Video Transcript:
Emma says, “Hi, doc. Can you please give me some advice on insomnia? I’ve had chronic sleep-onset insomnia for 22 years and would like to know if I will ever sleep without meds again. It’s a very depressing condition.”
Okay, Emma, I totally, totally can understand. This 22 years, so two decades, of extreme insomnia is not only debilitating to the body, but can be very disruptive to your overall neuroendocrine health.
Address Neuroendocrine and Adrenal Health
When we are dealing with any type of mild, moderate, or extreme insomnia, we are in need of addressing your neuroendocrine health, as well as your adrenal health. Those are the two kinds of categories that I want to focus on for this particular condition. I also want to offer you five different ways to address insomnia naturally.
Assess Your Circadian Rhythm and Cortisol Levels
My first way, most important, is to assess your circadian rhythm. A lot of times with insomnia, we’re imbalanced in terms of our natural sleep cycle. And ideally, we should have a circadian rhythm that rises in the morning and slowly slopes down to bedtime where it’s at a natural point where we go to sleep.
That circadian rhythm actually can be assessed and tested, and that is something where we test your adrenal health. There is a hormone that your adrenal glands produce called cortisol, and cortisol is the hormone that sets our natural circadian rhythm.
So ideally in the morning, cortisol, it starts to peak and it spikes and at the highest point is when you naturally arise. That’s when we’re awake, we’re most alert and alive, and feel like you can take on the world. Well, insomnia, a lot of times we have that flip-flopped, or sometimes the adrenal function and the state of cortisol is lower than what we want. By assessing your cortisol, that’s most critical, you can directly address the state of your adrenal glands.
Adrenal Glands and Neurotransmitter Deficiencies
Now, the other thing that comes with addressing your adrenal glands – there’s two parts to your adrenal glands. They’re two little tortilla-shaped glands that sit above your kidneys. It’s kind of like a hat for your kidneys. Those adrenal glands not only balance your sleep circadian cycle, they also are sending a ton of signals to the brain, and they also produce hormones. The middle part of the adrenal glands are called the adrenal cortex. That is the adrenal function that directly sends signals to neurotransmitters. Your neuroendocrine system is controlled by neurotransmitters. That’s basically real complicated to speak for, your brain is going to control certain body systems, and one of the body systems or cycles within the body is your sleep cycle.
By addressing our neurotransmitter health, and you can test for that, I test all the time with my patients, I want to assess three key neurotransmitters that control, 1) sleep balance, 2) sleep cycle, and then also 3) calming of your central nervous system.
The first neurotransmitter that tends to be in an imbalanced state is the GABA neurotransmitter. GABA is actually a brain-oriented calming neurotransmitter, and it is going to be the neurotransmitter that signals when the body’s at its calmest state and trigger sleep. If you are dealing with chronic onset insomnia, then that is going to be something where GABA levels are probably imbalanced.
The second neurotransmitter very commonly known with sleep is melatonin, and the third is serotonin. Those two, serotonin and melatonin, need to be in a particular balance. If serotonin is imbalanced, melatonin will be imbalanced. This is a really critical intricate measurement, and it needs to be tested and assessed before we start to dose with melatonin or other pro-serotonin supplements like 5-HTP.
Those three particular neurotransmitters tend to be in a particular deficiency. If you are dealing with insomnia, those three tend to be the ones that will show some degree of imbalance. And in your case, you may be having all three levels at a very high deficiency state.
Hypothalamic Imbalances
Now that leads to the gland that is producing some of these neurotransmitters, and that is the hypothalamus. A lot of times with my patients, if they are dealing with hypothalamic imbalances, there is a really important way to address that from a natural perspective. I will use hypothalamic glandulars, and I will also use certain lifestyle routines and practices to help love on your hypothalamus to help regulate sleep. The hypothalamus not only regulates sleep, but it also helps increase or enhance the duration of sleep.
This is also impactful and effective for individuals who wake up in the middle of the night. If you wake up between 1:00 AM and 3:00 AM, a very common time, that will be indicative of also liver imbalance. We may need to have some liver detoxing and liver love supported in your routine.
Test Histamine Levels
Now, the fourth really important way to address sleep imbalances is to assess your histamine levels. There are a lot of different blood tests and labs that we can run to evaluate if you have elevations in histamine. There are ways to assess this also in your own body. Like if you have a reaction to the environment, you have allergies, environmental allergies, or if you get a bug bite and it becomes raised and red, that can be an indicator that you might have some elevations, mild or moderate elevations, of histamine. Some folks have more intense histamine imbalances that lead to things like PoTS and other diagnoses. But histamine control is really critical for addressing your inflammation levels.
Address Systemic Inflammation
At the core of histamine increase is going to be systemic inflammation, and there are a lot of different ways to address inflammation. When we’re dealing with sleep, it’s not just the stomach in your body, but we’re also dealing with brain – neuro-based – inflammation. Foods, environmental toxins, allergens – those can all be sources of inflammation, as well as gut imbalance.
One of my favorite Organixx products that I love to recommend is the Joint & Muscle Care. That has a very wonderful blend of systemic inflammation lowering supplements, and it also has the power and potency to pass through the blood-brain barrier to help support your neuroinflammation and lower those levels.
Calm Your Central Nervous System
The fifth and final way that I like to recommend to individuals and patients like yourself who have sleep imbalances is we need to calm your central nervous system. There are a lot of different ways to do this. One of my favorite over-the-counter ways is by incorporating a full complex blend of magnesium. And the Magnesium 7 here at Organixx is really, really powerful because they have an assortment of magnesium types. But there are two critical magnesium forms – magnesium glycinate and magnesium borate – that can help calm down your central nervous system.
This is proven and very impactful for helping ease you into it calm central nervous system state that can offset some of the inflammation and some of the stress that the body is experiencing that could be preventing you from moving into a sleep state.
Meditation and Thymus Tapping
I’m also going to recommend meditation. Super, super powerful at helping calm down your central nervous system. I also recommend something super easy that you can do any time you’re kind of feeling stressed or anxious, particularly at night, I recommend thymus tapping. Your thymus gland is right here in between your chest, just at the lower part of your breastbone.
The thymus gland can actually instantly calm down your central nervous system and create a sense of calm and peace within your body. You make a little fist and you just do like a Tarzan tap and you can tap like this for five to 15 seconds. You want to do a little forcefully, so you kind of hear my vibration. But after doing that, you’re going to feel a vibration here in the mid-chest. That’s your thymus gland getting invigorated.
Doing all of these balancing activities, plus right before bed, tapping your thymus gland will definitely help to address the insomnia.
I hope that’s helpful, Emma. Please keep us posted on your progress.
Magnesium deficiency is linked to stress, diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, anxiety, trouble sleeping, sore muscles, migraines, and many more debilitating health conditions.
If your body needs magnesium, you want the most beneficial kind your body can actually absorb. Organixx Magnesium 7 gives you seven (7) of the very best, most bioavailable types of elemental magnesium available.
Video Transcript:
Today, I’m going to share with you how to get the most optimized, refreshing sleep that you can get, every night. This is really critical for optimizing your overall wellness and enhancing your anti-aging process. Getting your best sleep consistently is essential for you optimizing your overall hormone balance and your rejuvenation process of every cell and gland, and it will help you overall.
These five tips are going to help you sleep, get to sleep better. They will help you sleep longer in a more fulfilled way, and help you maximize REM sleep so you wake up totally refreshed and not tired. So, these five tips are super easy, and I’m going to share these with you today.
Number One: Limit Alcohol & Caffeine Consumption
And this is really important. I know a lot of you consume coffee, keto coffee – and even, hopefully, you are adding our Organixx Collagen to your coffee. You want to make sure you consume that 13 to 14 hours before you go to bed. So make sure you are limiting your caffeine consumption. This will greatly decrease the enhancement of your central nervous system, that invigoration that we sometimes get, that caffeine hit, and caffeine and even alcohol can skew our circadian rhythm. So that’s one of the best ways to really optimize your sleep.
Number Two: Power Down Before Bedtime
Make sure you power down two to three hours before bedtime, meaning power down on consuming things on your phone, or your laptop, or TVs at home, limiting blue light. And that also means limiting the natural daylight coming from a lot of our LED lights in our home, sometimes changing out the lights so that you’re not so much exposed to natural light that’s artificial. And I always recommend wearing blue light blocking glasses. Those are so good to help power down your body’s natural rhythm to get to sleep.
Number Three: Support Your Circadian Rhythm
Now, number three has a lot to do with your circadian rhythm support. And this is all about the body’s sleep clock. We want to ideally be reaching a peak point of “awakeness” when we wake up in the morning, and then we’re slowly dipping to where we’re at our lowest point, where we are ready to go to sleep. I actually evaluate certain levels in your saliva, in your blood serum, on a daily basis that can tell us where there are some imbalances. What I have found is that when we can level out some of these hormones and other micronutrients, we can actually achieve the best circadian rhythm. So, I’m going to share with you a few ways to do that.
Magnesium
Here at Organixx, we have Magnesium, and this is one of the most powerful ways to help support your body’s natural circadian rhythm by helping your body extract excess fluids throughout the day. So, consuming magnesium in the morning and right around dinner time will help minimize the need to wake up and urinate at night, which is a very common reason why a lot of people wake up at night. Magnesium also helps to calm our central nervous system, which helps to correct our circadian rhythm and ultimately support that natural sleep cycle.
Melatonin
Another compound that is highly beneficial is adding melatonin about one to two hours before your desired bedtime. Melatonin is the circadian rhythm cycle hormone. It’s what sets our natural day clock. And if you are being exposed to blue light therapy or blue light, or maybe you’re a shift worker, or are awake because you have an infant, melatonin is going to help offset some of those environmental factors that might be working against us for optimal sleep.
Lower Your Stress Levels Naturally
Now, another really important thing to address is to lower your stress levels. Enhancing your central nervous system calming is going to be one of the best ways to get the right circadian rhythm.
And there are a few herbs that I recommend. I love to add herbs like this tulsi that might also have some passionflower, some valerian, and kava. You can grab sleepytime teas that are beneficial. You can add CBD. And another thing that’s highly beneficial is adding the 7 Mushrooms. You can add 7 Mushrooms. These are mushroom blends of adaptogenic herbs that directly support lowering and balancing our stress response mechanism, which ultimately calms your central nervous system. Those are really good ways to, again, lower stress so that we have a better balanced circadian rhythm.
Number Four: Comfortable Sleeping Environment
Now, the fourth tip is creating the most comfortable sleeping environment. Environment is everything when it comes to optimizing your sleep. And even though we might not think about it, having the best mattress, sheets that are comfortable, jammies that are breathable, having the right cooling temperature, clean air, and even aromatherapy can be beneficial for optimizing your sleep.
I’m going to share with you a trio of aromatherapy blends that are some of the best aromatherapy blends for sleep enhancement. Chamomile, plus lavender, plus valerian aromatherapy oils are great for enhancing that natural sleep effect. So, you can diffuse that trio in a diffuser as you’re getting ready to sleep, and then that can continue to diffuse while you’re in sleep. So, that will help support that calming effect that we’re looking for that is going to optimize your sleep and help you get REM sleep. When we are refreshed when we wake up, it’s because we get the most REM sleep at night. Thorough, deep, rejuvenative sleep.
Number Five: Timing of Hydration
Last and final is to make sure you hydrate during the day and in the right way. I find that even myself, sometimes I’ll get to dinner time and think, oh gosh, I didn’t really hydrate well today. And then I’ll try and kind of max my hydration. And ultimately that ends up plaguing some of our core elimination organs, and we might end up having bladder or liver imbalances from excess of fluids that are too close to bedtime. So ensuring, and honestly, one of my best things is to plot it on my phone as reminders or write it in your planner, just to make sure you’re hydrating appropriately through the day. Getting up to urinate, or peeing at night, is the number-one reason why most people end up getting up at night. It’s the most common complaint I hear with my patients – men and women alike.
So, make sure you’re getting hydration appropriately throughout the day. And if you are taking any diuretics or any medication that might cause frequent urination, make sure you take that in the morning or around lunchtime. Make sure you’re not taking it before bedtime, as guess what, it’s going to wake you up to empty your bladder. And that’s also where magnesium comes into play.
If you have a need where you’re taking magnesium maybe two or three times a day, therapeutically, for excess fluid or edema, or you’re just really trying to enhance the kind of flush of the bowels, what I recommend is to make sure you take your magnesium at minimum three to four hours before bedtime. That allows the body enough time to process any fluid flushing that will allow your bladder and your liver and your whole body to get restful sleep.
So, these are five tips that will really ensure you’re waking up refreshed and getting the most optimized sleep at night.
Magnesium deficiency is linked to stress, diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, anxiety, trouble sleeping, sore muscles, migraines, and many more debilitating health conditions.
If your body needs magnesium, you want the most beneficial kind your body can actually absorb. Organixx Magnesium 7 gives you seven (7) of the very best, most bioavailable types of elemental magnesium available.
