How To Solve Your Sleep Challenges
Sleep is critical to your health, wellbeing and the aging process. Simply put, you cannot heal and feel well if you cannot sleep.
While you are sleeping, your body and brain is able to rest, regenerate, repair, detoxify, anti-inflame, balance blood sugar levels, burn calories, support immune activity, and reset your energy reserves.
Many people suffer from some sleep dysfunction or chronic sleep imbalances. Because it’s common does not make it normal. Many of us either have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, resulting in fewer than six hours of sleep per night, which is often associated with low-grade chronic inflammation.
This inadequate rest can impair our ability to think, to handle stress, to maintain a healthy immune system, and to moderate our emotions. Poor sleep is also correlated with heart disease, hypertension, weight gain, diabetes, and a wide range of psychiatric disorders including depression and anxiety.
So How Do We Solve Sleep Challenges?
To solve sleep challenges, you need to look at the underlying issues and origins instead of chasing the symptom. Below are some of the top underlying root causes to sleep imbalances that I see in my practice. Work with a natural health practitioner you align with, who can offer you the right at-home functional medicine lab tests to help pin point deeper imbalances that may be contributing to poor sleep.
Top Underlying Root Causes To Chronic Sleep Imbalances
1. Low Melatonin Production & Cortisol Imbalances
If you struggle to fall asleep or experience racing thoughts or worries while lying in bed, it can indicate that the body’s natural sleep and wake cycles, known as the circadian rhythms, might be a little out of balance. In a balanced body, melatonin production increases beginning in early evening as cortisol (a stress hormone) decreases. When melatonin increases, it forces cortisol levels down, effectively serving as a backdoor to lowering stress, anxiety, and the racing thoughts that keep many of us wide awake when our bodies are exhausted and longing for sleep.
An imbalance in the circadian rhythm can present with indicators such as:
• Difficulty falling asleep
• Tendency to be a “night person”
• Tendency to be keyed up, trouble calming down
• Clenching or grinding teeth
• Difficulty waking up in the morning
• Inability to feel well rested after sleep
• Energy drop between 4:00 and 7:00 in the afternoon
• Increased sleepiness in the winter, especially as the light diminishes
• Inability to remember dreams
• Waking up wide awake
2. Blood Sugar Imbalances
Waking up in the middle of the night and feeling so wide awake that you could go clean the kitchen can suggest blood sugar issues. If blood sugar plummets during the night, the adrenal glands release cortisol (a stress hormone) as an emergency blood-sugar-raising tactic. This cortisol surge is what wakes you up and makes you feel wide awake.
Symptoms of blood sugar imbalances related to night waking:
• Awaken hours after going to bed
• Find it difficult to go back to sleep
• Crave coffee or sweets in the afternoon
• Feel sleepy or have energy dips in afternoon
• Feel fatigued after meals
• Need stimulants such as coffee after meals
• Feel like skipping breakfast
• Slow starter in the morning
• Chronic low back pain, worse with fatigue
• Chronic fatigue, or get drowsy often
3. Liver and Gallbladder Overload
Your liver performs over 500 body functions including cleaning your blood and detoxifying your body from harmful substances. It’s extremely important to nurture this organ, especially if you want to look after your sleep patterns! A sluggish or overburdened liver can bring about a noticeable change to your sleep patterns. According to Chinese medicine, the liver is most active between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m., often peaking at 3 a.m. When you wake at this time, it often reflects an overload in body’s ability to detoxify from physical toxicities or emotions like anger, frustration, or resentment. Unlike blood sugar night waking, liver- and gallbladder-trigger awakenings are often accompanied by a feeling of grogginess, and many find it easier to fall back asleep.
Symptoms of a sluggish liver related to night waking:
• Waking up between 1 and 3 a.m.
• Becoming sick or easily intoxicated when drinking wine
• Easily hung over when drinking wine
• Long-term use of prescription/recreational drugs
• Sensitivity to smells, like tobacco smoke
• Pain under the right side of rib cage
• Hemorrhoids or varicose veins
• Chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia
4. Hormone Imbalances
Hormonal ups and downs of menstruation, pregnancy, and midlife fluctuations can impact sleep. For example, the hormone progesterone promotes restful sleep, and a drop in estrogen can leave you more vulnerable to stress. Similar to blood sugar events, a rush of cortisol can cause hot flashes that alert your mind and wake you up.
Symptoms of hormone imbalances causing night time waking:
• Cracked and dry heels
• Low Libido
• Rapid weight gain that won’t budge
• Irregular periods, intense PMS, hot flashes or other menopausal symptoms
• Feeling moody, irritable, weepy or have unstable or unpredictable moods
• Hair loss at the crown of your head, or growth on the chin or other weird places
• Hair feels dry and “crispy”
• Skin looks crepe-y and hangs off cheeks or chin.
• Fat accumulating in new places – under arms, hips, pectorals, or knees
• High cholesterol
5. Nutrient Deficiencies
It always starts with food. A poor diet and lack of nutrients, minerals and antioxidants is directly connected to sleep disorders and other health imbalances.
Top nutrient deficiencies connected to poor sleep quality:
• Vitamin D
• Vitamin B12 and B6
• Vitamin C
• Magnesium
• Vitamin E
6. Poor Sleep Hygiene
Sleep hygiene is a collective group of habits you can use to improve your sleep. We have to take responsibility for our daily habits that may or may not be supporting our health and sleep concerns. Poor sleep hygiene will result in poor sleep.
Sleep hygiene tips to improve sleep quality:
• No TV in bedroom. (I know, mean Laura!)
• Follow a regular sleep schedule. Avoid sleeping after 11:00 PM.
• Avoid caffeinated products after 1:00 PM.
• Exercise regularly. To relax tense muscles which might help to improve sleep quality
• Manage stress. Create a relaxing night time routine. Eg: reading (printed material), listening to soft music an hour before bedtime, meditation, deep breathing, journaling.
• Make sure your bedroom is cool and temperature is set from 64 - 68 degrees. This range of temperature is thought to actually help facilitate the stability of REM sleep.
• Limit screen time. Stay away from electronic devices at least an hour before bedtime. (the blue light produced by these devices suppresses your body in producing melatonin – affecting sleep quality.)
• Purchase blue light blocker glasses and wear 6:00 PM and after.
• Make the bedroom as dark! Use blackout shades to make your bedroom pitch black and cover or turn off all devices that glow or give off any light (including digital alarm clocks).
• Avoid eating at least 2 hours before bed, unless you lean towards hypoglycemia. Those with hypoglycemia sometimes do better with a snack before bed.
• Turn off Wi-Fi in the house.
• Ensure adequate exposure to sunlight. exposure to natural light and darkness helps to regulate healthy sleep-wake cycles.
• Wear an eye mask if needed.
• Wear ear plugs if needed.
What Can I Do??
If you are experiencing signs of chronic sleep imbalances, it’s helpful to work with an Integrative Health Practitioner. A IHP can run at-home functional medicine labs to test for nutrient deficiencies, hormones and deeper imbalances and then properly address them using an Integrative approach in order to rebalance your body, and feel well on a deeper level.
If you are interested in running a Functional Medicine Lab to get to the root cause of your symptoms or imbalances, please schedule an Integrative Health Assessment with Laura Pounds, IHP.