Want to know how to sleep better (beyond the usual advice)?
Occasionally I meet someone who sleeps well no matter what, and always has.
Many of us would envy that.
Perhaps you slept well once, but then had children, or went through a challenging life event, or your hormones changed, or you don’t really know what happened except that you stopped sleeping well.
Or are you someone who never slept well?
As you’re probably aware, sleep is critical to how you feel and function, including to your mood, weight, brain function, detoxification, hormones, memory, gut function and immunity.
I’m not going to outline the different stages of sleep, or give you the usual advice to reduce your coffee intake, TV time, blue light from electronic devices and stress, while increasing your exercise and whole foods, even though these are fundamental starting points to improving your sleep.
Instead I want to talk about a few of the lesser known causes of poor sleep to give you an idea of how your body systems and sleep are intricately interconnected. These are…
Blood sugar
Gut health
Hormones
You might find you have multiple areas that need to be resolved, or that fixing one area will have a knock-on effect.
Your blood sugar
This is a relatively common issue for many people as our modern diet is biased towards processed high carbohydrate foods.
I always ask clients whether they sleep well, and if they don’t, whether there’s a pattern to this.
If they say they frequently wake between say 2-4 am and can’t get back to sleep easily, this could be a sign of blood sugar problems.
If your carb intake is low to moderate, your body doesn’t go through the roller-coaster of blood sugar peaks and crashes that a high-carb diet causes. This means your energy levels will be steady throughout the day and night because your body and brain can rely on fats for fuel if glucose runs low.
But if, like many people, your diet isn’t ideal, your brain will wake you as it runs out of easily available glucose and can’t access fats to perform its many key roles as you sleep. It pushes out cortisol, an emergency hormone, to wake you up so that you’ll eat something and give it energy. It’s doing its best to protect itself and you.
Other signs are that blood sugar problems may be causing your sleeplessness are that you wake feeling hungry or hangry, want a late night snack, or experience dizziness in the middle of the night or morning.
THE SOLUTION
Sort out your blood sugar, your plan of action depending on whether you have low or high blood sugar.
In terms of diet, eat whole and natural foods as they come in nature without chemicals or processing, including plenty of non-starchy vegetables, good proteins and healthy fats, with limited starches like grains, legumes and root vegetables.
Here’s a blog on how to give up sugar if you want to get stuck in.
Gut health – surprise!
Your microbiome and your sleep
Your gut microbiome plays a major role in your immune system, brain function, hormone balance, mood and sleep patterns through two-way communication with your brain.
Studies show that microbiome diversity and richness is linked to better quality sleep and longer sleep times. Having greater microbiome diversity and richness is also associated with less sleep interruptions.
Conversely, short-term sleep deprivation may change the make-up of your microbiome, further demonstrating the importance of the bi-directional communication between your gut and brain.
Importantly, a high-carb diet promotes poor digestive processes, contributes to intestinal permeability or leaky gut, and reduces gut microbiome diversity.
Not only does gut health have the potential to impact your sleep and brain, but poor sleep may negatively impact your gut microbiome.
Your circadian rhythms
Your circadian rhythm – or body clock that determines when you fall asleep and wake – and your gut microbiome are directly connected.
Circadian disruptions, like jet lag or shift work, disturb the rhythm your body needs to produce healthy gut microbes. Both the microbial rhythm of your gut and that of your circadian rhythm greatly influence each other.
Your neurotransmitters
Several structures within your brain are involved in sleep, as are your neurons or brain cells, which help control your sleep or wakefulness.
Neurons partly do this through the production of sleep neurotransmitters like GABA and Galanin, or wakeful neurons like dopamine, histamine, norepinephrine and serotonin. These neurons suppress wakeful neurotransmitters while you’re asleep, and vice versa.
Other brain factors that promote sleep apart from our circadian rhythm are your Adenosine levels (which caffeine blocks), A2AR receptors, Uridine, Glutathione, Cytokines and more.
Neurotransmitters that affect your brain are produced in your gut, alongside other chemicals. By altering the types of bacteria in your gut, it may be possible to improve your brain health.
THE SOLUTION
Eat a whole foods diet as above with lots of prebiotics, get sufficient sunlight and Vit D, honour your circadian rhythm (are you a morning person or night owl?), move regularly, heal your gut and balance your blood sugar.
Ask your health expert about supplementation with L-theanine, GABA, 5-HTP, and/or Melatonin.
Your hormones
Your hormones are chemical messengers that work together like instruments in an orchestra, communicating with and coordinating cells in your body to influence your mood, muscle tone, growth, longevity and metabolism or energy conversion.
Hormonal imbalances are a key factor in sleep problems. Often they’re triggered by underlying problems, which are made worse by sleeplessness in a vicious cycle of dysfunction.
Some examples…
Progesterone calms the brain and decreases anxiety. The low levels that occur with perimenopause can cause sleep problems
Low oestrogen, a feature of actual menopause, causes hot flashes, your blood sugar to rise and wakefulness, not to mention weight gain
Cortisol, your emergency fight or flight hormone inhibits the ovaries, which can cause low oestrogen and the blood sugar to spike
Melatonin is known as the sleep hormone. It helps regulate other hormones and your circadian rhythms so low levels can cause poor sleep. A lack of light during the day, overexposure to light at night, leaky gut and nutritional deficiencies can reduce melatonin
DHEA builds muscle and bone, and naturally declines as we age or are stressed. Levels that are too low are linked to muscle weakness, including in your pelvic floor, which can lead you to have to get in the night to urinate
Low testosterone is connected to sleep apnoea, which reduces REM or deep sleep, which creates low testosterone in a self-fulfilling cycle
THE SOLUTION
Hormone disruptors include a poor diet, stress, toxins, inactivity, poor gut health and imbalanced blood sugar.
To improve your hormone health eat real food, limit alcohol, heal your gut including importantly constipation, move regularly, de-stress and reduce your exposure to toxins.