Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Are Women Biohackers By Nature? – With Lauren Berlingeri

Episode Date: January 31, 2022

For full show notes, resources mentioned, and transcripts go to: www.drmindypelz.com/ep106/ To enroll in Dr. Mindy's Fasting membership go to: resetacademy.drmindypelz.com This episode is all about whether or not women should be biohacking the same as men. Lauren Berlingeri studied at The Institute of Integrative Nutrition where she became a certified holistic nutritionist and health coach. Lauren is a Canadian host, fitness expert, and international model. She was the star of the popular web series "Woman Vs. Workout" which grossed over 15 million views. She has been featured in Women's Health Magazine, Shape Magazine, and Fitness Magazine. Please see our medical disclaimer. 

try to get, you know, your exposure to natural light in a healthy dose to get that vitamin D and then also to set your circadian rhythm by, you know, trying to watch the sun go come up and the sun go down. That's been like such a huge hack for me. Resetters, Dr. Mindy here. And I am on a mission to teach you just how powerful your body was built to be. This podcast is about giving you the power back and helping you believe. leave in yourself again. Let's jump in. On this episode of the Resetter podcast, I bring you Lauren Berland Jerry. Now, why I wanted to bring Lauren to you all is that she is the co-founder of a company called Higher Dose, and they are at-home biohacking equipment that is phenomenal.

And one of the questions that I have been asking myself for a pretty significant period of time is should women be biohacking the same as men? It's just like the way we eat. It's just like fasting, exercise. Should biohacking equipment like red light therapy and infrared sauna and PMF mats and a hyperbaric oxygen? Should that all be timed to our cycle? So I wanted to bring Lauren on to talk about what her company has discovered. She has a spa in New York City.

So she has been using this equipment on women for, a pretty significant period of time, and she had some real insight into how women should biohack. Now, what I wanted to make sure that I did in this conversation was always ask her for what the free version of the biohack was. So we went into different light therapies. We went into heat, hot, cold, we talked about cold plunges. Should women be doing cold plunges? We talked about frequencies, specifically around the PEMF mat and how women should be doing this. When we should be doing it and how long we should be doing it and what kind of conditions should we be using these pieces of equipment for

and what our free versions were that were available to us. It is such a rich conversation. So if you are interested in knowing how to hack into your hormones and be able to accelerate your health, this is an incredible conversation, whether you're interested in the equipment or not. We go through so much science. We go through hormones. We go through so many wonderful ways that a woman can maximize her hormonal profile.

And it was a real joy to talk to Lauren. So excited to bring to you, Lauren Berlandieri, and how women should biohack. When I dove into researching you and your passion, one of the things that really stuck out to me, and I thought, oh my God, I want to hear what she has to say on this, is this concept that women are biohackers by nature. Yes. Explain that because every part of my female body says, yes, we are. But then let's give that, like, how did you come up with that thought? And what are you basing that off us?

Because I think it's a brilliant idea, brilliant thought. Yeah. Yeah. So definitely having kids. That was my big aha moment. A lot of things shifted for me when I had kids. Like I always kind of thought I was like bulletproof and nothing could really go wrong. And then, you know, I had twins and I had a very traumatic delivery of my twins and I didn't

have the delivery wanted to and they came five weeks early. And then I tried to like put a lot of pressure on me like breastfeeding them both for a long time and I was just like so run down because I thought I could still live that life that I was living before having kids, which is, you know, like working out really hard. And I mean, when you're breastfeeding, you need to drink so much water. But, you know, running on the lack of sleep that I was running on, I ended up having a grand mall seizure about one year in. And that just sort of woke me up to like, I need to put myself first. And this is very important. And and I need to get my body back and, you know, just made myself a priority.

But yeah, it kind of just goes back to just being a woman in general. I mean, you know, we have two cycles versus men that have the 24-hour cycle. We have the 24-hour and the 28-day cycle, which is our hormone cycle. And I've had an interesting relationship with my hormones, just being someone that has always been into extreme sports and working out extremely hard. You know, before higher dose, I used to have this show called Women. and versus workout. And I did all sorts of crazy physically challenging things from NASCAR driving, 24-hour helmet heels, motorcross, firefighter training, like tough mutters, anything insane.

I did it. But I also had a hard time with my hormones. Like I couldn't sleep through the night. I had cystic acne on my jaw line, you know, irregular periods. And I just like thought I was like super healthy because I was like working out so hard. But I didn't really. realize that actually, you know, one, genetically, once I learned about my genes, that I'm supposed to be actually doing more Pilates and walking and not so intense workouts. And then also to like nourish my endocrine system and my hormonal cycle, I can't be in fight or flight all the time. Amen. And yeah. And most of, you know, the research that I was like deep diving into around fitness was more about like these like high intensity workouts and, you know, ketogenic diets. And, you know,

ketogenic diets and they like speak about it so matter of factly and I was doing tabadas and just like really like driving myself into the ground and I just didn't realize that this healthy lifestyle of extreme was not actually so good for me and my hormones and ultimately didn't lead to the goals that I was actually hoping to achieve from all of this in the first life yeah yeah which is to overall just be like healthy have glowing skin be calm and present you know with people and sleep better, et cetera. So it was just really this aha moment. I think once I had my kids and I really lost all of that like superhero like crazy fitness person and had to like relearn how to just like tap into my body and just listen to what my body actually wants versus like what I read or what I

think might be good for myself. And that was again really my aha moment where it was like everyone's different. You know, not only on top of me. me being a woman versus being a man. I also genetically am different. My body's made up different. And how I can best serve myself is actually to just like slow down and just listen. Yeah. And tap into like what's working for me and what's not based on the way I'm feeling afterwards.

Yeah. And it just made me realize like women have been doing that forever because we've had to because this research has been more supported for men. Yes. You don't know nearly as much as you should going into like, know, pregnancy and recovery and like how to nourish your hormones after or what you should be doing or menopause. Like you go to the doctor and they just like tell you to buckle in, right? Like that's all you could do when there's like so many things out there that you can do. Yeah. Actually help you

balance those hormones and do it more gracefully. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Um, yeah, just like really just like tapping into my like, you know, female community and especially moms and and learning from them on like what they've done and then just listening to myself on in general. I was just like, wow, we've sort of just had to figure this out. Yeah. And we've done a great job doing it. Yes. Do you feel like, you know, I'm like everything you're saying, I resonate with so deeply because that is so much of my journey where I was a competitive tennis player. I was the push on through person that if you told me, gave me a workout, you gave me a long day. Like, I could put my head down and I could do it.

But what I realized is it was destroying my hormones. And it was really hard to start to take a step back and unwind that type A warrior woman and know when to pull her out and when to tell her to calm down. And the more I've gotten in touch with that, the more women I hear that are sharing stories like you just said, where we are learning that in order to be powerful, we also have to know when to be soft with ourselves. And we need to know when to move into some of these things like fasting and working out and all these really wonderful biohacks and when to just chill out and sit on the couch.

Do you feel like this conversation is happening more and more amongst women because I don't know if it's my little bubble, but I feel like this is happening. So women are waking up and understanding this at a deeper level. Yeah, no, I definitely feel like a lot more women are talking about it, especially in the biohacking world, which is such an interesting place to be in because it's mainly male dominated. Yes. The voices in there are all men. And I love that world.

I get introduced to the best technologies. I've never heard of that work. But the fact of the matter is, is they just have totally different goals in us. And they have different genetic makeups and, you know, different hormone systems. And, you know, like I had to sort of. navigate that space differently than I would say like most men do. And I, yeah, I feel like there's a lot of women in that biohacking space that identify as biohackers but have big issues with a lot of the way that this information is being communicated.

Yeah. And that we need to highlight the fact that, you know, women aren't required to be in studies like men are. And, you know, we actually, I think it's since like 2006, you know, women weren't expected to be in studies at all and now still to this day the six times more likely use men than women and and that's like the real issue right so you can't just like look into the research and study and know that this is going to be great for us yeah so i actually up of it are different hormone phases right yes what i was like 10 years ago is very different than than i am now and and also what i'm going to be like in 10 years and another 10 years from now

it's just like our goals and what we need change. And they should change with our hormones. I think as a 52 year old woman, I can tell you that I constantly remind myself that when I go to work out is like, you're not supposed to work out like you did at 32. You're supposed there needs to be. And that also is not being discussed as much. I also fear that we may never get women studies because how if you took 20 women and

you put them all together and they're all at a different time of. their cycle, that would be very difficult to study. So, you know, I agree. I hear this a lot where people are saying we don't have enough female studies, but I fear that maybe they may not be coming. And so then we need to be our own end of one. We need to, we need to really understand our own hormonal system. So this is the reason I love your work and I love what you're doing at higher dose is that when it comes to biohacking, one of the things that I've thought about is should you be cold plunging all the time? Should you red light all the time? Should you, you know, hop on your PMF all the time? Like, how do we know as these biohacking tools are

emerging? How do we know how to fit them to our hormones? So I definitely want to dive into that. And before we do that, I'd love to have like a definition from you of what a biohack is. because I also think, and I'm curious on this, that biohacking's kind of been a male term. It's like, biohackers, hack this, hack that. It turns a lot of women off, actually. Yes. It needs to be rebranded. And trust me, we've been thinking about how we rebrand this in many different ways.

And the only thing we could think of was biohack hers, which I love that. I think still kind of like, you know, doesn't really honor exactly what we're doing so much because of the hacking part because it's really not about hacking. It's about this lifestyle and like educating and learning as much as you can about your body and and how it works. And I've really got more into testing more than ever. And then also just like being curious. Like I always like think like, well, how is my mom? How is my sister? How has their mom and, you know, family have been in the past? What kind of issues did they deal with? And you can learn so much just like, you know, how your family has been experiencing their own hormones and their own

hormonal changes. And then I did the genetic testing too as well. And that was just like mind blowing to me how much I learned and realized I was doing everything wrong. Yeah. Everything wrong. So I really do feel like it's important, you know, to take the time to really learn about your genetics and your makeup and, you know, your history. It can really like shine a light on. on, you know, a lot of these things that, you know, our ancestors have been trying to figure out for years. Right. Yeah. And actually, our ancestors, I think, were natural biohackers. You know, I think that they had to use biohacking. They had to hack into the night day cycles. Like, they had to live more intuitively than we're forced to live right now. Well, we're exposed to so much blue light. It's not even

funny. It's, like, so hard to, like, sink up to the worlds and the Earth's natural cycles, right? when you're behind a computer all day long. And on top of being a biohacker, I'm also an entrepreneur and a mom. And it's very time consuming all of this stuff. So I actually really use biohacking as like a recovery tool for me to just like, you know, kind of recover from this like busy, crazy lifestyle. And I'm, you know, again, constantly exposed to things that I know aren't good for me because I have to be in order to like exist in this modern world.

So it's like a reset for you from your entrepreneurial life. And to answer your question, you know, just around like a lot of these biohacks that maybe we don't know how good they are for us or how often we should be doing it. You know, at higher dose, we really like do our own research. And I've actually always used myself as like a guinea pig and just like tested a lot of these technologies out for long periods of time and seeing the way I felt afterwards. And we're very careful on what we do launch. because we don't want anyone to ever have any issues with what it is that we're doing. We try to be as transparent as possible, but we've chosen technologies that are so gentle and so safe, yet so effective.

And that's always kind of been like the way we think about, like, what kind of biohacks we should be getting into. Yeah, that's beautiful. So let's dive into some of the, like, free biohacks for per se. And then I love free biohacks. I love free biohacks. I love free biohacks. Yeah. Yeah. No, because I think, again, you can, there's a.

lot of hacking. I brought Ben Greenfield onto the show, and he was talking about how he stacks his hack. He's like, I have tea and a nap and a PMF mat. He had like five things that he did all at once. And I also think that the biohacking culture has gotten like you have to have equipment. And the equipment is awesome. And if you stack that with other natural biohacks like sunlight and fasting and things like that, now you've really amplified it. So one of the free biohacks that I'm very curious what you think about and how at times to a woman's cycle are cold plunges. Have you thought at all about is a cold plunge right during a woman's whole hormonal cycle? If you're missing certain hormones, should you be cold plunging?

Do we have any evidence of if that's great for women? I actually don't know about the evidence because I haven't really looked much into it myself per se, but I do know how I feel with cold plunging. and I have to be very careful with cold plunging because I feel like if I one, do it for any more than three minutes, it can be really hard for me to warm my body back up and I'm actually like freezing and I know my fire or flight system goes on because I start shaking and feeling like stressed out about it. So I know that it's not always good for me and I do think that it has a lot to do with my hormonal cycle. And I think of it like a hardcore workout because it is a lot for the body.

and the only time I would ever do a hardcore workout is like right after my period or, you know, up to ovulating because that's when I feel like so strong and energetic and not like overly sensitive to things. And that's because I think my estrogen levels are a lot lower than, you know, when they start to climb to around when I get my actual period. And genetically I learned I don't detox of estrogen. So I know I'm genetically already going to have like tough hormonal periods as is. So for me, personally, I only really feel the need to want to coal plunge around those times where I'm looking for something a little bit more intense. And I never do over three minutes. And I don't go back and

forth, back and forth because it's just too hard on my body. Now, my business partner, who's like a cold plunge freak, also a woman, she lives across from the standard in Miami for that reason, just a cold plunge. She doesn't have those issues at all. She doesn't have a hard time warming up. She just feels energetic and good. She always like looks for a cryoplane. places and and does so well with it. And I just think genetically like it's not that intense for her. And, you know, she has more of the genes that is like, you know, kind of A type personalities thrive with where she could go, go, go and work out a lot harder and not have the same like blood sugar issues that I have or hormonal issues that I have. So for me, cold plunging is not

great all the time. I really do know what I want to because my body would crave it. Again, I have to be careful with not going back and forth from too much hot and too much cold and never stay in for more than three minutes because when I did do that once, I stayed in for 10 minutes because once you pass the three minute mark, you're like, oh, well. Yeah, right. Yeah. I was messed up for hours afterwards. And yeah, and definitely don't do it in the wintertime. Like, it's really great when you live in a place like Miami. It's really hot all the time. Um, because, yeah, like in the wintertime, again, I find it hard to warm up from being cold and then you put your body into fire or flight stress mode. So I'm seeking out more things that are like lowering cortisol versus like cortisol.

Yes. Yes. As many women should be. I mean, I applied you for for having that personal journey. But I think that again, women are more susceptible to cortisol than men. The hormone progesterone has to have cortisol low. And progestones are calming hormone. Men don't, they get a little bit of progesterone, but not a lot. So they don't have to think about that as well. And have you, have you run a hormone test on yourself at all? I actually have done. I've been doing Dutch hormone panels for at least three or four years.

I mean, I just, this is the stuff I invest into. I'm not like someone to invest into like clothes or things. I love health. I love food. I love testing. I love supplements. I love this lifestyle. So I've always like made a point to invest into it.

And I actually very specifically were testing hormones before getting pregnant. And then after breastfeeding, once I like, you know, spend at least like three or four months after breastfeeding. I did another hormone panel. But I'm always kind of like testing and seeing what's going on. There was a moment too where I had some exposure to molds, which really messed my stress rate levels up. And I would have never known that unless I was doing the hormone testing to like. learn that these hormone levels were off and it indicated things for me. So I am a big fan of testing. I don't take it as gospel. But it does really like help guide me be my own detective.

Yeah, I agreed. Okay, let's go into light because there's a lot of different. Yeah. BioHack. Yes. And there's a lot of different ways we can use it, especially to get us to sleep better. And so talk a little bit. Well, and we know red light. helps with collagen production, which, oh my gosh, your guy's little face thing is amazing. But let's start with the foundational. What do women need to know about their exposure to light? Yeah.

It's kind of a really loaded question because there's the good light and then there's the bad light. And then there's also natural light too, which, you know, my husband and myself moved to Miami just because of the healthy lifestyle of exposing myself at least for an hour a day without sunscreen on. I always wear a hat for anyone that asks. I always protect my face. But we really do like sun bathing and sun gazing. You know, we're right on the water too as well.

So we watch the sun go down and that's also really important. But the exposure to light is one of the most important things to know, especially if you're someone that gets seasonal effective disorder or just your mood. Like just naturally my mood is affected by not getting sunlight exposure. So just first and foremost, yeah, like try to get, you know, your exposure to natural light in a healthy dose to get that vitamin D and then also to set your circadian rhythm by, you know, trying to watch the sun go come up and the sun go down. That's been like such a huge hack for me for someone that spends a lot of time in front of a

computer and in front of my phone to blue light. It's a regenerative way of like kind of balancing all that blue light exposure. But I'm also just like a really big fan of light therapies in general. I mean, we launched an infrared sauna company about six years ago. And that is a light therapy. And that was because it was hard to get natural light exposure living in New York City. Interesting. In that, you know, concrete jungle exposed to all this artificial light all the time and

wondering why it was like a hard time to like sleep. And, you know, like, yeah. So when I first tried my first infrared zone, it was like 70 years ago when I was living in New York, it was just like immediate benefits. I slept through the night for the first time in a long time. I felt so calm and connected afterwards. And I felt like happy and light. And when I started researching infrared and learning about the light spectrum and how it releases serotonin, just much like the sun and learning that, you know, infrared is very similar to sunlight. I immediately fell in love with it.

and it became my passion for like the next seven years launching infrared spas and infrared products. So big fan of, you know, infrared in general. And then I would say it was about like three years ago I was exposed to red light therapy. Yeah. And how red light is also very similar to, you know, infrared in its ways and often used together with red light therapy and just learning about all the benefits of red light on top of that. and you know how it, you know, feeds the mitochondria so it can produce ATP, which is energy, which just means that your overall cells are functioning better.

Yeah. Especially for hormones. It's like one of my favorite hormone balancers for women, boost testosterone for men, just those two things in general. I mean, I'm always telling people like this is the ultimate regeneration tool. Yeah. It's red light therapy with the infrared. And, you know, when I don't live in places like Miami, I definitely always.

make sure that I like get my infrared and red light as a substitution for sunlight. Yeah. Living here in Miami, I don't need it as much, mind you. If you look over here, that's my red light just sitting there. Love it. I'm ready to go because I do travel with these things. I absolutely love it. But, you know, what red light does for building collagen and, and, you know, downing inflammation

in the skin, you know, you don't get that from sunlight. Sunlight is actually, you know, could be quite harmful to the skin if you're exposed to it for too long. So, you know, there are some benefits of red light that you don't get from the sunlight. Yeah, agreed. So, yeah, I think that light therapy in general in the biohacking world is by far my favorite area of focus and think that, you know, more people should look into these regenerative light forms for their own health for substitution, as well as stacking on, you know, getting access to natural sunlight too as well. Do you, it's interesting. You had a biohacking space. spa in in New York?

Yeah. Is that right? We never called it that because again, it was like such a turnoff for women. And we, you know, back in the day, you know, when we just were a spa location, we had about 80% women and 20% men. So definitely spoke more to women than we did to men. But we launched our Williamsburg location, which is our biohacking center. We don't call it that.

It's just called higher dose spa. But we do all sorts of things from lymphatic drainage. massage and we do microcurrent for the face and we do all sorts of facial massage and red light therapy and infrared and you know we wanted to like have cold water showers like as our form of cold therapy because it's like the easiest thing to do and I find cold showers to be more effective for women than the cold plunging in general but yeah all of our locations have your own personal shower afterwards so we always like tell people to do like cold showers after the infrared sauna.

And it's literally like my favorite place to be just because of all of these like different tools and, you know, it's like supercharged self-care. Yeah, I love it. You know, when I first heard about you guys, I was, again, I've been thinking about how to time everything to the menstrual cycle. And I've been thinking about perimenopausal women and menopausal women, which is a large part of my community. And I heard somebody said, oh, there's these female biohackers and they have a biohacking

spa in New York. And I was like, what? That's amazing. A biohacking spa for women? I don't know if you promote it for women only, but I was like blown away and so excited that you guys were doing that because we really need that. I think more than men do because our hormones are tricky and they are susceptible. And what I find fascinating about the fact that it's in New York and what you're saying

about how you felt in New York compared to Miami is I think that's. really something for us all to think about when we're indoors all the time. We feel different than when we're outside. But we label it something else. We say, oh, I'm just anxious today. Or maybe I'm PMSing, but we don't realize how much the impact of Wi-Fi and blue light and all this stuff that is toxicifying. Like, New York simulation is so hard. Like most people that don't live there, they come there for a couple days and they're like okay get me out of here yeah and then when you actually like you know 10 years ago when I moved there it becomes this like weird drug that you become addicted to and it's like hard for you to like enjoy yourself anywhere else because you're just so overstimulated all the

time and you know like a lot of women I know like have you know issues getting pregnant later on and have all these like hormonal issues or just like burnout in general um and that's because like we don't have that opportunity to just like rest digest heal yeah you know We go against our design. We like every single day we're like at work inside with all this stuff. We're like literally going against our design for both men and women, but for women, it's a lot more. So talk a little bit about, I want to dive into the benefits of red light in a moment, but go back to infrared saunas and infrared because what we have found that's so powerful about

infrared is it like induces like a fever. So talk a little bit about the. the science behind it, why it would benefit women and how you guys have used it. Well, I guess now more than ever, there's such an emphasis on ways to naturally boost immunity, which is not enough conversation about that right now, especially living in COVID times. And it's funny because you get so regulated on what you can and cannot say, especially about immunity. But taking immunity aside from things, what infrared does is it mimics a fever in the body.

because infrared heats your core body temperature. And that's how it gets you to sweat is much like how you would start sweating when you're working out or if you had a fever. Your core body temperature gets hotter and then you start to sweat versus traditional saunas that heat the air. So it's a much more superficial way of heating the body, much more aggressive to you. You feel much more tired and lethargic in there versus in an infrared sauna. You actually feel like quite energized and good because you feel like you're kind of like

getting a workout without working out. and it's such a much more gentle and effective way of heating the body. So yeah, it is raising your core body temperature. So your body thinks it's getting a fever. So what your body does when it thinks it's getting a fever is like, okay, I got to boost up all my immunity to make sure I can, you know, fight whatever it is that, you know, my body needs to fight. So you get this like natural immunity boost while in the infrared sauna.

Yeah. On top of that, infrared kills any bacteria and virus. I don't know about COVID per se, but let's just say most. viruses don't like heat. And, you know, it's a really amazing thing to have us a tool anytime you are feeling like you're about to get sick or you feel like you've been exposed to something, you go into that infrared sauna and it kills that bacteria and that virus and boosts up your immunity so that you could, you know, be prepared to fight whatever it is that you're fighting. And then just on top of it, there's so many amazing detoxifying benefits.

Detoxes seven times more than traditional saunas, pulls out heavy metals, radiation, and environmental pollutants of your fat cells. So when you have a less toxic body, your body operates better, which therefore is going to like help you when you get something like, you know, a sickness or a virus or whatever it is. When your body is operating at higher levels because it's clean, then, you know, there's a whole list of health benefits. Right. Yeah. In general. But the list of benefits go on and on and on when it comes to bread. It just depends on like what it is that you want to talk about. I mean, I could go over a very high level, but some of my most, you know, things I feel the most passionate and most obvious are definitely, you know,

immune boosting, detoxifying, which we just talked about. You know, it does increase metabolism. It can melt away fat, speed up your heart rate to the pace of a like jog and burn calories. So it's like a workout without working out. Amazing skin benefits as we were talking about infrared and red light together, you know, boost collagen. Your skin's like so soft. and dewy and glowing afterwards, which is great for anti-aging. Yep. And it's an amazing recovery tool and pain management tool. Not only is like heat so therapeutic for the body,

helps your body go into that state of parasympathetic, rest and digest. But it also downs inflammation, increases blood flow and circulation. So it's feeding your body with this like fresh blood so that there's no stagnation so that it's operating better. So it has such amazing like recovery benefits in general. And it helps with sleep because it is putting your body into parasympathic state, which is rest and digest and getting you out of that cortisol state. That's one thing. It's like you could go in there with so much like stress and anxiety and literally feel the infrared just melted away.

Amazing. And I always like come out of there feeling like so calm and grounded and connected and just like glowing after. And what I find interesting about infrared is it is a tough one to do naturally. I mean, you'd have to get a fever to be able to heat that cell from the inside up. And like you said, the gym sauna is not doing it. So are there a natural way we can do it? There is actually. So if you ever like go to like maybe like Arizona or anywhere where there's like dry heat

and like natural objects like rocks and the sun is eating on the rock and the rock feels warm. and if you lay on that over time, it's just natural infrared. Oh, so go to Sedona, go to one of the vortex spots in the heat of summer and lie on the rock. Yeah, or just like, you know, you could pretty much be anywhere as long as the rock is hot and warmed from the sun, it's naturally going to promote infrared. Love it. One of our products is an infrared pymphma, and we have over 25 pounds of crystal therapy. Okay.

I'm based in tourmaline. And mainly we did so much crystals is when you heat those crystals, which is stone, and naturally produces infrared. And it also emits negative ions, which is what you get from nature. So you do, like even also laying on a beach in Miami, that's like natural infrared too. It's just like laying out in the sun. It's just, again, you have to worry about over exposure and the harmful heat rays. And you don't get any of that in an infrared sauna.

So I have to tell you that I have your mat. I ordered it. Yeah. And we call it the tranquilizer. So we put it on our couch. And it's literally like sits in one of the seats. And every person from my husband to my 21 year old daughter to my 82 year old mom, the minute they lay on it, like they're out.

They're done. You can't even, you can't talk to them anymore. Like, I don't know what is in that thing. But you are like, you guys have nailed it. It's really. Yeah. It's really the infrared and then the crystal therapy. but then PEMF technology, which is pulse electromagnetic frequency.

It's an amazing technology that's very similar to the Earth's core frequency. So it's kind of like walking barefoot in nature. It gives you that same tranquil, like calming benefits. So it's really, you know, like our innovation is not in, you know, inventing any of these technologies. They've actually been around for a really long time and studied. But we love stacking them. Yeah. To make the most like powerful experience.

And also using them at like really safe. spaces or like levels. Our PEMF mat is is more like focused around relaxation and recovery and sleep and regeneration. There are some PEMP technologies where you could get a much higher frequency and you really like feel that like jolting kind of like frequency, which can be good for other things like repairing bone or, you know, ligaments in the body. And it could be quite good, but in smaller amounts of time.

Whereas we decided to go with more frequent. that are more grounding, calming, and relaxing, because we see this as more of a recovery mat. Yeah. Something that you can spend a lot of time on versus like how some of doctors are using it to like repair and, you know, help heal bone. Yeah, we have a full, the pulse PMF mat here in our office. And we use it. Oh, wow.

We use it very therapeutically to heal fractures, chronic injuries. So I'm very familiar with the technology and it's, it is. I mean, it is very much. like going out into nature where you just get zoom, like you get centered. You get like back into your grounded being. I don't know another way to explain that. Nothing has ever given me that experience in my body like PMF will. Yeah. And that's the thing. It's like, you know, these technology is amazing. But sometimes you like have to experience it at like a professional doctors because they're like a little bit more like hard to navigate and you know if it is at like a higher pulsating rate and you are trying

to do something very therapeutic you'd want to go to like a more controlled environment yeah versus like you know the way we're thinking about it is like okay if we want to like make we want to make this easy to use for people yeah we don't want it to be like complicated where they could like mess it up and ultimately like get the opposite effect of what they're looking for in the first place so that's why we use like very safe spaces for a lot of these technologies versus like some of these more like professional grade units that should be more operated by a doctor. Yeah. And if you've thought about how, because this is the way my brain thinks, is timing all

these around the menstrual cycles. So like if the mat is putting you in a parasympathetic state, that actually would be better used in the back half of your cycle when your body's trying to lower down cortisol, bring in more progester. Whereas in the front half of your cycle, when you need more detoxification, going into something, I haven't tried your sauna blanket, but it's on my list of things to do. Go into the sauna and detoxify in the front half of the cycle. Because at some point, I don't know if you found this in the biohacking world,

there's not enough hours in the day to start to put all these biohacking tools in. But could we use them in a woman's cycle and cycle the different tools in depending upon the reaction we're trying to get with our hormones? Yeah, definitely. I find the sauna blanket and the mat both to be so gentle that it's kind of like safe to use the whole way through. Could be. Yeah. I definitely feel like I need them more on the second half of my cycle.

But I do feel that, you know, like I could use the sauna blanket at the end of the cycle and still get a lot of benefits from it. So it's actually a really good question. And again, I guess we would have to like research. it or just like do customer surveys around it and like get people to participate in like a clinical trial and like just give us feedback on it right but again a lot of our products are mainly to down cortisol so I feel like that's always a good thing for women yeah agreed it would be really fun to do like a Dutch test on on a woman and then have her use your guys equipment around her cycle and then maybe like I don't know 90 days later do another one um this is the way my my science brain

works. So if I find the woman willing to do expensive. The only happy part about the whole thing is like it's so expensive. And also like living in New York City, it's like a lot of this stuff is not even available to people in the right. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess that goes back to again, just like tapping into like the way you feel afterwards. And like is it improving your mood? Is it like helping you sleep better? Do you feel more calm and connected afterwards? Do you feel like it's balancing your blood sugar versus spiking blood sugar, you know, like all of these things that I feel like our bodies kind of tell us just by the way that we feel afterwards. Yeah. I think the biggest thing to like kind of worry about

more with infrared more than anything is just the dehydration thing, um, because you can sweat too much and it is hard to keep like that liquid in your body. Um, so just to make sure that you're like taking a good like trace mineral or, you know, magnesium and electrolytes and the right amount of salts afterwards to just keep that water in your body. Good point. That's probably my biggest concern with too much use or not at the right time. Yeah. Interesting. Okay.

Let's dive into red light because we can't leave this conversation without red light. The face mask you have, I saw a good friend posted a picture of herself wearing it on Instagram. And I was like, what is that? Because it looks so crazy from the outside when somebody's wearing it, which is brilliant because it makes for good social media posts. So I texted her. I was like, what is that? What are you wearing? So talk a little bit. I don't know what you guys call it, but talk a little bit about the red light on the face and what we know it can do for collagen production. I know there's some great studies on thyroid and red light. What do we know? Yeah, what do we know about red light? A lot of really great studies on so many different aspects of red light, especially depending on where you shine it. And then at what frequency too. And thyroid is definitely one for hormones, especially if you are exposed to a lot of blue light.

It's amazing to do. And the cool thing is like our red light face mask was designed for the face. And again, the way we think about it is like we did not create or invent this technology. But what I did focus on is a design that makes you want to use it three or four times a week, which is like optimally like how you should be using these technologies. And it shouldn't be something that, you know, you only use once every once in a while and it just collects dust. and you feel guilty about not using it because it's not practical. So we really focused on the design of it.

It has three straps, which, you know, makes it easy to, like, do a yoga flow or a workout. It's a medical grade silicone, so it's lightweight. You can travel with it. It's cordless and rechargeable so you can walk around your house. And then it has the eyehole so you can continue to work or if you wanted to watch TV or just, like, connect with a friend. You don't feel disrupted by the red light. So really, like, allows you to use this technology as you should, which is to,

three, four times a week for optimal benefits. And there's just a lot of research around red light therapy specifically for skin. Mind you, there's a ton of studies in general around red light. It's actually like quite crazy when you start to research it. You're like, wow, red light's good for this. It's good for this. It's good for so many different things. And I do think it comes down to this idea that it feeds the mitochondria, which is your cell.

And the cell produces ATP, which is energy. and it just helps it work better. So that can, like, affect the body all around depending on where you're using it. Yeah. But it is a great hormone balancer for women because women want to balance hormones first boost, per se. Some people want to be depending on. But my business partner freaks out because I, like, tell men to put it on their balls. Because there are studies actually.

Yeah. There was actually a testosterone study that water polo players and they had them every time they got out of the pool, they had them stand in front of red light. And they did that every day. They did like 20 minutes of red light. And after a month, their testosterone levels had gone up. So it's phenomenal for that reason. And my husband does it. And I think that even though the red light face mask was designed for the face, the cool thing is you can use it on all different parts of your body. But the most optimal way to get it is actually like a full body unit that you can sit in front of naked so that your whole body is getting all the benefits of the red light.

Yeah. And then I use it for all sorts of different things. Like I had breast implant removal. I had C-section. So I use it on my scars. And that's just easy to use over and over again because I put it on all my scars. And like literally like I can hardly even see my scars now. Wow. How often do you do it? Well, depends. Like on scars, it's just easy. Like I have all these like tools just like laying out. And like you can, I could be talking to you and have it on my scar. No one would be no. Nobody knows. It's not as disruptive. And then for like face, I showed you my full body unit. I usually like do my meditations in front of my full body red light unit. I find these tools help me have a better meditation practice because I like have my mat.

I'm sitting in my go mat, my infrared go met from higher dose. And then I have the red light face mask and then I'll like play a meditation. And it makes me want to stay there for like 20, 30 minutes. And I almost need these tools just to like. help me calm down and switch off and feel like I'm getting more than just that breakthrough meditation. But I've noticed like amazing things from my skin and, you know, just not having to like go to things like,

you know, Botox and fillers because I like, you know, more of that like natural look. But the red light like just like helps so much with skin tightening and rejuvenation and just like overall glow of the skin. It just looks like glowing and dewy. Yeah.

Is there anything you have to think about with these tools because, you know, you can go to Amazon and download a bunch of tools, but are they effective? This is a question. I get a lot. And cheaper doesn't always mean better. And you want to make sure that you're getting the right, the right tool doing the right job. Yeah. And I mean, it's like, what's the point of having a son of blanket that detoxify you detoxifies you could off gases and has all these like Amen. ... embedded into the materials. So, you know, we're on our fourth version of the sauna blanket,

and we're always trying to find better ways to improve it. And we really pride ourselves on, you know, the technology and just like the way we make it. We don't cheap out any in any way, rather the opposite. And we have the only sauna blanket on the market that has no ELF, virtually no EMF, which are two big things that you should, you know, be concerned about with any electric product, especially ones that are like supposed to like help you feel calm and grounded. And then also choosing materials that pass VOC standards in California, which is a very high standard,

which are sound of like it's the only blanket on the market that passes VOC standards. Amazing. Yeah. So you're all off. Which is like such an important thing too as well. And then again, like we're just like layering in all these different technologies. So we have the amethyst stone, the tourmaline, which promote, you know, an even more deeper therapeutic natural form of.

infrared that emits negative ions. We have a charcoal layer, which helps with the detoxification. And we have a clay layer, which is very cooling and balancing to the infrared. So it just feels so good. And then we have a magnetic, medical grade magnetic layer too as well, which helps increase blood flow and circulation so that you're pushing those toxins out through sweating when the infrared's loosening it up. Amazing. And yeah, it's just like down to like those kind of like specific details that are so important when choosing something that is supposed to like be elevating health and vitality. You don't want to like be taking any like hits in other areas because you're you're choosing like a product that was cheaply made in China.

Yeah. And I think this is a big problem as the biohacking world expands, you know, not you guys are really solving in my opinion the women's issue and having this discussion around women and biohacking. But then, you know, there's a point at which it's the same thing even with supplements. There's a point at which it's like this thing is perceived as helpful but when it's made cheaply, it's now harmful. And for the average person, everything, right? Food, supplements, like our clothes, like products that we put, like on our body, everything. It's like, oh, yeah, I bought it because it's supposed to be healthy, but it has all these,

like, harmful things in there. And then it ends up being like, what's the point? You'd be better off doing nothing. Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. Because the body's intelligent. This is one of my big premises of how the body heals is the body is an intelligent.

all you need to do is remove the interference. So when you get on, when you are getting on the PMF, Matt, you are removing the interference of Wi-Fi and technology in your home. You're bringing yourself back down to this natural state you're supposed to be in. And when we use cheap products or we try to make shortcuts with anything from food to supplements to these kind of tools, you actually now are harming the body's own intelligence. So less is more. And that's probably why you love fat.

fasting so much because it's such like an amazing tool that no one talks about that can literally heal your whole entire body. Yep. For free. Yeah. Right. You know, all you have to do. Amen.

Quality water. And it's like, oh, wow. It's such a no brainer. Yeah. And go ahead. Go ahead. You started talking about fasting and I'm like, I get, I get fired up. Go ahead.

Well, I actually wanted to know more just like what you think on like prolong fasting. And like, because I actually did a prolonged fast. for seven days about like eight years back. And it was really challenging for me, but quite a spiritual experience. And I would like to do another one. But when I did do genetic testing, my geneticist who I love was like your body doesn't do so well with fasting. So you have to be careful.

Now, I think that's more like 24-hour fasting here or there because I think it does put my body in so much kind of like a stressful state because of maybe blood sugar. I don't know why I have to ask her why she didn't suggest it, but I do feel like if I don't eat, my body goes into that fight or flight. So for like hormones and fasting and say genetically you're not so great with it, what is your suggestion around like kind of getting past that like fight or flight state into like reaping all the benefits of it? Yeah.

So it this is my passion is that women need to time it to their menstrual cycle just like everything else. So and I'm part of where you and I connect. on our missions is that there's not enough resources for women on how to fast according to her cycle. And so I've got a book that will come out in 22 that is going to be, it's called Fast Like a Girl and it's going to be exactly how women should fast. So stay tuned.

That's coming. But what I want to tell you is that you should be able to fast really well in the beginning part of your cycle. So once you start bleeding till pretty much through ovulation, somewhere in the middle of population, fasting should work a little bit better for you because estrogen really likes to be insulin sensitive. It likes when insulin comes down when glucose comes down. So most women will do well in these longer fasts at that time. Where we start to struggle is the week before our cycle when we're trying to make progesterone and cortisol is going up. Now, like, we shouldn't be fasting

and definitely shouldn't be doing a seven-day water fast. So these are the kind of things that I'm trying to get out into the world is how do women start to time their fast? Genetics is one thing, but we also know with epigenetics that things can shift. So how do we make sure that a woman is timing her fast accordingly? So it's helpful. And that's such like a no-brainer too. Right? Everything should just be timed to your cycle. Amen. Yes. Everything. Everything. I mean, I even saw a study the other day, Lauren, that showed that in the front half of of our cycle, our cholesterol goes up. And the reason that our cholesterol goes up is we need good cholesterol to make estrogen. And then as we go into the back half of our cycle, cholesterol

goes down because we don't need it as much. So I started thinking about that. And I was like, how many women walk into their doctor's office at the front half of their cycle, get a high cholesterol? Now they're putting on a statin, and they don't even know that there's an ebb and flow, a hormonal ebb and flow to their cholesterol. Wow. Actually, that's really helpful for me too because I also just got blood work and I always have high cholesterol. And I do wonder, like now that I'm thinking about it, it was at the, you know, front half of my period too as well. Amen. There you go. Yeah. Well, that's going to be an interesting thing to add to the book. And there sounds like there's so many like aha moments that we're all going to have reading it. So I'm really excited for it to come out because, yeah, I do. I want to reap all the benefits of the number one thing that's. the healthiest thing for you, which is fasting.

Yeah. Yeah. And I've always been like afraid to do it because of that since because I am more worried about like balancing hormones and not putting myself into this like state of stress. And is there a time frame that you suggest for women? Yeah. Yeah. I think if you want, if you love the longer fast, just do it in the front half of your cycle.

But really, you know, the research shows 15 hours is really good for us just in general going 15, 16 hours without food except the week before our cycle. So then when we dive into things like testosterone, well, okay, we get the most amount of testosterone during ovulation. We don't have any fasting studies for women on testosterone, but we do have it on men. And we know that fasting helps promote testosterone for men. And it's a 24-hour fast that gets the most testosterone increase in men. Now, is that analogous to women?

we don't know until we try, but it's interesting to lean into 24-hour fast during your ovulation period time. You can, you know, again, intermittent fasting works most of the time, but then the week before your period, just don't fast. You know, and most women notice that they're hungry for breakfast in the morning. They really can't fast as well. So it's kind of finding your rhythm. And we've come up with a tool called the fasting cycle, whereas a visual tool that women can

start to coordinate her cycle according to the different length fast. I believe that there's six different fast that women can do, but you got to time them to your cycle. So that's what the whole book's about. And how do you feel about coffee? Coffee is fine as long as it's clean and mold-free. But one cup. And you put anything in it? Everybody's got to test it with their blood sugar.

So for most people, black coffee won't pull them out of a fasted state. if you put MCT oil in it, it may even put you into a deeper fast. You might get more ketones, which is great. For everybody, cream is going to be different. So you really, what you do is you take a blood sugar reading. You drink your standard cup of coffee, take another blood sugar reading an hour later. Are those two readings very similar? If they are, then it hasn't pulled you out of a fasted state.

So that's how you check it. Yeah, I was going to get that levels device. And I also thought it would be really cool if someone could create like a female focused wearable that like measures, you know, on top of it like hormones and and wouldn't that be amazing blood sugar and and yeah, just like cortisol and just like your temperature, just like all sorts of things that are just geared towards like what women want to know. Because like. Yeah. Wouldn't that be amazing? That's a great idea. Cortisol.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, oh my gosh. If we could have that, I would just love it. and then factor in all those things together. And it would have to be in what like a continuous glucose monitor that is actually getting your blood. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You got me. Yeah, we actually, we use Nutrisense because they do know a woman's body a little bit. I mean, this is what we've experienced. Yeah, I think they're both great products. We just have gotten to know the women over at Nutrisense.

And I'm, I've actually brought one of the co-founders on my podcast. I'm going to ask her if why can't you measure cortisol? Why can't you measure, can you measure hormones? Wouldn't that be interesting? I'm like, that's a great idea. Great. Wow, I love it. Okay, this is why I wanted to have this conversation when I was like,

oh my God, she's a female biohacker. We got to know more about how to time your products. I literally, everybody that we've been working with from our Andrea seed oil guy who makes these highly compressed seed oils to the essential oil. guy to organify. We've been going to each one of them and saying, okay, let's look at your products. How do we time it to a woman's menstrual cycle? Because this is the level of health that women need now. So that's why I'm thinking about higher dose and I'm like, okay, what can we, how can we, I mean, all your products are amazing. Now, how does a woman pull each tool out according to her hormonal

needs in a 28 day period? So, no, I think that's like such, you definitely got my juices flowing and thinking about that too because my answer was you can do it anytime because we're always like so gentle so safe you know but there has to be a more optimal time and I bet you there's sometimes like because you know infrared also releases human growth hormone if you use it after like five o'clock you know and and there's all these like different things that it's like it would be so good to know like oh yeah it can like help address drone come up because your stress hormone goes down so you should prescribe it especially right yeah yeah better than HRT better than HRT better than bioidenticals.

Right, because you don't care about that as much as a woman. That's what I'm saying. That wearable needs to be like thinking about this kind of stuff. Yeah. Oh, I love it. Okay, well, I'm going to noodle on a little bit. I'll let you know what I find out. So, okay, I got to finish up before we go into my last question for you.

Yeah. You got to tell me where higher dose came from because dose isn't just dose. You actually have an acronym that's pretty darn cool. So explain so my listeners know what dose stands for. Yeah, so dose stands for dopamine. oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. And those are your four main happy chemicals. Yeah. And, you know, we came up with that idea because when looking into the research of what infrared does, it releases so much serotonin. It's like being out in natural sunlight. And, you know,

it speeds up your heart rate to the pace of a light jog. So it releases endorphins. And you just, like, feel so happy afterwards and so good. So we were like, how do, like, we figure out a way to, like, put it in the name. And then the sauna itself, which is what we started with, you know, if you go in there with someone and you're like naked and the sauna, it's like the most romantic thing to do with like significant other or like I do all like my friend dates in there too instead of going out and drinking alcohol. And so you release oxytocin just from that connection. I have my deepest best conversations in the sauna. And then dopamine it's like, you know, I feel like anytime you know you've done something good for yourself and

you feel so good afterwards, you're going to release dopamine. So you do release those four main happy chemicals when using our infrared son. I love it. The name came from. I love it. So you know that estrogen can be a precursor to serotonin. So for women going through perimenopause and menopause and postmenopause, as our estrogen declines, our serotonin can go down.

Oh, wow. This is why I always say hug a, hug a menopausal woman because, you know, she's dealing with these declining hormones and neurotransmitters. So knowing that. And then once menopause is. over, does it come back to normal? It doesn't come back to more normal, but your brain recalibrates. So during the perimenopausal years, as these hormones are up and down, the brain is really fried. And your neurotransmitters will really respond adversely. But after about a decade of this, now you've

kind of stabilized your estrogen levels and you're getting a rhythm with making serotonin again. But prior to that, I mean, the 40s are brutal. They can be brutal for some women. So, And a lot of it is where we can lean into tools like what you, what you guys are offering to be able to support a woman through that process. So yeah, I'm so glad you're doing this work. It's so needed. And it's been so enlightening just talking to you.

And I, yeah, have already been thinking so much more about just how we can support, you know, women in general. And agreed. Amen. Yeah. Totally agree.

So, okay, let me finish up on this question. So this is season three of the Resetter podcast. and our theme is gratitude. And so help us see what gratitude practices you do every single day. A lot of people have different ones. And what is one thing you're really, really grateful for right now in your life? Yeah, that's such a good question because it's definitely been something I've been thinking about more than ever as of recently,

especially after having COVID. I felt kind of depressed afterwards. And there was, you know, the only thing that gets you out of feeling depressed is to like think of all the things you are to be grateful for. And when I was like, I just had COVID a week and a half ago. So it's quite fresh or 10 days ago. But before COVID, I was running on the beach in Miami barefoot every morning. And I would do the six phase meditation.

I just love that. Yeah. Yeah. The Vish and Lacani one. Yeah. Yeah, I love it too. I've been doing that forever because I can like run kind of like slow and like just enjoy the grounding and fresh ocean air.

and the negative ions that are coming out. But my favorite part and the easiest part for me in that six-phase meditation is the gratitude practice. Just thinking of all the things that I'm happy for, I definitely feel the best boost of feel-good chemicals after I do that because I have so much too grateful for. And he really, like, helps you. It's like, it doesn't need to be big things. Like, I have successful business.

It doesn't need to be like that. It's like, you know, being able to taste your coffee in the morning that you love or like, you know, for me, it's just like being able to be with my kids who are healthy, et cetera. So I am a big fan of gratitude practice. Definitely suggest the Vishin Lacani six phase meditation where gratitude is one of the phases. Or just all around, it's one of the best ways to start your day and end your day. And I definitely am always the most grateful for health. Yeah.

Amen. My gosh. Yes. That gets me the biggest kick in life. It's just like knowing that we're all healthy in my. family. I'm like, yeah, I feel like with health, we try to find happiness so much outside of us in destruction of our health. But really, when you love the body you're living in, everything else falls into place. So I just love that. How do people find you? I just, I love what you're doing.

I know you have a new show that you guys are putting out on YouTube. Talk a little bit about how people can find you. Totally. So definitely check out higher dose. You know, we have an Instagram and the website. for more information on the products, but we're also launching a new website in January, and that is going to have like a whole content strategy, which I'm really excited about getting back into. And we are launching our show on January 3rd, which is biohackers, and it's about female biohacking.

And it's my business partner and I, like trying all these different like hacks, biohacks that are out there and seeing how the female body responds to it. And also check me out on Instagram. I mean, I'm like kind of into it. I like kind of do a good job of it. There might be some inspirational posts here or there of like some little biohacks. But my Instagram's at Lauren Berlingery.

Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.