Episode Show Notes

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In this episode, I explain why you can be completely exhausted and still lie in bed wide awake, and why normal blood work doesn't tell you the reason.

You'll learn:

  • Why feeling tired but wired at bedtime has causes your doctor's tests weren't designed to find
  • What your body may be doing at night that keeps your mind racing, even when you've done everything right
  • How to find out what's really keeping you from falling asleep so you can stop guessing


00:00 Why You’re Exhausted

01:20 Root Causes Over Hygiene

02:08 Nighttime Cortisol Spike

04:10 Hormones And Sleep

06:27 Gut Health Connection

08:42 Toxins And Inflammation

10:52 Neurotransmitters Balance

12:38 Testing And Program

14:36 Why Sleep Matters

Episode Transcript


[00:00:00] Today, I am going to be talking about another sleep mystery of why you can't fall asleep even though you're exhausted.


First of all I want you to know that if you are having trouble falling asleep at night, it's usually not just all in your head. It's not just anxiety, and it's not just because you're watching screens before bed or something like that, like not following sleep hygiene.


I have found after working with hundreds of clients and struggle with sleep issues myself, that there are imbalances in the body that are causing sleep issues. And unfortunately, the conventional medical system doesn't know about this, and so your, general doctor doesn't know about this. And so that's why when you go to them for help and they say your blood work is normal, and then the only thing they know to tell you is, "Oh follow sleep hygiene," or, "Do [00:01:00] CBTI," or, "Get a sleep study," even though a sleep study is only really screening for apnea.


It's not gonna show why you can't sleep. And then as a last resort, it is gonna be sleeping pills, which are just a Band-Aid, right? That's just masking the problem. It's masking the symptom instead of getting to the root of the problem. So after I struggled for two years with sleep issues and tried all the things you're supposed to try and nothing worked, I finally learned about these imbalances in the body, these underlying health issues that you don't even know are there, even if you are very healthy.


For me, I'm known as a healthy person in my group of friends. I eat well. I've always exercised. I've always cared about my health and studied nutrition and worked in the supplement department of health food stores and things like that. So this can happen even for those of us who are healthy and try to be healthy.


I still see not being able to fall [00:02:00] asleep normally or any kind of sleep issues as a sign that your body isn't healthy, and so we can find out what these are and fix them. Now, the first thing that is going to affect falling asleep at night is going to be if your body's releasing cortisol at night at bedtime when it shouldn't be.


And I see this in a lot of my clients because I am testing for cortisol and the whole cortisol pattern over a 24-hour period. So instead of blood work that is just looking at cortisol in the morning at that second in time, that's not really telling us much because even if that's normal, it could be even higher at night.


Like, mine was even higher in the middle of the night than it was during the day. And so that is the exact wrong, circadian rhythm that we are looking for. So ideally, cortisol is lowest in the morning, and then it goes up to its highest point within two hours of waking up, and then gradually goes down throughout the day.


[00:03:00] And it should not be high at night when we're trying to go to sleep. And so the key is, okay why is cortisol high at night? And yes, it can be from too much blue light from watching screens from not dimming the lights, from things like that. But, I've also found that there can be other, again, imbalances that are causing cortisol to be high at night.


So it can be your blood sugar fluctuating. It can have to do with gut health, which I'm gonna talk about in a minute. It can have to do with toxins, which I'm also gonna talk about in a minute. So, I just want you to know that if you are exhausted, but then you try and go to sleep and you're totally wired, then that means your body's releasing cortisol, or when cortisol has become depleted, then it's releasing adrenaline instead.


So those hormones are going to make your mind race, right? They're going to give you energy. They're gonna make it very hard to sleep [00:04:00] Excuse me. Having a little bit of allergies right now. So that's the number one thing of, trouble falling asleep. Now, another cause of this has to do with sex hormones, and this is especially true for women in perimenopause and menopause, but it also applies to men as well.


And I have been experiencing this firsthand the past year or so as I have been heading toward menopause and experimenting with different doses of hormone replacement therapy that have really interfered with my sleep. So I can tell the difference. Now I usually don't... my problem before was waking up around 3:00 a.m.


Now that is pretty much resolved. So when I have trouble falling asleep, I know that it's my hormones actually. And so when progesterone is too low, when estrogen is too low or too high compared to progesterone or testosterone, when testosterone is too [00:05:00] high, all of those things can interfere with sleep and especially not being able to fall asleep.


So that is definitely something that you want to be looking at. Again, both men and women, but especially women in perimenopause, this can be what's happening. And for some of us, like, taking hormone replacement therapy, like progesterone is supposed to help with sleep, but for me, it would have the opposite effect.


And I f- I figured out I have to take a very low dose and for it to not affect my sleep. So that is what is working for me. So just so you know that is something to test for, and I recommend both blood work for looking at hormones and a urine test like the hormone Zoomer that I do or the Dutch test that I used to do.


They both are testing for hormones and also showing how your body's metabolizing those hormones because estrogen can actually, even if your body isn't making a lot of it, it could be building [00:06:00] up if your body isn't able to detox it properly. And progesterone, again, could become really depleted or that could be going down the pathway that doesn't really help with sleep.


So anyway, that is just another factor that I have seen in so many of my clients, especially with trouble falling asleep. And feel free to comment and ask questions as we go, and I am happy to answer them as well. Now, this might be surprising too, but gut health can play a big role in sleep, with both being able to fall asleep and stay asleep.


But when the gut lining or the lining of the gut wall is damaged, then things are getting through the gut wall that shouldn't be. So like undigested food and toxins and bacteria and things like that, they actually leak through the gut wall into the general bloodstream, which is why it's called a leaky gut when that [00:07:00] gut lining gets gets damaged.


And those... all those things cause a lot-- cause inflammation. This low-grade inflammation, which is stressful for the body, it makes the body release cortisol, and so this can also be another reason why you're having a hard time falling asleep. And, that feeling tired but being wired and not able to sleep, even though you really want to sleep.


So gut health has a huge impact, and it can have to do with more than just a lot of times I talk about pathogens like parasites and H. pylori and candida and bacterial overgrowth, and those are especially notorious for causing those 3:00 a.m. wake-ups. But if you have pathogens, then likely your gut lining is damaged too, and so that's contributing to not being able to fall asleep.


So there's more to gut health than just, okay, we need to get rid of the pathogen. We also need to restore the gut [00:08:00] lining. We need to make sure that there are enough good bacteria in the gut and we need to make sure that the immune system is functioning well in the gut, that you're digesting food well.


There's a lot more to it than just killing a parasite, for example, which sometimes people want to know, "Hey, how do I kill a parasite?" And and that is an important part of it, but there's more to gut health than just that because, we're exposed to pathogens all the time and when the gut's healthy, then it...


those pathogens never take hold. It fights them off. So the goal is to create this good gut environment where these pathogens can't thrive All right. Now, another common thing I see, especially for trouble falling asleep, has to do with toxins. So by... And, we are exposed to thousands of toxins a day.


We can't avoid them completely no matter what we do, unless, I always tell my clients, unless we literally [00:09:00] live in a bubble. Just toxins are in the air, they're in the soil, so they're in the water we're drinking and the food we're eating. They're in the things we're putting on our skin. But the more we can minimize those things, the better.


So one of the things I test for is looking at my clients' toxic burden, and so testing for things like heavy metals, a lot of which come from tap water that we're drinking from environmental chemicals, which m- can also come from water and from foods we're eating. So that includes things like pesticides.


There are these PFAs or forever chemicals that just get stored in our fat that are really hard to get rid of, and they can't... there's no way to get them out of the environment at this point, so that's why they're called forever chemicals. And then another thing I'm also testing for are mycotoxins, which are from mold, and about a third of my clients are dealing with mold toxicity from the environment.


So that means it, it's in their [00:10:00] home or could be at work. Usually it's in the home though, and it could be currently or in the past. But testing for toxins gives me a sense of, okay, how many toxins are there, what's someone's burden of toxins, and then how can we minimize exposure to those toxins and help the body get rid of them gently.


But toxins are causing inflammation as well, and they really compromise our body's ability to detox. So they can compromise liver, kidney function, things like that. So again, there's more to it than just let's get rid of the toxins. We also need to address, okay, what else has been affected by the body having to deal with these toxins likely for a long time.


But that... The inflammation that the toxins cause can make it harder to fall asleep at night. And then the last thing that plays a huge role in falling asleep at night are our neurotransmitters. So these are chemicals that [00:11:00] are in our brain and also our gut, which is our second brain technically, and 90% of neurotransmitters are made in the gut.


And the gut is connected to the brain via the vagus nerve. So some of those are moving back and forth And so what I see in many of my clients is a lot of the calming neurotransmitters are depleted. So GABA especially is our anti-anxiety neurotransmitter, and so if you're low in GABA, it makes it really hard to relax and feel calm and able to sleep.


So sometimes that racing mind or feeling anxious at night isn't d- always from cortisol or just from cortisol, it can also be depleted GABA. Serotonin and dopamine are two also calming neurotransmitters that really help regulate our sleep cycle as well. So we might think of serotonin more for mood and dopamine more for, that reward system in the brain, but both of them also help [00:12:00] with sleep.


And so when they are depleted, it can be hard to fall asleep and stay asleep And then there are also stimulating neurotransmitters that when they're too high, make it really hard to fall asleep. So things like histamine and glutamate and acetylcholine are all very stimulating, and sometimes I see these high in my clients, and so that's explaining why they're feeling so stimulated at night and wired even though they're tired and why they're having trouble falling asleep.


So those are the five most common things I'm seeing that have to do with falling asleep. And if you want to find out what yours are, then that's where the functional lab testing comes in that I do in my Complete Sleep Solution program. So I use four different tests. I'm using the Gut Zoomer, which also includes neurotransmitters, to find out what's going on in the gut and with neurotransmitters.


I do the [00:13:00] Toxin Zoomer, which is looking at our toxic burden, and the Hormone Zoomer, which is looking at cortisol and sex hormones. So all f- four of those tests are going to identify these five reasons I just talked about that can really make it hard to fall asleep at night. So if that's something you're interested in, then you want to join my Complete Sleep Solution program.


This is a six-month program where we work closely together, do the lab testing. I also do assessments, screening for other imbalances in the body, and looking at habits and lifestyle and the mental part of not sleeping as well. My goal is to find everything that's getting away, in the way of a good night's sleep for you so that nothing is missed.


And this is the fastest and most effective way to get better because instead of doing just, "Okay let's look at gut health and see if that helps," and, "Oh, that wasn't enough to help," then we look at hormones and see if that helps, and that wasn't enough to help. [00:14:00] That's gonna take a really long time. My approach is to look at everything at once at the very beginning so that nothing is missed, and then I also know what to address first, what to prioritize.


And this is also important because everything in the body's connected, so we... if you try and just work on gut health without also working on hormones, it's gonna be hard to get better because those are all connected. As I've evolved this program over the past eight years, I've changed up the testing a little bit, and I've included assessing for other things to make sure that nothing is missed.


Because I had sleep issues for two years, I know how hard and frustrating it is and how exhausting it is, especially when you're already living a healthy lifestyle and trying to do all the right things and you still can't sleep. It's the most frustrating thing ever. And so That is why I am doing what I'm doing.


It's my passion to help people get over their sleep issues [00:15:00] because I know how miserable it is, and also, without enough sleep, it's really hard to do the things that you're meant to do in the world. I believe that all of us are on this earth for a reason, to contribute to the greater good, and it doesn't have to be in a huge way.


We don't have to be like Gandhi or Oprah, right? Even just raising a family and and working a job can be very meaningful and important. Like, how we live our day-to-day life has a ripple effect over everyone around us. So I know it's a lot easier to make that difference, to be in a good mood and positive and happy around the people around you when you're sleeping well.


So that's why I believe in this so much, and also because sleep is such an important part of health, right? So we know that, if you care about living a long and healthy life, then fixing your sleep is one of the pillars of that. The main [00:16:00] pillar, I would say. Even Dr. Matthew Walker says it's more important than diet and exercise, is getting enough sleep.


And I know if you're having trouble sleeping, that's probably not helpful, but... or it can be frustrating if you're trying to do everything. But I just want you to know that there is a way to find out what's causing this and fix it. Then you can sleep well and feel like yourself again and be the healthiest version of you too.


This program, my approach is definitely a health restoring program. So it's focused on sleep, but it's also focused on overall health because not sleeping is a sign that your body isn't healthy.