Grab your coziest blanket and your favorite herbal tea, because Karenna and Samantha are about to revolutionize how you thrive this winter season. Winter isn’t just about surviving the cold—it’s about aligning your health and habits with the season to feel your absolute best. In this episode, we chat with holistic health expert Nick Boleto, who brings the heat (pun intended) to your winter wellness routine. From rethinking how you eat to optimizing sleep and energy, this is your ultimate guide to staying vibrant through the colder months.
In this episode, we chatted about how you can support your health & your authentic self seasonally:
podcast. We are your hosts, Samantha and Corinna. This is a show where we invite you into your fullest expressed self and life, relationships and business. We believe that if you crave more, you are meant for more. There is room for all of us to be fully expressed.
Along with the show, we’ve created a virtual community to connect you with fellow listeners. Make sure to check out the Fully Expressed community membership. You’ll find the link to join in the show notes and on our website. So excited
Welcome to the latest episode on the Fully Expressed podcast. Welcome back. We’re so excited to have you here today Today, I’m so excited to bring you back for the fourth time, my fiance, as well as Nick Belletto. Sorry, Nick Belletto, my fiance, Nick Belletto. He is a holistic health practitioner. And we just thought that it would make so much sense to bring him back on the episode one because he has so much knowledge in this topic. And as you’ve been listening to the podcast, especially in the last couple of weeks, you’ve been hearing this trend. it feels you as Sam as I’ve been interviewing Yes, to the like, especially know, in the last couple of you’ve podcast, been hearing this Yes. weeks, trend. It feels like, you know, as Sam and I have been interviewing, which has been completely unplanned, to be frank. Like none of this has been like, you make sure you talk about this or mention this. Every single guest, when they come on here to talk about health or wellness or even just like in their own personal experiences, there’s this deep connection or desire. And they’re finding this beautiful dance with the rhythms and the frequencies of seasons. Yeah. And so we brought Nick back on to talk specifically about why it’s so important to, I guess,
Like none
live your life kind of listening to the rhythms of the seasons. And that can mean so, so much, honey. So let us know, like, yeah, wherever you want to take it. But how is our health impacted by seasons? And why are we cyclical? Where does that come from? Our evolution, wherever you want to start?
Cool. First thing I want to acknowledge is I think it’s so interesting and like funny that we like acknowledge that there are seasons. And I think we acknowledge this in like a lot of different areas of our life. Like entrepreneurs are always like, there’s going to be seasons in your business. And then like you ask anybody who lives outside of the echo chamber of San Diego, like, what do you really love living about Philadelphia? And they’re like, well, I love the seasons. And so like seasons are embraced in so many other areas of our lives, but seasons in our health is like never thought of really like people just have goals and they are just pursuing those goals relentlessly and not thinking about, well, what, what does like the external environment have to do with like what I should be doing for my health? The only area that we really see this at all is like with bodybuilding, like in bodybuilding, we get the littlest taste of that where like you have the, the summer shred and the winter bulk is what bodybuilders do. And what’s funny about that is that they’re doing it all completely
you shouldn’t be bulky yeah you should both during the
you should both during the summer and you should cut during the winter like when you think about evolutionary biology but that is like the closest that we get to following any kind of cycle in alignment with the seasons and so i just like first in speaking to like why would we think about the seasons differently at all it’s kind of like the first place that I wanted to bring it which is like well we’re doing that in all the other areas of our life we acknowledge in our relationships that things are going to go through seasons and people love seasons they choose they choose to live places other than San Diego which is insane to me as somebody who doesn’t love seasons. But like people love snow and they love the summer, you know, like they love all to live in alignment with the seasons and just kind of address that first kind of query that people might have. Like, why would I change anything coming out of the summer?
people love snow
why would
So what but like why is it important to live by seasons? You kind of mentioned a little bit about evolutionary biology. Like, what does that actually mean?
Yeah. So I’ll tell it. I’ll tell a story, and it’s going to be kind of a long story, but I hope that it’s interesting, and it’ll be helpful to know. So when it comes to, there’s basically two theories of longevity. There is the theory that, you know, we have like a preset amount of resources or a preset number of something super tangible like heartbeats or breaths that we can ever take in our life. And so the people who are on that side of longevity research or even just health span, they think, well, let’s slow everything down. And then there’s the other side, which is like, well, what if we maximized efficiency? Like we don’t necessarily need everything to go fast, but if we make things more efficient, then we can add more speed when we want to. And so there’s these two camps where one camp is trying to make things go super fast and one camp is trying to make things go super slow on like a biological level. And what I have found to be true in my experience is like they’re both right, they’re just not understanding when they’re right, which is the seasons. You would want things to move fast during the summer because how do we make our biology move faster? We feed it more food, we give it more exercise, we give it more sunlight, we give it more and more and more, and it goes faster and faster and faster. But if you were to rev your car’s engine forever, it’s going to explode. And so that is when you then would transition towards like what is called a winter metabolism, where you purposely slow things down. So you might do some fasts, you might expose yourself to cold, you might eat some foods that actually purposely slow down your metabolism. So like there are these things that we can manipulate with our lifestyle, with our lifestyle, with our nutrition to change the way that our metabolism works. And during those periods, you may not be like soaking up the abundance that you have during the summertime, but you’re repairing the mechanisms that allow you to experience the abundance. And that’s why we really should be making shifts in our health.
be some of the benefits of slowing? Like, what does that, what do you mean? Or what does that look like when you say slowing down the metabolism?
Yeah. So in my personal story, when I was first, I was diagnosed with PTSD and I was basically exploring the field of holistic health for holistic solutions. And how I came to this theory that I just explained to you was I came across this guy named Ray Peet, who is a doctor who basically was, he really studied nature and he kind of saw that the things that were thriving in nature were displaying a fast metabolism. And so everything that he taught people through nutritional therapies was to increase your metabolism. And then in the wintertime, he was a proponent of like a lot of different pharmaceutical drugs. So like he would have people on thyroid medications and he would have people using aspirin and pregnenolone and like all these different hormone replacements because those hormones naturally come down in the wintertime. And so his kind of train of thought was let’s just do summer all the time. So I started to apply that for myself and I experienced a lot more summer and I became a lot more vital and a lot more energetic. But it just so happened that I had done it at the right time of year. And then when I was doing those things in the winter, I was like banging my head against the ball. Like I was, it was clear that I was not lining up. It wasn’t working for me anymore. And so I came across this other guy who put forth what he calls the cell danger response. And he explains the healing cycle. And what he basically says is if you try to run on summer metabolism for too long, you run into those problems that I explained earlier. If you rev your car’s engine forever, it gives out on you. And so what ends up happening is you’re living with summer nutrition, but your cells start running on winter metabolism. And if you look at the standard American, they are overfed but under nourished. So they’re not getting enough of the crucial vitamins and minerals to run all their cellular processes, but they’re eating a lot of calories, which is why we have like an obesity epidemic. But really all chronic diseases follow this same model. And so what he basically explained was, and I’m going to get to answering your questions. No, I love this. He talked about hibernation. So when bears, for example, hibernate, they are, contrary to what
love this. He talked
were taught in elementary school, they’re not just going to sleep for the winter. They actually, on a cellular level, they shift their metabolism. So they shift from a summer metabolism to a winter metabolism on purpose. And so they eat all this food during the time of abundance, during the summer,
And so they eat all this food during the time of abundance, during the and summer, then they shift their cellular metabolism, which allows them to sleep They more. do sleep a lot but they’re more, also just more lethargic and And that slow. gets them through the winter because if a bear had the same demands for food and resources during the they winter, wouldn’t make it. Right. So they Right. lower the amount of activity and they because they also have lower resources. They can’t go get fish there. They can’t go to the supermarket, you know, like you can. So they shift on a cellular level. And we notice this across the animal kingdom where these shifts happen. And what he has noticed in chronic disease was humans do this too. They have this shift happen when they are exposed to some sort of threat. And it could be an environmental threat. It could be like emotional trauma, like whatever the threat could be. It could even be a physical injury. And so I read all this and I thought to myself, well, if we are seeing throughout the animal kingdom that some animals are doing this voluntarily and humans only do this as a response to threats, would it be, would it make sense to be proactive and to voluntarily do the same that the rest of the animal kingdom is? So like, what if during the winter I purposely shifted towards winter metabolism? And then if in the summer I I purposely shifted towards winter metabolism? And then if in the summer, I’ll purposely shift towards summer metabolism. And so that was my working theory. And so last year I did that. Like I was fasting like every other day, fasting for up to 72 hours at a time. I reduced the amount of carbohydrates that I was eating quite a bit. I would eat foods that most people would say are like low metabolism foods. Like I wouldn’t eat inferior fats like canola oils, but I would have a lot of polyunsaturated fatty acids, like a lot more fish and things of that nature. So I was like purposely doing things to slow myself down and it worked. Like my mental health stayed good through the winter. And then when I added in those summer foods, when we started to have more light, things stayed good. And so when I was like trying to do the summer metabolism thing in the winter, it wasn’t working for me. But when I did the winter thing in the winter, it worked. And so I kind of stumbled upon this like purposeful manipulation of our diet and lifestyle to align to the seasons. I was going to say,
that’s so beautiful that you stumbled upon it, but like it’s been clear on our episodes that other people are also believing in this as well, right? They’re just looking at it from different ways. I think how these specifically was talking about Ayurvedic medicine and the doshas which i think you studied ayurvedic medicine too didn’t you for school
school no that was the one that i didn’t study yes but was the
that was the one that i didn’t study yes but was the different doshas is what she uses in there’s like three different doshas and she’s like it’s the same way with the seasons right and she talks about so much of the of like even you go through different doshas throughout your day, depending on what’s going on. And you’re talking about this flexible way of eating or a diet ability way of eating. And I think it just challenges so much of what our society is used to because we’re taught routine. We’re taught structure. And you’re teaching like, yes, there’s structure with season. But there’s also this like intuitiveness or connection to your body that is also required throughout this process. Is that fair?
And like the exact opposite diet like also solves that exact same problem. And like to like I don’t think the conclusion is wrong in either of those. me, Like I science is science. mean, It’s like fairly objective. I mean, you can do bad science. But generally speaking, it’s good. Like you did it the right way. It got published in a major journal. So it’s not crap science. So the better question that i started asking myself was like why does it work sometimes but it doesn’t work other times yeah and i think for me what i’ve really landed on is this like seasonality and like purposefully embracing certain aspects in your life and in your nutrition
are some things that people can start to really lean into with the new season i mean by the time drops, this will probably be like fall, winter season, which tends to be a very difficult
season. So it’s also interesting you’re talking about fasting, which I think is so counterintuitive to the holidays. Exactly. Because everyone wants to eat more. Yeah. Yeah. But that makes sense, too, because like we do slow down. We talked because like we do slow down. about this with Hadley, We talked about this with Hadley too. too. And even
Because everyone
wants to eat more.
And even in our, like yeah, we do slow down. And as we move towards winter, like we come across New Year’s and we come across these times where we’re supposed to have energy and make these intentions and all this stuff. And we’ve had this conversation before together, not on the podcast, but like we don’t, neither of us really believe in New Year’s in the sense of like setting intentions in the dead of winter.
New Year’s is the first day of spring.
Yeah, exactly. And same for astrology. New Year’s is the first day of spring. So I think it’s, I think it’s maybe fair to say like it’s person dependent, which is why two studies on the same result could lead to the same conclusion or two studies on the same problem could lead to the same conclusion. But also there’s like an overarching theme of following the seasons and following like where our bodies are telling us where we’re off, what we need.
that, like we’re also expecting ourselves to use your language is like expecting ourselves to operate like we’re in summer all the time. Right. Which we’re all very aware. We do not get sunlight. We already had. We also had Jenna on here who talked all about sunlight. Yeah. You know what I mean? And like you do get less of it. So something that you’ve taught me was like the three ways that we get energy, for example. We vote an abundant amount that from the summertime. Is that fair? And then the wintertime, you’re just more selective. You don’t
to as much. Yeah. So this is maybe a fun fact. Most people probably don’t know this, but you get 50% of your DNA from dad, 50% of your DNA from mom, but you get 100% of your mitochondrial DNA from mom. So however mom’s mitochondria are, congratulations, that’s your life. And so a really cool distinction that you can make, especially to apply to the wintertime, is if your mom’s ancestry comes from a place where the ground freezes in the wintertime, it’s really important that you live differently in the winter than you do in the summer.
Regardless of where you live differently in the winter than you do in the Regardless summer. of where you live. Regardless of
of where you currently live now, because your mitochondria are, everybody knows basically that they’re the powerhouse of the cell, but they are so much more than that. They really are sensors of the environment. And the environment is your external environment. It’s also your internal environment. So like example if you were if your ancestry is like irish because i know for sure that it freezes in the wintertime so i’ll choose on pick on the irish if you were irish first of all before we started colonizing the world and we started all this like international trade would you have ever eaten a coconut in the winter time in ireland no you wouldn’t have like
didn’t even know what a coconut was
didn’t even know what a coconut was yeah and so like the the way that technology and innovation is expanding is some it’s expanding so much faster than we are evolving as like cellularly. So we are introducing our cells to things that, I mean, the technology that our cells is built on, it couldn’t fathom it. Like imagine going back even just 2000 years and handing somebody a cell phone. And like when you eat a mango in the wintertime, that’s what you’re doing to yourselves. Your cells are it’s 30 degrees outside. like, Why are we eating mangoes? I don’t know what to do with this. I should be not eating for days. And now I’m getting fed all the time. And we just ate all the time all summer. So going back to the point I want to make, if your mom’s ancestry comes from a place where the ground freezes, you need to do things fundamentally different in the cold months than you do in the warm months. A couple of like really practical things that you can think of. Vitamin D is to the summertime as melatonin is in the wintertime. So in the summertime, if you’re a Caucasian, you are meant to get as much sunlight as possible and store up as much vitamin D to get you through the wintertime. But your biology is created in such a way that it knows that you’re not going to get a lot of vitamin D because of your ancestry has not had access to it. And so you can think of melatonin, which is the hormone that’s responsible for promoting sleep, but it’s a lot more than just a hormone. It’s also a really powerful antioxidant in your nervous system. So the sun, you know, people are familiar, if you get a lot of sun, you can get sunburn, which is not a good thing, but it’s something that happens and it’s kind of expected by your biology. And when you get any kind of sunburn, you know, that creates inflammation, it creates this like cascade of like free radicals and other things that cause problems. Well, that’s where melatonin is. It’s kind of the opposite of that. So any of the inflammation that you create through the summertime of getting all that sunlight, melatonin cleans it all up for us. But in order to do that, right, during the summertime, we’re maximizing our time spent in the sun. During the winter, we have to start maximizing our time spent in the dark. And so we need to, like the sun goes down at 5 during
the wintertime.
the wintertime. It’s so
It’s so hard. Basically, you’re saying like no blue light, no nothing, like we got to go to bed? Yes.
bed? Yes. We got to get to the candlelight.
We got to get to the candlelight. So hard.
Like that time period when the sun goes down but and the time you actually go to bed like that time period is basically the equivalent of you sunbathing during the middle of the day during the summertime so sunbathing during the middle of the day during the summertime is like i mean it is it’s a non-negotiable for your health and getting that darkness is the same way during the wintertime. So that is the number one. And
you’re talking specifically for the audience to understand no blue light, all the things that would block or mess up your circadian rhythm. It’s like getting to that place where you can allow the melatonin to really proliferate? proliferate? Proliferate, Yeah. Flourish. Flourish
Yeah. So you have these cells in your eyes. They’re called IPRGCs. And so they are intrinsically photosensitive ganglion cells, reticular ganglion cells. So they are, they’re light sensitive. So when there is, like you said, blue light specifically, so the sun is a source of blue light, but it’s also, it’s a full spectrum light. So it doesn’t affect us quite the same way that isolated blue light does, like you get from your electronic devices. So if you’re exposed to this light, those light-sensitive cells in your eyes communicate to a part of your brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the SCN. Like, hey, there’s light outside, and that communicates to your pineal gland to not produce melatonin. So as long as there’s lights, you’re not going to produce melatonin because if you did, you’d be falling asleep during the day. But if you’re not going to produce melatonin because if you did, you’d be falling asleep during the day. But if you’re continuing to expose yourself to that light at night now, you’re not producing melatonin. And so you’re not getting told by your body, it’s time for sleep, but you’re also not getting that great antioxidant in your nervous system, cleaning up all of the, I don’t want to say damage because I don’t want people to fear the sun during the summer, but that potential damage that you may have gotten throughout the course of the summertime of being in the sun as much as you should have been.
Is that what you would call oxidative stress?
Yes. So the sun… Good
the sun… Good job. I’m not following. These are some big words for me.
are some big words for me. The sun can cause oxidative stress when you are not getting enough nutrients and all that good stuff. Basically, oxidative stress is a state where the amount of free radicals exists outdoes your antioxidant systems. And so melatonin is an important part of that antioxidant system. But in the summertime, you’re not going to have loads of melatonin because you’re getting loads of sunlight. Right. And that’s cool. But during the wintertime, you need to maximize the amount of darkness. And it makes sense in the summer, you
sense in the summer, you have more energy. You want to, you have more. Totally. Like Hadley even mentioned this, like we have more opportunity to get things done and we’re more productive.
Like Hadley
And that’s also fueled by the food too. Yeah. During the summertime you know, if you like, not that you would ever get mangoes in Ireland, but here, for example, in Southern California, you can’t get mangoes during the wintertime, but you can get them during the summertime.
the summertime you
So the abundance of fruits that we have is carbohydrates and these energy giving fuel sources. They are seasonal during the summer and then they’re not seasonal during the winter. It’s almost like nature knows something better than we do, but we are like so insistent on fighting it. And so, you know, we watched fucking Netflix until nine o’clock during the wintertime and we kill our melatonin production.
Which, how does that fuck with us because i think being someone in the past like you know winter times are hard i’ve said this over and over the past and on the radio on here it’s like winter is hard it can be really hard and you know what i think tv or phones and stuff they create a dopamine or something is that you’re searching it you know maybe you’re just like searching for like, there’s some kind of entertainment here. So I’m just going to focus in on that. But I don’t wake up feeling good the next day. And I feel like it ends up being like a spiral. It just like, you don’t sleep good. You don’t sleep good. Like I also like end up waking up. I’m like rolling over. I don’t wake up feeling refreshed. Like now that I’ve started to pay attention, even the lights in this room right now, you know, I can feel my eyes being like, I’m done of all this fake light. You know what I mean? Totally. They feel tired and they feel exhausted. And we do that in the wintertime even more because you’re right. There’s days where it gets up by 4.15, 4.30, at least here in San
Diego. I don’t know what it is everywhere else. But I was thinking back to even being a kid and I’m such an avid reader. I’ve gotten back into it, but I was such an avid reader and I did not grow up with phones. And I think about the fact that I woke up with energy all the time. And now I see my nieces who are five and seven or even other like my friends, kids, anyone that like puts an iPad in front of the kids or watches TV late at night. I’m like, oh, they don’t wake up with energy. They don’t wake up as vibrant as I remember being like, let’s go. It’s a new day. That makes so much sense. Yeah.
there’s, I mean. Yeah. So what are the negative
So what are the negative side effects or how does it affect us? Yeah.
or how does it affect us? Yeah. I mean, both of you guys, I want to touch on this specifically too, before I answer that question. Both of you guys mentioned dopamine and dopamine is made from an amino acid called tyrosine. And all of the amino acids that tyrosine is a part of, they’re called the aromatic amino acids, they actually absorb UV light. They get activated by UV light. And so what that ultimately means, which is kind of a shocking thing to hear, is you can’t produce dopamine if you’re not getting exposed to UV light. And so to both of your points, you specifically, Corinna, said like, you know, I feel like low vibe during the wintertime. And so like I’m scrolling on my phone looking for dopamine. That is exactly what you’re doing. Because you’re not getting as much sunlight in the wintertime, you’re not getting
That is exactly
what you’re doing. Because you’re not getting as
in the wintertime you’re not getting as much dopamine and so you’re going to those devices for dopamine specifically so i thought those it’s really cool that you guys mentioned
you guys mentioned yeah but so is it fair to say that we’re not supposed to get as much dopamine in the wintertime is that like i mean i haven’t supposed to be just like not there for us because of the sunlight.
Well, yeah. I we can think evolutionarily or mean, we don’t even have to think about us. again, like, Just go back to the bear with hibernation. Like, what does the bear need dopamine for?
for? Yeah, they’re sleeping.
He’s like, yeah, like he’s resting. He’s not going to go hunt like dopamine from an evolutionary perspective. Like people will kind of talk about it as like the reward neurotransmitter.
like, yeah, like he’s resting.
are you going and doing evolutionarily that you’re getting a reward that you would even need to get a reward for?
for?
the midwest or even like in england in those areas you are slowing down like before gyms like no one was going to the gym you know you weren’t going out for a run necessarily or the majority of people weren’t during the dead of winter so you are like relaxing more resting more probably reading more as well before tvs and everything yeah historically
historically not anymore not anymore that’s why we have such a sick yeah
not anymore not anymore that’s why we have
is we’re like expected to produce the same way in the summer in the winter as we do in the summer and that’s just ass backwards so i’m
ask a question that maybe listeners are thinking because i’m thinking this it’s like well what’s the dance with like well i i struggle with seasonal depression you know maybe it’s our relationship to seasonal depression i don’t know to like are there things it’s an interesting balance right I’m like do I as I’m hearing you like do I live the next couple months living seasonally being comfortable being lethargic being comfortable being low mode and like really creating relationship with like being present with like I can’t execute as much I can’t show up as much as I used to. And like, which is like a whole thing and a whole spiral that can happen with the balance of like, are there supplements that can also be supportive during those months to help us adapt to the lethargicness? But in my mind, I’m like, well, why would I want to contradict what my body actually wants? You see where I’m going with? Yeah, yeah, yeah. As a listener, it’s like, like, how do you fit in? How do you, how do you, like, how do you, yeah, like, how do you fit in? How do you balance there? Because I mean, people do, their mental health really does drop significantly. And not time. You could just be like,
You see where I’m
time. You
going into my hibernation in three months later. And not just that, but like, I mean, that takes a lot of internal work to get to a place where you feel comfortable being in hibernation. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying too. It’s like, do you recommend supplements during that time to help support you during your lowest seasons? Do you actually recommend not to and letting your body do its thing? What’s the balance there? Because like, it’s hard. You know, I was going
to say it’s hard. I was going to just add to that just because it goes along with your question is like, what about the blue blocking? Like, is it a matter of, okay, I’m realistically not going to not go on my phone at 6 p.m at night in the winter but like can i mitigate that somehow to not fuck up so badly my systems during the whole of winter yeah
i mean there’s levels to this shit you know like give us the levels yeah i’m sure there’s people
us the levels yeah i’m sure there’s people listening that are like really bad yeah and some of us that have been like me or corin and you, well, you’re like the expert, but us who have been doing some of the work and we’re like, okay, maybe we could take it to like a higher level.
Yeah. I mean, like I was writing a post about this the other day and I mapped out like four different levels to, I would just say like your light environment overall. And like level four, the level that we would all aspire to be is that you have no i’ll say at least no artificial light at night that you wake up slightly before sunrise every day and you witness sunrise and then you have your office outside and you would be outside all day long and we all want
want that i mean i’m done that’s
i mean i’m done that’s that’s level four literally
four literally i feel good all the time but that’s
that’s in the winter too so you’d be outside you’d be freezing your ass off true
your ass off true yeah which
i can explain why that’s actually good for you too but that’s like level four
why that’s
three is like again i would say absolutely no artificial light at night you get up slightly before sunrise and then you get 30 minutes of midday sun exposure. If you could do those three things, like you’re way ahead of most people. Level two. And really
And really quick, because Jenna Lee Hoffman mentioned this too in her energy, like where she talked about the sun and energy, but she also said it’s maybe you don’t get as much of the benefits as direct sun, but she also suggested like going out in either way yeah either way like whether there’s clouds or not you want the light
you want the light okay yeah so i mean during the summertime here we regularly are getting like 10 uv to even 12 uv and already and it’s still like kind of around the same temperature it’s within 10 degrees of peak summer right now but the uv is all the way down like four peak. And so during the wintertime, you may not get hardly any UV, but getting, you know, 30 minutes of UV one is better than zero minutes. Got it. So that’s like, that’s level three. Then level two, I would say is no artificial light at night, get up slightly before sunrise and see sunrise. And then level one is no artificial light at night. And to answer your question, like blue light glasses can definitely work for mitigating the amount of artificial light that at night that you’re exposed to. The important thing with blue light glasses, and if you Google blue light glass test, you can find you’ll see this the three overlapping circles. You if you take the test with your glasses basically if your glasses are clear they’re not blocking blue light and if your glasses are yellow they’re still probably not blocking blue light like you want those ridiculous looking like the orange orange glasses orange
like the orange orange glasses orange so mine do nothing
basically yeah
the clear
yeah i’ve been really wanting these ones that are like a hundred what the one yeah they’re looking like a hundred fifty bucks like 200 bucks and i’m like i’m gonna do that this summer yeah i mean we’re gonna invest those like immediately because i do feel such a difference the other thing that you taught me too that we have on both of our phones uh he changed the setting and i don’t know if we can tell people how to do this maybe you can create a reel
wanting these
reel you can reach out to me and i have a full guide on how to do this
but he can change it oh yeah i want to know yeah like for those that are watching it at night but it doesn’t like you know like i know it’s hard like for example like we turn it like before bed we’ll turn this on and then
that are watching
like when we wake up sorry for those are watching you can see the red it turns it lowers
turns it lowers it substantially yeah
it substantially yeah it lowers it a lot and i already feel so much better i’m like wow my eyes can rest yes it’s not perfect but i can actually still use it in a lot of ways and i really like it kind of helps meet me in the middle because like the first hour at a bed like i do try and avoid it but then i’ll get on and like check my phone real quick where am i what time is it you know i can’t like fully avoid not being on it for the first hour but this is really supportive as well.
Yeah, there’s lots of little tips and tricks. So Sam was mentioning her phone like automatically changes the scale of blue light that’s emitted. Like you can turn that setting on on iPhones. And then Brennan was showing you guys you can set up your phone, the triple click, and it’ll be completely red spectrum. And it’ll be completely red spectrum. There’s this great app on computers called Flux that you can which basically you just tell it like where you’re at geographically. download, And it’ll darken your computer throughout the day and brighten it during the day. Oh, that’s cool. There’s things that there’s great like biohacks that you can do to help with this. You know, light candles at night rather than turning on the lights me and
And it’ll darken your computer throughout the day and brighten it during the day.
on the lights me and austin onto that i love the candle and we always oh sorry go ahead it’s a game changer no it’s amazing it’s so romantic it just feels like otherworldly and like it feels so good yeah we also replaced our night statement we have one nightstand but replaced it with a red light so then right when we get in the room it it’s like only red light and the candles.
the candle and we always oh sorry go ahead it’s a game changer no it’s
we also replaced
the candles. Yeah. The thing that really made a difference for me last winter was I had to be at work by seven in the morning. And so I was getting up at 530 and I made a really hard and fast rule with myself that I wasn’t going to expose myself to blue light until the sun came up. And so like I had a candle waiting for me at my bedside table and i would light it and then i would take a candle lit shower and then i was cooking my breakfast by candlelight that’s
my breakfast by candlelight that’s awesome though it was really nice to wake up that way especially at that time yeah i was surprised yeah now we have our salt lamp yeah oh yeah we have a salt the himalayan
awesome though it was really nice to wake up that way especially at that
have a salt the himalayan salt lamps again not perfect because it is mostly blue light but the pitch of it is just a lot less dimmer we’re
dimmer we’re getting just
just like the old school lights you know before we replace everything with like these are super bright leds they’re so gross yeah you can look into like the brightness of one of these led lights is like 10 times or 100 times brighter than the sun we’re
yeah you can
poisoning ourselves over here it’s just like
over here it’s just like absolutely insane. So I know I think about
these people working in office buildings with the fluorescent lights and you’re just
like, Oh my God. Yeah. Like, I mean, I would just have an awful headache like being exposed to that all day long. So, yeah. So if you
I mean,
being exposed
have the orange glasses, you put them on like right when the sun goes down? Yeah. And then you leave them on all
have the
leave them on all day? Yep. Okay. Yeah. So I do like the triple click when sun goes down on my phone and then, yeah, put the glasses on. Then you can still enjoy some television or whatever into the evening and it’ll probably be okay. you know, should we try to like, should slash how should we mitigate having to live the life that we have to live in America during the wintertime is I think that most people would be pretty surprised how energized they are if they allow themselves to dedicate to this type of living for a couple of weeks. Because remember, all of this is built on the premise that your biology was meant for this. And so yes, like we are meant to shift towards this winter metabolism and we aren’t meant to be as productive and we’re not meant to push quite as much. But we wouldn’t have this hardwired into our biology if it felt terrible like it should and in my experience it does feel better actually than like trying to live the same way that you did in the summer in the winter time so like fasting during the winter time or during the summertime is really hard because your biology is like bro we need resources it is hot outside there’s a lot of sun like you’re also
doing a lot yeah you’re doing a lot we got so much on the weekend yeah
a lot yeah you’re doing a lot we got so much on the weekend yeah and then fasting during the winter time it’s like it’s not nearly as difficult can you
them what you’re fasting and looks like it’s not hard from what no like last time we’re not talking about days of fasting
no like
no there’s levels fasting too you know so like i i’ll do like a monthly 72 hour fast but you can one i’m gonna get on my soapbox for a second one of the one of the worst mistakes that people make with fasting is that they fast from dinner to dinner but dinner happens when the sun is down and evolutionarily again like you would never have been eating a meal with the sun down because we didn’t have the technology to cook or to see your food or any of that so if you want to start doing a fast and you want like level one level one would be fasting breakfast to breakfast because breakfast or even lunch is eaten during the daylight and the day meaning eat
eat breakfast and then don’t eat and then the following breakfast
daylight is a really important stimulus for your metabolism which is why your metabolism slows down during the winter time so if you want to fast correctly you should eat when there’s daylight. So you could fast lunch to lunch is perfectly fine. So I eat lunch on Monday. I don’t eat dinner on Monday. I don’t eat breakfast on Tuesday. And then I eat lunch on Tuesday. And so that would be approximately 24 hours. And you went lunch to lunch. What most people who are like in the fasting community would say if you eat any time in a day you didn’t fast in a day so if you want to do a day of fasting it’s a whole breakfast lunch and dinner so in that case you could go you know dinner eat dinner on monday then you don’t eat all day tuesday then you eat breakfast on wednesday i think those two practices for most people would go a long way, even just like one fast per week.
also just want to say, because I’ve learned and you can say yes or no, but like for women, because we have our cycle, I used to fast way more and I started having negative side effects, I think, from doing it incorrectly. But I think and I think from what I’ve read, it’s don’t fast on your period and don’t fast when you’re ovulating. Would you agree with
Yeah. I mean, really, like, does it matter? I don’t know. Women can get the same benefits again, like if your mom’s ancestry had it
does it
the ground froze, they would still get the benefits. But if you, again, think like evolutionarily, if men ever went out hunting and they successfully killed something in the dead of winter, they were feeding the women and children first. So women experienced fasting, but they probably experienced it more for fasting than women are. And I think that the best way to do it in modern day, because we are not subjected to being able to find a deer, is you could line it up with your cycles. So yeah, I think like the first and third week of your cycles would probably be the best time. I mean, your luteal phase really is kind of like the, it’s kind of like, yeah, it’s like the fall and the winter. The fall and winter. It is like fasting kind of.
it’s like the fall and the winter. The fall and winter. It is like fasting kind of. So you’re saying that’s the best time, the luteal phase to like cut. Yeah, luteal and follicular. That’s when you create the carbs the most though.
and follicular. That’s when you create
I do, it’s interesting
I do, it’s interesting you say that though, but there’s always like this one or two days where I’m not hungry. Yeah. Do you feel that? Yeah, especially when Rochelle tells me that too. Like there’s always like this small window where it’s like i really could go all day without eating yeah 100 not intentionally yeah like it’s not as hungry i’m just not and it’s not because i’m busy or not because i’m whatever distracted like i’m like i’m not that hungry today
not intentionally
and like i do eat very little i feel like i’m the hungriest on my period and when i’m ovulating those are probably when i’m yeah when i’m off and’m Those ovulating. are probably when I’m the hungriest. Yeah, when I’m ovulating.
and those are just such important biological functions. Like you have to support those, you know.
you have
right. Amazing. Any other questions you want to ask him? I feel like that was so helpful. Yeah, so helpful. I mean, it really helps us break down and understand like why seasonally is so important. And it gets us in the mindset of like, okay, what is it going to look like the next couple months? And they look different. I think you also talked to hopefully gives people a little bit more understanding or context as to why they’re feeling the same way that they’re feeling. And I also want to say like there’s no judgment or like on you. Like if you are on our phone. Yeah. Yeah. Like there’s still moments like where we’re not perfect either. definitely not but i do it’s crazy i feel a significant change especially when we did add the candle lights i was
our phone.
either. definitely
i feel so good and like waking up to a shower their candle light is like so nice or even going to bed with a candle light i’m like it does you can just instantly feel like your eye for me it’s always my eyeballs like these two little things like you can tell when they’re exhausted and i’m like oh they’re just so relaxed right now even
just not looking at our phones in the morning we’ve talked about that has been a huge shift yeah of how i carry myself through my day totally how i feel totally
huge shift
yeah thank you so much babe for breaking that down now one of the things that i guess we asked you this already, but we’ll ask you again. And whatever is present here, but present today more than anything, that we ask all of our guests that have come on to the podcast, like in this
again.
today where you are at, wherever that is for you, where can you be more fully expressed or where do you feel more called to be? We could tailor it to health.
anything. If it’s in general, whatever pops in.
Health, life, relationships, business. Pick a card. There’s always more than one.
Yeah, I mean, I think in light of the podcast today and the session that we’ve had, I’d really love to be more expressed as a as a teacher you know getting to take difficult concepts and make them actionable and like reasonable for most people because like i think about this stuff on such a deep level all the time and so like taking taking all of these thoughts and these like mini experiments that i’ve done on myself over the years and be like, boil it down to melatonin is the vitamin D of the wintertime. Yeah. It’s like sunlight during the summer. I didn’t know that. That was so
Yeah. It’s
I didn’t know that. That was so helpful. I had never heard that. Yeah. And I think it’s your teaching style. Yeah. You know what I mean? You’re just teaching a concept, which is so cool.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think when I am fully expressed as a teacher, that’s really like when I’m operating at my greatest strength.
Like there was some word that he said. It was like PR a little blah. I’m okay. like, But I get when even when you say big I still get what you’re trying to say. words, They do explain it very Yeah. well. It’s very well done. So thank you.
But I get when even when you say big I still get what you’re trying to say. words,
Yeah. Thanks for having me. You said before, but where can everybody find you?
for having me. You
am Nick underscore Boleto on I think all of the important platforms. But Twitter and threads is where I’ve been hanging out the most because I don’t have to do a stupid reel. I can just post. I can just teach. We’re have to do a stupid reel. I can just post. I can just teach.
going to put him on TikTok. I see it already.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Just step into that teacher role. Yeah. Yeah. And people can work with you one-on-one.
Yeah. And people can work with you one-on-one. Yeah. You can work with me one-on-one.
You can help them through the winter.
I mean, really, like. And the
And the summer. And the fall. And the spring. And the spring. We all need help. Help us out.
And the fall. And the spring. And the spring.
such a beautiful cycle like what you do in the winter like we didn’t even get to talk about all the science but like i’ll throw out one thing is like the the autophagy like people love to talk about that and relate it to fasting and like fasting is a good tool for that but really the winter is the best tool for that so like if you don’t do the winter, then you go into summer and then you fuck yourself. So like how well you do in the summer is based on how well you do in the winter and vice versa. Like if you don’t embrace summer, you’re not going to want to fast in the winter because you didn’t eat all summer.
it’s great actually to point that out because in today’s society, everything is now, now, now, now, now, now. And I feel that that was a big life lesson for me, just an intuitive eating in certain areas, in so many areas of life, but specifically wellness, that it’s a long-term game. Like if you’re vitamin D deficient, 30 days of vitamin D supplements isn’t going to get you that vitamin D back, you know? And I think speaking to that and like understanding we need to think the long game and that each season impacts the next one is so such a powerful like thing to
i love that yeah yeah alzheimer’s you develop in your 70s started in your 20s literally so and
20s literally
so and yeah there’s so much and they build on top of each other is what i want to say you know yeah and so like i’m learning this new relationship with the fall in regards to i started last year, like really welcoming the fall, really talking about rebirth. So then I can feel the highs of summer, you know, versus expecting myself to be consistent. Like as we want things fast, I think we also expect ourselves to be the same all the time. And in the
we want things
of we even talked about it with Rochelle, right? Yeah. The amount of darkness that you allow yourself to feel, the amount of light that you also welcome. And it’s the same thing here. Right. We’re literally saying like the more darkness that you receive in the wintertime by getting more sleep, you’re going to receive so much more light and sunlight and absorb it even better in
the summertime. And even Dr. Marince has said that, too, is like especially as women. But like we are literally like robbing Peter to pay Paul with our 20s. We are literally like robbing Peter to pay Paul with our 20s. And if we can get people to start thinking about all of this stuff now when we’re still young, exactly as you said, like the Alzheimer’s won’t come. We won’t spend years in hidden inflammation where it’s just an ache or pain, but really it’s like building over time and compounding to lead us to sickness. Yeah. Yeah. This is awesome. Thank you.
Yeah. Yeah.
is awesome. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for coming on. It’s’s a pleasure. Even though I live with you, I still learn things. I love it. That was another one. Okay, great. So I appreciate you and
for having me. Thank
we love you and thank you. Thank you. Thanks for
having me.
you so much for tuning in. We really appreciate you being here. If you enjoyed this episode, we’d be grateful if you could leave us a review and share it with a friend.
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Welcome to the latest episode on the Fully Expressed podcast. Welcome back. We’re so excited to have you here today Today, I’m so excited to bring you back for the fourth time, my fiance, as well as Nick Belletto. Sorry, Nick Belletto, my fiance, Nick Belletto. He is a holistic health practitioner. And we just thought that it would make so much sense to bring him back on the episode one because he has so much knowledge in this topic. And as you’ve been listening to the podcast, especially in the last couple of weeks, you’ve been hearing this trend. it feels you as Sam as I’ve been interviewing Yes, to the like, especially know, in the last couple of you’ve podcast, been hearing this Yes. weeks, trend. It feels like, you know, as Sam and I have been interviewing, which has been completely unplanned, to be frank. Like none of this has been like, you make sure you talk about this or mention this. Every single guest, when they come on here to talk about health or wellness or even just like in their own personal experiences, there’s this deep connection or desire. And they’re finding this beautiful dance with the rhythms and the frequencies of seasons. Yeah. And so we brought Nick back on to talk specifically about why it’s so important to, I guess,
Like none
live your life kind of listening to the rhythms of the seasons. And that can mean so, so much, honey. So let us know, like, yeah, wherever you want to take it. But how is our health impacted by seasons? And why are we cyclical? Where does that come from? Our evolution, wherever you want to start?
Cool. First thing I want to acknowledge is I think it’s so interesting and like funny that we like acknowledge that there are seasons. And I think we acknowledge this in like a lot of different areas of our life. Like entrepreneurs are always like, there’s going to be seasons in your business. And then like you ask anybody who lives outside of the echo chamber of San Diego, like, what do you really love living about Philadelphia? And they’re like, well, I love the seasons. And so like seasons are embraced in so many other areas of our lives, but seasons in our health is like never thought of really like people just have goals and they are just pursuing those goals relentlessly and not thinking about, well, what, what does like the external environment have to do with like what I should be doing for my health? The only area that we really see this at all is like with bodybuilding, like in bodybuilding, we get the littlest taste of that where like you have the, the summer shred and the winter bulk is what bodybuilders do. And what’s funny about that is that they’re doing it all completely
you shouldn’t be bulky yeah you should both during the
you should both during the summer and you should cut during the winter like when you think about evolutionary biology but that is like the closest that we get to following any kind of cycle in alignment with the seasons and so i just like first in speaking to like why would we think about the seasons differently at all it’s kind of like the first place that I wanted to bring it which is like well we’re doing that in all the other areas of our life we acknowledge in our relationships that things are going to go through seasons and people love seasons they choose they choose to live places other than San Diego which is insane to me as somebody who doesn’t love seasons. But like people love snow and they love the summer, you know, like they love all to live in alignment with the seasons and just kind of address that first kind of query that people might have. Like, why would I change anything coming out of the summer?
people love snow
why would
So what but like why is it important to live by seasons? You kind of mentioned a little bit about evolutionary biology. Like, what does that actually mean?
Yeah. So I’ll tell it. I’ll tell a story, and it’s going to be kind of a long story, but I hope that it’s interesting, and it’ll be helpful to know. So when it comes to, there’s basically two theories of longevity. There is the theory that, you know, we have like a preset amount of resources or a preset number of something super tangible like heartbeats or breaths that we can ever take in our life. And so the people who are on that side of longevity research or even just health span, they think, well, let’s slow everything down. And then there’s the other side, which is like, well, what if we maximized efficiency? Like we don’t necessarily need everything to go fast, but if we make things more efficient, then we can add more speed when we want to. And so there’s these two camps where one camp is trying to make things go super fast and one camp is trying to make things go super slow on like a biological level. And what I have found to be true in my experience is like they’re both right, they’re just not understanding when they’re right, which is the seasons. You would want things to move fast during the summer because how do we make our biology move faster? We feed it more food, we give it more exercise, we give it more sunlight, we give it more and more and more, and it goes faster and faster and faster. But if you were to rev your car’s engine forever, it’s going to explode. And so that is when you then would transition towards like what is called a winter metabolism, where you purposely slow things down. So you might do some fasts, you might expose yourself to cold, you might eat some foods that actually purposely slow down your metabolism. So like there are these things that we can manipulate with our lifestyle, with our lifestyle, with our nutrition to change the way that our metabolism works. And during those periods, you may not be like soaking up the abundance that you have during the summertime, but you’re repairing the mechanisms that allow you to experience the abundance. And that’s why we really should be making shifts in our health.
be some of the benefits of slowing? Like, what does that, what do you mean? Or what does that look like when you say slowing down the metabolism?
Yeah. So in my personal story, when I was first, I was diagnosed with PTSD and I was basically exploring the field of holistic health for holistic solutions. And how I came to this theory that I just explained to you was I came across this guy named Ray Peet, who is a doctor who basically was, he really studied nature and he kind of saw that the things that were thriving in nature were displaying a fast metabolism. And so everything that he taught people through nutritional therapies was to increase your metabolism. And then in the wintertime, he was a proponent of like a lot of different pharmaceutical drugs. So like he would have people on thyroid medications and he would have people using aspirin and pregnenolone and like all these different hormone replacements because those hormones naturally come down in the wintertime. And so his kind of train of thought was let’s just do summer all the time. So I started to apply that for myself and I experienced a lot more summer and I became a lot more vital and a lot more energetic. But it just so happened that I had done it at the right time of year. And then when I was doing those things in the winter, I was like banging my head against the ball. Like I was, it was clear that I was not lining up. It wasn’t working for me anymore. And so I came across this other guy who put forth what he calls the cell danger response. And he explains the healing cycle. And what he basically says is if you try to run on summer metabolism for too long, you run into those problems that I explained earlier. If you rev your car’s engine forever, it gives out on you. And so what ends up happening is you’re living with summer nutrition, but your cells start running on winter metabolism. And if you look at the standard American, they are overfed but under nourished. So they’re not getting enough of the crucial vitamins and minerals to run all their cellular processes, but they’re eating a lot of calories, which is why we have like an obesity epidemic. But really all chronic diseases follow this same model. And so what he basically explained was, and I’m going to get to answering your questions. No, I love this. He talked about hibernation. So when bears, for example, hibernate, they are, contrary to what
love this. He talked
were taught in elementary school, they’re not just going to sleep for the winter. They actually, on a cellular level, they shift their metabolism. So they shift from a summer metabolism to a winter metabolism on purpose. And so they eat all this food during the time of abundance, during the summer,
And so they eat all this food during the time of abundance, during the and summer, then they shift their cellular metabolism, which allows them to sleep They more. do sleep a lot but they’re more, also just more lethargic and And that slow. gets them through the winter because if a bear had the same demands for food and resources during the they winter, wouldn’t make it. Right. So they Right. lower the amount of activity and they because they also have lower resources. They can’t go get fish there. They can’t go to the supermarket, you know, like you can. So they shift on a cellular level. And we notice this across the animal kingdom where these shifts happen. And what he has noticed in chronic disease was humans do this too. They have this shift happen when they are exposed to some sort of threat. And it could be an environmental threat. It could be like emotional trauma, like whatever the threat could be. It could even be a physical injury. And so I read all this and I thought to myself, well, if we are seeing throughout the animal kingdom that some animals are doing this voluntarily and humans only do this as a response to threats, would it be, would it make sense to be proactive and to voluntarily do the same that the rest of the animal kingdom is? So like, what if during the winter I purposely shifted towards winter metabolism? And then if in the summer I I purposely shifted towards winter metabolism? And then if in the summer, I’ll purposely shift towards summer metabolism. And so that was my working theory. And so last year I did that. Like I was fasting like every other day, fasting for up to 72 hours at a time. I reduced the amount of carbohydrates that I was eating quite a bit. I would eat foods that most people would say are like low metabolism foods. Like I wouldn’t eat inferior fats like canola oils, but I would have a lot of polyunsaturated fatty acids, like a lot more fish and things of that nature. So I was like purposely doing things to slow myself down and it worked. Like my mental health stayed good through the winter. And then when I added in those summer foods, when we started to have more light, things stayed good. And so when I was like trying to do the summer metabolism thing in the winter, it wasn’t working for me. But when I did the winter thing in the winter, it worked. And so I kind of stumbled upon this like purposeful manipulation of our diet and lifestyle to align to the seasons. I was going to say,
that’s so beautiful that you stumbled upon it, but like it’s been clear on our episodes that other people are also believing in this as well, right? They’re just looking at it from different ways. I think how these specifically was talking about Ayurvedic medicine and the doshas which i think you studied ayurvedic medicine too didn’t you for school
school no that was the one that i didn’t study yes but was the
that was the one that i didn’t study yes but was the different doshas is what she uses in there’s like three different doshas and she’s like it’s the same way with the seasons right and she talks about so much of the of like even you go through different doshas throughout your day, depending on what’s going on. And you’re talking about this flexible way of eating or a diet ability way of eating. And I think it just challenges so much of what our society is used to because we’re taught routine. We’re taught structure. And you’re teaching like, yes, there’s structure with season. But there’s also this like intuitiveness or connection to your body that is also required throughout this process. Is that fair?
And like the exact opposite diet like also solves that exact same problem. And like to like I don’t think the conclusion is wrong in either of those. me, Like I science is science. mean, It’s like fairly objective. I mean, you can do bad science. But generally speaking, it’s good. Like you did it the right way. It got published in a major journal. So it’s not crap science. So the better question that i started asking myself was like why does it work sometimes but it doesn’t work other times yeah and i think for me what i’ve really landed on is this like seasonality and like purposefully embracing certain aspects in your life and in your nutrition
are some things that people can start to really lean into with the new season i mean by the time drops, this will probably be like fall, winter season, which tends to be a very difficult
season. So it’s also interesting you’re talking about fasting, which I think is so counterintuitive to the holidays. Exactly. Because everyone wants to eat more. Yeah. Yeah. But that makes sense, too, because like we do slow down. We talked because like we do slow down. about this with Hadley, We talked about this with Hadley too. too. And even
Because everyone
wants to eat more.
And even in our, like yeah, we do slow down. And as we move towards winter, like we come across New Year’s and we come across these times where we’re supposed to have energy and make these intentions and all this stuff. And we’ve had this conversation before together, not on the podcast, but like we don’t, neither of us really believe in New Year’s in the sense of like setting intentions in the dead of winter.
New Year’s is the first day of spring.
Yeah, exactly. And same for astrology. New Year’s is the first day of spring. So I think it’s, I think it’s maybe fair to say like it’s person dependent, which is why two studies on the same result could lead to the same conclusion or two studies on the same problem could lead to the same conclusion. But also there’s like an overarching theme of following the seasons and following like where our bodies are telling us where we’re off, what we need.
that, like we’re also expecting ourselves to use your language is like expecting ourselves to operate like we’re in summer all the time. Right. Which we’re all very aware. We do not get sunlight. We already had. We also had Jenna on here who talked all about sunlight. Yeah. You know what I mean? And like you do get less of it. So something that you’ve taught me was like the three ways that we get energy, for example. We vote an abundant amount that from the summertime. Is that fair? And then the wintertime, you’re just more selective. You don’t
to as much. Yeah. So this is maybe a fun fact. Most people probably don’t know this, but you get 50% of your DNA from dad, 50% of your DNA from mom, but you get 100% of your mitochondrial DNA from mom. So however mom’s mitochondria are, congratulations, that’s your life. And so a really cool distinction that you can make, especially to apply to the wintertime, is if your mom’s ancestry comes from a place where the ground freezes in the wintertime, it’s really important that you live differently in the winter than you do in the summer.
Regardless of where you live differently in the winter than you do in the Regardless summer. of where you live. Regardless of
of where you currently live now, because your mitochondria are, everybody knows basically that they’re the powerhouse of the cell, but they are so much more than that. They really are sensors of the environment. And the environment is your external environment. It’s also your internal environment. So like example if you were if your ancestry is like irish because i know for sure that it freezes in the wintertime so i’ll choose on pick on the irish if you were irish first of all before we started colonizing the world and we started all this like international trade would you have ever eaten a coconut in the winter time in ireland no you wouldn’t have like
didn’t even know what a coconut was
didn’t even know what a coconut was yeah and so like the the way that technology and innovation is expanding is some it’s expanding so much faster than we are evolving as like cellularly. So we are introducing our cells to things that, I mean, the technology that our cells is built on, it couldn’t fathom it. Like imagine going back even just 2000 years and handing somebody a cell phone. And like when you eat a mango in the wintertime, that’s what you’re doing to yourselves. Your cells are it’s 30 degrees outside. like, Why are we eating mangoes? I don’t know what to do with this. I should be not eating for days. And now I’m getting fed all the time. And we just ate all the time all summer. So going back to the point I want to make, if your mom’s ancestry comes from a place where the ground freezes, you need to do things fundamentally different in the cold months than you do in the warm months. A couple of like really practical things that you can think of. Vitamin D is to the summertime as melatonin is in the wintertime. So in the summertime, if you’re a Caucasian, you are meant to get as much sunlight as possible and store up as much vitamin D to get you through the wintertime. But your biology is created in such a way that it knows that you’re not going to get a lot of vitamin D because of your ancestry has not had access to it. And so you can think of melatonin, which is the hormone that’s responsible for promoting sleep, but it’s a lot more than just a hormone. It’s also a really powerful antioxidant in your nervous system. So the sun, you know, people are familiar, if you get a lot of sun, you can get sunburn, which is not a good thing, but it’s something that happens and it’s kind of expected by your biology. And when you get any kind of sunburn, you know, that creates inflammation, it creates this like cascade of like free radicals and other things that cause problems. Well, that’s where melatonin is. It’s kind of the opposite of that. So any of the inflammation that you create through the summertime of getting all that sunlight, melatonin cleans it all up for us. But in order to do that, right, during the summertime, we’re maximizing our time spent in the sun. During the winter, we have to start maximizing our time spent in the dark. And so we need to, like the sun goes down at 5 during
the wintertime.
the wintertime. It’s so
It’s so hard. Basically, you’re saying like no blue light, no nothing, like we got to go to bed? Yes.
bed? Yes. We got to get to the candlelight.
We got to get to the candlelight. So hard.
Like that time period when the sun goes down but and the time you actually go to bed like that time period is basically the equivalent of you sunbathing during the middle of the day during the summertime so sunbathing during the middle of the day during the summertime is like i mean it is it’s a non-negotiable for your health and getting that darkness is the same way during the wintertime. So that is the number one. And
you’re talking specifically for the audience to understand no blue light, all the things that would block or mess up your circadian rhythm. It’s like getting to that place where you can allow the melatonin to really proliferate? proliferate? Proliferate, Yeah. Flourish. Flourish
Yeah. So you have these cells in your eyes. They’re called IPRGCs. And so they are intrinsically photosensitive ganglion cells, reticular ganglion cells. So they are, they’re light sensitive. So when there is, like you said, blue light specifically, so the sun is a source of blue light, but it’s also, it’s a full spectrum light. So it doesn’t affect us quite the same way that isolated blue light does, like you get from your electronic devices. So if you’re exposed to this light, those light-sensitive cells in your eyes communicate to a part of your brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the SCN. Like, hey, there’s light outside, and that communicates to your pineal gland to not produce melatonin. So as long as there’s lights, you’re not going to produce melatonin because if you did, you’d be falling asleep during the day. But if you’re not going to produce melatonin because if you did, you’d be falling asleep during the day. But if you’re continuing to expose yourself to that light at night now, you’re not producing melatonin. And so you’re not getting told by your body, it’s time for sleep, but you’re also not getting that great antioxidant in your nervous system, cleaning up all of the, I don’t want to say damage because I don’t want people to fear the sun during the summer, but that potential damage that you may have gotten throughout the course of the summertime of being in the sun as much as you should have been.
Is that what you would call oxidative stress?
Yes. So the sun… Good
the sun… Good job. I’m not following. These are some big words for me.
are some big words for me. The sun can cause oxidative stress when you are not getting enough nutrients and all that good stuff. Basically, oxidative stress is a state where the amount of free radicals exists outdoes your antioxidant systems. And so melatonin is an important part of that antioxidant system. But in the summertime, you’re not going to have loads of melatonin because you’re getting loads of sunlight. Right. And that’s cool. But during the wintertime, you need to maximize the amount of darkness. And it makes sense in the summer, you
sense in the summer, you have more energy. You want to, you have more. Totally. Like Hadley even mentioned this, like we have more opportunity to get things done and we’re more productive.
Like Hadley
And that’s also fueled by the food too. Yeah. During the summertime you know, if you like, not that you would ever get mangoes in Ireland, but here, for example, in Southern California, you can’t get mangoes during the wintertime, but you can get them during the summertime.
the summertime you
So the abundance of fruits that we have is carbohydrates and these energy giving fuel sources. They are seasonal during the summer and then they’re not seasonal during the winter. It’s almost like nature knows something better than we do, but we are like so insistent on fighting it. And so, you know, we watched fucking Netflix until nine o’clock during the wintertime and we kill our melatonin production.
Which, how does that fuck with us because i think being someone in the past like you know winter times are hard i’ve said this over and over the past and on the radio on here it’s like winter is hard it can be really hard and you know what i think tv or phones and stuff they create a dopamine or something is that you’re searching it you know maybe you’re just like searching for like, there’s some kind of entertainment here. So I’m just going to focus in on that. But I don’t wake up feeling good the next day. And I feel like it ends up being like a spiral. It just like, you don’t sleep good. You don’t sleep good. Like I also like end up waking up. I’m like rolling over. I don’t wake up feeling refreshed. Like now that I’ve started to pay attention, even the lights in this room right now, you know, I can feel my eyes being like, I’m done of all this fake light. You know what I mean? Totally. They feel tired and they feel exhausted. And we do that in the wintertime even more because you’re right. There’s days where it gets up by 4.15, 4.30, at least here in San
Diego. I don’t know what it is everywhere else. But I was thinking back to even being a kid and I’m such an avid reader. I’ve gotten back into it, but I was such an avid reader and I did not grow up with phones. And I think about the fact that I woke up with energy all the time. And now I see my nieces who are five and seven or even other like my friends, kids, anyone that like puts an iPad in front of the kids or watches TV late at night. I’m like, oh, they don’t wake up with energy. They don’t wake up as vibrant as I remember being like, let’s go. It’s a new day. That makes so much sense. Yeah.
there’s, I mean. Yeah. So what are the negative
So what are the negative side effects or how does it affect us? Yeah.
or how does it affect us? Yeah. I mean, both of you guys, I want to touch on this specifically too, before I answer that question. Both of you guys mentioned dopamine and dopamine is made from an amino acid called tyrosine. And all of the amino acids that tyrosine is a part of, they’re called the aromatic amino acids, they actually absorb UV light. They get activated by UV light. And so what that ultimately means, which is kind of a shocking thing to hear, is you can’t produce dopamine if you’re not getting exposed to UV light. And so to both of your points, you specifically, Corinna, said like, you know, I feel like low vibe during the wintertime. And so like I’m scrolling on my phone looking for dopamine. That is exactly what you’re doing. Because you’re not getting as much sunlight in the wintertime, you’re not getting
That is exactly
what you’re doing. Because you’re not getting as
in the wintertime you’re not getting as much dopamine and so you’re going to those devices for dopamine specifically so i thought those it’s really cool that you guys mentioned
you guys mentioned yeah but so is it fair to say that we’re not supposed to get as much dopamine in the wintertime is that like i mean i haven’t supposed to be just like not there for us because of the sunlight.
Well, yeah. I we can think evolutionarily or mean, we don’t even have to think about us. again, like, Just go back to the bear with hibernation. Like, what does the bear need dopamine for?
for? Yeah, they’re sleeping.
He’s like, yeah, like he’s resting. He’s not going to go hunt like dopamine from an evolutionary perspective. Like people will kind of talk about it as like the reward neurotransmitter.
like, yeah, like he’s resting.
are you going and doing evolutionarily that you’re getting a reward that you would even need to get a reward for?
for?
the midwest or even like in england in those areas you are slowing down like before gyms like no one was going to the gym you know you weren’t going out for a run necessarily or the majority of people weren’t during the dead of winter so you are like relaxing more resting more probably reading more as well before tvs and everything yeah historically
historically not anymore not anymore that’s why we have such a sick yeah
not anymore not anymore that’s why we have
is we’re like expected to produce the same way in the summer in the winter as we do in the summer and that’s just ass backwards so i’m
ask a question that maybe listeners are thinking because i’m thinking this it’s like well what’s the dance with like well i i struggle with seasonal depression you know maybe it’s our relationship to seasonal depression i don’t know to like are there things it’s an interesting balance right I’m like do I as I’m hearing you like do I live the next couple months living seasonally being comfortable being lethargic being comfortable being low mode and like really creating relationship with like being present with like I can’t execute as much I can’t show up as much as I used to. And like, which is like a whole thing and a whole spiral that can happen with the balance of like, are there supplements that can also be supportive during those months to help us adapt to the lethargicness? But in my mind, I’m like, well, why would I want to contradict what my body actually wants? You see where I’m going with? Yeah, yeah, yeah. As a listener, it’s like, like, how do you fit in? How do you, how do you, like, how do you, yeah, like, how do you fit in? How do you balance there? Because I mean, people do, their mental health really does drop significantly. And not time. You could just be like,
You see where I’m
time. You
going into my hibernation in three months later. And not just that, but like, I mean, that takes a lot of internal work to get to a place where you feel comfortable being in hibernation. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying too. It’s like, do you recommend supplements during that time to help support you during your lowest seasons? Do you actually recommend not to and letting your body do its thing? What’s the balance there? Because like, it’s hard. You know, I was going
to say it’s hard. I was going to just add to that just because it goes along with your question is like, what about the blue blocking? Like, is it a matter of, okay, I’m realistically not going to not go on my phone at 6 p.m at night in the winter but like can i mitigate that somehow to not fuck up so badly my systems during the whole of winter yeah
i mean there’s levels to this shit you know like give us the levels yeah i’m sure there’s people
us the levels yeah i’m sure there’s people listening that are like really bad yeah and some of us that have been like me or corin and you, well, you’re like the expert, but us who have been doing some of the work and we’re like, okay, maybe we could take it to like a higher level.
Yeah. I mean, like I was writing a post about this the other day and I mapped out like four different levels to, I would just say like your light environment overall. And like level four, the level that we would all aspire to be is that you have no i’ll say at least no artificial light at night that you wake up slightly before sunrise every day and you witness sunrise and then you have your office outside and you would be outside all day long and we all want
want that i mean i’m done that’s
i mean i’m done that’s that’s level four literally
four literally i feel good all the time but that’s
that’s in the winter too so you’d be outside you’d be freezing your ass off true
your ass off true yeah which
i can explain why that’s actually good for you too but that’s like level four
why that’s
three is like again i would say absolutely no artificial light at night you get up slightly before sunrise and then you get 30 minutes of midday sun exposure. If you could do those three things, like you’re way ahead of most people. Level two. And really
And really quick, because Jenna Lee Hoffman mentioned this too in her energy, like where she talked about the sun and energy, but she also said it’s maybe you don’t get as much of the benefits as direct sun, but she also suggested like going out in either way yeah either way like whether there’s clouds or not you want the light
you want the light okay yeah so i mean during the summertime here we regularly are getting like 10 uv to even 12 uv and already and it’s still like kind of around the same temperature it’s within 10 degrees of peak summer right now but the uv is all the way down like four peak. And so during the wintertime, you may not get hardly any UV, but getting, you know, 30 minutes of UV one is better than zero minutes. Got it. So that’s like, that’s level three. Then level two, I would say is no artificial light at night, get up slightly before sunrise and see sunrise. And then level one is no artificial light at night. And to answer your question, like blue light glasses can definitely work for mitigating the amount of artificial light that at night that you’re exposed to. The important thing with blue light glasses, and if you Google blue light glass test, you can find you’ll see this the three overlapping circles. You if you take the test with your glasses basically if your glasses are clear they’re not blocking blue light and if your glasses are yellow they’re still probably not blocking blue light like you want those ridiculous looking like the orange orange glasses orange
like the orange orange glasses orange so mine do nothing
basically yeah
the clear
yeah i’ve been really wanting these ones that are like a hundred what the one yeah they’re looking like a hundred fifty bucks like 200 bucks and i’m like i’m gonna do that this summer yeah i mean we’re gonna invest those like immediately because i do feel such a difference the other thing that you taught me too that we have on both of our phones uh he changed the setting and i don’t know if we can tell people how to do this maybe you can create a reel
wanting these
reel you can reach out to me and i have a full guide on how to do this
but he can change it oh yeah i want to know yeah like for those that are watching it at night but it doesn’t like you know like i know it’s hard like for example like we turn it like before bed we’ll turn this on and then
that are watching
like when we wake up sorry for those are watching you can see the red it turns it lowers
turns it lowers it substantially yeah
it substantially yeah it lowers it a lot and i already feel so much better i’m like wow my eyes can rest yes it’s not perfect but i can actually still use it in a lot of ways and i really like it kind of helps meet me in the middle because like the first hour at a bed like i do try and avoid it but then i’ll get on and like check my phone real quick where am i what time is it you know i can’t like fully avoid not being on it for the first hour but this is really supportive as well.
Yeah, there’s lots of little tips and tricks. So Sam was mentioning her phone like automatically changes the scale of blue light that’s emitted. Like you can turn that setting on on iPhones. And then Brennan was showing you guys you can set up your phone, the triple click, and it’ll be completely red spectrum. And it’ll be completely red spectrum. There’s this great app on computers called Flux that you can which basically you just tell it like where you’re at geographically. download, And it’ll darken your computer throughout the day and brighten it during the day. Oh, that’s cool. There’s things that there’s great like biohacks that you can do to help with this. You know, light candles at night rather than turning on the lights me and
And it’ll darken your computer throughout the day and brighten it during the day.
on the lights me and austin onto that i love the candle and we always oh sorry go ahead it’s a game changer no it’s amazing it’s so romantic it just feels like otherworldly and like it feels so good yeah we also replaced our night statement we have one nightstand but replaced it with a red light so then right when we get in the room it it’s like only red light and the candles.
the candle and we always oh sorry go ahead it’s a game changer no it’s
we also replaced
the candles. Yeah. The thing that really made a difference for me last winter was I had to be at work by seven in the morning. And so I was getting up at 530 and I made a really hard and fast rule with myself that I wasn’t going to expose myself to blue light until the sun came up. And so like I had a candle waiting for me at my bedside table and i would light it and then i would take a candle lit shower and then i was cooking my breakfast by candlelight that’s
my breakfast by candlelight that’s awesome though it was really nice to wake up that way especially at that time yeah i was surprised yeah now we have our salt lamp yeah oh yeah we have a salt the himalayan
awesome though it was really nice to wake up that way especially at that
have a salt the himalayan salt lamps again not perfect because it is mostly blue light but the pitch of it is just a lot less dimmer we’re
dimmer we’re getting just
just like the old school lights you know before we replace everything with like these are super bright leds they’re so gross yeah you can look into like the brightness of one of these led lights is like 10 times or 100 times brighter than the sun we’re
yeah you can
poisoning ourselves over here it’s just like
over here it’s just like absolutely insane. So I know I think about
these people working in office buildings with the fluorescent lights and you’re just
like, Oh my God. Yeah. Like, I mean, I would just have an awful headache like being exposed to that all day long. So, yeah. So if you
I mean,
being exposed
have the orange glasses, you put them on like right when the sun goes down? Yeah. And then you leave them on all
have the
leave them on all day? Yep. Okay. Yeah. So I do like the triple click when sun goes down on my phone and then, yeah, put the glasses on. Then you can still enjoy some television or whatever into the evening and it’ll probably be okay. you know, should we try to like, should slash how should we mitigate having to live the life that we have to live in America during the wintertime is I think that most people would be pretty surprised how energized they are if they allow themselves to dedicate to this type of living for a couple of weeks. Because remember, all of this is built on the premise that your biology was meant for this. And so yes, like we are meant to shift towards this winter metabolism and we aren’t meant to be as productive and we’re not meant to push quite as much. But we wouldn’t have this hardwired into our biology if it felt terrible like it should and in my experience it does feel better actually than like trying to live the same way that you did in the summer in the winter time so like fasting during the winter time or during the summertime is really hard because your biology is like bro we need resources it is hot outside there’s a lot of sun like you’re also
doing a lot yeah you’re doing a lot we got so much on the weekend yeah
a lot yeah you’re doing a lot we got so much on the weekend yeah and then fasting during the winter time it’s like it’s not nearly as difficult can you
them what you’re fasting and looks like it’s not hard from what no like last time we’re not talking about days of fasting
no like
no there’s levels fasting too you know so like i i’ll do like a monthly 72 hour fast but you can one i’m gonna get on my soapbox for a second one of the one of the worst mistakes that people make with fasting is that they fast from dinner to dinner but dinner happens when the sun is down and evolutionarily again like you would never have been eating a meal with the sun down because we didn’t have the technology to cook or to see your food or any of that so if you want to start doing a fast and you want like level one level one would be fasting breakfast to breakfast because breakfast or even lunch is eaten during the daylight and the day meaning eat
eat breakfast and then don’t eat and then the following breakfast
daylight is a really important stimulus for your metabolism which is why your metabolism slows down during the winter time so if you want to fast correctly you should eat when there’s daylight. So you could fast lunch to lunch is perfectly fine. So I eat lunch on Monday. I don’t eat dinner on Monday. I don’t eat breakfast on Tuesday. And then I eat lunch on Tuesday. And so that would be approximately 24 hours. And you went lunch to lunch. What most people who are like in the fasting community would say if you eat any time in a day you didn’t fast in a day so if you want to do a day of fasting it’s a whole breakfast lunch and dinner so in that case you could go you know dinner eat dinner on monday then you don’t eat all day tuesday then you eat breakfast on wednesday i think those two practices for most people would go a long way, even just like one fast per week.
also just want to say, because I’ve learned and you can say yes or no, but like for women, because we have our cycle, I used to fast way more and I started having negative side effects, I think, from doing it incorrectly. But I think and I think from what I’ve read, it’s don’t fast on your period and don’t fast when you’re ovulating. Would you agree with
Yeah. I mean, really, like, does it matter? I don’t know. Women can get the same benefits again, like if your mom’s ancestry had it
does it
the ground froze, they would still get the benefits. But if you, again, think like evolutionarily, if men ever went out hunting and they successfully killed something in the dead of winter, they were feeding the women and children first. So women experienced fasting, but they probably experienced it more for fasting than women are. And I think that the best way to do it in modern day, because we are not subjected to being able to find a deer, is you could line it up with your cycles. So yeah, I think like the first and third week of your cycles would probably be the best time. I mean, your luteal phase really is kind of like the, it’s kind of like, yeah, it’s like the fall and the winter. The fall and winter. It is like fasting kind of.
it’s like the fall and the winter. The fall and winter. It is like fasting kind of. So you’re saying that’s the best time, the luteal phase to like cut. Yeah, luteal and follicular. That’s when you create the carbs the most though.
and follicular. That’s when you create
I do, it’s interesting
I do, it’s interesting you say that though, but there’s always like this one or two days where I’m not hungry. Yeah. Do you feel that? Yeah, especially when Rochelle tells me that too. Like there’s always like this small window where it’s like i really could go all day without eating yeah 100 not intentionally yeah like it’s not as hungry i’m just not and it’s not because i’m busy or not because i’m whatever distracted like i’m like i’m not that hungry today
not intentionally
and like i do eat very little i feel like i’m the hungriest on my period and when i’m ovulating those are probably when i’m yeah when i’m off and’m Those ovulating. are probably when I’m the hungriest. Yeah, when I’m ovulating.
and those are just such important biological functions. Like you have to support those, you know.
you have
right. Amazing. Any other questions you want to ask him? I feel like that was so helpful. Yeah, so helpful. I mean, it really helps us break down and understand like why seasonally is so important. And it gets us in the mindset of like, okay, what is it going to look like the next couple months? And they look different. I think you also talked to hopefully gives people a little bit more understanding or context as to why they’re feeling the same way that they’re feeling. And I also want to say like there’s no judgment or like on you. Like if you are on our phone. Yeah. Yeah. Like there’s still moments like where we’re not perfect either. definitely not but i do it’s crazy i feel a significant change especially when we did add the candle lights i was
our phone.
either. definitely
i feel so good and like waking up to a shower their candle light is like so nice or even going to bed with a candle light i’m like it does you can just instantly feel like your eye for me it’s always my eyeballs like these two little things like you can tell when they’re exhausted and i’m like oh they’re just so relaxed right now even
just not looking at our phones in the morning we’ve talked about that has been a huge shift yeah of how i carry myself through my day totally how i feel totally
huge shift
yeah thank you so much babe for breaking that down now one of the things that i guess we asked you this already, but we’ll ask you again. And whatever is present here, but present today more than anything, that we ask all of our guests that have come on to the podcast, like in this
again.
today where you are at, wherever that is for you, where can you be more fully expressed or where do you feel more called to be? We could tailor it to health.
anything. If it’s in general, whatever pops in.
Health, life, relationships, business. Pick a card. There’s always more than one.
Yeah, I mean, I think in light of the podcast today and the session that we’ve had, I’d really love to be more expressed as a as a teacher you know getting to take difficult concepts and make them actionable and like reasonable for most people because like i think about this stuff on such a deep level all the time and so like taking taking all of these thoughts and these like mini experiments that i’ve done on myself over the years and be like, boil it down to melatonin is the vitamin D of the wintertime. Yeah. It’s like sunlight during the summer. I didn’t know that. That was so
Yeah. It’s
I didn’t know that. That was so helpful. I had never heard that. Yeah. And I think it’s your teaching style. Yeah. You know what I mean? You’re just teaching a concept, which is so cool.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think when I am fully expressed as a teacher, that’s really like when I’m operating at my greatest strength.
Like there was some word that he said. It was like PR a little blah. I’m okay. like, But I get when even when you say big I still get what you’re trying to say. words, They do explain it very Yeah. well. It’s very well done. So thank you.
But I get when even when you say big I still get what you’re trying to say. words,
Yeah. Thanks for having me. You said before, but where can everybody find you?
for having me. You
am Nick underscore Boleto on I think all of the important platforms. But Twitter and threads is where I’ve been hanging out the most because I don’t have to do a stupid reel. I can just post. I can just teach. We’re have to do a stupid reel. I can just post. I can just teach.
going to put him on TikTok. I see it already.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Just step into that teacher role. Yeah. Yeah. And people can work with you one-on-one.
Yeah. And people can work with you one-on-one. Yeah. You can work with me one-on-one.
You can help them through the winter.
I mean, really, like. And the
And the summer. And the fall. And the spring. And the spring. We all need help. Help us out.
And the fall. And the spring. And the spring.
such a beautiful cycle like what you do in the winter like we didn’t even get to talk about all the science but like i’ll throw out one thing is like the the autophagy like people love to talk about that and relate it to fasting and like fasting is a good tool for that but really the winter is the best tool for that so like if you don’t do the winter, then you go into summer and then you fuck yourself. So like how well you do in the summer is based on how well you do in the winter and vice versa. Like if you don’t embrace summer, you’re not going to want to fast in the winter because you didn’t eat all summer.
it’s great actually to point that out because in today’s society, everything is now, now, now, now, now, now. And I feel that that was a big life lesson for me, just an intuitive eating in certain areas, in so many areas of life, but specifically wellness, that it’s a long-term game. Like if you’re vitamin D deficient, 30 days of vitamin D supplements isn’t going to get you that vitamin D back, you know? And I think speaking to that and like understanding we need to think the long game and that each season impacts the next one is so such a powerful like thing to
i love that yeah yeah alzheimer’s you develop in your 70s started in your 20s literally so and
20s literally
so and yeah there’s so much and they build on top of each other is what i want to say you know yeah and so like i’m learning this new relationship with the fall in regards to i started last year, like really welcoming the fall, really talking about rebirth. So then I can feel the highs of summer, you know, versus expecting myself to be consistent. Like as we want things fast, I think we also expect ourselves to be the same all the time. And in the
we want things
of we even talked about it with Rochelle, right? Yeah. The amount of darkness that you allow yourself to feel, the amount of light that you also welcome. And it’s the same thing here. Right. We’re literally saying like the more darkness that you receive in the wintertime by getting more sleep, you’re going to receive so much more light and sunlight and absorb it even better in
the summertime. And even Dr. Marince has said that, too, is like especially as women. But like we are literally like robbing Peter to pay Paul with our 20s. We are literally like robbing Peter to pay Paul with our 20s. And if we can get people to start thinking about all of this stuff now when we’re still young, exactly as you said, like the Alzheimer’s won’t come. We won’t spend years in hidden inflammation where it’s just an ache or pain, but really it’s like building over time and compounding to lead us to sickness. Yeah. Yeah. This is awesome. Thank you.
Yeah. Yeah.
is awesome. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for coming on. It’s’s a pleasure. Even though I live with you, I still learn things. I love it. That was another one. Okay, great. So I appreciate you and
for having me. Thank
we love you and thank you. Thank you. Thanks for
having me.
you so much for tuning in. We really appreciate you being here. If you enjoyed this episode, we’d be grateful if you could leave us a review and share it with a friend.
we Also, would love to hear from you. Reach out to us on Instagram and let us know where you feel inspired to express yourself as you embrace this next era. We are here to support you and encourage you. See you on the next one.
you on the next one.
Deep Dive into Eating Seasonally & Why It’s Important for Your Health
Eating seasonally is not just about following food trends – it’s about aligning your diet with the natural cycles of nature. Seasonal foods are packed with nutrients that support your body’s needs throughout the year. They’re fresher, more flavorful, and more affordable than out-of-season produce. In this deep dive, we’ll explore why eating seasonally enhances your health, strengthens your immune system, and improves digestion.
How to Prepare for the Winter Season: A Complete Wellness Approach
As the winter months approach, it’s essential to adjust your diet, lifestyle, and self-care practices. Winter preparation isn’t just about bundling up – it’s about giving your body the tools it needs to thrive during the colder months. Learn how to support your immune system, stay active, nourish your body with warming foods, and prioritize mental wellness for a smooth transition into winter.
What Is Winter Metabolism? Understanding Your Body’s Cold-Weather Needs
Winter metabolism is your body’s natural adjustment to the cold months, where your energy expenditure increases as your body works harder to stay warm. This shift often leads to changes in hunger and digestion. Discover how winter affects your metabolism and learn the best foods and habits to support your body’s energy needs during the colder season.
The Importance of Sleep for Cellular Health: Why Quality Rest Matters
Sleep is essential for overall health, especially for cellular repair and regeneration. It’s during sleep that your body detoxifies, strengthens your immune system, and repairs damaged cells. Learn how poor sleep can negatively affect your health and explore practical tips to optimize your sleep habits, so you wake up feeling rejuvenated and ready to take on the day.
How Netflix (and Other Screens) Are Messing with Your Melatonin Levels
Spending too much time in front of screens – whether watching Netflix or scrolling on your phone – can interfere with your body’s production of melatonin, the hormone responsible for regulating your sleep cycle. We’ll explain how screen time disrupts melatonin levels and provide strategies to protect your sleep, so you can maintain better rest and energy.
Reaching for Dopamine in the Winter: What to Do Instead
Winter can sometimes leave us craving dopamine-boosting activities, especially when daylight is scarce. While comfort eating or indulging in screen time might provide a temporary high, these habits can leave you feeling worse in the long run. We’ll discuss healthier alternatives for boosting dopamine during the winter months and maintaining a positive mindset.
Navigating Seasonal Depression: How to Stay Positive in the Winter
Seasonal depression, also known as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), is a common challenge during the winter months. Shorter days, colder temperatures, and less sunlight can impact mood and energy levels. We’ll share strategies for navigating seasonal depression, including light therapy, physical activity, and dietary changes, to help you feel more balanced and positive during the colder season.
What to Do If You’re Not Getting Enough Sunlight in the Winter
Shorter days and gloomy weather in the winter can make it harder to get enough sunlight, which is essential for maintaining healthy vitamin D levels and regulating mood. If you’re struggling with lack of sunlight, we’ll explore strategies to boost your exposure, including sunlight substitutes, supplements, and lifestyle habits that help combat winter blues and keep your energy up.
Stay tuned for all this goodness and more to embrace the winter season with ease, energy, and full expression.
About Nick:
Nick Boleto, CHHP is a dedicated men’s health coach, certified health practitioner, and lifelong learner. With a deep commitment to personal growth and research, Nick integrates a blend of ancestral biology, strength and conditioning, gut/brain health, and human behavior to guide his clients on their wellness journeys. As an avid experimenter and student of health, he continuously evolves his approach, staying at the forefront of wellness research to provide evidence-based strategies that drive real results.
Since 2014, Nick has worked with a diverse range of clients, including national and world-level strength athletes, collegiate and professional football players, Parkinson’s patients, marathon runners, weekend warriors, women with hormone imbalances, fitness coaches, and male entrepreneurs. His expansive experience and education have shaped his holistic approach, emphasizing the need for comprehensive, science-backed strategies to achieve mental and physical well-being.
Nick’s passion lies in teaching others how to take control of their health, empowering them to unlock their full potential through education, practical tools, and sustainable wellness practices. His work is rooted in the belief that true vitality comes from understanding the body’s innate wisdom and making informed, purposeful choices for lasting change.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nick_boleto/
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