How To Fall Asleep Fast And Overcome Insomnia [For Good!]

I think you have to realize that every aspect of your health flows out of sleep. So if your sleep is not optimally in duration or in quality, your health will suffer. You cannot lack, sleep, and heal. Welcome to the imperfectly empowered podcast with DIY healthy lifestyle blogger on a former empower you to transform your life one imperfect day at a time.
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the imperfectly empowered podcast. I am your host, Anna former. Today we have Kelsey Jack on the show. Kelsey is a functional health practitioner and founder of the successful program called reclaim sleep. It is a six week course designed to get to the root of your sleep problems so that you can overcome insomnia for good.
Who is not excited about that. I am very excited to learn from Kelsey. Welcome sleep expert. Kelsey, Jack, how are you? I’m good. How are you doing well? I’m so excited about this. I can’t wait to chat about sleep. I’m excited. Yes. Oh my goodness. It’s my favorite favorite subject, but it comes from a lot of trauma, so yeah, it’s perfect.
Yes. It’s how our, our stories I think are like best learned sometimes. So yeah. Well, welcome to my husband’s like work area slash my recording closet. I really need to. Convert this to my own, but for now, I’m sorry. Kinda wants. No worries. No worries. We are real life yes. Yes. I’m all welcome to the imperfectly empowered podcast.
Well, about embracing the reality that exists and it’s often very imper. I always jokes it. People are like, I love your background. It’s so pretty. But in reality, if you could see like the rest of the room, I’m dressed by a house, stuck in a closet. This is a closet that I took the doors off, cuz we’re renting this house.
So love that though. I was watching the founder of buff bunny. It came outta San Antonio, that company, and she’s just like a really inspiring female entrepreneur. She’s grown her line to, from like nothing to global now. Yeah. And they bought this townhouse for the headquarters of buff money and she had a GC come in and like put in these doors that if you press a button.
You can’t see through them and then you press another button and it’s like through the townhouse. So it’s like a really cool take on like, just utilizing the space that you have just in a totally different non-traditional way, which I love. So, so you’re saying she was the reason for the see through doors was just to make it more of a studio.
Well, like when she recording or working it’s as if, you know, she has these doors in front of her, but then if like people come over or whatever, it’s it all automatically just glass doors that you can see. S interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It’s really cool. So that is really cool. Oh, I’ll store that away for later.
I love outside of the box ideas. Yeah. Yes, yes. Especially when I only have to press a button. That sounds yep. I know it’s cool. It was really neat. I love it. Well for everyone listening, we are here with Kelsey Jack. When I pulled you all. And I asked what was something that you wanted to hear about on the podcast?
Several of you said sleep, and I shouldn’t have been surprised by this because this is a massive, massive issue for so many of my fitness nutrition clients. This is true. Yes of men and women, but I primarily work with women. So this is, as you all know, something I’m incredibly passionate about. That is the holistic reset button for the body.
And yes, getting restorative sleep is essential for your health across all five pillar. Everything mm-hmm is affected by good sleep. So I decided to pull in an expert. This is Kelsey Jack, and we, I love pressing the rewind button a little bit. So you, you have this program called reclaim sleep, but then you also have yes.
A, it is under the umbrella of another company. And I like hearing how you got to where you are and why you are suddenly in this world of sleep expertise. That’s not something you like start and think I’m gonna be an expert on sleep one day. So how did you get here? No, and well, and I was kind of alluding to like the path that took me to where I’m at now was not rainbows and unicorns and it was not a happy story.
To answer your question. I have the brand holy well, and I just launched the holy well academy. So what that is is that encompasses all of your capabilities to come and work with me or work on that platform. So I have the reclaimed sleep course, but I just launched a 90 day signature program, which is fully customized.
Okay. For 90 days. And I pull labs and we work very closely together in that journey. However, mm-hmm, answering your question directly of my story. Yeah. My sleep issues started, you know, looking back, right. It’s always like 20, 20 vision. If you had known what you’d known you would’ve gone. Oh, that really makes sense.
So growing up, I had a really amazing childhood. My parents are amazing people. We grew up on a ranch. I grew up ranching roaming and riding horses and spent literally pretty much 24 7 outside. And if we were not on our ranch, we were at the baseball field with my brother because my brother was very competitive in baseball.
And so just like a really cool like country town, small community loved that. But unfortunately what we know now about the gut microbiome and the connection there, I was a cesarean baby and we inherit our mother’s microbiome and a lot of other health, you know, statistics and sort of things like that because she grew you for nine months and that’s what you’re born with.
And. I was a chronic ear infection baby. So I was always on antibiotics and eventually got tubes. And that helped quite a bit. Unfortunately, that spilled over into middle school and high school, high school. I was playing competitive soccer, running cheerleading, pretty much anything I could do. And it was really starting to show my energy levels were plummeting.
I was always getting injured. I had bone fractures constantly. And in fact, I to, to break up, take a break from cross country because I had to swim because my bone fractures were getting so bad. And just really lethargic was put on Accutane twice. Cause my skin was a wreck. Well, it’s no wonder looking back now why that is.
And I was eating a lot of trigger food, so gluten and my microbiome just was not in a good position. Fast forward to college, your kind of stepping into the great unknown there, right? Of. all these firsts and the stress is really, really high, especially freshman year. Like I went to a very disciplined school and so I felt prepared in that way, but I think it was just the amount of school that you’re going under your freshman year, but I loved school.
However, you know, you take this transition from high school to college. And I really realized at that point in time, how much my mom did for us at these moments where you’re just like grow this immense appreciation. And I was like, my mom cooked for us clean, you know, the whole thing. And of course we did stuff like that too, but you get to college and you’re like, okay, what do I eat?
What do I do outside of my normal day to day? And so I took. What I feel females do is they either swing in one extreme or the other. And I fell on the one extreme, and that was, I was running three times a day just to let go of my stress. And I wasn’t eating enough looking back. I didn’t know that at the time.
And it just really took a toll on my body. And so when I got married and we wanted to start a family, obviously got pregnant and here I was in labor. And first time labor is pretty traumatic for any mom, but I was in a 43 hour labor. I didn’t eat, sit, sleep, none of it. And I slept four hours the night I had my daughter.
And after that, I didn’t sleep for two weeks straight. So mix adrenal burnout with a like kind of PTSD at that point, honestly, mm-hmm and it really just highlighted, whoa, I am mentally not in a good space and I need sleep. And. This is kind of where the rubber met the road for me and my holistic health journey, because I former, prior to getting pregnant, I was struggling real talk with just chronic UTIs.
Um, we were newly married and once a month I was having a UTI and I was like, okay, I cannot live like this. Like the pain was horrible. Like you just, it’s not a quality of life you wanna endure. Yeah. So going the traditional medical route, cause you don’t know any better. My. PCP, my primary care provider at this point was like, you know what?
Like, you really need to go see a urologist, a specialist. And I was like, okay. Her solution to me was, okay, you need to be taking an antibiotic before every time. And I’m like, mm-hmm, what, like, that does not seem normal before every time. What, before I was having sex every time before sex take a I’ve antibiotic every single time.
Yeah. I’ve heard a standing prescription for antibiotics that as soon as you start to feel the symptoms, then you can start the antibiotics cuz you know your body. So I have never, ever heard that anyways. Yeah. That was her solution to like a preventative care. And so I called my mom and I was like, I’m pissed off.
Like this cannot be the solution. So we reached out to a good family friend who was a retired RN. She called me and she was like, has anyone ever told you to take a probiotic? Right. And I was like, I don’t even know what that is, but this was like 10 years ago now. Yeah. This was really when holistic health was kind of, you know, like in the seed stage, like people were kind of learning about it.
Yeah, sure enough. I took one probiotic, probiotic never had a UTI and have never had a UTI again. So something clicked that day, but I was, you know, child free at this, this point I was working, getting up early and I was the girl who, on the weekends, I earned my workout. So if I ate the night before I was at the gym, I had to make my hit class by seven 30 in the morning.
I specifically remember my husband being like, you need to let your body rest and recover. That’s how you build muscle. And I was like, you know, when you’re in that. Phase of like, I’m gonna do this. Mm-hmm there is no stopping what I’m gonna do. Mm-hmm and so I was just determined, but that’s really when I was like, oh my God, I’m really burning my body out.
Mm-hmm and sure enough, it put up postpartum. So similar to the UTI story, I wanted to kind of bridge that connection. There is. I went the natural route because I have my body just doesn’t react well to anesthesia. So I was like, you know what? I’m just gonna mind over matter. We’re gonna do a natural birth in the hospital.
I did it. I was successful at that. Very proud of myself. However, when these symptoms started to show and I was so desperate for sleep, I went to my midwife and I was like, what’s going on here? Surely it’s a hormonal shift, but I need answers. I need a solution in the meantime, like obviously sleep’s not gonna be that great with a newborn, but I’ve gotta be able to get some sleep.
I wasn’t napping. I wasn’t able to sleep. I literally felt like I could have gone out at night and run a marathon. That’s how much energy I had. And we’ll talk about that connection with cortisol and adrenals and a little bit, it was bad. And the only solution was, you know what I think we need to put you on a, a strong anti-anxiety and a strong sleeping medication.
And that was like, People I am getting so sick of here. Here’s your symptoms. Here’s a pill mm-hmm . And I just really felt in my spirit, there is something so much deeper going on here, and I want to make the connection of what is happening in my body, why these symptoms are appearing. And I just knew this was not a language of a body that was at peace with itself.
And so I went on this quest, if you will. And I think this is the greatest moment in life. When, when trials meet mission and it all kind of clicks for you. And so my cousin reached out to me and she was like, Hey, I think you really would be good at this program. And it was the nutritional therapy association.
And I was like, listen, if this will help me figure out what is going on with my body by while also providing answers for other people and other females that are equally as rattled with their symptoms, I’m gonna do. So every night, my baby turned four or five months old every night after she went down, I was studying.
And a year later I got certified as a nutritional therapist. And this really set me on the journey of figuring out how everything was related to sleep. And I’ll touch on this later too, but there’s a big trauma piece and trauma’s kind of taking a front seat in the holistic health space as well right now.
And as we know, we’re not just physical beings, we’re mental, emotional, and spiritual beings as well. And so I think addressing the root causes in addition to doing a lot of mindset work and trauma resolution, and those things really hold a lot of answers that people don’t think about at first. So that’s a very important piece of, of the story as well.
And there is a book by Chris Kresser that really rocked my world and it’s called unconventional medicine and it breaks down just how broken our system is in that way. And I know specifically for females and, and just launching this 90 day program, we’re not taught how our bodies function at the most basic level mm-hmm and it is mind blowing to me.
Mm-hmm like, even if you look at the majority of research it’s done on males for intermittent fasting, for weight loss, for all of it, we’re not included in the research just up until about, I think 10, 12 years ago, we really started to be put in the research, which makes you rethink everything that you think you.
Which I will say. So one of the reasons for that is pregnancy. Now that’s not an excuse, but one of the reasons women are not as present is because of literally the years that we simply cannot risk being in research studies cuz of pregnancy. However, it’s still not an excuse, as you are saying to your point, a lot of research, the fitness world is just like that.
A lot of times programs are created for men. Yes. And I would say like, you know, in research we can include not pregnant women. And so exactly. Absolutely. It’s just, it’s just this thing of like the four phases. If you don’t know this, you have four phases of your cycle. It’s not just when you’re on your period, like you have four very distinct phases of your cycle.
And something I read really resonated with me the other day is even our. How the world works. And our schedule of work is based on a 24 hour cycle. Well, a man is on a 24 hour cycle. They wake up and basically have the same exact hormone levels. We do not from week to week, we vary based on mm-hmm, how we think, how we feel and how we can be productive.
Mm-hmm . And so I was like, wow, this is an incredible shift to see in this atmosphere right now, of how we can start to serve women where they’re at and how they’re uniquely made, because we, we are uniquely made. And the reality is there are certain phases where you’re productive and you’re on fire mentally, physically, emotionally, and we need, we can really work in that phase of our cycle.
Mm-hmm versus I tell women like, let’s not go crazy in the gym the week before and the week of your period, because just not honoring, you’re not gonna get the best outcome based on the hormonal levels where you’re at. And of course this affects sleep too. So you might, you may feel you don’t sleep that great the week before and the week of your period.
Well, that’s obviously we’ve got some work to do if that’s a sign and a symptom that you have going on. So it’s all interconnected. And I think the overwhelm that a lot of females feel, especially pertaining to mood and sleep, right? These are two big things for females. Is this confusion around not knowing how our body functions at a very basic level, like I said earlier, mm-hmm
And so I’m here to just offer kind of bridging the gap between misunderstanding around physiology and around your hormones, around your sleep. All those things will click for you. If you just understand how your body works at a deeper level also symptoms. Can be one of the greatest tools in your toolboxes if you allow it.
However, I find that most females, we are trained in Western society. The minute a symptom shows that I need to go to the doctor mm-hmm well, their answer is going to be prescribing a pharmaceutical, or I need to Google it. And then I’m overwhelmed by the information. And I don’t know what, how to sort through it.
yes. And so we do on this mission of like trying to figure out, and there could be 90 answers, but the, the reality is you are a unique individual everyone’s bio individual. You deserve to be looked at individually. And so that was a big, big part of my story and how I am, where I am now. And there was a lot of anxiety.
I struggled really bad badly with postpartum anxiety. And so out of that, With just the newness of being a mother with a newborn mm-hmm the anxiety led to a lot of obsessive compulsiveness because I needed to control my external space to feel like I have some of my control here because I’m not able to control my sleep.
And I felt like everything was happening to me physically and mentally and emotionally. So I just needed something to take that edge off. And so that became where like the OCD fit into the picture. One of the biggest turning points in my learning journey was sleep was actually a book called the mood cure by Julia Ross.
I’m not sure if you ever read that it is an indispensable resource. I recommend every single person on that book, especially in today’s age, because she talks very deeply about the nervous system, the connection of nutrient depletion, how this impacts mood, sleep and your sanity, essentially mm-hmm . And so this really was like a click moment for me.
Is it a book that primarily focuses on nutrition? Is that what she’s focusing on there? She has two books. Now the mood cure is really talking about isolated nutrients and supplementation form and how they can truly bridge the gap. offer hope. Do you, if you feel like there’s just something off with me, emotionally, mentally, and, and sleep wise.
And so she takes a very deep dive into some of the needs that need to be met for the body in order to function optimally mm-hmm . So this was a really incredible resource for me in my journey. And so I wanted to highlight that as well. Like if you’re in a really bad spot and you just need some wisdom there, she ha that is a great resource.
I recommended to all of my clients, my friends, my family, and say it one more time. It is the mood cure. The mood cure by Julia Ross. Julia Ross will include that in the show notes. It’s interesting. You said my husband and I have talked about this many times when we look back at the standard education as kids we think like, and my husband is he was a math teacher and an engineer.
He is now a computer programming teacher. So this is not knocking math, but in reality, I would have benefited significantly more from a physiology class once a year, instead of a math class, once a year, certainly a foundation of math. But did I really need precalc? I probably would’ve benefited from a tax course.
How to do your taxes? Yes. Why taxes even? Yes. What is the pounding interest? What is like mm-hmm , you know what I mean? Like let’s actually make it practical, not to mention, okay. I have two ovaries. And when this happens, this, this is why I’m having a peer like. You know, it really is. That is something that I think we are starting to recognize more and more even just with the idea of tech schools, which sounds like a weird correlation, but it is the concept that we’re talking about.
The idea that let’s start making education practical, not just informational yes. That we can actually that’s exactly use it in world. Absolutely. Well, I think two for females. What did service because when you do have that first period, I mean, hormonally, you’re just a mess, but looking back at it, it’s because of two things.
I think women are underserved in education in that, that capacity. And just knowing like, if I would’ve known, okay, this is coming, this is how I was gonna feel. You can somewhat feel prepared mentally. Like this is not abnormal mm-hmm okay. But also what we deem normal now in Western civilization is actually common, but it’s not normal.
It’s not normal behavior of the body to have severe bouts of anxiety and burnout and fatigue and insomnia, and in just like OCD or whatever, it may be sure that the hormonal fluctuations that are happening to you, there are things we can do on the front end. So you’re not experiencing these things on the back end.
Right. And so there’s a lifeline of hope there. It’s not just like. These things happen to me. I just have to deal with, with it. Right. And I have no idea why they’re happening. Yeah, for sure. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And for those of you I’m, I don’t know why. Yes, absolutely. The why behind the, what? I don’t know.
If you have talked to Jenny Swisher at all, she was on the podcast. She’s a hormonal health expert. And you know, we were talking about this too, but the importance of being able to correlate the why behind the what of female hormones and really it’s shedding, it’s shedding some light on some of the symptoms.
And just because it hurts does not necessarily mean it’s bad. mm-hmm, , it’s understanding to weed through. Okay. Before we just throw hormones or throw birth control or fill in the blank. Definitely check out Jenny Swisher, you can search her sync. Yes. I love her. Your hormones. Yes, but she is right to what, to what you are saying there as well.
Well, and even like there’s a new documentary just came that came out, it’s called the business of birth control. I truly feel every female should be required to watch that to arm themselves with knowledge before they go. And their doctor is telling them you need to do this, or I would recommend this mm-hmm because the reality is the side effects of birth control.
If you open the insert it’s from your head down to your knees. At that point, we need to be telling women, you know, what, if you have endometriosis, have you tried balancing your blood sugar and taking an OSCE? or if you’re struggling with chronic acne outbreaks and these sorts of things, maybe we should balance your diet and get you off.
Gluten. Maybe dairy is a trigger. We need to run a nutrition response test on you. Mm-hmm these are not things that doctors are taught. So they don’t know because they go to a school of medicine. They learn how to prescribe medicine. I love modern day medicine for acute emergency situations. However, when we’re, we’re talking about lifespan and optimal living, we overdo things in the prescription realm, which leads to other symptoms.
So then you’re put on another pill for another symptom. Yeah, it’s such a multi-layer. I mean, I just had an interview with Dr. Keith Johnson. He’s an orthopedic surgeon, but he even says this. We have said this so many times that in the medical education, whether you are in nursing, whether you’re a doctor fill in the blank, the reality.
It is more like disease care, not healthcare and not point preventative care. The issue is that we have this extreme gap between it’s like we have alternative medicine or quote unquote, natural medicine. I mean, there’s a million words for this, which, you know, has its own issues. And then there’s traditional medicine.
And the problem is they shouldn’t be like this. They should be like this. They need to be integrative and applied appropriately within their places. And there needs to be more overlapping education so that you don’t just have alternative medicine providers who are truly clueless to traditional medicine and research, and then traditional medicine.
That are truly clueless to what you’re saying, you know, the more functional side of it. So it is a huge, huge issue. And I love when we have people on here who are passionate about combining both of them. Everyone’s heard me say this before, but I personally don’t feel they should live in extremes. We need to integrate them.
So I love alternative. I love traditional, but most importantly, we need to practice integrative medicine where we’re learning, how to combine that. Yes. And I, and I think a big reason that you see that and you know, this is somewhat of a controversial statement. However, it’s just the truth is.
Pharmaceutical companies are competing with natural alternative care because it’s in their investor’s best interest that they keep a high patient load. So they’re even above that it’s insurance. Yeah. A hundred percent insurance, a hundred is what rules the world. If you’re really interested in learning more, again, listen to the interview with Dr.
Keith Johnson, but people don’t understand the layers in the medical system where ultimately it is about it’s a business medicine is a business. Yep. And it’s unfortunate. So things get taken outta context and it is true. Pharmacy companies often will fund their own studies, which then has some ethical.
But again, you have to look at research if it’s a really well done study. Yes. Then even if they funded their own research, In theory that does not necessarily mean that it is not a good study and therefore, you know, it’s just, it’s so convoluted to your point. And this is exactly why we need to be able to hone in on the science.
And that’s why I love like when there are people like you who are really nicheing down, especially like where you’re diving in and you are truly an expert mm-hmm, in an area and you have the ability to take a more comprehensive approach, like sleep, which is so essential. So I, I get very excited about that.
I’ll never forget. I was at a conference a few years back and I was talking to a doctor in MD and he runs a very high end program. I believe it’s outta Tucson, Arizona. And we were taught, chatting all things, uh, mental, emotional sleep mm-hmm and its impact on women specifically mm-hmm and I will never forget what he said.
And I think it will ring true with a lot of people too, is what was meant to be a bridge has become an island in medicine. We put women on medicine and it becomes an isolation like this is your only hope. This is the only thing we can do for you. That’s bullshit. And I am so sick of that model because we deserve better.
We deserve better answers and better care. And I think, I think a lot of good comes though from that, because we do our own research and we dig and females will find an answer, right? We’re very innovative and we’re very exploratory and curious. And so a lot of good has come out of the inability for me to get the care that I really wanted and the answers that I really wanted.
But what he said really stuck with me because he said, when I’m working with a patient, we can offer the hope of an immediate solution through medicine. Listen, y’all if you need to get on sleep medication. Do it, it saved me, literally saved me from so much because sleep is the, how you function, your brain, your body, your EV, your appetite, all of it.
And so if you need that bridge until you’re working on the root cause and a deeper issue, mm-hmm, a hundred percent. That’s where I love in the immediacy. We have hope for you, but it cannot be an island in the fact that like, well, I guess I have to be on sleeping medication for the rest of my life. Yeah.
Well, that’s where that really becomes an issue because we need to work on what is driving the insomnia. Is it mental and emotional? Is it purely emotional? Is it purely nutrition? Is it, what is it what’s going on? Mm-hmm and so I think. So really honor a female in that we want to offer her comfortability in immune immediacy, because really, if we’re able to, uh, join with a PCP and say, you know what?
I really recommend you talk to your doctor. I think you need to get on something that is just gonna give you stability. In the meantime, that’s gonna give you a really good night’s sleep. You’ll feel sane enough over time and your body will start to repair enough. Your cortisol’s gonna level out. Your adrenals are gonna start to level out.
You’re going to your lymphatic system, which is your brain. It’s how it cleanses itself at night. Uh, your brain is also a detox organ. And so we need to get to that point. So we feel rested and we feel sane and we can actually just go about our day, like a normal human being. And then when the client is comfortable, we’re gonna start to work on these root cause issues.
But I’m all about. Tackling something head on, especially once when it’s as serious as lack of sleep because you need to sleep and whatever’s gonna get you there in the meantime. And then we’ll start to work on. Yeah. And I’m glad you pointed that out. And for, you know, for those of you listening and watching, I have mentioned this before, but again, this idea of integrating the two, the traditional and alternative into an integrative approach, you know, an emergency medicine, quite literally, we’re there to stabilize and then disposition, meaning we are only there to make sure that you are stabilized and then we send you out to wherever you need further care, but it is essential because in reality, when your blood pressure is sky high, do I want to just put you on another medication to send you out the door?
No, there’s so much more that needs worked on your diet needs change. You need more exercise mm-hmm but in reality, changing your diet will mean nothing. If you die of a stroke, correct. The bottom line is traditional medication, pharmacy pharmaceuticals. Are okay. As Kelsey just pointed out, they’re not mutually exclusive of each other.
It is okay to stabilize your condition. And in this case, when we’re talking sleep again, working on your sleep is no good. If you are so mentally disabled that you’re considering taking your life, cuz you’re so depressed. Yes. Or that you literally can’t get yourself off the couch or you are so anxious that you can’t function, frankly, you are gonna struggle because just simply going through the steps to work on your sleep is not enough.
So hear us, we’re both saying this. If you need some sort of intervention right now, there is zero shame in it. It is a stabilizing effect so that you can get to the root cause and ultimately thrive and come off of the medication. God willing. That is the goal and it’s possible. Well, and to your point. We live in a society that’s culture.
That’s so toxic on so many ends, not just physiologically mm-hmm not just what we’re eating and drinking, but stress, caffeine consumption, social media consumption, the constant dopamine hit we’re society of extremes. When we, we are in that extreme, you have to be met with something that can tackle that extreme.
And sometimes ballistic medicine cannot meet you there right then and there mm-hmm it can meet you when you get here. So that is where I literally kiss my sleeping medication because I am so grateful that I had it when I needed it. And it offered me that lifeline because extreme has to meet extreme.
And so I know for my mama’s right, I have a lot of good friends that have had to go on very hardcore anti-anxiety medications, postpartum. Well, yeah, because your thyroid was a wreck before you were even pregnant. Your adrenals were tanked. Your blood sugar is in stabilized. You’re insulin sensitive. But now, because you’re that far, we’ve gotta meet you there with your PCP and then we’ll do some really good groundwork.
And hopefully we can get you off of that. Yep. That is up to the discretion of your PCP. But I think you’ll feel so good that you won’t need it anymore, but that is something I really wanna highlight. Like I think we can say so passively. There’s no shame in taking medicine. No, there’s all, there’s no shame.
And there’s also it’s it’s necessary sometimes. Mm-hmm and so I think. We would be doing women. We do do women, a disservice in going, here’s why you feel the way that you feel. Here’s why you are struggling with insomnia and anxiety. And a lot of that is because our adrenals are taxed. We have extreme nutritional deficiencies.
Our environmental toxins are so high. We have chronic late infections, bacterial viral pathogens, whatever that may be. Our mental, emotional trauma is not resolved. And so it is a layered cake. Stimulants exercise all that. And so, and why it takes all of us. I think that’s the key piece too. And, and you’ve pointed this out beautifully multiple times and as a, as a traditional medical provider, historically, I can also say, I have said this before that a lot of the reason that traditional providers are not going, they don’t have time.
They I’m a perfect example of that. I could have spent an hour in most of my ER, patients rooms explaining to them in a very well educated, well researched way, how you can actually change your life so that you’re no longer on blood pressure medicine. Yes. But I did not have the time. And that is the time highly unfortunate.
And I was unique and that actually had the knowledge because I. The self knowledge and the drive to understand it. Yeah. But for many traditional providers, we get none of that education. So if nothing else, I hope this pushes women in the next generations too, as they come up through medical school to be the change, to change the education that goes into our degrees, because I will also, you know, defend a lot of providers.
We don’t have the time and we’ve not gotten the education. No. Which is why, this is what I love. This is why when we integrate these two, where we have a holistic or a functional provider, ultimately working hand in hand, it’s all about collaboration. It’s all about collaborating. No matter what letters are behind your name, well in the system.
It’s literally not a fault of many doctors. What I get really angry though, is when a doctor is not willing to hear another side and that’s where you just become so myopic, because you’ve just done it this way on both sides. I’ve met it on both sides. Yes. A hundred percent. And so, yes. Um, Agree. I think that’s very important.
And I think there’s a, there’s a trending reel right now where it’s like, you know, just for example, like blood pressure is high because I’m stressed, I’m stressed because my blood pressure is high. Yeah. Maybe if we were to teach people what stress really is and physiologically how it manifests in how it impacts everything from insulin, blood, sugar, sleep, mood, all of it.
Yeah. Then your blood pressure may not be so high, but in the meantime, here’s some blood pressure meds while we work on the existing issue. Same thing with sleep. Yeah. Same thing with. Which is why we are here. We are gonna help you if you’re like, okay. Yes, let’s, let’s, let’s dive into it. We’re gonna take a quick break, but we come back, stay tuned.
We’re gonna play a speed round of this or that with Kelsey. And we are gonna hear her expert advice on how to fall asleep fast and overcome insomnia. Plus a whole host of other things stay tuned. Right? When we come back, you have tried it all worried. You will never lose the extra weight or reclaim the energy you once enjoyed.
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Okay. We are back here with Kelsey Kelsey, two options, no stress. Whichever one comes to mind first, would you rather candy or baked goods? Ooh, I would have to say baked goods. What’s your favorite baked? Good. I love chocolate. So anything chocolate, you have a very favorite chocolate recipe. Like if you could have this one thing.
Yes, I love chocolate trustlets cake. So I’m in San Antonio, Texas. Andres Leche is like a whole thing. I also love Flo interesting, but, um, we had a lady that worked for us years ago and she made me a chocolate chest Leche and it was divine literally. That’s great. I still dream about it. her subconscious is still yes.
There with the chocolate trace chase. That’s that means it’s a good recipe. Would you rather a paper planner or digital calendar paper? All the way I grew up in the eighties. Oh, see, I knew we would be friends. Do you have color coded markers as well or pens? I have all the highlighters, all the jelly pins.
I love jelly pins. I am a Lisa Frank. Like I grew up in the Lisa Frank era. Okay. We must be very similar in age because I did too. That’s so funny. I will say, though, there’s science that backs this, right? Like we wanna be all digital cuz we think we’re progressive. Yeah. There is actually science when it’s on paper.
Yep. Yeah. That’s why journaling and all that is so effective, but it just it’s, it helps the brain retain better instead of forgetting things. So if you’re really trying to work on memory or attention, write things down, physically write them down. That is true. Would you rather get a pedicure or a manicure?
Petty all day long. Amen. I met somebody the other day who always refuses the foot massage at her pedicure and I’m like, I literal. Who are you? I know, I literally don’t think I said anything. I was like, wow, nice speechless. This is the first you are you’re I’m like, can I have it weird? Yeah. Can you like get I’ll seriously so that I can take it right in?
Why go anyway? Um, flats are heels. Ooh. I love a good wedge because I think they’re just comfortable, just like a flat and they kinda support the whole arch. I don’t like stilettos or anything like that. They hurt my feet so bad. Yeah. Yeah. But they’re still cute. Wedges are cute. Yes. Well, flats are cute too.
I love shoes. Yes I do. Would you rather go to New York or Paris? Neither. I have zero. Where do you wanna desire? You know what, actually, you’re the first one that’s ever said that, but if I ask myself the same question, it would be a very similar answer. I’m not a city girl. They just don’t really flip my boat.
No, I hate so where would you wanna go? It’s actually a huge bucket list item. I would love to go to New Zealand, Sweden and Switzerland. So we are big mountain people around here. Mm-hmm I just don’t think you can beat the mountains, but New Zealand, you have both. Yes. So it’s like what New Zealand? My husband’s from Colorado.
And so we’re all about, he just got back from Teton national park, uh, Yellowstone. So he was in Wyoming and Utah and Colorado. And, uh, we spend a lot of our summers in Colorado, so yeah, but I would love to go to, you know, Europe, Sweden, Switzerland, those sorts of places and, uh, New Zealand. But yeah, I’m not a city.
I’ve literally dread the idea of going to New York city. Yeah. I’ve been one time. I, I would love to do the, um, this clearly shows my ignorance, but like in the movies, the big Christmas tree where people are ice skating. Yes. What is that? Is that Rockefeller? Yes. Rockefeller don’t even know clearly. Yeah. I think that would be fun just for the memory of it.
But I wish somebody could literally just like helicopter me in, drop me down and then take me the yes. Yes. I’m with you. So these are not my cup of tea. Overwhelming Hawaii was kind of like that. It was love amazing standing there and being like there’s mountains to my right and the most gorgeous water to my left.
Like I agree. That is the perfect balance. Bet. It’s absolutely beautiful. Yep. I love meeting soul sisters over the, this is the first time we’ve met we’re friends already. We’re gonna go to Hawaii. We’ll see you all later. yes. Yes. Come on, come on and get great sleep. Speaking of, do you like that transition there?
That was smooth. Yes, it was speaking of the, what behind the, why we all have heard that sleep is important. We have talked a little bit about why sleep is important, but obviously the question is how then do we actually improve our sleep? Fall asleep, fast, stay asleep. One of the first things I wanna talk about is the idea of the circadian rhythm.
And then you also, in your course mention light along with sleep cycles, which is very closely connected to the circadian rhythm. Just tell us a little bit about this idea of the circadian rhythm and sleep and wake cycles and sort of how understanding that helps ultimately. Well, I think you have to realize that every aspect of your health flows outta sleep.
So if your sleep is not optimally in duration or in quality, quantity, and quality, your health will suffer. You cannot. Lack sleep and heal. It’s really honestly that simple. And so everyone wants to put nutrition at the top or whatever it may hormones or whatever. And it’s like, okay, your body detoxes during the night, your brain detoxes during the night, you’re resting, you’re restoring the body through sleep.
And so it has got to be the pinnacle in your healing journey. If you want to perform better, feel better. If you want your mood to feel better, mm-hmm, , you’ve got to sleep. You’ve gotta focus on restoring and falling back in love with sleep to pun intended there. For sure. And the reality is sleep involves a lot more than just closing your eyes and going to sleep.
We realize this in our thirties, especially, but I think when we are little kids, we can just go to sleep. There’s a new song by need to breathe. And then it’s called in the backseat and it’s talks all about childhood and. I just wish I could be a child again in the backseat where I was falling asleep under the sun.
And man, I dream about those days because it, it seems now like for many females it becomes this thing that gets taken away and it’s like, holy crap, how do I re achieve something? That’s supposed to be just this natural process of closing my eyes and going to sleep. And the effects of poor sleep are reduced insulin sensitivity.
So you’re riding that blood sugar rollercoaster all day. You’re caramelizing your immunity. You’re prematurely aging. Women are all about that. If you wanna feel younger, be younger, you need to sleep better at a post tissue. So your cravings change, you eat. Poorly when you don’t sleep, you have less muscle mass.
And so circadian rhythm is really the goat of sleep. And the reality is a lot of us need to retrain our circadian rhythm. And this is something that I go through in, in a lot of detail in my sleep course. And what that looks like is light. Light is one of the first things God created. And that’s for a reason, it gives life to everything.
So if you look at light as the building block to providing life for everything that you’re consuming, but also for you, we are microorganism. So we’re made up of trillions of cells and bacteria. And so what feeds that is light, but not only that is light is responsible for going into our retina. And really the only reason that, you know, the, the difference between night and day is light mm-hmm
And so we have to respond accordingly if we want to heal our sleep. And so what does that look like? It looks like getting off of your dang screen. If you’re on your screens at night, that is blue light blue light suppresses melatonin. So I work with all of my clients in that phase of, we need to be consuming red light because that produces melatonin on top of that.
What time first do you give people? What timeframe do you say when you are? This is like bedtime. This is the end of screen time. Yeah. So around seven seven. And, and if you can’t do that well, we need to look at your schedule and see why you can’t do that, but we need to, how many hours before you turn off, so seven o’clock, but, um, like how much time before you go to sleep, should you be turning off your screens?
Like an hour, two hours before. Yeah. Yeah. And I’m, I’m putting on full blue boxers by around six 30 at night. Mm-hmm, a big shift that people do not think about. I’m all about habit stacking. So a lot of my clients, female clients that are fatigued out of life, they cannot sleep. They can’t even think about adding one more thing into their day.
I’m big on habit stacking. I have a really great episode, um, with a friend called her name’s cameo Pierce, and we talk all about this, but it’s basically adding things in what you’re already doing. So it’s not another thing you have to do. And what I mean by that is people always think, okay, I’m gonna go outside during the day, but you miss going out at sunset.
Sunset is so important for sleep because sunset is giving. Different rays and different colors that give your retina a signal to your brain. That it’s time to start producing melatonin, and we need to shut down cortisol. And so I always tell people if you’re gonna eat, eat outside, if it’s nice outside, go on a walk and watch the sunset.
It’s really that simple. And we should all be going on evening walks after dinner anyways, because it helps regulate our blood sugar, which impacts our adrenal health, which impacts good cortisol levels. So we can produce enough melatonin to fall asleep and stay asleep. One of the other things that we’ve practiced.
Well that I have encouraged clients to practice as well. Is the idea of also if going out for an evening walk is not something that you’re able for whatever reason, fill in the blank or the kids. Yes. Who knows for sure, is just simply creating that environment within your home to Kelsey’s point where you’re turning down lights.
And I don’t know if you talked to clients about this, but I’ve said this before lights in bedrooms should not be the bright white L E D lights. They should be the very, very warm, soft lights. And as I’ve said before, and I Kelsey’s clearly gonna be in agreement with me here, there should be zero screens in your bedroom.
So there’s none of that blue light infiltrating that space. It is strictly designed to sleep in one other recreational activity that does not need elaborated on. Yes, but basically, yeah, pretty much. You’re just sleeping. That’s what should be happening. So thes to what you’re saying is perfect. Yeah. Yeah.
And I think so when I was really in the bouts of my insomnia, I could not even watch TV at night, but now thankfully I’m at a, I’m in, I’m in a place, uh, physiologically and mentally, emotionally, all those things where I can watch a relaxing movie. That’s good for me. Like I’m a mom of two littles. And so like, I just have to have some time mm-hmm sometimes I take a bath.
Sometimes I read sometimes I shower or sometimes I watch a movie, whatever it may be, but you need to be doing things that are going to aid the body and sleep. So that can look like full blue blockers. You’re putting yourself to bed. Your, your phone needs to go to bed too, leave outside of the bedroom.
You don’t need it. If you need a flashlight to get up and pee in the middle of the night, which is a whole nother discussion of why you’re getting up to pee, that is also associated with poor sleep is use a traditional flashlight. You don’t need that much light or get a salt lamp and dim it and go to the bathroom, come back and go to bed.
Mm-hmm but you need to get technology out of the room. Um, EMFs are a big thing for sleep. They interrupt, um, they interrupt your sleep wake cycles. It’s just, it is what it is. And if we can turn our wifi routers off at night, we can get our phones out of our room. You will sleep better. A lot of it though does go back to light.
And the reason that you’re saying no LEDs is they emit blue light. And so really it all goes back to how much light exposure and why you’re exposing yourself to light. So every single day, going back to habit stacking, I make my coffee, I make my breakfast. I go outside, I get 20 minutes of unfiltered sunshine every single morning and every single night.
And so if you truly want to retrain from ground zero, everything, the way that your body is reacting to sleep, you’ve gotta retrain your circadian rhythm. And that is what is going to do it. It’s going to be the light. I love that. So just to recap and correct me if I’m saying any of this wrong, but bottom line, I’m hearing that two hours before bedtime, you should be proactively dimming lights so that ultimately your entire sensory system is recognizing, okay, we’re gonna start to shut down whether that be walking outside to get the sunset light, or even within your home creating the same environment, dimming lights, only warm lights in the bedroom.
I would also argue the bathroom can be yes, similar to this because we put such bright white lights in our bathrooms. But yes. Um, if they are the ones that you or your kids are getting ready in, not to mention, you mentioned peeing at night, you flip on the light, right? It is bright, bright white. So that’s another one that I usually tell people, keep warm lights in and then no screen.
So all this two hours before bedtime. And one of the other questions I wanna ask is, um, I’ve gotten this question and I’m curious what you will say. So research blanket answer is most people want about eight hours of sleep. The body. Needs, approximately eight hours. There’s a good reason that that number has come about.
But what do you say to the person who says, I just don’t need as much sleep as somebody else where they’re getting a lot less sleep, but they still feel energized and they’re pushing back on the, the sleep number. Do you have any thoughts for people or someone who’s saying I need so much sleep, but I don’t have the time to sleep that much.
yes. So we see this a lot in high functioning females that are they’re type a, they are go-getters and. You may think you’re a biological, uh, anomaly. You are not. And so we need to figure out why you are your nervous system is stuck in a loop of fight or flight, constant fight or flight. And if you can do that naturally, you’re going to bed early.
You you’re waking up with the sun, I would say good on you because that is the rhythm that we all need to be achieving is basically going to bed somewhere around sunset. We don’t all do that. We can’t all do that, but if you’re naturally waking up and you feel energized, like awesome. That’s amazing. I am not you.
I don’t want to be you. I love sleeping in. Amen. I love sleep. Yeah. So I would say though, too, on the flip side of that is females require more. This is scientifically proven. It’s backed because we have so many hormonal fluctuations and we are so hormonally complex. And because we have four phases to our cycle, we require more sleep longer, bouts of sleep more consistently.
And so if you are tired in the morning and you’ve gotten the appropriate amount of sleep, you need to honor your body, cuz you’ve got some healing to do. So sometimes that can look like for a couple months, we’re really focusing on you getting longer sleep. So your body can just catch up. But after that, we’ve really need to be asking why.
Are you feeling the way that you’re feeling in the morning, why you feel like you need to sleep all day? So this can look a lot like your blood sugar is too low in the morning. So your cortisol is not rising. Your cortisol is your get up and go hormone. We want this super high in the morning. We don’t want melatonin like hanging out there anymore.
And so get outside in the light. If you get yourself into the habit movement of waking up and eating something, nutrient dense, like I love eating a macro bar in the morning, cuz it’s good in protein. It’s good in fat. We need to eat before we drink coffee. Because if not, you’re suppressing your appetite.
You are sending your insulin out of control. Your adrenals are already tanked, which is why you can’t sleep. Or you feel like you need a mass amount of sleep. But while we’re at coffee is making, we’re gonna go outside and sip on it in the sunlight. This is going to repair things over time. Other things that have to do with needing.
A lot of sleep is we need to see if you have active Epstein bar, cuz this could look like mono is still hanging out in the system. It can look like you have hypothyroidism or you might have Hashimotos you could have an autoimmune condition that is definitely attributing to that. Your minerals may be out of balance, but there’s a lot we can do.
That’s very simple. It’s just simply restructuring how you’re going about your day and what you’re doing on the front end, because I work with chronic fatigue clients. And so I literally in my program and the sleep course have a sample day structure of like at this time slot, this is what you’re doing and this is why you’re doing it.
So around 8, 8 39, this is what we’re doing. We’re making our breakfast, we’re drinking mineral water. We’re going outside. We’re putting our bare feet to the ground. We’re exposing our retina to. And over time, you’re gonna start to see massive changes because the reality is sleep begins in the morning.
It’s not at night. So there are things that impact our sleep at night poorly or for the better. But in the morning you are setting the tone for your night. So for females, this looks like it’s like a full cycle, just like getting up early in the morning. I’m very passionate about an early morning routine.
It’s changed my life. But yes, as I tell people, being able to establish an early morning routine starts with phase one, which is sleep . So just to your point, better sleep starts with what you’re doing in the morning. Morning. I also wanna throw something out too, as somebody who absolutely loves sleep. I am by nature, not an early morning riser.
I have learned though strategies that, um, have helped me become an early morning riser. And it is. Changed my life for so many reasons. However, there is a difference between feeling tired and lethargic all day versus feeling like you don’t wanna get out of bed in the morning. They are not the same thing.
Absolutely. So there’s, there’s. Strategies to get yourself out of bed, first thing in the morning, but understand if you think there’s no way I could get up early because actually getting up earlier consistently will also help you sleep better when you have a consistent routine. However, it is not the same thing.
I just wanna point that out because I know that feeling like I don’t wanna get out of bed and it seems like you’re so exhausted. You just don’t wanna get out, but they’re not the same thing, what she’s talking about. No. And what I have talked about before is that that’s a lethargy all day long. When you establish the right patterns, you will learn, you can train your body to become an early morning riser, even if you are not naturally.
But I just wanted to point that out. It’s not the same thing as that lethargic all day long. So yeah, chronic fatigue and insomnia often go hand in hand and I actually just did a great post on my Instagram about this is how can I still be so tired and struggle with insomnia? Yes. And it’s because physiologically, like you are so backwards, what you’re doing during the day is impacting you at night.
Yeah. And then conversely, you all of a sudden get voidance patterns built in because you don’t want to go to sleep because you’re not sure you dread going to bed. Exactly. Yes. So then those things that you’re doing to avoid sleep are actually making the problem much worse. And so this is where you cannot extract and isolate things because everything is involved in sleep, your mental, emotional reaction to sleep your physiological, uh, patterns during the day.
So something I see a lot with females is. We’re gonna wake up late. We’re late for whatever we gotta do. So we’re shoving a banana down our mouth and we’re drinking coffee. This is a, and we’re growing on sweatpants. yes. And we’re not doing on whatever. We feel like a Hotman. Yes. Yes. So you’re literally breakfast is setting the tone for the day, but it’s not the breakfast you were trained to eat.
It’s not oatmeals and banana. That is a blood sugar disaster. Blood sugar plays so much intricately with your satiation, with your cravings, with your ability or inability to lose weight, to be metabolically flexible and to sleep at night. And. Stop drinking coffee on an empty stomach. This is a horrible idea because it suppresses your appetite, even if you’re hungry.
So it trains you to fast, longer than you should, which impacts your thyroid. And it impacts your adrenals, which all impact your sleep. So I always tell my female clients stop drinking coffee on an empty stomach. And if you’re going to add some cream and maple sugar, so you’ve got some good fat and some good glucose, at least you’re not drinking black coffee, but ideally we want to be eating something before we’re drinking coffee.
But if we’re starting out our day from a place of mental, emotional stress, and also we’re stressing our body out with those habits, it’s just gonna impair your sleep even more. That’s what I mean while about things that you’re doing during the day impact your night. And another thing is we’ve gotta step out of the stress.
So we’ve got to like take a step back and go. I react to everything in a stressful way, but is that actually appropriate? Like do I to be stressed right now? Probably not can take a couple deep breaths, take a drink of water. Like it’s gonna be okay. There are moments in time where you need that fight or flight to kick in.
But daily, multiple times a day is going to lead to mineral imbalances. It’s going to burn your adrenals out and it’s just not a good thing. And your cortisol is just gonna stay elevated. Yeah. Just ultimately yes. And so like to stress you out. Yeah. I think just like approaching stress in a totally different manner too, but really just, like I said, like going about your day in a different way.
And so. Shifting. If you wanna see change, you have to change the way you’re doing things. It’s really that simple. Right. Right. The problem is we don’t know what to do and we don’t know what to change. And so this is why I’m so passionate about, you know, I always say like, yeah, I could talk about sleep all day long, but it’s really the, the front end of sleep that I love to do like a total makeover on.
Yeah. I want to throw in here too, because some of you might be, so what you’re mentioning about coffee. So for those of you listening to are any of my clients, so I practice 16, eight intermittent fasting. There’s a lot of good research to it. We do drink coffee within that fasted period without eating, although you can like scoop of collage and ties, there’s gonna be some protein in there.
Sure. However, I wanna point out because I’m gonna argue that we’re both right in this and some of it’s contextual. So to Kelsey’s point. Yeah, I would agree if you are not nutritionally balanced, which many, many women, aren’t the number one imbalance that I see as lack of protein. Yep. And then you are waking up to her what she’s saying.
You’re already in this stress induced state, your cortisol level is too elevated to begin with on a regular basis. And then you are fueling yourself with caffeine, which is going to increase your heart rate increase. It’s going to add to that feeling of stress. And then you’ve got these blood sugar imbalances already.
So she is also right in that if that is already where you’re at. It is totally appropriate that you should be eating before you drink black coffee. That being said on the flip side with intermittent fasting, it’s only going to be beneficial if you are properly fueling in your fed window. And one of the huge elements to that is getting enough protein.
And that is why then yes, my clients don’t have any problem. Why I don’t have any problem drinking black coffee in the morning and not eating until 10, 11, even 12. It is because we have learned how to fuel our body with a much higher content of protein, which is going to stabilize that blood sugar. But that is next level.
it is another approach and it is a much deeper nutritional dive. So I just wanna point that out in case anyone’s like, oh, she’s saying this, but Anna has said this. Yes, we’re both. Right. It’s contextual. So I just wanted to throw that in there because it’s highly individual, right? So like we see with a lot of women who are per menopause menopause specifically, whenever you stop menstruating, the job of your hormones, go back to the adrenals.
Well, if you’ve spent from. Twenties to your forties, killing your adrenals. Your biofeedback is not in a place where you are good to do a lot of intermittent fasting. This is going to backfire on you. However, more advanced strategy, I would say long term to AGY and becoming Metabo. Metabolically flexible is intermitent fasting like.
We look back, we didn’t always have food. And so you had to train your body appropriately. I would also say with females, like you’re saying, this is very individual, like where are you at in your cycle? Like, probably not a good idea if you’re menstruating to be fasting, cuz that’s highly stressful and you’re already detoxing.
So it just depends. It’s a highly individualized approach. And if you’re in a state of emergency, like we need to get you balanced and then we can introduce some of these more complex strategies like intermittent fasting. But if your biofeedback is not in a good place, probably not the best thing to induce more stress on the body.
So yes, this is what I love about having these conversations is we, we are both right here, but we just have to look at the individual and going like, where are you at right now? Because if this is what you’re struggling with, it could be that you just need a little bit more protein and we can get you to.
Or it could be that like, we need to redo a lot of things and get your nutrient reserves up and your blood sugar balance and your cortisol balance. And then we can talk about fasting. Yeah. There’s so many like Kelsey is saying, I think the, the bottom line is there’s rarely one answer fix fixes all just like I would never recommend that somebody only start implementing one thing and not addressing it’s a multi-layered approach and it’s complex.
It’s complex. Well, there need to be multiple strategies. Yes. Fasting and keto sometimes like go hand in hand, but right. This is a great example is like, there’s a really good way to do fasting. And then there’s a really bad way too fasting. Same thing with keto. There’s a great way to do keto. And then like, if you’re pounding cream, cheese and bacon all day, like, just so you can, your keytones are level like yeah.
That’s horrid. Like don’t do well. Just to be clear, I’m not a fan of keto. I’m very Procars. I think our body was designed to function optimally with yes. Carbs. Yes. Let me just it out there. If you’re visiting me from Kelsey and you’re like, oh, is her program keto? It is not. No, I’m very, no. And. I think if you’re in an emergency state in the body, like with cancer, there can be answers to that through that.
Right. But I think that the, we, humans are interesting, right? Like we alluded to at the beginning of this episode is we go in extremes and it’s like, no, if everything is balanced in the body, we can take a balanced approach. But if we’re like 9 1, 1 level right now, like we’ve gotta get you back to center through a lot of different modalities to try to get you back to where you can do some of these things.
Yeah. And sleep being really one of the number one at the top. So before we wrap it up here, give me some of your top sleep hacks. Like somebody who is currently struggling with sleep, whether it be like best sleeping posture to like the culture of your bedroom, whatever it is, like, what would your best sleeping hacks be?
So I would say we need to eat enough. Females are. Notorious for undereating, especially protein. Dr. Gabrielle Lyons just did a phenomenal episode on everything to the Musco skeletal structure and how it impacts everything with protein. Like we need females in need protein. Yep. Um, so eating nutrient dense foods is good.
Making sure you’re eating enough, drinking water with minerals as a society. We’re so depleted and magnesium because, oh, I’m a like taking a drink right now as she’s talking. Yes. Yes. So adding minerals to your water, uh, please be filtered water, balancing your blood sugar. I approach every meal with blood sugar balance in mind, because if we can get off the insulin roller coaster and we’re not up here super high and then crashing down and then we need glucose to bring us back up and then it just repeats this pattern.
So eating a blood sugar balancing. Reducing inflammatory foods, whatever that might be for you individually. I love raw dairy. I can’t have it right now. It’s still an amazing, super food. So we’re all, you know, context and individuality there, but that could be a, a trigger food for you. Gluten is pretty much a trigger food for everybody across the board, especially from a inflammation standpoint.
So if you’re struggling with sleep and inflammation, cut gluten for a while, keeping it simple. We don’t need to have this super complex schedule. Many of us need to reduce what we’re doing so we can sleep better at night. It’s just being efficient with what we’re doing, knowing why we’re doing it and knowing how it’s benefiting the body.
I would say, never eat naked carbs. Like this is a big thing. You may not agree with me here, but I think pairing your carbs with a protein or. Is huge. So we’re not seeing those insulin spikes. This is balancing again, balancing blood sugar. But to your point, I would say nutrient dense carbs is all I would say there, I, to your point, either one is a good yes, but basically nutrient dense in my world is simply put, look for carbs that are higher in fiber.
That will be more stabilizing for your blood sugar, but agree. Yes, it’s still naked. Carbs are simple carbs like cake and sweets and you know, all these sorts of things, but starchy carbs produce serotonin and serotonin produces melatonin. So you can see. And, but also, so do amino acid. So protein. If you come from the context of low fat, low carb, you’re probably not producing serotonin, which is impacting your mood and is also impacting your sleep.
So you can see how nutrient reserves and nutrition play a huge role. Um, fat also help make hormones. So I would say. The getting your central clock, right? So that’s retraining the circadian rhythm. I would say, putting your phone to bed, but also like looking at what you’re doing. You cannot beat the rhythms of nature.
So I think if you just observe how nature functions is, how we should function, we need to rise with the sun and we need to go to bed with a son setting and everything that we do in between those two book ends is going to impact sleep. So we need to focus on eating nutrient dense foods, getting enough light exposure, general movement.
We love to go into the gym and we love to do a fasted orange theory workout. This is a disaster, in my opinion, if you’re gonna go do a fasted workout, pick up heavy weights, we need to build muscle. And this is where protein really comes in too, is I think females are doing way, way, way too much cardio, and they’re not building lean muscle mass.
Don’t be afraid of the weights. It’s not gonna make you bulky. And if you are trying to think of like the outline of my courses, like retraining, the circadian rhythm, looking at nutrition, looking at the adrenals, looking at blood sugar, looking at light exposure and supplementation is huge supplements.
Truly leverage the gap for me in so many ways. So we want to, like I said, not feel like we’re on an island and just have to be put on sleeping medication for the rest of our life. While also looking at the factors that are impacting our sleep. But I take sleep supplements nightly because they are doing so much more than just aiding sleep.
They’re impacting quality. Well be the quantity of, of sleep, sleep, supplements that you would re. It truly depends. But if we’re talking from a very global perspective here, my favorite favorite, favorite sleep supplement is probably beam dream. It’s called beam B E a M dream. And what is it? And beam it’s a C B D cocktail at night.
And it has trace minerals. It has magnesia tell people at CBD is we’ve. We all have heard CBD, but a lot of people don’t actually understand what it actually is. A really CBD, brief high overview. yeah, it’s a, it’s a, uh, hemp product. It is not marijuana. You can now get completely THC free CBD CBD. We have what’s called an Indi cannabinoid system in our body.
It directly impacts the liver. The liver is what is going to make the majority of your hormones, especially for your thyroid. Your liver is also very, very sensitive to insulin. And the production of insulin and how it operates with blood sugar. And so I really feel that the Indi cannabinoid system is depleted.
And so when we take C B D this Indi cannabinoid, these stores that fat cells actually store over time, uh, CBD and THC, and it actually retrains the sleep cycle over time. So when you take periodic breaks from it, the body still has it in circulation for up to two weeks. It’s pretty incredible. But theme is just this, the most delicious drink you will have at night.
And it’s kind of a ritualized thing, right? You warm up your mug, you’ve got good, like clean water. You’re adding a scoop of it. And it takes like 30 to 45 minutes to kick in, but it tastes like you’re drinking super yummy hot chocolate. They also have limited addition flavors right now, like apple pie, caramel, and it’s really just a really good baseline to meet a lot of nutrient needs for sleep and restoring the endocannabinoid system.
This is gonna impact mood problems like anxiety approaching sleep, and then you’re helping your body produce melatonin on it itself. Is that a pill? Or a powder or how is that? You can drink, you can drink tart cherry. You can take it. I take it in a capsule at night. So I’m not drinking excessive fluids at night.
Are you doing it every night? I do. I do do it every single night. I will take breaks though. I cycle my supplements. Mm-hmm so I’m not taking one nutrient for too long and every, occasionally I will take nothing and I’ll just take a good reset for a couple days. And then I’ll reintroduce a different type of.
And that’s true of, I mean like melatonin, even for people who are taking melatonin, I have gotten asked this a lot and you will become resistant to it. If you are taking melatonin, it should be ideally no more than it should be at least two nights separating, if not more, cuz your body will get resistant to it.
Yes. But we could talk forever about sleep. I love Kelsey and I could go on for a long time. Yes she, where can people find you? You have so many amazing things happening at holy academy dot coms, girls rockstar, I should say holy well academy, all the links will be included on the show notes, especially to her sleep course, since that is what we really honed in here.
But tell us all where, where we can find you. So I have a podcast it’s called the Holywell podcast. I don’t say that I’m gonna okay. I would love to have you on, on let’s go. I would love it. Let’s talk a lot about all the things that we love and, uh, so you can find me there, the Holywell podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find me hanging out on Instagram a lot, and that’s at holy dot.
Well, so w H O L L Y dot well, and then you can opt into my freebies via my email list. I do not spam you. I only send two out a month. They’re loaded with resources and new podcast episodes, and I’m fixing to come out with an additional fatigue freebie in the next week. And I just, you can follow my website, which is Holywell dot.
And then in addition to that, I launched the Holywell academy. So all of my education lives on that place. Right. And that’s also where like, you’ll find my sleep course or my 90 day program. So that that’s where you can find me. I’m also on TikTok, cuz I hear that’s like the newest, greatest, latest thing. I refuse people.
I refuse this social media stuff is all, it’s just getting to be a lot. And I know, yeah, I good for you. I love like, no, I love to do this. The interaction that, yes, it’s just so much better. I feel like it provides so much value to people. I feel like we, you know, obviously stayed pretty surfacey but like I have, um, a happy hormones free you can load, I have a sleep tracker sleep table that you can download.
So there’s a lot of resources that I love to give to people that just need a lifeline. Right. Yeah. So yeah, I think on this is all on her. All on her website totally will. Yeah. Yeah. Well really, if you want the free resources, you can go to my Instagram and my bio and that’s where you can find my link and download all that.
And that’ll all be on our notes. If you’re watching on YouTube, you just look in the description or you can go to hammers and hugs.com to my website. And, um, there will be all there on the, on the show notes, Kelsey, I pray God’s richest blessings over your home, over your business, everything that you are doing, I love what you do and you’re changing lives for so many women and empowering them to thrive.
So yeah, it was, I love how you ended that. I’m, I’m a strong believer as well. And I really think that it goes back to. What God has given us. And he’s given us so much to heal and to live full, healthy, vibrant lives. And so if you are in a place, a feeling like you’re just not where, you know, you need to be from a functional standpoint, there are so many amazing people you can reach out to now that are discovering this like Anna or myself or who, whoever it may be, but ultimately.
He’s such a good creator. And I think if we really look at how he has created our inner being and our body and the rhythms of nature, just pulling back and living in a simple way in the way that he intended, you will find so much richness in your life and so much healing and so much hope. So I would just like to conclude with that.
Amen. Love it. Thank you, Kelsey. All right. Thank you, Anna. Thanks for listening to this episode of the imperfectly empowered podcast. I would love to hear your thoughts from today. Head to your preferred podcasting platform and give the show an honest review and let me know what you think. Remember, you cannot be redefined only redeveloped one imperfect day at a time.
Your story matters and you are loved.