Episode 12: How Sleep Can Trigger Thyroid Issues + Four Things To Do To Get Better Sleep
Sleep can be a complicated piece of our health and wellness to solve because there are so many factors that contribute to getting a good night's sleep. But that is also an indicator of the impact that not sleeping has on the various parts of our health…. and our thyroid health is no different.
In this episode, we’re talking about how important sleep is to your thyroid health, your adrenal health, and your overall health. And of course, I have a few simple shifts that you can do to start making an impact in this area today… actually, a good bit of our episode today is covering quite a few sleep interventions so that you can choose a few things to do, and then continue to stack some good sleep habits on top of each other to create the restful nights of sleep that promote the healing and energy and focus that we all want.
Glad you're here,
Sarah
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
Adrenal Dysfunction Assessment: bit.ly/thyroid-tools
Products and Tools to Support The Adrenal Glands & Healthy Cortisol Levels: bit.ly/thyroid-tools
Disclaimer: Information shared on this podcast and any referenced websites are not to be taken as medical advice or to be used as a diagnosis or treatment plan for any medical condition. I’m sharing my educated opinions & experience but nothing shared here can be taken on a one size fits all basis and we always recommend you do your own research, talk to your own doctors and practitioners, and take full responsibility for any health & medical choices you make.
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Want to read this episode instead? Here’s the transcript!
So you probably know that sleep is important. Maybe you've thought about how you really should get better sleep, or perhaps the incessant feeling of exhaustion that you feel throughout your day constantly reminds you of how important sleep really is, or maybe at least nudges you towards wanting to take a nap. Sleep can be a super complicated piece of our health and wellness to solve because there are so many factors that contribute to getting a good night's sleep, but it's also an indicator that the impact of not sleeping has a tremendous effect on various parts of our health and our thyroid health is no different. So in this episode, we are talking about how important sleep is to your thyroid health, to your adrenal health, and to your overall health in general because as we talk about often on this podcast, nothing exists in a vacuum.
Certainly nothing heals in a vacuum. And so of course I'll have a few simple shifts that you can make to start having an impact in this area of sleep today. Actually, a good bit of our episode today is covering quite a few sleep interventions that you can choose to kind of focus on those, just a couple things to do and then continue to stack some good sleep habits on top of each other to create a restful night of sleep that promotes healing and energy and focus and all the good things that we want. So grab a notebook and a pen and let's get started with today's episode. Before we jump in, I love to point into the quizzes that I've created that are just these little online quizzes that help you to discern where your symptoms are coming from and thus where you should really focus your energy and efforts on.
So this week I wanna encourage you to take the quiz that is most associated with sleep issues, and that is the Adrenal Dysfunction Symptom assessment. And I'm always so excited to share just these quick assessment tools with you, particularly this one this week, which is, especially for people working on thyroid health issues that are feeling fried, maybe not getting restful sleep, potentially have cravings for sweeter, salty foods and just really can't get to some answers on what's going on. Even if you've been working on those thyroid issues for a while but still aren't feeling good, a lot of times this can point to issues with our adrenals. And so since sleep deprivation is one of the fastest ways to land yourself into adrenal dysfunction, if you're struggling to get good quality sleep, then assessing what's going on with your adrenals is a great place to start.
So you can head to the link in the show notes or go to bit.ly/thyroid-tools and you can take the adrenal dysfunction quiz. You'll see it linked right there along with other quizzes and tools that I have linked up as well. This will help you to see where you're at with in terms of your, your adrenal glands. And this is a great tool to come back to from time to time to see what gains you've made in resolving these symptoms as you sort of chip away at things. So, head to bit.ly/thyroid-tools to take the short quiz, assessing the symptoms that are keeping you from feeling good as you move through your days.
Welcome to the Natural Thyroid Fix. I'm Sarah Geissinger, a holistic lifestyle and nutrition coach and former hypothyroid mom who has reversed her thyroid disease using a natural approach to thyroid health. Trust me, I know what it feels like to move through the life in a brain fog, needing a nap by mid-afternoon and constantly be cleaning the hair you've lost outta the shower drain. Do you know what I'm talking about? If you're here, I bet you do. So if you're ready to reject the notion that this tired hypothyroid life is as good as it gets and start implementing simple natural strategies to live a vibrant symptom-free life, then this is the podcast for you. Let's dive into today's show. Well, hello and welcome back. You're joining us for the first time. Welcome. My name's Sarah Geisinger and I'm glad you're here.
Why am I not sleeping well?
So today we're talking about sleep, which is something that I think, especially as women, especially as moms, this is a common issue, right?
And when I was first dealing with my thyroid issues, the thing that was so frustrating is that everybody kept telling me to get good sleep, get more sleep. It's kind of like the the advice we give to new moms where we say, oh, just sleep when the baby sleeps. That's what you have to do. And that's just so hard. It's like easier said than done, right? And it's true, it is easier said than done, but it is good advice. We really need to sleep because if we're not sleeping, then we're not healing. And so if you are someone who's dealing with thyroid issues, sleep is really incredibly important. And focusing on sleep is one of the most foundational, I would say, most important things that you can do. And I get it. Figuring out sleep issues can be tricky because there are lots of different reasons that people don't sleep.
Some people aren't getting good sleep because their hormones are out of whack. Some people aren't getting good sleep because they're stressed out. Some people aren't getting good sleep because they struggle with digestive issues. Some people aren't getting good sleep cuz they have a baby, or they have a elementary school age kid that still wakes up in the night, or maybe they're not sleeping because they're stressed out because their teenager just got their driver's license and still isn't home yet. Many different reasons why sleep can be a challenge, but I'm here to tell you that if you are someone who struggles with thyroid issues or if you've worked on thyroid issues a bit and you've determined that you're dealing with some adrenal dysfunction too, on top of that, then cracking the problem of sleep is critical to your healing. I'm gonna go so far as to say is you will not heal if you do not solve the sleep problem.
Why is sleep so important?
And so as we jump in today, we're gonna be talking about sleep, how it affects our bodies, and then I have a whole slew of things that you can sort of pick and choose to address and start to work on. Sleep is the primary healing time for our bodies and for our brains. So this is really important. If we don't get adequate quality sleep, our health suffers. I mean, and we feel this, this is like a no brainer. When you, when you don't sleep well, you don't feel good. It's difficult to do even the most basic things. We just don't feel good. I feel like my body hurts a little bit more. My temper's a little bit shorter. I can't focus, I'm, I can't, it's a struggle just to get through the basic things of the day, right? And that doesn't even address the health the health impact.
That's just kind of like the <laugh> daily life impact. There's this a bunch of statistics that show that rates of chronic illness and also mortality rates are three times higher or maybe even more depending on some circumstances in sleep deprived people. So sleep is no joke in terms of its impact on our health, our wellness and everything. And lack of sleep is basically the body reads it as a huge stressor. And, and that is the kind of the quickest way to cause disruption in what we know to be our H P A access, which is the hypothalamus pituitary access adrenal access. And so this is kind of the, the loop of kind of hormones and messengers that are telling our body to have certain amounts of different hormones to be able to keep our body functioning well. And when this gets disrupted through any number of stressors, but sleep is just the biggest stressor, then adrenal dysfunction is what ensues.
And when we have adrenal dysfunction, we have issues with our adrenals, and that has direct correlation to what's happening in our thyroid as well. This simply having dysfunction in our adrenal glands and our, and this, this H p a axis connection, all these hormones kind of talking to each other, making sure that the levels are are correct and imbalanced simply having dysfunction there that can perpetuate autoimmune thyroid disease, which is the most common reason for h for being hypothyroid, for not having enough thyroid hormone. And so adrenal dysfunction can come from literally anything that sends like a dangerous signal to the body. Like I said, sleep is a big one, but also not eating enough calories that sends a signal to the body that we maybe are in the midst of a famine, working in a high demanding job that sends the signal to the body that we are, you know, we're under stress.
There's a lot of pressure. Maybe we're involved in relationships that aren't healthy, even things like nearly being hit by a car. What happens in the, this is the, i I go into this more deeply in other episodes, but basically what happens is there's a spike when we're in sort of these dangerous situations or what our body perceives to be a dangerous situation. There's a spike in cortisol. This is one of the hormones that the adrenal glands make the most important one. There's a spike in cortisol, there's a spike in adrenaline. And so, you know, say you're gonna be nearly hit by a car, you have the spike in those two things. That is the burst of energy that allows you to kind of zip out of the way so you don't get hit by the car. Maybe you're being chased by an animal as our, you know, primitive ancestors might have been bur that burst of cortisol.
That burst of adrenaline is what gets you outta the way, what saves your life, what keeps you safe. And that is cortisol's job. And so these signals that our body is getting all the time basically tells our body it needs to shift into survival mode. It might need another burst of energy, doesn't need to put so much energy into more like rested things like making our hair grow or reproducing. It needs to send signal. It needs to send energy and effort into getting our body out of the way of the oncoming car in survival mode. And so when we get danger signals, we shift into survival mode. But we, the problem is, is that in modern life, we oftentimes have too many <laugh> danger signals coming at us all the time because modern life is chronically stressful. And so we're constantly kind of calling on the body to send out the, the cortisol, to send out the adrenaline to get us out of stress.
And our body can't really tell the difference between real threats, real dangers and perceived dangers. And so these never ending, the never ending presence of really stressful, but not threatening, non-life threatening situations, that can lead to a constant activation of the stress response. And so when we have a constant activation of our stress response, then the body after a time just sort of quits and says, you know what? Forget it. We're not doing anything. We're not giving you any amount of cortisol in the right level or at the right time because it can't tell the difference between real threats, perceived threats real stressors, perceived stressors, any of that. And sleep deprivation is probably the fastest way to trigger this over constant activation of the stress response. And so the way it works kind of in our body at a physiological level is this demand for cortisol.
When there is a a demand for cortisol, the body decreases production of other hormones that normally it would be producing. The adrenal glands would be producing things like progesterone, D H E A, testosterone like our, our sex hormones. When cortisol, when there's a com a call for more cortisol, then the adrenals sort of shift gears and decrease production of those other things, which is, can means that stress can cause a hormone imbalance eventually with enough chronic stress. This h p access, the connection between, you know, our brain, our adrenals, everything, and, and our thyroid ultimately too is connected in there. Eventually with enough cr chronic stress, the HPA axis just sort of becomes overwhelmed and desensitized to that typical feedback loop. And it just stops sending messages to the adrenals to produce more hormones or less hormones. And no matter what's happening, it just doesn't do it effectively.
And this whole breakdown really affects the thyroid because every time there are high levels of cortisol in the body, it slows down thyroid hormone production. Meaning that if you are constantly under stress, if your body, if your adrenals are constantly throwing more cortisol into your bloodstream with elevated levels of cortisol, it can really have a big impact on thyroid function. Because every time there's a higher level of cortisol in your body, the thyroid is not making enough of its hormones. This also in these early stages, high cortisol, it increases antibody production, which is basically the immune system starts attacking the thyroid even more. And that inhibits the conversion of inactive thyroid hormone into active thyroid hormone. Inactive thyroid hormone is called t4, and it needs to get converted into the active thyroid hormone, which is t3. And when cortisol increases because of stress, because of lack of sleep, all of those things, then we can't even, not only are we not making enough thyroid hormone, our body's not making enough thyroid hormone, the thyroid hormone that it is making, it's not converting it into its active form.
At the same time I was gonna, it's like I feel like I'm saying, but wait, there's more. There are more bad things going on when we don't sleep and we have too much stress and we're constantly living in this sort of stressed out nons sleeping, sleep deprived state. At the same time, cortisol promotes the production of something called reverse t3. Reverse T3 is sort of like fake out active thyroid hormone. So active thyroid hormone is t3, reverse T3 is like a fake, it's a inactive thyroid molecule, but it's, that's able to bind to the receptor sites of where the T3 is supposed to bind. And so the cells will take in the reverse T3 sort of thinking that it is getting real t3, but it's not. It's getting an inactive thyroid hormone. And so this prevents the necessary reactions that are needed within a cell for thyroid hormone and leads to hypothyroid symptoms.
Sleep Deprivation & Thyroid Health
And so this is a problem. There's a lot of problems. So sleep deprivation can also cause symptoms that we like, feel, you know, all the things I just mentioned, you might not be able to like put your finger on it, or maybe when, once you're aware you can be like, whoop, that must be what a spike in cortisol feels like. I'm feeling a little like, you know, energy surge there for a second. But you know, you're not gonna, when you're feeling sleep deprived, you're not going to be like, whoop, must be producing too much T3 and not converting my T4 to t3, even though that's what actually is happening on a physiological level. But what we feel is sleep deprivation causing the symptoms like fatigue or brain fog, insomnia, which is the stupidest thing when you're so tired that you can't go to sleep. There can be blood pressure issues and also just a decrease ability to handle stress.
These are the things that we actually experience, right? And so that's, that is a problem with sleep deprivation as so many of those things sound very similar to the symptoms that we have when we're describing symptoms of hypothyroidism. Additionally, many people with hypothyroidism already have some degree of adrenal issues. And so yeah, I get there's like a chicken and egg thing. Did this, did this stuff start because you weren't sleeping? Or did sleep problems start once the thyroid and adrenal issue started? You know, who knows, really, there's some, an argument to be made for both. But getting good sleep at regular intervals is so, so important for balance, and that is the part of your body that it affects the most is the adrenal health. And that is really, really important to our thyroid. Feeling good, to our adrenals working well, well, not our thyroid feeling good.
I mean, I want my thyroid to feel nice, but <laugh>, I want my thyroid to work well so that I can feel good. Same with our adrenals, my adrenals working well so that we can feel good and have good balanced levels and appropriate sleep response. It's especially important for us to get deep sleep, which is the most restorative stage of sleep and promotes muscle repair and it supports healthy metabolism. And so making sure that our brain gets to the REM sleep, like rapid eye movement sleep, it's like the sleep promise land is vital because that's the stage where the brain starts to filter out information that it's received during the previous day. It heals the muscles. It kind of downloads our short-term memory to our long-term memory. And so quality sleep by doing that quality sleep helps reduce brain fog. It's that short-term to long-term memory transfer that kind of clears up the brain fog.
So all of this happens during sleep, getting a good night's sleep, it's a matter of making sleep a priority. So for some people the trick is getting to sleep, like the process of actually getting to sleep. For other people it's the getting to sleep and then staying asleep, which is a challenge. And so there are lots of different ways that sleep issues manifest themselves. And so I know that it is easier said than done when you can't sleep or you struggle with sleep. It's, it's something that is, it's much easier said than done than to solve this problem. But I wanna talk a little bit about the connection here and then give you some solutions to sort of, to sort of work at. So let's take a look at how the thyroid is specifically affected by lack of sleep. We've all heard of circadian rhythms, right?
And that's the body's natural 24 hour biological clock. It helps us feel really energetic in the morning and when the sun's out and feel sleepy in the evening. But a lot of times what can happen, especially when we're dealing with hypothyroidism, because there's a high likelihood that you're dealing with adrenal issues, what can happen is that circadian rhythm can be just totally thrown off, especially with well <laugh>, especially with our modern life and, and the way that we sort of live at a high pace, we have a lot of exposure to what's known as junk light or blue light not actual just like natural light anyway. So our circadian rhythm is really kind of easy to get it thrown out of balance, especially in modern life. And when that happens, it can leave us with fatigue during the day. An increase in sugar cravings and all of those things can make it hard to fall asleep at night, even if our body's tired.
Lack of sleep can cause hypothyroidism
Our endocrine system is composed of all of the hormones in the body, all kind of connected and tied the adrenals in the thyroid and, you know, other, other things as well. But it is all entwined with circadian rhythm. Tsh, for example, is known to be heavily influenced by the sleep cycle. And so if your sleep wake cycle is thrown off your ts h levels are likely off as well. So there's a couple interesting studies that are kind of demonstrate the connection between sleep and hypothyroidism. So back in 2019, there was a study of a bunch like 5,000 participants who slept less than seven hours per night. And then there were the other group who slept greater than eight hours per night. And the ones that were more likely to have subclinical hypothyroidism compared to those who slept seven to eight hours per night.
And so that means that the less sleep you get, the more likely you are to have hypothyroidism. And so that is, I mean, that's noteworthy. I think i, I really wish that I would've known about that when I was <laugh> in my early twenties pushing, you know, late night hours during my college years and not paying attention to that at all. Another study showed that slow wave sleep, which is the deepest, the, the rem sleep, the deepest dreamless sleep, it was reduced in those who had hypothyroidism. And so if you are someone who struggles with hypothyroidism, you are likely not even getting based on this research, not even getting the deepest sleep, because that deep sleep is really important for the body to heal and repair and detox. So not getting that cri to that critical sleep phase, it can impact your body's ability to even heal itself from hypothyroidism or Hashimoto's thyroiditis simply because you're not ever getting there.
Your likelihood of getting there if you have hypothyroidism is already decreased. And in 2006 there was a study based on shift workers, which shift workers people who are, are working these odd hours, but they found that third shift workers who typically have just disrupted sleep patterns because of working overnight and trying to sleep during the day and trying to live a regular life around that too. But they showed that shift workers had a greater risk for developing thyroid antibodies, that their immune system was more likely to attack their thyroid in a thy in an autoimmune thyroid disease compared to daytime workers. And so there's a lot of actual research then that continue to look at the impact of shift work and and its impact on thyroid health as well. And every single one of the studies showed that working like those overnight shifts really negatively impacts thyroid health and the rate of thyroid health amongst, among especially third shift workers is really high.
And so there's a lot of implications there. I thought that was super interesting with those studies. But because thyroid hormones play such a big role in sleep quality I always suggest that people know their numbers. If you have not gotten your blood work done and gotten a full thyroid panel done recently, then you should. So make sure that you head to your doctor and request TSH free T3 and free T4 testing. You can also get, I always recommend getting tested for antibodies, but those things are really important to know where you're at and then determine if you need to make some adjustments maybe to your thyroid medication or to your, just some lifestyle things that can help you help them work a little bit better. But it's really important to know what your labs are, and so work with your doctor to get that testing done.
And then you can also, if you head to my link in the show notes, then you can get the thyroid testing tip sheet, which gives you some more functional ranges so you can see if your, your levels fall within those ranges. But I always think that's so, so helpful because of the connection between the way that thyroid hormones impact sleep and the way that the adrenals are impacting sleep in really all of our hormone levels. So it's really helpful and important. Okay, so I wanna give you a few things that you can do today to start moving the needle towards improving your sleep. And these aren't gonna be all you need to do or maybe have a massive impact at one shot, but that's the deal with approaching thyroid and really any health issues from a holistic perspective. Healing comes as a culmination of small steps combined together to create a massive impact.
How can I get better sleep with hypothyroidism?
And so normally I just give you like two or three things super simple to focus on, but because sleep is such a, a nuanced thing and that that focus might need to vary from person to person, as I move through these suggestions, I'd encourage you to pick maybe one or two things to focus on for a week or so, and then maybe add in another stack, another element of getting good sleep on top of what you've already done. Okay, so I'm gonna jump in here. So the first thing that I would encourage you to do is clean up your sleep hygiene. So sleep hygiene is what we call the environment and the conditions that you sleep in. And for a lot of people it could use some work. So here is a sort of a little checklist of things that you might wanna consider to promote good sleep hygiene.
Limiting caffeine for better sleep
So the first one is limiting caffeine or moving it to earlier in the day. And caffeine intake can definitely impact sleep, especially if you're really sensitive to its stimulating effects. And so for some people you might need to totally eliminate caffeine to be beneficial. And I, but I also get that it's not possible for all people. It's not preferable, right? So I would encourage you to at least limit caffeine to just the morning and definitely restrict caffeine after 2:00 PM Get any caffeine you're gonna have for the day, get that in before 2:00 PM or whatever, eight hours before you go to sleep. That's kind of the magic window if you're gonna have caffeine.
Sunlight for Hypothyroidism
The second thing is to get adequate sunlight in the morning and throughout the day getting outside. And so this is like a, a, a thing in modern life that how many, you know, how many of us are just not getting as much sunlight as we really should be?
And so the, the, the timing of light that we get throughout a day can really have an effect on our circadian rhythm. And so the goal here is to sort of bring your body back into a natural circadian rhythm. And so I getting outside for at least 20 minutes within the first hour of waking up and hopefully, well, the ideal situation is that you would be able to do that before 8:00 AM but even if you're waking up later, getting outside as soon as possible is really helpful to shift that circadian rhythm and also do it with without wearing any sunglasses. So naked eyes <laugh>, because getting that sunlight into your eyes is what really helps your body to trigger like, oh, this is what morning sun feels like, this is what the morning feels like. And, and that is really helpful. So no sunglasses, sun first in the morning for about 20 minutes.
That is the best thing to do. So take your dog for a walk outside, do it in your pajamas if you want to, and don't wear any sunglasses. That is really helpful. It activates morning cortisol production. It helps kind of reset that circadian rhythm for the day and helps get our body in tune with the natural cycles of sunlight. So that is good.
Adequate Darkness for Optimal Sleep
The next thing is to sleep in a dark room. And so you're gonna wanna put in a little effort to make your room darker. So if you don't have blackout curtains, get blackout curtains and turn off all the lights, including any night lights. Some people love to wear a sleep mask, so if that's your jam, wear a sleep mask and maybe cover any blinking lights or maybe little blue lights. You can use just like a piece of black electrical tape or a sticker or something, a whatever light you might have in your room that that would be just kind of giving off any light.
Make your room as dark as possible. I would also encourage you to get an alarm clock or whatever clock you have that allows you to shut its light off, or if nothing else, you can just kind of turn it facing away from you so that you're not seeing any light. So sleep in a dark room, get your room as dark as you can. I would also encourage you to ensure that your phone doesn't blink or anything at night. And best case scenario is to get your phone out of your bedroom. I would, yeah, that would, that would be the best case scenario. It'd get your phone outta your room, use an alarm clock and really unplug. There's a lot of other things that, that kind of would be beneficial with your phone too, but maybe we'll have a whole episode just on how to use your phone to support you <laugh> when you're trying to do some healing.
Okay, along the same lines with lights, turn the lights down in the evening for at least a half an hour, two hours before going to bed, just try and avoid bright lights. And so you can turn, some people turn out their lights and use like red lights or like those salt lamps, the, you know, to just have kind of a dim light for evening activities. And that helps to promote melatonin production naturally in your body. Cut off your screen time, whether it's TV or phone or computer usage about two hours before bedtime because that input of blue light is, can really mess up your ability for your body to produce melatonin. You can also, on your phone, there are like night mode settings on your phone, or you can wear blue blocker glasses, and that minimizes the effects of bright screens and how they impact the melatonin production as well.So those are some light management suggestions.
You Don’t Have to Sleep in Silence
I'd also encourage you to use some kind of white noise sound to help you sleep. And so soothing sounds can really help to promote sleep. And so you could use a fan. We have an air purifier that we use to sort of reduce the, reduce toxins in allergens and molds in our home. And so that also serves as a white noise, but you could use a white noise machine to block outside sounds as well and just make for a really prime sleep environment. Okay, so clean up your sleep hygiene. Maybe pick one or two things that you can do to polish up the sleep hygiene.
Create bedtime routines
All right, the second thing that I would encourage you to do is to create some routines around bedtime. So a few suggestions here as far as creating routines around bedtime is, number one, maybe start a, a journaling habit.
A lot of times the inability to actually fall asleep, it comes from sort of your mind spinning with the things of the day or what you need to do. And so sometimes just writing it down and kind of getting it out of your brain is a good way to de-stress and allow your brain to just be freed up to focus on something else. So you, you, I mean, you can write, you know, your feelings of the day if you want to, but here are some other ideas that maybe would be more, more effective for clearing your brain. One, just doing a brain dump. Any thought that comes into your head, just put it down in like a stream of consciousness that's kind of fun sometimes without any judgment. And then just close a notebook, let it go. If we're trying to remember the things that you need to do is what kind of gets in your way and gets kicked around in your brain.
Then make a little to-do list of what you need to do, what's stuck in your head, what you keep kind of hyper-focusing on. And then assign them for when a day that you can tackle them. You can look at it the next day as a way of sort of organizing what you need to get done. And so that can be a very effective thing to do as a bedtime wind down routine. And then the last suggestion there is to start a gratitude journal. Just take a few moments to write down the things that you're grateful for each day, the good things. And just notice how focusing on the good stuff in your day and in your life just can start to shift your attitude. So focusing on gratitude is just a really good practice overall. And then writing it in that journal is just like a double, double good double bonus.
Essential oils for sleep and hypothyroidism
And during that time, as far as bedtime routines go as well, I love to incorporate essential oils. And so this is a big, we use essential oils as sort of anchors throughout our day, whether we're transitioning to work or school or morning or sleep or naps or whatever <laugh>. We use different essential oils to anchor to the different parts of our day. And so I would encourage you to do the same, especially for bedtime. This is something that is so, so helpful, especially if you are someone who kind of suspects that you have a cortisol spike at night or you feel like you kind of get that second wind and you're like ready to go. What essential oils can do is they trigger your brain by just using the aromatherapy, they can trigger your brain to just kind of be like, oh, this is the time we calm down.
And then it starts to kind of cascade the, the different parts, the different hormones, the different signals and messengers in your body that your body needs to calm down and it's time to calm down. And the essential oils there are speci, the specific chemical constituents of essential oils help at a physiological level to do that as well. So there's a number of research studies out there that suggest that just simply breathing in certain essential oils can help lower stress and promote sleep. Also, applying them topically they absorb into your bloodstream, and then your circulatory systems acts as the delivery system for helping to promote lower stress and sleep. So there's a couple great essential oils that I love to suggest, either applying topically or diffusing so that it's sending a fine mist in the air with essential oils to breathe in. Or even just putting a couple drops on your pillow.
You can do that. So there's a couple that I love oils like lavender cedarwood vever bergamo, Roman chamomile frankincense. Those are all great, great sleepy oils. I I love to use doTERRA's oils because of their high quality and effectiveness. And I also love that they have specifically a few blends that take kind of a combination of all of the oils that all the, the best of all the sleep oils and combine them into a few blends like the serenity blend, the peace blend. I love the adaptive blend and I love to have those blends where it just takes like a good mix into a well-rounded blend of those oils that are focused on sleep. Those, those can be a very effective way. I have all of my favorites in terms of essential oils linked up at bit.ly/thyroid-tools, and you can head there.
And all of my favorite sleep essential oils are linked over there for you, so you can find that there. Okay, the, the number three thing that I would encourage you to focus on after cleaning up your sleep hygiene and working on some routines, I would encourage you to supplement for sleep. So there are a number of supplements that can support sleep. And so these are things that you would take at bedtime or maybe like 30 minutes or an hour before bedtime to support your sleep. And so I'm gonna list out a couple that I think are very handy. So the first one is melatonin. And this is probably one of the most commonly reached for sleep supplements. It's maybe not always the best to be used for long-term support, but melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone to support sleep and supplementing, supplementing with it is generally say for short-term use, but there's some research that suggests that there might be some negative long-term consequences.
And so I would suggest using this in a short-term way, not as like an every night thing because it's maybe not the most effective strategy, and there may be some long-term consequences in terms of so your body should be producing melatonin on its own, and if you're supplementing it with like the megadose that a melatonin supplement would offer, then it be, can kind of make your body think it doesn't need to make any more melatonin anymore. And so that's just the, the, the problem with long-term use, but short-term use, it can be very effective. The second one is magnesium. Magnesium deficiency can really be tied with trouble sleeping, and it's really important for helping us get to sleep. And so this is a, it, it actually is helpful in balancing our levels of glutamate, which is a, a neurotransmitter and not having enough of glutamate can lead to sleep deprivation and anxiety.
And so it also helps to produce serotonin, which is a precursor to melatonin, which is a sleep hormone. And so we need these things to sleep effectively. And so a lot of times if you have hypothyroidism, you are magnesium deficient. Actually, there's a lot of indicators that most of the American population anyway is magnesium deficient. An easy way to tell is if you are magnesium deficient is that you have a sensitivity to loud noises like you startle easily. But other noteworthy things are that as just kind of a constant struggle with anxiety or depression or getting headaches very often. If you have fatigue or constipation, cramps, pms, those are things that can be connected to magnesium deficiency as well. So magnesium is a great thing to supplement with. And I have my favorite magnesium supplement linked up in the show notes, so you can head there to look for that as well.
I have two different essential oil capsules that I like to take at bedtime and I think are very effective. The first one is doTERRA's serenity capsules, which contain altheine and a blend of essential oils that are taken in capsule form to calm down the body and the brain from the inside out. I love them. And find that I get my best sleep when I take them about 30 minutes before I take two serenity capsules and then I take one of doTERRA's cohiba essential oil. Okay? I take, I take it in capsule form, but you can either put it in just drop form under your tongue or in capsule form. And it's incredibly calming to the nervous system. It has an effect that's very similar to CBD oil at a fraction of the cost. And so that is always, always good, right? It's always a whim.
So cova essential oil and the serenity capsules are my go-tos at bedtime. And they're very effective at helping to calm the body down.
The food you eat affects your sleep
Okay, the last thing that I will just mention quickly here is number four is eating to sleep <laugh>. There's a lot of research, and I will dive into this in a further episode because there's just so much to talk about here. But balancing your blood sugar, the less spikes you can have in your blood sugar, the better you will sleep. And so I will only say for this, for this right now, increasing the amount of healthy fats that you eat and increasing the amount of protein that you eat will help balance your blood sugar. And the more balanced your blood sugar, the research shows, the better you will sleep. And so I would recommend reducing your intake of carb rich foods and making sure that you're consuming protein and fat especially in the evening time because this is something that we do not wanna have.
We don't wanna have a spike in blood sugar heading to bed. And so this is a little, little adjustment you can make for sleep. And again, we'll dive more into blood sugar in subsequent episodes, but more healthy fats, more protein so that you are eating, eating for sleep. Okay? I would encourage you, I know that is a lot there in terms of the suggestions and things that you can work on. I would encourage you to pick one or two, do 'em for a week, and then maybe add another one, stack it right on top, okay? So make some little shifts because that's what we do when we make little shifts over time, then that is how we heal. So I hope you're able to apply some of these things and make some small shifts toward feeling healthy and good and getting great sleep. Because I believe when you do it that way, when you focus on doable lifestyle shifts, living a symptom-free life is totally possible. And I want that for you.
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