Barbell Shrugged - [Circadian Biology] The Science of Sunshine, Sleep, and Circadian Rhythm w/ Dr Alexis Cowan, PhD, Anders Varner, and Doug Larson #745

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

Dr. Alexis Cowan received her PhD in molecular biology from Princeton University, specializing in the metabolic effects of nutritional and exercise interventions. She is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania studying microbiome-diet interactions in both health and disease (i.e., cancer). Alexis is passionate about health and wellness at a visceral level. Her healing journey led her to overcome childhood obesity--losing over 100lbs during high school--an eating disorder, and irritable bowel syndrome. Her health challenges and successes have given her invaluable wisdom into what true healing looks and feels like, and have empowered her to effectively support others on their health journeys. Alexis has deep recognition for and appreciation of the interplay between the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels of being, and how harmonization across these levels is absolutely essential to achieving health in a holistic sense. She is passionate about spearheading a new paradigm of N=1 personalized medicine into the mainstream, elevating and empowering individuals from all walks of life to find and fuel their vitality so that they may embrace their soul's higher purpose here on the planet. Work with RAPID Health Optimization Work with Dr Alexis Cowan Dr. Alexis Cowan on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, Dr. Alexis Cohen is coming in and we're talking about literally my favorite subject, the sun. I love it so much. I've always kind of, if you've been around for a while, you've heard many times me talking about being a solar powered creature after living a decade in San Diego and having the absolute best sunshine in the entire world, probably for a decade and actually like really feeling how much healthier your body feels when it's out in the sun and having somebody that is a an expert in circadian biology we're going to come in today and talking about the sunshine the science really of the sunshine and how it affects our health sleep circadian rhythms as well as kind of digging

into a little bit on cardiovascular health gut gut health, and how just being outside, nature-ing yourself, forest-ing yourself can really help increase the effects of the nutrition, the sleep, kind of the lifestyle side of things. But really, how do we reintegrate into being a part of nature and creating a healthier you? As always, friends, you can head over to rapidhealthreport.com. That's where Dan Garner and Dr. Andy Galpin are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis. And you can access that free report at rapidhealthreport.com.

Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Dr. Alexis Cohen. Welcome to the show. Long-time listener, first-time guest. That's right. This is a good day. Today, we're going to be talking about sunshine.

For all you dedicated Barbell Shrug fans, wait for the rant coming about how much I miss living in San Diego and the beautiful sunshine, but cardiovascular benefits training inside versus outside. How did you get so attached to the sun? How did, how did nature become such a big part of your, uh, kind of your, the theory of how you view fitness and training and health? Great question.

So, I mean, historically, for those who aren't watching, I'm mixed. So I always tanned really well. I always had an affinity for the sun, but I never, um, you know, looked into the science behind this until more recently. So to just briefly backtrack. So I did my PhD at Princeton. The sun and circadian biology was barely on my radar when I was there, which was between 2016 and 2021. But then so at that time, the microbiome was really like, I thought the microbiome, this is it. This is the most important thing that everybody's missing. Like, this is what I need to be focusing on. And so I did, um, and then stumbled across Jack Cruz's work,

who, um, is a big guy in like the circadian and quantum biology space. If you don't know him, highly recommend checking him out. Dr. Jack Cruz has an incredible Patreon blog. He's been on a bunch of podcasts, very prolific. And when I was listening to his episode on Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin and Andrew Huberman, my jaw was literally on the floor the entire time. I was like, wow, this is like the piece that I was missing, not even realizing that I was missing it. But like, once we get into the topic and like start to talk about it it's like once you see these things you cannot unsee them and it's literally like just the way that we're living our lives is so opposite and antithetical to the way that evolution shaped us to live and the way that the evolutionary environment kind of just brought us up and the way that our bodies

are regulated and so by going against that we're're literally, I mean, you can look at our healthcare system. It's just really reflecting the burden that is our lifestyles and the way that we're choosing to live without even realizing it. A lot of it is unconscious. A lot of it is in ignorance of how the body actually works. And so I'm excited to dive into some of the details of that, like the scientific details of that today uh i have a question for you right now you are outside you're under an umbrella you're yeah there's a beautiful background for those uh that are listening only and can't see you so there's no direct sunlight hitting you you're in the shade so to speak but all the light that's also hitting you is from the

sun like what are there distinctions between direct sunlight and indirect sunlight as far as the impact on your physiology absolutely so i i should preface this by saying before this call i was tanning for an hour and a half and then i was on an hour bike ride so i've gotten a lot of sun prior to this call so i mean if you look at animals in nature when they've had enough sun they go into the shade Like that's the normal status quo of things to do. They know that innately. We don't have to tell them to do that. Our like smart monkey brains, our prefrontal cortex likes to get in the way and, you know, try to just intellectualize everything versus just going with what feels right and like following our instincts, which all other species on the planet do. But with regards to the differences

between indirect and direct light, typically indirect light is going to be devoid of UV light because UV light is a very short wavelength of light. It doesn't penetrate through fabric or clothing. And so if you're like in the shade, like I am under this umbrella, I'm not really getting access to any UV light. But what I am getting access to is almost all of the longer wavelength light, which includes red and infrared light. In addition, like my house, you can't see it, but the house is white. So it's also reflecting a lot of light at me, which I mean, there's just a lot of glare. So for podcasting, I like to do it in the shade. But if I'm trying to leverage the sun, I basically stay out in it like the indirect sunlight around the middle of the day for as long as I feel comfortable doing so. You want to kind of listen to your body. And I recommend people track their vitamin D status to kind of get an understanding of the dose of sun that they need for their bodies. So

optimally, we want vitamin D levels to be between 60 and 80 nanograms per milliliter, which mainstream medicine will say that 30 is fine, but this is really like completely suboptimal. In order to get full suppression of parathyroid hormone, which is this hormone that turns on when you're having vitamin D insufficiency, you need at least 40 nanograms per mil. But if you're living a more outdoor lifestyle, you're going to be between 60 and 80 nanograms per mil, depending on your heritage and where you're residing, what latitude you're residing at and what season it is, these types of things. But if you're optimizing your vitamin D levels between that range, you can feel pretty good that you're probably getting a good amount of sun for your body,

for your heritage, etc. Worth mentioning here is that I really think vitamin D needs to be considered as a biomarker and not as this just marker that can be optimized through supplementation. We're really missing the point if we think about vitamin D in that way. And I think that's also really reflected in the literature, because if you look at the literature surrounding vitamin D supplementation, there's pretty poor results with regards to vitamin D supplementation. There's not really that big of a benefit that you would expect given how closely associated vitamin D status is with a whole host of health outcomes. So

essentially what that tells me is that, you know, vitamin D status, your vitamin D levels are essentially reflecting how much time you're spending outdoors. They're not really telling you like, I need to supplement this vitamin D to get it up because then we're missing out on a whole host of other factors, including over a dozen other vitamin D-like molecules that are made in the skin in response to UVB light. In addition to a whole other kind of can of worms that we can get into called Pro-Opium Melanocortin or POMC, which is also produced in the skin and in the brain in response to UVB light. And if you're just taking a vitamin D supplement, you're completely missing the bigger picture of why vitamin D is important. So if you're in the shade and you're not getting UVB light, then you're not going to have as much

of a response on the vitamin D front compared to being in the shade and only getting the longer wavelength of light. That's right. So, I mean, you want to, ideally, there's different times of day that you can go outside and depending on how easily you burn, there can be a strategy to this as well. So everybody should be getting out and seeing morning sunlight. Morning sunlight is essentially devoid of UV light. You're getting primarily red and infrared light. And that really begins turning the body on, turning metabolism on and getting your system ready to kind of take on the day. This time of day differs significantly from the

middle of the day sun, which is very enriched in the UVA and UVB light, which have very unique benefits. So we talked about vitamin D and this propium melanocortin, which we'll get into, POMC. They're produced in response to UVB light exposure. UVA light is really, really important for the production of nitric oxide. So some of your listeners might be familiar with this molecule because it's really important for vasodilation, delivering nutrients and oxygen to tissues and basically supporting blood flow. And so UV light is a major stimulus for nitric oxide production and helping with that nutrient oxygen delivery. And symphony with red and infrared light that you're getting from all times of day, essentially, but the middle of the day sun's about 50% red and infrared light. That red and infrared light can directly penetrate into the body where it stimulates the mitochondria to directly make

more ATP and more energy. So that red and infrared light is extremely important if we're trying to think about optimizing our metabolism, optimizing our mitochondrial health, supporting energy production, which is crucial for all the things, not only getting a good pump in and getting a good workout, but also wound healing and just basic regenerative capacity of tissues, which require sufficient levels of energy. Anytime I hear broad statements like the sun causing cancer. And then I consistently question anytime that, that like pops up or just broad recommendations. Um, I immediately start thinking back to like, not modern day, man, but like long times ago, uh, or a long time ago, like hunter gatherers.

And I'm like, don't you think we would have records of like lots of people dying from skin cancer if the sun and humans really didn't get along that well? Can you talk a little bit about like what is like the appropriate amount of sun? Obviously, there's going to be you're going to tan and be able to handle more sun than my pale self. But I also feel like as evolution progressed and as humans became what we are today, we had to do it in accordance with whatever nature was throwing at us. And the sun has been here a very long time, like longer than us. So from wherever we came from to today, we had to evolve with the sun. Shark family, I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com. When you get to rapidhealthreport.com, you will see an area for you to opt in, in which

you can see Dan Garner read through my lab work. Now, you know that we've been working at Rapid Health Optimization on programs for optimizing health. Now, what does that actually mean? It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs. That means the inside out approach. So we're not going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you. Nutrition, supplementation, sleep. And then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world-class program,

and we invite you to see step one of this process by going over to rapidhealthreport.com. You can see Dan reading my labs, the nutrition and supplementation that he has recommended that has radically shifted the way that I sleep, the energy that I have during the day, my total testosterone level, and just my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to rapidhealthreport.com,

watch the video of my labs, and see what is possible. And if it is something that you are interested in, please schedule a call with me on that page. Once again, it's rapidhealthreport.com, and let's get back to the show. There has to be something that the broad skin cancer conversation is missing just due to the relationship that the longstanding relationship that we have had with the sun since we became a species. Oh, yeah. I mean, you're trying to get me on my soapbox today. I'm ready for it. I have other theories that don't apply specifically to the sun, but, um, is it EMF recommendation like this? Uh, just immediately roll my eyes and I'm like, we're not talking about the whole story here. That is, that is probably an incorrect statement

that a lot of people accept. Absolutely. I mean, just if we look at the lifespan of hunter gatherers, for instance, um, there was more infant mortality, which the data is kind of misrepresented, because if you lump all of those infant deaths in with the time periods you know it was like an average of 78 years old which so we're barely got anything and actually our lifespan is decreasing now in the U.S. for the first time in a long time so we're not doing things right we're doing things wrong we need to kind of wake up to that and I think people are but with regards to the vitamin D and like the melanoma story skin cancer story there's some really interesting points that I think a lot of people don't think about and there's like a lot of cognitive dissonance within the mainstream model too. So for instance, vitamin D status and vitamin D deficiency is one

of the top markers associated with the development of melanoma. So that's number one. Number two is that today we're avoiding the sun more than ever we're using more sunscreen than ever we're living indoors more than ever and yet melanoma rates are at their highest now how could that be if the sun is causal see doug i was right half-baked ideas she said they're right don't trust those people don't trust anybody i mean don't even trust us do you like think about things yourself if somebody's what somebody's even trust us. Do you like think about things yourself? If somebody's what somebody's saying is resonating with you, like follow those threads. But we shouldn't be taking anybody at face value, especially not the quote unquote experts. I would never identify as

an expert despite my long, long, many years of training. I'm always learning. I'm always looking for new information. I'm always updating my knowledge base. And I think that's, you know, that's what people should be looking for when they're looking for like a good resource. Yeah. So, and I didn't mean to distract you. I just love when those, when the broad recommendation comes out, but why, why is there such a disconnect between the idea or like from skin cancer and people being afraid of it. And the fact that we wear tons of sunscreen now, but melanoma is at its highest rates currently. Yeah.

So, I mean, I think the easy thing to like blame it on is like, oh, you know, people can get sunburned from the sun and therefore it must be causing like damage to the skin, which, I mean, if you're getting really burned frequently, that's not good either. But we're missing the bigger picture, which is like, why are we burning to begin with? So there's a few things here. And I should also mention that just sunburn alone isn't necessarily associated with melanoma either. It's a little more complex than that. But just within the sunburn story, we have a few important points. So one, there's like an ancestral mismatch with the environment.

So let's say you're somebody who has ancestors from Scandinavia and now you're living in like Ecuador or something. So that's a big mismatch, right? Because your skin evolved to basically get sun for only part of the year and it's not that intense. And then your body was designed to basically get cold the other part of the year and it's not that intense. And then your body was designed to basically get cold the other part of the year. So your mitochondria have a haplotype, which is called like an uncoupled phenotype or haplotype that basically is really good at making heat versus somebody who has ancestors that hail from more equatorial regions. Their mitochondria are really good at making energy and they're really meant to be getting good quality sun

year round. And by good quality, I mean like uv light year round um and so we can get environmental mismatches with our ancestors and so that can contribute to issues with health in both directions so if somebody from with african descent is living in more northern regions they're also going to suffer because now they're not also getting access to the sun that they were evolutionarily designed to get. But then we also have the issue of the modern diet, which is very, very enriched in a lot of processed oils that are enriched in these omega-6 fatty acids that are pro-inflammatory in the sense that they are precursors to this molecule called arachidonic acid, which is an inflammatory mediator.

And if you're getting a lot of those omega-6 fats, not only are you potentially pushing on that pathway to make potentially lower levels of chronic low-grade inflammation, but we also have the issue that these omega-6 fats can also displace the omega-3 production. So in the pathway in the body, we basically have omega-6 and omega-3 pathways running side by side, and they share a lot of enzymes. And so if you're taking in plant-based omega-3s in the form of alpha-linolenic acid, you need to make that into EPA and DHA in order to get the benefit, really, from omega-3s. And those omega-6 oils are actually basically out-competing the omega-3 ALA from plant sources

in the diet. So you're not actually getting conversion and the conversion rate's already super low. And the omega-3s are very important anti-inflammatory mediators. In addition to that, we also know that the skin turns over really quickly, like, you know, within a week or so. And so the fats that are coming in through the diet actually greatly influence the fat composition of skin cell membranes. And so the more of these PUFAs, these polyunsaturated fats, especially from these processed seed oils, our canola, our grapeseed, our sunflower, etc.,

the more of those fats are incorporated into our skin cell membranes, the more fragile our skin cells are going to be. Because essentially, if you look at the structures of these fats, they don't really sit nicely next to each other. They have these kinks in the structure because of the double bonds present there. And so they have a lower melting temp, which means they're liquid at room temperature. That's why if you look at a bottle of canola oil on the countertop, it's not solid. It's a liquid because it's already reached its melting temperature. And so if you have a lot of these fats in your skin cell membranes, you actually have increased membrane fluidity, which essentially means that your skin cells aren't going to be as robust to UV exposure.

And so you may be more prone to burning as well because you actually need to activate this cascade in your brain in response to UV light in order to efficiently tan in your skin. And this relates to the POMC cascade that I was mentioning earlier. When UVB light hits the skin and the eyes and therefore also the proximal brain regions, you produce something called pro-opium melanocortin or POMC that's cleaved into 10 distinct hormonal products. And two of those are alpha and beta MSH. And alpha and beta MSH are really important for basically triggering melanocytes to make melanin. And if you're not getting that central stimulus from your eye exposure to UV light, then you're going to be missing a huge part of

the equation with regards to mounting a melanin response in response to the sun. And so, you know, if we look at all of these different factors, these are things that so many people are doing wrong. Like a lot of people are wearing their prescription glasses and contacts outdoors frequently or like all the time. A lot of people are wearing sunglasses if they're outside. A lot of people are also lathering on the sunscreen, which is blocking the UVB light on the skin. And so you're not getting that POMC production, which stimulates melanocytes to make melanin. And so you're also going to be more prone to burning if you're wearing sunscreen,

if you're blocking your eyes in some way. And if you're eating a lot of these processed foods, these are all going to contribute to burning. So if you are going to be out in the sun all day long and you're not accustomed to doing that and you feel it's likely you're going to be burned if you don't put something on, should you just wait 20 minutes and then put something on? Or is there like a period of time that that's, you know, it'll be, it'll vary from person to

person, but is there like an optimal amount before you choose to put on sunscreen or before you choose to, I guess the glasses are kind of a different issue, but should you wait and then put on sunscreen is the biggest question here? Okay. So my perspective on this is to kind of follow what nature recommends and what nature does. So in nature, if you feel like you're getting too much sun, you see animals, they're going into the shade. They're not lathering on sunscreen. They're not doing anything else. They're not popping on sunglasses. They're just going to go into the shade. And so from a practical perspective, that could look like having an umbrella like this that you can sit under if you're outside or just even

putting on light clothing because UV light cannot penetrate clothing. So you can get some like light linen clothing or something, something to just provide some shade, a parasol or whatever, whatever you need. If you're really prone to burning, those are things that you can leverage. With regards to sunscreen, the issue that I have with sunscreen is that when you put it on, you're now exposing your skin to a symphony of light that it never evolved to encounter. We're meant to encounter the full spectrum of sunlight at once. And when we start to play around with that, whether that's like living an indoor lifestyle and now we're only getting natural light through windows and windows block all of UV light and about 40% of near infrared light. We're also encountering an alien sun spectrum in that context as well.

Same with sunscreen. We're encountering the sun spectrum that is completely unnatural to our environments and to nature. And so that's the biggest problem I have with sunscreen. Obviously, there may be one-off times where people need it. They don't have any other options. But I think the default should be to opt for shade or some light clothing instead. That would be my recommendation on that. Wonderful. but I think the default should be to opt for shade or some light clothing instead. That would be my recommendation on that.

Wonderful. What about red light therapy? You're talking about like alien wave light, or the spectrum, you're only getting certain wavelengths of light. If you're doing red light therapy, you're only getting one single high dose wavelength of light and not the others is that do you see a problem with that um so i actually don't mostly because uh so in most red light devices i have i use the mitre red panels myself and there's uh two frequencies of red and two frequencies of near infrared in there so we have a total of like four different frequencies but that's not the most important point. The most important point is that around sunrise and sunset, we do naturally encounter predominantly red and infrared light. So it's not a totally foreign signal to the body. Obviously, it's not optimal. Optimal would be to leverage your light environment and try to get out at sunrise and sunset to get access to that naturally. But if we want to further, you know,

for whatever reason, we can't configure our schedule that way, or we want to further, you know, for whatever reason, we can't configure our schedule that way, or we want to further support and protect our skin from burning if you're prone to doing so, you can actually also leverage red and infrared light before a sunning session to help protect yourself from burning and also afterwards. So there's some really cool research showing that they basically used humans. They had these like UV lights that they were shining on different portions of their skin, I think it was on their thigh. And they exposed part of their skin with doses of red and infrared light. And then they would dose them with UV at different doses. And you could show essentially in a dose-dependent manner that the red light protected you against sunburn.

And that was used before and after the UV light exposure. And so as it turns out, what happens is that because retinine and fred light are so supportive to mitochondrial function, it actually helps to prep our skin to mount the response needed. And mitochondria are required for melanin synthesis, by the way. And so it helps to promote that melanin synthetic response following a UV light exposure. So if you are somebody who's prone to burning, you can leverage a retinine fred light panel. You know, I would do it like right before and maybe a little bit after the sun exposure as well because the tanning response can be up to like a few days after a UV exposure. There's a bit of a

delay, a lag in that melanin synthesis. So anytime like before and after that sun exposure can be majorly beneficial if we're trying to protect ourselves from burning, but also just to support, you know, recovery and tissue regeneration, wound healing. And there's so many benefits of red and infrared light that we can talk about. Yeah. So an infrared sauna would count in that bucket. Yep. Even if it doesn't get hot enough for you. We both have an infrared sauna. I also have one. You mentioned gut health before the show, and I'd love to understand the first time I'd even thought about sunlight and gut health, our partner, Dan Garner made an Instagram post about it. And it was literally the first time,

and you're really the second person that I've heard talk about how sunlight affects gut health. What are really like the mechanisms in place there and how it's kind of a connection that I would have, I had never really thought about until very recently. Yeah, I love talking about this topic because gut health was something that I was really focused on in my practice. So after I graduated from Princeton, I started up my private practice where I work with people one-on-one. I also teach courses there and also train up other practitioners. So gut health was something that was really on my mind as well because I previously had IBS like in a previous life. This was like, gosh, like eight years ago now.

So actually, just to briefly backtrack, I lost 100 pounds like 14 years ago. Hey. Whoa. Yeah. High fives. Great job. Thank you. I would have never guessed that.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I would have never guessed that. Yeah. Thank you. So I maxed out around somewhere around 270 pounds and really got into weightlifting around that time too as I was losing the weight and got into training in general. But then afterwards, I developed a pretty gnarly disordered eating and also IBS. And so gut health was at the forefront of my mind because it was something that I struggled with personally. And so I ended up doing a lot of research during my time at Princeton, actually, into the microbiome and how to modulate it and, you know, for different health outcomes. And so it's been something that I've always been very interested in. And as I started getting into the light story and the circadian story, I started to learn a lot about the link between gut health and light and circadian biology. So some of the major features here are there's a gut skin axis that's activated by UVB light. So when UVB light hits your skin, it sends a cascade to the gut that actually helps

to increase gut bacterial diversity, which diversity is such an important feature of gut health because you can kind of compare it to the difference between monocrop agriculture and like a like a regenerative farm or like a wild crafted situation where in like the regenerative landscape we have all these different plants and fungi and viruses and protozoa and all these things working in symphony to create health among all the organisms in that community. And it's super resilient to any outside forces that come in, whether it's, you know, some sort of infective force, a virus or, you know, whatever it is, it's very robust to that. Versus monocrop agriculture, we literally need to pour pesticides, herbicides, et cetera, on these crops in order for

them to survive because they're so vulnerable because they don't have that ecosystem support. Same way in our gut. If we have, you know, only a handful of bacteria vulnerable because they don't have that ecosystem support. Same way in our gut. If we have, you know, only a handful of bacteria there and we don't have that nice diversity that's going to be protective and supportive against infections and against, you know, any issues that you might come up upon when you're thinking about gut health, then we're going to be, you know, doing our guts a disservice. And one of the major ways that we can support that diversity is through direct skin exposure to UVB light. So that's one. Another major route is that that red and infrared light that we talked about that's in sun can directly penetrate into the body. And

so I mentioned before, it can, you know, support mitochondria within the tissues of the body. The gut is included in that. So mitochondria in the gut is so important for, you know, cellular turnover. The gut turns over relatively quickly. And so that requires a lot of energy to produce those new cells, to replenish the gut lining, and to support just basic functions. And so the more that we can support mitochondrial function in all of the tissues, really, but if we're talking about the gut specifically, it's going to play a huge factor in our ability to adjust foods effectively, our ability to create a healthy environment that has the proper cellular turnover, that has this diverse microbiome. And so leveraging both UVB light and red and infrared light are going to be huge with regards to supporting gut health. And then, I mean, I guess the last factor

here would also be UVA light, which supports nitric oxide production, which also just helps to perfuse all of the tissues of our body, including the gut, with this important nutrient and oxygen delivery mechanism. So they're all kind of working together and you don't have to the sun, you're going to get the most benefit because there's these nerves under the skin of the abdomen that are really, really good at producing that POMC molecule I talked about. So if you want to get the biggest bang for your buck, expose your abdomen to the sun, and then you're also going to get the direct stimulation of mitochondria within the gut through the red and infrared light exposure while also activating that UVB-induced gut-skin axis.

That's shirt-off life. Exactly. That is jam. Everything you say makes me so happy. That's shirt off life. That is jam. Everything you say makes me so happy. Crop top life. All of the things I want to be doing. Shirtless outside training. Does it frustrate you when you hear kind of in like the, in your practice,

like people chasing 10,000 steps for like fat loss? Because it has a benefit of fat loss. Like that's like a downrange thing by increasing your activity. But the sunlight exposure is also a massive piece of this one. It just comes to like overall health. And I feel like just taking this natural approach really gives people it's, it's, it's how many things can we stack into one? It's not sitting in a dark room and walking on a treadmill just to get your steps, but actually becoming a part of nature and like foresting yourself so that you can get all of the benefits that cut like, um, there there's, there's so many things that you can stack

on top of each other by just being outside and being in nature. Um, one of those things, my favorite thing to do also is training. Um, how much better is it to train outside? It's night and day, honestly. Also, because of that red and infrared light that we talked about, you're going to be directly supporting your muscle energy metabolism to make more ATP to fuel that muscle contraction. And so something I've personally noticed that's very striking in my own training is that so my gym account has been frozen for a while

and I've been doing most of my workouts either in my garage gym or I roll everything out into the yard and I'll do it there. I haven't had any issues with like getting sore or, you know, it just felt like my performance was really good and just like very robust. And I was able to train, you know, basically every day because I wasn't getting sore. And so there's the benefit to that. But then I went back to the gym like two weekends ago because of the account at Unfrozen. I did kind of a standard workout for myself, but I really felt my muscles were like working harder than they should. And I was literally crippled for like four days after that workout, which was just like mind blowing because I had been experiencing none of that soreness when I was conducting my workouts outside. And so

it also just makes a lot of sense because that red and infrared light is also supporting your recovery, your energy production. So it just makes everything more effortless and it's going to make you be able to get a better pump in. You're going to be able to get more reps in potentially to move more load over time, like per week. And so I think if you're just trying to, you know, maximize your performance, you can really just, it's so simple, but just trying to move those workouts outside is going to be a huge game changer. Yo, a similar analogy to what you just mentioned. Like if you work out consistently and then you train really hard one day, you're not likely to be just wrecked sore as opposed to if you just never train at all. And then you go do a big workout, you're going to, you're going to be a mess for like a week. Um, similar to the

cancer comment that we had from earlier. like, if you're out every day getting little bits of sunlight regularly, and then you have one large dose of exposure to the sun, versus like, you're just inside all the time. And then you go, you know, you go to a water park for the whole day. And whether you get burned or not, like, is there some amount of buildup within your physiology that can protect you if you get that the regular dosage of sun exposure on a daily basis and then you get high doses every once in a while versus you know being basically in your basement mr dan garner in his basement um reading labs all day and then going out and getting a getting a high dose of um i guess it would be specifically the

short wavelength light that would be most likely to contribute to some type of cancer. So is there a buildup that takes place that shields you from the potential for cancer? Yes. So, I mean, first of all, I should just mention quickly, because it's very important. There hasn't been a single study that shows that sunlight causes cancer. They've all been done with uv light and isolation which we never encounter in nature it's always you know midday sunlight is over 50 percent red and infrared and like i already explained um that red and infrared light is very protective against uv light induced burning and and as a result of that it's going

to be protective against you know not only sunburn but also DNA damage. And so the idea that we can look at UV light in isolation and extrapolate that to the sun causes cancer is just an insane proposition to me. It's totally anti-scientific. It feels like we're trying to pick a fight with the thing that's not going to lose. Yeah. The sun's not going anywhere. Totally. It's an evolutionary given. We evolved under the sun.

And because the sun is an evolutionary given, our bodies were also evolved to be regulated by the sun. Because anything that our bodies can do to take some of the energy requirements off and just use the environment to regulate itself, it's going to do that because it's a more efficient pathway. And it also yokes you to your environment. So that means that your body's going to be more adaptable to your environment because it's literally co-regulated with it. But back to your question, yes. So there's this idea that Dr. Jack Cruz talks about, which is called like a solar callus. In the same way that you develop a callus on your foot when you're walking on the pavement or outside or whatever, barefoot, you can also develop this callus in your skin,

so to speak, which is basically just building up melanin because melanin is what's responsible for absorbing that light from the sun. It takes it in and it basically prevents any sort of externalized harm to other tissues because obviously UV light is very intense wavelength and melanin's job is really to absorb UV light very effectively. And so that's why when you're exposed to UV light, it mounts a tanning response because that's your body's natural response to protect against that intense light. But it's also even more than that because the UV light is also, I mean, some would argue that it's transduced in melanin to actually help to promote energy production and the status of the body with regards to the water networks of the body and deuterium depletion,

which is a whole other story and like rabbit hole. But short answer is yes. If you know you're having a vacation coming up in a couple months or something, you should be outside every day working up that solar callus so that you're not going to be as prone to burning. You can also leverage all the other things that we talked about in this episode so far. And there's one other thing I wanted to circle back to really quick because you mentioned about fat loss earlier and like getting your steps in. I really wanted to bring up the POMC story again because it's so interesting. Those two alpha and beta MSH molecules that I mentioned that stimulate melanocytes to make more melanin, they also

reduce appetite and increase energy expenditure. So this is also why a lot of people may have experienced this, but if you spend a day outside, you basically don't feel hungry. You kind of just feel good. And that's for a couple of different reasons. Not only the alpha and beta MSH, which help to suppress appetite and keep your energy expenditure high, but also three other cleavage products of POMC are beta, gamma, and alpha endorphins, which the endorphins are the endogenous opioid molecules that make you feel good. And they increase your baseline dopamine levels so that you have better cognition, you have better focus, you have better memory, you have just better overall feelings of energy.

These are all naturally going to be produced in response to UVB light as well from this POMC cascade. And so something that a lot of people don't think about or even know about is that when you're not getting that UVB light to trigger this endorphin production, you're going to seek out dopamine elsewhere. And what that typically looks like is you're going to look for the fast food, the junk food, the social media addictions, the drug addictions, the reality TV or whatever it is to get that dopamine fix. Ultimately, we need to get our fix somewhere, but evolutionarily, we're designed to get it from the sun, which maintains a stable baseline of dopamine throughout the day that allows us to actually think better and

critically think better and just to be less impulsive and compulsive. And so the more that you're living an indoor lifestyle, not only are you not getting exposed to that UVB light to leverage this pathway, but you're also exposed to an excess of blue light, which actually hijacks our dopamine system and makes us feel burned out. So all of the energy efficient lighting, the LEDs, the fluorescents, all of our devices are very enriched in the blue wavelength light, those frequencies. And that blue light is actually what our body uses, our circadian clocks, use to determine what time of day it is. So in the evolutionary environment, the primary source of blue light is going to be midday sun. And so that tells our master clock in our brain,

the suprachiasmatic nucleus, that it's the middle of the day. But now if we're sitting here on devices and under artificial lights, you know, at nighttime after sundown and just in general, like in inappropriate times of the day, we're sending discordant signals to our body. On the one hand, it's nighttime and we should be winding down to start getting sleepy and go to bed. On the other hand, we're blasting the signal to our brains that it's actually the middle of the day that suppresses melatonin release. That means that your sleep latency sucks. That means that your sleep quality sucks. You're not going to be getting into your deep sleep and your REM sleep as well. You're going to have poor recovery. And we all know how damaging it feels to not get a good night's sleep. Well, just imagine that every day you're on these devices, not blocking blue light,

you're not wearing blue blocking glasses or filtering your screens. You're just kind of blasting yourself. Now, every day you're going through that cycle. In addition to not getting out in the sun during the day to get the natural light to kind of balance those effects on the dopamine system and just overall neurochemistry as well. That's going to create serious burnout. We're going to run into issues there. You mentioned cardiovascular benefits, and it's kind of piggybacks on the training outside side of things.

What are those benefits? And you kind of brought this up pre-show and tweaked my interest on this. Yeah, I mean, so there's a lot. We talked about nitric oxide a little bit earlier. That's what allows your blood vessels to dilate. That's what allows oxygen and nutrients to be more effectively delivered into your tissues. So, of course, that's really important if we're thinking about supporting our aerobic capacity. We're also getting that red and infrared light stimulation of mitochondria for energy production in basically every tissue of our bodies. When it comes to cardiovascular health, the endothelium and the heart are extremely mitochondrially dense. The mitochondria function in these tissues is absolutely crucial to protect against any form of heart disease.

And something that we see a lot in like atherosclerosis is that these endothelial cells, the blood vessels are basically getting stiff and hardened because they're not being exercised. They're not getting that vasodilation to allow them to expand and then to contract back. And so if we're not, you know, leveraging the sun or, you know, anything else like temperature extremes, for example, if you're in the hot and you do like hot to cold, for example, that kind of expands and contracts your blood vessels as well. But most people are sitting at like 70 degrees indoors year round, never getting into the sun they're not doing anything to support this system to support that vasodilation and vasoconstriction

effectively and that's literally leading to like weakened arteries essentially because um the arteries are smooth muscle just similar to our intestines they engage in peristalsis like our intestines and if those muscles aren't engaged effectively, then we're going to get kind of a weakening and a stiffening of those vessels. So it's extremely important to leverage temperature extremes depending on where you live. If you're not leveraging temperature extremes, you should at least be leveraging sunlight, which typically comes along with some form of heat. Like if you're in somewhere that gets good quality sun year round, you're going to be getting also very warm weather versus if you're somewhere that the ground freezes in the winter, then you're kind of meant to get cold in the winter in order to adapt your mitochondria to the lack of quality sun. Because as it turns out, the cold and the sun have a lot of ways with regards to the way that it's affecting our vascular system,

with regards to actually endogenous light production. So our mitochondria, they make heat, but heat is infrared light. They're the same thing. And so the mitochondria are actually making light in the form of infrared light, but they also make UVC light in response to getting cold as well. So we literally make kind of our own internal sun when we're getting cold and becoming cold adapted. So that's why it's really, really important, especially if you have Northern ancestry, that you're really meant to get cold for part of the year and your body's really good at doing

that. And it will be able to adapt pretty quickly. And even if you have more equatorial ancestry, everybody does have the capacity to adapt to cold and benefit from it. So that's kind of my take on that with regards to cardiovascular health, leveraging temperature extremes, leveraging the sun is going to be absolutely huge. So after living in San Diego for a decade, so many of these things that you're saying, I thought were just like wild ass thoughts that I had of my body, like living there. Um, I, I, every time like February would roll around and it would be like 64 degrees and the sun would be out and I would be in like a beanie and a winter coat. And I'm like, how is this possible? People in North Dakota are literally freezing to death every day. Like it is beyond frozen everywhere north of me. And I'm here in 60 something degree weather. And then I just started having these thoughts of like, I feel like being cold is some sort of evolutionary process that we have to go through. Even if you live in on the equator and it never gets cold, there's something going on

with your body that it has to go through that process every single year in order for it to be healthy. And then kind of on the other side of that is then you become like a very solar powered. There's like some sort of balance that our body has to have in the processes. And you just kind of confirmed that it makes me feel so good. Yeah, I mean, it's it's definitely the case. And you just kind of confirmed that it makes me feel so good. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely the case. I mean, even in equatorial cultures, there's a lot of cold water immersion that would happen just from like, you know, bathing in streams and things like this. So anywhere you go, despite the temperature of the air, you're going to probably encounter cold bodies of water. And cold water is extremely effective at engaging our brown fat and helping to mount that brown fat response,

which makes more metabolic heat that helps to make you better at making heat so that future cold exposures you're going to be better at and more adapted to that exposure versus cold air. So cold water is extremely beneficial because water has a very high specific heat capacity, which means it can hold a lot of heat, which means that when you're in cold water, it wicks heat away from you really rapidly. And so five minutes of cold water immersion may be equal to like 35 minutes of cold air. So you can kind of get the biggest bang for your buck if you're leveraging cold water. And I think it's also largely ancestrally consistent, despite what part of the world you're from as well. It's so wild. The healthiest and like best I would always feel. Freezing cold, Pacific Ocean, beautiful sunshine,

and like an hour of those where you're literally in, you know, 60 degree water surfing for an hour and a half. But the weather or the air temperature is 72 to 74. And then whatever happens with all of the minerals that are in salt water and you get out of the water and you'll war like every aspect of your life, one, you've been surfing for an hour and a half. So life is good. But, um, just the way that your body feels coming out of that contrast and adding in movement and exercise and cardiovascular health, absolutely by far the best that my body, like it's hard to describe when you come out of there because you're just like, I feel so alive, like the solar power,

the cold power, and it all happens all in that one little place. Yeah. I mean, we didn't even mention this yet, but I mean, so you're kind of combining there. You have the sun, which is engaging your endogenous opioids, your endorphins. So you're getting that boost. Then cold actually basically is this huge stimulus for dopamine and norepinephrine production, even more than Adderall and all the stimulant drugs that people like. It engages that system even more. So you're totally having that online when you're doing your surfing in the cold water while in the sun. And then we also have the earthing grounding effect. So we didn't talk about this yet, but when you have your bare feet on the grass or even on the cement, or you're in somewhere like

the ocean, which is basically this giant superconductor. So you have this water that's full of minerals that's in contact with the sand way down below you. That's facilitating the flow of electrons from the earth into your body. And that's actually a way that our body gets free electrons to support energy production. It's like actually being in the sun and having your bare feet on the ground or being in the ocean is akin to having a meal. Like, it's very nourishing and satisfying and supportive to our mitochondria. And it's the way that we were designed to be. We're not meant to have rubber-soled shoes on every day when we're outside and being totally disconnected from the electric and magnetic fields of the Earth.

We're meant to be synced up with that because we also, like the Schumann residence, which is the magnetic field of the earth, actually mirrors what's going on inside of our bodies at the microcosm. And so if we detach ourselves from that, our bodies slowly start to become dysregulated because they're meant to be entrained by that planetary rhythm. And so leveraging that, whether it's through going into the beach and going into the water, that's the best grounding that you can do. But even just walking into your backyard barefoot. Every morning I go out to watch the sunrise in the morning morning and i'm barefoot i just sit on the grass watch it and get the red and infrared light it's like the most refreshing thing that you can do it's such a great start to your day and it's also free so it's great yeah i'd love to feel like hold on i want to dig into that real quick so the grounding piece uh i've heard people talk about that many times.

Again, Anders is talking about San Diego, which is where we originally met. We both were living out in San Diego. And every time I heard someone talking about grounding, it was almost always my most hippie friend. And they never really had like much support behind it. What is the actual science, both mechanistically and even if you can like talk about like actual studies that show XYZ benefit for grounding yeah so i mean maybe i can start by saying the body is negatively charged and if it's healthy it's going to be around negative 400 millivolts like if you

look at a cell or you look at the whole body that negative charge is indicating that our mitochondria are functioning appropriately and they're functioning well. Mitochondria work essentially as a battery. So I don't want to get too much into the weeds, but in the same way that a battery works by separating charges that creates a chemical potential energy that allows energy to be harnessed and then used for whatever device or whatever it's powering, our mitochondria work the same way by separating electrons from protons. That separation powers the production of ATP by literally spinning a rotor called ATP synthase. If you look at videos online, you can Google, just look at ATP synthase video, and you can see this rotor spinning and it spits out ATP. It's so cool. But that's working as a battery. And so

that battery needs, the net negative charge required. And it's reflective of effective mitochondrial function. And so when you're grounding or earthing in your backyard or's like concrete or grass or beach, you get free electrons from the earth that can then go directly into your mitochondria to support your ATP production, which is required for all of the processes in the body. And there's some research on this in the literature as well, showing that it also has anti-inflammatory effects, which my guess would be that that's also through this support of mitochondrial function, which, I mean, mitochondria are just so interesting and so important. I feel like at the root of every chronic disease is mitochondrial dysfunction. And we can see that actually at the level of mitochondria, there's something called mitochondrial heteroplasmy, which essentially means

levels of mutation rates within mitochondrial DNA. And if you look at the rates of these mutations, you can look at it in cancer and diabetes and Alzheimer's, any chronic disease, you can see that these mutation rates begin to go up. And that if you can reduce those mutation rates and help to support your mitochondrial colonies, that that level starts to come down and it's directly reflecting the function of those mitochondrial colonies and ultimately of your tissues. And so anything that we can do to support that mitochondrial colonies and ultimately of your tissues. And so anything that we can do to support that mitochondrial function is going to be very supportive when it comes to living a long and healthy life. And yet so much of what we do in the modern environment is directly

working against mitochondria. So for example, statin drugs, they're mitochondrial toxins. Antibiotics, most of them are also directly poisoning mitochondria as well. I should mention that mitochondria are basically derived from bacteria. There's this theory called the endosymbiont theory, which essentially says some single-celled organism fused with a bacteria millennia ago, and they decided to stay together as some symbiotic relationship. And so mitochondria share so many features of bacteria. And so anything we're doing to harm bacteria is also going to externalize harm to our mitochondrial colonies as well. And so, you know, we're living sterile indoor lives. We're not under the sun. We're exposed to a lot of chemicals from, you know, pesticides, herbicides, et cetera, taking a lot of antibiotics,

maybe exposed to mold in the home. Anything that's going to be harmful to mitochondria is going to create issues down the line when it comes to health. And so anything that we can do to help to support these crucial organelles is going to be huge. And it really, the basics of it just boil down to getting your bare feet on the ground and getting into the sun and moving your body while you're doing it. That's like the best thing that you can do. I totally agree. A hundred percent. It's my favorite thing to do too. It feels so good. It's amazing. I just want people to know, uh, I wish people like really lived in the sun the way, uh, like I'm, I'm the weirdo in my neighborhood that is always shirtless, always outside. And

I just, I obsess over being outside. Like I work in my garage with the garage door open all day long because it like makes my life better. It does. I feel like I, the more I am in the sun, the more I really do become like a solar powered creature. Like I feel like my more I am in the sun, the more I really do become like a solar-powered creature. Like I feel like my energy is better. I sleep better. It's like the thing that's been staring back at us our whole lives, and we don't realize how important it is. Um, I I've said this enough on the show, but living in, living in the perfect sunshine for a decade, like completely changed what I, how I approach just being outside, like being shirtless is just, it's so nice. It's not even just, um, the, the aesthetics or like, um, like showing

off your body or whatever that is when you're like a teenager or something. It's like, no, I want to absorb as much of this as possible because it makes me feel amazing. And then it probably just looks weird. Hey, it's fine. I mean, we can all be weird and eventually it catches on

and people get curious. And so I love, like, I wear my blue blockers whenever I go out, if I'm at the store at night or something and it's a great conversation starter gets people interested intrigued and then i can like share some science with them and most people are very receptive to and i think a lot of people also like innately know that what we're doing and what the status quo is is not good and

it's harming us and that they're kind of looking for options especially since covid a lot of people have opened up to alternatives and just being like trying to look for other answers like one of the biggest things to eliminating covid or and yet they were closing down parks and stuff and and like they closed down the ocean they closed the ocean you can't close the ocean for people what's wrong with these people they were insane and and yet i know that's a whole can of worms but i hate how like some people are just like trying to move on and forget that ever happened i'm like no we need to hold these idiots accountable because this is never happening again no way do not move on no be outside do not listen the

nobody's gonna listen to institutions anymore because of that. Nope, they screwed it. They screwed themselves over. It's a failing system. All trust is gone. I do want to wrap up. I know on your website you have some protocols on there, and one of them being the foundational protocol that everybody can start to use.

Can you kind of walk us through a little bit of that, your reasoning behind it, and then tell people where they can find the remainder of those on your website? Yeah, absolutely. So the foundational protocol, it's a free protocol available on my page. I also have a free lesson on light biology interactions that people can sign up for to learn the basics of what we've been talking about here and the science behind it. So the foundational protocol basically walks through all of the ways that you can make small changes to your daily life and your habits to help to optimize your circadian clocks. Everything from

blocking blue light on your devices and wearing blue blocking glasses to changing light bulbs in your house to what times of day to get outside and for how long at each and how to track that and how to know what the right dose is for you. Also EMF mitigation, which we didn't talk about, but that's also included in the protocol because it kind of. Also, EMF mitigation, which we didn't talk about, but that's also included in the protocol because it kind of goes along with the story because, you know, while sun exposure is extremely important that these natural EMFs, the non-native EMFs are kind of totally new to our biology. And I think we just, you know, kind of need to err on the side of caution when it comes to these things, because the research being done on these frequencies is

not very high quality, in my opinion, whatsoever, and it can't really be trusted. And so I think we as the consumers need to just be more cautious, especially when these institutions have been proven to not really care about our health in the long term. So we kind of need to take things into our own hands. So that's also included within the protocol. So people can access that in my LinkedIn bio, my Instagram. I'm primarily based on Instagram. I so people can access that in my link in bio on my Instagram. I'm primarily based on Instagram. I have a bunch of goodies in my link in bio. I have courses that I've done.

My metabolic mastery mentorship course recently ended and that was like eight lessons. And that includes a bunch of different aspects of circadian biology and light biology integrated with all different aspects of health, including gut health and thyroid health and more. I also just recently taught a three-week program on circadian biology, which is now available for self-study. And I also have a new program coming out that's like a three-month container, which starting on May 1st. So if people are interested in that, they can join. And other than that, I do take some one-on-ones clients kind of sparsely though. But I'm mostly going to direct people to my courses if they want to learn more. If they do want to work one-on-one, I'd be happy to schedule some calls with any of your listeners. And yeah, other than that, I also have a passion

for working with practitioners like medical providers or health coaches, things like this, and helping them to diversify the evidence-informed and circadian-adian informed approaches in their practice. So those are kind of the ways that people can find me. I also have a podcast called indoctrinate yourself, where I talk about a lot of these topics and more so people can find me in those areas. And they can find you outside. Doug Larson, where can the people find you? I'm going to tell you where the people can find me. And I'm going to, I'm going to break the mold here and ask you one more question. I had a question. I was going to let it slide.

And then you mentioned light bulbs a second ago. Oh, okay. Which I'm very funny about light at my house. And so all of my light bulbs throughout my entire house are all like 5,000 Kelvin light bulbs. Like kind of they're very white light, like not the very yellow, very orange kind of color you get with most incandescent bulbs. Don't, don't, don't. Don't, don't, don't tell my wife that those were really bad for me. What are your thoughts on the very white lights that you might put in your house? Not, not, they're not fluorescent lights specifically.

They're more like LEDs and things like that. Do those have an effect on your physiology with, with blue lights and especially at nighttime, et cetera? Yes, they do. So these are what's called like a melanopic lighting, which essentially means that they stimulate this molecule in our skin and in our eyes and our brains called melanopsin, which is a blue light sensor. Melanopsin is what initiates the cascade to the master clock in the brain to tell the brain what time of day it is, middle of the day. And so we want to make sure that we're limiting our blue light exposure from these types of lights or devices, et cetera, to basically the daytime hours when the sun is kind of higher in the sky. That's when we would naturally encounter more of that blue light. And so that would be more ancestrally consistent, let's say. But when it starts to get closer to sundown, it's really, really important to shift to red light bulbs.

Red light is going to have basically no blue in it. And so it's not going to stimulate that melanopsin cascade. So that means it's not going to interfere with melatonin secretion. And we want to make sure that we are allowing for that to happen because we want to make sure that melatonin is being released at the right time of day so that we can get good sleep and recovery. Also worth mentioning here that I didn't mention this earlier, but both bright light from the sun during the day and dark darkness at night are equally as important when it comes to melatonin and also when it comes to our circadian biology. It's not one more than the other. They both are equally important. So that means in addition to getting sun during the day, you also need to make sure that your bedroom is pitch black when you're

sleeping. Even a small amount of light, less than 100 lux has been shown to increase morning insulin resistance, increase fasting glucose levels, decrease heart rate variability and increase resting heart rate. And so it's absolutely essential that you're getting your room pitch black when you're sleeping and also removing blue light from your environment in the hours leading up to sleep. I would say at least like four hours leading up to sleep, starting around sundown, maybe like an hour before sundown, switching everything to red. So if you can get LED bulbs that you can change the color of, I can share a link with the ones that we use if you want it, but you can keep it on like the white light during the day and you can switch it to red at night. And then, you you know you can kind of avoid having this disturbing issue with regards to um melatonin production

and recovery and and circadian clocks so that's what i would suggest around those bulbs i think they're good for part of the day but you want to make sure to definitely avoid them at nighttime i have the hue lights i can switch them over to red there we go appreciate that uh you can find on instagram douglas e. Yo, this was an awesome conversation. I really appreciate all the hyper details and really digging into the physiology. That was very informative and

entertaining at the same time, so this was really fun. Appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you for having me. And you help me not feel like a complete lunatic about how much I love being in the sunshine. Love to validate people. Now I can push people to this show and say, she told me to do it. Listen,

it's science based. There you go. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner and we are Barbell Shrugged to Barbell underscore shrugged and make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where Dan Garner and Dr. Andy Galpin are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis. And you can access that free report at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.