We get word salad, we get brain fog, just like women do, and through paramedics, right? We gain weight, just like women. We start seeing changes in our hair, our skin, our nails, our libido, just like women. We get hot flashes, but we always just figure out you're making us hot or we put many covers on because have you ever Jeff Beard? Have you ever thrown the covers off at night unconsciously or consciously and jada just do hot and we're gonna sleep. Absolutely. Me too. Guess what we will have, yeah. Guess what we will have. Hey guys, episode 189 here. Yes, we have a very special guest today. He is the author of a national best selling book. His name is Justin High. It's called Stress Nation. We had him on our show Great Day Colorado. And now he's here joining us on TogetherMess Justin. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me guys. Yeah, So I wanted to have you on the show. Like I said, we had you on Great Day Colorado. You were very interesting. Our interview was very short, but I think it's something that you talk about in your book that people deal with and the future is going to have to deal with our phones, our technology and how it's interrupting our lives, our sleep, our stress levels and everything in between. And I know we could all relate. I can relate. 100%. I'm trying to be better at not being on my phone as much because I am one of those people that I work on my phone and I do everything on my phone and it's kind of like it's attached to me.

Yeah.

So I mean, let's get you one. Let's get you on. Where you want you want originally designed that way when you're a kid teenager, you want to attach to your phone. Oh no. No, no, no. And I have gotten bad about it, but I have been trying to be better. Yeah. And I think, I mean, it's something that we all have to,

I want you to speak on this.

It's something that we all have to, I want you to speak on this.

It's something that we all have to adapt to. Like you said, when I was a kid, we grew up playing outside, luckily my kids are outside playing right now. I want them to grow up as close as I did, but I know technology gets in the way with their iPads. What made you want to write this book in in the first place.

It's something specific happen in your life

that your like technology's taken my life over.

No, the story's a little bit more interesting than that. I started a company many years ago called Elastin skincare. Elastin skincare is probably the largest, one of the largest medical professional skincare lines, medical skincare lines in the world today. And from that, we were asked to have a look at supplements specifically focused on skincare by Nestle. And we decided to pivot towards endocrinology because our first iteration of last and had HGH in it. And so around 2019, we were doing a deep dive into hormones endocrinology And in my research, I was just completely fascinated with cortisol. And I developed a company that's available today called Rebalance Health. We are a supplement company out of Boulder. We are clinically tested. They're little lozenges. They let like mint and you put them in your mouth and and you suck on them. But with the only clinically validated company in the world, there's eliminated perimenopausal symptoms, 94% improvement in perimenopausal symptoms. We've reduced cortisol and stress, improved sleep, weight gain, eliminated that process. All the symptoms that we suffer from today and today's world are focused around cortisol. And my board asked me to write a book about the why behind what we're dealing with today that we've never had to deal with before. So behind Rebalance Health is this book Stress Nation that is literally the why. How do we get into this mess in the first place? Because it was never like this as Jordan knew attested to and so so did you Jeff. When I grew up in the 70s and the 80s, right? If it didn't exist in the library, or in the psyched period Britannica, it didn't exist. Simple as that, right? It's that simple, right? You wanted to watch TV at Midday? Tough. The next Latin was on, right?

The stars and stripes were waving and then it went to static snow. You couldn't watch TV at two in the morning. You just wasn't there, right? Netflix used to be DVDs in the mail. You had to wait for your copy to arrive. Before that, we had to go to the video store and hope that the copy of the video we wanted to watch was on the shelf behind the sleeve. otherwise you had to wait to next week until someone returned it.

And so life was much slower, right? My dad waited for Talex's or lettuce to come in the mail, right? We didn't have email. We didn't have social media. And we didn't have everything at our fingertips that we would just kind of binge into whether it is email work, you know, fascinating hobbies and topics that we want to gaming, social media, it's all in our fingertips now here and we don't have endings. When we were kids we had endings. Our parents worked from nine to five once they left the office. You couldn't get them. They were off clock. Today, you were slave. There are no endings. And so it's 24.7. So the book kind of talks about how thick it used to be, how they've changed and what we should do consciously to kind of find that happy medium. Because technology's not going away. You can't run from it. Right? But you certainly can learn how to use it with a better mindfulness to how it affects your body. Because this is the bottom line. When you're on these devices all the time your body doesn't know the difference between a calendar alert and a true emergency.

You know it.

When you get those phone calls from the school, you pick it up during the day. Oh, my kids, okay. Right. That's the first thing that you go. Oh, my kids, okay. Right. They've used to have that. They've used to, but that's how our bodies respond to every buzz, ding noise, vibration that comes out of our technology. So our bodies can't tell the difference.

And what that does is it causes our cortisol to be elevated

and it makes it difficult to fall asleep. And it makes it really difficult to stay asleep. And here's the piece that people miss. You make all your hormones in your sleep. I just learned that. I'm seeing this hormone specialist, actually from a great day Colorado. And Denise planned, it's her girl, so she introduced me to her. And same thing, I was like puffy and she was like, we gotta get your cortisol, your hormone. Everything you're talking about right now, she was like, we have to get your sleep under control because she was like, when do you sleep? And I was like, I never sleep. I'm up all hours of the night. And since I've been seeing her, I've been like doing really well. And losing weight because I would like gained like a bunch of weight too. Yeah, in a quarter or one mood. Right. Oh yeah. Everyone thinks that the visceral fat around your midsection that's become increasingly hard to lose, right? You're eating right, you're exercising right, but it won't go away. It's because your cortisol is elevated in your body, uses cortisol as the alarm system, right? Cortisol is your body's alarm system. It's designed to keep you safe. And when it thinks you're not safe, you're cortisol is elevated, and you're in the famous fight or flight zone. And when you're in fight and flight, your body turns off metabolism because there's no one's gonna eat next. So it stores the fat as the energy source that it might need at some point in the near future. You don't need libido, you're running from a bearer or burning building. Turns libido off. All these things are happening because cortisol's doing its job protecting you trying to keep you safe. We were never designed to live inside of cortisol. We were designed to live in it for a second or two and come out a few moments in and out of it as your body is giving you the warnings that you're in danger. And then you go into rest and digest and you get on with your world. But living in elevated cortisol because of technology is causing all of these symptoms to be exacerbated, whether they be exhaustion, brain fog, weight gain, libido. And of course, if you're going through paramanopause, elevated hot flashes. Oh, all right. So let me ask you this. This cortisol relate when it comes to social media. I know you said it's like a fight or flight, but what if you see a story that's like politically upsetting to you in some sort of way? I think that's the majority of America today. Does that affect your cortisol level as well? I did it. Does it upset yours?

Sometimes when I read stupid people's comments and then I'm like, you know what? I got to shut this off. I don't know if it affects my cortisol level as much as my overall emotions. Well, let me help you. I was being facetious. I got it. I know. It doesn't matter what the topic is, right? If it's got a response that gets you a little wound up or a little extra, that is going

to slowly increase your corners on.

Now, corners cortisol goes up and down all the time throughout the day. We want to get rid of the highs where you're above where it needs to be and very rarely the low lows, right? It makes people more even. That's what our products do, but the book and this subject is all about education. And do you know the average person, if you don't have to read the book yet, but if the average person touches their phone over 2600 times a day. What? Really? Not picking it up, but touching it. Lave time you tie, protect something, you're doing it 20, 600 times a day. And the heavy uses over 3600 times a day. What about having a conversation with someone? Do they even look at you anymore? Are they basically, you know, looking down at the phone and just to find that they have to respond to this really quickly? That's their cortisol. Their anxiety is kicking in because what happens if I don't respond? Or what happens if I don't know what that person just text me? That's raising your cortisol level and anxiety and what's happened is we've basically retrained our bodies to believe

that that's the new norm. And so our bodies are operating up here in this higher cortisol level, and we all think it's normal. It's not normal. It's normal too. But how do we combat that? Like you said, technology's not going away. It's going to get worse.

It's going to get to the point where people are already falling in love with some of these AI generators and computers that talk back to them. I mean, it's the future. Some people are sad because some people are just lonely, right? So how are we going to get away from this? And even myself, I don't even want to admit, I was just on vacation, but we're always filming for, you know, what we have to do for social media.

I am constantly looking at my- How are we going to get away from this? And even myself, I don't even want to admit, I was just on vacation,

but we're always filming for, you know,

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