There are two things that stood out for this person. We looked at their various systems and we saw that their food response and their metabolic pathway were off and they were struggling. What was going on here? Big red flag. If I scroll down you will see that their ability to convert starches, bread, rice, and pasta into glucose, which is the fuel you used, was the worst possible. They had AM1 gene, they had the AA version which means that they are highly inefficient at utilizing starches as fuel. They also had the worst possible insulin response so not only do they struggle converting rice, bread, pasta, and sugar into fuel. They also had a dysregulated insulin response to that input of the starch so this led to massive metabolic unrest. It led to a massive metabolic challenge where if they were eating within three hours of going to sleep their body at the time when it is supposed to be resting and recovering is struggling with metabolic hell it is called. They were in this challenged state because it took them so much longer to plow through this stuff as fuel. It required a couple of things, diet change like understanding what the body was actually able to work on, but also eating windows like what time was the appropriate time for them. And that one thing we were able to track. We use the Oura Ring, and we used continuous glucose monitoring to understand what was going on with them. And we showed the empirical data to them like, here is what is actually happening and why you were struggling so that was one.
They also had a second issue. Their second issue was their stress response. And what was going on with them is these two genes here. So ATAD2B body’s ability to regulate your adrenaline response and therefore how you react to imprinted negative stimulus. That adrenaline rush that happens when a problem occurs, a car accident, or some problematic email and is shocking and it causes the adrenaline rush. Some people are much more likely to imprint that feeling. Serotonin is your brain’s ability to manage and prioritize stimulus and manage mood as appropriate for whatever is going on. Now this person was dysregulated in both of these areas. The challenge is twofold for them and we were able to resolve this through supplementation and coaching. First of all, awareness of them even understanding how they think and perceive and potentially how their peers and family perceive them, how they behave. The first one, the biggest problem we see when it comes to sleep is not so much I can not fall asleep, which this person would have had with the metabolic struggle which got resolved, it is more that I can not stay asleep, this is actually the biggest sort of bucket of people that say I have sleep problems.
When your serotonin is dysregulated it means that your brain can prioritize stimulus. And serotonin is the chemical or hormone, we should say, that is supposed to wake you up. We know that melatonin is a supplement we can take to put us to sleep, you bind it and you utilize it and it puts you into that sleep state. Serotonin is meant to be bound and triggered when that first glimmer of sunlight comes through the window which is the trigger. Your brain is waiting for that trigger to bind serotonin and wake up. When your serotonin is dysregulated the challenge is that every stimulus in that second half of sleep when you know at some point your body knows it is going to, I have to wake up at some point in the second half of every stimulus. It is too hot, it is too cold, my hubby’s foot touched me, she or he pulled on the blanket, there is a coyote howling outside whatever is going on that is a stimulus of any sort, and that second half of the brain is confused and trying to understand, is this the thing, the sunlight that I am supposed to respond to? Oh, no, it is not, I am going back to sleep and you are in and out dreaming awake. The challenge is that this is the time that is second half asleep when you are also making serotonin. Serotonin is made in your gut during this time when you are supposed to be sleeping but you are being challenged because your serotonin is dysregulated. It becomes a vicious cycle if it was not dealt with properly.
There is a couple of solutions. First of all, 5-HTP is a supplement that manages serotonin levels. But more importantly, this person needed that ideal sleep cocoon. We got them a weighted blanket, sounds simple, but the science behind it is complex. We still are wired like our ancestors, we are still wired to be aware of sleeping in a cave and not being eaten by a wolf while you are asleep, that is literally what our brain is waiting for. And the safety, that sensorial your organ, the skin organ is head to toe, it is constantly sensing what is going on and if you are cuddled in that heavy weighted blanket it signals safety, it signals that you are in an environment that you do not need to worry and respond to every little stimulus and the brain will tone things down. You tend to overheat in that condition so you need a mattress cooler. And there are products you can buy like ChiliSleep that allow you to manage the temperature of your actual mattress. And then you have this weighted sensorial-like safety, you have the cooling from underneath you. And of course, zero light leakage, this is the signal and we no longer sleep in countries and cities where we have this perfect light call it a schedule that is mirrored to our circadian rhythm, our genetic circadian rhythm, we live all over the world. And if you are in North America what it looks like in July versus what it looks like in December two very different clocks and the body is constantly adjusting to all the stuff.
It is managing all the stimulus. And going back to ATAD2B which we did not speak of yet, managing the stress response, managing how do I deal with trauma, pain, and stimulus, and how do I resolve those things before going to bed? It is very important to not bring your trauma, pain, and problems with you to bed because the brain tends to ruminate and think and spin. And when you wake up in the middle of the night at three AM to use the washroom the first thing you are going to think about is your problems and then you can not get back to sleep. Before getting to sleep we taught this person to just journal, to take whatever their problems are, log them and say here is the legal letter that I got yesterday it is not resolved yet but I am going to schedule at 10 AM tomorrow a time to actually work on this and the brain receives that as a resolution, it is not closed but it is resolved, I do not need to ruminate and think about this thing anymore, I have now parked it and it is resolved that at 10 AM tomorrow I am working on it. There was a mixture of metabolic unrest, some behavioral coaching that was required, some supplementation, adding in some call it biohacking tools like we did, sorry, mattress cooling, weighted blanket, things like that, and all of a sudden this person who struggled with sleep for so long issue is resolved and they were able to sleep properly, ongoing. They had to be careful, there is still a sensitivity level and there is maintenance required. But they finally were getting good sleep which means everything else got better.
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