S03E111 Unmasking the Connections - Inflammation and Stress with Dr. Jonathan Hartman

Have you ever given a thought to the role inflammation plays in our lives? It's often misunderstood or even dismissed. But that's about to change. Come join coaches David Syvertsen @davesy85 and Sam Rhee @bergencosmetic as we unravel the complex world of inflammation and chronic stress with the guidance of Dr. Jonathan Hartman @thehartmancenter. Discover how different types of stressors, acute and chronic, if left unchecked, can potentially spiral into chronic illnesses. We'll also discuss the invisible, yet insidious, danger posed by long periods of low-level stress - it's not always the dramatic stressors that do the most damage.

Moving on, we'll explore the intriguing subject of gut health with a deep-dive into the causes and effects of intestinal permeability. Learn about the five main sources of inflammation - foods, bugs, toxins, stressors, and hormones - and the role they play in our overall health and wellbeing. We'll inspire you to make conscious lifestyle choices to avert inflammation and hormonal disruption. Believe us, your gut will thank you!

And lastly, we'll delve into the often-neglected area of sleep. Uncover the effects of chronic sleep deprivation on your health and wellbeing, and how seemingly trivial aspects like sleep temperature, light, and food intake can have a significant impact. We'll also discuss the potential benefits of weighted blankets and melatonin, and suggest natural alternatives for better sleep health. So, buckle up for an enlightening journey into a realm often overlooked - inflammation, chronic stress and gut health. You won't want to miss this!

Dr. Jonathan R. Hartman, DC, DACNB, DACRB, FABBIR, FACFN, FABVR has more than ten years of experience in the field of Chiropractic Healthcare. Dr. Hartman is board-certified with Diplomate status from the American Chiropractic Neurology Board – In 2017 he was one of only thirty-nine individuals worldwide who completed the requirements for this distinguished Neurology Diplomate. Dr. Hartman is also a board-certified Diplomat of the American Chiropractic Rehabilitation Board. He is an honors graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic. He continued to expand his outstanding academic pursuits through specialized training and certification in Active Release Technique and Manual Adhesion Release, two of the most advanced soft-tissue treatments used today to break down scar tissue and adhesion formation.

@crossfitbison @crossfittraining @crossfit @crossfitgames #crossfit #sports #exercise #health #movement #crossfitcoach #agoq #clean #fitness #ItAllStartsHere #CrossFitOpen #CrossFit #CrossFitCommunity @CrossFitAffiliates #supportyourlocalbox #crossfitaffiliate #personalizedfitness

00:00:00 Understanding Inflammation and Chronic Stress

00:09:48 Adapting to Stress and Controlling Factors

00:18:27 Factors Impacting Gut Health

00:27:53 Addressing Sleep Issues and Lifestyle Changes

00:32:42 Impact of Environmental Factors on Health

00:39:47 Making Lifestyle Changes for Health

00:45:36 Better Sleep Tips and Sleep Deprivation

00:58:21 Exploring Health and Lifestyle Changes

01:07:42 Gratitude

S03E111 Unmasking the Connections - Inflammation and Stress with Dr. Jonathan Hartman

[00:00:00] David Syvertsen: all right. Welcome back to the Her Fit podcast. I'm Coach David Syvertsen here with my co-host, Dr. And Coach Sam Rhee .

And we are back for week two with Dr. Jonathan Hartman. Um, John, thank you so much for coming back and, um, you know, How you doing?

[00:00:17] Jonathan Hartman: Awesome. Happy Sunday. Nice.

[00:00:19] David Syvertsen: Cool. Life is good. You got the new fancy artwork behind us. I the courtesy of, uh, of Coach Ashley, my wife. Thanks for getting that stuff. You know, we're just getting all the bells and whistles in this room.

Um, the storage closet that we are in the back across bison. That was very cool. Thank you Ashley. Uh, but today's topic is going to be very, very applicable to. Every CrossFitter out there and it's gonna deal with inflammation. Some of you guys call this soreness, some of you guys call this brain fog. It can all be under that umbrella of inflammation.

And it's a word that I think gets a little overused by some, but misunderstood by many where they just, they don't understand what true inflammation is, why it's dangerous, what you can do to prevent it. Um, so we're really, and inflammation is something that John has taught me more about, uh, than almost anything over the past 10 years that I've known him and everything.

I think I know about why this is sore, why this is swollen, why I don't feel good when I do these movements. I talk to him and I get, you know, the real answers and, uh, it's usually complete opposite of what I've been thinking about. So, Sam, when, uh, sorry. Hartman, when you think about the word inflammation, what is your first thought that comes to mind?

[00:01:30] Jonathan Hartman: Stress. Stress? Yeah. I don't. You can take stress and you can call that physical, you can call that mental, you can call that emotional structural, but the big umbrella term is gonna be stress. Okay.

[00:01:43] David Syvertsen: And that doesn't ne Yeah. So that does not necessarily need to be, like, when I think about stress, I'm thinking about, you know, having a, having a three year old doesn't, doesn't sleep well.

Owning a business and trying to get my knee to feel better, that's like stressing me out. Right. But you're thinking more about, you know, it could also be just working out, causing stress. Like doing Karen, what Sam just did. Yeah. That was stressful. Stress. Yeah. If you have inflammation from that stressful

[00:02:05] Jonathan Hartman: workout.

But what's, if, if we go, like, if we can just dive right into the rabbit hole on that. Let's do it. Sam's uh, what was your time by the way? It

[00:02:14] Sam Rhee: was awful. Don't even ask. Okay. I will say it only to make other people feel good. It was 11 minutes and five seconds. Okay. Which was

[00:02:22] Jonathan Hartman: horrible. But it was an acute phase stressor.

Right. Which in our, our evolutionary biology, that is what has been a norm mm-hmm. Is usually it's long periods of little to no stress, maybe times of, of food deprivation or starvation. Uh, you know, but that level of like running from the cyber tooth saber, tooth tiger running from the bear are really, really intense bouts of acute stressors.

And then hopefully nothing after that. But then you're late to work. Your coffee was too hot, patients were late, you were late. Uh, you gotta help your kids' homework. Uh, maybe we got into an argument with our spouse. You pop the tire. Uh, dinner was cold. Uh, you got a shit night's sleep. It's that chronic.

[00:03:19] Sam Rhee: Yeah. Flick, flick, flick

[00:03:21] Jonathan Hartman: that just keeps attacking and attacking and attacking. Mm-hmm. And that's the, the chronic stress that I hope that we're gonna spend the next, you know, little bit talking about. Mm-hmm. And, uh, uh, there's a, there's a really cool book. I'm gonna always go back to books, and there was a book called Y Zebras Don't Get Ulcers.

Okay. And, uh, Dr. Polsky, I iri, Richard Polsky, I, I can't remember who wrote it. It's called Y Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. And they talk about how, look at a zebra and, um, what does a zebra do? They live on the Savannah, they eat, they poop, they mate, they sleep, they eat, they moot poop. You know, there's a herd of like, you know, 50,000 of these zebras and life is pretty good.

And then maybe one day, If they got a lion chasing their ass and they're running for their life, right, like their life literally depends on it. Mm-hmm. Maybe they kick the lion in the teeth, they get lost in the herd. There's another 50,000 zebras, and then the crisis is avoided and that might not ever happen again.

And that zebra had a life-threatening 11 minutes that their life was in jeopardy. And then they go back to like, peace and harmony should

[00:04:38] Sam Rhee: have been seven minutes.

[00:04:40] Jonathan Hartman: Okay. But in the, in the day to day, zebras don't get that level of chronic stressors that we subject ourselves. Who constantly mm-hmm. You know, maybe when the will the beast is walking across the Savannah and they have to cross over that big river.

And now shit, I got an alligator that's gonna cut my, that's gonna rip my leg and maybe I kick the alligator in the, in the eyeball or something and then I'm running and then I make it back up the embankment. And then peace for the next 10 years, no more stress. We don't get that anymore. And unfortunately as humans, we subject ourselves to these chronic levels of micro stress every day.

And it's those things that open up the, the door to, uh, chronic illness.

[00:05:26] David Syvertsen: So give us your example, you said, of a, of a wilting plant about when it

[00:05:30] Jonathan Hartman: comes to inflammation. So this comes from a, a mentor and a dear friend of mine, Dr. Tom Colton. He's a chiropractic neurologist and functional medicine doctor down in Texas.

And he starts off with, when he interviews his patients to try to understand, you know, what's the mechanism and their why. He looks at a plant, simple, good old house plant, and what do they need to to thrive, right? They need food, water, and oxygen. Like three basic tenants. We're really not much different.

We need, you know, food, water, oxygen. We need love and. We check that off the list with, you know, good families and good relationships. And then we're gonna come back to food, water, and oxygen. In the last episode, we were just talking about nasal breathing and the absence of nasal breathing, right? That's oxygen.

And then that goes all the way back to children with, you know, making sure that they breathe through their nose. Cuz if they got tongue ties and they're breathing through their mouth and they're not getting adequate respiration in O two exchange, that's, that's one of our three B four basic tenants there.

Right? And if that stool that you're sitting on is sitting on, you know, uh, food, water, oxygen, and love, and you just knocked one of them out, you're gonna fall. That's not optimal health that you can build a platform for CrossFit and athletic resiliency and capacity on. So it's, it's so hard for me to not spiral and go off of all these different tangents because there's so important.

And when you're, when you're trying to address the. The resiliency of a person, a patient, a parent, a loved one. It has to go back to that. Mm-hmm. And that is what resonates with me personally, emotionally, clinically. And when that plant is, is wilting, or when that, when the plant is wilting and it's sick, what do you do?

You typically, you'll give it water, you'll push it into the sunlight and hell, you might even bring the plant outside to get some sunlight. Crazy concept that you know, and it starts to live again. It starts to thrive. But what about us? You know, when we start to wilt, we're gonna take a pill for this, we're gonna take medication for that, and we're just gonna try to, you know, that's like, to me, that's like putting a stilt up on a plant, on a branch and just, maybe we'll just keep it from, it's wilting, but if I just prop it up a little bit, All right.

Still looks all right. Yeah. But if you take that even deeper and that plant is still wilting, well, shit, why don't you just spray the leaves green. Mm. Make it look healthy. Just spray it green. And I, to me, that's where, when we look at our children and ourselves and us as athletes, that we don't, if the plant is wilting, you gotta give the body what it needs to grow.

You're not looking just to spray the leaves green. Mm-hmm. You know, you're talking with the, the, uh, the AirWave and stuff too. There's a time and a place, and it's appropriate. But if you're dependent on your belt and you're dependent on your lifters, there's maybe an argument against that, and that might not be appropriate.

So, I look at that wilting plant, and I think to myself that the plant is wilting. What does it need? Those are the basic principles of addressing the physiology and the, the metabolic capacity of someone. And as, as, as for us, as athletes, what can we do to support that body? And it's gonna go back to food, water, oxygen above.

So

[00:09:03] Sam Rhee: Dave is the wilting plant, but how do you help this, this wilting plant? He has a kid who isn't helping him sleep. What's he gonna do? Like

[00:09:11] David Syvertsen: muffled the kid at night? Like considering Yeah.

[00:09:15] Sam Rhee: He has a, he has a business which he's constantly focusing on and worried about, and that's a micro stress he has.

Like all these things that are, be literally beyond his control. There's no way short of quitting his business, running away from his family, living like a monk on a mountain. Totally. That he could actually not have these stressors. Yeah. So what is it that we're supposed to do to treat the

[00:09:39] Jonathan Hartman: wilting plant?

Yeah, I, I, I totally sympathize with you. You know, like these have been dark days and mm-hmm. We both know that personally, these have been trying times. So if those are variables that we can't get rid of, you know, just like a a, you know, a tree down in Florida can't relocate to the fact that there might be subject to, you know, several hurricanes.

What are they gonna do? Maybe they're gonna adapt and they're gonna make their branches a little bit more pliable so that when wind comes, they can withstand storms. Maybe they're gonna increase, uh, increase the depth of their root system so that they're more planted firmly in the ground. So when that hurricane comes, they've got a great support structure to withstand those storms.

Maybe there's trees in mangroves in Atlanta or in Georgia somewhere where there's gonna be a monsoon, there's gonna be 12 feet of water coming in one day. So they might dig into their root system, they'll make adaptations because there are demands that cannot be changed. Uh, myself personally, like, you know, sleep has been an issue.

Work and stress have been issues, but what are things that we can do to support

[00:10:48] David Syvertsen: the body? So that, that's where I think a lot of us can get something out of this episode. All three of us, you guys that are listening, Is that there are some things that are beyond your control. And I'm never gonna run away from my family.

I'm not gonna quit the business. I'm not gonna go live like a monk on a mountain, you know? So that my wad times could be better. You know, all those sounds pretty cool, but the, but I, there are things within our control and I think that's where I lean towards like, yes, you know what, Dave? There's certain things, Sam, certain things, John, certain things you're just not gonna be able to fix.

But let's talk about the things that you can fix. What can you do to reduce your inflammation? What, what can we do to reduce your stress levels? And I have three main topics. I want to touch on all three of them. And I'm trying to think of what, what would be better first to talk about. I do, I wanna bring up the exercise because.

Part of the benefits of CrossFit is it's mental release. How many times do we hear that, Sam? Every day. You know, I need to come in today because I'm stressed out. I need to come in and do these nasty, hard, high volume, high load, high skill workouts with my comrades at the gym and crush ourselves and be on the floor gasping for air.

And I'm sore for four days and I hate it, but I love it. Right? Um, and I, and I'm not being condescending at all because I'm like that sometimes, like if I have a long, stressful day, I wanna go wa and like it does, it helps me for an hour and then I wake up the next morning, I'm like, oh gosh. Like that.

That's happened to me a couple times over the past couple weeks where I'm like, man, I'm just not recovering that well. And obviously as Hartman has always told me over the years, um, you're burning the candle from both ends at some point it's just not gonna work. So, John, take CrossFit out of it. This is not, you know, pro bias and pro CrossFit.

Do people work out too much or work out too hard in an effort to relieve their stress, but at the end of the day, they're actually creating more stress, which creates the inflammation

[00:12:52] Jonathan Hartman: rabbit hole. And here we go. So the short answer's gonna be yes. Yep. Because even though that 11 minute workout might not seem like a lot, cuz it's only 11 minutes. I wish it was seven. Should have been seven. Yeah. Seven minutes. But that's in addition to, yes. Every day you slowly, all right, I'm gonna go down a couple rabbit holes.

Let's do it because our big topics that I'm gonna talk about are all gonna go into. Food, water, oxygen, nutrition, because in terms of what are the things we can change, I can't change my personal stressors, but I can change what I put into my mouth. Yes. I can change how I breathe. I can change some of my sleep parameters.

Yep. But I can also scale back. Like there's days where my workouts are gonna be like, all right, I'm not hitting above 1 35, 1 40 on a heart rate, and I'm just gonna be lifting up a a hundred pound medicine ball and just flipping it backwards for 25 minutes because I only slept for X amount of hours. I didn't like what my aura ring told me.

And I've committed as a father and a husband. Yes. So I can't do everything that I want. Right. Do

[00:14:03] Sam Rhee: you think those devices like, or rings or whoop, can help people in terms of figuring out what to do that day workout wise?

[00:14:12] Jonathan Hartman: I, I, I think overall that it can, I mean, for me personally, like I've had it for. Since 2018 and it has been one of the most important accountability police officers that I've used.

Really? Yeah. Because like, not for nothing, but if I, I'm, I'm that guy who wants to break myself on Saturday morning, cuz that's, I look forward to that. I've, I've killed myself all week serving patience. I wanna get up at seven and I just want to break my body down. Yep. And then when I look at this and I say, Hmm, maybe I shouldn't because I'm gonna regret that.

And at least for me, seeing what my, how much my stress has impacted my physiology. Not just CrossFit training too, but just starting the company and, you know, I've worked, you know, to be transparent, I've worked like 18 hour days since March of 2020. Yeah. You know? So you work at, you work at more than anyone.

Yeah. So how much that has impacted my physiology, I can't take it away. But what I can change is the quality and the quantity of the food choices that I make. Uh, if I consume alcohol, if I consume coffee, if I consume stimulants that change my brain chemistry, I can control those things. And that's where I'm sure we're gonna go into.

Mm-hmm. Um, what I think of, if I can maybe just go on a little, let me go down like a little story to explain how I look at these chapters, and then we can talk about them. Mm-hmm. So if you take your left hand, you make a fist mm-hmm. And you take your right hand, you make a claw. Yeah. And then every day like this, you're slowly scratch, you're slowly scratching at the skin, and every day you slowly pick, pick, bother, bother, annoy, annoyed, destroy, destroy the tissue on that.

If you kept doing this for the next hour, what's gonna happen? It's gonna bleed. By the end of the week, you'll probably hit tendon. By the end of the year, you've hit well, you've hit bone and lost your hand clearly. But what if I told you you couldn't feel that and you didn't have pain receptors? Mm-hmm.

You're screwed. Yeah. You're absolutely screwed. But what's happening into the, the, the intestines? So if we want to go into maybe nutrition and stuff. Yeah. Yep. You slowly pick, pick, bother, bother, annoy, annoy, destroy, destroy the tissue on the lining of your gut every day, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks, and you don't feel it.

There's a, there's a chemical warfare that's happening and you're, we don't feel that, because the great architect said, we're not gonna put pain receptors down in the intestines. Cuz if you're gonna feel that every day, you're not gonna live very long with what that's gonna feel like. In my rabbit hole last night in prepping of what material I wanted to send you, there were some journal publications that I sent to you, uh, with regards to, uh, zonulin and intestinal permeability as serving to the, the biological door to cancer autoimmunity and disease.

And there's this big buzzword that's made, you know, tons of, you know, social media hype on leaky gut. And if you imagine like a microscopic hole puncher that's going around and just boring a couple holes into the lining of the gut or the small intestines. So what this researcher did, Dr. Ante, was they found that by studying cholera, that there's certain food proteins that behave like cholera with creating a cell signaling pathway into the tight junctions of the epithelial lining of the gut, that in that increase the release of a protein that opens up the junctions.

And for babies, that's really important because when they're latched on and breastfeeding with mom, Babies want to have a leaky gut because they get their immune system from mom, right? All those immunoglobulins are coming down crossing through the, the, uh, gut barrier so that they can form their immune system and it's supposed to stop.

But then we're one of the only mammals that continues to drink the milk of another animal, which is a story maybe on another episode. But you know, that barrier should be tight then. And then when we eat certain foods and the body says, man, I really wanna take in those nutrients. I'm gonna open up those doors so I can bring those protein, carbs, and fats into the body.

But through stuttering studying cholera, they found that there's other proteins in little, uh, constituents that can cause the same cascade of events that cholera does. It's just not as severe today. So it doesn't, it doesn't kill you today the way cholera would, but it still promotes the same. Uh, immune response on a slightly smaller scale.

And that's why I go back to this because if cholera is like this, like tenfold, but you're gonna do this breakfast, lunch, and dinner, there's certain components of this that can cause that.

[00:19:02] Sam Rhee: Well, what cholera does is open up the gut so that you lose water and die because you're just leaking water into your gut constantly.

So

[00:19:10] Jonathan Hartman: that's part of that. And then the other part is the immune system, so that the immune system can mount the response to whatever it's trying to attack and then flush the system outta the body. But unfortunately, you know, it's so concerned with doing that, that that ultimately leads right to dehydration and death.

But they're finding that there's other things that are also causing this. And it's interesting. We got five fingers, we got five reasons. We got foods, we got bugs, we got toxins, we got stressors, we got hormones. So if we have foods, bugs, toxins, stressors, and hormones, And I can't take credit for this cause this comes from one of my mentors, Dr.

Tom Colton, down in Texas. Like, which of these things do we want to ignore? None. Right? And if we find that these are mechanisms which they can promote, uh, le uh, intestinal permeability, that's why this journal publication was titled as This Biological Door to Cancer and Autoimmunity and Disease and how different foods which we can talk about different bugs, like different parasites and viral infections and bacteria, foods, bugs, toxins from the water we drink, the the chemicals that we put onto our body, uh, stressors that we talked about in the last episode with running from the bear and hormones.

All of these things are things that can affect the integrity of our physiology and our gut lining, which, Uh, is that the hallmark of, of autoimmune disease or, or dis disease or lack of health optimization? Can you

[00:20:42] Sam Rhee: gimme a quick example of each one that I probably am doing wrong? Like food?

[00:20:47] Jonathan Hartman: Sure, yeah. Like start with food.

Yeah. So with foods, for example, uh, there's like some real big commonalities within patients, uh, or just humans in general, right? Is, you know, like 50% of the population is actually lactose intolerant, like in the world. And, um, specifically to cow's milk. And you know, that's a protein where there's been literature, there's tons of evidence to support that children, uh, can, uh, you know, from autism spectrum disorders to type one diabetics, that they can have immune auto reactivity to tissue in the body from cow's milk,

[00:21:23] Sam Rhee: but they eat and drink cow's milk all the time.

Yeah. Like

[00:21:28] Jonathan Hartman: every day. Just all the time, every day. Like, geez,

[00:21:31] Sam Rhee: ice cream, right? Like,

[00:21:33] Jonathan Hartman: All day. Yogurt, you name it. So you're gonna, we're gonna go back to, is the plant wilting? Cuz every day you're slowly pick, pick, bother, bother, annoying, annoyed, destroy, destroy that tissue. So

[00:21:42] Sam Rhee: should kids not be drinking lacto any or ingesting lactose?

[00:21:48] Jonathan Hartman: So depending on the age of the kid, if like my daughter, we don't drink cow's milk. Like we drink goat, we drink sheep, we drink, uh, like, like gluten-free non cows milk. How about ice cream? Oatley o oat milk. Oh, based ice cream. Oh, that's the best thing you've ever, that's not bad. Yeah, not bad. That's the best thing you've ever had.

Mm-hmm. Um, but like, so gluten, dairy, corn, soy, if I had to make like a public service announcement, you can probably change the world end chronic disease. Right. Gluten, dairy, corn and soy. Boom. Done.

[00:22:20] David Syvertsen: Oh, I don't think I could give up corn or soy.

[00:22:22] Jonathan Hartman: Yeah. So when I ran my lab work and I found out like, uh, I don't eat, I do my absolute best to.

Avoid gluten at all costs. Mm-hmm. Because it's not fair for me to sit on my ivory tower and yell down at my patients, stop eating this shit. And then here I am having like pizza and donuts. Right. It's not gonna work well. So I ran my lab markers and I don't have any intentional exposure to gluten. I have done my best the last 15 years at like, like an apostle to eliminate that uhhuh.

So I had other things, like we would have these organic, non GMO corn chips, and then my wife would make this amazing homemade hummus, like life was pristine. Mm-hmm. Then I ran my blood work and I found out like I'm reactive to every freaking isotope glu of, uh, corn that it exists. Uhhuh like this sucks.

[00:23:03] Sam Rhee: Maybe that's why paleo works, because you basically eliminate all of those things with eliminate Yeah. And soy and gluten and milk and everything.

[00:23:14] Jonathan Hartman: Like, that's such a great foundation for health. So I ran my markers. I found out I'm, I'm not really reactive to gluten, but I am reactive to corn. I cut out corn.

I lost like, Like 10 pound, like nine or 10 pounds in less than two weeks. Hmm. And I didn't even change change. I was carrying so much inflammation and water retention. Mm. Just cuz I was not eating gluten, but I was substituting with other stuff that I didn't realize. Like, oh shit, there's this concept called molecular mimicry.

And the amino acid profile of some of these foods, gluten, dairy, corn, and soy mimic each other. Mm. So when you are staying away from one substituting for another, well, sorry pal. You're shit outta luck. You gotta remove 'em both.

[00:23:56] David Syvertsen: Are you gonna do that? I don't know every, every, you know, here's a question that someone like me would ask is my and my dad asked him this question, you know, Hey, if you really wanna get your neck better and prosper and, and fix this thing, we'll get treatment.

We'll talk, get an mri, which you got. He goes, but you're gonna have to change what you eat. And my dad doesn't eat unhealthy, but he's gluten. And what's the question my dad asked? He goes, well, you know, like, What about like at the weekends or something like that? I pick my nail up a little bit, you know?

Yeah. Like what, what if it's like once a day? Its like, and, and Hartman doesn't hesitate. He goes, no, out, done. Zero. Never again that, and we don't like hearing that because we're, so, it's our routine and what's what we're used to, and it's what we crave. And I think that if you want, and you have to be honest with yourself when you look in the mirror, like, do I really need to fix this issue?

Do I really want to, what dedication level do I have? And if that dedication level is as high as you think it might be, then yeah, you have to completely mix it. How about you personally about it? So gluten,

[00:24:58] Sam Rhee: all of it. Corn, soy,

[00:25:00] David Syvertsen: I mean, I don't milk eat that. I don't eat soy. I, I haven't done milk in a long time.

Um,

[00:25:06] Jonathan Hartman: so I'll, I'll also interject and, and say that when I ran pre-post markers on my lab work, I'll toot my horn and I'll let you know that my testosterone went up 250 points in two months. Just by removing those foods. Right. Just by removing those stressors. That's awesome. Um, and cuz when we go back to these, these funk med courses that I take and I pound on my chest a little bit because Dr.

Tom, in his like 25 years of teaching, I was able to boast and say like, he's in his fifties and he has an extremely high testosterone level, like, like just absolute unit of a guy. Mm-hmm. And my testosterone levels were higher than his As but as they should be. Yeah. Be, do not just based by age, but because I was so adamant about removing those triggers that were affecting like, eh, you know?

Right. Like plant is wilting right now. Right. And you go back to, or you go back to what you were asking, what's your why? Like this comes, how badly do you want this? And it is not fair for, like, for me, I live in a bit of an absolutist type environment because with the patients that I work with, I work with some patients that have some pretty nasty things.

Mm. You know, with like epileptic seizure disorders and, uh, Parkinson's and, you know, a host of different types of cognitive decline in neurodegeneration. These are absolutes, you know, there's, there's plenty of literature to support like a, like ataxia for example. Like there are subcategories of ataxia that are gluten induced, cerebellar ataxia.

Just last week I ran over this with a patient who's got a seizure disorder and is sure as shit. Sorry. It's okay. She has, uh, she has neurological autoimmunity to the kinji fibers in her cerebellum and to her, her cerebellum as a whole. And when you start realizing like the neuroanatomy about how these areas of the brain regulate autonomic function and her heart rate variability is in a tank, because if she, she's got a stressful job, she can't afford to derail from her diet because she has neurological autoimmunity where these things are, they're breaking tissue down.

Hmm. You know, the other person who's got, uh, a type, she's a type one diabetic. And when you show here's, here's how you're living, here's how this is affecting your immune system, when you do this, it causes X, it leads to Y and you're here for z. I can't fix this until you help me help you do that. And that has been, um, My greatest privilege to help people see that because that's improved my life.

That's improved. My wife when, if she's gonna listen to this, she, we went through hell when we first started dating. We went through over 60 rounds of neurofeedback. She went through all these sleep physiologists cuz sleep was like one of her biggest, she couldn't sleep. Mm-hmm. So they said, well, you can take 700 milligrams of, uh, Ativan or, um, some other antidepressant.

Mm-hmm. So basically we're gonna give you a frontal lobotomy. We're gonna spray those leaves green, and we're gonna just sedate you. Not my wife. That's not gonna work in this house. Mm-hmm. So what did we do? Foods, bugs, toxins, stressors and hormones. Here we were thinking that if we went through all this neurofeedback mechanisms that we'd be able to help with her sleep.

The plant was wilting. We didn't, we didn't go after that first, so we had to go back a little bit. We had to take a step back and find out. Oh, oh. These things are things that are causing some stress. Stress and inflammation. We're gonna have to work on those first. And you know, that cliche of pulling an arrow back and the further you pull it back, the further it's gonna project forward, gave us the opportunity for the two of us to dial it in and say there's some things that we need to make some, some lifestyle changes on.

And by the grace of God, we did that. That changed our trajectory. And then we were blessed to have a beautiful, healthy little girl. By doing what we do, we lowered and limited all of those different stressors on foods, bugs, toxin, stressors, and hormones had a child. And now we're trying to bring that child up to know that these are things that affect the plant.

Mm. And I don't mean to sound too extreme on that, but it comes from the foundation of being emphatically passionate about my pursuit of serving my patients. And that's my So, and you walk the walk. Yeah. I

[00:29:34] Sam Rhee: mean, personally I would say paleo has helped. I mean, and I think that maybe these are the reasons why being strict paleo makes me feel the way I do, because I am avoiding exactly those foods which you are saying are stressors.

Mm-hmm. Talk about the bugs then.

[00:29:52] Jonathan Hartman: What, what bugs? Yeah. So like bacteria, uh, uh, bacterial and viruses. I mean, they're really hard critters to find, but if we go into like, the importance of, uh, organic versus GMO foods, right. And how when you ha regular

[00:30:07] Sam Rhee: foods have bugs and viruses in them.

[00:30:10] Jonathan Hartman: Uh, yeah. Oh yeah.

Yeah. So if you think of like, uh, like strawberries or one of the, like, uh, you ever hear like the dirty dozen? No. So if you, uh, the ew uh, if you google like the dirty dozen, there's like the list of like the 12 most, uh, pesticide concentrated foods in the world. Ah, okay. Right. So when we use, when we grow, like conventional strawberries for example, they, they use, uh, agent orange, like back from like Vietnam, and they use that to basically kill everything in the dirt and it makes it inert.

Then they add mpk, right? Sodium, potassium, uh, calcium back into the, uh, I'm sorry, sodium phosphorus, potassium back into the soil. Nothing grows, and that's how they grow their strawberries.

[00:30:54] Sam Rhee: So GMO foods, organic vegetables and fruits. Mm-hmm. Anything else to

[00:31:01] Jonathan Hartman: help? Uh, With just, uh, the bugs. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that if we're just trying to make sure that we have like adequate food, uh, water quality, you know, we're trying to limit our exposure to, you know, estrogen disrupting compounds found in, well, that'll be toxins, right?

Uh, you know, plastics and stuff like that. Yeah. Plastics, that's gonna go back to toxins. I think that if we can eat as close to organic, so I shouldn't

[00:31:23] Sam Rhee: be drinking my water from this. This is okay

[00:31:26] Jonathan Hartman: though. BPA free, right? Yeah. Oh, okay. But, you know, but when it comes, when we go to toxins though, yeah. You know, and it's not to be critical of a water bottle.

Yeah. But sometimes, like, you know, those big, uh, Big five gallon bubblers. Yeah. You know, they're sprayed with estrogen disrupting compounds on the inside

[00:31:40] David Syvertsen: of the

[00:31:40] Sam Rhee: bottles. Oh. To make it more

[00:31:42] Jonathan Hartman: clean? Uh, yeah, they're like preservatives for water, but they're, they're, they're terrible for a hormone profile. So those

[00:31:49] Sam Rhee: big ones that you put in the water cooler and you, you put upside down.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:31:53] Jonathan Hartman: They're, they're sprayed with some nasty chemicals in there, but sometimes that water might sit in there in a factory for a year at 115 degrees and leach, all that stuff. All that stuff's leaching in, and then we're just gonna drink that. I see. And then there's a really good term that a woman who, uh, her name is Patricia l Lerner Lemur, she wrote a book called That Smarting Autism, and she trademarked a term called The Total Toxic Burden.

And the Total Toxic Burden is this cumulation of effects from. Total toxins, right? Food bugs, toxins, stressors, and hormones, and how much these things affect our, how do you get your water? Then we have a reverse osmosis filter in the house. Okay. Yeah. So maybe I'm neurotic, but maybe I just care a lot and, um, well, no, I,

[00:32:37] David Syvertsen: I actually like hearing it because like, he'll say these things and it's like, you know, I gotta fix some of my stuff.

Well, I'll like drink all

[00:32:42] Sam Rhee: my water from water bottles like this too. So I'm probably getting a crap load of estrogen, like compounds from

[00:32:48] Jonathan Hartman: them. When we, when we just think of like, what are ways that we can just make a. Slight change, you know, for how much money we might spend in six months of buying water bottles.

It's the same price of a reverse osmosis that you throw underneath the sink, and then as he drinks from the water bottle. But, but that's

[00:33:04] David Syvertsen: not, it's not to be Poland Spring is no longer a

[00:33:06] Jonathan Hartman: sponsor. It's, it's never to be, it's, it's never to be critical. It's like, listen, I make my own, I've had my own bad choices.

Like if I have a glass of bourbon, one, one drink of alcohol, I look at my ring and I say, shit, my heart rate variability is in the tank. My heart rate variability is in the tank, and I just lost a day of training now. Mm-hmm. So I gotta practice what I preach and I'm still human. If I fall from grace and I make a couple mistakes like that, and I, now I have to pick up the pieces and pick up where I left off.

I also want

[00:33:32] David Syvertsen: to interject in that Hartman, he, he teaches this way. He talks like this because at some point down the road you're gonna have some serious issues and we do feel like we're a relentless. You can't touch us when we're twenties, thirties, maybe even forties. But he sees, I think the credibility comes from what he sees on a day in, day out basis of what people are dealing with physically right now.

And that eventually leads to mentally and emotionally. How many of these things could have be prevented by where you get your water from, where you get your food from? In the moment? No one wants to hear, Hey guys, no more pizza donuts. You know, no more bagel Fridays. Brock would be, Brock would be very upset when we, when we start, stop eating the bagels.

I was about to say, that's a lot of gluten. I see that kid eat every day.

[00:34:16] Jonathan Hartman: But there's, there's alternatives though, right? Yeah, there's, there's different types of gluten-free bagels made from cassava

[00:34:21] David Syvertsen: flour, rice flour. Especially now, especially now. Here's a question my dad asked, and I know others have this question.

Why is this an issue now gluten and it wasn't

[00:34:28] Jonathan Hartman: 50 years ago? Yeah, so amazing question. You know, cuz when you go to Italy today, even if you have celiac disease, you can still have pasta and bread and baguettes and no problems. But the, the species of grain grown in different parts of the world is completely different.

And the grains that we grew 50 years ago in the United States, there are molecularly completely different than the the amino acid sequence that we have today. And the one, the, the species grown in the United States now, not just corn, but also, uh, gluten, uh, as well. And unfortunately gluten. So when you have, when you consume wheat, uh, barley and rye are two others.

So there's like this like, you know, triangle. If it's wheat, then it's barley and rye. And it's those three different grains in the United States are grown that have been found to be not only molecularly quite identical, but extremely abrasive and immune stimulating to the intestinal lining. And that when we talked about before, how that impacts, uh, these, these intestinal epithelial cells that increase what's called zonulin, that affects occludin, that opens up the tight junctions in the gut.

Do you want to expose yourself to that? Like to what your dad said, you know, I want to kick my heels up, but I wanna have a hot dog and a cheeseburger or something on Saturday. All right. And then what happens if it takes you until Thursday to kind of regroup from that? Mm-hmm. And that's just because you don't have autoimmune disease.

Right. And then maybe you're going out to dinner on a Friday. Okay, great. So you never have time to catch up and actually heal that. But now for us, if we're doing that three, four times a day, if we're not fasting, or if we have a big bolus of pasta or something, or whatever it is that's gonna be antigenic inflammatory, you're never gonna have time to recover from that.

And then you're wondering why, how you compound that over the next, like 5, 10, 15, 30 years, now all of a sudden your health is just falling apart. Mm-hmm. And you know, we have this chronic epidemic of, of obesity, heart disease, cancer, infertility, autism. There's so many things now that are affecting. You know, and I'm, I want to keep this just towards recovery for athletes and stuff too.

And then I go right into these rabbit holes because, no, I think

[00:36:48] Sam Rhee: about the same thing. I think about my kids and I think about the subtle changes that these could be affecting them Yeah. On a daily, monthly, weekly, yearly base basis. And if I can, like, like you said, on any given day, it's not something that's a huge issue, but over 10 or 15 years maybe that has affected my kids in some subtle way, which I'm robbing them of something.

And, and that's something that I, I think of, not so much for me, but for, for the ones who are especially a lot younger

[00:37:20] Jonathan Hartman: than me. Yeah. And like, and that's, that's a really admirable point to think on because I would, I do my best to try to take that approach with Neil and my daughter because I. Pretty much every female in my family has at least two to three autoimmune diseases.

It, it's, it's a, it's almost a guarantee that like, I'm in like the very small end of the genetic gene pool, so I have to be really mindful of those foods, bugs, toxins, stressors, and hormones. Because I don't consider that I, I don't feel that I have a lot of reserve. There's people that might be just a little bit more genetically gifted, that are a little bit more resilient and they can, they can take a couple more punches, right?

I don't want my daughter to express what she has the potential for and I'm not gonna wait for her to have that, to deplete her, to deplete

[00:38:08] Sam Rhee: her genetic reserve. Yeah. Early. Yeah. When she should be, keep keeping it for whatever other stressors she

[00:38:13] Jonathan Hartman: might be encountering. The things that we can't control, right?

If it's gonna be sleep and work stress and I can't change that, right? Well, what can we change? It's gonna come back to a lot of those, those, those triggers. How about hormones? Yeah. So poof. So you, we, we have it easy cuz we're men. We're very simple. We're simple. Okay. When it comes to women. Yeah. Right.

They're a tricky beast. Ooh. You know, really tricky beast. All right. I'm

[00:38:40] Sam Rhee: gonna listen very carefully

[00:38:41] Jonathan Hartman: here. So, but what happens to a young girl from the second that they get involved in, uh, they, they like to paint their nails. They'd like to color their hair. They, they have a cultural thing of, of shaving, and then they use shampoos and conditioners and things that they, they've called, uh, it's called lotion.

It's a chemical shit. Storm of lotion, constituents that, but if you ever use, so we have this app, it's called Think Dirty. Yeah. You download this app on your phone and you can scan. All of your household products Oh.

[00:39:17] Sam Rhee: And see what chemicals are in these

[00:39:19] Jonathan Hartman: products. Yeah. If you wanna, if you wanna throw some companies under the bus Yeah.

Just take like your shampoo, download, think dirty, and scan it. And you will see on a grading scale, the the, uh, the, the carcinogenic activity and all of the estrogen disrupting compounds and the parabens and all of these things that are found in like, what you would think would be like an earthy, crunchy soap.

Yeah. And it's like a nine outta 10, like 10 being bad and like zero being the best. Okay.

[00:39:47] Sam Rhee: And okay, you don't need shampoo, but what does your wife use? Shampoo

[00:39:50] Jonathan Hartman: boys? We have, she has this green bottle, it's like 30 bucks, but we try to use as, as many like organic compounds, Uhhuh. And she gets frustrated Right.

Cuz the chemicals and synthetics. Yeah. My wife's got a great head of hair. Yeah. She loves the chemicals and synthetics. Yeah. They make it, she it thick and full and feel nice. Right. Yeah. But she doesn't want. Expressing autoimmune disease and chronic illness and God putting that on her

[00:40:12] Sam Rhee: throat, how far down the rabbit hole can you go

[00:40:14] Jonathan Hartman: with this stuff?

You can, you can get really caught up in this. This is so

[00:40:17] Sam Rhee: difficult and impossible. Yeah. Just but overwhelming thinking about how to avoid all this stuff.

[00:40:21] Jonathan Hartman: It's like when I first, like when I go over lab work on stuff on this with patients. Yeah. They're like, It's like paralyzing. Yeah. And we gotta take a step back and say like, I'm gonna make one change today.

[00:40:31] David Syvertsen: I was gonna say, do, do you tell one change? You're not the kind of guy that's like, oh, you got to change your entire world. What's, what's the simplest thing you can do to at least

[00:40:38] Jonathan Hartman: get this ball rolling? Let's just be a little bit more present. Let's

[00:40:41] David Syvertsen: just like Kyle Rader has tell me, oh my gosh, we're gonna get yelled at again.

Why? Because Kelly and Christine give me too much crap for, I'm always talking about Kyle Rader on this podcast. I love Kyle. I know, but yeah, so whatever. And they should love Kyle too. But anyway, we, I, why are they jealous of Kyle? I was just with him. Thursday, our kids are at the playground and we're talking, we, and he has cut out gluten and he goes, that's the one thing, even more than like drinking, if he cuts out drinking for X amount of time.

Yeah. He feels the immediate difference. Yeah. And he goes, if you go off a bender at a business center or something like that, it takes four or five days before you actually feel like, all right, I'm back. Yeah. And that's an example. Instead of just, you know, changing the shampoo, downloading, dirty, the think dirty, think dirty, um, changing how they drink water in their house.

Let's just get, let's do the gluten first and once that becomes routine. Yeah. Because again, once you. Get used to it. It's no longer hard. Yeah. I, I think everyone needs to understand that. Yeah. If you are gonna go down the lane that John has Yeah. With him, his family. Yeah. It is hard initially, but it doesn't stay hard.

It's just adapting to a new routine. Yeah. You know, and I, so I think taking on one thing at a time like this can make this a lot less

[00:41:49] Jonathan Hartman: overwhelming. And, and this was no different CrossFit's no different. That's very true. Right. Like, this was, this was real hard when I first came in 2015, right? Mm-hmm.

Getting my ass kicked three, four days a week. Mm-hmm. Why was I getting crushed? Yeah. I probably wasn't really as good about this as I needed to be. Right. Because I could not recover. Right. So my training was affected from the choices that I was making, and it was hard. But not doing that to me, if I don't make those changes living like that, it's just a lot harder.

Mm-hmm. And these are lifestyle changes that I'm just literally. Spewing out over the last 15, 20 years. Just be more conscious if we can just be a little bit more present in in what we're doing. Just look at the fork and just make a choice. You're making a conscious choice at the end of the day, what you're putting into your body.

Yeah. When you're buying, like we get into the routine when we go to Whole Foods and we go get a groceries. Like we know, for example, we do our best. We shop on the perimeter. Of the building. Mm-hmm. Just shopping on the perimeter. On the perimeter because you know, pretty much everything outside on the perimeter has a shelf life.

Right. Whereas everything inside with a rose has a shelf life for, you know, a few years or something. Right? Mm. So just having those different things and resources that you're just slightly more aware of the decisions you're making already is a monumental shift. This is all

[00:43:14] Sam Rhee: expensive too, though. That's the problem.

You're

[00:43:16] Jonathan Hartman: paying a lot more for this stuff. Very true. But doctor's offices are really expensive and I would rather pay the farmer than the doctor. Mm. So, I, I, because I've get, cuz you know, combative with patients when they say, you know, this stuff is too expensive. Okay, well, can we make some ch can we make some choices here?

Because, you know, this person, for example, might spend, you know, However much money on certain resources that might not be advantageous to their health. So maybe they go out to eat, you know, two, three times a week and they have no problem spending 150 to $200 at a nice meal with their spouse. But if they AC actually allocated that towards eating a little bit cleaner at home, you know, I think that there's always some way that changes can be made.

And if they can't afford organic, then non-organic is still gonna be 10 times better than something boxed with a shelf life or something canned with a shelf life. Mm-hmm. You know, now there's resources with farmers markets where yeah, they can't consider themselves organic because of how much money it costs in licensing rights, but when the farmer tells you we don't use pesticides, fungoides, herbicides, insecticides, and we responsibly grow all of our own produce, I don't care that it doesn't say organic now.

So I can still, uh, I can still live that way and on a budget. Mm-hmm.

[00:44:37] David Syvertsen: Let's go into the last part of this. When, when it comes to inflammation and what we can do, it's another book that you read, um, one that you sent me. Um, just some, some cliff notes on, and it's sleep and it's something that, it's probably one of the very few things that each of us do every single day.

Yeah. And a lot of us don't do enough of it. And I can come up with every excuse under the sun, but at the end of the day, are you doing everything? Get away from our things set up ideally for you and go back towards are you doing everything you can control at a higher level that can get you more at a, that can get you to get more outta sleep.

What are your opening thoughts on someone that has chronic inflammation issues, health issues, can't recover, and they start asking you about sleep. Hey, what should I be doing? How many hours should I sleep? I mean, how many times do you get that right? And I know there's not a template answer, but what, what, what rabbit hole do you go down initially with when it comes to sleep?

[00:45:36] Jonathan Hartman: This is like one of my hardest topics because I, I am afflicted with like chronic sleep deprivation from work and just being a young dad and Yep. You know, I know you were there through residency school. Yeah. It's the worst kids and I'm, I'm a work in progress. Mm-hmm. You know, I know that there's, I can't, this is a, a, a bear that I can't, I have tried and I, I'm, I'm trying.

Mm-hmm. And um, you know, so I'm halfway through, uh, uh, Matthew Walker's book and, uh, you know, from what I've gotten from it so far, like. Sleep deprivation very well might be one of the most chronic killers, uh, that we have. And there's a reason why I believe it. Sleep deprivation is, is still used for, for a form a means of portrait.

Absolutely. Yeah. Like you can go crazy and if you track your, oh, if we go back, I haven't measured my testosterone, uh, since I started the office cuz I can't imagine how much it's depleted my reserves and it's a variable that I, I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying to be better and uh, you know, trying to catch up on the weekends, any tricks.

I'm all ears. Okay. All

[00:46:55] David Syvertsen: ears. Let's talk about a couple things. Well, I'll ask you from someone that's not on your level of, um, just research and knowledge. I feel that I sleep much better when the room's a little bit colder and as dark as possible. Those are totally, and the other part of it, which we are getting better, we just started doing this with our son and we can actually see a difference because we're reaching for everything right now is no tablets before bed.

[00:47:17] Jonathan Hartman: Yeah. We, so yeah, those are, those are good talking points. Um, we, about an hour and a half, like millet gets no screen time. Mm-hmm. We go into the nursery, we read books, we play horsey, we play with our dolls. Hour and a half non-negotiable. Mm-hmm. TV's off no tablets. Uh, we have blackout curtains in the window.

Yes. Like we are us too. Yeah. We have these like Velcro curtain, like a. Things that have adhered onto the window that's behind the blackout curtain. So nothing comes in. Yeah, nothing comes in. And what's his name? Wrote a uh, Uh, Huberman actually had Yeah. An episode on how children exposed to light, like night lights, increases their risk of, uh, adhd, right?

Yeah, yeah. Neurodevelopmental disorders and I think attention deficit disorders. Yeah. And, um, which was, I thought was really an intr interesting. And, um, you know, but I think in, in why we sleep, I think they found like 62, 63 degrees was like the optimal sleep tempera temperature. Um, so colder room, complete darkness.

Uh, we personally, we use a weighted blanket. Mm-hmm. You ever use a weighted blanket? Uh,

[00:48:27] Sam Rhee: I've tried it. I'm not a fan. No, no. I

[00:48:30] David Syvertsen: feel very suffocated. I I love that friend.

[00:48:33] Sam Rhee: I need my feet to feel free for whatever reason. I don't

[00:48:36] Jonathan Hartman: know why. No. Yeah. I mean, just for us, like I have a 30 pound weighted blanket that, oh my God.

I swear by that. Like, I, we have our routine now between like cold. Weighted blanket. Mm-hmm. Uh, blackout curtains. Mm-hmm. And then honestly, we go back to like foods. Mm-hmm. Like nothing insulin spiking within two hours before bed. Like you mean sugar, alcohol, sugar, a car, carbohydrate. Ah. Like really anything that would create an insulin spike.

Because what that does to the, uh, the cortisol awakening response mm-hmm. Is that when you start to spike insulin from some type of snack or like, we're guilty of having, you know, like treats before a bed. Mm-hmm. If that causes an insulin surge that disrupts the cor cortisol response, that should not be happening until late in your sleep cycle or really early in the morning, which would be helping you wake up.

So then when you become what's called like a reactive hypoglycemic, when you start to wake up in the middle of the night, or even worse, you're spinning your wheels and you're wide awake late at night, and then you're dead tired in the morning. That insulin, cortisol interaction is usually. Affected from some type of, uh, carbohydrate sugar intake.

Mm-hmm. So those are, those are a few things that, that have worked for us. Have you ever tried melatonin? Um, I have, uh, I don't think, I think the, the research is kind of like 50 50 where if, if you're taking melatonin, I, I think, and I don't remember this from memory, but I, I don't know if that affects your, your body's natural metabolism and production of melatonin, if you remember, did something on that as well.

So is that the case though? Yes. He says yes. Yeah. So, uh, whereas like zinc, magnesium, boron, calcium. Mm-hmm. Like, there's some like trace minerals that you can take. Mm-hmm. Uh, there's something called com plus calcium, like from nature's calm, uh, little, little powder tincture you can do. And that has a couple micronutrients that could really help.

Mm-hmm. Uh, I haven't messed around with melatonin. Um, I try to, if I can get it from, from food, I'll do that first. And if I can do a top off with, uh, something like nature's calm, that's what's been helpful. Yeah. A

[00:50:47] Sam Rhee: lot of CrossFit athletes are pushing a lot

[00:50:49] David Syvertsen: of sleep aids these days. Yeah. What are, what's your a opinion on napping?

Right. Uh, for someone like, I, I have nights where I, I'll get four to five hours at night and I justify it that I have an hour or two nap in the middle of the day. And those naps are very hit or miss. Sometimes you can't fall asleep in the middle of the day. Something comes up. Do, do, can naps make up for a shortcoming of sleep at night?

[00:51:13] Jonathan Hartman: So I think according to Matt Walker's book, I think the short answer is yes, but that's not a good long-term alternative. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. Like sleep deprivation and hitting, you know, Yeah, like shift work. If you're working a grade graveyard shift and you're working 11 to seven and then you're gonna go to sleep from seven to 10 and you're gonna get a nap somewhere, that's not really good long term.

I think that that's a great

help aid. Better than nothing. Better than nothing. Yeah. Better than nothing. But I don't

[00:51:47] David Syvertsen: So there is some point to it just not as much value as people think. Yeah. I,

[00:51:50] Sam Rhee: I remember looking at it cuz I was doing that and I, I still have major sleep issues and

[00:51:55] David Syvertsen: the quality of

[00:51:56] Sam Rhee: sleep during the day is just not as good.

Cuz you, you have that like deep sleep. Yes. You don't get like your rem sleep, all the, the different stages of sleep that you tend to go through when you're sleeping at night and you're not going through that in your naps. It's just, it's very light quality sleep. Right. So it, it's not that restorative sleep that they keep talking about

[00:52:14] Jonathan Hartman: that you're really enjoy.

That's a huge Yeah. Restorative sleep. Is really hard to get in such a short timeframe and not, you know, not for nothing but your immune system like the, the glial system in the brain. You have the glymphatic system in the brain. That's the brain's natural immune recycling. It's trying to clean up all the cellular debris from all the metabolic activity that you did throughout the day.

And if you deprive yourself of that, you're not gonna get that in that one hour, two hour nap. And um,

[00:52:43] David Syvertsen: it's funny, when I was, I, I had a little stomach bug a few weeks ago. Um, I don't even know when this was. This was, um, in May, so it was a couple months ago. And Brock also got it right before. So he had it, then I had it.

And the combination of him being sick and me being sick at the same time. We got to a point where we were just like, I'm gonna bed at seven 30. Like literally that. That was it. And we would wake up at six in the morning, seven in the morning the next day and like felt like a million bucks. Like I was on a P E D, like performance enhancing drug type.

And here's a question that you'll get from a lot of people because in the reset challenge, what's one of the reset challenges is that I think we say you had sleep seven hours. Yeah. But we put a little asterisk in there, right? Like for a 24 hour period. Right, right.

[00:53:30] Sam Rhee: And, and it wasn't actually sleep. It was like kind of like, go to bed, go to bed, and then wake, get outta bed.

[00:53:35] David Syvertsen: Like so, and I'm looking back on it and again, should we change this? Maybe we should. I mean, I think conversations like this that challenge you and make you think a little uncomfortable are good for all of us. That no, it needs to be done straight through at night. And oh well my schedule is X, Y, and Z.

And I can use that argument too. I coach you coach the 5:00 AM on Wednesdays. Yeah. What does that mean? And the hard ass in me says, get to bed earlier. Yeah. And I've proven that I can do it. And I've even told Ash, I was like, Hey, when Brock finally goes down, sometimes we should be eating dinner before he goes down.

Cause a lot of times our routine is we eat dinner after, after, yeah. 8 30, 9 o'clock and then we go to bed. Oof. Right. And you know, we've been like that for a long time. Even before Brock, we used to eat dinner. Remember? Remember our classes used to go to nine 15 at night. Yeah. So we'd, someone would get home at 9 45, then we'd eat dinner.

Wow. And we did that for years. When? When? Like the early days of bison. Mm-hmm. And you know, you learn more. Listen to Hartman, right? Mm-hmm. You know, make yourself vulnerable, be humble about it and be like, you know what, maybe I do need to change something up. And I've made a strong effort, not as consistent, not as consistent as I want it to be, but I'd say multiple nights per week where.

I'm in bed way before like eight 30. Mm-hmm. Nine o'clock. Mm-hmm. Last night John texted me at 8 45. You were asleep out cold by then, right. And I do, I wake up, I feel better right away. And I feel the worst nights are, and when I do have even a drink at night and I know I shouldn't and sometimes I, I need to come down from a stressful day or something, but even when I'm drinking it, I'm like, I shouldn't be doing this.

And there's probably some addiction factors there. Um, where you more psychologic than psychological physiologic. Yep. And I. These, uh, the nights of sleep, they're not good. And it's, you feel it right away in the morning. And so my response to someone that says, no, Dave, I can't sleep seven hours at night because of X, Y, and z I, I think a lot of us can't do this.

Get to bed earlier. I, it's

[00:55:31] Sam Rhee: so funny cuz there's that whoop group of probably like 10 of us that are all together. So you get to see how people sleep. And their

[00:55:37] David Syvertsen: heart rate variability is, I've been told by that whoop group that you're always last place sleep. I'm the, and I

[00:55:43] Sam Rhee: really wanna bring in a couple of these people and be like, how the f are you sleeping eight hours or nine hours every night?

And your heart rate variability is like one 30 and mine is like 37. Yeah. Yeah. And, but it's funny because you can see the young ones, like they have awesome sleep during the week and then in the weekend it's like two hours their heart rate variability goes in back me it's like, Crappy during the week.

Yeah. And then it gets better during the weekend. Yep. But yes, I wanna bring in some of these guys and be like, how the heck are you guys doing so

[00:56:13] David Syvertsen: well? Like, I think we should do more of that. Like, I really do think we should have more conversations like this. And maybe, maybe you think that I've just always felt this routine growing up.

Like, no, you eat dinner than you watch TV for two, three hours. I watch the Yankee game. Mm-hmm. Like I think about the Yankees all day and I get to watch 'em and I'm up till 10 40. Oh, it's an extra innings. Like it's gonna go 1130. Why are these commercial breaks so long? It's 12 o'clock now. Monday night football.

Like, I almost watch all of them. And you know, with technology now, like TV to me is no longer an excuse. Like you can stream anything. Mm-hmm. You can watch anything at any time. Like I, I do that now with football games during the fall that I wanna watch. I'll DVR it and I'll just watch it in the morning and fast.

Can watch a game in a half hour. Mm-hmm. And these are things that I think. You know, we talk about being proactive to fix some of these issues, right? Like John has a certain way of getting water in his house. Mm-hmm. Um, look into goat's milk instead of cow's milk. And if again, you can get overwhelmed by this stuff and sleep is really hard.

But I do think that we need to go into these thing processes and be like, what is one thing I can do to make it a little bit better? Personally? I'm gonna stop

[00:57:18] Sam Rhee: the screen time before I go to bed. That's a bad one.

[00:57:20] David Syvertsen: Yeah. Like the phone. Yeah. Really

[00:57:22] Jonathan Hartman: bad. Does light tell you time in bed versus time of sleep?

Yes. Yeah, my ring. I was about to ask you guys about that keeps me honest cuz I can be in bed eight hours, but I can also. Take a conference and stream it from my iPad. Yeah. And then next thing you know, I lost two hours, or I'm death scrolling on social media. My sleep efficiency

[00:57:41] David Syvertsen: is horrific. Have you ever had a night where you're like, oh, I was sleeping for eight hours, and then it says five?

Yep.

[00:57:46] Sam Rhee: I do that every night. That's, that's a big reason why my numbers are the crappiest

[00:57:50] David Syvertsen: advice. Is that, is that, is that completely accurate? You think, you know, I have two, like, like weren't actually awake for three of those hours. Right. You know what? My

[00:57:57] Sam Rhee: whoop is the worst. It always gives me the worst score.

I have a, a watch. Yeah. And it's a little bit better. Okay. But to be honest, and I'll just, because listen, there are people out there at the gym who are getting legit eight hours sleep. Right, right. Like according to the whoop. Yeah. So if they can, I should be able to. Yeah. I don't know why. Hmm. Um, I, I have a couple of suspicions.

I I'm working on it

[00:58:17] David Syvertsen: too. I'm just working on it. Yeah. No, I like hearing that and I, I think it's, you guys are also on a lesser scale, making yourself very vulnerable and you know, I know John, you get a little uncomfortable. Like you don't want to tell people to do something you're not doing. Yeah. You know, it's tough.

I, I get that, but I still think you have so much credibility and like all coaches should feel this way. Like, hey, if I don't have muscle up, like I should still be able to tell people this is how you get a muscle up. Like, you know, I. I think your intentions are more important in some cases than the actual what's going on in your life, right?

You're not, yeah. You are as busy as anyone I've ever met in my entire life. If you sleep six hours instead of eight, like no one can look down on you and I'm still gonna listen to you tell me that I need to get

[00:58:58] Jonathan Hartman: eight. Yeah. And if I can just interject and say, I will try to fortify and supplement that sleep deprivation with, yeah.

Any other variables. Right? It's now, like recently, what I've done since February is I cut out coffee, right? Mm-hmm. Interesting. Oh wow. Yeah. So I, but there's some benefits to coffee actually. You, yes. There's plenty of benefits to coffee, but I find that with my sleep deprivation, When I have coffee, I'm too dependent and I get way too anxious.

Ah. And like when my daughter was born and I started the office, I, I shit you not, I was drinking three pots of coffee a day. Oh, that's a little too much. I'd have my third pot of coffee at six o'clock at night cuz I knew that I'd be done with my next patients for the next couple hours. Mm-hmm. And then I'd be downstairs till three o'clock in the morning.

Cause I was learning how to do all the billing, the accounting, and all that crap myself. Mm-hmm. And then we think about cortisol, stress hormones. Mm-hmm. How much that's impacting my physiology. And then here I am telling my patients, you gotta remove all the triggers. You gotta remove all the triggers. So then now my commitment, Jen and I, every February and March for the last few years, we go through this program where we go real strict.

And then now I just try to ride that out as long as I can. So I cut my caffeine intake down by 90 something percent and I, I talked with, uh, like Dan Greenberg about this, cuz you know, I don't, I'm pretty sure he doesn't drink coffee too. And, um, you know, but we found some of these mushroom powders and stuff that, mushroom powders.

Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, om I think is what it's called, but it's like a, it's an alternative. I like the, the cultural, you know, in terms of like the, the psychological addiction to coffee is, I like that hot cup of something or, mm. My wife and my daughter are asleep still. I can just, yeah, get myself set. You assess you up 15 minutes to set the tone of the day, but then I don't want the jitters.

Mm. So, I try to do this mushroom coffee as an alternative instead. Does it taste good? No. Okay, then. No, this is awful. But it's just something like, but I feel to me like taste is like way on the bottom of the list of priorities for me personally, because I care about how I feel. I care about economic environment and environmental impact.

Mm. And for me, that thing is like lower on the totem

[01:01:04] Sam Rhee: pole from, there's no way I'm gonna

[01:01:05] David Syvertsen: get Susan to try mushroom

[01:01:06] Jonathan Hartman: coffee. I'm so sorry. So no. But now there's other things. You ever hear a s WP coffee? No. Swiss water processed coffee.

[01:01:14] David Syvertsen: Dude, we're going

[01:01:15] Sam Rhee: so far down the rabbit hole. This is crazy.

[01:01:17] Jonathan Hartman: So s WP coffee, Swiss water process.

So like you have like, you can have coffee, but there's certain coffees that are actually extremely contaminated with gluten. Oh. So if you have someone who has a, a, a neurological autoimmune or some type of chronic underlying autoimmune disorder, that cup of coffee that they might have at seven o'clock and maybe at the two o'clock push after they had their massive, like Italian sandwich mm-hmm.

That's disrupting the integrity of the gut barrier. Mm-hmm. So if there's coffees that can be contaminated with gluten, that's, that's kind of a hard pass. So then you try to find organic Oh, great. You're making conscious efforts and, you know, you keep going down this rabbit hole. Caffeine is a stimulant. I don't do too well on personally.

Swiss water processed coffee. Uh, if I back up, you know how they na uh, they de how they, uh, decaffeinate coffee. Yeah. Yep. It's pretty nasty. Yeah. What do they use? Chlorine?

[01:02:12] Sam Rhee: Yeah. Some kind of chemical to, uh, it's a pretty hard process.

[01:02:15] Jonathan Hartman: It's like a bleach type of, uh, process. It's a, it's a pretty aggressive process and we talk about like foods, bugs, toxin stressors and hormones.

That stuff might not be the best for us. Swiss water process uses. Cold filtered water at ultra high pressure to naturally decaffeinate the coffee so you can get like a 95, 90 7% naturally decoff, decaffeinated coffee bean. That doesn't give you the jitters and it's organic as it, they're organic and they're great alternatives.

And, um, you know, when it comes to like affordability, well if I, if that's like 15 bucks a pound, but, you know, going to the coffee shop and that's like $5 every morning on my latte or something. I'm just changing my priorities. So that can still be affordable and, uh, that tastes a lot better than mushroom coffee, you know, so.

[01:03:06] David Syvertsen: All right. Well that, that was a, a great kind of like all-encompassing. Inflammation podcasts that I feel like we could all look at it from either nutrition, sleep, stress, all of the above. And like we said, don't get overwhelmed. Can you make a change? And, and can you evaluate that change and then eventually become something that's just feels more natural?

Can you go to the next level of changes? Right? Um, but I do want to encourage a lot of you guys that are chronically complaining about an injury or not feeling good when you come to the gym or you're just not getting the results out of your fitness routine that you think you should be getting. Because you come all the time and you work really hard and you're sweating and you're on the ground being dramatic after work workout.

And that's admirable cuz you're putting a lot of effort into it. And a lot of people don't do that. You do deserve credit, but if you still feel like there's something else that you need out of your fitness routine for the, your results and you can't just come back to the gym and do another workout, these are, these are things that are probably what are preventing you from getting to what your goals are in, in one way or another.

So any closing thoughts, Sam? And then we'll let John wrap it up with just what, what, what we just talked about for the past hour on inflammation and all encompassing process. It's never one answer, um, but what can you do?

[01:04:23] Sam Rhee: Yeah, my head's spinning cuz I, there's a lot to think about. I probably actually will listen to it maybe once or twice just to think of some things that I might want to incorporate in my life.

Reset challenge I think is actually really helpful for some of these things because it's a good time to sort of get rid of some of these issues. Mm-hmm. At, you know, during that time. Like you said, you do that with Jen, like what, February, March. We do it at the gym in January. I think. Um, I'm gonna approach the next reset challenge and I might actually do some of these things before that, but then I'm also gonna put a big effort in during reset to sort of really.

See what I can do to, to, to make some better changes, uh, with some

[01:05:05] Jonathan Hartman: of these things. Yeah. I, I look at it as like a challenge and, you know, cutting out coffee, that's really challenging. That's really hard. Yeah. Real super hard. Right? Especially when you're, you're grinding 18 hour days and you're getting shit sleep.

Mm. And then you start to realize like, wow, I might not need that stimulant as much as I thought I did. And then you can create some level of independence because you're realizing that, okay, if I can't sleep set eight hours, but I'm gonna make those six hours count how much those stimulants might affect the, the depthness of your sleep.

Mm-hmm. Or like, there's times when my sleep efficiency is like above, excuse me, 90% and I can still get it in, but I've only learned that from. Trying to remove some of those, those triggers and those stimulants. And, you know, with some of my closing thought, your shirt resonated well with me about mandating exercise.

Mm. Rob Orlando, I, I think that that's such a, that should be the, that should be the prescription for everybody. And when you're talking about like some of the pa uh, some of the clients here at the gym that might be struggling with, um, some aspects of recovery, I would have them critically challenge themselves.

Look yourself in the mirror and say, are you sleeping as hard as you train? Are you eating as clean and as hard as you train? Are you, are you addressing those, those pillars to keep that body functioning well? It's great that you're training, that's fantastic that you're here and you showed up, but that might be the easiest thing that that person does because, What they're putting into their body or exposing themselves to might take a little bit of effort.

And I think that if they look at that challenge of, of training as they would approach their nutrition and sleep and stress management, I think that you can just build a really resilient person.

[01:07:02] David Syvertsen: Yeah. I mean, I, I've been asked a lot over the past few weeks, how's training going? We have our qualifiers coming up in seven weeks.

Mm-hmm. That's been my goal since December, when, when I got hurt, was to be ready for those legends. And I've been saying like, my training is going well. I feel I'm doing things, I'm hitting weights and hitting movements, but my recovery is garbage. Like after a workout or two, I just don't feel like I can bounce back.

And to me, that's what fitness is. In sport. You have to, four days in a row, you gotta be a hundred percent. And I think I need to take a longer, harder look at some of these factors that are kind of good but not good enough. Rather than just saying, oh, I'll just, you know, it's just gonna take another six weeks to magically recover better.

You know, there needs to be changes that are made, you know, so Thank you, John. That was awesome. You crushed it on these two episodes. Um, you know, I'm sure we'll have you on again at some point down the road because I know there's a lot of topics that I think you could just give a really unique perspective on.

So we look forward to having you back someday. Man,

[01:07:55] Jonathan Hartman: I can't thank you enough. It's a privilege. Thanks guys. I appreciate it. Right. Our new

[01:07:58] David Syvertsen: business, our new business neighbor. See you guys. Peace.