(upbeat music) - Just wish you could sleep through the night without
being jolted awake with the need to pee? Well, if this happens
to you once in a while, it's probably no issue. But today we're gonna discuss
why this might be happening on a regular basis, either every night or several times a night. We'll start with men first,
but women stay tuned. This is for you as well. First of all, the most
common obvious cause of men getting up to go in the night is in
enlarged prostate gland. Now, an enlarged prostate
gland is incredibly common. 50% of men over the age of 50 actually have an
enlarged prostate gland and it jumps to 80% of men, 70 and older. Now, even scarier, one
in nine men will deal with prostate cancer in their lifetime. We recently heard about this
happening to King Charles and notoriously to our
own Secretary of Defense, so it's a very common problem. Now, are there symptoms that you might have an enlarged prostate? First of all, one of the
more common ones is you find yourself getting up once or
twice at night to go pee. The other maybe not so obvious is that it takes you
a while standing there to get your streams started
and you have to wait and think about it. The other thing that's incredibly common is if you have an enlarged prostate, you actually don't completely
empty your bladder. Now, here's a trick that I've learned from my
urology colleagues right down the hall from my office in Palm Springs is that once you finish, go do something for 10, 20
minutes and then come back and try again. You'll notice this, you'll
have actually quite a bit of urine in your bladder, and particularly if you're planning on making it through the night, men, go to the bathroom about 20 minutes before you plan on going to
bed and then do it again right before you go to bed. But one of the things
that you are not going to believe me about is that an enlarged
prostate is not something that is normal as you get older. I'll say that again. It is not normal to have
an enlarged prostate as you age. And there is now significant, impressive evidence that
prostatic hypertrophy, prostatic enlargement is
actually due to leaky gut, to intestinal permeability,
to literally bacteria and bacterial particles going
directly from the rectum to the prostate. They sit right next to each other and that inflammation in the prostate is what causes prostatic hypertrophy. Now, I'll give you a personal example. I used to have an enlarged prostate, but when I started on my
program, miraculously, my prostate shrunk miraculously. Well, it's not miraculous at all. I stopped seeding my
prostate with bacteria and bacterial particles, LPSs and the inflammation that
accompanied that died down. So I am approaching my mid 70s now and I don't have enlarged prostate and I don't have to get up at night. So think about that the next
time you get up at night and are bothered by that. Maybe just maybe changing your diet and eliminating a leaky gut is
just what you're looking for. Now, how do you deal with this? Well, the easiest way
is to get my new book, "Gut Check" gives you the whole
plan of stopping leaky gut, or you can come and visit at episode 164 right here with Dr. Mark Stengler's conversation, who gives great advice on how to deal with an enlarged prostate. Are there supplements that can help? There are actually a number of interesting supplements on the market that are certainly worth trying, but you're not really going to impact the underlying cause of this. Are there foods to help? Well, the best foods to
help are actually the foods that feed friendly bacteria and avoiding the foods that
are going to cause leaky gut. And just to reiterate, try to stay away from almost
all grain products except millet and sorghum. Try to stay away from beans
unless they're pressure cooked or fermented the appropriate way. Try to stay away from the
nightshade family of vegetables, potatoes, eggplant, tomatoes,
bell peppers, goji berries, or peel and de-seed them or ferment them. And women I haven't forgotten about you, women do feel a need to pee
in the middle of the night. Now, in my practice, I
actually see a lot of women that have irritable bladder, and there are various
theories about what causes irritable bladder, and obviously the first that comes to mind is a acute or a low grade urinary
tract infection, a UTI. Now where UTIs come from has been changed subject to debate with the discovery of
the human microbiome. For years, we were convinced that most urinary tract infections came from either honeymoon cystitis, and one does not need any
imagination to imagine where that comes from. But number two, most women were blamed for wiping the wrong way,
wiping up rather than down. But in fact, most urinary
tract infections are now been traced to particular strains of e.coli, which are prevalent in
factory farmed chicken. Now, how in the world is that possible? Well, I told you women that pay attention to what was happening to men, the e.coli that you eat colonize your rectum and they have a direct
shot from your rectum to your bladder, and they set up shop inside your bladder. Now, what's interesting
is that e.coli is capable of not only causing
this bladder irritation and infection, but there are some fairly simple maneuvers to make these guys less likely to colonize your bladder. Everybody knows about the benefits of cranberry juice in
urinary tract infections and avoiding urinary
tract infections in women, but the active ingredient
in cranberry juice is a compound called D-mannose. It's actually an
interesting sugar molecule that coats e.coli, that prevents them from
establishing themselves in your bladder, establishing a biofilm. And I've found it particularly
effective in my patients. So the dose is 500 milligrams and I like people to take
it at least twice a day, once in the morning and once a night, and it's been very, very
useful in my practice. However, there are a lot of women and men for that matter
who have irritable bladder that has absolutely nothing to do with a urinary tract infection. And what's been interesting
to me is that many of my patients with irritable
bladder are sensitive to a type of lectin that I've not written about
in any of my books previously until "Gut Check," because I didn't want people to think I was crazier than
everybody thinks I already am. This class of lectins
are called aquaporins and there won't be a test, but aquaporins are present in potatoes, white potatoes, they're
present in spinach, they're present in corn,
they're present in soybeans, they're present in tomatoes, and they're present in bell peppers. Oh, and by the way,
they're present in tobacco. You'll notice a number of the things I just
named are nightshades. These are different
than the regular lectins in that they can actually
cause bladder irritation. And one of the surprising
things is that a number of, particularly my female patients, they're big time spinach
eaters or french fry eaters or baked potato eaters, and
they love their tomatoes. So this is another reason
to be on the lookout for these culprits. Now, bad news, with regular
lectins, you can peel and de-seed these
particular nightshade family and eliminate most of the lectins, but unfortunately, the
aquaporin is in the flesh. And so for you folks, I
want you to actually get rid of your peeled in de-seeded tomatoes, your peeled in de-seeded
peppers, your tomato sauces that are peeled and
deeded, your tomato paste, and just see if that makes a difference. I think it might surprise you. We've had some really good success with this in our female patients. I know you want to have
your spinach salad, but if you have an irritable
bladder, try this trick. Get rid of the spinach
for a while, get rid of your french fries for a
while and stop eating popcorn. Now, if none of these
signs are your issues, here's what else can be happening. People who have congestive heart failure or who have swelling in their feet or their legs, one of the things that happens when you lay down is that all that fluid gets reabsorbed from your feet and legs and it's pumped
back to your heart because you're now flat and your heart has to dispose
of all that extra fluid and it hits your kidneys. So if you have swelling
in your lower legs, that's usually the culprit. One of the things you can
do early in the evening is stretch yourself out on a
couch while you're watching TV. Or better yet, do exercise snacking where you just do some jumping jacks or dance to a music for
two to three minutes and pump that extra
fluid back to your heart before you go to bed. Now the second thing that
happens is great number of us unfortunately drink a lot of water or drink alcohol for dinner
or late into the evening, and that water has to go somewhere. And so first things first. Don't have that glass of
water before you go to bed. Secondly, please stay up
after drinking alcohol because another thing that's
gonna really wake you up is that alcohol wearing off
about two to three hours after you go to bed and
you'll be wide awake. Finally, many, many people unwittingly are woken up by sleep apnea and that sudden need to take a breath because quite frankly,
you've become hypoxic. You have low oxygen levels. One of the best ways, if your partner tells you you're snoring, please take that seriously,
that snoring is not normal. Get yourself an Oura Ring,
which I have on here. They're relatively affordable. I have no relationship with
them except I'm a big fan and an early adapter and Oura Rings can
actually watch the number and report the number of
times you have episodes of drop in oxygen saturation
on your nightly report. And if you see that as a common occurrence or if you see that that episode correlates with you waking up wanting
to go to the bathroom, then it's time to get a sleep apnea study. And they're actually easy to obtain. They can even be done now at home. You don't have to be overnighted
in a sleep apnea center. So last, any other tricks? Well, Dave Asprey recently
mentioned using raw honey or MCT oil to help. I certainly haven't seen
that in my practice, but I'm not a huge fan of raw honey in the first place because, sorry, it's still fructose. Does it have some interesting prebiotics and possibly probiotics? Yes, it does, but I think the benefit outweighs the risk or the risk outweigh the benefit. Again, try D-mannose,
particularly if you're a woman, and see what happens. Okay, now I know what you're saying. I just wake up at two,
three o'clock every morning and it has nothing to
do with needing to pee and I can't go back to sleep. And I hear that all the time
from a lot of my patients. First of all, once again,
please, please, please, do not have a heavy meal or drink alcohol and then go to sleep. It's nearly a guarantee that you'll be up in two or three hours. Many of my patients are
woken up with heartburn or GERD, and that's what wakes them up. One of my tricks, and remember I was a
cardiothoracic surgeon for most of my career, and we
operated on people with GERD, heartburn, and one of the things that we learned very early
is we could prevent a lot of heartburn and GERD by having our patients
sleep on their side, their left side. Now, what happens when you
sleep on your left side is you actually, you trap a
lot of air in the top part of your stomach called the fundus, and it actually pushes up
on your left diaphragm. And it's actually one of the main causes of hiccups, by the way. But if you sleep on your left side, that air is basically forced out of your stomach in the form
of belching or burping, and that air no longer is going to actually push contents
out of your stomach. Now, how do you sleep on your side? Well, get yourself some big
pillows and put one behind you and one in front of you. There are actually devices, pillows that you can buy on the
internet that force you to sleep on your left side. Finally, get yourself a lot of dogs. We have four dogs on our bed and invariably one or two of the dogs luckily
lean against my left side, my backside and kind of
force me onto my side. Lastly, I should mention, get
yourself dogs that don't want to get up in the middle
of the night to go pee. That's a very important
consideration that I'm still trying to teach my rescue dogs to do. Finally listen to your
spouse or significant other. If they tell you your
snoring, take that seriously and get yourself a test because that, quite
frankly can save your life. And one of the classic signs of sleep apnea is this waking up at night and can't get back to sleep. Finally, it could be
something very physiologic around four o'clock in the morning. Normally a hormone called cortisol, the arousal hormone begins normally rising to get you ready for the morning. It raises norepinephrine adrenaline to get your blood pumping to actually raise your blood pressure so that when you step out bed being prone, you don't faint when you fall outta bed. The other thing it's trying to do is mobilize sugar so that, believe it or not, you
don't faint from lack of sugar when you get up and
you'll have plenty of glucose before you break your fast, break fast to get you going in the morning. And sometimes it's just
a simple sleep process that is entirely normal. One of the benefits of having dogs is that they will usually
get you up around sunrise. And quite frankly, my wife and I get up about five
o'clock in the morning because that's the time to
get up if you have dogs. So those are the tricks. If you find that late morning, you know, like four o'clock in the morning, five o'clock in the morning,
you just can't get back to sleep, that's actually a sign that your cortisol is working properly and a lot of times get a dog and you won't have to fight it anymore. Now, if you're still
experiencing all of this, please, please, please, this is something
you do not want to ignore. Men, a big prostate can
actually damage your kidneys because you do not empty
your bladder properly and urine backs up in your kidneys. It's called obstructive uropathy and it's a fixable condition
that you want to fix. 'Cause I've seen too many men damage their kidneys often
to the point of no return because they put up with
the fact that they have to get up two, three, four times a night because of this big prostate. So if that's you, go see a urologist or at least talk to your family doctor. More amazing episodes just like this one. Watch now to have your
body absolutely convinced that there is not a famine,
that things are ripe for having a baby or growing
a baby or feeding a baby. And this is not the time
for time restricted eating.
