#2516 - Rowan Jacobsen

Summary

The Joe Rogan Experience #2516 – Rowan Jacobsen
June 18, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Joe Rogan welcomes science journalist and author Rowan Jacobsen to discuss his latest book, In Defense of Sunlight. The central theme revolves around the complexities of sun exposure—balancing its risks, such as skin cancer, against its myriad health benefits, including vitamin D production, mood elevation, and improved cardiovascular health. The conversation challenges mainstream dermatology advice, explores societal attitudes and scientific politics, and delves into related topics such as sunscreen safety, genetics, skin tone, and even the science behind foods like oysters and chocolate.

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Key Discussion Points

The Double-Edged Sword of Sun Exposure

• Traditional Messaging vs. Actual Science

  • Both Jacobsen and Rogan started with the assumption that sun is mainly harmful due to skin cancer risks, but research demonstrates benefits like vitamin D production, improved mood, and even longer lifespan.
  • "The punchline is sunlight seems to extend your lifespan. So when I hit that, I was like, why are we not hearing this?" — Rowan Jacobsen (01:52)

• Physiological Effects

  • Sunlight is shown to release opioids in the brain and boost mood:
    • “We now know that it literally triggers the release of opiates in the brain. Sunlight. So, yeah, your body wants it, and your body rewards you when you get it.” — Jacobsen (01:25)
  • Exposure improves cognition, revs up metabolism, and lowers blood pressure in various studies (01:00–02:46).

• Risks: Skin Cancer Nuances

  • Sunlight—and specifically UV light—can damage DNA and increase the risk of skin cancer, but the relationship is nuanced:
    • “Sunlight does increase your risk of skin cancer, but… it’s not necessarily a linear relationship.” — Jacobsen (03:00)
    • Melanoma is more associated with sunburn and intermittent exposure than with daily, moderate exposure (11:22).
    • Regular outdoor workers have lower melanoma incidence than office workers (25:16).

Vitamin D and Health

• Vitamin D Genesis

  • Historical context: It was discovered that sunlight prevents rickets in children because UV light converts cholesterol in the skin to vitamin D (05:07–07:48).
  • “Sun’s really good for you. So we had this era in the 20s, 30s, 40s, when everyone thought sun would cure everything, and they went after it hard.” — Jacobsen (06:22)

• Supplements vs. Sun

  • Vitamin D supplements have failed to show the same broad health benefits in clinical trials compared to natural sun-derived vitamin D (30:11–35:57).
  • “Pills haven’t panned out in tests. They don’t work like natural D does for whatever reason.” — Jacobsen (30:00)

• Synergy with Other Nutrients

  • Discussion about the importance of pairing vitamin D with magnesium and vitamin K2 for optimal absorption and benefits (31:05–34:05).

Skin Type, Genetics, and Adaptation

• Skin Tone as a Key Factor

  • “Skin type is kind of everything. People with really dark skin basically don’t get sun-induced skin cancer almost never.” — Jacobsen (11:59)
  • Fair-skinned (especially red-haired, freckled) people are most vulnerable and need to be extra cautious (11:59–13:01; 91:42–92:23).

• Melanotan and Artificial Tanning

  • Discussion about the peptide Melanotan, its effects (including skin tanning and potential side effects like erections), and the ethics/risks of its use (13:01–20:00, 94:00–98:04).

Sunscreen: Dangers, Advances, and Policy

• Traditional vs. Next-Gen Sunscreens

  • Many chemical filters in U.S. sunscreens are less effective and may be absorbed into the bloodstream, with hormone disruption as a concern (63:10–66:24).
  • The U.S. lagged behind in approving more advanced, broad-spectrum ingredients used in Europe and Asia until June 2026 (64:31).
    • “US sunscreens are a generation behind everyone else.” — Jacobsen (64:49)

• Window Glass and UVA

  • Glass blocks UVB (sunburn/vitamin D production) but not UVA (linked to deeper skin damage and some cancers). Certain skin damage patterns, like “truck driver face,” arise from this exposure (59:17–60:57).

Scientific Skepticism and Institutional Resistance

• Pushback from Dermatology Establishment

  • Jacobsen describes being “denounced multiple times by the American Academy of Dermatology” (29:35).
  • “Their job is to prevent skin cancer. So if that’s your only job, you’re gonna tell people, stay out of the sunlight forever… No one can call you on that.” — Jacobsen (40:33)

• Interdisciplinary Challenges

  • Scientists are reluctant to venture outside their fields, leading to one-size-fits-all guidelines. Grant systems reinforce existing paradigms, making paradigm shifts slow (“science advances one funeral at a time”) — (49:04–52:24).

The “Light Diet” and Broader Implications

• Adding a New Dimension to Health: Light

  • “We need to think about our light diets and our… lightscapes… more seriously than we have.” — Jacobsen (38:09)
  • Both sun and artificial light exposure patterns profoundly affect health, mood, and metabolism.

• Practical Summation

  • For most people: Moderate, non-burning, regular sun exposure is beneficial. Burn risk and skin type must be respected, especially for those with very fair skin or a history of burning (91:04–93:14).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Sunlight seems to extend your lifespan. So when I hit that, I was like, why are we not hearing this?” — Rowan Jacobsen (01:52)
• “Burning is the one that people always say that—it’s not just burning, it’s burning causes damage that starts to appear years later.” — Rogan (26:13)
• “If there was a drug that I like—if depressed people could take whatever I felt when I was out in the sun after a week in the rain, they would take it every day.” — Joe Rogan on the mood-boost from sunlight (54:30)
• “It’s when your skin is totally unprepared, and you shock it with, like, a massive dose… then you’re in trouble.” — Jacobsen (29:05)
• “The skin color question has got to change ... for people with dark skin who have almost no risk from sun-induced skin cancer and can benefit hugely from things that will lower blood pressure and lower cardiovascular disease, it seems like you’re not being fair to those people.” — Jacobsen (52:34)
• “Sun exposure is competitive with antidepressants in terms of lifting depression.” — Jacobsen (93:18)

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Timestamps (Selected Major Segments)

• 00:12 – 05:53: Introduction, origins of sun-phobia, vitamin D and rickets, historical perspective
• 07:48 – 11:22: Heliotherapy, culture of intentional tanning, sunburn and cancer risks
• 11:38 – 17:47: Skin type, genetics, artificial tanning through peptides, Melanotan discussion
• 19:35 – 25:16: Natural vs. artificial melanin, damage repair, Melanotan anecdotes, Bob Marley’s melanoma
• 25:27 – 29:21: Office vs. outdoor workers, sunburn in childhood, baby oil era, George Hamilton
• 29:35 – 31:13: Dermatology stance, supplement vs. sunlight, vitamin D debate
• 38:09 – 43:16: Light diet as a health parameter, coffee as a supplement, caffeine science
• 45:12 – 50:04: Red light therapy, Rogan’s macular degeneration improvement story
• 52:34 – 54:47: Discrimination in sun recommendations by skin color, mood effects
• 59:17 – 62:34: “Truck driver face,” impact of window glass and sunscreens on UV spectrum exposure
• 63:10 – 66:24: Sunscreen ingredient changes, FDA vs. international policies, effect on coral reefs
• 72:53 – 74:34: Skin and gut biomes, hygiene products, implications for jiu jitsu/ringworm
• 77:13 – 80:11: Industry pushback, viral articles, one-size-fits-all guidelines
• 85:12 – 89:54: Evolutionary adaptation, redheaded gene, skin tone across environments
• 91:42 – 92:23: Advice for very fair-skinned people; sunscreen and clothing
• 93:18 – 94:00: Sun as an antidepressant, exercise synergy
• 102:44 – 104:53: The food pyramid, fat and health, cholesterol debate, evolution of nutrition science
• 115:46 – 117:00: Cacao origins, Amazon journey, heirloom chocolate movement
• 122:08 – 125:29: Oysters, chi, vegan options, food poisoning discussion

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Tone and Style

• The conversation is candid, skeptical, and humorous, maintaining Joe Rogan’s signature blend of curiosity and informality.
• Jacobsen remains measured and data-driven, advocating for nuanced, personalized recommendations about sun exposure, diet, and health.

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Key Takeaways

• Moderation and Personalization:
  Sun exposure is health-promoting for most, particularly outside the "burn" zone; recommendations should be tailored to skin type and genetics.

• Institutional Inertia:
  Medical guidelines often lag behind emerging data; interdisciplinary, holistic perspectives are needed.

• Supplements Aren’t Panaceas:
  Vitamin D pills may help those truly deficient but do not replicate the benefits of natural sunlight.

• Rethink Sunscreen:
  Legacy chemical sunscreens are problematic; advances will improve safety and efficacy.

• Beyond Sunlight:
  Light exposure—including red light therapies—has profound, underappreciated effects on health.

• Enjoy Life’s Pleasures (Informed):
  Coffee, chocolate, oysters—all discussed as not only safe but potentially beneficial, especially when quality and context are prioritized.

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Final Words

Jacobsen’s work, discussed in tandem with Rogan’s irreverent style, underscores the need to challenge dogma, embrace nuance, and consider evolution, environment, and individuality in all health behaviors—especially when it comes to something as fundamental as sunlight.
“You don’t need a lot… just a little bit of sun exposure doesn’t seem like a crazy recommendation.” — Rowan Jacobsen (101:26)

Transcript

[Dr. James Nestor]

Joe Rogan Podcast.

[Jamie]

Check it out.

[Podcast Announcer]

The Joe Rogan Experience.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Train my day. Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

[Jamie]

Yep.

[Joe Rogan]

All right. Very nice to meet you, man.

[Dr. James Nestor]

You too. Thanks.

[Joe Rogan]

Thank you. And thanks for doing this work because you want to talk about a subject that's confused so many people. Is the sun good for you? Is the sun killing you? Why does it give you vitamin D if it's bad for you? Why do people get skin cancer if it's good for you?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, it's super complicated. And the messaging has not sort of admitted that. And that was, yeah, a big impetus for the book.

[Joe Rogan]

What was your opinion of sun exposure before you started writing this?

[Dr. James Nestor]

So I had, you know, I had inherited the conventional wisdom from the institutions that it was really bad. At the same time, I will admit that my instincts were that maybe it wasn't as bad as they were leading me to believe, because whenever I was in the sun, I felt good. And I live in Vermont. By the time winter was reaching, like, month six, I felt bad. Right, Right. So I was like, there's more here than we're being told.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, that was my wife's opinion. She's like, the sun can't be bad. It always feels good when you go out there. I'm like, oh, no, it's a little more complicated than that. But that is the instinct. Like, it feels great when you're in the sun. Like, ah. It's like your body wants it.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Your body wants it. I mean, we now know that it literally triggers the release of opiates in the brain. Sunlight. So, yeah, your body wants it, and your body rewards you when you get it.

[Sponsor Voice]

So what is the issue?

[Joe Rogan]

Well, let's go back to the beginning. So you had this idea that sun exposure is probably giving people cancer. And sunscreen is good. You need to wear sunscreen, stay out of the sun. So when you started going into the research, what made you shift your opinion?

[Dr. James Nestor]

So it really started for me, like, seven or eight years ago. I was on this science journalism fellowship. So I was just doing research, and some of those studies hit the one about opiate release in the brain. Other studies showing that when light hits skin, cognition actually improves. Like, your metabolism cranks up a little bit when the body feels sunlight coming in. And I thought, that's interesting. That's all good stuff. Then I came across a couple other studies that seemed to indicate that sunlight could lower blood pressure, which was really interesting. So then I still had the sense sunlight bad. Right. So then I remember just like, googling, like, so how much does sunlight shorten your lifespan? And like, the punchline is sunlight seems to extend your lifespan. So when I hit that, I was like, why are we not hearing this? So that was the beginning.

[Joe Rogan]

And so then.

[Sponsor Voice]

So what is the problem?

[Joe Rogan]

Like, what is the issue with sunlight? Like, when you think about skin cancer, what are the confounding factors that lead to skin cancer? Are we completely aware of that?

[Dr. James Nestor]

It's more complicated than we thought. So sunlight does increase your risk of skin cancer, but it depending on the type of skin cancer you're talking about, it's not necessarily like a linear relationship. So, yes, in general, too much sun increases your risk of skin cancer. But yeah, the question is, what are the confounding factors? How important is skin cancer compared to these other things? If sunlight reduces your risk of other diseases, how does that weigh against the risk of skin cancer? So it's not the type of thing that can be done in a 32nd PSA.

[Sponsor Voice]

Right. So.

[Joe Rogan]

So sun cancer, that does cause skin cancer. Excuse me, sun exposure, that does cause skin cancer. What is causing it? Why is it happening?

[Dr. James Nestor]

So ultraviolet light, which is the most energy intense part of the solar spectrum, when those photons of light hit your skin, they go inside. Right. We absorb all wavelengths of light to a greater or lesser degree. And that super high energy ultraviolet light, if it hits a DNA molecule, it can mess up the DNA molecule and then that can lead to mutations and skin cancer. Then it can also indirectly cause skin cancer by creating what are called reactive oxygen species, which are free radicals, basically. So it energizes these atoms that start to steal electrons from other atoms and causes a little chain reaction, which is what a free radical is. So ultraviolet light can increase your free radicals and it can directly damage DNA. So that's why it can cause skin cancer. So it was basically that learning that one fact back in like the 40s and 50s that made scientists start to say light skin cancer. Maybe we should think about how much sun we're getting.

[Joe Rogan]

But this wasn't universally accepted.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Right.

[Joe Rogan]

There were some people that even back then thought that sun exposure was very healthy for you. Like, when did we figure out that sun causes the body to produce vitamin D?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, that was an important part. And it's a big part of the story, I think, because that was really back in the 20s that we figured that out. And then even a little earlier, we realized that sunlight could prevent rickets. Rickets? Yeah. So rickets is a soft bone disease. Like if you don't get enough calcium into your bones, when you're a kid, when you're a baby, you get soft bones. You get rickets. Really bad disease. And in the Industrial Revolution, kids started getting rickets. Farm kids never got rickets. Then suddenly, kids are working in factories. They're living in cities that are choked with coal smog. They're living in tenement buildings. They're never seeing the sun, and they all start getting rickets. Late 1800s.

[Joe Rogan]

Is nutrition a factor in that?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Vitamin D? It was all vitamin D. At first they thought maybe it was vitamin A, but it turned out that was how vitamin D was discovered, was some doctors figured out that it could solve rickets in kids. And then they figured out that if sun hit skin, that's how we made vitamin D. Then they figured out.

[Joe Rogan]

How did they figure that out?

[Dr. James Nestor]

They tested. They did some tests on

[Jamie]

dogs.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Actually. One of the guys who figured it out, he had a hunch that that's what it was like. They noticed that kids in the country wouldn't get rickets, and kids in the city did get rickets. So, like, I wonder if it's sunlight. So then a guy took dogs, and this was. I think Scotland stuck them in a. They actually thought it was dietary. He stuck them inside in this, like, little, like, warehouse and fed them oatmeal, which is what everyone in Scotland ate at the time. And the dogs got rickets. And he thought it was the oatmeal. He's like, okay, so something about diet. But then he got lucky because he had deprived the dogs of sunlight, and that's why they got rickets. So then eventually they realized that light hitting cholesterol molecules in the skin actually converts the molecules to vitamin D. So vitamin D is, like, downstream of cholesterol, but it takes that same ultraviolet light that can screw up your DNA. It actually breaks a bond in the cholesterol molecule, which allows it, gives it some movement, and it flips around into a new form that's vitamin D. So once they figure that out, then they're like, sun's really good for you. So we had this era in the 20s, 30s, and into the 40s, when everyone thought sun would cure everything, and they went after it hard.

[Jamie]

Really?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. Parents would send their kids up into the ALPs in the 20s to institutes for heliotherapy. Kids would ski around in their underwear, take classes in their underwear. There's awesome photos from this era. The instructors are in their underwear in the mountains outside in Switzerland, teaching the kids. And everyone looks really healthy, right? So there's kind of like this idea that you couldn't get too much light. So people are literally burning themselves on purpose for health.

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[Joe Rogan]

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offer is for new customers only. Is that the issue? Is burning a giant part of the issue?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. So to give it away now, it looks like for melanoma, which is the most dangerous type of skin cancer, it's associated with burning strongly but not with like gentle, moderate everyday sun exposure.

[Joe Rogan]

So how much of a factor is skin type? Like people that are pale or have freckles and red hair, blonde hair, like how much of a factor is that in skin cancer? And can they mitigate that by like gentle slow exposure? Like a little bit here, a little bit there and slowly build up?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, huge. Like, skin type is kind of everything. People have really dark skin basically don't get sun induced skin cancer almost never. And the authorities don't tend to talk about that because they want things to be. They want to have these one size fits all recommendations. But those recommendations to basically always avoid the sun are written for the super fair people. Especially if you have red hair, orange freckles, then you actually have a mutation in your melanin gene that makes you super susceptible to skin cancer from sunlight. So if you've got that phenotype, lots of moles, red hair, freckles, you do have to be really careful. And you can't, you can only do so much. Like you're not going to tan that much anyway. Your melanin's just different. Everybody else. Yeah, you're much less susceptible. And you can tan. You know, you can make more melanin pretty easily through tanning.

[Joe Rogan]

I wonder what, if any, effect. Have you ever heard of that? I can't remember the name of the peptide, but there's a peptide that people are taking now that causes their body to generate melanin and they get really dark.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

It's really weird.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. And I don't know what's going on there exactly. It seems like that peptide is maybe making you. There's things called photosensitizers that make your skin super sensitive. You just absorb solar radiation really well then, but not necessarily in a good way. And that can make you make tons of melanin to try to compensate. So I wonder, that peptide might be triggering melanin as a compensation mechanism for extra protection from sunlight. Or maybe it's just making melanin happen independently of sunlight.

[Joe Rogan]

Did you put it into perplexity all Right. Here it is. Mela. Melaton. Melanoton. Melanotan. Melanotan. Synthetic peptide analog of the naturally occurring hormone, a melon. Melanocyte stimulating hormone. Stimulates the body's melanocytes to produce melanin, resulting in a dark tan. It's largely unread. Unreal. Excuse me? Unregulated. Illegal in many regions for cosmetic purposes and carry significant health risks. Or what's the risks? It's not approved by the FDA for cosmetic use, and unregulated market means purity. Okay, but that's unregulated. Notable risks include dermatological issues, rapid and uneven darkening of existing moles, the emergence of new moles, and hyperpigmentation, concerns that could mask or accelerate the development of melanoma. What is this? Potentially damaging erections. What? Oh, that's right. This apparently gives people raging erections.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Why?

[Joe Rogan]

Prolonged, painful and potentially damaging. Damaging. Imagine you get an erection that goes so hard you redline the penis. Medical and dermatological organizations strongly advise against the use of Melaniton Melanitan because it's unapproved. There are no clinically established safe dosages.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Well, weird, because that. So Alpha msh, the thing that it is mimicking is that's how your body makes melanin. That's how your body's supposed to do it.

[Joe Rogan]

You gotta see the before and afters because they're kind of bonkers. I've seen some people get super. Well, the problem is, it's Instagram. You never know what's real. That guy got a little tan. Let's see if there's any. Okay. Look how pale that. See? But that's not. How do we know if that's real?

[Jamie]

Just like, there's like a light on him, right?

[Joe Rogan]

And then he's in a dark closet.

[Jamie]

In the last picture, before and after photos I've seen.

[Joe Rogan]

Is there that one right there? The low. The. No, the one. Yeah, that one. Look at that guy.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Well, you know, it's a look. It's an interesting look.

[Joe Rogan]

He injected himself with unregulated tanning peptide. Melaniton. Melanitan 2. Click on that.

[Jamie]

Seems like a joke.

[Joe Rogan]

No, no. This guy. This is the guy that I saw online. This guy's. He's the test rabbit. This dude went hard.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Did he get an erection, too?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, he died from that.

[Jamie]

I don't know.

[Joe Rogan]

So his before and afters. So let's see. What. Is he just. Okay, yeah, he just got darker and darker and darker. But I wonder if, like, if I understand that it's unregulated but if it was regulated. And this is something they're trying to work with right now with peptides and make them regular. See, that's. The photo's dark, though. I mean, that's like a shitty iPhone. One camera. That's crazy. If that's like, this is nuts. There's something going on there. Like, you know what it looks like? It looks like those bodybuilder guys who he's. That. That ink, that dye on their skin to make themselves darker so their muscles pop out more. So here's better tanning log photos. These are better photos. That's crazy. But I wonder if that offers skin protection.

[Dr. James Nestor]

It would definitely offer skin. I mean, if it's melanin, definitely. I mean, that guy can probably be outside all day.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. So that's the question. Is that available to someone who's pale? Like, and if someone is pale, see if you can find an example of someone who's pale who took it. Because you would think, like, oh, well, maybe that maybe just. We need to do studies and figure out what the dosage is and figure out how to activate that aspect of it.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Melanin clearly protects you from skin cancer. Like, if you have super dark skin, like African ancestry, you're blocking, like, your melanin is absorbing like 97, 98% of the UV rays. It's super effective.

[Joe Rogan]

But didn't Bob Marley die from skin cancer?

[Dr. James Nestor]

He did.

[Joe Rogan]

That's pretty crazy. Okay, this is one.

[Sponsor Voice]

Wow.

[Jamie]

It looks like the same person. Hard to tell without the face.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Same mold.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, it looks like the same mole. That looks pretty good.

[Jamie]

But I would just also wouldn't. If you were trying to sell some of this stuff and maybe nefarious ways, this would be an easy one to market. Tough.

[Joe Rogan]

And, you know, definitely, look, this is part of the unregulated market. Problem is, we don't know. And also, you know, you're getting 99% bro science on this stuff. You know, like

[Dr. James Nestor]

what screams bro screams

[Joe Rogan]

it from the top of the hills. What legitimate scientist is out there injecting himself with melanitan?

[Dr. James Nestor]

But the other thing is, if you do it naturally, right, if you just get a little sun every day and slowly build up, you're not just making melanin, you're also increasing your body's damage repair system. Like, you have all these nucleotide excision repair things that fix your DNA and fix cells that have gotten screwed up and that will also ramp up every day. And it's not just. Not just sunlight, like exercise, same thing. Anything that, that stresses the body a little bit. It's like hormesis. Right. So all those things are gonna cause your damage repair system to crank up and be ready. So you probably want those to like, the melanin and the damage repair to like go up together.

[Sponsor Voice]

Right.

[Joe Rogan]

So you would wanna, if, let's say studies were done, let's say we found what the effective and safe dose is and how to administer it, you would wanna do it along with sun exposure slowly to try to ramp up your body's ability.

[Jamie]

Added note on this, this happened 14 years ago.

[Joe Rogan]

Whoa.

[Jamie]

Which is strange. Here's some of the side effects, he said. But he also said he's pretty much impervious to UV at this point.

[Joe Rogan]

Increased libido. Didn't see that one much either. He said he didn't get it. Okay, sides are. Decreased appetite, very mild nausea, more for some. None for me. Decreased libido, increased libido. He said it didn't see that one much either. Some get facial flushing, like a niacin dose. Never got that either. And the most strange thing is that it feels really good to stretch, like when you first wake up. Interesting, huh? Did you do it for the skin coloring? Yes, I did it for skin coloring. I'm pretty much impervious to UV at this point. I have faded about 25% since returning from Florida January 31st. We'll be dosing again probably in March. Is this guy still alive?

[Dr. James Nestor]

That's my question.

[Jamie]

14 years. What is that, 20 years?

[Joe Rogan]

Click on that link. Where his. His profile. Well, let's see if homeboy's alive. Is this Reddit?

[Jamie]

See, a year ago, he's commenting. I never did it. Subtle.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay, so a year ago, he's still alive. Or someone has taken over his account. In theory, you could use an old school quartz tanning lamp. Okay. So you could tan with it.

[Jamie]

And he's in a weird Reddit there, so we gotta stop looking.

[Sponsor Voice]

Why?

[Jamie]

I don't. I mean, this is not for the show. But he's in a weird.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

[Dr. James Nestor]

That's why I was afraid to go that way.

[Joe Rogan]

That's the problem. Well, only crazy people are willing to try something like that. Like, do you remember that there was a guy. God, I think it was on Oprah or one of those shows where he was taking. Was it silver?

[Jamie]

Yeah, colloidal silver.

[Sponsor Voice]

That's right, colloidal silver.

[Joe Rogan]

And his whole. His skin turned blue permanently. Yeah, Like a Smurf.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Poor guy.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And he wound up dying. Yeah.

[Dr. James Nestor]

And how did it Kill him.

[Joe Rogan]

I don't know if it killed him, but he's. I believe he died young. That's homeboy. Not good.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, that's just not a good look.

[Joe Rogan]

You would think you'd start turning a little blue and you'd go, hey, maybe I need to back off. This colloidal silver Papa swerve dies. Yeah. I mean, what the fuck, dude? That guy. I mean, maybe he could have gotten some melanitan and evened that out. It's just been a nice chocolate, you know, like a bluish chocolate.

[Dr. James Nestor]

I mean, he looks delicious, I'll say that.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. This is Argrea. Argyria. Argyria, the rare disease that turns people blue. Caused by a buildup of silver in the body which discolors the skin.

[Jamie]

Wow.

[Joe Rogan]

2013, he died from unrelated causes, whatever that means. I mean, anybody's taking that much colloidal silver, you're probably making a lot of other mistakes.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, like, you're a risky dude. So many options.

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[Dr. James Nestor]

Back to Bob Marley. Yes, he did die of skin cancer, and that confuses a lot of people. So he had melanoma on his toe, and that was a kind of melanoma that's not caused by the sun. And everybody gets it, no matter what race you are. Everybody gets it at the same rate, which is quite uncommon. They know it's not caused by the sun, but it complicates things for people because people are like, I got melanoma on my toe, and they think it's from the sun and they're like, how did that happen? Right. Like, what's a melanoma doing on there? But so it does. Not all melanomas are caused by the sun. Most probably are, but it gets really weird with melanoma. It's associated with burning with like intermittent sun exposure. Like you work in an office all year and then you go to Cancun and get fried. That's a pretty good recipe for melanoma. History of sunburns also will double your risk. Chronic exposure, where you have an outdoor job every day, lower than average risk of melanoma.

[Jamie]

Really?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. So it gets weird.

[Joe Rogan]

Like landscapers or something.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Landscapers have. Outdoor workers have fewer have a lower incidence of melanoma than office workers. Wow. And we don't hear that.

[Joe Rogan]

No, no. I mean, I was, I was looking at Instagram the other day and some poor guy had this. I don't know what happened to his face, but he had some sort of skin cancer and they had to take a graft. And his. It was on his nose, so it was like a flap of skin was like almost covering over his eye. And you know, his message was, wear sunscreen. This is what happened to me.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Well, so, I mean, yeah, so I don't want to downplay skin cancer because it sucks when you get it. You know, they have to cut off a hunk of your ear or something. That definitely sucks, even if it's not life threatening sucks.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Dr. James Nestor]

And so, yeah, like, but that's generally from overexposure. Like burning. Burning. All the experts I've spoken with said don't burn.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. Burning is the one that people always say that it's not just burning, it's burning causes damage that starts to appear years later.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. And they're dialing in on that more and more. It can start like burns during childhood is actually the highest association for melanoma. Don't burn when you're a kid. So we're all screwed.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, that sucks. That sucks because I fucking cooked myself as a kid.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Same here. I grew up in Florida. Fried, you know.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s, you know, you wanted to get a tan. Especially when I lived in Boston, it was cold as shit in the winter when it got warm. You know, you're a Vermont guy.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

You got out there like, ah, put baby oil on. We fried.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Totally. I was just looking at some of those Johnson baby oil ads from like the 60s and 70s. Oh my God. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. It was basically cooking lube.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Totally.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. It just helped. Helped you cook better.

[Dr. James Nestor]

But you remember, you know, George Hamilton, like the actor, Mr. Tan? Yeah, he was all about that just the other day. I was like, how's he doing? 87 and ridiculously healthy right now.

[Jamie]

Really?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, he's going strong.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, I met that guy. He was. He did an episode of Newsradio once. Yeah, he was tan as fuck. Yeah, that was his thing.

[Dr. James Nestor]

That was his thing. It became. Yeah. What he was known for. And still. He's still going.

[Joe Rogan]

That's. So he's still tan.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, you should see him. He looks great.

[Joe Rogan]

What do you look like? Pull up a photo of George Hamilton.

[Dr. James Nestor]

I mean, great for an 87 year old.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, look at him, still tan.

[Dr. James Nestor]

How does he tan and shiny?

[Joe Rogan]

What a weird thing to be known for. He's the guy who gets tan, you

[Sponsor Voice]

know what I'm saying?

[Joe Rogan]

I mean, try to remember a role that he played.

[Dr. James Nestor]

That's true. I think he was Dracula in some bad 1970s, like comedy. Look at that. That's a tan right there.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. So how was he getting it though? Like, I remember when I was a kid in Boston, a lot of people use tanning beds, especially in the wintertime,

[Dr. James Nestor]

and they still do. Like those are actually like on the rise. And they do. They seem to raise your risk of melanoma for sure. There you go. That's how he did it.

[Joe Rogan]

Ah, look, he's got a reflect a tan thing. So he's just out there getting sunlight all the time and he didn't look bad. That's, you know, that's a weird one, right?

[Dr. James Nestor]

He claims he's never had skin cancer. I think.

[Sponsor Voice]

Well, he probably was doing it so

[Joe Rogan]

often that his body was prepared for it. Right. Look at that photo of him with that lady in the corner. Yeah, look at that. That's nuts.

[Dr. James Nestor]

See, that's the thing. I think if you're getting that regular dosage, your body is producing all of these compounds whose entire job is to make sure your cells don't turn cancerous. Because living things have been working on this for 500 million years. They get hammered by the sun every day and they got to deal with it.

[Joe Rogan]

Right.

[Dr. James Nestor]

So it's when it seems like when your skin is totally unprepared and you shock it with like a massive dose that, that it's not ready for, then. Then you're in trouble. Like that's the kind of thing that triggers trouble.

[Joe Rogan]

Was there any pushback on this research? Like when, when you first started examining this and realizing that sun exposure has a lot of benefits. But were any dermatologists saying hey, this is dangerous information. You shouldn't say this.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Hell, yeah. I've been denounced multiple times by the American Academy of Dermatology. Like, officially. They send an official letter when I write an article and they say nobody should be getting any sun exposure.

[Joe Rogan]

That's their opinion. No one should be getting any sun exposure. Regardless of the benefits. The vitamin D. The no sun exposure

[Dr. James Nestor]

without protection from either sunscreen or clothing.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Dr. James Nestor]

And if that makes you vitamin D deficient, take a pill. So that's what needs to change, because those pills haven't panned out in tests. They don't work like natural D does for whatever reason.

[Joe Rogan]

Really?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. They don't work at all.

[Joe Rogan]

What do you mean?

[Dr. James Nestor]

So everyone thought, like back in the 80s, 90s, everyone started noticing, scientists started noticing that people who naturally had lower amounts of vitamin D in their blood had higher rates of all, like, the classic chronic diseases. So I started thinking, okay, vitamin D, it's like a magic pill almost. It'll cure, it'll reduce everyone's risk of all these diseases if we raise their rates of D. So they started recommending vitamin D pills, which I think are still like the number one supplement in

[Joe Rogan]

the world, I take it.

[Dr. James Nestor]

So then they did all these clinical trials to prove that it would help. Huge, huge clinical trials. Tens of thousands of people follow ups that went for many years. None of them showed a benefit.

[Joe Rogan]

No benefit in terms of your immune response.

[Dr. James Nestor]

No benefit for any condition.

[Joe Rogan]

Now, did they take vitamin D along with vitamin K2 and with magnesium, because that's what's recommended.

[Dr. James Nestor]

So I don't. I mean, there were a bunch of different.

[Joe Rogan]

Apparently vitamin D by itself is not effective, that you need vitamin D with K2 and magnesium. And I think there might be another one. Put that into perplexity, please. See what it says, like, what are the benefits of vitamin D and what should it be taken with? Because I think magnesium and K2 are the big ones and that together they have a sort of a synergistic effect.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, that could be like. Yeah, I'd be curious.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, I think vitamin D by itself, the body has a problem absorbing it. It's like, there's a lot of things like that. Like zinc is like that. You need a N to absorb zinc, so you take it with quercetin.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Well, one thing, D, you know, the way you. It naturally comes in through the skin and it comes in with a whole bunch of related compounds. And so, yeah, I do think there's sort of a synergistic effect when it's combined with the Right things.

[Joe Rogan]

But D from the sun has always been known as the best way to get it. The best way to get vitamin D, the most effective, the healthiest way is through sun exposure.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, like, that's how the design's supposed to work.

[Joe Rogan]

Perplexity says vitamin D helps your body absorb calcium, build strong bones and teeth, support muscles and nerves. Plays a key role in immune function. Best absorbed when taken with a meal or a snack that contains some fat and often paired with calcium for bone health. So please put in what are the benefits of vitamin d taken with K2 and magnesium. See if it says that, because this is what my doctor, who is a vitamin specialist recommends. Benefits when taken with K2 and magnesium. Okay. Taking vitamin D together with vitamin K2 and magnesium can make each of them work more effectively, especially for bones and heart. As long as the doses are appropriate for you. The trio mainly improves how your body handles calcium. Interesting. D helps you absorb it. Magnesium helps activate D. And K2 helps send calcium into bones instead of arteries. D increases calcium absorption from your gut and supports bone, muscle and immune function. Magnesium required to activate vitamin D. Low magnesium can blunt vitamin D's effect and also directly support bone structure and many enzymes. K2 activates proteins that move calcium into bones and teeth and keep it out of the arteries and soft tissues, helping bone and cardiovascular health. Potential benefits of the combo, Better bone support, heart and artery protection, more efficient vitamin D use. Okay, so the doctor is correct. So maybe that's the problems that these people were taking it with. Low magnesium, low calcium, didn't have K2.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, I thought, like, I'd be curious if, like, if there was an effect on disease incidence for the combination. I don't know, because the D on its own, yeah, it didn't show any effect, but sun exposure.

[Joe Rogan]

Let's put that in. Does vitamin D taken on its own have any health benefits? Let's see what it says to that. Because I'd never heard that that D on its own was not effective at all. I just heard that it was minimally effective, that you had to take it with other.

[Dr. James Nestor]

It seems like it only helps people who have. Who are really deficient. Like, if you're. If you're super low, like below like 16 nanograms per milliliter, then probably it's a good idea. But, like, for people who already had, like, at least 20 nanograms per milliliter, it didn't seem to have any of these benefits that they were seeing in people who naturally had high rates through sinus nature.

[Joe Rogan]

It says yes Vitamin D on its own has several well proven health benefits, especially for bones, muscles and immunity.

[Jamie]

Just like a general answer, huh?

[Joe Rogan]

Bone strength and fracture prevention, muscle function adequate.

[Jamie]

I didn't add on.

[Joe Rogan]

Sorry, what's that?

[Jamie]

I didn't. I missed the word own.

[Joe Rogan]

Taken on it on its own.

[Jamie]

That's probably why the answer was weird.

[Joe Rogan]

So let's see. Yes, as clear, proven benefits, especially for bones, muscles and correcting deficiency.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. So that's going to be for people

[Joe Rogan]

who have super low levels preventing rickets. There it is.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. So they had thought that it might reduce incidence of all these other diseases based on what they're seeing for people who naturally had high levels through sun exposure and it didn't then.

[Joe Rogan]

People who had high levels through sun exposure.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, because your natural level of vitamin D is sort of a direct meter of how much sun exposure.

[Joe Rogan]

Right, but this is natural level. You're not talking about supplementation.

[Jamie]

Right.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay.

[Dr. James Nestor]

So that was why people who had high levels of D without supplementation have lower rates of every disease you can think of. So the hope was that raising everyone's D to those levels would have the same effect. And it didn't. Like, New England Journal of Medicine actually did an editorial in 2022 saying, Stop prescribing D, it doesn't work. Which is if.

[Joe Rogan]

God, that seems incorrect though, because if you're taking it with magnesium and K2, it seems that they do work synergistically and there seems to be proven health benefits that. One of the problems I think is like, I, I think people generally want to avoid recommending supplementation for some reason. It's kind of a weird thing. Like they want to dismiss it. Like, I had a doctor once that told me, don't bother taking vitamins, just eat a balanced diet. And I was like, look at you. Guy looked like shit.

[Dr. James Nestor]

He didn't look as good as you. Right?

[Joe Rogan]

He looked terrible.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. I'm amazed how poor what poor health. They generally like seem to take it.

[Joe Rogan]

I mean, it's so hard to take seriously a guy with a gut when he looked terrible and he was telling me that I just need a healthy diet. And I'm like, okay, I do have a healthy diet, but also I feel different when I take vitamins and my blood work. It reflects that.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, I noticed that when I started going to all the conferences of the sun researchers and they're all in like the basements of hotels and those guys all are as pacey as it gets. Like, do none of you guys practice what you preach? Really?

[Joe Rogan]

How strange is it that human beings, with all of our knowledge with, I mean, obviously there's much more to learn. We're still confused about how we interact with our environment.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, absolutely, 100%.

[Joe Rogan]

With sun, which seems to me like

[Sponsor Voice]

it's there, it's everywhere. It's like you're always in the sun

[Joe Rogan]

in the normal world environment outside of cities and all that stuff. It seems like we would have an understanding of what happens when you're interacting with sun.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. And light period. Like light of all kinds. Like, it seems like there's the sense in biology that light didn't matter. It's like just ephemeral. Which, you know, the quantum physicists 100 years ago understood that light and matter are just like two halves of the same coin. Right. And that light totally affects the behavior of molecules. We're made of molecules. Light's going to matter. So I actually think, like that's where I eventually got to with the book. I was like, we need to think about our light diets and our like, lightscapes that we're, you know, surrounding ourselves with, like more seriously than we have.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, it seems like your work is based entirely on the data. So what did these dermatologists have to say about the data? If they're denouncing you and they're saying that, you know, this guy should not be listened to, the things you're saying are dangerous, like, but you're talking about data. So I don't understand how they can just make those flat statements like that.

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[Dr. James Nestor]

Right. And what? I think we just need to have a conversation about the data and, you know, there's no, like, right answer ahead of time. But they don't. Like, their job is to prevent skin cancer. So if that's your only job, you're gonna tell people, stay out of the sunlight forever. Forever. Right. And no one can call you on that. No one can say, hey, like, I got skin cancer. It's your fault.

[Sponsor Voice]

Right?

[Joe Rogan]

But doesn't sun exposure improve cardiovascular health and lower blood pressure? And isn't cardiovascular disease a far more dangerous problem than skin cancer? In terms of numbers, it's number one,

[Dr. James Nestor]

20 million deaths a year. Cardio. So anything that moves the needle on that is awesome.

[Joe Rogan]

And it does.

[Dr. James Nestor]

And it seems to. All the studies show it does. But they're all observational studies, right? You look at populations, you're like, oh, these people have more sun exposure, lower blood pressure, lower rates of cardiovascular disease. But then the other side will say, correlation does not prove causation. Prove. Show us that it's, you know, do your giant clinical study where you stick half the people in the sunlight and they live longer. Which is not gonna happen, right?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, but it's like, are they willing to have a conversation with you?

[Dr. James Nestor]

They're not. They're not willing to. They don't wanna look outside of the sun and skin cancer question. Like, they're not willing to entertain any of the other benefits that are outside of their field. So there's gotta be somebody out there who can be the generalist, who can, like, think about it holistically.

[Joe Rogan]

That seems so ignorant.

[Dr. James Nestor]

It's the state of science now. Like, the science is, you know, like a field of micro specialties.

[Joe Rogan]

Would you like some coffee?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, I'll take a little. That looks good when you're pouring it. It's also a very shiny press.

[Jamie]

Oh, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Cheers, sir.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Cheers.

[Joe Rogan]

Is coffee good for you?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Coffee's awesome. Coffee is shockingly good for you.

[Joe Rogan]

Talk to me.

[Jamie]

Let's go.

[Dr. James Nestor]

It is fucking crazy how good coffee is for you. I've been startled by the power of the evidence.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, I'VE read both. I've read it's bad for you, and I dismissed it because I'm biased and I love coffee and I just. It just tastes too good, it feels too good. I like it. But I've read a lot of benefits about it.

[Dr. James Nestor]

I think it's the best possible supplement, really. Do you think of it as a supplement? It's the best. And I think it's all due to mitochondrial function. I think it makes your mitochondria just spin, you know.

[Joe Rogan]

And is it particularly because of caffeine or coffee itself?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Is the coffee bean, you know, I mean, caffeine? I think it's caffeine. But I wouldn't be surprised if there's other stuff in coffee that's contributing because, you know, like, tea doesn't seem to quite like, deliver the goods like coffee does. No, but caffeine is actually. The plants are making it to kill bugs, right? Because it makes the bugs, mitochondria run out of control and they basically, like, blow up. It does that to us. But we have these other, like, governors like that come in and slow down, that ramp up. So we get the nice ramp up without the explosion. So it's good. So it makes, you know, we produce energy more efficiently with less wear and tear.

[Joe Rogan]

That's all I need to hear. I'm in. I just love coffee. I'm not giving it up. But I've heard many people say that Michael Pollan had a really interesting anecdote. He laid off coffee for, I think, three or four months as an experiment. And then he had a cup of coffee and he said it was like taking a psychedelic. He said, I just felt so amazing and the effect was so profound. He said, I really wanted to do it only that way where I only take it, you know, very rarely, because. But then I fell right back into my.

[Dr. James Nestor]

He went right back. Yeah, like, I remember that article. It was great. And also you said none of the, like, the caffeine researchers touch the stuff. I'm like, that's not good. But, yeah, he went right back to it. And I think he's a proud coffee drinker.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, he is. He went right back to it. So have you had any conversations with these dermatologists that are denouncing you?

[Dr. James Nestor]

No, but I'd like to, actually. I think.

[Joe Rogan]

Are they willing or have they avoided them?

[Dr. James Nestor]

They have so far, really avoided. Like, they just say, you know, we're not ready to look at any of that research.

[Joe Rogan]

God, that's so weird.

[Dr. James Nestor]

I think it's going to change. I Think, actually, like I said, I think light medicine is actually going to become very important in the next 10, 20 years. And dermatologists are kind of positioned to be the leaders on that stuff because skin is the primary interface with light for our bodies. And, you know, they should be experts on all this. You know, red light therapy is a big thing now, and dermatologists are doing that, even though the evidence isn't great for that. But I think there's probably something there. But they should basically, I think they need to be thinking more about all these different wavelengths of light as healing modalities and how to, you know, work them into, like, regular, like, programs.

[Joe Rogan]

I've talked about this before, so I apologize to anybody listening, but I've essentially completely stopped my macular degeneration with red light therapy.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Wow. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Not just stopped it, but reversed it. Like, I don't need reading glasses anymore. I've been using a red light bed for about two years now. And from the time I started using it, within about a month, I started seeing benefits. And so Gary Breco was on the podcast and explained it to me. And so I went out and bought one of these really expensive. It's like a tanning bed, this thing you lie in. And I do it three times a week for 20 minutes.

[Dr. James Nestor]

So all over?

[Joe Rogan]

Yep. Naked. Just lie down in there and I keep my eyes open. And they. You know, I went to a tanning bed once. Not a tanning bed, a red light bed once at a health clinic. And they were like, gotta wear these goggles and make sure you close your eyes before the light goes on. I was like, okay, I did all that. And apparently there's some benefit that even when blindfolded, it increases your vision.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, for sure, it's. And again, I think mitochondria are part of the answer. There's a guy at University College London, Glenn Jeffrey, who this is his whole field, optometry and red light. And he has shown in multiple different animals, including humans, that red light improves mitochondrial function and improves vision.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, I mean, I'm 58, and for me to be 56 and saying, I'm fucked. I had these fucking things everywhere. I had these. All these reading glasses. I had them all over my house. I'd gotten up to 3x. These are the cheap Amazon ones. I had a nice pair, but I keep losing them. So I just. I went out and bought cheap ones. They seem to work. And it was just fine for looking at a computer, you know, reading my emails, reading my phone. And I needed them to Read my phone. I don't need them anymore, like at all. I don't use them anymore. My, my vision's not perfect. It's not as good as it was when I was 20, but is way better than it was when I was 56.

[Dr. James Nestor]

And yeah, I think so. The mitochondria in the eyes have to fire faster than any mitochondria anywhere else in the body. The eyes burn through energy like no other cells because it's like, you know, it's kind of the toughest task. It's like they gotta go super fast. So they, yeah, those mitochondria need to be on top of their game. And it seems like red light benefits

[Joe Rogan]

that in particular, it seems so close minded that these dermatologists aren't willing to say. Maybe we're looking at just insufficient amount of data. Maybe we're looking at this wrong. Maybe the whole thing is much more nuanced and maybe there's benefits if done correctly. I just don't understand why they're not. If there's all this data, which clearly you show in your book that there's a tremendous amount of data.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Why, you know like, so there's this saying attributed to Max Planck, who's this like quantum physicist. Science advances one funeral at a time. Right. I think we got to let the old guard die off a little bit. But I guarantee there's a young generation coming in who's going to be really interested in light and how they can use it.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh certainly. Well, I think there's so many conversations available online now from actual researchers and people that have put in the time and put in the work and explored things from this position that like hey, maybe the old guard are not correct. And the data seems to show that that's true.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, and it's fun. I mean playing with light, it's super fun. So like this is a way you can make your world a little bit richer. Is starting to think about this stuff.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, it's also like, don't you want to be informed? And if there's, if we do understand that it has an effect on mitochondria and there is all this evidence that red light seems to have some benefits. Like I just don't understand how someone could be an expert in skin and ignore that.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Well, I think that. And they won't object to the red. Some of them are using red light therapy because there's no risk of skin cancer for red. It's only the UV and maybe a little bit of the blue that contributes to skin cancer. So it's the UV where they get a little wigged out.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, but even that it seems like there's like in your book you show there's a tremendous amount of data, there's health benefits to it. So I just don't understand.

[Dr. James Nestor]

And that data, it's coming from all different other fields like immunology, cardiology. And scientists are sort of increasingly hesitant to trespass on their other domains. They're not going to walk across campus to the other building anymore. Yeah, that needs to change, you know.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, we've had those discussions too with scientists that are super frustrated, especially when they try to get interdisciplinary groups together to study one particular thing. And yeah, everyone's resisting because they have their own work that they're working on. They don't want to get involved. And it's like, guys, this is what you're here for. There's not a lot of scientists. You got to do your job because like you're the only ones that are doing it. There's. Without you guys, we're fucked. And if you're out there relying on old insufficient data, or you have this very small data set that shows that there's negative outcomes to sunlight and so you just throw the baby out with the bathwater, you're doing the whole field a massive disservice.

[Dr. James Nestor]

And the other part of it is that science, it's sort of very self reinforcing. It's all grant based essentially. Like if you're a scientist, you want to do a study, you have to apply for a grant to get the money to do the study. And there's generally a handful of entities that are handing out the grant money. And it's the old guys waiting to die who are going to approve what they think is the truth. They're going to fund the study that fits with what they already know about the world. So it's this kind of crazy system where the only way you can get money to do a study is if you're already telling them what they know. So it's very difficult to get funded to do something that goes against the grain increasingly so. And that's a problem.

[Joe Rogan]

And so much of it is dependent upon the ego of the people that are at the top of the organization.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Ego's definitely part of it.

[Joe Rogan]

It's a giant part of it. Because if they've based their entire career on telling you one thing that turns out to be incorrect, they're very reluctant to correct themselves.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, there's not just. It's very rare to find the individual who's well known in the field and is eager to self correct, you know.

[Joe Rogan]

So have you had any conversations with any of these dermatologists?

[Dr. James Nestor]

No, but I'd love to.

[Joe Rogan]

Not one that seems crazy. Have you reached out to any of them?

[Dr. James Nestor]

I have, I've reached out and I get the boilerplate like, we don't want anyone in the sun. Take your D pills, doesn't matter. And the one that really that I think has got to change is the skin color question. Because fine to, you know, go with the recommendations for avoiding sun for people with fair skin, but for people with dark skin who have almost no risk from sun induced skin cancer and can benefit hugely from things that will lower blood pressure and lower cardiovascular disease, it seems like you're not being fair to those people.

[Joe Rogan]

Not only that, it makes you feel better, which is very important. Just for sanity.

[Dr. James Nestor]

I mean, I think that gets underplayed. Mood and happiness is kind of the whole deal. Right. And there's just no question that sun exposure makes you happier.

[Joe Rogan]

I spent a week with my friend Brian Callan and Steve Marnella in Alaska and Prince Edward's island. And it rains there like 350 days a year. And we got rained on for the entire week. And then when I came back to la, I was driving around and the sun was magnificent. It felt so good. I stood outside, I closed my eyes, I like stretched my arms wide like I was just taking it all in. And I called my friend Steve up and I said, dude, because we were in the rain for like a week. I go, I'm in LA right now in the sun and it feels amazing. I never felt the sun like this before. It's just like my body was saying, you didn't get enough of this for a week. Now take it in and we're gonna reward you with all these amazing endorphins and good feelings. Like if that was a drug, that drug that I like, if depressed people could take whatever I felt when I was out in the sun after a week in the rain, they would take it every day.

[Sponsor Voice]

They would change the world.

[Joe Rogan]

Like I could feel like this all the time. And it went away, you know, it went away because la, it's sunny all day long every day, Right?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Right.

[Joe Rogan]

So eventually I got accustomed to it. But that feeling that I get that I got after the week in the rain and coming back just be like,

[Sponsor Voice]

ah, it was incredible.

[Joe Rogan]

It was like a drug, an amazing drug, a happy drug.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, it's an awesome drug. And I've felt it for sure. Especially like early spring, if I leave Vermont and I have something in la. I'm just like, why is everyone not just dancing on the streets? This feels so good.

[Joe Rogan]

But the problem is Los Angeles, they're so used to it. They're so spoiled. Everyone there is so spoiled weather wise. It's the perfect weather on earth. It's, it's incredible.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Especially if you live in like Malibu where it barely even gets hot. So you're dealing with that cool ocean breeze and it's sunny every day, you know, like. Oh yeah.

[Dr. James Nestor]

But how about here? Like, do you end up spending a lot of time outside here?

[Joe Rogan]

Oh yeah, oh yeah, I do. But I'm outdoors all the time. I work out outside. I do a lot of farmers carries outside. I, I practice archery. So I shoot my bow outside every day and I love it.

[Sponsor Voice]

I.

[Joe Rogan]

It feel, I feel better even when it's hot out. I don't mind because I'm really kind of accustomed to it because of sauna use. I use the sauna every day. I'm pretty religious about it. So my body's really acclimated to heat, so it doesn't really bother me that much. I just bring a big jug of 64 ounce jug of water with ice and electrolytes and I just drink that while I'm out there.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

So I shoot my bow for an hour and a half, two hours and 105 degrees and I'm fine. I love it.

[Dr. James Nestor]

I actually love it too. Yeah, like as a kid in Florida, you know, we'd play basketball after school for hours. Or in summer it would be 105 degrees and then you just kind of turn the hose, you stick out of your mouth for quite a long time, you know? Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

I mean it feels great. It's just you have to make sure you're not dehydrated and you have to make sure you don't burn. That's kind of all it is.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Joe Rogan]

That's all it seems to be. But we do see like truckers that. Have you ever seen those?

[Dr. James Nestor]

You're talking about that famous photo? Yeah, that is a crazy photo.

[Joe Rogan]

Crazy photo. So what we're referring to is there's a photo of this trucker and the left side of his face from the sun coming in from the window. Looks like he's 20 years older on his left side than it is on his right side.

[Dr. James Nestor]

It's like special effects. Somebody melted the left side of his face.

[Joe Rogan]

What's that all about? Yeah, there's the guy.

[Dr. James Nestor]

There he is.

[Sponsor Voice]

That's literally nuts.

[Joe Rogan]

That's literally nuts.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Like left side is just sloping off.

[Joe Rogan]

Basically his left side looks like a hundred year old man. Truck driver face. Years behind the wheel, driving a truck. Damage typically limited to the left side of the face. So it's literally called truck driver face.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. Now, so that photo and that study got used to like scare the shit out of a lot of people. Try to keep them out of the sun.

[Joe Rogan]

Especially people that are vain and don't want that. That up wrinkly face.

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[Joe Rogan]

That's paleovalley.com rogan oh, that's crazy. Look at the difference between. Wow, that's literally bananas. So what they're showing back and forth is they're just taking the skin from the left side of the face and switching sides so you can see how much damage he's received on that side. The driver's side.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. And so there's a couple of interesting things there. One that is shocking. But the question to ask is why doesn't every trucker look like that? Right. Like, if that's the problem, why does. Why, why him? Like, because I've been driving in a car for 45 years and you know, my face is the same on the

[Joe Rogan]

left as it is on the right,

[Dr. James Nestor]

kind of hanging in there. But. But the other thing is window glass I think is actually a really interesting problem to talk about.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Because window glass blocks UVB, but not uva. And there's two different wavelengths of uv. The UVB is the super high energy one. UVA is a little bit lower. It's kind of on the way to blue. And they used to think back in the day that UVB was the only one that caused skin cancer. And those old sunscreens that we used in the 70s and 80s only blocked UVB. Window glass blocks. UVB blocks only part of the UVA. So anytime you're driving or you're hanging out in a window in your house, you're getting a bunch of uva, you're not gonna burn. Cause UVB is the one that causes burning. But you're still gonna get a bunch of UVA, which they figured out, like in the 90s, does cause skin cancer.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, wow. So sun through the windows.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Sun through the windows is not as

[Joe Rogan]

good as sun outside.

[Dr. James Nestor]

It blocks the uvb, but the UVA comes through. But you'll never have a burn reaction because of it.

[Joe Rogan]

But you might be getting damaged.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. And so like in the us people get slightly more. Slightly higher rates of skin cancer on the left side of their body. In the uk, they get slightly higher rates of skin cancer on the right side.

[Joe Rogan]

Aha. Because they drive on the opposite side of the road.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. So window glass is slightly. Slightly. It's like 52, 48. It's not huge.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay. But it's statistically significant.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Statistically significant. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Huh. So do you think it's this guy's particular genes?

[Dr. James Nestor]

There must be something weird about that guy.

[Guest or Listener]

Right.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, how many instances of truck driver face do they have?

[Jamie]

I just googled the condition, and it's only him coming up in the photos.

[Dr. James Nestor]

So this is the thing.

[Jamie]

There's one lady, but she clearly doesn't seem to have the same issue.

[Dr. James Nestor]

There's a lot of truck drivers that have been doing it for 50 years.

[Jamie]

That's not the same thing.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, that's not real.

[Jamie]

Is that real? It's a different thing. She's got something wrong with her jaw.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh.

[Jamie]

But it's coming up as the same condition. Unilateral derma. Dermatota.

[Sponsor Voice]

I can't say.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh. So she had some sort of cancer that made her way its way into her jaw, but I can't.

[Jamie]

I would have assumed that more cases would pop up, but it's literally just him.

[Dr. James Nestor]

So that's the thing. It's the real question is what's up with that dude?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Jamie]

Interesting. That's not the. I don't think that's the same guy.

[Joe Rogan]

No. It doesn't seem like the same person, but might be. It's hard to say because of different

[Dr. James Nestor]

lighting, but so the thing is, so those sunscreens that were acting kind of like window glass in the 70s and 80s and even into the 90s before we got the broad spectrum sunscreens, they're blocking the uvb, so you weren't going to ever burn. And that's what SPF actually measures is how many more times you can be out in the sun without burning. So if you got. But it's based totally on UVB, so if you've got SPF 30 in theory, you can spend 30 times as long outside before you start to burn. That's a long time. Right. But all that time UVA is just pouring into you. And they now know that UVA is the one that probably is most likely to cause melanoma.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, that's crazy. Wow. So sunscreen now I use a natural sunscreen when I use it at all. It's this stuff that's like beef tallow based and has zinc in it. It's very white and obvious. You know, it's the, the spray stuff goes on clear. You can't even tell you have it on. Yeah, but it's very effective. But I'm always like super hesitant. I'm like, what, what's in that stuff? That we're gonna find out 15, 20 years from now, like if it can block the sun. So it's a chemical. And you're spraying this chemical on an organ which is your skin, so your, your skin's absorbing it. I'm like, what? What's going on there?

[Dr. James Nestor]

And they used to say, oh no, no, it's not absorbed very much. And then the FDA CDC did studies a few years ago and discovered that it's absorbed at very large amounts. It turns up at high doses or higher doses than they would like it to in blood, breast milk, urine, you name it.

[Joe Rogan]

And what specifically turns up and what's dangerous about it.

[Dr. James Nestor]

So they're suspected to be hormone disruptors, all those classic chemical filters like oxybenzone. There isn't much proof that they're dangerous in the amounts used, but they definitely are absorbed at much higher rates than we thought. And the FDA has refused to approve them as safe, pending more testing. And nobody's done the testing, but they're about to get phased out anyway. Just as of a couple months ago, the government changed the rules and is going to let in for the first time in 30 years new ingredients which they've been using in Europe and Asia and Australia for decades. And the Sunshine companies have been asking to use them and haven't been allowed to but they're finally going to get to use one of the main ones

[Joe Rogan]

and one of these ingredients.

[Dr. James Nestor]

So it's called like Bemotrizenol or something. And there's another one that you see in Europe called like Mexaryl 400 but they're way better. Like basically US sunscreens are a generation behind everyone else because in the US sunscreens are regulated as over the counter drugs. Bamotrizenol.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, Bamotrizenol. Highly effective broad spectrum UV filtered blocks. Both UVA and UVB. Approved by FDA's over the counter sunscreen ingredient in June of 2026. Oh, wow. So this month just happened. Celebrated for being highly photo stable. Doesn't break down the sun. Transparent on the skin without leaving a white cast and gentle on sensitive skin. So this is RFK junior Stuff.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, this one looks really good.

[Joe Rogan]

So this other stuff that has been in there, why didn't it get examined if Europe and Asia and all these other places were using these different, safer versions?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, they all bailed on it long ago because it was all we had.

[Joe Rogan]

God damn it. That drives me crazy.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, well, so fda, so in the US sunscreens are regulated as drugs over the counter drugs. So you have to do all this safety testing if you want to get a new ingredient in everywhere else they're just cosmetics. So you can use kind of whatever you want with more minimal safety testing. So the companies wanted to use this stuff in the US forever, but the FDA said, sure, just do the testing. But they didn't want to do. It was too expensive to do the testing. They would have to test it on animals. They didn't want to get the blowback on that. There are a bunch of reasons that they weren't willing to do it. Also, I think they're a little scared what they might find. So anyway, our sunscreens have not been nearly as good as what's used elsewhere, both in terms of performance and maybe safety suspicions. So that's going to change by the end of this year. It's going to get better.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, that's good. With the traditional sunscreen ingredients that we used to use, is there any negative health consequences of using them that they've shown? Like is there any diseases that occur more readily or more frequently?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Not that have been proven. Toxicologists are a little suspicious about some of them. They've definitely been shown to mess up coral. Right. Like people coral reefs.

[Jamie]

Right.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, that's one of the things they found after Covid. Right. They used to think. They used to think that it was the warming of the environment. This was one of the things that climate change. People used to say the climate change was destroying the coral reefs. And then it turns out actually it's all these people that have sunscreen all over their body and they jump in the ocean and they're essentially poisoning the reef.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, I mean, it's all the above, I'm pretty sure. But yeah, the sunscreen at that kind of concentration, if you got a bazillion snorkelers in the water, can definitely mess up the coral pretty badly.

[Joe Rogan]

Wasn't there some sort of a study that examined what happened to the reef after Covid? There was one particular reef that was in this highly visited area where people would jump in and they showed a massive increase in the reef after Covid.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, Hawaii banned use of those sunscreen. A bunch of places banned that style of sunscreen. But the.

[Joe Rogan]

But they don't really check your bags, though.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, right.

[Jamie]

You know what I mean?

[Joe Rogan]

When they say banned, people are gonna take it anyway.

[Dr. James Nestor]

But it doesn't look like. I don't think it has much impact on us unless you're using a ton of it, which of course now some people.

[Joe Rogan]

So it's not great for you, but it's not the worst.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, there's been a bunch of studies that just looked at like, lifespan, and sunscreen doesn't seem to have any impact whatsoever, like positive or negative on lifespan.

[Joe Rogan]

So it just might have some sort of an impact on hormonal function.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, it could. Well.

[Joe Rogan]

Endocrine disruption.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Endocrine disruption. There's a guy named Graham Peasley at Notre Dame who found that many, many cosmetic products of all kinds of are actually contaminated with forever chemicals. And even if they don't have it on the ingredients, like anything that's water resistant or super smooth is quite possibly going to have forever chemicals in it. And some of it is actually coming from the plastic containers because those get. They basically get fluorinated fluorine gas before they get anything in them, which is supposed to make them a little smoother, the inside of the containers. But it turns out that actually leaks forever chemicals into the product, whatever's in there. That's what he found.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, this is a problem with hot coffee when you're drinking it out of a paper cup.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Very similar. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. People don't realize, like, the paper cup is not capable of keeping that liquid. It would turn to mush. And the reason why it doesn't turn to mush is because there's essentially A condom, like around the inside of the coffee cup. And, you know, Paul Saladino broke a coffee cup down to show what it looks like on the inside. And you're like, oh, no, you're pouring hot liquid into plastic, which you're never supposed to do. And it's also like most coffee machines, like a giant percentage of coffee machines have just plastic everywhere. I got rid of mine. That's why we use French press at the studio and I use that at home too. And I have one of those little aeropresses to make an individual cup of coffee. It's like the plastic is a real problem and heating it is terrible.

[Sponsor Voice]

We know that about water bottles.

[Joe Rogan]

Like, you're never supposed to drink out of a water bottle that you leave in the hot sun in your car.

[Dr. James Nestor]

So now picture that bottle of sunscreen that's sitting in your car, right? Cooking and leaching into the material.

[Joe Rogan]

Yuck. Yeah. Not good. People don't think of the skin as an organization. And I was explaining to a friend of mine the other day, he was using hand wash, that, that hand sanitizer stuff. And I'm like, man, I don't think that's good for you. I mean, I think if you want to wash your hands, you should just use soap and water. And then I read this article about it, like, oh, yeah, that's a toxic chemical like hand sanitizer. When you're using it every day, you're essentially exposing your skin, your organ to this. Like, what exactly is in hand sanitizer? And is it bad for you? Because I remember this article, but I just went over the headline and briefly started reading it. And then I had to do something and I put a bookmark to it that was going to go back to it later and I never did.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Oh, okay. I thought you're gonna say like, something happened to the bookmark.

[Joe Rogan]

No, no, no, no. I just, I never went back to it. But I remember during the COVID times, everybody was just like, hand sanitizer everywhere. I'm like, I just don't think that can be good for you.

[Dr. James Nestor]

I mean, anything that's antibiotic, right? Anything that's killing biological life, probably you want to be at least a little bit hesitant with mostly alcohol.

[Joe Rogan]

Mostly alcohol. Well, even alcohol going through your skin like that. Isopropyl alcohol, sometimes used instead of or with ethanol, similar levels. And then this word benzalka chloride in many alcohol free products. All right, but see if you can find articles on the dangers of using hand sanitizer, because this is what I had read Briefly, just say, overuse it.

[Jamie]

You're gonna fuck up your skin biome. But I don't.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, that's what it's saying. Overuse.

[Jamie]

I just. That's. I just know that.

[Joe Rogan]

I know a guy's got OCD and he's, you know, hypochondriac a little bit, and he uses hand sanitizer all the time. It's kind of crazy. And a friend of mine, without knowing, went to look at his house because his house was for sale. And he's looking at the house, he's like, this is a very nice house. And he opens up a closet, and one of the closets was filled with hand sanitizer. And he got so freaked out, he didn't want to live in the house anymore. He's like, I don't want to buy this house. Like, this guy, like, whatever weird thing, he's possessed with that, he needs 50,000 fucking bottles of hand sanitizer.

[Jamie]

Hand issues are just classic overuse. And then don't not use it on your hands, obviously. Don't breathe it. Don't drink it. Right.

[Joe Rogan]

Only use it on your hands.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, but Jamie's right on the skin biome. Skin biomes turning out to be really important. They call it the gut skin axis, where your skin microbiome and your gut microbiome are chatting all the time. And you can change the composition of your skin microbiome based on all kinds of stuff like products, sun exposure, everything. You do probiotics. Probiotics, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, in the jiu jitsu world, in the early 2000s, people started really getting into probiotics. They started really getting into acidophilus yogurt, kimchi, fermented vegetables, and stuff like that, just to prevent skin issues.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Interesting.

[Joe Rogan]

Because jiu jitsu, because you're. You're getting scratched up and you're rolling around, and there's a lot of infections. And a lot of people get not just infections like staph infection, but they also get ringworm and a bunch of stuff like that. And so some people started using antibacterial soap. And the problem with that is it just nukes all the good flora of your skin.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

So then there's a company called Defense Soap, and they developed a soap specifically for grapplers. And this soap has tea tree oil and eucalyptus, and it's very healthy for the skin, so it promotes healthy gut flora. But it does kill all the cooties. It kills all the matte cooties.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's basically what you want that microbiome, it can take a lot of natural abuse. It's there, it naturally lives on skin, so it's usually getting and like roughed up by the world. But yeah, chemicals that are too strong can take it out.

[Joe Rogan]

And the gut flora is important as well. It's like you gotta think of the whole thing as one sort of ecosystem. Your whole body, it all works together. And if your gut biome is all fucked up and you don't have healthy gut flora, it can affect all sorts of different issues.

[Dr. James Nestor]

And yeah, it shows up on the skin for sure. That, that's, that's well known.

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[Joe Rogan]

so when you first started getting pushback against this, were you surprised? Did it upset you what did it feel like to get attacked by dermatologists?

[Dr. James Nestor]

I am naturally conflict averse. I was kind of like, do I even want to talk about this? But it was such interesting information I thought was important. So I wanted to. I wrote an article for Outside back in like, 2018, and I titled it Is Sunscreen the New Margarine? Right. So right there, that's pushing buttons. Yeah, I probably, you know, in retrospect, I don't push as many buttons today. I just point to the data.

[Joe Rogan]

You just didn't like it. Didn't like the response.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Well, I mean, it got a massive. It went truly viral, as they used to say. But it actually detracted. I think those old sunscreens really were like, margarine detrimental, like the ones that only blocked uvb. So I think I kind of got it right. But also the title detracted from the information in the article, in a sense.

[Sponsor Voice]

But why?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Because Margin sucks, March sucks. Those old sunscreens did suck. The new sunscreens are. They're fine. But.

[Joe Rogan]

So it's a good comparison.

[Dr. James Nestor]

It turns out to have been. Yeah, like, the more we learn about those old sunscreens, the more it looks like a sort of like a catastrophic mistake that then got fixed. But yeah, so that. So now the book is out. Suddenly I've got all these, like, beauty magazines contacting me and they have this image of me as like, you know, the Unabomber, like, hanging out. Hanging out in my cabin and firing off these missives. Really?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, from beauty magazines.

[Dr. James Nestor]

They were nervous to talk to me because they thought I was gonna be, you know, a kook. A kook, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow.

[Sponsor Voice]

So the first.

[Joe Rogan]

So is Sunscreen the New Margarine? So that was the first one. And what was the response to that? So do you remember the first really negative response and how you felt about it?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. So there was an official letter from the aad. And they're very polite, but they're like, we think this is misrepresenting the information and we think this is dangerous. If you're telling people that they might benefit from more sunlight, that's dangerous. So that's probably. And then, you know, when that came in, I was like, so that needs to change. If we have in our heads that exposure to any sunshine is dangerous, we're not seeing the forest for the trees. We've lost the thread on this one. So then. So I did a bunch of other articles. I did one article that focused specifically on the skin color issue. Like, do people of color. Do we need to stop Telling people of color that they need to protect themselves from the sun. And then I did a couple more recently for the Atlantic just on like what should recommendations be? Can we do recommendations that are not one size fits all?

[Joe Rogan]

Well, skin color in particular is one of the best signs of adaptation to environment. I mean, that's how human beings were able to get vitamin D from the sun in a place like Scotland. When people moved there, they got pale as shit.

[Dr. James Nestor]

100%.

[Joe Rogan]

Completely makes sense.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. And you can track it. It's like the gradations of lightning go with that move northward. So you could tell white skin is a desperate attempt to get enough light in a screwy northern environment.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. But when those people that have ancestors from that screwy northern environment moved to California or Arizona.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Australia.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. And Australia is real bad, Right. Because there's all the people that use hairspray in the 80s, they cause a giant hole in the ozone layer over Australia.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Well, yeah, essentially, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Australia, when I was there, they have these signs on buses, like these warnings that show skin cancer, like these horrible lesions on people's faces and stuff. And it's just this warning to wear sunscreen, protect yourself.

[Dr. James Nestor]

They're right. That's the textbook case where you've got a horrible mismatch between the population and the place. Like super, super high levels of sunshine in Australia. Weak ozone. Redheads from Scotland who are trying to deal. So their skin cancer rates are literally two or three times what they are anywhere else in the world.

[Joe Rogan]

Wow. Now how much of that is because of the skin color of the general Australian population other than the indigenous people? And how much of it is because the ozone?

[Dr. James Nestor]

So the ozone is healing itself slowly. We're getting there. So that's probably less of an issue now. It's a really fair skinned population in a super bright intense environment. So they do need to worry about it. But the problem is the rest of the world has kind of set its rules about sun exposure based on Australia.

[Joe Rogan]

What's interesting also about Australia is I wonder how long it takes for human adaptation to start to show itself. Do you think in 100,000 years from now, people that live in Australia will be dark?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Well, David Reich did that great episode with you, right? Did you have David Reich on? David Reich, he's the Harvard ancient DNA guy.

[Jamie]

Did we?

[Dr. James Nestor]

No. So he just came out with a new study like two months ago.

[Joe Rogan]

We had so many people on, I can't remember who ever had on.

[Dr. James Nestor]

I can't either. I was like, if I didn't hear it here, would I Hear it anyway, might be Lex or Superman. It just, that movement started a few thousand years ago. Suddenly like that pale redhead gene came out of nowhere and like skyrocketed. So it can change pretty quickly when the environmental factors change. Really?

[Joe Rogan]

That's only a few thousand years old.

[Dr. James Nestor]

The red headed gene. Yeah, yeah. That's crazy. It was kind of lingering quietly in the background and then like maybe that's

[Joe Rogan]

why gingers get so much hate because they're just brand new.

[Dr. James Nestor]

They are like the next new thing. But yeah, four or five thousand years ago it suddenly explodes in popularity, but in a very particular place in northern

[Joe Rogan]

Europe and most likely as a result to the environment.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, for 100%.

[Jamie]

Wow.

[Joe Rogan]

So I wonder how long it's going to take. I wonder if we could go into the future if the same population lives in Australia now.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Well, except here's the weird thing. So Australians versus uk, right? Similar genetics. Australia, super high rates of skin cancer because of that sunny environment, but also way better lifespan than in the uk.

[Joe Rogan]

Really.

[Dr. James Nestor]

So skin cancer is a factor, but that sunlight is actually benefiting Australians more than it's hurting them compared to the uk.

[Joe Rogan]

I wonder if that's a healthy user bias as well because one of the things about Australia is a lot of outdoor activities. A lot of people are doing stuff outside. Yeah, a lot of activity, period.

[Dr. James Nestor]

And that could be a factor. And actually that's one thing I come come down to in the book is it's really hard to disentangle all of these factors. But what's really obvious is just outside good, too much inside bad. So whatever, you don't even have to break it down too much more outside, cover it up, whatever you want is probably going to be good for you.

[Joe Rogan]

One of the things, a friend of mine who's a doctor said that when he was working in New York City in the wintertime, he would find people with undetectable levels of vitamin D. And he said it was a particular problem with people with darker skin because if you have darker skin you're going to get less vitamin D from the sun for whatever exposure you do get. And then these people are all indoors all the time.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, that's a really bad formula. If you have dark skin, you need five to ten times as much sunlight to make the same amount of vitamin D. So you're really, if you have really dark skin, you're kind of designed for a very bright tropical environment where

[Joe Rogan]

you're, where you're outside all the time.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Outside all the time. You can handle 12 hours a day of Sunshine. And in fact, you're going to benefit from it. You get moved to a really dark environment that's not going to be good for you. So you probably need to compensate in other ways.

[Joe Rogan]

It's going to be very interesting when genetic engineering reaches a level where we can turn those things on and off in people. And how do people react to fair skinned people all of a sudden getting dark?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Like, like, yeah, you know, like.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, we are one race. We are, it's. We are the human race. There's a bunch of different ancestors where people came from different areas where they adapted to different environments. But the reality is we're just human beings and we all started in Ethiopia and we spread out and that's just, that's what we are. We are the result of whatever environment our ancestors evolved in.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, totally. And with skin tone, it's clearly like very, very specific reactions to that environment and trying to figure out what's best in each situation.

[Joe Rogan]

But there's so much racial identity that's tied to these characteristics of your appearance and where your ancestors are from. It's going to be very weird if all of a sudden you could like, people get like dark, thick, curly hair and there used to be gingers. I wonder how people are gonna react to that.

[Dr. James Nestor]

I mean, it's coming, right, right, it's coming. And bets are off.

[Sponsor Voice]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

I just wonder how many people are gonna be claiming cultural or racial appropriation with people just deciding to have a healthier skin tone that protects them from the sun more.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Oh, I see where you go. Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, yeah, like that guy with the melanitan. I wonder, I wonder if anybody got mad at him.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Right, right. Like, what are you supposed to look like?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, what are you supposed to look like?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

There was a lady that was on a television show once that was turning herself black. It was in the uk. And this lady looked, she looked like she had other issues. She had giant breast implants. She looked like a kook. Bunch of plastic surgery, but she was

[Sponsor Voice]

dark as a date.

[Joe Rogan]

Like that lady. That's a white lady. So that's what she used to look like. And she's getting her boobs bigger and bigger. She wants them bigger. And so look, she keeps getting.

[Dr. James Nestor]

That's a little too far.

[Joe Rogan]

Maybe, Maybe.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Wow. That's her.

[Joe Rogan]

That's her. So what did she do? Via intense use of tanning injections. Yeah, so she's the ultimate Melanitan hero.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Wow.

[Joe Rogan]

I mean, that lady got like Cameroon dark. Like, look at that photo again. Go back to that video.

[Sponsor Voice]

Like, that's crazy.

[Dr. James Nestor]

That is crazy.

[Joe Rogan]

That's crazy.

[Dr. James Nestor]

I don't know. Maybe if you're in Australia, it works for you.

[Sponsor Voice]

Maybe.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, it would. Right. It would protect because it is melanin. But obviously she's got. She's got other things going on, like you.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. At some point you might, Might, might have too much melanin. So here's the funny thing about melanin as well. Like, so it's made by our melanocyte, which are what can become melanoma if they get screwed up. And those are in the very bottom of the epidermis, the outer layer of the skin. And it's an incredibly good absorber of uv, better than anything we've come up with. It's almost perfect at it. But what you want, when your skin gets hit with sunlight, that melanin that's just been produced is at the bottom of the epidermis where the melanocytes are. So it has to migrate to the surface, and then it kind of acts like little umbrellas. It'll cover the nucleus of the cell and protect it. So you get these little, like, umbrellas, a line of umbrellas on the very top of your epidermis. But it has to migrate up because of sunlight. If melanin is lower in your skin, then it's going to absorb all that radiation farther down. And actually it can cause more free radicals deeper in the skin.

[Joe Rogan]

And what would cause it to be lower?

[Dr. James Nestor]

So it starts lower and it only goes up in response to sunlight. So if you're never, ever in the sun and you suddenly go out and get hit by a bunch of sunlight, your melon's gonna be down too low and can actually create free. It can exacerbate the problem.

[Joe Rogan]

So this lady might be exacerbating the problem if he's just getting the melanin that way.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, I don't know, because I don't know about this specifically, but you probably. Yeah. You don't want to just be, like, messing around with melanin, like, to the extent that she is.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, boy. That's interesting because, like, the melanitan stuff, I have heard about it before and I never really looked into it, but the idea kind of makes sense that if you can make your body produce more melanin, that would protect itself. But I didn't realize that it has to be melanin from sun exposure you

[Dr. James Nestor]

want in the right place.

[Guest or Listener]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Could both things work? Could you do it that way and with sun exposure, increase both? And would it give some Sort of a benefit to have a higher level of melanin that could eventually get to the surface of the skin. Does that make any sense?

[Dr. James Nestor]

You're above my pay grade now. I think you might be above everybody's pay grade. I don't know if anyone is looked

[Joe Rogan]

at that they seem, it seems like something to look into though. If we know that there's a benefit to having melanin.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, I mean it'd be interesting. But I think this stuff's new enough that there probably hasn't been a ton of research on it.

[Joe Rogan]

So what does a pale person do? What does the old pasty white do?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, so full pasty white, like really pale.

[Jamie]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Like my friend, I have a friend, my daughter said he's white. And I said she was really little. And I go, yeah. She goes, no, no, he's white like paper.

[Dr. James Nestor]

So if you're white like paper.

[Joe Rogan]

He's from England.

[Podcast Announcer]

Yeah.

[Dr. James Nestor]

You do have to be really careful. You're not gonna tan that much. You just don't make that much melanin.

[Joe Rogan]

Can that change over time? Can they like slowly expose themselves to the sunlight like five minutes a day and just ramp it up?

[Dr. James Nestor]

It depends on your genetics. If you're like a full on ginger, like true redhead, you're then you have a type of melanin called pheomelanin, not eumelanin, which is what everybody else has. And pheomelanin just does not do a good job of absorbing sunlight.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh no. There's no hope for gingers.

[Dr. James Nestor]

There's no hope for gingers in terms of sun exposure. Dam the hope is just avoid that midday sun that's high in the uv, get the morning like the sunrise and sunset stuff that doesn't have the UV in it.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay. So they can benefit, benefit from sun exposure, but they can't have like full on outdoor sun exposure.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. They're the ones who need to be really careful.

[Joe Rogan]

So for those people, sunscreen is recommended.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. Or just cover up even, I think better.

[Joe Rogan]

You know how many other people are working on this stuff and is everybody sort of in agreement with the data, the people that are examining it?

[Dr. James Nestor]

I mean there's a ton of science coming out, but. But it's early days for sure.

[Joe Rogan]

Doesn't it seem crazy that sun and our reaction to sun is unknown or at least poorly studied?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, yeah, but. Yeah, but it's amazing how many things in medicine you dive into the research and you dig down a little and you realize that we're just kind of guessing still on Many levels. Like it's early days for a lot of this stuff.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, certainly for like stuff that they use for antidepressants.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, but that's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sun exposure is competitive with antidepressants in terms of lifting depression.

[Joe Rogan]

Isn't that nuts? And you know what's way better? Exercise. Yeah, many times better than any known antidepressants. Regular exercise.

[Dr. James Nestor]

I mean exercise is number one for everybody across the board.

[Jamie]

Ginger people with melod the peptide here, seeing if you post about it changing their hair color.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Interesting.

[Jamie]

And this one.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Jamie]

Permanently.

[Sponsor Voice]

What?

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, click on that.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Well, that this is.

[Jamie]

I guess this just takes it to the Reddit. It's just going to show a YouTube video here.

[Joe Rogan]

But there's multiple changed his hair color.

[Jamie]

Other posts about it.

[Joe Rogan]

Whoa.

[Jamie]

And there's a. I was just seeing

[Joe Rogan]

what if that would work with people that are old that have like white hair. I wonder what that would do.

[Jamie]

Like a melanin two page says like how it can affect hair color. Oh, I read through real quick that this is not the best website.

[Joe Rogan]

Isn't it weird that women with red hair are hot and men with red hair are not? It's very, very weird because women with red hair are considered very attractive.

[Jamie]

Yeah, this one's this good. I just got spray tan.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay. But the people that take it, that one guy is he like a one of one where it changes hair color

[Jamie]

so that this like I said, so this website.

[Joe Rogan]

Click on that. Click on the video. Let's watch it for a couple seconds, see what this guy's showing. So this is him before and this is him now. His eyebrow and his beard colors changed

[Jamie]

also we clicked on the. This might not even be him. He could be reporting the video, but someone else too.

[Guest or Listener]

So before I got all gray and my hair started.

[Dr. James Nestor]

It looks pretty good.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah,

[Guest or Listener]

gray actually used to be ginger. Now I was bullied a lot as a kid because I was ginger. I was weird and I was chubby. That's the winning trio for being actions from this Going through a lot of changes up here, down there, you know the stuff that happens during purity. So I didn't immediately noticed that my hair had gotten much darker. It was actually other people asking me what the hell I had done to my hairline. You know, on this picture it's probably much clearer. That's a picture of me and my brother. We have the same genetics in regards of skin color and the color of our hair. And as you can see, my hair is now completely different from his. We used to have the same Skin and the same hair, especially the color. Now, this is only from using. Using one vial of melanotan. Two in the span of a year, even more than a year. And it was at low dosages, but with our genetics of big, tall, white ginger, Belgian gingers, it completely changed the color of my hair and my skin. And the effects were very strong, so

[Joe Rogan]

the effects are permanent. So he still has dark hair, but what's interesting is in the beginning, he had gray hair.

[Jamie]

He seems older, obviously.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Right, right.

[Sponsor Voice]

But he had gray hair.

[Joe Rogan]

He was showing. And his hair's not gray anymore, right?

[Dr. James Nestor]

I mean, gray. Gray.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, gray and ginger.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Gray is a loss of melanin. Like, melanin is what makes your hair dark as well as your skin dark. So he's. He's resupplied his melanin for his hair as well.

[Joe Rogan]

It seems like that seems kind of nuts.

[Jamie]

He said one vial for a year. Oh, you said even all over your year.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. So for a year. So his skin has gotten pale again, but his hair is permanently dark. So that's what he used to look like. He had red hair. He had a red beard, and he had gray hair. His hair had gone gray, and now his hair is dark. I gotta know if this guy's full of.

[Jamie]

Yeah, that's. Again, it's like there's one.

[Joe Rogan]

Only one person saying, yeah, that's the problem. It's like you don't know what you're looking at, but that's crazy.

[Dr. James Nestor]

But it is. Yeah. Melon is the pigment for all of it. Bit.

[Joe Rogan]

Put that in. Does mellow. Melatonin. How does it say. How do you say it?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Melanotan.

[Joe Rogan]

Melanotan. Does melanotan have an effect on hair color? Put that into perplexity. See what they say.

[Jamie]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

What does it say? Because I know a lot of people with gray hair that bums them out, and they dye it, and. And that can't be good for you. You're putting dye in your hair.

[Dr. James Nestor]

I know.

[Jamie]

Yeah.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Stuff makes me hesitant. I'm stuck with the gray hair.

[Joe Rogan]

I think, well, mine would be gray if I had hair. It's all gray in my beard now. It's gray on my. I'm gonna try it. I want to try some melotan and see if I get dangerous boners. Melanitan does not have good human evidence of changing scalp or body hair color. Its main effect is on skin tanning and freckling, not on turning hair darker or lighter. But how's that guy? Maybe he's like, just a weird case.

[Jamie]

Yeah, but it's gotta be a hormone dependent.

[Joe Rogan]

What about the lady with the giant boobs? She had dark hair too.

[Jamie]

She's saying when I was looking through her thing, it said she went through a permanent tanning process. So I don't know. She would've been taking extreme dosages. But also her Instagram account is a mess. It's even hers. It's the one that Google showed.

[Dr. James Nestor]

But what's the. What's the erection connection? I don't understand how. You know, making more melanin.

[Joe Rogan]

What's the Melanitan? Owner erection connection. I have heard that. Though actually Brigham from Ways to. Well, the local wellness clinic was telling me about that. That some people have crazy erections because of melanitan. Yeah, like what? How? And some people don't. Like that one guy that had taken it. He said didn't affect him that way, but maybe. Maybe he's broken. Does it say anything about what's coming up right now? Causes boners. Okay. It can increase libido and trigger erections in some men. But it's not approved for. Well, I know it's not approved. How does it affect. It stimulates melanocortin. Melanocortin receptors in the brain which are involved in sexual arousal and erection control. Not just tanning. Controlled tiles. Controlled trot. Geez, I can't Talk today. Subcutaneous melanitan 2 caused erections in most men with erectile dysfunction, often without sexual stimulation. Same studies found increased sexual desire in a majority of doses compared with placebo

[Jamie]

increase.

[Joe Rogan]

Interesting. I wonder what the connection is.

[Dr. James Nestor]

It's the melanocortin, like you said. The MC. Was it MC4R up there? So yeah. MC1R is the gene that determines whether you've got the red hair or not.

[Jamie]

Look at this.

[Joe Rogan]

Common side effects were yawning, nausea, yawning and stretching. Flushing with decreased appetite. Some participants had severe nausea. At higher doses.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yawning and sexual desire is an interesting combination.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, that's weird. Yeah, I'm really horny, but I'm too tired to do anything about it.

[Jamie]

Hypoactive sexual desire for premenopausal women.

[Joe Rogan]

Interesting. Interesting. Also shows erectogenic. I like that word. Erectogenic effects in men with ED, including those who fail PDE5 inhibitors. What is that? Was a PDE5 inhibitor. Interesting. Someone should. Someone out there with gray hair should give it a go. Find out.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Find out what's up.

[Joe Rogan]

Doesn't sound like other than dealing with boners, doesn't seem like there's any real problems. I keep Going back to this you getting attacked thing, and I don't understand how someone could attack you with the data that you're showing. Because, like, it's. You're not making any dangerous or, you know, any claims or any. You're not advising people do anything that's reckless.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, no, I mean, I purposefully have sort of left. I really haven't. I basically tell people to figure it out for themselves. Right. But it's only small amounts of sun exposure that seem to be necessary to get most of the benefits. The jump isn't going from zero to some. You don't need it a lot. Nobody really needs a lot. Unless you have really dark skin, then you can probably get away with a lot. So, yeah, just a little bit of sun exposure doesn't seem like a crazy recommendation, but it's just because the messaging has been sort of so extreme and unyielding, like they've worked for so hard to sort of scare people away from any sun exposure that I think backing that up a little bit is sort of uncomfortable.

[Joe Rogan]

You know, I understand, but I mean, isn't history filled with new discoveries and changing courses?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, and I think it'll change, but it's gonna be one funeral at a time. It's gonna be ugly all the way.

[Joe Rogan]

When you do this kind of work, have you discovered any other things that people thought were unhealthy that turned out to actually probably be good for you, at least if used correctly?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, that's such a good question. So the one like the metaphor that I think we're all familiar with and that I think maps pretty perfectly here is diet and fat 25 years ago. Gary Taubes does that article in the New York Times Magazine. What if fat doesn't make you fat? And we were still back in that era of carbs. Cut all the fat out of your diet. Carbs are good for you. Margarine, Right? The margarine era. The top Experts got it 100% wrong back then. And when they got called on it by, like, you know, Taubes and others. Nina Teichels. You guys have had Nina on.

[Joe Rogan]

I've had Tobbs on as well.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Oh, yeah. Okay. You know, they fought hard and they were totally wrong. And we now, you know, we flipped, but it took a long time. And, you know, there was little blood in the water during that process.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, yeah. I was in the early days of that, and people were just warning me about my cholesterol. What about your cholesterol?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

What's really interesting is during the heart of that When I, you know, I eat a lot of meat, my diet's mostly meat. And I went to the doctor and I got all my levels checked, and he said, are you on some anti cholesterol medication? I said, no, why? And he goes, you have very low cholesterol.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Interesting.

[Joe Rogan]

It's weird. And I go, dude, if you saw my diet, my diet's like mostly meat and eggs and bacon. And that's like a giant percentage of my diet. I thought that was really interesting.

[Dr. James Nestor]

I think. I mean, yeah, I think the evidence is pretty good. Like for keto, I think it's pretty strong. Saladino, I think, is pretty much spot on on a lot of this stuff. But so, yeah, so that, like the ultimate. Experts all said that was gonna kill you.

[Jamie]

Right.

[Dr. James Nestor]

You know, Atkins, back in the day. And they were all completely wrong. So there's, you know, there's a long track record of the pros being wrong, I think, on a lot of things. But that's a really good example. And people can wrap their heads around that one because we now, I think a lot of people understand that low carb really works well for them.

[Joe Rogan]

I mean, they completely flipped the food pyramid.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Right. Which was a beautiful thing to do. And I can't believe it happened so fast.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Well, also with very little pushback. It's kind of interesting because the evidence had already compounded to the fact that. Fact that, listen, for sure, margarine is not a good thing. It's not a good substitute. But also that all these healthy fats that you're getting from milk, that you're getting from eggs. Eggs in particular, we've been told eggs are bad for you. The cholesterol. And eggs. Eggs, you could live off just eggs.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. Probably the perfect food.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. Like, eggs are fantastic. I always tell my friends that are vegans. I was like, listen, man, just get some chickens and they're your pets, and they give you free food. It's like, I have 16 chickens now, and I get eggs every day.

[Sponsor Voice]

And these chickens are pets.

[Joe Rogan]

Like, I go, hey, ladies. You know, I feed them. I throw the worms down. They're not afraid of me. They listen to me. When I open the door, they come running out and they wander around the yard. It's like a great relationship. You get free food, you take care of them, you feed them, and they eat all the bugs in your yard. And you get these delicious, healthy eggs

[Dr. James Nestor]

from them with those beautiful orange y eggs.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. So if you're worri. If it's an ethical thing, you don't want Animal cruelty. And good for you, that's a wonderful way to live. But you are sacrificing your health by not eating pasture raised eggs. Just get the real ones, not the bullshit ones, the real ones. Unfortunately, they're tricking people. Now, some companies have been exposed for feeding their chickens turmeric. They feed them curcumin and turmeric and they're make it because it makes their eggs a darker, more attractive yolk.

[Dr. James Nestor]

I know, right? It's so screwy, so bizarrely backwards.

[Joe Rogan]

It is. But isn't turmeric good for you? And wouldn't turmeric that you're getting from those eggs also be good for you?

[Dr. James Nestor]

It's like, yeah, it can't hurt. I mean, right?

[Joe Rogan]

So it's not like they're giving them food dye. So it's.

[Sponsor Voice]

You know what I mean?

[Joe Rogan]

So it's like, yeah, you're getting these darker eggs because people like that and the darker eggs come from turmeric.

[Jamie]

But

[Joe Rogan]

still you're getting turmeric then, aren't you? Isn't that how it works?

[Dr. James Nestor]

I mean, that's fine. But I think the chicken, I think it's the bugs that sometimes help turn them oranges. Yeah, we get eggs from our neighbor, like in Vermont, everybody, there's chickens running around the road everywhere. And yeah, they're delicious. Yeah, you can tell that they're getting it from the bugs and the greens and.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, and it's super healthy. I mean, but that, that color of things is also why they dye farm raised salmon, which is really gross. So salmon are getting that from bugs in particular.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, exactly. Little arthropods. Yeah. Like miniature shrimp kind of.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. That's why they have that wonderful looking pink skin, that orangey pink skin.

[Dr. James Nestor]

So in that case the dye is maybe a little more suspect.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, well, the dye is very suspect because it's like, you know, these farm raised salmon, they have pale skin because they're eating bullshit.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah.

[Guest or Listener]

You know.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Are there any other things that you've stumbled across that turned out to be good for you that people were averse to?

[Dr. James Nestor]

I'm still curious about alcohol. You know how everything is flipped on alcohol. Like first it was like drink or two a day is good for you. And then suddenly they flip like a year or two ago and say any amount of alcohol is bad for you. I looked into those studies and it seems like the takeaway really should have been moderate drinking doesn't do much of anything to you. Maybe it's slightly good for you or slightly bad for you, but For a drink a day or one to two a day didn't seem to have a whole lot of impact on mortality at all.

[Joe Rogan]

And also probably reduces a little bit of stress, relieves a little bit of social anxiety. And that alone is really beneficial. Like, how do you feel? Like, are you happy or are you stressed out? Sometimes a drink or two, you're like, ah, fuck it, we're fine. Everything's good. Like, that alone has benefits. Like, what it does to your mood, that it's a social lubricant. It'll allow you to, like, maybe laugh a little bit more, have a little bit more fun.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Totally. Which is why I can't give it up. Like, that social environment is a really nice environment to be in, you know, and if, you know, a couple beers helps make that happen, it's a good thing.

[Joe Rogan]

I gave it up for about eight months. I completely. I. Problem is, I own a comedy club, and I was there a lot. And so everybody's like, have a drink. Have a drink. Let's do shots. And then next thing you know, you look. I was in the gym the next day, feeling like shit. I got tired of doing that to myself. And so I said, I'm just gonna stop drinking. Not because I'm an alcoholic. Wasn't hard to stop. It was super easy. I just stopped. And then I started feeling way better. I was like, God, why was I drinking for so long? This is so bad. And then out to dinner with my wife, had a margarita, like, eight months later, I'm like, let's have a drink. She wasn't drinking either. I'm like, let's have a drink. And like, this is nice. I like it. So now I limit myself. I just. I won't have more than, like, two drinks. Two drinks is kind of my map. But two drinks is right. Two drinks is like wee. As long as you don't have to drive, you're not going anywhere. You know, if I go to the club, I'm there for hours, completely sober. After it's all over, it's like, I wake up in the morning, I don't feel like shit. Doesn't seem to be affecting my workouts. However, if you wear a whoop or an OURA ring or one of those tracking devices, you will notice in your sleep, in your recovery, you're not sleeping as well. You don't sleep as well. You don't get the same deep sleep.

[Dr. James Nestor]

I can tell.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, Just one glass of wine can fuck you up a little bit.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. Yeah. And that, for me, that hit in Middle age, like before that wasn't a problem. But now, yeah, like two drinks, two does seem to be the cutoff where life functions normally still. But yeah, the sleep's not as restorative somehow.

[Joe Rogan]

Somehow. But I wonder if it's the timing of when you're drinking. So I wonder if you have a glass of wine at dinner at 6 o' clock but you don't go to bed till midnight. I wonder if then your body has a chance to process it and then you're okay.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Well, that Italian style, right. I feel like the Mediterranean lifestyle, they got this pretty much nailed down like 2,000 years ago, right. It seems to work pretty well.

[Joe Rogan]

Which also brings us back to food.

[Jamie]

Right.

[Joe Rogan]

Because the way they eat is so. It's so interesting how thin they are and yet they eat mostly carbs.

[Dr. James Nestor]

I know, I know. Something's different there.

[Joe Rogan]

A lot's different. And we know what it is now. We know that there's a lot of additives and preservatives and it's also like they don't use glyphosate. And yeah, they have heirloom wheat. So they have wheat that hasn't been optimized to have a higher yield. So it doesn't have as much complex wheat glutens. And there's a lot of issues with our food, unfortunately. And if you eat American bread, you know, the bromine, all the different additives, all the. That we put in our food, that's so disturbing. Whenever I go to Italy, I'm so angry that when I come back home I can't have food like this. Like you have to seek it out. You have to go to like certain restaurants that only use like Italian flour.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, you look at those Mediterranean cultures and it just works for them. And yeah, like you say, you can't explain it in terms of like macronutrients or anything like that. Like it's something, there's something like synergistic about that lifestyle. I do actually think light is part of it too. Like they got great light there.

[Joe Rogan]

They have great light. Especially like the Amalfi coast. Those people.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

But the other thing is also less stress. They're not as career focused. They're more family oriented, very tight knit family groups. They eat dinner together. There's a lot of laughing, a lot of drinking wine. A lot of them smoke cigarettes. You go over there like cigarettes never went out of style over there. They're all smoking cigarettes and you're like, how are you guys so fucking healthy? This is weird.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, it Is it's. Yeah, it'll be interesting on cigarettes if it turns out that in a certain context, they're not that damaging, and then out of that context, they're super damaging.

[Joe Rogan]

I have heard that with polyphenols. I've heard that. And this is a. I think, controversial as well. But it's cigarettes taken along with olive oil and that a lot of these people have high olive oil risk diets, and that cigarettes, along with olive oil, that the olive oil tends to balance out whatever damage that the cigarettes are doing.

[Dr. James Nestor]

That is super interesting.

[Jamie]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Which kind of makes sense.

[Dr. James Nestor]

And it's gonna be like, everything is gonna be something like that where it's bad in a certain context, and then it seems to have been okay for people in a different context.

[Guest or Listener]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Are there any other things that you've noticed? Like, I know you've done work on chocolate, right?

[Dr. James Nestor]

A lot of work on. Yeah. My first sort of big magazine story, Outside magazine sent me to the Amazon on this crazy hunt with this German guy. It was basically Apocalypse now with chocolate. This German guy was going upriver into the Amazon to try to find this wild cacao to work with some of the indigenous groups to harvest wild cacao and make the world's first wild chocolate chocolate. So I went with him. Crazy, crazy trip. But, yeah, I sort of fell in love with cacao on that trip. But it was like, we landed, we took a small plane, and we were going to land on this river and meet a canoe that was going to take us up river to meet with these indigenous groups. So we found a Runway, right? This is in the Bolivian Amazon. I've been in the Amazon all of, like, four minutes, right? The plane drops us off on this flooded Runway where it was a crazy landing. We hop out of the plane. I'm glad to be alive. And then these four guys with guns come out of this little cabin and we're like, this is actually a landing strip that our Colombian boss owns, and we're guarding it for him. And what are you two white dudes doing here? So all the cocaine traffic comes through this part of the Amazon. And we had just done what people actually have been killed for, which is, you know, like, if a couple of white guys drop in there, they assume you're like, DEA or something, right? So they're super suspicious. And they were speaking Spanish, so I was like, catching every fourth word or something. I'm like, this can't be good because of the guns. But anyway, the guy I was with, the German guy, he negotiated with them and finally they're like, okay, just give us a landing fee. So we're like, sure, but yeah. So that was, but that was the beginning of my chocolate journey.

[Joe Rogan]

So what part of the Amazon were you, where are you?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Bolivia. Which Bolivia? You think of like mountains, La Paz, but they have these lowlands which are like straight up tropical rainforest. It's called the Beni. And it's like truly lawless area, like huge swaths of jungle. Bunch of cattle ranching as well. And all the drug traffic comes through there from the Andes.

[Joe Rogan]

And you went in there just as a journalist?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. So this guy, this German guy, he'd been living there for 20 years and he was trying to get this cacao and he's like, yeah, I'm gonna go meet with these groups, do you want to come? And Outside had just come to me and they'd like something else I'd written and they're like, hey, we're Outside magazine. What's the freakiest thing you ever wanted to do? Well know, we'll send you there. And I had like a little kid at the time, so I was like, you know, I'm not going to be going off a 200 foot waterfall and kayak for you guys. But then this like, you know, heart of dark chocolate thing came up and I was like, I could do that. I could be like the comic guy for them. So it was this like ridiculous journey where like everything went wrong. But we did get some really good chocolate at the end of it eventually.

[Joe Rogan]

So what is the benefit of wild cacao?

[Dr. James Nestor]

It tastes really, really good. Better than the industrial varieties of cacao that most chocolate's made with. And it's just like kind of a cool story. And it can be used to support those indigenous groups so that the forest doesn't get cut down and turned into more like cattle ranch. Because cacao grows in the understory of the rainforest, so it's kind of a way to monetize the full rainforest and

[Joe Rogan]

keep the canopy intact.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Exactly.

[Joe Rogan]

What is the benefits of cacao? Like health wise?

[Dr. James Nestor]

It's right there with coffee, tons of polyphenols, a little bit of caffeine, it seems to be anti inflammatory, gives you a little boost, makes you happy. For some of the same reasons and maybe some different ones as well.

[Joe Rogan]

And when you say it tastes better, in what way?

[Dr. James Nestor]

When you try it, a lot more aromatics and less bitterness. Basically what happened with cacao is when it became a global product, the Europeans selected varieties that were high yielding. Same thing that happened with tomatoes and everything else. They were high yielding, but they lost some of the great aromatic qualities that the old Maya cacao had had. That's what gets grown all over the world. Most cacao comes from Africa now, and it's more bitter, less interesting, but way cheaper. So then there's this movement that started like 10, 15 years ago of people trying to go back to Latin America to find the ancient heirloom varieties that had this great flavor and make better chocolate than had ever been made before. Sort of the most ancient is the stuff in the Amazon, which is where cacao originates, still growing wild. So it's kind of cool if you can go back to the primordial days and make chocolate.

[Joe Rogan]

I mean, the example of tomatoes is a perfect example because heirloom tomatoes are sensational. They're so delicious.

[Dr. James Nestor]

So much better.

[Joe Rogan]

They're so much better. And then you have one of those bullshit McDonald's tomatoes that looks like a piece of paper.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Is that cacao? That's what it looks like, yeah.

[Dr. James Nestor]

So it's these pods that you. And you open up the pod. It's kind of like the size of like a little Nerf football or something.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, wow. I had no idea.

[Dr. James Nestor]

And so chocolate is made from the seeds inside. You gotta ferment them and then roast them, and then you grind them into chocolate.

[Joe Rogan]

Where can one get heirloom chocolate made from this ancient cacao? Is there a company?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. So the place I send people is Caputos, which is an online site. They're like the main importer of specialty chocolate. There they are.

[Joe Rogan]

Is that the people?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. So Caputo's has most of the great wild cacaos available on their website. It's just like retail Caputo's.

[Joe Rogan]

So is it caputos.com? yeah, it's from Salt Lake City.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, they've got a cool shop in Salt Lake.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, interesting preserve. Bolivian rainforest.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Ritual chocolate. Yeah. I've heard of people like ritual cacao ceremonies. I'm like, what are you doing?

[Dr. James Nestor]

So that. What are you doing that? It's. That's a gringo thing. Everyone thinks it goes back to some, like. We're referencing some ancient Maya ceremony.

[Joe Rogan]

Of course it is.

[Dr. James Nestor]

It was a white dude in Guatemala. Yeah, there you go.

[Joe Rogan]

Look at these people.

[Dr. James Nestor]

It's kind of like ayahuasca with training wheels.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, they do cacao. But, like, what can come out of a ritual where you take cacao?

[Dr. James Nestor]

I mean, you know, same thing that can come out of ritual where you do anything else. Like, you're focusing, you know, and Some mindfulness. You get a little, you know, you get a little boost from the cacao, but not much. Yeah, it's more about the ritual or.

[Joe Rogan]

Why is cacao. What is a cacao ceremony? Why are they suddenly showing up all over la? Yeah, you can answer that one on your own.

[Dr. James Nestor]

So, I mean, Jamie, if you can call up Keith's cacao. There's this guy named Keith. I think he died recently. He's like the classic gringo guru with a big white beard who would have people in Guatemala. And he's just invented this cacao ceremony thing. White people. But he's.

[Joe Rogan]

Damn it, white people.

[Dr. James Nestor]

And then everyone else sort of took it from him. There he is.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, he looks like the type of guy. Look at him. Big old fucking dirty pot of cacao.

[Jamie]

Dunk it in a couple.

[Dr. James Nestor]

So he started.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay. Poor Keith. These silly people. So. But there's, like, antioxidants in it. Like, there's other.

[Dr. James Nestor]

A ton. Yeah, it's good for you. It's totally good for you. Yeah, it, you know, gets your heart beating a little faster. There's some happy drugs in there. It's got a tiny bit of cannabinoids in it, and it tastes great. So, you know, what's not to like?

[Joe Rogan]

Anything else? Any other foods or substances or different things that you found out that were beneficial.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Well, how do you feel about oysters? I wrote a book about oysters, too.

[Joe Rogan]

I eat them all the time.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Are you a fan?

[Joe Rogan]

I like them. Are they okay?

[Dr. James Nestor]

I mean, they're great, but. There's no but. They're great. But I think. I think we haven't figured out why you're eating like a little living being. So I think there's some Qi factor there where the reason people get so excited and feel so good when they eat oysters, it's not because of the nutrients. It's like there's something else that's in there.

[Joe Rogan]

Well, isn't there zinc in oysters?

[Dr. James Nestor]

There's definitely zinc.

[Joe Rogan]

And they're supposed to have an aphrodisiac effect, right?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. So I think that aphrodisiac thing is it's more about the chi, like this living force that you're ingesting than the.

[Joe Rogan]

This sounds like hippie talks.

[Dr. James Nestor]

It does sound a little, you know, like cheese gonna get justified scientifically at some point.

[Joe Rogan]

You think?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

So you think you're getting what's interesting. There's another friend of mine, made an argument for vegans to eat shellfish. He said, like, if you're eating clams, and oysters, they. They're so primitive. They're more primitive than plants. He said there's more evidence that plants are conscious than there is that these shellfish are conscious.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, I mean, I think. Yeah, plants are pretty damn smart, so.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, weirdly so.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And mussels and clams and oysters, they're not. They're sort of alive, but they don't feel pain, and they just move. And because they move, they open and close. We've decided that they're animals.

[Dr. James Nestor]

And with oysters, that's literally the only thing they can do.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah.

[Dr. James Nestor]

The clams at least can.

[Joe Rogan]

You know, they get the tongue.

[Dr. James Nestor]

And oysters, they're stuck. They just open and close. There's not a whole lot going on there for sure.

[Joe Rogan]

Right. But healthy for you.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Unless you get a bad batch and then you die.

[Dr. James Nestor]

They are definitely a source of food poisoning.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah, I've heard people dying.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. Yeah. They kill a few people every year.

[Joe Rogan]

You know, it's interesting. My wife got food poisoning from oysters once when we were on vacation, we were in Hawaii, and she ate oysters, and somehow or another she got it and I didn't. But then my daughter, who didn't eat oysters, also got the food poisoning, because food poisoning apparently can spread through the air.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Interesting.

[Joe Rogan]

And so it's contagious.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, I guess if you're, like, ralphing hard enough, you're flowing it through the air, I guess.

[Joe Rogan]

But it was really weird. And that's how we found out that food. Food poisoning is contagious. And that's one of the reasons why they isolate people when they're on boats when they have food poisoning.

[Jamie]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Because those people could actually spread whatever that is through the air. Fucking weird.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. But that.

[Sponsor Voice]

I do.

[Joe Rogan]

I do love oysters, but I do get nervous when I eat them because every now and then you hear like, houston, man dies from food poison.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Cold water. Cold water is.

[Joe Rogan]

Food poisoning itself is not directly contagious, as it refers to an illness caused by eating or drinking contaminated food. However, the specific viruses or bacteria responsible for the contamination are highly contagious and can easily spread from person to person through poor hygiene or shared surfaces. So it's contagious. So the viruses that come from food poisoning are contagious. It's not like, through the air. Oh, so surface contact. Is that what it is?

[Jamie]

Is.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, I see. So coughing and stuff injecting.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

And so you may be interested, the airborne confusion, the confused show more confuse food poisoning with highly contagious stomach bugs like Norovirus, where the viruses are not airborne, they're highly contagious. Can spread through the air in tiny droplets. When someone vomits, there it is. Leading to contaminated surfaces or breathing in aerosol particles. So that's what it is. It's the coughs.

[Jamie]

Yeah.

[Joe Rogan]

Okay. I think we covered it. You think?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, I think you're gonna get a lot of interesting responses.

[Joe Rogan]

Guess what? I don't read them. So good luck to all those haters shouting into the void. I've long suspected that sun exposure is probably good for you. And then it's really just a matter of like how much and mitigating the damage that you could get if you get burnt.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Turns out you're right.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. It just doesn't make sense that your body produces vitamin D through it. It makes you feel so good. And yet somehow another is bad. I think it's like many things very nuanced. And so I'm really happy that you did so much work on it.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Thanks.

[Joe Rogan]

And I'm happy you rode the storm too.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Well, the storm's just coming, I'm sure.

[Joe Rogan]

Especially after this show. But thank you very much. And tell everybody where your book is and how they can get it.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah. So whatever their favorite online place. In Defense of Sunlight, Amazon. Anywhere else.

[Joe Rogan]

And did you do an audio version of it?

[Dr. James Nestor]

Yeah, they let me read it.

[Joe Rogan]

Yes.

[Dr. James Nestor]

We'll see if that was good news or not.

[Sponsor Voice]

Nice.

[Joe Rogan]

I love it when someone reads their own book. It's very important, I think.

[Dr. James Nestor]

Me too.

[Joe Rogan]

Yeah. All right, well, thank you very much.

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[Joe Rogan]

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[Joe Rogan]

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[Joe Rogan]

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[Joe Rogan]

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