Insomnia
Functional medicine support tailored to uncover the root cause of complex symptoms.
Consult with our care team to understand next steps and build a personalized plan.
Serving Denver Metro, Fort Collins, and Colorado Springs.
About This Condition
Insomnia disorder is characterized by persistent difficulty initiating sleep, maintaining sleep, or obtaining restorative sleep, despite adequate opportunity and circumstances for sleep, leading to daytime impairment. It may present as trouble falling asleep, frequent awakenings during the night, early-morning awakenings with inability to return to sleep, or chronically non-restorative or poor-quality sleep.
Patients frequently report fatigue, low energy, irritability, difficulty concentrating, impaired work or school performance, and reduced quality of life. Insomnia can occur as an isolated primary complaint or in association with medical conditions, pain, mood and anxiety disorders, substance use, circadian rhythm disturbances, and environmental or behavioral factors that interfere with sleep.
Diagnosis is clinical and based on characteristic symptoms occurring several nights per week over a period of months, with associated daytime consequences and absence of another primary sleep disorder or medical or psychiatric condition that fully explains the sleep disturbance. Chronic insomnia often becomes self-perpetuating due to maladaptive sleep habits, conditioned arousal in the sleep environment, and worry about sleep.
Common Symptoms
- •Difficulty falling asleep at bedtime with prolonged sleep latency
- •Frequent awakenings during the night with trouble returning to sleep
- •Waking earlier than desired and being unable to fall back asleep
- •Non-restorative or poor-quality sleep despite adequate time spent in bed
- •Daytime fatigue, low energy, or reduced motivation
- •Difficulty concentrating, memory lapses, or feeling mentally foggy during the day
- •Irritability, low mood, or increased emotional reactivity associated with poor sleep
- •Excessive focus on sleep performance and worry about the consequences of not sleeping
Conventional Treatment Options
Sleep hygiene and CBT-I principles
Light/timing routines
Stress down-regulation
Our Functional Medicine Approach
Sleep is a downstream symptom of something else
By the time patients ask us about insomnia, most have already tried melatonin, sleep hygiene apps, and a sedative or two. Some helped briefly; most stopped working or felt worse during the day. Persistent sleep problems are almost never about "poor habits" — they're driven by cortisol rhythm, blood sugar volatility at night, thyroid or sex hormone shifts, undiagnosed sleep-disordered breathing, inflammation, or nervous-system dysregulation.
How Spire works the root cause
Our Unexplained Symptoms Program is the structured entry point for insomnia. We map cortisol rhythm, glucose patterns overnight, thyroid and sex hormones, nutrient cofactors for sleep (magnesium, B vitamins, glycine), and screen for sleep apnea where indicated. Then we sequence the interventions in the order most likely to actually move your sleep — not just stack more supplements.
Who this is for
Adults with persistent difficulty falling or staying asleep, people whose sleep collapsed after a life event (perimenopause, illness, stress), and patients who want a root-cause workup before considering long-term sleep medication.