351: Dreams Interrupted: Exploring the Sleep Dilemmas of Midlife w/ Laini Gray

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Courtney Townley 0:00
Welcome to the Grace and Grit Podcast made for women who want their healthiest years to be ahead of them. Not behind them. Join your host Courtney Townley right now. As she breaks down the fairy tale health story, you have been chasing all of your life, indispensable action steps and lasting change.

Courtney Townley 0:28
Hello, my friends and welcome to the Grace & Grit Podcast. This is your host, Courtney Townley. And today we’re going to talk about something that I just know is on the heart and minds of so many midlife women, which is sleep. And if there was only one behavior change that I could help a woman with in devotion to her health and well being it would be on helping her to get better sleep. for so many reasons. It just makes us nicer people. And I always say there’s like no problem on the planet that a good night’s sleep can’t solve. But when it comes to our health, it’s really where the magic happens. We always say like the brain caches out the liver, detoxifies the immune system fortifies our hormones recalibrate our tissues repair, there’s a lot of beautiful things that happen in our sleeping hours. And sleep can be really freaking hard when you are in the peri menopausal or postmenopausal years.

Courtney Townley 1:24
In fact, this is a topic that I just feel like comes up in every single coaching call that I do with individual clients, but also with my community at large. Like when we have group coaching calls, there’s inevitably at least one person who wants to be coached on sleep. So I know this is relevant. I know there’s a lot of questions surrounding this topic. And while we’ve done a lot of episodes on this show about sleep specifically, I just feel like this topic will never go out of style. It’s one that needs to be revisited often and much. And today, I have invited back to the show for I don’t know like the billionth time, like friends, Lady Dre, who I just have mad respect for. And I just enjoy being with her.

Courtney Townley 2:05
So those are the two reasons I’m actually inviting her back, we always have great conversations. But she also has a very beautiful way of simplifying complex topics, especially when it comes to hormones, biochemistry, these types of things, which of course plays a massive role in our ability to get quality disease later in life. So if you could use a little help, or a lot of help in the sleep department, this episode is for you. Yeah. Welcome to the show.

Laini Gray 2:33
Thank you. I’m excited to be here. And this is one of my favorite things to talk about. Oh, yay.

Courtney Townley 2:39
I didn’t actually know that. So that’s great. It’s awesome.

Laini Gray 2:42
It’s one of my favorite things to do as well.

Courtney Townley 2:45
I mean, I, if I could have like a PhD in something. Yeah. Like without a lot of effort. I think it would be asleep like I just a rockstar sleeper mostly, I’ve definitely, like found some disruption in my perimenopausal years. But how’s your sleep these days?

Laini Gray 3:01
Amazing. Amazing. It’s amazing. Yeah. And you’re

Courtney Townley 3:06
postmenopausal like your menopause like you are past past the

Laini Gray 3:11
past all of those. Yes. So my sleep has now returned to nice and wonderful and deep and restorative. And I love it so much.

Courtney Townley 3:22
Before we get into the juicy bits of this conversation, I think it’s important that we remind people what you do in the world.

Laini Gray 3:30
It depends on the day, but I am a functional health practitioner specializing in women’s hormones and gut health. My goal really is to help women take control of their hormone health and their overall health so they feel better sleep better have more energy and live a life they love

Courtney Townley 3:47
I love it. And you do a lot of your work through testing, like you look at hardcore data to understand where the disruption might be coming from on a biochemical level. And then you have conversations that are obviously going to help resolve that. Yes, yeah, definitely. Definitely. For anyone listening to this today, if you feel like you’re doing all the things, and by all the things, you’re gonna have a much better understanding of what that means by the end of this conversation. But if you truly are doing all the things and you also are still feel wildly disrupted, I cannot encourage Laney services enough to just kind of help pinpoint what you might be lacking or where you might need support on a hormonal level. Okay, so with that being said, let’s talk about I just want to kind of start this conversation by reminding the audience because you and I have these conversations a lot about sleep about training about food about so many things. And problems like sleep are never like one dimensional. Right? It’s never one thing. No, it’s usually lots of things. Yes. So the kind of enter these waters It’s just kind of talk about the heart the shifting hormonal landscape that happens at midlife, it makes sleep more challenging. Like, what is what? Like, what’s the cause of that?

Laini Gray 5:10
Yeah, so So backing up a little bit talking about our menstrual cycle. And we have these ebbs and flows of estrogen and progesterone, right. And what most of us will experience is that we’ve run, run, run and done all the things and we were staying up late in college, and we’re staying up late with kids. And then we’re seeing a blade getting things done. And we we somehow we sleep for five hours, and then we still have all the energy we need the next morning, right? And a lot of us survive on this for a long time. And we talked about how why how does that work? Well, our hormones are estrogen and progesterone are really the superpowers to keep us resilient. Right. And as we go into midlife, one of the first things that happens is progesterone starts to decline. And what that shows up as I don’t sleep as well, or maybe I’m having hot flashes at night, maybe I’m a little constipated. Maybe something else is, you know, just a little bit disrupted. But that shift in hormones really affects our resilience or about our ability to sleep without disruption and to have the energy we need the next day.

Courtney Townley 6:13
Yeah, well, you know, what’s interesting about this, too, is I feel like, you know, there’s this story that we tell ourselves that, well, I used to do all these things, and I was getting away with it. I was getting away with it. And I always like kind of giggle when I hear that. Because I’m like, you know, truth be told We’re never getting down to anything. Physiology? No, but I do think that and I know you feel this way as well, because we’ve had these conversations that the gift of midlife is that we almost become hypersensitive to things that were actually never working completely,

Laini Gray 6:46
completely, because we seem to be getting away with something. But really the body’s keeping the score. Yeah. And that manifests at a different age and a different way for every woman, right? That might be periods that are really crampy, or crazy, or exhaustion or all these things. But somehow we still think we’re getting away with it. And then when midlife comes, when the hormones start to shift, all of a sudden, it’s like you’re not getting away with it. We’re going to remind you of all the things you said you were going to do all the things that you thought were good ideas. Now it’s critical that we actually put these into practice.

Courtney Townley 7:19
Yeah. And on top of like, the hormones, just like I always say, like estrogen and progesterone are leaving the party. Yeah, yeah, damn it. But they are departing. And then on top of it, we tend to be in this age and stage like, in the most stressful time of our life, meaning we’re balancing a lot of responsibilities. We’re making a lot of really big life decisions. And the two hormones that you just mentioned, the estrogen and progesterone actually help us to manage stress. Yeah. So when they are no longer hanging out with us, we are really so awesome on a biochemical level at managing the stress response

Laini Gray 7:59
completely, because when when those estrogen and progesterone start shifting and declining, we are less resilient to stress. So cortisol becomes an even bigger, you know, get fights against us, our insulin, we don’t manage insulin as well with our hormones shifting. So weight becomes a little bit hard. And if you think about both of those hormones, weight gain and stress, sleep is really important to manage both of those, right? So we have to put all of the pieces together because they all are so interconnected. And yeah, you can’t do just one without the other. And we can’t just blame hormones, because they’re just kind of waking us up to what was really going on.

Courtney Townley 8:37
Right there. They’re beautiful messengers, right?

Laini Gray 8:41
Or while literally, they’re just telling you.

Courtney Townley 8:45
Yeah, so my mom, always she has this phrase that I love so much. She says that because she worked in the medical field for years. And she would work with some physicians who had just like wild theories, when a client would come in with kind of a common condition. Right? And so my mom, my mom saying was always when you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras. Right, like, yes, yeah. And so I kind of want to start, like our recommendations or kind of our, our pathway of helping the listener from the things that are directly within their control to start without going out and getting any testing or getting any kind of fancy supplements or anything that they very well may need. Yeah. But I kind of want to start with the Yeah, the horse conversation before we go to the more the other things that are a little bit more elaborate, a little bit more costly, certainly can be relevant. But let’s just kind of start at that base level. So let’s, we talked a little bit about stress. Let’s go a little bit deeper into that because stress means so many things. It does. Yes. Okay, so tell me tell me how you talk about stress like, well,

Laini Gray 9:54
First, if we’re just going back to the sleep conversation, I’d like to remind everybody we’re really into Good, intricately tied to our circadian rhythm to the way the sun rises and sets every single day. So when the sun gets up in the morning that actually triggers this natural release of cortisol in our bodies to wake us up and say, Hey, let’s get going. And that’s a good stress. That’s the stress that says, Hey, get up, let’s fight inflammation, let’s have energy, let’s get the things done. Let’s have some blood sugar regulate, all of the things that cortisol does in the morning are really good for us. Here, right 100% If you’re dragging to get out of bed, you’re probably missing that cortisol wake up piece of the puzzle. So it right that cortisol gets us up tells us to move around all of that energy, you always talk about the motion creates, right, we’re going to start moving and all of these things. And then if you think about what happens in the day, the sun starts to set. And as the sun starts to set, we should naturally be starting to slow down so that our cortisol production goes down. Because when it does, it says, Hey, tag team, you’re at melatonin you’re on. And then melatonin rises so that we have all of this great repairing things that can happen at night.

Courtney Townley 11:07
And melatonin really helps us to prepare for sleep. quality sleep, yes. And

Laini Gray 11:11
it’s an antioxidant. So we need it during sleep to do all of the detoxing and everything that you were talking about. So it’s a really powerful hormone. But here’s the catch melatonin and cortisol cannot be high at the same time. Yeah. So if cortisol is high, and melatonin is low, yeah, and the story

Courtney Townley 11:30
about kind of like the, it’s like the favorite child not but not really, right, like kind of given so much attention in terms of the way we live our life. Yeah, it’s like we’re always giving cortisol, the car keys totally. And melatonin gets neglected, because we’re not winding down at the end of the night. For all so many reasons. Some of the reasons that melatonin doesn’t kick in are because of what

Laini Gray 11:52
we’re stressed, right? And this is just part of life. We’re having dinner at seven o’clock at night, we’re doing homework, we’re finishing up things, we’re doing laundry, all of a sudden, it’s nine o’clock at night, and the sun’s been gone for a couple of hours, then we’re on our phone, browsing all of our social media, then we get on that TV, if you watch news, right? What I mean nothing is relaxing on the news at night. So if or if you’re watching a murder mystery, or something that’s really cortisol, antagonizing those kinds of things, or you’re just say out, the lights are on, you’re stressed out. Most women aren’t going to bed till 11 or 12 o’clock at night.

Courtney Townley 12:26
Yeah, let’s talk about that for a second. Because I’m sure you have found this as well. A lot of my clients will end up staying up much later than they actually want to. Because it’s their time. It’s the time that they get to be left alone, and they get zoned out too doing whatever their choice, their activity of choices. They’re not really doing anything productive. They’re not need to stay up. But there’s kind of like a mentality that goes along with it. That well this is the only time I get in the day. So I’m going to take it Yeah, and then the consequences they only get maybe four hours of good sleep or completely

Laini Gray 13:03
and it’s really hard to think about but if we talk about the sun and the moon and this whole situation, right? Really that sunrise in the morning that’s when we should be having our meantime if we want to work with our body’s physiology how we’re actually designed would be to use that natural cortisol surge in the morning before the kids are up because guess what theirs doesn’t surge until later in the day.

Courtney Townley 13:26
Oh that’s a little stinker thinkers

Laini Gray 13:29
that’s why kids have a hard time going to school early in the morning because they really don’t have the same rhythm

Courtney Townley 13:34
we are so in that phase in our house so harm is like wake me he’s like

Laini Gray 13:38
I’m they stay up like like they have a different growing kids have a different rhythm. But we’re talking about us midlife women right here, we have that natural surge of energy in the morning, we need to take advantage of that. We need to exercise we need to move we need to get our goals set in how our meditation do those things to set our day up for success. And then wind down. Because I guarantee if you start having really good sleep, that is yourself time you’re like really like on the other side, it just feels so good to wake up and not be tired. Like that’s better than staying up late to watch a movie any day of the week.

Courtney Townley 14:14
So let’s talk about the psychology of why people don’t actually spend time on themselves in the morning, especially women, because we’re really good. And I think we have a habit of giving energy away to everyone else, everything else. And then there’s almost this mentality of reserving like whatever’s leftover at the end of the day. That’s what I’ll take. Right, right. And you’re like spinning that whole thing on its head saying no, like in the morning, you have the most resources available. Yeah, why not preserve a little bit of that for you?

Laini Gray 14:45
Oh, totally right. It’s the whole oxygen mask thing. Put your mask on first. Then you’re going to be you’re going to feel stronger, you’re going to be more empowered, and then you will take care of all those people that are fright or all of the things because when you’re exhausted you’re not doing your best job as a mother, as a student as a, you know, colleague as any of those things when you’re tired, you’re just like trying to survive. That’s not the way to bring your your gifts to the world. Right? Yeah.

Courtney Townley 15:12
So we are feeding inside of Rumble & Rise this year’s power, purpose and impact. Yeah. And what we kind of started the year with was exactly this, like really talking about how do you start your day with power, purpose and impact? Like, and the thing is, and this is really important for people to hear, we’re not talking about like epic routines, namely time, you know, time energy and or resource heavy activities. We’re just talking about, like one or two things, if you have no practices right now. Yeah, like just spending five or 10 minutes getting your head on straight before you try to go out and save the world. Oh,

Laini Gray 15:48
yeah. And that mean, I know, you do the same coach where, you know, where are you at? What could you do? That doesn’t require a lot. I mean, I listen to my meditation in bed sometimes. Yeah. So I have 10 more minutes that I listened to something. Yesterday’s, for example, was on is everything you’re doing in alignment with who you are. Yeah, that was the trigger, I needed to like, get up, get things done, I have things I want to do. So just actually putting those little teeny pieces it could be reading in the morning, just with the lamp not really bright. You don’t have to get up and go run outside. And unless that’s your thing. You know, just something that says this is my goal for the day. Yeah. Right.

Courtney Townley 16:25
Yeah. And this is where I want to put my view my resources on purpose, because I think sometimes, oftentimes, we are running by default, which was our whole last episode that we did. Yeah, fine defaults. Because default is just reactivity. You know, and it is a big reason. I think a lot of women are starting their day already in hyperdrive. So we’re not talking about like, hyperdrive. We’re talking about using cortisol, to nurture your well being, yeah, that you dedicate a little bit of that energy to something that would align you with the way that you want to show up for the day. Yeah,

Laini Gray 17:02
I want you introduced me to the Miracle Morning, which I love that you just read.

Courtney Townley 17:07
Yes, yes, yeah.

Laini Gray 17:11
Yes. And there’s a whole like, it’s on Netflix

Courtney Townley 17:13
now, too, you can watch it. And I think this, but I have not seen it. Okay, it was good. It

Laini Gray 17:17
was good. For those people that don’t want to read books, you should watch that. But the other one I really like is the Five Minute Journal. Right? That really starts with, and I always joke, because it takes me less than two and a half, right. And that’s for the whole day. So you get up and you just grab your journal and you can make, I’m just gonna give you the tips right here you write three things you’re grateful for, right? That shifts your mindset right away from being hyper worried about the day you’re like, I’m grateful for three things, and try to make them different every day, then you come up with three things that would make your day awesome. Whatever that would be. If I exercise, if I eat well, whatever those three things would make my day awesome. And then set one intention. That’s it. That’s all you have to do. Right and lead in those things can be at the dishes are done, it doesn’t matter. Just very simple things that would make your day awesome. And at the end of the day, you say what went well, what went well, three things that went well today, and you find three things of joy. And then once one only one thing that you can do better tomorrow. Yeah, it literally takes two and a half minutes. And it’s so empowering. Because you’re like, Okay, I said, I wanted to go for a walk, get the dishes done, and eat vegetables, you can do that you can intentionally set some very simple strategies that make your whole day so much better.

Courtney Townley 18:36
Yeah, and what I love about this is I feel like it is the gateway to taking radical responsibility for how you’re showing up in your life, right? Because being taking radical responsibility requires radical honesty. And a lot of us don’t like that fact. No, just want to kind of move on and try and basically commit to new behaviors without understanding why we did what we did that got us into this pickle. And so this, this whole idea of, of kind of looking at the end, taking the end of the day to reassess what went well. And how are you used what you learned today to move forward tomorrow a little more wisely. It’s like we stopped ditching this concept that we can failed in some way. But rather than just perpetually learning, yeah, and we’re perpetually improving. And that D loads a ton of stress.

Laini Gray 19:23
Oh, totally. And if you can be excited about something that went well, at the end of the day, and just one thing you’re going to change or do better at that’s out of your mind when you go to sleep. Now you don’t go to bed worrying about everything. Because that’s we can’t handle all the things at once anyway, we’re never going to be able to tackle 27 big things all at one time. But if you break it down, that’s gonna make it more simple and have less in your mind as you’re trying to wind down and go to sleep.

Courtney Townley 19:48
Yeah, and on this mindset piece, because I do think this is such a it’s a gentle gateway to enter when we’re trying to improve sleep. It’s to just start paying attention to the self narrative. and even the narrative you have about sleep itself. Yes. Because I can’t tell you the number of clients I’ve coached over the years who say, I’m a terrible sleeper. I’m like, Well, if you if that’s your identity, that’s what you’re gonna keep writing to evidence to reinforce. Yeah. So let’s, let’s say that like, I’m right now I’m having some challenges sleeping, but I’m a great sleeper, or I’m working on becoming a great free. Yeah. But but the way you talk about sleep or the way you talk about giving yourself permission to wind down at the end of the day has everything to do with whether or not you will, actually

Laini Gray 20:32
Oh, yes, right. So maximizing that cortisol, that natural wake up moment in the morning to take care of yourself. And then taking advantage of the fact that it’s dark, and your body actually wants to slow down. And you just like giving yourself permission to start to wind down because guess what? Well it will the whole world fall apart if that load of laundry doesn’t get done at 11 o’clock at night? No, it won’t. Right? Can you teach your teenager to wash their school uniform or their whatever uniform they need so that you’re not doing it at 10? o’clock at night? Yes, you can’t. But having that time to really dim the lights, get off the screen, read, do something that’s more calming, will set yourself up for better sleep anyway.

Courtney Townley 21:16
Yeah. So interestingly, like LED lights have a tremendous amount of blue light in them, which I didn’t actually know, until I took this course on sort of light and how it affects our mitochondria. And so I’ve changed a lot of the light bulbs in my home to the Edison incandescent bulbs I just found on Amazon, I bought these giant packages of them. And now like seven o’clock at night, because you know, in the northwest, it gets dark at like five o’clock, I start turning those lights on. And it kind of mimics like a fire or like low candle lighting. And it really is it’s it’s not just me, I see it in my dog. I see it in my husband and my kid like everybody’s nervous system starts to decompress. And by nine o’clock, we’re ready for bed. Yeah,

Laini Gray 22:03
yeah, it’s crazy. We all these advances to be more energy so that you know, all of these things that we’ve shifted in our lighting really affects our sleep. And on that the amber blue light blocking glasses are super helpful as well. I was like, I don’t know about this. So my husband, I got them. We put them on at eight o’clock on winter night when it’s definitely dark outside. We weren’t ready to go to bed. We put these on. We’re watching a movie. We were yawning within 30 minutes. Yeah, because it blocks that blue light and mimics that fire lighter that sunset light and your body gets a chance to go. Oh, wait. It is time to wind down.

Courtney Townley 22:39
Yeah. Right. And there’s also I don’t know if you’ve heard, I’m almost afraid to Oh, it’s called Iris. It’s an app that you can just get on your computer. It’s very cheap. Like you can do, I think a free trial for 14 days. But if you are someone who works on your computer early in the morning or late at night, in order to avoid all this blue light exposure, it naturally turns the lighting towards the orange tinge. Yeah, and it’s super effective. Yeah. So you know, there’s there’s apps, there’s the glasses on your phone. Yeah,

Laini Gray 23:10
there’s Yeah. Yeah, there is. Yeah. But don’t try to work on graphic stuff when that happens, because the colors are wrong.

Courtney Townley 23:19
Probably not like, yeah, Instagram becomes very uninteresting.

Laini Gray 23:22
You’re lucky that it really does. Because everything you’re like, Oh, I can’t see the things the same. Yeah. And then yeah, I had Darren committees, like what’s wrong with your computer might let’s tell him, it’s time to get off. Right. It’s time for me to get off the computer. Exactly.

Courtney Townley 23:36
So you can actually just Google if you’re listening to this, you can just google how to create a shortcut to get your phone to kind of that more orangey red light in the evening and early morning hours. Like for me, all I have to do now is click the side button two or three times and it switches to an orange screen.

Laini Gray 23:55
I’m looking at mine’s called F dot Lux flux in mind, I

Courtney Townley 23:59
used years ago to really awesome for sure. So there’s

Laini Gray 24:03
settings on your phone as well, you can get in there and stuff those too.

Courtney Townley 24:07
So just to recap where we’ve been so far, it’s a lot and it’s gonna stack up to a lot. But basically, that you know, definitely getting in the habit of utilizing some of your morning time to help you manage your brain and manage your life in a way that helps you to unpack stress. So we’re using cortisol, which is a stress hormone, but we’re using it to kind of wake up and become alert and give our lives some of the attention that it needs to not live in such a stressful way. So I love that. Definitely evaluating the self narrative about how you talk to yourself about sleep, how you talk to yourself in general, because that can be a huge stressor for so many women. Just paying attention to light exposure, so getting out outdoors and getting natural light in your eyes is so important, but also using kind of these blue blockers or these sort of orange And and read hinges on the devices can be super helpful. And starting to kind of build an evening routine of winding down and not doing things that are super stimulating can all be really effective. Let’s talk for a second about exercise. Because I know for me when I don’t exercise, I don’t sleep. Yeah. And it’s a thing. And so it’s tricky, isn’t it? Because if we aren’t sleeping, the last thing we want to do is though exercise.

Laini Gray 25:32
Like make amends with that. So So yeah, totally. I get it. I’ve been there all the things. Let let’s think about your dog or your children. What happens to them if you just keep them in the house all day?

Courtney Townley 25:45
Oh, yeah. Do they sleep? Now? Well, Sally does, but

Laini Gray 25:48
I know Yes. Oh, this this does, too. But Ryan, what happens if they don’t get to go run around, they have all this built up energy know that right? The dogs to the dogs need to be out, you need to take them for a walk, you need to do all these things to keep them healthy. We have to follow those same rules. Yeah. And you know that if you’re a midlife woman and have all these stresses that we’ve been talking about how much energy is pent up in your body, you need to get that out. And the best way to do that is using your body. And it doesn’t have to be this extreme exercise program. This could be going for a walk, get outside and go for a 20 minute walk. This does not have to take your whole day. This is like right now. And it’s you know, really, really cold outside this can be Guess what I’m gonna go out, organize something in a basement and take loads one at a time. Take only one box at a time so that I’m up and down the stairs, up and down the stairs, anything you can do to move. The problem is we don’t even move at all. Yeah, just looking for opportunities. We’re just stopped. So all of this is crazy. Then we go try to go to bed. Nobody’s like, I have all this energy built up. I have all this stuff built up and you haven’t moved all day. So movement is really, really important. So that you can sleep at night. Let the energy go during the day. So you can bring it back in at night.

Courtney Townley 26:59
Yeah, love it. And I have seen I mean, the number of people I’ve coached over the years who were came in terrible sleepers. But then once they became regular exercisers how much that shifted their sleep quality and quantity was significant.

Laini Gray 27:13
Yeah. And then even on, like the early exercising, that sounds so terrible, right? It was like, I don’t know if I could do that. If you commit to that, and you do it and you get up and start exercising in the morning. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you are ready to go to bed at 830 at night. Oh, yeah. Your body will just be awesome. We have a great day. I had energy to get through the day because I worked out now online. Yes, bedtime. Yeah. And you’ll notice you want to go to bed early, you know earlier, so you have energy to get up. That’s pretty cool. It’s pretty cool.

Courtney Townley 27:40
Okay, let’s talk about food just briefly, because food. I’m gonna include alcohol in the food component, right? Like because these are I mean, I two things that I’ve definitely experienced as a pre menopausal thick in the throes of perimenopause is that while my body absolutely needs carbohydrates, I am so much more sensitive to the quality of carbohydrates that I consume. Yes. So a lot of like refined flours, sugars, things of that nature. I don’t feel good. And I don’t really sleep well. Because I don’t sleep well, when I don’t feel good. Yeah. And then alcohol. I mean, I could even just look at it and not sleep. You know, it’s just really, I mean, it’s great a lot of ways because I just don’t have the desire to drink right at all. I was never a big drinker. But you know, I would definitely have wine and stuff with my husband. And now it’s just like, Okay, what’s the real price for this? I’m going to pay. And when I’m really calculate the cost, it’s just not worth it. Yeah. Yeah. Because I’ll go sleep really easily. And then at one, two o’clock in the morning, it’s It’s party time.

Laini Gray 28:46
Yeah. No, it’s crazy. When we talk about this, this is where the insulin and the blood sugar come in. Right. So what we’re eating late at night is going to affect what happens when we sleep. So if we’re having and let’s be honest, when do you want to have ice cream late at night, right? You want to have this ice cream sundae, or you want to munch on chips when you’re having a blue light. So let’s put all these together. That’s a recipe for disaster. But we can get away Oh, yes, we can do it. And once again, we don’t have the resilience the same way in our midlife but we’re having that snack at night, or whatever it can be. And usually it’s carb dominant. That’s just how we tend to be at night. So when we go to sleep, but when we eat those carbohydrates that causes our blood sugar to rise that causes our insulin to rise. And that tells her Hey, it’s time to get up. Right? This whole pattern says, Hey, let’s get up and play. And you go to sleep because it doesn’t just happen instantly.

Laini Gray 29:36
But then you have this rise in blood sugar, and then guess where it has to go. It has to go down. And so what I’m seeing more and more is that when you’re waking up in the middle of the night, it’s because your blood sugar has dropped. And now your body’s like, oh crap, we need more blood sugar. So the cortisol comes in wakes you up because it’s trying to help get everything back in balance. Yeah. And so it’s kind of crazy. And this just this past year, I was on glucose I was sensor on my arm, right. And it was really fascinating to watch the night that I had like some snack or something that was high carbohydrate. And I went to sleep. And I probably could have slept through. But the thing went off thinking I was dying because it said, you know, for diabetic you and they doesn’t want you to head low. And sure enough, I looked over and I’m like, Oh my gosh, my blood sugar just tanked and went from this high, spiked high with my snack and then drop bottomed out. So my body literally is trying to save my life because of this low blood sugar drop. But when you are not diabetic, that’s just really just disrupting your sleep. Yeah, and it feels bad.

Courtney Townley 30:35
So what about because I run into this as well, not so much in my life, but I’ve run into a lot of clients, where they, they do need to eat something before they go to bed, because if they don’t have like, if they eat at six o’clock at night, and they don’t go to bed, they might not sleep well because they’re literally hungry. And same reason their blood sugar is low, but not from the crash just being you know, away from food for so long. So if someone is going to eat before they go to bed, what do we suggest protein fat?

Laini Gray 31:06
Yeah, just to make it mixed, you know, don’t have a saint just don’t have just carbohydrates. There’s a lot of different theories out there. Some say you have to have a little carbs that’s going to help with your adrenals and your thyroid. But it needs to not be that high carbohydrate snack that we did in our 20s. Right when we were staying up and watching Grey’s Anatomy, reruns or whatever friends and things like that. So eat something that’s okay. Sometimes with protein shake, or you know, Aveline peanut butter, you know, any of those things that are healthy snacks, those are going to just be nice, because they’re going to help keep our blood sugar stable. And then if you’re interested where get a CGM monitor that find the things that’s kind of really fun if you’re into actually seeing what works best for you. Because we’re all so different. You know, I do have a colleague, you think that your glucose went spiked with avocado? It does with her? Yeah, right. That’s just weird, right? So everybody’s different been able been able to see that. Or even wearing that as well get into an argument with my husband right before bed. Same thing spikes the blood sugar, because of the stress. And then there’s gonna be a blood sugar drop when that when I go to bed. So it’s really interesting to see how your habits affect your cortisol response and your blood sugar response, both of which disrupt your sleep. You

Courtney Townley 32:20
know, I love this point, because I think that so often when we think of blood glucose monitors we think of well, it’s going to tell me about how food affects my body. Yeah, but what you just said there is just so key, you know, it tells you about how stress affects your blood sugar. Yeah, and yes, food can be a stressor, but so can an argument with your husband or not sleeping for a night, or when you’re exercising, haven’t exercised. I mean, I really think it gives people probably such a more informed view. Yeah, of things that they probably never really considered to be stressors.

Laini Gray 32:50
Yeah. And that’s the interesting thing, too, wearing that. On the days that I exercise in the morning, blood sugar stayed more stable throughout the whole day. So to actually see that, right. And you and I have had that conversation for what how many 20 plus years? Yeah, probably at least look to actually see it in real time data. Oh, I wasn’t even making it up. It was real. It’s real. Getting up. And having that morning cortisol taking advantage of that sets your whole day up for success and your body’s success for winding down and

Courtney Townley 33:19
sleeping. Yeah, and this is a great segue into kind of like data driven information, which I think you obviously do such an awesome job of literally, like providing people with. So because I do think data for a lot of humans, is incredibly motivating, right? You can see like, what your body composition is made up of, or when you can see like where your hormones actually are. Or you can see what your glucose levels are doing when certain things happen in your life. I mean, I think that just really helps people to understand that oh, there is value here. Yeah, it is affecting me in profound ways. And we can theorize about it all day long. We can read about it all day long. Yeah. But when we actually see our data, it’s like, Oh, that is a problem. Yeah. Yeah.

Laini Gray 34:08
And that’s just kind of that radical responsibility that you’re talking about. Because to actually see it in real time means you’re gonna have to address it in real time. Exactly.

Courtney Townley 34:18
So when we have somebody who has been wrestling asleep for a really long time, they have done all the things like most of the things that we’ve talked about, maybe not all of them perfectly, but they’re doing a lot of them and they’re not getting headway and they’re not improving the quality of sleep or the the quantity of sleep. Where would you take them like what would you suggest to them?

Laini Gray 34:40
So a couple of things in midlife as we are, you know, hormones are shifting and first and foremost, progesterone starts to decline. So for many women, progesterone can be a game changer. Now, even prior to adding progesterone, magnesium, because as progesterone declines our need magnesium goes up and up and up. So just this is personal story. This is me, I never supplemented with magnesium. I knew it was important. As soon as I got into my 40s, I started supplementing with magnesium. And I have a quite a hefty dose now, right? And that’s just how I work, right? And we need magnesium for so many things, but it’s a calming nutrient. So if you’ve got that restless leg or you’re getting cramps at night, those are all signs of maybe not enough magnesium, just because so what’s the worst thing that can happen? It’s gonna help relax you and you don’t have leg cramps. The other thing low progesterone can constipate you magnesium helps on that end tube. So we’ve got supporting sleep bowel movements and muscle relaxation. So magnesium can be a great way to start and then progesterone when it’s time.

Courtney Townley 35:42
Yeah. And highlighting to that I think for like the active midlife woman that needs it becomes even more important. So it’s like we already have a need for it just being in America just being Yes, a country with soil that’s depleted in it. Yes. And then in midlife, we have even more of a need for it. And then if you are more active, yeah, your your need even escalates more. So I’m with you. Like magnesium is my like one of my non negotiables. And I noticed a difference when I stopped taking it. You know, like I just noticed I’m more amped up, my joints hurt more like I don’t sleep as well. I’m more constipated, all the things you just mentioned. Magnesium, it’s cheap. It’s so easy to supplement with. This is always a question that comes up. So let’s just like address it. The there’s 1000s of forms of magnesium, there are hot glycinate and chelated are like one in the same. And typically those are what I will recommend to people to start with. I’m sure you have some thoughts on this. So So what are your recommendations for the type of magnesium that people should be using?

Laini Gray 36:44
I do like the glycinate. If bowels are an issue, I might say this sits right. In reality. Magnesium is magnesium is magnesium. The form of it adds a little specialty, if you will, but it’ll all get in the body. So the other thing to pay attention if it’s affecting your GI tract. If it’s making you have loose stool, maybe you need a different form. Yeah, right. Different forms are better for brain health. maleimide is better for energy. Do you know there’s all these forms but you could take ballet at night and it’s not going to wake you up? Do you know what I mean? So, so looking for a high quality and yeah, like listen, Nate is probably the top one I recommend and then citrate as needed for bowel motility.

Courtney Townley 37:20
Okay, yeah. And the other thing I remind people of is like, sometimes I will go through periods, especially in the winter, where I’m like, any form I can get, I will take Epsom salt baths, I will use magnesium lotions, which have 125 milligrams per teaspoon. It’s pretty significant. Yeah. So there’s lots of ways that you can get magnesium in but supplementing with vegetables, fruits and vegetables, vegetables. Let’s not forget those.

Laini Gray 37:45
Those little guys. Yeah, yeah. But as your stress, eating too many carbs and not going to bed, you’re going to be much more magnesium deficient. Right. So that’s the other thing is that a lot of women will come and say, Well, I’ve never taken supplements forever. I’m like, Well, you’ve also never been Peri menopausal before. Yeah, right. You’ve never had this kind of stress on your plate. You’ve never been at this stage of your life. So you should adjust accordingly.

Courtney Townley 38:08
And I love you do such a good job when you do presentations and stuff of like really illustrating to women like just how erratic progesterone and estrogen are during the pre menopausal years. And when we kind of look through that lens at our sleep, it just makes a lot of sense. Why like I have a few great nights asleep and then I’m like, awake all night and I can think the house 10 times over just realizing that there’s just so much fluctuation there is there isn’t the last 15 to 18 years

Laini Gray 38:39
you’d be fine, you’ll be fine. No but that’s the reality is as your your entry in there those lifestyle things get those lined up, get those lined up, because then it becomes easier to add the other strategies, right? Blood sugar can disrupt your sleep and give you hot flashes. Right. So that’s a big deal. People are trying to figure out that yes, hormones help but they should be the last thing that’s added you still have to do all the foundational health things to set you up for hormone replacement success if you choose to go that route. Yeah.

Courtney Townley 39:11
Okay, supplement wise, I want to ask you because these are things that come up a lot supplementing with melatonin. Tell me your thoughts on that because I feel like it can be abused. I don’t know that it should necessarily be something that someone takes long term.

Laini Gray 39:26
So a couple of things there is new research out that shows when you take melatonin you’re not ruining your own melatonin production.

Courtney Townley 39:33
Oh, yay. Absolutely.

Laini Gray 39:36
Yeah. And then the other thing we kind of alluded to it earlier in the in the day is that for a lot of people they say melatonin causes sleep. That’s not exactly true. Darkness causes melatonin production. When we sleep melatonin helps detox and do all these great things at night. So for some people they take melatonin doesn’t help them sleep. Well. That’s not its main role. It’s actually primarily an antioxidant that goes through and cleans everything up at night. So you want it. But you have to have good sleep hygiene to be able to get your body to produce melatonin on its own. So everybody is unique, you should definitely look into testing. If you’re using it as a crutch, then we need to look at your lifestyle. Right? I’m not opposed to people taking it. But there’s other things. What’s the real issue? Is it a nervous system? Are you all ramped up? Do we need some calming herbs to help calm you? So you can naturally produce it? Right? So everybody’s going to be a little different. But yeah, what’s the real reason you’re not sleeping? Is it because you’re staying up till 12? And you’re on TV or on your phone? Yeah, melatonin may or may not be helpful.

Courtney Townley 40:43
And then there’s more of like, the over the counter kind of harder things like that. Tylenol PM, the sleeping pills, obviously, prescription. And what else? Oh, I had a client recently who was taking Benadryl for months to get to sleep. And I’m like, you know, I’m not. I don’t think that’s a great plan. Yeah. So, yeah,

Laini Gray 41:04
those are really just knocking us out. Right? We’re not getting the benefit of melatonin when you take Benadryl? Yeah, you’re just getting the drowsy after effect. So you’re losing out on not getting the sleep that you need. It’s not going to be a restorative sleep, because you’re not going to get all the benefits of what happens naturally. So yeah, really is how do we learn? How do we learn to put the lifestyle? And then what other strategies can we use to support that?

Courtney Townley 41:30
Do you have any tips for well, actually, let me ask you this first, and they’ll know their CBD? Do you have you? Do you have people who use it? Do you know? Are you familiar? Like I’m not

Laini Gray 41:39
a specialist in that area. But I have a lot of colleagues and people that love it. It’s totally it’s a game changer for them. So

Courtney Townley 41:46
it’s not a great sleeper and CBD has been like the one thing that has really seemed to help them

Laini Gray 41:51
and we have those cannabinoid receptors on every cell of our body. Yeah. So once again, everyone’s unique things are gonna work differently. Yeah, but there’s great research on that it’s more mainstream now. So it’s not as hard to get a hold of those kind of things. I have seen great success with people using castor oil packs.

Courtney Townley 42:11
Yeah, I’m glad you brought this up. Okay. So tell you tell y’all who may not know what that is. Yeah.

Laini Gray 42:16
castor oil, it’s a very thick oil, you apply it to the liver and across your abdomen, and then put on this flannel pack tied around, go to sleep. Okay, so it’s been used for centuries, it gets within the dermis of the skin, it helps support the detox pathways and help support digestive health. And what’s most important at night is that having that pack pressed against your midsection actually stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system. So it reduces inflammation and calms your nervous system to help you sleep. So a lot of my clients actually report better sleeping when they were myself included. When I wear my

Courtney Townley 42:49
Yeah. And so for those of you who are listening to this that might be interested in like ordering a castor oil pack, because I know you have resources for this. We’ll put your links there. But yeah, I’m gonna I’m really glad you brought that up, because that is something I would not have asked. Yeah.

Laini Gray 43:04
No, no, no, he does a lot of things though. So like, for example, we all need to detox for hormones we all need to poop for for hormone health casserole pack supports all of those, right helps with cramps helps with all kinds of things. So it’s a nice little, it’s a little weird.

Courtney Townley 43:20
If you’ve never done it. It’s weird, right? But it’s different. But hey, yeah, and if what you’re doing isn’t working something different is a great thing it was so no conversation with Laini Gray would be complete if we didn’t talk about poop. So I just want to address the role that gut health plays and maybe disrupting sleep. And then we’ll just kind of recap and give some really like concrete tips to listeners. But what is the role that gut health plays in our sleep cycle? And how can the disruption of our microbiome affect our sleep?

Laini Gray 43:51
Great question. So probably, I hope everybody by now has heard of the gut brain access, right. And so what happens in your gut doesn’t stay in your gut, it actually goes directly to your brain. So within your gut, we produce most of our neurotransmitters, our serotonin and melatonin is highly produced in the gut. Oh, good. Evening. So the healthier your gut is, the healthier that your production of neurotransmitters to make you happy and to sleep are going to be. And those those little messengers and everything that’s in your gut travel up the vagus nerve to your brain. So if you’ve got anxiety, depression, all of those things, supporting gut health can be paramount to all the things.

Courtney Townley 44:31
And so when we talk about supporting gut health, we are talking specifically about not consuming things that would obviously disrupt gut health, which would be things like probably processed foods, sugars, alcohol, all the things there. Yes. And stress and stress, staying up late at night and not getting enough sleep disrupt your gut microbiome. Yeah. And so we support our gut microbiome by obviously unpacking stress from our life is

Laini Gray 44:59
by moving our body Moving on. Yep. Awesome.

Courtney Townley 45:01
So obviously our diet, so lots of fiber less than vegetables, things of this nature, which are kind of a prebiotic, they feed the good bacteria. And what else like I know, like probiotics is always something people are going to ask about.

Laini Gray 45:16
Probiotics can be very helpful chewing our food, adding digestive aid, so that our foods broken down, and we can, you know, work that better. Making sure we’re having a bowel movement every day. All of these things, right, we’ve had that conversation a lot. But the interesting thing, and this is back to our first episode together was on gut health was it. Long ago, it really was It was after I wrote my master’s thesis. And so we got to the end of that I was like, Okay, we’re gonna have all these secret, all the secret information, I’m going to learn about how to fix gut health.

Courtney Townley 45:49
I do remember this because I’ve never said microbiome so much.

Laini Gray 45:56
And when we came back to I was like, guess what court, it’s the same stuff we talked about all the time, drink water, eat vegetables, move your body, get rest, reduce your stress. That’s how you support your gut microbiome. It’s very resilient. And so the cool thing though, about it is that it doesn’t take years and months or years and decades to heal it, it takes a good day of healthy behaviors. Amazing one day can shift your gut microbiome.

Courtney Townley 46:22
So good. So good. Okay, so if you were going to tell somebody a listener, what of these listeners today, maybe like three to five things that you think are game changers or just essential like linchpins to quality sleep? What would they be? Good

Laini Gray 46:42
morning sunlight, okay. And movement in the morning? Having a nighttime routine. So that you calm down, wind down? Yeah, okay. Add magnesium, because you need it anyway. Yep. And then consider other strategies like a castor oil pack, essential oils, and nighttime bath, any of those things that can really calm your nervous system to prepare you for sleep. When we want to run a marathon, we prepare for days and months and even years to be our best. We need to be preparing on a daily basis to have good sleep.

Courtney Townley 47:14
Yeah. Yeah. and nervous system health is just it’s such a big component of all of it, because it literally affects every system in the human body. And it’s dramatically affected by stress. Yes. And so, and that, again, that stress could be just psychological stress. It could be it’s for some people, it’s like the past trauma stuff. No, I mean, it can be a lot of different layers. And so this whole piece of nervous system health, which you and I always talk about the parasympathetic and the sympathetic, but really starting to maybe educate yourself a little bit about the nervous system, and what it does and how it heals. I know you know, this, I always bring on Irene Lyon, because I’m just such a fan of her work. And I think that she she’s really great at speaking to that topic. But I feel like every health conversation is always circling back to this nursing piece. And yeah, that’s one

Laini Gray 48:12
and coming back full circle to talking about resilience and hormones and how that impacts us. As we enter this midlife time. And things are a little bit of in flux, it really is a time to dig deep to those thoughts, traumas, toxins that have been can we’ve been carrying around for the last 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, because that will affect us. So this really is an opportunity for us to get to know ourselves better, so that we can heal and have better health moving forward.

Courtney Townley 48:38
Yeah. And I always say it’s like midlife is this invitation to renovate. Like, there’s parts of your life that are awesome and are working really well. And there’s parts of your life that have never worked well, or that you have just been avoiding, because there’s a lot of work involved there. And now you just don’t get to get away with it anymore. Like, it’s a call to action. It is. And that’s exciting. That’s exciting. It’s my thing. Totally agreed. Yes. Not

Laini Gray 49:01
the end. We’re not at the end of life. We’re actually at the second act. You say that all the time. Second Act. Here we go. Yeah.

Courtney Townley 49:09
So if someone is listening today and they want to find out more about you more about the testing, you do work with you. Where do we send them

Laini Gray 49:16
My website is graystarhealth.com. So you can learn about me there and then I’m most active on Instagram @laini.gray

Courtney Townley 49:24
I love it. And you’re good to follow on Instagram, lots of good tips and useful information. And I will just tell listeners to that inside of Rumble & Rise every month we do what we call a base camp section of our teachings. And base camp is always geared towards biochemistry like helping you to take care of the basic necessities of keeping your body happy and healthy. And so our focus in January is on reworking kind of your restoration methods because restoration is much bigger than just sleep. Right? It’s just getting having time in the day to decompress. Take a few breaths may be leaning into some creative arts like it can look like all kinds of things. But if that is something that you need a little bit of help with Rumble & Rise is an amazing space to do that in. So you can find out all about Rumble & Rise membership at graceandgrit.com/readytorumble. And that’s it.

Courtney Townley 50:21
I adore you my friend. I’m always so appreciative of you coming on here. And yeah, any anything any final words?

Laini Gray 50:28
No, I’m just being real. I’m like excited to get round my day so I can have a good sleep.

Courtney Townley 50:33
Yeah, I love it. Awesome. All right. Well, until next time, I’m sure. Yes. Thanks, Courtney. Thank you.

Courtney Townley 50:47
Thank you for listening to the Grace and Grit Podcast. It is time to mend the fabric of the female health story. And it starts with you taking radical responsibility for your own self care. You are worth the effort and with a little grace and grit anything is possible.