Dr. Jack Kruse on Light and the Microbiome

We have heard about diet and the microbiome. You are what you eat after all. What if there was something else that was not discussed as much? It turns out that light has a MAJOR effect on the gut microbiome. I had the pleasure of speaking with Neurosurgeon and Quantum Biology Theoretisist Dr Jack Kruse on light and the microbiome. He discussed with me that we are just at the tip of the iceberg with the gut microbiome research, how light affects depression, a new study on the Hazda tribe by Jeff Leech, and how you can help to improve your gut health with sunlight.

Jack Kruse is a Neurosurgeon and focuses on the foundations of how we work. Everything that he says is based on light, water magnetism and the laws of nature. He has taken this path as a neurosurgeon because he believes that when people understand how nature works they will understand how their gut microbiome works. His focus is on where the global disease process is going. According to Jack, there are diseases all around the world and they all come back to - light, water, and magnetism. 

What Was Your Eureka Moment With Light, Water, Magnetism?

I wrote a paper on spine surgery. I was giving a speech on it and when I stood up, I tore my meniscus. I was 6”2 and 360 pounds but I never had injuries to my knees before. The audience was filled with orthopedic surgeons and one of their wives worked for a biomedical company. She wanted to send me a book that could help explain why this happened. I read the book, the papers on it, and realized that food was not the dominant issue with my obesity. This opened my eyes to a completely different world. I was NEVER taught about this world. I had been to dental school, medical school, and this idea of light, water and magnetism was never brought up. 

I spent 18 months learning about this and I realized that a lot of the things I learned about in medical school were half-truths or absolute lies. I started to realize how dominant light is. This is something that is REALLY overlooked. When we talk about light we don’t realize that what we evolved from 4.6 billion years is the light of the stars in the sky. 

The problem is 99% of people today no longer live under that light. Most of the chronic disease paradigms involve light at some level. And it turned out my obesity was tied to blue light at night and lack of sunlight during the day. By being a night neurosurgeon for almost 20 years of my life, I have been creating a HUGE circadian mismatch on my life. That’s what drove the process of my obesity, not my diet. As a surgeon, I should know a lot about the circadian mechanism and back then I didn’t know “shit from shinola” 

There’s nothing like unlearning to relearn.

That was a big issue for me, as a neurosurgeon, I had dominated in school. In those 18 months, I realized that I didn't know anything about my problems. This made me think about how does the public feel about their diseases. I had a totally different perspective. That was 15 years ago and I am here today to say that light has everything to do with the gut microbiome.

 

How Does Light Affect Anxiety And Depression?

In the United States, there is a huge depression, opiate, and suicide problem. This problem all links back to a chemical in your eye that is called POMC that goes back to your brain. This chemical breaks down to 6 different chemicals. One of these chemicals is a chemical called beta-endorphin. AM sunlight makes this chemical naturally. It means that nature has addicted us to sunlight. When you realize this, you begin to understand why all ancient civilizations worship the sun. They knew that the sun was a powerful stimulus for biology. 

As a neurosurgeon, our bias is towards evidence-based medicine that we learn in medical school. BUT it turns out that our cognitive bias as a human species is towards the sun. We make two important chemicals in our eyes that have to do with depression. If you aren’t getting AM sunlight from Sunrise to 10am you are deficient in:

-Melatonin

-Dopamine

Depression is associated with Dopamine. To help boost your Dopamine levels, you need to get more sunlight. Most people think that melatonin is a night time hormone, but the benzene ring HAS to be programmed by AM light in order to work. It also brings up the Gut-Brain Axis because Serotonin is also made the same way as Melatonin. These aromatic acids are photon traps for the AM light. Melatonin has to be programmed for AM light but it doesn’t act in the brain or the gut until the light is gone at night for 4 hours. The other big issue is the largest storage of Serotonin in the body is in the gut! That is the storage house for tryptophan that will eventually become melatonin. SO if you aren’t getting enough of that AM light it can lead to these Gut-Brain imbalances.

Melatonin also controls:

-Autophagy (the process where a cell degrades its cytoplasmic material)

-Apoptosis (programmed cell death)

Melatonin, Dopamine, Serotonin, and Cytochrome I  all work together in this very unusual dance. Where the brain and the gut have to work together in order for a human to converse in day to day life. 

Blue light exposure especially at night (I call this ALAN: Artificial Light At Night) is deadly for the gut and the brain. The reason is that blue light and the sunlight is contained in the 7 colors of the spectrum. 

-The control arm for blue light is red light

-The secondary control arm is UV light (A&B)

Those control arms are not present everywhere we are on the planet. This means that the variation in the gut microbiome is tied to how the microbiome can be sculpted. We believed that the gut microbiome was greatly affected by food. But we are starting to find out that it’s sculpted by the latitude and the light that you get. That light comes from your eyes, skin, gut surface and that’s what sculpts the microbiome. 

Alpha MSH controls your appetite. You begin to see the connection between the whole area. If you start to understand the eyes well, you need to understand how the gut and eyes really link. You first get light in the central retinal pathways and then it ends in the leptin receptor. Leptin is a very vital hormone that regulates appetite, food intake, and body weight. If you aren’t getting the sunlight through your eyes, you may develop leptin resistance..

Where is leptin stored in the human body? 

It turns out that it’s in subcutaneous fat! And you have to ask yourself  “why the hell would God or nature put the key hormone in our body in our subcutaneous fat, if it acts in the hypothalamus?” Here's the reason, light on your skin or your eyes is what activates the whole process. So if you do not get that stimulus properly, it can lead to collateral effects down the road. 

The blue light was the cause of the weight gain I had seen. I knew there had to be another receptor somewhere on the skin that was a blue light receptor. Melanopsin, found in the eye, is also in the blood vessels of humans, especially in our skin. This is the other side of the leptin story. When we eat, 40%-60% of our blood volume goes to our gut. That means massive amounts of blood are delivered through those arteries. Those arteries also have melanopsin receptors in it. Even crazier, the microbiome is made of Prokaryotic Cells and they are known to release 5x more light than Eukaryotic cells.

We are made of eukaryotic cells, bacteria release a TON more light. Every single cell on the planet uses a very interesting type of light and it’s called Extreme Low-Frequency Ultra Violet Light. No one knows the spectrum of it but every cell that has ever been tested releases this light. The main function of the microbiome is a light mediator.

A great way to look at this concept:

Imagine the Microbiome is a projector in a movie theatre, and imagine the surface area of the gut as the screen. The black swan mitochondriac (Jack’s Tribe) is most interested in the information buried in the light about how the microbiome is working. The light that’s emitted from the different species of bacteria is critical in the biology of the human gut. 

Jeff Leech did a study and he found that when he gave the Hazda people (a group of hunter-gatherers in Tanzania) American candy bars, fed them antibiotics, soda, and then checked their microbiome NOTHING CHANGED. When he published this paper I had the biggest smile on my face and I knew that was light.

It showed that when you put people in nature under the power of sun their microbiome doesn’t change with diet. 

I told Jeff to bring the Hadza People to Texas where he lives and see if their microbiome changes. Because I can almost guarantee they will start to be overweight. And from what I heard that's EXACTLY what he's doing right now. 

There are so many papers that are coming out that show that just migration alone changes the microbiome because the latitude changes. The light changes. There is no diurnal change in the equatorial region. It’s the same 12 hours a day from the sun up to sundown. As you move away from the equator the day shortens, and it lengthens in the summer. The key is the diurnal variation also changes. Once you begin to realize that this is linked to gut health, we will then understand how the gut microbiome is sculpted using light, water and magnetism in ways that would probably blow our minds. 

I have much more information on all of this on my many blog posts, HERE. One thing I’d like to see is for the people that study the microbiome taking it out, putting it in a photomultiplier, and then do the spectrum analysis of the light that is emitted. I think then you will understand why we have the species that we do and why they vary. They are varying based on the light that’s outside! UV light is toxic to most prokaryotes. It turns out that blue, green, and red light is what most bacteria like. The mitochondria bacteria from 650 million years ago is built to like UV light. That's what makes it different. It is the only bacteria that can tolerate UV light to a great degree. 

This is the reason why:

Cytochrome I is made out of a protein that works with UV light. NADH is an electron acceptor that passes it to the second cytochrome which is made out of a flavin dehydrogenase that is a blue light detector. NADH is made out of Niacin which is Vitamin B3. Niacin comes from Tryptophan, and Tryptophan is an amino acid that absorbs between 200-400 nanometer light. 

All carbohydrate electrons enter the mitochondria through Cytochrome 1. Highly powered electrons made from the sun. Photons only interact with electrons that excite them. Cytochrome 1 is taking those excited electrons and capturing the light in there as it falls back to the ground state and that energy is being utilized in the cell. The signal from the environment is coming from the eyes, the skin, and the gut. 

When you begin to see these pieces and parts moving together you begin to realize that we are in the VERY early stages of knowing much about the gut microbiome. 

The microbiome and the gut is the most counter-intuitive quantum biological tissue that's in the human body. That's a mouthful! I find the gut extremely interesting because many of these quantum biological processes begin there. There are many diseases that people say begin in the gut. But that’s not entirely true….

They start on the skin and the eyes. That’s what changes things in the gut but we also have to remember that the gut does sculpt the brain in ways that we don't yet realize. It uses red blood cells, uses changes in the blood in both the portal and mesenteric veins, the system that affects the blood-brain barrier, and it affects the cervical spinal cord barrier. That is why many diseases that we don't yet have answers for exist. It’s the reason why people who have depression have a lot of gut complaints. And also why they have serious issues in their brain.

 

What About Gut Metabolites Such As Methane? 

Methane is how bacteria handles hydrogen. It’s the hydrogen store. The human microbiome is designed to make 1 liter of hydrogen per day for us to use. Hydrogen links to sulfur-containing bacteria in the gut to make a chemical called hydrogen sulfide (H2S.) What many people don't realize is that H2S is a gasotransmitter. This means that it’s a gas that is a neurotransmitter and that has direct effects on the mitochondria.

Those effects are linked to the action of nitric oxide within the gut and in the blood. What does nitric oxide and H2S do? It inhibits electron chain transport. It slows it down and it does this because it interacts with Cytochrome 4 which is CCO in mitochondria lingo. When you slow that transport down it has DRAMATIC effects on the Cytochrome 5 and ATPase.. If you don't get any sun then the ATP is spun with no electrons in it by red light.

The ATPase has red light chromophores- all around it that allows it to spin at 100% efficiency rate. We have no engines like technology that run at 100%. But it turns out that the ATPase in humans loses hydrogen at 100% efficiency rate. When you begin to understand this, H2S produced in the gut and nitric oxide made in the gut slow electron chain down that is what calorie restriction does. 

But the difference is, calorie restriction only works when you are in full-spectrum sunlight. This is the BIG thing that is missing in that research. UV light makes nitric oxide and the microbiome is making the hydrogen with the sulfated bacteria in your gut. These things are all quantized in ways most people don't understand.

Your microbiomes’ critical mission is to sulfate everything in your body. 

Sulfation is important because sulfur and phosphorus act as quantum dots in your blood. When the skin gets hit with sunlight and when you eat, the blood vessels are raised to the surface so that they can absorb light. Hemoglobin absorbs 250-600 nanometer light. Red blood cells need to be sulfated to work operationally. These things also need to be sulfated:

-Cholesterol

-Vitamin D

-Blood Platelets

-White Blood Cells ( they are able to make sulfate from H2S from your microbiome with no enzymatic machinery needed. BUT this is only if you can sulfate the blood from your gut or your skin.)

The key is, if you can't sulfate your cholesterol, then you can't sulfate your vitamin D if you can’t sulfate this then it doesn’t do anything to calcium. Everything works in a delicate balance. Vitamin D is linked to calcium homeostasis in the gut and it turns out that Vitamin D and UNSULFATED Vitamin D have different physiological benefits. 

The microbiome is the backup system for your skin.. Red light is the one part of sunlight that penetrates through your skin and all the way to every part of your gut. It penetrates 10-20 centimeters. Every bit of red light from the sun (which is the dominant light from the sun) is what mitochondria are interested in. 

The microbiome is interested in the red light as well. Blue light also penetrates us but it only penetrates 3-6 centimeters so for the gut it’s not a big deal because it will not reach where it is needed. We get the blue light from our red blood cells, our skin, and eyes. 

Lights Effect On Heavy Metals

There's two big things that go on in your liver:

-Methylation 

-Detoxification

For example: A lot of times you hear if you eat too much tuna you will get too much mercury, which is not true. The real problem happens if your methionine cycle is off. This cycle needs the sulfation to clear heavy metals. This means you don't need to eat a lot of things with mercury in it at all. If this process is broken in your microbiome, then over your lifetime you will become a net collector and you can't get rid of the heavy metals. ALSO if you aren’t sulfated you will actually develop methylation defects. Riboflavin is a B Vitamin in the gut that is VERY important. It’s a cofactor in all these pathways that we are talking about. All flavins are blue light chromophores. 

If you look at:

Chloroplast- it has 4 nitrogens around magnesium

Hemoglobin- it has 4 nitrogens around iron

The difference between magnesium and iron is the number of electrons it has on the periodic table. This means that it can absorb more light. We are more complex than plants, therefore, we have 14 more electrons and that's why we use iron. Riboflavin also has a photon trap. It has 3 benzene rings and it has nitrogen in its rims. That's the reason why it’s a blue light detector.

Guess what the microbiome likes to release? A LOT OF BLUE LIGHT. So guess what turns on this riboflavin detox and cleansing of heavy metals? That process. When that process in the microbiome is broken, this whole thing starts to fall apart. 

What happens on our surfaces (skin, eyes gut and lungs) is going to determine the biochemistry that occurs below. The biochemistry that is going on in the gut is RADICALLY different depending on the incident light EMF because it has to do with the free radical signal that is made. You have to turn on riboflavin and if this is not in your diet then that is one of the main causes of leptin resistance. Then your microbiome simplifies and that is how obesity can start.

In 2017 we found that melanopsin is in the subcutaneous fat and arteries of the skin. This isn't just about species, it's about the light these species release and it's about the EMF (solar vs non-native) and that is what simplifies the gut. Blue light by itself without all these other frequencies is the single biggest thing that simplifies the gut. That's where we get the obesity flora that everyone talks about.

How do you sculpt a microbiome that's going to be the most beneficial for our health?

Every single day for the rest of your life you need to face east while the sun rises whether it’s cloudy or not, you need to see that sunrise. See it with your eyes, your skin, and your gut. Expose your gut! The stimulus doesn’t have to be very long when you do it correctly. The greatest thing about Einstein's photoelectric fact is that this happens instantaneously. 

I tell people 80% of your ability to get better is to do just that. It’s not as hard as everyone thinks. If you don't have this perspective I'm going to tell you just because we started talking about some of the reactions between sulfation, hydrogen creation, and riboflavin. If you eat a seasonal diet for your latitude and location (adding in seafood and organ meats) you have solved your problem. Food matters but it’s about 5th on the list. This creates a BIG problem when I talk to nutritionists. Because they don't realize that there is another side to the coin that we need to look at. 

Eat a seasonal diet for your location on the planet and see the sun every day and eventually you can fix the diseases you have such as:

-MS

-SIBO

-IBS

-Depression

If you have any of these diseases, you will need to do more than just that instantaneous time that I talked about before. You may need 30-50 minutes a day from sunrise to 10 am. 

I used to spend hours outside once I learned about this 15 years ago. I have kept off 100 pounds for that long without doing much. How often do you think this happens? I have asked my gastroenterology friends and they said it rarely ever happens unless you have your gut cut by an operation. It’s possible when you REALLY understand light, water and magnetism. 

The problem is your day job. If you have a job where you never see the sun it will put you at risk. Try to change your day job to get a stability of light in your life. If you can't get this stability in your life put a redlight on behind you or go out whenever you can in the sun and absorb that light. 

We need to get people back to nature and eating a seasonal diet for food that grows under the power of photosynthesis in that location. That is the kind of medicine that we need.

Can you buy an artificial red light to help gut health?

I have an LED light that has Infrared A, B, and C.. I do not sell the lights until someone sees me as a patient and they get taught exactly how to use it. Everyone's process is different and the way they need to use red light is different. That is why I need to see them before I recommend something. You need to figure out how the microbiome and mitochondria are working inside of you to get this effect. In 5 years the lights may be available. 

Putting any red light on the market is the equivalent of putting  drugs in a pharmacy or a drug for over the counter use. I am not comfortable telling anyone how I want them to use the light until I know more about their personal context.

One of the world leaders in red light research is a Russian Scientist named Tina Kuru. She wrote a paper “Is red light therapy drug therapy?” and the answer is YES. Think about the power of that statement. People don't realize that the chemical bonds between carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen come from the sun. These little quantum effects have massive implications for the clinical diseases we treat and the phenotypes of our patients. 

We need to pay attention to everything to figure out how it affects the microbiome. We are just on the edge of figuring it out and we need to focus on the science of the future. Not the science that has already come out. The Gut-Brain Axis is going to be one of the most exciting places to be in the future of medicine. 

If there's one thing you can do for your gut health what would it be?

Unlearn to relearn. Read the book Light In Shaping Life by Roeland Van Wijk. If you didn't know that every cell in your microbiome releases Extreme Low-Frequency UV Light then you must read this book. It takes you back to the 1800s to the present day. When you understand the difference between prokaryotes and eukaryotes I promise you that you will have a new perspective on nature's laws and your gut. 

We are just at the tip of the iceberg with the microbiome. You may start to understand that everything you are doing now may not be helping you. Once you read this you may take a step back and try to look at the sun every morning and see what happens to your brain and gut and this is FREE. Light has a powerful effect on many parts of our body and the way it works. I challenge you to get more sunlight and see how you feel within a month or two. Share this with a friend that could use the help!