Difficulty Falling Asleep for Years to Now Sleeping Through The Night - Joannes Story
Joanne struggled with chronic insomnia for 33 years, often unable to fall asleep until 4am. After years of trying different approaches, she worked with sleep expert Anne Marie Boyhan to look beyond sleep hygiene and investigate the potential underlying factors affecting her sleep.
Discover Joanne’s insomnia success story, what functional testing revealed, and why long-term insomnia doesn’t always mean you’re destined to be a bad sleeper.
My approach uses a person's history, symptoms and, where appropriate, functional laboratory testing to explore physiological patterns that may be relevant to their sleep.
In Joanne's case, some of the areas we identified included hormonal imbalances and genetic factors affecting the way her body processes certain neurotransmitters and stress chemicals.
One of the genetic patterns we considered involved COMT.
COMT is an enzyme involved in breaking down catecholamines such as dopamine, adrenaline and noradrenaline, as well as playing a role in estrogen metabolism.
Certain genetic variants can influence how efficiently this pathway operates.
This doesn't mean that having a particular COMT variant “causes insomnia.”
It also doesn't mean your genes determine whether you will sleep well or badly for the rest of your life.
Instead, genetics can give us another piece of information when we're trying to understand the individual sitting in front of us.
For Joanne, we didn't look at one test result and declare:
“That's your insomnia.”
Instead, we started connecting the dots.
Her history.
Her symptoms.
Her hormones.
Her stress response.
Her genetics.
And, importantly, her very specific sleep pattern of being unable to fall asleep until approximately 4am.
That's where personalised work becomes very different from giving everybody with insomnia the same list of sleep tips.
The hormone-sleep connection
Hormones were another important area for us to consider with Joanne, including low progesterone.
This matters because hormones and sleep are closely interconnected.
Progesterone is particularly interesting because some of its metabolites interact with GABA-A receptors in the brain.
GABA is one of the brain's major inhibitory neurotransmitters and plays a role in reducing neuronal excitability and helping the nervous system move towards a calmer state.
This is one of the reasons I pay close attention to hormonal patterns when working with women experiencing persistent sleep problems, particularly during midlife.
It doesn't mean that every woman with insomnia has a hormone imbalance.
But when someone has struggled for years and the usual sleep approaches haven't solved the problem, I believe it's important to consider the wider physiological picture rather than looking exclusively at what happens at bedtime.
For Joanne, her hormonal picture was one of the pieces we needed to understand.
There wasn't one magic root cause
This is something I think is extremely important when we talk about “root cause” approaches.
The phrase can make it sound as though there is always one hidden problem underneath insomnia.
In my experience, persistent insomnia can be much more complicated than that.
I prefer to think of it as a puzzle.
One person might have a strong stress-response component.
Another might be going through significant hormonal changes.
Another may have digestive problems, blood sugar instability or environmental factors alongside their sleep difficulties.
And somebody else may have several factors happening at once.
The goal isn't to find a fashionable explanation for insomnia.
The goal is to investigate the individual person and work out which pieces appear most relevant to them.
That's what we did with Joanne.
If Joanne's story sounds like you...
Perhaps you've been struggling with insomnia for years.
Maybe you can't fall asleep until the early hours of the morning, or you fall asleep only to find yourself wide awake again at 2am, 3am or 4am.
You've tried the sleep hygiene.
You've tried magnesium or melatonin.
Perhaps you've tried sleeping medication, meditation, CBT-I or countless supplements.
And yet you're still not sleeping.
If that's you, I want you to know that there may still be pieces of your sleep puzzle that haven't been investigated.
Joanne had been struggling for 33 years.
Her story doesn't mean that everyone with long-term insomnia will have the same underlying factors or experience the same results. But it does show why I believe we shouldn't automatically assume that someone who has struggled for decades is simply destined to be a “bad sleeper.”
Sometimes we need to stop asking:
“What else can I take to make myself sleep?”
And start asking:
“What could be getting in the way of my body's ability to sleep?”
That's exactly what I teach in my free insomnia training.
I'll explain why some people continue to struggle even when their standard tests are normal, their sleep hygiene is excellent and they feel as though they've tried everything — and I'll introduce you to the approach I use with my own clients.
👉 [WATCH MY FREE INSOMNIA TRAINING]
Watch Anne Marie Boyhan's free insomnia training
About Anne Marie Boyhan
I'm Anne Marie Boyhan, a Sleep Expert, Sleep Science Coach and Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner, and I specialise in helping people with persistent insomnia understand what may be contributing to their sleep difficulties.
My interest in insomnia is also personal.
I experienced chronic insomnia myself, and that experience ultimately led me to retrain in sleep science and functional health and to develop the approach I now use with my clients.
Today, through my Easy Sleep Method, I work with men and women who often come to me after months, years — and sometimes decades — of struggling with sleep.
Many have already tried the usual approaches.
They've changed their bedtime routines.
They've taken supplements.
They've tried medication.
They've tried meditation, relaxation techniques or CBT-I.
And they're still asking:
“Why can't I sleep?”
My approach is to look at the person behind the insomnia.
Alongside sleep science and a detailed assessment of someone's sleep, symptoms and history, I may use functional laboratory testing to investigate areas such as the stress response and cortisol rhythm, hormones, gut health, blood sugar regulation, mineral status, brain chemistry and environmental factors.
The goal isn't to assume that every case of insomnia has the same “root cause.”
It is to gather the clues, identify the patterns that may be relevant to that individual and create a personalised plan.
I've now worked with clients internationally who have struggled with persistent insomnia, including people who believed they had exhausted every option available to them.
My sleep expertise has also taken me beyond my clinical work. I regularly speak about sleep through television, radio, media, corporate wellness programmes and educational events, and in 2025 I was recognised by The Sunday Times as a leading sleep coach.
But the work I'm most passionate about is helping someone who has reached the point of thinking:
“Maybe this is just how I'm going to be forever.”
Joanne had been living with her sleep problem for 33 years.
Her story is a reminder that the length of time you've struggled doesn't necessarily mean you should stop looking for answers.
If you're struggling with chronic insomnia and feel as though you've tried everything, start by watching my free training.
