Men's Health

Matt Cundill  0:01  
You may also like a show about the things you may also like things like health, more specifically, men's health. My 30s brought me reduced cardio and longer recovery times, my 40s featured muscle shortening and snoring, my 50s I don't have time to get into it. Thankfully, there's a lot of great advice out there, including Mike Sea, who is on the back nine of his 40s, but isn't afraid to talk about the things we don't talk about in men's health. Like why we don't sleep as well as we used to what's in the food we eat, and how we pollute the earth with things that we don't even constitute as pollution. Listen, I just want good sex, good sleep, and a trouble free trip to the bathroom every day. In that order. I called up Mike and thought we should talk about something guys don't talk about often. And that's their health. My first question to Mike, why men's health. I

Mike Sea  1:03  
was chronically sick for years. And I went into the conventional medical system. And I wasn't finding answers. I was getting prescriptions. And I was seeing different doctors and specialists. And nothing was really coming together, I was getting sicker and sicker. And I shared this on my podcast before, you know, it was a cardiovascular disorder. So it was really serious. Like I was like going to the emergency room multiple times a year with a lethal cardiac arrhythmia, irregular heartbeat, that, you know, doctors were like scratching their heads, and they couldn't always break me out of it. Sometimes I'd have to be admitted. It was terrifying, man, it was traumatic. And so I've always had kind of an interest in holistic medicine. But I thought this, this path I'm going down is not working, the people aren't helping me, I've got to do something different. And so I started contacting more, you know, we call them functional medicine doctors, holistic doctors. And through a long process, I found the right people, and they helped me get better. I did a lot of research on my own too. So I'll credit myself to some of that, you know, there was a lot of reading a lot of studying a lot of trial and error, a lot of books I was reading. And that's where that started that whole journey, just kind of, you know, after I started feeling better, and improving my health, it just kept me on a very strong trajectory, and affirm confirmation in my own heart that this was the way to live healthy, because being sick sucks.

Matt Cundill  2:43  
So there are two things I know about you that I know you're going to be able to qualify an answer. And one of them is you've lived in both Canada and the United States. So without going too deep into it, what are the differences between the two medical systems that you have experienced,

Mike Sea  2:59  
there's definitely more of a safety net in Canada, because every province has their own health care system, that's that's covered. For the most part. The thing that's different here is that there are I think, personally, more innovative approaches to medicine, the standard of care is a little bit different. You might have a specialist that will give you his cell number, or a surgeon will be like, you know, text me if you don't feel well, I never had that in Canada. So it's a little more personalized. It's a little bit more entrepreneurial on the part of the doctors, they want to be the best, they want to be the most cutting edge. I'm not knocking Canadian doctors at all, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that the system here seems to incentivize practitioners more than in Canada, they want to be the best. So when they're in private practice, they don't want to lose you as a patient, they want you so it's a little bit more personalized. The other thing is waitlists. waitlists are a lot shorter here. So if you need to go get an x ray or a scan or an MRI, when I was in Canada, I had to call place and you know, depending on how sick you were, and sometimes that wasn't even a factor. They would book it for five, I think eight months in advance when they had an opening. And it was just like, Okay, I need an answer now. And they wouldn't have that. I remember getting a referral here from a doctor calling for a scan or X ray. I don't remember what it was. And they were like, How's 930 tomorrow morning? And coming from Canada. I was like, Wow, that's crazy. Are you sure they hear that? Right? So I don't know if that answers your question. But those are some of the major differences I've found. I

Matt Cundill  4:44  
also know that you have a media background, which lends itself to something important that you mentioned, which was you know, the do your own research. We hear that a lot. Oh, just do your own research or why don't you do the research to find out more about this but not everybody's media savvy and you have this background. So when it comes to doing the research and playing Dr. Google and finding the stuff that you need to know, what tips can you offer people?

Mike Sea  5:09  
Check out the sources. Look for footnotes, look for studies at the bottom of what you're reading. So if some self proclaimed health guru with a blog that doesn't read anything else, and just makes up things and puts it up, because you know, the internet is largely unregulated for stuff like that. Don't always take that individuals word for it, look for backup. Look for other sources that say the same thing. One thing that always lights up in my mind is when I read something in by one doctor, or one bit of research or one study, and then I hear another doctor, somewhere on a podcast saying the same thing. When I hear it from multiple sources, it starts to really ring true to me that multiple specialists, multiple researchers are finding the same results. So always check out your sources don't just believe the first thing you read, because there's a lot of we both know there's a lot of garbage out there, right. And

Matt Cundill  6:07  
speaking of garbage, how did our world become so toxic? Industrialization,

Mike Sea  6:11  
convenience. So think about agriculture. They're growing the same crops in the same soil, year after year after year. It depletes the soils, the nutrients are gone. They add fertilizer, but what do they add in most fertilizers, n p, k, nine, nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium. I have a supplement a mineral supplement that has 53 different minerals. So our plants are depleted. A lot of our animals, the livestock are depleted. Even sometimes the organic stuff, it's healthier, it's not pumped full of, you know, different chemicals and antibiotics and growth hormone and all those things. But they're still eating depleted food a lot of the time. So it's industrialization, we make a lot of conveniences in our society as humans, which are great, I'm not going against those, but they come at a cost. Another example, cell phone towers, EMFs electromagnetic fields. Down here, they're building them closer and closer to people's homes. And those things are on all the time. And they're dangerous. They're not good for our health. In my opinion, some people may contest that. But when my phone is on me, I put it in airplane mode when it's in my pocket, I never have a live phone on. So there's just so many different things that we bombard ourselves with in the interest of convenience and technology and living a more industrialized life. It comes at a cost. So

Matt Cundill  7:46  
we've been living for over 100 years, with radio transmitters, starting with Marconi right up to z 1035, your favorite Hit Music Radio Station, there's no issue with any health concerns with the radio transmitter. But why cell phone transmitters,

Mike Sea  8:05  
there can be an issue depending on proximity. So thankfully, in a lot of places, I mean that I've seen, I've never seen those close to people's homes I used to live near some many, many years ago, but they were probably about three, four miles away. So it wasn't an immediate concern. I think they have zoning laws for that stuff. Because radio transmitters are very strong, they beam signals very, very far into the distance, as you know. And so those are a little more dangerous to be around. Well, a lot more dangerous to be around, up close. I used to work with a radio engineer, he used to tell me that, by law, he wasn't allowed to go to a transmitter site without somebody else. So you know, when you're around that kind of radiation, you have to be extremely careful. cell phone towers are a different type of frequency. So they don't go nearly as far it might not be as intense. It's more of a low level radiation as far as I understand it. And so that's not the best either when that's pushed up against your body, day and night, day and night, in my opinion, not the best thing to be around. This is the whole point of the natural man podcast is that we need to get back to nature. We need to live more in harmony and rhythm with nature. And what we've done is we've taken our society and made it completely removed from nature. So we're hiding from sunlight. We don't put our feet on the ground. We know we're always wearing shoes. I'm not advocating for going everywhere without shoes, but there's a certain harmonic frequency you pick up from the earth when you put your bare feet on the ground. And that's proven that's not I'm not making this up. This isn't pseudoscience. This stuff is real. That's why when everybody goes to the beach, they feel better. Right, because your feet are on that beach. It's not because you're on vacation. It's because you're in nature, you're getting that sea air, you're getting sunlight, hopefully, unless you lucked out, and it's a cloudy day, and your feet are on the ground, you might have flip flops on you take them off, put your feet in the sand. And most of the times when you leave that beach, how do you feel? You tell me? How do you feel when you leave a beach?

Matt Cundill  10:21  
Generally awesome, especially being inside the saltwater. I'm going to ask you a little bit about vitamin D and the sun in just a sec. But going to yoga, they often refer to being grounded and grounding and encourage you to take your socks off, to do the practice and feel your man.

Mike Sea  10:38  
Right, yeah, because you activate what's called the parasympathetic nervous system. So your sympathetic nervous system is your stress response. When you have your parasympathetic nervous system activated. That's the anti stress response, we're always living in a sympathetic mode all the time. So we are stressed out, we're running around, we're answering calls, we're answering texts, we got multiple meetings in a day, there's so much we have on our schedules, you know, parents have to take care of kids you got most homes are, you know, two working parents. So they come home tired and stressed out. And that takes its toll and then it affects people's sleep, that becomes a problem, we have to activate the parasympathetic, we have to get that back and not live in this constant state of stress this fight or flight mode, you know, we can feel like there's a lion chasing us 24 hours a day, we're out in nature, we're only supposed to feel that lion chasing us for a short time, till we got to safety, then the system calmed down. But we don't do that. Right. We're in that mode all the time. And so that's part of plugging into nature, getting back into nature, and being more in harmony with your environment, and not immerse yourself in a artificial environment, which has health implications. So

Matt Cundill  11:56  
think back to the 1970s and 80s. And running on the beach, suntanning. Oil, that sort of thing, oil up, you get a great tan things were good, life was good. And then we began to lose a little bit of the ozone layer and the sun goes from being our friend to a potential problem. How do we handle the intake of vitamin D in this era? Well,

Mike Sea  12:20  
I kind of have a minority opinion on that. And I'll explain. When your skin complexion is darker, you don't typically burn as easy. And that's because people of sub Saharan African ancestry had ancestors that were in the sun all the time. That's what nature provided them with. They were on the equator around the equator where the sun was always shining, the UV index was high, and they were fine. Now, when you have skin like mine more European, you were further north. And so the sun was not as strong our bodies, my skin is not as optimized to get as much vitamin D exposure from the sun as people closer to the equator. But I've moved closer to the equator than where I used to be. And I've actually developed what is called a known as a solar callus. So what that means is when I first would go south, coming from a northern latitude, I would burn to a crisp, like easily. And what I did was over time, when I was, you know, down south more regularly over time, I would spend more and more time in the sun. So first day was 10 minutes, you know, for a week, then the next week, 15 minutes, 20 minutes. Now, at a higher UV index, I won't burn. I honestly won't burn anymore. So I developed what's called a solar callus. I got used to that sunlight. I don't necessarily agree that the sun is bad for us. The sun is nature, the sun is life. Without the sun, we wouldn't have food, we wouldn't have light, we wouldn't have anything, we'd be gone. So I mean, I'm a big fan of sunlight. I think it's healthy. I think, you know, the medical establishment has mixed opinions on that. But from where I stand, that's part of nature. And we're supposed to get that vitamin D sun. That's life. When you have a low vitamin D level. A lot of ailments start creeping up. You don't feel as well, your energy's low. I was chronically low in vitamin D for years. And I didn't know it until I went to a functional medicine doctor that actually measured how low I was my my number was like, just above 20, which is which is crazy low. And so I started going out and I started doing this practice and sunlight. I tried to get in the sun myself every day. It's part of my routine. I feel a lot better when I do it. It takes the stress levels away. It's not only vitamin D that we get from the sun, but there's also infrared we're radiation which revitalizes ourselves. There's a whole thing. Are you familiar with the mitochondria? Yep.

Matt Cundill  15:05  
Yeah, only because of your podcast, mind you,

Mike Sea  15:09  
okay? All right? Well, the mitochondria, that's the battery and every one of our cells, right? That's the charge. That's what keeps us going. So when you go out in the sun, the UV light penetrates your skin, it doesn't just stop at your skin, it penetrates your tissues, the infrared radiation, so there's infrared, there's UV radiation, there's different forms as UVA UVB UVC UV B, I think makes vitamin D. So that infrared radiation actually goes through your skin and goes into your tissues. And it revitalizes all your cells, and it recharges your mitochondria. So it's like, plugging yourself into your skin is like a solar blanket. That's what that is. And so it's just picking up all this energy. And that's why again, that's why you feel great. When you're at the beach, you're grounding, but you're also getting sunlight. So if you live in a northern latitude, I don't recommend flying to Miami and sitting in the high noon sun for an extended period of time, you know, you might have to wear sunscreen or limit your exposure somewhat. But you can go out in the earlier hours, because the UV index is not as high, depending on how sensitive your skin is. And you can still get some of that light, it's something you need to get used to. And if you're used to living at a more northern latitude, you have to be a little bit more careful. But if you're more exposed to the sun on a regular basis, that sunburn stuff kind of ceases, depending on your skin type.

Matt Cundill  16:38  
So I don't think anything that you said is really a minority view. In fact, it all makes sense. It just needs to be you know, applied to people. And so I go for acupuncture. And I was asked about my school. And it turns out that I was eating a lot of spicy food, no problem. If I could live as if I were living in the Punjab. I would be eating this food every day. However, again, here I am a very white North American, who probably is not conditioned to be eating that food every day. Makes sense.

Mike Sea  17:08  
Makes sense. I mean, I don't know I eat spicy food all the time. My wife cooks spicy food. She uses cayenne pepper and stuff like that. So I mean, I think it's more of a personal taste. Is it affecting your digestion? Yeah,

Matt Cundill  17:21  
that has been flagged as the current cause of stagnant digestion.

Mike Sea  17:27  
Gotcha. Gotcha. And remember, I'm,

Matt Cundill  17:29  
I'm ordering it hot. Yeah.

Mike Sea  17:32  
I mean, you probably have to be careful with spiciness to some extent, but I mean, how's your digestion? When you eat the food? What are you eating? You're eating a lot of rice, and grains and stuff like that? Is a more protein based? Yeah. And I think whites is a flag, right? Yeah, definitely. I mean, it can be an issue, something I suggest is something to improve your digestion, try peppermint tea. Or even if you find like organic peppermints, with the actual leaves in them, right, not something that's refined and just loaded with sugar. But peppermint actually stimulates hydrochloric acid production in your stomach. And so you'll actually digest things better when you use some kind of peppermint or they're called bitters. So you can get some different herbs that are known as bitters. And if you take those with your food, it will help the digestion a little bit. The spiciness could be an issue, but it also might be the if you're eating a lot of simple carbs, it might be hard to digest as well. Carbs

Matt Cundill  18:29  
is always a problem, right? Rice, and then bread. And away we go. I mean, who doesn't love carbs? Because it's got the sugar in it that makes us feel full.

Mike Sea  18:36  
Yeah, but if you load up on protein, you won't crave those carbs as much, because protein fills you eating enough protein every day, which a lot of us don't do, myself included, I really need to eat more than I do. But I try to, I try to be up on that every day in the way of seafood, different clean meats, you know, grass fed beef, stuff like that. If you fill yourself with enough protein, you're satisfied, you won't crave those carbs as much. We had a Julia Ross on a previous episode and she talked about food cravings, that's kind of one of her specialties. And she linked food cravings to something mental. And so when you crave chocolate, sometimes that's a sign of low serotonin. You need that lift we chocolate. How do you feel? Amazing, right? Like who doesn't like chocolate? I don't know anyone that doesn't like chocolate. So when you eat chocolate, you feel amazing. What does it do? It gives you that temporary serotonin lift. So sometimes, some of those things are actually an imbalance that we might have up here. And so we start craving foods that maybe we shouldn't be eating now. Dark chocolate, organic is good. But you know when it has a bunch of other ingredients in there, you have to be really careful. So sometimes food cravings are something that we need to work on. Up here. are in order to get away from that now, I'm not speaking as a master. I have food cravings, you can ask any member of my family. I'm bad with food cravings, sometimes I have not mastered that yet. It's a process. I'm a work in progress just like you, Matt. Well, I

Matt Cundill  20:15  
can see from my behavior on the weekend where I had this craving after yoga class, an intense yoga class for the traditional Spanish and Catalonian fork breakfast, which is loaded with pork and a whole bunch of other things we don't even really know about, topped with an egg, and a whole bunch of things. And I was so hungry for this, that the food craving encouraged me to go take a look at flights to Barcelona, and what could have wound up being a $6,000 purchase to feed a craving. I actually just made myself breakfast, and that was the end of that. But what do you have for

Mike Sea  20:50  
breakfast? That? Okay, okay, I know, you're gonna come back and say, Well, I had oatmeal, a smoothie.

Matt Cundill  20:56  
I did have the smoothie. I did start with a smoothie. But you know, by the time we rolled around to lunch, we went with something called me gas, which is a traditional Spanish Hunter's breakfast.

Mike Sea  21:05  
Okay, sounds tasty.

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  21:14  
You may also like supports podcasting 2.0. So feel free to send us a boost. If you're listening on a newer podcast app. If you don't have one, you can see a full list of them at new podcast apps.com.

Matt Cundill  21:26  
So just thinking back to some of the oddities of things that people say and I'm like, is that a thing? I can't believe that's the thing that seems a little bit wacky, and then you unpack it a little bit, and it's not so wacky. And that comes down to electricity. We had a client here at our podcast network, Marla bar, who's the host of your gut reaction, who designed her home to make sure that the outlets in her room were far away from where the bed was going to be. And now that we're taking our devices to bed, we fall asleep with the devices near us, and can't wait to have a charging station set up near our beds. What are some of the dangers that you've spoken about with the experts on your show?

Mike Sea  22:05  
Very bad. It's called Dirty electricity. So what that is, is there's electricity in your wires. But typically, wires in your walls are not protective with a shielded covering. And so what happens is, that electric charge actually radiates in what's known as EMFs. I touched on this earlier. So that's called Dirty electricity. So how does electricity get dirty? It's modern appliances. Again, these are conditions of civilization. So modern appliances, laptop chargers, cell phone chargers, dishwashers, kitchen appliances can be really bad with that the newer they are sometimes the more fields they generate, the way their electronics are set up. They add extra signals into your circuitry in your walls. And so you're sending power to those things, but they're also introducing frequencies that don't need to be there. So in Canada in the US, we have a 60 hertz signal inside our electricity in our wires. So these are frequencies that are introduced on top of that they're called distortions or harmonics. In the electrician world, these things have biological impact on our bodies. Why is that? Well, our bodies are electrical, right? Our heart beats with electric energy. Our cells are all powered with electric energy. And so all our cells, all our mitochondria, all those things are like little antennas, the pickup frequencies that are not supposed to be there. And when you sleep too close to your walls, and your power outlet is on, you're getting that radiation interference that's interfering with your tissues, all night long. And so I know one guy that was so sensitive to this stuff, he actually had to move his bed to the middle of the floor, the middle of the room, which is not the best place to have a bed. So what you can do, and people are going to think this is crazy. But I know a lot of people that do this, turn off the breaker to your bedroom, when you go to sleep. If you get an EMF meter, you can buy some of them on Amazon, you'll actually see the difference in the radiation levels, the electric fields that are coming off those wires, just about every home in Canada in the US has that. And so you want to clean that up or take care of it. Those things are real. There's filtration systems you can buy to there's filtration systems that can go in at your electrical panel, there's ones that you can plug in into walls, as well. And they help clean up some of that extra noise that's on your circuitry. just unplugging all your devices and turning off all your all your lamps and things won't cut it because the circuits around your bedroom are still live right there's still power in there. And so you need to shut those off at the source or move away from them. It's something a lot of people overlook. I've had multiple guests on the podcast, talk about this phenomenon and we plan to have more in the future. but it's a it's an issue and it's real. And you know, you can look it up dirty electricity is, is what it's known as. And it's a thing, unfortunately, another thing of civilization industrialization, we just can't get away from it. So when you turn the power off in your bedroom at night, you're more simulating a camping experience. Right? So you're out you're, it's almost like you're you're not quite the same. But you know, you're out in the wilderness, you're closer to nature. Now. Now you got more of nature's frequencies around you and not irregular frequencies that are messing with your body. And sometimes people have I never say this, right? Tinnitus, tinnitus,

Matt Cundill  25:45  
I pronounce it both ways. And full disclosure, I have that.

Mike Sea  25:48  
Okay, well, there can be a variety of reasons for that. So I'm not saying you know, I'm not going to make a virtual diagnosis here. But Well, I'll

Matt Cundill  25:55  
tell you what, well, let's give it a try. Because I think rock concerts, earphones, and gunshots have contributed to this over the years, but you can add to the pile.

Mike Sea  26:07  
Well, it could be a nutritional deficiency, too. So you can go to a functional medicine doctor and get what's called a micronutrient panel. And so I forget the lab that does that. But a lot of doctors that have been on the podcast, use that and so that, that checks your tissues for all your different minerals, and vitamins that are supposed to be plentiful in your system, and you may be low in some places. So that's one place you can check for nutritional deficiencies, you can try to keep your cell phone away, you can turn off your Wi Fi at night, that's another thing you can try as well. If you're having that I once read I don't know if this is true, but I read a taurine deficiency can cause cause tinnitus as well. And that's a that's an amino acid that's fairly inexpensive. And you can order it online or you can buy it at most health stores. And it has a host of benefits. So there's there's different causes that can happen. I think sometimes it can be an even an ear wax issue that you know, as much as we try to clean our ears, sometimes some gets stuck in there, you might have to go to an end to, to flush it out. There's different causes. But that's one place you can start. If that's something you're dealing with Matt, something that

Matt Cundill  27:26  
comes up a number of times in the show, and I don't know what your relationship is necessarily with sleep, whether or not it's been a battle, something that you fight with, you've spoken about the benefits of magnesium before going to bed, which I'm a big proponent of, but also you've tried to unpack insomnia. So you can tell me a little bit about your sleep, but sleep in general and why it's important for health? Well,

Mike Sea  27:50  
sleep is when we heal, right. So we get up in the morning, most of us most we work nights, of course, but we get up in the morning, we do a bunch of damage to our bodies all day long. And by damage I don't even mean you know, junk food necessarily, but we're up, we're moving around, we're burning energy we have to go about our day, our blood pressure may increase a little bit. And that's a normal process of life. And so you're using energy all day long, you're using your brain. I mean, you know, some of us do, right? You're using your brain, you're using your digestive energy to eat food, you're traveling, you're walking, you might be exercising, you're walking around the office, whatever it is, you know, you're using your mind all day long. And so that burns energy. And it causes, you know, wear and tear, just like a car that drives the more you drive a car, the more you're gonna have to you know, replace your brakes, you know, you might start having problems with the fuel line, you might get a leak, our bodies are not much different. So sleep is very important because sleep helps repair all the injuries and insults you've been doing to your body all day long. by just doing life. That's when you heal. So when you go to sleep in your mind, you might be thinking, well, I'm going to sleep my body's shutting down, but that's when your body goes into like, hyper maintenance mode. So because you're not burning energy, walking around, running around, doing all the things you do in the daytime, talking to people, running errands, doing work, whatever it is, the heavy lifting all those things working in the kitchen making food because you don't, you're not doing those things your body is at rest. Your blood pressure can drop a little bit. Typically it does when you sleep, your pulse will drop and everything goes into maintenance mode, your livers your detox organ that detoxifies us, the kidneys do some of that as well. So all those organs kick into high gear and They repair all the damage, they try to undo as much of the damage as they can from the day. And so that's when we heal. So if people don't sleep long, if people are only getting two, three hours of sleep, and there's a variety of reasons why that can happen, that's a problem. Because most of us don't feel good on a poor night of sleep, right? Because we didn't repair all those things. We didn't rejuvenate ourselves, we didn't heal, that's when you heal. That's another reason why the electricity thing we're talking about in the bedroom is important because that's when you heal. So you need to create that space, that environment to heal as best you can in your sleep. And you need that sleep. So there's huge debate on how long people need to sleep. And I think everybody's different. We've talked about this on the podcast many times. So, you know, myself, personally, I feel fantastic on six hours. So if I get six hours, I'm like, I'm ready to go. Do I get six hours every night? No, I don't. I you know, I wrestle with stress. I've got work stuff I'm running around, I've got a lot of commitments, I got different things I got to do. So during seasons of higher stress, I wrestle with sleep a little bit more, typically. But in general, I sleep pretty good. I feel rejuvenated, I'm awakened in the morning, I'm ready to take on the day, I sometimes take a nap. But I don't typically need to nap too much during the day, that can be another sign. And naps are good. By the way. I don't think naps are bad. Some sleep specialists, they don't nap. I think it's fine to nap for most people. And I always end up napping a little bit just for a few minutes when I'm in the sun. So when I go on the sunlight, I get so relaxed, my body just starts to recharge, you know, I can feel those rays, and I just kind of doze off. And then I wake up feel fantastic. Go on with my day. Don't know if it's a good idea to nap three, four hours during the day, because you're going to lower what's called sleep drive. And sleep drive is that natural progression of getting more and more tired throughout the day. So you know, as the afternoon comes, you might find yourself yawning more, you might find yourself getting a little more tired, because you've been going all day. So that's normal. So your sleep drive should be strong, especially after the sun goes down, that melatonin starts getting released from your pineal gland in your brain. And it starts signaling to your body that, hey, it's time to go to sleep. So you listen to those signals, listen to those cues. Try to lower your light environment. Because when you have high light environment, when all your lights are on in your home, when you're staring at your phone, and you don't have night mode on I was putting night mode on so it's more orange, those frequencies are going right to your brain. And they're telling your brain it's noon. But you want to tell your brain it's noon when it's nine o'clock at night. So there's a certain circadian biology aspect of this that we have to pay attention to. So in my home, lights come down after a certain time, you know, might have a small lamp on whatever but we're not blaring the house with lights. I also wear I don't have them here. But I wear blue blockers as well. And so those block a lot of that blue light that trips out our brain into thinking it's high noon, when really it's you know, almost time for bed. So these are little hacks, you know, little bio hacks you can do. There's a, I forget the name of the company, if you watch TV, and you're looking at a big screen TV and you like doing that at night. That's okay. But there's these screens you can put over the TV that just give it more of an orange glow. So it's closer to you know, like a campfire versus this high noon light that's beaming into your brain and telling it that it's time to be awake.

Matt Cundill  33:56  
Oh, get your TV out of the bedroom. Yeah,

Mike Sea  33:59  
definitely no TV in my bedroom.

Matt Cundill  34:02  
No. And I'm glad you mentioned that about naps. By the way. I've been taking a 90 minute break. It's really a one hour nap. But every Saturday starting at 3:35pm for the last 30 years. And my body will naturally wind down into this and it's just part of a creative cycle. That Saturday afternoon when everybody is out of being frantic, and I've already had a frantic five days at work that I will just naturally have this creative rest in order to restart my creative side. And if I don't have it, we're going to have a bad week at work. It's going to not flow. I've got to have the Saturday afternoon

Mike Sea  34:42  
nap. What if you move it to Sunday? What happens?

Matt Cundill  34:45  
Well, footballs on Sunday we don't have time for that nap on a period but Saturdays is a is largely a wasted day by many people to get things done and it becomes the sixth working day. You cuz of how we treat it, driving retail purchases, things around the house, listen, a lot of it's unavoidable, you're not going to be able to do this net necessarily. And, you know, for years, I would skip it. But, you know, you have to find that time to recharge and not become harried and an add to the stress in your life is essentially going to make you sick. Because if you know, if you do spend that day, that six day, and that seventh day working and not resting, this is how you get sick, you wear your body down, you get a cold, you get other viruses will start to infect you. And that's the signal from your body to saying you need to stop.

Mike Sea  35:37  
Yeah. And as as the older you get, the less of that energy you can have. I'm almost 50 At the time of this podcast, and I feel better than I did in my 30s. But I can't work the kind of hours I used to work, I think that kind of wanes for some of us, maybe not all of us, but you definitely have to take some time for yourself. Whereas when I was 20, and I was in college, and you know, I'd be working somewhere at night, after class, I could function on two, three hours sleep. Well, you know, if you want to call it functioning, but that's a lot harder to do. At this age. I've found I don't know what your experience has been? Well, let

Matt Cundill  36:16  
me tell you what happens after 50. And this is why I'm listening to your podcast. You look great. Thanks. Are you dealing with stuff every day? Really? The body is a human mystery.

Mike Sea  36:28  
Do you take vitamin D?

Matt Cundill  36:29  
I do? Yeah. How

Mike Sea  36:31  
much do you take a day?

Matt Cundill  36:32  
I take three of the pills that are inside the bottle that my doctor told me to take? Do you notice any difference on that? I don't know any difference? Because I've been doing it for so many years? Well, that's good.

Mike Sea  36:42  
At least your D levels are probably optimal, then you want that? Yeah.

Matt Cundill  36:46  
And that started because of I was feeling depression. Really? Yeah. And so when we record this, we just move the clocks back not where you are, of course, because you're in one of the states that doesn't do that. But when that happens, we're going to be exposed to less light. We're not getting less sunlight, but I'm exposed to a little bit less. Therefore I take this to supplement. Yeah,

Mike Sea  37:06  
I've never used it. But there's a it's spelled s p e r t i. And it's actually a vitamin D lamp. And so it's actually a lamp that you can have on indoors when you're in latitudes where the sun is not as available at certain times of the year. And it radiates UV B. So ultraviolet B light which is the one that when it hits your skin, it turns into vitamin D. So that's another option. I've never messed with it. I don't know if you'll get a tan because I I think UVA tans you from not mistaken don't quote me on that. But there are other options available if you don't want to take the vitamin D pill might take more of your time though. Mike, thanks

Matt Cundill  37:50  
so much for sharing your experience. And now we'll listen for you ongoing and always on the natural man podcast.

Mike Sea  37:55  
For sure, Matt, good to see you, man.

Matt Cundill  37:58  
My thanks to Mike Sea for joining me give his show the natural man podcast to follow and it's everywhere you would expect to find podcasts. I also put links to his website where you can connect further there in the show notes and you may also like dotnet this episode was produced by Evan Surminski and edited by Aidan glassy and built for your ears buy every one of the Sound Off Media Company