The Body Electric With Sara Pugh

For more than 80 years, the scientific community has pushed for institutionalized wellness. We have deferred our health to only the conclusions of lab-based tests and the scientific method. But how have humans thrived for thousands of years naturally? It seems the dam is breaking right now, and people are waking up to the fact that there is so much we can do ourselves to naturally improve our lifespan and healthspan. A balance is needed between scientific health advances and the natural health solutions freely available to all of us. Adiel Gorel is joined by Sara Pugh, PhD for an “enLIGHTENING” conversation about the power of natural light and its impact on pretty much everything our body needs to regulate itself metabolically. In this episode, everything is touched on: light, vitamins, grounding, processed food, sleep, and more.

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The Body Electric With Sara Pugh

I’m excited because we have Dr. Sara Pugh here. Sara, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much.

Looking Back To Sara’s Career Journey

I have heard you speak, I have heard you being on a podcast. I love what you do. I think you actually are in a crossroads where you integrate the theory with practice in a way that I really find useful. That makes me extra excited. There’s so much to cover, I almost don’t know where to start, so I’ll start with the most cliché place. You can tell us what brought you to this point.

Okay. It actually started a long time ago because when I did my PhD, I actually used light and I was shining light on proteins and dyes. I had no idea how important light actually was for biological signaling. Even 25 years ago, I was aware of the fact that these proteins have got all these different light emission spectra, but I never put the pieces together to realize that was how really fast signaling happens in the body.

I did another project on statins and cholesterol, and after that I got very disillusioned with the mainstream or the centralized science and medical view of things, how it’s all just drugs and supplements. I left science. I did other things before I got into quantum biology, like hypnosis, which does tie into metaphysics, and then also I did movement, taught movement. That’s important for quantum biology because water and fascia and collagen are an intricate part of our bioelectronics.

This is another important thing. A lot of people think we’re just a lump of meat and they don’t realize how light and charge animate us and gives us life and powers our consciousness. A few years ago, I discovered blue blockers and a red-light panel from Dave Asprey, but it didn’t go into the depth about sunrises and UV light. I understood a long time ago there was something wrong with artificial light.

As we all know, the amount of chronic disease, obesity, heart attacks, depression, and everything’s all just going up and up and up. Sure, people could say it’s the food, but a lot of really healthy people or people who eat healthily have chronic problems. It led me to look deeper into how the body works, but also from a physics perspective as well as a biochemistry perspective.

I’ve got over 25 years of biochemistry. A lot of the information on the internet is all about biology and biochemistry. Any, I would say, Joe Blogs could just buy a big bucket of supplements and take them all, mix them together, make a big mess, and be worse than they were before. Whereas to explain physics to people, it’s not as simple because nobody likes physics and maths at school. I didn’t.

Changing the paradigm to explain to people how physics controls our health and our biology. Physics can be really interesting, and there’s loads of practical things that you can apply, and you don’t need to know anything about physics or have a degree in maths to learn the physics that goes behind what we call quantum biology. What quantum biology actually is, is now a really big, broad subject. It completely depends on who you talk to.

For those reading who think it might be just a fad, there’s actually bona fide research labs who look at things like the effect of biophotons in mitochondria, the effect of light on people, all of the physics of water because water is extremely fascinating, and it’s every single water molecule’s different. If you’ve got a glass of water, they’re not all the same, and we are made 75% when we’re young of water, and I think that’s obviously something people miss. They think water’s just this thing for washing in or drinking.

That’s an important part of health. Things like magnetism, different kinds of waves, whether it’s a scalar wave, a longitudinal wave, light waves, how this impacts our biology because fundamentally, we are just made of waves or nothing, or just energy, frequency, and vibration, as Tesla would say. When you say that to a layperson, their eyes just glaze over.

You have to explain to them, “How do you use this physics of yourself and all of the physics around us to have a better life, improve performance?” that’s where I’m at now. I’m always learning new things and like you said, I think making it practical for people but also keeping it scientific because it’s really easy to make things up.

The other part I said about the crossroads is there’s a big combination now of science and spirituality coming together, whereas to me I just look at the it’s just physics, a lot of things like action at a distance, and this ties really well into quantum biology because, again, we’re talking a lot about light waves or magnetism, things that we can’t actually see that massively affect our bodies, and then of course all the radiation that we’re surrounded by, but luckily we can do things about that.

The Reason Behind Using Daytime Blue Blockers

I come from an electrical engineering background, and so there was a lot of math and physics there. Decades ago, I was walking around saying, “We are at the lowest level electromagnetic waves,” because that’s what the physics show. Given that we are electromagnetic waves, many effects that have to do with frequencies, with photons, with water clearly, so to me, this whole thing is so clear. However, I like the way you approach it.

Specifically, I heard you say things like to the effect that, “Don’t let the perfect ruin the good.” In other words, some people can be very overwhelmed. “What? You want me to wake up for the sunrise and then you want me to do this and that.” Just step outside for a few minutes. That’s a good start. I like that approach. I see that you’re wearing glasses for the daytime and probably the reason you are, and you’ll tell me why you’re wearing them, is you’re in front of a computer. Now these may be Dave Asprey’s daytime blue blockers, but is that why you are using them?

You’ve jumped ahead a bit because I was just going to comment on what you said about being an electrical engineer and us being waves, because as you know, it’s all about coherence. We want to be coherent in the body, and we can have waves which are not coherent or they interfere with each other or they can add and multiply or they can constructively or destructively interfere with each other.

Just for people who are maybe new to this, if we are made of waves and then we’re going to talk about light waves, of course they’re going to interact with us because that’s what we’re made of. In terms of why am I wearing these glasses, when it comes to light, for some people they just think of light as illumination or turning on a light bulb, but it’s actually the sun makes 10 to the power of 36 different wavelengths or frequencies or buttons or signals or keys on a piano, whatever you want to call it.

Embedded within the sun, there’s all of the signals that our bodies need, of all this different color light at different times to tell the body what to do and when, whether to wake up, make hormones, get the gut going, sleep. These different colors and wavelengths of light are all going to have effects on the body and we definitely don’t know all of these.

People are familiar with red light panels and also you asked about artificial blue light. The problem with the artificial blue light is from screens and leds. Somebody’s taken away all of the rest of the light that would have come out of the sun and we’ve just got a narrow band of blue light at around, we’ll just say 450 nanometers-ish like 235, 265. First of all, this is not natural because we haven’t got the rest of the signals from the sun. Secondly, it’s not natural because we’re just looking at the same signal over and over again. It’s not providing any information for the body other than being somewhat stressful.

With blue light, just on a simple way of understanding before we get into any biochemistry, the reason the body doesn’t like it is it’s because it’s not natural, because it’s not full spectrum light. Generally, the light that comes out of say a computer or an ipad, it’s telling your body it’s 12:00 in June in the middle of summer.

If you’re looking at screens at, say, it’s 4:00 here or if you look at your phone at 6:00 AM, you’re confusing your body’s timing completely because our body clock completely depends on natural light, the natural blue light from the sun. Blue light from the sun is great. The blue light from the computers is going to be stressful. That’s one simple explanation.

From an eye health explanation, there’s things like there’s opsins and retinol and things in the eye. Excessive exposure to the blue light is going to cause photo-oxidation of this retinol. Vitamin A is really crucial but when it’s damaged by too much blue light in the eyes, it then becomes harmful to the body. Secondly, the blue light in my eyes and on my skin, it actually signals me to make more cortisol, and people are already stressed and then cortisol can dysregulate blood sugar.

There’s pathways via things like POMC, which is an important protein that’s light sensitive. There are also ways in which too much blue light can raise blood sugar and interfere with insulin. We know already we’ve got an epidemic of diabetes, insulin resistance, obesity, stress. Just by having blue light blockers in the daytime, just to limit some of the blue light that goes from my screen into my eyes is doing something for my health. Sure, the light’s still going on my thyroid gland and on my skin, because my skin’s covered in photoreceptors as well, but the eye is the main route in and the master signaler for the light.

As you said, if somebody wants to make one simple change, just wear daytime blue blockers to protect against screens. If I had my window open, which I don’t, I may not have the blue blockers because I’ve got direct sunlight coming in, but generally I do just because the blueness from the screen’s bright. Although I have got Iris and other things on the screen to help limit it, but I trust the blue blockers more.

On the subject of these glasses, you can get ones that are orange or red, which are for after sunset, because after the sunset, our eyes and our skin are really sensitive to photons and light. There’s not much wiggle room in the evening. If people expose themselves to way too much bright light in the evening, it’s going to push their dopamine down.

Lots of people, if they have cravings like binge eating or other things they like to do on the internet, if they have a dopamine problem already and then they’re shining more and more blue light in the evening, it’s just encouraging this temptation. The blue light also, too much in the evenings is going to interrupt the final stages of making melatonin for sleeping. Melatonin isn’t just a sleep hormone, it regulates other hormones like the sex hormones, it’s important for detox pathways, for autophagy.

Autophagy is getting rid of old and damaged cells to make new ones, like recycling. Apoptosis is killing cells that we no longer need, and melatonin controls that as well. Melatonin collects light throughout the day, and then it releases some of this light as well as biophotons at night for signaling. That’s the quantum explanation, but the biochemistry explanation would be melatonin we need it for sleep and repair at night.

If we expose ourselves to too much artificial light in the evening, we’ve really disturbed our melatonin. Even if we have a difficult daytime life, if we can sleep well, it’s a chance for people to be able to rejuvenate and regenerate. I just say darkness is just as important as light. You have to have both like a duality. We want the right light and enough of it in the day, and then we don’t want the light at night so that we can regenerate and sleep. Darkness isn’t anything bad, it’s just how you use it compared with the light.

When Alexis gets interviewed many times, she sits in her garden with her laptop in the shade. Right there you mentioned it. You said, “If I had my window open, I wouldn’t necessarily wear these glasses,” because you’d get a lot of the spectrum that’s coming in. Clearly if I was sitting outside in the shade now, I wouldn’t need it. There’s a difference. I’m honing in on one little point because I try to make this whole thing very doable for the people who are reading. They can do it. Your daytime blocking glasses, which you’re wearing right now, are different than the one you would wear at night. What is the difference and why?

Yeah, because if I wore the red or the orange at night, it blocks too much light, so it’s telling my brain it’s already dark. These are I think something like a 25% filter, so it still lets some of the light in and the blue light, because I need it for signaling. Even though there’s a window here, the window blocks the UV light and the near infrared, but the blue can still get through. That’s full spectrum blue coming through the window.

However, because I’ve got my computer here, I’m just adding an extra layer of protection. I’m just doing it because I would for to set an example. Say if somebody works in an office, a simple thing they can do is have a work near a window and have it open and then use the yellow blue blockers in the daytime because once you get used to them they are helpful and we’ve only got two eyes and they’re really important. That’s why I do this, because I don’t wear contacts or glasses and I want to not do that for as long as possible.

Working Around The Dangers Of Watching TV

Even if I wear my glasses, all of these blockers like the one that you’re wearing will fit over my glasses, which I use them at night. I talked to Scott and he said something interesting. I said, “What about the people who, when the night comes, they say, ‘I understand about the darkness and everything and yet, I really want to watch TV. I really want to watch like one hour of TV. What do I do?’” he suggested in the daytime, you had already said, if my window was open, I’d get the frequencies in that include the red and infrared and all the other ones. At night, you don’t get that even if your window is open obviously because it’s dark. He suggested that if you put an infrared source, you may aid a little bit.

You wear the blue blocking and you put an infrared source, maybe then watching the TV won’t be as harmful. What do you think about that?

Yeah, there’s different arguments to this. If somebody really likes TV, sure, you could have a little infrared light, because you can get incandescent bulbs emit infrared and then so do Bon Charge minis. Also, you could wear blue blockers to protect the eyes. Also, the other problem of the television is, this is another aspect of quantum biology, is it’s plasma TV. Plasma is like the fourth phase of matter. We’re not going to go down this route. I just want to say what I was going to say about televisions.

We can have healing plasma or healing negative ion winds. There’s lots of these in nature, including there’s a particular phenomenon at sunrise which and sunset with how the plasma is arranged. However, when you use electronic devices, you’re going to make plasma which can self-assemble into a structure, but it’s not going to be natural.

You’re bathing yourself not just in artificial light, you’ve now created some artificial plasma. There’s lots and lots of plasma tech nowadays for healing like people have probably heard of cold plasma, then our aura is just a cloud of charge or cold plasma. It’s not just the light from the television, it’s another dimension of things which are related to quantum biology of course, but not something that people have thought about.

The answer to that is don’t have a screen that’s massive as well, because some of the screens I’ve seen in certain countries like the US, it’s the size of a ping-pong table. If you have a smaller TV as well, not a gigantic one. Sure, we can’t buy old-fashioned screens anymore, they’re all plasma screens. As you said, if people want to add in some near-infrared because I do agree with Scott.

It’s not necessarily just the blue light being bad, it’s the absence of other spectrum. Also remember, from what comes out of the sun, there’s way more than just 2 or 3 wavelengths, because these panels only have maybe 2 red and 2 infrared like in the 600s and the 800s, so it’s not full spectrum. As you said, it’s better than nothing.

Something else to do with why I don’t watch TV. I’ve got really into Heart Breath Coherence at the moment because I love data and you can collect a lot of data in an app called ithrive, and it can give you reports on coherence based on readings in the body. The person that built it’s a genius and all their technology is really difficult to work and use. Anyway, when you watch TV you get really low coherence scores like 50, whereas if you’re outside or even playing, you get way higher scores.

From a level of coherence, which people can actually measure for themselves, watching TV is not coherent at all. However, again, it’s like everything. Some people having a glass of alcohol is their treat, other people watching TV is their treat. All I’d say is after doing that, just go outside and ground for a couple of minutes to undo all of the unnatural things you’ve done because like everything you can’t make people be monks and nuns and just live a life in the darkness in a cave and not have a social life.

You just gave me a little bit of a thought. I was talking to a friend. They love watching television at night. A few days ago, they went out to a social gathering. They told me, “I came back home feeling so much better.” Obviously, they were attributing it to the social interactions, which of course I’m sure it will, but now when we are talking, I’m thinking that was one night when they were not in front of their giant screen. That could have contributed to feeling better as well.

Of course because we emit loads of EMFs as well, like human EMF. Just having good conversations, laughing, being with other human beings, feeling accepted, that just makes us feel good. Whereas watching TV and video games is a very solitary pursuit because you just do it on your own and you’re being entertained, it’s all passive. Whereas if you have to meet people, you’ve got to think of things to say and be interesting and have a two-way conversation.

That’s why with the with the TV, that’s why I wouldn’t watch it. I’m not going to stop other people watching it but it’s when things are excessive, that’s what when it’s a problem. Yeah, definitely being with other people is really important because there’s so many layers to health and it isn’t just about just light and water and EMFs and food.

Why You Should See The Sunrise Regularly

If I were to talk to one of our readers right now and I would want them to begin on a good hygiene of a light life. We already know it’s a good thing to see the sunrise because there is a certain amount of red and infrared and there is no UV yet but let’s say sunrise these days right here where I am in California is about 6:50 AM. Somebody woke up at 7:40 not at 6:50. As you said, don’t let the perfect interfere with the good. I would say just open the door and go outside. The sunrise has already happened, but you’re still getting fairly early pre-UV light. Is that a good thing to do?

Definitely because the benefits of sunrise, it’s not just all when the sun comes up and that’s it. There’s still the daybreak before the sun comes up and there’s going to be a window between the UVA coming up because one of the main reasons for seeing the sunrise is setting the clocks in the body. People just have to accept it’s like turning up to a soccer game and you’ve missed the first half an hour. You’re just going to have to deal with you’ve missed stuff and try better the next day.

Also, the red light in the morning’s really important for renovating our red-light active proteins like hemes which are in the mitochondria. If you miss that window, you haven’t basically got lots of engines moving in the body. There are also important other cascades at the sunrise sets off to do with how the thyroid functions and how leptin functions.

It’s better than nothing to go out as soon as you get up an hour later. It’s like everything if you want the full package and the full results, you’re not going to get it. Don’t come and tell me “Oh yeah I got morning light but it didn’t work.” if people are sleeping in and missing the sunrise because there’s a very specific combination of light and cold and plasma and stuff in the morning.

As you say, everyone has to start somewhere so if somebody usually gets up an hour after sunrise and goes straight on their phone, if they go straight outside, that’s a massive improvement. Everyone has to start somewhere but they just have to accept they’re not going to get the benefits if they don’t do it properly.

How To Handle UVA And UVB During The Day

When they ask Jack Kruse if you can give us one thing to do, only one for everything, exercise, food, light, one thing, what should we do and he said, “Never miss a sunrise,” that was his response. In relation to what you just said. Let’s say the day progresses, about an hour, an hour and a half later, we have UV rise, so the UVA comes onto the scene. That’s another moment that we get some information from. Can you talk about that?

Yeah so this ties back a bit into when I said I used to do protein folding. Inside proteins there are like a they’re made of amino acids and some of them like tryptophans and tyrosines they’re fluorescent under and because they’ve got aromatic rings. Things like serotonin, melatonin, thyroid, they’re built from these aromatic amino acids, tyrosine and tryptophan. Intrinsically, we know alreadythere’s something to do with UV light because the proteins absorb and emit in the UV, that this could potentially act as some signaling pathway.

The UVA is important for making these neurotransmitters and it’s also important that we begin the production of melatonin in the morning, even though the pineal gland doesn’t make all the melatonin, mitochondria makes most of it, we still need to start this production so that we program these neurotransmitters with the right light signal.

As I said earlier that melatonin collects light throughout the day because it gets made out of different things ready to deliver its signal during the night. It’s important for our biological pharmacy that the UVA is also important for making endocannabinoids and enkephalins and endorphins and also things like melanin which I’ll get to in a minute because that’s a little bit of UVB as well.

Also, another important thing about UVA is its nitric oxide production. I can’t remember exactly which year it was that the Nobel Prize was won for discovering what nitric oxide did and all its numerous health benefits. The nitric oxide which needs to go on the skin, not just on the eye is a really important part of the UVA rise.

I actually read a paper that was talking about why taking Vitamin D supplements alone doesn’t really do much because it’s the act of going out in the sun that’s important and it’s not just the UVB, it’s the UVA and the nitric oxide that’s a huge health booster. That’s also why the UVA rise is important but the UVA and the sunrise together, that prepares the skin to receive the UVB later because that’s going to be higher energy, shorter wavelengths. It prepares the skin so you can go out in the UVB without burn risks. It’s like an orchestra or a story or a sequence that if we miss one piece it’s going to affect what happens later on in the day.

Here comes the UVB now. We’ve had the sunrise, we’ve had the period between sunrise and UVA rise, and now here comes UVB. UVB, again, depending on the latitude. UVB comes and as it hits your skin, the outer layer, we could make Vitamin D plus a whole other cascade of things that are being made.

Yeah, actually that’s important because when we say there’s no UVB, what we often mean there’s not enough UVI or UV index to produce measurable amounts of Vitamin D in the skin. However, it doesn’t mean there aren’t photons of UVB all year round, it’s just when we often when people talk about, “The UVB is gone,” what they mean is there isn’t sufficient amount or irradiance of it to create this reaction you described in the skin.

To crack open the cholesterol, it’s only about 8% efficient anyway. That’s why you need powerful light to be able to do the reaction. As you said, yes, you need the UVB and it needs to be over a particular UV index. Some people say 4, some say 5. You can get apps to measure this. That’ll begin the production of it makes pro-Vitamin D just underneath the skin. It’ll get transported through the body because it can be sulfated which means it can be water soluble so it can be passed around the body and distributed to wherever it’s needed at the right time.

The Vitamin D we make from the sun has got light information programmed into it. Like I said earlier light’s got energy and information in it, so it’s going to carry timing information. This Vitamin D gets used in the right time in the right place because many cells have a requirement for Vitamin D and there’s Vitamin D receptors in many places, including the mitochondria because it’s got like over 100 functions.

What we make from the UVB is different from what we buy as a supplement because the supplement is only the storage form whereas there’s another form an active form. Many people when they do a blood test only test the storage form which is supposed to be in storage not in the blood. They don’t test the active D. That’s the one that actually does everything and the supplement isn’t active D. There’s a variety of chemical reactions that happen to convert this supplement into active D.

Whenever you take anything artificially say biochemically like a supplement, you’re going to if you change Vitamin D you’re going to unbalance say Vitamin A levels because they’re paired. To convert all this supplement into active D, you need lots of magnesium and a lot of people are already depleted in magnesium because they’re easy waters low, they’re stressed.

Adding these supplements in on top is going to encourage a problem with magnesium and it can also disrupt other pathways like I think it can disrupt copper pathways the supplements as well and calcium pathways. You’ve added in a lot of something artificial and our bodies are very clever, so they’ll it’ll do a whole host of things. It’s just simpler to get it from the right source which is the light.

I heard Bob Fosbury say, and it makes sense, that there is sufficient UVB all year round because of the scatter in the atmosphere. There’s a scatter except in the winter, we wear layers to keep warm. UVB is a very high frequency, it doesn’t really penetrate clothing. If we are out there with clothing, we don’t get it. At least in theory, based on what he said, if you go out and you take your clothes off, you’re in a bathing suit or you’re naked whatever it is, then your skin will get enough UVB to create Vitamin D even in the winter.

I am happy to change my view about everything and I always do, but that means why not just test it then? It’s all very well people tell me things but these days, I don’t believe anything anymore, including myself, I have to always find proof or a reason. Even if I go back to first principles of physics, sure there I know there’s UVB all year round, but I really am not convinced that for certain people, say somebody with dark skin that lives in the UK or Seattle or New York, I really don’t think there’d be enough so it is person dependent.

I’m sure maybe somebody from Finland who’s got very pale skin, they can make Vitamin D at way lower uvis, so it would make sense to maybe test them in Finland to see can they make Vitamin D in the winter if they go around naked because the Fins are I’ve been there many times and they’re they like being naked. You’d have to test it because otherwise how do you know?

Also, with Vitamin D, there’s loads of different forms of Vitamin D. There’s even a Vitamin D4, there’s 15 or more forms that our bodies make naturally. There’s a dark form of Vitamin D and there’s probably also, I’ve got no proof, a UVA active and a biophotonic active Vitamin D because when we expose ourselves to the cold, our bodies make UV light because we’re making biophotons now and biophotons or photons inside the body are completely different to the light outside. They’re very coherent and laser-like, so there’s a very high chance that the biophotons that we make can make some form of Vitamin D that’s activated by the cold.

I’m sure there’s other pathways. I’m not disagreeing with Bob Fosbury at all, I just really don’t know the answer. Also, I think people focus just too much on storage Vitamin D as in the supplement and that blood test and they forget about the other 20 forms of Vitamin D plus all the forms we haven’t discovered yet.

Actually, there’s no real contradiction here because you said so correctly that a person with very dark skin in the UK might not have enough. When he was talking about it, he was talking about native people in the native environment. Someone who lives in Finland would have a certain skin. This interesting thing and of course it’s fascinating that our mitochondria creates UV light in response to cold which we’ll talk about cold and heat exposure in a second.

Actually, all other cells make biophotons in response to cold.

How To Get Sunlight While Working Indoors

It’s fascinating. Now we progress through the day. Let’s say you work. You work inside, you’re on the phone, you’re on a computer, whatever it is probably and I’m asking it, would it be a better idea to take breaks throughout the day? All you need to do is grab the handle of the door and now you’re outside. If you need to be in the shade, you can be in the shade.

I noticed it many years ago before I got into this, that when I traveled very long distances, I could overcome jet lag by being exposed to as much daylight as I could when I landed and putting my feet on the sand, like on the beach or something like this. It really mitigated jet lag to a huge degree. That was before I started to go into this.

Yeah because also, you’re getting magnetic or geomagnetic information for your location on the planet and then your brain is matching it to the light signal and the time because with everything our brains and our bodies always want to know what time it is, where are we, where are all our joints in space. Obviously, being in an airplane’s going to disrupt all our proprioception and our time perception and also deplete us of lots of charge and electrons. Going on the beach is a brilliant idea because you’ve got the seaside, you’ve got the ability to ground and then you’ve got the full spectrum light so you are going to reorientate your body and your biology to your new location quicker by doing that so yeah, that always works.

Here we are during the day, we get breaks we go out in the sun or in the shade but we are outside. Here, the UVB stops and the UVA stops and now comes the sunset and the sunset has its own information, right?

Yeah it does but also there’s a UVA window in the afternoon that I think’s important to point out because when with POMC it also makes alpha MSH for making melanin, but also alpha MSH is an appetite suppressant. A lot of people find if they don’t get the afternoon UVA they’re more likely to binge eat later in the evening or overeat or eat things they shouldn’t. The second UVA window is important for certain people, especially people who have trouble with appetite.

Also, it’s another way to push your dopamine back up again. Also we have we didn’t touch on melanin. I learned something interesting about melanin. We make melanin in the presence of UV light and people think it’s just a sun tan but it’s actually way more than that because it’s, first of all, a semiconductor, then it can absorb all wavelengths of light.

Even outside the electromagnetic spectrum even things like solar tons and so it’s a really amazing piece of electronics. It can absorb and absorb toxins and heavy metal, so it’s a natural cleaning mechanism for us. There’s all the melanin inside the body that we can’t see that’s all around neurons, around cells, around mitochondria, around our senses, in the brain. It’s really important. I think melanin and water together are really key part of consciousness because that’s something I’m really interested in as well because it’s all very well looking good but we also want our minds and our to always be able to be expanding.

I think melanin’s a really important part of this. Melanin actually absorbs something like 80 times more blue light than it does red light. If people have got a suntan if they do happen to be in a mall or a hairdresser or an airplane where there’s lots of blue light, their melanin can actually absorb some of this blue light. I learned that and I thought it was really interesting about how having a suntan is even more healthy than I even thought.

Back to these people you’re talking about who need to go outside. It’s basically just about changing habits because if you want something or to feel better you’ve got to make changes and most people do always feel better outside. We just get sucked into tasks on the inside. Smokers and vapers are allowed to go out for breaks whenever they want, so people who work in an office can go out for air if they want. I agree it’s difficult for say somebody like a nurse or a doctor because they have to be somewhere and then can’t go out. Even in between patients and operations and things there’s possibilities of just outdoor time. A lot of people just go outside anyway when they feel they’ve had too much inside.

It’s not telling people to do some weird thing like stick carrots in their ears or we’re telling people it’s reinforcing to people that it is okay to go outside. Also with children, they often behave worse inside than they do when you have outdoor time or playgrounds or outdoor schools. Back to Finland again, I think they did some studies on children who they had an outdoor classroom where they were grounded and out in the sun and pretty much all the ADHD went away and all of the exam scores went up.

If people want it, going outside I would say is also a gigantic biohack. It’s a stupid way to say it because it’s obviously it’s the bloody obvious and it’s natural but still, I know people that are into all the gear and have no idea and still don’t get it that they’re missing natural light and grounding. You can’t out biohack sun exposure and expect to feel your best.

Why Using Grounding Mat Is Not Recommended

What do you think of grounding mats?

I don’t like them because you’re plugging yourself into the AC and then sleeping on it. When we talk about electricity and electric fields movement and everything, nobody fully understands it and except a select few people on the planet. It’s just exposing myself and sleeping on something that’s plugged into the AC.

In terms of daytime using a grounding mat just before I forget what I do is I have a grounding strap for my shoe and I have a walking pole with copper wire wrapped round it or I have two because I quite like Nordic walking so that’s how I get more grounding when I go outside. Cleverly, our bodies plus our DHA and our water battery, we’ve got the ability to hold charge for a bit. With being grounded, yes it would be nice if we could be grounded all the time, but unfortunately, we’re not, but we do have the ability if we’re healthy and we follow quantum principles and learn how to keep our charge or chi or life force or whatever it is inside so it doesn’t leak out.

That’s why if people go to bed fully charged, I don’t I really don’t think they need to sleep on grounding mats because I’ve tried them many times and I’ve had the worst night’s sleep ever. I know other people who’ve tried them and didn’t like them. There are other people that swear blind by them but the placebo effect and the placebo effect of good advertising can be up to 50% or 80%.

Of course. Somebody could argue to counter, yes, it’s an AC outlet but I’m only plugged into the ground part of it.

Yeah, but you’re still being the antenna. On the other hand, with grounding some people say “It’s collecting electrons,” which technically with grounding, it acts as space and counter space or discharging positive charge. I can’t say that the source of the information because you’re basically attaching yourself to something that’s going to have unnatural information. I’m not saying it’s going to hurt you but it’s not natural and the body doesn’t like stuff like that. That’s my issue with it, that it’s just not natural.

However, I can see how it’s got the potential to discharge some of the positive charge, which again, we all agree is not good for the body. It’s one of these things that there are much better ways to discharge yourself because you can just go outside and stand on the grass. There’s difficulty with this one. Sure, somebody might live on flat number 56 in the middle of Stockholm or London or New York and wants some kind of thing to help them with their sleep and it may or may not help. However, the way it works doesn’t appeal to how I think now about quantum biology and coherence and knowing that I’m made of waves. I don’t want where I can help it waves that are not natural coming near me because it’s do it’ll do something and I don’t know what that is, but I’d rather not.

If you live in a house, you can mitigate all of that by actually running a rod into the ground. Actual ground outside of your window.

Also, it depends where the electric wires of your neighbors and everything. Isn’t something like half the electric grids, electric field in the ground, because electric fields are massive. Being an electrical engineer, you’ll know there’s some really fat electric wires in especially America and it can make an electric field of something like 20 kilometers. Sure, there’s going to be dirty electricity if we’ll call it that outside as well. I just think the grounding mats are a more of a fad. Grounding socks or shoes or poles or whatever, I think they’re good because you have to go outside to use them.

Why Leptin Is Called The Body’s Energy Accountant

If you walk in a park and in the park, there is no electrical infrastructure because it’s a mountain, so then yeah, that’s a good point. I keep my eye on the time of course I already know and I knew before we even started we could speak for five hours but I know we only have one. For the uninitiated, would you define Leptin?

It’s a hormone that regulates metabolism and we can call it an energy accountant because it links into things like bone density and fertility. If we don’t have enough energy to distribute on board, having a baby or building bones isn’t the first priority. It was discovered I think in 1994 and people might be familiar with there was pictures of a mouse one of them looked like a ball, a really fat one and then there was a thin one.

Scientists thought, “Hooray we’ve solved the obesity problem and now we’ll just make leptin and give it to everybody and the obesity problem will disappear.” I think a few leptin drugs were attempted to be made but they didn’t do anything so that was the end of that. People were like “How does it work then?”

From a biochemistry perspective, people know that there are receptors in the brain for leptin so it can dock at night and report to the hypothalamus how much energy there is on board. It has to do it in an electromagnetic way because it can’t just look and measure how much body fat you’ve got and thinking “Good, there’s plenty of fat here. The person’s got loads of energy.” we know a lot of people with obesity are actually starving metabolically or energetically so it can’t be doing that. It’s made in the fat cells under the skin, so that means it’s able to record how much light exposure we get. There’s lots of different ways that we can get energy, like getting energy from the sun or our environment is a huge way.

The leptin can sense how much did we charge up our solar panel from the sun and then it can report back to the hypothalamus to say “We’ve got plenty of energy on board at the moment,” because it measures it in like I said electromagnetism but then I’ve also would call it Chi. Even though it sounds like a woo-woo word, physicists have started to take on board the word Chi meaning life force or redox or charge or how many electrons we’ve got.

There’s so many other energy levels or systems in our body then. Even things like proper breathing practice and Chi Gong and other ways where you make and manipulate energy or Chi because, like I said, the collagen is piezoelectric. There’s numerous ways that we can generate something in the body which we’ll call Chi or energy or redox that leptin can measure.

If we’ve got high life force or Chi, then leptin’s going to report to the brain, “No, we don’t need to overeat tomorrow. We don’t need to eat that cake. We’re not starving.” If somebody wanted to have a baby, it would say, “Yeah we’ve got enough energy on board. Let’s make the baby,” “Yes, let’s repair and build some bones. Let’s make sure the immune systems functioning well.”

What happens with leptin is it’s very dependent on, first of all, how much light you get as in the UVA and the UVB because the leptin melanocortin pathways tied to POMC. It’s also dependent on seeing the sunrise because there are important things like the central retinal pathway and other energy pathways and the TCA cycle and the mitochondria that all get activated in the morning.

If the mitochondria is leaking energy or leaking charge, that means electricity is escaping. Leptin or no, we’ve got an energy leak. We need to eat more food. The whole timing of the body is important. All the things that we’ve talked about, the different color light and how that helps the mitochondria, the TCA cycle gets things moving at the right time.

If everything’s all coherent and moving smoothly in the body, it’s going to be efficient and then this helps with the signal from leptin to modulate the metabolism and the appetite. We can go on about leptin for a long time. Fundamentally, it’s an energy accountant that’s electromagnetic. That’s why a lot of people like I said right at the beginning with obesity have low energy and lots of problems associated with low energy but they’ve got loads of stored energy on their body.

When people get into a situation where they’re leptin resistant because they’re exposing themselves to too much blue light, they’re eating food with too much deuterium like say loads of fruit in the winter or loads of processed food because that’s got horrible quantum information, loads of deuterium in it. Deuterium, again, we haven’t covered, but it’s an isotope of hydrogen which in excess is going to again steal energy so leptin is going to register we’ve got less energy here.

There’s different reasons how people become leptin resistant. Sure, food plays a role but then not seeing the sunrise. Bathing in blue light’s going to mess up insulin and cause more overeating. It’s a big mix of lots of things but it’s easier I think for people to change their light habits like seeing the sunrise, getting all the different light we’ve described, blocking blue light than it is to change, say, 30 years of bad eating.

Often, when people change their light environment, that might have been the root cause of the binge eating in the first place. Leptin’s interesting and it’s something I’ve mulled over for a long time because I’m always looking for more ways to boost my redox or my charge or my chi or my whatever because like you described earlier, in some places like the UK, we don’t have great light so there has to be other ways to build up our charge like cold.

That cold is very good for leptin resistance and leptin sensitivity but then I did say earlier that when we expose ourselves to the cold, it makes the mitochondria ECT compress a bit so energy or electron flows more efficiently because there’s less time taken between each complex because they’re closer together. Time is obviously a huge factor in aging as in the physics of time. That’s going to be helpful the cold so that means that pleases the leptin signaling.

Also, we discussed that cold exposure makes UV which is basically making our own energy and inside us or charging things up so again, it makes sense of how cold exposure can benefit leptin signaling. Also, leptin and insulin are very tied together. That often people who are leptin resistant are already insulin resistant and people who are both are often diabetic. We know that cold exposure’s good for insulin resistance as well.

We are meant to have temperature changes through the day not just sit at like 72 degrees F or 25 degrees C all day. There’s lots of reasons of or ways we can think about how we can change our environment in order to have more energy or chi or redox or charge which is going to have better leptin signaling. You still need to have good Vitamin D levels because that’s showing how much UVB you’re getting and melanin and the UVA pathway is really important for leptin as well.

It’s something we can make it really complicated or really simple. In a lot of ways to sum up, health is just gathering charge, distributing it properly and making sure we’re not leaking charge or light. Leptin is the thing which senses how much how successful were we at gathering charge distributing it and not letting it leak out. If we’re good at doing that, then leptin signaling of course is going to be good. When people don’t have weird food cravings that takes away the unhealthy aspect of bad food but then it could have been that the light or the obesity began in the skin or the eye in the first place.

By the way, in terms of going back to grounding, there is the term being a tree hugger. In a way, I think when you touch a tree or when you touch the leaves, that’s also grounding.

When you touch nature or gardening, as long as the plants itself is grounding and wet because sometimes, the barks a bit dry. Also, if you touch the skin of animals say your dog’s ear or the underneath of your dog or cat when they’re standing on the grass, you’re going to ground through them so you can ground through other things as well.

What To Do During The Winter And In Cold Regions

What about harnessing the cold even if you are in a warm place or in the summer? Harnessing the cold via what we call the cold bath or going in a cold lake. Let’s say a cold bath because that’s very controllable. Now here we are we are getting the sun we are getting all of that but we are also going in an ice bath. What do you think about that?

I think it’s like fasting or saunas that everybody can do it because we’ve got the biochemistry and everything to deal with temperature changes. Also, like I said, we’re not supposed to just be at the same temperature. People should be cold resistant or cold adapted and heat adapted and heat resistant because sick people often are intolerant to any temperature or heat change.

There other benefits nothing to do with leptin like for inflammation people and also hormone boosting. I think testosterone and IGF for certain people goes up. People find it’s helpful for fertility but also for mental health because it produces noradrenaline. For depression or people who are trying to give up coffee in the morning or stimulants, having a cold shower can be an alternative because it’s going to wake the body up in a natural way.

Also, when you do cold face plunges alone, it can do things like stimulate oxytocin and oxytocin’s tied into the BDNF, the brain-derived neurotrophic factor pathway. There’s lots of benefits for the cold on multiple parts of the body because even though cold is potentially a stressor, we’ve been exposed to the cold ever since we’ve existed so we’ve got numerous ways in which we can use this stressor hormetically to benefit the body, and like I said, for the mitochondrial function.

Pretty much everybody can do something to access the cold because even if it’s quite a hot country, the sea or a lake is still going to be below body temperature so that’s still doing some cold exposure. Everybody can get a bowl and put ice cubes in it and put their face in. Pretty much everybody’s got a shower that they could have cold and then the majority of people have a bathtub you can put cold water in or ice or you can just put something outside and make your own plunge or buy one. There’s lots of ways to do cold for all different budgets and even free because I always like to make sure the people who are on a budget get catered for. I’d say cold therapy’s way cheaper than saunas and stuff like that.

When we now visit saunas, even people on a relatively low budget many of them go to a gym and there would be a sauna there. Of course, when we go to the Nordic countries, we have the practice of sauna followed by cold maybe one more round sauna followed by cold etc. We talked about the cold and I agree and I think it makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, that’s contrast therapy you’re describing. That’s fine. Normally for new people, they want to get cold adapted first rather than hot, cold because it can be a bit confusing and jarring. Definitely contrast therapy. Also, if people are doing it say in a Nordic country, because sometimes they actually go outside and roll in the snow, they’re going to get UV as well because the snow reflects a huge amount of UV light so they get the UV and the cold and the heat together.

I haven’t thought about that. That’s a fascinating thought.

Also, that’s the other thing like a winter tip. When it’s snowing, you’re going to be able to get more UV light because it’s all going to reflect off the snow. As we know, people get sunburned skiing so the snow and a sauna and a cold plunge would all work really together or just rolling in the snow. I’ve got friends who actually do that.

Sara’s Plans To Move To France

Knowing what know, do you sometimes feel tempted to move to a lower latitude?

I’m moving to France. I’ve been around all over the place looking. I am half a New Zealander but there’s reasons why I wouldn’t move to New Zealand. I’ve looked at El Salvador and places around the 30th latitude and the equator but I find that level of sun is too much for me. I know it might sound pathetic but I’m a very much a creature of the dark and the cold. I’m moving to France. I spoke in a conference there of Dan Winters and he’d already checked out the best locations.

He has a different view of what quantum biology is but it’s still the same as what Jack Kruse and other people say. It’s just for me, quantum biology’s much bigger. Anyway, in Perpignan. It’s twenty miles from Perpignan and it’s in the mountains. It’s got the cleanest air in Europe, the French have fabulous food and the kicker is there’s 300 days of sunshine in this area. It’s near Vernet-les-Bains.

I’ve already checked out the area or and I fell in love with it straight away. If I want a beach, it’s only about half an hour drive, so for me, that ticks all the boxes. I’m going to be fluent in French by April 2026 because I’ve got to go back there to assist Dr. Ralph Ottopohl with a course and I found that I really want to be able to speak the language so luckily I did French at school because I’m always trying to improve myself or prove that what I do isn’t BS.

I set myself the goal of being fluent in French by April 2026 so that’s something else that I do all my quantum stuff for is for my brain. That’s ticked and it’s also it’s near enough to my parents that if I have to go back because it’s about a two-and-a-half-hour journey to this particular area in the south of France. Switzerland I liked but then it’s too expensive. The place I like is just too remote whereas this place I’ve got my eye on, there’s also colleagues and friends of mine that live nearby so that there is a community but then there’s also new people for me to meet and that’s why I chose the South of France.

I’ve been toying with the idea of California. It’s not so bad. Northern California.

You’d never get me to live in America because I hate the electricity there. There’s so much EMF. Your electric grid’s different to ours. You use 60 hertz and loads of stuff isn’t grounded. The appliances are triple the size. You’ve got way more ambient EMFs. You’ve got all the Elon Musk self-drive cars, which means there has to be a ton of receivers and emitters. I think it’s one millimeter. That’s the wavelength they use all along the sidewalks. There’s a whole lot of crazy EMFs there.

I think America is a beautiful country and I actually really like the people there, but I can’t stand the stuff that’s on the food. I’ve done big explorations into supplements and gummies here and it seems it’s completely unregulated, like the weird chemicals seem to be acceptable for people to eat. I love America, I love the people, it’s just I couldn’t live here.

I can’t say that I haven’t toyed with the idea of moving to a place like Costa Rica, actually.

Can you speak Spanish?

I speak Spanish fluently.

That’s fine. I liked El Salvador. I thought it was fascinating. It’s just I felt really isolated with the Spanish and also, some of El Salvador’s clean because I puttered around a bit. I would say that in terms of cleanliness and emissions from vehicles and stuff and like the rules for what you can spray and can’t spray on crops in Central America’s a problem. Also, the water there was terrible. I forgot to take my distiller because it was too big. It was all plastic. As with everything, there’s pros and cons. I like the area that I was near a volcanic beach but I felt uncomfortable at the poverty.

Definitely, I’ll go back to El Salvador again to visit but I just couldn’t live there. As I said, the UVI is just too much for me. I can manage it’s just that I don’t like air con either I hate it. As I said right at the beginning, my bedroom’s my sanctuary and the idea of having air con and stuff in there would really piss me off but I think visiting it’s a great idea.

Now that you’re talking like this, I realize it’s not so simple to say, “I’m packing up and moving to Costa Rica or to El Salvador.” Miami, in theory, would be a great place, but all those EMFs that you’re talking about.

I think I wrote a blog about the different populations in different places because Menorca was on my list. I’m looking for somewhere that doesn’t have too many people. Also, I don’t make Vitamin D properly in really high UV anyway. My body likes to make it between about 4 and 8, so whenever I go to El Salvador, even Georgia, I’ll often be out in the sun all day and be naked and my body creates resistance. Whereas if I do that in France, Spain or Menorca, I can make huge amounts of Vitamin D way quicker. I am a creature of the darkness and the cold but obviously, I think sunlight is important. For someone like me, the equator is overkill. There is nothing wrong with the South of France. It’s orders of magnitude better than the North of England.

Get In Touch With Sara

I am very cognizant of the time. I have so many more things that I want to bring up. I know you work with people. I know you guide people. How can people reach you? How can they benefit from your programs, knowledge, or information?

I go by Busy Superhuman. I’ve got Substack for people who like to read. I’ve got Instagram, which is like carousels and educational reels, not stupid reels. I’m trying to get likes and clicks. I’ve got my YouTube channel where a lot of it are interviews with experts in the field, doctors, scientists, but I also sometimes make some twenty-minute educational videos with slides. I do have a selection of courses, starting from a beginner one and then I have a member’s group. It’s group coaching. I’m revamping all of my business to make it easier to navigate for people.

Yes, people can work with me and buy courses, but I also encourage people to look at all the free stuff first because I have massively overdelivered in the past. I could’ve made so many courses out of my content, but it’s there now. It’s like I’ve got things on all platforms for people like TikTok or videos or reading or pictures. It’s all Busy Superhuman.

If somebody was really spoiled and wanted to work with you one on one, do you have the bandwidth for that?

Yes I do. However, like I was telling you, I’m at this crux of where I discovered lots of new things about physics. I’m trying to tie in with the traditional quantum biology and with other things. It’s a place where you’re jigging a few things around. Yes, I do see people for one on one consultations, but I know lab work and tests are not the be all, end all, but it does help if people have got some data for me to look at. I always ask for a quantum day.

If people want to come to me to talk just about biochemistry and peptides and psychedelics, then go somewhere else. I ask lots of questions and I find out what people are good at and what they’re not doing properly because we like doing things we’re good at. I hone in on stuff that people are not doing because they don’t like it and then ask them to do it so people don’t like me, really. If people that love supplements just want me to tell them more supplements, that doesn’t resonate with me. If somebody’s not grounding and doing proper breathwork and coherence, then sorry, I’m not talking about supplements.

If someone just wants to come and talk about food for the 15th millionth time, I think it’s not difficult to feed yourself and use common sense, the quantum principles. I won’t take on anybody. Also, if something’s too complicated, I won’t take it on because I don’t think it would be fair, but I am open to it. I’ll always give people a chance. I’ll always ask, “What do you want? How can I help you? Where are you at? What have you tried?”

Just to pre-warn people, I have my agenda of what I want them to do because some people come and say, “I want you to do this, this and this.” I’m like, “Sorry, your intake form and your quantum day suggests otherwise, so I want you to do this, this and this,” so people don’t like it. Unfortunately, what we don’t want to do is usually what works.

If someone wants to reach you directly, how do they do that for a one on one?

Register on the website and I’ve got Messenger and things like that. I’m pretty easy to get hold of. Email is fine. That’s on my website, BusySuperhuman.com. I’m working on linking all my stuff together so that if people come in on one route, they can get to everything. Somebody might come from Instagram but really want to one on one. Someone might come from Instagram and want to read blogs. I try to make sure everything has its ecosystem. Within this ecosystem, people can still DM me, email me, and things like that. I will reply.

Sara, I want to thank you so much for taking the time. I know that we’re short on time. Maybe we’ll get to see each other again. I hope so because I have a lot more questions.

That would be great because also, we tried really hard to arrange this interview because I was only in America for a short period, so we were trying to find a day. Everyday didn’t work and we tried and tried. I’m really glad I met you. Yes, it would be fun to talk about this more.

Thank you very much. We learned a lot and we hope to see you again soon.

Just a question. Where are you from originally?

I was born in Israel, spent most of my life in the US.

I was trying to place your accent.

What were you thinking? Most people think French and then German.

I didn’t think French. I though something like possibly Scandinavian but also possibly Eastern European. I wouldn’t have guessed Israeli for certain because I kind of know that accent.

It’s got all mixed and mingled with the Spanish and living here.

Israel’s got good weather. Do you not want to move back there?

It’s at the 32nd latitude.

That’s still really low.

It’s like San Diego. I’m at 38 right here.

I’m at 56 when I’m in the UK. I love going to different countries and doing quantum biology there because every single country’s got pros and cons. That’s what I found. As you said, I went galloping off to El Salvador, planning on buying land there and living there. “Hang on a minute. I love this but I really don’t like this.” I looked around all other countries. For people, there is no perfect place that’s better than anywhere else. There’s always some problem somewhere. Sure, Israel is a wealth of history and sacred sites, but obviously, it’s potentially areas of political instability. I’ve never actually considered the weather. I have to go there and see how I feel because you never know, I might really like it.

I can tell you I haven’t been there in years and I recently went. I just came back and I was at a place that was exactly one mile from the beach. Every morning, I would start my day walking down to the beach, walking in the water with my bare feet, walking on the shore, walking on the beach and walking back. That’s how I would start every day.

That’s back to you had a good location and then obviously being where it is Israel is going to have more sun than say the North of Germany. It’s definitely something that I need to go to that side of the world and do a whole load of traveling about and see what there is available there. Thank you for your time. I really enjoyed this.

Me too, Sara. Thank you so much.

Important Links

• Dr. Sara Pugh
• Dr. Sara Pugh on Substack
• Dr. Sara Pugh on Instagram
• Dr. Sara Pugh on YouTube
• Dr. Sara Pugh on TikTok

About Sara Pugh

Sara Pugh, PhD, Quantum Biologist and Ketogenic Coach, helps people improve their metabolic, mental & physical health using Quantum Biology, light, water, circadian nutrition, hypnosis, targeted supplements & functional movement.

Her extensive knowledge of supplements, nootropics, botanicals, and nutraceuticals arose from her quest to solve serious mental health issues that she encountered in her 20s. “There is no magic pill, diet, movement and mindset are the key”. By leveraging her educational background in biochemistry paired with her extensive experience working intimately with the general public, Sara has been able to excel in a variety of areas such as optimizing light environment, quantum biology, ketogenic diets to help mental health problems, food addictions, diabetes, fasting, medical ketogenic diet, coaching, heavy metal detoxification and bespoke supplement advice.

Sara is the founder of NeuroPerform UK, a people-first mental health and wellness company that helps support a broad range of clients across an array of ages and industries, including corporate executives, athletes, and just about anyone who is looking to become the best version of themselves or overcoming mental health difficulties.