52. The Hidden Link Between Poor Sleep, Hormone Chaos, and Inflammation

Welcome to Rooted in Wellness with me, wellness advocate and holistic nutritionist, Mona Sharma. Together we will take a journey to discover natural healing practices from imbalance to balance, guided by ancient wisdom and modern scientific insights. I was raised living summers on an ashram, so I learned early on that food is medicine and your kitchen is your greatest source of healthcare and prevention. After facing two heart surgeries, anxiety and weight challenges, I discovered that just because your symptoms are common doesn't mean that they are normal. Together with some incredible guests, we will explore the power of our mind, body and soul connection, returning to our roots to rediscover our greatest wellbeing. [Speaking of the language] hi, everyone. Welcome back to Rooted in Wellness. Today's episode is all about one of the most overlooked yet most powerful tools that we have for healing: sleep. Sleep isn't just about feeling rested. It's about giving your body the time that it needs to repair, to reset, and really to thrive. And if you're struggling with things like energy or cravings or brain fog or inflammation or even anxiety, even if you're just feeling off, this episode is for you. Because chances are, your body's not getting enough of the deep restorative sleep that it needs to heal. And if you're looking for simple ways to feel better fast, don't forget, go to my website and download my free guide. It's the 12 wellness tips that will transform your energy, your clarity, and your vitality. It was co-created by the amazing Dr. Mark Hyman. You'll get actionable, powerful shifts that you can make today to feel more grounded, more energized, and more aligned. It's waiting for you. for you at monasharma.com/12-tips or in the show notes below. All right, let's dive in. So why is sleep one of the most overlooked healing tools? Let's get one thing straight. You cannot fully heal, detox, or rebalance without sleep. Sleep is actually what I connect with on my clients before nutrition, before supplements, or before anything else. Sleep is your body's most powerful reset button. It's the time when your brain clears out waste, your liver does its deepest detoxifying work, when your hormones rebalance, and when your nervous system finally unwinds. It's also when your body rebuilds its muscle and its skin cells and even your gut lining. So when you're not sleeping deeply or not sleeping enough, which is common these days, our healing really starts to stall. And poor sleep affects every single system within our body. It increases our insulin resistance, making it harder to manage our weight and our blood sugar balance. Poor sleep disrupts your appetite hormones, which are ghrelin and leptin, making you hungrier and craving more sugar throughout the day. It raises your cortisol, your stress hormone, and it also reduces your immune function over time. And it also lowers your cognitive performance, so you'll feel more foggy, more forgetful, and even low in motivation day by day. The thing is, sleep is not a luxury, it's a biological necessity. So what happens when we don't sleep enough versus when you do? And let's get really honest. If you're not sleeping well, you're probably already feeling the effects, right? But what's happening under the surface is even more important for you to understand. so let's break down what's really going on in your body when you're sleep deprived and that really what happens when you start to heal, when you're finally feeling well rested again, when you're sleep deprived, and that's even just like one hour off a night, you're missing an hour of sleep can throw off your entire system. It's like you're operating through life with jet lag. Right. Here's how. The first thing is that our blood sugar becomes unstable, and when you don't sleep enough, your cells become more resistant to insulin, meaning that your body can't process sugar as effectively. This can cause higher levels of fasting blood sugar levels, sugar cravings despite your best efforts, and even stubborn weight gain over time. Next, your appetite hormones go haywire. Lack of sleep is going to raise ghrelin, your hunger hormone, and it lowers leptin, your fullness hormone. This means that you're more likely to overeat the next day, and specifically crave more sugar, crave more cobs, and crave more processed foods. Your cortisol is going to stay elevated. Sleep is when your cortisol should naturally decline. But if you stay up too late or you wake up a lot, you know, throughout the night, this is what happens to me. Your cortisol is gonna stay high. This is gonna make you feel wired, tired, anxious, and even inflamed. And over time, this leads to adrenal fatigue, burnout, and hormone imbalances, which can be prevented. Also your immune function. It's going to drop with just one night of poor sleep. This can suppress your immune system, making you more susceptible to getting sick over time and maybe making it harder to recover. Next is when brain fog sets in. You might feel forgetful, unfocused, or unmotivated. That's because sleep is when your brain consolidates memory and clears out metabolic waste through something called your glymphatic system. Without deep sleep, your brain literally cannot clean itself. Poor sleep will cause your mood to suffer, and maybe this lack of sleep is going to impact your emotional regulation. You'll become more reactive, easily triggered, and more prone to anxiety or poor moods. It's harder to access that calm, grounded energy when your body hasn't had the opportunity to feel recharged. Digestion and metabolism are also going to slow down. your digestive system works better when your body is rested. Poor sleep can contribute to constipation and bloating or even a sluggish metabolism when you're well rested. Now let's talk about the version of you that's getting deep, consistent, good quality sleep. Here's what that looks like. So first is your hormones rebalance naturally. When you sleep deeply, your body regulates cortisol, insulin, melatonin, your thyroid hormone, your sex hormones, like estrogen and progesterone. You don't have to micromanage your hormones when you're giving your body enough rest. It does the work for you. Your body knows what to do when it's rested. Next is you're going to feel less inflamed. Deep sleep reduces inflammatory markers in the body. This means less puffiness and less joint pain, better digestion, and even faster recovery from workouts or illness. You're going to feel more clear, more calm, and more focused. You wake up with a sharper mental clarity, with better memory, and more emotional stability. We've all felt that, right? You're less reactive and more grounded, which affects everything from how you show up at work, how you communicate in your relationships every day, and how motivated you feel. What about your cravings? They're going to start to stabilize when you're rested. You're less likely to crave things like sugar and carbs and starches because your body is going to be in tune with real hunger cues, and it's going to be so much easier to make decisions that nourish you. Your metabolism, it's going to work for you and not against you. A well-rested body burns fat more efficiently, it builds muscle more easily, and has a steadier blood sugar levels. This supports long-term vitality and your energy and even a healthy weight. Your body is going to repair and rebuild. During deep sleep, your body releases growth hormone, which supports tissue repair, muscle growth, collagen production, and gut lining repair. This is essential for longevity and for our skin health too. Now let's talk about the importance of routine and rhythm every day. Here's something that most people don't realize. The timing of your sleep really matters just as much as the number of hours that you're getting. Your body runs on a circadian rhythm, a natural 24-hour internal clock that affects everything from your hormones to your digestion. So the more that you're consistent with your sleep-wake schedule, the more your body can enter a deep state of predictable, restorative repair. Going to bed and waking up at the same time every day, even on weekends, is going to train your body to sleep deeper. And this rhythm is especially critical for hormonal health, for your gut repair, for digestive support, and for regulating your mood. So what is disrupting our sleep? that we often overlook. There are so many hidden stressors that hijack your sleep quality even without you realizing it. Here are a few of the most common that I recognize with so many of my clients. The first is kind of obvious, and I know you all know this. It screens before bed. That blue light delays melatonin release. Even five minutes of scrolling can really push back your natural sleep cycle. It keeps your brain wired and working instead of getting ready for bed. late night eating or even drinking. Your body stays in this digestion mode and not repair mode. You've probably felt the difference when you eat a little too close to bed. Caffeine, of course, too late in the day. Some of us, like me, are genetically slower caffeine metabolizers. And this might mean that you have to stop your caffeine intake by 12:00 PM. For me, it's 11:00 AM. Then unprocessed emotions. I talk about this a lot with my clients. anxiety, those looping thoughts that keep you awake, unspoken words that keep your nervous system alert and thinking all night. It's so important to recognize what those are because that's sabotaging your body's ability to rest. Addressing your metabolic health. When I'm looking at my client's blood sugar dips, if your blood sugar crashes at 2:00 a.m., it's going to wake you up with a jolt. And this is more common than what most people realize. you might recognize that if we're using a tracker like an Oura Ring, get really familiar with your sleep cycles. I don't encourage you to look at a clock, but just be aware of if this is a sleep pattern that's consistent for you, then maybe you're gonna recognize there's an opportunity for you to do some sleep training again. All right, next, how do we fall asleep and stay asleep? I spent so many years of my life waking up so many times throughout the night, and it was really staying asleep finally, learning how to do this that enabled me to wake up feeling restored and refreshed. as you deserve. So let's get really practical on this one. Good sleep, it isn't just about how many hours that you're logging, it's about how deep and restorative those hours are. And here's the good news, you don't need to overhaul your entire lifestyle just to sleep better. It's just a few very intentional shifts to your environment or maybe your habits and your nervous system that can make a massive difference. So let's break this down into simple categories that you can start to implement even tonight. The first thing is to set the scene. Take some time to set your sleep environment to make it work for you. Your environment when you sleep is going to teach your body whether it's time to move into rest or whether it's time to stay alert. And here's how to create a true sleep sanctuary. So that's what it should feel like when you walk into your bedroom. Think about installing a red or amber light bulb in your bedroom or using a red nightlight. These support melatonin production, and it won't stimulate your brain with that blue or white light the way that it does when you're looking at your phone. Consider keeping your room really cool. 65 degrees Fahrenheit is ideal for deep sleep. Get an extra duvet if you need it. Maybe you and your partner will have to do some negotiating. Maybe you're going to consider some blackout curtains or a silk sleep mask, which I love to really block out light. A lot of my clients like using a white noise machine. It really helps them in getting that deep sleep. Of course, putting your phone away, put it in another room. Please make sure that you're putting it on airplane mode Moving it as far from your bed as you possibly can because I do believe that EMF exposure is also a thing. But remove all temptation. Keep your phone habits separate from your sleep ritual. Here's my pro tip. What if you could make your bedroom feel like a spa and not like a second office or entertainment space? Keep it dark and cool and free of screens. I always say to my clients, your bedroom is meant for sleep. for sex, for reading, and for rest. That is it. I don't want to see any screens in your bedroom. Next, let's talk about a hot topic, which is supporting your nervous system. Your body cannot sleep or move into deep rest if your nervous system doesn't feel safe. These tools really help you shift out of that fight or flight mode that we live in day by day and into that parasympathetic rest and digest safe that your body can repair in. I teach my clients deep breathing, like box breathing, inhaling for the count of four, holding for the count of four, exhaling for the count of four, maybe holding out for the count of four. Or if that's too complicated, just breathing in deeply and exhaling deeply. Make that a mindful practice every night when you get into your bed to cue the brain that it's time to rest, to cue that you're in an environment that feels safe, this is sleep training for adults. Mouth taping. Gently taping your lips closed at night with safe, skin friendly, gentle tape is going to encourage you to focus on nasal breathing instead of mouth breathing. That's going to improve oxygenation. When our body is rested, we're breathing in and out through the nose, not through the mouth. You could try humming or chanting or even light humming with your breath work. I hum with my kids at night before we go to bed because it activates the vagus nerve, which helps you downshift and prepare to relax. Journaling is also a great tool that you might enjoy. Think of it like a brain dump. You're dumping all of your thoughts onto paper out of your mind to stop that mental loop. And remember, a really calm mind means that you're going to have a calm body. It's going to get you into that restorative, deeper sleep that your body needs. and of course, I always get the question about supplements and herbs. I want you to use these really wisely. We shouldn't have to rely on sleep aids. All right. Sometimes your body needs that extra support, especially if you're going through a period of excess stress, maybe as your hormones are shifting, as your blood sugar might be disrupting your sleep and you're kind of working on getting ahead of that. There are some really great supplements that you can try. There, of course, is magnesium. Magnesium glycinate or magnesium threonate. It helps to calm the nervous system and really support deep sleep. I love combining this with L-theanine and GABA. Two pumps under my tongue and I find I'm able to get in deep restorative sleep. But of course, I don't use that all the time. Ashwagandha, an amazing adaptogenic herb that lowers cortisol levels at night. Maybe you're going to make yourself a yummy passion flower or chamomile or lemon balm tea. these are gentle herbs that help to ease tension and promote relaxation. There's been some really great studies on CBD or CBN. These can be helpful for deep sleep support, but quality matters. You want to make sure that you're looking for third party tested products. I'm going to say work with a practitioner on these ones. They can be so supportive. They're such powerful tools, even coming from nature. But you want, you don't want to get addicted to them. You want them to be part of your toolkit during times. of need. Something that I love, especially with my kiddos, is red light therapy. For some people, it's sauna. Red light therapy really helps to calm and ground us. It supports our nervous system. It lowers inflammation. And this could cue your body that it's time to shift into that period of rest. Sauna, as I mentioned, or infrared sauna can really help to lower our cortisol and raise our melatonin naturally. And plus, it's that rise and fall in body temperature that's going to mimic your body's natural circadian rhythm. and make it easier to fall asleep. If you're in the sauna, I want you to make sure that you're hydrating well. Give yourself about 30 to 60 minutes before the heat exposure and before you go into bed. For some of my clients, this could be really stimulating for them as well. So it's something that you're going to have to try on to see if it helps you feel restored. Next, I really want you all to get anchored in your own body's very unique circadian rhythm. This is your body's internal clock that is going to start thriving on consistency. And here's how to really keep it aligned. So I want you to consider maybe going to bed and waking up at the exact same time every single day, even on weekends. This is going to help your body anticipate sleep and the release of melatonin predictably, meaning your body is going to produce it. And what about first thing in the morning? I encourage you all to get sunlight in your eyes first thing in the morning, ideally within the first hour of waking up. This is something that we do with the Ashram. We go outside. It anchors your circadian rhythm for a better night's sleep ahead, and it attunes your body that it's time to wake up. You're moving to the activity portion of your day. You also want to avoid eating heavy meals within 2 to 3 hours of bedtime so that your body can focus on moving into that repair mode instead of digesting while you sleep. You've probably noticed on maybe you've gone out for a fun dinner, the nights that you do that, your sleep might feel a bit more compromised or you're waking up more often. So do your best. Try to eat two to three hours before you go to bed. Routine is everything. Your body wants that rhythm. It's how we are biologically designed to thrive. Your organs even run on a circadian rhythm. So set the stage to optimize the way that your body is meant to function naturally. So here's your final reminder. You are allowed to rest. Tune in and give your body the ability to rest when you need it. You're actually meant to rest. and you know that you're going to show up more fully for your life and for everyone else when you do so. And it doesn't mean that you have to do it every day, but if your body is asking for it, listen to the cues. Sleep isn't a luxury, it's your body's most powerful healing tool. It resets your hormones, it's going to clear your mind, it's going to repair your gut and your digestion, and even restore your glow from the inside out if you're doing all the right things. But maybe still not feeling your best, don't skip the sleep. Prioritize it, honor it, make it part of your healing ritual. And don't forget, if you're looking for a simple place to start, I encourage you go and download my free guide, 12 Wellness Tips that Will Transform youm Energy, youe Clarity, and youe Vitality. Created with the amazing Dr. Hyman, we offered our greatest daily tips to optimize your sleep, your digestion, so that you wake up feeling more grounded in your own unique energy. Grab it at monasharma.com/12tips. As I say to my clients, we all have a very unique constitution, but it thrives on consistency and honoring our body's own ritual and daily circadian rhythm. So please go and honor yours. Until next time, stay rooted, remember who you are, remember your body can heal itself, and I'll see you back here on Rooted in Mana soon.