How to Fix Your Sleep Schedule
In this blog, we're going to talk all about sleep! As a former insomniac who naturally resolved it, I want to share how I did it and how you can take back your sleep, too.
I am writing this at 3:30am after a series of nights with poor sleep - an event which, when I experienced it a few years ago, would have spiraled me into insomnia for weeks or even months on end. I used to experience phases where I would get less than 1-2 hours of sleep per night resulting in cognitive decline, memory loss, and vision issues where I would lose bits of what I was looking at. It was almost as if I would scan a room and get a panoramic but huge chunks of the image were missing and I would have to rescan multiple times.
Sleep is one of the most important states our bodies experience and without it, our healing, both emotionally and physically can’t happen.
Anytime we look at “issues” in the body we want to look at it from a place of curiosity and the understanding that the body is simply communicating a message. To understand the message more deeply we look for combinations of symptoms and context. If you are struggling with sleep and feel at the end of your rope, I invite you to take a deep breath and just get curious. Try not to assign meaning or fear to the situation but rather an openness to the desires body to get you to homeostasis. We just need to translate the messages.
There are 4 main contributing factors that I have found to be the most impactful to address and those are light, cycle, cortisol, and parasites. Look for overlaps in the areas too.
Light: Our circadian rhythm is dictated by light and this applies to both males and females. We are regulated by the light of the sun and moon which set the pace for our body’s 24-hour clock. When we use artificial light (blue light especially, it sends mixed messages to the body as to the time of day and when we need to be winding down for sleep or gearing up for the day. During the full moon, we naturally produce less melatonin which is the hormone responsible for initiating sleep.
Women are also heavily connected to the moon. The current understanding is that a woman’s natural 28-day cycle would fall so that her ovulation would land right at the full moon due this being “prime baby-making time”. Because of the higher light, our ancestors would have potentially been more active and even used this time to do fun activities and or even hold ceremonies under the light of the full moon.
This is largely debated but it does resonate so I thought I would mention it.
If you are staring at screens just before bed, have light on in your room when you are trying to sleep (especially blue light! Even if it’s a light for a fan or heater), try eliminating that all an hour before bed and keeping your room dark and see if that helps.
Your female cycle: To touch back on the idea that women are biologically tuned to ovulate during the full moon for baby-making opportunities, this would be before artificial light affected our hormones and cycle. Most women don’t have an exact 28-day cycle and humans are largely affected by the electric smog we encounter which can alter our cycles further. I can say I experience 28 or 29-day cycles and that 1-day difference means I sync up to the full moon for ovulation for several months and then I start a journey where I eventually since up with the new moon for a few months. It’s flexible and that’s okay! But it’s so important to be aware of what your body does and when and here’s why:
If you are already sleeping a bit more lightly due to the strength of the moon’s light with a drop in melatonin and then move through ovulation, you are experiencing a huge amount of energy in your body! Our ovulatory phase is when we are at our peak energy, have a heightened creative state, and are more excitable. You may notice a little bit of restlessness, racing thoughts, or an abundance of creative ideas during ovulation because this extra energy is keeping you in “go” mode. This is what I’m experiencing now! I have had two or three days of struggling to fall and stay asleep and, because I know my body and have a lot of awareness about how it works, I don’t feel the need to assign anything to this state and it keeps me from spiraling into a place of fear that I’ll stop sleeping. That fear only keeps you ruminating and further contributes to the thoughts keeping you awake.
Knowing your cycle, tendencies, and how you interact with the moon can free you from a lot of stress! I am incredibly creative and productive right now so I simply take advantage of this extra energy to make blogs and podcasts and get a little more done. This will set me up for plenty of space to rest during my menstrual phase. Remember, you do not have the same 24-hour energy cycle as a man! You have extended periods of energy, or rest, that span multiple days. This allows you to get more done in a three-day period than the average guy can get done in a week (and on the flip side this also means setting up a couple of days for rest whereas a guy gets his recovery in doses each day- we work differently and that’s a beautiful thing!) but if we try to do the same thing day in and day out without honoring these energy periods, we miss out on the opportunity to live optimally.
Cortisol: Cortisol is a stress hormone that can be a wonderful hormone to move us into action but too much wreaks havoc on the female body, taxing our adrenals, causing sleep disorders, damaging our hormones, and so much more.
According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, our bodies go through specific phases of healing for each organ during the night. For example, the liver processes toxins and enters repair mode between 1 and 3 am, and when we have an abundance of toxins, our body releases cortisol to combat them as it helps to reduce inflammation. Because it’s an action-producing hormone, if you get a large dump of cortisol during the night it will wake you up! If you wake up consistently between 1 and 3, it may be that you aren’t processing waste well, may be hindered by a gallstone, etc.
However, sometimes, the physical symptoms are manifesting because of an underlying emotion. The liver is heavily associated with anger, frustration, and rage; so if you’re waking up at 3 it might be because you’re repressing emotions that you must work through.
There are lots of beautiful herbs like Dandelion that can help support your liver, eating organ meats from grass-fed beef can be incredibly healing, and also addressing emotional components can be huge. Many women have liver symptoms from underlying emotions (this was me!) and this can slow down the liver and lead to poor processing of estrogen and, in turn, excess estrogen leading to a host of health problems like PCOS, weight gain, and more. Remember, the body is complex and constantly speaking to you and seeking harmony.
The last item on my list is parasite load. I know that’s not glamorous and may even freak you out so let me preface this one by saying your body is an ecosystem made of all sorts of microbes, bacteria, fungi…and yes even parasites. All humans have some parasites, bacteria, and “germs” and the right kinds in the right amounts are actually beneficial to us. Humans need parasites to help train our immune systems and by ridding our environment of germs, we may be shortchanging our immune systems. This leads us to a culture with a higher rate of autoimmune disease and allergies because our bodies aren’t primed to respond to threats appropriately and go kind of haywire.
It is estimated that upwards of 70% of people might have parasitic infestations which manifest as a variety of symptoms.
Our ancestors and many indigenous tribes have known for centuries that parasite cleansing is necessary for optimal health. If you’ve ever eaten sushi, you know wasabi is part of the dish. This is because real wasabi -made from the wasabi plant and not the fake kind you get at grocery stores- is a powerful anti-parasitic.
Parasites have evolved with us and not all of them are bad news. It is when the body is weakened (through high stress and taxed adrenals, for example), that they do have the potential to push the immune system into an imbalanced state.
So, what can happen is many people’s symptoms ramp up around the full moon or they struggle with sleep as their body is combatting a surge of inflammation. This is due to the parasites’ life cycle in which they are more active and reproducing during full moons (seems like a theme here doesn’t it? This is actually one of the reasons the theory that women are primed to ovulate during this time resonates with me- this is found all throughout the animal kingdom). These circadian rhythms affect all of us. During the full moon, we naturally produce less melatonin and more serotonin, which these parasites are attracted to. There are serotonin receptors on human cells and parasites as well. Parasitic worms use serotonin to help them move. When they have access to higher serotonin levels during the moon’s full phase, they can move around more freely.
Being aware of these 4 elements and being proactive with them helped me move through horrible insomnia. I had so many people tell me unhelpful things like, “add the sound of water to your room to help you relax!”, or “just take some NyQuil.”…and I got more and more frustrated when nothing seemed to work.
When we look at symptoms as messages and not problems we aren’t so quick to cover them up and instead we have the opportunity to be curious and think outside the box to find balance.
Hot tips:
Exactly 12 hours after an organ is in repair mode, it enters an activity state. Therefore, if you find yourself waking up between 1 and 3 am but sluggish between 1 and 3 pm when the liver is supposed to activate your energy, you can assume the liver is overloaded and needs some attention.
Creating a bedtime routine DOES help start the sleep phase. I laughed at this one for years before trying it and finding it pretty impactful. Routine communicates to the body that it’s time to get into a specific state and the steps you take help structure what state you’re inducing. If it’s all calming, slow, restorative actions you are setting the tone for the state you desire and the body will start to mirror your actions.
It’s okay to wake up at 3 and go create or get out your thoughts. It’s okay to lean into what you’re feeling and not stick to the rigidity and expectation of today’s culture. I can say from experience if I’m struggling to sleep it’s usually because I am motivated to express and need to take advantage of the clarity I have- once I do that I have no problem getting z’s.
I find for myself if I have trouble STAYING asleep and wake up at the same time every night it’s usually an organ imbalance but if I have trouble FALLING asleep or am just restless the whole night it’s because I’ve got the energy to spare. Awareness is everything in deciding the messages from your body.
