Episode 259
Title: Your Zombie Mornings Explained
Host: Dr. Nicole Rivera
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Transcription:
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Integrative You radio. You have Dr. Nicole here And I am going to help you understand why you feel like a fucking zombie in the morning. So for those of you that are like, what do you mean by a zombie? Let's just kind of break this down so you can see if you want to stick around for this podcast.
Because unfortunately, a lot of people have what I am about to describe. And more interesting than that. Most people have just classified it as their normal. They have classified it as a lack of caffeine. They have classified it as a form of aging. As many things. So if you are a person that wakes up in the morning and you feel like a zombie, that your brain is not really firing on all cylinders and you need to be up and about or have a cup of coffee before you feel like the cobwebs, you know, go away and you can now function, use your brain and go about your day.
In addition to that, you might also have a low grade headache when you wake up in the morning, that is also improved by the consumption of caffeine, or just improved by being up in a vertical position, walking around for at least 20 minutes to a half an hour. You also might. have a, I was going to say congestion, but this is really not just about the morning.
You might have congestion in your sinuses when you sleep. And you also might find yourself with a little bit of congestion when you wake up in the morning and needing to blow your nose in order to remove that congestion or eliminate that inflammation. In addition, you might also have a little bit of inflammation in your face.
You might find that you have bags under your eyes. And again, that starts to get better after being up in a vertical position, awake for at least 20 to 30 minutes, and it also can improve with coffee. And so the coffee thing and the primary compound that's in coffee being caffeine, this is going to make a lot of sense as I talk more about it.
But the reason why you might have those symptoms in the morning, again, you feel like a zombie, your brain doesn't function for a while, you have bags under your eyes, you have low grade sinus congestion, or a low grade headache specifically in the forehead. This is because of lack of brain detoxification.
So a really interesting fact is that melatonin is the master detoxifier of your brain. Melatonin, as most of us know, is something that helps with sleep. So the body being extremely, extremely intelligent, you have your melatonin start to go up at night in order to make you sleepy. But as we sleep and our melatonin remains high through the night, it is also having a dual function of helping with neurological detoxification.
So the problem that happens. is that many of us have hindered detoxification pathways. And we're going to get into what does that look like that could be causing the symptoms that we talked about originally. But I want to just take a quick step back here. Because you might be thinking, like, what the heck is stressing my brain or causing toxins in my brain?
So, one, you have something called a blood brain barrier. So, you have something called a blood brain barrier. And that barrier is supposed to block out anything that could be toxic or harmful to the brain. But the problem is, is that most of us have a leaky blood brain barrier. If you're ever looking for a test to measure this, Vibrant America, Vibrant Wellness, they have a test, it's called the Neurozoomer, where you can actually test the permeability, a.
k. a. is your blood brain barrier leaky? Is it permeable? And in the hundreds of times that I've done that test, there is a large majority of people that have a leaky blood brain barrier. And part of the reason why they have a leaky blood brain barrier is because there is a direct correlation to the permeability and the barrier of the gut lining.
So if you have a leaky gut, Which, that is definitely a hot topic, and it's been for many years. Then, you are going to be more likely to develop a leaky blood brain barrier. In addition to that, if you've had a lot of head injuries, you've had concussions, and I always laugh when I ask this question, especially to my male clients, and they're like, no, no, no, no, I don't, I haven't had any head injuries.
No, I haven't, I haven't had any concussions. Like what sports did you play? Hockey. Oh, yeah. Uh huh. Yeah, you, you have head injuries. Like, you can't, you can't swing it any other way. If you've played any type of impact sport, you have had damage to your blood brain barrier. If you have skied or snowboarded and taken some falls, You have damage to your blood brain barrier from injury.
Like, listen, I have snowboarded and knocked my head, and it's I wasn't concussed, but the the the most minor hit to the head, the most minor Uh, car accidents can create soft tissue damage and create damage to the blood brain barrier. So, if you played an impact sport, you already have damage from that perspective, let alone if you also have gut issues.
Okay, so now that you understand that. The other aspect is Well, what the heck is getting into my brain? If the blood brain barrier is damaged, what's getting into my brain? I have many many many many podcasts on this topic, but the way that I keep it simple is We are all under assault from a toxicity perspective on a day to day basis If you really got into the ingredients that are on your personal care products, from your lotions and your shampoos, to the fast fashion and the polyester and the really, really poor quality materials that are in clothing, to the perfumes that we spray, the makeup we put on, the food that we eat, there is a extremely high exposure to toxins.
It's in our water. If you drink filtered water, fantastic. If you don't have a filter on your shower, you're getting exposed in that way. You're getting exposed from swimming in bodies of water that are next to power plants, or they are getting runoff from farms and industrial farming. So at the end of the day, we're all being exposed.
No one is excluded from that statement. And it's just a matter of understanding that yes, our bodies are very intelligent, and yes, our bodies have all of these inborn mechanisms to get rid of toxins, but it's like the pool filter or the vacuum filter that no one has emptied. your body is going to get to a certain point in time, unfortunately, this is happening younger and younger, that it can't filter properly anymore because the filters like your liver and your, um, kidneys and your lymphatic system are just so burdened and overloaded that they can't do their job properly.
properly. And so when we talk about this topic today of the zombie mornings and the low grade headaches and the brain fog in the morning, we're going to be talking more specifically about the lymphatic system because this is a huge factor that is playing a role in why You're not detoxifying. Your brain is not detoxifying properly.
So let's just do a quick recap here. So we're talking about waking up your brain not functioning properly, maybe having even a low grade headache, maybe having sinus congestion. And now we're talking about the fact that this can be contributed to having a leaky blood brain barrier, which can be connected to a leaky gut, and the fact that certain toxins are getting in to the brain or into the cerebral spinal fluid, which is now creating issues.
So, as you remember from when I was talking about melatonin, is that melatonin is the detoxifier. So, if you're having decent quality sleep, you know, logically it would make sense that, Oh, well, the melatonin is doing its job and it's detoxing all the shit out of my brain. Yes, under normal circumstances, that would be true, but there's a couple of variables here that can compromise melatonin doing its job.
And some of that is going to be chronic sinus infections, uh, chronic inflammation in the sinuses, deviated septums, or scar tissue from having broken nose, having plastic surgery on your face. Then we also have different things going on with the ears. If it's chronic ear infections from childhood, if you've had ruptured eardrums and there's scar tissue in the ears from that, if you're even prone to having ear pain or tinnitus now, then there's people that have dealt with chronic throat issues, uh, constantly having that be their weak point.
So maybe you've had a lot of strep as a kid. Maybe you had your tonsils taken out. But maybe that's just your weak point. So when you do get sick or you're under the weather, you're going to feel it in your throat. Maybe you also have a lot of neck pain, and you press on the sides of your neck, like below your earlobe, and it's really tender when you press in there.
That's actually not bad. always muscular, usually that's a sign that there is a lot of issues, inflammation and toxins living in the lymph nodes. If you were to Google lymph nodes of the neck, you have a ton of lymph nodes running along the muscle called your SCN, which is literally the size of your neck.
And maybe you also have a lot of scar tissue in your neck because you've had whiplash, you've had car accidents, you were, you know, An avid athlete or skier or snowboarder or gymnast and all of those things contributed. Maybe you've had neck surgeries, maybe you have plates in your neck and you have scar tissue from that and that's adhering your lymphatic system from draining properly.
Then we also have dental and it's because dental things will affect all the things I just talked about. Dental will cascade into your sinuses. It can cascade into your, Uh, ears and your eustachian tube. It can cascade into your glands and your lymph nodes. it can cascade into all of those areas. So if you've had a per, if you're a person who's had a lot of root canals, you've had teeth pulled, extractions, you had abscesses, your gums bleed, you have gingivitis, you have receding gum lines, all of that is rooted in infection.
That's rooted in a poor microbiome. And even more interesting is your mouth is the first, uh, the I don't want to say the first part that doesn't make logical sense, but it is part of your digestive system. It's, it's essentially the start of your digestive system. And so if you have a shitty gut microbiome, you're going to have poor oral health.
And so dentists aren't talking to you about this because they're not nutritionists and they're not gastroenterologists. But at the end of the day, your mouth is a reflection of your gastrointestinal system because it is part of your gastrointestinal system. And there are many people that I've worked with that I have found chronic sinus infections that are directly correlated to a root canal.
Gone bad, created an abscess, an infection that penetrated into the jawbone and actually penetrated all the way through into the sinus. And so you can see this on x ray when you see dark bubbles, uh, things that look like black. That is going to show you that there is a probability of abscesses that are either in the jawbone or in, um, the sinuses.
These are called cavitations, by the way, for those of you that are dorks like me. So there's, the point that I'm making here is there is a lot of opportunity to create stress for your brain and to create toxins to spill into your brain. And so, if all of these things are going on, or one of them is going on, You're going to have a lot of issues, literally, it's, it's like barriers that are not allowing your brain to detoxify, especially when you're laying down in a horizontal position when you're sleeping.
So this is kind of an interesting story. I used to have horrible bags under my eyes in the morning, brain wouldn't function, low grade headache, chronic sinusitis as a kid. Um, my whole family, honestly, part of it was because I lived in mold most of my life, which I'll get into shortly. But This is something that, it just kept getting worse and worse as I got older, and of course I bought every cream on the market in order to, um, you know, get rid of the bags under my eyes, self conscious about it, etc.
Uh, coffee was a must have because coffee helped, and part of that was because coffee helped with the blood flow to my brain. So fast forward, I am just started my life as an entrepreneur. So being tired was, uh, pretty common, but when we were leaving work, uh, in the early days, you know, we left work at a reasonable time, six o'clock, six 37, which, uh, later down the line, you know, that became six.
9 p. m. Um, life is very different now as we have, uh, gained much wisdom. But at that time, the point that I'm making is it wasn't late. And, uh, at that time, my husband and I, we would, we just took one car to work because we were on the same schedule. So often he would drive home and I would fall asleep, but I would fall asleep to the capacity that he would either have to shake me to get me to wake me up, to bring me in the house, or sometimes he would have to carry me into the house.
And I thought I was just a really good sleeper. I could sleep anywhere and, you know, I slept like a rock. I didn't hear anything. So then we were in our exploratory phase of working with different lab companies, um, to get, you know, different types of analysis, and one of the companies was offering neurotransmitter testing, neurotransmitters, serotonin, melatonin, dopamine, So they gave me a free kit, and I decided, oh, let's do it.
Uh, I did my saliva test, I sent it in. And when I got the results back, my melatonin was through the roof. And I was like, wow, what the heck is this about? And I didn't know what I know now. So, with the melatonin, I wonder if this is why I I fall asleep the way that I do. And so fast forward, I am, you know, continuing to learn and grow as a practitioner.
And I then learn that melatonin is the master detoxifier. And in between that timeframe, I did a heavy metal test and it turned out that I had massive, massive amounts of mercury in my system. Part of that was from, I was a pescatarian for 10 years. All I ate was fish. And I didn't know anything about farmed fish or, um, canned tuna.
And I was exposing myself to Very, very high amounts of mercury over that decade of being a pescatarian. And so, essentially what was happening is my brain was toxic from a variety of things, mercury being one, but mercury is neuro toxic. It is specifically toxic to your neurological system. And my melatonin was going up in order to detoxify my brain successfully.
But as my melatonin went up, I was having these episodes of falling asleep. And this is something in the cases that I've worked with of narcolepsy, I've found very, very similar circumstances. And so my body was doing what it was supposed to do. It was producing excessive amounts of that melatonin to detoxify my brain.
But the other layer to it was that I had inflammation in my sinuses from chronic sinusitis as a kid that I never knew how to fix. I also had a horrible, horrible head injury and neck injury from snowboarding, where I had severe whiplash, I had 13 staples put into the back of my head and severe concussion.
So I had a tremendous amount of instability in my neck, but I also had scar tissue from the staples that were put in and from the whiplash. So I was having major issues. So my, my body was producing the melatonin, trying to detoxify the mercury. And the way that it works is that the brain is going to dump all of the toxins down into the lymphatic system of the head and neck.
So it's going to move down into the tonsils. If you don't have tonsils, it's going to move directly down into your lymphatic chain again, on the sides of the neck. And if there is issues in the neck, Because of scar tissue adhesions, clogged lymph nodes because of chronic strep when you were young or other infections, dental issues.
Now, you're going to have everything get backed up and it's going to get backed up into your venous system. And this is what is called CCSVI. Chronic Cerebral Spinal Fluid Venous Insufficiency. And what's kind of wild about this is that they have connected CCSBI to the things that we're talking about, but it's also been connected to people that have had mold exposure, that the mold has infiltrated the veins of the body, but also the head and neck.
And they have found that mold specifically is connected to Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis. And then they also found the connection of, uh, algae that has embedded itself in the epithelial lining of the venous system. And algae being the correlation to ALS, so amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which most of us know is a pretty extreme disease.
And so these tests were done, uh, by Dr. Zamboni. This is not something that, um, is just You know, random made up. So the reason why I wanted to bring this podcast to you guys is that one, I want you to be aware of how to fix these symptoms that you might have, but I also want you to have the ability to be proactive in not developing a serious neurodegenerative disease down the line.
And I say that because. It might seem like no big deal. Oh, I brain fog in the morning. Everybody does. Oh, I just need a cup of coffee and I'm good to go. But if you are young, you're a teen, you're in your 20s and you're already experiencing this, the compounding effect of years and decades, you are going to be more inclined to one, have more toxic load in your brain and you're more inclined to start having memory loss.
You're more inclined to have development of other neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's and dementia and ALS. So these are things not to be taken lightly and think, Oh, I just need another cup of coffee because this is a feedback mechanism telling you that there is something going wrong that is not allowing your brain to detoxify.
So this is a key factor in being able to be proactive. So the thing is, is that we talked about a lot of things on this podcast. So in order for you to really know where the hell do I start in order to improve this, is one, listen to this again, and oh, I have had chronic sinus infections at this phase of life.
I did have really bad strep throat and tonsil issues as a kid. I did have a lot of, you know, head injuries, and I was an athlete, and I've had concussions, etc. So you need to break down, like, what do you think is the catalyst. What do you think is potentially problematic? But you also really need to have someone on your team that gets it, that is able to help you navigate what is the one domino that we can, we can cascade in order to have the maximum benefit.
Because if you're like, Oh my gosh, I've had all those things. I've had head injuries. I've had sinus issues. I've had tonsil issues. I have neck problems, et cetera. Then it doesn't mean that you need to address every single one in the same capacity in the same magnitude It's usually there is one thing that will be the first domino that will create the ripple effect into the other areas and sometimes that is the dental.
And sometimes that is, uh, lymphatic drainage work. And sometimes that is detoxification protocol, but it's really a matter of understanding more about your system and getting highly specific. So you're not wasting time. You're not wasting money. You're not wasting effort because again, the bigger part of this picture is yeah, wake up and feel good, wake up and not need to rely on coffee, drink it.
If you like it, Wake up and not, you know, be thinking you need plastic surgery because you have, you know, puffy face or you have a double chin and you have bags under your eyes. You know, that's another thing is like the inflammation, the longer it goes on, it will cascade into your neck as well. You know, oh, I have a fat neck, and you don't have a fat neck.
You have inflammation in your neck. 'cause of all of these things that we're talking about. So, you know, plastic surgery is a lot more expensive than going and actually dealing with the root cause, which is also going to help you decrease the likelihood of having, you know, more serious neurological issues down the line.
The, the statistics on dementia and Alzheimer's right now, they're going up by the day. And we have to sit back and say, why? Why is this happening? And it's not just one thing. It could be a multitude of things, hence what we've covered here today. So don't forget, one, if you're like, holy shit, I never knew any of this, oh my god, it's not your fault.
You have never been taught any of this, number one. Number two is we are living in an era where there is so much mixed information, so much information on the internet. We don't even know what to do. We don't know where to start. And also, This is something that you usually, if you're to this point that you're relating to all of this, you need someone to help you.
You can't just change your diet and think all the toxins are going to flush out of your system. You can't just, you know, do a nasal spray like Afrin and think, oh, you know, my sinuses are going to heal and my bags under my eyes are going to go away. There are, there are ways to go about this in an extremely economical and effective way.
But, we always have to ask ourselves, you know, what is the cost of doing nothing? You know, people always, oh, you know, I want my insurance to cover everything, and this and that, and this sounds like a lot of work. I'm like, yeah, but what's the cost of doing nothing? Like, literally living the rest of your life feeling like fucking shit?
You know how many people feel like shit? And they're not even acknowledging how it affects their kids, their family, their wealth. It affects everything. It affects every minute of your life. It affects your energy. It affects your economic well being. It affects everything. So if you don't have health, you don't have anything.
You know, I used to think people were dramatic when they said that. I realized that I've been able to accomplish half the things that I've accomplished in my life because I haven't had those major roadblocks of feeling like shit, not being able to think, waking up like a zombie every day, not being able to remember things.
Like I've always had the tools for my health and I realized I'm, I'm so far ahead of other entrepreneurs in my wisdom and in my goal achievement and it's because My health has allowed me to do that. So if you want an unstoppable, limitless life, one, you're in the right place. And two, just understand you're in the driver's seat.
Everything and anything is fixable. It's figureoutable. Totally stole that from Marie Forleo. Love her. But your body, it's complicated but not, if that makes any sense. Your body is so fucking resilient, it just needs the right tools. And unfortunately, a lot of doctors are fucking incompetent, so I hate to say it.
I'm not putting myself on a pedestal by any means. I just I figured out a system. Me and my husband figured out a system and we figured out a system that allows people to get results. And that's really all it comes down to. It's not that I'm super fucking smart. I'm just, I'm a junkie for data. I'm a junkie for learning and I'm a junkie for common sense, because guess what?
A lot of the things that I learned through school never made sense. And I just challenged it. Most people thought I was crazy. And I just challenged it, and I was ostracized, voodoo doctor, oh my god, some of the reviews that still live online are fucking hilarious, like, but it's just, I did it for the sake of innovation, and, and that's what I'm all about.
I'm gonna blow shit up for the rest of my life, for the sake of innovation, and helping you! Alright, love you guys.
