#220: Sleep Tricks that Improve Your Hormone Health

So when you're chronically fatigued, your body is going to be into this sympathetic state. You're never going to be able to lose weight. And you have to understand where your weight is right now is an adapt— adaptation to all of the stresses that you're putting under based on your eat, how you're walking, how you're doing anything. So if you like, let's say just stop eating. Once you start eating, your body's gonna put all that weight back on 'cause you're just going to maintain that physiology. So the best weight loss plans, when we put our patients through 'em, it's work on sleep, get more sleep. You actually, by sleeping more, you'll speed up your metabolism because you'll lose weight because your body's more rested.

Hi, I'm Dr. Tabatha, the Gutsy Gynecologist. I'm a triple board certified OB-GYN and functional medicine physician. I've embraced the world of functional medicine and wellness through my own personal health journey, and I'm super excited to share my wisdom and unique perspective as it pertains to women's health. After caring for thousands of women, I've come to realize that your gut health determines your gyn health and your overall health. And it's a super gutsy thing for me to go against conventional gynecology practice to bring you the truth. No more Band-Aid medicine, ladies. We're talking root cause resolution on this show. So if you're struggling with hormone imbalance, weight gain, period issues, anxiety, insomnia, you name it, then you've come to the right place. And I want to be your gutsy gynecologist. So welcome. Oh my goodness. I'm really excited for this episode because sleep is one of the biggest complaints that I hear from women everywhere. I hear it all over Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. The women who come to work with my team and I at Her Higher Health. Sleep is the number one problem besides weight, I would say. And I haven't had any episodes about it because I haven't found anyone that really understood the power of sleep and could articulate it until now. So I'm super excited for my guest today. Like, you are going to be Just going, oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Lots of eye-opening information. Lots of ahas. Even for myself, as a doctor of osteopathic medicine, I understand the musculoskeletal system along with the nervous system. But he has figured this out. He has helped us understand. Why our sleep is interrupted, how it's impacting our health, and more importantly, how to fix it all. So I love this episode because part of the way that I finally lost weight and kept it off, part of it was sleeping consistently, sleeping in a restorative, healthy way. I would say probably the biggest needles that have moved my health, have balanced my hormones, have healed my gut, have put my autoimmune conditions in reverse, and stopped my herniated discs are a clean diet of no gluten, fasting, and sleeping like it's my job. Like, those are the big ones. So I'm just really excited about this episode because this is Something so small, yet so powerful. Okay, so listen all the way through. If you don't have time for the whole episode, just hit pause and come back. That's the beauty of the podcast. It's there. You can just go back to it whenever. And he does a little bit of demonstrations with some things. So if you want to watch it on YouTube, that's awesome as well. And can I just say, oh my goodness, please hit the subscribe button. Please give me a 5-star review. Take 30 seconds to leave a review because it means the world to the women out there. Like, it makes me feel good, right? But when you guys do that, it forces the Apple algorithm and the Google and the Spotify algorithms To acknowledge your voice and say, this is important to these women. Let's keep showing it to more women. And that is how we can help more women and really be a sisterhood. So I want to read a review from Nick and Family. It was 5 stars. Attention all women, follow this podcast. I love that. I'm so grateful for the information Dr. Tabatha gives on her podcasts. We have some amazing women making changes to our medical industry, and she's one of them. Together, along with Dr. Anna Cabeca, Dr. Mary Haver, JJ Virgin, etc., these women are dynamos in the medical field and are trailblazing women. Oh my gosh! I feel so honored to be on that list of women. So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, and. When women— when you guys take the time to leave the review like this, it legitimizes it for other women because, yeah, I am a professional. I'm triple board certified. Like, I know my stuff. But women, you guys want to hear from other women, right? You want to know, like, is this stuff helping you? Is it impacting your life? Who do you trust? You know, I hope that you trust me because I literally do this for you. Like I have said multiple times, I don't get paid. There's no benefit for this, but I reach the women and I, you know, I love giving free resources, giving you some value so that you can try some things on your own because not everybody needs A doctor. Like, I truly believe our bodies were created to be in balance and to thrive until our last day. And so you shouldn't need a lot of intervention from a medical doctor. And unless you are going through menopause and you want hormones, or you do have stuff in your gut you have to kill off to get back into balance, or you have mold toxicity or whatever it is, but There are so many day-to-day things that you can tweak and change to really reclaim your health and take back control of your body. And today's episode is one of them. So yay! I'm so excited. Share it with everybody you know. And this is for men too. Like, this is not specific to women's health. Sleep in general impacts everyone. It's for men, it's for children, it's for teenagers, especially nowadays. We have tech neck. It's this forward head posture where you lose the curvature of your C-spine because you're always looking down at your phone or you're stretching forward to look at the computer screen. We call it tech neck. And it's impacting everyone, especially our children. And that is very detrimental to our health. So my guest today is going to explain all of this. And it impacts our thermostats, how we regulate our temperature when we're sleeping. And a lot of you complain about night sweats waking you up. Like, I just— I'm hot and then I'm cold. And you can do really important things like keep your hands and your feet outside of your blankets. Like, I'll cover up with my blankets, but then I keep my feet out. And that helps me regulate my temperature. But the biggest thing that regulates your temperature is to be in alignment when you sleep so that your vagus nerve can regulate that part of your brain that handles your thermostat. So we're going to talk about all kinds of cool stuff today. So stick with us and let's jump right in. So let me just sing his praises really quick. Dr. Peter Martoni is an educator and a patient care practitioner. He's focused on improving patients' biomechanics for over 25 years as a chiropractor. So he believes the structure of your spine affects the function of the central nervous system. I do as well. That's the basis of osteopathic medicine. And this core belief is that the central nervous system controls every function in the human body. And in order to be able to express true health, you have to keep your nervous system healthy. Couldn't agree more. Okay, so when your spine falls out of alignment due to poor spinal mechanics, it interferes with the proper function of the nervous system flowing through your body and causing you to be out of balance. So even though he's a chiropractor, he's not recommending adjustments all of the time. Like, that again can become Band-Aid medicine if you're not getting to the root cause of it. And it turns out sleep Is part of the root cause of why you have this need to be put back into alignment by the chiropractor continually. So I love that he now does better because he knows better, so much like me. So love that so much. But he has gone on to figure this whole sleep thing out. He has worked with designers and engineers to create the Neck Nest. It's a pillow. That corrects patients' spines while they sleep. So his revolutionary concepts are designed to help restore proper biomechanics of the spine by adopting a neutral sleeping position, helping you sleep better, live longer, and be healthier. His techniques have been featured on CBS, NBC, Fox News, Dave Asprey's Upgraded Conference, and he's been on over. 50 podcasts as he travels the world teaching people how to regain their health by mastering the art of sleeping. So this conversation is super relevant to you, I promise. Okay, here we go. All right. Well, welcome, Dr. Martoni, to the Gutsy Gynecologist Show.

Thanks. This is fantastic. I love it. We're right in my wheelhouse of people that have issues with sleeping. So this is Fantastic.

I thought you were gonna say gynecology was your wheelhouse. I was like, wait, what?

Absolutely not. I do see a few gynecologists in my private practice, and we often talk about how important sleep is, especially as women are aging.

Yeah. Well, I'm so glad you're here. I really— I want you to share your story because when I heard it, it resonated with me. I was like, oh my gosh, that makes so much sense why I went on to have All of these problems. I had herniated discs in my neck, herniated discs in my back. I even ended up with failed surgery. And I knew a lot of it had to do with my diet and my super stressed-out life as an OB-GYN. But when I heard you talking about your story, I started thinking about the fact that I would sleep on couches at the hospital or in a hospital bed Or in a recliner, like, on my hand. If you guys watch it on YouTube, like, leaning on my hand. And then I would wake up when something was numb, and I would move to a different position. And, like, numbness waking me up was just how things rolled. So please tell my audience, like, what the heck? How did you become enlightened?

I know nobody wakes up one day and says, you know what? I want to be a sleep specialist.

Right?

Kind of one of the most boring things. On the planet to, to be in. But we're trying to make it fun. It's, it's really a zigzag and a whole— life's a zigzag and, and, and you gotta follow signs and, and the more in line you are with who you're becoming and what you're trying to achieve, the, the greater, better life you have. So like when I was a structural specialist, I'm a chiropractor, I'm an exercise physiologist, a nutritionist. So I always loved the study of human biomechanics and how the body works. And then being a chiropractor, I really appreciated the, the essence of how the structure of the spine affects the health of the nervous system. So like when I look at you, for instance, you have a head shift to the right side, which causes an issue in your vagus nerve, which compresses some fullness in the ear. But that's going to be affecting your parasympathetic nervous system. So you're going to have issues, you know, specifically somebody with that head shift. With digestion, with immune system imbalance, and hormonal imbalances.

Oh, my God. You just literally called me out.

You guys, people are going to fight that their entire lives, not knowing that it's related to your structure. And so when you're watering a garden, you have your foot on the hose. The health of that garden is only as healthy as the pressure on the hose. So we We, we, we change what we're eating. We, you know, we, we try to meditate to become less sympathetic dominant. So we do all of these things and nobody looked at the pressure on the hose. So that was my, my first 15, 16 years in practice is understanding how the structure of the spine and it directly plays a role on health and well-being. Well, I, as a chiropractor, Had a kind of like a dirty little secret. I always had back pain, always. Right? So I just attributed my back pain to, you know, being a, you know, competitive mountain biker, you know, hang glider, you know, skydiving. I mean, I've done it all to scratch the ADD itch. And, and then so when I, when finally it was about 15, 14 years ago now, I herniated my own disc. So I had just a little injury, not enough to like a, not a little crash on my mountain bike, but not enough to herniate a disc. It's just like 2 days later, I bent down, I twisted, I picked something up, gone. My whole leg was numb. I was in the most pain. I've broken my arm, my leg. I mean, but I was in the most pain of my life. I'm hooked up on Dilaudid in the emergency room because I couldn't move. And I'm sitting there like, how did it get to this? How can I be a chiropractor helping people with pain and discomfort of their spines? I had it my whole life. And now I'm in the emergency room. So I started reviewing x-rays and found that I knew that there was a pattern. I just didn't know really what it was. And I found that due to the righting reflex, which states that body posture adjusts to head position. You know, I'm adjusting all day long. I'm on computers all day long. We're on cell phones all day long. So I had this forward head posture. And after looking at x-rays, when you have forward head posture, that picks up a— so your body picks up a psoas major muscle spasm to take pressure off of the lower back. So people have these hip shifts, not because the problem's in their back. It's because it was in my neck. And, and, and, and like when you build a house, you build a strong foundation, you work up. The body works completely opposite. It's trying to level the eyes in body posture, adjust all the way down from how you're holding your head. So I'm like, holy mackerel, this makes sense. So I'm like, when can I fix it? Well, when are you potentially in one position all day long? Because your spine's like clay. I'm like, I might be able to do this when I'm sleeping at night. So I started like jamming pillows under my neck to get my neck back. As far back as I could. I hated it because I felt so unsafe and I couldn't fall asleep like that because, but because my why was, I, I, it's either surgery, I never practice again. You know, you know, I was just, I was so, so afraid. I've made it happen. I've never had a back pain since. And, and once I started adopting a sleeping position, so that is how, you know, the, the third leg of the stool is alignment when we talk about sleep. Because nobody talks about it.

Oh my gosh. I'm resonating with everything you're saying. Like, as a DO, I was trained like form follows function, right? You have to have the structural integrity of your spine to help your nervous system function properly, which in turn all your organs function properly. So this makes total sense. But we didn't get a lot of training on sleep. We really didn't. When I think about the fact that when I side sleep, I wake up with numb arms, I wake up in pain, and I do try to sleep on my back, and I'm constantly shoving the pillow under my neck because intuitively I know I want that, that curve in my C-spine. So I love this pillow of yours because it's really just like giving you that. And I think back to like People in Asia who, you know, they, they have the most centenarians. They're the healthiest. They have that little neck pillow. You know, I remember watching The Karate Kid going, he sleeps on that little thing under his neck? Like, what the heck? But they had it right, right?

Yeah. You know, it's funny, right? So when you look at, like, where that pillow— the pillow defined, the modern pillow is a support for your head. That's the problem. You can't support the head and have a great night's sleep. You'll toss and turn all night long. But back in the day when they first started with pillows, it was because of their big hairdos. They didn't wanna mess up the hairdo. So they, they started, you know, it's, it's been, if the why's big enough, the what won't matter. So they put these blocks of wood underneath their neck and that's how they would sleep. And, and, and it's that block of wood that really maintains the integrity of the alignment. And, Wow. And, and when you look like, so when we started, Getting people to sleep differently. It was really for, you know, discomfort in the back. What transformed was digestion health, was hormonal imbalances, where hot flashes were going away. And I'm like, what? Just from changing sleeping position? And it was because when you improve that arch, you then take pressure off of the vagus nerve and you improve parasympathetic tone, which then stimulates your hormones, digestive system, and reproductive immune system, digestive system, and reproductive system. So that's really kind of the full circle. My first 15 years were, was adjusting people till I was blue in the face because they always came in with the same patterns. Then once we started transforming the way people sleep, people started needing me less because they're holding their adjustments longer because they're maintaining alignment for 1/3 of their life while they sleep. And that's really Why we've, you know, so I'm still so focused on improving the function of somebody's internal system, but now I can scale it and help millions of people by teaching them how to sleep correctly.

Yeah. Well, I just appreciate the fact that you weren't cool with just continuing that bandaid approach of like, let me just adjust you every week. It pays my bills. Like every, it's copacetic, right? Like I had the same issue as a surgeon. Like, Every couple years, they're needing more surgery, and that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. So you're getting to the root cause of the issue, and I know women want to understand this a little bit more. Like really, I understand it stimulates my vagus nerve and calms me down, but let's get even deeper because my women, they are not sleeping. They are having hot flashes. They're having pain. They're having. Major gut issues. You know, they'll be doing the same thing for 20 years and then all of a sudden, like, I'm having burping and bloating and all of these issues. So let's talk more physiology. Explain to me, I've heard you talk about, like, what's happening in the brain when you're not getting that good restful sleep and how that's impacting things.

So if we were to dive deeper, and I, I really like to, to talk at kind of like a 5th grade level. Actually, I'm not smarter than a 5th grader. I tried to take that test so many, you know, the, uh, that, that TV show. Oh my God, the questions they ask. But when you, when you, when you look about physiology, really when you, you're looking at balance between 2 systems, systems that are called the sympathetic systems.

Mm-hmm.

And then systems that are called the parasympathetic system. So you either have survival systems, which are systems that want to keep you alive, awake, and surviving, running from a tiger. That's a specific physiology. Think about the physiology if you're going to run from a tiger. You know, your heart rate increases, your respiratory rate increases, and you are out of there. Your body is in protection mode. That's like If you're treading water to stay above, you know, you know, to stay, to not drown, and you're treading water, those are survival systems keeping you alive. Now, the opposite of that are your thrive systems. These are where you rest, grow, and repair. That's, you know, your digestive system, your immune system, your reproductive system. So you always remember your grandmother's telling you, you can't eat a sandwich and go out swimming. Because what happens is, is you to stay above water, your body shuts down the other systems. So it's almost like, you know, energy going to one system in lieu of another system. So a cell can't be and survive and thrive at the same time. And the issue is, is the body's physiology doesn't matter if you are running from a tiger or if your body thinks you're running from a tiger, you're going to establish that same physiology. And then that internalizes very characteristically adaption over a long period of time. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, increased hormonal dysfunction, increased digestion issues, increased, you know, immune system hypersensitivities. So when you, when somebody comes into the office or, or they, they, you know, I'm, I'm coaching them online and they tell me they have one issue with one system, I already know that their body's out of balance. It's not even a— it's because you can't have an issue with the immune system and not have an issue with the digestive system and reproductive system. They all go along, and it's typically an imbalanced state. So now when we go to sleep, our bodies need to balance, right? And that's when your parasympathetic nervous system is at It's maximum productivity, I guess you can say. When you're running from a tiger, it's sympathetics. When you're sleeping, it's parasympathetics. So now the trick is to try to figure out the perfection of what we call the sleep triune, to be able to balance these out. It— the sleep triune is the balance between the conscious brain, The subconscious brain in the body, because the conscious brain— I mean, the subconscious brain is really where that parasympathetic nervous system thrives. It just wants safety when it sleeps. It wants to feel protected, safe, nurtured, right? The conscious brain just thinks it wants comfort, and then the body wants alignment. Because the number one reason you toss and turn is because of pain, then safety, then temperature regulation, which is where the dysfunction comes with the parasympathetic nervous system. So now most people put themselves into a position where the conscious brain mistakes it for safety, and you think you're so comfortable.

Oh, yeah. So you're in the fetal position right now.

Yeah, right. I call it the armadillo. Yeah, right. Or it's the ostrich. So you— but what your body mistakes for comfort, your body mistakes safety for comfort. So the body feels safe, you fall asleep, and the body's like, what the heck are you doing? I'm out of alignment. So after 20 minutes, the average person will start tossing and turning 20 to 40 times a night because the body is in pain.

Hmm.

Then you are not in, in control of where you end up, and now you're reinforcing that, all that forward head tuck position. And you're complicating the problems at night when you're sleeping. So we talk about reversing the triune. Start with alignment, create safety for the subconscious brain, then teach the conscious brain just how to get out of the way because our conscious brain is what really screws everything up.

Oh, absolutely. Oh my gosh. You're speaking my language. Like, all of this is what I'm always preaching. And I tell women, even if you can mentally handle all your stressors all day long, all your tigers you're running from, that doesn't mean your physiology is handling it. Your body is still responding, it's still reacting, and it's going to stay in that sympathetic state until you activate the parasympathetics and shift it, right? So I love thinking about alignment, and I'm just thinking to all my nights of sleep recently, and I'm constantly finding myself trying to be in alignment. Even if I'm side sleeping, I'm trying to pull my up shoulder back so it's not hunched forward in that fetal curved position because I'm realizing I'm feeling that loss of that curvature in my neck. So I think that's really important for women to understand. What are some tricks that they can do for that?

All right. So the trick is, and I get this question a lot, like, you know, because the conscious brain, when I went in and we'll show them, especially if they're on YouTube, I'll show you the position you have to be in. The conscious brain is the first thing to say, I can't do that. There's no way I can do that. And it doesn't realize, but it's the subconscious brain's telling the conscious brain, listen, that's not a safe position. So the first thing we have to do is we need to evaluate your personality type. Right?

Okay.

So there's a very quick way that you can do this. So you're looking at me through a camera, right?

Yeah.

You're looking at a camera.

Yeah.

So this is what you do. Look at me, make a circle with your hands, and look at me through that circle.

Okay.

And now bring that back to your eye. All the way back. See what eye you looked at me with? Your left eye. And you're right-handed, I would assume?

Yes.

Okay, good. You can put your hands down. So that's a cross-dominant individual. So a cross-dominant individual has a brain that spins really, really fast. They compare themselves to other people. They have very high— like, like when, if they're arguing, they get into a very high state. They, they, they, they have a little more internalized anxiety. They have unexplained underachievements. So there's a lot of things that come with this. They're, they're basically live internally at a high parasympathetic dominant state. I'm cross-dominant. That's how I know this. The avatar so well. So they're your ADDs. And a lot of times it's undiagnosed with ADDs because everybody thinks, oh, ADD is lack of focus. It's not lack of focus. It's just a spin— a brain that spins. It likes constant change. It likes adaptation. But that avatar needs to feel protected and safe when it sleeps. It, it's more like the ostrich. It wants pressure. That's why, like, like pressured blankets and pressure on your forehead, things like that. So your specific avatar, when I, when I show you the position, goes like this. Yeah, no way. There's no way because your subconscious brain feels exposed when you're in that position. But when I show you what you do to create safety in that position, And the goal with sleep here, this is really one problem that people really get wrong.

Okay.

They think they have to decide on the entire night's sleep. I gotta get a great night's sleep all night. All you need to do is focus on falling asleep because that is the only thing you're in control of.

Mhmm.

And sleep is about letting go. So listen, if, if I, if you fall asleep in this position and then you wake up in a different position, who cares? The subconscious brain is in control when you sleep. You gotta get the conscious brain out of its own way. So the goal is start with alignment, make the subconscious brain feel safe, and then just learn to shut off that conscious brain. Right?

Okay.

And, and there are different techniques that we have. So with somebody like you, and most people, they wanna feel protected when they sleep. So when I show you this position right now, like I said, the conscious brain always says, no stinking way. And you can try to fall asleep as much as you want on your back, but the conscious brain won't let you. I'm going to show you right now. So here's a— that's a neck nest. And what the trick is with the pillow is not supporting the head at all. So you want to put a pillow underneath your neck and then let the weight of the head hang off the back of the pillow. That's super important. Because you want to use distraction to be able to gently stretch the curve back into your neck. You can use pressure on your chest. You can put that right underneath your chin. You can put a pillow over your eyes. You can put a shirt or blanket over your eyes. Right? You could put a pillow next to the side of your face, so it feels like you're sleeping on your side. So you can mimic side sleeping from a back sleeping position by using pressure on the body in different positions. And that's how you do it.

I love that. I just— you're trying to make yourself feel safe. I do love my weighted blanket. I think that helps a lot. So that makes a lot of sense. And then you said if you wake up in a different position, it doesn't matter, but you should always try to go back to that back sleeping position, right?

You want— so here's the thing. Remember, the number one reason people will toss and turn is because they're in pain, because your pain centers and your sleep centers are right next door. Let's say somebody's 40 years old, a lot of arthritic change, some degeneration in the neck. They hurt a rib back in the day. Their hips are out of alignment. They got disc issues. Just put— the lifestyle habit is just put yourself to sleep in this position at the beginning and then whatever happens. So let's say you're in this position for 1 hour a night and you do that for a month. That's 30 hours of putting yourself into this distracted position. The body will stop tossing and turning once it gets used to that position.

Awesome. Okay. How does sleep affect our weight? My women want to know this. They're always trying to be their ideal weight, you know?

So the biggest issue with weight is not being able to break down fat for fuel, right? So when it's— so we eat to maintain our energy, which we think, right? And we always eat. We have food within our systems. And then when we get low blood sugar, What do we do again? We eat, and and we're always putting stores within our battery cells, which are our fat cells. So when we get lack of sleep, the body will go into this survival state, right? And when you are surviving, the body wants to conserve energy to go for you know feast and famine. So certain things happen. You know, you increase, you know, hormones that, that make you hungry. You also release cortisol that makes you hold on to weight so that your body isn't able to release it so well. So when you're chronically fatigued, your body is going to be into this sympathetic state. You're never going to be able to lose weight. And you have to understand where your weight is right now is an adaptive Adaptation to all of the stresses that you're putting under based on what you eat, how you're walking, how you're doing anything. So if you like, let's say, just stop eating, once you start eating, you're going to create that— your body is going to put all that weight back on because you're just going to maintain that physiology. So the best weight loss plans, when we put our patients through them, it's work on sleep, get more sleep. You actually, by sleeping more, you'll You'll speed up your metabolism because you will lose, you'll lose weight because your body's more rested. Then you have to get your heart rate up at a very specific level, 80% of your max heart rate. You take the, you take 220 minus your age, take 80% of that, and that's your target heart rate that needs to be at that rate. So let's say the, let's say a 40-year-old would take 220, which is 180. Got 220 minus 40. So that comes to 180. Then you take 80% of that. So minus 36 from that. So the, the, the, I'm not doing the numbers right now, but let's say 140 would be your target heart rate. And you work at 140 for a half an hour at a time. And you do that in the afternoon. You don't wanna do that in the evening. So you're speeding up your metabolism and then you repair at night while you sleep. And then you do that one specific thing over a month and you're going to see weight loss.

Oh my gosh, I couldn't agree more. Like, when I found the world of functional medicine, I realized I was living in this world of disease and diagnosis and like everything was just so skewed. And I started cleaning up my diet. I immediately lost 10 pounds just giving up gluten and sugar, but it wasn't until I started sleeping that I lost the other 20 because I was so sleep deprived. Like, I was a prime example as an OB-GYN. And when I gave up that life, like, the weight just came off. I hadn't even started exercising yet, really. Like, it was crazy. So I couldn't agree more that sleep is actually a requirement for a healthy weight. And some people do require more sleep. You know, I have a couple autoimmune conditions. Sometimes I will sleep for 8 or 9 hours, especially on a weekend. Like, leave me alone. I need to rest. So I love that you're spreading that message because I think that we think it's like lazy or selfish. I'm like, our bodies were actually created to sleep. That's when they restore. So thank you. Like, so important. Oh my goodness.

I slept 10 hours last night, believe it or not. Good.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And, oh, okay. Anxiety is another big one my women deal with, like anxiety for the first time in their life. And a lot of times it is from the hormone shifts, the loss of progesterone and stuff. But I do think it's amplified because this is what I keep hearing. I can't fall asleep, or if I fall asleep, I wake up and then I can't fall back asleep. And that is making me even more anxious. And they're like getting caught up in the trying to get enough sleep pattern. And it's like this vicious cycle they're stuck in. So let's talk about that.

So let's, let's go back to the analogy of the vagus nerve and stepping on the garden hose, right? So stepping on the garden hose affects the flow out the hose. Well, what if the flow, the, let's say, at the hose, right where the spigot Isn't turned on enough, and you can't even turn that vagus nerve on because of constriction at a different, a different place. So when you're looking at anxiousness, anxiety, a lot of times it's stimulated by hormones, right? Because the, the issue is, as we're going through life with this distorted cervical curve, your spigot is on so low. That over a period of time, the gap between the sympathetic system and the parasympathetic system grows, not just because it's amplified by the hormonal changes that you're going through, but because of the severe compression of that forward head posture.

Mm-hmm.

So what people don't realize is your sleeping position progressively starts to suppress the vagus nerve function in, in as little as 10 years old. Because we see reverse cervical curves in children now. But when you amplify that, people start— your body loses plasticity as we age.

Yeah.

Neuroplasticity. So the ability to adapt shrinks because of part of the aging, the imperfection of the aging process. So as that amplifies, we see, see people that have these lost cervical curves due to their poor sleeping positions. Starting to really amplify the imbalances in that gap right around 35 to 40 years old. And then as we go through there, things just seemingly just fall apart. You can bowl through life when you're younger, but then everything is going to catch up. And then everybody thinks they're falling apart when the issue is always in the immune system, the digestive system, and the reproductive system. It's in those 3 because your major issue is parasympathetic inhibition due to cervical dysfunction. So that is the essence of how we bring somebody back from, you know, not even being able to smell perfume or wear perfume, and they'd have to leave rooms, to being able to adapt to their, their, their entire external environment and get their life back because we are able to turn on That parasympathetic nervous system. So whenever anybody has issues like that, it first starts with looking at the cervical function, looking at their sleep, and changing their positioning. Because then things start to just— once you start to turn the parasympathetic spigot on by getting that neck back, it's a game changer for some of these hormonal balances. Wow.

I'm sitting here correcting my cervical spine the whole time you're talking because I'm realizing I am literally slouched I'm in this big chair with my feet up on a thing. Like, I can't get any worse in my posture right now. So I'm—

So one of the issues with you is your head swings over to the right. So more than likely, you, you have had ear infections when you were a child or strep throats. And then that's also coming up from an old right ankle sprain. So what happens is ankle turns and it reinforces that translation Because a talus that comes forward is going to lean the atlas to that side. And that probably happened when you were young too. And then that translation we just bring through our entire life of dysfunction. And one of the fixes for that, like I said, is, well, working on balance because the vestibular system gets thrown off with that head shift and working on sleeping position.

Oh my goodness, man. So much is making sense. And I hope that women— I hope you guys hearing this are like, oh my gosh, this makes so much sense. Because I have so many women who are doing breathing techniques, they're doing heart math, they're doing all the things trying to regulate their parasympathetic system and activate it. I'm like, you got to be laughing, you got to be singing, you got to be humming. You have to be doing all of these parasympathetic And I hear women saying, like, I'm just— I'm not shifting. I feel like I'm stuck. And so, yeah, if for 8 hours of your day you are pinching that vagus nerve and you're not allowing that flow or that activation to even happen, that makes total sense, like, why we can't become unstuck.

Well, you're actually— you're pinching it Through your whole life. Because what happens is if there's a good cervical curve that you reinforce and then you stand up, let's say you stand up during the day, most people's necks are gone. That— so that's compression 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Right.

So your spigot is on so low, it's almost like going to the garden and just putting good fertilizer in, and you're doing all of these, and you're just planting new resistant plants, or you're changing the soil, or you're adding nitrate. You're doing everything in the garden, not even looking at the flow of the compression at the nerve root level. And that's really what, you know, what is eye-opening for people, because when we explain this to them, they're like, what? It can't be that easy. That's it. It's that one simple fact that I'm around the world educating people on, because it Is that easy?

Mm-hmm.

You know, and, and, you know, and then there are different techniques where you can use sleep masks. That in itself stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system. And when you meditate during the day, what you can do, always use a scent on your nose when you meditate. Then at night, because when you meditate, really you're focusing on your breath, you're releasing, you're letting go. Then your brain will attach that scent to calming, and you can just use that scent in, in stressful situations or when you're being put to sleep. So there are different ways to hack the parasympathetic nerve. But really what the lifestyle habit should be that really trumps all of it is focus on the integrity of that curve. And the best thing to do is just focus on the first 10 minutes of when you go to sleep. Don't say I can't, I won't, I'll snore, I can't, but you know, my— what, it doesn't matter. Just fall asleep like that. And then if somebody nudges you, lie on your side. Well, glymphatic drainage happens better on the left side. Yeah, well, that study was done in rats. Don't worry about it. So just, just do what's good for the body, which is put the body into alignment in that corrective sleeping position. Distribute your weight over the greatest surface area. You'll have less hip pain. You'll have less shoulder pain. You'll have a better functioning cervical spine. Just do that for 10 minutes a night. That's it.

Awesome.

I love that.

And I heard you in an interview talking about how getting a good night's sleep actually starts earlier in the day. And talk to my ladies about their schedule because Yeah, you can't just be crazy all day and then hop into bed and expect miracles, right?

Your body is like a cell phone. You know, the more performance you want out of the phone, right, the more apps you want to have on, the longer you have to plug it in at night. And, and if not, the phone will die. Well, you won't die. You'll just internalize that with a lifetime of dysfunction. Right? Which to me is still Dying, right? Hypersensitivities, autoimmune issues. That is just a severely imbalanced, fatigued system. So when we look at that during the day, it, it— life starts with expending energy and then replenishing energy, right? We wanna, we wanna look at that balance. We wanna remove pressure on the nervous system to allow the body to balance more effectively. And then we wanna look at the things within our environment that give us energy. And so what do we do? Typically people do caffeine, right? Well, caffeine metabolizes. It's a sympathetic dominant product. It, it puts you into kind of like an elevated cortisol level and it takes 5 hours to, to metabolize the half-life of caffeine. So you wanna make sure that you don't have any caffeine past noontime. Caffeine before noon's good. Caffeine afternoon is not good. Some people even ultra sensitive to that. And I'm not talking about a mocha latte, you know, big, you know, that you're walking around with like a, you know, a keg of caffeine. I'm talking about, you know, 8 to 10 ounces of caffeine. And then the second is the sun. Ultimately, we get our energy from the sun. So the more exposure you can get to the sun, the better off you are. I know, oh my God, sun's bad. You know, you know, live under an umbrella. Embrace the sun.

Yes, please.

That, that, that, that, that vibe, that skin exposed to the sun. Yeah, you don't— I mean, you can wear sunscreen, you can wear sun shirts that block you and don't damage the skin, but don't be afraid of the sun. So, and, and exercise, you got to understand exercise, you know, the only, uh, well, not the only, but The major metabolizer of cortisol. If you're exposed to a specific event, like a stressful event, and cortisol released, it takes 3 to 5 days to metabolize cortisol naturally through the system. So that's one stressful event. Look at another stressful event. Look at another stressful event. Now all of this shit just builds up and the weight of the world is suppressing on you. Then you get that imbalance between the parasympathetic and the sympathetics. So as we age and we go through that change and we're flickering that parasympathetic nervous system, it's all of this weight. The the organ that's designed in the body to metabolize cortisol is the heart. So when you exercise and you get that heart rate up to that that high in that rate, afterwards you're just going to be like.

No.

I just feel good. You're not gonna know why you feel good. You just feel good. It's because you— the heart used all of that cortisol for energy. So now you're going around with, with, with a bucket that's not full of cortisol, and then you can fill it up again. So exercise, exposure to the sun, you know, you gotta think about all these things because, you know, sleep is recharging your energy. During the day is expending energy in, in, in, in, in being able to supply energy to the system. So as long as you look at it like that, our entire 24-hour day, I call our health day starting when we go to sleep. And that needs to be consistent. So I don't like the midnight to, to midnight. I like the 9:30 to 9:30 because your health day starts with the 8 hours you spend in bed and then you move forward.

I love that. And I think when you're talking about cortisol, it makes total sense to me. I was a physiology major in undergrad. Like, this has been my thing. But there is a narrative going around that women shouldn't do any cardio because it causes cortisol dysfunction and adrenal fatigue. And women are just like, holding on to that narrative so tightly. And I would say that's probably for a very small population of people with actual adrenal fatigue, right? Like their cortisol is tanked, they can no longer produce. But I completely agree that if you have an excess stressful state, you're making too much cortisol, you do need to burn that off. You have to get rid of it. And exercise is one of the ways to release that and get rid of it, right?

Absolutely. And, and you are true, like some people you don't want to recommend too much exercise because they are so depleted. Um, you know, so that's why when you're working with somebody like you or you're working with somebody like me and you have somebody that's managing, you know, your effectiveness, it's really what it comes down to is who do you trust as a resource? Because it's not about Not enough information out there.

Right.

It's not that you, you can't Google something and, and one thing says this, one thing says this. It's about, do you have somebody you trust that can help you manage the information and navigate the information out there that is in line with what your outcomes— you see what outcomes you're trying to get? Here, here's the deal. Nobody— when you think about sleep, you're lying down In one position for 8.5 hours. That's a waste of time. Like, like when you really think about it, that's a waste of time. So nobody likes sleep. They like what you're becoming with good sleep. They like the outcome of sleep. So, so you can't sell sleep. Like I was talking to one of my staff and they're like, well, you know, we're doing this thing and there's this USTA and how do I teach the parents To teach the kids to sleep better. I'm like, listen, no kid wants to be lectured on sleep, right? At all. All you can do, especially with a child, is teach them the position to fall asleep. And this is how you're gonna fall asleep. Just fall asleep like that and then you're done. But as they get older, what do they want? They want more performance. They want less injuries. They want, you know, they want, you know, better hormonal balance as we get even older. You know, I have it so much dysfunction. My why was I had a herniated disc in my back, not realizing sleep was gonna help all these other things. I needed to fix my spine. So if your why's big enough, the what doesn't matter. So I wanted to become pain-free. I wanted to, you know, be able to practice. I wanted to still be able to mountain bike. I didn't want surgery, so I didn't care what it took. I was gonna make it happen. So that's why, that's why, you know, sleep itself, when you think about it, is if you don't maximize it and work on it, you, you're wasting— you're not wasting any time. You just, you get frustrated because you know how important it is. But, you know, you gotta focus on the outcome.

Yeah. I love that. And I, I think, like, if you wake up in the middle of the night, just be happy that you have some quiet time and you don't actually have to check your emails and do all this stuff and just be appreciative of the fact that you're laying there enjoying your comfortable bed and relieve some of the pressure of like, I got to fall back asleep, because I think that, you know, it just keeps us stuck in that vicious cycle. But I love all of these hacks, this information. I think I'm going to get a lot of good feedback on this podcast. My ladies are going to be super happy. I hope that you're— You're feeling this, you guys. I really hope you are. So any last parting words? And I want to say, like, you have courses that dive deeper into this stuff. People can, like, if they feel, yeah, this resonates with me, this makes sense, you have a ton of resources for them, right?

Absolutely. They can go to drsleepright.com. They can just take a sleep risk assessment to see how your sleep pattern is affecting your health. And then you take that, and then you can go anywhere from there. You know, if you, if you like what we have, it's great. But at least you can see where you stack up. But I do want to say one last thing, and I think that this is really important. This will be valuable because I love adding value. So one of the most— I, I, I talked about the sleep triune. The toughest thing about the sleep triune, yes, it's getting the alignment and the positioning right. But it's getting out of your own head, right?

Mm-hmm.

And it's really understanding that the bed is a safe place and you need to respect that time we spend in bed. So one of the problems with sleep is we can't shut off our racing brains. Now, here's a trick that helps, that's helped thousands of people. You can't think yourself to sleep. So when you're, when you're like in bed and you're thinking about something that happened today, Or something that needs to happen tomorrow, and you're trying to rationalize. The blood's in the in the wrong part of the brain for sleep. Now, I went golfing this past weekend. I think about every shot that I did yesterday, and because I'm remembering and I'm choosing not to think, because you you have a choice. If you get into an old memory that happened, oh that you've already find that you have to. have slept on this memory and it's already been categorized in the brain, you'll go right to sleep. And if you fall asleep on that one memory and you re-fall asleep on that same memory over and over again, you'll go to sleep quicker and stay asleep longer. So that is one trick. If you wake up in the middle of the night, access the same memory you put yourself to sleep on. The body loves consistency, loves bedtimes, it loves wake-up times, it loves The same thinking thing because it will attach that memory to sleep.

Oh my gosh, so good. I love that. I'm going to try that tonight. Awesome. Well, thank you. You are a wealth of knowledge. This has been so good. I hope all my ladies follow you. What's the best way to find you on social media?

Yeah, it's Dr.— it's Instagram, and it's @drsleepright. Yeah, not .com. So that's the website. @DrSleepRight, D-R Sleep Right. That's Instagram. And then I don't know if anybody even uses Facebook, but it's Dr. Sleep Right spelled up.

But that's— Okay. Well, we'll have the links in the show notes. They can find it. That's what most people do anyway. But thank you so much, Peter. This has been awesome.

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. And I appreciate everything you do, Doc. Thank you.

Hey, I hope you got so much out of that. That was really awesome. Okay. What was your golden nugget? What were you like, oh my gosh, I'm going to do this. I'm going to change this besides getting the pillow. Like, I'm totally getting the pillow because I'm tired of trying to make my pillow do what his pillow does. Right. But my golden nugget is as long as we keep pinching that vagus nerve with being out of alignment while we're trying to sleep, we're like in a bad position, our neck is bent, it's twisted, it's flat, it's not right, then we can't really get into that nice parasympathetic rest, digest, and repair state. It is being pinched off. So that was a good reminder to me, like, get into alignment first and foremost. Make yourself feel safe, like the ostrich who puts his head in the sand when he's scared. He's doing that because it feels safe to him. So, you know, if that requires putting some pillows around your head or a weighted blanket on your body and leaving your feet out, like whatever you need to do to feel safe, make that happen. And then remember that you can't use Use your prefrontal cortex. You can't talk yourself into sleep. It has to be a release, a relaxing subconscious thing. So I like the idea of just going over some memories that you really enjoy. And for me, I always rattle off my gratitude to Jesus. I just start saying all the things I'm grateful for, which I'm realizing is me activating a lot of memories because sometimes I'm grateful for just things that have happened in the past and I am think— pulling forward memories. And a lot of times they are the same things over and over again. So this makes total sense to me. So I hope that you will try some of this. Stuff because once you can dial in your sleep and consistently get good, amazing sleep, everything changes. And let me just tell you, I no longer sleep next to someone who snores. Another perk of taking my life back. That has helped a ton. So if there are things that are really distracting you and preventing you from getting a good night's sleep, please know that it is affecting your hormones, it is affecting your overall health, it's affecting your weight. So you have to figure out how to get a good night's sleep. Let me know if this was helpful. I love you, ladies. I will see you soon. Have a great week.