Why Sleep Problems Are Not Always About Sleep

 Sleep problems are not always just about sleep. In this episode, Dr. Raquel talks about deeper reasons you may be struggling with sleep, including gut health, hormones, micronutrients, blood sugar, thyroid function, liver congestion, stress, and anxious thought patterns. 

If you are tired of being tired, waking up at night, struggling to fall asleep, or waking up feeling like you barely slept at all, this episode is for you.

In this episode of The Rockyn YES Podcast: Your Empowered Self, Dr. Raquel breaks down why sleep struggles are often part of a bigger picture. She talks about how gut imbalances, hormone shifts, micronutrient deficiencies, blood sugar swings, thyroid issues, liver congestion, food sensitivities, and anxious thought patterns can all affect sleep. 

This episode is a reminder that your body is not random, and your sleep may be giving you clues about what is happening underneath the surface. 

In this episode, we cover:

•  why sleep problems are not always just about sleep 
•  how gut imbalances may affect sleep patterns 
•  the connection between progesterone and sleep 
•  why micronutrients matter for melatonin and hormone production 
•  how blood sugar swings can interrupt sleep 
•  the role of thyroid and liver function 
•  how anxious thought loops can keep you awake 
•  why looking deeper can help you reconnect with yourself

Chapters:

 00:00 Welcome
 00:28 Why sleep problems are not always about sleep
 01:10 Gut health and nighttime waking
 02:15 Cortisol, insulin, and blood sugar
 03:00 Progesterone and menopause
 04:35 Micronutrients and melatonin
 06:05 Cholesterol, hormones, and pain
 07:05 Toxins, inflammation, and sleep
 08:00 Food sensitivities and eating lighter at night
 09:00 Deep sleep, wearables, and tracking patterns
 10:20 Anxiety, thought loops, and journaling
 12:05 Thyroid, fasting, and blood sugar
 13:30 Why sleep affects everything
 14:30 Closing encouragement 

Ready to Go Deeper?

If this hit home and you’re ready to get unstuck and become unstoppable (mind + body), check the links in the show notes for what’s currently open through Rockyn Health—including options like Reset, Rise, BE (Breakthrough Experience) and upcoming Retreats. Not sure what you need? Message “YES” and we’ll help you choose your best next step.

Connect With Dr. Raquel

Instagram: @dr.raquel_rockyn.health
Website: RockynHealth.com
Podcast: Rockyn YES: Your Empowered Self

Quick Note

This podcast is for education and inspiration and is not medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider for personal medical decisions.

© 2026 Rockyn Health. All Rights Reserved.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to the Rockin' Yes Podcast, your empowered self. This is the place where we talk about healing from the inside out. We talk about connections between your health, your mind, your nervous system, your life. We want to know what's keeping you stuck. Because sometimes it's just a pattern. Sometimes it's just something outside of what you think it could be. And sometimes we have to take a step back and look at our life so that we can determine what it is we want to be and do and have in our life. So if you're tired of being tired, waking up at night, struggling to fall asleep, or waking up feeling like you barely slept at all, this episode is for you. Let's get into it. So today I want to talk about something so many people struggle with, and that is sleep. But more specifically, I want to talk about why sleep problems are not always just about sleep. Because a lot of people think the issue is simply that they need a better bedtime routine, less screen time, or the right sleep supplement. And sometimes those things can help. But often sleep struggles are part of a bigger picture. So, what do I mean when I say sleep problems are not always about sleep? So let's talk a little bit about what actually happens at night. So let's talk a little bit about your gut. Since I love the gut. So at night, what happens is if you have a digestive system that is not perfectly balanced, or you have parasites or other kind of microorganisms that are in your gut, what happens is they like to party at night. They wake up at night. They want to have things happening at night. So when they wake up, what happens is they start feeding on all the food, especially all the food you ate over the night. They start emitting different gases. They will also start creating inflammation in your body. Now, what your body will do as a result of that inflammation is it will spike up your cortisol. When your spike cortisol spikes, it decreases, it causes your insulin to go up, which causes your sugars to go down. So now you're waking up having to go pee in the middle of the night because we have some bugs that are having a happy party in your body. So we want to look at things. So that's just one example. Other things can be that your hormones are off. If you are deficient in progesterone, you are not going to be able to sleep. So I was on a boat this past weekend and I was talking to actually a couple of my aunts and their friends, and they're about 10 years older than me. Um, and we're actually all in menopause, and they're all talking about how they just wake up at 3 a.m. and they can't get back to sleep, and they have like their whole eight-hour day is done before 8 a.m. And the thing that I want you guys to understand, because I've just taken an endocinology class, besides that, I've known this from before, but sometimes you have to hear things again. But when progesterone is low, it will affect your sleep. Progesterone makes you feel good, but it also helps balance out your sleep. So what happens as you go through perimenopause or intermenopause is your hormones go down. And that means all of your hormones generally go down. And when that happens, you might not feel so good. You might not like your body. Your body is producing body fat in different areas, like your stomach, because technically now your adrenal glands, where the cortisol is made, it starts to your body has to build a little fat around your belly. And so many people get a little angry that they have this little, all of a sudden they get this little belly fat around them. And a little bit of belly fat is one thing, a lot of belly fat is a whole different thing because that'll again affect your hormones. But a little bit of belly fat is okay. Your body actually needs that to produce the hormones. And you need cholesterol in your body to produce hormones. So when progesterone goes low, which it generally does in menopause, all of a sudden sleep starts to evade you. It can be difficult, falling asleep, staying asleep, all these different ways it can happen. So one thing you want to make sure you do is get your blood, your urine, or your saliva tracked for your progesterone, estrogen, testesteron levels. Um, and then we what I always do when I look at things, I always look up the chain. And the other thing you have to look at is all the little micro processes that happen in your body that create and allow your body to produce progesterone. So if you don't have the right nutrients in your body, your body isn't gonna be able to make your hormones so that you can actually sleep well. Same thing. If your body doesn't have the right nutrients, the processes in your gut aren't gonna happen. So actually, a lot of things happen in the mitochondria, this energy house of your cell. So I'm getting a little technical. So for some of you who like to geek out on stuff, this is gonna be great for you. For those of you who don't, well, you know, hang on for the ride. But we have this mitochondria, mitochondria, and I talk about this in the office quite a bit. But the mitochondria, the energy house of your cell, that's where you create energy, where you get your ATP, where you get all that energy that makes you go. So what happens is if you are deficient in iron, magnesium, or your vitamin Bs, all of a sudden your body can't produce melatonin. Now I'm going to the end because there's serotonin and there's a whole bunch of other things that has to happen, but you need to have those produce serotonin, which is a neurotransmitter in your brain to make you feel happy. But it also, serotonin is then needed to produce melatonin. And if you don't have melatonin, your body's not going to be able to go to sleep. So if you're deficient in any of those, your body's not gonna be able to do what it needs to do. But in that same thing, that mitochondria also is where the hormones start to shift and change. So again, if you don't have your iron or your zinc or your bees or your magnesium or your essential nutrients, if you don't have the building blocks, the amino acids, your body cannot convert what it needs to convert from your basic building blocks into creating your melatonin, into creating progesterone, which creates estrogen and testosterone and I said there, no pregnenolone. Um, sorry. So we need that to produce estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. We need it, we need the cholesterol in their body. So many times people are getting so low on cholesterol, and then all of a sudden their body can't produce hormones. I've seen it on labs that people get their cholesterol so low and they're so happy, but they're feeling kind of crappy. It's because they don't have enough cholesterol. Cholesterol is one of the building blocks for your hormones. It also, cholesterol is also the myelin sheath that allows your nerves for nerve conduction. And when you don't have enough, you get pain. You get aches. The other thing that happens when estrogen goes low is you get achy. So the other thing on the boat, people were talking about sleep, but then they talked about all the joint aches. Again, hormones being low. But again, it can also be your gut inflammation, the bugs, parasites going off. It can also be micronutrient statuses that are low. It can also be toxins that are in your body that are also wreaking havoc and creating, um, allowing the bugs to proliferate, or to even just block the ability of in your neurotransmitters to do what they need to do because they go in and block stuff. So there's a lot of things that can be happening inside your body. So just trying to like assume that, well, if I just take more melatonin or if I just get this perfect bedtime routine, if I just become perfect enough, then everything will get better. That's the thing, it's it doesn't generally work that way.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

You generally need to look a little bit deeper than just the super level, superficial things that you're used to finding.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

You want to dive a little bit deeper. And that's actually really easy to do. It's very easy. I actually have people do micronutrient tests. We actually look inside the cell. So it's not just a micronutrient test to see what's floating around in your serum, in the blood serum area. This is actually a test to find out what nutrients are actually in your cells. So it can be a little bit different than what you actually see outside. So you might see that you're low on the outside when we look at it serum-wise. But when we look at micronutrient status, we look inside the cell, there might be enough nutrients in the cell. Or you might have a lot of it floating around in your serum, but it's not getting in the cell. Then we have to know why it is not getting in your cell. So those are vastly two different things that we want to look at. But I always look at the micronutrient status of what's actually in your cell. The other thing that I always look at is also the gut. We you need to test your gut. You need to look and see what there are for um the pathogens. And with those pathogens are in there and they're wreaking havoc and keeping you up all night, you need to get rid of them. Okay. Um, so other things that can happen even at night is restless sleep. So again, we're talking about magnesium, vitamin Bs, copper, zinc, the basic building blocks of your body. That's why you have to look at your micronutrient status. Because if you're very deficient, you gotta fill your bucket. If you don't have the right building blocks, you can't build a house. If you don't have all your nutrients, you're not gonna have a full bucket. You're not gonna be able to have things to pull from to create the life, the house, the body, the things that you want. So look at micronutrients. Look at food sensitivities. Because if you're eating foods that are creating inflammation or that are not working for your body, then you're also not gonna be able to sleep. Sometimes what can happen too is you might eat foods that really don't work for you at night, and therefore your body is overworking and it can't rest. So eating a little bit later at night is generally a better idea because then there's less food for your body to digest and to kind of keep it busy. So sometimes I have found, and I've talked to several people, that they like to eat their dinner early at night. So by the time they go to bed, their body's already had the time to digest and do what it needs to do, so now they can rest while they sleep. And also, you know, you don't want to feed the bugs, you definitely don't want to give it any sugar at night because bugs eat sugar. So if you're craving sugar, you probably got bugs, some off-balance bugs in your body.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

You can have good bugs that just are out of balance that can be create wreaking havoc. So maybe you wake up tired.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Maybe you feel like you've gotten in full night's sleep, but you just wake up tired. You might not have getting into the nice deep sleep that you need to get. So that's another thing. You can wear a lot of watches, you can wear an aura ring, you can wear things to help you monitor it. And what I have found is deep sleep is only about composes of about maybe an hour and a half max of your night's sleep. But you need to get about that, an hour to an hour and a half. And sometimes I've seen it get up to two hours. But I've had some people look at it and be like, well, why should I wear this? I'm only getting an hour and a half of sleep a night. No, no, no, no. That's just the deep sleep. And then your REM is going to be a different part, and your light is going to make up most of it. So you have to kind of look at the patterns and the percentages of where your sleep is in. So if one way to start paying attention when I had struggled with sleep, which I'm doing so much better now, I go in waves. Right now I'm in the progesterone wave. Um, but there's been other waves that have happened. And I had to actually start monitoring my sleep so I could understand. I figured out going to bed a little bit earlier for me works. I learned not eating a lot of food at night works. I learned not drinking works. So there's certain things as you start to watch those and you watch how food affects you, how drinking affects you, how sugar affects you, you're gonna start to pay attention. I like an app also called Stress Monitor. So it actually measures your HRB, your heart rate volume. And so it lets you know how much stress your body is under over 24 hours. It's through the Apple Watch. It's amazing, but it it really keeps me like I can notice like if it dips, what did I just eat? What did how did that affect my gut? How did that affect my body? What nutrients am I doing? Am I overdoing things? Do I not have the energy to do something? Did something not work for me? Again, these are clues. These give you patterns, they give you the understanding, the more aha's, so that you know how to shift and change. Some of the other things is people get so, and I've been in this, I think I was in this a little bit last night, but you repeat things over and over and over again in your head. So I've talked to people and they're like, well, my mind just doesn't shut down. And I totally get that. And I was actually having a conversation about somebody earlier and they were talking about anxiety. And I'm like, well, when you catch anxiety, one, forgive yourself for the thoughts that you're thinking at that time. And then decide to choose something different. So back when I was a massage therapist, so this was like 20, 30 years ago, uh, during one of my trainings, I don't remember where, I just know it was around that time zone. Um, but they have said, okay, when you start to feel your body or you feel your mind going in a pattern you don't want it to go into, or a negative pattern, or an anxiety pattern, just kind of like kind of forgive yourself, notice it, become aware, step left, like physically step left, and make a new choice. Make a new decision. What do you want instead? Focus on where you truly want to be, not what your anxiety wants. Because anxiety is just fear in disguise. It's just, and we are great manifestors, and you can manifest deliberately or by default. And when you're doing the anxiety thing, you're doing it by default. You're just letting your brain go down the loops, the spirals of all the bad things that could possibly happen. What if what if you actually thought about all the good, amazing things that can happen and you allow your brain to go there? It feels so much better. You feel better.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

And guess what? There's always a chance of it going one way or the other. But wouldn't you rather manifest a better setting? So when you can't sleep at night and you're spiraling through these, you maybe need to get up, walk around, step left, make a new choice, then get back into bed.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

The other thing to do is to grab a journal. Sometimes you just need to write your thoughts down and understand where they're coming from, and then find out and then write, what do I want instead? What are these thoughts telling me that I need to shift and change in my life? And write down the things of the things you've got to remember that you got to do the next day. Write it down so you get it out, and then the next thing you the next day, as soon as you wake up, grab it up and read it. But also start, you might want to even get it like an affirmation or a little prayer that you say at night that just blesses it and just say, you know, hey, I'm calling in nice, deep, restful sleep. I know I'm gonna go to sleep feeling great. I'm gonna wake up feeling amazing. You get that whole night to rest and reset. And so many people stress about it. And I get it. Sometimes it can be really hard. I've I've I have one kid that lives in my house that really struggles with sleep, that he'll stay up all night long. And so we are working with him too. Um, and there's times when he does really, really good, and there's times where he falls off, and when he falls off, but you you know there's certain things, and he's starting to pay attention to those patterns. And it's about listening to your patterns. Pay attention to that. The other thing that can affect sleep, thyroid. Okay, if your thyroid is off, if it's revved up or rev low, hypo or hyper, you're either gonna like be awake all the time or you're gonna sleep all the time and you might not feel rested. Again, hormones are a part of this, the gut is a part of this, the um inflammation, swelling pain, tenderness. If you're eating foods that create that, um, if you don't think food is affecting you, do a three-day water fast. Water only for three days, like 100 ounces a day or more. Day one, you're gonna be okay. Day two, you might feel like crap because your body's pulling out all those toxins. Day three, you should be feeling much better. Day four, you're gonna feel amazing. But if you want to see how food truly affects you, do a water fast. Because I like it when people say, well, food doesn't affect me. It does. And when you pull that food out of your body, your body goes through almost like a toxic withdrawal, a detox. So give it a chance. Try that. I've been doing uh water fast now uh for the last few months, and it's been eye-opening. Whenever I get a little bit offway, I'm like, and I just really love it because I feel amazing when I do it. So give it a shot. Give it a three-day shot, give it a two-day shot. Well, go to three days because once you hit that three-day mark, it makes a difference. Day one, you're pretty good. Day two, make sure you have time to rest. Do not take any drugs when you get a headache because you're gonna have a withdrawal headache, you're gonna have that detox headache, drink plenty of water, rest, and then day three, you're gonna wake up feeling so much better.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Let's see. So, this is all about sleep.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Your blood sugar, how it affects it. Again, like I said, in the middle of the night, the the cortisol goes up because the bugs go off, and that causes the insulin to go off, which causes your sugars to go down. So now you're waking up in the middle of the night, you're probably even hungry. You might even get a little hungry. You have to eat. So, or if you ate, didn't eat enough during the day, it might be a little bit of a struggle to go to sleep.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

And the other thing that you'll find when you do a water fast, you're gonna sleep amazing. Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

Um so there's a lot of strong connections between all the hormones, micronutrients, the gut, your liver. The liver has to clear out all those toxins. And if your liver is congested and can't clear out those toxins, it's just gonna recycle it. So it's gonna keep making you not feel good, more inflamed, more not sleeping.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Give your body a chance to rest. So when you don't get enough sleep, it affects a lot of things in your life.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

You can get more moody, you can have brain fog, it'll have you be more inflamed, it's gonna have you making poor choices, you're not gonna feel on top of things at work or for your family or your career or anything. Your patience goes down, your energy goes down, and it's just not fun to be you. And then you're wondering what happened to you. You don't feel like you anymore because you didn't get the sleep you needed. You don't have the nutrients, you don't have your hormones stable, you don't have your gut healthy, your liver's not working right. When you start allowing your body and just diving in, looking underneath the hood, finding out what's actually going on, and start giving it the support it needs, you will start to see your body shift and change and actually work for you. You'll start to find who you are again. You'll start to sleep again, you'll start to have energy again, you're gonna start to be you again. And that's what this is all about is being you. So that you can be true to who you are meant to be, your values, your life, who you want to be, so that you can be free and live the life you want, right? So thank you for stopping in and listening to the Rockin' Yes podcast, Your Empowered Self. I'm Dr. Raquel, and I am so thankful that you are here listening to this. And I would love for you to check out my website for anything that we've got going on. Uh, you can always email me and um connect with me via my website, and that's rockin' r-o-c-k-y-n rockin' health.com. And you can go ahead. Uh, I have different things on there that you can get in contact with me. I would love to hear from you. You can share notes in here. I just I want to be able to help you. And if you have um the desire, let me know. I will get some labs ordered, we'll start figuring out what's going on with you, we'll start putting things back together, getting you back to you. Have a beautiful day.