10 unusual sleep disruptors

We all know the usual saboteurs like blue light, not looking at your screen and so on.....

Today I want to put a little bit of my own spin on these 10 things and for that I took inspiration from my clients. When I told them a few things I thought were normal they had an "Aha" moment, a light bulb came on over their heads, so to speak.

So I really hope these will help you too.

Number 1: "The earlier I go to bed, the better."

You might think this is true but there is a reason why this does not work, or at least not for everyone.

One of my clients has a history of tension, being pedantic and wanting to be organized. He had a set bedtime for himself because he knew that if he went to sleep later than planned, he would become anxious. He knew it and as a result he couldn't go to sleep and as a result it would get worse, causing him to completely lose control of his mind.

When we started, I asked him how that worked for him. He told me that it takes about an hour to two hours to fall asleep each night. To which I asked the question "OK, so once you fall asleep, how long do you sleep after that?" "Well, usually only 'til 5:00. Ok, so, you fall asleep before 11:00 pm and then wake up at 5:00 am,' to which he confirmed this with 5:30/6 am.

If you do the math you will see that he often got 6 to 6 1/2 hours of sleep per night; sometimes even 7 hours, something he didn't realize himself. Often he would fall asleep around midnight and wake up around 6:30 a.m., which amounts to about 6 1/2 hours of sleep. I asked him if he felt tired in the morning and said, "No. I'm just annoyed that it takes me so long to fall asleep and that I always wake up around the same time. I don't know what to do with myself! I don't want to get up. I don't want to disturb my wife, who is still asleep, and I don't need to be at work that early, so for me, that early rising makes no sense at all!

Here's what it's all about. He was worried about the time he goes to bed when his natural bedtime is actually much later. We started to adjust that. I encouraged him to go outside more, to enjoy more time with his family and friends, something he did much less before.

Before, he wouldn't go out to dinner with people or leave early because he wanted to be in bed on time, and now he had realized that he could do all this. 

Going to bed a little later, but falling asleep faster and waking up at 6:30 a.m. is not unusual.

Many of you do that every day. His perspective changed because of that, too. So if you are someone who takes a long time to fall asleep, it may be that you just go to bed a little too early and you can try this too. Maybe such a small mindset change is just what you need.

Number two: "Ketchup."

It's not necessarily Ketchup, but I'll tell you a story about a client of mine.

This is a woman I have worked with and she is wonderful. A super dynamic young woman with three children. Her oldest child is 13 years old. (She is my age and my first daughter is four..... I am so very behind....) I just adore her!

The case was that she couldn't get through the day without having to take a nap. She just had no energy. Felt exhausted all the time. So her problem was not necessarily that she hadn't slept very well, but she had no energy left and she didn't want to take medicine and when she went to her regular doctor he just said everything was fine.

We started talking about nutrition. She didn't really know much about nutrition. You don't know what you don't know. When she described her diet it more or less came down to the following: "Well, I have a croissant in the morning, sugar at 10 a.m., another one at 2 p.m., and another one at 4 p.m.. ' I eat a box of cookies every day. At the end, it turned out she had a lot of sugar, and when we went to test her for Candida Albicans, the residual results came back positive.

Candida feeds on sugar and has many side effects, including fatigue. So by teaching her more about sugar and what foods it's all in, she learned so many new things. The next time she went grocery shopping she was completely blown away by it, it almost a paradigm shift. 'I picked up a bottle of ketchup and saw how much sugar is in it. I never knew that!' So when she started doing that, she was working to reduce or even completely zero out sugar intake for herself and her family. During my last session this morning, I saw her again and she said she has turned 180 degrees.

I have all the energy and I don't have to sleep anymore!

I no longer feel bloated and I know my body better now. Now when I eat something my body protests, I know what's happening and can make healthier decisions afterward. Even if I have a cheat day, I know what's going to happen. I can do that consciously! I don't have to take medication anymore! That's something she wanted to avoid in the first place.

Number three: "Hey Simon

I say "hey Simon," and I'm talking about Simon the cat, but it could just as easily be a dog. It doesn't really matter. Your pets can be a huge sleep disruptor. When you sleep, you're basically not unconscious, but you're not fully conscious either. It's that strange sensation in between those two states. But even in that state, you are still reacting to the movements around you. You see this with new mothers and their newborn baby. If the baby moves a little bit they will wake up right away but if a huge truck passes by they just sleep on. 

With pets, we often tend to react quite reactively to them, especially when they are in our bedroom.

If you are not sleeping well and you have a pet in your bedroom, my first advice would be to banish your pet from your bedroom. Get your pet a super cute fluffy stuffed animal and get them a nice new room/place where they feel nice and safe. If you have trouble sleeping you should stop allowing them in your bedroom.

Number four: "Your mattress

I know it's so obvious, but many people sleep on mattresses that are 15 or 20 years old and that's just really not acceptable anymore!

In theory, you should flip your mattress every six months, something I know I don't do but probably should. I only do it once a year. After 10 years of sleeping on the same mattress, it is advisable to buy a new one sometime. Sometimes my clients say that if they sleep better somewhere else than in their own home and I tell them it's probably because of their mattress.

Not everyone needs a firm mattress; sometimes you need a softer one.

I'm a big fan of memory foam, especially when it comes to the issue described earlier. If your partner is someone who moves a lot and you don't then memory foam can absorb that movement a little better. Each mattress has its own strengths, for example, some mattresses are better at regulating temperature, something that can be very useful when you are in menopause or if you are just sensitive to heat or cold.

Start looking for a good mattress and by doing a lot of research beforehand. Don't be afraid to ask for a test. Going to a mattress store and lying on a mattress for 15 minutes doesn't really work. You're light there in a store and well not mimicking your home situation. You don't get a good understanding of how you actually like this mattress and how you sleep on it. Most mattress suppliers allow you to test your mattress at home. This can usually be done for 30 days and some even allow you to try the mattress for 100 days. Take advantage of that. Don't feel shy about testing. It's a big investment, so come prepared and make sure you take advantage of those offers!

Number five: "Your bathroom lights

It may sound a little strange, but your bathroom lighting is usually the brightest in your entire house. After all, that's where we put on and take off our makeup. We take out our contact lenses and clean our skin there.....

The fact remains that artificial light has an impact on your biological clock because that your eyes think it is daytime because of those bright lights making it difficult to send a signal to your body to activate sleep because it is night. 

Light is not the only thing that affects our sleep. There is also sleep pressure, a hormone called adenosine. Adenosine also impacts our sleep and is definitely a factor, especially for those who are sensitive to it. You may not even know you are. Make sure you try this. Provide dimmed lights inside. Provide indirect light, maybe even candlelight. It's nice to slowly work toward your sleep and relax before that. I would definitely recommend it and of course don't forget to dim your bedroom lights as well.

Number six: "Broccoli."

Why is broccoli in this list? I have another story here from a client that I like to tell.

I was working with one of my clients, someone who was very conscious about his diet. When I looked at his food diary, everything was organic, high in protein, low in sugar, healthy carbs, and few low glycemic foods. If he ate wheat it was whole wheat or oatmeal. There was just nothing that stood out. Part of my job is to test for food sensitivities and we found out he was sensitive to broccoli. In general, you can say that broccoli is great. It provides a lot of nutrition and it has different nutrients and minerals in it. When I saw that, I had to smile because he was eating broccoli practically every other day.

Now you would think that broccoli is healthy but he actually created small inflammations every time he ate broccoli .

This meant that his gut was inflamed and his cortisol levels went up. Now cortisol is a stress hormone, it's an anti-inflammatory, but it also gives you energy; so not really useful for going to sleep. Even though he liked giving his body healthy nutrients, in practice it was just the opposite.

Again, you don't know what you don't know. You might think kale, your smoothie and your spinach are great and you might think you have a food sensitivity to that. You might then think of "oh, I don't drink dairy, but I drink almond milk. Maybe you're sensitive to almonds! So food sensitivities are definitely something to look at.

Number seven: "Thyroid".

I don't really have a story about it because almost all of my clients have thyroid problems. I just had two clients come to me with the story that they needed to push their doctor to get an ultrasound of their thyroid, because according to the lab, the values were within normal levels (more on that in my thyroid blog post). When I took a look at the values through a diagnostic lens, they were either too high or too low. TSH was too high, but T3 was too low and T4 was also struggling. I immediately thought the thyroid might be affecting their sleep.

After pestering their doctor because they still felt there was something wrong with them, they finally got their desired ultrasound. These are two independent clients and I just saw them because we had a summer vacation and one of them has coagulant bacteria. With one client, her thyroid had already shrunk, so the organ itself was really affected. The other client was also diagnosed with growth on her thyroid and with Hashimoto's disease. With Hashimoto's disease, your thyroid gland underperforms. In her case, it mainly had to do with that the T4 value conversion was not enough and then also the conversion between T4 and T3 was not enough.

They wouldn't have found out if they hadn't really pressed that doctor and if I hadn't looked at them through a functional diagnostic lens.

The thyroid is the key for me. With all my clients I look at it because almost all my clients have a problem with it.

Number eight: "Yeast".

And I'm talking specifically about Candida albicans, a strain of yeast. Everybody has a certain amount of candida but when we're stressed and our body starts breaking down because our stress hormone is basically catabolic. It's breaking things down because it's not meant to be there for a long time.

Candida can be very opportunistic and spreads like wildfire. This is not good news because it is a base for bacteria and parasites and you really want to get control of it.

One of the things heavily affected by candida is your sleep.

If you feel a lot of fatigue but at the same time cannot get to sleep I would look at Candida as a culprit.

Number nine: "the massage shower head."

The massage shower head, and I'm actually not talking about your shower head, I'm talking about your thoughts. For example, if you're super busy and you get thoughts in your head, you don't want to think about them, you tend to push them away. You shove them away. 'Not now' or 'Ooh, this is uncomfortable!

Because you are actually censoring yourself during the day you are less vigilant at night. Of course, this is because you are beginning to sleep.

Your brain suddenly takes the opportunity to give you all the feedback and everything that is still waiting to be acknowledged to erupt. 

Hello, the guard has gone to sleep, let's cut loose!'!

It's literally like getting water from a massage shower head all over you. So that's why it's a good idea to have a strategy for spreading your stress during the day. In terms of shower head, that's basically a gentle, smooth spray. You know, those thick drops that gently fall down on you.

If you do that during the day you have that trickle down your thoughts constantly. You don't risk being overwhelmed at night by everything you've just shoved into the corner.

Number 10: "the glass of warm milk."

And then finally there's the glass of warm milk. I talk about it because milk and dairy are something many of my clients disagree with.

Many of them don't know that if you have milk intolerance, dairy intolerance or lactose intolerance that means going to the bathroom in the middle of the night. 

This makes it difficult to fall back asleep, so make sure you keep an eye on that.

Does it really make a difference whether you drink a glass of milk or something dairy at night? I know that my digestion gets really upset if I have anything with dairy. So my going to the bathroom is pre-programmed. It also gives me cramps and so on..... no glass of milk before bed for me. There are some nutritional benefits for teenagers but it is not worth it in my experience.

I would say it is more of a generic sleep recommendation with some basis in nutrition because it contains tryptophan (precursor to melatonin) than that it really helps you fall asleep. In my opinion, in this case, the disadvantages outweigh the benefits it may have.

Knowing your sleep saboteurs is just the beginning . . . . .

Being able to finally know how to fight them, and waking up fantastic ready to seize the day by the bootstraps is really a great feeling. Knowing that you will NEVER be thwarted by those saboteurs again because you KNOW what triggers them is a whole other game. A game I can teach you.

If you want to know more about falling asleep without sleeping pills, with less than a day of work and with nothing more than readily available supplements and lab tests (then you don't have to rely on that pesky family doctor anymore).