#50 Gut Feelings: How Your Microbiome Influences Sleep

🦋✨💙 Welcome to Wellness Wednesday’s 💙✨🦋

Are you aware that your gut health may be behind your sleep troubles? This episode uncovers the intricate connection between the gut microbiome and sleep quality, revealing insights that could transform your nightly rest. We discuss how an imbalanced gut can lead to significant sleep disruptions, highlighting the vital gut-brain axis and its influence on mood, stress, and sleep-wake cycles.

Listeners will learn the importance of meal timing and hydration while discovering the profound effects stress can have on sleep quality. Practical tips and enlightening explanations provide actionable steps for enhancing gut health, allowing for a better night's sleep. 

We delve into the fascinating world of hormones, explaining how serotonin produced in the gut plays a crucial role in sleep regulation. Suggestions for easy lifestyle adjustments are laid out, encouraging listeners to prioritise their sleep through better dietary choices and wellness practices.

Join me in exploring this compelling subject that blends science, personal experience, and holistic health. With a focus on nurturing your body’s innate rhythms, this episode offers a roadmap to restore balance and rejuvenate your nighttime rest. Subscribe, share your thoughts, and let's prioritise sweetness in our night's sleep together!

Chapters

• 0:32 Welcome and Introduction
• 12:25 Overview of Gut Microbiome and Sleep
• 21:00 Gut Microbes, Hormones, and Sleep Patterns
• 1:04:09 Three Key Connections Between Gut Health and Sleep
• 1:54:09 The Importance of Meal Timing
• 6:31:13 Stress and Gut Health Impacts on Sleep

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello, hello everybody, and welcome back to this wellness podcast. I am your host, star Friedenberg, and this podcast is you can't make this shiitake up. I'm almost going to change it to shiitake mushroom, aren't I Today sort of a short educational podcast? You know, hopefully I don't know, I keep saying that but then I end up talking for forever. So I am sorry and hashtag not sorry at the same time.

Speaker 1: 0:27

But the purpose of this podcast today is I saw a really cool article that popped up. So, aka, I haven't written it, but I thought it'd be good to talk about it. Because, why not? Because good little tips and information, because of course, I have my feelers and fingers in many pies, because I love research and understanding and learning. So I'm just here to sort of relay what I pick up and I thought it would be quite nice to obviously pass this on, because when articles and information are being sent to me, it kind of sort of raises the information that it's okay. This is quite relevant at the moment and it's good to know.

Speaker 1: 1:04

And so the theme and the subject of this podcast today is all about the gut microbiome, my most wholehearted favorite subject, and specialism, and how it affects your sleep. So, as I always say to everyone you know on the outside, to the outside observer, it looks like I do quite a large amount of modalities and me people may or may not know that obviously there's a central core theme which it all stems from gut health, and that is what fundamentally has led me to sort of study areas outside of just gut health specifically, because fundamentally it is as a result of gut health and it's a consequence of bad gut health, and so in order to understand the symptoms as well as the root, then I can get people back to a happy bunny. The theme of today's subject is all about the gut, microbiome and sleep, and this is about three ways your gut can impact your sleeping patterns. So what I always see in the clinic is sleep by default is always off when someone has an imbalanced gut and that will be, and what I can say from my personal experience when you have a lot of irritation in the gut, gas bloating it does upset the body and thus the body is struggling to process what's going on down there and the system isn't in a relaxed state.

Speaker 1: 2:31

And one of the most most, most most common I see, is because people don't allow enough time between their last meal and their sleep. So I sort of say, on average, between three to four hours, if you can um, before you sleep, so that at least can allow the body enough time to digest the food as much as possible, and preferentially, when you get to dinner time, to try and eat a lot less harder foods, a lot more easier, uh, easily digestible foods, and I always go to the common soup, you know, softer foods like rice or fish, nothing raw, nothing hard, nothing extreme, that the body has to do its extra, extra work, if you will, to churn and basically dissolve that food into chyme, which is basically the medical word for soup, like substance, and so that'll be easier on your body, because the basically the whole purpose of sleep is to repair and the body cannot digest and repair at the same time. It's sort of the premise of one, one or the other and unfortunately a lot of people are not giving the chance to support that. So this and also one more, one more thing I think also is really important is when people wake up at certain hours of the night.

Speaker 1: 3:54

I always ask this question because in Chinese medicine we have something called the medicine, so the body clock, and the body clock represents that every two hours of the day, a specific organ is recharging. So when we look at people going to bed and they're waking up between the hours of one and three, that is about the liver. So usually liver is responsible for many things more than 500 functions of the body. So I'm very passionate. My favorite organ is the liver. My favorite vitamin is vitamin D, just so you know. And so the liver is responsible for so many things, and if you're waking up around that time, that's usually an indication that your body is unhappy and that organ is talking, if you will. So that's an indication already. And then when we go on to the period of 3 to 5 am, that's all about the lungs, and, as I always tell people that in Chinese medicine the organs are always married to each other. So when it's the lungs from 3 to 5, then between 5 and 7 is the large intestine time as well, which is the end point of digestion, if you will. So if people are waking up between that time period, you've got to think to yourself why, why is that happening? I always get the most comment around three o'clock, but usually if people say that they go to bed quite late 12 1, but then they're up at 5, 5, 36, then they think to themselves like what's happening? It's saying that the large intestine is saying there's something not happy there, something's not right.

Speaker 1: 5:29

And amongst the two other big, big, big culprits, number one is hydration levels. When you go to sleep, your body needs to be sufficiently hydrated in order to perform the processes of detoxification and clearing, etc. Which majority of the population, I can definitely say, are not sufficiently hydrated due to various reasons. And of course, then the machine's trying to repair and it's like oh, I don't really have the right fuel to support that. And then, of course, number two, the ultimate one it should be the priority king one is stress. So when stress is going on in the mind and the whole system's basically on red alert, red alert, red alert the body is going to perceive itself that it's in a state of trauma, a state of fight, flight or freeze, and as a result of that, the whole digestive system shuts down, because this is a non-necessary function when you were supposed to be running away from the metaphorical saber-toothed tiger. And so, as a result, the body can't then digest what's going on, and then that creates more upset and then a knock-on effect is a lack of sleep, and that's just sort of my typical observations from in clinic.

Speaker 1: 6:44

And what I can say is 100% of the people that come in that have digestive or gut health imbalances do have sleeping problems. When they initially meet me and then we get them to eventually sleep like a baby and not necessarily every single day, but majority of the time that their overall sleep quality is significantly improved. And I always say after we do a gut health cleaning treatment that you will sleep like a baby tonight and the typical response is it's the best night of sleep I've ever had, right. So if you want to get the best night of sleep ever and you are struggling with sleep, you're fundamentally running your system down, because the system only has so much. And I can talk from personal experience because when I was in a highly stressed corporate job I was averaging about four hours a day and I don't I can't even vouch if that was even quality hours, but highly wired. And now you know I'm very happy and proud that I'm sleeping anything between seven to nine hours a day and I can really value the importance of sleep now because when I have anything less than that I feel like a little gremlin and not at my best and optimum that I'd like to be on a daily basis.

Speaker 1: 8:06

And it was very interesting because two years ago I went on a sleep course to understand the fundamentals about sleep, what sleep's all about, how the brainwaves work and what happens, and how deep does sleep happen and what the cycles are and what it's like, depending on. What does it do to the quality of your life with having little sleep? What does it do to the quality of your life with having little sleep? And also the fact one big takeaway I took from that is you can't catch up sleep, which is fascinating. So some people go. I'll just pull an all-nighter for many weeks and then they go when it's at the end. Then I'll just catch up on sleep again. It's not possible and it's kind of like you need to create those embedded uh foundations now.

Speaker 1: 8:56

And the lifespan of a person who does the graveyard shift so if they're working night shift, uh, their lifespan does significantly reduce, and I think it was about 35 percent or so, it was just, it was a number. So it's kind of thinking like, okay, you know, how can you bring more balance? So all that nighttime partying or late nights at work or, you know, choosing to work a graveyard shift job. You know, is it, is it really worth it? Because, if, you know, fast forward 30, 40 years down the line and say, sorry, I'm taking off 20 years, you know, is it really worth it? I think you'd be saying, in the present day, I'm not so sure.

Speaker 1: 9:37

I think life is worth living and it's not. You know, the purpose is not to live for work, the purpose is to live to enjoy life, which is unfortunately something that a lot of people confuse at the moment. But if you're living your purpose, which I feel like I am, I feel like I'm living my purpose, I'm doing what I want. Only because I have done a career for a long time where I knew this wasn't for me, you know it can be different, because you get a different kind of motivation, because you know it's purpose when you're working. But it just doesn't feel like work and you feel energized. And of course, there will be days. They will always be days. We're like what am I doing with my life?

Speaker 1: 10:20

But on the overall, on the curve, if you're more up than down, then thumbs up anyway, coming back to sleep, which I feel I feel is very, and that's why I'm bringing up this article. So I can definitely say at this time you know, sleep is becoming and is has become and is one of the hottest health trends at the moment and, of course, this is for good reason, because I think people coming back to the fundamental pillars that I always talk about and going actually sleep's really important and you know what's great, it's affordable, it's something you don't have to spend a fortune on incorporating into your life. It's just a daily practice that you know the onus and responsibility is on you. You can make it the best or the worst habit possible. So, where you know where are you standing and knowing that it can just significantly change a lot, and there's sort of I think it's a Chinese saying about you know, every extra hour you get in before 12, before 12, 12 pm, before midnight just adds an extra 10 years onto your life, as they say. So it's really really important and according to Chinese medicine, the best time of sleep is anything between 10, 10 pm and 11 pm at night.

Speaker 1: 11:34

So just putting that out there, because one thing I noticed when I moved to the UK, coming from South Africa, you know the typical dinner, supper, uh, evening meal interchangeable word um, you know we're eating meals about 5 or 6 pm, but the lifestyle in europe is anything between dinners at 10 11 at night. So I can see a very different culture here, but of course it's very different set of health issues, whereas in south africa it's a very, very different way of being and I can see the benefits of the cultural um. You know the cultural habits if you will, because it's just a norm to eat that early. You hear people like is that a late lunch? What are you doing right?

Speaker 1: 12:18

So again, just sort of on the premise of giving that gap between, uh, sleep with night time, um, and your eating time and most important is the caffeinated beverages nothing after 12 slash, one o'clock latest. Because, um, coming from my sleep study as well, you know, even though you physically haven't drank coffee in eight hours, it's still in the system very low-key, underlying. But even when you go to bed, it's not actually registering you as sleepy because you're still wired. If you will, even on the subtle tones and subtle levels you may or may not recognize, you go. You could go to the bed, could lie down, you could perceive that you're falling asleep, but that's where you're not getting the quality um. So, yes, you're physically in the bed but not not actually getting any sleep or deep sleep at all. So that's why you'll wake up exhausted and that can have a knock-on effect. Even you know, two to three days later you can really feel the impact of what you've done a few days before.

Speaker 1: 13:18

All right, so although making sure you stick to a healthy sleep schedule and aim for an eight hour period you know that's sort of the guideline seven to nine hours, some are saying now, with females and hormones, up to 10 hours a day I think it's very dependent on an individual and their lifestyle, because I have a number of clients who, you know, have a crazy sleep schedule and their health is really not great. So eight hours a day is more than just your typical health craze, because there is a lot more to managing your nighttime routine. So scientists consider sleeping as an essential process for rest and repair, right? So, as I have mentioned that earlier as well, so at night we close our eyes and we drift off to sleep, allowing our subconscious to take over. During this time, our brain undergoes significant threat assessments over the stress of the day. It's sort of like you're playing out the scenarios in your head and your body will try to sort of just release them and will focus efforts on healing and energy restoration. Additionally, sleep helps to boost your immune system, fight off any infections. So always the sick people, the ones of low immunity. You'll marry the pattern that their sleep is really off and they're working really late, late nights, pushing themselves, doing too much, etc. And you might think of sleep as a peaceful activity. But it's actually quite an act of time, complete with building repair and information retention. So it's fascinating.

Speaker 1: 14:53

Because I always say to people you know, think about how incredible our vehicle is. It really is. It's a phenomenal thing, you know, and I can understand why. You know we say God has created this because, you know, still to this day we barely understand the body, we barely understand how all the functions go and, of course, from what we do know in the future, you know, things get rewritten from what we thought we knew in the past. So you know, what do we really know? Who knows, who knows? But for what we know at the moment, what I'm going is, wow, this is fascinating, absolutely fascinating.

Speaker 1: 15:28

And so I say to people you know, think about a car. A car you go in, you switch on the engine. You drive around all day. You can be driving the whole entire day. You get home, you park the car in the garage, the car physically shuts off and the car, can, you know, have a break, but our body literally never, ever stops. Does that? Like? We literally can't switch off the body, otherwise that equates to being dead, right. So when do we get the time to actually just repair? And that would be through sleep. But even through that the body's like okay, shift, day shift is over, let's get night shift on, and so there's so much going on. But this can only happen when you sleep and it's kind of like you're preventing night shift to start, and so we need to really take more value in it.

Speaker 1: 16:16

And I think the thing that I'm trying to create in terms of knowledge and understanding is I just want to put the information out there of you know, this is why one should regard, you know, in all the things I'm teaching, why one should regard this as really valuable. Then you take that decision to say I agree or disagree either, or it doesn't matter. You know, take the information like it's kind of like Morpheus. You know, I can show you the red pill, the blue pill. You know, I can only show you the door. You have to walk through it, right? So I can only give you the information. You can choose to do with it what you will, but maybe you'll go, okay, actually, you can choose to do with it what you will, but maybe you'll go okay. Actually, this is quite important, this is quite valuable and that might be the mindset shift that you go. Okay, I'm going to start making this important in my life and prioritize it in my life, because I want to have quality years in the future.

Speaker 1: 17:07

Right so, from eyes shut to wide awake. So when you cut down on your sleep, your natural repair mechanisms are compromised. However, most common issues with sleep aren't usually by choice. In truth, nearly 168 million people in the us are estimated to struggle with sleep at least once a week. That's over two-thirds of the nation. That's crazy statistic, isn't it? And if you're one of them, sleep can seem more elusive. It can seem outright impossible.

Speaker 1: 17:40

Actually, there are a lot of ways we can improve chances, your chances. There's a lot of ways you can improve your chances of falling asleep. You know this as doing breath work. So practicing breath work techniques, much like in meditation, maybe even playing meditation around, finding something on youtube, um, you know, having a nice bath, you know, dimming the lights in the house, not a lot of screen time, just to really get the body to shift gears and start to wind down, because I think that's what we hype. We hype ourselves up too much.

Speaker 1: 18:15

And I can just say, because at the moment I don't know if this is globally on Netflix, but there's a program called Gangs of London that I've been watching and I mean I don't know who the director is, but I was just like geez, guy Ritchie, take a step back and take a lesson from this guy. Because the violence and the intensity of this program I was like whoa, like my blood pressure is through the roof and I'm like how am I going to go to bed now? Like I was, like we can't watch this before bed because I'm just freaking out because there's just blood and gore and violence and betrayal. It's really good program. But, like I was, like I go to bed and I'm like my body is just so awake as if, like, I'm part of the program. So you need to sort of take the steps about how you're going to reduce the external sensory things that are available there. You know the hearing, the seeing, the touch, the feel. You just want to start to slow that down and which we want to try and help reduce the circulating levels of cortisol, the stress hormone that's in the body.

Speaker 1: 19:15

So another really great one that I do before bed is I take a nice warm shower and I use that as a sort of as a as a checkpoint of my day. And when I have that hot shower before or as soon as I get home, to be quite frank, my body knows like boom, that is the, the gear shift for me to go. Okay, well, the trigger, if you will, that says okay, you're home now. Shower. Shower means downtime, winding down, time to relax. You can switch off right and if I come home and I have something to do, I don't take the shower yet. So that's sort of how I would do, so that can help you relax. Any tense muscles also can relax from a stressful day.

Speaker 1: 19:57

Like I say, it's sort of not always practical, but you can avoid using your electronics, especially ones that have blue light. But if you do have blue light glasses or blue light protectors wherever possible, which are known to stimulate the signals in your body that keep you awake longer, or you can try natural sleep aids like magnesium. If you know me and you work with me, everyone is on magnesium, everybody, and not just any magnesium. It's magnesium by glycinate that I specifically put you on, because different ones for different reasons, but that's really the best one in my opinion to help with sleep and, um, yes, and also magnesium is really important because it does actually reduce cortisol in the body, like quite literally on a physical level. So you just like take this, it takes your stress away, so it's quite helpful and important.

Speaker 1: 20:47

So if you're highly stressed, then I say, take it twice a day, but if not, just take it before bed, an hour or so before, just so it can act as a natural I call it like an inverted commas natural sleeping tablet. I've made my own combination of natural supplements that you take together and that will really actually help like a natural sleep aid. And so you don't have to take pharmaceuticals necessarily. So my belief system about pharmaceuticals is everything has its place and you kind of want to just take those when you have to for a medical emergency or for a strict condition. So if we can take other natural means and methods to support daily functions, then that's perfect. These ways and many others can help you just to adjust your nighttime routine to embrace a better mental and physical state for rest. And there's a lot of other tips and hacks that you know I won't get into here, but I highly, highly recommend if you do struggle with your sleep, do contact me and then we can look at all the lifestyle recommendations, plus nutrition and possibly in-clinic treatments as well, to really reset your body.

Speaker 1: 21:53

But if you've tried your fair share of evening pick-me-ups or rather settle-downs actually and still finding sleep far on the horizon, there might be something else keeping you from becoming one with your bed. So we asked the question could your gut microbes be keeping you up at night? So your gut microbes have their fingers involved in a variety of physiological processes within your body. So their interaction with your hormones, their relationship with your brain activity and their strong influence over your immune system all play a part in how you respond to evening cues. And just a quick little fun fact about 70% of your immune system resides within your gut, so there's a strong correlation. So if you have a poor immune system, then you know your gut health is off as well.

Speaker 1: 22:46

So normally when the sun sets, the lack of sunlight interacts with the biological changes that affect our circadian rhythm, our sleeping rhythm, right Our exposure to day and night. This biological clock mechanism dictates when we feel tired and impacts how easily we wake up. Although most of the responses are fairly stable, over time we often make changes that can influence or even interrupt certain signals. For example, every day during the week you might use your morning alarm clock to wake you up on time to start your day, but come the weekend you shut it off, looking forward to sleeping in on Saturday morning. Except when Saturday morning does come, you arise wide awake at your typical 7am time, our internal biological clock. So just as you can influence your waking routine, scientists have determined poor nighttime practices and poor diet can change your gut flora and impact your risk of sleep patterns. Through some inspiring research, there are several theories on how your gut microbes might be calling the shots, and you know we always have a boss, don't we? So, however, research agrees that these three are the most likely culprits.

Speaker 1: 24:00

So number one, my favorite subject at the moment, is the gut-brain axis. So the connection between our brain and our digestive system is a complex system connected by the vagus nerve. So if you know about it. I'm huge on the vagus nerve at the moment, um, and especially the, the machine, the, the machine that I recommend that people buy from this third-party company. That can actually help stimulate the vagus nerve to work well, which basically helps your stress physiologically to calm down. So I'm super big on this theme at the moment and I love it as well because Brian Johnson, he, is also into it significantly. So I love when I'm into things and people are like I don't know, it's a bit new tech, I'm not sure about it. So now that there's a quite a popular, well-known public figure who's highly promoting it, then you get an extra thumbs up of confidence for that. So, okay, back to the back to the, the main topic, before I digress further.

Speaker 1: 24:57

Consequently, key signals can be passed down between these two, so like when we are hungry, stressed or even into our emotional states. So recently scientists have determined there's more to communicating than just the two organs. In fact, our gut microbes are also on the call and can change these signals for the better or for the worse. So you see, the same nerves that can regulate our digestion and motility also stimulate how quickly our heart beats and our mood. So if the gut microbiome is off balance. It's possible neuroinflammatory metabolites may be traveling up to the vagus nerve and then penetrating the brain. So these metabolites have been shown to influence our stress response, impacting our heart rate and disrupting sleep structure patterns.

Speaker 1: 25:52

Number two hormone regulation. So many gut microbes also produce normal compounds that use this pathway to travel to our brains. Studies implicating the relationship between our gut microbes and mood disorders have shown these to be the case, as many microbes within our gut microbiome produce serotonin, a key biochemical that regulates our mood. Serotonin is also a precursor for melatonin, another hormone that's essential to our light-dark cycle. That eases us to sleep. If the microbiome isn't producing its fair share of serotonin fun fact 95% of our hormones are produced in the gut. So by correcting the gut, the hormones correct themselves and then the hormones work well and optimally. Right, so it's fair share of serotonin this hormone flow may cease to a trickle and change standard sleeping patterns. This theory has also been supported by the number of people experiencing mood changes and reporting additional issues with sleep.

Speaker 1: 26:57

So, hormones out, sleep is out, and I think of the classic menopausal hot flushes in the middle of the night. Can't sleep. Hormones out, sleep's affected. Right Three the immune system. So scientists say our gut houses upwards of 70% of our immune system. I just told you that, so yeah. So now, hopefully that's in your mind.

Speaker 1: 27:18

When we're at optimal health, the immune organ works at peak performance like an efficient fighting machine. However, when our body is under long-term assault from toxic substances invading bacteria or injury, our immune system can interrupt normal processes and can change how well we regulate our sleeping cycles. When the gut ecosystem becomes imbalanced, it can cause an immune reaction that permeates through the digestive lining and penetrates peripheral tissues. If this immune response reaches organs such as the lungs, the inflammatory response can impact breathing at night and can increase the likelihood of impacting breathing patterns during sleep. Although researchers are uncovering complex interactions between our gut microbiome and our sleep, the full implications of their relationship are still not fully understood, right? We're still a lot years behind on how this vehicle works. What scientists have shown is that the health of our gut is intricately tied to the health of many other systems within the body. By maintaining your gut ecosystem and reducing stress, you might notice changes in your nightly routine. One thing we know for sure whatever your sleep routine is, you deserve to function at your best.

Speaker 1: 28:40

All right, so this is going to mark the end of the episode today, and what I hope is you just take a couple of nuggets from this and just sort of start thinking about. You know what time am I sleeping? Am I sleeping the same time every day? Am I waking up the same time every day, or do I have an extreme varying cycle, even on the weekends, you know? Am I getting enough sleep? Am I going to think about trying to get another hour of sleep in? Am I going to try to go to bed a little bit earlier? Am I going to reduce the electronics? Am'm going to dim the lights of the house? Then we're going to find some relaxing routines meditation practices, hot shower, hot bath, in good company. You know that soothes your, your nervous system, if you will, all right.

Speaker 1: 29:30

So thank you for your time, thank you for listening and if you've taken any good tips, please do let me know. Please also let me know if you know you've been listening to this podcast and starting to incorporate changes and things like that. I'm very interested. And also if you have any recommendations of certain topics you want to know more about, especially surrounding gut health, because that's my area of specialty, please let me know and I'll be happy to make an episode in due time. So, wherever you are in the world, I'm sending you love and light and I look forward to welcoming you back onto this podcast next week, same time, same place, with another educational packed podcast episode. Right, have a good day, bye, or should I say a good night's rest, bye.