Why Can't I Sleep

Why do so many of us struggle to fall asleep or stay asleep?

In this episode of Beautiful Chaos, Tammy explores the real reasons sleep becomes more difficult as we age and shares simple, practical ways to improve your sleep naturally. From hormones and cortisol to bedtime routines, breathing exercises, blue light, nutrition, and morning sunlight, you’ll learn how to help your body feel safe enough to rest and heal.

If you’re tired of waking up exhausted, this episode is for you.

Because quality sleep isn’t a luxury—it’s one of the most powerful tools for healing, emotional well-being, and overall health.

✨ Subscribe for more conversations about health, personal growth, relationships, and finding peace in life’s beautiful chaos.

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Have you ever climbed into bed completely exhausted, only to find yourself staring up at the ceiling and running through every conversation you've ever had since 1997? Or maybe running through the list of things you didn't get done or your to-do list for tomorrow. Or maybe you fall asleep just fine, but you're up and down, or you wake up at 2:30 in the morning and you're like, why is my body like fully awake thinking it's time to get up? If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. Matter of fact, that just happened to me last night, right before shooting this episode. So this is kind of comical. So today I'm going to be talking about sleep and why we struggle with it, how stress and hormones can affect it, and simple things we can do to help our bodies finally feel safe enough to rest again. Because quality sleep isn't a luxury. It is the foundation our bodies need to heal. It's a beautiful pay. And today's episode is a good one. Why can't I sleep? You don't know how many conversations I have with my friends, and we talk about this same problem. We're either having a hard time falling asleep or waking up in the night, or both, which is really bad. So I think it's a thing about getting older, right? I mean, when you're younger and you're in the thick of it and you've got kids underfoot, that's a different story, right? You're always you always feel like you're still on that two and a half hour bed or feeding schedule with a baby, right? Like I I used to say you don't sleep good to have to your kids like in their 20s, because you still don't sleep all that great when they graduate high school and they start off in college because you tend to worry. So but it's a real thing once you get older, and I'm talking like it can be late 30s, early 40s, but every it seems like every decade that goes by, it gets harder to sleep. And if you don't have good sleep, everything gets harder, like your emotions feel bigger and like you can't control them. Anxiety, that like pressure in your chest, and that feeling feels louder. Our cravings get worse. Sometimes we crave at night while watching TV or after we sit down to rest because really we're so tired, but we're trying to make ourselves stay up for a certain time, right? So our patience gets shorter with kids. Like I've noticed this with my grandkids, and I have three grandkids here this uh week, and I noticed that in the late afternoon I'm starting to get a little uh less patient. So that's that's a sure thing. Our bodies hurt more, like sleep is so important on every level, and yet many of us walk around exhausted, thinking it's just normal aging, or somehow we should just push through it, right? I don't know how many, let's see, like three people just in this previous week that I spoke to, and I'm always I talk to a lot of people, y'all, and everybody I talked to at some point, but for sure three just last week, were talking about how they struggled with sleep and that during the day they might have 15 or 20 minutes that they could rest, but as soon as they sit down, they go, Oh, I need to do XYZ. Not realizing that XYZ will still be there if you just gave yourself 15 minutes. So I'm talking a little bit of a nap or just to close your eyes, turn off all devices, turn off a TV, turn off music, just be in silence and let your body settle down. Because what happens is when our bodies um are stimulated constantly, it actually creates stress and it makes our bodies go into survival mode all day long, and our bodies weren't meant to do that. Quality sleep is one of the biggest gifts we can give ourselves. And why does sleep matter? What happens when we sleep is that our body repairs itself, our metabolism will regulate, our hormones will regulate, our cortisol lowers, which cortisol is our stress hormone, okay? Um it helps with emotional regulation, brain function, and memory. It's like it's just a reset, right? It even helps with inflammation. So if you struggle with inflammation, start off with well, for one, look at what you're eating and cut down all your carbohydrates, all your processed foods, and limit what you're putting into your body, and then figure out what you're what you're actually allergic to or causing your inflammation. That's what I did. The next thing is focus on your sleep. Sleep is so important, and sleep is one of the things most of us can control. This is one of the reasons why Stacy isn't here because you know, she cannot control her sleep at all because of her job. And you may have a job where you can't control your sleep, and you just have to grab sleep where you can. So I'm talking about normal, all of us with a normal work during the day or whatever it is, but sleeping consistently. So that's the other place where we don't do well as grown-ups. We don't sleep well consistently, and our bodies stays stuck in that alert mode. It our nervous system doesn't get a chance to calm down, and I've been suffering with that for probably two and a half years. My nervous system was like on overload, and it was ever since I went through the stuff with my mom and my stepdad moving them through multiple situations and watching their health decline. And so I became stressed, I became not uh sleeping very well, and my age, I'm 60. I've already been through menopause, so I've got menopause, stress, and and 60, right? So, like I said, every decade it seems like we get less sleep. So if we don't have that time for our nervous system to fully calm down, then we feel like we're just exhausted all the time and we feel short-tempered and all of those things. And a lot of us don't realize that we're we aren't just tired, and that's what we tell ourselves, right? Do you catch yourself putting out there, oh, I'm so tired, or I'm so exhausted. And it's not really that. If we were to name it properly, it would be overstimulated. I think back to when I was uh in the 80s and 90s after high school, and we had no cell phones, we had no car and no phone in the car. Uh, you were lucky if you had a radio. Um, and so you had moments when you were not um being stimulated, right? By noise and sound. And even visually, so even going into the grocery store, you've got music in the background, you've got people, you've got all these millions of things on shelves, and it's very bright and colorful. All the colors, all the brightness, the the lights, the fluorescent lights, the noise, it's it's all over stimulating. And then you throw in, let's go back to if you have kids, your kids uh can overstimulate you because it's easy for them to get overstimulated. So ask yourself, why can't I sleep? Ask yourself out loud, why can't I sleep? And think about what the reasons are. Is it stress? Because it could be all of these things I'm going to tell you. Hormonal changes. So you know, as we get older, we create less estrogen, no progesterone, usually, and um some of us suffer from less testosterone. Sometimes we have um thyroid issues that cause issues as well, or you just have an overactive nervous system because of too much stimulation, right? Or because you've stressed yourself out, that also overstimulates your nervous system, right? Because we have that fight or flight thing going on. Uh poor sleep habits. So another really good one is that we uh we as adults sometimes don't have the best sleep habits. How about blue light from screens? And I'm talking cell phone, iPads, tablets, televisions. Uh, this is a new one I heard is LED lighting is actually a form of blue light. So blue light is the form of lighting that wakes you up, okay? It stimulates your brain to be fully alert and awake. Eating too much sugar late at night. And actually, if you eat something between dinner and bedtime, then your body's actually going to be trying to process that food while you're trying to fall asleep. So I would suggest that after your dinner meal, say six or seven, that you don't have anything to eat until you go to bed. So go back to the have you developed a bedtime routine? Kevin and I go to bed at 9 p.m. Now I usually don't fall asleep till around 10. Sometimes I fall asleep between 9.30 and 10. And then we wake up at like between he wakes up at 3 or 4. I wake up about 5 or 5.30. But how many of you have actual an actual bedtime? Or a specific time you wake up? Or maybe you have one Monday through Friday, but Saturday and Sunday come and you decide you're gonna stay up late and go do whatever you're gonna do. And then even if you're not a drinker, you might do that, and then by Monday morning, you've not been in your regular routine of sleep, so you feel like you have a hangover, or you feel like you have brain fog, or you just don't feel good. So I want you to think about something, and hopefully, you know this if you're raising small children, that uh children need routines, they live by consistent routines, right? They like to have that, you know, after school we're doing homework, and then we have a uh bath time and we have reading time, and then we go to bed every every night at the same time. And you try to schedule that so that you have a half-hour leeway, so that if you do have sports and different things that go a little later, that you can actually keep your kids on a pretty steady uh sleep regimen. So um you you might even dim the lights for them, like you know, especially when you put them to bed. I think a night light is, you know, most kids like like a night light. But all of those things we do for our kids because we know that they live by routines, right? So why do we think that turning to teenagers or adulthood means we don't have that sleep routine anymore? Because the truth is us adults need those routines probably more than our kids because they have fully functioning young metabolisms, and they have all their hormones in place and they have everything rocking for them if they're healthy, right? And they're eating pretty healthy. It's us older people, you know, late 30s, early all of 40s, 50s, 60s, and up that need the extra sleep, the healthier nutrition because our bodies aren't functioning the way they used to. So we really crave rhythm, calm, and consistency, all of us, not just our kids, but all of us. So, for women, if you really struggle with sleep, some things I would suggest is to think about your hormones. Go have your hormones checked. Now, I I went to both a regular medical doctor and had my hormones checked, and I went to a functional doctor, and I liked this the functional doctor's readings ten times better because my medical doctor gave me like, you know, estrogen, progesterone, my thyroid, and then um testosterone. And then uh my functional doctor gave me all of those plus cortisol and a whole bunch of other different different things, right? So, and it was more detailed. But our lack of hormone production can absolutely affect sleep. So I don't know about you guys, but my husband, it sometimes is infuriating to me because he can just lay his head down on the pillow and he is out like a light. And then I don't know about you, but I lay there staring at the ceiling, or like he likes to sleep with the TV on, and I put a sleep timer on so it goes off in an hour because normally he's dead asleep and it won't bother him if it shuts off, and it gives me an hour to just veg out. And I actually have these blue light glasses that keep the blue light out, and it kind of makes everything look a hue of red, but uh man, I fall asleep before my sleep timer goes off. But I would suggest if you sleep with a TV on and your husband doesn't mind, turn the TV off. You will find that you will sleep better. You'll sleep better if an hour before bedtime you uh get off all devices and dim the lights and maybe just read a book, you know, not on a tablet, but actually read a hardback book. So during perimenopause, which some women can be going through that in your 30s, these are where your your hormones start not functioning well, they're not playing friendly together, and it affects your sleep. And definitely if you've gone through menopause or you're going through menopause, boy, I mean, you got so many things. It's not only just the direct disruption of your loss of hormones, but it's the night sweats and all the things, the hot flashes that you're going through that can cause those problems. So if you notice that you you slept great and then all of a sudden you're just can't fall asleep and you're really struggling, or you go a couple of days with only getting a few hours sleep, be sure to talk to a doctor and and look into hormone therapy options. And I think I mentioned it, but if you do a blood test for your hormones, um try to do one that's a long-term, also. Like I did one that they utilized urine samples and it was like a three-day event. And at every meal, when you went to sleep, if you woke up in the night, and then when you woke up in the morning. So um that's a really good test because it shows your hormone levels at different times of the day and um different days. So sometimes there, it's not just that we're getting older, right? And I think that we as women tell ourselves that a lot. Well, it's just part of getting older. Like I caught myself saying, Oh, my body hurts just because I'm getting older. Like everybody always walks about, talks about I get up in the morning and something else hurts. What if that's not normal? What if you can age gracefully? I mean, there's lots of things you can do, right? So watch some previous episodes where we talk about metabolism and strength training and and all the other important things that help your health in all aspects. So, what if you wake up multiple times in the night? Um, now you can't help it when you have kids, and I get that, but I will suggest this. If you can, if you're a stay-at-home mom, take a little nap in the day. Even if it's mid-morning, take a little 15-20-minute nap. I wouldn't suggest going over 20 because you just need to rest with no sound and get rid of the stimulation and get a little few minutes of just nothingness to reset your body and then you know go about your day. Um, another thing is a lot of people talk to me about struggling with waking up several times in the night to go to the bathroom. So, a big a big help with this is well, two things. So, as we get older, our lymphatic system kind of can get clogged up if we're not moving a lot, if we're not exercising, it can really get clogged up fast. So, what happens is it kind of absorbs and and makes everything kind of stay in you instead of processing through because your lymphatic system doesn't have a motor on it, it doesn't have a pump like most of our organs do. So, the first thing is if you have a lymphatic system problem, you'll notice your armpits are out, not in. You might have tenderness or swollen lymph nodes in your chest or here. Um, those are signs that your your um system's not functioning properly. And one thing you can do is really easy is go for a little walk every day and swing your arms naturally, just movement, right? The other thing is just to lay down on the floor and put your feet up on a wall so that your butt is on the wall and your feet are straight up. And you sit there for about 10 or 15 minutes, which you can do while you're watching a show if you want to, right? And then also you could sleep with your uh body up at an angle, actually, your head a little bit, um, and then limit your fluids. So, again, I talk about like 6 p.m. is a really good time for you to stop eating, stop drinking fluids, and if you have to take medication at night, you might want to just take them with a sip of water. Don't like, you know, guzzle down with water. But another important thing is to make sure to get all your water in during the day. So have all your water in before six o'clock. This episode of Beautiful Chaos is brought to you by Sarah Nova. They have a micro needling infusion kit that I've been using for eight weeks now, and I can tell you my skin is looking smoother. My little saddlebags I had forming on my jawline are tightening up. It's been amazing. So if you guys want to try Sera Nova, you can do this in your own home. It's very easy to use. They even offer a refund policy. So it gives you a little more courage to try something new. But I have really enjoyed it. And if you want to try it, because I absolutely love it and feel like it's actually working on my skin, you can go to Saranova.com, put in my code TAMI and all caps T-A-M-M-Y 01873. Your micro needling infusion kit is waiting for you. Some of these things I'm talking about, just pick one of them if you want, because habits are created by just doing the same thing every day for a week. Okay. You do that for so many weeks. They say it takes uh 90 days, but you can do pick one and do add one thing on to your sleep, your bedtime routine. And you might not notice a difference right away, but you might know a subtle change. And then the you know, the next week you could add another one onto that one. Like whatever you need to do, you know, the first thing I would do would be create a bedtime routine. Think about what's gonna work with your schedule. Remember that this is important to your body because it's how we heal. And by getting enough sleep, you're telling your body you're okay, you're safe, you can rest now. Okay. And that also deep breathing. So I'm gonna teach you tandem belly breathing. Um, if you do that, this can help lower stress and cortisol and help relax you. So it gets you out of that fight or flight, right? So it can help with anxiety also. So this is where you do deep belly breathing. So you're gonna imagine that you're feeling your belly button's actually gonna move and you're gonna breathe in, and your focus is gonna be your belly button going out, right? It's gonna rise. And then when you exhale, you breathe out your nose. You're gonna squeeze your belly button all the way in and feel all that air escape. You're gonna do it slow. This is the type of breathing that makes your body feel that it's safe. I also do the boxed breathing, which is breathe in for four, hold for four, breathe out for four, hold for four, breathe in for four. You do that four times. That also slows your nervous system. I do that during the day, and I'll usually try the tandem breathing like at night before I go to bed. So that really helps with tension that we naturally hold without even realizing it, or like that we're shallow breathing, also. Like, really, when you're working and doing something, you're breathing shallow because your body's focused on what you're doing. And so it's like conserving your energy so that your brain can focus and you can do what you're doing. So if you stop and you do those breathing, you might find your you realize your shoulders are up here around your ears, your neck's tight, or you've gone like bad posture, which this slouching or this causes a lot of neck tension and neck issues. Trust me. Got it going on. So the other thing is evening baths, and this is something that I've incorporated just recently, about a week ago. Obviously, it didn't help me last night, but I did have three grandkids here. Uh, so I think that my I just don't sleep as well when there's kids in the house, like any mother, right? We have that like internal listener on going, we gotta listen for kids, make sure they're okay. So if you have that, I don't know what to tell you. Just take sleep where you can and try to get as much as you can because it's very important to be able to be there for your kids in a calm and patient manner. So I've been loving taking a warm bath in the evening, and I spend about 20, 30 minutes in there. I don't have any music. I used to do music and candles, and I will do candles, but I just sit in the quiet, feel the water on me, and then I also tell myself that um, like right before I'm gonna get ready to get out of the bathtub, I say I release all the negative of today and fill my heart with all the positive today and all the joy. So I want to just release anything that gave me a, you know, made me like this, right? My shoulders up over my ears or anything that I felt uh caused some emotion with me. I want to hold the joy of the day and let go of everything else. So don't rush it, just enjoy. 20 to 30 minutes calms the nervous nervous system and helps you to sleep. And I do know I fall asleep a lot faster since I've been doing this bad thing. And it's only been a week, so I feel like it's really made a difference. I also added walking during the day outside for 20 minutes in the sunrise or in the sun, you know, in the mornings. Um, so a bath also lowers your cortisol level too, which is really good. And it's like you're giving yourself permission to stop fighting your, you know, your nervous system, your fight or flight shuts off. And you can speak out loud to yourself as well and say, I am okay. That works with anxiety too. I am okay, I am safe. Because sometimes there's a disconnect disconnection between your mind and your body, and um, your body can just be on high alert all the time because of all these things we've talked about. Limit blue light. Hey, those bond charge, I think is the name of the company that I got the glasses from. So uh limit your blue lights from your TVs, phones, tablets, avoid the bright lights, um, you know, put all your stuff down. And I I know uh it's hard to get off of our devices, but your body, your brain will love you for it because it's telling you by not sleeping, it's kind of letting you know you're overstimulating me and I need help. Okay, so let's help ourselves by doing what we expect of our kids to give their brains time off from all the outer exposure. They need time off. We need the time off. Our brains desperately need quiet time. One of my favorite things is to go camping, and I love to go camping because I don't have a cell phone. We don't we go or we don't have service, and I absolutely love it. Those are like my most favorite times that we do. Um, morning light, like I said, go for a walk. Um, if you let the sunlight hit your eyes, that is a way to help regulate your serotonin and your cortisol levels. So if your body's creating serotonin, which is that makes me feel good, um, hormone, then the cortisol level, which is the stress, dissipates, right? And it helps support your natural wake cycle. Also, kind of know your uh circadian rhythm. Um, you know, maybe you're a night person and you need to stay up until two o'clock and sleep till ten. If you can do that with a work schedule or your kids or whatever you've got going on, then then do that. But make it consistent, right? Always go to bed at two and wake up at 10. So then your body knows, you know, it feels comfort and consistency. So healing starts the moment you wake up. Um, I mean, when you go to sleep. And food can affect your sleep. And I don't know if you know this, but chocolate because it has caffeine in it. So no chocolate after six or tomatoes, and I didn't know this one, but uh, yeah, research shows that tomatoes can keep you awake at night, have you give you a hard time falling asleep. Any sugary foods or high processed foods, because your body struggles the hardest trying to process processed foods, right? Because some of that stuff isn't natural to us or to our bodies, and our bodies are like, well, I don't know what to do with this. So then it spends extra time trying to filter it out and do something with it. So pay attention to how your body responds to various foods and and really listen to yourself. Like I said, it's trying to tell you it's not happy by having you not sleep, and pushing through exhaustion isn't some kind of badge of honor, and rest is not weakness, and I feel like this is more of a woman's thing because we feel like we have to caretake everybody and nurture everybody to the point of harming ourselves, right? And if you're a parent or grandparent that's involved or anybody, our bodies need sleep to heal, period. Especially if you're like going through a cold or a flu bug or whatever, you need extra sleep to rest and recover for your body to heal up over that, right? Your mind needs time for sleep, it needs to be able to regulate emotions, your nervous system needs to recover. So, tonight, instead of treating bedtime like an afterthought, because you're hooked on a Netflix series or some series that you're watching, treat it like self-care. You know, why not have a nice warm bath? Create that routine, do some deep breathing. After you've put the kids to bed, you can do this. Take a bath, deep breathe, lower your lights, put the phone away prior to your bath. Let your body know it's safe. And all those things are gonna make it feel safe, but you can speak out loud words that say, I am safe, I am rested, I am good because you deserve rest too. And maybe the real question isn't why can't I sleep? But maybe it's what does my body need for me so it finally can. So let's listen. And if this episode helped you, if you even took one little nugget away that went, wow, I don't do that, I think I should do that, then share it with someone who's exhausted and struggling with sleep. We're trying to grow our channel, and uh we'd really appreciate any shares, any likes, and don't forget to subscribe if you enjoy this, and you can check out our other episodes as well. But if you subscribe, you'll be notified when our newest releases are are released via YouTube or our podcast, whichever podcast platform you're on, because we do Apple, Spotify, and uh Audible. And I think we're on iHeart too, but we're kind of everywhere. So, anyway, so you won't ever miss an episode. So, because life is messy, healing is messy, and sometimes rest needs to be the focus for us to heal. Take care and stay empowered.