235 | Make More Money by Getting Better Sleep with Martha Lewis

Well, hello money lover. Of course, it’s no secret that we need more and better sleep to be at our best, and especially during those midlife years. You’ve got kids, you’ve got a partner, you’ve got a business to run or promotions to get. You’ve got a 401(k) to contribute to and maybe you’ve even got a nanny to pay. Maybe your parents or you have health issues, and all of that causes stress and can leave you feeling like you just don’t have enough time in the day, or worse, that you’re not enough to handle it all. Any and all of these can lead to sleeping less and getting less sleep chronically leaves you chronically depleted. And believe me, I’m speaking from personal experience. 

I’m no stranger to burning the candle at both ends. Many of you know I’ve had a very sick child. I have a business to run and clients to take great care of, and I also somewhere developed the idea that the measure of my worth is the measure of how hard I work. That work ethic served me greatly when I was pulling all-nighters to get through college, and of course, when I was getting my company up and running and off the ground. But any tool universally applied is naturally going to be over applied. And when your solution to everything is work harder, you lack boundaries and you lose sleep. 

I’ve been a partial to complete insomniac for years and I’ve tried everything to resolve it, so I’m very excited about today’s interview with Martha Lewis, the Sleep Detective. Occasionally, I delve into topics that are related to money, just not as related as Roth IRAs or stock market returns, and this is one of those. The topic of sleep is related to everything health and wealth. And if you aren’t someone who suffers with lack of sleep, maybe today’s episode isn’t for you. I promise we’ll return to our regularly scheduled money programing next week. So just X out of this episode. Send it to a friend who doesn’t sleep well, and we’ll see you next week. 

You know that we have to get good sleep to participate productively at work, to negotiate effectively for salary, to experience being the version of yourself that you need to be to balance short term wants with long term needs. To have the presence of mind to increase your 401(k) contribution every year, and to generate the peace of mind and patience that you need to discuss money with your honey. Sleep matters and it matters to your money. But as I’ve already shared, I’m not an expert. Not by a long shot. So I wanted to interview someone who can speak to us about how to resolve these issues and return to our natural, well-slept state. Martha Lewis is that gal, so I know you’re going to love this very sleepy and magnificent conversation with the Sleep Detective.

Martha Lewis is a sleep consultant to health conscious high achievers who want to sleep but can’t. She’s a certified sleep expert and a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner. She addresses both body and mind with stress resilience techniques and testing for hidden health issues to get to the root cause of her clients’ insomnia. Before we play today’s interview, let me pause briefly to say thank you to Stacy869 for this five star review she just left for the Love, Your Money podcast. She says the Love, your Money podcast provides such invaluable advice. Each episode leaves me feeling inspired and empowered to take control of my financial future. Stacy869, we love you. Now we know you love us and I want you to know your money loves you too. And if you’re enjoying the show, would you be so kind as to hop on over to iTunes and leave me a five star rating and a brief review? Those ratings help get these episodes into the podcast players of the women who want and need them most. Thank you for your support. I am deeply grateful. Could not do this without you. Without further ado or delay, here is my interview with Martha Lewis, the Sleep Detective. 

[INTERVIEW]

Hilary Hendershott: Martha Lewis, welcome to Love, your Money.

Martha Lewis: Thanks, Hilary. I’m excited to be here and talk about money and sleep.

Hilary Hendershott: I can’t wait, I can’t wait. Being an insomniac myself and knowing what not having sleep can cost me, as I was sharing with you, kind of before we hit record, I want you to know, I know firsthand that sleep impacts so many things about life. Like, when I’m well rested, I have more confidence, better peace of mind, I feel strong, I’m better at data retention. I’m better at drawing on the skill set that I like to think I’ve spent my career building. What would you add to that? What are the things people can’t have without sleep? Or what are the benefits of sleep? I mean, it’s obvious, but I’m sure you have stuff to add.

Martha Lewis: Yeah, well, I got into this because of my own sleep struggles, too. So, I’ve been through it. And I know that when you’re not sleeping well, you’re really just surviving every day. At least that’s how I was, right? And so, you’re not thriving. You’re not thinking of the future necessarily. You’re not planning. You’re not trying to achieve your goals and dreams. You’re just, again, surviving. So, I mean, we know that sleep is important for health for so many reasons that it’s important for productivity, for mood, for everything because sleep impacts every aspect of our lives.

Hilary Hendershott: Everything. Everything, yes. And you alluded to it, but give us the story. How did you get to be the sleep detective? Were you born this way? Was it born of necessity? Tell us how it came about.

Martha Lewis: Right. I was always a great sleeper, and I always cared about my sleep. Like, when I used to work on an organic farm and I had to be there at 6:45, so I’d wake up at six in the morning. This is when I was in my 30s. And I would have people over to my house for dinner, friends and my boyfriend, and at 10 o’clock, I’d be like, “I’m going to bed, guys. See you later.” And leave everyone there in my house still hanging out. So, that’s how much I always cared about sleep and never struggled with it, so never thought twice about it.

But when I was 39 and late pregnancy, I started not being able to sleep and I was miserable, but I figured it was just hormones and that it would go away after my son was born, but it didn’t. So, once my son was born, he ended up being a really bad sleeper. I ended up hiring a sleep consultant to help. I ended up becoming a pediatric sleep consultant because it made such a big difference. Yeah, so that’s kind of how I got in the world of sleep.

But then I realized, once my son was sleeping through the night, that I was not sleeping, I still had this issue. And so, for me, I would wake up or I would try to go to bed early because I was so tired, but then it would take me forever to fall asleep. And then, like clockwork every night, I’ll wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning and not be able to go back to sleep for a couple of hours until it was 6. So, my son was waking up for the day. So, I was only getting like five or six hours of sleep. I like eight and a half hours of sleep. That was not enough.

So, I went through my journey of doing a lot of research, following what I call all the sleep rules, or what’s called the sleep hygiene of having a bedtime routine and not watching screens before bed, and all of these things that you read everywhere. And I was working in the supplement industry at the time, so I took what seemed like every supplement under the sun to try and help, and none of those things worked. I then became a certified adult sleep consultant, so looked at habits and surface-level diet and exercise and things like that. And those things helped me for a little bit.

And then I went through a stressful period. My sleep deteriorated again. None of those things were helping until I finally heard about functional lab testing and saw someone who is doing that to help with sleep. And I just had this light bulb moment, like this makes so much sense. There’s been something missing because here I am, doing all the right things. I care about my health, but something more is going on. And so, I ended up becoming certified in the lab test. And when I did the lab test myself, I found out I had a parasite. I had hormone imbalance, I had gluten sensitivity. I had really high uranium and copper, and so…

Hilary Hendershott: How do you get high uranium?

Martha Lewis: From tap water. I live in the mountains and so, yeah. So, it’s in the ground. So, yeah, all of those things were affecting my sleep. And once I started correcting those, that’s when I started sleeping better and better. And so, now, that’s what I do, is use this lab testing to find what’s going on in the body and then also helping with stress, with worry about sleep because I believe there’s a mental component as well.

Hilary Hendershott: Wow. Amazing. And so, you just sort of dive right into it, became a pediatric sleep coach, then an adult sleep coach. I mean, so it was really like you’re calling or there was something about it calling to you. And so, in my work, I advise people on how to do better with their money and I do find that sometimes people pay for the advice and don’t take it. I’m curious, what are the most surprising things to you about the work that you do with people? When they come to you, do they really want to sleep better? Or what’s that like?

Martha Lewis: They definitely do. I mean, most of my clients, they’ve tried a lot of different things. They’ve almost lost hope because they’ve been to the doctor. Sometimes, they’ve even been to functional medicine practitioners and doctors and tried cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. Like, they’re following all the sleep rules. And so, it’s easy to lose hope, right? And if you go to your doctor, they just tell you to take a sleeping pill. So, most of my clients are very motivated. I am surprised when someone pays for my program and then doesn’t follow through. But it’s really a health-restoring program, so I’m asking people to change their diet sometimes, to change their habits. And some of that is hard. And my goal is definitely to be there and support them in those changes. But sometimes, people aren’t ready to do that, so yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: What are the most commonly held misperceptions about insomnia? Am I overusing the term insomnia, by the way?

Martha Lewis: No, I say that all the time. And I’m not talking about an official diagnosis of insomnia that has its requirements. I just mean trouble sleeping. Yeah, so I use it generally as well. I think the most common misconception is that your choices are cognitive behavioral therapy, taking a sleeping pill, and if those things don’t work, it’s all in your head. It’s anxiety. You have an address to get or, like, there’s nothing else.

Hilary Hendershott: Right. And so, you’ve mentioned functional medicine a few times. I’ve heard of functional medicine. Can you define that? What is meant by that? And what do you do with that?

Martha Lewis: Yes. Great question. So, the conventional medical system or when you go to a doctor and get bloodwork or other labs done, they’re looking to diagnose something specific. Functional medicine is, instead using different labs, to look at how the different systems in your body are working and what’s not working optimally. So, I kind of see it as if your car engine light goes on, you take it to the mechanic, they plug it into their machine and it shows what’s causing it. It’s kind of the same thing. It’s like, okay, these things are out of whack, but not enough that where you’re ready to be diagnosed with a disease or disorder, but they just aren’t working properly, and so, it’s causing all these symptoms. So, it’s really more preventative and kind of finding things before it turns into something major and enabling us just to see imbalances in the body, in the different systems in the body without trying to diagnose something specific.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. Well, I’m super curious what these tests are. Is it worth diving into? Or do you think that’s a little bit too under the hood?

Martha Lewis: No, I’m happy to.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay, let’s talk about it. I’m curious, though, obviously, not everyone who comes to you has too much uranium in there. Tell me, what are the tests that you do? And what are some of the things that you find?

Martha Lewis: Yeah. So, I use four different lab tests that give me the most information for the least amount of money. I do some assessments as well in the intake forms. My goal is to get the big picture what’s going on and make sure we aren’t missing anything. Like, I see it as pieces of a puzzle. Everyone’s puzzle is a little bit different. But if we miss a piece, then they might not get better. So, my goal is to not miss any pieces.

Yeah, so I run a DUTCH Test that is a dried urine hormone test. It’s looking at sex hormones, so estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and really the balance between those hormones which is just as important. It also shows how those hormones are being broken down by the body, especially by the liver, so then I can see how different parts of liver detoxification are working. This test also looks at cortisol and your cortisol pattern. So, cortisol should be lowest first thing in the morning, then spike to its highest level within two hours of waking up, and then gradually go down throughout the day. A lot of times, my clients and my cortisol was so high in the middle of the night. It’s like higher than the rest of the day. And so, no wonder…

Hilary Hendershott: So fun.

Martha Lewis: Yeah, not able to sleep.

Hilary Hendershott: Right.

Martha Lewis: Cortisol is giving us energy and making our mind race and all of these things, like it’s meant for when we’re stressed and in fight or flight. So, we don’t want that happening at night. And then it also looks at melatonin. And so, it gives me a lot of different information. And then I do a GI-MAP which is a stool test looking at gut health. So, that’s where it’s looking at the parasites. It’s looking at kind of the bad bacteria and Candida, which is a type of yeast. And all of these creatures are nocturnal. So, it’s the middle of the night that they are, I know, this grosses a lot of people out.

Hilary Hendershott: I know there’s a reason I didn’t go into medicine.

Martha Lewis: Right. Yeah. But what happens is when they’re active, they’re causing all this inflammation. And cortisol is also an anti-inflammatory hormone, so then the body releases cortisol which wakes us up. So, all of my clients, almost everyone has some sort of pathogen. Not everyone has a parasite, but usually, there’s some kind of overgrowth happening. And then this test also looks at the good bacteria, which are actually responsible for making 90% of our neurotransmitters, so serotonin and GABA and dopamine that help us feel calm and relaxed and able to sleep. We need to have enough good bacteria for that. Yeah, it also shows how well you’re digesting food, how strong the immune system is in the gut. Again, it’s just this overall snapshot of gut health. So, we know what to work on there.

And then I do a neurotransmitter test using urine to look directly at neurotransmitters. I found, this was like the final piece for me, is that I was sleeping pretty well most of the time, but it was still somewhat inconsistent. And I test my neurotransmitters. And I was really deficient in serotonin and GABA. And I started supplementing with those. And since then, my sleep has just been great.

Hilary Hendershott: But now, can you actually take serotonin? I mean, isn’t that one of those where it doesn’t cross the blood-brain barrier? Do I remember that correctly?

Martha Lewis: Yeah, that’s GABA. A lot of Gaba supplements you can’t take. You take 5-HTP, which is a precursor to serotonin.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. And that one’s for you?

Martha Lewis: Yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay, that’s three. Did you say you do three tests or four?

Martha Lewis: Four. So, the last test is called the Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis.

Hilary Hendershott: This is where you find out all the drugs they do?

Martha Lewis: Well, not exactly, but that is where we find things like uranium and other heavy metals. Not doing any kind of recreational drug testing, but yeah, so it looks at heavy metals. It also looks at mineral balance, which is super important for sleep. And our minerals get out of balance when we’re stressed. Like, we actually deplete certain minerals faster than others and if our gut isn’t healthy and we aren’t absorbing the nutrients from food. So, I’m usually working on mineral balancing with the clients too. So, again, this is giving me this big picture, okay, what’s going on.

And then I’m also assessing for things like mold toxicity and brain inflammation, and then also looking at habits and stress in their lives and everything like that because mental stress affects the body over time. It damages the gut. It affects lots of different systems in the body over time as well. Yeah, so that’s what I use.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay, so I saw one of your reviews, said, “I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t sleep, and then I did her diet for a year,” so talk to me about, like, what are some of the types of diets or food plans you put people on? How long does that take? Of course, I’m going to live another year. It’s worth it, I get it. But just give me a sense of the resolution to this and your plans that you put people on.

Martha Lewis: Yeah, definitely. And I think you’re talking about my client, Rachel, who also was feeling better after three months, but that was after working together on things. And so, yeah, like that was her assessment. So, I do recommend an anti-inflammatory diet. So, a lot of sleep issues can be caused by inflammation. And that can be happening from toxins like heavy metals and things like that, but our diet plays a big role in that as well. I mean, we’re eating three to however many times a day, so that’s significant.

So, avoiding things like refined sugar, alcohol, even gluten and dairy for a lot of people, they’re reacting to that. It doesn’t have to be forever. But that GI-MAP that looks at gut health, it does have a marker for gluten sensitivity. And quite a few of my clients show that they are reacting to gluten. So, I do tend to recommend that, if that’s what their test results show.

Hilary Hendershott: My daughter has an Eastern medicine doctor and he’s all over us. To get off wheat and dairy.

Martha Lewis: Yeah. It’s tough. It’s just how it’s processed these days. It’s not as easily digestible.

Hilary Hendershott: That’s the same thing he says.

Martha Lewis: Yeah, exactly.

Martha Lewis: So, that’s a lot what I’m recommending with diet. And another thing related to that is blood sugar as well. So, what we’re eating is really impacting our blood sugar. And this is another common reason why people are waking up at night is that if you’re on this blood sugar rollercoaster all day, like it’s extremely up and down, whenever blood sugar drops too low, your body releases cortisol because that literally puts glucose into the cells. It raises our blood sugar.

And so, when you’re on that roller coaster all day, that’s going to happen at night as well. And then your body is going to release cortisol and you’re going to be awake. So, helping people also find their optimal diet. As far as how much fat, protein, and carbs that their body needs right now also is really going to help with sleep and energy and hormone balance and so many different things.

Hilary Hendershott: Oh, really? Wow, that’s interesting. So, you work on those proportions individually. And they can vary pretty widely for people.

Martha Lewis: Yeah, definitely.

Hilary Hendershott: Wow. Okay, interesting. And there must be some supplementation. And then are you doing the same functional blood tests or testing over time to see, measure progress?

Martha Lewis: We can. So, I work with people for six months initially. And a lot of people start sleeping better well before then. So, I know six months can sound like a long time, but it is really a health-restoring program. So, helping people who make…

Hilary Hendershott: Come on, my daughter is seven years old. I haven’t slept since before she was born. It’s okay. We have a lot of life to live, yes.

Martha Lewis: Totally.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay, so six months.

Martha Lewis: So, that initial program, six months, and includes one round of testing. And then sometimes, clients want to continue, like they’re sleeping better, but they really care about their health, and so, they want to retest and make sure that they keep on working toward getting back in balance as much as possible. And other people are like, “I’m sleeping great. I think things are resolved. I’m good.” So, I kind of leave it up to the person as to if they want to retest or not, but it’s obviously a good sign if now they’re sleeping well.

Hilary Hendershott: Yeah, that same Eastern medicine doctor I was talking about says, “Sleep tends to come back when the rest of health comes back,” right? And so, conversely, you could take it as if sleep has returned, some level of health has returned. So, it’s a good sign. I would be the one who wanted all the tests. It’s like, “Let’s test every month.”

Martha Lewis: Someone might go to that length for sure.

Hilary Hendershott: Yeah. Let’s talk about sleep, both over-the-counter prescription medications as well as herbal supplementation. What are your opinions? We all know all the things. You can say them by name. We have melatonin, l-theanine. We have Tylenol PM. We have Benadryl. We have Ambien. We have trazodone. Talk to me in as much depth as you want to about both casual and chronic use of those things because life is busy, right? And people find something that works, but talk to me about the upsides and downsides of those.

Martha Lewis: Yeah. So, let’s start with supplements. So, yes, you’re advised or you read melatonin, magnesium, CBD, all of these things can help. I think that those things, sometimes people do need those things, right? But melatonin is only going to help you sleep if you’re deficient in melatonin, and that’s the only reason why you weren’t sleeping. Otherwise, it’s probably not going to help. And same with magnesium, like most of my clients need magnesium, but they also need the other minerals to be in balance. They need the– what are called cofactors, other vitamins to absorb the magnesium. They need a healthy gut to absorb the magnesium. So, it’s always more than just magnesium.

And I always say, like, by the time someone has gotten to the point where they aren’t sleeping well, there’s more than one system out of balance. It’s not just as simple as take this one supplement and you’re going to magically sleep better. If that works for some people, that’s great. Like, that’s definitely where to start and see, but the people I’m working with, it’s chronic insomnia. They’ve tried all these things. And so, there’s not just one supplement that’s going to correct everything. So, that’s my opinion about that.

I also really believe in testing instead of guessing. So, sure, you can take melatonin. There aren’t conclusive studies showing that it’s safe long term. It doesn’t mean it isn’t safe long term, but taking something your body doesn’t need isn’t helping and could be, heard in some cases, harmful as well. So, yeah, everything is about balance in the body. Yeah, so I really believe like, again, the DUTCH Test shows if someone needs melatonin. The hair test shows if someone needs magnesium, so then we’re not giving something that the body doesn’t need. We know what their body needs.

Now, when you start talking about medications, over-the-counter prescriptions, that’s not as ideal in my opinion. So, even over-the-counter medications like Tylenol PM and Benadryl and things like that, I mean, it’s shown that it’s not good to take those things long term, and you’re putting an extra burden on the liver as well, which is probably already not working well if you weren’t sleeping. So, I think, to take those things every once in a while for sleep or if you’re going through a rough patch or something like that isn’t the end of the world, it’s definitely not recommended to take that every day, every night for years and years.

And then when we talk about prescription sleeping pills, no matter what it is, I mean, first of all, they aren’t producing natural sleep, so they’re sedating you. You don’t spend the same amount of time in the sleep stages as you do if you were sleeping naturally. So, that’s why there’s so much risk associated with them. Like, they talk about Ambien, you have greater increase of developing Alzheimer’s, and that’s because you’re not getting the same kind of natural sleep that you should be. There are also side effects to these drugs. And again, they’re putting this extra burden on your liver. And they’re really just covering things up, like, I call them a Band-Aid, right? Like, they’re not solving the problem of why you aren’t sleeping. They’re just masking that symptom.

Hilary Hendershott: Yeah. Okay, but there isn’t like one of them, for example, is far more harmful than another, or one of them in particular is linked to chronic– except you did say Ambien may be linked to Alzheimer’s, or maybe just not getting enough REM is linked to Alzheimer’s.

Martha Lewis: Right. But they’ve shown that that drug also does that is correlated with that. I will say like benzodiazepines, so that can be more like anti-anxiety like Lexapro and things like that. I have heard horror stories of people being on those and the withdrawal effects that happen when they try and get off. They’re very addictive. They really change the wiring in the brain. So, I mean, I did a whole podcast episode about this, about the dangers of benzos because, yeah, I just see so many clients who have struggle with that, who had either gotten off them and had these horrible effects. I have one woman who’s– she got off at four months ago. She has all these tics that are happening, like it’s affected her brain.

Yeah, and then other people who desperately try to get off them and just can’t. Yeah, so I think those are scary and something to not be using regularly. And I think, unfortunately, a lot of people get on them and they aren’t told how addictive they are and how hard it can be to get off. Yeah, so beware before taking something like that. I do think Ambien is like the milder prescription drug, especially compared to these benzodiazepines.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. Yeah, I think of those as for anxiety, so I didn’t bring them up. But thank you for mentioning them. Yeah.

Martha Lewis: A lot of people are on them for sleep.

Hilary Hendershott: Got it. Okay. All right. Well, and so, I mean, do you believe that some people are more prone to insomnia than others? Or in your opinion, in your experience, is it like there are always things we can tap into and then having a healthy sleep state is like a natural place to return to? Can you think there’s optimism for people who may not be sleeping and may not have time to even listen to your podcast or my podcast and they’ve got to get through single parenting or whatever it is? But is the core message of yours is optimistic, look, we can get to the root cause? You can actually return to being a sleeping baby, a highly sleeping baby.

Martha Lewis: Yes. I believe everyone is meant to sleep well. And that’s because, I mean, we as humans have been evolving for tens of thousands of years and we still need to spend a third of our lives asleep. Like, that’s how important it is. We’re meant to sleep well. We’re meant to have energy. We’re meant to be able to reproduce. We’re meant to be in balance. Our bodies always want to be in balance. So, I truly believe that we are meant to sleep well. And if you can’t, it just means something’s getting in the way and your body isn’t totally healthy.

Now, I do think that some people are more genetically prone to developing sleep issues when their body is out of balance. So, we all know plenty of unhealthy people who sleep just fine. So, it’s not like bad health equals poor sleep, right? And yeah, so I think that there are those of us when our body is unhealthy, then it’s our sleep that is affected first or second or whatever. And other people get other issues. They have gut issues or skin issues or it manifests in different ways. But based on our genetics, some of us are prone to our sleep is what’s affected.

Hilary Hendershott: Yeah. Well, thank you. This has been really helpful. Where can people find you if they want to find out more about what you do?

Martha Lewis: Yeah. So, my website is TheSleepDetective.com. My podcast is also called The Sleep Detective and I’m on Facebook as a Sleep Detective and Instagram as marthalewissleepdetective.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. And I did, I figured out while I was researching you why you came up with the moniker The Sleep Detective. It’s like because we have to put on our private eye hat and go to work and figure out what the heck is getting in the way of you and a great night’s sleep. Okay, well, if you’re listening, I hope you found this useful. Of course, we have to be at our best to do all the things that money requires. Martha, thank you for being here. I really appreciate you on Love, your Money.

Martha Lewis: Yes. Thanks so much for having me.