How to Fix Your Sleep Naturally with John Neustadt, ND

How to Fix Your Sleep Naturally with John Neustadt, ND

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Hey there, welcome back to the EnergyMD Podcast where we help you resolve your chronic fatigue syndrome and long COVID naturally so that you can get back to living your best life. So really excited today because one of the causes of chronic fatigue syndrome is sleep issues. And so we're going to be talking with a sleep expert today, Dr. John Neustadt. So let's learn a little bit about him. So Dr. John Neustadt, ND.

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is the founder and president of Nutritional Biochemistry, Inc. NBI and a leading expert in both osteoporosis and sleep health. He earned his naturopathic medical degree from Bastyr University where he received the Founders Award for academic and clinical excellence. Dr. Neustadt is a number one Amazon bestselling author with over a hundred published medical articles and four health books, including Fracture Proof Your Bones, A Comprehensive Guide to Osteoporosis.

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He's also a pioneer in sleep science, having developed Sleep Relief, the only biphasic time release sleep supplement on the market. Dr. Neustadt's integrative approach to health and practical strategies for better sleep have helped thousands improve their wellbeing. Dr. John, thanks so much for having me on, or thanks so much for coming on and joining me today. It's a pleasure, thank you. Call me John, please. Absolutely, and call me Evan.

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All right, great. So we're gonna be talking about sleep today. You know, about 95 % of people with chronic fatigue syndrome have sleep issues. So I think this is gonna be really pertinent to a lot of people. So I always like to start with what normal looks like and then we can kind of go into how things get dysfunctional. So what does normal sleep look like for people, for humans? That's a great question. And it depends on where they are, where we are in our life cycles, how old we are. Anybody with kids can tell you that, you know, a child can be...

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eating a meal and suddenly be in a deep sleep where you can't wake them up. They just instantly are asleep, which I'm envious of at this age of my 50. And then as we get older, what happens is it can become more challenging to fall asleep and it can become more challenging to get into that deeper restorative sleep like those children can get into quite easily. So normal sleep as we get older and for adults is considered that

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you know, up to maybe about 30 minutes to fall asleep is considered normal. You know, beyond that, can be, there could be issues that are posing challenges for falling asleep. But I like to see, I conceptualize this in two different ways. One is falling asleep and one is staying asleep. And people can have challenges in either or, or both realms. And then once somebody is asleep, there are four different phases of sleep. So sleep,

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The beginning of sleep or sleep onset is also called sleep initiation. And then the phases are numbered. So phase one is that sort of light sleep, or maybe you're drifting in and out and the brain waves start to change. And then you get a phase two or stage two, which is still considered a relatively light stage of sleep. And then stage three and four are the deeper stages of sleep. And then you enter REM, the rapid eye movement, dreaming stage of sleep. But those deep stages of

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restorative sleep are stages three and four where the cellular debris that junk that can accumulate from just cellular respiration can get cleaned out. Our body's cleaning mechanisms take over during those deeper stages of sleep, which we need not only for healthy cellular activity and metabolism, but also it's where learning and memory consolidation happens. So getting in those deeper stages of sleep are phenomenal.

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for learning and memory. And hopefully somebody wakes up normal or optimal is considered about seven to eight hours of sleep a night, eight hours typically, but that depends on the stage of somebody's life as well. Babies need a lot more, teenagers need less than babies. And as we get older, for adults, it's considered about eight hours of sleep. But there are two ways also to think about sleep. One is the quantity of sleep and the other is the quality of sleep.

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So somebody can get the number of hours that technically should be enough, eight hours of sleep, that's the quantity. But if that quality of sleep is not there, they're staying in those lighter stages of sleep, like stage one and stage two, then they're still not gonna wake refreshed in the morning. Yeah, I have quite a few people who tell me that they sleep 10 hours a night and then they wake up and they're still not well rested. Yeah, and I've seen that a lot as well.

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Yeah. And so then when people have dysfunction in their sleep, what stages is it typically? Do we know? So it depends. for chronic fatigue syndrome, I know you see a lot of that. They tend to stay in those lighter stages of sleep, the stage to sleep, for example. And I like to talk to people, don't necessarily need a sleep study where they go into a clinic and they spend the night and they get

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hooked up to wires and it monitors their brain activity during the night and their wavelengths. But you can just ask them, do you get woken up with very light noises? Are you a light sleeper? Does the slightest sound wake you up? And that's an indication that they are not getting into that deep restorative sleep. In addition to the comments that are made like, don't feel rested. I wake up and I'm tired all day and I just never feel like I can get enough.

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That's an indication for me. As people get older though, naturally in the elderly, they're not getting into that deeper stage four REM stage of sleep as often. So those, you get a shift in the stages of sleep and how much time people are spending in them as they age. And so, as I mentioned early on in this interview, babies when they're young, they get into that deep

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deep sleep, anybody who is, you you're trying to wake them up and they just won't budge and you're having a hard time getting that they're in that deep stage of sleep at that moment. And then as we get older, it becomes more challenging to just naturally get into those deeper stages of sleep. So as people are getting older, their hormones are going down, nutrients are potentially getting deficient, they get exposed to more toxins, are all of these things playing a role in why their sleep is getting more dysfunctional? Or is there something else?

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No, there are. And medications is one of those things that I would put in there in addition, especially, there are certain medications that are known to disturb sleep, actually a long list of them, and other diseases that are known, comorbidities that people can get that have a sleep component to them. And I'll just mention one of the medications, beta blockers are a common medication that's prescribed for heart issues and hypertension.

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they can, they are, they deplete melatonin and there are even clinical trials published where, people start taking the medication. They then have a hard time sleeping and then they supplement them with melatonin and they, their sleep gets better. Interesting. And so then in terms of, you know, oftentimes I'm replacing people's hormones in the morning and oftentimes that helps recreate a circadian rhythm. Can you talk a little bit about like what a circadian rhythm is?

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Yeah, circadian rhythm is our natural daily production of hormones. It's cyclical. So we're not always producing a hormone at the same concentration throughout the day. It fluctuates at ebbs and flows. So cortisol, for example, is a hormone that people probably have heard about for stress. It's a stress hormone, but it naturally also increases our natural daily production of it in the morning.

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So it goes up and it peaks, I believe at about nine or 10 in the morning. Correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a long time I've looked at it. I think that's about right. It starts going up about eight, nine, and then that's the peak in the day and then it decreases throughout the day. And one of the challenges is that people, if they are really tired in the morning and they're not waking up, but they're wired at night, that could indicate that that daily circadian rhythm has been flipped, meaning it's actually

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spiking for those people in night when it should be low and it's low in the morning when it should be high. Melatonin is another hormone. It's a dietary supplement. It's considered nutrient, but it is a hormone that increases based on a daily rhythm. So it increases and the sun goes down and P in about 10 o'clock at night is when it's going up. that is a primary role is for

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thought to be for sleep initiation or sleep onset. And then it peaks at two in the morning and it goes down from there. And so by 6 a.m., it's basically, you know, mostly out of your system. And those are just two hormones. You other hormones have daily, you know, circadian rhythms or some of them like, you know, people are familiar with in terms of menstrual cycles. And women can have monthly cycles in terms of the fluctuation of estrogen and progesterone depending on the time of the month.

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So it's very common to have these rhythms and these cycles and hormones. So then how do you, where do you start with somebody who's having a sleep issue? Are you recreating the rhythm? How do you like to do that? I got through a series of questions and asked them first, they having difficulty? I started to kind of the big, what I see is the big picture. Like, are you having difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep? So difficulty falling asleep is called sleep phase.

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onset, delayed sleep phase onset. They're having a hard time going to sleep. And some people who say, yeah, it takes me 20 minutes and I'm tossing and turning, you know, that's not really pathological. So part of it is sometimes just setting the expectations. And then, or is it difficulty staying asleep or, you know, what's called, or I'm not going to get into the technical stuff too much, but so, or staying asleep and then, or they could have both. So.

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what happens is within those categories and there can be different reasons. on difficulty falling asleep, what we can see is that A, they might be what's called wired but tired. So if they have been under chronic stress, if that cortisol has been flipped where it's high at night, if they have, and that's common in chronic fatigue syndrome,

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is that people can have that feeling. And I think many people have, and maybe they pulled a couple all-nighters or they've been studying and cramming for exams or something like that. And then they try and fall asleep and they're just laying there and they can't, they're exhausted and they know their body's tired, but they're not able to fall asleep. So that's what's called wired but tired. And that gives us an indication that there could be a cortisol imbalance. Or it could be simply they have

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muscle tightness. And we see that a lot, especially with people who are working on computers all day or have old sports injuries. If somebody can't get comfortable because they have muscle tightness or pain in addition to that, somewhere in their body, that could keep them from falling asleep or getting into a deep restful sleep as well. that's another clue of a different approach than just looking at the hormones of how to deal with those.

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know, muscle tightness or pain and discomfort that they might be in. It might be they have an old neck injury that's acting up. It might be that their pillow is not the right, you know, type of pillow for them. And that can change over time as well. It could be in terms of not being able to fall asleep or even stay asleep, that it's not the right temperature in the bedroom. So it's called sleep hygiene. You very simple things can be discussed and fixed if that's the cause.

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And the temperature that most people seem to be comfortable with is like 67 to 69 degrees, somewhere around there. And it's a personal preference. It's lowering the temperature, making sure it's a quiet room. It's a dark room. And one of the things that I see that's a real problem these days are people on screens before they go to sleep. So especially their phones or a tablet. And studies have looked at this. And one study that had volunteers reading on an e-reader, tablet before bed, and another group reading

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old paper books, old fashioned paper, found that those who were reading on the tablets at night before bed, took them 10 minutes longer to fall asleep at night. And when I read the study, I'm like, okay, big deal. mean, 10 minutes, who cares? But that wasn't the most shocking thing. The most shocking thing is what they discovered is that it took them hours longer in the morning to feel fully awake. And when they tested their melatonin, it suppressed their melatonin production.

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And so these people maybe are getting the quantity of hours, it goes back to that quality versus quantity, but they're not getting into that deep restorative sleep and it's taking them hours longer in the morning to feel fully awake. And so getting off of a screen, off of that e-reader, off of your phone, before bed, I like to tell people at least an hour before bed, I think is really important and it's an important recommendation that too often is not being made.

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And that alone can have some important benefits in terms of people's sleep. One other thing that Fitbit did years ago, I was really impressed by this. Fitbit is the sleep tracking technology a lot of people have, and it looked at 6 billion data points. mean, it's an incredible amount of data that these companies who have these sleep trackers have on all these people using them. 6 billion pieces of data. were asking the question, what is associated with

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the best sleep? Is it somebody's latitude, where they are in the world? Is it a male versus female, their age? What is it? And what they determine is that the best predictor of a good night's sleep is whether somebody is going to bed at the same time every night. Training your body that it's time for bed. Because what they found is that

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you know, people tend to go to sleep at about the same time during the week because we all have obligations, whether it's school or work, but then Friday night comes around, Saturday night comes around and people are going out. They're staying up later. They're socializing, maybe they're partying. And by the time Sunday night comes around and they've got to get back onto that weekly schedule, their body believes that, you know, they've flown, it's like they've flown to a different time zone and Fitbit termed this social jet lag.

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And so just getting on that sleep schedule is critically important for healthy sleep and for restorative sleep. So those are some of the things. And then when you look at sleep, staying asleep and getting into that deeper, deeper sleep, there are some things that will help you fall asleep and stay asleep, but keep you from getting into that deeper sleep, which...

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benzodiazepine or benzodiazepine like medications, alprazolam, diazepam, lunesta, those medications that are commonly prescribed for sleep and anxiety will knock people out, absolutely. But they don't get people into that deep restorative sleep. And in fact, they're associated with a high risk of falls and excess mortality and even cancer and dementia risk as people take them.

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So I am not a fan of those. They're conventionally quite popular, but there are other ways to deal with sleep issues that can hopefully correct the problem naturally without having to resort to that. Yeah, I'm excited to get into that in just a second. So then for people who are listening, they're self-identifying that they have an issue either falling asleep or staying asleep. And so then they can go ahead and try these, the sleep hygiene that you recommended, all excellent recommendations.

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And then what do they do if they're still not sleeping well at that time? So let me just mention one more thing about falling asleep. And this can also include staying asleep. People are worrying. They've got a lot of worries and they just can't turn their mind off. Writing it out, writing your list to do the next day, learning how to do deep breathing exercises, learning to meditate, learning stress reduction techniques, cognitive, possibly counseling, cognitive behavioral therapy, other types of

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counseling, EMDR, things like that can be very helpful if a component of that is just people are just so worried and anxious and dealing with that is really important. Now, if people are having a hard time staying asleep, some of those recommendations for falling asleep are the same as staying asleep. Meaning if you are sort of more relaxed and don't have the muscle tension and tightness or the pain, we can get rid of any pain or aches that you have, it's gonna help you

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stay asleep better. If you need a different pillow, for example, and that gets taken care of, then that can help you stay asleep. Making sure that all the sleep hygiene also can help in those realms. And then there are obviously some natural herbs and nutrients that can be used to help keep people asleep or help them relax, help their muscles relax, and just help them get into that.

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deeper stages of restorative sleep that can be helpful. And the other thing I've got to tell you, because I've seen it quite frequently, is it's important to really recognize, and some people want there to be a physical cause. They want to be something physically wrong that they can identify. And that may be the case. You can have more than one thing happening at the same time, as you know. But sometimes what's happening is people's social situation that they're in is just

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creating stress and anxiety in their lives. Maybe they're in a career they hate or a relationship that they are not fulfilled with, or maybe it's an abusive relationship. mean, there are real challenges that some people have that are gonna affect sleep. And it's important that if you can identify and deal with the underlying cause of that, that's wonderful. But there are some instances where it can be more challenging for people to do that. If they have a mortgage and a family and kids and they can't just up and leave their job.

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that they hate and that's an underlying cause. Well, you sometimes it is just important to help provide some strategies, you know, to help them get some better sleep, some strategies to help them manage their finances better or ways to help them feel more in control of their life. Yeah, that's a really big important point. I like to tell people that, you know, after dinner, everything that you should be doing should be thinking about how do you prepare better for sleep? And it's

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It's all about not thinking about things that are stressful, not getting, watching horror films on Netflix, not getting into stressful conversations, right? How can you be a child, childlike mind and have fun? I know that for me, I found that listening to sports commentary is kind of like my happy place. And so it turns off my thinking brain. I listened to sports commentary and it really, I've noticed that it definitely helps with my sleep.

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I love that. love that. me, I try to, when I recognize myself, feeling anxious about something and anxiety, a lot of times is just somebody's imagination of something bad happening in the future. It's not actually here. It's not happening here in our life immediately. And I let go of that. I try and recognize it and do some deep breathing and let go of that or understand that I let go of things that aren't in my control and not pay attention to them. in that

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regard, I've really almost completely shut off the news because it was making me a bit crazy. And I was getting too wrapped up in it. And the other thing too, is exercise, really important. Exercise can help with sleep, exercise can help relieve stress, it can tire the body out. And so that's another thing that I think find really helpful that for me in the evening, my wife and I often will take the dogs for a walk.

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And that's just a nice way to wind down and connect and get some steps in and just kind of wind down for the night. And I've seen some people do better if they exercise in the morning, some people better if they exercise in the evening. I mean, sometimes in the evenings, if you're doing too much strenuous activity, then you're kicking your cortisol up and then the body's confused. It's like, oh, you want me to go to sleep now? And that becomes a little bit of a challenge. Absolutely. Yeah, I've seen that also. And part of that is

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learning your own body. What are the rhythms that work for you? I don't believe there's this, there are patterns, right? And things that go across and many people and recommendations that a lot of people can benefit from, but there is no one size fits all, there's no combination of recommendation that is the best for everyone. And part of it is learning about, I think people tuning in more to their bodies. And we tend to be so in our brains.

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listening to our bodies and honoring them, understanding what we need and when it's time to slow down or when it's time to let go. It's odd in a way for me to be saying this and realizing that in conversations about sleep and in clinical settings about sleep, those sort of conversations, those deep, meaningful conversations and those health impacts of how

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how we are living our lives and its impacts on sleep are often not discussed. And so it is important and the research shows it. And do you have a recommendation? I you just said, you know, connect with your body and understand who you are and what your rhythms are, but do you find that there's a general time that's good for people to go to sleep? So,

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I haven't looked into what is the optimal time. What I've seen in studies in terms of some research that I've taken a look at, but I haven't done a whole survey of it, is about 10 o'clock, nine or 10 o'clock, is typically what I keep seeing. I know for me, having experimented with different things, I love going to bed at 10 o'clock and getting up at five.

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I like getting up early in the morning. It's quiet. It allows me just to start my day with a cup of coffee and relax. And nobody else is up in my family. And my days just feel long and full. And by the time that I go to sleep at night, I've had a full day. And one of the reasons why people are staying up later is, and there's actually a term for this, it's called, I believe it's called revenge insomnia. And it's the revenge part is because people feel like they're unfulfilled. They haven't had a full day.

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Maybe they slept till 11 or 12. And so they're like, I haven't had a full day or they're unhappy with their work. And so they, want to stay up later just to have some time that's, you know, gives them, gives them some joy. Uh, and so that's a real phenomenon, you know, people staying up later, but you know, training your body, getting up maybe earlier before work and going to bed a little, a little earlier and getting up a little earlier to have some of that peaceful, quiet time to yourself. Uh, to me,

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has been where it's my happy place. That's where I feel best. Nice. Yeah. I think a lot of people end up waking up earlier and they try to fight it by continuing to go to bed at the time that they've always gone to bed. I know that that happened to me and I had to start accepting it that, five o'clock is my new awake time.

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And so I just had to start going to bed a little bit earlier. And so now for me, 930, 945 really is more of the sweet spot for me. And once I accepted that, then all of a sudden I, and I moved that time forward and I told all my friends, you know, we make a joke. They're like, oh, it's almost pumpkin time. Isn't it, Evan? You know, I was like, I turned into a pumpkin at nine o'clock because I got to get out of there to get home and, and get ready for bed. You know, so.

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I've kind of negotiated this with my friends so that they know that this is really a priority for me so that I can get that sleep and my body is waking up at five o'clock and then I do my meditation and all those things to get my day started. So I love that. And that's more in line with, you know, kind of over the millennia and evolution, you know, how humans lived before the invention of lights and electricity. You know, now we flip a switch, we have 24 hour lights and electricity, 24 hour entertainment. And

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You know, before all of that, you when the sun would go down, it was time for sleep and the sun came up. It was time to get up in our natural, you know, we talked about circadian rhythm of those hormones. It mimics that that's the natural sort of ebb and flow of day and night as well. And we were, we have evolved in our hormones mirror that. Yeah. I have seen people who

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Other things that kind of interfere with that sleep can be some of these other modern technologies, whether it's dirty electricity or EMFs or smart meters. Is that something you've seen as well? You know, I haven't really looked at that too much. I just know that in terms of, you know, EMFs and people's phones and tablets, as I talked about, I recommend that. I do know people who are much more

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you know, in tune with general EMF exposure. And some people are more sensitive to that than others. I mean, it is true that we are surrounded all the time now with electromagnetic radiation with all of our devices as well as just natural background. And there are people that are more sensitive and some that are less sensitive. You another thing that is less modern than that, but still a relatively modern invention that interferes with sleep is alcohol.

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and some people will turn to alcohol to help them fall asleep. And that is a horrible strategy because what happens is it also messes with people's blood sugar. And one of the reasons why you asked me earlier, why do people have a hard time, you know, maybe staying asleep during the night? Well, blood sugar regulation can be a problem. So if somebody's blood sugar is dropping during the night, what happens is your body secretes epinephrine and cortisol, stress hormones,

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which release stored sugar. So sugar stored as glycogen in our tissues gets released by those hormones to increase low blood sugar. And our blood sugar is very tightly regulated. And so we have to have healthy blood sugar levels. But what happens also is then it wakes us up. And so that strategy of turning to a nightcap till people go to sleep is not a great

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Yeah, it's kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Yeah. Yeah. Very wise. And so, um, for somebody who considers themselves a night owl, this is always an interesting discussion to have with people where they say, you know, I've never really gone to bed at 10 o'clock. It's always been midnight or something like that. And I've always been done fine, but now I'm not doing fine. How do you, how do you respond to that? How do you, um, yeah, how do you respond to that?

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Well, there are lots of things that change as we get older. I don't think I could climb Mount Rainier again now like I did when I was in my 20s. I'm exercising differently now in my 50s because when I exercising again the way that I used to lifting weights, I was starting to injure myself. Our bodies change and it requires us to change as well. And just because you were doing better when you were younger,

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there are different reasons why somebody might've been doing better when they were younger. For example, when I was, as I told my wife, it depends on how young we wanna get into with our kids, even as teenagers. They have food in the refrigerator, they don't have jobs, we're cooking for them. Life is easy, relatively speaking. Obviously teenagers and younger, they have their own challenges that they're going through. get me wrong.

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but it's very different in college also if someone's pulling an all-nighters for exams, which is what I would do and run on adrenaline and then just be able to sleep and nap to their heart's content afterwards to catch up is one thing, but a lot of people are just going on a chronic sleep deficit and training your body again or retraining your body for healthier sleep patterns and just listening to what your body's telling you. you're like, well, I used to do this and now I can't anymore.

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I'm not so sure if they're telling you that because they really want to be living that way, or it's just a point of fact. Because the reality is, if you can't do it that way anymore, then you shouldn't be. Yeah, I agree. What's your opinion on using Benadryl or antihistamines to help with sleep? Not a fan. I'm just not a fan. I think there can be rebound reactions, can be addictions to them. And I don't believe that long term they're good.

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remedies. Thank you. And so we've gone through this process. And so, you know, oftentimes I'll replace deficiencies in the morning, hormones, vitamins, whatever, and then work on, you know, hormones at night, progesterone helps women fall asleep, estrogen helps women stay asleep. If they're still having issues, then I like to go to replacements, kind of like the product that you created. So can you tell us about that product?

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Thanks for asking. Yeah, sleep relief is the name of the product that for me, what happened was with my company and everything that I've done, it's, you know, I have patients coming to me, I was working with patients and could not find doses of nutrients shown in clinical trials to work in existing products. And so I had to create solutions because I needed them to help my patients. In the terms of sleep, what happened was people kept coming to me and saying, I'm having a hard time sleeping or what I was using.

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you know, stopped working. And then I started to have horrible insomnia and just a difficult time sleeping. And I would try some things that work for a little while, then it would stop. So I dove into the research and the neurobiology and the endocrinology of sleep and looking at all those phases of sleep and came up with a biphasic time release delivery system. It's the only one that exists where it deals with those...

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general categories of difficulty falling asleep and difficulty staying asleep. phase one dissolves in about the first 30 minutes to help people fall asleep. And it's got nutrients to help promote healthy, restful sleep. And then the phase two, the second phase over about the next four hours. And those have some of the similar nutrients, but also different nutrients that are targeting different phases of sleep and different reasons why people would be waking up in the middle of the night.

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And over those four hours, it's releasing those nutrients so that if somebody, so they can stay asleep or if they wake up to go to the bathroom, they can more easily fall back asleep. And then when they wake up in the morning, they just feel refreshed and ready for their day. mean, one of the challenges is that when people think about sleep, they oftentimes just think about melatonin and they start popping melatonin, one, three, five, you 10 milligrams of melatonin. And what happens is they take melatonin and maybe it works for a little while.

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and then it stops. So they take more melatonin and then more melatonin. And suddenly they're taking so much, they're knocking themselves out at night. And if they feel hung over in the morning. And the reason for that is that melatonin has a very short half-life, meaning 50 % of it is eliminated from the body relatively quickly. for melatonin, it's 45 minutes is the half-life. So to be generous, let's say an hour. So let's say you're taking three milligrams of melatonin, an hour later,

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you know, it's you have one and a half milligrams in your body. And an hour later, you have less than one milligram. And an hour after that, you know, suddenly you're waking up in the middle of night. And so people take higher and higher doses. And this, one of the challenges is, is that sleep is a complex phenomenon. And it's not just about melatonin. There are other receptors and other hormones and other nutrients involved. So GABA, for example.

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is a nutrient, it's an amino acid, it's used to help calm the nervous system down, that's in the product. Glycine, an amino acid that also helps calm and regulate the nervous system, that's in there. Tryptophan, L-tryptophan in the dose used in clinical trials is in there because tryptophan then can help promote the body's natural production of

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melatonin as well as just a little bit of melatonin, one milligram per tablet. And then there are some vitamins like vitamin B3 niacin that is required for your body's own production of melatonin. And then there's magnesium in there because magnesium is a gentle muscle relaxant to help sort of just people's muscles relax and calm down. And then different herbs, adaptogenic herbs and calming herbs, hops when people feel

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tired after drinking a beer, it's because of the hops that are in the beer. There's skull cap in there. There's jujube extract. There's ashwagandha. You different herbs that are shown in clinical trials, not only to be relaxing, but to be adaptogenic. And an adaptogenic herb helps blunt or reduce the stress response. Meaning if somebody is stressed or they have that cortisol response, like I mentioned, it helps reduce that. It reduces the amount of cortisol

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that is produced and it helps to regulate that stress response better. And so all of these things are there to help rebalance the nervous system, the endocrine system, all focused on healthy restorative sleep and all phases of sleep. That's brilliant. Yeah, I'm looking at the list of these. And so you found that this combination seems to work best, is that right? It has, I experimented with different combinations.

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different nutrients and this one by far, not only does it work best, but it gives consistent results. mean, people take this for years and years. I would love it from a clinical perspective if they could get better sleep, maybe they just need it temporarily, but a lot of people, especially age, need some support longer term. But yes, this is by far the best combination that I found. Nice.

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And it sounds like it's also addressing a number of different fronts with the adaptogenic herbs affecting the hormones, decreasing the cortisol. You mentioned how it's affecting melatonin in a number of different ways in terms of making the melatonin. And then it's got that biphasic approach. Yeah, I'm excited. I remember learning about it when I spoke to you at that conference and I'm excited to try it and to share it with others as well. So yeah, thanks so much for coming on. Is there anything that we...

36:24

did not talk about that you wanted to make sure that we address today. You know, one of the things, yes, one of the things that I've seen is becomes causative in terms of what's what's creating sleep issues in people as they have some sleep issues and then they believe they have sleep issues and then they expect that they're going to have sleep issues and then they never have healthy sleep until it gets, you know, there's an intervention or it gets fixed or something changes. So part of the issue is the anticipation.

36:54

people's anxiety becomes, they start to get anxiety around sleeping or anticipate, am going to have, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. I have sleep problems, I'm going to have sleep problems. So I found in terms of my own approach to my own insomnia and what I was struggling with is flipping that script, changing the language that I use in that is that I'm going to get a good night's sleep. I am figuring this out, I'm improving my sleep.

37:21

And that mindset alone made a big change for me. And I know that it has for other people that I've talked about. And so it becomes this cycle like we talked about at the beginning, this wired and tired, where the people are wired and they're exhausted and they have a hard time falling asleep because they can't quite get there. And then they get stressed and anxious that they are so exhausted and they're not sleeping. And then their cortisol goes up and then they end up

37:50

in that same cycle. So part of what we want to do using this approach, coming at it from different angles, not just a pill, coming in from all these different angles that we talked about is let's interrupt that cycle and let's create a newer, healthier cycle for long-term healthy sleep and long-term overall health. Yeah, brilliant. Mindset is such an important part of all of this work that we do.

38:19

And I'm so glad that you said that, because we'll start incorporating that mindset, that sleep mindset work in as well. Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned the hormone replacement too. I didn't talk about this, but very important, especially in, know, perimenopausal women, but also in men, testosterone replacement therapy as, as men get older, testosterone can, can decrease. And it's not just testosterone that can be helpful, but testosterone converts into estradiol.

38:47

You know, we have some estrogen as men in our bodies and so rebalancing male hormones can also be very helpful. And testosterone in the morning or in the evening for sleep? So I just, I use it overall just in the morning, not necessarily, you know, to sleep. If somebody is going to be on testosterone replacement therapy, you know, they can be on Clomaphene, helps the body produce its own testosterone or injectable testosterone once a week or once every two weeks.

39:16

The time of day doesn't really seem to matter in my opinion. Excellent. Yeah, I know that for people who struggled with sleep, coming back to the mindset and the anxiety piece, I tell them, if you don't sleep, just enjoy it. Enjoy the quiet time, listen to a podcast, do something not stimulating, try to do some meditation. If you get too agitated, you got to get up and get out of bed.

39:42

See if you can enjoy it as much as possible. It's kind of like when I did my yoga teacher training back, gosh, 21 years ago, when they said, you don't like the posture, enjoy it anyway, right? Love it. Love it. Well, thanks so much for coming on, John. Really appreciate you dropping all this knowledge. I hope it helped a lot of people today. And for people listening, if you like this video, please, or if you enjoyed this video, please like and subscribe and we'll see you next time.

40:07

I just mentioned my website real quick. yes, please. Thank you so much. NBI health dot com, NBI health dot com. Lots of articles on there. They can search for sleep, find different articles so they can learn more and the products are on there as well. Yeah. And there's a bunch of research on each one of those components of the at the bottom of the page, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was looking at while we were kind of going through it. But yes, and we'll drop those links below.

40:34

Go check out John and sleep relief. Thanks so much for coming on.