Use This Evening Routine To Feel Energized, Sleep Better & Slow Aging | Dr. Stephen Cabral

what are some of the most common reasons why people have sleep issues so stress is still number one and so it's also why taking sleep based medication like an ambient or something like that still doesn't get you the quality of sleep that you want yes lights are going to be out but you're not getting the restorative sleep that you need just being in bed for 8 hours a night does not mean that you're actually getting restorative and reparative sleep typically more inflamed brain fog you feel like a walking zombie and that's because your body didn't give you its own natural caffeine based boost but it's also those individuals that typically also have thyroid issues lifestyle things what what can somebody do to help themselves out in the situation developing a sleep routine is the number one thing that you can do and the thing that ultimately helped me the most was going to bed within 30 minutes of the same time every night so my body knew this is when you eat this is when you work out this is when you go to bed it really does help for people with cortisol based issues whether that is 11:00 p.m. for an individual 12 12:00 a.m. it's not ideal you really want to get to bed around that 10:00 p.m. time wake up around 6:00 a.m. again it is somewhat seasonal but you want to go to bed and turn things off when it's dark turn things back on when it is light Dr gabal welcome back again it's always a good time talking to you yeah it's great to be here love it so today we're going to talk about sleep you did you did some tests on us which we'll talk about towards the back half of the episode kind of how we did but let's start out with sleep and let's talk everybody knows by that by now how important it is uh but let's talk about the phases of sleep what what we know that they do for the body and what a would is considered an ideal ratio of different those different phases yeah for me my my mission is to obviously spread knowable statistics about your own body through at home lab testing but it's also deeper the education meaning that just being in bed for eight hours a night does not mean that you're actually getting restorative and repairative sleep and so for us today want to really talk about those four stages of sleep what they mean and then how you can get deeper into them so the four stages are essentially there's three three non-rem they just call them end stages and one REM so as we are drifting off at night that's stage one that's basically going from uh beta waves or alpha waves and moving into what's called theta waves and we'll talk about Wes today because that's the brain signal that it's moving into more of a quiet and calm State and it's one of the issues why people can't fall asleep well while they have anxiety while they have all sorts of issues is they're not actually able to bring down those Gamma or beta waves to an alpha wave and then ultimately Theta wave so that's they issues with stage one so that's okay that's already interesting information to me because this also explains to uh why probably brain FM is so like effective at helping you fall asleep is it's probably helping change the brain waves that what because you're listening to a sound in music right that it could be but you know it's interesting yes I think so and also what I noticed with kids you know if you have little kids you'll notice this when they're trying to fall asleep they'll get more anxious before they fall asleep and you got to help calm them down either rub their back or cuz all of a sudden there like they're they're restless so it's like they're having trouble going into that stage that first stage 100% yeah and so like my two daughters they're they're getting older now 10 and 12 but if they get riled up before bed they just they don't go all sleep for like an hour right it's like it takes a while for them just to cool down on their own but we're going to share tips as to how to how you can make that happen within 10 minutes okay so a lot faster but brain FM I'm assuming is that like a binural beats but but far more far more effective far more so one of the ways that these things work they actually entrain brain waves so you have one Herz basically going in one ear and then another one in the other air and they in the two waves come together from each air they entrain and they bring down let's say a beta uh state to a to a alpha which is Cal relax thinking that's pretty interesting so stage one you're going from conscious to unconscious just yeah exactly just going into sleep not quite sleep yet you're just going in that light sleep then the second stage is light sleep as well but now you're actually asleep so now you're moving into what are called delta waves and so you're starting to move to it goes um gamma beta and then it goes Alpha those are waking stages gamma is really high problem solving beta is stress as well Alpha is calm relax thinking Focus work and then we move to Theta that's the in between stage that we try to get to when we're meditating between um a wakefulness and sleep and then we move down to Delta and so as we're moving into the the delta waves and stage two only lasts for like 20 minutes and then you drop into stage three which is deep sleep deep sleep is the one that we talk about the most because that is the one that's restored for the body and so what happens is that we have uh two end stages deep and REM one is for the Mind REM sleeps more for the mind we'll talk about that and then deep is more for the body and so we're in this state we're in more of a Delta wave state our body essentially goes into this deep coma like state where very difficult to wake us and that enables this deep restorative pattern that the body knows how to heal so that's why we say is all of a sudden temperature body temperature drops heart rate slows and the body literally goes into a hibernation State that's deep sleep which is very different than REM and then REM uh is the REM stands for rapid eye movement because they've identified that your eyes are moving under your eyelids yes that's more for the brain it is more for the brain and so I like to refer to that one as you're taking all of the different things that wor you or you thought about or um concentrated on for that day and filing them away so that's a lot of what we know too from REM based sleep that's why when you have dreams and dreams are happening during that REM stage as well that you are processing information and at the same time hopefully reducing inflammation the brain as well now what's interesting about rembe sleep is that when they're when you're in a sleep lab and we're looking at the brain waves you go back to an alpha and beta based wave state in REM sleep so even though you're in your sleep it's like you're awake and asleep that's right and so the body then turns on its own paralysis mechanism so that you don't begin acting out what your brain is actually thinking now when that's dysfunctional you get sleepwalking 100% yeah or you start to literally twitch and move and all that in your sleep as well so what what is the um U optimal amount of time in each phase it's a good question so we look at Total Sleep per night and we want to get about 20 to 25% of that is REM sleep about 15 to 20% is deep sleep the rest is light now that light sleep does matter they used to think that it didn't matter so if you only slept 5 hours and you were able to bang out two hours of because ideally so there's 20 to 25% but also that's based on eight hours a night so you really do want two hours of REM and about 1.5 hours of deep each night and so that's why total hours matter as well because your deep sleep is typically the first four hours of the night and REM sleep the last four hours if you're in bed for eight hours now it does come in stages so essentially it looks like a cascan effect like a little waterfall it goes stage one stage two move right into stage three then stage four and then come back out of them okay that's a perfect world we don't see that we'll talk about sleep trackers and all that we don't typically see that in the real world um we see more deep the beginning of the night more REM the end of the night so what this brings up for me is I know that certain compounds one in particular that people use to help fall asleep cannabis MH reduces uh people's dreams or that REM stage in fact one of the side effects or withdrawal effects of coming off that is just like tons of vivid dreams do you guys see that in in the labs that you work with uh where you see people's REM go down from certain you know sleep aids or anything like that well alcohol is the biggest so you know unfortunately when people do drink alcohol it's fascinating if you have alcohol 3 to four hours and stop before bed seems to be okay as long as it wasn't that much maybe a drink or two maximum if your body you know can tolerate that but alcohol right before bed dramatically reduces deep sleep like under an hour we mostly see people like 3040 minutes and then it affects REM as well but not to as much a degree because it's towards more the end of the night I see and then THC affects people's deep in rem more than CBD so typically when you're taking a THC based substance it will have CBD as well but the THC which has the more of the psychoactive effect you're right does affect the REM sleep more than uh just like a CBD you mentioned tracking devices what are the best ones now what do they show so previously there was only a couple that would actually show your sleep stages but now most of them will show that so um I don't know if you work with any companies right now but Aura ring and whoop strap are definitely the two leaders in the space Apple watch getting there I still think that in the end they'll probably win um but right now not the best and then there's Fitbit there's also the mattresses uh that track it yeah does yeah so we we're pretty agnostic about the Sleep trackers what we want to do is we want to look at the sleep stages so are you getting two hours of Rim are you getting 1.5 uh 1.5 hours 75 to 90 minutes of deep and then you moving through the metrics that we like to see that are indicative of restorative sleep because you don't want to just go by your REM and deep you want to say what's your heart rate look like what's your body temperature your skin uh temperature look like uh what is breath rate per minute we can go through all those as well that people can start to use as parameters what some of the most common reasons why people have sleep issues these days they seem to be more and more common I would assume it has to do with stress right less lack of activity uh you know light exposure all the common ones I me what are you guys saying so stress is still number one and the reason is that if you can't turn the mind off those beta waves or even gamma waves you you can't get down to Theta you can't get down to those and so it's also why taking sleep-based medication like an ambient or something like that still doesn't get you the quality sleep that you want yes lights are going to be out but you're not getting the restorative sleep that you need in terms of you deepen R we still don't even know how those work do we those those drugs not completely they put you to sleep almost like an SSRI we know that they can help certain indiv indviduals in certain cases after two years is it effective is it worse so that you know we can debate about that s with s same with sleep-based medication they have a idiosyncratic way of working yeah and there there's some weirdly weird side effects with some of those people waking up and doing [ __ ] and not remember stay away from Twitter yeah especially when they're mixed with things like alcohol or other substances as well which people do of course so what's what's what are the what are some of the common reason because you'll hear this often and sometimes this will happen to me too where I I know I'm tired can physically feel exhausted but I'm wired yes so like I I I got to go to bed I got I know I need to go to bed and I'll lay in bed and I'm just not falling that's got to be the brain wave thing and then I wake up and I'm tired well part of it is if we a lot of people they work a long day and the exercise within a couple hours before bed so if that doesn't give you time to begin to reduce those stress hormones uh it's not just cortisol so cortisol is one of them which we're going to talk about later there's mineral corticoids like aldosterone that increase sodium and uh help you with an exercise but not great for Sleep there's norepinephrine and adrenaline so you need time for those things to calm down there's the blue light like you spoke about so if you have Bright Lights well your body thinks it's still daytime and so it keeps cortisol levels High melatonin levels low there's the anxiety there's the stress um temperature matters so some people I remember back in college when I was in my dorm room my freshman year literally a cinder block base room with three guys in this tiny uh bedroom and it was so hot especially September you go back to school and I had terrible time sleeping just because the the temperature the heat is so high remember your body wants to get to a hibernation based State you need that room colder and that's going to be one of the tips that we share with people as well like what temperature should you drop it down hey sorry to interrupt this episode is brought to you by nasm the world's Premier certification for trainers and coaches and if you click on this link right here you get $150 off any CPT package all right back to the episode you mentioned Al aldosterone that's that's chemical that is released to prevent you from peeing in the middle of night right that is it's another one um not dissimilar to that and that is antidiuretic hormone Angiotensin yeah it's a little bit different okay and the reason why I'm asking is that's a supplement no no this is something your body releases and and Adam often talks about how he wakes up like his whole life he has to wake up to go pee could there be an issue with production of that particular hormone 100% yeah so if your cortisol levels remain elevated it's basically like your body is still awake even though when it's supposed to be asleep your melatonin levels rise and we'll talk about that the inverse relationship and so you don't turn off the hormones so you're not producing that same level of anti-diuretic hormone most likely not getting into deep and rembas sleep because your body knows if you're asleep it doesn't want to wake you for night time year na so I've heard this before so my wife is makes this argument where I was like oh I had to wake up to pee she's like no you woke up and then you had to pee that is true for a lot of people yes you wake and then you have to pee yeah and it's because of the production of that or maybe lack of production of that anti as you rise out of sleep cortisol levels can get a little bit of a bump now some people it's a drop in blood sugar or there is just their mind has a lot of stress and so you wake up due to the stress of your dream you wake up out of that REM sleep right right right now you're awake and so now that you're awake the uh anti-diuretic hormone gets shut down now you brought up melatonin it's one of the easiest uh one of the most commonly purchased supplements for sleep it's available over the counter is there a uh is there a a negative feedback loop with melatonin can I take melatonin and then my body not produce it am I is it something I need to not like be worried about at high dosages like I see people online and this stuff you really kills me and I know that it shouldn't but I see Health people out there saying oh I'm taking 30 milligrams a day of melatonin 50 milligrams I'm like what what's wrong with like what's wrong with you literally that you're doing that second why are you sharing that with the general public um that this might be something worth doing and they'll point to an obscure study and it's all like the stud is not true yes these people with cancer or these particular conditions we're using that that's not general population yes that will completely shut down your melatonin production could affect your thyroid levels and cortisol levels the next morning because your liver has to process all of that melatonin and get it out of your body within an eight hour period of time that's insane um so when you take so in our practice not for everybody but the people who need it we'll give 2 and half milligrams of melatonin like and that's not going to shut down your production what's it going to do taking 30 minutes before bed what does it do cuts cortisol and so now because it has an inter inverse relationship so cortisol levels are high melatonin's low if uh cortisol is low melatonin's high so what we want to do is give your body a little bit of the bump it needs to get melatonin in your system which just say oh must be bedtime and the pineal gland which is typically giving that signal may not be getting that signal and this is why that Luna product feels so amazing on me is cuz it's what 2 and 12 milligrams it's less 750 microG but it's just enough to like make me and some people that's all they need you know for kids people like oh I give you know a milligram no that your child's weigh is 30 or 50 pounds and it should only be every once in a while kids should not have cortisol based issues like but yeah some kids do because of various reasons uh and every once in a while if you use it with a child what would you use 0.25 you know milligrams you'd use a tiny amount so my issue with melatonin is if I take it uh I'll get to sleep then I'll wake up almost inevitably in the middle of night at some point and I I thought it was because the Melatonin ran out and so they make time release is this a thing they do make time release we don't use that in as many cases we find that uh people will stay asleep unless there's other issues if we can get them to sleep and so you taking melatonin now keep in mind if your body doesn't need it you're not going to react well with it like it's it's like taking a magnesium believe it or not so magnesium is going to work great for 80 to 90% of individuals you give it to 10% of people they actually feel terrible they get massive brain fog they get a lot of adverse they have enough they have enough they don't need it or it's not in balance with sodium magnesium or calcium magnesium so it's always about that ratio as well wow so when you're doing a test so you did a test with us uh you were testing cortisol so through that and so natural cortisol or healthy cortisol should be higher in the morning and should slowly taper throughout the day and be at its slowest than evening before bed is that so when we were in the stress mood stress metabolism test with you guys before we looked at cortisol all throughout the day so upon waking before lunch before dinner and then before bed right and so the goal is you hum um healthy production of cortisol is about 9 to 13 nanograms per milliliter or units per day we'll just call them units so in the morning you actually produce between and should produce upon waking about 30 minutes later it's called the cortisol Awakening response about 6 to9 units out of your 9 to 13 for the day and that is what oh total you're saying for the total total so total for the day is 9 to 13 production in the morning should be between 600 and 9 wow vast majority vast majority is within two hours of waking 6:00 to 8: a.m. typically and we'll talk about the The rhythms of the body then after that before lunch it's about two before dinner around 1 to 1.5 before bed you want to be below 6 and so when you look at it it's this curve and it's called the natural dial rhythm of humans so we're meant to have have higher cortisol upon waking and then it slowly drops through the day so by 5: to 6:00 p.m. it's much lower and then by 9:30 p.m. we have our greatest drop typically again it's seasonal based if the sun's out until 9:00 at night during the summer all yeah cortisol production will last a little bit longer in the winter it'll be uh a little less depending on the season of the year how often do we see that inverted uh because I I'm thinking right now how many people need caffeine in the morning to wake up and alcohol at night to calm down fully inverted like high in night and low in the so this is what we'll typically see and we call that uh tired and wired a lot of people have it I used to have that you know back in the day when I had Addison's disease and a lot of other issues is that you'll be below a0 6 in the morning so if you wake up and you sorry 6 if you produce less than six units in the morning typically more inflamed brain fog you feel like a walking zombie and that's because your body didn't give you its own natural caffeine based boost but it's also those individuals that typically also have thyroid issues and that's because cortisol starts to be produced normally around 6:00 a.m. even a little bit before that but right around 6: a.m. so 56 a.m. cortisol begins to increase somewhere between 600 and 8 um a.m. it's going to peek out it does depend a little bit on when you're waking but it really depends on time of the year as well and then it falls well thyroid production gets started around 3:00 a.m. and so they have they work together and we'll often see low thyroid production so lower T3 along with that low M now at at night we'll see it sometimes at A8 or a 1 or 1.2 we already know before people come in what their symptoms are going to be tired in the morning feel like a walking zombie until their caffeine or until around lunchtime and then at night can't turn off their mind so they could basically take a nap any time of the day but they can't fall asleep at night and so it's very frustrating yeah very frustrating and how common is that and very difficult to heal well if you're talking about in our practice it's quite common because we're seeing people with you 50% little speculation here you know we talk about on the show but could somebody with cortisol issues uh then you know inadvertently seek out cortisol producing um you know lifestyle things like because I've noticed this weed call them cortisol junkies but these were clients who just constantly lay making themselves stressed out because they weren't producing enough cortisol is is that is that a viable theory that and dopamine yeah there's some really interesting studies so we'll just talk about the so caffeine um you know energ drinks anything that will get the body stimulated you know so anything stimulating and sometimes there's healthy versions of that which we can talk about based on kind of body types but then there's also correlations between people that are lower neurotransmitter so excitatory neurotransmitters would be norepinephrine and dopamine yeah and so those people there's actually good studies that show they Trend more towards alcohol and other substances because it gives them the dop amine and the excitatory neurotransmitters unfortunately that they're looking for so often times when we're working with people maybe with substance abuse or maybe with certain addictions we're immediately looking at their B vitamins we're looking at their dop me we're looking at cortisol levels as well okay supplements for cortisol the two most common ones that I hear about that are quote unquote uh supposed to help with high cortisol ashwagandha and phospha tile Serene yes you're correct are those the two ones that we see the data and research supporting so I just did uh podcast on a very large meta analysis on ashwagandha it was really well done it looked at like 12 of the largest studies I don't know which podcast it was um but it showed on average a 30% reduction or up to 36% reduction in cortisol with 400 to 600 milligrams of ashwag Ganda per day interesting W so like legitimately Works does what it says it's going to do and um the problem is that when you look at a lot of nutritional supplements it might have 100 milligrams and so that's not ainal dos in order to work but it also shows you when should you take it well you take it the latter half of the day tired you do that Doug yeah iag are you using that cons why using your adrenal Soo adrenal Soo that's got it in it so adrenal suo has a all of them a clinical dosage so adrenal Soo um has Eline ashwagandha riola phosphoserine luo so it has some adaptogens for the adrenals and the phosphos serin directly counteracts cortisol as well so if your cortisol is low those are the last things you want to take that's correct cuz that could cause you to make feel more crappy yes and so what happens if you have low cortisol first there's two parts of this so one sometimes your cortisol is low in the morning because you're exhausted and you have been under chronic stress and so you don't want to do things that would boost that what you actually want to do is take your adrenal sooth magnesium other things at night plus do a lot of the tips that we're going to give you to get better sleep restorative sleep but for people though who naturally produce a little less cortisol they're healthy but they produce less cortisol work out in the morning cold Plunge in the morning those types of things can actually be very beneficial they will Spike norrine they'll Spike cortisol now typically so that's why you have to know who you are healthy body robust you know recover really well sleep well you could do those things in the morning for people that are burnt out that's just burning your out even more well I remember that when we did this last time you had you told you would recommended Doug that he doesn't cold plune cuz he's already got the higher levels Mak sense so this test that we did what what was and what's the what's the name of the test and then what were we looking at this winner yeah this is our bedtime cortisol test sometimes called the poor sleep test and it's a one tube of saliva that's it so a little saliva sample before bed looking at your cortisol levels because if your cortisol levels are elevated the likelihood that you have strong melatonin and get good sleep is is quite low hey real quick if you go to Steven cab.com better sleep you can get a free poor sleep test find out if your cortisol is too high at night and messing up your sleep again click on this link get it right now okay so pretty good predictor Justin still hasn't been able to figure out how to do that without slobbering all over himself it's really tough to do drool it in there let's hear The Winner all right so we've got here so again the goal is to be uh below 6 6 yeah6 nanog per milliliter and we'll go you want to go worst to First yeah go worst again first worst to first so uh got to know you guys a little bit the last couple years could you have did you guess all these already knew coming in I'm like who's going to be wor yeah yeah I I was um I was not totally correct on first and second that's because there was a tie um but anyway I'll give it to you so remember some people are going to have to continue to work on this their whole life yes Doug you were 2.6 yes now I know that there was some extenuating circum es you can share that because remember this is one snapshot in time but on this night your cortisol levels were very high yeah over Cher yes you're overing on quarters I think Adam yelled at him right before probably I did say though I I did have an excuse I was really jet legged but yeah oh yeah that'll do it that can Rhythm will be all over the place that's right yes so it does matter it does matter so typically we would say take it on an ordinary day uh you know an average day not like your worst day not your best day this is just a normal day this is like because there are just like blood work it's a snapshot in time and so that does matter but also know that you know an individual's proclivity towards High cortisol will always be there or towards high testosterone or do and like so if your numbers matter which means for Doug for you A lot of these things we can't just do supplementation alone we need to work on the whole lifestyle and just know that you're going to always lean more towards a lot of that high evening could this now could this does this mean then his cortisol might be lower in the morning or or or does that not you know I don't have that stress Moon metabolism test in front of me but it'd be interesting to see because some people are high producers of cortisol now how do you know that it's affecting you it starts to lower your testosterone numbers starts to increase he's got the highest natural testosterone in the room so maybe so you are a high producer of hor sex hormones and stress hormones you're a hormone machine you you can overdo it meaning it can burn um but this is also then go back to are you getting 2 hours of are you getting 90 minutes so I do track my sleep and it's rare that I hit my uh Deep Sleep Numbers and sketchy on my REM sometimes too even if I'm in bed for eight or nine hours yes and I'm getting you know it's rare that I actually hit eight hours of sleep even if I'm in bed for nine hours and uh yeah a lot of times I just don't hit my rem or my deep sleep well it's interesting because you and I we both trct sleep and I'm actually very similar to you but you it just shows you you know to your point that there's this you're unique right that I I my sleep looks like yours and I'm probably less consistent with supplementation you're better with both those and I even probably abuse caffeine compared to you yet I probably still score a little bit better than he does and yet that just shows you how much you have to work on that it's crazy cuz you do more work I think than any of us do and he has and his testosterone is not affected right through the roof interesting yeah it's wild yeah my free testosterone though has been an issue so I don't know if that would be part that because the additional stress or heavy metals or inflammation will take your total testosterone and and somewhat block it by increasing sex hormone binding globulin um which then lowers your free testosterone right so these things do matter if you know we've worked together a bunch of lab tests the number one thing that you could do is dial in your sleep yes diet's good everything all these things are good sleep is the number one thing that will allow you to just keep doing what you're doing and live the same lifestyle for the next 20 30 plus years you got to stop watching anime before bed think it's else so yes 2.6 we're going to work on that I know there was some jet lag it does matter but we want to really reduce that to a point six or less that's that's the goal all right all right number two was Adam yep and Adam was uh 2.1 these guys stress me the [ __ ] out man I tell you right elevated so yeah if I was guessing just you know based on previous Labs based on um all the different things I would say Doug and then Adam and uh it's part of it is to be able to shut down the mind yeah you know it's a big part of is just saying like can I make the switch from this is the day to now okay how can I turn that off took me many years to do that this is what him and I share in common I can always count on Doug answering the phone at midnight if I text him because he'll be up probably just like me does does something like this affect mood like in other words cranky cranky 100% yeah oh producing high levels of adrenaline and like you know you're always amped you're always you're always what was your cortisol what was it 2.1 oh so I'm not even that much better than Doug no it's that's we don't typically see it I mean above two like that that's those are high numbers now I I so so I definitely know that some of the things I'm like the caffeine I'm high right I'm consistently especially lately I'm like 600 milligrams of caffeine a day now I'm good about shutting it down right so I've shut it down already by you know 11:00 or 10:30 you had 600 before 11 yeah a lot of that's my Peak right so I I normally I allow myself to Peak the 600 and then I try and taper back um so that that's probably a big issue and then of course like Doug I'm probably up at night thinking about work and doing that stuff which is such you know this is the hardest part about this is that's when I do my best work and so it's like there's this kind of give and take of like man that's when that's when I feel like I know and some people the opposite like some people like oh I'd love to get up at 4:00 in the morning cuz no one's awake and I do my best work I've tried that [ __ ] it just doesn't work for me so it's a it's a tough thing to balance is like that's when I feel my most creative my most focused on the business but I know it's the worst thing for me in my sleep and how do your deepen REM numbers look so like Dougs I I have a real hard time hitting those um because usually I would say well if you're showing High numbers before bed but you turn it off pretty quick once you fall asleep like you're able to downshift from beta to Alpha to Theta like real quick yeah no big deal cuz you're getting your 90 minutes deep in your two hours but most likely when you have these numbers you're not able to shut it down so he was at two so asand in the evening uh probably what around 5 6 o' with dinner would probably be would probably be great so the stack that we use it's not the full stack but the stack out of the gates is full Spectre magnesium at dinner adrenal suit at dinner so magnesium contacts a sympathetic nervous system okay uh adrenal Su which has the ashwag foser nine all those calms the cortisol levels okay and then before bed we use liquid melatonin which is in and out of your system fast so you're not groggy in the morning okay and so that seems to work really well and for you I would take it 30 to even 60 minutes before bed for both of you guys because it might actually take a little bit of time to get there but I'm going to give you some lifestyle things too to to start to make that shift away okay uh it took me forever I was a compl complete Insomniac through essentially all of my 20s and maybe even until like 3031 and then I I implemented these things now I mean every um I use Aura but again there's a lot of good companies every quarter gives you your stats my average sleep is 8 hours and 12 minutes it's 2 hours and 12 REM it's right about 90 minutes for the Deep Sleep your heart rate comes down within four hours like it can be done and I but I still use adrenal sleep at dinner yeah full spectrum magnesium at dinner and I still use just two to 2.5 milligrams of melatonin before bed okay and it was a game changer for me okay wow and will like acute things bother it too like business partners not paying attention to meetings and stuff like that will that caus me to really Spike really bad too or no what you say well and I mean don't get me wrong there still be like one night per month where something is on my mind and it's just it's not as great a night's sleep it still happens because we still live life just don't think about me before B it's hard but so we'll go we'll go over some of those tips in just a minute um so if I had a guess I would have set it in order and then I would have said s then I would have said Justin but both of you guys were three yeah so it's great that's great numbers t god significantly better well he just doesn't care so earlier talking about producing it like I don't know if that plenty of sleeping Mee Terri energy in the morning yes I still have it like and it's always sort of body type wise and all of that the low cortisol you would actually benefit from the workout in the morning the cold Plunge in the morning you Mo most likely that's more of your body type and it wouldn't it would not harm you or your central nervous system it would probably help you a little C in the morning I'm not a proponent of 600 milligrams a day but crazy yeah M for yeah I could coal plunge yeah I've been actually considering that now I I shouldn't probably cold plune I'm like Doug though right should not should not probably not not until we can get down because it'd be interesting to see if your total cortisol is above a 13 uh which it probably is if you're cuz you're not like you're low energy um and if you're drinking that much caffeine it's definitely spiking those levels it's just it's adding more fuel to the fire and even though you feel good when you get out of it because it just spikes adrenaline norrine it's not the only thing that does I don't want to say that but that it does do that and so we want to be careful with that so what about um how beneficial would the infrared sauna be for me and when would I do that if I use that yeah so that's super beneficial so using the infrared sauna or sauna in general the heat will induce parasympathetic nervous system tone which is the opposite of sympathetic opposite of fight or flight so a great thing to do now I'll tell you now so one of the tips I I want to say is that a warm hot bath before bed like an Epsom salt bath can be fantastic I'm not a big bath guy um but what happens is when you get out of the heat your body then naturally starts to cool and that is a signal actually to induce sleep that is so funny to me it's always it's always interesting to me how we do these things and this is the animal in us right that like just we naturally like what the big joke I I take a bath all the time at night I don't know why I don't I don't care like I'm like whatever the I've always done that and I do Epsom salt in it and I guess it's just one of those things I've gravitated to and it's probably positively impacting me and I don't even realize it because like why do I like that what about the Bubbles that doesn't help EP salt everything no the Epsom salt is magnesium sulfate right so that through your skin small amount but you still will yeah yeah you still will um not dissimilar to like a Transdermal Magnesium spray which is magnesium chloride versus magnesium sulfate um but the warmth as well calms the body it's very calming where cold will excite the body and so you get the blast of the the Gaba the serotonin serotonin is a precursor to melatonin now I'll tell you doesn't work for everyone um so if I do a sauna close to bed or a steam it will ant my body up too much same here I can't sleep yeah so it's based on the individual yeah I I work out I work out in the morning but not because I like it just because of my lifestyle with my family um so I've been doing that for years and uh it it is better I have reduced per performance but it is better I think overall for me do you do it fasted yes okay because faster will increase most likely cortisol levels to a greater degree than nonfasted workouts now uh cannabis also raises cortisol doesn't it I don't know I don't know if there's definitive have you seen definitive research that initially yeah I can see it going both ways you get a spike in cortisol initially from from what I'm told from what I've uh what I understand because it's I mean at least with CBD and THC as part of that your body has the CB-1 uh CB2 canabo receptor which ultimately should calm stress in the body but U you know I I haven't seen enough definitive research on that very interesting interesting okay so so lifestyle things what what can somebody do to help themselves out in the situation so developing a sleep routine is the number one thing that you can do and the thing that ultimately helped me the most was going to bed within 30 minutes of the same time every night so my body knew like this is when you eat this is when you out this is when you go to bed it really does help for people with cortisol based issues and so whether that is 11:00 p.m. for an individual 12 12:00 a.m. it's not ideal you really want to get to bed around that 10: p.m. time and wake up around 6:00 a.m. again it is somewhat seasonal but you want to go to bed and turn things off when it's dark turn things back on when it is light that is the ideal thing to do and now you need to mimic that in your own home it's so interesting because we're going to do this episode I I'll bring up some notes Here I actually read about um some of the issues with daylight savings time and People's Health um and they found some pretty remarkable things on there um it's worse for production Health the immune system every time they switch the time because and it's only switching an hour yes do you notice this in some of your patients where they'll come in and just just report like I'm I'm not feeling so good for most people it takes a good week to two weeks to be able to make that shift back even for jet lag the older people are the more disrupted that circadian rhythm becomes so it's like well as a kid or in your 20s it took a day you know to adapt as people get older it can take a week to really shift back what about I mean you mentioned jet lag I've talked about this on the podcast uh where people go to bed later on a Friday night they sleep in Saturday late late Saturday night Sunday maybe normal time sometimes usually later Monday they're jet locked and this is the this is the reason why people hate Monday so much is that we jet lag ourselves every single week it was it's one of the top three reasons I can say as to why I wasn't able to fully heal even when I was doing a lot of the right things is because I would go out Friday night with my buddies and Saturday night with my friends um and or or Andor like date whatever it might be but Sunday then I couldn't fall asleep so Sunday night like was a disaster so if you go out until 2 a.m. you know when you're in college or early 20s or maybe it's 30s 40s for individuals it's difficult to then go to bed at 10: p.m. on Sunday night cuz you probably slept until 10 11 12 your body's not ready to go to bed you know 10 hours later and so it's a huge thing is to I ultimately had to say no to the going out late in order to be able to heal my body we have to we have to explain too to people because obviously we have a lot of listeners that or care about Aesthetics and performance the gym and stuff like that like how much does that play a role in like someone's weight loss Journey or building like it they oh man I'm eating the macros right I'm training and stuff like that but then they're not seeing the results is this many times the culprit is because they just are they just can't get this straight and this is throwing them out of balance ultimately elevated cortisol in the evening when it should be low not as much of an issue in the first half of the day but when cortisol is elevated at night you're going to see lower levels of testosterone higher levels of estrogen in men and women so the conversion is just going to be greater as well as lower progesterone in women you're going to say poor thyroid function so it could be elevated TSH maybe only like a three three and a half your doctor doesn't really catch it but your free T3 is low so now your metabolic rate's lower when your sleep suffers you're going to have higher FCD uh glucose levels in the morning so you're not burning body fat as well so you pour recovery from the lower testosterone and the additional inflammation you don't want to train as hard or you feel worse you feel more groggy more tired you take in more caffeine which also depletes you of more minerals as well and and B vitamins too so all of these things over time are hey sorry to interrupt it's October Maps muscle is 50% off half off if you're interested click on the link below all right back to the show and I imagine so many clients would exacerbate that by also increasing the intensity of their training and increasing the running and all this other stress on top of that so the data on thinking that that's going to solve it help feel better temporarily so if you do a hard workout that's the corol junkies we I feel great though after my workout yes you do out some cortisol Norr and cortisol that's yeah I you know when also the data will show lack of sleep will contribute to impulsive behaviors uh you're more likely to be irritable and your Cravings uh for hyper palatable food goes up so just Downstream of uh it affects everything that would affect how you look for people who are motivated by that sugar salt and fat is what your body wants when you are tired and the salt increases it's a mineral corticoid so it increases the sodium right sugar is a fast fuel a fast fuel source and the fat just makes it more hyperpalatable and so when you look at it well chips pretzels like people want those easy salty foods that gives them that little bit of a boost yeah is that why the the Taco Bell at you know 2 am. sounds like such a good there's multiple reasons awesome so are could other things be contributing to this as well like uh poor gut health or anything like that so cortisol always has an underlying root cause reason as well maybe it is stress but it could also just be that you screen time before bed so we something called the 321 formula multiple people have spoken about this before but 3 hours before bed stop eating again it really is that important now I know a lot of people they want to maybe put on weight put on muscle well there are certain things that affect you more than others so anything that's hard to digest right before bed your body shifts now energy towards digestion rather than towards repairative and restored would it shake be better then because it's pre-digested yes it' be much much more beneficial easy to digest very simple okay to so and then two hours before bed no liquid so that because although your body does produce the antidiuretic hormone if you have a full bladder ultimately you'll you're going to have to urinate like no doubt about that and then one hour before bed this might be the most important is the no screens so it's really reducing all the blue light you can wear blue light blocking glasses which I was actually going to wear you know for the show I just forgot to put them on um but that's when it's most important like you don't need to wear blue blockers all day you can if you're staring at a screen you can use um a lower percentage one but before bed 30 to 60 minutes before have to stop within that and then shift over to more of the you know the analog based things like reading a book working on breath work one of the best things that you can do is something called resonance breathing I think we talked about it a little bit before in the show but it's like box breathing that's rhythmic right so it's kind of box breathing might be four in pause four out pause and then repeat well um resonance breathing is rhythmic literally you're staring at a circle like on your Apple walk I've seen this and you breathe in when the circle expands and you breathe out as it contracts and so all it is is it what is it doing it's readjusting your nervous system that's all that it's doing but when you're doing that heart rate variability increases it's another metric to look at if you are consistently lower on your heart rate variability sleep is suffering restorative you know your body is not repairing it's not rejuvenating now if if HRV is consistently higher over a baseline your body most likely then is lower cortisol it's it's um producing proper sleep hormones now I know certain Labs typically you want to do with other labs and there's you know on the on the other hand there are Labs you can do by themselves is this one of those where you're like okay we're going to measure your cortisol before bed but we probably want to test these other things along with that so the Bedtime cortisol test which we just ran you know is a great entrylevel lab you know I love that it's an easy way to get started the stress mood metabolism test the one that you guys have run before is the full picture so when you look at that it's estrogen progesterone testosterone DHEA cortisol four times throughout the day free T3 free T4 TSH TPO antibodies for the thyroid vitamin D3 insulin hemoglobin A1c now it's a lot of numbers but why does it matter because you start to see cortisol's effects on the sex hormones and the thyroid before It ultimately becomes low itself in the morning so if we see DHEA drop below a six we know like listen this stress has been chronic it is affecting your immune system it's affecting the virility the strength of your body your Constitution and unless you do something now you're just going to start to see this gradual decline or a really quick decline if a major stressor happens in your life which is sometimes Financial sometimes it's like job career sometimes it's relationship based those are often triggers for disease because it's a greater stressor that just further depletes you but you were already depleted before like I got really sick when I was 17 I ended up with rheumat arthritis Edison's disease you know pots type two diabetes all sorts of issues but it's because for three years before that I was stressed in high school no doubt about that um but I was taking antibiotics twice a day for years right so it's like there was things preceding that and then yes my senior year taking my SATs you know trying to be a perfectionist trying to get a scholarship to college all those things was too much and I just my body just broke and so there's always a preceding reason okay who are the kind of who are the people that should take this test anybody who knows right now that they are suffering in performance or low mood low energy in the morning you actually want it before bed it really does matter because if your cortisol is elevated before bed it's what affects your mornings so poor performance uh poor sleep that you know of if you're not getting the REM and deep sleep and you're tracking right now this is an important one to look at I mean I feel like that would be a way to Rite Away it's like all these tools are so available right you use one of these tools if you see you're missing those numbers that you got to go take this test and get to the bottom of what's going on right right right so are you uh so you always are always so gracious you offer some tests or or hook up our audience are you doing something like that with us as we are so this one's at Steven cal.com bettersleep so our goal is to help people improve their testosterone levels naturally uh reduce their inflammation levels improve restorative sleep this is the same test they'll see at that page uh which is just again my website steam.com bettersleep and which we typically do for your audience is the first 100 of those per month is free and they just pay shipping oh beautiful appreciate it Dr thank you so much it's great always good talking with you guys awes all right I know you like that episode if you did check this one out 30% body fat for men this is way too high this is actually a bit high for women as well so in today's episode we're talking about how you can go from 30 to 10 what is 10% body fat this is when you have a visible sixpack can you go from 30 to 10% yes it's possible but not if you guess along the way so we're going to talk about how you can do that in today's episode now there's a huge range right of like body types some people can run uh a little bit heavier uh and or a little bit higher body