Functional Medicine for Insomnia

What is Insomnia?

Insomnia is a sleeping disorder that is characterized by difficulty falling asleep, inability to stay asleep, or waking too early. Insomnia often causes an individual to have a low quality of life because lack of sleep leads to irritability, fatigue, exhaustion, and more. Insomnia commonly negatively affects a person’s work performance, decision-making skills, and relationships.

Causes of Insomnia

Insomnia has many different causes. If you don’t keep to a regular sleep schedule, have poor eating habits, intake too much caffeine or alcohol, or are experiencing extra stress you may experience insomnia but the number one reason we see in our practice is blood sugar imbalances that lead to spikes and crashes and overall inflammation.

• Blood sugar imbalances
• Food sensitivities
• Caffeine
• Nicotine
• Alcohol

• Poor sleep hygiene
• Stress
• Medications
• Work or school schedule

Types of Insomnia

Insomnia can be broken down into two different types depending upon the duration. An individual may suffer from short-term insomnia or chronic insomnia.

Short-Term Insomnia

Symptoms of short-term insomnia last for three months or less. While this doesn’t seem so bad, imagine going three months without a good night’s sleep. Most of us can hardly function after one. Some of the most common causes of short-term insomnia are a demanding schedule from school or work, jet lag from travel, or extra stress at work.

Chronic Insomnia

Chronic insomnia lasts for more than three months and occurs at least three times per week. For this type of insomnia, we need to dig deeper and find out what is out of balance in your body that is leading to your issues.

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Health Risks of Insomnia

The proper amount of sleep is essential to our health and overall wellbeing. When we discuss wellness, one of our main concerns is the amount of sleep that an individual is getting. Sleep has an incredible impact on our health. Without treatment, insomnia may lead to many long-term health risks. Some of these health risks include:

• Anxiety disorders
• Type 2 diabetes
• Stroke
• Heart disease
• Breast cancer
• Chronic pain
• Depression
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Parkinson’s Disease

Side Effects of Insomnia Medication

Conventional Medicine prescribes medications to alleviate insomnia symptoms without looking for the original cause. Even if the symptoms are masked by the medicine the original cause will still be there and there is always a risk of side effects when taking prescription medication. Unfortunately, the side effects of the medication look a lot like the side effects of insomnia. Mant insomnia medications often come with the following side effects:

• Headaches
• Trouble concentrating
• Memory impairment
• Feelings of grogginess

A Functional Medicine Approach to Insomnia and Sleep Issues

Whether you’re looking to treat your insomnia or just looking to improve your sleep quality, functional medicine can help. While there is not a “one size fit’s all” solution for a functional medicine approach can address the root causes of sleep issues. These strategies can be used as stand-alone treatments or in addition to pharmaceutical interventions. 

The first intervention we may recommend at F8 Well Centers is optimizing your diet and nutrition to improve your sleep. Nutrition is vital to both your sleep quality and quantity. Making changes like switching to a low inflammatory diet. In addition to diet changes, we can suggest adding dietary supplements to fill any gaps in macronutrients in your diet that may be contributing to insomnia symptoms. We can do lab tests to check your thyroid and adrenal function, iron levels, nutrient levels, and indicators of inflammation. All of this can help us make the most personalized recommendations and create individualized care plans. 

Another approach we may take is to incorporate mindfulness and meditation into a patient’s daily routine. Incorporating these practices into your routine can help induce a relaxation response within your brain that lowers stress responses and allows your brain to relax. Overcoming stress responses within the brain allows a patient to fall more deeply asleep more quickly and has been shown to improve the symptoms of insomnia. There are many strategies that fall under the umbrella of functional medicine that can help with insomnia.