Tried everything and still can’t sleep?

Maybe it’s a parasite.

You’re practicing perfect sleep hygiene, you have a consistent sleep schedule, you're meditating your little booty off all day long, but despite your best efforts, you just can’t kick those constant early morning wake-ups. “Why does this keep happening?”, you ask yourself as you lay in bed wide awake at 3:00 AM (again).

If this describes you, the root cause could be an intestinal parasite.

Yes, you heard that right: a parasite.

By definition, a parasite is an organism that lives on or in another organism of a different species and benefits by deriving nutrients from that organism.

Little worms and amoebas can actually enter your GI tract through contaminated water, undercooked meat, swimming pools, even kissing, and thrive in your stomach. This is an issue when it comes to your sleep for multiple reasons.

Why Do Parasites Wreak Havoc on Our Sleep?

Parasites are nocturnal

These little guys are very active in the middle of the night, so your liver is working to fight those parasites around 2:00/3:00 AM. As a result, your body's immune system is activated and you become inflamed. Whenever our bodies experience inflammation, we produce cortisol as a response to bring down the inflammation. As I’m sure you're aware, cortisol is the alert hormone and it's the last thing you need in your system at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning!

Parasites feed the “bad stuff”

These parasites are food for opportunistic bacteria as well as candida. Both of those things can cause sleep issues in and of themselves. Check out my blog post on gut dysbiosis to learn more about opportunistic bacteria and stay tuned for my blog about candida coming soon!

How to Find Out If You Have a Parasite

The simple answer is to ask your doctor to run a GI-MAP, which is a test that analyzes the DNA from a stool sample you send to a lab. From there, analysts can detect if there is any parasitic DNA in the sample.

I want to warn you that some traditional doctors may poo-poo this idea, and if that happens, that's okay! I would then seek the advice of a functional medical doctor, or you can enlist my services. GI-MAPs are run for all of my Level 2 clients. These are the clients who have tried everything to nip their insomnia in the bud but just can't sleep, which usually indicates there is some sort of physical imbalance or stressor — such as a parasite — that is causing the issue.

You Found Out You Have a Parasite — Now What?

The good news is that if you do have a parasite and you uncover it in the GI-MAP, the fix is pretty simple.

I typically recommend my clients do a GI cleanse, and it usually takes a few months to fully clean up their gut. They do so by taking botanicals that are specific for whatever parasite or bacteria that are present in their system, while also making sure that they're building up their gut with probiotics, prebiotics, and a healthy diet.

You can also go to your doctor for antibiotics, which are very effective at treating parasites. It's a quicker approach, however, the trade-off with antibiotics is that they kill all the good bacteria, too.

The Solution

If you think you could have a parasite and you want to uncover it and are interested in my services, feel free to schedule a 30-minute discovery call with me. I will talk to you all about how my program works and we can figure out if one of those nasty little parasites is to blame for your sleepless nights and get you back to sleeping once and for all.

Schedule Your Complimentary Discovery Call