How to Get W.A.Y. Better Sleep with Dr. Peter Martone

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I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout.

Sorry, mom turned four time New York Times bestselling author. Yes, I'm a certified Nutrition specialist, Fitness hall of Famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe. But I'm driven by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers, and sharing the information that I uncover with as many.

People as I can.

And that's why I created the well Beyond 40 podcast to synthesize and simplify.

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To help you thrive. In each episode, we'll talk about what's working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness. Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out at 100.

There are three pillars for powerful aging Eat protein first, lift heavy things, Sleep through the night. Now, I have talked about sleep extensively on this show because you know, just one poor night of sleep, you are hungrier, I always say, and not for salmon and brussels sprouts. And you're better at storing fat, worse at burning it off, you start becoming insulin resistant. So sleep is mission critical to your overall health, to your immune system function, to your hormone balance, everything right now. We've never addressed sleep the way we're going to address sleep today, and this is fascinating stuff. I don't know why it's not out there more. So what I would say as you listen to this is come along with me. I'm going to do exactly what Dr. Peter Martoni says here and give this one a go. I'm committing to it. Just like I committed to Dr. Joe Dispenza for six months and broke the habit of being myself, got into the habit of meditating regularly. Now this is the new frontier. So you're going to learn all about the new frontier of sleep in this show with Dr. Peter Martoni. I met him years ago and then we were at an event at this.

Place called Wizard Academy.

That's as cool as it sounds. In Austin two months ago. And we're like, oh my gosh. Anyway, he was kind of diagnosing me there, rightly so. And I'm excited about what I'm about to share and what will happen with me. And I want to hear what will happen with you, too. So let me tell you a little bit about Dr. Peter. He is an educator, injury prevention specialist and patient care care health practitioner who's been focused on improving patients Biomechanics for over 23 years. He is a chiropractor who always believes that the structure of his spine affects the function of the central nervous system. And this is probably this is the root cause of the chronic problems most people face. So he is talking about sleeping, right? And you'll understand as we go through this. It is really groundbreaking, innovative. Cool stuff. We've got some fun stuff for you, some giveaways, his five ways to sleep and some other cool stuff at jjvirgin.com forward/doctorsleepright and that's Dr. So be sure to go check that out. And I will be right back with Dr. Peter Martoni. This is a really fun interview, too. You're gonna probably learn some things about my sleeping habits that you may or may not want to know. All right, see you soon.

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Dr. Peter Motone, welcome back to the show.

Well, thank you, JJ. This is great. I love rerun act two. This is going to be great.

I know act two is always better than act one. I mean, in act one, you were not in your PJs.

No, the other. The brand's changed. Whenever I talk about sleep, I want people to associate relaxation, nice pajamas, safety, comfort. So I love wearing my PJs.

I love it. So if you're not watching this, you will want to definitely take a peek on Instagram, see the photos of this and I will tell you, Peter, you probably you wouldn't know this, but I did a talk at Parker Conferences on sleep. Parker would get 10,000 people back in the day, 10,000 docs. And so I think I was doing a talk for like a thousand people. And in the middle of the talk, I had set up a dressing room on stage and I changed into my PJs.

Oh, and I am so proud of you. That is fantastic.

I figured you'd love that. So I'm super excited to talk about sleep because for my three pillars of powerful aging, of course, sleep is mission critical. I'd love to know because you said you had a little brand shift how you got so interested in sleep.

Well, you know, as a structural specialist, I had herniated disc, been a chiropractor for years. I'm an exercise physiologist. Study of kinesiology. I always loved the way the body worked. So I didn't get into the kind of the sleep industry to help people sleep. I got into the sleep industry to help people improve their structure while they sleep. As a chiropractor, I still had back pain almost every day of my life for the first 15 years of practice until finally I herniated a disc and then have an add. You know, I'm like, how can I be a chiropractor helping people with pain? And I myself had a herniated disc and it was getting adjusted. So I reviewed 3000x rays. I came up with a pattern. I found that I had forward head posture because of the way I was sleeping previously. And I also had a shoulder problem, and I had a hip issue. And then I figured, well, if I can change that forward head posture. And it caused a reactive psoas major muscle spasm. The psoas major is the only muscle that attaches directly to a disc. So I'm like, holy mackerel. Did I have forward head posture causing a disc issue due to a muscle spasm all of these years? So I started jamming pillows underneath my neck, lying on my back. And the why was big because it was either fix my disc, have surgery, or not practice. So I laid on my back for hours and hours and hours, fix the curve in my neck, and my disc problem went away.

Wow. Well, here's the question. You did that while you were sleeping?

Yeah. So think about it. The body has laws of adaptation. When we have an issue in our body, more than likely, it's the way that it's our lifestyle and the way our body is adapting to that lifestyle. So one of the laws of adaptation is Davis's law, saying that tissue will remold based on the stresses applied. So if you're able to put the body into a position and hold it into that position over a period of time, like clay, it will remold to the position that you put it in. And we have the opportunity at night, potentially, to stay in one position for eight hours, getting structural improvement that you can't do any other part of the day.

Okay, so sleep positions. How do you do that, though? Like, I have the best intentions when I start out sleeping. And, you know, obviously I have my husband in bed, but I also have two little doggies who are known as little doggies that like to go under the covers and snuggle right up to you. So, like, a lot of times, the way I wake up, I'm like, oh, I shouldn't be in this position.

So.

So what is the best sleep position? And more importantly, like, how do you make sure you do that?

All right, this is great, jj, because, you know, you're a confident woman. You're cross dominant. You have a little bit of ADD that I can kind of maybe see. Maybe we all do.

Oh, stop it.

Our type of personalities want to control things, and I love it. I love control. But the one thing that you can't control is when you're sleeping. But what you can control is how you fall asleep. So all I want people to be conscious of is putting yourself into a position for success. So don't worry about what happens in the middle of the night. The lifestyle habit is this. We control and we own the 10 minutes on how we set up to fall asleep and then let the subconscious brain take control when we're sleeping. We toss and turn and move out of positions for three main reasons. One, because the body wants to feel safe. Two, because temperature regulation is off where we running too hot or too cold. And number three, because the body is in pain. So if we can look at all three of those, we can set ourselves up for the best layer of success. So one of the reasons when people fall asleep on their back, they're not in a comfortable position is because they feel exposed. So you can use pressure over your head, pressure on your chest. And those little doggies love to kind of snuggle up under the covers. But those dogs are also heaters. So we have to be careful on how we kind of manage our temperature while we're sleeping. So maybe we stick our legs and our arms out of the covers and. And then sleeping on your back, you can't put a pillow under your head. You need to put a pillow under your neck and let the. The neck fall off the back of the pillow, creating light distraction. So there, there are positioning ways to do it. It's not good enough to just say, oh, I'll fall asleep on my back, because that. It's not really sustainable. Falling asleep in a neutral sleeping position.

Okay, so the way you're supposed to sleep then is on your back with a pillow shoved under your neck. No doggies heating you up.

How about we say lightly placed under the neck, we lay our neck gently over the pillow.

Yeah.

Okay. And for different sleep positions, how are these impacting, say, your overall health, you know, your weight, all those types of things. If you're not sleeping the way you should be sleeping, which I would think.

Is pretty much everybody, large percentage of the population. That's why I'm trying to change the way the world sleeps, Helping them get way better sleep. So what ends up happening is most experts, when they talk about sleep, we always hear you, Right. Recharging at night when you're sleeping, re energizing at night when you're sleeping, Repairing your body at night when you sleep. But with the world most people don't really understand is the structure when you sleep is significantly important to maintain that structure of your spine. Because we're breaking our spine down and in. The structure of your spine directly affects the nervous system. So this is where things are going wrong. I've taken tens and tens of thousands of X rays on people. And inevitably, when somebody has a problem in their health, let's say they're going through menopause and they can't regulate their hormones, or they have digestion issues, or they have skin issues, or they have breathing issues, they get asthma on a regular basis, or allergies, they have lost the cervical curve in their neck. And that affects the function of a very specific nerve. And it's sitting behind me. It's called your vagus nerve. The vagus nerve controls your parasympathetic nervous system or your growth in development nervous system. So in order for you to thrive, you have to have a healthy, functioning vagus nerve. And when you lose the curve at night when you're sleeping, you're affecting the function of the vagus nerve, suppressing the parasympathetic response. And our body goes into chaos.

Oh, boy. And I know this to be true because I just went to the chiropractor and did the initial assessment. And the second one I went to and saw the neck situation. So I, I'm with you on the whole situation. However, I still come down to, okay, so you have, you gently place the pillow under your neck and lie there. But then the minute you fall asleep, doesn't your body just shift into like, I will roll on my side and then I have dog wedge and that's that.

Your body is going to move out of position again for three reasons, pain, safety and temperature. So if we can predict that, really the goal is obviously to stay in one position all night long, right? You can put a glass of water on me now and that glass of water will be on my chest when I wake up. I don't turn not. That's not going to happen for everybody because we have tissue issues, we have degeneration in our neck, and the body's not going to want that much extension all night long. So you're going to turn when you're in pain. As long as you're in that position for an hour a night, then do whatever you want for the rest of the night. But that lifestyle habit is putting the pillow under your neck so your neck is arched back and you're looking straight at the ceiling. Put a pillow over your head, use a sleep mask, put a pillow on your chest. Somebody like us is going to want that comfort and security. You could put a pillow on your chin so your mouth doesn't open, but have your hands and your feet out of the covers so your Temperature stays cool. And then at least setting yourself up that way every single night. Eventually, over a period of time, your body will adapt.

Nice, because I'm reading in some of the notes that you provided that the average person toss and turns 40 times a night. And is that pain usually?

That's exactly why. So people challenge me on this all the time, as you can imagine, because it's against the grain and I say, okay, you love falling asleep on your left side. Oh, you're a left side sleep. I stay in that all night long. Perfect. I love it. So let's do this. I want you to lie on the couch in the position you fall asleep on and try to watch a full two hour movie like that. It's not possible. There's too many pressure points. Your shoulder's going to kill you. Inevitably, what ends up happening is you have to move out of that position. That's the same thing that happens at night. You fall asleep because you feel safe, but your body is technically not comfortable because you're in a position that's not sustainable. When we fall asleep, most people want to feel protected and safe. That's why we fall asleep curled up in a ball on our side.

Makes total sense. Now, is there more to it for say a woman like 45, 50, blood like as hormones start to go completely wacky, you know, one of the first thing that starts to get really messed up is sleep. Now some of that is temperature regulation. I still remember getting thrown across the bed because I was like so hot. It was like, get off of me. So I'm assuming is that more a temperature regulation thing or is there more at play there?

So there's more at play. And then the complicating factor is that loss of cervical curve. When you lose that cervical curve and then you go into a time in your life where your body is really depending on hormone regulation. Hormone regulation happens through the parasympathetic nervous system. If you have compromised parasympathetic nervous system due to loss of vagal tone due to loss of curve in your neck, it complicates everything. So the lifestyle habit should be regardless on if you have sleep apnea and you snore on your back, it's get that neck into extension for at least an hour a night. And then while it could go to your side where you feel comfortable. But yes, you're correct, temperature regulation is a big thing. Then cortisol levels increase as you get lack of sleep. Then your leptin drops, you feel hungry at night. There's so many Things that happen when you start to go through the change. But most of the problem which is not talked about anywhere is that low vagal tone due to that loss of cervical curve. And that's what I'm trying to correct at night while people sleep.

So how quickly can you restore that?

That depends on how much degeneration and arthritic change. So picture the spine like hardened clay. The more scar tissue you have due to old injury. And I'm going to tell you, people often ask me, how do I know if I have it? Here's the history. I can look at people and by the way that they stand and how they move. And I'm actually creating a protocol known to teach in 2024 with great accuracy and dependability. I can look at you and tell you what's wrong. Well, why is that? Because your structure affects your function. So you know, if you have an issue, if you had ear infections as a kid, if you have heart.

Wait, wait, wait. How do ear infections as a kid, I mean, I understand things like I got rear ended and hit head on simultaneously on the freeway and basically totaled, cracked in half, Lexus suv. Clearly that left a mark, right?

But ear infections, so ear infections are caused by what's called atlas laterality, which there's a bone in the top portion of your spine called your atlas. When that bone is out of alignment, it affects what's called the tensile b li Palatine muscle, the muscle that when you yawn, your ears are supposed to pop, they open and fluid drains down. When that atlas is out of alignment, it affects that muscle. Well, it's also affecting the function of the vagus nerve. So if there's a history of ear infections, I know that that atlas laterality was there since you were born. And then you carry that suppression all the way through your life in your entire life is going to be adapted to it. So if you had ear infections as a child, you're also going to have degeneration at a specific level of your body called C5, C6 in the neck. And then you're going to have issues with hormonal imbalance. There's going to be a history of digestion issues, there's going to be a history of cysts, fibroids, heavy periods if you're a woman. And all of these things can be tracked back to low vagal tone. And the first question I ask all of my patients is, did you have ear infections as a child? Tells me to timestamp these problems from when they were a child who didn't.

Have ear infections as a child, right? Unless their mom nursed them till they were like 10. So again, let's take someone who's arthritic. The clay is fairly hard. Can you restore this or is there ever a time where it's just like you're done?

Most people, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, that's in that stage two, even going into stage three, degeneration, you can improve the curve. You can improve the curve within six months. We have hundreds and hundreds of post X rays on people improving their curve with significant degenerative arthritic changes that I did not even believe that they would be able to be restored. Now picture you. You're going to a chiropractic. Chiropractic would be like this. You have hardened clay. You could take that clay with chiropractic and put it in water. That makes the clay more moldable, but you still have to expose it to a different mold at night when you're sleeping. And what's really critically important that people understand is anytime you support the body, I don't care what you're supporting, you put a shoe on in your foot that's supporting the arch, you're going to weaken the arch. You put lower back support in anything, you're going to weaken the back. Anytime you support the body and you take over the function of the body, you make it weaker. So if you use a neck support while you're sleeping, you're going to make the spine weaker. Use a pillow, technically support for your head, you're going to make the spine weaker. You want to use distraction when you sleep, which is gently stretching a curve back into your neck.

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It seems to me that that the way that we sleep has set us up to get rid of the curve in our neck. Because we sleep with our head up on a pillow, this seems like the wrong thing to do.

Isn't this great? Let's just tell the entire world that. And I wish the entire world would listen to us.

So you sleep that way. You get rid of the curve in your neck. Which I literally yesterday went to the chiropractor and he showed me it and I'm like. And I'd had another guy show me a year before, but he wanted me to lie on this thing for 15 minutes a day. And I'm like, I don't have time. So bad patient this instead, you know, this guy gave me a little better protocol. Now I'm going to add the pillow. Couple questions. Number one, any pillow? Because I know you were on Shark Tank with the pillow. So let's talk pillow first. And then I want to talk vagus nerve.

So the neck nest goes angled up and then it goes underneath your neck. But look what's happening to the back of my head. It's hanging off the back of the neck nest. It's about an inch above the bed. So when you put something under your neck, the weight of your head is gently distracting that curve into your neck. So you're supporting just the base of your skull with the head, but a majority of the weight of the head is off of the back of the pillow. Almost like if you watch Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, they put their neck over a block of wood right in their entire head is hanging off the back of that block. But what's key is to have the weight of the head off of the bed so that you're not supporting the back of the neck.

So people shouldn't be sleeping the way they're sleeping with pillows. Because the way we're sleeping with pillows is taking the curvature out of our neck and we're spending eight or nine hours that way every night. So clearly this creates a problem. So should it be that we just need to train ourselves to be sleeping on a neck nest style pillow?

Absolutely. And once you're able to do that for at least an hour a night, because you are not in control what happens in the middle of the night, you're only in control with setting yourself up for success. So you set yourself up the same way every single night. You set yourself up with the intention to improve your structure while you sleep, which decreases sports related injuries, increases performance, you have less pain when you wake up. And then don't get yourself in a tizzy or all crazy because I toss in the middle of the night and I got to just reposition the pillow. Just start out every night on your back with the pillow under your neck and your neck off of the back of the pillow.

It reminds me a lot of other types of things like a food intolerance where you're having joint pain or skin breaks out and you don't correlate it to the food intolerance. Strikes me here that there's so many things that having this neck issue would then cause that you'd never lay it back to the neck, that most people have no clue that this is an issue.

Which would also be food intolerances. When people improve the structure of their spine, their body is becomes less sensitive because you have three areas, main areas that are controlled by the vagus nerve or the parasympathetic nervous system, the reproductive system, the immune system, and the digestive system. Most people that have an issue with one have an issue with all three of them in some way, shape or form. And nobody is talking about how the nervous system that controls all three of them is linked to and then linking it back to the structure that's affecting the integrity of the vagus nerve.

Well, how would you know unless you looked?

If you have an issue with those systems, I almost guarantee that 80% chance that you have lost a cervical curve affecting it. Now, another way to monitor that is something that's called heart rate variability. You can get a heart rate variability monitor or oring or something that measures hrv. And HRV is a way to determine how strong your parasympathetic nervous system is or how imbalanced the two systems are. And you'll find that you always feel a block. You're always going to have a block. You're not going to be able to get those really good HR B readings that let's say your peers get because your, your tone is suppressed.

Okay, questions on HRB because I just got a Polar H10 to be able to better track it because I've been looking at it on my apple watch versus my Oura ring. I've been looking at it sleeping daytime. And it's like they're giving me completely different measures. And I went, okay, this is silly. I'll go get a chest strap and check. How are you looking at it? Are you seeing a difference between the different. Because, you know, just like an Oura ring and an apple watch, I always joke I just take whichever one gave me better readings. But, you know, that's not really what you want to do for hrv. Is there a difference between daytime and sleep? And when is your best time to test it? And what really? Because I heard Peter Attia, Dr. Peter Attia, say the studies show that as long as I think it was like you were above 14, it didn't really make a difference. I'm like 14. So I'm assuming it changes with age. But, like, how do we know what a good HRV is? How do you test it? All of that?

That's great. So hrv, simply the device. You want to stay consistent with the same device, regardless of what the scores are. Some read 14. That 14 could be 30 on another one. I really take that as a grain of salt. Could really. People dive in on that very specific number and then they compare it to what their friends get. Let's just forget about that. Let's take really, truly, if somebody was a client, this is what I do. Use a consistent device. Monitor that HRV for a period of three weeks. Let's get an average, and then let's see the day that you feel the best that you are. Right. So let's say you wake up, you're energized, and you're, you're ready for the day. What's that HRV score look like? Let's say you had alcohol and you were traveling and you got, you know, an hrv. You know, of something like, what's a horrible HRV look like for you and how do you feel? And then the goal is going to be, is when you have that great day, what can we do to increase it by 15 to 30%? And then that is where we then start to dive into different things with sleep. But ultimately, your HRV should be the highest and most variable when your parasympathetic nervous system is at its maximum. So during meditation, when you calm down, when you're sick, you'll have a high HRV when you are sleeping. So anytime you need that vagal tone to increase immune system, digestive system, and reproductive system, you're going to have higher HRVs because your parasympathetic nervous system is in charge.

Wait, when you're sick, you have higher HRV's?

Yeah, because your immune system. So in order to stimulate an immune system, you need to stimulate your vagus nerve. That's why you get tired. Your vagal tone increases when you're sleeping. So let's take things to extreme. You have very, very low vagal tone when you're running from a tiger. You have high vagal tone when you're sleeping. So those are the extremes. So now in order to stimulate the immune system, you need the vagus nerve to turn on. So you're going to get tired. Right. If you're running from a tiger, you can't eat a sandwich at the same time because you'll throw it up because you're in survival and thrive. So everything is a balance within the autonomic nervous system. I just did a post on Dr. Sleepwright. The single best way to stimulate other than getting a great night's sleep, long term, your immune system is to elevate your core temperature. So get in a jacuzzi, a steam room, because your immune system in vagal tone follows temperature. So if you artificially give yourself a fever, you're going to improve digestion, immune system and reproductive system.

So is that why it's great to either do a hot bath or sauna before bed? Is that the mechanism?

You get a release in melatonin when you have a drop in core temperature quickly. So if you elevate your core temperature, that drop in core temperature. Because in order for us to get good deep sleep, we need our core temperature to drop within the first third of our sleep cycle. So if we fall asleep, let's say at 9, 30, 10 o', clock, we want our core temperature to drop 2 degrees so we get into deep sleep before our energy spike, which is around midnight. So if you elevate your core temperature with a sauna or jacuzzi, which I love to do, and then your core temperature is allowed to drop, you'll get into deep sleep quicker.

Interesting. All right, so two more things since we're talking tracking and same thing, I, I use my oura ring and apple watch and then I take the best score. However, I really feel like my aura is way better at sleep tracking than the apple watch is. What do you think about the sleep trackers? Is it just to stay consistent with one or are there some that are better than others?

It's just to stay consistent with what you have. It's. You can do a sleep diary, match that to your tracker, really stay focused on how you feel, and then look at the numbers based on how you're feeling. Obviously, the technology is getting better and better where it's becoming, becoming more accurate, but I like to just pick one and stick with one.

And the final one. Oh, he's not here. So I'm going to do this. He doesn't listen anyway.

Tim. Oh, we're talking about Tim.

We're talking about Tim, my, my fabulous husband who also can snore like a bear at times. He's a mouth breather when he sleeps. So then he tries to tape his mouth, but then he rips it off in the middle of the night. So what about mouth taping and mouth breathers?

So we are not taught to breathe correctly. Right. Our parents always told us to Go to bed, go to sleep. They never taught us how to sleep because nobody knows how to sleep. We're not taught how to sleep. We're supposed to fall asleep with our mouth closed and our tongue sucked to the roof of our mouth. Let's say it opens up our palate, expands it, and we breathe out of our nose. We've never been taught that. So, you know, most people, the airway drops down and anesthesiologists did a study that in order to open up your airway, you need an angle of your neck. So the neck needs to be into extension. Then the airway will not close down. So most people where they sleep on their side, they sleep on their back, their airways close down, which causes them to snore. So if we sleep on your back, neck nest or something underneath your neck, get that neck into extension. I use a pillow or covers under my chin to keep my mouth shut. And as long as I'm in that position, there'll be no snoring. If I then move it and then my jaw drops down, closes down that airway, sometimes it can mess with it. But whether somebody has sleep apnea or snores in the middle of the night, there are ways to combat that. You still want to sleep with a pillow underneath your neck for about an hour a night. And then if you snore and your spouse can elbow you and then turn to you side.

Yeah, that's what I do most nights. I'm thinking I'll just put a dog under his chin.

Actually. Yeah, dog would be great. You know, maybe some bling, like some Mr. T gold chain necklace.

It's a great idea. Yeah, that's so perfect. I'll tell them that's that came from you. We'll put a link to your neck nest. What happened? Just, you know, we all want to know. So you went on Shark Tank. What was that like?

So the way that it happened was lines and lines and lines and lines of people. And you get all the way down to the very last second. You know, the producers want to talk to you. It is a really pretty awesome process. And you make it to the end. And then when you, you have to fill out all the stuff, what are you asking for? What you're asked. And in there, I didn't have the patent on the neck nest yet. So they had said, well, so what would be best is when you get the patent, let's get the ball rolling and let's get you on the show. By the time I had gotten the patent, which was about Three months later, four months later, I had already had more money in the necknest account than I was going to ask them for. The necknest because of the message and what it does was just a great success for us. I haven't responded back to them. I haven't reached back out to them.

You'd be so good on the show.

I know, I know.

You're so convincing. Like, I think everyone needs a neck nest and a neck nest for travel that just lives in their suitcase. Like, I'm hearing this going neck nest for everyone.

Well, I think that's reform sleep, but also we have to understand. So we sold neck nests on Amazon and we tons of sales on Amazon. They were our highest returns because people buy a neck nest and like, oh, my God, this is going to be easy. It's going to change my life. It's changed the way I slept. But most people that bought the neckness originally heard me on a podcast like this. Their why is big enough. So the what doesn't matter because the neck nest is going to take some transition. The neckness is just a how. The why needs to become important for you. So when you start to see holy macro, my hormonal imbalances have been tied to loss of cervical curve, my digestion issues that I've had all these years, could it really be from low vagal tone? And then you start to see how your health is directly related to the positioning. Now you're going to work on your positioning and you're going to go through the trials and tribulations of being able to make a neck nest work for you. Then you'll go into one of our neck nest programs where we teach you how to sleep, we teach you the positioning. One of the things, and I know we talked about this, jj, I love you, but you don't want to share your covers with your spouse into docs. And that's because you're a heater. He's a heater.

You have to tell him this.

Come together at night as you wish. You love each other, but use your own covers so you're in control of your own space when you sleep. And it. It's really important.

Yeah, this can be interesting when explained to him because he, like, is like a koala bear. Like, between him and the two dogs, I'm like, shoved in. And sometimes I'm like, I can't even.

Move over here with.

People don't like to be told things, jj. So what you do is you say, oh, my God, you got to talk to Peter Holy mackerel. He has some of the similar issues. Do you mind just talking to him about his sleep problems and how he sleeps? Now I'll bring up the COVID thing.

You know, I always love assessments because it helps people really go, oh, wow. And I will tell you that going. It's such perfect timing that I literally went back for my second visit at the doctor and he showed me the lack of curve in my neck. And as I'm hearing all this, I think it's something most people don't think about doing. And when you see it, you go, oops. You know, it's like, oh, it was the big oh. That makes you take action. Because we get so used to our little issues that we're like, oh, it's just normal for me. And so I. I would also highly advocate for going and getting a spinal exam and having the doc outline your neck curvature, because when you see it, you'll go, oops. And hopefully yours won't have gone as far as mine has gone, because now I'm highly motivated, but even more highly motivated. But I think that's helpful for people because there's no lying to yourself about it once you see that. Right?

Yeah. And then what's really important to notice is body posture adjusts to head positions called the writing reflex. So as you lose that curve, you're going to have forward constriction in the forward plane. You're going to start to lose your balance, and then your brain tends to atrophy based on that forward constriction, because there's a specific portion of your brain called the vermis that adapts to that. And then the prefrontal cortex tends to atrophy. So what people don't realize is if you're getting more anxious, you don't feel like you're in your skin, you're yelling a lot, you get a short temper. That's typically due to loss of proprioception in the brain. And as you start to lose the curve in your neck, all of that becomes heightened. So there's so much connected to this and the layers. If the one message somebody gets from this podcast, all I would want you to take from this is the nervous system controls everything in the human body, and the structure of your spine needs to be looked at and maintain the integrity of that structure. And at night when we sleep, we just have to be looking at becoming a little bit more productive when we sleep, because we're becoming destructive when we sleep based on how we're sleeping.

That was a beautiful wrap Up. Thank you. There you go. So I'm going to put everything@jjvirgin.com forward slash Dr. Sleep. Right. And that is Doctor Sleep. Right. I'll put the Neck Nest. So the Neck Nest, you. You get on your site, not on Amazon. Correct.

So, yeah, there's a link from Dr. Sleepwright too. @necknest.com they can use a code JJ10, and then we can.

They get a deal.

They get a deal.

We love deals.

Okay.

I didn't know we were going to get a deal. I'm so excited. So we'll put the Neck Nest. You've got your five pillars of sleep that you're going to get access to and whatever else cool that we can think of will be there as well. So maybe a picture of you and your PJs.

Well, you'll find that all over the place. This was great, jj. I really appreciate it. You know, somebody as passionate about you diving into sleep because, you know, it's. Sleep performance is really what we're all about. Maximize your time during the day, you got to maximize your performance at night.

Heck, yeah. Like, I have my three pillars of powerful aging. Eat protein first, lift heavy things, sleep through the night. At first, I put sleep like a baby, and I went, wait a minute, if they sleep like my babies, that would be hell. So I went, it's. It's sleep through the night. But really, this. This is a whole different take on sleep. When we all talk about, you know, what you need to do to prepare for a good night. But this is very different than preparing for a good night's sleep. If you're not sleeping well, none of the other things work. You're not going to be able to build muscle. You're going to be insulin resistant, you're going to have trouble burning fat, you're going to like it. Just everything else falls apart. So this one, if you were going to put a little pyramid of those three things, sleep is the most important of all. Thank you for giving us this perspective that we have never talked about before.

Well, thanks for giving me the platform to share.

Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure.

You look and feel great and more importantly, that you're built to last. And check me out on Instagram, Facebook.

YouTube and my website, jjvirgin.com and make sure to follow my podcast so you don't. Don't miss a single episode@subscribetoj.com See you next time.

Hello, listeners. This is Anne Bogle. Author, blogger, and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I tag all things Books and Reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.