Day: February 25, 2023

• Mitochondrial dysfunction is at the root of most all chronic diseases, and it also plays a crucial role in conditions such as long COVID, which is becoming quite common. It’s also a root factor that must be addressed in COVID jab injuries, regardless of symptoms or severity

• One of the most foundational lifestyle components that can make or break your mitochondrial health is electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure. To allow your body to heal, you’ll want to minimize EMF exposure as much as possible

• The cristae of the inner membrane of the mitochondria contains a fat called cardiolipin, the function of which is dependent on the type of fat you get from your diet. Cardiolipin is important because, if cardiolipin is damaged, mitochondrial energy production will be impaired. The most damaging fat is omega-6 linoleic acid, found in seed oils

• Another major culprit that destroys mitochondrial function is excess iron, and almost everyone has too much iron. Copper is also important for energy metabolism, detoxification and mitochondrial function, and copper deficiency is common. Copper is also required for proper iron recycling, and low ferritin is typically a sign of copper insufficiency

• Other strategies reviewed include sun exposure and near-infrared light therapy, time-restricted eating, NAD+ optimizers and methylene blue, which can be a valuable rescue remedy

The video above features a recent lecture I gave to the American College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM) on how to optimize your mitochondrial health and function.

Mitochondrial dysfunction is at the root of most all chronic diseases, and it also plays a crucial role in conditions such as long COVID, which is becoming quite common. It’s also a root factor that must be addressed in COVID jab injuries, regardless of symptoms or severity.

Features of the post-jab injuries we see point to severe mitochondrial dysfunction, which in turn causes energy failure. The same goes for long COVID in people who struggle with unrelenting fatigue and other symptoms for months after they’ve recovered from COVID-19 infection.

If you can improve your mitochondrial function and restore energy supply to your cells, you’re going to massively increase your odds of reversing the problems caused by the jab or the virus.

Allopathic medicine has been a leading cause of death in the U.S. for over two decades. In 1998, researchers concluded that properly prescribed and correctly taken pharmaceutical drugs were the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S.

Two years later, in 2000, Dr. Barbara Starfield published her groundbreaking paper, “Is US Health Really the Best in the World?”

in which she provided data showing that medical errors by doctors were the third leading cause of death. Little has changed since then.

In 2016, Johns Hopkins patient safety experts calculated that more than 250,000 patients died each year from medical errors, again pegging it as the third leading cause of death.

In July 2022, the National Institutes of Health concluded the annual death toll from medical errors could be as high as 440,000 — and possibly even more because of lack of reporting — making it, still, the third leading cause of death.

In future years, I believe the medical intervention sold as “COVID vaccines” will prove to be the No. 1 killer of Americans, and we’re already seeing that trend. Something extraordinarily odd happened in 2020 and 2021, something that shaved nearly three years off the life expectancy in the U.S.

Even a tenth or two-tenths of a year mean decline in life expectancy on a population level is a big deal, as it means a lot more people are dying prematurely than they really should be. A three-year drop is simply unheard of.

While media blame this drop on COVID-19 infection, that makes no sense because the average age of those who died from COVID was about 85, well over the life expectancy in 2019. No, this massive drop in life expectancy is due to younger people dying decades earlier than they should, and the only factor that can account for that is the mass injection of people with an experimental bioweapon.

One of the most foundational lifestyle components that can make or break your mitochondrial health is electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure. To allow your body to heal, you’ll want to minimize EMF exposure as much as possible. The World Health Organization classified cell phone radiation as a 2B carcinogen in May 2011.

However, as I detail in my 2020 book, “EMF*D,” it’s actually a Class 2A carcinogen. To minimize your EMF exposure, which includes electric fields, magnetic fields and radiofrequencies:

• Keep your cell phone in airplane mode whenever you’re not actively using it

• Do not sleep with it near your bed

• At night, be sure to turn off your Wi-Fi

• Turn the breakers off to your bedroom, as the electrical wiring in most homes also emit dirty electricity

• Alternatively, sleep in an EMF-shielding tent, which is what I use whenever I travel and have no control over the EMF exposure in my room

You have about 40 quadrillion to 100 quadrillion mitochondria throughout the cells of your body. In my lecture, I show a picture of the structure of your mitochondria. The cristae of the inner membrane of the mitochondria contains a fat called cardiolipin,

the function of which is dependent on the type of fat you get from your diet.

Cardiolipin is important, because it influences the structure of the cristae inside your mitochondria, which is the area where energy production occurs. If cardiolipin is damaged, then the complexes will not be close enough together to form supercomplexes and thus the mitochondrial energy production will be impaired.

Cardiolipin also works like a cellular alarm system that triggers apoptosis (cell death) by signaling caspase-3 when something goes wrong with the cell. If the cardiolipin is damaged from oxidative stress due to having too much LA, it cannot signal caspase-3, and hence apoptosis does not occur. As a result, dysfunctional cells are allowed to continue to grow, which can turn into a cancerous cell.

The type of dietary fat that promotes healthy cardiolipin is omega-3 fat, and the type that destroys it is omega-6, especially linoleic acid (LA), which is highly susceptible to oxidation. So, to optimize your mitochondrial function, you want to avoid LA as much as possible, and increase your intake of omega-3s.

Primary sources of LA include seed oils used in cooking, processed foods and restaurant foods made with seed oils, condiments, seeds and nuts, most olive oils and avocado oils (due to the high prevalence of adulteration with cheaper seed oils), and animal foods raised on grains such as conventional chicken and pork.

Ideally, consider cutting LA down to below 7 grams per day, which is close to what our ancestors used to get. If you’re not sure how much you’re eating, enter your food intake into Cronometer — a free online nutrition tracker — and it will provide you with your total LA intake.

Cronometer will tell you how much omega-6 you’re getting from your food down to the tenth of a gram, and you can assume 90% of that is LA. Anything over 10 grams of LA is likely to cause problems. Healthy fat replacements include tallow, butter or ghee, all of which are excellent for cooking.

Another major culprit that destroys mitochondrial function is excess iron, and almost everyone, with the exception of menstruating women and those with large blood losses, have too much iron. On the other side of this coin is copper, which most people are deficient in.

Iron and copper are highly interdependent and need to be considered together. Low ferritin is rarely indicative of low iron. In most cases, it’s a sign that copper insufficiency is preventing proper iron recycling. Copper is also crucial for energy metabolism, detoxification and mitochondrial function.

You can learn more about this in “The Poorly-Understood Role of Copper in Anemia.”

To increase your copper level, you can either take 4 to 10 milligrams of copper bisglycinate per day, or eat more copper-rich foods, such as bee pollen, grass fed beef liver and acerola cherry. (Acerola cherry is very high in vitamin C, which contains the copper-rich tyrosinase enzyme.)

The other side of the equation is to lower your iron, which is easily done through regular blood donations. One way is to simply donate blood two to four times a year. If losing 10% of your blood in one sitting is problematic, then you can remove blood in smaller amounts once a month on the schedule I have listed below. If you have congestive heart failure or severe COPD, you should discuss this with your doctor, but otherwise this is a fairly appropriate recommendation for most.

A third leading contributor to mitochondrial dysfunction is lack of sun exposure. Getting regular sun exposure is crucial for several different reasons:

1. UVB triggers vitamin D production in your skin — In addition to playing an important role in infections, vitamin D is also necessary for mitochondrial function and cell health in general.

   The ideal source of vitamin D is sun exposure, so if you live in an area with plenty of year-round sunshine, aim to expose as much bare skin as possible for about an hour during solar noon.

   If you live in an area that doesn’t get enough sunshine during parts of the year, you’ll want to take a vitamin D3 supplement, along with magnesium and vitamin K2.

   You need 244% more oral vitamin D if you’re not also taking magnesium and vitamin K2,

   so taking them together means you need far less vitamin D in order to achieve a healthy vitamin D level, which is between 60 ng/mL and 80 ng/mL (150 nmol/L to 200 nmol/L).

2. Near-infrared rays in sunlight shining on your bare skin trigger melatonin production in your mitochondria

   — The vast majority of the melatonin your body produces (95%) is made inside your mitochondria in response to near-infrared radiation from the sun. Only 5% of melatonin is produced in your pineal gland.

   Melatonin is a master hormone,

   a potent antioxidant and antioxidant recycler, a master regulator of inflammation and cell death, and an important anticancer molecule.

   Melatonin has also been shown to be an important part of COVID treatment, reducing incidence of thrombosis and sepsis

   and lowering mortality, and is a known cytoprotector with neuroprotective properties that can potentially reduce the neurological sequelae documented in patients infected with COVID-19.

   When your mitochondria produce ATP (the energy currency of your cells), reactive oxygen species (ROS) are created as a byproduct. ROS are responsible for oxidative stress, and excessive amounts of ROS will damage your mitochondria, contributing to suboptimal health, inflammation and thrombosis (blood clots).

   Melatonin production in your mitochondria is your body’s built-in mechanism to counteract this damage, but in order for this invaluable system to work, you must expose your body to near-infrared light. While you can raise your vitamin D level using a supplement, this cannot be done with melatonin.

   Oral melatonin supplements do not wind up in your mitochondria where they are needed most to quench the damage from oxidative stress produced in the electron transport chain. An alternative to sun exposure would be to use a near-infrared sauna, described in “Near-Infrared Sauna Therapy — A Key Biohack for Health.”

3. Near-infrared light also:

   1. Increases mitochondrial ATP production

   2. Increases autophagy

   3. Increases heat shock proteins, which help proteins maintain their three-dimensional structure and refold misfolded proteins

   4. Reduces inflammation

   5. Triggers the conversion of retinol (vitamin A) to retinoids, which are crucial for immune function

   6. Structures the water in your body — Structured water acts like a storage battery that stores energy in your body in your blood, and helps push blood cells through your capillaries

The vast majority of people eat across 12 hours or more, which is a recipe for metabolic disaster. Health statistics bear this out. In July 2022, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology

posted an update on the metabolic fitness or flexibility of the American population.

Metabolic fitness includes things like blood glucose and blood sugar, blood pressure and weight, and metabolic flexibility refers to your body’s ability to seamlessly transition between burning fat and carbohydrates as your primary fuel.

“TRE is one of the easiest yet most powerful interventions for restoring metabolic flexibility and optimizing your mitochondrial function, which is key for recovery from any illness or disease.”

In 2016, 12.2% of Americans were considered metabolically fit.

Two years later, in 2018, only 6.8% of U.S. adults had optimal cardiometabolic health.

That was four years ago so, today, that ratio is probably even lower, especially if you consider the number of people who are now struggling with mitochondrial dysfunction as a result of the COVID jab.

TRE is one of the easiest yet most powerful interventions for restoring metabolic flexibility and optimizing your mitochondrial function, which is key for recovery from any illness or disease.

As a general rule, I recommend compressing your eating window to between six and eight hours, and fasting for the remaining 14 to 16 hours each day. The timing of that eating window is important though.

You want to avoid eating first thing in the morning (wait at least two or three hours) and you want to avoid eating right before bed. Ideally, have your last meal at least three hours or more before bedtime. So, to give you an example, you could eat all your meals between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., or 11 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Boosting nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) is, I believe, another crucial component when treating COVID jab injuries and long COVID. NAD+ is a crucial signaling molecule believed to play an important role in mitochondrial function and longevity.

NAD is used up by DNA repair enzymes and enzymes involved in inflammation and immunity, such that chronic inflammation or acute illness can rapidly result in depletion. To learn more about the role of NAD+ in health, see my interview with Nichola Conlon, Ph.D., a molecular biologist, featured in “The Crucial Role of NAD+ in Optimal Health.”

There are a number of ways to boost NAD+ without resorting to expensive supplements, including:

• Circadian rhythm optimization

• TRE and other forms of intermittent fasting

• Low-dose niacinamide (not niacin), taken at a dose of 50 mg three times a day. More is not better as it will impair the function of your longevity proteins (sirtuins)

• Intense exercise in a fasted state

Methylene blue can be particularly useful for addressing the fatigue and neurological problems that are common in long COVID and COVID jab injuries, as it works as an electron cycler. It basically acts like a battery, but unlike other compounds that do the same thing, it doesn’t cause damaging oxidation in the process.

If anything interferes with oxygenation or cellular respiration, methylene blue is able to bypass that point of interference through electron cycling, thus allowing mitochondrial respiration, oxygen consumption and energy production to function as it normally would.

Methylene blue can also be helpful in instances where you have impaired blood flow that prevents the delivery of oxygenated hemoglobin to the tissues. In this case, methylene blue helps counteract the reduced blood flow by optimizing the efficiency of mitochondrial respiration.

Methylene blue also activates the Nrf2 pathway. Nrf2 is a transcription factor that, when activated, goes into the cell’s nucleus and binds to the antioxidant response element (AREs) in the DNA. It then induces the transcription of further cytoprotective enzymes such as glutathione, superoxide dismutase catalase, glutathione peroxidase, phase II enzymes, heme-1 oxygenase and many others.

Methylene blue’s action on mitochondrial respiration is also coupled with biochemical upregulation of your oxygen consumption machinery in general. This upregulation remains even after the methylene blue is expelled from your system, and over time, it can actually increase the number of mitochondria.

For neurological conditions, consider using methylene blue in combination with near-infrared sauna therapy. A 2020 paper

in Translational Neurodegeneration reviews the benefits of this combination, specifically as it refers to neuroprotection.

Methylene blue is a hormetic, so low dosages have the opposite effect of high dosages. While every possible dose response has not been tested, as a general guideline, the benefits mentioned here are based on lower dosages, ranging from 0.5 mg per kilogram of bodyweight to 4 mg per kg at most. For brain health and nootropic effects, a dosage between 0.5 mg to 1 mg per kg per day is recommended.

Selecting the correct product is of crucial importance. There are three basic types of methylene blue: industrial, chemical and pharmaceutical-grade. The only version you’ll want to use medicinally is pharmaceutical-grade, which is 99%+ pure. Lower grades will contain varying levels of heavy metals and other contaminants.

Pharmaceutical grade will be marked USP, which stands for United States Pharmacopeia. Taking it with some ascorbic acid (vitamin C) facilitates absorption. To learn more, see “The Surprising Health Benefits of Methylene Blue,” in which I interview Francisco Gonzalez-Lima, Ph.D., who has spent many years studying this drug.

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Download Interview Transcript | Download FREE on iTunes

• The typical infrared sauna sold in the U.S. is far-infrared. These low-energy wavelengths provide virtually no photobiomodulation health benefits; they only heat your body superficially

• The near-infrared wavelengths can penetrate up to 4 inches into your body’s tissues. The incandescent light bulb is the most efficient way to heat tissue because it is mostly near-infrared

• Only a few percent of solar radiation are far-infrared. About 40% of the sunlight spectrum is near-infrared

• Sunlight and incandescent light interacts with light receptor proteins called chromophores in your body. When light hits the chromophores, they activate a variety of biological processes. Near-infrared also activates the mitochondrial chelating systems in the cells

• Near-infrared light therapy stimulates your mitochondria to release nitric oxide and boost ATP production which, together, promote healing effects such as DNA repair and cellular regeneration

I am of the belief, as are many other experts, that near-infrared sauna is an integral component of successful detoxification. Near infrared light also has many other biological benefits.

Here, I interview Brian Richards, founder of SaunaSpace,

who is equally passionate about this modality, and has developed a near-infrared sauna using high-powered incandescent light bulbs. While he does not have any formal health training, he’s quite knowledgeable and can provide information I think many could benefit from.

The vast majority of infrared saunas are far-infrared. While these certainly have many benefits, there are some downsides. As explained by Richards, the difference between far- and near-infrared is the wavelength of the light. Near-infrared is higher energy. It’s referred to as near-infrared due to the fact that the wavelengths are closer to the red wavelength.

“[Near-infrared] is what an incandescent sauna is,” Richard says. “But that’s not what the typical infrared sauna is. The typical infrared sauna is far-infrared, which are the very low-energy infrared wavelengths. They start out at 3,000 nanometers (nm) and go up from there.

There’s virtually no photobiomodulation (PBM) from these wavelengths. They’re only heating the body. It’s a very small portion of the sunlight’s spectrum. Actually, only a few percent of the solar radiation are far-infrared. The biggest portion of infrared (about 40%) in the sunlight spectrum that reaches the Earth is near-infrared …

So, a huge part of our evolutionary context is getting so much of our light as a near-infrared wavelength every day … If we’re comparing near-infrared to far-infrared, one of the big differences has to do with penetration into biological tissue. We have this concept of water absorption. Water absorbs different wavelengths to different degrees.

The water absorption spectrum actually starts at about 980 nm — the ‘first overtone of water’ it’s called. Right when we get in the middle of near-infrared, it’s only then that water begins absorbing wavelengths of light. But it’s a continuum, so once you get out of near-infrared, at about 1,400 or 1,500 nm, the water is almost entirely absorbing all of the wavelengths.

Once you get out to mid-infrared, and certainly when you get to far-infrared wavelengths, they’re 100% absorbed by water. Many people are unaware of this, but far-infrared wavelengths, for that reason, do not penetrate biological tissue very deeply. Saunas using far-infrared wavelengths are essentially surface heating you, and heating you in a conductive fashion.

The near-infrared wavelengths, because they’re at the beginning of water’s absorption spectrum, have been shown to penetrate up to 100 millimeters (mm) [3.9 inches] … With near-infrared wavelengths, we get radiant heat … penetrating heat. This is a much more efficient way to heat biological tissues …

The incandescent [light] bulb … is the most efficient way to heat tissue because it is substantially near-infrared … The sun is about 5,500 kelvin (K) … The incandescent bulb is between 2,400 and 2,800 K, so about half the temperature of the sun. Its peak is actually in the near-infrared. It’s a little bit shorter … But essentially, it’s the same form of light.”

There’s a great deal of confusion on this issue, and many sauna makers take advantage of that confusion. Many of the far-infrared saunas promote their sauna as doing exactly what Richards just explained, but far-infrared saunas are NOT radiant.

They heat your body, yes, but it’s very superficial, reaching only a few mm into your body. So, much of the far-infrared sauna advertising you see is really referring to the benefits associated with near-infrared, which is only a very small portion of the light emitted by those types of saunas.

It’s the ability of near-infrared to penetrate so deeply into tissues

that makes it so effective for detoxification and physical healing. On the other hand, unnatural light sources such as LEDs have a converse effect — they can cause a great deal of harm to your health.

Richards discusses this influence as well, so for more information please listen to the interview or read through the transcript. This issue has also been covered at great depth by Dr. Alexander Wunsch, a world class expert on photobiology, in “How LED Lighting May Compromise Your Health.”

Two other common problems with far-infrared saunas is that a) they claim to be “full-spectrum,” when in fact they emit virtually no near-infrared, and b) they emit high levels of electromagnetic fields (EMFs), even if claiming to be low- or no-EMF emitting.

I’ve measured some of these low-EMF saunas, and while there were no magnetic fields (the “M” in EMF), they emitted high amounts of electric fields (the “E” in EMF).

The problem is electrical fields are very difficult to measure without an expensive meter and proper training, and are another source of massive confusion, even within the Building Biology committee (a group of public and working professionals dedicated to creating safe havens in a toxic, electromagnetic world). Richards adds:

“You’ve got to be careful because there are so-called full-spectrum infrared saunas now where they have far-infrared emitters for heat, but they’ve added in near-infrared emitters in one of two ways. One way is to use LEDs. You can make LEDs now that emit only one monochromatic near-infrared wavelength.

They’ll add a few of those to be able to claim that there’s near-infrared, therefore it’s full-spectrum, when it’s not. It’s really two technologies that they’re trying to bring together and create a composite full-spectrum. But it still doesn’t have the same natural [spectral power curve] shape as an incandescent bulb, as the sunlight …

There are also some saunas that use low-irradiance, near-infrared emitters that are basically heating elements that are hotter than the far-infrareds. They do emit a small amount of near-infrared, but it’s at a very low power level, what we call in light-therapy: irradiance.”

For clarification, the term “irradiance” refers to the power density, which is measured in watts per meter-squared or milliwatts per centimeter-squared (mW/cm²). Watts refers to the power. An incandescent sauna bulb is typically 250 watts, so it’s high-powered. Watts per meter squared is the amount of power received across an area in space.

“That’s what power density is. It’s the power that’s received across a surface area in space,” Richards explains. “When we look at light sources in terms of ‘How much light therapy are you getting? What dose are you getting?’ you measure it by measuring irradiance.

If we know the irradiance, and we know how far away we are from [the light source], then we know exactly how many joules we get, how much energy we get dosed with per second.

If we sit a certain amount of time at a certain distance from a light source of known irradiance, we can figure out exactly how much energy we receive per unit time. In the scientific world, they use this term irradiance, but it’s basically power over an area. It varies widely with different light technologies of course.”

There are inexpensive meters that can objectively measure irradiance, called irradiance meters. Solar panel installers use them to measure the irradiance received by the solar panel, for example. The typical consumer meter will measure irradiance between 400 and 1,100 nm. In essence, they measure visible light — including the PBM section of near-infrared.

Using a consumer irradiance meter, anyone can confirm that the incandescent near-infrared sauna user, at 24 inches from the four 250W specialty lamps, receives about 30 mW/cm² near infrared irradiance. A single 250W specialty incandescent lamp, typically used at 12 to 18 inches from the exposed body part, delivers 15-34 mW/cm².

Traditionally, the benefit of sun exposure is thought to be almost universally due to the benefit of ultraviolet-B (UVB) radiation, which stimulates vitamin D production in your body. What most overlook is the effect of near-infrared and its impact on PBM. This is important as 40% of sunlight is in the near-infrared spectrum, which strongly supports the idea that this is an important frequency to be exposed to.

As explained by Richards, PBM refers to the process of light activating biological systems. In a nutshell, light interacts with light receptor proteins, called chromophores, in your body. When light hits the chromophores, they activate a variety of biological processes.

Importantly, certain proteins in the electron transport chain in your mitochondria contain the light-receptor protein cytochrome C oxidase (CO), which plays an important role in cellular respiration. CO has absorption bands for near-infrared light and visible red light.

This narrow bandwidth of the sunlight is not just heating your body or, in terms of UV, promoting vitamin D production. It activates an entirely different healing system. “Since we have mitochondria in every cell of our body, with the exception of red blood cells, it’s a core restorative healing system,” Richards says.

One of my recent passions is mitochondrial function, the electronic transport chain specifically, and how to improve and upregulate its function in order to decrease electron leakage, reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and oxidative stresses.

I’ve delved deep into the molecular biological literature, and it’s exceptionally rare to find research that addresses the near-infrared component of mitochondrial function. Yet it’s a really important component of mitochondrial health. Richards explains, “Near-infrared [light] activates the mitochondrial healing systems in the cells, but it does a lot more than that too.”

While the incandescent light bulb uses far more energy than LED bulbs, the heating they provide actually has therapeutic benefits. Farmers have long used incandescent light bulbs to incubate animal life and keep livestock warm, for example. Incandescent light bulbs can also be used for incandescent sauna therapy. For this, Richards recommends using a 250-watt, red-filtered incandescent bulb.

“All of the wavelengths emitted that the energy-efficient folks call nonefficient and wasteful are the healing wavelengths,” he says. “You want the 250-watt in an incandescent sauna therapy because you want a lot of the irradiance. You want a lot of this big portion of the healing wavelengths of near-infrared …

When we’ve gone to LEDs and fluorescents, we’ve removed the healing component for the sake of energy efficiency, but with very detrimental consequences to our health … From sauna therapy, we know all the benefits of heating the body.

It’s not just about detox. It’s the vasodilation, the blood circulation and the structuring of water. There are so many aspects that are beneficial to us. We remove almost all of those in our attempt to become 100% energy efficient.”

While it can be quite difficult to find incandescent light bulbs these days, and they cost more than LEDs, you can still find the 250-watt specialty bulbs Richards uses in his incandescent sauna therapy.

As mentioned earlier, you can determine whether you’re actually getting a therapeutic dose by using an irradiance meter. With far-infrared saunas using near-infrared LEDs, you’ll find they provide nowhere near the required irradiance. Above 100 mW per cm², the energy starts getting excessive, which can be counterproductive. As noted by Richards:

“Even with light therapy, we don’t want an unlimited amount. Just like you can’t be in the sun for an unlimited amount, you don’t want to be in the sauna for eight hours. With the sauna, you’re going to heat shock the body. Raise cell temperature a few degrees and you get all these detox and other cellular responses due to the heat shock.

The same thing with the light. You want to get a certain kind of natural level of irradiance. You know, 20, 30 or 40 mW per cm squared for a certain amount of time. That activates the healing systems in the cells in the body, and then let the body do its work.

If you look at the literature, the reason it’s called low-level light therapy (LLLT) is because it’s also referred to as low-level laser therapy. The original light therapy studies were done with lasers, which are high-powered sources, where the irradiance is incredibly high. What was found was that … it’s too much energy for the system. You can damage it.

If you see studies where near-infrared wavelengths have been shown to be damaging to the cells, you have to look at the irradiance levels that they use in the studies. You’ll see that they’re incredibly high. Just like if you get too much near-infrared or too much infrared, you can burn yourself.”

It’s really all about getting a natural dosage level of near-infrared wavelengths, but what is that? In the paper, “Infrared and Skin: Friend or Foe,”

coauthor Michael Hamblin, Ph.D., notes that “solar IR-A average irradiance is around 20 mW/cm² during the day with a peak irradiance reaching 40 mW/cm².”

Interestingly, the irradiance received in an incandescent near-infrared sauna at 24 inches from the four 250W lamps is about 30 mW/cm², closely mimicking the near-infrared irradiance we get from sunlight.

Thirty mW/cm² is equivalent to 1.8 joules per centimeter-squared (J/cm²) per minute, so a 20- to 30-minute near-infrared sauna session delivers around 36 to 54 J, which is right within the recommended photobiomodulation range discussed in-depth with Hamblin in my article, “Healing the Body With Photobiomodulation.”

Essentially, what you’re doing with near-infrared-based LLLT is stimulating your mitochondria to release nitric oxide (NO) and boosting adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production. Together, your mitochondria, NO and ATP work in concert to promote healing effects, such as DNA repair and cellular regeneration.

Richards started using an incandescent sauna to address his own health problems. He struggled with insomnia, adrenal fatigue, body acne, pessimism, low energy, and overall didn’t feel very well.

“Through my [online] research, as people do nowadays to get information and take action, I came across this [incandescent light therapy] concept,” Richards says. “It dates back to Dr. Kellogg, actually, of the early 20th century. I subsequently learned of and watched Alexander Wunsch’s videos, and many others.

Incandescent light therapy dates back 100 years. A long time ago, they were using it to heal lupus vulgaris and all these other things. Before we had this word ‘photobiomodulation,’ before we could look at the microscopic level and see the mitochondria, we had an understanding that this light was healing.

I found an old manual by Dr. Lawrence Wilson, ‘Sauna Therapy for Detoxification and Healing,’

which provides instructions on how to build your own incandescent lamp sauna. I built my own and had this amazing healing experience. It completely resolved all of my problems … It really blew me away. That’s what got me into all of this.

Since then, I’ve tried other saunas … It’s striking how poorly the far-infrared sauna heats you. You sit in there for 20 minutes and you’re just waiting [to start to sweat] … In an incandescent sauna, it’s immediate. You start sweating. You can feel the heat. The heat is very brisk and vital. It’s getting in there. But you know what? It feels good, because it’s mitochondrial stimulation.

It’s natural full-spectrum light in the natural shape and form of light as we’re designed to get it. It’s a feel-good heat and a great sweat. We know now too that it comes with all of these benefits of PBM. There are other kind of synergistic benefits that you can’t just attribute to the detox and the mitochondrial stimulation of the light.”

These benefits include structuring the water in your body — a topic discussed in depth in my interview with Gerald Pollack, Ph.D., author of “The Fourth Phase of Water.” Pollack calls this structured water exclusion zone or EZ water. Wunsch also discusses how water nutrient delivery is improved when near-infrared light hits the water in and around your cells.

As noted by Richards, the inside of your mitochondria has been shown to consist nearly entirely of structured water. Scientists have also demonstrated that structured water acts as a type of chromophore. Structured water also acts as a vehicle to activate, improve and optimize biological systems. All of this suggests that the human body really needs light in its natural form, as the sun’s wavelengths to:

1. Structure water

2. Provide benefits associated with heating

3. Activate biological processes via chromophores

As mentioned, the instructions Richards used to build his own incandescent sauna can be found in Wilson’s book, “Sauna Therapy for Detoxification and Healing,”

available on Amazon. This type of sauna was used in Kellogg’s sanitariums and spas in the early 1900s.

I discuss the history of Kellogg and the early days of light therapy in “How Therapeutic Use of Full-Spectrum Light Can Improve Your Health.” Many chiropractic schools used to teach single lamp therapy, but light therapy as a whole was more or less abandoned by the 1970s.

The incandescent sauna Richards built, based on Wilson’s instructions, basically consists of four 250-watt incandescent light bulbs in a diamond configuration placed close to the body for targeted, localized relief.

“I built mine based on his plans. It was a very bricolage product. He, for example, recommends using PVC plumbing pipe to construct the framework of the sauna and just use painters’ cloth from the hardware store and hardware cloth or what farmers call chicken wire for the bulbs. That’s what I made. It did work. It worked incredibly well for me, but it does have some serious disadvantages.

First of all, you want it to be hypoallergenic. You want natural materials, not a bunch of off-gassing plastics. That’s a big issue. Secondly, these bulbs are hot, so you need to protect yourself from the bulbs. Just a hardware cloth or some flexible wire is not sufficient.

You don’t want to touch the surface of an incandescent bulb. You can burn yourself. You need professional protection from that. Something that’s not negligently designed. Those are some basic product design issues that I’ve addressed in my saunas.

But more interestingly, and harder to address, is the electric field and magnetic field mitigation. EMFs stress us out. They’re nervous system stressors. We need to address both of them. They’re actually addressed in totally different ways. This is a big misnomer that you touched on earlier — these so-called far-infrared saunas that are described as low-EMF.

When they say they’re low-EMF, they’re only talking about magnetic fields. They’re only talking about one-half of the picture. Both magnetic fields and electric fields are nervous system stressors. We don’t want either of them from our electrical device.

They interact with our bodies in different ways, certainly, but they also are different in nature. Magnetic fields are hard to mitigate. They’re really hard to shield … You have to just kind of deflect it.”

Magnetic fields are measured in nanotesla, while electric fields are measured in volts per meter. This requires two different kinds of metering devices, as a device measuring electric fields will tell you nothing about the magnetic field and vice versa. When building (or buying) a sauna, you’ll want to measure both, to make sure neither field is present or very high.

Now, some of these meters can be very expensive. Since the important part is the effect these fields have on your body, you can use a body voltage meter instead, which measures the voltage reading of your actual body. (Keep in mind that your body voltage meter must be grounded in order to provide you with an accurate reading.)

“When you use a proper grounded body voltage meter, and you’re measuring body voltage instead of just the voltage around the sauna, you find that when you sit inside a far-infrared sauna with a body voltage meter, you’ll get thousands of volts per meter, thousands of millivolts, depending on the meter you’re using. Very high,” Richards says.

“Our natural body voltage is only a few millivolts or less even. It’s almost zero. It fluctuates, but it’s never above 10 mV, ever ancestrally. Pre-1888, we never had this [level of electric field exposure] in our life. We never had any of this man-made electric field stress.

We have it now 24 hours a day, from dirty electricity, from our computers … [In] the incandescent saunas that I’ve been making and dealing with for many years … we use grounding and shielding principles to ground out, block out and shield out all the electric fields so they don’t get to the user, so they don’t increase the body voltage.

You see that in my sauna. You measure it with a body voltage meter, either measuring radio frequency (RF) or measuring dirty electricity, the low frequency, you’ll see that it’s almost zero … There’s no sauna on Earth that’s ever done that before.”

While I believe Richards has built the ultimate zero-EMF near-infrared sauna, it is a significant investment, and may be out of reach for some. If that’s the case, you can still benefit from this technology by building your own starter sauna that will provide benefits, but will not protect you from EMFs. The core of the sauna are four 250-watt Philip incandescent bulbs, which can be purchased for less than $40.

To that, you need a safe light fixture. Wilson’s sauna can be built for a few hundred dollars. But you could actually forgo the tent, especially if you’re not addressing the electric fields.

The heating you want occurs as a result of the light shining onto your body, so you don’t really need a sauna tent. As noted by Richards, “All you really need is the air around you to be above body temperature; above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.”

So just about any small enclosed space, like a spare closet, could serve this purpose, but if surrounding materials like paint or finished wood or carpet have petrochemicals in them, undesirable toxic off-gassing can occur. Also, since the heating is directional, remember to rotate your body so that different parts are exposed, unless you’re only working on a single area with one lamp.

“The core of our sauna are these four 250-watt lights on our shielded device, with all the lifetime warranty and the quality that we manufacture. We sell just that as well, because you can use it in a closet. You can use it in a shower.

We have a lot of folks who have far-infrared cabinet saunas. They’re purchasing just that [four-lamp assembly]. They have buyer remorse and they want to upgrade to near-infrared and to full-spectrum and to be shielded. You can put one of our [near-infrared bulb assemblies] into a far-infrared sauna very affordably and not have to deal with any of the EMF stress at all from the product.

You just don’t have to turn [the far-infrared sauna on. You just use the four walls and ceiling. The same goes with the shower or other innovative enclosures that people can think of.

For folks who are skeptical of the concept, the proof’s in the pudding. You can start out with one bulb. You can start out with what’s called this targeted therapy, so single lamp incandescent therapy. And just use that for a localized issue.

Folks are using it for everything, from headaches to cramps, to skin issues, to neuropathies in the limbs, to just aches and pains from old injuries. That’s something that anybody can start out with and get a feel for this concept.

For the full body and the real detoxification, you do need to sweat passively. To sweat passively, we need air around us to be of 100 degrees F. Typically, it’s nice to have an enclosure to do that for convenience. But depending on the environment, the sauna room could be the size of a football stadium. If it’s above 100 degrees, you could just sit in front of your four 250-watt, red-filtered, incandescent lamps.”

While there are a number of different ways to get a sweat on, if you’re working on detoxifying heavy metals and other pernicious toxins from your body, passive sweating is more effective than active sweating. Active sweating is caused by physical exertion such as during exercise. Research has shown the toxin concentration in sweat during exercise is actually quite low.

Sweat samples taken during sauna bathing, on the other hand — i.e., during passive sweating — reveal high amounts of toxins are being released in the sweat. The reason for this, Richards explains, has to do with sympathetic versus parasympathetic nervous system activation. Your autonomic nervous system has two states, commonly referred to as “fight or flight” and “rest and digest.”

When you’re exercising vigorously enough to start sweating, your body is allocating energy toward your muscles, lungs and heart. “There’s no cellular reserves or hormonal gearing for detoxification or cellular repair or anything like that,” Richards says.

During passive sweating, however, your body is heated, which helps release toxins through the sweat, and since you’re not exerting yourself in any way, your body is able to use the energy from the incandescent lights to heal and repair itself. This is also why EMF mitigation is so important, as EMFs will activate your sympathetic nervous system. Again, EMFs are a nervous system stressor, which will hamper your detox efforts.

Overall, near-infrared therapy is something that can benefit just about everyone, seeing how most people experience mitochondrial stress and are exposed to toxins on a daily basis.

Like me, Richards is passionate about near-infrared therapy, and believes it’s one of the most impactful things you can do for your health. A recommendation to further improve the benefits from the sauna metabolically and for your mitochondria, is to use cold water therapy afterward.

After a sauna session, take a cold shower. But, whether you prefer hot or cold water, you’ll definitely want to wash off the sweat and not leave it on your body to dry. Scrubbing all the skin of your body with a natural stiff bristle brush is very effective for getting toxins off the skin, helps exfoliate and feels great. Also, be sure to collect the sweat with a towel when using the sauna, and remove after, as it will be loaded with toxins.

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