The Tummy Whisperer

S2: EP 2 - The Sleep-Gut Connection: Why Your Digestion Affects Your Sleep

• Renee Barasch

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Ever wake up feeling exhausted despite a full night's sleep? Or find yourself wide awake at 3 AM staring at the ceiling? The culprit might be hiding in your gut.

The relationship between your digestive system and sleep quality creates one of the most powerful yet overlooked health connections in your body. When your digestion struggles with inflammatory foods, undigested particles, or nutrient deficiencies, it triggers a stress response that ripples through your entire system. Your cortisol rhythm gets disrupted, histamine levels rise, and suddenly that peaceful night's sleep becomes impossible.

Histamine foods deserve special attention for sleep-troubled individuals. Gluten, nightshades (tomatoes, potatoes, peppers), and certain nuts can act as sleep saboteurs by elevating histamine levels in the brain. As Renee explains, "When there's high histamine, there's no way to go down to sleep." This explains why many people find themselves exhausted yet wired at bedtime – their biochemistry simply won't allow them to downshift.

Modern living compounds these issues through blue light exposure and disrupted circadian rhythms. The practical solution? Yellow-tinted glasses after 7PM (yes, they look a bit like Elton John's, but they work), morning sunlight exposure, and proper electrolyte balance. Contrary to popular belief, salt restriction can actually worsen sleep problems by impairing digestion and adrenal function.

The chicken-or-egg relationship between gut health and sleep quality means you need to address both simultaneously. Start with an anti-inflammatory diet, support digestion with proper enzymes, implement solid sleep hygiene practices, and consider how environmental factors like EMFs might be affecting your body's electrical system.

Break the vicious cycle between poor digestion and poor sleep. Your body will thank you with renewed energy, clearer thinking, and that deep, restorative sleep you've been missing.


Get to the root cause of your Gut Issues!  Watch the Gut Restoration Masterclass at https://learn.digestivehealthsolutions.com/

For a FREE Gut Health consultation, visit us at  https://thetummywhisperer.com/.

Contact Renee:
Email: Nhsolutions@sbcglobal.net

Renee:

We are live. We are live. I didn't see it come up on the screen. Thank you, my eyes, janine.

Renee:

Welcome everybody to the Tummy Whisperer podcast. I'm Renee Barish, your host and Tummy Whisperer extraordinaire. I'm here with the lovely Janine who helps me get these podcasts rocking and rolling. Janine has informed me that we are on episode number 24 today and it just feels like unbelievable to me that we've done 24 of these episodes and I love that I've been able to provide some insights for people into their health.

Renee:

Today we're going to talk about a big one which is a huge issue for more and more people, as we are affected by so many variables in the world, with EMFs and poor food and poor digestion and toxicity and poor air quality and shitty water and all the things. We're going to be talking about sleep via the gut-brain axis. We're going to talk a little bit about sleep hygiene, the gut, how it affects and impacts your sleep, how the sleep impacts your energy signature and how it can become a vicious circle if one of those things are out of balance, and how it can affect everything else. So to me there's so many variables in terms of good health. How it starts my shtick we're always starting with good food in good nourishing products, on good clean water, air purification, all the things. So when we're looking at how to stay healthy and how to move the needle forward in getting healthy, one of the first places I like to look is what you're eating. Look at is what you're eating, right? I just worked with a young gentleman this morning. He's 20 years old, he's super constipated and no judgment on my end. He's in construction, so he's fast fooding, not even thinking about it. He can't poop, he doesn't feel good, his sleep is for shit and he's. That's it. I need to do something about this. I love at age 20, he's like doing testing and he wants to get well and he's already loading up the gluten-free app and he's I can do a gluten-free bun at Culver's, so he's, he's on it. But again, looking at how food affects your brain, most people are familiar with the gut brain connection and I've talked about it before, and your brain is relying on good, healthy, digested, available nutrients and minerals in the body to say, to tell the brain hey, we've got enough. I've spoken about this before.

Renee:

The cravings that we experience, whether it's for sweets or baked goods or salty chips or protein, have to do with your body's inability to digest these things. And then your body is devoid and deficient. So the body says, hey, the hypothalamus starts sending the message to the tongue we need more salty chips. Basically it's more salt. We need more fat Basically it's more of what it needs because it's not seeing that your body's digesting these fats and your body's burning through the salt and the chloride, because the adrenals really need that salt to handle stress. And nobody alive is not under any amount of stress, even somebody who has a great life. They handle things well, they're pretty robust. They're probably having some digestive stress because they're not breaking down a good anti-inflammatory diet. So there's some level of stress that the body has to deal with on the daily.

Renee:

From time to time that affects how your adrenals and your hormones and your body respond. So what happens? If you're burning through your nutrients quicker than your body can take them in? You're going to be devoid and you're going to be deficient. And when you're deficient, that's where all that stuff starts. That's where the cravings start, that's where the adrenals start to go wonky. We start to get a shift in the cortisol. It becomes destabilized, it's firing at the wrong time and what that may look like is people may wake up exhausted in the morning. Even after getting eight hours of sleep, they may wake up in the middle of the night and not able to fall back asleep. Usually between one and three or one and five. They may not be able to go to sleep at all, where they're laying there just thinking and wired and tired and can't even fall asleep, go to sleep. So those are signs that we know that the cortisol and digestion is off, because digestion affects the adrenals, it affects your fight or flight and they work together. So again, the stress of undigested food particles starts to cause and inflammatory food starts to cause this cascade. So what can we do about it? What's the first thing we can do about it? We can work on digesting a low inflammatory diet. What's a low inflammatory diet? Because it's different from person to person.

Renee:

I have talked at nauseam about gluten. Gluten is something that can affect the wrong person. This is not to say everybody has a gluten issue, but gluten can be as classified lately as a higher histamine. Histamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain and when there's high levels of histamine it affects how we try to live daily and sleep and how our bodies respond to things. So when there's high histamine there's no way to go down to sleep. So we take antihistamines, right, whether you're taking a natural one or you're taking a Zyrtec or whatever it is.

Renee:

So looking at foods that may be higher in histamine may be a great place to start. For people, high histamine foods include gluten nightshades, which are your tomatoes, potatoes, peppers. Those are hard for people, but there's plenty of flavors in cooking that you can do without peppers. You can use all your leafy herbs, your cilantro, your rosemary and parsley and sage and all those things that flavor food nicely. So looking at if you're eating foods that are high in histamine, that's something to look at as well. Nuts also can be histamine, high in histamine, especially peanuts, and then those fall into your oxalate category, which is will be another show, because those can also cause issues. So looking at what you're eating could be a start. A little tiptoe through the tulips into why maybe sleep may be a little bit funky. So if you love spice which I do, but I don't dare then I kind of fade a little bit more in the wintertime, when there's less airborne allergens in the air, where my body handles those histamines better. Play with it and see.

Renee:

So, looking at what you're eating first, order of business. The next thing we want to look at too is your digestion, how your body's digesting what you're putting in. Can your body break down a nice piece of chicken with some broccoli and rice, a salad or whatever it is that you're eating? Is the body digesting that food properly so that the brain gets all the neurotransmitters and your tissues and cells get all the nourishment they need and the cells are able to pull in the nutrition and pull in the hydration and convert it and use it for fuel or whatever it's supposed to be used for and get rid of the waste. Remember, a cell's job is to pull in nutrition, pull in hydration, get rid of that waste. Remember, a cell's job is to pull in nutrition, pull in hydration, get rid of that waste. If that's not happening, you're going to have symptoms and name a symptom and it's probably due to that. So, looking at the digestive pieces, part number two is the body digesting, absorbing, getting rid of waste properly.

Renee:

The next part into the gut, brain access is also your sleep, which is one of those things that affect digestion and digestion affects the sleep. This one is a cat chasing the tail, it is just which comes first, the chicken or the egg. And many times for most of my clients with sleep issues it's a combination platter. Their digestion is not working. It's messing up the sleep. The sleep isn't working. It's messing up the hormones. The hormones are messed working. It's messing up the sleep. The sleep isn't working. It's messing up the hormones. The hormones are messed up. It's messing up the digestion.

Renee:

How do you know which one to fix first? Always start with your digestion, because your body needs the nourishment and we can always tweak the sleep as we're moving down the line. The gut-brain axis is a big piece of this. Right, it's really like a two-way street between your gut and your brain and they work together. It's your food doesn't just stop at your stomach and then jump into your colon. Right, there's a process that goes into nourishing every part of your body and your brain and when that brain needs something, the brain always wins. The brain tells the tongue and the body temperature, thirst, hunger, cravings, whatever the body needs that hypothalamus is right on saying, hey, we need more of this, we don't have it. Here's how you're going to get it.

Renee:

So when we look at proper sleep again, we talked about the digestive piece and anti-inflammatory diet, looking at histamines, which can greatly affect the sleep. We want to also look at sleep hygiene. So sleep hygiene is something I've talked about, but it's important. Everybody's on their phone doing scrolling, looking at whatever, but right before they go to bed you've got all this blue light exposure and the blue light scrambles the brain. These glasses have a little blue light blocking, but I don't Do. I have my I might've worn my Elton John blue light blockers. I've got blue light blockers that look like Elton John and I wear them starting at seven o'clock at night so that I have less blue light. And if Mark and I are watching a movie, I've got those things on and I look crazy, but I wear them. My sleep is better.

Renee:

So having your brain start to shift down, downshift, to know that you're getting ready for sleep without having all this bright light, is a big issue for getting good sleep. And another thing that's critical is waking up in the morning, and I'll get to that place between sleep and waking up, which is unfortunately just very hard for many people is when you get up out of bed in the morning. See if you can get outside for even five to 15 minutes because that natural sunlight starts to reboot your circadian rhythm. So don't get up and get on your phone and start looking for a meditation app. Get up, your emails will still be there. Start your coffee. You'll take your shower when you're ready. Right and get outside. Open the window. It's nice out still, they're not snowing yet. Walk out onto the porch, walk out onto the balcony, sit for five minutes, take some deep breaths and get that natural sunlight on your body, especially on your eyes. That again is going to help the circadian rhythm, especially on your eyes. That again, it's going to help the circadian rhythm.

Renee:

So what to do in between, that hour of when we're trying to go to sleep till the time we wake up, and we're up ready to vacuum at one in the morning, hey, I've got all this energy. What the hell is that? That used to be me. And again, it's all these things that we're mentioning. It's inflammatory, food digestion, hormones, poor sleep hygiene. Start with just one. If you're already doing a good anti-inflammatory diet and you don't have good sleep hygiene, work on it. If you want to watch a movie at night, grab those yellow crazy glasses. They fit right over your prescriptions. I have the ones from Dave Asbury. They just slip right over and they're great. They just pop right over mine and I should be wearing right now, and I'm not because I can't find them, but they're somewhere in the house. Oh, here they are. Wait a minute, everybody can see.

Janine:

They're not that bad so they're not that bad, so actually they're trippy. I'm getting 60s vibes.

Renee:

I love it yeah so they're great the prescription, because they're fitting over my prescriptions and I got again. I got these from Dave Asbury. He's the was the old bulletproof guy, but he's got a lot of hacks and I do love him. He's a little he's a little out there and can be a little inflammatory, but he's got a lot of hacks and I do love him. He's a little he's a little out there and can be a little inflammatory, but he's got a few good products that I do, these being one of them.

Renee:

So, working on that sleep hygiene and again, not to say that you can't watch a movie at night but get these on and most prescription glasses. Now people are aware of the blue light. The optometrist will ask do you want some blue light blocking? And people say, yes, it's not enough, you really need something yellow to block the blue is my understanding. So that's a big critical one for people and something that I could work on as well too. I don't have these on seven days a week and I do have to get better about it, but when I remember to put them on, which is at least three to four days a week, I do, and especially after dinner.

Renee:

That's when really helping your body shut down because your cortisol looks like this when you wake up in the morning. You should have this nice kind of you don't want to be getting out of bed, ready to go play football or something, but you should be alert and you shouldn't be okay, just give me five more minutes, or give me one more hour, or I need a spatula to get me out of bed. You should have some alertness in the morning in a perfect world and you should have this nice high cortisol and as the day goes the cortisol slowly dips until it's bedtime. People who have adrenal issues the cortisol spikes in the wrong time where they're exhausted in the morning they get a hit around 10 of energy and then they need a nap at one or between three and five, or they're ready to go to bed at six or seven and if they stay up past that they're okay, and then they're wired and tired at nine o'clock and then they can't go to sleep.

Renee:

So helping your body shift into that nice cortisol rhythm through good digestion, good sleep hygiene, is going to be another way to really help that gut brain access. So these are just tips and tricks that anybody can do. Looking at the diet, I harp on it all the time. It's very important in terms of good health making sure you're hydrated and making sure you're drinking your electrolytes whatever you like. I like the fringe ones. I think you can get those. A lot of people use the element ones.

Janine:

I think those are pretty salty, I like element.

Renee:

Yeah, they're pretty salty. I like the fringe ones. There's no preservatives in them. F-r-i-n-g-e. They make a plain, they make a raspberry one. That is out of this world.

Renee:

So you want to just get something clean, get your electrolytes in, because, remember, when you are drinking water without electrolytes, you're watering down your own electrolytes. So it's not that you have to mainline electrolytes, but you have to have some, especially during the warmer months which we're starting to cool off, which I've been loving. So, yeah, those things are very important. You also get minerals from fruits and vegetables. Not enough, because everyone knows our soils are depleted, over farmed, over tilled, so you do have to supplement. So adding the minerals is critical.

Renee:

Also, salt is another unfortunately, has developed a bad rap over the years. Lower sodium equals healthy healthy, which is really the wrong idea, because you can't even make stomach acid without enough salt. You have a low salt diet. You're going to have bad digestion, obviously people with high blood pressure and things of that nature. It's not so much a high sodium diet issue, it's a kidney issue, right, it's a kidney clearing issue. So, again, when we look at digestion and how the body breaks down food, if the kidneys can't concentrate the urine because there's a leaky gut, undigested food, particles, all the things that go bump in the night, the kidney is going to be hey, need a little help down here.

Renee:

So working on the digestive piece lowers the pressure off of those kidneys, which also helps the body with sodium, calcium, potassium. It's a whole cascade. So just lowering the salt isn't always the best idea. And on the urine test that I run, we actually test for chloride and we test for salt levels and we see how the body is managing the salt that people are eating or avoiding. And it's an important piece because, again, there's no way to digest your food without enough salt. Your body uses it to make hydrochloric acid, end of story. So anyway, that was an airful today. What do you think so far, janine? Is anything resonating for you?

Janine:

I really like the salt conversation because if you're not hydrated enough that can affect your sleep tremendously. And Element someone had turned me on to Element and at first I was like, oh my God, this is salty. Then I it is salty, but I find that if I put it in a really big, large water container it dilutes it a lot and I sip on it throughout the day and if I don't drink it I feel dehydrated. It's almost like I start to crave it after a while.

Renee:

The hypothalamus, the body's saying Janine, you need more water, you need more electricity. Our bodies run on electricity. There's no way to have good electricity without enough conduit. That's right. Salt is your conduit Needed to help the heartbeat, needed to help make your stomach acid, needed to help make everything in the body Very important. Yeah, I think this was a lot today, but it was good To recap. So good To recap.

Renee:

We're talking about the gut-brain axis. We're talking about how sleep is affected, the chicken-egg type thing between digestion and poor sleep. Poor sleep and digestion, how they feed into each other. Working on good digesting and anti-inflammatory diet, lower histamine, lower oxalate. Using your digestive enzymes to help break down your food and get good absorption of your nutrients, your vitamins, your minerals. Opening up those detoxification pathways to allow that ash to leave the body. And then really working on your sleep hygiene. It is important and doing those things, just doing parts of some of those things, I think people will start to see a shift in their health.

Renee:

The other thing, the last thing that I haven't really talked about, and this is one of those things that's like woo-woo and out there there are a lot of electronic devices like EMF blockers and things like that, and who knows if they work. I'm wearing this. I don't know if it works, I just hope it works. It's cute and whatever Rook has one under his pillow and bed, mark has his own. We have a few different ones throughout the house to block the electromagnetic waves that can affect our electricity system. And one of the things that my friend turned me on to is a little device. I don't have it up for the size of a coaster. It's called the Schumann. It's for anybody listening, it's the Schumann S-C-H-U-M-A-N-N and it's a little device that you charge up and you can put different frequencies on it. Here, in fact, I'm going to grab my frequency. I'm going to grab my frequency. This is cool, this is cool.

Renee:

So I got this last week and since I am in menopausal hell mostly because going through menopause really is tough, it is tough. I used to hear like women complain about it and I'm like, ah, I'm so healthy, I'll be fine. Ha joke's on me, but I am doing a lot better. The hot flashes are real, as I've complained on many shows before. So the Schumann device has these different frequencies that you could set for sleep, waking up, meditation, aligning with the Earth's rhythm, and my friend, who I trust and love dearly. If she loves it, I'm going to look at it because she vets everything she researches and if she likes it, I'm already like she's done all the heavy lifting for me. So I'm going to look at it because she vets everything she researches and if she likes it, I'm already like she's done all the heavy lifting for me. So I'm going to give it a try.

Renee:

And the most expensive device was $199. It like is not thousands of dollars and they have a cheap one just for sleep, a cheaper one that's, I think, $100. And there's a code you can get 12% off or something. If anybody needs it, I can. It's like I think it's Schumann 10 or something like that S-C-H large, s small, c-h-u-m-a-n-n 10.

Renee:

And some of these frequencies are I have to read them because I've deferred back to the charts Morning activation between five and nine is you can align with the earth's rhythm natural awakening, dna, energy activation and focus enhancement for the day ahead.

Renee:

So you pick which hurts and they have Schumann, beta, sulfageo and Tesla and alpha, of course, and then productive hours they have maintain harmony while working, expand consciousness and productivity. All these different things mental clarity, gentle pain and tension relief, energy stabilization, and the list goes on, because it comes with a little booklet, an e-booklet. So I've had this device for about a week and mine and Mark's sleep is thin. As we've gotten older it's been thinner, it's just all the things right and he's got a lot of stress at his job and he's on his phone and even though my husband started out as my client, I can only have that noose around him so tight. So he eats clean, he drinks his water, he does everything he's supposed to do and he he hears me and we all have to, we all always have to do a little bit better and work on ourselves the best that we can. So fast forward to turning on the device. The minute I turned it on, cause it came fully charged, I felt it in my body. Are you sensitive to energy, janine?

Renee:

People's energy, people's energy, yeah, yeah, I'm going to go with that, because when you're more aware, you're like and it's the same frequency. It's if you walk into a place and you know that like you get the creeps from that person change the frequency. It's like changing the radio station in the car. You don't want to hear that kind of music because the frequency is like you turn it to a different song and you're like, yeah, same difference. So this machine I literally turned it on and I was like I felt an immediate grounding to the earth. And there's a lot of grounding devices out there grounding sheets, grounding mattresses. They're super expensive, you have to plug them in and you have to make sure you're grounded and you have to be naked on the mat. And who the heck has time for that? I don't have time for that, nobody does. You plug in this little device, it's this big, and you change the frequency for what you want and it's really fantastic. I think at some point I'm going to have to get you one, because they are really amazing and it helps to me. What I feel it does is it helps align my energy field with the earth, so my body works better. Now here's the best part of this whole thing my hot flashes, which are awful and have gotten better in the past week to the tune of 70% since adding this device, and that's no lie. Now I'll tell you Mark loves the hot flashes because we're like at dinner and I'm taking the clothes off and I'm eating dinner, like in my bra, and he's I'm like don't even look at me, talk to me, don't even bother, I'm just like uncomfortable. The hot flashes are awful and it keeps me up at night. It's awful, like one night about a week and a half ago. I had one hot flash the whole night that never really muted down and I was able to fall asleep. But I just woke up feeling so awful I. The hot flashes are almost 70 75 better just by adding the device because my cells aren't getting more aligned in with a good energetic field. Again, there's so many disruptors in the energy in our atmosphere and that's another reason why I believe that we become unwell, and there's data to prove it. It's not just me spouting off some nonsense, there's data to prove it. So, shuman, for anybody that's interested, it really it's been helping my sleep as well. I to prove it. So, shuman, for anybody that's interested, it really it's been helping my sleep as well, I highly recommend it and I think that might be Jennings Christmas gift for me, I like.

Renee:

Maybe Christmas is coming in October, yeah, I like that, but it's super, super cool and so hopefully something resonated with everybody today in terms of what you can do to help your health move forward in the right direction working on some sleep hygiene, working on anti-inflammatory diet and, of course, as everybody knows, I'm always here for anybody and everybody who has questions on any of this stuff. I've been in practice for coming up on 22 years. I've been in the healthcare field for over 30. I know I don't look a day over 30, but I'm turning 60 in October, so it's hard to say. That freaks me out. What's the exact day? Sixth October 6th.

Renee:

Wow October 6th October 6th 60 years old, wow, I know, but I know what I'm blessed. I'm lucky, I feel good, I love what I do, I love helping people and I just feel blessed in so many aspects of my life. If anybody has questions, comments, concerns about anything at all, happy to give you my two cents for free. You're welcome to reach me at the tummy whisperercom. You can find me on Facebook and you can find me online, and I do a free 15 minute consultation and we can talk about what may serve you in your better health and help you be the healthiest, best version that you can in this day and age. Yeah, that felt good today. So thank you everybody for joining.