Jack Kruse Interpretation vs Reality
Or
Why It’s Important To Do Your Research Rather Than Blindly Trust What Others Say
The views stated here reflect my personal opinion and do not reflect the opinions of anyone mentioned in this paper.
Opening Remarks
First, I’m doing this because I have witnessed several people relying solely or heavily on the advice of Dr. Jack Kruse and his sycophant disciples. This naivete may lead some to put complete, unwavering faith in a protocol that may not contain everything needed to correct their health challenge(s). Kruse declares that merely building up your innate ability to ‘redox,’ the opposite of ‘oxidize,’ meaning increase your natural antioxidant ability vs. runaway oxidation, by routine sunlight exposure while avoiding artificial light at night (and possibly nnEMF), disease, for the most part, can be prevented and/or cured. Full-spectrum sunlight thus corrects all outpoints in the body. His declaration poo-poo’s the contributions, good or bad, of epigenetics, stress, microbiome (gut-germline axis, gut-immune axis, gut-skin axis, gut-brain axis…), sleep, exercise, food (macronutrients/micronutrients), diets, microplastics, vaccines, highly processed food, glyphosate, mind-body-spirit connection, etc. A person’s lack of sunlight causes disease, and only reintroduction can solve the ills that affect man. Andrew Huberman, Ph.D; Peter Attia, MD; Bruce Lipton, Ph.D; Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D; and 1000s other amazing researchers and Nobel laureates must then be schmuks for ‘not understanding’ that sunlight is the one and only true antidote to fix a broken human.
Here is one example of his comments contradicting a journal and its authors.
Some Geographical Facts
Lake Eyasi is in the central rift valley of Tanzania at 3.66667 degrees South latitude, just shy of the equator. Light variations at this latitude are negligible from season to season. Weather variations, though, are dramatic when comparing the dry season to the monsoon (rainy) season. This area is home to the Hadza, one of the last hunter-gatherer cultures in the world.
The Research Data and Interpretations Between the Authors and Kruse
Did Jack Kruse actually read the journal article, “Seasonal cycling in the gut microbiome of the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania” (25 Aug 2017), or just read the title and assume that because it used the word ‘seasonal,’ it was solely referring to sunlight variations between Summer (dry) and Winter (wet), and not from changes in foods eaten, that affected the microbiomes of the Hadza?
Please read the paper for yourself. All the authors who contributed to the research are true superstars in the world of microbiome research. The paper does not compare or even mention sunlight or seasonal variations of light. The ‘seasonal cycling’ mentioned in the paper’s title refers to the differences in foods that are available during the dry vs. wet season.
“The Hadza’s activities are largely based around food acquisition. They are affected by the local environment and are subject to two distinct seasons: Wet (November to April) and dry (May to October). For example, berry foraging and honey consumption are more frequent during the wet season, whereas hunting is most successful during the dry. Consumption of fiber-rich tubers and baobab occurs year-round.”
“To understand what might be driving the cyclical pattern, we examined the Bacteroidetes taxonomic units (OTUs) that are maintained in the Hadza across the phylogenetic shifts through the seasons. Firmicutes composition remained relatively stable throughout the sampling period, whereas (OTUs), primarily those of the Prevotellaceae, declined significantly in the wet season (fig. S2B). Examining commonly shared OTUs, present in at least 10% of the individuals, season by season revealed a pronounced constriction of Bacteroidetes in the early-wet season (62.8% decrease in shared OTUs for late-dry–2013 to early-wet–2014, representing 4.4 standard deviations (SDs) from the means of all other seasons; Fig. 1C). By contrast, the shared number of Firmicutes, remained relatively stable across the seasons (0.21 SD; fig. S2C).”
On the Dr. Jack Kruse forum, he states in a post titled, The microbiome isn’t about the diet. It is about your light environment, “Jeff Leach and his team have proved one of my predictions again that food cannot alter the microbiome if the sun is strong and builds the circadian mechanism into a fortress… The functional medicine community tries hard to sell the meme that it is the gut where most immune diseases begin because they have NO IDEA what they missed in the skin that sculpts the microbiome.”
And, “Jeff Leach’s 2017 data once again confirmed one of my theory’s predictions that the light on the skin and eye control what the microbiome looks like in our guts. It has ZERO to do with food when your redox is built properly by the sun. His paper was a Big BOOM in destroying the food narratives that need to be extinguished. These are the narratives that destroy public confidence. SCIENCE SHOULD BE ABOUT DATA, NOT BELIEFS THAT ARE OUTDATED.”
CITES: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6353/802
I find Kruse’s statements incompatible with the paper’s content and a slap in the face of passionate researchers who, for the past 100+ years, have devoted hundreds of thousands of hours to finding any link between the microbiome and disease, how lifestyle modifications contribute to it, and ways to mitigate it.
The research paper states, “Systematic seasonal differences in the Hadza microbiota led us to hypothesize that seasonal dietary changes might lead to related changes in the functional capacity of the microbial community.”
The last Paragraph from the research paper – “Together, these data indicate the microbiota of many urbanized people is characteristic of a diet limited in the plant-derived complex carbohydrates that fuel gut microbiota metabolism and maintain resident bacterial populations (12). Numerous other factors associated with industrialization could also be affecting the microbiota of people from higher-income countries. The challenge is to understand the importance of the ecological role and functional contributions of species with which humans coevolved but that are now apparently underrepresented or missing in industrialized populations.”
This is from a non-related article that interviewed one of the co-authors, Dr. Gloria Dominguez-Bello – “Poop was poop, and skin samples were from skin. And when you analyze the samples, they cluster by season.” The paper concludes that the gut flora varies because of seasonal shifts in diet.
Lastly, I’m grateful for the opportunity to communicate with two of the paper’s authors. Both confirmed what I have stated above is correct. Here is one of the author’s comments, “Our interpretation is indeed that the seasonal changes are driven by the large changes in diet. The Hadza are right near the equator, as you say — Lake Eyasi is about 3.6 degrees south of the equator. There is also a huge literature in animal experiments and in humans showing that diet has a very large impact on the gut microbiome, especially over the longer term in humans”.
Conclusion
Don’t get me wrong; Dr. Jack Kruse is a sharp guy with a unique insight into what causes disease and builds health. I was a $100/mo platinum member and then a free member of Jack’s forum, and I was on his FB pages for years. I have read almost all his free blogs and watched hours of YouTube videos. I am extremely familiar with his teachings and lucky to have a knowledge base that allows me to understand what he says or research parts for any needed clarification. Most of what he teaches comes from the hard work of luminaries like Michael Crawford, Ph.D; Douglass Wallace, Ph.D; Alexander Wunsch, Ph.D; Robert O Becker, MD; Gerald Pollack, Ph.D; John N. Ott; Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D; Fritz Albert-Popp, Ph.D; and others. This foundational research is the actual GOLD. I have studied their research, and I recommend that you look these people up, read their books, research, and watch their YouTube videos.
On his forum and FB, Jack has said things, as fact, that I have tried to fact-check and couldn’t come close to finding anything that would support it. At times, I would find data contrary to it. I tried to comment on his forum or FB posts only to have my response deleted or the post blocked from further comment, which is his prerogative, being that it is his forum or page.
Sunlight is my number one recommendation to my patients. It is also central in my life, and I preach the power of using it to heal and stay well. That said, not every symptom or disease is remedied solely by its use.
It is vitally important who packs your parachute. Uncle Jack can pack the chutes of others, but he is not packing mine.