Weekly Newsletter 2

In case you didn’t read week 1, you should – Read Here.

The message is even more pertinent since inflation ticked higher, but anyway…

Most of my in-person or online clients know that I use/recommend the Oura ring. “But I have an apple watch.” The apple watch is junk and it doesn’t do a third of what Oura does for tracking sleep.

Besides the fact that I don’t enjoy sleep, my sleep quality has been really bad the last 1-2 years. I’ve tried all the standard recommendations:

• Keep the room cold (65 for me)
• Blackout curtains
• Shifted darkness on my phone
• Not eat close to bed
• Melatonin, Valerian Root, Magnesium
• Blah, blah, and blah

I continued to get awful sleep. My deep sleep was ranging about 1-30 min a night. REM was moderate. Restfulness was high and most importantly, I felt like I got hit by a truck when I woke up.

Last year I wrote an article, “Slow-Wave Sleep, Aging, and Growth Hormone, where I found a correlation between deep sleep and growth hormone. Well, I didn’t find shit, the researchers did, but it was the first time I put it together in my own head. Current data also suggests that the amount of REM sleep we get is reduced by 50% in late life vs young adulthood. This sucks.

At the end of the article I mention peptides, specifically GHRP’s (Growth hormone releasing peptides). These have been around for quite some time now and I’ve already read an abundance of research on them. I used it for a few months after I tore my labrum and was amazed at how well it worked.

“Sleep-related secretion of GH appears to be primarily dependent on the release of growth hormone-releasing-hormone. Rodent and human studies have shown that growth hormone-releasing hormone injections decrease wakefulness and increase SWS (slow wave sleep).”

“During the fourth decade of life (ages 30 to 40 years) the total amount of GH secreted over a 24-hour span decreases by two- to threefold. Similarly, the amount of SWS decreases dramatically over the same narrow age range. Because the sleep-onset GH pulse is often the major secretory output in adults, age-related decrements in sleep-related GH secretion likely play a major role in the hyposomatotropism of senescence.” Source

“Our data demonstrate that GHRP stimulates not only GH release but also hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical hormone secretion. The latter effect is opposite to the blunting of cortisol after GHRH. Both GHRP and GHRH promote sleep.” Source

“After intravenous GHRP-6 non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) stage 2 increased and the nocturnal secretion of Growth Hormone, ACTH, and cortisol was elevated.” Source

The last few nights I used Ipamorelin + Mod-GRF (1-29) before bed, so far…

• I received my first sleep score in the 80’s (84) and highest readiness I’ve seen at 91
• My REM range was usually 40 min – 1 hour and 20 min – now it’s been 1 hour and 50 min – 2 hours and 35 min.
• My Deep range was 1-38 min, with more recent nights being 48 min – 1 hour.
• Lastly, my restfulness, or how many times I was waking went from 8-10 times to 2-3.
• It’s still early, but I will continue to track the numbers and report back here