The Live Lightly Podcast

Jessica Franklin (00:00)
Hello and welcome back to the Live Lightly podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Franklin. Today I'm joined by Dani Alger. founder of the DIG Method, which we're going to talk about today, along with light, circadian rhythm, and sleep. Welcome to the show, Dani. Thank you for joining me.

Dani (00:19)
Thank you, I'm excited to be here. love having conversations with you so far. We've recently met and boy, we're both such nerds when it comes to all things health.

Jessica Franklin (00:28)
Absolutely, And today, I know it's not going to be much different because this is one of the hot topics that's out there right now I think, people know, sleep is important, but why? So we're gonna

Go down the rabbit hole But before we do that, can you tell us about yourself and your own personal journey? as I got to know you, I just love getting to know people's stories and you definitely had a couple of key moments in your life that opened up your awareness to the fact that our bodies, when we are aligned with mother nature and living in balance

we can achieve and accomplish so much more than what we are told from our traditional Western medicine, perspective, we'll say.

Dani (01:11)
right.

Jessica Franklin (01:12)
Yeah,

yeah. So if you could tell us about those moments in your life where you realized, hmm, this is something that I can do on my own.

Dani (01:21)
So really quick, I'll just tell you what the DIG method is. DIG stands for Deep Internal Growth. And it's a process I created to teach people the basics of the human operating system. mean, sadly, most humans these days know more about their operating system of their iPhone than their own human operating system. And I definitely want to change that because technology and even our health care is

Jessica Franklin (01:25)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (01:52)
as good as it's ever been and getting better, yet the health of Americans declines rapidly and it's continuing to climb rapidly. I would say, I just gave a talk yesterday, talked about this. It's been 40 years ago this summer.

⁓ 1985 and I was 13 almost 14 going into my freshman year of high school and my dad had been having a few dizzy spells didn't think much of it but he had gone to hit golf balls at the driving range one afternoon and assuming he had another dizzy spell because he pulled over before he got there and had a heart attack in his car

and he died on July 8th, 1985. He was 41. had turned 10 days before he died, he had turned 41. And so that, oh, so young. And I knew it was young then, but now as a 53 year old, I am like, oh my gosh, it's so young. And that...

Jessica Franklin (02:46)
That is young.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (02:57)
immediately right then and there I made a decision that that was not going to be my fate and so I've been at this for 40 years and my health journey wasn't always so healthy. You know was in the 80s our

Our best advice was, you know, it's simple math, eat less, work out more. And so I'm kind of an overachiever in those areas. So I, you know, when I wasn't getting the result, I ate less and worked out more, not realizing I was working so far against my biology. I see it now. you know, in college, I studied biology, psychology and nutrition, still didn't really put all the pieces together.

Jessica Franklin (03:25)
Mm.

Dani (03:42)
Still lots of hustling through life, not sleeping enough, not probably not eating enough. And then fast forward to mid 90s, I'm running a business. had a coffee business that had me getting up at 4 a.m. and I would work out before work. So that's why I got up so early work. I teach spin classes after work. I was newly married, social, you know, doing all the things, just running on youth and adrenaline.

Jessica Franklin (04:11)
you

Dani (04:12)
But it wasn't until I wanted my husband and I tried to get pregnant. And I was, you know, in my mind, I was so healthy because I was lean. But, you know, thinking that meant health. Now I know, I know, you know, different.

Jessica Franklin (04:22)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dani (04:28)
But we tried for first year, nothing. Halfway into the second year, we finally decided like we're gonna have to do something here. So we started fertility treatments, did three rounds of in vitro that all failed. I this is just an extreme blow emotionally, financially, we were young. And so I just had to take a step back. I'm like, let's just stop and figure out what's going on.

by the grace of God, someone told me about this acupuncturist that was actually an MD in China, came here to work as an acupuncturist. And I was desperate. I'm like, I'll do anything. And whether it was the acupuncture or her wisdom of telling me, you have too much fire in your system, you need to slow down. Your body doesn't trust you because you're not sleeping enough, you're not having enough nourishment.

Jessica Franklin (05:19)
Hmm.

Dani (05:28)
eating healthy it wasn't enough and ⁓ excuse me and I just I had to slow down so my I ended up selling my business

Jessica Franklin (05:30)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dani (05:39)
and I started sleeping like a regular, you know, on a regular schedule. I ate more frequently and I learned to walk instead of run in so many areas of my life. And after a full year, we went back and had another round of in vitro and it worked, got pregnant with my boy, girl twins, and Kara.

And that was when, you know, bringing them, they were in the NICU and a nurse in the NICU told me, you are going to, if you want any kind of life and health, you are going to have to get these babies on a circadian rhythm because they're so messed up from being in utero, from being in, they were in the NICU for about three weeks.

and all the lights and bells and beeps and interruptions, they were so turned around. And so I did a deep dive into what circadian sinking was all about. And man, these babies were sleeping through the night by three months, which technically they were only like a month old because they were two months early.

Jessica Franklin (06:40)
Mm-hmm.

Dani (06:41)
And I just started to see, with all that, I started being able to put the pieces together of what does it really mean to be a healthy human?

Jessica Franklin (06:48)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dani (06:48)
and he's 19. And

So once I got myself aligned with my biology, had these babies get in line with their biology, we were all sleeping well, we were in a nice rhythm, 14 months, the twins turned 14 months, found out I was pregnant with our third baby naturally. So it really is...

Very cool to realize that when you get yourself lined up with how we're supposed to function, your body does what it's supposed to do. Not always, but most of the time.

Jessica Franklin (07:19)
Mm hmm. Yeah.

it just goes to show you, you were trying so much before and you really dialed in and knew that your body needed more sleep, more fuel and less stress. And those are huge things that I think anybody can relate to even now and even more so now than probably back when you were

Dani (07:41)
so now.

Jessica Franklin (07:42)
having this happen 23 years, 24 years ago. Yeah, I feel like it's not only still a problem, but it's, I think a deeper problem because we're just not learning how vitally important sleep is. And not only how important it is, but how do you achieve good sleep because we're not taught anything about circadian rhythm in school.

Dani (07:51)
It's a bigger problem.

Jessica Franklin (08:06)
And even now, and you have children that are have gone through college, and I don't even know what they're required to learn about health in college. But my son is now finishing middle school, and he hasn't had any education on food, or quality of food or anything about what food is meant to be.

Did your children have anything in high school or college

Dani (08:31)
they had a little bit,

twins in their senior year took a class called human body systems. And they started learning quite a few things. But I also feel like there's that point where it's good to, they need to learn it, but then learn why these things are so important and how they function as a whole. And.

Jessica Franklin (08:54)
Hmm.

Dani (08:55)
You know what you think what you eat how you move and how you sleep. That's part of my dig method process how it all relates because what you're eating is going to affect how you think and it's going to affect how you feel and how you sleep and then you take you know

You know your your nutrition is going to affect everything the way that you move or you don't move throughout the day is going to affect You know, I always say it's it's the chemistry all four of those things create a chemical reaction in our brain and body and It could be working for you or against you and so knowing these systems the basics at least and that's what I say Like I don't start with I don't want people getting lost in the in the weeds, right? I want them to know the basics

Jessica Franklin (09:29)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (09:40)
so they can understand how much control that we all do have over the chemistry we have running through our brain and body. depending on that chemistry depends on how, you know, whether you gain weight. And when I say chemistry, mean mostly hormones because they're chemical messengers. They're floating around in our system telling each system what to do. And with our modern culture, this hustle culture, most of us, including

Jessica Franklin (10:00)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (10:10)
our kids are marinating in stress hormones. So your cells, your organs, every system in the body is marinating in stress hormone. How do you think we're going to feel and operate? Right? And then, and then we start thinking that, you know, I know we're talking mostly about sleep, but it's like, it's all connected. And the food that we eat, it, you know, 70, more than 70 % of the food when we walk into a grocery store is packaged processed.

Jessica Franklin (10:13)
Yeah, big time.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (10:39)
junk that our body doesn't recognize. So we're creating new cells trying to repair our body with food that our body doesn't even recognize. So of course we're not functioning at our full potential and not you know and going back to sleep, sleep starts the first thing in the morning.

Jessica Franklin (10:41)
Mm-hmm.

Absolutely.

Dani (11:00)
And it starts with our lifestyle days previous, right? But really good sleep starts in the morning. And that's that circadian rhythm. And I just don't think, like you said, I don't think that people are learning young enough the importance of this. I mean, my kids, my gosh, they tease me and roll their eyes like crazy throughout their life because...

Jessica Franklin (11:08)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (11:27)
I was talking about this stuff and they now know it. And of course now that they're older, they understand the value of knowing it. But I was very serious about their sleep from day one. And I think that you teach humans how to be good sleepers. I think we all get in patterns so easily. being a good sleeper, have to, you can reteach your body at any age, but you have to understand how to do it. And that's, I would say always for

Jessica Franklin (11:29)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (11:57)
Step one for anyone is get yourself connected to circadian rhythm.

Jessica Franklin (12:02)
Yeah, and let's dig in to that But to rewind a little bit to piggyback on what you were saying about nutrition and how important it is to not load our bodies with all of these foreign chemicals and ⁓ seed oils and all of the things in packaged and processed overly highly processed foods that our body doesn't even recognize. That's all precursors to like you said,

the hormones and the balance that your body is constantly trying to strike. And if your body is out of balance in one way, because it's constantly using its energy to try to process and use whatever this stuff is that we're putting into our bodies for energy, it's actually causing a cascade of different effects that

our sleep is absolutely impacted by amongst other systems and things for sure. But yeah, going back to saying that, you know, our diet is so important and vital for many reasons, but it's also a piece of the puzzle when it comes to sleep. Like we can talk a little bit about, you know, the quality of food is important so that it's not bogging down our system.

⁓ and using up so much energy to try to figure out what to do with all of this foreign stuff. But on the other hand, it's not getting the nutrients that it needs to perform in an optimal way to give us all of these hormones that we need to support the things that our body should be doing in a natural way and sleep is one of those things. And especially

when we eat late at night, you know, we're bumping up close to before we want to go to bed.

What do you feel about eating right before bed? I always have like a two hour minimum, but preferably three to four hours before, before bed is my cutoff, preferably in an ideal world.

Dani (14:02)
there's so much here because you had started with the food thing and boy, we

could make this a three hour podcast easily. ⁓ Starting with what you were saying about nutrition and our body makes energy from the food we eat. That is what a metabolism is. People think of metabolism like, you have a fast one or a slow one. If you're fast, you're skinny. If it's slow, you're heavy.

Jessica Franklin (14:15)
Mm-hmm.

So much more.

Dani (14:26)
It's so much more than that. metabolism is

like a busy little factory taking in the oxygen we breathe and the food that we eat and converting it and making energy, fixing our body parts, renewing, restoring, doing all the things that we need to be healthy functioning humans. And when we're feeding it chips and soda and whatever, all the things that just completely light our gluten.

Jessica Franklin (14:43)
Mm-hmm.

Dani (14:56)
up, which I mean, that's a whole again, it's like, it's so, you know, that book, when you give a mouse a cookie, like there's all these things that are going to happen, right? And, uh, but, but I'll try and keep it simple, but you know, it's like, we have to be thinking of all of these things because they all affect the other. So yes.

Jessica Franklin (15:00)
That's another conversation, yes. But I know, right? Good analogy.

Mm-hmm,

they do.

Dani (15:18)
Light,

so going back to the circadian rhythm, light dials us in our brain, light calibrates the brain, food calibrates the body. So they're both very important. And so again, going back to good sleep, the best thing you can do is maximize morning light, because that's going to set you up for circadian sinking throughout the day. Wake up, throw back those curtains, better yet, I always say get outside.

Jessica Franklin (15:21)
Okay, yep.

Correct. Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (15:45)
The first thing

I do even when it's cold is I walk out, stand on my deck, do a couple of stretches, do some breathing, get that even when it's cloudy and nasty out, you're still getting that good light and that is what's telling your brain. It's morning, right? We have that, the very beginning we get that cortisol hit, which I talk so much about cortisol and I would try to really remind people it's not a bad guy. It's necessary. It's like the kickoff to the circadian rhythm. You should get a cortisol.

Jessica Franklin (15:57)
Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Dani (16:15)
all

hit between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. and then it should go down throughout the day until it spikes again the next day. However, we tend to, you know, we're not running from saber-toothed tigers but we have emails and hustle and schedules and rushed and all these things and most of our threats nowadays are coming from our head.

Jessica Franklin (16:23)
Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah, gonna be late.

Dani (16:38)
And so those are the kind of things to manage. But

in going throughout the day, is gonna calibrate the body. So you definitely wanna eat during daytime. And I spoke yesterday about this because so many people, not only are they dealing with sleep disruption, I mean, especially in our late 40s, 50s, 60s and more, ⁓

Jessica Franklin (16:50)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (17:03)
we are dealing with, you know, when you lay down at night and acid reflux because there it's the the chemistry that it takes to digest our food is really intense chemistry and you don't want it coming back at you. So when you eat late into the evening, you're digesting food and you will not you may fall asleep, but you're not getting into that deep restorative sleep if you're digesting food because I always explain one

Jessica Franklin (17:16)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (17:33)
process suppresses the other. You can't be doing both. You cannot be getting into good sleep and digesting food. And even though you stop eating with your mouth, at a certain time, your body takes

Jessica Franklin (17:35)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (17:47)
three to four, depending on what you eat, sometimes five hours to digest. I like, and again, I live a normal life and go out to dinner and do our things, but for the most part, I like to have at least three hours before bed. And I know that's a tough one because, stressed out Americans, one of our coping mechanisms is food, eating food. And it becomes habitual, but I can't even tell you how many people, yesterday and I...

Jessica Franklin (17:51)
Mm-hmm.

Dani (18:17)
room of

almost 30 people, how many people raise their hand when I said, how many of you have digestive issues and have, you know, things coming back at you when you lay down at night? And it's, you know, to think about it is like you really need to have it be a change of the guard, right? When your stomach is digesting food, let it do its thing. The best thing you can do is be up moving around, helping that whole process. Because when you move, it does help you digest your food easier. That's why I've made a habit of always moving after I eat.

Jessica Franklin (18:27)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, totally. It's also good for your blood sugar and insulin and all of that. Yeah, it's so important to move for at least 10 minutes after you eat, at least.

Dani (18:49)
So then, Oh, 100. All of it. Yes. Yes. After you eat, at least

if you can move.

10 minutes. And it doesn't have to be a gym session. It could be doing laundry, you know, just bopping around. Just don't sit because you're right. Like your, your, your legs and your glutes are going to be your biggest muscles and they're going to soak up that glucose. So then you have to use less insulin. So again, ⁓ my gosh. ⁓ that's another podcast. That's another podcast.

Jessica Franklin (19:04)
Mm-hmm. No.

dishes, walking around the yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yes, which is so important. And that's a totally different conversation that we could have. But the

food and the energy that your body is taking to digest it as you're trying to be in your sleeping hours, if you're budding that right up against wanting to go to bed.

Dani (19:34)
Right.

Jessica Franklin (19:38)
Your body is using all of its energy on that digestion process rather than the energy on what it should be doing which is all of the things you were saying before rejuvenating and repairing and rebuilding and restoring and I like to throw in there detoxing because this is a big big time for our bodies to be Getting rid of and detoxing the chemicals that we take in in our day

Dani (19:54)
Yes.

Right?

Jessica Franklin (20:03)
whether you live and eat super clean or not, we're exposed, we live in this world, we're exposed to so many chemicals. And this is a very important time for our bodies to be going through that detox process as well as some other processes that are very important for repairing cells

Dani (20:09)
so much.

One thing I say to my clients is that we have...

So we don't have all the control, but we have an enormous amount of control about the chemistry that we're creating. I said that a little bit earlier. like you said, chemistry is mostly hormones, neurotransmitters, the things that keep our body functioning, keep us dialed into that circadian rhythm. And so going back to eating before bed, when you're eating and digesting food, there's some very important chemistry that we need to fall asleep, and that is melatonin.

And when you're digesting food, it suppresses melatonin. So that's another reason why. Stop eating. have, you know, I've helped people come off of, it's so habitual to be continuing to eat, eat, eat, eat. It's not hunger, it's habit. So if you can have, for sure.

Jessica Franklin (21:13)
A lot of it is, agreed.

Dani (21:16)
If you can

have your dinner, maybe have whatever it is. If you need a little something sweet, usually if you have a sweet tooth after dinner, it's a good indication that your insulin is too high. And that's again, another podcast we can talk about. But when you get everything in balance, you probably won't have that sweet tooth. And so it's again, it's just getting out of habit. So I started doing stuff like making, making a cup of tea. That was kind of the signal to my body, like, okay, we're done. That's it. And so having a little

Jessica Franklin (21:28)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Uh-uh.

You

Dani (21:46)
like that. Some people like to just brush their teeth so they have you know have that minty flavor and it kind of cuts the cuts the the craving. But we need to allow ourselves to you know shut down that digestion, put that away, give it a rest and let that melatonin start coming in. And one thing that you know going back to getting my baby's circadian sinking was we put every light in the house on a dimmer.

Jessica Franklin (21:53)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (22:14)
We still live in that same house and we still do the same thing every night when it know when it starts to lights you know starts to get uh darker outside we put all the lights on a dimmer noise distractions screens i'm not going to say we're off screens because that's that's hard we're working on that but

Jessica Franklin (22:17)
Mm-hmm.

Dani (22:32)
then you allow your melatonin to come in naturally and you start to feel tired. But even more important after that is that when you fall asleep, you want to get into deep sleep.

It was very interesting yesterday in the group because a couple of people had wearables, which I'm a huge fan of. And the gal pulled up her data on her or ring and she's like, well, let me see what I got last night. And she looked up her deep sleep. She's like, I got 12 minutes of deep sleep. I was like, ⁓ man. But that is something that is so good because what you track typically improves if that's your goal. And she's like, is that bad? I'm like.

Jessica Franklin (22:50)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (23:14)
That's not good. I said it's good to know. It's good to know because you can work on it. So again, why?

Jessica Franklin (23:15)
Ha

What do you like as an

ideal for deep sleep?

Dani (23:22)
I mean, you know.

I'm 53, so I don't get as much deep sleep as I would hope to, but I work on it. I would like to see at least an hour and up to two. mean, especially younger teens, young adults still building a brain. They need that. their brain and body, you know, but they're not getting into that. so going back to like what you were talking about, the repair, the detoxing, and this is something

Jessica Franklin (23:35)
Mm-hmm.

Dani (23:54)
I think I told you I volunteer my time doing workshops at high schools because I want them to understand what's going on because it makes them stop and think like, maybe I won't grab a snack before right before dinner because I want to, you lot of them athletes and they want to be high performers. You won't be getting that growth hormone that we produce during deep sleep. That human growth hormone. It's like I always say it's like a self cleaning oven for our brain and body.

Jessica Franklin (24:16)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Dani (24:22)
and

it goes in and it gets rid of damaged cells. And we don't want damaged cells floating around our system causing problems. We wanna get rid of them. And that's what getting into that deep sleep and you're gonna have your best deep sleep between 10 PM and 2 AM.

Jessica Franklin (24:32)
Mm-mm.

Yes. Yeah.

Dani (24:41)
That's your

best sleep. You certainly want more than that, but you need to be in bed. I really say by 1030, that's, you know, in getting...

Jessica Franklin (24:49)
Mm-hmm.

Dani (24:52)
You need to probably be in bed about eight hours to get a good seven hours because, know, we're just especially 40s, 50s, 60s, you know, we just, we get disturbed for whatever reason, hormonally or whatever it is, but to get that good sleep. And I do track it and it's so motivating to really see. And that's what I have lost most of my clients with wearables because I think sometimes we forget.

Jessica Franklin (25:14)
Mm-hmm.

Dani (25:18)
what it's like to feel good. We just get used to feeling and performing at 70%, 60%.

Jessica Franklin (25:22)
Get used to it.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dani (25:29)
And when you

start to feel good and see results in real time with your data, it's like, man, this is fantastic. And so, you know, teaching even these high school kids, listen, because they were telling me that a lot of them don't even get home from their sport in high school until like 930. And so they get home, they're starving, so they eat, eat a big old meal and not always healthy. Hopefully most of them are healthy, but not always.

Jessica Franklin (25:48)
Hmm. Yep.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (25:59)
and

then they spend the next two to three hours doing homework because they've got such a huge homework load. And we've made this normal in our society and we wonder why our kids have so much anxiety and depression. It's like the very, the worst thing that's happening and the reason why it's causing, you know, causing that anxiety and depression is being dysregulated from their circadian sinking.

Jessica Franklin (26:10)
Yep.

And it's so sad that our culture doesn't recognize sleep as important enough to, I know that they're, they are starting high schools a little bit later now. I think it's eight 30. My son is about to go into high school and his new school will start at eight 30 in the morning versus 8 AM. I don't know how to feel about that because that just encourages them to stay up later.

Dani (26:27)
It's so sad.

Jessica Franklin (26:55)
and then also they're getting out of school later. So then sports start later. I'm like, I don't know about that. Right. Because there's maybe good intentions to accommodate the fact that they're wanting to go to bed later. But I think that it's, it's overlooking the big picture of like, we need to be sleeping between 10 PM and 6 AM minimum. Really. And especially at that age.

Dani (26:58)
Right. It just shifts everything. now there I know. I mean, I think it's there's good intentions, but.

Jessica Franklin (27:24)
Because like you said, their brains are still developing. Their bodies are still growing oftentimes and developing. And for athletes, their muscles are repairing and building and so on and so forth. There's so many things and that all happens while we sleep. It doesn't not happen in our waking hours.

Dani (27:29)
Right.

And that happens in sleep, only in sleep.

Jessica Franklin (27:45)
something to support circadian rhythm that we've started doing about a year and a half ago, So many of us are staring at screens all day for work. Kids are staring at their screens more and more and more during the day at school than they ever have. And also the overhead lights are all.

blue light intensive as well in probably 99 % of the school settings. you know, fluorescent lights that are very hard on our eyes, but also hard on our energy and our bodies because of so much blue light. And it's supposed to start dwindling from early morning, that blue light that we get from the sun to wake us up and get that cortisol.

should be slowly dwindling down throughout the day. Whereas like if you're in an office or at school with those lights, it's just constant and your body doesn't know when to start slowing down. So I like the glasses, that filter out blue light from screens

Dani (28:46)
Uh-huh.

Jessica Franklin (28:48)
I get lenses that actually are able to filter out 100%. There are some on the market that are definitely much less expensive, but they filter out less as well. So they might be slightly less effective, but I'd say better to have something than nothing to support that natural amount of blue light that we should be getting versus not getting.

And then at night, I love the lenses that are red. They call them campfire lenses. And so I really like that because.

It's hard, like you said, to say, get off your computer, get off your phone, and stop watching TV at eight o'clock at night, which is kind of when we should be shutting those things down. And that's hard for most of us to do that. So I love putting on those glasses around 8 p.m. because then by 9.30, everybody's ready to go to bed because their brain is producing all the right hormones.

Dani (29:33)
Mm-hmm.

Jessica Franklin (29:50)
for sleep.

Dani (29:52)
Exactly, exactly. And I know it is hard and I always tell people do the best you can, but yeah, the glasses can be helpful. There's a lot of cheap versions that don't really work, so be careful on that. But like I said, I'm a huge fan of just getting...

Jessica Franklin (29:53)
Yeah.

Right.

Dani (30:14)
calming the vibe and the light and the sound and the over stimulation towards the end of the evening. And I was not popular with my kids back in their 19 and 21 now, but you so they're on their own doing their thing, but for their, until they turned 18, which again, they weren't super happy about, they had to bring their phones and plug them into our bedroom by 10 PM at night.

Jessica Franklin (30:22)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (30:43)
But the one thing that was nice is they were bored, so maybe they'd read for a little bit, but they went to sleep. And I can tell you what a difference that is for mood regulation, for appetite regulation when you're sleeping. And again, there are still great sleepers as adults. And I think that's made such a difference. And it's funny because of course they complained about it then, but now especially the twins who are almost 22, they're like, oh my gosh,

Jessica Franklin (31:02)
Mm-hmm.

Dani (31:13)
I'm so glad you did that. And ⁓ I'm not even gonna let my kids have social media. I'm like, God, you guys are me, or, you know, a screen. And I'm like, well, I mean, good luck with that. You know, I knew that was part of their world and they had to learn to manage it. But at that young age, they just, they couldn't manage it. It's too addicting. I know how hard it is for me. And so the glasses can be helpful, but it's just, it's all the stimulation

Jessica Franklin (31:19)
Yeah. Right.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (31:40)
nighttime stimulation. And again, I don't think a lot of people think about it because it's not really taught and it's just it's the it's our culture, right? It's what everybody's doing. I went to a friend's house a couple months ago and she has two young children and they were on iPads, which again, I'm not judging that. I mean, we all need a break. But it was like eight o'clock at night and every light in the house was on full blast.

Jessica Franklin (31:42)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (32:08)
the TV

was on and which it kept getting louder because we were talking so her child kept turning it up and then they were on their iPads. mean just so much stimulation and the body is confused. It's completely confused. You're basically telling your body it's broad daylight. There's no need to be producing melatonin there you know and there's no need to get into deep sleep. We are in full on daytime mode and that is the biggest thing is for you

Jessica Franklin (32:15)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (32:38)
people really think about understanding the language of the body. It understands by, again, what we think, what we eat, how we move, and how we sleep. That's what tells our body what is going on. And we can orchestrate our chemistry and our biology in such fantastic, amazing ways when we're doing things at the right time.

Jessica Franklin (32:44)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm consciously

Dani (33:04)
You know, and even

it's hard on our, you know, our, our modern culture is hard on our nervous system and, and our nervous system is not designed for.

Jessica Franklin (33:10)
Hmm, extremely.

Dani (33:16)
hundreds of emails a day or all the stimulation or even news. I was just listening to something the other day that really what our nervous system is designed for is to have a few people in our life and not to hear about every horrible thing that goes on in the world. I know that sounds terrible, but we don't need to know every single terrible thing that happens in the world because we, you know, our nervous system is just.

completely it's like it's like an alarm going off in our body that we can't turn off and it's just not built for that i mean as much as our world is advancing we still have to honor these

Jessica Franklin (33:49)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dani (33:58)
bodies and these human vessels that we have because you can go against nature, but you're gonna lose. And that's something I talk about is we are losing. and I mean, I feel like not even eventually, I think we're seeing it in our kids. Some of the things that we're dealing with, diabetes, heart disease, you name it, obesity, everything you can imagine that Americans are struggling with that used to be like very old people diseases.

Jessica Franklin (34:05)
Mm-hmm. Eventually. Yeah.

Dani (34:28)
Our teens are starting to have it. It's not it's not okay Yeah

Jessica Franklin (34:31)
Yes, and it is much younger than our generation.

when I was ⁓ in high school and shortly after those years after, there were not people, many people suffering from so many diseases.

that are happening in our young kids right now, whether they're in high school still or in that first few years after high school and college, I just did not see that much happening with our age group until maybe now-ish, right?

it's the exposure, the overexposure to excess information, excess stress that we don't really need. Like you said, we don't need to know what is going on. Every stressful thing that's going on Like maybe in our community, it's good to have an idea of what's happening, but beyond that, and in our country, if there's something,

that we should know about that's important, hone it in and just like, okay, I know that happened and then move on. Don't sit on your TV watching it for the next week, There's just so many things that we don't need to be exposing our nervous system to on a constant basis. And kids are exposing themselves to that every time they're on social media

everything that they are doing is causing stress. So.

Dani (35:55)
Yeah, everything,

you know, and we didn't have the screens and the social media and that type of thing. you know, again, that we still don't understand the repercussions, but we're starting to see it. And I just feel like, you know, there I am seen.

Jessica Franklin (36:00)
Mm-mm.

No. Yeah.

Dani (36:14)
that a lot of teens are starting to kind of figure it out because they don't want this. They know it's not healthy. know, not enough of them are realizing it, but it's an addiction and it's again, it's so, have you ever watched, I mean, my husband and I are cracking up watching just how quickly they can scroll through and look and see what all these people are doing. And it's just, it's not what our nervous system is

Jessica Franklin (36:19)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Dani (36:43)
designed to tolerate. And so of course they have so much anxiety and it's the technology and the advancing and the screens and it's all it's all going to keep coming quicker and quicker and quicker. So it's it's all about I guess you know managing it. That's it. Helping our kids manage it. Right.

Jessica Franklin (36:49)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

managing through awareness. So like if you don't know, you don't know, right?

So I think it's parent responsibility, just like anything else that we're responsible for protecting our child. ⁓ We're protecting our children from so many things, just basic survival to keep them alive, right? But now we need to also be aware of protecting them from all of this other stuff.

the screens and social media and for so many reasons, not only for their physical health, but for their mental health as

Dani (37:28)
Right, right.

when you're young, it's just, we're constantly distracted and it's just not the way we are designed to operate. And I think that for those that want to feel different and perform, and I don't mean perform for any one thing. I mean, to perform in your life, this one awesome

Jessica Franklin (37:42)
designed. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Dani (37:58)
some

performance that we get to have. And I do think that starting young, I mean young, teaching kids how much control they have over, you know, how they feel. You know, teaching them how to orchestrate and activate this chemistry that we have available to us. It's powerful.

Jessica Franklin (38:11)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yes, and sleep is absolutely on the foundation of all of that. Because if you're getting your right amount of sleep at the right time and your body is able to heal and repair and detox and restore, then you're on top.

You're ahead of the game for sure. And yeah, all of these other distractions, I'm sure we could go on and on and on about the phone and all of the dopamine hits and all the pinging and things like that. But I guess we could just make it very simple and say like turn off notifications And that could be a very simple solution to to the phone stress.

Dani (38:39)
over here.

Yeah.

Jessica Franklin (39:02)
I did want to circle back to being outside is actually different than just opening your curtain and looking out the window. And we're so lucky that we live in a climate where even on a cold morning, it's definitely doable with a robe or whatever and some slippers, but. ⁓

Dani (39:09)
but it is different.

Right.

Jessica Franklin (39:21)
it can be a deterrent for most people who live in cold climates for six months of the year But it is important to do it at some point when you are able to get some warm clothes on within that first hour of waking up to be outside and not looking through a window because our windows filter out a lot of that important light. Yeah.

Dani (39:39)
They do. Right, right.

And, you know, again, it's that blue light is important in the morning and that's what we get naturally. So, just get from. Yes. Well, I mean, from.

Jessica Franklin (39:46)
Mm-hmm. From the sun. Not from your computer screen.

Yes.

Dani (39:51)
Right from the sun, but a lot

of times, know, I mean, today is a San Diego day, but we have no sun, but you're still getting that blue light, even with cloud coverage. It's just getting that natural light. And then, you know, like I said, I try and get out and walk a couple of times a day. That's become a nice habit that I really enjoy. But even at night, you start realizing like, now the light is getting more orange, red light, because that's also a signal to

Jessica Franklin (40:00)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (40:21)
your brain. all of these things and you know again most people want to talk about the sleep you know steps to getting better sleep and certainly they're important when you start them at night it's nice to have a night routine but good sleep starts bright and early.

Jessica Franklin (40:23)
this.

I agree. And ⁓

to your point of getting out a little bit maybe to walk after dinner in that space between dinner and bed. Also, if you have a clear night, ⁓ seeing the moon actually does help as well. ⁓ Because that's all part of what our brains are tuned to. Mother Nature knows best, right? Yes.

Dani (40:53)
It really does.

Yes, absolutely, absolutely

she does. And again, we're gonna, if we wanna be healthy, high functioning humans, we've gotta do these things to manage our biology so that we can live in harmony with our world of technology.

Jessica Franklin (41:13)
Mm-hmm.

Yes, that's the key right now is learning, relearning all of these systems that we have and that are functioning whether or not we know and whether or not we know how they are benefiting us or on the opposite end of the spectrum bringing us down and knowing how to find that rhythm again in our crazy busy

society, you know, we live here. And so now it's just a matter of figuring out how to navigate that in a way that works for each person, because, we're all different, and we all have different lifestyles and different circumstances, kids getting home at different times and dinner being all like, how did you navigate dinners? I guess that might be kind of a fun place to wrap up our conversation back to the food and

navigating eating before dinner, but after sports and you know, how did you navigate that with three children, three schedules, a lot of people out there have the same circumstances. So what was your secret sauce?

Dani (42:20)
Kind of what we would do and funnily enough, we only have one son home now, so we're mostly empty nesters, but.

One thing I would do is I would have basically dinner ready when they got home from school around 2 30 or three. And I felt like they always came home hungry. And so instead of waiting so that because they walked in the door and they wanted to eat and if they didn't have something available, they would go straight to, you know, something, something that wasn't ideal. And so of course our kids have been, you know, it's been drilled into their heads, always have protein for

Jessica Franklin (42:33)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Snacking. Right.

Dani (42:57)
always have protein first. don't want to just initially, you know, glucose spike is so much different depending on what you eat first. I always kind of ingrained that in them, but I really tried to have a meal.

Jessica Franklin (42:58)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (43:11)
ready when they walked in the door from school. And it wasn't anything elaborate. I mean, I used to love to cook. ⁓ But I got to the point where it was just like, you know, I got to feed these people something healthy. So I would make sure we had some type of protein. A lot of times they would do I would do quick stuff like bowls, whether it was a Greek bowl or a burrito bowl without the tortilla and just where they could just meat, vegetables, that kind of thing that always seemed to be a hit. And we kind of still do that.

Jessica Franklin (43:17)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (43:41)
And then it was, I would kind of leave it easily accessible because if they came home super hungry, they could have a little something, but I didn't want them starving coming home. So most of the time they would eat before they would go to their sport. And again, really, really, and listen, it wasn't perfect.

Jessica Franklin (43:41)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Sure. Nothing can be.

Dani (44:02)
I mean, I think our kids certainly did a little

rebelling because they, I just tried not to have too much junk in the house. was, I was like, Hey, if we're to go get ice cream or go get something fun, let's make it an event. And I just didn't want it laying around. I know some people feel different. You know, my daughter's like, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to make sure we have junk in the house so that it's not such a novelty. And I'm like, you know, everyone's different. That's okay. I'm like, that makes sense. But yeah, but some people, and then we have, we have two in our families that can be

Jessica Franklin (44:14)
Yes.

Yeah. If that works.

Dani (44:33)
snackers and no matter how much they you know they would if it's in the house they'll have it and if it's not I don't do it so I just didn't have much yeah I have all kinds of great healthy fruits and vegetables and you name it but but anyway I just wanted to have things available and that's that I would just make it very easily accessible I'd have you know cheese cut up and ready they could just you know so the things that were the most convenient were healthy ⁓

Jessica Franklin (44:39)
Mm-hmm.

Sure.

for the healthy foods, yeah. And

cooking larger amounts in advance, I think, is a good tip for sure for listeners because if you have to think about, oh my gosh, cooking a whole meal at that...

Dani (45:07)
That was huge.

Jessica Franklin (45:15)
time of day that's like six o'clock at night. It can be really hard. So if you precook a lot of protein and pre-steam or ⁓ oven roast a big batch of vegetables, you just kind of have it and they can kind of put together their own bowl or wrap or whatever. I like that idea. And sometimes I even eat before my son even gets home from his sport because it's like.

Dani (45:29)
Right.

Jessica Franklin (45:43)
at 730 at night before he gets home some nights. And I'm like, I just can't, I cannot eat that late personally, even though that's is two hours before the nine 30, which is kind of when I try to get myself to bed for sleep at 10 sleep by 10. So I like to cut off my eating window sometime between the five and six o'clock range. And on certain nights, he's just not home yet from his sport. Every night is different. But on those nights that are 730, I'll still sit

with him and my husband, ⁓ or maybe my husband eats with me while he's at practice. And then we sit with him and still have that family meal energy and conversation, but we don't have to be eating at 730 at night. And for him, it's like actually a great time for him to be eating dinner because his body needs that extra big meal before bed so that he's not grabbing something at.

Dani (46:22)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jessica Franklin (46:40)
9 30 at night because he's hungry again. Like if he eats dinner at five or six he's like you know snacking at nine nine thirty at night and then yeah so

Dani (46:47)
Yeah.

Yeah, and

that's a big thing. And I do remember because I, especially during the week, I like to eat early and just shut it down by sometimes four, sometimes five. Again, we have dinners and we're normal social people. So we eat when we eat sometimes. But when the kids were in and out during those years, ⁓ I would, like I said, just have food available. And I would sit down and sit across from them and catch up.

Jessica Franklin (46:58)
Mm-hmm.

Sure.

life.

Dani (47:19)
You know, so wasn't that I had to be eating with them, but I was definitely had that connection time. And then we did make it a priority, you know, once or twice a week to make sure that the five of us sat down and connected. But, know, it's life is busy and it's not always it's not always feasible for everyone to sit down at the exact same time and eat at the exact same time. And, you know, unfortunately, but you can do that a couple of times a week and make that, you know, which is very nice. But I would always.

Jessica Franklin (47:34)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dani (47:49)
consciously sit down with one or two or you know of them while they were eating because I think that's a that's a nice time to connect

Jessica Franklin (47:54)
Mm-hmm.

It is. It's a good time. Whether or not you're eating a meal doesn't really matter. So, yeah.

Dani (48:02)
No, not at all. They

don't pay attention.

Jessica Franklin (48:05)
No.

Dani thank you so much for sitting down and having this light conversation because it is one of the conversations that I think is so important to our foundational health. Live Lightly is all about how to live lightly, not only how we leave a footprint on the planet as consumers and as humans

but also how we feel and how we live in our bodies as well. Being light in our energy is

so much better for our health and happiness and our enjoyment while we are here on this planet.

I want to leave people with a way to connect with you

as well.

Dani (48:45)
mostly what I'm doing now is working with groups. ⁓

work with companies, they hire me as part of their employee wellness programs and I can do just a keynote, which is just kind of a foundational talk, giving them some great information, or they can hire me to do packages of workshops, and that's been really fun. I do work with individuals, and my favorite when I do work with individuals is to have people get certain tests. I love it when they wear wearables because again, when I work with people, I want them to see

that things are improving in real time and have the data to prove it. You can reach me, set up a discovery call, reach me at digmethod.com and you can connect with me through my website. I do have social media page. I'm not always great about posting but working on that and then LinkedIn under my name, Dani Alger.

Jessica Franklin (49:24)
Mm-hmm.

D-A-N-I-A-L-G-E-R. Yep, okay, perfect. Well, thank you again. I absolutely loved our conversation and having another conversation with you in the future

Dani (49:44)
Yep, exactly, exactly. Thank you. This was wonderful.

Jessica Franklin (49:57)
like talking about metabolism and insulin and mitochondrial health because that's also part of your program and it's foundational information again that we're just not taught anything about blood sugar.

Dani (50:05)
Yes.

Jessica Franklin (50:15)
and regulating our blood sugar with our eating habits. that's a future conversation down the road for sure.

Dani (50:20)
Right, yeah, I'm working on a, yes, I'm working on a

workshop right now. I'm almost done on ⁓ cortisol and insulin.

Jessica Franklin (50:31)
Mm-hmm.

Dani (50:31)
And that's,

Like I said, I always try and keep my complicated concepts simple so people can understand it, digest it and implement these things. Cause no other, it's not taught and know, insulin is the root of most of the diseases that we're dealing with right now. So it's very important to know. And it's also very important to have it checked, which most people don't know their fasting insulin number. And it's a, it's a big one for metabolic health.

Jessica Franklin (50:53)
Mm-hmm.

Dani (51:00)
It's the biggest.

Jessica Franklin (51:01)
Yeah, and

I think doctors wait too long and they aren't. Yeah, that's true. I think if you're not working with the right doctor, then yeah, you could have it slip past them 100%, which is crazy, right? That they're not checking that. So people are already.

Dani (51:04)
Mm-hmm. Or they don't do it at all.

for for sure. Yes,

Jessica Franklin (51:21)
in that place of being diabetic when there's really like three stages before diagnosis. Yes, years and years. I know we could totally go there right now, but we'll put a pin in it and we'll wait till another day. Yes. Okay. Thanks, Dani.

Dani (51:27)
⁓ years, years, years, 10 plus or more.

We'll shut it down. Perfect. Perfect.

Thank you, Jessica.