077: Wade Lightheart, Co-founder & President of BiOptimizers: How Magnesium Supplements (+ Lifestyle!) Can Be Key In Aiding Sleep Problems

Welcome to the sleep is a skilled podcast. My name is Mollie McGlocklin, and I own a company that optimizes sleep through technology, accountability, and behavioral change. Each week I'll be interviewing world class experts ranging from doctors, innovators, and thought leaders to give actionable tips and strategies that you can implement to become a more skillful sleeper.

Let's jump into your dose of practical sleep training.

Welcome to the sleep is a skilled podcast. Today's episode is all about sleep supplementation. Specifically. We really dive into magnesium. And one of the reasons we do that is there are, there's so much bioindividuality as far as what types of supplements make sense for different individuals to take, to support their sleep journeys.

And we are not absolutely in the business of just. Shout out different things that you might take or might not take. We really wanna encourage that people are testing and creating a protocol that makes sense specifically to them and for them there's entire area of study known as chrono pharmacology, really the science of time, as it relates to the type of drugs that you might be taking in and on a more basic scale that can be drugs like caffeine, uh, alcohol, THC, et cetera, but also your supplements and knowing that not only do certain supplements make sense for certain individuals or do not make sense for certain individuals.

It's also about the timing of when you're taking these. So some of these supplements that you might have been taking for years, you could be doing yourself a disservice just based on even the time that you're taking them. So there's a lot to be considered for what you are putting into your body. And so we really wanna be responsible on this topic.

And in the face of that, magnesium is something that I do feel more comfortable on as far as a generalized suggestion for people to explore. Now, of course, none of this is ever medical advice, but it can be something that can make sense for a lot of us to look into just because of the high prevalence of magnesium deficiency that seems to be present in our society, as well as how that could have particular implications around your sleep results.

Now, even personally, on a personal note, I do not take too, too many supplements and that is really by design, but the ones I do take are mindfully chosen with myself in various functional medicine, doctors and practitioners, and what have you. But one of the things that I do consistently. For my sleep and overall health is magnesium.

And the one that I do take is with this company that we're speaking to today, bio optimizers that has a really unique blend and thought process around how they're putting together the magnesium. So I think you're gonna be really interested in what we discuss today. But first a little bit about our guest.

So our guest is Wade Lightheart and a little background on him. He's an author athlete, nutritionist and expert on fixing digestion, a three time Canadian national, all natural body building champion who completed as a vegetarian former Mr. Universe competitor host of the awesome health podcast. Wade Lightheart is one of the world's premier authorities on natural nutrition and training methods.

Having majored in sports science at the university of new Brunswick. He has authored numerous books on health, nutrition, and exercise, which have sold in over 80 countries. Wade also serves as an advisor to the American anti-cancer. I. And as the co-founder and president of bio optimizers, that is the company that we're speaking about today, as it relates to this magnesium supplement and other supplements that you could explore with the company, a digestive and health optimization company, he's been in the health industry for over 25 years, coached thousands of clients and is sought after by athletes and high performance oriented individuals worldwide for his advice on how to optimize their health and fitness levels.

Now, bio optimizers has been featured on many of the biggest podcasts in the industry, including Bulletproof by Dave Asprey, Ben Greenfield, melody, Avalon, and many others. Few alive have traveled further or crusade harder on behalf of helping individuals transform their digestive health, wellness, and overall lives than Wade Lightheart after competing in Mr.

Universe and his health, failing him following a competition, victory, Wade began to search for answers in the process. He learned so much about what makes digestion work along with other principles, that form what he calls the awesome health system. And another thing that we're excited to announce is that bio optimizers has sponsored our podcast.

So we are really officially making that announcement and we are so grateful for this, and it feels really aligned to have a company sponsor us. That is something that personally I use every day and many of my clients. So, if you do wanna check out more about that company and actually what they're offering and specifically for our sleep audience is found at mag breakthrough mag, M a G in relation to magnesium mag breakthrough.com for slash sleep is a skill.

And you can use the promo code sleep as a skill to check out the magnesium formula that they've created, that blends together many different types of magnesium in a thoughtful manner to help support your overall health as well as your sleep. So I get a lot of questions around sleep supplements, and I'm very hesitant to just throw out a whole laundry list of possibilities.

One, I don't think it's the most responsible thing to do. I really do believe in testing to see what types of supplements make sense for you. And two, because I really truly believe that most of the things that you can do to improve your sleep are behavioral, psychological environmental in nature, and often don't cost a dime.

However, there is one supplement that I personally take every day and that I do feel quite comfortable with suggesting for most individuals to experiment with because of a couple of reasons. It's high safety profile and high rates of deficiencies in our modern society. Some put the numbers as somewhere around 80% of the population being deficient in this one area.

And that is magnesium. So magnesium has been called the calming mineral and some report that magnesium can increase GABA, which encourages relaxation on a cellular level, which is critical for sleep. Magnesium also plays a key role in regulating our bodies stress response system. Those with magnesium deficiency usually have higher anxiety and stress levels, which negatively impacts sleep as well.

Now before you go out and buy a magnesium supplement, it's important to understand that most magnesium products out there are either synthetic or they only have one to two forms of magnesium. When in reality, your body needs all seven forms of this essential sleep mineral. So that's why I recommend a product from my friends over at bio optimizers, they have created something called the magnesium breakthrough and taking this magnesium before bed helps you relax and wake up, refresh and energized.

And while we don't recommend that you go two nuts on looking at all the sleep stage classifications on all your wearables. I will share anecdotally that many clients have reported improvements in their deep sleep trend numbers. Again, I don't want you going nuts on the sleep stage classification numbers on your wearables, but I do wanna let you know about that because I know that many of you do reach out on questions of how to improve your deep sleep.

So I also love that bio optimizers offers free shipping on select orders and they offer a 365 day money back guarantee on all their products. Plus they have a customer satisfaction rating of 99.3%. Very impressive, and you can get 10% off magnesium breakthrough. Again, this is the same magnesium that I use every single night.

And finally, you can get 10% off magnesium breakthrough. Again, that's the magnesium supplement that I use every single night by going to www dot mag M ag. So mag breakthrough.com/sleep is a skill and be sure to use the code. Sleep is a skill for 10% off. And welcome to the sleep is a skilled podcast, really, really excited to get into this conversation today.

So, Wade, thank you so much for taking the time. I know you are a busy, busy man. Uh, so thank you for taking this time to discuss sleep with us today. Thanks. Great to be here, Molly. Awesome. All right. So without further due, cause I am clear out about some of our conversations so far that you are just a wealth of knowledge in this area of health and wellbeing, and really how to continually stay educated, stay at the top of your game, dive in, deeper on all things related to wellness and performance, and really so standing.

Um, so strongly behind those things that you've created this incredible company to really help facilitate that. So wanted to put the spotlight onto you for a minute, just to kinda share how you found yourself in this spot that you're in and how you've created this and how that relates to sleep. Yeah.

Great. Thank you for that. Well, I've been. Actually considering that a lot as I'm, uh, a few weeks away from turning 50 and oh, happy birthday, happy early birthday. Thank you. And I think when you get to, I like to think of as a, as a biohacker, fifty's probably a, I think in a reasonable expectation, the halfway point of life, if you like, if of all things line up yes.

To true. And I know a lot of people are looking to extend that and I think sleep is a big element of ensuring longevity. Uh, and it's something that becomes more challenging as we get older. Oftentimes. So I think I've thought a lot about my journey in the last say particularly 35 years. I think when I was 15, I got into body building and fitness and essentially we were the original biohackers, I think bodybuilders, because you're trying to overcome two.

Genetic evolutionary components. One to carry more muscle mass than you're genetically inclined to, and to lower body fat levels to an, an aesthetic idea defined by the sport, but certainly against biological survival. And I'm gonna lead this into this. So I've spent 35 years of working on overcoming genetic and evolutionary tend.

In order to have a higher level of performance and potentially extend life. And there's been a tremendous amount of failures and a few successes and our company by optimizers first identified one of the big issues, which also is an impact on sleep. And that is digestion. Hmm. And so we got known, I had a digestive issue after competing at the Mr.

Universe contest, wrecked my digestion and needed to come out of it did and took us about six months to fix it under the guides of a doctor, but then four months to kind of master the nuances between a wide variety of people. Because I think a lot of people don't separate. Say double blind studies from clinical research.

And so what you can, when you have all the parameters controlled in a research component, which everybody cites nowadays, so they can borrow on authority and credibility at, at the end of the day, that doesn't always translate into applicable functional effectiveness yeah. In the real practice and why they need people like you to help them out.

Because there's a wide variance between a double blind study and clinical experience and all of the genetic components, because let's say someone doesn't produce their statistical result that you want in a double blind study. Well, with some information and clinical research and, and some knowledge experience, you can apply the art.

Of biohacking so that you can assess the factors that are not allowing that person to get the result they want and then transcending it. And this is what I did as a coach in body building with my own life. And then with other people is what we develop products around. And now we are in a very unique time in life from a human perspective and the human experience.

So let's say human has been around a hundred thousand years, a million years, whatever that number is because there's so much variance about that historical data, et cetera, et cetera, depending on what part of the world you live in. Yes. What we can all agree on is based on the last say, 2000 years, we can be pretty confident about what happened.

Historically. The level of technological innovation that has transpired in the last century alone has radically altered the physiological responses. In humans. And what I mean by that EMFs mass food production and distribution, massive chemicalization and rapid technological innovation that overrides previous biological patterns.

In other words, blue light EMF, excitatory chemicals, overt stimulation, light in general. And its impact on the circadian biological rhythms, not to mention an increased level of anxiety and a decrease level of physicality. And I can say from personal experience, I have seen a shift in that 35 years from when I was a young boy, literally living in the middle of the woods with very little light pollution, working manual labor jobs.

Believe me, nobody in that group has a sleep issue. Yes. A hundred percent. You don't have it. No, I don't have it yet. If I walk down the street here in Los Angeles and talk to a hundred people, at least half of them. Have a confirmed sleep problem. Yep. And probably 80% of them have an unconfirmed sleep problem.

And another 10 or 15% are on the way to a sleep problem, but they don't quite know that yet or haven't suffered the effects of it. So why is that? And I think you do a great job of identifying those factors and, and how to overcome. Oh, absolutely. Well, one, thank you so much for kind of giving us the rundown of, because this is a big topic, we're addressing so many things.

And when we talk about sleep in particular, you know, people might think that well. Okay. So you just take a couple of these key supplements and you're good to go. And it's so, or drawn. Yes. A lot of people are using drugs too. Let's we, we always have to identify the boogieman in the room. Yes. Boogie the elephant in the room is, and the, the boogieman in the room even better is so huge because this is one, some of our most popular podcast episodes have been about people that have found themselves either on their, in the midst of having years of taking different, you know, benzodiazepines hypnotics or they're on the other side of it.

And they're looking to see how to wean off of those and, you know, so that gets to be a very murky and really challenging topic. And so to look to understanding that that's a possible path, that many people can go down. And that's part of my story too, is I went through this whole period of insomnia while traveling internationally on the heels of just massive kind of burnout mega.

Serial entrepreneur in Manhattan, all of that. And at one of my lowest points, I went to the doctors and what I was given, you know, now front to them, but struggling with sleep and was the result was here's Ambien. And so in, you know, that's can be a common path that many people go down. So having said that, thank you for illustrating all of these variables that are at play to a particular group.

And to you make the illustration, draw the line in the sand that for those manual labor, you know, individuals and the people that are really out there in these elements, they might have, there's a, a different conversation that might be at play as far as the sleep component is concerned. So it's layered, it's nuanced.

And from that place, then I know for you, you have continued for all of these years to kind of biohack. What have you seen over the years that has evolved to help support people in their sleep? Thanks for asking. So, uh, , I'll let you on your listeners on an inside joke that Matt, my business partner and I had dealt with for years.

He I'm a type of guy that works really well on six or seven hours sleep. He's the type of guy that preferred somewhere in the range of eight to 10. Yes. We would argue about sleep among other things. He's a ketogenic guy, I'm a plant based guy. Got it. And we run a company together and we don't see those as negative differences.

I think it provides us opportunities to be a little bit more 360 in our, in our applications of everything that we do in the company and be mindful of that. Cuz the goal is not to be part of a dietary tribe or a conceptual tribalistic component. The goal is to get the desired outcome in the most expedient way, with the most benefits towards it and the least liabilities.

That's that set point. So one of the things that came up was a book called your sleep prototype. Mm yes. I heard of that. And so it turned out that. I'm quote, unquote lion he's quote unquote a bear. So that just, that ended the argument at that point. So he, he, we were like, okay, so there's variance within this.

Cuz I used to say, I, I feel fine if I get seven good hours of sleep. Sure. Yet later on like yourself, I was traveling the world, serial entrepreneur and ran into a position. I wasn't a type of person that had problems with sleep, but about five years ago I ran into a major sleep problem. Mm. And it accumulated with travel, but also working hours outside of the normal parameters as well.

Yes. As a reduction in physical activity. Yes. And with that little micro experience and, and that led us to developing magnesium breakthrough. And that's a whole other topic because that's related to sleep. But at the end of the day, I was overstimulating the nervous system from creating an anxiety type response.

And I'm not an anxious person by nature. And I had no way of draining that out through physical exercise where I actually fatigue the musculature of the body. So I'm fatiguing the nervous system, but not necessarily the Mulet, which would go into a repair stuff. And so I'm in this endless loop, I'm stimulating myself with electromagnetic frequencies and blue light, and I'm not able to move around, get grounded, things like that, that I normally do.

And it was a disaster. And so I can appreciate. People who struggle with sleep. And that was a, you know, we went at it, Matt and I went at it. Now I've learned a lot from Matt. He's a guy that's invested a tremendous amount of money yeah. In his soul sleep program. And because he recognized it was one of the biggest hacks out there getting a good sleep.

Now I'll, I'll say one other piece on that too. And this is maybe I'm just an old guy waxing about the past. I'm a biofeedback guy. In the standpoint, I go by how I feel and how I visually look in the mirror on how I'm responding. Do I feel good? Do I look good? And what I mean, look good. I'm not trying to be a, a, you know, an academy award winner or an actor.

I, I gotta, I always say I got a face made for radio , but, um, I dunno about that, but okay. But, but the, the, the point of the matter is, is. When I started in this biohacking world, before it was called biohacking, we had to use, we didn't have any testing elements that are come in right now, testing elements today, when you're tracking sleep, there's a certain, there's an ex same as body fat with DXA scans or any of the biohacking device.

There's a point where the, that, where you need to be able to correlate. The data with how you feel, because how you feel is an evolutionary biological system that's long, tried and true. Yes. For billions of years of evolution to get to the human stuff. So I'm more likely to try that where I think a lot of people, particularly younger people are more tech savvy.

People will be more integrated in the tech side. I think the optimal is can you correlate both? And I see huge variances. I see people getting stressed out about their sleep score. Yep. Because, oh no. I only got 73 on my aura rings like, oh God, I was terrible. I'm like, but they go, well, I'm like, how do you feel?

Well, I feel pretty good, but I'm really upset about the 73. Well, Hey, you know what, maybe it's not tracking your REM like your deep sleep. Like, and we don't know all of the variance within this because we're still early in this, but I do believe some sort of tracking system, if you can do both digital and physical.

And then correlating it with your lifestyle to get that kind of triangulation is the only way that you're going to be able to legitimately hack sleep for yourself, as well as having an outside resource to help you overcome your patterns and biases that led you to poor sleep. And you need someone that's gonna smack you in the head and say, listen, if you eat before you go to bed, Not gonna work.

If you're on your phone before you go to bed, if you're watching TV in the bedroom, if you're not shutting off your wifi, if you've got dirty plugs and you're sensitive to EMF, if you're living in Venice beach, California in the middle of a 5g like microwave, you might want to consider putting in a ADE cage or something, you know, the, depending on the level that you need to go to to get that.

It's worth the effort and the effort will pay dividends if you want to go down that road. And I think since you spend almost a 30 year life sleeping, probably a good investment. Absolutely. No, I appreciate you kind of spelling that out of how coming from someone who's been in this field for a long time has tested a lot of things to really validate and underscore the importance of this area that I think has been a bit of an afterthought for quite a while.

It's been exercise nutrition. Oh yeah. And of course sleep is important and what have you, but it's, hasn't necessarily gotten its due as far as the importance that that can really play and helping from a bidirectional relationship with all these other things that we do for health and wellbeing. So appreciate that.

And you also touched on that. There's so many things that we can do, whether it's EMF related, whether it's from a health style, perspective, mindset, all of these things can get really nuanced. So for you as someone that has created this. You know, really huge supplement company in particular and have also put out education around different books and materials to really help support people that are, you know, really on this journey and looking to get really curious and engaged and test different things.

When you think of sleep, what are some of the things that you are addressing for people top down? Or is it more nuance than that? Certainly from a bio individual perspective, what do you see? You know, even if we start with the supplement piece or if you see another element that we can't go past without touching on?

Well, I always say this is kind of an unusual from someone that owns a supplement company. You can't supplement your way out of a bad lifestyle, but the right meant to your lifestyle integrations can push you over the top. And that's where we fit in we're we call our company bio optimizers, cuz we're into biological optimization, optimizing the biology, but we have to put a set of principles in place first.

So, what do we have? What are the variables that it comes down and they're so boring  but they're true. And you need to keep going over them. And the two biggest ones, I think, is your diet and your lifestyle. Yes. People who experience the best at sleep have a consistent routine that doesn't lead to bad sleep.

And the people who have bad sleep have a consistent routine to lead to bad sleep. Yes. End of story. Yeah. And that's not a disempowering statement. It's an empowering statement. Mm-hmm  because, because we've got this world that we're, we're trying to outsource everything, but you can't outsource your health.

You can outsource your health advice or your health accountability, but at the end of the day, I've dealt with people that have all the resources in the world, but will not implement it. Mm-hmm , I've seen people with extremely limited resources that hack a lot of stuff at a very low cost. Yeah. So really it's your motivation and your creativity, but at the end of the day, you have to take care of your health.

The second thing I think we'll just, what's the big elements. Stop eating at least three hours before you go to bed. Yes. Huge. Stop eating. Yeah. Just stop eating. Like we eat too much, period. I love to eat. I have to watch myself. I will eat too much so easily. I love, I grew up eating before you go to. We always had our snack before bed.

That was part of the deal  yes. Right. Was like where I, a hundred, how we did it was breakfast, dinner, supper. Do it. Well, where's lunch. Everything in between was a lunch.  where I grew up. Like, you had a lunch for here and a lunch for that and a lunch ladder, a snack. So, you know, I remember when I went at the west coast, I didn't know.

I didn't like people say, I'd say, well, let's go for dinner. And they thought it was six o'clock and I'm like, no, like dinner's at noon. Right. It was just a, it was a localization. And it was confusing for me for many years and I was called . So you have, but all that say that's the first thing. Second thing, I think looking at your genetics, having someone interpret that, to see how negatively impacted you are by EMF.

Mm. Some people EMF doesn't really bother that much. And we can see that with aquaporin responsiveness. And we see other people that in aquaporin is the kind of channels where things flowing out at yourselves. Those who don't know. And other people are hugely affected. And I have friends on both ends of the spectrum.

I would say I'm in between. I notice it, but can get past it. I have noticed a difference since I moved to California and Dennis very different than when I'm living in Sedona or even when I was in Vancouver. Sure. There's a difference. Big yeah. Feelings, my feelings. And so I'm looking at, oh, I've gotta upgrade my sleeping because it's not as good as it has been in the past because of the location I'm in.

So there's a threshold of how much EMF is impacting and I've crossed that threshold recently and I'm like, oh, that's interesting to know. I think the next thing you gotta look at is your mattress quality. I think getting a right mattress and I'm so for example, I lift weights and I, so I have wider shoulders mm-hmm  and a narrower waist.

I can really crank myself and disrupt. My sleep pattern and, you know, tendencies to put your hands over your head, as opposed to below the head, that that's the fact I'm a more of a face sleeper or a side sleeper. You can build out your mattress around that. And whether that's doing through a super customized things like Essentia mattress or one of these like cloud or all these different mattress companies.

Yes. And having that wonderful. If you want to do that and you have the money, but if not, how do you get the softness and really think about what's right for your body and for your partner. If you have a partner that that's, you you're gonna have to work that stuff out, you need to have a conversation about you need to work this out.

Yes. So have conversation. That's the next thing. So food that, and then three, if you take people with really bad sleep issues, take 'em out of the digital world, put 'em up in the woods somewhere. And make them live. Like people did a hundred years ago, sleep problems, go away. You come home, you're wiped out.

You go to sleep because you feel like it. And you have a deep, refreshing, I feel good sleep. We have become so sedentary. And so stimulated. We've created this biochemical cascade that is creating anxiety, disruption, distraction, FOMO, blah, blah, blah, you name it. All of these things are happening and we've got to learn how to manage the most powerful hypnotic device on the planet.

These things are ruining our lives. They're also ex making life really wonderful, but we have got to as biohackers as people want our help, you gotta exert extreme levels of discipline around this unit. So with your food program, no eating three hours before you go bed. You gotta set the time point and you can do this with, if you're testing with sleep.

Sorry, what is the point that you've gotta shut all this blue light producing EMF saying stimulatory, dopamine response mechanisms. What do you wanna call them phones? Yes. . When do you shut it off? And if you can't shut it off, well, now you have to recognize that you have an addiction plain it straight up like cocaine, like alcohol.

Yeah. Like, like pot, whatever that is. You got a drug addiction. The drug is just delivered to your brain through a light. It's a light delivered drug to your brain and you're an addict. And I'm not saying that in a con the reality of the facts. Yeah. Yeah. I grew up in a rural area. We're not very polite.

You run same. Yes. Middle of nowhere. Bulldozers. Yeah. You run bulldozers and wood chopping blocks and things like the communication is very cur. It's very loud. It's very direct and it's awful times very threatening as someone is communicating something to you in a very terse, precise, aggressive way. Yeah.

So that you don't kill yourself or somebody else. Absolutely. Yeah. So you get used to that. Because the niceties of society are going away and you need to be that brutally honest with yourself and your sleep. It's time to kiss the pleasantries goodbye, because if you're not getting good sleep, you're destroying your life, your relationships, your families.

I've done that. I got my 75 track. It ruined a relationship. It ruined my health. It ruined my happiness and it took me a whole six to eight. To get that back and I I'm supposed to be the advocate for it. So I'm trying to share this to people. I'm not trying to talk down to anybody because I made these mistakes and these are the conversations I had to have with myself.

I need to not eat at night. I need to shut off the blue light, regardless of what's happening in my business. In fact, I jettisoned one of my businesses I had to, I had to stop traveling all over the world, which I love to do. I had to stop. Yeah. Right. And I had to reexamine how I handled stress and communication, which is still ongoing.

You know, I've gotten professional assistance in those areas. And then I developed nutritional supplements as well. In addition to using these hacks that you talk about on your podcast about improving your sleep. So thank you for that. So that's a lot, it's a mouthful, but I just wanna lay it out. Yeah.

That that's, it's not a magic bullet. It's systematically taking apart your lifestyle and your habits, and then reengineering in a way that leads to good sleep. Ah, well, I appreciate you kind of going through that because it's not anyone that goes into the state of, well, you know, you just take this or you do this one thing and then it's handled, you know, it's really can do some damage in this area because it is so multifaceted.

It's such a huge barometer of the workability of your life. And it's going to go in and out of workability constantly. It's gonna be something that's evolved and something that works for you before might not. But I love what you're speaking to of being authentic and real with yourself and not kind of sugarcoating things and really getting clear from a place of that really sense of urgency and awareness that this is so crucial for a health and wellbeing.

And with that comes the power to make a difference with some of these other areas. Really really well said. And from that place, one topic that we've spoken about on sleep is, uh, sleep is a skill, has been this topic of chrono pharmacology. So the timing of your drugs, and when we say that, and that can go of course, into the timing of some of those prescription drugs we spoke to, but it can also go into the timing of supplements and it can go into the timing of even things.

Very, very commonly used drugs like caffeine and alcohol, THC, all of these. So one thing that I really love about your company is you're really looking to innovate and have innovated in a number of areas, including some that seem to down the road affect sleep. So things like having other alternatives to just tons of caffeine or coffee or tea, or what have.

Having neutropic options that might be more well tailored and focused to what you're looking to achieve and have some balance to them so that you can support the kind of arousal system so that the sleep wake cycle isn't really just obliterated at the end of the day. And then from that Chron pharmacology perspective the evening, and then having other things, drugs that can help support kind of a winding down or, you know, giving you some of that assistance in a really hyped up world, as you're looking to kind of create that balance for yourself.

Wondering if you can share about some of those. We're moving into a new era in nutritional supplementation. And first I think genetics and epigenetics have, have opened the door about the variance between individuals. So if we look at, I was like, how do we get to where we are going in nutritional supplementation, targeted nutritional supplementation, I, and being an athlete former of bodybuilder, you, you develop exercise and training programs for various muscle fruits, parts to maximally develop that for a visual aesthetic.

So it's a natural extension of that. And, and you put dietary regimes to again, overcome those two biological tendencies. Okay. So when it comes to supplementations, we have a lot of generalized knowledge, and I think you can begin with that. Probably good for people to take vitamin D cuz we don't get. Done probably good for most people to take some vitamin C, make sure you get a good mineral supplementation.

All of those things that we hear about everywhere though, that's supplementation 1 0 1 RDA kind of stuff. Looking at your diet. What are the things that are most likely to be not present in your diet? And I think it that's the next level of customization. Now we go to. And we said, okay, well you have a trouble.

Uh, methylating this? So you would probably do some, you want some methylation, nutritional supplements and some specific types to help you absorb these things that you're maybe deficient. Okay. And then you can go, well, then there's the timing of when do you want to take that? That's that's using chronobiology and for women that's even more of an issue because they have a monthly cycle.

Men are more of a daily cycle. Women are more of a monthly, so you need to be responsive that I'm not an expert in that. Sure. Just people wanna be fair, but be aware. Yep. Drive it down. Now you get into, okay. As a formulator, you're looking at, okay, there's various types of that element, which ones absorbed and utilized by the body, which ones correlate with your microbiome because we're actually not feeding ourselves.

We're feeding the bacteria, which provide the elements. You know, our, our microbiome feeds us, which has also plays a big. Aspect of our sleep cycle. And one of the reasons why eating late, I think is disruptive because you're activating system, right? And, and that's a whole other deal. Especially if you have dysbiosis in the body, you can create a whole chemical cascade.

That's a nightmare literally. Or if you have parasitical, you know, critters that are creating, you know, I always say you you're, you're getting the seven elevens. It's 11 o'clock at a night. And you feel like going into seven 11 and getting a ice cream sandwich, you probably got some critters running the show, not you.

Yes. So, so, so you can look at the, the inflammatory agents and then. When you get down to targeted nutrition is developing an array of products that accentuate the positives and reduce the negatives. And that's where we are as a supplement company. We've always been a best in class first in class, but we, we have now 13 PhDs and master students in our lab and the international Birch university where we're testing all these parameters and very few supplement companies do that.

We're getting and what allow, we are literally getting results. Every single week of tests that we're doing, that's allowing us to make better formulation, like some little tiny element added to an enzyme formulation can improve the enzyme formulation two, 300 times another medium that you grow various probiotics on can accentuate the growth of that probiotic.

A thousand times it's wild. Some of these things that you would not know if you're not experimenting with them. So when we get to cognitive components, there was one guy that changed what I think the perception of the importance of our cognitive neurochemical natures. And that was a guy by the name of Charles Quin rest in peace.

He was a coach for, I think it was 27. Different gold medalists, like gold medalist in different sports. Wow. Who's of professional sports. And he wrote, read a bunch. He knew a bunch of different languages, cuz he would see there was patterns of study in various countries due to funding and grant and stuff like that.

So he that and see patterns. And he was the first guy to correlate Chinese medicine with Western medicine and the five elements of Chinese medicine fit dovetailed perfectly with neurochemical dominance. Mm. And neurochemical dominance is a big issue. And for example, most of us. Are hooked on the dopamine loop, which is to develop of skills that lead to survival, but that's been hacked by phones and it's, and it's lead skills that lead to, I think, anxiety and depression, because you're, you're outside of the control mechanisms that dopamine was done for, but he was able to determine that there was a match here.

And so your neurochemical dominance can influence how well you sleep. So if you're, uh, a dopamine, a set of colon junkie kind of thing, or whatever, you know, oftentimes you, you are much. Susceptive to those hits and you can get to depletion. And if you get to depletion, that's where you start to run out of energy and not have to be able to form.

And you lose drive. You see this a lot with high drive people going to low drive situations. I don't know what happened. I lost my mojo kind of thing. Oh yeah. I work with a ton of poker players and you'll see the ups and downs and then they decide, oh, I'm gonna go off to a new venture. And then just the, the lack of that roller coaster can be really jarring a hundred percent.

Yeah. Uh, you see it with military guys coming back from, you know, intense, uh, guys and girls who come back from intense combat zones and the defrag period. Yeah. And then also another great element is rock stars who go on tour and they're on their touring lifestyle and they come home and their life's a disaster cuz they're like, Hey, it's three in the afternoon.

I wanna go hang out with my friends. They're like, uh, I got a job, you know? It's like, yes. So, so they're on a whole cycle. So people who travel a lot, I think are more susceptible. But going back to that. We're not providing the complete array of neurochemicals that allows us to have a full experience, how it allow us to rest properly, to shut down negative cascades and to upregulate positive cascades for what we want to do.

We developed a company called Nutopia that addresses those issues, and we literally customize neutropic formulations for people. And so that's kind of like next level in cognitive hands. Uh, we just came out with a GABA product, cuz GABA's really good for kind of that Zen product to downregulate for people that are really high drivers.

And I think a lot of people are listening to this probably are. So you can check that at a utopia, you go through a test, which is like a mini Braverman test, fixed neurochemicals. Our company di like figures out what's your dominance, what you're depleted in, what you're deficient in. You get an array of products, you test them through our app, you get that feedback.

We tweak the formulations directly for you. We go back again and it comes back and usually people have it down in 60 to 90 days and they can literally turn on whatever brain state they want. That's not gonna override diet. That's not gonna R override exercise. Yes. Or, you know, but this is where supplementation is moving towards, I think, and will continue to go that way as a encapsulation and more data becomes available to.

Deal with the variances in individuals a hundred percent. Yeah. And that customization, I think, is so unique. And I had the opportunity to go through that flow and now have myself a whole customized box of all kinds of goodies. And it's really great because also our life is dynamic and we might shift. So for so long, I had the identity of loving caffeine and all things stimulating.

And I only just in the beginning of this year, shifted over and doing this whole kind of detoxing experiment and now very low to no caffeine. And it's a whole new thing for me to explore. And so to be able to then test out. This box with having, uh, that not necessarily be as much of a feature, which had been so much of what I would've leaned into in the past to get that extra, you know?

Ooh. Uh, so to have those other things to go to is really fantastic. And I think that's often what we're looking to help facilitate here at sleep as a skill is not just to like, okay, get you sleeping. And it's also for those that are already sleeping fine. And they're looking to up level. Or in alignment with this, using this lens of kind of circadian optimization and freight optimization to then facilitate having a fantastic, amazing, huge life.

And part of that is to be able to have that awareness of what works and when, what might be detrimental and what might be beneficial and to have all those tools at your disposal are huge. And then it also includes the evening side of things, the downshifting, the down regulation side of things. I have your magnesium formula that I have in the evenings, and to have that, to support all the things that I'm doing as well, and many entrepreneurs that I'm working with.

Myself included. So can have that tendency to wanna create a life where there's lots of activity and nonstop moving. And so to really have that lifestyle piece be so dialed in is so huge to really take responsibility for having that clear off time and then having things to facilitate. That is huge. So, and I know you guys have made quite a name for yourself with so many of these products, but including the magnesium.

I wonder if you could just share a bit more about that one as well. Yeah. So when I ran into my sleep problem, I went to my team. So I have what I call a Jedi council. And the Jedi council is kind of like, you know, on star wars, you come in and, and there's a, a round table of experts and I get information from them independently to help correlate what's the picture.

Love that. And one of the interesting things that I discovered on this pathway was that I had two elements that were very low in me, B12, not surprising because mm-hmm, , I'm a vegetarian, I don't eat meat products or things like that. So no surprise there. And I was draining the, I wasn't being as diligent on my B12 supplementation at that.

Sure. The other thing I was surprisingly deficient in was magnesium. Like I thought, well, I have a, like, as a plant based guy, I actually get quite a bit of magnesium in my diet. I'm kind of surprised and that's, I recalled. Lecture. I had gone to Charles Quin and I went and researched my notes and I found my notes and he had identified this, and this was a secret aspect.

And he identified that different types of magnesium were uptake by different parts of the body. Now, as an old bodybuilder, I knew that magnesium was a problem because a lot of bodybuilders used to use a diuretic called slow. Which affected potassium, which are related to magnesium and guys would, if they got it wrong, would die of heart attacks and their heart would shut down because, or they would go into extreme levels of cramp cramping on stage, like RGA mortis.

And if you haven't had cramping from dehydration and I have, it's extremely painful. Yeah. It's not pleasant. It's like take a Charlie horse times a thousand. Oof. At the it's like it's, it's debilitating. And so I knew from this that, oh, there's different types of magnesium I'm deficient. Well, I go and start researching magnesium.

Wow. There's orate there's malate. There's crate. There's Tori. There's like three and eight there's. Oh my God. It just became just like, like everyone else. Well, what's the best magnesium and to be Frank. There's no right answer to that question. Right. Okay. Like I wanna like, I'm a guy that makes mag there's no right answer to that because yeah.

If you're someone that has irregular heartbeats because of magnesium deficiency and you have someone that has vaso constriction that gives you migraine headaches or PMs cramps, or you're someone who gets muscle cramps, or maybe you're not able to perform some of your key neuro transmit. Well, all of those could be related to magnesium deficiency, but all of those will be different types of magnesium, which are best for that particular component.

So Matt and I were Matt being the sleep guru. He is, we're like, all right, let's, let's get, let's buy every single magnesium on the market that we can get our hands on the different forms and we're gonna create a spreadsheet and we're gonna start taking, how much can we take before we get the runs?  and so this is like toilet experiments.

Okay. Yes, because anybody that's done a high level of magnesium knows it's you can get disaster bands really quickly. Mm-hmm  and, uh, I think the biggest enemy to that is crate. So if you are complicated, lots crates, probably your best one for con constipation, because it brings water into the intestinal tract.

But for the other things, it was like, ah, well, you know, we found different results with different things. Over considerable amount of months, we were able to come up with a formulation that we felt addressed the most amount of magnesium deficient needs in the most amount of people. So it's not to the sophisticated level of customization that we could get with neurotransmitters.

Sure. But it was enough that we could get a bigger effect to more people at less. That's a win. And, and when we looked at the elements that helps you absorb and utilize, cuz we were known as a digestive health outcome, we always look at not how much you take it's how much actually gets delivered to the cells.

And so we came out with magnesium breakthrough, it's got seven different magnesiums where I think we're on our fourth generation of that. Because as new research, we just added super Somil to the new one because that's smashing the bioavailability matrix. There's not as much literature as say some of the other magnesiums.

But what we are noticing is that people are noticing when they, when they up dose their magnesium and I suggest divided dosages throughout the day, starting at a half gram. And then like, no more than a half gram, three times a day. And then you can increase either the amount of dosages that you take or the amount per serving until you get the runs.

And then you titrate down a half gram from that to a gram stay at that level. If you get the runs again, drop it again until you get your maintenance level. And so I went all the way up to six grams. Wow. Which is, which is a ridiculous amount of wow. Wow. Wow. Yeah. And I was in a high stress lifestyle. I had to unload and change my going back.

I had to unload my lifestyle components and that took me a little bit of time. Yeah. And then I had to, in a, I change my movement patterns. I dropped the business. I changed the relationship. Like a lot of things got jetted there. Totally. And during that time, I went from six grams down to what I take now, which is about one and a half grams a day, one and a half grams.

I exercise a lot. I sweat a lot. So that's the sweet spot for me. Other people are gonna end up with two other people are gonna end up with three. Most people will find them for sleep. Uh, a couple of caps before bed, somewhere in an hour before bed, usually. People unwind if you're doing all the other things and you'll get a deeper sleep in both REM sleep and deep sleep on your sleep scores and people that track it love it.

But more importantly, they feel better. Yes. And that's, that's the most, you know, data's one thing, but do you feel better as the ultimate goal and it's been ridiculous how much feedback we've got from that? Ah, well, that's amazing. Well, thank you so much for kind of walking us through that because you know, anyone even new or has been in this conversation of sleep optimization for a while is likely to have heard some rumblings of magnesium and its importance.

And I feel like you're doing such a great job of addressing the nuanced fact that there's so many versions and types of magnesium, and there might be certain ones that are gonna make a difference for you. And that there's, um, a dosing that you can explore and that might be dynamic. And it might shift based on the types of foods you're eating, those stress levels, the, and being responsible for those stress levels.

I love that you also shared in just suffer through all those things. You actually made the hard decisions to shift some of those things and make things more workable. And then in alignment with that, through your dosage shifts. So these things, um, are things that take a really present and awake mind behind the wheel.

To intelligently adjust these and not just take them because someone else takes a certain amount or what have you. So really, really fantastic and important call outs. And since we're already, you know, have learned so much from you even just in this one, conversation would love to hear a bit more too, about how you are managing your own sleep.

And I'm sure it's also dynamic and shifts, but the first one is what might we see with your nightly sleep routine and that could shift with travel or other things, but what might be important to note. Well, I think one of the biggest factors that there's, there's two factors that I've noticed influences my sleep the most.

And that is the amount of stimulants that I use during a day. Yes. And I love stimulants. I love my neutropic love caffeine right there with the I'm a guy that loves the up. Yes. Right. I'm a stimulatory guy. Mine. I like that jet. I feel good on it. Yes. So that's one factor. If I find my sleeps disrupted probably took too many stimulants.

Yes. Number two is my cycle beforehand. So for example, some C products really helped me get into sleep. Some C V D products wake me up. Yeah. There's a big variance on that. And I've experimented with that and it's, it's a pretty big vari. Ma does a endocannabinoid test that you can dial in the specifics of which cannabinoid receptors might be best for your biology.

So it's an, a test you can do had 'em on my podcast. It's great thing. If you're into CBD, cuz that's all the rage right now, but yes, right CBD for you at the right time is it's just like everything else. No one size salt, that's a big factor. And then the amount of, shall I say, unresolved things in my life, that's eating away at me is a big thing.

And, and so that could be personal issues that can be business stress. It could be family stuff. Like there's a bunch of different things and I have noticed, and I've become more acutely aware of that. Now is these the more open loops about yes that I have in my head, two things. It often leads me to more stimulatory behavior.

Yes. Whether that blue light stuff, whether it's taking stimulants, what it's, that sort of stuff. But then I find if I'm waking up at night, uh, that's an issue. The other thing I, I would add to that is temperature mm-hmm  yeah. Big. In LA out by the beach. So you get big variances in temperature. One night, it's 75 degrees the next night, it's 66 degrees.

And so I make sure that I get my temperature below 68 degrees every night, because that's a big factor in my sleep process. And I I've decided now that I'm probably gonna have to add a fair day cage because I, if I've been tracking my stuff and I've noticed in a fair day cage where people don't know you can get these kind of like canopies that go over your bed.

I, I just think since they've advocated the 5g stuff, and maybe this is tin foil hat stuff or whatever, I feel more stimulated in my body and less recovered. Mm. I do feel that there is an impact to it for me. Yeah. And I think it's worth investigating and I'm going to attempt that I, and one of the big things is I went out to Sedona to do some N a.

Yes. That's the stuff with Katrina, a friend of ours. Yes, absolutely. She's got a great set by there. Big, big winner on man, a D treatments hundred percent, but I noticed my sleep over in Sedona and my meditations were off the charts relative to where I was here in LA. And I'm like, that's a, that's a really big gap.

And it's only a seven hour drive.  yes. So my life didn't change in that seven hours. That much, what changed is the environment I'm living in. So obviously that was a clear indication, which I just had recently is like, okay, we gotta, we gotta up the sleep game over here in LA now. Ah, well, keep us posted on you're tracking your sleep or do you use track.

I gave up all my trackers. You gave up all the trackers. Okay. I I'm going I'm I'm going by. Did I wake up at night? Yep. How did I feel inside the morning and how well I stayed with my routine, both in my meditation. Was I able to get deep in my meditation or was I not able to get deep? And then how well was my sleep?

And if I get everything right, I'm in bed at nine 30 after a great meditation, I wake up in the morning. I have a meditation. My sleep is uninterrupted at night. Yes. And I wake up refreshed and I kick ass at the gym. So those are the parameters. And I, I did sleep tracking for a couple of years. Sure. Yeah.

But I started to getting the FOMO around. The thing and, and sometimes it's secondary data and I wasn't so sure about it, so totally get that. Um, and I know there's a lot of biohackers that are gonna slap me at the next event. That's fine. I understand. No, it's all great. Well, I was gonna, I was asking only because, um, wanted to follow if you end up going down the rabbit hole on Fairday cages and what have you to see any of the shifts, but even from a, um, a kind of intuitive sense and that subjective sense would be curious to hear your results.

So keep us posted on that with the Fairday cage endeavors and what have you. And just so people know Matt, who's been leading the way in our research and is a, is a, like, he is a. Sleep expert, in my opinion, he's really good at the nuances of it, cuz he struggled with it and had to get it. Sure. He has worked with our, uh, lab team to build a customized sleep product, which will probably bringing out later this year because there are several elements that you can use that are gonna be variants and just kind of like Nutopia, we're gonna have a dial up customizable kind of sleep system for people to go through.

And so we're excited about that and we've been working on that for several years. Amazing. Well, I'm definitely gonna wanna hear the latest and the greatest about that and we'll have to share about that more cuz that's gonna be huge. Yeah. You'll want add on that one cuz he's, he he's as deep as it gets on that.

I mean, he gets crazy, but that's something I love that about him. Oh, that's fantastic. Well, you, that might in the future be answering this next question, which is what might we see on your nightstand or your proverbial nightstand. If you're traveling like apps, ambiance, supplements, what have you. And so possibly down the road, those supplements might be there, but, um, any callouts that, um, that might be important for us to know that is one thing that I've used and it works really well.

Nice. I really all elements. I do take magnesium every night. I do take probiotics every night and I try not to eat too late because that's big. Those, the eating big eating late is probably the biggest disruptor for me. Yep. A hundred percent. I mean, and we see that all the time. So every client we're working with is wearing at least an aura ring.

Some of them are big time biohackers. So they might have like four or five things tracking of an Excel spreadsheets and craziness. But so for those people, there's. So I cannot even explain the number of times that we go through. Oh, what happened on this night? And the heart rate was high HV, tanked body temperature was up.

Respiratory rate was up all of these things that indicate just a lack of really their optimal levels of recovery. And we look at what happened that previous day and night and the number of times that well, yeah, we went out to dinner late with friends and what have you, and just, I do not think it can be underestimated how important this is.

And for people listening, I mentioned the book circadian code a trillion times, but I'll mention it again. That's a great kind of gateway to this conversation of how much, the things that we do affect this really important, these bio rhythms. So our old treatian rhythms, circadian rhythms and Inre rhythms for women.

And they are aware and awake behind the wheel and they are looking to see what cues and the food component is just such a huge one that I think many people aren't getting. So thank you for underscoring that yes. Anything else that we might see on the nightstand is that kind of addressing, you know, it's really, you know, it's really funny.

People love this. I travel with electrical tape. Me too. Same. You get to, you get to hotels. Yes. And they have all those lights on and stuff. Yeah. I unplug that stuff. I tape stuff up cause they always had the most. Face of blue light things or green light flashing on the other side. Yeah. Or the one that drives me, the craziest is the smoke alarms.

Oh, I know, you know, that bright red light, you wake up. You're like, what the hell? You know? So I use electrical tape. It's kind of like MacGyver for those over that. But anyways, that's, uh, one of the things I use and if anyone has trouble with tearing that gaffers tape is really helpful, too black gaffers tape.

And so you can kind of rip it on the go. That is a great callout. And I think underestimated how important that can just have to be stashed in your luggage on the regular. So great. And then the last one would be what has made the biggest change to your sleep game or maybe the biggest aha moment for you in this area of managing your sleep?

Whew. That's lifestyle. And that's partly too, when you get to middle age, You have a perspective, you realize that there's less screens at the top of the, what do you call it? The hourglass. Oh yes. Sure. Yeah. And the greens below are much prettier white than the ones involved.  you're taking nice plate sand going through that.

So you, you look at that and you start to reevaluate. What's important and what's valuable in your life. You also end up having friends that have died, uh, family members oftentimes, and it realizes that you can really get caught in the circus of life and the ongoing FOMO type things which are ex exemplified or amplified by social media and, and digital information that we haven't learned to manage yet.

And so at some point in time, you have to ask yourself the question what's enough. That was enough. And I had to let go of business and I had to let go of some where I lived on the planet and I had to let go of some travel in order to what I feel lived my best life. I don't regret those changes. I regret that I didn't make the changes soon enough or have the hard conversation.

So I would say the final statement I'd lead for people is what I've learned around sleep and everything else in. Relationships business, your health, your family members, all that stuff. The quality of your life is going to be determined by the willingness and frequency that you are willing to have hard conversations yourself and the people around you, not in a condemnation way, but in a way saying, Hey, I'm not feeling comfortable about this.

This is the result of this. This is not a blame game. This is a conversation of empowerment is like, Hey, something is not working here. This doesn't feel right. Doesn't look right. Doesn't how can we bring resources to the table to address those issues like adults instead of children and the world is becoming idolizing infantile behavior, and we have to start becoming adults.

In the room with ourselves and the people around us, cuz that's all we control. We can't control what's out there, but we can control what's in our lives and take as much of it as possible. And then you start to realize is now you become an agent for your own health and your lifestyle and all of the responsibility falls in life.

Not everybody gets a great deck of cards. I get that. But you do have the option of how you play that hand. And I say, play the hand to the best that you can. You're gonna take some losses. You're gonna have some wins. Don't get too high. Don't get too low, but take, go play it, go play it to the best of your ability.

Ah, I love that. And any of the poker players listening will appreciate that, uh, analogy. And it's so true. And the truth is, you know, with, um, my story that I've shared often going through this journey of sleep, kind of being in my rock bottom and sleep, being a huge component of that. And so much of the process of getting outta.

A big portion was behavioral base, the same changes that you spoke to of like, oh, gotta cut the business. That's not working, cut the relationship. That's not working, be responsible for this. Get responsible for this, you know, really stepping into that ownership of our self in our life. So, so huge. And that's, you know, beyond just like gadget or gizmo or what have you.

And often we might be looking for that, cause we're desperately wanting that solution tonight and often it does take that deeper work. So I so appreciate you sharing that. And I think it's very incredibly wise as you head into this next chapter of your, of your life with the 50th, um, birthday coming up.

So very, and I would, I would caveat one thing on that too. It was the relationship that cut. Not the other way around. Yes. And sometimes that shakes things up, for sure. Yeah. Well, I always say, if you don't get the lesson, it's going to come back to you in increasing frequency and intensity until you get it.

And sometimes you don't get it and it becomes a terminal issue and sleep deprivation. Kills. Yes. It literally kills people. Absolutely. And so thank you so much for everything that you do and that you're out there and, and, and giving people the resources and making 'em readily available for people. It's a great gift.

And I encourage everybody to triple down on Molly's stuff. It's an area that I kind of poo-pooed early in my life, cuz it was just to had mastered. And so I did the same back in the day. Yes. Until so you couldn't get past it now when I'm. You know, so, but now I learned my lesson and I'm working towards improving it myself to the best.

Ah, well, thank you so much. And thank you for the acknowledgement. I so appreciate that. And the feeling is beyond mutual, you know, really excited to have been introduced to your company a while ago. And this has been a real part of my life now to have this, the connection to a company that really I see walks their talk and is continually looking to improve.

And for us over here at sleep is a skill we're not often mentioning a lot of supplement companies because we are so behavioral based. And so when we do align with different supplement companies and feel like the ethos is there, it really does. We take that really seriously. So really appreciate all the work you're doing.

And I'm sure anyone listening for all the wisdom that you provided today is gonna wanna learn more about you and your company. So what are the best ways for people to do that? Well, one of the fun things, I think a lot of people are, if they go to our site, they can get on, uh, bio optimizers or bio tribe.

We got a whole lot of biohackers who are communicating in that space. So it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. You can go to bio optimizers.com, ID love, Facebook, all that sort of stuff. I'll be Frank, I'm brought into specific components to curated conversations. That's why I think bio tribe's probably the best you'd get the most dynamics, not just for myself and Matt, but from other biohackers where you're sharing that data in an organic way.

I think that's really fun. Uh, and then like, oh, I said all the social media company and all that sort of stuff, that's just bio optimizers.com and we'll see it. Some of the events. Absolutely. I know. I just had the opportunity to see your team a, a biohacking Congress. I know, I believe you'll be a paleo effects and yeah, we're going to N paleo effects.

I'm really excited about that event. And of course, they've. Oh, yes, of course Dave Asbury's event and keto con and all of those. Absolutely. But having said that, so in synopsis, I just so appreciate you taking the time. Thank you so much. And we'll be looking forward to hearing more about your fair day cage experiments, and what have you in the future.


You've been listening to the sleep is a skilled podcast. The number one podcast for people who wanna take their sleep skills to the next level. Every Monday, I send out something that I call Molly's Monday, obsessions containing everything that I'm obsessing over in the world of sleep head on over to sleep is a skill.com to sign up.