? Like, why do I have to be working with you for eight months to fix this one thing and then we can't fix it? It started to be where I felt also in certain capacity, I'm like, I feel like I need more tools in my box, and That I'm missing something because I know that our food, our food landscape, if we're just zooming out and looking at the general population, our food landscape is horrendous.

[00:05:06] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And we know that. We know that there's toxins everywhere. There's, everyone has trauma and there's so many issues that are driving a lot of health issues. Yet, I feel like people are trying harder than ever, yet we're still not fully getting there, or that we have to try so hard. Understanding this piece of light and circadian biology just made everything make a little bit more sense because of how our light environment has changed over the past couple of years.

[00:05:39] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And that's another thing that was like this aha moment for me. Cause I'm like, I feel like it's getting worse exponentially. And it's been in the last couple of years that it's I know that we have exponential growth of, metabolic diseases and all sorts of things, but it has been getting worse.

[00:05:55] Christa Biegler, RD: Why in the last couple of years? 

[00:05:58] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So in the last couple of years, what's happened is that our light bulbs have changed. And I know it's like, what light bulbs? Like on a nutrition podcast talking about light bulbs yeah, this is why at first I'm just like, yeah, okay. But it starts to make sense.

[00:06:14] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So our light bulbs used to be these incandescent light bulbs. And if you use some sort of a spectrometer, you would see. see that the rainbow of colors that are coming out would be very high in the reds oranges yellows and really low in those like greens blues purples and that light spectrum mimicked sunset and there was also infrared light which is we perceive as heat coming out of those light bulbs and in Oh God, it's like, where do we even begin?

[00:06:47] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: I just don't want to say too much. These light bulbs mimicked sunset, they weren't overly harsh, and now we have those light bulbs are not able to be manufactured here, they're trying to outlaw them. There's like bans against them. They're not fully illegal, but that's the move that they're making.

[00:07:06] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: We're also under lots of fluorescent lights all day. Our windows block out red and infrared light. And that is always present in the sun spectrum. This red and infrared light makes up over 50 percent of the sun's rays. Because the lights are now moving to these LED lights, the LEDs, if you look at them under that same sort of spectrum, you're going to see peaks, huge peaks, under that blue area.

[00:07:34] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So a lot of us have heard of blue light being a problem. And , those light bulbs are very high in blue light. There's no infrared with them. And that's why, because they're energy efficient. That's why our windows are energy efficient. So anything that's energy efficient is excluding this red and infrared light that we normally had a lot of contact with.

[00:07:56] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Then there's devices. We have become more and more. Addicted I will speak for myself, more and more addicted to our devices, more and more tied to everything's on a device. Every child is, it's no more textbooks. They're using computers all day. And all of these devices have a very specific blue wavelength that they're emitting.

[00:08:16] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And that blue light raises cortisol, insulin, and blood sugar. And blue light is not bad in and of itself. It's really important and we'll talk about what. blue light does for us. But when in the sunlight, when we have blue, there's always red and infrared to offset some of those, those negatives that it might be or to balance it out.

[00:08:39] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: But what we're doing is we're creating, we're closing the windows. We're inside, we're energy efficient, and there's blue light coming from our light bulbs. There's blue light coming from our screens. There's blue light from our phones. And we're just inundated with this light that's sending a signal to our body to raise cortisol.

[00:08:57] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: To stop melatonin. So this is really important in the evening time and to raise our blood sugar and our insulin. So this is why so much metabolic dysfunction is coming about now because our light environment has changed. And it's not only the light bulbs that are in our house. It's also the street lights have changed.

[00:09:17] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: If you've noticed, not every single one, but they're changing them all over. And then also the headlights on our cars, they're like blinding now and they're the LED lights. So we're changing our light environment and it's having these huge impacts on our physiology. 

[00:09:32] Christa Biegler, RD: Let's go back and just talk about how things should be.

[00:09:36] Christa Biegler, RD: You've used the example to me that humans are like an airport. Is that a good starting point to understand the landscape of the day? 

[00:09:44] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Yes. So I'm going to go back to one more analogy before I jump to the airport. And this is a new analogy and one of the most important concepts, again, that wasn't like flashy or fun for me to learn about, but now makes so much sense is that our bodies need to be able to tell time, and this is a hugely crucial piece of information that is often looked over or not understood.

[00:10:09] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So why do we need to know? What time it is. So I like to even just use the example of let's say you're taking a nap and you wake up and for a second, you don't know where you are, what time it is, what is your first instinct? Is to try to orient yourself. Oh, 

[00:10:27] Christa Biegler, RD: whoops. I slept through the night. I don't know what day.

[00:10:29] Christa Biegler, RD: It's not a good thing. 

[00:10:30] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: It's wait, what day is it? Like you try to immediately figure out like you orient yourself. What time is it? Where am I? You need to know where you are and what time it is. And that's just our natural first instinct. When we don't know that it feels stressful, right?

[00:10:47] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: It feels really stressful. The same thing's happening inside of our body. Because why would you need to know what time it is, Christa? Because. If you knew that, okay, it's 2 p. m. on, when, Thursday, whatever day it is, and I know that I need to be on this podcast. But if you don't know what time it is, what are you gonna do?

[00:11:09] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: What are you gonna do next? Are you gonna go to the podcast? No, you're not gonna sign on to Zoom because you don't know what time it is. Why would you just guess? What to do what are you gonna go to your doctor's appointment? Are you gonna start making dinner? Are you gonna start getting ready for bed?

[00:11:23] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: We do different things depending on what time it is So we need to know what time it is. So we know what to do. Our bodies are no different So our bodies have been Design to be better at doing certain things at specific at certain times of either the day or night and humans from our earliest advent on this planet.

[00:11:47] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: We were diurnal creatures which means that is the opposite of nocturnal. I learned all these new terms. That's maybe not new for some people. It was new for me. So we are diurnal creatures, meaning we are awake by day and asleep by night. And We then evolved these abilities to be able to do certain things at certain times of the day better than if it were night time.

[00:12:12] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So we're better at solving problems, digesting and metabolizing food hunting. Being mentally sharp and solving problems. Try waking up in the middle of the night and then jumping on a podcast. Are you going to be as articulate? Are you going to be able to formulate your thoughts as well? No, because nighttime is for rest, repair, detoxification, things like that.

[00:12:33] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So just knowing that and that those are just some general, processes in the body. It's really important that we know what time it is so we know what to do next. Our body has hundreds and thousands of probably millions of tasks to do at every second of the day. So we can't just do. all of them all at once, that wouldn't work.

[00:12:57] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And so the body has developed this organizational system to be able to do what is needed at the proper time. And when we're in sync with this time, and it's heavily dictated by light, and I'll explain that in one second, that everything runs really well. So this is where the airport comes in. So our bodies are like an airport and they need to be able to do one thing at a time, just like the control tower in the airport is overseeing the flights coming in, the flights leaving.

[00:13:30] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Same thing with our body. We have a hypothalamus and we have a, this thing called the suprachiasmatic nucleus or the SCN. And we evolved these specific receptors in our eyes and on our skin called melanopsin receptors that Are sensitive to blue light. Why blue? Because it was only available during the day.

[00:13:51] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And so this blue light, the presence of blue light hits our eyes, hits our skin. And I'm going up like this because they are specifically developed in our eyes to receive light from above because the sun was above but. That blue light is the number one timekeeper or time giver actually to the body.

[00:14:13] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So this blue light appears in the sky and it gradually increases and then decreases throughout the day and then totally disappears and that is the primary signaler to our control tower in our brain of what time it is so it knows what to do. Inside of our skull, it's dark. We don't know what time it is because we can't tell.

[00:14:33] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: The light can't get in. So that's why we have these receptors to be able to tell it what time it is so it knows what to do. 

[00:14:42] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, totally. It makes sense. So this reminds me of our very first episode around circadian biology that when you see the sun right away in the morning, it's hitting the sun.

[00:14:52] Christa Biegler, RD: It's hitting the skin. It's hitting super charismatic nucleus, and it's informing your Brain your body to start producing hormones for the day. And then seeing the sunset allows you to release melatonin for a night and the blue light destroys it. It's how I've always described it to clients. And you've talked about this in terms of breakfast, right?

[00:15:12] Christa Biegler, RD: Why, what are, some of these are the way we've been living. So it's not surprising, but like you said, it makes sense. So will you talk about some of the that happen during the day? Around circadian biology in relation to breakfast, et cetera. And then the other thing I want to talk about is the windows because so often.

[00:15:30] Christa Biegler, RD: I always say to people, you can do whatever you want, but when you look at your phone right away, without blocking out the blue light, you're now telling your brain it's like middle of the day, right? Which is just confusing. And if you see full spectrum light, which the sun is not always full spectrum.

[00:15:45] Christa Biegler, RD: So we should talk about that. Also, it's usually, I always, you're going to correct me. I always say it's like before 9am, but it varies by location and year. So feel free to jump in there and correct me. But when you see that full spectrum light, that's the type of light that's hitting you.

[00:15:58] Christa Biegler, RD: But people always say, Oh I see the light through the windows when I'm driving to work. And how much does the window filter that full spectrum light? First of all, and then let's talk about full spectrum light. And when that changes throughout the day. 

[00:16:11] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Okay, so I can, I think I'll walk us through that journey of like sun up to sun down and then what happens after that and we'll talk about things like The specific windows of time for light and meal timing and why that's important.

[00:16:26] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So light is the number one time giver to the body. Meal timing is second most, but food also contains light information. So food contains photons of light. So that's an important concept to hold on to, and just coming back to the windows really quickly, I mentioned at the beginning that windows are blocking out a lot of the red and infrared.

[00:16:45] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And so it's giving us a higher than normal amount of blue because it's blocking out those other things and so one would that isn't full spectrum because we're not getting all those proper wavelengths. It also blocks out some of the purples, I believe. 

[00:17:01] Christa Biegler, RD: It's like this, it's like this invisible problem in our environment that we just don't know we have.

[00:17:06] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Totally. 

[00:17:07] Christa Biegler, RD: Totally. It's unfortunate. 

[00:17:08] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Yeah. So the first light of day is called daybreak. And this has a lot of benefits for if you can get outside for daybreak, the further towards the poles you go, the more Severe your day will change. So I know you live a little bit more north than I do So your son is probably rising significantly earlier.

[00:17:30] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: It's probably maybe in the fives, you know in the middle of summer Yeah, so my son will never in here in austin Texas is not even gonna rise in the five you know make this doable for your lifestyle But getting outside to see first light powerful because it's loaded with red and infrared light.

[00:17:50] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And I have a red light therapy panel right behind me. So all these red light therapy panels, all the amazing, wonderful scientific benefits of these panels guess what? You can get it for free right outside your window. And so you get that light on your skin and that's very healing. And it's also going to prepare your skin.

[00:18:08] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: To be receiving some of these harsher rays later on in the day. So daybreak is really powerful. And by the way there is an app called circadian and, or you can go to circadian. life to download this app. I'm not associated with them, just a huge fan. And then you can put in your location and it will tell you all these different time periods that I'm about to go through.

[00:18:30] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And it'll tell you when those are starting in your area. And then I get notifications on my phone, daybreak is about to begin. And so you can get outside during these specific times. So just a quick summary. Infrared light is, it makes up about 49 percent of the sun's rays. It's present in all sunlight, all times of the day, all year round.

[00:18:51] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So not all light is, as you mentioned. It's very anti inflammatory, supports pain relief circulation, wound healing, detox, stress reduction, immune system function. It also supports the mitochondria. It makes them more efficient at burning glucose and thereby lowering glucose levels. So this is really huge, and so we can use this as a strategy to help with blood sugar management.

[00:19:16] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And this is why When my clients go outside for daybreak and sunrise, we finally, that person who was working with me for 8 months, couldn't get her fasting blood sugar down. It went from 103 to 83 in less than 2 weeks. And it has stayed perfect because she is embracing this morning light. And so it's helping her.

[00:19:38] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: That mitochondria up regulate its ability to utilize glucose. It also builds a stuff called exclusion zone water, which is like our, it's like charged water. It's like our body battery. So energizing thinking like that and things like wifi deplete this water inside of ourselves. A lot of people with like histamine, MCA, stuff.

[00:20:00] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: They often have low cellular hydration. So getting all of this light, which like I said, it's available in all sunlight all year round really important. It also infrared light also builds subcellular melatonin. This was something I was so interested to learn that 95 percent of our melatonin is made during the day.

[00:20:22] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Only 5 percent is made from the pineal gland in response to darkness. It does need darkness in order to be transcribed. Released like that trigger to be released. So the darkness is not only five percent importance. However Thinking about okay are being inside. I'm not getting this infrared because my windows are blocking it My light bulbs don't have it anymore We are so deficient in that and then we have sleeping problems and this contributes to metabolic issues and all sorts of other issues So that is really important.

[00:20:53] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So that infrared light builds melatonin And then the red light that is also present at sunrise also is helpful for a lot of more things on the surface. So anti aging, hair growth building collagen, reducing signs of aging, things like that. So getting outside at daybreak is, can be another just, it's free.

[00:21:15] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Free benefits that you get from the sun. And then, like you said, when the sun actually comes over the horizon, that's considered sunrise. And that's the first time that blue light becomes present in our environment. And that blue light turns on that circadian clock and it says, ah, now it's time to start gently.

[00:21:36] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Raising the cortisol, we're going to turn off melatonin so then we can not feel groggy throughout the morning and it will promote wakefulness and yeah, It will rise, but so many people are like cortisol is bad. Everyone's high cortisol. We need to lower our cortisol. It's it's obviously with, as with any hormone, it's not that simple.

[00:21:55] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: We need it to be in a Goldilocks zone. It needs to have a nice curve raise in the morning and then slowly lower throughout the day. But many of us, like you mentioned, Christa are waking up and what are we doing first? Holding our phone right to our face and then we're telling our body. It's 2 p. m. And it's holy crap I need to make all this cortisol.

[00:22:14] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So we're flipping on a light or we're opening the fridge So it's giving us a giant burst of cortisol instead of this gentle drip That would normally happen as the Sun is gently rising This light also tells our body to produce pregnenolone, which is a precursor to cortisol and sex hormones so a lot of people are Very high in cortisol low in sex hormones or just super low overall and it's oh Can we use a free thing like the sun to give us some of these amazing benefits?

[00:22:47] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And then so getting outside at the beginning of the day, that's really important. And a lot of people will ask, can I look through a window? The answer is unfortunately, no contacts and glasses. Same thing. You want to make sure that you are looking through naked eyes. Other people will ask, what if it's cloudy, rainy, foggy, snowing?

[00:23:07] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: You still get that light. You still get the red and infrared. The clouds block some of the UV light, which we haven't gotten to yet, but like whatever is happening outside is the correct right stimulus for your body. So it doesn't matter as long as it's safe for you to get outside. Now, if it's like thunderstorming and there's a tornado or a blizzard, it's like super below zero and you're going to get frostbite.

[00:23:31] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Yeah. Maybe you want to crack a window instead. You can crack a window, look through a screen. Some people ask that as well. But that Idea of getting outside for sunrise is just so important, even though it doesn't seem like it is like it's just doesn't it's not glitzy. It's not glam. It's almost like this is too free.

[00:23:49] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: This is too simple to be that effective. And it really is. And then so Shortly after you see sunrise, what started to happen with me was I would always have coffee first. That's another cortisol spiker and it also is an appetite suppressant. So then I wouldn't eat until 10, 10 30 and When I learned that's you know Causing me to be running on stress hormones for a lot of the morning and a lot of this skip breakfast thing that we all started doing in 2018 Again, another thing that's like huge impact to Especially to females that it's causing we are stressed enough We don't need to add extra stress to the bucket and what I see with people who skip breakfast Consistently is that at first it works And then it doesn't.

[00:24:35] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And it's just a matter of time until it stops working that because it's just driving us to be running on cortisol, we're not taking in nutrients. So then we're like totally nutrient deprived. It's causing us to eat our meals, shift that eating window way later in the day. Then we're eating at times where guess what, because we have these circadian rhythms that say, Hey, you would do best to eat and metabolize at these times.

[00:25:00] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: We're shifting it. Out of the optimal schedule. So we're moving it closer to bed. And that's impacting our sleep. It's impacting our melatonin release. It's impacting our leptin, our insulin, our cortisol, all these things. And then we're not restoring at night. And then we wake up and we have metabolic problems because we're eating too late.

[00:25:20] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And there's also research that shows that when people skip breakfast, their subsequent meals, they have higher blood sugar responses to those meals than if they were to have eaten. Breakfast so all this to say it's really important to eat breakfast And one of the cool things is that at first when I was trying this to have my coffee after breakfast For me, it wasn't like I was totally skipping breakfast.

[00:25:43] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: It was just later I was like, oh god, i'm not gonna be hungry and i'll wake up sometimes and be like, oh man It's gonna be hard to eat, you know This morning and I go outside, watch the sunrise, you just sky gaze east and sure enough in 5 10 minutes, boom, my appetite turns on and that is a really exciting sign because that means that your hormones are really starting to regulate.

[00:26:07] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So give that at least 2 3 if not 4 weeks to work and you can. Move this forward slowly and gradually. You don't have to be like, okay, my first meal is typically at 12 I'm gonna aim for 9 a. m. Like don't go three hours try to do it You know a half an hour earlier and then another half an hour something like that so we really want to think about nourishing our body and Giving all these nutrients lots of protein that's gonna help with leptin signaling.

[00:26:35] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: It's gonna help with our metabolism with our blood sugar, insulin resistance insulin sensitivity, because that's the time of the day that we're actually most insulin sensitive. Some people with dysregulated circadian rhythms, I see the opposite, actually. They're like, Oh, that's my worst time of day.

[00:26:51] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And that's usually because they're not outside, not getting this benefit. mitochondrial issues that I see. And then the. The circadian disruption that would cause it to be the opposite. So we want to eat breakfast. And I always, I started that they 

[00:27:05] Christa Biegler, RD: feel that they don't digest their breakfast, right?

[00:27:08] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And then if you don't digest your breakfast, it could be a stomach acid issue as well. But the idea of, doing these calming practices in the morning, making the morning sacred, going outside, getting your feet on the earth. We probably won't even have enough time to talk about grounding, but The idea that we want to be Utilizing this free medicine to help our body be able to do what it does best and so the other thing is Eat outside if you can because you're going to be under all that red light You're going to be under all that infrared light and that's going to help your body Utilize all that glucose that you're putting into the system.

[00:27:48] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So it's like a again like a People talk about, maybe they're familiar with these blood sugar hacks, go for a walk after your meal, and that's great, and maybe we schedule the walk right after the meal, but eating outside is another really good strategy like that. Go ahead. 

[00:28:03] Christa Biegler, RD: I was just gonna offer, so I love when you sprinkled in your client's success with her fasting blood sugar in the morning after two weeks.

[00:28:10] Christa Biegler, RD: I also feel like all good things come after three weeks, like just be consistent with that, especially with this. I also would say that the people who are going to see The most significant difference. The fastest are the ones that are most dysregulated, right? The more screwed you are, the more screwed up you are, the bigger.

[00:28:28] Christa Biegler, RD: And I just tell Michael this is what I have seen. This will be a bigger deal if you have been, and very intelligent people do very stupid things. Let me work half the night because I need to finish a project. And so that kind of stuff catches up with you after a while you were talking about the intermittent fasting explosion of 2018.

[00:28:45] Christa Biegler, RD: I was like, I don't think anything has ever screwed my health more than that. I could never, but this is publishing at a convenient time. It's light out early. It's the longest days of the year, literally, when this is coming out. And I always change my tune about Circadian Rhythm, depending on the season.

[00:29:07] Christa Biegler, RD: When it's November, I'm talking to clients about light. Lamps, full spectrum lights on their desk or full spectrum alarm clocks and things like that. I also, something I've done for a very long time. And so I'm asking you this for your criticism or if you like this or what you add to it.

[00:29:24] Christa Biegler, RD: Another thing I like heat overhead light actually. And so it's just like naturally never been my thing. So I try to avoid it. And so when I go downstairs to work out, I just turn my red light. That's one of where my two red lights are. It's I'm just working out to red light. Like it's not really on my skin, but once you do the phone hack of like turning your phone either grayscale or red or whatnot, which is a huge one too.

[00:29:47] Christa Biegler, RD: Once you do that for the first time, it's wow. I had no idea how much my eyes did not like that other type of light. And I don't do that all day long. But these are all like little tools to work around because the reality is where I live every once in a while, it's like negative 10 degrees in the winter time and the days are late.

[00:30:08] Christa Biegler, RD: And I think that this is a big thing. I'm sure you have this too, but you have clients that go to work at 5 AM or whatever types of shifts and things like that. We should talk about night shift later, which is a tricky one. But. What would you add for like winter tools or when morning daybreak, sun, or those things are not really accessible, literally.

[00:30:26] Christa Biegler, RD: There are options. Yeah, I could bundle up at 10 degrees. I sure could. I get it. I can the reality is that majority of us humans would not. And so we'd like to have other tools in place that we can use. 

[00:30:37] Christa Biegler, RD: If you're urinating a lot when you're drinking water, maybe you're not actually hydrating that much. Or, in other words, getting the fluid and nutrients into the cell. Electrolytes are minerals that help fluid and nutrients get into the cell. I recommend all of my clients start by drinking electrolytes when we begin our work together, so to improve energy.

[00:30:56] Christa Biegler, RD: And then we get even more strategic with our electrolyte recommendations as test results come in. Now, generally electrolytes are potassium, sodium, and chloride. One of my favorite electrolyte products is pickleball cocktail from jigsaw health, because it's one of the only products you can get with an adequate dose of potassium to meet my recommendations, which is critical for blood sugar, which everyone should care about hormone health.

[00:31:18] Christa Biegler, RD: And digestion, huge thing for relapsing, digestive issues. Jigsaw health is also maker of the famous adrenal cocktail made popular by the pro metabolic corner of the internet and root cause protocol, as well as a multi mineral electrolyte for recovery called electrolyte supreme. You can get a discount on all of jigsaw's amazing products, including pickleball, electrolyte, supreme, and adrenal cocktail at jigsawhealth.

[00:31:42] Christa Biegler, RD: com with the code less stressed 10. That's three S's less stressed. Ten.

[00:31:48] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: For sure. There's a couple of other times of the day that I think are important to understand, and I'll try to go through these quickly, in order to know what we're doing with lights and blue blockers and full spectrum sunlamps, If we can try to mimic nature as close as possible, it gives us the answers.

[00:32:07] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: It's the guidebook. Nature is the guidebook. So when the, after sunrise comes UVA, and this is when the sun is 10 to 30 degrees off the horizon. And this is like one of my favorite times of day, because in this window, amazing things happen. So there's this peptide called Palm C. It's not important. It breaks down into all these amazing things.

[00:32:28] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And basically. things happen and it turns into endorphins. So we get endorphins. We get this production of alpha, beta and gamma MSH, which stimulates melanin. So melanin is like a natural sunscreen, very important because UVB is coming and that's where we make vitamin D and so many people are deficient and that's hugely impacting our metabolic health and many other things.

[00:32:52] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: But melanin, It naturally controls the appetite, has neuroprotective properties, it supports detoxification, it's capable of binding with heavy metals unbelievable. It can neutralize free radicals this time of, this light also improves fat burning, and then there's transformations, conversions of certain amino acids during, from this light, during this time of day.

[00:33:18] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: into things like serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, and thyroid hormones. So this light is preparing our skin for the UVB. It's making us feel happy and motivated and energized, and it supports our thyroid and metabolism. Okay, sign me up. And so this is where Light for me is not oh, yeah, and your circadian rhythm.

[00:33:42] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: It's no, this needs to be the foundation Upon which you place everything else and especially figure out what timing is most important Because you could have all the precursors you want to a thyroid hormone But if you never get the signal that it's time to release thyroid hormones, guess what you're not gonna do so So, people will ask how long do I need to stay out in all of this?

[00:34:08] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: You know in these different times of light and I will say Basically what you said before the sicker you are the longer you will need to stay out to see deeper healing but Three minutes is better than no minutes and 10 minutes is better than three minutes so do your best but I have people say like I did five minutes at sunrise and 10 minutes at in uva is that enough and I go well, okay Let's see how many hours you stayed inside of That would be 23 hours and 45 minutes.

[00:34:42] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So if we're spending 23 hours and 45 minutes inside, is that enough? Like I like return that question to you. So then it becomes this idea of. Okay, I need to start brainstorming. What else can I do outside? Can I take this phone call outside? Can I change my nightly? Oh, I sit down with my husband on the couch and this is our only time together.

[00:35:06] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Can we make it a stroll through the neighborhood? Like we have to start getting creative about how we can spend more time outside. UVB light comes next. It's not available in all locations all year round. You can use an another app called the D minder app to figure out if you're making D if the UV index is strong enough in your area.

[00:35:27] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And this is the most demonized and misunderstood because we're not consuming full spectrum light, and then we're. Some people are just going outside, and it's Oh, get sun, and then you get burned, and you're like that's stupid, and didn't that, isn't that what gave me cancer? It's we're doing it all wrong.

[00:35:43] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: We're inside all the time, and our skin is very deconditioned. I talked about all that red light, and the infrared light. That is very important to get on your skin. The UVA light is important because it's going to help build melanin, which is natural sunscreen. So we need to get vitamin D, which is essential.

[00:36:00] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: It's like a hormone like vitamin. It's there's so many benefits of it. I think that. Maybe we all know, maybe we don't but the idea like UVB reduces risk of cancer, boosts the immune system, it makes more melanin, and it creates free electrons in the body. A lot of us, especially with metabolic issues, struggle with our energy.

[00:36:21] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And we think, okay, I need to eat something or maybe have caffeine. Yes, when we eat, it breaks down actually into electrons, and it goes down the electron transport chain and creates ATP, which we know to be energy. It also creates that cellular water, that easy water. That's like our body battery. So food turns into energy, but also UVB light hitting our skin.

[00:36:43] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: We get electrons, turns into energy. Grounding. You step on the ground, you instantly start soaking up electrons. It turns into energy. And movement also. You move and you create electrons and it creates energy. So anyone struggling with metabolic issues or just feeling tired, which is so many of us, UVB light is a huge tool and grounding huge tools that we can use.

[00:37:07] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: This light also reduces appetite. It helps us burn fat and then. Everyone looks good with a tan, so I'll just throw that out there. But then after the UVB, then what happens at sunset, we get more red light. It's healing. So we prepared our skin in the morning. We got the UV light to synthesize vitamin D.

[00:37:29] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And then in the evening we're watching sunset and we're getting all this beautiful healing, red and infrared light. And that is how the sun shines. Vitamin D is meant to be consumed, and that is why so many people are so deficient in vitamin D because we're told to fear the sun, because yes, the sun can cause damage, but because we're not doing it properly.

[00:37:52] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So if we do it properly, that is the only way that I recommend to get vitamin D. A host of issues associated with vitamin D supplementation, and I'm not going to tell you not to take it, but I'm going to tell you to do your research. I'm going to get a vitamin D expert on my podcast actually and that's who, his name is escaping me right now.

[00:38:12] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: But that's where I'm learning about these things from, and it can, it's to supplement with a hormone like that, and, we're only testing the storage form of vitamin D, there's tons of metabolites of vitamin D, we're not testing for the active form, and yes, it can be helpful for a lot of people, but also, and I think this is a safe place to say this, vitamin D supplements are recommended by the mainstream.

[00:38:37] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And every time the mainstream recommends something, it makes me question. I'm not like, Oh, look, this is the one thing that they're getting right. So it just makes me question. And I'm not saying it's not an important, like a helpful tool for the short term, right? If it's midwinter and you're up in like Wisconsin, and you have no vitamin D, Possibility at that moment, you're really depleted.

[00:39:00] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: It might be helpful, but moving forward, if we can utilize all these strategies, that would be really helpful. And then sunset, once the sun goes down, there's no more blue light naturally in our environment. So we want to make sure that. are inside of our house matches that's where blue light blocking glasses come in. You want to turn your turn off overhead lights, at least consider finding some either incandescent bulbs are hard to find. I do some orange light bulbs, some red light bulbs, because this doesn't interfere with melatonin production.

[00:39:33] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: This doesn't tell our body to be making cortisol. And it. Will help you to a lot of people struggle to wind down and fall asleep Why because our lights are on telling us? Hey make cortisol It's daytime our devices the dopamine the scrolling and that's my hardest thing. I'm like, yeah, I block all the light But i'm still scrolling and i'm like, oh, why am I not reaching my health goals?

[00:39:57] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: It's the emfs invisible form of light. So there's a lot of things here where Doing some mitigation of light using orange lens, red lens, blue blockers, using these other colored lights whenever the sun is not up. So that also goes for the morning. So in the winter times, the sunrise is probably pretty late where you are.

[00:40:19] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And so what you want to do is if you're up and the sun is rising at seven and you're up at six, you want to throw on those orange lens, blue blockers again, because you don't want any blue light to come in before the sun. You always want the sun to be the very first blue light. Okay. That your eyes see because that's going to be the right time and so this is challenging with different latitudes and honestly, I don't feel like I have enough experience to say exactly what to do at those latitudes.

[00:40:46] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: I would say, don't wake up at 3 a. m. I would say maybe wake up more towards a normal time and just be consistent with what, whatever you do, if your son is rising super early or something like that. And we can talk about some winter strategies in a second, but this idea of mitigating the blue light is going to be really important.

[00:41:03] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And that's another thing that I see help people's blood sugar the very next day is that they mitigate the blue light at night. They fall asleep faster. They're sleeping more deeply and they wake up and their blood sugar is better. The next day. 

[00:41:15] Christa Biegler, RD: That's a fun part about blood sugar. It's a very accessible biometric data point, right?

[00:41:20] Christa Biegler, RD: And so that's pretty cool. If you see that within a day and it makes sense because it's, it's if we were able to something that we accident is an accidental failure for us that kind of goes along with your vitamin D. thing is that we put a lot more weight in our blood labs than we probably should most of the time.

[00:41:36] Christa Biegler, RD: They can change so fast with what we just ate that day. And so we often think because we do them once a year or twice a year, that they're just like set in stone. They're probably really impacted by what you ate the day before generally for almost all of the markers, not every single one, but.

[00:41:49] Christa Biegler, RD: For the most part, they are and a quick, just a side on vitamin D is that, for being such a developed nation in science and healthcare, and I think we can probably agree about this statement. We sure do things stupid sometimes, right? Like we oversimplify and I'm a fan of oversimplifying.

[00:42:05] Christa Biegler, RD: But you said something really beautiful. That was, we are nature. You did not say we are nature. I don't think, but you said you were used the word free medicine. And I always think like we are such, we are in such synergy with nature and it's how I'd like to just move forward thinking. And so when we try to depart from that.

[00:42:22] Christa Biegler, RD: We screw up to be perfectly honest. And if we just mimic more of what was already God given to us, we're probably going to be more on the right page than if we're synthetically trying to screw with it constantly. I'd love to hear since we were talking about vitamin D just a little bit and talking about hacks and now again, winter hacks on this note something I don't have a strong opinion about because I haven't been able to do some research.

[00:42:46] Christa Biegler, RD: I feel like I want to do this. a few independent research experiments on it is vitamin D lamps or bulbs. And I don't know if you have an opinion about it. 

[00:42:56] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So I have just basic emerging knowledge on it, but I feel that let's What would be optimal is to get as much vitamin D as possible. Let's say you live in a place where there's no vitamin D available in the winter because the UVB light is absent.

[00:43:14] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So what would be ideal would be to get as much vitamin D as possible. And we do that by building our solar callus. So I'm. decently tan right now. I have very pale skin, but luckily I'm half Italian, but I have built a solar callus and I have not gotten burned. The idea is you don't want to get burned, okay?

[00:43:34] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And then you can also cover your face. A lot of people are like, I don't want to age my face. You can cover your face. But the second you slap sunscreen on, you block all vitamin D. production and synthesis. So we don't want to use sunscreen as our go to. And so we get this solar callus and we build up this tan and that tan should last into some of the winter.

[00:43:58] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And what new studies are showing is that over the winter when vitamin D starts to go lower, Melatonin, some can step in and take over some of the roles of vitamin D. And because it is the season of darkness, so it's this idea of how did other people do it? Like, there were people living in Russia in, 1300, like, how did they do it?

[00:44:25] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: There were no vitamin D lamps, right? So what, what was happening? So I always question, like how did people survive? And it's almost like we need to catch up on what the body has already been doing. But in the winter, it is important, and this is something I know less about, but it is important to embrace cold, because the cold upregulate certain things like brown fat, for example, which is metabolically active.

[00:44:51] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: It helps keep us warm and it helps to burn fat. So it's a, it is a great tool. It's, I think, overused and misused nowadays. But in the colder seasons, That's when we want to lean into the cold practices. It is okay in these colder seasons to also lean into warming practices because we did always have fire, right?

[00:45:12] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So humans had fire and that's what we want our nighttimes to look like. We want to mimic the colors of fire. We want to mimic the oranges and ambers and reds of, and dimness of fire. But also that fire gave us infrared light. Energy radiation. So and if you look at all different cultures, there's Russian and Turkish baths There's hammams.

[00:45:33] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: There's sweet at Finnish saunas like in all these different cultures there was always some sort of a warming thing like and they do polar bear plunges and like snowbathing so Throughout our human history, we have always used hot and cold as well to help the body. And now what are we doing?

[00:45:54] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: A thermostat set to a nice 72? That's, that feels good. It's we don't venture from this little tiny temperature range, and we're not getting advantage of the benefits that come from, the sweating from the saunas and things like that. I could just feel it. walk outside. I live in Texas now.

[00:46:12] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So now I don't have to do sauna. I'm just going to go outside, pour sweat and be like, I'm doing a sauna and sun session at the same time. But leaning into the cold, leaning into the darkness. And then I would love to talk a little bit about a topic that has to do with what we should eat in the winter.

[00:46:30] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And this has to do with this. Word that scared me initially called deuterium and deuterium is a heavy form of hydrogen So hydrogen if we remember back to middle school biology or chemistry What is the first element on the periodic table? It has one proton and one electron and Hydrogen that is called deuterium has one proton, one neutron and one electron.

[00:46:56] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So it's basically double the weight. So I talked earlier very quickly about the electron transport chain and how electrons go through this little chain and then. At the end comes ATP and cellular water and a bunch of other stuff, but I'm not a scientist, so we're not going to go into all the details.

[00:47:14] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: But there's this one step of the electron transport chain that hydrogens go through and it's a tiny spinning, it's called a nanomotor, which I think is really cute. So it's a spinning nanomotor and it can easily fit one hydrogen. But deuterium has two basically two basketballs instead of one basketball and it jams up this motor And so it creates like mitochondrial issues, which will impact every single cell.

[00:47:42] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: It impacts our metabolism. It has far reaching consequences. So deuterium is typically where do we find deuterium? We find it from its produced from a lot of UV light, if a lot of UV light is around, and it's also found in fruits, it's found in sugars. So it's found heavily in foods that can only grow where there's a lot of UV light.

[00:48:06] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: It's also found in the water closer to the equator, there's much less as you go towards the poles. And why is nature doing that? Because there's certain things that help us excrete this deuterium or keep it out of our mitochondria. And those are things like UV light. And so this UV light and sweating and sauna is actually a really good one.

[00:48:30] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Helps us to not be, let's say affected by this deuterium that's messing up our mitochondria, our little powerhouses in ourselves. If someone lives in, let's say, Canada, and it's the wintertime, and their UV light is non existent, there's no infrared light. Infrared is another one that helps us excrete the deuterium.

[00:48:52] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: If someone's eating a banana that's been imported from Costa Rica, The light code in that banana is going to be totally different from what's outside, and that banana is loaded with deuterium. Same thing with your coconut water that you mentioned earlier. But, since, what you want to do, ideally, the takeaway of this is try to eat foods That were grown around your area.

[00:49:16] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: This is where local and seasonal really shines. And it's hard because you go to a grocery store and it's these oranges are from Chile and these blueberries are from California. And this is from Mexico and this is from Costa Rica. And it's what about anything from Texas? Has anything been grown by me?

[00:49:31] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So it's hard to see, but this deuterium. Can slow down the mitochondria. It drives metabolic disease. And oftentimes it's not like our carbs good or bad. It's what about your latitude? What about where you're living? What about your environment? Do you have the ability to excrete the deuterium that are coming with all these carbs?

[00:49:53] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And then the other thing is that UV light changes our gut microbiome. So if, when the UV light hits our skin, it changes the gut microbiome to be better able to digest. And metabolize simple sugars. So what you'll probably find is if you use a continuous glucose monitor, what you'll see is that very likely you can eat a banana in Canada in the winter, and you would probably get a significant blood sugar spike from it, depending on other factors, but then you can eat that same banana.

[00:50:24] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: In July in Costa Rica, and you would have a much better response to the banana and it would do. Much less harm to your mitochondria. 

[00:50:36] Christa Biegler, RD: It's a tricky situation, right? Because it's I like to know it, and yet perfectionist tendencies will latch on to a little bit like, oh, I can't eat that. And instead, the invitation is not perfection, But a mindful movement toward eating what's in season and changing it up.

[00:50:56] Christa Biegler, RD: Cause we tend to, I don't know if you have huge fan of automation. So it's I love automation, but sometimes we automate the same things over and over. And so just buy what's on sale and, or grow. I know that the real flex here is like spending as much time outside as possible and growing all your own food in that is really essential.

[00:51:13] Christa Biegler, RD: stepwise thing that was modeled very well to me as a child. And yet I do not water things. And so fortunately my 10 year old is taking over feeding me now. Easy to talk about things in the summer. I'm glad this episode is coming out in the summer because it's not really too late in most people's places to do some of these things.

[00:51:30] Christa Biegler, RD: So all like super beneficial, like it's when you start learning about this, your brain starts to explode. I know we're not even hitting necessarily a ton on structured water or grounding too much, but you've given a little lip service to it. And so I do want to summarize big picture, light stuff.

[00:51:47] Christa Biegler, RD: And I do want to make sure we feel like we gave enough lip service to what if I have to leave my house at 5 AM and I've got this cause people have these scenarios that it's I have to make it work for my life in this modern toxic crap soup that I live in. With all the lights. So I got to make this work. And then I think also, so let's run through that. And then I think you have some notes also, since we're mostly talking about light today, I think, and this, maybe we'll just insert this here before we get to summary. You shared some information with me previously about gut healing that happens in darkness.

[00:52:21] Christa Biegler, RD: Do you want to share about that? 

[00:52:22] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Oh, yes that our guts need to have complete darkness in order for all the cells to turn over. So this is another nod toward we need really bright days and we need really dark nights. So many processes are mediated by melatonin. And that think about, Basically, every repair process in your body is mediated by melatonin and melatonin needs that absolute darkness.

[00:52:50] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So a pair of I had these you block out shades, a hundred percent blackout is phenomenal. That was like an amazing investment I made, but even just making sure that you don't have a glowing green light on your, on, A smoke alarm or

[00:53:05] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: something like that and just take a piece of electric tape and put it right over So there's little tiny things we can do but I wanted to come back to the idea of the perfection thing I want to say I have not mastered the eating locally and seasonally yet and there are some days where I tell my audience I'm completely addicted to my phone.

[00:53:24] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And so I started using this thing called app block and I'm turning it earlier and earlier. So I'm blocking Instagram. So I am a work in progress. Everyone should be a work in progress. And the idea is not the cool thing is we don't have to be perfect to find healing. Like one night of blue light isn't going to kill you.

[00:53:42] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So that's good to know. Like it's not going to do that. And it's what we do consistently. That's going to make the biggest. Impact on our health and that's what our body is looking for. It's looking for some consistency So if you consistently do the best you can you're gonna have so many More benefits than if you just one day like stand outside for an hour that's not going to be as helpful as the three minutes that you can log in the morning because You have to take the kids to school, you know Sometimes it just looks like I can open the window today and I could keep the like I have a window cracked right here I turned my screen a little bit More red right now.

[00:54:18] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: I'm gonna do some red light and go outside after this like we have to figure out How to be okay with the fact that we live inside like we live inside you can Move to a field live in a tent not have emfs around not use lights But what kind of life do you want to have? So I do 

[00:54:36] Christa Biegler, RD: live in a field and there's, okay, 

[00:54:38] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: yeah, there are, there's trade offs.

[00:54:42] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So the main thing I would say is investing in a pair of orange lens, blue blocking glasses. My personal favorite brand is Viva Rays because it has a yellow base pair, which I use sometimes during the day. And then it magnetizes like the orange ones and the red ones on top. Big fans. Yeah, it's nice and convenient, but getting an orange pair of blue blockers, this is going to be helpful because.

[00:55:06] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Not everyone in your family is going to go for this right away. The other thing is you can just start swapping out some light bulbs. So I have a 7 red light bulb in my bedroom. One of the lamps in my bedroom has a white light bulb. The other one has red. Guess which one I turn on at night. Red light. Easy, easy little switch.

[00:55:24] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So even if it's like, Oh, my family still has the lights on, maybe you control the bedroom. And then what you're going to find is you're going to fall asleep really quickly with that. You can turn your phone screen to red. You can do it in the settings where you just triple click the side button, boom, it turns red.

[00:55:40] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And then you use those same blue blocking glasses if you have to wake up early and then you're done. Sitting in the carpool line when the sun is rising you take off those glasses crack the window That the light is still coming in so the cool thing is that they're not these strategies For many people are not super unattainable and they're just like little things that we can do that really move the needle and then maybe instead of Going for a walk before You know your breakfast, maybe you just switch it to after breakfast So you're not You know, asking your body to use cortisol.

[00:56:14] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So sometimes it's just gently switching timing of things 

[00:56:18] Christa Biegler, RD: and what works for you, right? 

[00:56:20] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Totally. Yeah. But I would say that light piece is important. And then just taking breaks to get outside or open a window and just look at the sky for a couple of minutes, reminding your body, Oh, it's 12 PM. Oh, okay.

[00:56:32] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: It's 3 PM. 

[00:56:33] Christa Biegler, RD: And the stack here is that this is even better, because when we stop and we're thoughtful about this or intentional about it, we're bringing intentionality and consciousness to our entire life. And part of what unrealized stress is just being completely unconscious to everything. It's you just keep going.

[00:56:48] Christa Biegler, RD: And so by. Triggering ourselves to stop and pay attention to something beautiful, something nature. It's this 

[00:56:55] Christa Biegler, RD: instant positive benefit for the nervous system. So we can look at it like that, too. I had a question for you about the two Tyrium. So I just saw a research paper about this yesterday.

[00:57:06] Christa Biegler, RD: I didn't read it. It's just open on my phone and one of those hundreds of tabs. I may not read. I'm wondering if you have any one that's a thought leader or researcher sometimes see all this bumbling online And I feel when I see that research, I'm like, I'm sure there's many more.

[00:57:19] Christa Biegler, RD: And so it's who is doing this work? And someone's promoting it right online now, which is good. And then it takes off and more people promote it. But I kind of wonder who are those thought leaders in that space or researchers? 

[00:57:30] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So Dr. Laszlo Boros is the number one deuterium researcher and Who I've learned all of this stuff from is Carrie Bennett.

[00:57:40] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: She's phenomenal. She's Carrie B. Wellness on Instagram. I've also learned a lot from my friend Sarah Kleiner and Yeah, but Laszlo Boros is a deuterium researcher 

[00:57:52] Christa Biegler, RD: And I think the listeners here will enjoy this thoroughly. Like we're just a bunch of nerdy geeks that are, I am basically always looking for what can I now do for clients that are, it's like free low cost one time.

[00:58:04] Christa Biegler, RD: It's duh. And I love the concept of like free medicine, like beautiful. I freaking love it. As we wrap up on this though, sometimes again, like I, so I love results and like people love results. And so again, if you're not super screwed up, you may not see some dramatic thing.

[00:58:22] Christa Biegler, RD: However some people talk about this being a huge Pete of weight loss resistance, which I think matches everything you said does that's not really my thing. I always tell people I'm going to work on the things that are primarily making your body feel unsafe to lose that way. But if your thyroid isn't getting signaling, then you're going to have weight loss resistance. So anything you want to say about that, because that just drives this point home to be sexy to people. 

[00:58:46] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Sure. So this has a lot to do with a hormone called leptin. So leptin is a hormone made in our fat cells and leptin's job. It every night between about 12 to 2 a.

[00:58:58] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: m Is supposed to go up to the brain to the hypothalamus and say, all right Here's danny's rundown of all the energy she has on her body. She's got this much body fat She's got this much stored sugar in her liver and her muscles and you know what? It's a little excess So tomorrow I want you to just lower the appetite a little bit don't worry about getting extra food and feel free to you know burn some of that extra fat that feels That's fine You That's one way leptin should work to help balance our weight.

[00:59:26] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: But oftentimes what happens is that the leptin cannot communicate to the hypothalamus. So when the hypothalamus does not receive the report from leptin, because there's resistance there, or there's something competing with leptin, To dock with the hypothalamus which would be cortisol or insulin which are both raised by blue light So when we have blue light at night Leptin cannot communicate to the hypothalamus and the hypothalamus goes.

[00:59:55] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Oh my god. I did not get the rundown from leptin We are starving. So tomorrow I need you to raise danny's appetite I need you to make her extra anxious because she needs to go out and get food and definitely slow down turn off fat burning Because there's a famine and we need to hold on to those reserves 

[01:00:11] Christa Biegler, RD: That was very compelling.

[01:00:12] Christa Biegler, RD: You could be the voice, there's the girl online and she always pretends to be like tampons and periods and it's, she's a comedian and you could have just been the hormone conversations right there. Very compelling storytelling there. 

[01:00:25] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: But yeah, so leptin is a hormone all about light.

[01:00:29] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: And our leptin levels are very heavily signaled by light. And so there's much more complex science in it, but I'm not quite there yet. And that's okay. Cause I have what I need to know, but I have a lot of people who are starting to lose weight and all this stuff about the light, like decreasing your appetizing, increasing fat burning, like we're designed to be in the light as much as possible, ever noticed like a long day at the beach, you're just not.

[01:00:53] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: As hungry as you normally are, right? It's like sometimes you don't even think about food. Your body is just getting so much energy from other sources that it makes sense that you wouldn't be as hungry. When I started grounding a lot, I started noticing I was less thirsty and that's 

[01:01:09] Christa Biegler, RD: because 

[01:01:10] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: My body's making more metabolic water.

[01:01:12] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: I used to be constantly drinking water. And I feel like I cut it in half and it's at a good amount now. So that's really good. But one of the things that you mentioned earlier that I just wanted to speak to about my own experience with doing some of this is that I've been struggling with some mental health stuff lately.

[01:01:29] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Cause I don't want to know if I want to call it mental health stuff, but I've been. Grieving and depressed because I'm going through a divorce. And so my moods have been so helped by doing these strategies and just thinking about oh, in UVA light, I get serotonin and dopamine and endorphins and norepinephrine like, yeah, I'll take some of those lovely brain chemicals, and then the idea that you're sitting in your, In nature and you're prioritizing getting in nature and then you're so happy to be in nature and you're looking around and it's so Regulating to our system and so like I did go to Costa Rica and I was just like, you know in the water Watching the sun go down by myself Just like bawling crying at like the connection and the beauty and I think that so many of us just want to feel Connected with people we want to be reminded that there is Beauty in this life and you know a lot of things that I shared Like I don't want people to get afraid about this I want you to feel empowered and to just do the best you can and you know You don't have the glasses.

[01:02:36] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: It's okay, but like to remember that we are nature and the further we get from that The worse we're gonna feel the worse our health is gonna be but we're just not gonna feel right And so I find that I feel my best and I feel the most regulated and I feel the least stressed when I am outside and getting in nature and even just taking a moment to like It makes you grateful to be out there and it's wow It just shifts something and I see some of my clients really every day on their stories They're posting the sunrise and they're like, oh the sun like it's You know the whole reason why any life on earth exists.

[01:03:13] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: It's no wonder why this is like the most important thing Like it's got to be the most important because it's where we come from all we're trying to do is get the sun's energy to be alive and so that is all we're trying to do so it's When I finally realized that piece like I have chills now that's what Makes so much sense to me because it's so simple yet so profound and so vast and so Ancient and it's all of a sudden Like it's also a very spiritual thing for me.

[01:03:43] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: I feel like I don't know why I'm going to cry like wisdom from our ancestors and like all these like cultures that revered the sun and it's just there's just a really a really deep connection you feel to all life. And it's that's what's so powerful about these practices. So I always 

[01:04:03] Christa Biegler, RD: say to my clients, like when someone cries at a breath work session or whatever, I always think like, why did God give us tears if we can't let them out?

[01:04:10] Christa Biegler, RD: Like their emotions that we're letting out. And what I'm hearing and seeing and feeling from you is that. These practices have changed you in a more visceral way than you could even describe. And it's it sounds to someone who has not experienced that connection, they're either jealous of what you just expressed, or they're just so disconnected that they're like, that's nice.

[01:04:31] Christa Biegler, RD: Next. And that's okay. That's okay. Cause we're all just like on this journey of where we are. It's man, we are so small. Where we are, right? That's it's good. Once upon a time, someone said something that has always stuck with me and has come true many times.

[01:04:46] Christa Biegler, RD: It's that there's really just two emotions, happiness and fear, but someone brought up another one and the other one is awe. And that's the beauty of nature. It's it is awe and you can, the research is endless. Like when you get into nature for 15 minutes, now you have two hours of stress resilience.

[01:05:01] Christa Biegler, RD: And so it's how can we, I like to just think about that because you said it's once it gets nice and before the mosquitoes come, I'm like, Oh, I wonder if I could just go outside for my appointments. And I was like, I could. As long as it's not too windy, I could, yeah, I could make it happen.

[01:05:17] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: So yeah, a really good hack for mosquitoes. I found this on Instagram, tested it, it worked. Get a little jar, put some coffee grinds in it, light the coffee grinds, and they just burn for hours. And the smoke from it, just make sure you're not too close to it. Cause it's like smoky. But put it in your area.

[01:05:34] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: No mosquitoes. Amazing. And a jar? 

[01:05:36] Christa Biegler, RD: Coffee grounds. Yeah. Interesting. Coffee grounds and a little got some really good coffee that has expired and I was like feeling really guilty oh. 

[01:05:44] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Mosquito repellent for the entire summer. 

[01:05:47] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, there you go. I don't know if that's enough. There's going to be a lot of jars where I live, but I'm going to definitely try that because I feel like I always need something and why not?

[01:05:54] Christa Biegler, RD: So excellent. Perfect. Sweet. Oh, Dani. Where can people find you online? 

[01:05:59] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: I hang out on Instagram a lot, Danielle Hamilton health, and my podcast is currently unlocked the sugar shackles, but that's going to change soon. Not sure what yet, but that's going to change soon. And that's my website, Danielle Hamilton health website.

[01:06:14] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: YouTube, all the things. 

[01:06:15] Christa Biegler, RD: And what Danielle's experience right now as this evolution and your clinicians, I hope we're always evolving, right? Because we don't know what we don't know. And I hope I didn't sound too judgmental of our medical system with vitamin E, but that's my opinion is like, wow, we think it's that simple, 

[01:06:32] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: right?

[01:06:32] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Like we think we can replace the entire sun with one. Little isolated nutrient and that's what it is. Like I see a vitamin D deficiency as a sunlight deficiency and a melatonin deficiency as a darkness deficiency. So and maybe sunlight as well because we build so much of it during the day. But yeah, 

[01:06:53] Christa Biegler, RD: I love that crack in the window.

[01:06:54] Christa Biegler, RD: It's yeah I get people they're like, Oh, I didn't get to do that. So just crack the window. Like I think I always like to come back to what are the simple things you can do. And I think there's a lot of beauty here. And I think there's future conversations around more of these beautiful topics about free medicine.

[01:07:09] Christa Biegler, RD: So thank you so much for coming on today. 

[01:07:11] Danielle Hamilton, FTNP: Thanks for having me.