Sleep, Anxiety, and Lack of Mental Clarity with Barton Scott founder of Upgraded Formulas

Oh, great.

Today on Midlife Conversations, I've got a really great treat for you because I've got Barton Scott here. Now, not only is he my good friend, so selfishly, I always love to talk to him and interview him and have him talk with you, but he's also a biochemist, he's an inventor, he's a behavioral nutritionist and international speaker, and even more importantly, he is the founder and CEO of Upgraded Formulas. And he is my go to expert when it comes to mineral deficiency. And we're going to get into what that means for you today because. Because we are going to be talking about sleep, we're going to be talking about anxiety, we're going to be talking about lack of mental clarity. Now these are three of the biggest complaints I get from midlife women. So stay tuned. You've got a. We've got a great episode ahead for you. Thank you so much for being here, Barton. I love we talking with you.

So fun to be back here with you and I. I love that this can be a catch up because we have a lot of new things to talk about.

We do. So first and foremost, how do I know Barton? Well, we met in Maui. Gosh, was it three years ago now? Probably three years ago, one of our good friends, Lee, she curated a bunch of friends to go visit her in Maui. What we didn't realize is she was like literally curating us together because she knew we'd all be friends. So, so I met Barton in this little friend pod that we kind of, that literally introduce us and we had some pretty deep conversations and a lot of fun on that trip. But one of the things that got me really interested in Martin Barton is we were talking a lot about sleep. Now I had just recently started tracking my sleep with an aura ring and I had noticed at the time and gosh, we brought and still has a screenshot.

I remember this.

Yeah, yeah, I was getting like five minutes of deep sleep and a lot of REM sleep. Like I was dreaming. REM sleeps when you dream and you're, you know, a lot of that. I thought, oh well, because I'm creative. But I couldn't understand why I would sleep like 10 hours and I would be so tired. And I remember showing you that oura ring where I was like, I've got five minutes. And what'd you say to me?

I, I remember saying like, wow, how, how are you doing? All the things you're doing with this, this amount of sleep. Like I, I would expect you'd be a mess. Like you've you've got all these things together. I mean, I can't imagine. I think what I said too is like, I can't imagine what's going to happen when you, when we get you some quality deep sleep. And I remember the stats to, to this day, it was like 11 and a half year, like this is my normal is 11 and a half hours of time in bed. So like essentially 9pm to 9am or 8 to 8, or 7 to 7, whatever it is, you're going to bed super early, trying to get sleep, which usually by itself is, is really good that. And the earlier you go to bed, usually the better you sleep in terms of quality. But it still wasn't working for you. And I know so many people are that way. And it was. Your average, I remember, was 16 minutes specifically of deep sleep a night then and a lot of REM. And we're able to shift that in like five nights to an hour, almost right under two hours. Hour and 51 minutes and five nights.

And how did he shift that? He didn't give me any kind of like secret meditate, even though Barton is very calming and I'm not a calming person, but you are. He's very calming. So we, he was just calming personality. But he gave me a pill. Like, you literally gave me a magic pill. You're like, take this magnesium. And I was like, I already take magnesium. You're like, no, no, take this magnesium. So he slipped me a pill. He slipped me a pill and it changed my deep sleep and full transparency all. I kind of forgot. Like, I'm just being real. Like, I used your magnesium for a while. I kind of forgot. I, you know, I get all kinds of. I have all kinds of magnesium. I'm like, I forget. And sure enough, you know, I'm noticing my deep sleep again starting to slip and all the things. And then Barton reaches out and I'm like, oh, guilty. I have not been using your. Using your magic magnesium. So we're going to be talking a lot about, we're going to be getting into more of that, like, why and like what you've taught me about anxiety and mental clarity and all the things. But I want to go back a little bit because before you ever even knew you were going to be a founder of upgraded formulas, before this was even a thing, you didn't know you were doing this. You were just like the science nerd, right? You were. This was your thing.

I love nutrition. Yeah. Yeah.

Tell us what happened. Like, what was, what happened that got you super interested in this.

So I, I was really close with, with both my parents was lucky with that. But the trade off as they were old, my mom was starting to get pretty, pretty sick. Even though she was otherwise healthy, it seemed like she was, she was in her 60s, so still relatively I would say very young. And, and she had retired low stress job and at medication led to surgery and surgery just kept leading in the wrong direction. And I was, I was thinking like here's a woman that was. I'm just watching the vitality drain out of her. And she was just like one of them more memorable people that I think a lot of people would have ever met if they met her and someone like everyone seemingly loved. Very wise. I mean such a, you know, a loss of wisdom when people like that die young just subjectively. And I remember thinking I can be at peace with, with that with her passing on, but there's still something that's fundamentally wrong or missing. And we had discovered I. So I also became a nutritionist and I was on my way to becoming a nutritionist at this time and I was studying chemical engineering and I finished in chemical engineering and the last couple years were tough because I also had a total lack of what we're talking about here, which was brightness, mental brightness or mental clarity, the ability to just look at something, read it, remember it while doing other things like that sort of flow state that I used to have. Often I was rereading things and like I mean engineering tax are possibly the most difficult to understand things on the planet because super high level math, high level chemistry, high level physics. I literally chose that degree because I, I heard it was the toughest thing I could study and I wanted to be able to grasp literally anything for the rest of my life. And so I started using that understanding to apply it and applying it to nutrition to better understand nutrition because I realized really quickly. So I'd been a wrestler and I wrestled for 10 years. I played football both ways, all these different things. I had a lot of deficiencies, concussions, all sorts of things coming in. I was no like by no means like a clean sort of starting point when I started having these issues. But what I'm, what I'm really saying here is that just like with anxiety and like you talked about me being very calm now that is completely based on the nutrient deficiencies you either have or don't have. So I can take someone's diet and if I had full control and I wanted to, which I'd never want to, and stripped out certain nutrients from their Diet, I could make them anxious in a matter of days.

Wow. Okay. Okay, let's. I'm going to dive into this here because this is right. This is like perfect timing. I swear, like, you come into my life at the perfect timing. First I got busted for not using your magnesium and my deep sleep's not doing well. That. That's the first thing. But the other thing is what I have, what I've been experiencing a lot lately is that anxiety feeling. And for those of you that are not sure if you're experiencing anxiety, to me, I describe it as. It feels like you've had caffeine, but you haven't.

Yeah.

And when I'm doing a lot in my business or when I'm super busy or overwhelmed, like right now, going back and forth, San Diego and Arizona a lot. Yeah. Like, I feel it. And it feels literally like I've had too much caffeine, even though I've had none. And if I don't go and just do a ton of cardio or do like, I. It just feels to me. And that, I know, is anxiety. And it's like this. I describe it as. I just want to shut my brain off. So, so many women in midlife navigate that if I were to go to a doctor, a western medicine doctor, they would say, here's Xanax and I'm not doing that.

They would shut their brain off with. So many people would. And that's not the path. Right. The path is figuring out something that I really like saying is symptoms are our allies. They. Symptoms are our friends. So that anxiety could turn into a full blown mental breakdown for someone if they don't address it. And addressing it is not medication. Because just really simply, this is not an opinion at all. This is like, we're looking at hard facts here. Like, grab. We all, we're all familiar with gravity. Right. You let go of something, you for sure are confident that it's going to hit the floor. The periodic table is the same way. And what we're talking about is elements. We're talking about magnesium, we're talking about lithium, we're talking about, which is not a drug but an actual element. And then at super high doses, they consider that a drug. So you can, you can also apply that to super high doses of magnesium, or if you're absorbing it really well, you don't need as much. But any other mineral, selenium, all these different things are therapeutic for us. And when we're missing them, it's like gravity. It's like stepping off your Balcony and not understanding gravity like you, you just, you're surprised that you hit the ground, you know. So anyway, I didn't want to interrupt. You're on something really.

No, but so like I want. Let's talk about that. That. Because that makes sense that symptoms are ally. So like, I know that I'm intelligent enough to. Okay, this is not normal, this isn't good. And the answer is not a Xanax. And I can't go just run two hours a day. Like that would be amazing. But I don't have all that time.

Right. So what do I do?

Right, right. And so a lot of people suck it up to. It's perimenopause, it's menopause, it's aging, it's stress, it's whatever. What do. What is typically lacking in our nutrition or in our supplements. What is that when you found that is typically lacking and what do we do about it?

Yeah, one of the, one of the things that's lacking is magnesium. Like we're talking about, we're talking about lithium being missing. We're talking about minerals that control blood sugar. Both different trace minerals, but also specifically large doses of chromium are usually needed to restore that. But you have to absorb it because virtually every chromium product we've ever tested is like, is around 5% or less absorbed in our, in our lab. So, you know, looking at, you know, how do we actually. Because why does absorption matter for. For people that aren't as into nutrition? Well, absorption matters because if it's not what you put in your, in your mouth, it's what gets absorbed. And that matters because if you can, if you can't reverse the deficiency by absorbing it, which is the only way to actually reverse it, then you are stuck with the deficiency of that thing. Which what I clarify for people that it seems like waving a magic wand is I understand all that. The interactions of these nutrients, of these elements that are again, just what build the entire planet. And that's, that's not up for grab. So we, we all agree on that. And that's what builds our hair. So we test our hair to see what is missing. And then that gives us this path of oh, okay, that's what's, what's wrong. And by reversing that, if I absorb it, I reverse it and then the symptom goes away because the problem, the underlying dysfunction is not there. The cells are happy.

So I want to back up a little bit because I want to make sure I'm following and that anyone listening is following. So if I hear you correctly, it's we want to figure out what's missing. So typically when someone's described anxiety, you are seeing a trend that it could be chromium, lithium, magnesium as three main things that could be missing. And it's not that people don't think they're getting it like they might be taking a random supplement with those things, but they might not be absorbing it. So if I'm hearing you correctly, the best way to know if you're absorbing it is not a blood test or a urine test or it's an actual hair test because that shows if your body's been absorbing it is that. Did I explain that right?

Absolutely. Yeah. It could be other things like copper as well. And that's a larger conversation around iron and how you might have iron overload. Even if, and this, this is, this might be a life changing sound bite for someone. I know it is with, with your audience. There's plenty of people, women and men that are told that they have iron anemia and they actually have iron overload. The reason why, and this goes to the fact of why you want to test hair is hair is tissue, just like skin is tissue. We might think of it differently. It doesn't matter how you think of it, it's actually very similar. And you looking now you have long hair even for a guy. I have fairly long hair. So you know, if I'm looking at the hair six inches down from my head, that's no longer accurate. But the half inch close to the scalp is very recent, very accurate. It's the last six weeks or so. But you know, in the case of something like iron, iron can be, this is from scientific literature up to 10 times higher in the tissue. And yet no medical doctor and a normal. And, and I never want to come down too hard on doctors because most of them went to school for the right reason and, and they just like the curriculum is what's wrong, not the person. And so but they are for sure again not opinion being taught other things besides this. And so what they are what we're seeing, whether it's them or uninformed nutritionist or anyone else that means well but doesn't essentially do well by helping the person. What they're misdiagnosing is they don't understand that iron can be 10x higher in the tissue. So if you're iron anemic in blood, that doesn't really mean much. The body can be dumping it out of your blood and putting it in your tissue. Meanwhile people are going gray faster. So if you want to go gray very slowly, which is just a sign of the body running out of energy, which can be caused by iron overload or copper deficiency or manganese deficiency, all of which we look at in the hair test because it actually shows blood is really just aside, really the last place you're going to see a deficiency show up. Because the body needs to work really hard at maintaining the blood to be perfect. Otherwise organs start shutting down. So the body will actually pull from your reserves. So it's like a checking account and a savings account. The blood is like this checking account. It's pulling from the savings account because there's not enough in the checking account. And then pretty soon that's fine until what happens? There's nothing in the savings account. And that's how people have bone disease. They have all sorts of skin issues, they have gut issues. They can't focus, they can't. They're chronically tired. They've gone gray either rapidly, all at once or over time. And. And for sure, you know, people may go, oh, I have plenty of energy, even though I have gray hair. You're. You're just pulling on those reserves. That's how that happens.

That makes sense.

Again, that is. That is not an opinion. That's just a poorly understood truth.

Yeah, so that makes sense. So. So a hair test is one of. Is. Is the best way, in your opinion, to see what's actually really going on with these things. Now, if you. So when. When someone's experiencing something like anxiety, and I want to talk through all these things, I want to go back and talk about sleep and mental clarity in a minute. But like anxiety specific. Let's just use that as an example. Someone's experiencing that. They feel what I'm talking about. That feels like they're on caffeine, but they're not. And it's like that. That anxious feeling.

It's a great description.

I mean, that's literally because I used to think that I had. I used to think, what did I have that had caffeine? And I'm like, I didn't have caffeine. That's. It's anxiety. That's what it feels like. You've probably never experienced anxiety part. You're so calm. I'm like, have you ever actually experienced it?

I used to all the time when I had magnesium deficiency. As an athlete, as a student, my personality was different. I was stressed all the time. I was really, wow, okay.

Totally different person, calm person.

Thank you.

I think calm. I think of you.

And I do meditate and everything, but if it wasn't. If I had a magnesium deficiency, you would know about it. You go, what's wrong? Like, what? You're not. Like, wow. And you don't. And you also, like, your skin doesn't look good and as good or whatever. Like, you would notice outer signs and wow. How the person's personality is.

That's wild. So, okay, so. So when you. Somebody just goes and does, like a Xanax or smokes marijuana or whatever they're doing.

Cbd.

Cbd. To stop that feeling. Not that it's temporarily stopping it, which might have a glimpse of a benefit because you're. But long term, you're not actually fixing the problem.

Is that so? Here's how I look at it, because that's. That's a great way to say it. The. The way I would say it is, imagine you walk through your house and there's a bunch of. You come home and there's a bunch of lights on, and you go, that's strange. There shouldn't be lights on. And you just walk through the house and you turn all the lights off.

Okay.

And then the alarm system goes off, and you turn that off. And then the smoke alarm goes off and you turn that off, and you go, so strange. And then a few minutes later, you're dead. Like, that's. That's what we're talking about.

Oh, that's intense. So you're. I. I get that. Like, you're all these things you're just ignoring. Like, okay, I got this symptom. Let's shut that down. Let's get this. But then you're not. You're missing the whole problem that's happening. Wow, that's powerful.

We don't do this on purpose, but this is what happens, and this is how people die. Yeah.

Wow, that's crazy. Okay, so I get to fix my. My anxiety. Efficient feeling, because now you scared me. Okay, so let's talk. You mentioned magnesium a few times. Now. This gets very confusing because. And I'm never about this.

I've also never given that metaphor before, but it's. It's so accurate.

So good. It's so good. I love that. Okay, I want to talk about magnesium for a minute because it's very confusing and misleading because there's so many different types of magnesium. And in all the marketing of every company, it's like, oh, I've got this and I've got that, and I'm confused, too. Like, do you need magnesium citrate? Do you need, like, ones to help you go to the bathroom, ones to help you sleep. Can you help us understand that? Like, and what's actually needed in magnesium? Like, what do we actually need and what don't we need?

Yeah, this is. So I'll make this really simple for people. I want you to think about how you get magnesium from food. And even if you have no nutritional background at all, I want you to ask yourself a question. Just use your intuition. So if you, if you think about it, do you think your body is asking for certain forms of magnesium every time you eat something? For example, this one crosses the blood brain barrier, this one's good for muscle. This work or does the body do it some other way that maybe you don't understand, you're not aware of? So the, the answer pretty obviously for those of us that have a, you know, nutrition concepts, is that no, like, whether we're talking about any element, the body's not going to go, oh, if you don't give me lithium, fill in the blank form of lithium or magnesium or potassium, then it won't work. Like, it's just. That's kind of idiotic when you see it from this, this realm. What we've been taught over the last decade is we've been taught. So as a chemical engineer, I design processes first as a background. Like the industrial process that builds the cars, for example, we designed that we don't design, like the rear view mirror of the car. We design the process that makes it so we can change the process and then change the outcome. What chemists do is they look at the outcome and they go, we can combine this outcome with other things, which is also cool. I also do that. And then doctors just go, oh, well, something's wrong. We need these things that exist out there. We need to put those together or we need to, you know, do drugs or whatever it is. Nutritionists look at supplements that are available and foods and they, they just kind of deal with what's available. So as a chemical engineer, I was like, let's create something different that matches that bio has biomimicry or bio harmony with what the body's doing with food. So every, in every case, when you've heard a certain type of, let's take example of magnesium, there's plenty of market marketing out there that just says it's a great angle for people to like. It's really hard.

I bought into it. I'm like, oh, I need all these different kinds of magnesium.

Totally. Because what's that, what is happening? So that's not the case. But what is the case is if you could absorb magnesium as the element, the body would just figure out how to do it. Which by the way, magnesium becomes totally different things in the body. Because if you think about it, this is a large thought that most people have never heard. I've said this only a handful of times, but everything you eat, protein, fat, carbs, guess what? It all is a collection of. It's all elements. It's nothing but elements. It's the periodic table. So we test. So knowing that that new concept would again, ask your intuition, would it be smart to test for that regularly in, in a way that's, that's reliable. And that to me is, is hair. Because blood is not going to show you deficiency until it's way too late. Because the body's just meant to make the blood perfect, hence the word lifeblood. That's crucial. So, you know, you want an approximation of the tissue, which hair is tissue, organs or tissue?

Okay, I still, I'm sorry, I'm gonna keep going deeper here because I'm just confused on magnesium still. So like, if you're eating a food that has magnesium in it, it doesn't say the kind of magnesium, it's just magnesium. And you're saying your body does with it what it needs. So why with supplements, have like some magnesium brands, they break down all the different types of magnesium. Like and like. Because we don't do that with other vitamins or minerals. I don't, I'm confused. Where did that even come from and why do we think it's important?

So the, the, we did it that way because we started looking at, we had a poor manufacturing system. So what, what I was able to do is build a better manufacturing system that produces an outcome that's similar to digested food. A plasma of minerals is what, what we have. Because I knew most people have a broken digestive system. They have low stomach acid. They have candida, they have parasites.

Yep.

They have mold. They have a long list of problems in the gut. They have leaky gut because even if they're eating gluten free, they're still occasionally getting glyphosate because, you know, it was on the salad that wasn't organic or you know, whatever it is, jet fuel, like all these different things. Stress can cause leaky gut. There's a long. It's, it's not easy. If you're struggling with your health, it's not your fault. It's not easy. But hopefully everything we're talking about is going to majorly help. And I, I've seen that for people even getting off pharmaceutical drugs doing what we're talking about, we, you know, we, we use this hair analysis and these supplements as a guided thing where it's like you need to know the problem before you can address it. And then you need to check on that problem as it improves. Something else might happen and you address that and you just get better and better over time. But the, the reason why we have multiple forms being taught is because what we had was one type of manufacturing system that couldn't do what ours can, which is create a plasma out of minerals. So take pure magnesium, make a plasma out of it using nanotechnology equipment and practices like, you know, using electricity and voltage and in a way that you can do some of these things. So we've literally done a clinical trial on our magnesium product and it's to my knowledge the only magnesium product on the market, by the way, that has a clinical trial which is like double blinded, placebo controlled. People didn't know what they're taking. They saw up to, you know, so Barton later.

But so basically if you, so your magnesium, your technology, the way that you're doing it is this, Am I hearing this right? That's kind of like having it from food in your body knows what to do with it because it's already broken down. Is that like the way you would use digestive enzyme with something? Is that. I know I'm oversimplifying, but is that.

Sure. So, yeah, so that's, that's close. The only thing I would add to it is imagine there are, let's say a hundred steps or ten steps either way you look at it, of the digestive process and then at that last step, the nutrients are ready to go into the bloodstream and they go in. And so what happens at that moment, that's what we're looking at and that's what we're, we're mimicking. And what we're seeing there is the particle size of the, the minerals of all these other types of like take these five forms or seven forms. Take this form. Is it's the best for sleep. Or this is the, and I mean we did a clinical trial on sleep to prove that. Hey, this is incredible. And if it works for that, it works for everything. Sleep is, as a friend of mine said, the, the nature's ability and best attempt at immortality. That is, that is what sleep is. It is us trying to reverse things. And, and we, if you can do that, well, that means everything's working. So we did a, a sleep trial on this to, to show. And you, I mean, you saw the benefits of that right away. But yeah, it's, I mean, it's gentle, so it's easy to not remember that, hey, this is the thing that really moved the needle. So we changed the particle size is really what we did.

So when somebody says you need to have magnesium citrate and all these things, you're saying, no, you just need a better process for magnesium. Like, is that okay?

Exactly, yeah, that and every other element. Yeah.

Because if you're taking something that has all, like three different types or two different or whatever, you're saying, you're probably not even absorbing those different things.

Right. You're absorbing a portion of the two to seven types of magnesium out there. So you'll see like, you know, just some marketing that says, oh, you know, we have these different types and this one does this and this one, and you're like, that sounds great. The only problem is you're going to absorb about 20% of all of it, and that won't be enough to really reverse the deficiency. And that was the case that I had and in my 20s and my mother had in her 60s. My girlfriend at the time had her mom and, and then her friend that was going through cancer in her late 20s had done a hair test and we found basically an early version of what we offer today in a much more streamlined, organized fashion. And I was like, wow, this is interesting. I mean, I, you know, I had a degree in, in chemical engineering. And so, you know, chemistry is something I study, I spend a lot of time with, spent a lot of time with the periodic table. I was like, here we go. This is what I've been looking for, if we can. Because I was. I know you talk about root cause a lot and think about that too. You know, just like with solving a problem in your business or your relationship, what is the root, not the this up here problem, what is below that? And, and for nutrition, I realized. And health, I realized if we can solve the deficiency, we're, we're a long way towards solving the problem.

So shortcut so far for. If you're dealing with anxiety, hair tests could be a really great tool for you because you can, you could start learning what is creating that, what's, what's lacking from that. And if you're dealing with sleep, which I'm going to switch back to, is. Is I'm going to go back to what I learned from you three years ago, and I just got lazy with it because I've been taking all the different types of magnesium right now. So I'm going to go back to trying, you know, doing this, and I'll track my deep sleep for people so they can actually see because I. That's what got me like, whoa, this is crazy. This is a big change quickly. So. So we'll track that again. Let's talk about lack of mental clarity for a minute. What typically causes that? Because I hear this described a lot in midlife. It's, it's. I've got foggy head or I can't focus, or all of a sudden people are diagnosing themselves with new add and I'm like, so there's all these different things. What is that? Also a mineral deficiency. What's happening there?

It absolutely, absolutely is, at the very least in part mineral deficiency. So there I created a product a while ago that has all these nutrients in it, but it can be any combination of these. And usually often it's all of these to some extent. So things like boron, manganese, which is, you know, something that helps the SOD pathway and can help with thyroid function. If you're cold all the time, like cold hands, could cold feet color in your hair? If you're losing that, you're probably like, we're all gray.

Like me. Can we reverse that?

Yeah, I. There. There is a. A large percentage of people that see a improvement in their hair.

Wow.

And. And along the way, hair and skin. Right. We remember that. That, that is just an outward reflection of how we're doing internally. Part of the reason why we value it is because it goes back to like the whole mating thing of like. Well, if. If, you know, someone has great skin, they're probably fertile. If they have great hair, they're also. That increases the, you know, or they have hair extensions. I mean, we don't exactly. Totally. There's so many ways to do it.

That's the thing. It's very. It's trickery now. We don't know, like plastic.

If you're just on an island somewhere, you know, with a bunch of people, you know, you would. You would see quickly the people. Yeah. And they most likely other have other health issues. Like their skin is. Is not looking good. All these different things. So. So all of this is very, very connected and it. And influences all of this. Like, silica is essential also, and it's not something we make at the moment, but that's essential for keeping, you know, the structure of the face up and, and 10 tendons and tissues and Helping collagen work in the body and all these different things. So there's. There's a lot. I mean, there's a lot to it. And without testing, you just kind of never know. The. The other thing I would add to what you're saying around anxiety is something that. That had really helped someone super close to me who was on SSRIs, and that this is not advice or anything, although I would say, you know, talk with someone that understands the type of testing we do, which we also have if someone wants that. But she was able to get off of her SSRIs over time using Upgraded Mood. And that. That can't be advice for people. But that. That is a.

What is in upgrading mood.

What's this? So we have some lithium, some chromium, some fulvic acid, some magnesium.

Can people take this stuff without doing a hair test? Like, can I like, I have a bottle of Upgraded Mood. Can I just, like, pop some in before my next podcast? Am I gonna like. Or does it. Is it like, you have to take it over time, or how does that work?

So. So there's a great study. It's called the water, the groundwater study. And they found in different parts of the US that had the lowest amounts of lithium in the groundwater, because most people are still drinking tap water, they found, and cooking with it, rinsing with it, bathing, even though I have filters on everything. And then I just make sure I get the minerals, because you have fluoride and fluorine and birth control and all sorts of things in. In the groundwater. And we're wondering, like, why, you know, people are having hormone issues, men and women. It's like people are mass dosed with, like, hormones and the supply now, you know, estrogens, all sorts of things. So they realized that lithium, when it was low in. In areas that correlated to the same areas having the highest rates of anxiety, suicide, and depression. Whoa. Yeah.

That's wild.

So this is. This is how nutrition becomes personality.

Yeah, that's wild. You know what's funny about you? I was just remembering when I was hanging out with you in Hawaii, you know, like, okay, for those of you listening, like, your business, maybe your business is you do eyebrows and you start noticing everyone's eyebrows or your business, you do hair, you notice everyone's hair. Or you knew. Or your fitness instructor, you notice everyone's butt. What Barton would. Do you still do this? Probably you would, like, talk to someone and you'd be like, they're deficient in blah, blah, blah. Like, you could tell based on how fast they talk or what they're doing. Like, what.

They're deficient.

You were doing that to me. You told me what I was deficient in. You're like. Just by knowing me for, like, 10 minutes, you're like, you talk fast. You are deficient in this.

Yeah. Wild. So. So it's amazing. I mean, part of it is just, like, you know, you. You have a great mental processing speed, and that's part of it.

But I do have a great mental processing speed. Thank you, Bard.

You know, it's like there's. There's so many different types of intelligence, and some people have very few. Fluid, like, fast intelligence, like what you have. And I think it's awesome. And we need all types of people, for sure. And it gets exacerbated in different directions when you have efficiency. I think that's what you're talking about. I totally forgot about that. Yeah.

I was like, I barely know you, and you're telling me what I'm fishing in.

But that's like, we'll prove it, and we'll see if I'm wrong or right or. Or what. And. And it's really fun. It's a fun thing. But I realized I got great at that because I used to do so many hair analyses, and I would be on the phone with someone and I'd be looking at their. What. At the results. Right. And talking to them about what symptoms they're having. And like, oh, you're tired. Okay. Oh, okay. You don't have a lot of energy, and you're bloated all the time, and you feel anxious and you're not sleeping well, and, you know, on and on and on and on. You're. Your estrogen is this way. Your testosterone is this way. Your progesterone is this way. You think you have iron toxicity or, I mean, deficiency. You probably have iron toxicity like we talked about earlier. You're. You know, even. So go. Go back and listen to that part, too. If. If you're hearing this for the first time, because it's not something you hear really anywhere, unfortunately. And definitely share that, because so many people. I literally have to have a call later today with someone that's in the wellness space that didn't. That doesn't understand this. And she has a big health podcast.

Yeah.

And I won't mention any names, but it's. It's interesting because you can pretty. I mean, you can. Doc. Look, doctors kill people all the time in hospitals. There's a word for it, and it's one of the Highest rates of death. And. And again, this is not to blame doctors. They're usually trying to do. They're in. They're almost always in it for the right reasons. It's the education system that's flawed and backed up backwards.

Wow. So, like, I did a hair test with you a long time ago. Like three. Like, before I knew about my ruptured implant, before I had my explant, before I had. Before I knew about the parasites. Like, before I knew all this stuff. So I'm wondering, I should probably do one again because it's like. To see what's going on now. I would imagine. So people should repeat this. It's not like you do it once. You should repeat.

Yeah, yeah. Quarterly is. Is best with anything that matters. You know, you look at your books for your business. Hopefully at least quarterly, but probably monthly. This is. This. Quarterly is fine. So every 90 days you do a test. It's very affordable. And then you get an action plan, a game. A game plan where you know what you're missing, you know what you need to work on, you know what's improved. It proves that the work you've done is mattering and you are making results. And people as a result, usually, you know, drop weight. If they need to drop weight, they usually put on. Put on more muscle more easily if they need to do that. We actually had someone, my now friend Kelly Dunlap, I was on her podcast. She said just taking the upgraded magnesium, doing the hair test and other things has reduced her time injured and has allowed her. This was really unique. She just sent a video testimonial yesterday that she, she had hurt herself again. And what happens is she's always trying to change her body comp, which is something you're great at and helping people with. And she wasn't really able to until, and I'm just quoting her, she was able to take some of the magnesium and sleep better and then therefore recover faster and then build muscle as a result and not get injured as a result. Even though she was increasing her weight each time she used to get injured. And she's like. She had injured her knee and she's like, I'm going to be out for three weeks. Great. You know, and she thought she was going to lose all that progress and that didn't happen. The opposite happened. We've helped people qualify for Ironmans make it to the world championship when they never had before because their electrolytes were off despite all the work they were doing. And again, that's not the product you're taking. It's the product you're absorbing, so. Or the. Yes.

I always learned so much from you. So. Okay, so I know for me, I need to start taking the magnesium again. I get to start taking again. I'm going to start tracking my deep sleep for you, Barton, because. Because first of all, sleep. Can you just. We even touch on this real quick? I want to. Why is deep sleep so much more important than REM sleep?

Deep sleep is the only phase. I mean, they're both important, but deep sleep is the only phase where you're DNA actually gets repaired. Oh. And. And that is. And that is what we think of as aging youthfully. And they're like, so my deep sleep right now, 152. You. You look like you're in your 30s. That's DNA repair.

That's got it. So I'm looking at my deep sleep right now starting this consolidation of memory. So starting my deep sleep because I haven't been taking your magnesium right now, but I'm going to start taking it again. So my deep sleep right now. So we have a record has been right around an hour right now.

Okay.

So we're gonna track and see what. Because you helped me jump, like, from like nothing, like 16 minutes to a lot, almost two hours. So now we're gonna see this difference.

This is a fun. I was just on a meeting with a friend of mine who has a sleep podcast, and one thing she talked about was how the OURA ring has reset as a new algorithm since you and I initially did that. And it's not as drastic now. So if you go from an hour to an hour and 20 minutes. Amazing. Hour and hour and a half. Amazing. Any improvements? Amazing. It's less than it used to be. It's less of a jump than it used to be. And it does seem less accurate than it used to be, to be honest. I mean, like, if you got a great night, in other words, it doesn't necessarily shows right. As drastically like it used to. But I'm glad we do this. A baseline is still a baseline, so we'll see an improvement.

I want to see. So I'm going to redo that.

I'm gonna just may not see the extreme that we use.

That's okay. I'm.

We have the. We have the screenshots of that anyway.

But if you're listening and you're struggling with sleep, like, this is definitely something to try. Like. Like, it can't hurt to try. I'm also going to start taking your upgraded mood because why Not I want to feel good. Like, why not? I'm gonna, yeah, I'm gonna go pop a little upgraded mood right after this. And then I think I get to also redo the hair test. So, you know, I. My audience, those of you listening, many of them are already checking their hormones. They're doing blood, they're doing a Dutch test. Like, they're doing these things. So to me, it's like, why not just add in the hair test while you're doing your other stuff?

Sure. I, I would say that most, you know, exactly. Add it in. You don't have to cut it out. And also, look, you know, with hormones, what do you think hormones are built of? You know, hormones are, again, all elements. Fats are all elements, proteins are all elements. Carbs are all elements. So it's a combination. And there's a certain transmutation that happens in the body when we take these elements in, where potassium, chromium, magnesium, manganese. All these things become different things in the body ultimately, and they, they activate certain things that wouldn't work if they weren't there. They, they help your body clean out and detox. If you, if you want to do a detox because, you know, you want more energy, better skin, et cetera. I mean, the way you do it is, is you start working on heavy metals, and you do that with minerals most, first and foremost.

So we're gonna. If you go to upgradedformulas.com forward slash Natalie Jill, upgraded formulas.com forward slash Natalie Jill, go there specifically because we'll have things for you because you came from here, and I'm going to have. We'll have a list of any specific product that we've talked about today. So go. So upgraded formulas.com Natalie for Natalie Jill. We'll put this in the show notes as well. Don't just jump right to upgraded formulas because we want to know that you came from me so we can bundle this stuff together for you and have some special stuff there for you. Thank you so much. Barton, we're going to have to have you back because I always learned so much from you. You shed light on a lot of things. So thank you for doing this today.

This was so fun. No, it's always such a pleasure to chat with you, to hang and to chat.