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Our 24-Hour Body Clock and the Fight Against Autoimmune Disease with Dr. David Bilstrom
33 Plays7 months ago
Many researchers say autoimmune disease has reached epidemic levels, with environmental and lifestyle factors contributing causes. Autoimmunity is a condition when the body attacks its own systems — but regulating the body's 24-hour clock may help slow or even reverse the progression of autoimmune diseases. Learn how.
Dr. David Bilstrom is an autoimmune disease specialist and author of
The Nurse Practitioners' Guide to Autoimmune Medicine: Reversing and Preventing All Autoimmunity. Sign up for Dr. Bilstrom's free email course at http://www.DrDavidBilstrom.com/medicalbilldetox.
In this episode:
- Defining autoimmunity and common autoimmune diseases
- What's contributing to an autoimmunity epidemic
- Treating the cause, not the symptoms
- Environmental factors disrupting our circadian rhythms
- When — and how — to see the sun
- The vital role of non-image-forming retinal cells
- How the body learns to heal itself
- Next steps to learn more
Connect with us at SuenoLabs.com. We're currently looking for contributors and podcast guests!
This episode is brought to you in part by Auphonic.
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Transcript
Understanding Autoimmune Diseases
00:00:01
Speaker
Free audio post-production. by alphonic dot com Do you have, or do you know someone who has, an autoimmune disease? Common autoimmune diseases include rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, lupus, many others.
00:00:19
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It's a broad category for when the body's immune system attacks healthy tissues and organs, leading to all kinds of medical complications. And
Introducing Dr. David Bilstrom
00:00:30
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data overwhelmingly shows that autoimmunity is on the rise.
00:00:35
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Many researchers have even described an epidemic of autoimmune diseases in the United States and around the world. Now, what exactly causes autoimmunity is complicated. There are certainly genetic factors at play, but there are many environmental factors and lifestyle factors as well.
00:00:52
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Today's guest is the author of a book called The Nurse Practitioner's Guide to Autoimmune Medicine, Reversing and Preventing All Autoimmunity. Now, this is a bold title.
00:01:04
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And when I first met Dr. Bilstrom and heard about some of his work in regenerative and functional medicine, I was curious to know more. He spent decades educating medical professionals and treating patients on how to handle the symptoms of autoimmunity and chronic health issues by really getting to the root cause.
Circadian Rhythm's Role in Health
00:01:22
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And while there are many things that we can look at at the center of it all is the body's circadian rhythm and sleep. So I'm certainly looking forward to this conversation to learn more.
00:01:37
Speaker
Today,
Interview with Dr. Bilstrom
00:01:38
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I talk with Dr. David Bilstrom, an autoimmune disease specialist, about what causes autoimmunity and chronic health issues in the body and the impact of regulating our 24-hour body clock.
00:01:55
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I'm Jimmy Leonard. This is Sweeneya Labs.
00:02:04
Speaker
Dr. David Bilstrom, welcome to Suenio Labs. How are you today? I'm fantastic. So happy to be here. Yeah, I'm really happy to have you here. i think this is a topic that a lot of people are going to be interested in, but maybe not a lot of people know about.
00:02:20
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So we've certainly got a lot to cover here, but I thought we could start with you a little bit about your background.
Dr. Bilstrom's Medical Journey
00:02:26
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So tell us a little bit about what you do, how you got there in life. Well, I'm trying to, and and and so far relatively successfully, changing the way that autoimmune diseases are dealt with worldwide. It's been about a 10, 12-year mission so far, but I've been doing ah functional medicine, integrative medicine for 20, 30 years.
00:02:48
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And functional medicine is where is where you try to figure out the why. Why do you have something? And if you have something, you're in a great position to make it better and prevent disease before it even happens.
00:03:02
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But with the autoimmune disease, the body actually is attacking its own body parts. And it is a super huge epidemic. ah including 70% of all autism is one particular autoimmune disease.
00:03:14
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used to be one in 400. Now it's like one in 40 kids in North America. turns out actually that autoimmune disease where we attack our own body parts, kind of the classics are like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, ah psoriasis, these kind of guys.
00:03:29
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It actually turns out that the immune system is part of every chronic health issue. Ability to control inflammation will drive any body part crazy, create a disease, and the immune system is intimately connected with everything that can go wrong in the body.
00:03:46
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Or you keep it healthy, you fix it if it got thrown off, you can fix anything.
Importance of Sleep in Immune Health
00:03:50
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And I'm so happy to talk today because sleep and a bigger concept being sleep-wake cycles and even a kind of of bigger concept being circadian rhythm, the 24-hour cycle that every cell in the body follows including the immune system, ah has to do with the circadian rhythm, the sleep-wake cycle, sleeping when you're supposed to. So this is gonna be super fun. So was this something that you always saw as a direction in your career and your practice, or or what sort of turned you on to autoimmune disease in particular?
From Rehabilitation to Functional Medicine
00:04:23
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Well, originally, my area especially was spinal cord injury rehabilitation. So as a rehabilitation doctor, i would all the folks I would see would be paralyzed from the waist down or the neck down after some kind of traumatic injury or some kind of illness.
00:04:37
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And super challenging population. Meds just just don't have meds for so much of the stuff they have to deal with, including their super sensitive to medication side effects.
00:04:48
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Yeah. And ah after a few years of doing that, I'm going, geez, wouldn't to be great if there were some out there that could help these folks in all these different areas of the body that were were adversely affected?
00:04:58
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And wouldn't it be lovely if there was no side effects? And the first thing I discovered was acupuncture. And so I trained out of UCLA and was board certified a medical acupuncture for about 35 years now.
00:05:10
Speaker
And oh my gosh, acupuncture works so much better than I ever thought. And then it but it got me thinking, well, geez, what else is out there that I never heard about my traditional training that might help these folks as well.
00:05:21
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And so, you know here I've been doing like a three and a half decade rabbit hole, like all these things that are so amazingly great to help the body either stay healthy or get healthy. that you just don't learn in in traditional training. the the thing i was already seeing a lot of patients with autoimmune disease, the chronic of the chronic folks, people that have been everywhere, tried everything, come to me.
00:05:44
Speaker
We get them turned around. They're feeling great. When I read this really tragic story in the New York Times where there was this really famous journalist who developed the autoimmune disease lupus. But her story I'd heard a thousand times already. you Nobody knew what she had. it was just getting worse and worse. Three years, five years, seven years, doctor after doctor after doctor.
00:06:03
Speaker
Eventually she got diagnosed. They go, oh, well, you got this autoimmune disease called lupus where you attack all these different body parts. And it really stinks. But the only thing they had to offer her was like a bandage medicine that might take care of the symptoms, but does not take you know care of why you got it.
00:06:21
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And you just keep getting worse and worse. little bit like with sleep work. So many people are given bandage medicine where it might help you sleep, but it increases your dementia risk. It doesn't give you a good quality sleep. It just gives you quantity sleep.
00:06:34
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And so ah in the case of lupus, this poor woman lost her was losing her life, lost her profession to lupus. I go, okay, this is crazy.
Global Rise in Autoimmune Diseases
00:06:42
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I've heard this way too many times. Somebody's got to change the way autoimmune disease is dealt with worldwide. And that's why I i took on this mission.
00:06:49
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So one thing that you mentioned, Dr. Bilstrom, earlier is that this seems to be a growing problem. Why is that? Well, what we see is that it dominated in all the developed nations around the world, and there's getting more and more.
00:07:02
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But also we can see it, the numbers building and developing countries. So everything that you know makes us what we are as far as a developed nation really negatively impacts the system, whether it's ah environmental toxins, whether it's stress, whether it's the things that are in our highly processed foods, you name it, what sets us apart from hunter-gatherer society, including disruption of the sleep-wake cycle, a disruption of the circadian rhythm, not sleeping when you're supposed to sleep, not getting outside and let your eyeballs see the sun, which I hope you get a chance to do.
00:07:39
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All the things that that make us kind of who we are really whack and challenge the immune system and really whack and challenge the body as a whole. And so like when I was in med school, it was one in 400 people had an autoimmune disease.
00:07:53
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Now, when you look at it, they go, well, You know, you can attack any body parts. So one of the things is there's not like hundreds of different autoimmune diseases. There's really one disease that can attack any body part.
00:08:04
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We've got a lot of different kinds of body parts. When they do the data, they say, well, if you take the top 10 most common autoimmune diseases, it's like one in seven, one in six people. I said one in 400.
00:08:16
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But when you you go like, well, they're not counting that 70% of all autism is one particular autoimmune disease. They're not counting heart attacks and strokes and dementia and Alzheimer's and osteoporosis as tied into the immune system. So when you look at that, it really truly is, well, either you have an autoimmune disease or if you don't do some things very specific, you're going to get an autoimmune disease because you're going to get a chronic disease that's tied into this whole immune system disruption.
00:08:42
Speaker
I mean, that that sounds so ominous, but yeah I think even just experientially, it it makes sense. I mean, think about how really anyone that you meet, you can just make an assumption that they're on medication for something or they have some kind of health issue or or they will in the next five or 10 years. it It is just kind of so much of our culture. It's so hard to stay healthy nowadays. You can be doing, hey, I'm trying to eat right. I'm trying to exercise.
00:09:09
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Oh my gosh, I got this chronic health issue. That didn't help me nearly as much. And I think, you know, when you say it's kind of ominous, but what I would tend to say is the body is so smart. The body and has this default mode. It's always trying to move towards wellness.
00:09:23
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It's always trying to fix stuff. so And if it's not able to fix something or it's not able to keep you healthy, there's a really good reason. And so even though it's kind of ominous, it's like, geez, you know, this is like, ah I'm kind of going to be stuck with this. I go, no, no, no.
00:09:37
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It's not hard to prevent it. And it's really, truly not all that difficult to reverse it when it's well established. You just got kind of know how to do it. And ah the body's too smart to to be make it really, really hard.
00:09:51
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You just got to
Impact of Circadian Syndrome on Health
00:09:52
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kind of know where to put your effort. So one of the things that you mentioned is, especially in developed nations, people are not sleeping when they're supposed to sleep. I think that's probably a good tagline for America. So many people can fall into that category. So you mentioned circadian rhythm a couple of times.
00:10:08
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What's the connection here? So it's kind of the bigger term would be circadian syndrome. So circadian syndrome is what happens when the 24-hour clock in every cell in our body, the circadian rhythm is thrown off.
00:10:19
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And I used to think that circadian syndrome was pretty much synonymous with metabolic syndrome, which is obesity. have an epidemic of that. Type 2 diabetes have an epidemic of that. That's insulin and blood sugar are control issues.
00:10:34
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And then cholesterol issues. And they go, well, it's the same thing. Well, we got an epidemic of cholesterol issues, obesity and diabetes. But then now they're like, oh, oh, o o oh, oh.
00:10:47
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and ah Circadian rhythm, you have a disrupted 24-hour cycle that oftentimes first shows up as sleep issues. that's tied into everything. It's tied into cancer. It's tied into autoimmune disease because it disrupts the immune system.
00:10:59
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It's tied into depression and anxiety. It's tied into really everything in the system. And so the the inability to sleep when you want to sleep is really the tip of the iceberg, total tip of the iceberg. It's like,
00:11:12
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You iceberg 5% is above the surface, 95% below. Hey, I'm not really sleeping the greatest. That's the 5%. But wow, what ah what a huge ah mess this is when that circadian rhythm gets thrown off.
00:11:25
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So characterize that, what does look like in someone's life? You know, to to say my rhythm is thrown off, what kinds of symptoms do we see? So I think one of the first ones would be, hey, I'm just not the greatest sleeper in the world.
00:11:38
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And you go, okay, well, you've got a sleep-wake cycle disruption. You've disrupted the circadian rhythm. You're basically either in or you're moving towards a circadian syndrome. And so ideally, we're supposed to sleep great. You know, we we we go to bed. We fall asleep fairly quickly.
00:11:56
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get the greatest sleep in the world. Oh, my gosh, sleep of the dead. That's the greatest sleep ever. We wake up. I am so energized. I'm ready to take over the world. And then all day long, you tons of energy. You don't have any brain fog. Your brain's clicking energy. Oh, my gosh.
00:12:10
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And then you do the same thing and you get this beautiful 24-hour cycle going. Well, if you're in tired during the daytime, it's like, well, actually, you should be tired at night, not during the daytime. And so if you're you don't have great sleep, you know it's disrupted.
00:12:25
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If you go, oh geez, you know, I'm not super energetic. My brain is not clicking when I'm awake. Well, that's kind of when it's supposed to click. It's not supposed to be clicking in the middle of the night, keeping you awake, right? And so I really think, you know, this if you have a disrupted sleep, oh my gosh, it is so important to fix.
00:12:42
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And unfortunately, like I touched on before, is ah you don't want to put a bandage on it. You don't want to just like throw a med at it and go, oh, I slept better last night. I must have fixed the problem. Well, no, actually, probably you didn't because the vast majority of meds that get used for sleep, what you want is good sleep quality and good sleep quantity.
00:13:02
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Most sleep meds give you quantity but actually make the quality worse. Sure. And ah so many of the meds that they use for sleep actually increase your dementia risk.
00:13:14
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There's one sleep med that gets used a lot called Trazodone that actually is one of the few ones that gives you better sleep quality and quantity. but It also increases your dementia risk.
00:13:24
Speaker
So you're using something to sleep that actually isn't fixing the problem and things just going to get worse and worse over time, not just your sleep but everything else, but also your increasing risk of dementia and Alzheimer's while you're taking a medicine for sleep. It's really...
00:13:37
Speaker
not a great way to go. So what would be an ideal situation? And I think this is where a lot of us run up against a wall here, because, you know, maybe maybe we know or we've heard before, okay you know, we need to be sleeping on a more natural rhythm, but I've got a job where I need to be on on the shift until 9pm, or, i've you know, I've got school stuff, if you're a student or, you know, we we have all of these, these lifestyle reasons that are throwing off our schedule.
00:14:04
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So what does fixing this look like? And that's where kind of this modern society we live at really compromises, you know the ease of keeping a great circadian rhythm.
00:14:15
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And so ideally, you'd want to go to bed about the same time every night, wake up about the same time every morning, you know, really get this 24-hour rhythm going. Now, there's a term called social jet lag.
00:14:29
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Social jet lag. Yeah. And so that's when we we shift our sleep-wake cycle on the weekends when we're not working. ah I stay up later. I sleep later.
00:14:40
Speaker
And you go, well, that you know that kind of makes sense. But actually, that throws the system off, just like people that fly you know halfway around the world or even a couple of time zones go, geez, it takes me a few days a few days to kind of get back in this new rhythm because of the different time zones.
00:14:56
Speaker
Well, basically, the sun's coming up a different time than where you live. The sun is going down different now you live. Even a couple of time zones, you know, it takes the body a little time to get going. Sometimes people notice it. It's like a subtle thing where maybe I don't sleep the greatest.
00:15:10
Speaker
But also, you you go like, well, geez, you know, i kind of got constipated. i only went like three time zones away. And, you know, might yeah I usually poop every morning. But, you know, it's just enough to throw me off when I get constipated. It's like, yeah, even a couple...
00:15:23
Speaker
you know, little time zones, it'll shift by a couple hours. That sleep-wake cycle is enough to start really impacting the entire system. Yeah, I mean, that's a ah great example. You know, maybe maybe not one that we always talk about, but it's like it as it shows that there is a whole body impact.
00:15:39
Speaker
So what else? So, you know, trying to go to bed at the same time, waking up at the same time, what else does it look like to have a consistent rhythm? Ideally, you want to ah have the night times as dark as you can.
00:15:53
Speaker
a big disruptor of the circadian rhythm and sleep is artificial light at night. So you want your nights to be as dark as you possibly can. Dark is really, really therapeutic.
00:16:06
Speaker
It's not just the absence of light, but dark itself is very therapeutic, but also sunlight is very, very therapeutic. And so we want our days to be as full of sunlight as possible and our nights as absolutely dark and devoid of any kind of light as possible.
00:16:22
Speaker
And so in the back of our eyes, we have the retina. Now, most retinal cells are what they call image-forming retinal cells. So those are the rods and cones that allows us to image-forming retinal cells, they project information up to the part of the brain called the visual cortex that allows us to see images.
00:16:41
Speaker
right And you say, well, how cool is that? Sight. Wow, how cool is that? Well, got one that might be even cooler. We only have known this for like 20, 30 years. We started seeing with research seeing that the eyes were doing a lot more as far as impacting us than we could explain by the rods and cones.
00:16:57
Speaker
And then they found back there in the retina things called non-image-forming retinal cells. Fascinating. Life hits the non-image-forming retinal cells. They project information to all these super, super important brain parts.
00:17:11
Speaker
The part of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which they call the master clock, that oversees the 24-hour rhythm in every cell in our body, including the immune system, which is involved in preventing cancer and all this, hey, I don't want to attack my own body, parse the autoimmune stuff.
00:17:28
Speaker
But it's really connected with everything. Every body part has a 24-hour clock or follows a 24-hour clock. So like you hear a lot about how important the gut is. Well, intestinal microbiome, that mix of the good, bad bugs in the gut that people go, wow, you know the gut is just like the super central mechanism.
00:17:46
Speaker
Well, it has a 24-hour clock. There's a different mix during the 24-hour cycle. Well, hormones have a 24-hour cycle. Neurotransformers have a 24-hour cycle.
00:17:56
Speaker
Everything in the body, heart rate has a 24-hour cycle. The heart has a 24-hour cycle.
Light's Effect on the Brain and Emotions
00:18:02
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That suprachiasmatic nucleus, light needs to see these non-image-forming retinal cells so they can project up there.
00:18:09
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But also, these non-image-forming retinal cells, when they're seeing sunlight... Some of the best is the infrared, more specifically near-infrared, the first three hours after sunrise, but there's benefit from the UVA, ultraviolet, A and B, more midday.
00:18:24
Speaker
They project information up to part of the brain that's involved in emotion and parts of the brain involved in mood. So it's called the amygdala and the perihabanula. And it projects to a part of the brain involved in our metabolism. So we have this epidemic of obesity.
00:18:39
Speaker
Jeez, I watch what I eat and I exercise. I can't lose a pound. That's because it's lost this 24-hour rhythm. it's not You're not seeing sunlight and the eyes are seeing light in the middle of the night. And so you disrupt this part of the brain that's involved in metabolism, burning fat as fuel and all this. So this is this epidemic of obesity.
00:18:56
Speaker
It also projects to the hypothalamus, and the hypothalamus is part of what they call the HPA axis, hypothalamus, pituitary gland, adrenal gland.
00:19:07
Speaker
Adrenal gland sits on top of the kidneys, makes the stress hormone cortisol. So the HPA axis is how our body deals with stress. And we need a healthy HPA access. We need to be robustly able to deal with stress, physical, emotional, spiritual.
00:19:23
Speaker
It's tied into everything. It's tied into cardiovascular health, hormone balance, immune system, you name it. And so the non-immunforming retinal cells need to see healthy amounts of light. All it takes is two minutes at a time.
00:19:37
Speaker
Two minutes getting the eyeballs outside. No contacts, no glasses, no sunglasses. 10 to 15 minutes is even better, but two minutes is all you need within the first three hours after sunrise and then as many times during the day as possible.
00:19:49
Speaker
Now, in our modern society, ah and as a doctor, I'm part of this, a lot of parts of the year, the sun's not even up by the time I get to clinic. The sun's gone by the time I get out of clinic, right?
00:20:00
Speaker
But you got to get your eyeballs outside. Between patients, walking outside for two minutes. Okay, la, la, la, la. It comes through clouds. It doesn't have to be sunny because we're talking about ultraviolet infrared. So you got to get as much sunlight as possible hitting those knot from your retinal cells that really start setting because every time of the day, there's a different sort of spectrum of light and the body starts going, oh, I'm setting my clock because I know when the spectrum should be there and I can see them and I'm setting them.
00:20:27
Speaker
But then here comes nighttime. And it turns out that, yes, sunlight, infrared, fire infrared, you're seeing a lot of people going to the gym and getting in the infrared saunas and all this kind of stuff. But then you got to have darkness at night.
00:20:42
Speaker
Uber important also. And what we have is we start flipping on lights when it starts getting dark because we're like, well... You know, our ancestors, they were awake when the sun was up.
00:20:52
Speaker
They were asleep when the sun was down. But we're like, well, I can't do that. You know, um I got to do some more work. I got to prep dinner. I got to get the kids to sleep. And you start flipping on lights. And so now you've got this artificial light at night. The toxic light is the blue light.
00:21:07
Speaker
It is so toxic to the system and hold so toxic to everything. works So this artificial light, more specifically blue spectrum, is super toxic to the system. And so, especially that two hours before bedtime.
00:21:21
Speaker
And if you get this artificial light at night, the blue light, that's unfortunately the old incandescent bulbs that we used to use that were big energy hogs, had very little blue light. But all the the newer lights in our homes are super high in blue light, toxic blue light.
00:21:37
Speaker
And that toxic blue light, particularly the two hours before bedtime, oh my gosh, does that throw off their circadian rhythm? And then that drives the insomnia. It drives the circadian rhythm. So in a perfect world, you want to wear a high quality ah nighttime blue light blocking glasses once you start flipping lights on at night.
00:21:56
Speaker
for sure last two hours before bedtime and then you want your bedroom as dark as absolutely possible you don't want artificial light night in the bedroom you don't need a nightlight you can't have light coming in through a window from other houses all this kind of stuff you got keep it as dark as absolutely possible now ideally you make it super dark you know block out shades or whatever, you wear a nighttime eye mask.
00:22:22
Speaker
And that dark is so important, just like the light was so important, to the point where we've released a lot of information the last few months about how toxic this blue light, artificial light at night is, including this lovely article about artificial light at night and cancer.
00:22:38
Speaker
They talk about how getting this artificial light at night really profoundly increased cancer risk. And cancer,
Risks of Artificial Light at Night
00:22:44
Speaker
we got an epidemic of cancer. It is just like all over the place in younger and younger people.
00:22:49
Speaker
Like colon cancer used to be like the 43rd most common cancer. Now it's the second most. And now people in their 20s and thirds are getting colon cancer. It used to be like, you know, 50s and 60s kind of thing.
00:23:00
Speaker
ah epidemic proportions and well it increases cancer risk but also depression anxiety obesity diabetes all these kind of things and it is so toxic to how the system works we also share this information that ah when women get breast cancer ah You know, you got to get rid of the cancer, surgery, radiation, chemo.
00:23:24
Speaker
But then you want to try to do your best never to get it again. Now, it's really sad. There's so many things because in functional medicine, we said, well, if you get rid of the cancer, to do that. You got to get rid of the reason why you got the cancer. but Otherwise, the why keeps pushing it to cancer again.
00:23:38
Speaker
We're not so good at prevention. But one of the things that women with breast cancer are offered by traditional oncologists, cancer docs, is something called tamoxifen. And they use it for five years.
00:23:49
Speaker
That's the only thing that most women are given to try to keep cancer from coming back again to the breast. Well, this artificial light at night totally stops tamoxifen from working.
00:24:00
Speaker
Totally stops from working. So tens of thousands of women in the United States alone are taking tamoxifen, thinking they're using something to prevent breast cancer from coming back. That artificial light at night, that's not only disrupting their sleep-wake cycle, but disrupting everything because it's throwing off their circadian rhythm.
00:24:18
Speaker
stops tamoxid from working. They're getting absolutely no benefit whatsoever. Now, it's not hard to fix. Truly, all you got to do is take melatonin to fix that because that artificial light night stops melatonin production and that has this huge impact on everything.
00:24:32
Speaker
And I'm sure, you know, your listeners know a lot about melatonin, but I don't think they know truly how important it is because if they're just thinking it's only for sleep-wake cycles, that's the tip of the iceberg too.
00:24:43
Speaker
your Every cell in the body basically makes melatonin. Your eyes make melatonin for itself. All these body parts make melatonin. The good bacteria in the gut make melatonin.
00:24:54
Speaker
It's not just for the brain. We've known for a long time that people that make more melatonin or take it, less heart attack, less stroke, less Alzheimer's, less cancer, less osteoporosis.
00:25:06
Speaker
And then when we're talking about our stuff that we're talking about here, you're like, wow, your ability to make melatonin, every cell makes it because every cell needs it. It is super important.
00:25:17
Speaker
But you get this artificial light at night, ah totally it totally stops it from making melatonin, but tamoxifen doesn't work. Nothing works as it should. And this is one reason why melatonin, a naturally occurring compound, should be made by our body. If we can't make it, we should take it. But when we make these kind changes, like trying to reset this 24-hour circadian rhythm,
00:25:37
Speaker
Well, then every cell in the body makes it and every cell in the body is happy about it. Not just you sleep like a baby, and but everything else works better, including
Restoring Circadian Rhythms
00:25:45
Speaker
preventing cancer, autoimmune disease, and all those.
00:25:51
Speaker
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00:26:09
Speaker
Dr. Bilsram, I think what you're saying almost sounds unbelievable. Like this idea that if we're on our phones or have these bright LED lights and we're doing this every single night, we have a higher risk of cancer.
00:26:23
Speaker
I mean, and to most people, I think that like that sentence almost sounds crazy. Why is that statement so shocking to most people that something as everyday sleep can have such incredible ramifications.
00:26:41
Speaker
I think one one of the the the studies that I quoted when we kind started sharing this information, it basically, i gosh, I wish I had it right here next to me, but basically it was saying, you know, industrialized nations, the advent out of, you know, light artificial ah illumination, you know, at first was thought to be innocuous.
00:27:01
Speaker
You know, it didn't hurt us. But now we realize that it has a big negative impact on us, ah not only the physiology, but behavior, you know, staying awake when it's dark and, sleeping when it's light, but then this drives cancer, depression, anxiety, obesity, diabetes, and all this. And so it's not innocuous.
00:27:19
Speaker
And it's something that we just take for granted. Well, that's life. That's our lifestyle. But it is a very toxic lifestyle, including the the ah social jet lag has a big negative impact on us.
00:27:33
Speaker
Just how we stay awake. I see white cycle shifts on the weekends compared to our, our, our work day. You know, what, what the, you know, if you don't know that this is really happening, you don't do anything about it.
00:27:43
Speaker
It's not hard to fix. you know, really, truly get your eyeballs outside for a couple of minutes, a couple of times of the day, and you make sure your bedroom's super dark.
00:27:54
Speaker
You pop on some high quality blue light blockers for a couple hours before bedtime, and you can be on your phone, not get whacked. You can turn your lights on the house, not get whacked and these kinds of things. And so, you know, it almost seems too easy. You know, I think you can look at it like it almost sounds like a too much of a mess to fix but truly the body is so smart it's really not hard to fix you just got to know that it it needs to be fixed because it's driving these epidemics of everything we're dealing with uh in modern society nowadays there's probably some parallels to other health fixes so to speak i mean you know if somebody's a smoker you know think about just saying well
00:28:35
Speaker
If you stop smoking, this one thing, just the incredible difference that's going to make in your health. And now of course, you know, there's there's all these reasons why it's it's difficult to just suddenly quit overnight. Just like I'm sure there's all these reasons why it's difficult to suddenly have great sleep hygiene if if that's not part of your rhythm right now. But there are these other areas where where we know this. If you make this one change in your life, it can have incredible ah impacts on your health overall.
00:29:03
Speaker
I'll give you an idea, you know, this concept in general, but also this yeah eyeballs have to see sunlight is I gave a lecture in Paris back in June of 2024. And I was talking about the four maternal microbiomes that makes a good bed bugs and four different maternal body parts during pregnancy that drive the development of the fetus, healthy development of the developing baby and the baby's microbiomes.
00:29:27
Speaker
And so I talked about, you know, how you can create these healthy maternal microbiomes that are going to help the developing baby, set them in a good place. And it's been shown to prevent everything, keep them healthier their entire life, not just, you know, childhood disease, but assess their system early so they don't get the diabetes and the cancers and the heart attacks and all this.
00:29:45
Speaker
And so I talked about, well, how can you develop these healthy microbiomes? What disrupts them? but how to correct it. And as an example of how profoundly important is the sleep-wake cycle, but these, including these non-image-forming retinal cells, seeing sunlight is a third the way through pregnancy.
00:30:04
Speaker
About three months in, six more months ah baby parts to be developed. There's a whole bunch of baby parts that still need to be developed, including The liver doesn't even fully develop until eight months after we're born.
00:30:15
Speaker
The brain doesn't even develop until 25 years after we're born. But you've got six more months of baby parts to come. There's very little baby parts in place. One of the few baby parts that's in place that three months in are these non-image forming retinal cells.
00:30:29
Speaker
It's so foundational. Baby's eyes start seeing light coming through the abdominal and uterine wall a third the way through pregnancy. Baby starts seeing a light. And that ability to see sunlight...
00:30:41
Speaker
coming through the abdominal uterine wall starting three months of the pregnancy. It's vitally important to develop all these brain parts we're talking about, all these microbiomes throughout the entire system. They're using this to develop a circadian rhythm ah three months in.
00:30:55
Speaker
That's why babies develop their unique circadian rhythm independent of the mother or during pregnancy. So the baby might want to be sleeping when the mom's awake, might be want to be awake when the mom's sleeping, but the word' developed they're also trying to try and develop a healthy part of the brain that's involved in metabolism so they never get obesity.
00:31:11
Speaker
Healthy part of the brain involved in mood and emotions. They never get depression, anxiety, bipolar, schizophrenia. They're going to the hypothalamus, so they develop a healthy ability to deal with stress even before they're born.
00:31:23
Speaker
Mom might be stressed out, but the baby, if the baby's eyes are seeing the light like they should, the the light part of this 24-hour circadian rhythm They're dealing with stress, even though the mom might be having a hard time dealing with it.
00:31:35
Speaker
The baby's dealing with it because they are developing healthy ability to deal with stress before they've been born. So this is so foundational in how we're put together. But then it makes it so foundational, this circadian rhythm and staying healthy or becoming healthy if we get sick.
00:31:50
Speaker
That's incredible. I want to switch to a ah different topic. wanted to make sure we mentioned this. So ah you also have a book. It's called The Nurse Practitioner's Guide to Autoimmune Medicine, Reversing and Preventing All Autoimmunity. That's a bold claim.
00:32:05
Speaker
Well, thank you. What do you cover in this book? Who's it whos it for? and you know is it Is it just for healthcare care practitioners? Is it for someone who's been diagnosed? No, it's it's really truly for non-medical people along with medical people. I intentionally did it that way because I really think that a non-medical person could do about 60, 70% of what I do in clinic if they just kind know. Because i always talk about the body. Yes, it is super, super complicated.
00:32:34
Speaker
But it's also super, super logical. We know that in our world in general, well, the inside of our bodies follow the same logic as the outside world. And so it talks about this epidemic of autoimmune disease, but cancer is the flip side of the same coin as autoimmune disease. So this is tied into the immune system in general, autoimmune disease, cancer.
00:32:53
Speaker
But as I mentioned before, it's tied into everything we now know. Anything you don't want is tied into it. And so I talk specifically about why this is such a problem. I talk about exactly why this stuff happens.
00:33:06
Speaker
I talk about exactly what tests to run. If you're a medical practitioner or these are tests that nowadays people can run themselves, exactly how to interpret the lab results, because it's important to get the right labs, but how you interpret it, exactly what to do based on the lab results, exactly when to retest to see if you're fixing it along with you should be feeling better, exactly what to do if if it's getting better or not getting better.
00:33:32
Speaker
So really, I'm just letting people know. And all the other things I do on my website, such as this free online educational email course, which is seven emails, and each one takes a deep dive into why chronic disease specifically autoimmune disease, but chronic disease in general, exactly why it happens and what you can do to fix it yourself, including we're sharing all this information.
00:33:55
Speaker
So this whole light, dark thing that we're talking about, the non-imforming retinal cells, all this kind of stuff, it's it's under an umbrella term called photobiomodulation.
00:34:06
Speaker
That's not an incredible Scrabble score right there. Isn't that That's a good but good word. Photo bio modulation. So photo, light, bio, life, modulation. I can't think of a synonym for that. you know how i know Kind of rhythm.
00:34:20
Speaker
Sure. Changing the rhythm. And that kind of stuff. Yeah, either for good or bad. And I mean, this stuff is so important. Babies can do it three months into their existence. And people just don't know how bad this kind of thing is when the circadian rhythm gets thrown off. They understand, man, if you don't sleep, that's terrible.
00:34:40
Speaker
Well, that's just the tip of the iceberg. But it's so important to be able to fix it. And it's not hard to fix it. You just got to know you got to fix it. So if somebody has an autoimmune disease or or they think they might or they've been diagnosed, but nothing's really worked, what's a good starting point? Because you mentioned a a number of different things. Like you mentioned getting lab tests, you know, maybe somebody has has no experience with functional medicine.
00:35:02
Speaker
Where where's the starting line? Well, think one thing is, you know, it costs so little money if you get your eyeballs outside for two or more minutes multiple times of the day.
00:35:15
Speaker
Start sometime within the first three hours after sunrise. Try to get them out there as much as you can. buy ah if you know where to look, and we share this information on my website, you can get a great pair of nighttime blue light blocking glasses for 30 bucks.
00:35:28
Speaker
You go online, you might have spent $200. $30 is all you need if you know where to go. And then you have all this. So just trying to reset this sleep-wake cycle, this light-dark cycle, the circadian rhythm has a huge impact on everything.
00:35:43
Speaker
And you spent $30. And so it doesn't take a lot of money to really get started. Now, you really got the system going in the right direction. Whatever health issue you have, depression, anxiety, obesity, you name it, diabetes, autoimmune disease, cancer.
00:35:57
Speaker
But that's a great foundation to set. And then you can start getting into, oh you know, so, you know, what lab test might I want? You know, what supplement that might might I need?
00:36:08
Speaker
temporarily because you don't necessarily need you know something all the time. You fix the system. The system takes over and does work. You don't need supplements or meds long-term. And if you're somebody who is on a medication, it's important to know how that's not really fixing the problem.
00:36:23
Speaker
So i you know you're not sleeping well. Here's Ambien. Well, you know, I'm sleeping better. What's the big deal? i know yeah something's causing it. We go, well, you know, of all the things that could cause you not to sleep well, the one thing we know is not a problem is an Ambien deficiency because yeah you don't have Ambien, right?
00:36:41
Speaker
So it's something, but it's not that. Oh, what's the big deal? I took Ambien and I'm sleeping better. Well, Ambien increases your dementia and Alzheimer's risk. It doesn't fix the problem, so there's circadian disruption. you know, your light-dark cycle, sleep-wake-like, stival off, and you're going new stuff on top of the old stuff.
00:36:58
Speaker
Oh, well, now I need something for anxiety. Oh, well, now I need something for hypertension. Well, now I need something for obesity. Now I need something for my immune system. It's like, well, and if you some sleep's better than no sleep.
00:37:10
Speaker
So if you just can't sleep a lick, well, you might want a medicine, but that's not going to fix it. Use it temporarily. at least I'm getting some sleep, which is better than no sleep. I can function during the day, do what got do, but then that should buy you time to go back and go, okay, so what's really going on?
00:37:25
Speaker
Well, here's my book. Here's the free online email course where lay people can do this. ah Ideally, I like to, as part of the education of medical people, I love to have somebody in every community that knows how to do this because it's hard for that community to understand how important this stuff is and what you can do to fix it.
00:37:43
Speaker
You don't have to re rely on bandage medicine unless there's somebody in your community that can share that information out. We're trying to share our community is worldwide, fortunately, including my wife and I who talk about this stuff. We've got a chance to lecture six different times in North Africa and the European Union to French-speaking audiences like Paris last summer because this is ah truly a worldwide issue. It's not just an American issue. It's a worldwide issue, and it's becoming an issue in all the developing countries around the world as well.
00:38:14
Speaker
Yeah, no, and I think that's a really good call out. I know, I know that am definitely guilty of doing that, even with just a head cold where, you know, I'll get sick and I'll take cold medicine to suppress the symptoms and then just go to work like normal or go about my day like normal. And it's like, you know, the body is still sick.
00:38:31
Speaker
Like i so I still need to heal. and so just ignoring the symptoms and acting like I'm not sick isn't helping the healing process. And so i think that's a good call out if you are taking medication to sleep or something like that is ignoring the symptoms isn't necessarily the same thing as healing.
00:38:46
Speaker
You know, for a while, you know, you get, you gotta do what you gotta to do to get through your day, but ultimately you really want to get the underlying issue that's causing this chronic thing. Like I just don't sleep well.
00:38:57
Speaker
So you mentioned your website. So, so what is that website? Where can listeners go to learn more about some of the things we talked about here? So it's drdavidbilstrom.com. So dr is like a doctor. So it's drdavidbilstrom.com.
00:39:12
Speaker
And we have blog posts, including I'd encourage people but when it comes to kind of this subject. one of the blog posts I wrote was about early morning sunlight and the other ones about artificial light at night.
00:39:24
Speaker
including there's a link to get high quality blue light blockers at night for only 30 bucks. There's a lot of other information on my website about circadian syndrome, circadian rhythm, how it ties into all this stuff, including the immune system.
00:39:37
Speaker
And everything that we share is the science. So you'll see on these blog posts, at least 10, 12 different scientific references. On my book, Even though it is for lay people, I included 100 different scientific references. because I think it's important that people know that this is not just one guy's opinion.
00:39:54
Speaker
Yeah, this is really and an emerging medical consensus. But as you said, some of this research is really in the last one to two decades or even newer. So it yeah it might not, depending on your age, you know it it might not be what you learned in school. It might not be what you learned in college.
00:40:11
Speaker
We didn't even know these non-immunforming retinal cells even existed 25 years ago. You know, it's a fascinating science. At least I find it fascinating. No, i I agree. I mean, obviously that's why and doing a podcast on this topic, but yeah, the blue light glasses, i'll I'll just give a shout out there. I have a pair, I'm not wearing them right now, but a lot of times I will wear them even just during the workday if I'm gonna be doing a lot of computer work. they It really helps with eye strain just in general.
00:40:36
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, therere they're just on my living room end table for anything that we're doing in the evening. The not sleep is the tip of the iceberg, 95% of what the impact is below the surface. But now hopefully we've been able to i'll tell people what's below the surface a little bit more.
00:40:53
Speaker
i love it. Well, Dr. Bilstrom, thank you so much for coming on to Swain Your Labs. Oh, my pleasure, Jimmy. Thank you so much for having me My pleasure.
00:41:04
Speaker
Swenure Labs is a show about sleep, memory, and dreams. For more content, visit our blog at swenurelabs.com and connect with us to learn more about how you can share your story related to brain health and the daily habits that help us to rest and live better.
00:41:22
Speaker
Thanks for joining. We'll be back soon. free audio postproduction by alphonic dot com