Sleep Is the Real Superpower: The Science + Soul of Deep Rest - Episode 167

Are you tired of being tired? This week’s guest, Shawna Robins, is here to shake up everything you thought you knew about sleep—and show you how to reclaim your energy, naturally and holistically. Shawna is the bestselling author of Powerful Sleep: Rest Deeply, Repair Your Brain, and Restore Your Life  and the visionary behind the women’s platform, Third Spark.

Her story is deeply inspiring: a cancer diagnosis at age 30 launched her into a transformative healing journey—one that eventually led her to discover the true power of sleep and how it connects to our gut, hormones, stress, and even our generational wellbeing. Shawna has since helped thousands break free from caffeine dependence, balance their bodies, and finally experience the kind of restorative sleep we all crave.

And Shawna’s sleep discoveries continued to be deeply personal. She shares how watching her father struggle with Alzheimer’s opened her eyes to the connection between poor sleep and long-term brain health. You’ll hear the powerful ways we can support our brains now to help reduce our risk for neurodegenerative conditions later in life.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why sleep (not hustle) is the real superpower
• How to create a sleep sanctuary and unwind with intention
• What gut health, hormones, and caffeine all have to do with your ability to sleep
• The eye-opening link between deep sleep, brain detox, and Alzheimer’s prevention
• Shawna’s personal rituals and expert tips for getting 8+ hours of deep, restful sleep

Whether you’re a sleep struggler or wellness seeker, this conversation is your invitation to rethink your relationship with rest. You’ll come away with practical tools and empowering wisdom that just might change your nights—and your life.

MORE FROM SHAWNA ROBINS

• Grab her book: Powerful Sleep
• Explore Third Spark: thirdsparkhealth.com
• Follow her on Instagram: @thirdsparkhealth

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Visit theseekingcenter.com for more from Robyn + Karen, plus mega inspo -- and the best wellness + spiritual practitioners, products and experiences on the planet!

You can also follow Seeking Center on Instagram @theseekingcenter.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:54 Sleep Is the Real Superpower: The Science + Soul of Deep Rest

Transcript

Robyn: [00:00:00] I'm Robyn Miller Brecker and I'm Karen Loenser. Welcome to Seeking Center, the podcast. Join us each week as we have the conversations and we, through the spiritual and holistic clutter for you, we'll boil it down to what you need to know now, we're all about total wellness, which to us needs building a healthy life.

Karen: On a physical, mental, and spiritual level, we'll talk to the trailblazers who'll introduce you to the practices, products, and experiences that may be just what you need to hear about to transform your life. If you're listening to this, it's no accident. Think of this as your seeking center and your place to seek your center.

Robyn: And for the best wellness and spiritual practitioners, experts, products, experiences, and inspo, visit theseekingcenter. com. Be honest. How did you sleep last night? If your answer is meh or not great, you're not alone. Most of us are walking around totally exhausted, relying on caffeine and sheer willpower to get through the day. But what if we told you that [00:01:00] sleep not hustle is the real superpower. today we are diving deep into something we all need more of, but often struggle to get.

Restorative, powerful sleep, and we're doing it with someone who's not only cracked the code on quality rest, she's built her entire life's work around helping others unlock it too. Shawna Rob Shawna Robyns is the bestselling author of Powerful Sleep, rest, deeply Repair Your Brain and Restore Your Life.

And honestly, This book is a wellness wake up call in the best way. she's also the CEO of Kaya Health and Wellness. The creator of Irresistibly Healthy and the founder of Third Spark, a platform empowering women to live healthier, longer, and more joyfully.

Shawna's story is more than her impressive titles in her early thirties, she faced a life-changing cancer diagnosis. That experience sparked a journey of healing, education, and transformation that's inspired everything she teaches now, from breaking caffeine addiction to creating a sleep [00:02:00] sanctuary, to restoring your gut and hormones naturally.

Oh, and get this, her sleep discoveries even tie into her father's experience with aging. so if you're caring for loved ones while trying to care for yourself, you're going to wanna listen closely. Pour yourself a cup of herbal tea. Get cozy and prepare to have your mind and possibly your sleep completely transformed.

Hi Shawna. Hi Karen. Robyn. Hi Karen. So we have to start off by asking how did everyone sleep last night? We just have to, 

Karen: how did you sleep? 

Shawna: I actually slept amazing last night. The full moon usually rattles my sleep a little bit. I don't know if it's just the energy of the full moon.

I don't know if it's the extra light coming in through I have these blackout curtains, but somehow the light still makes its way in. But last night was great. but I did a lot of things during the day and we can talk about that. That really helped me prime great sleep at night.

And when I say great sleep, eight hours, deep rem deep sleep. Like making sure that I maxed out all of the data [00:03:00] points that I use to really look and see. And then how did I feel when I woke up? How did checking in with my body, how did I feel? So what about you? 

Karen: Full moon.

Guilty as charged. Really felt that. Last night I did something silly in the architecture of our bedroom and I put a little portal window up really high. We have very high ceilings. Don't do that, folks, because the full moon always comes in and like literally blares right down on me, which I guess in a way I should be grateful for because I'm getting some of that moon energy.

But it really did knock me out of my typical, because I usually do sleep fairly well. The only issue I have is when I wake up very often, have that trouble going back to sleep at three o'clock, magic hour that I think a lot of people resonate. What about you, Robyn? 

Robyn: So I really am looking forward to this conversation because for right now, I'd say on average I get six solid hours and that's good for me.

So last night I did, I got six solid hours. So I felt for me good, I [00:04:00] know I could be doing better. And it was on the heels of the night before not sleeping very well, which for me is more unusual. And, this ties into a whole other conversation, which we may not get to today. We'll probably have another conversation with you about menopause.

Yeah. But I had a glass of wine the night before and it wrecked me. It wrecked me. That is like very sad to me first of all. But it's also accepting and honoring and doing the right thing for my body. So I have to get better at that. So that night before was not good. So last night I slept solidly, but for me that was only six hours.

So I think we have a lot to discuss. 

Karen: let's start with you , Shawna, and talking about your own personal healing journey. You had, as Robyn said, that cancer diagnosis at 30, my gosh, how scary. Yeah. Such an age. How did that lead you to becoming a wellness coach and then to your book, and when, during that whole journey did you realize that [00:05:00] sleep was the really critical and maybe missing piece in your journey?

Shawna: So it was a combination of things. One was just having my two little kids at the time I had two kids, now I have three. But two little kids, cancer diagnosis, the shock of oh my God, I wanna be around to watch my children grow up. And that became my why. And I really had to look at the way in my life I was living that brought this diagnosis into my life, really showing up and taking responsibility for this no family history of cancer.

And so really figuring out, alright, let's break it down, my nutrition. My martyr mom mentality, that was when it was like the height of the superwoman syndrome where I was trying to be everything to everybody, plus working full-time, plus, managing the household and the family and everything else.

And my sleep was just crushed during that time period. Some of it, the hyper vigilance like you touched on for sure, but also just being in adrenal burnout, thyroid burnout, [00:06:00] all of these things that we live with as women that we white knuckle through this time period of our life. and then on top of that, my dad being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease at the age of 62, really young, right?

With again, no family history. And I was sitting with him when they did the cognitive impairment test because we just couldn't figure out what's wrong with him. He stopped being able to spell words to write emails, to tell time. And at first we thought he had a brain tumor and he had a CT scan and that came up negative.

And so they did a cognitive test and I was with him at his neurologist appointment and the doctor said, you have mild cognitive impairment, which is a diagnosis for Alzheimer's disease. And because you have no genetic markers for this is 100% a lifestyle disease for you. And she said, you triggered this with your lifestyle choices and so therefore your longevity lies in your lifestyle choices going forward.

this disease will progress. It's a progressive, illness, [00:07:00] but you can slow it or even halt it for a while by making important lifestyle changes. And I no one had ever said that before. Not to me, not to anybody that I knew. No one ever said that to me throughout my cancer diagnosis and treatment and recovery.

And I thought, this is fascinating. And so I remember I went home and I grabbed every book that I could just voraciously reading. I'm a journalist by nature, so I'm a huge voracious reader. And I just decided, you know what, I need to go back to nutrition school so I can understand all these interplays between stress and sleep and nutrition and, environmental toxins and microplastics and BPA and hormone disruptors and there's so many facets of this.

And so that's what I did. I told my husband, I said I'm going back to school. You're gonna have to hold down the finances for about a year and a half. And he was like, great, do it. If you can heal your own body, help your father and potentially help other people, it is totally worth it.

And so that's what I did. And it was about [00:08:00] three years out of, after I had graduated as a functional nutritionist, that I decided that I wanted to write a book. I wanted to blend both everything I had learned in my education with everything I had learned in real life. By that time, my father was about four or five years into the disease.

He was progressing, but not at the steady rate that most people do with Alzheimer's. And I would say that at that point in time, he still had a decent quality of life in his sixties. Which was great. He got to be there. When my brother was married. He got to be there when my brother and his wife had their first child.

 He got to be there for my kids, birthday parties and soccer games and his language. He had aphasia. His language was definitely somewhat impaired but he was exercising and he was finally, for the first time in 18 years, eating healthy fats, right? Eating avocados and nuts and seeds. Things that he was told were bad, right?

Fats were bad. Everything was non-fat. Yogurt, non-fat milk, everything laced with sugar. I started to [00:09:00] see real improvements in his brain health and and so I decided I wanted to write a book on sleep. 'cause sleep was one of the big factors in his diagnosis. He didn't sleep more than two to three hours a night for probably almost 15 years due to the stress of building companies, selling companies, managing employees just multitudes of things he could fall asleep easily, but he could not stay asleep.

And when he was up, he just decided to get up three o'clock in the morning, two o'clock in the morning, four o'clock in the morning. I'm up, start doing emails. Watch the news, all that stuff. And so read the paper, read Time magazine. And that unhealthy habit, we really had to unwind that.

And so when I started doing research for my book what I stumbled upon at the time, so my book was published in 2020, so this was in 2019, now it's even worse, but at that point in time, in 20 19, 2 thirds of Alzheimer's and dementia patients in the United States that are diagnosed are female.

And I thought, what the heck is going on with women in their sleep? [00:10:00] And that was of course, before I was. Perimenopausal. So I had no idea what that, what it was all about. I'm like, I don't see what the problem is. I lay down, I go to sleep, I wake up, I feel great, right? And then perimenopause hit me like a Mac track, but we can talk about that later.

But that was such a shocking statistic to me. Now, of course, the statistic is that by 2030 more women will be diagnosed with Alzheimer's and dementia than breast cancer. So this is the fastest killer of women as far as disease and illness go. And part of that, of course, there's many overlays of that, but one of the big parts of it is that women stop sleeping, especially in their forties.

And then that sets up all these negative feedback loops. And so I wrote this first book, then I wrote my second book about My journey through cancer. And now my third book, which I have coming out at the end of this month, is called Why Can't I Sleep? And it's specifically for women in midlife because like I said, there's so many overlays of issues of why sleep becomes difficult at this stage in the game.

And it's really important that women [00:11:00] understand what they need to do because otherwise it's like the best prevention for illness and disease going forward. But if they don't get a handle on their sleep in their thirties and forties, there's no way that you're gonna be able to repair the damage that's done in your fifties and sixties.

End of story. 

Robyn: There's so much here, and I will have to say I just turned 50. My friends are all late forties, early fifties. Were. All perimenopausal or menopausal. And sleep is the number one thing we talk about. It really is. Most of the people that I know in this stage and even like mid forties and above, are having such issues sleeping.

And just with what you said, that freaks me out, 

Karen: statistic is frightening. 

Robyn: Wow. 

Karen: That's where we're headed. And it's funny, I think as when you said it earlier, Shawna, so it's like we almost look at sleep as a luxury. Not something we have to have. It's oh, that's right.

I can only like, Robyn, you said, if I can get six [00:12:00] hours of sleep, then I'm good. We know being tired isn't a good thing, but we don't think of it having this impact of disease. I love what you said before about lifestyle disease. I don't think I've ever heard that phrase.

everyone: No. 

Karen: Before. But it's such a wake up call 

Robyn: Yeah. I never actually thought of Alzheimer's that it could be a lifestyle. And I know there are some cases obviously that aren't, but like the fact that it could be a lifestyle disease is, I'm sure a lot of people listening or watching their eyes are open in a different way.

Shawna: Brain inflammation can happen in many different ways, So unfortunately for my father, his level of brain inflammation that then resulted into frontal temporal lobe dementia, which is actually what Bruce Willis has, is brought a lot of attention to that. So there's different types of Alzheimer's and there's different types of dementia.

Dementia is the overarching umbrella. Alzheimer's disease is a specific one in that there's Parkinson's, there's Lew body, there's all sorts of other ones. There's vascular dementia. But. For what my [00:13:00] father was dealing with, ? It was brought on by, like I said, a confluence of events.

Lack of sleep, right? So when you sleep, one of the most important things that happens to your body is that your brain is able to clean itself. cleans itself by making these sticky plaques and tangles. So every day, all day long, you're getting different pathogens that are coming in through your eyes and your nose and your gums and your ears into your brain.

And your brain is biologically well equipped to clean itself with these sticky plaques and tangles. So I call it the self-cleaning oven switch. So by the time you go through your first rem cycle, your brain literally like locks itself, like one of those old self-cleaning oven switches.

I wish we still had that, I don't know, maybe your oven does, but mine doesn't anymore, where you would lock it and press the button and walk away, and then three hours later come back and all the goo would be gone and everything would be clean in your oven. That's exactly what your brain does during your REM cycles, which is why it's really important to have four to five solid REM cycles every single night.

 Because if you don't those sticky plaques and tangles are [00:14:00] left in the brain. That's the negative thing about waking up the way women wake up in the middle of the night multiple times, sometimes once, sometimes two or three even to get up and use the bathroom, right? Like I coach with women that have to get up several times at night, or the light wakes 'em up, or the dog wakes up, or the partner snoring, wakes them up, or the kids wake them up, right?

And then you can't get back to sleep. So those sticky plaques and tangles are left in there. The brain is not properly cleaned. You have different kinds of pathogens that are in there, viruses and bacteria and things. So all of these things lead to brain inflammation, Then during the day, you're exhausted.

So what do you do is you reach for maybe a little more coffee, maybe a. Candy bar or a chocolate or something sweet, maybe you crave more carbs, right? That's all happening because your brain is tired. It's dirty, in effect because it hasn't been able to flush itself and it hasn't been able to remove those sticky plaques and tangles.

And also, your brain is looking for a quick hit of glucose and to keep it [00:15:00] awake. And so it's now telling you that it needs some carbs, it needs some sugar, it needs some caffeine, and then that sets you up on a negative feedback loop because then that now messes up with your blood sugar levels, and your glucose levels.

And so that's gonna keep you up at night. So the whole thing is this negative feedback loop. And this is what my dad was in, right? We called him the cookie monster because he literally had a box of cookies in his desk drawer that he would eat and snack on throughout the day to keep him awake. He would also take a power nap in his office.

30 minutes, he would have to lay down every single day on a couch or on a chair in his office just to get through the day. And people ask me all the time, are naps bad? Yeah, they're bad if you literally cannot stay awake during the day. they're actually a red flag for dementia and Alzheimer's.

Robyn: he was 

Shawna: so proud of his power naps, but they were like his lifeblood because he literally couldn't get through the day without them. That's not a good sign. So you have all of these negative things that start to happen to you [00:16:00] when you are sleeping under this seven straight hours is what we need.

That's typically what an adult brain needs to clean itself properly. 

Karen: Oof. 

Robyn: Wow. 

Karen: Shawna is part of the problem and this rise in dementia and all these mental. Diseases disease. do you attribute that to all of the information overload that we're getting? Like again, 50 years ago, the numbers were not like this, right?

So what do you attribute that increase in these diagnoses and the impact also on our sleep? 

Shawna: I think you already touched on it in the beginning of this, right? The hypervigilance. 

Our nervous system doesn't, when I say are, women typically, our nervous system doesn't have a chance to recalibrate itself during the day.

So if you think back to prior generations, maybe not our mothers, but maybe our grandmothers or great-grandmothers, they had hobbies. After menopause, because typically menopause, like you're done, right? Biologically a hundred years ago, right? Okay. The average age expectancy for women in the United States was [00:17:00] 47 and menopause was 40.

So you didn't live very long after you went through menopause. Biologically. Once you're done procreating, the body was done. now the average life expectancy for women in the US is 82 and menopause is 50, which is why I named my company Third Spark. What are you gonna do with that 30 plus years that our generation now has after menopause, but.

 Our our grandmothers and great-grandmothers would garden, they would knit, they would sit outside and watch, children play, right? Like they would do things that were calmer, more relaxing. They would play, bridge. We don't do that. Maybe the idea that in your seventies you might do that, right? Or in your eighties you might, but not in your forties, your fifties, your sixties. No way. We wanna be vibrant, we wanna be healthy, we wanna be, adventurous, joyful, passionate, fun. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

But at the same time, we have to find ways to wind down so that our adrenal glands can repair themselves. 'cause one of the [00:18:00] best ways that they repair themselves is sleeping at night. And so if you are in adrenal burnout already during the day, you're not gonna get restorative sleep at night. Everything is interconnected.

And once you hit menopause and your ovaries closed down, your adrenal glands are doing everything before they were sharing the load with your ovaries that were making your sex hormones. Now your adrenal glands are front and center, the only form of any kind of hormonal production you have. So you have to baby them.

And this hyper vigilance, we have to find a way as women to retrain our brains to let things go. So I talk a lot with my clients about developing stress reduction techniques during the day that help them sleep better at night, right? It's all about if people always ask me, what's the secret sauce to great sleep?

And I always say, your daytime choices, that's what sets you up for great sleep or not at night. And so what are you doing to manage your stress during the day and where can you build in [00:19:00] time? I don't care if you have to book it into your calendar, right? 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there. Where are you?

Just doing nothing. 

Robyn: , People don't even know what to do with that. 

Shawna: when I first started with what I call my do nothing time, I have a chair right here in my office. Actually, it sits, looks out the window. I literally sit there for 10 minutes.

Sometimes it's painful. I have to set an alarm on my phone to let me know when the 10 minutes is up. I just sit there and look out the window. I breathe. Sometimes I pray. I do a gratitude list. I watch the birds. Sometimes I just look at the flowers, but I literally have to schedule time in my day where I do nothing.

Robyn: It's so sad, but so relatable. We all get that. 

You talked about things that you can do during your day like that. What are other ways that people can set themselves up for a good night's sleep? And I think another aspect of that is nutrition and that gut sleep connection.

So I don't even know where to start. 'cause I think there's probably so many different ways. What do you think? 

Shawna: morning sunlight. 

Robyn: Thank 

Shawna: you. [00:20:00] That is where you start, You open your eyes in the morning and the first thing you need to do is get sunlight in them for 10 minutes.

Now that could be sitting in a sunny window in your kitchen, having your coffee or your tea. That could be sitting outside in your yard or in your garden. That could be walking your dog around the block. That could be walking your kid to school. It doesn't matter. But you need to get first morning sunlight.

So when you get up, whatever time that is in your eyes, no hat, no sunglasses for 10 minutes. What that does is it tells the pineal gland right here, located in the top of your forehead. It sets your sleep wake cycle. So your pineal gland knows 12 hours from this moment, it's gonna start making melatonin.

That's really important. That's how we've always lived as human beings. We've always lived as part of nature. We've always lived according to where the sun is in the sky. Now, if you don't have sunlight, , I went through a period of having foggy, disgusting weather, where it's gray all day in my town.

you can use light in your house, right? Turn on your kitchen light, turn on your bedroom light, turn on your bathroom light. If you have one [00:21:00] of those little sunlight that you can buy right where you just get a little vitamin D light, just 10 minutes, put it on your kitchen table, drink your coffee right in front of it.

But you want to get light in your brain through your eyes every morning, first thing, okay? That's number one, You'll see a huge difference in your sleep if you can get that. Number two then is your diet and nutrition. I completely agree with that. So the more that we eat sugar and carbs throughout the day, the more blood sugar goes up and down into these spikes.

So if you are going to be eating simple carbs and you're going to be eating sugar, like I can't give up chocolate. it's like medicine for me, especially the darker the better, but I know that I can't have it. After about two o'clock in the afternoon because the caffeine will interfere with my sleep, I also have to have it at the end of a meal so that it doesn't spike my blood sugar. So I make sure that I have something for lunch, right at 12 or one o'clock. Salad smoothie, something with protein, You've gotta [00:22:00] get enough protein. I know we hear that all the time, but one of the reasons why we need protein, especially as we age, is not only for our muscles, but it's for our melatonin production.

So melatonin is made from protein. If you don't get enough, you won't make enough. Really important. And then I have my dark chocolate after I'm done eating so that I have all the good fiber and all the healthy protein that's already in my digestive system. And so then it won't spike my blood sugar afterwards.

And then, the next part of that is making sure that you're not snacking after you're done with dinner. You have to turn off eating and even drinking. I can't even tell you how many women I coach with that are like, I didn't drink any water all day long, and I get so thirsty at night.

So I fill a 32 ounce water bottle and I drink it and I keep it next to my bed, but I don't know why I don't sleep well. Yeah, see, drink, you have to get your hydration during the day. So from seven in the morning until about seven at night, you're hydrating. After that, you have to cut it off.

You also have to cut off your food after dinner. No ice cream, popcorn [00:23:00] treats, snacks, a night cap. Any of that stuff is gonna interfere with your sleep because if you're digesting, you're not resting. Digestion takes a lot of effort for the body. Your body cannot do what it needs to do to rest properly if it's too busy digesting.

Karen: Did you say earlier that melatonin. is made from protein. 

Shawna: Yeah. Melatonin is synthesized from protein. It's done in your gut, actually. And so the other thing you need to think about is how healthy your gut health is, because if your gut health is off, your sleep will be off.

Karen: I'm actually thinking about the little kids, like the little ones who don't eat enough protein and why at night they may not be sleeping. 

Shawna: That's a big factor with children. Yep. So sometimes even like for my daughter who's 12, I will give her some cottage cheese in the evening before she goes to bed.

Not a big meal, but just something that's got a nice hit of 20 grams of protein. Or maybe some apples and some peanut butter or almond butter, something like that, that will [00:24:00] give her some protein so that not only she can settle down and have steady blood sugar through the night.

But also be able to make what she needs. If she didn't get it during the day, the body now has the ability to use it to make some melatonin. Yeah. One of the worst things you wanna do is to take synthetic melatonin, like over the counter melatonin because it's a hormone, first of all, it's not FDA regulated, so you have no idea what kind of quality you're getting in it.

And second of all, if you're gonna take a hormone, your body's not gonna make it. So it's really important that you don't mess around with taking any kind of melatonin. You do better to just create the environment inside your body where you can make enough on your own. 

Robyn: What else do you suggest in terms of gut health that people should be considering?

To improve it. 

Shawna: So gut health is really amazing when it comes to sleep. It's the chicken or the egg. Do you not sleep because you have poor gut health or do you have poor gut health because you don't sleep? Because they both play a part when in one another. Gut health is also transitory, right?

You can go through a really stressful time in your life, or you can go through a period of a lot of illnesses where you have to take a lot of antibiotics [00:25:00] and so your gut health goes like backwards and you gotta pull it forwards, So I feel like it's one of those things where you're always in a maintenance mode where you're either healing or you're maintaining or you're building.

 So I always tell my clients that the two ways that they can support their gut health, one is to seeded and the other one is to feed it. So gut health needs to be seeded with different types of probiotics. And you get that mostly through the diversity of your experience in life. So if you are spending time gardening you're getting microbiome, like you're getting microbes in the soil.

If you're hiking, you're getting it in the dirt. If you're walking on the beach with no shoes on, you're getting it from the sand. So the more time you spend in nature, actually the more your body has a diversity of different kinds of flora. It's really important. Now, if you work in an office space and you drive in your car or commute on a train all the time, you're probably gonna have to take some level of probiotics.

I love probiotics for women because we have so many different [00:26:00] microbiomes in our body. We just have our gut, but we also have our vaginal microbiome, our mouth, our eyes, our ears, our skin, like we have it everywhere. And, it's really important that you're utilizing a probiotic that's really great for women made by a good solid company that has good reviews like Jaro or something like that.

 and you take that every single day. 

Even when you feel great. 

Still seeding your gut bacteria, Then once a month or twice a month, try to eat foods you don't usually eat. Go to a different type of restaurant that you don't eat at. Go to a Korean restaurant. If you don't eat there, go to a Thai restaurant if you don't eat there or go to an international food store and buy things you don't typically buy.

Buy fermented plums. Just try to eat things, even if it's fruits and vegetables. You'd be surprised how many people really only eat the same 20 things all the time. You go to the grocery store and you just buy the same brands and you just buy the same, maybe you only buy green peppers.

You don't buy red or yellow peppers, or you only buy arugula and you [00:27:00] never buy spinach or kale, or vice versa, right? It's like we get stuck in our route. Just same thing over and over again. And so to break that up I think is really important.

Like last night I made an arugula pesto pasta with chickpea flour, noodles. It probably wasn't my best, would've been better with basil. It was a little bit sour with the arugula, and I put a can of white beans in the pasta. My kids are like, why are there beans in my pasta? And I'm like, because we're just trying to eat something different than just the same old way that we have pesto pasta.

And they're like, why are the noodles sticky? I was like, because they're chickpea flour. Just try it. And they didn't love it, but they didn't hate it at the same time, because it's just so important to just try new ways of eating things and get out of these reps that we have built for ourself.

So that's the kind of the seeding part, And then the feeding part is having polyphenols, so [00:28:00] your gut bacteria absolutely loves polyphenols. What does that mean? That means rainbow colored fruits and vegetables. So I always say that to my clients, to my children, to my friends. Eat the rainbow, Every day. Think about it. Did I eat anything red today? Did I eat anything purple today? Did I eat anything yellow today? Think about the colors that you're consuming because fruits and vegetables that are brilliant in their colors, especially in their skins are going to be like cheeseburgers for your gut bacteria.

They love them. So that's one of the best ways that you can keep them healthy. 

Karen: I love that. I've never heard of it that way. Thinking about my daily diet going, oh, me too. And 

Robyn: and that person who eats the same things over and over, we all are. 

Shawna: we all are. But trying to find new things. Like I started buying Kiwis, I'm like, what have we had that's green today? Outside of lettuce, Trying to find different colored things. 

To mix up in our diet every day. 

Robyn: So smart. You mentioned hormones. That [00:29:00] sleep can definitely is tied to our hormone balance or imbalance. So how can we start to look at that and potentially reset that naturally?

Shawna: So from the experts that I've interviewed on this subject, and then just living my own perimenopause to menopause, I'm 53 now. I started perimenopause at 47. Like I said, for me it, the wheels came off the bus. I hit perimenopause like overnight, and it just, my hair fell out. My thyroid stopped working, my sleep stopped.

I had insomnia for three years. I had skin rashes. it's like I had frozen shoulder, I had tinnitus, I had everything that was in the book, overnight. And and it took me five different doctors to find bioidentical hormones. Really challenging for me.

Because the birth control pill, which was offered to me by my OB, GYN, was not something that worked for me. And the, both the patch and the gel that I used, my body just didn't absorb it. My estrogen levels didn't really change. so for me, it was a kind of a [00:30:00] tricky thing. And I'm now finally on, I finally have found the method that works for me, but oh my goodness it's not an easy journey to go through.

Typically one of the first things that's impacted is a woman's sleep. When they start to hit this, and now we of course all know that perimenopause and start 10 years before menopause. I didn't know that when I was in my forties. I don't think there was as much information out there. Menopause as people say menopause is having a moment, I hope that menopause is having a movement.

I agree with that. my middle daughter's 20 and I can't imagine not sharing with her my journey. My mother never talked to me. My grandmother never said anything to my mother. It was like just something that you just dealt with quietly. On your own. And so hopefully that shifted now.

And, there's more public information and there's just more acceptance about it. so not only does the drop in estrogen and then progesterone, like progesterone is that happy hormone that just soothes your nervous system, right? And so [00:31:00] when you stop ovulating and you're not making any progesterone, it's not like you make a, oh, like estrogen.

Oh, maybe you make some, and then you just, it drops down a little bit, but then maybe you make some more during, per perimenopause. Progesterone just like disappears overnight, And so all of a sudden, this thing that you've had since you were 10, 11, 12 years old is just gone. And you start to get panic attacks, you start to have anxiety.

You start to get this restless brain that's spinning all night long, you get hot flashes from having no progesterone, you have mental health issues from having no progesterone, ? It affects everything. I even coach with women in their seventies and eighties that start using progesterone again just to be able to sleep at night.

My mother's 77 and was just prescribed micronized progesterone so that she could sleep. So it's really an important hormone to help you be able to sleep. With that said, estrogen, on the other hand, if you don't have enough estrogen in your system, you don't make enough serotonin in your gut.

And so estrogen is really tied to the sleep as well, not just through the hot flashes and night sweats, like [00:32:00] regulating our temperature in the body, but also just you've gotta have enough serotonin to be able to feel like a whole human being and also be able to relax and fall asleep at night. So it's a two part process.

Blood work is really not all that important when it comes to perimenopause and menopause. It's more important to understand how you feel. I can't tell you, three of the five doctors I went to said, you can have an antidepressant no problem. But we looked at your blood work and you're not in menopause, so there's nothing that we can do for you besides, give you Zoloft.

And I was like, this is ridiculous. I know what the issue is, this fading level of hormones that I have, I need help. it can be a real struggle. Telehealth has definitely come around in the past two to three years where now women can have access to it without actually going and seeing a doctor.

If you have high blood pressure and you know that because you have a blood pressure cuff that's telling you how high blood pressure you're gonna get medication, nobody's gonna do any blood work on you, [00:33:00] So if you walk in there and say, my hair's falling out, I have heart palpitations, I have night sweats, I can't sleep.

Why tell somebody you're not a year with no period, so you don't get any HRT. It's crazy. So now I think the medical community, because of the amount of societal pressure that's on them starting to come around, but for me, finding access to bioidentical hormones was huge and it really was able to turn my sleep and my overall wellbeing just in my body started to feel like myself again.

And so I highly recommend that if sleep is just somehow disappeared for you or for any of your listeners. I think that's one of the first things that you need to think about is potentially. Any kind of hormone shift that you might be undergoing. 

Robyn: Yeah. And did you end up having to find doctors that specialized in menopause?

No, 

Shawna: because there are none. Zero in my town. Wow. Zero. I'd have to drive two hours to find a doctor that had menopause [00:34:00] training. Yeah. That's something that's really saying something, isn't it? Yeah. Then the other factor that happens of course during perimenopause and menopause is that sleep apnea for women.

Goes up through the roof. Yeah. And so it happens during pregnancy and postpartum and then it happens again during peri and post menopause. And so finding a sleep study clinic that actually understands women's sleep numbers and oxygenation levels is also very challenging. So a lot of women deal with sleep apnea during this time, and they don't get the help that they need, and they don't understand why they're not sleeping well, even though they might be doing progesterone or they might be exercising, or they might be getting morning sunlight.

They're still waking up multiple times at night and they don't know why. And so sleep apnea really increases during this stage in life. And it's really important that women get help with that. 

Karen: Sean, I was just gonna ask you, we haven't seen your book just yet, but is there 

Robyn: The new one? 

Karen: Yeah.

Is there a checklist that you have for us? Yes. Yes. Writing all this down it's 

Shawna: chapter after chapter. Each chapter [00:35:00] has a different theme, insomnia, sleep apnea, menopause, like every chapter has a theme. And I've interviewed over a hundred different experts. Sleep scientists, sleep doctors just experts in every field so that I can add them and their specialty and what they offer for women.

Even when it comes down to for example, a sleep score or a sleep test that you might do where a doctor might dismiss you and say, oh, your numbers were fine. That's calibrated based on what typical numbers are for a man. So you have to know how to read your own sleep score to understand, we have to be the CEO of our own health.

everyone: Across 

Shawna: the board, there is just no question about it. And so you have to be armed with the right information so you can read your own sleep study and go, there it is. I knew I had something. There it is. And then you know how to fix it yourself. 

Karen: Yeah. I'm just thinking even as you're talking about my own mom who had so many of these symptoms that never put it together, that any of [00:36:00] this was relevant.

Again, 'cause her mother really never talked to her about it. So thank goodness we have this book that you can guide us through because all of these things are horrible. You add them all together and it's overwhelming. 

Shawna: It is. And that's why so many women are sick, And yes, we live longer than men, but we're actually sicker than men in our seventies and eighties.

So what I really wanna do is help women have a better quality of life as they age, 

This is not so much about like living to be 120, I don't think, but it's about really living with vibrancy and energy and passion and purpose. Because this 30 plus years that we have been given after menopause is such a gift.

If we can find our purpose for why we're here on the planet, And I've interviewed so many women in their eighties that say that this is some of the most prolific time they've ever had. Yeah. Either in a creative field or in their career or whatever it is that they're passionate about.

And so for [00:37:00] me, I just wanted to create a book that synthesized all this different information as well as things like, what about mouth taping? What about supplements? What about that? there's so many things out there. That's right. I wanted to be able to vet them all and put them in a place and in a way that makes it really easy to understand because what works for Robyn or for you, Karen, is not gonna work for me.

there's not a one size fits all. This is a unique blueprint you have to build for yourself. Sometimes there's a little trial and error. Is a sleep divorce gonna work for my relationship with my partner or not? Everybody's different. And so finding the different types of scenarios that work for you and your body is what matters the most.

Robyn: And when in talking about getting that good night's sleep, what is the most ideal way? That people can create a sleep sanctuary for themselves, like setting them up, even just their space and so forth. What do you recommend? 

Shawna: My sleep sanctuary [00:38:00] is so ridiculous. My husband's like he could sleep on a couch with the lights and the TV on.

For me, it's like it has to be a certain way. So let's start with the most important. There's three most important things when it comes to your sleep, sanctuary, light, sound, and temperature. Those are the things you need to be focusing on. Number one, if you can see your hand in front of your face while you're sleeping, your room is too light, You need to be able to have some way to black out all the lights. When I go stay in a hotel room, I'm literally putting t-shirts over TVs and covering up the clock and putting tape over. It's like ridiculous, but if there's any light, I cannot sleep, My brain cannot make melatonin the way it needs to if I don't have it completely pitch black dark in my room.

So that's number one. Whether that's blackout curtains, whether that's a way that Karen, you can get a, sun cover for the skylight that you put up. I love that you can lay in bed and look at the stars, but that's probably not always best for your sleep. So if there's some way that you can, cover that, even just [00:39:00] sleeping with an eye mask, That might be the answer. For you, just so that you have something that blacks out that light. So that's first. The second thing is, noise, Whether it's a partner that snores, whether it's a dog that wrestles and wakes you up, whether it's, your neighbors, if you live in a big city, having the city noise.

So for me. Some people love to sleep with earplugs. That's great. They didn't work for me. I tried them. For a while. I slept with a fan, turned against the wall. That was helpful. And then when I started having hot flashes, I turned the fan right on me and that was helpful. But I've actually found now that I'm using this app by called Sleep Space.

I met the doctor that actually invented this app and I love it and it plays dynamic pink noise all night long. And so I put my phone on airplane mode and I make sure that it's not anywhere near my bed so that I don't get any light or any disturbance. I don't want any EMFs. I make sure I turn off everything, put on do not disturb, but I listen to all night long.

I listen to this dynamic pink noise [00:40:00] what is pink noise for those? So pink noise. So there's different levels of sound. And so there's gray noise, there's white noise, there's brown noise. Pink noise is just a level of consistent sound for me. It helps me sleep the best.

When I look at my REM cycles, when I look at my deep sleep levels and the percentage that I sleep using pink noise has completely allowed them to shift in ways that I couldn't get before just using white noise or gray noise. 

 so that's been really helpful. So I would say play around with different vibrations of noise.

My daughter loves gray noise. She absolutely loves that. For me, it's just not what my brain needs to hear during the night to help me really stop with that hypervigilance. That's where it's most impactful is that I'm not waking up at every little thing. My kids are old enough now. If they have something that they need help with they're gonna have to figure it out on their own, or they're gonna have to get up and go back to bed.

'cause I'm sleeping. And mommy's sleep is one of the most important [00:41:00] things that not only does mommy need, but everybody else in the family needs as well too. So that's the second thing. And then the third thing is temperature. You really want your room to be between like 65 and 68 degrees. And so for some people that's sleeping with a window open.

For some people it's sleeping with the air conditioning on. You could have a chili pad that's on your mattress, which are great because you can, your temperature can be different than your partner's temperature. Those are really wonderful to use. You can, like I said, put a fan and face it towards you.

All of that stuff is really important. 

Robyn: this is so good. I'm so interested in trying the pink noise. I actually sleep with bin narrow beats. 

Shawna: Uhhuh. I have clients that love those 

Robyn: and I do love it. because it works, so I haven't tried anything else. it's so interesting if for some reason I have it on shuffle and repeat but if for some reason the repeat is not on, I wake up as soon as it's off. Yep. I cannot sleep with just silence. That does not work for me. No, I'm glad to hear that you recommend [00:42:00] sound in general, 

Shawna: Yeah. I really do. Because again, it comes back to this hyper vigilance like that you touched on in the very beginning and we've, tried to unpack it.

We our nervous systems are so wired for other people's needs, and so the second that we hear something, Is somebody coughing? Is somebody throwing up? Is everything okay? Does the dog need to go outside? Does this, we're constantly doing this all the time and we can't fully rest.

And so by taking the sounds away, it actually allows the nervous system to calm down. 

Robyn: It makes so much sense. It's so funny 'cause our daughter thinks we're crazy. You can hear the music from a distance and she's Ugh, your music. But I'm like, she listens to something too, but she thinks our music is weird, 

Shawna: And you know what, I think that naturally as humans, We tend to be attracted to the things that hopefully support our sleep. And if that's what's supportive for her sleep and that's right. What's supportive for your sleep is something different. That's right.

And I think the more, we get our daughters to understand that this, their bodies are [00:43:00] unique, their needs are unique, and really honoring that and taking responsibility for that. Like for me in the evening I really have to have some sort of warm bath or shower. I really need to turn off the blue light an hour before bed and get in some sort of water.

It's so relaxing for me and not everybody's like that, But for me, this is my process. This is how I work. And the more I know this about my body and the more I can support my body, the better my body and the happier she can be and the better she can function. 

Robyn: And with the water too, in my opinion, you're also clearing your own energy, 

Shawna: Of course. 

Robyn: Yeah, 

Shawna: of course. And I just have time to myself. where, you know and for some people it could be reading a book or it could be That's right.

Knitting, it could be crocheting, as long as it's not watching tv, binge watching on Netflix or shopping on your computer, or doom scrolling on your phone. Anything other than that. Some people do yin yoga at night, or they [00:44:00] do, breath work, or they do meditations. It's all great.

You just need to do you, whatever makes you happy, whatever's supportive for you, that's what's gonna be supportive for your sleep. 

Karen: your journey is just so fascinating. I'm thinking about where we started and you talking about being you starting out as a reporter and then having this real soul conversation, soul connection with your dad, who really sparked this whole journey for you into a whole new place and now you're helping so many people.

what's the spiritual lesson that you've learned during this journey 

Shawna: Ah, so many. My dad, I wrote about it in my first book. He was truly my north star even before he got sick. He was such a larger than life, human, charismatic and such a leader and so kind.

And I hit the jackpot. I feel bad for, especially women that don't have good father figures. I was so lucky to have such an amazingly strong, kind, loving, supportive [00:45:00] father, and I. Helping him have a quality of life as I watched him descend into Alzheimer's was such a joy and a privilege for me.

It's not a disease I would ever wish on my worst enemy. It was just a horrific way to lose him. But he was so brave. He changed absolutely everything that he could possibly change. His mindset, his diet, his nutrition, his habits, he really just leaned into all the changes that I recommended he make and I was so proud of him.

And so the day that he died, he was on hospice at home. He had been unable to eat anything for a while. And he loved drinking scotch. We were s Scottish as our background. And so I remember I was sitting with the hospice nurse and I was holding his hand and occasionally he would open his eyes and I said to her, is it okay if I put a little scotch in his mouth?

And she was like, not gonna make a difference, go ahead. And so at that point in time, I think [00:46:00] she'd given him some morphine and he was sleeping. And so I just took a little bit of his favorite chavis and I just put it on his lips and all of a sudden he's like licking his lips and he just had the biggest smile on his face, right?

He knew what that was and he knew that someone was there. And it was just such a beautiful way for the two of us to connect. And I don't know, I still. Feel that he is such a big presence in my life. I have dreams that I'm with him. Whenever I'm in nature. I talk to him. The day that he died, my brother left the house and went home and was washing dishes and he looked out his window and he lives in a very suburban area in Orange County and California.

And there was a hawk. That was just sitting he has a little fountain. It was just sitting there staring at him through his window. And so it was such an odd animal to have, Like in this really suburban area. And so now I see hawks all the time. It's amazing. They're all around, they're all around my mother's home.

They're all around me when I'm walking. [00:47:00] I see them in trees. It's really just incredible. So I really feel so much like he's still such a part of my life and guiding me and helping me, and yeah, just sharing his story, I wish I didn't have his story to share with everyone. I wish he was still here.

But the idea that he can create this legacy and be such this motivating factor through me, not only in sharing his story and using it through my book, but just in my own personal life journey. it's just been such a gift. 

Robyn: Think about even, I know from this conversation how many people are gonna have learned so much because of him through you.

Shawna: Yeah. It's amazing. Profound. It's amazing. 

Robyn: That just brings I tears to my eyes. I have one more, more like logistical ish question for people. When we talked about getting older and sleep does the time that you, in quote, should sleep increase as you get older? So in your seventies and eighties, should you be [00:48:00] sleeping more than seven or eight hours?

Shawna: Yes, but it becomes very challenging. Most women at that stage in the game are sleeping under five hours a night, and a lot of that has to do with, gut impairment, Just through years and years of antibiotic use and microplastics and endocrine disruptors and all sorts of things, If you're really not focusing on your gut health through your fifties and sixties, by the time you get to your seventies and eighties. You have a lot less diversity in your gut flora, and so your immune system and everything that's happening in there and you're synthesizing melatonin becomes more challenging.

Also, women tend to eat less and less protein as they get older. They eat less and less food, but they eat less and less protein. I coach with so many women in their seventies and eighties that are plant-based just because they just don't feel like eating chicken or meat or anything again, which is fine.

I don't have a problem with that, but they're not getting enough protein. They need to make sure that they are doing that so that they can keep their muscles strong and that they have enough building blocks, not [00:49:00] only for melatonin, but also for serotonin. So you have to just really dial in each decade, I feel like you really just have to keep dialing in on those healthy habits and making those healthy choices.

Otherwise, the body is simply not gonna have what it needs to be able to sleep while at night. 

Robyn: Yeah. I didn't realize that by the way. In your seventies and eighties that it's even harder to sleep 

Shawna: well. And a lot of the women that I work with are boomers in that stage. And they weren't given HRT, They were part of the whole generation that was told that it causes breast cancer. You can't have it. And so they've gone 30 plus years with no estrogen and progesterone. And so the body, it takes its toll on the brain and the heart and the bones and all of these things with not having any kind of hormone replacement.

So we're lucky, fortunate in the fact that we've all come to recognize now that was just a bunch of bs. And so things are changing for us, but for our mothers not so much. And so getting them [00:50:00] up to date on the new data and getting them access to things. I have a woman that I work with who's 83, who just started estrogen for the first time, and she's my UTIs are better. I don't have urinary incontinence at night anymore. My hot flashes are gone, my skin looks better, my bone density scans are better. She's just blown away. Like, why didn't I have this 25 years ago? This is so frustrating for me. But at least now, doctors are starting to come around with the fact that you can't age out of using hormones now.

Robyn: Wow. That's huge too. Yeah. What's the best way for people to continue to learn from you and potentially work with you, and can you talk about your new book, when that is coming out, as well as your other books.

Shawna: thank you. My company is Third Spark. The website is third Spark health.com. And I'm all over social media talking about all of this all the time. At Third, spark Health, so I'm also on YouTube. I put all of the interviews that I [00:51:00] do with all the experts up on my YouTube channel, as well as on Spotify.

Everything's all under third spark, so yeah, connect with me, reach out to me, send me an email, whatever however, is best DM me like I am, I'm everywhere. Because I feel like this information should be provided to all women. In my first book, powerful Sleep, which you can download on my website, I talk about how I am on a mission to help millions of women sleep again, and that truly is my mission, which is why I have so much free content that's out there because I don't believe that there should be any barriers of entry for any woman.

Regardless of your socioeconomic status, regardless of your ethnicity, regardless of the country you live in, the part of the world that you live in, it does not matter. One in four women globally deal with insomnia. This is a female issue, and so whatever I can do to provide support and information I'm here for that.

Karen: Oh, inspiring. Shawna, we've heard so much from you just in this last [00:52:00] hour, so thank you. 

Shawna: Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. And the new book will be all the end of the month, the end of May, hopefully, if not, maybe the beginning of June. And it's called Why Can't I Sleep? And it's for women specifically in midlife that struggle with sleep issues.

And like I said, it's a collaborative piece not just my experience, but of all the experts that I've interviewed through writing for Authority Magazine. And I just want women to have the information so that they can make the best choices for themselves. 

Robyn: And we'll make sure to be supporting that when it comes out.

We'll make sure that everyone has all the links that they need within our show notes. We know that we will be talking to you more. Absolutely. You have so much to share, and we're really grateful for all you're doing and to now be connected. 

Shawna: for having me. I think your show is wonderful.

I love The aspect of not only energy and spirituality, but also the nuts and bolts of what needs to happen in a woman's day-to-day life to stay on track. And, you did touch on alcohol and I know we didn't cover [00:53:00] that. Yes. But I think, alcohol's a huge sleep buster, especially in midlife and beyond.

But I think that as long as you know that, I had to break up with wine, I can still drink other forms of alcohol.

Wine. And I had to break up and it was very sad and I cried. but I think again, it just comes down to the fact that you get to decide. How you wanna live and you get to decide how you wanna sleep and you get to decide how you wanna age.

It's this authentic living, this authentic aging. And if you want to have wine with your friends and you know that, that means that you're gonna wake up two, three times a night, fine. Just accept it. Just do it. And just know that's gonna be the ramifications of it. But don't go through your life wondering why you haven't slept in 20 years, but yet you're still drinking three glasses of That's right.

Robyn: it's so true. 

Shawna: Just be honest with yourself. Exactly. And that's okay. Live authentically and to whatever works for you. 

Karen: And all the things that you've given us today I think many of us know that intuitively, however, the things [00:54:00] like getting, the daylight, getting the protein, Those are nuggets that were real aha moments for me that I think we can all take with us. And it's doing that inventory right, as you said, like with every decade that goes by, even if you're in your thirties right now, just starting to think about some of these habits that you can start to introduce.

So it's not like this holy shit moment. That's right. That's right. At least then you have a little bit of that forewarning to start to build in those lifestyle habits ahead of time. So 

Robyn: And thanks for putting it all together in your books and on third Spark and all of that, so 

Shawna: My pleasure.

My pleasure. Thank you. Like I said, more women I can help, the better this planet will be. Elevating women is the answer to so many problems on our planet right now. And if women can't sleep, they cannot be the powerful force that we need them to be. 

Robyn: So well said. Amen. Yes. All 

Shawna: right. Thank you. Thank you both.