- Are you near tears because you're so exhausted
but you just can't sleep?
Let me help you out.
I'll tell you why this is happening
and what you can do to turn things back around
and get you snoozing ASAP.
(upbeat music)
Hello lovelies and welcome to another one of my videos
in which I'll be talking to you about
why you can't sleep when you're actually
completely exhausted.
I'm sure most of us have been in that position
and I know that I have been,
that you're just so busy all the time
and all you can do all day is just long for your bed,
but the moment you lie down, you are just--
(crickets chirping)
The reason for this is that there's a hormonal imbalance
and when you're trying to conceive,
you don't want your hormones to be out of whack, right?
You want them in balance, not to mention
you need your sleep, you want your sleep.
So let's fix it.
The two hormones that are out of whack with each other
are melatonin and cortisol.
Melatonin is the sleep hormone.
At the end of the afternoon, beginning of the evening,
it goes up, up, up, up, up
under the influence of darkness
so that you and I can fall asleep peacefully.
Melatonin, however, has a buddy,
and buddy is called cortisol.
They're kind of like the weather man and the weather woman,
you know, they alternate each other
because cortisol goes up in the morning.
Cortisol is the thing that helps us get up.
It's kind of like our natural cup of coffee.
Cortisol is what gets us out of bed,
gets us motivated and gets us started with the day.
Cortisol is, however, also a stress hormone.
So, if we get stressed out, we have more cortisol
in our bodies and this is where it gets difficult.
When we have cortisol high in our bodies,
it inhibits the production of melatonin.
See where this is going?
So, when you are exhausted but you just can't sleep,
there are basically two problems.
You have too little melatonin, likely,
and too much cortisol.
This is made worse at night if you are
not getting off your phone, not getting off your computer
or your TV because the light that comes from these screens
actually also inhibit the production of melatonin.
So in combination with the cortisol levels being high,
your melatonin just will not get high enough
for you to fall asleep and stay asleep.
It's especially the case during summertime
and if you're in the northern countries
and it might be late til 11 o'clock
like it is here in the Netherlands.
It makes it even harder to fall asleep
because it just isn't dark enough for melatonin
to be built up.
And then the sun comes up really early as well,
so you wake up early again.
Great.
So as I said, high cortisol also inhibits
or prevents the production of melatonin.
So we also wanna look at what causes high cortisol.
As I mentioned, it's a stress hormone.
So, anything that's stressy kind of brings it up.
And that doesn't need to be a fight with your partner
in the afternoon or in the evening.
That will get your cortisol levels up.
But it can also be if you're reading a difficult
text message from somebody or an email from somebody
that is less than nice.
But it can even be the case if you are
doing some intense gaming at night
that brings up your blood pressure
or if you're watching a thriller, perhaps,
or something else that's quite exciting on TV
or if, I don't know, you go on a roller coaster...
Who goes on a rollercoaster at night, Fleur?
There are, however, also other things
that can bring up your cortisol levels
and that's basically anything that stimulates
your adrenal glands and that is coffee.
Don't worry, this is decaf, ha ha ha.
So, coffee contains caffeine.
Black teas contain caffeine,
chocolate, unfortunately, also contains caffeine,
and also, things like Coca Cola, energy drinks,
you name it.
So, caffeine stimulates your adrenal glands
to produce more cortisol.
So, remove that from your diet
and in the very least, in the second half of your day.
There's some other things that you may not have thought of
that they also stimulate the adrenal glands
and the first one is smoking,
not that you should be smoking at all,
especially if you're trying to conceive.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
But smoking does stimulate the adrenal glands.
And another thing is sugar.
Sugar also stimulates the adrenal glands.
So, you may want to look at some alternatives for sugar,
reduce it in your diet, or at least not use it
in stressful times or in the afternoon/evening.
The problem is, when you don't produce enough melatonin
and you sleep poorly, guess what.
Your cortisol's gonna be even higher in the morning
because your body experiences a stress if you don't
have enough rest 'cause we need rest
for our cells to regenerate and for us to have
strength to face the day.
So, if we don't get enough sleep,
we don't get enough rest, cortisol's going to be high
again in the morning and then, as a result,
you dip in the afternoon.
Then your body feels stressed because of that
and cortisol goes up even further.
Or you do cave for that cup of coffee
and then cortisol levels are high again in the evening.
And guess what, you have trouble sleeping again.
So let's talk about how we can nip this in the bud
and stop this cycle.
The first is we need to bring
melatonin up and cortisol down.
One way that you can bring melatonin up
is basically by creating darkness because that is
how melatonin is produced.
So if it is summertime and it is light in the evening,
maybe close the blinds a little bit
or don't turn on the lights at all when
it starts to become a little bit darker.
Just go with the natural flow
of the day and the night.
If it is dark in the evening, maybe dim your lights
and then obviously, here comes the screen thing.
Are you still using your screens at night?
Oh my goodness, we know that this is terrible.
You need to switch off all your screens
at least an hour before you go to sleep and preferably two.
If you really, really, really have to work
and you really, really have to look on your phone,
make sure that at least you have a blue light filter
installed on your phone because that will help reduce
the negative effects on your melatonin production.
To lower cortisol,
why don't you have a nice evening routine?
If you have a bath, take a nice bath
and make it extra functional by adding in some epsom salts
which contain magnesium and magnesium calms your nerves
and it relaxes you and helps you prepare for sleep.
When you are in a stressful period,
you use up magnesium a lot quicker
and you need even more of it.
So, supplementing through a bath with epsom salts
is a great idea.
If you don't have a bath, don't worry.
A foot bath works just as well.
Another great way to give yourself
a little bit more darkness is a sleep mask!
Super, super simple.
This is especially ideal if indeed there are
long summer nights and you need to go to bed in time
or if you live in the city and the lights are on all night.
Not to mention if it gets light early in the morning.
You still have your sleep mask.
I guarantee you the first night you sleep
with a sleep mask, you will feel the next morning
that you slept longer and deeper.
Tomatoes bring up melatonin.
So why don't you have a tomato salad for dinner?
Also, bananas help bring up melatonin,
so that's a great bedtime snack.
Just make sure to eat it with a little bit of protein,
so eggs, meat, peanut butter, or nuts in general.
Little bit of dairy if you can tolerate it
so that your sugar doesn't spike and then your cortisol
spikes because of that.
And another thing that I'm a great fan of is quark.
This is what we have in the Netherlands
and in the Scandinavian countries and in Germany.
It is kind of something between yogurt and cottage cheese,
I guess, and I know a lot of my patients
have been able to find it all around the world.
So, make it your mission to find it.
If you can't find quark, just find something else
that is a dairy product but that is more on the yogurt side.
So, Kefir could be a great one.
Just yogurt could be a good one.
Because this too brings up melatonin levels.
I love to eat quark, especially in summer time
with some strawberries and a little bit of vanilla
and I do put in a little bit of Stevia
'cause I have such a sweet tooth.
Then lastly, I kind of touched on this already,
but there's also a supplement you can take
and that is magnesium.
So apart from the epsom salt bath,
you can actually take magnesium as a supplement
throughout the day to calm your nerves.
This is especially useful when you're in a stressful period,
as I said, you use up a lot of magnesium already,
and you lose it a lot quicker.
So, magnesium will help you calm your nerves.
So that way, you can reduce some of your stress
which is actually physical, and as such,
reduce the cortisol levels
I recommend to patients and I do this myself as well
in very busy times, to take magnesium,
100 milligrams four times a day and have it with food.
Then the last one should be with your bedtime snack.
So let me know in the comments down below,
what do you do to fall and stay asleep
or if one of these tips resonated with you,
which one are you keen to start?
I hope you found this video helpful.
If you did, give it a thumbs up.
If you're not subscribed, make sure to click that button
as well and in the meantime, see you in the next video.
Bye!
(bright music)
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