How to Unlock Deep Sleep with 5 Proven Optimization Strategies
with Peter Martone
Dr. Wendy Myers
Hi, I am Dr. Wendy Myers. Welcome to the Myers Detox Podcast. On this show, we talk about everything related to heavy metal and chemical toxicity, and the health issues caused by these toxins. We talk about bioenergetics, anti-aging, and more advanced topics on health than you’ll hear on other podcasts. We don’t really do the basics here as much, but today we are talking about some basics. We’re gonna be talking about sleep, because sleep is the most foundational thing in health that you need to master.
A lot of people are always searching for different protocols and complicated things to do, and all that. I need more supplements. I need more of that. When really they just need to take a deep breath, step back, and focus on what they need to do to optimize their sleep environment, what they need to transition from the stressful day to sleep. We talk about all of these things with Dr. Peter Martone on the show. He’s an expert on sleep. We’re gonna be talking about how light affects sleep, how EMF affects sleep, and how your mindset and resetting your nervous system are important for sleep as well. We talk about sleeping in the dark, circadian rhythm management, food, and all these different things. There are a lot of things I hadn’t heard before about sleep on this show. So stay tuned. It’s a really, really important podcast to listen to.
Our guest today, Dr. Martone, is an educator, injury prevention specialist, and patient care health practitioner who’s been focused on improving patient biomechanics for over 25 years. During his private practice as a chiropractor and exercise physiologist, Dr. Martone always believed that the structure of your spine affects the function of the central nervous system, and this interference is at the root cause of most people’s chronic problems that they face, including sleep. Dr. Martone now uses his principle as the cornerstone to help people get way better sleep. He’s got a course called Way Better Sleep, and his techniques have been featured on CBS, NBC, Fox News, and over 50 international podcasts. He currently travels the country teaching people how to regain their health in bed by getting way better sleep. You can learn more about his work at doctorsleepright.com. Dr. Peter, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Dr. Peter Martone
Well, thanks for having me, doctor. I really appreciate it. Hopefully, people don’t fall asleep while they listen to this, but we really want people to sleep a little bit better.
Dr. Wendy Myers
No, we’re gonna try to make this exciting ’cause I’m obsessed with sleep. I think about sleep all the time, getting more sleep, optimizing my sleep, which means I’m super boring. I go to bed really early. I start getting ready for bed at seven, if you can believe that, just doing all my little sleep stack that I do. I wanna hear about your sleep stack, but first I want to hear about why most people aren’t sleeping well, ’cause this is something that a lot of people struggle with, and it’s the foundation of health. You’ve gotta get sleep right before you’re worried about anything else. So tell us about that.
Dr. Peter Martone
At this point, I believe that there’s been an inaccurate direction with sleep and helping people sleep, because I will say one word to that: it’s trauma. So, what ends up happening is that people don’t realize it, and there’s so much, we’re going to dive into sleep. We’re gonna really try to take like a 350-foot view and give people actionable steps, but ultimately, we’ve developed something called the triune of sleep, where when you look at sleep, there are three things at play for you to fall asleep, which we call the setup.
The execution of sleep is something totally different. So how you put yourself to sleep is really dependent on how the execution of sleep happens, and when you’re looking at sleep, putting yourself to sleep the right way. People are like, ‘Oh no, I’m fine.’ I fall asleep. We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about your body or sleep as a battery charger, and you have set it up and then execute. If you want the battery to charge correctly, like your body has the energy, you have to set it up correctly, and people aren’t even plugging in the charger correctly. And this is because of the fundamental need for sleep, which is safety.
The subconscious brain wants to feel safe. The subconscious brain is what controls sleep, and most of us have trauma. We live in fear. We have anxiety about the current political situation. You wear a mask, you don’t wear a mask, you have a measles shot, you don’t have a measles shot. So there are all of these things that people have, and they live in fear. That’s causing people at a fundamental level not to be able to sleep correctly.
Dr. Wendy Myers
That’s a really, really good point, ’cause I know whenever I’m stressed in my business or stressed about something, my mind’s trying to like solve that problem and figure it out. I don’t sleep as well. I think fundamentally we’re meant to live in tribes of 150 people and not know anything about what’s going on in the outside world. We’re not supposed to know all this stuff. Obsessively, for whatever reason, I’m on X scrolling all the time. It’s not conducive to sleep at all.
Dr. Peter Martone
No, it absolutely isn’t because, like you said, you made a specific statement there, and I’m going to clarify that. You said you’re thinking, and you can’t think yourself to sleep. That’s the conscious brain. You have to remember to sleep. So focusing on memories is what puts you to sleep. Focusing on thoughts is what keeps you up. Sleep is the opposite of control. It’s about letting go. And we as a society have a really tough issue with letting go and giving in to sleep. The approach that we take here at Doctor Sleep Right is that sleep isn’t just in the brain. It’s with what’s within the body and what controls every aspect of your health. That is what’s called the autonomic nervous system. There are different divisions of that.
There are your systems that engage to keep you awake in survival to run from a tiger. And then there are systems that calm you down, relax, and allow you to thrive and grow. And the trick is to shut off these systems and turn on these systems so you can hand the baton off to the subconscious brain correctly. Back to the triune of sleep. What’s critical with it is that there are three things at play. There’s the body. The needs of the body, the needs of the subconscious brain, and then the needs of the conscious brain. So when most people fall asleep, I’ve dealt with tens of thousands of people across the globe, millions now across the globe, and they go to sleep. And the first thing they say is, I say, what position do you sleep in? And they’re like, oh, the only way I can get comfortable is to curl up in a ball. I’m like, ha, ha, ha. They’re mistaken. Comfort for safety. This is not comfortable for the body.
Comfort lives in the alignment of the body. All the body wants is comfort. It just wants its weight distributed over the greatest surface area, not to be contorted and twisted, and sleeping on your side. Curled up in a ball is the opposite of that. Then the next thing that comes is the subconscious brain. We have people take an animal sleep avatar test. They can go to doctorsleepright.com to take it, and that identifies what animal they sleep like. Are you a gorilla? Are you an ostrich or are you an armadillo? Can you sleep anywhere, sprawled out? Do you need protection, or do you need to put your head under a pillow to feel ultimately protected and sleep on your stomach?
Dr. Wendy Myers
I think I was an armadillo. Most people aren’t.
Dr. Peter Martone
Once you identify that, the conscious brain gets out of its own way, that is the armadillo curling up in a ball.
Dr. Wendy Myers
That’s all really interesting. Let’s talk about the sleep position that you just mentioned. What is the best sleep position?
Dr. Peter Martone
The best sleeping position puts the body in alignment. Now listen, we’re gonna have obstacles that we’re gonna overcome, and the obstacles that we’re gonna overcome are gonna be airways, such as I can’t sleep like that, or my back hurts when it’s like that. Those are all obstacles. I’ve heard every single one of them, but when it comes down to it, the human frame, there are humans listening to this podcast. The human frame, I’m talking about every single human on the planet, is designed to sleep in a specific position where your body weight is distributed over the greatest surface area, and you have as little support to your head as possible. You want support in your neck. So basically, is this gonna be a video or is this an audio?
Dr. Wendy Myers
It’s a video.
Dr. Peter Martone
Alright, perfect. I have a little bed here, and I have a little pillow down there, which is actually one that was designed called the Neck Nest, but you might be able to see it right there. Basically, what I’m doing. I’m lying down and the neck nest under my head. And then if you notice the pillows, the neck nest is under my neck, and my head is off the back, and I’m sleeping like this. I know what you’re saying, Wendy. You’re saying there’s no way I can sleep like that.
I get it because it’s not your conscious, it’s your conscious brain denying it. Your subconscious brain’s telling the conscious brain that there’s no way I can do that because I don’t feel safe. I won’t breathe. I have to have something on me. All those are the objections that we need to identify for the subconscious brain. So we put the body in alignment, and we only have to fall asleep like this. You have to stay in this position the whole night because when you sleep on your side, the average person tosses and turns 20 to 40 times a night because you’re in pain. So when you think you’re sleeping on one side, you’re all over the place at night. That’s why we say setup first, execution second, but set up is designed to put the body in that position to just fall asleep.
Dr. Wendy Myers
That makes sense. Does it support the neck and open up the airway maximally, ’cause I know a lot of people deal with sleep apnea for various reasons, and that constricts their airway, and they open up, they wake up many, many times a night. That’s maybe a separate podcast. That’s something you need to get diagnosed and deal with, obviously, especially if you snore. No, you’ve gotta do a sleep test. You have to figure that out and address it. Tell us what else we can do. What else can we do to kinda wind down and get optimal sleep?
Dr. Peter Martone
In order to become a great sleeper, it doesn’t just happen when you put your head on the bed; it happens with what you do during the day. And we have just launched a project called The Way Smarter Smart Ring Project. Most people, when they buy a smart ring, don’t know what to do with the data. Is the data accurate? Nobody knows. And then they get more anxiety about sleeping ’cause they’re tracking it and they’re not getting good sleep. And they’re like, well, what the heck’s going on? And it’s causing more anxiety than anything else.
The Way Smarter Smart Ring Project is about understanding that we live our lives through our nervous system. Everything we do, say, function, and feel happens through that system. When you are listening to this podcast, you’re not even sensing reality, like you’re not even listening to reality. You’re listening to your brain’s interpretation of reality because you’re sensing it through your eyes, listening to it through your ears. So, everything we do happens through some integration of our nervous system. It’s our perception of our thoughts and beliefs. Then, when we express what we hear is going to be an adaptation to that. So why do I go that deep? I know that’s crazy, but that is so important to understand because when you are looking at a metric that you can control.
We can identify and understand that sympathetic duo. You can’t run from a tiger and sleep at the same time. They’re two totally different, contrasting nervous systems. You can’t be in survival and growth at the same time. You’re either growing or you’re surviving. So people that live in that survival state suppress three systems: the immune system, the digestive system, and the reproductive system. People that live in a sympathetic dominant state, fear, anxiety, they’re always stressed, they’re always have muscle tension. They have shoulder trap tension. They have back pain, neck pain ’cause they’re in this sympathetic state. But something very specific happens to the heart. The heart rate increases in a sympathetic-dominant state. Then what happens in a resting, relaxed state? The heart rate decreases. So if we can give you actions during the day to do, and you can monitor real-time readings, which you do, let’s say you meditate. Let’s say you pray. Let’s say you go into a hot sauna. Let’s say you ground, do a specific activity over a certain period of time, and monitor which one drops your heart rate the most. Then just do that on a regular basis.
Ads 14:06
This show is brought to you by Bon Charge, and I wanna take a minute to tell you about one of their amazing products that I’m absolutely in love with. There’s something I’ve been doing for about 10 minutes a day, and it’s wearing a face mask, but it’s not just any face mask. It’s this Bon Charge red light face mask, and it’s essential to my nightly skincare routine now. Believe me, red light therapy really works. It’s well established in the research to improve the appearance of your skin. How it does that is it penetrates deep into the skin to boost collagen production. It reduces the size of your pores, reduces inflammation, and eases the signs of aging.
Bon Charge’s red light face mask makes it so easy to take care of your skin. It’s like a mini spa session every night that I’m doing. It can be used easily at home. There’s no cord, so you can wear it while you’re doing other tasks. Plus, the mask is totally painless and it doesn’t heat up. Unlike some other beauty, anti-aging treatments, Bon Charge’s red light face mask has been a game changer. It’s part of my everyday skincare routine now, and I’m seeing such great results already from using this mask. My skin is more clear, it seems more plump, fresh, juicy, and my redness and dark blemishes are fading.
There’s a very special offer for all of my listeners right now. My listeners get 15% off when you order from boncharge.com and use my promo code, Wendy at checkout. This discount applies sitewide, and you’ll also get free shipping and a 12-month warranty. Go now to get this exclusive offer. That’s boncharge.com and with promo code, Wendy, you get. 15% off. This is one of my secrets to super healthy young-looking skin. I’m trying to reverse the clock. I’m trying to do everything I can to anti-age and this is one of the secrets in my toolkit.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, that’s so smart. At seven o’clock, I get on my PEMF mat for an hour in the relaxed setting and just try to start winding down. So I’m not just starting before I get into bed or think about bed around bedtime. You really have to transition into sleep and do things that are relaxing, versus just scrolling on your phone with a blue light shining in your face.
Dr. Peter Martone
What’s critical is getting the body connected to the circadian rhythm. The problem is we have all of these lights, and we stay up and we push past typical circadian rhythms of the earth. In the summertime, you can push your bedtimes. In the wintertime, you wanna cut your bedtimes a little bit early, but we wanna stay on some sort of regular pattern, whether you spring the clock forward or spring it back. That’s why people get sick because you change it. Even one hour, four weeks later, people are gonna start getting colds and blame it on allergies. But that’s neither here nor there. Basically, we need to keep our bodies in some sort of rhythmic pattern so that you naturally release melatonin.
Your body naturally produces serotonin. You give your body things to nurture sleep, and it really starts with connecting to your, I like how you said, the PEMF mat. Go outside and put your feet in the grass. Yesterday was beautiful here in New England. We just sat outside and had our feet in the grass, getting connected, getting those free radicals pulled out of the bottom of our feet neutralized.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I like what you said about circadian rhythm. It’s so important to go to bed at the same time every night, wake up at the same time, and do that on a regular basis. And that’s what I love about those Smart Rings, keeping on track with that. I use the Aura. I don’t know if the other rings are really very accurate. I’ve tried a few and I’ve not been that impressed, but aura’s been around the longest. They’ve been tracking data the longest, et cetera. For me, having an aura ring has really helped to discipline me to go to bed at the same time every night, ’cause it lets you know if you’re off your circadian rhythm and makes sure that you’re aware of that. It really helps with discipline. If you don’t go to bed early enough, you’re shortchanged in your deep sleep. You get that deep sleep at the beginning of the night and the REM sleep towards the end. So, having that awareness really helps to have more discipline with the circadian rhythm.
Dr. Peter Martone
And then tapping into the circadian rhythm. When you tap in, you have to understand the body’s physiology. It’s your state. It’s how the nervous system regulates and the true balance between the sympathetics and the parasympathetics. Those are controlled by emotions and thoughts. Emotions that drive an awake state bear anxiety, anger, hate, greed. These are stimulating emotions that will put you into a sympathetic dominant state. Parasympathetic emotions are love, gratitude, and caring. These nurturing types of emotions stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system and healing.
If you can just change your mindset and try to get all of that anger or that stuff out of your head during the day, and I know it’s so easy, it’s self-discipline of the mind. In our program, we call it mindset mastery. It is truly being able to master the thoughts and emotions and be able to do it specifically for sleep. It’s really a good art that people can work on.
Dr. Wendy Myers
It’s a practice. Well, like anything, and I definitely, I pray before I go to sleep, I pray to have good sleep, and I’m very specific, like, God, please thank you so much for giving me two hours of deep sleep and two hours of REM sleep. I’m very, very specific in what I’m communicating to my body that I want it to do. And then gratitude for all the things in my life. It’s a really nice way to fall asleep too. I feel like that helps shift me into that parasympathetic. Are there any other tips that you have for people to optimize sleep?
Dr. Peter Martone
Well, one of the major things, and you talked about it, is that your body goes through natural cycles. You gotta go through the deep sleep cycles at the beginning of the first 30 sleep cycles, and then towards the end or even into the middle, you have these REM sleep cycles. So you have deep sleep where the body heals, develops, and grows. The REM sleep is where the mind detoxifies and clears out. So if you’re not getting good REM sleep, you’re gonna have living brain fog. If you’re not getting good, deep sleep, you’re gonna be run down in internalized health issues.
So how do we optimize both of those? Well, the toughest one to optimize, believe it or not, is deep sleep, because in order to get good quality, deep sleep, it’s really important that your core temperature drops in falls within the first third of your sleep cycle, more importantly, before midnight with most people. So you want to be in deep sleep before a natural energy spike in your body. That typically happens around midnight. How are you able to drop that core temperature? Well, first off, you can’t eat late. Eating late destroys sleep because your body is digesting food and one of the byproducts of digestion is heat.
So if you’re eating late, you are going even 400 calories within four hours of going to bed, you are creating heat within your system. You might fall asleep, oh my God, I can fall asleep. But you’re not getting good, deep restorative sleep. That’s a big one.
Dr. Wendy Myers
You get those blood sugar spikes, and the cortisol goes up, wakes you up and you’re just a mess. There are a lot of people like that who are pre-diabetic that don’t know it, or they’re diabetic and don’t know it. They don’t realize that late night snacking when you have less of an insulin response, you’re screwing your whole night of sleep. You could have super high blood sugar all night long and not even know it. And you’re tossing and turning. It’s that eating late. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m eating at four o’clock and I feel like I’m a thousand years old doing that, but my food’s totally digested by the time I go to sleep. I just don’t want that blood sugar issue or the heat factoring into whether I get a good sleep or not.
Dr. Peter Martone
That’s great. If you got it wrong or you missed timing it, you can eat something before you go to sleep. It just can’t be heavy food, you know what I mean?
Dr. Wendy Myers
Some people need that. They need a little snack to control their blood sugar. I’m not one of those people, but I wish I was. But I guess some people might need a little snack ’cause they have low blood sugar. God bless you if you have that. That’s not me. So anything else? Any other tips you can give people? Certainly the light is a huge factor. I think people are not calculating how much light affects their health and different types of light and the timing of that circadian rhythm of light. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Dr. Peter Martone
I really like the simplicity of, obviously, Dock room docketing shades. I like the simplicity of either putting a pillow over your head, putting a towel over your eyes, or putting a sleep mask over your eyes because light pressure against your eyes creates a cocoon type of environment. If you picture sleeping in the open room where you’re just in the middle of the room. That open space creates a sense of I, I am not gonna be able to fall asleep, versus a room that’s a lot more enclosed. So as you enclose the space around you, that creates safety. But you can create that by putting a pillow over your head or wearing a sleep mask. That shortens that space around you even more, and that fulfills the need of creating safety for the subconscious brain.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I was just amazed when I moved into the house I’m in now, there weren’t very good shades on the windows and that I just didn’t deal with it for a while and I slept like crap. And then I literally bought a $20 blackout thing, just something quicker, let’s just get this done and slapped it up, and I could not believe how much better I slept without just the light. There was just a light outside my window at night, the streetlight and it causes cancer. It really has a huge effect just having a small little light coming in through your window or the light waking you up too early when the sun rises
Dr. Peter Martone
It makes a huge difference to have those blackout curtains. I won’t mention their name, but a very prominent sleep specialist argued on social media with me about the dangers of falling asleep with the TV on. I do not believe your TV should be on and the flickering lights. Let’s say you’re falling asleep and it’s a drama and they’re shooting guns. How can you tell me it’s okay to do anything that puts somebody to sleep? I just don’t understand it because you’re right, if you are not able to fall asleep naturally and you need the sound, which is okay, and you use devices to help you fall asleep, there are sound devices and noise machines.
There are other external factors that you can’t control, but we are designed to sleep, and the fact that when not sleeping, there are fundamental underlying issues that need to be addressed. And that’s really kinda where I stand on that.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I think people discount how many things negatively will impact their sleep. I used to think a long time ago that I needed this TV to fall asleep., I just needed my mind distracted. I just didn’t know how to train my mind to meditate or not think about negative things or problems or whatever. It’s a practice. You don’t need the TV to fall asleep or noises or things like that. You have to learn how to meditate and change your thoughts to more positive thoughts and gratitude rather than thinking about problems in the to-do list.
Dr. Peter Martone
It’s self discipline. It’s mindset mastery. You need to know what to master. If nobody tells you that you, if you focus on caring, gratitude, love and prayer, that’ll help you fall asleep. They just say, oh yeah, just shut off your mind. No, you can focus on specific emotions and understand that if you focus on those emotions, living gratitude, and then you connect that to a memory in the past, then a loving memory. Let’s say you love, I dunno, walking around a golf course or just an appreciation of nature around you. You’ll fall asleep like that, and if you fall asleep on a memory once, you’ll be able to put yourself asleep on that same memory over and over and over again.
Ads 28:13
I wanna say a couple of words about one of our Myers Detox Podcast sponsors, Qualia Senolytic. It’s a cutting edge formula designed to help your body eliminate senescent cells, also known as zombie cells. These outdated cells hang around draining your energy and slowing your workout recovery, and causing all kinds of havoc and mayhem. Backed by clinical research, Qualia uses nine plant-based compounds that support joint comfort, sharper focus, and better aging naturally. And here’s the kicker, you only have to take it two days a month.
It is simple, backed by science, and validated by research. You can try it risk-free with a hundred-day money-back guarantee. Go to qualialife.com/wendy and use code Wendy to get 15% off. You wanna try Qualia Senolytic. This is something that I’ve been taking. It’s part of my anti-aging protocol, because getting older doesn’t have to feel like it.
Dr. Wendy Myers
We’re talking about basic things here, like creating your cocoon, but there’s 14 different things that can impact your sleep. There’s a lot of things that can undermine your sleep. You have to go through the checklist but at least you gotta get these basics down for sure. Can you talk about the phones, that light at night and what that’s doing to us and preventing sleep?
Dr. Peter Martone
Put your phone face down. Just eliminate that. Even flickering lights from an alarm clock, if it’s like a really bright blue LA alarm clock, those lights can trigger and stimulate. You don’t see it, but if you close your eyes in your room, there’s an alarm clock right in front of you. If you unplug that alarm clock, you’ll see that through your eyelids. If your phone’s face up and a message comes in, it might be silent, but when a message comes in, I don’t know, maybe I can shut this off, but it turns it on.
The light turns on or something or even like a snow alert because I’m in New England, I don’t know, maybe like a rain alert comes in, the light turns on. Those things affect you at a subconscious level just because you’re consciously not thinking about it. Your subconscious brain’s running your entire life anyway. So we need to talk more to the subconscious brain, not the conscious thing that you think is an issue. You understand that the subconscious brain is always available.
Dr. Wendy Myers
One thing I did too is I put hearth lights throughout my house, like in my living room, where wherever I am at night, I have the orange hearth lights. I’m not having this bright blue light that’s communicated in my brain, Hey, the sun’s up, let’s produce cortisol. I think that’s a really important factor that people don’t think about, but it really impacts you a lot and your ability to ease and to sleep.
Dr. Peter Martone
An easy thing is if you don’t have a lot of money or even if you can’t put dimmer switches on all of them, just use candles or even a little candlelight a couple places in the house. It’s great. It is so soothing to use that natural candlelight. I love it. We love it. When it’s dark out, the entire house is a low light situation.
Dr. Wendy Myers
That’s a really good recommendation. I hadn’t thought about that. Anything else? What are your thoughts on EMF affecting our brainwaves and things like that?
Dr. Peter Martone
I have an EMF reader. I measure the rings. I measure the rooms. I measure when the biggest EMF is off of a phone. It’s when it’s plugged in. So that will go from green, believe it or not. There are certain areas of the phone that will ring orange, which is a moderate level when you know it receives something. But on and off, in general it’s typically on a regular basis, unless you’re on the phone, it’s usually green. But when you plug anything in from that charger all the way to the phone it’s red and you do not want this anywhere close to your head, because there’s more and more research that’s coming out on EMFs. But in a general house, unless you have a big station up front, like one of those transfer stations, or you have a big cell tower right next to your house, typical EMFs get blocked through most of the house unless you have a plug right next to your head. You have a plug right behind the bed, and anything that’s plugged in and is running through a wire, if it’s close to you gotta be really cautious about that.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I think people don’t really factor that in that might be affecting their sleep. You don’t wanna charge your phone near your head while you’re sleeping. A lot of people do that. It’s very, very common.
Dr. Peter Martone
You don’t want to be on your phone when it’s plugged in because that’s the most amount of radiation. It’s going right into your brain. Then if you’re on the phone, plugged in and trying to go to bed, that radiation, I don’t know what it’s doing, but I just know that it can’t be good.
Dr. Wendy Myers
It’s interfering with your natural brainwaves that you need when you’re sleeping or the right frequency when you’re sleeping. It’s just gonna go on and scramble those. You’re not sleeping well as a result of that. So, you mentioned this model of a pie. What is missing in this pie sleep model?
Dr. Peter Martone
This is so great. My mission is to help people master this and it is very different from sleep master, the time they spend in bed to improve every aspect of their lives, and create the best version of themselves. So when you’re looking at the time in bed, most people just look at it as sleeping, right? They just look at it like, okay, sleep, rest, repair, recharge. But they miss the fact that we live our life through our nervous system. So the glue that connects us together is that our nervous system functions optimally, especially within the parasympathetic nervous system. The nervous system that needs to engage is critical.
It’s very impacted by the cervical curve in your neck. And the reason is because the vagus nerve, which comes out right underneath, right from the brainstem all the way down, represents 80% of that entire nervous system. When you sleep on your side and you’re curled up in a ball, you’re distorting the structure due to Wolf’s law and Davis’s law, and the writing reflex. You’re destroying the structure of the cervical curve. I’ve taken tens of thousands of cervical x-rays on patients, and most people who have internalized health issues, it all stem from loss of curve because you’re not able to get that parasympathetic inner turned on.
It’s like a dimmer switch, turning it down. So when we look at the missing glue, the crust that holds us together, people don’t sleep well because they have a dimmer switch on that parasympathetic nervous system because of the purely structure and, and the conscious brain is telling us that this is comfortable. We force ourselves to sleep in these contorted positions that are destroying the structure, which is complicating our sleep problems because the sympathetics aren’t able to turn the baton off to the parasympathetics and really get those engaged. So, how you sleep, the alignment starting the alignment first, going all the way back to set up charger correctly in the missing crust is the structure, it’s the alignment, it’s the position you fall asleep in, being able to improve, not just your body’s ability to sleep once you get it down, but the entire health of the entire system.
Dr. Wendy Myers
That makes so much sense ’cause when you’re sleeping on your side, your head is kinda in this forward position.
Dr. Peter Martone
When you’re doing this, you get wrinkles. You’re causing maxillary sinuses to close down airways and jaws to be contorted. If your spine’s like clay, it’s hardened clay, but you can still bend bone. You take a bone bender and you bend it for a while, you’re gonna have a bent arm, right? So, if you’re spending eight hours a day, one third of your life like this, what the hell do you think that’s doing to your structure? And then everybody’s like, I don’t know why I have headaches. You have headaches because you’re distorting the structure of the spinal cord itself.
I can’t believe people don’t see it. They’re like, no, there’s no problem with me. I’m like, why? What if you look at the next person who has heart palpitations, their head’s gonna be tilted off to one side, and once you start to see it, you can’t unsee it because their most health-related issues are dysregulation in that autonomic nervous system.
Dr. Wendy Myers
That makes so much sense. I actually haven’t heard anyone articulate it that way, but it makes perfect sense. Also you’re probably gonna compromise your glymphatic system, that lymphatic system in your brain from draining and detoxing as well, which is so, so important. Let’s talk about supplements. Are there supplements that you recommend that most people take to facilitate sleep?
Dr. Peter Martone
I created a supplement. I’m not a big fan of supplementation for sleep. The one that we did, it’s more specific to help people get to deep sleep. And what it does is it just has GABA in it that calms the brain, allows the body to release serotonin, and it has l-arginine, which dilates your blood vessels. Why do I want your blood vessels dilated? I want your body to regulate the temperature out of your hands and your feet so you can drop the core temperature. It also has magnesium in it, so I really like using GABA in magnesium for sleep. I’m not really a fan of melatonin. GABA absorbs better with a little bit of melatonin, like 0.5m I believe of melatonin. Not like the fives, six sevens and tens that normal people are taking.
When you are looking at sleep, we want to not try to force ourselves to sleep. We want to be able to nurture the connection to the circadian rhythm and harmonize with that. I like scent and I like using those two supplements.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I love GABA. I think that’s so important. Some people are so stressed out today that we need GABA to turn off the stress hormones and the stress neurotransmitters and things like that. I think progesterone is super important. A lot of people don’t sleep because of a lack of progesterone. I spent my forties sleeping like crap and feeling like crap and feeling more stressed than I should just from a lack of progesterone. I think that’s really important to look at and test as well. If you have sleep issues, start testing in your twenties. A lot of hormone experts I talk to, they have patients in their twenties on progesterone, and I’m not talking like a little cream, a little wild again, cream. I’m talking about prescription, bioidentical compounded.
Most people need a lot more ’cause we’re so stressed in so many different ways. We shift our body from making these sex hormones like progesterone to making stress hormones, and all the chemicals and the toxins we talk about on this show also are really working against our hormones. At some point there has to be, yes, stress reduction in place, but I think there’s the amount of toxins, there’s a lot working against our hormones that you may in fact need to replete those and replace ’em.
Dr. Peter Martone
Think about non-stimulant foods. You’re really tired, so, oh, I need to pick me up. So most people do caffeine. They do chocolate. I don’t have an issue with chocolate, especially raw chocolate, but a little bit, especially when it’s low in sugar and natural. You don’t want that caffeine in your system because the half-life in most people of caffeine is five hours. They’re having a cup of coffee, let’s say at noon. Let’s say it’s a regular coffee. Let’s say it’s not normal coffee. It’s the Starbucks that has 300 milligrams of caffeine in it. Well, if you do that at noon, at five o’clock, you still have 150 milligrams of caffeine. Then at 10 o’clock you still have 75.
You want under 25 milligrams of caffeine you want even less than that, but really for it to not so much affect your sleep, you want under 25 milligrams, you already have too much caffeine. People are like, I don’t know why my heart’s beating. Well, having your last cup of coffee was at two o’clock or three o’clock. Well, I don’t have a problem falling asleep. I know you don’t have a problem falling asleep, but it’s affecting your heart rate’s ability to come down, cooling your cold temperature to get deep restorative sleep. Then when you wake up, you need the coffee again. So it’s this vicious cycle.
Ads 42:26
For anyone listening who really wants to detox their body, go to heavymetalsquiz.com. I created a quiz for you. It only takes a couple of seconds and it’s based on some lifestyle questions. You can get your toxicity score and get a free video series that answers all of your frequently asked questions about how to detox your body. Check it out at heavymetalsquiz.com
Dr. Wendy Myers
That’s so important ’cause we’re so caffeine-fueled and people are doing other stimulants as well. People don’t realize how many hours later that affects us. So that’s a really important point. I’m from Texas, so everyone’s drinking tea morning, noon, and night like every single meal.
Dr. Peter Martone
I’m in Massachusetts, and every car you are behind, you smell weed. Listen, I understand that you may need that at some point to calm down, but THC causes significant REM rebound. So you might be able to fall asleep because you’re super calm, but you’re not getting good, deep restorative sleep. And then at the end you have these crazy dreams because you’re rebounding towards the end, and your body’s trying to make up REM. Once you detoxify through the TAC, then you’re sweating in the middle of the night. It’s just not the right way to put yourself to sleep.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Everyone is also different in that regard. There’s been research about how THC reduces your REM sleep significantly.
Dr. Peter Martone
It causes REM rebound at the end. Your body will make it up
Dr. Wendy Myers
Same with alcohol. You just get reduced REM sleep and when you go off of that, you start having all these dreams and all this REM so your body’s trying to catch up. What puts you to sleep doesn’t necessarily give you quality sleep for sure.
Dr. Peter Martone
That’s great. I love it.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Why don’t you tell us about your program where you teach people all these fundamental foundational things to aid sleep?
Dr. Peter Martone
We have a site called doctorsleepright.com. it’s a three-tiered system I guess you can say. Basically, we have the Way Better Sleep Ring Project. The only reason I’m using the ring that we created is because I want everybody in our platform on the same tracker, because if I’m making recommendations based on different trackers, it’s very difficult to be able to consistently get the right data. So, you track your data, you understand your data, and then you work to optimize it. We do that during the day because you don’t just put your head on the bed and become a better sleeper. It’s what you do during the day. Then the outcome is that you’re a better sleeper. So we have these daily habits or rituals that we put people through.
Then we have the setup. In that setup we call it the Way Better Blueprint. It’s a way to put people through. They start by taking their animal sleep avatar test, and then based on what avatar they are, there are specific things that we have each one of them do to be able to improve their metrics with their ring. Then the last thing is once they’re able to put themselves to sleep correctly, we look at what happens with the data, then it’s execution and execution is ultimately where it all lives. That’s the mindset, working on those hard things that you know are sub-programming of who we were when we were a kid.
That stuff is driving our ability sometimes to get deep restorative sleep because of the trauma that we were in. We don’t realize it ’cause we don’t feel it during the day, but it’s really subconscious. So we put people through these workshops that they can go through to be able to help really get at the core problem of it.
Dr. Wendy Myers
That’s so important, ’cause I know some people had a really stressful, abusive childhood. Their stress set point is just gonna be a lot higher than the next person. They’re gonna be triggered more easily, they’re gonna have a harder time calming down. You gotta work on the vagus nerve and the stress set point and release that emotional trauma. I have an appointment in a couple of weeks with a trauma specialist, and it seems like just a never ending project. I’ve been working on emotional trauma for like 10 years, doing mostly bioenergetic frequency type work. But I think doing past life regression and all that, there’s conventional medical research for intergenerational trauma that we carry. That last piece I’ve gotta work through, but it pays many dividends to work through all that stuff, not just with your sleep, but with your physical health issues also. That research from Kaiser Permanente conventional medical research showed that over 65% of our physical health issues are from ACEs and, and emotional trauma. And so it’s really important for so many different levels.
Dr. Peter Martone
You don’t just become a better sleeper and then become healthier. You become healthier, and the byproduct is better sleep. So it’s a really interesting concept because healthy people sleep well, and it keeps that cycle. So you can’t just force sleep and then become healthier. You have to work on it as a 350-foot view or this complete package. That’s why I’ve been within the autonomic nervous system space and a chiropractor for 25 years. My entire career has been about helping people get over chronic illness by balancing the autonomics and to be able to do that, you have to understand the autonomics are driven by emotions and emotions are driven by beliefs, and beliefs are subconscious programs.
I was brought up in a great loving home, but it doesn’t matter how loving it is, it’s how I internalized other relationships. Some people feel bad about saying the word trauma. They fear it. Like, oh, I wasn’t traumatic, they weren’t abusive. It doesn’t matter. What trauma is to you is not what it is to the same person. You have two siblings living on the same thing that internalized things differently because you are who you are, and those are the things that people need to have help and guidance with.
Dr. Wendy Myers
And even neglect can really screw up your nervous system set point as well. That has a lot of negative effects as well, even if you weren’t abused and just neglected. People have a really hard time identifying that. I know I certainly did. In my opinion, I think mastering sleep is the number one priority you should have for your health. It’s the number one thing you should be doing before you do anything else. Nothing else matters. You’ve gotta master this sleep. I love that you have this course to help guide people through this. It takes time to learn all this stuff, implement it, and have discipline and good practice. You get better and better at it. I can just say in my opinion, after years and years of bad sleep, it takes years off your life. You gain weight, you get insulin resistant, and it leads to many other health issues. So the number one thing you need to be focusing on is your sleep and mastering that. Tell us again where we can take your course.
Dr. Peter Martone
You can go to doctorsleepright.com. You can find the neck nest. You can find out about our programs and all the projects that we’re working on. You can also go to Instagram and follow me for free there. I put all sorts of content out there.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Well, Dr. Peter, thanks so much for coming on the show. I love talking about sleep. That was really interesting and fascinating. I hope you guys got some great tips that you can start implementing now. Go get your aura ring. Don’t waste any time on that. You can’t change what you’re not measuring. Again, thanks so much for coming on the show, Dr. Peter. Everyone, I’m Dr. Wendy Myers. Thanks for tuning in every week to the Myers Detox Podcast. I do this show because I’m so passionate about health and teaching you. I really want you to get out of this show a few little distinctions that you can add to your life, improve your life, and meet your health goals, because you deserve to feel good. Thanks for spending your most precious resource with me, your time. I’ll see you guys next week.
Disclaimer
The Myers Detox Podcast is created and hosted by Wendy Myers. This podcast is for information purposes only. Statements and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast, including Wendy Myers and the producers, disclaims responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. The opinions of guests are their own, and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. If you think you have a medical problem, consult a licensed physician.
