Why can’t I stay asleep?
As you lie there staring at the ceiling with thousands of thoughts running through your head, you tell yourself “I just want to fall back to sleep.” An hour to hour and a half pass by and you fall asleep only to be awaken 15 minutes later. It’s time to get up. Seriously! What’s wrong with me?
This is one of the most common symptoms that we see in our office. For some it’s the inability to fall asleep but for so many, they can fall asleep but every night they wake up around 2-3 in the morning and it takes them 1-2 hours to fall back to sleep. They state that not only do they wake up but they are wide awake, like it’s morning. But it’s not!
Why is that? And better yet, what can I do to stop it? The great news is that there is a reason or should I say reasons for this and there are solutions.
What’s causing my problem?
There are a few big reasons that you wake up in the middle of the night and they are all a sign of dysfunction.
Probably the most common one is poor blood sugar control. Our bodies use glucose for fuel, especially our brains. While we are sleeping we don’t need a lot of fuel with one exception, our brains, which uses a lot of fuel while we are sleeping. If we have poor blood sugar control and have insulin resistance, our brains will require even more sugar. If our brain doesn’t get the fuel it needs, it will trigger hormones such as cortisol and norepinephrine to get more sugar. Unfortunately those are the hormones that wake us up in the morning. This is why you lie wide awake. It typically takes 1-2 hours to burn off the hormones and then get back to sleep.
Another reason is our gall bladders. About 4-5 hours into our sleep cycle our bodies will do a gall bladder dump. This is probably done to get rid of old bile. If we have stagnant, sludged up bile or an inflamed bile duct, this will wake us up.
For some people they aren’t just waking up, they are in a pool of sweat. They have night sweats. Welcome to the world of hormone imbalance!
We are asked so many times by our patients what they can do at bedtime to fix the problem, “Should I take melatonin?, Should I take magnesium? Maybe milk?” Our answer is somewhat surprising to them. If you want good sleep, it’s what you do in the morning that matters most. Actually it is what you do throughout your entire day. Just like the old saying “Love making starts in the kitchen,” a good night sleep is manifested by what you do in the day.
How Can I Fix It?
Research shows that people who exercise in the morning have better quality sleep.
Eating small frequent meals has been promoted by many but it does create a constant need for fuel which can create a problem. If you you eat every 2-3 hours guess what happens when you go to sleep, after 3-4 hours you haven’t eaten so your body needs fuel. Eating small frequent meals can be a great way to start getting better blood sugar control but the best way to improve blood sugar is to increase your fat intake and of course decrease our high glycemic foods. Even consider a modified ketogenic diet.
If a poor functioning gall bladder can wake you up, the solution is to get it working better. This can be done by taking things like milk thistle and dandelion root to support the liver. Eating good quality fats will also help as they are so much easier to digest.
Remember the gall bladder helps you digest fats.
Reducing toxins in your body will take stress off the liver. Use natural cleaning supplies, natural personal hygiene products, eat organic and cut out the processed foods.
Supporting the liver will also help with your hormones as many people can’t clear out their hormones and they just circulate around the body wreaking havoc.
Screen time before bed has been shown to decrease the sleep hormone melatonin so cut out screen time at least 30 minutes before bed.
Stop eating at least 3 hours before bed. Having a full stomach shunts blood to the stomach which can interfere with the brain getting what it needs.
These small things can make a significant impact on your sleep. If they don’t, you probably need to get help. We have worked with thousands of patients and would say one of the biggest improvements people tell us about is their quality of sleep.
A great book on sleep is by Shawn Stevenson “Sleep Smarter.”
