YOU’LL NEVER FIX YOUR SLEEP UNTIL YOU FIX THE CAUSE

Sleep As The Top Biohack

Dr Pompa 0:00

What's the most powerful biohack that we can do as humans? Oh, I've even put it this way on one of my Instagrams. What's the most powerful drug on the planet? Same answer. Sleep. If you don't sleep well, oh, you might sleep through the night. Maybe not. But even if you do, if you're not getting deep recovery sleep, then life will not be good. Yeah, fatigue. Yes, it leads to more brain fog. Yes, it leads to more aches and pains, gut problems, everything, autoimmune, thyroid conditions, all of it, yes, can be made worse or even caused by poor sleep continually. Look, when people do interviews and studies on sleep, unfortunately in America, most people don't sleep well. Even the people who would claim sleep through the night, they realize aren't getting good deep recovery sleep. Well, in this podcast, I want to shed some light on it. I want to bring you the things that most people aren't talking about. I want to give you some solutions. I want to talk about the upstream, the big cause of factors of sleep that most people listening have not thought about. But also, like some other podcasts, I have my team that has fielded a lot of your questions about sleep because I've touched on it in obviously other podcasts, but also in Instagram. So we have a lot of questions that you asked too. So I think most of you listening want to know what I can do about it, right? And you don't care to know that sleep, um, you know, how it affects your hormones, how it affects your health in general. I think most people trust, at least that's what we heard, trust in the fact that they know that sleep is very, very important for uh for health. And when they don't have it, they don't feel as well. Okay, you know, that said, um, I think that there needs to be a little um bit of clarity.

Oura And Whoop For Feedback

Dr Pompa 2:01

Right now, I think what's really popular are a lot of the um sleep um ways of measuring sleep. The aura ring is a good one, right? And um the whoop um is another one. And I'm sure there's other devices out there. Uh so that said, let's start there because one of the questions is do those devices work? And is it worth getting one of those devices? I say yes, they do work. The technology has gotten much better from when it first started. But here's what I like about it, and here's maybe what I don't like about them. What I like about them, it allows people to see what kind of night's sleep they had. Meaning, oh wow, you know, my score was a 60, 100's the best. Okay, that's one example. But I thought I slept so good, but you got very little, if any, deep sleep. My gosh, I only got, you know, 20 minutes of deep sleep. You know, that's not good, right? So the thing I love about the app that it shows you something you don't know, but also it shows you some areas of causation and things that you can change. Let me give you one example eating right before bed. Many people eat before bed and it massively disrupts their sleep. Now, I could tell you don't eat before right before bed. And you'd say, yeah, but I think I sleep better if I eat before bed. Um, and I don't know that it disrupts my sleep because I sleep through the night anyway, and I feel good. Yeah, but when you have one of these uh aura rings or something like that, you can see that eating before bed, you're not getting into deep sleep. Your heart rate's up, your HRV, as and these are things that these types of uh devices actually measure, um, is inverted in the wrong direction. So then what do you do? You go a night where you don't eat before bed and you see a dramatic difference. That's one example. I just did a video uh on Instagram talking about there was a new study showing exercising before four hours before bed is devastating to your night's sleep. Now, again, if you have a device that measures it, you could easily see that because you would see like, why is my heart rate elevated, you know, for the first two hours of the night when that's where it's really important to get you know your deep sleep. Well, it's because you exercise. So then you go a night without exercise and you see a dramatic difference. You get my point, is that you're able to actually see something. So therefore, now you believe. And if you believe, you will change. Okay. And I could even talk about um, you know, other things like taking hot showers, cold showers, even cold plunges, because some people do cold plunges that day. And I say, one of the ways is how did you sleep that night? I slept fine. Well, see, if you have an aura ring uh or one of these devices, you do a cold plunge for three minutes and you realize, oh my gosh, I felt amazing after I did that cold plunge, but it really crushed my deep sleep. That means you didn't adapt to the cold plunge. And what could have been good was bad because you did too cold, you did it too long. The premises hormesis. I talk all about that. Now, that could be even a sauna. That could be a lot of different things. So, yes, I love these sleep devices. Top of the show. If you don't have one, maybe you get one because it will change your behavior, and that's how we're gonna change the night's sleep.

Peptides For Sleep And The Catch

Dr Pompa 5:35

Okay, let's talk about some of the common questions that many people have. What about peptides for sleep? Because peptides is such a hot uh topic. One is called DISP, um, and it's a deep inducing sleep peptide. And um I I think that it's fun. Uh, I think that it can work, but it's a very expensive way to sleep. And like I say, of all peptides, if you're not upstream to the cause of why you're not sleeping good, don't waste your money on the peptide because absolutely probably would be more of a waste of money. Okay, so also let's talk about what you can do right now.

Light And Screens Before Bed

Dr Pompa 6:16

Sleeping um more in the dark. It doesn't, some people will say pitch black, but I don't believe our ancestors slept in pitch black. But artificial light in the room, not good. Start there. Get rid of all artificial light. It could be coming in something, you know, something you have plugged in. It could be um a clock, many things. Artificial light, not good. Okay, that that that's a big one. That's not a small one. Looking at your phone right before bed, not good. If you're going to do that, put it on nightshade. Go into your uh go go into settings and then go into your um generals, and then it you'll see that under um screen that you can actually put it on nightshade. And what that means is it takes the blue light out, and therefore you're not looking at blue light. Blue light from phones or TVs or any uh computer screens uh disrupts your production of melatonin, and that's something that you need to go into normal deep sleep. So you don't want blue light before bed. All right, blue light in the day, different story. Put it on night shift and avoid any uh screens before bed is a big deal. Also, what kind of lights do you have in your room? I've done videos on this as well. Red or amber lights before bed, absolutely what you want, because even regular lights, uh light bulbs are heavy in the blue lights. So be careful with that before bed. So if you went into my room, um, I have all amber type of lights. There are there's a company, I think it's healthylighting.com. Um, by the way, if you would look at all of our lights in our house, that same company um has full spectrum bulbs and uh basically bulbs that mimic outside light. So in the daytime or like early evening, we'll use um those healthy bulbs, but they have all they have red lights, they have all of the spectrums that you need before bed, during the day. So uh get good lights. Okay, so here's one that I want to talk about because uh I suffered with this myself. Um,

Neurotoxins As Upstream Sleep Drivers

Dr Pompa 8:24

I would sometimes not be able to fall asleep. This is when I was sick and challenged because I was neurotoxic. I had very high mercury levels. Um, I was also in a low-grade moldy home at the time. So when you look upstream to why most people can't sleep, it's typically a neurotoxic issue. There's different solutions for not being able to sleep, but oftentimes I would solve those by taking some high dose melatonin, 5 HTP. It would put me to sleep.

Waking At 2 To 4 A.M.

Dr Pompa 8:53

But then the issue became I would wake up sometime between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. and I just couldn't get back to sleep. The Chinese call that liver time. I have some different solutions for that. When that happens, um, it could be that your cortisol rises. And there's a reason for that, and I'll talk about that in a minute. But there's a product from a company called Interplexus, find it online. It's called Seraphos. One to four of those pills, so you can see the dose is different. Um, if you wake up, can taper down that cortisol and allow you to get back to sleep. Now, the reason the Chinese call that liver time is because you dump bile between 2 and 4 a.m. Bile is what your liver produces, but it holds toxins. And when you dump it, that toxic load, that was what was happening to me, will spike the cortisol. So another technique is to take some binders uh when you wake up in the middle of the night. I've created many binders in my day, one called bind, another called gut clear. Um just taking carbon, it's limited because it's only one type of binder. I like binders that have many different types. Uh and there's things called benonite clay or calcium morolite. I mean, there's a lot of different binders that can be used. But um by taking these binders in the middle of the night, these gut binders, it will bind up that toxic biocomplex and then it allows you to fall back to sleep because the cortisol then will come down naturally. So, two different strategies if you wake up in the middle of the night. Ultimately, I believe you have to get rid of the cause, meaning what neurotoxic cause you know is causing you to wake up at two or four in the

Mold Mercury And Mouth Infections

Dr Pompa 10:40

morning. Many times it's people living in a moldy home, unknowing to them, low-grade mold will cause sleep disruptions. It really causes cortisol to pop at weird times. A lot of those people can't get to sleep either, but even if they do, they'll wake up in the middle of the night. So, um, and again, I've done a lot of different podcasts uh on this topic because I teach a lot on this topic. A lot of people have hidden infections in their mouth. Uh, you'll see a lot of dental uh me interviewing dentists. A lot of that, these hidden infections, which we call cavitations, can cause sleep disruption. Mercury, that was my deal. I had a lot of mercury in my pituitary hypothalamus in the pineal gland. Uh, mercury literally finds its way into those parts of the brain. Well, they control your hormones, they control your melatonin in the pineal gland, they control your uh circadian rhythm, they control your cortisol, right? So that area of the brain is the control tower for all of that. When that has a lot of mercury in it or aluminum or other heavy metals that end up going into those parts of the brain, which studies show that it does, then guess what? Nothing works. You could do all these things for your sleep. You will not get to sleep, or you will not sleep solid, or even if you do sleep through the night, you wake up wiped out because you have an upstream issue. So again, this isn't the episode for me to walk through how to know if you have mold or mercury, et cetera. I've done other shows on that, find them, and even more importantly, how to get it out safely. I've taught cellular detox for many, many years. This is what I do. Um, and I I believe my Instagram bio, I've done um many, many different teachings on that, or at least they connected one or two different teachings on that. If you go to Pompa program, uh there's some other different teachings on that, uh, on all of those topics. So I think when we're looking at sleep, I think the alternative health space really is missing the big cause. And that is, again, my passion is going upstream. Look, regular medicine, they'll give you a drug that knocks you out. But as you already found out, you're really not getting deep recovery sleep just by taking a drug. Okay, I want to open up for some questions because I want to make sure that I get all your questions answered. So I'm gonna look to my team for that. Insomnia, how do I fix it without getting on medication? Well, look, uh again, I think evaluating the causative factors that really drive insomnia. You know, are you in low-grade mold? Do you have silver fillings putting mercury into your brain? Did you wear contact lenses in the 70s, 80s, early 90s where we're putting mercury right into our brain? Brain mercury will cause insomnia, uh, hidden infections in the mouth. Um, go to a biological dentist, get a cone beam. What I'm trying to say is rule these things out because they're they're absolute causes of severe sleep problems, which we define as insomnia. Um, I don't believe solving insomnia with 5 HTP melatonin or the next great sleep product is the answer. I do believe the answer long term is getting to those causes. I suffered from insomnia. When I was sick, I would tell you it was the worst part of my whole illness, not sleeping at night. Um, I dreaded the nights because what everything, it every thought gets worse at night, right? Doesn't it? I mean, everything that you uh, you know, think about as a potential problem at night versus the day, it's magnified tenfold at night. So not sleeping is a real bear, but there is a cause. Listen, I said go to POMPA program and watch some of those um teachings I've done because, you know, a neurotoxic issue, especially brain toxins, neuro, meaning nerve, the biggest nerve in the body is the brain. If you do not clear the brain at the cellular level, you will not solve insomnia. So if I don't press on that, then I really miss the boat. I there's not a pill, there's not a powder, potion, lotion. Um, it's not just stress. Your stress bucket, physical, chemical, and emotion, the body doesn't know the difference, but the chemical accumulation is the big causative factor of insomnia.

Waking Inflamed And Fragrance Exposure

Dr Pompa 15:00

Why do I wake up so inflamed? How can I avoid this? Well, first of all, again, I sound like a broken record, but people that wake up inflamed are typically neurotoxic. They're they're toxic at the cellular level. Real detox is doing detox at the cellular level. That's what I teach. I it sounds trite to say, you know, it's toxins at the cell, but that's what it is. You know, are there things that you can do right away? Yeah, minimize your toxic inload. What are you washing your sheets in? Gosh, you know, I didn't even talk about that because fragrance carries hormone disruptors and you're breathing them in your pillowcase and your sheets, oh, in your clothes all day long. Switch what you and your family are washing your clothes in. You know, go to a um free and clear, as they call it, and that is non-fragrant uh uh laundry detergent. Please don't even use fabric softener. They're they're bad. They carry a lot of the fragrances. Fragrances are so bad because they're protected by intellectual property laws that they don't have to share with you um their ingredients. That means they're using banned substances and hormone disruptors and cancer causers in their products. That's why fragrances are the worst. Laundredergent is a big one. It disrupts sleep. Listen, even to this day, if I go to a hotel, most hotels now have switched because they know it disrupts sleep. They've switched over to allergy-free, free and clear uh laundred detergents. But if I go to a hotel that, you know, I smell the sheets and I'm super tired, I just want to go to bed, I invariably wake up in the middle of the night, can't get back to sleep because the scent, the fragrance, literally drives up cortisol. Get rid of fragrance. There's one tip right away, besides cleaning up your whole life. So the next question. Explain

Sleep Debt And Weight Gain

Dr Pompa 16:48

the relationship of sleep debt and weight gain. Well, look, there's so many studies that show if you lack sleep, and sleep debt means that you're lacking sleep all the time, right? So there's a building effect on it. There is no doubt about it. I already said that it obviously disrupts your cortisol. Cortisol really can determine how we store fat or not. That can have an effect on insulin. Insulin's a fat-storing hormone. Every hormone can be linked in some way to how you sleep. So getting enough deep sleep, I said from the beginning, these aura rings and whoops and different ways of monitoring your sleep are important because you can see what you're doing that is causing sleep disruption. So if you can get more deep sleep by eliminating some of these things in your life. So some of you might just start with one of these devices that look at your sleep and go, gosh, you know what? Maybe that shower that I'm taking before bed isn't doing me any favors. The cold bath, uh, you know, whatever, exercising too late at night. So, you know, that can give you more deep sleep, and you're going to hormonally optimize. The deeper the sleep, the better the hormones. REM sleep actually clears toxins out of the brain. So it has an impact on cortisol. So all of that is really important. So maybe you get a device and that'll literally help you start to hormonally optimize, which then actually starts to help you lose weight because ultimately the inability to lose weight and weight gain is hormone problems and sleep affects hormones.

Melatonin Safety And Tolerance

Dr Pompa 18:20

What are my thoughts about melatonin? Do you build a tolerance to it? Okay, so I think melatonin can be okay. I I think that if you keep the doses under nine, uh under 10 milligrams, it's it's hard to reach a tolerance. There's some studies that show that even high doses can be really hormonally um beneficial, especially if you just do them hit and miss. I think that um it doesn't work like other hormones, that it stops your own production, meaning if you take melatonin for three nights and stop, the next night your body still will produce its own. At least that's what studies show. Unlike other hormones where you slow down your own production and that can be damaging. So I think melatonin is safe. It also works as an antioxidant. I think there's a lot of other benefits of melatonin. I think some people produce too little and therefore taking it can be a benefit to their health in general, not just their sleep. Um, so but that said, I still believe, though, that the more you use it, the less it seems to work and the more you need. So I do believe that there's a tolerance, but at least it's not like a hormone where you stop producing your own tolerance.

EMF And Dirty Electricity Fixes

Dr Pompa 19:40

What should I do to protect my body at night from EMF, which by the way is a major sleep disruptor? I didn't even talk about this. Dirty electricity. I did a great Instagram video where they measured the dirty electricity behind my wife and I's head. Her side was higher than my side. And basically a lot of people can't sleep over even 30, let alone 60 or above, which where ours was. And after they mitigated it with like a $200 solution, putting a shield, and it was it's their website is SATIC, not static, sadicshield.com. And um, maybe my team can put that up. But a $200 solution behind our bed, and it absolutely brought it to zero and changed how we sleep. And I can tell you, my wife and I both were like, wow, we're dreaming so deep. Um, so dirty electricity, that same company also has a device you can put in your house and lower all of your house dirty electricity, which creates, by the way, an electromagnetic frequency, which is very disruptive to sleep hormones, your health in general. So they have a lot of mitigation tools and even how you measure it. They have a device on their site of how to measure it, which I recommend. Um, and then they even have some plug-in devices that you can put right next to your bed. I think these things are like $50 to $100 and you put them next to your bed. And if your problem's not severe, it'll mitigate that problem for you. Measurable and watch the difference of how you sleep. Okay, so that's dirty electricity. Turn your phone off or put it on airplane mode. Um, and if you're worried about your kids or expecting a call, put it across the room. Distance is your friend. So also make sure you're not sleeping near a um uh what do you call it, a router. Don't have a router in your room. Oh, cell phones. You'll see my some of my videos. You go into hotels and they have the cordless phones next to your bed. Unplug those and move them away. God forbid they're in your house. Don't ever put anything cordless next to your bed. And God forbid a baby sleeping, right? All those uh baby monitors. Uh, I did videos on that of how destructive they are and how much radiation that they release, you know, right into your baby. So make sure those things are way, way across the room. Now they have wired in ones and they have low EMF ones. So look for some of those solutions if you're using a video camera in your baby's room, but you don't want that stuff in your room either. So be careful of anything wireless in your room. I have none of

Non Toxic Mattress And Bedding

Dr Pompa 22:24

that. Organic mattress is so important. Um, I think the mattress more than the sheets, because the sheets get washed all the time. Mattresses off-gas something called VOC's volatile organic compounds for years and years. They're loaded with flame retardants. Your face is in the mattress constantly. Just because you put a sheet over it, doesn't mean all those chemicals aren't going into you. They are. So you absolutely want a non-toxic mattress. Ami is, look, it took me eight or nine months to narrow down two companies that I thought were sufficient. I ended up going with Ami. It's um, so it's Ami Mattresses.com, omimattresses.com. They have different price points, different mattress. All their mattresses are healthy, chemical-free. It's a matter of what you what style, you know, sleeping uh behaviors you have, you know, the mattress you might like. But getting a non-toxic mattress is key. Uh absolutely what you wash your sheets in, I already brought that up, is critical. But organic sheets, um, cotton sheets or like um natural uh sheets like um Italian wood fiber, bamboo are better than the polyester. You don't want polyester. It also creates sweating heat and plastic problems as well. All right.

Final Questions And Share Request

Dr Pompa 23:46

So I got to all their questions. I got to all your questions, hopefully. If you have more questions, write in. Um I have a team of people who can lead you to the right resources and direction. Many people have problems with sleep. So please share the video, like it. Let's get the message out, get to the cause, always on the Dr. Pompa podcast.