Are you tried all day, then come night time and you can't sleep?
Maybe you find it hard to fall asleep or maybe you're waking up randomly at like 2 or 3 am and you can't get back to sleep. Or what's even more annoying is that you fall back to sleep at about 5 am, you get one hour and then you feel even more tired after you wake up at about six.
So, if this is you, if you're feeling tired all day but can't get to sleep at night and I know how frustrating that is, then I want to talk about what is actually going on there and what you can do about it.
So first of all I know that you probably tried different things like, I don't know, maybe you've different herbal medicines like valerian or some magnesium to help you to get to sleep earlier. Maybe you've tried to go to bed earlier as well and none of that is making a difference.
Okay, so the reason why we don't fall asleep or we wake up randomly in the middle of the night can be due to a number of different things.
One of the biggest things that I see in the work that I do with women with adrenal fatigue and burnout and stress is that, stress and our stress hormones are the things that are waking us up at 2-3 am in the morning.
If you've had a really busy day, if it's been really hectic, especially for women with anxiety and overwhelm if you've had a full on day and you've had a lot of stuff going on in your head you'll find it's really common to find that in the nighttime that you're waking up at that 2 – 3 am and what's actually happening is that our stress hormones through the day, our cortisol which is our main stress hormone will have this rebound effect at night okay?
And so what happens is it interrupts our melatonin which is our sleep hormone and so therefore cortisol should be low and melatonin should be high but what's happening at that 2-3 am mark is it's doing a flip.
And so cortisol is jumping back up and melatonin is dropping down and so therefore it's waking you up and preventing you from falling back to sleep. One of the other biggest things that I see again, it can be stress related is a fluctuation in blood sugar levels.
So if your sugar levels drop during the night that is definitely going to wake you up and so a lot of the time when we're stressed, when we're anxious, when we've got a lot on, it can mess with our blood glucose balance. Okay, so that's another thing.
The other things that I see is overactive thyroid can wake you up in the middle of the night, a drop in progesterone. So again, really common.
If we've got lots of stress and oestrogen dominance then our progesterone tends to be lower and that can be another thing that wakes women up around that time in our cycle.
And another one is digital overdosing. So I was staying in an AirBnB just recently and they had the WiFi right near my head and I couldn't sleep at all, it was just buzzing through me.
So definitely if you're on the technology, if you're on the digital, digital products during the night or even too much during the day that is definitely going to overstimulate your brain and it's going be hard for you to fall asleep at night.
These are the things that I recommend. It is so important to get a proper night's sleep.
They found that anything less than seven hours of sleep a night has shown to impact health and make us more susceptible to illness. And the reason being is that when we're sleeping, our body goes into a relaxation response. It goes into what's called the parasympathetic nervous system response.
That's basically our rest and our repair. So if we're not getting enough rest and repair time then we're going to be more susceptible to illness.
Okay so this is our time when our self healing systems are switched back on and if we don't get enough time in rest and repair it will impact our immune system, it will impact our reproductive system, our hormones, our mental health, our quality of life, everything!
So here is a short term solution. So if stress is definitely a factor for you I would say address that and look at a proper, kind of like an adrenal reset plan which I'll talk more about. But in a short term solution, just that you can do in the next few days is to, studies have shown that if you do activity, exercise, even if it's walking, even if it's yoga, Pilates, cleaning the house, any kind of activity that's kind of getting your heart rate up is enough to help you to have a better night's sleep okay? So activity during the day will help you to have a better night's sleep.
The other thing that they've found in studies is that if you go out into nature for about 20 or 30 minutes during the day you'll actually have a better night's sleep and all of that is impacting our cortisol levels. So our stress hormone levels.
So if you're working in an office and you're kind of around computers all day, try to get outside. Even if there's a park around you somewhere. It's really just being around trees and grass and greenery that actually stimulates a reduction in our stress and our cortisol, helping us to have a better night's sleep. So definitely do that.
Do some activity, go for a walk during the day where you can but really kind of, either do one of those two things during the day.
The other thing is if you've got a really overactive mind, so if you find that come night time that your mind is buzzing and you've got your to-do list going off in your head, you can't shut if off, you're kind of, you know, going through the events of the day then a really great herb that I recommend is Rhodiola. Rhodiola is a herb which helps with relaxation, it helps with stress, it helps to give us energy, helps us to adapt to stress.
It's really good for the immune system too. But it's really good for people who have a really overactive mind. So you take that during the day and that will help you to have a better night's sleep.
So first one being exercise and getting out to nature, second one being Rhodiola.
If you feel tired and wired, if you're waking up during the night but you also feel anxious during the day, if you're overwhelmed, if you're exhausted all the time so it doesn't matter how much sleep you get, you still always feel tired.
Then there could be more going on there that needs to be addressed and needs to be looked at.
I'm running a workshop this week where I'm going to talk a lot more about that. How those symptoms are all related okay, and how they're related to adrenal fatigue and I'm also going to show you what you can do, the steps that you can take to get your energy back, to get your mojo back, to have a better sleep, to shift unwanted kilos and all of those things.
Plus on the workshop, it's free to join, I'm going to put a link above or below this video.
Plus on the webinar I'm going to give you a ‘7-Day Energy Reboot Kit'. So this is exactly what I give to my clients in the first week to shift their energy and to elevate their mood.
So you'll get that on the workshop and the other thing is once you sign up, I'm actually going to give you an ‘Energy Assessment' too.
So really kind of show where you are along the energy spectrum. So, if that's you, if you're anxious, overwhelmed, stressed, can't lose weight. You know, have your moods really low, anxiety et cetera, come and join us on the workshop It's free to join and we're going to talk a lot more about that and what you can do.
