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May 29, 2018 - Dr. Oz Podcast
48:03
The Gut-Brain-Sleep Connection: How to Fall Asleep Faster
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So, Lisa is one of the uber sleepers.
My wife can, honestly, 10 hours, and she just keeps packing away.
That is so unfair.
Do you sleep and sleep and sleep?
Like, once every 10 years.
I love it.
But sleeping next to you makes that impossible.
Why?
Because, oh, 5.15 in the morning, clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp.
Turn on the lights.
Oh, he's up.
Everyone must be up.
Yeah.
Good luck.
Hey, everyone.
I'm Dr. Oz, and this is the Dr. Oz Podcast. podcast.
Getting a good night's sleep may seem like an impossible dream when you're tossing and turning at 3 a.m.
In fact, more than half of you listening right now are struggling to fall asleep.
So I've got good news.
I want everyone to close their eyes and relax, unless you're driving, because what my next guest has to say will put you to sleep.
And no, not out of boredom, but because his new book, Sleep Smarter, will give you the simple tools you can start using right now to finally get the quality shut-eye that you deserve.
Integrative health expert Sean Stevenson joins me now.
Welcome to the show.
Very grateful to be here.
I was blessed to have Sean on my TV show, and he riveted the audience, so I thought I'd share some of his wisdom and go a little deeper into some of these topics since we have a bit more time together.
So the book Sleep Smarter suggests there's a more thoughtful way of getting sleep, which is an interesting process because people always use that phraseology, I'm going to fall asleep, but it's the opposite.
You don't just fall into sleep.
You've got to work at it.
Yeah, yeah.
It's really a big moniker is that a great night of sleep starts the moment you wake up in the morning.
So it's the things that you really do to set yourself up for a great night of sleep.
And also the book is called Sleep Smarter, not necessarily Sleep More.
So it's really about getting efficient sleep cycles.
That's what I really focus on for folks.
So Lisa is one of the uber sleepers.
My wife can, honestly, 10 hours and she just keeps packing away.
That is so unfair.
Do you sleep and sleep and sleep?
Like once every 10 years.
I love it.
But sleeping next to you makes that impossible.
Why?
Because, oh, 5.15 in the morning, clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp.
Turn on the lights.
Oh, he's up.
Everyone must be up.
Yeah, good luck.
You seem like you're sleeping.
In Lisa's family, they're sleepers and they're non-sleepers.
They're six kids.
It's like an experiment.
And three of them were just big-time sleepers and they can do it forever.
And then three of them are like me.
We like to sleep, but time to get stuff done.
So I think that becomes a big challenge for the non-sleepers, trying to understand what is it that gets the sleepers to be able to sleep.
When you compare those two groups, what do you find?
We have a mutual friend, Dr. Michael Bruce.
He talks about the chronotypes.
And I definitely abide by that.
But there's some basic human tenets that kind of go consistent with everybody.
But for me, again, it just really boils down whether they're a super sleeper.
The funny thing is my wife is the same way.
She could sleep anywhere, anytime, anytime.
She can fall asleep on a flight, like, in five seconds, you know, whereas I'm, like, literally the flight yesterday from San Diego to here, I worked the entire time.
Oh, wow.
I just can't do that.
You guys sound a little jealous of our sleeping ability.
I mean, you know, I think it's a gift, for sure, but at the same time, you know, like, I think we're probably more in the lion's Yes.
Chronotype, where we're just early risers, ready to get stuff done.
And I typically don't nap.
But, you know, I do see naps as a great supplement.
But sleep at night is really the real food.
And so I want to make sure people are optimizing that so they don't feel like they have to have a nap to make it.
See, I love napping.
And I think part of it is because I'm very much dependent on light.
When I see the sun come up, our home face is east, so I wake up.
That's actually why I get up at 5.30 in the morning in the summer.
In the wintertime, I don't want to get up at 5.30.
But I think that drives a lot of folks.
But you have a different philosophy from most tried traditional sleep experts who oftentimes are designing their programs around people who are really having issues sleeping, not the walking wounded like most of America listening now.
Yeah, absolutely.
So like I said, and just to really drill down on this, I truly believe that it's helping people to optimize their sleep cycle.
So what does that even mean?
The average sleep cycle is somewhere in the ballpark of 75 to 120 minutes.
And this is where you're cycling between non-REM sleep and REM sleep in the transitionary stages.
And so we want to get efficient, effective time in each of those stages.
And so just we'll take an example.
90 minutes on average.
And if folks are getting, we'll keep the 90 minutes as the baseline.
We'll say four complete sleep cycles.
That's about six hours of sleep.
So I like people to be in that kind of, that's the border for the minimums, to get four complete sleep cycles to completely regenerate your brain and your body.
And then from there, we jump it up a notch, which is ideal, is going to be seven and a half hours of sleep for most folks.
And then some folks need more, so that's going to be nine hours.
And so what does this mean with the sleep cycle?
So we've got, as we're talking, we're basically in like beta mental state.
So when we're talking about sleep cycles changing, we're talking about brain waves changing.
So we go from beta to alpha, and then we go to theta, and then delta is the deep kind of anabolic non-REM sleep.
Sounds like a fraternity.
Yeah.
And so we want to efficiently go through all those stages because there are great benefits in each of them.
Just to give a couple quick ones, in REM sleep, this is rapid eye movement sleep.
This is where we get a lot of dreams happening.
But this is also where something called memory processing takes place.
So this is where even stuff people are learning right now gets converted to your short-term memory.
So it's pretty important.
And then if we look at the Delta non-REM deep sleep, this is a really anabolic state.
You're producing the most human growth hormone.
So you need, again, efficient time in all of those.
And so small things like, for example, Harvard researchers have confirmed that blue light exposure, for example, can disrupt your melatonin secretion and also cortisol.
And so if you're exposed to blue light right before you go to bed, and so what they found was that basically every hour you're on your device at night, You can suppress your melatonin for about 30 minutes.
So even if you fall asleep, you know, you're unconscious, this doesn't necessarily mean you're getting efficient, effective sleep because you're not producing melatonin, if that makes sense.
Does that mean watching TV too?
Yeah, that blue light exposure, yeah.
But there are hacks for that.
I'm not the guy that's going to take it away.
I want to stay up sometimes and watch a movie after the kids are asleep.
There are ways you can go about this, but you want to make it more of the exception and not the rule.
So share some of those hacks.
What do you do?
And just to point out to everybody, melatonin is not so much for sleep as it is for circadian rhythm.
So it tells your body that it's late and you're supposed to be asleep.
So it makes all the pieces of the puzzle fit together.
But let's say your wife, who loves watching movies...
And she can sleep 10 hours, doesn't bother her, wants to watch a movie that goes till 10, 30, 11 at night.
So what would I do or someone like me who's caught in that conundrum in order to still be able to sleep right when the movie ends?
Yeah.
So for myself personally, well, I like to, first of all, ideally have a sleep curfew or a screen curfew, better said.
So I generally give myself 30 minutes of free time away from the screen before I go to bed, just to kind of unwind.
But in a situation where we are staying up, they're blue light blocking glasses.
I don't know if you guys have ever tried these out.
So you watch your device with glasses on?
Yeah, these blue light blocking shades.
Interesting.
Yeah, I've been using these for probably five years.
And I started off, like, I got some from Amazon, just like construction glasses.
I looked ridiculous.
It was one of my first Instagram posts.
I don't know how my wife still talked to me.
But, you know, from there now, they've gotten some that are pretty good.
Do they have little screen films?
You know how you can put a little thing on your phone so people can't see from the side what you're doing?
Do they have those to block the blue light, do you think?
So what we have, even on your device, it looks like...
Do you have an iPhone?
Yeah.
Yeah, so on the iPhone, now Apple's built in an app, or it's really more of a tool called Night Shift, that automatically pulls out the most troublesome spectrum of light from your phone.
Oh, so cool.
You literally go to your settings and your screen and just set it and forget it.
So, like, even this is a multi-billion dollar company, and they're really starting to understand that this is potentially a problem, you know?
And so we've got that for your computers, everybody.
There's an app called Flux, F dot L-U-X, does the same job.
I've been using that for over half a decade as well.
These are free apps, you know?
Yeah, free apps.
And so you don't also have to put on the blue light blocking glasses.
That's more for, like, ambient light if you're watching television.
Yeah, I find that when I can't go to sleep, and so I just like scroll through Instagram before I'm falling, I really can't fall asleep.
Right, yeah.
It gets worse.
It's like going down a rabbit hole.
Yeah, absolutely.
And then she gets mad at me.
Literally, that happens, then she gets mad at me.
How would you know?
You sound asleep.
Because that's why she's mad at me.
Well, guess what?
So, here's what's so fascinating, especially social media.
I mean, it's really designed to keep you addicted to it.
So, you're getting like a dopamine hit right before bed.
It's going to kind of keep you seeking.
You know, that really helps us to kind of seek and look for stuff.
And the crazy thing is, with dopamine getting secreted, every time you find something, you get a little hit from your opioid system.
So you start to create this kind of vicious feedback loop.
You seek, find, seek, find.
And Instagram, Twitter, Facebook is perfect for that because you're going to keep looking.
And so again...
Here's the thing, though.
We can't just tell yourself, I'm not going to be on my phone for 30 minutes before bed.
You have to fill it with something of greater or equal value, or you're going to get what I call the internet jitters.
I just check the posts real quick.
Exactly.
Right quick.
Right quick.
And next thing you know, you get sucked into that internet black hole.
It's so easy for any of us.
I'm not perfect, by the way, but I'm very much aware of it.
All right, we're just scratching the surface here, but we've got a lot more to discuss, so stay with us right after the break.
Let me get into you a little bit, because you have these unorthodox ideas that have been partly come out from your own philosophy of bucking the trend.
And you look incredibly fit sitting across from me right now.
You are incredibly fit sitting across from me right now, but you weren't always so healthy.
And I think sharing a little bit of your history, your challenges with your...
I know you had spine issues and other challenges.
We all do, but you got advice that you weren't happy with.
And the medications and braces and all this stuff.
How did you get past that to become the person you are now?
Sure, yeah.
And just to point out, you're one of the biggest podcasts around.
Obviously, I love having you on the show because you're charismatic and thoughtful.
You've become a thought leader for a lot of people who, like you say, hey, listen, there's more out there than just taking a bunch of pills.
Yeah, absolutely.
So for me, I was age 20, just to give a super brief, and I was diagnosed with degenerative bone disease and degenerative spinal disease.
So the disc in between the vertebrae and my back were deteriorating rapidly.
To the degree that my physician at the time told me I had the spine of an 80-year-old man when I was just 20. Is that genetic?
Yeah, there's a genetic component, but as you guys know, there's epigenetics.
Literally flipping a switch on that aged my spine.
I just had a scan done probably six months ago, and my spine looks amazing.
It actually looks better than it did two years ago.
For folks who don't know what epigenetics is, just explain it to them real quick, but also explain how the epigenetics went the wrong way for you.
Sure, sure.
So epigenetics, if you look at the name epi, it's like epidermis.
It means above the dermis.
So this is above genetics or above genetic control.
And so now we know that tens of thousands of our genes are regulated largely by our environment.
There are certain things that we can do to either kind of flip on these genetic programs or kind of flip them off.
And I'm being very, this is a very kind of fundamental explanation by the way.
And so- - Accessible.
Yeah, yeah.
So with epigenetics, we really are taking back control because we were taught, you know, when we were looking at the Human Genome Project, for example, we thought we're going to find all of these different human genes.
Come to find out, we collectively share about the same 25,000 to 30,000 genes.
But why do we have so much difference?
And this is because of, you know, epigenetics and how different genes can be expressed.
One gene can be 20,000 different expressions of the same gene.
And that's determined by your environment, the things you're exposed to, and also the environment you create in your body.
And so for me, when he gave me that diagnosis, you guys of course know the placebo effect.
Placebo, here's what people don't know.
On average, placebos are about 33% effective.
Just the belief that a drug is working, whether it's chemotherapy or something for your blood pressure, crazy.
So they have to account for that in every study.
So what he did for me was something sort of the opposite.
It's called a nocebo effect.
This is when you get a negative injunction that something bad is gonna happen.
And so I went from a nuisance of a pain in my leg to chronic debilitating pain within about six weeks.
And that sent me on this spiral downward.
And I was in college at the time.
I started missing classes.
I went from a 12, 15 credit hour load to a 3 credit hour load because I was embarrassed.
Because I'd get this sharp, like, on a scale of 1 to 10, it would be a 10, but it would just be a split second.
So it was enough to start messing with my mind.
Like, I'm just not going to move.
And so I spent a lot of time laying on the floor in my college apartment playing video games.
I got graded Madden, by the way.
That's right.
And by me being so docile and also, you know, him telling me bed rest, here's these pills, eventually I was fitted for a back brace.
And again, it's super embarrassing when you're like 21 in the club and you've got like a back brace on.
I know, it is.
It's not cool.
But everything changed when I finally decided to get well.
Now, most people don't ever do this, so I don't want people to glance past this.
I was completely invested in what my physicians were telling me.
Like, there's nothing you can do about this.
This is so-called incurable.
And so I just believed it.
And it wasn't until I really got like, you know, they don't walk in my shoes.
And they're not thinking about me as I'm laying here suffering.
So let me just see what I can do about it.
What was that moment?
Because you obviously had weeks or months of lying on the floor.
Yeah, yeah.
And did someone inspire you?
Oh, that's such a great question.
Nobody's ever asked that before.
It was actually my grandmother.
And she kept calling me.
She would like pester me, you know, like just checking on you.
I'm just like, I'm fine, Grandma.
But it just finally hit me one day.
I was sitting on the edge of my bed and I had my pills in my hand.
I had, you know, it was a combination of over-the-counter and prescription medications to help me sleep.
The pain was so bad it would wake me up at night.
And I was just looking at the pill bottle and my grandmother just popped into my head.
And I just remember her always telling people growing up, like, Sean is special.
Like, he's going to do so much in the world.
He's going to do amazing things.
And I was just like, my life is the complete opposite of what she thought.
I'm going to do something about this.
And so that's when I really decided to get well.
So most people, it's more like wishful thinking.
Like, I'll try this.
We'll see what'll happen.
I hope this works.
I wish I would get better.
I decided, like, no matter what, I'm going to get better.
And also when I went to school initially, I went to school pre-med, but I hated science.
Ironically.
That's a bad combo.
I got into marketing just from watching TV. It was like Boomerang, the Eddie Murphy movie.
I was like, I'll do that.
So life had other plans for me.
And so, but I remember in school initially when I went to school, like the upperclassmen just obsessed with self-diagnosis.
It was freaking me out, you know, just like this pathology, you know, and now there's all these problems.
And so, again, I decided to do the opposite.
I'm going to find out everything I can about health and not disease.
And I'm a very analytical person by nature, by the way.
So it wasn't like, you know, the clouds parted and like, you know, this moment happened.
But I put a plan together that entailed three specific things.
One was changing the way I was eating.
I knew it was the issue, but I didn't know how much.
The second thing was movement.
Because I was given permission not to do it, the worst thing you can do is to do nothing.
Because the rest of your body is going to atrophy.
And the third thing was to finally get my sleep together.
Sleep was the biggest struggle for me.
And if you're not sleeping, you're not healing.
Where did you get the information?
Did you just...
It took time.
You know, I went for low-hanging fruit first.
You know, kind of doing what my coaches taught me.
You know, as far as nutrition.
Which is a lot of bad science.
Yeah.
But you know this statement when the student is ready.
You ate like a gallon of ice cream, your coach told you, right?
Before football games?
Yeah, we were just trying to get calories in.
It wasn't even a thoughtful process.
You said, go home and get calories because you need the nutrients.
Good luck.
And you were wearing it on the sideline.
The end of the game.
And so, you know, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
And so the right people started coming into my life, the right books.
You know, the internet was happening with health summits starting to come up.
And I shifted all my coursework over to biology in school as well.
And, you know, anatomy, kinesiology, all that good stuff.
And just over time, you know, I start to pick up pieces.
But I'm also somebody who, once I start to get better, and by the way, Spoiler alert, again, I'm completely better now, but it was about six weeks later, I lost about 25 pounds.
What?
Yeah, yeah.
From what?
I gained about 50 pounds over that two years.
Oh my goodness.
And it only took you six weeks to lose 25 pounds?
Again, results not typical, but I'm kind of just more of a mesomorph body type.
The weight just kind of came off of me.
Were you exercising?
Yeah, I started to exercise.
It was a big part of that.
And here's why.
So I came across a study that was done on racehorses.
And this is a multi-million dollar industry.
And so there's a big vested interest in the horses not breaking a bone because they could be put down.
And so they took the horses.
They had a control group.
Then they took the horses and they gave them supplements to see if they can increase their bone density.
And so, of course, I was taking supplements now.
I was eating great, getting the calcium, the magnesium.
Because I found out all these things were important.
But they also had another study group where they walked the horses in addition to giving them the supplements, and they found their bone density increased even more.
So this is really the key to exercise.
It's not about looking good, like that's a side effect.
The real importance of exercise is assimilation and also elimination.
What does assimilation mean in this context?
So assimilation, so I'm taking, now I'm eating all this good food, I'm taking supplements, it helps your cells to absorb it.
The stuff that you need to absorb?
Yes, exactly.
The movement does?
Yes, it's essential.
Absolutely essential.
Because the resources are running, but the actual, just the walk Right, walking.
They took the control group.
They did the same stuff a horse would do.
Then one study group gave them calcium supplements and other supplements.
And then the study group that had the greatest bone density increase, they walked the horses and gave them supplements, if that makes sense.
So is there some way of getting the supplements better absorbed?
Exactly, yeah.
Interesting.
When we come back, it's the one vitamin everyone needs to be taking more of in order to see better tonight.
Find out what it is after the break.
You know, the thing about sleep is it also sets your circadian rhythm, which is one of the biggest frontiers, I think, in medicine.
All these things we've taken for granted are affected by the time of the day you do them.
What time you take a pill, whether it's for high blood pressure, which, by the way, your blood pressure itself varies over the day, but even chemotherapy.
It makes a huge difference if it's morning versus afternoon versus evening.
We try to ignore that because it's sort of inconvenient.
I don't want to have to just do your stuff at a certain part of the day, but it turns out that it works better.
So you've wandered into a bunch of hacks that have allowed you to become an effective sleeper, ones that a lot of Americans are following now.
So the screen time part I get, but I'm curious, when you actually put your head in the pillow, And you're looking at the ceiling and you're by yourself because you sleep by yourself.
What are the things you do personally to get you into the space where you can sleep and not wake up at four in the morning?
Oh, perfect.
So, again, a great night of sleep starts the moment you wake up in the morning.
And one of the big keys, and I even did this this morning, Appalachian State University did a study and they took folks to find out what time of day exercising can help you have the best sleep at night.
Mm-hmm.
And so they took people in the study.
They had them train it three different times exclusively over the course of study period.
7 a.m.
for one phase of the study, 1 p.m.
in the afternoon, and then 7 p.m.
At the end of the study, they consolidated all the data, and they found that the morning exercisers spent more time in the deepest, most anabolic stage of sleep.
They got more efficient sleep cycles.
They tended to sleep longer, and this is something that can get looked past in the study.
They had, on average, about a 25% greater drop in blood pressure at night.
Compared to the other groups.
And that's kind of correlated with the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system.
So basically helping you to calm down better when you are laying down on the pillow.
So now, for folks that are listening that work out after work, it's okay.
But I still want you to get some movement in the morning.
What it does is something that I call a cortisol reset.
Because a lot of people come into my office and we call them clinically tired and wired.
But their cortisol was too low in the morning and too high at night.
And so helping to kind of flip that switch and get cortisol elevated, that's what exercise is really good for in the morning.
So I recommend just a minimum five minutes of exercise.
Not just a cup of coffee that won't make up for it.
Yeah, I mean, it's a hack.
It replaces a cup of coffee.
What I'm saying is you can't work out like this morning on a way.
I could not work out before we got here.
Simple little yoga stretch.
It took me five seconds to drink the caffeine.
But Tai Chi, done in the morning usually.
A billion and a half people in China are doing it.
In this country, they have all kinds of practice.
In India, they do yoga.
I like doing it just to stretch in the morning, which is basically sun salutation.
But I didn't realize that connection to the exercise, to the sleep part.
But it makes perfect sense.
And when I'm left to my own design, I always work out first thing in the morning.
I mean, I work out before Lisa's out of bed, and I do find that it helps me through the rest of the day, but also there's the emotional part of being able to brag to yourself, right, that you did your five minutes or seven minutes or an hour, whatever it happens to be, so you're not feeling guilty the whole day.
How do you define good sleep?
Do you use those trackers much?
How effective are they for folks?
I've got people who are good friends of mine.
They're the self-quantifying gurus.
I'm just really more into, and this is the barometer I would use for the people I was working with, How do you look, feel, and perform?
I think that's the most important thing.
The most important metric is just paying attention to your body.
A lot of people, if they come in the office, their blood sugar is wonky or they're having issues with their energy.
The first thing I would look at after I'd learned about this stuff was their sleep.
Instead of trying to give them a supplement to try to give them more energy.
This is where you actually are generating true energy.
And so that's really it.
How do you look, feel, and perform?
And your sleep, it's called beauty sleep for a reason.
And there's so much research coming out now about the collagen production and all these different things that are affected by your sleep.
And so that's the barometer I use.
Are you supposed to dream as you awaken?
Are you supposed to awaken in REM sleep and therefore have some dream consciousness?
Yeah, you're typically going to be coming out of a transitionary stage close to REM sleep.
The reason that we could potentially even be groggy when we wake up is that if your alarm clock goes off when you're in deep sleep, it's very difficult to pull you out of that.
And so sometimes if we hit the snooze button or maybe we get up and we decide to go back to sleep and you get into a transitionary stage into deep sleep, you're going to feel even more tired than if we would have got up.
And I know this has happened to a lot of folks before.
And that's why, you know, exactly, you sleep eight hours and you feel tired because you still woke up.
You're alarm clock this morning.
Lisa got up before me to do the hour of extra things she has to do.
And that's not what I normally get up.
And my system's pretty regular.
I mean, I know what time I'll wake up because I usually REM at that time.
Sleep cycles, as you point out, are individual, so we get there.
Let me, if I can, push a little bit on food.
Because this is an area where people don't generally acknowledge there's a huge power.
But you speak about the gut-brain-sleep connection.
And if you're going to sleep smarter...
Pile your book.
You've got to hack your food as well.
It was a big part of your recovery you pointed out as well.
This is so powerful.
And like the research on this knocked my socks off.
I couldn't even believe this.
And so we have a tremendous, like a massive amount of neurotissue in our gut.
A lot of folks don't realize that.
Even upwards of like 100 million neurons are in your gut, producing somewhere around 30 neurotransmitters, much like your brain.
And actually, it's often referred to as the second brain.
Your gut is.
The enteric nervous system.
And so just having that as a first baseline is that, wow, there's a lot going on here with our gut.
So here's what's fascinating.
Number one, serotonin.
Serotonin, over 90% of our serotonin is actually stored in our gut.
And why does this matter?
Serotonin is a precursor for creating melatonin, which helps to regulate those circadian timings, circadian timing system.
Number one, fascinating piece.
Number two, researchers have found there's 400 times more melatonin in your gut than in your pineal gland in your brain.
You can actually have a pineolectomy, which I don't recommend.
They can remove your pineal gland, and they found that the levels of melatonin still stay relatively the same.
Crazy stuff.
Because when I was taught in school, your pineal gland produces melatonin.
End of story.
It's not the end of the story.
And so researchers at UCLA sought to find out what's going on, what's kind of controlling this.
And they found that there's bacteria in your gut that communicate with the cells that produce these sleep-related neurotransmitters and hormones.
And so your gut, it's called the microbiome.
And I know you've had Robin Chutkin.
I have.
She's fantastic, yeah.
And so your microbiome is a huge influence on whether or not you're producing the right neurotransmitters and hormones to affect your sleep.
And so one of the things that we do is, like, let's look at how do we get your microbiome back on track.
Number one is avoiding things that hurt your microbiome.
So this would be...
Obviously, processed food.
Processed food, especially sugar, is going to feed opportunistic pathogenic bacteria.
It can throw off that cascade.
Now, by the way, we have upwards of 100 trillion cells.
We have 10 times more bacteria than we have human cells.
So you're actually more bacteria cells than you cells.
It's kind of weird.
I want everybody to be creeped out.
It's okay.
It's how it's supposed to be.
But the balance of that bacteria, we want to make sure that the good guys are kind of in control.
Because we all have a ratio of...
We outsource digestion, actually, right?
Exactly.
You don't digest your own food.
The bacteria, thank goodness they're there.
They're helping you eat.
Yeah, exactly.
So processed foods, also pesticides, herbicides, fungicides.
You can't avoid those.
It's hard to avoid those things.
The suffix side means to kill.
Because we're bigger organisms, we tend to bioaccumulate some of these things and hold them in our tissues.
What do you recommend to get rid of them?
If you can avoid them, avoid them.
Eat organic food, if at all possible.
Again, it doesn't have to be 120%.
You know the list of the dirty dozen.
There was a paper that came out this week revealing the endemic nature of pesticides in our food supply.
It's really hard to eat food that doesn't have pesticides in it.
It's cross-contamination.
Advocates for the industry will say, well, it doesn't really cause demonstrable harm in us.
But I get you.
But no one's measuring what it's doing to our microbiome.
You don't know yet.
Yeah, that's the problem.
But this is specifically the thing, the microbiome is the issue.
Because these things are designed to take out small pests.
Right?
And most of them, this is just what they use, just to give a quick synopsis on this.
They're either neurogenic or estrogenic.
This is just what they use to either screw up the reproductive cycle of the pest or to damage their brain and nervous system.
And so again, we're just thinking, oh, it doesn't do anything to us.
We don't know yet, but we know what that's designed for and we're consuming it, it's probably causing something.
So it's just better to err on the side of caution.
Also, chlorinated water, for example.
Chlorine is a very strong antibiotic.
And I want that in water that's been through a lot in our water system.
It's definitely good at cleaning, but we're not going to necessarily drink pool water, for example.
But you can take chlorine out with a filter.
Yes, that's the point I'm getting to, exactly that.
By the way, there are certain filters that says it removes the smell and taste of chlorine, but it doesn't remove the chlorine.
You might want to look at more of an RO system.
RO stands for reverse osmosis.
Yeah, perfect.
But then you probably want to restructure your water a little bit, maybe add a little sea salt, a little lemon to your water, something to give it a little bit of a charge, if that makes sense.
Explain that.
So putting lemon in water is an old Ayurvedic approach.
Thousands of years of human experience has not gotten rid of it, which makes me think there's something going on there.
But how does it recharge the water?
Oh, perfect.
So, you know, when I mention RO, so what that does is it puts the water through a very tight...
And it doesn't allow for certain kind of larger particulate matter to make its way through.
And what you're left with is more or less something that's kind of a supplement, which is H2O. In nature, you never find H2O by itself, right?
So that's the construct of water.
It's H2O with other things dissolved into it.
So water is known as a universal solvent because it really becomes and takes on what it's exposed to.
So with H2O in nature, you're going to find a certain mineral construct with it.
So that makes the water a little bit more alkaline or acid.
Or these acids and bases we were taught about in school.
So what we want to do is...
Understand that if we're taking a supplement, which is blank H2O, your body will actually start to kind of pull in your own reserves of minerals in your tissues to try to process the water.
Because the water has to have a certain structure to fit into your aquaporins.
These are kind of protein channels that hydrate your cells.
It's kind of complicated stuff.
It's like when you take a bath.
You know how your fingers get pruney?
Yeah.
It's because you have more salt or those elements you're talking about.
Inside your body, then outside, so you're sucking water in through your skin.
Perfect example.
So your cells do the same thing.
Yeah.
So we want to make sure the water has some structure so that it can hydrate you properly.
And I know there's probably folks listening that they might drink a lot of water, but they never really feel like they're really hydrated.
So you might want to look at destructuring your water.
There's obviously, again, just pinch some Himalayan salt or sea salt.
Lemon is one of those things.
It provides free electrons.
There are liquid minerals you can add, too.
Yeah, liquid minerals.
There's a bunch of those.
Let's finish up with the superstar you called vitamin G. Yeah.
Grounding.
Grounding.
Okay.
Wow.
So this was one of the things I just didn't believe, all right, until I looked at the research, which was shocking.
And so to make this simple, you know, humans evolved with contact of the earth, right?
The surface of the earth is really brimming with free electrons.
And I just mentioned this with the food.
Like, what are we trying to get from our food?
We're trying to get these antioxidants.
We're trying to get these free electrons, this energy.
Where does it all come from?
It comes from the earth itself.
You know, so human body is very conductive, first of all.
It's the kind of premise you have to understand.
And just to give an example, like I'm looking at some sockets over there.
There's an outlet over here.
If we're feeling frisky and we want to stick a butter knife in there, which I don't recommend, you're going to get electrocuted.
We're very conductive.
Or if you think about the scary movies, Jason comes in where you're trying to exfoliate and you're taking a bath and throws an electronic device in your tub, you can kind of fry your system.
So we're very conductive.
static electricity.
And so there's a certain spectrum of light that we can see, all right?
Some animals see more into ultraviolet or infrared.
We have a certain spectrum.
So we can't see all the energy that's coming off of things.
And so again, earth is brimming with free electrons.
It's like the matrix.
Yeah, it's crazy stuff.
So by you getting in contact with the conductive surface of the earth, you literally start to absorb these free electrons.
And they add on an electron to kind of balance out these free radicals.
Because free radicals are really just missing an electron.
When we talk about free radicals, we're talking about something that's considered to be paralleled with aging.
So it kind of puts out this little fire that we're having.
So it reduces inflammation.
As far as the sleep research is concerned with grounding, And this was just, again, blew my mind.
What they found was that while patients were grounded while sleeping, so in contact with the Earth's surface, they were able to normalize their cortisol levels.
So they actually brought their cortisol levels down and it normalized it throughout the day.
Alright, so it dropped the cortisol level down at night and made sure that it didn't get out of sequence during the day.
So we gotta be camping, basically?
No, yeah, so...
How do you ground while you're sleeping?
Sleep outdoors.
Yeah, on the ground.
So what we want to do is just make sure we're getting some time connected.
And it's very difficult in a city like this, you know?
Well, also if you're wearing sneakers, it's a rubber-soled shoe.
Right, you never get in contact with earth.
It's like when you drive a car, the rubber keeps you from...
So what do you do?
You walk barefoot for five minutes a day?
How do you ground yourself?
So ideally, we get in...
So what are some conductive surfaces?
Dirt, soil, grass, sand, bodies of water.
Concrete is semi-conductive.
Asphalt is not.
Wood is not.
Rubber is not, obviously.
So if you can get some vitamin G time with your feet on the ground, great.
But there are also gadgets now.
Like I've got a grounding mouse pad that my hand sits on.
I've got a grounding mat under my desk that connects to the grounding prong in your outlet.
Aha.
In the office.
Right.
So that can keep you grounded.
And I actually did some tests to actually, you know, monitor whether or not it does bring down the kind of megahertz charge that my body has.
It's crazy.
It's crazy stuff.
So the lightning strikes, did you get off the pad?
That is probably not going to happen, but, you know, and this is the thing, like, we still don't know about that technology.
We don't really know how effective it is, and so it's just something to experiment with, something for people to consider.
One thing I'm going to say is, for a lot of young kids, especially, who have disabilities, autism spectrum, etc., Getting them outside and playing and running on dirt and ground and in the water does seem to have an impact.
And one of the arguments, I've heard it made by folks that they always make it quietly, they're sort of embarrassed, almost ashamed to acknowledge that they think grounding might be important, is that it grounds them.
So I personally think running outside with your bare feet is probably a wise thing to do anyway.
And if you get the extra benefit of the grounding that might let you do a lot of the things that Sean's speaking of, it'd be great.
Sean, thanks very much for being with us.
My pleasure.
Check out the rest of his sleep secrets in Sleep Smarter, 21 Essential Strategies to Sleep Your Way to a Better Body, Better Health, and Bigger Success.
You can hear Sean's full progressive relaxation session to help you fall asleep.
We didn't even get the relaxation, but maybe one of the most important tips he has, so follow along with him.
Let's get right after this.
Thank you so much for tuning into this episode.
And I'm very happy to share with you this little bonus piece to complement what you learned today with Dr. Oz on his incredible podcast.
Again, this is Shawn Stevenson, and we covered so much information today, including the topic of what you're doing during the day really does help you to sleep better at night, including the timing of your exercise and also improving the health of your gut, aka your microbiome, and taking good care of that environment in your gut.
Also, just to sneak one little tip in here for you, you also want to feed that gut microbiome, what I call plenty of good sleep nutrients.
If you take a look at something like vitamin C, for example, this has always had rave reviews for being great for your immune system, but it's also important for your sleep.
A study published in the Public Library of Science found that people with low levels A study published in the journal Sleep found that potassium may be helpful for those who have trouble staying asleep.
So what are some good foods to look for?
Potassium, we're looking at something like avocados, great source of potassium, green leafy vegetables, broccoli, and also a sea veggie.
called Dulse.
Dulse, okay?
That's a sea vegetable called Dulse.
And then for vitamin C, we know plenty of great vitamin C foods, but are you eating enough of them?
Bell peppers, green leafy vegetables, kiwis, strawberries, papaya, good stuff like that.
All right, so make sure to get in plenty of good sleep nutrients.
Now, there's a whole list of those that you'll find on my book, Sleep Smarter, but what I also want to share with you is not just what you do during the day, but obviously the things that you do at night as well to help you to kind of decompress Slow down can help to improve your sleep as well.
Yes, we are great at going from zero to 100. As humans, zero to 100 is no problem.
But can you go from 100 to zero?
Can you turn it back down and relax?
That's the real question, the bigger challenge in our world today.
So if you think about this, there are several clinically proven methods to help us to decompress and to switch off that fight or flight, aka sympathetic nervous system, and help us to wind down.
Things like journaling, massage, meditation, these are all clinically proven to help us to relax and activate that parasympathetic rest and digest nervous system.
There's also another interesting one that we're going to go through today.
What we're gonna go through right now is something called progressive muscle relaxation.
Now, you might actually think that your muscles are relaxed, but they're probably not.
Many of us tend to hold a constant muscle tension where our muscles are slightly, quote, on, even when we consciously believe that we're fully relaxed.
To help combat this and to truly relax those muscles, the best thing you can do is fully tense them up first.
I know that sounds strange, but Dr. Philip Gurman, who's the clinical director of Penn Medicine's Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at the Penn Sleep Center in Philadelphia, says,"...progressive muscle relaxation is a relaxation exercise in which you systematically tense and then relax all the muscle groups of your body.
It helps to promote overall physical relaxation, which has a number of benefits on its own." So basically, by fully contracting your muscles, you can elicit and experience a greater relaxation when you let go.
And this practice is used clinically to help to reduce stress and to, of course, improve sleep.
Now here's an example of how it's done, and I'd encourage you to do this exercise Along with me in a relaxed position with your eyes closed.
So if you're driving right now or operating heavy machinery, then go ahead and pause this portion of the episode and save it for later to help you to relax.
Okay, so what I want you to do first is to go ahead and get into a very comfortable position.
Ideally, you can go ahead and lie down right now and close your eyes.
Now, when you're in this comfortable position, eyes closed, first thing I want you to do is go ahead and take a couple of deep breaths to begin the practice.
Breathing in deeply, filling up your belly with air, and exhale.
Get all the air out of your body.
Very nice.
So go ahead and do that again.
Breathe in deeply, fill your belly up with air, and breathe out.
Get all the air out of your body.
Very good.
So with the progressive muscle relaxation, we're going to tense up your muscles, starting from your head, literally going down to our toes.
We're going to go through each section of your body, tensing the muscles, and then allowing them to relax.
So, starting with your face, we're going to go ahead and tense up those eyebrows.
You're going to raise your eyebrows up as high as possible, keeping your eyes closed.
Get those eyebrows up high and tense.
Really create some lines in your forehead.
Nice and tight.
And relax, let it go.
Just let them go back to their neutral position.
Okay, so we're going to hold each of these for about 10 seconds.
Okay, so we're gonna, this time we're gonna squinch the eyes together, squinch the eyebrows down.
Nice and tight.
Squinch tight, tight, tight, tight.
Eyes and eyebrows for 10 seconds.
And relax.
You'll probably notice you want to take a deep breath after each one of these tensing sessions.
So next thing we're going to do, we're going to move to your nose and your mouth.
Then we're going to tense up your entire face with your eyes, your nose, and your mouth.
Tensing together nice and tight.
Squeeze your face together.
Like you just bit into the most sour thing ever.
Squeeze.
And relax.
Very good.
So each time, we'll take a few seconds between the sets that we're doing.
Next, we're gonna move down to your neck, okay?
People hold a lot of tension in their neck and shoulders.
So what we're gonna do right now is we're gonna tense up your neck.
Just tighten those muscles in your neck.
Like you're getting those weird muscles popping out of your neck like you're a wrestler, right?
WWF, WWE. Nice and tight, tense, tense, tense in your neck.
And relax.
Very good.
Again, we're holding each contraction for right around 10 seconds.
Okay, so now we're gonna move on to your shoulders and arms.
Your arms should be down at your side.
Okay, right in the comfortable position.
And we're gonna tense up and squeeze your arms and shoulders.
Here we go.
Squeeze, squeeze your arms, tense, squeeze your fists together.
Tense up your forearms, your upper arms, your shoulders.
Squeeze them together nice and tight.
Squeeze, squeeze, keep squeezing.
Squeeze and relax.
Very good.
Okay, now we're gonna move to your chest and your abdomen.
Okay, chest and abdomen.
So as we're laying down or in a comfortable position, I'm gonna go ahead and you're gonna squeeze your chest together and squeeze your abs nice and tight.
Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze tight.
Squeeze those muscles together.
Tense.
Get as tense as you can.
Two, one, relax.
Just let your body relax.
Let the tension go.
You're doing great.
Okay, our next body part we're going to move to is your back.
Obviously, a lot of people carry tension in their back muscles.
They're kind of chronically on, especially that lower back.
So we're going to try to hyperactivate those muscles so they can relax a little bit deeper.
Alright, so...
Three, two, one.
Here we go.
Squeeze your back muscles together.
Squeeze.
Tense.
Pull your shoulders back.
Squeeze those muscles.
Tense up.
Tense your back muscles as best as you can.
Squeeze.
Squeeze.
Three, two, one.
Relax.
Very good.
Okay, we're making our way down our body here.
We're getting close.
Next up, we're going to go ahead and tense the muscles around your hips and your buttocks.
All right, as Forrest Gump would say, your buttocks.
All right, so get ready.
Here we go.
Three, two, one.
Squeeze.
Tense up your groin area, your butt.
Squeeze.
Tight, tight, tight.
Squeeze.
We got five more seconds.
Squeeze.
Get as tense as you can.
Squeeze.
Your entire hip area.
three, two, and relax.
Very good.
All right, next we're going to target our upper and lower legs.
Okay?
So you're going to tense up your calf muscles and your quads, hamstrings.
You're going to tense up all of your legs at one time.
Alright?
Three, two, one.
Squeeze!
Tense those muscles up in your legs.
Squeeze!
Get your calves nice and tight.
Squeeze those quads together.
Feel those hamstrings turning on.
Squeeze!
Five, four, three, two, and relax.
Very good.
Very very good.
Okay, now finally we're going to target those feet and your toes.
Alright, we said we're going to start from your head, work our way all the way down to your toes, so as promised.
Alright, so get ready.
Three, two, one.
Tense up those feet.
Curl your toes in.
Curl them.
Or you can extend as high as you can.
Get them nice and tense.
Tense, tense.
Five seconds.
Alright, get those muscles in your feet tense.
Three, two, one.
Relax.
Let go.
Let go.
Doing fantastic.
We've got one more bonus here.
Alright, now we're going to do full body tension.
Alright, we're going to squeeze every part of your body together at one time.
Every muscle you can think of that you can command.
We're going to turn it all on.
Squeeze super tight for 10 seconds.
And then we're going to relax and just let it be.
Alright, here we go.
Three, two, one.
Squeeze every muscle in your body.
Contract tight.
Your face...
Your chest, your legs, feet, everything.
Squeeze.
Five, four, three, two, and done.
Let go.
Just relax.
Just relax into it.
Did an incredible job.
If you follow along with this exercise, you feel that deep relaxation.
Those muscles were slightly on.
Now they've found a way to turn off a little bit more.
Relax a little bit deeper.
You did such a great job.
And again, thank you so much for tuning into this podcast from the incredible Dr. Oz.
And I'm very happy to be a guest today, Shawn Stevenson.
I appreciate you so much for taking action to better your life, to better your health, and to be an inspiration for the people around you.
You deserve to feel good, you deserve to get great sleep, and you deserve to have great health as a result.
Alright, so again, I appreciate you immensely.
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