The Problem With Sleeping On Your Side, How To Sleep On Your Back, Little-Known Sleep Enhancement Tricks & Much More!

I found that I needed to be in control of something because we're all control freaks. It's very difficult for us to shut it down. Especially if you're like me. You could put a coin on my shoulder and I will wake up and that coin will still be on my shoulder. I don't toss and turn all night at all. Now we're doing our post X rays on them. It's ridiculous. I'm taking people off of care three and four months earlier and when I tell people is that you don't have a problem in your lower back, you have a problem in your neck.

I have a master's degree in physiology, biomechanics and human nutrition. I've spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet. From Sealfit, Kokoro, Spartan Agoji and the world's toughest mudder to 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science. Search the globe for the world's top experts in performance, fat loss recovery, hormones, brain beauty and brawn to deliver deliver you this podcast everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride. Oh, well. Howdy, howdy ho. Today's podcast is a little funky. It's with my friend Peter Martone. He's not like a world renowned sleep expert, but the dude knows some kind of fringe under the radar stuff about sleep I haven't talked about before on the show, so I thought it was high time I got him on. Don't fall asleep. Don't operate heavy machinery during today's show, please. Hey folks, my guest on today's show is actually one of my buddies. He and I have ripped up the dance floor at an 80s party together and more importantly, spent plenty of time at health conferences geeking out on the very topic we're going to talk about on today's show. Sleep. And more specifically, sleeping positions. His name is Dr. Peter Martone. He is a chiropractic physician. He's probably one of the smartest guys I've ever talked to when it comes to outside the box thinking regarding sleep, meaning like you know all about stuff like sleep cycles. If you're listening in, you've probably no doubt heard interviews with people like, you know, Matthew Walker or Nick Littlehales or Michael Bruce. But Peter has a very different approach. He kind of, kind of approaches Sleep from a very biomechanical standpoint, which is quite interesting. He also has some other tricks, too, that I'm hoping we have time to get into stuff I haven't heard of before when it comes to. To sleep enhancement. So I'm gonna take a sip here. I've got a little cinnamon chaga tea I'm chugging on. We're recording in the evening. This is round two. We tried to connect this morning. That didn't work so well, huh, Peter?

No, it didn't.

Yeah, we had. Our time's all mixed up. I think Peter came running out of the forest from a workout. And we tried, but we're making it happen now. We're making it happen right now. And mainly, one of the things that I should tell you is that you may recognize Peter in his voice because he was on a Facebook video with me a year ago where we were talking about probably where we're going to jump into right now, sleeping on your back and why it's so good for you. And the problem with side sleeping, and for me, as a side sleeper, this is something I find intriguing. So, Peter, I believe that, if I remember properly, your story begins with watching that old martial arts movie, Crouching Hiker. Crouching Hiker. If I can talk. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Am I correct?

You are correct. That is where my. I called it. I did a story for a friend of ours, Dr. Joe Mercola, and I laid it out. I am, you know, having ADD like you, Ben. Hey, I know. I'm sorry, but. No, having add, I like. I love puzzles, and I love to put things together. And some of the stuff that we're going to go over. The reason why the audience hasn't heard it before is it's just the way that I, you know, I'm an exercise physiologist, a chiropractor, a nutritionist, and I just put things together because I see patterns. And I was watching Crouch and Tiger Hidden Dragon. I think it was set in, like, the 1500s, and when the two characters came out of the room, I remember very, very vividly seeing a block of wood for their head. And I'm like, what? For a pillow? And I'm like, what the heck is the block of wood doing as a pillow? I mean, that would. I said that would be so uncomfortable.

I don't know. These are the same people who train their limbs against blocks of wood to make their bones stronger.

Yeah, that's true, but it wasn't for their head. It was for their neck. And that really sent Me down this whole entire thought process of changing because I was a side sleeper and I had shoulder problems and I always blamed it on rock climbing. I rock climbed all over the world and I thought it was rock climbing. I thought it was impingement syndromes, and I fought those forever.

Weren't you like a semi pro mountain biker or something like that too?

That was actually coming out of the woods when I got you text. Oh, yeah, I'm ready in five minutes I was in the middle of the woods and I bolted all the way to my house and on the phone with my wife said, hon, you got to pick up the kids from school with one hand flying down the trail. And it never worked out, but that's fine. We're on it today.

Good man. You're the one guy I'd want texting and cycling at the same time. So you. So you saw the. The Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon movie. These cats are sleeping with their. Their necks on a wooden block and where'd your mind go?

I said, well, it kind of makes sense, right? Because if you look at.

No, it doesn't.

It does because one time I was. I got. I was camping, right? I did a lot of winter camping and, you know, lived out of a backpack for a while. But anyways, so I was camping and I remember I forgot I had this little camping pillow. And instead of a pillow, I used my shoe and I put my shoe onto the base of my neck and I was so surprised because I slept all night long with a shoe under my neck. And I woke up and it was well rested. It didn't make any sense to me.

That is interesting because I would have chosen a coat or like a rolled up pair of socks.

Yeah. For some reason my shoe made. I don't know, at that time it worked. Maybe I put something over it, but the shoe. Shoe worked good. I had two shoes together and my head kind of nestled into it and I slept good. Then I started sleeping on my back from there and. And then my shoulder issues, which I had double impingement syndromes, ended up going away. And I'm like, wow, there's something to this. And wait till I. Wait till I get into some of the stuff that I found on. I just did a review of a thousand X rays and it was staggering to me what I found.

Jeez. Okay, cool. Where do you want to jump in with. What's wrong with the side sleeping position in the first place? Because I don't know. I mean, I thought that was intriguing and I figured before we teach People how to sleep on their backs or how one could do it. I mean, I'm curious. I've heard you talk to me a little bit about it before, but can you just take a deep dive into the issues with side sleeping?

All right, so I would, after looking in, really reviewing these X rays, I would like to start there. I would say 90%, and this is regardless of age, 90% of all of my patients have some sort of damage to their cervical spine. So what is critical in human development and human structure is that you have a curve in your neck. Right, you're familiar with that. You have a nice cervical curve in your neck. And when you lose that cervical curve in your neck, this is due to texting. I mean, we are on computers all day long, we're texting all day long, we're driving and we're sleeping on our side. What ends up happening is we have all of this forward head posture activities during the day, and we have nothing to reverse that damaging effect at night. So what ends up happening is people are losing the cervical curves in their spine. And with this review of X rays, what I found is 98% of people that lose a cervical curve in their spine pick up a curve in their lower back in the scoliosis. Basically, their hips get thrown out of alignment.

So wait, is the curvature in the upper spine like a front to back curvature or a side to side curvature like a scoliotic curvature higher up, causing a scolio curvature farther down?

Exactly. So you're losing the normal cervical curve. So in the lateral plane. So basically, picture your head moving forward. Right? That's loss of curve. So in the lateral plane, you're losing the cervical curve. It's called the lordosis. And in the lower back, you're picking up a scoliosis in the A to P plane.

Okay. All right, so you're sleeping on your side and it's creating a scolio curvature of the lower back.

It's first thing that's happening is you're losing. The first thing that happens is you lose the cervical curve in your neck, which is causing a scoliosis in your lower back.

Okay, so is that the main issue with side sleeping then? Just that, loss of hip function?

No. So when you lose the curve in your neck, something very specific happens. There's a portion of your brain called your vermis.

Is that like an acronym for something?

No, it's an actual part of your brain. All right, so there's a specific part of your brain in the cerebellum that its major Function is to kind of control proprioception. Okay. So your balance, your awareness in space. And when you lose a cervical curve in your spine. And in your spine, 80% of all the proprioception into the brain comes from your spinal cord itself. I mean, your spine itself. So when you lose that cervical curve, what happens is you break down propriocept, which atrophies the vermis. And the vermis is one of the functions is to build the prefrontal cortex. So what ends up happening? The prefrontal cortex is your executive functioning. So you lose your executive functioning and you lose focus and you lose attention, you get irritable. So it's a very, very, very interesting connection.

This thing with the vermis, has this actually been studied before?

Yeah.

So you get atrophy of a part of the cerebellum from sleeping on your side.

Long term, no. So you get atrophy in a portion of the cerebellum from loss of proprioception. And when you lose, when you break down the biomechanics of the spine, that decreases proprioceptive signals into the brain. So I'm theorizing that because when you degenerate the spine, you atrophy your vermis. So when you lose the cervical curve, that's basically degeneration of the spine.

Now, what about this idea? Because we in the past few years have seen the emergence of the knowledge of glymphatic drainage that occurs during a night of sleep. It's when the brain kind of cleans up cellular garbage. And it's very similar to the lymph drainage that occurs for the rest of the body. But it's my understanding that that occurs most favorably in a side sleeping position. So wouldn't you be limiting the amount of lymphatic drainage?

Which then I would ask the question is. So that lymphatic drainage happens around the neural tissue itself. So if you decrease the curve in the spine, you're going to severely block off that lymphatic drainage when you reverse that cervical curve in the spine. So if you take a normal individual and you reverse the cervical curve in their spine, you're going to inhibit, it's called the atlas axis, upper cervical area, where right around the top portion of the spine, you're going to block off cerebral spinal fluid at that point.

Okay, so you're arguing that the disruption in cervical curvature that would occur from long term side sleeping and the loss of glymphatic drainage that would occur as a result of that is actually greater than Any inhibition of glymphatic drainage that would occur if you were sleeping on your back instead?

Without a doubt, 110%. Yes.

What else with side sleeping? Is there any other issues with side sleeping besides this atrophy of the vermis, loss of proprioception and a scoliotic curve of the hips?

Sure. So let's look at why we toss and turn all night long. Right? So your pain centers and your sleep centers are very close together. And that happens, you know, for a reason. Because when you're in pain, your body wants to wake up and turn. Correct. So if I tell my patients I.

Get that a lot in my left hip, by the way, I can't sleep on my left side. I can also. I'm kind of like half side, half belly.

Well, your body. So what I, what I would, I would quite tell you to do is go on your right side, right. And try to watch a movie in that position for two hours. Stay in one position. It can't be done because your body.

It'S Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, I could do it.

Exactly. But you're going to be in pain. So my point is, is that when you fall asleep on your side, you're only in control of that position for a short period of time. When you check out, your body is going to toss and turn you all night long because of the fact that your body's not in, which we'll talk about in a second, a neutral sleeping position. So that's why people toss and turn. They toss and turn because they are. Because they're in pain, because they're in an improper sleeping position. So the next thing I would say on that would be, let's say somebody has alcohol. And alcohol puts you into a deep comatose sleep and it inhibits your pain sensors. So if you go to sleep on your side, this happened to me many times back in the day, and you have alcohol, and then you wake up on your arm, you're gonna pull your neck, you're gonna wake up tight, you're gonna hurt your arm because you stay in that position three to four times longer. And you actually can do damage to a joint by side sleeping like that.

Now, what about actual research or insight into things like cognitive function or executive function or a lot of the things that we rely upon proper REM and non rem cycles for? Has any of this ever been tested in sleep labs? Have you ever done any internal research or anything like that?

So my only, I haven't done research on back sleeping and any of that Type of stuff. But recently I have an OURA ring, and I've really been geeking out on that thing, really understanding when I get my best deep sleep, time of the week, I get my best deep sleep. And then my sleep cycles, how much I toss and turn, things like that. So you could put a coin on my shoulder and I will wake up and that coin will still be on my shoulder. I don't toss and turn all night at all. I don't move.

Hmm, interesting. Okay, so the problem here is that even if people would be convinced that there's some kind of link between injuries or cognitive function and an entire night spent on your side, what I run into is I just can't freaking train myself how to sleep on my back. And furthermore, I'm curious, you know, besides this hip scoliosis thing, if there are actual advantages to sleeping on your back instead versus, say, you know, let's just say we fix this issue by sleeping on the stomach, for example. Can you walk me through that?

Walk you through how? It's how to get somebody to sleep on their back.

You know what, before we do that, what would be the advantages to. To sleeping on your back? Like, is there any advantage beside getting rid of some of the issues that we just talked about?

Yeah, so if you use a pillow, we'll talk about. We have one specifically designed not for your head, but you use it for your neck. What you will actually do is reverse. You'll actually restore the cervical curve in your neck, which also helps decrease the lumbar tension. So you'll decrease lower back pain and you'll decrease neck pain by sleeping on your back.

Okay, so I guess the million dollar question here is somebody listening in, they want to train themselves how to sleep on their back. I've tried. My issues are I get pretty comfortable. I can actually take a whole nap on my back just fine, 40, 60 minutes. And I'll often put a pillow under my knees and pillow under my head. Even then I wake up with a little bit of sinus congestion. Like, I kind of like wake up like that when I'm sleeping on my back. And I also find if I'm doing that for a full night of sleep, I'll get about an hour into a full night of sleep and I kind of wake up and find myself shifting to my side. So how do you actually train yourself to sleep on your back?

So the way that I teach my patients is I say all you have to do is start on your back. You don't have to stay in your back. All night long. You start on your back and you sleep on your back for one to two hours a night. That is going to be enough to be able to stretch that neck back and help reverse the cervical and help reverse the damage of texting and forward head posture all day long. Another technique that I have them use is you can buy like a. If you don't have a bed that elevates, you can buy these sleep wedges online and you can sleep at a 5 to 10 degree angle and that will help you also sleep on your back.

Is that the same as one of these gravity beds that actually kind of tilts you back as you're sleeping?

No, basically like a hospital bed, you know, where it elevates you elevates your legs slightly and elevates your back slightly. So I sleep at about 5 to 8 degrees.

Okay, gotcha. I did a whole podcast on those gravity beds before. At one point they're called zero gravity beds. Have you seen these things before?

I have. No, I haven't.

Okay, so the zero gravity bed is. Let me see if I can describe the shape of it to you. It can go down to flat, but it's basically elevated. So your back is at an incline. Then it kind of dips down under your lumbar spine and then dips back up under your knees, then levels out. You could probably, or if anybody's listening in, you could Google it and see a picture of what it looks like. So kind of tilt your upper body up and your lower body up so you're almost kind of sleeping in a V shape on your back with your knees kind of elevated. That's different than a sleep wedge.

Well, yeah, so that's exactly. That's the best way to do it, to be able to sleep like that. But a sleep wedge is a, you know, a $49 investment online and all it is is a small triangle. Basically, it's 7 inch elevation.

Okay, gotcha. Yeah, these gravity beds are usually like a couple of thousand bucks. I did a whole podcast on them. I'll try and hunt it down and link to it in the show notes, which by the way are@BenGreenfieldFitness.com that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com necknest. So you start off by sleeping for an hour on your back, preferably with. And where are you putting the wedge?

So the wedge is long enough where it start. So the pillows at the top of the wedge. Right. And then the wedge goes all the way down to the base of your, of your spine. So Basically at your belt line.

Okay. And the wedge is, I assume, with the tapered end of the wedge pointed down towards the bottom of your spine.

Correct? Yeah.

Okay. All right. I could do I have one of those, you know, like those. Those sex pillows. I forget. Yeah, that's that same shape, huh?

Yeah. Yeah. You're gonna do fine with that. That's gonna be great.

Oh, I do do fine with that, brother.

Trust me.

Okay, so you need, like a. Like a pillow wedge. And you want to just do it for like an hour a night. And will your body eventually get to the point doing that where you could sleep an entire night on your back?

It will, because the issue is if you have that reverse cervical curve, which is also picked up in the lumbar by a pelvic misalignment, and your ribs also have scar tissue in them from side sleeping, and you can't take a deep breath, what ends up happening when you first start lying on your back? You can't stay on your back because your body is in pain, because your lower back is going to bother you, your ribs are going to bother you, and your neck's going to bother you. So by making a lifestyle habit of starting an hour or two a night, some nights you'll be there three or four hours. Some nights you'll only be able to one or two. But you do that all the time. Eventually your spine will change. Takes about three, about two or three months.

What about this trick of using. I think you called it a 650 down pillow. Like a down pillow. I don't know. What does the 650 stand for?

Well, it's a fill. So what we ended up designing is I was trying to get people to use down pillow back in the day and stuff it under their necks. And what ended up happening is.

That's important. Sorry to interrupt. You said under the neck, not under the head, which was weird for me at first. So basically, your head's kind of like tilted back just slightly.

Exactly. Yeah. And then we ended up designing. We actually used a down fill in it. We designed a pillow for your neck, not your head. So it's a totally different design because if you're going to support the head, then you use a regular pillow, which is going to destroy your cervical spine. But if you support your neck, it's similar to, like, the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. It's not a block of wood, but we made something that would work similar.

So you saw the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. They had a wooden block on your neck. You did it with a shoe when you were camping, then you tried a 650 down pillow, and then you said, screw it, I'm just gonna make a pillow that can actually go underneath the neck.

Yeah. And now we're. So we launched the pillow back in December, and now we're doing our post X rays on them. And it is, it's. It's ridiculous.

How do you X ray a pillow?

No, I'm X raying a person's neck. I'm just kidding. Yeah. And it's ridiculous. I'm taking people off of care three and four months earlier because they sleep in the right positions.

Interesting. So do you have a pillow like. So you've got this pillow. This is the one you call the neck nest, right?

Correct. Yup.

Okay, so you have this pillow. It's underneath your neck. Are there any other pillows underneath it or is the head just kind of. Kind of supported in a slightly tilted back position with this thing underneath the neck?

Yeah. So it's a. There's nothing else that you use under it. You put it directly on the bed. And then the way that I've been using it now is because it has two custom zippers on it. You can add fill. You can take fill out, which is something that, that people fought me on, but I wanted that anyways. But I have very little fill in my pillow and my pillow. My head rests almost right on the bed and I just stuff that pillow right under my neck. It is. It's such a comfortable position.

Do you usually start with more down and then work your way. Work your way down.

That is exactly. That's exactly what you do. And yeah, so my body is in a neutral position. So when you think about it, your surface area is greatest on your back and your weight needs to be distributed over the greatest surface area. So when you sleep on your back, it's called a neutral sleeping position. You're actually distributing your surface area over the greatest amount of space. And then once your body gets used to it, it'll stay in that position all night long.

Okay, so when you're. When you're taking this down out, is that the little zipper on the side of the pillow?

Yes. Yeah.

Okay. I haven't actually taken any down out of mine. You sent me one, but I didn't. I didn't mess around with that at all. What's the down made out of?

It's duck and down. So. And they, they take all the, you know, the little pokey. The little pokey things that come in down that pokey in Your neck, they take all that stuff out and that's why it's a concentrated down.

Yeah, I think those are called quills. I'm not sure.

I could be making that up. No, I think you're good.

So you basically get this pillow, you put it underneath your neck, you do this for say an hour. When you sleep on your back at night, do you put a pillow under your knees at all?

No. So I don't. A couple of my patients. At the beginning, you can, because it's like I said, when your back goes into extension, so your back naturally, when you lie back, goes into hyperextension. And when it goes into hyperextension, you don't need a support under it. You don't lose. You're not going to lose the, you know, the curve in your lower back. But what happens is if you're not comfortable, if you're not used to sleeping in that position, your lower back will get painful, unless sometimes you need the pillow under their legs.

Okay, so back up to these X rays that you did with your patients when they were doing this. What exactly did you see?

So I would have. I have a patient with a reverse cervical curve. Right? And when you reverse the cervical curve in your neck, remember, you pick up, your hips go out of alignment. So everybody looks at the hips being out of alignment. And what I tell people is, I said, you don't have a problem in your lower back. You have a sleeping position issue. You have a problem in your neck. So we look at the neck and there's a reverse cervical curve. So we are now taking post X rays where we're restoring the cervical curve and then we take pictures of the lower back and we're pulling out the scoliosis in the lower back.

Interesting. How many patients do you have using this thing right now?

Well, since December, we've sold a thousand pillows, so we have a lot of people using them.

Congratulations, that's pretty good. When you're on your back like this. You know, I kind of like this idea too, because there's some devices I don't use because I can't sleep on my back. Like, there's this headband called the Dream headband for monitoring ECG signals while you're asleep. There's like noise blocking headphones that work really well, but if you're in a side sleeping position, you can't use it that well. It's something that's, that's high up on my priority list. And I'm still toying around with the pillow that you sent to me. And, and I'm now doing of course, like I mentioned, all my napping in a back position. I just got back from a camping trip where you know, when you're inside a sleeping bag, you're pretty much relegated to sleeping on your back. And I actually stuffed some clothing, not my shoe, but stuff some clothing underneath my neck and then a little bit underneath my head just so it wasn't straight flat on the ground and it worked pretty well. So I'm kind of coming along and I like the idea and I imagine some people have some questions about how to do this and if you have questions, I have some other sleep things I want to ask Peter about. But if you have questions about this, just go to the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com necknest I'll link to this Necknest pillow. It's just one size fits all and you take the down in and out as you want.

Yeah, you customize it. My kids use it too. So you can have a small neck, a small size and you can take enough fill out where it works for your kids too.

Alright, cool. For all you using that iron neck training device, you might need a lot of, you might need a lot of down. Peter might need to send you extra down. Okay. So the other thing I wanted to talk to you about was you have all these other little known sleep tips like your trick about remembering stuff and you have some interesting thoughts on core temperature and even using pressure on your head to sleep. I would love to pick your brain for a little bit on some of these lesser known sleep tips that you have. So can you, let's start with this thing about remembering. Can you fill me in on how this works?

Yeah. So I, you know, in my past I had a lot of anxiety and I had a difficult time sleeping because I would think, I don't always think about things to do. I think about, you know, my to do list and what I had to do, you know, at the office and, and I was a thinker. I was a big thinker because I lived in my head and I was unable to ever. I was unable to get a good night's sleep and the more I was thinking I'd wake up all night long. So then, you know, I talk. Some people, they said count sheep and count and count and count. So I would count and count would help. But it wasn't great for me because I'd start counting and then it start thinking. Right. So I found that I needed to be in control of something because we're all Control freaks. It's very difficult for us to shut it down, especially if you're like me. So I remember I was giving a talk once and giving a talk in my office. There was about 23 people in the audience. And I remember that night. Instead of counting the number of people, I counted each person and remembered each seat that they sat in. And I just visualized each person in each seat. And then I went right to sleep. And I did that over and over and over again from the same talk. I memorized where each person was sitting. And I found that the further. The more I memorized the same event, and the further I got from it, the quicker I went to sleep. And I stayed asleep all night long so I could focus on something, but I wasn't thinking. It was very important for me because I looked at some of the science on this. What I was doing was I was remembering. What I think I mentioned to you one time is you can't think yourself to sleep. You have to remember yourself to sleep.

What do you think is going on there from a cognitive standpoint?

Because I looked it up, it doesn't exist anywhere. What I believe is happening is when you dream. Listen to Walker and some of the other people out there. Dreams are a way that your body categorizes your memories or your days, events, or. But so when you. And what I found is if I, let's say, go mountain biking today, I can't remember the trail I took today. I have to sleep on it, and then I can remember. Then it will put me to sleep. If I happened yesterday. Does that make any sense?

Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, I've messed around with this, and it actually works. Oddly enough, I didn't believe you. And then I started to remember. And the farther back I can remember, like, I'll think about what I had for dinner last Friday, you know, like five days ago, and it actually works. But I'm trying to figure out if it just distracts you from the other racing thoughts that you might be having or if it's actually causing you to tap into the memory banks you tap into during some of your. During some of your REM sleep.

Yeah, that's what I'm theorizing. I don't know. But, you know, in what I find is if I go back to. If I think about something back in my childhood, I'm out. So the further I go, you go far back. I do, yeah. And I love it. And I remember the same exact. I go back to the same exact time, the same exact walk I walk around the block when I was a kid. It's fun, and I'm out.

That's a very interesting tip. I recommend that people try it if you haven't heard of this before, because for me, it actually works. You also have some interesting thoughts on core temperature and sleep. And I think your thoughts are interesting because I've always kept the room cool, tried to not exercise too hard close to bedtime, often do sauna and cold or a hot, cold contrast shower prior to bed, and also sleep with socks on. With the theory being, and there's a little bit of research on this, if you keep the feet warm, there's more blood available to be shunted to the core and you have different thoughts. Can you outline your thoughts on core temperature, sleep, and things like socks?

Oh, my God. I'm so glad you brought this up because it is something I'm really, really, really passionate about, because one of my core beliefs. Right. Have you ever heard of the term allostatic load?

You might want to describe it for our listeners, though.

So basically, to make it simple, and I told my mom I wouldn't use complex terms. So to make it simple is your body has a hierarchy on things of importance, like vital organs. Your body cares more about keeping your heart beating than it does growing your fingernail, right? So there are survival systems that take, like, your body. Core temperature is one of them. So your body cares way more about your core temperature than it does even your immune system. It cares more about your core temperature than it does keeping blood in your feet. So when you think about allostatic load, you got to think about, okay, why do we get sick? And we get sick because our body only has so much energy that it can distribute throughout the whole entire body. If you're running from a tiger all day long, because that's a survival system, you've got to get away from that tiger. It's going to suppress three very important systems. Your immune systems, your digestive system, and your reproductive system. Those systems are all lower on the totem pole than getting away from that tiger. That makes sense. That's allostatic load. Your body has a hierarchy of things that it needs to maintain. And then if it has extra leftover energy, then it will boost your immune system, then it will boost your reproductive system and your digestive system. That is why people always have issues in three areas. You can have a digestion issue, an immune system issue, and sometimes a sex issue. So they're all connected. So now let's go back to sleep and let's go back to temperature. Well, your body needs to. One of the most fundamental high on the allostatic load things is body core temperature. When you drop, you're correct, you get sleepy. But it has to be so tightly regulated within 1 or 2 degrees that it requires an enormous amount of resources to be able to maintain a core temperature at 98 degrees in a 60 degree room. So when you're sleeping, to me, I keep my core as warm as possible.

As warm as possible?

As warm as possible with the as amount of covers on myself. And then I use my hands, my feet and my head as the radiator. So I let. Because the body cares so much less about your hands and your feet, it will make them really cold. So if you're doing the opposite of what I teach all my patients.

But wouldn't if like, couldn't you just not keep your core warm and also keep the other areas exposed if you're using them as radiators and get the core temperature even cooler? Or are you saying that that would increase the allostatic load too much?

It'll increase the allostatic load on maintaining core body temperature at 98 degrees and it will suppress your immune system healing at night. That is a theory, but I'm going with it because it, because remember at night if you take the way that I explain it to my patients again, if I take a glass of water and I need to maintain the temperature of that water at 98 degrees and I put a little meter, energy meter in there as the, is the temperature. If there's no barrier around it. If the temperature of the room cools, it takes more energy to keep the heat at the, keep that water at 98 degrees. But if I insulate it with a little, you know, with a little koozie, it takes less energy giving the body more healing energy. So, so what I, so my, my thing is, is keep your core warm and like the, like the Ayurvedic, you know, writings let the, let your hands, arms and feet out. Sometimes I only put the covers from my waist up to my neck and I'm done because I use my hands and my feet as my radiator.

Do you track your sleep at all? You like use the oura ring or anything like that?

Yep.

Yeah, that's the one that you use.

Yeah. So last night my sleep score was a 97. 96.

Holy cow.

96.

Geez. I might have to try this. We're using that tip that you just talked about. Keeping the core warm and the hands and the feet Exposed.

Yeah. The issue which I guess is easier.

To do if you're sleeping on your back, huh?

It is, yes. Way easier. And you don't. You won't toss and turn. Ben, I'm telling you, you're gonna love it. Take it. Take it before and after X ray. Because also, too. I mean, not to talk personal stuff, but if you have spastic to iliopsoasis, which are muscles through your stomach, they attach directly to the spine. I believe that they're in spasm because of a reverse because of a breakdown in the curve in the neck or improper sleeping position.

How are you keeping your core warm? Are you just doubling up your blankets around your stomach and back area?

No, I just use one down blanket. That's it.

One down blanket. But you make sure it's over the core with the feet and the hands exposed.

Yeah. So I, So, so for your, for your listeners, if they go to that neckness backslash, Bengreenfield that we'll talk about there, there's a. I, I'm gonna have pictures there, and I have pictures of myself doing this. I have pictures of myself, my kids in the head garage, which we'll talk about in a second, and I'll post it all to that site.

Okay, great. The other part is the head. Like you. You talked about actually getting a weight on the. On the head. Am I correct?

Yeah. So again, when you. My theory why people like to sleep in the side position is like the ostrich that's sticking their head in the ground. It's because they're curled up in a ball and they feel protected.

Yeah, I do that if I'm sleeping on my side. I even have, like, one pillow under my head and one pillow over it.

Yeah. And that's where the whole weighted blanket idea came from. Right. Because when you have pressure against your chest, when your arms are close and they're tucked into you, you feel protected. So when you sleep on your back, you feel so exposed to the world. Right. Because your arms are out, your chest is out there, your head's out there. So what I do is, like I said, I use those blankets up on my chest, which feels really good. Sometimes I'll put a pillow on my chest, but I also put a pillow over my head, and I call that the head garage, where I put a pillow up to my eyes. Basically sits right on my nose, above my nose, so I can still breathe, but I like that pressure on my thigh.

I own all these things. I have a weighted blanket. I have your neck nest, and I Have a pillow. So you're saying I would sleep on my back? Hands and feet exposed down, blanket over the core. My neck's on your neck nest. The top pillow's kind of over my eyes. Then I've got kind of a weighted blanket over my chest.

Come sleep over one time. We'll have a good time.

No, it's not gonna happen, bro. But that's very, very interesting. Okay. And I will try this. I want to try it. And I'll track my sleep. Okay. Very cool. The Head Garage. I dig the name. You should like invent some kind of a, I don't know, contraption that just does all this at once.

I'm in the works.

Saw a thousand of those too. So do you have any other kind of, kind of little known sleep tips that people might not know about? Because I know you just love to geek out on this stuff. You're more obsessed with sleep than most people I know.

Yeah, I do. I love sleep. A few other things that I think is really important when somebody is going to sleep, right? One of the problems is that, have you ever tried to go sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep and you're thinking, and then you can think about everything, right? So it's the only time in the day when you wait. You're actually smarter in the morning when you wake up for the first two hours than any other part of the day because it's the only time when your brain can tap into your thought, part of your brain, in your memory, part of your brain. And blood is going to both areas of the brain. So it's a very addictive time to think. So at night when you're sleeping, it's very addictive because you can tap into different areas of your brain because you're in a different state. And Thomas Edison got into this state. And what he would do is he would. He would hold these balls in his hands.

I know this.

Oh man, this one blew me away when I heard this, because I do really some similar stuff because you can do it through meditation too. But he would hold these balls in his hands and he put these thimbles on the ground. And when he had this, this problem that he couldn't solve, he would go into this basically sleep state and he'd start thinking and it almost feels like he can walk around your brain when you're doing it. And then all of a sudden, right before you go into sleep, your body releases all muscle constriction and he would drop the balls and it would hit the thimbles and it would wake him up and he'd come out of that state and he'd be able to write down a solution to his problem. So when you go into that type of state, the problem with people, if they don't monitor their thoughts and they have a lot on their mind, they're going to think all night long. And then what happens when you sleep? You're going to forget about everything. Just understand the thing when you wake up in the middle of the night or you're trying to go to sleep and there's a lot on your mind and you think you're gonna figure it all out, you can't remember it when you wake up, you can't do it. So write it down. Have a journal right next to your bed. Write things down. It's better to wake up for a minute, write things down, get it out of your head and then go to sleep.

Yeah, I have one of these. These pilot pens. I think it was Tim Ferriss who I found this out from. And it lights up just a little bit at night. It's still kind of a blue light, but you don't have to flip on the lights. And you can write on a. On like a regular paper piece of paper, you know, the last thing I do is pull out my phone to take notes on the phone, because your brain just gives them a phone mode at that point. But I think it's called a pilot pen. I believe it's some kind of a lit pen. I'll find it and link to it in the show notes. But I agree, you have to write it down. The problem is, just don't write it down. Oh, it's called the pilot's pen, by the way. Not the pilot pen. The pilot's pen. Put a link to it in the show notes. And in terms of that journal, you just wake up and then transcribe it or put it into your computer, your phone.

Yeah. Well, what I do now is I don't need to do that anymore because I meditate in the middle of the day and I get my thoughts out during the middle of the day. I organize them and then I journal them. And then I have a journal right next to my bed. I go to bed so quickly now that, I mean, I go to sleep so quickly and stay asleep that if I'm thinking at all, I'll write all my thoughts down and then clear my mind. One of the things that was the. Which puts me to sleep even quicker now than remembering myself to sleep. I've been trying this new technique is I Think about thinking about nothing. So I try to clear my brain of all thoughts, any thought that comes into my brain. And so I go into. I try to go to sleep with a clear slate and think about nothing. So that's my new technique. I'm still working on. That's difficult.

You need to be a proficient meditator to be able to do that. Do you take any supplements before bed?

The only supplement that I do take is during the day is magnesium. But recently I've been messing with CBD oil because the one portion of my sleep that was kicking me in the ass was my deep sleep. So I track things right on Sunday. And I believe that sleep is significantly tied into weight because it's tied into my weight. I'm heaviest on a Monday after a weekend. And then on Monday night, I won't get a deep sleep. I'll bike on Tuesday. Tuesday night, my deep sleep will only be about 20 minutes. And then Wednesday, when I get a great night's sleep, my weight's low. And that's when I get my deepest sleep is on Wednesday night after a workout on Tuesday. So I started to then take CBD oil. I've been only doing this for about three weeks. I've been taking CBD oil about 25 milligrams, which is 12 milliliters of CBD. Oh, no. I don't know.

25 is not bad. That's one of the few supplements I take before bed. I'm like, closer to up around 60. I'm a sucker for CBD before bed. It just helps me sleep so well. But that's pretty much the only one you take, huh?

Yeah, that's the only one to take. I don't like taking a supplement that is a hormone like melatonin. Unless you're trying to. Unless you're trying to, let's say, change the circadian. You know your circadian clock.

Yeah. If you're traveling particularly west to east, it works pretty well. Okay, interesting. So this neck nest, I wanted to make sure we point people in the right direction so they can just go. I'll have a link in the show notes, but it's necknest.com but you gave me a URL necknest.com greenfield because you have, like, some extra goodies you're throwing if people want to buy one of these neck nests. Can you fill me in on what they get if they do that?

Yeah. So I have this new sleep quest. It's called, you know, my acronym now is doctor sleep. Right. And so I have this 30 day sleep quest, which we're launching May 1st. I'm breaking down and I'm diving into all of these topics, plus more foods to eat, how food affects you. A lot of my tips that I give my patients, you'll see all the before and after X rays and different things. So we dive in a little bit more. And that's a $99 value. People going through it for $99. But if somebody buys a neck nest, they're going to get that sleep, right? The 30 day sleep quest for free. And then they'll also get a free pillowcase with it. And if they buy two, they get free shipping.

What kind of stuff is in that sleep program?

So the sleep program is 30 days. So I break every. So one day, every day for 30 days. They'll get an email, they'll get a video from me and they'll get my. Basically my notes of the topic. So like one topic is sleep position, how to use a pillow. We talk about caffeine. Caffeine is a huge one because the half life of caffeine is five hours. So if you're looking at drinking like a Starbucks and Starbucks, like a big Starbucks, could have 300 milligrams of caffeine in it. If you do that, even let's say by noon, five hours later, which is five o', clock, you still have 150 milligrams of caffeine in it.

More than that, if you're a slow caffeine metabolizer genetically.

Right. And it's crazy, people don't realize how food affects them, how the room setup affects them, how the placement of your bed affects you. So we're breaking all this stuff down. So I'm teaching people how to master sleep in 30 days.

How long does it take to do each day? If you're doing 30 days.

It'S about a 15 minute a day investment.

Great. Just bring your laptop to bed and watch it in bed. Right? 15 minutes every night.

Yep. There you go. Yep. Picking time during the day.

Cool. Well, I'll link to that too. So if they get the pillow, they can also get that Sleep Quest along with the pillow. I know you're throwing in a custom pillow case for free too. So you got a bunch of goodies people get over@necknest.com Greenfield I also recently did a really big article I didn't do. One of my buddies who's a physician wrote a really big article, I don't know if you saw it, on how to increase your deep sleep percentages and we got into a whole bunch of stuff in that article too. Like, oh, great article, vibration therapy, a lot of stuff. So that's another one that's interesting. And I'll link to that in the show notes as well. It's like a 10,000 word article, but not only is it good, but I found total random thought. I found out that this app called Pocket, if you save articles that you find on the web for later, not only will it save them in your little Pocket archive, but it will read them to you. So if you have some big long article that you don't have time to read, you can actually use this app. I think it's getpocket.com and I didn't even realize that it could read it to me until I opened it on my phone. I'm like, holy cow, I can just go on a walk when I don't have time to read an article and this thing will just, just dish it out to me. So little random tip for folks. It's called Pocket. Anyways, though, Peter, your wealth of knowledge, thanks for taking time out of your day and I guess in this case, your night to come on the show and share all this stuff with us. I'm sure you're jonesing to get to bed and take off your clothes and put the weighted blanket on and make your garage and the thing under your knees and your lift pillow and all that jazz. So I'll leave you to that. And I have my own little tricks I'm going to be trying this week as well. So I'll report back and if you're listening and you have questions, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com necknest leave them there. I'll link to Peter's pillow over there too. And you can rock and roll. Thanks for coming on the show, Peter.

Hey, thanks a lot for having me.

All right, folks, until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dr. Peter Martone, based out of Boston. If you couldn't tell, signing help from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate, because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.