Recently, I interviewed Annika Carroll, and we discussed her journey with sleep disturbances, psychological and physiological factors affecting sleep, the role of diet and lifestyle, practical strategies for improving your sleep quality, why high-quality sleep is foundational to our overall health and well-being, and more. If you would prefer to listen to the interview you can access it by Clicking Here.
Dr. Eric Osansky:
I am super excited to chat with Annika Carroll. We will be talking about how to get better quality sleep. Very excited for this conversation. Let me go ahead and dive into Annika’s bio here.
Annika Carroll is a functional sleep and health coach for high-achieving women and is the owner of Sleep Like a Boss. Annika is committed to helping women in midlife take back control of their sleep, restore their energy, and avoid burnout, so they can thrive both at work and in their personal lives. Her approach gets to the core of sleep struggles, tackling issues like hormone imbalances, gut health, and daily habits because sleep problems are really just in your head. Thank you so much for joining us, Annika.
Annika Carroll:
Hi, Eric. Thank you so much for having me.
Dr. Eric:
This is going to be an amazing conversation. So many different people have sleep issues. Before we talk about this, let’s get a little bit more of your background. What led you to become a functional sleep and health coach?
Annika:
Well, the fact that my sleep went out the window surprisingly and never wanted to return, no matter what I was doing. I literally had no clue what was going on because in my 20s, I used to hit the pillow and be out and be up 30 minutes before the alarm went off in the morning. I would go all day, and I was fine.
I had my child. I went back to work a year later in my 30s. I got sick; I had food poisoning, which I didn’t recover from for a long time. Doctors couldn’t figure out what was going on with me, and I couldn’t sleep anymore. Every night, I’d be up from 1-4 or so. It was driving me insane. I started developing this fear of going to bed. This is going to happen again; this is another horrible night.
I completely went into burnout. There was a point where I could not go to work anymore because I was not capable. I was spending time on the couch. Doctors ran test after test after test of the tests they ran. They looked at blood, stool, H-pylori in the gut. They didn’t find anything. They didn’t figure it out.
They told me to see a therapist, which I did. It helped a little for things that I had to work on, but not with my sleep issues.
Then I found a functional practitioner. I was actually looking for hormonal imbalances, so period problems and anxiety and things like that. My sleep started getting better. Then I put two and two together, and I found somebody who was in the functional space and was doing something with sleep. This is what I really wanted to do, because I was a functional practitioner by then.
Sleep is our superpower, I think. If we don’t have it, we just don’t feel good. We can’t do anything. If we get a good night’s sleep, it’s the foundation for everything. Like you said, too many people are struggling. Some of them don’t even know, and a lot of people don’t talk about it.
Dr. Eric:
Yeah, exactly. You said you developed food poisoning. Then it was after that incidence where you started having sleep issues, right after having food poisoning?
Annika:
Before that, I had a very traumatic birth with my son that was a very stressful time. There was some trauma there that I hadn’t dealt with. I was fine. I was at work. I was super busy. Then work slowed down, and I was good.
Then I had this food poisoning. It never really- I couldn’t eat anything anymore. For months after, I was on oatmeal and bananas. Everything else I put into my body was not good. I looked like I was six months’ pregnant every night.
I started self-experimenting. Let’s do some live probiotics. I didn’t know what was going on. My doctors said they couldn’t find anything. “I have looked at your blood. It’s amazing. I have looked at your stool. I can’t find anything. It’s all in your head.”
One of the gastroenterologists I saw gave me an IBS diagnosis. I had never heard of IBS because I wasn’t in this space. That was in Germany because I am from Germany. They were very vague. How can you even diagnose this? This isn’t anything, from what they were writing. I didn’t think it was an answer. I started digging more. Doors opened.
Dr. Eric:
It’s related to it because it’s related to your story, which is what caused the sleep issues. When I think about food poisoning and gut issues, I think of SIBO because I know that damage can take place in the migrating motor complex when having food poisoning, which can relate to IBS. Most GI docs won’t look into SIBO. They will give you a diagnosis like IBS and not do a breath test to see if you have SIBO.
You don’t usually relate food poisoning with sleep. So many different factors of course can cause sleep issues.
You also mentioned this fear of going to bed. How big of a problem is that? When someone develops a sleep issue, initially, it could be so many different things as we mentioned. Maybe it starts out physiological, but then becoming more of that fear or mental aspect, I assume that’s pretty common.
Annika:
Yeah, it is. I think it sometimes is even the reverse, that we just have a stressful period. Everybody does in life. We don’t know that there’s anything with our bodies because we don’t understand what stress does to the gut for instance. We just assume we are going through a stressful time, and this will settle down, and sleep will come back, which in a healthy body, would be the case.
For a lot of people, even during that stressful time, they already start panicking. They start having that fear. Then we get into this vicious cycle that our body is in a constant fight or flight. It’s constant stress, about the fact that we try to sleep and think about it too much. Then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and you self-sabotage with this fear cycle.
Sleep is passive. We can’t force it. If the body is safe to relax, the body will eventually sleep. If it’s not, for whatever reason, whether there is a physical stressor like your gut and all the other things that we talk about, or something that is in your mind, that might be very real. There might be something you’re going through that is very stressful. Or it might be something that is just a story that we have now created. “I just worry so much. Tomorrow will be an awful day if I don’t sleep again. If I wake up at 2am again, I will lose my mind and can’t perform the work tomorrow, and the kids and everything.” We have to break that cycle.
Dr. Eric:
What are some approaches? I know we’re jumping ahead. I experienced that as well. I can’t say I’ve had life-long sleep issues, but there was a time in my life where I did start having sleep issues, and it did become more psychological. I know with me, I just trained myself to get out of it, just doing some mind-body medicine, not checking the clock in the middle of the night.
What are some things for someone who is listening, and if there is that stressful component, where it becomes that emotional cycle? Thinking every night before going to bed, “Am I going to be waking up at 2am? Will I be able to fall asleep to begin with?”
Annika:
This is hard to do. The first thing is to accept it. If it starts raining outside, we just don’t worry about that too much. We can grab an umbrella and still go. With sleep, it’s kind of like that. If we can get to the point where we say, “I might be waking up at 2am again. I might not get a lot of sleep. It won’t kill me. I’ve done this before. I will be okay. Will I be tired? Is it annoying? Yes. We can accept that. We don’t have to push that away. We just have to get to a point of saying, “I will figure this out.”
I often have clients literally do that throughout the day. Whenever this thought comes back in, because it comes back, you’re so tired, “This will be another bad night.” In that moment, start catching yourself and say, “It will be okay. Whatever happens is going to be okay. I will start figuring this out. I’m going to start looking at this.” That’s okay.
We don’t want to go to, “I will figure this out. I will have awesome sleep.” If you say this to yourself, your body and brain will be like, “No.”
My safe zone, my brain thinks waking up at night is okay. That’s what keeps it safe right now. We are trying to change that. That poses a threat on the brain. If you are making changes too quickly, that’s often why you can’t sustain them.
We go very slowly. I’m going to figure this out. Not “I have the solution. It’s going to be great tomorrow. But I’m on a process.” Most people don’t get to disastrous sleep from today until tomorrow. Getting into it took a while. Getting out of it might take a while. Be easy on yourself.
Start looking at what’s happening during the day. Are there moments where you can just breathe? If you’re tired, can you take five minutes where you just do nothing? Listen to your favorite song. Go outside. Take small breaks. That restores your energy, too. That gives your body a little bit of leeway, so to say, to recover.
People are going to think she’s crazy: Don’t move your bedtime forward. Do not try to make up for that lost sleep by going to bed at 8pm if your normal bedtime is 10:30pm. Your body works on a rhythm. If you start moving that back and forth because there were bad nights of sleep, so I’m going to bed at 8pm now because I’m so tired that I could fall asleep on the couch, try not to do that.
You’re messing with your body’s rhythm, and your body gets even more confused. Try to get closer to 9:30/10pm, and then go to sleep. Often, we build enough sleep pressure that we can carry that through better, or at least fall asleep quickly again when we wake up.
Dr. Eric:
Thanks for sharing that. I know with a lot of these interviews, let’s go over some points, and then at the end, give how do we overcome the sleep issues? It’s such a big factor, so I wanted to conquer the emotional part, the stress part of sleep. I appreciate you talking about this.
There are other factors that I want to talk about. Diet, blood sugar is a big factor. If you could talk about the impact of blood sugar imbalances on sleep and insomnia.
Annika:
It’s a biggie. I would say probably 80% of my clients who struggle with waking up have blood sugar dysregulation. If you’re someone who has struggled with wakings, and you cannot fall back asleep, let’s have a look at blood sugar.
Our blood sugar should be reasonably stable throughout the day and night. What happens if we eat? Yes, our blood sugar will go up because we put glucose into the system, and that will get absorbed into the cells with the help of insulin. Then our blood sugar comes down a little again, stays hopefully somewhat stable. If that happens throughout the night, too, then we’re good.
What often happens throughout the night for multiple reasons that we could go into is our blood sugar drops too low. If that happens, our body wakes us up because it’s a stress response. The body thinks you’re basically dying; you need food. Your blood sugar is too low. How does the body generate that in the moment because you’re not up and eating quick enough? It will break down muscle tissue to create energy for glucose. That requires cortisol.
Cortisol is our awake hormone; it’s often called the stress hormone, but it’s also your awake hormone. It brings you energy because that’s its main job. it provides glucose to the system. If that happens, your cortisol goes up. It might not even shoot up completely, but it goes up a certain amount that might be enough to suppress your melatonin, which should be helping you with sleep at night.
Cortisol is up, and you’re up. I could clean the house now. I could plan a vacation. I’m totally up. It’s going to take you 60-90 minutes to fall back asleep because that’s how long the body needs to break that cortisol down. Melatonin is strong enough again to help you fall back asleep and then hopefully stay asleep. Often, it’s 4/4:30am. That hour/hour and a half, might get up, start doing emails and work. Then we have shifted so much in our cycle and our biology that it’s a total mess.
Then, if you have had a bad night like that, you might notice that you start gravitating toward crappy foods the next day, like muffins, really starchy things, ultra-processed, quick fixes, energy, chocolate. That is normal. The body needs that energy. The carbs provide that energy very quickly.
Then we send our blood sugar on a rollercoaster again because we are putting a lot of sugar into the system. What goes up comes down. Then it crashes. Then we need more sugar again. That falls down. Then we do that whole thing the next day. That continues overnight again. With that, we can establish another one of these vicious cycles.
If we can keep our blood sugar in a better space throughout the day, we’re likely setting it up for success at night.
Dr. Eric:
Obviously, eating well, eating whole, healthy foods, minimizing refined foods and sugar is important. How about eating at night? When do you typically recommend for people to stop eating?
Annika:
It depends on the person. If you’re having a big dinner, like a lot of people eat dinner as their largest meal of the day, I would try to finish 2-3 hours before you go to bed. Things like Thanksgiving dinner. The big stuff, three hours before. If it’s your normal dinner, maybe two is okay. For some people, it doesn’t fit in otherwise.
The earlier you can move it, the better it is generally because your body has digested everything, so it doesn’t need to digest while you’re sleeping, which helps with restorative sleep. Then we sometimes play with snacks.
Dr. Eric:
I was just about to ask you, is there a time and place for eating right before going to bed?
Annika:
Yes, there might be. However, it is not something we want to do forever. We want to get your blood sugar organized. To help you avoid that ditch at night where you wake up, if you eat within half an hour, or sometimes an hour is okay, so 30-60 minutes before you go to bed.
You hear different things. Some people say it should be a protein snack. Other people say other things. What I have been successful with is a balanced snack. Some protein, a little bit of fat, and a little bit of starchy carbs. If it’s a dip in blood sugar, we need some glucose in that snack to avoid that dip. The protein and fat just help to slow digestion down and carry that whole response a little better.
If you can do a little bit of Greek yogurt, with some blueberries in it. Or I am on the gluten-free front, so gluten-free crackers, maybe with a little bit of hummus on them. Or some carrot sticks with hummus, or celery sticks. Some olives with crackers. A little bit of cheese, if dairy is your thing, can work. A little piece of chicken, like a small bite, with olives or something. Some people go with fruit. It depends. I wouldn’t eat a whole banana. It’s very high on the glycemic index, so it can mess with your blood sugar. A small piece of it with yogurt could be okay. It’s a bit of a trial for what the person reacts to well.
If you’re somebody who wakes up in the middle of the night and is actually hungry, that is definitely a sign that you’re waking up because of your blood sugar. You didn’t eat enough throughout the day.
Dr. Eric:
Makes sense. You said you don’t recommend for people to do that long-term. You don’t want them forever to be having a snack right before going to bed. How long usually should someone expect to be eating snacks before going to bed, ultimately breaking the cycle? I know it’s different. Are we talking about where someone might be doing this for maybe a week, or a couple of months on average?
Annika:
I would say probably 1-2 months is more what I’m seeing, if you’re consciously working on stabilizing your blood sugar throughout the day. If you’re not, this might be a longer thing.
Is it really harmful to do that if your caloric intake is fine? If we are not overeating because of that. I think if you get restorative sleep with it, that is probably more healing than not having sleep. Overall, metabolic health and blood sugar regulation is so critical for overall health that it would be my preference for someone to work on that, so that is not what is sabotaging their sleep anymore.
Dr. Eric:
Okay. How about blue light, electronic pollution? What impact does that have on sleep? More and more people are aware of the impact, but there are still a lot of people who dismiss that. They’re still on their iPhone or on their computer before going to bed. What impact can that have on sleep?
Annika:
It can have a big impact in the sense that the blue light that is emitted, especially when you’re on your phone or computer, is very close to your face. It shines right into your eyes. This can suppress melatonin release, so that will hinder you to sleep well. We need a good amount of melatonin to sleep well.
People ask, “Do I just put on a filter that Apple provides?” Yes, that’s a first step. There are also blue light filters, blue light-blocking glasses that people can wear. If you actually want to make a dent into that, well, the easiest thing is don’t use them at night. Avoid them. Put your phone to bed, like literally put your phone to bed. Buy yourself an alarm clock that is analog. The old school, little squares from Amazon for $10. That is your best bet.
No push notifications coming in in the middle of the night that light up your phone and vibrate on the nightstand. That’s a big one.
If you go into blue light-blocking glasses at night, if you want that to work, they have to be the orange ones. The clear ones are mainly during the day to filter off the light from the screen, so we don’t get tired eyes. With sleep, they don’t really show in the data that it is a significant increase in melatonin. That is what the red-light bulbs or orange blue light filters do.
EMFs in general, electromagnetic fields, is another thing. Some people are very sensitive to that. Some more than others. We are all surrounded by EMFs all the time. It’s an epidemic.
We live with electronic devices, and it doesn’t have to be a phone. Your toaster. Anything you plug in. The power lines you live by. The everyday use of appliances are more low-grade EMFs. Often, it’s the sum of the individual things. We’re not just using a toaster. We are on cell phones and computers at the same time.
I would keep these things out of the bedroom. The bedroom is for sleep. Keep everything out of there that shouldn’t be in there. It can really make a difference for people. Often, they don’t think that’s their problem. If we do that simple step, they already notice a difference.
It’s shown to affect your nervous system. It’s shown that EMFs affect your immune system. There are studies that prove that. If you’re someone on the more sensitive side of that spectrum, or your bucket is full, these types of things can tip them over the edge. Even if it’s by itself, it wouldn’t maybe be that big of a story, but it’s a piece of the puzzle.
Dr. Eric:
Great advice. What are one or two other factors that can affect sleep that are either common or uncommon? Whatever you want to chat about.
Annika:
The #1 thing that I see besides stress, because we never take breaks. We just expect to hit the pillow and fall asleep and sleep through, and it doesn’t happen because we never take breaks. We are just on all the time.
We don’t spend enough time outside. It’s really that simple. They go together actually. Our body functions best if it has a lot of natural light because that natural light gives the body information of what time of the day it is.
Why is that important for the body? It knows, “I need to release digestive hormones. I need to make sex hormones now. I need to release cortisol. Oh, I need to make melatonin because we are soon going to bed.” The body knows that through the hues of the light and the angle at which the sun rays fall onto your retina in your eye.
We have totally ignored this for decades. With the technology coming on, we have totally forgotten about this. Cubicles, people sitting in boxes all day, working in factories, not seeing daylight.
I was giving a talk a couple weeks ago in a hotel, so one of those big rooms. It’s a conference center actually. We were in there, and I was like, “Can anybody tell me what time it is without checking the time?” “No.” This is exactly what happens. You have no idea.
If there are no windows, or if you work in a basement, you literally have no clue what time it is. You need to go outside and give that input. If people do that and stay off their phones at night and their devices, really take time and breathe, enjoy life in the moment, and follow every trend we see on social media, you will be a lot better with your sleep. The nervous system calms down, and all of your systems improve over time. Your gut balances out. Your hormones balance out. This is all a problem because all this stress causes all these issues. We have to address fixing the gut, fixing the hormones. Taking that stress component, so the body can get back into homeostasis and maintain that, too.
Dr. Eric:
Going outside, something I could also improve on, too. Something I have been working on, as I’m sure you can relate, other people can relate, you just get busy with whatever you’re doing. In my case, not only working with patients or doing these podcast interviews, there are so many different things. It’s a matter of choosing.
I try to get some sun in the morning, but I also like to get some in the middle of the day. Quite frankly, sometimes I don’t because it’s a matter of choosing: do I need to get this task done, for example, and sacrifice the 10-15 minutes? Maybe I should compromise at times and say, “Even if I go outside for 3-5 minutes, that’s better than not going out at all.” Sometimes, I do that. Sometimes, I don’t. I do need to be more consistent. Thanks for reminding me as well as letting all the listeners know, too.
Annika:
One thing I often see with women particularly though, alcohol. We have talked about diet. Alcohol, that red wine at night. Yes, you fall asleep faster, but your sleep is bad quality. It’s a thing. I understand. We’re anxious, we’re busy, we just want a few minutes of Netflix and drinking that wine. If you’re struggling with sleep or don’t have energy, it is not a good idea. It’s been proven. It’s counterproductive. It doesn’t help.
Finding something you enjoy. Asking that question of “What’s missing? Why do I need that wine? What could I be doing instead to relax? What do I need? Is it a phone call with a friend? Is it connection? Maybe I want to sit there and watch something but drink something else that doesn’t have alcohol in it.” That is a big one often that I see. If I actually ask the question, like I do on my intake form, but if we go into that conversation, can we check that out? It’s going to make a difference.
Dr. Eric:
Even having a single glass of red wine for example can affect sleep quality?
Annika:
Yes. There are studies that show for women, it really helps with falling asleep. It has that sedating, relaxing effect. But it messes with your deep sleep and REM sleep. That’s why often the hangover in the morning isn’t just “My liver couldn’t handle it,” which is part of it. The older we get, the bigger this problem becomes. But it’s often that you didn’t get enough sleep, and there is still too much hormone in the system that should have been cleared out from sleeping.
Dr. Eric:
How about caffeine? If someone is having sleep issues, is it okay for them to have a cup of coffee early in the morning or a cup of green tea? Is that something they should also avoid completely if they’re having problems falling and/or staying asleep at night?
Annika:
That is a bit of an individual thing. I think for most people, having a coffee or green tea before lunch is okay. For most people, it metabolizes at a point. Coffee can metabolize very slowly, so you can still have caffeine in the system very late at night. If you can’t fall asleep, I would actually consider trying decaf for a little and see how that goes. The falling asleep to me thing, there could still be caffeine in the system. Waking up is not so likely, but falling asleep.
If you struggle with anxiety, leave the coffee, and see what happens. It’s often a thing. For women, I often see that anxiety improves.
If we are so tired that we can barely function, I may switch clients to a matcha latte, if they are coffee with milk drinkers. That green tea is a slower release caffeine. You get a bit of a boost, but you don’t get the caffeine up and down.
If it’s just brain fog, maybe look into lion’s mane. I find this works really well with brain fog. Sometimes, we might not need caffeine. But it’s an individual thing.
The one thing I would try not to do is not make that the first thing in the morning. Don’t wake up and immediately get to the coffee machine. With nothing else, it hits the system. If you’re not sleeping, and you are likely already super exhausted, that really pushes your body very hard, and it’s going to drop very quickly. Likely at around 10am, you will be reaching for ultra-processed foods for more energy, or another coffee, because you cannot sustain that level that you pushed your body to. We need to work on getting you more energy in the morning, so you can then have coffee, and it carries you a little bit into the afternoon.
Dr. Eric:
Supplements. You always want to try to address the cause of the problem. Whether it’s stress, or we spoke about blood sugar, the caffeine, the alcohol, whatever it is, you want to address those imbalances, whatever factor is causing the sleep issues.
There is a time and place for supplementation. What are your favorite supplements or some of the supplements you commonly recommend, which might also be your favorites? Assuming you recommend supplements at times to your clients, what are some of those supplements?
Annika:
I do, but I often don’t go for the full-on sleep supplement because I want to get to the root cause, and I want to get away- If I am already having fear of not sleeping, and I put a pill in there to sleep, then I make myself potentially dependent on only sleeping if you take that pill. Then we take that pill out, and we have to go through that whole behavioral thinking process again of “I can sleep without a pill.” That is why I go on supportive supplements.
The one thing that I find helps really well is topical magnesium. That can be a lotion or a spray. Lower legs or bottom of your feet every night consistently. We are likely depleted in magnesium anyway. It may take a while. Bottom of the feet for some reason, the skin absorbs very well. It seems to be going into the system very well and works really well for a lot of people.
Another one that I really like, if we have blood sugar issues is inositol. I like it in a powder. I put it in my matcha because it’s sweet. It’s natural to the body. We are still putting a synthetic hormone in, but it is natural to the body. It helps regulate blood sugar and can really help people get over that night hump, even if you take it during the day. We play with it. Some people take it in the morning with their coffee, and some people take it before bedtime. That really depends. That is something I have seen work really well, even in small doses, until we get that blood sugar stabilized.
If we have someone who is anxious and exhausted, rhodiola is something I often really like. I often recommend taking it in the morning, not at night, just so we get through the day a lot better.
I am honestly not a huge fan of melatonin because I have not had great success with it. A lot of clients haven’t had great success with it. I use it to shift someone’s circadian rhythm sometimes. If they sleep until 11am or 12pm, and we need to get them to get up at times that allow them to participate in the work force, so we sometimes do it at certain times of the day, a time release one.
I don’t know if you have heard of this product, but Herbatonin.
Dr. Eric:
No, I have not heard of it.
Annika:
It’s the company that makes Femmenesscence, Symphony Natural Health. They have a plant-based melatonin called Herbatonin. Melatonin is not just a sleepy hormone; it’s a very strong antioxidant. It has more significant antioxidant properties than synthetic melatonin.
I have had really great success with it in very low doses. They have a .3mg capsule and a 3mg capsule. I have a lot of hard-core not sleeping clients who do okay on .3-.6mg. It often works even better in combination with a little bit of magnesium. It doesn’t give you that hangover effect at all. It could happen that you start dreaming weird things, but that happens on melatonin, too. Once your body gets deep sleep and into REM sleep, it catches up.
That is something I sometimes like to use for the time that we’re figuring out what’s going on. Often with sleep clients, we have inflammation, like gut issues. That antioxidant is so nice that we can get that oxidative stress and all the fun stuff that comes with the inflammation a little bit better in check, even throughout the night. That’s a product I’m really excited about actually. It just works a bit differently.
It doesn’t work for everybody, like a lot of these things. There is always a bit of a trial. But it does work for quite a few people.
Dr. Eric:
Herbatonin, maybe combining it with some topical magnesium on a temporary basis. A lot of people can take a lower dose, .3-.6mg. Wonderful.
With melatonin, this person might not see you because they might be sleeping okay. I’ve come across some people who have been taking melatonin for quite some time, years maybe, so sleep is not an issue. Maybe it is related to their taking melatonin, maybe not. How would you approach that person?
Would your approach be, “They’re taking melatonin. They’re sleeping well. They’ve been on it for a few years. Let’s let them be.” Or would you want to try to get them to the point where they are not relying on melatonin? For someone who has been on it for so long, is that possible?
Annika:
We don’t know. If they came off, would they have trouble sleeping? Generally, they should not. Over a short period of time because your body does not lose its ability to make melatonin. The amount of melatonin that the brain releases to get you to sleep is marginal, in comparison to how much we weigh and how big we are. It’s a teeny, tiny amount. The body kicks production back in.
There might be a bit of a rough period, but it should work. It’s hard to say. Am I someone who thinks synthetic melatonin is great? No, I don’t. We don’t have studies that say it’s harmful. Melatonin is such a strong antioxidant, so it’s being looked at in cancer treatments. Will they give certain treatments throughout the night in the future for melatonin? We know melatonin levels are higher, so the body can maybe work with the treatment better and handle the treatment better.
Personally, I think we can do it without, if the body is healthy. Should we give the body something it doesn’t need? Not necessarily. That’s why I’m such a fan of this plant-based one because it literally just has three ingredients. It has chlorella, rice, and alfalfa sprout, and that’s it. If that’s what it takes versus a synthetically made thing that you buy at the health food store in the UK, prescription only because it’s technically a hormone. I would recommend people at least look into how they can change it.
The easiest question for me is how do you work with light and darkness? Melatonin is the darkness hormone. Is your bedroom dark? Are you avoiding lights at night? Are you giving your body everything it needs to make melatonin?
Dr. Eric:
Before wrapping up, I have two more questions. Is there anything else that I should have asked you that I didn’t ask you? Anything else you’d like to discuss?
Then the second question is when should someone consider working with someone like you, a sleep specialist?
Annika:
We could talk about sleep for weeks. There are so many things. I think the questions that you asked are great. I think they’re the ones people often ask that are important to an audience.
When should someone reach out to somebody like me? I think whenever you’re not satisfied with your sleep. When you wake up, and you didn’t sleep well, or you sleep okay, you get a good amount in, but you’re still exhausted. Something’s not right.
If you know that you’re someone who has some issues here and there, maybe your periods are wonky, maybe you are getting to the menopausal or post-menopausal stage and your sleep is gone because that happens a lot. There is a bit of digestive issue. Sometimes, people have no symptoms. A lot of people do a deep dive into it. You’re struggling with energy and sleep. Then I think it’s a good idea.
If you’re someone who snores or whose partner says, “I think you stopped breathing sometimes. I touch you, and you keep breathing,” then please go see a sleep specialist in the sense of someone who assesses for sleep apnea. A lot of people are underdiagnosed. That might not fix your overall sleep problem, but it should be looked at. That is something I can ask questions about. I would symptomatically assess you for that, but I would send you somewhere else because that is not my specialty.
A lot of people don’t know that something like what I do exists, but it is important. You don’t need to struggle. You need to sleep. I have clients who go 30-35 years with horrible sleep. You see it at their age. It wasn’t good.
Dr. Eric:
Agreed. Unfortunately, a lot of people experience sleep issues, where they are only getting 4-5 hours per night. Some people, obviously less than that. So glad that there are functional medicine practitioners like you out there helping people to get better sleep, to get more quality sleep. That being said, how can people find out more about you, Annika?
Annika:
You can check out SleepLikeABoss.com. You can listen to my podcast, Sleep Like a Boss, where we talk all kinds of functional health and sleep. You’ve been on.
I’m not as active on social media as I probably should be, but I try to stay off as much as I can. There is Sleep Like a Boss on Facebook, and @_AnnikaCarroll on Instagram. But the easiest is the website.
Dr. Eric:
As I mentioned since we started recording, it’s been a while since I had someone focus on sleep on the podcast. You shared some great strategies, important information. Appreciate you taking the time to have this conversation with me.
Annika:
Thank you so much.
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