How Can I Get Better Sleep?
- Gut Honest Truth
- Jul 1, 2022
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 20
The answer might surprise you...
Welcome to the Gut Honest Truth blog where a Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner gives you digestible information to tackle your chronic health concerns.
That's me, Katie Morra; and in this blog I'm going to break down why sleep matters far more than most people realize — and what you can actually do to improve it.
And as always, working one-on-one for your specific needs is always our top recommendation, check out our appointment options to get started with one of our licensed health care professionals today.
We've all been told to "get more sleep" — but rarely does anyone explain why it matters so much, or how to actually do it. If you don't understand the why behind a recommendation, the follow-through tends to be short-lived. So let's fix that.
What Is Sleep?
Sleep is an altered state of consciousness — a time where interactions with our surroundings are limited and the body shifts into essential maintenance mode. Despite how still we appear, the brain is highly active during sleep, performing functions that are impossible while awake.
Poor sleep quality is directly linked to increased risk of metabolic dysfunction, high blood pressure, obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, anxiety, and depression. It impairs immune function, hormone regulation, gut health, blood sugar balance, and cognitive performance.
Sleep is not optional recovery. It's active, essential biology.
What Happens While You Sleep
The brain consolidates memory and learning — without adequate sleep, we can't form or maintain the neural pathways needed for learning and memory formation.
The glymphatic system clears waste — a kind of "plumbing system" in the brain that allows cerebrospinal fluid to flow through and flush out toxins that accumulate during waking hours. This system is largely disengaged while you're awake, making sleep the only window for this critical detoxification process.
The circadian rhythm regulates everything — your biological clock responds to light and darkness cycles, coordinating wakefulness, body temperature, metabolism, and hormone production through the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the hypothalamus.
REM and non-REM cycles alternate — cycling through roughly every 90-120 minutes, with longer, deeper REM periods toward morning. REM sleep is the most active stage — the "dream state" — and plays a critical role in memory consolidation, emotional processing, and brain development.
What Sleep Directly Impacts
Cognition and concentration
Weight gain and maintenance
Metabolic health and blood sugar
Athletic performance
Heart disease risk
Mental health (depression and anxiety)
Inflammation
Immune health
How to Actually Improve Your Sleep
1. Get Morning Sunlight
Your circadian rhythm is highly sensitive to light and temperature. Viewing natural sunlight within the first 30-60 minutes of waking — and again in the late afternoon before sunset — is one of the most powerful tools for anchoring your sleep-wake cycle. In winter or for early risers, 30 minutes of exposure to a 10,000 lux bright light (like an Amazon Happy Light) first thing in the morning is a solid alternative.
2. Keep a Consistent Schedule
Research consistently shows that regular wake and sleep times — even on weekends — significantly improve sleep quality and daytime energy. Pick reasonable times and stick to them.
3. Be Strategic About Caffeine
Caffeine has an average half-life of 5 hours. That means if you have caffeine at 2pm, you still have a meaningful amount circulating at 7pm. The afternoon slump that makes you reach for that second cup may itself be the result of poor sleep — which that cup then perpetuates. Consider cutting caffeine by noon, or switching to lower-stimulant options like Mud\Wtr or Four Sigmatic mushroom coffee.
4. Reduce Bright Light at Night
Melatonin — the hormone that signals your brain it's time to sleep — is suppressed by blue light from phones, laptops, and tablets. Aim to avoid bright screens for 2-3 hours before bed. If that's not realistic, blue light blocking glasses are a helpful tool. And the TV you're falling asleep to? That's likely disrupting your sleep more than you realize.
5. Optimize Your Sleep Environment
Your environment matters more than most people account for:
Cool room — ideally below 70°F
Dark — blackout shades or a silk eye mask
Quiet — white noise machine, earplugs, or a HEPA air filter
A wind-down routine that supports the parasympathetic nervous system: journaling, reading, magnesium-rich foods, tart cherry juice, or a warm bath
6. Track Your Sleep
Many people don't actually know the quality of their sleep — they assume they slept fine without data to confirm it. Wearables like the Oura Ring can reveal patterns you'd never notice otherwise: frequent waking, poor REM, elevated resting heart rate, and how lifestyle factors like alcohol, stress, and exercise are affecting your recovery night to night.
The Gut-Sleep Connection
Sleep and gut health are bidirectionally connected in ways most people don't realize. Poor sleep disrupts the gut microbiome, increases intestinal permeability, and worsens IBS symptoms. And gut dysfunction — particularly H. pylori, SIBO, and dysbiosis — can directly impair sleep quality through their effect on neurotransmitter production and the gut-brain axis.
Cortisol dysregulation is another major sleep disruptor we assess at GHT — high evening cortisol, a flat cortisol awakening response, and disrupted diurnal rhythms all show up clearly on a DUTCH test and directly explain why patients can't fall asleep, stay asleep, or wake up feeling rested.
If you've been struggling with sleep and haven't looked at your gut or your hormones, you may be missing the root cause entirely.
Sleep is not just rest. It's one of the most powerful levers we have for hormonal, metabolic, immune, and gut health. Being intentional about it is one of the clearest things you can do to support your overall healing.
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