#446 Q&A Megadosing Astaxanthin, Fixing Food Sensitivities, and More with Tim Gray

Tim Gray (0:00)

But if supplementing with vitamin D, well, it does help the immune system and help fixing your gut, but it doesn't give you all the hormonal benefits that D3 actually does from the sun, natural light. So don't just fill up your gauge. It's almost like grabbing the fuel gauge and dragging it up to being full. It's still gonna run out of fuel.

Siim Land (0:16)

Yeah, there's more than just the building blocks. You know, yeah, you get the building blocks from collagen that then is used for making collagen and for collagen turnover, but there's some other effects on specific, like the immune system and macrophages as well. Tim, welcome to the show.

Tim Gray (0:33)

Thanks for having me, man.

Siim Land (0:34)

Yeah, we were just discussing that you have like exciting times ahead of you with the Health Optimization Summit as well launching in the States from now. It's like one week from now, so April 12th and 13th in Austin, Texas, where I'll also be there and a lot of other different speakers will be there as well. So, yeah, how do you feel about it?

Tim Gray (0:57)

Super excited from this little event in the UK, going to Austin, Texas. And I think we're going to be bigger in year one in the US than we were in year four in England. So, yeah, it's really, really fun because we're going to be helping a lot more people and bringing a lot of the cool paleotribe back together again. It's awesome.

Siim Land (1:16)

Yeah, yeah, just if people want to join at the last moment, then yeah, check the link in the description for the link for that. But yeah, today we're doing a Q&A. We asked both of our followers on Instagram to do like a, to ask us questions. And one of the first questions we got was, how do you get sleep when your mind is racing and you can't switch off?

Tim Gray (1:41)

Yeah, okay, so I'll take my angle on this one if I may, Siim. I mean, this is something I struggled with for many years, and I used to have to take just different sleeping tablets. And I did this on and off for years. And obviously, it's just, in my opinion, a neurotransmitter imbalance. And that could be from eating the wrong foods later on in the day, or having coffee past 12, one o'clock in the afternoon. And it could be from watching Netflix or being too stressed, or having an argument with your partner, or, you know, especially if you're watching Netflix, and it's fighting, killing or whatever, your body is in a war zone and not ready to switch off. I used to find that my brain went...

The moment I laid down and I found that eating not far after sunset was perfect. And actually, and I keep it here, and I'm traveling right now, so this is why I'm sitting on the bed in my hotel room, but I always carry vitamin B3, so niacin, with me. The flush kind, because I find that this really helps calm down adrenaline and helps the brain, all the neurotransmitters calm. So I take 50 milligrams, which really helps. And also, another one that I take as well, which is fantastic, just in case I've had coffee during the day, is L-theanine. I mean, L-theanine is bloody fantastic. So those are two good supplements, but I don't rely on the supplements. They're more like the bonus, the last 20 percent, whereas the food winding down and things are the most important thing. And then the obvious one, which is blue light. Blue light, our body thinks it's still midday if we're playing with our phone in bed like this. So your body's thinking you shouldn't sleep now because there's predators around. It needs to be nighttime where everything's sleeping. So again, the decent set of blue blocking glasses is, you know, really, really beneficial wearing them for at least, at least an hour before bed and not taking them off when you brush your teeth and getting blue light in your eyes again, because that kind of interrupts the whole thing and confuses your body even more.

Siim Land (3:46)

Yeah.

Tim Gray (3:46)

What do you think?

Siim Land (3:48)

Yeah, like I think the mental distress or some, I guess, something stressful mentally will be one of the biggest reasons why some people, you know, especially when it comes to the racing mind and rumination and racing thoughts.

So sometimes it's like neurotransmitter imbalance that, you know, or some underlying chronic stress that keeps that anxiety increased or elevated. But at other times, yeah, it's just you like read some bad news or got a bad email or something like that, that keeps you just thinking about that thing and ruminating about it. So, you know, it's kind of tricky. And what I found is that certain like supplements, yeah, can help with that L-theanine and GABA or Ashwagandha or certain few others. But, you know, if with sleep is if you're like struggling to fall asleep, you've been bed in like 30 minutes, then one of the best things is to just get up and go somewhere else and do a little bit, you know, something else, you're wearing a blue blockers and things like that. But try to get out of the bed for at least a little bit, because then, you know, you're going to disassociate some of that bed with the rumination at least. And, you know, you might do something else, read a book or something, and you'll get sleepy naturally by doing that. So that's like one, that's what I usually do if I'm like, you know, twisting in the bed and not being able to fall asleep for whatever reason, then I'll just, okay, I'll just get up and do something else for a little bit, maybe like an hour or half an hour. And that usually is enough. And then I go back and then I'm like already a bit more tired.