Michael Roesslein:

All right, we are live. We are here with Dr. Christine Schaffner. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today.

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

Oh, it’s my pleasure in.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah, it’s always fun. We actually just took 40 minutes to even start recording. Because every time we connect, there’s a lot to talk about. So today though, the recorded part of our Conversation is going to be about GABA and a new product that you formulated called Somnium. That I absolutely love that we’re adding to our retail shop. And we want to educate people on. So I think the first place we should start is, what is GABA? And I think we can go from there. I think people might have various ideas. They know it might be related to sleep or relaxation or something, but like what is GABA? And what is, what are its primary functions in the body?

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

Yeah, absolutely. So GABA is a neurotransmitter, it’s Gama-Aminobutyric acid and GABA has what we call an inhibitory effect in the brain. So it has that calming, sedative quality. People who are drawn to alcohol have that GABA like effect when we drink alcohol. And so GABA also is really important in our sleep. It helps reduce anxiety. It helps to regulate our mood. And I became really intrigued with GABA, because I treat a lot of patients with chronic illness, a lot of people with neurological illness. And we’re always talking about how do we improve sleep? Because we know sleep is so important for our health and our wellbeing and our brain and our research showed that, people within insomnia about 30% of them actually are deficient in GABA and also, pain syndromes and other things that are part of this overall chronic illness picture pain, fatigue, anxiety, depression, chronic stress, even headaches.

               These can be associated with low GABA. Another part of why I’m really interested in GABA is a lot of my patients can have even like a hyper excitable neurological effect from too much glutamate in their brain. And so GABA really helps to balance glutamate. And so people can have a deficient when they have a deficiency in GABA, all of these things can be impaired. So it was just area of focus and an area that we wanted to put attention to because it had this opportunity as we’re talking about to just really help people get better sleep, feel better mentally, emotionally, and physically.

Michael Roesslein:

You mentioned pain syndromes in that is it? So the inhibitory effect and the calming effect, aren’t just in the brain, it’s like systemically, right? Like the,

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

The GABA acts on cells throughout the body. So,

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

yeah, absolutely.

               And a lot of neurologists, if you go to a neurologist, they might prescribe a drug called Gabapentin. So it’s a GABA analog that helps the central nervous system, as well as the peripheral nervous system. It can help with neuropathy and pain, syndromes, anxiety, and so forth. So big pharma has tried to really take GABA and isolate GABA for this neurological effect as well.

Michael Roesslein:

Oh, but they can’t just sell GABA.

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

Conversation. [crosstalk 00:03:12]

Michael Roesslein:

You can’t patent to think that, well they could, but they’d just be with the supplement company like it would. I got you. So the Gabapentin is kind of their Frankenstein of GABA. Okay. And that makes sense. So you said chronic stress headaches, you mentioned about 30% of people with insomnia are deficient in GABA and that GABA deficiency can be correlated to a lot of those other conditions. How or why does one become deficient in GABA? Do we know that?

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

It’s a good question. I don’t think we know the exact answer. It’s not a straightforward, it is may be some other neurotransmitter imbalances, but whenever I look at any imbalance, especially neurotransmitter imbalance in the body, we look at epigenetics, right? So there’s an epigenetic phenomenon potentially that predisposes people to make less of this neurotransmitter. And that can be also through other methylation pathways and co-factors that are needed to make a GABA. So that’s one influence,

               Honestly, chronic stress because we really kind of blow through our GABA when we’re in these hyper stress states that are really pushing cortisol and pushing neuro-adrenaline in the body. And so chronic stress can be a reason that we have low GABA, of course, all sorts of gut issues. We absorb a lot of our budding blocks to make our neurotransmitters. So with the just rise in chronic dysbiosis, and leaky gut and all of the, gut issues that we’re dealing with day in and day out. So those are like the big buckets, there’s probably a lot more that we still have to, look at and understand. But I would say GABA deficiency is probably way more common than we realize by the time someone shows up at one of our offices.

Michael Roesslein:

Okay. That makes sense. And yeah, I don’t know anybody who’s under lots of stress these days, so I don’t think, and it’s incredible. Like I just, I did a recording of a podcast episode this afternoon with Dr. Christina Bjorndal who focuses naturopathic medicine for mental health. And she’s got a book called beyond the label. That’s great. That talks about naturopathic approaches to mental health. And she said, stress is what triggers manic episodes. It’s what triggers bipolar disorder. It’s like every, it’s just amazing. I’ve done like 10 recordings in the last few weeks because I’m trying to record them all before we move. And every single thing that, all comes back to chronic stress, chronic stress, chronic stress, chronic stress. And so the body, you said blows through the GABA when we’re chronically stressed, because it’s a calming agent. So it’s like, Hey, we need more of this. And then all of a sudden it’s we don’t have more of this. And so the tired wired people are probably the ones who are most efficient. Right? Or definitely that would be something to look at.

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

Absolutely.

Michael Roesslein:

Okay. And we’re talking today, your product Somniun is a topical products and it was interesting. That’s kind of what got my attention because I know of GABA and I’ve heard a lot of mixed opinions on GABA supplementation from various practitioners, many of whom who I’ve always followed and trust and saying, “This works great” or “It doesn’t work at all.” Or I, if somebody takes this and it affects them, it’s a blood brain barrier issue. And so I personally, when I’ve taken oral GABA, I haven’t seen very much effect from it. And I’m curious, why is that? Because I know some supplements they’re great orally. And then other things, if you take them, they don’t make it through the, to the right form. So is there, what’s the issue with, I guess, why create the topical? Like what were you seeing or why do you know about oral GABA that it just doesn’t work very well?

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

Yeah. And I think GABA is definitely one of those supplements. I think unlike other amino acid and neurotransmitter supplements, that there was such a mixed bag of response and there are, I mean there’s some pharma, GABA, liposomal GABA and I’m not saying those don’t work at all, but they were too unpredictable and there are, again, our patients tend to have a poor absorption or, a part of any supplement is getting that information to the right part of the body. So we can have a therapeutic like effect and we’re really created this GABA topically around sleep. And we can talk about all the reasons why, but we, I worked with another doctor, Dr. Marco [inaudible 00:07:45] , who’s a dear friend and a brilliant formulator. And he has other experience where we’ve created other topicals in there, and before. And it just really fit my knowledge base of really trying to get GABA into the blood brain barrier because what we’re doing is the GABA is combined with something called Chondroitin sulfate and Chondroitin

               Sulfate is actually, this can be considered a vegan product, it’s probiotic or microbial derived. It’s not animal based. And so the combination of the GABA with the Chondroitin sulfate helps to shuttle the GABA through the dermis. What we call the interstitium, which is this fluid space underneath the dermis that leads into the lymphatic system that travels to really because we’re applying it topically in the cranium, it can get into the brain more easily. And we were talking prior Michael, about when people have a positive experience with this product, they feel it right away. So we know that it’s fast acting when it’s the right thing for the any individual who uses this. And so the Chondroitin sulfate is kind of our secret weapon to shuttle the GABA across the blood brain barrier

Michael Roesslein:

Makes sense. So it kind of sneaks it into the lymphatic route cause the lymphatic has the direct line through which actually was just recently discovered. I remember when I started learning about the nervous system and the lymphatic system, there was no crossover. And I remember when that was announced if few years ago it like turned everything on its head like, “Oh, by the way, we found a lymphatic system in the brain.” which you’ve done a presentation in our neuro master class that talked about that. And it seemed that the functional medicine world was like, no kidding.

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

Everybody kind of already just could tell like just because of how things work that it was related. But yeah, gets into the lymph, into the brain. So then for the people who don’t respond to the oral, this is a way that, and I’ll vouch for the response is quick.

               I didn’t anticipate what happened when I took this and didn’t anticipate honestly, adding it to the shop. It’s a high price point as an expensive product. And I was kind of hesitant. And then I was telling you before we went live that I’ve been working with the same bottle of it for like, or jar, I guess it would be called for like four, five months and a little bit goes a long way. And with Mira, she uses like, I joke with her, did you even get any on there? Because it’s like almost imperceptible. And it’s really effective. And you mentioned before we went on air that you wanted to mention, sleep, sleep came up a lot in our brain and neuro master class as like deep sleep and different phases of sleep is kind of when the brain cleans itself.

               And there’s a lot of thought that when we don’t have these cleaning cycles in the brain, this is your neurodegenerative disease. This is your, Alzheimer, your dementia, your Parkinson’s like all these kind of things. There is a presentation on Parkinson’s disease specifically. And it was mostly focused on circadian rhythms. If you want to deal with Parkinson’s, it’s a circadian disease and it needs to be asleep. Because otherwise the stuff builds up in the brain. So something like this, you work with neurodegenerative diseases and mystery diseases with neurodegenerative neuro symptoms. Can you explain that correlation between being able to achieve these deeper states of sleep and like overall brain health?

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

Yeah, absolutely. I’d love to. And I, again, A bit very passionate about the glymphatic system and I’ve studied a lot. I try to really treat anybody who’s in my office to how to optimize this. And we were chatting about of course I use a lot of liposomal Miltonin and I even use transdermal or suppository melatonin and melatonin is great. It helps those initial parts of our circadian biology when we get into sleep. But when I was talking about the glymphatic system, I kind of stopped there for a while. Oh, take your melatonin. And do you know your EMF precautions? And then you should be good. And it works for some people that’s enough for them to get through the night and have healthy sleep. And of course, melatonin has all these wonderful detoxifying and neuroprotective effects as well.

               However, the more I was kind of going through my knowledge of the glymphatic system, those two stages of sleep and, so we have non REM sleep and we have REM sleep. And then part of non-REM is this deep Delta wave sleep. And it’s a really important part of our immune function, our endocrine function. And it’s another part in deep sleep as well as REM sleep. This is when our glymphatic system is actually more active. This is because of what’s going on physiology. This, we really in order for the glymphatic system to be working optimally, we have to achieve these phases and cycles of sleep. And so really the GABA, what we’ve learned is when we use Somnium that it really increases, we’ve used sleep trackers on people and we’ve seen it, doesn’t improve sleep latency, so falling asleep, but it improves quality and amount of deep sleep and REM sleep. And so that is super gratifying to me because feels like, okay, it kind of finished that equation of how to get people all of the benefits during sleep time to help have a healthy brain and to optimize the glymphatic system.

Michael Roesslein:

Perfect. And you mentioned too, before we came on that a lot of people have trouble achieving those states of sleep so this isn’t something like don’t just because you’re going to sleep and you’re waking up in the morning that you’ve had much time in these REM states of sleep. And you mentioned a link there between like trauma and hyper activation of the nervous system and how that’s almost like a negative feedback loop, like trauma hyper activation of nervous system prevents REM sleep, which perpetuates the nerves. So can you just a little bit to like where people are doing that kind of work or,

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

How this could be linked there too?

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

Yeah, absolutely. And what I’ve learned through kind of my research on sleep and just diving into all the reasons why this works so well, is that, that part of sleep called REM so rapid eye movement, that’s when, we actually are physiologically, really active. Like our heart rate goes up. A lot of more activity, we’re obviously paralyzed and dreaming them most actively during this time. And what I’ve learned about this is that in REM sleep, this is the only time our brain is completely takes a break from Neuro adrenaline. So when we think of like how stressed out we are? How much adrenaline a lot of us have going on in our body and our brain? REM sleep is kind of like a reset button that we can kind of detox from the neuro adrenaline, but unfortunately the chicken or egg, right?

               If you struggle, unfortunately from trauma or PTSD, you actually suffer or PTSD have more nightmare. They have poor sleep and they need that sleep in order to actually REM is not only helpful for not having a neuro adrenaline in the brain, but it’s also a time where the amygdala processes, emotion, the hippocampus all of these things are that limbic part of our brain is really working and helping us process and detox from these really horrific experiences. And so what they found is that if you have too much neuro adrenaline from trauma and stress, you can’t even, you have a harder time across, into that REM sleep time, but you need it, right? You’re the person who needs it the most, right? which is unfortunate. And so GABA actually helps to dampen or put the brakes or kind of like balance that more adrenaline and get to lower threshold.

               So then you can start entering into that REM sleep, the body and the brain can take a break at that neuro adrenaline. And you can have, healthy dreams, less nightmares and really process emotions. So I think that we don’t talk about recovering from trauma and PTSD in relationship to quality of sleep enough. when I learned about this, I’m like, oh my gosh, all my patients who have PTSD or trauma, we do all the things, right? And of course with all of your work, there’s so many wonderful ways to heal from that. But we have to put good quality sleep into the equation to really recover our brains. From that experience.

Michael Roesslein:

That’s a really interesting twist. And so many people with chronic disease are suffering from trauma and PTSD, whether you know it or not, like whether it’s something you’re consciously aware of and you’ve thought about, and you’re dealing with and you’re working on, or you have no idea. And you’re just confused as to why you stay sick a lot. This is a lot of people. So if that sounds like you, this might be something you might want to give a try. And I’ve noticed, I told you before we went on air too, that my dog has a reflux issue that happens in the nighttime and it wakes me up and I have to give her something to make that stop. And if I’m in a period of high, if I’m in a normal, like casual period in my life, which comes every once in a while, and I’m not at a high baseline level of stress which probably means not like excess Neuro adrenaline or anything else, I can give her that and then go back to sleep.

               If I’m in a stressful period of time, which I’m moving right now, launching a business, running another business, moving to another country, learning a language. There’s a lot of stress. And my brain at 2:00 AM, if I get woken up is like, cool. Let’s figure out all the things in your life right now at two in the morning and worry about them all and stress over them all. And then I can’t go back to sleep and it’s like…. I’ve noticed since I started taking this, I’m half asleep. When I wake up to give the dog the things, and then I give her that, and then I’m zonked back out in like 30 seconds, like I feel, and then in the morning I’ll be like, did I wake up last night? I don’t even, it’s like a dream. It feels like a dream. And that has helped me immensely because beforehand I was having lots of nights, at least two or three a week where I would be up at like three in the morning and unable to go back to sleep.

               And then my next day is a mess. I am like oh man, if you take away my sleep, I am like hungover for a day. And I can’t think or do anything I’m depressed. I’m in a bad mood. So it has made me invincible to the mid evening, mid sleep, wake ups, derailing anything just because I just feel like I’m sleeping. even when I wake up, I’m just like, oh, like if I had to wake up and do something, I wouldn’t even want to it’s.

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

I’m out, it’s definitely a deeper level of sleep. And that’s when I realize, Man, people need to know about this stuff, because it really, really works. I’ve taken the melatonin and I still take sometimes the liposomal, the quick silver, little pumps of melatonin and it’s helps me fall asleep pretty easily, but that does not have like the deep sleep effect that this stuff does. It is, and you’ve been using any in your practice now for a while.

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

Yeah. it’s been on the market since end of last year. I believe, So yeah. It’s been really fun to have the feedback and, testing out. We everything that, we produce, we test out on Our patients.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah.

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

And ourselves, and we felt really excited about this is just that equation of helping, especially for my standpoint of helping people recover from neurological illnesses is just like, what’s that missing piece?

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah.

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

And as we have both talked about like people are stressed out, I mean look at what we’re going through. And there’s an opportunity for people who want to try and then have the time to try this. Not only to help with sleep, but relaxation or meditation, you combine,

Michael Roesslein:

I didn’t know before this conversation that I could do this. and now I’m excited and I’m going to try,

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

Yeah. somtime we want, sometimes we have people do like lymphatic drainage in the office and apply it and just, we get into those deeper.

Michael Roesslein:

Oh, wow.

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

Yeah. So it’s nice.

Michael Roesslein:

Then it’d be really moving.

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

Yes. Yes.

Michael Roesslein:

Oh yeah. I haven’t taken during the daytime. I need to try it with like in meditation or maybe like if I’m going to sit in nature somewhere or just something where I want things to be calmed down, to be able to connect.

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

More so even in my because I’m starting to work with clients doing energetic work and trauma work and things like that. Like somatic work, I’m now even thinking like a little touch of it before that might be helpful too. Cause it’s like, if I bring like…. Energy into that space, it’s, disruptive to the process and I need to be in a place where I’m the ground for them. And so if you’re any somatic therapists or trauma therapists or energy workers out there, this might be something for you too. So,

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

Yeah, That’s a good point.

Michael Roesslein:

Cool. So the little jar, I am not kidding. Like we’ve had it like five, four or five months and there’s still a decent amount left in it. I’m not even almost out. So it says three months. I’m sure if somebody uses like a lot of it, it’s about three months worth of a supply, but mine’s going to be six, six months for me, for sure. So I really honestly think it’s totally worth it. And I’m just appreciative that somebody created it because it’s, I told you before we came on, so this isn’t just for the camera. I don’t feel a lot from many supplements and neither you said, does your husband? and he said, “oh, this stuff works.” Like all surprised, like, “oh, you made a product and it works.” But I don’t notice stuff like very much.

               I take a lot of things because there’s things that I know that are really good for me. And maybe over time, I’ll notice like some changes or some shifts, but like rarely do I ever use in anything that is like an immediate oh wow, this is strong stuff. And It really is. And it’s impacted my life in a positive way. So we’re looking to bring in more neuro brain nervous system related stuff, because almost all of our products are like gut and microbiome. And this is the first one that specific for that category. And because without the sleep, the whole neuro situation goes down the drain. So that’s like the building block. That’s the that’s start here.

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

With anything neuro related as sleep and then let’s troubleshoot from there. But if you’re getting good sleep, I would be willing to wager. Lot of your problems would shift a little bit with anything neurological.

               So absolutely just thank you. Thank you for, for creating it and, and everybody’s benefiting from it and thank you for giving us a little education on GABA. I took like a whole page of type notes really quick and yeah, I love my job is so cool. I get to like learn all these things direct from people and everyone’s like, how do you know all this stuff? And I’m like, because my friends are all genius doctors and scientists and I get to ask them questions a lot. So I love it. Yeah. Thanks. And, and everybody let us know what you think if you try it out, but it just goes just real quick. It just goes behind the ears and

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

Yeah, I am. I put, I put a little bit in again, a little, it goes a long way and you put on your temples and then behind your ears on the top of the ears, there’s the thinnest part of the skin. And then again, how it travels, it can be right. And there getting into the brain and you as you get to experience this product and get to know it you’ll know that your dreams are more, you can recall them more and again, wherever you’re coming into this from, but you can play around with it. You can actually start doing more intention work and dream work around, yeah. Just seeing what comes up and if you have a question or a thought or something you’re trying to process, you can have that intention before going to bed. And,

Michael Roesslein:

I’ve noticed that too.

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

Yeah, and so that’s a whole other, it’s sleep, it’s neurological, it’s all the things. But again, I think where we connect on many levels, Michael is also this consciousness piece and this consciousness movement and, I feel like I can sleep well at night. If we’re helping people really connect to those parts of ourselves that we don’t always hear or have the access to. So that’s kind of the other really meaningful part of this product that I enjoy.

Michael Roesslein:

Beautiful. Yeah. A lot of traditional cultures believe that our dreams are our connection to our own intuition, our subconscious, our own sense of source of God, of whatever you want to call it. And in our culture for a lot of reasons, we’re cut off from that. Because we get terrible sleep and we’re up all night and we have screens and we’re stressed and all these things. So it, it does have a deeper component to it and I’ve noticed the dreams are much more vivid and I recall them more and they’re different. Like it’s not as scattered and weird and all over the place. I have like cohesive, I’ve even had a few like more lucid dreaming experiences and things that it would be interesting. I used to practice that like stuff to do that. And I still struggled with it and I don’t practice anymore. I bet it would be easier now.

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

Oh yeah, you should totally use that. And I, with going down this rabbit hole, I got to interview a lot of, of people as well. And there’s this doctor who works with Dr. Wild, Dr.[inaudible 00:24:48]. And he has a beautiful book when brain’s dream, I believe it’s called. And he talks about modern life. where a dream deprivation time. And he talks about all those, all the things that you said. So yeah, I think our dreams are messages and, the more awareness we bring to them, the more that we can get out of them. And this is just a tool to help you experience them in a clearer, more coherent way.

Michael Roesslein:

Well, I’m grateful it exists and thank you for your work. And I always love connecting with you and, and taking the time to share this. And I couldn’t recommend this stuff enough. If you have trouble asleep or staying asleep or neurological conditions or anything that you listed around, anxiety, depression, headaches, pain syndromes. I know we have a lot of chronic pain people. It’s definitely worth giving in a shot and I want to know what you think too. So after you get it, let us know and we’ll have this transcribed down below if they’d rather read and we’ll probably put some more education on the site around GABA and stuff too, but we really cool information, really cool products. I’m excited for it. And thank you so much.

Dr. Christine Schaffner:

Thank you so much.

Reference source (1,r1, r2): https://ipothecarystore.com/products/somnium-nighttime-gaba-cream