There are several things to keep in mind about sleep and that your body uses this time to heal is one of those. Listen to the podcast and find out some key tips about the importance of sleep and your body’s ability to heal itself.

Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:00:08] Hey, Welcome to Wellness Insights with Dr. Chalmers with me, Dr. Chalmers. Today we’re gonna talk a little bit about sleep. Now, sleep is a big, big thing. I know we’re not going to cover everything right now I wanted to cover some of the stuff that I see the most.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:00:24] Ironically, B vitamins are a big, big part of sleep B2 B6 specifically. We’ve got to keep that liver clean or else we’re never going to stay asleep.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:00:34] So what happens sometimes if you’re waking up between two and four in the morning, oftentimes not every time and oftentimes what’s going on is your liver is trying to detoxify. So it’s increasing its metabolism as it goes and it ends up waking you up.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:00:49] People go out? No, no, no. I get up to pee between two and four in the morning. No, you. Because you wake up, you don’t wake up to pee.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:00:56] So that’s generally liver we clean up liver specifically high dose B6, high dose B2, and that helps quite a bit. So coffee enemas again are great for that methylated B vitamins are going to be great for that. Kill the parasites first. Work all the way through that. That’ll help quite a bit.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:01:13] Testosterone is also going to be a big piece of that we talk about that a lot. Get your testosterone levels checked because you know you’ve got to heal while you’re asleep and so we’ve got to make sure we do that.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:01:24] Now getting to sleep. Getting to sleep people understand melatonin and you can use melatonin, and that’s fine If that works for you, great. Generally, the reason you need to use melatonin, though, needs to be looked at.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:01:36] So oftentimes not every time, but oftentimes it’s because of the light source it’s hitting our eyes. So remember that your eyes are brain tissue. So whatever hit your eyes is hitting your brain immediately because your eyes are pretty bright.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:01:55] Now, if we’re staring on our cell phone, watching TV, walking around the house with, you know, there are 5000 k lights on, and then we walk into our bedroom, turn the lights off, lay down and go, Why can’t I go to sleep? Because your brain still thinks it’s noon. It’s still kicking out serotonin like it’s noon. So what you oftentimes will have to do is start kind of conditioning your body.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:02:15] All right. I’m going to go to bed every night at X time, 10:00. It doesn’t matter. Midnight. 11, 9:30 don’t care pick a time. About 20-30 minutes before you’re going to be trying to sleep. Turn off the lights. Put your turn your cell phone off, put it on vibrate, get it away from you, that type of thing.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:02:34] And then I like to do a thing called a meditation piece where you take a bowl and you fill it with sand you stick a candle in the middle of it, you light a candle. And you sit over your couch.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:02:44] Now, when you do this, the safety, make sure that when the candle falls over, because you just assume it’s gonna. When it falls over, it’s never tall enough to fall so the flame is outside the bowl of sand.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:02:56] The bowl of sand is there so that when the candle falls over, it can burn as much as it wants to and not catch anything on fire so that’s what the bowl of sand is for. You can also use like a glass that has a candle inside it.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:03:08] But the point is, you want to stare at the flame the the major light source for the room I want to be that flame. And as you stare at that flame and you watch it dance as things start popping in your heads like, Oh, tomorrow when need to do this. That’s fine. We’ll do it tomorrow. Just push it aside.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:03:25] That’s. That’s good, Brain we’re going to get to that tomorrow. Oh, hey. We should have done this thing today. You’re right. We should have pushed that aside I’m going to do that tomorrow. Right now, it’s time to sleep right now. It’s not time to do anything. So we’re not going be doing anything but focusing on that flame and working on sleep.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:03:41] So try to clear your head this is the meditation piece try to clear your head try to relax try to calm down. Listen to your breathing, Slow your breathing think about your feet relax your feet. Think about your ankles, your shins relax them relax your toes, relax your kneecaps, relax your thighs, relax your pelvis, but relax your your stomach, relax everything all the way up to your nose.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:04:07] Take a couple of breaths and focus on breathing deep, breathing slowly and search your feet again and work all the way back up. And the whole time you’re pushing things out of your mind that you’re not going to listen to because we’re focused on this flame relaxing, we’re focusing on sleep.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:04:21] And so that’s going to be the way that you sit there and you sit and you calm your body down. Now, if you want to take your CBD, if you want to take your melatonin, you want to take any of this stuff, you take it before you start this process.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:04:33] And then as you go through this process of calming down and taking a breath and sleep and starting to get into the mode of sleep and starting to relax, this will help get everything back where it needs to. Your brain will stop producing as much serotonin and we’ll start producing more melatonin, and then you’ll be able to fall asleep and get asleep faster and stay asleep better because of the B vitamins you’ve taken throughout the day so that’s the way we get to sleep.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:04:59] Now, the caveat to that. If you’ve never done a sleep study, do one. I don’t care if you think there’s no way anything is going be bad. That’s great. That’s what I thought. Guess what? Horrible Apnea. Terrible.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:05:13] Like I own two CPAP in case one breaks, I have the other one I can always turn on. That’s how bad mine is. Never knew it. I was dying. Flat out dying. I test people like when we do concierge work, sleep apnea studies one of the first things we always do.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:05:28] Because I don’t care if you want to lose fat, get healthy, have brain function I don’t, you know, be a better, nicer person don’t care if you’re not sleeping, if you’re suffocating at night because you don’t have enough oxygen, no thing will get better. Nothing, not a single thing will get better in your your health and wellness world because you’re suffocating at night. So we have to fix that. First, Boom!. First.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:05:52] I’ve seen hormone levels come back up. I’ve seen anxiety and depression go away. I’ve seen epilepsy go away, I’ve seen migraine headaches go away. I’ve seen got issues go away just by fixing sleep.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:06:06] So it’s Calcium CT sleep studies are the first two things I try to get everybody who does concierge work with me to do, because without that information, we don’t know what’s going on.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:06:16] And I’ve had like, I’ll give you a quick story. I had a 28 year old girl athlete, super lean, super fit, really nice, really smart, came to me after she’d been to her neurologist and done every study I could imagine except for a sleep study. Like literally every study EEGs, EKGs, all sorts of brain scans, PET scans, all sorts. I mean, the guys did everything and that to their credit, they did a hell of a job. I really did.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:06:43] And I’m looking at it and I was like, look, the only thing you don’t have you don’t have a sleep study, so go back to your same neurologist, get a sleep study it’ll be done on under insurance, and then we can figure out what’s going on we kind of move on from there, which is. All right, cool.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:06:57] So she comes in two weeks later and she was like, Hey, I went to my doc and he tells me that he wouldn’t do it. He told me I wasn’t a six year old fat man, so I didn’t need a sleep study. She says, but I’ve been researching what she told me and I read the articles you gave me to read, and I. I want to do it anyway, so I. Cool. So I sent her off her one comes back, terrible apnea. We got our CPAP, and within like two weeks of finally figuring out how to use her CPAP, she never had a migraine again.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:07:25] So that’s how important sleep studies are so don’t blow them off they’re a big, big deal. Don’t blow off sleep. Don’t think it’s just something to pass the time, you know? Oh, I’m tired. I guess I’ll sleep and catch some no that’s how we regenerate, how we build muscles, how we rebuild the brain. It’s how we stay healthy.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:07:43] One of the major keys to high quality of life for a long period of time or wellness is sleep. So don’t mess around it. Just sleep. If it’s not working right, let’s figure it out. The biggest piece with a lot of my guys, a lot of my, especially my CEOs, is they can’t learn to shut their brain off.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:08:01] So go that little meditation piece I showed you kind of how kind of, you know, focus on the flame, focus on shutting everything else out of your life. And when it’s time to sleep, it’s time to sleep. If your brain goes, Oh, crap, we forgot to send Ted that bill. You can send Ted the invoice in the morning. He’s probably not going to read it till the morning anyway. So just the tip of the morning.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:08:21] Calm down right now you’re trying to sleep, okay? You know, it’s like, Oh, I left the oven on. All right, go ahead go turn the oven off you know when to burn the house down. But you get where I’m going with this.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:08:30] Very, very, very few reasons to stand up and go work on something else but if you did, let’s say it’s like out of the 20 minutes of meditation a minute, 18 in. Right? You only have two left. You go let the stove on, go turn the stove off you probably have to start all over, your ought to sit down and just. Okay.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:08:49] 20 minutes I was breathing I’m a start guy and going through the whole thing. So put that into your into your routine and see if that doesn’t help. So that’s the big thing on sleep.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:09:00] A lot of those kind of give it kind of an hour. I’ll get sun and I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Now you’re going to you’re going to wish you were dead letter earlier. You’re quality of life is going to be piss piss poor real fast.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:09:11] So focus on getting some sleep so this also doesn’t mean that you’re supposed to sleep all day. Don’t do that. Get your 6 to 8 hours in quality. 6 to 8 hours and go crush the day. But that’s kind of how we go on sleep so make sure you’re getting it.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:09:27] If you’re not using those little tips, use those little tips. Melatonin still works great. But meditate and focus on clearing everything out.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:09:34] So if you guys still have questions, Questions@Chalmerswellness.com, and we’ll get them locked out. Thanks.

Ask your Questions at Questions@Chalmerswellness.com