The Breath- Gut Connection and why you should Nose Breath with Dr Vijaya Molloy

Hey guys. Cribben Govender from the Gut Health Gurus podcast. I'm a food scientist and I've got my partner here, James Chedrek, who's got a background in psychology. I'm super excited to have our next guest on the show and her name is Dr. Vijay Malloy and she's got a background, she's a dentist. And. And Vijay, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Crippen and James.

My pleasure. Vijay, I thought, you know, just introduce you to our audience. How about just giving the audience a little bit of a background on who Vijay is?

Okay. So I grew up in New Zealand, but I've been in Australia for now over 20 years. I came here in 97 and I've been, I came here after having received my degree. I've been primarily in Sydney. I'm also the mother of three boys. I have my own small dental practice and I have recently developed my own brand of natural toothpaste.

Also wonderful. And Vijay, today I thought the scope of our discussion is going to be pretty free flowing, but I thought we'll, we'll start off on, I guess what you're really passionate about, which is the mouth and the gut connection. So explain to our audience, when you talk about the mouth and the gut, what does it actually mean?

Well, when you think about it, the mouth is really the start of the gut. And at dental school and we're conditioned to, well, I wouldn't say we're conditioned more so we're taught to think of the mouth as being a separate entity which we treat quite separately to the rest of the body. But as, as I'm sure you're aware, everything in the body is connected to something else. So if you have an unhealthy mouth, then there's a tendency for more disease to occur in the rest of the body. And there's been more research emerging lately about the links between gum bacteria or periodontal bacteria, to use a more technical term, and heart disease, blood pressure, vario, cardiovascular illnesses, also osteoporosis and a variety of other ailments.

Absolutely. And excuse me, Dr. Vijay, I actually meant to say the breath and the gut. So that was my faux pas, really. I apologize. Because remember, you're passionate about the breath, breath and the gut. So let's clearly, being a dentist, the mouth is very important to you. But I think your passion is really around the breath and the gut. So let's go into that rabbit hole and let's explore a bit further. And my apologies again.

So I talk about the importance of nose breathing as opposed to mouth breathing. And this is a topic that's becoming more widely researched and documented. So when you breathe through the nose, the quality of the air that you're breathing is better. It's likely that you will be breathing better as well. You'll be taking slower diaphragmatic breaths. It's likely that your air passages are well developed and able to accommodate this. When you're nose breathing, there's usually a reason why nose breathing is not normal. In fact, when I was doing a talk, I looked up the definition of nose breathing in dictionary and the definition was of sorry, of mouth breathing. And the definition was stupid person. That's what I found under the definition of mouth breathing. So it is not normal. Mouth breathing is pathological. If we are mouth breathing, the air is not filtered. It doesn't have the benefit of being filtered by the nitric oxide as it passes through the sinuses. It also means that we've got an obstruction somewhere in our nasal passages or our oropharyngeal passages, and we're just simply not able to get enough air through the nose. We're probably hyperventilating. It also means that we're not getting enough carbon dioxide into our bodies, which means that we're not able to achieve something called the Bohr effect. So the Bohr effect dictates that you need a certain pressure of carbon dioxide within the bloodstream to stimulate the release of oxygen by the haemoglobin molecules. And we all know the importance of oxygen. If we don't have enough of it, our bodies suffer in every way. So if you don't have enough oxygen, your body's constantly under stress. Cortisol is a stress hormone which your body makes when. When it's not working properly. Initially, your adrenals will be activated. So people that chronically mouth breathe often present with adrenal fatigue as well. So the body's not able to make any more adrenaline. You've got high levels of cortisol. When your cortisol levels are high, you often don't get enough melatonin. So your sleep quality is compromised because your gut health is compromised. Often you're not producing enough serotonin. It's a whole spiraling cascade. Your heart is under pressure, your endocrine systems can fail, your thyroid can suffer. Often I'll see people that have been diagnosed with these problems. I've had the odd patient that's been struggling for the last 20 years or so and spent a fortune on medical care, explored every possible option or treatment. And the. The problem has simply been that they have sleep apnea. They just don't breathe well.

Sorry, excuse me. Keep going.

I was giving a monologue there. I was going to say, I'm particularly passionate about this when it comes to young children because if we pick this up at an early age, we can intervene. And a child who's a chronic mouth breather will have a long, elongated face shape. They'll have narrow airways. Often they present with bed wetting. They don't tend to do well in school. If their tonsils and adenoids are very enlarged, they won't be able to eat properly either. And these children are often problematic babies. They're problematic children. The parents are pulling their hair out. They just don't know what to do with them.

So how do people actually develop the habits breathing through the mouth rather than the nose?

Okay, well, in young children, it may be that their adenoids and tonsils are enlarged, so they're impinging on the nasal airway, the oropharyngeal airway. They're just simply not able to breathe through their nose. Sometimes it is actually habitual. So you might get a cold for a week or so. When you have a cold, it's very difficult to breathe through your nose. Then after that, the habit just develops and you see some kids walking around with their mouth hanging open. So that can happen sometimes as people gain weight, as we often do post middle age, then just the increased fat deposits and pressure can cause the airways to become restricted.

Wow.

And some people are quite. Yeah, some people are quite adamant that they actually do breathe through their noses. But when you investigate further, it may just be at nighttime that they're mouth breathing.

Yeah. So breathing is clearly very important. I know for myself, with my nose, I've only got, I think, one nostril that functions properly. So I was very similar. I used to breathe mainly through my mouth, but I kind of change up because sometimes primarily through my nose, but sometimes I know if I'm doing because I'm also into singing. But when I sing, I've trained myself to breathe through my mouth, but it's only specifically for singing. And the other thing I wanted to delve into is with this breath, this nose, breathing and breath, is there any benefits that you're seeing in terms of having, say, for instance, a meditative practice? Is that linked to what you work, what you're talking about?

A lot of people do experience benefits from that. So, yeah, I think that's certainly a valid practice. And if anything, it makes you focus on Your breath that calms you, it slows your breathing, focuses the mind. And I think now there is sufficient scientific evidence to show that even five minutes meditation practice a day has numerous health benefits. I will say, though, that if someone has really significant nasal obstruction, they may not be able to do this even with meditation. I have had some patients, though, who are adamant that they have been able to train themselves to nose breathe using meditation. So it's certainly something I'm very open to.

Mm. And so you've highlighted that there's, I guess there's a limitation when people are breathing through their mouth. Now, what's some strategies that people could use to train themselves to, I guess, breathe more through the nose, assuming that they don't have any, I guess, dysfunction of the nasal cavities?

Well, the first thing is being aware of it. So just being mindful during the day that this is what they're doing. There's also certain exercises that you can do. They're called myofunctional exercises. There's a whole field actually devoted to strengthening the muscles of the lip, the cheeks and the tongue, such that you breathe with your tongue on the roof of the mouth, resting against the soft palate behind the top teeth, with the lips gently together, and breathing through the nose. That's considered to be the ideal breathing posture. So there's a number of exercises dedicated just to achieving this. So some of them can be as simple as just sitting for half an hour a day with a popsicle stick or a tongue depressor just held horizontally just between your lips. You don't want to bite it with your teeth, just gently between your lips. And that helps build up lip strength. And there's also certain exercises to do with the tongue. In some cases, some people are tongue tied, and that can be an obstruction. But that's something that needs to be assessed on a case by case basis. Not every tongue tie needs to be cut and not every tongue tie is a problem.

Right. That's really fascinating. So what we'll do is we'll perhaps link some. We'll put some links in the show notes and people want to explore this. What was it called again?

Myofunctional therapy.

Myofunctional therapy. So we'll link to show notes, and then if people want to get more information, they can kind of follow that link and learn how to sort of adopt this practice, if that's something of interest. So, James, is there anything else you want to explore?

So just a quick question about how all that breathing affects the gut health And I wonder if people who have all those blockages, chronic mouth breathers, is there a direct effect on their gut health? Microbiome. I'm just wondering what the linkage is.

There.

Apparently is. And there's more research emerging to support this. It's still a pretty new area when it comes to research. So the whole idea behind it is that if the body's under constant stress, then the microbiome will not thrive. I mean, microbiome is very complex. As you know, it depends what you've inherited from your parents, what your ancestry is, how many antibiotics you've had as a child. So I guess this is just one other contributing factor to the whole puzzle.

Yeah, it's a microbiome field is extremely complicated. I think what we can agree on is that there is an impact of having excessive stress to a microbiome dysfunction. So I always talk about like the very first time I ever came across the link between stress and I guess types of bacteria in the gut was actually through animals. So in my second or third year of university when they talk about meat dysfunction and meat defects is primarily caused by a stressed animal. And so I find that fascinating. You look at, you know, like the Japanese you have, they produce something called Kobe beef and they produce the highest quality beef by keeping the animal very calm. So they'll go through these weird practices of playing classical music and massaging the beast. So it's a pretty morbid topic. But that's the first time I ever linked to stress and the difference between gut bacteria.

That's really interesting and on a bit of a tangent as well then it would sort of hold true for free range versus factory ranged animals. Caged hens versus free range hens with egg quality.

Yes, absolutely. I've actually visited when I was in, still working in I guess industry, I've visited I guess these factories where these animals are processed. And it is a horrible, horrible, horrible thing when you see how stressed these animals actually are. And I think it's, it has a flow on effect. It's really you are what you eat, you know. So if this animal is stressed, there's a whole lot of dysfunction that's coming through the animal into your own body as well.

That's very, it's very interesting concept. Are you a vegetarian then?

I'm not a vegetarian, but I do, I do because I've got a kind of like an Indian background, initially from South Africa. But I remember growing up that my grandparents always had certain days of the week where we'd only eat vegetables. So my Thing is to incorporate as much vegetables as possible into the diet. And don't get me wrong, I like to eat some meat sometimes. And this is what I recommend for my audience as well, is to have something like 30 to 40 different types of vegetables per week. So that's hugely challenging. So by having this consciousness focus on eating more vegetables, you could adopt these fasting type regimes where you're doing a vegetarian fast like two or three times a week. I think that's hugely beneficial because we know that fiber is very important for gut health and to encourage a healthy microbiome. So it's extremely important.

Yeah. I mean, I personally only eat chicken a couple of times a week and that would be the only meat that I would normally have. And once again, similar cultural heritage. So we only had a small amount of meat growing up.

Yeah. And I think, you know, when I think back of my childhood, we came from poverty, so meat was. Meat was a. It was luxury. Right. So it was something that was used very sparingly almost for flavor. And you look at the Chinese cultures as well. When you go to Asia, especially China, meat is almost a luxury item. Most of the plate is actually covered with tons and tons of different types of vegetables.

And a colleague with a traditional Chinese medicine background was just saying also that meat was traditionally regarded as just a condiment, not a main meal. We really don't need as much protein as we're having on a daily basis as well.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. We definitely need to encourage more vegetable consumption, for sure. And I'm not sure you've come across. I forget her name, but she's actually James Cameron's wife. So the famous director, the film director directed the Terminator and all these Avatar and all these really famous movies, and both of them are vegans, but they talk about, you know, just. Just incorporating more vegetables. I can't remember an exact concept, but it's like including almost days of the week where you become vegetarian. So not to say that you're vegetarian all the time, but it could be two or three times a week being a vegetarian just to encourage more. And I think it's a huge issue in Australia. We eat way too much meat. I think it's almost a cultural thing where the meals are built around meat. And I think there's huge benefits from incorporating. What this lady's talking about is having a couple of days a week just having. Being vegetarian. It doesn't have to be all the time.

Sorry, we've got a bit off topic there, didn't we?

No, that's okay. Our podcasts are like that. They're kind of. It's whatever rabbit hole we find, we jump into and explore.

I was going to say it gives the digestive system a bit of a rest as well. And I read that meat generally takes three to four hours, or sometimes takes even 24 hours to fully digest, whereas fruits and vegetables are a lot faster. So then if you're having fruit following a meat meal, then that fruit, in theory, doesn't digest until the meat has digested. I don't think there's a lot of scientific evidence for this yet, but it's something I've heard and I thought it was interesting.

I think this is a good point now to segue into Vijay, the, I guess the entrepreneurial side and to talk about, I guess, Coco Clean. I'm fascinated about products there. What's the. I guess the. The origin of the idea? How many years ago? Where did it start? Why did you develop this? Firstly, what is it? Why did you develop it?

I've been trying to remember this because a few people have asked me, and the truth is I actually can't remember when I exactly got the idea that I was going to do this. It was spurred on, I guess, by the trend towards loving all things coconut oil. So I thought, oh, I'll develop a coconut oil toothpaste. Because one of the concerns that I had was a lot of my patients were coming in and saying, I brush my teeth with coconut oil and baking soda, and baking soda is highly abrasive. And I was thinking coconut oil just as a fat. I'm not sure if that's really going to do any good. So I was thinking combine. Combine the element of the coconut oil, put it in a toothpaste, make it more therapeutic. So that's where the original idea came about. There were a few hurdles along the way, as there often is with sort of thing. So I first got the idea in 2015, and then it took me about eight months to come up with a formula. I worked with a chemist to get the taste right and so forth. And then there was. There was a long process of trademarking, preservative testing, all this sort of thing that goes into product development. And we were finally able to release it May last year. So May 2017.

Now, why do people want to switch away from the current toothpaste to using Coco Clean?

Well, I guess when you use any of. For example, I won't name them, but when you use any of the bigger brand names out there, they often contain products such as Triclosan which is now being identified as a toxin. Some of them contain titanium dioxide and when you read them, they read more like a chemical cocktail rather than a therapeutic aid.

Of course, this mantra I live by is that whatever you put onto your skin or even your mouth in terms of your toothpaste and stuff, you know, you got to be willing to eat it.

So.

So if you, because it's going to end up in the bloodstream, it's going to end up in the body. So that's a very simple way from putting on my skin, am I willing to eat it? And if the answer is yes, then I'm sure it's going to be perfectly fine. But again, I've moved away from using commercial brand toothpaste for this very reason as well. Because what we know is that all these chemicals will have a huge impact on the body. I don't think it's fully understood yet because we're almost living in. I mean, there's some testing and rigor that goes into the products in the market. But again, we don't know what these effects are long term. Like I'm talking 10, 20 years of usage. I don't think there's any studies there to actually back up that these products are safe. We know that a lot of these products are detrimental to the body and especially something like triclosan, which kills bacteria. So when it ends up in the gut, there's a huge likelihood that going to be damaging certain parts of your microbiome as well.

And there's also, it's been found to be associated with allergic reactions, contact dermatitis. And there's also speculation that it may possibly be carcinogenic as well. And like you say, we just don't know. And we're living in an age where we are just constantly bombarded by a chemical cocktail every day, just even by existing. And it does worry me the number of children that I see with allergies with allergic reactions. Whether these things are just more documented now. But I have heard so many people say this wasn't the case in the 70s we would just go to school with our peanut butter sandwiches. It wasn't an issue. Everyone didn't have to carry EpiPens.

I mean, I'm in full agreement with you, Vijay. It's. We live in an area now that we're bombarded with toxicity, whether it's through our food supply, whether it's through our toothpaste beauty products. Then you've got the electromagnetic radiation around us, we've got the artificial lighting which we're going to just about to do a huge podcast very soon. So guys, keep listening. And so we're bombarded. So hence that's why you've got issues with gut permeability, leaky guts that you didn't have in the 70s. So I think people need to be so mindful about what they're actually allowing onto their bodies because it's hugely detrimental to health.

And also, if we go back to the breath gut connection, I do wonder how much of these chemicals that we're ingesting causes internal inflammation which is then going to compromise our ability to breathe as effectively as we could be.

Yeah, it's almost like chicken and the egg. Which one comes first? I mean, it's a problem.

I see some patients because I work in an integrative medical clinic. There's a lot of autistic patients that come through and some of the mothers, they do an enormous amount of work. They put their children on the GAPS protocol and some of the improvements that I've seen in these children are quite amazing, which in my mind is at the very least anecdotal evidence of the effect of gut health on gut microbiome on neurological development.

That's a really interesting point, Vijay. I mean, I was recently at a microbiome conference and I asked one of the speakers who is working in the autism space, and I'll actually link to her in the show notes if you want to, if the audience wants to follow her work. And I asked her and I said, well, in terms of diet, what dietary regimes out there that are showing from a clinical level improvements in terms of when you talk about autism? And she mentioned, like, in terms of the studies, the only one that they have real data around is the ketogenic diet. And I did ask about the GAPS diet and the GAPS diet in that we've seen lots of anecdotal evidence from our community as well to support the GAPS diet. The thing is, I don't think anybody is actually doing studies on it. But you've seen it through your clinic. We've seen it through our anecdotal evidence as well with our community that the GAPS diet does have benefits when it comes to addressing digestive dysfunction.

I guess the thing is with all these sorts of diets, they need to be carefully monitored and overseen because if just the average person goes and puts themselves on the GAPS diet, then they may end up severely nutritionally deficient. It just may not be the right thing for them. So I guess that's the main take home message to do it. Under the supervision of a qualified practitioner.

Absolutely. And you know, whether it's GAPS diet, whether it's FODMAPs, these diets are not developed to be used long term. They're only developed to treat. Like for myself, I went through a GAPS diet for about six months, but I don't follow a GAPS diet as an ongoing protocol because it's hugely restrictive. First, it's not much fun because you can't really eat that, all the stuff that you really like, but. And once you get that healing happening, then it's going back to just clean eating.

That's right.

I can say I don't deprive myself of anything that I love, but it's all clean. And that's the take home message. Use these therapeutic style diets to fix issues and then just go back to good, regular, clean eating. Fresh fruits and fresh vegetables and, you know, the best food that you can afford. And stay away from supermarkets. Go to your organic stores or farmers markets and you know, you're giving yourself the best chance to eat the best possible food.

Yeah, that's right. And on a bit of a tangent, I was actually listening to something, a podcast, about the value of the ketogenic diet for mental health in terms of dementia, degenerative mental illness, and it having a preventative effect and a assistance effect with dementia and with Alzheimer's. Have you ever come across that?

I have seen snippets, but I can't say I've actually read this study. But yeah, let's go into it. What's your thoughts on it?

It was just a single podcast that I had listened to and I just, I just thought it was really interesting. But I think it's more when you're talking about the individual that probably has a highly processed diet and then you're putting them, but the key was also high fat. And then I thought, if you're taking that down to a neurological structural level, does that help? The myelin sheaths of the individual nerve fibers, does that help strengthen them? Does that, does that help maintain dendrite connections within the brain?

Yeah, absolutely.

Looking at the biology and the structure.

Of it all, I think the stuff you're talking about is well above my pay grades, but you're the medical expert, so I'll take your word for it.

Just wanted to say thanks as well. This has been really interesting for me as someone who's a bit newer into the whole, I guess, gut health scene of things. So very, very interesting. So I'm just wondering, I guess, just how to apply a lot of what we've talked about today, I definitely want to make sure I'm breathing through my nose rather than my mouth and not mouth breathing, but just. Are there any more takeaways for people who are maybe struggling with some type of health issue? They want to get their heads around this. They want to start implementing this stuff, I guess. Do you have any recommendations of what people can start to implement?

Yep, absolutely. I would recommend if you're struggling, depending on where you are, there's different levels of struggling, which part of the axis you're on. So if it's just that you feel like your nasal breathing could be better, try something as simple as a neti pot. Every morning and night. You can buy something from the chemist, the sinus flow. Try that. Some people recommend decreasing gluten and dairy. There's a lot of intolerances around those foods. As a dentist, it's not really my place to make nutritional recommendations like that, but you could always see a naturopath to get those sorts of recommendations, or a nutritionist, or even a GP with an interest in diet. If you are really, really struggling, I would recommend seeing a GP straight away and getting a referral to sleep clinic. There's a number of sleep clinics around there. You can get take home sleep studies or you can get hospital based sleep studies and depending on the outcome of that, that will shed some light as to what's going on with you. You can also find a good ENT if you get any inquiries through this podcast. For people looking for someone in particular location, I'm happy to try and help them source someone that may meet their needs. It's all about diagnosis, correct diagnosis, it plays a big part. And stress, as we've mentioned, plays a big part when it comes to anything. You could have, you know, structurally the best nasal passage, but if you have a really high stress, high demanding life and you're not able to take the time to just relax and become, in my opinion at least, anyway, you will end up fighting a losing battle.

That's an interesting point. So what does Vijay do when it comes to managing stress? Because obviously you're a very busy woman. You're an entrepreneur developing your own products, you're doing your dentistry type work. So how do you, for moms out there, or even working professionals, how do you manage your stress? We live in an extremely stressful era right now.

Well, we do. And this is something that I have always had a problem with, even when I was quite young and I did university level psychology. And back then you had to do A quiz to determine if you were a type A or type B personality. And I was an off the charts type A personality. Like I would have been an A double, double, triple plus. It's only as I've gotten older and I've just accepted my life is ridiculously busy, I will always have numerous things that I have to do. I'm not going to be the perfect mother. Sometimes my children will have meals that come from a supermarket box. And that's okay. Just go with the 8020 rule and just accept that you're going to have some failures. And life is not always about success and achievement, but just about really focusing on being in the moment. And that's something we hear a lot of people talking about now because what's the point really if you don't enjoy every step along the way? Because you never really know how long you've got, do you?

Exactly. That's an excellent point. Your time on earth could end very when you least expect it. I recently lost my brother about four months ago. My younger brother was like, yeah, that, that reminds you very quickly about your mortality.

Well, that's exactly right. Just the most important thing to me is quite holiday time with my kids, my husband and my kids. My oldest is now 15, so every day I think he's almost a man. In three more years he might not want me around. So I need to make the most of the time that he's here that he's willing to spend time with me.

Absolutely. It's really cherishing your loved ones, your children, your family, being present with them, being 100% focused. Just get this is something I try and do every day is, you know, getting balance. Like you dedicate some time for your health, primarily for your work, any work issues that you have to deal with. But then it's very important to set aside time for your family and also set some time aside for yourself so to do things that you want. So I think it's all about balance. You know, we all live very stressful lives. James and I are totally A type personalities as well, 100%. We've got a million and one things on the go all the time. So I've got to constantly remind myself to just stop. You know, I do breath work in the morning through meditation. So do transcendental meditation actually. So you go, Vijay.

I was going to say it's something that I always think of, tomorrow I'm going to get up and I'm going to do yoga or I'm going to do this, but haven't, haven't made the time to do it. But I do have these meditation domes that I bought from the US and they vibrate, they send your mind into the theta state in three and a half minutes. So that's something that I. Yeah, that's something that I do do twice a day.

I've actually never heard of that. We need to link to the show notes. I think for people and there's all these different modalities. There's. I don't think it. It's just finding something that works for you. I mean in terms of mindfulness, I don't think meditation is going to be suitable for everybody. It's just fun. It could be simple as going for a walk and just paying attention to the sounds and the smells of nature and just being present. It could be dancing. Some people find meditation out of dancing. I think it's anything that really takes you out of that monkey mind to the monkey brain and that thinking brain and drops you into your body. I think even dance is a great one. Like dance, people dancing, that's a meditative practice. Sporting activities as well could be a meditative practice. Yoga. So all these things are going to help reduce your stress levels. It's going to get you out of that thinking head and just drop you into present state awareness. So it's just up to the individual to find something that they enjoy because obviously it's going to be something you're going to be doing a lot of so you might as well enjoy it.

I did, I was at a seminar a few weeks ago and the presenter there did say there was a study that showed that a few hours in nature will then keep you going at a better mindset for about four weeks or so. And. And another thing they spoke about was community living because we live very insular lives. So I think it's important even if you don't have family as such around you to find a community somewhere. Because human contact and interaction is so important to our mental well being and establishing quality friendships that you can open up to and you can have a deeper connection with.

Absolutely. Vijay. I couldn't agree more. I mean we're built to form communities and relationships. Isolation is the worst thing for you. I think it's so important to connect with people, communities, even put time in your calendar. I mentioned the importance of having relationships on top of mind. Putting in your calendar to catch up with your friend for coffee or catch up with a sibling. Just, just. It's hugely beneficial because, you know, it's like oxytocin. It's like the love hormone. Like it's giving someone a hug or even making eye contact with the person that's serving you coffee and putting those pesky devices away and putting them in airplane mode and just being present and looking at. Often I'll just sit in a coffee shop and I'll just look at people. What are they up to? Or even have a chat, chat with the barista. This is all therapy for us. It's simple, but it's just something that we don't do enough of. We take it for granted.

Yeah, absolutely. And all these devices, I mean there's so many studies now to demonstrate the negative effects of this constant blue light exposure and even the effect of watching television. The same seminar that I mentioned, they mentioned there that it puts your brain into a particular state which is like phase two of sleep. So then when you, if you spend hours watching TV before bed that you then don't sleep well because your brain thinks it's already had a little bit of sleep. So no sleeping is difficult.

That's hugely important. That's, that's a part of my practice as well. So say around as soon as the sun goes down, I pretty much. Because we watch a little bit of tv. I guess the evenings I might watch a show before I go to bed. But what I do is I put on blue light blocking glasses. A lot of the computers now they do, I think Apple are aware of this, that with the blue light issue. So they have programs that actually reduce the blue light on your phones or on your computers. But when you're watching tv, I think just to give an added benefit as well to wear blue light blocking sunglasses and that just reduces any risk of having those issues that you're talking about. Is that something you do as well?

Yeah, for sure. I've got the blue light blockers on my phone, on my laptop. But I just think, I think if you pay attention, you can really feel how frantic your mind is when you're on the phone watching tv, particularly before bed. It's just a horrible position to be in to sleep. Not conducive to sleep at all.

I first noticed it, I had a week in the Kakadu last year and I came back from there because there's not a lot of WI fi, there's not a lot of mobile access there. I came there, I was so relaxed and then the day after I was just browsing through my phone and I was actually really aware of the agitation. It's very noticeable, the agitation I was feeling. It was just even looking At a Facebook forum, it wasn't, wasn't interacting with anyone. It was just, I was just a passive viewer. And the agitation you feel and that's probably the state most of us exist in on a day to day basis.

100% agree, Vijay. I think it's something that you just kind of, you almost just hedonically adapt to. You hedonically adapt to a stress state and you just think it's normal. But I think once you start to experience these little glimpses like yourself going away on holidays and feeling that relaxed state, then when you come back it's contrast. And then for a while maybe you might think, ah, yep, now I'm stressed again. But then you hedonically adapt again and you just. And that's your new baseline. So I think we need to be very conscious about how we manage these things, whether it's devices, whether it's our sleep, whether it's our stress levels, just to make sure that we are putting steps in place to actually manage it. We're not just taking it for granted and just thinking it's normal. So it's almost building good routines, habits, practices every day. And sleep is a whole new topic in itself. And we won't fully go into that rabbit hole, but we will cover it in another podcast. But I think that's a good place now to wrap the Vijay, is there anything that you would ask of our audience that you want to impart to them to benefit their lives?

So my biggest thing would be to live mindfully and this is something that I'm probably only just really getting my head around. And I would have to say the difference in stress levels since focusing on that has been massive to accept that if you've got children, your house is going to be messy. That's going to be okay. Bills will be unpaid. I usually get final reminder notices before I get around to paying my bills. Not because I'm avoiding them, just because I just forget. That's probably not the best advice. But it's okay, that happens as long as your power doesn't get cut off.

Yeah. And how can people find Vijay? We'll link to all these in the show notes. So how can they connect with you? How can they find you on the interwebs or.

Sure. I will be launching a new website which will have its a podcast attached called Mind Body Mouth. So that will be available in the new year. Otherwise you can contact me through my toothpaste website, coconuttoothpaste.com wonderful.

Vijay, I'm so honored to have you on the podcast. I want to thank you for giving up your morning to spend time. I know you're a very busy, busy, busy person. So much appreciation and gratitude for spending time with us this morning and so blessed. Thank you so much, Vijay.

It's been an absolute pleasure. I really, really enjoyed speaking to both of you and we seem to be very much on the same wavelength with, which is wonderful to come across like minded people.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Same for me. Thanks so much for the time. I felt like I've learned a lot from speaking with you, so really appreciate you making the time. Thank you.

Oh, fantastic.

Thanks, guys. That was another episode of the Gut Health Gurus podcast. Tune in next week for our next guest and we'll be talking all about something we covered today, which is Light Sam.