Ask Mark Q&A #10: Sleep Disturbances, School Lunches, Water Filtration, And More

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

Most tap water has over 38 contaminants in it, including all the drugs that we take, like from hormones to statins to antidepressants that get in the water supply, to pesticides and chemicals, pollutants, lead. It's pretty nasty. So I do recommend water filters. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Hyman, how you doing? I am so excited to be back for another ask me anything with Dr. Mark. It's called Ask Mark. It's a live Q&A show that I'm doing for my community. It's where I take questions from my text community and I invite all those people to join me live and ask their questions. Now today we got about 10 to 12 people that are going to join us to ask their questions. And if you want to ask me a question in the future, all you do is text me at 413-225-8995. That's 413-225-8995 and use the hashtag AskMark. And my team might pick your question. for asking me in the future. Okay, so today's Ask Mark is sponsored by Thrive Market. And Thrive is one of my favorite places to get high quality organic ingredients at wholesale prices. You can get an extra 25% off your first purchase and a free gift when you join Thrive Market today. Just go to thrivemarket.com/hymenfb. All right, let's jump in with our first guest. First guest is Diane English. Hi Diane, how you doing?

Hi, Mark. Doing great.

Good. What's your question?

My question is, why am I waking up between one and three every night and I can't go back to sleep for two to three hours and it scares me, but I'm having a struggle. It's been months and months and months.

No, that's too bad. I really feel your pain there. I think a lot of Americans, about 70 million Americans, have sleep issues and everything from what you're talking about, the trouble falling asleep, trouble staying asleep, trouble waking up early, interrupted sleep, sleep apnea. I mean, it's, it's, we have an epidemic of sleep disturbances, and it affects people terribly. It affects our cognitive function, their mood, their energy. And I, and I think a lot of people have struggles with sleep that need to be really thought through and addressed and get to the root causes, like everything else in functional medicine. There's a lot of root causes, and some of them are quite simple. Sometimes just simple sleep hygiene. Maybe your room's too hot, maybe it's too noisy, maybe you're eating too late before you go to bed. Maybe you're drinking alcohol at night. Maybe you're having too much sugar during the day and you get blood sugar drops that'll wake you up in the middle of the night. Maybe your life is way too stressful and you haven't really processed everything in the day and you'll be ruminating in the middle of the night and maybe you need to address the stress in your life because that can really cause adrenal dysfunction that can lead you to wake up at 1 to 3 in the morning. Maybe it's because you really have been using too many screens and you have light pollution and your light exposure is affecting your melatonin production. which can maybe you'll fall asleep because you're tired but then you'll wake up because you really have a dysregulated circadian rhythm. So, thinking about all those things is really, really important. So, for me, I make sure that one, you know, eat three hours before bed, don't eat, don't eat food between, you know, dinner and bedtime and give yourself at least three hours before you go to sleep. Take a little walk after dinner. That's a good idea. Make sure you get exposed to morning light in the morning because that'll stimulate your pineal gland which will help you increase melatonin production, help decrease stress response and cortisol. I encourage people to meditate a lot, 20 minutes twice a day is a really great formula for addressing a lot of insomnia issues. And I love Ziva meditation, which you can find online, making sure that you're don't exercise late at night. Also can help a lot. Alcohol, getting rid of alcohol. Sometimes people are really sensitive to caffeine, even if they drink it in the morning. They'll be watching caffeine because that can kind of keep you up sometimes at night. Make sure you get off screens at least a couple hours before bed. If you have blue light blocker glasses, those are great to put on as the sun goes down and use them all evening. Make sure, you know, don't be on screens. A couple of, you know, a couple of really difficult challenges at night can really kind of screw your whole system up. So I really encourage people to focus on their overall sleep hygiene. I've got read a lot of blogs about it. I think there's 20 tips to better sleep, and there's a lot of great books about sleep. I think, you know, there's a lot of things people can do to help improve their sleep, whether it's, you know, doing those things that I just mentioned. Sometimes it's just also dumping your brain at night, like, you know, journaling and, and writing down all the things that are on your mind and kind of purging everything else, you're not ruminating about it at night. And lastly, there's things you can take. You know, magnesium is a great relaxation mineral and help you sleep. Some of them to Earth can be helpful, like valerian, passion flower, 5 HTP, melatonin. So there's a lot of really wonderful things out there that you can try to use. I use GABA, theanine. There's depending on the person, there's various supplements and herbs that can really be helpful. That's kind of where I would start with people. And then if, you know, there's something else going on, you know, it could be a medical condition like hyperthyroidism or other things that can cause insomnia.

So you kind of gotta do a workout.

But that's sort of the big view on sleep. And if you try some of those things, I bet your sleep's gonna get better.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Sure. And I think we have Shannon next. Hi, Shannon. How are you?

Doing well. How are you?

Good, good, good.

Good. My question is, do you have any tips on reintroducing meat into a vegan diet and what should I expect?

Well, yes. I mean, I think that, you know, The first question I ask is, why do you want to introduce meat if you're vegan?

I didn't go vegan for ethical reasons. So, I remember feeling my best on a paleo-ish type diet several years ago. So, I'm looking to reincorporate that back into my life.

So, you weren't feeling good doing pure vegan?

Is that what you're sharing? Yeah, and I'm having to avoid gluten, which you know, main protein source is satan and vegan diet. And, it's just I need to get my protein intake up and I'm just looking for health benefits as well.

Yeah. So I think it's not that complicated. I was a vegetarian for 10 years, so I've been through it. I think at first it can feel heavy in your stomach. The best thing is to start with lighter things like start with fish and use digestive enzymes that can really help proteases and lipases which help digesting protein and fat. Having first maybe fish and chicken and and then you can try small amounts of red meat and sort of introduce it slowly. If you have a giant big steak, you're gonna, you're gonna feel uncomfortable. But I think your body starts to quickly adjust and your pancreas will start to produce all the enzymes needed to actually digest the meat. So it shouldn't be that difficult. But I think, you know, it's important for what you're saying to highlight something really, really essential. It's part of the Pegan diet philosophy, which is personalized nutrition. So it's not that I think that everybody should vegan or paleo or anything in between. I just think that people need to really get that they need to personalize their approach to what they're eating. And you did it for yourself, tried vegan and it didn't really work. And so you have to pay attention to that. And I would say not let your ideology trample over your biology.

Yes.

Thank you. Of course. And if everybody just put themselves on mute after you ask your question, because I'm hearing a bunch of background noise. So hi, Carolyn.

Hi, Dr. Mark. My question is that I've been taking a melatonin supplement for like two years. And is it safe or healthy to be taking that so continuously? Yes.

I mean, there's a lot of research on melatonin. It's generally safe to take long term. It may even suppress cancer. And, I think, you know, a lot of our melatonin are screwed up because we are exposed to so much light pollution, because we have really gotten out of our circadian rhythms and our habits of waking up by the sun and going to sleep with the sun and having no lights at night. I mean, we only had electricity in the last 150 years, right? So, it's like it's all new. The light bulb has kind of screwed us up in a lot of ways. and it's really affected our life. And if you're on your screens and you're, you know, looking at that, that's going to really suppress melatonin production. So blue light blockers can really help. But I think it's okay to stand a small amount of melatonin. It's fine.

Great. Thank you.

So we have Amanda. Hi.

Hi. My question is, how do you recommend approaching my daughter's school to help implement some better foods?

Well, that's a great idea. You're not alone. You're not the first mother to think about how to get kids to eat healthy. First, there's no teaching them at home and having a safe home and getting them in the kitchen. I just posted a video of me cooking with little boy and we made these pancakes. And, you know, people don't understand how much kids love to play and be part of things and be involved. And, I think getting them involved is key. As far as schools go, you know, there's a lot of groups out there. Conscious kitchens is a group that works with schools to help them transform their nutrition and their food service. Big Green is one by Kimbal Musk is also doing school gardens. There's another group called My Way Cafe in Boston that's really figured out how to get these schools to do delicious food that's designed by chefs that kids will eat within the school nutrition lunch guidelines and within the school budget. It takes a little innovation. There was some need to revamp the kitchens because most school kitchens just have deep fryers and microwaves. They really can't cook real food and they get this pre-packaged processed stuff. They just heat up and serve these kids, which is terrible. And then, My Way Cafe is great because they basically got really good food and made it from scratch. The workers in the kitchens and the schools are much more fulfilled. The kids were happier. They were eating the food. It wasn't getting thrown out. They were doing better and there's academic performance. There's no lack of knowledge. In fact, in my book, Food Fix, I encourage you to check that out. There's a chapter in there about you know, the kids and stuff. And one of the things they talked about was a CDC report on nutrition and academic performance and focus and attention and behavior. And some of the research has been done when you swap out all the junk food and you give them healthy food in terms of behavior, suicide, academic performance, all those things, absenteeism. There's a lot of data about this. So I think there's a lot of resources out there. And I do talk about it in my book, food fix. I encourage you to check that out. You can even go to food fix. book.com and there's an action guide. You can download the action guide and that tells you exactly sort of what kind of things are going on and where to plug in and where to get help. But you're not alone and it's a great thing to do. And I think, you know, in terms of impact, you know, it's one of the areas where we do have impact because schools are local and parents have an impact and if you get a group of parents together, you can really.

Change the system in schools. Awesome.

Thank you so much. Great, sure. All right, now next we have Abingail. hello. hi there. How are you?

Doing well.

How are you? Good.

I was wondering, what are your thoughts on fluoride, particularly for people who have problems with enamel on their teeth?

Well, fluoride is one of those controversial topics because we have had a lot of dental disease in this country and for years, kids have tons of cavities and it really has been linked to sugar and that's pretty clear. Even the food companies can't deny that. and there was a push to put fluoride in the water as a mass fluoridation program. I think it's helped to reduce cavities that the problem is, and there are local treatments that your dentist can do and so forth. The problem is mass fluoridation of the water has consequences because it's a particular type of molecule that interferes with thyroid function and other things and bone health. And so it's not completely free of side effects. And I think it's important for us to have enough of it, but I really I'm not a huge fan of sort of mass fluoridation program. I think it might be controversial to say that, but I think we should really pay attention to some of the data that shows that mass fluoridation has really been contributing to some other issues. So I think on the whole, there are local treatments your dentist can do that are fine with kids that they can coat their teeth and so forth, but at lower doses, I think it's okay. But I think just giving lots of fluoride to kids is potentially problematic. Thank you. Yeah, I think we have Adam next. Hi, Mark. Hi. My question for you is about gluten digestive enzymes and what to look for in a product. Well, first of all, the question is what is really going on, right? Because if you're truly celiac, I don't think it's gonna help. And I think just to give a background on gluten, this is a real, real problem in America today, and increasingly around the world, for a number of reasons. One, the wheat we're eating isn't the wheat we used to eat. We've changed the breeding practices and have created something called dwarf wheat, which is a hybridized version of wheat that is essentially super starchy. It has way more gluten proteins than traditional wheat, and it also is sprayed with glyphosate at the end of harvest, and that can destroy your microbiome and cause immune issues. and it's also preserved with calcium propionate, which causes behavioral issues in kids and causes, you know, attention and all kinds of irritable behavior. So. And it's in everything. And on top of that, we've really destroyed our microbiome through our processed diet, through antibiotics, through C-sections through, you know, environmental chemicals is all sort of just damaged our microbiome, which has made us all have a more leaky gut. And so we look at the real rates of celiac over the last 50 years, there's been a significant increase, a 400% increase. When you're looking at objective data, meaning they took the blood of people from 50,000 years ago they'd had on ice, and they compared it to the blood of 50, of 10,000 people today, and they found there was an actual 400% increase in true celiac. Now, 1% of the population apparently has true celiac, but there's a continuum from just mild reactions all the way to severe reactions. And, some people have non-celiac gluten sensitivity, some people have cell mediated or T-cell based gluten reactions which aren't antibody based which you can't really detect on a test. And so, you know, it's really important to sort of figure out what your issues are. The best way to know for you is to do like at least a three, four week elimination of gluten and sometimes you even need three months and then reintroduce it and see what happens. How do you feel? and I think that's the best test you can do to determine whether you really are having significant reactions to it. And if you are, then I don't think enzyme pills are going to help. If you're mildly gluten sensitive and you want to try some of the gluten digesting enzymes, I think they can be useful, but not if you're celiac and not if you really have a significant issue or an autoimmune disease. Thanks, Mark. Sure. And I think next we have Angela. Hi. hi, Dr. Angela. Good. How you doing? Hi. I was wondering. Good. I don't see you. If you could talk to me about. Yeah, I don't know what's wrong with my camera, but at any rate, I was wondering if you could talk to me about farmed fish, specifically farmed salmon. Is farmed fish ever okay? Yeah. So there's, you know, it's not all, you know, homogenous that there are many. challenges around fish. One is overfishing stocks that we have that are really depleting our oceans. Two is the pollution that we've put in the oceans of microplastics and heavy metals that make a lot of fish unsafe to eat like tuna and Chilean sea bass and swordfish and halibut and marlin and all sorts of different fish that we could eat but that are actually pretty dangerous. and so there's been a lot of look to farming of fish. Almost when you farm fish, they often do it in crowded pens. They use a lot of feed that's not natural for the animals like corn. And they also give them, you know, there's a disease control measures such as antibiotics and other things that, you know, affect the quality of everything. And then depending on, you know, what they're eating, Farm salmon. You know, I remember Randy Hartnell from Vital Choice, which is a great fish company from Alaska, showed me how. And, oh, there you are. Hi, Angela. showed me how there's this different palette colors. Like, when you pick the paint for your house, there's, like, a whole palette of different orange colors that the fish Farmers can pick to dye their fish. And I remember being in South Africa once, and I had this big white fish. It was. It looked like a salmon. I'm like, what is this fish? Oh, it's a salmon. I'm like, well, why is it white? They said, well, we don't dye the fish here. So in the United States, they give them dye. Now, there may be natural dyes, but still, they also you know, may not have the right levels of Omega-3s they might be higher in PCBs and other things depending on the farming. There are better farming practices and there are practices that allow you to sort of buy farm fish that's essentially safer to eat and it's either organic or grown in better conditions. And there's a wonderful website called cleanfish.com where they basically kind of go through and through these metrics of quality and how they treat the fish and the quality of the farming operations provide guidance on, you know, which farm fish are the best, which fish are healthier in terms of overall, you know, practices, but also in terms of the, you know, the nutritional quality of the fish and the risk for toxins and so forth. So on the whole, I think regular farm salmon is probably not that great for you. Certainly it's better than eating sugar and processed food, but it's, you know, if you're looking at it, really upgrade everything, you want to get small wild salmon. from Alaska. Vital Choice is a great resource. And then there are other resources like Thrive Market, which is sponsoring the show that actually has really sustainably harvested small wild fish and it's really great. So I think you can get the stuff you want just to be a little more intelligent about where you're getting stuff from.

Thank you.

Did that answer your question? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, great. All right. and I think Sage is next. Hi, Dr. Mark. Hi, Sage. I'm a behavioral health nurse. And so my question was, how do I stay healthy on night shifts? You know, sleep hygiene or when should I eat? That's a tough one. I'm, you know, from someone who's lived that as an ER doctor and delivering babies and running, you know, just different crazy call schedules. I understand. And you know, the truth is, when you look at the data on sleep deprivation, night shift workers, their life expectancy and disease rates are much worse than, than everybody else is working in the daytime. So I know our society sort of mandates and Health Care for sure requires some night shift working. I mean, it's, it's hard because when you're in a night shift cycle, you, when you're, when your days off, you want to be awake for everybody else who's alive in the world. You want to sleep all day and miss life. So you end up kind of flopping back and forth. I mean, the best thing to do would be not stay on the same sleep schedule the whole time, which is not usually doable for people. But, you know, the best you can do to keep yourself healthy is to make sure, you know, following the Pegan diet, like a Whole Foods plant-rich diet, making sure you're cutting out the sugar and starch, which you'll crave and want to eat because you're tired. So I remember being in the ER, and all you want to do is go for the stuff, you know, and it's true. But it's, it's a real tough battle because you're battling your your hormones when you're sleep deprived, your ghrelin goes up, which is your hunger hormone, your PYY goes down, which is your appetite control hormone. So you're really in a situation where you're sort of almost predisposed to eat worse. Exercise, stress reduction techniques, meditation, getting the right supplements, all that can for sure help. It's just the basic lifestyle stuff. But keeping your schedule as much as you can in rhythm is key. Thank you. Sure. There's a great book. It's called the Circadian Prescription. Also, it's by my colleague and mentor, Dr. Cindy Baker. It's a bit old, but it's really a great book about the power of resetting your circadian rhythms. Awesome. Thank you very much. Sure. Hi, Errol. How are you? I'm good.

How are you?

Good. Good.

What's your question? My question is post working out. So obviously protein for muscle repair and carbs for energy, but are there specific foods or herbs that you would recommend for recovery for athletes?

Yeah. So what recovery really means is recovery from trauma, from inflammation and oxidative stress, and also for rebuilding and repair muscles. So you want all the raw materials for rebuilding and repair, right? You want all the good quality protein, and you want the right amino acids in order to build muscle, which you, which, you know, are the branching amino acids, which is generally come more in, in animal foods. You can supplement, you know, plant proteins with them to help. But that branching amino acids are important for repair and recovery. I also think that, that there are certain supplements we need, like vitamin D, which is important for bone and muscle strength. You know, I think we need the right electrolytes if we're sweating a lot. I think most of us are dehydrated intracellularly, so we're not getting the right amount of intracellular hydration so we can drink a lot of water. But, you'll see a lot of athletes, for example, are running marathons. They can die from drinking too much water. They get diluting their blood and you get seizures and die from hyponatremia, which is low sodium in your blood. So, the key is when you're hydrate, hydrate with electrolytes. I also would say in terms of other supplements, there are a lot of great supplements that have to do with inflammation. So, turmeric, cherry extract, Boswellia, there's a whole series of them. The other thing I would say in repair and recovery are the adaptogens. So things like ashwagandha and Siberian ginseng and ginseng, even the adaptogenic mushrooms, the cordyceps and, and so forth. They can be very helpful in, in creating more resilience. And a lot of athletes have used these over the years. So I think, you know, combining the right rest time, the sleep time, the protein, the, the electrolytes, the anti-inflammatory supplements, herbs, and the supplements like vitamin D and magnesium and electrolytes can be really, really helpful. So I think you know, sports recovery is really important. I take it very seriously. So if you can get a massage, that's also a good thing. Or take a hot Epsom salt bath. Epsom salt bath is, you know, is also great. You don't have to even have, you only need a bathtub and some salt, you know, basically Epsom salt. That's a great way to sort of recover and help because that's got magnesium in it. It's also very detoxifying and it can.

Really help to sort of reduce inflammation and pain.

Awesome. Thank you so much.

Yeah, sure.

All right. I think that's all for questions, right? Do we have more? Ryan? Oh, Ryan. Okay, we got another question. Hey, Dr. Ryan. Thanks for having me. How are you?

Sure.

Good. How are you? Good. So, my question is, what do you recommend for a whole house water filter? So, you know, it's interesting when you look at water today, you think you should be able to just drink it out of the tap. I remember, you know, when I was a kid, we'd go on canoe trips in Canadian wilderness and the Adirondacks. in the Salagun Park, we just drink the water out of the lake. We couldn't filter it, wouldn't do anything. I'm surprised we didn't get sick. But anyway, it was pretty clean back then. Now, you wouldn't want to drink anything, even what's coming out of most taps. In fact, most tap water has over 38 contaminants in it, including all the drugs that we take, like from hormones to statins to antidepressants that get in the water supply, to pesticides and chemicals, pollutants, lead. it's, it's pretty nasty. So I do recommend water filters. You know, I like the reverse osmosis. Personally, there are ones that you can have installed on your whole house. I, I have it installed, you know, in most of the house. And I, for sure, for the, for the, for the kitchen, I have a whole reverse osmosis water filter system so I can get clean water in the kitchen to cook with. I think some people are already taking it to more extremes. For example, if I I was living in Cleveland, which has some of the worst water, and it's super chlorinated. So I just turn on the shower and I feel like I'm getting fumigated with chlorine. And so there are shower water filters. You don't have to do the whole house water filter. There's probably carbon filters enough for that because you're not drinking it. But I think reverse osmosis in the kitchen, if you want to do a whole house reverse osmosis, you can. That would really clean the water. But the key with that is it removes everything, right? So remove also the minerals. It's really important to take electrolytes with your water. and that's what I was sharing a little earlier that, and I, I like lots of different brands out there. The one I like is called light show. It's just, like, a liquid bottle. You can squirt a little bit in. It tastes kind of lemony, doesn't taste too bad. And that, that electrolyte support will make a huge difference for people to really get their intracellular hydration and to, to, you know, replace some of the minerals that are lost when you're using the reverse osmosis filter. Right, right. So basically, you recommend having one. in the kitchen and then maybe having a filter just for the shower or something. Yeah, yeah. Shower, bath. I mean, it depends where your water is coming from. If your water is coming from a well, it's not chlorinated, it probably doesn't matter, you know? But, yeah. Great. Thank you so much for your time. Of course, sure. All right. So I think we are done for today. It's so great to talk to all of you, and I'm so glad that you joined us today on this episode of Ask Mark, which is sponsored by Thrive Market. If you want to ask me a question in the future, you can text me at 413-225-8995. use the AskMark and my team might pick your question for one of our future calls. I also want to give another special thank you to our sponsors, Rite Market. They're always giving you the highest quality products at the lowest cost. They've been so supportive of my new book, the Pegan Diet. They even created a special Pegan Diet favorites list with a ton of my favorite products from Thrive. Plus, they're offering my community an exclusive offer to get 25% off your first purchase, an extra 25% off and a free gift when you join Thrive Market today. So just go to thrivemarket.com/hymanfb. And if you missed the live stream, don't worry, we're gonna be airing it on the Doctor's Pharmacy podcast soon. And really, thank you for joining us and we'll see you next time on the Doctor's Pharmacy.

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