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Transcript
Top Takeaways
- We have a receptor in our mitochondria, in the electron transport chain, that responds to red light.
- The receptor will respond to red light by producing more ATP more efficiently, which causes something called nitric oxide uncoupling.
- Nitric oxide that can cause arteries to relax, create better blood flow, better brain function, gut function, lung function, and sexual response, can get caught in the electron transport chain.
- Red light has the ability to knock this stuck nitric oxide out of the electron transport chain, which allows the nitric oxide to properly aid in the many body functions it is involved in.
- Near infrared light can help skin by promoting collagen production, reducing age spots, and helping in hair growth, while far infrared light can help with muscle soreness, detoxification, help manage weight, energize our cells and manage blood pressure.
- Blue light can be used to clean bacteria off of our skin and our face, helping to reduce acne.
- Sunlighten’s lumiNIR a personalized infrared handheld device that you can use on any part of your body, and including different interchangeable light emitting heads for different healing properties.
- Adding in 20 to 30 minutes of an full spectrum infrared sauna 4 to 5 times a week has been shown to be a natural approach to dealing with blood pressure issues, losing weight, fighting fatigue, toxicity, seasonal affective disorder, improving sleep, and improving arteries.
- A 120 to 130 degree infrared sauna 15 to 20 minutes a day has been shown to help congestive heart failure and advanced circulation issues
- You can learn more about Dr. Kahn at drjoelkahn.com
- To learn more about lumiNIR Click Here!
- To learn more about Sunlighten Saunas Click Here!
Wendy Myers: Hello everyone. I’m Wendy Myers of myersdetox.com. Welcome to the Myers Detox Podcast where we talk about everything related to heavy metal and chemical detoxification, detox protocols, and strategies, and supplements, and everything related to health as well. Today we have Dr. Joel Kahn on the show. He is an amazing cardiologist and he’s going to be on the show today talking about the benefits of infrared saunas, and red light therapy, and new handheld light devices that are a revolution in this industry that are really, really inexpensive, that are portable, and all the benefits that come in these handheld devices. Also, I met Dr. Joel Kahn when I was shooting the Dr. Nandi show in Detroit, Michigan and went to his restaurant. He’s such a lovely person and so knowledgeable.
Today he’s going to be talking to us about how infrared saunas improve heart health, and improve arterial health, and lower blood pressure. Joel is a cardiologist, so he loves using infrared saunas to improve his patient’s heart health. We’ll also talk about how red light reduces wrinkles and stimulates collagen growth, which is one of the amazing benefits that I use it for, and how blue light in the handheld device we’re going to talk about today kills bacteria in your skin to reduce acne and prevent breakouts. We’re talking about blue light also. Also new advances in handheld and near infrared light devices. Additionally, how your mitochondria respond to infrared light to make energy more efficiently.
Love using infrared saunas and infrared devices to dramatically improve energy production in the body. Lots of ways to work with energy. I know so many of you listening to this show are concerned about your toxin load in your body. And I created a quiz that you can do, takes two minutes to take at heavymetalsquiz.com. Based on some lifestyle questions that I developed, you can ascertain your relative levels of toxin levels in your body. After you take the quiz, you get your results, and then you get a free video series that talks about your toxin levels in your body, what the next steps are, where to get started, and just answers a lot of people’s frequently asked questions when they’re wanting to get started doing a detox and aren’t really sure where to start. Go check it out. Take the quiz at heavymetalsquiz.com.
Our guest today, Dr. Joel Kahn of Detroit, Michigan is a practicing cardiologist and a clinical professor of medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Michigan Medical School. He is known as America’s Heart Healthy Doc. Dr. Kahn has been triple board certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular medicine, and interventional cardiology. He was also the first physician in the world to certify in metabolic cardiology with A4M, MMI, and the university of South Florida.
Dr. Khan has authored scores of publications in his field including articles, book chapters, and monographs, and he writes health articles and has five books in publication including, Your Whole Heart Solution, Dead Execs Don’t Get Bonuses, I love that, and The Plant-Based Solution. He has regular appearances on Dr. Phil, The Doctors Show, Dr. Oz, Larry King Now, Joe Rogan Experience, Bassem Yousef. He has been awarded a Health Hero Award from Detroit Crain’s Business, and he owns two restaurants in Detroit. You can learn more about Dr. Kahn and his work at drjoelkahn.com. Joel, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Joel Kahn: My pleasure. It’s been long overdue.
Wendy Myers: Yes, yes. I met you at your restaurant actually in Detroit, Michigan. You have a beautiful vegan restaurant. Yeah, it was wonderful food and it was a pleasure meeting you. I’m so thrilled that you’re coming on the show to talk to us about red light therapy and infrared light therapy. Give us a little rundown.What exactly is red and infrared light?
Joel Kahn: Yeah. Just backdrop, restaurant is what I do for passion, for the community, for health. I’m a full-time integrative cardiologist in Detroit and I spend more time trying to take care of people like you advise. Also then actually making sure we have gourmet food of high quality, but they’re both part of the same global picture. The best way to detox is not put toxins in in the first place. We stress that through food in our family business. It keeps me busy. But it’s exciting… I get excited when I find a field that looks promising, but it has a ton of science that was unexpected. We were just chatting before we went on about what I would call a fad diet that is popular but has essentially no science.
That should be a pretty strong pause before you embark on something if there’s no science. I mean, of course it could be really right, and brand new, and without foundation. It turns out that there is literally hundreds, I think the correct number is thousands, of basic science research studies about the overall role of light in our health, but specifically red light. Of course, I’m standing in a room with terrible LED fluorescent light bulbs that are white. But that’s a whole spectrum. I can’t see it. I can’t see the ultraviolet, and the greens, and the reds, and the purples. But that’s the prism, the spectrum, everybody’s familiar with. Our body responds.
A lot of your listeners, I know, probably know about blue light and its potential to keep us up at night as one of those wavelengths. But it turns out red light, and probably the single most fascinating part, there’s red light spectrum of maybe about 680 nanometers. I’m doing that from memory, it’s been a long day. Then there’s near infrared light that’s a little different spectrum in the 800s.
The most amazing finding, and this is all based on peer-reviewed science, massive textbooks, not really the kind of books that most people in the public read, which are just fine. These are studies, science from particularly the Harvard scientist, Michael Hamblin, is that we have in our mitochondria. Everybody wants their mitochondria healthy. We all got different ideas how to either keep our mitochondria powerhouse cellular apparatus healthy, or how to get them healthy through various strategies that you’re very expert at.
But we have a receptor in our mitochondria, in the chain, the electron transport chain it’s called that we learned about in, probably biochemistry in medical school long ago, but there’s a receptor sitting there that responds to red light. I don’t think anybody has a theory why it responds to light, but it’s specifically the wave form. Specifically more than near infrared wavelength.
Of all things, we can hardly conceive of this 1000 or 2000 mitochondria in every heart cell, and there’s millions if not billions of heart cells, and that’s just one organ. We’ve got mitochondria in your skin, and mitochondria in your brain, in our eyes, in our liver, and pancreas, and kidneys. Those mitochondria have, in every one of these organelles, a pathway to make energy, ATP. Everybody, your patients, my patients, we want to feel energetic and try and do it as natural as possible. Well, this receptor will respond to red light and actually cause more ATP to be produced more efficiently.
What’s really fascinating, this is known as nitric oxide uncoupling or uncaging, is this wonderful molecule that won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1998. The identification that there’s this molecule, nitric oxide, just a nitrogen and oxygen combined, can cause arteries to relax, can cause blood flow, can be participating in healthy brain function, gut function, lung function, sexual response. It can actually get caught in this same mitochondrial electron chain pathway. The red light knocks it like a pool ball on a pool table, out of that position allowing the ATP to be reformed more efficiently. Also releasing the nitric oxide to be released and circulate and help arteries do whatever it is they’re supposed to do, which is be flexible, and compliant, and provide lots of blood flow where we need it. This red light therapy about…
The basic science, is what I just said, has been work over 20, 30 years. Red light therapy actually has an interesting origin. There was a Hungarian scientist, and I want to say the late 60s, I’m pretty sure I’m just spot on there. He was actually trying to injure little rabbits in a research model. Horrible little idea, but that’s how research is done. He was trying to introduce cancer into the skin of some rabbits. He would shine red light on this irritated skin area to proliferate the cancer, then he’d have a model to study the research.
He found every time he did that, the darn wound healed and he kept studying it. It was the exact opposite. It was chance favors the prepared mind. He was willing to observe that. “I just shine red light on this little rabbit surface, and it destroyed my experiment, but I saw something unexpected.” Out of that has come many, many years of looking at red light. I just described what I think is the most interesting finding, better energy production and efficiency, release of nitric oxide to do some vascular healthy functions.
But the kind of clinical benefits actually go back to that first rabbit experiment because wound healing and skin health, and even the cosmetic aspects of a younger, healthier appearance have all become very strongly supported science in the red light world. Red light is not very deeply penetrating. It seems to have some very good effect on skin, but it doesn’t have to go very deep, or it can’t go very deep. There’s some data, it stimulates collagen production in the skin, which means less wrinkles or actually potential relief of wrinkles, age spots, all the cosmetic issues that we might seek out other injections and fillers and the rest could be achieved to some degree with red light.
There’s some data about hair growth with red light. There’s a whole industry of various caps that have only red light in them to, if your hair is thinning, or balding, it might be one approach to it. There’s a fair decent database for it. Red light in cellulite. A lot of people concerned, because again, not very deep in the tissue but it affects fat mobilization and fat chemistry. But then the near infrared is a little more deeply penetrating. The near infrared can actually penetrate through the skull and actually get into the brain of which are set up to this mitochondrial efficiency may have some future role that’s being studied. It’s not far off in early cognitive impairment like early Alzheimer’s, early Parkinson’s, and such.
The more deeply penetrating infrared helps with muscle soreness, helps with muscle pain. There’s a lot of athletic teams are using it before and after serious workouts or before athletic sports, amateur or professional events. You can spend $100,000 on a really jazzed up red light bed for an NFL team, and some of them do that, but the commercial breakthrough is, the price has come down, down, down, down from 10,000, 20,000, $30,000. Now, for less than 1000 you can have exposure to near infrared and red light and your favorite therapy one of them, and my favorite therapy, sauna has near infrared in it. It’s a great way to work on your overall health, and detoxify, and energize, and manage your weight, and gain some cosmetic benefit that’s more the red light than the near infrared.
I’m pretty geeked about it, and the cardiology perspective is ATP production, nitric oxide relief, energy. We don’t know for sure. I suspect greatly. I don’t know for sure. Nobody’s studied. If you shine red light and it can penetrate bone, are we actually causing the mitochondria in the heart to be more efficient? It could it be a cardiac therapy. That’s an exciting area that I’ve not seen any data but it can help with weight control and such, which better weight control, better blood pressure. I mean, there’s a million avenues why I’ve had a lot of patients really feel they’ve benefited.
You got to separate science and the woo, woo, woo of a lot of the anti-aging and functional medicine. But I can’t think of between the data on sauna and then this separate but overlapping field of red light and near infrared light. They are so strongly science-supported from a basic science, the treatment science. Why not have better skin, and [inaudible 00:15:51] body, and less cellulite, and more energy, and better brain. I mean, it just sounds too good to be true out of something that’s non-toxic. Because it’s not UV light. It’s not tanning, and the skin cancer risk is not a concern.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I mean it’s so pleasurable. I mean, I love using my infrared sauna. I go on it at least three to five times a week typically. I’ve done lots of podcasts on infrared saunas. I think my audience, they are pretty well versed on that. But now we have lots of these small devices that emit near infrared, that emit the red light, do red light therapy and near infrared light therapy without having to purchase a big sauna that some people don’t have room for, or can’t afford, or what have you.
Now there are these small devices, handheld devices even, that can help with some of the beauty benefits. I love, this is a Sunlighten lumiNIR. This is an amazing little handheld device that you can use on any part of your body, but I’ve been using it on my facial skin to improve wrinkles, and spots, and unevenness. There are so many amazing benefits for the skin and I think this is such a cool little device. I’ve never seen a handheld device like this before.
Joel Kahn: No, I agree, and I actually have one in my home too and share it amongst family members. You can change the heads, but the one that’s the red light head, and that’s not going to have near infrared, it’s a handheld, largely cosmetic approach, and an important one. But I agree you can put it inch or two from the face. For anybody who’s never done it, it’s not hot, you can’t burn yourself. If you’ve got five, ten minutes, maybe 12 minutes, you don’t need to do much more than that, you can really gain some great benefits. That particular device, because I’m familiar with that one, you can change the head. It comes with other add-ons. If acne is more of a concern, there’s a different head, and for other kind of approaches too. Cutaneous health and skin health. Yeah, it comes right off that.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, you can just pop off this head right here and, yeah, this is really, really well designed.
Joel Kahn: Yeah, you could travel with it, or take it to the gym, or little meditative break at the office, you can shine red light. Any of us can do, you can go to pubmed.gov, the National Library of Medicine where anybody can put in red light therapy of the skin. Though the official word for what you just showed, if you want to really read a little bit, it’s got three compound words, it’s called photobiomodulation. Photo because it’s light photons, bio because it affects your biology, it affects your collagen production, affects your mitochondrial function, and modulation, we’re obviously changing it a little bit with shiny red light. I am in Michigan right now, it’s where I spend my career. We might see some sunshine again by April, but we sure haven’t seen it this week, it’s like Seattle and Detroit right now.
Light therapy has many purposes. We’re talking about mainly the cosmetic purposes. God bless, that’s a good one, and it’s a safe one, and it’s a novel approach in addition to a healthy diet, and good sleep, and proper nutrition and such. But yeah, this is really something people don’t need to hesitate about from any safety. Even the price entry is, red light devices five, six years ago were 10,000 plus at specialized dermatology centers, specialized wellness centers, but now they’re a home device that you can share around with your teenagers, your significant other, your spouse, and everybody benefits.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. You mentioned that you’re not going to be seeing the sun again until April. A lot of people suffer from seasonal depression where they just don’t get that sun stimulation in their eyes and on their skin. How can this type of device help with giving people some needed infrared rays?
Joel Kahn: Yeah, most people close their eyes when the red light is on. Some people will wear little eye protectors, although that’s recommended and always do what’s recommended. Most actually skip it but keep their eyes closed. Although there is some data for certain macular degeneration syndromes that extra red light may have a role, but there is a good amount of data that you may release some melatonin, the natural sleep hormone that’s in our brain, in our pineal gland.
We typically, in my home, and I tell my patients, “See if you can get the red light into your life an hour, an hour and a half before bed.” It’s very relaxing. As I say, it might be part of a meditative practice, a quiet moment, a little moment of reflection, and help you actually maybe perhaps fall asleep a little easier and have better sleep. That’s the antithesis of the iPad, the iPhone, the laptop that’s shining blue light into your retina and causing your brain to get a message that it’s daytime and time to not make melatonin. We can hack it a bit and maybe actually sleep a little deeper and a little better.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. You mentioned that mitochondria are stimulated by light. They have receptors for near infrared rays, so they like the sun, we need to charge them up with the sun. But this is a very good second runner up to stimulate the mitochondria with the near infrared rays.
Joel Kahn: Yeah. I think everybody can relate to what you just said. I mean, particularly when I step off the plane from the winter of Michigan. The minute you’re in the sunshine in Fort Lauderdale or some such place, I mean you feel energized and you feel like doing more. It is probably partly psychological, but it may be to some degree physiological that you’re actually creating more energized and efficient mitochondria. There’s some interesting data if that can help if you’re traveling seven, eight hours time zone change. If using that, the same time you’d normally.
If nine o’clock at night you would typically use your lumiNIR for some skin benefit, and then adjusting quickly to the new time zone you’re using it the same time. In the new time zone it may actually help a bit with your [inaudible 00:22:42] biology or your jet lag, which we could all use a little mitochondrial energy when we arrive in a new country hours away. That’s a fun little hack too, and that’s a very portable travel unit that you just showed. You’re not going to bring big panel, but that’s a really easy one to bring with you.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Let’s talk generally about some of the evidence and some of the research that you have mentioned that there’s hundreds to thousands of studies on the benefits of infrared and now red light therapy is coming more to the forefront. Talk to us about some of the benefits and the evidence to support that.
Joel Kahn: Yeah, and again, your listeners have heard it, but a lot of it came from sauna data. Most of that started with data from Japan in terms of, there was this one particular center in Japan about 35, 40 years ago. They got interested in infrared sauna and near infrared energy, did some basic science, showed, same words use, that it actually helps your lining of your arteries called your endothelium. These 50,000 miles of arteries are all lined by cells that should be very helpful and prevent plaque, keep our blood pressure normal, and helps support healthy sexual function, and make nitric oxide. That near infrared energy that you might achieve in a full spectrum infrared sauna was one way to actually help support all that. That was basic science.
Then they started, in Japan, applying it to actually serious heart patients as a therapy 30 years ago. There’s probably 30 to 40 peer-reviewed scientific studies and medical journals originally published in Japanese, but they’re all accessible in full text in English that are from high blood pressure, to congestive heart failure, very serious disease, to leg circulation problems, to some cardiac circulation problems. There are documented benefits to using these red energy therapies. Both near, mid, and far infrared that you might get in the sauna. That’s actually considered, in Japan, a first line add-on to drugs, and exercise, and the full spectrum you might apply to a heart patient, particularly one with congestive heart failure.
Some science that’s gone on in the United States, again, particularly with hypertension, it’s just something I deal with all the time. People that are just stuck, want to get off of medication, making the diet changes work and, excuse me, are being treated for sleep apnea. [inaudible 00:25:29] implementation, whatever’s needed, but they’re still stuck. Adding in the energy that comes out of a near infrared by being in an infrared sauna can really accelerate that process maybe through some weight loss that they were stuck at, maybe through this nitric oxide blood vessel production.
Not everybody can put in an infrared sauna in their home in terms of financial impact, but most people can find a wellness center or a gym in their community where they can either use it regularly as part of just their gym membership or via a package. At least to try for eight, 10, 12 visits if they can’t get one in their home and see how that all goes or find a buddy with an infrared sauna, particularly if it is near infrared, and get the full benefits of that. [inaudible 00:26:17] called, again, full spectrum infrared sauna. Just-
Wendy Myers: That’s what I did. I found a sunlight and sauna at a Pilates place I was going to and just started doing that. Did that for a few months before I just finally was like, “I’m going to be doing this a lot. I need to just get one for my home.”
Joel Kahn: There’s less basic science, but there’s lately been some additional clinical science for steam sauna. There’s a whole different apparatus and I don’t know, it’s not really people have steam in their shower and can make their… maybe they have a door in the shower that really shuts tight. It’s unclear if that provides a benefit, but true finish 180 degree steam sauna which frail people, and pregnant women, and people that black out easily, and advanced heart patients shouldn’t use. Where they can use infrared sauna tends to be a more gentle and a lower temperature approach to sauna. But if you’re a healthy stud, a studette, and your only access is the steam sauna… there’s quite a bit of science now that it’s another health habit, both for perhaps detoxification or keeping yourself pure.
Because I say if… Why bother with detoxification if you’re keeping your toxin load pretty low and good habits from the beginning? If you absolutely can’t find a infrared sauna, which I’d always recommend first, and really fits everybody’s health status… a steam sauna is a backup if your gym has that and doesn’t have near infrared. But talk to your gym member. If you’re one of the upper end gyms, they should really have a full spectrum infrared sauna. I agree, sunlight would be the American brand, I tell them to put in and I think their members would do great but, yeah.
Wendy Myers: Yeah they fall all the time, you can never get in. [inaudible 00:28:11] a line around the corner in the locker room. You’re a cardiologist, so tell us what are some of the cardiac benefits of red and near infrared light?
Joel Kahn: Yeah, I would list my probably most frequent go-to is blood pressure issues and people… I mean, again, it’s a very good goal to say, “I wonder if I can get blood pressure medicine,” but you got to do it safely. You got to do it in an integrated manner. It’s sleep, and it’s food, and it’s fitness, and it’s stress management, and it’s identifying and remedying toxification pathways and all. Adding in 20, 30 minutes, four or five times a week, you can use it every day if you can fit it into your life, has been shown to be a very appropriate way to deal with blood pressure naturally, they just got to keep at it. Many people will lose some weight. The calorie burn for 30 minutes in a 130 degree full spectrum infrared sauna is pretty significant for some people in addition to their aerobic program. That would be number one.
There’s not a lot of congestive heart failure in the general public in the cardiology practice. But if I have patients with advanced circulation issues or congestive heart failure issues, I wouldn’t do steam sauna. That would definitely be where I wouldn’t recommend that, it’s way too harsh, way too stressful. But 15, 20 minutes of 120, 130 degree infrared sauna would be both scientifically supported and very comfortable. There’s times I’ve written little prescriptions for patients hoping they can get their insurance company to pay for a package at a wellness center or perhaps even help them arrange one for their home, not generally going to be successful with that. But that’s how strongly I feel about it to put it on a prescription pad.
Weight loss in general, not just associated with blood pressure. Then just that fatigue. I mean, that’s the last one. Just struggling with clean diets, clean exercise. We’ve done some testing, we’re looking for toxicity, not really finding it. As we said, particularly before bed with better sleep, seasonal affective disorder, this general upbeatness. There’s something very, very wonderful about being around red light. I mean, it really has… it’s not really hot as you know when you use that lumiNIR. A little tiny sense of it generating a little bit of heat, but it’s just…
Our cells are primed. As I said, that mitochondria cells. I should probably say this, the mitochondria are primed to be more efficient in the presence of red light like you just showed with the lumiNIR. We can make vitamin D in the skin, of course, when we’re light exposed, everybody knows that. What is less well known is, I’ve mentioned this probably four times now, this miracle molecule called nitric oxide that our arteries can make. But the skin can make nitric oxide, and the skin can release nitric oxide to lead to a more energetic feeling, a better function of the organs, and a lower blood pressure. Light is what triggers the production and release of nitric oxide from the skin.
It’s a new era when we’re telling people that probably one of the worst things we’re dealing with are standard lights that we have. I wear daily when I’m doing my reading, these are semi blue light blocking glasses to try and avoid the fatigue from being in an office for eight, nine hours under standard fluorescent light bulbs or LED light bulbs. They can drag you down a bit. That’s one way just to block them a bit. Then at nighttime I were full yellow blue light blocking glasses. But just getting that dose of red light before bed is probably a fast track to just feeling better.
Beyond that as I say, I’ve experimented with the idea. There’s relatively few patients that are having a lot of, it’s called angina chest pressure, chest tightness, but whether red light that would be more of a full panel or getting in a full spectrum infrared sauna so you can get some near infrared that penetrates deep enough in the body that it may get to the heart. There’s no published science on that. I don’t have a real strong opinion yet how effective that is but it should work.
Wendy Myers: Yes. Yeah. I mean, so getting into a full spectrum infrared sauna, major, major benefits. You talk about the cardiac benefits and lower blood pressure. Part of that is that when you shine this infrared light on the body, or the infrared rays rather on the body, they reduce… it activates the parasympathetic nervous system and that can help to bring down the blood pressure. But it’s also the nitric oxide release. What does that mechanism whereby the infrared light or infrared rays help to release more nitric oxide and lower blood pressure?
Joel Kahn: Yeah, as far as my reading indicates, and again, it goes back to, as I mentioned, some basic science in Japan on little tiny animals that were set up in experimental models, which I don’t love that whole idea, but it does move science forward. When they were able to measure the way we should have, again, I mean, these just flexible and youthful arteries. They could document animal models that exposure to near infrared energies from a full spectrum sauna can do that. It probably is this very odd situation that this molecule we want to produce, nitric oxide, and we can do that by healthy diets, with leafy greens, with beets, with watermelon, and pine nuts, and avoiding fast food and processed food, which have the opposite effect. But that it can actually be trapped in mitochondria at a very critical enzyme, it’s called cytochrome c oxidase. The nitric oxide’s there and the red light can’t have its full effect, so it bounces off the nitric oxide.
I believe the ability of a sauna to enhance nitric oxide is really, in some way, just freeing it up so it can get back to the circulation and then it can reduce your blood pressure naturally. When you have a lot of nitric oxide being produced and available, you’re much less likely to have clogging of your arteries over time. That’s where the regular, regular use of a full spectrum sauna appears to be a very healthy way to avoid what’s called atherosclerosis or aging of your arteries and that’s stellar. It’s just one piece of the picture, but it’s a very available and comfortable way to do it. Very relaxing.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I love it that you’re prescribing this totally natural method of improving your arteries and heart health. It’s so, so important when heart disease is so prevalent in our society. There’s so many amazing ways to address it besides just medication, which most doctors, that’s the only thing that they’re doing with their patients.
Joel Kahn: Yeah, sadly now it’s 101 years that heart disease has been the number one killer of men and women in the United States. There are a couple of States that cancer beats heart disease on the list, but across the United States, and across almost all Western countries it’s the same. There’s definitely been advancements. My 30 years in cardiology from bypass to stents, to medication, to coronary care units. I mean, there’s all kinds changes, but what we don’t focus on is really prevention and we don’t focus on natural.
We really could cut this number back phenomenally with all the lifestyle simple habits that we can never exhaust talking about from fitness, to diet, to not smoking, to sleep, to weight, to stress management, and family and joy. But the ability to bring in some new technologies like that red light therapy lumiNIR that you held from Sunlighten. If you can combine…
Actually, I very often use the lumiNIR, because the one thing my full spectrum infrared sauna from Sunlighten doesn’t have, I mean I got a pretty jazzed up one because I love it so much for the sound system and everything, but there isn’t actually a red light panel inside the sauna. Maybe that’s [inaudible 00:36:44] they’re working on, I don’t know. But I’d take my lumiNIR into the infrared sauna so I’ve got near infrared energy from the sauna and then red light. They are slightly different wavelengths, slightly different purposes, more superficial, more cosmetic or mood, and the near infrared being deeper penetrating mitochondria energy, weight loss and all. But the combination is just unbeatable.
There are people listening that aren’t going to see sunshine all winter. But if you’re in my part of the world, I mean, I can highly recommend, I can endorse it for my patients this make you maybe look better, smile more, or sleep better. It’s just so natural and so soothing.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I’ve been doing that too. I’ve been going in my sauna and also taking this. As long as you’re spending that time to be exposed to infrared, you might as well also get the red light benefits as well. I’ll do this on my face. Just getting all those benefits on my face, neck, and chest area to just improve the appearance, get all the other benefits of the red light that you mentioned.
Joel Kahn: I’ll tell you, there’s a couple of hacks, again, I imagine your listeners are used to the term hack, that I will use sometimes in the sauna. I say this very cautiously. These are not medical prescriptions. I’m not your doctor, but they’re fun. If you’re really healthy and in good shape, I will sometimes take a handful of niacin, which I always got niacin, 1000 milligrams, 1500 milligrams. You will get a hot flush. I’ll go work out for 15 minutes, it might be a little HIIT, HIIT protocol on an elliptical, on a treadmill, or with kettlebells or something.
Then you go in your full spectrum sauna and you can really get this nitric oxide vasodilatory. Don’t do this if you’re pregnant, don’t do this if your blood pressure is 88 naturally, don’t do this if you’re on lots of blood pressure medicine, but you can really get this big sweat going on. It’s a fun thing, and that’s something I’ll do a few times a month where I feel like I’ve sweated some of my plastics, and some may heavy metals, and some of my DDT and all. That’s a fun one.
The other is there was a very provocative, and this is as a practice I do with my full spectrum sauna. A provocative article, plants get light, chlorophyll creates energy in plants. It hasn’t been thought that humans have a system like that. We create energy through our food predominantly, but there was this mammalian cell study that may be if there’s enough chlorophyll in the blood, that being exposed to light and near infrared energies actually help you, in addition to the mechanism of nitric oxide release, it’s called uncaging [inaudible 00:39:41]. Nitric oxide gets uncaged from this receptor to go do stuff.
I will take a handful of organic chlorella if I can time this properly about half an hour before I go in a near infrared sauna or before I’m using my red light. Because that will… Rich, rich, rich, source of chlorophyll, very clean source chlorella with a lot of vitamin C, and vitamin K2, and omega-3 from algae and such. But you may actually be able to hack light, chlorophyll-rich blood and act plant-like, and that’s… I’m extending this a bit, but there is some science basis for, if you really want [inaudible 00:40:20]. In fact, chlorella is such a great natural detoxifier anyways, there’s no reason not to try it. But next time you’re around red light, take a handful of chlorella half an hour before and get your blood level up with chlorophyll and see if you have some plant-like tendencies to just feel great.
Wendy Myers: I like doing the niacin also, the B3, because that, essentially its purpose is to make fat cells explode. That releases its toxic contents, which then you can get in circulation and then excrete those through and your sweat and your sebaceous glands.
Joel Kahn: Yeah. I would urge anybody, if you’ve never heard of this crazy protocol apparently both of those use, maybe talk to somebody who has little experience with niacin although it is over the counter, and start low dose. Because there are people that absolutely get a prickly, prickly, prickly red-faced, full blown flush that they don’t… I like it, but you may not enjoy it and you may wonder what the heck just happened to your body. A few people get a rush that’s a little bit more than just this transient flush. Cautiously read about that and talk to your advisor, your health coach, or your health practitioner about that.
Wendy Myers: Yes, [inaudible 00:41:40]. The niacin flush has to be done correctly, and it’s a whole protocol. I’m going to have Dan [inaudible 00:41:46] on the podcast soon to talk about that exact protocol that his father developed. But yeah, you have to start really, really low because it can be very uncomfortable. What about immune system benefits? There’s lots of benefits to infrared saunas. How is it affecting our immune system?
Joel Kahn: Yeah, it does seem that it’s one of the key principles of aging lately is senescence, or decay of our immune system. We may not respond to vaccines if we get vaccines, and we may not be able to fight off infections, whether they be parasitic, or virus, or bacterial, or any other offenders in our body. That there’s at least preliminary data that sauna may affect both our release of youthful white cells from the stem cells or from the bone marrow. Frankly I don’t read on that quite as much. You may know more about that than I do, but there is anecdotal reports from databases of both steam and infrared that people may have less infections and avoid illness. But I’ll happily have you share what you know about that because I focus like laser beam on cardiovascular benefits.
Wendy Myers: Yes. Yeah. I know it helps to activate some of your heat shock proteins and all the heat just naturally induces this fever that kills off infections and it’s just, there’s lots more complexity to it than that. But I think people, we need all the help we can get with our immune system because there’s not a lot of things in conventional and functional medicine to address or improve our immune system function.
Joel Kahn: I agree. It’s that principle called hormesis, what doesn’t kill you makes you better. It makes you stronger. The heat, like you say, [inaudible 00:43:42] in heat shock protein and it’s more that repair, that regeneration that happens after you insult your body. Heat’s a bit of an insult and even some of the red light can, but it’s what happens after that is the miracle of all that. Releasing more juvenile immune cells that have more ability to protect us is one of those benefits. Pretty cool.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Tell us, so what are your thoughts on this lumiNIR. What are some of the benefits that you have found in using this device, and the different light panels that it has, and the uses for those?
Joel Kahn: Every time I get one it disappears with one of my kids, although we have one around now. I mean, the only head I have right now is the red light head. They’ve all gone to the kids for other uses. These are fairly grown adult kids, but nonetheless. But I just love it that I have taken it on trips, because I really like using it before bed, particularly if I’m flying from Detroit to LA, three hour time shift. 15, 20 minutes of lumiNIR before I go to bed really seems, and a little bit in the morning, it helps me reset that clock.
I’m 61 and I would rather not appear with excessive wrinkles and age spots if I can help it. I mean if, that’s where life goes. I do think it’s helped. I’ve had that device, maybe it’s a year now, because it is a new device, for about a year. I mean, I would hope that it helped. The general discussion amongst my patients and my family is that they are reporting good feedback. Yeah. But I don’t have the green one or the blue one. They’re all gone. I mean, I’m going to have to pass on giving any testimonial there and I think there’s a clear one too.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, it’s interesting. This comes with this lumiSport and so this lumiSport, it’s just a little head that you’d put on the sauna here. It’s just like, you see the… I haven’t used this one yet because I’m not doing it on sport. But yeah, it’s just the same thing there and it doesn’t say about the color of light that’s coming out of it, but it can reduce inflammation, ease muscle and joint pain, promote cell regeneration, stimulate tissue growth, and increase wound healing.
Joel Kahn: Yeah. Which is really the list you typically talk about with near infrared light and I projected. I don’t know that the lumiNIR has the ability to get into the 800 wavelengths and such. But yeah, those are all benefits you can expect if you have some non-healing little skin wound or other situation. That’s where red light is just, it’s original use. It’s just so ergonomically friendly and easily rechargeable and holds the charge real well. That’s why I don’t bring the charger when I got out of town. It just has a quick ability to hold the charge quite well.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, it’s [inaudible 00:46:58]. It’s because it’s cordless and I’ve never seen a cordless handheld device near or red light therapy like this before. They’re all usually panels and they have a long cord and that’s just not really going to be practical for travel or whatnot. Then they also have the lumiGlow. This is red light that’s known for giving the skin benefits, the anti-aging benefits of the skin. This is stimulating collagen production, reducing wrinkles, improving firmness. You mentioned helping with brown spots and things like that.
Joel Kahn: If your listeners aren’t using red light, think about how radical what you just said is because there’s a lot of competing markets out there for collagen production that are marketed, whether it’s [inaudible 00:47:50] or collagen powders, or a variety of approaches, or eating the animal from snout to tail, or some of the crazy approaches to get more glycine in your diet and such. But to be able to do it externally, safely with red light and so much science. That’s, again, going back to the thing we started with that, at a basic level, red light can cause collagen fibers to replicate and be stronger and more aligned so they’re actually stronger, better collagen.
People don’t know, collagen is the most abundant molecule in the body. It’s abundant in our skin, in our blood vessels, in our organs. It is really quite phenomenal that you can improve the health and the usefulness of your skin by bulking up collagen without any other approach in red light. I think it’s the most phenomenal use.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I love it because I’m 47 and I do a lot of things to improve my health, and improve my skin, and reduce wrinkles, put a lot of work into that. Because after 30 years old, 35, women’s collagen production begins to decline and the padding and elastin in their skin begins to decline. That’s why you see so many products that are really false marketing to improve collagen. A lot of creams saying they’re going to improve collagen and they really aren’t able to do that at all. Using the red light I think is really a revolution in anti-aging for really truly being able to plump up firmness and stimulate collagen growth.
Joel Kahn: Yeah. Phenomenal. Phenomenal. Yeah.
Wendy Myers: Then there’s also this other, the lumiClear, which has the blue light on it. This is interesting. I’ve had facials where they’ve done little blue light processes on your skin. But this is great because you can do it at home, and this one is to help reduce bacteria and purify the skin in minutes. That’s what they do at a lot of good facial places is they do this one with blue lights so it kills all the bacteria in your pores, and so your pores don’t get clogged up or you reduce acne.
Joel Kahn: That’s great. That’s one that disappeared the fastest in my house. Because we had a couple of handles. It seems like the heads went with the handles.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. This one also helps to clear stubborn pimples, minimize future breakouts, reduce the appearance of acne scars, and improve skin’s texture. This is great. It’s such a great to do a little lights circuit trainings for instance for your skin. I love this. I think this is an amazing Christmas gift. I would love to get something like this for Christmas. I think Sunlighten has really come up with something revolutionary for so many different reasons we talked about in the show.
Joel Kahn: I couldn’t agree more. If you got a really loving significant other, get the full spectrum sauna and the lumiNIR and use them together.
Wendy Myers: Yes. Yeah. It’s great for couples to do together too, they get healthy together. Well, Dr. Kahn, thanks so much for coming on the show today-
Joel Kahn: Thank you-
Wendy Myers: … and informing us about the benefits of infrared and red light. Is there anything else we haven’t mentioned or anything you just want to say to the audience?
Joel Kahn: Again, you have such a sophisticated group of listeners. But, I mean, it really is, it’s the detoxification. I mean, I, in my cardiology practice, do such advanced lab work, and I got a nice clientele, and they’re full of heavy metals, and they’re full of herbicides and pesticides, and we need many ways to get it out. That’s, again, where the nice and flush can be particularly helpful or generally just get in an infrared sauna, get in a Sunlighten sauna and favor the fact you’re going to stay healthy. It’s a different world than you and I grew up with, and most of your listeners grew up with 30 40 years ago. I just love the detoxification of infrared sauna therapy.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I do too. I can’t really speak enough about infrared saunas and how important they are to add to your health regimen. I really feel like the people that are doing saunas on a regular basis are the ones going to be living longer, healthier, disease-free, and medication-free lives.
Joel Kahn: Absolutely.
Wendy Myers: Fantastic.
Joel Kahn: Thank you.
Wendy Myers: Dr. Kahn, thanks for coming on and everyone, thanks so much for tuning in today to the Myers Detox Podcast. Thanks for tuning in and I’ll talk to you guys next week.
