Thermo Diet Podcast Quarantine Edition Episode 28 - Interview with Nathan Colonna

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Full Transcript

 Jayton Miller:
How's it going, guys? It's Jayton back again today on the Thermo Diet Podcast and I am here with a very special guest, Nathan Colonna. How are you doing today, Nathan?

Nathan Colonna:
What's going on, Jayton? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on.

Jayton Miller:
Thank you for coming on. Could you tell us a little bit about your background and your story and how you got here?

Nathan Colonna:
Yeah, of course. I was always an active kid throughout my childhood years. Played baseball, played golf, were my main two sports. And after high school, when I went to college down in southern Virginia, I got more into the weightlifting and the bodybuilding mentality. I was always the smallest kid throughout high school and that was my big motivation was to get bigger, that was my goal at the time. And throughout college, I just stayed consistent with working out and I started to see progress. And after college, I got into the personal training industry, I became a personal trainer. I went through all the certifications of [inaudible 00:01:07] specialist, fitness nutrition specialist. And it was always a passion of mine to help others and I just kept going through the bodybuilding world, I guess you could say. What you see most people do in the fitness industry.

Nathan Colonna:
And backstory, going back to, again, when I was 18, what really started this whole thing was I got sick. At the age of 18, this was when I was a freshman in college and I got sick with Lyme disease and that's what I was told at the time. So, again, I just lived through college thinking it was something I had to deal with for the rest of my life because that's what the doctors told me. And going through the personal training industry, doing more bodybuilding, just living that life, I got sick again at the age of 24 and this was almost eight years after I got sick the first time. And after I got sick the second time, I had numerous amounts of symptoms, from brain fog to constipation to anxiety to systemic inflammation throughout my entire body to not really understanding and realizing how much pain I was living in at such a young age. And after that second time I got sick is when I really got thrown down the rabbit hole of continuing to educate, really going deep into educating myself in this whole health industry.

Nathan Colonna:
At the time, what I was doing as a bodybuilder was eating six, seven, eight meals a day, eating a lot of foods that were stress causing, that I wasn't aware of and doing. A lot of habits that I wasn't aware of was actually leading me up to this, a lot of these symptoms I was having. So it just led me down this rabbit hole of continuing to learn more about myself, about health in general. And it went from one thing to the next.

Nathan Colonna:
The first thing that got me into the whole thing was changing the quality of my water. And at the time, I was drinking tap water out of a plastic jug and didn't even realize that was something I could change and feel better. And once I changed the quality of my water and that aspect of health, it just, it led me to one thing to the next to the next. And ever since that day, I didn't stop learning. Even to this day I'm still learning and just, it led me from so many different diets to so many different types of training styles to so many aspects to health which I'm sure we'll get into. But yeah, that's kind of the back end of it. Yeah.

Jayton Miller:
Sweet. That is one topic that I saw whenever I was going through some of your work is water quality versus quantity. So can you give us an examples of specifying the water quality over the amount of water that we're actually getting in.

Nathan Colonna:
Yeah. I think especially coming out of the fitness industry, many, whether they're trainers or just people just going to the gym trying to get healthy, they have this, I guess, perspective of having to drink a lot of water. And that was me for many years, I was drinking upwards of two gallons of water a day. I had a coach at the time actually, I wasn't doing any shows but I was just ... And when I do something I take it seriously and I do everything for a purpose. So I was drinking up to two gallons of water a day and it just, I didn't realize at that time that it was causing a lot of issues like excessive urination and depletion of my electrolytes and excess stress on the kidneys.

Nathan Colonna:
So after I switched my water from tap water, I went to alkaline water. And, kind of giving you the full story, at that time I felt better and I didn't even realize, oh, wow, such a small change can make a difference. And then, when I continued to do more research on how alkaline water, the type of water I was doing, was still consisted of certain chemicals and it wasn't fully removing all the chemicals in the water, then I went and upgraded into reverse osmosis. So for those who don't know, we have written a blog post on quality of water and you can look up into whatever zip code you are and see how many chemicals are in your water. And this isn't talked about much, but it is out there on the internet, you just have to do some more research.

Nathan Colonna:
So I started doing more research on looking at the chemicals that was in my county's water supply and I didn't realize it was over like 2000 chemicals. And when I was looking at their website, it's the EWG website, I saw certain chemicals and they would give you the health guideline for what's allowed in the water supply. And sometimes it could be these chemicals like chloroform or bromide or chlorine, can be upwards to 100 to 150 times in the water than that's actually allowed for the health guideline. But we don't realize that these, when you look at the chemical on the website, right below it it says, "Potential effect" and it says, "Cancer." So I was like, "Oh, man." And at this time I had, one of my good friends who is my business partner now, his dad went through cancer and he was still alive. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, I've got to talk to this guy."

Nathan Colonna:
So I just really learned that there's a lot of chemicals in the water supply that were directly correlated to cancer and I was never told about this. I was like, "No one told me about this." And people think you've just got to get bottled water or the filtered water and you'll be set. And maybe that's a good step for somebody to take but I can tell you that really taking your water quality seriously will make a huge difference. And that's focused more on the quality because these chemicals that are in the water supply do disrupt our hormonal system, they create a stress response within the body. So if you're just looking to reduce stress and overall be healthier, then looking into the quality of the type of water you're drinking is crucial.

Nathan Colonna:
And even people who are drinking water bottles, they think, "Oh, it's filtered, it's spring water." But still, you're rolling the dice with that water being in plastic which is another form of stress. Xenoestrogen and that can cause a lot of issues in our hormones which can lead into symptoms as hypothyroid and continue to disrupt our thyroid function. And whether it's five years, ten years down the road, we don't realize that symptoms can just come out of the blue. And that's what frustrated me and for most individuals, it's like, "Oh, I was doing the same lifestyle for this 20, 30 years and now, all of a sudden, I have these issues." Well, yeah, for some people it can take longer to build up.

Nathan Colonna:
So that's more the quality of the water and now I take it even a step further and make my own magnesium bicarbonate rich water and I reverse osmosis the water, then I distill it. And nowadays I really only drink, personally, a liter to two liters of water max a day. In the summertime it's going to be a little bit more because I'm more active, I'm sweating more. And that goes for everybody, it's context with how much water you need. But definitely, the standard guideline of eight cups of water a day I think can be detrimental to the person's, individual's health, especially if it's toxic water.

Jayton Miller:
Yeah, definitely. So during that distillation process, how do you re-mineralize some of your water, other than the magnesium bicarbonate?

Nathan Colonna:
Yeah, that's pretty much all I do because I supplement with other minerals as far as [inaudible 00:08:58] and I get more minerals from bone broth and fresh juice and fresh milk. So I'm not really concerned about, personally concerned about drinking a lot of water. One, because the mitochondria make water. If your mitochondria are functioning properly, you'll make water and CO2 and heat. But, again, if you have some sort of metabolic condition or issue, you're not going to be structuring that water properly within the body. So yeah, that's pretty much all I do as far as water. Yep.

Jayton Miller:
Sweet. So one of the other interesting topics that I saw whenever I was going through some of your work was myofascial release, so can you go through what fascia is and some of the things that happen over time whenever we begin to go under stress and have these different kinds of traumas that happen to the fascia?

Nathan Colonna:
Yeah, of course. Great question. For those who don't know what fascia is, it's think of a spiderweb, dew-like structure that is webbed in between your entire body from head to toe. Throughout your bones, throughout your organs, throughout your muscle. It makes up everything, it supports your bone structure. So in a sense, it's going to support your posture and your spinal alignment. And we'll get more into posture but posture regulates every function to the human body because your nervous system is in your spine.

Nathan Colonna:
So fascia is over time, as we grow up, we accumulate stresses throughout our life. Whether it's at a young age, we start crying as kids, we don't get the things we want, to deaths in the family, to other chemical stresses in our environment from air pollutants to toxic water quality to the type of body washes we use to the chemicals we use on our skin, colognes. All the way up to nutritional stress and injuries, whether it's a car accident, twisting your ankle, having a surgery as a kid that you might not have remembered you had. All of these stresses are going to, again, create that fight or flight response within the body. So if you look at a baby, and you touch its muscle, its very malleable, like a hydrated piece of clay or Play-Doh. And over time, for instance, that clay as it dries out, it gets very dry and its more susceptible to breaking or cracking.

Nathan Colonna:
Same thing with our fascia, the more stresses we build up and the less we take care of it properly and hydrate the fascia, the more at risk we are of going to be at an injury or whatever issue, a circulation issue, a digestive issue, because fascia goes through all your organs and digestive tract, so it can really suffocate that as well. And it really just begins to calcify. For those who don't know what calcification is, it's like, again, it's like seeing an 80-year-old walk and they can barely move, they're walking like a statue, very slow. But what happens when you hydrate that piece of clay or that piece of Play-Doh, it can begin to reshape of remold into a new piece of art, similar to the body. But we can actually not only rehydrate our fascia and make it more malleable, but we can also reconnect our brain, which is like, think of that as the software to our body, the hardware, into these functional patterns, rewiring the body into a more foundational position.

Nathan Colonna:
Because in today's society, especially over the past 20 to 40 years, we've been sitting down more. And where it becomes an issue, not that sitting is bad, it's that we, as a human, can create a stress response without even moving, with just thinking a negative thought. So a great book for your listeners that they could look into is Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. It's because they simply live to their actual biology as a zebra. When as humans, our biology as a human is to stand and to walk. But what happens when we do these habits that get us away from our actual biological blueprint is we're adapting into an unnatural environment.

Nathan Colonna:
So we're basically becoming more into, for those who know football, second or third or fourth string. I like to call this as an example is, most people's bodies are working out of their second, third and fourth string potential. And the body is very smart, so if you're sitting down and you have, say, a deadline at work, you're going to wire in that stress or any stress that you're having in your life. Your body's wiring in that sitting position is that is how you're supposed to adapt to that stress, when we are actually supposed to walk and stand if we have some sort of stressful event. So we're just basically wiring in, we're programming, we're coding in these dysfunctional patterns into our body. And it can come through anything. Through an injury, like I said, through any chemical stress, any emotional stress, environmental stress and nutritional stress.

Jayton Miller:
Yeah. Wow, there's a lot of stuff to crack open there. Let's see, so, during the sitting process we tend to hyperventilate and that leads to an excess of oxygen in the system and not enough CO2 retention, so what are some of the things that you recommend in order to retain CO2 and to begin to breathe properly whenever we're in this unnatural state?

Nathan Colonna:
Yeah, great question. I would say the first thing to do is to be aware of how you breathe. Are you breathing through your nose throughout the day or are you breathing through your mouth? Step number one in awareness. Are you aware of these habits? Because if you're breathing through your mouth and you're not doing anything, then your body is essentially in fifth or sixth gear, when the only time your body needs to be in fifth or sixth gear is, for instance, you're running or you're doing an intensive exercise or you're running away from something. You don't want to be mouth breathing pretty much at all. And even when you're doing some sort of light exercise, we prefer our clients and even ourselves to breathe through the nose. Because when you look at animals that breathe through their mouth, they're in a stress state or they're sick. That's the only time.

Nathan Colonna:
So if we're constantly breathing through our mouth, again, that's a sign that we're in a stress state. So what can you do from there is close your mouth and begin to breathe through your nose and with the CO2 retention, I didn't ... No one taught me this until I educated myself more about proper breathing through, a lot [inaudible 00:16:13]. [inaudible 00:16:13], he's got a lot of great information. Because I was a mouth breather my whole life, so I can definitely relate to those. My whole life I wasn't aware that mouth breathing was bad, no one taught me. So from there being aware is, you could do little habits where you can see how many breaths you're taking in a minute and ideally we want to be two to six breaths per minute which is 10 to 30 seconds per breath.

Nathan Colonna:
Most people, they're upwards to 10 to 12 to 15, sometimes 20 breaths per minutes. Especially if we're mouth breathing, they're going to be shorter breaths and the breath is only going to go up into the upper chest cavity, it's not going to go deep into the diaphragm and into your thoracic spine, which is the middle of your back, and your ribs. And that's where you're basically limiting yourself of how deep of a breath you can take. So if you're someone who feels like they have shortness of breath and, "Oh, I just can't take a large breath, Nathan." Well maybe you need to begin some trigger pointing or myofascial release because you have all these restrictions and knots and adhesions throughout your entire body that's not allowing your lungs and your diaphragm to expand because you have so much restriction there. So that could be a great tool to use to allow your body to begin to take deeper breaths so that it can become and get back more into, like you said, the homeostasis, more into its balanced state.

Nathan Colonna:
Breath holding is another good technique that I started to do a lot when I didn't realize I couldn't breathe through my nose. I was like, "Oh, I can't breathe through it." I was trying all these Vicks VapoRubs and breath strips over my nose and they were, it was a short term help but nothing sustainably long term until I began to, again, reduce all these stress causing factors and retrain my body how to breathe properly. So a breath hold would be something, for instance, as you breathe in and out, normally through your nose if you can and then you would hold your breath after you exhale. And after you exhale, you hold your breath and you can see how many steps you can take around your living environment or wherever you are. See how many steps you can take until you get to that medium to heavy air hunger is what we tell our clients to do. And when you get to that spot, stop and then take a breath, preferably through the nose if you can. And if you can't, try this at least four to five times and I guarantee you you'll be able to begin to breathe through the nose.

Nathan Colonna:
Because holding the breath after you exhale is going to build up that CO2. And usually it's just a sign that you don't have enough CO2 present in the body, that you're not able to breathe through your nose. It sounds kind of cliché but it's pretty interesting when you try it and experience it yourself and say, "Oh my gosh, I held my breath and now I can breathe through my nose." Because it helps open up the air nostrils and it vasodilates them when you breathe through the nose. You pick up [inaudible 00:19:25] as well and that helps too. But usually, if you can't breathe through your nose, it's just a sign you're deficient in CO2 and, of course, other stress causing factors may play a role. But I think those are great two steps. Being aware, shooting for two to six breaths per minute, doing some breath holds and some trigger pointing. And of course keeping the metabolic rate up, which I'm sure you guys talk a lot about.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Yes. So in terms of the myofascial release, going back to the core point that we were talking about, one of the things that I saw that you were for was the mobility versus flexibility. And I think that's very important for a lot of people to make a distinction about, so can you go into some details there as far as the benefits of mobility versus flexibility and why we might not want to focus on flexibility alone?

Nathan Colonna:
Yeah, great question. Because even myself as a trainer for almost eight years, I didn't do any trigger pointing in my life, I was always stretching or doing an isolation movement. And for those who don't understand how the body is created, we have muscles that connect all the way from our foot to the top of our head. Muscles aren't isolated, they're like one big chain that's connected. And say, for instance, if I stretch my leg muscle, it's going to pull more tension down the bottom of that chain and the chain length ... For instance, the chain is related to your muscle, the whole sling of your muscle. Then it's going to create what's called an unbalanced length-tension relationship, so there's not an even tension throughout the whole body. So you can be flexible, quote unquote "flexible" and do the splits or put your legs behind your head but that doesn't relate to what we're meant to do as a human, is to stand and to walk properly and to sprint and throw. And if you can't sprint or throw properly then that's showing you something is going on in your body.

Nathan Colonna:
So as far as mobility, I see it as you have complete integration or connection from head to toe of all your slings, of all your fascia lines, all your connectivity from head to toe of muscles. So think of it as, again, the software, the hardware analogy. Your brain is the software, your body is the hardware. And if we, for instance, stretch a knot in a rope or we stretch a rubber band or we stretch a grocery bag, over time, that grocery bag and rubber band is going to lose its elasticity and recoil. And you can't really remove a knot out of a rope if you continue to stretch it, you've got really get down, deep to the bone.

Nathan Colonna:
So, again, think of isolating stretching as disconnecting that link, or those neural kinetic pathways and highways from your brain to your body so you're basically short-circuiting your body when you stretch. We've worked with a lot of ex-gymnasts and ex-yoga individuals and they're just, they're still in pain. And it's unfortunate because sometimes we go into the gym or we go do some sort of activity thinking we're doing it for health and we have the right intentions but sometimes we're not aware that the habits that we're doing are actually putting us in the wrong direction. So I think it's good to make mistakes like that and learn and just, if you're continuing to be open minded and willing to change your habits, I think that's one of the most important steps because I didn't see results in my health journey until I changed my perspective to everything and not just believing all the certifications that I went through and that I learned from "professionals", quote unquote.

Nathan Colonna:
So that's the basis on mobility, I think. And flexibility is, if you're able to take a video of yourself walking and running, I think that's one of the best things you can do because that can show you what's going on with your alignment and your structure. Because going back before, as a human, we've evolved to stand and to walk and to run and throw. And how do I move myself from here to my car or from point A to point B? I have to walk. I'm really focused on probable chances. What do I do most of the day is I walk, I stand and I move. So if I can create my training regimen or do exercises that revolve around the posture and the gait cycle, I am going to set myself up for success. And when you move, you don't isolate a muscle when you walk, you're integrating every muscle together as you walk. So I hope that clears it up for individuals who are confused about how the human body's designed and supposed to move.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. For those listeners that don't know what the gait cycle is, do you mind walking them through what that is?

Nathan Colonna:
Yeah, of course, the gait cycle is simply you walking. It's getting a video of you from the back side and the side, lateral side, and watching yourself move. Because that's the most powerful thing is to watch yourself and see what's going on with your body. Again, there's so many details I can go into with what you want to look for as far as you gait cycle but think of your gait cycle as just you walking and running. And when you can walk and run efficiently and you can run faster and be in less pain, when you run and have less restriction, then that's [inaudible 00:25:23] I think that's a great sign of progress towards improving your gait cycle. Because personally, with myself and many clients that we've worked with, when you improve the gait cycle, every aspect to your health will improve by far.

Jayton Miller:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, one of the interesting connections that I've seen is that, for instance, some great thinkers, they enjoy walking out in nature. And I think that there's a really big correlation between the ability for our brain to cross connect the hemispheres and the ability to walk properly and actually have those connections taking place. Do you have any insight to that?

Nathan Colonna:
Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, it is about how well you walk, not just about how much you walk or how many steps you take. But how effectively and how properly you do it I think is a better question to ask yourself, just like the water analogy, as the quality of your water. But yeah, when you become ... I didn't get to this ideology in just a year or a few years, it took me ... I was a personal trainer for multiple years and my business partner, he was a power lifter way before I was a bodybuilder and sometimes it's a tough mindset to get out of because you go into the gym. For me, I was just trying to get big and it was focused on vanity driven results and that's what most people go to the gym for is to lose weight or to build muscle and look good. And there's nothing wrong with looking great but there's another side to health that we have to look at and that's how we move.

Nathan Colonna:
Because your actual body is the only thing you truly own. So if you can continue to do things like walking properly and that relate to what we're meant to do, I think that can play a huge role in whatever it is, mental health, digestion, circulation and working both sides of the hemispheres of the brain. And just being aware of what you're doing when you move, how you're moving when you walk, it seems so simple but it's, I mean, I try to make it a habit every time. I mean, I do now, it's just a habit of mine now that when I do walk, I'm aware of how my feet are hitting the ground. Am I stepping off of my big toe when I walk? Am I using my glute maximus to propel myself forward in this horizontal position? Or am I, like most people do, they walk in a vertical plane of motion where they're slamming on the ground instead of walking in a horizontal motion?

Nathan Colonna:
And there's more things to look at in a gait cycle when you walk, like are you rotating your upper body when you walk and keeping your hips still and not allowing your hips to move? But when you watch most people, their hips are doing all the movement and their upper body is completely still. And it's the opposite of how the human body's actually supposed to move and, again, that all relates back to the stress aspect in our opinion is how many stresses have you been through that have created the way that you're moving now, from the synthetic shoes that you've worn your whole life to the backpacks as a kid to the injuries, so on and so forth. So I know I kind of went off topic but it's all important.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Have you heard of the WeckMethod?

Nathan Colonna:
How do you spell that?

Jayton Miller:
W-E-C-K.

Nathan Colonna:
Weck. No, I haven't. I'll have to look it up.

Jayton Miller:
So he's basically, he's one of the leading experts in sprinting and one of the things that he talks about whenever it comes to walking is having that balance with each step that you take and making sure that the head is over the foot. So every step that you take, you're always on balance and having the rotation of the body match the steps to make sure that you're functioning properly. And it takes a lot of stress off the lower back too.

Nathan Colonna:
Yeah, well, I mean, the pelvis, your hips, are the ... As Naudi Aguilar talks about this in Functional Patterns, your hips are the foundation to your posture. And, again, if your hips aren't in a neutral position when you walk, then you're going to be using things like your knees or your back to move instead of your butt. When, yes, if your pelvis is in a proper position, you will be using your glutes properly. Which, your glute max is the number one muscle that your body should be using when you walk. But most people, they're using their IT bands, they're using their knees, they're using their upper butt cheek called the glute medius, they're using their lower back.

Nathan Colonna:
So they're holding all this tension and they're not putting the tension properly in their butt cheek because of all their dysfunctional habits they've been doing their whole life. And it's not a quick fix whatsoever, I mean, I'm still working on my standing posture. And once you realize what a standing posture should look like, because that's the foundation of a human, then you either continue doing your dysfunctional habits or you do everything in your power to stop that and focus on your posture only. You could take thousands of steps daily and if you're not walking properly, again, it can create more issues.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Yeah, WeckMethod, it's really good for information around sprinting and those functional patterns. I'd recommend it.

Nathan Colonna:
Gotcha. And another thing I didn't really go into is, I mean, when you say "walk", your body has these sling mechanisms. You have a anterior oblique sling, which is your front sling. Think of your body as like an X, your right pec connects into your left oblique and vice versa. Left pec connects into your right oblique. And then same thing on your back, your right lap connects into your left butt cheek and your left lap connects into your right butt cheek and they should connect. And those are just two slings of the body, you have over 10 slings. Myofascial slings that Thomas Myers talks about in his book, Anatomy Trains, so I think that's another great educational resource is to read through Thomas Myers, Anatomy Trains book. And he breaks down the slings throughout the whole body, shows you cadavers of how all these muscles are interconnected and so on.

Jayton Miller:
That's really interesting. So going back to the myofascial release, what are some of the most common trigger points that people experience and what are some of the ways that we can target those and help to work those out in some cases?

Nathan Colonna:
Yeah, so going back to the foundation of our body, which is the pelvis, that should be, in our opinion, the priority to begin trigger pointing, is the pelvis. So there's multiple tools you can use and they're all for certain purpose like lacrosse balls, softballs, [inaudible 00:32:24], PVC pipes, medicine balls, [inaudible 00:32:29], boom sticks. They're all for a specific purpose because you need different tools to hit different trigger points throughout the body. And we have, of course, an anti-stress starter guide that takes you through the top trigger points that we believe you should be doing that are the heavy hitters that you're going to see the most results within.

Nathan Colonna:
It's usually the big muscles. Anything around your femur bone, like your quad muscle or your hamstring or your glute medius, your TFL, which is the side of your hip muscle, your abdominal, the front part of your body. All the abdominal region we hold a lot of tension. Your pecs. Everything is important. I mean, I really don't ... Yes, there might be more important ones to focus on, like the hips and the abs but everything needs to be taken into account if you want to get to the root of your issues. And then doing a trigger point and seeing if being your own engineer, do a trigger and point and go walk around and see how you feel after that. Do you feel more pain or did you feel less pain? So that's what we do in our ... If anybody wants to check it out, our free anti-stress started guide is that we take you through trigger points to begin doing.

Nathan Colonna:
Because if you have these restrictions in your body and you're not eliminating them through either a trigger point or someone knowing how to give you a deep tissue massage properly, then that's going to be a stress that is ongoing 24/7. And that's going to continue to deplete your mineral storages, it's going to keep your body in a stress state, it can impact your sleep, your mood, your recovery, et cetera. And, again, it is painful for those who haven't trigger pointed before, it is the most painful thing you'll probably ever go through. Because, as Thomas Myers says, pain has come into the body, AKA stress, whether it's a death in the family, that's pain. Whether it's an injury. And pain is going to have to be applied for that adhesion or knot to be released.

Nathan Colonna:
And it's difficult, even for myself, I was ... It was my biggest fear as personal trainer to do it. I would try and I would just shy away from it, I was taking a passive approach. But it wasn't until I just came to this point where I had all these injuries and at such a young age I was like, "I'm just ready to do whatever." And sometimes that's what it takes is you have to just be willing to give it your all and effort and really be consistent with it to see maximum results into it. And if you can ever have a friend or a whatever, someone else apply the pressure at these trigger points, that can help you get through it even more because you can just sit there and relax instead of actually trying to hold your body in these positions while you do the trigger pointing, if that makes sense?

Jayton Miller:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Definitely. So have you ever heard of EMS or electrical muscle stimulation for myofascial release?

Nathan Colonna:
I've done the dry needling with the electro- the stimulation but I don't know if that was specifically EMS.

Jayton Miller:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). So they're the ones that basically they have the sticky diodes that you can put on your muscle and they stimulate the muscle with electrical contraction.

Nathan Colonna:
I've done that, yeah.

Jayton Miller:
So from my understanding, whenever you zoom in on it, the muscle fibers actually are in a state where they're in constant contraction. And whenever you can actually stimulate them with that electrical pulse, then it gets them back in sync with the other muscle fibers that are around there. And personally, I've had great experience with it. From a professional standpoint, is there anything that you recommend as far as that goes?

Nathan Colonna:
Yeah, I mean, I've dabbled with all of it, from dry needling to chiropractors to percussion guns to stretching to mobility, mobilization things to FMS, FRS. But I think they could all be used for a certain time and a place but ultimately, like I tell people when they get chiropractors and adjustment or whatnot, the most important thing is for your brain to actually wire in the right position. Because you can have someone adjust your spine or, yes, this electro stim may help begin the process but ultimately your brain has to, in our opinion, has to wire in those positions. And it takes some work. And I'm sure you see in today's modern world, we want the quick fix and, yes, it may be for a time and a place if you're just chilling out but personally I haven't seen any better results than through deep, very deep, to the bone trigger pointing.

Jayton Miller:
Okay.

Nathan Colonna:
Yeah.

Jayton Miller:
Interesting. So I noticed that you also have a lot on sleeping. So what are some of the biggest tips that you would give to some of the listeners as far as sleep goes and optimizing sleep?

Nathan Colonna:
Great question. Yeah, I just posted a video about this a couple days ago. And for sleep it's, again, it's not a quick fix. We tend to go through something, like maybe having a tea or taking some herbs or CBD or whatever, melatonin. And they may have some short term benefit but long term it's going to take awareness of your environment. What have you done for many years that has created your sleep issues is the question I think we should ask ourself. Have you been staying up at night, late at night, for many years in a row? Or looking at these computer screens many times throughout your whole entire life?

Nathan Colonna:
Again, it goes back to the stress component. One, being aware of what is causing the stress response in the body, because ultimately that's going to impact how deeply you sleep, how well you sleep and how much you recover. But as far as practical things we could begin to do right now that I think are more longterm, making sure you're getting proper sunlight throughout the day because that's going to help drop your stress response and it's going to help suppress melatonin production for the nighttime and save it for the nighttime. Excuse me, not suppress it, that's what blue light will do. Making sure you're not around a lot of these bright lights at night. After the sun goes down or before the sun rises, try to be in an environment that nature intended it to be, would be a great tool to begin. Whether it's investing in a pair of blue blockers or having more incandescent and red light bulbs around your environment. Bright lights, again, there's multiple studies and information out there how these fluorescence and LED and computer screens and phones. Again, that blue light is telling your body it's midday sun.

Nathan Colonna:
So if you're telling your body it's one o'clock at 8PM or 9PM, imagine what that's doing to your circadian rhythm and then you're doing that day in and day out for many years. I was. And then that leads into the frequency aspect of EMFs, I think is an important topic to talk about. Because I used to sleep with my phone under my pillow when I used to have the wifi router outside of my bedroom, not understanding that it was causing another stress. And if you could, again, create that environment where you sleep as less stressful as possible, that's going to allow your body to come into that balanced state. But if your body's having to fight off these invisible frequencies from your wifi router and your cellphone, laptops, your body's not going to get into that deep, restful sleep because it's trying to fight off these invisible frequencies.

Nathan Colonna:
So maybe doing something, if turning your wifi router off helps or moving it away from you, making sure you're not, your head's not next to an outlet, that could cause some issues too from dirty electricity. Keeping your phone away from your bed, turning it off or airplane mode is a great tool that I've seen work for me and many people. And there's things you could do, like direct connect your laptops and computers as far as this invisible frequency. And then, going back to trigger pointing and posture. If you still have all these adhesions and knots and pain spots throughout your body and you're trying to go to bed but your body's still in a stress state. So doing deep trigger pointing before bed is probably one of the best things you can do in my opinion.

Nathan Colonna:
And combine that with some breathing techniques like we talked about before as a powerful tool you could do to bring that body back into its rest, digest, repair regenerative state. So trigger pointing and breathing are other great tools that you can do. Proper supplementation. Most people, again, are deficient in magnesium, the right forms. We know that magnesium controls 42% of our body's enzymatic functions. If you want 42% of your body to function properly, you need magnesium. But most people are deficient in it. Again, because it's getting burned so fast because we're constantly in a stress state, that we don't have any. And magnesium, again, is related to so many issues and one of them can be sleeping or the racing thoughts before bed or restless leg syndrome, recovery muscle spasm, cramps. So proper supplementation of magnesium. We recommend bicarbonate, of course. And chloride through baths and spray I thing is a great thing to do.

Nathan Colonna:
Also, making sure you're using ... I think what worked for me personally is using my bed just for sleep and not using my bed for just sitting on or just chilling on. Keeping my bed environment just for sleep. Cool environment is a great thing to look into, is keeping your environment where you sleep nice and cool, 60 to 65 degrees. Personally I also use, and I've seen results with this, is the Magnetico sleep pad. I don't know if you've looked into that but Dr. Dean Bonlie talks a lot about that, how that can help a lot of sleep. That's more of a later thing if you haven't done these basic foundation things. But if you're someone who's covered all your bases so far then maybe look into a Magnetico sleep pad. So we went through breathing, sunlight, posture, trigger pointing, proper supplementation. I think that's a great few tools to begin starting with.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Whenever it comes to light, I always tend to recommend red light. I usually do it first thing in the morning before the sun comes up and then a little bit before I go to sleep at night. And one of the things that I've heard is that red light helps you produce energy, so it's going to put you into that regenerative state that's actually producing more energy. Whereas, blue light is going to put you in a state to where you're going to be using that energy. So it's very stimulatory because you're supposed to be using that energy throughout the day to get things done. If you think of it in ancestral terms, they were out hunting or gathering or building stuff during the day and then at nighttime they were actually able to settle down and then get into that restful state. And they were typically around the fire, which just happens to be a spectrum of red light and orange light. So I think that's one thing that a lot of people don't pay attention to, especially since everybody's glued to their technology nowadays too.

Nathan Colonna:
Yeah. Again, it's something I think people need to educate themselves on because we're not going to change our habits if we're not educated on these topics. We're going to continue living the same way. So yeah, that's a great point. Another thing, I mean, we talked about prior is movement. If you're not moving enough, again, we're not moving enough in today's society. We have to move more, get more circulation. That's, again, going to help our body get to that relaxed state as well. So doing movement throughout the day, I'd say at least 20,000 steps a day. Most people are shooting for 10,000 but amp it up a little bit if you're still having some issues with sleep.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. And get out in nature too, that always helps.

Nathan Colonna:
Yeah, it's very simple. Simple things, right?

Jayton Miller:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Definitely. Well, that's really all I had to talk about today, is there anything else that you wanted to flesh out?

Nathan Colonna:
No, I mean, ultimately, what makes sense to me after trying all these crazy diets is just focusing on human physiology and the blueprint of human. With keeping the metabolic rate high, because no one really told me about the metabolic rate until I tried all these diets and focused on just removing the stress causing factors out of our life. Whether it's through excessive stress causing foods or a negative work environment that you may have to remove out of your life or where you're located as far as where you live, the type of people you're hanging around.

Nathan Colonna:
So many different areas that can cause this stress that simply just depletes our body of energy production and when you understand everything, every process to the body needs energy. Sleep, digestion, recovery, breathing, mood, whatever it may be, then simply just continue removing the stress causing factors and implementing more of these anti-stressful habits that, like you talked about in the first part of the video, is bringing your body back to that state work and do what it's meant to do and not just live off that preconceived notion of you can't do anything about it because your genetics or somebody told you that you have to live that way. You have to be that person to take ownership of your health and I think that's the most empowering thing to do is educate yourself, never believe you have it all down and continue to experiment with all of these tools, whatever resonated most with you. So yeah.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Where can people find some of your work?

Nathan Colonna:
Yeah, they can go to ... We have a website. It's mitigatestress.com, just as it sounds. We have a bunch of blog posts there, we have our anti-stress starter guide you could download for free where we give a lot of foundational habits you can begin to implement like trigger pointing, posture, breathing, nutritional habits, other lifestyle habits and tools. And you can find us on Instagram, we have business page called mitigate stress and then my Instagram page is my last name, Colonna_fitness. We also have YouTube channels, it's mitigatestress.com and mitigatestress2.0. We're always putting out content there. We do free consultations if anyone wants to just talk to us, get to know us more and share our experience of what we've been through. And we look forward to connecting with more individuals and like-minded people like yourself. So, again, I just appreciate the time that you've allowed me speak about all this and, yeah, thank you.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Well I definitely appreciate the time you put away for getting on here and letting me talk. Then, I guess I'll go ahead and end it here.