13: Is hormone imbalance causing your insomnia?

Episode Transcript:

Welcome to the Why You Can't Sleep podcast. If you struggle to sleep and you've tried what seems like everything, you are in the right place. There are imbalances in your body that are keeping you awake, and you're going to learn what they are in this show. Now, let's kick off this episode with an inspiring success story from one of my clients who has significantly improved their sleep by correcting the underlying health issues that were causing their insomnia.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode. Before I get into this week's episode, I just want to talk about one of my clients who has had major success. So this client, Teresa, just slept the past three nights without sleep meds. So her insomnia started in July of 2021, completely out of the blue. She never had sleep issues before. She had dealt with anxiety, though, for a lot of her life, but then all of a sudden, she was only able to sleep three to 5 hours a night, and so she ended up getting on sleep meds because, of course, she was desperate for more sleep. So we ran some tests.

All the tests that I run, it showed that she had copper toxicity. So I've talked about this before, but her copper was through the roof. So something likely caused her body to release all that copper. And so that could have been exactly what caused her insomnia. We'll never know for sure, but that is my guess. She also had depleted sex hormones. She had a parasite and high candida. She had liver detox issues, and she had high cortisol at night, which is likely from the pathogens in her gut and from that liver dysfunction.

And so she had a lot of these imbalances for years, most likely, but something put her over the edge that led to her insomnia. And so only four months after we started to work together, she stopped the ativan and is sleeping well. And this could be you, too. So all of my clients are similar in that they have more than one thing that's causing their issues. And so that's why I do multiple tests, so we find everything so we don't miss anything.

All right, so today I want to talk about hormones, and this client, Teresa, also did have depleted sex hormones, so this relates to her as well. But pretty much every single one of my clients has some kind of hormone issues. Some are too high, some are too low, but either way, they aren't feeling well, they aren't sleeping well, and their hormones can be a big part of the problem.

Now, we tend to think of hormones as a women's problem, but my male clients also have hormone imbalance. So this isn't just about women. Now, when I talk about hormone, cortisol is, of course, one of those hormones that is likely out of balance. So a lot of my clients have high cortisol, especially at night. So we see this direct cause of why they aren't sleeping. Or sometimes cortisol levels are actually low. Theyve become depleted over time, and then the body resorts to adrenaline when theres stress and inflammation. And that makes those symptoms of racing, mind racing heartbeat, things like that, even worse when theres adrenaline involved.

Or sometimes they see fluctuations in cortisol throughout the day. That explains why people have more energy and less energy at certain times of the day. Now, of course, by hormones, we also mean sex hormone. So low estrogen and progesterone can definitely cause sleep issues as well as high testosterone. And then melatonin is a hormone as well that I look at. So when we think of hormones, we want them to all be imbalanced with each other. So if you think about a symphony, you want all of the musical instruments to be playing at the same tempo, the same volume, the same key for it to sound really good, right? And if one of those instruments, let's say the clarinet, gets out of key and starts playing too loud, it's going to ruin the entire symphony. And it's the same with our hormones if one gets out of balance and it affects all of the others.

So we want them all in balance together. Now, low estrogen and low progesterone can cause insomnia as well as many other symptoms. And some of those symptoms are similar. So hot flashes, headaches, weight gain, depression, anxiety, mood swings can be from both low progesterone or low estrogen. So you never want to guess and say, oh, I looked up online and I have some symptoms of low estrogen. I'm going to go to the health food store and get estrogen cream, which you can do. Now, if your problem was low progesterone and you start adding estrogen, you're just making things worse. So you definitely want to get tested and not just guess about hormone.

Now, low estrogen tends to cause additional symptoms of lethargy, fatigue and brain fog, whereas low progesterone causes more like irritability, feeling stress, nervous jittery, sugar cravings, higher low blood sugar. So there are some differences there as well. So you can definitely get your hormones tested by a doctor, and you can be prescribed estrogen or progesterone hormone replacement therapy. And this might help alleviate some of your symptoms. Which is great, but it's not getting to the root of the problem, because sex hormones become depleted for a reason and it's usually because of long term ongoing stress. And this is what happens. So when your body constantly has to make cortisol to deal with stress, and this can be mental stress, and this can also be physical stress in your body that you don't even know is there. So the kinds of things that I test for.

But when your body's constantly making cortisol to deal with stress, then it takes all those resources away from making your sex hormones. So they're all steroid hormones, they all are made up of the same building blocks. And so if your body's focusing on cortisol, it's nothing. Making sex hormone, this is actually what helps us survive, because our body is always going to prioritize what it thinks is survival in the moment versus reproduction, right? If you're super stressed all the time, your body needs to deal with that. It's not going to want you to reproduce and have babies because you're not in a healthy place to do that. These depleted sex hormones are usually the end result of that chronic stress. And so I see this in a lot of my older clients, especially once people get in their fifties and sixties and they've had decades of ongoing stress. And so that's how long it can take to become depleted over time.

But sometimes I do see very low levels of estrogen and progesterone in women in their thirties. And that can be from being on birth control or also they just had a lot of stress and their body isn't able to make those sex hormones. Now it's also important to if you're eating a low cholesterol diet, low fat diet. If you have too low body fat, our hormones are made out of fat and cholesterol, so we need those things. So sometimes diet can play a role too. Or if your gut is damaged or you have h. Pylori is a bacteria in the stomach that affects protein digestion, then you aren't getting those building blocks, you need to make those hormones. So those are some of the causes of hormones getting depleted over time.

Now, another common pattern I see, and especially in men actually is something called estrogen dominant. This is when estrogen is high, or at least it's high relative to testosterone for men or progesterone for women. So this can cause a lot of symptoms for women like PM's, heavy or irregular menses, fluid retention and bloating, breast tenderness and weight gain. And then for everyone. It can cause headaches, brain fog, mood swings, depression, irritability, low libido, and sleep disturbances. Of course, and a lot of times, estrogen dominance or estrogen is high because the liver isn't functioning properly and it's not able to break down those hormones and get them out of the body like it's supposed to. And so that estrogen just keeps circulating around and building up in the body. So that's usually a sign of poor liver health, although gut health plays a role, stress and inflammation, heavy metal toxicity, and getting estrogens from the environment and from food.

So things like soyez or BPA in plastics, those can also cause this excess estrogen. Now, another hormone pattern I see that affects sleep is high testosterone. And this can happen in women. And a sign of this happening in women is getting those whiskers on your chin and chest and face. So those kind of black, dark, prickly hairs. When women get that, then that means that their testosterone dominant also cause irritability or aggression, infertility, acne, or oily skin. In men, this is going to cause an enlarged prostate, a deepening voice, and for everyone, this can cause weight gain and insomnia. So definitely something to look at.

And then low melatonin is also, not surprisingly, a pattern that I see in some of my clients that is leading to their sleep issues. So I don't recommend melatonin supplements for everyone, but some of my clients are. Melatonin is low. And so I do recommend that short term because it can help them sleep, and it also has a lot of other important functions in the body. It acts as an antioxidant, so it's important for our immune system and it opposes cortisol. But I really see low melatonin as a window into gut health because 90% of melatonin is supposed to be made in the gut by the good bacteria there. So when melatonin is low, then I assume poor gut health. And that's usually confirmed by the GI map that I run where we see different pathogens and maybe low normal flora happening and contributing to that melatonin or the low melatonin.

So again, a lot of times I will recommend supplements short term, for melatonin while we work on rebuilding gut health. So they aren't taking that forever. And that's also what I recommend, you know, for hormones in general, is, okay, let's get to the root of it. Let's find out what's causing your body to be stressed so your body doesn't have to focus as much on making cortisol, and it can make your sex hormones instead. Instead so that you don't have to take these hormone supplements forever. All right, everyone, thanks for listening, and I will see you next time.

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