The vitamin world is giving the wrong

advice. For instance, if you do not know

what you're doing with them, they're

just as dangerous as any drug you could

put in your mouth. The next thing is

supplementing with vitamin D is not the

same as being outdoors [music]

because we absorb it through our skin.

But what we've been told is don't ever

let the sun touch your skin. And another

example is when we're deficient in this

vitamin, our brain actually forgets how

to sleep. And I know that because I'm a

neurologist and I wanted to tell the

world about what my patients and I had

and discovered together about making

sleep better. And billions around the

world have a sleep problem, but no one's

treating it. And the usual sleep

treatment is behavioral like blackout

curtains, go to bed at the same time.

But that is not something that's helped

the people who wind up with me. They've

tried all that already. And I've taken

care of 28-year-olds who just had a

stroke.

>> 28, sorry,

>> 28-year-olds. We associate stroke with

being old and having diabetes and

hypertension and heart disease. No. So

then I did a whole bunch of sleep

studies because we found some exciting

things [music] by accident that turn out

to have to do with vitamin deficiencies

and deficiencies that have developed

from being indoors too much. [music] And

we're starting to feel the effects of

that like obesity. But there there are

no obese squirrels in my backyard. The

only obese animals are cats and dogs

[music] that we keep inside. And then we

found out most of the sleep disorders

are really linked to the gut the

microbiome and we could go into that but

one of the interesting thing I learned

was vitamin D is a hormone. There was a

mistake made in calling it a vitamin.

>> Well, I'm very curious to learn about

all of this and also you've come up with

this protocol called the right sleep

protocol. Can you walk me through it?

>> Absolutely. Here's the first part of it.

So,

>> this is super interesting to me. My team

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Let's get on with the show.

Dr. Nasha Gmanac for the people that

have just clicked on this conversation

because they like the title, they're

interested in the subject matter, what

are what are they going to get from

sitting with us and listening to us? How

is their life going to improve?

>> A completely unique and new way to look

at why they are not sleeping well or why

they have medical problems. I hope they

will come away with the impression that

I want to find out if my brain chemistry

is normal or not normal for sleep.

>> And you were a clinical assistant at

professor of neurology at Stanford

University Hospital and also you did a

neurology residency at Harvard Medical

School.

>> Yes. I grew up in California. I became a

biochemist and then I wound up being

interested in medicine because

biochemistry is being applied to humans

in medicine. So I became a physician and

then I went into neurology and I'm a

neurologist and then by accident

somebody insisted that they wanted a

sleep study and this was in 2004 now.

>> So you became you were a neurologist,

you became a doctor and then you fell in

love with sleep.

>> Yes.

>> How many patients have you worked with

on the subject matter of sleep? What's

the wide range of symptoms that they

were experiencing and problems that they

had just to get a sort of context on the

variety and broadness of your

experience?

>> Probably 200. Since leaving neurology

practice, I started a online business

where I became a sleep coach. I'm

estimating that I have affected another

5 to 6,000 people. And that's because I

have a a workbook that we're going to

talk about. I have set out a series of

steps that you should do and that those

steps are based on brain chemistry

>> not on you do it wrong which is what is

all over the internet. You are just

doing it wrong. The usual sleep

treatment is behavioral

>> blackout curtains,

white noise, go to bed at the same time,

recognize your bedroom as a quiet place

for sleep, etc.

That is not something that's helped the

people who wind up with me. They've

tried all that. They've tried

everything. So what are the range of

symptoms?

The first experience was with women who

had headache. One of my patients said,

"These drugs you're giving me haven't

worked. I want a sleep study." She had

sleep apnnea. She was young and thin.

She did not look like a fat older male

with a fat tongue, which is what we were

being sold at that time. The people with

sleep apnnea have a fat tongue. It gets

in the air a airway and they need to

wear one of these things over their face

at night that blows air up their nose.

She put on the CPAP device. She came

back two months later. Her headaches

were gone. She'd had a daily headache

for like five years.

>> So it worked.

>> Yes. And I was like, well, no, there's

no way because headaches are really a

brain stem function problem. I have this

whole construct in my mind and it's a

biochemical problem. So, I think maybe

it's allowing her to stay in deep sleep

longer

and she's making the chemicals that I'm

focusing on that allow her head pain

switch to go into the off position,

which is where it's supposed to be. It's

supposed to be off until somebody hits

you in the head and then it turns on.

Hers is just turning on spontaneously

all the time. So then I did a whole

bunch of sleep studies in young healthy

females who had daily headache. They

would frequently say something like, "I

wake up at 3:00 a.m. and I can't go back

to sleep. I wake up at 3:00 a.m. and my

sleep is lighter after that. I wake up

at 3:00 a.m. with a headache." And then

I have, let's say, as an example, a

little Mexican lady who comes in from

northern Mexico. She's now living in

Texas with her kids. She had never had

headaches until she moved up and she's

living with one of her grown kids and

she's coming to see me for headaches. We

happen to have a a beach house in Mexico

for a period of about 14 years. So I

would go down there and I would think,

what's going to happen to these people

that have sleep apnnea who don't have

any electricity and they're living in

palapas that are made of sticks with a

thatch roof. They're still doing the

same thing that they were doing 2,000

4,000 years ago. And you can't tell if

the little vetsitos, the little old

people are 60 years old or 80. They

might be 90. They're not fat. They're

not tired. They're great grandfathers. I

begin to realize this is about living

outside. Humans were meant to live

outdoors like every other animal. We

have decided that we are special, but

we're not special. We're our

biochemistry is like every other animal.

Okay. So, these two these inputs are

coming all at the same time. And I'm

puzzling over these sleep studies. That

first gal had sleep apnnea, but most of

the women that I sent for those studies,

they did not have sleep apnnea or come

back on the front page would say no

significant apnea. There was a

significant score. How many times do you

stop breathing during the night? And

then the next part is what do they have

that's wrong with them? That came about

a year and a half later when the

pulmonologist says, "I don't know if

you've noticed this, but your population

has a really unusual finding. Most of

them have delayed rapid eye movement

sleep, no rapid eye movement sleep, or

they have rapid eye movement sleep

apnea, meaning they only stop breathing

in rapid eye movement sleep.

>> What's rapid eye movement sleep?

>> So, this is called a hypnogog.

And on this bottom axis is time.

On this axis is a representation of what

phase of sleep you are in. And it turns

out that when we enter sleep, we go

through what we call two lighter stages

of sleep. The first phase that we enter

is here it's wake.

Couple of times this person woke may not

even be aware that they woke up went

back to sleep. But we enter sleep in

light sleep one and light sleep two.

These are called that because when the

sleep experts started studying this in

1970, that's relatively recently. You

could easily awaken someone out of these

phases. Okay? And it has a certain

brainwave pattern generates. And then

they go into a phase that's called deep

sleep or slowwave sleep. Everyone who

has a sleep tracker device which is very

common these days is now becoming

familiar with I have this much deep

sleep. I have this much rapid eye

movement sleep. Deep sleep is really in

the sleep industry called slowwave sleep

because the brain waves are these slow

big pattern.

We always go through a couple of light

sleep phases and then we go into rapid

eye movement sleep and then we go

through light sleep phases and then we

go to deep sleep. Now the pivotal

question that I asked the pulmonologist

why would my patient have stop breathing

that's what apnea means. Why would they

stop breathing only in REM sleep? I

thought this was an anatomic problem.

And he said, 'Well, we get the most

paralyzed of all in REM sleep.' And I

went, paralyzed?

Holy crap.

Do you mean I'm I'm paralyzed while I'm

in bed? What if I stop breathing? What

if my brain doesn't ever not like

unparalyze me? That's terrifying.

And it turns out every animal, including

fruit flies who we're doing sleep

studies on, get paralyzed in sleep. We

get the most paralyzed in rapid eye

movement sleep. When this part

needs to get repaired,

it gets paralyzed, too. That means you

have to have an anatomy that stays where

the tube that you're trying to breathe

through stays open

while you are unconscious

and trying to repair everything in this

area. And I want to pull out the brain

to let you know where this is happening

and why it's so important. This part

that's white is called the brain stem.

This part is actually fully in control

when you are asleep. There's a little

switch up here that goes boop. Stephen,

you're not conscious anymore. The brain

is still extremely active. In fact, the

waveforms that they record from up here

look the same in rapid eye movement

sleep as they do in wake, suggesting

that all sorts of things are happening.

Like you wake up abruptly because some a

noise happens and you're in the middle

of a dream. You're traveling. You're

flying. You've you've got huge colors

going on. Your brain is extremely active

during this time, but you're not aware

of it. And this part right here, it is

running your heart rate, your blood

pressure. It is paralyzed you. This is

where the autonomic nervous system comes

in. The sympathetic nervous system and

the parasympathetic nervous system are

centered right here. They are meant to

be the automatic driver of all the

processes that you use during the day

and they run sleep.

This process

that we're talking about here is fully

run by the brain stem.

>> So the sort of sleepwake cycles.

>> Exactly. The sympathetic is called fight

flight. The other one the

parasympathetic is called rest and

digest.

It also is experienced as a state of

calm. Okay. It is also what happens when

we have an orgasm. There are things that

are happening in the brain stem that

feed back to why do they fall asleep?

Why do the guys fall asleep on top of

her? Probably because it actually might

increase the likelihood of

fertilization. Maybe it has a survival

risk.

These are all unconscious things that we

don't we aren't trained to connect

together. But once you get into the

parasympathetic nervous system, it turns

out that the parasympathetic and the

sympathetic are also very involved in

what's happening here. And the basic

idea is the first half of the night, and

you'll see that we've also broken it

into 1 2 3 4 5 cycles usually of about

an hour and a half. The first half of

the night till about 3:00 a.m. is mostly

run by the sympathetic side,

>> which is the fight orflight side.

>> Yes. So when you're well balanced and

you have a completely normally operating

brain stem, you will have a couple of

branches of REM sleep. But my patients

did not have any REM sleep at all in the

first half of the night. And in fact,

they might have been lucky to little

have a little half an hour here between

4:30 and 5, if at all.

The second half of the night from 3:00

am to 7 am is run by the parasympathetic

side. That means if you look at it in a

certain way, you could say, well, wait,

maybe they've lost the parasympathetic

driver for the second half of their

night. Seeing all these sleep studies

that did not have this phase of sleep,

they're actually one6 of the amount of

RAM sleep they should have. And as I go

back through all the sleep studies, I

realize, well, wait, don't we kind of do

mood in REM sleep?

>> What do you mean, do we do mood?

>> When trying to link the comments that my

patients have made and the drugs that I

give them, I realize I've been giving

out anti-depressants to this group of

young, healthy women with headaches

because they frequently say, "I'm in a

terrible mood."

So, they can't remember. Isn't there a

body of literature about memory being

made permanent during REAM? Yes, memory

is linked and mood is linked. If I'm

allowed to go back to sleep, if I have

the proper brain chemistry to allow me

to fall back into REM sleep, I will wake

in a better mood. Those are the sorts of

things that the patients will tell you

if you ask about it and if they're able

to fall back to sleep.

because my group did not have sleep

apnnea and could not wear CPAP masks.

What's wrong with them? Why aren't they

in this phase of sleep? This is a

neurology problem. This is not a

pulmonologist. This is not about

breathing. This is about this brain stem

and what is the chemistry of this? So

then I go to the anatomy and then I find

out what are the cells in this brain

stem area that make us paralyzed. Just

to make sure I'm with you, you're you're

asking that question because you figured

out that the women who are struggling

with sleep and getting headaches have

less of this REM sleep which is

associated with being paralyzed. So the

question you've then asked is what are

the chemicals that help us become

paralyzed?

>> Yes. Okay. What [clears throat] are

cells that take us into these what what

is the chemistry of that? Since I am so

focused on biochemistry, there's

actually a deficiency in a

neurotransmitter that our moving doors

means that we've lost a neurotransmitter

that we must have to be normal humans.

And the reason why they don't know it is

because there are no drugs that

duplicate acetylcholine. There are no

drugs. But ultimately what we found out

together was that vitamin D makes the

enzyme or the protein that makes a

certain reaction happen that makes

acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is the

neurotransmitter the chemical that the

autonomic parasympathetic side uses. We

hear all the time about epinephrine and

norepinephrine or adrenaline and

noradrenaline. That's what happens when

somebody rear ends you. Your blood

pressure goes up, your heart rate goes

up. That's all dominant here. If you're

wearing a sleep tracker, you'll you'll

see that there's a measure of what's

called heart rate variability that goes

up as the parasympathetic becomes

dominant

>> as the the rest and digest.

>> Exactly. So all of the messages that we

have to increase the heart rate or

decrease the heart rate or to have a

bowel movement or be constipated or to

digest our food, those are all

eventually run by a chemical and our

body and our brain use these chemicals

to send messages. This is actually a

chemical deficiency state that happens

when you move indoors.

Sunscreen, computers, and air

conditioning all started in the 1980s.

And the reason why it's not as evident

to you as it is to me is that I was

alive before the 1980s. There were two

kids in my class of 300 that were

overweight.

They didn't go on diets. They didn't

have any trouble sleeping. They weren't

on anti-depressants. The things that

weren't common when I was a teenager

that are common now are striking for

those of us who are this age because we

know it wasn't like that. What we've

been told is it's toxins in the food.

It's that we aren't doing it right. I

don't think those are things when you

say I'm not doing it right, then you

should be able to tell me how to do it

right. And that's what a lot of these

podcasts are about. How do I change what

I do so I can feel rested and be at the

peak performance of my life? That

interests a lot of people.

I would claim that there's a deficiency

state in the background that you can

actually fix and you can fix it, but

it's through vitamins. And the our ideas

about vitamins are wrong. Completely

wrong. We've been taught that vitamins

are not important or vitamins are very

important, but they're easy to use.

They'll never hurt us. Uh you just take

a certain like who's your

recommendation? What's the vitamin D

recommendation dose that this guy's

given out? We've been told things that

are actually not true. And medicine

hasn't taken responsibility for the fact

that this is the the core of

biochemistry.

It was done by physicians. These

original research articles in the 40s

and 50s that the word vitamin was used

was done by medical experts.

It's unfortunately been given to the

government to give recommendations. It

should never be in the hands of the

government. The government doesn't know

anything about our biochemistry.

So the supplement industry at the moment

is a mess. And I say that only because I

have seen dramatic things happen to my

patients that

are not what I expected. And vitamins

are a form of biohacking. They're just

as dangerous as any drug you could put

in your mouth. If you do not know what

you're doing with them, bad things will

happen to you. And unfortunately,

frequently those bad things are the same

thing you had before you took the

vitamin. Therefore, you should pay

attention to what you're feeling. So,

the pathway that I've built that's on my

website now has a a second half that's a

journal. You have to keep notes of

what's happening to you.

>> How many people

are experiencing sleep problems in your

point of view?

>> Billions. It's around the world. There

are sleep study centers in every country

that has electricity. in Germany, in

Japan, in Brazil, and they're all

publishing how abnormal the studies are.

This is not what it looks like.

They rarely

send out an article saying that we have

less RAM because they don't have an

answer for why. I just happen to be the

only one currently on the internet

that has a different way of looking at

it. Well, I'm very curious to learn

about all of this. I've never heard

someone say to me before that vitamins

are linked to sleep issues.

>> Absolutely.

>> Um, it's typically, you know, put on the

sleep mask and close the blinds and make

sure it's cold in the room. So, this is

incredibly interesting to me.

>> Let me add one more thing so I don't

forget. You and Matt Walker talked about

chronotypes. Yeah,

>> there are many dogmatic statements that

are being made about genetics and sleep

that are not necessarily wrong, but

they're also not necessarily right. And

I had the same training that you that

you get from Matt Walker. He's doing

animal training. We say dogmatic things

based on certain studies that we do. And

then my patients

don't behave that way. my patients turn

out to, you know, this person has been

working to take this to an extreme. So

the chronotype story is you're either an

early bird or a night owl and you had

shared that you're a night owl and that

your girlfriend is an early bird. Okay?

And what is being taught is that that is

your genetic makeup.

Although there are genetic mutations

that lead to certain timing of sleep, it

turns out everybody I was doing this

vitamin stuff w with would revert back

to fall asleep at 10 and wake up at

6:00. Even the people who were working

nights their whole life. This woman that

I'm seeing who is on disability now

because she got a terrible disease

that I believe is because she worked

nights when she is at home on disability

for several years. that I'm still caring

for her for that disease.

She's still sleeping during the day.

Well, why would she sleep during the

day? And now I have a whole run of

patients who say, "I guess it's because

I always work nights." It turns out that

humans really can't work nights if they

have normal brain chemistry. Why?

Because we're day hunters. We are

supposed to be asleep in the night. And

that is our biochemistry. There are lots

of animals that are designed to be awake

at night. Owls. That's why they use that

as a symbol.

And if you do the right thing with their

chemistry, and if you insist that they

spend more time outside,

then they actually revert to falling

asleep at 10 p.m. and waking up at 6:00

a.m. It's very difficult to operate,

unless you're international like you

are, to be falling asleep. There are

people who fall asleep at 4:00 a.m. and

wake up at noon. That is a very

difficult problem to operate within the

normal population because the rest of

the world doesn't operate that way. And

when you think about it a little bit, we

actually have certain standards on when

we start work and when we end work. And

that's the same all over the globe. So

there were things that happened to me

that surprised me and they became

consistent. Okay? And those are some of

the things that we're going to talk

about. And that's what made me think,

you know, this is around the world and

it happened at a specific time. There

are many diseases that started to be

reported in the middle 80s. You guys

aren't aware of it because you think

it's normal now, but ADD, ADHD,

depression, things that are affecting ch

childhood development, which we could

discuss at a different time, fatty

liver,

certain things like oh increase in

diabetes, the things that were diseases

that had been described, they're all

some of them are old diseases that have

increased in incidence, but some of them

for the first time, fatty liver was

first described non-alcoholic fatty

liver first described in the 80s ADHD is

similar. So during the time that I don't

know why we have this epidemic I'm still

thinking toxins because that's what

we've been told pesticides glyphosate

and then

we get into the area of vitamin D and

how did I find out about vitamin D? Why

was I sort of forced against my will to

step into the vitamin D politics, which

is a horrible morass?

>> There should be a button just down below

here. And if it says subscribed, you're

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subscriber, that means you're not yet.

And if you're not subscribed, please

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but you haven't yet hit that button.

Thank you so much. So explain to me your

your assertion is that vitamin D is

fundamentally linked to a lot of the

sleep disorders and deficiencies that we

see. How how can you prove that to me?

>> I think I would prefer to give you these

two examples.

>> Okay.

>> Because the people who are listening,

these are at the two extremes, but it'll

cover a lot of the people that are

listening.

>> Okay?

>> The first is let let's call her Meline.

>> Maline.

>> She's 32 years old. She's a redhead.

That turns out to be important. She's

100 pounds overweight. She just had her

first pregnancy three years ago. And she

had been told that because she had

endometriosis and polycystic ovarian

syndrome, that she would never get

pregnant. But she got pregnant. She's

very happy about that. She had uh

gestational diabetes, which means she

had diabetes during the time that she

was pregnant with her son. And now she

is pretty much a wreck. She has daily

headache, which is why she's seeing me.

She's on about nine drugs. She has

several kinds of pain. She has a

terrible pain down the front of her leg

that she's been told is endometriosis,

growing on one of her nerves. She has

terrible burning in her feet. She has

terrible reflux. She poops once a week.

She feels like she has to get up and go

to the bathroom several times a night.

She thinks that's why her sleep is so

interrupted. So, I'm treating her for

her daily headaches and her pain. And

then I start to think about sleep. And

because we've been trained that fat

people are fat because they're fat

slobs, because they eat wrong, because

they don't exercise, it's their own

fault.

I don't even think about the fact that

many of these things might have a common

source and that she's been tortured by

this her whole life. So I send her for a

sleep study. She gets on CPAP. Over the

time she's on CPAP, she gets a little

bit better. Her sleep is better. She

feels better. And then I stumble into

vitamin D. Okay. Now, we're going to set

that as an example of the most horrible

set of things you could have perhaps.

And another example, and we're going to

watch what happens to these two women

over time. The second one we'll call

Natalie. And Natalie is tall,

statuesque, she's a triathlete.

She is also seeing me for daily

headache. She grew up in a family that

is of Italian origin. She is dark tan.

She swims. She's athletic. She's outside

all the time in the summer. Five years

ago, she had her first child. Her

daughter, she did well. No problems with

her sleep. Two years ago, she has her

son. And since her son was born, she has

not been able to go back to sleep. Even

when her son goes back to sleep, she

can't. She feels tired. She has

postpartum depression. She had

gestational diabetes. Like she's doing

everything perfectly. She knows

everything there is to know. She's done

paleo and keto. She is very well

informed by the things that doctors tell

her to do. And now her sleep is also

abnormal. And she had a few headaches in

high school, but now she has daily

headache, too. So there's a fiveyear

span here where I'm doing CPAP masks and

sleeping pills. And those are some of

the stories.

And it's not just limited to women, but

I especially want to point out that

women are more effective because they

have the babies. So, the next thing that

happens is 5 years into it, I've got

this beautiful 18-year-old who's about

to go to college. She comes to see me

for daily headache. She has a sleep

study

that shows none of these phases of deep

sleep.

>> So, she's having no deep sleep.

>> No deep sleep. And every 15 minutes or

so, my interpretation is her brain is

trying to get into these one of these

deep sleep phases and she wakes up to

light sleep again. So every time the

brain tries to do this, it breaks to

white sleep, light sleep, light sleep,

light sleep. She thinks that she's

asleep the whole night.

This shows that she's asleep the whole

night. But her sleep study over my five

years of experience is horrifying

because it's not just, oh, she's missing

a little rim. She has no deep sleep at

all. This is a brain stem

disorder of chemistry that's going to

mean she might meet me 10 years from now

with a stroke. I've taken care of 28-y

olds who just had a stroke.

>> 28, sorry,

>> 28-y olds. We associate stroke with

being old and having diabetes and

hypertension and heart disease. That

means I'm looking at this and for the

very first time I have actually started

to see the diseases that my neurology

patients come in with and their

relationship to sleep. By the end of the

five years I'm doing sleep studies on

anybody who will let me. So I'm doing

little kids, I'm doing moms, I'm doing

dads, I'm doing every single neurologic

illness that comes in. They're all

abnormal. All of them. This implies that

the reason why you get a disease is

because your sleep is not restorative.

That implies that I should think about

the body as golly, I know people who

live to be 75 years old and don't have a

doctor. They were my grandparents and

then they started to get medical

problems about age 75 and then they died

at 85.

Why aren't we looking at it that way?

Why aren't we saying, "Oh, this means

your repair system that's designed to

completely repair everything in your

body every night." And you talked with

um Tara

Swat about lymphatic drainage. These

things that happen while we're sleeping.

It is what makes us last.

Like we're not made of teflon. We're

made of these biologic materials and

they repair themselves every night.

That's a miracle.

>> If you view it through that lens,

then you start to question why is

medicine doing what it is. I'm trained

to ask questions for the thing the

person walks in for. Let's say burning

in the feet.

>> Okay?

>> And I'm trained to make a little list of

the diseases that have resulted in that

and then give a drug for it. And if we

don't find a drug that reverses it,

which we haven't for burning, but I'm

going to tell you why, then we give a

drug that numbs the pain a little bit.

>> We just kind of plastering it over

cracks.

>> We're putting band-aids on these things

instead of saying, "Well, what do you

think led to this?" And this

glimpmphatic drainage point I think is a

really important one because what when I

understood this glimpmphatic drainage

idea it had a profound impact on my

relationship with sleep. I would argue

more so than anything else. There's

actually a colleague of mine who's

currently sat out there right and I have

an emoji that I sent to her. She's

called Georgia Gibson. I have an she she

likes to work very hard and I sent her

this particular emoji of this this I

can't even remember. She told me what

the cartoon was, but it's these little

fish that come out and clean the big

whale.

>> Yes.

>> What's What's that called?

>> I don't remember, but I know what you're

talking about.

>> Okay, I'll put it on the screen. It's

from like a movie. So, everyone in the

comments is probably going to know what

I'm talking about. But I sent her this

emoji just to remind her that she needs

to sleep cuz she needs to wash her

brain. That's what I say. I say to her,

"You need to wash your brain," which

means go to bed. When you go to sleep at

night, these cleaners, you want, you

know, again, I'm I'm animating this in a

way that's not scientifically accurate,

but these cleaners come out and clean up

your brain and they wash it all and they

clean it and they scrub it and they make

it all back to normal again. So, if

you're not sleeping, then you're going

to get some kind of buildup of crap and

that can lead to disease or, you know,

other worse things down the line.

>> Yes, that's a perfect description of it

actually. And that's about the level of

what we know. So, the 18-year-old with

no deep sleep, she comes back and say,

"Hey, this drug you gave me for my

headaches made my headaches better, but

I'm so tired." And I'm looking at her

sleep study going, "Holy crap, no wonder

she's tired." Okay, this is really,

really bad. And this is invisible.

Absolutely invisible to the rest of the

physicians cuz she looks perfect. So, I

do a B12 level and a thyroid test

because I have no idea what to do. And

the B12 is profoundly low. low enough

that it shows up as abnormal and a

little red. Okay. Now, the the weird

part about this is I've never done a B12

level in a headache patient since I've

been doing headaches as a part of

neurology, which is a large part of

neurology. I then start to give B12

recommendations and I do B12 blood tests

on all the patients who I have in my

little stable of I've done these sleep

studies in them. They still are not

sleeping well unless the sleeping pill

works. So, for about a month, I'm doing

B12 tests and then one of my patients

says to me, "My doctor said my vitamin D

was low." She gave me vitamin D and my

wrist pain went away. And I had no clue

and I thought, you know, I'm just doing

blood tests anyway, which I never did in

my headache patients. I'm just going to

throw that in. I was completely naive.

And because I was naive, I was not

afraid to do this. But I did vitamin D

levels and B12 levels in a group of

about 500 patients between September and

December of 2009.

And I gave you the background because I

had all these thoughts buzzing around in

my head. What are we looking for? We're

looking for something that it controls

the brain stem. Now, they're going from

August or September to December. That's

in the fall. So, if you're going to make

D in the summer, which is when we're

supposed to make it because we're out in

the sun, that's all I knew about D is

you make it from the sun. It's about

bones.

They were all low. All of them are low.

Two of these guys that are on CPAP come

back. They both have headaches. They

both say the same thing to me in the

same week. You know, I've been wearing

the CPAP mask for a whole year. My

headaches hadn't gone away. But that

little note you sent me last time I was

in here when you did my vitamin D level

and you told me to get vitamin D. I took

that for about a month. My sleep got

better and my headaches went away. Now I

happen to know that all the D's were

low. But D's about bone. Why would it

have anything to do with sleep? So I go

to the PubMed. That's my resource now. I

hang out with PubMed all the time,

>> which is

>> that's where you register all your

articles that we publish. 2009. I put in

two search terms, vitamin D and sleep,

and there are no hits.

And then I put in vitamin D in the brain

and I wind up going to articles by a guy

named Walter Stumpf Stu MF who's been

writing about vitamin D for 30 years who

has actually published that there are

vitamin D receptors in this little

stripe along the back of the brain stem

that paralyzes us. Like he knows the

name of this nucleus. He has shown

articles where the vitamin D receptors

are in this nucleus that paralyzes us

and in the nuclei that are the clock

nuclei that determine what time it is,

what time we go to sleep, when we make

these transitions. The brain always

knows exactly what time it is. Those

areas have vitamin D receptors.

That means vitamin D is doing something.

That means I'm very interested in

thinking if this vitamin D

is low, like if they say 30 to 100 is

normal, and my patients with sleep

disorders and neurologic problems have

vitamin D levels in the low30s and

below, is there a vitamin D level, not a

dose, but a brain or a blood level that

I can measure that might make them sleep

better? That would be phenomenal. Should

we go down this vitamin D road? I know

nothing about it. I start sending people

for vitamin D levels and giving them

vitamin D and I start reading.

Walter Stump has already put together a

beautiful belief system around vitamin D

is the hibernation hormone. It allows

animals to adapt their body to tolerate

winter when there's no food. It tells

their body to do things like the thyroid

hormone lowers the metabolic rate of all

the cells in the body. The weird part is

this is written about beautifully by

Walter Stump. And because he has a whole

belief system that tells what you should

expect, he's also published many

articles. The first articles in 1982

about brain stem. He publishes articles

about postpartum depression, about

infertility, about obesity. He's telling

us what epidemics are going to happen,

but it's before it happens because the

sunscreen's coming out in 85

and the middle of the air conditioning

computer. And when I'm talking about

this during CO, it becomes much more

exaggerated. Okay, CO has brought us all

indoors and we're starting to feel the

effects of that even more exaggerated.

So, Walter has this idea set. I call him

up. Luckily, he's retired and he takes

my phone call and I say, "Hey, you don't

know me, but I'm this clinician in Texas

and I have this clinical observation

that I've done all these sleep studies

on people. Their brain

that should be sending them through

these particular steps is not. You have

shown that there are vitamin D receptors

all over the nuclei that should be

running this.

Has anybody written about sleep and

vitamin D?" And he says, "No, but it

makes perfect sense. It's the

hibernation hormone. What else would you

do? You sleep longer.

And it turns out that when our D goes

very low, our brain actually forgets how

to sleep. That's the easiest way to

describe it. That gal that I showed you,

she had not only vitamin D deficiency as

the primary deficiency and with

secondary deficiency we're going to talk

about, but there your brain just becomes

completely scattered and it's what it's

supposed to do because the the D is

doing a specific thing. It took me a

while to figure out. There are articles

that actually took Walter's articles and

said, "Hey, there are these D

receptors." What hormones do that's

unique is the hormone goes inside the

nucleus

of the cell and the nucleus has the DNA

and it binds to the DNA and it has a

special vitamin D receptor. That's what

Walter was measuring. When it hits that

receptor, there's a specific protein

that that DNA expresses. That means that

little piece of DNA comes out. It makes

this protein. The protein that it makes

is an enzyme that makes acetylcholine.

So that means I can trace through the

scientific literature all the way from

the receptor to the articles that use

that that showed that it was an an

enzyme called choline acetal

transferase. Now the next part is really

important because what I want out of

this is that Meline and Natalie both get

better. Okay, this this biochemistry is

my thrill. But what the listener wants

is how do I get better? Now, since I

started this and the first time I

started giving vitamin D was in 2010,

this is now

16 years later.

Is vitamin D any better understood or

given out? No. The science is

phenomenal. The recommendations for the

doctors

don't go there. The endocrine society

are supposed to be the experts in

hormones. D is a hormone.

>> I think that's an important point which

is a lot of people think of vitamin D as

some kind of well we think of it as a

vitamin but you're telling me it's it's

a hormone.

>> It's the most bizarre thing I've ever

run into in medicine. It's really

bizarre.

>> Which which path?

>> There was a mistake.

There was a mistake made in calling it a

vitamin. It is made on our skin.

Now, it turns out animals frequently

lick their fur,

and they get their vitamin D that's made

in their fur from licking their fur.

Some of it's absorbed, but the thing

that's unique about us and pigs,

domesticated pigs, is we're bald.

That means most of the time we're making

it on our skin. It's never supposed to

be from the food. It was not ever about

the food for us.

We don't lick our skin.

Therefore, we absorb it through our skin

and we can actually have salmon. The

salmon has vitamin D in it. That's the

salmon's vitamin D. It's not our vitamin

D. It's like saying you eat salmon, you

get salmon estrogen. That should be

enough estrogen for you to have a normal

period. That's crazy. If your ovaries

are not making enough estrogen, you

won't have a normal period. Okay? They

called it a vitamin. And in the n early

80s medicine decided vitamins were for

lesser humans. Therefore D got pushed

into that pile and it got given over the

counter. Now, the fascinating part about

that is it turns out to be a good thing

that it's over the counter because the

lay public once they hear that their

whole health is actually tied to this

and that they've been doing what their

doctor recommended, which is to use

sunscreen and stay out of the sun. And

the original recommendation, cuz I was

there in the early 80s, was don't

sunburn.

Every sunburn that's a bad sunburn that

you peel from will age your skin even if

you're 10.

>> Which is is that true or not?

>> That's true.

>> It's true. Yeah,

>> that piece is true. Now, the weird thing

is that has been morphed over the last

40 years into don't ever let the sun

touch your skin. People are smart. If

you tell them that they can use

sunscreen wisely and it blocks the

ability to make vitamin D and it has

turned into the combination of sunscreen

plus being inside much more than we ever

were before. When you had air

conditioning, people slept out on the

roof in Saudi Arabia. That means you

spend much more time outdoors. And it

also turns out there's a particular move

in health and wellness which is about

the many forms of wavelengths of energy

that we absorb that are given to us by

the sun that are not UVB. UVB is the

wavelength that makes D. There are your

podcast about infrared. Very very

important. That means there are many

wavelengths of energy and the more time

we spend outdoors, the more our body

actually uses those wavelengths in our

biology because medicine is so

conservative and so slow to change. They

basically poo poo any new ideas. So

hyperbaric oxygen laughed at uh infrared

laughed at made made fun of and

therefore you could actually have your

license taken away since co

since doctors are now doing things

across video. I am safer in my little

place making my comments making my

statements. They're madeup stories.

>> What is a madeup story? My telling you

my belief system

is a madeup story. This is really an

important idea. I thought that

everything written in a book is true. As

soon as the publications come out, soon

as I can go to PubMed,

I thought those things written down were

true

absolutes. And then you stay in medicine

for 30 years and you realize the things

that you were taught are not truth

anymore. Well,

that means they made up those stories.

They do a scientific experiment. You and

I are looking at the data, but there's

always a conclusory.

My conclusions from this data are those

are always made up stories. And in fact,

they're always humans making up stories.

You and I are not listening to stories

that ants make up or that cats make up.

We're very human centric.

We're studying things that are stories

that humans make up.

>> And we're arriving at a conclusion based

on some factors that we can see which is

you know often causation or correlation

sorry and not necessarily causation.

>> Correlation very important. We all have

a belief system. You and I are building

a belief system here. I told you that

Walter Stump had a belief system. The

reason why I'm using those terms is

I was really pissed off at the

pulmonologist when I realized

that woman with the sleep apnea, she

wasn't a fat middle-aged male with a fat

tongue. How dare they? Here are these

women. They have headaches. They're

suffering. How dare they make up this

story? And then I began to realize

they made up those stories. That was

their best guess.

>> That is every single person who sits on

this side of the table. It's their best

guest.

All of us are or you wouldn't have us on

here. Very enthusiastic about our

guests. But it's very important to

realize that every belief system means

you see the world through that. But it

always has blinders.

>> There are things that you won't be able

to see because of it as well.

Then you must move into a point of view

which is I need to stay flexible. What

if new information comes? Yeah.

>> Okay. So

>> the debelief system at the moment is

that it's a vitamin

>> and there's a huge political fight

within the medical literature. It's very

weird.

>> The debelief system. What do you mean?

Medicine has decided that the only way

you can get any important information is

to have a control group, a study group.

The study group gets X, a drug, in this

case, vitamin D. And you compare the

outcome of both groups.

>> And what does the other group get? A

placebo. Basically, they think it's a

drug, but there's nothing in it.

>> Yeah. And then you compare the outcome.

The problem is in no biologic pathway is

there only one variable. There's never

one variable.

And that means when you give one a

hormone,

you also need to know that hormones are

always in done by blood levels and that

the normal state for the human body in

every biologic

animal including plants is that hormones

stay in a tight little narrow band. Too

much and too little are both not good.

always goes towards the middle. In the

lei experience, this is why we do blood

levels of testosterone. If we give you

testosterone supplement, if we give you

estrogen in thyroid, even lay people

know my aunt would get crazy when her

thyroid was off and it could be too high

or too low. D is exactly the same. Yet,

they do these studies based on a fixed

dose. So it doesn't matter what the

level is,

what time of the year, how much sun

they're getting, they're all getting

4,000 IUs.

>> So they could be having too much or too

little.

>> No blood levels are taken.

>> So you're saying that it should be

personalized the amount of vitamin D.

>> Absolutely. Any hormone that you take,

if you compare, that's why the endocrine

society is so important. They know in

2004 when they gave the final

recommendation for the doctors and

practice, they know that the studies

that have been done so far are rarely

done in the way a hormone should be

studied. And they say that in their

report. They spent a whole year looking

at this chemical, all the research

that's done. And they say, you know, we

don't really have any good studies. We

don't have any clinical studies like

mine for instance where we're relating

the dose that we give the person to the

blood level that's achieved. Therefore,

you would think they would say we need

more studies. No, here's what they said.

Therefore, you should not do vitamin D

levels and you should not give

recommendations about vitamin D, taking

it or not taking it. you should just

avoid the whole conversation because

what's going to happen when you do a

vitamin D level is you're going to call

me up and you're going to say what dose

should I give the D level is this and we

don't know so they've said don't be

curious don't do it that's insane now

that means the lay public is coming to

me and other people on the internet and

they're coming to podcasts like this to

learn about it and there are a lot of

conflicting

attitudes foods. I may be one of the

biggest recorder in my brain, which is

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I'm very curious about Meline and

Natalie still.

>> Great.

>> What happened to Meline and Natalie?

>> Okay. For two years, I'm talking to

Walter on the phone and I start giving

vitamin D to my my patients and I

learned that every single person needs a

unique amount. Very scary. That means

everybody else is saying, "Oh, take

5,000, take 10,000, take 20,000. I take

a h 100,000 once a month. Okay? And I

find out also that if you get past about

a level of 60, that's when they come

back and say, you know what, my sleep is

better. Now, importantly, I still was

operating under the false belief that

there's only one variable. Okay? I came

up in medicine using drugs. That means

you match the drug to the complaint. Oh,

that one didn't work. And then we do

this one, and then we do this one. Okay?

I'm ashamed that I looked at it that

way, but that was my training. So, I

thought vitamin D was going to fix

everything. Within the next 6 months, my

patients start to come back and say

horrible things like my joints ache all

over and my doctor's about to send me to

the rheatologist who does autoimmune

diseases,

>> like arthritis.

>> Exactly. Then the next person comes in

and says, "I've got this terrible

burning in my hands and feet." And

another woman comes in the same month

with burning in her hands and feet. Two

women, same month. They have nothing in

common except they both have headaches

and they've been doing vitamin D with me

for two years. And they say, they want

to know, is this related to that vitamin

D that I've been taking with you? And

now I'm very freaked out because I'm

afraid that what I've been doing even

though their sleep is better and we're

all happy about that headaches were

better now they're a little worse again

is I've put them in a situation where

they are now using more of whatever

these building blocks are and I've I've

actually forced them into another

deficiency state. I'm making them make

more repairs and now they're deficient

in something else and I don't know what.

Now, a patient walks in with a book.

This is why I'm telling you that my

patients are the ones that taught me all

this stuff. And I'm telling you these

embarrassing stories because they come

in and they say, "Did you do this to

me?"

That's very uncomfortable. And I don't

know, but I feel a commitment that I

better find out. And a woman walks in

with a book that's called the pain-free

promise of pantaththenic acid. God

forbid it's another vitamin. So I happen

to have developed over the same time

period this weird buttock pain. I can't

sit down to talk to my patients at the

end of the day because my butt hurts. So

I feel like I have the same thing. So I

read this book. It says pantaththenic

acid is a chemical that makes this thing

called co-enzyme A. Co-enzyme A is

responsible for making cortisol.

And I think I don't think that's causing

this burning, but this is something I

need to know about. And cortisol is big

in sleep. We talk about cortisol all the

time, the timing of it, and it's huge in

inflammation. I go to the vitamin store,

I find panthenic acid. The book says 400

milligrams is the right dose. So, I pick

up the 400 milligrams and I go to the B

complex. I find something called B 100,

which means there's each one has got 100

milligrams or 100 micrograms. I go home

with these two things. I start taking

them

and I give recommendations to the anyone

who comes in in that one week where I

have a sleep study, they have a new

complaint, I give a recommendation of

B100 and B5. What the book did was it

sent me to the references. The articles

that she references are from the 1950s

in this creepy lab next to the Iowa

State prison where they're doing these

creepy experiments on prisoners before

it becomes illegal. They published this

article saying if you block panaththenic

acid for two weeks, you see four things.

They can't sleep.

They have belly complaints, bloating,

and all sorts of things. They have a

funny puppet like gate and they have

burning in their hands and feet and I

go, "This is wonderful." So that was one

of the motivations. So the cortisol link

to pain and the burning in the hands and

feet. Now I've got it in my head that

I've made them use more of the B

vitamins.

>> So let's just pause that. So you're

saying that by asking your patients to

take more vitamin D, you're saying that

the body has also started to use more B

vitamins, which means that by taking

more vitamin D, they're now deficient in

B vitamins.

>> Yes.

>> And so when you use vitamin D, you also

use more B vitamins.

>> There's another point that I'm about to

make, but you summarize it perfectly. M.

>> So [clears throat] the next question

would be, okay, I'm taking 400

milligrams cuz that's what it says in

the book and that's the only dose that

was on the shelf in the vitamin store.

>> I get to the end of the week and I

realize I have restless legs and my

restless legs has been much worse this

week. This is probably too big a dose

and I stop the 400 milligrams and

everything goes away. My butt pain goes

away like in a day.

>> 400 milligrams of

>> B5.

So panaththenic acid is called B5. All

the patients who come back say

were you trying to kill me? This 400

milligrams here I got so agitated

I stopped it after two days. I felt like

I was crawling out of my skin and I

couldn't sleep at all. If you block B5

you get insomnia. That means it has

power in sleep. D has power in sleep.

But it turns out if it has power in

sleep, your body has a very specific

amount that it wants. If you give it too

much, it's not happy. If you give it too

little, it's not happy. And it turns out

that instead of giving you one thing

when it's low and another thing when

it's high, which is what I would have

anticipated, it goes back to the same

thing. When it's not happy, it just

stops sleeping. Now, a couple of them

come back and say, you know, I stopped

the 400 milligrams because I was so

agitated, couldn't sleep at all, but I

stayed on B100. I feel great. My sleep

is perfect. My pain is gone. And I said,

that's what happened to me. It's just

like too weird. This chemical is doing

something and it's acting. What I would

say to my patients is be very careful

with this because I don't really know

what dose you'll need.

If it's too much, it'll act like

caffeine. It'll keep you up at night.

Okay.

Then the next thing that happens is a

gal comes in and says, "You know, you

gave me that B 100

and I I achd all over. I would get up in

the morning and I go

and she said, you know, I broke it in

half and I'm taking that and I feel

great." What you'll see here is B50,

which is 50 milligrams of each, but all

eight B's has 50 milligs of of B5 in it.

It turns out if you've been taking D for

two years, you've actually worked your

way into a place where your body has

been using more bees and you are now

very profoundly deficient. But she did

not take two years. She was a new

patient to me. She had not been on D for

that period of time. The reason why this

discussion is important is there are

millions of people who started taking D

and CO who by the fourth year after

taking it started to have burning in

their hands and feet. They're not even

taking it anymore. They took it from

2020 to 2023. Their levels got into the

60s. Their doctor said, "Hey, 60 is

enough. Stop taking the vitamin D." But

they still show up with the B vitamin

diagnosis. And they go to their doctor

and they say, "Oh, well, you've

developed lupus. Oh, or you have this.

Oh, or you have that." These are all

diseases that have been described

already, but they haven't been described

as B vitamin deficiency states, which is

bizarre, but that's the historical

point. All of the literature says B5

deficiency doesn't exist because it's in

every food. Now, I'm reading that

literature and it says thamine, which is

B1, has a poop bacteria source and a

food source.

B2 poop bacteria and a food source. All

of them come from the poop.

>> What do you mean come from the poop?

These eight chemicals called B, all of

them are made by bacteria

and we absorb them. Everybody knows that

we have the wrong microbiome. And we've

all been told that it's toxins.

Antibiotics are the major thing that are

blamed. But we now have a huge body of

literature about the microbiome being

abnormal.

>> The gut microbiome.

>> Yes. The other weird part about it is

there are these guys in Oklahoma, GI

surgeons, who are giving poop

transplants.

>> Give me context on what that is.

>> They take poop from one person and they

push it up the other person's butt. Like

we've spent a hundred years saying stay

away from the poop. It's bad for you.

Don't go from the poop to your mouth.

Okay? We've made this idea that the

bacteria,

we're fighting against them. They're

trying to take us over and they're bad

and we're fighting against them. But as

people are dying of things like

claustrdium difficil, which ciff is the

way it's shortened, they're dying of

cadiff infection and they're doing poop

transplants and they live. It turns out

that the 8 B vitamins were first

described as bacterial growth factors.

They are chemicals that one bacteria is

able to make and it pushes it out of its

cell into the environment. And this one

next to it, that's a different one goes

>> [gasps]

>> Goodie, give me that. And those guys

live together as a group, a commensal,

meaning each one of them derive benefit

from having the other one there. So

there are four big groups of bacteria

that is the normal human microbiome.

Well, why are there four? Why is it

always this four? And how come we only

know

about 2% of them? for saying all these

things that the microbiome is wrong.

Turns out we only know 2%

of 200 bacteria that are normal

occupants from the mouth, from the lips

all the way to the anus. We only know

2%.

But we have the genetic footprint of

every single one. We are able to take

them out of the poop or out of the small

intestine or out of the mouth and we can

say these are the genetics and we've

named all of them. So we know there are

200. Okay.

>> And the article that they write is, you

know, it looks to us like the reason why

this forsome of groups hang out together

is because they all at least need one B

vitamin and they produce at least one.

So they all have a relationship to the B

vitamins. And we should start thinking

about the microbiome as the production

system that supplies the B vitamins to

the body. I didn't find that article

until after. But here I am back again

with one big question. These two women

with the burning in their hands and

feet, why did they get B vitamin

deficient? If the bees come from the

food, they've had the same diet all

along. And I I haven't controlled their

diet. I haven't made them change their

diet. Why did all of these people come

back with these complaints?

The one thing we know is many of them

have IBS symptoms, which are a signal

that the bacteria isn't right. IBS.

What's that?

>> Irritable bowel syndrome.

>> Yeah.

>> Diarrhea, constipation, bloating. My

belly isn't right.

>> Yeah.

>> Because I had assumed that D was going

to fix everything.

>> Vitamin D.

>> Mhm.

>> The [clears throat] vitamin D was going

to fix their belly and it didn't. There

were several things that did not get

better. One, their IBS didn't get

better. Two, they didn't lose weight.

That was really weird because they were

out exercising more. They were out

exercising in the middle of the day, but

they didn't lose weight. That means

there's still something wrong in the

background where they didn't lose

weight. So, I'm stuck with, okay, why

didn't the D fix the B thing? Oh. Oh,

these were all described as bacterial

growth factors. I have assumed that

vitamin D was a bacterial growth factor

because Walter W talked about the GI

tract having all sorts of receptors for

vitamin D. And so I assumed that the

bacteria that lived inside us needed

vitamin D to be normal. And therefore I

assumed that IBS showed up in the 1980s

[clears throat]

because we went into D deficiency and

that D deficiency caused this IBS. There

were no articles about that in humans

until 2020 when COVID came and they

actually started to realize that the

people who were D deficient died in

COVID and they started to actually look

at oh is the microbiome playing a role

in our immune system? Yes. If I give

vitamin D, will the bacterial makeup of

my stool change in a positive way?

>> Exactly. Does the poop bacteria makeup

change in a positive way? We know we've

seen people who don't have inflammatory

disorders and they have these this

bacterial makeup. Will giving vitamin D

change the population? And yes, that's

the answer. Now I realized now I'm

giving two bacterial growth factors D

and now I'm giving B 100 and I'm giving

a large dose of all eight B's. Remember

that give all eight. Mhm.

>> That means by accident I have actually

given eight bacterial growth factors

that are necessary for bringing the poop

bacteria back to the normal human makeup

that it's supposed to be that it has

always come to be spontaneously.

That's a really important point. All the

other animals in the world, they're not

obese. There are no obese squirrels in

my backyard. The only obese animals are

are cats and dogs that we keep inside.

So to summarize for me, what is the link

between vitamin D and the B vitamins?

>> It turns out that all the bees come from

the microbiome.

>> Yes. Okay, I understood that.

>> In order to have the correct microbiome,

we are actually commensal organisms with

our microbiome. That means we have to

provide D. They in turn provide us with

bees.

>> Okay. So isn't that a good thing that

you gave them D then because then their

body makes B.

>> Yes. But it didn't make be on its own.

Otherwise, those side effects like my

butt pain wouldn't have been there.

Okay. So, let's bring that let's bring

that into focus. The D by itself did not

correct the microbiome.

>> Yeah.

>> So, when I took 5,000 of D between 2020

and 2023,

and I took it for three years because my

doctor told me it was okay. But in 2025,

I started to have rheumatoid arthritis

symptoms. The D did not correct my

microbiome. It actually made me

deficient. I'm going to give you the

drug for rheumatoid arthritis. I'm not

going to picture it as, oh, you need

B50.

>> So, you gave B50, but then didn't they

have another problem?

>> Most of the time, what happens after the

B50 is everything comes back to normal.

The GI tract corrects. You have to take

it only for 3 months. I was taking it

for four and a half months and I started

to wake up and feel old.

>> Yeah.

>> And everything I just parenthetically

told you about the the GI tract was

percolating around in my brain. And what

I had told my patients was, you know, I

think we've stumbled on the growth

factor that the right microbiome needs.

And I think the reason you became B

vitamin deficient was because it was the

wrong microbiome. But when we give them

what they need, they're going to grow

back.

>> Okay. Fine. They're going to grow back

and they're going to do their job.

>> Okay, so

>> they're going to produce B50. They're

going to make that.

>> Let me summarize that. So, by giving

them B50 for a short period of time,

[snorts] you're kind of jumpstarting the

gut microbiome and then you don't want

to keep giving it to them or else

they're going to become like dependent

or not do their job properly. So, you

want to give it to them for 3 months.

Let them jump start and then they'll do

their job and then you leave them alone.

>> Yes. And I want to add one more thing.

The way you think about it is probiotics

are bacteria.

You dump the bacteria down and you

swallow it. It goes into your small

intestine. But if it does not have the

growth factors that it needs, which

every bacteria has its little set of

growth helpers, it needs to be able to

absorb from the actual juice that's down

there. If it doesn't have that, it can't

reproduce.

Every bacteria that's sitting in my

small intestine right now

12 hours from now is going to be in a

different place.

>> A [clears throat] day from now I'm going

to poop it out. Who's up here now? The

great great granddaughters of the

bacteria that are sitting there while

you're I are talking. They reproduce

rapidly. You have to picture them like a

river. Like we're sitting in, we're

looking at the river and the water looks

like this and 10 minutes later the water

looks the same but that's not the same

water that we were looking at 10 minutes

ago. That water is downstream. [snorts]

That means the level of reproduction

that they are expected to do requires

constant production of these growth

factors. Now it turns out that you don't

have to think about that. All you have

to do is have the normal bacteria that

was generated spontaneously when you

were born because mom was giving you D

in her breast milk and it also had eight

B's. Those eight B's came from her

normal microbiome in the breast milk.

That means you had everything you needed

and then you were out in the sun. You

were born in June or July in the summer

and then you got D on your skin and that

process has replicated for 300,000 years

for 250 million years. The dinosaurs had

a microbiome in their intestines. This

is so old it's unimaginable.

>> So what is the conclusion here then?

Because I do want to bring this back to

uh Natalie and Meline.

>> Okay.

>> I still haven't figured out what what

you what you told them to do. Stephen,

you are so smart and it's so such a

pleasure to talk to you. These are

difficult points. Meline is struggling

with all these things. She's slowly

getting better. Then we do the D. She's

slowly getting better. Then we do the B

100. And then

it's freaking awesome. She starts to

lose the pain that she had down her leg.

The burning in her hands and feet goes

away. Her sleep gets much better. Now

she's into year three and four

of what becomes the right sleep program

and she's still on 30,000 IUs of D a

day. That's an immense dose. Most people

are taking 5 to 10. She's been taking

30,000 a day for four years.

Her D level has stayed the same. It's in

the 60s. She's doing a great job of

keeping everything the same.

That really means that her body is using

30,000 IUs of vitamin D a day for four

years. That's a very important concept

because it means she is using so much

more than anybody else is using in my

practice. Most people are on 10,000.

But she's making these amazing repairs.

Her depression is gone. She's stopped

three medicines that we've been using

for pain control. She now gets up in the

morning and she feels energetic. She's

starting a program that the Texas state

has for going back to work. I mean, I

was like, "This girl's never going back.

She wants to go back to work. She is a

totally different person." Now,

importantly, she is not 100 pounds

thinner. She's still 100 pounds

overweight. And that is one of the

things that happened in most of my

patients and clients. The body will not

lose that weight until it's really made

every repair it thinks is necessary. And

then it decides that it's not going to

need this fat anymore.

>> So with her, did you take her off the B

vitamins?

>> The routine is that one, they have to do

D and this this will become the right

sleep program.

>> But they have to do D because they're

not getting sunlight.

>> Correct.

>> We none of us really get enough

sunlight.

>> Correct. So and we can talk about

supplement versus sun, but the D is

pivotal to the entire program and it has

to continue. And if you have a sleep

problem or medical problems, you will do

better if you get your D above 60 and

keep it around there.

>> That is not the same as saying what is

the ideal D level for a human who wants

to overachieve. It is not the same.

>> Okay,

>> so she's on D. She stays on D the rest

of her life as long as she needs it. And

she's always checking her D levels. Then

she goes on B 100. she happened to be

one of the ones that was on D by itself

for 2 years. If you have been on D for

two or three or 5 years in the past and

have developed B vitamin deficiency

states, then you will have to go back on

D with the B50 and you will do that for

3 months and then you will stop and

you'll go down to a much lower dose

that's a multivitamin. One of the things

in the background that we haven't talked

about yet is there are actually hundreds

of things that the bacteria are doing

for us that are just starting to be

reported. But they have been pivotal all

along in all the minerals, all the

minerals that show up in a multivitamin.

All the magnesium, calcium, selenium,

manganese, all these things that

nobody's really interested in and they

all are in list on their multi

multivitamin.

All through the same time frame, people

are developing iron deficiency and iron

overload. And it turns out that the

bacteria have been a pivotal part in our

intestine, speaking to our body about

whether or not our iron level is low or

high in the liver or in the blood system

in our bone marrow or in our brain. And

if you do not have a specific bacteria

called Lactobacillus rutery, you will be

missing a brand new metabolite or

chemical that was named after that

bacteria just in the last three years

that's called rutery. That is one of the

chemical messengers that our body uses.

So that means many of the deficiency

states that the naturopaths and the

functional medicine people are studying

are all linked to the fact that this

bacterial tube has been doing all these

things for us all along. And when you

lost them, each individual person has

its own set of specific deficiency

states that must be addressed for their

sleep to get better.

>> This is something that I've made for

you. I realized that the direio audience

are strivvers. Whether it's in business

or health, we all have big goals that we

want to accomplish. And one of the

things I've learned is that when you aim

at the big big big goal, it can feel

incredibly psychologically uncomfortable