Key Takeaways

After two years of waking at 3am despite doing everything right, functional lab testing revealed Martha had a parasite (blastocystis hominis), hormone imbalance, high uranium and copper from heavy metals, mineral imbalances, and deficiencies in both serotonin and GABA — none of which had appeared on regular blood work.
The root cause driving her 3am waking was elevated cortisol in the middle of the night — a stress response triggered largely by a parasite she had unknowingly carried for 13 years after traveling in Nepal and India.

Correcting the imbalances the tests identified — including adding targeted neurotransmitter support as the final piece — brought her from five to six hours of broken sleep to eight and a half hours a night.

I used to be the best sleeper I knew.

I'm talking about leaving my own dinner party at 9:45pm to get to bed on time. Sleep was never something I thought about. I just did it every night without thinking twice.

That changed when I got pregnant at 39. In the last few months of pregnancy, I started lying awake for hours — couldn't fall asleep, couldn't stay asleep. My midwife gave me herbs. Nothing worked. I told myself it was just pregnancy, and once my son was born, things would go back to normal.

They didn't.

My son was a terrible sleeper. I was nursing him every 45 minutes through the night, even at three months old. I eventually hired a pediatric sleep consultant, and four nights later he was waking only once a night. It was so life-changing that I trained as a pediatric sleep consultant myself.

But once he was sleeping through the night, I still wasn't.

I'd lie awake from 3am until he woke up at six. On a good night I was getting maybe five hours, when I need eight and a half.

Trying Everything — and Still Not Sleeping

At the time I was working in the supplement department of a health food store. I tried everything that came through those doors. Magnesium. Melatonin. CBD. Every sleep formula on the market. I followed every rule I could find — bedtime routine, no screens, stopped eating chocolate after dinner, all of it. Nothing worked. I remember crying in the middle of the night, just desperate for sleep and unable to figure out why I couldn't get it.

I got a second certification, this one in adult sleep. That helped a little. I stopped obsessing, stopped complaining to everyone around me, stopped researching at 3am. My sleep got somewhat better — I could fall asleep more easily. But I was still waking up most nights for an hour or two. I still wasn't getting eight and a half hours, and I had no idea why.

I was a sleep consultant who couldn't sleep, and I had run out of ideas.

The Test That Changed Everything

Around that time, I was researching how to turn my sleep work into a business, and I stumbled across a practitioner doing something I'd never seen before — using functional lab testing to find the root causes of why people couldn't sleep.

My immediate reaction was: this makes complete sense. If I've done everything right and I'm still not sleeping, something must be going on inside my body. The only way to know is to test for it.

So I ran the tests on myself.

The first thing that jumped out was my cortisol. Cortisol is our stress hormone — it's supposed to be at its lowest in the middle of the night so we can sleep. Mine was through the roof at exactly the wrong time. My body was in a full stress response every single night.

Something was causing it. And that something turned out to be mostly a parasite.

The Parasite I Didn't Know I Had

Thirteen years earlier, I'd traveled in Nepal and India and gotten really sick. I thought I'd dealt with it at the time. But according to the test, I was still carrying a parasite called blastocystis hominis — blasto for short. It had been quietly damaging my gut, driving up my cortisol, and disrupting my sleep as the years went on.

I know the idea of a parasite grosses people out. But when I saw that result, I was relieved. Finally, I had an answer that made sense.

But that wasn't the whole picture.

The test also showed hormone imbalance — not surprising after having a baby at 39. It showed high uranium and copper from heavy metal exposure. Mineral imbalances. And when I later tested my neurotransmitters, I found I was deficient in both serotonin and GABA — the two that matter most for feeling calm and being able to sleep.

It wasn't just one thing. It was all of it together, compounding each other. And not one of those things had shown up on regular blood work over the years. Every year my doctor told me I was in perfect health. But I wasn't — and I knew I wasn't, because I couldn't sleep. I just didn't have the right tests.

What Finally Fixed It

Once I started correcting what the tests had found, my sleep changed. Not overnight — that's not how my story went. Some of my clients get better quickly. For me, it took time for my body to get back in balance. But steadily and consistently, things improved.

When I added support for my neurotransmitters, that was the final piece. I went from five to six to seven broken hours a night to sleeping eight and a half hours. I stopped thinking about sleep. I stopped dreading bedtime. It just became something my body did again — the way it always had before.

I'm grateful every single night.

I've now helped over 300 clients do the same thing. And what I see in practice every day mirrors what I experienced myself: people who've tried everything, who are already healthy, who are doing everything right, and still can't sleep.

Not because they're doing anything wrong, but because there's something going on in their bodies that no one has tested for.

A parasite. Hormone imbalance. Heavy metals. Mineral deficiencies. Neurotransmitter depletion. These things don't show up on standard blood work. They show up on the tests I run. And once you know what you're dealing with, you can fix it.

FAQ

Q: I've tried every supplement for sleep and nothing works — what am I missing?

A: Most sleep supplements target symptoms, not causes. Magnesium won't fix a cortisol spike driven by a parasite. Melatonin won't correct a serotonin deficiency rooted in gut damage. If you've worked through the standard sleep stack and still can't sleep, the problem is almost certainly something that hasn't been tested for yet — not a supplement you haven't tried.

Q: Can a parasite cause insomnia?

A: Yes. Martha carried blastocystis hominis for 13 years without knowing it — and it was the primary driver of her elevated nighttime cortisol and chronic 3am waking. Parasites don't always cause obvious digestive symptoms. They can quietly drive a stress response in the body that disrupts sleep without ever announcing themselves.

Q: Why do I wake up at 3am every night even when I fall asleep fine?

A: Waking at a consistent time in the early morning hours is often a cortisol issue. Cortisol is supposed to be at its lowest in the middle of the night. When something — a pathogen, a hormone imbalance, a blood sugar problem — is triggering a stress response, cortisol spikes at exactly the wrong time and wakes you up. The question is what's causing the spike.

Q: Why didn't my regular blood work catch any of this?

A: Standard blood work is designed to diagnose disease. It's not designed to assess how your body's systems are actually functioning. Martha's doctor told her she was in perfect health for years while she was carrying a parasite, heavy metals, hormone imbalances, and neurotransmitter deficiencies — none of which were visible on conventional labs. Functional testing looks at a different level of detail.

Ready to Find Your Root Cause?

If your sleep looks like mine did — you've tried everything, you're doing everything right, and you're still waking up in the middle of the night — this is exactly what the Complete Sleep Solution program investigates. The program includes functional lab panels that test for the root causes most likely to be disrupting your sleep: gut pathogens, hormones, neurotransmitters, and toxic burden. So instead of guessing at supplements, you know exactly what you're dealing with.

→ Learn how the Complete Sleep Solution program works

About Martha Lewis

Martha Lewis is a certified Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioner and founder of The Sleep Detective™. Since 2019, she has helped 300+ clients identify the root causes of their insomnia using functional lab testing — including gut analysis, hormone panels, neurotransmitter testing, and toxin screening. She discovered her own root causes (hormone imbalances, heavy metals, and a parasite) after years of trying conventional sleep solutions, and now uses the same investigative approach with her clients.

Learn more about Martha →