Sleep
Now here’s a blog that I think everyone will be able to relate to in some fashion. This is going to be all about sleep. Now it will not be about all the stages of sleep and how to track your sleep etc., rather it will more so be about what causes sleep issues. Because at the end of the day, all I care about as a doctor is what is causing your issues and not allowing you to get into all those stages of sleep that are crucial for your body to function well. Getting patients to sleep well might be the most important thing I can do for a patient, even if that’s not their primary complaint. When we sleep, we heal. It’s as simple as that. So no matter what your symptoms are that bring you in to see me, getting you restful and true sleep is fundamental in getting over whatever your health challenge is. So let’s dive in to what I see are the biggest reasons why people have sleep issues.
My first question to a patient whenever they say that they have sleep issues is “is it hard to fall asleep, stay asleep, or both?” This question alone can give us so much information about your sleep issue. So here is what goes through my head with each of the following answers.
1. “Hard to get to sleep”….This means that they most likely have a cortisol level that is too high for their body. Cortisol is your stress hormone so the person who can’t get to sleep lives a stressful life style. They often have busy minds that don’t shut down and it takes them a long time to settle down etc.
2. “Hard to stay asleep”…This is the most common answer I get and it makes me think of two things. First and foremost my mind goes right to a blood sugar regulation issue, which in my practice is the most common cause of sleep issues. You wake up when your blood sugar drops or goes low. People who can regulate their blood sugar better, sleep for longer periods of time, it’s that simple. The first energy medicine seminar that I ever took known as TBM, preached on the first day that every patient walking through your doors have 2 issues, they are dehydrated and have a blood sugar issue. It’s been 8 years since I took that seminar and boy can I tell you that they were spot on when they made that statement. The other thing that comes to my mind when people say it’s hard to stay asleep is the horary clock in Chinese medicine. This is a 24-hour clock that shows every organ of the body having a 2-hour window where they are strongest. For instance, gallbladder is 11 pm-1 am, liver is 1 am-3 am and lung is 3 am-5 am. So if you constantly get a symptom at the same time everyday, the Chinese would look to that organ for the cause of your issues. Well, most people who can’t stay asleep wake up between 1 am and 4 am in my experience so there’s most times either a liver or lung issue. And these issues can be anything from structural, chemical or emotional causes. That is up to the doctor to figure out. And one thing about the liver, which is 1 am – 3 am, is that it is one of the most important if not the most important organ for controlling blood sugar. See how important blood sugar is to regulate?
3. And for the last answer saying both, that just means they have cortisol and blood sugar issues and more so just have a body that is chronically stressed out with high levels of inflammation. Many people live in this state.
So that is pretty much this whole blog in a nutshell right there and before I talk about ways of helping out those issues, I want to mention some of the other common patterns I see. On top of balancing blood sugar and stress, another huge reason I see people not getting good sleep is caffeine intake. Now there are many people in my profession that will disagree with me on this, mostly because they are emotionally attached to their coffee and are addicted. Why do people get caffeine withdrawal headaches? BECAUSE IT’S AN ADDICTION. I’m going to make the statement that the number one food sensitivity I see clinically is caffeine. Even more so than gluten and dairy. It never gets old when patients bitch and moan about giving up their coffee just to tell me that it was the greatest thing they ever did and it allowed them to feel what feeling good really feels like. And caffeine goes beyond just coffee. For more information on that see my food sensitivity blog.
Next, the people who’s minds are going a million miles an hour and can’t turn off due to their minds thinking a million thoughts have a lithium deficiency. I am talking about the mineral that is depleted from our soils, not the drug for being bipolar. This mineral is severely missing from our foods due to lack of it in our soils. The symptoms one gets from a deficiency of it consist of minds that don’t shut down, ADHD, mood swings, anxiety, depression, anger and aggression among other things. Wouldn’t it be nice to not experience any of those things? Lithium also helps lower high cortisol which if you read my hormone blog, you know the significance of that.
The last contributor to poor sleep is EMF. This is such a huge topic, hence why I wrote a whole blog on it that you can find here. The first thing patients tell me when we start limiting their exposure to EMF is how much better they sleep. This is due to the high frequencies that EMF waves carry through our bodies that change our brain waves to a much faster pace. When we shield the body from them, our physiology changes back to the state it should be in and allows us to function properly in every aspect of health.
So what can you do to sleep better? First and foremost, you need to respond appropriately to your stress levels. Emotional stress is a killer and being able to adapt to your emotional stress is the game changer. Finding a doc like me can significantly help you in that area. We have many tools to help you physiologically respond well to the emotional challenges in your life. The two most important practitioners for you to accomplish this are a chiropractor who practices like I do and an acupuncturist. I use a TON of acupressure in my treatments and have seen miracles doing so. And it is also crucial for you to do stress relieving activities on your own time. Exercise is fantastic for this. That’s why people become addicted to working out, because it can help reduce stress immensely. If you want to take it a step further, make meditation and things alike a part of your daily routine. The point is to disconnect from the stressful world and lifestyles we live in to give your body a break. I also HIGHLY encourage you to find a hobby that takes you out of everything. For me, that consists of things like driving cars, golfing, basketball, playing video games, watching documentaries/TV shows that interest me and above all, studying medical information to learn new things to incorporate in my treatments with patients. My career is my number one passion/hobby and learning how to help people is a great stress relief for me. If your job doesn’t bring you joy, change it…you will thank me later.
You have to stabilize your stress also because it helps stabilize blood sugar. Other ways to stabilize blood sugar to sleep better are getting off all food sensitivities and eating a proper diet. Refer to my blog on this for more in depth information but in a nutshell, get off the foods that people are most sensitive to and eat a diet high in protein and fat. Aim for less than 40 g of carbs a day and see how your sleep changes. Fat and protein help stop blood sugar swings whereas carbs increase those swings. Those swings are what make people wake up in the middle of the night usually. Doing this with your diet and adding a couple supplements can help immensely. I suggest using a supplement that has zinc, chromium, alpha lipoic acid, L-carnitine and magnesium in it. For this, I use Vervita Inspiracell or Regenerzyme Heart( I usually start people on Inspiracell first). 1 of those a day with each meal is the standard dose. I also often times have people supplement with berberine to prevent high blood sugar swings. For this I use Goldenthread Supreme. 1 with each meal again for a total of 3 per day. Adding those two supplements with a diet change can significantly improve blood sugar.
If you wake up at the same time every night and are thinking that your problem is organ specific from the Chinese horary clock, you need to investigate that organ. In my experience, the organs are stressed due to emotions or hidden infection. For 1-3AM, that’s related to liver, which is anger, frustration and resentment. The essential oil I use to help this is Vervita Sore to Soar which deals with those emotions. From 3-5AM is lung, which is related to grief, sadness and or felling stuck in life. For this I use Vervita Elite Harmony or Heart Harmony essential oils. You can use these oils topically on the bottoms of your feet, in a foot soak or bath with Epsom salt and or diffuse them in your space. If those organs are stressed due to infection, I treat them like I do parasites which you can find that blog here. For a gentler approach, I use Vervita Klenz and Immune Rmor. For a more intense protocol, I use Morinda Supreme, Goldenthread Supreme and Melia Supreme. Those 3 should help take care of most infections.
If your mind has a thousand thoughts in every direction, try taking some lithium before bed. This is found in Vervita Kalmz. What I usually do is have people take Kalmz for the lithium and Ashwagandha Supreme for the cortisol regulation. This is a great 1-2 punch for stress hormone regulation and busy minds.
And for the EMF solutions, see the full blog. The most important things for sleep off the top of my head are to turn off your routers at night, your phones on airplane mode, don’t sleep with any electrical devices on your wrists, limit screen time starting 2 hours before you go to sleep and put grounding bags found here under your bed to protect you when you sleep. These all will give you restful sleep like you would never believe.
CLINICAL PEARL: One very important suggestion that is worth bringing to your attention is waking up and going to sleep at the same time everyday. This is important because if you are a weekend warrior and like to sleep in certain days, your body registers you are in different time zones. This messes up your circadian rhythm, which is what regulates your sleep cycle. So imagine every 5 days or so you sleep in an extra hour or so which tells your body you are on a different time zone and then in the next couple days its back to what your usual sleep schedule. Can you see how this confuses your body all the time?
In conclusion, these are all little changes you can do to help combat the most common reasons for sleep issues. Taking care of these causes I would say help 90% of all sleep issues. The other 10% are usually something like people on pharmaceuticals that disrupt their sleep or work schedules. I also want to say that just because you are asleep does not mean that you are getting restful sleep. This is why you wake up not feeling rested even though you were “asleep” for 6-8 hours or more. These solutions in this blog should address that as well. Enjoy your weekend and your restful sleep.
This is the way,
Dr. Charlie