51: Why Your Body Feels Worse at Night (And What to Do About It)

Have you ever woken up feeling off, pushed through the day, and then hit an unexpected wall right around four or five in the evening? You are not imagining it, and you are not falling apart. There is something very real happening in your body, and once you understand it, everything changes.

In this episode of Beyond Wellness Culture, Dr. Brook Sheehan breaks down the physiology behind what she calls the evening spiral, that moment when symptoms you were managing just fine seem to pile back on all at once. The culprit? Cortisol. Not because it is your enemy, but because it is doing exactly what it was designed to do. As cortisol naturally drops throughout the afternoon, the protective mask it was providing lifts, and your body starts to surface whatever was quietly brewing underneath, whether that is inflammation, lymphatic congestion, allergy symptoms, or plain old exhaustion.

Dr. Brook walks through simple, practical ways to support yourself through this window without immediately reaching for an over-the-counter solution, from adding minerals to your water and grabbing a high-protein snack to stepping outside for fresh air or resting with a cool cloth on your forehead. She also explores how this evening window affects all four pillars of the body OS ecosystem, the physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental, and why the feelings that seem to chase you down at the end of the day may actually be an invitation to feel things you were too busy to acknowledge earlier.

This episode is an encouragement and an education. The more you understand what your body is communicating, the less you have to fear it.

Your body has been talking to you your whole life.

On July 11, join me live for Body of Wonder and learn how to decode the signals behind your symptoms so you can stop guessing and start understanding.

Save your spot: https://os.drbrooksheehan.com/workshop

✨ Your body has been trying to tell you something.

Find out what it's saying with the free 30-second Body Signal Decoder Assessment. Pick your signal, get your personalized guide straight to your inbox, and finally start making sense of what's going on inside.

Get it here: os.drbrooksheehan.com/decoder

🎧 And if you caught the mention of the Talk to Me, Body affirmation card deck during the episode, here's where to grab yours. 63 scripture-anchored cards to help you trust the body God designed for you.

Get yours here: drbrooksheehan.com/talk-to-me-body/

📱 Come say hi on Instagram: @drbrooksheehan

⭐ If this episode spoke to you, would you take a second to leave a five-star review on Apple or Spotify? It helps more women find this show. And more women learning to listen to their bodies is exactly why I do this.

Transcript

Dr. Brook Sheehan (00:00)

And I think as a society, and I am gonna put myself in this category as well, we have become so accustomed to being comfortable. The temperature in our homes, our waters, we got our environment, everything in our own personal ecosystem, is all there to match our comfort. What I am encouraging you to do today is to allow yourself, allow your body to sit in that discomfort a little bit.

Are you doing everything right for your health but you still feel off? Does the wellness world have you overwhelmed, second-guessing your body, or chasing yet another fix? You’re not alone. I’m Dr. Brook Sheehan, and welcome to Beyond Wellness Culture, a space where we step out of the noise and rebuild trust with our body. This is where we stop overoptimizing, find clarity instead of confusion, and approach our health in a calmer, more grounded way. Take a deep breath, and let’s dive in. 

Welcome friends. So excited you are here. I want to say thank you to everybody who reached out about last week's episode and my personal story on anxiety and what that looked like for me and how I processed through and just everything that had happened during that timeframe and being transparent and sharing that with you guys and then just the outpour of other people.

Reaching out saying they felt seen and they were super grateful that I shared that. So I just want to say thank you for being honest and sharing with me how that episode hit for you. In today's episode, I want to talk about something that I actually talked about during episode five of this podcast, which actually was recorded back in 2024.

Quite a while ago, it's still there. You can certainly go back and listen to it. I gave three different major topics in that episode. Today I really want to highlight and pinpoint one of the things I spoke about, and that is increased pain at night or increased discomfort, I should say, in the evening. And we're gonna call this the evening spiral. There's no actual medical term for it necessarily, but it is.

When the nighttime comes... And when I say nighttime, I'm talking about anywhere between 3:30, 4:00, 4:30, 5:00, depending on what time zone and if the sun's still out and those kind of things. But it's those moments that we feel in our body where we just feel like we just hit a wall. And maybe we woke up that morning not feeling too great. But as the day went on, we felt so much better. We were able to do what we needed to do. And then BAM.

All of a sudden we get hit with something. And one of the things that I talk about a lot on the show is really helping people understand their body

So that we don't need to spiral in a state of anxiety, thinking that something more is going on when in reality it's just this or just that. And I want to talk about that because I feel like a lot of times in my own personal life, I experience it. And I have to remind myself as well, okay, this is what's happening. This is a normal body process. This is normal. I can be okay.

There are other times when I know what's happening right out the gate. And I don't have to start to spin in that. And there are moments when I'm talking, you listener, off the ledge. If you're a patient of mine, a lot of times it's like, hey, you're gonna be okay. This is how the body's responding. It will be fine. I want to give some tactical things that you can do when this stuff is occurring so that you feel empowered.

A knowing what's going on, but B also knowing that you can support yourself. So we're gonna get into that a little bit more into the episode, but I really need to talk about what is happening physiologically, because when we have an understanding, we can then have a better way of supporting ourselves.

No different than if I was a car mechanic, I would not freak out over every little sound I heard because I would know what's happening. But see, many of us are not car mechanics. So we get in our car and it starts making a funky noise, and we don't realize that noise might be because one of the windows is cracked and it's not even a big major issue. Or maybe we're smelling gasoline, but it's coming from another car in front of us or to the side of us or something.

But our minds start to spiral and we start to get into this like, my gosh, and we freak out. And maybe I'm just speaking to myself because that's exactly what I did. I still do it sometimes. And I drive an electric vehicle now, but there were times when I drove a non-electric vehicle. Every sound and every smell would freak me out.

Now, I don't want every sound, every signal, every ache to freak you out when it comes to your body, because if you understand how it works, you won't freak out. All that to say, let's take a deep breath and let's settle in as we talk about what this evening spiral looks like. You wake up in the morning, you're feeling pretty good. Maybe you don't feel super great. Okay. Maybe it wasn't an incredible.

Incredible night of sleep. Maybe you just feel like you're waking up and your throat is dry or your nasal passages are dry or just kind of not functioning at your highest capacity. The alarm went off. You have to get up out of bed and you're still feeling like I could sleep a lot longer. Okay. Well, when you get up out of bed, you start getting ready, you do what you need to do, part of your morning routine.

And you start, okay, like I I'm actually getting better. I don't feel like I need to take an allergy pill. I don't feel like I need to take any medication for this headache or whatever it is. Cause sometimes and I'm speaking again for myself. There are times when I wake up in the morning, I'm like, my gosh, am I getting sick? And just like I shared a second ago, I have to remind myself of these same things. I am speaking to you.

As a person from the choir. And if we know that we can band together one another, friend to friend, and know, my gosh, we're gonna get through this. think of me as a person reaching my hand out to grab your hand, to hold your hand, to guide you through and to pull you out of this mental spiral. Because I have to pull myself out of this mental spiral sometimes too. So you wake up, you're feeling meh not so great, you decide.

Maybe not to take any sort of medication You're just doing your normal routine and you're like, wow, I'm feeling really great. I'm feeling good. Like days going on. You're feeling amazing. You're like, wow, that was that was interesting. I didn't feel like I needed to do anything. And then all of a sudden, something creeps in and you were not expecting it. Feels like you got walloped.

On the side of the head, and not even speaking necessarily about head pain, but just all of a sudden you're just boom, exhausted, super irritable, maybe just achy joints everywhere. Maybe you you have this low grade headache coming on, and you just feel super stuffy in your face. nasal passages are extra dry, just all kinds of things going on, and it feels like you got blindsided.

Totally blindsided. Now, there is something physiologically happening in your body when this is happening. Now, this is not unique to me. And I know that many of you listening probably may not remember a time of this because if we're not consciously aware of it, these times can come in and we just go and we pop an over-the-counter pill, which I'm not saying anything judgmental about doing that. If you are doing that, not at all.

What I want you to understand is your body is physiologically doing something that it's been designed to do, and you are just a recipient of all of these feelings. Now, what is happening when you wake up in the morning? We got to take it all the way back to that morning time frame. when you wake up that morning and you're feeling these symptoms, as the day goes on, now 30 to 45 minutes.

After you wake up, you start getting going into that routine, right? Cortisol is increasing. Now, cortisol is a hormone that a lot of us probably have heard about. I say stress hormone, and people, cortisol. Yep, that's it. Cortisol, it is not an enemy, it is not to be vilified. We vilify cortisol so much because people talk about cortisol, that little pooch in your lower belly. It's cortisol. We got rid of it, get rid of that lower belly.

It's cortisol. It's the enemy. It's yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We do live in a culture where cortisol gets dysregulated. Yes, we live in a society where we are stressed to the hilts and things are happening. But cortisol is not an enemy. Cortisol may rear up and things may happen, and those adrenal glands may be needing attention.

But there are absolute things that you can do to support them before you end up in full-blown adrenal burnout. Now, we're not talking about adrenal burnout today. We're just talking about the physiological process of cortisol. So cortisol rises 30 to 45 minutes when you're getting up. I'm gonna give you an example for me particularly within the last couple of days.

I've been waking up with just really dry passages, nasal passages, dry throat, feeling scratchy. Like, wow, I am gonna lose my voice. And I gotta be on all these Zoom calls and I gotta be recording podcast episodes. Lord, this is not okay. I need my voice. I need my passages lubricated so I can speak correctly, right?

So I get up, I'm doing my morning routine, getting my liquids in, and feeling great. Talking to patients, doing what I'm doing every single day. And then evening comes and boom, right back at it. No voice, feeling scratchy, low grade headache, all these things. Now I could totally chalk this up, which part of this absolutely has to do with allergies. I'm definitely feeling a little bit more of an allergy “attack” right now. And I don't even like saying that word, but an allergy expression. Okay. My allergies are starting to kick up a little bit.

And that's happening. Now I can certainly, certainly go and take a Benadryl. I can certainly take a Zertec or an Allegra, something to help with the allergy symptoms, to get that balloony feeling out of my head. Now I'm not saying not to do that.

But what I'm saying is if you know what's going on, you may not necessarily feel that that is the first thing you need to run to. So in my case, feeling like coming into that four, five clock, six o'clock window evening time. And here in San Diego, the sun's going down a little bit later. So it's not kicking up as early as it would have, in the winter-fall time frame.

That being said, I felt horrible. I felt so disgusting. I felt all these things. Now, what's happening here physiologically is cortisol is dropping. So cortisol has been designed to ebb and flow.

Cortisol is increasing 30 to 45 minutes when you get up in the morning and it's coming down as the day goes on. Now, the idea, the rhythm of this is to get you to get into this healthy rhythm of being able to sleep. Now, people who are waking up in the middle of the night, there are all kinds of things with cortisol dysregulation, adrenaline running through their body, all sorts of mechanisms that are getting that nervous system.

In a state of dysregulation, and stress is absolutely a component to that. dysregulated blood sugar is a component of that. We're not going into that right now, but those are things to be aware of. Now, as that cortisol is dropping, cortisol during the day is acting as a mask to any underlying symptoms that are happening in your body.

So there could be underlying inflammation, there could be underlying infections, there could be underlying lymphatic congestion, there can be underlying anything going on. And what cortisol is doing now that is dropping, and it's not cortisol's fault, but cortisol is dropping, now you're kind of being a little bit more exposed, so to speak, like the curtain is now revealing all of this stuff underneath the surface, and your body's starting to feel it.

So, what do we do in these situations before we panic? Because let's be honest here, I already talked about cortisol and I just talked about dysregulated nervous system. When we panic, all we're doing is throwing our body into more of a state of dysregulation.

When we're freaking out and thinking that all is going to crap and everything you're doing to keep your body in alignment, to keep your body healthy, functioning, you're just now getting to a point where it's just like, my gosh, what am I gonna do? My gosh. So when you start to panic like this, it really throws your body into this dysregulation.

This is why I think it's important you know what's going on. You don't have to understand the nuances of everything that is happening in your body, but you didn't do need to understand what is going on from that physiological standpoint. so cortisol masked all these things, and now you're feeling them. One of the simplest things, that you can do is to rest.

Now I talked about my whole lesson I learned in dealing with the anxiety that I dealt with for two and a half weeks in what rest truly looked like. Now, this is not resting from a place of resting to be able to do the things that I need to do. This is resting from a place of giving your body the adequate space.

So it can perform and do the processes that it's been designed to do. Like that wisdom is inside your body, regardless of if you even wanted it to be there. It's been designed with that wisdom. if you just rest, if you give it the space, give yourself some breathing room and maybe take it a little easy. If there are things that you still need to do.

Throughout your day because it's only four o'clock, and you're just like, well, I got to get through another hour of work, and I still have a 45 minute commute home. Another thing you can do is just add a little bit of minerals to your water. It can be a little bit of an electrolyte, it could be getting a little bit of sea salt water, actual sea salt in your water with a little bit of lemon.

I'm not telling you to do an entire packet or an entire scoop or an entire serving of electrolytes at this point, but you can do a little something there to support your body. You can get a high protein, high fat snack, one or the other. And when I say high protein or high fat, I'm not meaning go find something and that's 30 grams of protein right this second.

Something that's high protein can be a teaspoon of almond butter or one hard-boiled egg. Like a little something to help balance out that blood sugar, to keep your body moving, to give your body building blocks to do what it needs to do. So you don't always have to run for the over-the-counter things.

You can simply do these other things that I am sharing here.

you can take a warm shower if you're home. And I mean a quick one. It doesn't have to be a long shower. You can dim the lights, maybe set your phone aside for about 20 minutes, give yourself just a little bit of rest. If the sun's still out and you're feeling this crash coming on, if it's 4 p.m., right when it shows up.

Go outside. Maybe get a little bit of fresh air. Doesn't have to be long. Doesn't have to be very elaborate. It can be so simple. You can use a cool cloth on your head if you're getting a mild headache. These are all things that you can do to support your body without having to take the over-the-counter stuff.

I wanna make it very clear here that I am not dismissing any medical emergencies. There are things that are very important to pay attention to.

And when you are experiencing symptoms day in and day out, or all of a sudden they show up with this intensity that has never been there before, those are times when you actually should be seeking out care. There are other times in your body, which is what I'm speaking about now, that it may feel uncomfortable. And I think as a society, and I am gonna put myself in this category as well, we have become so accustomed to being comfortable.

The temperature in our homes has to be set a certain way. So we're not too hot or too cold. We have our waters, we got our environment, we got our everything in our ecosystem, our own personal ecosystem, is all there to match our comfort, whether we like wearing loose clothing because we don't like it touching our skin, or whether we like tight clothing because we want to feel snug and secure. All of these things are for our comfort.

We run away from things that cause us discomfort. what I am encouraging you to do today is to allow your body to sit in that discomfort a little bit. Maybe you don't need to run for the allergy medication right off the bat. Maybe you can do some of these things that I just shared with you. and maybe it is dry throat and dry nasal passages. Maybe you can just make a cup of tea minus the honey. Cause if you're having any sort of symptoms, you don't want to add sugar to your quote diet. So just have a warm cup of tea. Maybe as the tea is cooling down, you can just breathe in the warm fumes, like to help get the nose. And then drink it, slowly and give yourself just this space.

When we do these things, we let our body stop performing. It's not trying to push. We're not trying to make it do things. We are saying, okay, I hear you. I'm going to listen to you. I know that this is part of the normal thing, and I'm going to be okay in that.

Now, a lot of this episode has been all about the physical stuff, right? Feeling the physical discomfort in our body, what we can do, what happens physiologically with that cortisol, and so forth. however, because the body OS ecosystem is built on those four pillars, physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental, I think it's important to talk about things in the other pillars that can be impacting why these physiological things are occurring. Now, it is your body's natural wisdom to have that cortisol drop. That is the way that God designed the body to do that. He wasn't trying to be mean. He wasn't trying to be a jerk. It was not meant out of malicious intent. It's actually for our betterment and our design so that we actually will go and get some rest.

Now again, all of our comforts, we can keep the lights on till two, three in the morning, till heck even all night long, we can keep the lights on and screw up our sleep. Be back in the day, they could not do that. They didn't have that luxury. We need to start treating our bodies the way that it was designed to be treated and stop trying to push it to do all these other things.

So, how does these kind of feelings impact or like what does it look like from a spiritual component? the spiritual layer is this might be an invitation to come back to rest. I talked about this a lot in episode 50 about rest, but coming back to our bodies, allowing our bodies to really rest from a state of peace and not resting from a state of pressure.

Not making it rest because okay, if I get 20 minutes nap right now, I'll be able to do X, Y, and Z. There are certain days that that is absolutely okay. However, there are times when we should not be doing that. We're not going to pretend we're fine. We're going to ask, like, what am I carrying? is there something that I'm carrying that I can set down tonight that I don't have to allow it to overwhelm and take up all of my peace. See, these are things we can do from a spiritual standpoint.

What about the emotional layer? The evening is when all of that noise, all of that input that is coming in at us is actually quieting down. Yes, I know we have our phones and we can do doom scrolling and all of that, but the the noise from the rest of the world, the interactions we have with people at our jobs, at our church, at our park dates, with the kids, wherever we're at on a daily basis.

All of that noise when we're home and we're kind of getting into that, okay, body's starting to like hit that wall, that noise starts slowing down, the day stops distracting you. And so all of those feelings that you tried to outrun all day actually start catching up. So maybe you felt some sadness, maybe you felt frustration, maybe you felt fear or resentment or pressure.

Like I talked about pressure in the last one with the spiritual layer. Your body might just be in a place where it's like, I need you to feel those things that you were so busy earlier and weren't willing to feel. We need to give our bodies grace in this instance. We need to understand, like, hey, if you put that cold rag I talked about in the physical layer, if you put that cold rag on your head and you just sit in bed for 20 minutes, cause, hey, dinner's gotta be made, kids gotta be put to bed. Great, do that.

Give yourself the space and just start releasing all of those emotions. I've said this so many times before. Our emotions were meant to be visitors. They were never intended to be residents. We so many times allow emotions to take up residency in our body when they were supposed to come, be felt, and go. Come, be felt, and go.

We need to take this time in this evening to give ourselves space just to take a deep breath. Now, mentally, how is this impacted? Well, symptoms get worse because this thing, our brain, it's so tired. You've made decisions all day, you've had to process things, you've managed people, you've solved problems, your capacity is lower. So that same symptom.

That felt super manageable at 10 a.m. Like, I'm just gonna push through. I'm not gonna take anything. I'm gonna be good. I feel great. I didn't need anything. Yay! I didn't have to take anything. And then boom, you hit that wall. like the little emoji with the brain popping out, the head blowing up. That's what we experience on a day to day. And if we're constantly pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing and not resting.

We're going to feel these things more and more. so the whole premise of this episode that I really am trying to get across is that if you understand the physiological aspects that are happening in your body, how to support yourself, what it looks like for all four of those pillars and how that is impacted, you can then be able to just even take a deep breath.

Maybe you just don't even remember anything else in terms of the tactical things, the practical steps to put into place. And all you say is, I remember Dr. Brook was saying something on Beyond Wellness Culture about the cortisol levels going down at night and that my body's gonna experience some things or I'm gonna notice some things. Not every day, but there are days when you are gonna notice those things and you can just be like, okay, I hear you.

I hear you. Thank you, body, for alerting me. And I'm gonna take a rest as soon as I can. But even that small little gesture of acknowledging that your body is speaking and it's talking and it's saying something to you and it's trying to communicate, that simple gesture really starts to build trust and your body will start to get louder. And I'm not talking about in a mean way, but it starts to get louder, like it will start to.

Talk to you, you will hear it more clearly. So when certain things are happening, when certain signals are kicking into gear and you're just like, okay, I'm gonna make it through this. I'm absolutely gonna make this through. You will be absolutely fine. I pray that this episode really encouraged you to know that your body is wise, it is incredible, it is doing so many amazing things for you.

You don't have to spiral into fear if you know what is going on. That window slightly being cracked, making that weird sound, or smelling gas from another car in front of you that you think is coming from you or the weird sound your car is making. All of those things, when you understand what's happening, you don't have to necessarily freak out. You go, let me roll that window up.

Let me get into another lane so I don't have to smell the fumes from the other car. And I can trust and have faith that I'm going to get where I need to go because this body is so wise and it's been been designed so beautifully. So thank you all.

So thank you for listening and I will see you on the next episode.

Friend, thank you so much for spending this time with me today. I know your body is grateful that you listened to this episode as well. If this conversation supported you in any way, please share it with someone who feels overwhelmed by their health, or quite possibly stuck in that wellness spiral. And leave a review on Apple Podcast as it means a lot to know this space is supporting you, and helps this message reach the people who need it most. Alrighty, let’s close those tabs, exit the apps, and let your body do what it already knows how to do. I’ll meet you back here every single week. Bye for now.