And can I say brain fog? Anyone? Right. Can anyone relate? So if you’re not sleeping and you have brain fog or you’re not sleeping and you have fatigue or you’re not sleeping and you have weight gain or you’re not sleeping and you have a low immune system or you’re not sleeping and you have mood swings and so on and so on and so on, not sleeping is a root imbalance, a root thing in your lifestyle that really, really can wreak havoc on your body and so I want you all I want us all to be like like the wonder women of sleep. I want sleep to be our special power. Because when you sleep, a lot of things change. And so I don’t like to chase symptoms. I like to relieve your symptoms because I don’t want you to suffer. But I want us to remember that symptoms are our sacred messengers. We want to start having a different relationship with our body and with how it’s speaking to us. We want to say, Hey, what’s going on here? What are you trying to tell me? What’s out of balance, What’s going on? And so we also have the whole emotional realm. Often worry and anxiety can interfere with our sleep. So there’s a lot of moving pieces in our sleep. And I just want some of these things I say you may have heard before, but are you doing them because it’s so easy to hear things and go, Yeah. Oh, she makes a lot of sense. That’s smart and then we don’t do it. And so kind of checklists through. And then at the end, I’m going to tell you, like my favorite tests of my favorite hormones. But just starting to think about is your room dark. Like dark, dark, like you’re at the planetarium, You put your hand in front of your eyes and you can’t see your hand. That’s dark and that’s how your room should be. Is it cold? Do you have your room set at like 65 to 68 degrees? And is it cold? We don’t do well. We need to bring the temperature down. Is it WiFi free? This is a huge one. So are you turning off the router, getting the Wi-Fi down and are you breaking up with your cell phone or at least, you know, having some boundaries? We don’t need to break up with it. We just need to have boundaries. And that’s in all of our relationships. And so I talk a lot about that a lot with our during our interview on the summit about having a better relationship, better boundaries with your phone. But that’s really important. Not keeping your phone. I mean, we’re mature here. We don’t sleep with our phone under our pillows, right? I think that’s just the kids that are doing that. If you’re doing that, I don’t mean to offend you, but please stop doing that. Please stop putting your phone in your bra on your body, but putting your phone out of the room, putting it on an airplane mode. But even in airplane mode, there’s still a little bit. So if you can just turn it off or get it out of the room.
If you have to keep your phone on because you have the emergency contact for kids or elderly parents, then like keep it on, but keep your door open and put it like way out. Like my kitchen is next to my bedroom so I can put it like way over on the other side of the kitchen. It’s far, far away. But if it rang, I would hear it. So really important to have your EMF hygiene down for when it comes to sleeping. Also important to think about where you’re sleeping, like what you’re sleeping in. Are you sleeping in organic cotton pajamas or are you sleeping naked, which is really good. Are you sleeping in silk? Is your bed healthy? Do you have an organic mattress? Are your pillows organic and your bed sheets? And so there’s a lot of pieces here and they’re all important and you don’t have to do them all at once because that will probably overwhelm you. If it doesn’t overwhelm you, go for it. But most people, most of us get overwhelmed. And so it’s good to take things, you know, one step at a time.
It’s really important to think about what you’re sleeping on an end and are there toxins coming at you? Because I remember when my son, who is also now a naturopathic physician, I took him to his first medical conference before he even started school. We went to this environmental medicine conference, which they are always depressing because all we learn about is how the toxic situation is getting worse and how we’re being bombarded. And that was like the first lecture we went to was this case study, and it ended up that the person was very sick because their mattress was off-gassing and giving them all sorts of chemicals. And so I always think about that. That was like his introduction, like, yeah, you know, good health comes from all places and we have to really be diligent. Staying healthy is worth it because we get to enjoy our lives and without our health, it doesn’t matter what we have, we’re not going to enjoy it, but it takes some effort and attention. And so there’s really that fine balance between being neurotic and being proactive. And I’ve been neurotic. So I can say that because now I just proactive balance, balance, balance. So it’s really important that you know, you can have lavender sprays on your pillow. I do that like an organic lavender spray. And it’s really important that you don’t have screens. There’s no TV in my bedroom, bed is for sleeping, for sex, whether it be with a partner or alone it’s for I also use it for some meditation and mindfulness. I have my alter and my meditation cushion almost at the with my bedroom set up. It’s almost like right by the foot of my bed. But sometimes I like to when I go to sleep or when I wake up in the morning, do a body scan or do some gratitude work or some prayers. And so I, like a lot of people say the beds for sleep and sex, but I also say it can be for prayer and meditation, too. And so you want to really start making sleep a priority and having a like hard line and so what time are you going to go to bed? And if you are looking at screens, I think like saying don’t look at screens for 3 hours before is a little unrealistic, right? Because if you’re going to bed at ten, then that’s seven. That’s a long time and a lot of us need to be on our screens or choose to be on our screens so you can get blue blockers hours. But I think at least an hour, an hour and a half is a good time to put down those screens. And you can read a book, you can take a bath. I think it’s nice to drink a hot cup of camomile tea. It’s nice to have kind of a bedtime routine that tells your nervous system and your body it’s time to. It’s that time I like to journal.
I have this five-minute journal that one of my patients gifted me, and it’s really nice. I do it in the morning and it’s kind of like I can write affirmations and what I’m excited about. And then at the end of the day, I can write what made today great. So I kind of can manifest and plan and dream about the day ahead. And then at the end of the day, I can kind of reflect how it went and then I can share what went great. And then there’s also what could have made the day go better. So like, where could I have been more focused or more on top of it, or what could have happened? So I like it. It’s a nice way to bookend the day and just to be a little more mindful and introspective and what’s going on in your day and a co-creator of your day because we do co-create our days, so we might as well do it mindfully so that we can have the best day possible. So there’s a lot that goes into it. And I often tell the story of when I was in medical school and I used to have to, I was raising my two boys and so I didn’t have a lot of time. And that’s naturopathic medical school. And I had my non-negotiables.
Now that I’m post-menopausal and my kids are out of the house, I have a lot more time to log on myself. But back then it wasn’t a lot of time, but my non-negotiables were sleeping 8 hours, getting 30 minutes of aerobic exercise, and getting 30 minutes of meditation in. And I just somehow lived around the corner from a Zen monk who had a zendo and a temple and his backyard space to run over there in the morning. But because I was running over there, it was like it started at like five in the morning. You know, these monks don’t mess around. And so I would go to bed at 830 and it’s like, so by 7:00, 630, I’m already thinking about our beds. Bedtime is coming and what’s going on, you know, is homework need to be done or dishes like what needs to be done and what am I triaging? What is going to have to wait till tomorrow? Are the dishes just going to get water soaking so that stuff doesn’t crust up, But I’m not going to wash them and load the dishwasher and stuff tonight. So and I still do that to this day. And it’s still like when it’s time to sleep, It’s time to sleep. And so nothing is more important than caring for yourself. Nothing is more important than plugging into yourself and giving yourself the rest you need. And so having a routine, a wind-down routine, and my routines can vary because there are so many fun things, you know, whether it’s taking a bath or having a cup of tea or journaling or listening to some chanting or chanting, my self, or there are so many different things. I can do everything all night. So I like to kind of go be in the moment and see what I’m going to do. But I have like a handful of things reading. I really like to read before bedtime. So that’s just something to start doing that you can make it a priority. None of this like it’s last on the burner after you’ve done your emails and watched three episodes on Netflix and done the dishes and made lunch for tomorrow has to start coming up to the top of your priority list. And so those are just a few things. There are many more I just want to give you like some things to get started with and then as far as hormones and what I see, there’s a few things I see. I see high cortisol in the evening and that’s looked at through a 24-hour saliva sample for a point salivary cortisol test, low progesterone, and progesterone is not always, but it’s like 85 to 90% of the time, like a homerun for getting a patient to sleep, especially oral bioidentical progesterone. If you heard my talk about hormones a few days ago, you know that I like calm capsules and cream. And if you didn’t hear it, go back and listen to it, and then I’ll explain that. But the oral capsules affect GABA receptors in the brain and they have a nice downregulate motion, and they can really be a big key player in helping you sleep and then thyroid making sure your thyroid is balanced. Because if it isn’t making sure your liver is moving, we always want to think about traditional Chinese medicine in the cycle of tides, and between one and three is when the liver energy is highest and before that. So it’s every 2 hours. So after that is long before that is the gallbladder. So from 11 to 1 is the gallbladder. So keep track. See like do you wake up and is it always the same time? Because that can be a hint that there’s something going on in that organ system that needs to be addressed. And liver time is a common time for women to wake up.
It’s common for the liver to be congested when we’re going through our menopausal transition, which is why I am very on top of working on your liver and making sure your bile is flowing. So looking at your progesterone in 24-hour urine testing, looking at your cortisol levels, and of course, looking at your thyroid and it’s not just to get to sleep, it’s when you wake up. So we want to have our circadian rhythm a priority. So within waking up, getting outside if possible, within 15, 30 minutes, certainly within an hour, getting your feet on the ground if you have a nice treat, one of the nice trees and looking at the sun, watching the sunrise, not staring at the sun, but gazing to the east. So you’re getting that light into your eyes in that pregnant, alone production. Really, really, really important stuff. So I talked kind of fast and, you know, these are just little mini talks just to give you a taste and to give you things like go back and listen. There are a lot of things you can pick one of these things and start doing it and it’s going to help you. But the lifestyle stuff often has to be coupled with the hormonal stuff. So you could be doing all the good lifestyle stuff, but if you’re not getting your cortisol balanced or you don’t have the right progesterone and is not in balance with your estrogen and your testosterone, the lifestyle stuff’s only going to go so far. So this is really marriage. What you do, what you take, how your balance really plays an important role. So I hope I wish you not a good night now because the summit day is just kicking off. So enjoy the lectures today, enjoy the talks, and wish you goodnight for later. And if you are not sleeping, make sure you find someone to help you on your sleep journey because it’s one of the key foundations that we have to master so we can heal and age gracefully. See you later.
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