Unlocking the Healing Power of Sunlight: Transforming Children's Health with Dr. Alexis Cowan

Sunlight exposure is crucial for supporting overall health by influencing mitochondrial function and regulating biological processes. 

Today's guest, Dr. Alexis Cowan has a PhD in molecular biology from Princeton and operates at the interface of physiology and metabolism, which basically means she studies how our bodies work and use energy. Her focus areas include circadian biology and how sunlight and toxic artificial light affects our health, microbiome-host interactions which looks at how our gut bacteria interact with us, and how does food and exercise affect our metabolism. 

Dr. Cowan stresses the significance of sunlight exposure in promoting optimal health, emphasizing its role in boosting mitochondrial ATP production and structuring water within the body. Particularly, red and infrared light from the sun directly impact mitochondrial function, leading to enhanced metabolism and energy production.

Dr. Cowan's insights highlight the importance of natural light exposure for health, emphasizing the significance of spending time outdoors and optimizing the light environment. By incorporating these practices into daily life, children can experience improved cognitive function, enhanced critical thinking skills, and overall well-being.

[00:01:12] Psychedelic experience sparking scientific interest.

[00:05:08] Impact of light on biology.

[00:08:29] Sunlight importance for children's health.

[00:12:34] Harmful Effects of Screen Time.

[00:15:19] Blue light's impact on health.

[00:16:37] Sunlight benefits mitochondrial health.

[00:21:22] Melanin's role in sunlight absorption.

[00:24:45] Benefits of Sun Exposure.

[00:27:30] Sun exposure and melanoma rates.

[00:31:31] Red and infrared light benefits.

[00:32:57] Melanin and skin pigmentation.

[00:37:45] Mitochondrial adaptation to climates.

[00:40:47] Ignorance around light and health.

[00:43:36] Optimizing baby's light environment.

[00:48:07] Baby monitor and blue light.

[00:50:42] Rise in childhood diseases.

[00:54:47] Melanin in autism research.

[00:56:19] Benefits of infrared light therapy.

[01:00:30] Spending money on solutions

[01:03:34] Gut microbiome research misconceptions.

[01:07:26] Gut health for children.

[01:11:59] Gut microbiome optimization protocol.

[01:13:01] Researching medical information online.

[01:18:01] Seeking quality information and viewpoints.

[01:21:08] Questioning preventative dentistry practices.

[01:24:24] Sunlight exposure and fertility.

[01:26:46] Tracking Hormones for Birth Control.

[01:29:44] Fertility and mitochondrial health.

[01:33:43] Sunlight and mental health benefits.

[01:38:37] Children's health and environmental impact.

Dr. Cowan's Instagram:
DrAlexisJazmyn

Lena's Instagram:
lena.livinsky

Transcript

Lena Livinsky:
Dr. Cowan I'm so excited and honored to have you here today because I have been learning from you for the past few months. And even though it's been a few months, I feel like you have made the biggest impact on my health. So I'm just so excited to have you on the show. Thank you for coming on.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Thank you for having me. It's a long time coming. And I know we're gonna have a great, great chat. You're always very inquisitive and tapped in. So I think we're gonna really be able to shed some light on important topics for people.

Lena Livinsky: I think so too. Thank you. So before we get started with all my questions, could you share a brief background about yourself and how did you get into researching sunlight and its effect on our health?

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yeah, so this could probably be an hour podcast by itself, but I'll try to keep it brief. So I completed my PhD at Princeton in the Rabinowitz Lab, which is one of the top metabolism research labs in the world. I graduated in 2021. Prior to that, I did my bachelor's at a small college called Moravian College, studying biochemistry and math. And if we go back before that, I actually, the reason that I ended up going into that space, like into science, was from a really powerful psychedelic experience that I had actually. And so I was initially in culinary school after high school. and then I went and visited one of my best friends at Moravian where she was and she was studying chemistry and I ended up tripping on LSD for the first time. That was like my first psychedelic experience that weekend that I went and visited her and it just was like so mind-opening in so many ways and just really made me curious about wanting to learn more about just the nature of reality and I feel like science was the way to kind of get there. I mean there's multiple ways to get at it but I think science really emerged as like There's something that I, you know, just kind of have a knack for here, and I really want to just learn more about how things work. just like the structures that underlie biology and life. And so I ended up going into biochemistry because I thought it would be more applicable to my general interest with regards to like nutrition and metabolism. Also, maybe a brief tangent, but before I went to college, I had lost 100 pounds in my junior into senior year of high school. And so that kind of catalyzed part of my healing journey, I would say, because I had a lot of health issues as a child. from like really traumatic dental procedure when I was two years old to like chronic recurring strep throat in first grade, then childhood obesity. I think I had a lot of black mold in my home, had a lot of skin infections, respiratory infections, and just overall my health was very poor up through high school. And so the weight loss was kind of the first phase of catalyzing my healing journey and kind of opened my eyes to at least my personal ability to take charge of my health and do something about it. But there were also issues that came along for the ride with that weight loss journey including an eating disorder and then shortly thereafter irritable bowel syndrome or ulcerative colitis as well. And so those were kind of my first initiation into really understanding like What am I doing in my life that is influencing these disease states and what can I do to heal them? And so that was also definitely underlying my interest in science and wanting to understand more about health, the body, biology, just so I could hurt like I could help myself and then ultimately always kind of had an interest in helping other people as well. So I ended up going to Princeton, studying in the metabolism lab there, primarily was studying the differences across like ketogenic, high carbohydrate diets and fasting and feeding as it relates to how tissues and different organs like change their metabolism in those different conditions. And then when I graduated, I started my own business because I wanted to work with people. I was particularly interested in working with athletes and other high performers to really work at the performance optimization side of the spectrum. But I very quickly transitioned the bulk of my practice to working with people who are more disenfranchised with the standard medical model because I found just in my, you know, time spending on social media and people interacting with people online that there was a huge subset of the population that fell into this category that were just fed up, that were, you know, dealing with chronic diseases but not actually receiving any solutions for these chronic diseases and they were just suffering and wanted to figure out how to not suffer anymore. That became a major focus of my practice is like developing protocols and approaches and having consultations with individuals to help them re-engineer their life, essentially, to create health versus just trying to drug or supplement your way out of a symptom. And then I went back to school, kind of. I did a postdoc at UPenn in 2023, which I wrapped up earlier this year. And now I've really been focusing back on building my business and my brand with really a focus on just trying to, I would say, scale this information to get it out to more people because at some point along this journey last year when I was in my postdoc, I came across Dr. Jack Cruz's work and the impact of light on biology and how it's absolutely, you know, there's key wavelengths of light that regulate very crucial aspects of biology, but without them we run into some real issues. Notably, like absence or deficiency in sunlight in particular and key wavelengths within sunlight is a huge problem from a chronic disease burden standpoint. And so I went down the rabbit hole on that starting last year and I've basically kind of reconfigured my entire practice to be able to unpack this information for people so that it's actionable, understandable, and also just really kind of pushing the boundaries of the science and like the practice of lifestyle optimization and disease remediation as well. And so, I mean, I've seen the most transformation in my own health and life since living a more outdoor lifestyle and really reconnecting with nature and helping other people to do the same. And like the results that I hear from all the time are just, you know, miraculous. And it's just so simple. It's nothing complicated. It's basically free. And so I feel like it's the most empowering space to be in right now. And I'm really excited about it.

Lena Livinsky: Oh my gosh, yes, this is incredible because I have started applying this to my life and I've been on this healing journey for years and years and years and I've seen just so much change in my body over the last few months and I'm like oh my this is this is incredible like I literally feel lighter and energetic, just even grounding and being in sunlight. Like it's a physical phenomenon. And it's just like our body is craving it. And we're just not talking about it enough. So thank you for being in the space and bringing this information to us.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: It's my pleasure. I am literally obsessed with it. I can't shut up about it. People probably get annoyed at some point. But I'm like, I can't, I'm just like word vomiting everything that I know, because I just want to help people. And I'm just like, it's very interesting science, too, which makes it extremely fun. It's not only practical, but it's very intellectually stimulating.

Lena Livinsky: Oh, absolutely. And I love how you share it on social media and across your channels in general, because it's so digestible. So every day I like I look for your posts, and I'm like, Oh, okay, so this this, I didn't know this. So this is so cool.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: I try I try to show up before. Actually, only earlier this year I started posting very frequently. I was trying to post every weekday because there's just so much information that people don't know. And I think it's easy for me to just assume like, oh, you know, people will know this, I don't need to post about it. But actually, no, it's like really we need to dial in the basics, providing that information and also in repetition. So it's really like people are reminded about it frequently and then it starts like kind of getting, let's say, worn into the system so they can kind of put it on autopilot and don't have to think about it as much. But there's especially because of all the propaganda and the anti-sun rhetoric that's in our culture, we really require a lot of, I would say, reassurance or just re-approaching the science that already exists to show, actually, no, this is not only is it safe to go out in the sun, but it's absolutely essential. It's not negotiable.

Lena Livinsky: Oh, 100%. And my podcast in general focuses on children's health. And I feel like we need to talk about that so much because now one in two children or even more at this point has a chronic disease. There's so many issues with our children because of the toxic lifestyle that we have, I believe. So I kind of wanted to ask you this loaded question, but why is sunlight exposure so important to our children's health?

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yeah, I love this question largely because we live in a society now that's like digital babysitting is the norm. And I think in 10, 15 years, we're going to look back at that as child abuse. Now that we're finding out the absolute havoc that being on devices and screens that are highly blue lit and, you know, devoid of key frequencies of light, including the red and infrared light part of the spectrum that you receive from the sun, when you're getting that blue light in isolation, that's blasting the eyes and the face and the skin. it just wreaks havoc on the child's nervous system because that nervous system doesn't become fully myelinated until like mid-20s. And so that means the nervous system is actually more vulnerable to outside forces, specifically like electromagnetic forces, especially the non-native ones because our biology did not evolve to encounter them. So that includes like the LED lights, the fluorescent lights, like the white ones, all of our device screens, the tablets, the phones, the computers, the TVs. They all have these blue pump LEDs, which means that they're highly enriched in blue light innately. And then they basically use filters to then make it look like all the other colors that you see. But underlying that is actually a predominantly blue light LED. And I just recently interviewed Dr. Martin Moore Ede on this topic. And he's the man who discovered the master clock in the human brain, the suprachiasmatic nucleus that's required for setting the circadian rhythm in the brain and the body. And that circadian clock is set by blue light coming in from the eyes. And so we're meant to encounter blue light from sunlight, you know, while the sun is in the sky, we're going to be receiving blue light from that. But we're never meant to encounter blue light outside of that period of time where the sun is up. And we're always meant to encounter blue light with an abundance of red and infrared light. So midday sun is over 50% red and infrared light and something like less than 30 or maybe 20 something percent blue light. We're talking about especially midday sun. And so the advent of modern tech and devices are really making us blue light toxic and especially the children because their nervous systems are more vulnerable and more likely to be harmed by not only the blue light but also the non-native EMFs that come along for the ride with regards to like the Bluetooth, the Wi-Fi, the 5G. the 4G, etc. And so if I see, you know, young kids wearing like AirPods or wireless headphones on the tablets, like I literally am just it hurts me inside because I know what that's doing to their brain, to their development. And it's a lot of that damage. You can make progress if that damage has occurred. But a lot of that can take a long time and a lot of effort to actually reconfigure and like, regenerate and heal because especially because these blue light devices also hijack the dopamine system. And that's why kids are obsessed with this tech, like they literally can't get enough of it, because it's hijacking their reward system and making them addicted to it. It's making their dopamine levels depleted, their dopamine systems burned out. So now they're going to be more likely to have things like ADHD or have things like mood disorders or bad temperaments or acting out, so to speak, and not being able to sleep. Blue light directly inhibits melatonin release from the pineal gland. So you cannot sleep if you're getting blue light after sundown, which we're not meant to encounter today. Most people, when it gets dark, they're throwing all the lights on in the house. They're still on the TVs and whatever else. That's directly impairing your ability to fall asleep you know, within a reasonable window of time because that melatonin is not being released and melatonin is required to get to sleep and then stay asleep and have good quality sleep. So there's just so many implications to tech use for children. And if we're going to have our kids using tech, we should ideally have been having them do that outside. And if they're not outside, then at least at the very least, we should be having filters on that tech to remove some of that blue light burden and add some red back in. And that's why also I'm just like, it hurts my soul to see the push towards like tablets and Chromebooks and stuff in schools. Now these kids are literally sitting on screens from the time they wake up to the time they go to sleep. And it's literally, I can't think of anything worse for their biology than that behavior.

Lena Livinsky: Oh my goodness, 100%. And then you have these 5G towers going up by the schools and by churches and hospitals and everywhere else where we have so many large gatherings of people and children. And it's just so scary to see because like you said, we're not going to really truly know the effects of this until much later. And then we're going to be like, well, this is what we did wrong. So thank you. for sharing that information because I think it's not talked about enough. I got my son the red light, blue light blocking glasses, the orange ones. Amazing. He's learning to wear them. He doesn't love it, but if he doesn't wear it, the TV doesn't come on at all.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: That's great. There are some solutions. You can do the blue blocking glasses. For sure, that's great. If people are in the market for those, make sure you're getting a good pair. They should block about 100% of blue light. There's a lot of them on the market that aren't good at all. Like if it has a clear colorless lens, that's a sign that it's not gonna do anything. Maybe it'll block like 5%, it's not really that helpful. A lot of the coatings that you'll get on prescription glasses, they say blue blocking and that doesn't work. Like if you can see blue light when you're looking through them, they're not working. When you wear a good pair of blue blocking glasses, if you look at something blue, it looks gray. Especially if it's like a blue LED of some sort, you literally will not see the color blue at all. and that's how you'll know it's working. There's daytime versions as well that have like a yellow lens that filters about 60% of blue light out, but the nighttime ones are gonna be the dark orange lens, and that's how you'll know that they're legit. You can also use software like Iris for computers. It's like www.iristech.co. That's a software you can download that will remove blue light from your computer. There's different settings that will remove more blue light at night versus the daytime, and there's different ways to play around with it, and very easy to turn on and off as needed as well. And for TVs, so like for example, our TV that we have in our living room upstairs has, if you go into the advanced picture settings, you can actually turn the whole TV like red. So there's like an RGB setting. So if we're going to watch TV at night, it's in the red mode. Our other TV downstairs, we don't have the red option. So we usually turn the backlight way down and then we'll just pop on blue blocking glasses. So there are options and ways to kind of work around this without having to just stop using tech altogether that will have a massive benefit to you.

Lena Livinsky: 100%. It's something you get used to because when I put the filter on my phone initially, I was like, oh, but I can't really see. I had to turn it off to watch something. After a while, it's kind of like second nature. It doesn't bother you at all.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yep. Totally, totally. You're really protecting your dopamine system and your eyes and the photoreceptors, the light receptors in your eyes and skin that are very sensitive to blue light, specifically melanopsin is the blue light detector. If you blast those photoreceptors in your eyes and your skin with narrow band blue light like you receive from tech and like artificial lights it destroys those photoreceptors and makes you less sensitive to that light and it also hijacks like I said before the dopamine system so you're literally like want you crave to be on the screens more in addition to burning out your dopamine system, that's not the only implication, but also things like drug addictions, drugs, alcohol, pornography, gambling, anything that has like a compulsive behavior behind it is directly related to the dopamine status of the individual. And the more that you can enhance your baseline dopamine by leveraging sunlight and nature, the more autonomy and sovereignty you're going to have and the less of those like compulsive behaviors are going to be able to grip you. Wow.

Lena Livinsky: And now, I know being in sunlight will mitigate some of the blue light effects, but how about the EMF effects? Does it mitigate it as well?

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yeah, so I would say yes, because sunlight is innately supportive to the mitochondria. So the red and infrared light from sun, which is over 50% of midday sun, almost 100% of like very early morning and late evening sun, that red and infrared light can directly stimulate mitochondrial ATP production, also mitochondrial water production. It also helps to structure the water in our bodies to form more of that fourth phase exclusion zone water. It's like a gel state water that's absolutely crucial for facilitating metabolism. A lot of people think about ATP facilitating metabolism, but it's actually the water that directly facilitates metabolism. ATP kind of just helps to boost that process a bit. But the structuring of the body's water is absolutely huge, and that's directly what sunlight will do, specifically far infrared light around 3100 nanometers, as well as UV light around 385 nanometers, I believe. Those two wavelengths, which you'll receive from midday sun, are exceptionally good at structuring the water within our bodies. And so by being outside, if we're using tech or even around like a 5G tower or something, it's going to be way less harmful to our mitochondria compared to being inside in artificial light with the 5G or whatever other Wi-Fi, et cetera, frequencies around us. And I also should mention here that just by virtue of being inside, even if you don't have any lights on or any tech on, you will be blue light toxic because glass filters out about 40% of near-infrared light and almost 100% of UV light, in effect concentrating the blue portion of the sunlight spectrum. So just by being inside, even if you have the most natural light in the world in your home with all the windows or whatever, that's not actually natural light. It's being highly filtered and manipulated to basically provide an alien spectrum to your body. Your body doesn't know that that's sunlight. It looks like something else. So either, you know, opening up your windows or your doors to let some natural light in, or just if you can take your activities outside, that's even better. And that's what I typically do. Like, I work from home exclusively, and my office is right back here in my patio where I'm at right now. I just work out here every day. If it's raining, sometimes I'll spend more time inside. I'll try to crack a window or a door so more natural light's coming in. Or I'll put my red light panel on in the background so I'm getting at least some additional red light into the space while I'm working inside. Those are some little tips that people can use if they have the flexibility to work at home. And if they're in an office, if they can keep a small red light panel at their desk. take as many breaks as you can to just get some fresh air and time spent outside and getting a little bit of sun, even on whatever skin you can expose, is going to be great. If you can take your meals outside, also incredible, because there was a study that came out earlier this year showing that just 15 minutes of 670 nanometer deep red light therapy before they did an oral glucose tolerance test, but basically a proxy for a meal, reduced the blood sugar response by 30%. So just that short period of red light exposure was able to reduce the glycemic response to that glucose tolerance test, in effect reducing the glucose response to carbohydrate feeding. And now imagine what benefit you could get if you're just taking that meal outside because you're not only getting 670 nanometer red light, you're getting the full spectrum of red, infrared, UV, and everything in between that's gonna really facilitate mitochondrial metabolism, the clearance of glucose from the bloodstream, It's going to help to keep your metabolism healthier. It's going to help prevent you from crashing and burning from like the glucose roller coaster throughout the day. And so just as something as simple as taking your meals outside, trying to catch sunrise if you can, which is a really important time of day for setting the circadian rhythm. and turning on your metabolism and your hormone production. And then if you can get some midday sun, that's ideal. You can track your midday sun exposure by looking at your vitamin D status. So vitamin D is a biomarker of midday sun exposure, specifically the UVB part of the sunlight midday. And you want your vitamin D levels to be greater than 60 nanograms per milliliter. That's how you can know that you're getting enough sunlight for your body. And that's going to account for skin tone as well. So the darker somebody's skin is, the more sunlight they need in order to reach that level. And that's because melanin, which is in skin, it gives skin a tan or coloration, that melanin absorbs all frequencies of light. And so that means that if you, you know, are getting sunlight, somebody with darker skin, that melanin is absorbing that light and preventing the conversion of the 7-dehydrocholesterol into vitamin D. So people who have darker skin need more sun. And that should also be intuitive because cultures and populations with dark skin are more equatorial in nature. And that means they're getting higher quality sun year round. And the adaptive response to that was to have more melanin in the skin innately to help mitigate any sort of damage from sunlight and also maximizing your ability to harvest energy from the sun. So something a lot of people don't know is that when sunlight strikes your skin, melanin actually takes that energy and it can split water molecules in the vicinity. into H2 gas, hydrogen gas, oxygen gas, and four free electrons. And those free electrons can actually directly power metabolism and the mitochondria. And so in effect, simply by going outside and getting your skin in the game, as Dr. Jack Cruz would say, you're going to be gaining free energy from your environment. And if your bare feet are on the ground as well, you're going to be getting free electrons from the earth, too. And so together, like you're actually getting a meal without even putting a single piece of food in your mouth. And so it's extremely supportive from a mitochondrial energy standpoint to make sure that we're not just focusing on diet, which is only one third of the equation that we're also maxing on the grounding and sunlight part of the equation as well.

Lena Livinsky: Yeah. And that could be so fun for kids to do. So such good advice. But from what you said, two things stood out to me that I wanted to ask you about. Because oftentimes kids are prescribed vitamin D drops when they're born and supplementation by almost every pediatrician. So what do you think about that? Is this needed?

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yeah, so I mean the literature would suggest that vitamin D supplementation is not helpful in any context outside of the prevention or reversal of rickets, which is like severe vitamin D deficiency that can impact bone structure and the growth of bones and essentially calcium and phosphate metabolism. So if there's a very striking or severe deficiency, there can be a time and place for vitamin D supplementation. But outside of that severe deficiency window, there's no benefit as shown in the medical literature for supplementing vitamin D to get up to optimal levels. And in my mind, that's because vitamin D is truly a biomarker for your sun exposure habits. And just taking the supplement of vitamin D isn't actually giving you the benefits of the sun, which are a multitude. So like I talked about, we get the red and infrared light from the sun. We're also getting other benefits of UVB light outside of vitamin D production. We're also stimulating the production of pro-opioid melanocortin, or POMC. POMC is a prohormone that's cleaved into 10 distinct hormonal products, three of which are alpha, beta, and gamma endorphins, the endogenous opioid molecules that help to raise our baseline dopamine levels. improve mood, cognitive function, memory, help us have reduced anxiety and reduce levels of depression, make us feel more connected and just have a better felt sense of well-being. We also have the alpha, beta and gamma MSH or melanocyte stimulating hormones that help to stimulate the production of new melanin in response to UV light, which is essentially when you get a tan. But in addition to that, they also work at a very deep level, at the level of the hypothalamus and the brain, to regulate appetite and energy expenditure. So they actually help to suppress appetite and boost energy expenditure. So just by virtue of being outside in the sun, you're going to be supporting a healthy body composition and reducing cravings for foods that aren't serving you necessarily, something like the highly processed junk foods or cheap meals, you're not going to feel as inclined to reach for those things because neurochemically you don't need them in order to get the boost because you're already operating from a place of fullness. So from the perspective of kids, like kids really need, they're not going to need as much sun as like an older person, let's say, because as Jack Cruz just talked about on my podcast he was on a few days ago, The really important aspect of sunlight in childhood is to help mobilize subcutaneous fat to allow the central nervous system to become myelinated versus in older age, you need more sun in order to actually facilitate metabolism. So there's kind of different, requirements for some, let's say, across the lifespan, but absolutely crucial for kids. And most kids love running around barefoot outside. It's like very natural to them. And we really just kind of make them go against their natural inclination to do that because of some social standards or something like this. And I think kids just have so much wisdom about what's good for them too, whether it's like they don't want to eat a certain food or they don't want to have to put shoes on or they want to go out and play in the dirt, in the mud. Let them express that wisdom. I think we can learn so much from children because they're not yet indoctrinated into this dysfunctional culture that we find ourselves in.

Lena Livinsky: Oh, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. And I found myself guilty of that because before I learned about the sun, I feel like I was fearful of like, you know, getting a sunburn from my son or maybe just in general having him outside as much. And now I'm kicking myself for it. He's only two and a half. So luckily, I feel like I didn't do too much damage.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Exactly.

Lena Livinsky: Um, but that, but this is something that comes up for parents a lot. I feel like, you know, that fear of getting a sunburn and then you listen to the societal advice out there that tells you like, you should put sunscreen on every single time. Cause otherwise you're going to get cancer. Your kid is going to get terrible sunburn. So what are your thoughts on this? What can we do to help our kids thrive outside without the fear of needing to put sunscreen on?

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yeah, so I think nature sunscreen is shade, like leveraging shade whenever you can, that's great. And you're still getting a lot of benefits of indirect sun exposure just by being outside with like naked eyes and, you know, just being grounded in nature. So that's a really like the number one thing to do. And like that doesn't mean like they can't ever go in the sun, I think they should go in the sun as well. But you can typically keep an eye on the skin. So if it starts to feel like it looks pinkish or they're complaining about it, like typically you can kind of see when a burn is starting. So I would say, you know, you could probably gauge that for yourself and in your specific situation and kind of get a feel for how much sun time your child can tolerate before getting burned. I also don't think burning is necessarily the end of the world. I think there's a lot of propaganda around sunburning. We even see, with regards to melanoma rates, The chronic regular sun exposure is inversely associated with decreased rates of melanoma incidence and mortality. And yet there's all this propaganda around the sun and melanoma when it seems like if you're getting sun every day and time outside every day, you're actually protected against it. And so I think one of the biggest problems people have is intermittent sun exposure where they're never in the sun. and then they go on vacation, they blast themselves, they get burned to a crisp, and then maybe they do that a couple times a year. Meanwhile, what should be happening is you're building this solar callus throughout the year, you're gradually increasing your sun exposure, you're starting early in the year, so the sun intensity is ramping up as the months proceed towards summer. And by the time summer rolls around, you have melanin in your skin. You have this so-called solar callus built up that Dr. Jack Cruz coined. And then you're going to be able to tolerate more sun without burning, and you're going to be able to harness more of the benefits of that sunlight. And so intermittent sun exposure in the literature is very clearly associated with a variety of skin cancers, SCC, BCC, and melanoma. But chronic regular sun exposure is inversely associated. So essentially what that means is we need to be getting out as often as possible. gradually dosing our sun, keeping an eye on our skin, you know, making sure that we're trying not to burn, but I would say if you burn, like it's really, it's not the end of the world. And there's a lot of behaviors that we have as modern humans that actually increase our risk of burning, including things like over consuming omega-6 fats relative to omega-3s. Most Americans are highly deficient in docosahexaenoic acid or DHA, which is the long chain omega-3 fat that's found in animal foods like fatty fish. It's also in lamb, but fish roe, You can even eat things like shellfish are great, oysters, scallops, clams, mussels. Some white fish as well will have a decent amount, not as much as like salmon and sardines and mackerel. But optimizing your DHA status is really important, especially for children because they require DHA for their developing nervous systems. 60% of the retina is DHA by weight and up to 30% of the brain. And DHA is what's literally required at a quantum biologic level for your body to render reality from moment to moment. So the reason that you can see and that your brain is interpreting reality is because DHA is converting light energy from your environment into electrical impulses that then recreate reality in your mind. And so it's really amazing and it's absolutely crucial and so many people are not getting DHA in their diets. A lot of people will be getting ALA from things like flax, walnut, things like this, but that ALA is the short-chain omega-3. It doesn't actually have a biological role. The EPA and DHA are much more biologically active. and only about 0.5 to 4% of ALA can make it to DHA. And that's further impaired if you're over-consuming omega-6 fats from processed seed oils because the enzymatic machinery that converts ALA into the longer chain EPA and DHA uses the same machinery that the omega-6 fats do. And so if you're consuming a lot of those omega-6s, it's going to out-compete that enzymatic machinery for elongation to form the DHA. So most people are just literally not getting any DHA whatsoever. either directly through their diet or through conversion of ALA. Also, if you're exposed to a lot of artificial light from like LEDs, fluorescent bulbs, device screens, and a lot of non-native EMFs as well, will impair mitochondrial function on your surfaces, which includes your skin, your eyes, and your proximal brain regions. And that's a problem because we actually need mitochondria to be healthy there in order to make melanin in response to the sun. And so just by virtue of living a very indoor tech-heavy lifestyle, you're going to be more prone to burning as well. So those are just a couple things off the top of my head that, you know, people can change about their lifestyles and their nutrition to decrease their risk of burning. And the one other thing I guess I'll mention briefly is you can leverage red and infrared light to prevent burning too. So what that could mean is you get out at sunrise and sunset. which is highly enriched in red infrared and there's no UV at that point. Or you could use a red and infrared light panel before going out and getting your midday sun session. And that red and infrared light primes the skin to help it tan instead of burn and protects against sunburn in actually like a dose dependent manner.

Lena Livinsky: I can speak to this myself as well because I'm very fair. My skin is very fair. This is probably the tannest I've been in 10 years after I went to Greece 10 years ago and I got this amazing tan. I was like, oh my God, my skin can tan. That's probably because of the Greek sun and the vacation maybe mindset and being on the beach every single day. I lived in Spain that entire year before I went. So I was getting a lot of sun exposure from walking and being outside. So I feel like I was doing all this without knowing. Um, and also I wasn't exposed to as much blue light, but still like I built up my skin callus, so I'm not really getting a sunburn this year. And we went to the beach like two weeks ago and I did get a bit of a sunburn, but it wasn't anything extensive like I usually get. So this is so exciting because even for people like me who are very fair, this is doable. You shouldn't be afraid of the sun. You should be out there and really reaping the benefits, which we really need to be healthy.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yeah, absolutely. And I can attest to this as well. I have a few friends who are Fitzpatrick type one, which is like the fairest skin and, and Uncle Jack himself is also Fitzpatrick one, but you wouldn't know it because he's like really dark now. And some people with Fitzpatrick one may notice a freckle in response to the sun. That's just that's normal for some people like you might freckle and then the freckles merge into a tan basically. It has something to do with the way that melanocytes are secreting melanin and that melanin is being accepted by the keratinocytes in the skin. A lot of individuals, like for myself, when my melanocytes secrete melanin, it kind of diffuses evenly into the keratinocytes. And so that's what gives you like an even tan. But in some individuals, the melanocytes are like that, that melanin is not being diffused. It's instead it's forming like these puncta. And so that's basically what a freckle is. And there's nothing wrong or bad about that. That's completely different from like a mole. Like if you have an irregular looking mole, that can be problematic. But a freckle, like freckling is totally normal for some people. That's just the way that they're developing melanin. And if you keep following that out, eventually it will actually become a tan. And it's just as good of a tan as anybody else's. And that allows you to harvest more solar energy from the sun.

Lena Livinsky: You just made my life. This is incredible information. I have freckles and I was going to ask you about that. Okay, so I'm getting more and more. So it's a good thing my tan is coming in. Okay.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yes, it's coming in just like little isolated spots and one time like they'll just come together into a unity at some point.

Lena Livinsky: I can't wait. I have to get out in the sun, but it's stormy outside. So maybe tomorrow. Oh, this is so cool. Okay, so I asked you about this and then Actually, so I want to jump around to this because we started to talk about moles. What about vitiligo and stuff like that where you hear this advice that you cannot be outside because you're losing your skin pigmentation? What is the truth behind it?

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yeah. So, I mean, Jack has a really great blog on vitiligo as essentially a disease of blue light toxicity and non-native EMF toxicity that's basically poisoning the melanocytes and the skin mitochondria to prevent melanin from being diffused like in a uniform way. And it's essentially like harming the melanocytes there. And his solution to that is literally just working on your solar callus, working on supporting your mitochondrial health in general. And, of course, mitigating your exposures. So it's really just about optimizing your indoor environment to be as protected against non-native EMS as it can be. Maybe that means turning off your Wi-Fi while you're sleeping, making sure your router is in place somewhere that you spend a lot of time in during the day, not keeping your phone on your body unless it's on airplane mode, not using your laptop on your physical lap, things like that. Also, of course, the blue light blocking situation we talked about earlier, whether it's glasses or using filters and also opening up windows and getting natural light. And if you can take your office work outside, even if you're working in the shade, that's going to be extremely helpful. So it's really it just really comes back to the same story. But some people just will be dealt a hand that maybe they have vulnerability in their skin. Maybe somebody else has vulnerability in their gut or their lungs or their heart or their brain. Like it just We're all kind of dealt different hands of mitochondria as children because all of the mitochondria we inherit come from mom's egg. And so your mitochondrial DNA is all from the maternal line of your family. And so actually you can, by knowing something about the heritage of your maternal line, you can kind of understand where your mitochondria come from. And that can tell you something about what lifestyle might be optimal for you. So, for example, me, I'm mixed, but my mom's side of the family is Scandinavian, so that DNA is from Scandinavia. And so what that means is my mitochondria really like to get cold in the winter and then get good quality sun and warmth in the summer. And so that's something that I can leverage here in New Jersey, even though I'm not in Scandinavia, to optimize my mitochondria for the conditions that they're expecting. versus somebody who has maternal mitochondria from an equatorial region, they're going to do much better with constant sun year-round because that's what those mitochondria evolved for. So the reason I mention that is because we basically want to support our mitochondria to the best of our ability. And in doing so, that tends to just help things across the board, regardless of what disease state you're dealing with. Mitochondrial dysfunction is essentially at the root of all chronic diseases. And depending on which tissue has the most vulnerability, that disease may manifest in one over another. It could manifest as autoimmunity or neurodegeneration or cancer or diabetes. you know, different options we see in the chronic disease states in modern society, but they're all essentially rooted in the same underlying phenomenon, which is an environment that's toxic to our mitochondria. And so the more we can do to support those mitochondria, the better we're going to be with regards to disease remediation and also disease prevention as well.

Lena Livinsky: So if you are somebody who has mitochondria, your maternal mitochondria come from a region that's typically cold in the winter and you live in a warmer climate, What can you do to simulate that cold exposure during winter times when you're supposed to be getting it?

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yeah, so it's actually really interesting. The uncoupled mitochondria, which are the mitochondria that come from more northern regions, they have a lot of plasticity. So if you take somebody from Sweden and you put them in Ecuador and they live there for a couple of years and you look at their mitochondria, their mitochondria actually become more like the coupled mitochondria that you would have if you had ancestors that came from that region. So it's actually really interesting. So there is this level of plasticity where people with the northern uncoupled haplotypes can actually shapeshift their environment very effectively compared to individuals that have coupled mitochondria that come from equatorial regions. There's not as much give in their ability to tolerate cold and do good without high-quality sun year-round. But there's pros and cons, right, also, because the coupled mitochondria are also really, really efficient at making energy. And that's why you see most of the athletes that we see, like the elite athletes, typically have dark skin, especially in specific sports, like in running, for example, marathon running, and even sprinting, too. And that's because their mitochondria are just powerhouses of energy production. And so they just kick butt in athletics, because energy is the name of the game when it comes to performance. And so there's absolutely benefits to that. But then there's also cons in like this inflexibility to tolerating more northern regions or northern climates where there's poor quality sun for part of the year. And I think that's really one of the primary reasons why we see such disparities in health outcomes among black and brown communities in the U.S. because most of the continental United States is pretty high in latitude. So, here in New Jersey, I'm around 40 north latitude. And obviously, that means, you know, during the wintertime, there's at least a couple months where we're getting barely any UV at all. And so, for individuals who have these coupled mitochondria that are expecting good quality sun year-round, this can be really problematic from a metabolic health standpoint, a mitochondrial health standpoint. And so, whether that means, you know, buying some like a Spurdy device and a red light panel to use inside to at least get some UV that way. or maybe taking like a week or a couple weeks vacation in the middle of the winter to at least bank some vitamin D and support your system. Either of those strategies can work and it can be really helpful, especially if you're somebody who has those coupled mitochondria.

Lena Livinsky: This is so incredible because you really don't think about health this way right now with what you hear outside, right? With social media and everybody else is talking about food and exercise and the big, the big things to do to be healthy. So, and these things are so simple and that you can do to really support your mitochondrial health and your health in general. And we're just, you know, and they're so easily accessible and free. So I wonder if this is why we're not talking about it or we just do not know.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yeah, I mean, I think there's certainly a lot of ignorance around light in general. I mean, the electric power grids didn't roll out until the late 1800s. Prior to that, we had candlelight and fire in-house, basically, and that was the extent of indoor light. Firelight is almost entirely red and infrared light. There's no blue at all, so it's not very disruptive to melatonin, relatively speaking. But starting in the late 1800s, we really started electrifying the world and we became this like industrious society of people who could essentially work 24-7 and at the expense of your health. But we didn't realize at the time the role of light in regulating biology at a very core level. And I think at some point there became a conflict between let's say like economic incentives and healthcare incentives because at some point even when we learn the information like actually this is a big deal and we're running into problems in health and we have this incredible disease burden we'll now There's some certain level of doubling down versus admitting wrongdoings that I think is just part of human nature to a certain extent, especially for people in power who want to stay in power. So I think there's definitely some aspect of willful ignorance in that context. But I think people are really waking up to this and the information seems to be really resonating with, you know, my community and people DMing me every day just like so thankful and just shocked, honestly, at this information because it's just so not in the mainstream whatsoever. But it's also very intuitive at the same time. It really resonates with people because like, yeah, actually, I feel really good when I go outside and spend more time in nature. And yet, like, I've just been denying myself of that due to, you know, what I was told by some propagandist or a physician or something like this. So I think a lot of it is just really coming home to yourself and your own wisdom and intuition around what's good for your body. And that's really my ultimate goal as well, is to empower people to be able to make good decisions for themselves. And that's another really beautiful thing about optimizing your light environment and getting back into the sun is that your critical thinking skills get better, your ability to think in a more flexible way, in a less dogmatic, rigid way, that improves too. And so just by getting outside more, you can start to see more clearly and think more clearly. And that can just, you know, has so many implications to an ability to change your life in a very meaningful way.

Lena Livinsky: Yeah, absolutely. I feel this way. I feel like my mind has been clear the last few weeks even, and has been in a long time. And it seems surreal, but I feel the effects of it on my body just by being outside so much more. So if we were to do like a case study on a baby, What are some things that we can do to optimize their development to help them really grow up to be healthy in this sort of toxic environment we live in right now?

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yeah, so I think the biggest thing to know is that light and the circadian rhythm is just as important for a newborn or a young child that it is for us. And I think a lot of the issues people run into today of, you know, children not sleeping and being really fussy and having lots of issues with, let's say, latching or, you know, basically any common issue you can think of in very young children. will honestly improve if you dial in that light environment because their bodies are also expecting some level of rhythmicity and light, like there's a certain time of day where the light's out and there's a certain time of the night where it's dark darkness. And so many people are especially missing that dark period at night because a lot of us won't even think about it, but non-native EMFs are a form of light and our bodies interpret them as such. It's just part of the non-visible part of the light spectrum. They're called radio waves. And so even, you know, a lot of non-native EMF in the environment can be interpreted by the body as a form of light, which is problematic because we need darkness at night. So optimizing the nighttime environment, making sure that like throw electric tape over any indicator lights on devices or light switches, blackout curtains, if there's any sort of like streetlights outside of the window of the nursery or in your own room. making sure that all the lights in the house starting around sundown are turned red. I recommend getting like color changing bulbs or you can get red bulbs exclusively red bulbs so that you're not turning on any bright white lights at night because that's going to be problematic for you and the baby and you really need the baby's circadian rhythm to be anchored into normal regular light and dark periods because that's going to really help them sleep and them grow and regenerate and recover as well, because we really need these anchor points of light and dark in order to allow our bodies to engage in the processes that they do in discrete ways. So for example, during the daytime hours, our bodies aren't focused on rest, recovery, regeneration, they're focused on making energy, they're focused on cognitive power and mobility movement. And at nighttime, that's when we're getting into a regenerative phase, autophagy, like the cellular cleanup crew that's coming in to take out any garbage, making sure that, you know, your metabolism is functioning well, that you're cleaning out your cerebrospinal fluid, that all your tissues are being tended to essentially so that you can go into the next day kind of starting with a bit of a fresh sleep. But if we're never getting that dark period at night coupled with the bright light during the day from the sun, the full solar spectrum, then we're going to basically be wearing and tearing every day overnight because we're never getting into those discrete phases properly. And the same applies for children, even exceptionally so, because they're developing so rapidly, they need exceptional inputs into their system in order to anchor their rhythms, that's going to set them up for a healthy childhood and beyond. And that also includes, well, like breast milk and formula, which is a whole can of worms because there's literally no good baby formulas on the market, infant formulas in particular. I'm trying to do something about that soon. I'm really, really going to try because it just makes me really sad because I know there's a lot of women who aren't able to pump enough milk and have enough milk for their child. And I think also, in my opinion, is related to the light story and the environment too. Like, if you can support your body as a mother by being outside more, you're probably going to be able to produce more nutritious milk and more milk in general for your baby. But the DHA content coming from the milk is so crucial for that developing nervous system. And we also know that the DHA coming in through the mom's diet directly influences the amount of DHA in the milk. So the mom's diet needs to be dialed in. You need to be getting enough fats and proteins and enough DHA in particular in order to make sure that your breast milk is actually providing the nutrient density needed to your baby. And so that's kind of a host of things. There's a nutritional side of things. But the light side of things is really, really crucial because it's what's going to anchor that child's rhythms in that's going to proceed with them through early childhood and beyond. And so it's an absolutely crucial part of development, especially because, again, that nervous system is extremely vulnerable. There's essentially no myelination occurring just after birth that's going to gradually increase up through 25 years of age. But anything you can do to mitigate non native EMF exposures and like an artificial blue light exposure is going to be an absolute huge game changer for that baby.

Lena Livinsky: Absolutely. And nowadays, it's just with the advancement of social media and you posting about your baby, I just feel like we're always on our phone around the child, which is so harmful. And I found myself doing something very similar, even though innately I knew I wasn't supposed to be. But you know, you're up at 3 o'clock in the morning feeding, which is the worst thing you can do because you're literally blasting yourself with blue light. But it's like you're so tired and you go on it. So there are things to think about. And I also think the baby monitors are a big problem as well because not only because of the light but also because of the EMF and I actually have one that's supposed to be really low EMF but I got an EMF reader recently and I checked it and it was so high It was so high. It was just blasting in my son's room. I noticed the last few weeks, and I don't know if this is just because of also us getting more sun exposure and everything else, but once we stopped using it and just leaving the door open, I feel like he wakes up happier because he used to wake up and he used to be so grumpy. I don't know why. Every single day, he would wake up and he would be crying or unhappy. In the last few weeks, he's just full of energy. Is it the monitor? Is it the sunlight? I don't know, but something's happening.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: That's that's wild. That's wild. Worth mentioning about the non AVMFs is there's this concept in physics called the inverse square law that people should know about. Essentially, what it states is that the closer you are to a source, the stronger the non AVMFs are going to be. So just creating space between yourself and the emitter is hugely beneficial if you can't remove it at all. So that's just something to know. For example, let's say somebody put a 5G tower up near your house, and let's say it's to the front right of your house, and your bedroom's in the front right of the house. Well, if there's another room available, you could consider moving so you're not sleeping so near to it, as an example. Just making some space can be very helpful. And if you have the ability to remove or replace that thing to get a better option or a better solution, like leaving the door cracked, then it's even better.

Lena Livinsky: Yeah. No, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. And these are little things that we didn't think about, but they can make such a difference for our quality of life and for our baby's quality of life and development. We talked a little bit about the rise in childhood diseases. And some of these, the biggest rise we have seen over the years has been in autism and ADHD and different neurodevelopmental disabilities. So in your research, have you found any causes for that happening? What are your, kind of what's your hypothesis about it? What do you think is causing these?

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yeah, so I know, not to like keep talking about Jack, but he's really just at the forefront of this space and research in this space. And he actually just had a lot of money invested, well, from Nicole Shanahan, who's Bobby's VP, running partner, but she has a child who's autistic, and she is very wealthy and wants to put money into different labs and research areas that can help solve the problem. And Jack told her straight up, like, it's probably not the vaccines that did it, though they certainly might contribute. I think the vaccine schedule is absolutely obscene. And the fact that we think we can just, like, inject young children with multiple vaccines at one time and never test them clinically together. We only have safety studies on each vaccine independently. And even then, it's not really that realistic because you're not only getting all those vaccines, but you're also exposed to really crappy environments and environmental toxins and bad light. And it's like everything comes together to create this toxic soup of just just devastation from a health standpoint. It's honestly incredible how functioning people are despite the just chaos that we're living in. So just a testament to the resiliency of the human body, I think. But anyway, the vaccines may play a role, especially like some women report, like they take their kids for the vaccines and suddenly something changes. But there was clearly a vulnerability in the system for that to happen, I think, is Jack's point. And his notion is that it's really the blue lights that's causing an issue at the level of the mitochondria in the brain. that's creating issues with regards to the brain being vulnerable to chaos or vulnerable to like shifts that can happen from other inputs. So it's basically like a like a house of cards that can easily fall over versus like a brick house. And we want to have as much resiliency as possible. And so anything we can do for ourselves, like as parents, like to help our health because that's then epigenetically going to be passed down to next generations. And so there can be implications there with a lot of non-native EMF and blue light exposure and sunlight deficiency in parents. than having children that are kind of already dealt a bad hand or like a suboptimal hand of mitochondria that can then make them more vulnerable to even smaller harmful inputs such as like a vaccine. Like maybe they would have been fine with that vaccine if the mitochondria they were dealt were more robust, let's say. So I think there's that. I think also like it seems to be really interesting in the brain. There's definitely a sensory aspect to autism where it's like the senses are more vulnerable. And if you look at every sense in our body, there's always melanin present at that location. So we have melanocytes inside the mucous membrane of our nose. We have it deep in our ears. We have it at the back of our eyes. We have it in our skin, like our sense of touch. And so all of our senses are a part of the melanin story. And melanin is a story about light, because like we know, we can see in our skin when we get a tan, that's melanin. But when we are exposed to UVB light, we're actually stimulating the production of melanin throughout our body. So that's not only on our surface, but also deep in our body, like in the substantia nigra, which is the part of the brain that gets damaged in Parkinson's disease, it fails to make dopamine, and that melanin starts getting degraded. And so the melanin inside our bodies is equally, if not more important than the melanin on our surface. to facilitate our sensory processing. And so I wouldn't be surprised at all if there's an issue at the level of melanin in autism because then essentially we're going to have either more sensitivity or like the wiring diagram that's allowing those senses to be interpreted is somehow getting messed up. And now we're getting kind of chaotic responses to sensory inputs. And it seems to be the case in autistic children that are very sensitive to sounds and smells and a lot of chaos visually as well. So I think there's something there that we still need to explore. But I know Nicole is funding a lab at the University of Texas, I believe, that's studying red and infrared light therapy in the context of treating autism in children. And so preliminarily, I believe they got some good results. And so we'll see how that develops. But the easiest thing for that is just go out in the sun because the sun is over 50% red infrared light. You're going to be able to dose a lot of that really effectively, full spectrum. And just time spent in nature in general is going to be very, very beneficial to the microbiome and inflammatory status. I made a post earlier in the week showing that just 30 minutes to an hour of grounding is able to dramatically reduce inflammatory burden throughout the body. And inflammation, especially in the gut, is a hallmark also of autism as well as dysbiosis within the gut microbiome. And we also know that being in natural environments exposed to a lot of biodiversity is extremely beneficial from a microbiome standpoint and I would say almost non-negotiable if we want a healthy, diverse microbiome. And so I can just see so many benefits for autistic children or adults to just spend more time outside because we're kind of hitting all of the pillars that are having issues. We're hitting the melanin part of the story. We're hitting the grounding and the biodiversity and the sun part of the story, the inflammation. So I think it's just like, you can't put that in a pill, really. It's going to be the best solution that we have, and it's free.

Lena Livinsky: Absolutely. Which is what I love about this the most. It's so accessible to everybody. Because I was going to ask you about the infrared light therapy, because those panels can be expensive. So is it really necessary to do those versus will you get the same benefits just being outside?

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yeah, I mean, you can definitely, we should be getting the benefits by being outside. There may be disease states, times and places where you can augment that by using targeted red infrared light therapy. But for people who are healthy and want to stay that way, the sun is more than enough. You don't need to buy a panel. If you're somebody who doesn't have the ability to get outside as much at this point, that doesn't have the flexibility in your schedule, let's say, then you could leverage red and infrared light panels to get some of that benefit back. It's still never going to be as good as being outside, but there's absolutely going to be benefits to doing that. And then there does seem to be like some targeted therapies in not only children with autism, but like neurodegenerative diseases and like sports injuries and things like this that we can use the red light and infrared light therapy to help expedite the healing process.

Lena Livinsky: Yeah. I've had psoriasis since I was little, but one of the advice I've heard before I even started learning from you was red light therapy by itself for skin health. Is this something that we want to do? Do, let's say, just red light therapy to focus on a particular disorder or should it always be in unison with infrared?

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yeah, so I think there's definitely benefits to specific wavelengths of light that are becoming more increasingly studied. I think naturally we always receive them together, so it makes a lot of sense to do them together. From a psoriasis perspective and a skin health perspective, especially from the psoriasis standpoint, typically we see psoriasis and eczema travel really closely with like chronic fungal infections. And we know now, like from the study I talked about earlier, with reducing the total glycemic response to a meal by leveraging red light, well, we know these fungal organisms feast on glucose from our bloodstream from our meals. And so the more that we can reduce that glycemic response, the less there's going to be available to feed those organisms, and it's going to help to reduce fungal burden and and just overall improve metabolic health and glucose control in the circulation, which then over time can really help to clear up stubborn fungal infections. But again, you can get that benefit from just taking your meals outside and spending more time in the sun. For targeted skin health, like let's say you want to reduce fine lines, wrinkles, or like injuries on the surface of your skin, or maybe in tendons or ligaments just underneath the skin, then targeted red light therapy does seem to be very beneficial in that context. Typically, it's together, the 810 nanometer infrared light tends to be the best one to penetrate deeply into the body. So that one can even go through bone. So depending on where the injury or the issue is, at what depth into the tissue or if it's on a surface level, there may be some preference to using some wavelengths over others. But I would say as a general rule of thumb, it's good to use them together and you kind of get like a full spectrum, both an inner and an exterior benefit to using those.

Lena Livinsky: Oh, absolutely. That's amazing to know that. Thank you. Now, going back to autism and mental disabilities in general and just chronic health conditions, talk a lot about detoxing and functional providers oftentimes want to test specifically for what's going on in your body. So they might want to do like a stool analysis or a urine test analysis or blood work. And those things are expensive. Like, do you feel like we're kind of getting away from the problem a little bit? Or do we really need to know exactly what's going on in the body to get better? Like, what are your thoughts on this?

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yeah, I have lots of thoughts on this because I really see all the testing and supplements as largely like a scam. It's also ironic because the same people, the functional medicine providers that will do all of this testing and supplementation will be knocking on the allopathic doctors for using the prescription pad to solve people's problems. But they're just doing the same thing with testing and supplements. And it's extremely expensive. I know people who were spending like ten thousand dollars a month on like supplements and testing. And it's absolutely insane. Like, I want people to be spending money on solutions, not testing. Like, let's look at your lifestyle, look at what you're doing, how you're living, what you're eating, where your home is. And then from there, there's already going to be plenty to optimize there because we're all modern humans living in this kind of like weird space where we're trying to figure it out and most homes just you know are highly suboptimal in a variety of ways whether it's mold whether it's you know no natural light coming in you can open up the windows whether it's I don't know whatever toxins asbestos like whatever is in the home is a whole can of worms. But if we can use that money to actually build a beautiful outdoor space for you to spend time in, we're going to be hitting a lot of nails on the head because, for example, in the mold situation, just by getting you out of the house, we're already reducing your dose and the burden of mold on your system. So even if we're not yet even addressing the mold that's in the house, we're already improving your condition because we're just getting you out of the environment that's causing the issue. So the more time you can spend outside, the less you're going to be exposed to concentrated mold toxin, recirculated air, these semi-sterile indoor environments that have more viral particles and microbial communities that aren't really natural. There's a lot of issues with indoor environments in general that can be remediated, but I think a lot of those issues can be solved by just spending more of your time outside. And then if we want to do testing, like I think doing like mycotoxin testing in urine can be helpful in cases we suspect mold just because once you know it's there, then we can kind of go look for it wherever you spend time, whether it's at home or like at a job. But outside of that, I don't really see very much benefit in testing unless people have like the excess income that they're willing to just they want to know the data and they want to be able to track numbers over time like some people are like that and that's totally fine. But a lot of people don't have the financial bandwidth for that, and I don't think they need to necessarily. I think we can just spend the money on solutions, like building that beautiful outdoor space for you to spend time in, buying the good local organic foods, spending money on productive things that we know are going to pay off versus dubious supplements and testing that may be inconclusive. I 100% agree with you.

Lena Livinsky: Um, especially given my background and a lot of the families, um, as a speech language pathologist and feeding specialist that I, I've, I've worked with a lot of families and a lot of them are lower SES income families. Um, and, you know, and there's so many things we can do in the home that we can help them with to help with a lot of these disorders, such as autism and everything else. Um, and, you know, just not having some kind of a number or a blood work result in front of you. It shouldn't stop us from making the changes that we need, because I agree with you, I don't really think we need to know everything. And also, everybody changes, right?

Dr. Alexis Cowan: I agree.

Lena Livinsky: We might get a different result today versus a week from now.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: I totally agree. And a lot of I think the testing is also in a bit of hubris. Like we don't actually know what we're looking at half the time, specifically with like the gut testing. So we're just like scratching the surface and understanding the gut microbiome. And for us to think like these microbes are good and these are bad, it's just a really elementary way of thinking about it. I think it's going to shake up to be more like, you know, we want specific ratios of certain bugs. Some may be good, but doesn't mean more of them is necessarily better. And so I think if we're doing one off gut testing without any point of reference, this is not helpful at all. If somebody can afford to get a gut test and then like do it again three months later after some intervention, maybe there's more information there. But again, I don't really necessarily think we know what a good and a bad microbiome look like. I think it's going to be highly individual. And we just don't have like the scientific wherewithal to be able to identify or distinguish those from each other at this point. So I think it's much more like an exploratory, like in the world of basic research, we're not really at the point clinically where we can say, based on your stool testing, like this is what we have to do. Like it's really just not that clear cut in the world of microbiome research. And I think there's been a lot of, not lying, but just like misleading people into thinking that there's something going on that isn't necessarily happening just because we're misinterpreting the results.

Lena Livinsky: 100%. And I feel like this is just across the board with anything because even in my field, I'm constantly asked about like milestones, should my child be doing this right now? They're one and a half, how many words should they have? How many things should they be doing? And it's just impossible to tell every child is different. And everybody's different. So the same thing goes for our gut microbiome. It's mind blowing to me how we're misinterpreting the data so much.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: I agree. And especially because a lot of the science is based off of averages anyway, we're not looking at the end of one individual. And so using that science to then inform like clinical practice, I think is not ethical on one hand, but it's also not helpful because we don't actually know at the level of individual what's going on specifically for them. We're always comparing to some average normal value, which also has issues because let's say For homocysteine, for example, somebody gets a homocysteine test and it comes back at like a 10 or an 11 and their doctor, you know, doesn't flag that because it's normal. Meanwhile, optimal levels are like under an eight, but optimal isn't part of the spectrum that's provided on those blood work tests because you're only getting compared to the average of the population, which the average of our population is ill. So who wants to be average? But it's like, there's no distinguishing between that. And so I think, um, When it comes to health optimization for the N of one individual, it's really a very personalized experience and it's very hard to find these benchmarks that you should be shooting for. It's going to be highly individual.

Lena Livinsky: Oh, a hundred percent. Unless you have like a very chronic issue, like constant diarrhea, let's say for 10 days, I need to know there is like some kind of gut bacteria causing this.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yes.

Lena Livinsky: That's a place for testing. Right.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Absolutely. Because if you need like an antiviral or you need an antibiotic or whatever it is, like we want to know what that is or an antiparasitic. But in the cases where it's like we have these, I don't know, more nebulous chronic conditions that are likely multifactorial and environmentally driven, then we really need to be looking at the environment and not at these like lab tests that are kind of dubious. It is inspiring me so much.

Lena Livinsky: This is great. Oh, so, but I know you have a gut protocol optimization, gut optimization protocol. I'm actually on it right now, like week two, not ready for HMOs yet, so I had to backtrack a little bit. But I wanted to talk to you about that and how we could implement something like this for a child who needs it. Let's say they've been on multiple rounds of antibiotics and they really wiped their gut, like how can we help our children optimize their gut health?

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yeah, so Layer Origin, who makes the human milk oligosaccharides and the reds and the peels, they actually make a kid's HMO. It's basically the same as the adult, but it's just dosed a bit lower. So you can even just like make that dosing difference yourself by doing like a half scoop or something. You can check the dosage on the label. I can't quite remember, but the ratios are the same. But anyways, these human milk oligosaccharides are really good at feeding bifidobacteria in the gut. So among the bacteria that we've characterized in the human gut, it does appear that bifida bacteria is highly associated with better health outcomes in general, lower levels of inflammation, better aging process without like as much chronic disease burden. So it's one of those bugs that I think if we can support it, we're probably going to be better off. I can't really say that about many other bugs, but bifida does seem to be really great. And if we look at like the population data, Individuals who have lower levels of bifidobacteria throughout the aging process appear to have higher levels of inflammation at the level of the gut and beyond, as well as like more chronic disease burden. And so in the modern day, we have ability to be able to support bifidobacteria levels through essentially a food, but it's what we find in human breast milk, these human milk oligosaccharides, or HMOs, whose job it is to feed bifidobacteria in the newborn's gut. And bifidobacteria in the newborn gut are really important because they basically train the immune system to understand which microbes are good and supposed to be populating and which need to be eliminated or targeted for removal. And so the training data that the immune system receives from these bifidobacteria is absolutely crucial for shaping immune health throughout a lifetime. And that's why we see formula fed babies and C-section babies have so many issues with inflammatory diseases and asthma and allergies and all these things. because that microbiome was not properly seeded and fed in very early stages of life. And so even as adults, if we weren't breastfed or were C-section babies, we can still support bifidobacteria levels through the use of like HMOs in supplement form. There's some HMOs that are also present in baby formula, but that only just started within the past, like I want to say, 15 years. We've characterized over 200 human milk oligosaccharides in breast milk, and yet there's only one or tops two that are used in baby formula, which is kind of crazy to me. And Layer Origin's most recent product, the Super HMO, has like five different HMOs in it, so it is a bit more broad spectrum. And by providing that more broad spectrum, we're able to cultivate more diverse strains of bifida within the gut, that have a variety of different effects from reducing inflammation and tuning the immune system into a more anti-inflammatory state to also supporting neurotransmitter production in the brain, serotonin, dopamine, a multitude of benefits across the body to be able to support Bifido. And so typically in a gut protocol, in addition to getting plenty of sun. There's this gut skin axis that's activated by UVB light. When UVB light hits your skin, it helps to increase gut microbiome diversity. So just by being outside in the sun, you're already supporting your microbiome. If you're also out in nature and natural environments, you're exposing yourself to biodiversity. That's also going to help support healthy microbiome. And then from the dietary input side of things, we can do the HMOs. We can do red polyphenols and apple peels. And these all have really good prebiotics that are going to feed a diverse array of beneficial microbes in the gut that help to maintain a more anti-inflammatory state. just help to keep that community diverse and robust against infection and illness, essentially. And so that's kind of the ethos of the gut microbiome optimization protocol, is to cultivate and foster a healthy, diverse microbiome that's resilient through leveraging the three pillars, which is essentially the nature, the sun, and the prebiotic inputs. And also postbiotics can play into that as well. So like fermented foods are a good source of postbiotics which are metabolites that are made by beneficial bacteria when they digest prebiotics such as the HMOs or like the polyphenols. When those get digested, the bacteria basically poop out postbiotics and those postbiotics can be really helpful to shape and sculpt the microbiome as well. So that's kind of like I would include like the nutrition piece as the pre and postbiotics. And together, those pillars can really help to form a healthy gut environment.

Lena Livinsky: It's amazing. And it's simple to do, right? Because it's all in your hands. It's easy to manage at home, hopefully. I mean, everybody's situation is different, but it seems easy enough where we can really make a change and make a difference in our children's health. I feel like a lot of people get their information from social media now, which is fine. We all do. And sometimes we find wonderful people to follow. that we really learn important information from. But I wanted to ask you, like, what's a good place to actually do research for a parent, let's say they have a parent, we have a parent who really wants to learn about a problem they have with their child, let's say it's eczema. If they're just going Google, they're going to find, you know, WebMD or whatever it is out there right now, where they're not going to really get good information. What do you think is a good place to do research for a parent?

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yeah, so I mean, whenever I'm doing research for my own edification, what I'd recommend doing and what I do is Go into Google and then put whatever search terms you're interested in. Let's say it's eczema in children. So I put eczema children and then I put PubMed at the end. And then when you search that way, you're going to get primary literature papers that are going to be, you know, not interpreted by WebMD or Mayo Clinic or whatever else. You're just going to get the raw information. And so that way you can kind of see if you can also filter by year as well. That will be an option, especially if you go into Google Scholar. So if you just search Google Scholar, You can click on Google Scholar and then when you put in your search terms, it will only pull up primary literature and then you can filter by year if you only want to see the most recent papers. And you can kind of see the state of the literature at that point. if you're somebody who feels comfortable reading papers. If you're not, I would say it's still a good idea to see what is being done in the space, maybe just reviewing titles and reading abstracts and seeing what people are talking about, just to familiarize yourself with some of the avenues being explored within the space. And then at least you'll be more armed with an ability to be knowledgeable and have good questions, whether it's for your doctor or for anybody else, like a health professional that you're working with. just so that you know there's options because a lot of times, healthcare providers are not keeping up with their own education. And when they went to medical school or nursing school, let's say, the literature that they were getting access to and the information they were accessing was already 10, 20, 30, 40 years old. That doesn't really get updated. It gets updated maybe like every 10, 15, 20 years. So that information is highly outdated and most of them aren't staying on top of it because they're all like burdened with debt and burned out and blue light toxic. So they don't even have the bandwidth or the energy to be able to continue their education in that way. So it's kind of up to us as consumers and educated individuals and parents to be able to to stay on top of things for our own sake and for the sake of our children just so that we're at least understanding what our healthcare providers might not be educated on and what they might be missing. And I mean it's really hard to vet like voices on social media, but what I'll say about doing that is like you want to try to find people who aren't making a brand around being bullies essentially. I'm thinking of a couple people in particular, I'm not going to say their names. Not brands around bullying, people who typically try to speak about multiple sides of an issue and addressing them, people who are referring to literature and talking about it in a way that's not absolutist. So that's another issue I see a lot online is like the evidence-based people who they literally don't, they think that nothing exists if it's not in the published literature on like PubMed, not realizing that like in a clinical context where you're working with an individual, there's a lot that goes on at the level of an individual that may not be reported in the literature because again, that literature is not reporting N of one situations unless it's a case study. it's mostly reporting averages across the population and the average may not apply to one any individual. So there's just like completely different worlds when we're thinking about the world of published science versus like clinical or end of one approaches. to solving health problems. And so I think it's important to be evidence-informed, but not evidence-based. The evidence-informed approach is like, I understand the literature, and because I understand the literature, I know its limitations. Because automatically, there's going to be limitations in science because science is innately reductionist in the way that we're conducting it. And by being reductionist, that means that we're getting rid of some variables in order to focus on one variable. But by removing the other variables, we're no longer recapitulating the natural environment. And so we don't actually know if those outcomes we're getting are relevant to the real world. having access to information from somebody who has a viewpoint that is more moderate and understanding of the limitations of our current science, I think is really important. People who don't just like say, well, this is the answer because it's published here. That's a red flag for me personally. And yeah, other than that, I would just say like staying curious and like trying not to get too overwhelmed or scared about there's a lot to be overwhelmed and scared about, I would say, but like just trying to, I don't know, when you start focusing on like getting out into nature more and like reconnecting with nature and spending more time outside, I feel like it puts a lot in perspective, at least for me personally. I feel like it's harder, things kind of just slide off me like Teflon versus operating with a short fuse that I'm just waiting to be triggered about something. I've really noticed a huge difference in myself with regards to that. So I think it's easier to be level-headed and to think clearly about challenging topics and questions. So I think that's why it's the best place to start there. from that place of like equanimity, it's easier to go information foraging, and like collecting different viewpoints and synthesizing them because you're literally able to critically think better. So in general, I would say it's a hard issue to solve with regards to finding good quality information and vetting it. But I would start by trying using Google Scholar, seeing, you know, what evidence is recently been published in your area of interest. And then from there, maybe you can go like popping around social media to see if anybody's talking about these things. And then just understanding that you're just getting somebody's perspective. It's not necessarily like the rule or the law, the whatever they're saying, but just assimilating that perspective in the context of everything else that you've learned. And then you kind of just like build your own perspective over time through the synthesis of other ideas.

Lena Livinsky: I love that. I love that. And I couldn't agree with you more. I feel like once we're not so on the edge and just, I can feel like stuck in this toxic load that we have every single day, we can digest information better. We can correctly think better. I'm seeing this in myself as well. And also, I know studies show that like 70% of antibiotics are over prescribed and if you go into a doctor's office and you just ask a question like, why are you prescribing this? Like, why are you telling me this about my child? Whatever the question is, once you start questioning these recommendations by medical professionals, they're more likely to actually not over prescribe these things. Wow, perhaps usually look for different solutions and maybe look for more like a natural healing alternative. If you're into that kind of stuff. It's incredible what you can do by just asking questions.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yes, I think there's just so much bullying in the healthcare space that just really grinds my gears because I mean I personally experienced the downside of that kind of behavior like because all of the illnesses I had growing up like I was on antibiotics for months at a time and nothing was helping and just kept the problem kept recurring because the problem wasn't actually being addressed. We're just addressing the symptom which was like the recurring strep and then I just feel like doctors, due to the blue light toxicity and the debt burden and all of that, they can be extremely defensive. And so if you go to your doctor and you ask a genuine question and they get defensive about it, I would say try to get another doctor because that's not somebody who is thinking clearly or critically and that's going to directly externalize harm to you and your family. So shopping around for providers I think is a really good idea to find somebody who's at least open-minded and like able to answer your questions without getting like a temper about it almost.

Lena Livinsky: Yeah 100% and somebody who inspires you because I feel like doctors sometimes like to play almost God and they're gonna tell you you can never heal from this or this is you for the rest of your life you have to take steroids for the rest of your life. I listened like I don't know where I would be today. So these are just the things that you really need to think critically about. And if you feel a disconnect with a doctor, you really need to question where this is coming from and look for somebody else.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Totally. And I was actually just having a conversation with the quantum mom on Instagram, Kelly Bento. She's amazing. And we're talking about dentistry because she's a dental hygienist. And she was just saying how, like, well, she was describing to me the difference between reactive and preventative dentistry and how, like, actually reactive dentistry is much more appropriate because the preventative dentistry is actually just basically trying to do a wallet biopsy, as Jack would say, like, take your money. A lot of what they're doing is just exploiting people for money essentially. And that if you're going to a doctor, like we have to think about what incentives are in place that may drive their treatment decision making outside of my well-being, which is a really sad state to like have to think that way. But just the way that our medical system is structured within the capitalist system is it misincentivizes treatments for financial gain. And we saw that really clearly during COVID as well, with like the ventilators and the vaccines. And it's just, it's really been a huge wake up call for people to take the reins back for their own responsibility of their health and their family's health. And as much as that, you know, can be scary because now the burden is on you, the responsibility is on you. The reality is we never should have been outsourcing that responsibility to begin with. We kind of just ended up in the system where that was the case. And again, I think that comes back to the light story where people become low agency and burned out and they no longer want to think for themselves. They just want to be told what to do by some daddy figure, doctor or government. But that's at the cost of actually having control over your own destiny, so to speak. So I think Ultimately, COVID was an incredible wake up call for people. And I do see major shifts happening and people speaking up for themselves and really radically changing their lives.

Lena Livinsky: Now, the way I thought before COVID is drastically different to the way I think now, and also more so being out in the sunlight. And what's important is that you can make these changes, like you can always work on, or maybe reverse or make some decisions that you have made in the past better. you can work on your health and you if you have children like you are in charge of their health as well so educating yourself on this is so important and playing an advocate not being afraid of being bullied by a doctor is so important because they can't help themselves your child cannot advocate for themselves until they're older so it's on you to really question what you're putting in their body and what being what is being recommended to them

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. I think the timing for this conversation is good because I think people are receptive to this notion more than ever before in our society.

Lena Livinsky: A hundred percent. I agree with you. Um, so I know I've asked you so many questions already. You've been so generous with your knowledge and your time. Um, I did want to ask you just two more things. So one of them is about fertility because a lot of the people listening to this podcast are parents or want to be parents. Um, and there is such a big issue with fertility right now. Just people just cannot get pregnant. Um, so what are your thoughts on this and how big of a, puzzle piece in this is actually sunlight exposure.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yeah, it's huge. In particular, morning sunlight around sunrise is really important for this aspect because when that red infrared light, that first morning light hits your eyes, it stimulates the production of pregnenolone by your pituitary gland. And pregnenolone serves as a precursor to all the primary sex hormones. So we see a lot of issues with hormone imbalances in women like estrogen to progesterone ratio. We see a lot of issues with testosterone in men. testosterone rates have been declining rapidly for the past 50 years. It's like unprecedented and like barely anybody's talking about it and it's pretty wild. So there's definitely a fertility issue on the side of both men and women. There's certainly going to be a role for like endocrine disruptors in our environments, which again, Exposure and dose to those things will decrease if you spend more time outside because you're not in that concentrated indoor environment where they accumulate. So just getting outside is another good way to reduce your dose exposures to them. Also, just like opting for cleaner products in general, just being more mindful of what you put in and on your body in general is a great step to take towards that. I also recommend for women, like we're in this world where women were, you know, women in the millennial generation, let's say, were pressured to be on birth control essentially from their teen years. and served as the guinea pig population for that, we have no idea the implications of being on birth control for like the first 10-15 years of your childbearing era. And I think it's no coincidence that we see this rise in infertility and endometriosis and and PCOS and all of these things that are related to the sex organs on this population of girls who were on birth control since high school. I think that it's highly likely to be linked. But having said that, I think the best thing that women can do for themselves is to start tracking their cycle and just really getting to know the rhythms of their body and the rhythms of their hormones. And it's extremely easy. There's the propaganda that we were sold around birth control, like you need to take the pill or you're going to get pregnant is absolute garbage, like that's just not true. You can track your hormones and it's just as effective as taking the pill with regards to avoiding any unwanted pregnancies. So, I recommend using natural cycles which uses the basal body temperature. You take it every morning and after ovulation happens, within a few days, progesterone starts to go up and that rise in progesterone triggers an increase in basal body temperature by like 0.5 to 1 degree Fahrenheit. And so that rise in progesterone signifies that you successfully ovulated. And so that will begin essentially your green period, which is the period of time where you can have unprotected sex without getting pregnant. Because the egg already, you know, went into the, like, left the ovary, went to be fertilized, didn't get fertilized. And that breakdown of the corpus luteum is what signals the release of the progesterone. So that means there's no egg to be fertilized anymore. So you cannot get pregnant physically. And so that's a really good way to keep track of your cycle. And it goes into an app and they use an algorithm to basically train their algorithm on your data set and then it will tell you essentially your green days and your red days. The green days are like non-fertile days. The red days are the fertile days, like it's like a six-day fertile window essentially because once you ovulate, once luteinizing hormone peaks within 12 to 24 hours, ovulation occurs. And then that egg will degrade within like another 12 to 24 hours. But sperm can survive in the vaginal environment for like five to six days prior to ovulation. So that's why the window is like almost a week of like potential fertilization. And then you can also couple the natural cycles with Inito Fertility Monitor, which is what I use. I use both of these. So the Inito, it's I-N-I-T-O, is a morning urine test that allows you to measure estrogen, progesterone, luteinizing hormone, and follicle-stimulating hormone. And so on the Natural Cycles app, they will give you options to do LH testing, luteinizing hormone testing, on certain days to increase the accuracy of their algorithm and also help to minimize the number of red days. And so what I do is I use the Inito monitor on the days that they recommend doing LH, and then I can see if LH is indeed peaking or not, and then I can also confirm the rise in progesterone signaling the successful ovulation with the Inito monitor as well. And so that's just an incredible strategy that women can use to track their cycle to have like autonomy and sovereignty over whether or not they want to get pregnant and also just develop a relationship to like, oh, like when my hormones are doing this, like I feel this way in my body and understanding also tracking within like cycles of the moon too. So typically my cycle is very much aligned with like the full and new moons and a lot of women will experience this as well. So it's just good to be able to tap into these more subtle aspects of the body and your biology and be able to understand how it's influencing the way that you're actually feeling in your body. And then once you do that, I feel like so many women, we're not taught about this in school, which I think is just absolutely criminal. And we're not, you know, we're not taught about this and so we don't know to actually look and see, like, am I ovulating? Is that why, am I not ovulating? Is that why I can't get pregnant? Or am I ovulating and we're just, you know, not having sex at the right times? Like, what's going on? Is it maybe the husband and not me? There's different ways to figure that out. But if you are successfully ovulating, that's a pretty good sign for you. It doesn't necessarily say that egg quality is going to be the best. And egg quality really comes back to a story of mitochondria as well. If those mitochondria are poor quality, then that egg's probably not going to be able to be fertilized. Or if it does, it's probably going to be an early miscarriage. And so optimizing your mitochondrial health in general through all the things that we talked about today, are all ways to be able to improve egg mitochondrial quality, which will increase likelihood of fertilization and a healthy pregnancy. And then from the men's side of the things, we can leverage things like cold sauna exercise, of course, sunlight for both sexes. In particular, cold exposure for men, if they do like an ice bath and then they exercise right after, it increases testosterone significantly. Women can increase testosterone actually from doing like an ice bath and then you don't even have to exercise But for men the exercise afterwards is crucial So if the men in your life have a an issue with testosterone that's impacting their fertility They can leverage ice and exercise they can do or just like cold showers as well They can do the sunrise. Of course, that's equally beneficial for both sexes movement in general is really great and if you can do that movement outside even better because when you're demanding energy production from your muscle, if you can get that red and infrared light on your skin at the same time from the sun, you're now supporting the production of that energy. So it's a very synergistic effect. And in addition to that, if your bare feet are on the ground as well, that's going to be super beneficial because you're now also getting free electrons from the earth that's going to help to power that movement. Absolutely.

Lena Livinsky: Wow. this is mind blowing information. And it's again, so simple to do. But we're just not taught to think this way or do these things for our bodies. Because oftentimes, like, let's say you were a nine to five, you leave your home. Let's say you park in a garage, right? And you get in your car, you go to your office, and then back into your house, like we don't even have exposure to sunlight, like, or if we're working from home, unless we like, I feel like just the way the society is set up right now is just set up not to be outside. So we really have to take this back into, you know, take the reins back and just rearrange our life to make this happen. Because it's doable. It's easy.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Somebody was mowing their lawn. I had to mute myself.

Lena Livinsky: Sorry.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: I just had trouble hearing you at the end. Did you ask me a question?

Lena Livinsky: No, no, no. I just said, you know, we can take it back. And we can make it happen. It's so easy. And it's, and it's, you know, affordable and, and just it seems like a big deal to rearrange like a few things in our daily routine, but it's really not.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: It's really not. And once it becomes a habit, it's just, it's going to feel easy. It's just a matter of like getting the new habit in place.

Lena Livinsky: Yes. A hundred percent. Um, and then last thing I wanted to ask you, because I dealt with this myself, um, was postpartum depression. And how do you think, um, sunlight and the, just this, This like healthier lifestyle plays a role in this. Is this something that we can Prevent from happening again with the right kind of sunlight exposure and just working our health before we get pregnant Or what are some things we can do to help the condition once once we yeah, so I think sun and postpartum depression is just there's a huge link here because again the endorphin story that I was talking about

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Earlier, we know that these endorphins directly improve mood, dopamine levels, felt sense of well-being, cognition, memory, just overall brain function and mental health as well. And so the more we can leverage, especially midday sun. Sorry, is this background noise really bad?

Lena Livinsky: It's fine. My son is about to get home, too. It's going to get loud. It's fine. We're fine.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Oh my God, of course they come out right now. Anyways, the more you can leverage, especially midday sun and get that UVB light is extremely beneficial for the endorphin production because that UVB light is what stimulates palm seed production and then gets cleaved into the endorphin products. And the one thing I'll mention there is that you want to make sure that you're getting both your skin, your naked skin and your eyes, your naked eyes into that sunlight in order to maximize the benefit. because if you're wearing sunglasses, contacts, or prescription lenses, or you're wearing sunscreen, you're going to be blocking that UVB light from interacting with your eyes to simulate endorphin production in the brain, and also with your skin to stimulate it peripherally. So we want to make sure that we're exposing as much skin as possible, and you can get like tan through bathing suits from Kaniki is a really good brand. so that you can actually be naked in the sun without being naked. And then just making sure you have naked eyes for when you're getting your dedicated sun time is going to be hugely beneficial if we're trying to optimize for mental health and well-being. And then just anchoring your circadian rhythm as well, getting up at the same time every day, going to sleep at the same time every day, And avoiding blue light at night as much as possible because that is really what depletes our dopamine levels. It makes us feel burned out and like short fuse and just overall makes us feel less connected. And so the more we can anchor that circadian rhythm, avoid blue light at night and maximize especially that midday sun, it's going to be huge from a postpartum depression standpoint.

Lena Livinsky: This is such good advice. You know, I'm excited because I do want to eventually have another child. So like knowing all this thing now, like I know I can prepare my body so much better. Um, you know, it's, it's, it's phenomenal how big of a difference we can make in our health, like prenatally and postpartum. It's thank you for sharing this information. I think it's so crucial.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Yeah, I think it's such low hanging fruit and everybody can access at some level. Even if you live in a city, you can just find some green space. Ideally, make some plans to get out of that city at some point, but that's another story. But everybody can access some nature no matter where they are. And even if you can just get your bare feet on like some concrete, if you don't even have access to some grass, that's still going to be grounding, especially if it's wet. So like if you wet the grass or wet the concrete, that makes it even more of a grounding force. The beach is like the most grounding place that you can be because the salt water essentially increases conductivity between the earth and yourself. So you're getting even more free electrons from being at the beach and like the wet sand or in the ocean. But there's so many different ways that you can access nature and grounding and sunlight and anything you can get is better than nothing. So don't feel like if you live in a city there's nothing you can do. 100% you can still get outside and get your skin out in the sun even if you're just sitting on the pavement. I visited my friend in Queens like a few months ago and I was did the cold plunge in his place and then I was sitting outside on the sidewalk just like in front of his gym and like some construction worker thought I was like injured or something because I was laying in the sun like enjoying the sun I was like no this is fully intentional.

Lena Livinsky: Yeah it doesn't matter if you look weird it's worth it.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Exactly and actually it'll be a good thing because then people will ask questions and then you can educate them and spread the love.

Lena Livinsky: Oh 100%. I joined the gym which is they have classes three times a week and it's at 6.15 and I wear my orange blue blocking glasses and I feel like I always get stares. And I'm like, I don't care. Like the second I get a question about it, I'm gonna I'm gonna share your work with them. Yeah, we love this. We love it. Well, thank you so much for coming on. You know, you're you're such an amazing person to learn from. I'm so happy to have found you and to be like learning from you every single day because you're are making such an impact on everybody's lives. And I'm just so thrilled that you came on this podcast to spread some of your light with everybody listening.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Thank you so much for having me. This was really fun. I'm excited for it to come out. We can post it and everybody can listen to the goodness. I don't talk about fertility and children's health very much, so I think it's a really important conversation. So many kids are just not living up to their potential because of poor environments, so I think the more we can do to educate mothers and families on this topic is just going to be huge for our future generations.

Lena Livinsky: Um, and even from my background and my therapeutic background, you know, a lot of kids, when, when doctors recommend help for them, like they're going to find themselves in a therapy setting, which is beneficial in many ways, but there are so many different things we can do at home. And from the health perspective that these conversations are so important to have, because we can support them. on a much bigger level by knowing this?

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Absolutely. I mean, because so much of mental health and behavioral health is a story about light and biochemistry. It's very fundamental. So the more we can regulate those foundational aspects of health, we're just going to get benefits to every aspect of our health and our lives.

Lena Livinsky: Yes, yes. So thank you for sharing. I can't wait to have this come out. I'm hoping like a week or two. Yeah. So then everybody can know and thank you again for for being here. Amazing. Thank you so much. Have a great weekend. Oh, you too. And I forgot to ask you if anybody wanted to connect with you online, where can they find you?

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Oh, yeah. I'm on Instagram at Dr. Alexis Jasmine, J-A-Z-M-Y-N. You can shoot me a DM on there. Follow me. I post almost every day and lots of good information on my stories as well. So that's where people can find me.

Lena Livinsky: Yes, yes. And you're so responsive. You're so generous. Thank you for doing that.

Dr. Alexis Cowan: Thank you.