About Martha


Key Takeaways

  • None of Martha's clients have a healthy gut, even the ones with zero digestive symptoms — Martha herself had a parasite, low good bacteria, and poor fat digestion with no digestive issues to show for it.
  • Gut bacteria produce up to 90% of your body's serotonin, dopamine, melatonin, and GABA, so gut pathogens and imbalances don't just cause digestive problems — they directly disrupt the neurotransmitters and hormones your body needs to sleep.
  • The Complete Sleep Solution program uses four functional lab panels — Hormone Zoomer, Gut Zoomer, Neurotransmitter Test, and Total Tox Burden — done at home through Vibrant Wellness, because insomnia is almost never caused by just one system in the body.


If you've been told your labs are normal and you still can't sleep, you're not looking at the wrong labs — you're looking at the wrong kind of labs. Standard bloodwork is built to catch disease. It's not built to catch the kind of imbalances that keep you wide awake at 3am while everything on paper looks fine.


That's why I use four functional lab tests with every client in the Complete Sleep Solution program, all from one lab company, Vibrant Wellness. You take all four at home and mail your samples back in a prepaid envelope. It takes a couple of weeks to get results once the lab receives your sample, but we start working together right away — the testing runs alongside the rest of the program, not before it.


The first is the Hormone Zoomer. You take five samples over 24 hours, including one in the middle of the night, so we can see your hormone patterns throughout the day instead of one snapshot. It looks at your melatonin pattern first — sometimes melatonin is really low, especially at night, and that alone partly explains why you're not sleeping. It also looks at cortisol and cortisone, and a lot of my clients with sleep issues show high cortisol at night. That's a problem because cortisol is your stress hormone. It's supposed to be lowest at night, and when your body releases it instead, it raises your heart rate and body temperature and makes your mind race — exactly what you don't want happening while you're trying to sleep.


The Hormone Zoomer also looks at your sex hormones — progesterone, estrogen, and the androgens like DHEA and testosterone — and how they're balanced against each other. If estrogen and progesterone are both technically "in range" but one is way higher than the other, that imbalance alone can cause sleep issues. The test also shows how your body is breaking these hormones down, which can point to whether you need more methylation support, more liver support, or whether there's inflammation in your gut driving the imbalance. That's information standard bloodwork simply doesn't give you — it shows hormone levels at one moment in time and stops there.


The second test is the Gut Zoomer, and this is where I'll say something that surprises people: none of my clients have a healthy gut. Some have obvious digestive symptoms like bloating, gas, constipation, or diarrhea. Others have none at all. I didn't. I had no digestive symptoms whatsoever, and I still had a parasite, low levels of good bacteria, and I wasn't digesting fat well. If you aren't sleeping normally, your gut likely isn't healthy either, symptoms or not.


The Gut Zoomer tests for at least 66 different pathogens, including H. pylori, which I see in a lot of my clients, along with various parasites, candida, and viruses. This matters specifically for sleep because most of these pathogens are nocturnal — they're most active in the middle of the night, eating, excreting, and releasing toxins, which triggers inflammation. And whenever there's inflammation, your body releases cortisol to deal with it. If that's happening at 3am while these pathogens are active, that cortisol release is very likely what's waking you up. The test also looks at bacterial diversity, gut inflammation markers, immune function through secretory IgA, antibodies against the gut wall, how well you're digesting and absorbing food, and even markers that point to liver dysfunction.


The third test is the Neurotransmitter Test, and this one has been a genuine gamechanger for both me and my clients, because when we know which neurotransmitters are high or low, we can act on that right away and people start sleeping and feeling better quickly. It uses the same four or five samples as the Hormone Zoomer to track your neurotransmitters across the day. It looks at norepinephrine and epinephrine — stress hormones separate from cortisol — along with serotonin and its precursors, GABA, dopamine, glycine, and taurine. Low GABA in particular makes it hard to feel calm enough to fall asleep, since GABA is your anti-anxiety neurotransmitter. On the flip side, when stimulating neurotransmitters like glutamate, histamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine, or aspartate run too high, they'll stimulate you and wake you up. None of this happens in isolation, either — the good bacteria in your gut make up to 90% of your body's serotonin, dopamine, melatonin, and GABA. So if your gut isn't healthy, you're not going to have enough of these neurotransmitters no matter what you supplement with.


The last test is the Total Tox Burden, a urine test using the same sample as the Hormone Zoomer and Neurotransmitter Test. It screens for mycotoxins, which come from mold and are most commonly linked to water-damaged homes, though they can come from food too. About 25% of the population has a gene that prevents them from clearing mycotoxins on their own, so those toxins build up, drive inflammation, and disrupt sleep. It also screens for heavy metals — lead, arsenic, mercury, cadmium, and uranium — and I'd say at least half of my clients are dealing with some level of heavy metal burden. And finally, it looks at broader environmental toxins like BPA, glyphosate, and phthalates. Almost everyone shows some exposure here simply from daily life, but when multiple toxins show up together, that's an added burden on your liver and your inflammation levels — and both of those affect sleep.


Combined with an assessment of your habits, diet, lifestyle, health history, symptoms, blood sugar patterns, brain inflammation, and how your genes are behaving, these four tests give me the full picture of what's actually going on in your body. From there, I don't hand you fifty supplements pulled straight off the lab report — I prioritize what matters most for you and build a plan to fix it, so you can start sleeping and feeling better as quickly as possible.


FAQ

Q: Do I need to have digestive symptoms for gut testing to matter for my sleep?

A: No. None of Martha's clients have a healthy gut, including the ones with zero digestive symptoms — Martha herself had no digestive issues and still had a parasite, low good bacteria, and poor fat digestion. If you aren't sleeping normally, your gut is very likely part of the problem even without bloating, gas, or other classic symptoms.


Q: Why do I keep waking up around 3am?


A: It's often related to gut pathogens being active at night. Pathogens like H. pylori and various parasites are nocturnal, so they're eating, excreting, and releasing toxins in the middle of the night, which triggers inflammation and a cortisol release — and that cortisol spike is what wakes you up.


Q: What's the difference between this testing and my regular bloodwork?

A: Standard bloodwork shows you hormone levels at one single moment in time and stops there. Functional testing like the Hormone Zoomer also shows how your body is breaking those hormones down, which can reveal whether you need methylation support, liver support, or whether gut inflammation is driving the imbalance in the first place.


Q: If I've already had comparable lab testing done, do I have to retake it?

A: No, not necessarily. If you've taken a comparable test within the last six months or so and the results are still relevant, let Martha or her team know and you won't need to retake it.


If you've been told your bloodwork looks fine but you still can't sleep, this is exactly what the Complete Sleep Solution program investigates. The program includes all four functional lab panels covered here — the Hormone Zoomer, Gut Zoomer, Neurotransmitter Test, and Total Tox Burden — so instead of guessing at one piece of the puzzle, you get the complete picture of what's actually keeping you awake.


→ 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.


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