Hooked, Wired, and Tired: The Hidden Cost of Constant Connection

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability, explicit or implied shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want Working on Purpose. Now here's your host, Doctor Release Cortez.

1:04 Welcome back to the Working on Purpose program, which has been brought to you with passion and price since February of twenty fifteen. Thanks for tuning in again this week. Great to have you. I'm your host, doctor Release Cortes. Most leaders are sitting on untapped human energy, and I help them unlock it. I'm an organizational psychologist, logal therapist, workforce advisor and the founder of the Gusto Now movement. But the title I really love is just much simpler and simply I traffic and energy, not the service level motivation or another engagement initiative kind, but the deeper force what I call Gusto, the life force for performance that drives commitment, perseverance, and genuine ownership of a shared mission in the clients we serve. You can learn more about as on how we can work together at Gusto dashnow dot com or my personal site at least Coortes dot com if you are just joining us. My guest is Justin High. He's a serial entrepreneur, product designer, and innovator whose career spans health, wellness, biotechnology, and consumer products. He has co founded multiple award winning companies, including Alastin's Skin Skincare and Gello Pharmaceuticals. Today, he serves as the president and CEO of Rebalance Health. His interest in hormone health, especially the overlooked role of cortisol, began with a desire to understand how modern stress impacts the body. He's written the book called Stress Nation, Escape the Technology Trap, Eliminate Stress, and Reclaim Rest. Will be talking today specifically about the role of hormones in our life and health, the technological trap, but he's going to help us really understand better and also a bit more about how his company, Rebalance Health, is helping to bridge the gap there. He joins today

2:36 from Boulder, Colorado, justin a hearty welcome too, working on Furgos. Thank you very much, thank you for having me. It's wonderful to have you, and I appreciate and celebrate what you brought into the world here. It's really beautiful. It was a beautiful read, and I loved how playful it was. I saw that the language was described as being playful and accessible and it is so thank you for doing that for us. Thank you, You're welcome. So I want to just jump right into it because I told you before we got on air that I took your advice from your book to heart and started thinking better about or more deeply about how I interact with technology and how it might be impacting my health. I have certainly suffered from those sleep problems that you talk about for lots of different reasons. So I think it's important that we situate this idea of the technology trap, with this little thing that we all can't seem to get far away from, at least to start our phones.

3:29 Could you start there? Yes, very simply, we look back to how we've evolved over the past forty years, and you really take a deep dive into how our life was much calmer, much slower, and how we have beginnings and endings to different parts of our day and where we are today, where there are no beginning and endings because we carry everything in our pocket, our little phone that gives us access to unlimited information and content we want it, whether it's good or bad information, or put that to one side, or just say that we have unlimited access and we weren't taught how to use it as humans. We just thought, ah, this will help me be more efficient. I'll work faster, harder, longer, And we've compromised our humanness in that process, and we've compromised our health. And to put it really simply, when Cortiso is elevated because of the device, it actually interrupts our natural rhythm that we have in our body called you know, the circadian rhythm. And what that does is it prevents us from falling asleep, and it prevents us from staying asleep. And the AHA moment for most people is you make your hormones predominantly in your sleep. So if you're not sleeping, you're not making the hormones. You need to function as a human being at your very best the next day. And that cycle repeats day after day, week after week, month after month, and that is why we have a massive hormone problem right now.

5:00 Hm hm wow, way to open it strong, justin Yeah, so let's just throw our phones and all of our our technological devices right out the window, and I will be so poppuyar with all the tech companies. You know, I had nothing against technology. I love it, I use it. We're using it right now to do this wonderful interview. The problem is we weren't taught how to use it. And I'm very blessed. I have a very very influential board of directors, and one of the women on my board was very close to Steve Jobs and was part of the Apple She ran all of the stores globally, and she said, Steve would hate how the iPhone has, what it's become and what it's done to our lives. It wasn't what it was about, but it has naturally evolved that way. And there would no instructions from any technology company on how to use this for our well being. It's always about more, more, more more, but never about restraint. Yeah.

5:57 Yes, And I want to dive in a little bit more as we go through the when we get into the technology trap into the next part of the conversation. But next loot to do is I want to situate for you. There's for you, and what you're teaching us in the book is that we have a master hormone and you call it it's cortisol, and you have resied yourself as its hype man because it gets a really bad rep Yeah. Cortisols a wonderful hormone. I mean, almost every molecular in the human body has a cortisol recepta, which means when that hormone is high or low, you feel it systematically head to toe. No other hormone operates that way. And if cortisol is high, it is able to stop the other hormones from functioning right simply as I explained, because if couso's high, you can't sleep, you can't make it.

6:43 So if it's high, you're not making testosterone, progestion, estrogen, HGH, you name it, it's not being made because cortisol's interrupting that natural cycle. That's why I call it the master hormone. But on the positive side, when it is imbalance, it's doing wonderful things where immune system must sleep, wake cycle. It's doing something for you know, sucerlose levels, it does everything for metabolism and so forth. The way that you should look at cortisol is it's your body's alarm systems. It's there to protect you and keep you safe. We're all at arms with cortisol right now because we think that it's you know, it's doing harm to us. But what it's doing, it's saying danger, danger, danger. There's too much stimulation going on here. You're too high. You need to calm down, and we're all ignoring it. We say no, no, no, no.

7:31 The tech company says, I can do more, I can be faster, and that's what I'm doing, and our bodies at a juxtaposition with cortisol all the time, and so if we can get cortisol to calm down, then it works in our favor and it does wonderful things. When it's in the alerted state, it's basically telling us you're in danger. And when our bodies are elevated in cortisol, that danger to the body seems like I'm running from a bonying building, I'm being chased by a bear, say the tooth tiger. It's designed to keep us safe. And when it does that, it goes, well, you don't need libido, let's turn that system off. You don't need metabolism, let's turn that off because I don't know when you're going to eat next. Right, you're running for your life, so I want to store as much of that fat as I can keep. So now all of a sudden, everyone's like, I can't lose weight. I'm gaining weight, I'm eating right, I'm exercising, but I can't lose the weight. Yeah, because your cornsole's high. Your body's not letting you burn that off because it's turned off metabolism because it thinks it's in a fital flight situation, not in a rest and digest environment. And so that's how cortisols interacting with our bodies, and we've all missed it. We all just think, why can't all I've got to do this diet, I've got to do that exercise routine, I've got to do it this way. No, we just got to learn slow down.

8:49 So a couple of things to build on that. So for listeners and viewers who don't know as much about hormones as you do. I was shocked to learn that we have what more than fifty hormones that work that run us and two if listeners and viewers, if you don't, if you're not familiar with cortisol to the extent that Justin is or I was before I read the book, it's also called the stress hormone or the fight or flight hormone response. So just to situate that for the people that are listening, and it's just kind of getting getting getting acquainted to it. So another thing that I thought was really interesting is you talk about Allison Grant Raycom's work in the book and you talk about how she says cortosol has a rhythm. We always start really high in the morning and then we have peaks and troughs throughout the day and then we're trying to bring it down at night. Is that Do I have that right?

9:32 Absolutely? So it's a natural circadian rhythm. As you wake up, your corso starts to spike. It's what wakes us up, and it goes up very quickly. It's why we we think the best first thing in the morning, we're on our best, we're fresh, and so cortisol definitely gets nice and high in spikes around made often. Then it really starts to come down on the other side of the curve and starts to head down. And if you think about cortisol and melatonin, if they were in a relay race, cortozo would hand the baton over to melatonin and then melatonin will say, yeah, it's time to prepare for sleep, right, But that means that cordozot has to come down to meet melotonin at the right level. But if cortisol's all the way up here and you know, melatonin's down here, they can't hand off that baton and we're constantly fighting it, and so what do we do. We'll take a whole handful of melatonin gummies. Maybe that'll force it to happen.

10:26 It doesn't work that way. So that cycle is high in the morning, peaks abround midday or so early afternoon, starts to come back down, and it should be as low as possible as we hand off to melotonin and we want to go to bed. So speaking that this sleep part that you talk about was really alluring for me. A couple of things that stood out. If you tell me if I got through one, you said, napping doesn't count because what we're going for is what seven to nine good hours for if we were tween the ages of eighteen and sixty four. You mentioned other eight ranges is too. But you also talk about how what you mentioned the sleeps, there are the ram cycles and the in rim cycles, and we go through four or five of those at night, and you said you want we need five, ideally five complete cycles.

11:10 Do I have that right? Yeah? I mean there's four to five cycles. You go from like slight sleep, you know, to more of a deeper sleep than into a RAM sleep, and then you rinse and repeat. Essentially, the most important sleep for me for tracking I like is deep sleep. You want it in for sixty to ninety minutes during an evening of deep sleep, because that's when you make it predominantly a lot of your hormones, your sex MNEs and so if you are not sleeping or you wake up in the night, you disrupt that cycle and your body is not able to make the efficient hormones you need to function the next day. And lots of analogies you could use, but people normally sleep the best when they're on holiday. Very simple.

11:54 You just think about that. When I'm on holiday, I sleep like a baby. Right, there's probably more intimacy in all, there's probably more play in our world, more joy in our world. Just that's very easy way of looking at what stressed us to us and how it impacts us. And so when you can't fold a sleep and you can't stay asleep, and that's the keyword, stay asleep. Especially as we get older, your hormones are compromised. And that goes into a whole other conversation around entitlement that we have as we get older and our lifestyles that we choose as we get older. And actually it's harder for us to get seven to eight hours of uninterrupted DAVE as we get older, and that's the most important time.

12:39 Well, I want to start We're going to talk more about this in the next segment, but I do want to start talking about technology. I learned so much from your book justin Oh my gosh, so much and this idea of the effect of blue light on us in terms sure of how it increases our cortisol. So I told you I was working on this. I was trying your stuff last night and I put my phone away for two hours ahead before I went to bed, so I didn't have the blue light. And then I was thinking of myself, what do TV count No TV counts as blue light, you know, And I was trying to go through the list of things that I could actually be looking at before I went to sleep. So I got a book, justin old fashioned book and Help, and it was great. It was actually it was very relaxing, right, and I didn't I also put some nice lavender spray in my pillow, which I loved, but it was great.

13:28 I normally used that times and suddenly in to kind of knock out some emails or look through make sure I didn't miss a text or whatever. That's how I use it. And so I didn't do that last night, and I slept. Okay, I can't tell you. I can't give you the reaving report that I watched all the way through, but I think it's it would be great if you could also teach our listeners and viewers just how does this blue light impact the course level? What's so bad about the blue light? Basically, blue light is the same frequency that the sunlight emits, and so when your body sees sunlight, it wakes up and it triggers more quartoso. It's it's really that's the simple way of explaining it. Now, you can buy blue light glasses that you can wear that kind of showed your eyes from the blue light. I mean even light bulbs to some degree you have blue light. And then screens have blue light in them, and it's just a mant of we never used to sit in front of screens the way that we do today. We're never in front of screens for this amount of time. I'll give you one statistic that's really eye opening. The average teenager college student uses their phone not for work but for entertainment purposes, social media and other games and stuff for an average of six hours a day. Now, if you're sending your kid to a four year of college, that means one entire year is sat in front of the screen doing nonsense.

14:47 Wow, yeah, no, it's incredible. And even just what you just gave us, the just any idea of huh, why can't I go to sleep? If I'm looking at this blue light which acts like sunlight to me, I I respond to sunlight. Man, I'm up and at them. And I'm definitely one of those people. I love the getting out of movie and throughs in the sun. That makes so much sense for me. Justin just realizing and making that correlation helped me so much, Like, okay, I could put this phone down. Yeah, I mean wonderful. We never used to do that. We used to actually have conversations, talk to one another, watch read books, you know, watch your kids play, you know, play games. That type of interaction is far and few between compared to sit in front of the TV watching a movie, unlimited content. And to be quite honest, why are we watching the news? Like why watch the news in the morning, because that's going to spike your quartos are like nothing, Why do you want to watch the news?

15:45 There's never any good news on the news ever, right, And so now it's like watching a horror movie before you go to bed, all right, suspend. It's the same effect you spiking your your brain, you're spiking your quarters are you can't turn your brain off. And that's what we want to do. We want to put ourselves into a calm state so that we can actually fall to sleep and stay asleep. And the way that we work these days is asinine. I mean, there used to be a news hour. Now there's a news station, and now there's twenty four to seven access in use on any device that you choose. Yeah, yeah, so true. Well, let's let what we've shared so far sink into our listeners and viewers while we take our first break. I'm your host, Doctor Release Cortez.

16:26 We're in the air with Justin High he's the president and CEO of Rebalanced Health. We've been talking about the importance of hormones in our life, specifically cortisol. After break, we're going to dive more deeply into the technology trap that we're all in. We'll be right back. Doctor Release Cortez is a management consultant specializing and meaning and purpose and inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to a lease a l Se at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

17:46 Thanks for sting with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Release Cortes, as I am dedicated to help them create a world where organizations thrive because they're people thrive and we're led by inspirational leaders that help us find a contribute our greatness and we do business that betters the world. That I keep researching and writing my own books. So one of my latest came out is called The Great Revitalization. How activating meaning and Purpose can radically and lige on your business. And I wrote it to help leaders understand the today's very discerning workforce. What do they want and need from you to give their best and stick around and then I give you twenty two best practices to equip you to provide that through your leadership and your culture to satisfy them. You can find my books on Amazon or at least coore test dot com if you are just now joining us. My guest is Justin High. He's the author of Stress Nation, Escape the Technology Trap, Eliminate Stress, and Reclaim Rest. So I have to have you talk about this because I just said I'm an organizational psychologist and I was really really taken aback by what you wrote about with in one of your chapters called stress, anxiety and clickbait, especially when it comes time to I'm going to situate this in the world of intense anxiety, depression, and loneliness that we're in. You taught me something very interesting about people who are trying to make sure they're keeping to themselves through technology and how much worse that's making them.

19:05 Yeah, I mean, they're designed to keep you single. They're designed right, I mean, that's the whole point of these apps is not necessarily, you know, to connect you with someone that would be lovely, but most of the time it's not. It's designed to keep you continually clicking and looking and never content because the way that we used to connect was we'd go on a date, or we'd go on a second date. We'd move much slower in our worlds, and we'd be more selective, and we'd wait before we became physically intimate. But intimacy I like to break down as into me. You see intimacy, it's beautiful, right, you look someone in the eye, you have a conversation, you get mentally stimulated before you get physically stimulated. But then came along swipe left, swipe right, right, and we lost it right, and then the art of the gift of the gap, of learning how to talk to one another, the fun nonsense of pickup lines, the engagement, the wit, the kind of the dance that we would play in order to engage with one another. It's gone. It's vanished.

20:20 It's now, do you tick the boxes what I'm looking for? You don't know if even ticking the boxes is the right approach, but it's the way that we've become very systematic and very clinical about choosing a partner versus, Oh my goodness, opposites attract. There's a reason for that, right, And instead of looking for our clones and so Unfortunately we've become alone, and COVID didn't help that. It exacerbated that, and it took us to the degree and we never really came back from it in the way that we probably should have. There's a lot more fear in the world than they ever used to be. And you think about what life was like in the eighties and the nineties and even you know, two thousands, it was a lot more carefree and a lot more joy, a lot more playfulness. And I long for that and people to do that.

21:07 Yes, And one of the many things I like about your book is that you help us understand what's working against us in the world with especially with regard to technology and how it's working with our homewanes, but you also tell us what we can do about it. And so you also say that you know, real life dating is coming back because it works. So going out and choosing to be part of organization, tract or meet your interest and meeting those humans organically who might be interesting to. You absolutely and you're attracted. To, Yeah, like who's that, That's he's cute, who's. That exactly exactly? So I think this is. Important and I know for me, I actually have become much more intentional about leaving. You also talk about this too in this chapter about you know, get how the best thing that you can do is to go out and connect with people, Go be involved in your community, be involved in your neighborhood. And I'm doing more and more of that too, because one thing I've learned by hosting this podcast is the pandemic did help us ratchet ourselves down, so rewired our brains and our nervous our nervous energy, nervous systems, so that would became harder for us to be able to go out and socialize. But then that's just what we need, is that kind of connection.

22:16 But then you take it one step further justin which is really interesting. You have a section in that chapter where you're talking about how technology has allowed anxiety disorders to really take up to a new realm, because then you could take avoidance behaviors to an extreme. I hadn't thought about this, but if you're always somebody who's suffering from anxiety and depression, and you've got anxiety so that you know so great, you can order peace it without talking to anybody's They even leave it on your doorstep and you don't even have to answer the door anymore. Right, But to your point in your book, you say that a therapist would often say exposure to their anxieties is usually a form of starting the process of healing. And if this, if technology allow just to recluse so far, how do we get.

23:03 Out of that hole? Yeah? Just think about what's block Because the Starbucks used to be. I mean, Starbucks used to be a place you go to. Social medfa third place or when they call the third place. Yeah, now you go there and everyone's head down to the laptop on the phone. They're rarely actually having conversations with one another. It's a place to go and work, like almost like what the library used to be. Yeah, you have a section here that which made me laugh because you know, as a single person, I always whenever I go out to eat, I always sit at the bar by myself. Not by myself. I sit at the bar so that I can talk to the people around me, and I've had some of the most amazing, like fantastic conversations by meeting complete strangers. I don't sit at the bar, and there are occasions when I will work for a bit, but then I at some point I can't help it. I have to connect with people the bar, so I have to left because my daughter teases me incessantly about this.

23:58 Well, it's it's a skill that you have that she hasn't evolved to yet. I mean, it's like going on an airplane. We used to have conversations with the people who are left in our right now people put in the headphones and the big ones now and say, you know, stay away from me, right right, right, yeah, cool to me. Right. You have some amazing conversations with strangers. On the plane, and I have. I've had actually a few people that I met on planes on this podcast because I got to know them and I was like, oh, you got to talk about that on my program, right right, so for sure. And then we got to talk about how you know your You have a section it says your smartphone is smarter than you think and it's playing you. So this is where we speak to the idea of how whatever you're searching for, just you know, if you're worried about something, concerned about something, you know, all those searches just give you more additional material on that topic which could continue to make you concerned. So speak a bit about just you know the danger there from a try.

24:50 I mean, I think every physician on the on the planet is afraid of the Google MD that you've done. You know, you search that particular ELM comment, I'm like, I'm dying. No, you just have a cult, right, But everyone believes they've become an expert. And the problem with the Internet is you only get good information out of it as to what's been put into it. And unfortunately there's a lot of misinformation that's been put into it. And so even AI is getting a lot of things wrong right now because it's basically searching that database of online content and not all of that is correct. So what you're getting is kind of you know, it's it's more you know, fearmongering. It's the end of the world doomsday stuff, when really it was just a cult. The deal is just a cold.

25:44 So you also talk about, and we've sort of mentioned this before, but when you talk about when followers replace friends, and it's such a good point, how many of those followers, if you, if you had a dinner party, would actually show up to it. Well, you know, look, humans are by nature are curious about what's on the other side of the fence. Right. The green is always grass out over there. That's just kind of human nature. So we used to compare ourselves to a handful of individuals within our peer group. Now you're comparing yourself to millions of people online who are only posting what they want you to see. And I love my grandparents because they gave me so much wisdom and some pearls that I would like to share one with you, which is if everyone in your peer group who thought their world was wonderful, if they all were able to put their problems into the middle of the room, I guarantee you you'd pick your own problems back up again.

26:42 Wow, because you never. Ever know what's going on. And I tell my kids all the time, the internet and social media is simply what people want you to see. They don't always share the negative, the tough. They want you to look at look at me, Look how wonderful I am. Because they're trying to provide a service, a fantasy, a alternative world in which you keep coming back to see what they're going to do next, what's going to happen, What are you doing, what are you using? How can they be like you? But that might not be what's really going on behind the scenes, and most people know this inherently, you still get sucked into it. Yeah, I read it. I like, you know, in real life so much better. But you know, one of the other things you talked about is, you know, you can go to any any line that you're in, the grocery line, in the Starbucks line, and people aren't as you said before, they're not talking to each other. They're all looking down at their phones. And for whatever reason, justin I don't know when I started this, but it was one of those kind of things where I've just got a radar for when I see people actually connecting and talking, and I love to come and celebrate it. And so like being out for dinner with my daughter and her boyfriend some time ago. We're in this beautiful Italian restaurant here in Dallas, having a beautiful time, and I can't help noticing the couples that are actually having conversations.

27:56 Yep. So I look at my daughter and she looks at me. She's like, yep, I know, go do your thing. So I walked over to the table just in front of us, and these people have been talking and connecting the whole entire time. We haven't hed. There was no phones in sight, and I walked up to them and I said, excuse me, I don't mean to interrupt, maybe just a little, but I couldn't help noticing that you have been talking together the whole entire evening. Are you newly together? And they said, we've been married twenty five years. And I turned to the woman and I said, what do you love about this man? And she said, I get to be one hundred percent authentically me. There's no pretending. It's so free, Yeah, one hundred percent. I tried to look at the man, and now he's starting to get emotional, and I said, what do you love about this woman? And he said, I can't imagine starting any day without her that beautiful. It's wonderful coming over to celebrate that, you know, I get so they get to be celebrated and they nobody's ever said get lost, go away, I want to hear from you. Nobody's ever done that. They feel seen and celebrated, and I get the benefit of witnessing this beautiful connection and then just stepping into their space with them. It's like, I think it's the wonderful antidote for today's That's what I'm saying.

29:04 Yeah, absolutely, and you know, not to be self promoting here, but I've been married and with my wife for over twenty six years. Wow, And we get commented on or people come up to us almost daily. We go to the gym every morning together at four point thirty. We're always giggling, We're always smiling. It is my personal objective. Over the past five years, I gave myself the challenge. I wanted to make my wife laugh a minimum of five times every single day, because what we did when we were flirting and dating can become, you know, forgotten very quickly with the mundane routine of life, kids, stress, financials, mortgage, you know, work, you name it. And so often found myself I didn't connect with my wife and I missed that, and so I act like an absolute buffoon half the time around her in order to make her laughing giggle, which fills up my cup, fills up her cup and is absolutely addictive. And we get people at the gym going, how are you guys always laughing? How are you guys always smiling? How are you you know? How are you doing it? That? You always hear? And it's just not the same without one another. And I think that's what you get from being connected, truly connected and understanding one another.

30:16 And that's what marriage for me is about, and it is for her. And again, I think joy is contagious. Happiness is contagious. I completely agree. In fact, let's go ahead and grab that, because I love that you have got a section in your books which is joemo is that is the new fomo so and I love that. I'm ready that you've used the word joy several times in this conversation already. Yeah, joemo is the joy of missing out versus the fear of missing out, And the fear of missing out goes to the social media. I mean, social media is all about the fear of missing out. That's why everyone is scrolling the length of the Eiffel Tower every single day on their front right. The average consumer touches their phone over twenty six hundred times a day, and the heavy users of a six hundred and so your fear of missing out? What happened? Why didn't I do it?

31:03 What's going on? And you compare that to the good old fashioned soap operas and shows that we used to watch as kids, whether you know, throw some crazy names Dallas or Dynasty or whatever. They bay watch you know, you name it. It was once a week, once a week, so you waited. Now people binge watched a whole series of a weekend. They sit on the couch and so I think it's really interesting that we look at Jomo and it's something that I find that the younger kids are beginning to embrace, like there's actually a joy in being present. There's a joy in being in the moment and not always being what am I missing? And I think part of that is the awkwardness around silence. People don't like silence anymore and they feel avoid with my phone that you're beginning to build that kind of memory muscle about oh I'll check this, oh i'll do this.

31:55 I'm expecting a text or an email or a phone call or a social media post, and that's that fear of missing out versus I don't want my phone. And if you've noticed, there's actually been a recent up search in flip phones the providers now because kids don't want to be online. It's a phone, it's there for my convenience, not a you know, I'm not a slave to it, and I don't have to answer it, and I don't have to respond to every text, so I don't have to answer every email within thirty seconds of receiving it. And it's that I'm happy where I am right now and I will deal with it later when it suits me, which is a wonderful mindset in contrast to every time I get a vibration, a buzzer, ding, a sound, I have to pick it up and deal with it. That spikes our cortisols. Spikes are stressed spikes our adrenaline. Everything is going on and it prevents us from being in the moment, and it messes with our homeows.

32:58 Thank you for just bringing out home in a way that I haven't really seen anybody really wrap up so nicely in a box with a nice pretty bow on top. Let's grab our last break. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortez. We're in the air with Justin High. He's the president and CEO of Rebalance Health. We've been talking about how technology traps us in some of the ways that we can get around that. In this last segment, when we come back from our break, we're going to talk about what he and his team are doing at Rebalance Health. We'll be right back, Doctor Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author.

33:44 She helps companies visioneer for a greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her at Eliecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is Working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to a lease A lisee at Elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

34:30 Thanks for jaaning with us, and welcome back to Working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. As you know by now, this program is dedicated to empowering and inspiring you along your journey to realize more of your potential. I mentioned in the last segment or the last break, that one of my books just came out, the Great Revialization. It contains those twenty two best projects to help you elevate your culture for your organization for today's discerning workforce. What I did for you as I created a very simple three page assessment that you can pull off our website GUSTODESHNEU dot com and it'll help you understand the extent to which you're mediate those standards if you are just now joining us. My guest is Justin High He's the author of Stress Nation, Escape of Technology, Trap, Eliminate Stress, and Reclaim Rest. So for this last bit, I wanted to dive into one of one of the latest ventures that you've been working on here. I know you've been a serial entrepreneur, but let's hear the story of what led you to found Rebalance Health.

35:23 Well, that's actually quite easy. The book stress Nation is the why behind Rebalance Health. I wrote it based on the recommendation of the board to explain the why without being salesy. I think you can tell there's nothing sales in the book, very straightforward, talks about the cause and effect, the why, and some lot of tips and techniques on how to do it. But Rebalance Health is all about supporting our natural bodies are basically our nervous system in handling stress by leveraging supplements and the supplement that we developed was very unique to cortisols. It's proprietary blend. It's been clinically tested. We've got over four IOB clinical studies on the product, and I'm not talking about two or three people in the study. I'm talking hundreds of people in the studies to prove that we can get our product into the body and that it actually works. And the way that the product works is it's a basically a mint. He suck on it like a lozenge and it's a mint, and it has nothing but adapter gens and Chinese herbs inside of it, and they taste like an altoid. And what we were able to do was be able to offset what technology is doing to our nervous system. So it helps kind of bring us back into balance. Since the company is called Rebalance, and we have specific formulas for men, for women, and for sleep.

36:48 And what we learned very quickly is that by bringing the natural circadian rhythm back in alignment with our natural body, and by leveraging some of the tips and techniques in the book, we were able to get people back to sleep and be able to calm people down. And the big win that we had was. We actually have unprecedented clinical data for women going through perimenopause. We were able to reduce perimenopausal symptoms significantly. I mean, women were reporting in eighty percent reduction in hot flashes, a seventy eight percent improvement in mood, and sleep rest recovery. Even libido had improved. Weight gain was a big win as well.

37:32 Women were seeing a up to two pan size reduction over a twelve week period simply by bringing their cortisol levels back down into the natural levels so their body can sleep. This is all about sleep, I know it. We talk about cortisol. It's all causing effect, right, and we're so used to I'm going to take the medication per headache. I've got a tummy ache. I'll take that medication. I've got the flu, I'll take that medication. Well, most of the elements we suffer from today all stem from high cortisol, which is prevent us from sleeping. Because we're humans, we need to regenerate. And that's the bottom line. This is all supporting ultimately sleep where you naturally will make the hormones you need and then all of a sudden, miraculously you feel better. I mean, if you stayed up all night tonight, doctor Cortez working on another book, and you did it the night next night as well. You would not feel so great the next day versus if you just slept, you would feel amazing. And that's because of your hormone production.

38:28 Well, it occurs to me that you're also in the business of halting divorce or straining relationships. Right. So one of the things you talk about in your book, which I think is incredibly compelling, and listeners and viewers just think about this in your own life for a second. You know, if you get to be you progress a little bit through through the years as a woman, and your homoones start changing. In such your libido is really either non existent or very very low, and sex just isn't something that you're interested in or it's painful. And yet man on the other side, they have the little Blue pill helper which can help them want to have sex anywhere, anywhere, anytime, anywhere. So what a. Horrible combination, right, I mean, this has got to be somebody's got to be laughing about this somewhere, right, And so you're helping to address that really significant societal issue justin.

39:15 Well, i'd like to speak to that. To some degree. Men go through menopause as well. It's called Andrew you say that, yeah, yeah, and they start in their thirties, mid thirties, and it ends in their seventies. So men go through it over roughly or forty year period, and the symptoms are identical to women's, but on a significantly less intense scale. Right, maybe for one percent, very very little. We get half flashes, right, Guys that throw their covers off at night and hot they were having a hot flash. Men gain weight, they lose their libido, you know, they lose their hair, and they lose their memory, and it's all very very similar. They get moody, et cetera. Women, unfortunately, are very blessed that they go through this special transition that ever might work a period time, and the symptoms are exacerbated, you know, whatever percentage you want to put, it's ridiculously unfair, no question. Finally, I actually put myself through exaggerated Andrew pause by taking my estrogen to zero, and I had hot flashes every literally forty five minutes for four weeks. I said, I can't do it anymore.

40:19 So I have a lot of empathy. Relationships are difficult at any stage in life, but definitely as men and women go through this midlife transition, which is a beautiful thing. It's just like puberty, it's just you know, an older phase. I think it gives a lot of women and men a lot of freedom to change their outlook. You have the you know, I don't give a f you know phase of my life for women, and I think it's beautiful and wonderful. But with the right sleep and the right support, whether it be HRT, whether it be rebalanced health, whether it be you know, anything like that, it's very manageable and it's very easy to get through this process with the right support. And the problem is women haven't been given that support at all. And right now they're the largest demographic of women going through perimenopause that has ever gone through. It think's over one hundred and fifty million women a year enter perimenopause. And there's a lack of information out there, and so I've really been doing my very best to try and educate everyone as to what is actually going on, and there's so much misinformation out there. It's challenging to get through the noise. But it really comes down to sleep and I know women say that's a chicken and egg. Right. I can't sleep.

41:35 That's why I'm having all these symptoms. I can't make the hormones and you know, and so I want to feel better. But it's sort about all the techniques I've given you in the book, all the tips, and they're not easy. I mean we're talking about you know, what does alcohol do. Well, it's a stimulant, it's not a sedative. A lot of women and men take wine at night and guess what, two or three hours after you've consumed, it turns to sugar. Now you're awake. Right, If we have a heavy mail, we drink lots of the evening, we're aging. Our bladders can't do what they used to. Our body is going to wake us up in the night to use the bathroom. So you kind of have to set yourself up for success. So there's many kind of things that we've taken for granted because we just felt entitled or we deserved it, and that is actually counterintuitive to what we actually need as we go through this aging process.

42:25 Well, I can tell you from my own experience, it just it became such my normal that I didn't know to question it. Justin. I mean, I was waking up at two thirty three o'clock in the morning and I was completely unable to get back to sleep until five thirty or so, and I just accepted that this is, you know, the reality of it all. So it became such a normal part of my life that, you know, I think that's also what happens to it becomes insipious in terms of our incipient, in terms of our everyday life. Absolutely, we've never questioned it. We've always thought it's the norm, and it's very easy to get in that and when you actually you know, when I was doing the research, I'm like, well, of course, this makes so much sense. But there's so much noise out there because we've got so much technology and new toys being thrown at us, it's so easy to get distracted.

43:13 So true, Well, as we come to a close here in the show, i'd love it if you could share, you know, maybe as an example of someone how they they've used their products, their life has been changed. I'm sure you have plenty of case studies, but just to bring it to life for us. Yeah, we get a lot of women calling us or emailing us and telling us that we've changed our life with our supplements in our book, because you know, they're like, I've got my life back. My kids like me again, my husband likes me again, my men going. I'm not grouchy anymore. I am sleeping. I understand it. I got to play with my wife and my kids. I finally feel like I used to feel. And I think we've just let society has just evolved in a way that we think more is better and faster the way to get to more, and we've never questioned at what expense that is. And so you know, my only guidance is try and play more, put the phone down. And one last analogy is would you drive your family across country get in four hours of sleep? No, you wouldn't because it wouldn't be safe. So why aren't we making decisions about our companies and our financial lives with the same lack of sleep. We're not making good decisions. And so if we can take a breath, we can slow down a little bit and we use it for better, you know, for the goodness. I put the take the frick in social media off your phone. I put it on my

44:44 laptop only so it's purposeful. It's on my computer. I need it for work or use it or look at it, but it's not on my phone. So I'm not going to sit on the toilet for hours and get lost to go down the rabbit hole and all of a sudden my legs are number right. We don't do that anymore. We have absolute purpose for how we use technology. Here here, Justin. That is amazing. I have to say, I'm so grateful. You know. One of the things I told you host an is show for eleven years, about ninety eight percent of my guests come to me through a public relations representative or somebody who's helping you socialize your book. And I wouldn't have any other reason to know you Justin, and you've written something really powerful. I got a ton out of it. You've already helped me as I told you, so, Thank you very much. I don't know if you know this, but the show system by people around the world who generally tune in because they're trying to become better versions of themselves as a human. They want to become better leaders, or they want to run their company in a better way.

45:36 What would you like to leave them with? Just envision the person you want to be and make it happen. You don't have to listen to anybody or anything. It's all within yourselves. We've always been marketed to in the past thirty years in a way that we believe that we're inferior and that we don't know. But most people's intuition are spot on and they get it, they know the right things to do. We just get caught up in the noise so easily, and simply getting up from your desk and going for a walk for fifteen minutes outside without your phone, let your thoughts percolate. Naturally, you'd be amazed at what you can achieve and what you can do when you put your mind to it.

46:20 And we don't need to rely on AI, and we don't need to rely on this. You naturally gifted, and I think people forget that, and we've become lazy and we rely on the technology to such a degree now that it's actually got bigger consequences to not only those decisions, but our health and our psyche completely agree. So grateful that you're in the world helping us navigate this. Justin thank you so much for coming on working on a purpose to talk about this. Thank you doctor Cortez. I appreciate your time. Very welcome. Listeners and viewers. You are going to want to learn more about Justin High, his book Stress Nation, and the workiness team do at Rebalance Health I recom. When you start reguisitting their website, it's rebalancehealth dot com just as as it sounds, rebalance health dot com. Last week, if you missed the live show, you can always catch it we recorded podcast. We were on air with Michael Yang talking about his book Coming Alive on the Ride as his life as an entrepreneur. So we talked about his immigration experience from South Korea when he was fourteen years old, some of the experiences he had writing forty thousand miles by motorcycle and what they taught him about himself and his life. And we also heard about how he nurtured his entrepreneur appetite and his career and ultimately sold his two year old company for seven hundred and fifty million dollars. Pretty amazing, very inspiring. Next week we'll be on the air with Ryan Godfredson talking about his book Becoming Better, the groundbreaking Science of Personal Transformation. See you. Then, let's continue leaning into discovering how to elevate your operating system as a leader and create destination workplaces where legendary

47:52 business takes place. Let's work on Purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes, each week on W four CY. Together we'll create a world where business operates conscientiously. Leadership inspires and passion performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there, Let's work on Purpose.