From high stress and insomnia to becoming a sleep expert with Claudine Francois

I’m excited to introduce you to my brand new team member, Claudine Francois. 

In this blog post, you’ll learn how Claudine went from high stress and insomnia to becoming the sleep expert that she is today. 

This blog post is going to be a little different than I normally do - we’re doing it interview-style.

Let’s dive in! 

How Claudine got into functional health 

Martha: So I would love to start off with understanding how you got to diving into functional health and what you're doing today.

Claudine: Wow. Well, I think a lot of people who are in functional health, it's because we were struggling with our own health issues. So I was in corporate America, I was the CFO of a multinational corporation, and I felt like the stress of it all was killing me from the inside out. 

And I had previously thought this stress was a good thing. I thought, oh, if I'm stressed, I can get all this stuff done. I got the cortisol response and I just focused and I didn't realize what it was doing to my body. I didn't realize it was breaking my body down and starting to stop all of the other systems from working like they're supposed to. 

So I started having all the usual symptoms. I couldn't sleep. I was getting migraines, I was gaining weight even though I was working out and eating healthy. I had blood sugar issues and thyroid issues as well. 

Stress was the culprit for all of my issues, which it usually is in some way or another. 

I eventually went to an NTP, and she ran the GI Map test and a food sensitivity panel on me. So she did those tests and we found out, okay, I had thyroid issues, I had blood sugar issues, I had leaky gut.

All of these symptoms are physical manifestations of my stress. And so this is what I call phase one of my healing because she fixed me by giving me all the right supplements so that I could heal the leaky gut so I could get my blood sugar back on track.

I know you talk about blood sugar quite a lot and how important it's to sleep, getting my thyroid, all these things handled. And so I was better. 

I could eat the foods that were on my foods and sensitivity panel again, and I had more energy again, because that's another thing, when you're stressed, your body's depleted. 

But the problem is that we didn't work on any of the mental stress, which are the underlying reasons of how I got there in the first place:

What were my patterns? 

What were my tendencies? 

What were my driving forces that made me work myself to the ground? 

Because shortly after that, I got out of corporate, started my own CFO business, and I just repeated my patterns! Except now instead of working for somebody else 24/7, I was working for myself 24/7.

And it was even more important because there was no guarantee I got a salary. I had to please my clients, I had to perform. It was even more important that I perform well. And so I basically got to the same place again except now it was worse. 

Kind of like when you see the warning light flashing on your car and you don't take care of it, it's not like it goes away and gets better. Oftentimes it gets worse. And that's what happened in my body. I kept ignoring the warning signs again, I kept pushing my body to the brink because that's what we do as high achievers. We just push, push, push. 

We think, “Oh, I don't have time to be tired. I don't have time to take care of my body. I just need to do all the things I need to do.”

So then I got to the point where not only did I have a leaky gut (again!), I was getting migraines (again!), and I had fatigue and muscle pain (again!), now I also had h pylori and candida. 

I developed other gut issues because I hadn't listened to my body, and I just let it go on and on and get worse. 

How Claudine became a health coach and sleep expert 

Claudine: So that is when I transitioned to becoming a health coach, and I liked being a health coach. I liked helping people. But I could see that I could only help them so much. I could help them with their sleep habits, eating better foods, drinking their water, and exercising, but couldn't I “see under the hood” to help them deeper. 

They don't get better from doing what I call the basics of sleeping, eating right, and working out. And it's because there's something else going on inside their body that's preventing them from getting better. At that point I went to functional medicine so I could “see under the hood” and help my clients better. 

I want to know what's preventing people from getting better. Because as someone who spent 25 years in accounting, I'm a data geek. I love data. Give me the numbers, show me the stats. And so now instead of doing strategy for businesses, I do strategy for health.

Martha: Yes, I love it. Yeah, there's a lot there to talk about too, I think. And I think what I want to point out especially is yes, you can go to a practitioner, yes, you can get recommended all these supplements, but it's not just about supplements. And I know that's what functional medicine's kind of known for. 

I work with a lot of people who've gone to other practitioners, functional medicine doctors, and they were recommended 15 supplements. But that didn't really help, or clients were so overwhelmed that they couldn't even take action on the recommended plan. They felt like they couldn't make the changes that they were being asked to make. 

And so that's why as Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioners, we've been trained to look at the big picture, look at someone's whole life and not just say, “Progesterone's low, take progesterone. Cortisol is high, take this to lower cortisol.”

We want to know why is cortisol high? Why is progesterone low? Let's address those things. 

And that is where the stress piece comes in. And I think that burnout is so common because in our twenties, we can do it all. We have all the reserves. Our bodies are healthy, our bodies are making a lot of cortisol. And then over time, we can't keep up. And that's why we start seeing people in their 30’s and 40’s and 50’s and 60’s. They've been dealing with stress for years and decades, and it's finally catching up to them. 

So yeah, I think it's amazing that you have learned that lesson and now you are helping other people with that.

So it was funny, before we started recording, Claudine brought up this analogy that she came up with that has to do with soccer. Both of our kids are playing soccer, which is funny. 

I talk a lot about cortisol and how that affects sleep. And so I thought Claudine had this great analogy for that. I'm curious your thoughts as well on cortisol and stress and how that affects sleep.

Claudine: Cortisol is the antithesis of sleep. If you have high cortisol, you cannot fall asleep. 

And like you said, both of our sons are in soccer, and I was thinking cortisol is like that diva soccer player who's like, “I'm going to win all the goals. I'm going to do all the things. And melatonin, you're hanging out on the sidelines. You are not getting in the game. I’m the star.”

And so the star soccer player, cortisol, is just making it happen. 

The coach, who is like our body, is saying, “Well, cortisol is doing all the things. I don't want to pull cortisol out of the game, but melatonin's over here and wants to play too.”

Your body needs to “play melatonin” to help you get your rest so it can repair your body overnight; repair the damage that cortisol has done during the day. But if cortisol is so strong and so powerful that it is making all the plays and doing all the things and squeezing everybody else out, then you have no hope for getting melatonin in the game - which means you have no hope for sleeping. Your cortisol is too powerful. It's overpowering melatonin.

How high stress and mineral imbalance played a role in Claudine’s health and career path

Martha: Yes. I love that. It’s such a great analogy. So I'm curious how else your body was affected by stress. We've talked about mineral imbalance, gut health and how not dealing with what was causing you stress then led to your gut health getting even worse. But I'm curious from a mineral perspective, because minerals are unsung heroes. 

Everyone talks about vitamins, we know about vitamins, but minerals don't seem as important - but they are so critical for every single process in our body, and stress really depletes some minerals and can create these major imbalances. So I'm curious what you saw for yourself there.

Claudine: Oh yeah. Well, minerals are like little tugboats, right? When you go to the shipping yard and you see all the big ships, you're like, “Those ships are awesome.” But you don’t really think, “How did they get in there?” 

If you did find the answer to that, you’d learn they got in the shipping yard because of all the little tugboats. 

So for my mineral test, I saw a really high calcium, which is what we call a calcium shell. 

At first you might think, “Oh good, I have lots of calcium in my body.” But actually that doesn't mean you have a lot of calcium in your body. It means you have a lot of calcium in your hair, in your soft tissue, because it's the body's stress response when you're stressed. It's pulling calcium out of your bones and your teeth where we want it, and it's putting it in your soft tissue because calcium can be a calming mineral.

So their body's putting calcium in your joints, and that's where people get joint pain. It ends up as gallstones or kidney stones. Some people end up as calcification of the arteries, and that's why they have high blood pressure.

I love getting to the why of things. When people tell me they have high blood pressure and they just take these high blood pressure meds, it makes me curious. The question is not that you have high blood pressure, it’s why do you have high blood pressure? 

So yeah, for me, I had this ridiculous calcium shell. Calcium is supposed to be at 65 ish, and mine was over 300. And so that points to a high amount of chronic stress over a long period of time. And that's what was making my thyroid sluggish. 

That's what was causing all these internal stressors in my body. I had the migraines, all of the cascade of health issues that happen when the body has to make all these detours because when our body starts reacting to things, there's a roadblock somewhere. And it's like, “Well, I have to go around it somehow!” And then all of these other symptoms just keep piling up because the body is not designed to go around things all the time. 

So the calcium shell is a big indicator for me of chronic long-term stress.

It’s important to lower calcium and get it going into the bones and teeth where they're supposed to go, but it's also about getting to the root of where the stress is coming from. 

We know for a lot of our clients it can definitely be mental stress, emotional stress, overworking, or other things like that, that leads to the body getting all stressed as well. The imbalances in the body can then contribute to leaky gut, hormone imbalance, mineral imbalance, calcium build up, and so many other things. 

Final thoughts from Claudine

Martha: Awesome. So is there anything else you want to share?

Claudine: One of the biggest stressors is not being able to sleep. And so when you have this, I call it a circular formula, right? You're stressed because you can't sleep and you can't sleep because you’re stressed. 

And that's why the work that we do in your sleep programs is so important because it's going to break that cycle and actually help people get the sleep they need so their body can recover. 

All the extra support you're doing to fix the damage that's been done on the gut, on the hormones, on the minerals, so that they don't have to be stuck in that cycle anymore.

Claudine’s bio and how to work with us in our sleep programs

Claudine Francois, a Board-Certified Functional Medicine & Holistic Health Practitioner, is a

trailblazer in guiding high-achieving women to transcend burnout and embrace vibrant living.

As a former CFO of a multinational company, Claudine intimately understands the toll of stress and its effects on health. Her transformative journey through functional medicine and lifestyle shifts led her to become a dedicated advocate for women's well-being.

Claudine's expertise lies in uncovering the root causes of chronic issues that often elude traditional medicine. 

Through sophisticated functional lab tests and a holistic approach, she crafts personalized protocols that empower her clients to reclaim energy, clarity, and sleep!

Ready to get 7+ hours of interrupted sleep a night? Work with us in one of our programs. 

Learn more at www.thesleepdetective.com