Tried everything to sleep better? I’m not about to tell you to have a bedtime routine and wear blue light blocking glasses. I’m going to tell you some strategies you may not even realize are related to sleep but that can make a big difference and sleep-specific supplements, not just in sleeping slightly better but in actually overcoming chronic sleep issues. 


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


Episode Transcript


[00:00:00] Have you tried everything to sleep better? I am not about to tell you to wear blue light blocking glasses before bed or to have a bedtime routine. All of that typical sleep advice, I'm going to tell you some strategies you may not even realize. Are related to sleep, but they can make a really big difference.


And I'm going to recommend some sleep specific supplements that you may not have heard of before. I'm not just talking about melatonin and magnesium here, and these are going to help not just sleep slightly better. But these can actually help in overcoming chronic sleep issues.


My name is Martha Lewis. I am a functional health coach. For the past six years, I've helped almost 300 clients find and fix the root causes of their sleep issues so they can sleep well naturally without needing drugs and be able to perform at their best, whether it's in fitness [00:01:00] or work, or just life.


All right, so let's get into these hacks. The first one is going to be surprising to you, especially if you're fit and healthy and eat a healthy diet. But for one of my clients, and actually several, but one in particular I'm thinking of this was a game changer for him even though he. Exercise. He was super into fitness.


He was super into being healthy and longevity and all of the things. He was already taking a lot of supplements. He was a very healthy weight, but it turns out that he needed to work on balancing blood sugar and. The reason blood sugar is so important for sleep is because the more it's going drastically up and down during the day, the more that's gonna continue into the night.


And whenever blood sugar drops too low, the body releases [00:02:00] cortisol because the cortisol actually puts glucose into the cells to give it energy and raise blood sugar. But of course, if that's happening in the middle of the night, that's going to wake you up. We do not want to be releasing our stress hormones in the middle of the night, so balancing blood sugar is super key.


And this is what's happening during the day. So working on this during the day is going to affect your sleep at night. And so for this client, he was having a smoothie for breakfast and he was using protein powder. He was putting lots of fat in there. There wasn't a lot of sugar, but when he changed.


That smoothie into having what I call a savory breakfast of some kind of meat and vegetables and a complex starch like potatoes or sweet potatoes. He started sleeping through the night. So for some people a healthy smoothie is [00:03:00] still. Affecting their blood sugar, and especially when you're starting off your morning with that's setting yourself up for the rest of the day.


So starting having breakfast within an hour of waking up and. Making sure that it is savory and not spiking blood sugar too much is going to help you sleep better at night. Now I have an entire episode about blood sugar that I can link to in the show notes. If you wanna know more about this, there are continuous glucose monitors you can get that you wear for two weeks at a time.


That will show you every minute of the day what's happening with your blood sugar and you don't need a prescription to get these anymore. So it's a great way to. See how what you're eating is affecting your blood sugar. So this could be an issue for you. Again, even if you're a healthy weight, even if you're fit and exercising it's surprising how much this is an issue.


Now, for the second hack I [00:04:00] wanna talk about, these are gonna be surprising and many of my clients are making these mistakes because. If you're into health and you're following people on Instagram and you know they're gonna recommend things to, to improve your health, right? So one of those might be intermittent fasting, and many of my clients are doing this where they're going 12, 14, 16 hours without eating and.


I do think that intermittent fasting is great for someone who is healthy without any symptoms. I now intermittent fast off and on and but if you aren't sleeping, your body is already stressed. It's already releasing a lot of cortisol just because of the fact that you weren't sleeping. And so fasting is.


Is adding more stress to an already [00:05:00] stressed body. So that's why I don't recommend it for someone who isn't sleeping well. Now, once you're sleeping better again, yes, then go back to intermittent fasting. It can really help actually with blood sugar and and diet and all of those things, but I actually don't recommend it for someone who isn't sleeping.


I don't recommend skipping meals. I don't recommend working out fasted or working out without eating. I don't recommend cold plunging if you aren't sleeping well. Again, these are things that a healthy, imbalanced body can tolerate. But when you aren't sleeping, you're already stressed, your body is already stressed, and these just add more stress.


Now the next point I want to make is relevant to many of my clients because many of them are ambitious. They're busy, they're go, go, go. They're, in that phase of life where they have a stressful job. They're have a [00:06:00] family, they might be taking care of aging parents, they might be traveling a lot for work.


There's a lot going on and they might feel stressed all the time. And what can happen is when we're just go, go, go all the time, we can get stuck into that fight or flight mode and. When we're young, we can handle this right? Like this way in our twenties we feel amazing. We have tons of energy. We can have a really stressful job and stressful life, and it can actually help us perform.


You know, we can drink and feel okay the next day. Like our bodies can handle so much when we're young, but after years and decades of that, we're not able to handle that anymore, and the body can get kind of stuck in that stress mode. And so one of the things that you can start doing is really working on having times to calm your nervous system.


And there are hacks for this. Again, [00:07:00] I have another episode all about this, about things you can do. Of course, meditation and breath work and things like that can all help, but even some things you might not be thinking about, especially like having boundaries around work and non-work. What I mean about that is a lot of times my clients are working a lot and then they're thinking about work even when they're not at work.


And so then technically they're working all the time, right? Like in their brain, they're working all the time, and then they're not able to be present with their families and enjoy the other things in life because they're just constantly thinking about work. So one of the things I help them with and that I suggest that you do as well.


And this is a practice and it takes time, but is to start when you are at work, you're focused on work, and then you're not focusing on personal things. And then when you are not working, you're not thinking about work. [00:08:00] And of course you might have a good idea. This happens to me like sometimes while I'm mountain biking, I have this great idea and I stop and I put in my phone so that I don't forget about it.


And then I'm like, okay, now I'm not thinking about work anymore. So that's what I mean by, it's a practice. 'cause you're gonna catch yourself thinking about work at seven o'clock at night when you're eating dinner with your family. And that's when you wanna start telling yourself, hey., I'm gonna write something down if I need to or not, but then I'm not thinking about work anymore.


And so we just want to have times where we're not just in that fight or flight in that stress mode. So this is just one way to do that. Now, this next hack, you might roll your eyes a little bit because I'm sure you've heard this. When I say you want to lower stress, so. But let me clarify here. I don't mean, I just talked about the nervous system and things like that.


And of course there are ways to lower stress, but I think what so many people don't [00:09:00] realize, and my clients are actually really relieved to find out, is that it's not just their work stress or life stress that is affecting their sleep, which is good, right? Because we can't just get rid of work stress.


You can't just. Probably you can't just quit your job or only work 20 hours a week or whatever it is. We can't just get rid of our families so that stress isn't going away. And while we can learn to manage some of that better, what I want you to know is that there are also. Stressors in your body that you don't even know are there that are adding to your total stress.


I see it as like a stress bucket, so our bodies can handle a bucket full of stress, and anything more than that is going to overflow the bucket. So if your bucket's already pretty full from work and family and traveling and being busy. You don't have much room for other stress, but [00:10:00] there can be pathogens in your gut.


Your liver might not be detoxifying properly. Your neurotransmitters might be depleted. Your nutrients, especially minerals might be depleted. So all of those are additional stressors that are overflowing your bucket. So when we find what those stressors are, and I use functional lab tests to do this,


and we start addressing those, then your total stress. Lowers, and then your bucket is not overflowing anymore, and then you can sleep normally. So this is why you don't have to quit your job and leave your family to be able to sleep better. This is why you can, and you don't have to wait until retirement or until your kids have graduated high school or college, right?


You can start working on these things now because different imbalances in the body adding to that stress bucket. So if this is something you're interested in, this is what I help my clients with. So I use lab testing to find what the physical stressors are so that [00:11:00] we can lower those. And then of course we'll work on work stress and nervous system and things like that.


But we wanna work at the body and the mind at the same time. If you really wanna get better. So you can book a free consultation with me to talk about the Complete Sleep Solution Program, which is my six month one-on-one coaching program where I look at the lab tests. I look at your entire life, give you a customized protocol to get your body back in balance, to lower stress and inflammation in your body, to lower your overall stress in your bucket, so that then you can sleep peacefully.


Now the last point I wanna make, and you've probably tried melatonin and magnesium and CBD or THC and all kinds of different supplements to sleep right now, I always say there aren't, there's not a magic pill that's gonna help you sleep better. Permanently, and that's because there are imbalances in your [00:12:00] body that we need to address for you to be able to sleep well.


But I have found four specific supplements that have really helped my clients, especially at the beginning when we first start working together, while we're waiting for those test results and even once they're starting their protocols and things. You know, I, my goal is to get people sleeping better as quickly as possible.


So I'm gonna recommend some things right off the bat to help. One of those things is a supplement called Liposomal GABA with Lthe in it. So, lthe is a precursor to gaba. GABA is like our anti-anxiety neurotransmitter. So this really helps us feel calm and relaxed and able to sleep, especially if you're taking it before bed.


And, so then a second supplement that I recommend to many of my clients is by Gaia Herbs, and it's called Nighttime, HPA. Now, HPA stands for Hypothalamus Pituitary Adrenal Axis. [00:13:00] So it's, it's helping with the adrenals. You've probably heard of adrenal fatigue. And might think your adrenals are to blame when actually your hypothalamus tells your pituitary, which tells your adrenal glands to make cortisol and other stress hormones so things can go awry in any of those.


In that axis, it's not just your adrenal's fault if you're making too much cortisol or not making enough cortisol. So this supplement has adaptogenic herbs like ashwagandha and some mushrooms that help us deal with stress in the body. And then it also has some relaxing herbs like lemon balm and magnolia bark to help with that relaxation at night.


So this is another one that is taken before bed and can really help just feel more relaxed and calm and able to sleep. Now this next supplement might be surprising. It's not necessarily meant to be taken at night before bed. It's called [00:14:00] beam minerals. So they have some supplements called Electrolyze and Micro Boost.


And what they are trace minerals from fulvic and IC acid. And the reason I recommend this to so many of my clients is because. Most of us are deficient in minerals. Our soils are depleted in minerals, so the foods we're eating don't have as many minerals as they did a few decades ago. And if our gut isn't healthy and we aren't digesting and breaking down food, well, then we aren't getting the minerals we need from food.


So it's just so easy to become depleted in minerals. So these minerals by beam help supply dozens of these, what are called trace minerals in very small amounts. So you're not taking 500 milligrams of magnesium or calcium, for example. They're all in very small amounts. And what it also does is it just helps balance minerals overall.


It can even help your body get rid of heavy metals and so [00:15:00] reduce kind of toxins in the body. So. This is a supplement I recommend to a lot of my clients. For that reason, I even had someone write me, so I did another video describing in detail these supplements and which ones you wanna take when, depending on what you're dealing with.


So I suggest you watch that video next, but I had someone after that episode who wrote me, is there any way the beam minerals just maybe sleep through the night when I haven't done that in months, and I'm like. It's definitely possible, so it's not like the other two I mentioned that can directly help with sleep, but it can indirectly help by helping give your body the minerals and nutrients it needs.


Getting rid of some toxins and helping in that way. And then the last supplement I want to mention is actually the closest thing I've found to a magic pill for sleep that's not a drug. It is called tro. [00:16:00] It's by a company called Proscriptions. And it is a troche, which means it's something that dissolves in your mouth, so it's absorbed really quickly.


So this supplement. Has things like melatonin and CBD and apigenin and it's a mixture of things, but I had a couple of clients with amazing success with this. So one client wasn't sleeping at all. He had gone a few weeks, hardly getting any sleep and. When he first started taking this, he started getting three hours and then five hours.


Now he's sleeping nine hours a night. So he is doing great. And then another client who was taking Xanax every once in a while, if he'd have some trouble, then he'd take a Xanax for a couple nights and then, kind of get back on track and not need it again. So he started taking this supplement instead.


And it totally worked. He didn't need to take the Xanax anymore, and now of course he doesn't need anything. But this can just be a great bridge [00:17:00] to, to help. While we also address, okay, what's going on in the body that's causing this? 'cause you don't necessarily wanna have to take something like that forever, right?


So I see it as a temporary thing while we address the imbalances in the body. Get your body back in balance, then you can sleep normally without needing anything. So again, I suggest watching the next video about these four supplements. In detail and how to order them.

Listen and follow: Apple Podcasts · Spotify