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Foreign. Welcome to the Thyroid Fixer podcast where we dive deep into the world of thyroid and hormones, especially for you ladies navigating perimenopause and menopause. And really for anyone struggling with hypothyroidism, I'm your host, Dr. Amy, thyroid and hormone specialist and CEO of a global telemedicine practice where we prescribe the right thyroid treatment and bioidentical hormones to all 50 states and most of Canada, helping you become that badass human that meant to be. So if you're battling weight gain and hair loss, you can't lose weight no matter what you do. Your energy levels are plummeting and your libido left town. Then you're in the right place and you have found your tribe. Remember, I want you to embrace every inch of that badass woman that you truly are. So if you're ready to dive in and fix things, let's get started. Do you want to burn fat while just sitting around? Do you have extra weight to lose? Do you want less inflammation? Do you want to reduce your oxidative stress? Do you want to improve your lipid panel, maybe become more insulin sensitive? And once again burn fat while you're sitting there at rest at your desk
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or on your couch watching Netflix?
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Well, now you can, with the power of T2 that is in Thyroid Fixer. Now, Thyroid Fixer is not just for those with a thyroid problem. It's for anyone looking to lose body fat to improve their metabolism to have better energy. Thyroid Fixer actually works at your mitochondrial level. So it is stimulating your metabolism. It's also activating ATP, which gives you more energy, nice and steady through the day. Here's the other really cool thing that Thyroid Fixer does. It turns on a gene that prevents fat from. From accumulating all over your body. So that means, yeah, if you slip up and you have the Oreo cookie or the sweet potato fries, which are my two favorite, they're my downfalls. That is not going to put extra fat on your butt, your hips, your thighs and your abs. Oh, and your arms. You don't want those jiggly arms. So why don't you just improve your fat burning potential and actually turn on a gene that prevents fat from accumulating on your body with the power of Thyroid Fixer. So as a listener of the Thyroid Fixer podcast, your first time purchase, you can use the code listen 20L I
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s t n 2 0. We'll put that down in the show
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notes and if you've already purchased it, but you just Want to save a little something something extra? Then use the code, listen 10L I s t n 10 and grab some thyroid fixer. Stock up today because it will help
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you burn extra body fat and who doesn't want that?
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I need to talk to every woman who's been told your labs are normal while your body is screaming at you and rebelling against you. Fatigue, brain fog, the weight that will not come off, mood swings, hair loss, feeling dismissed, frustrated and confused. I get it. And that is exactly why I wrote my new book, the Thyroid Fixed the Nonsense Guide to Fix Fatigue, Fogginess and Fat that Won't Budge. That just says it all and it is now available for pre sale. So I need your help to spread the message. I am giving you an ask as my listener and a promise at the same time. If you pre order the Thyroid fix, my promise to you is to continue delivering all kinds of free advice, information, content, education, empowerment. Because that's what I love to do. Whether it's here in the just fix your thyroid Facebook group or I'm on live. I will give you everything I possibly can if you do me one favor which will be a favor for yourself as well and pre order the Thyroid fix. Now. This book is not another list of supplements, vague advice. It's not a diet plan. It's not filled with recipes. It is a clear, honest guide. It is the Thyroid Bible. It is the last thyroid book that you will ever need because it teaches you how to read your own labs. No other book has done that. It teaches you what medication and dose you need. No other book has ever done that. It will help you to understand why you are being misdiagnosed, why you're being under treated and why you can't talk about hormones, weight loss or menopause without talking about the thyroid. I called it Thyroid Bible because like I said, this is going to be the thyroid book of the next few decades. When you pre order, you're not just supporting me, you're telling the publisher. This message matters and it needs to get out to the world and it needs to get into the hands of women who have been ignored for far too long. So will you go to thyroid fixbook.com and pre order a copy of yours today? It'll be shipped to you on May 12th and you will get free entry to our all day live event where I will be there answering your questions live, teaching live and bringing in amazing guests for you to also connect with and ask your questions too. So thyroid fix book.com pre order yours today welcome to the Fixing series. We are doing a series that touches on the top symptoms that you are experiencing with thyroid problems or hormone imbalance, weight loss, resistance, fatigue, and hair loss. These are the big three that I hear from you. All that I see in my patients that drive you crazy, that you think about every single day, that basically consumes space in your head. And you are searching Dr. Google, trying to find answers, buying programs that don't work, all the things right. So it's important to be educated. First, the root cause of those symptoms. Inability to lose weight, hair loss, fatigue. We have to find the why. And there are multiple, multiple whys. But when we go over them and then you take this information and do your own checklist, you can see, oh, yeah, maybe. Maybe it is my thyroid. You know, my doctor said that everything was normal, but now that I'm listening to this, I'm realizing it's not normal. This is not in a normal range or in an optimal range. My doctor is just looking at it as part of the standard lab value range. Oh, wait, yeah, no, I'm not eating enough protein. I had no idea that protein was so important for weight loss and for hair and for fatigue. Oh, my gosh. It spans all three. So we're going to talk about, in each of these episodes in this series, we're going to talk about what you can do to fix this, what you need to look at, what you need to test, what you need to check yourself for. Maybe it's just, am I lifting heavy? Am I eating enough protein? Am I drinking enough water? Am I doing all the things? Am I taking the supplement? Or do I need to go deeper and get proper testing and look at my individual lab values that contribute to one of many symptoms? So enjoy the fixing series. So continuing our fix your series, another really, really big symptom or condition or struggle that I hear from all of you is sleep. And I know this is a big one. And, you know, I have to be honest, I have not focused on sleep like I should be with all of you and the importance of sleep, and that includes my patients as well. You know, we say sleep is important. If you don't get sleep, nothing will happen. You won't lose weight, your hormones won't be balanced, your blood sugar will be all over the place. But then the question becomes, okay, then what do I do? Or what is the underlying cause of my insomnia? My waking up in the middle of the night, my inability to fall asleep? That's what I want to dig into so that you can in your mind, because in order to fix something, we have to know the root cause, we have to know the reason, or we have to know the multiple reasons that may be affecting us on a deep personal level. We have to go through that checklist so that you can say, okay, yeah, you know what, I am not getting enough magnesium or my cortisol is off or whatever. The thing is, you can actually take it into your own hands and address it. Because really, I mean, if we're not doing all the things, then we really can't step back and complain and say, I'm still not sleeping. Well, maybe it's because you're on your phone or your computer until late at night. So there's the lifestyle factors, there's the dietary factors there, the hormonal and functional medicine factors. So let's go through them. First and foremost, thyroid and hormones are always at the top. Because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you do down here, it doesn't matter your dietary changes. It really doesn't even matter your supplements, like the supplement regimen that I found that finally fixed my sleep, and I'll go into my personal story in a minute, would not have worked if my thyroid was out of whack and I was still hypothyroid or if my hormones were imbalanced. It's just not going to work at all. So we have to start there. So let's start with the master gland. Now, we know the thyroid gland is the master, plays a pivotal role in just regulating your metabolism, your energy levels, your overall hormonal balance, which, of course, all of that can significantly impact sleep and sleep quality. So first of all, underactive thyroid hypothyroidism, that's what we talk about a boatload on this podcast, low and slow thyroid function. So with a low and slow thyroid, individuals with hypothyroidism, you're going to experience excessive daytime sleepiness and fatigue and difficulty maintaining sleep. Then at night. And then you can also, with hypothyroidism, get muscle cramps, joint pain. Of course, any kind of pain or inflammation is going to impact your sleep as well. So as those thyroid hormone levels are low and slow and they are decreasing your metabolic rate, obviously with that low and slow metabolism, you're going to feel more tired, you're going to be more sleepy during the day. But then with the hypothyroidism, that can affect cortisol that we're going to talk about, and you can actually get a boost of cortisol at Night, because your cortisol is disregulated, you can have that low cortisol during the day, and then all of a sudden the end of the day comes and boom, it spikes high at night. So that alone, that hypothyroid cortisol connection alone can impact your sleep. The other thing to consider is that hypothyroidism is associated with an increased risk of sleep apnea. So that's when we stop breathing. During sleep, some people will wake up, some people won't wake up. Some people don't know that they have sleep apnea. But we do know when that occurs. It brings you out of that really deep sleep, that deep reaction, restorative sleep that we all need to repair our bodies. Those with sleep apnea, you're going to come out of that deep sleep because essentially you're gasping for air and you're coming up into a more light sleep state or an active awaken sleep. Now, we know the thyroid controls blood sugar, so blood sugar is another just sinister player in the game when it comes to sleep. So let's say right before bed, your blood sugar spikes. Now, this could be because of what you eat before bed, or this could be because your thyroid is not balanced and you don't have that regulated glucose like you should. So right before bed, you get this surge. Maybe it's cortisol surging, pushing up your blood sugar. Maybe it's because you had a bowl of ice cream right before bed, pushing up your blood sugar. Where there is a high, there is an equal and opposite low. Oh, I can even use. I'm going to use alcohol. I have a story with that. So I'm going to use alcohol as an example, because alcohol will spike your blood sugar and then you'll have a crash. So anything that spikes your blood sugar, I want you to just remember that spike your blood sugar before bed will result in a low in the middle of the night. And that is when your body will wake you up, because your body does not like low blood sugar whatsoever. So here I am at my friend's birthday party. This is a couple years ago. This is just so ironic that all of this happened at the same time. She's wearing a CGM because I told her to. And she says to me, did you know that when you drink in the middle of the night, your blood sugar plummets? I said, you know, I've always known that alcohol affects our sleep, but I didn't know the mechanism. Quite honestly, I said that that makes sense. It's very interesting. And at the same time, I had a CGM on as well. I had two glasses of wine in her birthday party. This particular CGM that I was wearing, it wasn't my first go round, but this particular one had an alarm that I never really turned off on my app. So in the middle of the night, that night, my alarm goes off, I wake up out of a dead sleep. I'm like, what the hell's going on? I take my phone, I basically almost throw it across the room, but I turned it completely off because the damn alarm would not shut off. My blood sugar had dropped low. Sure enough, so interesting when it happens to you. So interesting. So there you have it. If I was not wearing the cgm, I still would have woken up because my body would have said, hey, this isn't safe. We don't want you to have low blood sugar, so we're going to wake you up so you don't die from low blood sugar. Erratic blood sugar in and of itself, whether it's coming from hypothyroidism or it's coming from your own choices, or you are a type 2 diabetic, insulin resistant and you're just not balanced, all of that can directly affect your sleep. And then of course we have hormones. So thyroid hormones, blood sugar, all tied together, they're all so very much tied together. Hormones specifically, we are looking at estrogen and progesterone. So as progesterone declines, and we know that that happens In a woman's 30s, progesterone is our calming hormone, our relaxing hormone. So as progesterone levels decline. Absolutely. Our brain is, is, has chitter chatter. You know, you go to lay down to go to sleep and your brain is on fire and you're thinking of all the to do list that you didn't get done that day that you have to do the next day, all the emails in your inbox, all the demands from all people and your brain is just going. Progesterone helps calm that because it calms the brain. Estrogen then also has an effect on the brain. It actually improves our brain function, reduces inflammation of the brain, reduces our risk of Alzheimer's and dementia. And then of course we know that as estrogen levels drop, hot flashes, night sweats and just disrupted sleep occurring. So if you are a woman moving through perimenopause and menopause, your sleep disturbances, if they just started happening, could easily be your hormones. And then of course we have to bring in thyropods to bring in the thyroid back into the picture because thyropause the definition is when your hormones shit the bed after the age of 40 due to. I'm sorry. When your thyroid shits the bed after the age of 40 due to fluctuating hormones. That's our definition of thyropause. So thyroid hormones, blood sugar, cortisol. We've covered all of that so far. All of those can affect sleep nutritional deficiencies. Okay, so which ones? Magnesium. We know that magnesium is required for your thyroid to convert T4 to T3. Magnesium acts as a natural relaxant. It regulates GABA, which I'll get to in a moment. It regulates the GABA receptors in the brain. Magnesium helps GABA work, and then a deficiency in magnesium can lead to muscle tension, anxiety and insomnia. So we want magnesium on board in order to help us sleep. I always tell my patients to take mag before bed and take a multi mag like my quad mag or like bio optimizers Mag Breakthrough. You want more than one magnesium. You don't want to just take mag citrate. That's going to help you poop. You need all the different mags together in order for it to affect your sleep and for you to get all the benefits of the magnesium. I have a separate podcast. We can link to it in the show Notes on magnesium and all the different kinds of magnesium and what each form of mag does in your body and how important it is. Okay. B vitamins. B6 converts tryptophan into serotonin. Serotonin is a precursor to melatonin. And as women in perimenopause and menopause, we are also, when we start doing hormone replacement therapy, which I encourage all of you to do, we already went over what the hormone deficiencies can do to our sleep. As you start that, it is advised to be on some type of B complex. I have my B fixer in my line. There are multiple different B complexes out there. But you want to be taking your B vitamins not just for sleep, of course, but for overall hormonal balance. That's a separate podcast as to what happens to nutritional deficiencies as we move into perimenopause and menopause. Our bodies go wacky, ladies. They go wacky. So a lot of different starts to happen. So we want to stay on top of it and make sure that we are taking a multi B. B12 help helps to regulate our circadian rhythms. And a deficiency in B12, which many of you have. If you are vegan, if you are vegetarian, if you are on metformin, you are going to have a B12 deficiency. Most of us, if we are not taking B12, we want our B12 levels to be above a 700. If you're not taking it, you're going to be low. Helps to regulate circadian rhythm and efficiency. May lead to disrupted sleep wake cycles. So if you are waking up in the middle of the night or you're waking up at 3am 4am and you cannot go back to sleep no matter what you do. Complex B vitamin. That's what you need with methylcobalamin B12. If you've ever walked out of a doctor's office being told your labs are
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normal, but you're exhausted, gaining weight, foggy, frustrated, then this is for you. Being told you're normal doesn't mean you're optimal.
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And it definitely doesn't explain why you
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still feel like something is wrong and feel like garbage.
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That's exactly why we created the Fixer Lab test plus consult.
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It's affordable, often less than ordering labs on your own from places like LabCorp or Ulta. And it includes comprehensive thyroid and hormone testing plus a full hour long consultation with one of my highly trained team members. We walk you through your results line by line and explain exactly what they mean for you so you can finally understand what's going on in your body and what your next step should be. So if you're done being told that you're fine and you're ready for real answers, then go to fixer power lab.com that's F I X E R P O W E r l a b.com and get some help that you need.
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Omega 3 fatty acids that helps support the production of serotonin. Omega 3s also reduce inflammation. Any kind of inflammation can affect your sleep. So things to reduce inflammation. Hashimoto Fixer which contains black cumin seed oil that's going to reduce inflammation. C60 is amazing at reducing your inflammation. If you are microdosing a glp, that's amazing. Curcumin. A high quality curcumin like fusionary formulas. That's in our gift guide, our holiday gift guide this year. Fantastic company that's going to help reduce inflammation as well. Vitamin D low levels are linked to inflammation and poor sleep and an increased risk of sleep apnea. Remember, your vitamin D needs to be between 80 and 100 and if you are not taking vitamin D regularly, I'm going to tell you your levels are going to plummet. Minded When I started becoming more erratic with my vitamin D intake, it just absolutely plummeted. So you know, eating things that are anti inflammatory. Avoiding caffeine, avoiding alcohol, obviously avoiding sugar, avoiding high processed carbohydrate foods before bed. It's going to help your sleep, it's going to help your sleep because you're reducing that inflammation. And you won't be spiking your blood sugar, you won't have these erratic spikes and in your blood sugar where you wake up in the middle of the night sometimes with a CGM alarm going off and scare the whole household. Stress, you know, it's all around, especially this time of year. It's all around and really doesn't really matter what time of year it is. Stress is always present in one form or another. And with chronic stress comes cortisol dysregulation. With or without hypothyroidism, we can have adrenal dysfunction, we can have cortisol dysregulation, we can have it where we're flatlined during the day and spike in the evening like I talked about earlier. But just even that chronic prolonged stress that totally disrupts the HPA access, meaning your hypothalamus, which talks to your pituitary, which talks to your adrenals. It starts to, to mess with that whole system where one speaks to the other, speaks to the other and then it becomes a game of telephone. Or by the time the message gets to the adrenals, that message is all messed up. It's basically like, hey, it's morning now. Why don't you get up and get going? Oh, okay. And then you're cleaning your house at midnight. That chronic stress is debilitating on our bodies a and on our sleep, which then gives you a double whammy. So stress in and of itself can kill you. And then not sleeping has that long term effect on all systems. All systems. Again, what I said in the beginning, if you're not sleeping, nothing's happening. Just forget about the hormonal balance, forget about the thyroid balance, forget about losing weight. You're probably going to become a type 2 diabetic because I could totally make you a type 2 diabetic if, if I disrupt your sleep every night, you know, give you like five hours and don't let you get into a deep sleep. I can make you a diabetic in like five to seven days. It's been seven studied and has been proven in studies. Really interesting study that I always refer to. I know I'm like ADD today. I'm like a squirrel, right? So a really interesting study that I always refer to is when they took a set of Twins and they put them in a sleep lab, controlled their environment, controlled their food. Everything remained the same except the one twin. All they did was disrupt his deep sleep. That kept bringing him out of deep sleep. So he never got that deep rest and repair sleep. And in five days he was diabetic. That's how fast it can happen. That's why I said I can make you diabetic. So we have to control our stress. This is where the meditation comes in. This is where adaptogen comes in. Adrenal glandulars, those help as well. I'm a huge fan of gaba. I said I would come back to it. Progesterone helps with our adrenals. GABA helps with our adrenals. GABA is the calming neurotransmitter. So I actually put GABA into my sleep fixer because it is very, very common to the brain. And I'm not leaving the men out. But I'm sorry if you are a perimenopausal, menopausal woman, your brain is on fire. It's bouncing around, it's thinking of things that you really don't even want to think about. And I did an interview with Dr. Fiona Lovely. She got into the brain during menopause. The beneficial side of the brain during menopause is you really stop giving a. You really do. Like your armor comes down, your give of shits go away. Things that used to bother you don't. But the flip side is that your brain just ruminates more. You are more prone to anxiety because of that decrease in progesterone. So anything that we can do to calm our brain, including progesterone, but also Gaba, because you don't have to have that prescribed. That's over the counter. That calming neurotransmitter is going to help us rest and relax and sleep a little bit better. Much better. How about that? Now this would be a good time to add in my sleep story. I've been very open about this through the years, but starting in my 20s, and I believe it was triggered by a divorce and I had to move in with a friend of mine. And listen, I'm in my 20s, you know, not a big deal, living with a friend. But at that point in time, that's when my sleep became really dysregulated and I started noticing that I just could not fall asleep no matter what. I did melatonin. I did high dose melatonin. I eventually went to the Tylenol pm, which then led to Xanax and Ambien and I, I did sleep studies, the whole gamut. And really for about 20 years I didn't sleep without some kind of pharmaceutical help. It just wasn't going to happen. And at that point in time I figured, well, sleep is more important than the medication side effects because I need to sleep. I mean, without sleep you just die. And there was a time that the sleep expert said I'll just stay awake and eventually you'll fall asleep. Well, that was three days, so. So I had had enough about that. I finally gave in and just took a sleeping pill because I needed to sleep. So it wasn't until I found really, it's the combination that I put in my sleep fixer. It's a little bit of melatonin baby dose, just enough to mimic what my brain makes, the Gaba L theanine, which I'll get into 5 HTP, which helps you stay asleep. A little bit of chamomile, passion flower, valerian root. That was the stack that finally got me sleeping. And that's what I've been relying on. And sometimes I'll throw in some Delta 8 that helps with relaxation onset. So when I stack all of that and I do my lifestyle factors that we'll talk about, that is really what has helped me sleep. And of course progesterone as well. Now we have to bring in the gut before we go into lifestyle factors. The gut brain access. So the gut microbiome plays a crucial role in producing those neurotransmitters like serotonin. 90% of serotonin is made in the gut. So if our gut is a mess, then it's going to affect our mood, it's going to affect our sleep. So dysbiosis, which is really just imbalance of gut bacteria, we pretty much all have it. Leaky gut, we all have it that can lead to inflammation that affects sleep. So then that goes back to what can we do for inflammation? Hashimoto's Fixer C60 all of that I like eating, I don't like taking probiotics every single day. A lot of you have gotten into that cycle because you know Jamie Lee Curtis promotes activia and you just eat it every day, right? All we hear is probiotics, probiotics. But the problem is, is that probiotics, when taken daily, you're only feeding that group of, of bacteria and all of these guys over here are starving. So I really like to cycle probiotics if you are taking them on the regular or I like to save them for just taking with an Antibiotic, prebiotic rich foods. Garlic, onion, asparagus, those are fantastic. Bone, broth, fermented foods. That all helps your gut and it gives it more a variety of food for the different bacteria in your gut as opposed to just using one probiotic day after day after day where you're only feeding a couple billion bacteria, but we have trillions of bacteria in the gut. And then, you know, just eliminating gluten, you might have to eliminate dairy just to take out anything that's going to contribute to inflammation. But at the end of the day, dairy. Listen, if you're eating processed garbage and drinking alcohol, does dairy really matter? I mean, I would say let's, let's take out the alcohol, let's take out the gluten, let's take out the sugar, let's take out the processed foods. Get rid of anything in a can, in a box, anything that you can't pronounce the ingredients to eat real whole foods. And then for God's sake, if you have to eliminate your hard grass fed cheddar cheese, do it. But leave that for last because I don't really believe in eliminating dairy unless you absolutely have to. So let that be an individual thing. I don't want to hear from all the, the anti dairy haters out there. Just let it be an individual thing and figure it out for yourself. But anything you can do to reduce inflammation. But bonus lifestyle factors. What disrupts our circadian rhythm? Well, I had a really interesting interview with Danny Hamilton. She went into how our circadian rhythm affects our weight, affects our blood sugar. Not getting light outside, not stepping outside during the day and getting natural light, always being under artificial light, especially the blue light from our screens and from the new light bulbs that are in every single building now, suppresses melatonin production. When we get that blue light all the time in our eyes, it suppresses melatonin production where we literally do not realize that it's nighttime, it can be dark outside. But because we're putting that blue light into our retinas constantly, our brains literally think it's daytime. So I just got back from a 4M in Vegas and it's really interesting. Even though I, I don't gamble, I don't spend time in a casino. That doesn't matter. If you were in Vegas, you were so overstimulated and illuminated, you could walk down the street and think that it's daytime because of all of the lights. And that's on purpose. That's to keep you going. That's why when I got up at 6am and went to the gym. There was at least 50 people in the casino that were obviously still dressed from the night before. And they were still going. I mean, I can't even imagine staying up all night. My bedtime's 10pm, like I would die. But these people were still going. And that's because their brains never knew that it was dark out. And really, I mean, even if I think back to my 20s, the one time I stayed up all night. No, it wasn't to study for finals. It was when I visited my friend in Vegas. And I will never forget going to the Hard Rock Cafe in the morning for breakfast and going, Holy shit, it's 6am, 7am and I'm not even tired because my body still thinks that it's daytime from the day before. Blue light blocking glasses, my favorites are Viva rays. And I believe we have a discount code. We can stick that in the show notes for you. But those are my favorite because they have the yellow for the day, then they have the orange, then they have the red that you clip on it just like bam, magnetic right onto the lenses at night. And they have prescription, which is huge for me because I want to take my contacts out at night and I want to put my glasses on. But my glasses, my prescription glasses, were not blue light blocking glasses. So I got my Viva rays to be prescription. So now I take my contacts out, put my Viva rays on, start with the orange, clip on the red right at the end. That induces sleep. So that can actually help with your circadian rhythm. And that sleep wake routine for sure. Physical activity. So have you ever not exercised for a while? Like, let's say you're in a routine. You are a normal worker outer, if that's a word. You work out on the regular and then you don't. And then you're like, oh my gosh, I can't sleep well because I just didn't expend enough energy. My dog, if, if it's a cold day, we can't walk. He's been laying around all day. At night it's like he gets this cortisol spike and wants to play. And it's 8 o' clock at night. Well, it's because he didn't expend his energy through the day. And that's the same with humans too. We need to be moving, we need that physical activity. And then your, your temperature. I don't even know how my parents ever slept in their house. Set at 75 degrees. I tried to tell them that there are actual studies that show 68 or less. 68 degrees or below is your best sleeping temperature. You want sleep, it doesn't matter if you're a little bit chilled. If you set your, your thermostat at 68 and you're like a little bit cold, cold getting into bed. You're getting into bed, for God's sake, you're going to be covered up. But just having your ambient temperature in your environment be a lower temperature, below 68 degrees significantly improve sleep quality. Some people will use like a cooling mattress. That's fine. I just prefer I keep my bedroom really at 63 degrees. Sometimes I'll crack a window even in the winter. As long as it's not really below 20 degrees, I'll just crack a window. Gets that fresh air in there. Oh my gosh. Simply amazing for sleep because I don't want to be hot. I would rather be cool and have those blankets on me and be cozy and comfortable than be kicking them off at night because I'm too damn hot and I'm sweating. Weighted blankets also helps reduce anxiety. We use them for add, ADHD and autism kids. They can be for us too, because think of how good it feels when you're just in bed and you have the weight of the comforter on you and almost promotes that relaxation. Any kind of chronic stress we already talked about that is just going to increase cortisol, suppress melatonin, it's going to mess you up. So beyond just, you know, meditation, adrenal glandulars, all that, sometimes cbt, which is cognitive behavioral therapy or emdr, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, I've done both, they're amazing. That can significantly reduce anxiety of a specific situation as well. If you're dealing with a, a chronic specific trauma that can seriously help in any kind of trauma programs, My dear friend, Dr. Amy Opigian has an amazing platform with a ton of different trauma resources on there as well. Environmental toxins, you know, I mean that, oh gosh, we can go down rabbit holes, heavy metals, mold, all of that can affect the nervous system, which then affects sleep. So doing things like infrared sauna, supplementing with glutathione, supplementing with iodine, anything that detoxes us at a just a nice slow, steady pace. Absolutely beautiful for our sleep. There are some genetic factors, so genes like variants in genes like the comp gene C O M T that affects dopamine metabolism, MTHFR affects folate metabolism. Both of those will influence sleep quality and your resilience to stress. So this is where the B vitamins that we talked about come into play. Methylated B vitamins, dopamine precursors, all of those are fantastic as well. To balance out your genetics, epigenetics, working with an epigenetic specialist, very beneficial as well. I have one on my team. And knowing your genetics, if you're asleep, you know, if I could go back, if I could go back to my 30s and 40s when I was deep in my sleep issue, taking the pharmaceuticals, if I had known then what I know now, I would have gotten a genetic test and had somebody go over it as it relates to my sleep. Because targeting those genes that are affecting our sleep, in addition to all the other things, all the other things, you can't just target genes and have your progesterone be in the shitter and your thyroid not functioning and think that that's gonna work. But it's everything put together. I'm giving you this huge checklist so you can say to yourself, all right, I have that down pat. I'm good there. I'm good there. Ooh, yeah, good point on this one. I'm not doing that. I'm not doing this. I'm not shutting down my computer or my phone at night. I'm not wearing blue light blocking glasses. So freaking simple to do. Why are you not doing it? Did you know that you can turn your screen red? There's a way to on your screen that you can set it in the settings and then you click it three times and it's red. So you can do that at night as well. And that will help take out that blue light from your eyes. But that's not going to help if you're walking around, your house is lit up with LEDs and you're watching TV and you're on your computer. I talked about GABA. L theanine is another one that is in my sleep fixer that is amazing for promoting relaxation and reducing nighttime anxiety and 5 HTP support serotonin production and that helps you stay asleep. So that is amazing as well. I pretty much covered everything. I mean, that should give you a really nice starting point for addressing your sleep or your sleep disturbances. I honestly can't think of anything else that we didn't cover in this episode. So hopefully this will help you to fix your sleep. Now there is nothing wrong with adding in supplementation like sleep fixer or like doing individual stacks of, you know, your progesterone and then have some magnesium. Maybe you do a Delta 8 if you bring in THC. That's fine. If that helps you. Anything that is natural that helps support your sleep, I am completely fine with you doing what I don't want you to do unless you are in that transition period right where the sleep supplements just aren't helping. But your thyroid hormones are messed up, but you're on your way. You're on your way to optimization. I I hesitate to say the the pharmaceuticals because I mean, I used them. I used them. They're better than not sleeping at all. But if, if we can transition you off of those pharmaceuticals, find the root cause, address any of the things that we talked about today, that's so much better. Because what I realized for me is that the benzos, well, I'm already set up for Alzheimer's. I had the APOE4 gene, my mom had Alzheimer's, her father had Alzheimer's. Benzos increase your risk of Alzheimer's. So you bitch your ass. I wanted to get off of them, but I just couldn't because I needed to sleep. Well, doing all of these things and once I added in the right sleep supplements changed my life. Got off the benzo. So I'm really, really hoping that this helps you as well. Take Fix your sleep. Okay. Till next time. The information shared on the Thyroid Fixer Podcast is intended solely for informational and educational purposes. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult with your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, treatment or before making changes to your healthcare regimen, including medications, supplements, or other therapies. Use of the information provided in this podcast does not establish a doctor, patient, or client provider relationship between you and the host or between you and any other healthcare professionals featured on the show. 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