Introduction and Product Overview

Hi everyone. Welcome to the Future of Menopause Summit. I'm your co-host, Doctor Ben, and I'm joined today by a very, very special guest, Daniel Boenning.

Welcome, Daniel. Wow. Thanks for having me. It's appreciated to be here. Of course. Very happy to have you. Daniel is a certified clinical nutritionist for 35 years and our ingredient supplier for one of our new products.

Were very excited about. I'll hold it up here for everyone. It is called coming to focus their sweet dreams Supreme, and it is a plant based, peptide based formula to help with all aspects of the sleep cycles.

And as we all know, sleep is just absolutely central to hormonal, adrenal, thyroid, general health. Very, very important topic, something my patients are almost always asking me to help them with.

So very excited, Daniel, to have you here and get into the weeds on how this product can help people get a better night's sleep. Yeah, I'm hoping to get you all there.

Yeah, absolutely. All right, so any further ado, I would just like to jump right in. So just in a general sense to kind of set the stage for talking about the product.

Can you speak on just like the different phases of the sleep cycle and some of the functions benefits of each. Yeah. Well, what we looked at in our studies was REM sleep, you know, where we're we're really getting into the wild dreaming the, the deep sleep patterns, which is important for regeneration as well.

And then we looked at even the post effect of the morning time when people woke up that they weren't hungover. But the big components of sleep. I think the real message I want to get across here, from what we saw and what we're seeing with all these phases of sleep, is that all the phases of sleep were improved, Reb was dramatically improved, duration was dramatically improved.

But because of that, because of solid sleep, especially in the hormone arena that the brain's system, called the lymph system, can detoxify.

Sleep Cycles and Brain Detox

And when we see that there's an impaired evening of sleep, we have this large buildup of amyloid plaque, which when we sleep really good, we can get rid of very effectively.

So one component is detoxification. And we know when we look at heart rate variability studies. And we'll get into that a little bit with the sleep patterns.

That was dramatically improved that the whole personality of the individuals calmer. And that even though they're going through hormonal challenges, things can run a little bit smoother.

Awesome, awesome. And I love that you brought up the glimmer system. You know, a lot of our patients, people in general, I would say are familiar with the lymphatic system.

But when we bring up the glimmer system, we usually get like a You know, are you able to speak on that a little bit more just to help educate people on what exactly the lymph system is?

Yeah, it's like you said, it's similar to the lymphatic system in the brain. In a nutshell. You know, to our listing audience, it's a detoxification pathway in the brain.

And so as I said, when we allow a better sleep pattern, a deeper sleep, your brain goes through a lot of biochemistry in a day. And so it's allowing the body to clear out the toxins and not just the toxins, but the metabolites of brain function.

And when we don't sleep well, those do not clear out of the brain. We wake up with a headache or crankiness or we don't feel rested. That's a big piece of clearing it out through the system.

Absolutely, absolutely. Kind of focusing more on our audience, our lovely audience. Yeah. What are some of the most common concerns that you will hear from people, menopausal women, specifically in regards to their sleep?

Well, the big ones, you know, are just that. It's such a disruptive sleep pattern, you know, with the hot flashes or whatever they may be experiencing the monkey mining at night, which a lot of us do no matter what.

But I always call it monkey minding. You know, you're running a business doctor, you know. But what? This does it. I'll share with the audience. This is from a lot of feedback we've had.

As you still may, monkey mind, you still may wake up a little bit, but your sleep cycle and falling back to sleep is much faster. And I find that to be a very strong component of this peptide that we presented to you, that you put in your bottle there, you know, the sweet dream supreme.

And so when we have a generally restful or I'm trying to get them up with the right term but a restless night of sleep, this calms that down a lot. Excellent, excellent.

And so kind of expanding on that a little bit more. So you know, certainly a lot of our audience definitely my patients and doctor stills patients will know that hormones and specifically progesterone is a big needle mover for us in terms of how we want to support the sleep cycle, reduce anxiety, get rid of that.

You know that that monkey mind that so many of us tend to deal with at some point or another in our lives, if not during the entirety. Can you talk about how the Sweet Dreams Supreme product can kind of stack with, you know, progesterone or melatonin or, you know, herbs or any of these other things that people are using to support their sleep cycle.

Yeah.

Menopause Sleep Challenges and Hormone Support

The beauty and the challenge of the uniqueness of individuality is that not every sleep pattern is the same. So we have sleep stacking, what we call our, you know, using progesterone and the peptide or using melatonin and the peptide.

Not to say that this peptide can't work amazingly well as an individual, but there are some patients that need a little bit more. We call that sleep stacking and finding the uniqueness of the patient to, you know, either progesterone or melatonin or other herbals, valerian, hops, passionflower, whatever they may be, that some people will go, I do pretty good with this.

And then you add in this peptide, they're like, whoa, this is a combination that I love. Absolutely. I can definitely say my mother doctor stills, we were just on vacation or not vacation, a networking event in Texas.

And she had it right next to her progesterone and I can say firsthand account. She slept like a baby. Yeah, she shared that with you. I'm so happy for. Just for her. Well, yeah.

You know, I get excited about what I hear, the good stories that that it's helping them, you know? And when you look at the science, that's great. But the subjective response is even bigger.

Absolutely, absolutely. All right. Kind of again, staying on the topic of hormones, can you speak to how poor sleep itself can become a driver of hormonal imbalance?

You know, obviously there's the effects of the, you know, or the disruption in the system with disruption impeding brain detox and just kind of, you know, flushing the system, so to speak.

But can you, can you speak a little bit more on that? Yeah. I think, you know, you're obviously I'm going to say, knowing you as a physician, you're much more well versed in that arena with the hormonal arena.

But you look at a healthy sleep cycle, there's a lot of restoration that helps in the body. And there's these all these different circadian rhythms too involved.

And so when we're off of we're out of five hour sleep cycle or a disruptive sleep cycle, things aren't in pattern. Like let's talk hormonally not estrogen and progesterone.

Let's talk cortisol. You know, cortisol absolutely big one. It's a big one. And that's part of the driving force that keeps us awake or wakes us up. And it's part of the driving force of what this peptide does.

This peptide attenuator calms down cortisol and kind of pushes it off to the morning time where it's supposed to be and not to where we're staying awake might be.

One of the most common things I hear from patients are just like, whatever it is, even with the progesterone, I just I can't help but wake up between 2 and 4 a.m.

and I'm always telling them, that is, maybe we're starting to get into the arena of adrenal circadian rhythm dysregulation. And certainly this formulation is definitely something we expect to help immensely with helping to just kind of regulate the adrenal rhythm and make sure cortisol is ramping up at the time it is supposed to be.

So we get good sleep and wake with good energy. We want it all. Yeah. You're not waking up with a hangover effect. Yeah, exactly. Because of this, you're waking up refreshed and there's my cortisol ready for me to go.

Absolutely, absolutely. How quickly would you say people typically see result with this peptide formulation? Yeah. Great question. This literally you should notice ideally in that first use what the study shows.

Yeah. What the study showed was about an hour before bed that this peptide kicks in right away. And so people should notice. Oh yeah I did sleep a little bit better last night than normal.

And maybe the second or third night they'll notice it a little bit more. You know when we're in sympathetic and we're pushing cortisol, we're not we are not adapt to seeing shifts of calm too easily.

You know, we see calm as fatigue sometimes when actually it's being a little bit more Zen like. And we're in the parasympathetic phase of it. So this product should work pretty much right away for people.

Fantastic, fantastic.

How the Peptide Works and When It Takes Effect

And you kind of alluded to this a little bit in your answer there. Do we see kind of cumulative effects where this kind of builds over time, whether people are using it individually or, you know, stacking it with progesterone and other hormones, other, you know, alternative remedies for sleep, do we see those kind of cumulative building effects a little bit?

I will say it's a peptide. Right. And there's only so many receptors in the brain for this peptide to go to. So it's not like a major league needed build up process.

But I have had feedback where people will feel a little bit more in balance the second day of use or the third day of use, but after that they're like, oh, this just works for me.

And it's not a peptide that will like the next day is not going to be still hanging out with the system. You need to take it the next day for it to work.

And so that sounds like a good thing in terms of not waking up sedated. It's huge. Could I share where this is working at for not to get overly technical, and I hope I'm not bouncing in front of some of your questions now.

But so there's these orexin receptors in the brain where a lot of medications try to go to help people sleep, but that causes a big hangover effect for those people.

So why I said there's only so many receptor sites for this peptide. If you took a lot more of it, you're not going to get a bigger benefit out of it per se. Gotcha.

So ideally, one capsule should do it for more people. You can go to two capsules, but you really shouldn't need much more because there's only so many receptor sites in the brain for this.

It's it's called the erection receptors. You can people listening and you can look that up. But that's where this really works really well is calming down the erection receptors that hyper excitability phase.

Fantastic. Given that it's a brown rice derived peptide, would you say there is a patient demographic or just a group of people, for lack of a better term, who you would maybe caution with taking this product or advise against even?

Yeah. Great question. I love those questions about allergies from supplements. You have to understand that in the manufacturing world we clean these materials up so much.

This is a peptide. This is a mean of acid without any residual rice component left Brown rice component left. Now people could say there may be an energetic component.

That's possible, certainly. But with that said, we've had this ingredient for a while. We've seen the literature on this ingredient for quite some time.

I have not had anybody with a brown rice allergy be, you know, unresponsive to it or have an allergic reaction to it. Excellent, excellent. So maybe a little bit of caution, but no outright contraindications.

Or someone who should just absolutely has to go another direction. Definitely not. Definitely. Fantastic. Fantastic. Let's see I would definitely like to get into the system a little bit more.

Again, you know that whole we get when we bring it up, I just think there's I couldn't talk enough about it. And you went into it a lot as far as like it's supportive detox.

You know as far as you know, why isn't that just working all the time? Why do we need sleep? You know, because our lymphatic system, if we're moving, the lymphatic system is working, you know, but the brain is such a it's such a high metabolic activity and therefore, by extension, such a high producer of metabolic waste.

Can you speak to a little bit as far as you know, why isn't the fat system just running all the time, like our lymphatic system might be? And how that ties into why sleep is so important for it?

Well, I think from my perspective, as this is being talked about more and more, the industry is with the sleep wake cycle, so disruptive. You're you're disrupting a system that's supposed to be functioning.

What. But two, I've got to say, I really feel that, you know, we've talked about this a lot a little bit before with Doctor Sharon as well, the inflammatory process that's happening in our body.

You know, we you know, when we think of inflammation, we think of, oh, you know, an elbow or whatever inflammation.

Safety, Dosing, and Receptor Activity

But the brain responds to an inflammatory process as well from our diet stress all these factors. And I think that's a component that doesn't allow the emphatic system to work as ideally as we'd want it to.

We are at inflamed patient society that a lot of these processes. Absolutely. A lot of the I could say disease processes revolve around inflammation. And so I feel that's a piece of the lack of the system functioning really, really well is we are feeding this system in inflammatory diet and inflammatory lifestyle 100%.

And I'll say, you know, those who know me know I'm a biochem nerd. I know you're you know, I'll say a member of the tribe in that respect as well. So you know why.

Just why isn't the system draining all the time? Why is it not open? Why is it closed? It is because the brain is so densely packed with neurons, other cells, you know, just it's there's not necessarily this dedicated drainage system like we have in the rest of the body.

And so when we go to sleep, this high metabolic activity by the brain starts to relax a little bit. There's less of a need for blood flow nutrient delivery.

And so that allows the blood vessels to construct a little bit. And so that frees up more space. And that's what opens the glimmer system. And so that is why, you know, if you're if you're sleep deprived your sleep cycle is disrupted.

You're not getting that opening. There's no drainage for this metabolic waste. It starts to accumulate and we will see things, you know, higher risk of Alzheimer's or neurodegenerative disease.

You know, this, that and the other thing. So just a such, such an important thing for people to be aware of. So thank you for sharing your expertise there.

What a great explanation of that. By the way, doctor, I got to tell you, the way you explained that is it's well, it's a hard one to kind of explain. So but yes, it's that it's the inflammation or the use of the braided calming down.

And like you said, the neurodegenerative disorders and diseases are a process of this not happening properly. Absolutely, absolutely. So takeaway has got to get your good night's sleep.

I know that's the story. Oh yeah I know for me if I get any less than six hours of sleep, I got to cancel the day. All right, let's see. All right. So I think that's about all the questions I had for you here.

Just. Is there anything else you'd like to speak on as far as, you know, kind of the getting into the weeds of how the peptides work or how this might stack synergistically with other treatments people are using or just any other, I'll say, clinical pearls that you'd like to get across here.

Yeah, if you don't mind what we've seen. So as we're listening in and try to visualize this pattern, but many of us are familiar with melatonin as a supplement.

Right. But what what we're seeing without the melatonin with this peptide was we're seeing a higher natural melatonin curve at night, giving us better sleep.

And as I said earlier, that it's pushing off this cortisol curve to the morning time where it's supposed to be. When we have poor sleep, we have a lower melatonin curve.

And we said, we have that 2 a.m. cortisol peak or, you know, giving it variable hours. But where we're waking up with a lot of thought and what we've noticed is with this peptide taking an hour or half hour before bed, right around there, we're seeing a higher melatonin.

Cortisol is pushed off to in the morning.

Melatonin, Cortisol, and Autonomic Balance

What we saw as well as we said cortisol call me down that cortisol curve. But we're also seeing autonomic nervous system balance. And maybe you talk a lot to your patients I know I'd like to discuss this a lot.

We have sympathetic and parasympathetic wired and fired in parasympathetic. That's the stress response. And we experience very little parasympathetic tone.

But when we get into good sleep this helps what we call heart rate variability and brings up parasympathetic tone. That's digestion. That's reduced pain perception.

That is as we discussed, as you mentioned, that fat system functioning because we're in parasympathetic. So what we saw just for the listeners so they know how powerful this can be, is on average 38 war minutes of total sleep.

That's a lot actually. You know, 13 minutes more of deep sleep, 12 minutes more of REM sleep. And that's at just one capsule a day. So now is that purse is that per sleep cycle?

Yes. More 12 30 minutes more. Okay. Gotcha. So just again, just basic information for the listener. The sleep cycle. You can generally divide into four stages.

The total cycle. We generally expect that to last anywhere from about 90 to 120 minutes, give or take from person to person. Stage one is your light sleep, very quick stage.

That's where you're falling asleep. It really doesn't last more than a few minutes. It's easy to be woken from that particular stage. So again, we have the monkey mind going on or we don't have blackout curtains or, you know, our sleep hygiene if you want to say it's just otherwise off, some people can get stuck there.

A lot of people get stuck there. Stage two is where you get into more stable sleep. This is where the heart rate is dropping. Body temperature is dropping.

Metabolic activity by the brain is starting to decrease a little bit. Again, opening up the system like we were talking about earlier. Stage three is your deep sleep.

This is where physical restoration is occurring. Growth hormone is releasing to repair and regenerate damaged tissues through the night. Immune system recovery.

Once you get here, this is where it's going to be much harder for you to wake up from. Thankfully, nobody likes to be woken up in the middle of the night.

And then your fourth and final stage is your REM sleep. This is where we have our vivid dreaming. This is where we're consolidating memories, processing emotions.

And yeah, just so again, very, very important to hit all four stages of this. And this peptide formulation is definitely going to help with all of these stages again, either by itself or in synergy with anything else that patients might be doing.

Yeah. And that explanation was so powerful because I get people saying, oh my gosh, I'm actually dreaming that I never felt I dreamed to before, you know, and let's clarify, not nightmares, but just good healthy dreams.

Yeah. Vivid doesn't mean bad, right. Exactly, exactly. But that's you know, when you in our industry, you know, in the nutritional nutraceutical industry, I don't like to ever talk.

I've been at this for 35 years. I don't like to talk about a panacea nutrient. I don't think there's one out there, but this one that I've seen through your office has been amazingly powerful for people, and I'm very passionate about people who don't sleep well.

And you hear about the few people that really do and you're like, oh, I don't know that that person gets to me because they sleep well. Yeah, absolutely.

Because they're all happy and joyful in life is great because they sleep good. So the power of sleep is huge. I'm glad we're addressing it again because like you talking about in your group here, you know, the hormonal shifts that happen and as you and doctor shared are just those if we can get better sleep, man, it's just a synergistic blend of just feeling so much better.

Yeah. It just it opens the floodgates in such a positive way for so many people. You know, it really does. You know, everyone knows if you sleep better, you feel better.

That's, you know, like saying the sky is blue. But when people really do achieve it, you start to see like, oh man, I can't believe all these problems I was having.

They just start to seem to melt away or at the very least significantly improve. It is just so central, you know, we can't, you know, we don't sleep well.

Nothing's working well. Right. And as you talked about all the phases of sleep, what people are. No. Two like you were talking about that first phase, that this product was shown to help people fall asleep faster.

So again, not the panacea. And you can look at sleep stacking it.

Sleep Stages, Results, and Closing Remarks

From what I know now, this would be one of my first choices of if I was looking for a sleep product to add to my program, but if we're falling asleep faster, we've got better REM sleep, deeper sleep, and longer duration of sleep.

If it doesn't help you, one of those components, like any little bit, is a positive effect for people. They notice it right away because we all talk about it.

How did you sleep last night? It's a common question. Absolutely. I gotta stop by everybody. Yeah. Thankfully, I have good answers on that, generally speaking.

You know, sometimes the kids are, you know, I say about that. Oh, that's another great point you just brought up, by the way, because this is a common question I get and I don't mean to interrupt.

Oh no, you good people always ask that question. Will this knock me out that I can't wake up to the kids in the middle of night if there's a disruption of any kind?

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. You are not knocked out. You are just in a really calm state of good sleep. But you could wake up and function. I'll give you an example.

I was traveling, got to bed at midnight from my travels at a hotel, but I had to be up at five. I fell asleep better, I felt rested. I woke up at five. I didn't have a hangover effect.

That's how this works. It's just calming the neurological system down. That's what it's doing. Beautiful. It is definitely a fantastic product. I can definitely say.

All right. So on that note, I think that's a good segue into for our audience here. So for anyone watching, if you've been listening to this conversation and we've picked your curiosity, you're interested in trying it again.

I'll I'll show the product here one last time. Make sure that gets into focus. Sweet dreams Supreme if you would like to try it. We are making it available for everyone at a 15% discount on our store.

Make sure to use the code summit 2026. There is everything is lowercase for the 15% discount and go get a good night's sleep. So so important to everything.

Okay, well, Daniel, I wish we could keep going. I do have to run, so we are out of time here, but it's just such a fascinating and important subject for so many people, not just menopausal women.

I don't know anyone that doesn't need to sleep, so this matters for absolutely everybody. But I'd just like to thank you again for taking time out of your day, spending the time with us, and just sharing your expertise.

It is certainly invaluable, and I would love to thank our audience for again taking the time to learn more about your health so you can advocate for yourself better and just improve your general quality of life.

There's no such thing as too much of that, so we will see you all again for another important and fascinating conversation. But until then, everyone take care and be well.

Thank you. Thank you doctor.

Daniel Boenning, BS, CCN

Nobody Warned You Your Brain Was Basically Marinating in Its Own Waste All Night