The Dr. Hyman Show - The Real Reasons We Have Trouble Sleeping with Dr. Todd LePine

Episode Date: May 8, 2020

Functional Medicine is all about looking at the way our systems function together, rather than focusing on one part of the body at a time. The steps you take to support whole-body health work in the same way. Diet, exercise, stress reduction—they simultaneously affect more than just one aspect of your health—and new research has revealed that choices around these things can have major impacts on our sleep, and how that cycles back to support overall optimal health. In this episode I sit down with Dr. Todd LePine to discuss why so many of us experience issues related to our sleep and what we can do about it. Dr. LePine graduated from Dartmouth Medical School and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, specializing in Integrative Functional Medicine. He is an Institute for Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner. Prior to joining The UltraWellness Center, he worked as a physician at Canyon Ranch in Lenox, MA, for 10 years. Dr. LePine’s focus at The UltraWellness Center is to help his patients achieve optimal health and vitality by restoring the natural balance to both the mind and the body. His areas of interest include optimal aging, bio-detoxification, functional gastrointestinal health, systemic inflammation, autoimmune disorders and the neurobiology of mood and cognitive disorders. Dr. LePine teaches around the world, and has given lectures to doctors and patients at American College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM), Age Management Medicine Group (AMMG), the University of Miami Integrative Medicine Conference, The Kripalu Center in Lenox, MA, and is on the faculty for American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M). Dr. LePine is the head of the Scientific Advisory Board for Designs for Health and a consultant for Diagnostic Solutions Laboratory. He enjoys skiing, kayaking, hiking, camping and golfing in the beautiful Berkshires, and is a fitness enthusiast. This episode is sponsored by my Sleep Master Class. In this modern world we place too much value on staying busy and deprioritizing sleep, which is why I have created my first ever Master Class. It guides you through the most important steps to getting better sleep, starting today. To learn more about the Sleep Master Class, head over to drhyman.com/sleep In this episode, Dr. Hyman and Dr. LePine discuss: The value in asking if you are waking up refreshed How artificial light at night disrupts hormones and sleep The importance of getting exposure to natural light in the morning How side effects from medication, caffeine, alcohol, eating late at night, and environmental toxins can all affect sleep Sleep hygiene routines The link between temperature and sleep Consequences of chronic sleep deprivation Sleep and the immune system EMFs (or electric and magnetic fields) and their effects on our physiology  Additional treatments for sleep issues For more information visit drhyman.com/uwc Products mentioned in this episode: TrueDark https://truedark.com/ Purity Coffee https://puritycoffee.com/ Oura Ring https://ouraring.com/ Chili https://www.chilitechnology.com/ 10-Day Reset https://getfarmacy.com/ Additional Resources: “Your Brain and Immunity: The Fascinating Connection You Need to Nurture” https://ultrawellnesscenter.com/2019/06/04/your-brain-and-immunity-the-fascinating-connection-you-need-to-nurture/ “Magical Magnesium” https://ultrawellnesscenter.com/2020/03/11/magic-magnesium/ “5 Strategies for Better Sleep” https://ultrawellnesscenter.com/2020/03/19/5-strategies-for-better-sleep-2/ “Why is my teenager so tired?: A personal story” https://ultrawellnesscenter.com/2018/09/25/why-is-my-teenager-so-tired-a-personal-story/ “8 Simple Hacks for a Better Night's Sleep” https://drhyman.com/blog/2016/04/13/8-simple-hacks-for-a-better-nights-sleep/ “Sleep Heals” https://drhyman.com/blog/2018/12/20/sleep-heals/ “Is Coffee Good or Bad for You?” https://drhyman.com/blog/2016/07/14/is-coffee-good-or-bad-for-you/ “Food Bites with Dr. Hyman – Nighttime Snacking” https://drhyman.com/blog/2015/05/15/food-bites-with-dr-hyman-nighttime-snacking/ “Food Bites with Dr. Hyman – What can I do to stay asleep and sleep more deeply?” https://drhyman.com/blog/2015/02/05/food-bites-dr-hyman-can-stay-asleep-sleep-deeply/ “Is There An Antidote to Stress?” https://drhyman.com/blog/2019/12/31/podcast-ep87/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Guess what? Your brain takes out the garbage at night. So if you're not getting good, deep, restorative sleep, you can't clean the brain. Welcome to The Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman, and that's Pharmacy with an F, F-A-R-M-A-C-Y. And welcome to this special episode called House Call. And it's about sleep today. And we are going to get deep into sleep, but we're not going to put you asleep, I hope. And I'm here with my good friend, colleague,

and partner at the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, Dr. Todd Lapine, who I've known for decades. We worked together at Canyon Ranch over 25 years ago, and he's been involved with functional medicine longer than I have, which is a long time. I really respect him. He teaches all over the world, is one of the leading thought leaders in the space of functional medicine, and welcome to the doctor's pharmacy. Thank you, Mark. All right, so this house call today is about sleep, which is a big problem. I think we have an epidemic of sleep problems. Yes, we do. So tell us, how prevalent is this? And what's going on with our sleep?

It is. So you bring up a really good thing. So, you know, most people when I ask, one of the big questions I ask them is, you know, how do you feel? Where's your energy level on a scale of 1 to 10? And, you know, do you wake up refreshed? And a lot of people are not waking up refreshed.

So I think what's happened is we're living... I'm refreshed after I have my coffee. Yeah, exactly. So I think what's happened is we're living... I'm refreshed after my coffee. Yeah, exactly. And I'm actually going to talk about coffee and how actually coffee works on interrupting that thing that triggers sleep, which I'll get to later. Wait, wait. Are you going to take away my coffee, Todd? Yeah. No, no, I will not. I love my coffee. I had two cups this morning. It's a legal drug that got me through medical school and my medical training.

Um, but anyway, uh, I think what we have in the modern society is a disruption of our sleep wake cycle. So when you look, I always, I always look at like 70% of Americans have sleep issues,

right? Absolutely. Yeah. So, so, uh, we have, uh,

into our, our bodies, our natural sleep-wake cycle, and that natural sleep-wake cycle is part of how we are as animals. So when you look at most animals, you know, what happens at nighttime, the sun goes down, what do they do? They go to sleep. They're not on their iPads. They're not on their iPhones. They're not on their computer. They're not on their television. They don't have a light bulb and they're not right in the refrigerator. All right. All right?

All of my cats running around at night looking for mice. Well, if they're nocturnal, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I think that, in my opinion, one of my experiences, artificial light at nighttime, I think is a big, is sort of the elephant in the room. And for people that have had sleep problems, one of the easy things that you can do that can help to fix that is to have a blue blocking lights

glasses at night. Yeah. I actually have them. I do too. Absolutely. So when you look at the... You look goofy, but you sleep good. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And it's actually in the medical literature and these LED lights have a very high blue spectrum. And blue light is the type of thing that sort of wakes your body up, and it suppresses melatonin. So melatonin, which we can measure, we can measure that easily in patients, is the hormone of darkness. So one of the times when I'm seeing patients, not only do I measure their sex hormones, their adrenal hormones, but I also measure their sleep hormone, which is their melatonin. Like at night, maybe.

Yeah, at night. So you actually can check it in the morning, and you can also check metabolites of melatonin. And your melatonin levels tell you whether or not you're getting enough darkness. So you can take melatonin, and as you get older, our bodies produce less melatonin. But the thing that you can do to boost your own melatonin is not expose yourself to light at night. So candles, back to candles?

Back to candles, yeah, exactly. Blue blocker glasses? Yeah, candles actually work quite well. Yeah, they do. But the LEDs on screens and all lights now, there are no more incandescent light bulbs. So what about the sort of night setting on the computer or iPad? Does that just go garbage? It doesn't cut the mustard.

It's not as good. But what if you wear the glasses when you use the screens? Yeah, and you'll know they work because when you wear the real ones that really cut out 99.9% of the blue light, you can see the difference. I did the other night. I was tired, but I put my glass on.

And my blue glasses I got from TrueDark. and you can go to truedark.com and you you put the glass on and i watched my movie on my computer in bed and i was like normally kind of mess with my sleep a little bit but it was like fine i guess had a great deep sleep yeah wow this is really amazing yeah i mean whatever you're going to do with computer whatever it, it's not going to look normal, but you will sleep a lot better. And I do that myself. And I actually, this is where it, where it really hit me about the, the effect of light is I was in New York city, uh, one weekend and I was giving a lecture and it was, you know, it was a Friday night and I was, I was lecturing the next day and, uh, I'm walking down, you know, just what are you doing in New York? You walk down day. And I'm walking down, you know, just what do you do in New York?

You walk down Broadway. So I'm walking down Broadway. It was about 10 o'clock at night. I did it for about a couple hours. It was like 11, 12 o'clock. Oh, yeah. And, you know, the lights on Broadway, I could not sleep that night. And that's where it really hit me as like, oh, my God.

I mean, this was obviously real, real bright LED lights. But it was phenomenal i just could not fall asleep wow could not stay asleep that's incredible and that sort of got me down that path of really understanding light so light is a big problem light pollution light pollution yeah exactly like i mean there was a book i read years ago called lights out yeah which describes the advent of chronic disease and obesity with a light bulb. Yes. And how that affects our sleep-wake cycles, how it affects our circadian rhythms, how it affects our hormones,

how it affects our metabolism, which is something we normally don't think about. Exactly. Especially in traditional medicine. We never learned about light. Exactly. But now, you know, there's... And one of the best things that you can do,

and I try to do this as often as I can, is early in the morning exposing yourself to light. So darkness tells you to go to sleep. Light tells your body to wake up. And exposing your eyes without, actually even without glasses, to the sun. I'm really a sun worshiper now. I'm sort of, you know, sun gazing. It's very, very powerful for setting.

You're blind, but you sleep fine. Yeah, right. Yeah, you're blind, but you sleep fine, exactly. But exposure to light shortly after you get up is one of the things that helps to synchronize and set your circadian rhythm. Every morning, my wife and I, we get up and we take the cats for a walk around the yard. Yes, our cats go for a walk. They're well-trained Burmese cats.

And we literally walk around and get the sunlight and spend 20 minutes out there just walking around the yard. And it's just so nice to get that sunlight in the morning. Exactly, yeah. And you want to do it relatively early, within about 20, 30 minutes of getting up and exposing yourself to the sunlight is very, very helpful for synchronizing your body clocks.

So that's one reason that people are having so many sleep issues. And what are other reasons people have sleep issues other than the light pollution? Sometimes it can be medications, medication side effects. Some of the people are taking these stimulants. So I'm tired. So here, your doctor gives you Ritalin or Adderall, and then that is a stimulant and it's sort of keeping you up. Excess amounts uh over

use of caffeine uh or having caffeine too late in the day um you know some people are very caffeine sensitive and you know they can't have any kind of tea or coffee yeah most people in general i'm going to say that you know if you have one or two cups of green tea coffee and it's early in the day it's not going to affect your sleep the half life of coffee is about six hours so in six hours half of its out and then those six hours a quarter of it nothing nothing afternoon exactly exactly nothing afternoon exactly and most people it's not gonna affect them and alcohol is a big alcohol is a big one in fact I had I was about to tell you about a case so I had a patient who was, you know, eating late at night. And that's

another one. That's another one, right? Another one. And that actually, I think, also affects sleep also. Because when you're sleeping, you don't want to be digesting. You really want to be in a fasting state. One is going to interrupt your sleep, and two is going to make you fat. Yeah, exactly. You're basically storing it instead of metabolizing. That's how sumos, right? The sumo diet. That's how sumos get fat. They eat and go to sleep. That's right. That was actually a chapter in my book. One of my first books, Ultra Metabolism, was called the Sumo Wrestler Diet. Right, because the sumos have a recipe for knowing how to put weight on, right? You eat and go to sleep. And it was a simple patient came into me and they were eating late at night. It was like eight, anywhere between eight to 10 o'clock at night. And they were having a couple of glasses of wine, you know, which, you

know, that sounds okay. Well, it was a combination of eating late at night and those two glasses of wine or alcoholic drinks. And very commonly, especially as you get older, maybe after 45, 50, you'll get what's called rebound insomnia. So the alcohol sort of relaxes you, whatever. But when it wears off, the brain sort of wakes up. And I started to experience this myself when I started turning 45, 50. And so I'm very aware of it. So any patient.

So you drink wine in the morning. You drink wine in the morning. Exactly. Happy hours at noon. So no coffee or wine after lunch. Yeah. Right. So, so one of the things that you do with patients is, you know, get them aware of their circadian rhythm or their sleep-wake cycle, the importance of light in the morning, darkness at night, and then also get them off for maybe two months of, get them off of all alcohol and all caffeine and sort of see where their where their baseline see where their baseline is and then it's for them to decide how much and

how often and when to have those those things which you know a good cup of coffee is pleasurable a glass of wine is pleasurable but too much too late is not a good thing yeah hey podcast community it's dr mark hyman and right now than ever, we need a strong immune system. And that is why I'm offering my eight-part sleep masterclass free to my entire community. If you want to get access to my free course and reclaim your sleep, go to drhyman.com forward slash sleep and sign up today free. That's drheimann.com forward slash sleep. And now let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy.

And there are other things that are sort of off the chart a little that people don't think about, but I had severe mercury poisoning and that really interrupted my sleep. So insomnia can be related to heavy metals and toxins, for example. It can be related to thyroid problems. toxins, for example. It can be related to thyroid problems. People have low-grade, low thyroid function. That can be a sleep disruptor.

Hormonal issues. Obviously, menopause is another one. Yeah, menopause is huge. Even like blood sugar issues. People who are diabetic or pre-diabetic, they can get hypoglycemia in the middle of the night. They wake some up, they get night sweats and hot flashes. So there's a lot of reasons people have sleep issues that are, you know, biological that you could fix. And even nutritional factors, low magnesium and other factors can be really a big issue. Exactly. Yeah. And it's interesting you say that because there are some people who will have a very big cortisol response at nighttime. So cortisol is the adrenal hormone, sort of your get up and go hormone. We're supposed to have cortisol rising as we wake up. And there's a test that we do called the cortisol

awakening response. So how much does your cortisol rise as you get up? Well, there are some people that will have problems with cortisol secretion at nighttime when it should be really, really low. And that's another thing that i think is is the important thing that interrupts people's sleep is excess amount of cortisol stress hormone at nighttime yeah that's what my wife yells at me for reading um a covet 19 news at night before bed so you're not gonna sleep yeah you're right but you're right you want you don't want to be watching scary things and stimulating things and get your adrenaline up before you go to bed.

And I think often we live a sleep-disruptive lifestyle. So we eat late. We drink. We have lots of lights. We engage in stimulating activities before bed. 24-7 news. We email before bed. We don7 news. Email before bed. We don't do things to wind down.

Just having a simple sleep hygiene routine. You know, I'm really religious about this, but at least an hour, maybe even two hours before, you turn everything off. Maybe I take a hot bath with Epsom salt. I put lavender drops in there because lavender actually reduces cortisol levels

to lavender essential oils. I've made my room completely black. I have a blackout shade. I even have eye shades. Ear plugs if you need them if you live in a noisy area. Yeah. I use those when I travel all the time. Blue bocker glasses.

So there's a lot of ways to structure your environment so that it's really good. It makes sure the temperature is right. Yeah. There's another clinical case. I had this older gentleman who had a whole bunch of different kinds of problems and had probably a little bit of early Parkinson's, mild sort of slowing down. He's in his late 70s. And he, on his own, found out that when he turned the thermostat down from 70 degrees to 64 degrees, he slept so much better.

And again, that's the other thing. What happens to animals at nighttime? They're actually out in nature. And guess what? We're animals too. That's true. We're actually designed to be out in nature. Yeah.

And that lowering of the temperature also, I think, is very, very good for inducing sleep. And I actually think, this is my own sort of theory, is that when you take the warm bath and then you go to bed in a colder environment, that shift of the temperature differential, I just get very relaxed when I do that. That's true.

I mean, the best sleep I had in years was I was doing backcountry skiing with my daughter last year in Utah in the middle of winter. And you're climbing up. So you exercise and get up in the hut. But you're sleeping in an unheated hut in a sleeping bag. And it's like 30 degrees. It's freezing.

But you get your hat on. I just love like a baby. And my wife and I have, this is a common debate. She actually had a comedy skit about this. I've seen that. How to go to bed in a winter coat with a hat on. And so we figured out this solution, which is this really cool thing called the Chili Pad. And it's something you can buy, which you put, it's filled with water.

It's like a water that goes through it and it cools it. It's like an air conditioned water. And I can have like 64 on my bed and she can be like 75 on the other side and like it's the best and I and I use that and I sleep great because in New York when I had an apartment the the the radiator was on I couldn't control the temperature in the winter you open the window it's too cold yeah so I had this thing it was like best invention ever and they have ones with different size you can like switch it for the guys yeah girl so it's it's really uh uh important to get the temperature right so there's all these really simple hacks.

And in the show notes for this podcast, there's going to be articles that have a lot of these things in them. So I think it's really important for people to kind of think about how do they optimize their sleep? Because why is sleep so important? And what are the consequences of chronic sleep deprivation? Sleep deprivation is obviously that one of the things is that if you have sleep deprivation, you get angry and irritable. You're very irritable. It actually affects the amygdala part of the brain, the primitive part of the brain. That's a sort of fighting kind of a thing. So when you see people who are chronic. Is America sleep deprived? Is that the issue here? Yeah.

Yeah. As our so hostile. We might even have the POTUS might be sleep deprived. Well, we know he is. Yeah, yeah. He could very well be. And so when you don't get good restorative sleep and, you know, they say that, you know, seven to eight hours is ideal. There are some people who need more. There are a little bit people who need less.

But most of the time you want to ask, I ask my patients, when you wake up, do you feel like your batteries are charged? Do you feel refreshed? That's really, I think, the key thing. And also looking at patients, how quickly can they fall asleep? It's not how much time you're in bed. It's like, can you fall asleep relatively easily? I had a patient the other day who was like, it takes me two hours to fall asleep. Oh, my God.

Why is that? Okay, then you've got to go down the laundry list. What are you doing at night that may be impairing that? Um, and then, uh, you just, you just need to, uh, have that good, good sleep hygiene. It's, it's, it's key. It's so important. And I think, you know, we know chronic sleep depression affects your mood, causes depression. It affects your risk of, for example, dementia. Your brain can't clean itself. You just brought the next thing. The danger of that is that what we found out is that our bodies, our brains are about 2% of our entire body weight, but they consume 20% of our energy in

the body. So they're highly metabolically active, which means that they also produce a lot of metabolic waste. Yeah. Exhaust, basically. Exhaust. Yeah. And the garbage. And guess what? Your brain takes out the garbage at night. So if you're not getting good, deep, restorative sleep, you can't clean the brain. There's a whole system in the brain called the glymphatic system, which is the lymphatics of the brain that allow you to take those metabolic toxic waste products out of the brain. And what happens is they sort of open up at night as you're sleeping. And if you are not getting good sleep, you're basically not taking the garbage out of your brain. Just like flushing the toilet in your brain. Exactly. And you get, you know what, for what? Exactly. So yeah, this is really important. So you get increased risk of brain inflammation,

increased risk of dementia, increased risk of depression. Your cognitive performance goes way down, which is striking. I remember the study I saw of sharpshooters, like basically snipers. And their accuracy was like 99% when they were awake with eight hours sleep. And then seven hours, maybe it was like 97%. And then six hours, like 80%. Five hours was like 50%. It was like a coin toss. Are they going to hit the target or not? Exactly. And then also the sleep deprivation is worse than alcohol. You're actually more

mentally impaired with sleep deprivation than you are being drunk. Yeah, I get that for sure. And I think we have to understand that sleep is not a nuisance or a waste of time. It's something to be cultivated and optimized. And it's critical to your health, your immune function. We're now in this age of COVID-19. And sleep is one of the best things you can do to make your immune system more resilient. So making sure you get enough sleep and understanding how to create the structures for you to sleep well. And then, you know, for those people who are not getting better on the sleep front,

even trying all these cool techniques and things we talked about, whether it's the blue blocker glasses or getting their sleep hygiene right or maybe me using a chili pad and their temperature right, all this stuff. If they're not getting better, there may be other reasons for it.

And that's where in functional medicine, we dig deep. We find heavy metals and thyroid issues, gut issues and nutritional factors that may play a role in sleep disruption. Yeah. And the other thing, and this is something that's probably not on the radar of most doctors and even also integrative doctors, is EMFs. So if anybody's gone camping, when you're camping out in the wilderness guess what you are not around electrical yeah that's what happened to you ty also didn't have any ems around exactly yeah yeah

so so uh and uh when you go out can't can't actually going camping for a week will help to reset your circadian clock and i also believe that when you're camping you're earthing you're grounding and you're actually on on the ground literally. And you also are not surrounded by EMFs. And I do know that EMFs affect our bodies in many, many ways. And I just- That's not all hype. It's not hype at all. I mean, when we measure an EKG, we're measuring electrical signals of our heart. When measuring an EEG, we're measuring electrical signals of our brain. So our brains, our bodies are bioelectric beings, and we interface and interact with energy signals, whether it's light, sound, or EMF vibrations.

And without question, they can affect our physiology. There's been evidence that EMF exposure can predispose towards more autoimmunity. And I do know that when you sleep and you ground yourself, you will sleep better. And my theory is, I think it's related to the fact that when you're in a building, you're around a lot of EMFs. Yeah, my wife got wind of this. In New York City, she got one of those EMF detectors. And it has this score on it, and you can see the green light is okay, yellow, caution, red is severe danger. In our apartment in New York,

it was severe danger all the time. Yeah. And then when we brought it close to our phone or other things, or to the Wi-Fi, it would kind of explode. And she decided she wanted to protect us, and she basically created a Faraday cage around our bed. Essentially got a special kind of cloth that blocks electromagnetic frequencies,

a special grounding sheet. She hung it over our bed. And if you go in there, you can't make a cell phone call. You can't get on Wi-Fi. You're like, it literally blocks everything out, which is really amazing. So we started using that in New York because in New York, there's so much. You go on anybody's router, and you'll see there's hundreds of Wi-Fi opportunities. Yeah, and without question, it's not like you can draw a blood sample

or get a urine sample to check EMFs. It's one of those things where you need this special device. And this is not voodoo stuff. This is not wacko, crazy stuff. This is real stuff. Our bodies are affected by electromagnetic signals. Some people have more sensitivities. Absolutely. I think there's just like everything. People are more gluten sensitive. People get more EMF sensitive. And I think there's a wide variety of how people respond. But if you're struggling,

these are the kinds of things to think about. And you think, what do psychiatrists do nowadays to treat refractory depression? They use pulse magnetic field to the brain. That's an energy. It's an energy signal, right? They don't even know how it works. They just do it. It's like they used to do ECT where they would paralyze you. This is a more modern version. Exactly. It's a more modern version.

Exactly. But it really shows you that our bodies have an interaction in some type of complex energetic fashion with our body. Yeah, it's so important. I think we see so many people struggle with sleep. They don't prioritize sleep. They don't understand how to get their bodies to sleep. They don't understand what their bodies require. All the things we talked about from dietary things,

whether it's getting off of sugar and starch. I have so many people do what we call the 10-day reset, which is like a... A lot of patients love it. And what's amazing is they report, am I sleeping better? You get off alcohol, you get a caffeine,

you get off sugar, you clean up your diet. And all of a sudden your, your hormones start being regulated properly. Your brain chemistry and your neurotransmitters start getting regulated and back in balance. And you start to sleep better and you feel better and you have more energy. And it's like, wow,

who knew that all these things were connected. And then the other thing, this is a very important thing, and this ties in with the coffee because you and I enjoy a good cup of coffee. The interesting thing about how coffee works is that coffee blocks adenosine receptors. And you were talking earlier about ATP. So the fuel of our body is ATP, adenosine triphosphate. So there's three phosphate groups attached to this molecule.

And as we go throughout the day, ATP gets degraded into ADP, which is two phosphate molecules, and then to adenosine monophosphate, and then to just plain old adenosine. As our bodies, and the more you exercise, guess what? The better you sleep. The reason for that is our body has a buildup of adenosine. So as our bodies go throughout the day, we're active. It's good to get more adenosine. Great. The adenosine will slowly build up. And then in certain parts of the brain that triggers the sleep mechanism. Well, guess what? If you look at the structural molecule, the caffeine fits into the adenosine receptor. So that's why it prevents us from feeling tired uh okay so i i just got this new

espresso machine uh does anybody in the market for a new expression so we can how about decaf is that okay yeah so that's that but you know again you know caffeine uh can definitely uh and actually there's actually some interesting thing about with with coffee intake uh epidemiologically uh you, a couple of cups of coffee actually have preventive effects for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. So it's not all bad. Not all bad. And the one thing I will say- It's the dose and the timing.

The dose and the timing, like anything. And the other thing that's really, I think, important with coffee is to make sure it's organic, because that's one of those highly sprayed things. Like strawberries, you don't want to eat if they're unless they're organic. Coffee is one of those things, you just don't touch it unless it's organic because that's one of those highly sprayed things like strawberries you don't want to eat yeah they're unless organic coffee is one of those things you just don't touch it unless it's organic very important yeah and there's some great companies out there that do this purity coffee is a great one I encourage people to check that out and I think I think you know we we are a society of sleep-deprived people we we think sort of lack of sleep is a badge of honor I certainly learned that in medical school

we don't learn how to prioritize sleep, how to practice sleep hygiene, how to identify the things as a practitioner of how to help people sleep. We give them medications and sometimes medications can be helpful, but they really do create a vicious cycle and a problem. Yeah, exactly. You're totally right. In fact, there was an article recently that came out with the chronic use of these benzodiazepines, increasing your risk for Alzheimer's. So the sleep medications, things like Triazolam and Ambien and those types of things, when you use them chronically, there's actually been an association with increased neurodegenerative conditions, even some of the anticholinergics, which are also used for... So you really, yeah, you want to use them very

carefully and judiciously. And there are some patients that may have some esoteric sleep disorders, things that we don't quite understand and may need chronic use of those things. But by and large, those things are to be used for a brief period of time. And then there's a lot of other things that you should have in your toolbox to be able to treat. And we do that at the Ultrawana Center. We use melatonin, we use magnesium, we'll use things like GABA, theanine, glycine. We'll use herbs like valerian, passionflower, hops. And we often see real improvement with these just simple treatments. I had a patient who was really struggling with sleep and I gave him one of the formulas we use here at the Ultra Wellness Center and it had melatonin and a bunch of herbs, valerian, this and that. And he said, I'm sleeping great. And

sometimes it's really simple. So I think we need to really focus and double down on our sleep. I think people are struggling with sleep out there. There is a way through, there is a way out. There's a lot of great ideas in our show notes. Come with this podcast. I encourage you to, if you're interested in struggling, we'd love to see you at the Ultra Wellness Center. We're doing virtual consults now so we can see anybody from anywhere in the world. Dr. Lapini, myself, Dr. Liz Boham, George Papanikolaou. It's an incredible team. We have nutritionists, health coaches. We have a really great team of physician's assistants. So we really can help you navigate a lot of this and figure out what's underneath.

So if you're not getting better with the typical stuff, it's time to sort of look towards a functional medicine doctor to get help. And we'd love to see you here at the Altra Wellness Center. So any last thoughts, Todd? I'll just end with a quote by Shakespeare. To sleep, perchance to dream, aye, there's the rub. And that's what we need to be doing is we need to be getting good sleep. And also one of the questions I ask my patients is, do you dream? Yeah. So you're not dreaming, you're not getting good sleep. And I see that you have

your, your aura ring on. So, yeah. So you got a nice, nice color. Look at that. I got that. And you can actually, the Delta sleep, which is where your body really restores itself. That's a deep restorative sleep, which you can measure measure we should compare notes here yeah we compare very competitive i got three hours i got two hours yeah it's interesting sometimes i get more deep and more rem and it's like i can notice how i feel differently and the temperature makes a big difference when i drink alkaline and my heart rate doesn't drop down it's really interesting yeah and some of these tools that like we we're talking about that give you a little bit of feedback as far as how your body's responding can be very motivating.

So great. So yeah, so there's lots of great tools. We'll put the resources for things like the Chili Pad and the Oura Ring and True Dark Light Block Glasses. All that's going to be in the show notes. We'd love you to take advantage of the things that are going to help you and get better. So if you love this podcast, we'd love for you to share this with your friends and family. Leave a comment.

We'd love to hear from you. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Thanks, Mark. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you all the experts that I know and I love

and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter.

I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays. Nothing else, I promise. And all you do is go to drhyman.com forward slash pics to sign up. That's drhyman.com forward slash pics, P-I-C-K-S, and sign up for the newsletter and I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger longer. Now back to this week's episode. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode.

Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services.

If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.