👉Join the Complete Sleep Solution: https://thesleepdetective.com/complete-sleep-solution

Have you tried everything for your insomnia and started to wonder if you'll ever sleep well again?

When you've struggled with sleep for years, it's easy to lose hope. But just because other approaches haven't worked doesn't mean you're out of options.

In this episode, you'll discover:

  • The one thought that can change how you approach your insomnia.

  • Why sleep hygiene, supplements, and other common solutions may not be enough to resolve chronic sleep problems.

  • How hidden health imbalances may be keeping you awake, even when you're doing everything right.

  • Why your past struggles with sleep don't have to determine your future.

  • If you're tired of feeling like nothing will ever work, this episode will help you see why better sleep is still possible.

Learn more about working with Martha: https://thesleepdetective.com

00:00 The Missing Sleep Belief

01:05 Why Trying Everything Fails

03:12 Mainstream Advice Limits

04:03 Root Causes In Body

05:04 Humans Are Meant To Sleep

07:21 Medical Vs Health Care

08:49 One Thought You Need

10:20 My Insomnia Story

11:12 Functional Testing Breakthrough

13:35 Borrow My Belief

15:24 Complete Sleep Solution Overview

16:30 Labs And Personalized Protocol

19:24 Who The Program Helps

21:22 Health Restoration And Sustainability

22:32 Final Encouragement

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Today, I want to talk about this sleep mystery, and it is simple, but you probably don't have this. It is the thought that you need to have to be able to sleep better. And the reason this is so important is because without this thought, you won't take the steps you need to actually sleep better.

And this thought is very hard to have if you've been struggling to sleep for a long time, even if it's weeks, or months, which some people I talk to, it feels like an eternity. But some of you have probably been struggling for years or even decades or your entire adult life.

And so the longer you've been struggling and the more things you try, the more discouraged you get.

My clients will have this thought because they are hiring me and taking the action to sleep better.

But if you don't [00:01:00] believe this, you're just going to give up, or you're just going to half-heartedly try things, right? Like, "Okay, I'll try this, you know, thirty dollar supplement or fifty dollar supplement, but I'm not ready to go all in to actually figure this out." And, you know, you've probably tried a lot of different things, so I'm not saying that this is your fault or that the reason you aren't sleeping isn't from lack of effort, right?

I'm sure over the weeks, months, years, you've tried many different things, everything from online sleep programs, CBT-I, maybe online or something your doctor recommended. You've probably tried lots of different supplements, magnesium, melatonin, CBD, THC, so many sleep formulas out there.

You might have gone to therapy because you were told it was all in your head. You've probably done a sleep study, which is really just looking for sleep apnea. It might show that you aren't sleeping, but it's not going to [00:02:00] tell you why you aren't sleeping. You've probably tried lots of different gadgets, acupuncture, getting blood work done by your doctor, maybe even going to functional medicine doctors or naturopaths or things like that.

You might even be taking sleeping pills because I get it, you need to sleep, and it sucks to not be able to sleep. But if you're here, I imagine it's because you don't want to be taking medication to sleep every night for the rest of your life.

So- I know that you've tried so many things. You've probably spent quite a bit of money on this. It's super frustrating. You're exhausted. And I'm sure you go through times where it's kind of a roller coaster ride of, " Okay, i'm gonna try this supplement. I'm gonna do this program and hope and pray that this is gonna be the thing."

And then it doesn't work, and then you kind of dip into this, "Well, I'm just gonna give up for a while because that didn't work." And you're super discouraged and frustrated and don't know what to do next. And then maybe you hear of the [00:03:00] next thing, and then you give that a good try, and then that doesn't work.

And, again, this isn't your fault because the problem is there isn't a mainstream solution for this. So the medical system is going to say follow sleep hygiene, right? So have a bedtime routine and dim the lights and, you know, all the things. Hopefully they're gonna start there, and those are important things to do.

But if you have chronic insomnia, it's not because you're watching TV before bed or you don't have the right bedtime routine. I work with many people who have a two-hour relaxing bedtime routine, and they still can't sleep, which is so frustrating. And then the solution is, "Well, it's all in your head, so go do cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia," which I think is helpful. You know, our mindset around sleep, our thoughts about sleep, our habits are super important. But again, they're usually not enough for people with chronic [00:04:00] insomnia. Or you're going to be prescribed a sleeping pill.

And so the solution that I have found that totally solved my sleep issues once and for all, that I have helped hundreds of clients do, is to actually find the root causes in your body.

And yes, we also want to focus on habits and your thoughts and all of those things, but that's not enough if your body is out of balance, which if you aren't sleeping, it is.

The good news is this is the only thing that's getting in the way of a good night's sleep for you. So I know you've tried all these other things, but you likely haven't tried this or no one's helped you do it in the right way, right?

So you might go to your doctor and get blood work and everything comes back normal or a couple things are off, but it's not really explaining why you can't sleep. And unfortunately, that's what's covered by insurance. That's what your doctor [00:05:00] knows about, and that's all they know about, and that's all that's covered by insurance.

But there is another way, and this is what I truly believe, is everyone is meant to sleep well. Every single person. Now, there are some super rare sleep disorders that less than 1% of the population has, and you probably don't, , even though you might think you do, but most likely you don't. And so all of us, as humans, are meant to sleep.

And as humans, we are meant to sleep an average of eight hours a night. It could be seven, it could be nine, and anywhere in between is what is considered normal sleep. And I always think about this. We have evolved for tens of thousands, if not millions of years as humans, without getting rid of our need to sleep, and so have animals.

All different animals need different amounts of sleep And we all need that sleep or else we would have evolved out of it, right? Because [00:06:00] if you think about it, sleeping is a very vulnerable state to be in, right? You're not aware of what's going on around you, and so it's a time when you're vulnerable to predators.

But it's so important to sleep because so much recovery happens then that we still need to spend about a third of our lives asleep. It's when our brain repairs, it's when our body repairs. So many things happen while we sleep that we're still discovering, but it's that important. So that's how I know that every single person is meant to sleep. We're meant to get the right amount of sleep.

Now, there is the short sleeper gene that again is in less than one percent of the population where, you know, maybe a few people need or fewer than seven hours of sleep. Maybe a six or five or four, whatever it is. But again, that's a very small percentage of the population to not need as much sleep and to not have any negative health effects from [00:07:00] not getting enough s-sleep.

So we're all meant to sleep between seven, nine hours. So I see it as if you can't, there are just things in the way. If you imagine walking down an alleyway, and there are trash bags in the way. We just need to remove those trash bags and then you can sleep. And unfortunately, our medical system doesn't really know how to find those trash bags and help you remove them, and that's because it's actually not their job.

So not sleeping is not usually a medical problem. It is a health problem. We call our system healthcare and things like that, but medical and health are two different things. I see medical as diagnosing and treating disease and saving people, like saving lives, emergency medicine, things like that.

And it is so valuable, right? My 10-year-old was born via C-section. If not for modern medicine, we [00:08:00] would not both be alive today. So I am so grateful for it, but the medical system does not help us optimize our health. It helps treat disease once it's happening. Doesn't help prevent disease.

And so you have to go outside the medical system into health system, and functional health is what I recommend, to find out what's actually causing your sleep issues and fix them. And so if you haven't gone down this route yet, that's why you haven't gotten better. That's the only reason why. It's not 'cause you haven't tried hard enough.

It's not 'cause you don't want to. It's just because, you know, no one has looked for what's going on in your body that's actually causing this.

And so the one thought you need to have to be able to sleep better is that it is possible for you to sleep better. 

You have [00:09:00] to believe that you can sleep well, that you are meant to sleep well, that you can figure this out to take that step to be able to sleep well. So that's why I talk about, okay, this is the one thought that you need to have.

You have to believe it's possible.

Someone told me this a few years ago, and it stuck with me ever since, of Whether you believe in God, a higher power, the universe, anything. I'm not religious, but I am spiritual, so I tend to believe in a higher power, kind of universal intelligence.

But I heard this reframed as God. God would not give you the ability to want something, to desire something that isn't possible. That would just be cruel, right? So I think that anything that we can imagine, anything that we want, anything that we desire, and so this can be sleep, but it can also be achieving different goals, making a certain amount of money, like [00:10:00] all the things.

Anything that we can imagine, we can achieve. We just have to overcome the obstacles that are in the way of that. And so that's what can happen with sleep, and that is what I'm passionate about doing and what I help people do because that's what worked for me.

So I struggled with what I call insomnia. Now, I was not officially diagnosed or anything. I'm referring to insomnia as any trouble sleeping, right? So trouble falling asleep, trouble staying asleep. For me, I would wake up around three, three thirty AM, not be able to go back to sleep for a couple hours, so I was not getting the eight and a half hours that my body needs.

Or, waking up too early, kinda tossing and turning all night, restless sleep, not feeling rested in the morning. So that's what I'm talking about when I talk about insomnia. It's just any kind of sleep issues, sleep troubles.

And I tried all the things. I was already a baby sleep consultant, so I [00:11:00] knew a lot about sleep.

I got an adult sleep certification, which did help a little bit of changing some of my habits. I stopped complaining about sleep all the time and talking about sleep all the time and researching about sleep all the time. But it wasn't until I learned about functional lab testing that found imbalances in my body that I had no idea were there that I was able to finally sleep better again.

And, I see not being able to sleep normally as a sign that your body isn't healthy. It's actually a symptom of a bigger problem, that there are other imbalances in your body. And this can be true even if you care about your health, right? Like, I've been a nutritionist since my 20s, , and I'm known as a healthy person, in my group of friends, in my community, in my family, and yet at age 39, I still developed insomnia 'cause there were things in my body that I had no idea were there. I had a parasite that I'd probably gotten 13 years before from [00:12:00] traveling in Nepal and India, and, I think that over the years it just slowly damaged my gut, which led to other imbalances because everything in the body is connected.

So by the time I wasn't sleeping well, my hormones were completely out of balance, probably because I had a baby at age 39. I had heavy metals that had built up, especially uranium, because for a long time I drank the tap water in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where I live, which is known to have some of the best water in the world or definitely in the country, and it tastes good, but water facilities don't filter out heavy metals and they add chlorine, which kills the bad guys, but also kills the good bacteria in your gut.

So anyway, so I had heavy metal toxicity. I had too much copper in my body, probably from taking birth control for 10 years, even though that was 15 years prior. I had neurotransmitter deficiencies, which can happen when the body's [00:13:00] stressed for a long time and when the gut isn't healthy, and there can be a genetic component to that as well.

And so it was all of those different imbalances that were affecting my sleep. But once I did the lab testing that showed what those imbalances were and started correcting them, then I started sleeping better. And now I sleep well. I sleep eight and a half hours most nights.

I wake up grateful every day for that. Like this morning, I'm just so happy that I slept well. I will never take it for granted. I don't think anyone with sleep issues ever will. So I just want you to know that you have to believe you can sleep better, and I totally believe you can.

And I will say, it's normal to believe that some of the time, and then to doubt some of the time, and especially, again, the longer you've been struggling, the more things you've tried. So I always say my clients get to borrow my belief, too, right? Like that when they [00:14:00] are feeling discouraged, then I remind them of this truth and of what happened, like sometimes people are sleeping better, and then it gets worse again before it gets better again.

And that roller coaster, as I call it, is totally normal. And so they get to borrow my belief while they're going through the roller coaster and keep reminding themselves of the progress that they've made. I'm not saying that you have to b-be in belief all the time, but you do have to believe to take the next step.

Whether that's working with me or whatever next step you want to do, you actually have to believe that you can sleep better first to take that step and to be committed 100% to that step. So I hope that that makes sense. If you take anything from this, I want you to know that you are meant to sleep well.

You can sleep well, no matter how long you've been struggling. I've helped clients who struggled literally since they were in college or even [00:15:00] one client since he was 14 is when he started having sleep issues. And he worked with me when he was in his early 30s and was back to sleeping seven and a half hours a night.

So I just know that it's possible no matter how long you've been struggling, no matter how old you are, no matter how many things you've tried. So you can borrow my belief, and I hope that that will help you take the next step that you need to take. And so if you're ready to find the root causes, as I say, like the imbalances in your body that are causing this, that are causing your sleep issues, that's what I do in my Complete Sleep Solution program.

It's a six-month program. It includes analysis of four different functional lab tests. My goal is to look for everything that could be causing this because by the time you have a symptom, such as not sleeping well, there's more than one imbalance happening in your body because every system in the body affects everything else.

So like for me, m-maybe the main thing was a parasite, but that was [00:16:00] causing the high cortisol at night that was waking me up. It caused my body to be stressed, which then it focused on making cortisol Instead of sex hormones, so that's how my hormones got out of balance. It damaged my gut, which then affected my body's ability to make neur- neurotransmitters, 'cause up to 90% of neurotransmitters are made in the gut.

It affected my ability to detox the heavy metals. So that's what I mean by everything is connected. And so my goal is to look for everything at once at the beginning, and that's gonna be the fastest and most effective way to get better. So I'm looking at gut health, I'm looking at neurotransmitters, I'm looking at cortisol, and not just morning cortisol, you know, at fasting time when you get blood work drawn.

We need to see your cortisol pattern throughout the day. 'Cause mine was normal in the morning, but it was higher in the middle of the night than it was in the morning, and that was the [00:17:00] problem. That was why I wasn't sleeping. And blood work doesn't show that, but a urine or a saliva test will show that if you take it multiple times throughout the day.

Look at sex hormones, look at liver detox, look at toxins. So that's another test I do, including toxins from mold. So looking at all of those things. I assess for blood sugar imbalances. I look at your diet, at your habits, at your entire life, at everything that's happening in this very holistic way so that nothing is missed.

And then once I have all the data from the lab tests, from your intake forms, all of that, then I give you a personalized plan. I call it a personalized health transformation protocol to get your body back in balance so that then you can sleep normally. And so most of my clients are sleeping better throughout the six month.

It just keeps getting better and better. But I do make it six months [00:18:00] because sometimes it takes that long to complete the protocol, to get off the protocol, to make sure that, you're still sleeping well before I say, "Okay, you have graduated, and you're good to go."

And so it's very much a health restoring program.

I am specializing in sleep, and I definitely have a lot of clients who have seen functional medicine doctors, naturopaths, things like that, and what's usually happening, why they haven't gotten better, is because those people aren't specializing in sleep, and they don't know about the different imbalances that affect sleep specifically and/or just something has been missed.

I see it as different pieces of a puzzle, and so sometimes just a piece or two of the puzzle has been missed. So even if you've gone down that route a little bit, if you haven't gotten better, it doesn't mean you can't get better. It just means either your body needs a little more time or some pieces of the puzzle have been missed, and my goal is to find all of those pieces of the puzzle.[00:19:00] 

So if this is something you're interested in, then you can join the program. If you want to talk to me first, you can schedule a consultation. I will put the link to learn more about the program here.

And if you want to schedule a consultation with me, then you are also welcome to do that.

I definitely help people with different sleep struggles. So whether it's falling asleep, whether it's waking up throughout the night, whether it's waking up in the middle of the night for a long period of time, all of those kinds of issues. And because it's a health restoring program, it's also gonna help with any other symptoms that you might have.

So some of my clients, their only issue is sleep. Like that was me. I didn't really have any other symptoms, um, except for, like being tired during the day from not sleeping, but... And maybe a little bit of brain fog from being tired from not sleeping. And then some of my clients have a lot of different symptoms, [00:20:00] sometimes even medical diagnoses or taking prescription medicines, things like that.

So it's a whole spectrum of just sleep to lots of issues to anything in between. Some people have digestive issues and know that that's an issue for them and, um, and so gut health is definitely a big piece of the puzzle that I work on. But some people don't have digestive issues and gut health is still a big piece of the puzzle.

Like me, I had no digestive issues at all, but I had this parasite that had totally damaged my gut and so then that damaged gut led to me reacting to different foods and so gut health was a big, piece of the puzzle for me. So, if you're dealing with hormone imbalances, and this is for men and women, so not just women, but definitely, I'm in that part of my life where I am dealing with perimenopause, approaching menopause and dealing with those hormone imbalances there. So that is also something that we look for.

If you're dealing with mood issues like anxiety, depression, things like that, [00:21:00] whether clinically diagnosed or not, by helping with neurotransmitters, by helping with gut health, by helping lower inflammation, it's going to help with that as well.

And of course, sleeping better, we're gonna be in a better mood. So it's very much a complete health restoring program, which is another reason why it's six months, 'cause that does take time. But what's great is that you not only get your sleep back, you also get your health back. And I teach you how to keep your body in balance and healthy in the years to come.

So this isn't just a quick fix that as soon as you stop it's going to, deteriorate again. I mean, of course you have to keep up certain good habits and things like that. You can't finish the program and then start eating McDonald's three times a day and not exercising and, you know, all the things and expect to, stay healthy and sleeping well.

But yeah, I teach you how to keep your body healthy in a very sustainable, easy [00:22:00] way, even in this modern day and time where we are surrounded by unhealthy things. So yeah, so it's more than just sleeping well, 'cause you're going to optimize your health, and moving forward. Because, we need sleep to be healthy.

It's one of the main pillars. Sleep, diet, and exercise, right, are the three main pillars. And I think sleep is one of the most important. And sometimes it's easier to eat well and exercise, and we can't force ourselves to sleep if we can't sleep. So that can be super frustrating. I know it was for me. So if you're like me and really care about your health and want to live a long and healthy life, then it's so important to address your sleep.

And again, the belief you need to have is that you are meant to sleep well.