If your sleep is off, you probably think stress is the reason — but chances are you’re only aware of one kind of stress, even though your body is dealing with all three.


In this episode, I’m going to break down the three types of stress that most commonly interfere with sleep, so you can recognize what’s actually keeping your nervous system from settling at night.


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] If your sleep is off, you probably think stress is the reason, but chances are you're only aware of one type of stress even though your body is dealing with all three. In this episode, I'm going to break down the three types of stress that most commonly interfere with sleep, so you can recognize what's actually keeping your nervous system from settling down at night.


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 coach for the past six years, helping over 300 clients get to the bottom of their sleep issues once and for all.


When we talk about stress, we usually think of mental emotional stress, right?


But it's not actually just emotional. Stress is anything that your nervous system has to adapt to. And sleep breaks down whenever total stress load [00:01:00] is more than the body can handle. And so it's not just about sleep responding to what you know is there. It responds to what your body has to manage. And some of that we don't know about because it's hidden.


Let's talk about the three different types of stress.


The first one I'm going to simply call mind stress or that mental emotional stress. So this is that constant thinking, processing, anticipating, worrying, feeling overwhelmed, things like that. Some examples of this are going to be like, if you feel responsible for everything. I know this happens to a lot of men and women, especially parents, right, where it's like we're juggling work and kids and all the things, and we each have our own responsibilities at work and then also at home. And so it can be a lot. That's very common. Obviously financial pressure, relationship troubles, things like that are [00:02:00] that kind of mind stress and getting constant input from work, from email, from social media, just always having things coming in is going to add to that overwhelm and bombardment.


How this shows up in sleep, this is definitely going to affect being able to fall asleep because if you're sympathetic nervous system is turned on all day long it's going to be hard for it to just shut off at night and go to sleep. Those racing thoughts and that feeling of wired, but tired, especially at bedtime.


So this is the type of stress that most people notice and know about, they're aware of. But it's usually not the only one affecting sleep. We know about the mind stress because that's what we are aware of. And high achievers, especially those of us who are busy and have a lot of goals, we just think that's normal and it's something that can't change.


But [00:03:00] this is why when you've tried to do things to calm the mind, like meditation, like breath work, things like that, that alone isn't enough to fix not being able to sleep.


This is especially true for a client I'm working with now named Alex, who is very busy in his work. He has a big deadline coming up at the end of the year for work when I'm recording this. And he has three young children, one who is waking up in the middle of the night. He's got a lot going on but as you'll see, when I talk about him with the next two kinds of stress, it wasn't just that was happening, but that's what he knows about, right? That's what we always know about is what's on our mind all the time.


So that brings me to the second kind of stress is body stress or these physiological stressors in the body. This is internal physical stress that your body has to manage, whether you feel emotionally stressed or [00:04:00] not. So this can be things like being on the blood sugar rollercoaster, or even not eating enough or eating too much. Both of those are stressful for the body. Not getting enough exercise or actually over exercising or over training. There can also be gut inflammation and infections. There can be liver detox issues.


And how this affects sleep, this can definitely lead to light restless sleep to waking up too early in the morning, and difficulty staying asleep, especially that waking up at three or four and not being able to go back to sleep.


And so this is because if your body isn't physiologically calm, it's not going to be able to stay asleep. This is what most people don't realize because again, we're aware of the mind stress, but we have no idea that this body stress is happening.


I had a parasite probably for [00:05:00] 13 years. I had no idea. I had no digestive issues. I had no other symptoms except that I developed sleep issues 13 years later.


And also healthy habits, quote unquote healthy habits, can also add to stress that we're trying to do the right things, but they're actually creating more stress.


So things like skipping breakfast or otherwise could be called intermittent fasting, doing cold plunges. Again, exercising too much.


So we're trying to be healthy, but it's causing more stress in an already stress body. And so this is why you can be exhausted at night, but it doesn't mean your body's able to go to sleep.


And so my client, Alex he had high cortisol at night. No wonder he wasn't sleeping well. And that was from mycotoxins, from mold in his body. He was having trouble detoxing and trouble digesting [00:06:00] food, and so all of these things he couldn't tell were happening. He knew about the mental, the mind stress. He can't tell about the body stress a lot of times. But all those things were affecting his sleep.


Now the third type of stress is toxin stress. So this is any kind of external things coming in that your body has to detoxify or process or adapt to. So some examples can be alcohol, even in small amounts, medications, or even taking too many natural supplements could be too much. But also things like environmental chemicals that we're exposed to in our cleaning products and personal care products. There can be mold, there can be pollution, there can be heavy metals.


These affect sleep 'cause they can definitely lead to fragmented sleep, to vivid dreams or night waking and really just getting that non-restorative sleep. [00:07:00] This is because your nervous system can't rest while it's trying to deal with all of these toxins or when there are more toxins that it can deal with.


And so this is something that often gets overlooked because we can't tell they're there. We can't tell, for the most part if we have heavy metals or environmental chemicals. But one of the tests I run is looking specifically for these things so that I can see how many toxins someone is dealing with.


And of course, we all have some sort of toxins in our body. But some of my clients have 10 and some have 30. So there can be a really big difference as to each person's toxic burden. But this really often gets overlooked because it's invisible, because we can't feel it.


And so people tend to blame that mind stress on their sleep and possibly think there's nothing they can do about it, right?


Because we can't fully [00:08:00] control how much stress is in our lives. I think that we can manage it and we can reframe it, but we can't get rid of having a busy job and having a family and all the obligations that come with that.


This is why supplements don't always help. So melatonin, magnesium, CB D, cannabis, like none of these things are enough to help if they're heavy metals and environmental chemicals and infections and all these hidden stressors that we don't even know are there.


So I will tell you that most people, if you are struggling to sleep, you probably have all three types of this stress. And you're probably only aware of mind stress.


Or you might not even have much mental stress. I do have quite a few clients who are retired or not dealing with a lot of stress and they're like, I know I shouldn't be stressed. I don't feel stressed, but I can't sleep. And that's because then they have those hidden body and toxin stressors for sure.


So [00:09:00] if you try and fix the wrong type of stress, if you're only trying to work on the mind stress, then you're not gonna get any better because you still have these other hidden body and toxin stress that are keeping you awake.


So you don't need to fully eliminate stress, especially mental stress, 'cause that's not possible. You just need to lower the right kind of stress.


So if you're realizing your sleep issues aren't just about mental stress, this is exactly what I work on inside my Complete Sleep Solution program. We look at the mind, body, and toxin stress together, so you're not guessing what to fix first. You can learn more or schedule a free consultation with me using the link in the description.


This program is really for people who have tried lots of things to sleep and nothing is really working. If you've tried the sleep hygiene and what I call all the sleep rules and maybe cognitive behavioral [00:10:00] therapy and meditation and random supplements and all those things, and still have been gotten better, then it's because there are definitely hidden stressors that you don't know are there.


So that's what I look for using functional lab tests and assessments in the program. And it's really important to have this customized for you because it's different for everyone and we need to deal with different toxins in different ways, with different pathogens in different ways, and we want to address all three of these types of stress if you really want to get better.


So if this is something you're interested in, then, again, schedule a consultation with me. We'll talk about how you're sleeping, what you've tried so far, what your goals are, 'cause everyone has slightly different goals as to how they want to be sleeping. And then I can explain how the program works and tell you how we'll achieve those goals in six months or less.​[00:11:00]

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