OMG!
Last night’s UW Radio show with T.S. Wiley, author of Lights Out, was definitely a classic.
We had way more live listeners than any other recent show. The switchboard was lit up like a Paul Chek show! Thank you for calling in with questions. We’ll definitely have to have her back on soon for an “Ask T.S.” show.
CLICK HERE to listen to the show or DOWNLOAD IT on iTunes.
I feel like we only got to cover the basics. The second half of her book shows us how our poor sleep habits cause heart disease, cancer, and hypertension. For example, the hormones melatonin and prolactin (we make them when we sleep) are powerful antioxidants and immune modulators that protect us from cancer and oxidative stress. Also, when prolactin spills over into daytime, we become autoimmune (and fat). According to gluten expert Dr. Thomas O’Bryan, autoimmunity will be the number one cause of morbidity and mortality by this time next year. I wonder how much of that has to do with us staying up past our bedtimes.
We look high and low for solutions to our health and fitness challenges. Most of the time, we come up empty. For many of us, the solution may be under the covers in a pitch black room when the sun goes down.
Try it and see what happens.
We make this stuff so complicated. The key to health and vitality is simply living well. In 1900, we slept for half of our lives. Now, we only sleep for a quarter of them. And the things we’re doing during our waking hours like eating processed foods, over/under-exercising, and stressing out certainly aren’t helping our cause.
We need to wake up (after a good night’s sleep, of course) and get back in tune with nature in more ways that just eating whole foods and moving our bodies.
If you’re looking for the simplified explanation for why poor sleep makes you fat, tired, and sick, watch the video above.
I’m off to the movies.
Do something fun this weekend. Kick back and relax. Eat healthy foods. And don’t forget to get to bed on time.
Out!
Sean
Sean, how does one factor in geography. Consider the difference between living in Maine and living in Ecuador. Very large day/night variation in Maine and very little in Ecuador.
Hi Sean, I tried to listen to the show from last night by clicking above on click here…and it says it’s not detectable on the internet… has anyone else had this problem?
Thanks!
Jeni
Hey Sean,
this show was so wicked! and I loved Wileys book as well!
I´m half german (dad) and half guatemalan (mom) and I´ve been trying to find out if this mixture of genes can affect circadian rythmicity. I grew up in the tropics where winter is basically unimaginable and I´ve been living in Germany for 10 years now. It also got me confused while trying to do metabolic typing.
Would love to hear your opinion,
Cheers!
cb
I loved the UW Radio show with T.S. The information was awesome and her personality and demeanor was delightful as well. I stare at LCD screens for way too much of the day. It definitely messes with my eyes and makes me feel bad. I have to break that habit and find other ways to spend my time besides TV and computers. I’ll have to go the paper book route as I like to read.
After listening to the show last night I took the laptop out of the bedroom, unplugged and turned off anything electrical, put a sheet over the window, unplugged the nightlight I kept on for my cat. It was pitch black in there and immediately my eyes / head pressure felt good again. There is definitely something to this sleeping in pitch black concept and rises and sleeping with the sun cycle. Who would have thought that a bit of ambient light in another room would disrupt hormones and whatnot. I’m sleeping in pitch black with no tech in the room from now on.
I’m going to try some melatonin like T.S recommended to get to sleep faster as well. I’m a lean guy so have no need or interest in fat loss, actually the opposite for me. I can’t wait to get the book and read more about this. You definitely gotta have T.S. on again in the future, this may have been the best, most fun, show I’ve heard yet.
Thanks for your hard work.
I had 2 questions when I listened to the show. 1 is for a friend who is a nurse who works 3 nights per week and the rest of the time is on days with the family. What can he do to help himself and protect himself from harm.
Secondly, I can’t completely black out my room. I’ve tried but still get some ambient light from the outside. My solution is to wear an eyemask at night. Does that have the same effect? It keeps all light out of my eyes.
Thanks.
we need carbohydrates all year long because we are warm blooded mammals . Also we have no fur and very little hair and we don’t make vitamin C which is almost exclusivelly in fruits and starchy vegetables. Clearly we have to eat carbs all the time for those reasons
Also the notion that we need total darkness is mistaken, we are not rodents that live underground, clearly we have evolved with some light due to the moon and stars and we can sleep normally during the day as well. Only artificial and particularly blue lights are an issue and suppress our sleep
Hey Sean, love what you are doing with your website and shows etc – am really into health and fitness, having benefitted immensely from the chek program/woolcott/price pottenger etc personally and professionally. I have taken plenty from the info you have gathered together from different sources and bought various books recommended such as nourishing traditions. I try to pay it forward as much as I can, and want to acknowledge the terrific job you are doing getting the message across. that said, think you are off base with this one mate. listening to the blogcast some of it really doesn’t reasonate with me. traditional sleep wake cycles and related hormonal benefits aren’t anything new, and some of what she says doesn’t stack up to me. so I did a bit of research and jumped on her site amongst others to investigate further. now I dont rely on formal qualifications as a basis for credibility, however given that she states she has a degree in anthropology and actually doesn’t, makes me question other statements she makes. further, the volume of info out there highlighting people’s adverse reaction to the Wiiley Protocol also raises concerns. now I know you can find conflicting info on the net about anything, however prescribing high levels of HRT to joe public with no formal qualifications based on her own theories worries me, especially given adverse reactions and related controversies. if she is representative of her own program, I think I will pass on this one Sean. cheers
Sean, this was an excellent video.
I would like to mention another issue that could have an impact on our sleep (and therefore our weight) and our health. I am sure that you know in 2012 that the U.S. and Canadian government plant to phase out and ultimately altogether ban the conventional incandescent light bulb in favour of the flourescent light bulb. Meaning that they will no longer be available in stores for us to purchase.
Flourescent light bulbs have been known to cause a series of issues from migraines to issues with sleep. They are known to emit ‘dirty electricity’ which can impact our health.
As such I am very concerned about this issue and the implications on our health. Having had personal experience trying to use flourescent bulbs in the past, I can honestly say that they did negatively effect me and my sleep. And many other people are affected similarly.
I would like to hear your point of view about this issue.
What amazes me about T.S. Wiley is how absolutely sure she sounds when she says stuff that’s wild conjecture at best. “Electricity [from an aquarium] blocks melatonin receptors” … yeah, sure. That’s on par with homeopathy, dowsing and magnet therapy. Also, she mentioned an experiment where a tiny light spot blocked melatonin production and advocated sleeping in pitch black darkness, yet also acknowledged that the moonlight probably doesn’t affect it all that much. Hello?
I think that there’s definitely something to trying to get better sleep – but Wiley’s Gaian it’s all connected mumbo jumbo is a prime example of taking a good idea and running *way* too far with it.
Here’s some more information which people who are convinced by Wiley’s books need to check out – particularly if they’re thinking about taking hormones.
rhythmicliving.org
wileywatch.org
And here’s a study cited on wileywatch about the Wiley Protocol:
Menopause. 15(5):1014-1022, September 2008. Rosenthal, M. Sara PhD
The Wiley Protocol: an analysis of ethical issues.
Rosenthal MS.
Department of Behavioral Science, Program for Bioethics and Patients’ Rights, University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington, KY 40536-0086, USA.
OBJECTIVE: This review explores the ethical issues surrounding an unregulated protocol that is advertised to women through consumer books, the popular press, and the Internet, known as the Wiley Protocol.
DESIGN: A content analysis of relevant documents was conducted, followed by telephone interviews with investigators and former participants to verify facts.
RESULTS: The Wiley Protocol is an example of unregulated research involving potentially unsafe doses of bioidentical hormones applied to an unselected population of women. This protocol fails to use research ethics guidelines such as informed consent, investigator expertise, sound methodology, standardized data collection, and data safety monitoring.
CONCLUSIONS: Clinical ethics breaches include lack of full disclosure of risks, coercive influences, as well as misinformation about the study goals and safety. Breaches of professional ethics include conflicts of interest with respect to financial incentives, patient accrual, and inadequate standards of awareness and proficiency among participating investigators. It appears evident that the failure to regulate nutriceuticals and products of compounding pharmacy has provided the opportunity for these ethical violations.
I was very familiar with this long before booking T.S. on the show. Her hormonal protocols have been called controversial. Actually, I don’t know anything about her protocols, as I have not read her second book.
Our show was about Light’s Out, which is much less controversial and very well referenced.
Regarding your other comment, the moon is a much weaker light source (I forget the units it is quantified in) versus the fiber optic light used in the study.
Thanks for your comment, Mike!
Hey Sean,
while I agree that Lights Out is less controversial than her book on menopause and the hormonal treatment protocol, I don’t agree that it is well referenced. It does contain a lengthy appendix with references, but they aren’t linked to specific statements in the book, and as many people have pointed out (check out Amazon reviews) some of the experts referenced distance themselves from Wiley’s claims.
I also watched your chalkboard wrapup of the interview – what I would take issue with is how the hypotheses are presented. These hormonal causal chains are hypotheses – they’re not scientific facts. I’m not saying that they’re wrong – I just think that the human body is far more complicated, and the situation isn’t usually as simple as one hormone going up/down and then others are affected. As far as your presentation is concerned, I think you could be a little bit more clear whether what you’re presenting is more hypthesis or more scientific fact. It’s often not easy to tell, and we all know that conventional wisdom may be flawed in some areas – but it isn’t automatically wrong.
As far as Lights Out is concerned, I’m not buying the conclusions. Humans aren’t hibernating. Hyperglycemia may be in some ways connected with the mechanisms that are at work in hibernating animals, but to the conclusion (the “Endless Summer Hypothesis”) does not follow from that IMO.
Oh, and about the moon vs. fiber optic light: I guess so. But I’d also say that the light from an alarm clock or tv set LED in standby mode also falls more in the moonlight category. This idea from the book that since we evolved to sleep in caves we somehow require pitch black environment to sleep properly – I’m not buying it. I think that caves came quite late in human evolution, and even then they’re not all pitch black.
BTW: Check out Mark’s recent article about sleep:
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/biphasic-sleep/
🙂
Sean, you are awesome! You just blew my mind. So many things make sense now!