What do salt and soup have in common?
They can both improve your sleep.
Stress & Mineral Use
When the body is stressed, it uses a variety of minerals to fuel the stress hormones. These hormones enable a person to push through real or perceived threats.
If stress is very intense or chronic, minerals in the body are quickly depleted. The adrenal glands, which help with the stress response, essentially steal minerals that were divvied out to other parts of the body. Those adrenals figure that survival is the priority.
If you are waking up in the middle of the night to urinate, it is often because your water isn’t getting absorbed properly. Therefore, essentially the water is going in your mouth and quickly out the other end without doing much good in between. Luckily, that problem is fixable, enabling better sleep!
Minerals enable the body to properly absorb and utilize water.
When mental or physical stress is draining the body of minerals, there often aren’t enough minerals left over to help with water absorption.
Furthermore, tap water is not as mineral rich as spring water. For this reason, it can be helpful to add minerals to drinking water. Adding a pinch of sea salt or ConcenTrace minerals to water can increase water absorption.
#1. Reduce Stress
I know that certain stresses may be out of your control. Let’s not focus on those.
There are so many ways that you can reduce or eliminate the strain on your brain and body. Decreased stress means better sleep.
- Reduce or eliminate sugar, alcohol, and processed carbs. These all stress the body and therefore deplete mineral reserves.
- Limit lifestyle stresses. For example, don’t engage in excessive physical exertion that leaves you feeling extremely drained rather than worked but energized. Tackle that intense workout in the future, but first build up your body through a restorative diet and by eliminating some of the other stresses that are draining your reserves.
- Fix poor digestion. If food is not properly absorbed, nutrients needed to combat stress will not be available for the body. You could be eating a “perfect” diet but not be getting the benefit of it due to poor digestion.
- Overcome food allergies. Work with me or another health professional to identify and eliminate food sensitivities or allergies that are causing a constant low grade stress on your system.
#2. Build Up the Body
Increasing minerals in the diet will help the body to absorb water properly and combat stress. Both of these things will improve sleep quality.
- Add more sea salt. Place a small pinch of sea salt in your water to help increase absorption. Or add more to your food. Click here to learn more about sea salt.
- Eat mineral rich foods. Ingesting bone broth on a regular basis is a great start!
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