Getting a good night’s sleep is critical in terms of maintaining your body’s overall state of well being. It is when your body undergoes repair and healing. An amazing dance between various neurotransmitters, hormones and blood sugar occurs to enable us to get to sleep and to stay asleep all night. All day long our body’s nervous system is in sympathetic (stress or flight or flight) mode. At night the other part of our nervous system kicks in, that of the parasympathetic system. That’s the part involved in slowing things down, in digesting your food (that is why it is a terrible idea to be eating on the run), in healing and in assuring you of a good night’s sleep.

First thing to look at with sleep disorders is how stable one’s blood sugar is. To address this part of the puzzle ask yourself these four questions:
Do I crave sweets? Do I crave sweets after a meal? Do I get sleepy after a meal? Do I get irritated, moody, anxious or fatigued if I go too long in-between meals? These are clues that you have a blood sugar problem. This can be further identified on laboratory testing of your overnight fasting blood sugar level as well as your three month average blood sugar level known as your Hemoglobin A1c.

A comprehensive blood laboratory test is needed to evaluate many of your systems including the basics like blood sugar, thyroid, liver and kidney function, cardiac and lipid status, inflammatory markers, CBC as well as more advanced testing to include thyroid auto antibodies, vitamin D and sex hormone levels. Additionally we will order salivary cortisol and DHEA levels, measured on awakening, at noon, at around 6PM and just before bed time. Our fees for these tests are about $295, which represents our wholesale cost.

Treatment would include changing the diet if appropriate to more of a whole food diet and less of a packaged food diet, getting off of or significantly reducing your food allergies (sensitivities), dealing with your blood sugar issues if applicable via change of diet and/or taking of appropriate nutrients to assist in stabilizing this area, improving your hormone balance via the above plus ensuring your detoxification pathways (liver, kidneys and gut) are working properly and if not then taking appropriate nutrients and or herbs to assist as well as providing specific nutrients to support your hormone glands if indicated.

Chiropractic adjustments to improve the function of your nervous system are often found to be very helpful for this condition. Usually two visits per week for the initial month of care provides a good test run to see the degree of response to this therapy. In my approach toward improving the nervous system with hands on technique, I utilize a concept called brain based therapy. This approach enables me to utilize my training as a chiropractic neurologist by performing a thorough functional neurologic evaluation of your nervous system and then look to start making immediate beneficial changes.

Lastly, if needed in more difficult cases we will utilize a cutting edge technology from Germany called Ondamed, that allows for the targeted stimulation of localized tissue with micro current fields.