Most Replayed Moment: Sleep Expert On The Truth About Melatonin And Magnesium

“Pediatric? Yeah. So the people's use of melatonin in kids is increasing. So in pediatric populations, it's increasing exponentially. And in fact, if you go down the sort of the supermarket aisles here in America, often if you go into sort of the health sort of food section, there's this big purple section.”

“there's this big purple section. That's the melatonin. And a large proportion of that is they're dedicated to gummies for your children with melatonin. And there was a study that was published about three years ago that showed here in America, over the past 10 years, there has been a 503% increase in poisonous overdose admissions to hospitals of melatonin in the past 10 years.”

“to hospitals of melatonin in the past 10 years. 503% increase. So firstly, we've got to be a bit careful. The second reason is that melatonin is a bioactive hormone, and it's also involved in reproductive development.”

“which is to say male rats who were going through adolescence. And they were dosing them with high amounts of melatonin. And what they found is that that stunted the development of the testes, of the testicles, and it caused testicular atrophy.”

“Now, these were very high doses. But we've got to be a little bit careful. We think, we say, well, melatonin is a natural hormone. So anything natural is safe. Melatonin overall, in terms of its safety profile, is very safe. It's actually a very good antioxidant.”

“They've been taking it for years. We've got no idea what happens after years. That was my hesitation when the first time someone offered me melatonin is, from doing this podcast and speaking to smart people like yourself, I've come to learn this sort of principle that if you start making something for your body in terms of a hormone,”

“there are other supplements which people talk a lot about one of the ones that's become really popular is magnesium I've heard ashwagandha and I've head magnesium a lot yeah is there any efficacy to these are these are these useful? the first thing i would say is that if you're suffering from sleep problems and you're looking to supplements”

“and they would assess their blood work and what they found is that some of those people were magnesium deficient and when they supplemented them with magnesium and they became magnesium normative their sleep got better but that's very different than saying look you and i were currently magnesium normative”

“and then dosing myself with high volumes of magnesium am i imagining that that's going to make my sleep better the the analogy would be let's say i developed this incredible new oxygen saturation machine and you say to me well but matt my blood oxygen saturation machine is not going to right now, looking at my device, tells me it's 98.6%.”

“machine is, I'm not going to get you past 100%. You're already at ceiling level. And that's the problem with magnesium supplementation. If you're magnesium normative, all you're doing is creating probably expensive urine at that moment in time. Now, there may be an indirect benefit of magnesium in that it does seem to relax muscles.”

“this state of quiescence. And that's very helpful for sleep. So magnesium may still have an indirect benefit on sleep through its relaxation kind of policy that it instantiates in the body.”

“is different. Ashwagandha and another compound called phosphatidylserine. Phosphatidylserine and ashwagandha, both of these supplements seem to help do one of two things. They either ratchet down the fight or flight branch of your nervous system, and they can also reduce the amount of cortisol.”

“but you're so wired, you can't fall asleep. That's the fight or flight branch being switched on. And you just can't fall asleep. You need to push it back off. Phosphatidylserine and ashwagandha will both push you back over into the more quiescent, what we call parasympathetic nervous system branch. That's good. However, they also will reduce cortisol. And cortisol is a wake promoting hormone.”

“The first is something that your sleep, sleep tracker will measure, which is the continuity of your sleep. Meaning do you sleep in one or two nice long bouts throughout the night? That's good quality of sleep.”

“That's very poor quality of sleep. And the way that you can measure it in your sleep tracker is just by looking at the app and there'll be something called sleep efficiency. Sleep efficiency is defined as the following of the time that you're in bed.”

“because i i kept hearing it too this magnesium magnesium the first thing to note is that most forms of magnesium magnesium oxy oxide or magnesium citrate most of these forms of magnesium don't cross the brain barrier and sleep”

“Some of my friends often talk to me about these miracle things, or this thing, or take Modafinil, and everything will be fine.”