Light Matters More Than Diet for Your Energy

Nick Urban [00:00:01]:
You’re listening to High Performance Longevity, the show exploring a better path to optimal health for those daring to live as an outlier in a world of averages. I’m your host, Nick Urban, bioharmonizer, performance coach, and lifelong student of both modern science and ancestral wisdom. Each week, we decode the tools, tactics, and timeless principles to help you optimize your mind, body, and performance span, things you won’t find on Google or in your AI tool of choice. From cutting-edge biohacks to grounded lifestyle practices, you’ll walk away with actionable insights to look, feel, and perform at your best across all of life’s domains. Here’s something that sounds impossible. You can eat clean, take every supplement on the shelf, train hard and still feel tired, foggy, exhausted, and wired at the same time. And the reason might be the light you’re sitting under right now. My guest is Rudy Nassif.

Nick Urban [00:01:10]:
He’s an engineer who hit rock bottom— brain fog, no sleep— and clawed his way out by changing one thing almost no one thinks about. the light hitting his eyes all day and night. He built a company called Viva Rays, circadian eyewear designed to work with your body clock instead of against it. Rudy, welcome to the show.

Roudy Nassif [00:01:34]:
Thanks for having me, Nick.

Nick Urban [00:01:35]:
Plenty of people think that light is just an on-off switch. You’re either exposed or you’re not. Maybe it’s bright or it’s dim. Set the stage for someone who’s never thought about this. What is light doing in the body and why should anyone care?

Roudy Nassif [00:01:48]:
Yeah, that’s a wonderful question. Most people think that light is just illumination. It’s something that you turn on and off, it allows you to see the world around you. However, light goes way beyond that. Way beyond that. And I like to describe it or view it as information instead of illumination. So, light is information, not only illumination. And the way I like to look at it, I think light is the language spoken by every living thing on Earth, from the smallest bacteria to the largest mammals.

Roudy Nassif [00:02:26]:
And this language has shaped evolution for billions of years, guiding the growth of the plants, the movement of the animals, and the rhythm of the seasons. So So, light is literally, philosophically speaking, and I will integrate it with scientifically, it’s the language that nature speaks to us, shaping every aspect of our biology. So, how is that? Light impacts us on so many different levels. So, it touches our circadian biology, our endocrine system, our nervous system. But ultimately, Light controls us on a cellular level.

Nick Urban [00:03:08]:
On a cellular level.

Roudy Nassif [00:03:10]:
More specifically, the mitochondria. And for the listeners who are not familiar, just a quick definition. Those are the tiny little engines within every cell that are responsible for breaking down the food that we eat into ATP. And in the process of doing this, they produce water and CO2. And this is the energy that we use that fuels everything that we do. Thinking, speaking, moving, creating. Also healing and regeneration. Now, there’s a scientist back in 2017.

Roudy Nassif [00:03:51]:
His name is Dr. Douglas Wallace. He won an award for a groundbreaking discovery. And it’s absolutely fascinating because he literally said that 90% of modern chronic diseases originate in the mitochondria losing their efficiency. And one big reason they lose their efficiency, it’s not what most people think. So it’s not only food.

Nick Urban [00:04:23]:
It’s not And exercise.

Roudy Nassif [00:04:24]:
It turns out it’s mostly light and darkness. So I’m going to cover both. How, how light— how could light impact the mitochondria? So you’re probably familiar with Albert Einstein, right?

Nick Urban [00:04:41]:
I hope so.

Roudy Nassif [00:04:41]:
Yeah. Okay, so Albert Einstein’s photoelectric effect, he shows that when light shines on electrons, it generates electricity. Now, why is that important? You may think, okay, uh, how, how does that impact me? This is how plants photosynthesize and how solar panels work. And here’s the part that is really, really fascinating. And when I say this, most people really start shaming me for not understanding the difference between plants and humans. But I say humans also photosynthesize.

Nick Urban [00:05:15]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:05:17]:
Okay, so this process happens within our cells via what we call melanin, which is semiconductor that essentially allow us to photosynthesize. And there’s a Mexican scientist who published a research in a research paper in Nature. He said melanin is to us what chlorophyll is to plants. And to take this a step further, a Nobel Prize winner, Albert Szent-Györgyi, he discovered that sunlight excites electrons in the electron transport chain of the mitochondria. And so the electron transport chain is where the mitochondria pushes electrons and protons from the food that we have eaten that got broken down into those tiny particles.

Nick Urban [00:06:06]:
Right.

Roudy Nassif [00:06:07]:
And then essentially the mitochondria It generates a spin that is being used to metabolize food and break it down. Now, here’s the interesting thing. This spin is essentially generated by the electricity that the mitochondria produces in response to light. And it’s now scientifically known that 1/3 of the energy that we get comes from food, Where’s the second— where’s the second third coming from? It turns out it’s coming from sunlight. Now, there’s 2 very important aspects to this. Mitochondria make on-site melatonin in orders of magnitude than what the melatonin that is made in our pineal gland. And just to clarify a few things, Melatonin is known as the sleep hormone, which the pineal gland produces in response to darkness so that we can have deep restful night’s sleep. I’ll cover melatonin more in the conversation, but what I want to clarify, it turns out that this on-site melatonin has nothing to do with sleep.

Roudy Nassif [00:07:20]:
We produce it during the day in response to sunlight. And, this mitochondria It’s a very powerful engine. But, what ends up happening is that this engine starts heating up as it’s metabolizing food and metabolizing life. The byproduct of this metabolic process is reactive oxygen species and inflammation that end up really damaging this engine. So, the question is, what’s the cooling system that the mitochondria use? to essentially clean off those inflammations. It’s circulatory melatonin that we produce in morning sunlight. Now, what’s the second cooling system when, when there’s no sunlight? It’s pineal melatonin that we produce in response to darkness when your eyes stop viewing blue and green light after the sunset. So melatonin is one of the most powerful antioxidants known to man, and it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s powerful in order of magnitude compared to any antioxidant that you get from food.

Roudy Nassif [00:08:41]:
So to wrap this up, literally light is controlling the mitochondria, mitochondria controlling our longevity. And our ability to stay young and our ability to produce energy. And light does this via 2 mechanisms. One, the sunlight that we get, which acts on our mitochondria in so many different ways. This is only one way. And second, the second part is darkness. The absence of light is what produces this pineal gland melatonin. That is not only a sleep hormone.

Roudy Nassif [00:09:13]:
And not only the highest antioxidant in nature, but it acts also as a signaling molecule to activate the cellular cleaning crew: autophagy, apoptosis, and mitophagy. And those are like fancy terms to describe the mechanisms that happen within our cells so that we can get rid of old cells and replace them with new cells, aka longevity.

Nick Urban [00:09:42]:
Yeah. I think to go back to what you were saying earlier, I first came across the idea that humans can be viewed as photoheteroautotrophs by the work of Dr. Arturo Herrera. He’s the one I think you were referencing. And very fascinating, like the role of melanin and the impact on, I guess, life. How would you go about like If 1/3 of the energy that our mitochondria produce can be traced back to dietary intake, that means there’s another 1 or 2/3 unaccounted for, and light plays a big role there. Does that mean I can get 1/3 of my daily energy requirements strictly from sunlight and nothing to do with food itself?

Roudy Nassif [00:10:29]:
Yeah, that’s absolutely an excellent question. And, To go back to the times when I was completely circadian disrupted, I was struggling with depression, with anxiety, and with ADHD. And no matter what I tried, like every diet imaginable— ketosis, carnivore diet, ancestral diet, veganism— nothing seemed to move the needle. And I was taking all the best adaptogens and supplements for brain health and mitochondrial health. But still, I felt the same. And it wasn’t until something radically shifted, and it was something completely unexpected, as though by surprise, that my life completely turned upside down in, in an excellent way. What ended up happening is my former partner, she comes to me and being very desperate because I was suicidal depressive, she said, hey, pack your stuff, we’re going to volunteer on an organic farm in northern Quebec with indigenous people.

Nick Urban [00:11:37]:
Wow.

Roudy Nassif [00:11:39]:
And in this moment, I’m thinking to myself, like, volunteering on a farm, like, how this is going to help me? But here we go, we’re driving for 7 hours from Ontario to Quebec, and when we arrived to this farm It was nighttime. There’s no electricity, no artificial lights, only like a canopy of twinkling stars so brilliant it felt like the universe is welcoming me home for the first time.

Nick Urban [00:12:06]:
Hmm.

Roudy Nassif [00:12:07]:
I slept in my tent for 6 weeks. Sunlight during the day, firelight at night. On day 3, something absolutely miraculous happened. I wake up and for the first time in my entire adult life, I feel like energy surging through my veins like electricity. Like, literally, I was like, whoa, like, this is what it feels to be rested, to be energized. And the night owl in me who used to stay until 2 AM every night, guess what? is now sleeping shortly after the sunset, naturally, no effort.

Nick Urban [00:12:49]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:12:50]:
Now, one of the things that I noticed on this farm is that my food intake went completely down.

Nick Urban [00:12:58]:
It decreased.

Roudy Nassif [00:12:59]:
I wasn’t eating as much food as I used to. Prior to that moment, I would snack a lot. I would constantly feel hungry and constantly low on energy. So I asked myself a very important question. If food is the only source of energy, like so many health gurus say, how is it possible that I’m now eating less food and I’m feeling more energized? And the answer to this question absolutely blew my mind. There’s 2 scientists back in the 1980s, Martinek and Berezin. They published studies showing that different frequencies of light activate different enzymes in our bodies that are related to metabolism and digestion of food and absorption of nutrients. So much so that they make them 500% more effective.

Nick Urban [00:13:52]:
Wow.

Roudy Nassif [00:13:53]:
Now, 5-0-0. Think about this. This is like literally you’re 5 times better at assimilating the nutrients from any meal that you are eating. And what ended up happening later, I used to pay thousands of dollars in supplements, and my bill for buying groceries was really high because I was over-relying on food for energy.

Nick Urban [00:14:22]:
Mm-hmm.

Roudy Nassif [00:14:23]:
And that wasn’t helping.

Nick Urban [00:14:24]:
Why?

Roudy Nassif [00:14:24]:
Because over-relying on food will also cause A lot of metabolic byproduct called reactive oxygen species.

Nick Urban [00:14:31]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:14:32]:
And if you are living in an environment that is highly inflammatory where you’re exposed to blue light all of the time, you’re not exposed to sunlight, meaning you’ve shut yourself down from the 2 cooling systems that the mitochondria needs to clean those reactive oxygen species. And at the same time, because you’re energy deprived and sun deprived, you are literally relying on so much food and so much supplements in order to find your baseline, and you end up drowning, and you will never find that baseline because you cannot get healthy in the same light environment that made you sick. And this was like this one sentence that I heard at 1:00 a.m. in my basement as I’m scrolling on my phone. The blue light is shining on my face. I’m feeling miserable. And Dr. Jack Kruse pops up in my feed.

Nick Urban [00:15:21]:
Yes.

Roudy Nassif [00:15:22]:
You can’t get healthy in the same light environment that made you sick. And in this moment, Nick, I paused. I really paused. And I thought to myself, could this be the reason for everything I’ve been going through? The lack of energy, the constant fatigue, the depression. And this question took me on an 8-year journey an odyssey of discovering the power of light and discovering the profound impact that light has on our biology. And at the beginning of our podcast together, you had asked me like, what would make this a win? I said to you, what would make this a win is that I could speak and be able to impact at least one person who’s listening in order for them to take this information and turn it into knowledge.

Nick Urban [00:16:15]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:16:16]:
and start acting on it so that they could also experience the power of light and what it feels like to go from circadian disruption to circadian regulation.

Nick Urban [00:16:28]:
So, if anyone’s tuning in right now and it’s 2:00 in the morning, you’re scrolling or listening, that’s a good place to start to get out and change your light environment.

Roudy Nassif [00:16:38]:
Yes. You cut off a little bit, Nick. I don’t know if I cut for you as well.

Nick Urban [00:16:42]:
Ah, okay. I was just saying anyone who’s scrolling right now and listening to this, if it’s 2:00 a.m., perhaps it’s time to put down the phone, to get out as early as possible without sacrificing too much sleep and changing your relationship with light.

Roudy Nassif [00:16:57]:
Absolutely. One of the most powerful steps that anybody could take is getting that morning sunlight and eliminating artificial lights at night.

Nick Urban [00:17:07]:
Yeah, I was going to ask you about the potential vitamin, mineral, nutrient deficiencies if you’re consuming less food, especially over long periods of time. But if you’re getting a higher absorption, more bioavailability out of the food that you do consume, then it can more than make up for it.

Roudy Nassif [00:17:26]:
Absolutely, yes. Because in this life paradigm, it’s not about consuming more, it’s about consuming and being effective at actually absorbing that which you consume.

Nick Urban [00:17:41]:
When it comes to food, do you put your food in the sun? Does that have any impact on it? Like, are there any things that involve light that your average person probably isn’t considering that they should?

Roudy Nassif [00:17:53]:
Yes, absolutely. That’s a wonderful question because when you think about the basis of the whole food chain is what? It’s photosynthesis.

Nick Urban [00:18:04]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:18:04]:
So, it all comes down back to sunlight. And what you think of as your banana is but sunlight that is stored in food. So it’s an electromagnetic barcode of the sun. And when you eat that banana, your body does not really recognize it as a banana. It ends up being broken down into light particles in the form of electrons and protons that have an electromagnetic barcode or a stamp.

Nick Urban [00:18:33]:
Okay.

Roudy Nassif [00:18:33]:
that reflect the light information that this banana has been grown under. And this banana will end up hitting the photoreceptors in your gut and signaling to your body about what time of the season it is. So therefore, food becomes something really important from the light lens because you want to make sure that the light entering your mouth is matching the light entering your eyes.

Nick Urban [00:18:59]:
Yes.

Roudy Nassif [00:19:01]:
You want to match the information. Otherwise, it creates a disconnection between photoreceptors in your hypothalamus and in your eyes and the photoreceptors in your gut, causing tremendous amount of inflammation. And that completely dismantles the whole food talk about which diet is the best, because the answer to which diet is the best will become really simple. What season is it and what food is growing around you in that season? Go visit the farmer and get that food because this is the match. This food will have the electromagnetic barcode that matches the sunlight that you’re getting daily.

Nick Urban [00:19:48]:
I think the average person is well aware that there are photoreceptors in the eyes. You mentioned photoreceptors in the gut.

Roudy Nassif [00:19:56]:
Yes, absolutely. Our bodies are covered with photoreceptors. It’s in our skin, it’s in our gut, it’s in our eyes. We have melanopsin, we have different other types of opsins like neuropsins, for instance.

Nick Urban [00:20:13]:
Uh-huh.

Roudy Nassif [00:20:13]:
Neuropsin is a specific photoreceptor that captures UV light. So If you go and talk to the average ophthalmologist, they’ll tell you that as humans we don’t absorb UV and that UV is bad. You need to block it with sunglasses.

Nick Urban [00:20:30]:
Right.

Roudy Nassif [00:20:31]:
But why on earth had we evolved to create a photoreceptor that is specifically designed to absorb UV? So you ask yourself this question and you start realizing UV is one of the most powerful frequencies that the body uses in order to break down or convert amino acids in the eye into different hormones that control the way we think, the way we feel, and the way we act. So light controls your reality because how you think, feel, and act controls your perception of yourself. Yeah.

Nick Urban [00:21:15]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:21:15]:
And of others around you. What’s an example of this? UV light turns those amino acids into serotonin, dopamine, and melatonin. Serotonin is the hormone that allows you to feel happy and calm and satisfied with what you have right now. So like in this moment, Nick, I’m talking to you and like there’s these wonderful trees and like birds hovering around. And I’m feeling this like beautiful sense of like satisfaction with this moment, partly for you for doing what you do and for allowing me to come and to share what I know with the world, partly to Mother Nature which always gives from herself. But this is serotonin at play. Dopamine, on the other, on the other hand, is also produced because of UV light, and it’s literally what allows us to zoom out and see the bigger picture in life. Like, I see you, I see you sitting up paying attention.

Roudy Nassif [00:22:16]:
This is dopamine. Dopamine allows you to sit up, to pay attention, and to have the motivation to go after what you really want in life. So if you’ve ever been struggling with lack of motivation or inability to focus, AKA what I had struggled with as ADHD, was not an ADHD problem. It was a light problem. Because when I was on the farm, after a few weeks of being there, picture me in the field. It was around 8:00 AM. I was alone weeding the crops. The farmer comes to me and I can’t, like this moment brings me chill because he looks me in the eye, he places his hand on my shoulder and he says, Rudy, I just want to say like, I really admire how much focus you have.

Roudy Nassif [00:23:06]:
Yeah. And, and this moment blew me wide open because for 22 years I grew up as the ADHD kid that got kicked out from 7 different schools, and it completely blowed out my, my paradigm of the kid who can’t focus. So UV light also is what we need in order to activate POMC, proprio-opiomelanocortin. which is like a master protein that become different peptides and hormones such as alpha-MSH, which is essentially what regulates your appetite.

Nick Urban [00:23:41]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:23:42]:
So we know that people with disrupted alpha-MSH have weight issues and they tend to overeat food. That’s a lack of UV light exposure. And alpha-MSH from the brain sends a signal to produce melanin in the skin. Now, what is melanin? The simple, or the simplified version of this question is it’s the natural compound that the skin produces that allow us to tan. But that only scratches the surface.

Nick Urban [00:24:17]:
Yes.

Roudy Nassif [00:24:17]:
Of what melanin does. So we spoke about people commenting on my post saying, you must be so dumb and you must be somebody who’s never been to school because you’re saying that as humans, we— you don’t know the difference between plants and humans, Rudy. And I say, oh well, I wish I did not go to school because I would have saved myself many years of wrong programming. But as we mentioned, Dr. Arturo He published a paper in Nature saying that melanin is to humans what chlorophyll is to plants. So what does this mean in application? It literally can split water molecule using UV light the same way chlorophyll splits water molecule inside of a leaf. And when sunlight hits melanin, water dissociates into 2 things. And, the second one is really important to the longevity game.

Roudy Nassif [00:25:24]:
The first one is oxygen. The second one is hydrogen, one of the most powerful antioxidants.

Nick Urban [00:25:32]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:25:32]:
And, it creates what? It creates a stream of steady electrons that the cells use for energy.

Nick Urban [00:25:43]:
I’ve talked about molecular hydrogen on this show, and usually it’s administering it exogenously. It’s either inhaling hydrogen gas or taking a tablet, you drop it in your water and it dissolves and creates hydrogen water and you drink that. But what you’re describing is an easier, more like more fundamental mechanism of just going outside and exposing yourself to some UV light and having your body create your own molecular hydrogen.

Roudy Nassif [00:26:17]:
Absolutely. And, you could test this. If you get octopus ink, which is very rich in melanin, and you put it in your water and then put it in a bottle that allow you to see what is going on, take it out in the sun, Spin the water and you start watching the hydrogen bubbles bubbling up on top of the water. This is melanin at play, literally, and light interacting with melanin to create one of the greatest antioxidants, hydrogen. And melanin does also 4 things that are absolutely magical. Of course, the number one—

Nick Urban [00:26:58]:
First.

Roudy Nassif [00:26:59]:
The first thing is it’s a free radical scavenger because it’s creating the high antioxidants. And these antioxidants are absolutely essential when you’re thinking about heavy metal detoxification. I was having a conversation with a friend and we were talking about something that is still considered in the realm of conspiracy, which is the chemtrails. And what I had shared with this friend Is whether you want to think this is conspiracy or not, it’s, it’s, it’s your thing. And I have, I have nothing to do with that. But what I could guarantee you is if you take a blood test before and after you are exposed to a chemtrail, here’s what you’re going to notice. You will see 3 things going high in your blood. One, lead.

Roudy Nassif [00:27:53]:
Second, aluminum.

Nick Urban [00:27:54]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:27:55]:
And, third is mercury. Now, how can you deal with these heavy metals that are like they destroy your brain and they are among the most dangerous metals on the chart because they’re not biocompatible?

Nick Urban [00:28:16]:
Mm-hmm.

Roudy Nassif [00:28:16]:
And, they’re also high conductors that essentially end up making our exposure to blue light and to Wi-Fi much worse because now we’re conducting that Wi-Fi into our, into our biology. One of the ways, and the most important ways, to clean those heavy metals— sweating. So sauna, going for a run. It would be your duty to do these things if you are exposed to chemtrails. Now beyond that, How does the body clean those heavy metals? It does so via antioxidants that bind to those heavy metals and push them out. And besides eating a diet that is rich in antioxidants, there’s 2 very powerful ways to do this. One, melatonin at night. So you need to be blocking artificial light after the sunset.

Roudy Nassif [00:29:09]:
Second, melanin. So exposing yourself to UV light is among one of the most powerful way to eradicate those free radicals. The second thing, melanin is an immune regulator, so it boosts your immune system. And there’s a lot of talk today about what could have happened during COVID if people were getting more sunlight. And it’s a very interesting conversation because we know what the Every— like, whether it’s vitamin D production or melanin production or all these different pathways, they all impact our immune system and boost it. The third thing, melanin is the darkest substance in this universe. So, it’s a broadband receiver of frequencies of light. It literally absorbs every frequency of light that you can think of.

Nick Urban [00:30:08]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:30:09]:
So, it makes you a solar panel. And, here’s what’s something really interesting. Our body literally, it converts UV light into infrared via melanin.

Nick Urban [00:30:26]:
Uh-huh.

Roudy Nassif [00:30:26]:
So, the UV will end up converting into infrared that is structuring the water within our cells. And, you could test this out. You could put 2 bottles, one water, the second one water with octopus ink.

Nick Urban [00:30:45]:
What’s that?

Roudy Nassif [00:30:45]:
And what will end up happening, you’ll see that the water with the octopus ink will heat up a lot faster than regular water because the melanin is essentially generating tremendous amount of infrared light by converting UV into infrared. The last one, melanin is antibacterial and antiparasitic, and it’s a very effective compound to fight mold. Not so many people know this.

Nick Urban [00:31:18]:
Yeah, I think I first came across the idea of melanin being important to human health when I read a book, I want to say around 2019, called Regenerate. And, the author in it describes how melanin is one of the core things that made humans unique and allowed humans to flourish.

Roudy Nassif [00:31:36]:
Beautiful. I haven’t read this book, so I’d love for you to recommend it for me after we finish our chat.

Nick Urban [00:31:42]:
Yeah, definitely. So, it sounds from like from what you’re describing, everyone would just want more melanin. That’s very difficult to do. How would you recommend like taking that knowledge that you just described and then changing something? Like, what can we do with that knowledge?

Roudy Nassif [00:32:00]:
Okay. So, first of all, I really want to warn against hearing me and getting really excited and going out and saying, I’m going to get as much UV exposure as possible, and frying yourself out.

Nick Urban [00:32:16]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:32:18]:
Now, why is this like a really important thing? Because If you’re hearing this for the first time, chances are you’re not ready to absorb UV light in the— in, in, in such a way that is beneficial to your health. And the reason so is if you have lived a perpetual life where you are indoors all of the time, you are exposed to blue light all of the time, you’re exposed to Wi-Fi all of the time, the chances are that your mitochondria are pre-damaged. We know essentially that from Dr. Glen Jeffrey, that he ran very important research showing that when mitochondria was under LED lighting, which comes from your screen, the LED bulbs that you use in your home, he looked into a microscope and what he saw was really, really, really shocking. He saw that those mitochondrias were clamping together, and they were slowly going downhill. They stopped breathing. So, if you’re somebody who’s been in this environment for a long time, your mitochondria will not be able to assimilate UV light, and cohesively—

Nick Urban [00:33:39]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:33:41]:
work with your biology to spread melanin in a coherent and cohesive way across the organism. So you’ll end up burning yourself. And one thing about melanin is many people don’t know, but it takes about 4 to 5 weeks for the body to really create new melanin and synthesize new melanin besides mobilizing the already existing melanin. So if you’re type 1 skin, type 2 skin, You’re hearing this, the first thing you need to know is there’s a specific protocol you need to follow. Do not go out in the sun and blast yourself. It’s very safe that you go out and get a lot of sunlight in the first hour of the day and the last hour of the day. And in fact, this pre-exposure to morning sunlight will preload your skin with red and infrared and will allow you to absorb more UV. Later in the day.

Nick Urban [00:34:34]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:34:35]:
And it’s also important that if, if, if you, if you’re convinced about the importance of building melanin, the only time you can really build melanin is when UV is present in the environment. So that is not morning sunlight and sunset that a lot of health influencers talk about, the importance of morning sunlight. Morning sunlight is excellent for resetting your circadian rhythm among other things. And yet, it scratches the surface in comparison to the beneficial impact that you could get when you start getting later UV light. But, the important aspect is if you’re just starting, you want to start with 2 minutes of full-body exposure. And then, you want to make sure that on that same night, When you’re starting to get UV, it’s an absolute—

Nick Urban [00:35:30]:
I lost you for a second. I heard you say you want to make sure, and then I don’t know what came after that.

Roudy Nassif [00:35:34]:
You want to make sure that on the same day you’re starting to get UV, it’s an absolute non-negotiable that you’re blocking artificial light after the sunset. There’s a very powerful relationship between your sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic. that ties back to sunlight and darkness. If you want to optimize your sunlight exposure, at the same time, you need to be optimizing your darkness exposure, and you need to be giving your body that signal of darkness by blocking blue and green light after the sunset at the same time every day. This is going to be non-negotiable. Some of the other non-negotiables, you need to cut all seed oil because it’s highly oxidative and it doesn’t work with UV light. UV light will end up shining on your skin and it will— you— it’s— it’s— seed oil is very phototoxic, meaning when light shines on it, it will flood your system and your endocrine system with inflammation and with inflammatory molecules. So there are all these different nuances that you need to make sure that you are getting right.

Roudy Nassif [00:36:43]:
And I will not be able to share all of the nuances because we’d spend hours doing so. But I highly encourage you to go on our website, check our blog, and I’ve broken down all of these different protocols in a very simple and easy way to understand and helping you know how to essentially start building up that gradual exposure in a way that build up the melanin in a healthy way. What are some of the other aspects and things that you need to start thinking about eliminating from your environment in order for this protocol to be successful? And, what are some of the things that you need to be adding into your life in order for this to be successful, all of which will determine whether you’ll be successful building your melanin without hurting yourself.

Nick Urban [00:37:25]:
Yeah. So, based on what we’ve discussed so far, a couple of my own ideas and practices, I’m curious your take on this mini game plan. First and foremost, if you have especially CFLs but artificial lighting like compact fluorescent lights or the the tube lights, that kind of stuff, to replace that with incandescents, halogens, something that’s more compatible. You have a light spectrometer in front of you, and when you look at these light sources on, like, with a tool that measures them, they look very different, very— the artificial ones look very disjointed compared to the sun. And, the halogen, incandescent stuff like that looks more like the sun in terms of the way our biology can understand it.

Roudy Nassif [00:38:10]:
Yeah.

Nick Urban [00:38:11]:
You also want to have a big contrast, lots of light exposure during the day after you get accustomed to it, and then very little to none at all later at night. You want to gradually build up your exposure over time. You want to remove foods that oxidize easily when they’re exposed to light, and especially UV light. And anything else we’ve mentioned so far that—

Roudy Nassif [00:38:36]:
I’m forgetting. The use of skin products that are highly oxidative. So anything that has a lot of chemicals in it, the shampoo, the— like, you really want to need— you need to start thinking that your skin is an extension of your nervous system. Anything you put on your skin is going to be absorbed. And if you’re using like soap and shampoo that are flooded with chemicals that are highly oxidative, then this is not going to act well with sunlight as Yeah.

Nick Urban [00:39:04]:
And also anything that any product that if when exposed to UV light becomes carcinogenic, it breaks down. It’s probably not a good idea to put that in, on, or around your body if possible, if you’re going to be exposed to that UV light.

Roudy Nassif [00:39:18]:
Yes, indeed. And it’s very funny, but what’s, what’s an example of such a thing that people tend to put on their skin and it ends up being carcinogenic. Do you know?

Nick Urban [00:39:34]:
Sunscreen?

Roudy Nassif [00:39:36]:
Yes. Yeah, it’s crazy because sunscreens are packed with chemicals like oxybenzone, homosalate, and these are among the most dangerous chemicals that you could ever put on your skin. Because not only they flood your endocrine system with oxidative stress, but it turns out that they’re phototoxic. They literally go like on fire. Like if you light up these, if you light up these chemicals, they’ll blow up. They will explode outwardly and radiate. And this is essentially what ends up happening underneath your skin when you put this sunscreen and expose yourself to UV light. There’s like this explosive radiative energy that is packed with endocrine disruptors.

Nick Urban [00:40:31]:
Yeah. Yeah. I used to be religious about using sunscreen and I found that the sunburn I would get after, even when I follow, I use it exactly as directed, it would be different. It would feel worse in a way. I wouldn’t get like the same, like it, I wouldn’t feel as inflamed or as hot as you get when you have like that exposure to UVB, but I, it just didn’t feel like it protected me. And I’ve since stopped using it because it doesn’t really make sense to me. And there’s a lot of better ways to protect yourself from the sun.

Roudy Nassif [00:41:00]:
Yes. And people ask me like, okay, so what do I do? Like, what are some of the other ways I could engage with to protect myself from overexposure? Well, number one, shade. When you are in the shade, you’re not in direct UV light. And that’s one of the best ways our ancestors have used to protect themselves from overexposure. Number 2, a hat. Such a beautiful innovation. You put a hat and you get shade and you decrease the amount of brightness and UV light that is arriving at your skin. Wearing clothing is another way.

Roudy Nassif [00:41:37]:
Why do you need to be in direct sunlight? What ends up happening is most people spend most of their life indoors and they have a harsh winter and everything is dark. And out of a sudden, on a beautiful spring day, the sun is shining and they feel inspired and they go outside and they end up spending 6, 7 hours in direct sunlight. They fry themselves. They come back home on that night, they end up cooking a big meal at 9 PM under fluorescent blue light, and their body is literally screaming because melatonin is low due to artificial exposure. Cortisol is high, and then their organs are spending all night long trying to metabolize that meal that they ate very late, which you’re not supposed to eat 3 hours before bedtime if you really want to allow your body to properly clean and rejuvenate at night. And therefore, they wake up the second day and, and, and they’re completely burnt. And it’s, it’s, it’s no surprise. Of course you are going to burn.

Roudy Nassif [00:42:38]:
You, you overexpose yourself suddenly And you did all the wrong things at night. You did not allow your body to repair and rejuvenate. And one of the only ways to essentially build that exposure is consistency. So once you start doing it, you want to maintain the practice. It’s not something you do every weekend. It’s something that you do every day. And instead of doing it for a long time, you compress the time and you do it every day.

Nick Urban [00:43:08]:
Yeah. 2 other things I think are important to mention in the context of doing it properly. You mentioned this earlier, and I know this to be true from my own experience as well, that the early morning light exposure, it helps buffer and shield you against the UV to an extent because it’s higher in infrared specifically. And also, it helps like the earlier, the more sun you can get during the day, the more melatonin you’re able to produce at night as well. And then also, when you’re outside, even if you’re in the shade, I think it’s the green color of nature, of trees and bushes and shrubs and stuff like that, it reflects the infrared specifically. So, you still get that exposure even though you’re not directly in the sun.

Roudy Nassif [00:43:51]:
Yes, yes, absolutely. This is very underlooked, but the leaves on trees and the grass, Anything with chlorophyll really is highly reflective, highly reflective of infrared light. So, what this means is I’m in this forest right now. I’m like forest bathing.

Nick Urban [00:44:12]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:44:13]:
And as I’m forest bathing, I’m bathing in a field of infrared light that is literally like encompassing my body. It turns out that like when you are in a forest, you get 5 to 10 times the amount of infrared light that you’d otherwise get if you were in direct sunlight. So that’s, that’s an absolutely excellent way. And what do we know about infrared? Infrared is highly regenerative. It’s the polar opposite of UV light. And the more you preload with infrared, and you more— the more you expose yourself to infrared after your sun session exposure, the more you’re going to be able to repair and rejuvenate any damage that may have happened during your exposure.

Nick Urban [00:44:58]:
Okay. We’ve covered some of the big ones as far as I’m aware. I’m also starting to think that perhaps a lot of the controversy around light exposure and UV specifically and even diet, all of this is because we’re not looking at the right variables. And, if we consider all the variables, we were aware of them and we actually researched them, Headlines we see in the news might look very different.

Roudy Nassif [00:45:20]:
Yeah, I think it’s a very nuanced conversation. And oftentimes some people try to take this nuance and to cut it into a 30-second video of here’s how you could improve your melanin. And it ends up being destructive because it’s n 1. And we really need to look at the circumstances and the conditions of each individual and to deal with all of the things in their environment that could act as counterproductive aspects to sun exposure, eliminate those, and then start slowly building that practice.

Nick Urban [00:46:00]:
So, there’s a tremendous amount of variation between individuals in terms of the amount of melanin they have in their body, in their skin, which is evident by the color of skin because that, as far as I can tell, is a good proxy of how much melanin you have. Maybe I’m wrong there. But, I think that’s what it is. Is it always better to have more melanin? And, do the people who have more melanin in their skin have a longevity advantage?

Roudy Nassif [00:46:25]:
That’s an excellent question. I think from the perspective of understanding all the aspects that melanin does to a human being from being a free radical scavenger to allowing us to produce hydrogen water to allowing us to become this very powerful battery that is able to absorb all frequencies of light and convert them, including radio frequency. And essentially, the more melanin you have, the more resilient you are to Wi-Fi and radio frequency. And a very important aspect of melanin, when you’re flying on a plane, you’re exposed to massive amounts of radio frequency.

Nick Urban [00:47:11]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:47:11]:
What ends up happening— I had noticed this in myself several times. I’d be like all beautifully tanned before my flight, and I had taken a picture of my body before and after the flight, and what I saw after was absolutely mind-blowing due to all the stress that you’re exposed to in the airport and from the radioactive frequencies when you are Flying, here’s what my body essentially did. It was eating up its own melanin as a way to deal with all this inflammation. Yes, my body was eating up the melanin, and by the end of the flight, I ended up being less tanned. So my body was brilliantly using the melanin reserve in order to deal with stress. And I tell people from my observation The more melanin you have, the more passively resilient you are to stresses in your environment. Because one of the first things the body ends up doing is using its own melanin reserve to deal with all the different inputs that are generating oxidative stress leading to aging and impacting longevity.

Nick Urban [00:48:23]:
Can melanin absorb— I mean, obviously it can absorb the visible light range. And, on one hand, you have UV and then on the other side, you have infrared. If you go back down further into the UV spectrum and say you go to gamma X-rays, stuff like that, can melanin help deal with that as well?

Roudy Nassif [00:48:43]:
Melanin is a blackbody radiator. So, what is a blackbody radiator? It’s essentially one of the characteristics of a blackbody radiator is that it’s able to absorb every frequency of light on the electromagnetic, electromagnetic spectrum. And that includes radio frequency, includes every frequency that, that you had known to man. Even sound frequency is absorbed by melanin.

Nick Urban [00:49:17]:
Wow, sound frequency as well. Okay.

Roudy Nassif [00:49:19]:
Absolutely. Every wave field is 100% absorbed by melanin and is converted into heat. And, uh, that plays a profound role in longevity. And the thing is, what is, from my opinion, the second most powerful mechanism for anti-aging and for longevity, I’d say, is the polar opposite of melanin. And that is melatonin. And this is how the story of light and darkness unfolds beautifully. And we come full circle because I had started this podcast by saying that when it comes to mitochondrial health, it’s not what we thought it is that break down the mitochondria. It’s not only bad diet and exercise.

Nick Urban [00:50:13]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:50:14]:
It turns out it’s light and darkness, and both of which act and play together and must continue to have this balanced rhythmic interchange between the two in order for us to thrive. And I think fundamentally, when it comes to longevity and well-being, those among us who can maintain a state, a homeostasis state are the ones who will thrive and will continue to stay vital and vibrant. And that is dependent on the nervous system’s ability to maintain a balanced rhythmic interchange between sympathetic arousal, which happens in morning sunlight and in light and sunlight in general, and parasympathetic arousal, which happens in the absence of light, and that is during the darkness. when you stop viewing any form of artificial light, including your Wi-Fi, because the Wi-Fi is read as a radio frequency that is a light wave that will also arouse your nervous system and swing it from the very well-needed parasympathetic state to a more sympathetic arousal.

Nick Urban [00:51:26]:
I think with a lot of this stuff, if we could actually see it, if we could see radio frequencies, if we could see infrared, if we could see ultraviolet light, Our approach towards it would be very different. For example, you would think twice about leaving your Wi-Fi on at night if you could see that it’s irradiating you and your room. It’s kind of like leaving a light switch on, but we just can’t perceive radio frequencies, so we don’t think anything about it.

Roudy Nassif [00:51:48]:
Yes, that’s an excellent point because our senses react to motion and they react to a part of the spectrum that moves and that we are wired to see, such as the visible spectrum.

Nick Urban [00:52:02]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:52:03]:
But there is— that’s only 1 over 10 billion of what exists in this universe from a wave perspective. So there’s a massive wave field that is constantly alive and existent that we cannot perceive. And it’s true, if we were able to see the noise that we’re creating, due to electromagnetic radiations and all of these radio and microwave frequencies that we can’t see, I think we will be freaked out because it will be a soup.

Nick Urban [00:52:34]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:52:35]:
A soup that is extremely messy that we’re constantly bathing with. And what we can do about it is it starts with simple things. Right now I’m talking to you and my phone is on airplane mode because I don’t need it.

Nick Urban [00:52:51]:
Yeah, me too.

Roudy Nassif [00:52:51]:
And I would never put the phone in my pocket because it would be frying my endocrine system and the parts that are highly impactful for fertility. So when I go to bed, why not turning off the phone? Because I don’t need it. Why not turning off the Wi-Fi? Why keeping all these frequencies that could potentially be damaging. Perhaps, perhaps you’re somebody who doesn’t believe it’s that damaging, but we can argue that it’s potentially damaging. And why do you want to keep that potential risk?

Nick Urban [00:53:30]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:53:30]:
Although Dr. Alan Frey had published research back in the 1980s, he ran a very interesting experiment on rats. He took 3 groups of rats, one that was exposed to 1.2 GHz, one that was 1.2 GHz pulsing frequency, which is similar to the frequency that we get from our Wi-Fi. Although I shall say that it’s less intense because now we went up to 2.5 and 5 GHz and we’re moving upward.

Nick Urban [00:54:06]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:54:06]:
And the third group was a sham group that wasn’t exposed to anything. Now, they took these rats and they injected them in fluorescent dyes. They injected their brain in fluorescent dyes and they sacrificed those rats. And then after the 1.2 GHz exposure, they looked at their brain and what they saw was absolutely scary. The group of rats that was exposed to 1.2 GHz had 20 times higher amount of fluorescence inside of their brain compared to the group of rats who were not exposed. Now, think about this for a moment. You have something called the blood-brain barrier.

Nick Urban [00:54:50]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:54:51]:
This tissue that is supposed to protect your brain from anything to enter. And what ended up happening, the rats that were exposed to this pulsing 1.2 GHz frequency They had their blood-brain barrier wide open and all the fluorescent dye went right into their brain compared to the rats who were not exposed, did not have any fluorescence inside of their brain.

Nick Urban [00:55:15]:
I’ve even read that now they’re using that strategically. And, if someone has to undergo a certain procedure, they’re using RF, radio frequencies, to selectively open the blood-brain barrier. So, whatever it is that needs to penetrate and get into the brain, gets in and then they stop using it. And it’s interesting to hear that that same technology used unknowingly or applied unknowingly could be having that same effect on humans. I mean, I hope that more of that research is translated to humans, but regardless, the precautionary principle, like, it’s better to be safe than sorry, essentially.

Roudy Nassif [00:55:49]:
Absolutely.

Nick Urban [00:55:50]:
I’m sure you hear sometimes, but Rudy, what about the people on the beach? I see them, that they look like they have leather skin, like They’re in the sun all day. What’s up with them? Why are they not the pinnacles of health?

Roudy Nassif [00:56:03]:
Are we talking about people down, for example, in South America, like in Mexico, for instance, people spending like a lot of time in the sun?

Nick Urban [00:56:13]:
Yeah, say 4 or 6 hours. And, you look at them and it looks like they’ve aged significantly.

Roudy Nassif [00:56:22]:
Yeah, so I live in Mexico and I’m surrounded with the local community. And when you look at it from the outside, it may appear this way. Although when you start going on the inside, what you don’t realize is most of these people are phone addicts. They are exposed to a tremendous amount of artificial light. They have all, like, way back, converted their, uh, their lighting to these like very bright blue artificial lights. And all of them, the ones I have spoken to, although they spend quite a bit of time in sunlight, they, they don’t sleep. They barely sleep. They drink a lot of alcohol.

Roudy Nassif [00:57:05]:
They, they, they eat a lot of seed oil. And what ends up happening is they create a tragic environment because, as we said, it’s not only about sunlight.

Nick Urban [00:57:16]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [00:57:16]:
It’s also equally about darkness. And most of these people, they’re in sympathetic arousal 100% of the time. And one of which is my surfing coach. He’s very fit, he’s amazing. You’ll watch him surf, you’ll be amazed. And throughout the past 4 years, I’ve seen his health decline. And I’ve seen like him dealing with macular degeneration. which on the outside you’d think, oh, he’s overexposing himself to UV light.

Roudy Nassif [00:57:48]:
And this macular degeneration is a sign of aging. But when you zoom in, here’s what actually happening. Every morning, your retinal pigment epithelium, one of the most mitochondrial dense tissues in your entire body, perform a very precise circadian job. It does cellular housekeeping. So, it clears all these shed debris that are released by your photoreceptors overnight. And, it requires a massive mitochondrial energy in order to be able to deal with these things. And when you disrupt that signal, the release and the clearance of this tissue start failing. And your retinal pigment epithelium also produces its own melatonin at night when you’re sleeping.

Roudy Nassif [00:58:55]:
So for somebody like my coach, you look from the outside and you’ll say, oh, he’s a surfer. He’s around a lot of UV light. This is why he has macular degeneration. But when you zoom into his lifestyle, you realize that his, his completely circadian disrupted. He spends his night until 3 AM under artificial blue lights, drinking alcohol and not taking care of himself. And he eats a lot of seed oil and he’s constantly on his phone. Like as the sun sets, he’s, he’s glued to his phone and then he goes the second day and his exposed to a lot of sunlight and he’s around surfaces that are highly reflective around the water. And that’s why he ends up aging a lot faster than somebody else.

Roudy Nassif [00:59:41]:
But this is how it looks on the inside when you zoom in.

Nick Urban [00:59:46]:
Yeah. Yeah, it’s so easy to see something on the external and assume that, okay, this causes that. When really it’s all the factors behind the scenes that we’re not looking at.

Roudy Nassif [00:59:59]:
Yep, indeed.

Nick Urban [01:00:01]:
So you have a bunch of these light meters and you built an entire company around light. What has been some of the surprising findings for you in that process?

Roudy Nassif [01:00:13]:
That’s a great question. One of the most surprising aspects that I discovered along the process When I start going to those farms, I experienced this radical transformation, and I went from desperation to inspiration. And what ended up happening is every time I would come back to the city, I would lose my rhythm and momentum, and the brain fog would come. I’ll start sleeping late and waking up late, and it feels that I had no ability to stay in control of my rhythm. And shortly after, I learned about blue light and blue light blocking glasses. So I was really, really excited. I was like, whoa, finally I could have a tool in the city that will help me have control over the light that is entering my eyes. So I went on and I bought these clear lenses, blue light blocking glasses, and I paid quite a bit of money for them.

Roudy Nassif [01:01:11]:
And I start wearing them religiously. talking to my friends saying, I have the exact tool that will help me when I’m in the city. I’m no longer going to lose my rhythm. I was really excited. And within, within 3 days, all of this excitement faded away because I realized nothing had happened. And I was still like experiencing all of the symptoms that I had experienced before when I’m exposed to artificial lighting. At that point, I really laughed at myself. Because I’m an engineer.

Roudy Nassif [01:01:43]:
I understand the science of light very well. I understand the physics of light very well. And one of the very things is, as a kid, if you’ve ever been coloring and mixing colors, you realize that in order to— if you mix blue light with orange, they end up canceling each other out. They become black. So from a physics perspective, you’re running into a limitation. And that limitation is if you really want to eliminate blue, you need to use orange. So what ended up happening is I went down the road of buying all these different blue light blocking glasses, yellow lenses, orange lenses, red lenses. And after trying so many of them, I was pretty frustrated because I wasn’t getting the results I wanted.

Roudy Nassif [01:02:31]:
And that’s when I think I bought the first Spectrocolor meter, which allowed me to measure. And I saw that many of these companies were essentially not doing what they’re supposed to do. So, they were either over-blocking blue light or under-blocking blue light. So, one of the most surprising is I’ve seen orange lenses that I thought, oh, well, this is excellent. It’s going to be blocking all blue light. And I’d measure it and it will have—

Nick Urban [01:02:59]:
Wow.

Roudy Nassif [01:03:00]:
spikes of blue and green light leaking across the spectrum. So that’s when I realized that the color mattered, but it did not give the full picture, that you could have essentially orange-tinted lenses or red-tinted lenses thinking that they’re doing what they’re supposed to do, and they end up having all these leakages across the spectrum. And another big realization was Blue light is not bad.

Nick Urban [01:03:28]:
Yes.

Roudy Nassif [01:03:29]:
And blue light blocking glasses during the day are the biggest scam. Like, you don’t need to block blue light during the day. But what you’re dealing with during the day is LED lighting that is emitting a narrow spike in blue light at 455 nanometers. And the issue with it is not that blue light is bad. Sunlight is full of blue light.

Nick Urban [01:03:52]:
Mm-hmm.

Roudy Nassif [01:03:52]:
But if you look at the spectrum of sunlight, blue light is balanced and proportionate with yellow, green, orange, and red light. So they come symbiotically together to create a balanced frequency. For the first time ever in our entire history, we are sitting under blue lights during the day that have a lot of blue, and they’re not proportionate with any of the other frequencies that we need to have when blue is present. And this ends up really damaging the mitochondria and increasing inflammation. So we came up with the daytime harmonizing glasses. And the special thing about them is that instead of blocking that blue light, which you need during the day, we’re essentially targeting that inflammatory frequency and we’re harmonizing it in such a way that we decrease its sharpness and we spread it across the spectrum. So we’re getting more yellow, more green, more orange, and more red light to balance out that blue. And we came up with the first circadian system because we realized it wasn’t about one pair of blue blockers that will be the savior.

Roudy Nassif [01:05:04]:
The light in nature is constantly changing and is dynamic. You need blue light during the day. You need to completely eliminate it at night. So we came up with a 3-in-1 system which allows you to clip on the evening lenses after the sunset. And this is the bonfire technology. It mimics the exact color temperature, eliminate all of the blue, and allow your nervous system to wind down when you are exposed to the second sun that you’re not supposed to be exposed to after the sunset. And Finally, 1 hour before bed, you clip on the nighttime lenses. And those are funny because we get all kinds of comments from our clients calling them the sleeping pill.

Roudy Nassif [01:05:47]:
And oftentimes people put them 30 minutes before bedtime and within a few minutes they start yawning and they think, oh, well, like, this is really magical. And I’m like, no, it’s not. You’re just getting the darkness that your brain needs. order to produce melatonin properly, and that’s about it.

Nick Urban [01:06:05]:
Yeah. So, those last ones are mimicking the effect you got when you were on the farm away from the normal light environment.

Roudy Nassif [01:06:12]:
Yes, indeed.

Nick Urban [01:06:13]:
And, one thing I like what you mentioned, blue light is not harmful in and of itself, especially timing of it matters. It’s actually very important during the day and around solar noon. I think there’s a lot of blue light. And it’s not about eliminating it, it’s about applying it at the right times and also at the right, what would you call it, like spectral graph. Like you don’t have any massive spikes in nature. It’s much more smooth. I don’t know. I don’t have, usually I use an infrared light to offset my podcasting light so that I balance it.

Nick Urban [01:06:48]:
And that’s like one way of offsetting some of the effects of indoor lighting. I’m not sure what my main podcasting light is. I’ll check it out right now. I don’t know. You see, you said that your circadian— okay, there’s a big spike. Oh, right there, you can see it. It’s it around somewhere around a little before 463. So, that looks like it’s the exact frequency that I’d want to block out with some of the lenses that you have, the daytime ones specifically.

Roudy Nassif [01:07:16]:
Yes. And, to clarify, it would not block it. It would more so harmonize it so it decreases in sharpness. Yeah. And if you take the same measurement with the lenses in between, you’re probably going to see a spike in the yellow, green, and orange compared to when you took the measurement without the lenses.

Nick Urban [01:07:39]:
So if I measure right now with— these are the clear ones— I measure these through here, I should see less of a spike, is that what it is?

Roudy Nassif [01:07:49]:
Yes, you’re going to see less of a spike and you’re going to see that the spectrum has grown out on the green, orange, and red light. It’s now bigger on that side and the blue is balanced with it.

Nick Urban [01:08:05]:
Yeah, interesting. It looks much more like it does when— if I just now go outside. Show that for reference. Oh, I guess, yeah, I guess it’s solar noon, so it actually looks a lot more similar to what it does through the lenses. I used to wear the blue-blocking glasses during the daytime, but I realized that that was not the right thing to do, and I would wear like the darker ones.

Roudy Nassif [01:08:30]:
Yes, it’s extremely detrimental. In fact, many companies are selling the dark-tinted yellow lenses during the day, And they’re sharing this crazy agenda that like you need to block blue light at every cost and it’s really bad and, and people are freaking out. And it’s not, it’s not as freaky as it is. I would freak out if I’m exposed to a lot of blue light on a consistent basis at night, but, but during the day what you need is a system like this one that will end up harmonizing that blue and not block it. So, there’s a massive difference between blocking it because if you were to take a measurement with your dark-tinted yellow lenses, you’ll end up seeing no blue light anymore. And, that is something that will create circadian disruption because your brain goes, oh, the day is ending, let me shut down energy production.

Nick Urban [01:09:23]:
Yeah. I also like that you’ve mentioned several different things in this podcast. You mentioned it’s blue, yes, for sure, pay attention to blue light exposure when it’s right and when it’s not right, but then also green light. Green light is an important one also.

Roudy Nassif [01:09:36]:
Yeah.

Nick Urban [01:09:36]:
And also, beyond just this, like, yes, through your retina, melanopsin receptors, all that kind of stuff that matters. At the same time, if you’re blasting yourself with light in other ways, your room isn’t dark, you have your Wi-Fi router 2 feet from your bed, you have your phone on touching your body while you’re sleeping, these can also essentially be light signals that you can’t see them, but they’re there, and your biology can perceive them, and those can still be causing disruption. So, it is important to change what goes through the eyes, but then also what’s hitting the body in any way.

Roudy Nassif [01:10:10]:
Absolutely. Nick, you’re such a genius summarizing and compacting everything together into a practical means and way for people to digest them. I love that. And, I just want to add that For somebody who’s able to see my spectrum here, this is the frequency that is emitted from the screen, and you can see like a spike in blue, a spike in green, and another spike in orange. But at night, what ends up happening— so I’m going to take a reading here with the red lenses, which is the nighttime one. So let me do another one. Somehow it’s not coming out.

Nick Urban [01:10:45]:
I wonder if I can do it.

Roudy Nassif [01:10:46]:
Huh, it’s showing weak signal.

Nick Urban [01:10:49]:
I also use a software on my computer called IrisTech, and I think that changes the emission. Like, this is how my monitor looks before I block anything, and then after I— yeah, after I block, let’s take a look. Oh yeah.

Roudy Nassif [01:11:05]:
So now you should not be able to see any blue or any green.

Nick Urban [01:11:10]:
Yeah, well, that little tiny bit is probably because I didn’t hold it properly, but it’s like, it’s extremely low in comparison. So it Obviously works. But again, you still want to do the other stuff. You don’t want to have bright overhead fluorescent blue-emitting lights in your bedroom. Even if you are blocking it with glasses, you want to ameliorate, fix the light environment first, and then these go on as a secondary means of protection.

Roudy Nassif [01:11:37]:
Absolutely, yes. And, in your own house, you have the freedom to control the lighting. It’s not like when you go out to a friend’s house or go to a restaurant. This is when the glasses are phenomenal. But inside of your house, if it was my house, then I would not have any overhead lighting and I will only use Himalayan salt lamps powered by incandescent light bulbs. And you want to make sure that after the sunset, the light that you’re exposed to is below eye level and not overhead. Because the melanopsin in the eye is stimulated mostly by overhead light because sunlight is overhead. So anytime you put your lighting down on the floor, it’s less stimulating to that protein in the eye, melanopsin, that signals to the brain about the time of the day.

Nick Urban [01:12:27]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [01:12:27]:
And it’s always a lot more superior to use actual incandescent lighting compared to digital lighting. Which means LED lighting.

Nick Urban [01:12:39]:
We will start to wrap this up. If people want to connect with you, if they want to check out your company, Viva Rays, how do they go about that?

Roudy Nassif [01:12:47]:
So, our website is vivarays.com, V-I-V-A-R-A-Y-S.com. You can see all of the circadian glasses on our website. I also highly encourage you, if you’re new to this, Start digesting our blog. And, the best way to digest our blog is not to go and read 10 blogs in one day. It will be overly overwhelming. The best way is to sign up to our newsletter. Every Thursday, we send one blog that breaks down how light impacts health. And, it will be something that you’re exposed to once per week that you’re able to digest and you’re able to integrate into your life because Many people end up listening to this information and memorizing it, and they could tell it to you perfectly.

Roudy Nassif [01:13:35]:
They could describe every pathway in which light impacts our biology, but they end up not implementing anything. And the most important part about all of this is not memorizing the information. In fact, most of the information that I had shared with you is completely nonsense.

Nick Urban [01:13:54]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [01:13:54]:
If you don’t take it and implement it into your day-to-day life. And I shall say that from that perspective, the science of behavior tells us that in order for us to engage in any action, we need to have enough motivation to do it, and we need to have the ability to do it. So anytime we are doing something that is seemingly hard, It requires tremendous amounts of motivation in order to do it.

Nick Urban [01:14:25]:
Mm-hmm.

Roudy Nassif [01:14:26]:
And motivation is a fickle friend. It goes up and down. We can’t rely on it in a consistent practice like this. So if you’re just starting, although I had said go out and get 15 minutes of morning sunlight, this may seem difficult for you when you first hear it, and you’ll probably end up not doing it. So make it easier. Instead of 15, 1 minute. Start with 1 minute.

Nick Urban [01:14:51]:
Hmm.

Roudy Nassif [01:14:51]:
And what do you need to do after that 1 minute? I want you to celebrate yourself because that’s when the brain goes, I’m gonna highlight this moment. It felt really good. And I’m gonna prompt the body to do it again and do it again. And this is essentially Instagram. This, like every app that you’re addicted to has taken the science of behavior And embedded it in the app, making the user engage with an app that feels very easy to do and that makes you feel good. It gives you little nudges of notifications that allow you to really feel good secretly. So use that same technique to really take control of what you’d like to do, including morning sunlight.

Nick Urban [01:15:40]:
Beautiful. And, your team set up a code for listeners of High Performance Longevity. If you guys use the code, I think it’s URBAN, that’ll save you 5%. But, we’re not quite done here yet. I have a few more rapid-fire questions for you. And, the first is, what are your thoughts on some of the trendy topics, especially as they relate to light exposure and things like methylene blue or shilajit, the dark pigments of the plant and animal world? I guess chlorella, spirulina, that would be one. What’s the other one? Oh, light therapy, specifically red and infrared light therapy. Are you a fan of any of those?

Roudy Nassif [01:16:20]:
Okay. So, to answer this one by one, the reason why methylene blue is powerful is because it absorbs all frequency of red and it has great affinity To the neurons within our mitochondria. So it ends up anytime you’re taking methylene blue, you’re able to absorb all of this red light and make use of it for enhancing mitochondrial functioning. However, please bear in mind that I don’t think we have enough research about the side effect of methylene blue. And therefore, personally, if I was— advising myself, I would not use methylene blue and I would perhaps replace it with something like chlorella or what’s the other thing?

Nick Urban [01:17:13]:
Chlorella, spirulina, the plant pigments.

Roudy Nassif [01:17:15]:
Spirulina and chlorella. I don’t think that they will be as effective as the impact that you’ll get from methylene blue. However, they’re a lot safer and they will also absorb a lot of the red. And frankly, I don’t think that if you go about your light exposure in a consistent way and you take everything that you’d learned today and you start implementing it, I don’t think you need something like methylene blue in order to enhance your red light absorption. And I think the risk of taking something like methylene blue, which we don’t yet understand the long-term impact of it on our health is greater than, in my opinion, that the benefit that you’re getting by boosting your absorption for red light and enhancing mitochondrial functioning.

Nick Urban [01:18:07]:
You were saying that methylene blue, we don’t know the long-term effects yet very well. So, you think the risk is greater there than for something like a light therapy?

Roudy Nassif [01:18:15]:
Yes, that’s one. Shilajit, I think shilajit is generally a much safer thing to engage with because it’s natural and it’s a natural compound in nature. And also because it’s a very dark substance.

Nick Urban [01:18:35]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [01:18:35]:
It has really tremendous ability to allow the body to absorb a broad spectrum of sunlight. And, I’d advise somebody to experiment and see what works for them. If you find that taking chilejit is enhancing your mood and your energy, then why not? I don’t have anything to say. I don’t have any negative things to say about chilejit. When it comes to red light therapy, I will venture to say that most people thinking about red light therapy are misusing it and they don’t understand the fundamentals of it. So much so that they put it above sunlight in a sense. I’ve seen people in Miami in health conferences where the sun is outside and it’s absolutely gorgeous.

Nick Urban [01:19:31]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [01:19:32]:
And they’re standing in front of these narrowband red and infrared devices. thinking that they’re completely, you know, doing the best biohack on Earth to enhance their energy production and longevity. And I don’t think so because when you are in the sun, you’re getting broad spectrum red and infrared.

Nick Urban [01:19:59]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [01:20:00]:
And that which you’re getting from that device it’s like a grain of sand in the ocean.

Nick Urban [01:20:07]:
Yeah.

Roudy Nassif [01:20:08]:
The ocean is outside, is sunlight. That grain of sand is your device. And the other aspect is you end up getting a lot of high irradiance and overdosing on a very narrow band that you would have never gotten in nature because the irradiance in sunlight is distributed across the whole spectrum. And the, the fact that you’re overdosing like a very tiny spectrum is, in my opinion, detrimental. And we will start seeing more and more the detrimental effects in the next 5 to 10 years as more people are engaging in this practice. And in the same way as we’re now seeing the LED lighting is really bad because it has that narrow spike of blue light, do you, do you really think that we’re not gonna realize that the LED lights that are rich in the narrow spike of red and infrared are also causing an equal and opposite effect that is equally destructive? It’s gonna be the same thing because there’s no good and bad in nature. There’s, there’s a context in which you’re exposing yourself to something. And, I believe that the LED red and infrared are providing an unbalanced context.

Nick Urban [01:21:33]:
Yeah. And, especially with the substitution these days of natural light for these technologies, they can be helpful if you already are getting a lot of light and to expose yourself to them for a little bit to help recover faster from, say, an overdose of whatever UV. But, at the same time, it’s still not a natural context and it is still 1 or 2 or maybe 5 narrowband wavelengths instead of the full diversity you see when we hold up the light spectrometers and shine it outside, for example.

Roudy Nassif [01:22:05]:
Yes. I mean, it’s like when you’re taking supplements, your supplements will not replace your food intake. They’re just supplements to add to whatever deficiency you may have. But, if you don’t have deficiencies, you don’t need supplements. And therefore, if you have some deficiencies in sunlight and you’re supplementing with devices, that’s fine. But, if you don’t have deficiencies, I don’t think you need the device from the first place.

Nick Urban [01:22:28]:
Rudi, we could talk for hours. Obviously, there’s lots to cover here and it’s been a blast hosting you. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. And, thank you all for tuning in and sharing your time, your energy, your attention with us today. And hopefully, you can get out and Enjoy some natural light today. Thanks for tuning in to High Performance Longevity. If you got value today, the best way to support the show is to leave a review or share it with someone who’s ready to upgrade their healthspan. You can find all the episodes, show notes, and resources mentioned at outlier.com.

Nick Urban [01:23:07]:
Until next time, stay healthy. Stay energized, stay bioharmonized, and be an outlier.