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Sleep Help: Fix It Fast

Tell me… how do you sleep at night? And not like from guilt - even though I can see how that phrase might of come off, but as in - Do you fall asleep easy? Do you wake feeling rested? Do you sleep all night long?

If you can’t guess what I am going to say next - I’m just going to lay it out there for you. Sleep is critical for your mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing. Vital even. And yet for so many - sleep is elusive.

Think of how many times you hear someone say - I’m tired. I’m exhausted. I didn’t sleep. Now one end of that for SURE is the over glorification of busy BUT there is another side entirely in the time and quality of heads on the pillow. And that leads to inflammation, the build-up of toxins, in the ability to process deep emotions, and disrupted energy flow.

There are more sleep aids on the market today than ever before and yet we are still sleepless.

Dive in with me today, so I can get you on the way to a full and restful night’s sleep.

Sleep is Critical

Sleep doesn’t feel very important to us - we all go through stages in life yes? Where sleep is for old folks - or maybe we’ve proclaimed “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

I may have even proclaimed that before... and I get it from the outside the body appears to be still and inactive. But there is actually so much more going on in there!

During the night, while you snooze your body is working to restock your hormones, process serious toxins, repair tissue damage, re-arm the immune system with vital white blood cells, eliminate the effects of stress, and process those big heavy emotions.

The current state of sleep disorders – isn’t just causing the coffee stock to soar - it is disrupting our immune system, inflaming autoimmune conditions, and causing hormone disruptions...coffee ain’t fixin’ that.

Luckily, sleep is one of the first priorities I address in their journey back to wellness. Routinely getting a sound sleep improves motivation and the ability to make the changes necessary to heal the body. And I’m going to share simple steps you can do to change that TODAY. But first I want to talk to you about HOW you fall asleep

The Magic of Falling Asleep

The magic of falling asleep starts with the pineal gland. The pineal gland is a teeny-tiny gland, about the size of an ant, located in the center of our skull - think right behind the middle of the eyebrows (the third eye).

The pineal gland secretes a neurotransmitter called melatonin following our circadian rhythm. Have you heard of melatonin? I always cringe when I hear people “taking melatonin” for sleep or worse giving it to their kids routinely.

Melatonin is a pretty cool little neurotransmitter it, once it kicks in, it's kind of in charge. It suppresses the activity of a whole bunch of other neurotransmitters, resulting in the calming of the brain and body. Part of the reason for this brain calming is because it counters things like cortisol, the stress hormone secreted by our adrenal gland.

As you become more drowsy, your brain slowly begins to turn down the volume on our voluntary skeletal muscle functions, eventually turning them off. This is super cool because it is your body’s way of keeping you from moving around so much and doing things like acting out your dreams.

Turning off voluntary skeletal muscle is the body’s built-in way to prevent that internal revitalization work I mentioned - the restocking of your hormones, processing of the serious toxins, repairing tissue damage, re-arming the immune system with white blood cells, eliminating the effects of stress, and processing those big heavy emotions - from being disrupted.

For example, you may have seen in real life, think of a dog you have seen dreaming or even a child...this function in the body is the reason why its hard to move your limbs or shout in response to a nightmare or vivid dream.

For you to have that ideal restful and nourishing sleep, melatonin should be steadily rising and cortisol should be super low at bedtime.

Sounds simple right? But there’s a catch: the pineal gland has to be triggered to start the melatonin process and thanks to the way our ancestors lived - if someone trips the alarm your body can reverse things.

Do you know what triggers melatonin? Darkness and low noise situations. Do you know what will grind it to a screeching halt? The opposite of that. Don’t worry - we are going to take a closer look.

I want to take a quick break for a shout out - you know I adore getting feedback from you - ratings or reviews on your fav podcast provider, comments and messages on social, and feedback from clients in my 1:1s and group programs...it helps me to help more people I get the BEST questions too

Recently I received this message on Facebook-

"Audrey, I can’t sleep. I lay in bed for hours and just can’t fall asleep - and when I do fall asleep I wake frequently...is there something natural I can take?"

Where do you think I am going with this? When I dug in a little deeper, I found the issue - it wasn’t that she was missing some nutrient that her body needed to sleep - it was that she was missing darkness and low noise!

We made some adjustments and right away within just a couple of nights her body switched gears and remembered how to fall asleep and stay asleep.

Now it's not always that simple I assure you - sometimes it takes longer to reverse these things depending on a number of factors.

I have started to hear recently that “my phone is my only connection to my friends/family/world” and here's the thing - that is totally fine the other 10 hours in the day but it is an excuse (and not a very good one) for poor sleep that kicks off a waterfall of poor health.

Tough Love: Sleep Help Starts with YOU

The “my phone is my only connection” is an excuse, even amidst the current state of isolation for increasing addiction to TV, handheld devices, social media, and email in the evening, our choices easily get in the way of our body’s pro-sleep chemical shifts. 

Most of these devices display what is called full-spectrum light. This serves to confuse the brain, is it night time or not? Combine that with the type of shows we watch (or even emails), these shows are often loud and stressful. The evening news is designed to create stress and fear, maybe you watch crime dramas or violent shows or horror movies designed to do the same. We don’t check work emails for joy late in the evening either - it's usually stress-related or adding to the already extensive to-do list.

But Audrey - what about my blue light blocking setting on my iPhone? Or my app for blocking blue light? Guess what - studies show it doesn’t work. Yep - all participants in the study for Apple’s “Night Shift” setting showed decreased melatonin production.

6 Steps to Sleep

As promised let’s dig into what to do - I want you to do this all week AND if next week you really stuck to it - in episode 117 I will go deeper into some other sleep assist options if that has been ruled out.

If at any point you are done with trying to DIY your sleep - you can book a quick virtual Sleep Consultation with me here.

Steps to stop sleeplessness:

1- Choose calming, quiet evening activities. Often all it takes is identifying more calming, quiet evening activities (e.g. reading a book, taking a warm bath, going for a light stroll outdoors, playing with a pet, folding laundry). If you are having trouble sleeping, I recommend no email, TV, next-day-planning, no budgeting, or stressful conversations in the full hour before bedtime. The key here is to choose activities that resonate with you - hate reading - not for you. Laundry stresses you out - choose something else.

If noise is an issue, whether it be environmental noise or the snores of a partner or pet, it's easy to grab some super soft foam earplugs or the white noise of a fan. There are lots of white noise machines that help with this too, both while sleeping and in the hour before bed.

2- Turn off all full-spectrum light for a full 1-2 hours before bedtime. This means no email, TV, or smartphone apps. On the rare occasion that you do need to use these devices - try blue light blocking glasses to assist in diffusing the effect on your sleep cycle - the phone and app settings are not effective. If you aren’t sleeping right now then make a hard rule to turn off phones/handheld devices 2 hours before bedtime. Make a hard rule - no phones or iPads in the bedroom.

3-Avoid all caffeine sources after 2 pm (e.g. tea (even green), coffee, soda, chocolate, etc. Yes, it can affect you that many hours later.

4- Mind the temperature. It is also important to the bedroom not be too hot, as this can disrupt sleep during the night. Rooms that are too hot or too cold tend to wake us up. In addition to waking us up to mess with the bedding, temperature extremes naturally increase our stress hormones which promote wakefulness.

5- Have a relaxing ritual at night. That might include some herbal tea, like lavender, chamomile, valerian, or passionflower. These herbal teas can help you relax and set the tone for sleep. If you aren’t much of a tea drinker - or even if you are - a hot bath with Epsom salts may work well if you are like me - and if a hot bath sounds like torture, maybe writing in your journal for 10 minutes or reading some inspirational or spiritual books will help. You can also meditate before bed, or meditate yourself to sleep. If you're struggling with stress or anxiety, CBD might help to calm you. Use this comparison chart to find out which type of CBD might be best for you, but often all that is needed is a little oil massaged into your legs or arms and you'll feel the effects soon enough.

6- Quiet the digestion. This one is particularly powerful, a full tummy often causes initial drowsiness but if you have restless or light sleep - avoiding eating the last 2-3 hours before bed is very beneficial.

Don’t worry you don’t have to remember all these steps - you can grab these steps in my free pdf download at audreychristie.com/autoimmune.

Its a free resource I have created just for you, its called 5 Steps to take TODAY to stop Autoimmune Disease - print off the sleep page and mark them off over the next 5 days. You can even request my specific bulletproof sleep protocol or grab a quick sleep consult with me.

To wrap this up -

Sleep is a non-negotiable. If you are routinely not sleeping then this is a priority to fix - right away in order for your body to be able to do the work of healing, in order for your emotions to process, your hormones to restock, your immune system to function properly, and your autoimmunity to diminish and heal.

Thank you so much for tuning in, if you have a second it would mean the world to me if you could leave a rating or review! That helps me help more people get clear of autoimmune disease. I’d be oh so grateful.

Be well.

 

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Autoimmune Diet: Why It Isn't Working and What to Try Instead

Are you tired of trying to figure out WTF you should do for your autoimmune condition? Specifically, if there is an “autoimmune diet” you should follow? Have you tried EVERYTHING? Given up lots of foods only to find that you are still having symptoms?

Here’s the thing - it doesn’t make you weird, or wrong, in even incapable of healing. There are so many experts out there shouting “do this!” and “get rid of that!” and because they look like experts and when we are suffering we are desperate for something to work - we jump on board and then find ourselves still suffering from symptoms and on top of that now suffering in emotional ways because we gave up our favorite foods.

We are changing that today friend! Today we are talking about foods you can ADD to your autoimmune diet that are delish and help you heal and we are getting rid of some MAJOR misconceptions about what the perfect autoimmune diet really is.

Welcome if this is your first time listening  - I’m Audrey Christie - I’m a functional and integrative nurse nutritionist and energy medicine practitioner. I help women stop chasing symptoms and find relief and ultimately learn how to heal their bodies from autoimmune disease.

Which Autoimmune Diets have you tried?

I’ve seen it 1000s of times - some version of “Audrey I have tried everything, I’m taking a supplement protocol, and I’m eating 100% keto and not getting better.” You could swap keto with literally any autoimmune diet:

AIP (Autoimmune Protocol)
Low or no Fodmaps
Vegan
Raw vegan
Paleo
Keto
Veto

You get the idea right?

Here’s the thing - if you just throw spaghetti at the wall by trying whatever diet plan is the next best thing - then guess what you get? Some spaghetti might stick but ultimately you get a big ol’ mess.

Why isn't my Autoimmune Diet Plan working?

Because of this little principle called bio-individuality. One of the things our human suits have in common is that we are all unique.

Here’s a recent example -

(I absolutely adore getting feedback from you - ratings, reviews, comments on your fav podcast provider, comments and messages on social, and feedback from clients in my 1:1s and group programs...it helps me to help more people and sometimes I get the BEST questions too - recently I had a question about tinnitus. Tinnitus is ringing in the ears...)

This Instagram follower asked -

Hi Audrey....: what about Tinnitus? Can this be reversible? I had anxiety for many years and then 2.5 years ago developed insomnia and tinnitus at the time. I work for a (Reishi mushroom) company and it healed my anxiety and insomnia. But still, have tinnitus and recently got diagnosed with leaky gut?? parasites? Out of fluke. I took a live blood cell analysis and this is how I found out! What are your thoughts?

What can you take from this? She tried a common (and really good solution) for reducing inflammation and healing her body - and she got partial results with a big problem still remaining - well a couple - tinnitus and leaky gut, right? It didn’t heal her tinnitus - and its not because reishi isn’t a valid solution that helps many with similar or even the same problem. Its because she is unique, a bio-individual.

And just to put a bug in your ear here - if you think bio-individuality only applies to natural healing holistic techniques - you would be mistaken. It applies to pharmaceuticals too, and over the counter meds. That cholesterol pill, steroid, birth control, allergy med, I could go on and on, is blanket applied to Y people with X diagnosis and is not useful or effective and even harmful for most.

For this submitted question - you need to know that one of the things that are touted oh-so-healthy for so many (because it is!) can actually seriously aggravate and cause tinnitus - eating raw veggies. They can cause the eustachian tubes to constrict which leads to ear ringing. So can dairy or even something more mechanical like nerve over facilitation. My point is - that something that is so healthy giving, like raw veggies may not be right for you right now. (We already know that dairy isn’t healthy for humans.)

What could you try instead?

So what the HECK do you do instead? I get it - you are all thinking, “great Audrey, thanks for bursting my bubble and now I have wasted another 12 bucks on the diet book that is going to cure all of my ailments." It’s totally fine, we all have! At least there are likely some good recipes in there.

The good news is that you CAN take some steps to tune into your body and get a sense of what is right for you and what isn’t. Another one of my favorite strategies is to increase the good on your plate instead of focusing on what to take away. The reason is: there's a truckload of food triggers that could be happening - some could be real - and some could be a secondary effect of other troubles in your human suit.

Try moving in a positive direction...

Let’s look at what we can add on the plate TODAY that will help to start your path to becoming CLEAR. Adding nutrients can be so much easier mentally and energetically than avoiding certain favorite foods.

You want to make sure that as many of your foods are organic as possible AND if you can’t find it organic then DO ensure it is not on the Dirty Dozen List.

Papayas
Wild Blueberries
Raspberries
Strawberries
Celery (I’m not against drinking celery juice - just make sure it’s organic and it is not your only strategy)
Cruciferous Veggies
Cucumbers
Leafy Greens
Sprouts and Microgreens
Sweet Potatoes
Cilantro
Garlic, Ginger, Turmeric
Chaga mushrooms

Are these the ONLY foods to eat? No way. This isn’t even a list of ALL of the healing foods. But DO try to weave these in as often as possible, try them cooked, raw, blended and see which foods make you feel alive and vibrant and which ones don’t.

What we covered

If you are hopping from nutrition plan to nutrition plan and hoping that an out-of-the-box restriction based autoimmune diet will work for you - lets stop and try something new. Will you do that with me?

 I created a free resource for you, its called 5 Steps to Staring Healing from Your Autoimmune Disease TODAY. And its specifically simple steps you can take right now - including changing your mindset, enhancing your sleep, and adding nutrients to your plate.   You can download it on the show notes page or your podcast player, or at audreychristie.com/115 and it always lives at audreychristie.com/autoimmune.

To wrap this up -

Let’s work to add plants to your plate and stop hopping from autoimmune diet to autoimmune diet because ultimately what works physiologically in your body will be different than what works for others.

Thank you so much for tuning in, if you have a second it would mean the world to me if you could leave a rating or review! That helps me help more people get clear of autoimmune disease. I’d be oh so grateful.

Be well.