Ep. 48- Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity with Dr. Saundra D...

This is the You Winning Life podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, trainer and certified entrepreneur coach, Jason Wasser. Hey everybody, welcome back. Today's guest is Dr. Sandra Dalton-Smith. She's a board-certified internal medicine physician, speaker, author, international wellness expert who's been featured in many, many media outlets: Prevention Magazine, MSNBC, Women's Day, Fox, Fast Company, Psychology Today, Dr. Oz's show, which is really cool. She's the author of numerous books, including her newest one, which is called Sacred Rest. Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity, and it includes groundbreaking research on the 7 types of rest needed to optimize your productivity, increase your overall health, your happiness, recover from burnout, living your best life, and such an important topic, especially nowadays where stress and sleep and napping and scheduling is just thrown against the wall right now. So, Dr. Sandra, thank you so much for hanging out with us today.

Oh, it's a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

So, let's first make it very timely. Sleep pandemic. What's going on? What are you seeing? What's showing up for you as a physician? I know from my side as a therapist that we can talk about stress levels, we can talk about people being on top of each other, we can talk about fighting and conflict and not getting exercise and all that stuff. What are you seeing that's showing up on your side of the coin?

I think for most people, they, they can already tell that this is affecting their ability to relax and to be able to get high-quality sleep. There's a recent study that was done by Sleep Standard, and, you know, what they found was that about 80% of people were feeling as if COVID was having a direct effect on their ability to sleep well, with a large portion of them feeling like anxiety was a component of that. I think it was somewhere around 47%. So, so yeah, definitely this shutdown, um, you know, social distancing, all the components that are going with that are affecting us. Our ability to rest is being affected because, I mean, this doesn't feel very restful right now.

Right, right. So what do you say, like, when it comes to the science behind sleep, there are times where people are like, I'm so stressed out, I need to take a nap, or I'm so stressed out, I'm just going to go to bed, which I know in the psychospiritual world, people say it's great. Just go take a nap, refresh your energy, don't keep moving the momentum forward in a place where you feel like crap and you feel like stuck. Don't keep energizing that, right? Go take a nap, go try to rest. But for people who are not able to sleep, what's really going on behind the scenes? Why is what's going out in the world affecting us on a neurological and a biochemical level? And why that's playing out for people?

Well, I think that's the thing. When we think about sleep, many of us are combining sleep and rest as if they're the exact same thing. We're using the terms interchangeably. So we try to get our rest by just going to bed at night. And when we do that, we are actually missing out on the different types of rest we need. I think many people don't realize that there are actually different types of rest. So sleep is just the physical type. That's the main area that it's focusing on. And so when you just focus on getting it, you're omitting these other types of rest. So it's like, let me try to fix one area by doing something in a different area, and it doesn't work. Right.

So in your book, The Sacred Rest, you talk about these 7 types, and you use this kind of an acronym for the word rest, right? So one, right, so the REST stands for recognizing your risk, evaluating your current position, science and research, and today's application. So let's break that down. Um, what do you mean by each one of those stages?

Yeah, so what I do in the book is I try to make it as systematic as possible. So as people are working through each of the types of rest, they can kind of first determine what their risk is, just recognizing maybe the things that are happening in their day, their career choices, where they live. There are a lot of different components that play into which type of rest you may be more prone to be deficient in. And so that's the recognizing your risk. And then just evaluating, you know, once you determine that, OK, I think I may be having some mental rest deficit, how bad is it? Are we at a severe level of deficit? Or are we just kind of beginning? Are we already at burnout? Because how you approach it is going to be different depending on really how diseased are you in this area. And then the science, I think it's important to just get an understanding. I think as a physician, I always feel like medicine, a big part of that is teaching. I think patients have to have an understanding of what it is you're treating. Otherwise, it's kind of like, take this medicine up, but don't ask me what it's about. So— and when you're asking people to change their behaviors, I think it's even more important that they understand the science behind it because then they kind of come along board the train with you and you're not pulling them. And so that's the science and the research. And then today's application is just making it practical. You know, I love reading great books and I love getting information. And I don't think we have a lack of information. You know, we have the internet, you can get every bit of information the world has. I think what we have is a lack of application. And you know, the information is so great, but Nobody knows how to make it real so they can actually use it in their life. And so that's the last component, just, okay, now you know you have a deficit, you know how bad it is, you know what the science says, here are some things you can do.

So there's a lot of myths, right, around the— like you said, first of all, the words sleep and rest have been interchangeable, but they don't necessarily mean the same thing. But there's also so many different myths about what works or what helps people when they need to sleep, right? We can start from melatonin, we can talk about You know, blackout shades, we can talk about blue lights, we can talk about electromagnetic frequency, we can talk about, right, a whole gamut and a whole spectrum. From the perspective that you have as a physician, what are the basic things that you've seen are proven to be true and helpful? Because I'm finding that, like we talked about before we jumped on, the research I'm doing about vitamin D, but I'm also— I've done a lot of research on melatonin, which I know is not something that someone's supposed to be on for a long time.

Right, right.

But also, there's a large connection to both vitamin D and melatonin deficiency for COVID victims right now, right? Especially— that's why the older population— correct me if I'm wrong— because our body creates its own melatonin, but then at a certain age, it drops off significantly, like 18 to 21. So that's one of the reasons why we're finding that older populations might be having some significant issues. So what are you finding that has been the research, the actual provable science, cold cold rooms versus hot rooms, right? Heavy blankets versus sleeping without a blanket. What have you seen from your research and your experiences?

Well, and that's the thing, because it's just like— I always relate it to this. When I'm looking at medicine and I'm looking at the research behind what medications, what pills work for people, the research doesn't work on everybody. You know what I mean? One blood— that's why we have like 20,000 blood pressure pills and diabetic medicines, because there's a lot of individuality that kind of goes into that. And I think even more so when we're looking at sleep, because I have some patients who line up with the research that say colder rooms are better. Then I have other patients that say, I wake up if the room's too cold. So it's kind of like, well, you're not fitting my textbook definition of how this is supposed to work. I always try to make sure that people kind of keep a little bit of individuality and freedom in kind of judging how the— search works on them so that they don't kind of get caught up into that too much. But some of the things that I've seen that really do seem to be effective for many people, the darker the room does seem to help. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that many of us live just very sensory-rich lives. And so we're constantly under sensory overload and a lot of people have a sensory rest deficit. And so the darkness of the room kind of helps with that. That may be the only time of the day that they actually shut their senses down. I do think that some people benefit that if they have a lot of problems with what I call mental— a lack of mental rest, they benefit from some white noise because that droning kind of sound shuts down their cerebral space a little bit so that it's not focusing on all their thoughts and it has a place to focus. It's almost like saying, hmm, you know, when you're doing the meditations. It's doing it for you so that you're not having to go through that rhythmic pattern, but it kind of gets the brain to go to that quiet space. I do find that those things do tend to help. And I think a lot of it has to do just with the ability to let the body go kind of quiet down. Many of us try to jump from our busy day straight into sleep. You know, we try to— let's jump from Facebook or whatever it is we're looking at on TV, hit our nighttime routine, and jump in the bed and think that our body's just going to flip off. And it doesn't do that. There has to be a period where we kind of wind down wind down a little bit. And I think a lot of some of the most successful rest strategies require that. They kind of take you through that process of winding down.

Well, it's so interesting. So about 2 months ago, before this started, mid-February, I was at a conference with a friend of mine who's a chiropractor and has been using the Muse headband for meditation. And he's been using it with his clients, his patients. And he's like, "You gotta get it, you gotta get it." And I've done meditation, I participate in meditation, But I, you know, I remember like for a certain amount of days straight at the beginning of this whole thing happening, and I remember a weekend later I traveled away. I was also leading a workshop for young entrepreneurs. And the next day when I came home, I had to basically pivot my entire practice in 24 hours. And it was kind of like the world was ending. But I realized that I was committed to a meditative process for the first 14 to 21 days, and they kind of like went by the wayside for a little bit. And I realized since then, now looking back, I'm like, My sleep has been different because I was doing it a couple of times a day. I started off at 3 minutes and 5 minutes and 10 minutes, and then I would go up to 15 minutes because with the headband, I'm sure you're familiar, right? It actually has— the noises go up and down and you hear birds chirping. You're actually causing that by the more relaxed you become. And then I realized that I had a pattern even though I was taking melatonin and all my other supplements that they're recommending in the functional medicine world right now for immune health. My sleep wasn't getting better. In fact, it got significantly worse, even though I wasn't feeling stressed.

Mm-hmm.

Last night I broke out the Muse headphone, and I was up late, but I realized that like at a certain point my body actually started to hurt from exhaustion. But I slept incredibly well because I did a 10-minute meditation. I stayed up a little bit longer in bed, but then I just literally crashed. So I definitely see that correlation to having your mind be able to go to a place that's that white noise, that clean space, what are some of the other things that, like right now, we're being consumed by technology 24/7. Forget when we talked about 6 months ago, we were being consumed. But right now, right, we're all on Zoom, we're all doing telecommunication, we're spending more time in front of a digital screen than ever. How much time do you think we need really to start distancing between being in front of technology and being able to get to a restful place?

Well, I— before bed, I definitely think there needs to be some time. You know, a lot of the research has extended periods of time, 4 hours and more. I think for many people that is extremely difficult to do, especially depending on if they are someone whose job kind of focuses around the internet. There are a lot of kind of digital entrepreneurs or social influencers who, honestly, their work is embedded in the electronic. So I think it's difficult for a lot of people. So I find that if you at least start backing up some of that time— so I always tell people to begin with at least a couple of hours. If you can distance from electronics for a few hours, if you already know that you have a problem with unable to turn your mind off and you're kind of having these ruminating thoughts when you try to lay down at night, if you're having a lot of eye strain, headaches, you know, all of these things that are signs that your body's kind of revolting against these electronics, to start kind of at least with an hour. If you can get through that without having a panic attack, then you add on a little bit more time until you get to the point where it's stressful. Because I find that people that are really into their gadgets, they, they really do have like a withdrawal when you take it away from them. And so, you know, I wouldn't tell an alcoholic to just stop, you know, that's dangerous actually. So I actually have people just kind of start weaning themselves off of it in small blocks till they get to the point where they feel comfortable. Many people can get to where they're at least up to a couple of hours. I've rarely found someone, particularly in the millennial age when I'm working with that group, who can go 4 hours without any electronics. It's just part of their life.

Yeah, and I'm a big fan of taking tech fasts at a certain time of day or a certain block of time over the course of whatever period. But it's really tough 'cause I know, like I've realized that I'm, thankfully iPhones have this little new calendar up here that says this is how much time you've been on what you're using. But literally, I'm sitting, as a therapist, I'm literally sitting in front of my laptop all day now, seeing my clients, as you are as well, and then I'm doing social programs after that, and then I'm doing networking events after that, and it's like, I mean, thank God my chair is really comfortable, but like, you know, I'm finding that like my day is busier now than it was when I was going back and forth to my office, which is really only 6/10 of a mile away, which is great, but like, I'm like, wow, like I'm packing way more in in a day now than I was that, and then trying to get a bike ride in or play some guitar or whatever it may be. I'm wondering what else is going on where it does seem like the days are just much more exhausting. I've seen research and articles on this limbic disconnect between connecting to all these people but not actually really connecting because we're not getting the touch, we're not getting the olfactory Are you finding that to be something that's showing up?

Well, yes, because that's really what social rest— when I talk about that, that's really what that's about. You know, the whole issue with social rest is that many of us aren't getting it even though we're surrounded by people all the time. We never have a sense of really having those deep connections that we're being restored and fed by. And that's what social rest looks like. You know, many of our relationships are more draining. They're pulling from us. They're requiring things from us. And they're kind of negative in a way, even though I don't mean that in a way that it's a bad person. I mean, your kids, your spouse, your coworkers, your clients, they're all requiring things from you socially. So they drain your social energy, not because they're bad, not because they're a negative influence, just because of the nature of the relationship. And I think for many of us, we don't look at people like that. We don't look like, how is someone positively is someone pulling on me socially and relationally? And how is someone negatively pulling from me? Because those people that are kind of positively pouring back into you, that restore your ability to feel uplifted and that you belong and that you're, you know, that you feel accepted, those relationships tend to be the ones that get pushed to the wayside because those other people who need you are going to be a little bit more demanding about their needs than the people who are trying to actually pour back into you. You know, I think, I can't remember the research that I was reading about, regarding adults and their number of adult friends, but how often, and I think most of us see this in our lives, when you're in your 20s, you have all these adult friends you're hanging out with and you're kind of feeding each other and keeping each other at this great kind of social relationships. And then you have kids and then it's hard to get with your friends. You just want to get a date with your wife, you know? So you don't have that time to really keep building those social relationships. And I think it's important to see the value in that. And I think we're seeing it now more than ever. Because we're having a hard time to actually getting time with those people because of the limitations that we're under.

So there's two things that I want to pick apart from what you just said that I'm completely in agreement with and talk about a lot. One is the concept of boundaries. We started talking about it first when it came to the time we're spending in front of technology, but two, the amount of time we're spending in front of people that are either feeding us positive energy or detracting and taking away all of our positive energy. So I think that's a very profound concept that I want to just make sure our listeners are tapping into, that especially right now when you're not able to see everybody you want to see, are you spending the time that you do have connecting, whether it's digitally or with a social isolation, you know, at social distance, with the right people that are going to feed your energy and not be an energy drain to you? So, the boundaries component, which also goes back to eating, which goes back to sleep, which goes back to alcohol, which goes back to video games, which goes back to communication, right? The boundary theme is rampant, right? Boundaries of, right? What time are you going to bed and allowing yourself to go to bed? And what time you allowing yourself to wake up? So I think that's a massive theme that I've seen in my years as being a therapist. And the other concept, the word that you used was restorative, which funny enough typically will come out of restorative yoga, right? As opposed to like very hardcore and very like, and I think that's the only world that I've heard that term come from. Consistently. We don't talk enough in the wellness world outside of the integrative or natural wellness about doing things that are restorative to you. So can you just touch on that a little bit more from your perspective? Because I think that's such a— it's such a powerful word that's so underused.

Yeah, and I think that's at the core of rest. I think that's why really so many of us fail at rest, because we are not thinking about it that way. You know, when I'm talking about the 7 types of rest and we're looking at the the mental, the spiritual, the emotional, the social, the sensory, and the creative types of rest. What I'm referring to is what are those activities you do that restore you? You know, rest should really equal restoration. And I think too often we think about rest, we think about the cessation of activity. We think about we're just not going to do anything. And that actually isn't restful for most people. You know, if that was the case, then every time someone veges out in front of the TV, they would pop up and just be energized and ready to go. And most people actually feel worse feel worse after that. They feel more drained and more tired and more depressed. You know, it needs to be restorative. It should pour back into you. It should replete whatever has been depleted.

So then let's break those down because I know we did spend some time on the social, which is one of those categories. And you just listed the physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, sensory, social, and creative, right? So can we break those down a little bit and just give a basic understanding for everybody listening about about what those actually mean according to your research. So, you can be in all walks of life.

Yeah, well, the physical, I think, probably is the easiest because most people automatically associate that with sleep. But, you know, the physical actually has two components, the passive and the active. So passive is things like sleep and napping. And then you have the active form of physical rest, which include things like yoga and massage therapy and leisure walking, you know, where you're not necessarily trying to get all 10,000 steps, you're just trying to keep your circulation moving and your lymphatics draining properly. So those are the things that kind of fall into the physical type of rest. Mental rest relates to the things that help you to be able to get your mind to that quiet space. So that could include meditation. And when I say meditation, I even mean word focusing. Some people have a very hard time just getting their mind to shut up, their headspace to stop talking to them. So sometimes it's helpful just to have a word of the day if you don't do normal meditation, just a way of kind of stopping that those thought patterns, those negative thought patterns. Right.

Well, even like by— right, crossword puzzles, which have fallen out of favor over the last many years for digital stuff, but like that I would see is a very contemplative, right, intentional way of focusing. And you're not— right, it's not like this stressful, strenuous thing, but it— again, it is a way of, I think, of fulfilling that specific topic, you know, or any type of those type of applications of that.

Yeah, that's really interesting you stated that because, you know, I get emails sometimes from women who are just very upset that, you know, that their spouses are out there chopping wood and saying that they're getting mental rest. They're like, "How is he resting? He's out there chopping wood." You know, but if you think about it, I mean, physically he's not resting, but mentally he's doing a repetitive activity that doesn't require him to think. So he's able to shut it down and just focus on the chopping. And so, you know, when you think about these types of rest, it's like, what takes you to the place where whatever it is that just won't stop or won't come to a peaceful place, what are the things that help you do that? I've seen people say that they experience it with when they're fishing. Fishing is the most boring activity I've ever seen.

Next to golf, but I don't want to say— I live in Florida, so I don't want to offend any of my, you know, fellow Floridians.

But for some people, those really are the way they get restored. Right, right. So, yeah.

So, OK, so that's that category. So let's move on. So that's the physical we did. We did the mental. So let's get into the spiritual.

Yeah, spiritual rest is really individualized for depending on people's faith. I always like to look at it as kind of having some type of relationship with something bigger than you, whatever that looks like in your religious beliefs. And so your sphere of religious belief, kind of getting past the religious part of it, kind of the ritual and the routine part of it, and kind of more into the relationship part of it. How do you fit into into it. And I think that helps a lot of people because then it kind of takes off some of those boundaries and barriers that people have because there— I feel like everybody has to have some type of spiritual belief. Even my atheist friends have some type of spiritual belief.

Right.

And if we start looking at it kind of as a bigger picture and not so much the fine details.

Well, it's interesting. I have this big, big theme that like spirituality and religion don't always go hand in hand. There are religious people who aren't spiritual and there are spiritual people who aren't religious. So, so I do in a way decipher those two paradigms. But one of my earlier guests is, uh, is a mentor of mine, Dr. Andrew Newberg from Jefferson Medical School, formerly at Penn, who's one of the top neurological imaging specialists in the world. And his field of study that he kind of pioneered was neurotheology— what happens to your brain during spiritual and religious experiences. And one of his books is actually called Are We Hardwired for God? But he goes through the neurological breakdown of what happens what happens to us with meditation, with prayer, and he studied all across different things. He's just a super cool guy and has amazing research that's very easy to access and read for the layman. But we do see that when we contemplate on a spiritual thing, like you said, something that's bigger than us, and it doesn't have to be religion, but focusing on the trees, which, right, and the leaf and why, you know, when the wind blows, how come it's blowing all the leaves and not just one believe, right? And just get lost in that mental pattern is a spiritual practice, right? It's a contemplative. So, so I would even maybe say spiritual can even become contemplative.

Yes, it really can. And I think it's just getting to that point where you don't feel so it's, it's me against the world kind of feeling, that you kind of see yourself in a part of the big picture.

For sure. So after spiritual, we have the emotional.

Yes, emotional rest is the rest that we experience when we are able to really just be authentic and share how we're feeling, sharing what's going on with us. So when we take off our mask and all of our kind of preconceived professional notions about how things are supposed to look, I think a lot of us, particularly those who are in any kind of profession, have a tendency to kind of— I want to say be in performance mode, but that's the only way I can describe it— where we're kind of living up to whatever that professional expectation is. And there's a stress associated with that. And I think too many times we go home from work and we take that professional persona home, and we don't allow ourselves just to kind of be ourselves, just to kind of get back to our truth. And the problem with that is if you're always kind of in performance mode, then you start feeling like, am I okay? Is the real me okay? And you know, that's, that's a dangerous headspace to be in. Right.

And I'm wondering, like, as people progress in their society of— how do I say this— of influence, right? As you started becoming— right, when you first became a doctor and you started practicing, to now being a recognized expert in your field, I'm wondering— and me being, right, Jason Wasser, the guy who just started as a therapist in 2005, to me having a podcast and speaking and doing workshops, right, the line between personal and professional starts to become a little bit more blurred.

Yeah.

So what are one of the things that you have found that's been helpful to you to be able to shut that down, to not always play doctor wherever you go?

Well, I think it's really— for me, it's been having those people in my life, at least having a few. You know, you don't have like 100 people you do this with, but having one or two friends where I can just be myself. You know, if I show up at their house with my hair in a ponytail, no makeup on, flip-flops on, and, you know, shorts they're not like, "You don't look like a doctor today." You know, they're just like, and I might be doing telemedicine that evening. They don't look at me and like, you know, "You're not fitting what I imagine here." They're just okay with it. You know, if I say something inappropriate or if I have a bad attitude about a situation, you know, I don't feel judged, I don't feel condemned, I don't feel shamed. And I think that's important. You know, there's so many opportunities to feel that, particularly if you're on social media, if you do anything that people can judge, you know, podcasts have ratings, you write a book, they have ratings, you know, all of these things give people permission to pick you to pieces if they want to, you know? And so I think it's important to have those people where you don't feel like that's ever something you have to experience.

It reminds me of that Brené Brown story. I'm not sure if you're familiar with her work, where she was talking about having like, she's like, she was going through this whole big thing and one of her friends like, oh, it sounds like you're going through a breakdown. She's like, no, it's a spiritual awakening.

Damn it.

Right. Like it's whatever script you want to give it. If you write, if you say it's something where you're like losing it, no. If you're saying like there's something that's going to become better as the outcome of this, then yes, that's the— so I definitely want people to hear that, right? The intentionality of what you're feeling, but being around people who will support you, who won't give you the judgment. They may judge you once you leave, but that's on them. That's what a good friend is for, not to judge you in front of you, only behind your back, and then not tell anybody, right? That's when you know it's really a good friend. But I think that's an important, important component of having that inner circle that you can really let it go with. So we talked a little bit about the sensory already, right, with the sound and the noise and the darkness and the temperatures, and we talked a little bit about the social. So let's get into the creative.

Yeah, creative rest is probably the one that I I love just researching more than any of them because I think many of us experience this, but we didn't know what we were experiencing. Like if you're someone who, when you go to the beach or you're at the mountains or out, you know, around flowers and something about being in certain settings just make you feel better, you feel restored through your, your spirit and your mind. And you can't really quantify what that is. That's really what creative rest looks like is the rest we we receive when we allow beauty, whether it's natural or man-made beauty, to just really awaken something inside of us. And rather than us trying to create beauty, we let beauty create something inside of us. Love it.

And I know so many people right now during this time are— the word pivot has been used probably 1,000 times in the last month, right? At least to each of us and around us and all these things. And I'm finding the cool thing that people are taking on new hobbies, taking on, right? Baking was the banana bread craze. That was, that was right. That no one could find ingredients for that. So it's very interesting that that creative outlet, that people are now finding something new because on one side the world has become a lot smaller, but on, but on the other side, like you can now find something to tap into because there's so many great free resources. People, I think the beauty of humanity is showing despite all the negative of humanity that's also showing. Going right now. But I think the beauty of like, "I want to help. I want to offer. I want to teach this class. I want to do a cooking class." I have a childhood friend of mine who's doing a cooking class. He's a chef and he's doing cooking classes every day from his kitchen with his children.

Oh, how cool.

Really, really cool. And I have another friend of mine who's an ultra marathon runner and a professor, and he's literally showing, he's like, "You don't have to do a marathon all at once." And he broke up a marathon into multiple parts throughout the day. And right, so the mindset of all these rules have changed. Did he still run an ultramarathon of 50-something miles in that day? Yes. Did he do it according to the standards of— right, it was a 4-mile loop. He had his lawn chair, he had his ice bucket, he had his food. I'm sure. But he did it right over the course of whatever time, not on an official course. The guy still ran an ultramarathon.

Yeah.

So I think one of the benefits of looking at stress as it applies to sleep, of being restorative, of doing these things, is that we don't have to play by the old rules anymore.

So true.

And we can find right now what does work for us. And again, I'm going back to that word that you use because it's such a great word, that restorative things. So can we get into a little bit of the science, right? So sleep and stress, like if those two things don't get handled, what are some of the things that we are going to see down the road because of that?

Well, that's the thing, you know, when you get to the point where your body's just under chronic, constant and chronic stress, you're going to start seeing, you know, changes within other depletions in other areas. So your cortisol levels, your ability to process, um, you know, even just your glucose in your body, because the higher your cortisol levels stay up, the more likely you're going to be prone to diabetes. Then if you get diabetes, now your blood vessels aren't functioning very well. Now you're at risk for heart attack, stroke, strokes and high blood pressure. So it's like this domino effect. You know, we have a lot of people who have, you know, what we call metabolic disorders. And, you know, really that just boils down to we have a lot of people who've been chronically stressed to the point that their metabolic systems have given up. Right.

And that metabolic syndrome, I mean, I would venture to say that the numbers that we have of people who are clinically diagnosed with metabolic syndrome is probably double that. At the bare minimum because we're— as you and I talked previously, right, the labs versus functional labs and all those different things, but also, right, with diet, with all the other things that are going on, the toxins, environmental toxins, whatever it may be, does have a significant effect. And just because it may show up within normal limits on a lab doesn't mean we're still not having all these other symptoms going on. One of the things that I'm finding through my own research over the last many years doing more of this integrative nutrition as it applies to mental health, is that the vitamin B paradigm is very interesting, right? Most people don't know this, and especially now, right, people are making quarantinis and all their other creative, right, pandemic drinks, right? They're having a Corona for the corona. But vitamin— the drinking alcohol does pull vitamin B out of your body and causes deficiency in vitamin B. And vitamin B, correct me if I'm wrong, is a stress-handling. So can we talk a little bit about that from your perspective?

I think— I think I'm always asked this question about, do I need to take a bunch of vitamins? It kind of depends on what you're eating, you know, because you can get most of the vitamins you need if you're eating healthy foods. The problem is— yeah, if— the problem is most of us eat very hectic diets. You know, there's no— there's no intentionality in what we're eating. So we're not eating like food food's medicine. We're more eating just to our likes and our time. What do I have time for today? Do I have time to make something that's going to actually maybe act like medicine in my body, or am I just going to grab something that's probably going to kill everything that was good in the food before I actually ate it? So I think it's important to kind of look at someone's diet and how they're using food. I think for people who are using food as medicine, medicine. They're very conscious about, am I getting an adequate number of vegetables and fruit? You know, am I over-consuming carbohydrates? Am I getting the right amount of protein? Am I drinking enough water? That's a huge one for most people. You know, how much of these things they're consuming, consuming. Then you can get to a point where the food acts like medicine. But, you know, that's, that's a lifestyle change. That's a real lifestyle change because then you are you are functioning at a much higher level than most of the world. And that's why I think so much of the world we're having to depend on and rely on more conventional medicines, you know, the pills in bottles.

For sure. There's a meme that's been going around about a person who has on the table in front of them, just you name the junk food, right? Whatever it is, it's soda, Pringles, and dip and nacho, right? All these things that are right at one point point may have not even been food in the first place.

That's true, right?

And it's just like a table and the person's stuffing their mouth and it says, "I can't wait for the vaccine to come out." Hmm, that's good, right? I'll send it to you. But it's so salient to what's going on in the world as a whole. It's— I have this huge personal belief that I do not believe believe that people should have a TV in their bedroom. Forget the spiritual ramifications and the intimacy. But I think right from the amount of having like a space that like, I know the word we hear that sacred, right, is, is one of the title of your book. But I think having a sacred space and again, not necessarily putting into a religious or spiritual connotation, just having your space that doesn't have other things enter it, that belongs to you, that is your place to be free from distraction and limitation. Distraction is something very huge. And I'm finding that when I see my couples, one of my first questions for them is, "So how long have you had a TV in your bedroom?" Hmm, that's good. And how often is that being watched in bed before you guys are— and they're like, "But how's that going to solve the problem?" Like, it's not, but it's part of the symptom of another way of being distracted from the things you need to do. So again, talk about the white noise or the distraction, but if you're having the TV going at night because you need something to fall asleep to, but you still have like a butt ton of EMFs, right? And I know there's two schools of thought that EMFs are BS and EMFs are not BS, right? So we're not going to get into that now, but there definitely is some type of— I can tell that when I've worn a Garmin watch, I got a Garmin exercise watch, I didn't feel so great. And it could be, again, placebo because of my studies on it. I'm going to say it's not, but I definitely did not feel well with the EMFs and the different things that were going on from the watch, which is why I've refrained from moving into the digital watch category in that regard because that's going to be going into my nervous system 24/7. We're already so high frequency. I'm wondering, right, simple hygiene stuff, like what are the bare minimum basics that you say every person should be at least be doing these things?

Well, I think that's a great one that you started with is just no TV in the bedroom. I always say that every house should have their own own sanctuary place, whatever that looks like. It could be the bedroom, it could be another room, but a place where majority of the activities that are done there are restorative. Because when you do that, then when you have kind of a, a bad day or a day that you're really feeling drained, you can pull away to that spot. So I think it's great if it's the bedroom. I think that there is an importance of having some type of darkness or ability to get to darkness. You may not want that necessarily every night, but I don't think it's healthy to have a bedroom that never gets dark. I think you never really get your senses shut down. And I think it's hard enough to do that in today's society as is, that there needs to be some room that you can get to complete darkness. I don't know if you've ever done a sensory deprivation tank.

I would love to, and it's on my list, so.

Oh, it's a holy experience.

I've heard, I've heard, I've heard people either freak out freak out or people have the most transcendental experience ever.

Well, I think that's the thing. I don't recommend it for anyone who hasn't at least done some basic restorative restful type things recently. I think for someone who is already kind of high-strung and anxious, it would probably cause them to have a panic attack because it would be pitching them into darkness and weightlessness and lack of sound all at the same time. And if they haven't been practicing that already, then it's like, you know, your body's like, what's happening? But for someone who's already, you know, for myself, I've been on this kind of journey for a while now. So it was about 4 or 5 years into the research and the studying that I finally did one. And it took me about 5 minutes to really get comfortable. I mean, I was there and my eyes were, you know, it was dark. My eyes were open, but it was completely dark and you're weightless. And it took about 5 minutes before I fully relaxed. Because during those 5 minutes, it's like, this is so foreign. You know, this level of peace is so foreign that I had to kind of get out of my head for a minute and just experience it.

So did you find that there were certain thoughts or certain sensory feelings that were coming up for you during that first 5 minutes?

I think for me, because it was inside of a pod, you know, you're in this pod.

And it's claustrophobic, but you don't know how claustrophobic it is because it's dark.

Well, that's exactly it. I knew I couldn't see like the— where anything stopped or started, but I saw it before I got in. So I knew I was in this pod. And yes, it was like 5 minutes of getting past just that thought of I'm close. I'm in a closed-in space. So kind of once I could get my head around that and let that thought go, it's really, you know, it's the mental rest. I had to get to the point where my brain would shut up.

Right. And so for people who are agoraphobic, that's probably not going to be the best one to go to. They would want to find an open tank type of scenario instead of that one. But again, I've heard so much for years. It's funny how I would probably say 15 or 17 years ago, I heard about someone here in South Florida who built his own and people were going as part of his social community to go and use it. Like, that is the weirdest thing ever. I've never heard of this. And then all of a sudden, two big 2 things came up. One is that, right? And the other thing is the salt rooms, which, right, for breathing and whatever it may be. Yeah, people like mock people have salt lamps. The research isn't there and it's not giving off any of the— right, because maybe it's not big enough. Who knows? Again, placebo, right? What's that Dr. Joe Dispenza book, which is amazing? You Are the Placebo, right? But I'm curious, and maybe we can wrap up with this, if this has been any part of your research when it comes to intimacy and sexuality, when it comes to sleep and rest.

What—

where has your research gone on that?

I didn't really hit that topic specifically. It's interesting because one of the things that I started getting emails from, from the gentlemen, honestly, more than the women, was an increase in sex as their wives became more restful. It was amazing the number of emails I got from men that were like, thank you, my wife— my wife found out about your work and read your book and and, you know, I really could not understand why we went from having a great sex life to we hardly were having sex. And now all of a sudden she's initiating and she's interested. And, you know, in their discussion, what they were really finding was that a lot of these women were sensory overloaded with touch. They were taking care of small kids, they were touched, touched to death. And so little hands, big hands, they didn't want any hands on them after a certain period of day. And so just kind of understanding that that's what's, what was happening happening, they were able to do some restorative things to kind of reclaim their body, um, ways to kind of quiet their mind so that they could actually be receptive to the, um, kind of the emotional and mental connection that's needed for great sex. And so it was interesting to see how when they got more rested, they actually got more in the outcome with their sexual relationship.

That's so interesting. Cause I'm thinking about like, is that can be the same for anybody who's an educator? Educator, or especially a preschool teacher, or a nanny, or, right, when you have that sensory overload in a specific way. Because if you know, right, the 4 love—

the 5—

4 love languages, right? Uh, 5 Love Languages. One of them is, um, that's right. Yeah, sorry, I had a double neurology glitch, but I had to look over there for a second to find the book on my bookshelf. The 5 Love Languages, right? One of them is, is physical touch. But it's interesting, as you're saying, it's like, wait, these guys figured out that if they take burdens off their women, that they're going to want to have better and more sex with them? This is not rocket science here. It's like, wait, if— there was a great movie in the '90s with Jeremy Piven and David Spade called PCU, and they had a group that was making fun of all the different political groups on a college campus. Amazing movie. And one of them was the womenists, and they're like, men suck, men are evil. And at the end of the movie, there was a big blowout party, and one of the jock frat guys goes over to one of these womenists and goes, would you like a beer? And she's like, no, I don't want to have sex with you. And her friend's like, he's just offering you a beer. She's like, wait, what? Yeah, he's being nice. Wait, if you're nice to them, they'll do things for you? It was like this mind-blowing thing. So I'm hearing, I guess I'm hearing you talk. I'm like, like, I want all the guys to hear who are in a relationship. If you take burdens off your partner's lap, And this can also be in reflexive. You will probably have a better and deeper intimate connection with your partner.

That's so true. And that's, I think that was, that was probably some of the most surprising emails that came because that wasn't anything I talked about necessarily, but these men were noticing that, you know, hey, my wife mentioned that they needed emotional rest. My wife mentioned that she just needed to have a moment where she could just share with me what was going on with her day and not have me interject, not have me try to fix it, but just listen. My wife was having this trouble reclaiming her body, so I started putting the kids to bed. So it was Daddy bedtime instead of Mommy do it all. And now when I go in the bedroom, she's set to go. So it was just really interesting because I don't think we realize is how the stress of life keeps us from really enjoying as much of life as we could.

I love it, I love it. So I just wanna give a shout out to your website, which is I Choose My Best Life. And there's the 3 books, Sacred Rest, Come Empty, and Set Free to Live Free. And there's amazing, amazing resources. There's quizzes, there's all this really, really good stuff that's going on that you're doing on your social media. So I really want people to check that out. Again, it's ichoosemybestlife.com is Dr. Sandra Dalton-Smith's website, and obviously you can find some really good resources there, and she does coaching if anybody needs some for this specific topic of being mentally overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and physically tired when it comes especially to rest and restorative activities and sleep. Is there anything that before we go, I'm always a big fan of this one question, that if you had 2 minutes to be with someone and you knew you're never going to be able to talk to them again, what would you share with them? What would you distill down all this awesome wisdom that you've garnered and kind of be like, "You got to know this before you leave me." What might that be?

I would probably say it's really just to get an understanding that, that work is— cannot be the only goal. That when you focus all of your attention on the work and you omit the rest, that you're setting yourself up to get to a point where you're working more out of your overwhelm rather than out of your overflow. And so you can never give your best work from that place of depletion.

Awesome, awesome, awesome. So everybody out there listening, Dr. Sandra Dalton-Smith, please check out her her really cool sounding book, Sacred Rest, which goes into the 7 different types of rest and being more restorative. Again, her website is ichoosemybestlife.com. And again, thank you so much for hanging out with us today. Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life podcast. If you are ready to minimize your personal and professional struggles and maximize your potential, we would love it if you subscribed so you don't miss an episode. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook @JasonWasserLMFT.