Book Review: The Sleep Solution
During my Freshman year of college my roommates and I participated in a talent show. We “wowed” the audience with a cheesy dance and lip-synced routine to a Barenaked Ladies Song, Who Needs Sleep:
Who needs sleep? Well you’re never going to get it. Who needs sleep? Tell me what’s that for. Who needs sleep? Be happy with what you’re getting. There’s a guy who’s been awake since the second world war.”Fast-forward ten or so years later and that song was no longer funny.
It was my life.
Who needs sleep? I do!
I’ve never been a great sleeper. For as long as I can remember I’d go through a roller-coaster cycle of insomnia. I would have trouble going to sleep or wake up in the middle of the night with my mind racing. This would last a week or two until I was so tired and then I’d get a couple weeks of decent sleep. Repeat.But after the birth of my daughter, my body went into a whirlwind of chronic, deep insomnia. Beyond the sleepless newborn phase, my body struggled to go to sleep and stay asleep long after my little girl finally slept through the night (which, for the record, wasn’t until she was 19 months old).
I tried everything.
With the exception of drugs, that is. I tried yoga, essential oils, herbal teas, relaxing music, turning all the lights off in my house by 6:30, going to bed consistently early, no television, no clocks, hypnosis, earthing mats, acupressure… you name it. If it was natural and someone anywhere had written about it, I tried it.
But things got worse before they got better.
The breaking point was when I had five nights in a row of not being able to fall asleep until after 4 A.M. (For the record, I go to bed early every night and since my little girl wakes up at 5 or 6). And this was after nearly two years of horrible sleep already. I finally went to my doctor/homeopath (really, I should have gone much sooner). Between her expertise, some blood work, and my desperate desire to get over my sleep issues I was finally able to get to the root problems. From there I continued researching.
Gotta love those hormones.
Hormones affect virtually every single one of your body’s functions, and have a profound impact on all its physiological systems. - The Sleep SolutionThe more I learned about hormonal balance and how the hormones are affected by glucose metabolism, I was finally able to piece together an action plan to get more sleep. And it worked!
I’m finally getting sleep. (Or at least I was… then I had another baby. Ha! But I’m sleeping better now with a newborn than I was with a toddler who slept through the night.)
The Sleep Solution
Emily
Benfit, the quick-witted and super smart brains of Butter Believer has
put together an amazing resource on how to overcome your insomnia: The Sleep Solution: End your insomnia naturally.While I have come a long way and learned a lot (mostly the hard way), I SO wish I had this book when I was struggling to get quality sleep.
She covers the basics that most other sleep books cover: Circadian rhythms, creating the ideal sleep environment, sleep cycles, supplements, etc. All good information and stuff you can find in other books.
But beyond all that, she also gets to the root problem.
Emily discusses in length the importance of balanced hormones, metabolic health, and how the two are connected. In other words, she gets it. She goes beyond some useful tips on improving your odds of sleep.
The root cause of insomnia
What I discovered the hard way, and what Emily covers so beautifully, is that blood glucose management is a function of the body’s metabolism which is regulated by the thyroid which regulate the hormones involved in sleep disruption. Knowing the root problem is key as you move forward to solving your insomnia. And The Sleep Solution does a great job of helping you overcome the root problem and ending your insomnia naturally.Emily will teach you:
- How to test for low thyroid function and low metabolism
- How to balance your hormones to help you sleep quicker, longer, and deeper
- How to minimize stress
- What nutrients support metabolic health
- How to help regulate your circadian rhythms
- How to create a healthy bedtime routine
- How to deal with middle-of-the-night wakings
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