Speaker 1: Anyone that comes over to Shapi Low's residents. By the way, listeners,
Speaker 1: that's our ship name, Shapiro Low's. If you come over
Speaker 1: to our house, there's a few cupboards you could open
Speaker 1: up if you're like looking for a wine cup or whatever.
Speaker 1: That just supplements are going to come poor house.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, eight percent of Americans use some sort
Speaker 2: of sleep aid, according to the National Center of Sleep Statistics.
Speaker 1: And Nielsen says that we spend over a billion. Yeah, baby,
Speaker 1: that's a billion with a B dollars a year on
Speaker 1: melatonin alone.
Speaker 3: WHOA.
Speaker 2: People will do just about anything to get a good
Speaker 2: night's sleep.
Speaker 4: It's the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Hey, it's Katie Low's and I'm Adam Shapiro and this
Speaker 1: is Chasing Sleep, a production of Ruby Studios from iHeartMedia
Speaker 1: in partnership with Mattress Firm.
Speaker 2: On this episode, we want to talk about nutrition and
Speaker 2: fitness and quality sleep. Let's just call it the holistic
Speaker 2: health triangle.
Speaker 1: We are busy people, actors, entrepreneurs, parents, podcast hosts, and
Speaker 1: sleep is like really really important to us.
Speaker 2: Yes, And because our health and our families health is
Speaker 2: so important. That's why I've been looking forward to this episode.
Speaker 2: Our guests include doctor Chris Winter, a sleep neurologist and
Speaker 2: scientist who has authored.
Speaker 4: Two books about sleep.
Speaker 2: Chris is at the forefront of research and studies about
Speaker 2: the science behind sleep supplements.
Speaker 4: Welcome Chris.
Speaker 3: I'm excited to be back. This is a fantastic topic.
Speaker 1: Chris advises a lot of athletes and professional sports teams
Speaker 1: on how quality sleep can help maximize performance.
Speaker 2: Yes, and I even understand that you worked with my
Speaker 2: hometown heroes, the Philadelphia Phillies.
Speaker 1: And Danielle la Fata is also with us. She's director
Speaker 1: of Performance Nutrition for the Phoenix Suns. She figures out
Speaker 1: what these top athletes need to be eating to be
Speaker 1: their best and making sure that they get good quality
Speaker 1: sleep so that they can return to the play offs
Speaker 1: again next year. Welcome Danielle, so nice to meet you.
Speaker 4: It's nice to meet you guys as well.
Speaker 5: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much Danielle and Chris for being here
Speaker 1: to talk about sleep and supplements, which is a hot
Speaker 1: button topic amongst me and all my mom friends and
Speaker 1: my mom herself included.
Speaker 2: Chris, We're gonna get started with you, nutrition, fitness, sleep.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about the holistic health triangle.
Speaker 2: As I recall my high school geometry, is this an
Speaker 2: equilateral triangle?
Speaker 1: Hold on a second, Adam, you took high school geometry
Speaker 1: and you remember any of it?
Speaker 4: Yes? I did, Katie, Okay, I didn't say I did
Speaker 4: well in it.
Speaker 1: Chris, tell us about this holistic health triangle.
Speaker 3: I always think about it as four legs of a table,
Speaker 3: so I'm more of a quad guy. I think about exercise, nutrition, mindfulness,
Speaker 3: and then sleep. I think mindfulness really starts with trying
Speaker 3: to understand not only your own sleep and maybe issues
Speaker 3: you may be having with your sleep, but also the
Speaker 3: emotion that you're bringing with it. Those are sort of
Speaker 3: my four I think. You know, if you take one
Speaker 3: of those legs away, the table collapses.
Speaker 1: Chris, how do you define sleep supplements?
Speaker 3: I think the best way to define supplement is something
Speaker 3: that's taking a process that's hopefully already pretty healthy and
Speaker 3: making it even a little bit more healthy. So what
Speaker 3: we're looking at is a biochemical reaction that starts from
Speaker 3: the time we ingest food to the point we're actually
Speaker 3: making chemicals in our brain that support sleep. Serotone and
Speaker 3: melatone and dopamine or rexin. There's a bunch of them,
Speaker 3: and along each pathway you're taking the proteins in milk
Speaker 3: and breaking them down to an amino acid. That trip
Speaker 3: to fan gets converted into something else, and eventually you
Speaker 3: get melatonin. And there's all these steps and all these
Speaker 3: cofactors and minerals that are important to support that process.
Speaker 3: And for an elite athlete like Danielle's working for, that
Speaker 3: matters a tremendous amount. But if you're listening to this thinking, oh,
Speaker 3: how much magnism do I need to get so I
Speaker 3: can get some sleep, there's a reason why we don't
Speaker 3: call them treatments. We understand very clearly how these things
Speaker 3: are best used and where they're not going to be
Speaker 3: particularly helpful.
Speaker 1: And Danielle, you help manage all three or even four
Speaker 1: of these, which Chris has mentioned the mindfulness part. The
Speaker 1: three I'm talking about are the nutrition, fitness, and sleep
Speaker 1: you manage. These were top athletes who compete at their
Speaker 1: physical and mental best. Let's just like get into this.
Speaker 1: Do you recommend supplements?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 5: I am still food first, supplement second, but I always
Speaker 5: talk about being smart with our supplementation. Chris can talk
Speaker 5: to this a little bit more, right, they're also phases
Speaker 5: of sleep. Are you having a hard time falling asleep
Speaker 5: or are you having time staying asleep? And so then
Speaker 5: that's where food, nutrition, hydration at a potential supplement could
Speaker 5: come in. So just really understanding what's going on and
Speaker 5: what's needed.
Speaker 2: What would you say are the connections between nutrition and
Speaker 2: quality sleep.
Speaker 5: Well, it's finding that sweet spot for people where you
Speaker 5: can have a light snack one to two hours before
Speaker 5: going to bed if needed. When I speak with my athletes,
Speaker 5: whether it's my bench guys, and they didn't play very
Speaker 5: many minutes, but they still had a warm up, and
Speaker 5: they still went in earlier in the morning, and they're
Speaker 5: still not going to bed until one or two o'clock
Speaker 5: after the game.
Speaker 1: They still need to eat.
Speaker 5: So maybe it's more of an in between meal, not
Speaker 5: so much as a real heavy dinner, but it's not
Speaker 5: a light snack somewhere in between for them, whereas my
Speaker 5: starters or my high minutes players.
Speaker 1: Yes, they'll need to eat post game.
Speaker 5: So it's explaining to them that because they're like, oh,
Speaker 5: I shouldn't eat late at night, I can't eat late
Speaker 5: at night. Well, you've been active for the last five
Speaker 5: six hours and now you're not going to go to
Speaker 5: sleep for another couple hours because you're all revveed up.
Speaker 5: So it's looking at each individual and seeing where you're
Speaker 5: at your physical activity or non activity throughout the day,
Speaker 5: and how we could adjust your meal patterning.
Speaker 1: I'm just getting flashbacks to Adam in my honeymoon in Italy,
Speaker 1: where we romantically thought it was going to be amazing
Speaker 1: and it was. I mean, honey, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: it was amazing, but we had to sleep sitting up
Speaker 1: for so much of it because we were eating.
Speaker 4: Red wine and red sauce and red tomatoes.
Speaker 1: You just pasta red wine meals and like trying to
Speaker 1: lay down on it. I mean, I still like it
Speaker 1: rises up into my throat when I even think about
Speaker 1: It's so grossy.
Speaker 2: Yes, we should have done those big Florentine stakes at lunch.
Speaker 4: Yes, sure, Chris.
Speaker 1: The athletes you work with and me too, like we
Speaker 1: love to travel. In your experience flying with athletes in
Speaker 1: and out of different time zones and dealing with different
Speaker 1: types of sleep schedules to get them on the right
Speaker 1: sleep schedule, what do you do with all of the
Speaker 1: teams that are flying around and changing time zones? Constantly.
Speaker 3: It depends on a couple things. The first is what
Speaker 3: is your mission. If the mission is to fly to London,
Speaker 3: give a lecture and go right back home, then you
Speaker 3: may not really want to acclimate to the time zone right.
Speaker 3: A great example is, you know, a lot of times
Speaker 3: a team will play a preseason game in Mumbai, India.
Speaker 3: They want people not to get hurt, not to lose
Speaker 3: a player, and just reacclimate to that time zone they've
Speaker 3: come from as quickly as possible. Or you're trying to
Speaker 3: get to a place and actually enjoy it, like Italy,
Speaker 3: you know, and the meal is so interesting. It's like,
Speaker 3: let's all meet back here at three o'clock in the
Speaker 3: morning on this zoom call and have like heavy alfredo
Speaker 3: and see how our bodies adjust to it. It's like
Speaker 3: we could do it if we did it every night,
Speaker 3: three m alfredo, big pasta dinner, we'd eventually get used
Speaker 3: to it. But this is kind of what we're looking at.
Speaker 3: We're trying to adjust to a different timing for our athleticism,
Speaker 3: a different timing for our eating, and a different timing
Speaker 3: for our sleep. So there's all kinds of interventions you
Speaker 3: can use to speed that process up. But it's different
Speaker 3: for every athlete. But there's all kinds of interventions that
Speaker 3: can adjust our circadian rhythm a little bit faster than
Speaker 3: it would typically if we did nothing in the direction
Speaker 3: of travel matters. It's easier for us to stay a
Speaker 3: little bit later than to go to bed early right
Speaker 3: before we're ready, so that that kind of plays a
Speaker 3: role in it as well too.
Speaker 1: This is like an example. We love our whole families
Speaker 1: on the East Coast. We live on the West Coast,
Speaker 1: so I always say, bring your kids to New York.
Speaker 1: Instead of giving them dinner at five o'clock, which is
Speaker 1: what we do here, you know, let them eat at
Speaker 1: eight pm with the whole family and then they sleep
Speaker 1: later too.
Speaker 4: We love an East coast trip.
Speaker 1: What would be some examples of ways that you could
Speaker 1: supplement if you were going to intervene and try to
Speaker 1: change someone's sleep schedule for a different time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there's lots of ways to do it.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: I like to be thoughtful. What are you giving your
Speaker 3: child right before they get on the plane. I love
Speaker 3: there's little hummus bowls with the little pretzel chips. Hummus
Speaker 3: is a ton of trip to fan in it. So
Speaker 3: we always talk about trip to fan and the Thanksgiving turkey.
Speaker 3: There's way more trip to fan in chickpeas and hummus
Speaker 3: than there is in a traditional store bought turkey. So
Speaker 3: I like cam and meal tea. Like you got to
Speaker 3: be careful, you know, want to give the kids, you know,
Speaker 3: green tea or caffeinated tea, but maybe you make a
Speaker 3: little thing of you know, camimeal tea or ice it
Speaker 3: and you have that in their sippy cups. And Okay,
Speaker 3: we're gonna drink our relaxing teas before we get on there.
Speaker 3: I mean, none of those things are going to hurt.
Speaker 3: And again, might you know, create a little bit more relaxation,
Speaker 3: a little bit more sedation that this sort of helps
Speaker 3: the plane flight a little bit.
Speaker 5: So one easy thing is not even a supplement, but
Speaker 5: a juice. Right, tart cherry juice is blown up all
Speaker 5: over the place. I've been using it for about ten
Speaker 5: years with my athletes.
Speaker 1: What I've never heard of this?
Speaker 4: Did you say tart cherry juice?
Speaker 5: Tart cherry juice, not the sweet bing cherries. It has
Speaker 5: to be the tart Montmorency cherries.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 5: Yes, the science shows us that it's fifty cherries, whether
Speaker 5: they're frozen, dried, or squeezed into an eight ounced juice.
Speaker 5: There's naturally occurring melatonin in the cherries, and it's kind
Speaker 5: of like a time release, and then there's also some
Speaker 5: extra antioxidant, so that could really help. I do want
Speaker 5: to say, if you're having issues with your sugars and
Speaker 5: there's some pre diabetes or anything, you're definitely going to
Speaker 5: want to figure out how to blend that with you know,
Speaker 5: some proteins and some fats and fibers so that sugar
Speaker 5: doesn't dump right into your system.
Speaker 1: But yes, that's a really easy thing to do.
Speaker 5: And a lot of my athletes and non athletes, they
Speaker 5: swear by it.
Speaker 1: I swear by it. It works really well.
Speaker 2: Whow Yes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you can take it anytime to day. You can
Speaker 5: take it at night, you can take it in the morning.
Speaker 1: Where do you buy it? Any grocery store, any grocery store.
Speaker 5: And you know, I worked with the US men's national
Speaker 5: soccer team and I introduced it to them as well.
Speaker 5: So there were a few of us with soccer. We
Speaker 5: would come together in different cities or countries, and so
Speaker 5: we would do a nightcap and we would do little
Speaker 5: shots of tar cherry juice.
Speaker 1: So that was our way of getting it, very different
Speaker 1: than what I've ever done experienced. I'm interested that was
Speaker 1: our nightcap in this on this same subject. And please
Speaker 1: both of you feel free to answer. What are the minerals, vitamins,
Speaker 1: nutrients that people could try or that you suggest before
Speaker 1: resorting to a sleep supplement. This tart cherry juice is
Speaker 1: one of them. Yes, what are other things on the list?
Speaker 5: Yes, I'd recommend camin meal tea would be fantastic. High
Speaker 5: magnesium foods, so your nuts, in your seeds, magnesiums.
Speaker 1: Are great, just overall relaxing. And then Chris, when we're
Speaker 1: resorting to the supplements, what is that? Are we talking
Speaker 1: like natural like magnesium powder, magnesium pills? What are people doing?
Speaker 3: I would say that magnesium is important for the support
Speaker 3: of good sleep. Neurologists that used to work with said,
Speaker 3: you know what, brains love magnesium. So to me, what
Speaker 3: I would say to a patient who may be struggling
Speaker 3: with sleep is have you had your magnesium checked. I've
Speaker 3: been educated by a lot of dieticians and nutritions out
Speaker 3: there that say, you'd be surprised how many elite level
Speaker 3: basketball players show up at training camp and they're magnesium deficient.
Speaker 3: So I would say this is a great thing to
Speaker 3: test for, and the people who are deficient, maybe magnesium
Speaker 3: supplementation could be helpful or you're not going to get
Speaker 3: into a lot of trouble just taking a reasonable supplement
Speaker 3: of magnesium yourself. To me, it's all about expectation.
Speaker 4: I think where we run.
Speaker 3: Into trouble is I have been struggling with sleep for years.
Speaker 3: I am lucky if I get two hours of sleep.
Speaker 3: I have this terrible, anxiety fraught relationship with sleep. How
Speaker 3: about magnesium. I don't think magnesium is going to touch that.
Speaker 5: I think Chris brings up a great point, right, you
Speaker 5: want to get to the root of what it is
Speaker 5: and where in your sleep what's happening, and then that
Speaker 5: way you can start little things and maybe a supplement
Speaker 5: is or is not part of your program, but it's
Speaker 5: just a band aid.
Speaker 1: Really, Okay, I went on a huge melatonin kick. I've
Speaker 1: been on the magnesium powder kick. I've been on the
Speaker 1: CBD kick. I'm trying to think. I think that might
Speaker 1: be Adam, you think that's it. I feel like those
Speaker 1: are my three.
Speaker 4: Well, what's the sleepy tea. Is that a high magnesium.
Speaker 3: Tea Cammeo passion flower, Valerian.
Speaker 1: Usually, Oh yeah, Valerian Root.
Speaker 4: There's another one, yeah, Valerian Root. But how are those
Speaker 4: things working?
Speaker 2: I mean, what about nighttime rituals, something that you can
Speaker 2: put into your routine that may help with your sleep.
Speaker 4: Are you a tea person?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, My wife's a big tea person. In fact,
Speaker 3: I grow camrameal. I think it's fun to grow it
Speaker 3: and dry it out and grind it up and stick.
Speaker 4: It a little thing.
Speaker 3: So I think that's great. I mean, I think when
Speaker 3: you're looking at well, Chris, I'd like to know more
Speaker 3: about supplements and figure out ways to integrate them into
Speaker 3: a healthier sleep lifestyle. I think bedtime routine is a
Speaker 3: huge place for it. So there's the tea Camimeo passion Flower,
Speaker 3: Valerian Root. I think nothing's better than every evening you're
Speaker 3: settling down to watch your episode of whatever or read
Speaker 3: your chapter of whatever, and you enjoy your camerameal tea.
Speaker 3: We used to do that with our kids, like we
Speaker 3: would make you tea and kind of deliver it to
Speaker 3: their bedrooms when they were doing homework and calculus just
Speaker 3: kind of Okay, let's dim some lights here, let's get
Speaker 3: the phones hooked up downstairs. Here's your tea. Just this
Speaker 3: kind of it kind of creates this rhythm ah when
Speaker 3: you smell the tea and you feel the warmth and
Speaker 3: you taste the cammeal. Maybe the cammeal has some sort
Speaker 3: of relaxing property improves your sleep, but it does always
Speaker 3: serve as that queue to oh, tasting the cam meal,
Speaker 3: it's about time to go to bed. It's like the
Speaker 3: lavender spray on your pillow. I love lattes and I
Speaker 3: would drink a latte every night if it didn't screw
Speaker 3: up my sleep. So my newest one is it's got
Speaker 3: all kinds of different eshwagandha and all these different alfhienine
Speaker 3: I think in mushroom optogens and all these things that
Speaker 3: sort of support sleep no caffeine. So I think that's
Speaker 3: where you can really find a solid hook into the
Speaker 3: supplement world. Is trying to kind of build these things
Speaker 3: into a routine to support not only better sleep, it's
Speaker 3: better health.
Speaker 2: I think this is a fascinating discussion, and we are
Speaker 2: not done more to come.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Chasing Sleep. In this episode, we are
Speaker 1: aiming for peak performance. We're talking about sleep and supplements
Speaker 1: with Danielle Lafata, who helps the Phoenix suns eat well
Speaker 1: and get good sleep, and sleep specialist doctor Chris Winter,
Speaker 1: who works with lots of pro athletes too along with
Speaker 1: regular people like us. What do you think, Chris, what
Speaker 1: should our listeners consider when looking at supplements.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a tough thing. And I'll say right off
Speaker 3: the bat, you know, I tend to be pretty much
Speaker 3: a stickler for research, but you know, in terms of
Speaker 3: great research behind sleep, I would say that's a little lacking.
Speaker 3: I think it's important to understand that just because there
Speaker 3: isn't research behind something doesn't mean it's not true. It
Speaker 3: just means we can't say with a lot of authority
Speaker 3: about that. You know, certain ingredients maybe in my non
Speaker 3: latte latte may kind of fall into that category of
Speaker 3: maybe in five years we're talking about, Wow, the adaptogens
Speaker 3: were so important. I think this is where consumer technology
Speaker 3: sort of comes in and really works at its best
Speaker 3: when you're asking it a question. So why he says, us,
Speaker 3: sleep's terrible? So I bought this thing. I'll put it
Speaker 3: on my wrist, do the experiment. Hey, Okay, take the supplement,
Speaker 3: the magnesium. I like to change one variable to time,
Speaker 3: So pick some weeks that things are pretty steady at work,
Speaker 3: and for this two weeks you're going to take magnesium,
Speaker 3: and for these two weeks you're not, And see what
Speaker 3: happens with your sleep.
Speaker 4: Tracker, Daniel. Are these supplements safe to take?
Speaker 5: The supplement industry is wild. It's the wild wild West.
Speaker 5: So anything you pull off the shelf, don't think that
Speaker 5: what it says on the bottle is actually what is
Speaker 5: on the bottle. And I've been preaching this for over
Speaker 5: fifteen years now. In the sports world, we have NSF
Speaker 5: Certified for Sport or Informed Choice or Informed Sport certified,
Speaker 5: so they're a third party company and they make sure
Speaker 5: that what it says on the label is actually in
Speaker 5: the bottle, and then they test it against all of
Speaker 5: the two hundred band substances on the World Anti Doping
Speaker 5: Agency list. I only recommend those supplements to my athletes,
Speaker 5: and the FDA doesn't have enough manpower and they don't
Speaker 5: have them enough money to regulate this industry. So you
Speaker 5: have to be the sleuth or find the professionals that
Speaker 5: will do that for you.
Speaker 3: Not to get too far off. There's a great study
Speaker 3: that just came out that supplemented another study from twenty
Speaker 3: seventeen in Canada. So basically, if you're taking melaton, you
Speaker 3: have no idea what's in it. They took thirty commercial
Speaker 3: brands and actually looked at them, and the variance was comical.
Speaker 3: In fact, one had no melatonin. It just had CBD
Speaker 3: in it.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think we have to ask what's the story
Speaker 1: with CBD?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 1: It is everywhere, literally everywhere I look. Is there any
Speaker 1: research on this? What is CBD all about?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So I did a deep dive on this, you know,
Speaker 3: right before I went to Major League Baseball training camp,
Speaker 3: to have that ready for every baseball player that asked
Speaker 3: about it. You know, CBD, cambinoids, THCHCCBN. You know. My
Speaker 3: takeaway is this, we can't really say a lot about
Speaker 3: it right now because it's just known in relationship to sleep.
Speaker 3: I actually feel like in certain chronic pain sort of situations,
Speaker 3: even something like generalized anxiety, I think there's some promise there.
Speaker 3: And I think that when we are in any one
Speaker 3: of those subjects, I feel like I'm a little bit
Speaker 3: out of my expertise. Realm if I'm talking about general
Speaker 3: as anxiety as where I'm a sleep specialist tenurologist, I
Speaker 3: think we can say pretty definitively at this point there's
Speaker 3: not any real great data support chronic use of any
Speaker 3: of these products as something that would relate to better sleep. Now,
Speaker 3: where you get into the weeds a little bit is
Speaker 3: as we've talked about before on the show, great sleep
Speaker 3: kind of relies on mindfulness. I think for individuals who
Speaker 3: have struggled for a very long time with their sleep,
Speaker 3: there's an inevitable anxiety about sleep, and so it's hard
Speaker 3: sometimes to separate out. If you can control anxiety, specifically
Speaker 3: anxiety around the process of sleeping, you'll often and either
Speaker 3: facilitate maybe a marginally better sleep, but almost always a
Speaker 3: better perception of the sleep.
Speaker 1: Obviously, falling asleep is so much different, I guess than
Speaker 1: staying asleep, because I have tons of friends that can
Speaker 1: fall asleep right away, but they can't get connective sleep.
Speaker 1: You know, if they wake up the middle of the night,
Speaker 1: their mind starts racing it's over and then they're up
Speaker 1: from you know, two am to seven am, Versus my
Speaker 1: friends who lay there for one hundred hours can't turn
Speaker 1: it off. Are there supplements that are helpful for one
Speaker 1: problem versus the other? Which supplements and if any would
Speaker 1: be needed?
Speaker 3: Again, this is not That's probably not a process or
Speaker 3: a problem that I would look to, Oh, you have
Speaker 3: trouble staying asleep with then you should take this supplement
Speaker 3: versus that. I mean to me, that problem starts with
Speaker 3: the conversation of how long has this been going on?
Speaker 3: What is it that wakes you up? How many times
Speaker 3: are you waking up? How do you feel the next day. So,
Speaker 3: in that sort of flow chart of working through that problem,
Speaker 3: if supplement is in this flow chart, it is very
Speaker 3: very near the bottom. It's not the initial thing that
Speaker 3: I would try. So it's like we were always taught
Speaker 3: as a neurologist about headaches. A new onset headache or
Speaker 3: a change in headache character needs to be evaluated immediately.
Speaker 3: I would kind of say the same thing about sleep
Speaker 3: versus well, I'm not going to get any evaluation. I'll
Speaker 3: just try to find a supplement that sedates me through
Speaker 3: this issue. I mean a lot of times, you know,
Speaker 3: going right to some sort of treatment like that obscures
Speaker 3: the actual problem. And that's the reason why probably the
Speaker 3: average personal sleep out and is taken three to five
Speaker 3: years to get treatment because they're not going right to
Speaker 3: the source. They're like, well, I started taking melatonin and
Speaker 3: that seemed to work for a while, or I was
Speaker 3: taking more sedating drug that I used in the past
Speaker 3: for anxiety. Well what are you doing? So to me,
Speaker 3: anybody who's in that position of struggling to fall asleep,
Speaker 3: struggling and stay sleep o, you know, getting some professional
Speaker 3: help for the problem first might actually eventually involve a supplement,
Speaker 3: but that's not what I would jump straight to.
Speaker 1: Also, because I was curious, like do I need this
Speaker 1: because it's actually helping, or do I need this because
Speaker 1: now I'm so stressed? So I do understand this cyclical problem.
Speaker 4: What about the prescription drugs?
Speaker 1: Though I've mom, this one's for you and every woman
Speaker 1: who's ever gone through menopause. Honestly, yes, Like my mom
Speaker 1: gets on a soapbox saying, if you are a woman
Speaker 1: of a certain age and you have dealt with hot
Speaker 1: flashes for fifteen years, you have tried every supplement and
Speaker 1: done prescriptive drugs. Because I shouldn't be driving behind the
Speaker 1: wheel of a car. That's how little sleep I've gotten
Speaker 1: because I'm so hot and my hormones are so messed up.
Speaker 1: You're welcome.
Speaker 3: Mom.
Speaker 1: She really wanted you all to know that.
Speaker 4: She did. She left us note this morning.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean that's a massive it's a massive topic,
Speaker 3: and you throw menopause in there. It's its own separate issue.
Speaker 3: It's a very very meaningful and problematic thing to people.
Speaker 3: And we give terrible advice to individuals who are struggling
Speaker 3: with sleep with menopause, and the advice usually becomes some
Speaker 3: sort of sleeping pill. And when you start can get
Speaker 3: sleeping pills, they don't really change sleep that much. You're
Speaker 3: gonna fall asleep, what five minutes faster sleep in additional
Speaker 3: seven minutes Like that's the data. But more importantly is this,
Speaker 3: There's never been a sleeping pill that shows improve performance.
Speaker 3: So when patients come to see me, well, listen, Chris,
Speaker 3: I don't want to take the ambient, but I've got
Speaker 3: to perform at my best or terrible things happen. Well,
Speaker 3: while you're looking for that study that shows that the
Speaker 3: pill you're taking, whatever it is, makes you perform better,
Speaker 3: I'll finding twenty studies to show it doesn't. So this
Speaker 3: idea that we needed to perform our best.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: And this is a terrible sort of thought pervasive thing
Speaker 3: that's in medicine in general about sleeping pills, because so
Speaker 3: many clinicians have no real training in sleep. Even though
Speaker 3: of the top seven complaints you will find in a clinic,
Speaker 3: one is I can't sleep and two as I'm too
Speaker 3: tired during the day. So again, that perception can be
Speaker 3: really problematic if we don't ask some questions, if we
Speaker 3: just assume, oh, well, she doesn't sleep, so let's give
Speaker 3: her a pillar a supplement, that can be the beginning
Speaker 3: of bad things. Sleep is a skill we're trying to
Speaker 3: build that there's no shortcut to it.
Speaker 1: And Danielle, how would you rate some of these supplements
Speaker 1: or let's say, do you personally suggest meditation versus a prescription?
Speaker 1: I start with have you done a breathing exercise?
Speaker 4: Have you journaled?
Speaker 5: I start with all the sleep hygiene. Again, I'm not
Speaker 5: on Chris's level. I'm more of like a look at
Speaker 5: me as like I try to screen for these things
Speaker 5: and I know the basics. So you breathing technique or
Speaker 5: a yoga or a meditation huge for me. Calming things
Speaker 5: like althenine, that's why teas are great, you know, doing
Speaker 5: a couple of green teas in the morning or you know,
Speaker 5: camo meal at night because of this protein or amino
Speaker 5: acid called althenine, which helps us to get in two
Speaker 5: hour rest and digest or parasympathetic nervous system.
Speaker 1: So I'll kind of start there with something light.
Speaker 5: Magnesium is always good, especially if you're deficient in magnesium.
Speaker 5: It will really you'll really feel that relaxing, and I
Speaker 5: think that's why after a couple of weeks it kind
Speaker 5: of stops, because you might have your stores all all
Speaker 5: bound up with with that, I don't go right to melatonin.
Speaker 5: There are a lot of sleep products for us on
Speaker 5: NSF and that Informed Sport certified, but everything has melatonin
Speaker 5: in it, and I don't think everybody needs melatonin. And
Speaker 5: a lot of times my clients that I see the
Speaker 5: bet their wits end and they've been doing so much
Speaker 5: and they are stressed out and the mind is going,
Speaker 5: so they're looking at every they want a little bit
Speaker 5: of the brain and the body relaxation, you know, to help.
Speaker 5: They'll do the meditation and they'll do everything, and they
Speaker 5: know that it's just for a short period of the
Speaker 5: time until they can get going back again. It's not
Speaker 5: something that they hang on and that they need to
Speaker 5: do every night.
Speaker 1: Right right, everything that we just talked about.
Speaker 5: It works just the same for us as it does
Speaker 5: for my elite athletes. Also, it's what they're willing to
Speaker 5: work on, right. Are they willing to meditate? Are they
Speaker 5: willing to journal? Are they willing to get in some yoga?
Speaker 5: Are they willing to just do exercise in general? So
Speaker 5: just helping them create a behavior, picking one thing to
Speaker 5: work on to start working towards that. And of course
Speaker 5: it's also working with people that want to look at
Speaker 5: the root cause or want to find what the problem
Speaker 5: is and then want to make those gradual steps to
Speaker 5: get to a place where they don't need these crutches.
Speaker 4: What do you see down the pipe?
Speaker 1: What's in the supplement future, Chris?
Speaker 4: What are you seeing? What does the future of supplements
Speaker 4: look like?
Speaker 3: That's a great question in terms of I always think
Speaker 3: that you can answer any question about what does the
Speaker 3: future of X look like by evaluating the past. And
Speaker 3: so you know, in the time that I've been in
Speaker 3: this space since the early nineties, is there a supplement
Speaker 3: that has come along that has changed everything? Like for
Speaker 3: the positive. Now that's different from you know, MELTONA came
Speaker 3: along and everybody's on it. Is it truly meaningfully changing
Speaker 3: things for the positive or is it just sort of
Speaker 3: a distraction until the next thing comes along? You know?
Speaker 3: I think that magnesium could certainly be in there for
Speaker 3: some people. I think that generally, when you eat well
Speaker 3: and you eat a relatively normal diet, you get what
Speaker 3: you need. Science has a way of surprising people. But
Speaker 3: as of right now, I think it'll just be sort
Speaker 3: of or more.
Speaker 1: What it is right Is the supplement future just looking boisterous.
Speaker 5: I think supplements there just there's always going to be something.
Speaker 5: The CBD is really huge, but still in its infancy.
Speaker 5: I thought years ago I got a handle on there's
Speaker 5: always something new coming out. We do talk about these
Speaker 5: supplements that are out there, the ones that are a
Speaker 5: combo products of magnesium and alpenine and another compound GABBA,
Speaker 5: which is a brain transmitter.
Speaker 1: Is that a pill?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 5: Yeah, you could take it as a pill, And that's
Speaker 5: controversial because it's this big molecule that whether we take
Speaker 5: it through supplements or you can't really get it in food.
Speaker 5: It's what the body makes inside by a bunch of
Speaker 5: different vitamins and amino acids and whatnot.
Speaker 1: Wait, what brain transmitter? Okay, Chris, can you break this
Speaker 1: down for us?
Speaker 3: Gabba compounds. That's a tricky one. Gabba is an intermediate
Speaker 3: in the synthesis of things like serotonin and melotonin. Problem is,
Speaker 3: it's also not entirely clear if the preparation that you're
Speaker 3: consuming is able to cross the blood brain barrier. These
Speaker 3: are real chemicals and they're important in that sort of
Speaker 3: biochemical cascade. The real issue is are you consuming enough
Speaker 3: to make a difference? And number two, is it really
Speaker 3: even bioavailable getting absorbed into your bloodstream making it to
Speaker 3: your brain to make any kind of difference. Those are
Speaker 3: the questions more for a chemist, I think I.
Speaker 5: Would say keep coming back to are you doing it
Speaker 5: safely and smartly and using something that you know is
Speaker 5: real and not just a bunch of you know, rice
Speaker 5: powder and pixie.
Speaker 4: Dust, snake oil, snake oil.
Speaker 1: Yes, love this, look at them. We could live like
Speaker 1: an athlete tonight, Honey, Danielle and Chris. This is massive.
Speaker 1: I mean, every single person I know is struggling with
Speaker 1: anxiety around sleep, getting sleep, the quality of sleep. What
Speaker 1: should they be taking. Is it supplemental? Is it natural?
Speaker 1: It's a lot. So thank you for being on Chasing
Speaker 1: Sleep and for spending time with us and getting into
Speaker 1: it same.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of fun, my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Huge takeaway from today's episode four legs holding up the
Speaker 1: table that is you. One of those legs is nutrition,
Speaker 1: one is fitness, one is mindfulness, and one is sleep.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the holy grail, is it not.
Speaker 2: It is really important to take a step back and
Speaker 2: really think about what we're saying here. We're saying supplements
Speaker 2: are supplemental things.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: The words that Danielle used were like crutch band aid.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: We need to think about what is the root problem
Speaker 2: and if the root problem is not a super easy
Speaker 2: thing to take care of, then yeah, there are supplements
Speaker 2: that can help while we're trying to figure out the
Speaker 2: root problem.
Speaker 4: So for example, when we're traveling.
Speaker 1: That's a great time to supplement our needs. And sleep
Speaker 1: is a skill.
Speaker 4: That we can actually work on.
Speaker 1: We have to develop it like any other skill.
Speaker 4: It takes work, it takes time. That's right.
Speaker 2: We hope that this podcast has become a supplement to
Speaker 2: your other podcast listening.
Speaker 4: See what I did there gain.
Speaker 1: Eight, Adam, sometimes your jokes could be classified sleep supplements.
Speaker 4: Whatever I can do to help people sleep better.
Speaker 1: We hope you'll go into your podcast player, rate and
Speaker 1: review the show and tell us what you think.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: You can always find me on the instagrams at ktq.
Speaker 2: Low's and you can find me at Shabby Shafts, and
Speaker 2: don't forget to follow or subscribe to make sure that
Speaker 2: you get our next episode.
Speaker 4: When we commune with nature.
Speaker 1: Yes, or like, we live in Los Angeles and maybe
Speaker 1: we should be playing ocean sounds when we're sleeping instead
Speaker 1: of hearing city sounds or birds chirping. I think nature
Speaker 1: has a huge effect on quality of s.
Speaker 4: I'd like it.
Speaker 1: Next time it's sleep and Nature on Chasing Sleep. Until
Speaker 1: next time, hope you are living your best while sleeping
Speaker 1: your best.
Speaker 2: Chasing Sleep is a production of Ruby Studios from iHeartMedia
Speaker 2: in partnership with Mattress Firm. Our executive producer is Molly Soshia.
Speaker 1: This show was written and produced by sal Matt Brands,
Speaker 1: Dave be Sing, Jason Jackson, and Michelle Rice.
Speaker 2: Chasing Sleep is hosted by Katie Lows and Adam Shapiro.
Speaker 1: That's Us thank you to our partners at Mattress Firm,