This Was DESTROYING My Life

Dr. Berg’s Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast

Dr. Eric Berg

Health & Fitness

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Insomnia is torture! In this podcast, I’ll share several sleep tips to address the real reason why you’re waking up at night. Find out how to sleep better at night and eliminate sleep problems for good.

Cortisol should be at its lowest point at 2 a.m., but for some, it’s at its highest! This can cause night-waking and other sleep problems that can interfere with your day. Sleep medication can worsen this problem by causing your cortisol to rise even more.

Magnesium glycinate before bed can help lower cortisol, which can help you sleep better at night. Twitching and cramping can signify a magnesium deficiency.

Low blood sugar can increase cortisol and cause you to wake up at night. If your diet is high in carbs, your blood sugar may decrease while sleeping, and your body will increase cortisol levels to normalize your blood sugar.

If you wake up at 2 a.m., evaluate what you ate the day before. Refined starches, MSG, alcohol, snacking, and eating late can disturb sleep.

Salt cravings can signify a sodium deficiency. Sodium helps lower cortisol, so add more sea salt to your meals throughout the day if you’re having salt cravings.

Here are a few other sleep tips that can help you sleep better at night:

•Avoid suspense and action movies before bed

•Avoid blue light before bed

•Get plenty of sunlight during the day

•Go for long walks

•Exercise to release excess energy

The liver detoxifies the body between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. Night waking during this time frame could signify a problem with the liver. Milk thistle before bed can help.

Restless legs syndrome can be related to a B1 or magnesium deficiency. Lower your carb intake and increase your consumption of these nutrients. A high pulse rate could signify a potassium deficiency, which can also interfere with sleep.

Apple cider vinegar before bed can help stabilize blood sugar for better sleep, but make sure it’s diluted.

Transcript

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0:00.0	How do you go back to sleep if for some reason you wake up between 2 to 3 a.m. in the middle of the night?
0:08.2	I would consider myself an expert at insomnia because I had this for over a decade and it was
0:14.5	destroying my life. It was not just getting up at 2 or 3 in the morning. Sometimes I wouldn't
0:19.4	even sleep for one minute the entire
0:21.8	night. I would lay there. It was basically torture. What's unique about 2 a.m. is something
0:28.3	called the circadian rhythm with cortisol. This is a stress hormone. Cortisol should be at the
0:34.8	lowest point in this rhythm at 2 a.m. and the highest point at 8 a.m.
0:39.7	For me, everything was backwards. I was very, very awake at 2, but I was extremely tired at 8 a.m. in the morning.
0:47.3	I tried everything. I even tried prescription medications. It didn't work. In fact, what I didn't know at the time was those medications actually worsen your
0:56.1	cortisol. They raise your cortisol. We can also look at things that help you lower cortisol.
1:02.1	And one big one is magnesium. Magnesium has the ability to actually lower cortisol. And your
1:08.6	cortisol can actually go up if you're deficient in magnesium.
1:12.0	Also, if you're sitting there watching right now and you have any tightness in your muscle in your
1:15.9	upper back, lower back, or if you point your toe, okay, and it cramps, that's a sure sign that
1:22.0	you are deficient in magnesium. The type of magnesium that I would recommend to take is something
1:25.3	called magnesium glycinate. It can actually help relax your muscles and help reduce cortisol.
1:31.3	When you want to take it is at night before you go to bed.
1:34.3	Towards the later part of the morning, right around 6 o'clock a.m.
1:37.3	is when you have the least amount of magnesium in your tissues.
1:41.3	This is also probably why a lot of health problems occur in
1:45.5	early morning, like heart attacks, stroke, restless leg syndrome, because a lot of these things
1:51.4	are influenced by magnesium. One last indication of magnesium deficiency is twitching. So if you're
	...

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