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If you've been wondering why magnesium isn't helping your sleep, why you wake up exhausted no matter what you try, or whether something deeper is going on in your body, this episode is going to answer that.


Most people who can't sleep have never had a proper mineral test done. Standard bloodwork doesn't show it. Your doctor isn't looking for it. But when I run a hair tissue mineral analysis on my clients, mineral imbalances show up almost every single time, even in people who eat well and take care of themselves.


In this episode you'll learn:

  • Why magnesium alone almost never fixes sleep problems, and what has to be in place for it to work
  • The slow oxidation pattern that causes exhaustion, weight gain, and insomnia all at once
  • How chronic stress leaves a measurable mark on your mineral levels and what that looks like on a test
  • What a calcium shell is and why it's more common than you'd think
  • Why copper toxicity is one of the most overlooked causes of a racing mind at night
  • How one client finally got answers after years of failed treatments — by looking at minerals and heavy metals


If you've tried everything and you're still not sleeping, you need to hear this.


00:00 Why Magnesium Alone Fails

00:08 Introduction and Background

00:46 Jamie's Story

01:46 The Magnesium Myth

02:21 Slow Oxidation Pattern

03:17 Calcium Shell Pattern

03:59 Fast Oxidation Pattern

04:50 Four Lows Pattern

05:38 Copper Toxicity Pattern

06:47 Testing vs Guessing

08:13 Hair Testing Benefits

09:15 Sleep Mineral Analysis

10:11 Jamie's Success Story

10:41 Next Steps


Episode Transcript


[00:00:00] You've heard magnesium helps with sleep. Maybe you're already taking it and you're still waking up at 2:00 AM, still exhausted, still can't figure it out. I'm Martha Lewis, a functional sleep coach for seven years now. I've run mineral testing on hundreds of clients, and mineral imbalances are one of the most consistent things I find in people who can't sleep, including in myself before I figured out what was going on in my own body


In this episode, I'm going to show you exactly what mineral testing reveals, Why magnesium alone almost never fixes the problem, and what the actual patterns look like that are keeping people awake.


I'm going to walk you through a client case. Then break down the four specific mineral patterns I find on testing that directly disrupt sleep


First, I want to tell you about my client, Jamie. She had been to doctor after doctor, so many different practitioners.


She had tried hormones, parasite cleanses, herbalists, medications like Trazodone and Xanax, [00:01:00] and nothing worked, or it would work briefly and then it would stop


She was so desperate that she and her husband sat down and prayed for someone who could help, and then they found me.


When we ran the hair tissue mineral analysis, I found a calcium shell. This is when calcium is super high, which I will explain in a few minutes. But this was a direct sign that her body had been under stress for a very long time.


Her cortisol was sky high. Her B vitamins and minerals were depleted. Her body had been running on empty, and the mineral tests showed exactly how that had affected her


She had the test results. Now the question was whether fixing what we found would actually move the needle on her sleep after everything else had failed


Most people who can't sleep have already tried magnesium, so why doesn't it work?


This is because minerals work synergistically, which means they need to be in balance with each other. So too much magnesium without [00:02:00] sodium and potassium in balance pulls the whole system off.


You also need boron and vitamin D and B vitamins just to absorb it.


And if your gut is compromised, you're not absorbing it as well as you could, whether you're taking it in food or supplements. So testing tells you what you actually have, not what you're taking.


Now, if you feel tired all the time, you struggle to lose weight, and still can't sleep, there's a pattern on the mineral test that explains all three of these at the same time. 75% of my clients have this pattern. And this is when sodium potassium is too low to hold minerals in the cell, so calcium, magnesium build up in the soft tissue like the hair.


And so it looks high on the test, but it's not available to be used by the body. This means that the four primary minerals, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, are all out of balance. And this is caused by chronic stress, [00:03:00] by not getting those nutrients enough from food, and by, you know, taking common supplements without testing, especially taking calcium and magnesium. And even avoiding sodium in a healthy source like sea salt can also lead to that depletion.


And then this pattern in the extreme can lead to what I mentioned with Jamie, which is the calcium shell. So this is when calcium is super high, which means it's not being absorbed and it's not getting to the bones and teeth where it's supposed to go. It's being pushed out into the soft tissue.


This can happen from over-supplementing with calcium or from chronic stress. Calcium is a very hard mineral, and so when the body is stressed, sometimes it will build up calcium as this protection against that stress But this is directly going to affect sleep. It can lead to anxiety and that racing mind, especially at night


[00:04:00] Then there's also an opposite pattern, and it causes the same kind of sleeplessness, just for different reasons. The fast oxidation pattern depletes calcium, magnesium, so those are low, and sodium, potassium are super high. And this happens when the body is under more acute in-the-moment stress, kind of at the beginning of stress, because the adrenals really use a lot of, sodium and potassium.


So those will look high at first in this fast oxidation period, and then over time, usually it switches to the slow oxidation, where sodium, potassium become depleted.


And so when sodium and potassium are super high, it speeds up the thyroid and adrenals. So this can definitely lead to, again, that racing mind, anxiety, and not being able to turn that off at night.


Another pattern I see is a surefire way to know how much stress your body has been under, and this is called the four lows pattern when all four of those [00:05:00] minerals have become super depleted. This is kind of the end result of being under acute stress and that fast oxidizer pattern, and then that becoming chronic stress and leading to that slow oxidizer pattern, and then over time, just all four of those minerals become very depleted. So this is a really burned out kind of end result state, and I see this on a lot of my clients.


When the body doesn't have those minerals, then the adrenals can't function properly, the thyroid can't function properly, blood sugar gets more out of balance, and sleep can definitely be disrupted.


Now, for the final pattern, most people have never had their copper tested, and here's why that's a problem.


Copper is a necessary mineral, so you might see it in some multivitamin mineral supplements. But when it's too high and not being absorbed by the body, it becomes toxic. And so it's circulating around causing lots of [00:06:00] symptoms, especially that racing mind, that anxiety, that sleeplessness. This was a pattern that I saw in myself as well that was one reason why I wasn't sleeping, and this is something that I commonly see in quite a few of my clients.


And this can happen especially, if you're drinking water from copper pipes, if you're swimming in chlorinated pools, those tend to have copper that can accumulate, , birth control. So women taking birth control, tend to result in an excess of copper. And then even vegan vegetarian diets because the zinc to copper balance is what's really important and vegan diets especially tend to be very low in zinc 'cause that is commonly found in animal foods


So knowing all this, this is a problem with going to the health food store and picking up whatever the label says is good for sleep, right? Or just trying magnesium when that could actually be driving things more out [00:07:00] of balance. Your body could need magnesium. Most people do. And, you know, the hair tissue mineral analysis is very complicated to interpret because just because something's high doesn't mean necessarily that it's bad.


When calcium is too high, that creates that calcium shell. But when we see magnesium high, that means that the body isn't absorbing it at the cellular level, and so you actually do need magnesium. But if you take magnesium and sodium and - potassium is super depleted, that's just driving that imbalance even farther.


So most of my clients need magnesium and sodium and potassium. Some people do need calcium if that's low. If it's high, then, you know, definitely need to work on balancing the other minerals, taking vitamin K2, which helps put calcium into the bones and teeth where it's supposed to go.


And so this is why I never recommend that people take a calcium supplement without testing their minerals with the hair test. Because taking a calcium [00:08:00] supplement when it's already super high is just going to make it worse. And if you aren't taking it with vitamin K2, which many calcium supplements don't come with that, then it's not going into the bones and teeth where it's supposed to go.


So the hair tissue mineral analysis really helps us read the pattern and what's going on in your body over the past three months. This is why it's so much more valuable than blood work, because blood work is showing that second in time.


And the body's always trying to keep the minerals in the blood in homeostasis or balance. So it's going to pull calcium from the teeth and bones into the blood to keep that level. Same with sodium, same with, you know, all the other minerals that blood work tests.


So the imbalances will show up in the hair before it ever shows up on blood work. And because you're using about an inch of hair for your sample, we're seeing a picture of the past three months instead of just that second in time. [00:09:00] So minerals in the blood can be changing constantly because the body's always trying to get it back in homeostasis. But the hair is reflecting what's been happening for the last three months. And so then that actually guides us in what to do next


if you've been struggling with sleep and you've tried all the usual advice, magnesium, sleep hygiene, melatonin, and nothing is working, there's a good chance your minerals are part of the problem, and the only way to know for sure is to test them. That's exactly why I created the sleep mineral analysis.


It's an at-home hair tissue mineral test that reveals what's actually going on at the cellular level, your mineral patterns, your stress response, and the hidden imbalances that could be driving your insomnia. You'll get the test kit as soon as you sign up, my Sleep Essentials program to start working on your sleep right away, and a video walking you through how to interpret your results through a sleep lens and what to do the im- about the [00:10:00] imbalances that are found.


Right now during the launch, it's just $199. I'll put the link in the description so you can go check it out and finally get some answers


Now back to my client, Jamie. Once we started addressing her mineral imbalances along everything else, the cortisol, her gut, her hormones, her sleep started to shift. The calcium shell told us exactly how much stress her body had absorbed over the years and gave us a roadmap for what to address first so that she was finally able to sleep again even after she had seen so many different doctors and practitioners who had tried to help her.


Stay tuned for the next episode, which is going to be about heavy metals, which is another cause of insomnia that the sleep mineral analysis shows. And if you want to learn more about the sleep mineral analysis, you can watch this video next.

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