Are You A Night Owl? (insomnia, sleep apnea, thyroid, adrenals & gut health!)

Would you consider yourself a night owl?  

One of those people who does their best work at night, you get a “second wind”, maybe feel “wired but tired”, or have trouble falling asleep before midnight.

I’m definitely not, never have been.  

But many of my clients come to me proclaiming that they are “naturally” night owls, and often times they have been for most of their lives…that is until we start working together and find what’s really been keeping them up at night.

I don’t believe anyone is a true night owl.  

We’re not meant to be night owls- it’s in our very DNA.  People are diurnal (aka day dwelling creatures) unlike our beloved pet cats and many other nocturnal (night dwelling) creatures.

The first ever research about human primal sleep patterns was released this year and guess what it showed – we are meant to fall asleep within about 2 hours after sunset and naturally wake up about 20 minutes prior to sunrise.

Yet a lot of us struggle to get  to sleep before midnight, dread the alarm clock going off before 7am and have to drag ourselves out of bed.

There are a lot of things that disrupt our sleep patterns these days.  Some of the most commonly known ones are; artificial light exposure, lack of exposure to sunlight during the day, too much sugar and alcohol in our diet and city noise.

But there’s one thing (actually three) that secretly disrupt your sleep.

You can’t see, hear or even feel these things most of the time.  They lay in the darkness and wait for the sun to go down before they start screwing with your sleep.

I’m talking about parasites, bacteria and yeast overgrowth in your gut.

These gut invaders are nocturnal organisms, so when you’re ready for bed they are just getting the party started.

In this week’s video and blog I talk more about how these gut invaders disrupt your sleep, why being a night owl isn’t normal and how it all sets you up for thyroid and hormone imbalances, sleep apnea, insomnia and more!

Let’s set the scene for how sleep basically works in the body…

Cortisol along with melatonin are the two primary hormones that regulate your sleep and wake cycles.

Cortisol is what gives you energy to get up in the morning.  It should be at its highest level right around the time you wake up and then it slowly tapers off throughout the day until darkness when it reaches its lowest point just after sunset, allowing you to fall asleep.

Then enters melatonin which rises after sunset as it starts to get dark, to keep you sleeping soundly.  As the sun rises, it becomes brighter outside and melatonin lowers so you can wake up with cortisol again.

Unfortunately gut invaders mess with this beautiful dance between cortisol and melatonin.

Cortisol is also our stress hormone and gut invaders cause a LOT of internal stress.  With their nocturnal nature, they get active when darkness falls causing a lot of internal chaos and distress.  This internal stress then spikes your cortisol levels at night and disrupts your sleep pattern.  

This spike in cortisol at night from gut invaders is the “second wind” or “wired but tired” feeling you might be familiar with- it’s artificial energy.

Melatonin is mainly produced in the gut, about 80% of it to be exact.  When gut invaders are present they can cause two things to happen…

One- Melatonin is also a natural antioxidant, 200% more powerful than vitamin C. The body recognizes gut invaders as an “infection” causing the body to pump out more melatonin to fight the infection, thus disrupting your normal melatonin patterns and sleep.

Two- The chaos that gut invaders ensue suppresses melatonin production over time as they damage the intestinal lining where melatonin is made, making it hard for you to go and stay asleep.

When gut invaders are present, the adrenals also start to go into overdrive, pumping out cortisol trying to keep up with the internal stress and working to adapt to irregular sleep patterns.

Once cortisol and melatonin are out of balance it’s like a domino effect.

The thyroid is usually the next to go down since it’s so closely regulated by the adrenals, and all hell breaks loose.

One of the number one symptoms of Hypothyroidism is insomnia.  If you have insomnia then, is it really insomnia?  Or do you just need to check your thyroid and adrenal function, and for gut invaders that are triggering them to be out of balance?

People with sleep apnea (a disorder that affects sleep quality because of blocked breathing pathways) also suffer from daytime fatigue, apathy and feeling lethargic which are also symptoms of Hypothyroidism, dysfunctional cortisol and melatonin rhythms.

Hypothyroidism may contribute to sleep apnea by enlarging the tongue, a condition called macroglossia.  But what’s contributing to the Hypothyroidism in the first place, intensifying it and causing macroglossia?  Yep, those darn gut invaders.

I work backwards to solve things like insomnia, sleep apnea, and general poor sleep quality to find the underlying hormone imbalances in the thyroid and adrenals, and ultimately I always find a gut invader as being one of the biggest underlying contributors to all of this chaos.

Start to reconsider your night owl-ness, insomnia, sleep apnea and thyroid imbalances.  Are they really that plain and simple, or are there underlying healing opportunities like gut invaders yet to be discovered?

Join me next Tuesday (9/13 – note date changed from 9/8) with Master Life Coach and Hashimoto’s Thriver, Molly Hamill, for our FREE webinar Your Gut: the Secret to Healing Your Adrenal and Thyroid Issues

We’ll be talking more about how gut invaders impact your hormones, sleep and overall health, how to go about testing for them and getting rid of them!

REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR HERE!