Unlock the Secrets to Health, Healing, and Longevity

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

Hi, it's Dr. Jenn. I'm so excited to have Lorraine Maita with me today. Lorraine recorded on my last summit and we had this fascinating discussion about environmental toxins, a topic of which she is absolutely an expert. So just to reintroduce her, she is the hormone hormonizer and she helps women achieve ideal weight, boundless energy, restorative sleep, a clear mind and a balanced mood so that they can get their life back. She has been practicing functional medicine since 1992, so absolutely a pioneer here in this space.

Dr. Maita, thank you for being here today. Oh, it's my pleasure. If I can help only even one person. I feel like I've done my job well. I know. We all know that you help way more than one person. You've been doing this a long time and doing it well, and you've made a huge impact. And I know that over the course of your career, you have helped a lot of women with breast cancer and in turn, their families, because we know that when we heal a woman, we heal her family, we heal her community, we really make a larger impact. So today we're going to talk about those people that you've helped over the years, and we're going to talk about the impact of breast cancer because it is still making a huge impact.

And it may even be worsening because our society and our ecosystem continues to decrease in quality rather than increase. Right. And and it's my it's my theory that that's contributing a lot to the prevalence of disease. So why don't we just start off by talking about what do you think is happening? What do you think are that contributors to the increased occurrence of breast cancer? It's a whole host of things. I mean, I think we beat toxins and microbes from elimination, liver, gallbladder to death last time and all all of it's I'm not a one trick pony.

I'm an internist. And I have to put my fingers into everything and I have to look at everything and no stone unturned. And, you know, I learned a lot over the years. I mean, I worked more on prevention, but people came to me with breast cancer or after breast cancer after being treated with breast cancer. And I wanted to help them. And, you know, over the years, you just keep adding to your repertoire and you find things that can contribute.

Breast Cancer Risk and Circadian Rhythm 2:53

So our environment, our go, go, go information overload, working 24/7 hour electronics, the toxins that are everywhere, that you can't get away from, all of that contribute and one of the things I learned when I was the chief medical officer of a very big company, and we had people traveling back and forth to Asia all the time, they were jetlagged. And, you know, I didn't know that it increased the risk of heart disease. It increased the risk of ulcers and gastrointestinal disturbances. I had to know all of this because I had to protect them.

But it also increased the risk of cancer. So circadian rhythm disruption. So circadian rhythm is, you know, you get up in the morning, you're go, go, go. Then, you know, you gradually calm down at night. It's light, dark, sleep, wake. And then we have these clocks, we have the master clock, which is the daylight clock and the sleep wake clock, but they control all the other clocks and every organ. Every organ has a clock. So, you know, our detoxification has to have the right time and place to do it.

The God has their own clock, the pancreas deliver the kidneys. So when the clocks get out of sync, they're like, what the what? We're just happy. Yeah. So you can. Well, first of all, what you're talking about circadian rhythm. This is the rhythm of the sun, right? And we are all tied to the rhythm of the sun. Every single animal person, human that we are all tied to the rhythm, to the sun. So you hear about animals that are nocturnal because they are more active at night and their and their bodies, their systems are acclimated to being active at night.

Whereas humans, anyone knows we are designed to be active during the day and sleep at night. Right. That's why we don't have great night vision and we don't have claws and things to protect us like we are. We are meant to be awake during the day and asleep at night. And so really what's happening with time travel is sleep disruption, right? Yes. And also being on all your electronics work day doesn't end anymore at five. It doesn't. And such a great point. Yeah. And you're like, you're on these electronics that emit blue light and you there's light pollution.

I know. No matter where I live, unless I actually blackout, there's light coming in and that can stop melatonin. And melatonin can reset your rhythm and reset the clocks and it can stop the disruption that can cause the growth of cancer. You know, it's it's postulated to increase the the decrease the risk of light pollution. And, you know, there there were studies at night shift work and jet lag increased the incidence of breast cancer around prostate colorectal cancer. And at the macro level, it's disrupting all the clocks and they don't know when to do their thing and they don't stop.

Some get stuck. And then it also at the cellular level, you know, our cells need to regenerate in a repair and a lot of that happens during sleep. So is disrupted. That doesn't happen. You know, the cells have to recycle old stuff. The old cells, we have to kick them out and chew them up and get rid of them so they don't cause any harm. And our DNA repairs and that doesn't happen if the circadian clock is disrupted. Yeah. So that's a really interesting thing because all these repair mechanisms that you're referring to, this is really happening when we sleep.

Yeah. And we, we as a society are not we're not a society, a society that values sleep. We are a society that values the waking behaviors. And as a result, we are a society that is plagued with a chronic illness. And you you alluded to some of them. So people who are short sleepers, people who sleep less than like 5 hours a night, they are at increased risk for being overweight, obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke and cancer. Yeah, and everything I'm saying here, because I don't treat cancer, I help prevent it.

And if somebody has cancer, you know, I prefer referring them to you because you are the expert there. And I feel if they get somebody who has much more knowledge than I do, but when people come to me, you know, I'm seeing this with autoimmune, I'm seeing this with chronic fatigue, I'm seeing this with fibromyalgia. No matter what I say here, it will help prevent cancer developing, spreading or recovering. But it's going to help with all those other ideas. And that's really because at the root of all of that is inflammation, right?

It's the same inflammation that leads to all of these disease states. And it's why we don't see them necessarily traveling alone like people who get cancer generally. That's not the only thing going on with them. Right. They see the worst cases where the people who were stressed out and, you know, they they didn't sleep, their cortisol was through the roof and they were they were just not honoring their bodies needs. Yeah. And you know, the interesting thing is that they're now trying to, you know, use light therapy for cancer treatment and prevention.

And also the other piece that, you know, I discovered over time was that when you eat affects the clocks, too. So it's not just daylight, light, dark, sleep, wake, it's when you eat. So if you eat at night, you're disrupting the clock. You're your body is not there. It's it's throwing things off. And intermittent fasting can inhibit tumor growth and it can increase sensitivity to any kind of chemotherapy and radiation therapy. So I you know, I urge people to take take note of that. We're driving our bodies into the ground when we're constantly on the go and we don't honor the day night cycles.

This is why we get chronically ill. So that's a really important point. We have to start to value honor and respect sleep because sleep is when the healing happens. It's when all those repair mechanisms are happening. And if you're not sleeping, you're not healing. And that goes across the board, right. So it's true for cancer, but it's true for heart disease and it's true for weight management and it's true for mood. Right. Because, you know, think about how you feel even after one night of poor sleep.

Sleep, Cortisol, and Immune Suppression 10:10

You are cranky, you are irritable, you're making bad decisions. Right? I mean, what do people go for? They don't go for a bowl of broccoli when they haven't slept overnight. They go for a bowl of French fries. Yeah, right. Like we're not making good decisions. And so when you think about what happens with just one night, imagine layering that day after day after day, so not repairing. So all that repair need is building up. Plus, you're making bad decisions day after day after day. And it doesn't take too long to see that this inflammation build up is going to manifest as something some really unwanted something.

Yeah. And so it just prevents repair as well. And it prevents it. It throws all your signals off and all the things that are supposed to be happening can't happen. So inflammation. But it's also it affects the other hormones in the the big hormone that I see that can increase a lot of chronic illness is cortisol. Yeah. So let's let's talk about cortisol. So can you explain to people what cortisol is? What's the role of cortisol? Why do we need to worry about it and like talk about because it's worrisome if it's high, but it's also worrisome if it's low.

Exactly. Right. And and a lot of people are caught somewhere in that cortisol imbalance scale. And that's huge because I find that if you fix cortisol, you fix everything else. And there is first of all, I want to say there's no such thing as adrenal fatigue. The adrenal glands don't fatigue. What happens is like if you had if you had a bell that would suck on and it was constantly buzzing, you would cut the cord, you'd cut the wire, you turn it off. Well, this is what happens in your brain. Your brain just said, look, you're just constantly stimulating me.

I am I am not going to respond anymore. And it turns off the signals to your adrenal glands. So when it's constantly high, it suppresses the immune system. We need cortisol. We need cortisol to fight or flee. We need it to mobilize energy. We need it to wake up in it mobilizes it gets your heart rate up, it gets your blood pressure up. It gets allows you to wake up. It mobilizes cortisol so you have energy and it keeps your immune system in check too much. It also increases blood, blood sugar, glucose.

Yeah, right. License to fuel that we need to function. So I think to just to create a picture for people. So we think of cortisol as like that fight or flight hormone, right? So if you come out of the cave in the morning and you meet a saber to tiger, you will get a surge of cortisol that would allow you to run your very fastest to get away from the tiger or you died. But what we weren't meant to do is run away from tigers day after day after day, hour after hour after hour. And now we're getting so cortisol surges from emails or disagreements or bad relationships or stressful situations and so like so many of us are just bathing in cortisol all the time.

Right? So what does that mean? What does that do? What happens to people who are bathing in cortisol all the time? Well, your brain after time is going to turn it off. But when you're when it's high, it's going to suppress the immune system. And that's your surveillance. It looks are your immune system is looking for cells that are just not quite right, eats them up, spits them out. And those are pre-cancer cells. So we need that surveillance for the immune system. It breaks down, muscle breaks down, bone raises blood, sugar raises blood pressure, raises cholesterol, makes your wrinkled.

You know, that's what gets in women. It breaks down your college and then, you know, you get you become more susceptible to actions, too. And it's it's just logical, right? Because, like, if you're running away from a tiger, you don't really need to have so much worry about that virus that you might encounter because the immediately the immediate threat to life is the tiger. Yeah, right. And so when we have these big cortisol surges, we are immune suppressed because we have to focus all of our energy on getting away from the tiger.

And we are modern beings living on a very old gene code, right? So we only know these periods of acute serious stress or we we have relaxation, we have our rest and repair mode. But we're not getting into rest and repair. Right. And that's really where I see the big problems occur. So, you know, any I don't always give hormones to people, but some some people came in with very high cortisol. I saw that as a danger signal. And, you know, it's almost a predictor. And yeah, you know, it was a predictor because over time this person developed cancer and but the opposite is true.

Once your brain turns off, you're like and you're not giving signals to make cortisol. And the cortisol is flatline because I measure cortisol on every patient flatline. Then you have a much more increased risk of cancer, autoimmune disorders, chronic fatigue. So can you. Can you talk more about that? Can you talk about how you measure cortisol and what you mean by flatlined? Yeah. So I have people spit into a tube four times a day. First, when they get the. Morning measuring, you're measuring cortisol in people saliva.

And saliva. They spit in a tube when they first wake up because that's when cortisol, it has its own circadian rhythm. It should be highest in the morning. That is going to get you up to go. That's going to feel your body wake you up, get you ready to face the day. And over the course of the day, it's going to go down. So we measure another one at noon. We measure one between four and five, and then we measure one at bedtime. So we have some people that can't sleep. They can't turn their mind off. They're there, can't they're waking up at night.

Well, they can sometimes have a flipped curve, meaning it's low in the morning and it goes way up at night and they just can't stop. So I usually give some phosphatidylserine, which is a it's a phospholipid that lowers cortisol. It's very benign. It protects your brain against damaging effects. And because of its weight, we should we should note that we actually see brain atrophy with people who have elevated prolonged levels of cortisone. I mean, when you say your brain turns off, your brain really does turn off.

Yeah, it has very detrimental effects over the long term, high cortisol. And those those flatlines are are harder because then that goes from being stressed out to burned out. And that's like having a car with no driver and it's self driving and it just your immune system just does not work. There's nothing to keep it in check. So you either get autoimmune where it just turns on and attacks you or you get cancer where it's just not on at all and there is no surveillance going on. So it's really important to measure cortisol to manage that.

And you do it the same stop proper high nutrient diet, you know, moderate amount of exercise, getting light and movement in the morning and, you know, chilling out at night, you know, as the lights, as dusk approaches, dim the lights, quiet your mind, don't eat late night snacks. Don't do your harvest exercise at night block blue light. And then we're living with the rhythms because your cortisol rhythm is off, your circadian rhythm is off, and we all know goals in them, if they're off, can increase the risk of cancer.

Yeah. So it sounds like most of the things that we we need to do to correct our cortisol rhythm where it's supposed to be highest in the morning, a peak about 30 minutes after we wake and then steadily drop throughout the rest of the day. And it sounds like most of the way to correct that and to get into normal rhythm are lifestyle measures. Exactly. Lifestyle measures, correct? Everything. Yeah. Now, those are terrible. They're terrible. So what what kinds of things in our lifestyle are throwing off this cortisol rhythm?

And then what kinds of things can people do in order to reestablish this normal cortisol pattern? A lot of sugar. Sugar is very detrimental to our health, eating nutrient poor foods. We need nutrients. We need a lot of B, C, magnesium to manage the stressors in our life. It's also our reaction to stress. Stress. Nobody can say stress causes cancer, but certainly people who have a lot of stress are they're much more resistant to treatment. They're much more likely to have a recurrence. So your mind and your mindset are really, really big how you perceive things, because we can't change the world.

We can't change anyone. We can only change our reaction to it. So if we're stressed out and, you know, you grab a drink, you grab a, you know, chocolates and ice cream and carbs and you just, you know, you then try to drive yourself to to work out really hard late at night and you're, you know, just to squeeze it in. We're not doing our body. So we have to live with the rhythms of life and we have to feed our bodies properly, get a good night's sleep and I don't care what it is that that, you know, sometimes, you know, you can take melatonin to help you sleep.

You can take phosphatidylserine if your cortisol is high at night, you can take calming herbs.

Measuring Cortisol and Restoring Balance 21:00

You can you know, there are relaxing cheese, something to just calm your your mind and body down and blocking blue light at night. Yeah, that's that's a great point. And I want to talk more about the EMF and light exposure because you did talk about overconsumption in the beginning. So I do want to get back to that, but I just want to call attention to what you said about working out, because there is this perception that if you're overweight, you should eat less and exercise more. And for the cortisol, all body type for the person that is has elevated cortisol, they're putting weight around their middle like their abdomen, but also their back.

That that body type, that person whose cortisol is elevated, they actually don't do better with more exercise. Do that. No, they don't. And they burn out more. They end up gaining more weight. They stress their body out. And sometimes I have them do cortisol after they work out. And it's through the roof. It's totally through the roof. Yeah. Yeah. So they're just really they're just really perpetuating their situation when they're when they're exercising and exercising more and exercising heavily.

Right. Your body is going to respond to any distress. So I like to expand the definition of stress because people think stress is just mental. Now, it could be lack of sleep, it could be toxins, it can be inflammation, infection, adverse food reactions, allergies, nutritional excess, nutritional deficiency, solitude, having a sedentary lifestyle, anything that your body senses as distress because it could be physical, emotional, chemical. Yeah. And again, just reiterating that point that the stressors aren't going anywhere.

Right. You're always there's always going to be stressors. You're always going to be put into these situations that are stressful. But it's not the stress that matters. It's your interpretation of the stress. And that's why it's so important to have a skill set that allows you to manage it, to consciously decide what comes in and what doesn't. Right. To build up your own emotional Teflon so that you can decide, right? You can decide what you internalize. You can decide what has importance to you and things like meditation and gratitude, practices like that really make a tremendous difference on what what the impact of stress has on you.

Yeah. And I give that advice to almost every patient that comes in to see me. Plus I also give them maybe vagal exercise to do. I tell them if you only worked your biceps, your arm would be stuck in a Popeye curl. But then you've got to work. The other part of your nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system. So things like, you know, humming, singing, I sing in the shower, you know, just because it just it's a good release and it works. Parasympathetic parasympathetic nervous system guard doesn't, you know, massage, you know, rubbing your feet.

I also love heart math. I don't know if you know about that, but it's a way of practicing deep belly breathing. Deep breathing is my go to at any time because you can do it any time, anywhere with anyone. You can't just sit and meditate or do yoga poses in the middle of a heated argument, but you can do deep belly breathing. And then when you focus on. Your head. And something somewhere, someplace you're grateful for, oh my God, the whole nervous system calms down. And if you do that, I do that in between every patient I clear my or whatever, I just clear.

I get focused, I calm down and I then I'm ready to go and really focus completely on that person. But it's all technique. It is. It's something that is taught to us. At the Institute for Functional Medicine, we talk about clearing ourselves in between patients so that you are refreshed, you are refocused, and you're not carrying one into the other, because that's not good for them and it's not good for you. Exactly right. And so having that skill set is very important. Having a breathing practice is really important because that is something that you can employ anywhere it's free.

You know, and I study Freud. I studied hard math when it was on cassette tape. So now I'm really showing my age on cassette tapes and be sure, are 200 200 studies on this. It works. It helps people sleep. It decreases anxiety, decreases depression, increases creativity, innovation. It was developed for CEOs and elite athletes. And they they showed so much benefit that, you know, you don't need you don't need the equipment. Yes. They sell an app for the phone. They sell. I used to do this on all my executive physicals.

I would train people on the heart map where you put a little sensor on their ears. And you you you look at the before and after. And when somebody I had I had a person working for me and she was a meditator. So she said, bring it on. And she was meditating. And, you know, there was like a choppy sine wave, meaning goes up and down, but it was a little rough looking, you know, it wasn't smooth. And then I said, you know, she loves her dog. So I said, Focus on your dog. Oh, my God. You saw her face. Just relax.

She's she just she glowed. And then that sine wave was smooth with an even. And that's how a nervous system should be. Should be flexible going up and down. That's heart rate variability. And that's also linked to mortality. So that technique. Right, like the less variability that you have, the more likely it is that you will get chronic illness. Right, exactly. So you feel that that's working, that parasympathetic nervous system, because you have to be able to respond to an emergency boom or to then stop the flow of adrenaline, stop that cortisol reset.

And you know, this this is why we're always chronically ill, because I listen to people and what their lives are like. And it it's it's what people are going through. They're just doing too much for too many people and not doing self-care and they're not properly caring for their bodies. Yeah. So it's really about being able to transition in but then transition out of that state, right? It's that flexibility that you can respond appropriately when you're supposed to respond, but then to be able to get back into that parasympathetic rest and repair phase where, you know, that's the state that we're supposed to be spending most of our time in, but we're not.

Right. So one of them at a time. But you meditate for, what, 10 minutes, half hour of the other 21, 24, 23. You know, it's yeah, yeah. This is why I try to practice it throughout the day so that, you know, I have that flexibility. Yeah, but one of the major reasons why we don't have that flexibility, why we're not in a parasympathetic state most of the day is because of our electronics. Yes, this is a huge issue. So can you talk a little bit about the electronic electromagnetic field, what it means and the kind of impact that it's having on us, especially when we are hearing about 5G technology?

Like what what's what's going to happen to us with all of this? Well, I'm not the expert on this, and I'm studying it myself because, you know, like everybody else, I love my electronics. I do block the blue light at night. I do turn off the notifications at night because I don't want that constant distraction. But there are I have some patients that are extremely sensitive to wi fi. And now with 5G, we're electrical beings. You know what? What's running out? It's electric. I mean, I can tell you that the second I get into a car that has wi fi, I have a headache immediately.

I just can I I'm so sensitive to the electro magnetic field. And I mean, I, I happen to know that it's because I've had mold exposure and I'm one of the 25% of people that cannot metabolize mold. So, you know, 75% of the people have enzymes to be able to metabolize mold. So they get a mold exposure and they don't have a problem. But 25% of us have a problem. And for people who have a problem with mold and you then get a mold exposure, you can be very sensitive to things that are seemingly innocuous.

So I can tell immediately, like, I can't sit near a printer. I can't. I have to be away from the wi fi to sleep. I didn't think I was sensitive. And, you know, it's going to be very hard to tell people no wi fi. But I just bought a little thing to put over my router because, you know, the only place with the router is where I work. So now I have a protector and I just started to turn off my Wi-Fi at night. What I've noticed is I sleep a little deeper. And that is very true for everyone. My sleep was always pretty good, so but I do do notice it's just it's a somewhat deeper sleep.

So I don't know that everybody's sensitive, but I do know that there is no escaping it. And some people really have to be careful and protect themselves. It's worth trying. So I did an experiment by turning my wife's eye off that night.

Electronics, EMFs, and Sleep Disruption 31:20

I have a timer and I, you know, I do notice a deeper sleep. Yeah, well, you may not have problems sleeping, but insomnia is an epidemic in this country. Totally. And it is the reason why the sleep med industry is like a multi, multi, multi-billion dollar industry. Yeah. But we could talk about that a little bit because these sleep medicines that are being prescribed, people do perceive that they're sleeping, but they don't allow for all of the sleep cycles. Yeah. So they actually don't end up making a difference in terms of chronic disease.

Exactly. Because I have I have patients who have the aura ring and they'll they'll report on their sleep. And then I'll you know, I blogged a lot. I've been blogging for about 15 years. So if I run across something, I want to research it, I research it, and then I write a blog about it because it's going to help them. And, you know, my patients say, oh, you wrote that blog for me. I said, Yeah, I did. I wanted to help other people. And there are certain things that really will help you get into deep sleep or get into REM sleep and but it is an epidemic.

And there are some people I can throw the kitchen sink at them and that they just don't sleep. And that's really where I start. I look at the cortisol, I look at the hormones, I have them practice heart map. It's not just, you know, magnesium and melatonin and phosphatidylserine and calming herbs, but sometimes you need it. You need it all. And where we don't know how to people don't know how to turn their minds off and they don't know how to turn that adrenalin cortisol off either. Yeah. And listen, it's hard and there's a lot of things to know, but small changes end up making a big difference.

So, you know, if you start to respect that circadian clock and maybe wear blue blocking glasses after dark, maybe shutting down your router at night, turning off your Wi-Fi and putting your phone in airplane mood mode, getting the electronics out of the bedroom, that's going to go a very long way towards restoring your sleep. And I'm also hugely in favor of creating a really welcoming sleep environment. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So let's just transition to are there supplements that you like that you think are helpful in promoting healthy cortisol levels and and in turn help you to get restorative sleep because this is so intertwined.

Right? So if your cortisol levels are off, you're probably not getting restorative sleep. And this is a really negative feedback cycle that people get into. Yeah, I, you know, one of my favorites if your cortisol is high is Phosphatidylserine. I know it's a very long name. We call it P. S for short. It's P, h, 0sphatidylseri. And everybody asks me to spell it so I'm smelling. Phosphatidylserine and. It's, it's, it coats the nerves in our, in our brains. And actually it coats the nerves everywhere.

And people some people have said experience brain freeze all of a sudden like you're stressed and then no words come out. You're you're sort of in paralyzed by brain freeze. Well high cortisol will disrupt the repair of the hippocampus cells that are responsible for your memory. So Phosphatidylserine actually protects against that. It can lower cortisol. It is I get to see a side effect for that and it doesn't interact with any other medications. So I feel very good about that. Okay. Do you do you think that people should measure their cortisol first before I taking phosphatidylserine?

I do. I do have the measure first, but If you're one of the people, it's not going to hurt you. If you're one of those people that your mind is racing and you can't fall asleep or you sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with this boom surge of energy, it's not going to hurt you. But I always I just I don't guess I prefer doing that. Magnesium is. Right. Agree. But I think that that's a really interesting point that if you're someone who is under a temporary period of stress and you can't sleep because your mind is racing and you're waking up in the middle of the night thinking about whatever that thing is, phosphatidylserine is one of those things that you can use in these special situations.

Yes, right. And it's far more effective than like an antidepressant would be. And while a sleep medicine may help you sleep, it actually doesn't allow for the reparative things to go on. Why you sleep so it doesn't allow you to sleep with purpose. Whereas Phosphatidylserine will. Really will. Yeah. Yeah. The other, the other supplement I like is helping. It's an amino acid, it's an extract from green tea, but it doesn't have caffeine in it. And I give that to people who are anxious or if they wake up in the middle of the night and they really need to sleep, they, you know, they they don't want to take anything because it's four in the morning and they have to get up at six in the morning.

I tell them, take 1 to 2 l-theanine because it allows you to sleep. It's not habit forming. It calms the monkey mind. It calms your nervous system down and it allows you to sleep so you can even take it during the day. Like, I have some anxious people that take it during the day and they feel it just takes that edge off the anxiety and I feel like it's very safe. I have my friends who are holistic, psychiatrist said. Even give people 16 a day. I don't generally tell people to do that, but if you're anxious during the day, it's hard to stop a train at full speed, right?

So if you take a little bit throughout the day it keeps it slowed down so that at night you can come to a full stop, you can take before bed, you can take it if you wake up. It's it doesn't make you feel hung over. So I really love that supplement. What about melatonin? I, I am I like melatonin, but some people get very vivid dreams of melatonin. Some people have get hung over from melatonin. You should always start low. People are stronger, is better. No, you have to understand what your body responds to.

So I will give melatonin, especially people have circadian rhythm disturbances. I like it. And if they have trouble falling asleep because I used it a lot with jetlag, I had people going back and forth to Asia all the time and we had a reset

Supplements for Sleep and Stress Support 38:40

that constantly reset their clocks and it was a life saver. But you need a short acting to fall asleep, but you need a long acting to stay asleep. So some of them are called controlled release or slow release or long acting. So you have to know how to use it and start always star low because more is not necessarily better. And to be clear about melatonin, there are sleep doses which are relatively low doses like they're three to the three milligram, up to three milligrams, or for the long acting up to six milligrams.

But then there are anti-inflammatory doses of melatonin because melatonin is that hormone that balances cortisol. So cortisol is our dominant day hormone, but melatonin is our dominant night hormone. And that's actually the hormone of repair. Yes. And it's for that reason that we're really seeing nice data in the breast cancer population about high doses of melatonin. These are not sleep doses. These are very high inflammatory doses. So we're talking about doses anywhere from 20 to 100 milligrams of melatonin.

So this is very different than what we're using for sleep. So You know, that's just something to think about in terms of the melatonin. Yeah. So down that regulates estrogen receptors and if it's the estrogen stimulated breast cancer growth. So you know, I know I didn't know they were using doses that high. Obviously, I don't treat breast cancer, but I help people recover from it or prevent it. But it has a lot of antioxidants and they've been using it for viruses at night, usually doses of ten milligrams and it has some antiviral activity as well.

Mm. Yeah. Okay. And then I know that we have talked about turmeric before. Just tell me your thoughts on tumor risk and what role you think it plays in someone's health plan. I love it. Now, you know, if you want to restore the gut microbiome, you want one that's not as easily absorbed. It helps with the gut microbiome. It's a good anti-inflammatory, antibacterial antioxidant. Now, I it a lot with people who have chronic pain and due to inflammation because I try to use a form that's more absorbable one with a BCM 95.

That's the that's the third generation because it's not very well absorbed. So if you put it in your food, you're not going to absorb much, but it's going to do a good job for your gut. And it is talked about a long time last time about the gut microbiome and how that can hijack your immune system, your nervous system, your hormonal system. So curcumin is a go to especially when people can't sleep because of pain. Yeah. And I think that that point that you bring up is really important to talk about because oftentimes when people are getting chemotherapy, they're told to not take turmeric because of its anti-inflammatory effects.

But if you're taking turmeric, that's not absorbable. Most of it stays in the gut. And the purpose of doing that while you're getting chemotherapy is to protect your microbiome, because your microbiome is so often damaged by the chemotherapeutic agents that you want to give them some protection. And turmeric in its non absorbable form is a great way to do that. Yeah. And we're both in love with turmeric. We are. We are always we see the world through a very similar lens anyway. So let's sum up what we talked about today.

We talked about the importance of being in circadian rhythm, in being aligned to that rhythm of the sun and to prioritizing sleep. Because sleep is really where the healing happens. And that cortisol, which is our waking hormone, which is pretty much the dictator of our immune health, because elevated levels of cortisol will depress the immune system and quite frankly, that is how cancer happens. I right. My cancer isn't a perfect storm. It is a result of immune suppression. It is it is the manifestation of immune suppression.

So managing cortisol levels and and making sure that you have balanced and appropriate cortisol levels is so important, you can easily test for it with a saliva test where you measure cortisol at multiple points throughout the day and know where your cortisol is. And if your cortisol patterns are abnormal, where so many of us are because we are so subject to the stressors of daily lives, you can correct those things with dietary and lifestyle recommendations items like the ones that you made. So getting rid of processed food, getting rid of sugar, eating a whole food diet, but also exercising thoughtfully.

You don't want to over exercise that will only exacerbate what's happening with you. And you have to have some stress management techniques, right? Because the stressors aren't going anywhere. It's your interpretation and your internalization of the stress that matters. You mentioned heart math and deep breathing techniques, which are wonderful. Meditation is wonderful, but not just to live in meditation because there is the rest of the day. Right. And so to have this flexibility, to have these techniques, to build

Summary and Closing Remarks 44:45

your your toolbox so that as the stressors come out during the day, you're able to deal with them in a meaningful manner. Right? You can have your own Teflon and we talked a little bit about the impact, about the importance of blocking blue light at night, trying to stop the electronics closure at night, turning off your WiFi getting a route or cover all of these things for the purpose of preserving your sleep. Because at the end of the day, if you're not sleeping, you're not healing. Beautifully said.

Well, I just summarized what you said. Well, you did a great job of that. As you always. Dr. Maita it was wonderful to see you today. Where can people find you? howtoliveyounger.com But I am going to rebrand because somebody said to me they think it's geriatrics or they think it's botox said to me, you make people feel good again. So I'm rebranding to the Feel Good Again Institute. I just have to get it. All the pieces in place and let people know howtoliveyounger.com will redirect to The Feel Good Again Institute because I want people to feel good again.

I happen to love the feel good again institute. That sounds amazing. I wish you lots of luck in your rebranding. And as always, I can't wait for our next conversation. They're always wonderful. Yes, me too. It's it's Dr. Jenn Simmons with RealHealthMD Thanks for joining us today. And I'll see you real soon.