Sleep should be easy and if it’s not it’s because you're missing one or both of the 2 things I’m going to talk about today. 


You'll learn:

  • why all the things you've tried to sleep better haven't worked.
  • the 2 things you don't want to ignore if you want to consistently sleep well without needing drugs or a ton of supplements
  • How Gabby used this formula to go from 2 hours of sleep to 5.5-6 hours in 4 months


When you follow this simple formula, you'll be able to consistently fall asleep easily, sleep 7-9 hours uninterrupted, and wake up rested with energy all day.


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


Resources mentioned:

185: 3 simple steps to change your thoughts about sleep so you can sleep well


00:00 Introduction to Better Sleep

01:03 Meet Gabby: A Case Study

02:22 Step 1: Achieving a Healthy Body

03:17 Understanding Body Imbalances

13:07 Step 2: Cultivating a Calm Mind

18:59 Gabby's Progress and Success

22:25 The Complete Sleep Solution Program

25:45 Conclusion and Next Steps


Episode Transcript


Sleep should be easy. And if it's not, it's because you're missing one or both of the two things I'm going to talk about today. You're going to learn why all the things that you've tried to sleep better haven't worked. And the two things you don't want to ignore. If you want to consistently sleep well without drugs or a ton of supplements, when you follow the simple formula, you'll be able to consistently Fall asleep easily sleep seven to nine hours uninterrupted, however much your body needs and wake up rested and have energy all day.


If we haven't met yet, I am Martha Lewis, AKA the sleep detective as a functional health coach for the past five years. I've helped myself and over 200 clients. Find and fix the root causes of the, of their sleep issues by using the simple formula. I'm going to tell you about today. So let's get into it.


So before I get started, I do want to tell you about one of my current clients and I am going to call her Gabby. So she was only sleeping an hour at a time and getting a total of at most two to three hours of sleep a night. even with taking THC, CBD, CBN gummies. she is crying all the time because she's so tired and just feeling desperate for sleep.


She had tried hormone replacement therapy. She tried antidepressants, but she did not want to be on them. And the hormone replacement therapy did not help her sleep. She had already spent thousands of dollars on a DO, a functional doctor, a wellness coach, and cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. And she had recently gone through a hard divorce and has a new boyfriend.


And so she wants to sleep well and get a fresh start on her life. And her sleep actually kept getting worse. It was not getting better. And of course she was skeptical that I could help her because she's already tried a lot of things and already spent a lot of money. So I'm going to continue with her story as we go on.


So you'll be able to see as I talk about the formula here. So step one is having a healthy body because a healthy body sleeps well. And if you are like me and maybe you already live a very healthy lifestyle, Like I always ate organic, you know, I cared about the nutrition of the food I was eating, I exercised, I took supplements from here and there, like I worked as a nutritionist, I worked in the supplement industry.


I managed the supplement department of a health food store before I got into this. And yet my body still got out of balance enough to have sleep issues, which for me started in late pregnancy and didn't go away even after my son was born, even after my son was sleeping through the night and I had become a pediatric sleep consultant.


So I just want to point out that a healthy body sleeps well. So that is the first step. And I think what a lot of people don't know is that there are different imbalances in the body that affects sleep. And, you know, we don't know this because if you look up how to sleep better, everything you read talks about sleep hygiene, have a bedtime routine, don't drink caffeine too late in the day, keep the lights dim before bed, don't watch screens before bed.


I mean, when I wasn't sleeping well, I remember reading that same advice over and over again. And it was so. Frustrating because you can do all those things, but it's not going to help if you have chronic sleep issues. And that's because there are also imbalances in your body that are affecting your sleep.


So I want to briefly talk about these a little bit today. And I have on my podcast, I have episodes about each of these. So if you want a deeper dive into each of the imbalances and you can find that there. But hormones can become out of balance. So by that, I mean, um, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, when, when some of those are low, especially estrogen and progesterone, which happens to women as we get older, but it also applies to men, then that can affect sleep.


If estrogen is too high, actually for both men and women that can also affect sleep. If testosterone is too high, that can affect sleep. So hormones are a big piece of the puzzle and I will add cortisol counts in there. a lot of my clients have high cortisol at night and that is why they aren't sleeping because Cortisol supposed to be low at night because it gives us energy.


It makes our mind race. It increases our heart rate and blood pressure and body temperature. It's, you know, what we use for a stress response. So we don't want the body releasing that at night and unhealthy gut. So there are numerous ways that gut health affects sleep. When the gut is inflamed and damaged, then whenever there's inflammation, the body releases cortisol.


And again, when that's happening at night is going to wake you up. If there's a pathogen in your gut, and by that I mean a parasite, or Candida, which is a type of yeast, or bacterial overgrowth, including H. pylori, all of those creatures are nocturnal, so they are most active in the middle of the night, releasing a lot of toxins, which causes a lot of inflammation, and then the body releases cortisol.


Another way the gut affects sleep is by the good bacteria in our gut make up to 90 percent of our neurotransmitters. So I'm talking about serotonin and dopamine and GABA and melatonin that are necessary for us to feel calm and relaxed and able to sleep. So if you don't have enough good bacteria, then you can't make those neurotransmitters.


Liver detox issues is another big one I see in pretty much all of my clients. So the liver is also most active at night, and that's when it is supposed to be dealing with all these toxins. And when there are more toxins than it can handle, and that can be from pathogens in the gut create these toxins, heavy metals or toxins, mold can create, um, mycotoxins.


So even if you don't drink alcohol, which a lot of people will tell me, I don't drink alcohol anymore. My liver must be fine. There could be toxins in your body that you don't even know are there. And we're also exposed to hundreds of chemicals every day that are a healthy body can get rid of if there aren't too many, but when there are too many, then it can't handle it anymore.


And then those toxins , circulate around at night, causing inflammation, which is causing you to wake up food sensitivities happen when the gut is damaged. And so when you start reacting to different foods, then those cause inflammation as well. Now, mineral imbalances are something that isn't talked about very often, but, um, different.


When calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium are out of balance with each other in different ways that can directly affect sleep. So there's more to minerals and just taking magnesium now, yes, a lot of my clients are deficient in magnesium, but they're also deficient in sodium and potassium or maybe in calcium or calcium can get way too high, which I'll talk about with Gabby.


And then that affects sleep heavy metals. are things like mercury and aluminum and cadmium and lead. These can build up when your body isn't healthy and can't detoxify properly. Or when you're lacking minerals, heavy metals can do part of the job as minerals, even though they're toxic to the body. So that's also another piece of the puzzle mold toxicity.


So about a third of my clients have And they may not have been exposed to mold and either knew it or didn't know it, but their body wasn't able to get rid of the mold properly. And so it started thriving in the body and that is very toxic and can cause all different kinds of symptoms.


So if you're having sleep issues, but also. Things like frequent urination and aches and pains and, um, sensitivity to light. There are lots of symptoms that mold can cause, but that's something that I screen for as well because mold affects the gut. It affects our hormones. It affects our mineral balance.


It affects detox for sure. And neurotransmitter imbalances. So I mentioned those talking about gut health. Because the good bacteria in our gut have to make the neurotransmitters. Um, so a lot of times I'm seeing, you know, not enough serotonin, not enough GABA, not enough dopamine. And that can be due to genetic reasons or when the gut isn't healthy.


When you don't have enough nutrients to make those neurotransmitters they can become deficient. you might've heard of histamine or glutamate. Those are stimulating neurotransmitters. And when those are too high, that's going to affect sleep and more. I talk about this as everyone has their own unique puzzle and different pieces to their puzzle.


So if you aren't sleeping, you don't have every single one of these, but there's definitely more than one of these that's happening because everything in the body is connected. And so if there's a pathogen in the gut. That is affecting your minerals because your gut is damaged and then you aren't absorbing nutrients from food that you need to.


It's affecting, um, it can lead to damaging the gut and causing food sensitivities. It's going to affect liver detox and so many more things. It's going to attract neurotransmitters. It's also going to affect hormones because when the body is constantly making cortisol to deal with stress, it takes those resources away from making sex hormones.


So then those become depleted. because everything's connected, it's why you can't just say, Oh, maybe I have a parasite. That is what is causing my sleep issues. And treat the parasite and then you're good to go. Unfortunately, the parasites damage your gut. It's affected your minerals. It's affected your hormones.


It's affected detox. It's affected everything. that's why I really believe in looking at every single thing that could be causing sleep issues in the body. And that way that nothing is missed. And that is what had happened with Gabby is that she had seen these other people, but things were being missed.


And so her test results showed that she had high cortisol, so her body was very stressed. Her sex hormones have become depleted. She had, again, those low neurotransmitters. She had mineral imbalances, especially she had something called a calcium shell, which is when calcium builds up really high. And instead of getting into the bones and teeth where it's supposed to go, it gets into the soft tissue like the hair.


So that's why I use a hair test to look for minerals. and not getting to where it's supposed to go. And so it builds up. And this is usually a result of major stress. And so it makes sense knowing that she had just gone through a hard divorce, that this is kind of the body's way of protecting itself.


So her calcium is really high. She also had mold toxicity and she suspected because she lived in mold before and luckily when we started working together, she had just moved to a new place. She also had bacterial overgrowth in the gut and poor digestion and liver detox issues. So these were some of the pieces of her puzzle.


So again, she didn't have everything but she had a lot of these. But the good news is we can address these things all at once. And. You can improve your sleep can get better really quickly. All right. And she also had blood sugar imbalances. So that is something that I screen for. I don't test for it, but I screen for it in my intake assessment to see because when blood sugar drops too low in the night, the body releases cortisol to give it energy.


Um, but of course that's going to wake you up. So that's another piece of the puzzle that I'm looking for. All right.


So step two, we talked about a healthy body and then a calm mind is next. 


So I want to add before I get into the calm mind, because this might seem obvious and especially if your doctor has said, Oh, it's anxiety.


It's all in your head, right? Or if you are feeling anxious a lot, even during the day and at night, if your mind is racing at night, then you might think that that's the problem. Okay. And I want to say first that the imbalances in the body that I just talked about can cause the racing mind, they can cause anxiety.


And so instead of anxiety causing your sleep issues, And then lack of sleep causing anxiety, which it can, so it becomes this vicious cycle. But there's also something above that that's causing both of those things, right? So the imbalance is like when cortisol is high all the time, you're going to feel anxious and wired.


And if it's high at night, you're going to feel anxious and wired at night. If your blood sugar is on a roller coaster, you're going to feel anxious. And so the, one of the first steps to having a calm mind is to addressing the imbalances in your body. But there are still things that we want to look at to make sure that what you're thinking and stress isn't affecting your sleep.


So it's really important and things I help my clients with are to rewire their brain. So that instead of being stressed about sleep. They look forward to sleep. And of course this helps as you're sleeping better, but it doesn't even have to, before it becomes something positive, it can become more neutral where, you know, you're not crying all day because you weren't sleeping.


And that can happen because you change your thoughts before your sleep even gets better. We can change how you're thinking about sleep. And that is only going to help improve your sleep. We want to eliminate sleep anxiety. So if you are anxious about sleep, if you're going to bed, Not sure if you're going to be able to sleep if you're awake in the night getting so frustrated and anxious about sleep That's only making it worse


So before your sleep even changes at all We can change how you're thinking about it and whether you're feeling anxious or calm about it I promise it is a practice but it is totally possible and it's actually One of the first steps I do with my clients because we can't change the imbalances in the body immediately, necessarily, it's going to take some time, but we can change your experience of how you're sleeping now, right away.


I really help clients with calming their nervous system, especially someone like Gabby, who I was just talking about. And a lot of my clients tell me this is that they feel like they're just stuck in that fight or flight. And so their stress response is just turned on. So there are a couple ways that I help my clients calm that nervous system and take the time to do that every day.


And it doesn't have to be long. It can be five minutes a day to start and five minutes before bed, but it will make such a huge difference to help your body. Remember how to get into that. calm part of the nervous system. I also give tools to manage stress because if you're running around all the time and super busy, you know, if you're dealing with something like a divorce, If you are juggling kids and work and all the extracurricular activities and cooking meals and all the things, we need to learn how to manage that better.


We can't necessarily get rid of those things, although I do help my clients pinpoint, okay, what can help reduce some of the stress, but also how can we handle the stress better? And that's partly by how we think about it. and, you know, and as the body gets more imbalanced too, then you're also better able to handle that stress.


But in the meantime, stressors are always going to come up, right? Like we're not just going to sleep well and then live a stress free life from here on out. Unfortunately, that's not how life works. So we can learn how to manage it a lot better. We also pinpoint if trauma is something that you need to address and give you resources for that.


Um, even things like being unhappy in your job and your relationships is going to affect sleep because it's this, um, just ongoing, like minor stressor that's always there. It's always in the back of your head. So that's something that we look at too. And you know, what are your mind and body trying to tell you?


Is there something that isn't right? That is causing this. stress and anxiety that's been affecting your sleep. So, you know, calm mind is the second step. And I want to add to that, even if I, I work with a lot of clients who have also done cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. And so they're like, it's not mental anymore, but then they'll tell me, Oh, I still feel anxious.


Before bedtime. Oh, I'm still looking at the clock all night in the middle of the night. Oh, I sometimes believe that not sleeping well is going to ruin my entire next day. And they're super busy or they're dealing with something stressful. So even if you've done CBTI or you're going to a therapist, if, if you're still worried about sleep, then there's still a mental component.


And your nervous system might still be in fight or flight. So we do want to address both of those things. So for Abby, we worked on her mindset first. I mean, again, she had days where she was crying all day because of her lack of sleep. So I knew. That, you know, while we're waiting for her test results that this could really help and, you know, helped her learn ways, just simple, quick ways to support her nervous system and, um, even like we talked about feeling her feelings and really changing her thoughts.


Um, and the support for her has been really important so that she doesn't spiral and make her sleep even worse because she got to the point where, I mean, she's now sleeping five and a half to six hours straight, but then she had a few nights where she went back down to four and a half hours and she was panicking.


And so she messaged me. And so we're. talking via message and I just reminded her of all the progress she's made in only a few months, how she came to me only sleeping an hour at a time and two or three hours max and how four and a half, even though she was sleeping five and a half and then went back to four and a half.


It was so much better than she had been sleeping. And then I started pinpointing, okay, what could have caused this? And I realized that she had tried to make three different changes at the same time. she tried to decrease the gummies she was taking. She tried to change her bedtime because we talked about making that earlier so she could get more sleep because she had to get up at a certain time every day.


And she tried a new supplement for sleep. All at the same time. And so then we figured out, Oh, that's when she started sleeping less. And so, you know, we talked about in the future, making those changes one at a time and giving her body a little more time to get back in balance before we try and, um, reduce and wean off the gummies that she's taking.


So that was really important for her. Um, so she recently had my clients fill out a check in form before each of our sessions and rate their improvement. And she recently had a 7 out of 10 improvement. And she's only 4 months into the program. So this is really amazing. And she said that her gut She had a lot of bloating.


That's so much better. Her anxiety is so much less. Even her co workers have commented about how she seems so much calmer. And so she is a perfect example of someone who's gradually gotten better over time. So two months into the program, she was sleeping four to five hours a night. It kind of varied, but You know, she went from sleeping two to three to four to five.


She was sleeping five and a half hours by three months. And now she's sleeping five and a half to six hours again, straight without waking up. So she's just gradually gotten better and better. And as our body keeps getting back in balance, she's just going to keep getting better and better and get to where she's sleeping six to seven hours a night, like she wants to.


All right. So the simple formula. Is a healthy body and a calm mind. And that is what is going to equal seven hours of restful sleep. So this is how I help people in my complete sleep solution program. So it is a body and mind program, which is unlike anything else that's out there. You know, functional medicine doctors are going to look at the physical part.


Therapists, CBTI, things like that are going to look at the mental part, but I know that we need to do both at the same time. And this is a private coaching program. So that means that it's going to be customized for you. Not everyone needs as much help with the mental part as Gabby does. You know, some people only need a little bit of that.


And others need a lot more. And so it's definitely customized to whatever you need. But I do make sure that while we're looking at all the imbalances in the body, that also there's nothing in your mind, the sabotaging your sleep, because we can fix all the imbalances in your body or try to, but if you're still.


So if you're just running around all the time or super stressed about something or stuck in fight or flight, your body actually isn't going to be able to get back in balance. Definitely not as quickly. And so you still aren't going to be able to sleep well. And same if we just work on the mental part, but you still have a parasite and high cortisol at night, you know, the meditation, breathing exercises, all of those things aren't enough.


If there are also imbalances in your body. So it's really important to look at both. This also gets to the root cause. So I'm not just recommending Band Aid supplements. They're targeted for what your body actually needs based on the science of lab testing. And we're not covering it up with something like a sleeping pill does, right?


We're getting to the root of what is actually causing your sleep issues. I use lab testing, so we're not guessing, we're testing instead. And again, I'm looking for everything at once, for all those puzzle pieces at the same time. I work with a lot of people who've been to other practitioners, and they went to someone who specialized in adrenal fatigue, or hormones, or gut health.


And so they do one test, they work on that thing, and then they still haven't gotten better. And again, that's back to everything in the body is connected. So we need to find everything that's out of balance and correct those. And that's going to be the fastest and most effective way to be able to sleep.


Well, it's also customized for you, as I mentioned, and it's really a health restoring. Program. So yes, I picked the lab tests that helped me get to the root of sleep issues, but they're also getting to the root of underlying health issues that you don't even know are there. And so this is why besides just sleep, so many other symptoms improve for people.


Their gut recovers, their hormones get back in balance. They lose weight without even trying their aches and pains go away. Like so many different things, because again, we're looking at everything and it's really restoring your health over time. So you can sleep normally and feel great and have energy and think clearly exactly as we're meant to.


So if this is something you are interested in, you can schedule a consultation to get started. And that's the first step. We'll talk about what's going on with your sleep and health, what you've tried so far. What your goals are, and then I'll explain how the program works to help you achieve those goals in six months or less.

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Thanks so much for listening everyone. And I will talk to you soon.

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