148 – Nutritional Deficiencies, Herbalism and Insomnia

Welcome to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast with your host, Nicole Rose, from the

Solidarity Apothecary.

This is your place for all things plants and

liberation.

Let's get started.

Hello. Welcome back to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast.

How are you doing today?

I'm not in a car park, thankfully.

I'm in my beautiful herb shed, which is as

messy as ever.

I've got someone who's gonna set up a professional inventory system very soon,

like spreadsheet legend.

So I am exc for that because I have tried and

tested many a thing, but just need something to make it all kind of easier to manage.

And I realised there's like 130 herbs,

different hubs in my apothecary.

So it's like, yeah, no wonder it's a bit

overwhelming.

Do you know what I mean?

Anyway,

I'm doing good.

I'm still in the kind of like, herbalism, PTSD

and traumatic stress promotion land.

It's always a bit of a sprint, I'm not gonna lie.

I think other people do launches that are, like, shorter because I have so little time to

work, because I want to prioritise my toddler, so I tend to go a bit, like, small and slow,

if that makes sense.

So,

yeah, I'm getting.

I'm getting a bit behind on the old Instagram

captions.

Does anyone ******* see my stuff anymore?

Do you know what I mean? There's like 27,000 followers on that

Instagram, but, like, ******* no one sees anything.

I might have to capitulate to ******* putting some makeup on and recording some reels.

Do you know what I mean? I don't want to chase the algorithm.

Go. But it's like, needs.

Must I need to ******* feed my child anyway?

No, it's all good.

But before I dive into the episode, just like,

shameless plug.

The Herbalism PTSD and Traumatic Stress course

is still open for enrolment.

I open it twice a year in the end of March and

the end of September, and no one is turned away for lack of funds.

So you can access it for free if needed, or for a small donation or a small monthly

donation, whatever is possible for you.

And the course is ******* awesome, not going to lie.

It's eight modules, super comprehensive, all about how trauma and chronic stress affect our

bodies, affect our different nervous system states, affect our sleep, affect all the

things like contribute to chronic illness and disease.

And then like, how the **** do we,

you know,

try and live in a different trajectory? Which I know is like, ******* hard in

capitalism, but looking at ways we can Support our nervous systems, support our health.

Looking at foundations like sleep and nutrition and yeah, working with.

There's like 32 plants in there that are different kinds of nervines, which are herbs

with an affinity for the nervous system.

So I go into a lot of depth about each of

those.

And yeah, it's.

Yeah, I think it's one of a kind.

Not gonna lie.

There's also lessons about medicine making and

kind of all the herbalism basics, like herbal safety, stuff like that, as well as like

collective responses to traumatic stress,

which is really important to me.

So how do we, you know,

work within a framework that is allowing us to kind of like rest and recover and also kind of

release what's going on for us, but ultimately supports kind of like resistance and how we

can reorganise our society so that,

yeah, we're kind of preventing those causes of trauma, if that makes sense as much as you can

within the human experience.

But think of how many traumatic things

wouldn't need to happen if we actually had *******, you know, like class equality or

racial equality or whatever.

I mean equality is a bit of a liberal term, but do you know what I mean?

Like, it's basically all about the kind of politics of trauma, the conditions that are

causing trauma and how do we respond to that in like collective ways, but without like

neglecting the fact that all of these systems take their toll on our kind of like tissues

and our individual bodies.

And that is also a kind of like terrain that we need to work with.

So anyway, I don't know if that's made it all sound really confusing.

It's basically a awesome self paced course.

You can work through it as long as you need.

I send out reminders every eight weeks, so you

can kind of like.

Yeah, if you're worried about signing up and

then forgetting about it, then you'll get those kind of prods.

But there's basically like no pressure to participate.

You can bounce around, you can just focus on one or two herbs if that's important to you.

You can just do the fun medicine making stuff and not look at the trauma content, like

whatever kind of like.

Yeah, it's kind of designed for people to actively choose what they want to learn.

But if you're.

Yeah, if you value a structure and you value that kind of like logical flow, then you can

obviously work through it from start to finish.

Which is like awesome.

Like I'm definitely have that sort of brain.

So anyway,

but yeah, please cheque it out.

I'll put a link in the show.

Notes and yeah, I'm gonna get stuck in now.

So this episode is all about nutritional deficiencies and their, like, relationship to

sleep and then also about kind of like, herbal medicine options.

It would be,

I think, quite helpful if you listen to the episode in the last series about like,

depletion and fatigue where I talk about food because I go into like, all the,

like, food politics stuff and all about the importance of kind of digestion and.

And like, assimilating nutrients from food and actually getting energy and nourishment from

our food.

So this episode really complements that one.

And also it'd be useful to listen to the previous episode where I kind of lay out my

sort of, like, general approach to like, insomnia and sleep challenges using lots of

different strategies.

So looking at things like daytime nervous system support,

like food and nutritional deficiencies, which I'm going to talk about today,

things like addressing like, inflammatory patterns that can be affecting sleep as well

as, like,

yeah, just the kind of like, other,

like, roles of things like sedative herbs in supporting someone to sleep.

Because if you haven't heard me bang on about this, sleep is like my number one priority

with anyone that I'm supporting one to one.

It is like the number one thing that would

like, make a difference to someone's life in terms of mental clarity and brain fog and

reducing inflammation and,

you know, repairing tissues and feeling just like more kind of resourced and less

murderous.

Do you know what I mean?

You know when you have a bad night's sleep and you're like, oh, I want to kill everyone?

I shouldn't say that publicly, should I? You know what I mean, though?

I just think like, that sleep deprivation or even just like reductions in sleep can just

have wild ******* impacts on our moods.

And that can, you know, lead to all sorts of things like arguments in relationships and bad

decision making and just like, yeah, it just has repercussions.

So if we can support ourselves to sleep well, to sleep in a way that is restorative.

And I know people that have chronic illnesses might sleep a lot but still not feel like

restored when they wake up in the morning.

And I'm going to talk about that next time

around inflammation.

But yeah, for today, I'm going to be focusing on kind of like nutrition and like,

nutritional deficiencies.

So in the herbalism, PTSD and traumatic stress course, I have a thing where I talk about,

like, nutritional deficiencies and their research around relationships with anxiety

rather than, like,

sleep, if that makes sense.

And. But they are kind of like intrinsically

connected.

So for this one, I've kind of reviewed a bit

of, like, the more recent literature around deficiencies of particular nutrients and how

they affect sleep.

But I think,

again, in terms of this, like, daytime nervous system support as an intervention for better

sleep,

it's really useful in the PTSD course where we talk about the connections between anxiety.

Because if you're, like, ******* running on anxiety all day long because you have a

deficiency in, like, vitamin B12 or vitamin D or something as a contributing factor to that

anxiety, then addressing that nutritional deficiency will then reduce that kind of

daytime activation,

which will hopefully lead to, like, better sleep.

So they're all really connected, but I'm just trying to kind of focus on sleep at the

moment.

So, yeah, everything is obviously really connected.

And it's not as simple, unfortunately, as, oh, I'm deficient in this nutrient, therefore I

will take this supplement, therefore I will start sleeping again.

Like, yeah, we would.

It would just mean that, like,

everyone that takes a ******* magnesium supplement is, like, suddenly recovered from

insomnia and it's just not the ******* case.

So, again, there's this whole interlayered,

like, system going on of,

like,

is this deficiency causing inflammation, which is therefore interacting with our sleep

quality, or is this deficiency contributing to anxiety, which is therefore interacting with

our sleep pattern? Or does this deficiency actually have an

effect on certain kind of neurotransmitters that affect sleep, for example?

So there's lots and lots of different mechanisms, but instead of thinking just

about, like, supplements or herbs as kind of, like, fixes, I want to be kind of reflecting

on, like,

basically, like, does this person's body have what it needs to physiologically sleep?

Well,

and we obviously have different physiological needs in terms of getting to sleep and staying

asleep.

Okay, so I'm going to bounce through,

like,

some common kind of nutrients and how they may be affecting someone's sleep.

But I'm not making, like,

wild ******* claims here, and I'm not encouraging that.

You're just like, oh, that sounds like me.

I'm gonna buy this supplement and everything

will get better.

Because,

you know, like I said in the food episode, you might have a supplement but not be able to

absorb it because your kind of digestive terrain is distressed or inflamed, or there's,

like, something else going on.

Likewise, some people have genetic factors that affects absorption of certain nutrients.

Maybe someone's medication is leading to, like, a nutrient depletion,

maybe.

Yeah, just chronic stress is kind of like

rinsing what's kind of going in, if that makes sense.

But anyway, I'm just gonna bounce through some of the options.

So first of all, iron.

I have a lot of vegan clients and I've been vegan for a million years.

But like,

it can be challenging for people to get enough iron,

especially people who menstruate or who have conditions where they menstruate like a lot

have quite heavy periods.

But I think when there's something going on

with someone's iron, and obviously I encourage people to get blood tests so we're not just

like moving around in the dark.

Like if you can get a free blood test looking at this stuff, it's like really, really

important, right? And that's generally like you go to the doctor

saying you feel fatigued, they'll generally test your iron levels.

But one of the interesting connections is like restless leg syndrome.

So that's something that people come to me a lot.

It's like, oh, every time I start relaxing, like my legs go wild.

And I used to think this was like largely magnesium related, but I. The more I've been

reading about this stuff, the more I'm like, aha.

There's like actually quite interesting studies around like iron deficiency and

restless legs.

So that's kind of interesting.

But yeah, but there are, yeah, there are kind of studies around like iron deficiency anaemia

and that being associated with like poorer sleep,

more challenges in like falling asleep and then just kind of like more like reduced sleep

efficiency.

So like that sleep not feeling kind of

restorative.

The other challenge is like often people have like issues with their ferritin and stuff when

there's like some kind of chronic inflammatory process.

So that's when the kind of inflammation episode will come into its own.

But yeah, like iron supplements can be really, really life changing.

And I think herbalists will probably hate me, but I think it is easier to get iron from like

a strong iron supplement on like a short term basis if that's like showing up in your blood

tests that you,

that you are deficient.

But there are like amazing herbs that can kind of like just kind of support us like longer

term with,

with like iron levels like in our diet.

And obviously like food and nutrition is like

the grey day, right? Like wanting to have like nuts and beans and

different things that contain iron.

But yeah, like herbs like nettles for example, are just fantastic at improving people's like

iron status.

Like nettles are a really amazing blood tonic.

Like I've had to tweak people's blends to take iron out of the mixes because they've gone

from Being like hardcore anaemic for most of their life to just like have having quite

healthy to high iron levels.

So, yeah, so I think, like, there are,

yeah, lots of herbs that can support with that.

And I'm going to talk about herbs a little bit more.

Okay,

so the next one is B12.

And I wish,

like, I feel very angry at a lot of like,

vegan kind of like outreach stuff back in the day.

I think these days there's like a lot more awareness.

But like, I feel like back in the day it was really sold as this kind of like super healthy

diet.

Like, it's gonna like fix all your health issues, you're gonna be as strong as a

gorilla, like all of this nonsense.

But it B12 deficiencies are so ******* serious

and can really, really affect people and everyone is very different.

So someone can go vegan and it can take years and years before, like a deficiency is kind of

like becoming symptomatic.

And for other people that can be like a much

shorter time frame.

Which is why I think we see this kind of cycling of people going vegan and stopping

being vegan or needing to eat eggs or things like this.

And like,

I wish there was like a lot more awareness about B12 deficiencies.

And if you are like a nutritionist and like,

no less about B12, come on the ******* show, let's talk about it.

Because I always joke with my Clients, I'm a B12 drug dealer, but basically, like, this

fudgeing,

like,

is just so life changing.

To have a good quality B12 supplement and the

blood testing is like, quite difficult in terms of it's not always that accurate.

And it depends like, how recently you've had supplements and like all of this stuff.

So people often are like, well, my B12 is fine,

but they're still showing like all of the ******* symptoms of a deficiency.

But like, yeah, B12 deficiency can kind of like manifest in so many ways.

Like, there's a joke about vegans being like vegans, but because of this kind of like

concentration,

memory loss, like challenges with like focus,

like brain fog,

that's really B12V as well as just like anxiety, like chronic anxiety.

Like, I know vegans think they're anxious because animal abuse is like horrific as a

form of oppression.

Like, that is definitely like something that

keeps us awake at night.

But oh my God, a lot of it is just like pure B12 deficiency.

And people are like, oh, I eat loads of Marmite, blah, blah, blah.

But I'm sorry, it's just like often it's Just not enough.

So like,

yeah, and again, like, all the absorption issues, like certain things can really knock

out our B12 reserves.

Like anaesthetic, for example, can wipe out a

lot of B12 reserves in the liver.

Like, that's super interesting.

So it's like,

yeah, you know, get tested, but just look into the symptoms of it.

But I find when I'm supporting people that are taking a B12 supplement that will generally

have a knock on effect of improving, like insomnia symptoms, like quite dramatically in

many cases.

Partly because people have more energy to do stuff in the daytime.

And as I talked about it in the Last Time episode about daytime support when we have

kind of like more activity, more.

Kind of hate the word productivity in terms of

its like catalyst connotations.

But like,

if you have a kind of like satisfying day where you get stuff done, like you've been

physically moving around, you've been active, like, that will like increase your odds of a

good night's sleep.

Right.

Whereas if you've just like struggled all day

long to like muster the energy to do things for all sorts of reasons.

But yeah, like, B12 can be,

you know,

like an interesting factor in like,

often like really hardcore anxiety.

Like, I don't want to like pluck stuff out my

*** here without like providing the sources, but I'm pretty sure there's like interesting

connections with things like psychosis and stuff.

And B12 deficiency.

So yeah, like, with any deficiency it can have

quite serious effects.

So it is worth like sort of staying on top of

this stuff.

Okay.

Magnesium. All right, so I think magnesium is the,

like, mineral that capitalism, like,

loves to market because so many of us are kind of deficient in magnesium because of things

like industrial agriculture just like, depleting our soils and just reducing that

mineral content in our soils and therefore reducing that mineral content in our food.

But I do feel like magnesium is kind of like really marketed as this like, sleep

supplement.

And like, in my experience and like, I'd love to hear people's experiences, but like, I

found if people take magnesium close to bedtime, they don't actually sleep well

because most people that are taking magnesium are deficient in it.

And then when they suddenly have it, they actually get a bit of an energy kick.

So I recommend kind of taking it in the morning and I find that that will kind of

like, yeah, be a bit more effective when like, sleep is a big challenge for someone.

But yeah, magnesium has like hundreds of different,

like, uses in the body and is used by the body in all sorts of ways.

So when we have a magnesium deficiency, we will start seeing all sorts of interesting

sleepless symptoms, like including anxiety,

things like heart palpitations, like a lot of tension,

like all of that kind of like racing heartbeat stuff.

Sorry, I meant to say that in the iron section as well in terms of like anaemia,

like will really trigger a lot of cardiac stuff which can kind of often affect our

sleep.

But yeah, but there's different studies around magnesium and yeah, like as with any kind of

supplement approach, like it's always about like prioritising food like as much as

possible.

And interestingly, a lot of the stuff that

contains magnesium are obviously like often deficient in any way.

Like seeds and nuts and leafy green vegetables.

Right.

Like those things, like, even if you're very

like nutrition conscious, are actually quite difficult to kind of get a lot of in my

opinion.

But I often, I don't think there's like,

like a strong.

I think it's like still quite under researched, but I found a lot of luck, not

luck, a lot of impact with like the sprays.

And also like a magnesium spray.

You can get them from like Holland about and

stuff.

And also like Epsom salts in a bath.

Like I find magnesium supplements can sometimes make people like not queasy but like

maybe a little bit loose.

Like everyone's a bit different.

But I think like an Epsom salt bath as part of a like evening kind of wind down ritual is

like ******* dreamy for someone's nervous system.

And like if you look at things historically, like we never used to buy a ******* plastic

bag of salt, right, like from ******* ebay or whatever, we would be like swimming in the sea

and like the sea is like full of ******* salts.

You know, like in the Victorian times they used to send people with chronic illnesses to

like, well rich people with chronic illnesses to like ******* seaside.

And they would be just like soaking up vitamin D and being bathed in the ocean with like

loads of ******* salts and magnesium and it's just kind of like,

yeah, interesting where that stuff's going.

And now unfortunately our seas are full of

******* pollution.

So that makes that difficult in terms of like

swimming in the ocean with like sewage and stuff like that.

But if you can get into a clean beach, I mean ideally let's all be ******* joining surface

against sewage or whoever and like campaigning against this stuff.

But yeah, like that kind of like access to those salts I think is really,

yeah kind of like interesting for the nervous system.

And yet magnesium is like always.

I kind of generally promote it to most people

because I Find that if my sleep go goes like temporarily a bit wonky and I'll start getting

like little muscle twitches, I'll be like, oh, magnesium.

And I'll start kind of like supplementing again.

So.

Okay,

okay. Vitamin D. So this tends to be something that I recommend to most people that I support

one to one.

Because vitamin D deficiency can just have

like so many kind of like repercussions in the body.

Like most especially like fatigue.

And I talked about this in the last series

around kind of depletion and fatigue.

But like if someone is having sleep

challenges, like I'm always going for vitamin D and kind of a little bit similar to the

other things I've mentioned.

Like when we have more energy and kind of vitality in a day,

everything starts to kind of work a bit better and then that can like improve our sleep at

night.

So you know, like it is one of the easier things to supplement in terms of like

supplement quality is like less of an issue in my experience.

And like those little sprays are really nice but like obviously we can just ******* get it

from the sun.

Right? But depending on where you're listening to

this, that might not be possible or straightforward.

Like I personally am ******* hopeless like in the,

you know, in the proper heat.

But I, I do, you know, give me a ******* like

spring sunny day, autumn sunny day, ******* dreamy.

But like,

yeah, there are all sorts of kind of like factors around that, like all the *******

sunscreen **** and you know, all of this stuff.

So yeah, it's not always easy to access it.

And most people like in the kind of northern

hemisphere are like often deficient.

So I think yeah, as a kind of like general thing to try if you're experiencing sleep

problems,

vitamin D is great.

And also like just for kind of like anxiety,

like again this knock on effect of like is someone not sleeping well because of their

baseline, baseline anxiety.

And that anxiety might be to do with like very

real like structural things like ******* poverty or being in abusive relationship,

all the other things.

But like having a ******* vitamin D deficiency

on top is like not going to ******* help.

Like it just worsens anxiety in my experience.

So yeah, getting on top of that can be really, really helpful.

Okay, so those are the kind of like main supplements that I see a lot in clinical

practise in terms of like people start taking them and then they start to feel better and

they start to sleep better.

But then, you know, obviously the herbs are being worked with as well.

But like I talked about this I think before but like I'M gonna basically move on to like

more around kind of like eating in general.

And I do feel like not eating enough is like a major cause of disrupted sleep.

So it's not just like this particular micronutrients.

It's like is this person actually getting enough food?

And I mentioned like being in prison and like you know, not having access to enough food and

like lying, you know, having to just like desperately try and sleep by like sleeping on

my stomach and stuff.

Because you're just so hungry it's like unbearable.

But like when our body like doesn't have enough kind of like calories let alone

nutrition, like yeah, I think we,

we kind of underestimate that as an effect.

Like for me I'm like quite like I had a

clinical supervisor that told me I'm very like food focused person because like when we're in

Calais I was always like hyper planning like all my snacks.

Mostly because I'm like vegan, gluten free.

So it's not always easy in a French

supermarket to like find good snacks.

And you know, I like to be organised but like

I'm a kind of like eat regular regularly person.

Whereas like she was much more like forget to e eat until 6 o' clock and then have a big

meal kind of person.

But for me if I skip a meal I will kind of

feel those repercussions.

And I do notice it even when I go to bed earlier because like say for example my son's

not had an afternoon nap so then he'll sleep really early in the evening.

If I've then therefore eaten really early in the day, I will struggle to sleep as well than

if I've had a good dinner.

But if you like overeat and I'm not like an

overeater person, like I just don't have the like stomach size for it I think.

But like yeah, that ovary in causing kind of like gas and discomfort is not gonna do you

any favours like sleep wise.

But yeah, kind of like,

you know, like if there's patterns of restriction which can obviously be like a

mental health challenge around kind of disordered eating and stuff like that, like

that will often have like quite detrimental effect on sleep.

You know, like I've actually, I'm not going to share that because it's more confidential but

like,

yeah, I basically supported someone who I was kind of giving them like all the kind of usual

sedative herbs, like encouraging them with different supplements and things.

And then it kind of got revealed a few months into working with each Other that they were

actually really struggling with disordered eating,

and so they weren't eating enough.

And then that was basically the reason they

weren't sleeping.

So, yeah, like, food is a major factor.

And,

like, I obviously never want to talk about this stuff without talking about the

structural things.

But, like, poverty and food access and food

insecurity are obviously like, the primary drivers of not being able to eat enough food

in the daytime.

Right.

Like, if you're, like, rationing your food

because you don't have enough funds, or you can only eat, like, one meal, but the other

meals you can't afford, like, all of this stuff is, like, very ******* real.

I've shared some of my personal experiences around that of, like, growing up with a single

mom and benefits and stuff, and that.

That how that, like, dramatically influenced

my relationship to food and, like, understanding of, like, food poverty.

But, yeah, so it's all.

I don't want to say it's all complicated, but

I just mean, like,

undereating can be, like, a major, major factor in why someone isn't getting enough

sleep.

But I'm very aware of all the things that influence appetite.

And that's why sometimes the kind of biggest intervention we can make with herbs is to,

like, trigger that feeling of an appetite while simultaneously trying to lower that

stress response.

Because if we are in a kind of sympathetic dominant state where we're in, like, crazy

levels of fight flight, like, that just naturally turns off our digestion because our

body is not gonna set aside energy to digest and process food when it's, like, prioritising

energy for survival.

So you get the person,

I love them, I know them well, but they.

When they're stressed, they just won't eat and

they'll just be like, busy, busy, busy for hours on end and then just forget to eat and

then suddenly awful in the evening because they've, like, not had enough food.

And it is good that prioritising that parasympathetic rest and digest time is, like,

really, really important as much as we're able.

But, like,

yeah, we also sometimes just, like, need food.

So, yeah, if we can kind of like, tone down

that activation.

Like, I do notice a kind of, like, increase in

food intake once.

Like, that stress response is, like, supported to be reduced.

Likewise, just like general gi.

Things can really influence how much we want

to eat.

You know, like, if we have, like, lingering

nausea or,

like, dysbiosis in our microbiome or eating comes with loads of consequences, like massive

bloating that makes you really uncomfortable or constipation.

Or diarrhoea, then that's gonna like understandably prevent you from wanting to

eat.

And then therefore that undereating could have this kind of like knock on effect in terms of

your sleep and like potentially insomnia.

Yeah.

Does that make sense? As well as like all the other things, the

******* spoons it takes to cook, the mental energy it takes to decide what to eat, to do,

shops, like all of these things are really, really connected.

So yeah,

it's not just like that straightforward, but.

Okay, so yeah, there is actually.

I'll try and dig it up.

I don't think it's.

Yeah, it wouldn't be in the PTSD course

because the study like only came out like last year.

But there was like a really big study looking at like the impacts of like food insecurity

and insomnia.

And they're kind of like conclusions of that were that like food insecurity is associated

with like poorer sleep quality, difficulty falling asleep and difficulty staying asleep.

And again, like that's not just because there was like a nutrient deficiency of a like

particular nutrient, but like, like because of this relationship between like hunger and not

having enough calories,

not having enough actual food, but also just like the stress that comes with living in

poverty and financial insecurity.

So they're all connected.

Right?

And that's why again I have to talk about the political context in the PTSD course because

you know, you just can't have one without the other.

Okay. So I've talked about like specific nutritional deficiencies and just like not

having enough food.

There's also like other mechanisms around hunger which are interesting and just kind of

like metabolism and like blood sugar.

So like.

Yeah, like having kind of like inadequate like food or like spacing between food can like

obviously affect our kind of blood sugar and then that can like sometimes trigger like

night wakings in people.

Like I, you know, like, I'll often like wake up like one in the morning sometimes and like

need I have like walnuts next to my bed so that like they're my little go to snack.

When I was like experiencing like chronic illness stuff.

My ex girlfriend Anna, who died unfortunately in Rojava, she would call me like three

dinners Nicole because like I would be, I'd always need like, like kind of snacks like

next to my pillow because mostly at that time it would have just been like really extreme

levels of cortisol because my best friend in prison at the time had like cancer and stuff.

And I was just like hardcore like stupid.

Like not stupid.

Like I was just like hardcore workaholic,

like completely driven by stress response, like completely addicted to stress chemicals.

Like just didn't know, you know, like how to have that like parasympathetic time.

But, but that kind of like metabolic connection, it is very much connected to kind

of like undereating.

But also,

you know, there might be other things triggering like, you know,

maybe that there is like metabolic stuff that needs to be investigated.

Like peeing in the night, for example.

Like it is quite common to just get up and do

like a quick pee and go back to sleep.

But like if someone is peeing frequently,

I would want to kind of like just get some bloods done with the doctor of like looking at

their blood sugar and insulin and all of this stuff because it can just be like something

else that's going on in the background.

And also obviously like all perimona, perimenopausal stuff, hormonal stuff.

Like I'm going to talk about all of that in the inflammation episode next time.

But there are like so many, so many, so many different factors that can affect someone's

sleep.

But yeah, blood sugar and this kind of like overnight hunger is also worth including.

Oh, sorry, there was a couple of nutrients I've forgotten to mention.

So yeah, I was gonna say about zinc, there's like really interesting evidence around zinc

in terms of kind of like it like improving sleep in like several people.

And yeah, zinc is like quite like well known for kind of its relationship to the immune

system and stuff.

But that's why, you know, just like getting

like seeds and nuts and things in your diet is like really fantastic as a kind of source of

zinc.

Calcium, like calcium supplementation is like very like, I don't say dodgy, but it's like a

bit,

it's a bit tricky, it's a bit complicated.

So dietary sources are like super valued over a supplement.

But there is like some research around kind of like calcium deficiency and like insomnia and

then omega 3s.

So omega 3s are often like our essential fatty

acids are often something that I recommend in my clinical practise in terms of like

different supplements because often AR diets are often really deficient in like healthy

sources of fat.

Things like nuts, seeds, oils, healthy oils like olive oil and avocado.

And you know, people that eat animals, they might have more kind of like animal fat,

whereas like vegans aren't kind of getting that.

But there's obviously loads of amazing like plant based sources.

But yeah, like when we have this kind of imbalance of different essential fatty acids

it can, like, really wreak havoc on the nervous system and can be like a big factor in

anxiety.

And again, I don't know,

I haven't like, had time to research it in terms of sleep, but I know, like, from loads

of experience of working with people that like omega 3s and anxiety are like a big, big, big

factor.

So, yeah, it's kind of like when I talk before about like, like what things, can just reduce

things by like 5%.

Like, if you're really struggling with

anxiety, then it's like,

you know, addressing one deficiency might help bring it down like 5, 10, and improving

protein might bring it down another 15.

And it's like all these kind of like small interventions kind of add up over time to

making sort of supporting someone to feel more kind of like steady and resourced and have

more kind of like energy and like less inflammation, all of these things.

But yeah, like Omega 3s are kind of interesting.

So I forgot to share about that in the nutrient section.

Okay, so where the **** does herbalism come in?

And I talked about this a lot in the food episode around fatigue and energy.

So I'm not gonna go into loads of depth with this.

I think listen to that.

And that will be the most helpful thing.

But there are obviously, like, amazing nutritive herbs that we can draw on.

And I guess before we get to nutritive herbs, there are also like culinary herbs.

Right? And I talked about this last time.

But having like mixed herbs with your meals, adding like herbs and spices like that are

appropriate for your constitution and everything else to our meals can help us

access certain nutrients,

can help us digest our food.

Like, they're really, like, fantastic.

As is just eating a kind of broad spectrum, like, plant diet, you know, like with lots of

different, like, colours and yeah, just like all the greens, like berries, the roots, like

all of these amazing,

like, things that we can just,

you know,

are like, designed to eat as humans when we were like, gatherers and now we're just like

forced into these like, weird capitalist food systems.

But yeah, so having that kind of like as much nourishment as we can get, like, is wonderful

in terms of, like, nutritional deficiency.

But there are a role for amazing nutritive

herbs.

So many of these herbs have, like, high mineral content and also high vitamin content.

And they also often have a bunch of other wonderful plant nutrients and kind of like a

broad spectrum of nutrients.

So herbs like nettle, for example,

are ******* fantastic in a kind of like, longer infusion.

Also make the most amazing,

like, glycerite with Nettles.

People will add nettles into, like, vinegars.

And vinegars will extract minerals like,

pretty well.

So, you know, things like nettles and

chickweed and plantain and all of these kind of like green leafy herbs that have good

mineral content.

Like, a vinegar is like, a good method.

But don't get me started on vinegar slash

yeast intolerance symptoms.

Anyway, people who come to my practical

medicine making course will laugh at me because, like, I just, like, preface my how to

make herbal vinegars class with, like, so much like,

anti vinegar stuff.

But no, it is.

It is like a part of.

Part of our diets.

But okay, so, yeah, nettle, oat straw.

And then we kind of get into more sort of like, like, therapeutic herbs that have, like,

high nutrient contents and kind of, again, this broad spectrum of nutrients.

So things like elderberries and hawthorn berries and dandelion roots and dandelion

leaves and, like, you know, there's just like all these amazing kind of.

Yeah, like, nutritive, like, delicious nom nom nom plants, like.

Oh, shazandra.

Oh. Anyway,

but yeah, cheque out the food episode, because I do talk about that in, like, more depth.

Okay.

I just.

I always talk about this, but it is about what someone absorbs, not just about what they eat.

And that comes back to the kind of, like,

digestive system terrain.

Like, what's going on microbiome wise, what's

going on inflammation wise.

Like, what's,

you know, are there, like, structural factors? Like, are there things causing reflux?

Like, there's all of this stuff that influences, like, what we can kind of absorb

from our food and what we can and that, like I said, like, our food intake and our digestive

processes are gonna, like,

feed into our sleep habits.

Okay. And then, yeah, like the last week's episode, I'm not gonna go into it all again,

but this daytime nervous system support with, like, nervine relaxants like lemon balm and

hawthorn chamomile, like, herbs like this can be really effective at just lowering those

levels of our stress responses to kind of help us sleep better at night.

Okay.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

Just on the trauma connection stuff, I feel like I've probably,

like, talked about this stuff enough.

But, like,

we need enough food in order to kind of sleep well.

And not getting enough food is, like, largely to do, like, poverty and ******* capitalism.

But also our stress responses really influence what we eat and what we don't eat.

So supporting our nervous systems is really important.

If someone is a kind of, like in a kind of chronic state of like the fruit tree's

response, for example.

They might just like struggle with like

actually cooking or you know, being able to like navigate their kind of hunger cues in

their body.

Especially if they're experiencing like dissociation, they might just be like, is

food.

You know what I mean?

Do I have a body?

I've definitely been there.

Nervous system states like kind of collapse and exhaustion can obviously like wipe out

someone's like desire or energy to collaborate, cook.

And then like I've mentioned several times, our kind of like highly activated states of

like mobilisation, like fight and flight, like, can often just like wipe out our kind of

body's desire to kind of sit and, you know, cook food and eat food and everything else.

So when we understand our nervous system,

it just has all these amazing knock on effects in terms of enabling us to kind of access the

food we need to have the energy we need to live the lives that we want to try and lead,

you know, or to address our ******* like, world and like all the horrors that are going

on and yeah,

I guess just, yeah, insomnia isn't like,

I have this one deficiency and addressing that will like solve everything.

Like I said, it's this like 5%, 10%.

It's these like small kind of interventions

that can make a difference, like in general.

But like herbs are a kind of interesting like intervention that can like kind of support us

with this like area of what might be impacting our sleep.

Okay, so again,

just reflect on the question, like, does your body actually have what it needs?

Like, and I know like there's like so many structural influences on that, but just in

terms of like, physiologically are you getting enough calories?

Are you getting enough of certain nutrients?

Nutrients,

do you have any signs of deficiency in certain things?

Can you get that, you know, looked at in blood tests?

Like,

yeah, kind of.

How can you kind of support your nervous

system so you feel safe enough to kind of like crave food, let alone cook food and absorb

nutrients and nourishment from that food, because that's what matters.

All right, so the next episode I'm going to talk about inflammation.

And I think in hindsight I think it would have been easier to do an inflammation episode

sooner.

But it's, you know, just like one part of the

puzzle.

And some of the other things that I've

mentioned, like chronic illnesses and hormonal changes, stuff like that also really affect

our sleep.

So I'm going to be talking about that in the next episode and yeah, shameless plug.

Well, I guess it depends on when you're listening to this, but the Herbalism PTSD and

Traumatic Stress course is still open for enrolment at the moment.

I talk about sleep in there, I talk about nutrition, I talk about nutritional herbs, and

then I dive into detail, into all of the plants that I've mentioned so that you can

kind of start working with herbs in your everyday life to support you and your body

navigate this world.

But yeah, please cheque it out if you're curious.

No one is turned away for lack of funds.

That's really, really important to me.

So,

yeah, please cheque it out.

Okay. Thanks for listening.

Thanks so much for listening to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast.

You can find the transcript, the links, all the resources from the

show@solidarityapothecary.org podcast.