Essentia: Rise & Thrive Featuring Dr. Mark Hyman

The first episode of Essentia: Rise & Thrive the podcast saw Jack Dell'Accio, Essentia CEO & Founder, and our moderator Whitney Lauritsen host Dr. Mark Hyman for a conversation about stimulants that affect our sleep, including food stimulants! 

Dr. Mark Hyman is a practicing family physician and an internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in the field of Functional Medicine. He is the founder and director of The UltraWellness Center, the Head of Strategy and Innovation of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, a fourteen-time New York Times bestselling author, and Board President for Clinical Affairs for The Institute for Functional Medicine. He is the host of one of the leading health podcasts, The Doctor’s Farmacy. You can keep up with Dr. Mark Hyman on instagram and get Dr. Hyman's weekly health tips here. 

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You can also read the full transcript of the Essentia: Rise & Thrive podcast featuring Dr. Mark Hyman here: 

Whitney: [00:00:00] Welcome to Rise and Thrive. This is a series where we explore some of the biggest topics in wellness and how they affect our sleep so that you can learn to wake up every day, feeling rested, recharged, and ready for anything. I'm Whitney Lauritsen the moderator and I'm joined by Jack, the CEO and founder of Essentia natural memory foam and our special guest today is Dr. Mark Hyman, a practicing family physician, and an internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in the field of functional medicine. We're recording the podcast on Clubhouse today to have a live discussion about how stimulants impacts. To help you understand how to rest well and restore the energy you need to take on the world.

I love that. It's so such an important subject matter if you're live with us on clubhouse, you'll have the chance a little bit later to come up on stage to ask questions to Dr. [00:01:00] Hyman and any of us up here, and we encourage you to visit myessentia.com/podcast to get more information about this broadcast.

I've put that in my bio. If you want to check. And before we get into the subject matter today, I'd love to give Jack a chance to speak a little bit about what inspired the Essentia rise and thrive audio project that we're doing and why he invited Dr. Hyman to kick off the very first episode.

Jack: Awesome. Thanks. Thanks Whitney. Mark. Thank you for joining us. We're really glad to have you here. The series that we're launching today was really part of what we'd like to do is we give back in so many ways and here trying to offer up some of the knowledge that we've gained over the years. Pioneering sleep wellness with material science.

While we focus on material, really, we will learn so much by wellness leaders, either that we've worked with or who has inspired us over the years. And mark you're one of those guys and it's great that you're the first guest on this short series and allowing us to start [00:02:00] strong and we really appreciate you and are so grateful that you're joining us.

Dr. Hyman: I'm super thrilled to be part of this. I have to say that, sleep is one of the most important things in neglected things in our culture and getting sleep straight is so important. And. Personally a key to my sleep and I've had to seek challenges. So we can talk about that. Has been the Essentia mattress, like honestly, it's like the I bought three of them, cause they're so good. And I just think it's getting, I'm getting a good night's sleep is so key and honestly, like I love to travel and I'm traveling now in another country and it's I'm like, where's my bed. Whereas, like I want to go home. I just want to go home.

Whitney: I feel the same way. I don't travel without one of my Essentia pillows. I have a travel pillow and a few others, a regular sized pillows that I bring with me and Jack. Isn't it true that there's Essentia beds and some hotels now. So you could actually choose a hotel based [00:03:00] on the mattress.

Jack: I don't know if you could choose your travel according to that, but we're in a whole bunch of properties from oddly enough. We're very well set up in Vegas. All the MGM properties from Bellagio, MGM grand, aria they've all got special, healthy travel rooms with a central featured in it. But we've got some all around the country in different spots. I don't know if you can make your travel plans according to a central hotels just yet, but there are some spots and but more guests through the years when you've been buying that, we've been following you for years.

And every time you either walk into our store, contact our people, I'd always get the call. Dr. Mark, Hyman's buying a bed. So as much as you're excited to buy the product, we were always pleased that we actually got the reach out to you. That resonated that our product was worked well for you personally as well.

Dr. Hyman: It's so funny. It's so funny because when we were. And other than New York and I got apartment New York and I had no mattress. And so we literally we ran into the Essentia [00:04:00] store and there's not that many of them. So I went to the center store and we got to lead all the matches. We ran around like maniac. Like within five minutes, I think I want to explain everything and I'm like no. no. I wanted this one to send them the apartment.

Whitney: Yeah. That's the danger of going into those stores? Every time I do, I end up leaving with another Essentia. My current obsession is the body pillow because when I went into a store a couple of years ago, I laid on it and I, it, I couldn't get up.

It was too comfortable. So now I work on there sometimes. It's just been a game changer, Jack, actually you call it the the replacer. Is that what it's called? They're the replacement. What's the nickname for that person?

Jack: It's a giant body pillow. So really it replaces your partner. W we've had some, some people who feedback say that it was a step up as far as the partner.

Whitney: I'm really excited to kick things off and talk about how to stop making up for lack of sleep by filling up with stimulants, which is something that I think a number of us doing, maybe even if we're [00:05:00] not recognizing it.

And I actually put out a query on Instagram yesterday to see what questions people had about sleep. Overwhelmed with the response, because it seems like most people struggle with sleep. Have you found that to be true?

Dr. Hyman: Yeah. It's yeah. It's estimated that there's 70 million Americans with sleep problems. And that's really a concern for people because that's a lot of people and it's probably more, look at people who don't sleep enough, you don't have adequate sleep.

People's quality of sleep is core and sleep really determines the quality of your life. If you're not sleeping well your focus, your attention, your mood, your energy, your ability to do what you want to do in life is dramatically impaired.

Whitney: Yeah, absolutely. And, I think there's a [00:06:00] big issue with circadian rhythms and how that's disrupting anything from our immune health and bigger diseases, mental health challenges.

So I'm curious, how do you define a stimulant and what exactly falls into the stimulant category? Cause I think there's the obvious ones like caffeine, but what else is maybe not so obvious about.

Dr. Hyman: Yeah. I think obviously I coffee's the number one problem. And there are people who do fine with coffee.

They can have a glass of iced coffee or espresso before they go to bed and just go right to sleep. And a lot of it has to do with your genetics and your enzyme. That metabolize caffeine. So if you have good metabolizing enzymes, then you're going to be okay and you might not affect your sleep. But if I know some people can have coffee after noon, or if you have more than one copper, even one, couple of them, people just spinning.

So I think it's important to just pay attention to what your body does. There's also genetic tests. You can look for. [00:07:00] For caffeine sensitivity. There's also green tea and other caffeine that we gather yerba mate, all kinds of stuff that people are using for stimulants and caffeine that can be quite disruptive to sleep even in low doses.

So that's always something to worry about. I think the other stimulant that we have is our digital universe. And that has been a huge disruptive sleep because I'm just amazed at how many people sleep with their phone in their bed. It's it's like their best friend.

And and they're often when they don't and they don't put it on airplane mode, they just let it go. All night and they'll take texts and calls and just really disruptive. Most people don't do that, but they do use screens before bed. And when you're using screens before bed, if you're not using blue blocker glasses or screen filters or other devices, you're going to be shutting down your melatonin production, which is the main hormone in your brain that determines the onset of sleep.

So normally, in the morning you wake up and the best thing to do is to. Yeah, bright sunshine, sunlight without sunglasses [00:08:00] for 20 minutes. So take a walk outside some of your porch, whatever that helps to increase the stimulation of the pineal glands normal circadian rhythm resets, your adrenals, resets your hormones in a way that allows you to know, get ready for the day.

And then at night you need to shut down all the lights. I Honestly, we all. Had candles or, nothing, we would just go to bed with the sun. And now we're all up with bright lights at night, really disruptive blue light that, that shuts off melatonin production. So a lot of people, I really serious issues with inadequate melatonin production because of all the digital devices being on their phone in bed.

You have a computer working at night, doing emails, whatever it is. I think that's one of the worst. I think the other stimulant, and this is the one that I find very. Disturbing is the news. It's just bad news all the time. Like where's the good news channel. No worries. Where's, GNM the good news network, I want to see,

and I, you think the world is falling apart is terrible [00:09:00] and there's a lot of problems and crises and there's all kinds of disruptions, but it's just the same old bad news report over and over war disease, death, like violence, political strike. Yeah. We should be aware and pay attention, all that, but th but it's easy to become addicted to that.

And and to have it on all the time and the stimulus, I think TB is another big stimulant that we have to address. A lot of people are really. Hooked on TB and other people binge on Netflix. You have you don't have to wait a week to get the show. You can watch like three seasons in one night.

So that often really just serves people as well. And I think that, stress is a stimulant in a way, any kind of stressful environment, whether it's a relationship, stress, work, stress, family, stress, money, stress that, that is. Increases cortisol and catecholomines, which are stimulants.

Epinephrine and norepinephrine are though to be calm adrenaline, adrenaline that gets produced in the state of response to stress and that really disrupts sleep. So I think. [00:10:00] Right? You don't want to be sleeping when you're running from a saber tooth tiger. You want to be like running really fast.

So it's going to prevent you from sleeping and ha and as we age, the other thing that happens, we lose muscle and we, our diet becomes more carbohydrate rich, and that also drives cortisol production and increases. The cortisol levels as well as decreasing growth hormone production which means you can't say cause high cortisol, high and growth hormone, low, stupid talk.

One of the most potent drugs when nothing else works for people is what's known as GHB also known as a date rape drug it's market, as something called Xyrem. It's a drug that increases growth hormone and it helped people sleep and nothing else does, but most do impairs the function of our hormones and growth hormone.

So sugar is another Houston, tons of sugar. And that's very disruptive to sleep. Sugar will also increase cortisol catecholomines and often will disrupt sleep by even causing hypoglycemia the middle of night and people can. Hot flashes night [00:11:00] sweats. And that often is because a big of things, sugar and exercise is great, but not late if your exercise late at night and you're gonna, get into trouble falling asleep. And there are many, if I can keep going, I don't want to take over the whole conversation.

Jack: It's interesting. A lot of the things that you've been talking about, I work with. Pro athletes and there, they have it all combined. They've got all of these issues. They overexercise there's, they have stress, they have anxiety just to perform.

And many of them have a lot of issues when it comes to the sleeping and just winding down. And it's a big thing that we've talked through with different guys and guys and girls and. What was really interesting is, and I wanted to ask you is what is it about unnatural sleep that keeps the body unconsciously active?

A little background on this is that in the review of athletes and their sleep performance, I noted that when they use narcotics as sleep aids like keeping them asleep through the night, their brain activity is actually much [00:12:00] more. With less REM and left less leap sleep cycles. And that's why, I guess if you wake up feeling groggy after you're using some supplements that way what is happening to the body that it's not not as deep asleep as a proper nutrition sleep and proper food and things like

Dr. Hyman: Jack you're talking about in products, you mean sleep aid, like not just things like morphine or. Oxycontin or those kinds of drugs mean like the NBN or values or any of those .

So sleep aids can often be helpful for people to break the cycle, for travel sometimes for, different kinds of. A disruptive environment, let's say, but as a daily ritual, people get hooked on sleep aids and there are different ones that have different problems.

Pain medicine like narcotics will definitely cause sleep apnea. It can suppress respirations and it can. It can affect sleep quality. A lot of things like, Ambien or Lunesta [00:13:00] or the other drugs like Adavan or Xanax or Sonata is drugs. They all they'll work to some degree but they become addictive.

They tend to request over. And they're really designed for short-term solutions. So if you have sleep issues and I've had them it's really important to figure out what the root causes, and it can be many things that are the root causes of sleep issues. Like for example, mine was mercury poisoning. I had mercury in my system that was from living in China and.

And quite hell and that the known the insomnia now, most people check. But it's important to look at your microbiome can be a factor your levels of magnesium your thyroid level, all these things sleep. So it's important to do a thorough evaluation, but you can't just assume that, giving people these drugs time.

It's going to be a good idea of the best solution. And it really is, I think quite problematic. And what will affect their overall wellbeing and health for longterm?

Whitney: Yeah. And one of the things that comes up along the subject matter is a [00:14:00] lot of people seem to have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, or they get up in the middle of the night and they can't fall back asleep and they just want to get through the night without waking up.

So if all these medications are promising and that there'll be able to finally sleep through the night, are you saying that it's not really worth taking them? And is there something that they can do instead during those nights where, they're up for a couple hours and they can't follow.

Dr. Hyman: Yeah, for sure. Not being asleep is a horrible thing. There's a lot of work being done around sleep down, understanding of sleep and its architecture and stages. And what disrupts sleep when enhances asleep all are becoming really backed by a lot of good science. And it's going to Dr. Matthew, Walker's heard a lot about it. He's a great guy. I think he wrote a book why sleep matters. There's a lot of books on sleep. The every, the number of blogs looking at. What are the root causes? So that's from a functional medicine perspective. What I'm most interested in and how do we begin to help design and structure a life that supports health and support sleep.

I just started my patients. They have sleep [00:15:00] problems. You have to, get up at the same time every day and go to bed at the same time every day. Ideally go to bed before 10. Because your best sleep is generally early in the night for the deep sleep. Make sure your environment, your sleep hygiene is great.

So that means your rooms should be pitch black. You should get blackout shades, or I shaved quiet. If you're living in Northern place at your place, I never traveled the ICS and earplugs. They never know I'm going to be. You want to make sure the room temperature is good. Now, if you're that typical couple or one's hot and one's called what's the solution.

Now there's this wonderful thing. It's called chili pads and different chili blankets and things. I found very helpful, but you can call your side of the bed if your partners, why don't you call that's fine. Feed is probably good for most people. It's when it's lower. Up. And I buy my best sleeps when I'll go to sleep and I'll sleep for 10, 12 hours are when I go camping and I'm like winter camping and I'm up in a year at somewhere and it's 40 degrees in there [00:16:00] and I'm going to be really vulnerable.

Also encourage people to practice, sleep ritual before bed. So I'm get off of screens at least an hour or two before bed, if not more use blue blocker, black glasses turn off all. The in life news, lights and have different filters for blue light or wear the glasses and just keep the lights low at night and don't get on screens and watch TV before bed and make sure your bedroom is just for.

Basically sex and sleep because if you're working in bed and you're associate other things, you're going to be activated all. These are just really simple tips. Taking a hot bath with Epsom salt. It can be really helpful before bed. I've heard people being, talking about taking an ice bath before bed.

And I was like, ah, this is like fun. I heard a couple of people really thinking it was a game changer for them. I don't have a bath that I'm gonna try it when I get one. And then you also need to think about emptying your mind if your mind is I do this every night, I try to empty my mind and I write down all the things that are [00:17:00] on my mind, so I can just lay, let, go for the day and rest.

I think. There are supplements that can be very helpful. Often people are really low in magnesium about 45% population deficient and can extra magnesium been very helpful, making sure that, if you're struggling, you might need a little metal to Tonin. You might need try some herbs that can be very helpful, the real area and passionflower, and Magnolia.

There's a lot of herbs that can be very helpful for sleep. Also horrible are finding CBD very helpful for sleep, which is on the active component of marijuana, which is the CBD instead of THC. Okay.

Working with my patients that come up with what the strategies are, and on top of that, I look for the causes. Are they hypoglycemic? Do they have menopause? Is there a thyroid look? Do they mercury poisoning? Do they have some form of depression that's causing sleep disruption and what is the root cause of their depression and their, sorry.

And that's really important to figure out. Cause if you don't, you're just going to be putting a bandaid on [00:18:00] that problem without solving.

Whitney: Yes. And on that note, since there's a lot of different things that you can try and experiment with, what are, what's your take on all these different sleep trackers that are out there? Like bands watches. There's the rings now are those helpful?

Dr. Hyman: I've tried them all and they can be pretty accurate. Something like even ordering is probably one of the most accurate. And I think that There are other devices like apple watch will track your sleep. And there is devices that you can get to put by your bed and track your sleep.

If they checked your sleep. If you use all of it, once you're on, you're going to get a lot of kind of variation in the readings, but you get a general ballpark of where you're at. So I can tell I'm snoring. There's one that picks up snoring. I can tell like how many times they get up. I can tell my heart rate variability is.

Resting heart rate and then also how much deep sleep I had REM sleep. And how long it took me [00:19:00] to fall asleep. So those, I think those are helpful for even to understand what their sleep architecture is, but long-term, I think they can be distracting and obsessive. So while I did use them for a while, I stopped and I thought my sleep got better when I stopped. So just maybe me, but I don't know.

Whitney: Yeah. That's fascinating. I was thinking about getting the Oura ring, but maybe

Dr. Hyman: I like it. I like it. I love it. I like, I, the only thing, I don't think anything bad about it. I think it's great. I think the super instruct. But once you learn what's going on, then, oh, so for example, I learned that if I drink alcohol, that I will, my heart rate variability will suck and my sleep will suck.

And so I'm like, oh, I don't want to drink alcohol and sleep is more important to me than. And we think that's really, that was an insight I had or that, my depending on what I was doing that day, I could tag the things that were screwing up my sleep.

Jack: I like to try different things. I've been trying. Melatonin supplements. I've tried the CBD oil in and they do work to make you feel [00:20:00] arrested, but what's impacted me the most. And I don't really have sleep issues, but I've noticed that I've started. Intermitting fasting.

That's I don't have a real sleep issue, but I did notice a change that when I started intermittent fasting, that I would fall asleep. So obviously nutrition has a big part in how we sleep at night as well. I just thought it was interesting that, I didn't, I wasn't intermittent fasting specifically for sleep, but I did notice that I get shut out much sooner when I go to bed. And I think that's definitely always a good thing.

Whitney: Yeah, this is it's all a big experiment. It sounds and I think my big takeaway is that the tracking can be helpful, but consulting with a doctor sounds like a really good route because there could be a lot of underlying issues here. And Jack, I know you have another question that I wanted to give a heads up to the audience that we're going to turn on the hand raising features. Bring some [00:21:00] people up to ask some more questions. Jack, did you want to ask one more question before we do?

Jack: It's seems obvious in a sense, but I know that there's a huge relationship between sleep and weight matters. And I, what's your thoughts on that? Cause they know it's a vicious circle. I think if you don't get good sleep, the binge eating, you end up eating more carbs and all that it's. How do people cut that off too, to try to have that balance it's I think it's a big challenge for a lot of people.

Dr. Hyman: It really is. I think, the sleeping way to relate to in many ways if you're overweight, it can affect your sleep because you'll be a higher risk for sleep apnea.

You might have more sort of insulin resistance and get disruptions in cortisol and insulin at the night time and blood sugar looking to shop your sleep. But conversely, lack of sleep will cause awaking. So how does that work? One of the most elegant there were. Where they took college kids who were basically healthy kids and they gave [00:22:00] them a healthy one group of a healthy diet.

They gave them both, basically a healthy die and they went here, eat this stuff. And they're like, okay, we're going to deprive one group of sleep and the other group not. And the group that got the private sleep and stuff like six hours instead of eight or five hours, whatever, what they found was that their hormones were different during the day.

That you were craving more carbohydrates and more sugar. And I know this from a personal experience. Cause when I was, I used to be an emergency room. Doctor delivered a lot of babies, like 500 babies over my lifetime and when you're not sleeping and you're up all night and you're working the next day, you're in the ER, working late tonight at two in the morning.

All you want is sugar and carbs. Muffins bagels, candy, like whatever, like ice cream. I used to have I used to go, I'm trying to embarrass a skater back of the Navy where I really was doing what I'm doing now. 30 years ago when I was in the ER, I would literally have before I go to my night shift, I would have a quadruple espresso, a half a pint of ice cream and a giant chocolate chip cookie.

And then. [00:23:00] Go to work at 11 at night, five in the morning, and that was not good for sleep. It was great for not falling asleep on my patients, but I think it's so important for people to understand that sleep will hugely impact your weight. And I think the circadian rhythm, is so important as mentioned earlier, it's such a critic.

Concept for people because we are biological organisms. We have cycles, we have rhythms, we have chronobiology, which is literally the function of different organs at different times. And even chronotherapy for cancer. In other words, different chemo drugs will work better at different times of the day.

Depending on the organ and the patient and the activity, which is fascinating to me, which is an old sort of ancient Vedic kind of concept. But they're using it in medicine. Now you can just Google chronobiology and learn about it, but it's so important and we've so disrupted them with erratic schedules with off hours sleeping.

So people will stay up all night or they'll stay, they'll go to bed late one night and a little bit earlier, [00:24:00] and I don't have to down schedules. That's not good. So yeah. And then you want to make sure people get getting good. Sleep is the weight management strategy, because if you don't it's really, it really can turn into a disaster for people.

Whitney: Yeah, we don't want that. So I appreciate you going so into depth about all of this, and we do have some. One was sent to me in advance and then I'm going to bring up Jason Wrobel Monique Rhodes, and I'll open up the hand-raising for anyone that here on clubhouse with us to ask their questions. The one that was very common that kept coming up was the best position for deep sleep and whether or not it's okay to sleep on your side.

Is it better to sleep on your back? Have you research this at all and do you feel like there is an ideal position for sleeping and if that impacts how.

Dr. Hyman: Yeah, I think it really depends on the person. Some people to find sleeping on their back. And if you have sleep apnea, that can be.

Some people, we actually [00:25:00] want them to sleep on their side. Like we, we have a very cheap treatment for sleep. Apnea is called a tennis ball trick. Essentially you saw a tennis ball into a t-shirt, then you wear the t-shirt and then you roll on your back or tennis ball bothers you. So you roll back over here.

The other thing is the, the stomach sleeping is probably not great for most people, but a modified side stomach sleeper is probably the best. But if you can sleep on your back and you don't see that's okay, too.

Whitney: Fantastic. Thank you. All right. We have Jason Wrobel up here to ask the next question.

Jason Wrobel: Hey Jack Whitney, Dr. Hyman. Thanks for having me. My name is Jason. I'm a cooking channel TV host, plant-based chef, and a person who personally has struggled with insomnia on and off for many years. So my question to you, Dr. Hyman is when it comes to our mental health specifically related to the function of our neuro-transmitters.

How does. Sleep or lack thereof directly impact our mental health and our neurotransmitter function. What's the correlation?

Dr. Hyman: It's huge. I Your serotonin [00:26:00] levels, your dopamine levels, your catecholomines all either your transmitters. Regulated by a complex web of your body systems and sleep disrupts those in dramatic ways and weaves to often depression, anxiety one of the things that people don't realize is it's so much anxiety and mood disorders can derive from lack of sleep.

If you don't sleep, you just feel depressed and tired and shitty all day. If you're get a great night's sleep, you're like take on the world. And we know this from the data that the sleep disruption is both a cause and a consequence of things like depression, anxiety. I think it hugely impacts our cognitive function.

In addition to just sleep, when you're, there was a one study I saw where they looked at sharpshooters who were cyprus, basically in the military. And they found that those snipers that had sleep deprivation, where they would deprive all of them of an hour progressively every other night.

So they'd get, eight, they were like 99% accurate in seven. They were like 90% accurate in six hours. They were like 70% accurate and less than they were like, it was like, basically. From the vaccine was like 50% accurate. [00:27:00] So it really dramatically impacted their performance. And often it said that if you're super private, it's like being drunk that you should.

And I can tell you driving sleep deprived and I've done it for years. When I was working in emergency, when I was younger I almost, I remember coming home from one shift in long residency, literally almost drove into into off the road into a railing. An exit from an highway.

And I was like, this is dangerous. This is really dangerous. So I think secret probation is and poor sleep quality and all the things that we talked about earlier about, I think that disrupts sleep are so important, but we get a handle on, in their own lives because your life is only going to be good as your quality of sleep.

Whitney: Well said next up we have Monique, I'm going to invite her up to speak. Thank you so much for that. Great question, Jason. And then after Monique anybody is welcome to raise their hands.

Monique Rhodes: Hello. Hi, Whitney. Thank you so much, Dr. Hyman. It's very interesting what you're talking about and it's perfect.

What you've just said, because the work that I teach is I teach people how to be happier. [00:28:00] And one of the exercises that I do with my students is to track a series of variables in their day to bring their awareness to what has the biggest impact on their happiness and overwhelmingly what I see. The variable that has the biggest impact on their happiness is sleep, which is probably no surprise to you.

But my question is this, how can my clients go one step further and become conscious of exactly which stimulants are affecting them. So you said that you found your head an issue with mercury, but the average person may well struggle to figure something like this out. So what process would you suggest for people to actually figure out what is causing them? These sleep issues?

Dr. Hyman: Yeah, I I think first of all, following the basic things and I think. A blog I've written, I think it was like 20 tips for better sleep or something. And it goes through the basic things that you can do on your own [00:29:00] without having to go see a doctor. And that's a place I would start for most people.

It's all the things we've talked about, get rid of a lot of the A lot of the things that are the stimulants and the habits and create a sleep ritual and sleep hygiene, all those things, right? The things that we talked about, the regular rhythm of sleep and using your bed for sleep and romance and creating a quiet, peaceful, dark space of winning Campion, avoiding alcohol, getting exposure to sunlight in the morning, not eating three hours before bed, not getting bigger ski at night.

Writing all your worries down taking a hot bath, getting massage. You can get one out of the house using a hot water bottle on your, so it can help, watch the medications that interfere with sleep, that are stimulants and then cold medication, steroids, headache, medication, things like that talked about using magnesium and all these things.

And melatonin even, guided meditation and relaxation, CDs. That's great. I actually use binaural beats once I had back surgery. And I was having trouble sleeping. So I would put on this like binaural beat thing at night, and then my headphones and I just would go right to spec the sleep was really great.

There's all kinds of things like that. If you're still [00:30:00] in trouble and you're doing all those things, there may be things you need to get checked for. You need to be tested for food, sensitivities, thyroid problems, menopause, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue issues, heavy metals various kinds of stress disorders and cognitive disorders can help affect.

Then you need to see a functional medicine practitioner and I'd encourage people to try to find one. Yeah, but that's what I would recommend.

Whitney: Thank you. And thank you for asking that Monique. Great question. We have a few people in the queue and as a reminder to anyone else listening live on clubhouse, you can feel free to raise your hand and get in line.

And also as a reminder, we are recording this for the Essentia: Rise and Thrive. So you will be able to listen to it over again. And if you come up to speak, we just want to know that's giving us permission for you to be on the recording. So next up we have Kareena.

Kareena: Great. Thank you. My question is, I've never had problems sleeping. I sleep really well, [00:31:00] a nine even 10 hours. Like I'll sleep really well. My thing is that I always seem to have a late schedule. Like my that's like my regular rhythm or something.

I don't know, but I sleep very late at night and I will wake up late in the afternoon. And as much as I want to get. On an early schedule. I just can't seem to do it. And I wake up really groggy and I can't really function during the day. And I can sleep the same eight hours waking up early, like at seven o'clock in the morning and I can't function for some reason.

And I've literally had to accept jobs that are later on so that I can accommodate my sleep schedule. Which is crazy. Have you yeah.

Dr. Hyman: That's crazy. So what time do you go to bed and what time do you normally wake up now?

Kareena: I can easily go to sleep like at three o'clock in the morning [00:32:00] and I can wake up at noon or one, 1:00 PM.

On a funny note. I just recently found out that I asked my mama what time I was born. And she said, I was born at one o'clock in the afternoon. And I'm like that's funny. Cause I always like to wake up at one o'clock in the afternoon.

Dr. Hyman: That's crazy. I think this is not an uncommon problem. I don't know what you'd need means that you're doing too many things, but the best way to do it, it's just to move your sleep schedule earlier and earlier. So then when you stop at three, you go to sleep at two the next night, and then try that for a few days would have been at one until they slowly move your schedule.

Let's see if we can get it back before 11 and sometimes you can use melatonin to help you get sleepy, or you can use CBD to help you get sleepy to reset melatonin and a good reset for your clock. So that often would work thing a half a milligram, two for three milligrams of melatonin that should help you reset, but there's [00:33:00] no magic to it.

It's just looking at what are your habits that you do at night? Are you drinking or eating? Are you watching TV or your computer, or what are the habits you have that are keeping you up? And then you can start to slowly shift your time clock in a different direction.

Whitney: Kareena that makes you feel better. I am recovered. I am someone who recovered from that schedule. And now I wake up at 6:00 AM, but for many years I used to have a very similar schedule. As you described. I never thought I would be an early morning person, but now I am. Phenomenal. So I can be a, some glimmer of hope for you.

Kareena: Thank you. Yes. All right. I'll try the middle of town and I actually haven't tried that, so thank you. Thank you,

Jack: KareenaI love that you've prioritize, sleep so much. I can just imagine that the interview is declining a job because of the times. Yeah.

Whitney: All right. We have four people in the queue, so I'm going to bring that up and we [00:34:00] may have time for more. That may be all we have today, but we'll see where we're at after these next four people. Thank each of you for coming up and Corrina for asking your wonderful question. And we'll go to the next one.

Now, if you would like to introduce yourself, when you come up here, give some context, we'll spend a few minutes entering your question. And remember that this is being recorded and we look forward to you being part of the conversation.

Guest Question: Thank you very much, Whitney. Thank you, Jack. Dr. Hyman, just wanted to ask you mentioned supplements. What do you think of Brahmi psyllium, husk and cilantro.

Dr. Hyman: What was the first one? Brahmi the, her Brahmi B R E H M. Oh, that's a new one on

Guest Question: it's an Ari Vedic. Her yeah, I buy,

Dr. Hyman: I can't think off hand for the, [00:35:00] okay I'm familiar with that, but psyllium husk is actually. By, and it's this fiber, I don't know. I don't know if there's any particular question you have about it is great for digestive issues. Constipation. If you drink a lot of water with it, it's, it's, it can help with lowering blood sugar, cholesterol, and many other benefits.

So I think it's a bit cilantro, usually a food. I had a friend who had an iron storage problem and he told me he'd do cilantro for. Months six months and it all his iron levels come down with. So it's a natural Q later. I think those are both helpful things. They're not, I don't think of those as supplements though. I think of it more as like foods or, fiber.

Whitney: I just looked up, brought me, it looks like the other name for it isGotu kola.

Dr. Hyman: Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. Gotu kola. I know that I'm yeah. I was like, I don't know how I missed that one, but yeah, I know that's a one, that's an effects cognitive function and half this brain and cognitive function.

So I think those are all fine. I'd be worried about the adiabatic herbs in a way, because unless the source and how they're processed, they often are containing heavy metals. And I've seen [00:36:00] many people with heavy mental issues as a result of taking on.

Yeah, of course. And, but, I think people don't realize a lot of companies will put actually metal in the products in India. So there's concerns about that, that I have, but mostly it's. Okay.

Whitney: Thanks for coming up. We're going to bring up the next question here and then we'll have two more after that and see if we have time for any more.

Thank you all for participating in Dr. Hyman for all your fantastic answers. I'm learning so much.

All right. Could you say pronounce your name? Cause I, I might mispronounce it. So the next question, if you could introduce yourself.

Ignatius: Sure. Sure. Yeah. I'm Ignatius. I'm from India and yeah, thanks for this discussion. And thank you doctor. I really liked your tips. So I had a question specifically to towards your gut health and your sleep.

[00:37:00] I've noticed in myself, there seems to be a great relationship between gut health and sleep. Like I have acid reflux and I've noticed that I've even noticed, like if I'm taking, I've been taking PPIs for you. But I've been trying to get off them, but I've noticed if I'm taking strong PPIs, like my sleep is much better, but when I'm trying to get off of them, my sleep is much, much worse.

And I've also noticed that maybe probiotics help a little sometimes, but not all the time. So I was just wondering if you could speak a little bit on gut health and.

Dr. Hyman: That's a fantastic question. I'm so happy. Most people have no clue that what's going on inside their gut and their microbiome. Can impact your sleep, but your microbiome actually is so important because your gut and your brain are tightly connected and there's something called the gut brain axis or the second rain.

And when there's an imbalance in the gut, flora, which drives inflammation, anything that drives inflammation [00:38:00] can affect sleep and it can also trigger inflammatory metabolites that affect the brain that. It actually caused sleep disruption and effect this stress response, heart rate, sleep structure. So you know really important.

Serotonin is a precursor of melatonin and most of the serotonin your body has made in your gut while you're not. And you're like, I think your immune system and then sleep issues are so the immune system and the microbiome and the sleep connection is being mapped out. Definitely your gut plays a huge role in sleep.

And if your guts and healthier, you're not going to be really able to sleep really well. So having a more diverse gut microbiome, we call it gut microbiome. Diversity really helps sleep. And so taking probiotics and building a prebiotic and probiotic diet can really help and also conversely if you're sleep deprived it can adversely affect your gut too.

And I know this I [00:39:00] just, as a doctor who never slept I. I know that my gut would often feel that if I hadn't slept and they would have affected both ways, so good sleep and mood are so critical and they are really connected to your overall gut health. So keeping your gut microbiome healthy and the inflammation down near circadian rhythm of properly regulated is so important.

And the gut microbiome imbalances can cause that if you have any reflux, I would also say that, there may be reasons Why you're having that and that there may be a cause of reflux. And I've written a lot about it, even on my website conduct time.com and you can look at that I've also done it on a podcast from the doctor's pharmacy.

You can listen to that on reflux and in here out functional medicine approach. Because most of my patients, I get them off of those drugs, while they help in the short term are hugely problematic because they shut up out. And we need that in order to absorb minerals, vitamins, I just protein and many other things.

So when I was in medical school, those drugs came out and we were told by the drug reps, never used them for more than six weeks. They're [00:40:00] highly dangerous to use lighter and now people just stay on Brera, and that's terrible. So I think we really need to get people off of those. And most of my patients can come off them pretty easily by fixing the root causes with a function.

Whitney: It's nice to hear that there's hope and so many solutions for this. Thank you so much for that. Great question. Next step. We have Mary and then we'll have Natalie after that and we'll probably be wrapping up at that time, Mary. Thanks for coming up with.

Mary: Oh thanks for having me up here. So I have my basis in nutrition. So I'm a nutritionist. So a lot of this fascinates me and forgive me if you already answered this, just because I'm also working. So I was trying to listen to most of it, but I feel like the biggest complaint that I get with my clients is like waking up at 3:00 AM. And I know that there is like a chordal cells. Like our cortisol starts going up around that time.

So I was wondering if you find that with your clients, like your biggest complaint is a 3m wake up and if you think it's core, [00:41:00] like correlated with that cortisol spike and that like stress reduction might be the biggest thing, like biggest suggestion for that, or yeah, I guess your thoughts around that.

Dr. Hyman: Yeah, I do think that is the most long of reason for people struggling with the streamer cup is people are tired words, so they're exhausted. They go to sleep, they fall asleep and they're still on a stress response so that their body kicks it back in. So I think it's super important for people to.

Really the stress before battle through meditation, through stretches and yoga, who guided imagery through hot baths, through getting off screens, getting saw shoe, something really soothing and useful. And that will often bring down the cortisol because it was just go, and then jumping ahead, and you might see fingers Austen, but you won't be really functioning the way you want.

Whitney: Wonderful. Thank you so [00:42:00] much. And thank you, Mary, for asking that. Yes. Thank you. All right. We have, I think one more question. We'll see where we're at. Time-wise we have Natalie up. No pressure, Natalie, to make a great, I have a question after that. So don't worry. No, no major pressure for being the very last question. So come on up to stage and I'm really looking forward to hearing from you.

Natalie: I wouldn't be actually believe it or not. First of all, hello to everyone. Jack Whitney and Dr. Hyman. I work in the PCLs field and intimate resistance basically. And I also have this particular. Person I'm helping right now.

And she's having the same problem as Mary was telling the spike at 3:00 AM and she cannot sleep after that score. She's a very stressful person. She is stressed out most of the time she connected. She wants to control everything around her. Of course, that's going to cause more [00:43:00] stress and anxiety and we're working on the breathing part, the reprogramming her mind trying to get her out of that state, of course, through foods and exercise, her body is, looks really fit. So I wouldn't say there's much as other things, but the stress. So is there anything Dr. Hyman that we could do before? The exercises eating well. Maybe some supplements I've heard about Mila. Toni, she's doing melatonin is not working yet. Apparently her cortisol level. Of course, this was really high.

Dr. Hyman: Yeah I think, there's a lot of people need work on their adrenals and that is often a place to start. And I've written a lot about it. Again, you can go to my blog. A lot of it is all free, so you can just go climb in adrenals and you'll find it, or go to doctors, pharmacy. We've done a lot of podcasts on adrenal dysfunction.

And so it's not easy to deal with that. And, if your thyroid's [00:44:00] off, you just take a thyroid pill or do a few things and it often gets better. But if you don't like with cortisol and adrenals, they take a lot more time, a lot more effort. You need to really ever circadian. Reset. You need to wake up and go to sleep.

At the same time, you need to have light exposure in the morning. You need to be off stimulants. You need to be off caffeine, alcohol, sugar and you need to take certain nutrients like the B complex vitamins and vitamin C and zinc and pantothenic acid. And a lot of the herbs that can be very helpful, like Rhodiola and caucus and.

Even a lot of other things can be very helpful. I written a lot about that. I think just the idea that it's going to take work is important. People understand, but.

Whitney: Wonderful. Again, lots of hope here, which, there seems to be so many solutions here and I'm so grateful that you've covered it. And of course, in your podcast and your books, you have so many great resources on this. Mark. I, we do have one more question from the audience. Somebody messaged me at the back channel, which is [00:45:00] Jason's, I'm gonna bring.

To ask one more question then I'll see if Jack has anything else he wants to address. And we'll wrap up here. Thank you, everyone who has joined us today and asked wonderful questions. This has been a really informative discussion and we're thrilled to have Dr. Hyman here with us. All right. Now, Jason, you are the one with the pressure

Jason Wrobel: all right. I'm going to, I'm going to try and pull it through. Last year I read an article Dr. Hyman, that a nasty. Released some interesting research about naps and they found that they did some studies with their pilots where they slept for about 26 minutes and found increases in alertness by about 54% and job performance by about 34%.

How do you feel about naps? Are they beneficial? Do you personally enjoy taking them and not, can they be a replacement for a good night's sleep, but how effective do you think they really. Taking naps,[00:46:00]

Dr. Hyman: I'm in Spain right now and I was nearly before. I everything shuts down from two to six and all the stores. He goes home at lunch and they go take a nap, but it's part of these cultures for a long time. I do think for some people, napping can be very helpful.

I think if you're really healthy and you feel good and you get adequate sleep at night, most people don't need a nap, but it can be a helpful tool to help reset people. I actually have. No, I often will try and take a nap, but I really sometimes don't call asleep and that can be fine, just resting or going into this Twilight state and reset me.

But what I found really effective is meditation. And I do that every. I heard it's tremendously helped my sleep. And I often, if I'm, I've had a busy time or I didn't have enough sleep the night before, like I literally will go and I think I'll go into sleep. I call it an applicating. [00:47:00] I'm sitting out and fall over.

I almost feel like I'm sleeping. But it's another state of crisis. I like, I didn't see that. From NASA and you'd definitely get, a significant improvement in job performance. Like 54% by taking a little shallow, even closing your eyes, you don't actually have to fall right asleep.

Just like laying there. And I think I've found that really helpful. Just close your eyes, lay down, maybe do a guided imagery meditation. Sometimes what I'll do is like a yoga nidra. I just put my headphone on. I'll just get like on race kinds of apps or, when you get on YouTube, Let's listen to a guidance deep relaxation. Those can be very helpful. And as effective as

Jack: I've seen, some teams actually have a nap rotation. So the, and they would have, but they would color code them from a green, yellow, red. The intensity of training and they would offset their cycle with naps and basically impose the players that they had to almost get a forced nap.

And obviously some of the [00:48:00] players needed assistance with that, whether it be audio headsets, and really try to get them into a different state, but they were offsetting a lot of their strenuous training with naps as well. I bet I don't have the background on it to know what's about it, but I see it in, into practice in use.

And actually I, before I did a triathlon years ago, right before starting, I took a 20 minute signs, a sensory nap right before hitting the trail. I thought that was helpful as well, but very interesting than Nassau data.

Dr. Hyman: Yeah, maybe.

Whitney: Thanks for that. Great question, Jason. It makes me want to take a nap sometime today, or maybe not, or maybe, I try to fight off the nap so that I can sleep better at night, but it depends on the day.

 Meditation is something I strive to do more often. So another reason to make it a priority. Thank you Jason, for that question and thank you for everyone else who has come up today to ask and Dr. Harmon, this was so wonderful. We really appreciate you spending the time here with [00:49:00] us today for everyone here, this has been recorded and it's going to be up on Essentia's brand new podcast called Rise and Thrive.

And there's a link to. My profile and Jack's if you want to check that out, it's myessentia.com/podcast. And you can also get sign up to get notified about the upcoming guests that we have next week. We have a special session on indoor air quality, and I'm sure that's another element that Dr. Hyman is as passionate about in terms of setting up your room for success.

So we're going to focus on that. Do you have a favorite air filter or way of purifying the air? Dr

Dr. Hyman: Hyman. Yeah. I've put in a whole system in my house, but also love the air doctor, which is quite good.

Whitney: Wonderful. And Jack, any other final words before we wrap up today?

Jack: Really, he wants to thank everyone and especially mark really thank you for joining us and being a part of it. Again, always been. A big follower of yours and love what you do [00:50:00] and appreciate that you really joined us here today. Yeah. And

Dr. Hyman: of course, thanks for having me, Dr. your mattress cause that, that, that honestly changed my life. What am I working on right now?

Whitney: Yeah, what's coming up new for you and what's the best way for someone to find out what's coming down the pipeline with what your.

Dr. Hyman: Just, they can sign up Dr. hyman.com is where my kind of comedy central is, and then I have my doctor's pharmacy podcast and then that's a great way to access content. Yeah. And keep tracking me that way. And I've got my weekly newsletters. And so the Mark's picks is great for people that want to like. Thinking about lately and products I like, or the things that I've been using. So yeah, those are good places to start.

Whitney: Wonderful. We'll be sure to link to those in the podcast show notes, which again is at myessentia.com/podcast. Thank you again for everyone being here today, and we hope to see you next week. Same time, [00:51:00] same place to discuss indoor air quality.