Synergee: Hi, friends. Lori here. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Synergy Podcast. Kelly and I truly value your continued support, and today I get to share something very close to our hearts. For years we have guided our clients through powerful health, transformational journeys, and now we’ve taken all of that wisdom and created something we’re so proud of.
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And now let’s get back to today’s episode.
Today we are welcoming back a true pioneer in a world of integrative health. Doctor Deanna Minnich. With over 20 years of experience as a nutrition scientist, educator, and author, Doctor Minnich bridges the gap between conventional science and ancient wisdom.
Her work explores the deep connections between food, mood, hormones, and spiritual well-being. She’s known for her colorful whole self approach to nourishment, and today we’re diving into one of the body’s most underestimated and misunderstood hormones melatonin. While many know it as the sleep hormone melatonin, his role goes far beyond bedtime routines, from mitochondrial health and mood regulation to immune function and even cancer biology, melatonin might just be the body’s best kept secret.
Get ready for a conversation that will change how you think about light, darkness, and the hidden rhythms that shape your health. Let’s welcome the incredible doctor Deanna Minnich.
Dr. Minnich: Oh my goodness, what a nice, warm welcome. It’s great to be here again with you ladies and I’m excited for the conversation. It’s such a hot topic. And in fact, just even today I’m seeing a client. And what is her number one issue? It’s fatigue. So it’s common and it’s really hard to know, you kind of have to tease out the root cause of like, how did we get to this place of fatigue? Is it just overall malaise societally, or is there something specifically going on? So that brings us into the mitochondria for sure. The mitochondria, if you remember all the way back in I guess eighth or ninth grade biology, the powerhouse of the cell. So we’ve always thought about it just as ATP production. And we think about it living in the cell. But we don’t realize that, you know, our mitochondria helps dictate how we’re able to show up. And I was just reading an article about mitochondrial attrition in the brain, like the loss of my secondary as we age and how it affects our cognition.
Synergee: So I was so excited to be able to have this conversation with you and really dig in and give people kind of an anchor for what they can be doing to nourish and feed their mitochondria and how their everyday life may be kind of taking them backwards.
Dr. Minnich: Yeah, I love that. And you know I’ll just say one quick thing before we dive in. We need to look at our maternal line when we think of the mitochondria because most of the DNA that feeds our mitochondria trans generationally, it’s actually coming from the maternal line. So here is where I just put it out there for everybody to listen to.
00:04:20:23 – 00:04:45:06
Dr. Minnich
What is it in your maternal line looking at that lineage, the ancestry that’s connected to your mitochondria, you know, is it from Eastern Europe? Is it from Asia? Where are your mitochondria from? And, you know, really thinking about what the energy needs would be from not just you in this moment, but trans generationally? How did you get here?
00:04:45:10 – 00:04:50:02
Dr. Minnich
And feeding your mitochondria, potentially in that more ancestral way?
00:04:50:02 – 00:05:04:11
Dr. Minnich
above that perspective? I have not really thought about that. I did some work this past year personally in looking at my maternal line, but I did not take it to the degree of looking at the food sources for the maternal line.
00:05:04:11 – 00:05:29:07
Synergee
I was looking more at trauma history, like what has happened intergenerational and what’s been passed down as far as trauma response and stress response. Because I do believe our stressor thoughts get set in utero and maybe even before. So some of these people that have a low heart rate variability pattern that we see showing up when we’re assessing them with oura ring like tracking and then they’re just persistently low.
00:05:29:07 – 00:05:44:14
Synergee
And they can get it to a certain point, but they can’t really make it go any higher. So just really digging in and trying to figure out if there’s something that got set from a trauma response that might be affecting that, but never really thought about, the fuel source of the mitochondria generationally.
00:05:44:14 – 00:05:46:16
Dr. Minnich
Yeah, I think that’s beautiful.
00:05:46:16 – 00:05:48:09
Dr. Minnich
It’s great that you’re bringing in trauma
00:05:48:09 – 00:06:11:17
Dr. Minnich
and I think it’s all related. What did we eat as a result of the trauma, whether that trauma was also famine, war, poverty, just stress response in general. What was it generated by and how did we actually approach food and lifestyle? Yeah. So I think it could take us into a very mind-body spirit type of realm depending on how deep people want to go with that.
00:06:11:17 – 00:06:25:16
Dr. Minnich
But I do think it’s important to look at healing the line of the maternal line of the mother of the feminine. Because that does say something about our mitochondria. Wow. You know, you always blow our minds.
00:06:25:16 – 00:06:29:20
Synergee
That’s why we love. That is why we pray. But
00:06:29:20 – 00:06:33:19
Synergee
yes, I mean, just a different way of looking at things from a different perspective.
00:06:33:19 – 00:06:46:03
Synergee
But it’s, you know, it’s the conversations that are out there and happening, but there but again, I love that you take us there. So let’s get into it. Because that is very a unique perspective. And I can’t wait to hear a little bit more about that.
00:06:46:03 – 00:06:52:17
Dr. Minnich
All right. So where do we want to start. Do we want to just, dive into nutrition or where would you like to start with the mitochondria?
00:06:52:19 – 00:07:15:22
Synergee
Let’s dive into it because there are some listeners that are kind of new to this. So what is the mitochondria keeping it super simple right there. And then what role do they play? And then kind of moving into some of the hormonal influences and such. Yeah. Right. So mitochondria and that’s plural. So mitochondrion would be one mitochondria and you know just one unit.
00:07:16:00 – 00:07:46:18
Dr. Minnich
But essentially we’ve got them throughout the body and they shepherd our energy production. So they’re kind of interesting structures. They look like a capsule. They have two different membranes. And they have to I would say create a gradient of energy. Right? A lot of protons, a lot of exchange of, you know, one, one proton being moved to another molecule and essentially through that whole process giving us ATP, which is our energy currency.
00:07:46:20 – 00:08:14:05
Dr. Minnich
So when we are exercising, we can actually increase mitochondria number. So the mitochondria aren’t just static. We can actually have more which may be connected to more energy production. Right now there is a double edged sword with mitochondria and that is that. Sure, more energy is good, but we also have to tend to the mitochondria because there’s a cost to getting the energy from the mitochondria.
00:08:14:05 – 00:08:44:11
Dr. Minnich
And so through that whole process of that proton gradient and the electrochemical exchange that happens in order to give us ATP, we can produce what’s called free radicals. And those free radicals can create cellular damage. So it’s kind of like there is a cost, right? So when we create energy through the mitochondria we create debris. So there’s a lot of talk about, well how can we have more streamlined energy production.
00:08:44:11 – 00:09:22:06
Dr. Minnich
And so that’s why conversations like having a more ketogenic diet have come up. Because in some ways, looking at fat fuel sources that might be very efficient for the mitochondria to produce energy. But quite honestly, it’s not really just about one nutrient. It’s about the overall health of the cell. And I do think that much of the health of the cell, we need to be looking at fats, you know, creating not just fat in the diet, but then also healthy composition of the mitochondria and the cellular membrane, because that’s going to determine what gets in.
00:09:22:06 – 00:09:51:10
Dr. Minnich
And out of the cell and also the dynamics that relate to the mitochondrion. And as we get older, what ends up happening is we tend to see what we call in functional medicine, mitochondrial dysfunction and mitochondrial dysfunction is related to neurodegeneration. So looking at different diseases like Parkinson and Alzheimer’s, because the nervous system has this connection very closely with the mitochondria.
00:09:51:12 – 00:10:22:05
Dr. Minnich
So we want to tend to our mitochondria. And through just overall as as an organelle in the cell throughout our lifetimes, but especially especially as we get older because things are less efficient. So the way that the mitochondria clean up, after all of that energy processing is a little bit less efficient. So we just have to be sure that we are guaranteeing more things like antioxidants in the diet to kind of sweep up and clean up all of that.
00:10:22:05 – 00:10:46:22
Dr. Minnich
The other thing that has come to the light, so to speak, is the role of things like fasting, intermittent fasting, because what we see is that that whole process of abstinence from food for certain time periods could be important for things like autophagy, my autophagy. So essentially helping with the clean up process within the cell and within the mitochondria.
00:10:46:22 – 00:11:10:05
Dr. Minnich
And so yes, I think we need to consider timing of eating what we are eating, the macronutrients, which would be the protein carbohydrate and fat. And then we need to think about the vitamins and minerals because the mitochondrion needs a lot of nutrients to make it run correctly. And we can maybe unpack that a little bit.
00:11:10:05 – 00:11:13:22
Synergee
And with that, we need to tend to things like lifestyle too, which we’ll get into.
00:11:14:22 – 00:11:15:23
Synergee
So I wanted to go back
00:11:15:23 – 00:11:44:08
Synergeen
to the cell membrane because you know that mitochondria has a double membrane outer and an inner. And I think back Lori and I were just leading a group. We were teaching a group, a mind, your collaborative group of other providers. And we got into the conversation about trans fats. You know, we have a full generation now that are 50 plus that had tremendous exposure to trans fats through low fat eating and all of the products that hit the market that had trans fats in them.
00:11:44:10 – 00:12:02:23
Synergee
So their mitochondrial membranes are shot. And that’s a lot of what we’re seeing now there in menopause now. And they’re very fatigued and they’re having a really hard time with cellular energy. What would you say about that? Like is there a way to help rehab those mitochondrial membranes?
00:12:02:23 – 00:12:05:13
Dr. Minnich
There definitely is. I mean, they’re not static.
00:12:05:13 – 00:12:43:01
Dr. Minnich
They’re dynamic. In fact, the mitochondria are very dynamic. They’re always turning over lots of activity. And so just to back us up a little bit because we talk a lot about, but whether it’s leakiness overall through the body, leaky gut, leaky brain, leaky membranes and leaky mitochondria. Right. So when we have poor quality fats within membranes of any types, what we tend to see is that we get things in and out, perhaps a little bit too easily, things that shouldn’t be in and out of that cell membrane.
00:12:43:03 – 00:13:06:14
Dr. Minnich
So I do think that if we have an issue with our mitochondria in the way of not having enough energy and having a lot of fatigue, it might actually signal that we have leakiness in other parts of the body, because if you think about it, the mitochondria are quite protected. They’re within the confines of the cell. So in order to get to that place, we’re looking at different systems.
00:13:06:16 – 00:13:28:11
Dr. Minnich
And the body works in terms of like a macro and a micro relationship. So what we see overall is kind of the sum of its parts. So working on these membranes with good healthy fats, making sure that we have a good balance of fats. And one simple thing that people can do is just very simply looking at their omega three index.
00:13:28:11 – 00:13:31:06
Dr. Minnich
That is such an easy thing that people can do. My
00:13:31:06 – 00:13:59:16
Dr. Minnich
PhD was on essential fatty acid absorption and metabolism. For the most part our body conserves the absorption of these essential fats. Right. But then how we’re metabolizing them and integrating them. And I have even seen that people who supplement with omega three fats, they still have a low index, which means that either maybe they’re not absorbing them as as well anymore.
00:13:59:16 – 00:14:02:13
Dr. Minnich
And we know that absorption changes as we get older
00:14:02:13 – 00:14:06:02
Dr. Minnich
ways. Maybe they’re using them, right? They’re
00:14:06:02 – 00:14:29:16
Dr. Minnich
metabolizing them, or maybe they’re just sequestered in the tissues. So we’re not seeing that as much in the blood okay. So I think starting there is good. Yeah. Is it possible that when looking at that Omega index, that another possibility would be that they are over ingesting other fats such as omega sixes, assuming that they’re good, but quite out of balance?
00:14:29:16 – 00:14:50:09
Synergee
Is that another possibility? Yeah, that’s a really good point. I’m glad that you mentioned that. It’s it’s you know, if we look at the family of fats, they’re also diverse. Some are short, some are medium, some are long. Some are more fluid, some are more solid. So it’s about the right level of all of those things coming together within the membrane.
00:14:50:11 – 00:15:10:10
Synergee
So we do need a little bit of saturated fat. We need a little bit of unsaturated fat. We want that nice balance between omega three and omega six because that sets the stage for good, healthy inflammatory response. And as we know, most people and their average diet, especially if they’re eating a more processed diet, they have more omega six fats.
00:15:10:12 – 00:15:18:02
Dr. Minnich
So that’s now omega six fats. I just want to pull back from that, because I know that there’s a lot of talk about seed oils and
00:15:18:02 – 00:15:21:08
Dr. Minnich
yes, I feel like what happens in nutrition is we get
00:15:21:08 – 00:15:31:17
Dr. Minnich
in this very polarized mindset of like, yes, no, good, bad. And I don’t think it actually works like that. I think that there’s a spectrum in between.
00:15:31:19 – 00:16:02:12
Dr. Minnich
There’s a lot of nuance, there’s a lot of translation that goes into that equation. But yes, I mean, the best way to look at your omega six and your omega three, those are the two families of essential fats, is to actually just do a blood test. It’s relatively inexpensive. You can do it for your practitioner. You can actually even do it online and just give a blood sample, a dried blood spot that can be analyzed for fatty acids and let you know where you need to go.
00:16:02:12 – 00:16:40:20
Dr. Minnich
And then based on that, making the shift in your diet and then possibly in your supplements. Yep. I am so glad you mentioned how we are so polarized sometimes and in nutrition. We hang on to that one thing, right? And that’s really what we’re here for. That’s part of what our mission is, even in this podcast is to help people understand and decipher through what they’re being blasted with, right of information that’s out there and trying to figure out, lowering the noise and really figuring out in that how do they apply it to them and their individuality and their genetics and their lifestyle.
00:16:40:20 – 00:16:45:00
Dr. Minnich
And that’s really challenging for the health seeker, is to decipher that.
00:16:45:00 – 00:17:04:17
Synergee
That is a challenge, isn’t it? Especially in this day and age of influencers and all the the garden variety of things that are floating around there on the internet and social media. So, yeah, I think that it’s wise to temper any extreme views with, you know, what is reasonable, the rule of reasonableness.
00:17:04:17 – 00:17:27:20
Dr. Minnich
Right. And I think that that’s something to be thinking about in the work that I do. For the most part, I had certain principles, and I think that they are more reasonable. One is color, which refers to the colors of food in the phytochemicals, which actually nicely jog a lot of the resilience of the mitochondria. Right. Really keep the mitochondria fit.
00:17:27:22 – 00:17:52:13
Dr. Minnich
The other one is diversity. So having dietary diversity. So shaking up your everyday eating with different kinds of foods helps to feed the gut microbiome, which helps to feed the whole body. We see that dietary diversity is a very important factor for resilience and mitochondrial function. Then the third thing is rhythm. I do think that, you know, sticking close to nature.
00:17:52:13 – 00:18:20:18
Dr. Minnich
Nature’s rhythms. I just posted on social media yesterday, there was a study that I saw showing that in this population that was tested, they were looking at different lipid markers, right. So just blood fats and showing that in situations where the environment is a high heat environment with high humidity, we start to exhibit certain dysfunctions which we can see through our lipid profile.
00:18:20:20 – 00:18:41:09
Dr. Minnich
So when I talk about rhythm, I’m not just talking about circadian rhythm or the day night cycle. I’m talking about seasonal rhythm. We’re different in the summer than we are in the winter than in the autumn or the spring we are. You have to adjust. Right? So that’s important. It is an often undervalued and underappreciated.
00:18:41:09 – 00:18:56:08
Synergee
I see people that are trying to make lifestyle changes, and they typically can get really rigid with what they’re doing and not really be thinking seasonally or thinking diversity because they figured out what worked for them to get them through a rough period at work.
00:18:56:13 – 00:19:12:09
Synergee
So they’re dug in like ketogenic eating, for example, or carnivore eating, for example, and they get stuck in that mindset of, this is what I have to do for the rest of my life. So I love what you’re saying about just the rhythms of life, understanding those a little bit better, and learning how to navigate.
00:19:12:09 – 00:19:25:19
Synergee
But I am curious about what you said about the fluidity of fats or measuring those at certain times of the year. Are there changes seasonally that we should be making with our fat intake or quality, or types of fat at different times of the year?
00:19:25:19 – 00:19:43:14
Synergee
I think again, back to measuring your labs and looking at your lipids and knowing that there might be more in the way of things like if you already have atrial fibrillation, you might need a little bit more guidance to do a little bit more checking in with your practitioner over the summer months, as an example.
00:19:43:14 – 00:20:10:00
Synergee
Or if you tend towards high triglycerides, high LDL cholesterol, you just might need to maybe just check in, see how you’re feeling, look at and monitor cardiovascular parameters. You mentioned heart rate variability. That’s a great one. You can also be just very simply looking at blood pressure. You know, we have so many different vital signs to be keying into that signal, like the whole of us.
00:20:10:02 – 00:20:42:13
Dr. Minnich
So yeah, I do think that we need to be exploring what we’re doing on a seasonal basis. Even things like exposure to light and dark, which I know we’ll get into because that circadian rhythm changes seasonally. So now we have rhythm upon rhythm, where in the winter months, depending on where you live. But if you’re in the northern hemisphere, if you’re if it’s the winter months, you have early darkness and you have, you know, you have late light in the early morning.
00:20:42:13 – 00:21:19:06
Dr. Minnich
So, you know, things are kind of skewed, including your sleep cycle. Your melatonin that you produce from the pineal gland will be different. And melatonin is a connector to the mitochondrion. So in fact, the mitochondria in itself can actually produce melatonin in. And it’s, it’s very good that our bodies know how to do that because as I mentioned before, otherwise it can become a wastepaper basket of all of these different free radicals and all of those radicals, kind of like off putting all of this emission.
00:21:19:06 – 00:21:48:01
Synergee
Right. This is kind of, the downside of oxidative stress and what melatonin does because melatonin is unique. It’s not just like vitamin C or vitamin E, where or even coenzyme Q10, which is used within the mitochondria. But melatonin is fat soluble and it’s water soluble. So it’s it’s amplified like it can flax, which means it can be in the watery portions of the blood.
00:21:48:03 – 00:22:14:04
Synergee
And it can also be within fat tissues like the skin, the brain. So it can be throughout the body. So it can work very nicely with the mitochondria because it is quite fatty, right? Because of the cell membranes. But yet it needs fluidity in order to move currents through. So the melatonin as a molecule works really well intracellular algae to help that.
00:22:14:06 – 00:22:38:21
Synergee
Yeah. And I can imagine going back to what you were saying. And this makes sense from a time of the year seasonally is that even activity levels are very different for a person based on day two. But I think about an example of and I learned this just by testing my own self every six months. Summertime in winter time, particularly with Spector cell, that’s what I used and still continue to use just to kind of give me some of that indication.
00:22:38:21 – 00:22:55:03
Synergee
But I realized I travel a lot during the summer. I happen to live in Florida, so we have nice weather pretty much all the time. But in the summer when I travel, it’s usually coastal, so I’m eating more fish and I’m doing those things and I don’t need as much fish oil during those times. That’s just one example.
00:22:55:03 – 00:23:10:20
Synergee
But I do think it’s so important to test. I love what you said test don’t guess, you know, use the data. And then of course you have to track it and trend it too is as getting people to really journal what they’re doing and connect those dots. I did this per year
00:23:10:20 – 00:23:17:14
Synergee
and I would say I’m pretty guilty of just testing my labs once a year, like on my birthday, which happens to be winter.
00:23:17:16 – 00:23:30:13
Synergee
So I’m thinking back now, like all my data points or like one time of the year. So now you’re challenging me to go back and think differently about seasonally testing to see are there differences that I need to be more aware of? So I love that.
00:23:30:13 – 00:23:33:22
Dr. Minnich
And even select one so you don’t have to feel like it’s too onerous.
00:23:33:22 – 00:23:34:06
Dr. Minnich
But
00:23:34:06 – 00:23:37:13
Dr. Minnich
you just add lipids even and focus on
00:23:37:13 – 00:23:52:06
Dr. Minnich
cardiovascular parameters. Yeah that would be one good thing. But I do think that, you know, depending on people’s ages, I think as we move our way into our 50s and beyond, I do think it’s important to get labs twice per year.
00:23:52:06 – 00:23:55:16
Dr. Minnich
And I like the March September time
00:23:55:16 – 00:24:02:11
Dr. Minnich
frame because September again signaling right after summer and then March signaling right after winter.
00:24:02:11 – 00:24:05:02
Dr. Minnich
So you’ve got your peak in your nature.
00:24:05:02 – 00:24:08:11
Dr. Minnich
So it’s a really nice flag. So kind of looking at like
00:24:08:11 – 00:24:38:00
Dr. Minnich
extremes in both directions. Although I also like the idea of doing labs around one’s birthday too, because there’s even data to show. There was a study that was done some time ago, and it was done in New York. What they did was I looked at hospital records and looked at people’s death dates and what they died of and their birth dates, and they found that there was a correlation between people’s birth dates and what they seem to have more risk of.
00:24:38:02 – 00:25:04:10
Synergee
So I think it’s kind of neat to think of your own personal rhythm based on your month of birth. So yeah, you have to look at all of those things, right? I mean, it’s, health is something to navigate, and it takes a little bit of work if we want to be proactive and to to live optimally, like, we can let life happen to us or we can move to the forefront and say, no, I need this and this and this.
00:25:04:10 – 00:25:25:01
Synergee
And I think that’s what’s happening is that more and more people are becoming empowered. They know what to ask for. All of these metrics are fabulous because people can look with a continuous glucose monitor and say, oh my goodness, this is what happens when I have this bread. Yeah, right. And we get that information.
00:25:25:01 – 00:25:35:21
Synergee
we can really dial it in today like no other time. As far as the wearables being able to navigate that a little bit better and access to labs to now people can go in on their own and get their lab testing done.
00:25:35:21 – 00:25:46:13
Synergee
They don’t necessarily have to be ordered by a provider. And so it’s learning how to navigate that data. That’s important. Right. And that’s all we’re here.
00:25:46:17 – 00:25:54:02
Synergee
Yeah. And that’s where sometimes we might need a coach or a practitioner to step in. Yeah. Let’s let’s talk about the metric of light
00:25:54:02 – 00:25:59:09
Synergee
light and darkness because this is an easy one that everybody can measure.
00:25:59:09 – 00:26:02:12
Dr. Minnich
Okay. There are different ways to do it. We could say, well, we can just use our
00:26:02:12 – 00:26:05:05
Dr. Minnich
eyes to see light in dark, which we can.
00:26:05:07 – 00:26:21:15
Dr. Minnich
But there are also apps that people can use where on their phone, they can simply use the camera on the phone and the app that I use is free and it’s easy to download. It’s called Light Meter Lux, light
00:26:21:15 – 00:26:25:01
Dr. Minnich
Lux, no cost to it and all it involves
00:26:25:01 – 00:26:30:13
Dr. Minnich
is so easy you just direct. So it’s almost like this would be like my eyes, right?
00:26:30:13 – 00:26:57:01
Dr. Minnich
The camera, the phone would be my eye. I have the app on and I move it to wherever I am looking, and it will give me the unit of Lux and one Lux is equal to a candle flame about three feet away, about a meter away. So you can get a measure of luminosity. So we want to wake up with that full spectrum light.
00:26:57:03 – 00:27:22:11
Dr. Minnich
And that first exposure is important because it starts to bring our melatonin signal down and even helps to prime the melatonin for that evening. So there’s a dual purpose there. And it enables our cortisol to come up. Right. Like just getting that early morning light. Know it’s very interesting because, I was just having a conversation with somebody about three weeks ago now there is a gene.
00:27:22:17 – 00:27:35:14
Synergee
So I’m a huge advocate of testing for people. Snips. They’re called snips, like where you have a gene variant where you have a typo in your gene code that makes that gene function a little bit differently, right?
00:27:35:14 – 00:27:39:00
Synergee
Yeah. And this woman I was talking with, she was telling me how she was so
00:27:39:00 – 00:27:49:05
Synergee
challenged in terms of waking up in the morning and feeling like the monster, the big bear in the house in the morning, and she she couldn’t figure out why she tried all these different things.
00:27:49:07 – 00:28:31:02
Synergee
But when she assessed her gene variants, she found that she had a snip for the melatonin receptor, which made that receptor hang on to the melatonin. A bit longer. So you can imagine that it would be harder for her to wake up in the morning, because melatonin is a signal of darkness in this signal of sleep. So knowing that she had this change in her receptor made her even more in tune with her lifestyle and ensured that she definitely got up and got outside in order to get the bright light so that you bring the melatonin down quickly.
00:28:31:11 – 00:28:51:13
Synergee
Yeah, but she wouldn’t have known that she didn’t really put it all together. She was trying all these other things, going to bed earlier, you know, eating different things, but hadn’t really pieced together the power of light and how light can change our energy level, can change our physiology, can change our psychology. And here’s an interesting tidbit for people.
00:28:51:13 – 00:29:14:20
Synergee
So yes, using the app. Right. So let me just give you some best practices on that before I kind of move into eye color. You know there are different recommendations about exposure to light. And if you think about it, many of us are indoors most of the day. We work inside, whether in an office, home office. But what you really want to aim for is getting the full spectrum light outside.
00:29:14:22 – 00:29:36:17
Dr. Minnich
And even if it’s just for a couple of minutes in the morning, that’s good. Even if you live in a cloudy environment, it doesn’t matter. You’re still getting that exposure through your eyes. So I do think it’s important, even if you work in front of a window, like right now, I work in front of a window and that changes the luminosity even peripherally.
00:29:36:19 – 00:30:03:06
Dr. Minnich
It’s significant because I’ve actually tested it. So when I use my light meter app midday, I’m getting something like between like 2 to 4000 lux, depending on how sunny it is. But if I was facing a wall, that would be like 2 to 400, you know, so a factor of ten. So yeah. So you want more light during the day, but kind of the healthy light.
00:30:03:06 – 00:30:21:09
Dr. Minnich
Right. And you know, right now we’re on a camera with artificial light. And that artificial light is not necessarily too bad. During our day, but at night the artificial light at night, which is an alien, becomes an endocrine disruptor.
00:30:21:09 – 00:30:30:05
Synergee
Wow. Say that again. Say that again because we talk a lot about endocrine disruptors, and I have never had artificial light on the list.
00:30:30:07 – 00:30:43:17
Synergee
So talk about mind blowing. Yeah. We’re doing all these things to avoid the food, to avoid the chemicals, to avoid the things that we know for sure are endocrine disruptors. But light. That’s interesting.
00:30:43:17 – 00:30:44:06
Dr. Minnich
Artificial
00:30:44:06 – 00:30:55:09
Dr. Minnich
light at night. Not the soft reddish candle light like fireplace hue light, but the bright fluorescent, you know, you go to a sport game, you go to a basketball game.
00:30:55:09 – 00:31:17:04
Dr. Minnich
Those bright lights, you go to a library, the bright lights, you go to a grocery store, bright lights at night. You know, some of us even go to a gym at night. And I had myself. Until I developed this more, I would say, greater awareness of light and dark, because I was realizing that even if I was working out in the gym, I’m still under this bright light.
00:31:17:04 – 00:31:41:18
Dr. Minnich
What am I doing? So it’s okay to be in those places, but then you can take precaution i.e wearing things like, you know, and there are all different kinds of blue light blocking glasses, right? These are a very modest form just for my computer. Like during the day, to be just protective of my eyes because, you know, so many people are developing eye issues.
00:31:41:20 – 00:31:45:04
Dr. Minnich
A lot of ocular issues are happening. Increase
00:31:45:04 – 00:32:03:22
Dr. Minnich
macular degeneration, cataracts. I don’t know if this is just a function of age and people just seeing more of it being tuned in. But you know our eyes are valuable right in our eyes. Connect to the brain. There is a superhighway right to the essentially to the pineal gland. And that will signal our melatonin.
00:32:03:22 – 00:32:36:09
Dr. Minnich
So if that’s disturbed, we are now those photosensitive cells are perceiving blue light. It shuts down melatonin. Melatonin is required to open the sleep gate. It can help with getting us to sleep. It doesn’t necessarily keep us asleep, but since the point that it becomes dim outside, we start to increase slightly with melatonin and then eventually we peak at about 2 to 4 a.m. and that many times is the time that people are waking up.
00:32:36:13 – 00:32:59:03
Dr. Minnich
They’re going to the bathroom. They’re now exposing their eyes to blue light blue light. Again. It’s like, oh no, you don’t want to do that. You know? It’s like you want to, you know, as much as you can stay within that darkness for that 2 to 4 a.m. time period. That’s really essential for deep restorative sleep, for sure.
00:32:59:03 – 00:33:04:00
Synergee
So I want to go back for a minute DNA back to the mitochondria in melatonin.
00:33:04:02 – 00:33:34:18
Synergee
Because I don’t know that we explicitly said the connection between the mitochondria and the and the and melatonin. So it’s my understanding from your work in looking at the antioxidant protection. We mentioned all of the reactive oxygen species that get produced just with metabolism and having antioxidants there. And melatonin happens to be a really key potent antioxidant. You want to frame that out in relationship to like vitamin C that everybody knows about being an antioxidant.
00:33:34:18 – 00:33:43:14
Dr. Minnich
So just to put it in perspective, vitamin C now I don’t want to diminish the effects of vitamin C because vitamin C is also really important in its own right.
00:33:43:14 – 00:34:17:01
Dr. Minnich
But vitamin C, if you look at how much it can quench with respect to free radicals, we’re looking at probably 1 to 2 free radicals in certain kinds. One molecule of melatonin can quench up to ten free radicals. And even the metabolites of melatonin act as antioxidants. So essentially the mitochondria do make melatonin. And the mitochondria can also take up intracellular melatonin.
00:34:17:03 – 00:34:27:17
Synergee
So the mitochondria are essentially using it and being regulated by melatonin. As you know, again, I don’t want us to think it’s only melatonin.
00:34:27:17 – 00:34:31:08
Dr. Minnich
Right. But melatonin is a primary one, which
00:34:31:08 – 00:34:53:10
Dr. Minnich
now if we make the clinical translation and say, okay, well how does that shake out in terms of my life or my risk of certain diseases? What we also tend to see is that there is a connection between the risk of neurodegenerative diseases, things like, again, Parkinson’s, dementia, Alzheimer’s and melatonin.
00:34:53:10 – 00:35:15:02
Dr. Minnich
And maybe that’s through the interface of sleep, maybe it’s through the interface of the mitochondria. So there is that interconnection there to be looking at. And also, metabolically speaking, I think that melatonin is important. Melatonin has a connection with insulin. It actually is kind of like a spider web. All the hormones connect to each other, right? Because,
00:35:15:02 – 00:35:18:02
Synergee
you know, in functional medicine, we talk about how
00:35:18:02 – 00:35:21:11
Synergee
hormones are the communications system in the body.
00:35:21:12 – 00:35:48:22
Dr. Minnich
So we have got neurotransmitters, we have hormones. And if you change one hormone let’s just say you’re not sleeping so well, what can happen is then the next day you’re not eating so well. So the whole thing is just kind of like, interconnected, but the mitochondria and melatonin interphase at the level of exactly what you mentioned, the antioxidant function, but then also the anti-inflammatory response.
00:35:49:00 – 00:35:57:19
Synergee
Right. Because, even if we think back to the pandemic and why was melatonin supplementation being talked about for immune health? And that
00:35:57:19 – 00:35:58:19
Synergee
kind of threw me for
00:35:58:19 – 00:36:00:00
Synergee
it threw me off.
00:36:00:00 – 00:36:00:18
Dr. Minnich
Yeah.
00:36:00:18 – 00:36:03:00
Synergee
I was thinking you know, wait a minute. We’re
00:36:03:00 – 00:36:10:08
Synergee
talking zinc, vitamin C, the steady eddies for the immune system. But now all of a sudden, melatonin was part of protocols
00:36:10:08 – 00:36:13:18
Synergee
that I that caused me to look a little bit deeper.
00:36:14:09 – 00:36:48:21
Dr. Minnich
And if you can see why it’s you can see that melatonin again is serving multiple functions: anti-inflammatory, antioxidant. And it’s helping with our chrono rhythm. Right. Kind of like stimulating that sleep wake cycle. Opening up the sleep gate connecting us to circadian rhythm. And yes, it’s also a mitochondrial regulator. Yeah. So it’s really important for intracellular health. So the health within the cell and it kind of keeps things I would say in balance.
00:36:48:23 – 00:37:12:09
Dr. Minnich
There’s also a connection with viruses. So this is not a lot of cellular biology work. But essentially what we see is that a cell can be overtaken by viruses where the viruses start to create their own phase, right? They just kind of set up shop inside the cell. Amyloid proteins and peptides can do that as well.
00:37:12:11 – 00:37:40:08
Dr. Minnich
And melatonin helps to break that up. It helps to at least from a cell perspective helps to break up that phase separation. And so Doris Lo and Doctor Russell Reiter have done a lot of work on that. So you can imagine that that would be important for mitochondrial health as well. Yeah. To keep the overall cell healthy because otherwise it becomes cluttered with a lot of debris.
00:37:40:08 – 00:38:04:07
Synergee
And you know, it’s just fascinating if you think about it. But the the health of your cells really does determine the health of your overall being an organism. So looking at your skin, looking at your hair, seeing how your gut feels, what is your mood state? How are you sleeping? It’s all in some way, we could say a reflection of the cell and even down to that mitochondria.
00:38:04:09 – 00:38:27:12
Synergee
So when we say test, don’t guess because we say that a lot, right? And we really do want to utilize measurement markers to know what a person needs and don’t need. When it comes to melatonin, is there a quantifiable way to say that a person needs it or not, or is it merely subjective? That’s a great question.
00:38:27:14 – 00:38:49:20
Dr. Minnich
And I get that question a lot. There is only I mean, if you think about it, you can change your melatonin levels by exposure to light. So if you have, there are ways to measure melatonin. So you can measure melatonin in your saliva and you can kind of create a curve. And that’s called dim light melatonin onset or dim light.
00:38:49:22 – 00:39:04:18
Dr. Minnich
Yeah. Just basically it’s kind of like let’s just say 6 p.m. starts to get dark. You start producing a little bit of melatonin, it starts going up. You can kind of track that progress. And then in the morning you can have a urine test to see how much you metabolized your melatonin
00:39:04:18 – 00:39:07:05
Dr. Minnich
and just really tell you how much you produce it.
00:39:07:05 – 00:39:08:19
Dr. Minnich
It just tells you how much you metabolized,
00:39:08:19 – 00:39:48:20
Synergee
right and how much you excreted in your urine. It’s hard because the peak of your melatonin from the pineal gland, not from the mitochondria per se, but from the pineal gland, because maybe I need to make the distinction here, because at night, this whole cycle that I’m describing with light and darkness, that melatonin is coming from the pineal gland, which is in the brain, when that is released from the pineal gland, it goes through this systemic circulation and then it keys into the clock genes within all the different body systems like the liver, the kidney, the gut, they all start to get in train to the circadian
00:39:48:20 – 00:40:14:12
Synergee
rhythm. It’s actually quite beautiful if you think of it as like, wow, nature is like connecting us through that signal of melatonin every night. So if we’re not sleeping well or we’re waking up, it’s like it’s preventing us from creating that inner symphony of like connection with nature. So that’s pineal melatonin separately, we have the melatonin that’s produced inside the cell.
00:40:14:14 – 00:40:37:10
Dr. Minnich
Now to your question, Lori, as to whether or not can you actually measure that? That is not so easy to do. And it’s also not so easy to measure pineal melatonin because it’s fleeting and it can be disturbed by what you’re eating light and dark. And also we’re not going to have somebody wake up in the middle of the night to kind of look at their peak of what they’re making.
00:40:37:10 – 00:41:02:08
Dr. Minnich
So many times we start to look at symptoms, and that brings us back to what we started talking about. Is the person fatigued? Are they not sleeping well? Do they have stress? If you look at the curve of melatonin and throughout a person’s life and again, we’re talking pineal melatonin, we see that children have some of the highest levels of melatonin.
00:41:02:10 – 00:41:29:06
Dr. Minnich
So personally I don’t think children should be given supplemental melatonin unless they have a condition where they might benefit, like ADHD or autistic spectrum disorder. There could be some indication there, but just for sleep hygiene popping about a bunch of melatonin gummies, I feel like maybe we just need to look at sleep hygiene first and foremost, right? Like make sure there are devices or bedrooms clean.
00:41:29:08 – 00:41:47:16
Dr. Minnich
You know, all of those different factors. But kids have a high amount of pineal melatonin. As they reach puberty, things start to change. They start to come down. By midlife, we have about a third of what we had as a child. And then in our 50s, we have about a 10th of what we had as a child, and it just continues to plummet.
00:41:47:16 – 00:42:13:08
Dr. Minnich
We pretty much bottom out. So the question becomes, well, gosh, what happens then to my mitochondria? What happens to my aging? Because we know in a lot of different biohackers you were just at a longevity conference. Biohackers are really into supplemental melatonin because they seem to be keyed into this sweet spot of how do we patch the gap of what we’ve just lost.
00:42:13:10 – 00:42:31:21
Synergee
You know, we think about that with all hormones really. Like even estradiol, progesterone, testosterone, you know, melatonin is no exception. But melatonin is truly beyond a hormone, whereas Astrid Pill is more like, you know, classically connected to feedback loops as a hormone.
00:42:31:21 – 00:42:39:02
Synergee
right? I think it’s clinicians. We were afraid to prescribe melatonin for the longest time because we thought we were going to inhibit production.
00:42:39:04 – 00:43:00:14
Synergee
But listening to you talk about how we’re I mean, a 10th of what we had and younger years, that’s pretty significant, especially knowing what it does to the mitochondria. So but more is not always better. Right. Like mega dosing of melatonin. Like we saw heavy doses for things like cancer. We saw heavy doses even in the post Covid protocol.
00:43:00:16 – 00:43:07:03
Synergee
But those are for short term use and for a condition specific use, right? Not for day to day consumption.
00:43:07:18 – 00:43:08:12
Dr. Minnich
Everything that you
00:43:08:12 – 00:43:23:17
Dr. Minnich
just said I agree with, in fact, you took those words from my mouth because I would be saying exactly the same thing. We have no evidence that high doses long term are, number one, beneficial just for overall health.
00:43:23:20 – 00:43:27:04
Dr. Minnich
Yes. To what you said. There are certain indications working with a
00:43:27:04 – 00:43:56:19
Dr. Minnich
clinician where under certain protocols, short term may be beneficial. In fact, I just posted a study, a review looking at, cancer chemotherapy. It was a review article kind of looking at the role of melatonin in that, what that plays. Right. And I actually did a melatonin masterclass last year where I interviewed a lot of these different experts that have done the research, clinical research, benchtop research on melatonin.
00:43:56:21 – 00:44:24:05
Dr. Minnich
And all of them are very much speaking to the safety of melatonin within a certain dose range. Right. So a physiologic dose what we just patching what we have lost but not a supra physiological dose where it’s like pharmacologic levels where our bodies haven’t seen those levels. And that would be completely new and overriding what we would have had naturally.
00:44:24:07 – 00:44:50:11
Dr. Minnich
And we can say the same about most hormones, like even when women do menopausal hormone therapy, you know, we just replete to our biological stage of life. Or is there a danger in kind of overriding that signal? And now it’s like, but wait, we haven’t seen that in like we’ve been in this dip mode. And so I feel that, you know, again, back to what we were saying about nutrition.
00:44:50:11 – 00:45:08:11
Dr. Minnich
Sometimes it’s very binary. It’s kind of like good, bad, all or nothing. And oh, we’ve seen a little bit of that with hormones where it’s like, oh, you know, no, melatonin is bad. It’s a hormone. You wouldn’t give that to anybody. And then other people were they’re taking triple digit doses of melatonin. And I’m like, why?
00:45:08:11 – 00:45:09:18
Dr. Minnich
That’s a lot of mouth tone.
00:45:09:18 – 00:45:12:17
Dr. Minnich
And you know I think the sweet spot is
00:45:12:17 – 00:45:16:12
Dr. Minnich
somewhere in between. And then it has to be personalized to that individual.
00:45:16:12 – 00:45:19:00
Synergee
Absolutely. That between repeating
00:45:19:00 – 00:45:20:13
Synergee
and rebalancing.
00:45:20:13 – 00:45:33:01
Synergee
Yes. And it’s clear it’s the position at which you approach the individuality of the client that you’re working with. And there are a lot out there that are just working to replenish or replete.
00:45:33:03 – 00:46:05:10
Synergee
And we know that it’s not just that one thing. It affects the symphony. And I love the word harmony because that’s what it is. There’s harmony. So and I do have a question about air versus SR, is there, you know, when you think about dosing or, or, taking or supporting your supplement melatonin, is there a difference between immediate release and sustained release enough to, to, to basically use one or the other or is there a purpose for both?
00:46:05:12 – 00:46:31:03
Dr. Minnich
Well let’s talk about the supplements a little bit. So info disclosure I do work with a company that sells a plant melatonin. It’s called urban in. And the thing about urban tone and it’s very unique. It’s it’s from plants. It’s from rice chlorella and alfalfa. And it’s in the plant matrix. So it’s not just isolated or extracted where it’s just melatonin the moment it hits your tongue.
00:46:31:05 – 00:46:58:20
Dr. Minnich
Right. So it’s kind of bound up in the plant. So it kind of has this natural release which we would want. Because if you think of, again, that curve of melatonin, we’re slowly going up as it gets dim. And then we keep going up. So with a lot of the synthetic melatonin that are on the market, which is about 99% of the melatonin that you would find online, it’s it tends to be chemically produced.
00:46:58:20 – 00:47:40:07
Dr. Minnich
Right. So it’s starting with a different petrochemical type process. So you do have to be thinking about contaminants. So when you mentioned sustained release, I know that some people like that format. My only take with that is that you have to look at what is included in that supplement to make it delay the absorption. You know, many times there are things that we may not want that are in and of themselves, phthalates, parabens, you know, things that we wouldn’t necessarily want to take because, you know, it may have some untoward effect or just be seen as an endocrine disruptor.
00:47:40:09 – 00:48:01:15
Dr. Minnich
Yeah. So I do think there is a timing aspect. I think your question is really good because some people are rapid, metabolize years of melatonin, so they need to take it closer into bedtime. So for me, I’m one of those people. I’m a rapid metabolize melatonin. So I don’t wake up groggy from melatonin if I take it.
00:48:01:17 – 00:48:38:09
Dr. Minnich
So I take it, you know, just right before bedtime, essentially about 30 minutes before. But in general, what the package tends to say that you’ll see this on products like 40 to 60 minutes before bedtime. Now, if you want to slow it down naturally, one thing that you can do is take it with fish oil. That’s another great way to just naturally, without having like any kind of encapsulation or any kind of coating on it, you could take it with fish oil to kind of slow that release, because we know that fat, it’s, it kind of slows things through the stomach.
00:48:38:09 – 00:49:01:00
Dr. Minnich
So that would be one thing that you could do. Now, my husband, just to give you an example of somebody else, and I’ve talked with many people like this where they say I get groggy in the morning from melatonin, even low dose. So for those people, they have to back it up more. So if I go to bed at 10 p.m. and I’m taking my melatonin, my herbal turn in at like 930, that’s good for me.
00:49:01:00 – 00:49:09:02
Dr. Minnich
It works for me. But for my husband, he has to take well, he goes to bed a little bit later than me, but he has to take it three hours before bedtime.
00:49:09:02 – 00:49:12:13
Synergee
Well, that’s good to know. Yeah. And he had to kind
00:49:12:13 – 00:49:15:07
Synergee
of experiment and figure out like what
00:49:15:07 – 00:49:18:21
Synergee
time was the best to match his metabolism.
00:49:18:21 – 00:49:30:14
Dr. Minnich
Yeah. So keep that in mind because some people say, oh, I had nightmares or I got groggy or I had a headache or, you know, just something, you know, to even talk about the nightmares.
00:49:30:14 – 00:49:54:02
Dr. Minnich
Is that because the supplement itself is contaminated or does it have other things in there, you know, in some of the mixology kind of supplements where there are multiple things in there, you can actually change the metabolism of melatonin by including certain things. So you could actually be speeding it up. So I always watch I just like to have melatonin on its own.
00:49:54:04 – 00:50:10:19
Dr. Minnich
So I’m going to take it, and you know, in that small dose I don’t want to have it kind of mixed up with a bunch of other things, like especially not botanicals, because you might actually increase or decrease the metabolism. You can change the dynamics of it.
00:50:10:19 – 00:50:14:11
Synergee
So what about tart cherry? A lot of people are touting tart cherry at bedtime.
00:50:14:11 – 00:50:18:01
Synergee
Does that have any mechanism of action for melatonin production?
00:50:18:01 – 00:50:38:20
Dr. Minnich
What I like about tart cherry is that, well, first of all, tart cherry is very rich in polyphenols, and I’m a huge fan of polyphenols because polyfill, phenols and salves establish kind of a chrono rhythm type of an effect. So that’s why certain foods seasonally, when they come up like cherries, they tend to come up like in the springtime.
00:50:38:20 – 00:50:48:11
Dr. Minnich
Right? Grapes tend to come up in the autumn and also could play a role in kind of establishing that that chrono rhythm. So
00:50:48:11 – 00:50:52:00
Dr. Minnich
tart cherries are rich in polyphenols, anti-inflammatory.
00:50:52:00 – 00:50:56:12
Dr. Minnich
And the reason why some people aren’t able to sleep is because they’re inflamed.
00:50:56:12 – 00:50:59:20
Synergee
Gotcha. Right. So it has a nice anti-inflammatory
00:50:59:20 – 00:51:09:22
Synergee
response. Now, most fruits, seeds, nuts, especially the reproductive portion of plants contain some level of melatonin Nin.
00:51:10:00 – 00:51:32:14
Synergee
So some people say, oh, you know, I’m sleeping better because I’m taking tart cherries. And that helps me with melatonin. And because it’s supplying melatonin. But actually, if you look and calculate how much you would need in the way of tart cherries, I mean, it’s not a standardized amount, right? You don’t know how much you’re getting in tart cherry juice.
00:51:32:15 – 00:52:03:16
Dr. Minnich
It’s not on the label. And we know that plants are very unpredictable based on their growing. I did a calculation in the paper that we published in the nutrients Journal, and I just took a paper, identified a general range of plant melatonin and tart cherries. And of course there are different varieties. So even you have that. But what I calculated was in order to get 0.3mg of melatonin, you need 2718 cherries.
00:52:04:07 – 00:52:07:05
Dr. Minnich
I put number that number just because I get the question all the
00:52:07:05 – 00:52:27:17
Dr. Minnich
time. So 2700 cherries to get a modest physiologic dose of melatonin. And I you know, I have nothing against cherries. I mean, I actually, my husband had, a gout attack some years ago. So, you know, I always have like a or NC tart cherry juice in the fridge just in case.
00:52:27:17 – 00:52:52:09
Dr. Minnich
You know, just as an anti-inflammatory. I have pomegranate juice. I have certain juices that I see as medicinal. But, you know, it’s it’s it’s so good to have tart cherry juice before bedtime. It does help. Or wake somebody up. You should have that in an empty stomach. I don’t know all those things, but I think cherries as a food are incredible because of the polyphenols.
00:52:52:09 – 00:52:59:15
Synergee
Well, listen, we could spend days talking. I feel like this hour went by and a snap of a finger.
00:52:59:17 – 00:53:12:03
Synergee
You are just a wealth of not only information, but just pure joy. We love having you on. And, thank you so much for being so generous with your time and your energy and all of your knowledge
00:53:12:03 – 00:53:13:04
Synergee
today.
00:53:13:04 – 00:53:29:17
Synergee
I’ve been looking forward to this, and I’m glad that we had the conversation. And I hope that, you know, people can find some takeaways. If I were just to think back, like three things for me, the way from this, you know, we talked about omega threes and how important that is for the mitochondrial membranes. Right.
00:53:29:17 – 00:53:51:04
Dr. Minnich
The two membranes and just for overall cellular health. So get your levels tested. The omega Quant test is available online. Very easy to do, very inexpensive. Then you can figure out what to do from there. So omega threes number two pay attention to your light and darkness. Like really try to live in sync with nature as much as you can.
00:53:51:06 – 00:54:13:09
Dr. Minnich
I really feel like, you know, health doesn’t have to be all biohacking and metrics and, you know, like you have to constantly be analyzing ourselves. Like, I almost feel like letting go of that and being more in nature. Yes. Rising with the light, going to bed with the dark, or at least taking some preventative measures with blue light blocking glasses.
00:54:13:09 – 00:54:36:18
Dr. Minnich
If you’re tending to be out a little bit later and then I would say number three. So light darkness when it comes to melatonin, seeing melatonin is more than just a sleep aid. You know that that kind of whenever I see that out there I’m like, oh my goodness, what happened? That the communication of melatonin has just been distorted.
00:54:36:18 – 00:54:37:01
Dr. Minnich
So
00:54:37:01 – 00:54:39:21
Dr. Minnich
It had poor branding, poor branding.
00:54:39:21 – 00:54:41:05
Dr. Minnich
for a brand. But you know, I guess
00:54:41:05 – 00:54:57:13
Dr. Minnich
because in so many ways people just want a simple solution. And they just want to think about something in like a very like unilateral way. But whenever things come from plants, many times they have multiple functions. And melatonin has kind of co-evolved with us through the mitochondria.
00:54:57:15 – 00:54:57:19
Synergee
Yeah.
00:54:57:19 – 00:55:01:01
Dr. Minnicn
You know, it’s ancestral. It’s again,
00:55:01:01 – 00:55:28:21
Dr. Minnich
It’s a maternal kind of feminine molecule because it is connected to the maternal line and to the mitochondria. Right. It’s kind of beautiful in that way. It’s very protective. So if you are thinking about melatonin because you’re wanting to optimally age or at least have better circadian rhythm, better mitochondrial health, you know, I think working with the practitioner to assess that better figuring out a dose timing and all of those things that we talked about would be good.
00:55:28:23 – 00:55:46:18
Dr. Minnich
And of course, my preference is a plant melatonin like urban toning and evaluating that, right, especially if you’re in your 50s and beyond. I’ve got my whole family on it. My mom, my dad, and my mom actually was on it even before I started talking about it. She already knew it was. I was like, yes,
00:55:46:18 – 00:55:50:04
Dr. Minnich
she’s always ahead of the curve. Are you? You talk about her often.
00:55:50:04 – 00:55:51:21
Dr. Minnich
She’s always ahead. Yeah.
00:55:51:21 – 00:55:54:22
Dr. Minnich
well, she she tends to be on some things, that’s for sure. But she
00:55:54:22 – 00:56:06:07
Dr. Minnich
knew about melatonin. So we share articles and I’m always like you know you guys you know it’s and I kind of feel like it has a connection to other things. Maybe it’s even a molecule of consciousness.
00:56:06:07 – 00:56:25:16
Synergee
And you know, if we’re changing our brain and our nervous system through melatonin, chances are we’re changing our state of awareness and being. So it to me is kind of a spiritual molecule as well, which I find really fascinating. Absolutely. My takeaways for everybody in terms of like, okay, right. Like
00:56:25:16 – 00:56:37:15
Synergee
Yeah. What can we sit back and take. Yeah I think one thing that I would share, I talked about the journey looking at the maternal line, there’s a book that is named It Didn’t Start With You, and I’m trying to remember the author right now.
00:56:37:20 – 00:56:56:02
Synergee
Yeah. Didn’t it? Yeah. It didn’t start with you. Yeah. And it’s relatively new. It’s been out maybe a year and a half, but it really talks about all the epigenetic challenges or advantages that we have and kind of let you look at it through a different lens, a lens of compassion. And how can we embrace this? I love what you said about eating according to that.
00:56:56:02 – 00:57:10:15
Synergee
I think that’s another thing I’m going to dig into after this discussion today, is looking at that a little bit differently, looking beyond just the trauma response, but looking into the nutritional response, too. So thank you for that. Just wanted to share that. And Laurie, any takeaways from you?
00:57:10:15 – 00:57:13:02
Synergee
Yeah. No, I just I so appreciate,
00:57:13:02 – 00:57:26:17
Synergee
Deanna, your depth of science behind, behind every conversation. And I just want to just applaud you. I know you do it because you love to do it. We were talking about that before we started recording today.
00:57:26:17 – 00:57:46:17
Synergee
That you have such a passion, but it’s so important. And you bring that up every single time. Bringing people back to the research, the science and the clinical bridging that gap really between research and application and just thank you for being a thought leader, for being there and teaching. It’s been fun to learn alongside of you and learn from you simultaneously.
00:57:46:17 – 00:57:59:15
Synergee
So I’m just going to second what Kelly said. Thank you for taking time out of your very busy schedule. We know you’re traveling a lot. Congratulations on your most recent award. You accepted. That was such humility. And you deserved every part of it.
00:57:59:15 – 00:58:06:07
Dr. Minnich
Goodness. Thank you so much. That’s a lot to take in. And I feel like, you know, we’re all part of this movement.
00:58:06:07 – 00:58:24:18
Synergee
We’re all so invested in health and well-being. This is so we’re living in interesting times because we’re learning more, right? So we have more tools to do that. So it’s exciting to be on that journey with both of you. Yeah. What’s your next book? Yeah. What’s your next book? And is there any way for people to connect with you?
00:58:24:21 – 00:58:56:06
Dr. Minnich
Yeah, the best way is just to go to my website, which is Deanna Mediacom. One. And I do have, what people seem to like is the resources tab, where I have a bunch of down there, they can just download those. Yeah. I have recently started a new YouTube channel, and it’s on science and spirituality. So I’m interviewing people in functional medicine on their stories as it relates to their their scientific outlook, but also their spiritual framework, because so much of that actually Prime’s how we live, how we teach, how we work.
00:58:56:12 – 00:59:21:18
Dr. Minnich
And so I’m very interested in, I think as a scientist, what ends up happening is like, you go deep into science and you start realizing the beauty and just how amazing the human body is in so many ways, and then it just becomes like a spiritual aspect. It’s like, wow, this is like it’s just we spend our lives and bodies that we seek to understand.
00:59:21:18 – 00:59:43:20
Dr. Minnich
Right. And many times are a lot of our lessons in our learning come from our bodies. And so yeah, I’m very interested in spirituality and the way that I define that is a sense of purpose, meaning and connection. So looking beyond, you know, like, what do we believe? What are our values. So that’s something on YouTube that people can check out and subscribe to.
00:59:43:23 – 00:59:57:22
Dr. Minnich
I’m just doing that for fun. It’s just, something I’m enjoying. It’s a passion project. So that would be what I would say is new. I can’t wait to connect with it. That’s awesome. And I’m sure that our listeners will too. So thanks again, Dana,
00:59:58:16 – 01:00:15:20
Synergee
The Synergee Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice. And no doctor patient relationship is formed. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
01:00:15:20 – 01:00:25:02
Synergee
Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have, and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions.
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