Gut Health and Sleep
Today we are going to talk about the topic of gut health and what that has to do with your sleep. With me, I have a wonderful, super smart, and amazing team member, Martha Lewis.
Martha has multiple years of experience in leadership, team management, and running her own successful nutrition practice for 5 years.
As a pediatric sleep consultant, she has impacted hundreds of families and is now doing the same for adults. As a Sleep Like A Boss team member, she is combining physical insight through lab testing with stress resilience techniques, handling sleep in a holistic and efficient way.
Gut Health and Sleep
According to Martha, our gut health is sort of everything. As we know, 80% of our immune system is found in our gut, and what is living there, the billions and trillions of creatures, have a significant impact on our health.
If there is any kind of inflammation in our gut, which can be caused by things like an unhealthy aka leaky gut, or if you are sensitive to certain foods, that can cause inflammation. An infection, like a parasite, or bacterial overgrowth, or fungal overgrowth, all those things can cause inflammation. Whenever there's inflammation, our body releases cortisol, which is great because it's anti-inflammatory, but when that happens in the middle of the night, it wakes us right up. It can impact our energy levels, our mental health, like anxiety and depression. Sometimes it can also trigger digestive issues, skin issues, etc.
Good thing is that we can get to the root cause of it and fix your gut health!
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If you think it’s gut-related, you can take probiotics.
Figuring out what foods you are sensitive to is key as well. You can do that with an elimination diet, where you don't eat the big five allergens: dairy, wheat, soy, eggs, corn. Leave those out of your diet for a month, and then gradually add them back in and see what happens. Or you can do a food sensitivity test and find out immediately what foods you are sensitive to.
Another thing that is really important is finding out if you have a gut infection. Bacterial overgrowth is a big one as well as fungal overgrowth. You can test for fungal overgrowth or a quick Candida test, the so-called spit test. You take a small glass of water and you literally spit into it. If after a few minutes the spit is just floating on top, you most likely don't have Candida. If it starts slowly growing legs and sinking, then you possibly do. If it quickly sinks all the way to the bottom and grows “legs”, then you most likely have Candida.
But, the best way and the best tool to find out exactly what's going on in your gut is to do a gastrointestinal map. This is a test that literally tells us so much that's growing in your gut, whether you have a parasite, what kind of bacteria are growing there: good, bad, in between.
If you think that Martha is the perfect fit for you, go to our team page, and there you can find Martha and book a call with her by simply clicking on the scheduling button.
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