EP #158: The Science of Cognitive Wellness & Enhancing Brain Health with Nootropics with Dr. Julie Hwang & Jane Wong, Co-Founders of NOON

Welcome back to another episode of Everyday in Dorfens, a mental health podcast focused on the importance of finding joy and happiness in daily living. I'm your host Stella Stephanopoulos, and this week I am so thrilled to have Dr. Julie Quang and Jane Wong, who are the co-founders of Nune on the podcast. Nune is a rising player in the cognitive wellness space that blends neuroscience with traditional Chinese medicine. In this episode we dive into the founding story of the brand and how Jane and Dr. Julie met their unique backgrounds and how Nune aims to marry Western medicine with more traditional Chinese medicine and Eastern science. We also talk about their complimentary perspectives on the topic of cognitive wellness with Dr. Julie having a background as a naturopathic doctor by training and Jane being an architect and working in the design and innovation space. I'm personally really fascinated by hearing the stories of founders who are directly in the health and wellness industry, so it was an absolute pleasure having the two of them on the show. Before we dive in or reminder to like, rate, and review this podcast on whichever listing platform you prefer. Let's dive into it. Hi Dr. Julie, hi Jane, thank you so much for coming on to Everyday Endorphins. It is so wonderful to have you both here tuning in from Toronto from I think also New York City. Thanks so much. So nice to be here. Great to meet you. So nice to be here. I would really love to start off by having both of you share a little bit about your background. And before we were even on this call and doing this interview, we got to connect. It's crazy to kind of see how the wellness world is so intertwined. You recently partnered with I'm a yoga studio, gather yoga in New York and I know Emily who started the yoga studio here in the city. So it's just really amazing to have this opportunity to get to interview pioneers in the wellness space, thought leaders, people who are building really interesting things and see how different brands get to collaborate together. But before we even get into new and everything that you guys are doing, let's take a step back and talk about your background. So maybe Dr. Julie, if you'd like to start sharing a little bit about yourself. My background is in physiology, human sciences, and I'm a naturopathic physician by training. I did my research in clinical neurology, so in seizure disorders and worked a lot in the supplement space around different like clinical trials and different fish oils in particular. And I own a clinic and work with a lot of different practitioners. And a big part of my practice is acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. And Jane, would love to hear from you about your background and story and entry into the wellness space. So as you know, I'm based in the York. I've been here for 10 years, which is longer than I thought I'd be here for. My background is in design and technology and also innovation. I started as an architect a long time ago and transitioned more into the digital realm. And I've done everything in between, you know, spatial, digital, experiential, etc. And my entry point to wellness, I mean, naturally, I think being in New York, growing your career, you are used to finding ways to balance, you know, all the stress and everything. And noon actually was started after burning out for the second time. I mean, despite all the fact that I go to yoga, I surf, all these things, it just really wasn't in a way like enough and it wasn't holistic enough. And so noon was actually started realizing that there was a significant gap in the market for solutions that actually tapped the mental aspect of stress. So again, while there's so many options of there to create and help with the physical aspect of stress, there wasn't really anything there that really helped you with the cognitive states. So that's how my entry point came to be and realizing that there was this really nice white space to explore. So you mentioned burnout twice. Can you talk a little bit more about that experience? Like how would you characterize burnout in your life? Was there a particular aha moment that you realized, wait, there aren't any really solutions out there to addressing that mental side of stress management and like looking at stress from a cognitive perspective? Well, burnout looks like different things for different people. I think there is no sort of single definition. I do think that my realization that I was burned out was when everything felt sensitive and everything felt stressful. Even the smallest thing felt like a big thing, you know, even like buying groceries or washing the dishes. And that aspect of my well-being, I think again, we're adaptive. We're super used to experiencing stress. But more and more, we're just adapting to higher and higher levels of stress where it just becomes very normal. And I think everyone, again, everyone's biochemistry is different and tolerance is different. So some people can tolerate a very, very high level of stress and still be very functional. And I would say that's I'm one of those people. So I would definitely have to get pushed over over the edge for me to realize like, hey, maybe I need to actually slow down and think about how I want to show up for myself on a day-to-day basis. And realizing in that moment also realizing because it was around COVID that so many people around me also were suffering from the same, it looks very similar predicaments, you know, we were sedating ourselves with alcohol or going to more extremes with working out a lot. But again, it's really swinging you always from extreme to extreme. And yeah, I just realized like then there was just nothing there outside of going back to my more traditional roots of more holistic practices for well-being. That's such a good point. Burnout can look different for different people and I do think that common denominator that you described as even the smallest things start to feel stressful. Like when we are in that heightened fight or flight response, over things that don't really need to get us so worked up. And I think if that's even kind of characteristic of not even experiencing burnout, but just being in a very high stress environment. Before we started recording this interview, I would say I had a pretty not super stressful day, but for whatever reason, I'm like right now dealing with trying to think about moving apartments in a few months and all the logistics that go with that. And I kind of blew up on the phone with my mom because I was like, I'm so stressed about this. I need an answer, I need help. And I wouldn't say I'm feeling burnt out right now, but I do think that there's a lot to be said around feeling like a sense of agitation and anxiety over things that like really don't matter at the end of the day and needing to kind of remind yourself that the smallest things don't really you don't need to put all of your attention towards that in a negative way. Like there's no need to get so worked up over the little things in life and perhaps that's a tangent, but it kind of reminded me of what you are sharing around your experience with burnout, feeling the sense of overwhelming stress even in like the smallest mundane things in life. Dr. Julie, do you have any, I don't know, experience in your own life where you've had that burnout or you witnessed feeling that kind of stress firsthand over really like the little things? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think it usually accumulates through people who are amazing trying to survive and obviously surviving and thriving and like great big cities with huge like social pressures and in addition to academic pressures plus financial pressures. And I like to talk about it with my patients around like a hyper activation of that sympathetic or butterfly nervous system being that it's a positive thing. So in in the short term, it's great that we have this nervous system, you know, gets us out of trouble. There's a tiger in the room. Technically, we could I guess stay and fight it or like others would probably run away. But what happens is physiologically separate from our mind. So we cannot access this autonomic nervous system autonomic is synonymous with automatic. We can't access it so easily. And so I always say like I really try not to vilify the body when the body is doing the anxiety thing when it's creating the physical symptoms and say don't vilify your body is doing what we trained it to do. You know, if you pull them all night or you're going to get better grades, you're going to get more money. And so if you do that for 30 years, you know, 40 years, we're are we surprised. When we get like a like a bill in the mail or you know a scary email or something like that, the body is not responding to just that incident. It's responding to all the history that has become embodied in the nerves in the nervous system. So it's really important. And I think just to honor like everyone's doing great as a part of that that recovery and that's a big thing with burnout recoveries like around well what are the pieces. How do we get from a state of I can't do anything that level of burnout to okay, how can I like go through active recovery. Yeah, that's such a good point because even like creating a really small actionable goal. I feel like boosts that sense of self efficacy where you're like okay, I was able to do that. So now I can do this at next step rather than feeling like you're jumping from like square zero to a thousand. You just take the tiny little steps. And I think maybe that's an interesting framework to think about when we think about this concept of like active recovery from burnout. And would left also hear a little bit about in your background, Dr. Julie, the differences between more like naturopathic medicine versus the Western perspective. I mean, I'm not really sure I would love to hear your thoughts on this. It feels like as we're in this like era of holistic wellness and looking at wellness from multiple perspective points. People are kind of trying to close the gap between pure Western thought and more Eastern thought. So first is is that true? And secondly, can you talk maybe a little bit about the differences in like traditional Western medicine and then more so your background and like traditional Chinese medicine and being a naturopathic doctor. Yeah, I mean, the approach is kind of I like to see it as like a different language because the bodies of the body. So the reactions are what they are. If you're getting palpitations, that's called palpitations and Western medicine. And from an Eastern perspective, it might be called like a heart sheet deficiency. There's a language element to it. But the unique thing about traditional most traditional medicines and I can really only speak to traditional Chinese medicine is that we look for balance. We look for restoring balance as our action, the actions we can take and we look at it holistically. So as an example, every organ system actually has an emotion associated with it. So even the emotional symptoms become cues and clues to that point is towards which organ system might be undergoing pathology or need more attention. And in Chinese medicine, the most common way of looking at the bodies through balance of like Yin and Yang, that's probably the most well known image, graphic concept, you know, that symbol. And I mean, to bring it back to Bern out as an example, because that's kind of where this all started, this conversation started was, you know, there's like a little bit of the other color in the Yin Yang symbol. Like on one side, there's a little circle of the other side. The dark side of that that symbol is Yin, the light set is Yang, the ideas on the dark side, there's a little bit of Yang inside Yin. And so when we look at the body of the person, what we might see is someone who's what's given Somnia as an example or burnout. And in Somnia and burnout, we would say, okay, this person must have a lot of energy. They stay up through the night, you know, they can't really rest. Like when you're burnt out, you often meet people with burnout and they have trouble sleeping, right? Is this true? Is this going to just calm it? Is this your experience? So what's interesting around that is that we don't call that excessive energy or excess Yang. That's actually Yin deficiency. And so the solution isn't run a marathon before you go bed. It's let's nourish the system. And then from a Western perspective, we would look at the adrenal system and we would look at cortisol and your fight or flight pathway and how that's impacting your hormones and your cortisol awakening response needing to be better regulated. So we would say better to have that cortisol is supposed to come up up and down between between your meals to give you energy to sustain your energy about four times throughout the day. And so oftentimes we'll see it in cortisol, dysregulation, adrenal fatigue, stress. We'll see that inversion, right? Where they are very tired in the morning, need caffeine. And then difficulty falling asleep for some reason. Right. Just to follow on that, just when we think about schools of thought, I like the way you said it, Julie, with different languages. But I would also say like Western medicine, but you know, Julie and I both growing up in the West, but having a lot of roots in the East and turn a cultural roots in terms of how we were raised, like the foods we ate. It is a very different mindset in terms of how to fix something. You know, I think Western medicine tends to slap a very quick fix solution. Hence, like when I burned out, I was given two weeks worth of steroids instead of, hey, maybe you should stop working. Or, you know, like let's think what the root cause of why these things are happening, which I do think when people say holistic, I think a lot of people kind of tend to mistake what this word means. And almost in a way, it feels lesser than Western medicine sometimes because it takes longer requires more patients. It feels like this day to day mending whereas I think a lot of Western medicine has this visage of power. So you want the most powerful effective drug and you know, doctors, a lot of them tend to over prescribe in general. So what we're also up against from our products is competing with the effects and the feel of some of these other things that people are used to receiving for their ailments. So for me, again, no noctua Western science because of course there's a lot of great things there, but we're trying to change how people understand supplements and also understand how to take care of themselves. So Western medicine does tend to swing you from extreme to extreme highs or highs and lows or lows. And I like to say like for us and like Julie said, it's about balance. So it's about keeping you at your baseline, which if anyone knows what that feels like, it's like when you feel great, everything flows, you feel sunny on the inside. And that's where we want you to stay, which should be achievable. Yeah, I love that. I think you have a very interesting the way you phrased it around the difference between Eastern and Western medicine, like just different perspectives on our opinions and approaches on how to fix a problem. I think it's so spot on and I think you kind of read my mind because I wanted to ask a question around, you know, your background in Chinese medicine and also just having like cultural roots in the East for the both of you. Informed your approach into building the products with noon and the mission and the philosophy of what you guys, you know, are contributing. So if you could share a little bit about how those Eastern influences shaped really approach to reinvisioning the supplement space. Yeah, as we were going down, I mean, personally, the research around finding more natural and plant based ways to heal very obviously led back to TCM and for us traditional Chinese medicine is a very specific practice. So I would not say like either of us are specific TCM practitioners, but the culture of TCM in terms of having food as medicine is very much ingrained in Chinese culture. You eat seasonally, you have hot and cold foods, things that are good for inflammation, things that are better in summer versus winter. And you learn a lot about different herbs and mushrooms and plants that do different things that are good for different ailments again or different periods of your life, maybe for your actual period or like when you're feeling again insomnia or when you're you have too much energy. All of these things and so you learn these this connection to plants at a young age, but I think what's interesting again growing up in the West is that I personally for myself and I can't speak for Julie like I kind of took some of these things for granted because you grow with it you grow with your grandparents making it your mom. And then you go off into the world and. I like didn't make these things for myself, I didn't make soups for myself, not like that and realizing that again I was given steroids versus something natural I really wanted to figure out how to do it better where I wasn't draining my whole system. And that really led me back to yeah looking at traditional Chinese medicine herbs and realizing that they're quite powerful and of course functional mushrooms which is like a foundation to TCM altogether. Yeah tell us more about the different products with noon to and really the objective the goal what you want the end consumer to feel after consuming these products and kind of I know there's like three different main categories so you could just share a little bit more about the product development process and as you both came together and we're really. Concepting through like what do we want noon to be what was that process like for the two of you I think from a high level even just what drew me to work with Jane has been really around noticing that people need. A little bit of joy in their lives need endorphins. A little bit more delightful you know something to look forward to and that can really be a big part of healing and health and wellness and it's actually it's an incredible and incredibly important part because you can't. Make these massive changes in your life if there's no reward does that make sense so that the room that we need to have and work with it's not just psychology it's really like the endorphin pathways and so you know all about this so that was really what kind of drew me into this type of project and we have two different lines of products we've got the chocolates and then we have the gummies which are our most recent launch. Probably what you've tried within the gummies I'll speak to the gummies just within the gummies we have three skews one of three products one is focus one is called chill and one is called sleep that's what we all need is to feel more focus to get better sleep and to chill out I definitely. These are foundations yeah exactly exactly I mean Jane and I worked a lot with our neuroscientists as well and put these formulas together in such a way that was trying to hit have you heard of new tropics yeah I've done a few interviews on new tropics like with the founder of thesis and a few other brands as well so familiar with them great yeah so a new tropic is anything that can improve like the human mind cognition. And there's different ways of combining both natural and synthetic substances but in our case all natural substances in order to create improved basically cognition right so an improved nautropic function and that's really the one of the major themes of our products is to try to okay how can we create formulas that hit on multiple levels in the short and the long term and also have a lot of research with human trials behind them as opposed to just selecting things that some people anecdotally might feel as good or maybe traditionally only this herb for example was only used traditionally that those are the kinds of things we tried we tried to say how can we make the most optimal product and so there's no question those were some of the criteria and then we put together our formulas focus having L. Theonine green tea extract and then combine them with in focus in particular with our B vitamins and vitamin D3 both actually with long great studies on improvements to cognition and then I guess I'm I need to mention the big thing which is the functional mushrooms so the big kind of hero of our products is working with functional mushrooms and these are lion's main portaceps, Rishi, my Taki, Shataki, Jane, feel free to jump in, Poria, from mella there's so many I take turkey tail I know that's a functional mushroom too like you maybe you probably have it we really stuffed as much as we possibly could into each more mella was really maxed out but the idea with the mushrooms is yes you get this amazing benefit from everything we're learning from the mushrooms we get an even increase like an even greater benefit if you combine them with other tropics in this fashion we did that for our three products we have focused chill we have in chill we have a lot of herbs that are really like commonly used for stress we call them adaptogens they help the body adapt to stress and so that's like ashwagana or diola and then we combine them with our seven mushroom blend which has just all the heavy hitters like we had just mentioned in mushrooms functional mushrooms and then we added in their althianian and gaba in this kind of combination in particular we set up in such a way that it doesn't create sedation so you don't get really sleepy from taking the chill you just take the ed draw in terms of how you feel from taking it I don't know how the brain was jumping here but the feelings the way we like to describe it because again just to go back to our in terms of how we we even thought about these products part of it was a what's on the market that isn't working so well so like trying to solve real problems in terms of filling gaps for the actual product efficacy and then how can we simplify people's routines as well so knowing that functional mushrooms and the adaptogens together plus you know all the vitamin and mean asses that Julie is mentioning knowing that like our team actually could figure out a pretty solid formula that combine all of these things together meant that we could also help simplify people's routines and create these sort of one gummy to rule them all kind of a thing so for focus like Julie mentioned that's it does focus but it also energizes so you think about these what caffeine gives to people and again why people enjoy it it's it gives them a really great boost so we want to put those things those aspects of feel together and then for chill and this is something actually that I think a lot of other people struggle with if you cannot smoke weed and you cannot you know take an edible in the middle of the day or the beginning of the day how can you actually find chill in a different way that it allows you to be productive and I think again there's all these people who need to function still drink a day so chill was specifically designed to help you calm your nervous system and sometimes you know when you're anxious or stress your nerve nerves feel like they're they're firing the way I like to describe is that these just put put them in a bow you re center and you feel calm without feeling tired which is if you've never felt that it feels pretty amazing yeah I feel like that's like an endorphin high when you feel calm but you're not sleepy you're just content my plan after this interview is to take a chill got me and go to yoga like that is what I wanted tonight so I'm excited for that even just as you're sharing the feelings that you get out of taking these different hobbies like I'm getting excited to take the chill one but now we should talk about our last one sleep which has been our best seller actually this one Julie and Christine have added in three mushrooms Ray she tremella and porra cocos which if you've never had them are actually really great for skin rejuvenation and inflammation and immunity so total well being so what we like to call this one is like it's the beauty sleep coming so not only does it help you fall asleep turn your mind off it also helps you stay asleep and you wake up actually looking and feeling refreshed sleep is such an important foundation to our well being I know that when we sleep it actually allows our brain to kind of like flush out some of those toxins and like actually it gives you a space to have a restorative moment for your body like through the act of sleeping and especially in New York City city than ever sleeps people are out and about and doing things and it's hard to feel a sense of being rested like you can sleep but are you really getting a restful night sleep and I tend to run on overdrive number one but number two as a product of that I think even if I'm sleeping I don't know how restful the sleep actually is because I feel overstimulated all the time and I think this is a you know something that a lot of people struggle with whether or not they live in New York or in a major city like a feeling maybe of restlessness or not getting a proper night of rest it like makes you feel horrible and it extends not just the day after but it has like a longevity to it even and when you're not feeling like you're most clear mind itself it's harder to get those endorphins because you're just grumpy at least I'll speak in my own experience but I'm not surprised that the sleep gummy is one of the best sellers honestly just given how critical our sleep is for our well being yeah and I think people are just doing that sleep is actually essential I can't just keep going with sleeping at 2 a.m. and then waking up at you know 7 30 rinse and repeat I think also as people are becoming new parents as well and of realizing that sleep is just the most critical thing that they need to make sure they can do it again the next day absolutely I mean parenting I right now thinkfully cannot really to but I can imagine that is a job or either is very little sleep as I was looking on your website as well first all I love the design and the static the branding I think it's beautiful there is this concept about cognitive tuners I thought that was so cool I'd never heard that before and there was another line that talked about how new and creates moments of care to tend to the mind body access which maybe is getting again into this more eastern thought but can you elaborate a little bit more on this idea of having cognitive tuners through the products or just even this idea of like what it means to tune your cognition to keep it in equilibrium to keep things in balance I just thought it was a really clever concept to talk about I like the term cognitive tuners because it also implies that you are attending to yourself on a day to day basis like when you think about your days in general no days the same so it's really difficult to have a consistent experience every single day it's it's quite rare you'll wake up feeling one day like oh this was amazing I slept perfectly and then maybe the next the worst night of sleep and some things are environmental some things are work related social etc so when you think about the differences that you're facing all the time it makes sense that our products can help you again tune so you can get back to your baseline it's not swinging you from end to end you know extreme to extreme it's saying like oh I feel a little bit of this let's take X to make me get back to this state or I'm feeling a little too much of this maybe I need to you know chill out a little bit so I think part of it is having a little bit more self awareness for where you're at but tuning for me implies that you're constantly tending to yourself and it is about equilibrium imbalance rather than again and so that's sort of where that term comes from yeah it's kind of similar to this I just love I love the tuning concept it's so similar in I guess in like Western physiology we talk about homeostasis all the time how the bodies always try to come back to its like center point it's homeostasis can change same way set point can change things like this but it's really around okay well the body has these innate processes and also developed processes that help it get to maintain balance or survival things like this and we have this concept called alo stasis as well in how care which is when you're trying to create like the steady you're trying to be the steady constant that's alo stasis and that in health in at least in wellness in my experience of practice is the goal is opposed to you know are you alive or not which is you know has extreme value of course but you know survivorship but the idea of like okay are we really thriving like how can we be optimal and in spite of everything going around us can we really be steady and that alo stasis point can be enhanced through using things to help tune up or tune down what you need and a lot of the ingredients that we're using have what we call multiple actions so in clinical herbalism we'll talk about like adaptogenic action like adaptogens nerve vines these are different classes of herbs that impact different systems and they literally talk about adaptogens like they bring your lows up and your highs down like it's really around creating that alo stasis and encouraging it so that's sort of how I see it as well I love that that's such a good description you know even how you just said despite what's going around you how do you kind of come back to that study baseline and as a yoga instructor I try to not be too hesitant to say preachy like I try to not give speeches in my yoga class because some teachers will like really go off which if that works for you that's fantastic I try to impart a little bit of wisdom sprinkle it in here and there depending on you know the class and sometimes sometimes oftentimes I will talk a lot about how yoga is a practice of really regulating the nervous system through tapping into the power of your breath through linking your breath with your movement and so what I try to tell my students is to encourage them to harness the power of their breathing off of the mat in like in real life like leaving the yoga studio applying these practices in their day to day because when you're able to kind of latch on to the breath you know no matter what's going on around you the chaos the this the that you can tap back into your breathing and learn to self regulate your kind of getting yourself back to that equilibrium to that homeostasis to that baseline and maybe that's just another way of saying like your own cognitive tuner you know you're tuning back to your natural baseline state so maybe I'll throw that in into the next one. But well I mean you're right. Yeah I think one thing though people I think a lot of people start to recognize and realize that they do know what their baseline feels like you know if you've ever a perfect day and you feel amazing and you've had great sleep that's your baseline like that's how you should feel yeah and we get so distracted we forget sometimes how good baseline can feel. Well everyone's doing really great I think also we get conditioned into like into that fight pattern right because breathing will turn on the vagus. So the poly bagel so that's like no physiology right there turns on your rest and that just function I feel like we could talk about this for another three hours or something there's so much research out there and I feel like the wellness space now is shifting its focus towards thinking about how do we get back to this. So we get back to the sense of homeostasis and like what does it mean to really quote unquote find balance and life and I think that's a very philosophical question actually because when you're in balance like it's a give and take and things are always fluctuating so how long can you actually exist in balance I don't know I don't think forever because naturally things will ebb and flow but I think it's like how quickly do you come back to that set point because naturally things are going to fluctuate so it's like how fast. Do you get back to that sense of equilibrium and it kind of actually goes back to your earlier point dr Julie like people wanting to feel a sense of joy like we need to remind ourselves that there are these joyful moments in life and this podcast as you know and as my listeners know is all about that it's all about finding things in life that bring you joy that bring you into our fence and incurring on to those moments and to those practices and so as we round out. The interview today I have two final questions for the both of you and I'll start with the first one. The first question is how do you define happiness I was really thinking about this I feel like and there's a difference for me you know be between happiness and feeling content for me happiness almost has like a spiritual aspect connected to it where content feels a little bit more practical and maybe that's just me maybe maybe you know like I'm content with a lot of things in my life I feel good I feel balanced but happiness almost for me exudes this extra sense of feeling elated you know everything is sunny everything is golden water just flows and not that negativity doesn't exist but the sense that like everything is possible and that feels that's happens for me I love that I really like that I have like everything is I have like a different relationship with the word happiness because I think you know I study a bit of Buddhist philosophy and like for you know happiness with the capital H is really that ultimate happiness all to state and I like to see happiness as a state as opposed to like an emotion of feeling or something that can be like given or received I like to see it as this state and you can be crying and very happy you know you can be grieving and happy and so I think that for me happiness is around the piece and content like Jane was saying and then very I think serene state of harmony harmony that's a good word it's interesting because Jane you were kind of describing them to be separate happiness versus being content but then Julie you're looking at it from a more maybe philosophical perspective and seeing happiness is this like elated state like achieving your vana or something and yeah it's not like yeah but this feeling of being content is part of that equation like to feel at peace is to live life without resistance like to be in flow with life I also feel like they're connected but I do think content and happiness have separate definition in a way like they are to learn but for me happiness sits if I could give it a hierarchy like on top of contentment if that makes yeah yeah that's how I see it so like in contentment is like a part I love it that out of all the people that I've asked this question this I think has been the most like deeply thoughtful response and I love it because now I'm thinking really about well how do we differentiate joy from feeling happy from being a state of happiness from being content versus even your point Julie on you can grieve but still be happy our emotions are so interconnected and something I really try to emphasize with the show is like debunking this myth around toxic positivity because really every day in Dorfins doesn't mean that you're going to be happy every day and you should be looking for happiness every single day to be happy all the time 100% that's not what it's about it's about how do you choose happiness despite being in the face of adversity and working through sadness and grief and frustration and XYZ how do you still maintain a sense of content and joy and inner peace when the world's going to piss you off when you have a million obligations and the list goes on so I really liked that point on how emotions can coexist opposite emotions and coexist and I'm sure there's a lot of us out there that are happy angry all the time right yeah that was me like 40 minutes ago when I was like how am I going to figure out all of these things that I have to do that's also that's also why I think we need to focus on our in Dorfins and so my last question to the two of you is what is something that brings you a bit of endorphins every day I know is really simple it's just literally going for a walk or like sitting in the sun that's super simple but it works for me every single time the foundation back to the basics and actually having my cup of coffee in the morning I feel like it's of course it does something to be physiologically but it's a ritual that I look forward to it does bring me gives me that sensation of happiness you know because it's something I really enjoy doing feeling grounded yeah it's also thing that I share with my partner so it's just a nice thing to look forward to I love that I also love my coffee morning routine Dr. Julie what brings you endorphins well endorphins I mean I love endorphins because they're like all I see all hormones you know secreted within the nervous system is endorphins right so and what's great about them is that they reduce pain and like that's such a huge part of endorphin activity so I really like sleep and I've said this like so many times because I love sleep very good at sleep again that's like my goal in life is to be champion sleeper but yeah I like to exercise I like to work out I like sports I play I grow up play sports so I can big part of my life so I think getting in even if it's a small workout some squats I really try because I think that's huge for the endorphins I couldn't agree more there's such a link between movement being medicine and I know I feel way better on the days that I move my body in some capacity and I've had to really work on shifting my mindset from all or nothing to like even 10 minutes a day is something and like make the time to do it you have the time so I think that's super important well it's been really such a pleasure getting to have both of you on the show and really happy that we're in each other's orbits and I'm excited to take this chalgummy very soon and sweat it out on the yoga mat take two be very zen tonight where can my listeners connect with the both of you and try out some of your product on their own you can follow us on Instagram it's at at its noon dot world and find us at noon dot world in terms of our website you can find our products there and if you're in New York you can find us at happier great partners amazing I love happier grocery so that's awesome so great yeah thanks for happening yeah thank you so much for watching on Instagram on tiktok and subscribe to my sub stack where I not only talk about episode recaps or events that have happened that month but I get to dive a little bit deeper into my own perspective and philosophy on joy and happiness and living a good life thanks again for tuning in and reminder to keep spreading in door fens and finding the things in life that bring you joy until next time