Natural Solutions to Restorative Sleep in Menopause

Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I have a little sleep secret I want to tell you about. Look, sleep is crucial for your fitness, but it's crucial for just plain old everyday life and function. And I find I sleep great unless I have a migraine. And I've had more than my fair share since perimenopause all the way through postmenopause. My secret weapon was Blue Sky CBD sleep gels. Each gel contains 25 milligrams of CBD and 25 milligrams CBN for deep restorative sleep. Something about it helps to reduce inflammation, which I believe for me was key in helping me get to sleep. But the biggest thing is so many of the over-the-counter solutions, whether for sleep or migraines, can ruin gut health, and liver health. Neither one of those did I want to be problematic for me. So this option is recommended by healthcare providers worldwide and backed by thousands of happy customers, many of whom come from our Flipping 50 community. There is zero THC, so it's non-habit-forming. It's made by a trusted family-owned company that we all can feel good about. Third-party tested for purity and potency. And if you're interested, you too can try a sample for just $6. But even better, you can get 30% off forever with discount code FLIPPING50. That's FLIPPING50. Just go to flipping50.com/blueskycbd. We'll put that link in the show notes and you'll find it everywhere on Flipping 50 at My Favorites.

What are you waiting for? Good night. Oh my goodness. As many of you know, I often record this introduction to a podcast after I have recorded the podcast episode. I'm just coming off of it, hot off the end of it. And first of all, I have to say it's like dinner and a show. It was so good. The content is so great. I know we've talked about sleep on this episode or this podcast more than one time, but this episode is unique. First of all, as we're talking about how CBD might be a potential win for you, but there is so much more here in this podcast. You will hear me toward the end of this suggest to you listen to it again because there is that much here. There is this layer of great information And you're gonna want to hear that and tune in, but I think you're also going to want to tune in again because between the big chunks of great information, there's this little nugget of, I'll bet you didn't know that. So we're giving some specific amounts of the levels of DHEA, what DHEA is for those of you who aren't quite sure. We're talking about estrogen and progesterone, how they need to be in a balance. I've mentioned this before, but this is really important because I run into many women who are saying that they're on estrogen, they're not on progesterone. And I'm like, how is that possible? Because they need to have a good relationship with each other. And you'll hear a little bit more about that and the numbers for that as well. But we're really talking sleep. Restorative sleep in menopause can be elusive. Can we just agree on that? But the challenge is, it's elusive for different reasons. And you and I do not want to fall into the black hole of saying, well, it's menopause. It's— I don't— I'm not making as much melatonin. It's progesterone, potentially. There could be other things going on. This episode out is about other things. I think we can agree that we need to keep our eyes and our ears open. This will be one not just for you, but potentially for your spouses, and you're going to want to share it with your besties and your sisters after you have listened to it for the second time. My guest today is Dr. Eric Dorninger. He's a registered naturopathic doctor and licensed acupuncturist, having graduated from Bastyr University. He earned a BA in kinesiology from the University of Colorado Boulder and completed EMT training there. He later served as an EMT in New Jersey before obtaining his doctorate in naturopathic medicine and a master's degree in acupuncture from Bastyr University. In 2005, he founded Roots and Branches Integrative Healthcare in Boulder, Colorado, focusing on uncovering the root causes of chronic illnesses. He's a certified practitioner specializing in mold and biotoxin illness. He is dedicated to differential diagnosis and personalized treatment plans, emphasizing the importance of identifying underlying causes of illness. In addition to his private practice, he teaches functional medicine, practices jiu-jitsu, skis, and supports his children's health journey. Listen to this because this is background that you want to know before we dive in. He specializes in inflammatory and autoimmune disease, and I want to suggest to you that aging is inflammation. If we can slow or stop, prevent inflammation, we can decrease the rate at which you and I age. You can see this showing up all around you, and I don't mean your friends, your besties, or yourself who might be doing Botox. I mean, just start looking at how people are aging when you are 50 at your class reunion or 60 at your class reunion. I don't mean that we're scrutinizing and judging, but I do mean to say that you can tell people's lifestyle habits begin to show up, and you know who's sleeping really well, who's drinking a lot of water, who's— I, I can't say that it has a lot to do with sun or not, although I'm seeing a little sign of aging on my skin. I definitely know that. I think there is a lot to say for our habits, but the things that Dr. D, as we shall call him, specializes in are this: Hashimoto's, lupus, mold and biotoxin illness, autoimmune disease, chronic fatigue, gastrointestinal concerns, mood disorders, cardiovascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis, hormone balance, chronic pain, neurological conditions, food sensitivities and intolerances, and complex chronic disease. I'm going to read the line of what I just told you: inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. What was in there? Hormone balance, because if we're not in hormone balance, we're inflamed. If we have food sensitivities and intolerances and we're ignoring them, and we have signs and symptoms, say, in gas, in bloating, constipation, or diarrhea, and we're ignoring them, we're inflamed. So realize that some of these things that are going on we are either trying to maybe ignore or settle for, and/or we are solving the symptom as opposed to getting to the root cause. So we are talking to the doctor and the owner of Roots and Branches Integrative Healthcare. So let's take advantage of it. Can't wait to dive into this episode with you. I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness in menopause and beyond before you knew to ask them. The goal to help accelerate your results with with science and the practical application of proven protocols while living your best life. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman, and it's not just about you but the 3 generations that you influence. My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert, and an international speaker, to founder of the first and the only exclusively made-for-menopause-and-beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week I interview experts behind the scenes and the science of optimal hormone-balancing fitness and longevity and share answers to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy that you want, need, and deserve. Welcome back, Dr. D. Thanks for having me. All right. Important topic today. And before we dive into this, so disclaimer, everybody, we're talking sleep. All right. So sorry to spoil it, but that's the deal. But I just listed off a huge list of inflammatory autoimmune diseases that you help with. And as I started reading them, realizing, connecting the dots with what we're about to talk about, how, how big a deal is sleep for almost each and every one of those?

Yeah. Yeah, it's a great question. And there's two things that I consider panaceas., and you're the queen of one of them, and that's fitness, right? Exercise, work.

I like you so much.

Yeah. Well, it's, it's really like what I've seen. I've watched your work and you really get in there with the triathlete all the way to the person who's got a bum knee and hasn't been off the couch in 3 years. And I love the, the breadth of people you reinvite back into movement. And I'm in Louisville, Colorado, right outside of Boulder, which is the land of the triathletes. So sometimes I'm coaching people down from too much working out because overtraining is inflammatory, but good moderate exercise and a good night's sleep are truly panaceas that help regulate your immune responses. So if, if you thought of your immune system as a seesaw, there is one kid on one side, that's the Th1, and that's where your cytotoxic T-cells and natural killer cells are. Those are the Navy SEALs that take the shot. And the other side is the humoral immunity or the antibodies that are the Central Intelligence Agency that tags bad guys right here. So in a balanced immune system, you're supposed to be really good at tagging and assassinating and tagging and assassinating viruses, bacteria. You're not supposed to attack self-tissue. You're not supposed to karate chop your own thyroid, Hashimoto's, or your own pancreas, type 1 diabetes, or your white matter, MS, or your cartilage, rheumatoid arthritis, or your connective tissue, lupus, et cetera. Et cetera. And moderate exercise and a good night's sleep are both published over and over and over again as these potent immune balancing agents that balance the fulcrum in the middle of that seesaw. So it, it's really a Kenny Rogers song that you're after. You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. You don't want a karate chop.

Oh my gosh, it's dinner and a show. Very good.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, in a, in a disorganized immune system, you're, you're karate chopping. Corn and now you're karate chopping perfume at the perfume counter. You're the person who, who gets headaches smelling Macy's, you know, 2 miles away and then you're gonna karate chop yourself tissue, right? But you also don't want to be that person who, you know, gets every single bug and virus and bacteria because you're not good at that. And a good night's sleep. And I think we've all, all experienced this where you're like 3, 4 days into a flu and you're like, oh, I have work to catch up on and emails are jacking up and I just don't have it in me. And then all of a sudden, You get one good night's sleep and you wake up the next day and you're like, okay, I'm back. And what happened there is restorative, regenerative, anti-aging growth hormones really finished off the virus and rebalanced and regenerated. So you wake up refreshed. And that's why we call it beauty sleep. Right. I'm not anti-Botox or doing interventions to help us feel good and look good and do all that stuff. But nothing is more anti-aging than good quality restorative sleep.

I want to, I want to back up and kind of— this, this is kind of a catch-22 thing, I find. But I want to ask you first about moderate exercise and not stepping over that. I was just having this conversation with a friend of mine, and I was, I was actually a guinea pig for her and a program she's got. And I don't like to put anything in front of my audience. That I haven't, like, tried, know, trust, you know, and had a pretty good experience so I could talk to them about it legit. And she was like wanting me to do really light exercise. And I was like a week into it and I'm like, God, I don't know if I'm satisfying her definition of that. So my question to you is, would you say moderate exercise? Is that relative to an individual? You take one of those crazies out there in Boulder, Colorado, I don't care if they're an age grouper or a pro, they all exercise like they're pros. And, you know, we tell them to do moderate exercise, you know, half of what they're usually doing is like, that'd be significant to a lot of listeners in my audience. So how do you define moderate?

Yeah, and that is relative. And you don't want that person who gets motivated for the MS150 and they they had a girlfriend who got multiple sclerosis and they've never ridden a bike and they forget to warm up and train for the race. And then one day they just sit on the saddle and their privates are ground beef and they have to lay in a cold plunge for 3 days to, to rebound. Obviously you don't want to get off the couch and hit that hard and you do want to titrate up and, and work out. But for some of the literature, like preventing breast cancer, in postmenopausal women who get the most breast cancer, you get a 50% reduction with 4 hours of working out a week. And if you follow the later— that's a New England Journal of Medicine study. Yeah. So I'm all about pink ribbons and breast cancer awareness, breast cancer research. We just found half the cure. Support a woman in your life, your wife, your partner, your girlfriend, your sister, your best friend, and say, I got your kids. You're going to CrossFit or whatever the deal is. Help women who do everything for the world have more time space to get their workouts in. And don't let anyone crap on your workout. Right? Once in a while, there's gonna be an emergency, and dad, who's 87, needs to, you know, go to the urgent care, and you're not gonna get to work out. But overall, 4 hours a week showed a 50% reduction in breast cancer incidence in the group of women who get the most breast cancer. Now, later data showed 2.5 hours a week is just as good if it's resistance training. So for breast cancer prevention, nothing's better than resistance training. And if you only had time to do one, you would do resistance over cardio, but there is benefit to cardio as well. And you want to try and mix it up, but let's just say you're a mom of 3 kids under the age of 7, or your son's having a really hard time with depression and you're daughter-in-law is working all the time and you gotta watch 3 fricking Rugrats under the age of 12, right? And, and you don't have time to get your workouts in. It's a family crisis. You gotta step in there, which is what women do, right? You can do one of those 7-minute burst exercises, you know, the 7-minute app. And that is 7 minutes because that's already where the benefits of vigorous physical activity kick in. So what I tell people is if your recovery is taking longer than 2 days, right? Like you, like you hit a good CrossFit workout or you hit a good pump class, you went to Zumba or you swam in the pool or whatever, and you are still sore, then you are overtraining. And that might be relative. You might just be low on DHEA and testosterone. And that is an epidemic in women over 40. DHEA and Dale Bredesen's end of Alzheimer's work should be 400 or higher on lab. Total testosterone should be 40 or higher on lab. We see these overtrained women come in with DHEAs of 12, should be 400. And DHEA is testosterone's mini cousin from the adrenal gland that helps dampen inflammation, immune modulate. If you don't sleep well because you're just kind of sitting there with kind of a restless leg, tense body feeling, you're probably overtrained. And then the other thing we see is some of our elite triathletes, even if they're a hobby athlete, we send them to the heart scanner. And you get your first heart scan at 50 if you're a female, first heart scan at 40 if you're a male. And that's because more women die of heart attack and stroke in this country than men. But you start 10 years later. Yeah. So it's dramatic to hear about Timmy's dad who had a fatal heart attack on the pickleball court at 42, but more aunts and, and moms are, are, are dying of premature heart attack or stroke. They just start later. If you have plaque in your carotids or arterial sclerosis, calcified plaque in your coronary arteries, that's inflammation. That's another sign of overtraining. If you need 1,200 milligrams of Advil 2 days every weekend to do another 14er, you're overtraining, right? So, so again, but one of the biggest hallmarks of overtraining is you don't sleep well. You start getting kind of a strung out feeling.

This is so good. And I have a longtime client who I hope is listening to this and listening now because it will be less painful because we have turned the corner. But it took years of us working together to get me to cut back, cut back, cut back. We're going to put in our whole recovery day. She's like, no exercise. I'm like, yeah, not like that at all. And then to, you know, but it took that for her to help her insomnia. It's amazing. And I think we think of it the opposite way. So many, so many women think I have to exercise because that'll help me relax.

Yeah. Now you should think that for tweener boys and girls and, and, and then young men and young women, they are crazy energetic puppies that if you don't work them out, they will poop the carpet and claw the furniture. Right. So if, and this is where I say, oh my goodness, like when you're in high school, even if you're in band or you're more of a tech nerd and you play your Call of Duty with your buddies or whatever, you still have to move or you won't sleep well because you'll have that kind of ADD angst energy. Right. But then we get into college and if you're lucky, you play some intramural ultimate frisbee or some flag football or you got a couple of friends in the volleyball. Then all of a sudden we go to work and then there's no more gym class. There's no more after-school sports. So it's this thing where you always have to move your body. But even in some of the latest research, they call it LIIPA, low impact physical activity, like the Okinawans who putt around the garden. That is an independent risk factor for dementia as well. So moderate physical activity and even potent workouts that, that still allow you to sleep They are really good for the brain. We know that. But I love the idea of Elon making me a housebot that can do the dishes and vacuum and me and my wife don't have to butt heads when we're both tired. No one wants to do dishes anymore. But at some point when we don't even wipe our own hineys, we're going to lose low impact physical activity as a way to like kind of just drain that little bit of angst energy, but also avoid that extreme workouts that totally corrupt sleep.

Yeah, love that. I just want to expound on this one more time for listeners because I know you're on board with this, but I was just— there's no, no accidents. I was just literally today going on live about, you know, when you look at the difference between people who have, women over 40 specifically, optimal body composition versus those that don't, that struggle with weight loss. They put it on in menopause, or it was there and now there's more, and it's really bothering them. One of the biggest differences is movement versus exercise. And I think we all dwell on that— gotta go to the gym, I gotta do this— and they're trying so hard. If you're listening, I have so much empathy for you. You're trying so hard, you're doing the right thing, but you're potentially over-exercising so that when you come home you just want to sit. Your couch compensating. And we have it backwards. We should be looking for the, what's the minimum viable physical activity you do at the gym so that you have more energy the other waking hours of your day. You want to do the dishes, you'd volunteer and take the dog for another loop around the block. That activity actually adds up to far greater than the 300 calories you might burn in your workout because it's an all-day affair.

So.

I did 10 years of Fraser Meadows Retirement Community, and that all started with creation of the Vitality Club, where I got invited to talk to senior seniors, 88-year-olds, 92-year-olds, 98-year-olds about a different topic every 3 months. And I did brain health and I did gut health and I did pain and I did sleep. And you know what Fraser Meadows Retirement Community's favorite drug is for sleep? Tylenol PM and/or Advil PM. Why? Because they're anti-inflammatory. And reason overtraining prevents sleep is you just triggered a flood of inflammatory cytokines in your body. And the older we get, you're not getting that much older, you're just getting more inflamed. Just another decade of pub grub and, you know, low vitamin D and industrial seed oils. And, you know, when you get over 40 as a male and a female, your DHEA drops, so you're not menopause, but sometimes people say you're perimenopause. Nope. Your adrenals just aren't making one of your anti-inflammatory Arnold anabolic hormones, DHEA. So all these things start to accumulate, and then an 88-year-old can't sleep well because they're just, they're just now 8, 9 decades of, of American standard American diet inflammation, everything else. So that is where I recently went to Balfour and we talked about, we've talked about the Blue Sky CBD CBN, the sleep gels. Yes. And you have to find things that don't destroy your liver, your kidney, or your intestinal lining that you can use consistently. And I tell people all the time, I would put Advil in the water if it didn't wreck your kidneys, your liver, and intestinal lining. So one of my favorites for this kind of being inflamed all day is— and you know, I do research and development for Blue Sky, and your listeners should know that— but is our sleep gel.. And we do have elite athletes with Whoop rings that are using the sleep gels and they get deeper quality and quantity. And, and we won't publish on that, but we have about 20 that we've tracked intimately. But I think the reason that research study on CBN, which is 20 milligrams of CBN, showed improvement in sleep, and that's about what we have in our sleep gel, and there's a little bit of CBD in there. And I think the reason it works is because it's a novel anti-inflammatory that brings down those inflammatory cytokines. So your pineal gland and, and your other, the rest of your brain can secrete melatonin and set you up to go into deep restorative sleep. But if you're full of inflammation at the end of the day, if anyone's just recovered from a knee surgery or something, this, they know this feeling like you kind of can't fall asleep. Or when you're at the height of a flu, you don't fall asleep. It's about 3, 4 days into that. Yeah. Fever where you finally go, I was able to finally get to cytokine load where I could fall asleep. That's one of my favorite little tricks for those who don't overtrain. But if you're overtraining, this guy— the sleep pills work really well, well too.

Yeah, right. You know, and I like to say that my, my career these days, yeah, running a business, you know, there's so much of this, you know, which I love, by the way. But, you know, there's more sitting behind a desk, there's more sitting. And it's so ironic that I run a fitness business where we're working on getting other people fit, and I'm sitting more than I've ever sat. But partially because of that, probably lots of staring at screens like many of you who might be listening, you know, I shared with you behind the scenes I've been getting migraines more often than I care to admit. And I don't normally have a problem sleeping. I'm really good at it. The only thing disturbing me is a puppy. And, you know, when I was having just a series of migraines, it was It's like clockwork almost every week, you know, and I knew that I had some of the Blue Sky. And so I went to get the sleep gels and made a huge difference. I mean, just, you know, and I have to believe related to the inflammation, just settled things down. And within an hour, you know, here I am. Okay. The pain is gone because when I've got a migraine, anybody listening who can relate, I know you're, you've got me. But you lay down and, and honestly, it's almost worse because it's throbbing now. And that's all you're trying to do is go to sleep and you can't. And there's nothing worse.

Nothing worse. You're not like trying to get through the dishes, distracting the migraine, right? Yeah. Tax papers or watching a show. You're, you're just right there with them going, no, I just close my eyes and go to sleep.

Right. And you're like, the throbbing. Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

And so I like to give practical advice on podcasts. And if you— those SkyGels, two things I'll say about them is Blue Sky has sample packs that are $6. So you can trial the sample packs for $6. And, and I have my own problems. I actually take the Blue Sky Original because it's an uplifting productivity molecule. It's also an anti-inflammatory. And I take the, the original before. Jiu-jitsu and before kickboxing and before a big hike. But the— for the patients who love those sleep gels, they trial one. And you do one a half hour before desired bedtime if you have trouble falling asleep. You do one at bedtime if you have trouble staying asleep. And then if you're both, you could do one a half hour before desired bedtime. Like, I want to go to sleep at 10:30, pop one at 10. Then if you wake up at 1 AM, you can pop another one. And then if you, if you're not getting there the next night, trial 2. If you need more than 2 Blue Sky sleep gels, we're probably missing something. And that's where I want to take the rest of the podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Do, does, what are brass tacks biochemistry physiology for falling asleep? You need steady oxygen. You need steady oxygen. So one of the biggest undercelebrated concerns in healthcare today is that people don't realize one-third of all apnea patients are thin. Yours truly totally uses a CPAP and it absolutely saves my, it helped save my marriage. It helped me stay patient with my kids. It helped me be the doctor I want to be. Because I was waking up so hungover and depressed from getting choked all night. So when you have an apnea event, what's happening is you're choking your brain off from oxygen, right? And what the healthcare system does is they look for 450-pound morbidly obese Tommy, right? Male, huge, type 2 diabetic, and that guy usually gets access. To an overnight oximeter. And an overnight oximeter is just putting on an O2 monitor that records your oxygen through the night. If you're dropping below 90%, you're choking to death and we're going to spike cortisol. You're going to spike norepinephrine, epinephrine, adrenaline. It's an emergency. It's literally like the boogeyman is in your bedroom choking you. Right? Bye-bye melatonin and restorative growth hormones, aka beauty sleep hormones, and you're going to wake a train wreck. So the 3 things we always tell people is 1/3 of all apnea patients are thin. Wow. You can snore and not have apnea. So Uncle Frank can be, but his O2 isn't dropping below 90. You cannot snore and have crazy apnea. So you can just go like this. Honey, honey, that can look like killing your brain and killing your restorative growth hormones. Right. Wow. And then the third one is postmenopausal women have more apnea. Right. Interesting. We have like, I love working with postmenopausal women and I'm 51 and I had like an awesome mom and as spoken on the last podcast a little bit about how much I cherish that space. But we also like laugh and we bring humor into the aging process. And sometimes some of my more super fit, bolder women whose silhouette isn't changing that much, but their triceps getting a little jiggly, they'll go, what's this? What's this? And I'll go, that's, that's the habit. And what I'm trying to say is laxity is laxity. And if you're feeling it a little bit, like muscles aren't as much and I'm doing great and I'm looking awesome at the, at the high school reunion and holy cow, Tammy used to be the fit gymnast, you know, and you're just trying to have nonjudgment and love up on everybody. And we're all getting too old to be hard on each other. It's just a blessing we're alive. Turn the corner at 50, right? But it's, but you're going to realize that it's a little bit of that tone that's just not the same as it was 10 years ago is the same for your throat muscles. It's the same for throat muscles. And then as you go altitude, you also have more apnea. So really, okay. So if you might have raging apnea in Boulder, Colorado, and do just fine in San Diego, you go from Boulder to Breckenridge, it's only getting worse. And I can't tell you how many people—

Are there careers, people who've had certain careers where they've used their voice, or pilots?

Yes. Yeah. A very astute question. So there is in the British Medical Journal, there is, you can Google British Medical Journal didgeridoo. Sleep apnea, and it'll show you the 4-minute YouTube on the study they did for Mastery of the Didgeridoo to treat mild to moderate apnea. And you have to learn the circular breathing and play all the time. We got to see Trombone Shorty open up for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and it was just off the shizzle brass band. And they play like covers of Green Day and Rage Against the Machine, and he'll go, and hold a note forever while he's breathing through his nose, he's storing air in his cheeks and blowing out the horn. Trombone Shorty doesn't have apnea. He takes his throat muscles to the gym every night when he's amazing, right? So oxygen, right? If you're anemic, if you had a uterine bleed or gastric bleed or colon cancer and you're anemic, You'll wake up all night, right? If you had a really bad COVID and you scarred your lungs and you have atelectasis or pulmonary fibrosis, anything that messes with oxygen freaks out the brain when you sleep. When you roll onto your back, you condense your lungs, so you have 20% less lung volume. So a lot of people's O2 ring is fine until they lay on their back. Wow., and then they get a crash.

Wow.

Yeah. So that's number 1, right? So we love the sleep gels to take down inflammation, set up good sleep. But if you're getting past 2 sleep gels and you're still, like, waking all night, you have to ask your doctor to do an overnight oximeter or sleep study on you. The second one is fuel. Now, you're the fitness queen, and you probably know you really have to have steady fuel if you want to crush a workout and then if you want to build muscle, right? And the old gold gym guys back in the day that you would use chromium picolinate, and that is a mineral that keeps the glucose steady to that muscle so we can make gains, right? And, and we do a lot of constant glucose monitors with the nurse practitioners in our office, and it is crazy how many people are doing fine all day, and at 3 in the morning, they drop down to 55. And I do not want to burst anyone's bubble, but that glass of wine Totally helped you fall asleep. It brings down that excitotoxic glutamate. The molecule of anxiety in your brain literally gets suppressed by alcohol. It enhances GABA. Ah, progesterone used to do that for us premenopausal, right? And now I'm like falling asleep, but my blood sugar, what goes up? Because alcohol is just fermented sugar, must come down. And then I go blood sugar of 90. Blood sugar of 80, blood sugar of 70. My brain goes, running out of fuel, running out of fuel, running out of fuel, blood sugar of 60. Boing! And you wake with a cortisol spike. And that's because cortisol's original name is glucocorticoid, or I'm the steroid that rescues low glucose. And now you're worried about little Timmy smoking pot who should have been home 2 hours ago. And where is he? And which came first, the blood sugar drop and the cortisol spike and the anxiety, primal anxiety from being scared about running out of fuel or worrying about little Timmy who's not home yet. And it's 10 minutes after curfew, right? And it's normal to worry about your kids, your mom, if you're a mom, right? But, but it's normal to worry about puppies and aging parents and girlfriends who are going through breast cancer treatment and everything in between. But the freaking oxygen drop or the blood sugar drop came First, then the cortisol spiked, and now you're sitting there feeling lonely and hollow at 1, 2, 3 AM, literally carrying and entertaining all the stress, anxiety, pain, suffering, and worry of the world.

Yeah. Wow.

Wow.

That was a lot. I want to ask you something that I think everybody here is a little worried about when they take anything to help sleep, including CBD. So talk about hangover effect. Yeah. Will there be one? Will they wake up in the morning and still feel groggy? I think everybody has a fear of that.

Yeah, it's a great question. So we see hangover with THC and alcohol, but not CBD, CBN, because it's an anti-inflammatory and, and it doesn't affect blood sugar. So the bummer about weed and wine, and weed does the same thing, is it actually helps you fall asleep, but it disrupts sleep architecture from a hypoglycemic drop. So if you remember back in the day, people called it the munchies, and the munchies is a street term for a hypoglycemic attack on your brain. So things that don't— that just bring down inflammation, and Advil and Tylenol will be included in that— don't leave you hungover. Advil and Tylenol unfortunately will wreck your liver, kidneys, and intestinal lining. Benadryl is also an antihistamine. That's an anti-inflammatory that will leave you hungover and is on Indiana University's aging brain list. So I'm always looking for these things. Benzos, I have to have an Ativan, right? Can get you bind benzodiazepine-induced neurological dysfunction. It's literally a disease where you atrophy your brain and you have rebound anxiety and you get benzo belly and have It's full body side effect from the drug, but when you took it, it helped you fall asleep. So we're looking for things that dampen inflammatory cytokines without wrecking an organ or a body system or leaving you with a hangover. Right. And then with that glass of wine, your throat muscles get drunk too. So now if you don't believe me, I'll take you to a bunch of attorney houses on the Hill and I'll show you Sneezy and Snorri and Apnea and Choking and everybody else up there after a Buffs game. And they're And that's where I'm already teaching my kids and particularly my younger doesn't think he's ever going to do drugs or alcohol. And, but I say, if y'all got a buddy, yeah, turn them on your side, not only so they don't choke on their own vomit, Jimi Hendrix style, but so they also have less apnea.

Right. So, yeah. Wow. Oh my gosh. This has been so rich. So rich. Every time you open your mouth, something, some gem comes out. So I hate to quiet you down or squelch you, but this was so, so good. And you just hit so much. I'm going to suggest to every listener here, you listened once, come back and listen again because there's a layer in here. You'll hear the first time the big chunks, but there are some nuances that he said that you may not catch until the second time through. So please do yourself a favor and listen to this twice at least, and then share it with at least 2 friends. Okay. So, Dr. D, let me ask you this. Is there a question that, knowing we're talking to peri-postmenopausal women, is there a question that I should ask you? Is there one more thing that you'd like to leave them with?

There is, and it's basically bioidentical hormones. So if you have your uterus, right, some women have had partial hysterectomy and the uterus out. You can't take bioidentical estrogen without progesterone. You have to oppose that estrogen with progesterone. And if you're really having a hard time sleeping, you have to follow the oxygen, get an overnight oximeter that records. The one we use is the Lookie Ring, L-O-O-K-E-E-R-I-N-G, lookietech.com, but it's Lookie Ring. And we don't get any royalty or kickback. It's just a good ring. There's another ring that a patient brought the other day. It looks solid too.. These are all about $75 to $150, and they will download your readings to your phone in the morning so you can see if you drop below 90%, and then you can talk to a nutritionist or an MD or PA or MP about trialing a constant glucose monitor and seeing what happens. I have very sad news for you. A single shot of Don Julio Blanco tequila with soda water totally drops my 3:00 AM glucose to 55. If I have that occasional drink, I'm having like an avocado, some olives, and beef jerky at bedtime. And that stabilized that. But if you're— but you also want to get your hormones checked. And on average, women need 100 to 200 milligrams of progesterone. To hold their progesterone, and progesterone binds GABA in the brain. It makes you feel cool, calm, and collected. So for a lot of women, they're like, I must be having a midlife crisis. I'm like, where you have undetectable progesterone and the hormone that used to tell your brain to be cool, calm, and collected is gone. And estrogen binds the serotonin receptor for enthusiasm. So it is normal to grieve life, to reevaluate life, to reshape life, to start over, to say, screw it, I've never been athletic a day in my life and it's 64, I'm gonna walk the Boulder Boulder this year. And we see it all the time, just people flipping the script. But if you're like, I've never been an anxious or depressed person, you have to get your hormones checked. And on lab postmenopausal, progesterone should be at 2.0. During reproductive years, the blood draw progesterone oscillates between 4 and 24. We're just asking for postmenopausal women to stay at 2, right? And a lot of them come in at 0.1, and they're just feeling that. Now, progesterone also, and estrogen, have neuroprotective benefits. They help slow your journey towards dementia and aging brain. And then there's women who don't get to do estrogen because they had a reproductive cancer. Mm-hmm. And if that's the story, I have good news for you. You don't have to sit there with vaginal dryness and night sweats and hot flashes and achy joints and depression. Black cohosh was published in multiple trials to not only be safe for post-reproductive cancer women, but it helps prevent future recurrence of breast cancer while it helps with mood and achiness and libido and because those women aren't allowed to do DHEA either. Not because it's contraindicated, because unknown, it's gray area. So we recommend a high quality supplement company, and that just should be someone who's doing third-party testing on the raw materials. 500 milligrams of black cohosh twice a day. Now, any woman can do that, but the post-reproductive, you had breast cancer, you had ovarian cancer, you had uterine cancer, you don't get to do postmenopausal estrogen. So the oncologist says, I did my job here. What do you want? You don't got cancer. And you're like, I want like one night of sleep and these joints not hurt and like my brain back. I'm gonna exercise.

Right.

That's even before you talk about chemo brain irradiation. So black collage, 500 milligrams twice a day can be a miracle for those women. And they need that support. They deserve that support. And that often opens the door to, I'm walking again. I did yoga.

Yeah.

Now I'm going to go do some 1-pound weights. Now I'm doing 10-pound weights. Look at me. I hit 25-pound weights today. You know, so, so I would say follow the oxygen, follow the fuel, really keep an eye on your, your, your sex steroids. And, and, you know, instead of that Tylenol or Advil PM, do that sleep gel from Blue Sky. And as always, we like to give your listeners, um, discount and the code this time is flipping, which is appropriate. And that's just like, you know, what is your alternative if you're really wound up and you're going to go for that half tab of Ativan again? You know, try the, try the SkyGel and stay off the benzos. They are appropriate for the occasional getting in and out of a brain MRI with claustrophobia or sitting still during breast cancer radiation or hospice, but we know how many people get roped up by benzos and opioids. And we have to find alternatives that work for calming you down, decompressing you, and getting you into that beauty sleep.

So great. So great. Dr. D, thank you so much for being here. So everybody, I'm just going to do a quick recap. So if you're ready and wanting to give these a try, I highly recommend. So you can find more information on it, remember it's Code Flipping. You're going to find the link at flipping50.com/bluesky, and that's to try the samples just to give it a try. Get started. See if this is something that works for you. I promise you're going to love it. And if you want all the details on how to connect that link because you're busy, it'll be in the show notes on Flipping 50. You can always get to the podcast page. Today's notes will be at flipping50.com/restorative sleep in menopause. Thank you for listening. To listen to a decade of episodes and to get the show notes, visit flipping50.com where you'll be able to find all the previous episodes. And I made it super easy to make the most of your listening time and get exactly what you want to listen to as top priority by getting the top 10 episodes in the areas you most care about, like how much protein do you need, weight loss, and other 3 ultra important topics we've identified as our community's top 5. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than you, midlife women. So go and listen right now. Do you have a question for a podcast? A question you'd love to ask, or maybe a story you want to tell? Did you know we have a special group just for podcast question roundups and the answers My community coaches and I provide answers daily inside of this group, but it's also where I go when I occasionally say, okay, open call for podcast questions or tell your story. Would you like to be a guest? So if you're looking for a community of women who are also interested in optimizing their health, strengthening their mindset, and looking forward to every new year, join the Flipping 50 Insiders Group. That's Flipping 50 Insiders on Facebook.