Unlock Better Sleep and Hormone Balance, with Dr. Deanna Minich

At 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.

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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 with 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 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 Perimenopause 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 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 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 store. So there's a lot going on then actually like all in the 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, you know, thyroid hormone is like 2:30-3:30am 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 right run by the sun and the moon in so many ways. 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. But you know, sometimes you need something more to bring you to the natural, to the next level. And so the melatonin supplementation did help me with sleep significantly. 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 2018, where they talked about 13 potential contaminants that can be found in a synthetic melatonin supplement. 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 on the. 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. 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 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. You know, 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 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.

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.

Yep. 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.

No, 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. 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 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. I do think about that. I think about microplastics, which are pervasive and invisible. It's like every day I see another article on microplastics. I recently just wrote an article I'm writing for holistic primary care, which is 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. It just. Just like there's PFAS in period products and in tampons and pad. I mean, it. You think about who's certifying this, it wouldn't even occur to me to think that my salt is contaminated.

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 what have heavy metals been tested in that salt? Because 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.

Yeah, 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 so.

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 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 a. The cholesteramine. 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. 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, the, the tubules, right, that, that enable things to get into those, into the lymphatic fluid and then into the lymph. So omega 3 fatty acids, 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 me 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.

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 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, I go outside and I do my 45 minute, 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 light. And 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, you know, 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, 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 know, you have to start there before you pivot over to a melatonin supplement.

Can you draw the line for the listeners between what's the impact of being on the screens with all this blue light or 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? Right.

Okay, 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 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.

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 melatoninopause? 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 divining 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.

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 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 was. 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 okay not to be perfect. You don't have to be perfect. You have to be in the game. Just stay in the game.

I had a baseball hat on. I had a Red Sox hat on. 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 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 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.

Oh, well, just on my website, deannaminik.com so D E A 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 society and 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. So 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. Like, it's very inspiring to watch.

Oh, 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.

All right, so for the listeners, thank you for listening to this episode of the five Journeys 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, 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.

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