Dr. Jarrett Grunstein, is widely known as Dr. J, is a seasoned chiropractor with 20 years of experience, dedicated to helping thousands of patients overcome neck and back issues.
Before pursuing his chiropractic career, he earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Contemplative Psychology with a Minor in Yoga Philosophy, studying at Emory University and a Tibetan Buddhist college called Naropa University. Dr. J deepened his Yoga practice while spending three months studying at a Yoga Ashram in India.
His innovative treatment approaches have distinguished his career, including serving as an official chiropractor for the Toronto Blue Jays for four years. Dr. J is an expert in sleep health, anxiety, and the critical connection between spinal alignment and restorative rest. Specializing in sleep and musculoskeletal health, Dr. J has dedicated his career to helping people achieve better sleep and optimal health through innovative sleep solutions.
Connect with Dr. J on LinkedIn. and follow Grunstein Family Chiropractic Center on Facebook.
What You’ll Learn In This Episode
- The role of anxiety in sleep disorders and practical ways to overcome it
- Stress Management: Relaxation Techniques and Better Sleep 3
- How Dr. J’s Pillows were designed to revolutionize the sleep experience
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studio in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by Kennesaw State University’s Executive MBA program, the accelerated degree program for working professionals looking to advance their career and enhance their leadership skills. And now, here’s your host.
Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, CSU’s executive MBA program. Without them, we wouldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have Dr Jarrett Grunstein with Doctor J’s Pillows. Welcome.
Dr Jarrett Grunstein: Oh, thanks for having me.
Lee Kantor: I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Doctor J’s Pillows. How you serving folks?
Dr Jarrett Grunstein: Well, this has been a long journey. It started about 14 years ago. I’ve been a chiropractor for 20 years in practice. And early on in my career, I started recognizing the very close link between neck pain and how people were sleeping at night. In other words, I would fix someone’s neck in my office, a patient, and I’d get a call back in a week or two that they slept wrong and their neck hurt again. So I started looking around the pillow market and realizing there just wasn’t a pillow that actually was scientifically designed for both back and side sleeping, which is how most of us sleep at night. So that started this 14 year journey.
Lee Kantor: Now, what is kind of do most people? Are they okay with their pillows or are they okay with the way they sleep? Or is this something that affects more people than maybe you realize?
Dr Jarrett Grunstein: Yeah, I’ve had a lot of pillow talk in this life more than most. On the average, probably. And what I’ve discovered is that most people, believe it or not, don’t love their pillow. They generally don’t even like their pillow. And particularly one if you have any neck pain or just have trouble sleeping at night, you’re probably on the hunt for the perfect pillow and have wasted a lot of money along the way, and likely have a closet filled with pillows that just didn’t quite work.
Lee Kantor: And then some people have pillows, like for years and years and years. Like, is there kind of a like, should you be getting rid of and updating your pillow on a regular rhythm? Like, is that I mean, I don’t think there’s a lot of education when it comes to this.
Dr Jarrett Grunstein: Yeah, this is really a black box for a lot of people, I agree. And the truth of the matter is that, well, so let’s just start with sleep position. So if you’re someone who shifts between your sides and your back, which is about two thirds of us, after a lot of research on my part, you actually need a pillow with two levels of support. In other words, when you lie on your back, you only want a pillow that’s about maybe an inch high or so underneath your head. But then when you go to your sides, you need a pillow that has more like four inches of support. So right out of the gate, any pillow that just provides one level of support really doesn’t work for both sleep positions. That describes about 98% of the pillows in the marketplace currently. So you can see there’s a huge gap in what people need and what’s being provided by the pillow market.
Lee Kantor: Now, what about the material that the pillows are made of? You know, there’s at hotels, they are made of a certain material at your house. It’s made of different material, like then now there’s memory foam material, like there’s all kinds of materials. How do you land on the the appropriate material?
Dr Jarrett Grunstein: Okay. So that’s a great question. So the pillow I designed, there’s two components to it. One is the shape. And second as you’re bringing up is the material. So let’s just go with the material because that’s where we’re talking pillow material. Most of the time in the marketplace currently is either polyfill or memory foam. Those are the big ones, and unfortunately they’re both polyurethane, which means a couple of things. One, they off gas VOCs, volatile organic compounds which are not really good for us. And secondly, since they’re petroleum based, they actually are highly flammable and therefore by law need to be sprayed down with flame retardant chemicals. Again, these chemicals aren’t good for us. So I decided to go with a material called latex, which actually it comes from a rubber tree. It’s natural. And not only is it latex, but it’s grown from organically grown rubber trees. So this is organic latex that is free of any chemicals. And it’s hypoallergenic, which is a big issue since we’re placing our head on this thing a third of the night.
Lee Kantor: So then, um, you’re addressing the material, and you’re you created the shape. That’s the appropriate shape, so that if you if you buy this one pillow, then you’re kind of you don’t have to worry about pillows for a while.
Dr Jarrett Grunstein: Yeah. So the shape of this took me only about 5 or 6000 hours to design. Uh, and I say that tongue in cheek, uh, this was the design is actually based on over 30 scientific studies. Uh, I’m also a spinal scientist and have written studies on, uh, scoliosis and, uh, spinal related issues. So I was very adamant that this pillow actually have a lot of science to back up why the dimensions are the way they are. And, uh, this is an audio program, so I can’t show it to you, but the pillow actually has a bowl in the center that your head sits in perfectly. It’s cradled perfectly. And then a neck support when you’re lying on your back. That is designed with a lot of specificity so that your neck is perfectly supported. And then when you roll to the sides of the pillow, it’s much higher, which you need to make room for your shoulder, because what a lot of people do on their sides is they’ll place their arm underneath the pillow, which ends up causing all sorts of shoulder issues. And a lot of your listeners probably do wake up with shoulder pain, and that’s because they’re propping their pillow up because it’s just not high enough. So all those issues needed to be addressed in this design.
Lee Kantor: Now, is the pillow kind of the heart of the problem when it comes to people who have some sort of sleep disorders is like, would the pillow alleviate some of this stuff? Like, a lot of people have trouble sleeping. A lot of people, you know, maybe snore. They have issues in their sleep that maybe it’s a lot of it is just the wrong pillow.
Dr Jarrett Grunstein: Well, insomnia is a huge issue in this country. Insomnia simply means either you have trouble falling asleep or you have trouble staying asleep at night. And this is affecting over half of us in America at this point. Estimates suggest, and part of the issue is mental. We can’t get our minds to be quiet. So I actually wrote a book on this in terms of meditation and breathwork that helps slow the mind down. And then the other component is physical. In other words, if your neck isn’t comfortable and you’re constantly trying to rearrange yourself and rearrange your pillow naturally, it’s very difficult to lull yourself into a relaxed state enough to fall asleep. So yes, it’s very important that the pillow is the proper shape. And then also, I do have a lot of recommendations, particularly in the book I wrote about sleep hygiene. And there’s a lot of issues related to this. But yes, these are physical and psychological factors. Participate in insomnia. The other issue you mentioned was snoring. When we’re on our backs, the throat is supposed to remain open enough for us to breathe. But people who have what’s called obstructive sleep apnea. This is a difficult issue for them because these snoring episodes, uh, allow for uh, or I should say disallow for enough oxygenation to occur. So we wake ourselves up with this snoring, which leads to fragmented sleep at night, which is not a quality sleep. So the pillow I designed it does. When you’re on your back, keep your neck as neutral aligned as possible, which does translate into the throat passageway being open more. However, I want to make very clear we haven’t done studies on this, so I don’t want to make any medical claims at this point.
Lee Kantor: Now, is there any like what are some clues that you might have sleep problems? Is it like is it obvious or your partner is telling you or like, you know, your your, uh, your fitness watch is telling you, like, what are some clues that you might have issues?
Dr Jarrett Grunstein: Well, there’s a lot of good clues. Uh, one of them, I think, is fatigue. If you’ve been in bed for seven, eight hours and you wake up and you don’t feel refreshed. That is suggestive that you’re not getting good quality deep sleep, and that is probably the biggest clue of all. But as it turns out, if we’re not sleeping between 7 to 9 hours a night, there are all sorts of health issues that can arise everything from heart disease to digestive troubles to overeating to depression, anxiety and the list goes on. So there’s actually a lot of health issues that are directly linked to when we’re not getting at least that good seven hours of sleep per night.
Lee Kantor: Now, what do you tell the. I mean, there’s a hustle culture that, you know, people are bragging about how little sleep they get and need.
Dr Jarrett Grunstein: Yeah, this is a real problem right now. I mean, America, on average is sleeping. They say somewhere between 6 and 7 hours a night, which is below that seven hour threshold. So that means as a culture, we’re actually praising ourselves for getting more done. But the reality is, is that when we do sleep that full 7 to 9 hours a night, we are much more effective during the day. In other words, issues like concentration improve when we get enough sleep. So you might be at work at your desk for an hour, but not getting nearly as much done as if you actually had a strong level of concentration. So it’s not only issue of timing, but it’s also efficiency. So that’s where good good night sleep really comes into play.
Lee Kantor: Now do you have any advice for the listener out there when it comes to getting a good night’s sleep? Is there any relaxation techniques or anything you can share that might help someone sleep better tonight?
Dr Jarrett Grunstein: Absolutely. So let’s go back to the sleep hygiene issue I had mentioned earlier. There’s a couple just basic things that we can do that will promote a much better night’s sleep. One of them is a sleep schedule. Making sure that we try to go to bed at around the same time and wake up around the same time, because our bodies are like a clock. And when this clock gets continually run at the same pace every 24 hour cycle, it works much better. We will naturally feel like we need to go to sleep at the same time when we do this ritual type of thing night after night. Another issue is light. Our body is cued by light. So in other words, if we are exposed to light late right before bed, that cues to our brains, it’s not time for sleep. And this is a real problem. So we want to dim lights out as much as possible that last hour before bed. Another thing is temperature. Our bodies will naturally drop in temperature as we’re falling asleep. So we ideally want the temperature in our room to be somewhere between around 65 to 68°F, which some people might be shaking their heads and saying, that sounds pretty cold. But in fact, that is what science shows the optimal sleeping temperature. Um, so those are big ones. Another thing I highly recommend doing some type of relaxation technique. Um, I like breathing, uh, the breathwork, uh, that I recommend because I used to practice yoga in an ashram in India. So I learned this in India, uh, many years ago. And that is breathing in and out through your nose, never your mouth. And the in-breath is three paces in three beats, if you will. And then the outbreath is six beats, and that long outbreath through the nose slowed down will really relax our entire nervous system. And that’s a great way to slow our minds down and to get into that more relaxed state, which will definitely benefit us as we’re trying to fall asleep.
Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned that you’re a doctor Is the pillow only available through doctors, or is it something that anybody can get their hands on if they need it?
Dr Jarrett Grunstein: All right, so we are just launching. I have to be very clear about this. We’re launching our presale on February 1st. And what that will allow for is people who go on to our website. Uh, is it okay if I share the website, please? Oh, okay. So it’s w-w-w dot d r j s pillows.com. So it’s Doctor J’s pillows.com. And when you order, there’s gonna be a place for you actually to put in your height and weight. Because we have five sizes of pillows. Because just like if you were to buy a pair of jeans, you wouldn’t go to a jean company that just offers one size. And so we have this specially sized for you. And then when you order, we’re going to be sending you the pillows this summer. So they’re going to be available in June. And we’ll call you right before we send them out, uh, so that we have your proper shipping address and we make sure the size is correct. But this is an exciting journey because what we’re going to be doing is manufacturing these pillows ultimately in the United States. We are really excited to be a US manufacturer in the future, and not only manufacturing here, but paying a living wage to our employees. A very high priority for me is really making sure people are paid properly and treated with dignity, because I believe when you have a company where the employees are treated properly, they’re going to do their best for the company. It’s a reciprocal relationship. So that’s our that is our mission.
Lee Kantor: Well, doctor J, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.
Dr Jarrett Grunstein: Thank you. I appreciate you having me.
Dr Jarrett Grunstein: On, Lee.
Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.