The Livy Method Podcast - Let's Talk Sleep, Stress and Hormones With Dr. Olinca Trejo - Fall 2024

Episode Date: October 3, 2024

In this Guest Expert segment, Gina discusses sleep, stress and hormones with Dr. Olinca Trejo. Dr. Olinca is a licensed, board-certified Naturopathic Doctor in the province of Ontario. She also holds an honours degree in Kinesiology and has achieved her certification and internship in bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT).You can find the full video hosted at:https://www.facebook.com/groups/livymethodfall2024Topics covered:Digging into how sleep and stress affect your ability to lose weight with Dr. OlincaHow sleep affects our body physically as we ageWhy should we care about sleep when we’re looking to lose weight?Sleep and hormones - the two are tightly linkedA good night’s sleep and its effect on blood sugars and insulin levelsSleep deprivation leads to weight loss from muscle rather than fatThe impact lack of sleep has on cravingsIt’s not willpower - being under-slept affects our decision-makingLack of sleep and the impact on thyroid function, testosterone levels and moodCortisol. adenosine and melatonin - sufficient sleep is needed for optimal levelsStrive for sleep quality to be better than yesterday - perfection doesn’t existMedications and supplements - is there something everyone should be taking for better sleep?Magnesium - the vast majority of us are deficient in magnesium The importance of working with your health care provider to address your sleep issuesInsomnia and when we just can’t sleep - the importance of re-evaluating our habitsAlcohol and THC - the impact they have on sleep, hormones and weight loss Restless leg - what can we do about it?Our goal - empower you to have the necessary conversations with your healthcare providerWhere to find Dr. Olinca - [e-mail] importance of getting the support you need from your healthcare provider To learn more about The Livy Method, visit www.ginalivy.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Gina Livy and welcome to the Livy Method podcast. This is where you'll have access to all of the live streams from my 91 day weight loss program. With a combination of daily lives, guest expert interviews and member stories, there is something new almost every day. Miss the morning live? Want to re-listen to one of our amazing guest experts? Well, this is the place. This podcast is hosted on Acast, but it's available on all podcast platforms, including the one you're listening to right now, Spotify, Apple,

and Amazon Music. This is an opportunity to become curious. And then some things, how do we help you feel less overwhelmed so you can continue on your journey? Keep believing in yourself and keep trusting the process. Just be patient. Trust the process, be patient. I love that. Okay, all this week we've been talking sleep and stress. How is it affecting your ability to lose weight?

How much do we really need to focus on it? We had Dr. Beverly David, clinical psychologist, join us on Tuesday to talk about the brain and psychology behind sleep. Alana McGinn, renowned sleep and stress expert, joined us for sharing tips on how to get better quality sleep. Today, Dr. Alenka Trejo in the house. Well, welcome. First of all, we're matching. I love that. It's a whole vibe. And it was unplanned. Yeah, we are a pink vibe, but you guys have to know anytime that we've matched on the show, it is completely unplanned. But now I think that we should plan this. This is a vibe. I think so too. It's a whole vibe. The conversation today, I mean, I'm sure it'll evolve into something completely different, but how does sleep or lack of sleep impact your weight loss journey

in a sense of how is it affecting your body physically? How is it affecting the way your body's processing and digesting foods? How is it affecting your hormones, which I know is a big, huge conversation? Would you say that's the conversation or would you have something else to add? Yeah, no, I think that it's really important for people to understand how important sleep is for everything. Like, you know, I think that, and I meant this when we were all having a panel discussion, when you were asking for tips and I was like, you guys, you need to sleep. It sleep is the best life insurance policy that you can buy. It is the cheapest life insurance policy that you can buy. And they're legitimately the studies show that the shorter your sleep, the shorter your lifespan, right.

And the poor your health span and your quality of life. And so I, I think that often, especially as we transition through our age and our stress and all of these things, we start placing less importance on sleep. And I think that the one takeaway that I hope that everybody walks away with today is that there, as you age, it actually needs to become more important than, you know, and so all of these sleep hygiene things that we're talking about, and all of these changes that we're talking about, you really need to invest into it, because your body doesn't have the same capacity to just let you get away

with murder and little sleep as it did before. And I think that you and I will chat about this, but it can the sleep deprivation that's chronic in our society, because legitimately, I don't, there's very few patients that come into my office that I'm like, oh my God, your sleep sounds great. Like this is amazing. We don't have to fix anything. It's, I think it's a little bit of an epidemic and I think as a result of it there, it can impact things like, you know, from your immune system and your cardiovascular system and all of these things, but truly it's your hormones and and your ability not just to regulate the things that will help you be successful in this program and successful in life in general. Right. But it's about losing the weight, keeping the weight off, making sure that the weight that you lose is coming from the right place, because it also impacts where you're losing weight from, of course.

And also a lot of the emotional component that we go back to and Dr. Beverly talked about on Tuesday, right? And so I just, I hope that you walk away feeling empowered with some tips and some tricks and all of these things and also walk away feeling like, oh, I probably need to like really focus on this just as much as I need to focus on the snacks and the food and the food and the movement and everything else. Yeah. Isn't that it though? Trying to get across how important to how

vital it is, not just to weight loss, but health and wellness, and then also not stress everybody out. A hundred percent. Yeah. It's like, you know, it's like you guys, I can give you symptoms. I don't want to stress you out about you living shorter and like your testosterone decreasing if you don't sleep enough. But you know, like I grew up when I was in Mexico, like I remember like my dad, love you dad. But like my dad grew up in like a very macho culture that was like, no, like men don't need to sleep as much.

And like my sister and I would see him like sleep on the couch like this, you know, at like six o'clock. He was like, no, like sleeping is a waste of your time. sister and I would see him like sleep on the couch like this you know at like six o'clock he was like no like sleeping is a waste of your time sleep and I'm dead 100% I'll sleep when I'm dead and now we're like eating all of them we're like well it like actually if you don't sleep you die and so maybe we need to sleep a little bit more but yes okay but let's bring it back to weight loss because I know this is like what people want us to talk about. Okay. Now maybe it's too big of a question or conversation to have from the get, we have to break it down, but why would people care about sleep when they're trying to lose weight? Like why bother focusing on sleep when they're trying to lose weight? Cause you know, calories in fact, calories out, eat less, exercise more. Obviously

we're not doing that here. There is a food plan, you know, drink your water, take your supplements. I'm going to ask you about supplements and sleep too in a bit. But why would people care about sleep when they're trying to lose weight? Yeah. So I think that maybe it's easier to understand what happens when you don't sleep. And I will say that the things that we actually see is that when you don't sleep, everything kind of falls apart in your body. Of course, that I will always bring it down to hormones. So I will start with a hormone conversation. Okay. Actually know that sleep and hormones are very tightly linked, right? And problems with one usually give you problems with like the other one. And let's start with like the very basics of it,

right? Which like, we know that there's like this huge conversation around blood sugar and insulin and fat and all of these things. And so when you don't, and let's talk about what not sleeping means, right? And like this context, because there are what Dr. Matthew Walker says, like the four macros of sleep, which is the quantity, the quality, the regularity and the timing. And so all of these problems in how much you're sleeping, how good your sleep is, how regular your sleep is, or the timing, right? Of like your sleep with your circadian rhythm is in and out. That can all lead to the problems that we're going to talk about, right? Because I don't want people to think that it's just like, oh, I must get eight hours of sleep. Like, no,

it's about getting like really good sleep and really good bang for your buck in those. And so let's talk about like, just like weight and like breaking down by hormones. And so when it comes to hormones, if you're underslept, your pancreas specifically, which is the organ that actually releases insulin, which is a hormone that regulates to an extent, a lot of this blood sugar regulation, and then helps your cells either store into an extent, use sugar, or you store it as fat. What happens is that your pancreas, specifically when you're not getting like that, that deep restorative sleep that we need, right? That's like just before the rapid eye movement sleep. It doesn't actually release as much, or it doesn't really release an appropriate amount of insulin for the next day. And then what happens is that for the, to the insulin or the hormone that it actually releases,

your cells don't really listen to, to the insulin message as much. And so what happens is that when you're underslept when it comes to insulin you become impaired almost at like both ends of the blood sugar regulation because your pancreas is secreting an abnormal amount of insulin and then your cells are like really not listening to the message and we've done studies with this that say that you know if I just take a set of healthy individuals and I sleep deprive them for I think it's four nights to five hours or less, their glucose regulation will be about 40 percent less or more impaired than it was than they were when they were sleeping properly, which actually throws the majority of those people into the pre-diabetic state, right? And I mean, if you're

already in that borderline where you're like, well, my doctor is like telling me that I need to lose weight. And part of the reason as to why I'm here is because I have a strong history of diabetes or, you know, my blood sugar is spiking or whatever. The best thing that you can do is actually sleep because it is one of the risk factors for pre-iabetes and metabolic syndrome. Okay. So let's break it down in simpler terms. So if I had a great night's sleep and I ate my breakfast, as opposed to I had a crappy sleep and ate the same breakfast, what's the difference going to be?

If you have a good sleep and an adequate, like a great breakfast, your body takes that breakfast and it's like, Oh, this is amazing. I'll use this. I'll store this. Like, this is perfect. I'm going to like, you know, it's almost like it uses your food appropriately and it doesn't just like lock it up as like fat, right? When you don't sleep properly, what will happen is that just from this, this one hormone, because we're going to is that just from this this one hormone because we're going to get into other ones into this one hormone what will happen is that your insulin is going to be way higher your cells are not going to be as receptive to the message of that hormone and then when you eat that breakfast what's going to happen is that it's almost like your cells are

like no no no no i don't know what you're doing here like i don't i don't want this i don't want this i don't want this and, your body just has to put that sugar somewhere and it will put it usually as fat around your liver and your abdomen. So it's almost like instead of using up what you're, what you're eating, you're storing it up as fat. Okay. Is this would be the, would, would this be an example of insulin resistance? Yep. That's exactly. That's actually why when you're under sleeping, people in the studies that we've done, and their glucose regulation actually is about 40% less than it was before.

It actually throws them into that pre-diabetic insulin resistance state. Okay. All right. So when you're tired, it's easier to gain weight and harder to lose weight if you're not getting sleep. Not when you're tired, when you're seriously sleep deprived. I mean, I would imagine this is where it comes in. And one of the factors that attributes to weight gain and menopause, because women aren't sleeping, yes, there's muscle mass, yes, there's hormones, there's other reasons, but I would imagine this would be one just layered on top of many. So if you're not sleeping because of all these about the living method, but like, you know, the, the like severe calorie restriction diets that we often do in these studies. Yeah. There's a ton of studies

on that. So if you are not sleeping, um, usually the people that are underslept, they lose about, uh, 50%. I think it's like 55% of the weight that they lost actually comes from, um, muscle rather than fat. And so it's, it's so it's so interesting, because even if you take two people who are on the exact same diet, that people that are not sleeping are not losing as much weight, and the way that they are losing, it's actually from muscle mass rather than fat, right. And the other part of the equation is that it also lowers the likelihood of successful weight loss, long term, in part because of that insulin sensitivity that we were talking about. Right. The other part of it that you discuss a lot, actually, even like without this conversation, is the impact that it that under sleeping has on your hunger and your satiety hormones. Yes. Yeah. Right. Because we know, we know that we're going

to talk, we're going to do an entire module on this, but an entire live on this, but what will happen when you're underslept is that as almost like a survival mechanism, your body will increase your hunger cues and decrease your satiety cues, which means that if you didn't sleep the next day, you're going to feel way hungrier. And we talked to you. I mean, part of this program truly is like, listen to your body and your hunger cues. You can't do that. Yeah. Or you need to understand if you, if you had a crappy sleep, right. It's going to, it, it will affect your, affect, you're more likely to crave carbs and sugar all day if you've had a crappy sleep. Yeah.

I mean, we touched on this with Dr. Beverly talking about how it affects your brain, affects the choices that you're making. It affects your emotions. It affects your hormones. It affects your body physically. Okay. So when you are not sleeping or that chronically sleep deprived, your body is processing the foods you are eating differently, and you're more likely to crave higher sugar, higher fat, high salty types of foods, and or you are actually feeling hungrier than normal? You know, for most people, it's actually both things that happen in tandem. And one of the coolest studies that they've done,

and I'm going to try to simplify it to not go on a tangent, but when we undersleep people and we actually look at centers in their brain that control a lot of emotions, right, and emotional regulation and what we call hedonic eating, which is more of that I'm eating for pleasure rather than I'm eating because I'm hungry. When you're underslept, we actually see a significant increase in that signaling of almost like hedonic eating where your brain is actually not just saying because of these hormones uh you know i'm hungrier i i don't i'm not as satisfied with what you're giving me it's like give me all of the things that are going to give me pleasure and maybe give me a little bit

of dopamine and maybe not make me feel as crappy and it's in 99.9% of us, that's going to be ultra processed, high fat, high sugar, crappy food that is doing nothing for you, but increase those cravings and almost like just keep you in that hamster wheel. Right. And I mean that, that obviously this is what we're trying to also like get you out of so that you're a little bit more conscious of those choices and things like that. But there is a physiological, neurological component to that, that I think is so important that we also understand that just sleeping can set us up for success because, and I think that Dr. Beverly talked about this, we also see that the first thing that usually happens when you don't sleep is that your motivation goes out the window. Yes. Yes. And so that's hard because it's, you know, the choices that you're making, especially if this isn't, this is your first rodeo and this

is the first time that you're really learning about food choices and like what you should be eating. And you're trying to break bad habits with your food. When your motivation is out the window, you're hungrier and you feel like eating that like donut or whatever it is that like makes you feel good. Even if it's momentarily, it's going to be a lot harder for you to be like, well, Gina said. Yes. Well, this is why this week is built into yes. On top of our maximizing conversation, which encompasses all the other things you can focus on besides what you're eating and when and water and supplements. But this is why we put it

in during this mindfulness week, this week of mindfulness or awareness, whatever resonates with you. I love this comment from Sandy, who's joining us live. I had never considered that before, but that may explain some of the days I make bad choices. Yes, absolutely. And I think with dieting, people think it's willpower. It's willpower. It's willpower. No. So this is where you understand, okay, I had a crappy night's sleep last night. Maybe your weight is up, right? Because you didn't get a great sleep either, not real weight gain, but then your cravings feel like they're out of control. You feel off. You're really tempted to just go for a quick fix or whatever here and there in terms of

foods. That's why. And so bringing awareness, it's like, okay, how do I feel today? What's going on? How was my sleep last night? Okay. So note to self, I am tired, right? That's why I'm craving carbs and sugar. What can I do? Make sure I drink my water, up my protein and fat, make sure I'm consistent with the foods that I'm eating, or even just understanding you're edgy or you have that extra hunger or craving because you got a crappy night's sleep. You can deal with that. You can deal with that. A hundred percent. Yeah. And you know what? And I think that like, I mean, not even just addressing the emotional piece, because I think that's actually really important, but even from a hormonal piece, because I get asked always about things like thyroid, right? And they're like, I, you know i i would i i would say that the the when when it comes to weight loss i always

want it to be the thyroid and almost never is um but even chronic under sleeping can impact the way that your body activates your thyroid hormone right so the conversion between the inactive t4 to t3 is actually completely impaired if you're not sleeping well. I know Dr. Paul talks a lot about the gut microbiome, but there's really interesting research right now saying that the lack of sleep can actually alter your microbiome and favor more of those fermented species that give you a lot of the bloating and like really super stinky gas are tied more to that small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. And men, you know, because I know that we always, I have this terrible tendency of turning everything

to perimenopause and menopause. But even for men, if you take a group of healthy young men in their 20s and their 30s, and you sleep deprive them for five nights, literally, it can only take five nights, they will actually have a level of testosterone that's about that ages them by about 10 years, which means that their levels of testosterone will be of somebody who's about 10 years or senior. And so even that on its own, it's, it's so mind blowing, because the lack of sleep can actually age you, right? It's not just about in testosterone is also so important, right, for weight loss. But the one thing that I think is so interesting that you've brought up with the emotional control is that, you know, the thing about sleep that I even find in like my life, not even when it comes to motivation and food choices, is that it will

make you the lack of, the absence of adequate sleep, I'm going to say, can make you abnormally overreactive to like negative stuff. And then you're equal hypersensitive to like reward based things. Right. And so I know this happens to you, but like to me, if somebody, you know, it's not even just about like making the food choices, but like sometimes it's just like everything just is like annoying. And sometimes I've been underslept and I've been like i don't want to take drinks of five liters of water like i don't want to have any more of these veggies you know like it's not even the like i would love the donut it's more of the like this is everything's annoying like i'm not gonna stick to this plan like this is different and so it's just i think that it's just so important for people to just be aware

of you know if that's happening to, you can sit down now and go in your living journal and be like, Oh, what about my battery? You know, maybe my battery's all the way on this end. And like, what could that happen? What could I change? And sometimes it just means like just sleep a little bit better. Yeah. Or cut yourself some slack. If you're not getting sleep, okay. You're not going to fix this overnight, but cut yourself some slack. Or if you're having a harder time losing weight or you feel like your cravings out of control. I think that I think I'm just such a massive fan of deeper level of understanding. If you know what you're dealing with, then that's, that's your way in. Again, yes, we all want to lose our weight

like yesterday. But I just want to change people's perspectives and understand there's a lot going on here when you are trying to lose weight. Okay. So any other area where it's affecting your body before we talk about what to, what you can do about it, any other area that's affecting your body, your digestive system, your hormones, your brain that we should really get into before we start the conversation on what to do about it? I mean, my, one, honestly, is cortisol. And my favorite one is cortisol because there's, I think that there's the stress component and the impulsivity and a lot of what we're talking about, reward seeking. The studies really point towards like two areas of your brain. One is called the amygdala and one of us call it the prefrontal cortex, which I know

Dr. Beverly touched us on and you and I are going to talk about uh in the lives when we talk about hormones but the other part is cortisol right and if we just take it back to the fact that your sleep is regulated by really three things because i think that a lot of the tips on you and i talk about will kind of boil down to this but it's regulated by three things one of them is going to be melatonin which everybody knows about and everybody wants to take because they think that that's going to fix their hormones and their sleep. But we'll talk about that. The other one is cortisol, which a lot of us have heard about, not probably in the context of sleep, but probably in the context of stress. And another one is called adenosine, which is more of like this neurochemical ways that you produce as you kind of spend energy through the day that creates a lot of the sleep pressure but to boil it really down into uh i guess like very simple terms um melatonin you actually produce early in the day and almost like the red spectrum light that

you see first thing in the morning and you like your brain kind of stores it right in a specific part of your brain uh and it's cortisol actually which is the hormone that yes it's a stress hormone and yes it can cause belly fat and yes yes yes all the things that well most of the things that you hear about uh on social media but cortisol is also amazing because cortisol is a hormone that wakes you up in the morning feeling like i'm ready to go it peaks about an hour after you wake up and then through the day it decreases and it should decrease uh enough that then your brain is like oh i think it's i think it's nighttime right because cortisol actually has the break on melatonin and as soon as cortisol starts decreasing then

melatonin can increase right because it's almost like that the uh foot comes off of the break decreases melatonin is rising it's all. So I just want to stop right there because hormones are like your chemical messengers in the body. And Dr. Alinka is going to be back in the next couple of weeks talking about hormones 101. She's going to talk about what hormones are, how they all work together. Michelle's going to back talk specifically about menopause and all that as well. So specifically you know sticking to sleep okay because we all hear about court we hear about insulin we hear about cortisol we hear about all those things so if you are like what is cortisol what is insulin just follow along with the conversation today and then you know

when we have that bigger conversation on hormones it's all going to come together and make a lot of sense oh it's going to be chef's kiss yeah But when it comes to this, it's cortisol because a lot of the times, you know, when it comes to sleep dysregulation, when we, again, don't have the quantity, the quality, the timing, or the regularity, there will start becoming a lot of problems with cortisol, right? Because cortisol is a regulator of that circadian rhythm and that sleep. And so you're going to start seeing changes in your release of cortisol through the day, your release of cortisol through the night. And so a lot of the times when you are not sleeping efficiently, I'm going to say because of those macros, your cortisol throughout the day is also going to be all over the place. And you really truly need that deep restorative sleep in order to deactivate that fight or flight response that we are constantly

like in and activate a little bit more of that resting, digesting, reproducing, right? Which is actually why if you also don't sleep well things like high blood pressure right can peak and like and there's like a lot of the cardiovascular component because your body never really gets a break from constantly being on just like waiting for something to happen and so then the next day if you've underslept the next day your cortisol tends to be usually at least at the beginning a lot higher and so you're not just going to be more overreactive to that stimuli, but also when it comes to weight loss, right? That cortisol response and that high cortisol is telling your body like, hey girl, you got to store those carbs because there's a

bear that's about to eat you at any given point. And so like, you can't use them right now. We got to store them as belly fat. Yes. Yes. And so I just, I just got, I got sidetracked. I'm reading this conversation as someone's like, I'm ready about plateaus, but still discouraged not to see any weight loss. I mean, this is what these conversations are about. People are still, first of all, you want plateaus, you need plateaus. If your weight is dropping, your body's got to adjust to that. But then the other side of it, everyone's like, tell me what to do to lose weight. I want to lose weight. Why is the scale not moving? You can focus on all the foods and do all that perfectly. But if you're not sleeping, right, your sleep is, your sleep is out of whack, you know, that, or you're super high stress,

your cortisol levels are all jacked up or too low. That's going to impact. And that's what the, listen to these conversations that we are having. I'm also hearing, watching a lot of questions about sleep hygiene questions. I'm a shift worker. What do I do? I'm a new mom. What do I do? We've covered these in the last couple conversations that we had with Dr. Beverly David on Tuesday. We also talked to them with, about them with Alana McGinn, who gave us a lot of strategies and a real understanding. Should I nap? Should I not nap? Should I take melatonin? Should I not take melatonin, right? So if you miss those conversations, this is a real well-rounded conversation. And Dr. Link is rounding it out for us now.

So you might have missed that. Today, we're getting more into the physical impact and really understanding what lack of sleep does or why you need sleep. But I'm going to get into, now that we've covered those issues, get into what can you do about it? So we're going to talk, we're going to talk supplements. We're going to talk about, you know, like what, you know, we're going to talk about, like we'll talk about some things like Russell's legs and stuff like that as well. But if you didn't listen to those two conversations,

you definitely want to take time to do that. So, okay. I just want to say that. All right. A lot of people in the back. Yeah. Right. Because I think people don't, again, this is like, people don't take into account their sleep. They're like, I don't know. I'm doing everything. I'm drinking the water. I'm eating the food. Why is my weight not moving? Meanwhile, they haven't slept for weeks and their stress levels are through the roof. Yeah. And like, they're like on their phone before bedtime or they feel anxious and then they have some alcohol because that disrupts their sleep or they have too much caffeine, which also impacts their sleep.

I know. And this is honestly, this is, I think, why I love this conversation, because it is it is increasingly like working on all of those things and working on the tiny little things that improve your sleep quality is so important as you age. And when we talk about even like, you know, female hormones and menopause and like how, you know, through your lifespan, actually, what will happen is that your sleep on its own without you doing anything, even if you had like the most perfect sleep, you end up sleeping a little bit less and your sleep becomes lighter, more fragmented. It becomes less efficient. And so you cannot get away with all the things that you think you can get away with. And there's even, even if you're a shift worker and you're a new mom and you feel like you have no time for yourself at the end of the day, like you can all do little things to

improve the quality of your sleep. So that is just better than what it is that it was yesterday. That's all it needs to be. It doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to be better than what it was yesterday that's all it is okay so covered a lot in terms of hormones anything else before we move on in terms of like what you can do about it um no i think you know i think that we're going to cover a lot of it at when we talk about the uh perimenopause and menopause conversation in a couple of weeks, because I do think it's very, very, very important for women to also understand that we are way more

likely to develop sleep disorders as we age. And I want to discuss that, like why and like very thoroughly. But it is true that we are twice as likely to actually develop sleep disturbances over our lifetime than men right we're twice as likely to develop things like restless legs right like we are way more likely to develop insomnia in that perimenopausal transition and about half of us actually go on to have chronic insomnia and so this is the most important week maybe for you, for you to really start focusing on this because we all have hormones, right? And this conversation that you and I have had before where people are like, well, I'm postmenopausal. This doesn't apply to me. It's like, no, no, you still have the hormones that sleep, you know, impacts negatively or favorably.

And so you can choose actually to, which is why I say that it's actually, it's, it's the best life insurance that you can buy for yourself because there's absolutely nothing that sleep doesn't touch. And there's all of the things in your body calibrate from your memory to your immune system, to your hormones, to your cardiovascular system, to like everything calibrates when you recalibrates when you're asleep, because it's the only time that almost your body shuts down in some respects, right? In some respects that can be, your brain can be a little more active, but that's actually when you learn and you consolidate a lot of this stuff that's happening is to just give yourself your best chance. Just like listen to this week, like apply, even if you just applying like a couple of things. Yeah. And then whether your, your, your sleepless nights are due to cognitive behavioral therapy issues, where they are your thoughts and your anxiety and what is going on there, whether they are your sleep habits or whether you are a new mom or you are a shift worker or your hormones are

all out of whack, there's a lot in here to create a lot of opportunities for you to level up your sleep that much more, to get that your sleep that much more to get that deeper sleep that much more. Okay. What do we like? Do we take what medications supplements? Do we start there? Or? Yeah. Okay. What can I do? We can talk about anything? Yeah. You tell me. Give it to me. What can I do to get better sleep? What is the foundation? Like, what do you find yourself most suggesting? Like, is there a one everybody should just like blanket supplement that everyone should be taking in order to get better sleep?

Oh, I know. I know. Okay. Listen, it depends as to why we're not sleeping and what I'm trying to fix in their sleep, right? Which goes back to like, again, if it's the quality or the timing or whatever. And I don't want to over focus on this because I know that you guys have heard about the importance of the sleep hygiene from sleep experts, like legit sleep experts. But I really, truly just like them cannot emphasize the fact like more, the fact that your sleep hygiene

is the best pill that you could take and you keeping your sleep as regular as possible is also the, like the second, probably best supplement that you could take. Right. So, so I, I want, I want to really bring as much awareness to that, that there's, that is way more important than anything that you're taking. I also want to talk about how there's not really a one size fits all because there's so many things that are impacting sleep, right? For some people, it can be anxiety. For some people, it can be, I mean, not on this program. It better not be on this program. But like sometimes when you're over restricting be, I mean, not on this program, better not be on this program. But like,

sometimes, when you're over restricting carbohydrates, for example, right, like that can impact your sleep, but you're not doing this on the living method, because we're teaching you not to do that. We if you know, if, if you have hot flashes, or temperatures of regulation, like there's so many reasons as to why we're not sleeping. I will say that the vast majority of people, if you're just like, if I had to try one thing for everybody, magnesium is where it's at. And I know Dr. Paul covered this. I know. I know Dr. Paul covered this.

And there's a bunch of different types of magnesium. And we love magnesium citrate because it's really well absorbed. It's very cost effective. It does, honestly, I do find that most people that take it report that the quality of their sleep is better. And they just feel like, even with sleep scores, right? If they're wearing a wearable, they're like, look, like my efficiency is a little bit better, right?

If the reason why you're not sleeping is more like anxiety and stress sometimes we'll recommend instead of a magnesium citrate a magnesium glycinate or bisglycinate or threonate that actually crosses the blood brain barrier but i would say that as a blanket statement if it was like the one thing and the thing about magnesium is that the vast majority of us truth of the matter is that we're um deficient in magnesium and it's actually something really safe for most of us right because the only real side effect is that with citrate specifically because we never really take oxide but citrate if you take too much you'll get diarrhea but

like outside of that there's not really major contraindications but so it's like a really nice safe one um that we really really like if if it's more of like that stress response and you feeling like you know my cortisol is really really high a lot of the times we actually have to do stuff throughout the day to help you regulate your cortisol not just at bedtime and one of the things that I see often when people come to my office and they're like, I've been taking all of these things for sleep is that we take them too close to sleep. And a lot of these things take about an hour to two to really get into your system. Right. And so if you're taking something for stress and expecting it to work within 10 minutes, like girl, like you gotta go back a

little, cause like it's, it's not magic, right. It's not the best of the acid. Yeah. So I would say that things like ashwagandha or lavender or kava or, uh, honestly even, um, uh, valerian root that a lot of people take. Sometimes what I do find is that they work in specific contexts, but a lot of the times people feel like they don't work because they don't time it appropriately. And so when you're taking these herbs, it's like super important to talk to your healthcare provider to like figure out not just the timing, but if it's right for you, because you need to figure out why you're not sleeping in the first

place. Yeah. I want to, you mentioned the healthcare provider. So this conversation is not prescriptive. This conversation is bringing awareness. You should really, if you're having sleep issues, go talk to, at the very least, your pharmacist, your own healthcare providers when adding anything like this in magnesium. Yes. I mean, most people are deficient. That's an easy add for the most part, safe for everyone. The citrate is great, but there could be better ones out there given your stress levels or what you're dealing with. The glycinate might be a better way to go or combine them to a retina. That's a pretty generalized catch-all. It's usually good for everybody.

But when we get into specifics, we are bringing awareness to this conversation. So if you're like, well, what did you say and what did you get and all those, what should I take? You know, this really is a conversation for your healthcare provider. But we're just letting you know there's options. There's things that you can do. I do that. What did you call it? Valeria route. I do that. God awful, disgusting Valerian drops. Oh my God, that shit is rank. But I take it, drops in my water that I take. Listen, I'm trying anything and everything right now to get my sleep. But I'll tell you what my best sleep of my life was when I was in the hospital a few years ago.

I had some rare reaction to something and I basically was building myself back up again. And I couldn't have coffee. I couldn't have wine. I couldn't have any cannabinoid reactive foods, like no cabbage, no chocolate, no nothing. My diet was so basic and plain. I was so tired. I was going to bed real early, getting up early. I was doing all of it. I'd never slept better in my entire life because my health depended on it. And then all of a sudden, life starts creeping in, stress starts creeping in, pollen, all this stuff creeping in, late night movies creeping in, all of a sudden you know life starts creeping in stress starts creeping in pollen all this stuff creeping in late night movies creeping in all of that so i i know that feeling a lot of us feel like oh there's no way i could get that sleep you can it just could be that you

got to work at it you got to work at it yeah you do and you know and i i mean, I'm, I'm, I'm, uh, the poster child of this. I, uh, I had really awful insomnia for like debilitating insomnia, I would say for like two or three years. So when I talk about sleep, like, let me tell you, I've tried everything. Um, and for me, it was very stress induced. It was when my husband was at, we had to move to Boston because he was doing a specialty and it was like COVID. And there was just like so many things that were happening in our lives. And I like, I vividly remember, I literally went to my doctor just having a panic attack being like, I haven't slept for like five days. And I know that I haven't slept. And it's just that, that desperation that happens. And I was like, just give me anything, like get me a benzodiazepine, like give me

propofol. Like, I don't care if I die, like Michael Jackson, like just give me anything, like give me a benzodiazepine, like give me propofol. Like, I don't care if I die like Michael Jackson, like just give me anything. Like I was that it honestly was just that because I think that there is sometimes it's awful. And I had this very enlightening conversation with my doctor. And she said, like, you know, we need to look at not just like you're asleep, but we just need to look at like all of the other stuff that you're doing. Right. And like as a survival mechanism, I was over caffeinating. I was like super depressed and super anxious. So I was over medicating with alcohol at the end of the day. I was like constantly like scrolling on social media, which was like activating my amygdala too much. I was not doing any of the strategies that I knew that I needed to be doing

because I was just so anxious and so in my head that I just couldn't, I wasn't exercising. Like I was when I, and I really truly mean this, even as a healthcare provider, like my husband was like, I don't know how to help you. And I just had to come to that term almost like you, you did, where I was like, if I don't fix this, like I'm, I legit think that I'm going to die. I aged 15 years and I just, I had to put in the work and it wasn't easy for me either. Even though I preach about, I mean, I preach about this now, but like, it was so hard because I had to give up so many of the habits and reconstruct a day in my life that was in line with who I wanted to be, not with who I was at that moment. And it made me, it forced me to reevaluate so many things that were very uncomfortable for me. Yeah. Yeah. And that's,

I love that. Yes. I mean, I love that you went through that, but I love that you say that because it is uncomfortable to have to make changes. And just because we are, you know, we deal like we help people and I, you know, we're, we're sharing all these tips. Doesn't mean that we don't struggle with our own habits, our own coping mechanisms, our own issues. When we tired, we're not making great decisions either. Right. That's why we need to have this conversation now. So we all understand. Exactly. Prevent getting to that point. Um, what are you talking about? Go ahead. No, sorry. But I was i was gonna say and i don't know if you feel like this but like it's also a constant struggle to be who you want to be right like

you're constantly working at it it's not that like i learned it and then i was like i reached nirvana and like i'm never going to do this i'm never going to crave a glass of wine before bed like f caffeine like no it's still like a decision that you make every day and sometimes you fall back and you're like oh god yeah i, yeah, I need to do this. So, like, don't think that, like, we're telling you this and we don't continue to work at it. Like, I love wine just like everybody else. Like, I'm not, you know, on some pedestal being like, alcohol, what? Like, no, of course I do.

I love caffeine. I'm Mexican. My mom probably gave me caffeine and IV when I was little. Like, you know, so I do just know that like everything that we're saying this week, every week actually, but especially with this conversation,

we're saying it with like love and empathy and compassion because we know. Like we know where you're at and we want you to get better because we want you to be here. And we're not martyrs up here either. Oh God, no.

No, no, no. Okay, please. Yeah. Let's talk about wine. Let's give it to us straight. And THC or CBD. Can we smoke weed? Can we drink wine?

Your honest thoughts about how it's impacting, not just your health, but let's talk specifically weight loss. Right now, when I work with clients, I used to say about alcohol, I've never really had clients who had to cut it out but it can definitely like you can still lose weight you got to offset with other things but for a lot of reasons you might want to take it out to get better sleep right for your hormones for a variety of reasons so give it to us straight alcohol and

okay so gummies whatever however people take it yeah so uh the truth is that alcohol is a sedative which means that uh because it's a GABA agonist which means that it binds to the same receptors that like loracepam you know like a lot of the benzodiazepines that help you relax which means that yeah for sure which is actually why when you drink it you feel relaxed and you feel they're very disinhibited. Right. Which like sometimes like three glasses too many and you say things that you probably wouldn't have said. So that's actually what happens with alcohol. The hard thing about alcohol is that your blood concentration of alcohol, assuming that you're just like an average metabolizer, is going to peak at about like four to five hours, right?

And so that actually means that if you have it before bed, even if it's going to be one glass of wine, when you have it before bed, you're like, oh my God, I feel so relaxed. This is going to be a great night's sleep. And what will happen through your sleep, even if you don't wake up, but I would say that like most of us like have a bunch of like frequent awakenings that we don't notice, right? But even if you don't realize that you're waking up, when you have alcohol in your bloodstream, you actually spend way more time in that light, not deep, not restorative, not REM, like the sleep that is for nothing. Like literally it's almost like your eyes are closed, but you're not really doing anything good for yourself. And so then the problem is that, that from a, from a restorative

standpoint, you are jipping yourself of getting into that like deep restorative sleep that generally, cause you know, the sleep cycles like change throughout the night actually happening that mostly in that first half of the night. And this is actually when you rebalance your immune system. This is when a lot of the hormone control happens. This is when like your cardiovascular system resets. And so drinking wine before bed or drinking alcohol, I don't want to just blame it on one, but drinking alcohol before bed actually really deeply impacts that piece of it. And then what's going to happen is that then you're going to experience more frequent awakenings. You're going to experience a little bit of a harder time regulating your temperature.

And we talked about that this week, about how important it is to actually have a cold room and to drop your temperature, right, when you're sleeping to get that deep restored sleep. And then when it comes to the later part of the night, which is when it's a little bit more REM dependent and REM is what your body really uses to develop when you're young but also to consolidate memories and process a lot of emotional stuff it also interrupts that a little bit later at night and so what ends up happening is that you end up with this like super light, really fragmented, overly crappy like sleep, which then at the end of the night, you'll wake up. And like if we're honest about it, you never wake up after having some sort of alcohol and think like, oh, my God, it's a great sleep.

You never feel like, oh, yeah, I feel a little tired. I feel a little something. So then it's for sure it's dose dependent. But like even one glass of wine has actually been shown to do that right and so when it comes to weight loss if you listen if you if you're still with us uh as part of this conversation having wine is indirectly impacting your weight loss because it impacts all of that hormonal balance that's going to then either set you up for success or failure the next day. With other stuff, I mean, and I know that's not just about weight loss, but the other thing that alcohol does is that it really disrupts your hormones, like your

testosterone and your estrogen mainly. it can increase actually your fluctuating level or your uh uh bloodstream levels of estrogen by about a hundred fold and estrogen is amazing but too little estrogen and too much estrogen are both bad right and that's bad not just for your breasts and your uterus and like estrogen dependent uh tissues but it's also bad for your weight because too much estrogen, this is actually why I say like, there's a sweet spot, right? There's a Goldilocks sweet spot that we look for for estrogen, but too much estrogen also makes you store more fat. And so honestly, nothing good comes from alcohol. I mean, if you are going to drink,

because if you are going to drink, really, I just want you to keep it as early as possible. I mean, if you are going to drink, because if you are going to drink, really, I just want you to keep it as early as possible. I mean, have maybe some mimosas. But, you know, if you're going to drink in the evening, try to keep it at least four hours before bedtime. At least four hours before bedtime. Okay. What about weed? Yeah. So THC kind of does the same thing.

THC. So CBD doesn't cbd doesn't really have an impact on your um uh non-rem deep sleep and your rem sleep but thc seems to also disrupt your restorative sleep okay but so cbd yeah thc yeah yeah cbd yeah i mean yeah cbd yeah but you know and you know and thc actually impacts your REM a little bit more, which is actually why at high doses, a lot of people are like, I don't even dream. I feel like my sleep is great at like with THC. Yeah. It's probably not a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I used to smoke weed. I can't, I can't do it anymore, but, um, would never have dreams,

would never have dreams and never really felt would help relax me and get me to sleep. And then, but never, ever felt well rested. And then it took me like three weeks to come off and I'd stop it. And then my dreams would come back and I'd actually have significantly better sleep. So people who think they're taking it to help them sleep, that they're not, it's not really, um, helping your sleep. Okay. Um, what else we want to talk about? I, I have on here restless leg syndrome. I think so many people have restless legs. What do we take for that? I know magnesium can help, but is it a sign of something else? So like what, what, what can I do for that? Yes. Okay. So restless legs. I mean, we know what restless legs, uh, is it's really just

like, you know, the, you, it's almost when our patients is like, you get the jitters you know you just like gotta move them um it does increase we know the prevalence of it increases as we age you know uh it can impact up to i think it's like 15 to 20 percent of adults which is actually a lot um and we don't really know actually what causes it we know there's a genetic link and there they can't it can't be more um it can be uh higher in people with uh european ancestry and like it's lower in certain regions like you know people with east asian descent or african descent and so there we know that there's like a genetic component and maybe like ethnicity component to it um but we haven't really identified like specific genes that we know like this is the one that gives you the jitters um magnesium can help but the very interesting genes that we know, like, this is the one that gives you the jitters.

Magnesium can help. But the very interesting thing that we've discovered in the last probably decade or so is that there's actually a link to iron deficiency. And it's, I think it's actually very interesting, because it's not just like, people that have iron deficiency on blood work, but it's, it's, so it doesn't really depend on how low your blood level of iron is. It's more about low levels of iron in the brain. So it's actually possible to have low levels of iron in your brain without actually having low levels of iron in your bloodstream. So a lot of this discovery has been done post-mortem right we're like somebody that had really restless legs or really bad restless legs we like open them up after they die hopefully after they die and they were like oh my god you don't have a lot of

iron in your uh in your in your brain and so we obviously do not recommend you taking iron without talking to your health care provider because iron uh too much iron is also not a good thing but uh sometimes in dose appropriately in the appropriate setting um iron can actually help with uh restless legs and there are some other medications right that we give um that you can talk to your doctor your neurologist or other people about that actually blocks some of the signaling but i would say that in the natural world the two things that we see having the most clinical impact is magnesium i i have actually found that different types of magnesium work for different people some of the ones that cross the blood-brain barrier a little bit better for people that have restless

legs um and uh in iron work and and you know, I would say that the vast majority of patients that suffer from restless legs will always say that exercise legitimately, like exercise is such an important component of controlling their symptoms. Yeah. I know that whenever I get restless legs, I get particularly, it's because I haven't been active and I can almost feel like I got to like release some energy or get out there. I noticed it makes a difference. Okay. Wow. So much fabulous information. I mean, these conversations really about are informing and bringing awareness and empowering our members to have more thoughtful, direct, focused conversations with their healthcare providers.

Because if you can express what you think is going on with you or what you're dealing with, and you're like, hey, I'm not sleeping well. I heard about this or that. I'm doing this, this, this, and this, and this. What else can I do? Really just empowering you to have the conversations that you need to have with your own healthcare providers. Dr. Lenga Trejo is going to be back with us in the program. We're going to talk about hormones with her. We're going to talk about menopause, perimenopause, menopause, postmenopause with her. She's going to be continuing to share her knowledge, but I know people are going to want to reach out to find you. Where can they find you? I always give my clinic email because I am not on social media platforms. And every time that I'm on here, I promise that I'm going to go back on it and I never keep my promise.

So you can always shoot us an email. I love that you are just so into what you're doing. You're not on social media. I have mad respect for that. Mad respect for that. I mean, I'm on your social media. And so when people are like, how do I find you? I'm like, oh, you can just go on all social media platforms for the junior living method and you'll find me. But you can always shoot us an email at info at drlinka.com. I work with a fabulous team of women who are also fantastic practitioners that if I can't see you, somebody else can see you. You know, and I love that you said that this is just about empowering people. And I just want like if I can say anything that I don't think that I got across when

we were chatting is I think that I think think that by nature what I see is that often people are also really afraid of taking medications and they try all of the things and they feel like it's their fault and like speaking from experience I think that sometimes you just feel like this is something that you're doing or not doing or whatever it is and I think I hope that these conversations empower you and also give you a broader understanding of like, these things are like so complex. And like, just because we talk about supplements and sleep hygiene and all of these things doesn't also mean that we don't realize that there's a place and a time for medication. And I, and medications, you and I talk about this all the time, but medications are like floaties, right? And like,

for me, when I was suffering through it, it just helped me reduce the anxiety associated with not sleeping so that I could do all of the work that I needed to do that I've talked to you before and I for the last hour about and Dr. Beverly talked about and Alana talked to you about because I think that sometimes when you're not sleeping it feels like everything else is falling apart. And so sometimes getting the help that you need and understanding that is just for a short period of time and that is what you need can help you and can allow you to make the changes that you need to make in order to actually fix this from the root cause. So I don't want you to think that like because we're like it's all about sleep hygiene and it's all about this. We don't support that. We support it. We talk about, I mean, if you've listened to more than one episode with us, we, we love medications when dosed appropriately by a healthcare provider who knows you and is in line with like your long, your short-term and your

long-term goals. Yeah. Whether it's your sleep or your hormones or you're dealing with depression and what's happening there, or even weight loss medications, we are all about those. It's just that there are so many things that you can do on your own to be as proactive about your health as possible. And these tend to be the things that are not talked about a lot, which I think is such a hopeful conversation because there is so much more you can do. But yes, you and I are both on the same page about that. Thank you so much. Thanks for everyone who's joining us live. Thanks for all your questions. I have kind of got one eye on the conversation, one eye on all of our

comments and the conversation happening live with us. For anyone listening after the fact, thank you for joining the conversation today. As always, Dr. Lincoln Trejo, I love you. I adore you. I am so grateful for you. Thanks for joining me today. Thanks for having me.