Episode Transcript
[00:00:20] Speaker A: Welcome to Infinite Human, where we explore our limitless potential through conversations with guests who have achieved greatness, overcome challenges, and work to find their purpose. We aim to share and inspire you to do the same.
I'm your host, Shona Kerr. I'm a college coach, professor and businesswoman who is eager to learn from and sharing the wisdom of others with you and onto the show.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Foreign.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: With me today is Dr. Matthew Castano. Dr. Castano is a naturopathic physician, nutritionist and fitness specialist. He's here today to talk with us about improving and optimizing our own lifestyles, from sleep to diet and from exercise to supplements. It's all here and I'm confident will be incredibly useful to all who hear this in the show. Notes will be a 50% off coupon for one of Dr. Castano's meal delivery recommendations, a link to a podcast he references, and instructions on how you can personally connect with Dr. Castano. I think you'll find this entertaining, relatively human, and what's better than a roadmap to be a better version of yourself? Enjoy.
Welcome, Dr. Castano. It is a pleasure to have you here today.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: Thank you. I'm glad to be here with you.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Let's start by just defining. Can you explain to us what is naturopathic medicine?
[00:01:57] Speaker B: Sure. So naturopathic medicine is a functional based approach to treating human beings. Basically, when we look at different symptoms, conventional wisdom is you go to the doctor and you say, I'm having difficulty sleeping, I'm having difficulty losing weight, I'm anxious, I've got chronic pain. And usually most people are expecting to walk out of that office with some form of medication or a treatment plan. But unfortunately, conventional medicine has had a steer away from addressing the root cause of those symptoms and just expecting sleep medication to help with sleep, or statin to lower cholesterol, or a weight management medication in order to help peel off the pounds. But nothing really addresses the root cause as to why those symptoms are manifesting in the first place. So I'll give you a perfect example. We'll go back to the sleep issue. You're having difficulty falling asleep. You're waking up during the night, you tell your doctor this, and usually they recommend some type of a benzodiazepine. Take Xanax or Ativan before bed, or they'll recommend something like Ambien. And what those do is they artificially increase in the brain, something called gaba. And that GABA helps you basically relax. Same neurotransmitter actually, but gets released when you drink alcohol it helps calm things down and puts you at ease. The problem is that it never identifies why you're having either a difficulty producing GABA in the first place or maybe has nothing to do with that at all. Maybe it's the fact that you have a magnesium deficiency. Maybe you have excess stimulation too close to bedtime. Maybe you're eating too close to bedtime. Maybe there's a metabolic imbalance because of your diet. There's so many different possibilities that can contribute to insomnia, and they're never addressed when you just give it a band aid approach with the medication. So naturopathic medicine looks to try to figure out what the etiology is for the symptom that you're. That you're experiencing. Another perfect example that I see all the time. In fact, the majority of what I do in practice is gastrointestinal in nature.
People come in all the time. They say, I have ibs. Okay, what does that mean, irritable bowel syndrome? Well, it pretty much means that you don't have celiac disease, you don't have ulcerative colitis, you don't have Crohn's disease, and the doctor can't figure it out. So they slap you with this diagnosis called irritable bowel. That sounds sexy from a diagnostic standpoint, but really gives you no information as to what's causing it. And so most of these folks are on an antacid. Their doctor says you should just take omeprazole or esomeprazole or one of these over the counter antacids. And these people are on them for a long time. The problem is, is a lot of times these folks have something called sibo. It's an overgrowth of bacteria in their GI tract, causing them to have gastrointestinal disorders, abdominal pain, bloating, reflux, gas. Maybe they have candida. It's an overgrowth of bacteria. I literally see these on a daily basis. So it's not like this is a rare condition. Every single day I see these patients have these issues. And then sometimes, actually a lot of time, it's an inadequacy in the amount of hydrochloric acid that you produce in the GI tract or in the stomach. So you eat food. The acid in the stomach is supposed to begin to break that down, and then once it does, it passes it into the small intestines. Well, because we're stressed out, at least the majority of us are, we don't digest food appropriately, and so we don't make that hydrochloric Acid and the food sits in the stomach, begins to ferment a little bit, gas off gases, and then that's a lot of times what causes that reflux and GERD symptom. So you then put these patients who have an inadequacy of hydrochloric acid on an antacid, and oftentimes it gets rid of the symptom, but it makes the fact that they have underlying nutrient deficiencies even worse. You need the acid to break out iron and magnesium and calcium and B12, literally. I see this on a daily basis. I have nothing against conventional medicine when it comes to acute issues. You have a broken bone, you have a tenacious bacterial infection, you have a tumor. I don't want to see you as an afterbath. That's what conventional medicine is for.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: You touched on how you work alongside traditional medicine. How does that look when you're in the office?
[00:05:47] Speaker B: Sure. So obviously I see all my patients from a holistic standpoint. They come in, they tell me their main issues, but I'll do a head to toe review, ask them about bowel habits, energy, sleep, their diet, their past medical history, what surgeries they've had, what hospitalizations they've had. I try to get a really good organic picture of my patient and then I run blood work on everybody. So based on what they end up telling me and the chief complaints that they have, I send them to the lab, they get a pretty comprehensive panel performed, and then we get back together to go through it. Based on what I see, then I can make the best recommendations of, you know, filling in nutrient deficiencies, balancing hormones, addressing any infections that they may have. But if I find that they end up having something that I think would require more of a conventional medical approach, you know, their certain hormones are just dramatically out of order, or they're presenting with really high levels of inflammation that I don't think would be necessarily addressed from a functional standpoint. I will absolutely refer out to the appropriate specialist, you know, send them to an endocrinologist. If their hormones are really off kilter, if, if I think that they would need a rheumatologic workup and, you know, potentially reduce levels of inflammation that would otherwise protect their joints. And it wasn't something that I thought that I could do, you know, in myself, I will absolutely refer out. That's what these specialties are for. But for the most part, the majority of the people who are seeing me have already exhausted the conventional medical approach. And like I touched on before with gastrointestinal issues, that's probably 50% of what I see. And these folks have gone to their gastroenterologist after being referred by their PCP and they're just kind of shoot out of the office after having done an expensive endoscopy or a colonoscopy or just put on these prophylactic medications that aren't really making them feel much better at all.
I guess that's the long winded way of me saying absolutely. I refer out and work with conventional medicine all the time in the state of Connecticut. I don't have script authority. Unfortunately, many other states do allow that. If I find that, you know, I've been trying to work on testosterone with an older guy and I can't get his levels up naturally, I'll absolutely send them to either an endocrinology or a clinic that can help give trt. So they absolutely work in congruency. I'm obviously biased. I think that addressing the root cause with naturopathic medicine from a chronic standpoint should be done first and then going to conventional medicine for the drugs. But yeah, that's the hybrid model that should exist for everybody.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: It's very logical. I'm curious, how did you get into naturopathic medicine? What was your route? Why? Why? What? What drew you?
[00:08:22] Speaker B: Yeah, good question. So I've always been interested in health. When I was 18, 19 years old, I really took a very strong focus on diet. And at that point in time, everything that you would read online was basically saying, eat a ton of fish, fat's going to kill you, don't eat red meat. And so I followed a lot of those recommendations. And I started noticing over time I was losing weight, my energy level started to go down, libido was non existent. And for an 18, 19 year old, that is like when it really should be peaking. And I was going to the University of Connecticut at the time, people invite me to parties. I didn't really have much of a desire to go. Definitely some degree of anxiety and probably low grade depression. So at the time I was an accounting major and I was interested in doing something within the medical field or really more nutrition field, but I didn't know what that looked like. So my father actually had a client who was a naturopathic physician and he goes, I think you might like this. Why don't we go get dinner with this guy, I'll take you guys out and you can kind of pick his brain. So that's exactly what I did. And so this guy was massively influential. He took me under his wing and said, Come into my office, I'll give you a workup. You can see what I do. And so at this point in time, didn't know that I had any issues at all. But he ran blood work and my testosterone was in the toilet. I mean, for basis of comparison, the reference range for Testosterone is about 200 to 1100. As an 18, 19 year old kid, I should have been like 900 plus. And I was at a total of 43. And so he kind of freaked out, sent me to get lab work done again. I think it came back marginally, it was like 52 or something like that. So exactly as I had explained to you before, he said, let's rule out any overt issue, make sure you don't have a pituitary tumor or something wrong with the testicles and all that. So I went to the head endocrinologist at the UCONN Med Center. I did a workup with her, got the testicular ultrasound, she ran more blood work on me, she ran a cholesterol panel on me. And then I went in to see her for the follow up. And she said, well, there's nothing wrong with the testicles. Yes, your testosterone levels are low. Your thyroid is actually off kilter, too. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to write you a script for testosterone injection therapy. You'll inject yourself once a week, and then I'm going to write you a script for Synthroid to help get your thyroid back online.
I was like, why? Why am I experiencing these things? Nobody in my family history has them. And she says, oh, we don't always know, but these things will make you feel better. So knowing fortunately at that point in time that if I started these things, I'd most likely have to be on them forever. I went back to the naturopath and said, hey, there's nothing wrong with me as far as I can tell, aside from the fact that I have these biochemical markers off kilter. So we said, good, I'm glad you don't have testicle cancer. I'm glad you didn't take the injection therapy. Let's try to figure out what the issue is. So he ran blood work on me again, identified that my cholesterol level was way too low, and identified the fact that I had mercury poisoning from eating too much fish. So the mercury poisoning was negatively impacting my hormonal access. It was preventing me from being able to make thyroid hormone and I wasn't eating nearly enough fat. And he explained to me that fat makes Cholesterol. Cholesterol goes on to produce testosterone in your sex hormones amongst a bunch of other things. So he goes, leave my office, go across the street to Whole Foods, get the fattiest cut of meat you can find. Get every full fat dairy product you can find on the shelf, yogurt, heavy cream, go home and eat it tonight. So I did. I did exactly that. And the next morning, without getting too graphic, I can tell you that my libido was definitely back online, literally after one night.
So then I go back to the head endocrinologist at the UConn Med center for a follow up visit with her. She goes, all right, well, tell me about your diet. And I was like, wow, this is the first time any conventional doctor has asked me about that. So I go, well, now I'm having a couple of pieces of bacon, three whole eggs, sometimes I'll have coffee with heavy cream. And she sat back in her chair and was like, oh my God, you need to eat more. Heart healthy diet. Have you had Cheerios or oatmeal? I'm looking at this woman. You're the head endocrinologist at the UConn Med Center. How is it that you don't understand the downstream flow of how testosterone is produced in the first place? So she runs my blood work again and I was already up to about 400. I think it was like 425 or something like that. And then my thyroid was back on back online too, as we were detoxifying from the mercury. So again, this is one example of a conventional physician. I'm not saying that they're all like this, but I kind of saw the dichotomy at that point between a guy who fixed me completely in the absence of medication versus the conventional route where I didn't know to look any further. I just, I'd probably be injecting myself with testosterone right now and definitely wouldn't be a naturopathic physician. So that's the story. Basically. I told my dad at that point in time, I'm not going into account. I'm going to switch, switch gears here.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: So. So you did, you switched from an accounting degree. What degree do you then follow for naturopathic medicine?
[00:13:15] Speaker B: It depends on the school. There's not a ton of schools that even offer degree in the United States. I think there's maybe six or seven. The one I went to actually was a University of Bridgeport that no longer offers that particularly particular program. So I think most of them are, are in the, there's one in Canada, Arizona A bunch on the west coast, but they have certain requirements. So you need your biochemistries, you need your biologies, your, your like typical math, general sciences, English, those, you know, undergrad credentials. But you need a specific set of organic chemistries, biologies, biochemistries. And once you have those, then you can apply. I found the best track to follow was actually nutritional science with a minor in psych. And then you kind of just piecemeal the classes that you need in order to apply for the programs. But the first couple years in med school are basically a revamping of the biochemistry and pretty much every ology. I mean we had microbiology, biochemistry, anatomy, physiology, and they were significantly more intense than I had during undergrad. So those science courses were just kind of like a precursor. You make sure you're not a dummy so that you can hopefully survive the first couple years.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: What does it mean to you personally today? How do you live your life?
What parts of this are you personally using and doing each day?
[00:14:37] Speaker B: I mean, great question.
I think when you adapt or adopt, I should say a mindset of addressing the root cause of health in general, it kind of puts you in a different paradigm entirely. Like everything that I put in my mouth, I'm not hyper analyzing it, but I want to make sure that it's real food. Stuff that isn't coming from a package isn't, you know, produced with seed oils that can be pro inflammatory. I run blood work on myself fairly often, let's say probably once a year now on average. And I'm looking to make sure that my nutrient profiles are staying adequate. I think foundationally people overlook the importance of sleep, hydration, managing stress levels, obviously, you know, exercise. I think having a lot of those things in balance is foundational and kind of at my core. So it's a tough question. It's like, how does naturopathic medicine influence your life? How does it? Not really, because I embody it entirely with what I do. It's the whole mindset of like, okay, if I'm experiencing a headache or if I just don't feel like I'm mentally as with it. What, what caused this to happen? You know, why am I not performing at my best and what can I do to get myself back into balance so that I do have that. But a big piece of it obviously is diet. So I am quite regimented with making sure that I'm eating good food. I'll go to a birthday party, I'll have sometimes a piece of cake, depending on if it's homemade or bought from A grocery store. It's just kind of a knowledge of all right. I want to make sure that the things that I'm doing in my day to day life are going to support my long term health goals. And sometimes most of the time I'm perfectly fine sacrificing the momentary pleasures of certain food that I know are going to make me feel like garbage later on for just feeling better in general in its entirety.
[00:16:22] Speaker A: Awesome. So let's say you have a regular human. What are the naturopathic interventions they should consider using right out the gate?
[00:16:32] Speaker B: I always try to maintain an evolutionary perspective in anything that I'm doing. Sleep is foundational. I try to strive for eight hours a night. Doesn't always happen. I got a two and a half year old, another one on the way. But having the discipline to going of going to bed early. I go to bed at about 9, 9:30. I'm up at 5:40 for the gym. Exercise is incredibly important for me. I do CrossFit.
I go three days on, one day off, two days on, one day off. I take two rest days a week. I make sure that all the food that I'm consuming throughout the day is real food. Stuff that isn't typically coming from a package. I never get fast food. I think a biggie too is alcohol. I don't drink alcohol. I mean I'll go out, I'll have a margarita with friends every once in a while. But no matter what you read, no matter what any study that comes out, it tells you, oh, you know, men can have one drink a night on average or two I think is like the typical cap. Alcohol is garbage. There's not, there's nothing valuable in it for you. It negatively impacts your sleep. It's been shown with just one drink to negatively impact your intestinal permeability and lead to something called leaky gut. It's not great for you. So I don't, I don't really drink much.
I exercise regularly, I eat well, I get enough sleep. Hydration is another big one. I'm drinking water throughout the day and because most days have some type of physical activity, I'm usually using some form of electrolytes. I personally like, like element element but I'm a big fan of relight. If you want to just take a pinch of pink Himalayan salt or Celtic salt and put in your water, I think that's also very important. But at the end of the day J, E R F just eat real food and I think that really gets you a good portion of the way.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: There's other things that with the modern diet and modern living that we're just not getting through that route.
[00:18:20] Speaker B: So I do supplement and like I said, I run blood work on myself and what I find with most people, regardless of where they live in the United States, there are four supplements that most folks seem to need. Usually it's vitamin D because quite honestly, unless you're out in the sun for 15 minutes with about 80% of your body exposed, and if you're in New England, that's between May and September, you can be nude outside in December, January, and you're not going to make any know enough vitamin D. I take a vitamin D pill. I take magnesium. I think the magnesium content in our soils has been largely depleted over time. In fact that that has been shown and our magnesium output is super high because we live a much more stressful modern lifestyle. And that depletes magnesium. Anytime you're stressed, you deplete magnesium. Anytime you drink soda or alcohol, deplete magnesium. If you don't get enough sleep, you deplete magnesium. And magnesium is needed for over 300 different enzyme systems in the body. So people are saying, oh, I have high blood pressure, I have difficulty sleeping, I've got anxiety, I got muscle cramps. It's usually some form of magnesium depletion. So vitamin D, magnesium. Unless you're eating some type of healthy fatty fish, which is basically just sardines or Pacific, you know, Alaskan caught salmon, usually most folks need an Omega 3 and that helps decrease inflammation throughout the whole system, helps protect the cardiovascular system, the brain, the joints, and then a multi. You know, you can eat the healthiest diet in the world, but there are just like magnesium trace minerals that have been depleted from the soils that you just don't get enough of.
And you know, one of those that's typically in a multivitamin is iodine. And people say, well, you know, I doesn't the government iodized salt. Yeah, and that's definitely the salt you should not be consuming. It's just bleached sodium chloride with, with iodine added to it. But coincidentally, the only real good food source of iodine comes from seaweeds, which is in the sea. And you would think that sea salt has iodine and it has none. So usually you want to make sure that the multivitamin that you're getting has a decent iodine dosage. So super multi or a multivitamin, vitamin D, magnesium and omega. Those are the main ones that if you live any degree of an active lifestyle and really want to optimize how you feel those should be in the mix.
[00:20:31] Speaker A: How would that change or be adjusted? Let's say you're working with an athlete. It's really looking to optimize performance.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: Yeah, really a lot of those are dose dependent. So that's why I run blood work and I usually see with athletes that magnesium deficiency that I mentioned, again, vitamin D across the board is needed. You really only make that from the sun. There's not a lot of good food sources of it. Um, but in addition, I probably would recommend some form of like a curcumin or turmeric based supplement just to generally reduce inflammation. Um, I find that that's a heck of a lot better, Much better alternative to taking an NSAID like ibuprofen or naproxen. Um, and then let's see, creatine, also super important. Uh, I think everybody, regardless of whether you're an athlete or not, should be taking 5 grams of creatine monohydrate per day. There's just too much information, too much research that indicates that it's excellent for, for brain health, cardiovascular health. Every single organ system uses the creatine monophosphate system. And then you can kind of depending on the athlete's intention. There are other supplements that you can introduce to help bolster high end performance like beta alanine. Obviously caffeine used appropriately, can be very helpful. Branch chain amino acids depending on how you're you're working out. So at that point it gets individualized. But I would say the core would be those four main supplements I mentioned, probably curcumin to decrease inflammation.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: Very helpful.
What are some of the results you've seen with your patients? I mean, and I will say, you know, I was recommended to you by someone who I know has seen incredible results. I've also recommended other folks that have seen incredible results. But I want to hear from you some of the success stories that you've seen.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: I would say on the whole, my favorite population to work with are athletes because a lot of the recommendations that I'm making, even when it comes to taking these supplements requires you, once you leave my office to take the supplements. And athletes are used to just having a coach tell them do this, do that, don't do this, don't do that. So I find that, that you're a population of my patients that do extremely well because you do what I say. Whereas I feel like there's a lot of other folks that I see where I kind of have to do the cheer, cheer, the pom pom the cheerleading to get them to follow my recommendations. But I would say, on the whole, from an athletic standpoint, I've had a lot of folks come in saying, you know, I used to have a lot more energy and resiliency. I used to wake up in the morning, just be ready to go. Now I'm finding the alarm clock goes off, I'm dragging out of bed, or 2, 3pm comes in the afternoon, I'm dying, and I got to do my, you know, gym exercise, or I got to play pickleball, or I have, you know, my exercise in the afternoon, and I just don't have the same energy that I did before. A lot of times this is coupled with usually some degree of a deterioration in sleep. People are having difficulty falling asleep, or they're waking up during the night having difficulty at that point. So it's multifaceted. But I would say on the whole, when these folks implement the supplements that I'm recommending based on the biochemical. Biochemical deficiencies that we identify, and they change up their diet, they get rid of alcohol, and they really focus on hydration. Once they get to the basics of really what my majority of my dietary recommendations and lifestyle recommendations are, I see massive improvements across the board. A lot of times, the adrenals, and this is very true for athletes. The adrenals help you adapt to stress. That these little glands that sit on top of your kidneys and your back, and anytime you have some type of stressor, they produce cortisol. And that cortisol gets elicited to help decrease inflammation. It brings blood sugar up in the bloodstream. When you haven't consumed any food for a long period of time, it attaches to neurological receptors in the brain that help you focus. And so if day in and day out, you're stressed because you're working an intensive job, you've got kids at home, you've. You got bills to pay you. You're just juggling the, you know, the complexities of life. I see these adrenals over time begin to burn out. The brain sends the signals to the adrenals. It says, come on, give us some cortisol. Eventually the adrenals say, f you, they don't produce the same cortisol anymore. And additionally, the cortisol that does get secreted is then attaching to these receptors in all these different areas of the body. And those receptors are generally the same way, saying, fu, we're not listening anymore. Like you walking into a smelly bathroom, you notice the smell at first, and you kind of become desensitized to it. So it's coaxing that adrenal system back online by getting to the basics of. Okay, well, how do we revamp this adrenal and autonomic nervous system? So, I mean, your question is excellent. If patients do what I say and take the supplements, eat the diet, avoid alcohol, get enough sleep, everybody across the board notes improvements in performance.
[00:25:03] Speaker A: I mean, I guess it's pretty simple really. It's just in practice, actually doing it can be a human challenge.
[00:25:09] Speaker B: Yes. And there's also nuances I can say, you know, just eat real food. But what does that mean? Does that mean you have to go to the grocery store and, you know, cook every single one of your meals? Is there any options when you go out to eat for something like that? And then if you do go to the grocery store, what does that look like? Are you eating a carnivore diet that's become popular? Is it keto? Is it low carb? Is it high carb? Is it low fat? Is it vegan? There's just so much misinformation out there. Which is why I say if you're great grandmother had it, probably good. In my book, get away from all the franken food, meat, fish, veggies, fruit, and just have it generally balanced. That, I think is the foundation. And then depending on what type of exercise you're doing, you can get nuanced.
[00:25:54] Speaker A: From there, you're walking the walk, you're living this life. And do you have any cheats or hacks to make eating just real food EAS versus the having to go to the supermarket, having to cook? Do you have any advice on how to even just start navigating that?
[00:26:14] Speaker B: Yeah. So if you live along the east coast, there's this company called Nutra Meals, N U T R E Meals, and they're excellent. So they're a company out of Boston, I think they have a bunch of commissary kitchens all down the east coast and they deliver food on Monday mornings. Nothing's frozen, everything's made fresh. There's no crappy seed oils that are used in their foods. Their macros are pretty well balanced. Macros being carbs, fat and protein. Very well balanced. My wife's an unbelievable cook, and since being together, she really just cooks pretty much everything Matthew approved, she calls it. But this company is really, really good and they pretty much do the exact same thing. So if you're a high performer and you just don't have a lot of time to cook, that's always an option. And a little plug if you're interested in signing up. I actually have a 50% discount code that anybody, if they want to use it to get it off their first week. So I tell all my patients, do it for a week. See how you like it. You might find that you want to do it every day for lunch or, you know, you want to do lunch at dinner, or just sporadically. They have different tiers, but sign up with this code and they seem to like it. But if you don't want to do that, meal prepping is huge. Go out to the grocery store, go out to Costco, get, get a big pack of chicken, marinate it, throw it on the grill, chop it up, have it just food availability. And then from there, take some potatoes, chop them up, throw them in the oven, make some, some sweet potato cubes, and then do the same thing with Brussels sprouts. Lather them in olive oil, throw some salt on it, roast in the oven. Boom. Get a, get a crock pot, get like a six pound chuck roast, throw it in there with some, some chicken broth and the chopped onion. Boom. Set it eight hours. What's the meal prep time? I don't know, 15 minutes tops. And you got lunch pretty much set for a week. It's just kind of getting ahead of it, taking a little bit of a time on Sunday or Saturday, whenever you have some free time to meal prep, throw them in containers and having that food availability. But I see this time and time again, when people are hungry, it's the end of the day, you just worked a long day and you come home, you open the fridge, and you got nothing. It's inevitably, incredibly difficult to not just pick up the phone and have Uber Eats drop off a pizza. I mean, just get ahead of it, have that food availability. That's the best hack I can honestly recommend.
[00:28:27] Speaker A: I hear you loud and clear on that. That's when bad decisions are made. And it does require some organization, but well worth it. Well worth it.
[00:28:35] Speaker B: And I will also say another big hack is just don't buy shit. Don't have it in the house. Like you're out of the grocery store and you're passing the Little Debbies. Keep going.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: If it's not there, you can't eat it. Quite right.
[00:28:47] Speaker B: I know, I know.
[00:28:49] Speaker A: What's your go to treat? Let's say you're going to break your rules. What is it?
[00:28:53] Speaker B: Ice cream.
[00:28:54] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:28:54] Speaker B: Yeah. There's a place in town. I'm in East Long Meadow. There's an awesome place called Batch Ice Cream. Every single one of the things that they make has like four ingredients. It's like heavy cream. My favorite's the black raspberry that they have. So it's real fruit, heavy cream, real sugar. You know, they're not using anything fake or. And then whatever the heck, maybe eggs. I think I read the back of their. I think that's it. I think it's like cream or heavy cream. Real fruit, eggs and sugar. That's it again. Great grandmother had it. That's what real ice cream is supposed to have. No stabilizers, no gums, no preservatives. And I don't do it all the time. I go with my. My son. We'll get a kitty. He'll have a bite, I'll have a bite. He'll have a bite, I'll have a bite. Really, it's one of those things where, like, it's more the experience and the treat rather than, you know, I'm sitting on the. On the couch with a half pint of Haagen Dazs, drowning my emotions.
[00:29:46] Speaker A: Well, it does reassure us that you are indeed human and you will treat yourself occasionally. Now, in terms of exercise, you've gotten me into CrossFit. I'm loving it. You're a CrossFit pro. What drew you to that? Why CrossFit over anything else?
[00:30:04] Speaker B: So I think the sustainability of a program for exercise is multifaceted. A. It should be good for your physiology. The tenants of CrossFit specifically are that for the most part, you're doing functional movements. So you should be squatting, you should be pushing something overhead, you should be lifting something off the ground and maintaining the appropriate mechanics so that you don't get hurt is super important. Now, crossfit to some extent, has gotten away from that a little bit. Like, what's the function of a handstand push up? Probably not much. What's the function of a pull up? That is, you know, a butterfly where you're pulling yourself up a bar? Probably not that much, but for the most part, that is. That is number one. CrossFit is predominantly functional exercise. I think that any program should have strength training and should have some form of cardio. CrossFit combines them both. Sometimes it's fully strength training, sometimes it's fully cardio. We were just talking before the start of this podcast. The one you did today sounds much more cardio. And sometimes they mix both, you know, barbells with, you know, a run or some type of cardio component together. So it's a highly efficient. So it's functional, it's highly efficient. And then a really big one for the sustainability of any exercise program is community. I see this time and time again. I've got people come into my office who have a significant history of working out and gotten in great shape, but they fall off the wagon. And why? Well, it's because at the end of their long workday, they got to go to the gym for an hour and work out alone. They got nobody else they talk to, they put their headphones in, they pick up their dumbbells, they do their curls, and eventually and inevitably they burn out. That is a very small subset of individuals where that's their meditation, they continue doing it. But CrossFit offers a community of people who push you, who ask you if you're going to be at the next workout, who usually get together outside of the gym and you've got a friend group. And let's face it, in today's day and age, where do you meet those types of folks anymore? You're not, I mean, you probably shouldn't be going out to a bar and having your regulars there like you just, it's tough to meet people in today's day and age. So now you combine all of those. And that's, that's why I like CrossFit, because it pretty much checks off all the boxes.
[00:32:07] Speaker A: You make a great point on the community aspect of exercise. And obviously CrossFit is not going to be for everybody. Finding what it is for you is important. And people have listened to me ad nauseam talking about the benefits of pickleball in the very same way. I think it really does bring people together. It makes you want to show up again and again. It keeps you accountable. If you've agreed to play with three other people, you can't let them down. You got to show up.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a beautiful point. Exactly. Team sports, really? Outside of what, grade school? When are you playing team sports?
[00:32:41] Speaker A: Right.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: Pickleball is beautiful for that.
[00:32:45] Speaker A: And I'm sure there are many other options out there too. But I think that's, that's very insightful to bring up the community aspect.
So what, what's cutting edge? What's coming down the line? What, what are we going to see soon? What's not quite out yet? What are you hearing?
[00:33:02] Speaker B: That's a good question. I mean, there's all these, this talk about health span and different things that you can do. Injection therapy, IV therapy has gotten pretty sexy. Glutathione pushes things that you can do to.
[00:33:14] Speaker A: What do you think about IV Therapy.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: I mean, I think it's good. The thing is, is it worth it? Is it worth strapping up with an IV that you could otherwise pretty much get from a oral dose of a multivitamin with your, you know, your B vitamins and your, your magnesium and I mean, there are certain benefits that bypass the metabolism and the absorption in the GI tract that, where it just goes directly into your bloodstream. But usually with these IV therapy packages, you're paying like 125 bucks a pop. And I just haven't seen it really push the envelope or push the needle, I should say, any more than just being consistent. Taking an oral dose of something that's a fraction of the cost. Now you're hungover, you know, you went out to Vegas and you had some fun, you know, funds with a friends of buddy and you got to recover. Yeah. Go get hooked up to an IV and you know, come back online. But I don't know, I really don't see that much of an improvement really across the board with people who do IV therapy with glutathione pushes. If you're fighting an infection, if, you know, you have a significant family history of cancers and all that, you could get ahead of it and, and do an IV push of glutathione, which is the master antioxidant in the body, that could be helpful. But the thing is that these different fads come and go, and I think it kind of displaces the importance of what we talked about earlier. Proper sleep, proper nutrition, managing stress, making sure that the stuff, the inputs into the body are appropriate. I think with all these different things that come in the market, nad and nad, nad H. I think it is these different things that are known to activate sirtuins or longevity genes. They came out not too long ago and people were like, oh my God, I gotta get on these things. Fast forward. They do a research study that says that if you have any inclination of potentially developing cancer, this can fuel it and make it progress faster. So it's like, you know, we hear about all these things, these new cutting edge treatments for longevity or health span, and it's like, okay, take it with a grain of salt. We don't have all the information yet, but make sure you're sticking to the tried and true foundational things of health. That's my honest take.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: Do you have any general tips for us in terms of sleep and sleep hygiene and how to get that done? You've emphasized the importance of sleep. How do we make that better?
[00:35:32] Speaker B: So first and foremost, it's better to get to bed earlier than to sleep in. That usually is the case across the board. It seems to be that the vast majority of people optimized best with a bedtime around 9 to 10pm and a wake up time around 6am it just seems to be that, that and everybody's a little bit different. Some people do optimize, you know, their sleep wake habits slightly pushed further like an 11 to 7. There are other folks that do better with a 8pm and 4am wake up time. But for the most part a 10 to 6 is the sweet spot. And then it also comes down to consistency. So it's very important that within about 60 minutes your sleep and wake time is the same. So say for example you're used to going to bed at 9pm you really shouldn't on most nights be going to bed past 10, even on the weekends. And if your wake up time is at 6am, you really shouldn't be sleeping in past seven. And the more that you can regulate that, the more all of your physiological processes are going to be in sync. So people don't know this, but a lot of times you'll have a bowel movement on the exact same time. If you can make sure that your sleep wake cycle is the same, your hunger cues will come online. I'll give you a perfect example. Every day at about 11:30 I'll have like a whole food protein bar. I just don't have time between clients to have an actual meal. So I'll have this thing and I can tell you without even looking at the clock when 11:30 has hit. It's like something snaps and I'm instantaneously hungry. I think optimizing sleep with a completely blackout room. Studies have shown that even a little like blue diode coming from where your phone is charging can disrupt your sleep. So we have in our room is all those lights are completely off. We got blackout curtains and I wear a sleep mask every night. In fact, my wife made fun of me for it for a really long time and I think we ended up going somewhere. We were on vacation and it was pretty bright in the room so I took mine off and I gave it to her. I said just use it. And from that night onward she has worn a sleep mask every single night, travels with it, can't live without it. And it really does make a massive difference. Avoiding food too close to bedtime, also super helpful. Usually 2 plus hours at least 3 is even better. But 2 plus hours at least of no food prior to bedtime has been shown to help improve your sleep. Alcohol is a massive detriment. So if you're having a glass of even wine with dinner, and I'm Portuguese, I've since I was probably nine, been offered a glass of wine with dinner. And I would say avoiding alcohol in its entirety at least three plus hours before bedtime can be helpful. I know we had talked a little bit about, like, marijuana use at one point in time. So marijuana is a little tricky on the whole. I'm a fan of cannabis, but it has to be used appropriately. I'm not a proponent of smoking it. I think the consumption of it is a lot better for pretty much everybody. But then there's a lot of more that is in cannabis than just thc, which is the psychoactive component. CBD has gotten a lot of highlights, but there's a bunch of other cannabinoids. There's CBG that helps with gastrointestinal issues. There's CPN that helps with sleep. There's CBC that helps with a whole host of other things like the immune system. So getting like live. It's called rosin, a live rosin extract that's in a low dose gummy with more CBD than THC can actually be very helpful for sleep. And of all the supplements that I use in my practice, that is actually the supplement that that patients like the most because everybody's got sleep issues, whether they're waking up during the night or difficulty falling asleep. So I have them start on a low dose of the CBD gummy, and most end up telling me that they sleep really well. Now, conversely, I'm a big fan of wearing a trackable, so I have an apple watch. I used to have a whoop. A bunch of my patients have whoops. Some people have OURA rings, But I think that type of response is very individualized. So if you find that any cannabis in your system negatively impacts your ability to get into REM sleep, or you wake in the morning, you feel a little bit hungover, either the dosage is inappropriate or the timing of administration is not good. A lot of people think that if they take a hit of a weed pen right before bed, it helps with sleep. And it is true that it helps when you're falling asleep, but it disrupts the architecture of that sleep. So on the whole, I usually recommend a 5 to 1 CBD to THC concentration. I have my patients usually start on about 2, 2 and a half milligrams of THC, about 12 and a half milligrams of CBD and I have them take that about two hours before they go to bed. So they peak. If they do have any buzz, then they go to sleep. And it seems to be that their sleep architecture is really, really improved. And speaking of sleep architecture, caffeine is a massive deterrent. So if you end up, for most people having caffeine after 12pm, you might be a fast metabolizer and it may be out of, out of your system by then. But a lot of people, if they don't know it, are slow metabolizers of caffeine. And even if they're able to fall asleep quickly, a lot of times they just don't get the same sleep architecture. They're supposed to spend as much time in deep sleep, don't spend as much time in REM sleep. So I would say alcohol and caffeine, be very cautious of those. If you're going to use cannabis, eat it, don't smoke it, have it earlier in the evening so you kind of, kind of peek and then start coming down on the back end and then avoiding food, using a sleep mask, making sure that the room is blackout and then also making sure that the room is not too hot. So it seems to be that between 60 and 69 degrees for the ambient temperature is where you should be.
So, yeah, mouthful, I know, but that's.
[00:40:52] Speaker A: No, it's incredibly useful information. And as you and I know, sleep is the bedrock of everything.
[00:41:00] Speaker B: It really is. And if you ever want to really geek out on it. Joe Rogan had a podcast with this sleep researcher named Matthew Walker. He's actually, I think he has a PhD in sleep. I don't know if that. I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's what it is. And he wrote a book called why We Sleep. Highly recommend. At least starting off with that podcast. Matthew Walker, Joe Rogan. I don't remember the podcast number, but if you type that in, you'll find it. And once you listen to that, I promise you your quality of sleep will improve because you're not going to want to screw things up once you hear how detrimental it is when you're sleep deprived.
[00:41:35] Speaker A: This is all life changing. I'm really pleased we can do this to get some messages out there to people. You can only see so many patients, so this is hopefully going to be very, very useful to people and an incredible overview. We could talk for hours and hours and perhaps we'll do this again and dig a little deeper into different topics.
[00:41:56] Speaker B: I love it.
[00:41:57] Speaker A: I cannot thank you enough for this. As I say, I really believe it's going to be life changing to people who listen. And thank you very much.
[00:42:05] Speaker B: Yes, my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:42:10] Speaker A: This has been infinite human with me, Sharon O'Kerr. Until next time, keep challenging yourself and make others better along the way.
