Vitamin D Expert: The Supplement World Is Giving The WRONG Advice!

**Stasha Gominak** (0:00)
The vitamin world is giving the wrong advice. For instance, if you do not know what you're doing with them, they're just as dangerous as any drug you could put in your mouth. The next thing is, supplementing with vitamin D is not the same as being outdoors, because we absorb it through our skin, but what we've been told is, don't ever let the sun touch your skin. And another example is when we're deficient in this vitamin, our brain actually forgets how to sleep.
And I know that because I'm a neurologist, and I wanted to tell the world about what my patients and I had discovered together about making sleep better. And billions around the world have a sleep problem, but no one's treating it. And the usual sleep treatment is behavioral, like blackout curtains, go to bed at the same time. But that is not something that's helped the people who wind up with me. They've tried all that already. And I've taken care of 28-year-olds who just had a stroke.

**Steven Bartlett** (0:50)
28, sorry?

**Stasha Gominak** (0:51)
28-year-olds. We associate stroke with being old, and having diabetes and hypertension and heart disease. No. So then I did a whole bunch of sleep studies, because we found some exciting things by accident that turn out to have to do with vitamin deficiencies and deficiencies that have developed from being indoors too much. And we're starting to feel the effects of that, like obesity. But there are no obese squirrels in my backyard. The only obese animals are cats and dogs that we keep inside. And then we found out most of the sleep disorders are really linked to the gut microbiome. And we could go into that, but one of the interesting thing I learned was, vitamin D is a hormone. There was a mistake made in calling it a vitamin.

**Steven Bartlett** (1:30)
Well, I'm very curious to learn about all of this. And also, you've come up with this protocol called the RightSleep protocol. Can you walk me through it?

**Stasha Gominak** (1:37)
Absolutely. Here's the first part of it. So.

**Steven Bartlett** (1:41)
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Dr. Stasha Gominak. For the people that have just clicked on this conversation, because they like the title, they're interested in the subject matter. What are they going to get from sitting with us and listening to us? How is their life going to improve?

**Stasha Gominak** (2:29)
A completely unique and new way to look at why they are not sleeping well, or why they have medical problems. I hope they will come away with the impression that I want to find out if my brain chemistry is normal or not normal for sleep.

**Steven Bartlett** (2:47)
And you were a clinical assistant professor of neurology at Stanford University Hospital, and also you did a neurology residency at Harvard Medical School.

**Stasha Gominak** (2:54)
Yes. I grew up in California.
I became a biochemist, and then I wound up being interested in medicine, because biochemistry is being applied to humans in medicine. So I became a physician and then I went into neurology and I'm a neurologist. And then by accident, somebody insisted that they wanted a sleep study, and this was in 2004 now.

**Steven Bartlett** (3:17)
So you became, you were a neurologist, you became a doctor, and then you fell in love with sleep.

**Stasha Gominak** (3:21)
Yes.

**Steven Bartlett** (3:22)
How many patients have you worked with on the subject matter of sleep? What's the wide range of symptoms that they were experiencing and problems that they had just to get a sort of context on the variety and broadness of your experience?

**Stasha Gominak** (3:37)
Probably 2,000. Since leaving neurology practice, I started an online business where I became a sleep coach. I'm estimating that I have affected another 5,000 to 6,000 people, and that's because I have a workbook that we're going to talk about. I have set out a series of steps that you should do, and that those steps are based on brain chemistry, not on you do it wrong, which is what is all over the internet. You are just doing it wrong. The usual sleep treatment is behavioral. Blackout curtains, white noise, go to bed at the same time, recognize your bedroom as a quiet place for sleep, etc.