Is your mood up and down and you don’t like yourself when you’re grumpy? You can be irritable and not yourself, especially when you haven’t slept well.


If you want to stop fighting with people, stop your racing negative thoughts, be a more enjoyable person to be around, like who you are and enjoy the good life you know you have, this episode is for you. 


In this episode, I share my story of how I was grumpy with my husband and coworkers and how I changed it, the key to lowering overall stress in your life, and 3 things that are causing stress in your body that you don’t even know are there. 


You don’t have to wait until you’re retired or your kids are out of the house or the big project at work is done to sleep well and be calm and empowered instead of snappy and irritable and on the mood swing roller coaster.


Schedule a consultation to get started with the Complete Sleep Solution program so you can consistently sleep 7+ hours uninterrupted, naturally and permanently.


00:00 Introduction: Understanding Mood Swings and Sleep

00:30 Meet Martha Lewis: Your Sleep Detective

00:46 Personal Story: Overcoming Grumpiness

03:17 The Hidden Causes of Stress and Sleep Issues

05:00 Mineral Imbalances and Gut Health

07:43 Inflammation: The Silent Stressor

10:07 Achieving Balance: Mental and Physical Health

11:48 Join the Complete Sleep Solution Program

12:34 Conclusion: Take the First Step to Better Sleep


Episode Transcript


Is your mood up and down and you don't like yourself when you're grumpy? You can be irritable and not yourself, especially when you haven't slept well. If you want to stop fighting with people, stop your racing negative thoughts, be a more enjoyable person to be around, like who you are, and enjoy the good life you know you have, this episode is for you.


This is the sleep detective podcast. You'll learn why you can't sleep and how to fix it naturally. I'm Martha Lewis. And as a functional health and sleep coach, I've helped over 200 clients find the root causes of their sleep issues and restore their health. And when they feel great and are sleeping well, their moods are more stable and they're way less grumpy.


In this episode, I share my story of how I was grumpy with my husband and coworkers and how I changed it. The key to lowering overall stress in your life and three things that are causing stress in your body that you don't even know are there.


I developed sleep issues in late pregnancy. Which I figured was just hormones and there wasn't anything I could do about it. But even after my son was born, he wasn't a good sleeper as a newborn. So I hired a pediatric sleep consultant to help with his sleep. And within four nights, he was only waking up once a night, which he did until he was sleeping through the night at six months old.


But for the next year and a half after that, I still wasn't sleeping well until I finally figured out why. And I was so grumpy during that time. I was definitely not myself. Now I could mostly hold it together with my son. Like I had a lot of patience with him, but I was super irritable with my husband.


And even at work, like I was still working a full time job at the time I was managing people and I could be very irritable with them too. Looking back, I was not the best boss, unfortunately. And so. I know that my lack of sleep was what was affecting my mood because that's not how I normally am or how I want to be.


And so everything changed once I fixed my sleep issues, once I got to the bottom of why I wasn't sleeping well and started sleeping better again, my mood improved. So much as I'm sure you can imagine and so if this is you if you and you think you can't do anything about it And it's just life. It's just how you are You're just have to deal with not sleeping well with being grumpy if you're waiting for your circumstances to change So what I mean is like you're waiting for retirement to fix this problem You're waiting for your kids to be out of the house.


You're waiting for that big work project to finally be done If you're implementing long, strict bedtime routines or you're trying to wake up early to actually have some time alone, maybe you're having wine every night to wind down and lower that anxiety and exhaustion that you're feeling. Maybe you're even trying different supplements, probiotics, GABA serotonin supplements, things like that to try and help, but it's not enough.


And this is why what you need to do is first of all, you need to get enough sleep. Now, if you're here, you're probably here because you know that that is an issue, but if you think that it's not possible, I'm going to tell you what's actually causing your sleep issues.


And one of the main things. Is that there are physical stressors in your body that you don't even know are there that are affecting your sleep. And when you have those internal physical stressors, it's making your external life feel more stressful because your body already has all this stress and it can't handle anything else.


So what you see, maybe other people handling well of juggling Life and work and kids and all the things it feels super overwhelming to you and it's not your fault. It's because your body has more stress than it can handle and that is also what's causing your sleep issues. And even if you're dealing with more serious mood issues and have been for most of your life, like anxiety and depression, the same imbalances in your body that are affecting your sleep can also be.


Affecting your mood and causing those mental health issues and I'm saying mental health in quotation marks because there can be very physical reasons for, you know, from the imbalances in your body that are affecting your mental health. So this is good news, right? Because we can find and fix the physical imbalances in your body.


So let's talk about what these physical imbalances are, where this physical stress is coming from. So one thing that I see in so many of my clients and that isn't talked about very much are lack of minerals or different mineral imbalances. So you've probably tried magnesium to sleep better, you know, We know that most people are deficient in magnesium and maybe magnesium can help, but it's actually the balance of calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium together that are so important.


So even if you have enough magnesium, if you're depleted in the other minerals or they're out of balance, then that can still affect your sleep. And your mood and if your gut isn't healthy and you aren't digesting food well, especially protein and getting the minerals that are highly available in animal protein, especially then we can become deficient in minerals.


Or again, those minerals can really get out of balance. So that's why one of the tests I do with all my clients is a hair tissue mineral analysis that really shows the balance of those minerals. And those imbalances are going to show up long before they show up on blood work. So I know that blood work looks at a few different minerals, but the blood isn't where most minerals are stored.


So we can tell a lot from the hair and the levels there as to what your mineral needs are. So that's just one kind of physical stress again. You don't know it's there. It's hidden, right? Like you can't tell that you have mineral imbalances, except if you're dealing with sleep and mood issues, then most likely you do.


Now, another physical stressor that you might not know is there is lack of good gut bacteria. So it's actually the good bacteria in our gut that make up to 90 percent of our neurotransmitters. So things like GABA, Our anti anxiety neurotransmitter, serotonin, our kind of feel good neurotransmitter. And then serotonin converts to melatonin, which is our sleeping neurotransmitter.


So we need enough good bacteria in the gut to make those things. And I know you're probably taking a probiotic and that's great, but it's not going to be enough if there are also pathogens in your gut that are. Depleting the good bacteria. And again, if you aren't digesting food well, if the wall of your gut is inflamed so all of those things are also affecting the good bacteria in your gut.


And so a lot of times taking a probiotic isn't enough. You want to look at your entire gut health to ensure that. Your gut is an environment where there's good bacteria can thrive and make those neurotransmitters. Now, another big physical stress is inflammation. So when there's inflammation, your body has to make a lot of cortisol to deal with that inflammation.


And then again, like that stress from inflammation. is causing so much stress in your body that then it's hard to handle the other stressors in your life. So I kind of see it like a stress bucket. Like let's say you can handle a bucket full of stress and what that looks like is different for everyone.


When your bucket is overflowing, that means that there's more stress in your body can handle. So if we can lower some of that stress by addressing these physical stressors, then you can handle that little bit of extra stress that comes along with life that's always going to be there, right? So the goal is to lower the stress in the stress bucket.


So that it doesn't overflow. So what causes inflammation? It can be from pathogens in the gut. So parasites, bad bacteria, yeast like candida are all going to cause a ton of inflammation and affect your sleep, affect your gut health, also affect your mood. Liver detox issues, if heavy metals have built up, if the pathogens are creating a lot of toxins, if you're like, we're all getting exposed to toxins all the time.


And again, when your body's healthy and in balance, it can handle a certain amount, but when there are too many for it to handle, then those toxins circulate around. They cause a lot of inflammation and they're going to affect your sleep and your mood. So finding what's causing inflammation in your body is the key to lowering that stress in your body.


And then you can sleep well and then you can feel good and be in a good mood and you'll stop having such high highs and low lows and being on that crazy mood roller coaster. You can even really diminish anxiety and depression symptoms as well. You can stop snapping when the littlest things happen, like I was doing especially with my husband.


You can really be the person you want to be, feeling calm and empowered and like you can handle anything that comes up. This is what happens when you're sleeping well and your body's in balance and your body isn't overly stressed. And so then you will naturally sleep better and improve your overall health.


So, now that I am sleeping well, my moods are so much more even keel. And I've done a lot of work mentally on this too. It's not, there's the physical stressors like dealing with those. I've also worked a lot on my thoughts and handling stress better. And so now I just feel so much more even keel and little things don't really bother me anymore.


Most of the time I feel like I can handle whatever is happening in my life, even though I'm juggling, I have an eight year old son who's doing lots of activities, my husband. Works a lot and is gone a lot. I work from home in a very limited amount of time while my son is at school. I have a dog with an autoimmune disease.


We have Guinea pigs, like we have a lot going on, right? It's a typical modern life, but most of the time I feel like I can handle whatever's happening, and it feels really good to feel like that and to sleep well, and to wake up rested and just ready for the day. And so that is what you can do as well. So if this is something that you want to fix in your life, you don't have to wait until you're retired 20 years from now, or until your kids move out of the house in five years, or until that work project is over in a few months or a year.


Like you can do this now. Because stressors in life are always going to come up, so there's never going to be like a perfect time where you're not dealing with any external stress, where it's okay, now I have time to work on this. The goal is to be able to figure out what's causing stress in your body and your mind while you're in the middle of life and deal with it, and then you can handle whatever comes your way from here on out.


So, I do lab testing in the complete sleep solution program to find the stressors in your body that are causing inflammation. The different imbalances that are, you know, causing that stress in your body and making everything else seem more stressful. And so I help you address those. I help you with the mental part of not sleeping and with handling.


External and mental stress better as well. So we lower overall stress. We lower the stress in your stress bucket and then you're able to feel calm and relaxed and even keel and enjoy life and feel happy and sleep well and improve your overall health. So if this is something you're interested in, you can find out more on my website, thesleepdetective.com. And the first step is to book a consultation with me.


So we'll talk about what's going on for you, what's going on with your sleep, what's going on with your health, what's going on in your life. We'll meet each other. I'll find out everything I need to know. We'll talk about what you've tried so far and why those things haven't worked.


I'll ask you what your goals are, what are you looking for? What are you hoping to achieve? And then I'll tell you how I can help you achieve those things in the program in the next six months or less. All right, everyone. Thanks so much for listening. And I'll talk to you next time.

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