Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - How to Choose a Healing Mattress: Not Your Usual Sleep Advice with Jack Dell'Accio of Essentia

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

Ever wondered if your mattress is affecting your health? Jack Dell'Accio, founder of Essentia Mattresses, teaches us about the intricate relationship between sleep, mattresses, and overall health. He explores the profound impact of toxins, EMFs, and mold in mattresses on health and recovery, especially in women and professional athletes. Jack shares his expertise on how to choose a non-toxic, certified organic mattress and the unique benefits of Essentia's advanced features like thermal regulation and EMF management. Tune in and unlock the power of restorative sleep! Go to https://myessentia.com and use the code RESETTER for an EXTRA $100 OFF an Essentia organic mattress purchase. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://drmindypelz.com/ep284 Jack Dell'Accio, CEO & Founder of Essentia and a certified Sleep Coach, has dedicated over 20 years to analyzing and improving sleep. Jack is particularly passionate about the role of restorative sleep in disease recovery, prevention, longevity, and performance. His expertise has led him to work with some of the world's top athletes, including those in the NBA, NFL, MLS, and over 25% of active NHL players, to optimize their recovery and performance through better sleep. Essentia's organic mattresses have garnered recognition from several esteemed organizations, including the Mayo Clinic's Well Living Lab. For eight consecutive years, Consumer Reports has ranked Essentia as the top foam mattress. Jack Dell'Accio has also led a landmark double-blind study with professional athletes confirmed that sleeping on an Essentia mattress can extend time spent in REM and Deep Sleep cycles by 20% to 60%, proving their efficacy in enhancing sleep quality. Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

On this episode of The Resetter Podcast, I am bringing you Jack Delaccio, who is the founder of essential mattresses. Now, there's a really complex conversation around sleep and mattresses that you are about to hear. And before you rush away, I want you to understand that our sleep and our bedroom and the whole process of sleepy, is a healing environment we are putting our bodies in. And I wanted to bring Jack to you all to talk about how do we look at our mattresses as a healing tool. So we start off by looking at things like toxicity. I spent years and years in my clinic helping people detox and we dove into looking at all kinds of toxins that were coming off a mattresses. And so Jack and I will discuss what toxins you need to know that might be off gassing from your mattress. We also talk about things like

EMFs. Very interesting conversation on EMFs because you can't see EMFs. And so, but a lot of us are having trouble sleeping at night because of these frequencies that are coming into our rooms. And how do we look at our mattress as possibly helping us block these EMFs? Then we also dive into mold. This one was fascinating to me because, I don't know, where are my menopausal women? How many times have you woken up in the morning and your sheets were drenched and all of a sudden you, you know, air them out? But did you know that if you've been sweating in bed over and over and over again, there can be mold that's forming in there? So this, this. is the complex conversation you're about to hear. I promise you it's not scary. When we talk

talk about toxins a lot of times, it can be incredibly daunting. And it was really important for me to bring Jack to you all and help you understand how to navigate if you have the right mattress, if you need a new mattress, if your mattress is blocking you from healing, and if you are going to buy a new mattress, how do you figure out which mattress to use? So it's a really informative mattress conversation and I'm really excited because Jack was the one to bring you all this information. As you will discover, he is such a sweet man. His heart is in the right place. He's not trying to sell you his mattress, although we do have discount codes if you're interested in it. Just go to my ascentia.com and use the code resetter. But he and I align.

on just helping people understand where they are putting themselves in a healing environment and where they may be putting themselves in an environment that is actually accelerating disease. And the mattress could be one of those. So I definitely wanted to have that conversation. So hope you enjoy it. And off to Jack and I to discuss mattresses. Enjoy. Welcome to The Resetter Podcast.

This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Okay, Jack, I'm really excited to sit with you and dive into everything we need to know about mattress. So thank you for being here. Oh, thank you. I'm so grateful to be a part of it. So thanks for the invite. So I'm going to go way back about 10 years ago. I got into doing detox in my clinic. And part of why I got into doing detox in my clinic was because I started to see that certain people were not getting well as quickly as other people. And I couldn't figure out what like the through line was until I started to look at, oh, some people have exposure to a significant amount of toxins. And

that exposure actually starts to affect how they heal. And so I started going down this rabbit hole of like where are all the toxins coming from. And that got really scary, really quick. And one of the things that emerged out of that initial discovery was that our mattresses were off-gassing. Our mattresses were holding on to mold. Our mattresses had toxins in them, and we spend so much time on our mattress. It's so challenging, and one of the first things you want to detox or get out, you want to fix and get out of your house. So through a toxic lens, can you talk to us a little bit about what's the problem with just walking into sleep train?

I have nothing against that mattress store, but it is local to me. And just buying a mattress because it feels comfortable. What do we need to think about from a toxic standpoint? Well, definitely great question. And kind of dates back to my experience 25 years ago. How I got into this was my dad was diagnosed with cancer. And he was dealing with a whole lot of environmental reactions and overreactions. and one of them was in the sleep environment.

And as we started to kind of figure out what that was, we actually realized that the one element in your home that probably emits the most toxins is the mattress. And more so, at that time I was in Canada, and now I'm in the U.S., but in the U.S., there are FR regulations that force manufacturers to put a higher load of toxins to make it a fire barrier.

But when I had realized that those toxins that were remitting out of the mattress and what that does to slow down his recovery, what that did to have an overreaction from his body, getting into hives, respiratory issues, it was easy to see when someone is ill how the body is reacting and overreacting to that. Well said. It's very difficult for a healthy person because we all think we're invincible. We're not noticing it. We're not realizing it. as I dug deep into this and developing the essential material specifically for that one purpose of eliminating toxins, I had realized that it wasn't just enough to be organic. And that would be if we're just addressing the issue of toxins, yes, an organic mattress does

the job. But I'm sure as we'll dig a little deeper in, just organic is just one of the elements that you need from a mattress. but absolutely when we're talking about toxins one it makes your you're again speaking to about a healthy person who doesn't have intolerances and overreactions to chemicals just for the ordinary person going to sleep in a toxic environment in a toxic bed you're overworking your central nervous system you're you're keeping it active so it's not it keeps you out of the slow wave cycles which heal the body, heal the mind. So there's so much going on that we need during sleep that toxins prevent

us from getting deep into that. And that's scratching the surface. That's the obvious stuff. But it impacts our hormones. It impacts so much everything. And when I was when you invited me to be on the podcast, it was actually kind of interesting because I started to look at some of our female athletes that we work with, some of the retired ones and what they're going through when they're get into their hormone change, right, in premenopausal and all that. So and I'm looking at this and I realize that everything that I've been designing and building for Ascentia, it's how can I explain it? Men and women are obviously different. And a lot of the things that I've done for

the change for for general sleep, the only difference between men and women truly when it comes to sleep is that some of these points are so much more important because of life changes of women because of, you know, so again, it's a little bit of what what helps women will ultimately good for men, but so much more relevant to women. And that was one of the things I've realized before coming to the show here. Take it for granted when I'm speaking one-on-one with an athlete. But, you know, when we're talking about a whole category, a whole audience, it's interesting how that came to mind. Yeah, well, it's interesting because toxins do affect women a lot more. And part of that is because of their endocrine disruptors.

So, you know, if you have an off-gassing on a mattress of chemicals, those chemicals might actually be like estrogen mimickers that go into a female body while she's sleeping. That body thinks it's estrogen, but it can't use estrogen the same way as it's real estrogen. So then it throws off her estrogen levels. Correct. which is actually really detrimental for a menopausal woman who's like, hold on every little bit of estrogen she possibly could have. So do we know, just so I can kind of help people and guide people into understanding the toxins and mattresses?

Do we have like a category of like, hey, these are the toxins you're going to want to stay away from when you're shopping for a mattress? So the chemical lists are really long. I'll tell you the consumer product to avoid. So the consumer product to avoid is you'll avoid polyurethane. Polyurethane being what almost all regular synthetic mattresses on the market are made of. That's a petrochemical foam. In a mattress itself, on the surface levels, their densities are higher. So their concentration and toxin load is that much stronger.

And it's off-gassing that much more. So the polyurethane would be the primary culprit for, for releasing the toxins. Immediately after that are the FR barriers and the FR chemicals that are added in typically either to the foam itself or to the cover. So the textiles become a fire barrier and they have chemical treatments for that as well. Typically you'll have polyester, the polyester shell with fire barrier liquids in it and basically beneath that is the polyurethane. That is your primary products to avoid. So you want to transition from going from polyester to an organic cotton. You want to not put in any of the, you want to make sure there's that beautiful lofty pillow type look that you get

on a mattress that looks so nice. Well, they put that in for softening because if you don't have the optimal materials underneath, they need to add the cushioning on top. But that cushioning is fiber batting. That fiber batting becomes a nesting ground for allergens. Those are chemically treated which adds more toxic load to your mattress. So you know when there's a there's a consequence to everything you're putting in there. So right now if you go from top to bottom, you've got your fabric laced with FR chemicals. You got your fiber which is now laced with cleaning detergents and chemicals to keep them clean. Then you've got your polyurethane underneath. And then from an entry level you've got your spring case underneath, which typically is inert. So it's

whether you have an organic or non-organic product, a spring doesn't affect any of the toxic load. However, the springs are not as durable, do not give the same support, but ultimately become kind of like disruptors with EMFs, which is a whole other topic as well. So ultimately, you want to go at a full organic foam product. At essentially, that's all we've ever focused on

has been working the formulas of latex, to make them behave as we need for eliminating motion transfer, pressure, pressure, all those things can be handled in proper foam formulation. Again, organic foam formulation. And avoiding those main materials is what you need to do. Is it a situation like, I know when I go to my farmer's market and I ask them, oh, have you sprayed your chemicals on the food? And are you certified organic?

many of them will say, well, you know, we are organic, but we just didn't go through the process to become certified organic. When I walk into a mattress store, is there regulation around what's organic and what's not? Or can I just assume if they say it's organic that they mean it? So, no, they've got to be certified galls and gots organic. So the brand that you're buying, so if you're buying mattress A, the certification needs to be in the name of that brand. The reason I'm saying that, so you've got Gauls and Got Certifications, is there's so much fake greenwashing going on.

So what many retailers will do and some brands will do, they'll piggyback on one of their suppliers' certifications. So for example, if they were buying, and we don't sell to any of those people, so that's not an issue with us. But technically, if someone was buying one layer of foam from us, And they would then say that it's certified Gauls and Gauts organic, as you can see by essential certifications.

But if they've added that, if they've encased that in polyester, fiber-filled, F-R-treated, and below our foam, maybe put in a polyurethane foam for cost, bringing down costs, they can bury that organic product to being something that's really non-significant. In fact, when I started, when I first, developed the foam, my first customers, I never thought I'd have a direct to consumer brand. My focus was really just developing the material. And my first natural instinct was to sell this to the big manufacturers.

And they initially started buying it. But what they wanted, they wanted quarter inch and half inch slivers of our product. They wanted it for marketing purposes. So they would glue it on to their polyurethane and wrap it up. And they would say that it had galls and got certain. Well, actually, that was pre that we were pre-galls and gots. That was at the time that we were making this organic foam, but we were not certified at the time before I went to the direct-the-consumer.

I've noticed in my own, in my own experience, there was a point where I would say, I don't need to be certified. I know it goes in it, and we know we're all organic. But it's not as simple as that because I can be getting cheated by my supply chain. So I realized that when I became certified, my suppliers needed to be certified as well. So that's forced them to make sure that they weren't using pesticides and they had to follow the proper protocols and the custody of the of the product from tapping the trees all the way to when it's out our doors has been fully audited, verified, audited and vetted all the way through.

So that kept my suppliers on it because I saw inconsistencies before that we were certified. And so that made a difference. So again, that gave me as a manufacturer who I really should have full control of everything I'm putting in it. But if I don't see all the farms internationally that have really harvested this fluid for us, unless we have the auditors on site and making sure that those fields are pesticide-free, that the managing of the products are to standards, there's other things like there's no child labor and so many other things that come with the certification, but ultimately the primary thing

is making sure that it's a toxin-free certified organic product. If I had my doubts as a manufacturer, consumer should have their doubts if they're not buying it. If the brand and the certification don't match, there's an issue there. Okay. Okay, cool. I just want to make sure people can go in and navigate a salesperson who might try to steer you and say, these are all organic, what I'm hearing and what you said is maybe the next question, if you don't see certified organic on it, is to ask what chemicals are in the fabrics of the mattress. Are the mattress companies, do they have to divulge that?

Do they have to tell you? They do not. No, there's no. I thought you were going to say that. So that's where your only true test is understanding the certifications that are on there. And then the two that lead in the space is Gauls for the, which is global organic latex certification and Gauts is global organic textile certification. So most mattresses will only have gots.

And the reason they'll only have gots is because they'll put an organic fabric on the top. but everything within the core of the mattress is not organic. So they get the right to say that it's a got certified organic cover. However, that doesn't tell you that the fiber batting, I've seen so many manufacturers that have a got certified organic shell, and then it's quilted in polyester. And then they've got polyurethane on the inside and springs and all that. So you really need to take the time to prioritize.

If you're going to prioritize sleep, prioritize understanding the components that are in the mattress that you're considering, from the shell to the fiber filling to the core itself. Okay. Okay. So then, before we move off the toxic load, I really, again, I've sat with so many patients and detoxed so many patients. I really understand how overwhelming this could be.

Like you come to a conversation like this and you're like, what? My mattress has toxins in it. And I've got an autoimmune condition and my menopausal symptoms are off the chart. Like, it's almost like you want to reject it because it's too overwhelming. So two questions before we move off the toxic piece of mattresses is one, is there a life to, like, does it off gas maybe for six months? and then it's fine, or do these toxins, is it like a continual toxin that just dribbles into your system night after night?

Is there like, like if I have a mattress that is 10 years old, five years old, is it going, are those toxins out of it? That would be my first question. So obviously at the initial stage, it's had their highest intensity and, you know, the actual reactions in many, cases are still active and off-gassing the most. It is constantly declining. The exposure and intensity of the off-casting is a constant decline. But what's also happening at the same time, specifically on certain material polyurethane, for example, as those toxins are escaping, the product

itself is losing some of its flexibility. It's becoming dry, brittle, and it's breaking down. So as you're losing the toxic load, you're losing the benefits, the physical benefits that you bought that product to begin with. Oh, yeah. There you go. Yeah. Well, there's that. It's a problem too. Yeah. So that's kind of that that exchange. And then the, you know, I guess my other question would be, and I, and I don't know if you know, this might actually be more of an answer for me. But I'm thinking, again, like it's really hard to look at two. mattresses and say, well, one is $3,000 and the other one is $5,000. And the reason I would spend a $2,000 difference is because of this off-gassing. Do we have any literature out there about, like, autoimmune conditions and mattresses or people becoming sick from their mattresses? Like, has anybody actually gone in and studied the poor health that can be created with

mattresses. So you're not going to find studies on a mattress itself, but there's plenty of studies talking about the exposure to the specific chemicals, to the specific components that are used in mattresses. So when you talk about polyurethane and understanding the breakdown of polyurethane, and you'll have the connection from that, you'll have the, you know, the chemicals used for fire barrier use and the connection of chemicals with those. And the unfortunate part is, is that all of these are within legal limits. So what does that mean is that, you know, the foam manufacturers, the fibers,

the ones who are converting the fiber, they're all using, they're putting the chemical exposures, obviously, within legal limits. But the legal limits are still not healthy. They just won't, they'll kill you slowly, not quickly. So that's, that's like the RDA.

That's like the RDA, right? You know, this is what, how many, how much vitamin A and vitamin you should get into your system. And when we look at those regulations, they're really minimal. And talking about a mattress, so many mattress brands, so many models are all very different. So you're not going to have a study that's really talking about specific mattresses alone. Like when we do studies, we'll do studies which we're looking at everything as far as sleep,

REM sleep, deep sleep, heart rate variability. We'll look at all those things when it comes to our mattresses. and we compare them to polyurethane mattresses, memory foam mattresses, other organic mattresses. So we'll make comparative testings over 10-week double-blind studies, but we're not specifically looking for the reaction to chemicals. We're looking the impacts of sleep. Yes.

When exposed to the totality of what those products have to offer. Really good point, because if you look at the hypothalamus pituitary pineal gland, it's not, that controls your circadian rhythm. And that actually is one of those things where it doesn't have a blood brain barrier. So if you're lying on a mattress and it's off gassing, you're breathing that in, it's going into this part of the brain that doesn't have a protective shield around it, then yes, it's going to throw off REM sleep and deep sleep and heart rate variability. And so it sounds like you guys have measured that.

Yeah. One of the things that I would say when you're looking at different price points, in conventional mattresses, a conventional organic mattress is the difference between an organic mattress that might be $1,000 compared to something that's $3,000, compared to something that's $6,000. It's kind of all over the map. In general cases, these are very easy to understand why those differences are. So for example, most organic mattress are made with organic latex. And so a $1,000 mattress will have a very small amount of organic latex.

The rest will be coils. You know, you get into the next level, it'll be more latex, less coils. And it's in the ratio. And you get to the most expensive, it's all latex, no coils. So that's kind of how the pricing goes. With ours, it's a little bit different because we never have coils. However, we really change our formulas substantially. And we really get into the behavior of those formulas to maintain them always organic,

but also having a desired outcome for performance. And I think you're actually the perfect person. You've experienced that where, you know, at one point, I think you didn't want to reach out to me, just busy schedules. And you went organic, but not our organic, right? And you saw that difference so you can speak to it in your own experience. But that's really there are differences and that's what we, I obsess with, believe it or not, because we have a full range of products that, you know, they typically would have gone

from $2,500 up to $10,000, $12,000. My energy, the last 20 years of leading essential has actually been to maintain as low cost as possible. And it's hard to believe because they are quite pricey, but believe it or not, I, you know, if I followed the way the industry goes, I could just be making a $50,000 mattress easily. And it's our 20th anniversary. And instead of launching something that was super high price, again, I said, how do I take what I've learned, what I've developed and make it more accessible to everyone? Because what makes me happy is more people being healthy. And for our 20th anniversary, we actually did something at the $600 level,

but not to get into merchandising and all that kind of stuff, but the thing is my challenge to myself for the last 20 years is how do we make this accessible to everyone? Now, obviously, we're dealing with a lot of pro athletes that use our products, and they've always seen us as a value, but I understand for the everyday consumer, when they're walking, when they're going and look at mattresses, it's kind of shocking where the prices are.

And it's overwhelming and understanding why. And it gets frustrating. And people just walk away and just buy anything. But putting thought into what's in it and the toxic exposures that come out of all the different possible components in there and not focused on that embroidery that says wellness spa or something that kind of sounds organic, but what's inside really matters. Right. Yeah.

That's why, again, why I wanted to bring you on is so we can like take all the different parts of mattresses and break them apart here. I will tell you that what I love about your mattress, so we actually have one mattress in our house that's all organic. And it's great, but it doesn't have any of the other bells and whistles that your mattresses have. And we'll talk about that in a moment. So I kept having to put like the cooling pads on top and the grass. pounding sheets, like as I kept learning about all these things that were like affecting my health, I kept having to layer all these things on top of this organic mattress. And then I like hit this under, like when I learned about you would put everything in one mattress.

I was like, oh my God, like how much easier is that? So that's that's one thing I want to point out. The other thing that, and I sent a message to you on this, what I found so interesting is it sort of had the softness. of like maybe like a foam mattress, but it was hard underneath. So when I would get up, I felt like I was like significantly, like, I enjoyed getting into bed, but I didn't get out with kind of aches and pains. Like I, like it had the benefit of a hard mattress, but it had a soft feeling on top. Is that, did you guys do that on purpose?

First of all, I loved, loved, loved the message you sent me. One, it was so authentic. Then two is as you're speaking to me on the message, you're thinking about what you're saying. So it just came out so authentic that way that you're just speaking and thinking about what you're trying to say at the same time. So it was an awesome message. Because you're in that message, you're telling me how, you know, I prefer a firm bed. It didn't feel firm to the touch. And then I got on it.

And all of a sudden, it's supporting me like a firm bed, but it doesn't feel firm. Yes, that's all by design. That's all intentional. Number one, a hard bed is actually not good for so many things. It's not good for your posture unless you have a flat bore posture. But if you have curves in your back like most of us do, a hard bed is not good for you. It doesn't promote proper blood circulation. It doesn't give the proper cradling support for your lower back and shoulders.

If you're a side sleeper, it brings you even further away from being good for you. So a hard bed is not right. The problem is that no one's put the time as we have to develop something that has the elasticity to adapt to your curves, but has the high density to continually support it. And that's exactly what you have. You don't, you have a bed that feels soft to the hand touch, but when you're horizontally on it, it's fully supportive because the density's there. We actually, our beds are more dense than the standard mattress. Yes.

about triple the density of a regular mattress. So you're getting that support, you're getting that feel, but without the hardness, without the boardiness that you get from what's a firm support conventionally in the mattress industry. Yeah, it's really unique. And really, I've never been on a mattress like that before. So, okay, talk to me about EMFs and grounding because that was another thing that kind of, as I was researching toxic toxins, is that we're not just. dealing with chemicals, but we're dealing with frequencies. And I think EMFs, some people are starting

to understand that. Grounding sheets have become really popular. So what is it that we might need to know about the part of like EMFs and grounding? Because you've built in the grounding into the mattress. So this is, I guess important to preface this is that all of my research has been about the science of sleep and moving that needle on REM sleep and deep sleep because that's the game changer. And it's important to know that while he has one specific thing like just toxins or just thermal regulation or just EMFs, that alone is not, doesn't cut it. And that's where to really move the needle on sleep.

our obsession has been to bring all these things together. That's why why do we address EMFs? Why do we address thermoregulation toxins? Because all of it are relevant and all of it together really equate to proper sleep and performance sleep. So when it gets the EMFs, and it's an interesting topic because the EMFs were something specifically that, again, you can't see, just like you can't see the toxins, but it's easily measurable to read toxic load in an environment. Whereas back in the day, when those were not so

easily available, again, it was invisible. When it comes to EMFs, we don't see them, right? So you get this, this constant erratic waves that come from cell towers and satellites and mobile phones. All of these signals are coming in in a very erratic behavior to come to the devices. It's not linear. And it's not the way our body's harmonic, organic wave is, because everything has a wave to it, rocks, trees, everything has an organic wave, our bodies as well. I had to find a direct link to measuring this before I bring it into a company like Ascentia. So we actually connected with a doctor in Switzerland, who had really showcased how blood cell behavior behaves erratic just like the EMFs that are in our environment. And EMFs have changed, whereas, you know, 30 years ago, we were talking about EMFs from

microwaves and toasters and all your appliances. And grounding worked really well for those type of appliances because those EMFs were coming from the appliances from your surroundings and what the EMF grounding pads would do would make sure that that went down to the ground and it channeled down to the ground rather than going through your body. Today's EMS, M.S are a little different. They're coming in from wireless devices. They're coming from satellites, from antennas. So those are coming to us from everywhere. So just using a grounding mat is not the same because it's still channeling through your body because it's not coming from the ground up. It's coming from the air down. So you're becoming a channeling antenna to that. So what we had seen is through the dark field microscopy and blood cells, we were able to identify through his doctor is that grounding pads were not doing the job. The blood cells continued to behave erratic during phone calls, streaming, and use of electronic equipment, everything that was wireless.

The reason we went deep into this is because we deal with a lot of professional athletes. And a lot of professional athletes are at a very young age in their lives, right? And that's the one tool that they don't want to drop out of. Obviously, you can block away your home from the devices. but our goal is always to embrace technology and not make it impact our personal lives and that we move forward with it. Through the change in our formula and adding in quartz in our latex formula, we had realized the quartz itself is a mineral that maintains memory and maintains whatever you give it. So the wave that the quartz had was able to,

mimic the organic waves of our body and become actually the dominant wave in the room. So we added the quartz specifically to our latex. It became the dominant wave. And basically those communication towers and everything that you need to activate your phone, all it needs is to come through. So if it follows a natural harmony wave to get to your phone, communication is delivered. However, we no longer had the erratic blood cell activity in the blood. So this became that bridge of an evidence-based approach that we are not blocking EMFs,

but managing them so they don't affect our bodies. So that's what we've done at essential, is not block EMFs, but manage their ways so that they're not impacting our blood cells. Okay. So, and what's interesting, I want people to think about this. And this, again, when I learned about the toxins in mattresses, I was, I rejected it. And I was like, just get a good mattress. And when I started to unpack all these things, I'm like, wow, how could sleeping be one of the most harmful or helpful things we do every day? So what you're saying is that if you are, like, I'm in a house right now that is right near a lot of power. lines. And I actually thought about this. I've been looking out at the power lines thinking this isn't really good to be like, I've been sleeping fairly well. But that, and that's just one example.

EMFs are super invisible, lots of frequencies out there, especially if you live in a city. When you're lying down, those frequencies are going into your body and are those negative frequencies and they are absorbing, being absorbed into your body. Is that correct? And that's why if you put the courts in there, now the courts has a frequency that's more healing and powerful than the other, the other. Correct. Correct. And it's, it's, it's, it's, you're absorbing them. We are absorbing them. They're actually passing through and causing your blood cells to behave erratic and clump together. And so if you looked at the blood work, we actually have it on our website, we have all of the blood work showing from all these

tests that we've done, the blood cells tend to clump together during that EMF exposure. And the clumping together, what that leads to is less oxygen flow, basically restricting that oxygen flow from behaving properly and naturally. With the quartz, you no longer have that clumping of the blood cells. So that behavior behaves naturally and it's not obstructing the healing that needs to happen during sleep. It's one of those things where we're, we, we, where like you were described, you can't believe that sleep could be so bad. It's kind of one of those things.

Sleep is where we heal. Sleep is where everything positive happens. Yeah. In not the right environment, some positive healing happens, but not where it needs to be or not or it should be. I've noticed those because we, again, we started this company working for people who were ill and challenged and facing, you know, their biggest health challenges.

And it was easy for us to. to see and understand what work, what didn't work. Today we work both with them, but we also work with pro athletes, and we learn from them as well, because they're very much in tune and in touch with their bodies and how they're performing. So it's all about thriving and pushing the needle on how well we can do,

how much better we can make sleep. And often we've seen it's how we push the needle to getting more REM sleep, more deep sleep. And if we increase the percentage of those two, and again, achieving this through eliminating, eliminating the impacts of EMFs. We really see a huge change and it's a game changer. And you just become so much better at life when you sleep better.

Right. Yeah. Well, and that's, you know, I've always been an incredible sleeper. Like you give me like two hour break and I'm like, I'm going to go take a nap. In fact, even in my practice, I would see patients in the morning. I'd go home. I would literally work out and then I would get in my bed and I would take a 20 minute nap and then I'd go back in the afternoon.

And so what ended up happening is that I just started to grab sleep wherever I could and I loved sleep. And then I hit perimenopause and I hit my 40s and I couldn't sleep. And it was so frustrating because I didn't have that tool that I so desperately wanted. So, you know, do you have, do you have, like, I'm sure you have plenty of stories, but do you have measurements outside of HRV, total sleep, REM sleep, deep sleep. Like, like, I know everybody's going to want some kind of guarantee that, like, hey, if I get on this mattress, it's all going to be, life is going to be great. But if we look at the mattress as a healing tool, like that's what I hear you saying is the mattress should be a healing tool. Then what do we know outside of our own symptomatology is healing while we're sleeping using the Ascentia mattress? Well, the beauty of these days is that we all get to have trackers, you know, so you can actually measure this.

So what we've done and what you can see on our site is we did a 10-week study with 75 pro athletes. It was a double-blind study. And through basically seeing different, they happen to all be athletes. That's what they hide in common. We just felt that was the study that we were putting together. but you know from different genders to different ages to different lifestyles because everyone had a different routine of you know that you have our super athletes that are committed to sleep and committed to eating well and committed to everything they do in their sleep hygiene to others who are you know still going out

and drinking and doing so we really got to see that every single player that were on the essential mattresses all had minimum 20 and up to 60% improvement in deep sleep and REM sleep. So we know and when we did that with those tests a few years back, we immediately put quarts and everything. But you know, and I'm kind of an extremist that way. When I see something moves the needle, I make sure that our whole collection, we're not about good, better, best merchandise. We're committed to wellness.

And we're that before a mattress company, we're asleep wellness. company. And so that got integrated in the line. And soon after that, we're getting our customers that are reaching back out to us and say, hey, we've been tracking our sleep. I've improved my REM. I've improved my deep. They're seeing the differences. So we know that everything we do improve sleep and the outcomes in your recovery, in your life, in your both mental and physical, will be improved because of it. It's just, it's an absolute, you know, the only way we won't change is if you've gone from our old mattress to our new mattress, same technology that won't be moving the needle. But ultimately, we know that if you take care of all these segments from toxins to EMFs,

to body's natural thermal regulation, to posture support, we're taking care of all these things simultaneously at the same time, we will be improving sleep. Then we get to another level when we talk about specific coaching. Like, for example, we have some athletes that changed from, you know, they were retired. became premenopausal and all of a sudden they were getting sleep interruptions. So now we went to somewhere else. They've already got the ultimate tool for sleep. So how can I help them in some sleep coaching?

What could we do differently? And what I would tell them is obviously the drop in estrogen levels interrupt the REM sleep because estrogen helps with REM sleep, which is one of the things we're always trying to increase. So what I would tell them is, okay, well, let's change some of the habits. make sure that you're following your schedule to a T because your internal clock follows that schedule. Let's back up eating. And, you know, instead of three hours before sleep, let's not eat four hours before sleep. Again, everything to try to help with a healthy sleep. Exposure to light, help trigger that natural circadian rhythm. So make sure in the morning, you are exposed to

sunlight and daylight. Get into certain routines that can help offset the hormonal change. that it's happening. And the feedback has been positive from people that we would give that kind of coaching to. You know, it's funny. I was just sitting there thinking, I don't even know if there's like a health standard for how often you should even change your mattress. Do you, is there, do we have any kind of, is it mattress dependent? Some break down a little bit quicker. I know this is like a total segue from what you were saying, but I'm now thinking through all the mattresses in my house and thinking, is there like something I need to do different? So ultimately the life of a mattress as the problem is the mattress industry is almost like a cushioning industry. It's not really a sleep

wellness industry. So your mattresses are not necessarily built to go through your hormonal changes. They're not meant to go through your lifestyle changes. So they're not built for that. They're just made built for comfort. And so because they're just built for comfort, the last, as long as the materials don't break down. So most people change your mattress when it's hammocking, when they're getting back aches and shoulder aches, it's time to change. So it's all physical,

but they're not really measuring the performance of sleep. Now, if you, you know, we've been doing this for 20 years, and we have people that are on their mattresses that they purchased from us 20 years ago. What I would say,

if you're a lifer with Ascentia, the only reasons you have changed is, is because we've changed. You know, the mattress we built 20 years ago, I would say that today they would be the best in-class mattresses only short of our new mattresses because we've only been putting quartz for the last five years. We've only optimized the thermal regulation in the last five years. So you're getting certain benefits today. So a person that would say, hey, I'm looking to optimize sleep. I have an

Ascentia 2010. What do I expect from an essential 20-25? It will be different, not that the 2010 is bad because we built it with the same, you know, idealism and making sure we built it right every single time. Right. But our learning, we've learned so much more. So there is no time frame. So in a sense, what we've built today happens to work for all your changes in life, lifestyle hormone changes.

Just because, you know, in my research, I've realized that that is optimized sleep even beforehand, even before you went those changes, what we've done to the mattress, optimize your sleep then. That's why we said, when I was a specific athlete that faced a change, not that she was sleeping badly when she became preemopausal, but she was getting sleep interruptions. She was waking up at two, three o'clock in the morning, which never happened before. So she's still on, on the best possible surface available to her. So she didn't need to change the mattress, but that was like, okay, well, let's try some lifestyle changes. Let's try making a few things to try to bring you back to what you're used to.

Because, again, this is someone who's already prioritizing sleep. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's like when I look at somebody who's in a health crisis, what I typically do is go, okay, let me look at their lifestyle. And their lifestyle when it comes to sleep is, everything from the time they go to sleep to the room, like being dark and cold, to looking at like deep just so the people who may not know that deep sleep is measuring how much the brain is detoxing.

And REM sleep is measuring how much you can integrate new information that you learn that day into your brain. So I think that, and so when I would break that down with people, we would start to see like, oh, your primary way in which your body is healing has completely gone off course. And so putting those pieces back together become really, really important. Can we talk a little bit about what you can expect with pricing on a mattress? Like, is more expensive going to always be better? is let like is there a way to tell like you know like I'm a wine lover if I go and buy wine like sometimes I get tricked into the more expensive bottle is going to be a better wine and then

the more you understand wine the more you realize wait a second there's cheaper wines that can also be amazing is the same thing with mattress does the price dictate what it can do for you so it's interesting I mean I can speak of what we do at Ascentia so at Ascentia it's specifically correlated to the performance just because we don't do anything for nothing. So in a sense, I'm not putting bells and whistles. It doesn't need bells and whistles. So I'm not going to put something irrelevant, unnecessary in any bed because, again, my goal is to keep them as available and affordable to everyone as possible.

So in that alone, you are getting more. But however, I think when people ask me this question is it all depends. how intensely serious do you want to take your sleep. So in entry level product that we make, just to give you the example, the foundation of it stays true to what we believe in. It's fully certified organic. There's zero coils.

There's zero fiber batting. We formulated the top layer specifically for what we call our zero gravity, pressure redistribution, transition layer. And all it's just the latex formulation. that we've designed and formulated to give a really great support, great feel. And it's an incredible product. So I stand behind that product 100%. And the pricing is amazing.

So why spend more? So now it's how seriously do you take your sleep? Because the next level up. And again, at one point, I take you back 15 years ago, what I would do is whenever I would develop the next great thing, I would stop making everything else beforehand. And I remember after two, three years of really limiting it to the greatest and the best only, we had a customer to call back and said, well, you know, we bought this bed from you four years ago. We want to get one for our second home.

Do you have that same model? It goes, well, no, we stopped making them because we made it better and greater. And this was everything it was about. And it goes, well, we didn't really want to spend that budget because with every, new iteration and every improvement, costs went up because we were adding certain essential oils and certain expensive features in the ingredients that brought that number up. So that's when I realized, well, I need to make some of these iterations available to everyone. But every time we go up, it's because we're moving the needle on something.

So when we get to our lifestyle, which is hypoallergenic, it's all certified organic, like durable because our $1,600 bed a last 20 years, just like our $10,000 bed. They're both made dense. They're both made well. So you really have a hard decision with Ascentia because they're all good. But when you go up...

I was just going to say, how do people pick? Well, they pick on how obsessed they are with sleep. So when you go to next level up, you get to what we call our REM5. And it's about thermal regulation. So our lifestyle is temperature neutral, whereas our REM5 allows your... body to naturally drop by 5 degrees over 8 hour time lapse, which moves the needle on REM

and deep. Yeah, that really, that really, I just want to say that thermo-regulating feature is really interesting because the body does have to drop its temperature in order to get into these deeper states. Correct. And menopausal women know this. So, yeah, that's really good. And then we go above from there is our REM 9, which drops 9 degrees over an 8-hour time left.

So those are the main difference. is right there because we know that those and the materials use for that because don't forget what's interesting for us is we're not adding a cooling device to cool you down we're not adding chemicals with the most popular thing in mattresses is phase changing chemicals which when you touch them they feel cool they react to your body heat you touch it and you feel a cooling sensation that's a chemical reaction that makes you feel cool two of the reasons why those don't work number One is it requires you to keep changing position to get a reactivation of the chemical reaction for you to constantly get the coolness. Well, those are sleep interruptions.

Number two is you added chemicals, which we've talked about earlier, are disruptive to your central nervous system. So we basically go from our lifestyle to our REM5 to our REM 9, always chemical free to achieve natural thermal regulation. What does that mean is we're only going, it allows your body to expel the heat that it needs to expel. So you're not going to feel cold in bed because you're only discharging what your body needs to. And if you are in a state of overheating, that's when five and nine will make a difference for you. Because the nine allows your heat to escape much quicker than the REM 5. So those are those are a difference. It's beautiful.

Yeah. And here's what I just want to say because. the whole purpose behind this conversation for my podcast and my listeners was, what do we need to think about when it comes to mattresses? And I was in practice for 25 years, and like the greatest mattress that my patients thought was ever created was the sleep number. And when I actually went to go look into the toxic load of the sleep number, it was really high. And so then I started to really analyze everything we needed to know about these mattresses and how it was the off gassing.

It's the temperature. It's the EMFs. It's like all these things coming together. And I had not, I mean, I was putting, like I said, chili pads on and grounding sheets and blocking EMFs in my room, like doing everything I could to create the most healing environment. for my body when it sleeps. And then when I heard what you all were doing, I'm like, wow, you've put it all in one mattress, which I'm not sure anybody has done that yet. So this is why this conversation was so pivotal to have with you. And the second thing, I really, you've said this three or four times now that I don't want my listeners to miss. When you say, are you committed to

sleep. It depends on how committed to sleep you are. Where my brain goes is it depends on how committed to healing you are. Because sleep, and I use sleep all the time as an analogy to fasting. People, when they go in to learn how to fast, sometimes they struggle to get into those fasted states. And they say fasting isn't for me. And I always say fasting is a healing. state, you put your body in, everybody can find their rhythm with it. We just have to figure out what blocks you. It's very much like sleep. Sleep is a healing state. You're putting your body in, but not everybody can sleep. So that was really important because I think that we have a tendency just to think about how good our back feels or how comfortable it is. But I want people to walk away

from this podcast and say your mattress, your bedroom, your whole environment that you're sleeping in is a healing state. Would you agree on that? Absolutely. A few things that come to mind is you're the expert on fasting, but for certain people, fasting may cause temperature abnormalities where they may have a spike in body temperature. So in those cases, more specifically, a mattress that, a mattress that, that manages that thermal regulation allows more body heat to escape, kind of lets you through those dips and valleys of going with some of the healing measures that you're taking like fasting. And it's not just, again, not just back and shoulder pain.

It's we're talking about accelerating your recovery time, not just physical, but mental. We have players that, you know, a lot of the situation with players is they deal with anxiety, stress. they have to learn what they've been taught that day. They need to learn plays. And the retention. Retention happens through proper sleep.

Focus, anxiety is a limit increased focus. And eliminating anxiety happens through really good sleep. So healing is even just healing of the day. It's not healing of only the major issues, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So well said.

Well, where can people find you? Do we have discount codes? Like are there, the other thing about a match. that I think is really helpful. Do you have like order it, sleep on it, if you don't like it, send it back kind of routine? Yeah, definitely. We've got 120-day trials. I believe we, I'm sure we have a discount we're offering to your, to your listeners. I'll put it in the notes. But I realized, but I also realize I put my phone on an airplane loan, so she never got it. That's so funny. That's why she didn't reply.

Yeah, we'll put it. This is what happens when you get too visual. visionaries together that, you know, we don't know the logistics. So yeah, we'll put the discount code. We definitely have sleep trials. We're here. We're here because we really care about sleep wellness. So our team is really only trained for that. So they're trained to help you. So anybody who has calls, you call our, you chat with us, you 800 calls. And obviously we've got loads of information and all the testing is are all on the, on the learning pages of our website. It's MyEssentia.com. Again, we're here to help.

We're not here to sell you anything. We're here to deliver wellness through sleep is what we're really, really committed to. So you won't have anyone pressuring anybody to buy anything ever. Right. Thank you. Yes. And you and I align on that. You know, I feel really clear that the goal of health is to have great discussions like this. And to say, well, if this works for you, go for it.

If it doesn't, no problem. So thank you for taking on that same attitude. Every time I speak to you, you're really engaging. And you screwed me up this time because my team is always making sure that I'm looking at the camera. But no, I've been looking at you the whole time. No worry. No worries.

It was a good. You know what? It's so funny because I have that when I'm, I don't look at the camera. I look at you. Yeah. Because I feel like what's more important is that we build rapport and we have a great conversation. so our listeners can learn from it.

If we're not looking at each other, it's all good. Exactly, yes. Yeah, I really appreciate this conversation, and I really hope people get a lot out of it. And where can people find the mattresses? We'll leave links in the notes, but where else can they find you? Well, basically, we do everything direct to consumer through our website. So everything's at Myessential.com.

The learn pages are really important. There's a lot to learn. We even did some testing for the, military last year. We've been testing on eliminating mold in the sleep environment, which is a big trigger as well. Ah, yes. Which is a big problem as well. So we have, we have, we've reformulated all of our mattresses. They were already quite resilient to mold before, but we've, we've gone even further by increasing the acidity levels of our essential oils, organic essential oils that we put in there. So we've taken that to a different level. So yeah, there's so much to learn at the

learn pages at myessentia.com. And then it's, it's, unfortunately, we don't have showrooms around the country. We, we used to, but the demand of our product has been all online just because it's been referral based most of the time. We are in certain hotel properties, MGM resorts. They have healthy travel rooms, which feature essential mattresses in them. But ultimately that, that it's through that website that is, is where they're available. We didn't even go into mold. I forgot, but just So we can sum that up. If you're in a moldy house, but you have an essential mattress, you're not, the mold isn't being absorbed into the mattress.

Is that correct? So no. What it is is we've increased the acidity level of our essential oils to basically not make them thrive and expand the spores because mold spores just, they're, they just grow at an incredible pace. So what we've basically been able to identify through testing is we looked at the mold growth. Because it's an external infection. This is not coming from your mattress, but it's from your environment where the mold breaks on.

But a typical polyurethane mattress is the ideal environment for mold. The reason why is one, you've got this sponge. Two, you've got the moisture that us humans bring into it from perspiration, body heat and everything creating this environment. So one of the things people will tell you right away is, you know, don't make up your bed right away. Allow it to air out, allow the sun shine in, right? So because you want to be a dry surface all the time.

So when we looked at the issue a year ago, we realized that growth of mold spores is exponential on a regular mattress. It's insane. And then we looked at our essential mattresses, and it was about 90% less. than the regular, than polyurethane, than the regular mattress. But then how do we move the needle on that? And I realized by changing the acidity of the essential oils we were using,

we went from 90% to 97%. So we really were able to make it where mold spores would go on there and eventually die. Now, if it's a true invasion of mold, well, they may win that battle. But our goal here was to minimize that risk, almost eliminate the risk of growth of mold within our mattresses. And I think we achieved that. And again, that was another thing. As soon as I discovered that, I put it on every single essential mattresses because it's just part of good sleeping. Well, Jack, you did not miss a beat.

So I really appreciate the incredible thoroughness that you have approached one of the greatest healing containers, which is our sleep and our bedroom. So thank you for all of that. And we'll leave links to everything and keep doing amazing work with helping people sleep and heal. I really, really appreciate what you all are up to.

Thank you. You are always easy and awesome to talk to. I look forward to reconnecting with you live. Our paths will cross, I'm sure. They will cross. They will cross. Yeah. Amazing.

All right. Be well. Thank you. Appreciate you. 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.