Will a sleep coach help you with insomnia?

If you’ve been struggling to sleep for a while, you’ve probably tried all the things: supplements, gadgets, sleep hygiene, a new mattress, essential oils, sleeping pills and more.

You may have even done Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for insomnia with a sleep coach.

While habits and your thoughts have an impact, if you've done what seems like everything and haven't gotten better, it means that there are imbalances in your body that are affecting your sleep.

You can have a 2-hour bedtime routine and meditate every night and not watch screens before bed, but it's not going to help you fall asleep easily and sleep through the night if you also have a parasite or hormone imbalance or neurotransmitter deficiencies.

As a functional health and sleep coach, I go beyond the standard sleep advice by using functional lab testing to find the root causes of your sleep issues.

Functional lab testing shows how the different systems in your body are working so we know what to fix, kind of like how a car mechanic plugs the engine into the diagnostic machine to see what’s wrong.

The tests look for everything that could be sabotaging your sleep, including:

Sex hormones because depleted or out-of-balance hormones can make it hard to fall and stay asleep.
Cortisol because if your cortisol is high at bedtime or in the middle of the night it's going to be impossible to sleep.
Liver function because your liver is most active at night. If it can't handle all the toxins it's supposed to detoxify, you'll be awake!
Gut health because pathogens in the gut are the most common reason why people are awake for hours in the middle of the night.
Neurotransmitters because too little serotonin or GABA and too many stimulating neurotransmitters will keep you awake.
Mineral imbalance and depleted minerals directly affect sleep.
Heavy metals because they cause inflammation and impair detox which sabotage your sleep.

The reason you haven’t been able to cure your insomnia even though you’ve tried many things is because there are multiple puzzle pieces that need to be found and addressed.

When you know which parts of your body are out of balance through lab work, you'll be able to specifically target the root cause of your insomnia so that you not only start getting 1 to 3 more hours of sleep but you also feel more rested and replenished with the hours you do get.

The 4 functional lab tests I run in my programs are:

1. The Dutch Test

The DUTCH test is a comprehensive dried urine hormone test that shows what’s going on with your sex hormones, cortisol pattern, liver function, melatonin, and more.

This test is more accurate than blood work for sex hormones because it takes an average of your hormones over a 24 hour period.

And it shows your cortisol pattern which gives so much more insight than just taking a fasting morning sample.

I get so much valuable information about multiple systems in your body from this one test.

2. The GI Map tells me what’s living in your gut: parasites, bacterial overgrowth and/ or candida. This is a common cause of insomnia since those creatures are nocturnal. This test also shows how well you're digesting food, how strong your immune system is, and gives an overall snapshot of your gut health.

None of my clients have a healthy gut, even if they don't have digestive issues!

Gut health is a crucial piece of the puzzle for everyone with sleep issues so you’ll finally be able to sleep through the night by addressing your gut. And it’s way easier than you think!

Because of the technology of the test, it finds pathogens such as H. pylori that can be missed by a biopsy or breath test and parasites that your gp’s stool test doesn’t even look for.

And I use the test to help you restore your gut health and create a gut environment where pathogens can’t thrive instead of merely trying to blast it with a strong, damaging antibiotic that leaves your gut less healthy than you started with.

3. Neuro Focus Panel

I use the Neuro Focus Panel to look at 7 key neurotransmitters so we can support any deficiencies or excesses and get you sleeping better as soon as possible.

This test is a game-changer because it enables us to start using supplements to improve your sleep right away.

4. Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA)

The Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis shows mineral balance (which is crucial for good sleep) and heavy metals (which destroy sleep) and gives clues about how well your adrenals, thyroid, blood sugar system and more are working.

Mineral balance and heavy metals are often overlooked by other practitioners so you don’t want to miss these critical pieces of the puzzle.

(If you've worked with other doctors and practitioners and haven't gotten better, you aren't broken! It's just that something has been missed.)

Our client Jaipal wrote, “Through a series of lab tests, through metrics and analysis, Martha was able to hone in on the source of my restlessness and lack of proper sleep.”

You will also fill out an intake questionnaire and other assessments so that we don't miss anything that could be affecting your sleep. These assessments look at:

Diet and blood sugar to stop the 3am wake-ups.
Habits and lifestyle so that we can recommend key changes to help you sleep deeply and wake up rested and with energy.
Mold toxicity which greatly affects your health and your body's ability to sleep normally.
Brain inflammation so we can help lower it.
Epigenetics (how your genes are being expressed) so we know exactly what supplements and lifestyle changes to recommend (and not recommend!) that will have the biggest impact on your body.
And more

You won't ever have to google “causes of insomnia” at 3 am again because you'll know what's going on in your body, instead of trying to sort through generic reasons for insomnia.

If you’ve worked with other sleep coaches and haven't gotten better, what’s been missing is finding and fixing the imbalances in your body that are keeping you awake at night.

As a functional sleep coach, I’ll find and fix all the root causes of your insomnia so you can sleep well naturally without drugs.