104. STRESS Nation with Justin Hai: How Cortisol Hijacks Your Hormones

Are you tired of being told to "just manage stress" while your sleep, cycles, and fertility feel out of control? In this episode, Dr. Monica Minjeur is joined by Justin Hai, author of the upcoming book STRESS Nation, who unpacks how our tech-driven lives are disrupting cortisol—the master hormone—and what that means for women’s health. We talk about the overlooked ways cortisol imbalances are caused by poor sleep and our constantly digital world of 24/7 technology. We discuss how to truly reset your body’s stress response without jumping straight to medications.

This is a hopeful, science-backed conversation filled with practical tips for women in every stage of reproductive health—including those navigating perimenopause or recovering from burnout.

Preorder STRESS Nation here and get bonuses discussed in the episode: https://stressnationbook.com/

Instagram: @Justin_a_hai

Transcript

Monica: 0:01

Welcome back to Cycle Wisdom, where we empower women to restore natural menstrual cycles, to improve health and promote fertility. I'm your host, Dr. Monica Minjeur, and I'm so glad you're joining us today. Today's episode is a little different and incredibly timely. If you've ever felt like the modern world is working against your body, leaving you overstimulated, under rested and hormonally off, you're going to want to stick around. We are diving into stress, sleep, and cortisol with a guest who brings a much needed perspective. Justin High is the co-founder of Rebalance Health and author of the brand new book Stress Nation. Justin is here with us today to share how he has spent years studying how our technology, saturated culture is disrupting the body's natural rhythms and how we can improve our cortisol levels to improve our health. We will talk about how stress shows up in your hormones, how disrupted sleep impacts those hormones, which can cause changes with your fertility and your menstrual cycles, and most importantly, how you can start to reset your system even in the midst of a busy, demanding life. So let's jump into this episode, and I hope you enjoy our interview. I am so excited today to share a fantastic guest with you all and we have today Justin Hai. On the podcast. Justin, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and then we'll kind of jump into the interview here.

Justin: 1:31

Wonderful. Well, thank you for having me on the podcast, doctor. I really appreciate it. I am a husband, I'm a father. I'm a passionate designer slash businessman, and I have evolved multiple companies over the years and started many. The last venture I started was the last in skincare, which is arguably the largest medical grade skincare. Company currently in the world, based off of peptides, but originally based off of a formulation that included HGH, we ended up pivoting towards peptides and we were one of the first companies to move from growth factors over to peptides from that, we caught the eye of some individuals that were interested in doing supplements for skincare I kind of researched that, didn't like that, and then fell in love with endocrinology and kind of went down the rabbit hole. And ultimately I fell in love with cortisol. I was just completely enamored with cortisol. It was unique. Everyone was focused on peptides at the time, CJC IP Ella. All these different peptides used to stimulate different hormones in the body or emulate hormones in the body. And then they all got reclassified as biologics. By the government. And then everyone started using HRT, like crazy. It just took off, like through COVID. It just went ballistic and I was just completely enamored with why, what was going on, what was happening to the human body that all of a sudden this was needed. And I just. I just fixated on cortisol. So from like 2020 onwards, I've been kind of researching and educating myself and others around what cortisol is and why we're in the situation we are in today of excess stress, anxiety, and, you know. Young men are looking for medications for ed. Women at a younger age are entering perimenopause. The symptoms are exacerbated unlike ever before. And as a complete human race, we're suffering unlike we've ever suffered before. And so I wrote a book called Stress Nation to try and explain it and dumb it down into simple, understandable sound bites and with actionable items in the book. So it's not just a. You know, a diatribe and manifesto on this is what's the problem. I actually give you some solutions to help as well.

Monica: 3:53

Fantastic. And I, I'm really excited to talk more about the book because I know a lot of our listeners deal with a lot of these symptoms and manifestations, especially of excess cortisol, excess stress, which is impacting their hormones in, in very big ways. So, course. Could you tell, tell us a little bit more about what inspired you to kind of dig into more of. Science of stress and cortisol in the first place. I know you kinda gave the history as far as how you got here, but was there, was there anything else that was like, Hey, this is what really made you look into this and say, Hey, I need to write a book about this.

Justin: 4:23

I was just really fascinated by cortisol because almost every molecule in the human body has a cortisol receptor. No other hormone functions that way, as you know. And so it really was like, wow, this is kind of like the master hormone and. I just was fascinated by how there was a cause and effect and there are a lot of symptoms that the world is suffering from, and we are very, you know, we're very, very, very shallow in terms of I have a headache, I'll take a headache. I have a tummy ache. I'll take a tummy pill, right? I can't sleep. I'll take a sleeping pill. But there are underlying reasons for those issues. I've got brain fog. I'm gaining weight. I exercise every day, but I still can't lose that exercise. Little weight on my stomach or my libido's gone. But I, I eat healthy and I exercise, but my libido's not there. I losing my hair, my hair, skin and nails. It's all related to an underlying condition. And writing the book was a great way of supporting multiple initiatives that I have going in my world, but fundamentally, it was to try and explain and demystify what's going on because in my authentic opinion. This, this is not rocket science. This is very fundamental and simple. The problem is our egos get in the way and our egos, and we can justify anything we want because the solution isn't always convenient. That's the reality behind it. So the book was trying to go back into a nostalgic format. Go back to the eighties, go back to the nineties when life was different. And I joke, but I'm deadly serious at the same time as a kid, I used to sit in front of the TV first thing in the morning'cause that's when the cartoons were on. There was an a cartoon hour, right? There was no more cartoons after like eight o'clock in the morning. That was it. You were done, right? So you couldn't sit there and binge watch TV for 50, you know, another five hours or what have you. At night, you couldn't watch TV beyond a certain point. Why? Because roughly at midnight, the national anthem came on, the flag was waving, and then we went to static snow. There was no more channels that were broadcasting content. There wasn't a news. Channel or 10 of them. There was a news hour. There was a news flash, right? That gives you an example compared to what you have today is how it's different. You wanted to watch a movie, you went to the cinema. Or you went to the video store and if you were lucky, there was a copy of the video you wanted to watch behind the jacket cover. Remember that? Yeah. And then you were like, oh, it's not there. I have to pick something else, right? Yes. My dad would say, alright, you got three minutes, we gotta go, right? Mm-hmm. You go home and you, you'd have a family weekend, you'd watch one, maybe two movies, right? Then you went outside, you played, you did something different. I don't have to preach. What do we do today? We don't do that. We're spoiled. We have unlimited content 24 7, and it is naturally destroying the human body. That's the true pandemic.'cause what it's doing is it's wrecking your natural circadian rhythm and everyone has an ego and justify. But I wanna watch it. But, but. You know, but, but, but, but, but no, and it's, whether it's food, alcohol timing of that, it's all going against our natural circadian rhythm. And when you take a step back and you understand that we as humans haven't involved in thousands of years, but yet the technology that's been available to us in the past 30. We are trying to keep up with the technology because it giving, it's given us so much more access and we are craving it. We have been trained. To be addicted to these devices and the information it provides, whether it's social media, games, content, news, email, it doesn't matter. It's all the same as content that's addicting and we are all addicted, and it's going to take us to sit down and have a good long, hard conversation with ourselves as to what is important, is our health important? Whereas watching that movie going on screens and you know, responding to emails and dealing with this and dealing with that, more important when I know I need to be sleeping, because at the bottom of it all, if your cortisol is high, you can't fall asleep. You can't stay asleep. You need seven to eight hours of uninterrupted sleep every night in order for your body to naturally make the hormones it needs to make for you to function the next day. That isn't negotiable and everyone seems to think it is. That's the fundamental problem that we're having. We are negotiating with non-negotiables and we are paying the consequences, and then we complain about it. It.

Monica: 9:21

And we talk a lot in our practice about, you know, people come in all the time and they want a quick fix for something. Right. And we, they're, they're sometimes angry at me. I say, I lose all my friends when I say, but first sleep. Yeah. And, you know, and we say, okay, well if we can't kick that good sleep, we're gonna get nowhere with any of the rest of it. So love, love, love, love that. So talk to me about, in your research,, what did you find as far as. This relationship with chronic stress and disrupted sleep, and how does that impact us and what are some of the symptoms that we may see?

Justin: 9:53

Great question. So let's just go back to what we know as to being factual. From a scientific and medical perspective, you need sleep. That's how the human body regenerates repairs, recharges and gives you the energy and the resources you need to be able to function the next day. Right. Seven to eight hours has been proven uninterrupted. If you wake up once medically speaking, that's technically a bad night's sleep. So uninterrupted sleep seven to eight hours and now enables your body to go through the light, the deep, the ram sleep cycles. You make your sex hormones, the almost all your hormones at night during your deep and your out. Okay. Yeah, you make a little bit during the day. Let's not get into semantics, but the majority is all made at night. If you don't sleep, you can't make it. And so you say you got six hours of sleep and you woke up once. Yeah, that's pretty good for me. I'm pretty happy with that. Right. But you're at a hormone deficit for where you could be that day and too many consecutive nights and you are on a downward spiral. And then all the symptoms that we experience as aging adults start to manifest and become exacerbated. If you are a man going through andropause, yes, men, you have an equivalent of menopause. It starts at 30, ends at 70, it lasts 40 years. Your symptoms are a fraction of a half of a percent of what a woman experienced because she goes through the same thing but in a shorter period of time. And so everything is exacerbated tremendously beyond what you could possibly. Okay, but the symptoms are the same. Hot flashes, brain fog, weight gain, muscle mass loss, hair, skin, nails, energy recovery, all of that show up because of a lack of sleep. The lack of sleep is because your stress and your cortisol levels are too high because they need to be high in the morning. As you wake up, they give you the energy, the focus, the concentration. They start to arc towards the middle of the day, and they come down at the end of the day and you want'em to be as low as possible. Just before you go to bed and you can't go from super high to low as possible. In an hour. It doesn't work that way. You need time to unwind and let that naturally kind of cortisol reduction occur. Now, when I say high, I mean high within normal levels, not high in elevated levels, right? Because stress, cortisol. There. There's a lot of confusion around cortisol. I mean, let's be honest, there's no such thing as cortisol face people. That's just something that was made up on TikTok. You woke up puffy'cause you had so much sodium or you drank a alcohol or you whatever, right? There's no such thing and it's actually insulting to people that suffer from Cushings that actually have swollen faces, right? Because that affects a very small, tiny percent of a percent of a percent of the population that actually get that horrible disease. The majority of the population are just puffy. And the media takes everything they can and they just blow it up in the wrong ways. And so really what we have to realize is as we get older, technology impacts us in a greater way. Because we don't have the ability to bounce back the way we did in our twenties and our thirties, right? We were invincible in our early twenties. You could fall off a building, literally stand up and walk away, right? You could run a marathon and then do it the next day. Try and do that in your thirties and forties. If you are not a trained professional athlete, you're gonna be sore. Right, right. And that's that combination of high HGH and testosterone in men and women that help you recover super quickly. But as you hit mid thirties, forties, your body naturally drops in terms of making those hormones at those higher levels. You would need it, those higher levels because you went through puberty and you became an adult and you developed and so forth. So you need to understand that your, your hormone levels are high in your teenage years, your twenties, and then they start to peter off. And as you start getting into your thirties, you really start to notice it and feel it in your forties. You really feel it. And your fifties, you're like, what happened? Okay. And so you have to protect your sleep. Like never before. As you start to enter midlife forties, fifties, I mean, you need to protect it all through your entire life. But let's be honest, you'll feel it the most in your forties and your fifties and your sixties and so forth. That's when you have to protect your sleep and you really have to be almost militant about it, right? That late night meal, I'm going on a date. My loved one's gonna be lovely. We're gonna have dinner at nine o'clock. We'll be done by 10. I'll have that glass of wine, I'll have that piece of cake or that dessert. Great. But understand that your bladder is not the same as it once was. You are going to wake up in the night to use the bathroom. Now you have a clinically bad night's sleep. All that sugar. Alcohol is not a sedative, it's a stimulant. It turns to sugar within a few hours. And guess what? You'll wake up again. And no, you can't just take melatonin as to fix it because it'll help knock me out. Melatonin doesn't put you to sleep. It prepares you for sleep. There's a very big difference, right? And so all of these components play into the quality of life and your sleep hygiene. And so you almost have to realize the older you get, you have to treat yourself like your parents did when you were younger. You've gotta go to bed early, you're gonna have dinner early, you've got to do these things because the human body requires the sleep to regenerate and make the hormones naturally. You cannot make those hormones naturally without the sleep.

Monica: 15:20

So talk to me about, sleep, obviously, we know that we need that sleep. That's when we're able to restore and repair a lot of what's going on. But what if I'm somebody who's getting enough sleep? I'm, I'm getting seven or eight hours, it's uninterrupted and I am still just feeling exhausted, right? Like, what else is going on? Could cortisol still be playing a role even if I'm getting that adequate amount of sleep overnight?

Justin: 15:41

Absolutely.'cause at the end of the day, you know that it's an unusual scenario to be honest, because if people's cortisol are typically high, they can't stay asleep and they can't fall asleep. So it's an unusual scenario. But the general premise of where we are today is that we have these technologies on our phones, tablets, laptops, computers, and as soon as they make a noise, a ding, a buzz, a vibration, whatever it is. Your cortisol goes up a little bit. Mm-hmm. And why does it go up? Because you have this built in trained reaction that I need to know what it is, and until I know what it is, it's good news or bad news. It's one of the two. There's nothing in between, right? It's either good or bad. And I have anxiety and my stress starts to elevate until I figure it out. That's why you see people at dinner with their loved ones, with their family, it's still on their phone because it's buzzing. They have to pick it up. It's addicting and what's happening is your levels of stress are elevating beyond what they should be for a human being in a natural state. And so if you are constantly in that fight or flight state, it's causing tremendous damage to your body. The inflammation is off the charts. And the analogy I like to use is most people when they go on holiday or they used to, right, it was far more relaxing. You were, you got sleep, you were covered, you felt amazing. You had a glow about you not just'cause you had the suntan, but you had a twinkle in your eye. People were more intimate. The libido comes back, right? All of a sudden, why? All the stress is gone. Right. The phone is like, I'm on vacation. I'm not getting those emails anymore. I'm not looking at the news. I don't want to, I'm on the beach, or I'm skiing or wherever people like to go and they're enjoying their life. They're winding down. Their cortisol levels are back where they used to be prior to the technology kicking in, and as soon as they go back home and everything turns on again is, and it goes right back up. So the natural way to do it is to understand these are tools and to try and detox from technology the best that you can. Now, it's not going anywhere. It's here to stay. We're in the rat race, unfortunately, right? So we have to learn. But one of the things as a wake up call to a lot of parents is I pay you, use screen time for your kids, right? You monitor the screen time. Ever thought that it was designed for you as well.

Monica: 18:13

Yeah, absolutely. And it's, you know, it's, it's interesting when we pay attention to it and we say, well, if it's bad for our kids, why would we think it's good for us?

Justin: 18:22

Because we're entitled, but it's to work. You're not wrong. You have a, a responsibility as an adult that you choose to earn a living and provide, but. It's dangerous when you think about it. If you're sleep deprived, do you really wanna be driving with your kids in the car? Right,

Monica: 18:39

right. Are there certain things that you found, when you were going through things that talked about how much screen time is too much? Or is there a, limit? You know, I know we talk about for children, they say less than two hours per day is the recommendation through a lot of pediatrician's offices, but what about for adults? Is it that same? Is it more, is it less? What is, what's the ideal there? I mean, nothing would probably be ideal, but

Justin: 19:02

there's realities are longer, right? I mean, it's a loaded question because there's realities, you know? I need to respond to a correspondent in order to coordinate a podcast. Tomorrow, it's eight o'clock at night, I have to look at my phone. Right. There's this, there's certain realities. There are studies out there that will tell you, you know, anything from nothing to, you know, six hours. There's studies saying you need to stand up every 45 minutes to stand up every hour. I mean, there's lots of studies out there. I'm a big believer in, you know, your own body and. You'll inherently know when you have a good night's sleep. Oh, I feel much better. I feel rest. You need to learn to listen to your body because it's like HRT. There is no one stop solution for everybody,

Monica: 19:53

right?

Justin: 19:54

And if you think about it, HRT, hormone replacement therapy is just one big experiment. One human at a time. Because what the doctor's going to do is ask for a blood draw hormone panel and then ask you all the subjective questions. How are you feeling? How are you sleeping? How's your energy? How's your mood? How's your libido? How's your skin? How's your hair? How's your weight? And based on the answers, the doctor gives an educated recommendation on, well, let's try this dosage. And this would. Ratio of hormones and let's see how you feel. 90 days we come back, do a blood hormone panel, hopefully the whole thing. Not just the one hormone. Right? The whole hormone panel. And then ask you the same questions. I feel fabulous. Great. Maybe we should just stay the course. This is working. I don't feel so great. I'm not saying, well, we need to make an adjustment. Right. You cannot give the same dosage to the next patient. You have to go through that process, right? So your hormone ratios is like a cake with ingredients, and the ingredients are the different hormones in your body. Everyone's recipe is different, like your thumbprint is different. And so how these doctors come up with, well, all guys need to be above 600. I'm like, I never heard so much nonsense, right? It's absolute nonsense. You need to listen to your body. Your body will tell you what's right and what's wrong. The only difference is the doctor's going to give you a pharmaceutical potentially to augment it. Now, I am a big proponent of HRT. I think for the right people at the right time in their life, it totally makes sense. It makes the quality of life better. But HRT will never, ever, ever counteract high cortisol.

Monica: 21:27

Right.

Justin: 21:28

Cortisol is something you have to understand, learn. You can take supplements and augment it. You can meditate, you can go for walks, you can be in the sun. You can have good kind of lifestyle habits, but there's no hormone replacement therapy that you can take to offset high cortisol and stress

Monica: 21:46

We talk a lot in our practices, as you mentioned. There's no one lab test that is like, this is the thing, right? And even when we look at cortisol, we say, well, if you feel a certain way, your cortisol levels help to guide us. But if you're not feeling well, still, we're not where we need to be. You know, and that same thing applies for any of the hormones that we check in our practice. It's like I I'm more concerned on how do you feel? Yes. And then we let the, let the labs guide us as far as, okay, is this. Super therapeutic. Is it not enough? What is, what does that look like for us? So, you know, are there things in particular that, you know, we've talked a lot about sleep, making sure we're getting that good circadian rhythm going. We have a lot of people that are probably listening to this podcast who are busy parents or maybe they have a newborn at home and they're not. Sleeping through the night or a lot of people who are trying to conceive and they are just always on the go. What are some of your favorite practical tips to say, how do I help to restore my cortisol and get that back to a better balance?

Justin: 22:43

The answer to that is you have to understand how the body works, and hopefully through this podcast you've learned a little bit more. You have to prioritize what's important to you. And if you are trying to get pregnant, it's important to reduce inflammation in your body. It's important to get sleep. It's important for your body to make as much of the hormones that it possibly can in the right ratios for your body. But the only way you do that is through getting sleep. It is paramount that you have the right foods. Food, nutrition is a big part. Exercise, huge, big part. Water consumption, again, big part, and it's really critical that you start to kind of dial yourself into the true human natural circadian rhythm. And in an extreme way, you're supposed to wake up when the sun rises and you're supposed to go to bed when the sun goes down in an extreme scenario. Okay? Give or take a few hours, okay? And. You need the seven to eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. The sun triggers cortisol in our body. The sun triggers kind of a healing process, natural vitamin generation. It helps us in so many ways. Sitting in front of blue light screens all day does not work. Eating hamburgers and pizza all day does not work. Okay. Having protein is critical. Lifting weights critical for bone and and muscle health. And so the routines that I like are consistent routines. So my wife and I wake up every morning at four 30 in the morning. We're at the gym at five and we work out, and that sets up our day tremendously from being together. That emotional connection. But when you do that, it actually to us, it stimulates so much of the good vibes inside your body, and I'm deliberately staying away from all the dopamines and all the other nonsense that are vibing. Said. It makes me feel good. It makes her feel good. It starts off the day correctly, come back. We have a healthy breakfast. We get on with our day. Try and get outside. And we try and wind down in the afternoon and in the evening we do what we need to do. We try not to be in front of a television about an hour or two before bed. We try and stay away from our screens, our devices, and we like to, you know, whatever it is. We have a routine where we take a hot shower or you know, we meditate or you do something to help your body really calm down and wind down. My wife loves grounding. She loves taking her shoes and her socks off going, having grounding. It's amazing the studies, the grounding documentary, grounding books, all that. Second, you stand outside in the dirt with your toes in the dirt. You instantly eliminate all the electric electrons in your body that you are getting, being charged from all the electronics around us. The rubber soles on our shoes that prevent us from actually grounding with the earth. These are things that work for me, not necessarily work for everyone else. I only have breakfast and I only have dinner. I don't eat throughout the day and I watch my calories. I make sure that I consume less calories than I burn. Right? Everyone asks about what's the best exercise? The best diet to me is the one you're gonna stick to, but the fundamentals apply. It's that simple. I'm a big believer in having protein and I, I don't wanna get into what diet.'cause to me it's all marketing nonsense anyway. Eat farm to table foods that you like. In good ratios of protein, carbohydrates, and fats. That's it. Whatever works for you, that's the best diet. Right? And it isn't a diet. That's how you're going to eat for the rest of your life. Yeah, absolutely. And if you have a naughty meal, don't feel guilty about it. That's worse than the food that you just consumed, right? The guilt is far more toxic to your body. So enjoy the cake. Enjoy the donut, what have you. No one's perfect. And then when it comes to exercise, just exercise. Right? It doesn't, there is no best exercise. It's the one that you're gonna do is the best exercise. But I do believe in lifting weights. You have to lift weights as you get older for your bone health and your muscle health. And I think all the, you know, the, the surgeons now are, are talking about this a very big. Global scale, like lift weights, that's the best thing for you. Yes. And so that's it. And the rest of it is marketing. The rest of it is just companies trying to promote their diet, their exercise program. They think they're fads, they come and go, but the fundamental principles are very much the same. Yeah. And so I try and have dinner around five o'clock. Yeah. I'm not afraid to say it. Don't care. I feel better when I eat. I haven't eaten lunch. I've had. A very low calorie breakfast. Haven't eaten throughout the day. I eat late afternoon, early evening, and I'm in bed by 8 45 because I'm waking up at four 30.

Monica: 27:29

Right,

Justin: 27:29

right. And guess what? I'm happy and I don't care. People can ridicule you, tease you, whatever. How boring. No, I have a very, very full life. I love my, my world. We have a lot of adventures and we do fun things. And yes, sometimes we say up till midnight, but guess what? I'm sleeping inside. Eight. Eight in the morning. Yeah. So I accommodate and I adjust, but my body happens to like this regimen, and I started that regimen real simply because when we had kids, I used to work out at night after work, I would never see my kids and I couldn't be helpful. So by switching my routine, by working out in the morning, which is better for you, much better for you I was able to be a good dad and be around for my kids and help with homework. Working out at night, guess what raises your cortisol people? Yeah, so just understanding the cause and effects helps you set up your day not to be a robot, but to have a good opportunity winding down your cortisol so that you can improve the quality of your life.

Monica: 28:26

Have you heard of the, the term revenge, bedtime, procrastination? Basically, you stay up late to reward yourself, right? So like, I had a really tough week. It was crazy. I'm gonna stay up late'cause I deserve to stay up and watch this movie or deserve to stay up later. You know, that's, that's kind of this thing that's in the sleep world that they talk about where they're like, oh, well it's fine, but now what? Right. So if, if that's something that's happening, you know, I hear, I talk to a lot of my patients who that happens on their Friday night, their Saturday night.'cause they're like, ah, I got tomorrow morning. What does that do to cortisol? So even if you're getting that seven or eight hours of sleep and that shifts it, how does that rewire what's going on with our internal clocks? And is that bad idea? Doesn't matter. What are your thoughts on that?

Justin: 29:06

From, a logical perspective, I'd say a one day shift or, two days doesn't really make any difference. It's consistency over the long term, but if you had a rough week and you haven't had much sleep, and you can reward yourself with additional no sleep, it doesn't sound like a very good strategy, right? I mean, logically, you don't have to be a scientist or a doctor to understand that. That just doesn't sound good.

Monica: 29:27

Yeah. And I think some people make up for it saying like, oh, well I'm still getting eight hours of sleep. And I just, in my mind, I think, I don't know about you, but I wake up at the same time every morning, even without an alarm. Yeah. So I can't imagine that you would still sleep on through that. I don't know. That's, no,

Justin: 29:41

I, I agree with you 100%. Like even if I want to sleep in, sometimes I find it difficult because my body is so wired to waking up so early in the morning. It is what it is. But honestly, your body likes consistency. Your body doesn't like, you know, random times it finds it very hard to get into a rhythm and it's very hard to get that uninterrupted sleep if you are constantly, you know, changing on your body, your sleep time in, in terms of like three or four hour variances. So if one time I'm go to bed at eight, next time I go to one in the morning, your body does not like that. Your body wants consistency and reliability and. You know, pick a a time that works for you. If it's, I'm going to bed at 10 and I'm gonna wake up at 6:00 AM Perfect. But try and be consistent with that. It doesn't mean like on a weekend you can't go and enjoy yourself. Absolutely. But understand the consequences that might happen. I know that if I go out for dinner with some friends and it's gonna be a late night. I'm gonna start dragging with my friends. My body's like, you need to go to bed. I'm trying to stay awake and, and, and rally with my friends. And sometimes it's like, oh, you, you, you, your body's fighting. You like, no, you need to go to bed. And so, okay, I do what I can. I know when I go to bed, I might find it hard to go to sleep. Why? Because in order to stay awake for those additional five or six hours, say, hang on, my friends, my body needs more cortisol. And so I'm giving my body naturally more cortisol stimulation in order to stay awake, get going, which then prevents me from falling asleep and staying asleep. So I know I'm gonna have a rough night's sleep.

Monica: 31:11

Yeah. Great. All right, well, is there anything else about your book or about this topic that you wanted to make sure that our listeners know that we didn't talk about already?

Justin: 31:20

Well, if you go to our website, which is stress nation book.com, you can sign up. We offer a, a free course which is 365 days of texts. Just quick reminders and step bits to tell you. There's a video course and a cortisol guide that we offer completely free. There is a perimenopause five day educational course as well to help you with kind of. Reducing and minimizing those symptoms. And obviously you can sign up and, and purchase the book if you wish to do so as well. The really, the big thing for me is sleep, and don't forget to hug someone. It's amazing how quickly cortisol can come down with a little bit of human touch, which. COVID destroyed in the United States, absolutely destroyed. So you know you don't have that shake hands. Give someone a hug. Hug your pet. Hug your partner, your family, your kids. That brings cortisol down very quickly.

Monica: 32:12

Love it. Love it. And tell us again, when is your book coming out and where can we get it? Are there other places other than your website? Or is your website the place?

Justin: 32:19

No, you can buy pre-order it today on Amazon. Book.com. Bam. Books, books a million, lots of different bookstores. You can get it found on Nobles. It will be nationally on the shelves, September 15th. So pre-order today and thank you for the opportunity.

Monica: 32:35

Fantastic. Thank you so much for talking with us today. I look forward to sharing this episode with everybody and again, we will make sure that we post all of that contact information in our show notes. So make sure you check out Stress Nation, it is sure to be a great book and it's gonna dig even deeper into all of these topics we covered today. Thanks so much, Justin, for your time. I really appreciate it.

Justin: 32:54

Thank you.

Monica: 32:56

I hope this conversation with Justin sparked something for you. So many women are walking around exhausted, feeling wired, but tired and wondering why their fertility feels off, and they're told it's just stress. But what if we actually took that seriously? What if you stress hormones, especially cortisol, are sending your body a message? Whether you're trying to conceive, navigating cycle issues, dealing with perimenopause or menopausal changes, or just trying to feel more like yourself again, the truth is this, sleep, stress, and hormonal balance are all deeply intertwined and they matter. If today's episode resonated with you and you're ready for a more restorative root cause approach to your health, we at Radiant Clinic would love to help you along your journey. If you're ready to work with our elite team of healthcare professionals, go to our website, radiant clinic.com to schedule a free discovery call and learn more about our package based pricing for comprehensive care. We are currently able to see people for in-person appointments in our Cedar Rapids, Iowa Clinic, or can arrange for a telehealth visit if you live in many different states across the us. Check out our website for current states that we can serve medical clients and let us know if your state is not listed to see if we can still cover you there as we are constantly expanding our reach, please note that our fertility educators are able to take care of clients no matter where they live. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please share this podcast with someone in your life who would benefit from our services. Remember to subscribe to this podcast for more empowering content that I look forward to sharing with you on our next episode of Cycle Wisdom.