What if I told you that sleeping fewer hours could actually make you perform better? Most people think they need 8-9 hours of sleep to function at their best. But here's what high performers are discovering: when you optimize your sleep quality, you can actually sleep less and feel more energized, focused, and productive than ever before.


In this episode, you'll learn the 3 steps for more efficient sleep and what you can do to fall asleep faster and get more restorative sleep.


Schedule a consultation to get started with the Complete Sleep Solution program so you can consistently sleep 7+ hours uninterrupted, naturally and permanently. https://p.bttr.to/3VJwvDs



00:00 Introduction: The Sleep Efficiency Myth

00:54 Meet Andrew: A Case Study in Sleep Optimization

01:47 Identifying Sleep Stealers: The Root Causes

04:16 Three Steps to More Efficient Sleep

06:38 Calculating and Improving Your Sleep Efficiency

08:52 Conclusion: Achieve Peak Performance Through Better Sleep


Episode Transcript


[00:00:00] 


What if I told you that sleeping fewer hours could actually make you perform better? Most people think they need eight to nine hours of sleep to function at their best, but here's what high performers are discovering. When you optimize your sleep quality, you can actually sleep less and feel more energized, focused, and productive than ever before.


This is the Sleep Detective Podcast where you will learn why you can't sleep and how to fix it naturally. I'm Martha Lewis. I've been a functional health and life coach for the past six years, and I've helped over 200 clients find and fix the root causes of their health issues so they can consistently sleep seven to nine hours without drugs, and many of them are high achievers and athletes who care about optimizing performance.


So I want to tell you about my client, Andrew, who I worked with a few years ago. When he [00:01:00] came to me, he had been struggling with sleep since he was 14 years old, and he was, I think 28 years old at the time. So he was definitely one of my younger clients, but he was a lawyer, and so he needed to be performing well, and he realized that he had to plan to be in bed for nine hours.


Just to get seven hours of actual sleep. So as he said, it was very inefficient. And during law school he couldn't afford to spend nine hours in bed, so he got even less sleep than he needed and he spent most of his days thinking and worrying about sleep instead of focusing on important things like class and homework and having fun in college and law school.


So the functional lab testing we did together revealed why he wasn't sleeping efficiently. So he had super high cortisol at night, so that's why it was taking him a long time to [00:02:00] fall asleep. And it's also why he was waking up in the middle of the night and taking a while to go back to sleep. This can happen because of pathogens in the gut.


So he had a bacteria called h pylori. He also had Candida, which is a type of yeast and both are very disruptive to sleep because they are most active in the middle of the night when we're trying to sleep. That is when they are partying, so no wonder. He was having a hard time sleeping and probably because of those pathogens, his liver wasn't detoxing properly.


And so the liver's also most active at night, and so when there are more toxins than it can handle, they circulate around causing inflammation, which makes the body release cortisol, which is going to wake you up in the middle of the night. So. This is why he wasn't able to fall asleep quickly and stay asleep, and why his sleep was so [00:03:00] disrupted and also why he felt tired when he woke up, even though he was spending nine hours in bed.


So after working together, he said that he can reasonably expect that if I'm in bed for eight hours, I will get more than seven hours of sleep. So his sleep efficiency totally. Increased. He also has more time because as he said, having a higher sleep efficiency means that I have more time during the day to do whatever it is I need to get done.


And that's something that makes a huge difference. So of course, if you are spending less time in bed trying to sleep, you're gonna have more time during the day, whether it's to get things done or to actually have fun and enjoy your life. He also really experienced mental freedom because once he was sleeping well,


it wasn't on his mind all day this worrying and stressing about sleep. And he said, even going back to high school, he would be kind of worried about the amount of sleep [00:04:00] he was gonna get that night, especially if he had a big exam the next day. This really improved his peak performance. Of course, he had better energy, he had more time and mental clarity to focus on what matters most.


So these are the three steps for more efficient sleep. So number one is to eliminate those sleep stealers. So these are the hidden imbalances that keep you awake longer than necessary. And a lot of times, like I mentioned, it has to do with cortisol. So pathogens in the gut, kind of the bad guys in the gut.


The top reason I see, especially for that waking up around three and 4:00 AM and not being able to get back to sleep. Liver detox is the second most common thing I see. And blood sugar issues, even in people who are eating well and pretty healthy, that can also affect sleep. And then there are other things like [00:05:00] hormones and neurotransmitter deficiencies and any kind of toxins like heavy metals or mold.


So. Finding what is. Affecting your sleep is really key. And so when your body stops having to deal with these underlying health issues, then you fall asleep faster and you're able to stay asleep all night and need less sleep to feel so much better. So the second step is really to optimize your sleep consolidation.


So you know when you're getting better quality sleep cycles, that means that you get. More restoration and a lot less time. And then you wake up fewer times during the night and if you do wake up, you fall back asleep a lot quicker. And then the third step is to remove that sleep anxiety. So when you stop worrying about sleep, then your mind can focus on performing [00:06:00] during the day and sleep becomes this automatic thing instead of stressful.


And you know, as far as. Decreasing sleep anxiety. Of course that's gonna happen as you start sleeping better, but that's also something that you can start working on now or right away, is kind of your mindset about sleep and worrying about it and talking about it, and things like that. So that's something I start helping my clients with as soon as we start working together, while we're also going to find those hidden imbalances that are affecting sleep, so then you can easily sleep well all night.


So this is what I recommend moving forward, is to, first of all, calculate your sleep efficiency. So track how long you're in bed versus.


Your actual sleep time. So notice if you're like Andrew, who was planning on being in bed nine hours to only get seven hours, you also want to investigate what is stealing your sleep. [00:07:00] And so I do that with functional lab testing and assessments to find everything that's affecting sleep. And so this really involves looking for the root causes, not just surface symptoms.


And so if things like magnesium and melatonin and CBD and following the sleep rules, as I call them, and all those things don't work, it means there's something deeper going on. So that's really the key step that so many people are missing. And that's not talked about in the medical community, but you know, not being able to sleep normally is a sign that your body isn't healthy.


Even if you exercise and you eat well and you care about your health and all of that, there's no way your body's in balance. If you can't sleep normally, if it takes more than 10 to 15 minutes to fall asleep, if you're waking up multiple times in the night, if you're waking up for long periods of time, and if you aren't waking up [00:08:00] feeling rested, then that's a sign that your body is out of balance.


And then you really want to optimize for efficient sleep. So it's not necessarily about how long you're sleeping, but how efficiently you're sleeping. And so you want to focus on being able to fall asleep faster and waking up less times, or going back to sleep faster if you do wake up. And so you really.


Want to measure your success by how rested you feel, not the number of hours in bed, because not everyone needs eight hours of sleep. I like eight and a half. Personally, I have many clients who work best with seven, and so we're all just wired differently that way, and it can change throughout our life.


So it's more important. How you feel the next day, then the number of hours you got. So if you're tired of spending too much time in bed just to feel exhausted and you want to be like Andrew and [00:09:00] sleep efficiently while also performing at your peak, let's investigate what's stealing your sleep quality.


You can book a free sleep better consultation with me so you can consistently sleep seven or more hours a night of restorative sleep. Eight hours or less in bed, which is going to give you more time and energy to excel in everything that matters to you. Imagine going to bed at 10:00 PM waking up naturally at 6:00 AM feeling completely refreshed, no more lying awake, no more tossing and turning.


No more needing nine or more hours in bed just to function so you will get an hour or more every day back to spend on your goals. Your relationships and the things that actually matter. So sleep will become your way to perform at your peak.

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