The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #254 - Dr. Peter Martone

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)

Melanie Avalon:
Hi and welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation I am about to have. So the backstory on today's conversation about actually almost exactly a year ago now, I went to Dave Asprey's ninth annual biohacking conference. And that is where I met Dr. Peter Martone. I think we've met very briefly at a party.

Dr. Peter Martone:
Did Dave introduce us, or did Erin introduce us?

Melanie Avalon:
I think- I feel-okay. I'm probably- my memories like all messed up, but I feel like we met I don't think we got introduced. I think we just like met and then I met Erin And she was raving about you And I think I had already met you. I am not sure the point There was a lot of there's a lot happening There the point is we met which was awesome Also met a mutual friend Erin who was also awesome And she was just going on and on about how we had to get you on the show I agreed because what you're doing is something that I am really fascinated by and I have actually had a lot of listeners Ask me about this interestingly enough. We were just talking about my assistant Diane She was she's been like so excited ever since she heard about you because she's also obsessed with the topic But in any case the topic is the role and we'll dive all deep into this but basically the role of our Sleep position our neck our spine and how it affects health conditions and just all the things and Dr Martone actually has a Pillow called the neck nest that is actually created and I will let obviously you talk more about it than me But created to address everything in this area So I have so many questions for you. It's funny. So ever since I knew you were coming on the show Every now and then when i'm listening to podcasts Like sleep position will be mentioned I would be like, oh take a note because I feel like I keep hearing different things about the best sleep position and it's very Confusing to me, but so in any case, thank you so much for being here

Dr. Peter Martone:
Oh, no, this is great. I, we're going to dive so deep into it. And really what the hope is, is to make it really palatable, right? Understandable for somebody and so that they can take what we, what once they hear this podcast, they can take it and sleep better tonight.

Melanie Avalon:
I definitely want to get into your personal story, but just like I said with the confusion, like I really am so confused because like looking at your pillow, you know, it forces you to sleep on your back, but then I keep reading things about sleeping on your side and from an evolutionary perspective, like how are we supposed to sleep and animals when I look at animals, they don't normally sleep on their backs unless they're like cats that are really, you know, being crazy. So so many questions, but before all of that, your personal story, I dive deep on your website and there's a lot of information there, but what led you to doing what you're doing today with this whole world?

Dr. Peter Martone:
Yeah. You know, thank you. It's so interesting, right? Because nobody wakes up and says, oh, I want to be a sleep expert. I just don't see that as the goal when you look at your vision. And I didn't say that. I said that same thing. I had no idea if you had told me, you know, when I was five years old, 45 years down the road, I'd be in the sleep industry. I'd say, you're crazy. But life leaves breadcrumbs. And this, I was called to be into this industry, but I kind of denied it most of my life because I have ADD myself and I push through pain. I push through, I used to make excuses. I was a chiropractor at that time for 15 years, helping everybody else with pain. And I said, and I had pain every day in my practice. And I like, oh, it's just because I'm a mountain biker or I, you know, I was just jet skiing the other day or I went skydiving and I, you know, scratching this ADD itch. I use it. I use adrenaline a lot and I've had a lot of injuries. So I chalked up all of my pain that I lived with and told myself it was normal because of my lifestyle to just, you know, life until one day I had a little mountain bike injury by way less than what I had had before, but I knew something was different about this because my back started hurt in a really, really weird way. And then a few days later, I went down, just twisted a little bit and next thing, you know, a shooting pain went all the way down the back of my leg, all the way to my foot. My leg went numb and I seized. I couldn't even move. I herniated my desk and I couldn't move so bad. I remember telling my wife, I'm like, I'm done. She's like, okay. I said, I have to go to the hospital. She's like, all right, jump in the car. I'm like, I can't, I'm, I can't even, I can't even move. So we had to have the ambulance come to my house, brought me to the emergency room. I'm laid out on the emergency room. I'm hooked up on to lauded because it was the only thing that I could, that would take the pain away. I remember I had so much morphine. They asked my wife, I was a drug addict and she's like, he hasn't, doesn't even take an aspirin. The pain was so bad. And I had remembered something in school. I was sitting there. I was in really the one of the low places of my life. And, and I remember sitting there in school and thinking, you know, I saw a teacher said something once and I'm thinking, how could I be in the emergency room right now as a chiropractor? I've worked with patients my entire life. And I'm sitting there with their herniated disc, not knowing if I was ever going to practice again, but a teacher had mentioned something and I just started thinking about it. The only muscle in the human body that attaches directly to the disc is the PSOAS major muscle. And that is through your stomach. And I'm like, and something just caught me. So I went back and I started reviewing x-rays first a thousand, then 2000, then 3000. And I saw that when somebody loses the curve in their neck, which means, you know, tech neck where you, where your head comes forward, you pick up a reactive, do the Dura mat attention. PSOAS major muscle spasm. And then your hips rotate. And I'm like, holy crap. I didn't have a, I thought I didn't have back pain all these, all this time. I had a neck issue and it translated down to my back. So maybe I could fix my herniated disc. I just thought at that point, by changing the way I sleep, by forcing my neck into a specific position, eight hours while I slept. And I did that night in, night out, night in, night out. And next thing you know, I have had zero pain in like 15 years. I'm a competitive mountain biker again, and I'm back to my daily life. So I entered this, the sleep industry, not because I wanted to help people sleep, but because I wanted to help people improve their structure while they slept to be able to, you know, get the results that I was lacking for the first 15 years of my practice.

Melanie Avalon:
That sounds like a crime scene, television show, looking at all the x-rays and like seeing the pattern. Oh my goodness. So, so is it about, so everything that you just talked about, is it all addressed within the neck? How much of it is the neck versus the body, like the rest of the body?

Dr. Peter Martone:
your spine. I think that is so great. So within our protocols and programs, we talk about what's called the corrective sleeping position. Now within the body, we call it the sleep triune. There's three things that are battling at the same time. There's the conscious brain, there's a subconscious brain, and then there's the body, right? So the body, what it wants, it wants alignment. It wants its weight distributed over the greater surface area. That's all it wants. It doesn't want to be in pain. The subconscious brain, this is really important, it wants safety. It wants to feel safe and nurtured. In the conscious brain, it screws everything up. It can't get out of its own mind. It just needs to shut down and let go and hand the roll over to the subconscious brain. But the problem is because we consciously put ourselves into these contorted positions because we think we feel comfortable, but really we're putting ourselves in these curled up ball positions because the subconscious brain feels safe and that puts the body in these contorted positions, which is what destroys our entire structure. So what we talk about is reversing the triune. We talk about start with alignment in mind, and that's the corrective sleeping position, which we'll talk about. That's going to be an unsafe position for the subconscious brain because it's exposed. So you need to create safety, so you do that with pressure on your forehead, sleep masks, weighted blankets, whatever you can do to create this cocoon type of sleeping environment. And then we just need to teach the conscious brain to get out of its own way and shut down.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, this is so fascinating. Why did we not evolve out of that?

Dr. Peter Martone:
because of my consciousness.

Melanie Avalon:
because of our feelings of unsafety. So that's why we like the fetal position.

Dr. Peter Martone:
So, what we're doing now is we're testing some theories. Well, not some theories. I'm classifying the subconscious brain into three animals, and I think everybody wants to align with an animal. I just think it's great. So, in order for me, and they can go to drsleepright.com and take a quick survey, and I'll be revealing the information. But in order for somebody to sleep correctly, you need to talk to the subconscious brain. You don't talk to the conscious brain. And the subconscious brain aligns with one of three animals. The first one would be the gorilla. The gorilla, so confident, it can fall asleep anywhere, on its back, legs and arms up. It can fall asleep anywhere. But then there's the armadillo. The armadillo is that consciousness that needs to curl up into a little ball in order to feel protected. There's just a little sense of insecurity. So, you're using that curling up into a ball to feel safe. And then the last one is the ostrich. You need such a sense of safety where you need to stick your head into the pillows. Those are your stomach sleepers. Those are where your face is getting hammered down right into the pillow. You're putting a pillow over your head. You're creating that cocoon. So, depending on a test that we're going to be releasing, it'll identify your subconscious brain into one of those three categories. Then in order to sleep on your back, we know how we need to put you and how we can align that safety subconscious settings to be able to work in your advantage.

Melanie Avalon:
This conversation is so fun. So is that why, to bring it back to what I was saying in the beginning, it's really only these domesticated pets that sleep so openly on their back, is it because we have these cats and dogs that just feel so safe that they're just sleeping like that? And in the wild, they would not do that.

Dr. Peter Martone:
Well, you have to understand that the thing that differentiates the humans versus animals, they don't have that prefrontal cortex that's able to really have that executive function that really screws up our sleep. So one of the problems with sleep is you need to let go and it's so hard for people to let go, right? That's kind of where the problem lies is we want to control, we want to think, we want to rationalize and you need to let go and then once you're able to let go and hand off the football per se to the subconscious brain, then if you're not letting go the right way because you've controlled, you know, you've put the body into a contorted position, it's a problem. The dogs and animals don't have that. And if you notice the positions that they sleep in, and this is where some of those studies on side sleeping and other contorted positions are anchored into, they're anchored into studies that are done on rats which have a totally different structure. Their greatest surface area is on their side. The human greatest surface area is on its back. So you want to start in a position where your weight is distributed over the greatest surface area. In an animal, it's on the side. On a human, it's on their back. So that's really where we came up with a lot of our principles was identifying the difference between the different structures of the species and then analyze how we can support those structures.

Melanie Avalon:
with the back surface area thing. So not necessarily fetal position, but I am just such a side sleeper. So can you be in alignment sleeping on your side? I know there's less surface area.

Dr. Peter Martone:
The problem is the neck now we have what's called the 10 minute sleep ritual you don't have to sleep on your back the entire night. The lifestyle habit is that you fall asleep in a corrective sleeping position. End then whatever happens happens remember when you fall asleep your conscious brain is not at play to subconscious in your body so you put those two parts of the triune into alignment and then safety and then you just fall asleep then whatever happens is going to happen so don't think about the entire night I need to be a back sleeper I can only sleep on my side I need to be a stomach sleeper just start the first 10 minutes falling asleep and then let the body take over we need to stop controlling the entire night because with the average person will toss and turn 20 to 40 times a night because the body is in pain you're not controlling that that's just subconscious brain in your body so we need to identify that and then be able to use the bed to be able to do more and get more production out of our time while we sleep.

Melanie Avalon:
It's so interesting. So last night I was trying to find all the studies I could find on tossing and turning and sleep position and all the things. And there was one study talking about people, the different sleep positions. So sleeping on your left, sleeping on your right, your back, your stomach. It concluded that people sleeping on their right side slept the deepest and tossed and turned the least. I was like, is that causation correlation? Maybe those people just sleep better. Like they're not like, like maybe they are in a state of, like you're saying, like safety and they're sleeping better. And it's not really about the position per se.

Dr. Peter Martone:
here's the thing with studies and they drive me freaking crazy is the study is like, what do you, you know, you're, you're studying and you're looking at a variable, but what are you, you know, negating, right? What aren't you looking at? So when people like, Oh yeah, you sleep on your side to get better sleep. Well, I get scores of almost a hundred when I'm sleeping, you know, so what are you, what are the variables you're looking at and what are the variables you're missing? And, and so when we look at sleep and we look at structure and we look at our, you know, the sleep programs, you need to base everything on law. Law is something that is undeniable and it happens a hundred percent of the time. And like gravity, gravity is law. So you have laws of adaptability in the body. So why am feel so strongly about sleeping position and how you start out is so important is because one of the things that people fail to recognize is the impact that the structure of your spine has on your entire health and wellbeing. And that's the component that most people miss. And that's really where I love to dive into.

Melanie Avalon:
you're talking about starting off the night in the correct sleep position, I have a hybrid request question. So for me, maybe quite a bit of the listeners. I don't know anybody who does an intermittent fasting protocol where they're eating in the evening as their eating window. So I know this might not be ideal for sleep, but I do go to bed on a full stomach.

Dr. Peter Martone:
No, you don't.

Melanie Avalon:
I felt, okay, in my defense, I did listen to a recent interview, I'd be curious your thoughts on this with Dr. Matt Walker, and he said it's really not a big deal to sleep on. I'm paraphrasing, but not like immediately right before bed, but he said the studies were overblown about going to bed on a full stomach.

Dr. Peter Martone:
It all depends on how much food you're talking about because one of the byproducts of digestion is heat in, in, we need to make sure that our body temperature cools by one to two degrees in order to get into deep sleep within the first third of your sleep cycle.

Melanie Avalon:
That's why I swear by my cooling mattress and my pre-bed sauna session, well, before eating. My question is, for people who are doing that, who, because like eating and then sleeping on my back does not feel conducive to digestion, could I start the night on my side and then have your neck nest, for example? I'm not the type that sleeps, like, goes to bed and wakes up in the morning. That is not me. So I wake up in the middle of the night. Could I do the back portion like halfway through the night when I wake up?

Dr. Peter Martone:
You could. Absolutely. Here's one of the things with eating to just kind of get back to that in digestion. So you are correct. You know, you you you're going to digest a little bit better on your side, but you can also digest better by elevated sleeping. So you can sleep elevated by about five to eight degrees. And I like the lifestyle habit being putting yourself into that alignment at the very beginning of your sleep cycles. Because what's going to happen is over a period of time when the structure adapts, you won't be waking up in the middle of the night because your body will not toss and turn and you won't get into as shallow of a sleep cycle. And let me ask you a question. What time are you waking up? Is it one to two o 'clock in the morning?

Melanie Avalon:
I would be proud of myself if I went to bed at 1 a .m. I am not even asleep at 1 a .m. normally.

Dr. Peter Martone:
Oh, oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. You owe me. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Melanie Avalon:
I am not a good example here.

Dr. Peter Martone:
That's a horrible example, but that's fine.

Melanie Avalon:
When you were saying one, I was like waiting for you to be like, do you wake up at 1pm? Or I was like, where's the one going here? My chronotype is, I'm not a good example to use.

Dr. Peter Martone:
Oh, no. So, so right. So if I was to, you know, not knowing anything about your health, right, before I was a sleep specialist, I was an autonomic nervous system specialist. So my big thing when people would come in, they would fly in from all over the world, and we would, we'd really help them balance out their autonomic nervous system. Most people with dysfunction, whether it's in their immune system, digestive system, or reproductive system, they're going to have issues in one, if not all three of those systems at the same time. And it's an autonomic nervous system issue. And to fix that autonomic nervous system, typically do that at night when you sleep. And then another big thing about that autonomic nervous system is that if you're parasympathetic-inhibited, which I would say that you are, not knowing the dynamics, that parasympathetic nervous system really wants to be in bed before an energy spike, and typically the energy spikes are about midnight.

Melanie Avalon:
I used to identify as like an, an insomniac and that I had trouble sleeping. I actually now, even though I mentioned waking up, I'm happy in the progress I've made because I, I basically, I fall asleep right away. I do wake up in the middle of the night to go to the restroom and stuff, but I immediately fall back asleep. It's massive improvement from where it used to be, but it's definitely not ideal. I look at people who are, you know, living the parasympathetic sleep life and I'm full of envy, but yes, I do all the things too. Oh, which speaking of the incline, I'm glad we were talking about the elevation aspect. I don't do this now. I did used to use bed risers. I'm curious because I'm two questions. One, can you create that elevation just with pillows or does it require actual risers? And two, I saw on your website that you're not supposed to do that every night. And I was wondering why.

Dr. Peter Martone:
All right, so when are you you suppose you can do I do with pillows I do it one of my bedrooms We have a house at the lake and then we have a house here and when I travel I always do with pillows I do it pillows of my house at the lake. I have a bed that elevates here You can do it with sleep wedges You can do it with the pillows just need to be flat and soft because you're only Rising up just a little bit and the reason why I don't like to do it every single night is The body Your health is a is a product of what you would do on a ritualistic basis So every single day your habits define your health and well-being So if we put that basically per se the pelvis into this constricted position You're shortening the so as major muscles So I like to stretch it out at least a couple times a week So I'll sleep flat a couple times a week or I'll start out like that And if I wake up, I'll go back to elevated sleeping

Melanie Avalon:
And then speaking to, you mentioned it a few times throughout this interview and then I was reading about it, like I said a lot with your website, but the role of our nighttime versus our daytime habits and how that's going to have an effect on our spine overall. What I'm curious about is does actually being in that position while asleep, the state of nervous system and brainwaves and everything that you're in, does that have any different effect on the rate of change or the, yeah, the rate of change. And so what I'm comparing it to is, for example, I also every day do a sauna session in my sunlight and solo, which you lie down in and that's, I like completely on my back. So is an hour of that laying on my back in there having the same or more or less of effect than an hour while I'd be asleep doing that?

Dr. Peter Martone:
That's actually a good point so I am when I say that ten minutes sleep ritual and you put yourself to sleep and you should stay in that position for at least an hour. The reason being is because that hour will turn into two hours that two hours will turn into three hours the goal is to be able to set your body up into the position with the sense of safety in a position that. Is conducive to distributing your body weight over the greatest surface area preventing you from tossing and turning so you'll get deeper sleep more restful sleep in more restorative sleep by teaching yourself to fall asleep that way now is it still good to lie in your sauna to get that neck arch back absolutely but the reason why I want people to do it at night while they're sleeping is because you'll that length of time subconsciously will allow you to get way better sleep and that's what our way stands for is awakening the full potential of a well rested aligned you by getting that neck into extension you open up the carotid sheath in the vegas nerve will start to function more efficiently which is eighty percent of your parasympathetic nervous system so if you're able to get that neck into extension. The longer you're able to do that with consistency you're gonna start seeing you're gonna sleep deeper because ultimately it's the parasympathetic nervous system that's controlling how well you're sleeping.

Melanie Avalon:
And I definitely want to talk about your pillow specifically, but how intuitive is it just in general, if people are sleeping on their back, is that automatically going to put them in that position?

Dr. Peter Martone:
Let's go back to law, right? One of the laws, basically it's a kind of an, it's a written law. Everybody says it, but it, there's no specific law around it. But if you don't use it, you lose it. Everybody hears that. If, if you support something, like if you put your arm in a cast, when you remove the stress from the body, cause the body is constantly adapting in the absence of stress, the body will degenerate the joint if you're not using it. So you put your arm in a cast. You're going to lose. Let's say your elbow in a cast that you'll weaken the muscles. Thing atrophy will occur. You take your arm out of the cast. You cause a stress of movement. The body will rebuild the joint. So when you're looking at the body, you want to add stress to the body. And then the stress is a force that causes change in the body. And the body will adapt by creating something or destroying something. So if you support the head with a pillow, which a pillow defined is a support for your head, you support the head with the pillow and you rest your head on it, you're going to still destroy the cervical curve because the cervical curve will fall down. Now, if you use a cervical pillow that supports the neck and the head at the same time where the head is resting on something and the neck is resting on something, you're basically supporting the neck and the head. You're still going to destroy the cervical curve. Now picture rolling up a towel or say, or like a Neck Nest is similar to this. This is what I did before I had the neck nest and I, I would take either soft down pillows or I'd take a towel and it would roll it up and I'd put it under my neck, then my, my head would hang off the back of it, but wouldn't rest on the bed, it would rest about a half an inch to a quarter of an inch off of the bed. And by using my weight as my head as a weight, it would gently distract. That's a force that causes change. Distraction is the force. So it will distract a cervical curve back into my neck. That is why I couldn't find a pillow that already existed. So I developed one because that distraction is what really gets the improvement.

Melanie Avalon:
Does that distraction, how does that affect your parasympathetic nervous system?

Dr. Peter Martone:
Well, the distraction itself is a force to the tissue, so you don't feel the distraction. It's a gentle stress, but what it will do over a period of time is it opens up that carotid sheath, and that is what, like almost like stepping on a garden hose, that carotid sheath presses on that vagus nerve and causes issues in the immune system, digestive system, and reproductive system. So women that have significant hormonal issues at night, or you have autoimmune issues, or you have digestion issues, that's a vagus nerve problem because your vagus nerve isn't turning on enough, especially at night. So that's why a lot of these things can be helped while you're sleeping.

Melanie Avalon:
And how long does it take for the change to happen in the actual curvature and everything?

Dr. Peter Martone:
That all depends on how old somebody is, and that also depends on how much degeneration is also within the spine. So it can take, I mean, I've had people do it in as little of three months or up to two years.

Melanie Avalon:
Can people completely reverse it?

Dr. Peter Martone:
Yes, I've seen a complete reversal.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow, I know, because I haven't had an x-ray of all of that area in quite a while, but I know when I did, I think it was during the pandemic, yeah, there was curvature that was not good.

Dr. Peter Martone:
Yeah curvature that's not good and not let me give you the avatar and you might relate to some of this so you have issues in all three systems immune system digestive system and hormonal imbalances. Your hands sometimes can fall asleep your ears can start to ring you can you know people get heart palpitations you'll be more likely specially if the head comes forward to sprain an ankle to the side of handedness so if you're a right handed more than likely your right eye just sprain that right ankle because your body leans forward and when you lean forward and I'm not gonna lie to you it's very difficult to start sleeping on your back because a lot of times I get feedback where people say I feel like I'm falling off a cliff because your body is so unprotected in that posterior plane that it doesn't feel safe back there that's why what we do now is we have people put pillows against the side of their face so when they're sleeping that pressure makes the body feel like you're sleeping on your side.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, okay. Their whole face?

Dr. Peter Martone:
Yeah, so if you take so picture like lying on your neck nest, right? You say your head's back just take another pillow and just just like a pillow like when you sleep on your side The pillow touches the side of your face Just put a pillow up against the side of your face and lean it On the pillow even it's kind of a weird position. Do you know what I mean? So your neck is in that back lying position But you have pressure to the side that you sleep on on the side of your face because when you close your eyes The subconscious brain does not know where it is in space So if you trick it and you put it on its side, you're going to be able to get a sense of safety That's why it is. It's really a technique to doing it

Melanie Avalon:
What is the role of the actual mattress or the bed? Does this work with any bed?

Dr. Peter Martone:
any bed much, much less of an issue once you're getting the position incorrectly, you'll be able to fall asleep really on anything. When I talked to Dave, he falls asleep I think on a mattress that's only two inches thick. I was talking to Dr. Mercola the other day and he's like, yeah, I'm down to just a platform now. I'm like, you guys are nuts. But once you're, I couldn't do it, but once you are in that alignment, the bed becomes less of an issue.

Melanie Avalon:
Is one more ideal, like it would actually be ideal if we were sleeping on the floor on something hard?

Dr. Peter Martone:
I, it doesn't have to be the floor. I like distribution of weight over greater surface here. So I like a firm support, like a firm mattress, but I like pillow tops. I have two pillow tops on my mattress up in the lake just cause I didn't like the first one. I didn't think it was enough. But if, as long as you, you, you have some cushion between you and that the surface you're sleeping on, you can pretty much sleep on anything.

Melanie Avalon:
I've always been fascinated for as long as I can remember why people like certain firmnesses or softnesses in beds. I've always felt like it should be a universal for what feels good, but people like such different things. Do you think that's just, is that based on their pain in their nervous system or is it just personal preference?

Dr. Peter Martone:
Yeah, well, basically what you're doing is you're trying to buy a more comfortable platform to put you in an unsustainable physician for longer periods of time. It's just complicating the problems you give me a side sleeper. I'm going to give you a shoulder problem. I'm going to give you a hip issue. You put them in a more comfortable bed where they stay in that position longer, just going to progressively make that condition worse. It's it's law. It's biomechanics. Davis's law says tissue remolds based on the stresses applied. You look at somebody side sleeping. That spine is so contorted. You're going to have so many internalized health issues that go far beyond lymphatic drainage where that that study was done on a rat anyways. But though all of those studies that tell you the positioning of the side and you sleep on your right side because you don't want your liver to compress down into the body. All that's taken taken out of consideration when you put the body into a natural aligned position.

Melanie Avalon:
When should we start sleeping this way? So if parents have kids, how should the kids be sleeping?

Dr. Peter Martone:
What I tell the parents, like I did with my kids, especially my youngest one who has, you know, ADD and she had security issues. I say this, just put them on their back, just teach them to sleep on their back. It's better for them really, believe it or not, to sleep without a pillow. But if they want a pillow, nice soft pillow, thin, thin, thin pillow, as thin as it can be. And then put all this stuffed animals all over them, wedge them in there, put them over their heads, put them on their bodies, make sure they feel safe. As a baby, we wanted to be swaddled. That's the pressure we wanted to use. The children, like we're always told to go to sleep. We've never been taught how to sleep. I remember when I was a kid, I grew up in Malden, Massachusetts on the busy highway, I mean on the busy road, on my front porch. I always thought somebody was gonna come in, smash through the window and steal me. So I curled up in as small of a ball as I could. All these stuffed animals all around me, I'd wake up somewhere on the floor, my covers were off of me, but I was able to put myself to sleep because I created safety. Think about if we teach kids this and we look way beyond why they're not sleeping and all of the consciousness and why they can't sleep. And we talk to their subconscious brain, we can put them to bed so much quicker and better and safer.

Melanie Avalon:
Are there any conditions that people should not sleep in this position?

Dr. Peter Martone:
Let's, let's talk about, we're talking about sleeping in this position. Every condition will benefit from starting in this position because once you close your eyes, the subconscious brain or the body, if the body's in pain or, or if the body doesn't want to be in that position, it's putting you into a position, you know, and it's going to move you out of that position. So, so our consciousness can't control. It's like the people say, Oh, you got to sleep on this side, sleep on that side. You're not sleeping on that side because your body is going to toss and turn once it's out in, in discomfort, or let's say you have severe sleep apnea and in the airways closing down, your body is going to move out of positions. So, so I would say everybody should start this way for at least an hour a night to, to get the improvement of the arch of that cervical spine, because the, the improvement of that is really what is going to improve your of our health, and then after that, sleep in any position that you, that you want to.

Melanie Avalon:
And so the actual neck nest, I'm just so obsessed and love product development. So how long did it take you? Like how many manifestations of it did you have? And what was it like to develop it and how did you develop it?

Dr. Peter Martone:
I lost hours, countless hours of sleep, developing your thing. Oh my God. And we consistently, you know, we were in development of new products all the time. We listened to feedback. That's why we, our website is really unique where people go there. They take surveys and offer those surveys. I develop products or I come up with webinars because we're always in product development development right now for something that tests your balance, because one of the issues with forward head posture is you lose your balance. Then when you lose your balance and atrophy, your vermis, you get prefrontal cortex atrophy and you get more anxiety. So we're doing studies in colleges right now. But so when you look at, when, when you were looking at the neck nest in, in developing it, it was the fill at that time was very, very, very important to me because you need a fill like, like you can't use foam. I tried to use foam. I tried to use all these fills that like contort to your neck or they push back too much into your neck. And when you, when you, when I was using these fills, I would wake up with shoulder problems. My, like I don't toss and turn. So, so my body is very exposed to injury, you know, if I'm sleeping in, in one position for eight hours. So when I was using these different pillows and these different fills, I was getting, you know, my, I would wake up, my hand would be numb, my neck would be in pain. So we, we have it down now where the fill in the neck nest is really important, how you use the neck nest. Because the neck nest right now is designed to be used at an angle. That I would say is one of the toughest things about the neck nest. You got to watch the videos, you got to break it in. I love the natural aspect of the fill, but it's harder to use because you got to get it right. We're, we're using a fill right now that we were fine. I just approved it's not, it's not a natural fill, which, so I won't use it, but it, but it's a poly fill, but it will allow the neck nest to be a little bit more user friendly to use. You can use it the way that it looks like you use it by just putting your neck right over.

Melanie Avalon:
I wonder, because I know you guys sent me one, because the natural fill is the down feathers, right? Yes, yep. And I think you sent me one without that. Would that have been the new one that you're using?

Dr. Peter Martone:
No, the new one we're using, it should be out probably by June.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, ooh very exciting. Okay, awesome

Dr. Peter Martone:
Yeah. Did I get, are you, are you allergic to feathers? Yes, you are allergic to feathers. So I put it in a bag in. Oh, okay. Yeah. In the neck. Yeah. We know we're going to, we're going to totally change your experience.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, awesome. Oh, I'm excited. So June, pretty soon. Well, by the time this comes out, then it should be out.

Dr. Peter Martone:
I am so unhappy with the Art Neck Nest experience. They were like, how are we going to do this for her? How are we going to do this for her?

Melanie Avalon:
I felt bad because you guys are so overwhelmingly accommodating. I was like, oh my goodness, these people are so nice. But no, this is amazing. I'll have to get the new one. That's exciting.

Dr. Peter Martone:
Yeah, no, I will send you a new one. It'll be a game changer for you because you'll be able to use it and you won't have all that crickling as like plastic wrapping on the inside of the neck nest. So it'll be good for you. Awesome. Do you travel with yours? I won't go anywhere without my neck nest. Yeah, I bring it on the plane. I have two covers, right? I'll bring it on the plane. I'll always get a window seat. It is the best thing to travel on a plane with because it'll keep your jaw shut. You put you get the window seat, you put yourself right up against the window and I can fall asleep with it on a plane. So I travel with it on the plane or it goes into my carry on.

Melanie Avalon:
Going back to just, like I said, I'm just so obsessed with product development and everything. I have thought about this for so long. How do you, with studies, I feel like it's probably really hard to study sleep because if people, going back to the psychological safety thing, if people know they're being monitored or know, I just feel like it would affect what they're naturally doing. So how do you even conduct studies?

Dr. Peter Martone:
The studies basically were pretty, I mean, when you're looking at data, right, we have, you know, tens of thousands of people on a neck nest. So we have the opportunity to be able to look at, so when somebody buys a neck nest, if they have aura scores or they have whoop scores or they have scores, we can then have, look at their scores before using a neck nest and after using a neck nest on a large basis. But really where the time I put in was, it wasn't with sleep, it was with structure. So it was before and after x-rays of, you know, hundreds and hundreds of patients being able to, you know, look at the results that we got before using a neck nest and changing the way they sleep and then after. So I did a lot of my initial studies on in-office case studies based on before and after x-rays. So knowing that I was getting that structure, then we transferred over to seeing how it improved people's sleep.

Melanie Avalon:
two-part question. If you had unlimited funding and could just do your dream study, what would you do? Do you have any lingering, haunting questions about all of this that you really want to know?

Dr. Peter Martone:
Yeah. So I want to, so one of my issues kind of to be very, I mean, I've talked about very publicly, well, I had a lot of anxiety, right? And due to having ADD, there's so many things that go on in your mind. There's unexplained under achievement. You can't pay yourself to everybody else. In school, I had a little bit of, you know, I have dyslexia. So I had, I had trouble going through school, navigating my way, especially in college. Once I figured out and I became an exercise physiologist, the funny thing about ADD, I didn't even have to study anymore. You know, organic chemistry, I, there was like a puzzle to me and people staying up all night and I could just see the answers, but you give me theater 100 and I'll fail it, right? Because it's just, I wasn't, just my brain didn't work like that. So I want to get into colleges. That's really where we're moving. I want to get into colleges, do the studies and show how improvement in sleep and just structure, just by the way you're starting out, will transform people's anxieties and allow them to study better, allow them to be able to spend, retain information more because there's so much improvement with sleep and structure and how it affects the cervical spine and longevity within your life and then your ability to focus.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, well I will let listeners know, so you are so kind, so listeners can get 10% off site-wide at necknest.com and they can use the coupon code AVALON10, A-V-A-L-O-N-10. I'm so excited about that. What other products do you have? I know you have a sleep mask, some supplements.

Dr. Peter Martone:
Yeah, so what people can do is really what I think is, you know, where we can add the most value. I would love you to go to necknest.com and check out the necknest. But at drsleepright.com, what I love is we have a free sleep risk assessment. You go there, you take a 25 question questionnaire and it spits out how your sleep habits are affecting your life. And that gives you some feedback, but really, you know, I'm doing it with an ulterior motive. It's giving me information as to how I can tailor my education to help more people. So, you know, we've had thousands and thousands of people take that. I change the questions on that sleep questionnaire. So then I'm able to really home in the data to be able to, when I do these podcasts or I do my education, speak to exactly what you need. So I would love for people to take that free sleep risk assessment. And then as, when they go to there, they can go, there's a link there to necknest.com or vice versa. And then we're always in product development. You'll see, we have sleep supplements that we developed. We have, you know, different things within the body that we're developing. We're gonna come up with air back supports for the plane, next air neck supports for the plane. So different types of stuff.

Melanie Avalon:
Wait, air neck supports? What are those going to be?

Dr. Peter Martone:
So one of the issues that I have with a lot of the supports out there, the planes, they hold your head off of the back of the seat. So I like air because first of all, if folds up, goes in your purse, then you can blow it up and you can put it right behind your neck. So I'm coming up with a design on that right now.

Melanie Avalon:
That is super cool. That's awesome. Well, this is beyond fascinating. I want to go take all your quizzes. I was just thinking how it's really interesting. Like with my aura scores, I don't think I could ever get a 100 on my aura ring because of the time I go to bed. There have been days where almost every single one is perfect, but then like the timing or the one that monitors like when you actually went to bed, it's like, nope. It's like zero. It messes up my whole score. Like, man. But actually, one of the best scores I ever got in my aura ring was when I had to get up really, really early for a court date, actually. So I went to bed at like a normal time, woke up really early, went to the court date, came back, took a four hour nap, and it just assumed that I had slept. It just thought that was my sleep with like an hour, I don't know, moment in between. And it gave me like an almost perfect score. I was like, okay, I can't win here. So in any case, this has been so, so amazing. So again, for listeners, you can go to necknest.com, use the coupon code AVALON10 to get 10% off site-wide and definitely take all those quizzes and learn all the things. I have one last really easy question, but is there anything you wanted to touch on before we go?

Dr. Peter Martone:
Yeah, just one thing and one thing that I think would help people sleep tonight, right? You put yourself in that position, get a pillow, jam it under your neck, get that neck back, don't get frustrated, but remember this. You can't think yourself to sleep, right? You need to be able to let go, but you can remember yourself to sleep because your memories are different than if you're thinking. So if you're thinking you're in your prefrontal cortex, which is in the front of your brain, if you're remembering, your energy is a different place, which is close to your sleep centers. So remember a memory that's rhythmic. I do it, I walk through a golf course. Sometimes I count people that were at my party, I put them in categories. But if you remember a memory that you don't want it to have anxiety or you don't want it to be a bad memory, but a good memory, like a walk around a golf course and all of your shots or something like that, and you remember it once, remember that memory every single time you go to bed and you'll shut your brain off and you'll get it out of that conscious brain and your body will be able to let go.

Melanie Avalon:
That is amazing, I have never heard that before. I love that, this is not the exact same thing, but I think one of the biggest shifts I had for my own issues with waking up and falling back asleep is historically I would wake up and then I would just, like you said, I'd be thinking, I'd be like, I'm not gonna fall asleep and I'd remember all the times I couldn't fall asleep and it was just a really bad pattern. And then once I started a few times, like actually just falling back asleep, then I tried when I would wake up in the middle of the night, I would remember, oh yeah, you do this, but you always fall back asleep. And just that small little mindset shift was a game changer for me. I love that memory idea, I'm gonna try that. Okay, so the last question I ask every single guest on this show and it's just because I realize more and more each day how important mindset is like we're talking about. So what is something that you're grateful for?

Dr. Peter Martone:
I am grateful for life really, you know, I love humanity and that's why one of my one of my missions is to be able to impact my life on humanity. And when I look at my own life, I live in gratitude every single day, you know, being given the gift from God of clarity and being on mission has really, really allowed me to be more productive and more focused and more in alignment and congruent with my entire life because I have purpose. And I believe that when you have purpose, you can accomplish anything. So I'm grateful every single day for having purpose and to be able to impact my impact, be able to maximize my impact on humanity.

Melanie Avalon:
I love that so much. And I am so grateful for everything that you're doing. I'm so happy that we met the conference. And honestly, I've been obsessed with sleep. My sleep routine is absolutely insane, everything I do. So I've always been studying it and learning about it. Nobody is talking about this except for you. Well, that I've come across. This conversation was just so eye-opening and mind-blowing to me. And I think it's going to help so many people. So thank you for what you're doing. I'm excited about all your future developments and hopefully we can meet again in the future.

Dr. Peter Martone:
Thank you for having me. Thanks for believing in me. And thank you for everything that you're doing. I really love how authentic you are to your audience. I think it's great.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, thank you Dr. Martone. Have a wonderful rest of your day and I will talk to you later.