MGU 38 | Alleviating Sleep Issues

 

The connection of stress and exhaustion with being well-rested can be noted from the amount and quality of sleep one has every day. Without doubt, the better sleep you have, the more productive you can be. Jason Wrobel and Whitney Lauritsen share their sleep issues and their journey of figuring out how to alleviate them. From blue light blocking glasses to magnesium powders, Jason and Whitney have done it all. Learn more interesting methods of preventing sleepwalking, sleep talking, and lucid dreaming in this episode.

Listen to the podcast here


 

Sleep Issues: Alleviating Sleepwalking And Lucid Dreaming

“I’m tired.” Who am I imitating?

No one’s going to get that joke.

It’s fine. It’s funny that sometimes when we’re tired, we revert to this almost childlike state. 

You should tell the story behind that.

We have a good friend who whenever she’s tired that she declares it publicly to let everybody know that she’s tired, but only us in her close company because we get the joke, “I’m tired.” 

There’s got to be more of a history behind.

No, it’s her weird voice. It’s her own weird thing. The point is I feel like when people get tired, they revert into like, “Come cuddle with me. I’m tired.” People revert to this interesting childlike vulnerability. It’s cute to observe.

Tell people what you do when you’re tired.

I get grumpy. That’s what I do. 

You do something physical when you’re tired.

I yawn, but my head gets itchy and my ears get red. If you want to know if I’m tired and dead giveaways, “How red are his ears and how itchy is his scalp?” It’s interesting. It’s a dead giveaway.

It is fascinating because I don’t know anyone quite with those characteristics when they’re tired. You’ve told me that you’ve been doing that since you’re a little kid. Why do you think your scalp itches when you’re tired?

I don’t know. I get itchy not just in my scalp. I get a weird tingly, itchy feeling in my body when I get tired. 

You also zone out. It’s noticeable. You stare off into space or you start being harder to connect with and I’ll know that you are tired. It’s interesting to me how some people have completely different reactions or stamina when it comes to sleep. My thing is that I don’t do well in the mornings, but at night I could stay up for as long as needed. I have a lot of stamina at night. I could stay up super late. I could probably stay up for 24 hours fairly easily, I know I have before. I can go to bed and get a few hours of sleep and wake up and force myself to function. The hardest thing for me is getting up on the earlier side and it’s fascinating to me. Something that I’ve been curious about and paying more attention to is that my ideal schedule is going to bed. I go to sleep at around 1:30 or 2:00 AM, which is late for a lot of people, but there have been periods where I could go to bed between 2:00 and 4:00 AM. To me, 1:30 AM is early. It’s progress. Maybe not early, any time before 2:00 AM is early for me. I’ve been averaging 1:30 and I feel like I’m making some progress. My ideal time to wake up, which is probably part of the reason that I go to bed on the later side is no matter what time I go to sleep, getting up at 10:30 AM is my ideal. Getting up before 10:30 feels early to me.

Your body seems to be in tune with that circadian rhythm for you.

MGU 38 | Alleviating Sleep Issues

Alleviating Sleep Issues: When people get tired, they exhibit a childlike vulnerability.

 

It has for a long time. When I say that I’ve been curious about it, sometimes I wonder, “Is there something wrong with me? Is this an indication that something is going on with my health? Is this bad for me?” I’ve tried to do some research around it, but nothing’s been super compelling. There are some articles that come out fairly frequently about the times that you go to sleep and how that impacts your health. It does seem like the data’s leaning towards that. Someone like me who consider themselves a night owl. I’ve seen articles suggesting that your life span can be shorter. That’s a motivation for me but there’s also part of me that doesn’t fully believe that. It doesn’t seem like it has a massive impact on me. I feel healthy in every other way. There are no major health indicators, but who knows? Maybe it is shortening my life. This is one of the rare times I would say this, but it is unpleasant for me to get up much earlier than 10:30, that I would almost rather have a shorter life if that meant that every day could be more pleasant. It’s weird to say that out loud, but why would I force myself to get up at a time that does not feel physically good to me? What if it bought me a couple more years of life? If those couple of years of life meant I had to get up a lot earlier and feel unhappy and uncomfortable every single day, that sucks.

Whitney is going on record saying that she’s willing to sacrifice a few years so she can sleep in.

I know it’s amusing, but I do mean it. I can relate to some people who feel that way about different things. It reminds me of when Jason’s television show, How To Live To 100, came out. There was a frequent response of people saying, “I don’t want to live to 100. That sounds awful.” Do you remember that?

Yeah. That’s because they had an association of living to be 100 as being this decrepit, old mummy. My old response was like, “If you take care of yourself, you’re not going to be a decrepit, old mummy.” Culturally, all we have, unfortunately to this point, by and large with some exceptions. There was an interesting video that came out a few years back about a vegan cardiologist who lives in Loma Linda. I believe he lived into his late 90s. He was mowing his lawn and driving and traveling. I believe he practiced surgery cardiology into his late 80s or early 90s. There are exceptions to the rule. 

My grandfather would be one of them. He was 97.5 years old. Physically, his health had been declining, although I feel like that didn’t necessarily have to be the case. I don’t think that he was doing any extraordinary measures. He was taking the best care of his health that he knew how. He wanted to live to 100 and I wanted him to as well. He was eating a lot of poor food, probably out of ignorance or whatever. The thing about my grandfather is that he was completely with it mentally. Completely is an exaggeration. He was sharp. In the last few months of his life, he started to have some hallucinations, but that was maybe a couple of months left of the life that happened to him. I talked to him for less than 48 hours before he passed. His memory was entirely there and he knew who I was. He cognitively could have a great conversation and remember most of his life. It was like he was the same person that I remember my entire life, except for the fact that every once in a while, he hallucinated about people being there in his room. This is such a tangent, but what if there were people in this room that we couldn’t see that?

We’re going to loop it back around to the original subject soon enough when we wrap this tangent, dear readers. This is interesting, DMT, Dimethyltryptamine they call it The Spirit Molecule. Full disclosure, I’ve done DMT and had a DMT trip and that was interesting. DMT is manufactured by the human body and it’s released, I’ve heard in highest concentrations at birth and death. Perhaps, as your grandfather was getting closer to the end of his physical existence, DMT was being released in his body. I don’t know, I’m putting out a theory that maybe these hallucinations were from the DMT. It’s possible because as you get closer to death and when you die, there is DMT released in your body. My experience with DMT was hallucinogenic. That’s maybe a different podcast, but I was in a different place.

I have to ask my dad about that because it was when my grandfather was in hospice. He wasn’t in hospice that long. I’d have to get my specifics. I do remember that there was one time where my grandfather thought there was somebody else staying in his room with him and he only had one bed in there. He thought he had a roommate or somebody had a bed. I don’t know if it was anybody alive. What if it was a ghost?

Extradimensional being, who’s to say it? 

I’ll ask my father if he was hallucinating about people that were still alive. That would lead me to think.

Maybe the lines of reality we’re getting like past and present were getting blurred. 

If these were people that had already passed on, I would suspect. Simply because my grandfather felt sharp. Who knows what goes on with the brain? Tying this back into what I was saying about sleep is that it is possible that there are the things that we’re doing to our brains constantly and we don’t realize the magnitude. I have been getting a little bit more into Daniel Amen. I was listening to one of his audiobooks. It was through Brendon Burchard’s HPX podcast. He had an episode of Dave Asprey interviewing Daniel Amen. It was fascinating. It is captivating and interesting and it made me want to go do a brain scan at the Amen Clinic. He’s saying it can predict your health in extraordinary ways and give you opportunities to work on it. There’s much that we don’t fully understand about the brain yet.

Another good tie-in to the subject matter is for me, not only do I like to go to bed late, but something is going on with my brain when it comes to sleep because most of my life I have slept talked and slept walked. I don’t know if my parents would be able to pinpoint the exact, but I know that when I was a little kid, this would happen every once in a while. As I’ve gotten older, my sleepwalking and sleep talking have become more common. It’s something that people are amused by because anybody that’s been in the room with me, including Jason and most of my friends, family members they’ve all witnessed this. I also use a sleep recorder frequently, every night. It’s on my phone. It’s an app called Sleep Talk. I got this and it was $2 or something and it was worth it because I use it all the time. It’s helped me identify a lot of patterns with my sleep.

I tend within a 1.5 to 2 hours after falling asleep, I’ll sleep talk, and there’s at least a 50% chance that I’m going to do it. The other interesting thing which we’ll get into later is that I’ve been tracking it. For the first time in a while, it has not been as frequent. There are some changes happening in my health or something, whether it’s emotional health or physical health, but something shifting where I’m not talking as much. I’ve been trying to identify what’s causing it and the frequency and all of that. I’m trying to do my sleep study. I’ve never done a sleep study before. I’d like to do one. I have gone to doctors and talked to them. I’ve read many things and one of the frustrating things about this type of a sleep disorder, which technically is what I have, is that there isn’t much that can be done for sleep talking. It’s disregarded. To me, there’s got to be some underlining factor because it’s odd.

Is there something chemically off in my brain? Maybe that’s another reason to get a brain scan. The sleepwalking though is the more concerning thing. This is what I know I’ve been doing since I was little because there were times that I would at least once in my childhood, I fell down the stairs because I was sleepwalking, which of course is concerning because you could injure yourself. Since college, I have started sleepwalking more frequently. I started using a camera that has night vision to record myself and catch myself sleepwalking because I was trying to figure out what was going on, what was I doing, what were my actions? Is there any reason? Was there a sound that I heard? What was the trigger? The interesting thing is I have not been able to identify a trigger. Something is happening in my brain that causes me to jump out of bed and sometimes get out of bed and do something.

Pick up a knife. 

Sleep can be really challenging to figure out. Click To Tweet

I’ve never done that. You can laugh, but I’m serious about this. I don’t think it’s that funny. I’m fascinated by it.

I’ve been scared in moments because there were times when I’ve been in your presence, when you’ve slept walked and I’m like, “Please don’t go to the kitchen.”

Luckily, I’ve never done that. I have however opened up my door and gone outside several times and that’s become more frequent. I remember when that first happened that I could recall was in college. I’ve told you this before.

Is that at the apartment in Boston? 

It was in a dormitory. It was my freshman year of college.

I was imagining the place you lived, like the alleyway place. 

Those not have been good. I don’t have any recollection of it happening then, it might have. I would remember if I had gone out to the alley. The first big memory of it was in college and I found myself in the bathroom across the hall and it was an odd place for me to be. I don’t think anyone saw me. It was late at night. I would have been embarrassed. I also have a recollection of probably years ago, I was living in an apartment in Venice. I woke up as I was walking down the stairs of the apartment building. It’s scary. That might have been the time where I almost went and did a sleep study. I had good insurance through a job. I went to a sleep specialist and they recommended that I do the sleep study, but I didn’t do it because I left the job right around that time. It would have been fascinated to see the results. It would be even more interesting because over the years, I’ve been passionate about health. I’m curious how has that impacted my brain?

That’s probably one of the biggest frustrations for me, and Jason will share this as well, is that sleep is one of those things that feels challenging to figure out. Both of us have this relationship where we have different sleep issues. Mine is mainly the fact that I go to bed late and wake up late. Sometimes I’m worried that’s a bad health issue. For me, the sleep talking and sleep walking are frustrating and I want to get to the root of it. I don’t know if I can. That’s the thing when you research them, all the articles that I’ve read are like, “You could take this medication but there’s nothing else you can do.” That’s frustrating. There’s not even an advice on supplements to take. All of this stuff there isn’t much information out there about even a holistic viewpoint of healing your sleep issues. My point is that it’s frustrating for me because I feel like I’m doing much for my health. I’m going to yoga, meditating, eating well, staying hydrated. I’m trying to do everything I possibly can and yet the sleep issue is still there. Jason has that similar frustration with his sleep issues, that it doesn’t quite make sense to you and there isn’t a ton of readily available information out there that could help.

On an overall continuum when I was researching the sleep chapter for Eaternity, my first book, there’s a lot of science around sleep and there’s a lot of science around the brain. What they don’t have is any definitive evidence of what exactly the brain is doing or how the body is healing itself while you sleep. That’s still a mystery area and it’s interesting to see the research unfold of like, “What is the purpose of sleep?” They’re like, “It’s to repair the body.” They don’t know exactly where we go when we dream. Where is our consciousness going? What is happening in that process of dreams? I find the subject fascinating. Not only from an esoteric conversation perspective of what our dreams and what’s happening chemically and where does our consciousness go while our body is sleeping? That’s a whole fascinating subject. I was experimenting with lucid dreaming and using techniques to try and be conscious of controlling my movements and my choices whilst in a dream, being fully aware whilst in the dream. That’s fascinating as hell. 

Did you do that at all?

I never did. Not intentionally. There have been times where I’ve been in a dream and been fully cognizant of the fact that I was in a dream and a different reality, but not because I got myself there, I was experimenting. There are different techniques that I was trying out to get myself into a lucid dream state, but I was never able to intentionally create the conditions. Anytime I’ve been in a lucid dream, it seemingly happened. Not because I was trying to prime myself to be in that state.

When you were aware, when you were lucid dreaming, you were able to control yourself for a little bit?

Yeah. I remember specifically in the lucid dreams that I’ve had of holding my hands up and being like, “I’m me, but I’m somewhere being fully cognizant of being in a dream.” As opposed to most dreams I feel, there’s not cognizance of, “I’m in a dream.” It’s we’re living and it’s an alternate reality or spirit world. I don’t even know the real spirit world. Who knows what it is? You’re like, “Wake up. I’m back on Earth. I’m back in whatever this reality is.” The times I have lucid dreams, I was fully present to the fact that I was in a dream and in it. It hasn’t happened much and it also hasn’t happened because of the practices I do. 

What did you do when you recognize you’re in the dream? Did you make any choices or were you excited about it?

I remember having conversations with people and feeling like it was normal. It’s not like, “I’m in a dream.” It was like, “Let me do some things.” I remember flying in one of them, choosing to fly. 

MGU 38 | Alleviating Sleep Issues

Alleviating Sleep Issues: Blue light blocking glasses are great for helping you secrete more melatonin.

 

I feel like that’s go-to because I know I’ve lucid dreamed but I was probably a teenager. I have a memory of lucid dreaming but I don’t remember what I did if my guess would be the flying.

For whatever reason for me when I have been lucid dreaming and cognizant of it, I remember that I have the power to levitate and fly on command. I’ll be on the dream and I’ll be like, “I can do this?” I remember lifting off the ground and flying around a room or flying over the tree. It usually has something to do with flying. My choice to remember I had the power to fly and go like, “I can do this,” leaping off the ground into the sky.

That reminds me of not lucid dreaming but sometime within the past few years, I knew I was living in the place that I am now, which is now a number of years that I’ve been living here, which is mind-blowing how time goes by. There have been a couple of times where I’ve had odd experiences. I’m pretty sure I told you this, Jason, where I felt like I was visited by some being. I’m somebody that I have a pretty open mind about aliens. I feel like I wouldn’t be surprised if they existed. I’m not somebody that’s a massive believer in them, but I’m curious and I love watching documentaries and things.

A lot of us are fascinated by the unknown and the possibilities. It’s not a huge part of my life is my point. There have been a few times in my life where I had the experiences if I was being visited in my sleep. There was one time that I don’t recall strongly enough to paint a picture of verbally. It’s a strong physical memory. You have the memories where they’re clear in your head and you can express them, and then other times you know something happened but your brain almost can’t describe it any more. This was one of them where it was somewhere in between awake and dreaming. I’ve had that a lot in. I’ve also noticed myself without even trying, I can feel myself falling asleep and still feel conscious as I’m dropping into the dream. That happens to me almost every single night.

This conversation is inspiring me to tap back into lucid dreaming because I feel like that’s the key. You have to try to remain aware and I haven’t put much effort in, but I have that feeling of in-between consciousness. It’s fascinating. It’s not something that I even think that much about. It just happens. Maybe that has something to do with the sleep talking. There’s some part of my brain that’s working interestingly and maybe it’s all about shifting perspective. Whereas for years, I felt frustrated by that thinking like, “This is annoying.” Maybe that’s an indication that there’s some other type of consciousness happening. To come back around to these visitations I’ve had, it’s not I’m sitting here going, “I was visited or abducted by aliens.” Honestly, that’s what it has felt like where there has been at least one time in my life where I saw or felt something above my bed, on the ceiling, communicating with me. I’m pretty sure that’s happened multiple times here in this place that we’re recording. Not in the closet that we’re in but my bed, and having a nonverbal communication with this being. I remember distinctly that I was trying to not forget the messages that I was given.

Do you remember any of them?

No. That’s the thing is I didn’t hold onto that. You have to be cognitively aware and careful. I probably would have had to wake myself up and say it out loud so that it would be recorded. I remember one time I was trying to do that, but I wasn’t fully connected to my physical body. Why don’t you share with people your experience with sleep and what’s been going on? Let’s get to more of the practical.

I have been passionate the past few years, 2018 in particular. I experienced such consistent insomnia more than I had ever had in my entire life. Insomnia has never been a real issue. It’s never been a chronic thing to address in my life but in 2018 for some reason, the insomnia was crazy. For me, I’ve been on a quest to continue to sleep pack and I continue to refine it and experiment with different things. Where I’m at with it, my whole pre-bed ritual if you will, which seems to be working. In 2019, I have not experienced much insomnia at all. The adjustments, I’ve been trying to eat my last meal 2 to 3 hours before bedtime, not eating right before because for whatever reason before bedtime, I’m a late-night cereal muncher. I want cereal before bed. It’s a thing. 

It’s interesting though because for as long as I’ve known you, you have always been strict about not eating hours before bed. Those rules are in place because you’re trying to control yourself?

Yes. They’re in place because I’ve realized that for whatever reason I’ve noticed a corollary, if I do late-night eating, that tends to keep me up. Another thing is to start my wind-down process where I don’t have my face in a screen and I try to limit my screen time. That’s been another thing at least an hour before bedtime.

The blue light blocking glasses, which we’re both into.

I’m a huge fan of Swanwick Sleep. It’s a great blue light blocking glasses. They’re stylish too. 

We have matching pairs. I’ve got a pair and then Jason wanted to get them too. Those are wonderful. They are reducing eyestrain and blocking out the blue light. Studies have been showing that the blue light can interfere with melatonin production. Melatonin is crucial in helping us fall asleep and stay asleep. That’s why I decided to get the glasses and it’s remarkable. I find that wearing them helps me feel more tired. That’s been how I’m going to bed earlier. If I put them on 30 minutes to 1-hour before I want to fall asleep, I’ll start to yawn, I’ll start to feel sleepy. It’s not for wearing in front of a screen. It blocks out any blue light. It was Dave Asprey that was talking about in one of his books how we’re exposed constantly to blue light, unless we are only exposing ourselves to daylight. Specifically installing lights that don’t have blue light in them. Most of the light sources that we’re absorbing as human beings have the blue light in it, which is interfering with our hormone production. When I heard him say that, it was a big concern of mine. This is true. Part of the reason why we want to do this episode is that there’s much happening in our day-to-day life. We don’t even realize how it’s disrupting us. As human beings, are we supposed to be up hours and hours after the sun goes down?

Not in our most natural setting, we’re not. 

There’s part of me, even though I enjoy staying up until 1:30 AM, it’s not natural. I’ve created all of these ways to block out the light. Jason introduced me to blackout shades. I have those installed. The lights still get in from those. I don’t have them perfectly installed. My place still gets light and I’ve noticed I’ve been waking up around 9:30, 10:00 AM naturally because the light comes in strongly at that time to my place. If I want to keep sleeping, I’ll put on a sleep mask. I have a great one from this company called Dream Sleeper and it covers your entire face. It’s super comfortable. I’ve created hacks to allow me to sleep later. Whereas part of me feels like it’d be an interesting experience or experiment. What if we started going to bed when the sun went down? How would that shift our health in our lives? What do you think? The sun goes down around 8:00 PM and we’re encroaching on summertime light. That’s pretty early. Are you going to turn off all your lights at that time? That’s a serious commitment.

There's so much happening in our day to day life that we don't even realize how it's disrupting us. Click To Tweet

In a natural setting. When I was in Costa Rica for the first time in 2005, I was there on a friend’s property. I’m helping him build out some structures for a yoga Ashram and I was sleeping in a tent in the Costa Rican rainforest. When the sun went down, you go to bed. You’re not in San Jose, in a city. You’re out in part of the rainforest, “Sun’s down, let’s go to bed.” 

Part of that being that when the sun comes out, the tent gets hot.

I want to go back to your point about blackout shades and melatonin. The blue light blocking glasses are great for helping you secrete more melatonin. Blackout shades, sleeping in as much of complete darkness as you possibly can also great for melatonin. Another sleep hack that I’ve been doing hardcore is tart cherry juice before bedtime. I’ll have a couple of tablespoons of tart cherry juice. It’s a concentrate that will mix with filtered water. I’ll take that an hour before bedtime. Tart cherries are one of the best foods to help you naturally produce more melatonin as our almonds and other nuts. Bananas are great for melatonin production. Oatmeal is great too.

It is odd because many people will have it in the morning.

I started having oatmeal at night sometimes and it’s helped me power down. 

Also the temperature in your place is huge. We tend to sleep better when it’s colder.

I have a BLUE air filter in my room. I have a fan on in my room and in the hot summertime, I run the AC before I go to bed. I also am a big fan of a sleep mask.

Which one do you use?

It’s from someone who got it at Bed Bath & Beyond. I don’t wear a giant one, the Dream Sleeper. 

You use the Bucky mask. That is nice.

Also unplugging EMFs, massive. It’s also a non-negotiable is unplugging the Wi-Fi and putting the phone on airplane mode. I have an alarm on my phone but I keep it away from my head. I also use earplugs because five animals at home and they like to make noise in the middle of the night. It’s this ever-evolving thing that was inspired by chronic insomnia. We’ve both done this where we’ve got a big project and we’re going to stay up all night working on it. That’s not insomnia. That’s a different thing. That’s when you’re super focused and super passionate and maybe there’s a deadline and you need to get to it the next day. This was like, “I want to sleep and my body won’t let me sleep.” That’s tough.

I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced that. Jason, I recall that you were doing all of the things that you listed out and none of those were working. What do you think shifted? None of those tactics you shared or anything new that you’ve added, are they?

The tart cherry juice is new. I wasn’t doing that before.

I was at the point as this friend of giving Jason every sleep product I could find because we often get sent products or try them at shows. You were trying to sleep CBD. I gave you the melatonin gummies. There are a couple of brands, Rescue Remedy. Either that one had a tart cherry in it or the other one which is MegaFood’s vegan gummies. I’m almost 100% sure that had tart cherry and that did not work for you. Maybe it was the juice that made a difference, is that what you think? The other thing that Jason introduced me to is magnesium. For a while, we are taking Natural Calm’s Magnesium. I was having trouble consuming it because it was sour and tart. I tried a bunch of their different flavors and there was a point where I was gagging having that.

You haven’t had that experience with it. It doesn’t affect you but there’s something about my taste buds. It was like having a super sour candy or something where your whole lips want to pucker up. That’s how I felt with Natural Calm. The product that I like is Pure Essence and they have a magnesium powder. My favorite one is orange vanilla. I had that and it was good. These magnesium powders are super helpful for relaxing your muscles, which can also help you sleep. You can take a magnesium bath too. If I want extra support in sleeping, I will take a bath with magnesium salts and I will take a magnesium supplement through a drink powder or something like that. That seems to help me in relaxing overall and ease myself into sleep and keeping my body relaxed while I’m sleeping, which perhaps could help with the sleepwalking.

MGU 38 | Alleviating Sleep Issues

Alleviating Sleep Issues: Each of us has a different situation in terms of sleep patterns going on with our bodies.

 

The other thing I added consistently was using a diffuser with organic lavender. The diffuser I added in and that lasts for two hours. There’s 120 minutes cycle. Before I go to bed, I’ll load it up with water and some lavender and I’ll let that go for two hours, the first two hours of sleep. The other thing, and this is if all else fails, I use marijuana when I need to.

Why not CBD? Do you find that the THC makes a big difference?

Here’s the thing, my cocktail before bed, this is the last thing I consume before bed is 6 to 8 ounces of tart cherry juice. I’ll put five-dropper full, I’m using ionic magnesium where it’s liquid magnesium. 

Who makes that?

Sunwarrior does, but there’s also a great brand called Mineralife. I’ll add five squirts of liquid magnesium and then I’ll add three-dropper full of CBD. 

Which brands?

I have many. Purium is what I’ve been using. Purium has good CBD. When I’m looking for a CBD, I’m looking for a full spectrum because some CBDs are not full-spectrum, meaning that they fractionate or use a part of the CBD molecule and not the whole thing. I’m always looking for something that says full-spectrum CBD. However, I’ve noticed that for my body, the recommended dosage on nearly every CBD I’ve had is way too low. I will triple or quintuple or quadruple the amount. If they say, “One dropper full.” I’m like, “One my butt.” I’ll do 3, 4 to 5.

It depends on how much is in it. It depends on a lot of factors with CBD

It does, but what I’m saying is if the CBD magnesium tart cherry juice isn’t working and all the other things. I have used marijuana medicinally in the sense of, if I have it right before bedtime, I will usually knock myself out with it. If I feel like I’m having insomnia, that’s my last resort. That’s the nuclear option for sleep if you will.

You found that’s effective. It’s going to work. I remember when you were struggling with insomnia, there were times where you felt desperate to find something that works.

My whole thing was I don’t want to be smoking marijuana every single day or using edibles or whatever. There was an organic edible that I was taking, which was a pretty low dosage. It was an organic trail mix bar that was infused with CBD and THC in it. I would take a tiny, 1×1 square and I would have that along with the juice and everything else. The edible wouldn’t kick in until right before I started falling asleep. I found that was good too. For me, it’s about figuring out what your body responds to is the point of this and knowing that many methodologies are coming out. We found again the blue light blocking, the blackout shades, sleep mask, unplugging EMF, not eating 2 to 3 hours before bedtime, magnesium, tart cherry juice, melatonin, all these things. For me, if I need to, using medicinal marijuana as my last resort has been effective. So far, I’ve only had one night, which is great for me, where I was like, “I can’t sleep.” 2018 was nuts. I’m grateful that for this moment, I seem to have found some good puzzle pieces that are working for me. 

That’s part of it, is this ongoing exploration because it doesn’t feel like anyone person has had all the answers for sleep. As far as my research has led me, I have not dug in nearly as much as I would like to Arianna Huffington who has a whole book about this and I want to read her. There’s still much more to learn. She has been praised as being incredibly knowledgeable about sleep. I have read a lot of books and listened to a lot of podcasts and read a lot of studies and all of these things throughout my life. It is much about putting the puzzle pieces together. It’s not allowing it to get that frustrating. My heart goes out to anybody who’s struggling. An extreme version would be someone like Michael Jackson who got to a point in his life as far as we know had to have a doctor administer drugs that ultimately killed him because he was desperate to sleep.

That’s on the rare side. Maybe it’s not discussed as much because some of us might find shame in it or we might think that nothing can help and we want to give up. There are many products out there and I’ve tried a lot of them. My issue though has not been getting enough sleep. I’m someone that can sleep for nine hours easily. I need a minimum of eight hours. That’s the other thing I’ve learned through talking to people is some people are cool in seven hours. Some people could sleep for ten hours. There is some data saying that it is not the healthiest thing for us. Getting 7 to 8 hours tends to be on the healthier. Nine might be a little bit more acceptable. I’m fascinated by all the data out there. We’re still learning much and this is ongoing with this podcast is we don’t have the answers.

I’ve never met anybody who has all the answers to health and can diagnose you and solve your problems. It’s about taking in the information and trying things out and being patient throughout the process. If I could recommend one thing, it’s to track it. Recording my sleep has given me a lot of insight and noticing all of these little behavioral changes that I can make. Not only when I eat but what I eat and I hydrate. That’s been noticeable is sometimes in my sleep recordings is I cough a lot. I’ve been aware of how much water I drank before bed. I can sleep and I won’t usually wake up in the middle of the night needing to use the bathroom, so I can drink a ton of water before I go to bed. Not everybody has that. Are you one of the people that can’t drink a lot of water before bed?

I’m a late-night pee-pee. I have to watch myself because that tart cherry juice cocktail I tell you about, I will drink it right before bedtime, so that I can hopefully not wake up in the middle of the night. I need to be mindful of my liquid consumption before bed because it’s hard for me if I wake up in the middle of the night to fall back asleep. It’s challenging for me to do that. 

I’m lucky in that sense where I can easily fall back to sleep in most cases. Each of us has a little bit of a different situation going on with our bodies. My best advice is to keep tweaking it, stay curious, keep a journal, use a sleep recorder if you want to track any audible changes. You can wear devices. If you have an Apple Watch or a Fitbit or something like that, you can sleep with those on and track your sleep. I’ve done that, although sometimes I worry about the EMF. I’m not super keen on that. It’s interesting even how much you’re tossing and turning and what position you’re sleeping in. There are many factors to how we sleep. It’s something we should be paying attention to.

One thing is the musical component and sounds in terms of sleep. I’ve been using two things. I have an app that has nature sounds on the phone and these are not required on Wi-Fi. You can have your phone in Airplane mode while you do this. You can have streams and rushing water and forests and ocean. It’s awesome. The other one is our friend, Moby, has a great album he came out in 2016 called Long Ambients. I will use this album for not only meditation, but I’ve used it before bedtime. It’s in 432 Hertz, which that’s a whole another conversation about what 432 Hertz means in the vibration of that for the body. It’s more natural than 440 Hertz, which is what most music is. This Ambient album is full of these rhythms and these tones that are relaxing for the body. Check out that album from Moby. It’s good.

My biggest challenge is Evie. She often gets restless and it’s hard for me to sleep super late. Jason has the same issue with his animal sometimes.

That’s why we have this great Patreon account for Wellevatr and you can help us build the recording shed in my backyard, which is being planned. We have some great supporters who have been supporting this podcast. We would be grateful for your support in helping us continue our work to share resources and ideas and new concepts that we can all experiment to enhance our wellness, enhance our joy and our state of consciousness here on the planet.

We see Wellevatr as a community. Chime in on social media. We’re on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and we also have the website, Wellevatr.com. There’s a blog where you can comment on, you can find our email address. We’d love to chat with you publicly or privately. Please make sure to you let us know what you’re thinking and what’s working for you. Any questions that you have, we’re here to support you and we’d love to introduce you to other people in the community too.

That’s it for now. We’ll see you with another episode coming soon. Have a restful night’s sleep to you!

 

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