Sleep: Root Causes Beyond Melatonin | Webinar

hello hello everyone I am here tonight to start our webinar i'm also on instagram live so hello everyone that is joining us there I've been doing this multitasking thing now on on Tuesdays but but it's been nice to have you know people that are on the webinar but also people that don't know about the webinar to learn about it through the Instagram live so today we're actually going to be piggybacking off of some of the things we've been talking about this month it's really been all about different types of mental health conditions and last week we drove in and really talked a lot about depression anxiety and even addiction and how do over there and you know I felt like that was such an important topic to touch on because unfortunately so many people are dealing with depression and anxiety especially anxiety I'm hearing it left and right and in very very young ages as well so with that being said when we talk about you know these different imbalances that can cause us to feel low feel depressed or even feel anxious this is actually very tied to also some of the sleep disorders that we could be dealing with and I think that so many people are struggling with their sleep you know some people it's the full-blown insomnia and then there's other people that are really just dealing with broken sleep or never necessarily waking up refreshed or popping up in the middle of the night and what's really fascinating too is if you actually look at the Chinese medicine it's called the organ clock and three two hours of the day you have different organs that are regenerating so if you pop up at the same time every night or even if you crash the same time during the day this is usually tied to an organ that's under a lot of stress so one of the most common things that I hear in my clinical practice is people waking up between the times 3 & 4 so 3 & 4 a.m. is actually tied to your liver which unfortunately in this day and age most of us are dealing with some type of stress on our liver and everybody thinks alcohol when I say this and I'm not necessarily talking about alcohol but medications caffeine alcohol pesticides herbicides any type of toxin has to get filtered out of the body through the liver so the liver is constantly dealing with the brunt of so many different things so it's really important to take care to your liver and also if you are popping up between 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning kind of keeping that in mind for those of you that have no idea where the liver is the liver is on your right like it's right by your right ribcage so some people have a lot of pain there so sometimes it could be your liver sometimes give you your gallbladder just so you know but you know the second most common time people are getting up is going to be after that it's going to be between say 5 or I'm sorry 4 and 5 a.m. and that's actually more lung related so if you're someone who has had a history of upper respiratory infections bronchitis things like that this can actually be tied to why you are waking up at that time in the middle of the night so the body is so so fascinating and really what I want to uncover today is I want to be able to talk more about these sleep issues because unfortunately what we're doing is we're usually grabbing for some type of medication and then for those of us that are trying to go the more natural route were utilizing things like melatonin and then the more we use melatonin or even our medications we usually need to up our dose or we eventually need to switch the what we're using because it stops working and it stops working because we haven't necessarily been able to figure out or address the root cause and really some of the things that I'll tell you tonight is that it's not super black and white it's there's no one rhyme or reason to why people have sleep issues there are many many reasons why and as I go through the examples you guys should be able to decipher you know which is maybe more appropriate for you because everyone is going to be obviously a little bit different so for those of you that are on the webinar and for those of you on Instagram we have a webinar which I have all these amazing slides so you actually get visuals for everything that I'm saying but for those of you that are just on Instagram just you can join us next time I do these every week okay so just kind of a little bit about what we're gonna cover tonight is we want to talk about just understanding that you don't know what you don't know there's very very limited testing when it comes to sleep so doctors our transmitters they're not necessarily going to the lengths of doing any type of MRIs or cat scans or imaging to look at the brain to see if that's associated with sleep so really what it comes down to is oh you have bad sleep here's your sleeping pill and there's not a lot of testing so it's very difficult for people to understand why secondarily is if you're trying to fix your sleep it's not always about what you do or what you take but it's also about how you do it because you have to consider there might be various factors playing into why your sleep is off and then we also want to really look at some of the the limitations to the approaches so I've already kind of I've already kind of mentioned how you know it's it's usually going to be something natural like a melatonin or it's going to be a sleeping pill and there are so many other ways that we can go about really helping our sleep and some of the difficulties with our sleep can come down to the way our bedroom is set up and some of these things that we do before we go to bed which we're going to cover so just a little bit about myself a little bit about Integrative Wellness group is you know we really have learned a lot over the course of our clinical practice and we kept seeing a lot of limitations with the way that medicine is looking at the body and what I mean by that is we look at the body as being a bunch of separate parts so when you're complaining about your sleep it's kind of just thought that oh you just have a sleep problem and that there's no other possibility that there's other organs involved or there's more of a root cause to it it's usually just like oh well change your schedule or get to bed earlier and it's not usually that simple especially because we are so overly stimulated in this day and age so we really kind of pushed the boundaries and we're always digging digging digging to just try to understand you know some of the origins to why people feel the way they do and we've uncovered that there is a lot of limitations with the testing and there's also a lot of limitations with the treatment protocols so we really opted to spend more time ask that our questions dig deeper so that we can truly uncover what is the cause and then be able to obviously give you a solution and because that's the most important so a little bit about myself I am an integrative physician I work at integrated wellness kirb working primarily with a lot of complex cases the reason why I'm comfortable saying that I work with a lot of complex cases because I really do such advanced and comprehensive testing that I have the ability to uncover what is the route to your symptoms so it's not about you know naming and blaming and just saying oh this is your diagnosis this is what you have wrong with you it's really a matter of what caused it what you know where are these symptoms coming from and when you do the right testing you can do that with confidence and then be able to know exactly how to help this person so I can work with a lot of different populations and the reason why is because my testing and the way that we look at the body has the ability to unravel really what is the root cause that's the absolute most important thing so a little bit about why I even do what I do I don't do what I do because I was really sick um I actually thought that I was a pretty healthy individual I really thought that I ate well I was conscious you know I was definitely healthier than a lot of the people around me and when I actually got into this field and I started doing my own testing I realized that I wasn't actually very healthy and I realized that a lot of the things that I dealt with on a day to day some people you know or some of my symptoms were on a week to week basis I found that I just normalized them so you know occasionally having a stuffy nose was my normal you know having a headache occasionally was my normal having an upset stomach when I ate the wrong thing was normal having brain fog was normal and this is the common thing for many of us is we normalize the different symptoms because maybe they come and they go but also because our blood work is usually saying that everything looks fine and that's one of the biggest things that I've learned is there is a lot of limitations with our more traditional testing and because I did more comprehensive testing it really revealed that I actually had massive mercury toxicity because I was a pescetarian for ten years meaning I only ate fish I didn't know any better I thought all fish was created equal and it was super healthy and good for your brain little did I know that I was eating tons of swordfish and tons of tuna which is very very high in mercury and then on top of that because I was eating so much fish I actually had a lot of infections in my gastrointestinal system because I was eating a lot of raw fish doing sushi so really the biggest thing is is that you don't know what you don't know until you do your testing and I think the biggest thing that I advocate for is don't settle for feeling mediocre and especially because people that I work with are you know they're young they're in their 20s they're in their 30s sometimes and they're sitting there being like oh yeah I can't remember anything oh I always have to have a had on me because literally my memory is shot or I could barely get out of bed in the morning you know on the weekends I just try to sleep so I can recover from my week this is not a way to live we really need to start asking for more and demanding more out of our health care because feeling like that now how are we gonna feel in a few years so I know that it's late and I know a lot of us got a lot of things going on we got kids running around people want dinner you know we have dogs barking and and we probably have emails to catch up on and all the good stuff but what I'm gonna talk to you guys about tonight is not things that are traditionally being talked about these are not just run-of-the-mill I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that you need to go on an elimination diet I'm actually gonna give you information you probably have never heard before so with all the distractions around us it's an awesome time to just shut down the email browser slide the cellphone away be able to kind of hone in because this is really amazing information that is not things that you're hearing from other places other platforms and other physicians so first and foremost before we start talking more so about sleep is I want you to know that it's not your fault that you don't know what you don't know if you've failed at trying to get yourself better and you failed at trying to choose the diet that's right for you or you failed at you know trying to pick the right supplements medications etc it's not your fault there is a ton of information out there there was a ton of conflicting information out there it gets very very very confusing on what is what what is right for you and even how to get started so it's really just a matter of don't blame yourself don't kind of allow that to make you paralyze it's really just being able to get the right information and be able to use it in the right way so I think the most important thing is is this slide for those of you that are on the webinar I personally think that one of the biggest detriment to what's happening in medicine right now is the fact that we look at the body as a bunch of separate parts and we have we're in the mindset of oh he's wanting to work with a specialist or being told that we need to go see a specialist and if you really think about it we have a cardiologist that's going to help us with our heart we have a neurologist for our brain psychiatrist for our our mood and our mental health and we're assuming that all of our systems are actually they're working independently and not working together and that is one of the things that keeps us confused it keeps us paralyzed and it keeps us from actually getting better because nobody is piecing the puzzle together and nobody is actually necessarily being able to tell us hey this is the route to the umbrella of different symptoms that you have going on for those of you that are asking about the webinar the webinar link is actually in the bio on Instagram and it's also on the website so you should be able to actually hop right on there and join in but again you will be able to access the replay so private message me if you want the replay and I'll send it directly to you okay so this gonna brings me to my second point is I just mentioned that you know if you have something going on with your brain then you're gonna see a neurologist if you have something going on with your gut you're gonna see a gastroenterologist if you have depression you're gonna see a psychiatrist or a psychologist so this is really just everything being separate number one and number two this is just overlooking basic physiology and really on the topic of sleep so 90 to 95 percent of your serotonin is made in your gut the precursor to melatonin is serotonin so that alone gives us tremendous insight as to why we might be dealing with a sleep issue also feeling depressed maybe it's low level but then we also might be dealing with a low level gut issue that comes and goes or we blame it on IH much pasta I ate a big meal I ate out age too much dairy whatever the case may be so there is a huge huge connection amongst all of our organ system let alone just the gut to the brain so another big thing that I hear on a day-to-day basis is why doesn't everybody do what you got ice - why does the Nemesis type of testing why doesn't everybody you know look at the body from an integrated standpoint and the way that I answer that question is if you think about the most common testing that we do on an annual basis the most common testing that we do is blood work and blood work is a chemistry based test so when we have compromised chemistry or a compromised biochemical pathway then the way that we fix that is by utilizing chemistry altering substances which is what medication pharmacology so the majority of the testing that is being used on a regular basis is to look for a broken chemistry that can be fixed with chemistry so when you start to look beyond that and you start to use other modalities of testing looking at DNA and looking at genetics and looking at diet and looking at neurology it becomes a little bit different with your approach and you can definitely get to the root and then be able to have a more comprehensive and specific approach so this kind of also brings me to the last point on this slide is that we look for the broken chemistry to fix it and then we also are always seeking out what is going to be the one thinks what is the one pill you know think about every commercial I think it actually makes me cringe when I watch TV now it is because the commercials are just almost so ridiculous when you really really listen in and it's pretty much proposing that you know one day there's going to be one pill that cures a disease which is just such an unrealistic expectation but also secondary to that is you know none of these one pill cures they all come with side effects so with that being said you know it's not that the healing process has to be crazy complex but it's more important under stay on that it's multifaceted we are multifaceted people like think about you know just the amount of feelings that we feel on a day-to-day basis like how many emotions do we run through by walking around going to work you know seeing an email looking on social media you know we just kind of ignore those things and think stress is stress and we think that stress isn't gonna actually play a factor in our physical body but at the end of the day we as complex beings there's so many layers to why we feel the way we do so a very interesting story is we had a patient who had three major symptoms which are crazy common depression anxiety and insomnia insomnia came and went it was you know she would have insomnia for you know a couple of days and then it would get better and then it would come back and it was really really up and down so what's so fascinating about this is that when we dug in and started doing her testing one of the primary things that showed up was not necessarily that this person just had a lot of trauma in their life and a bunch of gut issues that maybe threw off you know their serotonin levels it actually was more so related to her vascular system and this is something that is off of the radar so much of the time because our brain needs three things which I'm gonna talk a little bit more depth on but one of those things is the brain needs oxygen the way your brain gets oxygen is by proper blood flow so this was a person who actually had quite a few head injuries she was a professional skier and her head injuries were everything from just very minor bumps to two concussions and then what they now presume to be post concussive syndrome and also CTE s which is a chronic traumatic encephalopathy which they're actually acknowledging now especially in the NFL and with football players so pretty much what it means is that there's inflammation in the brain way way way after the concussion or head injury so what happened from all of these different areas that she had not only to the head but also to the neck is it started to alter the amount of blood flow to the head and because of this she started to have the early early onset of what is actually called vascular dementia so because her brain was not getting proper amounts of oxygen her pineal gland was not getting proper amounts of oxygen and this was actually leading to the inability to make melatonin so this was a huge huge culprit for her serotonin and melatonin being really really low so at the end of the day for me to start trying to manipulate those pathways was never gonna serve this person it was about helping her actually recover from her head injuries she did not wear a helmet know this she was a skier a long time ago I guess before it was a thing so it's just really important to understand that there is a lot of things to be considered if you're dealing with insomnia it's not always necessarily just oh if this runs in my family this is genetic this is hereditary or you know i i'm a poor sleeper so one of the really cool things about what i do on a day to day basis is i get to really blow people's minds i really love to see their mouths drop and the reason why this happens a lot is because when i am talking with my patient especially on their initial consultation I'm digging I'm digging and almost acting as an investigator because I want to truly really try to understand you know what got them where they are you know what was all of the sequence of events that led question how do you fix something like vascular dementia so it depends on the route for this specific woman who actually had head injuries one of the things that was actually really beneficial to her was something called craniosacral therapy the other layer to it for her was she had a lot of lymph node issues in her neck so we actually did a lot of lymphatic drainage with her as well and all of that improved her vascular supply to her brain we did other things but for sake of simplicity those were like the two major things that we used specifically for her but again when we when we work with people we actually test their body to see what therapies are best so some people that might also have vascular issues for their brain we might treat them very differently okay so one of the big things that is important is knowing that depression and anxiety are very different and that depression and anxiety can be linked to your sleep issues but your sleep issues are not just about a melatonin deficiency it could be a lot more complex than that and that the brain needs three things so I've already started to talk about this a little bit so your brain needs oxygen which means it needs to get that oxygen from proper blood flow the other thing that your brain needs is stable blood sugar this is not about being a diabetic this your brain is also in trouble if you're hypoglycemic meaning you have low blood sugar and if you're the person who gets hangry and you want to hurt people because you didn't eat that also means you're probably hypoglycemic or you're becoming insulin resistant so with that being said your brain needs stable blood sugar to function properly and I'm gonna tie that back into sleep the other thing that your brain needs a stimulation for those of you that are just kind of stuck you feel very stuck in your job you feel very stuck in your life you haven't learned something new you're not exercising you know you sit a lot for work you're constantly on a computer you're probably laughing tremendous stimulation for your brain you might also be noticing that if you have to do a long drive maybe it's two hours maybe it's three hours or four that you're feeling physically fatigued from doing a long drive and that's not physical that's a neurological fatigue that's creating a pattern in your body so it's very important to notice those subtleties if you're the person that's like oh you know let me read a book and then you start reading and you're passed out within like two pages that also means you have very sensitive neurons that means your neurons are close to threshold so the way that I classify that is think about like if somebody slammed a book on it on a table you jump but if somebody drops a pin you probably wouldn't jump when your neurons are very close to the threshold that little pin drop will fire this is also people that tend to get ringing in their ears - it's called tinnitus um so you have to start taking these signs from your body in your brain to say oh crap I gotta fix this especially if you're young because these are all signs that your brain is starting to I hate to say it but degenerate I'm not trying to scare anybody but it's the reality of it so blood sugar I want to go back to this so when you're talking about blood sugar high blood sugar is going to be people that are either pre-diabetic diabetic or they have insulin resistance insulin resistance all that that means is that when you get sugar and I fix from pasta if it's from fruits if it's from candy whatever it is the insulin allows your brain and your body to use the sugar but if your insulin is not working properly then you have a bunch of sugar floating around in your blood that is making you inflamed opposed to your body actually using it as fuel so becoming an insulin resistant is so common nowadays and it's becoming more common because there's so much hidden sugar in all of the different things that we are eating even if you go and you're getting your almond milk latte that is you know no added sugar knows syrup' no vanilla no mocha there is still a very high content of sugar just in the milk so it's very very important to know and be conscious of the amount of sugar you're being exposed to and also considering that crackers and chips and pastas and breads all also break down into sugar as well so the other piece of this is going to be the hypoglycemia which is the low blood sugar and I know that my whole life I was on the hypoglycemic side and everybody told me that oh that's good you have low blood sugar and in reality my brain was not getting the fuel that it needed so the way that hypoglycemia looks is you're the person who wakes up in the morning you have no appetite so you don't eat you usually grab for caffeine because you're a little foggy and you need the caffeine to kind of clear you up and make you be able to you know get your crap together to get to work then you know the coffee suppresses your appetite gets to lunchtime you're starving and now you want to eat you know as much as you can so you'll usually grab for like the sandwich or a rice bowl or something that's going to give you glucose to spike your blood sugar fast because it's so low then you spike then you crash then you get tired middle of the day you eat dinner and then you want sugar after dinner I say this scenario to many people and they go I think you just told me my biography I'm glad you liked that one DJ so with that being said is it's very important for you to acknowledge are you the person not eating in the morning are you the person that said that says you're not eating in the morning because now intermittent fasting is a good thing for you by the way you're only supposed to intermittent fast three days a week max don't intermittent fasting day because now you're pushing your body into hypoglycemia and you're going to actually further stress your neurological system so outside of that the other things to consider if you're the person listening and you're like you know what I don't eat sugar I'm super careful about it but I relate to some of the symptoms that you're describing so the other thing that you have to consider you might have something stressing your pancreas that is affecting your gut so what I mean by that is your stomach on your left ribcage that's where you get you can have bacteria get into your stomach that causes indigestion and heartburn burping things like that but your stomach and your pancreas are embedded together so very easily if you've had bacteria get into your stomach you can have that start to affect your pancreas and start to throw off your blood sugar so then you're the person that goes to the doctor you get your blood work drawn and they tell you you're pre-diabetic but you're sitting there being like I don't get it I don't even eat sugar how is this possible so it's more so that your pancreas is stressed for other reasons opposed to it just being dietary so that's a very important thing to to understand so number two is oxygen so the oxygenation to the brain comes from blood flow there are a lot of different factors that play in so the person who has the low blood pressure this is also the person that's being told oh that's good it's good to have low blood pressure if you have low blood pressure then chances are it's very difficult for your heart to pump blood against gravity into your head so having low blood pressure could be leading youth to having rain odds bad circulation in your hands and feet okay you always have pulled hands and feet and that means if you're not getting blood to your hands and feet you're also not getting proper blood to your head so it's very very important to understand that having low blood pressure cold hands and feet or rain odds is also playing a very big role in why your brain might not be working at its best and you might be having sleep issues on the flip side to that we also then deal with hypertension which is the high blood pressure the people that have migraines headaches pressure in the head those are people they're actually dealing with high blood pressure in the vessels of the brain there's a lot of reasons why this happens and I don't have enough time to go into it in depth but some of the most common causes of hypertension in the head has to do with a lot of congestion in the neck a lot of this congestion comes from the people that had a lot of strep as a kid had a lot of ear infections they constantly get swollen glands or they're always getting upper respiratory infections all of those things can play a very big role on creating a lot of issues with the blood flow in and the blood flow out so these things can play a massive role in people that have migraines headaches visual issues dizziness vertigo ringing in the ear also known as tinnitus in addition to sleep issues so lastly here we have stimulation so I've kind of gave this away already but for those of you that are getting physically fatigued by reading a book by driving along distance this is showing that your neurons are very very close to threshold so again instead of you being you know jumping because somebody slammed the book now the pin drops and you're jumping that's what I mean is that the your neurons are super super super sensitive so you're gonna fatigue them very easily so if you're the person that like is getting extremely fatigued by doing the most minor things it's neurological it's not physical and you need to start thinking about what is or if you can think but you need to seek out what is going on with your neurological system so exercise it's such a key thing to utilize when it comes to stimulating the brain and improving some of the neurotransmitters but also learning something new read a new book you know take a take a dance class or whatever you know feels good to you but learning something new is just so so important for the longevity of our brains and also reducing the risk of dementia and Alzheimer's so last but not least is rolla toxicity so some of the major things that also stress out our neurons that our neurological system is toxins so I mentioned earlier for the view that I've been listening the whole time that one of my primary things that was revealed through by testing was I had massive mercury toxicity so mercury as well as aluminum and many other heavy metals are neurotoxic they are extremely toxic to the neurological system so if you just think about dental work so those silver fillings that go into your teeth or even the silver fillings that you had for 20 years that were removed that was that was silver amalgam also known as mercury so think about the proximity of that mercury to your brain and that is going to play a very significant role on some of the toxicity that can actually affect us from a neurological standpoint so taking into consideration what are some of the things you're being exposed to just from dental work and fillings and implants and dental infections that can play a role in our brains I have a question why would somebody not be able to tolerate hyperbaric oxygen therapy there's probably a lot of reasons but I would probably say the biggest thing that I would see is that the oxygen is creating a lot of die off and then the detox pathways are not able to get it out this is the same thing for people that take antibiotics or a lot of herbs and they they're trying to kill say Lyme disease or viruses or whatever the case may be and they what's happening is like especially the lymph nodes the lymph nodes are your massive filtration system of the body so if your body can't get it out then that is going to play a very significant role in having a negative response to something like hyperbaric or even you know different protocols to kill infections as well so going back to sleep so I mentioned already serotonin makes your melatonin so for those of you that are on say an antidepressant you might think you're in the clear but unfortunately that's not necessarily how antidepressants work they're called SSRIs so all that they're doing is they're trying to keep excess serotonin in the synapse clear in the the synapse so that the the neurons pick it up so just because you have excess serotonin does not mean that it will have the ability to convert into more melatonin the conversion actually happens in your pineal gland so some of you may be aware but there's been a lot of research that has revealed one of the major stressors on the pineal gland is fluoride I know there's a lot of controversy on fluoride but at the end of the day everything in moderation for us getting a lot of fluoride treatments getting them you know every couple of months it might be a bit excessive in addition to your fluoride is in your mouthwash fluoride is in your toothpaste so all of this exposure can definitely play a role in the pineal gland during autopsies they've actually found crystals of fluoride in the pineal gland of people that have had Alzheimer's and dementia so this is just really significant to understand because this little change can really help you to potentially improve your sleep so another big thing that is absolutely required for you to have melatonin production darkness so for those of you that are on your Kindle you're on your phone you're on your laptop you're doing your emails till 2:00 in the morning you can't do it I know it's a techy world I know it's super easy and convenient and you got to get stuff done but you're screwing up your sleep you need to take into consideration that it's not just about dark it's not about the room being dark the blue light that comes in through your devices is playing a significant role in altering your brains ability to make melatonin so you really need to consider are you on these devices too close to the time you're trying to go to bed another big wine is methyl donors so in order to take serotonin and convert it into melatonin you need a bunch of friends you need a bunch of support those are classified as methyl donors it's your folate your b12 you also need things like zinc so folate and b12 are actually absorbed in your stomach so people that have had gut infections they've had indigestion they have had h pylori they've had GERD chances are you're not absorbing any of those nutrients and if you're the person taking b12 and you're peeing fluorescent colors you're not absorbing it you're pretty much have very expensive urine by the way so it's very important to kind of know that it's not just about taking melatonin if you are gonna take melatonin then you really need to make sure that you're getting your folate and your b12 and the other cofactors the other thing that depletes you a folate is birth control so a lot of us are depleted and fully just based off of that reason because most women have been on birth control at some point or are on it as well so another big thing too is the perfect balance of serotonin or I'm sorry melatonin and cortisol so they actually work inversely so what's gonna happen is going to be that you need to have cortisol going up in the morning to get you up so you're actually awake the cortisol going low at night so that your melatonin kicks in so you fall asleep so a lot of us are in this complete like adrenal crisis because your adrenals make your cortisol but something else that plays a significant role in your cortisol levels which is one of your stress hormones if insulin so if your blood sugar is a mess you will never fix your cortisol so for those of you that are listening that you're like on the adrenal fatigue train and you're taking all the adrenal supplements in the world you need to consider is your blood sugar part of the puzzle it's very very important to address that so someone's asking me about blood pressure how could you how could someone increase blood pressure so one of the you have to make sure that you're appropriate for it but licorice root is something that increases blood pressure so that's definitely a good herb that you can utilize I don't know why I'm like doing this and not okay so another thing about adrenals and the cortisol levels and also another one called norepinephrine because that's a very important hormone for your sleep is your adrenals become very compromised by caffeine nicotine as well nicotine from cigarettes so I know that it's this vicious cycle because we're tired so we're drinking caffeine to try to get us through our day but we're actually creating this massive negative feedback loop so one of the ways that I transitioned from coffee is I started to use matcha which does not necessarily give you that spike the way that coffee does and that is a great segue to try to give your adrenals a little bit of a break so it's really really important to take that into consideration okay so if you haven't realized it by now it's really a matter of you don't know what you don't know because if you don't do the testing and you don't know that your blood pressure and your blood sugar and the fact that you're not learning something new is all could be playing a role in your brain and in your sleep you know you just don't know what you don't know it's a matter of somebody you know taking a look at you doing better testing to uncover these things so a big big thing is that we need to stop accepting our crappy sleep and our fatigue and our poor memory and our brain fog as being our normal we're just adapting our lives around these new symptoms and we're not even asking for answers we're just accepting that this is part of the aging process and that it's just kind of we're doomed to feel a certain way and unfortunately what normalizes it more is the fact that most of our friends and family also feel like crap so you don't really have anything good to compare it to so it's really you know it's really interesting because all of my you know friends and family they're like wow you know you're the only one who's energetic and sleeps well and you know feels good and I'm just like well I'm not the only one also doing something different so it's really a matter of if you know what is going on with your body your body can bounce back so a couple of myths about mental health and sleep is that depression is always going to be caused by a serotonin deficiency that there's also no reason for your insomnia or the only reason is your melatonin anxiety is hereditary and that you've also had all the proper testing to know where your sleep and your mental health lies and then the other big one is that we have no control over our mental health because it's probably just genetic so myth number one depression is always caused by a serotonin deficiency so I think this is really important because when we're dealing with sleep issues a lot of times we're dealing with a low level of depression because the serotonin the melatonin are so linked up but it's important to know the difference between what a serotonin deficiency actually looks like and what a dopamine deficiency actually looks like because the people that are actually deficient in serotonin are the people that have kind of lost joy in everything they had that nothing is making them happy nothing's making them excited they have a great life on paper you know they have a beautiful family in a great house and a great job but they're not happy those are the people that truly have a serotonin deficiency and then there's people on the flip side that have more of a dopamine deficiency these are people that are really they're not very motivated they kind of are a little bit numb they have a lot of they have a lack of concern for others they feel very hopeless very worthless and they tend to kind of isolate themselves for that reason the other interesting part about this though is that dopamine also has a huge tie to pleasure producing effects so what I mean by that is dopamine deficiencies are usually tied to addictive behaviors so when we have a dopamine deficiency where the person who's like oh my god I'm having a terrible day where's the chocolate oh my gosh I can't wait to have a glass of wine I need to go on my break because I need a cigarette I'm so stressed and everybody's different some people it's you know why I'm cigarettes some people for me it used to be a mocha latte so it's not that it has to be you know a bad behavior you might be just using food you might be using sugar you might be using exercise but you're utilizing those to try to mend a deficiency the reason why I they're called addictive behaviors is because obviously we keep going back to them and the reason we do that is because the the mocha latte or the cigarette or the wine gives us a very short-term dopamine high and then once we crash back down we want to go back to whatever gave us that high so it's very important to kind of take those symptoms into consideration because if you actually fix your dopamine you might be able to quit the cigarettes or you might be able to you know give up that glass of wine every night or you may be able to cut the sugar out of your diet so it's very very important to be able to decipher that and on the flip side when we're dealing with the serotonin the serotonin you know if you truly have the serotonin deficiency most of the time what we're going to do is we're going to go on something to supplement and that which is usually going to be an antidepressant if we're going prescription route and then if somebody is going the natural route they might be using something like 5-htp so with that being said when you're talking about neurotransmitters they have to be in perfect balance if you have too high of serotonin you will be anxious if your serotonin is too low you will be depressed so it's not a matter of trying to just boost a boost at boost it it's about doing the right testing so that you can actually monitor where your levels are at and unfortunately so much of the time when I'm working with somebody who cracked us all the times their pressure is coming from another issue which is sometimes oxygen issues to the brain the blood sugar issues and then a lot of people are dealing with this overload of serotonin which is actually they're confusing their anxiety with depression as well so another telltale sign that you have a serotonin deficiency is seasonal affective disorder we're kind of in the midst of it right now we're in the winter especially living in the Northeast and a lot of people are you know really wanting to run for the islands and which is okay but one of the big things about sunshine is it actually activates serotonin receptors in our skin and that is something that boosts our serotonin so being able to get out into the Sun even if it is cold is such a is such a way to be proactive about getting your serotonin up in a very natural way and then the same thing really goes for dopamine if your dopamine gets too high you can actually start to induce almost more of a psychosis you can feel like you're losing your mind or you can even be classified as schizophrenic so it's very very important to kind of know these signs because either if your self or a loved one is on a prescription and they've been on it for a really long time and they're exhibiting get a massive anxiety or they're exhibiting panic attacks or even psychotic behavior you need to consider you know how their levels gotten too high and they need to consult with their physician so an interesting patient presentation was there was a patient that I was working with that had constipation for almost 10 years patient also had depression and anxiety so you know constipation depression anxiety these are three things that are unfortunately way way to commonalities so getting into the history with this person turned out they had a bad snowboarding accident when they were I think they were in college resulted in a severe concussion neck sprain 13 staples in the head no helmet constipation started shortly after no big deal kind of came and went then they actually moved into feeling a little bit depressed but it was more situational it was just like oh well you know how did that day or oh you know broke up with a boyfriend so kind of reason for why they were feeling low had this mild dizziness mainly when getting up too fast then actually started fainting around her menstrual cycle nobody was really able to figure out what was going on with her just kind of had these random fainting spells didn't happen all the time but everything checked out normal in the testing soon after that little bit of anxiety kicked in then memory loss the memory loss was a lot more related to the short-term memory a post a long-term just kind of forgetting where the keys were you know couldn't really remember you know to-do lists and things like that so with this person it was multifaceted it wasn't one thing and I know it very well because it was me and what primarily happened was a snowball effect and this snowball effect happened over years it was the injury one of the biggest things the injury did was it compromised a lot of blood supply to my brain and it was partly because I had massive whiplash which created a lot of scar tissue in my neck I also had a lot of scar tissue from the scar on the back of my head where I have the 13 staples in addition to that because of my neck sprain I had vagus nerve damage so your vagus nerve comes from the brain but it innervates your lungs your heart your gut your reproductive organs and your vagus nerves does all of the things that you don't think about consciously like breathe have a heart beat digest your food these are not things you tell your body to do is done automatically through your autonomic nervous system so with that being said this is what triggered the constipation constipation then triggered the lower serotonin levels then from there started to kind of skip breakfast was really busy had a lot going on started to move into this hypoglycemia which started to now compromise the amount of glucose the brain was getting and then last but not least was the vagus nerve also innervates the reproductive organs so this was causing a lot of issues with the menstrual cycle so when I was getting my menstrual cycle the uterus technically in flames as its loss off the tissue I know for the men listening it's gross but it's reality but as that was happening it was actually further irritating the vagus nerve which was then lowering the blood pressure and causing the fainting so this took a long time for me to actually figure out once I had the the testing that I do but it was very very fascinating because these were things that I learned to live with I was really just normalizing and navigating my life around it and you know literally I was fainting and I was just like oh well I just gotta be careful that I don't you know go for a run close to my menstrual cycle because I'm gonna faint and this is such a common thing that I hear on a day-to-day basis is that you know something that extreme we're just normalizing it so another big thing that I wanted to touch on is that you know you've potentially had the best testing for your mental health or your sleep dish disorders so when it comes to the type of testing that exists is that we're usually just looking at sleep studies or we're looking at blood work and we're not going beyond that but there are amazing modalities and technologies that exist and one of them is something called a quantitative EEG a quantitative EEG literally is a brain map it maps out the hemispheres of your brain and tells you what's overactive what's under active what's going on with your brain waves because your brain waves will actually also dictate your so the key it's called a quantitative EEG this is completely different than a traditional EEG but the best part about it is a quantitative EEG actually then we'll give you the brain map and dictate how you can fix the brain through something called neuro feedback and the best part is literally neuro feedback is a matter of wearing glasses wearing headphones as the technology does the work as you're watching a movie and it retrains the brain it's almost like exercise for the brain to balance things out so this is an amazing technology that's being underutilized and it's something that completely transforms people's mental health as well as their sleep the other thing too is we talked about serotonin and dopamine you know some of these neurotransmitters there's neurotransmitter testing it's as simple as doing a urine test and this way we can actually look at somebody who is potentially taking a medication or trying to supplement to see are they actually deficient are they over abundant in the neurotransmitter and you know there's many labs that do this but again it's as simple as a urinary test some of the other tests that we utilize specifically is something called bio resonance testing as well as bioscan testing so we look down to the DNA level to see what is stressing the neurological system but also more importantly is what's stressing the body because there's so many ties to sleep disorders the gut can be a very simple connection and again for those of you that are just hopping on it's because serotonin makes melatonin it has to convert into melatonin but 90 to 95 percent of your serotonin is actually made in your gut so we need to kind of utilize the modalities out there to look at these different things secondary to that is we have the different things that can stress our brain to throw off our melatonin production is heavy metals mercury is a huge one aluminum is another one for those of you that don't know every time you put on antiperspirant you're putting aluminum in to your lymph nodes so if you think like how the heck in the world would I ever be exposed to heavy metals you're being exposed it's just the reality of it it's in our antiperspirant the silver fillings and our teas have metals in them the white fillings in our teeth have cadmium in them almost any type of dental composite has different types of chemicals in it the other big thing which is definitely one of my zones of genius is infectious disease testing so there are many things outside of toxins and heavy metals that can stress our neurological system and throw off our sleep but some of the big ones when it comes to infections is one disease there's also parasite infections like toxoplasmosis so for those of you that have ever been pregnant or you've ever heard this when a woman is pregnant they say don't change the cat litter and the reason why they tell you this is because you put yourself at risk for being exposed to a neurological parasite called toxoplasmosis so this is not me just saying oh this is one in you know a million people like toxoplasmosis is very easy to come across and get exposed to in addition to that mold is another big big trigger to neurological issues and sleep disorders and then we also have infections like syphilis and bartonella I know those of you listening or probably syphilis isn't that like eradicated syphilis and Lyme disease are they look almost identical under a microscope and it is very very easy to be diagnosed with Lyme disease you know syphilis is something that I actually do see in my practice through the testing that we do so it is not as uncommon as you may think the safest way to get rid of heavy metals in the brain the biggest disclaimer I would make is that when you take when you're trying to detox from anything heavy metals mold any type of toxin you absolutely need to make sure that your liver your kidneys and your lymph nodes are being supported so that means usually you have to do a combination of supplements you have to do a combination of infrared sauna and you also have to do a combination of herbs for your kidneys drink a lot of water stay hydrated electrolytes you cannot you don't try to detox from heavy metals by yourself just just don't do it use a professional because the last thing you want to do is make yourself sick and that's really important too is if you are going through the detox process and you feel sick you're not doing what's right for your body it's not just you're supposed to be sick while you detox it means that you're stirring things up that your body is not getting rid of and it is starting to just circulate through your tissues and your blood so it's very very important to make sure that all of those detox systems are being supported okay so on the note of these infections and how they can play a role in our sleep and overall our mental health kind of patient he presented with set sensory issues and gut complaints patient was about eight years old he had really bad sensory issues like it was impossible for his mom to even get him to brush his teeth so getting him to take supplements was going to be very very difficult but we needed to use something to help him with his detox process so what mom decided would be best is if we would actually use a suppository a suppository for detoxification it was called a glutathione suppository that we used specifically for this patient suppositories are little inserts that go into the rectum yes I know not the most glamorous but that's what we needed to do so as she was administering at one night she reached out to me and she said so I saw a worm and I was kind of confused this was very early on in my practice by the way I was confused because I did a stool sample and it came up clear and so at that point we decided to do another school sample and another stool sample and we did them from all three different companies and never did one of those school samples reveal that there were parasites but what happened was that he actually had pinworm so the the limitation with stool testing is that 20 minutes after a bowel movement leaves your body the parasites will self-destruct so by the time your sample reaches the lab they're pretty much going to not be able to find the traces of the parasites so with this being said parasite had a massive tendency to affect your neurological system so for those of you that are listening and feel very kooky today it is a full moon and under a full moon is when parasites are the most active so for those of you that have been moody today your stomach has either been bothering you or you have terrible sleep tonight it's time to get checked for parasites and the point of this slide is not through a stool sample because you need to use more elaborate testing in order to find them because stool testing does not always reveal them so it is very very important to take that into consideration if you are dealing with depression anxiety or sleep issues so I just want to let you know on the Instagram live I am gonna get cut off in 30 seconds chelation is not very safe so I would not recommend that but if you want to learn more about detox glamour organic goddess definitely check out our website we have a podcast all about safety toxification so definitely check that out guys if you want to be on this and you want to listen to the whole thing definitely message me privately through the private messenger on Instagram so I can get you the replay alright guys so last but not least secret number three is you have no control over your mental health so most importantly is when you know the root cause anything is possible it's really just being able to be strategic in the process of getting better and most of the time with the limitations in the testing that we've already established today it's very difficult to figure out the root cause most of medicine is not necessarily digging for that we're kind of just trying to acknowledge the symptoms and put a bandaid on them so some of the things that are super important to get your sleep on track and to get your overall well-being on track is you have to consider the use of technology and the exposure to EMS so we are literally in Wi-Fi soup all day every day and one of the easiest and best things that we could do is try to cut down as much EMS in our bedroom as possible EMS our electromagnetic frequencies this is our Wi-Fi this is Alexa this is our cordless landline phones our cell phones our routers all of these things if you have cordless landline phones and your bedroom get them out if you have a smart TV in your bedroom ideally get it out if you have a router in your bedroom get it out all of those things are literally going to create massive stress on your neurological system the other thing to glue in so I know gluten is such a hot topic and everyone is thinking about gluten in relation to their stomach they're thinking well it doesn't bother my stomach so I'm fine start paying attention to if it affects you neurologically so if you eat glue and you go out and you know you have pizza or you have pasta or whatever the case may be start to notice if your sleep is off if you're fatigued to the next day if you feel soggy the next day I know that this was something that was happening to me never hurt my stomach but it created a lot of issues with my cognitive function and the only way you're really gonna notice is if you cut it out for at least a week and then you bring it back in and you start paying attention to those things so so it's not necessarily your eating it every day you're not going to be able to notice it you probably feeling tired and foggy as you're normal the other big thing going back to this hypoglycemia I'm balancing out your blood sugar you need to eat breakfast it is so so so essential to balance your blood sugar to then balance your brain and to get your circadian rhythms back on track exercise exercising pretty late at night might throw you off more because you're pumping up your endorphins but if you're waking up and I know some of you are probably so freaking tired but if you can just like be super diligent and discipline and get yourself up and just try to do a little something in the exercise family in the morning you will probably find that your sleep turns around more rapidly and the other thing is learn something new um being able to stimulate your brain in a new way is so so important and we need to do it going back to the basics we need to grab a book we need to read a newspaper trying to always learn on our computers or our Kindles and our tablets it is going to further stress the brain especially if you're doing it at night so if you like to read before bed try to transition over to an actual paper-based book it will make a significant difference for you so one of the biggest things that I've learned over the course of my clinical practice is that very very rarely do things look like the textbook and there is a lot of gray when it comes to medicine diagnosis and different conditions very rarely is super black and white and that you fit the textbook so this is usually where we start to have less and less options when it comes to getting better or bouncing back because if we don't fit the textbook then we usually don't get a treatment recommendation because you have to match the textbook so if you don't let match the textbook then why should your treatment so it's very very important to dig deeper to get better information to really know what is root-cause to your sleep issues so that you can actually know how to fix it once and for all so kind of talking about the old model versus the new model so those of you that have been listening the whole time you may have been looking at some of the you know tests that I listed and I listed out the bioresonance scan and I listed out bioscan so I actually want to give you a quick visual on one of the technologies because I think that explaining it is always a little bit more difficult than actually showing you guys so let me hop over I'm not going to be able to talk as I show you it's only gonna be about like 10 seconds so let me just show you this and I'm going to hop on and explain a little bit further you all right everyone so the video that you just saw was actually based on one of our technology is called bio resonance so bio resonance is a technology that looks down to the DNA level by using frequencies so with that being said when you're looking at that video the photos are obviously not the the person that's being tested but the icons that overlay onto it are representative of what's going on in the patient so the very last one that you saw was actually looking at the vascular supply to the brain so that's really one of the amazing things is we're able to do this type of testing and get immediate answers and actually get a visual on what is going on with this patient so with that being said the specificity and the ability to piece the puzzle together it's just so so significant and I like to show this because as I kind of move forward and show you guys a little bit more about how we do our testing the way that we do our testing is different and the reason why I started to branch out and and look at other modalities of testing is because a lot of times what was happening in the very early stages of practicing is you would come in we would do our initial consultation and then I would have to use all these different private labs and the private labs would be everything from stool samples to nasal swabs blood testing neurotransmitter testing and a lot of the testing would rack up to thousands of dollars and it didn't feel good to me that somebody was investing thousands of dollars before they actually were able to know what was wrong with them because in my mind the most important thing is getting better and I want people to put their funds towards actually getting better so I wanted to figure out ways that I could get more accurate information in a faster amount of time while keeping the cost down from a die Gnostic perspective because literally the Diagnostics can rack up to four or five thousand dollars sometimes and you know if you look at most other functional medicine practitioners they will tell you oh you can come see me for you know this consultation fee but your your labs are going to cost you know anywhere between two to five thousand dollars so it's very important to kind of know that there is an expense that goes in but we really try to first of all give you more accurate answers in a very short amount of time but to do that at a fraction of the cost so that you have the ability to actually spend money on the most important which is getting better so that's why I call this functional medicine versus integrative medicine because we're now really looking at the integration of how the body systems are working together and we're not sitting there giving you an elimination diet with a supplement protocol we're actually looking at you as an individual and because of the testing the bioresonance being one of the technologies we have the ability to customize and personalize the approach because we have the ability to test what your body needs the most so your supplements your herbs your remedy is your therapies those are all tested against your DNA to see what your body is going to get the most benefit from and when we look at the body from an integrated standpoint we're actually going to maybe we'll work with you and do detoxification maybe we'll be working with your gut maybe we will be working with your neurological system it depends on what your testing tells us so another big question I always get is how does insurance work and we serve people we do not serve insurance providers and that's how we're able to do what we do and we're able to give the time that we do just based off of your initial consultation and the second visit with me myself Sam or even doctor Nick you get three hours with us to not only dig deep into your history but then to go over all of your results and give you dietary recommendations and give you a plan of action so I wish that we've had the ability to be in network but we are out of network because we want to have the freedom to do what is best for you so people do use flex savings accounts and health savings accounts and all of that good stuff but we really wanted to make sure that we had the out of network freedom so the biggest thing though that I think is an important disclaimer is that you do have your blood work go through your in-network lab so that is completely covered by insurance which is fantastic so I think one of the biggest things that I realize on a day-to-day is that we forget that health care is about answers and solutions we've kind of settled for getting a diagnosis which is merely a description of our symptoms chronic fatigue syndrome that means you're chronically fatigued irritable bowel syndrome you have irritation in your bowels we've settled for these diagnoses and we've settled to kind of think that we just have to live with it or our only option is medication and then eventually surgery so getting back to really knowing that you deserve to understand the route is most important to us and that's why we do all of these different types of tests on our onboarding process so with our onboarding process you are going to get your initial consultation with your bio resonance scan which is that scan that I previously showed we're also going to be using a different technology which is a Meridian based technology I call it computerized acupuncture it actually scans the different meridians of the body and for everything from food allergies to chemical allergies to look at the body from a little bit different our perspective we also were testing regularly for heavy metals mineral deficiencies vitamin deficiencies and our blood work is as comprehensive as it gets we're testing everything from your thyroid to your hormones autoimmune conditions mold markers the list goes on and one of the other things that I absolutely love about what we do is the autonomic response testing we can test for so many different things with the autonomic response testing but the most important is this is our valuable tool for how we decipher what is your personalized health plan what supplements does your body need what types of therapies does your body need because your body is completely different than someone else's body that potentially has the same diagnosis or even the same symptoms everybody's needs are different so using a cookie cutter approach is not going to work so you know one of the things I wanted to do was try to create value with some of the different tests that we do but it's so fascinating because when it comes to the people that you have now been classified as being or having a mystery illness you just being able to know what's wrong with you is priceless if you're the person that can't sleep and nobody can figure it out and it's literally deteriorating your quality of life getting your sleep back is priceless so depending on what your goals are and what you can achieve it's really priceless but it does come with a price so our complete onboarding price is 1425 and for those of you that are listening that are like oh that's crazy that's outrageous and because you're new to this world I totally get it but I will tell you that is a quarter of the price of what you will spend if you have to pay for all of those private labs because most of those labs will rack up to a couple of thousand dollars and you will not be guaranteed to know what's wrong with you and that is why we do it the way we do it now but the best thing about it is we do always advocate for working with families and if you decide that you wanted to join on with a spouse it's 1425 for the first person but any additional family member is 597 so the same exact testing but most importantly we want to make sure that we are a good fit for you as you are a good fit for us so I'm gonna actually pop this up in here and you can take a look at it but we have a way for you to hop on a strategy call to learn a little bit more about who we are and what we do so that you can really just kind of understand the entire process and then our care team can give you a little bit more insight about how it all works because we do work with people long distance one of the things that I didn't reveal so far is that your hair contains your DNA so whipping said because some of our tests are DNA based we can actually do a lot of your testing from a distance utilizing the DNA in your hair and then for those of you that are listening that are very interested in the course of care that we offer because it is very very very unique and very comprehensive we offer everything from immersion weekends to immersion weeks I actually have three people here this week that are from all over the country which is been amazing because these people get such amazing results in a short amount of time literally had a mom in tears yesterday because her daughter is suffering from debilitating neurological issue called pandas and she said that she slept through the night for the first time in five years and she also did not have a headache and did not have any problems speaking she actually has a lot of problems with her speech and she and that was after one day of treatment so that's that's pretty remarkable and it's really what gets me excited about what I do every single day and I've already kind of touched on this but the unique onboarding process at the end of the day is to save you money up front because it's going to cost a lot more if you're doing all of those private labs so we really try to make it reasonable so you can figure out what's going on sooner than later all right so I have no questions on tonight if you have any that pop up feel free to pop those in otherwise you can definitely check out the link to the strategy call there's tons of information on our website as well so definitely head over there if you have if you're looking for anything else in addition but lastly I just want you to know that you know these webinars are such an amazing educational experience but when it comes down to you being able to figure out what's going on with you and being able to have a roadmap that's when this becomes that breakthrough experience this is you know I love doing these things because I love opening people's eyes to what's out there but you know the transformations that we see on a day-to-day basis is just amazing and I really just I can't tell you how how much I love what I do and being able to see people's lives transform is really just I feel very very lucky and very grateful for that so I thank you guys for being with me and our website integrated Wellness Group comm check it out next week we're actually going to be talking about autoimmune brain conditions so definitely share the link with anyone who is dealing with any type of neurological conditions in the world of pans or pandas or any other types of severe neurological conditions so I will see you guys next week thank you again for joining