You are what you drink. Alcohol and caffeine aren’t the only liquids that may be impacting your sleep; your water may actually be hurting your sleep more than you know. Both tap and well water may carry damaging contaminants into your cup and into your system.

When working with my client, Todd, his HTMA (Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis) showed high levels of copper and uranium in his body. Copper can get into your water from copper pipes (or from birth control in women), and uranium often finds its way into groundwater and well water, esp. in the Rockies.

Todd also had other issues. He had a parasite, he had poor digestion, he had gluten sensitivity. So his gut also wasn't healthy. But the heavy metals were a really big part of his sleep issues for him so that's definitely something that we addressed. After working together, he went from waking up three times a night to usually waking up only once a night.

In addition to heavy metals (lead, arsenic, cadmium, uranium, etc.) and metals (like copper), tap water can contain chemicals which impact our gut and overall health, like chlorine.

To address this issue, testing your tap water and well water is helpful. You can use mytapscore.com or the Environmental Working Group’s database to determine if your water contains impurities. If your water has heavy metals or contaminant levels above the safe threshold, using a filter is critical.

Unfortunately common filters like Pur and Brita just aren’t going to cut it. I recommend one that can remove heavy metals and contaminants like PureEffects which plugs into your household water system, or a Berkey which is a table top filter.

I also recommend cooking with filtered water as well because the food that you're cooking is going to absorb those heavy metals and contaminants too. Using a charcoal filter in the shower can also reduce chlorine exposure.

Lastly, it’s important to remember that toxicity in the body is all about imbalance. When a body is healthy and in balance, managing the chemicals and contaminants we come into contact with daily is something most bodies are made to handle.

We see real problems when other minerals in the body are out of balance. For example, if you're deficient in sodium and potassium, for example, (which is really common because those get depleted easily by stress), then your body will hold on to certain heavy metals so that they can do some of the jobs of sodium and potassium. So I never recommend any kind of chelation therapy or forcing your body to get rid of heavy metals. Instead, I always focus on balancing the most important minerals first. Then we can support your body as it's ready and strong enough to get rid of those heavy metals.

At least half of my clients have heavy metals, so if you aren’t sleeping, book a consultation today so we can get to the bottom of it.