Make This ONE Change for Better Sleep, HRV, and Fat Loss (Dr. Peter Martone) | Ep 280
Download my free Better Sleep, Better Body guide to optimize your sleep for fat loss, body composition, and hormones
---
Could your sleep position be holding you back from optimal recovery? You track your training, nutrition, and HRV—but what about your neck alignment during sleep?
Dr. Peter Martone joins me to explain how your sleep position affects your nervous system, HRV, and overall performance. He reveals how traditional sleeping positions might be sabotaging your recovery and shares practical tips to start fixing it—tonight.
Dr. Peter Martone is a chiropractor and exercise physiologist with over 25 years of experience. Through his research, he discovered how sleep position and spinal alignment impact nervous system function, recovery, and pain. He has helped thousands optimize their sleep and performance through proper positioning.
Today, you’ll learn all about:
02:12 – What is a "sleep avatar," and why does it matter?
06:28 – How Dr. Martone discovered the link between sleep and spinal health
10:30 – The one sleep change that fixed Dr. Martone’s chronic pain
14:13 – How your sleep position affects your nervous system and HRV
20:09 – The #1 mistake people make with pillows (and how to fix it)
25:47 – Why side sleeping could be causing your shoulder pain
30:42 – The real reason for imbalances and chronic pain
35:35 – How sleep position impacts snoring and sleep apnea
41:18 – The easiest way to start fixing your sleep position
Episode resources:
Website: drsleepright.com
Instagram: @drsleepright
The One Sleep Change That Can Transform Your Recovery, HRV, and Fat Loss
Most people think optimizing sleep is all about going to bed earlier, using blackout curtains, or avoiding blue light. But what if your sleep position—the way your body is aligned when you sleep—was the real key to better recovery, higher HRV, and even more efficient fat loss?
In this article, we break down what Dr. Peter Martone shared on the Wits & Weights podcast about why your sleep posture matters more than you think. You’ll learn:
✔ How your sleep position affects your nervous system and recovery
✔ Why side sleeping might be contributing to pain, poor HRV, and even weight gain
✔ The best way to sleep for long-term health and performance
Why Sleep Position Matters More Than You Think
We all know sleep is essential for fat loss, muscle recovery, and overall health. But most sleep advice focuses on surface-level factors like:
Sleeping in a cold, dark room
Avoiding screens before bed
Using supplements like magnesium or melatonin
While these can help, they don’t address a critical factor: how your spine and nervous system are aligned during sleep.
🔹 Your nervous system controls everything from recovery to metabolism
🔹 Neck and spine alignment directly affect HRV, stress levels, and hormone balance
🔹 Sleeping in the wrong position can reinforce poor posture, increase stress, and disrupt sleep cycles
According to Dr. Martone, side sleeping and stomach sleeping can misalign your neck and spine, leading to:
❌ Shoulder and hip pain (especially if you lift weights)
❌ Lower HRV (Heart Rate Variability), making you more sensitive to stress
❌ Inefficient recovery, which can impact muscle growth and fat loss
Instead, the ideal position for sleep is on your back with proper neck support.
The Best Sleep Position for Recovery and HRV
If you want to improve your HRV, reduce pain, and recover better from training, here’s how to optimize your sleep position:
1. Support Your Neck, Not Your Head
Most pillows push your head forward, worsening neck posture and increasing stress on the spine.
✅ Instead of a traditional pillow, use a small support under your neck, allowing your head to rest slightly back.
✅ This helps restore the natural curve of your cervical spine, reducing tension and improving nerve function.
2. Start Sleeping on Your Back
While side sleeping feels comfortable, it puts your shoulders and spine in a compromised position, leading to joint pain and poor recovery.
✅ Transition to back sleeping with your neck supported to allow optimal spinal alignment.
✅ This position promotes better lymphatic drainage, improved vagus nerve function, and reduced cortisol levels.
3. Add Pressure for Comfort
Your subconscious brain associates pressure with safety, which is why many people instinctively curl into a ball when they sleep.
✅ Use a weighted blanket or an extra pillow on your chest or side to mimic the security of side sleeping without sacrificing alignment.
✅ This helps your nervous system relax into deep sleep faster, improving HRV and recovery.
How Sleep Position Affects HRV and Fat Loss
HRV (Heart Rate Variability) is one of the best indicators of nervous system health and recovery. A higher HRV means better stress resilience, while a low HRV suggests chronic stress and poor recovery.
Research shows that **proper sleep posture can:
✅ Increase HRV, helping your body handle stress better
✅ Reduce cortisol, the stress hormone linked to belly fat storage
✅ Improve parasympathetic nervous system function, which controls digestion, recovery, and fat metabolism
By simply adjusting your sleep position, you can enhance your ability to recover from workouts, optimize hormone balance, and even improve fat loss over time.
The Biggest Sleep Mistakes That Sabotage Recovery
Want better sleep, faster recovery, and a higher HRV?
Avoid these common sleep mistakes:
❌ Sleeping on your side with a thick pillow – This misaligns the spine and compresses nerves.
❌ Using a pillow that supports your head instead of your neck – Leads to forward head posture and poor vagus nerve function.
❌ Eating too close to bedtime – Digestion keeps heart rate elevated, disrupting deep sleep.
❌ Ignoring stress before bed – High nighttime stress = lower HRV and poor recovery.
How to Test if Your Sleep Position is Hurting Your Recovery
If you track your sleep with an Oura Ring, WHOOP, or other HRV monitor, try this:
1️⃣ Check your HRV before adjusting your sleep position
2️⃣ Sleep in the optimal back-sleeping position with neck support for one week
3️⃣ Compare your HRV, resting heart rate, and sleep quality
Most people see measurable improvements in recovery, deeper sleep, and less morning stiffness within days.
My Final Thoughts
If you’ve been struggling with recovery, low HRV, or stubborn fat loss, your sleep position might be the missing link.
By simply supporting your neck properly, starting on your back, and using strategic pressure, you can:
✅ Improve nervous system function
✅ Enhance recovery between workouts
✅ Boost HRV and resilience to stress
✅ Support fat loss and muscle growth
Sleep isn’t just about getting enough hours—it’s about positioning your body for optimal recovery.
Try these simple changes tonight, and you might wake up stronger, leaner, and more rested than ever before.
👩💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment:
https://witsandweights.com/free-call
👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support
👋 Let's connect! Ask a question, get my FREE newsletter, or find me on Instagram
📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS.
🏋️♀️ Download Boostcamp for free for evidence-based workout programs
🫙 Get 20% off Legion supplements with code WITSpod
Have you followed the podcast?
Get notified of new episodes. Use your favorite podcast platform or one of the buttons below. Then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” and you’re good to go!
Transcript
Philip Pape: 0:01
We all know that sleep is super important and you might even be tracking your sleep, your training, your nutrition, your HRV, your aura ring all of that. But what if your sleep position is the thing holding you back? Your neck alignment, for example, during sleep, affects your nervous system and your recovery. Well, in this episode, sleep expert Dr Peter Martone is on to share how traditional sleeping positions might be working against you and shares a better approach that could help you out. You'll learn why neck position impacts everything from HRV to recovery and get some practical tips to implement, starting tonight. Whether you wake up with stiff shoulders, can't seem to recover between workouts, or you just want to optimize your rest, this episode will change how you think about sleep and sleep position.
Philip Pape: 0:51
Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're examining how sleep position affects your recovery and results with Dr Peter Martone. Drawing from over 25 years as a chiropractor and exercise physiologist, peter discovered some profound connections between neck position during sleep and nervous system function, and he's helped thousands optimize their sleep through proper positioning. So today you're going to learn how your sleep position influences nervous system function, why the way you currently sleep might be compromising your recovery, and some practical tips to improve your sleep, starting tonight. Dr Martone, welcome to the show.
Dr. Peter Martone: 1:36
That was a great interview. Thank you for being I mean a great introduction. Wow, you've really summed up everything. I think we're done you did it.
Philip Pape: 1:43
There you go. Yeah, no, you just said that the interview is done. Yeah, there we go. No, that's awesome, you know, for the folks listening. Dr Martone gets around the podcast circuit for sure, and I first heard him on another podcast and it blew me away, because we talk about sleep a lot in the nutrition and training world. It's kind of the same things over and over, though it's the sleep hacks 's, the, you know, the cold, uh, the cold dark room with the sleep mask and the avoiding blue light and all of that. But I want to get into this very special angle that you come at it from with position, and my first question really is what exactly is a sleep avatar? Because I think that would lead to this very well I think that that is.
Dr. Peter Martone: 2:22
That is so. And listen. All the advice from the experts out there. It's great, it's all a piece of the pie, but in moving into this field I realized that they're missing the crust, and the crust is the connection that we live our life. And by the end of this podcast, if anybody wants to improve their performance, take their training to the next level, take their injury recovery to the next level.
Dr. Peter Martone: 2:48
You have to understand one thing that we live our life through our nervous system and everything we do through recovery, through, you know, digesting food, how we digest food, is all controlled by the nervous system. So when you eat food, putting that food in your system, that's not what makes you healthy. It's your body adaptation to that food, and that is all driven neurologically. So when I took that understanding and then I applied it to sleep, you can see that all the advice is great Lie in a cold room. That helps Make it quiet, shut off the TV. All of these things are super important. But what's happening right now? How you're listening to this, let's say, this podcast, that podcast is happening in real time, but you're not listening to it in reality. You're accepting this podcast through your sight through sound. So you're basically your brain is integrating the information and what you're listening to is a distortion of reality. And so what one person's experience might be listening to this podcast the same exact podcast somebody else could have a very this podcast the same exact podcast somebody else could have a very, very different experience because it's driven through our nervous system.
Dr. Peter Martone: 4:09
So when you think about our nervous system, we have basically some specific needs. You're in fight or flight, where you're in like training, or you're in growth or in a repair when you're sleeping. So think about when you are running from a tiger. You're in the stressful state, and that stressful state some people live there emotionally. So if you live in stress, one of the fundamental underlying needs for sleep is safety. So some people require a lot more safety than others. Some people curl up in a ball to sleep and some people can sleep opened up. So, your avatar, we've designed this very specific test at drsleeprightcom, where you take these I don't know, maybe it's 10, 15, 20 questions and it identifies what animal you need to sleep like. Basically, what it's doing is it's identifying what your subconscious need for safety is, and then, by doing that, I give you specific advice based on what your avatar score is or what animal avatar you are. Are you a gorilla, are you an armadillo or are you an ostrich?
Philip Pape: 5:19
Yeah, gorilla, armadillo, ostrich Good, I want to be able to get into that. First, I want to say I didn't take offense that you said this was a distortion of reality, because the context you put it in made 100% sense. I'm a fan of the matrix, by the way, so you got me going there through the senses. But it's true. All of existence that we perceive is through our senses, and even philosophers over the centuries have argued what is real right. So what's really cool about this, peter, is we talk about the central nervous system a lot, with stress and also with training, but we don't drop that connection in very much when it comes to sleep. I'm realizing that myself.
Philip Pape: 5:57
I've talked about sleep a lot and helped many clients with it, and I don't often put it in that context. So that's going to be super helpful as you move forward. And then the need for safety. I just had a guest on talking about the need for safety with our food choices, how we go to food for comfort, and it's just all so primal. So I want to understand about these three animals. I'd be curious what I am. I haven't taken the test yet, but I'm going to do that. You said the gorilla, the armadillo and the.
Dr. Peter Martone: 6:25
The gorilla, the armadillo and the ostrich, and the ostrich. Okay, so now we're in the second step, right? So let's just let's talk about where this came from. Actually, let's just go all the way back and tell you why I'm even in the sleep industry.
Philip Pape: 6:38
Okay, good, yeah, why are you in? It? Does position matter? All of that?
Dr. Peter Martone: 6:42
This was nuts. So I'm an exercise physiologist. I trained in UMass, amherst in Australia. I was a professional trainer in Australia and it was. So I'm an exercise physiologist. I love the study of biomechanics. I geeked out on it.
Dr. Peter Martone: 6:57
I loved the shoulder, but I always had pain. I always had pain in my shoulder. I always had back pain. I went through chiropractic school always had pain, even adjusting patients. I'd teach patients how to get out of pain, but I myself always had pain.
Dr. Peter Martone: 7:11
I attributed it to being a competitive mountain biker skydive, rock climb. I do anything to scratch the itch of having ADD that can drive me to adrenaline. Right, because stimulation is what calms somebody that has a brain that goes a million miles a minute. So I was driven to stimulation.
Dr. Peter Martone: 7:32
And then, you know, my best friend was in a tragic accident, died right in front of me. We were on quads and it flipped over and landed on him. You know, I gave him CPR and it set me into a negative dalwich spiral, just a a dark, dark place where I never wanted to be again. And um, so I was there and I was mountain biking, taking crazy risks, just had my first child and I jumped off this drop. It was about a 10 foot drop on my mountain bike and I felt a little tweak in my lower back and and you know I have had it before it wasn't really too big of an issue. But then after the next couple days, I went down. All I did was pick up a pencil and blew out my disc. Now I'm. I remember I was in so much pain I I told my wife I'm like I call the ambulance, I can't move, and she's like I'll take you to the hospital. What's wrong? I'm like you don't understand. I can't move.
Philip Pape: 8:33
Yeah, unless you could pick me up, I can't move.
Dr. Peter Martone: 8:35
Leg was numb and I had so much morphine. By the time I got to the hospital they asked my wife if I was a drug addict, because I was in that much pain and I can remember me in the emergency room saying how does it get to this? I'm a chiropractor, I understand biomechanics, but I myself can't help myself. So once I got out of the hospital I said I'm not going to have surgery. I got to figure this out. So I reviewed 3,000 x-rays at the time and I just I knew, knew there was a pattern. I just couldn't really put my consciousness to it. So I started reviewing x-rays, reviewing x-rays, looking at cervical x-rays and how they relate to lumbar x-rays.
Dr. Peter Martone: 9:13
Cervical is the neck, lumbar is the back, cervical lumbar, cervical lumbar. And I found this correlation that in our body we're supposed to have curves. You have a cervical curve and the lumbar curve is the same curve. But when you lose the cervical curve, which I had, I had a little bit of a loss of curve, never any pain in my neck. The reactive response due to what's called dura mater tension is a curve in the lower back and that curve in the lower back happens through the psoas major muscle, which is another thing that we found. And the psoas is the only muscle in the human body that attaches directly to a disc. So I didn't have back pain all these years because I wasn't getting adjusted enough or because I wasn't stretching enough.
Dr. Peter Martone: 9:58
It was because I had loss of cervical curve, picking up pelvic rotation, doing an adaptive response, and I'm like, holy shit, are you kidding me, ken? And that was a side sleeper. I used to curl up in my ball because my physiology loves protection, had shoulder issues, hip issues, and I'm like wait a second If I can spend, because I know long, long stretching is the best type of stretching, because I know long, long stretching is the best type of stretching, so I can spend one third of my life stretching my neck back, making sure I can reestablish that curve. In theory, at the time it should be able to take the pressure off my low back and fix my disc problem, and that's what ended up happening.
Dr. Peter Martone: 10:40
I started jamming pillows up under my neck until I created this neckness and then I started to transform the health of my spine and then I transferred that to my patients. So that's really what drew me into the sleep industry. It wasn't because I wanted to help people sleep. I wanted to fix their spines while they slept, and that is why our approach is so much different, because I come from all of this, this wholism, this, this holistic approach to healthcare, and now we've adapted that entire thing to sleep and increasing performance.
Philip Pape: 11:17
Yeah, no, it makes sense Mixing the biomechanics with the nervous system, with your individual propensity for that. What I want to understand, peter, is the three avatars you mentioned. It's a safety thing, but there's also a biomechanical or physical thing. I mean, I guess it's in the questionnaire, but I'm trying to understand how someone decides what they are, and then is the solution very different between them, or is there like a baseline set of things that are practical for everyone to use?
Dr. Peter Martone: 11:45
So then what we do is we have this triune of sleep, and this is where the avatar comes in. You have the conscious brain, the subconscious brain and then the body. Okay, the body wants alignment, that's all it wants. It doesn't want to be in pinning. And this is where the trick is the subconscious brain, the fundamental need for the subconscious brain. It doesn't know posture, it knows pressure, and the subconscious brain wants to feel safe in order to sleep.
Dr. Peter Martone: 12:16
Right, when I grew up in Malden, massachusetts, I was on a busy street and kids would bang on the window and it would scare the heck out of me. So I was always afraid to go to sleep. So I curled up in a ball, I put all these stuffed animals around me, and only when I felt safe was my body able to fall asleep. So different people, depending on their types of personality, require more safety than others. And so let's say you're a gorilla, okay, everybody needs to start in the same position. You're a human, you need your weight distributed over the greatest surface area and everybody needs to start in a specific position. Now your conscious brain is going to say you can't do it. But what your conscious brain is mistaking for comfort, it's the subconscious brain saying this isn't a safe position. That is what we have to understand. So we put the body in alignment. Then we need to figure out a plan to be able to create safety for the subconscious brain, because once you fall asleep, the conscious brain is out of it.
Dr. Peter Martone: 13:15
The subconscious brain controls sleep. So if you can identify the amount of safety somebody needs, some people need to put a pillow on their head, like the ostrich. The ostrich needs to stick to you. They're the stomach sleepers. They need all of that pressure on their chest. They put pillows over their heads. They need to stick their head in the ground to feel safe. The armadillo curls up in a ball. The gorilla has no enemy, so it can fall asleep anywhere. The gorilla has no enemy, so it can fall asleep anywhere. So, depending on which avatar you are, then I can tell you how you need to create safety in order to fall asleep in the aligned position, and then the avatar tells us what technique you need to use to shut off the conscious brain.
Philip Pape: 14:01
Okay, that makes sense. And before we go further, one thing that always comes up for me is the ability to fall asleep doesn't always correlate with the restfulness of the sleep, right? So when someone has no problem just falling asleep, I imagine it's still possible that they're still not in the maximum safe position for them just because of that. Is that correct?
Dr. Peter Martone: 14:23
Yeah, and that's where, like the five pillars of sleep and body temperature, what time you're eating stimulants you have. We have this way better sleep academy where we address all of that, because once you close your eyes, people are like, oh, I can have a cup of coffee and fall right asleep. Oh yeah, you can. Of course you can, but your heart rate's still high, keeping you out of deep sleep, so you're not getting deep restorative sleep. Test still high, keeping you out of deep sleep, so you're not getting deep restorative sleep. Testosterone levels are going to be cranked, adrenal glands are going to be cranked, but you wake up eight hours later and you think you slept great, but you didn't go through the natural cycles. And that's all the technical aspects of sleep.
Dr. Peter Martone: 14:55
And so what we really try to do, especially for that performance in that athlete, when you're looking at pain, pain is biomechanics. Biomechanics follow head position. So most people that have a shoulder issue or a hip issue have a neck issue because their head's too far forward and, due to the writing reflex, your balance is getting thrown off because most people are going to lean to the side of a sprained ankle. So the balance is coming over and the spine is twisting the head's coming forward, then you put that on the load in the gym. Then you're just going to hurt something. Because we want to start with alignment at night, especially for the athlete.
Philip Pape: 15:35
Okay, so just a little bit more on the biomechanics and the physiology behind this, and then I want to get some practical tips for folks. You mentioned the nervous system. Where does the vagus nerve come in here? I think you talk about that a lot in your work as well. Why that matters. It also comes up when talking about stress and relaxation and meditation and all sorts of other topics.
Dr. Peter Martone: 15:57
Yeah, so the vagus nerve controls sleep. So the opposite of sleep is awake. So awake is sympathetic dominance. So the opposite of lifting would be growth. So you have growth in defense. So when you are engaging the muscle, your body is in defense. When you are repairing the muscle, the body is in growth.
Dr. Peter Martone: 16:17
So those two things are like a seesaw. Each one of them is controlled by a very specific nervous system. And the issue is the nervous system is controlled by our emotions. So sympathetic stress whether you're running from a tiger because you're being chased or your body thinks you're running from a tiger, you're going to have a stimulation, you're going to have a stimulant response, which is why emotions affect sleep.
Dr. Peter Martone: 16:43
So the opposite of that is the parasympathetic nervous system. So the parasympathetic nervous system 80% of all the healing that goes on in your body, your body's ability to sleep. It controls three areas immune system, digestive system and reproductive system. So most people don't just have a problem with one of those systems. You have a problem with all three because there's an issue and a dysfunction within the vagus nerve. Now, the important thing about the vagus nerve is that it comes out right at the base of the neck, so when you lose the curve. You are just, you are tanking your vagal nerve function. So because we sleep curled up in a ball, a lot of times people can't sleep because their vagal tone is getting compressed due to the loss of cervical curve and the position is reinforcing that inability, like a weak muscle for you to turn on that deep healing capacity of the vagus nerve, because it's being compressed like stepping on a garden hose.
Philip Pape: 17:45
Okay, great. No, I'm glad you connected all those. So then, if you want to capture a baseline of where you are now based on all of this I don't know if it's like HRV, because I know you've talked about HRV having a big potential impact and improvement when you address this but what would people want to be measuring, like right now today, knowing they haven't touched anything, and then you know, once they've addressed the neck positioning and other factors, they can see an improvement. What would that be?
Dr. Peter Martone: 18:11
yeah, the best thing in this is that's how you brought it up. And I don't care what monitor you're using, whether it's fitbit, whether it's apple, whether it's Fitbit, whether it's Apple Watch, whether it's Oura Ring, it doesn't matter. You just need to be consistent. Whatever you're monitoring. And I like HRV, because HRV, which is heart rate variability, basically monitors the balance between the sympathetics and the parasympathetics, the balance between the sympathetics and the parasympathetics, the balance between the running from a tiger or that survive nervous system or that thrive nervous system.
Dr. Peter Martone: 18:45
When you are surviving and you're running from a tiger, that heart rate needs to be very rhythmic and the body needs to be able to depend on the amount of sugar getting to the cell like clockwork. That's a rhythmic heart rate, believe it or not. If you have a 60 beat per minute heart rate, that's one beat every second. That's not good. You want it variable, like bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. So one beat might be in 0.5 seconds, another beat might be in a second, Next one a second and a half, next one three quarters of a second. So you want that variability within the heart rate because that means the parasympathetic nervous system is at play. So when the parasympathetic nervous system is at play. In your sleeping, your heart rate is very variable. When you're awake and you're running from a tiger, it's very non-variable, so you can then take a reading over a period of a day and see how calm your system is and being able to see how well your body's repair.
Philip Pape: 19:42
That's one of the best explanations I've heard for HRV, because it's a confusing concept for people and even if you have an O-ring like I do, and you know you learn and dive into this subject people don't quite always get it, and your description of it being a gap between your sympathetic and parasympathetic meaning that the more of a calm state you can get into, the more it's going to vary is a good visual for that. So then I guess then I want to get into the positioning stuff, because you talked about a pillow, you talked about the curling up and whatever based on the avatar. I mean, what are all the things that people are going to potentially adjust when they fix their sleep position? All right, sleep position. Is this going to potentially adjust when they fix their sleep position.
Dr. Peter Martone: 20:19
All right, sleep position. Is this going to be audio visual? What is it?
Philip Pape: 20:22
it's mainly audio, I mean, you know, but but we have the video.
Dr. Peter Martone: 20:25
We do have the on youtube yeah, so this is what's going to do. What I'm going to do is I'm going to put myself in the position and you're going to explain what I'm doing okay, all right, okay, here we got it so I will move my audio here.
Dr. Peter Martone: 20:40
My thing oh, I got my spine on the bed, so I'm going to be using right now to do a neck nurse. This is something that we created, but if you have a soft down pillow or you have like a blanket, you can put under your neck. What's important is that you support so anytime you support something in the body you can put under your neck. What's important is that you support so. Anytime you support something in the body, you weaken it Anytime. I don't care what you're supporting. Anytime you support the body, you weaken it.
Dr. Peter Martone: 21:06
So when you use a pillow a pillow is defined as a support for your head You're weakening the cervical curve in your neck. You do not want to support your head when you sleep, but if you support your head or you use a cervical pillow and it goes under your neck and it's supporting your head at the same time, that's even worse. So you want some sort of force. If you have a bad curve, like I did, you want some sort of force applied to the neck that gently stretches and arch back into the neck and that would be distraction. So you support your neck, but you use the weight of your head off of the back of the neck nest or whatever you're using, so that your head is basically almost three quarters of an inch or an inch off the bed and it's gently like a slinky, like a weight up the end of a slinky.
Dr. Peter Martone: 22:01
It's gently stretching the curve back into your neck, even though you're supporting the neck by using the weight of your head as a distractive force. The body reacts to force, a force. Stress is a force that causes change, so that is what will reintroduce the curve back into your neck.
Philip Pape: 22:20
Okay, yeah, it makes total sense. So only support your neck. Your head hangs back a little bit. So Peter is about to lay down on his bed here in the video and he's just got a looks like a soft pillow squished up under his neck, just like he explained, and the back of his head is up a bit from the surface.
Dr. Peter Martone: 22:40
Yeah, I know. And when most people okay, here we go, right, we're going to talk about this. So when most people see that, right, it's like you're sleeping in a coffin the first thing that people say is I can't do that. I get it, you do not have control Right now. Any decision you're making is the conscious brain, so we know that that decision's flawed because the conscious brain makes all the excuses. It's why you don't do it. It's the problem. So let's talk to your conscious brain. Hello, consciousness, I get it. You can't do that. You're not in control.
Dr. Peter Martone: 23:13
I'm talking to your friend who is actually in control, like in my house my wife. You talk to my wife if you want to get anything done. So I'm going to talk to the subconscious brain. Subconscious brain, I know you can do this, but what you're saying is it's not safe and you don't feel safe doing it.
Dr. Peter Martone: 23:28
Listen, all we need to do is fall asleep like this and then, once you fall asleep in this position every night, I don't care what you do. So that's the lifestyle habit. The lifestyle habit is not to be a back sleeper with something under your neck and think that you're not going to be able to sleep like that Get like what every other expert tells you. Oh, you know, fall asleep on your side, that's the best position. Listen, idiot, not an idiot talking like the subconscious brain. You're not in control. I'm not talking like the subconscious brain. You're not in control. Once you fall asleep on your side and your arm's in this position, try to watch a two-hour movie in the position you fall asleep in. It's not possible. So for somebody to tell you that you can fall asleep on your side and that's the best position, you're only in that position for 20 minutes and then the average person tosses and turns 20 to 40 times a night because they're giving them the wrong explanation, because they don't understand spinal biomechanics.
Philip Pape: 24:28
And when you do this thing with your neck, you don't do that, so like what? Inevitably you're going to stay in that position. Is that what you're saying?
Dr. Peter Martone: 24:33
Yeah. So when you I don't want you to think about the whole night, but when you fall asleep in that position, right, everybody needs to start in that position, I get it. Your airway might be an issue. You snore, you have apnea. It's worse in that position. I get all of that. We have tricks and tools to help people overcome those things, but you want to start the body in alignment. Then the next trick is then be able to create the pressure from sleeping on your side, mimic that in the back sleeping position. So, for instance, if I get all right, I'm going to show you one more thing right here. So if I'm a back sleeper, if I'm a side sleeper, okay, I sleep on my side. That's pressure against my face, okay. So what you can do, you take neck nurse, put it on your neck but put a pillow against your face.
Philip Pape: 25:28
Put a pillow against your face on the side, okay.
Dr. Peter Martone: 25:33
Right or put a pillow on your side. You is. How important is it for you and how much safety or pressure do you need to create in order to allow the subconscious brain to have to stay in that position?
Philip Pape: 25:46
Oh man, okay, so, yeah, it makes total sense now. So if your body is inclined to want to go onto its side, you're giving it the safety so that, even if it tries to, it's now snuggled in that pillow and you're remaining aligned.
Dr. Peter Martone: 25:57
Okay, beautiful, yeah, that makes total sense and nobody has ever this has taken so much understanding, because these concepts that you know we have, like spare breathing and all of these things, they didn't exist before, because everybody you know takes the. They look at the 2015 study that was done on rats and say that side sleeping is the best for humans. But even though there's a significant study, this is a gold standard. The gold standard study that tells people that lymphatic drainage happens best on your side was done on a rodent. The rodent spine is completely off the cervical spine is completely opposite the human spine and in there there's a significant, same say, significant statement saying, even though this was done on rodents, we're extrapolating that the same is going to be done for humans.
Dr. Peter Martone: 26:48
And this goes through the entire industry and and it's like it drives me bonkers. So I said I gotta figure out where that study is, because I didn't know that it was done on rodents. I'm like, because there's something flawed because lymphatic drainage only occurs with ease is if the cervical biomechanics are good, because it's flow of the heart with breath around the spinal cord that you you need that cervical spinal flow, and if you have a breakdown in the proper spinal biomechanics of your body. You're backing all that stuff up cause like heart pressure, blood pressure and all sorts of different issues. And that's when I saw the study and I'm like that makes perfect sense.
Philip Pape: 27:30
That makes sense. Yeah, the findings were that, but it does not apply to humans. I mean, I could tell you that from my girl's hamsters, that they're very different creatures than us.
Stephanie: 27:37
I could tell you that from my girls, hamsters, that they're very different creatures than us. The most value that I got from this was the fact that I had someone that I could talk to about anything and that there was going to be no judgment. It was just well, here are your goals, here's the best way that you're going to achieve it, and then let's work together to help you feel inspired and motivated to do that and there's a lot of people out there trying to be coaches and not all of them have done the work and also just be a genuine person that is positive and coming from the heart in terms of wanting to help, and Philip really embodied all of those qualities. I would recommend him to just about anyone that's looking to achieve goals in that realm of their nutrition and building new habits.
Philip Pape: 28:23
So we're going to break it down into different pieces here. You mentioned somebody with shoulder pain right, and again, I know lots of people who lived right. They have various issues that come across over time and sometimes they seem to not go away, even if they have surgery, even if they have physical therapy, even if they're doing everything they can to train around it. Maybe it's because of their sleep. I mean, how does that cascade or those mechanisms work to then say, somebody who had rotator cuff surgery and just never quite could recover, now, all of a sudden, is pain free?
Dr. Peter Martone: 28:51
You give me a side sleeper, I'm going to give you a shoulder problem.
Philip Pape: 28:55
Okay, so that's me, that's me.
Dr. Peter Martone: 28:56
I'm speaking for myself. I can see it because your head shifted to the left side, your hip is going to go to the other side and your shoulder is internally rotated. So when you have that, your body posture adjusts to head position. Then Davis's law so writing reflex says body posture adjusts to head position, so the head comes forward. Davis's law says tissue remolds based on the stresses applied.
Dr. Peter Martone: 29:19
So if you're sleeping on your side, you're internally rotating the shoulder, so you're stretching out and you're weakening most people because we're not rock climbers, we're not climbing things have inferior trap issues. The inferior trap is the main muscle that causes shoulder issues and impingement syndromes. Most people believe that the rotator cuffs are the problem. They're not the problem, they're just they're getting worn down because the altered biomechanics of the shoulder, because the shoulder blades. We have weak inferior traps. The inferior trap is done only with one exercise Grab the bar and squeeze your shoulders together. So the blade needs to squeeze together and then that will bring the shoulders back. But if you continue to sleep on your side, you're going to continue.
Philip Pape: 30:07
You're offsetting it? Yeah, cause even uh, dead hangs are known to be helpful. But, like you said, if you're just making the root cause worse, it's not going to help, okay.
Dr. Peter Martone: 30:15
That is a good as long as you go up and down a little bit and just get that flow. But that's what it's doing. It's reversing what? So? The rotator cuff right, supraspinatus, infraspinatus subscapularis and teres minor All of them, you know, most of them do this. Only two of them do external rotation, but none of them really retract the shoulder blades, which is what causes the impingement syndrome, the shoulder riding up into the capsule.
Philip Pape: 30:42
Makes a lot of sense. So I assume similar logic follows for everything down the whole posterior chain when you get to the low back, because low back's the next big hitter, would you say, or from your experience.
Dr. Peter Martone: 30:52
Well, the big hitter is the eyes right. So it's the eyes. Everything wants to level the eyes Now, oh, I got a short right leg. I got a short. That's all bullshit. Those are all adaptation to forward head posture.
Philip Pape: 31:05
Oh, when people say I have asymmetry or whatnot, that's what you're saying, yeah.
Dr. Peter Martone: 31:08
Yeah. So most people are like oh, it's the leg, and they saw a therapist and they say I have to work down here. I got to work on my core more. It's not your core, it's not your core, it's proprioception, it's balance. So it's innervation to the muscle. See, muscles are minions. They're always being told what to do. They're being told by the neurology. So if a muscle is in spasm, it's either moving something or protecting something. That's it. So we have to stop looking at the muscle structure and seeing why it's out of balance. It's out of balance because we're losing. I don't want to get technical, but it's all right, get technical.
Philip Pape: 31:43
It's all good.
Dr. Peter Martone: 31:43
The premise in our brain is atrophy. So, for instance, for you, what I want you to do is go to your screen, look at me through your screen and bring that circle back to your eye. What? Do you mean Like, so make a circle, okay, yeah, and look at me through the lens of the iris of the webcam.
Philip Pape: 32:01
Okay, yeah, it's like a teleprompter, so hopefully I'm doing it All right, make it smaller, make a circle.
Dr. Peter Martone: 32:06
Now bring that back to your eye. Okay, I could, so your right eye.
Philip Pape: 32:11
So now, oh, I see, yeah, you're telling me eyes that are dominant, and I got it.
Dr. Peter Martone: 32:15
Are you right-handed or left-handed? Right-handed, do you kick with your right foot or your left foot, right foot and do you do anything ambidextrous? No, okay, good, so you're fully lateralized. So that fully lateralized neurology is a lot easier to work with than and if you kick a ball, you're going to kick it with your right foot, correct? Yep, for sure it is a lot easier to work with.
Dr. Peter Martone: 32:41
Sleep wise, and one of the issues is you're constricted because I can see it in the way you stand in the frontal plane. So what happens is, as we lean forward or as we atrophy the brain people walk forward. That's why people have foot issues or toe issues. Yeah, you can see it right there. So when you're leaning forward, so when you go to sleep on your back, your body it's a lot of people are going to have nightmares, thinking because it's not safe, because the head's in that extension and you you're not safe in that that backwards plane.
Dr. Peter Martone: 33:10
So you want to work on balance to retrain the neurology, like we're working on a pack right now, on a specific wobble board that quantifies balance. But you want to work on like, just get a wobble board, not a bose ball, it needs to be a wobble board, like really hard wobble board which is a circle with the ball on the bottom and you want to stand on it and and have upright posture. Most I mean most people fall backwards or they fall forwards and they're constricted in one of those planes, but but that is what's firing the patterns wrong. So with all of my athletes, I have them immediately work on balance, because that is the best way to retrain the symmetry of the body. You don't look at it and say, oh, you need to do more on the left psoas, because you're not in control.
Dr. Peter Martone: 34:00
The subconscious brain's in control. It's your nervous system. Yeah, yeah, everything's the nervous system.
Philip Pape: 34:04
No, no, it makes sense, Like I'm thinking robots and gyroscopes and I'm thinking Segway, Like, oh, that's going through my engineering brain of how like all that stays balanced with counteracting forces that you don't even think about. Think about just like with lifting. You know, sometimes just being able to lift with the major movement patterns can resolve some quote unquote imbalances and such that people thought they had, because you're training things as a system, so you're talking about your nervous system. So, okay, this is good, man, I didn't realize I'd get my own coaching session here, but this is good for people listening because they're like now they can walk through the process.
Dr. Peter Martone: 34:37
And you sprained your right ankle, by the way, just to let you know.
Philip Pape: 34:40
I sprained my right ankle. Yeah, you think I did.
Dr. Peter Martone: 34:43
Turn your head to the left side my head to just my head, yeah. And now turn your head to the right, as far as it'll go. See how far you go to the right side and you don't go as far to the left. Yeah, that's coming up from an old ankle sprain. So the talus is pumped forward. It's possible, man, I've had injuries over the years. It's possible, yeah, but your body is leaning to that ankle sprain and then the heads go in the opposite way. So that's the mechanics, so you know, so that biomechanics of that right ankle need to be addressed. So you stand in on one foot on that wobble board, you work on proprioception, you retrain the brain to get out of pain. That's where, like, all of my work was done in that whole area before, and then it moved into the ADD world, then into the sleep world. So that's kind of where all that stuff is put together.
Philip Pape: 35:29
Wobble board sounds like fun. It reminds me of the. Uh what would? I grew up in the eighties. They had the. It looked. It looked like a board with the ball. That was the pogo ball. I know you said not that like the hard one, but still made me think of that. What about people with um, like sleep apnea, snoring issues, does? Where does that come into play with all of this?
Dr. Peter Martone: 35:45
no, that's great. Those are things that have to be overcome with airway management, but it does not change the position. So we have to have anchors. An anchor is something that is is law 100 of the time. So so writing reflex Davis' law, wolf's law and these are laws that they're not denied it's like gravity. You can't deny that. So in one of the laws that we've applied, is that your nervous system controls everything in the body. How important is it that nervous system functions optimally Extremely important While the spine protects your central nervous system. How important is it to maintain the integrity of the spine versus a 2% increase in heart rate, blood pressure when you sleep on your back? It's absolutely asinine when you're looking at things and comparing them to the overall yeah trade-offs.
Philip Pape: 36:33
first principles yeah, right.
Dr. Peter Martone: 36:35
So everybody, regardless of the airway. That's where the academy can come in, right. It can help people overcome things with understanding and learning. We're doing high level view, but you should always just start on your back with the pillow under your neck, put the body into alignment, create safety and then you know remember yourself to sleep, don't think yourself to sleep. So you got to get out of your own mind and you put those three things together. It'll transform the way that you sleep and will transform your results in the gym and improve your performance.
Philip Pape: 37:08
Something came to mind just totally off the wall. Is there any connection with your dreams and this like level of safety in the way you sleep? Like you mentioned the falling back, and I'm like I've always had dreams where I'm falling at the end in my nightmare and that's how I wake up.
Dr. Peter Martone: 37:20
Yeah, because you're losing Remember. Your dreams are in this weird space in the brain that nobody understands. Yeah, true, and if you are losing balance and your head is in a position you're going to stimulate some sort of vertigo, let's say in your head you're going to feel like you're falling off.
Philip Pape: 37:40
Yeah, yeah, I was just curious about that man. This stuff fascinates me. I'm a very skeptical person, very rational minded, but the more I've talked to experts like you and understand that there there is a rational principle basis for this stuff when you really explore it, and it's fascinating. So and then the other thing is my. You know, sleep masks are big now and weighted blankets and all of this other stuff. Are there any any things like that that could either get in the way or help in all of this that we should like maybe stay away from or I love pressure, love pressure in the eyes.
Dr. Peter Martone: 38:11
You can use a sleep mask. You can use a pillow over your head. You can use a sock. I've used a shirt.
Dr. Peter Martone: 38:18
When you travel, it's important to create a cocoon of pillows all around you, stuff them everywhere. Pressure is what creates safety. That's why babies like to be swaddled. That's why the weighted blankets work with some people. I don't use a weighted blanket, I just put my covers up underneath my chin close. I put some on my eyes. I just create that safety type of feeling. I'm more of a gorilla avatar, but I do need the safety. But I don't like all that pressure. I don't like the weighted blanket personally, but I do use it a lot with some of my clients. So I do love the idea of doing that. One thing interference Melatonin interferes with sleep cycles. Right, it knocks you out. Sleeping medication knocks you out, but you don't get good, deep, restorative sleep. Sleep for the bodybuilder or the athlete is the first third of your sleep cycle. The most important sleep for the anxiety, the ADD, the people that need to quantify their emotional stuff in their brains, is the last third of your sleep.
Philip Pape: 39:31
Right, is it deep and then REM? Yeah.
Dr. Peter Martone: 39:32
So the body healing is done in the first third brain heal. Mind recategorizing is done in the first third brain heal of mine recategorizing it is done in the um in the last third. I need it all because I got add. No, I can't super. You know athletic, so I I really am so disciplined on recharging if I want performance during the day. It starts with me at 9.30 when I go to bed and then when I wake up, my daily rituals that I choose. I know how I'm going to sleep that night. So it's not that you can just work on sleep and close your eyes and be healthy and have great sleep. It's really who do you need to become? Nobody wants to waste eight hours in bed. They want who they're becoming because they're getting better sleep.
Philip Pape: 40:18
Yeah, I agree. And what about wasting six and a half hours in bed? Because the other question is people are wondering well, what does Peter think about just sleep duration, like what are your thoughts on that?
Dr. Peter Martone: 40:27
Sleep duration does vary. I need a lot of sleep, but basically what you do is simply what we talked about at the very beginning. You keep taking your HRV. Take a day when you're at your best and see where your HRV is. That's your target. Then you want to increase that by 15% to 20%, or if you're never feeling your best, you want to increase that by 20% to 30%. So you do the thing. If you're not where you want to be, you need more sleep or you need to improve your quality. But I like the number eight right Eight hours of sleep. I like the number eight right Eight hours of sleep. I think the more athletic I am, I need nine, nine and a half hours of sleep. Sometimes If I'm not doing a lot, then I can get away with less.
Philip Pape: 41:09
Yeah, yeah, I know it's tough for a lot of people, but baby steps right Like one thing at a time. So I guess one of my last questions here then is is the best place to start? Besides, we're going to send them to your links and all that. Don't worry, peter, they're going to go through all that, figure out what you've got to offer them. Is it the pillow, or is there any other tip that you usually like to share with folks that they should come out of this with?
Dr. Peter Martone: 41:28
The best thing to start is start with positioning. Yep, start with positioning first. Don't say you can't is. That just lives in your own conscious brain. You start with positioning. You then create pressure in some way. Just use a sleep mask, use a pillow over your forehead, doesn't matter. And then, the biggest thing that I help people to get to sleep and I glanced over this so I want to go back to it think about the nervous system. You have nervous system at play.
Dr. Peter Martone: 41:57
When you are running from a tiger and you have to be quick with it, you know the blood's in the front portion of your brain. You need to think. When you're running from a tiger and react, you know it's the opposite of thinking. It's either remembering or letting go. So you can't think yourself to sleep because the blood's going to go to the sympathetic state and it's going to block you from sleep.
Dr. Peter Martone: 42:25
So if you're falling asleep and you're like I can't do this, I can't fall asleep like this, this is not going to happen or you're living in hate, anger, envy, fear. Those emotions are going to keep you out of sleep. Fear, envy, fear those emotions are going to keep you out of sleep. Now, if you talk about things like love, respect, gratitude and you give in to like an old memory. We have a thing that we call a sleep memory. Walk around a golf course in your head. If you golf a rhythmic, go from every hole, think about every sand trap, you'll be asleep by like the night hole. And then, once you walk that golf course, once walk the same golf course over and over and over again, that rhythmic memory your body will link to sleep and you'll fall asleep real quick.
Philip Pape: 43:10
I like counting sheep. You'll sleep tight, just like it says on your wall oh man, this has been super valuable. Peter, is there anything else you wish I had asked? I mean, I think we covered a lot in one, you know, jam packed topic here. Was anything else you wish I had asked about this topic?
Dr. Peter Martone: 43:25
I like data that identify things that we can control. So the first thing we have to understand is heart rate needs to drop down, respiratory needs to drop down and core temperature needs to drop in order to get good quality deep sleep. You can't do that by exercising too late at night, right before sleep, and you can't do that by eating too late, because if your body's digesting, you're producing heat, your heart rate's staying up and your metabolism will stay stimulated. So you want to go to sleep really clean. I guess you can say so. I have a rule no more than 300 calories within three hours of going to bed, and if it's a big meal, you want to have that at like 5 pm in the afternoon.
Philip Pape: 44:18
You hear that everyone. It's another reason to maybe train earlier in the day. And also, don't eat too late. And for us who are like bulking, which I am right now, that's a little more of a challenge, right, because that just means you need to start early with your food and spread it out and not be too late, because I've noticed those numbers on the HRV and everything just go to hell when you eat too late. With the amount of food I'm trying to eat right now, so, thank you, Peter, for all of that.
Philip Pape: 44:41
Where can listeners find more about TORQ? Where should they start to get the assessment and then find out more about what's available?
Dr. Peter Martone: 44:46
Just go to drsleeprightcom that's D-R-S-L-E-E-P-R-I-G-H-Tcom. Take your free animal sleep avatar test. Then you're in my world. You'll be able to find out anything from me from there, and always on Instagram at drsleeprightcom.
Philip Pape: 45:00
Awesome and I'm going to take advantage of some of this stuff myself. I'm definitely going to do the pillow thing tonight and I'm glad we spoke, because I'm happy to report back after seeing some improvement or checking out your stuff, and I'm glad the listeners got to learn from you today. So thank you so much for taking the time to be on here All right.
Dr. Peter Martone: 45:15
Thank you so much for having me.
