16: How mineral imbalances (like magnesium) can cause 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.

Our client Jim wrote, "Before working with you, I was waking up for two to 3 hours during the night. I also had an upset stomach and my energy level was good, but not as good as it was in the past. My sleep has improved overall. I'm still waking up during the night, but I go back to sleep faster. I do feel I get a deeper sleep and I feel more rested, a noticeable improvement in comparison prior to working with you. Also, my stomach feels better and my energy level is much better. Anxiety over the simplest things have diminished greatly. Now I can better identify and handle stressful situations. I like that you're very good at listening to any symptoms that I was experiencing and compassionate about those symptoms. You're knowledgeable on the tests and on the many products that are available to relieve or resolve a person's issues. It's been good working with you. Thank you, Jim. I enjoyed working with you as well."

Hello, everyone. I'm excited for another episode today, especially because you know that not sleeping can drive you crazy. I know this, too. When I used to lie awake at night, I think of everything I did that day, trying to pinpoint what it was that I did wrong that was keeping me awake. Was it the chocolate I ate at 04:00 p.m. did I exercise too little or not enough? What the heck? Was it so frustrating? And then I learned about how things in the body can cause insomnia, and I realized that there was something much deeper going on. And that's why everything I had tried before didn't work. All the supplements, all the changes to my schedule, my sleep habits, and things that I made, they didn't really work.

And that's because there was something actually going on in my body. Once I did some functional lab tests, I found out that I had a parasite, I had heavy metals, I had a liver that wasn't that healthy. I had hormone imbalances. I had a lot of different things going on, and these were all contributing to my insomnia. So now I know that there was all of those things and more, and I finally overcame my insomnia by addressing everything, my gut, my liver, my hormones, my minerals, food sensitivities, all the things. And I realized that just trying to fix one thing was not enough. So this week, I want to tell you about something you might not have heard of, and this is that mineral imbalances can cause insomnia. Now, we hear about vitamins all the time, but you rarely hear about the importance of minerals for health and sleep, besides maybe magnesium.

And really all of my clients have some sort of mineral imbalance, which makes sense since they aren't sleeping well. And one of the most important things to know is that even though you hear about minerals by themselves, like magnesium can help with sleep, for example, they actually work synergistically together. So if you take too much magnesium, it then affects your calcium, sodium and potassium levels. And it's also more complicated than just taking magnesium. Even though you might need magnesium and that might be contributing to your sleep issues, you actually need other nutrients to absorb magnesium as well. So you need boron, you need vitamin D, you need certain b vitamins. And so you can take magnesium supplements, but it's not going to help if you don't have those cofactors you need to absorb them, or if you have an unhealthy diet, that's nothing, digesting the supplements correctly either. So, this is why I have all of my clients do a hair tissue mineral analysis or an HTMA, because mineral balance is so important for sleep.

And so the first thing I focus on with my clients is getting the four primary minerals back in balance. These are calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium. And ideally, these should all be in balance, but these are almost always out of balance, and you actually can't deal with detoxing heavy metals or if you have iodine deficiency or something like that, until you balance those primary minerals first. So, one pattern that I commonly see on the HTMA from my clients is called slow oxidation, or slow metabolism. And this is about 75% of my clients have this pattern, and they kind of know it. You know, if they have a slow metabolism, like they have trouble losing weight, they feel tired and sluggish. And so that's what a slow metabolism means, but it also has to do with your mineral balance. And slow metabolism means that your adrenals and your thyroid are sluggish.

So, not that there's necessarily anything wrong with your adrenaline, thyroid glands, but just that they don't have the nutrients they need to be supported, and so they aren't working optimally. And so in this pattern, your body isn't able to keep, to hold on to sodium and potassium. And so those levels look really low on a mineral test. And then when that happens, calcium magnesium can't get out of the cell, and so they build up in the soft tissue like the hair, and they actually aren't available to be used. So calcium magnesium in this case look high, but they're actually low in the body and being excreted into the hair. So it's pretty complicated to interpret these test results because high doesn't always mean high and low doesn't always mean low. So what happens is that if, say, you're taking magnesium supplements, magnesium can look really high on this test, but if you aren't absorbing them, that's actually what makes it high, so your body isn't able to get them into the cell, and so it's pushing it out into the soft tissue, like the hair. And so it's showing up high on that test.

So some of the symptoms of this pattern with that, what looks like high calcium magnesium, low sodium potassium, insomnia is a big one. Hypothyroid symptoms like weight gain, cold hands and feet, and fatigue, constipation, sugar cravings, and low blood sugar, like feeling apathetic and depressed, and not wanting to be social and having a lot of negative thoughts, even brain fog. So all of these are some of the symptoms of this kind of pattern. And what causes it is going to be chronic stressed. So both physical and mental, because your body, when it's stressed, it burns through sodium and potassium really quickly, and magnesium as well, so those get depleted. I'm a poor diet. If you aren't eating enough protein can contribute to this. Even taking supplements like calcium, magnesium, zinc and vitamin D can lead to this imbalance, because if you aren't getting enough sodium, potassium to balance those out.

So that's why the testing is so important. And just trying random supplements is not recommended because you can get too much calcium, and that's not good. Toxic metals and environmental chemicals can contribute to this. Chronic infections, especially gut infections and even medications. So blood pressure drugs, sedatives, sleeping pills, marijuana and pain pills can all lead to this slow oxidation pattern, which can directly lead to insomnia. Now, the opposite pattern is going to be fast metabolism or fast oxidation. And a lot of times for those of us with slow metabolism, we think we want it to be fast, right? So that we can lose weight and have energy. But you actually want a balanced metabolism.

You don't want it slow or fast. And fast oxidation can also cause insomnia. So what happens is that sodium and potassium are high. They build up in the body, and at the same time, you use that calcium magnesium too quickly, so you're imbalanced the other way. So you become deficient in calcium magnesium. And this pattern of mineral imbalance speeds up your thyroid adrenals, which speeds up your metabolism. But that can lead to, like, things that we associate with a type a personality, and being anxious and irritable and aggressive, having loose stools, having that racing mind, especially at night, and insomnia, having panic attacks. So all those things that make sense, if your metabolism is too fast, it's too much.

That's why we want it balanced. And causes of this fast metabolism can be a low fat diethouse, not getting enough fat, too much caffeine, of course, but even pesticides and toxic metals that we're getting from food and water, chronic emotional stress, certain supplements can actually lead to this pattern. So too much vitamin C, vitamin e, and certain b vitamins. And then, you know, herbs like ginseng and maca. And if you're taking like, glandular supplements for thyroid or adrenal, that, and you're taking too much, then it can lead to this fast metabolism and then prescription drugs such as thyroid medication. So if you're taking too much for hypothyroidism, it can have the opposite effect. Antidepressants, amphetamines and cortisone can all contribute to this pattern, and that's going to affect sleep as well. Now, what can also happen is having way too much calcium.

This is called a calcium shell. This is when you aren't absorbing calcium. So it's not, the calcium isn't getting to the bones and teeth where it's supposed to go. It's instead your body is putting it into the soft tissue, like the hair. So that's why we see it on this hair test and we get a calcium shell from too much calcium supplementation. So this is why calcium supplements can be really dangerous if you don't know that you actually need calcium. Also, though, emotional trauma and chronic stress can lead to this, because calcium is a very hard mineral, and so your body will build up the calcium in the cells. It's kind of a way of a shield, like a literal physical shield with that hard mineral.

So people have been through some trauma or some kind of loss. I see this high calcium. Now hard drinking water is going to have extra calcium. Hypothyroidism or hashimoto's can lead to this calcium shell, iodine deficiency and copper toxicity. And so some of these symptoms of a calcium shell are going to be joint and muscle pain and cramps, spasms or twitches. And that's because, again, calcium is also a sharp mineral, and so when it moves around, it can. It can lead to these pains in your body. Now, hypothyroid symptoms again, those cold hands and feet, weight gain, fatigue, any kind of arthritis, osteoporosis, bone spurs, kidney stones are another sign, fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome.

A lot of people with these have a calcium shell now, poor dental health and tooth decay, because the calcium isn't getting into the teeth where it's supposed to go. Kind of this feeling of feeling disconnected and apathetic and numb. So that's where the shell is protecting you emotionally, which can also manifest as depression. And brain fog is another symptom of this. And so if you have some of these symptoms, then it could be from a calcium shell. And so you really want to find out if this is what's going on for you, because it's going to increase your risk of heart disease if calcium is getting pushed into the soft tissue, because that includes the arteries, again, that's why you don't want to be supplementing with calcium unless you absolutely know you need it. And you definitely want to be taking vitamin k two if you take calcium, because that helps move calcium into the bones and teeth where it's supposed to go. Now, another thing I'm looking for on this mineral test is copper, and copper is a necessary mineral, but it can become toxic if we have too much of it.

And so I talk in detail on another podcast episode about copper toxicity. But this is common thing I see, especially in my female clients, because birth control and hormone replacement therapy can lead to copper toxicity. Also, vegan and vegetarian diets can contribute to this because they tend to be low in zinc, and zinc and copper balance each other out. Copper also accumulates in your liver and your brain, so it's going to put an extra burden on your liver, which if you're not sleeping, your liver probably isn't that healthy. And, you know, when it's in the brain, it's going to cause neurological issues, including insomnia. So it can lead to fatigue, anxiety or irritability, trouble sleeping, hypothyroidism, brain fog, but also that racing mind apathy, low libido, infertility. And it's coincides with candida infection in the gut a lot of the times. So copper is definitely something that you want to be looking for.

And having too much copper is going to affect the other minerals, too, because it depletes potassium, and then it raises sodium at first, but then over time, it depletes it, and it increases how quickly you use up magnesium by five times. And it pushes calcium to the soft tissues, creating a calcium shell. So that's how copper toxicity can lead to that slow metabolism pattern and that calcium shell. So, definitely something you want to be looking for if you can't sleep. So if you're a slow or a fast metabolizer, it's sabotaging your sleep. If you have too much calcium or too much copper, that could be keeping you awake at night. And so that's why it's so important to look at what's going on with your minerals and get them back in balance. So that's why all my clients do that hair tissue mineral analysis test, so I can see what's going on there.

Because if we just look at your gut or your hormones and you don't address mineral imbalances or copper toxicity, then you're not going to fully get over your insomnia. And so I work with my clients on all the factors that are contributing to their mineral imbalance, because the gut is going to affect minerals, the diets affecting minerals, toxins are affecting minerals, and, of course, mental stress is affecting minerals. So I help with all of those things to. To help get minerals back in balance. So the most powerful part of finding out what's going on in your body that's causing your insomnia is that you don't feel crazy anymore. The reason you're waking up at 03:00 a.m. and not falling back asleep isn't because you aren't breathing correctly or you didn't meditate for long enough. It's because there's actually something going on in your body that's causing this.

And so now that you know this, there's no need to get anxious because you can work on it and correct it. And that's exactly what I can help you with. And I know this because I overcame my own insomnia by doing this, by finding what's going on in my body. And I've helped dozens of clients with this as well. So whether they've been struggling for years or months or since childhood, they get better. And you can, too. All right, I wish you a good night's sleep, and I will talk to you next week.

Are you ready to take the first step toward figuring out your sleep issues? You want to start with the essentials? So I created the sleep essentials program to help you get started improving your sleep. It's based on what I start with for my one on one clients, so it's things that everyone needs to address. This program has four modules, so you can learn about what really causes sleep issues and how to optimize your diet and blood sugar for better sleep. It also has five bonuses, such as how to calm your nervous system, how to exercise for your best sleep, and how to get off sleeping pills. It comes with videos, handouts, and checklists, so you can start implementing right away. The cost is normally $37, but for being a listener of this podcast, you can use code sleep 20 to get $20 off, making it a steal for $17.

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