 the average person will toss and turn 40 times a night. So you may think you're sleeping on your side, but every 15 to 20 minutes your body is going to toss and turn and you are not in control. Welcome Dr. Matroni. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. You know, we talk a lot about sleep on this show because I believe high quality sleep is one of the most essential aspects of health and longevity, but the one thing we haven't touched on is the relationship between sleep and spinal health. All right, tell us more. Well, thank you. It's an honor to be on the show and then be exposed to greatness. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I think really to start, it's really maybe start with my story on how I even got into sleep. Perfect. You know, I zigzagged here and because I didn't get into the sleep industry to help people get a better night's sleep, I got into the sleep industry to fix a problem that I was having for the first 15 years in practice. Even up to the age of 35 years old, I had pain in my spine and in my shoulder almost every day in practice. And I just attributed it to, you know, I'm a mountain biker, I'm a Scott, you know, I'm a pretty competitive athlete. So I'm like, Oh, yeah, yeah, I'll deal. I'll help my patients with their discomfort. You know, but you know, I'm different because, you know, it's, you know, it's always a cobblest kids that have no shoes. So I was getting adjusted and it wasn't until over 15 years ago, I was in a little bit of a mountain biking mishap and I herniated my own disc. So I'm in the emergency room, my leg is numb. I'm hooked up on Dilaudid and I'm sitting there not knowing if I'm ever going to practice again, knowing that I've been seeing patients and I'm a chiropractor myself with a herniated disc. I'm like, how did it come to this? So I reviewed over 3000 x-rays because I knew that there was a pattern. I just couldn't put my finger on it, reviewed 3000 x-rays and found that the problem wasn't in my back all these years due to how the, you know, everything is connected and do the adaptive response. I ended up with the weakened disc because of forward head posture. And that has a myriad of reactions that I'll go into. So next thing you know, I'm just thinking, I'm like, well, due to the specific laws in the body, like Davis's law where tissue will remold itself, you know, how can I remold my spine? So I came up with this theory, I can remold it the eight hours that I spend in bed. And that's what really made me start to focus on becoming a sleep expert. So once again, physician heal thyself, huh? It was, it was a matter of almost life and death for me, right? Yeah. It was, I had to, I had to rise up from the ashes because at that point I was afraid that everything, you know, had kind of crashed around me. You had this issue with your spine and you're a chiropractor and you're getting adjustments from colleagues. And yet that wasn't doing it, right? Well, you know, the way that I explain it is like this chiropractic in our health is basically a pattern of our daily rituals. It's a daily of what we do on a ritualistic basis. And that's driven by our belief structure. So, you know, my belief is, yeah, like get the spine adjusted and move it into alignment and that's gonna, everything's going to be better. Well, now my understanding is chiropractic is like this. Let's say you have hardened clay, or you take Play-Doh and you, you know, take the top off that clay hardens. Well, chiropractic care is like taking that clay and putting it in water. That makes the clay more moldable. But if you expose the clay to the same molds, you're just going to have the same patterns. So, yes, I was getting adjusted, but I wasn't doing anything that changed my lifestyle patterns, which was still reinforcing the same problems. I really want to talk into how you came up with this thing. But, you know, way back when we didn't have, we didn't have any mattresses as far as we know. And we probably didn't have any pillows, except maybe our arm, or maybe a couple of bunches of leaves or something. And we apparently did fine. So what, how did mattresses and pillows evolve? And we see every day, every night on TV, some mattress company, some pillow company saying, wow, the key is this and this and this. Help us understand this because you're the guy. That's so great. So pillows and mattresses, right, are designed for comfort and support. They don't, they're not in your comfortable and supported in positions that are unsustainable. See, the body tosses in turns for three reasons. First, because it's too warm, temperature regulation. Three, because it feels the need for safety. So if the door is open or you feel like you're going to be attacked and you bought it, you need to create a safe space. And the third reason is because it's in pain or it's uncomfortable. So the way that I, the way that I challenged my patients are people that, I mean, obviously I'm speaking to hundreds of thousands of different people. And the way that I challenge you is say, try to watch a two hour movie in the position you fall asleep in. It's not possible because that position is not sustainable. The average person will toss and turn 40 times a night. So you may think you're sleeping on your side, but every 15 to 20 minutes your body is going to toss and turn and you are not in control. You're only going to be in control of when you fall asleep. So what I teach my patients is fall asleep in an aligned position. And then the long year in that position over a period of time, like clay remolding, you're going to change the structure of your spine. Convince me that the modern pillow and mattress is probably a really bad design to align your spine. So well, alignment doesn't come from the base. Alignment comes from the position. So the spine control, the nervous system controls everything in the human body. So my anchor is making sure that nervous system functions optimally. I've been doing heart rate variability studies on my patients for 20 years. And I was always trying to improve the function of the vagus nerve. And Ross Hauser, I don't know if he is, but he does a lot of study on loss of the cervical curve in the neck. I have an interview with him soon, but loss of the cervical curve in the neck affecting the function of the vagus nerve. So the only way to do that is to keep yourself tucked in like this to tuck your chin. So what we want to do is we want to look at the structure of a spine, right? We want to have this curve in the neck. And a pillow defined is a support for your head. So when you sleep on your back or on your side, you can't support the head because what you're going to do is you're going to tuck the chin. So the anesthesiologist did a study. I can't remember where it was, but they look at head angle and airway in the opening up of your airway. If you use a pillow, the thicker the pillow becomes, even if it's a flat pillow, it's going to close down your airway because it's tucking your chin. You do that over a period of time. You're going to reverse the curve in the neck just by sleeping in the wrong position. Gotcha. You bring up heart rate variability. So what would your findings be? And most people watching the show know about heart rate variability. And in general folks, the higher your heart rate variability, the better. And the lower your heart rate variability, the worse. And long ago, I did a study looking at people who actually might need defibrillators in their heart for dying. And we found that there was a very strong correlation between heart rate variability, low heart rate variability, and bad heart function. So yeah, I'm a strong believer because I did a study on it. So what did you find about the neck and the posture of sleeping and heart rate variability? So it explained it just a little for that group. Heart rate variability is the balance between your sympathetic and your parasympathetic nervous system. So if you're going to go for a run, your body is going to become more sympathetic, which is in that survival state. So your heart rate needs to be very regular, right? Because the blood, the muscles need to depend on regular blood in nutrients. Well, in contrast to that, the parasympathetic nervous system, when you're more relaxed, there's a lot more variability to the pulse. It's not a regular heart rate, which means every, you know, if it's a 60 beats per minute, every second you don't get a beat, it varies. So you're ready for anything. So the parasympathetic or relaxed system, where you're ready for anything, is a more rested system because you're not sympathetic dominant. A sympathetic dominant state suppresses three areas, immune system, digestive system, and reproductive system, because that's all controlled by the parasympathetic nervous system. So what we find is when we get somebody into the position that we want them in, we keep them into that position for one to two hours a night. And then they improve the structure of their spine. They improve their heart rate variability by up to 30% by doing nothing at night by just changing their own position. And it is, it's been a game changer to be able to see. So I was trying, I got into this world because I was trying to fix spines to allow people to become less pain, you know, to get out of pain. Now just seeing the benefits of what has been doing a high rate variability over our health, getting rid of immune system issues, because the vagus nerve is functioning more effectively. It's been amazing. Just yesterday, I saw a patient who has very low, he wears an aura ring, and he has very low deep sleep. And he actually has very low heart rate variability. And it's kind of a chronic problem for him. And we've done all these tricks. And are you saying, I'll put you on the spot here, that if I got his neck and spine into alignment during sleep, that we'd probably see a change? How old is that patient? He's actually 76 years old, but a very vigorous 76 year old. So 76 year old is going to have, it depends if they're right or left handed, but they're going to more than likely have twisted an ankle. So this is how everything's connected, because I can see looking at you that you have an issue, because you hold your head to one side. So I can tell that you sleep on one side, and you specifically sprained your right ankle. So you're not going to be able to turn your head as far to the left side, because the atlas is going to shift to the side of handedness and typically a sprained ankle. So when you have atlas laterality that occurs due to forward head posture, that affects the vagus nerve, which tanks your heart rate variability. So what I was actually talking to Dr. McCullough about is I do not believe there's a combination that everybody is just sympathetic dominant. I believe they're parasympathetic inhibited due to the loss of cervical structure in their neck affecting that nerve behind me, your vagus nerve. So everybody's got a cell phone, and every one of us is doing this all day. And we hear that that's really a dumb thing, but of course the dumb thing we have to do, because most of us don't look at our cell phone like that. Is that a big part of what's going on with people these days? So what I found in my, so when I was in that emergency room bed, and when I was there, I remembered, when you have, so I'm going to show you, I don't know if everybody is on, but you can see that picture, see how there's a cervical curve in that neck, right? It's a nice curve. When you lose the curve, look what happens to the lower back. Do you see that curve? And you will have a reactive, you will have a reactive, so-asked major muscle spasm when you end up losing that cervical curve in the neck. So what ends up happening, what was the question? Holy mackerel. So your cell phones. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So body posture adjusts to head position. So that's the writing reflex. So the more, I call that the modern day lifestyle, the more that we are texting, the more that we're on computers, and we're reinforcing that at night because we want to feel protected, curled up in a ball, you're restructuring that spine. It's called neck neck, and it's a loss of cervical curve because we're always on our technology. I have seen 10 year olds with phase one degenerative changes now than we ever used to be for because of all the cell phone use. All right. So let's talk about sleeping position. There's actually, from a cardiovascular standpoint, there's some argument to be made that sleeping on your side is actually a pretty doggone good idea. But I bet you you're going to tell me that in terms of my spinal alignment, that's a really bad idea. It all depends on what we're using for our anchor. And my anchor is, right, when we do researches, what do you, what do you take as information or what do you, what are you not looking at as variables? My anchor is that the nervous system controls everything in the human body, and the structure of your spine plays a significant role in maintaining the health and well-being of that nervous system. So if you break down the structure, it doesn't matter how healthy the heart is, the heart is going to dysfunction. It's going to throw the body into chaos. Now, there's a gold standard of a study that people typically, they, they, they talk about, we're talking about lymphatic drainage and, and on your side. Well, that study is done on rats. And the rat structure is such where the curve is completely different in their cervical spine. And the way that it came up with a lot of this positioning is I said that the body needs to be in a position where the weight is distributed over the greatest surface area. The greatest surface area in a rat is on its side. The greatest surface area in a human is on their back. So when you, I had shoulder impingement syndrome for years, I had a hip issue. When I had that back issue, that's because I was sleeping twisted. And after 20 minutes, I twist to the other side and twist to the other side. So we're twisting our spines, breaking down the structure, affecting the health of the nervous system, which I believe affects everything. So my anchor is protecting the spine, at least for the first one to two hours at night. People are going to have issues with airways that they're going to have to manage in different things, but set your body up for one to two hours at night. Then whatever you do in the middle of the night, do it in the middle of the night. But at least you're going to get one to two hours reversing of the damaging effect of being on that phone all day long. Now, wait a minute. So you're a chiropractor and you apparently knew these things. And yet you're sleeping on your side and you've got all these joint issues, back issues, etc. What? And I realize the wake-up call was you rupturing a disc and that certainly gets your attention, particularly for a chiropractor. It's like a heart surgeon having a heart attack. Luckily, that hasn't happened. So what made you reassess your knowledge base and say, okay, how did I get this so wrong and here's what I should have done or here's what I found out? Because I got my ass handed to me at Harvard Medical School when I was giving continued education credits to Mass General. So here was my deal. When I was the first chiropractor ever, they wanted chiropractic to be, you know, this was three years out. And remember, life leaves breadcrumbs. So they wanted a chiropractic talk about chiropractic. Then they started asking me these questions. I was strong on chiropractic and then I tried to speak into a medical world that, you know, because I just came out of diagnosis, I thought I knew, got my ass handed to me on a silver platter, right? So I learned a big lesson there. I said, I need to base my information on law. Law is such that gravity, you drop something, you cannot deny that that's going to hit the floor. So when I speak and I speak in practice, I apply things to law. There's three laws that I use. I use the writing reflex, which states this is law. If somebody has a hip misalignment, it's due to head position. Body posture adjusts to head position. And they started realizing all those short legs and leg length discrepancies, that's all coming from forward head posture because the body is adapting to that. Law number two, Davis's law. Tissue will remold based on the forces that are applied in the direction that the forces are applied. And Wolf's law, bone or restructure based on the stresses that are applied. So if tissue can remold, and bone will remold, and body posture adjusts to head position, and I know these are all laws, how can I apply that to help myself? So I started to apply these laws the way the body works that I know. They don't teach you this, you learn the laws, but nobody ever applies the laws. So I put those three specific laws together to come up with my entire sleep protocol. And it all starts with the neck. Body posture adjust to head position, what controls everything in the human body, the brain, and then it stems from there down. Do you have mentioned that you learned an important lesson from a movie scene about weight distribution during sleep? But what the heck is that? So like I said, life leaves breadcrumbs. So we talked about, I use an essential mattress, love the mattress. I use a necklace for my pillow. But when I watched, this is now, but in watching that movie, it was crouching tiger hidden dragon and the 1500s, they were sleeping on the floor in their neck. They had a block of wood for their, and I'm sitting there. I'm like, wait a second, that's not a pillow. That's a corrective, you know, appliance device for sleep. And that's when I kind of started putting stuff together. Holy macro. If the pillow defined as a support for my head, it hasn't evolved over the last couple of hundred years. And our lifestyles evolved because we're sitting in front of a computer all day. I need to create and make something different, almost like rolling up a towel and sticking under your neck. Focus on the structure of the neck, put the body into a neutral sleeping position where your weight is distributed over the greatest surface area. And I've had, I'm 50 years old, I have less pain than I did when I was 35. I can fall asleep with a glass of water on my chest and it will still be there. I don't toss and turn. I don't move. And my sleep scores are out of this world because I get restful night sleep. And my heart rate variability, which I was unable to get my deep sleep scores up through the roof. All right, you're making a convincing argument. Now, it's just based on experience. Right. And, you know, and I see patients six days a week. And, you know, when I say something, it's based on, you know, 25 years of looking at these folks' blood work and how they feel every three months and going, hey, you know, two and two together, it makes four. Before we really get into the, the appliance that you invented to fix this, I want to, I want to go back for one second. A lot of people, I'm a heart surgeon and a thoracic surgeon. I operate on the esophagus. I operate on people who have GERD, heart burn, reflux. And one of our teachings in general is the last thing I want in a patient with GERD is number one, have them eat near the time of bed, obviously. And number two, I want you actually over on your left hand side. And I don't want you on your back because it's the perfect way if you're going to have GERD to do this. What say you? So that is, so now what happens is we're in the rabbit hole, right? Because you're at a myriad of symptoms that have gotten you to that point that you need intervention. So the body has what's called a limitation to matter. Limitation to matter is such that, that if I cut off my arm, you can't take the arm and put it back. There's a limitation to what the body can heal from. So I believe the cause of all of these things is that loss of cervical curve. Most people that are, so I would almost guarantee if you X-ray that person's cervical spine, they're going to have degeneration at C5, C6, and that Atlas is going to be shifted. How long that has happened for or how long that's occurred for, that's going to be an issue. So what I would do in a situation like that is I wouldn't abandon the back sleeping position or the neutral sleeping position to at least be in it for one hour because if you get away from it completely, you're just going to keep complicating the problems and drive it deeper. I would say stay in that position for an hour and night, but not flat. You need to be elevated five to eight degrees, maybe a 10 degree sleeping angle. And I can demonstrate that when we kind of get into positioning, but there are ways to be able to manage that esophagus effectively and not affect your entire sleep cycle. So every once in a while, maybe once a year or twice a year, I go against my gut and I have peanuts. I love peanuts, but it always and I have them at night. I don't know why. I know what it's going to do to me. It's going to give me acid. I'm going to wake up and I'm going to take a knife and stab it right through my stomach. Guess what I'm going to do at that point? I'm going to turn it my side. There's no way I'm going to stay on my back because you know, it just keeps keeps burning. So what I'm talking about is how I believe the world should have started out learning how to sleep from the very beginning. There are problems when the system has broken down to such a level as you and me, then you want to start by using, stretching it back, but it might not be the best position for you at the beginning. Now you mentioned something just a second ago. Okay. So we've got this quote older person who clearly has some degeneration in C5, 6. And you can see it on x-ray. You know that it's there if you admit it because people can feel it. Is it ever too late to remodel your spine? Or, you know, oh, I'm done for. That's what I am. You know, the problem is, is when you lose the cervical spine, you're going to pick up a scoliosis in the low back due to the adaptive psoas major muscle spasm that occurs. And the psoas is the only muscle in the human body that attaches directly to a disc. That's what weakened my disc. That's the protocol I came up with. So when you first, when you start and you have degeneration, you start sleeping on your back, you're going to end up with back pain also. So what I tell people is this, that positioning where you're lying in that stretched out position where things are unlining, it's a great position for everybody. Should everybody start flat on your back in that position, the answer is no. That's why we have our online coaching programs and I want people to understand a tip-toe way approach into it. Just like somebody that has a lot of fallen arch and they put an arch support in, you don't want to use that arch all day long and you're going to destroy everything else. Or people that have hip surgeries, their spines turn into a mess because everything adapts together. But tissue is remoldable. The harder the clay, the tougher it is for that tissue to remold. So you have to be a lot more patient. But I have, my oldest patient on a neck nest is 103. And so, so I think if she's able to be on a neck nest, and not, not, I mean, or sleep, sleep in a patient, but she's still a side sleeper. But, you know, if you're starting one position and then you roll over, that's fine. At least start with the end in mind versus, you know, starting with tossing and turning in mind. Alright, so let's talk about the neck nest. What is it and what problem are you trying to solve with? I think we understand what problem you're trying to solve. So how does that work? Through the writing reflex, what happens is, and you see right here, I don't know if I can see the, now you can't see this. So what ends up happening is, here's the spine. Here's the cervical curve. Most people do not have this curve now. Most people have a curve that's reversed. When you reverse this curve due to tension all the way down the spine, the body is going to adapt by doing this. So if you lose the curve here, you're going to pick up a curve here. And this is what deteriorates the lumbar spine. That is what took me, it's like simplicity on the far side of complexity. It seems like such a simple concept, but it is very misunderstood. And once we understand that and you, now your awareness is there and you look at, I mean, I've looked at tens of thousands of x-rays and it's there 95% of the time. So what the neck nest is designed to do over a period of time is improve the structure here so that you take out the rotation here and you improve the function and the integrity of the nervous system. That is what the neck nest does. And I can show you what that positioning looks like right behind me because I am in my little podcast studio and I just so happen to have a bed. Oh, wow. Okay. All right. So whether you do this with a neck nest, or you do this with a soft down pillow, or you do this, you know, you know, I don't know, with the towel, this is the positioning that you want down, is in I'm lying flat, you can use multiple pillows to elevate you, you can use wedges to elevate wedges, you can use the beds that elevate. But this is what we're going to do here is I'm going to lie down on my back. Right. So right now that's lying on your back is critically important because you're unwound here. But still, if you use a pillow, you're closing down the airway and you're going to snore like a rocket ship. Yeah. I don't know. Does a rocket ship snore? I think they make noise. So you're going to, so I take this neck nest, I angle it up, I put it under, and now my chin is open, my airways open, and then my hands down by my side. Most people when they look at that position say, there's no way I'm going to be able to do that. First reason is because like, you know, one of the reasons I believe that we're side sleepers is because nobody taught us to sleep and we want to sleep to feel protected. So we curled up in a ball. So we need to know that and then we want to set up a, we want to set up an environment that our body feels safe. And I found by just using a simple sleep mask that in itself, because it puts light pressure on the eyes, that in itself will improve your heart rate variability because it stimulates your parasympathetic nerve, just by using a sleep mask to create a sense of safety. And then the last thing I want people to do, and this stuff we can dive into, I've had hours and hours of conversation on this, how to use your covers. Because I believe everybody uses their covers wrong. Because remember, one of the issues to get good deep sleep, restorative sleep is your body needs the temperature right. So you need the temperature regulate effectively. We want to hand regulate out our hands and our feet. Due to the allostatic load, we want to keep our torso warm. So the way that we use our covers, I love spouses, I love my spouse, don't share your covers with your spouse, because you guys are both heaters, you want to have your own covers, and you want them to have their own covers, and you want to have your hands and your feet out of the covers. And then you take the edge of the covers and you put it up underneath your chin, just to be able to hold your mouth shut. And I will show you that right now. So you're going to think I'm a nut job doc, I know, because I'm going to put my sleep mask on. Oh man. And for those of you who aren't watching, he's got his sleep mask on, he's got his neck nest, and now he's getting his covers on him. And all right, so he's stuffed his neck nest under his neck, and his chin is up, and now he's got his duvet, his comforter, and he's kind of stuffed it under his chin, and his hands are loose, and his feet are free, and there he is. And he looks like the Pillsbury Doughboy. I hope you're watching this. So, you know, so I actually, I agree with you on so much of this. I, for instance, I'll give you an example. This patient from yesterday, we're talking about how we're going to get him more deep sleep. And I said, so, you know, how do you sleep? He says, Oh, he says, I just have to be completely covered up. I have to, and it drives my wife crazy because he says, I wake up really hot, and I'm uncomfortable, and I said, Well, there's half your problem. I said, you know, he says, Oh, no, I have to be all covered up. I have to be covered up. And I said, And you're right, he should not be all covered up. You're exactly right. And personally speaking, I kick my feet out, and my, my hands out. They, they have to be out. You're absolutely right. You know, that's so good because innately, once you start getting like this, and you understand these principles, right? Your body wants weight. That's why weighted blankets out, right? It wants protection. It wants, it wants security. One of the three ways, like people like, Doc, what's the best way to get deep sleep to the main that there's actually really two reasons. First, you got to have your core temperature drop. Second, your heart rate needs to drop. Those need to drop quickly before midnight because your energy spikes typically close to midnight. So you want to be in deep sleep, rested before that period of time. So core temperature is like critical in being able to understand it and get it down correctly. And once you get and understand your body core temperature, and you're able to drop that with either cold showers or using new covers effectively, not eating, you know, 300 calories within three hours of going to bed like that. I stopped my meals even before that. It is, it's, it's a game changer for your ability to get to sleep and wake up while resting. All right. So I mean, this is good to hear because you're saying that really the positioning for the first few hours of sleep is going to make all the difference in the world. And you're not, you're not saying, oh my gosh, you got to sleep on your back the entire night and you have to have the neck nests under your neck the entire night. Good. Because I actually have a staff member who has your neck nests and she's trying to adapt and she finds herself on her side. And she, we talked actually yesterday, she says, I'm a failure because I, I'm a failure. And please ask the good doctor why she's a failure. We have tens of thousands of different people we, we have worked with. And so the body works on consistency, right? One of the problems with sleep is you're not, you can't consciously, we all want to consciously control something. So, so that's why people can't get to sleep because they try to think themselves asleep. You can't, you got to remember yourself asleep. You have to put the blood in a totally different part of the brain. So we, but we want to control something all the time. But when you fall asleep, you're not in control. So, so most of the people, most people get the positioning wrong. They don't get that angle correct with the neck nests. So I'd have a go to the website and it also takes, it's like a, I mean, this thing, you know, they think, oh, it loses its, it loses its support. When it breaks in is actually when it works the best, you're only trying to support three inches from your neck down to the base of the bed. It should condense all the way. I use so many different bills to come up with that. So the lifestyle habit is this, you get the positioning of the neck nests correct. You fall asleep with that, whether you last a half an hour, 45 minutes an hour. That's it. Over a period of time, just focus on the first 45 minutes of your sleep and your body will do the rest of the time. Be patient. It takes a long time to change. There are certain, there are very different variables for everybody. But the goal is beginning with the end in mind, begin with your structure in mind, begin with your anchor that your body posture adjusts to your head position. You don't have posture issues. You have head alignment issues. And then, you know, a good thing is for people to work on their balance after they're doing this for a period of time. You bring up a very good point. Many people, as they age, balance becomes one of their major complaints. Help us out. What's going, what's going wrong? Oh boy, this is, this is big. So you're going to have, oh man. Oh, I'm sorry. I actually mentioned this because no, this is good because it's something I see all the time in my patients. So you want to, you want to know if somebody has an atrophy prefrontal cortex, just watch the way they walk, right? And so here's the deal. And people with ADD or cross dominant people right handed left footed, they're going to have more of an issue with this because they have an issue with the corpus callosum in their brain, which is right in the left side communicating. So here's the deal. There's something in the brain called the vermus. The vermus in the brain, one of its major functions is to build the prefrontal cortex. What builds the vermus is something that's called proprioception, which is your awareness in space. So when you atrophy the vermus, you're going to atrophy the prefrontal cortex and you're going to start losing your balance. 80% of all of the proprioceptive signals up into the brain into the vermus come from the spine. And the majority of them come from the cervical spine. So when you see somebody and they turn and they have really bad balance, they have significant loss of their cervical rotation from left to right. So as we age, part of the aging process is scar tissue. Scar tissue restricts movement. You restrict movement, you're going to decrease, proprioceptive signals into the vermus, ruin your balance and then forget your marvels. You're going to lose your marvels. So one of the major ways to be able to improve the structure and function of the brain and integrity of the prefrontal cortex in your balance is improve the cervical curve, improve rotation and work on balance on a regular basis like it's the only exercise that you do for yourself. And it's easy. Got a wobble board, use a wobble disc, but challenge your brain to stay out of pain is what I tell my patients. Are there other things that you can, so, so wait a minute. All right, so I can't move my neck as much as my wife can. And I'm convinced that I can't move my neck as much as my wife can because I've got some spinal issues and there's scar tissue in there. How the heck do I get to move my neck more? Does she push? I would like to go to a professional chiropractor in your area, right? Go to a chiropractor, make sure that, you know, have x-rays taken, see what the degeneration looks like because here's the deal. Most of the damage in people's spines, where you're going to have the damage is C5, C6. That controls flexion and extension. The issue typically where 80% of all the rotation is is atlas C1, C2 and occiple. So that's here, you normally don't degenerate atlas C2 and occiple. So by adjusting that area, you can get a significant, I had a patient come in today who had, so lost 70% of their range of motion to the left side, adjusted their atlas. They almost got all of their range of motion back. They're not going to keep that range of motion because the tissue is going to remold, it's going to relateralize. But as long as you're getting that adjusted, you're stimulating that tropioseptive sense, immediately you're going to improve your balance. So the neck nest is cool and it forces you into the position you want. Are there other things that you can do to facilitate that positioning during the day? Getting ready for sleep, you got some tricks that you send people home with? Yeah. So the biggest thing is, remember, law, we go back to law, body posture, adjust to head position, raise your monitors at work. We're all looking down because of COVID, everybody at home on their little laptops, that is just, you have headaches, because at home at your work station, you don't have them at work. It's because you're down, curled up in a little ball. Get an extension monitor, lift the monitors up. Your body posture, adjust to head position. You want to be looking slightly above eye level, up at the monitor. If you notice when I'm doing this, I'm looking up at you. It's because if I'm looking down, you can't, it's so bad. So I have people do that. Really, as far as the positioning at night, I think it's really important to note that you can use a three-pillow system, and you can tell your, this is a really cheap, ineffective way to do it. So you can take a pillow, put it at the back of the bed, take a pillow, put it in the front of the bed. In a sense, what I'm doing right there is I'm creating like this little elevated surface, like a rolled up towel, a neck nest, something, and then sleep starting off in this position, because I'm not flat, but I'm elevated. That's not going to put as much tension on the ligaments, and it's going to be an easier transition to be able to get to learn how to sleep on your back. Another question. You see people say, well, when you're at work, you ought to use one of these kneeling chairs, or you want to sit on a ball, because that'll help your spine. I personally sit on a ball when I'm seeing patients, and I have for years. So is that just a bunch of silliness, or is there science behind it? If I want the quickest way to degenerate the joint, to degenerate the brain, is don't use it. Put the arm in a cast. That's ultimate support. Lie down. If you don't use it, you lose it. If you don't use your body, you're going to atrophy your body. So if I want to lose the joint, I'm going to immobilize it with a cast over a period of time the joint will atrophy. So support makes the body weaker. I don't care what it is. A sneaker is a support. It makes the body weaker. You take a thyroid, because you have a thyroid issue, you're going to make the thyroid weaker, because you're going to depend on the support. Whenever you support the body, you're going to make that area weaker. Well, when you use a chair with a lot of support, you're making your back weaker. So when you're going to atrophy the brain to that level of weakness. So when you use something like a ball that requires your stabilized muscles in your core to engage, you're stimulating proprioception, and you're strengthening the brain, you're doing the opposite. So whenever you want, whenever you find weakness in the body or poor posture, you're doing something, you're sitting too much, you're sitting in the wrong chair. So even though it's difficult to go from a regular chair to a ball, it's way better for you. Okay. You know, you made me think of something. I was a Boy Scout and did a lot of camping. And we had a sleeping bag, but we clearly did not have a mattress and we did not have a pillow. And so, believe it or not, we slept really good on the ground, really good. And I suspect our ancestors slept really good on the ground. And we didn't, we, if anything, had a rolled up knapsack or a rolled up piece, a rolled up newspaper that we put under the back of our neck. Maybe we were on to something. Well, when I was camping, I used to use a sneaker under my, under my neck to get back there. So yeah, that's, it's all of those breadcrumbs that made me come up with, well, heck, I think the world's sleeping wrong. So our mission is to change the way the world sleeps to awaken, to a well line, more well rested potential. So sleep, speaking of sleeping wrong, not a day goes by that we don't see some mattress company advertising that their mattress is the key to great sleep, whether it's a foam or a cooling mattress or, you know, adjustable bed. How, where does all that fit in this? Or is it just as simple as getting your dumb neck aligned? Well, if you get the, if you get the positioning correct, the base becomes a little less important, right? Because remember, we're making beds more comfortable to try to keep us in poor positions, which is causing destruction in our spine. So I like, you know, so, so for instance, latex mattress, non-toxic, right? Because I like to decrease toxins within my environment also. So a lot of these foams and stuff have off gases and, and I just don't want my body dealing with that at night. So, you know, like I said, like a sentier mattress that is non-toxic or it's latex. I like bendable. I like mattresses that bend because I'm a firm believer. Some days I mount mic, I tweak something, I'll sleep elevated. Then some days I'll sleep flat. I move my bed all the time. I think elevated sleeping and being able to change, you know, change your sleeping angles is, I think that's brilliant. So I love the bed, I love the latex beds that bend. And, and that's really kind of where I go with that. But once you get the positioning correct, the body will do the rest in the middle of the night. And a lot of times my patients will come in and they're like, I hate my mattress. I'm like, put a sleep topper on it. Just don't throw it down the tubes yet. Distribute your weight a little bit more over a greater surface area. Decrease your pressure points because one of the reasons we wake up, remember pain, temperature and safety. So if we can decrease the amount of pain you're in at night by, by putting a down comforter or something thick onto that, you can save mattresses and save, save yourself thousands. That reminds me of a very good point. It's very difficult to sleep on your side on the ground because your, you know, your, your hip hurts, your shoulder hurts, wherever these pressure points that aren't really relieved. And you're right. If sleeping on a ground, you basically have to sleep on your back. You're, you're on to something. Thanks doc. It's, uh, it's been a passion of mine for the last seven years to get the messaging down so it's, so people can absorb it. Right. You know, you go to just tell people, oh yeah, just sleep on your back. They're like, what are you crazy? You're nuts. But once you start to see, you know, where the anchors are and what we're trying to create and it's not on, you know, don't do it all at the same time. You only need to do one hour, one and a half hours, two hours on your back. It's a game changer for the structure and it's going to save. It's going to, when people start getting this right disease, I believe in, in the U.S. across the world is going to get, it's going to become much less. If you go to sleep on your back in the right position on your back, will you stay in that position for a while? I mean, uh, is that, is that predictable that somebody will stay for that way for an hour or two before they start moving around? So now this is my, my ethical lie. When I tell you, it's only one hour that you're going to stay. I know based on doing that for days in, days out, months in, months out, eventually you're going to stop tossing and turning. You'll fall asleep seven hours later, you'll wake up and you won't have, you won't have moved. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's amazing. But that doesn't happen overnight is what you're saying. No, no, that's why I know. I love people with little chunks, little itty bitty chunks. And ultimately your body's going to push into the position that it's most comfortable in. So if, if somebody says, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, this isn't good for me. That's not good for me. Let your body decide because you're not in control. Hold your consciousness out of it. Work with law and just try it. And then over a period of time, your body is going to let you know if it's bad or not. If you fall asleep on your side and you have too much alcohol and you decrease the pain response, you're going to wake up and you're not going to be able to move your own. Is that a good position for you to be in? Oh yeah. And it's a great position for me to be in. There's no way you can't sustain that. 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