Dr Joseph Dituri, also known as Dr. Deep Sea, is a biomedical engineer, former U.S. Navy saturation diver, and professor who lived underwater for 100 days as part of Project Neptune— a groundbreaking scientific mission to study how extended high-pressure environments affect the human body and brain. During his time beneath the sea, Dr. Dituri and everyone who visited him experienced something extraordinary — their deep and REM sleep doubled, reaching an unheard-of 60–66% each night.
Dr Joseph Dituri, also known as Dr. Deep Sea, is a biomedical engineer, former U.S. Navy saturation diver, and professor who lived underwater for 100 days as part of Project Neptune— a groundbreaking scientific mission to study how extended high-pressure environments affect the human body and brain. During his time beneath the sea, Dr. Dituri and everyone who visited him experienced something extraordinary — their deep and REM sleep doubled, reaching an unheard-of 60–66% each night.
SHOWNOTES:
😴 What 100 days underwater revealed about deep sleep
😴 How hyperbaric oxygen became a surprising sleep breakthrough
😴 Which hyperbaric protocols actually work and which don’t
😴 Why pressure metabolism can reset your sleep depth
😴 How oxygen and pressure may enhance brain repair and memory
😴 Why chronic inflammation might be your hidden sleep disruptor
😴 How hyperbaric therapy could boost HRV recovery fast
😴 The unexpected sleep upgrade that changed his nights forever😴
😴 And many more
SPONSORS:
🧠 If You “Can’t Turn Your Brain Off” At Night…try a quality magnesium supplement that addresses ALL the necessary forms of magnesium that you need to support calming your nervous system and sleeping deeply. https://magbreakthrough.com/sleepisaskill
GUEST LINKS:
Website: Book - The Art and Science of Hyperbaric Medicine
Instagram: @drdeepsea
LinkedIn: Joseph Dituri, Ph.D.
Book - The Art and Science of Hyperbaric Medicine
DISCLAIMER:
The information contained in this podcast, our website, newsletter, and the resources available for download are not intended to be medical or health advice and shall not be understood or construed as such. The information contained on these platforms is not a substitute for medical or health advice from a professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation.
Welcome to the Sleep As a Skill podcast. My name is Mollie Eastman. I am the founder of Sleep as A Skill, a company that optimizes sleep through technology, accountability, and behavioral change. As an ex sleep sufferer turned sleep course creator, I am on a mission to transform the way the world. Thinks about sleep.
Each week I'll be interviewing world-class experts, ranging from researchers, doctors, innovators, and thought leaders to give actionable tips and strategies that you can implement to become a more skillful sleeper. Ultimately, I believe that living a circadian aligned lifestyle is going to be one of the biggest trends in wellness, and I'm committed to keeping you up to date on all the things that you can do today to transform your circadian health, and by extension, allowing you to sleep and live better than ever before.
Welcome to Sleep as a Skill Podcast. Now, if you've ever struggled to sleep soundly, imagine finding your deepest, most restorative sleep 30 feet below the ocean. Now, that's exactly what happened to Dr. Joseph Dituri. A navy diver turned biomedical engineer who lived underwater for a hundred days and came out with insights that could redefine how we heal, perform, and sleep.
Now our guest, Dr. Joseph De Tori, also known as Dr. Deep Sea, is a biomedical engineer, former US Navy saturation diver, and professor who lived underwater for a hundred days as part of Project Neptune. A groundbreaking scientific mission to. Study how extended high pressure environments affect the human body and brain during his time beneath the sea.
Dr. Ator and everyone who visited him experienced something extraordinary. Their deep and re sleep doubled reaching unheard of highs of over 50 and sometimes even 60 or more percent each night. In this episode, we discuss how Dr. De Tori's underwater sleep transformed doubling, deepen REM sleep levels, the science of hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and how oxygen pressure influences sleep, recovery and metabolism, how living under pressure impacts brain health, inflammation, and mental performance.
And this conversation blends science, storytelling, and pure inspiration, expanding how we think about oxygen pressure and the body's ability to heal itself. So let's dive in, not quite literally with Dr. Joseph de Tore, otherwise known as Dr. Deep Sea. Now first a few words from our sponsors, and then we'll jump right in.
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39.2% a sleep Foundation survey reports not even mentioning all the indulgent food and late night effects that often come along with it. And as we know, sleep is the key to your body's rejuvenation and repair process. It controls hunger and weight loss hormones, boost energy levels, and impacts countless other functions.
A good night's. Sleep will improve your wellbeing much more than just about anything else I can possibly think of on the planet. Uh, you know, I'm biased, but gotta say that. And sleep is your major to focus on as we head into the fall season and hopefully beyond. And that's why I recommend that if you're going to start taking some supplements on.
Sleep often. Magnesium is a great place to begin, but not just any magnesium supplement. I do recommend getting the Magnesium Breakthrough by BiOptimizers Magnesium Breakthrough contains all seven forms of magnesium designed to help you fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up refreshed, which isn't that what we're all looking to do.
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This special offer is only available@magbreakthrough.com slash sleep is a skill. I will also include this in the show notes as well. Welcome to the Sleep is a Skill Podcast. I am delighted that our guest is taking the time today to share all things sleep and his unique kind of perspective on this for many facets.
So Dr. De Tori, thank you so much for being here. Hey, thank you for having me. We really appreciate coming on. Yay. All right. Well, this is gonna be a lot of fun. So maybe we start at the beginning of how you found yourself an expert in your arena and how that bridges into sleep. The funny part is you think I'm an expert.
That's, that's fine. Isn't that the joke with like all people, you know, it. Like, no, you just start learning and then you're like, oh, I wish I paid more attention in that class. Oh geez. I really wish I knew that more. Yeah. But now you learn how to learn. So that's good news. Uh, so I heard from my bio, I was in the Navy for 28 years and towards the end of my Navy career, I just was not sleeping well.
I had night terrors. I was waking up screaming. Uh, I then got divorced and tried to. Being with people. And when you wake up screaming with a person next to you, they're like, who the hell is this guy? Yes. Uh, long story short, um, I went back to school. I got a PhD in biomedical engineering and I started attacking my entire life as a biomedical engineering problem.
And going through that solution set, just being like, it all boils down to human physiology. Hold on. Pull the string on that. What happens here? What happens there? What happens there? So I don't consider myself by any means a sleep expert. Yeah. I'm a really good at human physiology. I'm really good at some sorts of medicine.
I'm really good at blood flow in the body. Yeah, I'm not good at sleep. I still struggle today. Got Tuesday. I didn't sleep very well, right? Yeah. Here, here we're Thursday, Tuesday. I didn't sleep well, so it's like, well, I so appreciate you sharing that because before we hit record, we were just speaking to some of the importance of the vulnerability because so many people think that they're alone.
Like when I went through my period of insomnia, I thought, what am I like the only weirdo that like can't get myself together to be able to do this thing called sleep. So to share that and be open with that, but still be in the kind of. Sandbox with playing with different things that can help support us and keep improving.
That's why my outlook is that sleep is a skill and that it's something that we can continually improve upon over time. And it's never like, it's like a mountain with no top. It's not like we arrive or something, you know? Because even when you think you gotta figured out, you know, you get stressed or something happens and then it can still shake up.
So. I so appreciate you speaking in that way. So maybe we can go to some of that, your areas of expertise that you do speak to. How do you see those kind of play in with sleep in, in your experience and beyond? Sure. Interestingly enough, as, as you guys well know, I, uh, I stayed underwater for a hundred days.
Yes. The reason why I stayed underwater in an isolated, confined, extreme environment. For 100 days, it's 'cause I couldn't afford 200 days and 200 days. True story. Right? I love that. 200 days is the length of time it's gonna take us to get from here to Mars. So everybody says we're going to Mars and I say, Elon, I have a question.
Uh, what are we gonna eat? What are we gonna drink? How are we gonna sleep? What are we, B? Right? We gotta start answering questions here now on this planet so that we can learn through analog analogous. Yes. We gotta get this stuff down right now and figure it out, right? Yeah. So when we go into these environments, I spent that time underwater.
Why? Because every single astronaut that's ever flown has trained to fly in the water. Hmm. So that's the closest medium we have on this planet. It's the closest thing we have to CRG. So we've been doing it. So I said, okay, I'm gonna get in the water. So I got in the water. Well, I, I work in hyperbaric medicine, uh, and I know that when you go underwater, you're in hyper meaning more than baric, meaning pressure.
Mm-hmm. That increase in pressure increases metabolism. The increase in pressure and partial pressure of oxygen increases a person's metabolism. Ah, what does that mean? Oh my gosh. I went, usually if you're scorers score things, uh, with the, uh, what do they call the gor ring or whoop Yeah. Yep. Go ring the whoop all these devices, right?
Sure. Everybody that came down to visit me and myself, I would normally sleep in 30 to 33% in deep in re your sleep, your, your people know what deep in REM is. Right? No issues. Totally. So 30, 33% deep in REM over an eight hour period. I got a couple of, you know, two and a half, three hours, something like that.
Sounds great. Except while I was underwater every single night without fail and everybody that came to visit me, I doubled my deep in REM sleep. 60 to 66% in deep in rem. What? Unheard of 50 to 70 million Americans. 50 to 70 million Americans suffer from sleep problems. Yeah, and I was like. We just hit the freaking jackpot, so pull the sleep expert in.
Started pulling the string on this, trying to figure it out. We don't know why. We think it's due to the increase in metabolism. You know the, it's not the stress, it's not that that we ruled out everything. Yeah. We still don't know the answer, but in science that happens a lot of times, so, okay. So just so, yeah.
And hearing that it's incredible. I don't know if it's not like front page news everywhere. Right. That's amazing. So. My question is for people listening, because often when people are showing up to this podcast, we found seems to be like one of two reasons. Typically, they're either in a acute situation where they're like really struggling with sleep and they wanna help right in away, or they're sleeping and they just wanna kind of optimize.
But I think both groups would be like, well, how can I. Glean some of this in my own life. Like could people, hypothetically, I know this would be cost prohibitive, but could you sleep in a hyperbaric chamber or like what are some of the ways that we could bring some of this into our lives? Here's the beautiful thing.
I don't believe you need to sleep in a hyperbaric chamber. You just need to go to a hyperbaric chamber, a regular there. There was back in the day, a picture of Michael Jackson. Do. Are you old enough to remember Michael Jackson getting his hair burned? Yes, I can. Yes. You wear that. Well, thank you. But when Michael Jackson got his hair burn in Miami and he wanted to donate something to them and they said, Hey, you could donate this thing called a hyperbaric chamber.
So he paid the money to donate it. Never actually went in one. Ah, he went in, crawled in it with his clothes on. They took a glamor shots picture, and that was it. So he never actually slept in hyperbaric chambers. Like they said, he never did any of that. But if you just go to any hyperbaric center and you go in hyperbaric oxygen therapy for an hour to an hour and a half a day, you can glean some of those same results.
It's not gonna be a 66% deep in REM 'cause that's just unheard of. I mean, think about it, five to six hours a night. I slept in deep and rem. It was insane. Insane. And. Moreover, with that extra sleep, I mean, 'cause we know what we do in deep and red, we relearn, we, you know, we restore, we re, we put everything together, right?
Yes. My, my coherence increased by 13% and my face leg decreased by 5%. All because of my sleep. Right. What, when you sleep better, you think better. Oh, totally. When you sleep better, you sleep, you think faster. Mm-hmm. It's insane. Right. So with all that stuff being said, um, like I said, I think you can get some of these benefits out of just going to a normal hyperbaric center and I don't make any money if you go to a hyperbaric center, I don't care.
Right, right. I'm a researcher. Okay. And do you have any callouts too between if. Someone saying, all right, well let me start doing that. We've heard some people say, well, there's such a big difference between soft shell and hard shell. Is that gonna be a big distinguisher of what would get you that value potentially for sleep?
Yeah. Interestingly enough, I was at approximately 1.7 atmospheres on air, so the salt sail chambers go to 1.3 on air and a PhD student that I knew just did a research study. Um, and he came to the starting conclusion that you can help your body's processes, including stem cell proliferation and so forth.
You can do that at 1.3 on air and it works and it won't. So I'm not sure whether you can get all the advantage out of it, but. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water because you can get some advantages out of it. And the cost. It's cost prohibitive to go in a hyperbaric chamber on a regular, and you need a prescription by a medical doctor.
Right. You know, so I'm not trying to tell you to circumvent it. Mm-hmm. Go to a facility that's safe, the easiest way to know whether a hyperbaric facility is safe or not. Mm. Walk in there and ask them to see their emergency procedures binder. Ooh. And they will just, if they are trained, yeah. They will whip out their binder and they will show you.
'cause it's right in plain view for them to see and use at all times. Mm. If they can pull it out, they're at least doing their safety procedures. Short of that, if they go what? Run, run, run back. Got it. Do you have one at home personally? Do you use one routinely or. Oh yeah, I, I use them routinely, but I have them in my office.
Ugh, of course. Amazing. Yeah, so good on to Tampa. I think I might have to. I know, I feel like there's a lot of kind of biohacking happening there. It's quite the hotbed. Okay, so then any other things to share about your experience in those a hundred days? I mean, I'm sure there's a whole book worth of things to share, but as it relates to sleep.
Yeah, not much more as it relates to sleep. I found that I slept very soundly, uh, very heavy, but everybody's like, oh, it's the electromagnetic waves. It's the lack of sunlight. It's the, we checked all that. Uh, we didn't come down to any of that, so. Yeah. Because if anything, I mean, based on, so much of the things that we do on this podcast are speaking to the perils of being denied of sunlight for extended periods of time.
So the fact that you would think that that would be a problem, not part of the, you know, the benefits. So that's very interesting. Right, right, right, right. Yeah, no, I, I personally believe that sunlight's very helpful and, you know, the, the, the, the red light, uh, you know, we, we need blue light. We need it. All these people that walk around with the blue blocker glasses on, I'm like, please stop.
Why? Yes. Exactly. No, they don't even look that good on you. But outside the door, I know, it's so true. It's become such a problem. So then I'm curious, I know you spoke to some of the benefits from a a metabolic perspective, from the sounds of it. I wonder if you could share a bit more about why we think that might be, and also kind of breaking down additional benefits of utilizing kind of hyperbaric on your health and wellbeing and its spillover into sleep.
Right. So speaking from a metabolic state as I was underwater, I did blood, urine, saliva, electrocardiograms, electrograms, pulmonary function tests, uh uh, every test known to man, including 19 psychological psychosocial tests. Wow. Nobody had done this level of research underwater since the C lab days in the seventies.
It's amazing. When I went underwater, we were doing things like we're trying to find muscle loss, right? Sure. We don't wanna have the muscle loss that you have when you're in space. Yeah. So I was using these bands and so all that being said, I did weight balance, measured my arms, bicep, triceps, chest, all that.
Okay. And while I was underwater, we found was happening. And one of the known mechanisms of action of hyperbaric medicine is it does increase your metabolism. But since I was in it 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the first 25 days, in the first 25 days, I lost 22 pounds. What? And I ate the exact same thing.
Wow. As I eat on the surface every single day, nothing changed. I mean, I'm three to five eggs every morning. Cheese, meat. Yes. You know I'm a meatier. Same. Yep. I'm right there with you. Lunch. I'd have a big salad with a protein on it. Dinner I'd just have a protein and something green. Right. That's what I did Every night I get about a hundred.
A hundred or so grams of protein, and I'm about 200 kilos, right? Mm. So it's 0.5 grams per kilo. Right? My docs, my doctors, because they, it wasn't just me. I'm a PhD, not an md. So the MDs that were involved in the project pulled me aside and said, look, this, we can't have you losing weight. This is, this is bad.
Mm. I said, yeah. They said, we need you to, uh, you know, one and a half times your, uh, your protein. So basically. I'm eating 150 grams of protein. This is hard. It's hard to eat 150 s of protein and thank God I, I was able to maintain that weight after that. So I didn't lose any more weight after that. But it's about a 50% increase by and large, just 50% increase in, uh, your metabolism.
And that being said, at the end of every night, I'm always tired at the end of the night. 'cause I. I work is what I do. I like, I get up at five in the morning and I swim hard and I, you know, blah, blah. And I was doing experiments on myself and thinking and lecturing, teaching at the University of South Florida.
I mean, I was doing everything. Yeah. And you know, by the time the end of the day rolls around, I'm like, click. Yeah. So, um, falling asleep is never the problem sometimes for me. It's staying asleep. Yes. But I had zero issue underwater. It was like, click, lights out. Goodbye. Next morning, 5:00 AM I'm waking up, but I go to bed at nine 'cause I'm old.
Yeah, I hear that. So it really, it felt like it reduced the kind of sleep fragmentation, the amount of wake ups that you would experience. Yeah, it did. Uh, and, and y you know, I mean, look, um, a, a man of a certain age, once you get over 50, you start waking up in the middle of the night and having to go pee.
Right. I'm sorry. It's just minute it goes. Yeah. Um, they say that there's a way around that limit the water after six. I've been doing that forever. Yeah. I still wake up to pee. It's more of a habit. Yeah. Short of that, um, no, I, I, I did not have the frequent waking, the rolling, the flip flop. I was boomed down, out, gone night.
Wake up in the morning. It great. So if you could have those same sort of sleep conditions above water, would you readily do that? Would you be amped to do that? Readily, readily. Readily. And I'm trying to do everything I can. Look, I, I know people told you this guys like Dr. Kirk Parsley are living this. If you're, I was just with him.
Yeah. It was amazing. He helped organize this whole. Navy SEAL shooting extravaganza with, so my husband and I, and so we're the only like non seals and it was incredible. So just was with him and he's been on the podcast twice. I'm here in Austin, so he's here and he is just amazing. Yeah, I was just in Austin two weekends ago.
Oh my God. Wait for health optimization Summit? Oh no, for the hog hunt. Oh, okay. Okay. I never. Kelly Hog Hunting. Sorry. That's way better. Kirk was my doctor in the Navy. Oh. So Kirk was, was on my group. He was in my command, you know, and he and I would go places. It was like Kirk and Bones, you know? It was amazing.
Yeah. That's so great. Oh, we love him. Ugh. Very dear friend of mine. Matter of fact. In this book? Yeah, he is. This is the book I wrote on, uh, about the one atmosphere dive suit. Yeah. He is Dartos the doctor. What? Yeah. Oh my gosh. That's amazing. Okay. Yeah. Wow. Alright. So people like that are real experts in this.
They know what's going on. Um, and you know, they talk through the sleep hygiene and stuff like that. And, and I am an absolute believer. I truly am. I'm an absolute believer and I started a traumatic brain injury healing program here, and when I did that. I got a whole bunch of doc parsley, sleep remedy, and I said, look, this is a naturopathic way of doing this.
Yes, let's do it naturally. Like he says, I don't know what your deficiency is. I guarantee you it's not a LTE deficiency. It's not an ambient deficiency. Yes. Maybe melatonin, maybe magnesium, you. But I'm on that path now, right? So I'm on the path to find out the human physiology that works around sleep. And it, it is so important.
Uh, it's critical for us to learn, relearn, keep doing what we're doing. So. Oh, that's fantastic. Okay. Amazing. And so on this topic of hyperbaric and benefits that could also kind of in tandem support sleep, I was, you know, I mentioned that health optimization summit and they had, what was it called?
International Hyperbaric Association, I think, if I'm recalling it correctly. Anyway, it was an educational kind of platform around the benefits of hyperbaric. And so they had all these pamphlets there and one of the things, it was just like. Any problem you were dealing with was addressed seemingly with hyperbaric based on some of that literature.
But, so they would point to TBIs, they would point to post-traumatic stress, they would point to hormone imbalance, immune function, uh, viral load. I mean, just felt like the list kept going. And then of course the sleep topics. But many of those things, of course, can show up in our impacts and, you know, results with our sleep.
So can you speak to some of that, the things that you've seen as far as how it can support some of those? Oh, absolutely. Right. So anytime your body needs to heal anything, how does it heal stuff? Stem cells. Yes. Well, I can either double or all the way up to eight times the number of stem cells in your body by just using hyperbaric medicine, right?
So you want to get better hyperbaric medicine's the way, uh, fibroblast proliferation, secondary to collagen synthesis. I mean, you know, it's, it's like there are so many things that are coming out that. We know are mechanisms of action of hyperbaric medicine. So you think, okay, collagen. Collagen synthesis.
That's great. No, no, no, no. It's not the collagen. You're injecting your face and you make yourself pretty or whatever. You make your lip choppy, right? This collagen is the building block of every cell in your body. Yes. Yes. And if you can make that and make it more and get more stem cells, you can repair your stuff.
You can reheal, you can heal things better. Anything that's poorly perfused tissue, you can hyperoxygenate if you hyperoxygenate. You do that whole kreb cycle thing more, better, faster burr, right? Yeah. I mean, so this is human physiology, right? All of this stuff, once you learn it, you go, oh, that makes perfect sense.
Oh yeah. So some of this stuff that's really cool is hyperbaric oxygen. It, it basically inhibits toxins from your body. That's one of the known peer reviewed mechanisms of action. Now. Right now we use it for gaseous, gangrene and, and things of that sort, right? So these toxins that are in our body that are truly dead, does that mean that you can't use it for mold?
Right? Does that mean you can't use it for whatever, gadolinium, right? Mm-hmm. Like any kind of a toxicity, you can take a binding agent, get in the hyperbaric chamber, get a couple of hyperbaric sessions, get that worked out. Now you gotta go to somebody knowledgeable to work you through that protocol. But that's easy enough.
I mean, and how's that gonna make you sleep? It's gonna make you sleep better, right? So all these things tie together. It's basically like the, um. The most fuel efficient thing you can do for your body if you'll Wow. Is to get it's natural, right? It's not like. I got a prescription for you right here. It's not like I'm gonna give that to you and you're gonna get hooked on it and Oh, I'm gonna have to break you of it.
You're gonna have to go to Narcotics in management. Exactly. And it did seem to kind of jump up in Vogue and more conversations post COVID. Is that something you've also seen too? I mean, I'm sure it's a newer area of study, but Oh my goodness. So look, science wins over BS and right now we haven't done many studies on this, right?
Yes. But. I will tell you this. I will tell you that hyperbaric oxygen works so well for COVID that the Tampa Police and Tampa Fire Department's Workman's Comp paid me. To treat their people. I was having so much success and workman's comp, as you probably well know, pays $0. They're like, they Capital One, no department.
They're like, no, no, I'm sorry. No, you can't go to a chiropractor. No, you can't do this. Yeah, you can't do that. Oh, that helps you definitely. You can't do that. Right? Yeah. But they paid because in 10 treatments of hyperbaric medicine at 2.0, uh, times the amount of oxygen, um, you basically, the firemen got better.
Wow. The highest number that I had was 12 treatment. Uh, 12 treatments, and they got battered. And you know, this big, cute, burly fireman comes out and he wraps his arms around you. God, don't hug me. Don't. Right. But it's that kind of a thing. But when you think about it, it's all what happened with COVID? How did that affect your type two pneumocytes?
How did that affect the type one pneumocytes for gas exchange? And yeah, so it is, all of that makes. Perfect sense from a human physiology standpoint, but yeah, absolutely. And they started sleeping better and they had double the number of stem cells and they were able to heal themselves a little better.
So look, man, your body wants to heal itself. Mm. Put it in the right condition and it does. Guess what else it does? It lowers inflammation. Yes. Yeah. Interleukin six goes down, interleukin 23 goes up. Uh, insulin-like growth factor goes down. I mean, we are talking H-S-C-R-P, boom, you know what I'm saying? We are talking all of the measures of inflammation, systemic inflammatory response, which as you know.
Most Americans we're eating crappy diets and we're doing not such good thing. Look, occasionally I was in Austin, Texas a couple weeks ago. Yeah. And, uh, I, I had a cocktail or two, I'm not gonna lie. Correct. Right. Live a little yes or two because I'm, I have a little bit of balance. Well, yeah. I could use a little bit of hyperbarics when I got back from that.
Right? Yes. Kind of makes sense overall. But, uh, yeah. Uh, you get that inflammation and you wanna reduce that inflammation, but, you know, let's apply it. Let's apply it across a broad spectrum of diseases. You have Crohn's. Mm. Crohns is a disease of inflammation. Yes. Yeah. I wonder if you had a powerful anti-inflammatory.
Like this is simple, right? Yeah. You reduce the inflammation in your body, you're sleeping better, you're healing more. You're that. Yeah. And would you say the same rules are likely applying when we 'cause uh, pointing back to some of those, that long laundry list, it feels almost like a panacea of some of the things that are pointed to of benefits with hyperbaric and a whole group of them being mental health aspects and certainly mental health and sleep intimately connected are, are thinking the metabolic piece, the lowering of inflammation and neuro inflammation.
Yeah. So, uh, the lowering inflamma, inflammation and neuroinflammation, as well as the release of serotonin, which is one of the things that hyperbaric medicine does as well. Right, okay. Have you ever known a diver, a scuba diver? I have actually. I've had, um, a few, uh, a few of them that I've worked with through, over in California.
Yeah. How are they after they go diving? I mean, elated, right? Like I'm happy. Why? Well, it's not just because Diving's cool. Yeah. It's because that increase in pressure has been shown to release serotonin. So interesting. If it releases serotonin, serotonin gives you the little happiness. It gives you a little happiness update, you know?
Well, I feel like you're living proof. You see a like joke. So whatever you're doing, once again. And, and I wanna emphasize to everybody on your brain. And don't lift me up on a pedestal. I am a freaking work in progress, right? Yeah. Are we all just like everybody else? I stumbled. I fall, I have bad days, and boy, yeah.
Aw, I love that. Right? So please don't, uh, please just keep trying, keep doing something different, right? True. Nobility not being better than your fellow man. It's being better than your former self, right? Hmm. So just a little better than I was yesterday. Just a little. So good. Yes, little. I love that.
Beautiful. Okay, so then as far as this big conversation of hyperbaric, is there anything we're missing in some of the benefits of hyperbaric that could be supportive to, you know, mental health sleep, but also many of the people that are using wearables, they're also looking at things like heart rate variability, heart rate, respiratory rate, body temperature.
Blood, oxygen, anything we've like, haven't covered that could benefit those aspects. Right? Yeah, sure. There's a lot there. So let me just go back to a little piece of mental health please. Yeah. We believe that this may work for traumatic brain injury. Hyperbaric oxygen may work for traumatic brain injury, for all the things neuroinflammation, information, information, all that stuff that we mentioned.
Uh, serotonin release, that kind of stuff. We believe it so well that the governor of the state of Florida. University of South Florida where I am an assistant professor yes. Uh, gave us, uh, $28 million and said, go do a hyperbaric study and figure it out. So we are now in the midst of the largest clinical trial ever done in hyperbaric medicine at the University of South Florida.
So we're pretty excited about it. Congratulations. That's huge. Wow. Yeah, it's, and it's huge for our veterans because we are treating an all veteran population right now, four 20 veterans who have traumatic brain injury, mild to moderate traumatic brain injury. So that being said, yeah, and we're taking all the blood, all the biomarkers, everything that I did while I was underwater, we're doing almost all the same stuff.
Uh, we're also taking thesis and doing diffuse sensor imaging with mri. So real great study. That's fantastic. Okay. And so with all that, do we anticipate that some of those things could point to, like for instance, one of the big pain points, you know, from a, this is like a first world problem I suppose, but many people will point to, ugh, my HRV just stinks and I can't seem to improve it.
I wanna improve this metric. And they're getting that from their nighttime HRV readouts with the different wearables. Do we feel like that is something that could be improved by utilizing hyperbaric. Yes. That is a thought at this point. Okay. Uh, we don't have a, we don't have a large amount of data on that.
Sure. But we believe that it's, that we believe that it's possible. So heart rate, heart rate variability, right? We're talking about how much, how well poof. You, you expel the blood from the heart, right? Yes. This is important because if your heart is in this kind of a rhythmic fashion, beats every second.
That's horrible shape. That's you. Responding to autonomic nervous system stress, which is that systemic stress in our body, right? Yeah. If you are not stressed, if you are chill, your heart will just go, how much do you need? Three quarts or three? Three liters. Three. Three. Whatever. Bam. Gimme three. Gimme four and a half this time, and it beats every 1.5, 1.7 0.5, right?
So it responds to the load. That's the true heart rate variability, and it is a detector of autonomic nervous system stress. And, uh, as a matter of fact, yeah, I did my dissertation on that. So what, that's some cool stuff I did. I did a dissertation on, on heart rate variability and how it senses autonomic nervous system stress.
Geez. Okay. Because naturally, so commonly when people are struggling with their sleep, they're dealing with some psychological stressors. But, you know, not to limit it just to the psychological piece, of course, physiological and what have you, but that's incredible that we could see that this could be a tool in our toolkit that could be helpful.
Yep. Okay. Yeah, it, it definitely could be. Now, one of the things while I was underwater that I did, uh, also in conjunction with all this other stuff was. I had to take a good solid look inside, right? Mm. So I meditated a lot. So I did, you know, lion's breath. Ah, yes. Right. Yeah. I did all that stuff right. And I started to take my breathing down.
I started to look inside and I started put holy mackerel when you do that kind of stuff. Mm. Some of that, some of that, uh, anxiety sort of. Drifts away. Yes. Every single, remember I took 19 psychological psychosocial tests? Yes. The GA seven, the PQM nine, the, the, the beck anxiety, the Beck Depression, the sleep, whatever, whatever.
Yeah. All those got better, every single one of them. But it's a combination of things. There's not the one thing that you could do. Oh, the only thing you have to do to sleep is turn your temperature down to 66 degrees. No. Yeah, exactly. Cold. Cold, temperature, heavy blanket, go to sleep at the same, you know, it's a combination of things.
Yes. And on a nightly basis. So, yeah. Keep trying. Keep trying. So, good. Well, I'm glad you said it like that. I know we've had different guests kind of point to it, like a garden. Like you can't just say, oh, well it's just the soil, it's just the seeds. It's like the whole thing that creates the, you know, a plentiful, rich garden.
It's not just gonna be isolated. So well said. Okay. So with every guest that we bring on, we ask them four questions around how they're managing their own sleep, and definitely interested to hear the latest for you with all of these kind of experiments and research and thought that has gone into this.
And the humility of the fact that there's up, so there's downs. So from that place, what would you say currently is your nightly sleep routine looking like right now? Nightly sleep routine, pretty easy. So at about, uh. At about sundown 'cause it's summertime. Yep. And it's a little later, right? So 7 30, 8 o'clock.
I usually watch the sunset. What does that do? Puts red light right in your eyes, right? Yes. From that moment on, there's no overhead lights in the house. Everything's that yellow soft, right? And this is not just me, this is her, right? Because she's telling me, my girlfriend, yes. She's telling me like, okay, we're doing this, we're doing that.
I'm like, yes. Right, because I'm smart. Right? Totally. So the yellow light comes on. We try to. Limit any blue light whatsoever. There's no tv. You know, we turn all that stuff away, put it away, and we start our nighttime routine. You know, you wash, you know you clean before you go to bed. We do the clean thing before you go to bed.
Don't know how you guys do it. Yeah. Turn the temperature down. Right. Temperature goes to, she likes it at 70. I'm a little warmer than that to be frank with you, but because I don't know, I get cold really easily. Yes. But, and then we have big heavy, we have two spreads on our bed. They're both heavy. Uh, and we basically will wrap up and keep ourselves warm.
I try and wrap myself around her. She's usually doing the distance thing. Um, but definitely cold. Um, yes, all of the minuscule lighting that I do have in the room, smoke detector lights, something like that, that's got tape over his wrap. The windows have. Literally have aluminum foil on them like it is so good, thick black in my room.
Love it. And I am laying in bed at nine 30. My do not disturb goes on at nine. So good. I don't. I don't want to talk to you if Yeah, if, if it's an emergency, short call, whatever. Right? But there's nothing to talk about at nine 30 at night that I'm gonna change. My daughters will ring through, that kind of thing.
But short of that, uh, nothing I can really do. Um, and then you try and go to sleep at the same time. You try and wake up at the same time. One thing that has helped me, and this is Joe to Tori, right? Mm-hmm. Um. It has helped me. Sometimes I do get up in the middle of the night. Yeah. When I get up in the middle of the night, I take those deep breaths.
I try and go back to sleep. If I can't go back to sleep, I go downstairs alone. Without a phone. Yep. Without watching tv, and I just sit on the couch and I breathe. Mm. Right. If you make the commitment to the only freaking thing that I'm doing between 9:00 PM and 5:00 AM. Is being in this bed or doing a sleep thing.
Yeah. That's what you're doing. Your body will just be like, all right, the first time it'll be like, no, no. I wanna go, oh, check the score of the game. Yes. Check the check the check the note. No, stay on the and stay. Right. So you wanna stay away from all that stuff and just try and breathe. Then get back in bed and force yourself to go back to sleep.
Mm-hmm. Then be kind to yourself and kind of maybe sleep just a little bit extra. Right. But yeah. Yeah. You, you gotta, you gotta be kind. Right? So that's generally my nighttime sleep routine. Uh, I take magnesium citrate in, uh, about 700 milligrams. Mm-hmm. Seven 50 milligrams, give or take. I take it in the powder form, so it's a little hard to measure.
Uh, but yeah, it's, uh, it's quite a, uh, quite a high dose of magnesium. But it is, I think good and it's working for me. Amazing. Okay. I love that. And I appreciate too sharing what you do during the wake up. 'cause that is just such a huge topic. US Worlds just released this sleep survey. I mean, you know, it's a survey so who knows, but they did point to 89% of Americans as of this year reporting, waking up throughout the course of the night.
So wake ups, just however you cut it, a lot of people are dealing with wake up and so. Having kind of some thoughts on ways to manage that and to your point, just kind of creating that like time bound relationship with this is when we start the kind of sleep opportunity, this is when we end the sleep opportunity with some kindness and wiggle room depending on how the night went.
But that it's very clear for the body. Smart. Exactly. Exactly. I love that. And then the second question would be so far to date, and what would you say does your morning sleep routine look like with the idea that how we start our day could impact our sleep? Nah. So my, uh, when, when I had my traumatic brain injury, I, I kind of realized that I love the awesome orange orb.
So I get up in the morning, I'm a 5:00 AM kind of a guy, uh, five 30 at the very latest. I walk two miles to the sun. I watch the sun rise. Amazing. I watch, I put the red light in my eyes in the morning too, right? Yes. And then I walk back and I start my day. So my day started with physical activity and a good solid look at the sun.
But yeah, that's my, that's great. Generally speaking, morning routine. Look, yeah. I'm not perfect. By no means do I do this every day. Yeah. And yes, maybe I wake up, hung over and I don't do it. We get break. Right. Right. So we live a little. Okay. Love that. Okay. And then what might we see on your nightstand or in your sleep environment?
Don't have a nightstand. Uh, there is no clock. There is nothing. Yes. Literally. Literally there's nothing. Yeah. My phone is charging. My phone's not charging near me. Exactly. iPhone is on the windowsill. Far enough away that I gotta get my fat ass outta bed. I really wanna do it. I won't let myself get outta bed.
I'm like, I can't reach it. I can't do it. I can't touch it. So good. I love that. Okay. And then so far to date, what would you say has made the biggest change to your sleep game? Or set another way? Maybe biggest aha moment in managing your sleep? Yeah, the aha moment. I used to take about 200, 250 milligrams of magnesium.
Uh, magnesium citrate. Yeah. Uh, and then. Somebody that I was talking to was like, Hey, why don't you take more? And I was like, well, how much can you take you? Like, yeah, uh, you can take a gram. I was like, well, hold on. Now I gotta look this up. Right. So now I start looking it up. Yeah. Yeah. You can take a lot.
Yes. Right. And I don't feel like I need to take, it's a whole lot. Yeah. But seven 50 milligrams is a nice dose before you go to bed. Oh boy. For me, it is a game changer. Mm. For me, it, it bumped me from, like I said. So 30 to 33% that I usually get. Yeah, I feel better. That's all that I know at this point. You know, I wear the A ring at night, but not usually during the day.
Uh, okay. And you know, the tracking's good, but it's not great. Yeah. Incidentally enough. Of the four 20 people that are in that traumatic brain injury healing program. Yeah, they we're doing aura rings on all of them. So we're gonna have some great sleep data on that. Oh my God. Can we please have you back on?
Once you kind of delve into that, that would be amazing. Srf Smurf. Okay. Fantastic. And so for people that want to follow you, follow your work, this, uh, amazing deep dive, no pun intended, into all this incredible research, uh, how can they do that? Thank you. Well, you can follow me at Dr. Deep Sea on most of the handles on x, on uh, on Insta.
You know, uh, you can find me at Joe to Google Doc Deep Sea. If you want to go, you can go on our YouTube site and just look up Dr. Deep Sea. Google it and you'll, you'll find me. It's not that hard. Okay. Fantastic. Well, huge congrats again on what you're gonna be doing. All this work, all that that you've already done, and what's ahead is so exciting and you're, I think, providing a lot of hope and excitement for people, not only listening, but for that are all gonna be impacted by the work you do.
So appreciate it. And then we'll be in touch to, for part two, I would love part two. Okay. Keep rocking on. Thank you. Thank you.
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