Nighttime Secrets To Protect Your Heart And Brain

Guest Introduction and Website Mention 0:00

Well hello everybody. We have a very, very special guest here reversing her disease. Naturally. So it my friend, my colleague Laura, friend to arrow, coming all the way from the other side of the country from where I am. She's on the West coast and always basking in the beautiful California sun. How are you, Laura? Well, good evening, sir. It has been a warm day over here, I will admit. We're hitting around 70 degrees, in winter, so it's pretty nice. Yeah. And just in case they said that to Greg, that is Laura Frontrow 0.0.com.

So, either while we're talking, after we're talking, you will want to head over there and check out a very, very wonderful website, because this is a nurse who has gone on to become an advanced practitioner and has a very, very large following of group clients and private clients and online education, teaching people about better energy, who wants better energy, everybody, better digestion, better balanced hormones. And a lot is on energy and sleep. And I wanted to pick this very knowledgeable brain that Laura has, working with all these people, you know, stress and sleep and the interface with toxins we're hearing about Make America Healthy again.

And how we're being poisoned and our food and our water and the ad in our air. So I think it's going to be a lot. And it's, you know, if you've ever been stressed, raise your hand. If you've ever slept poorly, raise your hand. If you've ever, ever eaten food in a restaurant that could have toxins, raise your hand. I mean, it's everybody. So you think you can do that? Laura? Yeah, sure. Let's do it. We're going to do this in, like 30 minutes or less. 30 minutes? Yeah. Just everything that's important lives in 30 minutes.

And everybody tonight is going to sleep like, hopefully a happy baby. I have a know. Okay?

Why Sleep Matters for Healing 2:06

I have a couple grandkids that always don't sleep so great. But we're going to shoot for the happy baby sleep. So you know, first of all just at a on your deep level, why should we try and really work hard on maybe 7 to 8 hours of good rest and not thrashing around in bed or out on the couch or turning on the TV at three in the morning. Why is that so important to our health? Gosh, you know, this is such a critical key. And it's interesting because so many people say to me, can you just give me the right supplement to solve all my problems?

Or can you just tell me the right diet to eat? But if I suggest that we try to work on sleep a little bit more, you get a million excuses. And I'm sure you hear this in your own practice, I can't. I am too busy. I have too much to do. The dog wakes me up. The, you know, on and on. I get stuck on, you know, social media looking at it. And then before I know it, two hours has gone by and now it's midnight and I didn't go to bed. And I read a book that says that, you know, I'm just a night owl, and that's how it is. And, and I argue that this can actually be shifted when we start living our life with the circadian rhythms of the Earth.

Now, why is sleep so important? Well, because so many things happen while we're sleeping. I think people think that sleep is when just everything shuts down, right? And nothing happens while you're sleeping. But it's quite the contrary. A whole bunch of really important things happen while we're sleeping. I guess, first and foremost, I would say while you're sleeping, all those toxins we're being exposed to and that are getting into our brain are being drained through the lymphatic system. You literally flush the toilet on your head while you're sleeping.

You flush all of that out, and if you don't get enough sleep, you're not going to be able to flush that. And then when you're sleeping, this is the time you maybe have heard of rest, digest and repair. Like, this is the time when our bodies are actually repairing, building new structures, repairing organs, digesting food, making hormones and neurotransmitters, assimilating vitamins. This is a time when your body is actually in repair mode. It's almost like you know how sometimes the Caltrans workers that's like in California, the freeway workers, they come out and repair the freeways at night, right?

They come out and they start working at night while the population is less active. Well, it's kind of like your body. A whole nother crew comes out at night. They turn on floodlights and they start doing the inner work. And if we don't get enough sleep, that is going to impair our ability to do this. And we know that research studies show us that people who do not get rest and sleep actually have a higher incidence of chronic health conditions, including heart disease, including cancer, including Alzheimer's, including, you know, the list goes on and on.

So we cannot emphasize enough how important sleep is to our healing process. So if this is you and you're listening right now and going, if one more person tells me that I need to, like, shut off my cell phone, get the blue eyes out of my light, out of my blue light, out of my eyes and actually prioritize sleep, I'm going to kill somebody. Well, then this is triggering you right now is for you. You really need to prioritize this. Let me just put a pause. You used a term that nobody in this segment has used, and I think I probably flew by a few people.

I caught it just barely, but lymphatic and maybe some people thought you said lymphatic and other people just wigged out. So just take a moment and tell us what that word. Yes, yes. So what I said was lymphatic and it is related to lymphatic. So your lymphatic system is directly under the skin.

Lymphatic System and Waste Removal 5:56

And this is kind of like a waste removal system in your body. And the piece of it that's above the neck is called the lymphatic system. And it's connected. And this is people may think of it my lymph nodes. Right. Like when I get sick my lymph nodes inflame. I can feel them. So of course that's all part of lymph has to do with our immune system. Also has to do with shuttling and moving waste out of the body. It's probably one of the most overlooked organs in the human body in terms of successful healing from chronic illness.

One of the very first things that we do, in my community is we support lymphatic drainage so that you can actually get toxins out of the body so that you can shuttle those out and heal. So that's what I mean by lymphatic. And just one more little piece about that in order to stimulate lymphatic flow, it actually doesn't have a valve system like your circulatory system, like a backflow system that helps the, blood return up from the extremities and to the center of the body. So the way that your lymphatic system moves fluid is actually with moving your body.

So muscle contraction when you're walking, exercise I mean, being mobile, this is what helps the lymphatic system move our fluid around the body. And this is one of the cases for moving your body and not sitting still all day long. So when you have pooling of fluid in the legs, for example, this could be due to lymphatic system as much as cardiovascular system malfunctioning. So moving your body is critical okay. So thank you for that. So everybody now we'll think about flushing the toilet on their brain.

And when they get into bed, even though there may not be a beautiful picture, that is what sleep is going to help us do. And all those wonderful, wonderful ways we're going to approach it. So why do so many people I don't have the exact statistic, but you're right. From my busy practice talking to people, it's an enormous, you know, percentage. Well over 30% sleep poorly. And, you know, you have some expertise and things that most people you talked about watching social media and just staying up late, I think

Hidden Toxins in Food, Water, Air, and Products 8:14

a lot of people are watching TV series and the rest, they just get hooked. But you talk a lot about hidden toxins and infections and nutrient deficiencies. This may be a factor, you know, kind of, I would say hidden from most people listening to the summit. So talk about toxins. Where are these toxins, what are these toxins and how do they interact with sleep and all the rest. But you know. Yeah, I feel like toxins is one of the big buzzwords right now. I how do I detox my body? Right. Well, well, first we need to identify why.

Before you could even start detoxing, I would say identify where and how toxins are coming in, because it makes sense to actually stop the flow of toxins into the body. Before you even start to try to detox. Because why would you even detox if you just keep pouring stuff in? It's a never ending battle. So first step to cleaning this up is to identifying where the toxins are at. And boy, this is a big, big topic. We have toxins coming at us at a faster and higher rate than at any time in human history.

You know, it was really the industrial revolution that started to create a lot of this toxic world that we live in. But toxins are really in lurking in places that we may not even be be realizing. So I'll give you an example. So we have a lot of people in my community who are very health conscious, and they make sure that they eat, you know, organic food, real food, whole food, unprocessed food, and are not realizing that the store that they're buying this food from. I'll just pick on Trader Joe's because it's a great example.

If you have a Trader Joe's in your area, the actual containers and packaging that the food is coming in is laced with endocrine disrupting chemicals. Now everybody, I think alive today knows that BPA is bad. BPA free is something that you look for whenever you're buying something that's in plastic or plastic bottles. But did you know that BPA being outlawed has just created a whole new category of sally chemicals that are labeled under a different name? They may not be called BPA, but they do the same function as BPA and have the same danger to the human body.

And it's called something else. And so so you're still getting if you're buying anything that comes in plastic, you're getting exposed to endocrine disrupting chemicals. And I pick on Trader Joe's because if you go there to buy produce, it's even packaged in plastic. Everything is partitioned and and nothing's like hardly anything is just in a bin where you pick out what you want. Like, here's a pack of cucumbers, here's a pack of, you know, they cellophane everything. And then most everything comes in plastic these days, right?

It's hard pressed to find anything that comes in and glass jar anymore. I'm always looking for it. If I, if I were trying to buy anything that I need, that's already prepared, like a sauce or anything that I want to cook. So that category of just unawareness with food, thinking, I'm eating good, I'm eating whole food, but is it, is it being sprayed with chemicals for freshness and to stay green and to have a longer shelf life? And is there pesticides and herbicides in there? And is it packaged in something that could be damaging to the body?

Now, in terms of the air we breathe, the water we drink, toxins are nonstop coming in. I if you have a refrigerator filter on your water to purify, it's a step in the right direction. But I will tell you that you're not actually drinking pure water if you're just relying on a refrigerator filter. So getting some other, you know, purification system on your water is critical. You can use something like a under under sink reverse osmosis system or a water distiller or countertop or something along those lines.

It'll get more purification. And then the air we breathe is a big one. You know, the lungs take in toxins. And what you take in, in the lungs gets filtered right into the bloodstream. So you want to talk about a doorway to your heart, right. And a doorway to putting toxins right into the heart is what we breathe. And so I really encourage, that if you don't have an air purifier that you consider getting one in your home, your filters in your, you know, air conditioning, the heating system are probably not adequate.

And there's so many chemicals that are coming off of our furniture. It's called volatile organic compounds that off gas off of our flooring, the paint on our walls, our furniture. And I know you're thinking like, gosh, where I how do I even survive with all of this? And the thing that I want to share is perfectionism isn't possible. You do what you can and you take control of what you have control over and do these small things like slowing down the, the intake of toxins from air and water is a big step in the right direction.

Also, air purification in your home helps, filter out mold, mycotoxins. If you happen to live in an environment that has mold that you're unaware of because not all mold has a scent, you might not smell it, but if you've ever had a leak in your garbage disposal dishwasher, you know washing machine anywhere in the house, the chances are you could have mold growing and not even be aware. It could be in the sheetrock. It could be behind the, you know, the flooring, the paneling. You may not know it's there.

So, so having some kind of purification system of the air just to capture that, because mold mycotoxins are very hard on your organs, including your heart, and can lead to chronic disease, including cancer, lung disease, heart disease. So these are small things. And I think the other big category, Joel, is is body products, hygiene and cleaning products. So what are you actually putting on your body? What are you cleaning your house with? Is it full of intricate, disrupting chemicals and things you can't pronounce or understand?

And I would suggest that if you're going to go for reducing, the chemicals in your body, products and cleaning products, and you're going to start switching things out, just do it one by one because it can become very overwhelming if you go stand in your bathroom and go, well, I guess I need to overhaul everything. It's expensive and overwhelming and your family is going to be really mad at you if you just throw out their favorite toothpaste, deodorant, and shampoo and replace it with something they've never heard of before, so I would recommend one product at a time as you run out, replace like, let's do this sensibly and unless you're totally gung ho and like, I'm doing this, okay, go ahead and throw everything out and replace it.

But you can find a lot of really nice clean products at places like sprouts. And, you know, online you can find all kinds of clean products. They're cropping up everywhere. You're looking for, you know, BPA free, phthalate free, organic, you know, plastic and fragrance free. All of these things are what you're looking for in your in your products. And then cleaning products are another big problem. So I mean, we could go on and on about toxins in the environment, but there's never been a more toxic time in human history.

Is that is the bottom line. There's also never been a more diseased time in human history either. I'm sure you've seen this in your practice. You switched over to the other side and stopped doing, you know, procedures on people to open up arteries and hearts and started working on the preventive side. But have you seen it slow down at all, or are we just seeing just as much heart disease as ever? Just as much or more than ever? Maybe at a younger age? And this whole amazing list of toxins and great suggestions you made. And.

Yeah, and as you emphasize and, you know, some really, really good stuff on your website, these, these plastic, sources of endocrine disruptors can screw up our sleep. They can affect our cortisol. They can affect our hypothalamus pituitary axis, the HB axis. And you're sitting there wondering, why am I sleeping so poorly. And like you say, you picked up on the run, sandwich, the shop wrapped in plastic. And, you know, that sandwich is just permeated and invisible. Of course, it's all invisible.

It's tasteless, odorless, can't see it, but, yeah, maybe some of us will sleep better by getting some of this out of our life. You have a fascinating if people I wondering, you know, why are we talking about sleep and then comfort system and, you know, these toxins on a heart summit. You have a great reference on your website. I remember reading it. It's a couple of years old, but I hadn't looked at it for a while. Called sleep Duration and Heart Attack. And it's only 460,000 people. And if you sleep less than six hours at night, which all these toxins you just did a great job listing could be part of, the cause.

Or you sleep 6 to 9 hours a night. A more optimal level. The short sleepers have about a 35% higher risk of heart attack. And that's really a big number. And we worry about smoking and lack of exercise. But how about, you know, poor sleep? Because we're just polluting ourselves, as you know. So nicely said. What about cortisol? Do you run lab panels? Do you just judge cortisol by interviewing people, or do you base it on lab testing or, and, and what kind of suggestions would you tell, stressed, hard working, businesses maybe, you know, on some boards, to deal with cortisol access.

Yeah. So, definitely, we, we run cortisol testing. We like to use saliva. This is a measurement of cortisol in the tissues. It's different than a blood cortisol level. And when you're measuring cortisol with, as a tissue sample from saliva, you really want to measure it throughout the day. So you want to see what it's like when you first wake up in the morning. I like to measure a cortisol awakening response, actually, which is your cortisol in the first 30 minutes of waking. And then you're measuring it about four more times throughout the day about you.

So you do it, say 7 a.m., 30 minutes later, around 9 a.m., around noon, again around bedtime. You're seeing what this cortisol pattern is.

Cortisol Testing and Stress Patterns 18:38

And what I see over and over again is people have elevated cortisol from the minute they wake up. It's crazy. They your cortisol waking response. So just spike about 50%. I see people that have 125% spike in cortisol. That means as soon as they wake up there anticipating stress in the day, they're anticipating it being hard. And it's kind of a behavioral thing. It's like a learned behavioral thing. So what I'm suggesting to you is that elevated cortisol levels become a pattern in your life. And people always ask me, oh, I had an extra stressful day when I did that test.

Would it have influenced it? And the answer really is not much because the pattern stay. Or if you if you say, I had a Zen day and I did my cortisol test on the set on the day that I was just so relaxed, it'll still be high because you're in this pattern of high cortisol. So it's breaking that pattern. Now, when that cortisol is high throughout the day, and especially when it's time to go to bed, it can make it very difficult to unwind, shut off your brain and actually stay asleep. And so what we find is when we start supporting with adaptogenic herbs and we start supporting, the body with lifestyle behaviors that regulate and improve that HPA axis and get you into a parasympathetic state that people start to sleep much better.

I can't tell you how many people. That's all it took. Now, does it work for everyone? No. Some people need progesterone to sleep. Some women just need some progesterone to help them sleep. They need some hormone evaluation. And progesterone, some people will respond nicely to just working on lowering cortisol, but everyone's a little bit different. It's kind of trial and error though. You just kind of try it out and see what fits. The good news is that adrenal saliva testing is not super expensive.

It's one of the less, lesser expensive, functional labs that we have. So it's it's more accessible to everyone and can be a huge another. Definite hurdle that I suspect, even though people are listening to dozens of lectures, they've not heard about saliva hormone testing. And you're referring perhaps a company like CRT. I like Genova. I like their cortex. Yeah, but it's good too. There's there's a lot of different ones out there. Yeah. You're making the case that a lot of, you know, functional hormone experts make that blood testing of, testosterone, estrogen, cortisol, in the blood may not be as representative as doing it in the saliva and actual tissue of sorts, as you said, correctly.

And it's I've done it myself. It's for cortisol. It's just literally spitting in a little tiny container four times at a certain interval during the day and gives you that curve up and that curve down. But many people are unfamiliar with that. So I think I just want to emphasize what a worthwhile point that is. And yeah, standard chronologies aren't going to offer that to you. Most functional doctors are, I'd say some I actually don't know if it's most, Well, you know, consider doing it that way.

I just had a discussion with a functional medicine doctor today about my mother and her hormone levels at age 92, and they still matter. Good hormones at 92 are still good for the brain in the body. And, we talked about getting the proper saliva testing, which. Yeah. And their current allergist, who's a very capable, wonderful person, was not recommending. So. Interesting. So, yeah. One thing that, excuse me, one thing that our listeners should probably be aware of is that when that cortisol is consistently high, it actually fully, suppresses your natural rise in melatonin.

That signals the time for your body to go to sleep. So this is a big issue. Like this is important to get evaluated. If you're if you're struggling with sleep. All right. You know, there's that sleep hygiene people talk about, you know, shutting off coffee at a certain time. Yeah. Dinner at a certain time. Alcohol a certain time. Do you have a, advice or, you know, typical protocol you'd give, a person struggling with their sleep? Not sure. Yeah. For sure. So, obviously, the things that you just stated and the sleep environment is really important, a lot of times people's bedroom is the junk collecting room where stuff just piles up laundry baskets full of unfolded laundry boxes of discarded stuff, things that just kind of end up there.

We can shut the door on the bedroom, we just go in there and sleep anyway. So I would encourage, if that's you, you're smiling and laughing to yourself right now, yet my bedroom looks like a storage room. Then get that cleaned out of there. Get that all out of there. The clutter in that room literally has an energetic drawer in your ability to relax and sleep. So declutter it. Make your bedroom the most peaceful zen spa like place in your house. Get the TV out of your bedroom. Definitely don't be watching TV in bed and then you want to make it dark and you want to make it cooler, so drop your temperature down.

If you live in a warm climate like me, you want to try to drop it down to 68, 69, 67, 68, 69 degrees if you can, and if you can afford it with air conditioning, if it happens to be a situation, you know where you live more. If you live in a cooler, quiet climate, oftentimes you can you can just shut off the heat at night right in the house. Temperature drops.

Sleep Hygiene and Bedroom Environment 24:18

And then something that has worked really well for me is sleeping under a weighted blanket. So I sleep under a 25 pound blanket every single night. This has been explained to me as being like an ancestral response. So when we were, you know, cave people and we it was time for us to sleep, we slept under heavy furs and skins from animals. That is what was used to make us warm. And they are heavy. And this is like what has been explained to me as an ancestral thing that has not changed over thousands of years, right?

That when we have something heavy on us, it actually signals us. It's time to go to sleep. I sleep so well under it literally was life changing for me and it's a funny thing because I travel a lot for conferences, for work, for whatever. And I'm not always going to travel with my weighted blanket. Like we'd have to check another bag because it's heavy and all the things. So when I'm in a hotel, I find all the pillows and everything I travel with like a little ergonomic neck pillow so I don't use any of the pillows on the bed.

But usually a king size bed in a hotel is going to come with like four pillows. I pile them all on top of myself when I when I go to sleep, and I just make sure heavy if there's a little sofa or something, you can throw that cushion on top of you on the bed and you'll get that feeling of heaviness. And that is my hack when I'm traveling. I know it's funny, but it works. Wow. That is, I've heard of weighted blankets. I've had one in the past, long ago, and maybe I'll dig it out. But this hotel hack, that's, That's a lot of work.

Yeah, just pile them all up on top. Is good for any any regimen that you do personally before you go to bed in terms of, supplementation that. Yeah. Well, so truth be told, I don't need to take supplements to sleep at this point. I've got everything dialed in and I lay down and I fall asleep rather quickly and I stay asleep. There was a time when, when I was, first going through menopause that things were pretty crazy and I needed some progesterone that really supported, like I mentioned, sometimes it's a progesterone support.

But there are supplements that can really help with, sleep. So I want to talk about a couple and I think one that is maybe underutilized. I think most people know about melatonin. You can take magnesium, but something that I think is not talked about a lot is five Http. So five Http is a precursor molecule to the neurotransmitter serotonin and the hormone melatonin. So it supports both of those things. And promoting the synthesis in the body is really essential for mood health. But it also helps helps calm us down and helps us get ready for sleep.

It promotes sleep. So you can take five FTP during the day without getting sleepy. It will help regulate mood, but when it's later in the day and time to sleep, you can try that. And it really does help promote a healthy neurotransmitter balance. It helps promote a normal stress response. It helps support healthy, optimal brain function and helps support sleep quality. So there's a huge win win there. Now, you might wonder, like, how do I know if I need this? I like to run organic acids tests, which is a urine test.

And there are markers on that test that show us if you're churning through serotonin, if you're churning through a lot of it, that's a sign that five HTP could be supportive, but it's a fairly, benign, easy thing to try. It's over-the-counter, and may be a good support for, for the audience. Yeah. And I think those are great tips that we have not chatted with anybody else about it. It sounds kind of exotic. Five HTP but I agree with you. Five hydroxide sellers, all the good companies, there's dozens and dozens of brands, about 100 to 200mg that, people could try in their sleep regimen.

And start low. Right? I would say start with around 50mg and build up. Another thing I think we should talk about is magnesium. I mean, on the on the subject of organic acids tests,

Supplements and Practical Sleep Support 28:38

I would say almost 100%, if not 100% of people that I test have a higher need for magnesium, even though they're taking it. I think this is a pervasive problem in our culture. And I, you know, magnesium is needed for over 300 enzymatic processes in the body. And it's really important for mitochondrial energy production. And it is very helpful in helping us sleep. So I think I can very safely say you are not going to overdose on magnesium. I have literally never seen an organic acids test where it was flawless and and I didn't recommend it.

It's one of the most common, high need nutrients that I see from an organic acids. Yeah, I agree, and I mean, I usually read for magnesium glycine, but I know some people prefer that widely available version magnesium three inmate, because supposedly it crosses the blood brain barrier and gets to the calming centers of the brain a little bit more effectively. And there are some that mix. So you can have both. I have both, and I have magnesium oxide at my house, and I play around with three and eight and Gleason eight, and I can't notice a difference, you know, honestly.

Because glycine by itself can be a sleep aid. And so magnesium glycine eight will give you two sleep. You know, calming herbs like chamomile for example, lavender. All of these things are supportive as well. But you know, most people have already tried these and are like, I still can't sleep. So checking cortisol, checking progesterone levels, considering something like five FTP sleeping in our way to blanket. These are all things that can support and like Doctor Khan said, if you don't sleep, you have an exponentially increased risk of heart disease.

I mean, this is critically one of the most important things you can do. Preventatively. Yeah. And, you know, there were studies that I use a lot when I lecture more than a decade ago that people with low sleep have increased heart risk. I mentioned this massive study a couple of years ago, but the American Heart Association finally caught up. And they do so much education, it's important they got up and there are lights essential. Eight they added one more habit to avoid heart disease. And it was, getting that 7 to 8 hours of sleep.

And they do a lot educating the public. But you know, you've got the advanced practice. And he gave us I think it gave us great tips. Great ideas, weighted blankets, saliva hormone testing with a functional practitioner like yourself, Laura frontrow.com. And, some of the supplements, including five HTP, which we have not really emphasized here. So this is good stuff. I mean, if somebody takes away just one of these points and sleeps better, you have helped people a lot. You still, taking on clients because you, you know, a broad, run, you know, off.

Yeah. Yeah. We, I really run quite a bit of group programs. We start with gut healing and, supporting people into that lymphatic system that we talked about opening those drainage pathways, getting the body prepared for detoxifying and deeper detox. Along the path is when we definitely do organic acids, adrenal testing. If you reach out to to my team on my website, you can book a free call to talk to one of my health coaches. They can go through your health with you and find out what the best fit is for you.

But definitely we're working with people we love. It. Good. Well, enjoy that 70 degree perfect weather and, well, chatter away here until it's, full bloom. Summer is Midwest, but thank you for your time. Thank you for your expertise. You're always a delight to talk to, and I'll please see you soon at the next medical meeting.