Podcast Episode 5: Is Your Sleep Decreasing Your Productivity? (with Transcription)

In this episode we discuss the importance of quality sleep how neglecting this part of our wellness affects our physiology and daily function.

Watch to the end to hear our recommendations, including Dr Bagwell’s take on melatonin.

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Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (00:00):
It's become really, um, concerning is the right word as a clinician to see the number of parents that are giving their kids melatonin. Welcome to the True Health Solutions Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, stress, inflammation, and functional health clinician.

Brigitte Spurgeon (00:12):
And I'm your co-host Bridget Spurgeon Metabolism and nutrition expert.

Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (00:16):
This podcast is where we bring hope, truth, and inspiration for your holistic health journey

Brigitte Spurgeon (00:21):
Because the world needs the best version of you.

Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (00:27):
Hello and welcome to True Health Solutions Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, here with

Brigitte Spurgeon (00:32):
Brigitte Spurgeon,

Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (00:34):
The Brigitte Spurgeon. And, uh, and today we're gonna talk about something that's near and dear to both of us. We both have experiences with this on both sides of the fence. Uh, and today we're gonna talk about what is really considered, uh, just a, a super solution to so many issues that we run into nowadays. We all want more energy. We all want to heal. We want better immune function. We're gonna talk more about all this, but today we're talking about sleep. All right? We get this question a lot in the office, whether it's has to do with weight loss, whether it has to do with, uh, GI issues, You know, obviously, pain, inflammation, whatever it is, the patients come in for sleep, invariably becomes a topic at some point or another. And so we're gonna tackle that as best we can. And our short podcast, of course, is always, we are gonna revisit these topics over and over again, uh, and develop, uh, more and more, uh, about these different topics. Today we're talking about sleep. We have whole workshops on this, but we're gonna hit the highlights today. But before we get started, as always, we wanna talk about, um, how, how, how does this topic relate to us personally here and in the now? And so, Bridget, how have you been sleeping?

Brigitte Spurgeon (01:37):
Yes, I have been sleeping reasonably well. Uh, you know, we always have a joke that my husband always says, like, you know, Bridget can just like, drop and, and just fall asleep any, any place, any time. Um, not, not necessarily to that extreme. So, um, I've had to deal with sleep disturbances in Mexico. In our first location, we were in a neighborhood with a lot of street dogs, and so we dealt with arching dogs that felt like all night long. So that was definitely a, a sleep disruption. The other factor that we dealt with is the, the, the time change. So where we are in our time zone, getting dark, Getting dark, yeah, getting dark later, and the sun coming up later. So it actually, we had to shift our sleep pattern and our daily routine pattern. So that was interesting. In our new location, uh, it's quieter here. We don't have the dogs. However, last night there was a, there's a karaoke bar or karaoke event, like just below us. Cause we're on the marinus <laugh>. Fortunately, I, I did get to sleep. I was able to, I guess, get to sleep, and I stayed asleep until I woke up at 6:00 AM So, uh, so all good. I'm,

Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (02:53):
This is just real talk. This is, yeah, I got some real talk too, as it relates to sleep. You know, so everybody's listening, you know, know, they know that we're going through it too. This is something that you don't just like, uh, you don't just learn how important sleep is one day and then all of a sudden the light bulb goes off, and then now your sleep's perfect forever. It just becomes a priority. It just becomes that thing that you're gonna focus on, right? You'll talk about that a little bit more later. But, uh, for me, um, I really didn't prioritize sleep. And I even, uh, one of my mentors will end up listening to this podcast, and he's the one that used to say this all the time. He said, We'll catch up on our sleep when we're dead, You know? So I just said, Okay, well then we're just, I'm gonna be a ridiculous producer.

(03:28):
I'm gonna go save the planet and I'll catch up on sleep when I'm dead. Well, I think then my forties hit and, uh, and it just became way more abundantly apparent, right? Like, just cross all areas, whether it's mood, whether it's recovery, you know, where now sleep all of a sudden was like, Oh, maybe I need to pay attention to the sleep thing. Now, here I am, wellness doctor, reading the stuff and just saying, But my mission's bigger than sleep until sleep. Uh, you know, these laws of the universe, they tend to rear their ugly head at some point. And so I started to feel inflamed. Uh, you know, so it just became a no-brainer. This had to become a priority. Um, and it's funny because, and I do this now even sometimes, is it, uh, like my kids would always go to bed earlier when they're younger.

(04:07):
Um, and, uh, and so I just started to go on, I literally would make one trip upstairs to put them to bed, and I wouldn't let myself go back downstairs. I would just go into the bedroom and then start the wine down process. And it was the best I ever felt in my life. Like, my body was feeling amazing. My mental clarity was there. So, um, and so anyway, so I have been negatively impacted. And now, you know, certainly it's, it's a just a huge priority. And we're gonna talk about, at the end of the episode, as we always do, we're gonna give, uh, bridge is gonna give her top two. I'm gonna give my top two, uh, so solutions for improving your sleep tonight. But before we get to that point, and the practical part, let's talk a little bit more about, um, kind of the stages of sleep and how it, you know, how amazing it really is that we, I think that's important so everybody can realize it's something worth going for.

(04:51):
There's this, there is a huge prize on the other side of a good night's sleep, or consistently getting good night's sleep, right? And then we do have to certainly hit on and just help connect with people that are struggling with different areas of their health right now. And talk about when you don't sleep enough, how devastating it really is. And then again, we're gonna drop the, uh, the top, uh, or just our top two solutions for getting better sleep tonight. So, um, you know, when, when we get into, when everybody wants to talk about sleep cycles, and I think that's worth talking about, um, and that's different than talking about circadian rhythms. So if it's okay, I'm just gonna explain the two of those just simply really, super simply for everybody. And then I'm gonna have you chime in on how that might be affecting people's energy metabolism, et cetera.

(05:30):
But, um, first of all, the, the circadian rhythm is amazing. Like the body is a miracle. God created the body. It's absolutely incredible. Uh, and, and if, and if not for the other million reasons, this, the circadian rhythm is, is mind blowing, where you're, everybody has heard of melatonin by now, and melatonin actually will turn off when you wake up in, in the morning when you're exposed to light. So as soon as light hits your skin, melatonin production decreases and shuts down, down for the day. Okay? So now you need to be alert and active. And we could get into the details. There's even parts of your day where you're stronger. There's parts of your day, there's literally times of the day, depending on when you wake up, there's a time of the day where you're gonna be the strongest. There's gonna time of the day, we're gonna be the clearest, the most mental, uh, capacity.

(06:14):
You're gonna have the fastest reaction time. There's an hour of the day where you're gonna be the most reactive. I mean, it's a, again, so amazing what we've learned about the human body with this, right? But then as soon as that sun starts to go down, and then the lack of sunlight, the lack of light around you hitting your skin, actually melatonin now kicks back in the factory turns back on, and it literally starts to ramp you into recovery time. So that's what the circadian rhythms are for anybody who didn't know what that is. And this is super important because you're doing, you're, you're performing maximally throughout the day when you're in that, when you're in rhythm with the circadian rhythm and you're recovering maximally at night. Now when you're recovering at night, now let's talk about stages of sleep, right? Cuz now we're just in the nighttime thing, so the cycle asleep.

(06:58):
And so now we have different stages, 1, 2, 3, 4 in rim. And so, uh, again, the body is amazing. You're a miracle. Like it's unbelievable. We can't explain so much of the stuff the body does cuz when you get through phase one, two, when you get into three and a four, that's when your body's getting all that regeneration. That's when muscles are repairing, uh, at, at the fastest rate. Then we go talk about getting into rim sleep. And it, this is absolutely mind blowing to me. I was telling you about it beforehand. I taught it at a workshop recently. Every time I talk about it, it reminds me just again, how amazing the body is. But they're, they're in that rem sleep. It's actually a filing away of your day that happens. There's other things that happen, but your, your, your body literally during that time will go through all of the day's memories and it picks for you what's going to become a memory and what needs to be, uh, kind of discounted and thrown into the trashcan.

(07:49):
So your, your brain is doing all this without you cognitively thinking about it. It's just deciding what your, like, it's literally deciding what your library of memories is going to look like moving forward. So when we don't remember something, it's because in that rim sleep, you're, you're, it decided that you didn't need to remember it for some reason. And so the more that that's disrupted, the worse the memory is, right? I mean, just, and people are like, my memory's been going and they also haven't been sleeping. Sometimes it's as simple as get to bed, get some sleep.

Brigitte Spurgeon (08:19):
You know, it made me think about just as you were saying that I, I just thought about a computer and you know, like our brains are like a computer. And so shutting that, like, you know, when you shut the computer down, I, I, I think of like us in the office and like platinum and it just like goes through like you can see all the, all the code and it's like basically processing. So when you shut it down, it's processing all the activity from the day. And then, and so think about if you just let your, like you, you're using a computer a lot and, and you never shut it down, what does it do? It just gets bogged down and slow and and tired and you have to do a reset on it, right?

Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (09:00):
Absolutely. And, and just like we talk about artificial intelligence nowaday nowadays and computers learning, that's what our brain's doing overnight is it's actually needs to file all that stuff away so we can learn from the day before and then it can adapt its physiology according to those experiences and know what to do the next time. So just again, it's absolutely critical for living life. We're not even talking about, we're talking about basic living life. Now, if you get this right and you do it well, now we're performing at a whole other level because we're optimizing this incredible gift called the brain and nervous system, right? Yeah. So memories are stored and consolidated. Um, your, your ability to concentrate goes up significantly. You're able to maintain better mental health, so your neurotransmitters are able to balance out mood of course is better the next day. Not just cuz quote, I got sleep, but because literally your biochemistry is optimized for having better mood, your metabolism is regulated, muscles are able to repair and recover, um, your immune system, you know, uh, increases, uh, several hundred percent overnight if it's been depleted during the daytime.

(10:00):
So there's, you know, there's so much that happens that's amazing about the whole sleep, sleep process. Um, talk to us a little bit about the, the metabolic side. Cause people that are listening, they probably picked up on that and they're like, Wait a minute, what about my metabolism? Um, cuz everybody says, as we always talk about on the podcast, I want more, everybody wants more energy. Whether you have weight to lose or not, you know, um, you know, everybody would still like to have that metabolic optimized, metabolism optimized in order to have more energy. So talk to us a little bit about the effects of sleep on metabolism.

Brigitte Spurgeon (10:28):
Yeah, I definitely wanna do that. I just, while we were on the thought of us processing our day, I wanted to give a recommendation, um, that we all can use to optimize, like, to utilize that knowledge and, and to, um, like, yeah, so, so that we can basically optimize that function in our body. And that is before you go to sleep, have a just have, it could be post-it notes by your bed or it could be a little notebook and just get in the habit of writing down three gratitudes for the day. Cuz remember Dr. Bagwell said that we follow away memories, we decide what we're retaining. Yeah, that's good. We're processing through So three gratitudes for the day. Guess what that allows you to go to sleep in a sense of peace, feeling the reward for your day, um, in a, in a positive mindset.

(11:20):
And then write down three things that you want to accomplish the next day. Because one thing our brain does is as we're in that rem rem sleep, it's almost like it's planning out like it's go, it's, it's, it's attempting to go ahead of you to achieve what it needs to achieve. So if you have a, let's just say a goal written down our, some subconscious brain wants you to achieve that goal that you've written down. So if you give it three things to start working, it's like you're allowing your subconscious to go ahead of you to go before you to prepare the way, isn't that, And now when you start your day, the next day you're, you're ahead because your brain has already started doing the work. How amazing is that, that our subconscious can be working on our behalf when we're sleeping?

Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (12:10):
You literally have the most, the most super computer on the planet on, on your side to your advantage. And specifically, and I used to, when I remember when I first heard that, I was just like, there's no way this is kind of like, this is that positive thinking stuff, you know, like this is just kind of some fufu psychobabble stuff. But, but then I started to understand the neurology and there's actually the, what's called the re reticular activating system. We already know that whatever we focus on e everybody that's listening to this can admit that whatever you focus on expands. Like whatever you focus on, you tend to put energy into whether it's an acute thing with your kids right now, whether it's a career, you know, we, we know that, but there is actually neuroscience that says, but the reticular activating system that says if I, if I focus on something, I will go towards it.

(12:51):
And so that's specifically what we're doing is we're literally preloading the reticular activating system, um, for the next day. And so now automatically, as you go through the day, and here's the beautiful thing, you don't have to think about it ever again. I think that's important to say too. It's not like you're focusing on something so that you have to keep focusing on something. You can literally just download it in there in a few minutes and your brain in the background will just be running tape on focusing on whatever it is you gave it to focus on while you're doing your regular day. You know? And so this isn't like, this isn't law of attraction and you know, they might have taught it differently and you know, to their advantage, but we're literally just talking about simple physiology and neuroscience. We don't even have to go past that, right?

(13:31):
You already were created amazingly, beautifully and perfectly, and this is just one of the perks of being a walk and talk miracle. So I love that. Thank you for chiming on that. Okay, now let's talk about tell, So what happens, um, in the case of someone who, uh, who doesn't get enough sleep, right? So let's say they're on the weight loss program and, and, and they come in and they stalled, and then you talk to 'em, uh, and they say, Well, you know, my sleep's been disrupted. I got a little stressed out and my sleep's been disrupted, and now I've only been getting like five and a half hours sleep at night. How does that impact their metabolism?

Brigitte Spurgeon (14:02):
Yep. So, so um, with our patients, with our weight loss patients, we also have to think of, you know, the program that they're doing is, is not a diet. And it's not simply manipulating nutrition to lose weight. It literally is a metabolic healing strategy. And so when we think of metabolic healing, it's the same thing. What, what do we do when we sleep that allows our body to rest and heal? So the metabolism's no different, it needs that rest as part of that healing process. So if you're not getting enough sleep, and, and I see this quite frequently, and so like someone can literally say like, Bridget, like it's been 10 years since I got over five or, or six hours of

Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (14:45):
Sleep. Yeah, we hear that all the time, right?

Brigitte Spurgeon (14:47):
Yeah. And, and, and so I mean that's a, that's a tough challenge, but it's, it metabol metabolically sabotages someone. And so why is that? So, you know, I, my brain loves to think about what's going on on, on a physiological level. So, so on one side of it, we know that, that it is affecting, that sur that circadian cycle with, with the melatonin and with the cortisol. So now your body is, um, if if you look at a 24 hour period, you're gonna have, um, a longer period of cortisol production and, um, and, and cortisol once again. But like part of what, and here's the thing, when we talk about that, like in the morning when a cortisol goes up, that's a positive thing by, by the way, That's

Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (15:31):
Right. We need,

Brigitte Spurgeon (15:31):
We need that cortisol to go up in the, in the morning. So cortisol's not all bad, but chronic production of cortisol and PR and producing cortisol longer than what we needed that now becomes dysfunctional. And so, um, because one of the things that that does is it dumps sugar into, into the bloodstream. And, and the o the other part of that then is in the, uh, when it's dark, that affects our insulin sensitivity and our glucose metabolism. And, and so, um, when you look at the, the research for, um, for healing diabetes, for example, you, um, when it comes to food timing, like one of the top recommendations is to not eat when it's dark because your, um, you have less insulin sensitivity. So ba so basically what it's saying in layman's terms is that your body's not not going to metabolize not going to use that sugar. Well, so what does it do? It, it keeps your blood sugar, um, elevated, which is keeping your insulin up. When your insulin is up, your body does not burn fat, it holds on to fat. So, um, and I'll, I'll talk about that a little bit more. But

Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (16:44):
Basically, yeah, and, and one thing that's these hormones, right? Because that's so important. When we sleep, one of the biggest things that happens in the body is our hormones are able to a, do some things that they're supposed to do or replenish, right? And so when you're sleep deprived, this is just really fundamental when it comes to weight loss and metabolism and stuff like that. When you're sleep deprived, your gring levels go up and stay up. Yep. And that's the hunger hormone, right? Yep. So people are always fighting, I'm hungry, I need more food, I'm hungry, I'm hungry. Well, that may not be a product of what you ate today as much as it's how you slept last night or for the last 25 years. And at the same time that you're now, you're wanting to put more food in, right? Because that, and it's not even that you need the food or that you're really hungry, it's just the hormones kicking in saying all this extra grillin saying you need to eat. And at the same time you're leptin levels go down and stay down, which is fat utilization hormone, right? That's the hormone that tells our body how to use fat properly. So if we get in stuck in this sleep deprivation cycle, our body's always telling us to eat and then doesn't know what to do with fat, which I'm pretty sure is the opposite of what, you know, of what everybody knows to be true and necessary about having proper weight loss and, you know, proper, uh, metabolic function.

Brigitte Spurgeon (17:55):
Yeah. And that, you know, the thing is with, with metabolic healing, once again, we always go to the root cause of the problem. Well, the root cause of metabolic dysfunction, or I guess one of the main root courses is insulin resistance. And so, so when you don't get enough sleep, you're just perpetuating that insulin resistance problem. And so, um, like just if this resonates with you when your sleep is down, your glucose metabolism decreases by 40% and your insulin sensitivity decreases by 30%, that it's a huge number when it comes to looking at the function and metabolism of your body.

Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (18:40):
Yeah, that's more than just a hurdle. That's like a crater just came up in the middle of the road. You know, like that's, I mean, that means like we just got done saying you're gonna be hungrier. Your body loses the ability to know what to do with the fat that you're either eating or need to mobilize from your hips. Then at the same time, your body doesn't, can't hear insulin properly to know how to properly mobilize glucose. I mean, this is the definition of metabolic dysfunction. I mean, this is like, I'm getting a picture of like LA freeway, you know, five accidents happen at once, you know, don't plan on getting home in the next six hours. Like that much of a dysfunction happens to someone's metabolism, um, when they're not sleeping properly. So that's huge. And then there's other things, right? There's your immune system.

(19:20):
I mean, you know, so it doesn't do any good to be skinny and sick, right? So now at the same time, you're not sleeping, your immune system's completely tanked. Uh, you know, one of the best things that people could have been doing during covid is actually getting proper sleep every night just given their immune system a chance for when the virus came along. Uh, you, you, everybody nowadays too, you know, it used to be that we're all afraid of cancer. So not sleeping, increased likelihood of cancer, increased cancer, uh, risk factors not sleeping, increasing heart disease, risk factors increasing inflammation, decreasing ability to digest properly, decreasing liver function. I mean, I could keep going on with all the things sleep deprivation, but at the end of the day, um, at, at the end of the day, the immune system, uh, is what regulates the inflammation.

(20:02):
Like inflammation problems come from the immune system. And we know that inflammation's underlying cause a 21st century disease. So it's like, pick a, pick an illness and, and if you don't get enough sleep, you're moving towards it. And the scariest one used to be cancer, but now it's Alzheimer's and dementia, right? So now not only are, so now, and we can get into amyloid, plaing and fats in the brain and all this stuff or whatever, that's directly impacted by everything we just talked about with the metabolism, right? Cause we talk about being more of a metabolic disorder that's happening. But really people, if you, if you're not getting enough sleep, you can't think clearly today. And so if I, I, I wish people would just hear this and just say, if you get more sleep for the next seven nights in a row, you will increase your thought. You know, your productivity throughout the day by literally, I'm gonna pull the stat up right here. It's 42%. You become 42% more efficient in your day and 36%, uh, better at cognitive recall, meaning more focus throughout the day, right? If you just get proper amount of sleep, we're literally talking about a 30 and 40% upgrade to your day, right? If we,

Brigitte Spurgeon (21:08):
We need to repeat this like a hundred times. Like if you want more performance in your day, if you want more performance, cognitively, physically, uh, you know, whatever that is, sleep more because it's counterintuitive.

Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (21:20):
Yeah, that's right.

Brigitte Spurgeon (21:22):
You want more performance, sleep more.

Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (21:24):
Yeah, absolutely. So let's, let's go into the, uh, let's go into, uh, our top two each. And I think I wanna hit on melatonin. I think I have to an, I have, I have to tackle that. I don't think I'm allowed to get off the podcast. So I'll talk about melatonin for a minute here. But let's talk about our top two and then I'll give a couple supplements and then address melatonin for all of our listeners who are already thinking. I sleep good, I sleep great, cuz I take melatonin. We gotta talk about that. All right. So Bridget, what's your top, your number one, uh, uh, way to, um, to improve sleep for people starting right now?

Brigitte Spurgeon (21:54):
You know, I'm just gonna give you what has worked for me, like, why I've become successful in this area. And I just have to say like, not to be cliche if you've heard us and and heard some our podcasts already, but it's mindset. I make it a priority. I know that it is a health priority. In fact, in fact, I, and people, you know, my background, like I'm an extreme exerciser and things like that. But even when I was training for like major endurance events, I prioritized my sleep over exercise. I would, I would prioritize my sleep over, you know, getting up early to get a certain work thing done. Like sleep is my number one priority and I structure my life around it to be honest. I will structure social events, calendar events, workout times, like I will structure it around my sleep cycle because that has to be that first.

(22:51):
Like if, if I look at my 24 hours that that rock has gotta fit in my 24 hours first, and then everything else fits around it. So, so mindset, why wise we have to go to like, but why is that important? Why would you prioritize it? Well, I don't know why you would prioritize it, but I know that I prioritize it. Number one, I'm a performance person. I want to perform well cognitively and physically in the past for races and training. I, I want to perform well. So performances is my, when my top three, my second one is healing. I want my body to heal. We're always healing something, right? And so I, so I want to give my body the tools that it needs to heal. And then the third one, and Dr. Bagwell, you mentioned this, but this literally has been a thought, especially in high stress times in my life.

(23:46):
I don't want to get cancer <laugh>. Like that's it. Like that, that should be a strong enough thing for some, for some reason. You know, I, I equal, like I do all the right things health wise, but one thing that I found in my life is I just don't have as much control over is stress. Like I, you know, we can, we can do the best we can, but I don't have control over death, you know, death causing extra cortisol. Cause you know, grief, stress, like you, we can't control all those factors in our life, right? You know, we can't control things that happen on a business level that cause stress. And there will always be things that cause stress, um, on a business level, right? And so I know that the way that I can combat that, that stress is by giving my body enough rest. That's it. Period.

Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (24:33):
Yeah. And so kind of what you're saying there, two things about that. One is just accept the statistics for what they are, right? Because if we just actually stay, if we don't get into denial over it, then we'll start to naturally give it some focus and move towards health. Um, and then the other thing is, is that I was just thinking, you know, people who are listening that maybe they're not alter marathoners or they're not big performance driven people. Um, you know, I was just thinking about when we go into corporate America and we teach workshops all the time, it's, we call them corporate athletes, you know, cuz we have to remind people that when you go through a stressful day, you might as well have played, you know, on, on the grid iron on Sunday. Or you might as well have ran an ultramarathon, you know, for some people who are experiencing that degree of exhaustion and stress throughout the day.

(25:16):
So we have to treat ourselves like stay at home, you know, mom athlete, corporate athlete, teacher athlete, right? Doctor, athlete. We have to have that recovery component is necessary for all of us, not just those people that push themselves, you know, in their sport or or whatnot, right? So that really resonate with me cuz I know I've been teaching that for a long time. Um, and then, uh, and my first thing is, uh, is we'll talk about internal environment, external environment. The first one's really simple. Uh, let's talk about external environment. That means, and you've heard this before, but I'm just saying it now. So it's a matter of record, uh, that the room that you're sleeping in matters. So first things first, we had a light, bright light that was shining through our window. So we had to do blackout curtains. It's really important, uh, to make sure that because we talked about melatonin, it's really important to make sure that that room's as dark as possible.

(26:04):
So we had to invest in some blackout curtains just to get it all the way, you know, dark as we could. Um, the other thing is 65 degrees, you know, so you're gonna hear a different temperature, 63, 68, you know, different degrees, about 65 degrees and that might sound cold and that's fine because your body needs to be in the presence of that temperature in order to go into that recovery mode. Now you can get warm under the covers, right? But it keeps the body in that regenerative state, um, and helps you get into the deeper sleeping state and the deeper sleep, um, longer. And the other thing is it really needs to be a very quiet environment. Um, Bridget, you talked about that in this at the top of the show. Um, you know, it needs to be a really quiet environment and you can use things like white noise to drown out the little inconsistent sounds.

(26:46):
You can drown that out with some consistent sounds like the waves or the ring or whatever it might be, uh, you know, that will help you sleep better. So really first things first, it's super simple. It's turn the dial, put the, uh, you know, even though the phone might be on the other side of the room cuz of emf that's another episode, but, you know, put turn on the white noise. Um, and uh, and you know, get un get comfortable under the covers in that dark room and you already have set yourself up for success. So, so many people have not done those things and they'll complain about sleeping and they can do that in five minutes starting tonight. So what's your second thing that people can do to sleep better tonight?

Brigitte Spurgeon (27:20):
Add onto that. Also shut off. Um, any emf. So you turn off your wifi at night. It's something simple but is is really key. So my my my second thing is actually to focus on or be aware of your eating window. So what one of the things we do is we teach our patients, um, how to structure in basically intermittent fasting or having an eating window. And so when I say close your eating window, it means don't eat anything after a certain time. And so, um, I would set a goal of having that two and a half, three hours before your sleep time. So if your sleep time is 10 o'clock, um, then close your, your, your window between seven and seven 30. And I mentioned this earlier, but it's, it, it's also because of the way that your body metabolizes glucose after dark. So that, so that affects it. And also you just don't want to be like, when your body's trying to shut down and go to sleep, you don't want it to be like, Oh well I'm in the mode of, I've gotta like be that digesting and you get a, you know, when you eat you get a blood glucose spike and things like that. So you wanna set your body up for, for success.

Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (28:31):
That's good. That's

Brigitte Spurgeon (28:32):
Also, and also keeping car, keeping carbs. Well actually, not that I say that it's probably person to person because actually some people could have the benefit of having some complex carbohydrate in the dinner. But I, I think for,

Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (28:44):
I was gonna say that's really relevant too, depending on somebody's current metabolic state. Cuz a lot of people might ask from this episode and say, Okay, well do I eat carbs? Do I eat protein? Do I eat fat? And there are general rules of what you should or shouldn't do. But with us being more customized and everything we're gonna tell you, you need to have conversation about that and you know, cause we need to really do an assessment and make a better recommendation. Right? That's good. Um, and then my second thing, um, is, so we talked about the external environment and let's talk about you the internal environment. Um, and there's something super simple but wild powerful that I've been working on a lot more than the last two years. Studying, understanding teaching. I took, uh, actually a group of men through this, uh, process, uh, and they all reported significant improvements in their sleep.

(29:23):
Uh, but I'm just simply put, it's, it's breathing but, but structured breathing. And so oxygenating your tissue properly, um, it really ramps your body down. You can take a whole day's worth of stress and push it through the filter of five minutes of proper deep breathing. And it could be different breathing by the way, 4, 7, 8 breathing. That means in for four hold for seven out for eight. We use that for patients every single visit in the office to help ramp down their fight or flight response and help to support and ramp up their rest digest and recovery response. You can use box breathing where you're gonna breathe in for five, hold for five, breathe out for five, hold for five and repeat that, you know, for five minutes. Um, I've actually been using some technology where I actually hook a, a, a lead up to my ear and it actually takes me through a roughly five second breathing in and out.

(30:10):
And it actually gives me a score as far as how my heart is regulating. So we're talking about heart rate variability, we'll talk about that in future episodes. But what, what that is a reflection of is how well my body can handle stress and how much I return to a state of being resilient. And so I can become more resilient and ready to heal, uh, better with less interruption if I can get my heart avail, heart rate variability better before I go to sleep. So breathing is something, again, these are simple things. It's like accepting, uh, five minutes to prep your room properly, breathing for five minutes. And if you stack these one on top of another, you're, there's no question that tonight you will sleep better. Period, end of conversation. I mean there's other stuff health-wise we might have to address, but we can at least get the arrow going in the right direction cuz most of the people who are even interested in this episode, their arrow's been going in the wrong direction in the sleep category for a really long time. Right. And so, um, and go ahead.

Brigitte Spurgeon (31:03):
I was gonna say know that it's a process like, excuse the pun, but it doesn't happen overnight. And so mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it's you, you know, when when I talk about I feel like really pretty healthy with my sleep, it's because that has been a 15 year journey,

Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (31:17):
Right? No, that's good. It, they can get improvement tonight and shift their biochemistry, neurotransmitters and hormones tonight. Uh, but they'll have to practice these things in order to become more proficient at it. Absolutely. And then, um, and then top two supplements, um, are, are top supplements. And there's two of 'em that I, that I really like that impact sleep quickly, um, and effectively. Um, cause we gotta talk about those and no one of them is not melatonin. Uh, but I like magnesium. Magnesium is just a general relaxer. It's gonna relax smooth muscle, It's gonna, um, it's gonna help, uh, it's great for precipitating the healing process and muscles. Um, and so, uh, so we love magnesium and that can be taken several different ways. Uh, probably the best way really would be epso, salt bath. Uh, you're gonna, cuz you're actually gonna drink the magnesium right through, uh, the, the largest membrane, um, in your body, which would be your skin just goes right through that in the pores and it hits all the different areas, uh, that you can get, uh, in the water all at once and then goes systemic quickly.

(32:13):
Um, also supplementation. You can certainly take a magnesium supplement. We like liquid magnesium more than capsules. Um, but uh, but we do use, uh, magnesium capsules as well. Um, the other thing, and we actually have a, there's effervescent powders you can use. We actually have that in the, in the office as well. So you got different options for magnesium and really, I don't mind telling people about magnesium cuz it, it, it, it's been said that it could possibly be, uh, the most efficient mineral in people's bodies around the whole world, right? So there, there, if you're listening to this podcast right now, there's a high 90% chance that you're deficient in, in anyway. So why not use it to, you know, create some sufficiency while you're also supporting a better sleep and recovery. And then, um, and an acute situation. Um, I don't like just using this product for sleep solely.

(33:00):
However, if, if sleep becomes the number one issue for someone, we'll use this in an acute situation to get their back, get them back on cycle. And I'm talking about C B D and I'm almost reluctant to mention it because I think everybody's been talked, talked to about CBD in the last several years. Of course everybody in their brother and sister are selling it, but we really do use it in a clinical environment. Um, I don't know that it does all the things that everybody says that it does. But I will tell you one thing, I think the thing that's probably best at is not necessarily making someone fall asleep, but everybody who I have use some high potency, c including myself. Uh, when, when you take it and then you do fall asleep for me, I don't wake up until the alarm goes off.

(33:40):
It does something in me. I'm not getting the science of it right now where it just helps me get into and uh, and get into it and cycle through deeper sleep better throughout the night without interruption. And I have actually, when I take C B D I've noticed, cause I do track my sleep cycles with some devices and stuff, I have noticed that I can pick up a whole extra rim cycle, uh, when I can, when I go to bed properly, take the CBD wake up in the morning. So it's been fantastic for helping me get back on it on a sleep cycle. Um, but then I come off of it because I want my body to be doing that on its own. I don't wanna be dependent on even a, even a healthy supplement in order to do that, uh, for me. Now, real quick on melatonin.

(34:16):
So, um, it's become almost, it's become really, um, concerning is the right word as a clinician to see the number of parents that are giving their kids melatonin. Now. Now melatonin is amazing. It's actually amazing for anti-cancer. Gosh, I probably should do a whole episode on it, but it's amazing for certain things. Um, and it needs to be at certain levels inside your body so that it can respond the way that it's supposed to. Back to the first part of the episode where we talked about circadian rhythm, Okay? If you take melatonin, there's been some debate around this. Um, but as a biochemist and airing on the side of the more sound research that I've seen, if you take melatonin and you load up on it, it will just decrease your body's own ability or, or, or your body's own response to produce it for you so called downregulation.

(34:59):
And so if you load up on melatonin and everybody will say, No, I sleep great. Cause I take melatonin over time, use using it over time, it's gonna decrease your body's ability to produce it or willingness to produce it. And so that's a real problem because you don't obviously wanna decrease function of the body. You wanna increase function of the body. So if you do all these other things that we said, it's going to ramp up that melatonin cycling and production, and that's where you want to be. You want your body doing it optimally for as long as humanly possible you don't want. But now I'm seeing more parents are putting their kids on like melatonin gummies, and finally they're calming down at night, finally they're going to sleep. This is a problem. And we don't know, and I'm gonna be honest, honest, like as a clinician, we don't know what that does.

(35:38):
10, 20, 30 years down the road. Okay? So melatonin has its place, but melatonin can also be tested for, right? We were on a simple test to be able to determine melatonin levels. And I will tell you, uh, when we have melatonin on the shelf out here for when it's necessary, and I've probably given out two bottles of it in two years, right? It's just not when you test for it, it's, that's usually not the culprit. There's other neurotransmitters, other hormones, other lifestyle factors that are contributing to the decreased sleep, um, more than melatonin deficiency. But we're using it as a crutch and I'm concerned about what the future looks like if we just stay dependent on it. So that's the two supplements to take and one to just one supplement to put a big question mark next to, um, you know, for anybody listening today,

Brigitte Spurgeon (36:21):
That's a great health health tip, I love what you said there. Um, because it's all about asking the right questions. When we are taking our health into our health, into our own hands and taking responsibility, It's asking the right questions about ourself and our practices, but also from our clinicians that we're working with and from my doctors. But, um, when I'm, when you are looking to take something, is it increasing or decreasing function in your body? I love that, Dr. Bagwell.

Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (36:49):
I love it. It's a true health solution. That's what's happened. And today, on this episode today, we talked about sleep. We could talk about it more. We got, gave you lots of info. Uh, go back and listen to it as many times as you need to. Or, uh, if you picked up on something you have questions, please make sure that you reach out. Uh, you all the different ways that you can contact us through our social media, uh, um, uh, accounts and channels. So make sure that you're asking questions. We want this to be interactive. We're here for you. Um, and, uh, we look forward to checking in with you on our next episode. Thank you for joining us today. Make sure that you subscribe, uh, so you can get more information like you heard today on sleep. Bridget, anything you wanna say before we check out?

Brigitte Spurgeon (37:25):
I'm good.

Dr. Lonnie Bagwell, DC (37:27):
All right, great. We look forward to hearing, uh, uh, speaking with you on our next episode. Thanks for joining us today on True Health Solutions Podcast. Make sure that you click to subscribe. Also go to our website, www.truehealthcharlotte.com, where you can download any resources related to today's show or any future shows. And lastly, if you search for True Health Center Group on Facebook, you'll be able to join our free health community. We look forward to seeing you there.