Explore the Myths of Melatonin, with Dr. Deanna Minich

Foreign. Hello and welcome to this episode of the five Journeys Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. I'm Wendy Trubo. Ed can't be with us today, so we're going to do this without him and he's going to miss the best episode because we have Deanna Minick here and you all know she's been on the podcast before. I love her to pieces. She is, she's super smart, MS, PhD, CNS, certified functional medicine Practitioner. She's a nutrition scientist, international lecturer, educator, author, and has over 20 years of experience in academia and the tool in the food and dietary supplement industries. Through her talks, workshops, groups and in person retreats, she helps people to practically and artfully. And that's the part you really want to pay attention to. Not just practically, but artfully transform their lives through nutrition and lifestyle. Deanna, welcome back. I'm so psyched to talk to you today.

Oh, it'll be great. Wendy. It's so good to catch up with you.

Totally. I know we're going to talk about melatonin today, so I think we should start with tell me the top myths. Like do some myth busting for me on melatonin.

Okay. You know, there are many circulating and the biggest one is melatonin is a hormone, so it should never be taken as a dietary supplement that if you take it, it is dangerous. So let's just talk about that because, you know, first of all, what is melatonin? Melatonin is a compound that's found widely throughout nature. It's found in plan found in animals. It's found in our own human bodies and our bodies can make melatonin. And it is true that melatonin can act as a hormone. So the pineal gland produces melatonin at the peak of darkness. So there is that. We do know that melatonin is acting as a hormone. However, melatonin has a lot of other functions that people aren't so aware of. For example, it's anti inflammatory, it is an antioxidant. It's very potent when it comes to its free radical scavenging activity. So that's why it's had. You and I were talking a bit about COVID before we jumped on and that's why people have started to bring it into protocols for immune health. So it has a lot of other functions. It's like saying, well, vitamin D is a hormone, so we shouldn't take it. It's dangerous. You know, I draw that as a parallel because we now know that vitamin D is very, very hormone. Like in its action and in fact, we published a paper back in September of 2022 in which we likened vitamin D to melatonin and said that basically that melatonin is like the next vitamin D because of many similar actions.

Well, I was reading a study that looked at athletes who took melatonin during the day and that it improved their athletic performance and their focus and their ability to run plays. And it's so funny because, you know, we were talking about COVID because I just got over Covid for the third time and part of my recovery regimen was I took high dose melatonin. I'm still taking it actually. Like what, taking almost 20 milligrams at night and about six during the day. And I have found it to be helpful at like resetting brain function and, and helping me get back on track, which has been valuable because I don't like to have any downtime. So. So, okay, so how did it come to be this thing about it's just a darkness hormone?

Well, I think because it was first isolated from the pineal gland of animals and this is back in the late 50s. So then there was a connection to the pineal gland, circadian rhythm and then enter in sleep. And in fact, if we look at the data on sleep and melatonin, I would say that that's some of the weaker research, some of the stronger research is actually in immune health, in mitochondrial regulation, in brain health. And the way I see melatonin is it's a circadian nutrient. A circadian nutrient. You know, me as a nutrition scientist, I'm kind of stepping out there by being disruptive with calling it a nutrient, because what defines a nutrient? Right. We have some kind of need state in the body. And much like vitamin D, which can go down through the lifespan, we see that with melatonin, kids produce a lot of melatonin. The most melatonin that your body is ever going to make is when you're a child between the ages of like three months to, you know, as you hit puberty and you start that decline. So that's another myth. What's that?

It's all downhill from teenage years, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Which, you know, and if we look at the rates of chronic diseases and how the risk for certain types of diseases, whether cardiovascular, metabolic, neurological, they all start to somewhat coincide with that dip in melatonin. And I'm not saying that melatonin is the sole cause of that, but it might be contributory.

Wait, it doesn't help, right? It's like being hungry and tired and overwhelmed and stressed one of those alone, they just don't help.

Yeah. And all of our hormones are coming down at about the same time, right. Testosterone is going down. Estrogen and progesterone in women are coming down at about the same time that melatonin is making that very steep decline as well.

You know that's our next book, right? Sweaty and Bitchy From Sex to Brain Function Master Menopause and feel freaking amazing because perimenopausenopathy, menopause is cruel and unusual punishment for women. That's all I have to say.

It can be harsh if people don't have the tools. Right. And, you know, enter in melatonin for perimenopausal women and sleep. One of the things, you know, I'm perimenopausal and I know one of the things that really helped me was to bring in a higher, a higher dose of melatonin at night to help me. Because that 2 to 4am period at night is when we're supposed to produce the most amount of melatonin to help with recovery. It also syncs up with glutathione with a number of the different antioxidant defense enzymes, like even superoxide dismutase. They all peak between that 2 to 4am time window. So that's when we're waking up. Right. If we have perimenopausal issues, so we're not recovering.

And that's when women go into labor. When you look at other parts of the life cycle, women go into labor between 2 and 4 in the morning because your catecholamines are surging, getting ready for the day. So it's an interesting layer. And that's also around down when you're going to be hypoglycemic. If you've eaten your last meal eight hours before and your liver is like, whoa, I have no glucose. Let's release our stores. So there's a lot going on then, actually, like all in soup.

Well, and also the circadian rhythm of hormones, which you just spoke to. Right. The body is preparing for cortisol to increase in the morning. Testosterone is high in the morning. This is why a lot of our physical activity should be done very early on. And then thyroid hormone is like 230 to 330, 30am I think is when we produce the most thyroid hormone. Then at night we've got melatonin. So it's interesting, you know, we're run by the sun and the moon.

What do you mean? I totally agree with that. What do you mean, when you say that you were taking a higher dose of melatonin as you transition through the menopausal period or perimenopause, like, what do you. What's higher to you? What's. What's baseline? What's higher? Where should people be? This sounds like a myth that needs to be busted, honestly.

Well, this is a myth on the other. Other side of the coin, where people are taking extremely high doses of melatonin. And there isn't a lot of science around that. Right. So if I just base a clinical protocol or a dosing regimen on the published science, what we see from the early work of Dr. Richard Wortman and others is that a low dose, a low physiologic dose of melatonin, which would coincide with replenishment of levels, which we see that dip in our fifth and sixth decades, you know, in order to get those levels back, we're looking at about 0.3mg total dose.

Not like per migs, per kg, just literally 0.3mg, 0.3mg.

In fact, I was talking with a friend of mine who's a health practitioner, and she had listened to me talk about melatonin. And then she tried erbatonin, which is one of the products, which is plant melatonin at 0.3. And she did not think that she would see a result of that. And she was so surprised, she's like, okay, maybe less is more.

So funny. Like I was thinking back, I got my mercury fillings taken out last year, and I felt better. And then I was like, oh, it's just a placebo effect. But my recovery on my whoop went up noticeably after I got my fillings out. And I was like, you can't fool the whoop. It's not like I can have different heart rate variability because of my. So it's really interesting when someone who's skeptical that it actually makes a difference.

So you're talking tiny doses, relatively tiny, but that's a studied dose. I mean, that goes back to the early 2000s, where, you know, they were using, like, physiologic doses and they were using supraphysiologic doses. And they did find much more of a benefit with these lower doses for things like helping with sleep and other things. So. But for some people, let's talk about the personalized nuance as well, because what most people don't realize is that melatonin is metabolized much like caffeine is. So when we take in caffeine. You know how some people do really well with coffee and they have no issue. I'm one of those people, by the way. I metabolize your. Not it.

I don't do well. It makes me crazy while I sleep. I'm like, sleep.

Okay, so you're a slower metabolizer of. Of caffeine, right? So you might be somebody who needs less melatonin because it's going through that same pathway, which is cytochrome one, a two. For me, as a fast metabolizer, I might need a little bit more because my body just works very quick on that. On the level of that particular enzyme. So I found when I started having vasomotor symptoms at night, when I started having night sweats and hot flashes and sleep disruption, I was like, you know, I have to go up in my melatonin. I cannot just take the 0.3 anymore. That's nice. Just for filling the potholes, so to speak. But now I need. Like, my potholes are deeper, so I need to.

You have no pavement.

I have no pavement in certain areas. So I began taking 3mg bid and so just taking it at night. So I was taking a higher dose, and that suited me better for helping me to patch over a lot of. You know, sometimes it's not even sleep disruption. It's about inflammation that we have when we're sleeping that causes us to wake. And I think that melatonin, like, what causes. Well, because let's think of the glymphatic fluid, right? The glymphatic fluid is now a newer. You know, now it's more of a. It's a concept that has rooted into sleep medicine as well as even brain health. The fact of, like, how our brain cells shrink as we're sleeping in order to allow for the better convection of fluid into the interstitial space. And so basically, we're releasing a lot of these toxic amyloid metabolites and such from the brain into the glymphatic fluid, which then drains into the lymphatic vessels and then goes through our circulation, right? So it seems that some of the research is showing that melatonin is helping in that process. Melatonin is helping to reduce that inflammation because if our brain is inflamed and the brain can get very inflamed because it's very fatty, it's filled with lipid. So lipid can readily be in that state of high cytokines. It can be bathed in that cytokine milieu. So with melatonin being a very effective anti inflammatory, having that at night to help perimenopausal women with their sleep, with their glymphatic fluid, brain function, less brain fog. I mean, you start putting all the pieces together mechanistically and you can see where it starts to make sense.

Are there any downsides to this, to taking melatonin?

Yeah, well, I wouldn't say that Melatonin is, you know, a supplement is the first line approach. It's kind of like how in functional medicine we would never just say, oh, take 20 supplements to patch a bad diet, to patch not exercising, to, you know, patch stress. You know, just take a bunch of these supplements and don't worry about it. To me, that's like a drop in the ocean. So to me, I think first and foremost, I think of it like a triangle. You know, how do we actually, what's the, at the base of the triangle? And I think, you know, I mean, you and I really resonate on the environmental aspects of health and healing, right? So like what is in our environment, what's toxic, what's. What do we avoid, what do we remove? Let's look at our mattress. Let's look at our everyday. Do we live in a moldy house? You and I were talking about Lyme, you know, just viral load. How do we bring that down and how do we do that through lifestyle? And one of the things that I think we have, Wendy, is we have darkness deficiency. And this is something that can be easily corrected. So during the day we are in artificial light. You and I are both bathed by our ring lights, right? We're surrounded by this light, which is a different light than we have that then outdoor natural light. Like right before this, I was exercising. I go outside and I do my 45 minute walk. I get natural light even though it's cloudy here. Here in the Seattle area, you're still getting full spectrum light, but indoors you're only getting a certain wavelength of light, right? So there's that one. We have a sunlight deficiency, right? That's why vitamin D is so problematic. Secondly, at night now, we continue to be bathed in this very unnatural blue enriched light instead of transitioning to red light. This is problematic. This is why the pineal gland is not getting the signal through the retina to start to make melatonin with the dimming of the natural light, which will then allow us to move into that very healthy circadian rhythm pattern which coincides with sleep. So we have a darkness deficiency. We have too much light. So Before a melatonin supplement, let's correct the darkness deficiency. Right? Let's stop with the lights at night. I mean, I've actually taken this to heart because I'm very much a walk the talk kind of person. And I feel like, how do I teach it if I'm not doing it? So I try to get outside in the morning, having that first exposure to bright morning light. And at night, I must say, I'm used to working 14 hour days into the night being on my computer. This is so unhealthy. This is so unhealthy. So I have shortened my day. And if I have to be on the computer, I am literally doing two things. One is I'm dimming the screen. Number two, I am wearing blue light blocking glasses. I'm having to course correct my environment. You have to start there before you pivot over to a melatonin supplement.

I think we need to take a step back, Deanna, because the question is, what's driving that behavior of working for 14 hours a day? And I'm picking on you. Except I do it. Every human I know does it. And so it's really about, okay, well, what's causing that behavior? Because the working 14 hours is the manifestation of whatever's driving that, right? So the stress, the taking on too much, the pushing too hard. And we were talking off screen about, you know, the, the fifth stage where you reevaluate your life and you figure, like, who am I supposed to be in this world and what's my legacy? And yours is not working 14 hour days.

Well, and you just don't have the reserves to do it anymore. You start realizing, like, I don't have the quite the stamina that I used to have when I was in my 30s and starting my business. But, you know, I, I'm going to posit something different to you back over that. This tennis, you know, like a tennis ball. I actually feel like I love everything I do. Like when my husband will say, deanna, you're working too long, and I'll say, mark, I love doing what I'm doing. But like you and I were talking about, I am becoming much more scrupulous about what I am taking on. And if there are things that seep in where I don't totally love it, I'm starting to say no. And to me, this is a metaphor, right? We talk so much in functional medicine about leaky gut, leaky brain. There's even talk about leaky mitochondria. And I think that this is symbolic of a leaky life where we say yes to everything. And, like, you're begging the question of, like, how did we get here? What's behind the overwork? It's leakiness. It's a leaky life. It is taking on too much without the reserves, without the fortification, without the support. You and I were talking about people that support us and how we work, you know, just within a larger community. I mean, it's. It's all in. I often like to look at things symbolically, to make sense of it at a macro level, to help me understand, like, how do I help myself to do better. Because when we know better, we do better. But there is something about the work that we do that is enjoyable too. And I'll tell my husband, I'm like, I love what I do. I love teaching, I love researching. I could be on PubMed into the wee hours of the night, but I know that this vessel that I'm in, it's just not sustainable, and I need to get smarter about that.

Well, I think you bring it very nicely back to melatonin. If. When you're. What's. Can you draw the line for the listeners between, what's the impact of being on the screens with all this blue light? What does it do to melatonin? Like, why is it bad?

It stops your body from making melatonin. You know, we. We rely. And that's why people are starting to do melatonin supplements. Because, you know, I have to say, even my mother, who is very healthy, she watches television into the night. And I said, mom, what about your melatonin? What about, you know, you're watching that blue screen? And she's like, well, that's okay. I take a melatonin supplement and I'm like, okay. You know, some people just are not going to change their patterns. So, yes, you're going to need to get melatonin in some way to have a cohesive, healthy circadian rhythm. So if you know that you're not going to change your environment, then bringing in certain things to help you accommodate better. But I must say, I've been really trying to do a lot better because, you know, we can't go back into the dark ages either, where we have a fire, we work by a fireplace and candles, we just, you know, number one, it's not safe, and number two, it's just not practical.

Right. It's bad for air quality. Like, you can't win here. Right? Bad air quality, yes.

Bringing in environmental medicine. So I do think that there can be a place for melatonin supplementation. And if people are using it for circadian rhythm, I was not. I, I, you know, what I was using it more for was anti inflammatory effects. I know that the mitochondria is very, very much regulated by melatonin because especially when we go through perimenopause, one of the things that we start to lose obviously would be the steroid hormones like estrogen, progesterone, which typically can be very protective against inflammation. So when we lose those reserves, I mean, I already eat a very nutrient dense diet. I'm loaded up on phytochemicals. I mean I live and eat and walk and breathe the rainbow. So. But you know, sometimes you need something more to bring you to the net, to the next level. And so the melatonin supplementation did help me with sleep significantly.

Can you get it from food too?

You can. So when you look at, and we reported on this in the review paper, we looked at all the different food sources and what's really interesting, Wendy, is that first of all you find it in plant foods, a lot of different plant foods. You find it in nuts and seeds, more the reproductive portions of plants. So even fruit, you find melatonin of fruit. Like people talk about cherries and tart cherries and pistachios. The only thing is, you know, as I sat there calculating the amount of melatonin in a pistachio and then equated that with how many pistachios you would need to get 0.3 milligrams. Yeah, we're talking thousands of pistachios. Like it's not okay, so you need.

To take a bathtub. It's similar to like when you take broccoli seed extract. You would need to eat like a bathtub of broccoli in order to get the equivalent clinical relevance. So you do. Yeah, you need a bathtub of pistachios, which would be thousands.

You need a lot or the whole.

You'd be fat, you'd sleep well, but you would be fat for eating well.

In eating so much, especially if you take it before bedtime and if you're not supposed to have anything to eat before bedtime, that's where it becomes challenging. So, so while I don't want to dismiss. This is another one of those myths that does need to get busted, I think because many people will say, oh, I just drink some tart cherry juice before bedtime. That gives me my melatonin. Well, tart cherry juice actually contains a lot of different things. It contains polyphenols, which are incredible for reducing inflammation. It does contain minute amounts of melatonin, but not in the proportion per se, to give us the replenishment level that we need. So while I wouldn't dismiss taking in a lot of those plant foods, I think we need to be conscious about how much we take in the sugar amount, you know, the absolute amount before bedtime and all of those things. But we're getting small amounts of melatonin in our food supply for sure.

I want to go back to something you said, because I was just thinking about your comment about how we drain the glymphatic system at night. Really? When you think about physiologically and how to support detox best, it makes sense that you would take detox. You would take binders at night. Correct. Because that's when you need them. And it's so funny because I take. I get up in the morning and I take my mold binders, which is. Includes chlorella, clay, charcoal, and, well, call, which is the cholesteramine.

Yep.

But at night, I also take fiber and chlorella because I'm like, I might as well get it going. And it makes sense to me when you think about, oh, you want to do that at night, because your body does drain. So it makes sense.

It does drain.

It makes sense. It's like, oh, okay, there's that. That bears out.

Okay, Wendy, just a couple of things for your listeners on the glymphatic fluid that I have learned in researching this, because I teach on this a little bit. First of all, reducing inflammation in the body is key for helping the glymphatic fluid. Once the brain has some degree of inflammation, it constricts the tubules that enable things to get into the lymphatic fluid and then into the lymph. Omega 3 fatty acids would be key. The melatonin would be key. Thinking about what you take at night would be of utmost importance. And also, there's a little hack here. There was an article talking about the position in which you sleep, being able to help a little bit more with the glymphatic fluid drainage. So the right lateral position seems to be preferred more than supine. So, you know, you're seeing the opposite. But, you know, right. Right side. And, you know, in traditional medicine, sometimes that coincides with, you know, filling the liver. You know, if we're thinking of detox, like enriching the liver more with circulation to enable things to move. But yeah, at night, it's an active period for us, even though we're kind of dormant from A mental or at least a body perspective. A lot's happening on the detox front. And that's why I think melatonin is important at night, because it is helping in that detoxification.

So how do you know if you have enough or too much?

Well, there are laboratory testing methods. So a lot of the labs that are in our space have urinary and salivary melatonin. I'm a little bit on the fence about those methods, honestly, because if you start to look under the hood of what you're measuring, there can be a lot of things that can interfere with the melatonin. And what you're measuring in the urine is essentially a metabolite. You're measuring that. So imagine that you had some exposure to light, you're going to be changing your melatonin. So I think, and you know what I have, and I can provide it for your listeners as well, is we put together. So I work on a team of people and essentially putting together a list of all of the many signs of insufficient melatonin and what that could look like. Now you're mentioning melatonin toxicity. I hadn't thought about that because I think more often than not you tend to see deficient or insufficient levels.

I mean, I've never seen toxicity. I've just never seen someone who ever got up to that level. Especially as it's water based, you're gonna pee out what you don't need. Right. It's a, it's a horn. If it's a hormone, it's not water.

Based, but it's actually unique. It's amphiphilic. It's water and fat soluble so that it gets into the brain, it gets into the blood. So you are actually. It can flip to both sides. It's called amphiphilic. It exhibits both characteristics. So with your melatonin, just having a little bit of fat might actually be worthwhile, but not completely necessary.

How do people find the sweet spot for themselves? Thank you for offering to include that survey and we'll put that in the show notes for people. How would, how would someone, I mean, certainly perimenopause, but there's a lot of people who aren't perimenopausal or menopausal. So if you're not in that bookend time, how would you, how would you know if you're taking too much? Like, can you suppress your melatonin by taking melatonin? This, I think is a myth.

That's another myth. That was one of the myths that I wanted to talk about because one of the things that gets circulated is, oh, if you take melatonin, you're just going to stop your body from making melatonin. Melatonin. And there have actually been prospective studies, about four of them that have set out to answer that question of whether or not your body does stop. And they do not find a cessation of melatonin production by the body when you take even higher levels of melatonin. Now, I do want to make a statement, a myth on the other side about extensive long term use at high levels. We don't have enough data. So when we start to think about more than 3mg long term, there just isn't data. And I know that some practitioners out there in the space, they're taking double digits of melatonin without having the data. But that is not supported by science. I'm just wanting to also look in that direction as well. And another thing, Wendy, that I don't advocate, this is another myth that children need melatonin. When I see all of these melatonin gummies that are created for kids and kids are on their devices late into the night, they're in their beds, they're looking on their phone, they're on their iPads. I mean, we need to start with lifestyle when it comes to children. I don't think it's appropriate to have long term high dose melatonin nor bringing in melatonin to children. But I do think it's appropriate to have lower dose amounts of melatonin throughout the life cycle as they start to naturally decline. We do not reduce endogenous production is what the studies would show.

This is fascinating to me, right? Especially coming on the heels of COVID and amping up my melatonin as a result. So interesting. What? Have I not asked you that I should be asking you about melatonin?

I know what you can ask because you and I, again are key into toxicity. And one of the things that I learned from writing this review paper in the Nutrients journal in 2022 was that 99% of the melatonin supplements on the market are synthetic. And as a result of that synthetic process and the chemical processing from petrochemicals, what can happen is that there can be contaminants. And there was one paper, it wasn't my paper, but it was a, I think it was in 2018 where they talked about 13 potential contaminants that can be found in a synthetic melatonin supplement.

Come on.

So, I mean, Wendy, we know that in Our space, there's a lot of. There's a spectrum of options, right? Like, there can be junk at the level of supplementation. And, you know, it can be very expensive to be getting certain supplements. This is why I choose a plant melatonin that I do know more about. I choose Erbatonin because, first of all, it's from plants. It has nothing other than the whole plant matrix. So it's not even an extract. You know, I. I just have become. I've worked in the dietary supplement industry for years. You know, I've worked at a variety of different companies and at one company for, like, 10 years. So I got to know the dietary supplement industry quite well looking at quality control measures. You know, there was also a study, I think it was published by Canadian researchers in which they looked at 31 different supplements just off the shelf of melatonin. And they found that it did not meet label claim either. It was like up to close to 20% less or up to over 400% more of what was on label claim. So there can be some sketchy supplements out there. You just have to know your source. Right? Which is why, you know, oftentimes when people ask me, deanna, where do I buy supplements? You have to go with a cgmp third party. Ask the hard questions. Know your manufacturer of supplements, because once you have a good one, then, you know, they should be testing for heavy metals. They should be looking at things like, is it organic? Is it? You know, one of the other myths out there is that plant based is healthy. You know, plant based could mean derived from a corn source and then it goes through chemical processing. Right? It could still be chemically synthesized if it's plant based. So I want the listeners to know that because they need to know the questions to ask, because if you don't know, you don't know how to frame up questions to manufacturers. So, yeah, I have been working actually with a melatonin manufacturer by the name of Symphony Natural Health, and I have been learning much more about melatonin production and how does that work? How does it get derived from plants? What are safe sources? So I have become a little bit of an insider in the industry, I must say. And I do want the word to get out, because if we look at what we see, it's like fish oil. My PhD was on omega 3s and omega 6s, essential fatty acids. You could have the most. You know, you. You can have great benefit from fish oil, but only if it's a good, reputable, high quality, low toxic residue. Source. And, you know, it would be a shame for people to be paying good money for supplements that are contaminated or they just don't know the questions to ask, right?

Yeah, 100%. And I think that's particularly important when you're talking about fish oil because it often has mercury. Because it comes from fish.

Yeah. And it's molecularly distilled. It goes through a number of processes, you know, so not all those processes are in high integrity, but there are companies that are doing it well. And, you know, we have to think about sustainability of the sources in addition to toxicity.

Yeah, definitely not overfishing and protecting the environment. I have a question for you, Deanna. Do you. Do you know of any studies that are going on looking at mercury levels on the west coast after all those wildfires released mercury into the air and water and land? Just out of curiosity, I don't mean to put you on the spot. I'm just more curious.

Yeah, I'm not aware of studies, but what I have even more concern about is Fukushima and having much of the radiation within the air water being transferred into food supply and then also being hit on the West Coast. You know, quite honestly, Wendy, as you and I both know, there is no safe planet anymore. There's no country that is pure. I thought that when I went to Iceland and I thought, well, maybe this is a country where you find absolute purity because they're so removed from everything else. But you find microplastics in Siberia, you know, where it's not even populated. So. Yes, I mean, I think that there are lots of things to think about on the west coast where I live. There's mercury, there's arsenic, which is high in this area, which is coincides with increased risk for cancers. So I do think about that. I think about microplastics, which are pervasive and invisible. And, you know, it's like every day I see another article on microplastics. So, you know, and I recently just wrote an article, so I'm writing for Holistic Primary Care, which is an. It's an outlet for practitioners. And I was writing on hydration and the toxicity of water and how we're really looking at salt in a different way. And even salt can be contaminated with microplastics. So we have to ask. We just have to ask. People have to ask who they're getting their salt from. Did you test for microplastics? Because that's part of the earth. It's part of what can be contaminated.

I don't even think. I mean, this sounds like a business idea, right? To certify that companies are testing the purity of their products. Just like there's PFAS in period products and in tampons and pads. You need to think about who's certifying this. It wouldn't even occur to me to think that my salt is contaminated. Yes, just NaCl. Right.

So, well, and there's commercially processed salt, and then there's the more. Less. Well, I would call it less refined salts. So like the Himalayan crystal salts, Celtic salt, volcanic type salt. So these are coming from the earth. And we need to ask the question about, you know, what have heavy metals been tested in that salt? You know, because health, health trends are now skewing in this direction of, okay, we need salt together with water to make for better hydration. And people are using all of these fancy salts, which is good. But just ask the questions about heavy metals and microplastics. Yes, 100%. I know we're skewing from melatonin here, but it's just another thing that I've been thinking about lately is the purity and toxicity of our water supply and how that drives down minerals, and minerals, as we know, compete with toxic metals. So we're reducing minerals in our water because it's purified, and then our salts are becoming contaminated. So anyway, I don't want to leave listeners on a. A message that sounds kind of downer and dire. I think that there is. There's hope, and I really think it gets back to lifestyle. Wendy. I mean, how do we live our lives? How do we control inflammation in our minds? How do we create the space? You know, I recently published on social media this whole thing on pauses. You know, how we have menopause, we have perimenopause, we have andropause, we have adrenal pause. And I was on a different podcast, and the interviewer, Dr. Dickon Weatherby, he said, well, what about melatonin pause? You know, we've got all these pauses. So during the time of pauses, which can translate into having less vitality, you know, how can we use that pause as a defining rod to re establish a new baseline to get different levels of nutrients? And even some of these, which are called hormones, but actually flex to being a nutrient, you know, maybe we have to recalibrate. We need to recalibrate our hormones, we need to recalibrate our environment and, you know, just kind of shake things up a bit because our biochemistry is being shaken up by the environment as well as just getting older.

I feel like first and foremost, we need to recalibrate our behavior and then recalibrate all the things we're taking. Right. Because if you get off the screens at night and you wear blue light blocking glasses and you turn the light down, make it redder versus bluer, that right there is an improvement for you.

It's huge. It's huge.

And you have control over that. I think that the thing I'm always interested in is people understand they have agency and control over how things go, because they do.

They do. Although I remember in the clinic a few years. Well, about five years ago, there was a woman that came in with multiple presentations of autoimmune conditions. She had 11 children at home. She homeschooled. She couldn't find, you know, one minute of alone time. I think some people are strapped for time. They're strapped for, you know, just. There's time as a general concept, and then there's alone time. And she was starting to go into perimenopause. Can you imagine, like, having a. You know, just lower reserves and then entering into that. Okay, so I. I think we all have our unique challenges and taking it one step at a time. Like you're mentioning, like, go after your lifestyle first. That. That tends to be free and accessible. Change your lighting, you know, reduce your chances of darkness deficiency. Reduce your chances of sunlight deficiency. You know, like, even this morning, I had a call. I had a group zoom call that I had to be on, and I was like, I need to integrate my lifestyle with that. So I put on my headphones and I took my neighborhood walk at the same time as Ed Zoom. Because I'm like, I have to integrate. If I keep everything separated out, then it becomes stressful because I can't fit everything all in a day. So how do we integrate? How do we bring in things where we can do two things at once to help give us some energy?

Yeah, I think that's great. And also, I think what's so important for women to hear is you do have to move your body, and it's okay to be sweaty in a meeting. And it's. It's like, it's okay not to be perfect. You don't have to be perfect. You have to be in the game.

Like, just. I had a baseball hat on. I had a Red Sox hat on.

Go Boston.

I thought you might like that. I had my baseball hat on. I had my hair in a ponytail. You know, in this day and age, we have to care for self first, you know, and. And then we. We undo leaky life well, that's the.

Start to undoing leaky life, Deanna.

Right.

Because just setting that boundary of, okay, I need to. I actually booked exercise into my calendar because otherwise my calendar got booked and then I was like, I need to move. I need to move my body. So I booked it.

Yes. And to be fully present, you know, there are times that I'm, I'm doing a moving meeting, but then there are times that, you know, your mind has to accompany that movement as well. You know, my dad, who's not all that healthy, but he does move and he says his, his tagline is when you stop moving, you start dying. And for him, he may not eat the best, but he's a guy that's always on the move. He's always like, okay, he's in the car, he's going somewhere, he's walking somewhere, he's active in his mind. So there's something about that ability to flow, which again connects us to hydration and making sure that we're properly hydrated, we're seeing light. So lots of things to take away from this. Right.

Wendy, there's tons of action items. Deanna, tell me, where can people find you? Because I know people are going to want to find you.

Aw. Well, just on my website, deannaminick.com so D E A N N A M I N I C H and what I have on there is, you know, over the decades, I've just as an educator, I've just been loading up the website with resources that people can download for free. And I even tell clinicians, just go and take that variety tracker. Use it in your practice. Like everything on there is for people to use. It's just my give back to, to society. And you know, I want people to make these things actionable. And for the melatonin assessment, however, that I would have to send to you separately. That is not uploaded to my website as of yet.

Okay. So if you send that to me, we'll get that in the show notes for people.

You bet?

Will do. Thank you for the difference you make in the world, Deanna, and for your commitment to it and your commitment to being healthy alongside making a difference. It's very inspiring to watch.

Well, and I feel that you are on the same wavelength in so many ways. Right. We are in the same circles and we care about self care.

I know. I'm so bummed that you live in the west coast and we live on the east coast. Cause I'm like, oh, I can't play with her. She's, you know, I only see you at conferences, like once a year. Twice a year.

I know, I know. We see each other usually in December. My husband is from Rhode island, though, so we are going to fly over to that area this summer. And you know, he likes to get into the water. The water on the east coast is different in his opinion than the water on the West.

It is different. All right. When you come out to the east coast, look us up. We'll go out on the boat.

Okay.

So. All right. So for the listeners, you're probably not going to come in the boat with us, but thank you for listening to this episode of the feel freaking amazing podcast. Deanna Minick, who I love to pieces, is our guest today. You should absolutely look her up@deannaminik.com we'll put that in the show notes. And Deanna, thank you for being here. This has been great.

Oh, it's been lovely as always, Wendy. It's a joy to talk with you. Take care.

Thank you. Yes, you too, Sam.