You know what's really frustrating? You're doing everything right—no caffeine after 2pm, perfect sleep hygiene, you’ve tried all the supps—but you're still wide awake at 3am. 


The reason nothing has worked is because no one is looking for the hidden imbalances in your body that are keeping you awake. 


In this episode, I'm going to tell you the 5 most common underlying health issues I've seen after working with over 300 clients even though your blood work is normal and your doctor says you're fine.


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


Resources:

https://thesleepdetective.com/post/28-11-ways-to-minimize-toxins-to-sleep-better

https://thesleepdetective.com/post/is-your-liver-causing-your-insomnia


00:00 Introduction: The Frustration of Sleepless Nights

00:40 Meet Martha Lewis: Your Sleep Detective

02:11 The Root Causes of Insomnia

02:18 Hormone Imbalances and Sleep

03:06 The Role of Cortisol in Sleep Disruption

04:14 Gut Health and Its Impact on Sleep

06:38 Detoxification and Liver Health

09:26 Neurotransmitters and Sleep Regulation

11:32 The Impact of Toxins on Sleep

12:33 Conclusion: Finding Your Path to Better Sleep


Episode Transcript


[00:00:00] You know what's really frustrating? You're doing everything right. No caffeine after 2:00 PM perfect sleep hygiene. You've tried all the supplements, but you're still wide awake at 3:00 AM. The reason nothing has worked is because no one is looking for the hidden imbalances in your body that are keeping you awake.


In this episode, I'm going to tell you the five most common underlying health issues I've seen after working with over 300 clients. Even though blood work is normal and your doctor says you're fine. This is the Sleep Detective Podcast, where you'll 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, helping my clients find and fix the imbalances in their bodies so they can consistently sleep seven to nine hours without drugs. Now I got into this because of my own sleep issues. [00:01:00] And this was almost 10 years ago now because my sleep issue started in late pregnancy and didn't go away even after my son was born and he is now nine years old.


And it took me two years of trying all these things and you know, similar to what you are doing too. And it wasn't until I did some lab testing that showed that I had every single imbalance that I'm going to talk to you about now, and that was why I wasn't sleeping. It wasn't because I wasn't eating right or exercising too much or too little, or not following what I call the sleep rules.


There were actually things in my body. That were literally keeping me awake at night, and this is true for all of my clients as well. And most people have some combination of some of these, if not all of these, because by the [00:02:00] time you have any symptoms such as not being able to sleep normally, it means that multiple systems in your body are out of balance.


So at this point is not just one thing. So let's get into what these five things are now. The first thing that I commonly see. Are hormone imbalances. So first of all, I'm referring to sex hormones and. This is for both women and men. So I know we think of hormones as a women's problem, but many men also have different hormone imbalances, and so our hormones, ideally estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, both men and women have all of these.


They should be imbalance with each other. And if testosterone is too high, if estrogen and progesterone are depleted, if estrogen is too high, all of those scenarios affect sleep and can cause insomnia. [00:03:00] So that's one of the first things I am looking for are sex hormones. Now. Related to hormones is also cortisol.


So most of my clients including myself, have really high cortisol at night. Now, cortisol is our stress hormone and it gives us energy and makes our mind race and raises our body temperature and blood pressure and heart rate. So we should not be releasing cortisol at night, but if there's inflammation and stress, then the body will release cortisol at night when it shouldn't be.


And when I first tested my hormones, my cortisol was through the roof in the middle of the night. It was higher in the middle of the night than it was at any other point during the day. And it's supposed to be the opposite. So I see this in so many of my clients. Now we want to find out why is cortisol high at night?


You can take a supplement to lower cortisol, but it's not fixing the root of the problem. [00:04:00] It's just artificially lowering cortisol when actually cortisol is trying to protect you from inflammation. So the other few imbalances I'm gonna talk about are what are causing high cortisol. Another imbalance that I see in every single client is their gut isn't totally healthy.


And this was true for me too, even though I was a nutritionist and I even had a certification in gut health. So I took probiotics, I ate fermented foods, I drank bone broth, and yet. I still had a parasite that was waking me up in the middle of the night. Most of my clients have some sort of pathogen that's living in the gut that shouldn't be there.


So it can be a parasite like I had. There can be different bacterial overgrowth such as h Pylori and other bacteria. There can be yeast like candida. And mycotoxins [00:05:00] from mold. And so all of these pathogens are nocturnal. So it's the middle of the night that they're most active, which means they're eating and excreting and releasing a lot of toxins, which calls inflammation in the body.


And whenever there's inflammation, again, the body releases cortisol. To deal with that inflammation. But when that's happening at three and 4:00 AM when these pathogens are most active, that is going to wake you up. So most of the time, if someone is waking up around three or four and has a hard time going back to sleep, there is some sort of infection in the gut


there can also be when, especially when there are pathogens, the gut gets damaged and we start reacting to certain foods. And so there's this low grade inflammation all the time. So, it's kind of a chicken and egg situation. Did the pathogen cause the gut damage or was the gut [00:06:00] already damaged and so the pathogen was able to take hold?


Either way, it becomes a vicious cycle that we need to break. So there's more to gut health than just killing the pathogen. Right. So we also want to make sure that you have enough digestive enzymes and you're digesting food properly. We want to help restore health to the lining of the gut, to all of those cells, and


we want to do whatever we can to lower inflammation and really boost immune function in the gut as well. Now, the next imbalance that I commonly see. Has to do with detoxification. So most of my clients, livers and other detox organs are not working properly. And this is true whether or not they're drinking alcohol, like alcohol is definitely going to add to the toxic load.


But I have many clients who are like, I don't drink alcohol, so my liver must be fine. Well, the thing [00:07:00] is, when your gut isn't healthy, when there are these pathogens, they're releasing all these toxins. And then when there are other environmental toxins, which I'll talk about in a couple minutes, then the liver becomes overburdened and there are more toxins than it can handle.


The liver is also most active in the middle of the night, so it's between one and 3:00 AM when it is really doing its heavy duty job of working on getting rid of toxins. But when there are too many, those toxins are circulating around. They're causing inflammation. Then your body releases cortisol and you're awake.


So many of my clients have a pathogen and liver detox issues, and so it's like a double whammy in the middle of the night. And so it definitely explains why you weren't sleeping, and this was true for me as well, even though. Again, like I lived a very healthy lifestyle. I was really into supplements. I would do cleanses and things [00:08:00] like that, but the parasite was likely too much for my liver.


And I know that I have the M-T-H-F-R genetic variation, and so that means that my body has a harder time. Detoxing than other people who don't have that. So this is definitely one of the things I'm seeing in almost all of my clients. And so I usually recommend a supplement to help and other practices they can do, which I've talked about in.


Previous episodes, which I can link to in the show notes about how to support your liver and minimize these toxins. And I do wanna let you know that this is what I help my clients with all the time. So I use different functional lab tests to find out what's going on in your body that's sabotaging your sleep.


That doesn't show up on blood work because I'm testing for. Gut health with the stool test. I'm testing for [00:09:00] hormones and liver function and neurotransmitters and toxins, which I'll talk about in a minute with urine testing. And so I get a lot more clues and details than blood work can give. So if this is something you're interested in, I.


Help clients in my Complete Sleep Solution program, and you can book a free consultation with me to find out more at the link in the show notes. Now the next imbalance I commonly see has to do with neurotransmitters Now. In case you haven't heard of neurotransmitters, maybe you've heard of things like serotonin and dopamine and gaba.


So there are dozens of neurotransmitters that are kind of like signaling, the brain and the body. And we need enough of these neurotransmitters that I just mentioned to feel calm and relaxed and able to sleep. And [00:10:00] so in almost all my clients as well, I see depleted serotonin depleted gaba, which is our anti-anxiety neurotransmitter and depleted dopamine.


And all of these help regulate our sleep cycle as well. And this was true for me too. And even after I found out about the parasite and liver detox and hormone imbalance, I was sleeping much better, but I definitely wasn't a hundred percent. And it took me a few years to learn about neurotransmitters, and then I tested mine and they were all really depleted.


Once I started supplementing with those, that's when my sleep really fell into place. Pretty much a hundred percent. And what's great about testing for neurotransmitters? And if you're deficient is I can recommend supplements that will help you sleep and feel better pretty quickly. So it can take time to restore gut health and deal with a pathogen and things like that.


But [00:11:00] dealing with neurotransmitter deficiencies can be very fast. And so a lot of times my clients see improvement right away because we can address these. Now, there are also some neurotransmitters that are stimulating, and sometimes those are too high, and that affects sleep, so things like glutamate and histamine.


So I also help find out, okay, why? Why are these so high? And recommend ways to lower them. So then everything, all the neurotransmitters are back in balance and you can sleep well. Now the last thing that I see in all of my clients are toxins, and so I already mentioned this with the liver detox, but the toxins I'm referring to, there can be heavy metals, so things like mercury and lead and arsenic in uranium, which I see in at least 50% of my clients.


They're environmental chemicals, different pesticides and herbicides. And things [00:12:00] like phthalates and parabens that we find in body care products. And then there are also mycotoxins, which come from mold. And so all of these toxins. Again, they are going to put this extra burden on the liver, and they also cause a lot of inflammation, so they're causing this low grade inflammation day and night.


And so then our body is constantly stressed. It's constantly releasing cortisol, and cortisol isn't going down at night like it should. So I do lab testing to look for all five of these issues, plus more because. There can be other causes of sleep issues too, but these are the five most common things that I see.


So if you want to learn more about. The tests I use and how I actually help my clients fix these problems. You want to watch the three step fix for adults 40 [00:13:00] and over to find out more about how that works, so you will be able to watch that next. All right, thanks so much for listening, and I will talk to you next time.

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