How to find and fix the underlying health issues that are keeping you awake at night.


Resources mentioned on this episode:


Find out more about the Complete Sleep Solution program. 


Episode Transcript:


Have you tried everything from natural to pharmaceutical just to get a good night's rest? Join me, Martha Lewis, certified sleep expert and functional health coach as I unpack what's really keeping you up at night and how to change it. This is the Sleep Detective podcast and I'm going to show you how to sleep well so you can enjoy your life.


Hello. Hello everyone. Happy Thursday. I hope you're all having a great week so far. All right. Today I'm really excited to talk to you about the four functional lab tests I use to show why you can't sleep. And this is even if your blood work is normal. Most of my clients who come to me have gone to their doctor, they've gotten blood work, maybe they, sometimes people do have some imbalances, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, something like that. But for the most part they come back normal.


And so the doctor says, well, there's no reason why you aren't sleeping. Why don't you follow the sleep hygiene? Why don't you see a therapist and do CBTI? Why don't you take this pill? And that's kind of all they know to do. But with functional lab testing, we can find what is going on in your body that is affecting your sleep because really not being able to sleep normally is a sign that your body isn't healthy. And so there's no way that if you have any symptoms such as not sleeping well that these tests that I run are going to come back normal. They're definitely going to show what's going on in your body that is affecting your sleep. So I want to explain these four tests today so you'll understand what I'm looking for. And I'll start off by saying these tests are different than blood work because they're not meant to diagnose anything.


They're instead they're called functional lab tests because they're looking at how the different systems in your body are functioning or working. So then we can see things before they even show up on blood work. So they're also really looking at your overall health and preventative so that we can start correcting these imbalances before they turn into anything major that will show up on blood work and how it works. How I can work with people all over the world is that I order the test for you and the test gets shipped to your home and then you take the test in the comfort of your own home, send your samples back to the labs and prepaid envelopes and then I get the results. So this is how I work with people definitely in the United States, but even in Canada, in Europe, in Australia, New Zealand, some parts of Asia.


So I've worked with people in a lot of different places in the world, which is really fun. And so we can order these lab tests almost no matter where you live. Feel free to let me know if you have questions as I am going through these as well. So what I'm doing with the testing and the assessments I do is I'm looking for all the possible causes of your insomnia. So there's never just one cause. And I see everyone has their own unique puzzle with their own unique puzzle pieces. So with the test and assessments, I'm looking for all of these possible puzzle pieces. So you're not going to have all of these, but you're going to have some combination of these. Everyone has a different combination of their own unique puzzle pieces. So the first test I run is called the Dutch test. This stands for dried urine test for comprehensive hormones.


So it gives a lot of different information. It's first of all going to look at your cortisol and especially your cortisol pattern. So if you've gotten blood work done and your cortisol has come back normal, that's just testing it at that one second in time. And so sure, it could be in normal range first thing in the morning when you take the test, but that's not telling us what cortisol is doing the rest of the day. It could be even higher in the middle of the night or at bedtime. And so that's why you're having trouble sleeping. You can see here this was my cord Dutch chest when I first did it. And so my values were this red line here. So the ideal are between the black line, so that's a low range limit and the high range limit. And then the patient values, which were mine was the red line.


So this waking sample is also representing the middle of the night. And so you can see my cortisol was super high in the middle of the night, and then instead of having the spike first thing in the morning like it's supposed to, it just went down from there. So this explains why I was waking up for two hours in the middle of the night feeling super wired, and then also why I didn't have any energy during the day, especially in the morning because we're supposed to have this surge of cortisol after we wake up that gives us energy for the day and then it cortisol gradually goes down, but I'm just crashing for the rest of the day. So cortisol shows a lot of what's going on. Now of course, we need to find out why cortisol is high and fix that. So I don't just recommend taking something to lower cortisol.


We need to find out why your body's releasing cortisol because doing it usually because of stress and inflammation. So we still want it to respond appropriately to stress and inflammation. We want to find the source of where that stress and inflammation is coming from and correct that. And then you won't have this spike of cortisol in the middle of the night. Now this test is unique because it also measures two different kinds of cortisol. So it's showing how much your body is making and how much is available to be used by your body. And sometimes these should match, but sometimes they don't. And that suggests other imbalances. So again, it's why it's more valuable than blood work that's just showing how much is available to be used and just showing that one second in time. Now this test also looks at hormones, especially sex hormones, and this can be more accurate than blood work because you're taking five samples throughout the day.


So we're getting an average of your hormones throughout the day instead of just the second in time because our hormones do fluctuate throughout the day. And this really shows very clearly the balance of hormones, which is most important. So even if estrogen was in range here and progesterone was in range, if estrogen's weigh higher than progesterone, what's called estrogen dominance, which can directly lead to sleep issues. So the balance of the hormones is just as important as just seeing your levels and that everything's normal. So yeah, you can see in this person's test, estrogen is super high, progesterone is in the postmenopausal level, testosterone is also low. And so all of these things are affecting sleep. The test also looks at melatonin, so we can see if you actually need melatonin or not. And then it also looks at liver function. So it has multiple different markers for liver function. On this one test that I'm looking for, it looks at different parts of liver detox such as methylation, sulfation, and more. So most of my clients need some sort of liver support. And it's not just from drinking alcohol, it's when your body isn't healthy, it can't detoxify properly, and so we need to support it and whichever phase needs to be supported so that you can sleep well because our liver is most active in the middle of the night. So liver function definitely affects sleep directly as well.


Alright, let me go back. So the second test I do is called the GI map and let me get to the right spot. So one of the things I'm looking for are pathogens. So this test looks for different parasites. It looks for h pylori, which is a bacteria that lives in the stomach. It looks for fungi or yeast like candida. And the reason this is so important for sleep is because pathogens are nocturnal. So they are most active in the middle of the night. That's when they're eating excreting, releasing all these toxins, causing all this inflammation. Then the body releases cortisol to deal with that inflammation because cortisol is an anti-inflammatory hormone, but then cortisol is going to wake you up, right? Cortisol gives us energy, it makes our mind race, it increases our heart rate and blood pressure and body temperature. So it wakes us up.


And I mean a pathogen was the reason why my cortisol was so high in the middle of the night. And if you're waking up around three or 4:00 AM at about the same time every single night, this is probably one of the things that is going on that is causing that is a pathogen in the gut. So that's definitely something that we want to look for. But there's more to gut health than just dealing with pathogens. So looking for the good bacteria in your gut are also super important because they make up to 90% of our neurotransmitters. So gaba, serotonin, dopamine, melatonin, all of these neurotransmitters that help us feel calm and relaxed and able to sleep, we need enough of the good bacteria to make those things. And so good bacteria can be depleted when there are a lot of pathogens taking over when the immune system of the gut isn't functioning well.


So we definitely want to look at the balance of the good guys to the bad guys. And then this test shows what's going on with your overall gut health because again, it's more than just taking a probiotic. It's more than just killing a pathogen. We need to create an environment in your gut that is healthy so that when you're exposed to pathogens in the future, it can fight it off and so that the good bacteria can continue to thrive. So this looks at digestion here. There's another marker for liver function with this B glucuronidase. It shows your immune response including a marker for gluten sensitivity, this anti glyadin iga, and it's showing how much inflammation is in the gut with these markers and looking at the pathogens and the good bacteria. I get this overall snapshot of your gut health. I'll tell you, none of my clients have a healthy gut even if they don't have digestive issues.


When I had a parasite, I didn't have any digestive issues, I would not have known, but it was slowly damaging my gut over time, which led to food sensitivities, which led to nutrient deficiencies because when the gut's damaged, then you can't absorb the nutrients from food like you should. So even if you don't have digestive issues, it's likely that there's something to address in the gut. And for some people there's a lot going on and there are tons of pathogens and depleted good bacteria and digestive issues, and for other people it's not. But it's always a piece of the puzzle for everyone. All right, the third test I do is called the neuro focus panel. So this is a urine test. It's looking directly at neurotransmitters, and I started running this test. It's been over a year now as one of my four core tests because most of my clients are actually deficient in serotonin and gaba.


And we talked about with the good gut bacteria, how important those are for sleep. So we can supplement for those things right away and people start sleeping better and feeling a lot better right away as well. If you have any mood issues as well, like tend to experience anxiety depression, then for sure neurotransmitters are playing a role in your sleep issues and your overall health too. So it is testing for serotonin, for gaba, for dopamine. It's also looking at norepinephrine and epinephrine, which are some of our other stress hormones, and it's looking at glutamate and histamine, which are excitatory neurotransmitters or stimulating neurotransmitters. So when those are too high, that can actually affect sleep too. And again, we can start supplementing and supporting that right away so that you can start sleeping better right away. Then the fourth test I do is called a hair tissue mineral analysis.


So this is looking at your mineral balance. One of the main things I'm looking at is a balance of calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium. Those are these four minerals here on the left in the purple. I'm not sure if you can see my cursor or not in this case. They're actually all really depleted. So this is a result of long-term chronic stress, but sometimes we see calcium magnesium super high and sodium potassium, super low or vice versa, and both of those patterns and this depleted minerals pattern can directly affect sleep. So minerals are a super important part of the super important piece of the puzzle for pretty much everyone. Now, this test also looks at heavy metals including copper. So copper is actually, it's right here, this high one in the purple. It's actually an important mineral, but when it's too high and the body isn't absorbing it, it becomes toxic.


And then it looks for things like uranium and arsenic and mercury and cadmium and lead. And we see these in at least half of our clients. So heavy metals, again, they're toxic, they can accumulate in the brain and the liver and lead to neurological issues, including sleep issues, put an extra burden on the liver. And so that's also an important piece to look for. So these four tests give me all the pieces of the puzzle so that we can see what we need to address. And then my goal too is I'm looking for everything at one time. So instead of I talk to people who've worked with other practitioners and maybe they went to someone who specializes in gut health because they know they have gut issues, or maybe they went to someone who specializes in hormones, especially women who are on perimenopause and menopause. But those are only one piece of the puzzle. And so let's say you have hormone imbalance and a pathogen in the gut and heavy metals and depleted neurotransmitters. If you don't address all of those things, then you're probably not going to get better because those things are still interfering with your sleep.


I don't want to overwhelm you with all the reasons why you might not be sleeping. It's my job to look for all these things and give you the plan to fix it in a very simple way. So I do the hard work, the detective work of finding all your puzzle pieces, and then I give you a simple plan to follow so that you can get your body back in balance, restore your health, and then you can sleep normally like we're supposed to. You can fall asleep, easily, stay asleep all night, get at least seven hours of sleep a night so that you wake up feeling rested. So my client, Emily, would go five to seven days without any sleep, and her test results showed extremely high cortisol at night, estrogen dominance, liver detox issues, she had a parasite and she had food sensitivities. So those were her pieces of the puzzle.


And so we just need to find what the pieces of your puzzle are. Again, it's going to be some combination of these, and that's what we will do with the functional lab tests that are included in the program. So in the Complete Sleep Solution Program, I use these four functional lab tests and assessments to find all of these pieces of the puzzle, get the big picture of what's going on, and then my team and I give you a plan, a protocol to get your body back in balance so that you can sleep normally. And the program includes analysis of the four lab tests, the customized, you also get 12 sessions over six months. So it is a private one-on-one program where in the sessions we talk about everything related to sleep. We explain your test results, we explain your plan, and then we help you as you implement that plan.


And we also help you with any of the mental part of not sleeping well. So any anxiety you might have about sleep, which if you struggle to sleep for a while, it's probably gotten in your head. And with stress in general, because even mental stress affects the body, it breaks down the body over time. So we can't eliminate stressors in our life, but we can change how we respond to them and how we feel, how stressful they actually feel. So that is also a big part of the program. It's very much a body and mind program. It's looking for everything that could be affecting your sleep, and it's helping you restore your health. So it's more than just sleep. I have helped people with losing weight with fertility and getting pregnant with thyroid health, with acne, with all kinds of other issues. High cholesterol tends to go down high blood pressure tends to go down because we're addressing all the imbalances in your body that are affecting your health.


So besides just being able to sleep well and have energy, that's another big one. Be able to think clearly any other kind of symptoms that are happening can also be corrected with this program as well. So I will put information about the program or the link to my website in the chat so that you have that. And let me know if you have any questions at all about your sleep, about the program, about the lab test, and I am happy to answer them. Even if you're watching the replay, feel free to comment after and I will be able to see it and answer any questions that you have. So I just want you to know that you are meant to sleep well, and if you can't, there's just something getting in the way of that and we can find out what it is and fix it so that you can sleep well naturally without drugs and long-term.


This isn't just a quick fix, it's really getting your body back in balance so you can continue to sleep well. All right everyone. So good to see you today. Tomorrow I am going live about why nothing has worked so far to help you sleep. So I'm sure if you're like I was, you've tried so many different things to help you sleep, and it's very frustrating and it's easy to start losing hope that you can't get better. But I'm going to explain why they haven't worked so far and what actually will, because I want you to know that you can sleep well, you can overcome this no matter what. Even if you've been struggling for years and decades, even if you've tried dozens of things, even if you've done functional lab tests with someone else. I'm going to talk about why you haven't gotten better yet and why you can get better.


So join me there. Next week I will be out of town on vacation, so I will not be going live next week. I'm going to San Diego with my family and my son, who is eight. We're going to be doing a lot of fun kid activities like Legoland and SeaWorld and the Safari Park. He loves animals. So it's going to be a really fun trip and get some beach time away from the winter of Wyoming, which has already started. So that's where I will be next week, but then I will see you for Thanksgiving week and after that. All right everyone, thanks so much for listening. I will see you tomorrow.

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