Turning the Puzzle Sideways: Sleep, Diet & The Brain-Gut Connection

Over the past decade, I’ve had a frustrating, stressful, seemingly unsolvable health issue. Thought i’d share the breakthrough that has helped — and, how “turning the puzzle sideways” might have helped sooner.

For the earlier part of my life, sleep was not something I worried about. I drank tons of coffee, could sleep on a red-eye then roll into a meeting, and worked on my computer until late. I was always able to sleep.

In my mid-thirties, something changed. Maybe it was becoming a parent, work stress, aging, or all of the above. I became a super light and fitful sleeper. I often woke at 3am and couldn’t fall back asleep. I learned to plan to be in bed for 10 hours to get 8 hours of sleep — but even after 8 hours, I often felt exhausted.

According to my Zeo, Fitbit, Apple Watch and the many other tools I’ve used to track sleep, I was rarely able to achieve the lowest levels of deep, REM, or light sleep. As I read about the importance of sleep, not sleeping felt like a recursive source of stress.

Over the years, I tried every remedy and lifestyle change recommended by doctors, internet research, and books on sleep. I compared notes with friends who also couldn’t get good sleep. And like many, I medicated with a spectrum from melatonin to Benadryl to Ambien to CBD/THC. While feeling like a pharmaco-sleep expert was kind of cool, being dependent on a pill to sleep did not feel cool at all.

At the beginning of this year, I decided to try the trendy Keto diet out of curiosity. Could it be that by eating more fat one could lose fat? Seemed strange. Like most diets, it was not so fun at first (keto flu + stress dreams of accidentally eating a delicious pizza), but using an app (carbmanager) to log food helped. And amazingly, I did lose weight that regular exercise had not budged.

But the giant coincidental AH-HAH from my keto experiment? After a few weeks, I started sleeping REALLY well.

My deep sleep, REM, and light sleep regularly hit above average. I woke up feeling rested and had more energy. I stopped taking Ambien. It’s been about 3 months and every morning I am pleased to look at my sleep data after struggling to get good sleep for over ten years.

Did the good sleep come from eliminating a problem food? Or from cutting out carbs, gluten, or eating more healthy fats? Or was it changing the microbiomes in my stomach? Or changing my nighttime levels of insulin, cortisol, serotonin, GABA or other natural chemicals?

Wish we knew. Researching the diet-sleep connection turns up very few clinical studies and conflicting results. Am trying some newer diagnostics to learn more, and I’m grateful to have the privilege to afford medical help and various remedies to try to solve and learn from this problem.

The Brain-Gut-Health Connection

I’d already been a believer in the “brain-gut connection,” but had never had a personal experience. Changing what’s in my gut has literally changed my life.

There’s a growing body of research showing a connection between the gut, brain, and our systemic functions than we don’t fully understand. Researchers at Stanford are focused on the bacteria in our guts — our “gut microbiota.” When we’re healthy, we should have up to 1,000 different types of microbes in our guts that protect us from pathogens and secrete stuff that acts like natural pharmaceuticals. What we eat alters the microbiota in our guts, which research is showing can influence our moods, metabolism, sleep and more.

Studies have shown that subjects with health conditions have different microbiota in their guts. And when microbiota found in the guts of Parkinson’s patients are transplanted into the guts of non-Parkinson’s mice, the mice demonstrate neuroinflammation and motor symptoms. Amazingly, when the gut microbes from obese mice are transplanted into thin mice, with no change in diet, thin mice become fat!

There’s also something called the “Enteric Nervous System” (ENS) — a giant network of nerves in a thin lining that goes from the esophagus to the rectum. Researchers believe the ENS sends signals to the brain to alter our mood, energy and health, depending on what’s happening in our GI system. It’s being called our “second brain,” but it’s one we know little about.

UCLA, UCSD, Mayo Clinic and many more are building growing evidence about the brain-gut connection. This could lead to a future where health disorders can be helped via diet changes or “psychobiotic” supplements.

I’m hopeful we’ll someday have accessible diagnostics, programs and scientifically-backed supplements to help people leverage their guts to impact mood and health, and that diet consideration will become part of the standard of medical care.

It’s an exciting forefront for research and new solutions that could power future startups. While biotech investing hasn’t been our expertise, investing in tech that re-imagines work or personal life in large markets is what we look to invest in — so if you or someone you know is working on a startup that can be described this way, we’d love to hear about it.

Turning the puzzle sideways

My partner Ted recently told me about getting stuck on a difficult jigsaw puzzle with his daughter Kate. At first they made fast work, but then made little progress for hours. It was seemingly unsolvable. Then, a eureka moment: turn the puzzle sideways. They saw it from a different perspective and suddenly pieces fit together in a way they hadn’t seen before.

This resonated much. It is all too familiar to address a problem the same way for a long time. In my case, I spent over ten years with a sometimes debilitating and literally exhausting sleep problem. I was lucky to coincidentally change my diet. It had been there the whole time, but I didn’t think to put diet into the consideration set, and it had never been suggested by the many, many medical resources consulted.

Hopefully this idea is helpful for you. If you are stuck with sleep or other health issues, insight could come from something outside what you’ve been considering. And if you are stuck on any problem at all, it can help to step back and reframe the picture. Ask different questions, change up the tactics, get new input, or “turn the puzzle sideways” — I hope this helps you make new progress.