If you are having trouble SLEEPING WELL:

There may be a few issues going on:

  1. Inability to Fall Asleep: there may be too much cortisol (stress hormone) in the body.

  2. Inability to Stay Asleep: there may not be enough serotonin, a blood sugar imbalance, and/or liver issues.

Both sleep disturbances can also be correlated to viruses, heavy metals, poor detox pathways, and/or the inability to process excess hormones!

Inability to fall asleep:

If you find that you get wound up at night and you’re not getting tired, then lowering cortisol at night is key. Changing up your evening routine is also key as well as finding ways to decrease stress. Start with these simple tips:

  1. Lower all the lights in your area to a bare minimum. Blue light from fluorescent bulbs and LED light both block melatonin production. Lowering this type of light exposure will allow your brain to regulate melatonin, the sleep hormone.

  2. Make an herbal tea blend: Use lemon balm, passionflower, chamomile and hops for a deeply relaxing and restorative tea blend. These herbs stimulate serotonin, GABA, and tryptophan in the brain, are naturally anti-viral and restorative to the gut and relax the nervous system. Make a strong brew and serve with some high-quality raw honey, yum! (Or keep it simple and buy some Sleepy Time tea!)

  3. Try to avoid screen time 1-hour prior to sleep or you can install an app that blocks blue light or buy blue light glasses.  Blue light revs the brain and can block melatonin production.

  4. Turn your phone to Airplane Mode to drop the amount of EMF’s that are coming in. Think of your phone as a big antenna! 5G is strong and beams in A LOT of EMF’s.

Standard Process Min-Chex and Medi Herb’s Valerian can really help one calm down and fall asleep! I also blend a special Sleep Tincture especially for women.

Inability to stay asleep:

If you suffer from constantly waking at night and finding it difficult to get back to sleep, then supporting your body’s serotonin production, blood sugar instability, working on your liver health as well as bringing down inflammation will really serve you.

If your blood sugar levels drop too low when you are sleeping then the adrenals may release adrenaline which will wake you up and then it’s hard to fall back asleep. Your blood sugar is also regulated by your liver while you sleep so a SP 21-Day Liver Cleanse will GREATLY help heal your liver back to optimal health!

It is also important to make sure your Vitamin D levels are optimized, as this hormone-like vitamin is responsible for healthy serotonin levels. You can go to your MD or the private lab ($49) and get tested. If you want to begin taking Vitamin D, you can begin to take 5000 IU of D3 with Vitamin K per day; this is a moderate dose to get started. Vitamin D deficiency is a very high occurrence of about 80-90% of the population due to improper sun exposure, especially in the winter. Rather than guessing, I’m about testing.

It’s worth noting that if your ferritin (iron) levels are low then you may have a hard time falling and staying asleep. This can also be lab tested and should be every year.

If you are open to additional supplements you can also consider 5-HTP, an amino acid that occurs in the human body and is the precursor to serotonin. 5-HTP is currently used to relieve mild to moderate depression, anxiety, insomnia, migraines and fatigue.  (5-HTP should not be taken with antidepressants and selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors.) You may also want to consider taking Inositol as well, as inositol supports serotonin production and liver health. We have all of these supplements at Big Beautiful Life and urge you to be very picky when choosing supplements. 90% of the supplements sold in stores are garbage

You may want to do a combination of things but the best answer is to get to the ROOT CAUSE. Other factors could be at play here, an imbalance of thyroid hormones or high or low estrogen/progesterone levels. Too much or too little estrogen will give you hot flashes and insomnia, too low progesterone can give you disturbed sleep. Thyroid hormone is important for proper sugar, serotonin, and melatonin metabolism so it can be difficult to sleep if your thyroid levels are low. The best way to figure out how your thyroid is doing is by getting a blood panel that includes: TSH, FREE T3 and FREE T4.  These values tell quite a story about your thyroid! TSH alone tells nothing.

It would be worth booking a Natural Functional Medical appointment to see what is going on with you hormonally if you are really suffering here. Sleep is the most important part of your healing journey so it is worth the expense!

Learn more about Natural Functional Medicine HERE.