25: Seven critical mistakes most people with insomnia don’t know they're making

Episode Transcript:

Welcome to the Why You Can't Sleep podcast. If you struggle to sleep and you've tried what seems like everything you are in the right place, there are imbalances in your body that are keeping you awake and you're going to learn what they are in this show. Now let's kick off this episode with an inspiring success story from one of my clients who has significantly improved their sleep by correcting the underlying health issues that were causing their insomnia.

Andrea (client): "After two years of just terrible pain, it's hard to even stand up from the couch type pain. To have it just be gone is so amazing. I can't even put it into words."

Martha: "Good, good. I'm so glad to hear that sounds awful."

Andrea (client): "Yeah."

Martha: "Yeah. Well, is there anything else you want to add?"

Andrea (client): "I guess I'll just say that if anyone out there is dealing with a similar thing to me, don't wait, get help as quick as possible. I wasted two years of my life trying to figure this out and my kids are so young. I feel like I wasted two years that I could have been spending more time with them and just not having this be a problem. So get help, whatever that looks like for you as soon as you can."

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode. I hope you are having a good week so far today. I'm excited to talk to you about seven critical mistakes I see people making that they don't even realize that they're making. It's not helping them overcome their sleep issues because I talk to so many people with sleep issues and they're doing everything they can to sleep better. They're exercising every day, they're eating healthy, and I say that in because I'll explain in a minute. They are following the sleep hygiene tips that are out there everywhere. They're taking supplements and they're really frustrated because nothing helps, which I get. I was in the same boat when I was struggling with sleep and I remember dealing with it for two years and just reading the same things over and over again about what to do. And so I did all of those things and nothing actually helped.

Someone I talked to today who's actually just signing up for the program said it's almost an insult to keep it reading those things everywhere. Like come on, isn't there more out there besides just the basic sleep tips, not watching screens before TV and not drinking caffeine too late in the day and exercising every day. We have been hearing that in nausea for a decade now. So I imagine you're frustrated too, and that's why I am really passionate about this podcast. I want to get more information out there. There's more to sleep than just following the sleep rules. There are actually imbalances in your body, there's stress in your mind, all of these things that can affect sleep, and I want to spread the word about this and for you to know this. So if you're listening and other people with sleep issues, please send them the link to this podcast so that they can listen to it too.

We need to first of all have hope that you can get better because I know if you just go to your doctor or go to your therapist or read online and none of those things work, then you're kind of left with nothing else. And so there is always a way to get better. These same people who are telling me that they're doing everything I was, they're actually making a lot of the same mistakes and so it's actually keeping them from getting better. So I want to share what these common mistakes are and then you'll actually know what's actually going to work so that you can sleep better once and for all. Okay, so mistake number one is eating inflammatory foods. Now I know, I know you're going to tell me you eat healthy. So many of my clients say this. I was eating healthy too.

I had a background in nutrition before my sleep issue started and I got into this. I ate organic, I worked for a local organic biodynamic farm, but I was still eating plenty of inflammatory foods, any kind of processed foods. It's mainly the refined oils that are so bad. So even those organic processed foods tend to have canola oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, all of which are really inflammatory. And of course the conventional processed foods have even worse ingredients and more inflammatory ingredients, but the organic foods aren't necessarily that much better either. And then other sources of inflammatory foods, refined sugar is going to be a big one, so hopefully you aren't eating that, but if you are, that's causing a lot of inflammation and gluten and dairy also, for a lot of people with health issues and sleep issues, that is causing inflammation. I don't believe that everyone in the world is sensitive to gluten.

There is evidence that gluten increases inflammation. They found that after people eat gluten, there is something called zonulin, which is an indicator of leaky gut or an unhealthy gut that increases after everyone eats gluten. But for people who aren't sensitive to it, their gut repairs itself really quickly and that inflammation goes away really quickly. For those of us who are sensitive to it like myself, that inflammation doesn't go away as quickly. The gut doesn't repair itself as quickly. In fact, the body can have this immune response to gluten three to six months after you eat it. Those antibodies are still there. And then someone with celiac, that's the extreme where there's an autoimmune component eating gluten. So I don't believe that everyone is sensitive to gluten. However, many of my clients are sensitive to gluten and a lot of people don't think they are, right?

They don't have digestive issues. I've told my story on a previous podcast about gluten, which I can link to in the show notes, but I didn't think I was sensitive to gluten either until I quit for a month and then added it back in and I realized, oh, I felt a little more bloated and a little more tired, and then I didn't sleep well that night. So I saw this direct correlation between my sleep and gluten, but not everyone does, and you can still be sensitive to it and not really know it. So that's why it's really helpful to actually test. And the GI map, the gut health test that I do has a marker for gluten sensitivity, and I'll tell you, 90% of my clients, that marker is higher than it should be. So it indicates they are having this immune response to gluten.

So even if you're eating healthy because you're eating organic whole wheat or earlier forms of wheat like in corn and things like that, that could still be causing inflammation for you. One other thing I want to say about inflammatory foods. If you're eating out in restaurants, you're eating inflammatory foods. I'm not saying that no one should ever eat out, but if you're dealing with sleep and health issues when you're eating out a few times a week, that is creating this inflammation. Unfortunately, restaurants use the cheapest foods available to increase our profit margin, and so they aren't using good oils, they aren't using organic foods. So this is the big mistake that I find people make and it's the number one thing I recommend to anyone who can't sleep is to go on an anti-inflammatory diet. You don't have to do any testing, you don't have to invest heavily to do that, but that can make a really big difference.

Now, the second mistake I see people making is drinking alcohol, especially people who have been struggling to sleep for a long time because it's one way to adapt and maybe fall asleep faster. But research shows that it doesn't help with sleep. It can cause night wakings a few hours after you go to sleep and it's putting this extra burden on your liver and also causing a lot of inflammation. So I'm working with a client now who came to me and said, I just want to be able to eat whatever I want to eat and drink and still be able to sleep. So I explained how that wasn't going to be possible, especially in the beginning and once he saw on paper again, he was sensitive to gluten and his liver function was not great. And so that's a big motivation to actually see things on paper and see how what you've been doing is affecting what's going on in your body.

It's a lot more motivating, but if you can't sleep, I highly recommend avoiding alcohol and not having it very often at all, maybe once or twice a month. Alcohol is also putting that extra burden on your liver, and I'll tell you, many of my clients need liver support. Their liver hasn't healthy, and so when the liver isn't healthy, then toxins circulate around. The liver's most active in the middle of the night. So that's happening in the middle of the night creating all this inflammation, which then your body releases cortisol to deal with that inflammation and it's going to wake you up. So taking a break from alcohol can be a great thing to do if you aren't sleeping and if you're not motivated yet, I recommend you listen to the Huberman Lab podcast. He has an entire two hour episode about alcohol, and he pretty much concludes that it's poison and that we should not be drinking it.

So I found that highly motivating. Now, I still have a drink or two every now and then a couple of months I will say because I got to a point where I couldn't tolerate alcohol and I don't want to have it completely out of my life. I enjoy in a social situation drinking alcohol and getting a little buzz and feeling a little more uninhibited, so I don't want to totally cut it out either, but it's not part of a healthy lifestyle to be drinking alcohol often and it's not helping your sleep. All right? The third mistake I see people making is thinking that their doctor can help. Of course it makes sense if you're dealing with any kind of health issues to go to your doctor, get everything checked out, make sure that there's nothing major going on. But I talk to so many people where their blood work is normal.

I say that in quotations because what's normal on blood work is based on the average of the people taking the test, and it's not actually what is ideal or optimal. And again, I have another whole episode about this, about why your blood work doesn't show why you can't sleep, but this is all that a doctor knows how to run, right? They're going to run a blood panel and everything's probably going to come out normal and it's not going to explain anything. They're going to tell you to follow sleep hygiene or they're going to recommend you go to a therapist or they're going to prescribe a sleeping pill or recommend CBTI, and that's all they know how to do. And so unfortunately, our medical system is meant to treat disease with pharmaceutical drugs and surgery. It's not meant to actually build health and prevent disease and keep people healthy.

And so that's why blood work isn't helpful because that's only meant to diagnose something major going on or that might indicate more testing. And so yes, go to your doctor, rule everything out, but they're not going to help you find the root cause of your sleep issues. Unfortunately, it's just not how our system works. And this brings me to my fourth point is the mistakes I see people make too are doing a sleep study If you have insomnia, sleep studies are primarily looking for sleep apnea and they are selling CPAP machines, and this is big business. Now, I'm not saying it can't help to go again, if it's something that you want to go and see and maybe rule things out, that's great, but there's also this difference between apnea and insomnia, where apnea is when you stop breathing throughout the night and your brain wakes you up so that you breathe again and get oxygen insomnia.

So you can have both, right? You can have apnea where you're stopping breathing and then it wakes you up, and if you have a hard time falling back asleep, then that's insomnia. If you have a hard time falling asleep at bedtime, if you're asleep for a long period of time in the middle of the night, that is insomnia. And while a sleep study can say, yes, you were awake for an hour in the middle of the night, they're not going to tell you why, and they don't have a solution for it except for a sleeping pill or cognitive behavioral therapy. It's just I talk to so many people who have done sleep studies and it has not helped with their insomnia at all. So unfortunately, yeah, it's just not the answer. Mistake number five is looking for the magic pill that's going to help the one magic pill.

I will tell you, if there was a magic pill that would help every single person out there with sleep issues, someone would be a bazillionaire and no one would have insomnia anymore. There's not one pill that's going to work for everyone, and that's because there are many different reasons why people have sleep issues. If it's gut health for someone and hormone imbalance for another person, there's not one pill that's going to help with this. And it's amazing to see how many supplements are out there promising that this is what's going to help. I even have some clients email me like, well, my friend told me about this supplement that has melatonin and l-theanine and holy basil and magnesium and all the things, and so all these different combinations of supplements put into one that are supposed to be the magic thing and it's not going to work, so it's not going to work for everyone.

You might get lucky and something does help, and that means that you don't have major imbalances going on. Then if one pill is going to help you solve all your sleep problems, that's great. That's all you need. But for most people, if you've been trying all these different things and you know that that's not going to work, and so continuing to search for that, it's just going to be fruitless. And that's because the six mistake, I see people making this that they're just guessing at supplements, right? So I heard melatonin can help. I heard magnesium can help. I heard this supplement can help. It's totally guessing as opposed to doing the lab testing that I do that shows exactly what your body needs. Yes, you do need magnesium, but you also need sodium and potassium and boron and vitamin B six and vitamin C and a healthy gut to actually magnesium.

So there's always more to it than just one thing. Yes, maybe melatonin can help. I use the Dutch test to say dried urine hormone test that looks at melatonin, so I can tell whether someone needs melatonin or not, instead of just spending money on supplements, guessing to see if it will work, and I'll add if someone's melatonin is low, that's a sign of poor gut health because 90% of melatonin is supposed to be made by the good bacteria in your gut. And so if melatonin helps you, that's great, but if you don't want to have to supplement with that forever, then you're going to want to test for and find out how to support your gut, what's going on in your gut. Yeah, so I always say test instead of guess. That's the value of the science of lab testing is then we know what your body needs and that's going to be different from what the person next to you needs and the person on the other side of you needs is completely different for everyone.

All right. Now for mistake number seven that I see people making is that they're looking for the one thing, and I mean instead of the one pill they're looking for, is it gut health? Many practitioners even do this as well, like they specialize in gut health or they specialize in hormones or they specialize in detox. This is partly because our medical system has become very specialized, which has been amazing. It's how people have become experts in different things. But what happens is that a gastroenterologist is looking at the gut is not collaborating with the neurologist or the endocrinologist. And so these specialists aren't seeing the fact that everything in the body is connected. So gut health affects liver function because if you have a pathogen in your gut that's releasing all those toxins, that's putting extra burden on your liver, and then your body's going to release cortisol to deal with those toxins and that inflammation, and then that's going to take resources away from your sex hormones, so then sex hormones can become depleted.

Or if your liver isn't working properly, then estrogen can build up and cause estrogen dominance, which can lead to sleep issues. So everything is connected, so it's kind of impossible to rebalance hormones without also addressing gut health, liver function, mineral balance, neurotransmitters, all the things that I look for in my program. And so I would just be wary of any practitioner's like, yes, it's your gut health. Let's test your gut health, and that's going to be the answer. So you really want to be looking for everything that could be contributing to this, which is why you want to come to my masterclass that's happening because I'm going to be talking about all the things that contribute to sleep issues and show you this comprehensive list of what in the mind contributes sleep issues, what in your body can contribute to sleep issues, how your genes, your epigenetics contribute to sleep issues.

So this was really interesting. I asked one of my clients named Susan a while ago who her sleep had improved a lot, and so I asked her, what do you think has made the biggest difference? And she said, one major thing is getting my blood sugar under control and not having me wake up at 3:00 AM every night because I'm hungry. The pregnant alone I think has helped with the night sweats and lighter bleeding during my periods. The five HTP in the morning has really helped with melatonin at night. I do believe my gut has struggled, so all the gut supplements and lastly, surrendering to the process and getting help, and I love this. She wrote, I guess I can't say it's one thing, and that's exactly right. It's not one thing. All right, so I want to briefly answer a, this is more of a comment than a question that a woman named Kim had in my Facebook group and she wrote, I have lost hope.

And this just made me so sad because I mean, first of all, my mission is for you to know that there is hope. Your insomnia is fixable. And I know this with the bottom of my heart because I struggled and lost hope for a bit too and got better, but also because I know that we are meant to sleep well. It's just what we're meant to do as humans. And if you can't, it just means that your body isn't healthy. It's just a sign. Your body's saying, Hey, things are out of balance. Help me. It's your wake up call. And she went on to say that she's lost hope because she's doing this gut health protocol and it hasn't been helping. And again, I think that's the focus of only looking at one thing and not at everything, and also trusting and giving things time.

Restoring your health in this way does not happen overnight. This isn't a quick fix that I'm talking about because there isn't such thing. I mean, really the only way to fix insomnia is to find out what's causing it and address that. Unless you want to take sleeping pills and those work, then some people do. But my clients who come to me, they don't, and I get that because I would not want to either. I just want you to know that you can get better, I promise. It's what we're meant to do. We're meant to sleep, and if you aren't sleeping and nothing seems to help, it's just because there's something missing, right? You haven't, even though it's easy to say, I've done everything, I'll just say, if you haven't done my program, you haven't done everything as you've been learning from this podcast. The way to sleep better is to find the imbalances in your body that are keeping you awake.

I created the Insomnia Insight Program so you'll know what these imbalances are and have a plan to fix them in just 30 days. In the Insomnia Insight Program, my team and I use four functional lab tests as well as assessments to look for everything that could be affecting your sleep so we don't miss anything. Then we will give you a personalized, holistic 90 day plan to get your body back in balance so you can get the deep sleep that you want. You'll know exactly which supplements and habits your body needs. No more trying to find the magic pill or following advice you find online that just doesn't work for you. You'll also get support for six months with weekly live coaching calls and daily chat messaging to get all of your questions answered. This will ensure your plan is successful so your sleep keeps improving.

You'll also have access to valuable trainings such as Smart Sleeper Habits where you'll learn evidence-based habits that will help you sleep more peacefully. You'll learn Smart Sleeper Essentials so you can fall asleep fast and stop the 3:00 AM Wake-ups by finding the perfect diet for your body and by balancing your blood sugar. And the Smart Sleeper mindset will help you get rid of negative thoughts and anxiety about sleep so that your mind doesn't sabotage you. The program also includes bonuses, such as how to get out a fight or fight and calm your nervous system, how to minimize toxins and support your liver, how to make changing habits easier. Also, that you can restore your health and sleep deeply. There will also be challenges so you stay motivated to follow your protocol and to celebrate as your sleep keeps improving. There will be monthly bonus trainings to further improve your health mindset and sleep.

There will also be customized case reviews available, so if your sleep hasn't improved in three months, you can submit a case review where we will review your results and plan and tell you exactly what to do next to make sure you're successful in the program. And if you sign up from this podcast, you can get a special bonus, a Customized Sleep Jumpstart plan. We will give you top three action steps to improve your sleep right away as soon as you sign up while we're waiting for your test results. The investment for the Insomnia Insight program is $2,500 plus the cost of the lab tests, which are around a thousand dollars. There is financing available from advanced care card.com. You can find out more about the program and sign up at the link in the show notes in the Insomnia Insight Program. You'll know the imbalances that are causing your sleep issues, and you'll have a plan to fix him in just 30 days so that you can sleep better and make the difference you're meant to make in the world.

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